Category: Uncategorized

When most people think of hungry children they immediately picture the starving children of Africa.  They don’t picture children in America hungry, but many go to bed hungry because their parents can’t afford to feed them.

 

I find this incredibly disturbing and can’t comprehend how a country such as ours can spend billions of dollars to send people to space or go fight a war that is none of our concern but yet neglect it’s citizens.  In the United States alone, there are 17 million children at risk for hunger.  Out of them approximately 2 million are homeless.  The two go hand in hand, and as powerful as America is, or at least used to be, there should not be any one-man, woman or child, ever have to listen to the grumbles of their tummies all day and every day.

We are a country of waste.  We waste everything we place our hands on, we waste tons of food that these who need it could be eating.  One third of the food we buy…we waste.  I have thrown food away simply because they don’t last or expire quickly or throw leftovers in a container and forgetting about it until you see it weeks later growing mold.  There are no kids in our house so it’s definitely not a science project.

As of April 2014, New Mexico with 29.2% of children in conditions that leave them without food to eat leads the nation.  One county in Texas, places 41% of children who do not have sufficient food source whatsoever. (Numbers per U.S. Department of Agriculture and Feeding America) When the Food Stamp program decided to cut expenses in 2013, 45% of the children in America were using SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).  Even with SNAP, kids are not getting the proper nutrition as their parent(s) are not spending the this assistance in proper means for the well being of their household.  Many abuse the system and buy expensive foods such as steaks and fish, instead of spending it on foods that will last for a whole month, many run out of this assistance long before their month is up and have to pinch pennies to make ends meet.  Some people also take that assistance away from their children to make gains in their favor, like using SNAP to buy drugs or alcohol by letting the people they are buying these from to use their EBT Cards.  It is sad that these people think of themselves instead of buying loaves of bread for sandwiches to feed their families.

As powerful as America is and with all the money that exchanges hands between the rich and their finances, the banks, the corrupted government, overpaid athletes and celebrities you would think we would not have to worry about issues such as these….but it is there, in plain sight.  Scruffy men and women standing on corners holding signs WILL WORK FOR FOOD.

(What will 25 cents buy?)

In this plastic world we live in, having spare change is hard to find, reach your hand in your pocket for change and you withdraw pieces of lint.  If I have it and don’t need it, I will give it to someone who will appreciate it.  But most of the time I don’t even have lint in my pocket, they don’t serve a purpose they are just a part of my pants, stuff go into pockets but when you don’t have even lint in them they are useless.  Just a pocket of air or wasted space demanding something to put inside.  That is what the people on those corners or walking carelessly between cars for something to put into their pockets or that cup they hold.  That cup they use to take your change they may use it to hold food or a drink, that cup is their livelihood.  That cup that he found in the trash that once held onto your $5 cup of coffee or a Slurpee from 7-Eleven…

There are ways to help, plunk change in their cups or hand them a few dollars, who cares what they use it for.  Go buy an extra meal when you go to McDonald’s or Burger King.  When I made a trip in April to NY from FL, I made sandwiches for my trip and made an extra baggie for someone who could use it.  I had a sandwich, chips and water in an extra bag, and at one of the rest stops there was a veteran who was in need of a meal.  So I gave him mine and tossed him a couple dollars.   He was so appreciative he acted as though he had won the lottery.  I remember a woman question me about doing that….she said to me, “What did you do that for?”  I replied simply, “Why not?” and walked away…I saw her again as I walked back to my car, she was still standing there looking at the man, I was thinking to myself, please do something nice lady…she didn’t she shook her head and walked away…I said out loud, “stupid bitch”.  I watched her walk to her car, a newer model Cadillac , and sit there in it…she saw me looking at her…as I was about to pull out of the rest stop, I noticed the lady get out of her car, walk back to the Vet and hand him something…it was money and she counted it into his hands…there was five bills of unknown amount…he hugged her and that is when I pulled out to head on my way to NY.   I smiled for a bit, knowing I made a little bit of difference in someone’s life.

To help out the hungry: 

Home

http://feedingamerica.org/

http://www.thelunchtray.com/feed-hungry-kids/

http://www.nokidhungry.org/

Written on this 6th day of September, 2014…a new dream has taken the place of the old dream that was spoke of in Washington, D.C. on the 28th day of August in 1963 by Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. who also had a dream.  My dream and his dream are kind of different yet very similar.   His dream turned into more of a nightmare where my dream actually grasps reality.

