I want, first of all, to thank this lady for the use of her "Frozen Charlotte" photo. I have one too, and mine is a little different, having wings and no body, but a head and a flat
piece of metal with a piece of writing paper inside so that a message of condolences
could be given to a parent or relatives who had lost usually a child or baby. These
Frozen Charlottes were a late Victorian art form for Children mostly and they had bodies
with solid forms and no movement at all. The fad lasted into the 1920's, but the idea
of people preserving memories of children that had died very young or perhaps were
stillborn persisted into the 1950's. One of my best friends had a photo taken holding
her stillborn baby, I am sure something she would always preserve.
A friend with stage 4 cancer made mine for me and for years it has sat on the edge of
a ledge with my collection of angels and beautiful crosses. I am spiritual, but I
don't attend churches, and I have always loved these things. But for years, these lovely
things in my collection have sat protected on shelves and on top of a shelf and hanging
on the wall. They sat there, inanimate and going largely forgotten but still loved,
as happens with many of our collections.
As I took them down one by one to pack up to go to our new home, a transformation
began to take shape in my mind. I intend to put my Frozen Charlotte and all the birds
of all kinds I have collected for years into my peach tree, where they can move with
the breeze and bring life to the area. As for my angels and crosses, I intend to put them
up on a high cement wall behind our home that separates us from neighbors way
above us. It will become my Garden of Angels, and when one of our beloved pets
passes on, I will have a box to put it in and bury it there and it will have an angel or a cross above it. In this way, I can keep my family with me, and someday when I pass from
this plane, I told my significant other, Richard, to put a cross down near my family for me
too. I am donating my body to Life Science, and I really believe in that, for it will be used
for study if not for replacement parts for others, and when they are through studying
or using it in important ways, they will cremate it at no charge for me. Richard will
do the same, and if a person is a male or female vet, they can have their ashes transferred
to a VA cemetery. I have their number and they come and pick up the deceased at no
charge to anyone. In this time when life is changing so much for all of us, perhaps one
of the best ways we can manage is to find ways to help others. I am glad to see that happen.
Something about transforming things into a sort of living "Garden" really appeals to me.
Over the years, I have received a lot of bullying from grade school to being a senior,
but I am letting go of that too as my personal transformation. Like my Garden of
Angels, I want to live a life free of unnecessary worries and anger at others for having
power over me. No one has power over me except me, myself, and I. I am ready for
the future and whatever comes from it. Being a lifetime victim serves no one, and
definitely not me.
Some of my goals right now are to become a volunteer for CASA (Court-appointed
Special Advocate) for foster children. I just finished reading two books I could
not put down by David Pelzer, who was one of the worst cases of child abuse
to ever happen in California, and I have read another tragic story of another foster
child who became a victim of the system, which happens often. If I were not older
than dirt, I would definitely become a foster parent myself, but since I am a senior, I
will be an advocate instead. I have already done my training and they have advocates
in every state almost. I also want to become a volunteer tutor again for special needs
children and young adults and ESL students, as well as illiterate adults. And I want
to finish some of my art projects to donate to worthwhile charities. There are so many
needs today, so I feel that is the best use I can make of whatever art I can finish. And
I want to finish a book I am compiling of all the poetry I have written over the years
and hopefully benefit some worthwhile cause with my earnings. Having goals
in life is important. Whether we can realistically finish them all or not, the key
is to have goals and dreams to reach for as we go forward in time.
You all likely will not hear from me again until we are through moving and I think
we take possession of our home on the 29th, but whether we have our computers
hooked up or not is unknown right now. Because we are just moving in, we have
to show proof of our title and our ID but they say they can turn everything on
in one day. We will see. It will all work out and things tend to do. Love and
hugs to you all always, Anne
As we are packing up to make hopefully the last major move of our lives,
I look back and forward at the dilemmas we face in life, sometimes that we have to
decide very quickly, And sometimes we have to ponder over whether we are making
the right decision or not.
Strangely, as many symbolic things have happened in this last month or so,
I had an e-mail from the only other man I was ever married to in this lifetime.
We were young, and it was during turbulent times in the U.S. People were disgusted
with the government, and a branch of people decided to start buying up all the gold
silver, something like what is happening now.
