Let’s talk about bones, achey, breaky bones. I cannot get through a day without several conversations with and about my bones. Many of my friends share this phenomenon; we fall into a specific category, women who know the perils of vacuuming shag carpet and, men who grew sideburns and ducktails. We sang along with the original Elvis Presley.

These days, we do not sing about the toe bone being connected to the ankle bone, the knee bone, and the thighbone. Now, we have total knowledge on the connections in our bones. We are a large group as reflected in the popularity of the television show, “Bones.”

My bones talk to me. I have made a pact with my bones which includes rules on diet and exercise, but I do not run unless I am being chased. My bones do not wake up at the same time, particularly, vertebrae L5 and L4. And the laziness seems to be spreading from bone to bone to bone. I never bound out of bed. Oddly, I have begun to adhere to rules that in my youth, I disdained. I always wear shoes. The only time the soles of my feet touch a bare floor…is in the shower.

Each morning, Lee and I check with each other to ask, “How are you feeling?” It is good to check to see if we are operating correctly. The answer could affect lives.

A conversation is not complete when I speak with friends until we take account of each other’s latest health issues. We share notes, doctors, and, of course, we compare drugs. If you eavesdropped, you would hear these questions and thoughts. It is a familiar litany of questions; I ask myself and my friends. Where does it hurt? What will make me feel better? Will I hurt like this the rest of my days? When is the next doctor’s appointment? I am so tired of doctors. What did I do to my back, in the first place? Why is my back so slammed together? Should I see another doctor? Will I never get better? Should I have another operation? Or should I just accept my fate and live with it?

It is chronic pain, perpetual motion. Chronic pain feels like two hungry wolves howling inside my body. The parable teaches that all of us have within us two hungry wolves. Which wolf lives depends on us. The wolf that lives is the one we feed.

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It is the Holiday Season, lighting even the darkest heart. Homes and businesses sparkle, wishing the merriest of seasons. Lights jump and blink, dancing past car windows beaming hope into December nights. Window panes glow, and dark streets are transformed.

Sometimes, we forget that these are the darkest nights of the year. This is when nature rests and Demeter grieves for her lost daughter. In the time before history, this was the season of the Winter Solstice when nights were as indelible as black ink and where shadows live unseen. Only the Druid Priests commanded the night sky, to the farmers the night sky was a dark mystery ruled by the moon.

Legend and lore tells us of the Pagan Mid-Winter festivals during the middle ages and before. But, within this darkest December night, deep within the earth, spring is waking from a winter’s slumber.

My story is of another time, when the Carolina backcountry was America’s first frontier. This backcountry was so wild and wooly that the pioneer settlers slept in fits and jerks. They knew that danger was only a shadow, an arm’s length away.

My story is a sacred tale written for the brave and the faithful who came to North Carolina when it was a wilderness. The Piedmont, the Carolina backcountry, was unknown and uncharted. The Catawba River was home to the bear and jaguar and the homes of the Tuscarora, the Cherokee, and the Catawba Indian tribes. The Carolina backcountry was the end of civilization. Still, the pioneers came with pockets filled with dreams.

In the fall of 1752, Brother Joseph Spangenburg set out with several other Moravian Brethren leaving Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to search for a place in North Carolina to build a Moravian settlement.

Almost fifty, Brother Joseph was portly with a kind face, and a bald head, but he wise in wilderness ways and held to unswerving faith that God would guide his journey. Brother Joseph had several opportunities to misplace his faith when they became lost and spent the winter in the mountains around Blowing Rock.

It was spring when the men entered the area known today as Winston-Salem, here Brother Joseph found his Promised Land. He named the area Wachovia in honor of a place in Germany where the Moravian Church, a Protestant sect called the United Brethren, had first found refuge. Here, they would build a village and name it Bethabara, House of Passage. They first arrived in groups of fifteen or twenty, they came as guardians.

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“Sometimes, I don’t think you have the sense God gave a goat.”

That’s what Cousin Phyllis used to say to me. Then she would stare at me as if I was something swimming around in a dish.

Even though Cousin passed a long time ago, I heard her ask that question today. It was while I was watching the television show, “The View.”

