Sure its a state. State of confusion or maybe it is only where I work.

You're right, Marie. I don't know about you but as I age I find that taking chances has it own rewards. I can remember telling my dad when I was younger that another friend was doing something and it was ok and him telling me well if he jumped off a bridge would you jump off, too? Some times I get these crazy notions and thankfully there are times when I get a cold hard shock of reality to clear my head. I think in relationships there should be atleast one person with commonsense. I knew it worked for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. So many times I have been like a boll weavil just looking for a home or a tumbleweed just being tossed in the wind. I kind of like that song of, "Goodtime Charlie" - "It is hard to grow up when you are 33". Really harder to grow up at 50 I have found.

My ancestor Henry son of Sir Edmund was was implicated in the Gunpowder Plot but exonerated. He was with Lady Vaux. November 8 1605.
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=15001

I have been widowed for 2 years 7 months now. Finally getting comfortable with it. An aide last night noticing how I call everyone hon said I have so many wives.

Lately, I have been remembering to keep gas in the tank of the car so I don't have to walk. I have found other ways to meet my neighbors instead of coasting into their driveways and asking to use their phones.

Have you ever dialed your own number and got a busy signal? It is like wow I must be having a good time.

How do you show yourself that you love yourself? Maybe you have heard that song, "What have you done for me lately?"

I went out and bought me some peanut butter and crackers. Yeah, I know I am a cheap date.

I miss my dad. He gave me a 200 year old anvil. He told me not to break it. I still haven't broke it yet.

If you are not important to them as they are to you then pack it in is the way I look at but then that is just me.

I am sorry that happened to you. A little over a year ago I went through the same thing. Quit my job; Stuffed everything I could get into my car and it lasted for about two weeks. I was smart enough to keep my dog. She told me there was the front door and she had her son help pack my car back up. Man it sure was a bummer. I had worked all day and drove for another day. I was exhausted when I got there. We had talked for a year and I shared with her the most intimate details of my life. I had to learn the hard way that one should always have a contingency plan. It really educated me and tried my faith but made me stronger. I found that not everything that glitters is gold. Kind of like fool's gold. Live and learn I guess.

I used to wish I was given the option to be lazy growing up. I always loved reading and escaping in one form or another. Seems like there was always chores or work to be done. Work has always interfered in my plans of taking it easy even when I had gravy jobs. My friend's wife stayed behind while he went to California and is making major bucks now. Lately her and others at the nursing home are giving me the Jed Clampett speech of, "Jed, move away from there. California is the place you ought to be." My problem is that I have found a form of stability here even though I don't get paid diddlysquat. Then the friend's wife said, "Well, with all the money you will be making you could afford to keep paying rent to your mother and have your house to fall back on." I have been contemplating if this idea though couldn't be just another geographical cure or a rainbow chase. I keep hearing the per diem tune and I can't help but think it is all pie in the sky. Besides that 7 day workweek at 12 hours a day I don't know if I can still cut the mustard.

Way to go. I am happy for you.

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's dystopian soft science fiction novel, was published in 1953. It first appeared as the novella, The Fireman, in the February 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. It is a critique of what Bradbury saw as an increasingly dysfunctional American society, written in the early years of the Cold War.

The novel presents a future in which all books are restricted, individual people are anti-social and hedonistic, and critical thought is suppressed. The central character, Guy Montag, is employed as a "fireman" (which, in this future, means "book burner"). The number "451" refers to the temperature (in Fahrenheit) at which a book or paper burns. A movie version of the novel was released in 1966, and it is anticipated that a second version will begin filming in 2008. At least two BBC Radio 4 dramatizations have also been aired, both of which follow the book very closely.

Over the years, the novel has been subject to various interpretations, primarily focusing on the historical role of book burning in suppressing dissenting ideas. Bradbury has stated that the novel is not about censorship; he states that Fahrenheit 451 is a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which ultimately leads to ignorance of total facts.

I think that last line really says it all.

He wrote some good books and I enjoyed watching the Ray Bradbury theater when it used to show on tv. I his, "The Tatooed Man" was extraordinary.