My husband, who was a practicing architect at the time, got hooked up with some
people who were buying and selling gold and silver, along with the Hunt brothers
and many others. Worse still, he decided with some other good friends that if he
did not pay taxes, it would help to make a difference in the government and
perhaps get them to stop their foolishness.
How naive people were in those days (unlike people today - really???). I was
working at a full-time job and attending my last year in a university. I was not
in agreement with this decision. I was going to to continue to pay my taxes.
When you play the game of monopoly, you cannot play by the rules of checkers. It
became more and more stressful. Our home, which backed up on an alley, and
was surrounded by bushes all around, was highly susceptible for someone to
come in and rob and perhaps even kill my husband. Plus there was the worry
from the government itself. They were locking up protestors everywhere,
and the ones they were going after first were those doing it and teaching
others how to do it.
Finally, under the stress and concern that I would come home and find him gone,
and perhaps be taken to jail as an accessory myself, I told him that if he would not
quilt doing this, I would have to leave. I simply could not take it any longer. It was
a sad day after I had graduated that I packed up what I could of just my own
things and drove away to start a new life and perhaps adventure, one what was free
of rebellion.
I would travel back and forth for the next some years to an anthropological/
archaeological adventure with a well-known anthropologist who had discovered
some very talented potters down in the interior who had literally re-invented
the craft of creating clay pots from just finding pot-shards. My own degree was in
archaeology, so it was right up my alley. I took turns helping with running my friend's
economic and free market publishing business and editing a book he was in process
of publishing of his grandfather's work and filling book orders, getting the
book published majorly old school in hot type, and other aspects of the business
while he made trips down and back to Mexico.
It was a good adventure, but I never forgot my friendship and love of my former architect
friend and husband. Suddenly, just a few days ago, I received a notice from him that he was
on his own once again (after what I thought was two additional marriages), but he
had called to let me know his last wife, whom he had loved, had died back in January of Huntington's Disease, a horrible inherited disease that affects all the motor parts
of the brain, unlike Dementia or Alzheimer's, and may or may not be inherited.
It is so strange to look back on all the dilemmas I have dealt with in this life, and
the choices I have made related to them. I have a significant other now, some years
my junior (yes, I guess I am a cougar, but what is age but numbers?). I took him into
my home and heart when he got injured on the job in this senior mobile home park,
and have been his caregiver/advocate (unpaid as a volunteer) since perhaps 2016 or
17, and we live a very simple lifestyle. He became my caregiver for a short time
when I had breast cancer surgery, so it was a good trade. Today we are in process
of moving to another state with less issues or so we think, and hopefully where
I can finally get the care he needs so much since he has two failed neck surgeries,
and is now partly disabled.
Perhaps life is always intended to be full of dilemmas and perhaps that was
the symbol of the lives of Adam and Eve. I thought about the man, Jesus,
bearing that cross, and how it too represents the life and death dilemmas
we will face in our times. What dilemmas do you face today?
Life has been full of many lifetimes . . .
There was the lifetime of a need to be healed,
And a lifetime of needing to be loved.
There was a search for something to believe in spiritually.
And there was a need to be recognized for all I knew
Or thought I knew.
There was a need to belong
And there was a need to help others.
There was a lifetime of needing to feel powerful
and a need to teach others.
And in the process of it all
There was a need to know myself
And a need to forgive myself
For doing the best I could do
at any given time.
I have been a changeling,
And perhaps I will be so
For the rest of my days.
I have been doing a lot of thinking recently about our world and what is happening in all areas. It began when we were driving through Arizona in search of a home. Crossing from California into Arizona, I became immediately conscious of how each and every mountain is named. Each mountain was sacred to our American Indians in the great Southwest. Each mountain, with its amazing columns that seem to rise up out of the earth as if a huge glacier suddenly burst forth, and when it was done, not only did the huge columns stay standing all of these centuries upon centuries, but solid boulders were mysteriously left sitting atop these columns somehow, perhaps placed there by the Gods. And even though some hang out over the road, they still do not fall.
