upcoming show, bd, etc

i made this poster for james - nice and bold and plain, as he likes it. my bd is upcoming & the family has asked me what i want to do, but what i really want is a tiny house here so that they all will visit and feel how much cooler it is here than in bakersfield, how much cleaner the air is, & how peaceful it is. then they will want to be here more. but since the 2nd tiny house was sold out from under me two days ago, i don´t guess i´ll get that wish. but my god, what a golden problem. as part of mama´s bd yesterday, i sat w/her & listened to rachel maddow, her favorite pundit. usually the truths that maddow reveals & connects are too hard for me to stomach. i cry & get mad. but mama is strong & watches her nightly so ¨sheĺl ¨never get caught off guard again, like i was in 2016.¨ maddow spoke last night about the emmett till federal memorial dedicated today, her point being that we don´t give up in the face of violent hate. (3 memorials to the little boy brutally murdered by pieces of human dogsh*it over the decades have been vandalized & destroyed -- inexplicable!!! how can such blatantly violent racism still exist????? -- but this latest one weighs 500 lbs & is made of titanium or some other indestructible material & now it´s a federal crime to deface it, so go ahead, racist dogsh*t subhumans, vandalize it now & go to prison!!!) i was reminded by that bright, brave woman´s commentary (rachel´s, tho mama fits that description, too) that my life is a piece of cake & always has been, so i´d better do something to make the world a bit better every damned day. most immediately, that means making my husband´s life better & easier. we talked just now about moving the music room to the main floor of the house. i hope we do it. soon. hereś to getting to get old, getting to keep having life, getting the chance to become better. too many in this beautiful, horrible world don´t have those luxuries.

mama, tex-ass, the complications of family, bad cops, ¨the planet isn´t going anywhere... WE ARE!!¨ (geo. carlin)

mama said she doesn´t want anything for her birthday so i got her a groupon for 2 spa treatments. i phoned dad to tell him to ask her to check her email for the surprise. he said, maybe i will go with her! so that will be double-plus-happy-making for mama. :)

cousin mary frances, a devoutly progressive roman catholic, is going to texas & i might join her. she needs another lefty to be there in support. plus i love mary fafa and i love my tx family... & i love texas bc it is so beautiful. i love the forever skies and the land for days and the sighing seas of oaks and the endless roads... even the 10-gallon hats & blue jeans & boots & the twangy music & that drawwwl... but the trumpism, the redneckism, the hate, that makes it tough each time. i love my cousin so much, tho she always has baffled the bejeezus out of me... tho not really, bc sheś always been a bigmouth outsized personality, the star of the show whatever room she enters, ¨rita junior,¨ dad sez, tho aunty rita would die twice if she knew what rednecks her two children have become. my cousin jumped on me last time i was there, yelling: just cause i didn´t go to COLLEGE doesn´t mean i DON´T KNOW ANYTHING!!!! and blasted me for some minutes before losing steam.

i had asked her where she got her information. whoops, my mistake. how dare i ask her where her outlandishly xenophobic & kneejerkedy-law-enforcement-loving ideas came from. (i think she was defending the latest bad cop murderer of a black civilian. my cousin, like her dear mother did, loves & adores jeans-&-boots-wearing, gun carrying, drinking & chawing Men; she worships at the feet of the Toxic Male, but she´d never call them that & would call me weird for doing so. as for me, my paternal grandparents were law enforcement. my dear step-grandpa, i have had to admit now that i´m a grownup, was a big hunk of a man, so good to all of us, but in his line of work a life-taker & a neck-breaker. james says in mp school & the military in general they get waaaay more training than those who go to cop school. he sez that´s why there are so many of them who are dangerous idiots. even my cousin´s brother was involved in so many shootings, he got HONORABLY RETIRED from the cop shop... with pension!!!! so just knowledge of my family causes me to know james is right... not my cousin. we need law enforcement. but THEY NEED MORE TRAINING!!! my cousin´s brother, with whom i grew up, was/is a small, iron-obsessed [weapons, weights, motorcycles], fearful boy who was abused in childhood... shouldn´t such a person, who might be looking to get even with Life, get more training than a soldier does before he is armed & sent out onto the streets?? so why am i a skeptic about all of this & my cousin believes that cops are de facto right, that guns are de facto the way, w/o compunction? she is bright, but she seems to consider the examined life to be the mark of a snob or a weirdo, i.e., me. :( and maybe until college becomes affordable for all, it will continue to be seen as the realm of the elite, instead of a place for those who want to build their brains & souls & help the world... isn´t that why ppl go to college?? oops. maybe not.)

more: my cousin is brown as a peanut & was named after a ¨little [black] doll¨ her parents had when she was tiny. it had umber skin and black curly hair, like she does. my cousin does not look white. but she has aligned herself w the philosophies of ppl who 100 yrs ago would have hanged her, but more likely would have had her as a servant.

there are many ppl in just our own family that are like this: they revile ppl who question the 2nd amendment, law enforcement, & who´ve gone to college. but if college now reeks of elitism & exclusivity, what about their criminal wanna-be-mob-boss millionaire hero, the orange stain???? apparently the questionings i mentioned indicate disloyalty to the united states of america... yet ignorance of oneś own government, misogyny, hypocrisy, unchecked privilege, & bullying are just fine!!!

dad and i were emailing this morning about the whole confusion, & what he sent was worth repeating, i thought:

subject: interracial rednecks

dad,

i was thinking about what i said re sitting under confederate flags with shotguns and realized all those family ppl have interracial relationships!! so what IS their objection to liberality??? why is there such hatred toward intellectualism and inclusion????

i still tend to think itś racism somehow.

the white men control the brown ppl (spouses, significant others, children). the brown woman obtains power by being with (controlling) the white man. is this colonialism 2.0, contained within oneś own household?

i just don´t get it!!!

dad´s reply:

It is fearful, tribal behavior and not entirely limited to the uneducated.

