Wednesday, January 9, 2019
1475-1477: The Basement 2.0 from Lincoln County Watch
By Anna Von Reitz
It has been over a month since the
massive 7.0 Earthquake that had its epicenter a block and a half from my
home in Big Lake, Alaska.
I still have to go through the house every day and keep straightening the pictures on the wall, thanks to all the after-shocks.
I want to thank my readers for their
helpful hints and suggestions about properly storing fishing rods and
other topics. The fishing gear is now neatly secured and my husband is
(slowly, but surely) oiling and cleaning the reels. I wish that were
all we had to do, but it is not.
There's been some fun along the
way. Disasters always bring things to light and force you re-think
things in surprising ways. Each one we survive (Miller's Reach Wildfire
(1996) and 7.0 Earthquake (2018)) yields new insights.
Last week it was Minus 19 at my
house, and just up the road from us, my Paralegal friend suffered Minus
32. Needless to say, it was a good time to hunker down like toads in a
hole and sort through wreckage in the basement, so that's what we did.
We ran across an entire box full of old music CDs that had crashed and
scattered all over the floor:
Cat Stevens.....Joan
Baez......Gordon Lightfoot..... Neil Diamond.... The
Who.....Poco.....Lobo.... Simon and Garfunkel..... Carly Simon.....The
Rolling Stones..... Steppenwolf..... ZZ Top..... Anne Murray..... Joan
Armatrading.... The Pointer Sisters.....Lionel Ritchie..... Jimmy
Buffett..... Bryan Ferry..... Dire Straits....Chaka Khan.... Merle
Haggard.... Johnny Cash.....Guns and Roses....Fleetwood Mac..... Moody
Blues..... Led Zeppelin.... Bee Gees..... ABBA...... Kenny Loggins.....
Maureen McGovern.....Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship..... Ringo
Starr.... U2.....Joe Cocker....Randy Newman.....Sting....Van
Morrison....the soundtrack from "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence".....
David Bowie.... Aretha Franklin..... Motown, Motown, Motown....Diana
Ross.... "Pipeline", "Telstar", "Classical Gas"..... Kenny Rogers.....
Dolly Parton.... and on and on and on. And that's just the
Pop/Rock/Country Cross-over. That isn't even beginning to count all
the Classical and Jazz.
I bet we had 300 albums in that
mess. Easy. And most of them we haven't listened to for years,
because, frankly, there hasn't been much time for sitting around
listening to music since saving this country became a priority.
So, we cranked up the sound system
and listened to all that we had and all that we forgot and we continued
to sort and throw away and reorganize ---- which is a lot more fun with
music than without.
Thus I faced the Rogues Gallery of
empty, half-empty, dried to a paste, and otherwise coagulated cans of
paint and varnish, stain and solvents, which every home collects and
which nobody ever throws out because we think --- usually wrongly ---
that we might need some "for touch up" later on.
In actual fact, of course, it's a
rare day that any touch up is undertaken until it's time to paint the
whole wall again --- and the touch up paint remains sitting in cans in
the basement for generations. I had cans of touch up paint for walls
that no longer exist.
Strangely, I don't feel alone. I
bet there are millions of Americans out there who have a shelf (or
shelves) of ratty paint cans that should be properly disposed of.
Well, better late than never, I have
herded mine into open cardboard boxes and steeled myself for the trip
to the dump and the extra dumping fees.
Serves me right. I will feel better
when it's done and my basement will certainly be cleaner and better
organized. I just wish I had come to the task with a conscious will,
instead of being prompted to do it via now- dented cans of paint and
stain and varnish all over the floor.
Among the other discoveries, I found
that a coffee urn in the office had somehow broken its base with two
perfectly spaced half-rounds of plastic missing, and no harm to the
functionality or appearance of the the coffee pot at all. The only way
you can tell that the damage wasn't part of the original design is by
picking it up and feeling the rough edge. Otherwise, it looks like it
was made that way.
