Geoffrey has a lot of complications on his travels. Mainly cold weather and hunger. He buys food, he buys beer, and he runs out of mRescued by Milkmen
Geoffrey has a lot of complications on his travels. Mainly cold weather and hunger. He buys food, he buys beer, and he runs out of money. He has a water bottle that he heats up to place in his sleeping bag at night to keep him warm. He runs out of matches. I see him lying dead on the highway, either from lacold, lack of water and food, or maybe an 18-wheeler has knocked him into eternity. But, as long as he has beer, tea, and cigarettes, I don’t think he cares where he spends eternity. I feel that way abut books.
When he is out of food, he guiltily steals milk off porches. Do they still deliver milk in England? I mean, this is a fairly new book. Our milkman, as far as I know, has been gone a long time. I remember my older brother brought home his Swedish girlfriend, and she ran out to greet our milkman, telling him that she wanted to meet the man that all the women in America slept with. Brazen Hussy, she was.
I cut my hand on a milk bottle that was on our porch when I was little, so said my mom. I recall my dog taking a ride with our milk man in the late 50s. All I see anymore is the ice cream man. I miss those days.
Now Geoffrey found a few opportunities to steal milk, eggs, butter, and bread off people’s porches. You won’t starve in England as long as they have this kind of delivery service. If it were the years of the 1900s, he could have stolen pies that sat in people’s windows. I was surprised that he didn’t eat bugs. Maybe you have to be starved before that idea comes to mind. He really wasn’t prepared for this trip. And I wasn’t prepared to read a good book....more
I have read this short story twice, because I cannot help myself. When will it end? I mean how many times will I end up reading it?
Peyton is a crazy tI have read this short story twice, because I cannot help myself. When will it end? I mean how many times will I end up reading it?
Peyton is a crazy travel rider, as opposed to a same one.
This story is about a trip he took with his wife. Well, I guess she is his wife. If he said, I forgot. Well, Anyway, he gets to this cabin, and I don’t know. It was a trip, but the trip was mostly in his head. This guy was on a roll. It was as though he wrote this story right after the trip and put down everything that flew into his mind, and some funny and unexpected things popped into it. I found myself laughing out loud. How does he think up these things? I asked. It isn’t like he is sitting there trying to make up jokes; they come naturally.
At the very end of this book, Geoffrey wrote, “I will continue to write more ballads about the experiences that only matters to me, or maybe the odd person who respects ones little affectionate memoirs.”” I believe I am one of those odd persons....more
It’s the full package that I loved, but in the end, it is the story of two boys living in a refugee camp somewhere in Kenya, having fled the war in SomaliIt’s the full package that I loved, but in the end, it is the story of two boys living in a refugee camp somewhere in Kenya, having fled the war in Somalia.
It is not just a book that talks but one that plays beautiful Middle Eastern music. One with many voices even that of goats and birds and water and children, running.
I heard the sounds of laugher, of tears, and of anger. It was all a new experience for me, a book like that of old-time radio but so much better.
Two boys had lost their mother, not to death but to separation during the war, and they were placed in a refuge camp. The older boy caring for his little brother, a child who could speak but for one word, the oldest in the universe. A boy who lived with seizures, his loss, and his fears. While safe from harm, from the war, they were always hungry, and as the older boy said, you get used to it. You live with it. Yes, there were food rations, given every two weeks or so, but they never lasted. Yet when Ramadan came, they fasted. Such was the perfection of their faith.
They lived in tents and had many of their other needs met, but as the boy said, “It could get boring.” So, he started school, staying away from home for hours a day while others took care of his little brother.
And by the time this book ended, the newness of having sound effects had faded, and I was left with the sadness of knowing that there are people who have been separated from their homes and their families, who had even lost them to death. Whose lives have been on hold for many years. Waiting. But I knew all this before. It just became more personal. Personal, as knowing and seeing the ill- treatment of the men, women, and children at our own boarders.
Don’t think of this book as a children’s book but as a religious experience, one of faith, love and hope....more
Soong-Gee-Dee was born around 74 years ago in South Korea so was a young boy during the Korean War and experienced Americans bombing of his country. HSoong-Gee-Dee was born around 74 years ago in South Korea so was a young boy during the Korean War and experienced Americans bombing of his country. He writes about hiding from the bombs and even having his own hut burned down.
I really wanted this to be longer, but early childhood memories are few and far between. His other short books, there are 22, are interesting and free on Amazon. They each contain an anecdote of his life, and I would love to see them one day placed in one volume. I think that he is just doing them one at a time as he remembers them.
