Black and White and Red inside

Tomatoes I grew in my driveway in MA!

Gorgeous sunset overlooking White Bay, Jost Van Dyke.

Hobiecat sailors on Jost Van Dyke.

More tomatoes I grew!

Cukes, too!

Eggplant, as well! (God I miss those gorgeous countertops!)

I am SOOOOOOO sick of these articles detailing how "white" people view the experience of "black" people after the death of that guy in Baltimore and countless other black men.

Why are we so hell bent on separating people from people?

What the hell is color anyway? It's all perception.

What I call purple, some call blue. What I call green some call blue or turquoise.

It's all in the label that we give things.

Why do we so desperately feel the need to label things, anyway?

Can't we just go about our business and just BE?

I'm really really really fed up with the overwhelming desire to judge people based on something you probably don't even understand.

Take, for instance, my friends who have transitioned from male to female.

This was not just some rash decision that someone makes and goes about lightly. This is a painful and very complicated decision and process. My one friend -  who is now Tiffany - when I first met Tiff, he was a burly biker dude. Hairy and very very manly. And very very sweet. I loved him from the first time I met him.

Over the many years I knew him as a he, it was clear that his appearance didn't match the way he felt inside. He thought, at one point, that he might be gay, but that didn't work either.

After a lot of soul searching, counseling and meeting with doctors, he came to the obvious conclusion that he had been born with external physical identifiers that did not jibe with the internal feelings and desires of a female.

It took a LONG time for him to become Tiffany. Painful electrolysis, hormone therapy, psychological counseling, lots of mean people making ignorant comments during the transition.

Tiffany is now a Mom (she adopted several kids), has an incredible job and is just an all around wonderful human.

When I hear people make fun of people they don't understand or have biases against someone because of the way they dress or what color they are or whatever? It makes my blood boil.

There have been some very cruel things said about Bruce Jenner and the gawking that people are doing during his transition to female. The big show the other night - I refuse to watch such things. He's obviously going through a very big thing in his life and I just wish that people would stop with the ugly jokes and ignorant commentary.

I do not purport to know what Bruce Jenner is going through. But I do know what my friend Tiffany went through and I have two other young friends who identify as female and  - to me - it was obvious all along that these "boys" were just basically born with the wrong external body parts. They were always "girls" but through the process of genetics got the X and Y chromosomes when, in fact, internally they are CLEARLY XX.

Something you hear people who have dogs say a lot is that we learn so much from our dogs. They are totally present - they know how to anticipate a good time or a good meal, but mostly they are right there with ya just as life is happening.

They don't care what you're wearing or not wearing, they don't care how you look or what color you are. Most of the time they don't care what gender you are or if you're gay or whatever you may or may not be.

They just care how you treat them and even then, some dogs take terrible abuse and still can muster a wag when they're treated kindly for two minutes.

Kids - same thing for the most part. If you treat them fairly and kindly, they become fair and kind adults (for the most part - there are those sociopath crazy people who need extra special help).

But, blanket statement - if you're good to others, for the MOST part, they will return the favor.

There are nasty people out there for sure, but I really do think that the nastiness comes from either mental illness or being really mistreated somewhere along the way by someone who was supposed to protect and love them.

So, to go on with my theme of Polly Purebread sweetness - I'm just begging people to be nice to each other. You really have no idea what someone else's journey feels like.

Just yesterday I was in the library voting for the mayoral runoff election (Go Berkowicz!) and there was a woman there with a sign on her that said "Sin is Same Sex."

Really? Just how the f*ck do you know?

Most of my friends are gay, bi, lesbian, trans or something else other than "straight"  - and I love that term "straight" as most of the heterosexual humans I know are FAR more weird about the boudoir than any other subdivision of people.

You think it's normal that that guy literally sews her hands together and she is getting off on it? Holy schneikies. That, my friends, is some WEIRD stuff. Yeesh.