I thought it was pretty interesting. Here is another site that has more information.

http://www.1421.tv/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=119

On PBS

The Asiatic Fathers of America - Chinese Discovery and Colonization of Ancient America

by Dr. Hendon M. Harris, Jr.
Edited and abridged by Charlotte Harris Rees

"The record of Asia is written into the stones of America and into the bodies of its early people."
Hendon M. Harris, Jr., 1975

Is it possible that the Chinese discovered and colonized America not just a few years before Columbus but thousands of years ago? Is there evidence that they made repeated trips to America over the centuries?

In 1972 the late Dr. Hendon M. Harris, Jr. made a startling discovery in an antique shop in Korea. He became weak and had to sit down. In his hands he held a primitive ancient world map in classical Chinese which showed the location of the fabled Fu Sang (land to the east) - right where America should be.

Most Chinese believe that Fu Sang is just myth. But was it? The Chinese classic the Shan Hai Jing, which some date back to 2200 B.C., described Fu Sang in detail. Many of those descriptions fit exact locations in America including the Grand Canyon. Seventy-two percent of the place names on this map, which some call the "Harris Map," are from the Shan Hai Jing.

Dr. Harris’ search led to his acquisition of six more maps. He became aware of twenty-three other similar old maps in museums and collections around the world. No one knows the origin date of this style maps. The existence of this many of these old maps supports their authenticity. Some people thought that the countries in the center of the map - China, Japan, and Korea - were real but that the countries on the far edges of the map were imaginary. They had no faith that the Chinese could have gone that far so early. Harris believed that these maps were later copies of the long lost map that originally accompanied the Shan Hai Jing.

After extensive research, in 1975 Dr. Harris published a book of almost 800 pages titled The Asiatic Fathers of America but the book had little circulation. Ever since Dr. Harris’ sudden death in 1981 of a stroke the maps were held by the heirs. In 2003 the family took them to the Library of Congress where they remained for three years while they were studied.

Was Harris Right?
National Geographic March 2006 states that the DNA of most American Indians carry markers that “link them unequivocally to Asia.” Encyclopedia Smithsonian contends that the Indians arrived by boat (not over a land bridge). National Geographic September 2004 related that some believe that when Columbus arrived that there were 30 million Indians in North America. To amass such a large population would have taken many centuries.

Now the author’s daughter Charlotte Harris Rees, who gave a speech on this topic at the Library of Congress on May 16, 2005, is bringing Dr. Harris’ book out again in an abridged version. Dr. Cyclone Covey, Professor Emeritus of Wake Forest and longtime scholar on the Shan Hai Jing and ancient American history, advised her during this project. Perhaps this time the world is ready to explore these possibilities.

About the book
The Asiatic Fathers of America (abridged) gives a concise explanation of the Harris Map, early Chinese map making, and a discussion of ancient Chinese literature (including the Shan Hai Jing) that mentions Fu Sang. Dr. Harris’ book shows the correlation of American Indian and Chinese customs and language. It also explains how the Chinese would have been able to come by sea at such an early date. Mrs. Rees has included some pictures of the Harris map collections which are shown publicly for the first time.

About the author
Dr. Hendon M. Harris, Jr. was a Baptist missionary in Taiwan then later in Hong Kong. Born in Kaifeng, China to American parents he spoke Mandarin as early as he did English. His knowledge of Chinese literature and language allowed him to recognize the significance of the map when he first saw it.

Endorsements
“The Harris collection of maps will, in the long run, cause and even more fundamental and agonizing reappraisal of American history than my book has.” Gavin Menzies, author of best seller, 1421 The Year China Discovered America.

http://www.pbs.org/previews/1421/

Trial, Execution and Aftermath: The details of how the other conspirators were rounded up need not concern us here. One by one they admitted their part. Dragged through the crowd, they were to be hung, drawn and quartered at Westminster on 30th and 31st January 1606, excepting Tresham who died of illness in the Tower of London. The show trial of the conspirators took place in Westminster Hall, Sir Edward Coke, Attorney-General, prosecuting for the King. The King indeed observed the trial from a secret hiding place. All were condemned. Coke fulminated at the conspirators: they stood no chance of being spared. On 30th January 1606, Sir Everard Digby was the first to mount the scaffold, then Robert Wintour, John Grant, Thomas Bates. Tom Wintour and Guy Fawkes, Ambrose Rookwood and Robert Keyes followed on 31st. One by one the conspirators had been interrogated and tortured by manacles or by the rack. They all, except Bates, had denied any priestly involvement, but Bates’ testimony involved a Fr Garnet, a Jesuit, who had ministered under various pseudonyms, for many years in England and who had learnt in terrible consternation under the seal of Confession, what was to happen, but was powerless to do more than to counsel him forcefully against it; he had no success.