I am reading each and everyone of his booklets and will review each. I just wish that I knew more about him and tried to put a review on Amazon, but it looks like his books are not up for review. If I am wrong, I hope some can guide me to the review link. ...more
This is the second book that I have read by this author who was born in South Korea but has no idea how old he is but thinks by now he isA Life Lesson
This is the second book that I have read by this author who was born in South Korea but has no idea how old he is but thinks by now he is 73 years old. His little books are free and are non-fiction, containing just anecdotes of his life.
This short story stayed with me. I will never eat another crab or a lobster for that matter, ever agan.
Two friends often go shopping together, the one, Wendy, has been to college and has learned to debate. When a man loses a twenty dollar bilThe Debater
Two friends often go shopping together, the one, Wendy, has been to college and has learned to debate. When a man loses a twenty dollar bill, Wendy picks it up and pockets it. Her friend protest, but Wendy uses her debating skills to overcome this. Now, this is based on a true story, and I question how anyone could debate the issue. The money belongs to the man; there is no “finders keepers.” The next time they go out her friend shoplifts, which could have involved her friend if caught. So do you drop the friend or just tell her if it happens again your friendship will end or do you do something else?...more
“Post Office” was Charles Bukowski’s first book, and it made him famous with some people. I suppose it was a best seller, but I don’t care enoCharming
“Post Office” was Charles Bukowski’s first book, and it made him famous with some people. I suppose it was a best seller, but I don’t care enough to check this out. This is my second book of his, and I only read it because I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. I got my fill of him and will add this: His book was trash. And you know what? It was his autobiography, which is probably all he ever wrote, trashy autobiographies.
I had read “Ham and Rye,” which was about his childhood. and in it, he only thought about sex and fighting with everyone around him, even lost jobs. This time he has a job at the Post Office, and while he is not fighting with every man, and while he finally gets up enough nerve to have sex, he slaps women around. Mr. Nice Guy. He gets married, divorced, lives with one woman after another or just sleeps with them. Gets mad, and wham. He also gets drunk a lot and plays the horses. Charming....more
This was like watching a train wreck. You don’t like what is happening, but you can’t divert your eyes. Charles Bukowski’s life was thaRaw beef on Eye
This was like watching a train wreck. You don’t like what is happening, but you can’t divert your eyes. Charles Bukowski’s life was that train wreck. I didn’t like him, nor his father or his mother, and I must say that Bukowski was just like his father, the man he hated. In fact, he hated most people, and he loved to get into fights with everyone just like his father had with him many times as well as being belittled.
I thought to put the book down twice but had to know how it ended. Well, it ended as it had started, for it went nowhere. The first time I thought to put it down was when the neighbor boys were trying to get a dog to kill a kitten. Bukowski wanted to save the kitten. That was one of his only redeeming qualities, But he screwed that up. He was afraid to get bitten by the bull dog, and yet, all he had to do was grab the dog’s hind legs, and in one fast swoop, he could have thrown the dog, and the kitten could get away. And how was it so different than being beaten by his dad had he been bit? Instead, he walked away. The other time was when a girl got gang raped.
Fighting and drinking got him thrown out of schools, jobs, and rooming houses. Sex drove him on, but by the end of the book he had never made it with a woman. That was more than okay by me because what I was already reading was more than enough. The sex would have more than likely been abusive. Why would he be nicer to a woman than to his friends whom he always attacked verbally and physically?
Still, I am curious to see what else he had written and maybe reread the book that I read by him in college that I didn’t like, and yet, he is a most unlikeable man, one I would not wish on anyone....more
He Talked A Lot About Harlem, and It5 Wasn’t Always Good
Eddy spent his childhood years in Harlem and decided to go back to live there, at least for a He Talked A Lot About Harlem, and It5 Wasn’t Always Good
Eddy spent his childhood years in Harlem and decided to go back to live there, at least for a year. He lasted two years, long enough to write about it. Maybe, he stayed too long. He wasn’t in Harlem in its heydays, not unless he was a child, a child who couldn’t remember what it was like when it was glamorous, when it was a haven for blacks, a reprieve from white Americans. His father must have seen it then, because when he came back to his old neighborhood, he stood there and wept. Such are the times in America, seen over and. Over. Decay almost everywhere.
He moved back to Harlem in the 1990s; this book was published in 1997. He tells us what it had meant to those who lived there in its beginnings, and what it is like now. It was the place to be years before his return. Now it was the place to leave, but people stayed, because there was no other place to go when you are too poor to walk away.
Over the years I thought about Harlem, how I wish that I had seen in it in its glamourous years. My sister thought the same, and when she and her daughter went to New York, they took a bus tour to see Harlem. She doesn’t remember the tour, it was nothing. You can’t see Harlem from a bus seat. You can’t see Harlem if you are white like us. You can’t even see it if you are black and just visiting. You need to experience it, and the time to have experienced it is gone.
