Shayna Performance SLCC Jazz Festival 2011

This is my grandchild Shayna Henrie singing Old New York.
I love it. I've learned how to move a video.
I'm so happy.

Operations

Although small, I love the Black-Eyed Susan.
I need something bright and cheerful to
send me to my next operation
removing nodels from my thyroid,
odd nodels that shouldn't be there.
I started out this operation road
with a hysterectomy, my problems were
like my sister who died of overian cancer.
I'm not sure I actually needed one.
Doctors told me I did.
Then I had sharp pains and I was
sent to emergency to have a gall bladder
removed...only to discover the entrance to
my pancreas didn't look right. I flew to Boston.
Was diagnosed with Ductal Mucinous Ectasia
and was operated to have some pancreas removed.
It was totally diseased. Where did that come from?
How do you pick up a fatal disease?
My pancreas and spleen were removed.
I become diabetic (no pancreas) and need
insulin shots and enzymes to digest food.
Everyone I talked to told me I couldn't live
without a pancreas...I am living.
Next they found a lump and it was a lumpectomy.
Cancer and I am given both chemo and radiation
although doctors felt the cancer was contained.
Chemo freezes. Radiation burns.
I know now what diabetics live through.
I know now what cancer patients,
my sister with ovarian cancer, lived through.
Finally released as a survivor,
high calcium on final blood tests and scans
found a lump on parathyroid.
It was removed. Now there are lumps
on the thyroid. Did one contribute
to the other? I don't know,
but feel that I'm not the healthiest
person around. Maybe lumps are forming
here and there and everywhere!
But these are small. They can be removed.
I can live some more years.
I am 72. I told my family after I hit
70, I was on the gravey train.
My cousin has 28 stents.
I can live without a few lumps.
Modern Medicine comes up with
another solution. My husband's
back is bad. Will the new bone,
Kryptonite, we saw last night on TV
help him? He needs some Superman
Power. I just need a super-flower
power.

Anasazi

ANASAZI
The Red Sun
Little black or red square men
One hundred hand prints
painted by those long ago
who also left mud and stone
storage houses or cliff dwellings
high on red cliffs.
Breath catches
at leaping goat hanging on cliffs
impossible to climb.
Were they painting for the Gods?
God of Wind. God of Water.
God of food that came only with seasons.
Children rush. Children climb.
To see paintings left behind.
Finding a black obsidian arrowhead
Down by Lampstand, laying on sand,
Black against red sand.
A perfectly spiked White , so delicate,
By the Monkey House under a Cedar tree.
In that exact spot to draw down eyes
On that very day feet carry close enough.
Curious. So curious about the makers
Of this perfection. People from long ago
That touch lives now.
The Anasazi. The mystery.
My breath catches.

This is my revised Anasazi poem to go in book for next Festival.
Dave suggested no I or Me. I like it. The pictures didn't come with
poem, so I used old one. I hope Cheryl gets the new version.

Old folks gone

My mother's special friends, Twila and Veda, have died only a month apart.
They were sister friends for life and one without the other was reason
to depart. Sid is a nephew that helped them both with chores and other work.
I talked to Twila about her mom about two weeks before she died and
she talked and talked, wanting to have her mom part of Boulder Women.
Veda always remember Aunt Vesta, the one her age...and Mother and Twila
were the same age, lifelong friends. Twila 98 and Veda 96. My mother died at 89.
Grace, another same-class friend is still alive at 99.
I am missing going to the funeral of Veda in Boulder...to see her kids
that I haven't visited lately .. Farlan and Twila. Maxiene died years ago in
an auto accident. Since I can't attend, I am thinking about them today.
Fae, my neice's husband's mom also died. They must travel through the snow
to Panaca for her buriel. She was a character..and loved the ball games where
she would curse the referee at the top of her lungs. Her son and wife sat in a
different spot. I used to take my grandaughter and go visit her dogs. Grandma Fae and those dogs were the ones to see.
I am reading about my Stringham relations that I never knew. Great-Grandpa Jeremiah and his brother Briant who stayed for years at Antelope Island. Briant
used to say he would love to have an acre of ground filled up with babies. He would roll and tumble with them all day long. That image caught me...what man says
something like that? They say he loved children and was never known to say even a cross word. (never spanked) Great legacy. I would have liked to have known him.

Pa and Ma by LaRae

I love this cartoon with the head of the big steer on top
being carried from Phoenix to Utah, with parents fighting
all the way...here my dad yelling at mom. Very authentic.
My sister Marge has been reading Dreams of my Father by President
Obama presenting his dad in the best possible way he could,
and wonder if we are doing right by ours. We did the Clyde King
Story, but she was thinking it was too negative and we didn't get
in the book all his accomplishments. He ran three ranches for many years,
kept his cattle herd growing, was an accomplished rancher and business man.
He had a sense of humor and said funny things. He was liked, but he also drank,
cursed and raved. We told of drinking episodes. We think of him as a
drunk, but he didn't drink all the time or he could have never made as much money as he did. The question is...were we fair? Did we tell the best of him? Did we tell all sides? What was the best of him? The worst? Why does this cartoon seem so true?
Dealing with people, we find them so many-sided. Everyone seems to have their worst side...we indulge food, drink, sex, drugs.. and are sometimes out of control. Another side of us becomes religious, educated, thoughtful, generous, and caring. So how to balance all that within one person? How do we show ourselves as balanced individuals? That is my wild cow on top of the truck that I brought up from canyons. My dad did cuss. My mother did cry. LaRae captured it. There is something about writing, about art, about imagination that captures the truth...and holds it dear.

