one tiny step...

Went to the second week of the Grief Workshop last night. I liked the video and the topic and the speakers. Mom liked last week best and I liked this week best. Ironic how each individual needs something different. We took pictures of our loved ones for the small group. I also brought the words to the song that G wrote. I was unable to read it so KK did. I really liked the photo quilt wall hanging that one of the group leaders brang to show. I would like to have one made. Its a great idea. It would be nice to personalize one for everyone. I'll have to think about it. I do feel as though I took a step forward from last night.

slow, quick, quick...

Learned some intermediate steps last night for the Bolero. A nice crossover infront and then both dance forward, turn out and back to the basic step of slow, quick, quick (or rock step)

and the Foxtrot. slow, slow, quick quick.
a huge promenade grapevine move that kicked my butt.
1/4 turn to center for the guy, 1 side step 2 twist forward step, 3 twist step back 4 back step 5 twist step forward 6 forward step 7 side step slow 8 slow side step, quick quick.

and then a regular promenade that was 1,2,3,4,5,6. Whew. very tired afterward of 2 hours of ballroom dance.

Boomerang...

Started the Grief Workshop with mom and KK. I feel stuck in my grief and yet attending Monday night I felt as though I stepped back a few paces. It was very difficult in the small group. We were not bonding at first. We got done very early with all the discussion requirements and the group leaders didn't know what to do. I took the initiative and spoke about how dazed I still seem to be and how I do not understand the simplest of comments. The others opened up then.

I have lots of questions and yet voicing them is strange. Why would I have questions about death? Death is very simple and there is no alternative to it. Each one of us are moving towards it, every moment of every day.

Such tragic, tragic stories. How do we grow through this? How do we each speak about the unspeakable. Death is taboo in this society.

This night bothered my so much I was unable to sleep. I ate a late snack, which is bad for me and then I had to get up to knit until 1am. My socks are done! I actually have been snacking late the previous week too because I didn't want to go to this workshop.

Gadsden Flag...history of

Don't Tread on Me--By Chirs Whitten , 2001 updated 2002

http://www.foundingfathers.info/stories/gadsden.html

The Fourth of July never fails to reinspire my patriotism and sense of community with my fellow Americans, even when those fellow Americans are a mob of drunken cretins and teenagers trying to get out of downtown Chicago at 11pm.

I like seeing all the American flags. I do have my complaints about the American government, especially about how intimately the Washington D.C. politicians feel they should be involved in the daily lives of their subjects, I mean, citizens. But the flag isn't just a symbol of the American government. It's a symbol of shared American values -- especially our highest common value: freedom.

When it comes to symbolizing freedom and the spirit of '76, I do think there's a better American flag. With all due respect to the stars and stripes, I prefer the yellow Gadsden flag with the coiled rattlesnake and the defiant Don't Tread on Me motto.

The meaning of Old Glory can get mixed up with the rights and wrongs of the perpetually new-and-improved government. The meaning of "Don't Tread on Me" is unmistakable.
There's also an interesting history behind this flag. And it's intertwined with one of American history's most interesting personalities, Ben Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin is famous for his sense of humor. In 1751, he wrote a satirical commentary in his Pennsylvania Gazette suggesting that as a way to thank the Brits for their policy of sending convicted felons to America, American colonists should send rattlesnakes to England.
Three years later, in 1754, he used a snake to illustrate another point. This time not so humorous.

Franklin sketched, carved, and published the first known political cartoon in an American newspaper. It was the image of a snake cut into eight sections. The sections represented the individual colonies and the curves of the snake suggested the coastline. New England was combined into one section as the head of the snake. South Carolina was at the tail. Beneath the snake were the ominous words "Join, or Die."

[Benjamin Franklin's woodcut from May 9, 1754.Newspaper Serial and Government Publications Division,Library of Congress.]
This had nothing to do with independence from Britain. It was a plea for unity in defending the colonies during the French and Indian War. It played off a common superstition of the time: a snake that had been cut into pieces could come back to life if you joined the sections together before sunset.