While living in Berkeley in the 70s, I saw Telegraph Avenue. I experienced it. My friends took me to Haight-Asbury in San Francisco, and we drove its streets. I still wish that I had seen it, but I would have had to have taken the bus there often to spend the day. Still, my own experience would not have been the same as those that had lived it. I was not into living this Hippie dream.
In the 90s, Harlem was no longer Harlem, nor even for the blacks. It was no longer glamourous. Some black cities, even white ones, die from neglect, from crime and poverty. Some black towns died at the hands of the white people, like Tulsa’s Greenwood District that had died in the 20s when the white men burned it down, killing at least 300 blacks, men, women, and children. I can’t help but feel that the white man had a lot to do with Harlem’s demise, too. I blame it on our white, racist government for keeping wages low and jobs few, and for not caring about the black child’s education. The drugs just came to ease the pain; instead they brought hell.
Eddy found a cruddy apartment to rent. Better than most. He did what he had to do to fit in. Put his good clothes in the closet and hoped that the mice didn’t ruin them. He listened to his neighbor’s fight, watched men on the streets beat their women, sell drugs, get into fights with each other and even kill. It is a wonder he lasted as long as he had.
Eddy is a great writer. He is spell binding. But I wanted the glamour. And now, Harlem is being rebuilt, “gentrified.” I ask, is this a good thing? Well, yes, but only if the blacks can afford it. I have my doubts for I have heard of this before, this word, “gentrification,” which really means that a town is now too upscale for the poor to afford. In Tulsa, they did it differently. After burning the Greenwood District down, they eventually tore what was left down, put in a college and a bypass. They are fixing to put in another bypass through another black town just east of Muskogee.
When I was a child we used to go to Fresno, CA for Christmas shop in its big city. Big to me. And then we would drive down Santa Clause Lane. In the mid-90s, my husband and I moved there for work. The downtown was dead, the upscale shops had moved to a mall, and now we only saw stores that sold flea market items, not antiques. Santa Clause Lane was still there in its rich neighborhoods. Our neighbor took me to see a neighborhood that used to be nice, that was before the drugs and the gangs came in and took it over. It looked like it had been bombed, just as Eddy described parts of Harlem. I hated every minute of Fresno. Eddy now hated Harlem, or so it seemed. When my husband’s job ended, we took to the road and headed for Texas but ended up in Mississippi. The last night in Fresno, we had a drive-by shooting. The neighbor kids excitedly showed me bullet shells in the street right near our house. I was glad that we had slept that night on a mattress that was on the floor. We picked up that mat mattress and put it in our gutted-out trailer, waved goodbye to our good neighbors who had gathered on the sidewalks, and left. Eddy had done the same. ...more
George Strait can sing a song about Amarillo and make the town seem wonderful, and Gail Caldwell, who grew up there, can do the samAmarillo by Morning
George Strait can sing a song about Amarillo and make the town seem wonderful, and Gail Caldwell, who grew up there, can do the same. It made me wish that we had taken a detour off I-44 to see it when we were driving by a few years ago> Still, I knew better. It could not have looked much different from what we were looking at: a desert all the way through the Texas panhandle. Like Gail said, the only thing blocking the sky were the grain elevators. Of course, when we drove into Groom, Texas, on I-44, to let our dog out, we saw a 100-foot statue of Jesus that also blocked the sky. I imagine that everyone that stepped out on their front porch saw it. There are no atheists in Groom.
Once in the life of America, the panhandle was overrun with buffalo grasses, until the new Americans came and dug it all up, leaving the land barren, especially in the panhandle. Mesquite grows there, we are told by Gail. Gotta love that mesquite as it makes for good barbeques. Flavors the meat. This was Gail Caldwell’s autobiography. She was a book critic for the Boston Globe for 20 years and won the Pulitzer Prize. I picked it up because I liked its title, and now I can say this, I liked her story.
The first few chapters take in her youth, and how she went to the library often, and at age 11 she tried to check out, “The Origin of the Species,” and the librarian told her mom what she was trying to do. Her mom said, “Let her have it.” Not that she understood it, but Gail was reading books that I had never thought to read at that age or at any age. Still, I wrote down a few titles, just not Darwin’s.
When she grew up, she went to college and skipped out of a course to make her way to Berkeley, CA where she hung out on Telegraph Avenue, as I once had, and she even saw a communist Vietnamese flag on a house. We had one on our rooming house in Berkeley, but it flew high the day the Vietnam war had ended. The 60s. Hippies. She even took part in demonstrations. The only one that I had ever been in was quite by accident, when my ex was taking me by car to a doctor’s office that was located on Telegraph Avenue, and we found ourselves in the middle of one. When I saw the hippies, not really knowing what they were, I wanted to join them, and a few years later, I moved alone to Berkeley, to that rooming house.
