Truth, Love, Biology, Stones

 “I wasn’t born in a barn, but I got there as fast as I could.” A kindred spirit wrote that. Actually, barns aren’t my forte. I like the wild open green fields where the animals frolic, and the air smells fresh.

But I loved my run-in barn, 24 x 12 feet, open on one side where my two horses could be dry and out of the rain. And I kept the rubber-matted floor clean. They used one side for their hay, and the other side for a bathroom. It worked perfectly. I cleaned it every morning.

My love of horses must have begun when I was six years old, before I ever touched one. My father took me to the carnival when he came home from the war. I lusted after one of their prizes: a small horse statue. He bribed the hawker to sell it to him—I’m sure that was meant to be a surprise when he won it, but I knew the truth, and it forever endeared him to me. He disappeared from my life after that…for 38 years.

When I was nine years old, my mom and step-dad moved from a small town in Oregon to a house on one acre of land outside the city next door to a farm with a number of acres, two horses, a cow, chickens, and rabbits. There, one of their two daughters, a high school student, would pull me up behind her on their big horse, King, and we would take off roaming the countryside.

The other daughter rode their old mare, King’s mother. Sometimes we would go to the store to buy Grape Nehi, or to the creek to swim, or to an old racetrack grown up in weeds but still fun to encircle. During hay season, in the cool of the evenings, we tried to get the horses to jump the small piles of hay the boys raked up from windrows into small stacks. Only the horses plowed through instead of jumping them, and we had to rake the hay into a pile again.

Why Lois spent time with a nine-year-old is beyond me, but I will be forever grateful. She was my mentor, and she sent me on a journey of wishing, dreaming, and praying for a horse of my own.  

Three years later, we moved away from Lois and King, but I got Boots. My horse. A super horse. My step-dad chose well. I totally loved that horse.

And now I am in love again.

With baby goats.

It happened yesterday when I drank my morning coffee sitting in clean, sweet-smelling straw, holding a baby goat. He was quivering, and I held him until he was warm and snuggly. The other goat was a bit standoffish, but by afternoon all of us were sitting in the sunshine, happy as three otters on a creek bank, with the babies nibbling grass and crawling on my lap.

Daughter dear, grandson and I picked up the goats on Sunday afternoon. It’s Tuesday now, and we’re settled in, happy. This morning, I, again, drank my morning coffee sitting in the straw and holding a baby goat. They greeted me with “baas.” I thought they were crying yesterday, but I think they were happy to see a person.

How am I going to get anything done?

These are boy goats, but will not be Billy goats. They are called wethers; that is, a neutered goat. They haven't had surgery, but they have rubber bands—you figure it out—it’s your biology lesson for the day.

And now I am here with you. It’s Tuesday, blog day.

Last Tuesday I was a mess. I had already written the blog the night before. I would clean it and publish it in the morning, I thought. The trouble was, when morning came, I fiddled with it. I didn’t like it. I changed it. I lost it.

Lost it? What the heck? Where did it go? I searched. I thought I could get my history back. I couldn’t.

After hours of trying, I rewrote the blog, but it didn’t have the enthusiasm of the first. I thought I had it together.  I wanted to get my blog out. I hit publish. Then refused to look at it for two days. But when I did, I screamed bloody murder.

What a mess.

I’m embarrassed.  

I cleaned up my mess, and I’m off again. It will not stop me.

And this brings me to the question I began for this post a few days ago: “Why is it that when someone from the opposite end of the political spectrum from me will say I’ve been lied to, when apparently they've been given the truth?”

We used to expect people to tell us the truth. A liar was soon ignored.

Ignoring or shaming tended to weed out liars. Honest Abe, remember him? Nixon probably would have gotten away with his break-in, but he was caught lying. This administration can lie right to our faces, even with fact-finders right behind him, and half the country doesn’t care.

But half the country does care—you know how a lie will travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. And the people who care are walking the hard road, against constant opposition.

It used to be that we expected reporters to have integrity. Do you know what integrity means? I thought it meant telling the truth, but it actually means speaking within one’s own moral system. Can you believe it? A person with no morals can tell you lies and be within their own integrity.

