Back to that neat picture I saw

I said I'd say more about my post about the neat picture I saw and then I vanished.  I do vanish often.  Health problems, ya know?

So here it is.  I was raised by a Presbyterian, a Catholic, a Christian Scientist and a man who wasn't exactly sure what he believed but he was so nice about it, it didn't matter.  And then I went to a very private school for gifted girls (the boys' school was right across the lake) run by Jesuit priests.

So, do you suppose I got confused?  No.  I was never confused.  I was just quiet.  Sort of in the closet.  Because I didn't believe what any of them did, but there is a time when one may speak and it isn't in childhood.

I do not believe that the birth of a child is the proof of God's existence.  I do not believe that violent weather represents God's rage.  I do not believe most of what I was taught and expected to believe.

I believe there is this life, here, today.  I believe it is my duty to live every day to the fullest of my ability.  This means not only finding the joy, but respecting others and their beliefs, respecting others who were not made the way I was, and having no regard whatsoever for gender lines or anyone else trying to control me.  I figure if I can control myself in a given day, that's a big job.  There isn't enough of me left over to try to control anyone else, and I want everyone to feel that way.

So, what that means is, I am not offended by your beliefs and I expect that you will not be offended by mine.  We are, I hope, all adults here.  We have, I hope, had enough life experience to teach us that we cannot change others and we should not try.

Should, though I use it, has nasty connotations when others use it about still more others.  So, if you are forever saying, you should ... knock it off. Control yourself. Leave control of others to them.

And where is all this going?  Well, they gave me permission to use it, and so here it is. This is who I am, always have been, and always will be:

Atheist Alliance International (AAI) is a global federation of atheist and freethought groups and individuals, committed to educating its members and the public about atheism, secularism and related issues.

  

A positive global voice for atheism and secularism, Atheist Alliance International:

• Strengthens co-operation between atheist and freethought organisations around the world;

• Supports the establishment of new atheist/freethought organisations, particularly in developing countries; and

• Facilitates and supports projects/events that promote atheism, critical thinking and empiricism, while combating discrimination against atheists and freethinkers around the world.

Vision and Mission

Atheist Alliance International's vision is a secular world where public policy, scientific inquiry and education are not influenced by religious beliefs, but based upon sound reasoning, rationality and evidence.  

Atheist Alliance International's mission is to challenge and confront religious faith, to strengthen global atheism by promoting the growth and interaction of atheist/freethought organisations around the world and to undertake international educational and advocacy projects. 

Education

Education is the core approach of Atheist Alliance International.  AAI supports its members and the public in the acquisition of new knowledge by:

• Providing news on atheist/secular issues and campaigns through the AAI website and social media channels

• Publishing Secular World magazine and the periodic Imagine! newsletter

• Hosting atheist conventions with local groups around the world, to provide the opportunity for communities to hear from established and new atheist speakers

• Supporting the establishment of new atheist/freethought groups, particularly in developing countries

• Supporting educational projects, such as the Kasese Humanist Primary School in Uganda

Advocacy

Basic rights, justice and social responsibility form the foundation of what it means to be human.  AAI works to defend and protect the rights of atheists and like-minded people by publicising relevant issues, distributing media releases, developing policy statements and cooperating with other groups to bring issues and injustices to the attention of media and government.

Community-Building

AAI recognises the value of social communities and the importance of providing a strong and protective foundation for individuals, families and groups.  In addition to promoting and encouraging the formation of new atheist organisations around the world, AAI supports international outreach and community-building programs such as the atheist "OUT" campaign.  Such programs raise general awareness of the atheist community, help new communities to become established and counter the bias and discrimination directed at atheists.  Some of these activities are operated through the AAI Foundation.

Atheist Alliance International is run by a volunteer international Board of Directors and relies on membership fees and donations to fund its activities.  If you support atheism and secularism please join us!

History

Atheist Alliance International was founded in the United States as the Atheist Alliance in 1991 by four local US atheist organisations: Atheists United (Los Angeles, California), Atheist Coalition (San Diego, California), Atheists of San Francisco Region (California) and the Atheist Network (Houston, Texas).  Atheist Alliance quickly added additional affiliates. Within a year, it had eight US organisations as members and by the end of 1992, its first international affiliate.