The snake illustration was reprinted throughout the colonies. Dozens of newspapers from Massachusetts to South Carolina ran Franklin's sketch or some variation of it. For example, the Boston Gazette recreated the snake with the words "Unite and Conquer" coming from its mouth.
I suppose the newspaper editors were hungry for graphic material, this being America's first political cartoon. Whatever the reason, Franklin's snake wiggled its way into American culture as an early symbol of a shared national identity.
American independence
The snake symbol came in handy ten years later, when Americans were again uniting against a common enemy.
In 1765 the common enemy was the Stamp Act. The British decided that they needed more control over the colonies, and more importantly, they needed more money from the colonies. The Crown was loaded with debt from the French and Indian War.
Why shouldn't the Americans -- "children planted by our care, nourished by our indulgence," as Charles Townshend of the House of Commons put it -- pay off England's debt?
Colonel Isaac Barre, who had fought in the French and Indian War, responded that the colonies hadn't been planted by the care of the British government, they'd been established by people fleeing it. And the British government hadn't nourished the colonies, they'd flourished despite what the British government did and didn't do.
In this speech, Barre referred to the colonists as "sons of liberty."
In the following months and years, as we know, the Sons of Liberty became increasingly resentful of English interference. And as the tides of American public opinion moved closer and closer to rebellion, Franklin's disjointed snake continued to be used as symbol of American unity, and American independence. For example, in 1774 Paul Revere added it to the masthead of The Massachusetts Spy and showed the snake fighting a British dragon.
[Paul Revere's modified "Join or Die" snake from the mastheadof Thomas's Boston Journal, July 7, 1774. Newspaper Serialand Government Publications Division, Library of Congress.]
The birth of the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps
[The seal from a 1778 $20 bill from Georgia. The financial backing for these bills was property seized from loyalists. The motto reads "Nemo me impune lacesset," i.e. "No one will provoke me with impunity."]By 1775, the snake symbol wasn't just being printed in newspapers. It was appearing all over the colonies ... on uniform buttons ... on paper money ... and of course, on banners and flags.
The snake symbol morphed quite a bit during its rapid, widespread adoption. It wasn't cut up into pieces anymore. And it was usually shown as an American timber rattlesnake, not a generic serpent.
We don't know for certain where, when, or by whom the familiar coiled rattlesnake was first used with the warning "Don't Tread on Me."
We do know when it first entered the history books.
In the fall of 1775, the British were occupying Boston and the young Continental Army was holed up in Cambridge, woefully short on arms and ammunition. At the Battle of Bunker Hill, Washington's troops had been so low on gunpowder that they were ordered "not to fire until you see the whites of their eyes."
In October, a merchant ship called The Black Prince returned to Philadelphia from a voyage to England. On board were private letters to the Second Continental Congress that informed them that the British government was sending two ships to America loaded with arms and gunpowder for the British troops.
Congress decided that General Washington needed those arms more than General Howe. A plan was hatched to capture the British cargo ships. They authorized the creation of a Continental Navy, starting with four ships. The frigate that carried the information from England, the Black Prince, was one of the four. It was purchased, converted to a man-of-war, and renamed the Alfred.
To accompany the Navy on their first mission, Congress also authorized the mustering of five companies of Marines. The Alfred and its sailors and marines went on to achieve some of the most notable victories of the American Revolution. But that's not the story we're interested in here.
What's particularly interesting for us is that some of the Marines that enlisted that month in Philadelphia were carrying drums painted yellow, emblazoned with a fierce rattlesnake, coiled and ready to strike, with thirteen rattles, and sporting the motto "Don't Tread on Me."
Benjamin Franklin diverts an idle hour
[Benjamin Franklin, portrait by David Martin, 1767. White House Historical Association.]In December 1775, "An American Guesser" anonymously wrote to the Pennsylvania Journal:
"I observed on one of the drums belonging to the marines now raising, there was painted a Rattle-Snake, with this modest motto under it, 'Don't tread on me.' As I know it is the custom to have some device on the arms of every country, I supposed this may have been intended for the arms of America."
This anonymous writer, having "nothing to do with public affairs" and "in order to divert an idle hour," speculated on why a snake might be chosen as a symbol for America.
First, it occurred to him that "the Rattle-Snake is found in no other quarter of the world besides America."
The rattlesnake also has sharp eyes, and "may therefore be esteemed an emblem of vigilance." Furthermore,
"She never begins an attack, nor, when once engaged, ever surrenders: She is therefore an emblem of magnanimity and true courage. ... she never wounds 'till she has generously given notice, even to her enemy, and cautioned him against the danger of treading on her."
Finally,
"I confess I was wholly at a loss what to make of the rattles, 'till I went back and counted them and found them just thirteen, exactly the number of the Colonies united in America; and I recollected too that this was the only part of the Snake which increased in numbers. ...
"'Tis curious and amazing to observe how distinct and independent of each other the rattles of this animal are, and yet how firmly they are united together, so as never to be separated but by breaking them to pieces. One of those rattles singly, is incapable of producing sound, but the ringing of thirteen together, is sufficient to alarm the boldest man living."
Many scholars now agree that this "American Guesser" was Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin, of course, is also known for opposing the use of an eagle -- "a bird of bad moral character" -- as a national symbol.