I know that I appear a certain way to most people. I was blessed with a strong body, pretty face and a generally optimistic attitude. I'm smart, well-traveled, educated and look white white white. What people DON'T realize is that my Momma is married to a black man, that I'm half German and also Italian, English, Irish and who know's what other stuff is in my genetics!

They don't know that my Momma marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. and that I was brought up for the first 6 years of my life on the "wrong" side of town in a highly racially divided city. Most of my friends were "black" and I put that in quotes because I didn't see them as any different - they were just my friends.

I lived in an integrated neighborhood and went to an integrated school for kindergarten and half of first grade. I didn't know it was integrated, it was just my school!

Then my Dad got a big opportunity to work for one of the most popular radio stations in the lower peninsula of Michigan, so we moved on up to Traverse City. A lovely lovely city, but OOOOOHHHH so not diverse!! I remember thinking how weird it was that nearly everyone in the whole town was white.

As I've aged I really do take notice of the diversity around me and I relish it. I love that I can walk into a place here in Anchorage and hear any language you can imagine, eat any ethnic food, and see people of all colors married to each other. It's such a transitional place and we're so close to Europe (just hop over the North Pole!), Russia and Asia - it's truly fascinating.

I once asked a person I was related to at the time (ex-husband numero uno) "How would you know who to hate if you were blind?"

She didn't like that too much.

Something that bigots and other sundry assh*les need to keep in mind is that during an emergency or disaster, would you turn down the aid of someone because they weren't the "right" color?

I think not.

Likewise, when there is someone in need who doesn't necessarily look like you, do you just turn your back?

Probably.

That's the thing. Maybe you should reconsider your motives. Because I will promise you, if you're losing blood and there is a person who has donated blood and your life is saved because that kind soul was nice enough to give blood? Well, the only color that truly matters then is Red.

That's all I gots for today.

Ciao for now & thanks for reading.

xoxo

My Lady and Koty. They certainly look different from each other but they had SO much love for each other.

And these two looked alike and he just tolerated her. She was a bug, but a sweet one!
My Sadie and Koty.

My Beebles. I love my little red girl!
She's a ball of energy and joy,

Bad News and Other People's Problems

A spectacular Bleeding Heart in my old back yard.

Lilacs. yumm.

I won an award for the flower boxes I did this year. 1st place!

Pretty rose in Loja Spain.

It is so very interesting how people react to bad news.

My husband lost his job for various reasons on Friday. That's happening a lot around here as the oil companies take their money and run.

Luckily the Native Corporations are booming and hiring loads of people, so thank GOD for that.

In any case, this brings me sort of full circle back to when I was going through my hardest, darkest times. If you didn't know about my saga a few years back, it ranged from dying dogs, divorce, two deaths (my Grandma and one of my dearest friends), a deranged dog that I tried to help but could not - he bit three people, lost my job and my house (I sold it - made a profit, so that was a blessing) and basically lost every last shred of confidence I'd ever managed to muster.

I didn't even know how to cook or garden or make decisions or take care of myself in any meaningful way. For a while I took prescription pills for my high blood pressure, a different one for my CRAZY anxiety attacks, a pill to help me sleep and I drank a lot to just numb the pain of everything.

Notsomuch did I want to kill myself because that would require planning and it was too much like work to even think about how sad my Mom and Dad and my other relatives and friends would be.

So it wasn't really thoughts of suicide, it was just wanting out. I just wanted the pain to stop. I wanted to not be nauseous all the time. I hardly ate anything for about a year. It was too much work to try to make any food and nothing sounded good. Ever.

I ended up losing 25 pounds and ironically, that was one of the things that helped get me un-depressed and partially helped me be not sad ALL the time.

Losing the weight also helped me regain my health - I stopped taking the blood pressure medication and my anxiety levels started to even out.

I realized that numbing myself was not going to cure anything. So I got into therapy, stopped drinking for a year and stopped taking the sleeping meds, too.

Now, with the loss of my husband's job, money is now a huge issue. We're talking about our options and what the future might look and feel like, so it's actually kind of a good thing. It's allowed us to kind of join forces to try to come up with suitable solutions to our present situation.