Atheist Alliance began publishing its magazine, Secular Nation, in the second half of 1994.

Atheist Alliance began hosting US conventions in 1995, with the first one held in Los Angeles, California. The Atheist Alliance website went on-line in 1997.

By 2001, the organisation had a half-dozen affiliates outside the US, and so changed its name to Atheist Alliance International (AAI).

In 2006, AAI held its first international conference, in Reykjavik, Iceland.  In 2010, it began its current program of co-hosting conventions with Affiliate and Associate Members, starting with the extremely successful 2010 Global Atheist Convention held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

In 2010 AAI determined that it could more effectively pursue its goals by separating its US-focused activities from its global activities.  The US-focused group, Atheist Alliance of America, became an Affiliate Member of AAI.

Values

1. Reason and rational thought.   Reason and rational thought are the basis of logical decision making and essential to address the issues faced by humanity.

2. Science and empiricism.  The scientific method is the best tool we have for seeking truth and understanding our world.  We make conclusions based on the best available evidence and change our conclusions accordingly as new evidence becomes known.

3. Compassion.  Human compassion and empathy are the basis of a cooperative social structure that benefits all people.

4. Purpose.  This life is the only life we know we will have and it is up to each of us to utilise it meaningfully.

5. Freedom.  All people are entitled to freedom from discrimination on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and disability.  All people are entitled to freedom of conscience.    AAI supports the values outlined in the International Convention of Human Rights.

6. Responsibility.  Each person is part of a global society and is responsible for humane interaction with other people and animals and for the preservation of our habitable planet.

Read those 6 items.  It doesn't get any closer to perfect than that. Those are the things I have believed most of my rational life.  Of all of the preachers and priests and most reverend folk I knew, those who influenced me the most were the Jesuits, who taught us to wonder why.  They taught us to use reason and logic to solve our problems.  Granted, they also taught us about God, and they taught us the academics, and they taught us sports and drama and all manner of well-rounded child stuff.  But mostly, what I heard from them was, use your mind.  Use reason.  Apply logic.  Gather facts.  Stand on your conclusions.  I took the long way round but I figured out by the time I was about 13 that I am an atheist.   Thirteen in my sheltered world was still a little girl.  It was not expected that, aside from academic successes, I would be a grown up at that age.  I didn’t think I was, either, but I knew I didn’t belong in church.

I was 15 before my beloved custodians noted that I no longer attended church, largely from the reports of the Jesuits that I was not attending church.  My Gram asked me why.  I said they don’t say anything that I believe in.

She thought about that and then she said in her normal loving voice, “How about a deal?  You don’t have to believe what they say or even listen.  But it’s a Jesuit school; you have to go to church.  So you go, and while the priest is saying his bit, work on your homework mentally, or think about what we’re going to do for the next weekend.  Now, how many services have you missed at school?”

I shrugged. “About two years.”

She gawked.  She said, “How is it they just noticed?”

“Well, most of the time I’m not at school on weekends and we get back well after the last Sunday service, so they probably assumed I was going to church at home or abroad.  But the last few weeks, I’ve been staying at school on the weekends because Becky’s Mom died and she stays at school.”

She nodded. ‘That’s very kind you.  So that’s how they caught you.  On campus but not in church.”

“Right.”

“What’s the shortest session?”

“That’s the noon one.  It’s only half an hour.”

“Why?”

“People from the community come for it, and they’re welcome, but they have other things to do, too, so the fathers worked out a really short session for them.”

“Are the girls welcome?”

I nodded. “We are.”

“Then what about our deal?  You go to the noon one and calm the fathers down, and I’ll see about that horse.”

“I’ll see about that horse,” meant that the horse I’d had my heart set on for about a year was going to be mine.  And I did figure out things to do during the short noon session.  My face was pointed forward and my mouth knew the responses.  I was training my horse.  I trained; I didn’t break and that made great horses.  The grooms teased me that nobody else could tame a horse with just love and apples.  I said anyone could, if they tried.