Next, Gail went to Mexico with three friends. She lived the 60s almost as I had, but I found this life in ’69. She found it earlier. Mexico, for me, began in ’85. She mentioned camping out on a beach there, and a man opened her tent the next morning, and she kept saying “Vamonos,” which meant, “Let’s go,” and not “Get going.” He got the message but only because of her anger and hand gestures. He left. I mixed up the word “shit” for “afraid” in my college Spanish class and got a big laugh when I had said, “I am shit.” That was less dangerous for me than what she had said.
The last few chapters were spent remembering her aunt and her father. They really influenced her life, and for a woman that grew up in the sticks, well, without sticks, her life was a pretty good one.
Amarillo by Morning by George Strait
Amarillo by morning, up from San Antone Everything that I've got, is just what I've got on When that sun is high in that Texas sky I'll be bucking at the county fair Amarillo by morning, Amarillo I'll be there
They took my saddle in Houston, broke my leg in Santa Fe Lost my wife and a girlfriend somewhere along the way Well I'll be looking for eight when they pull that gate And I hope that judge ain't blind Amarillo by morning, Amarillo's on my mind
I picked up this book because I wanted a light read, but it was not exactly light reading. The story was about a middle school Chinese girl who desireI picked up this book because I wanted a light read, but it was not exactly light reading. The story was about a middle school Chinese girl who desired to continue her education in order to support her parents, to bring them out of poverty, as well as herself and other family members.
I was not ready to read about her hunger and how she went to school, often without eating or with just some bread. I realize that this happens all over the world and worse. But reading her story I was able to feel for her personally.
School was so important to her that when given a little money for food, she saved the money by fasting and bought herself a ball point pen for school. She chastised herself when she didn’t get good grades, and I must say, so did her mother, who she honored, but who I felt was rather cruel towards her, even one day telling her that she wished that she would kill herself, but Ma Yan was strong and continued to try to do her best in school until she began getting top grades, and this, in spite of her hunger.
Her mother was often ill yet continued to work in the fields. I do not know why she didn’t have access to medical care since I do not know the Chinese system of health care, but the stomach pains that she kept getting were no laughing matter, and the medicine she had on hand didn’t work.
Then I thought of how Ma Yan, instead of spending money to pay for someone to take her home from school, walked 6 hours to get home. She just couldn’t spend her parents hard earned money.
I thought of my own life. Did I ever go hungry even though we were poor? No. My mother worked to support us, and I think that the welfare department helped us some, often threatening our father to pay up or else. I realize that much of the time our breakfasts were not that healthy, being cereal, toast and milk or orange juice, and that I was often hungry before the noon lunch break. But it was nothing like the hunger pains that Ma Yan experienced. And I had lunch money, if not a lunch sack. Ma Yan had nothing but was given a little bread at times.
When I first read of her hunger, I recalled my living in Berkeley and going to a house with a man who was crashing it with some other people. “Crashing” in this sense of the word meant that the house was empty, and everyone had just decided to break into it in order to get some shelter from the night air. When I learned that there was no food, I left and went home. I joked later that I had tried to become a Hippie, but I didn’t wish to starve.
Then there was the time that I fasted, and Ma Yan fasted on purpose as well, but for religious reasons, which I felt was not actually a good idea for a starving girl, I fasted for health reasons. During my own fast I lost my hunger after two days and at the end of 10 days I had lost a lot of weight. I never desired to fast again.
Ma Yan did get to go to college, but I believe it was because her diary got into the hands of the French who decided to create a program to help the poor children in China to get an education. And while Ma Yan’s family now have more money, I hope that her mother got the medical help she needed. Still, they are not rich, but they are comfortable.
And if you were to look out over the world, its wars, famines, as well as other problems, it can be overwhelming.
Then I used to work at TACH, a program for the homeless where they open their doors each day, but only during the day so the homeless could get out of the cold. Then they feed them a lunch. What impressed me was the fact that all left over food would be given to those who waited long enough, but when someone showed up at the last minute, they would give them their food. So even though the people who had given up their extra food would go without food for the rest of the day, others would at least have one meal.
Yet, I would look at what they were being given and considered it junk food and wondered why the sandwiches were not made of whole wheat bread or that the peanut butter wasn’t organic or why the bologna and cheese weren’t made with real meat and real cheese and then served with condiments. I even wondered why they were served potato chips. But It was just to fill them up. At least, in the winter, someone always made some homemade soup. And, well, those were the foods that my own mother had given to us when I was growing up and dinners were no better except for the liver she tried to feed us once a week, which I threw on the floor or the dog or put in a napkin and flushed down the toiler when no one was looking. I even tried chopping it up and mixing it with mashed potatoes, but it ruined the potatoes.