Colonel Christopher Gadsden and Commodore Esek Hopkins

Although Benjamin Franklin helped create the American rattlesnake symbol, his name isn't generally attached to the rattlesnake flag. The yellow "don't tread on me" standard is usually called a Gadsden flag, or less commonly, a Hopkins flag.
These two individuals were mulling about Philadelphia at the same time, making their own important contributions to American history and the history of the rattlesnake flag.
Christopher Gadsden was an American patriot if ever there was one. He led Sons of Liberty in South Carolina starting in 1765, and was later made a colonel in the Continental Army. In 1775 he was in Philadelphia representing his home state in the Continental Congress. He was also one of three members of the Marine Committee who decided to outfit and man the Alfred and its sister ships.
Gadsden and Congress chose a Rhode Island man, Esek Hopkins, as the commander-in-chief of the Navy. The flag that Hopkins used as his personal standard on the Alfred is the one we would now recognize. It's likely that John Paul Jones, as the first lieutenant on the Alfred, ran it up the gaff.
[Commodore Hopkins, portrait by C. Corbutt, 1776. Click here for a larger image. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.]
It's generally accepted that Hopkins' flag was presented to him by Christopher Gadsden, who felt it was especially important for the commodore to have a distinctive personal standard. Gadsden also presented a copy of this flag to his state legislature in Charleston. This is recorded in the South Carolina congressional journals:
"Col. Gadsden presented to the Congress an elegant standard, such as is to be used by the commander in chief of the American navy; being a yellow field, with a lively representation of a rattle-snake in the middle, in the attitude of going to strike, and these words underneath, "Don't Tread on Me!"
The Revolutionary standard
The Gadsden flag and other rattlesnake flags were widely used during the American Revolution. There was no standard American flag at the time. People were free to choose their own banners.
[Flag of the Culpeper Minute Men.]
The Minutemen of Culpeper County, Virginia, chose a flag that looks generally like the Gadsden flag, but also includes the famous words of the man who organized the Virginia militia, Patrick Henry, i.e. "Liberty or Death."
[The First Navy Jack]
The First Navy Jack features an uncoiled rattlesnake winding its way across a field of thirteen red and white stripes.
One of the most interesting variations is the flag of Colonel John Proctor's Independent Battalion from Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.
[Flag of Colonel John Proctor's Battalion, raised in 1775. The "I.B.W.C.P" above the rattlesnake stands for Independent Battalion, Westmoreland County, Pennsyvania.]
Tradition holds that in May 1775, when the citizens of Westmoreland gathered at the Hannastown Tavern and issued their own Declaration of Independence, they tore down the British flag that was flying there and made some modifications. The original flag had an open red field with the British ensign in the upper corner. They painted a coiled rattlesnake and its "Don't Tread on Me" warning onto the center, as if ready to strike at the Union Jack. This flag is one of the few that's still intact. It's at the William Penn Memorial Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
After the Revolution, rattlesnake flags became less common. General Washington and many members of Congress preferred stars, stripes, and more conventional symbols, such as the eagle.
Over the years the Gadsden flag has become more and more associated with rebellion and totally disassociated with pride in one's government. Some say that this makes it a lousy symbol for the Fourth of July. But I say that makes it a great symbol for celebrating the spirit of July 4, 1776.
© Chris Whitten

WAY TO GO JOE!!!!

