Just wanted to say goodbye to all of you whose lives I have shared through this blogstream. I can still be reached on Facebook, just contact me at Sabra Beck. I hope many of you will do so. Happy trails to you.

Sunshine Rider

The elections have ended, the rhetoric continues. NPR, FOX, MSNBC, CNN, all can't let go. Pundits must keep spewing forth spurious rhetoric to justify their jobs and politicians must follow suit to justify theirs... But what is it the average person really wants? Is anyone listening? Could I venture an opinion here from a middle class, motivated, informed, tax-paying, hard working citizen? ENOUGH! I want you all to shut up with your "we'll get even shit" and consider the situation.

Property taxes have risen. Not my income. Food prices have risen. Not my income. Gasoline prices have risen. Not my income. Public services have been reduced, city and county maintenance issues neglected, education funds emaciated and yet Congress pays itself, provides its own health care, and all its many perks, on the backs of their empty rhetoric. Unneccessary foreclosures have proved the corruption of the banking industry. Investment houses continue to pay exhorbitant wages that are not justified, restraints placed on Wall Street are being gutted as we speak. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Obama backs down and Republicans gloat.

It's time to put the partinsonship aside and think of the needs of the working class American first. I don't want to repeal, reject, punish, or waste any more time or money on your petty politics. I want the health care issue to slowly but surely come to fruition, even if I have to initially struggle with it. I want manufacturing and banking to get their tails out from between their legs and release some of that stimulus money they have been hoarding. I want us all to take some risks to make things better. I want local parks to be adopted by their local communities and groomed and maintained for those local children. I want more State Farm pot holes filled by their amazing road crews! I want neighborhood watch associations back in gear. i want car pools, conscientious use of natural resources, a stop to fossil fuel pollution, and a future for my grandchildren. I want a combination of the Perk Reports and the High Country News.

Like most of you, I don't have a lot of time to promote ideas that I know work, but I know that if we just stopped calling each other names and trying to undo what we do, only to be undone again, things could be better. Surely there are hundreds of American like me that would like for our legislators, businessmen, workers, teachers, to just list their priorities and proceed accordingly. Angry, envy, ambition, are ever-present enemies that only compassion and conciliation can overcome. We do have common values and they need not originate in the religions we espouse. We all must reach out, calm down, get involved (even in the smallest way) in our communities and make them work. We must respect one another. We are equally valuable and must treat each other accordingly!

And finally, Zenyatta should have won the Breeders Cup!

Sunshine

Driving home from town tonight my husband and I saw a snake in the road... turned around to identify it. It was a gorgeous tiger rattler, very rare in these parts. As we were leaving, another neighbor drove on top of it, backed up, and drove over it again, as I was screaming. I am still so upset. All life has value, even that of a rattlesnake in the Arizona desert. It was near no houses, was just warming itself on the pavement after the sun went down. I was so furious with the woman who proudly killed it. What produces this mentality? It is not okay to kill things that represent no threat to you, or to hurt them, or capture them, or destroy their environment.

I have lived in this place for 20 years. I co-exist with snakes, coyotes, javelina, bobcats, deer, and the occasional mountain lion. I wake to the sun streaming in through the windows and the sound of animals by the pond. I struggle with uprooted flowers, noisy woodpeckers, and scary rattlesnakes, but they have as much right here as I do. I am careful. I am appreciative. I go to bed when the skies are filled with stars and the cries of coyotes can be heard on the ridge. I am blessed. We must do a better job educating others to value what is around them, not to consider it a threat or something to be controlled or killed. If wild creatures scare you, live in town! Remember, all life has value.

So we've bickered, and argued, and called each other names, and lied, and accused, but the truth is, all Americans deserve to have care when they're ill, whether they are rich or poor, old or young, employed or homeless. We are a nation of plenty. Just go to Walmart, or Cosco, or Sam's Club, and see how many of us leave with baskets full of things we didn't even go to buy in the first place. Yet, when we see someone who has no health insurance, or has lost theirs, we tend to somehow think that it must be their fault. It doesn't matter whose fault it is! We can afford to cover every American just as easily as we can afford to leave the store with all those new items. Raise my taxes. I accept that may be the price I will have to pay, but don't make excuses for our failure to act as most industrialized, progressive, socially conscious nations do.

I did a teacher's exchange to South Australia several years ago. My cohorts grilled me about my country, and one of the questions was about health insurance. Why didn't we have it? If they could afford it, why couldn't we? At one point in my stay I became quite ill, and when I went to the hospital there were no questions, only my name, address, and complaint. The care was excellent. There was no charge. I didn't see the Australians suffering economically from their decision to fund health care for everyone. Did they pay higher taxes than we do? Yes, but they also had much better public services, including health care, unemployment, aid to single women with children, educations expenses, parks and recreations programs, even better roads and a great national t.v. channel.

I have tried to remain apolitical for the past year, but the lies that inundate my email box, the radio talk shows, and even the halls of Congress make me ashamed of my countrymen. Go to the grocery in my neighborhood and see men sitting on the sidewalk outside talking to themselves, gesticulating wildly, or picking at their gloved hands in 110 degree heat. Where is their help? Why can't they get medication for their disease. Go with me on my Mobile Meals route and see some of my clients living in tiny rooms with only a fan, whose only sustenance is the church. Ask yourself why they have no health insurance. Join me at the tiny apartment of a man dying of liver cancer, in pain and unable to eat the meals I bring him, and ask yourself why he has no clean, comfortable hospice to care for him in his final days. I'm sorry. I just can't accept that we can't do better.

I did read the bill. It took three days of intense concentration. It is reasonable. Let's pass health care. We CAN afford it. We can't afford not to.

In the summers we take our horses to a grown daughter in Boerne, Texas, so she and the grandkids can ride. We then head north to Colorado for three months. Of course, there is a thing called "separation anxiety." I seriously told my daughter that my mare often had separation anxiety when I was gone and didn't eat well. The next day I was up at 5 a.m. and over at the barn checking on the mare. Later that evening, I was back at the barn, checking on my mare. As I left town the following day, I went by the barn to check on my mare... It seems I am the one with separation anxiety. I call three times a week, not to check up on the family, but to check up on the mare.

Friends were visiting us in Colorado, and we decided to go hiking and camping in Rocky Mountain National Park. No dogs allowed there, so I enrolled our three at a local dog camp for four days. You had to take your dogs a few days before going so they could see if they would be all right in a community situation, since the kennel is all about play and freedom, and the dogs are only kenneled at night. You have to leave your dogs for 4 hours, but you can watch the closed-circuit TV to see how they are doing. I was a wreck! The dogs all went into their "sizes" groups, sniffed and postured, and were fine, while I stood at the counter and wept. Separation
anxiety big time!

I always thought that when the kids were gone and I was retired life would be so simple. Instead, all these pets have made me go through the anxiety all over again!

Sunshine