When I learned that some Christians believe that the poor are poor because they don’t have Christ in their hearts or because they are going to the right church, I felt anger.This is why many food shelters open with aprayer and give a sermon. Whereas, the Methodist Church in this town feed the poor every Thursday evening, and they never say prayers or judge them. People are not poor because they are lazy or because they don’t have Christ in their hearts, they are poor because that is what life gave them, and they just need a hand, and if that doesn’t work, they should still not be judged....more
Today seems like a great day to write a review for this book,, because it is pouring down rain, and in just a fewTrials of the Earth by Maary Hamilton
Today seems like a great day to write a review for this book,, because it is pouring down rain, and in just a few hours we have already had 4 inches of rain. So, I don’t see myself going outside since our book group has been cancelled due to flooding.
Our rain is much like the rain that Mary Hamilton had experienced while living in the Mississippi Delta. It caused her home to be flooded and destroyed. Only the rain she experienced lasted more than a few hours, which is not what I expect our rain to do.
This was Mary Hamilton’s autobiography, beginning from the time she married Frank Hamilton to her old age. While she outlived her husband, she never talked about her children’s lives after they were grown.
When living in the Mississippi Delta, her husband was a logger, and they lived in a house next to the river. What? When the rains came, and the waters rose, I couldn’t help but think of the wise man who built his house upon the rock, for as the rains came, she and her children, who were alone at that time, became trapped.
Due to her ability to write really well, she was able to turn her life into an adventure, although she would not have considered it an adventure at the time. So the story of her house being under water was quite interesting.
Since we live on a hill with very rocky soil, I don’t worry much about flooding, not that we were like the wise man; It just happened that way. So, as I said, I don’t worry much about flooding, although one weekend we had 9 inches of rain, the field next to us, was flooded, even covering our roto tiller with about a foot of water. My blackberry bushes also stood in water and never came back even though they love water, just not that much.
There are other stories like this in her book, but her life was only excitiing in parts of her book, and in the beginning it was so slow paced, that I almost gave up on it. Still, I knew that there had to be something to it causeed someone she knew to encourage her to write it all down.
She lived back in the 1860s when America was raw, and pioneers were still moving west. Her husband moved them around as well, going back and forth to Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi. At this time her husband was working at a logging company, and she worked as a cook for thosse loggers.
Then when they moved, she she made dresses for neighbors, making a dollar per dress. Opefull, tey provided te material and the thread. Then after moving again, she and her eihildren picked cotton.
None of this appeals to me as I would find it rather grueling since I don’t like repetitive work. I tried making crafts at one time along wit my friend, Mimi, wo then wanted me to make them to sell. I was already bored, so I passed.
Mary never complained, so perhaps she liked her life. Or perhaps she just didn’t wis to complain in her book.
Then they once lived by a prison, but that was short lived, because they didn’t wish for their children to grow up in that environment. Whenever a prisoner escaped, the children sometimes saw what happened to the men when they were captured.
When I was just out of high school, I moved to Vacaville, CA and lived alone in a small run down house near the Vacaville Prison. Not aving a car, I used to walk by the prisoners working in the fields when I was going to work as a car hop at the A&W Root Beer Stand. The prisoners all stared at me, and I was glad that they had shackles on their legs.
Then one day my boss sowed up at my ouse, and my husband to be was there. They took it that we were sleeping together, but we were not! Then they called my parents and told tem that I lived near te dangerous prison, and then they fired me. Ah, tose were the days!
Back to the book: At another time, Mary’s husband had moved them to the woods in Arkansas, and during this time her children played in those woods. One day some wild boars saw them and chased them up a tree, but it didn’t end there as this horrifying story with the boars continued. After their rescue, their parents still allowed them to play in the woods. Such was life back then. Parents did not try to protect their children as much as they do today. She didn’t mention being worried about them playing in the woods again, but I would have been beside myself. Still, I prefer the freedom that I had in my own childhood, as I roamed all over our small town, and I walked with my do to the river and the hills.
If my mother only knew of the times my siblings and I were almost killed, she may have worried about us too, as if she hadn’t worried too much about us anyway.
For examples: I had once saved my little sister from drowned, a friend of my brother’s saved him from drowning in a reservoir. Then there was the time that I was standing on the edge of a ravine pressing on the lip of the ravine, causing basketball-size pieces of dirt to fall into it.e. Of course, back th[]]]]]]]]]=en I never saw the danger of doing this. What would have happened if a much larger piece had broken off with me on it? And that is just a few of the dangers we managed to get ourselves into when we were kids.
What bothered me most about this book was how a few of Mary’s children died at a young age, not making it even to their teenage years. After one of her sons had died, one of her daughters wanted to go to heaven to be with him.
If any one of us had died when we were young, I can’t imagine that any one of us would have wanted to go to heaven to be with our so-called loved one. My older, whom I dearly love no, used to tell me to go play in the freeway, if not that, he would tell me to take a long walk on a short pier.