It's so interesting though, when people ask how you're doing and for the most part, I just say I'm fine and move on to other topics. But sometimes, it's necessary to tell people the honest truth about how you REALLY are. Sometimes I'm NOT fine. I'll certainly BE fine but sometimes shit happens and it's just shitty.

Sometimes it's okay to tell people that things are not good at the present moment. Sometimes a good cry is exactly what is needed.

It's OKAY to have emotions and feelings.

They WILL NOT kill you! Not at all.

Some people just kind of laugh and give a cliche to you to make you feel better. My favorite was the "God closes one door in order to open another."

Nope. Sometimes it's just shit everywhere you look. And then sometimes? It gets even worse.

So, when someone tells you bad news, and I know I've said this before, sometimes they just want to be heard and get some damn sympathy for their crappy day or crappy year.

Utter strangers have given me hugs recently when I told them what had happened. And then other people that I thought were good friends? They just run for the hills! Yikes!

It's shocking the way people react. Like if you possibly get too close the bad luck or sad emotions will rub off on them.

As if we are all supposed to be super stoic and everything is supposed to be perfect at all times.

No. No it's not.

There are wars going on, leaving children orphaned, there was a HUGE earthquake in Nepal killing thousands of souls, our government has gone totally mental, riots and protests in Baltimore, domestic violence everywhere, racism rampant STILL and loads of hard-working people - like my husband -OUT OF A JOB in a terrible economic environment.

And frankly? There's just a lot of bad behaviour out there. The "Me Monster" as my favorite comedian, Brian Regan, calls them.

There are LOADS of Me Monsters around these days and they do not give a flying crap about anyone or anything except lining their pockets and "getting ahead."

It's like these asshats in traffic who will NOT let you into a lane and speed up to get to a red light.

WTF?

It's baffling to me.

And the woman at the bar a few months back - I bought a round for some of my friends and she was sitting with them. She actually had the audacity to accept the drink and then act like I was trying to "get" something from her. She said "I don't KNOW you. What are you doing buying ME a drink?"

?

Nice. Very classy. And you're welcome, jerkface.

The people I knew who were with her were trying to get her to calm down, but she was in some sort of alcohol-induced anger circuit. It was really embarrassing for her and her friends who know me.

People.

Whatever, right? That's her problem - entirely hers. Not at all mine.

So, again. My plea? Just go be nice. That's all. You really don't have to go out of your way to do anything in particular, but just be nice to other people.

If they need to talk? Listen. Put aside your agenda for like 10 minutes and just listen.

If they need to cry? Comfort them. Give them a warm hug or hold their hand or whatever. Just listen and then when they stop crying or talking? Just tell them you're there for them.

Sometimes we all need a bit of reassurance that things sometimes are shitty but they do not REMAIN shitty forever.

Ups and downs are all a natural part of life.

My ex-husband's Grandmother, Bea, was one of the kindest, nicest humans I've had the pleasure to meet. She was gentle and artistic and just sweet as can be.

After her beloved Dave passed away, she would often call either my husband or me and describe that she was feeling "blue." She didn't really cry but you could see the sadness in her eyes when we'd go for visits sometimes.

We'd talk about Dave and her art and the news and what birds had recently visited the feeder we put outside her window. We'd talk about her sister and other relatives and her friends in the assisted living home she lived in. On occasion, I'd stay and have dinner with her and her 100 year old table mate (who was SOOOO interesting!) and Eleanor who was never married and was in her late 80s and was a big wig in the Army.

These women had done everything in their lives the way they wanted. Eleanor regretted not having children because she was often very lonely. The other woman, Mary, she was a world traveler and had a big family but no one close by to visit.

And then there was lovely Bea who had family and friends and was sharp sharp sharp up to the last minute, but her body was failing her. Even her esophageal muscles were failing. Can you imagine?

I digress. My point was that despite losing her husband and basically being taken away from her home and everything familiar, Bea remained so very positive. She just forged ahead each day anew.

