Keeping it simple and close to home “again” this year . . . counting our blessings that are more plentiful than we deserve.

Merry Christmas to all…

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I voted for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan today and am damn proud to have done so!!! In just a few hours we’ll know whether this great country of ours will be headed on the road to restoration or hurled down the dark path of perdition. For the sake of my son, his wife  and their precious sons and daughter, I have been praying for the former. Time will tell…

It’s been a long time now since your ol’ Okie has had any enthusiasm for writing on this blog. The more overdosing of Obama that we’ve had to endure, the more bitter and negative I became… to the point that I no longer could see a point to it. Opining just wasn’t going to get anything done about the nightmare.

Three years ago I began working with Sonja Eddings Brown on a project called “The Kitchen Cabinet” – a political website oriented towards conservative women. I had worked for her briefly in ’06 on the California Constitutional Amendment, Prop 8, and had built a blog, Article6Blog.com, for her husband Lowell and his blogging partner John, who both had been part of a Southern California Christian Bloggers Association formed in the Spring of 2005 of which John and I were two of the founding members. Sonja art directed me on their major redesign a couple of years after we had originally put together their blog.

The first Photoshop sketches for TKC were done in the Fall of ’09 and the initial launch was in the Spring of 2010. The site was extensively revised that August to get it ready for the 2010 election cycle where it played an important roll in coordinating conservative women’s groups across the country in their efforts that helped lead to the largest pickup of GOP House seats in decades as well as many Governorships.

This election cycle it has been all about electing Mitt Romney as the 45th President of the United States. Tonight we’ll see if we have been able to help get that done. I’m but a small cog in a big machine, but it sure is nice to be DOING something rather than just constantly complaining… However, I do feel some major inner-irritation coming on — and I don’t know a better way to get that out of my system than to come here and vent!

Is Okie back? Guess like tonight’s results… we’ll just have to wait and see.

Oh — If you even wondered just how the Golden State of California has gotten itself into such a sad state, check out my friend Laer Pearce’s new book, “Crazifornia”. It’s a nightmare of a cautionary tale to all those that still believe in the Progressive Way.

Tulsa, Oklahoma: February 11th, 1952

The first hero was a birth mother, an un-wed teenager or young adult, or perhaps just an existing mother with already too many children that couldn’t face one more. In a clinic — not a hospital — this brave gal gave birth to a 5-1/2 pound blond, blue-eyed baby boy, (geez, where did this extra 190 pounds come from???)

She, and most likely also the birth father, were of German/Austrian decent — hey, I can look in the mirror! Often in the 80s folks thought that a dear friend, Steve Guentner, and I were brothers. I used to kid him that his dad must have been a traveling salesman passing through Tulsa sometime in 1951. But that is as much as I would/will ever know about the birth parents. Closed adoptions really meant “closed” back in the day, and that’s alright with me.

The second two heroes are my “real” Mom & Dad, my adopted parents, James and Anna Mae Baker. They took the leap of faith during that time of the dueling “Nature vs. Nurture” theories, as well as against the wishes of some of their family members, and took in this 3-hour-old new-born critter directly home from the clinic.

I am such a blessed human being. My parents loved each other so very much and stayed together until death did part them. She soldiered through the terrible ending of my Dad’s existence by way of Alzheimer’s, and spent another nine years after that with us here on this side of the Great Divide before going on to join him on the Next Great Adventure.

Turning 60 makes one aware that one’s own Next Great Adventure is coming up, sooner than ever before . . . however, out here in the Golden State of “existential granola”, ‘they” say 60 is the new 40. I keep telling that to my 60 year-old knees, lumbar vertebrae, spare-tire belly and various and sundry other body parts, and they keep coming back at me with — LOL!

Seems like every year I examine and comment on the elements surrounding my birth. This year it is especially poignant in light of President Obama’s assault upon religious freedom this last week via trying to force Catholic institutions to provide the “morning after” pill — (simply an early abortion in a pill), along with other contraception options, to all their employees by making that mandatory in their health-care plans regardless of that being a violation of the Church’s deepest held beliefs — as one Arch Bishop put it, to do so would be a “mortal sin”. But hey, to this administration, what’s a little mortal sin more or less? Last year I wrote:

Each year on this day I reflect on the thought that if Roe vs Wade had been the law of the land in February 1952, I am most certain that I would not be here to write this. Many tens of millions of nascent human beings have had their lives terminated since that SCOTUS decision. I truly wish that folks would make the right choice when faced with an unwanted pregnancy, and choose LIFE. There’s always some good folks out there without kids of their own — waiting, wanting to love and raise that baby as their very own.