When my older brother moved out, I was excited because I got to have his bedroom, which I had coveted forever. It was a screened-in sleeping porch. And when I moved, my younger sister got my room and two of my Lanz dresses. She ruined tose dresses, which had actually be hand me downs frm my older sister. Still, they were ruined, and I was upset!!
I am sure that everyone in my family is glad that I didn’t take my brother’s dvice to play in the freeway evem though they had not wished to go to heaven with me had I fallen off that cliff.
I felt that Mary’s life was too hard. I would not have wished to have lived it, but maybe she enjoyed cooking for a large group of men, and perhaps she loved sewing every day, all day long. And maybe she found her life to be quite an adventure. If nothing else, she really enjoyed her children and felt them to be very precious to her. Perhaps, she just took life as it cme, and maybe many of us do the same. There were not many choices in the old west if you were a pioneer and didn’t live in town. That may even be true today. ...more
“The day before we left I found an almost-clean raccoon skull in some tall grass. I rinsed it off in a nearby stream and then tied it into my hair so “The day before we left I found an almost-clean raccoon skull in some tall grass. I rinsed it off in a nearby stream and then tied it into my hair so the skull lay neatly in the center of my upper forehead. By this time in my travels, my hair was so ‘natted up’ from all the beads, bones, and rattlesnake skin that it felt like the roots of a tree.”
Weird. And people picked up her while she was hitchhiking like this. Hey, this is a true story of a woman hitchhiker, even if she hiked with companions she met along the way, people had to notice her. What I find so weird is the raccoon skull in the middle of her forehead, not the rest of it. Hey, when I was a young teen I brought home a cow skull from the slaughter house, buried it, dug it up just to find maggots, and covered it up again. I also found a bobcat skull, but when I was called “weird” I gave it to my niece so her mother could call her weird and not me. Right now I wish I had that bobcat skull, but two years ago my husband and I found a coyote skull, and it sits on my bookcase. Someday I will give it to my niece. And since I called the author “weird” I am hoping she will read this, realize that it is weird to keep her raccoon skull and send it to me.
This lady is gutsy. I met people in Berkeley at Sproul Plaza who were hitchhiking and heard their stories, but I never had to nerve to say, “Please take me with you,” and I know that they would have. I was a student; I had a part time job; I couldn’t take off, but I didn’t have the nerve anyway. I envy her for her experiences, but then as I think of it, my husband and I bought a trailer in the mid 90s and traveled the U.S. and we stopped wherever we wanted, and he found work, just to leave again when we were bored. I am still envious.
She even stopped in Height Asbury to look around. My friends and I only drove though it. I had Telegraph Avenue in the late 60s through the 70s, so why do I feel I missed the Height? Because I did. I didn’t get to see the women wearing flowers in their hair. Oh, wait. I wore flowers in my hair.
She took heroin in the Height. I always wanted to try Opium, but only once and that was after reading “The Opium Eater.” I was afraid of addiction. I had a date in Santa Cruz, CA one day, and the guy said, “Let’s go visit one of my friends.” Okay. We walked into the house, and there was a young beautiful girl there, probably 21 and I was 29. 21 seemed young. Two guys came in with heroin to shoot her up. I thought, “There goes her life,” and I have always wondered how she faired. I told my date, that I wanted to leave, and he said, “Stay, you will learn something.” They shot her up, and she looked like she passed out. Euphoria? I walked out into the night and found my way back to Berkeley. I missed my chance at trying heroin. But I just wanted to eat opium, not take heroin.
But the author was smart, she didn’t get hooked. She liked LSD too. I lost my chance twice. Just sat and watched people tripping and saying to myself, “No way.”
So her idea was to travel from one Rainbow Gathering to another. I had not heard of them before this year when I was reading, and still am reading, a book about Indians. The Indians dislike the Rainbow people because they come on to their land and take drugs. Their land is sacred and not meant to be desecrated.
I don’t miss the Rainbow Gatherings like I do hitchhiking, which I would probably hate if I did it her way. I hitched back to Berkeley from Northern California once, and I hitched around Berkeley, and some man wanted to show me something, so I got out of the car. She had to get out of trucks. I missed Woodstock.
She goes to L.A. with a guy, a side trip from the gatherings. She leaves when it gets dangerous. I am so glad that nothing happened to her. It reminded me of a movie I watched once, which name I wish I remembered, where a couple went to eat in L.A. and when the restaurant closed no taxi would come to take them to their car that was parked in a fenced in parking lot, so they tried to get to the parking lot safely.
She was much safer at the gatherings. They had a kitchen set up, and people had to gather wood. They lasted a month at each place. Well, it is hard to get people to help. That is how communes are as well, and I had always wished I had joined one, and I could have, but for school and work. Well, Berkeley had communes. I guess things I wanted to do and try I didn’t want to do them bad enough. I once wanted to go to Manchu Picchu, but a friend said, “If you wanted to, you would really go.” She was right. I traveled all over Mexico instead.