Representative Joe Wilson was the only congressional member to stand up and speak out during the president's address to congress. I am proud to be an American today and am very proud of Rep. Joe Wilson. It's about time someone stood up to all the lies. Finally, someone who became so tired and frustrated with it all spoke up for ALL of us. WAY TO GO JOE!!!

Tea anyone???

3 months yesterday...

Has it been three months already??? It seems like G will just be walking around the corner, and then it seems like I just saw G for the last time yesterday. Will the de ja vu never end?

I wonder what happens to G now? Is his spirit just gone?
I don't feel so good.

545 people...

545 PEOPLE By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country. I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress.

In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank. I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason.. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes. Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party. What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist. If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red. If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ.

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way. There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do. Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power. They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses. Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees. We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

What you do with this article now that you have read it.......... Is up to you.
This might be funny if it weren't so darned true. Be sure to read all the way to the end:
Tax his land, Tax his bed, Tax the table At which he's fed.
Tax his tractor, Tax his mule, Teach him taxes Are the rule.
Tax his work, Tax his pay, He works for peanuts Anyway!
Tax his cow, Tax his goat, Tax his pants, Tax his coat.
Tax his ties, Tax his shirt, Tax his work, Tax his dirt.
Tax his tobacco, Tax his drink, Tax him if he Tries to think.
Tax his cigars, Tax his beers, If he cries Tax his tears.
Tax his car, Tax his gas, Find other ways To tax his ---.
Tax all he has Then let him know That you won't be done Till he has no dough.
When he screams and hollers; Then tax him some more, Tax him till He's good and sore.
Then tax his coffin, Tax his grave, Tax the sod in Which he's laid.
Put these words Upon his tomb, Taxes drove me to my doom.
When he's gone, Do not relax, Its time to apply The inheritance tax.

Accounts Receivable Tax, Building Permit Tax, CDL license Tax, Cigarette Tax,
Corporate Income Tax, Dog License Tax, Excise Taxes, Federal Income Tax,
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA), Fishing License Tax, Food License Tax,
Fuel Permit Tax, Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon), Gross Receipts Tax,
Hunting License Tax, Inheritance Tax, Inventory Tax, IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax), Liquor Tax, Luxury Taxes, Marriage License Tax, Medicare Tax,
Personal Property Tax, Property Tax, Real Estate Tax, Service Charge Tax,
Social Security Tax, Road Usage Tax, Sales Tax, Recreational Vehicle Tax,
School Tax, State Income Tax, State Unemployment Tax (SUTA),
Telephone Federal Excise Tax, Telephone Federal Universal Service FeeTax,
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes,
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge=20Tax,
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax, Telephone State and Local Tax, Telephone Usage Charge Tax, Utility Taxes, Vehicle License Registration Tax,
Vehicle Sales Tax, Watercraft Registration Tax, Well Permit Tax,
Workers Compensation Tax

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY? Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What has happened? Can you spell 'politicians?'And I still have to 'press 1' for English!?
I hope this goes around THE USA at least 100 times!!! YOU can help it get there!!!
GO AHEAD - - - BE AN AMERICAN!!!

Tea Party anyone???...

The American government has gotten completely out of control. I am going to hang a tea bag on my rearview mirror as a protest. I keep meaning to make pins too so I can wear them. I think this is a good idea. I am tired of big government and people using and thinking the government can solve all their problems. It can't, it won't, it just makes the problems bigger.

Let's have a tea party shall we? Like are forefathers before us.