[RANT] I feel the same way today. A fetus is NOT a disease. Nascent human life is not just some meaningless “tissue” that one should have the option to dispose of at will, on a whim. Viable babies should not be partially birthed and have their brains sucked out of them for someone’s convenience. Sorry to be so graphic, but look at that face up above — it is HUMAN! It wants to be ALIVE. You and I don’t have any right to KILL it just to make our lives less hectic, to solve our little problems, to be free of the responsibilities of our actions with each other. [/RANT]

Now that I’ve got that out of the way for another year . . . time to PARTY!!!!! Well, at least time to grab some great Mexican over at Casablanca Restaurant and take into the office for our Saturday “Tax Season” lunch. Dinner might be at the Polish restaurant Warszawa, or maybe that will happen tomorrow as some of our dinner party are under the weather today. If that happens, I’ve got about 8 pounds of smoked ham and the ham bones from a full one just dying to become something — meaning — split pea soup for EVERYBODY!

“Life is GOOD!”

Peace. Out.

Keeping it simple and close to home this year . . . counting our blessings that are more plentiful than we deserve.

Merry Christmas from the ol’ Okie!

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[In June of 2005 I wrote this post about my dad for Father's Day, and re-posted it a few years later . . . it's no less pertinent today -- so, please enjoy!]

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There are only a few things that I wouldn’t give up to be able to sit at that table again and talk with that farsighted, hairy guy, among them my mortal soul, but almost everything else would be in play.

That’s MY DAD! All 190-some-odd pounds of rough hewn, sunburned, 100% human male. Sometimes I wonder what he really thought of his 125-pound, pink-skinned, soft-handed son who couldn’t chop wood for poop, whose pigs got loose and got run over on the highway, who was deathly afraid of snakes and who refused to go to medical school because he wanted to be “an artist”. But, no matter what, as long as I gave whatever I was doing a 100% effort, he was with me in support. That was his way. I actually thought it was a little weird, at the time.

Now that I am getting to know him as he was at 25, I see that he made his own way in life, against tremendous odds, and without much, if any, help. He was just trying to save me from having to learn a lot of life’s lessons the hard way. Unfortunately, there is only one way to learn life’s lessons, and that is to live through them, and pay attention! Many of my generation still have not learned that one. God help us, if things don’t change, it looks as if we’ll be known as the “Gimme gimmes” all the way to the grave.

I loved this man. We never had a major falling out — although he was never fond of my mid-back-length hair in the 70s — so we never had to have one of those later-in-life reunions. When my son’s mother left me in California and returned with him to northeastern Oklahoma, Dad stepped up and did what he could to provide some Baker male influence for the boy. They loved each other so very much. I was proud, but also a bit jealous at being out-of-the-loop.

Sometime in the late 80s, he started interacting with everyone a bit less than usual, and minor chores like sharpening the lawnmower blade, or fixing a rusty door hinge became huge tasks that were too confusing for him. By the early 90s, he had forgotten who I was, although he was more than content to sit and have pleasant conversation with this stranger from California, wherever that was. In late April, 1995, he left us for a better place. Mom waited around until January, ’03 before deciding it was time to finally join him.

Lover, warrior, husband, father, grandfather, church deacon, Sunday school teacher, pharmacist, business owner, friend –

Most definitely a member of “The Greatest Generation”.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad . . . I miss you. (db)

My friend Randy H., who moved out here to LA a few weeks before I did in ’83 has a young daughter in her early 20s named Ashley. An amazing gal, she and her sister have become financially independent by excelling in martial arts and becoming instructors in same. Both are talented artists and are attending Otis Parsons College of Art & Design. Both are also half Japanese.

Ashley was recently diagnosed with “takayasu arteritis“, a condition afflicting mostly Asian women between 15-30 years of age that causes a multitude of severe problems with the aorta. Ashley’s condition did not respond to the steroid treatments and she will be undergoing open heart surgery tomorrow.

Please say a prayer for Ashley, and her family. If you can place her on any prayer lists it would be a big help.

Thank you . . .

A blessed Easter to you and yours,

Okie