Let’s get this stated upfront: bless her heart, Elizabeth Hasselbeck is a loving mother, wife, and probably a great friend to many. She dresses nicely, her hair is lovely, and her smile is just grand. But, sometimes she says stuff that causes me to stare at her as if….

Elizabeth has been very carried away with herself since she attended the recent Republican Convention. She is star-stuck on Sarah.

Today, Barbara Walters asked Elizabeth why she supported Sarah Palin for Vice President. direct question with a question.

As Elizabeth answered, Cousin whispered in my ear, “Do you think she has the sense God gave a goat?”

I’m curious as to who coaches Elizabeth Hasselbeck? It must be her husband, Elizabeth has used football terms when explaining herself. Her political leanings are based on a strange mystical secret formula that only some understand. She sounds like she is giving a reading of the Tarot cards.

Now, she considers herself a standard bearer for Palin, the Northern-Hunter Virgin-Mother Goddess. This morning Barbara Walters asked her a simple direct question.

“Why do you think Sarah Palin is qualified to become Vice-President of the United States?”

“Why do you think Obama is a good candidate?” Elizabeth answered.

Shapeshifting. That is what Elizabeth and all the Neo-Cons do. When they cannot answer a simple question, they shift into the defensive position. They throw the ball to another subject trying to make the questioner defend their position.

Wonder what shape Sarah Palin takes tonight. How many times will Palin throw the ball outside the field and charge in another direction?

How glib will Hunter-Goddess Palin be tonight? Will she use the terms, “pit-bull soccer moms,” and “six pack Americans?” I am a six-pack type of American. I grew up in Shuffletown. I even worked briefly for a Charlotte soccer team and the now-forgotten, World Football League. I need her to step up and go beyond sound bites and cynism when she answers the questions.

It is a shame that Elizabeth Hasselbeck did not join Sarah Palin at the Motel Six when she was being briefed by experts. But, it seems, that Elizabeth is a natural shapeshifter. I am pretty-positive that Sarah Palin is a master shapeshifter.

What if we began to practice spiritual economics… “Do unto Others as you would have them do unto you.”

The Old Gray Man and the Hunter-Goddess have sufficiently alarmed me. When I think of McCain, the image of an angry Old Gray Man comes to mind. Sarah Palin is his Northern Hunter Goddess. She can see Russia.

I have a suggestion.

Until this nonsense has passed, women should just stop sleeping with men. This act that would give us all breathing space and could bring us to our senses.

If you cannot fill up with gas today, remember this when you go to bed tonight. If Momma is unhappy; everyone is unhappy.

This was tried in Athens once and it didn’t work badly. During a time of war and chaos, the Athenian women fed up with the way men were running the world refused to have sex with their husbands and lovers until they fixed it. The Play based on their actions. The play was “Lysistrata” by Aristophanes.

I am sure there are other eras in which women took matters in their own hands. Remember Rosie wearing a red bandana at work during the war? Ma Kettle?

When was the last time you spied an Iroquois?

Back in the American pioneer days when settlers were trekking down the Great Wagon Trail, the Iroquois Nation of Tribes fought the Catawba Indian Tribe and pioneers over the trapping and tracking of the beaver. When the beaver population dwindled; the war was over. No beaver. No war.

This could be just another loose translation of the era?

Action is needed. The world has tilted.

John McCain called a halt to the political campaign, took time to buy drinks for the thirsty New-Con Republicans, Senator Joe, and Newt Gingrich, last week. McCain did not close his campaign doors or do anything to help the crisis situation, but the Gray Old Man sent America an invoice for the Door Prize on Monday, September 29, 2008. Wasn’t this supposed act of skill in reality an effort to cinch the 2008 election? If so, he certainly succeeded in bring forth total confusion.

I have tried, but I cannot erase from my mind the image of Sarah Palin being anointed against witchcraft by three strange ministers during her days as an elected official? Does this image tell me who she really is? One of those ministers has a reputation for fighting witches. Isn’t a witch always a woman?

This political season has been the dingiest political season I have ever experienced.

“What harm could Hunter-Goddess Palin do to the world?”