On July 4th, 1776, a group of men of our country wrote the words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence signing a promise note to which EVERY American was to benefit from.  This note was a promise that ALL men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

                               

It is very obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of sexual orientation are concerned.  Instead of honoring the sacred obligation, America has given the homosexual people a bad check which has come back marked “insufficient funds”.  We refuse to believe the bank of justice is bankrupt.  We have come to cash this check that will give us freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of NOW.  Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of hatred to the sunlit path of justice.  Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all our children.  It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the homosexual.

In 1963, King told his supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that “1963, is not the end, but a beginning.”  In 2014, I am telling you, my dreamers from the computer desk in my home in Orlando, Florida that back in 1969, the Stonewall Riots was also not an end, but too, a beginning.   I was three years old too young to remember the events of the Raid but the whirlwind of that revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

        

 In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.  Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

The new militancy which has engulfed the homosexual community must not lead us to distrust of all straight people, for many of our straight brothers (and sisters), have come to realize that their destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.  And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead.  We cannot turn back.  There are those who are asking the devotees of gay and lesbian rights, “When will you be satisfied?”

We cannot be satisfied as long as hatred saturates ignorant minds.  No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and the righteousness like a mighty stream.   I am not unmindful that some of you come from great trials and tribulations.  Some of you have come fresh from the closet.  Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and the staggered by the wings of police brutality.

You have been the veterans of creative suffering.  Go back to Massachusetts, go back to Nebraska, go back to Wyoming, go back to New York knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

I still have a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.  I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”  I have a dream that our children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by their sexual orientation but by the content of their character.  I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day a gay man can kiss the lips of his boyfriend and not be ridiculed.  I have a dream that one day a gay or lesbian couple can receive the same benefits of straight couples and that love will conquer hate.  I have a dream that one day we ALL can stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.  LET FREEDOM RING!

When we let freedom ring, we let it ring from every homophobic state and every city, we will be able to speed up that when all of OUR gay, lesbian, bi and transgendered children, straight men/women and gay men/women, will be able to join hands and sing, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank YOU, we are free at last!

(Tegan Quin of the band Tegan and Sara)

 

She shouldn’t have to go unmarried.  It’s her right at the Canadian level to marry whom she chooses, she doesn’t have to wait on the rest of the world to come out of their dusty closets in order to get married.  But she does and so does her sister, they like the picture above states, in solidarity they will remain unmarried.  

People are making many of those choices for us without asking what we want first.  What we want are equal rights, but because the majority of the people live their lives with noses stuck within pages of “a book written thirty-five-hundred years ago” (Same Love by Macklemore), they can’t see beyond their religion’s doors.  They just assume what is written they should abide by instead of passing their own judgement individually separate from their church and/or their god.  But marriage isn’t about god or religion, people who do not partake in religious traps, such as Atheists (I am not conformed to any religion but find my beliefs to transcend into Atheism) can marry without so much as a raised brow but when two loving couples who happen to be either male or female, want to marry…oh no you can’t do that, it’s not Adam and Steve it’s Adam and Eve.  Seriously folks, that is getting really old.  Can’t you come up with new material?  

The bible, I have read a few times, is a good read but if you believe the stuff that is written in there, seriously? you do believe what is written? Walking on water, dividing the seas, breaking a loaf of bread to feed thousands, making a man from dirt and a woman from his rib, and a snake who appears to be able to talk telling Adam and Eve to eat the apple…really? Floods and angry gods and all the animals two by two on a boat built by Noah to escape the floods.  We have men riding a chariot to heaven, talking donkeys, a slingshot wielding boy who takes down a giant.  Then god has his son who is killed, slung up on a cross, died for all of our sins, comes back to life and the good of man and humanity is restored.  

So then you have to read between the lines and find all the sins, all the sins of the flesh and mind of man.  Sins so many…but one sin, small yet so mighty, the one where all the anger and the judging derives from….”You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.”  However, the misconception of us sinners under rainbow law is that it is not preached in the bible that homosexuality is a sin.  It is not about our feelings or tendencies, it’s the actions.  The sex part that gets everyone’s panties in a bunch.   The sexual wedgie.  That wedge between how we are seen in the public eye.  

So what about Same Sex Marriage? What does it say in the bible about two consenting adults of the same sex who are in love and want to cement that love to each in a simple thing called marriage?   There is no mention of same-sex marriages or partnerships in the bible, either for or against.  Many Christians oppose the legalization of same sex marriage because they confuse the distinction of roles pertaining to gender and what they see as sin filled behavior to which they will spew that it’s a perversion in god’s eyes.  Others will view our demands for equal rights to what they have learned from the bible about avoiding judgement of choices people make and act with kindness and respect for all people…if the latter were true everyone would be able to be married to the person they love regardless of gender and regardless of whether it is Adam and Steve or Adam and Eve.  