Questions were asked, as ever, about Jesuit involvement. Why had none been produced in the show trial of the conspirators which followed in the January of 1606? Finally Fr Garnet’s safe place of hiding was discovered. Along with the chaplain of Hindlip House, he had been hiding in a confined space, fed with soup through a straw pushed through a stone in the wall in the most appalling conditions. He was taken to London in stages but treated with care. At his trial on 28th March 1606, he pleaded not guilty. Coke, the prosecutor again said "I will name it the Jesuits’ treason as belonging to them." He dragged up Queen Elizabeth’s excommunication, the Spanish Armada, Spain, indeed anything he could. Fr Garnet declared: "I have always abhorred this wicked attempt." He was accused of misprision (knowing about a crime - the plot - but doing nothing about it). He was executed on Saturday 3rd May 1606. Fr Garnet had been a native of Heanor in Derbyshire.(See note 10) http://www.innotts.co.uk/asperges/fawkes/fawkes4.html Sir Edward Coke (pronounced "cook") (1 February 1552 - 3 September 1634) was an early English colonial entrepreneur and jurist whose writings on the English common law were the definitive legal texts for some 300 years. He is credited with having established the legal basis for slavery in the English colonies. Between becoming a Member of Parliament in 1589 and again in 1620, he served as England's Attorney General (1593-1606) under Elizabeth I of England and as its Lord Chief Justice (1613-1616) and a Privy Councilor (1614-1616, 1617-1620) under James I of England. His speeches, in the House of Commons, against governmental abuses of the people's rights so angered King James that he held Sir Edward prisoner in the Tower of London for nine months in 1622. In 1606, Coke helped write the charter of the Virginia Company, a private venture granted a royal charter to found settlements in North America. He became directory of the London Company, one of the two branches of the Virginia Company. As director, he proposed a means by which slavery could be legalised in the new Virginia Colony. Fearing opposition if the issue was publicly debated, Coke was responsible for Calvin's Case in 1608, which ruled that "all infidels are in law perpetual ennemies". Here he was borrowing from a legal tradition rooted in canonical law and apologetics for the crusades. In this way Coke played a significant part in the development of New World slavery. On January 2, 2003, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom refused to make a public apology for the long history of slavery under the British Empire on the basis that it was legal at the time. Writing via assistant private secretary Kay Brock, she said "Under the statute of the International criminal Court, acts of enslavement committed today . . . constitute a crime against humanity. But the historic slave trade was not a crime against humanity or contrary to international law at the time when the UK government condoned it." Copies of Coke's writings arrived in North America on the Mayflower in 1620, and both John Adams and Patrick Henry cited Coke's treatises to support their revolutionary positions against the Mother Country in the 1770s. Under Lord Coke's leadership, in 1628 the House of Commons forced Charles I of England to accept Coke's Petition of Rights by withholding the revenues the king wanted until he capitulated. Quotes The quote is believed to have led to the "castle exception" of self-defense: "A man's house is his castle - for where shall a man be safe if it be not in his own house?" His famous quote about the common law: "Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason. . . The law which is perfection of reason." (First Institute) Resources The Lion and the Throne, a biography (ISBN 0-316-10393-4) of Coke by Catherine Drinker Bowen, won the National Book Award.

I didn't know what it was and hear the term so much that I got curious.

Dear Diary,
I really didn't mean to go off on the nurse last night but she really pissed me off and got on my last nerve. I am really getting better at venting. I didn't use any curse words or raise my voice this time. She really thought I needed a vacation, too and that I am just taking all the umpteen jillion rules too personally. I really thought I would have felt better if I had screamed louder but she convinced that I made my point just as good without raising my voice and using profanity. She agreed to stop nicpicking so much and it was really nice that she found somebody else to pick on rather just me all the time. I promise to stop spraying glade after she sprays lysol. I will learn how to breathe lysol. I know if I can adapt to breathing air that I can adapt to breathing lysol.