Monthly Archives: August 2008

Most newspapers give endorsements to particular candidates during election times.  So, here at “Chasing Thoughts. . .” I have decided to unveil my endorsement for the presidential race.  I know, everybody has been dying to know who I will endorse, hanging on the edges of their seats in . . . . . . anticipation.  Well, today is your lucky day.  Today, we have learned not only that John McCain has chosen Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, but you will also learn who I am endorsing for the presidency.

If you have ever read my blog before, then you know that I am very much AGAINST Obama.  For more reasons than I can really list in one post.  His pick of Joe Biden as his running mate is not exceptional.  Biden seems like a nice guy (I saw him on Leno months ago) but I cringe every time the man calls himself a Catholic.  Catholics do not support abortion. Ever.  Biden does.  Okay. . . I’m not going to continue down that rabbit trail at this time.

And, you may have guessed by now that I’m not a huge fan of Hillary, either.  It would be safe to say that I will never be able to support anyone who is pro-choice or who advocates a national healthcare system.  Hillary’s mistake, by-the-way, was not letting ol’ Bill campaign for her.  That man definitely has the gift of gab.  I don’t like his politics, but he’s easy to listen to.

And McCain . . . nope.  I don’t much care for him, either.  I just don’t understand why the Republican party couldn’t come up with someone more charismatic.  Like Napoleon Dynamite, for example.  Or his buddy Pedro.

So, I know everybody is absolutely dying to know who I am endorsing.  Okay, at first I considered Bill and Opus (If you don’t recognize those names, see the  “Bloom County” comics by Berke Breathed, 1980’s).  But, since it really probably is futile to cast my vote for actual cartoon characters (although it is often difficult to tell the difference) I realized my only choice was to vote for Dave Barry.  Yep, good ol’ Dave.  He is the only man in the country, who, at the end of every year, has actually kept track of the year’s events and takes the time to document them.  Sounds like he’s more than qualified, to me!  My family even has bumper stickers that say: “2008.  Dave Barry for President.  Yes, of the United States.”

Care to join our cause?  Visit Dave’s website. (I’ve included that link right here for your convenience, however it has always been in my sidebar links section under “Fun”.) If you want to buy a bumper sticker of your own, visit Dave’s Online Store.  Want to know where Dave stands on the issues?  Don’t miss Dave’s Q & A.

And, for those of you who just are dying to see what the bumper sticker looks like, here ya go:

I am sure that everybody is excited by this new option for presidency!  Hang in there, November is just around the corner, and you’ll have your chance to vote then.  See you on the campaign trail!

I think it’s best to let the man speak for himself. Please note that this speech was made on June 26th. Two months ago today.

Packaging is everything.  So, in an attempt to get folks excited about summer coming to an abrupt halt, and in the spirit of American Commercialism, everywhere we look these days there is some sign, poster, or advertisement that says “Back to School”.  I am too old to be fooled by such.  I know what those signs really mean:  “End of Summer”!  End of Freedom. Which, for as long as I can remember, I have dreaded.

Perhaps it is because I am a product of the public school system.  In public school, kids are expected, almost encouraged, to hate school.  They are segregated by age and sent through their days in assembly-line fashion, but expected to remember all the new information that is directed at them at least long enough to regurgitate it on an exam. School is often more like prison than a freeing and enlightening of the mind. But it is very effective in mass-producing students who cannot think for themselves.

We chose to begin homeschooling 14 years ago for many reasons, but they can almost all be boiled down to freedom of thought. As homeschoolers, our children are free to choose many of their topics of study, we can sleep late, or call a trip to the grocery store a field trip in economics and nutrition.  Homeschooling is, if nothing else, an exercise in freedom and enlightenment.  No wonder public school officials fear it so much.  We produce thinkers.  Homeschoolers not only think for themselves, they question and challenge.  They seek Truth.  In the socialistic setting of the public school, thinking is dangerous. Questioning and challenging are discouraged or even punished.

No wonder hordes of young men and women think Obama is such a great choice.  They were never trained to think, to question, to challenge.  They hear what he tells them, and, because they were trained by the public school system to accept what they are told as the gospel truth, they blindly believe he’s honest and can be trusted.  After all, he has a microphone, doesn’t he?  He’s using all the right buzzwords that they were programmed to get excited about: hope, change, belief. He looks and sounds like he means business.

So they never bother to check his voting record.  I wonder if they even know they can do such a thing.  They don’t bother to question his contributors’ motives.  Who is funding his campaign?  What do they stand for? Make no mistake: nobody is going to donate money to a political campaign if there’s nothing in it for them. Why do foreign investors think giving Obama millions of dollars is a good idea?  What are the changes he is promising?  And, if  he is able to actually implement them, what will that look like in real life?  What will be the long term effects of the changes he is proposing?  Can we even pinpoint exactly what those changes are?  The summer break mentality is not up to the task of choosing the next leader of the free world.  Our educational system has failed us by producing generations of people who cannot make educated, informed decisions.