And then she and a man she met along the way decided to go to Mexico together with her dog. They crawled under the border fence without getting a visa.
While the Mexicans are so much friendlier than the Americans, they really had some struggles with survival, except that they were always being offered food, even for their dog. That is the way Mexico is, as my friend and I, drove down three times in a VW bug, and were often offered food. Still, I wouldn't want to be hiking in Mexico unless I had a lot of money, food, and water on me, as there were times when they all had to do without any of those three items.
The book was much more exciting when they were in Mexico, and not just going to one Rainbow Gathering after another, although getting to the gatherings was interesting and learning about the gatherings and what happens at them was also interesting. I looked them up, and they are still going on the U.S. and abroad. I must admit the hippie generation was one of the best we had in America, so it is no wonder that many continue on with it by going to gatherings....more
I lived in a brown shingled house on Channing Way in Berkeley with 3 other roommates back in the early 70s. Next door to us, on the second story of anI lived in a brown shingled house on Channing Way in Berkeley with 3 other roommates back in the early 70s. Next door to us, on the second story of an apartment building, lived a young black man. One day when I came home two of my male roommates said that they had something to show me in the kitchen. Spit. The black man next door had purposely spit out his window onto ours. I didn't know if either of the guys in our house had irritated him or if he just didn't like looking at us. In any case, the guys got a big kick out of it; I didn't. Knowing that they wouldn't go out and wash the window, I went outside and washed it.
The following day my roommates told me to look out the window again. This young man had hung a banner out his window, the one facing our kitchen, and on this banner was a picture of Malcolm X with the words Malcolm X written on it. The guys laughed at this also, but to me it was disquieting. Since then I have always thought of this young angry black man whenever Malcolm X's name has been brought up. and I had always thought of Malcolm X as very angry racist, a person to fear.
Here it is years later, and I have decided to learn the real story about Malcolm X. This book put me though a lot of changes. Mostly anger towards his racist views, even if I understood why. Up to a point, the news had been right about him.
The first few chapters of this book tells of his growing up without his dad, and soon his mother was in a mental institution. So, his sister allowed him to move to Harlem with her.
Now, I have always wondered what Harlem was like back then, the jazz scene and how people lived, but I wasn't ready for his kind of life. He had low paying jobs in the beginning, and then began smoking and selling reefers. Next, he went on to cocaine. He partied with the jazz musicians, even sold them dope. Next, he became a pimp, and then did some robberies. Not an interesting life to me, nor even a good read.
He even wore a zoot suit in Harlem, a suit I had seen in a library book in the 60s that was about fashion throughout the centuries. It was the zoot suit that interested me back then:
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Next, he was putting down women, especially married women whose men came to Harlem to visit the prostitutes because their women were domineering, etc. It is always the woman's fault, and as I found with Malcolm, it was the white man's fault for everything too. Then, according to him, women didn't want to be treated nice; they wanted to be treated mean, because, he reasoned,if you don't treat them badly they will leave you. I thought, maybe when you treat them badly, they are afraid to leave. Ever think of that? Or maybe it is because they grew up being mistreated and don't know any better. Ever thought to treat them better? And what woman would leave Malcolm X for threating them good? After all, he was famous.
So by now I was getting sick of this book, but I wanted to educate myself about him since I only knew what I had heard on the news in the 60s, so I read on.
In the next phase of his life, he was imprisoned for committing robberies. The best thing he did in prison was read for they had a lot of good books, according to him. It was also in prison where he became a convert of the Nation of Islam--a black Muslim group that had its beginnings in America.
The Nation of Islam had taught him that the white man was the "blue-eyed devil," and then he kept repeating, throughout the book, all of the sins of the white people had committed; he painted with a large brush. Much of it was true, but I thought of the book "Mein Kampf" and its ugliness. I thought of Donald Trump. I thought of quitting this book.
Then he began talking about how brainwashed the black men are due to the white man's teachings, yet he doesn't seem to realize thatthis form of the Muslim religion was also brainwashing him, giving him half truths.
The last three chapters took a turn for the better. Malcolm X went to Mecca, and when he returned he was a changed man for he had been told that the Nation of Islam didn't teach the true Muslim faith, for the true Muslim faith loved all races.
When he was in Makkah, he wrote a letter to his loyal assistants in Harlem:
"Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this ancient Holy Land, the home of Abraham, Muhammad and all the other Prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors...
There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white.
America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered white - but the white attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color.
You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.
During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept on the same rug - while praying to the same God - with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the deeds of the white Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana." "We were truly all the same (brothers) - because their belief in one God had removed the white from their minds, the white from their behavior, and the white from their attitude.
I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man - and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their 'differences' in color.