It is not difficult to understand what made the earth seem so sacred. People took the time to thank the earth for the richness it gave to them. They understood their relationship with the universe and how it had incredibly come together to support a wide variety of life forms: plants, creatures, and human beings in every color, every belief system and every direction of what we know as earth. There was plenty for all. Even today, man with all his misunderstandings of what we have been gifted, comes to look and to experience. Without knowing it, he is experiencing what the ancients knew, and people continue to come despite any obstacles. It seems surreal, as if we have stepped somehow into another universe.
I thought about how we have all taken so much for granted, and become so involved in trying to live that we really don’t know a lot today about what is happening. What can we believe amidst the many forms of communications coming like unwanted missiles from so many directions. The governments of countries are shaping our beliefs about staying healthy, and more importantly about how much power they have to form the most basic beliefs we have about everything we have held near and dear over the centuries.
The viral isolation today has changed society throughout the world once again. We are more and more believing that the government is helping all of us through these times. Political parties are willing to fight to do whatever it takes to gain power, not for us, but for their own causes. The government is no longer about Of the People, For the People or By the People. But our people have forgotten so much, and the schools at all levels are decreasing our knowledge in reading, writing, arithmetic, and especially history.
Overall, today, I have thought about this beautiful universe and earth we have been given and what is going to happen to it and the people who have been given the responsibility of keeping it healthy so that it can continue to give its best to all of us. And then I thought about something I read once in the Bible. Blessed are the meek and the poor, for they shall inherit the earth. The ancients always had it right.
In this time of social isolation, I have been doing a lot of thinking about what is happening that has changed our world so much. I remember reading a blog post from my friend, Steve Tanham, one of the Directors, along with Sue Vincent and Stuart France, of a fantastic study from the U.K., The Silent Eye Mystery School. I am going to save the best for you to learn by visiting the site on WordPress blogs, or on Facebook. I have completed my first year of study, and it has been one of the most interesting years of study I have ever had; I am addicted to studying and learning new things.
Steve Tanham had written a post about how he had gotten his 90-year-old mom from their old family home, and brought her to stay with his family so that she would be safe during this revolutionary time we are facing, not really knowing anywhere on the globe what might come next.
Then I thought about a lot of seniors in the U.S., and how so many of us have been forgotten by families, not because they want to be cruel, but because of the way the world seems to be revolving. People are moving faster and faster trying to keep up with some unknown forces that seem to be pushing us into a shorthand way of life. We speak no longer in long letters, but speak on the cellphones in monosyllables or e-mail in talk that is nothing more than single letters that are supposed to represent some sort of written language. And now we have come into a world that is ruled by something we cannot see, and can only believe what others tell us. More and more of the world is being isolated from others and having many, if not most of our freedoms taken away by powers that we cannot fight.
Over the weekend, stuck in the house by rain and cold on top of the orders not to leave our homes without face masks, I laid in bed and watched the PBS stations. Actually it was a perfect thing to do for I learned so much during that day. I learned of all the incredible feats accomplished by the ancient ones in their structures that they built when they had none of the incredible tools and formal knowledge that is held today by engineers and builders and others in the trades. And I thought about how there is a trend today at least here in the U.S. to put up housing and some other structures as quick as possible, though there are some pretty amazing public works for certain. Watching the ancient ones with their incredible knowledge considering what was known of the world was a new sort of evolution. I began to wonder if we are in the midst of a revolution or evolution.
And then I saw some incredible programs about the world and how the universe in general is bubbling up through volcanoes, and rivers and the oceans are rising and falling, and sometimes it seems as though there is chaos in the universe as well. So I thought about that for a long time, and in the end, I thought how this is perhaps part of the way the universe was created. It is not always at peace. Sometimes during these universal catastrophes, people do die, or they get cast from their homes where they have perhaps lived forever, without rhyme or reason. Perhaps we have expected the world to be always logical and something that supports life, but the reality is that it does not.
I closed my eyes, and slept soundly, knowing that life is never a guarantee for us or for this universe and that the best we can do is to live each moment fully and to remember those things and people we have loved for whatever time we all have.
Evolution of our planet seems to be happening at warp speed, and in a sense, it very likely is.
I was thinking back on my own life and the values people held vs. the values we hold today. People, families especially, seemed to be one of the most important values any of us had. We had just come out of one war, and would soon enter another one, and then still another one through my own lifetime.