Let’s consider: we know Governor Sarah Palin believes that women who have been raped should have to pay the State of Alaska for the cost of hospital supplies, tests, and the official rape kit. On the broader scale, does this mean that we should pay for finger-prints when a burglar breaks into our home? Should women pay for being raped?

One of George II bills recently floated through Congress during September 2008 stated that medical workers did not have to perform any duties they did not approve of because of their religious beliefs. Does that include mastectomies, the tying of female tubes, hysterectomies, vasectomies, and Viagra?

What if our daughters return to a world where they are never allowed to use birth control pills? This what the bill says to me. I remember rumors I heard in high school about why girls suddenly disappeared from their school days. In Charlotte, NC, they were sent to a group home situated behind thick cedars planted to guard the identity of fallen mothers.

Who is masterminding McCain’s campaign? I am suspicious of every word he mutters. OGM can’t seem to get his balance? Does he need a ‘walker”, something to lean on as he talks? What are they telling him? The people who seem to own the Senator from Arizona.

Hillary Rodham is beginning to look like an awkward, but wise, step-sister. At times, I remember her as a rugged Venus who fought well. Her husband is still fighting her battles badly. She should have considered not sleeping with Bill, a long time ago. Maybe, she did?

I figure Sarah Palin has been locked up in an Anchorage Motel Six for the majority of her campaign being prepped for the VP debate. The Republicans brought in statesmen, advisers, teachers, professors, and debate masterminds to school her in all subjects. Is she teaching them to shoot moose?

During the recent CBS interview with Katie, Palin reminded me of the Oracle of Delphi who sniffed fumes when she spoke.

I hope when the shadows in the wind are revealed, that we are still standing. Who will you sleep with tonight?

I just learned the Bail-Out Package Failed. It seems that the “Great Country Club Goddess” Nancy Pelosi from San Francisco accidentally insulted the flat-world New Cons, who think Sarah Palin is a “the” choice for the “Second Most Important Position in the World.”

I know them. Or at least I have seen them on television. These are the voters who think that if a woman can shoot straight, she can go hunting with them; after all, she is good looking. It is okay to have her manicured, powder-stained finger on the Great Button.

What with moose, emails, cancelled and no so cancelled campaigns, bank failures, global economy, war, famine, exchangeable female parts, and oil addiction, reality is teetering.

The Flat World New-Cons have had their feelings hurt. So they took their bats and balls out of what they seem to think is a game, and went home. Certainly, Old Gray Man McCain thinks the current situation is a game of bluff.

So meanwhile, they posture, brush their feathers, and squawk.

I watched the stock market drop like a rock and wonder what is about to explode, but wait, maybe they will consider….what, resigning? Is it time to vote the bums out?

Hold your breath?

It’s the Old Neo-Cons vs. the breakaway New-Cons. That is the battlefield. They have lost and they are taking us with them. I do not want them to give us the world they created against our will. We never wanted a thing to do with them. We were polite when we lost two elections. We voted against war, but we supported the soldiers.

And, now, here we are sitting with the Neo-Cons and the New-Cons at the end of the road they took us down. We are sitting in first row facing the events created by our political leaders and the majority of the voters counted.

Have we all collectively lost our minds: citizens, politicians, and religious leaders? Certainly, I have. I have lost total equilibrium because the world stage is caught in chaos.

Yet, this emergency situation will be suffered through by all of us, individually.

No one walked away with the Door Prize, today, no one political party, or politician won the door prize, Golden Apple, AKA, the Bail-Out Package and most recently the Rescue Plan, but make no mistake, the prize is tawdry at best.

I just heard that Old Gray Man and his Beautiful Wife enjoyed a dinner date with Senator Joe Lieberman and his Proper wife this past Saturday night at a very expensive restaurant. Did they discuss the prospect of a last-minute VP run?

And, I am wondering…where, where….are our leaders?

I don’t think Old Gray Man was seen since dinner to comment on the Golden Apple. Maybe he ate and drank too much. There is such a thing as gout, which seems to be going around these days. And there was the discussion concerning the Neo-Cons and the New Cons division in the ranks. Now, he emerged from the cave to make angry pleas for consolation. Thanks, Old Gray Man.