It shouldn’t matter…but it does.  Our countries leaders are at each others throats over that little 4 letter word as LOVE.  They see two woman together and their view of Love becomes perverted, they see what they want to see and will take sides with others who also see LOVE as ugly, but cannot differentiate between what is right and wrong.   The main focus stems from what they hear from the churches and the bible, and cannot separate church from state.  If religion was left out of the conversation we wouldn’t be here demanding same rights as our straight friends and family who do not have a clue (well unless they are bi racial couples, then maybe) what it feels like to be told your kind of LOVE is not accepted.  

 

 

I met my wife in 2000, in a lesbian chat-room on Yahoo. We chatted and sent emails back and forth getting to know each other better.  We talked on the phone for hours and made plans to meet over the course of three years.  We met, we got attached, we fell in love, we lived a life as a couple and in 2011, in New York, we married.   A year later, we moved to a state in the south that was stuck in the old ways of what many people thought, that same sex marriage is an abomination.  Where LOVE was defined as wrong, bad, ugly, disgusting and completely taken out of context.  Where marriage definition declared it was about one woman and one man….again, get new material.   There you go again going against your god and judging differences.  Isn’t that what makes our country unique all the differences in people.  The races, the cultures, languages, and the characteristics of what makes us all different, that melting pot we were taught about in school.  Does this not matter?

What happened to this country we call home? Once a great nation filled with freedoms and people who have given their lives for those freedoms that some take for granted.  Once gay couples started asking for more specific freedoms, SCREEEEEECH!!! Hit the brakes…hold the phone!!!  Specific freedoms?  You mean we can have more than what we have already? Like what?  How about the freedom to marry the love of our lives? Maybe allowing two gay men to adopt children? Giving closure to a grieving lesbian who lost her partner of 20 years, don’t they deserve that?   But I thought DOMA was struck down and we are given that right to marry already? Not in every state, out of 50 states in the U.S of A only nineteen allow gay and lesbian couples to marry – CA, CT, DE, HI, IA, IL, ME, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, PA, RI, VT, and WA and Washington, D.C.  Not a lot out of 50, but it’s a start.  There are however, fourteen states that are going through the court systems as we speak (or as I write) and rulings have been in favor, these include AR, CO, FL, ID, IN, KY, MI, OK, TX, UT, VA and WI judges have struck down marriage bans, and in OH and TN, judges have issued more limited pro-marriage rulings.  

Many people ask us why do we want to get married so bad, it is just a piece of paper and a ring that declares marriage.  It is more than just a simple paper or what ring we wear, it’s beyond that.   Like infinity?  Sort of, you find someone who rocks your world, you fall in love, you date, you move in together, you love that person with all your heart, body and soul, you ask them for your hand in marriage and you go to the clerks office and register but are turned away because they don’t allow your kind to get marriage.  So you declare this an outrage and you have the right to sue and in waiting for a verdict you fight for your freedoms…the Specific ones? Yes the Specific ones! The ones that matter to you, the ones that define your personal character of who you are…a lesbian woman or a gay man…as well as bi or transgendered.  Our differences that make us all unique but only same in body parts (other than what defines gender) and skeletal diagrams.  But how does this separate you from a man and a woman who want to marry or already are?  Because it doesn’t matter what a man and woman couple looks like, they can be covered head to toe in tattoos or one is Asian the other is Black, they can be millionaires or live in filth on the street, homeless and hungry, strong or weak, religious or not, a Democrat or a Republican…to them it doesn’t matter because that are not gay.  But gay people can be all those things?  Oh sure, they can be but I described what a man and woman together can be.  They are not gay.  Once you implicate you are gay or lesbian, people can’t look beyond what you look like.  They can’t see the forest for the trees.  They can’t see the intertwining LOVE we have for one another.  They just can’t see us beyond the labels that society has placed on us…homo, fag, dyke, pervert, queer…sinners.  In demanding that place in which we want to have the right to marry, many who have seen us as those labels have begun to see as much more.  They have started to notice that we are angry and frustrated and they are starting to see that we too have needs and wants…or in other words….Specific Freedoms?  Yes.  

In gaining those freedoms, is when that paper and that ring mean something.  That is why it is important.  Right?