This result is even more amazing
when you consider that this urn is a stainless steel cylinder with a
spout and a domed lid and it fell about eight feet from the top of a
shelving unit onto a cement floor.
I guess I must have a need for a
large coffee urn in the future? Perhaps you are all going to drop in
for a cup of java? The pattern of what is saved and what remains after a
disaster is a perennial mystery.
Every lampshade in my house is toast, but all the lamp bases survived without a scratch.
My beloved and well-used Crock Pot
sustained a dent, but it still works just fine and to tell you the
truth, I hardly notice it and nobody else around here cares, so ---
welcome to our new, rearranged reality of dented Crock Pots and
"miracle" coffee urns.
The poles of our Volley Ball set did
not survive. They took the hit to protect the fishing rods and reels.
Now, I am looking at the net, weighing my options. New set? New
poles? Give up playing at my age?
The Tetherball, soccer ball, and
basketball are all squashed flat, which probably formed the cushion that
saved my AeroGarden, which, like the coffee urn, fell from a shelf near
the ceiling to the cement floor and survived. Even its delicate
fluorescent bulbs are intact. Go figure?
And, after a brief discussion with
my husband, we have decided to give all the big power tools we have been
hoarding in the basement for the last fifteen years to a younger
neighbor, a talented carpenter who suffered his own personal-life
disasters on top of the Earthquake this winter.
I have in all my "spare time" been
dusting and cleaning and oiling up cross-cut arm saws, tilting arbor
saws, planers, table saws, nail guns, joint planes, planers, sanders,
compressors, and all the various parts, pieces, knives and blades that
go with these worthy tools to a new home.
We haven't had any significant use
for all these tools since we finished building this house, so we aren't
going to hang onto them and let them gather dust when a young man needs
them to earn an income for himself and his family.
Yes, it is very physical work.
I get dirty and dusty and have
plenty of encounters with cob webs. My hands and nails get filthy on a
regular basis and wearing gloves doesn't help a lot.
Why, you say, don't I hire someone to come in and do this?
First of all, I have been
supplementing The Living Law Firm and our researchers and historians out
of my retirement funds for a long time. It doesn't make much sense to
divert funds from that and ask for others to make similar donations to
The Cause, just so I can avoid some hard, dirty, physical labor.
Second, when it comes to a disaster, you quickly find that you are often the only one who can make the decisions involved.
Who else can put my Ant-Bait in a place where I can find it next spring?
No, there are many things in life
--- going to the bathroom, deciding to throw out old school papers, and
sorting through family photographs --- that are uniquely ours to do.
You can't hire it done.
A disaster puts it all in your face,
all at once --- and the dust and rubble and shards of glass are really
secondary to the business of keeping and throwing away and giving away
and reorganizing.
What might have been a pleasant
enough wintertime project, like putting all the old family photos in
order and into albums, is suddenly front and center because they are
scattered all over the floor and under overturned shelving units and
stuck like feathers between bags of flour.
And that is just the way it is.
I am looking forward, some months
hence, to crawling my way out of the chaos, to a day when I have found
new homes for my youngest son's extensive (and I do mean--"extensive")
Thomas, the Tank Engine collection and his even more extensive (if
possible) holdings in Playmobile sets. I think he had them all.
Knights and castles.
Pirates and desert islands.
Frontier forts, covered wagons, cowboys, cows.
Farms galore, complete with critters of all kinds.
This may sound like I was an
innocent observer of all this play-time largess, but of course, he was
spoiled rotten to the extent that I could spoil him, and I allowed a lot
of "investment" in play and imagination and adventures that Hollywood
never dreamed of.
We are looking for a Pre-School or
Church or Hospital or Library program that has the resources (and space)
and commitment to set up these miniature worlds and make them available
to more than just one or two children.
As sad as I am to see them go, it's
like the woodworking tools. We had them when we needed them. Someone
else needs them now.
This odd sorrow is part of living in
the slipstream of life, a part of what gives life balance and grace ---
that we pass things on, and let them find their place as blessings in
other homes and other lives.