As a nation, we cannot afford to take a ’summer break’.  We must Think.  Question.  Challenge.  Seek Truth. These are skills and habits that should be employed all year round, for the rest of one’s life.  We cannot shelve our brains for the summer, or it truly will mean the end of the American Summer. The End of Freedom.

I just wanted to let everybody know that I have finally finished uploading all the pictures I took along the way and while we were in Texas this month.  If you just click on one of the pictures on the right sidebar of this page, it will take you to my Flickr account, where you can see not only those pictures, but literally hundreds of others.  I will be uploading all of the photos from the Adams Album to Flickr later this afternoon or evening.

I had a friend tell me that she wash hoping that I would post some pictures from my Aunt Bobbie’s photo album. And, actually, I have been meaning to, but well, one thing leads to another. So, without further ado, I am posting some of my favorite pictures. All the pictures here are scanned from the original “tintype” photographs. If you click on the picture, it will pull it up in a new page with a description. Just use your browser’s back button to get back to this post. (Also, if you click on the picture, the entire picture will be shown, not just the tiny ‘thumbnail’s!!)

I really love these pictures! They made me realize that my family really did live in the “Wild West”. Some of the pictures looked just like something out of ‘Tombstone’. They were all in Texas, though.

While we were in Texas, one of the most exciting things I got to do was scan all of the pictures in a photo album belonging to my Aunt Bobbie. Her grandmother gave it to her mother 105 years ago!!!  I was very humbled that Bobbie let me take it and scan it, because I know how precious it is to her.  I felt like I was carrying the holy grail with me for the four brief hours it was in my possession.

My mom was actually the one to ask if we could get it and scan it, to preserve the pictures in it.  Bobbie said she didn’t mind, and she called her daughter-in-law, who was in town, to have her bring it to the hospital for us.  She didn’t want to bring it, but she did.  For some reason, she had the ridiculous idea that we were going to take the album all the way back to North Carolina with us, then mail it back to Texas!  There is NO WAY I would trust the USPS with something that valuable and precious!!  I’m not sure why she thought that, because we never said anything of the sort, but apparently she didn’t trust us with it at all.  Apparently the woman also didn’t understand why I would want such a thing, and asked Bobbie “What does she want with all of our family pictures?”

Wow.  Bobbie is my grandmother’s youngest sister.  That makes her family and my family the same family, last I checked!  Nevertheless, we got the album and scanned it and had it back to the hospital in record time.  The album is in amazingly good condition; in fact, it looks almost brand new!  The photographs are incredibly clear, for the most part.  Twelve of the photographs in it are tintypes!  I was worried they wouldn’t scan well, but they turned out fantastic!

To give a general idea of how awesome it is to have these pictures:  one of the pictures (a tintype) is of my great-great-great-great grandmother, Sarah Graham.  (Graham was her married name, I don’t actually know her maiden name . . .  yet!) This woman died in 1860!  So that photograph, at the very least, is 148 years old!!

What did I want with my family pictures?  Well, first and foremost, I wanted to preserve them.  Now that I have them on my computer, I can share them with others in the family who may be interested.  I also plan to create a book with all of those pictures, and add some newer pictures and some pedigree charts and family group sheets.  So, yeah, to put it very, very mildly, I am forever grateful to my Aunt Bobbie for letting me scan her photo album, and thrilled out of my mind to have the pictures!

We finally got home from Texas yesterday.  My aunt is doing much better, although she is not out of the woods yet.  I am so glad that we went to see her!  She is so precious to me. I do believe that she will get to go home at some point in the near future.  Thanks so much to everyone who has been praying for her and for us!

We got to see Amber and Victoria, along with Amber’s new husband, Bobby.  I can’t believe how big Victoria has gotten!  And she is absolutely beautiful.  She looks just like Amber did at that age.  Amber looked really good, too, and it was great to get to see her again.  We got to see other family members, too:  Joey, Gaylon’s brother, and three of his younger kids: Matthew, Dorinda and Jonathan.  Faith and Dorinda have been writing letters back-and-forth for almost a year now, so it was really cool that they got to see each other and hang out for a bit.

We attended Mass at St. Anne’s Catholic Church, where my mother converted to Catholicism when she was in High School. (How sad that the daughter of a Cradle Catholic had to “convert”!)  It was cool to go to Mass there, but the acoustics were really, really bad, making it very difficult to hear what was being said.  I did hear and totally agree with one thing the priest said, though: it really doesn’t matter if it’s a dry heat or a humid heat, once you get up to 100 degrees, it’s HOT! (It was almost unbearably hot the whole time we were there!)

On the way home from Midland, we spent an evening with my cousin Branden and his wife, Laura. I have been wanting to meet her for such a long time!  We email and blog back-and-forth, but until this past Sunday evening, we’d never met.  So, that was very cool.  I wish we could have spent more time there, but Faith was sick and we needed to get her on home.  (She and Mom both came home sick . . . happens every time!)