I have been mourning the loss of what once seemed it would last forever. Those long summer nights when we children could play safely out in the neighborhood streets and parents never had to worry about where we were, or whether we might perhaps become victims of human trafficking. The thing we played with first and foremost was using our minds to create fantasies such pretend forts or capture of the enemies, or “Red Rover.” Then we had boxes, which played a multitude of roles. Bicycles and skates and going swimming in the summer were big thrilling activities. And at Christmas, we got such simple but yet such beloved gifts – a B B gun for boys, or perhaps a new collectible doll for a girl.
TV was new and it was a thing that was already changing the family sitting down together for dinnertime. Instead, people sat around with TV trays, ate TV dinners, and no one was sharing the events of the day. I remember the family sitting around the TV, entranced by the amazing wonder of the Test Pattern. Families had only black and white, and I think it was later in my life when color TV came into being.- It was the age of “things.”
Young people called Marijuana “Mary Jane,” and in our youth we avoided those people as bad people. Getting high meant taking an aspirin and swallowing it with Coca Cola, and then spinning around until we fell down. We went to school and had really healthy lunches, and no one had to be shamed if they did not have one. They just got in line with everyone else and got a filling lunch. Teachers could make us write something on the board 100 times if we were bad, or have us sit in the corner with a Dunce Hat, or chewing gum on our noses. And they could even hit our hands if we did something wrong (or use paddles on our bums). And if we did something unthinkable like throwing spitballs, we might get sent to the dreaded office. That meant our parents would be notified, and we might even get “grounded.”
But things were changing. Parents didn’t talk about marital problems such as domestic violence or abuse of children. No one went to a psychologist; it was the psychiatrists who dealt with problems based on strange theories that not many understood. Only society’s very well-to-do went to them. Women really did not talk to each other about things that were private to their families. Perhaps some families went to their priests or their pastors, but we never heard or read about those things.
Suddenly, people were going to Space, and just as suddenly, we were frightened of nuclear power. Families everywhere were building bomb shelters, and we endlessly practiced in school how to duck under our desks in the event of a bomb. Suddenly your next door neighbors you had known for years were suspicious of you and not open to having you see the insides of their bomb shelters. There were these people called Communists, and we did not exactly know who they were, but they were people to be feared. More and more people were identified as those horrible Communists, and then they had to face having hearings on TV, that place we had once thought something so simple and so fun. Now it was full of things no one really understood, and they spoke of those people in whispers within a family, but not shared outside. We really did not know WHO to trust anymore.
And today, here we sit, almost with the same amount of fear of things not seen, but believed. Things we cannot understand, so we fear those things. And suddenly we are grasping to hold onto things that make about as much sense as ducking under our desks or building bomb shelters.
Life is moving way too fast with way too many things going on all at once, bombarding our senses as they did before, but now with warp speed unseen in our lifetimes. One day we hear a scary word that none of us understand and the next day it is killing people all over the world. Should we hide under our desks, fear everyone anywhere near us, or perhaps even kill them because they have more of something they believe will save them than we do?
Will we ever see life as it once was again, or was it simply that we we never really learned anything of lasting value in the time we have been here? How far will a little learning take us?
We hear so many horror stories about viruses today, and every one of them are viewed as something terrible to take every precaution against. This is not to say that such things do not exist, but virus have been known to create genetic mutations in nature that have accounted for some pretty incredible things out in nature.
Tje tulip is one of those. Originally when tulips were first introduced, there were only solid colors and simple shapes we all recognize as everyday (not saying they are not beautiful too). But a virus caused them to mutate into these mixed types and then one of the most striking of all tulips came along – the Parrot Tulip. Below is an example of just one of the many forms.
Stunning springtime Flaming Parrot Tulip flowers against a white background.
In the day when these unique and beautiful tulips first were introduced, collectors sought them out and paid exhorbitant prices for just one of the bulbs. One bulb could bring a cost of four cows, or six pigs, or I think it was ten lbs. of butter, which was in high demand. Once the collectors got the bulbs, they would work with them in such interesting ways (you must read about it; it is fascinating). And so today we have thousands of types of tulips out there, thanks to the virus(es) what changed their DNA. Also, if you like to watch PBS, I watch things like NOVA all the time, and so perhaps I saw this on TV. However, you might find it on the Internet or in the literature of a plant nursery specializing in tulips.