Better by far that we all move on
and willingly share our blessings with others, so that more people can
thrive and dream and be happy and secure---- and all the "basements" and
"attics" of our lives get cleaned up and organized into the spaces that
we need now, as we flow onward, too.
What I needed at thirty was a great
deal more and different than what I need facing 70, a lesson I have
shared with my children. My husband and I have not waited to pass on
family heirlooms and treasures, but have liberally gifted them on to our
children as soon as they established homes of their own, and passed on
to other relatives, also.
That, too, turns out to be a
blessing --- because none of those ancient and precious things have been
burned in the wildfire nor smashed in the earthquake. Only our own
possessions, of our own generation, have been damaged and lost.
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See this article and over 1400 others on Anna's website here: www.annavonreitz.com
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EXCLUSIVE: Patriots REACT After Trump Declares BORDER CRISIS - The OPERATION is Underway!!!
Found Here: https://youtu.be/9AjI6idl2aY
This is stark reality on the border. We are being invaded, and Trump needs to do his job right, instead of half way.
This is from Stewart Rhodes of Oathkeepers.
President
Trump, please declare a national emergency and deploy the full weight
of the U.S. military to secure the entire 2,000 mile border with Mexico,
with military boots on the ground, and to also order the U.S. military
(the Army Corps of Engineers and military combat engineer units) to
build the necessary layered system of wall/steel fencing, patrol roads,
and surveillance systems - all backed up by ongoing military, National
Guard, and militia boots on the ground that are needed to finally and
fully secure the entire 2,000 mile border with Mexico.
Call the White House at: 202-456-1111
Email the White House here
And also contact President Trump's Twitter account.
Walking the Walk
By Anna Von Reitz
I was in a queer kind of agony last night,
listening to President Trump's speech about Border Security.
Agony for him and for this country, too.
Here he was, stating it all so simply and clearly
that a rock could understand the issues, yet having to deal with the Liars and
the Hypocrites accusing him of "manufacturing a crisis" --- one that has been
building since the First World War and which they were themselves decrying less
than a year ago --- and urging us to put the needs of 800,000 federal workers
ahead of the security and needs of 350 million Americans.
I told you that the Enemies of Mankind are Liars.
Did I also mention that they are hypocrites?
Both Nancy and Chuck and all their ilk have
repeatedly ranted and raved --- but all for show --- about the lack of border
security. I am old enough to know that their hypocrisy stretches back decades
and that if not for them and their "talk and do nothing" program, this problem
would not exist now.
It wouldn't even be a problem, if generations of
Democratic Presidents and Congresses had done their job.
With the Liars, it's always this way ---- always a
matter of "talking the talk" --- but God forbid that they ever "walk the walk".
I am totally fed up with it. I listen to Pelosi and
Company with the patience of Job and pray to be delivered from the hypocrisy
dripping from every word on every topic:
Racial equality? What have they done to promote
racial equality? Nothing. But they have done a great deal of self-interested
promotion of racism and polarity and injustice.
The Democrats--- Southern Democrats --- are the
ones who "re-enslaved" black Americans as "public property" after the Civil War,
but you will never know that unless you read the history for yourself.
The Democrats are also the ones responsible for
bringing in European Central Banks and promoting the evils of the Federal
Reserve System and "deficit spending".
It's their deficit spending system and false claims
in commerce that have led to the inflation of the currency and widespread
unemployment and racketeering by government agencies.
All down the line, they preach one thing and do
another--- often exactly the opposite of what they are saying. Just like their
sudden reversal on the issue of a Border Wall.
Six months ago or so, Chuckie Baby was all for a
Border Wall.
Nothing has changed, in fact, the problem which he
and Nasty Nancy left unattended except for "talk" of support, has only gotten
worse. Much worse.
And there is Donald Trump, one man standing up for
what has needed to be done for a hundred years at a minimum, being accused of
manufacturing this problem.
I have news for them. This is an old, festering
problem that they have left unresolved.