The followers of George II insisted on four horsemen to accompany them in the past eight years: War, Deregulations, Oil Addiction, and Greed. The entire party of George’s regime voted in favor of all that is in discussion today. They did this without allowing us to see all the details behind their supposed sound decisions.

Note: I know many fiscally sound and socially conscious Republicans who will not vote with their party in the 2008 election. The choice of Sarah Palin as a Vice Presidential candidate was just too much.

The Flat World New-Cons and the Old Neo-Cons, the Republicans still standing must help fix our world.

We tried to listen to why they made their previous choices, but they didn’t share the details. Most of their major acts were not to be seen by others. Stealth is their mantra. They made the mistakes of the past eight years and they are trying to walk away from their mess.

We stand today exactly as they placed us. We have let ourselves be divided into warring groups of voters. If not for the Neo-Cons, and the New-Cons we would not be watching the stock market today.

The Democrats have also accomplished little to stem the flow since before the last months of Clinton’s era. Still Obama is holding fast as a voice of reason.

If we keep looking backwards, we will hit a wall to discover a world we do not know, nor remember.

Me and you, together tomorrow, it is not a time to run for cover. We must stand and hold the space for common ground. Individually, we must hold fast.

We cannot run from an empty gas pump. We will stand and let our leaders catch up with us. We will need food and medical care. Americans do not know panic or whining, we have proven we can handle hard times.

Our political leaders must become our equal to solve the situation, not walk away from it. Today, there are no winners.

I believe tomorrow will find a solution. I believe. My world is as steady as we can hold it. We must look to each other for a solution, not differences.

I am Furious.

Yet, I feel so wedged into one spot. I am not allowed to embrace but one choice because our Politicians have so narrowed our selections that it looks as if…like Congress and our elected officials, we have lost our way. We gave away too much to so few and did not as questions or demand accountability.

Now is the time to set aside political rudeness for the good of everyone. Surely, we can melt the Door Prize into equal shares? Who is going to step forward to speak the truth?

October 7, 2008, is the 228th anniversary of the Battle of Kings Mountain, a heroic Revolutionary War Battle where our ancestors bearing muskets defeated the Tories and the mighty British Army. These days I wonder if we are at war with each other.
I will always be from that mythical place called Shuffletown. It is in my memories and my DNA.
American citizens have been divided by race, creed, and color, not to mention in utero and non-utero Americans, hunters, white women, women of color, crazed old women, Fundamentalist Christians, heretics, liberals, and those liberals, Christians and those Christians, sinners and saints. Sometimes, we watch others for signs of inflammation. Aren’t you tired of the screaming and name calling by our leaders and the media as they build monuments to our differences?

Is it my imagination? Do we quarrel more among ourselves failing to find common ground? Have we forgotten the importance of insincerity, manners and respect? We all seem to know who is a Democrat or a Republican and we treat each other accordingly?

I am exhausted by the daily slanderous political emails. Emails that alert me to supposed horrors committed by our political and religious leaders?

Do you think God counts emails?

After many, many, emails informing me that Obama is a Muslim. I do not believe this because I am convinced that Michelle would not wear a burka.

Are we being divided into war zones or voting precincts? Are the other voters really serious about changing the American way of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? It seems we have all begun to drop bombs upon each other from our places of insecurity. The louder we argue. The more we divide. Are we being distracted?

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What happened is this. A beloved member of the family departed this world; my grandson accepted a position with Apple Computer in Cupertino, California; I had back surgery; and my daughter, Jodi, brought my grand-dogs home to roost. These events were all “Rites of Passage.”
My family stepped through new portals this summer. It was a time of change and it was all a part of life and living. Life, like nature, is lived in seasons. But, often, we are distracted and we fail to notice.
These were all pivotal events that will become a marker for a new phase in our family’s life journey. It was also a time I paused to notice how sweet life is and how softly time slips away. I spent the summer counting blessings and looking back on other times. Remarkably, I noticed that often what I thought were times of tragedy and chaos were, in reality, times when miracles were unfolding.

As I looked backwards, I noticed how times were as marked in the history of families as happening either when someone died; another moved; graduated, married, and so on. Aunt Nancy always marked time by these events, especially deaths.