I thought you all might be interested to know a tiny bit of my background to know why I would be looking for information about viruses to share with you. For a number of years in my younger life, I was a Regulatory Compliance Specialist (that is a fancy term for a specialized quality assurance auditor whose task it is to meet all the requirements of the FDA and other organizations that can get involved. Now this company happened to make plasma derivative products, which are used for things like AIDS, which is an acquired virus, or the thousands of other types of viruses that are auto-immune viruses, some rare that there are not enough cases to do proper research on them. Some of these viruses that still exist today are said to date back to Biblical times and to the twelve tribes. Many come from Eastern Europe.
Now in the medical world, things are classified according to their danger in their administration. At the top of the list of course are things like any heart implants, and that is pretty obvious. Plasma Derivatives are right up there at the top too because anything that goes straight into your bloodstream obviously will likely kill you faster than say a pill, but of course, as with everything, there are exceptions to every rule.
Well, when I was 64, I was among 400 of the employees who got laid off because the company was being sold to a firm in Spain, but something happened to which I am no longer privy, and so the company went out of business altogether. And so began another and most satisfying period of my life, becoming a substitute paraeducator (generally a one-on-one), a substitute aide, and a substitute teacher for special needs children (often with several issues all at the same time. I loved every moment of that, and though I could have been permanent (and was asked over the years on more than one occasion, I said no. I never wanted to do what most teachers do regularly, but to be able to work more directly with the children.
As a final note, I am recommending a book I am starting to read from my last visit to the thrift store: Robert Gallo, M.D., Virus Hunting Aids, Cancer, & the Human Retrovirus: A Story of Scientific Discovery. Once an M.D., and one of the most-cited authors of scientific literature in the world during the 1880’s, he served as Chief of the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, and a two-time winner of the Albert Lasker prize, the highest honor in biomedical research.
I think a very healthy thing to do in these confusing and stressful times besides the obvious, is to use this time to educate yourself. You can get such books from places like Amazon, and I am sure you know others as well. It may well be available in E-book format. I wish you one and all the best of days, and ways to find something of beauty and joy every single day.
Today with all the news bombarding us and politics getting more and more ugly, and everyone seeking to understand something that simply is, and perhaps we will never understand it even many, many years from now, this cartoon seems more true than ever.
I thought of a man writing about how he was so concerned for his three-year-old granddaughter because she had open heart surgery, and many, many health issues through her little life. And I wrote him and told him that instead of focusing on the ills from which the child is suffering, why not let her know what a great will she has to live, and how she is a hero, and he is going to be happy to be there when she graduates from high school, goes on to college, and becomes some great person in this world – a genuine hero! What would it hurt? Is it confirming she is going to die, or does he really want to see her live. Then affirm life, not death, and let her know every single day what a strong fighter she is, sort of like a Ninja warrior. It can’t hurt anything, and affirming life, even in these difficult times, rather than affirming death is the best thing for all of us. Do we really want to die?
I have been through cancer, and so many traumas when I came to close to dying, but I am a strong fighter and no matter how bad things got, I guess I wanted to live the most. So I found many ways to affirm life, and when I was in my worst days, I gave myself challenges to do, like looking for a good saying every day and pasting it into my little diary, or I did a sort of collaging of life images that expressed my feelings in any given time, and it helped me get through another rough spot in life. I created art, and I wrote poetry, or I experimented with other things like mixed media art, singing and dancing. Or perhaps I played with my dollhouses and colored in my coloring books, something I did not get to do in my childhood. It is never too late to be a child again or perhaps for the very first time. Just let go and be who you were meant to be or who you always wanted to be.
Never give up until they are shoveling dirt over you. When it is your time, you will leave this world, but nothing says it will be forever. We don’t know what lies on the other side, and all the souls have to go someplace, so why not think about it that way and forget the forever aspect of it all. The world is constantly evolving, and so I know that there is no true end to things; it only happens in our minds. Take this time to make things right in your life. Rebuild fences and be a true friend to everyone you know and love.
May every day you live be a true miracle. Peace and goodness to all of you. Anne always
God’s (change to whatever works for you) great big family
And the truth, you know
Love is all we need.