 

I was tall in elementary school, I towered over the boys pretty much and was called, “Lurch” or “Stretch” by them in honest fun…a few of my friends in turn started calling me “Shorty”, I didn’t mind…I was tall and skinny, like my Dad.  Summer exchanges from 6th grade to 7th grade I just kept getting taller and was still a bean pole, with braces…I kinda looked goofy.  So really nothing out of the ordinary until the next year, during school physicals when the nurse said that I was too heavy for my age and height.  I was 5’7″ and weighed about 160.  I didn’t look fat but she insisted that it was unhealthy, well so was the school’s food…but I took notice that I was enjoying food more than before and would buy doubles of subs, pizza and desserts for lunches.  I was a growing girl.  I was going through hormonal changes, I was hungry.  What do you want from me?

Moving onto Junior High, I got into sports so I was kind of active but active with an appetite.  Gaining another 10-15 pounds, my parents weren’t too concerned, it was the early 80’s nobody taught us about issues with food and weight.  They didn’t seem to notice, but the kids at school sure did.  Especially the boys…oh the boys, to which I really had no interest in at all.  (Save that story for a later post) The names started soon after that, Fat Kat, Fat Ass, Fat Slob, if there was a word they called me it definitely was shared with the word “FAT”, the whole sticks and stones thing followed by words will never hurt me, who ever came up with that poem, was never the subject of being picked on in school.  The girls were just as critical of my appearance, and once friends before turned vicious and cruel because I was not like them…I had my little click of friends who too were casted out by the “cool kids” or the “snobs” because they were different and it was these handful of people who helped me get through the things that were going on in my head.   They didn’t judge me, there was no need to…and all was good…but those damn boys…they just couldn’t resist to have their fun at my expense.  Walking down the hallway to class, poke my books out of my hands so that all my homework and notes fluttered about on the floor, and some taking those pieces of paper and ripping them up and throwing the torn pieces at me…”Oops”.  I could only muster up dirty looks and no words.  It was like that into Senior High, it was worse then.  I was a heifer by this time, close to 200 pounds, but the height masked the weight.  Family said I was just big boned…I was just a big and tall girl…with a big butt.  

My grandmother, told me that my shelf butt was from a great great great relative…yeah, it was great great great to know this…I will let the kids know at school my fat ass ran in the family…don’t pick on me.  But they continued to do so…

Sitting in class one afternoon, I started feeling something hitting me and noticed that I was being pelted by over-sized spit balls and there were two of the guys behind me taking turns throwing them into the back of my jeans…you know when you are overweight you get that plumbers look…without the crack…my jeans made a small basket for the boys to practice their bucket shots.  Turning around and telling them to stop made them laugh and you just turn back around and cry inside.  

It wasn’t just in school, I was treated like shit in my own home when the boys would call my house.  One night in particular, I was home alone (parents were out) and the phone rang.  It was one of the guys from my class.  The conversation was about me going out with one who I did like in a friendly way.  I was asked if I liked him and I said yes.  He then proceeded to ask me if I was going to the dance that weekend, I told him probably not, he asked me why, told him had nobody to go with, he said you can go with me.  He asked me if I would go out with him…but he ruined the moment because in the background there was snickering and I knew that I was being teased.  I told him to Fuck Off and slammed down the phone.  Immediately the thought of going to school the next day was terrifying as hell.  I went in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep.  

I didn’t want to go to school the next day, but I went and the events of the day escalated.  First I was reminded of the phone call the night before.  I was given a note and read it.  It simply said “Why would I want to go out with someone as fat as you?” I crumpled it up and tossed it into the trash.  Went to class and greeted with cow moos by one of the boys who called me…I didn’t let it bother me, flashed them the finger and sat down in my seat.  We had a test that day…and the papers are collected and passed out so that others can grade your papers.  I failed…not because I didn’t study or anything, I failed on purpose.  I got it in my head that if others thought of me as a failure, I should act like one.  I was actually very smart in school but because of the torment I was living, I thought why the hell would I want to be in the same grade class as the ones who teased me and were just fucking mean to me.   I still to this day try to understand why they were so mean to me, sure I was overweight but I didn’t look it.  My parents and their parents knew each other, and my grandmother was the local Avon Lady, she knew everybody and I would go to these same kids houses and they were no different from who I was.  We were in the same middle class bracket, there was nobody who was out ranked.  But in school I was treated like shit.  Treated like a low class citizen…and not even treated like a human being…and I didn’t know why.  Why?

Why? Why was I treated differently? Because I was fat? Because my hair was short and sometimes not maintained properly so that it disgusted someone to actually put a note in my locker saying “Wash Your Hair”…really?