Also, this summer I was acutely aware that I have become a “senior citizen.” I am not fond of the term, “senior citizen.” It sounds like I have a disease or smell bad. Still, I use it when it means I get discounts. I prefer to think of these years as the time when we become esteemed “elders.” The term, “elder’ sounds like we have reached the age of reason and wisdom whether or not we actually have.

Family hierarchies change? Time passes, we move through life’s journey stepping, turning, and shifting: taking on roles and leaving parts behind us. Like Aunt Nancy, I began to notice the changing seasons and to mark important events in the many journeys of my family members, universal events that occur in all families. Each life inside each family is, in the words of Joseph Campbell, “A Hero’s Journey,” that includes challenges, love, joy, and loss. Look to the times of your family and the friends you hold dear. You will see the reflections of your life.

In July, we lost Vince Kerrigan, a family elder. With his passing, my grandchildren lost a dear grandfather, my son lost a mentor, my daughter-in-law lost her father, we lost a friend, and, most importantly, Ruby lost her husband of fifty years. The summer of 2008 was a time when we all turned to each other for comfort. It was a time when the family knitted together and became a little stronger.

As we attended Vince’s funeral, my grandson, Christopher, was driving across America. A grandfather left this world and a grandson’s new life was beginning. How normal. How wonderful. How sad. It happens everyday.

During the funeral I was aware that I was to have back surgery in a few days and my daughter had come home to take care of me. As I have already mentioned, she brought my grand-dogs home to roost.

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Ever since the immigrant Scotch-Irish set foot upon the ports of this grand country we have been studied and dissected like biology frogs. Okay, I am exaggerating. But it is not an exaggeration to say that the Scotch-Irish personality is an enigma to many. One fact that is assumed about southern folks is that we love a good fight and a good celebration. It has even been said that we will fight at the drop of a hat. Our cultural history verifies this.

I cannot resist throwing my two cents into the pile of books and columns that have been published explaining the mind of the south. After all, I am a storyteller and a spinner of yarns. My roots run deep into the Carolina red clay.

The anniversary of the Revolutionary war battle of Ramseur’s Mill is approaching. On June 20, 1780, 1,300 Tories and approximately 400 Patriots converged on a hilltop near Moses Ramseur’s Mill and commenced a battle fought to the death. Neither the Tories nor the Patriots were well armed. To understand this battle it is important to note that this was a battle fought by neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother, cousins against cousins. It was a civil war.

In the Carolina back country there was nothing less than civil unrest. On a daily basis allegiances were sworn to the British, but those who sworn allegiances to the British were as likely to change their mind when they spoke with a Patriot.

Civil war is a staple in our history. It begins in the foggy pages of civilization. Our heritage is traced back to the Lowland Scots who left the scant thin soil of Scotland to follow the promise of bountiful harvest on the Ulster Plantation in Northern Ireland. They left behind a lawless poverty stricken land to return to Ireland.

To understand how it came that the Revolutionary War was fought with such zeal by the Scotch Irish…let’s open the biology drawer and take out the proverbial ‘frog,’ and place it, once again, under the microscope to study our DNA.

In discussing the Scotch-Irish it is impossible to separate fact from legend and myth. Let’s begin with myth. Before the Iron Age, in the time of the long before, a Celtic race of people known as the Picts lived on the northern edge of Ireland. When Moses was parting the Red Sea, it is told that their leader know only as Neill, the grandson of Gaodhal Glas, married the daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh. This ancient warrior queen was known as Scotia and her sons became the Scoti. During this time, the Scoti migrated from Ireland to Scotland seeking a better life and refuge from the Romans. If you are keeping score this migration took place during the fifth century. The truth of who they were slumbers in the lost page of history far beyond our reach.

The roots of the Ulster Scots who migrated to America lie in Scotland and the fire in our blood is inherited from the wild people who battled the Romans. They were guerilla warriors and farmers.

The Scoti evolved into the primitive Caledonians or the Caledonian Confederacy as they are known to scholars. They became the indigenous Iron Age people of Scotland. And it all began with an ancient queen from Egypt.

The Romans labeled them as barbarians and savages. Yet, Celtic royalty was descended through the mother. Let’s put it this way, these barbarians figured you always knew who your mother was, if not your father. This was pretty good reasoning for Barbarians.