We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones
Who make a brighter day
So let’s start giving (change to living or keep both).
There’s a choice we are making
We’re saving our own lives
It’s true we’ll make a better day
Just you and me.
Send them your heart
So they’ll know that someone cares
And their lives
Will be stronger and free.
As God (again, replace with spiritual, or whomever you follow) has shown us
By turning stone to bread
So we must all lend
A helping hand.
We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones
Who make a brighter day
So let’s start giving (change to living or keep both).
Anne writing now:
It’s hard to believe that there have been other times in this world when people have died in great numbers, or when people have panicked by so many different things, and really lost their sense of values completely. What are we teaching our children by all of this panicking and hoarding, fighting, and even hurting others over things like toilet paper or hand sanitizer, etc.? What are we doing that is using our own minds and senses that can help us get through this as we have over centuries by not giving in to insanity?
The children of the world all need us to help show them the way to survive these periodic periods when governments and businesses are not necessarily doing the right things for the people. Don’t you find it strange that Senator Diane Feinstein (U.S.) sold off her stocks right before the announcements of everything shutting down? Remember Martha Stewart and what she did just before a big stock drop? What about states declaring Martial law and preventing people from going out of their homes? Remember what happened in Poland in WWII? Strange that in an election year, the American people have been so totally isolated and left in a state of panic and near insanity (if not total).
It is important that we do not give in to this panic. It is important that we stop fearing our neighbors and that we teach our children good values because it is what has made our country–and I am sure for those of you in other countries of the world who may happen to read this) that spirit we have called The Spirit of America. Thank you one and all so much, and today, see if you can each make one person you talk to on the phone feel appreciated and happy. When I talk business to folks, regardless of what it is on the phone, I always thank them very kindly for doing such a great job, and then I tell them to smile. I always let them know that I am 78, and have been through a great many things (which is true) and here I am still standing. Yesterday, a service lady told me when I told her these things that she had been having a horrible day and that it made her feel so much better. If we do nothing more than this with everyone we come in contact with, this will be good. Let people know that regardless of what others tell us, we are all in charge of our own world, and we have to not give in so easily. If we are going to get ill, so be it, but just using simple measures as we normally do in flu season is actually enough. Fear definitely makes everything else worse. We ARE the World; We ARE the Children, and WE can definitely make the world a better place for everyone. The power is within all of us.
I was thinking this past week that I have always felt powerless in the presence of people who seem to have more power than I do. I know, this may sound silly, but when you grow up with people who have absolute control of your everyday life and not in healthy ways, it is easy to lose a sense of your own power.
In my case, Richard and I live in a senior mobile home park owned and run by the most evil people I have known for a long time, though I must admit they are not the first ones. In fact, every senior mobile home park I have lived in has been a senior’s worst nightmares. And yet, for many seniors it represents a place that may be affordable on a limited income, as well as having neighbors in your social and economic position. It may represent safety and well-being where there are people close all around you who will surely know if you are in danger or you are perhaps ill. And there is usually a “clubhouse,” where there are monthly activities – perhaps coffee and donuts on the day you pay your space rent, and potlucks at different times of the month. And with things such as we are going through now throughout the world, it can represent a kind of sanity when all else is failing us.
So how could anything like this not be a senior’s dream? But let’s take a good look at what happens with a great many parks, for sure the ones in my own town of Yucaipa, CA (in San Bernardino County within the Inland Empire of Southern California). Looking at the history of the parks here (and this is true in many places in the U.S.), one of the things we have here are people who come into the area, knowing very little if anything about the needs of seniors. It is a cheap investment by the standards of those who buy the parks. They skirt any rent control that might exist in an area, coming in intending to raise the rent “for improvements they are making or going to make.” The reality is that the City itself has very little control (and does not want the involvement with having to be saddled with making sure things are working right). They have other more important needs. The park owners are bringing money into their communities, and they don’t want to stop that development. They spend their energy creating more sophisticated and luxurious communities that bring more money into the community and they cannot be really blamed for that. All communities want to keep improving their communities; it is all about good business.
The first issue that mobile home residents have no say-so in is the hiring of park managers. There is no background check required, no real experience necessary (they are trained for a very short time).