My day wasn’t over yet, there is still that last poke of fun they had to get off their chests, the one thing that sent me over the edge that made me just want to crawl under a rock and die.  The day that suicide crossed my mind, where I just didn’t want to live life anymore…fuck them all.  Assholes.  Coming out of study hall and heading back to my locker, was walking ahead of some of the guys, not the usual ones who were picking on me, but new blood, new names, but one of them is considered family,…a second (or third) cousin…and he called me a name that to this day, I remember so well and haunts me.  Just a play upon my name of Katrina, removing Kat and inserting three new letters.  Cow.  He said behind me, “Mooo-ve over Cow-trina!” and it made everybody in that hall laugh.  I wasn’t laughing.  I turned around and told him to “Shut the fuck up!” and ran to my locker in tears, and not one of my friends that I did have, asked me if I was ok.  Nobody cared, they just continued on their way and I was left to fend off the emotions and the deep desire to die.  I was quiet the rest of the day, one of the girls I was friends with took notice that I was too quiet and asked me why? I asked her if it mattered if I was quiet or not and she replied guess not.  Thanks.

I was a Senior, in a month school would be over with.  And I didn’t know whether or not I would make it to see graduation.  It seemed so far away, I knew that my grades had slipped dramatically to the point where going to summer school looked like where I was headed.  It wasn’t my fault, they wouldn’t leave me alone…they wouldn’t stop, they kept poking and prodding me like a cow heading to slaughter.  Cow-trina.  I felt nothing…there was no feeling to describe what I was going through. Nobody fucking cared anyway.  At the end of that day, I went home and swallowed a handful of sleeping pills with a beer I stole from the refrigerator and took out the blade from my Father’s razor, and started carving into my wrist…tears flowing nonstop, this is not what I wanted to do, but I had no other choice to end the pain. I had nobody to talk to, I couldn’t tell my parents what was going on in school, they wouldn’t have believed me and there wasn’t anything they could have done.  We didn’t have the resources back in my day for kids to feel comfortable in talking to people in school…you would be labeled crazy and next thing you would be strapped to a gurney with happy meds going through your system.   No, you kept your mouth shut, nobody wants to hear about what ails you..you pussy.  Oh, you getting called names in school…oh boo hoo hoo!!!  

I don’t remember anything from the time I was ending it all, don’t remember going to bed, and I recall was very disappointed when I woke up the next morning.  Thankfully it was a Saturday.  I had the weekend to prepare and figure shit out till Monday. I failed at taking my life just like I failed in school and life.  I was Nineteen.  (I sang that…and smiled.)

What the hell could be so bad at that age? Well the past 5 yrs prior with all the ridicule and names, the stares and pointing fingers, and lack of any kind of self esteem, and the disappointment of waking one morning along with the intentional failing in school because I didn’t want to associated with….THEM….I don’t know, what do you think…there wasn’t a term for it that I knew of…I didn’t know that I was being Bullied.   I didn’t know that 30 years later, kids are still contemplating suicide for the same things I went through.  I managed to overcome my bullies.  The pain is still there but it has subsided over the years.  I am older and more wiser and my voice isn’t so quiet nowadays.  I am not playing the shell game, because I came out of that years ago.  I survived bullying.  I will stand up for anyone who is bullied.  There are people out there who will listen, you do not have to go it alone.  I wish I had someone who stood up for me.  If you are a student and need help from a counselor right now, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

http://www.stopbullying.gov/

http://www.stopbullying.gov/respond/be-more-than-a-bystander/index.html

http://www.nea.org/home/neabullyfree.html

 

 

 

Trying to set up a blog site for my writing…it’s more overwhelming than actually writing something. I don’t want it blah, I want it to depict me and how quirky I am. I want a place beyond Facebook to where I can actually stop and see a specific idea, like describing color to someone who is blind or what music sounds like to someone who can’t hear. Like taking a feather and placing it into a hand that cannot feel…for me this is my personal reality. I can place a feather in my right hand and it’s just that a feather, it’s not soft, it’s quills do not poke me for I cannot feel it. I can place that same feather in my left hand and immediate notate that it is soft and manipulating it can be poked by the end. Describing something out of the ordinary to someone who has no reliable senses, is what I think about.

Then there is my need to express my opinions, my thoughts and ideas. Share some of my poems and stories. Knowing that somewhere inside me is a whole lot of Mindset Overload…(title of my page I am working on) overwhelming ideals that sometimes I don’t comprehend.

My unselfish place in society to fight for what I believe in, such as same sex marriage and how being a lesbian from small town America has changed me, to how being married to a woman is none of anyone’s damn business but my own.

This is me…this is who I am, I can’t change and will refuse to change…it’s my choice in this life I lead…