It was a problem following the First World War,
when General "Black Jack" Pershing unleashed the military to sweep through
California and the Southwestern States to pick up and deport scads of Mexicans
who were here illegally.
It was a problem after the Second World War, when
Eisenhower had to do the same thing.
If Donald Trump has to unleash the military to take
care of the problem that the gutless, useless Democrats have handed him, it will
not be at all "unprecedented".
It will be the same answer and choice that other
Presidents have had to make to secure our Southern Border.
Time for all the children who have bought into the
Liar's Sop to grow up and time for the Media Conglomerates to be busted
up.\
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See this article and over 1400 others on Anna's website here: www.annavonreitz.com
To support this work look for the PayPal button on this website.
My Father's Question
By Anna Von Reitz
I never realized it was any Big Deal
or anything so unusual at the time, but in retrospect it is painfully
clear that my Father's daily question to me was incredibly important and
a sign of the blessing that has been with me all my life.
Every morning when I woke up, I
would scamper out of bed and go looking for my Father. On weekdays,
this would be very early, somewhere around five o'clock in the morning,
as he left home for work each day by six.
I would find him in the kitchen most
days, savoring his last drops of coffee and reading. My Mother, loyal
to the core, would have been up since four cooking his breakfast (and
now, mine) and packing his lunch for another day.
Upon seeing me, he would always
immediately set his paperwork and coffee aside and open up his arms to
me for a big, happy hug. Then, he would say, "And what can I do for you
today?"
It was so simple. A happy hug, a
look on his face that said, "You are my treasure!" and the question ---
"What can I do for you today?"
Our Father in Heaven has that same
attitude and question. It's never about Him. It's always about us. And
the hug and the smile are written upon the stars of the galaxies and
the rush of the winds and tides.
"So, my child, what can I do for you today?"
Most of the time, I just snuggled
deeper into his arms and rested my head on his shoulder and was
completely happy, needing nothing more. The silence spoke for me.
Other times, I would have something
on my mind and I would ask for something or would ask for him to do
something for me. I always understood that if what I asked for was good
and it was reasonably within his power to give, I would get it. No
questions asked.
I was spoiled rotten. And every day, I got another chance to answer his question.
Almost unconsciously, I have carried forward this same tradition with my own children.
As a parent, it's not about me ---
it's about them. How can I best serve them, their needs, their
interests, their life going forward? What is on their mind and in their
heart? What are their dreams?
You only find out by asking in an
atmosphere of love and acceptance, by creating a little Sacred Space,
where they are safe and comfortable telling you the truth every single
day.
Over time, asking and answering this
simple question creates a bond that time and even death cannot erase. I
am still very close to my Father, and not just because I carry his DNA,
but because his mind and spirit and attitude took root in me, too. His
question has become my question.
What can I do for you today? How can I make your life better?
As I have gotten older I have come
to realize that many people spend their lives and are never asked that
question by anyone who cares. This leaves a void and an emptiness in
their lives, as if they are unconsciously waiting and listening --- and
the question never comes.
I have also come to realize that
most men are left ill-prepared for the stress and strain of Fatherhood,
much less prepared to embrace its joys. Fathers in the current world
have largely been reduced to being bread-winners, and judged according
to how much money they drag through the door --- but being a Father is
much more than that.
Fatherhood is a mirror of our
relationship with our Creator, and ideally, a means for us to understand
our relationship with our Divine Father. When this mirror is cracked
or dimmed or dirtied, it is difficult for children to find the True God
within themselves.
So, once again, I must admit that I was well and truly and fabulously blessed.
My earthly Father was all that a
child could ask for or need. He offered me a clear and steady insight
into what it means to have a "Father in Heaven", and though it was his
voice asking me The Question every morning of my life, I have come to
know that Our Father in Heaven asks each one of us that same question
every day:
"Beloved Child, what can I do for you today?"
----------------------------
See this article and over 1400 others on Anna's website here: www.annavonreitz.com
To support this work look for the PayPal button on this website.
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