Basically there are no requirements by the HCD (Housing and Community Development) which is part of the state government, supposedly charged with protecting the rights of mobile home residents including making sure that that those who purchase their homes and pay them off get their titles when that process is done. The reality is that this HCD has never been given proper legal authorization to make sure things go smoothly for the residents, and as a results, landlords such as the ones I have will wait until the home owners die while they still are trying to get their titles. And most seniors don’t know fully their rights or the way things work.
Most seniors are unwilling to do what they need to because of fear that the owners will take revenge on them or they are too ill or perhaps disabled to try to do anything. My home was sold to three other seniors before me, and all of them died without ever getting their titles. Of course I could not have known this when I purchased it, and the landlord did not tell me. Yet he had worked for this park for some 20+ years, so he fully was aware of the nature of the owners. But like many park managers or landlords, he does what they want him to do; it doesn’t matter if it is illegal or unethical. He wants to keep his cozy regular home in the park and get paid for doing nothing except collecting the rent each month and telling the people who are renting to clean up their own properties (which the park is supposed to do unless you own your place).
There are so many other areas of elder abuse I have seen and experienced with my own eyes in these parks, and I am one of them also now since I too have been unable to get my title for my home despite my many attempts to get it from the owners, and also having gone through every local level – the HCD, the City of Yucaipa, Legal Aid, Elder Abuse, Code Enforcement, and many others, all to no avail for some 1-1/2 years (or close to that). Two of my neighbors also have similar problems: one who has not had his for nine years, and the other one who is being expected to pay back taxes on the land to get his title when it has not been in his name at all. And that is the HCD saying he has to do that.
I became extremely depressed these last months. I want to get my significant other, Richard and myself out of this park and into a small home in Arizona with its own land. California is not a good place to live anymore. Frustration with feeling once again that I had absolutely no power was a truly a biggie for me.
Then one day when I was looking at many of the criminal justice publications I receive on the Internet, I came across a National Elder Fraud Number. Without waiting a second, I dialed the number, and for once, I began to get answers at a higher level of State and Federal places that can help. Also, the people who run this organization are mandated reporters, and this time the reports are not going under the shelves. I have been given the numbers of a lot of agencies at a much higher level from which I will be able to help. Also, the people at the National Elder Fraud are coming from another part of California to visit me and to make sure that everything is followed up.
For once, I felt empowered with my newly found knowledge. We can never have too much of that regardless of our training or our needs. And we should never give up just because someone says so. I trusted that landlord, and I gave him $4,000 up front down and paid the other $4,000 over the years $100 a month along with my monthly space rent and utilities. I never missed a payment, and I had to pay the insurance too for the home, not realizing I would not get much at all without that title. That might not be much for a lot of people, but for me, it was my last savings I had since I had to stop working because of the cancer and the PTSD.
Right now our country is in probably the worst situation we have had since WWII politically, health-wise, and education-wise. People are panicking and acting totally irrational and it is because they don’t know what to believe. They think they have no power to do anything about it. This is NEVER true. There is always a higher resource, and in this case, it might take us awhile to find it, but I think we can all empower ourselves by at least trying to find something else that can help this situation.
I know that I have read several articles by Steve Tanham, Sue Vincent, as well as Stuart France, founders of The Silent Eye Mystery School, and I have learned a lot of things I could not otherwise find on the Internet such as the very nature of viruses like that of the Corona Virus and bacteria since the beginning of time, and many really good articles related to the values we hold in this life.
I also want to acknowledge Patty Fletcher and Claire Plaisted for keeping things going for all of us bloggers and authors during this challenging time. Thank you one and all by giving us higher resources we can learn from and take back the care and maintenance of our own lives. Just as that money for my home is the last thing I own that can help me and my hubster move forward, so are your bodies, minds and souls the most critical things you have in this life. Take good care of them and treasure each and every moment with your loved ones that you can enjoy now.
I still think of my friend Sue Vincent and her amazing son, who was wounded severely enough to kill someone, but he has recovered slowly over the years, and there they were out planting flowers by their little pond, and Nick, her son, insisted on carrying some mulch for the garden for him mum. Take back your power; it is waiting for you.
All in a Day's Breath 
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