"Let's Drive."

I drove to Boulder to work on my book with my neice and stopped to see the
two paintings at the new rest/information stop past the Escalante Cemetery
done by Lynn Griffin...which I found OUTSTANDING. These will certainly commerate the Hole-in-the-Rock story. The dedication of this spot is planned for Memorial Day at which time they'll do the Hole-in-the-Rock play, as well as other events.
Hey people, these paintings are worth the drive to see.
I am still working on my book about the Grand-Staircase Escalante National Monument. I was trying to finish it up so we could get some frist drafts done to check for errors. I also wanted a picture of the Circle Cliffs from the mountain.
I tried to add it here, but it is back on top. Oh dear. I wish I'd taken a picture of the Ponderosa Pine trees that have had their limbs snapped this winter. Limbs look like they'd been shot off by Old Man Winter and are laying in clumps at the bottom. What happened there?
My book is gradually coming together. It needs to be done. I changed the name to "Let's Drive" as it tours around and through the monument. I'm hoping that people will read and then say, "Hey family, let's go for a ride in the Grand-Staircase canyons."

My side

My family is in a 'blog fight' each putting out
their side to the family story for each other ---
and the world. My sister Gerry is writing her memoirs
and bringing out every family problem known to man as she
sees it in hers, and mine, and my sisters' lives.
She is currently trying to get the friend, who is all
our friend for years, off the family site for an affair
with our cousin, never discussed at least by her (the friend),
that supposedly happened years ago...or went on longer than we know.
I can only tell this friend right now that she'd better start
blogging and tell her side of the story...off the family site...
as we are not allowed there to discuss 'old fights',
if she feels she is getting unfair treatment. We can only
tell the world. She is 80+, still young enough to fight.
She did the 'right thing' and got her divorce, so she could
live the way she wanted. My cousin didn't.
Which comes to me. I had my 50th Anniversay this year.
My cousin will soon have his. We have been in this marriage thing
for years. I understand married wives...I lived with a truck
driver who was gone weeks at a time. Who knows what happens on the road?
I have been called door-mat, passive, non-fighter, too-sweet, and other
non-flattering terms, which are true by the way. You can't live with
a man 50 years and not be walked on at times...although you try to walk on too.
My truckdriver is not rich. My cousin is. Both are charming.
I don't step and neither did my cousin's wife. We are ANGELS.
That gives us power of a different kind. What exactly, I can't say.
I just want the world to know that I am ready to defend
all wives of stepping men. That is my side. It's not easy
to be the loving wife and snarling might happen (Or pouting,
bawling, sneering, sniffing, and sheer boredom.), but it comes with
the territory.
We are the Water Lillies!

Family

Like the profusion of Asters,
the family grows and expands from
one generation to the next
profuse in it's beauty.
I find endless fascination in both
directions. for example Jane died at
age 31. How? Did she have a child?
Did she marry the man that married
her parents, or his son? Why is she
so completely lost? She was my Dad's
Dad's sister.
My dad's family gathered on
Grandpa's ranch. They left, stayed,
and died. What was of most value?
What do my children actually think?
What am I missing? What are their goals?
What would they love most from me?
I raised them and they left and check in
sometimes. They live such different and
separate lives, each on their own.
And now I have grandchildren and find each one
endelessly fascinating, as I will great-grands.
We hit and miss on their very busy lives.
We enjoy. We laugh. We go.
Our turn to go into a past generation
creeps upon us...and we remember the
deaths and difficulties of those
who went before us.
I feel the urge to gather, like the Asters,
and keep the family bouquet
together in a bunch.
If only they didn't have to put down
their own roots to grow.

Sopher's first novel

I want to recommend this novel to readers everywhere.
It is the story of her wealthy Jewish family living in Tehran,
her father being wrongly arrested and his imprisonment, and the family's
eventual escape into Turkey. The world as they knew it collapsed.
Her brother was previously sent to America for safety.
Dalia was only nine/ten when all this took place
and her book is about that difficult time. She tells
about her family's actual escape at the end of the novel.
In this novel, she explored the conflicts for each family member
as they tried to stay alive, cope, and discovered their actual
relationshp with those they hired, the revolutionaries, and
others being taken to prison, tortured, and killed.
They were saved by the father's wealth. This is a remarkable
first novel. This is a remarkable novel about those who live
through upheavals in government control...
I am aware of the wars in Iran and Afganistan, the crowds of people protesting in Egypt, in Sudan, in so many countries today. I think about people
protesting because they are starving, needing to have a better
life and feel 'walled' in American easy living and too much complacentcy.
I wonder just how to care about so many in the world needing food and
medical attention. I need to know more, understand better.
I am touched by Dalia Soper's story. I recommend it.

Tribute to Modern Medicine

I'm very glad for modern medicine for keeping my grand-daughter alive!
She is only 12 (13 this month) and has had a very rough time in the last months with pain in her stomach. After tests of all kinds, they determined the gall bladder wasn't working and operated only to find the appendix eight inches long and very, very swollen - doctors were surprised it hadn't burst. No one suspected
this was the problem in one so young...and with some history of problems since birth.
Of course, we need to wait and see how she recovers, but I think her life has been saved. And I am grateful. This is my girl Logan who,I feel, has a lifetime of
giving to do. She wants to be a nurse for newborns. She is remarkably kind. Her future is as bright as her red hair! I love her much.