With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the so-called 'Christian' white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster - the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.
Each hour here in the Holy Land enables me to have greater spiritual insights into what is happening in America between black and white. The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities - he is only reacting to four hundred years of the conscious racism of the American whites. But as racism leads America up the suicide path, I do believe, from the experiences that I have had with them, that the whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, will see the handwriting on the walls and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth - the only way left to America to ward off the disaster that racism inevitably must lead to.
Never have I been so highly honored. Never have I been made to feel more humble and unworthy. Who would believe the blessings that have been heaped upon an American Negro? A few nights ago, a man who would be called in America a white man, a United Nations diplomat, an ambassador, a companion of kings, gave me his hotel suite, his bed. Never would I have even thought of dreaming that I would ever be a recipient of such honors - honors that in America would be bestowed upon a King - not a Negro.
All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of all the Worlds. Sincerely, Al-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X)"
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He was murdered shortly after announcing his new way of thinking, the love he felt for all. It is thought that the Nation of Islam had him killed, that it was ordered by Farrakhan. That is a sad turn of events. I would have loved to have known how things would have changed for him. What would his speeches have been like?
As for myself, I would like there a hate speech law passed in the U.S. because, to me, free speech doesn't really include hate speech. I say this because of how this election year is going, because of Donald Trump's hate speech, but I thought it even before then. Canada has a hate speech law. They are ahead of us there.
Note: For those who have complained that their book didn't have an epilogue, this kindle book does....more
This book is a prayer, not just for him but for his people and all peoples and for the earth.
A message to humanity
Our work will be unfinished until notThis book is a prayer, not just for him but for his people and all peoples and for the earth.
A message to humanity
Our work will be unfinished until not one human being is hungry or battered, not a single person is forced to die in war, not one innocent languishes in prison,and no one is persecuted for his or her beliefs. ~~Leonard Peltier...more
“After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throug [image]
A Jack Kerouac but with compassion.
“After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it. Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo, I have visited, to some extent, all the other Latin American countries. Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease; with the inability to treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize at that time that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming famous for making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people.”
“Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world.”
Whether fighting as he did was the right way to make changes in the world or not, I don’t know. I do know that people seldom, if ever, give up their power over others easily, and I know for all that he had done, things have not changed much. Still Che Guevara has been a hero of mine, as he has been to many others around the world. For me, it is because he cared enough.
The quotes I gave above aren't even in this book, but they show you the beginnings of a revolutionist. When you read about his travels in this book between the pages of excitement over all that he experienced, you find comments about the poverty and the lack of medical care that exist in those countries. I felt that being a medical doctor wasn't enough for him.
"The future belongs to the people, and gradually, or in one strike, they will take power, here and in every country. The terrible thing is the people need to be educated, and this they cannot do before taking power, only after. They can only learn at the cost of their own mistakes, which will be very serious and will cost many innocent lives.”
“It is there, in the final moments, for people whose farthest horizon has always been tomorrow, that one comprehends the profound tragedy circumscribing the life of the proletariat the world over.”
“An accordion player who had no fingers on his right hand used little sticks tied to his wrist; the singer was blind; and almost all the others were horribly deformed, due to the nervous form of the disease very common in this area. With light from the lamps and the lanterns reflected in the river, it was like a scene from a horror movie. The place is lovely,”
And here is a quote to ponder on:
“I now know, by an almost fatalistic conformity with the facts, that my destiny is to travel, or perhaps it’s better to say that traveling is our destiny, because Alberto feels the same. Still, there are moments when I think with profound longing of those wonderful areas in our south. Perhaps one day, tired of circling the world, I’ll return to Argentina and settle in the Andean lakes, if not indefinitely then at least for a pause while I shift from one understanding of the world to another.”
His destiny wasn't to travel but to fight for human rights. He was killed by a firing squad on October 9, 1967 in Bolivia. HIs remains were found and removed to Cuba where he was given full military honors on October 17, 1997. His remains are now in the Che Guevara Mausoleum in Santa Clara, Cuba. ...more
The author of this story wrote about his own experiences of surviving a snow storm in 1931 in Colorado. I found his story so interesting that I couldnThe author of this story wrote about his own experiences of surviving a snow storm in 1931 in Colorado. I found his story so interesting that I couldn’t put it down.
He had awakened one morning to a warm, balmy day and felt it safe to drive into town in his buckboard in order to get supplies. On the way home a blizzard came up, so he tried to get home as fast as he could. On the way he saw deaths of people and animals, one that stayed with me was the school bus filled with children.
Note: I am not sure how I even found this used book. It is $1000 used on Amazon at the moment, and another on Amazon is for $79. I could never sell a book for that much money. Amazon should put it on kindle, because it is a great story. I imagine since the book was written in 1988 a library would have it, but it is self published, so I don’t know....more
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