Often I'd let Bea know she was a huge inspiration to me. All that she had accomplished and her immense talent could have made her a bit egotistical.

Quite the contrary. She was a very gentle, quiet, kind force with which to be reckoned.

I hope to be just like that and I wish that upon all of you out there.

Clovers for luck!

Neil deGrasse Tyson is my hero

Just read this interview.

He's AWESOME!

That's all.

And Now Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Program...

In the Chugach State Park in the Campbell Tract. 

Crystals that form when the snow evaporates and then refreezes. 

October in New England at my favorite Orchard and farm.
My friends, the chickens. Hilarious girls!

I have no idea what the hell is going on in the world right now.

Planets must be aligning or something as nearly everyone I know has major turmoil going on.

Family members in and out of the ICU, losing jobs, people behaving badly.

Really just loads of strife.

Surely has been a ration of absolutely crazy grossness happening all around these parts.

I, for one? Am tired of it. I'm ready for some smooth sailing again.

As many of you know, I went through a VERY rough patch in life about three years ago. Took me a LONG time, lots of money and lots of therapy sessions to get my head back on even close to straight.

Luckily, despite all of the crap that has been happening in the recent months, I'm totally fine. I might shed some tears and I might get angst-y at times, but for the most part? I'm really quite okay.

Big revelation to know that whatever is thrown at you, pretty much? Meh. Whatever. It can be dealt with. Just take it one thing at a time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm NOT having much fun with all the monetary turmoil and lack of income and waiting on the IRS to issue me my refund (yeesh) - however, as a wise friend once told me:

"If you can throw money at a problem to make it go away? You're in really good shape!"

And that's the truth. Money can be made. It can be gotten. Real problems and REAL sadness happens upon the death or illness of a loved one. Or when your loved one doesn't love you anymore.

THOSE are real issues.

Jobs come and go, friends sometimes come and go, houses come and go, money, cars, material stuff - all comes and goes.

What really matters?

Like we've all heard when someone is on their deathbed, they do not regret that they didn't spend more time in the office or at their job. They regret that they didn't take part in the every day joy of being with a loved one or friend. Spending time with the dog playing fetch. Playing baseball with their kids. Going for a midnight swim with their spouse.

Those moments that you look back upon and remember fondly? They certainly don't involve a stack of paperwork at your job.

So, as I'm going through the crap of daily life, I really really really do make the effort to take the time to smell the roses. And marvel at the little butterfly that landed on my Chinese poppies on Saturday. And take in lovely lavender color of the crocuses in my neighbor's yard.

The birds that are nesting in my yard bring me so much happiness! I know most people think I'm whacko because most days I take an hour or two just to go birdwatching and keeping track of the progress of the plants as spring warms us up.

I was just outside putting a letter in my mailbox, red flag up for the postman. (Who is delightful, by the way and also a transplant from MA!)

There are about a million little sprouts of lichens in the yard, wild snapdragons, Jacob's ladder, LOADs of life! Green sprouts of grass, red peony leaves and my beautiful bleeding hearts are bursting forth.

There's also a weird mystery plant that has found its way right next to the front door. Can't wait to see what the heck it turns into! It may be a cyclamen that seeded itself - I grow them inside in the upstairs bathroom and when the blooms or leaves are spent, I throw them out the window to adorn the walkway (even spent flowers are pretty to me).

Annnyway, I read a big article about the protests in Baltimore and all that's happening there.

Gives a person some perspective. I'm not gonna worry about a lost job or a few hundred dollars that someone stole from me. How lucky that I had the money to steal to begin with, right?

So, straighten up, fellow humans. Let's do this thing together. Let's help each other out. We are, after all, floating around a huge star on a planet that is mostly water and getting waterier every day.

I suggest we all learn to swim. Reeeaaaalllly well!

Yikes.

Take care of yourself and go forth and be nice to a stranger today. Make someone's day brighter.

Ciao for now and thank you for reading.

xoxo