The people of Scotland and Ireland were skilled in the making of bronze and iron weapons. They were not a unified nation. They were horse-war tribes down through the annals of history who often fought each other.

Hadrian’s Wall was originally built as a defense against attacks by the wild hordes of the primitive people of Ireland and Scotland. They lived in hill forts and farmed. In Scotland, their life continued to be one of battle and hardship. The Romans were never able to completely conquer these people.

It is still written and accepted that the Scoti, the Caledonians, the Celtic tribes were barbarians and savages. However, in 1850, a mighty storm on the Orkney Islands in the north of Scotland removed tons of sand from a stretch of beach and uncovered an Iron Age Neolithic site, a village called Scara Brae that was established 3,000 years before the Romans invasion of Scotland. The village was a gathering of stone houses with indoor water storage, indoor toilets, and underground drainage systems. Scientists believe they studied astronomy and sailed as far away as the Middle East. It was an advanced civilization. During the Stone Age, the village of Scara Brae supposedly a place inhabited by savages and barbarians was flourishing.

It was their descendants who migrated back to the Ulster Plantation in Northern Ireland. We know of the strife and war that gripped Ulster during the mid-1600s until today. In Ulster they found more starvation, taxation, and siege. In the sieges of the town of Derry, the Kings of England and France starved equally the native Irish and the Scottish. It was the peasant farmer who suffered and it was the Ulster immigrants who set sail across a dangerous sea in crowded ships exposing themselves to illness and starvation. The peasants came to the shores of America with empty pockets filled only with the hope of improving their lot in life.

We were the lowest of the British class system and it is in our heritage that we were always on the move and always at war with some one, if not ourselves.

It was the children of these peasants who met on June 20, 1780, to wage a harsh and gory battle of neighbor against neighbor. Few wore a uniform. The only way they could separate friend from foe was a white piece of cloth the Patriots wore in their hats.

Consider this, a conversation I found at an Internet Site, The American Revolution in North Carolina, The Battle of Ramseur’s Mill.

In the thickest of the fight a Dutch Tory, seeing an acquaintance, said, “How do you do, Billy? I have knowed you since you was a little boy, and never knew no harm of you except that you are a Patriot.”

Billy, who was out for business and not to renew acquaintance, as his gun was empty, made a pass at his friend’s head with the butt of his gun, who dodged and said:

“Stop! Stop! I am not going to stand still and be killed like a damn fool, needer,” and immediately made a lick at Billy’s head, which he dodged. A friend of Billy whose gun was loaded put it to the Dutchman’s side and shot him dead.”

Hard times make hard people.

Spring is not a good time to leave Los Angeles, but that is what I am doing.

Every flowering bush in West LA is blooming. The sidewalks are strewn with petals. Pink and red azaleas spill over flower beds and walls. Even the mystical wisteria vines are draped with lavender buds.

Neighborhood yards are filled with ice plant blossoms as bright as neon. The silver roses were the first to bloom in the yard I refer to as the “Rose Garden West.” Soon the Rose Garden will be filled with an array of roses.

In Brentwood, the dark, scrawny limbs of coral trees are bursting forth with their exuberant orangey-red flowers. Bougainville vines in electric blossoms of purple, orange, and pink are every where you turn in this city. They own the roofs and walls of homes and restaurants.

There should be an official Los Angeles parade in honor of each new season because Mother Nature loves to show off in this city. She spreads her bounty across this city as generously as Cousin Anne spreads Duke Mayonnaise on a slice of bread.

So I am leaving. We fly home tomorrow. Leaving Los Angeles always feels like I am being whisked away too soon from the party.

You see, my Supervisor and I a are bi-coastal couple. We are also an inter-racial faux marriage. I am a Southerner from Shuffletown and he is an Angeleno.

This lifestyle means that I often feel like I left a stove on three thousand miles away.

I am a day away from exiting this sun-drenched city and I am sure going to miss this odd and hypnotic place and the people who live there.

Back home, in Shuffletown, the red tulip bulbs I planted last winter should be peeking out of the finally unfrozen ground. I can’t wait to get my hands in the dirt of my patio and front yard. But I will never quite shake the dust of LA from my hair.