This shocked the heck out of me.

But this morning, I looked up the word integrity. I found it described basically as I originally thought—to be honest.

Integrity:

• Honesty: A steady refusal to lie, steal, or deceive in any situation. [1, 2]
• Consistency: Acting in the exact same ethical manner whether people are watching or not. [1, 2]
• Wholeness: Deriving from the Latin word integer, meaning a state of being whole, complete, and undivided in character. [1, 2]
• Soundness: Maintaining an unimpaired, solid condition, often applied to moral character or physical structures. [1]

 

Do definitions vary? And if it’s from AI, AI knows only what we tell it.

How can it get smarter without the data in the first place? It’s like history. His Story. Written by a man. Recycled by a man. Run through the biases and the thought processes of a man.

 

What if the data is wrong? Whoops.

 

Yesterday an ad caught me. I was curious –a honey cure for Alzheimer's? Only one dollar a day? It can be found in your kitchen? Numerous celebrities, their voices and faces online, claimed that their fuzzyheadedness disappeared within a week. They could remember words again. I looked closely; has this been AI-generated?

The faces didn’t look exactly right. But wouldn’t the media need permission to use people’s faces and voices to sell something? Would celebrities allow that?

Honey is a hot topic these days. It’s good for you; it’s not good for you. Alzheimers is a hot topic; everyone fears it. The fear of losing our memory—now that’s a good distraction.

It isn’t plaque buildup in the brain that causes Alzheimer's, so said this ad, it was something else. Okay, I’ll bite. What is it?

I watched for at least one half hour—it felt like an eternity. That’s one reason I blog—you can read me in two minutes. And if this has any AI content I will jump up and down and scream.

I hate those long commercials that give their credentials, their life story, their research, their conclusions, and then I find that, of course, they had made a world-shaking discovery, something they would sell to you.

Whoops, I told you my horsey life story.  

This particular ad I’m talking about came from substances found on a tiny island with fresh, unspoiled soil, water, and nutrients not found in the US. They believed two minerals found there could soak up the toxic metals we accumulate over time that cause Alzheimer’s. One was found in their wild honey. The other was in their water.

The people raised on the island rarely got Alzheimer’s.  

A picture on the ad showed someone stirring honey.

I saw no kitchen, and no menu.

But I did see a bottle of capsules available for purchase.

How much did they cost?

You had to wait a while until they disclosed that.  

The special price was reduced to about one dollar a day.

They did not mention that confiscating that rare and precious commodity would use it up. I don’t think there is an endless supply of wild honey on a small island.

I wasn’t born yesterday.

But I don’t want to doubt everything either.

This is like the touchstone, said to bring one’s heart’s desire. Legend said you would recognize it by touch, for it was always warm. A person learned it was on a rocky beach, and so he searched, picking up stones to feel their heat. And so, to eliminate the stones he had checked, one by one he threw them into the ocean.

One day he found the stone; it radiated an uncommon heat. It was the touchstone. His arm, however, had become so used to throwing stones that before he could stop himself, he slung it into the ocean.

Sleepy time.

P.S. The ad I mentioned is considered a fraud.  Bill Gates does not have a cure for Alzheimer’s. How can whoever controls our information get away with this?

Hope

 

The first egg is always a monumental event.

After a winter of rest, sleep, and using her energy to grow new feathers, one of my chickens laid her first spring egg. I could name her Hope, but I have three red hens, and I can't tell them apart, so I don't know who laid the egg. That egg was from yesterday. Today, I got another. Yea!

 

 ----Imagine strips of paper upon which you have written your insights. 

You throw them up into the wind. And other people, like children running through their first flurry of snow, arms outstretched, instead of catching snowflakes on their tongues, catch those paper strips in their tiny little fists. If they like what's written on the strip, they keep it. If not, they throw it back into the wind to be picked up by someone else.