The naked apes survived because they were fearful. Watch your cat.

www.HistoricBakersfieldAndKernCounty.com

the heat lately has been uncomfortable here, but quite worrying elsewhere: 130 in death valley. 130 in las vegas!! 123!! james sez, ¨thatś as hot as it was in saudi arabia.¨ (and then i think, he was in saudi arabia? then out leaks another snippet of james´s life. i think i know more now about his life than my own! yet i know hardly nothing about him, i think at times. the experiences heś had are never truly knowable to a citizen like me.)

¨the planet is fine...the people are f**ked!!!!¨ (george carlin)

now iḿ just blablablaing along bc iḿ in front of a fan and it is 80 degrees in this house and i am so comfy in my hot pink muumuu (ha! how the pinup manque has sunk! a muumuu! but what a wonderful sink it enables!!!) yes, dear gawd, my human suit is so happy in this house & temp, but to bakersfield i now must go w/the dog children, for dear mama´s bd. so that means extreme heat. so wherever you be, stay cool, you´ll.

blablablablablablabla

am driving myself nutty looking at tiny houses and trailer hitches.

think i need a chill pill or some other way to release adrenaline!!! here are some pix. after this, more piano!!!!

blogger no longer gives the option to caption individual pix, so these will have to remain inscrutable, or annoying, or unknowing, or whatever.

sometimes peanuts, sometimes shells. -uncle henry

...i thought the neighbor was a nice male, but he neglects his dog, a sweet giant of a bear having the same name as my older stepson. the dog is almost as big as i am but affable, friendly, such a good boy. the male underfeeds the dog & leaves it alone constantly. he is blase & uncaring when others (i´ve done it now 3x) have to go retrieve the dog when he gets out repeatedly. ...resentment is when i drink poison and expect you to die.... (i posted this on facebook because my week has been nothing but shells.) 28 years ago today was the last time I drank alcohol, so tomorrow is the anniversary of my first day sober, July 4th, 1995. Life keeps happening, but thanks to sobriety and adopting a program for living, my reactions are generally improved. Thank you to everyone I've met in this life. Everyone is a teacher -- how to be as well as how not to be, with, of course, much to be learned in the middle. One thing for sure is now I feel like I have a life instead of an existence, which is how it felt before. In general, my sober life has been one of purpose, with some serenity, which I never felt before. Even with life's certain ups and downs, I can be useful and have peace. A good Independence Day to all, Jenny Page.... i went to a teacher conference last week w/the hurricane named corey (talented hyper hilarious brainy principal of our school) as well as other colleagues. we all were upgraded; ¨the room´s larger than my apartment!¨ exclaimed our young history teacher, one of those guys born an old man, adored w/o comparison by our student body, deservedly so. the room featured an entry lounge w/large sectional & tv; a full kitchen; a separate bedroom w/two plush beds, tv, feather pillows, all of it perfectly temperature-regulated. large bathroom, everything built-in, everything new, everything nice. i was swallowed up by the vastness, the silence, the city-fied aloneness of the place, tho some nights i slept like the rock you might´ve heard about. the hotel gym featured sturdy cardio with video screens: i skiied across the grand canyon, biked in reims, france as well as villages in the alps. four of us females sat in the jacuzzi one night while corey regaled all, including strangers, w/her wild & hyperbolic comedic stylings. fireworks boomed from disneyland, their reflections sizzling across the brightened nighttime hotel windows nearby. full breakfast each morning. delicious, of course. busy busy important mentally-taxing info all day at the convention center, brain crammed with school stuff, school stuff, school stuff, then finally home, back to the mountains, back to the birds, the breeze, the blue sky, the pet children.... circling back to resentment, at the conference a little birdy told me that you can mail someone ¨a box of sh*t.¨ ¨what?!?!?!¨ i sputtered. that can´t be real; that´s something you only see in early john waters. ¨here, check it out,¨ the person said, whipping out a phone & proving it. ¨you have to pay more to send human sh*t,¨ i learned. i couldn´t stop gaping. in this world of mind-boggling technology, people can pay to mail boxes of excrement to a**holes -- totally anonymously.... when james is not here, i work inside & outside til i can´t move anymore. i not only love it, it needs doing. i learn about stuff. i eat weird combinations of food & watch subversive, avante garde art, foreign, cult & grindhouse movies i´d otherwise never. last night, a particularly gruesome & brutal flick kept interspersing footage of glenn gould. what keyboard facility! what clarity of tone! startling! i read up on him this morn & so from that awful film learned a new piano technique, ¨finger tapping,¨ taught to glenn gould & others by the famous piano teacher known -- cher & prince-like -- by the single name guerrero. i hope it will help these slow phalanges move along a little quicker.... how does it all relate? it takes fertilizer for growth. from crappy experiences -- inadvertent, intentional, unavoidable, whatever-- can come a message, a wisdom, a betterment. humans are messaging-making machine, i know. from the luxurious aloneness of the hotel experience came a conference bringing fellowship w/other educators, pedagogical goodness. from the brutally ugly film came increased piano possibilities. from the frustrations of my life i (much of the time belatedly) discover character defects, practice patience & take positive action. sometimes i step in sh*t, but that is human, & i know now not to roll around in it, like i did in younger years. i learned that i can pay to have a box of caca shipped to some a**hole or another via u.s. mail, & how is that positive except as a means of revenge? well, by writing about it here, i not only squash any chance i might do it myself (& then feel guilty forever), but now you know. and you, my friend, well, do with it what you will. https://www.shitexpress.com/ https://poopsenders.com/