Anyway, we are all really glad to be home.  I really miss all the mountains and trees when I’m gone!  Did I mention it was only 71 degrees here today?

Last night, we got to eat Mexican food.  At La Bodega on Big Spring Street in Midland. REAL Mexican food!!!  Tex-Mex.  The stuff that God eats.  After eating “Mexican Food” in North Carolina for 14 years, it is always a super-special treat to eat the real thing.  The salsa that came with the chips actually made my eyes water, it was so hot!  Man, that was good!!!  And it just got better from there.  The queso was actually a lovely golden color, not icky white goat cheese. The food came out smothered in glorious RED sauce, covered with CHEDDAR cheese!!!  It was Nirvana!

So, wanting to share the experience, I called Kendall to let him know how awesomely hot the salsa was.  He was rather rude about it, and told me that if I ever wanted to talk to him again, I should stop talking right then about the salsa. So, I called Gaylon, to share my joy with him.  He said the exact same thing Kendall said (which is really not appropriate to share here) and started whining about how he and Kendall were back home eating Ken-L Rations.  (Yeah, right!)

I am disappointed that they didn’t appreciate my experience, but Mom and Alex certainly did!  Alex loves Tex-Mex, even though he refuses to eat any ‘Mexican’ food in North Carolina.  And really, after last night, it’s going to be really difficult to convince my palate that the stuff they serve out there is worth eating.  *sigh*

We got to Midland, Texas on Wednesday.  Even though I grew up in this part of the country, I am still always shocked to see how FLAT and BROWN it is here.  There just are not any hills or trees.  I have to say though, that what God left out in landscape, He made up for in the skies.  They are really gorgeous here.

On the way out, we got to spend some time with my dear friend, Cathy and her family.  That was definitely one of the highlights of my trip, and we had not even reached our final destination yet!

Mom and I got to see Aunt Bobbie very briefly on Wednesday, and she looked a lot better than I had expected, which was great.  Thursday they moved her to a new facility (something about Medicaid not covering her stay where she was at. . .) and we all went over to see her for a while yesterday.  My cousin and brother-in-law both say it will be a much better place for her.  I really hope so.  Aunt Bobbie is very precious to all of us on our side of the family, because she is all we have left.  I couldn’t help but notice the other day how very much she looked like my grandmother, her oldest sister.

I got to stay with my cousin Wednesday night.  Her home is absolutely GEORGEOUS!  I felt like I was staying with royalty!  We got to visit quit awhile, and will hopefully have a lot more time to visit more before we head back.

It was also wonderful to see Chuck and Anna.  Chuck is Gaylon’s brother, and it’s always great to get to see them.  We got to meet their ‘new’ granddaughter, Akasha, who is absolutely adorable!  Faith fell in love with her and spent the entire evening playing with her.   In fact, Faith and Alex stayed over there Wednesday night, rather than go with me to my cousin’s, because they were having so much fun.

On the way from Dallas to Midland yesterday we stopped off to see Gaylon’s mom and grandmother.  That was really nice, and I got some pictures.  They are staying in a travel trailer out on Gaylon’s cousin’s ranch outside of Sweetwater, Texas.  We got to see him, too, which was a treat.

With the Grandmothers

Mom and I were amazed to see all of the wind generators all over the place. There are literally thousands of them out here now. At some points, I felt like I was in some sort of science fiction movie! I do think it’s a good idea, though, because there is certainly plenty of WIND.  (Did I ever mention how much I hate the wind???)

Wind Turbines in Texas

Anyway, I just wanted to post an update. Several folks have asked how long it took us to get here.  Three days.  It’s a total of 19 hours of ‘drive time’, but we divide that up usually so we don’t all go crazy.  I will write more as we continue on our journey.

So yesterday we drove all the way to Canton, Mississippi. Yeah, it’s a really long drive.  But, the weather was great and the kids got along great, so all is well.  I chose Canton because it is the little town where my Dad’s family lived before the Civil War.  I have done so much research revolving around this little town that I wanted to actually see it for myself!  We are going downtown this morning so I can take some pictures.  

Then, we’re back on the road, headed for Texas.  We had originally planned to drive straight through to Midland, but when we realized that it would be a twelve hour drive, we unanimously elected to stop in Dallas tonight.  We won’t be doing any visiting, except with my aunt and uncle, with whom we are staying.  Then we’ll head to Midland tomorrow morning.

Aunt Bobbie is doing somewhat better, according to my cousin, Pattye.  She is a bit stronger, and can pull herself up to a sitting position now.  They are going to be moving her to another care facility on Thursday, something to do with her insurance.  At any rate, we can’t wait to see her tomorrow.

So, that’s my update so far.  I’ll be writing more as we go.