 

On a day long ago, there were murmurings at the kitchen table that were not understandable to little ears, but I knew something was brewing. My father enlisted in the Navy because he knew the draft was coming and wanted to choose his area of service. The Navy was not to be, though, for they found he was color blind. Therefore, he ended up in the Army. I learned of my father's colorblindness from those murmurings and how that surprised him. Maybe that's why he sketched in pencil or charcoal, a.k.a. black and white. I learned that during the war, he drew portraits for the soldiers, and I remember he said, "You can't put too many lines on a face."

 

Once, he wrote, "You thought I would only be gone for a short time, didn't you?" I don't remember knowing he was going to be gone. If there were any goodbyes, I don't know them. If there were any tears, I didn't see any. He was just gone. He must have slipped out when I was sleeping.

He survived the war, but not his marriage or his fatherhood with me.

Which brings me to a question:

If the civilians on the home front could watch their brothers, husbands, and sons go off to a foreign land not knowing if they would ever see them again, if they were willing to offer their pots and pans as metal for the war effort, if they could have necessary items, like shoes and foodstuffs rationed, and purchase war bonds to help fund the war effort and still maintain HOPE for a liberated future, we can do it.  

 

Those folks back home believed that goodness would prevail and that evil would be vanquished.

Do we believe that now?

Without hope, if we feel that the future will not be better than the present and might even be worse, we will die spiritually.

We have it backward. The opposite of happiness is not sadness. It's hopelessness.

Hopelessness is the root of anxiety, mental illness, and depression. So, why not shoot up a school, sleep with your boss's wife, take illicit drugs, or load up on pharmaceuticals by the bucketfuls?

 

 ----My strips of paper blowing in the wind will contain plain talk about magical things. I am gathering them into a book with the working title of YOUR STORY MATTERS, Living Your Life in the Most Awesome Way Possible.

 I metaphysically use the word magic. I know physics is at work. I also understand that something divine is swirling around that we find impossible to explain. 

 "I may not get there with you," said Martin Luther King Jr., "but I have been to the mountain. Mine eyes have seen the glory…I know that we will get to the promised land." 

He gave that speech on April 3, 1968. On April 4, 1968, he was shot and killed.

There was a man with a vision, a man who believed in non-violent resistance, and a man who had hope. He made a difference.

I know we are made of strong stuff. We must find our courage, integrity, and ingenuity and gather harmoniously. Remember, we are the ones to make a brighter day.

 Once, I watched a T.V. show where the presenter traveled the world looking for the happiest people. He found that the Taiwanese were among the happiest. The reason? 

They believed in hope.

 

 I was poking around in an old website that sat unpublished since 2015.

 

It was my old Blog, Where Tiger’s Belch and Monkey’s Howl.

Now when reading it it seemed happy.

 

Why did I let it go? When I read the  post,“What Makes You Happy?” and came across “Puppy Love,” I was hooked. It has a link to a Budweiser Clydesdale commercial that made me cry/laugh/smile. 

 

I am reopening the Where Tiger’s Belch Blog. I trust that the Universe is guiding me in the right direction.

 

When I read, “Have you noticed that it takes more effort these days to hold up your face?” I had to laugh.

 

Maybe you are much younger than me and haven’t discovered the face issue yet. Perhaps it’s just me. I look at myself in the mirror and don’t look too bad, but when I see a photo of myself, I wonder what happened.

 

Well, I discovered the truth. In the mirror, I inadvertently held up my face, and a photograph caught me slack jawed. 

 

One writer asked, “How does your writing look at its relaxed state? Do you let it drop like our face?”

 

See, someone else knew of this phenomenon. Oh, the pressure to hold up your face and your writing.

 

From Norm Papernick on Tigers:

 

 “Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad.”

 

I was more light-hearted then—I’m returning to that blog.

 

Please give Where Tigers Belch a look- see. I would appreciate your thoughts on it. I will clean up some posts, delete some, and check my grammar and spelling. It could be like a high school play that is not perfect; it is not slick or professional, but it has the heart that professional Hollywood plays do not have.

 

It is fresh.

 

Here it is at https://wheretigersbelchandmonkeyshowl.blogspot.com

 

Soon, it will be www.wheretigersbelchandmonkeyshowl.com. I wanted simply wheretigersbelch.com, but alas, someone else got it. It’s “coming soon.” Please don’t confuse it with mine.