So I was 13 when I realized that I was sitting in a Jesuit church, listening to a Jesuit sermon, and not believing a word of it.  But just as I dislike having Christianity shoved down my throat, I have not shoved my lack of faith down anyone’s throat.  It just is.  And that’s my way.  When a thing can’t be changed, it just is.  I have been an atheist since I was about 13. A group of dedicated German men opened a small school and taught hundreds of gifted girls to, before all else, think.  I thank them for that.  I’m sure they would not like where my thoughts took me, but they taught me to gather my facts, consider them dispassionately, determine what they had taught me, and engage it.  I did.  I am an atheist.

I'm worried about the human race

Back in ancient times, when I was in college, I overheard a conversation between two professors that concerned me.  I mentioned it to one of them a while later and they were weary eyes that turned to me.  He said, "Tell me, why does that upset you?" I said, "If we deny the things that have been done to us, or the things we have done to others, how will we ever stop those things from happening again?"  He nodded.  He said, "Yeah.  That is why I teach it.  My parent's died at a prison camp in Poland.  If we don't remember it, and study it, and learn from it, will we stand by silently when it happens again?"

He was teaching a class called The Holocaust.  The first day of that class, he walked out after 20 minutes of non-stop shouts and denials and statements that it was all propaganda and nothing more.  The next semester, the same thing happened to the Viet Nam vet who tried to teach the Viet Nam semester.

And now, so many years later, I see it happening again.  We are forgetting that they violated us, slapped the eagle's face and danced jigs on the wasteland of our grief.  We haven't forgot to complain about the loss of freedoms we have suffered since then.  We haven't forgot to complain about TSA.

But we are growing complacent again, and we are denying that it can happen again.  We are ignoring the radical factions building in our own country, determined to clean out Washington DC and take over government themselves. 

We are politicizing new terror threats and shrugging as our embassies in the Middle East are cleared and closed.  One man told me what a drag his upcoming business trip is going to be if everything has to be focused on security and crap, and didn't they kill that guy, that Bin Laden guy, so what's the deal?

Yeah, we killed that Bin Laden guy.  But he wasn't the entire organization.  He was one man and he was their leader, but where one leader falls, another will step up.

Where discontent boils and has no lawful outlet, it will find an outlet, lawful or not.  Where heated heads rule, and change is brought about by gunfire, whose finger will be on that button?  Will it be under the control of a level head inside that radical faction?  Or will there be a heated mind flush with victory, a finger shaking with adrenaline on that button?

Will we after all go quietly into the night, denying to our very last instant that it ever happened here or ever could?  Did they cripple the eagle and take the spine from America?  Did they turn us into angry, hateful, vengeful partisans who can only throw invective at each other?

I am worried for the human race, being herded like cattle to its ultimate destruction.

I Saw the Neatest Picture ....

Jesus in all his Caucasian glory, was sitting on a rock, and saying, "This is how it is.  I created you with original sin.  Then I killed off a lot of you for sinning.  Then I got a woman pregnant with me so you could kill me so I could forgive your sins."  This is the best description I have ever seen of Christian philosophy.

A Family Law professor asked us one day, "How do you know the Bible wasn't written by ten drunk guys sitting on a rock?"

A pastoral associate in a Catholic Church told me that the biggest myth in the Bible is Genesis.  It is simply the Christian creation myth and each faith has one.  It appears that most people need to understand where they came from and where they're going after they die.  This makes of most people seekers of the key to comfortable circumstances after death.

Here's an idea.  Instead of dwelling on where we came from and where we're going, why not focus on today and make of each new one the best day it can be?

More on this later.

My Books

Published to the Kindle:  Daryl James, Mafia Buster. Daryl is a sweet and naive girl from Kansas.  She and Becky, her best friend, took off for New York City the minute Daryl turned 18; Becky had got to 18 a few days before.  Daryl went to pick up tofu and ... what else?  She stopped in a restaurant to use the pay phone to call Becky and find out what that other thing was, and while she was there, she saw a man come into the restaurant and kill another man.  We will learn later that Daryl just saw a Mafia hit man, right hand of the capo di capi of the Mafia, kill an FBI agent.  And the problem with that is, he saw Daryl, too.  What follows in three years in the hands of Mafia.  Daryl, a child who was home schooled, learns hate.  And with the magnificent gift her father gave her -- the desire to know and understand -- Daryl developed a mind that could recall every detail in an instant.  And three years after they turned her into the Pretty Wife, Daryl James got out.  And she turned to the filing cabinets in her mind and took them down, one man at a time.  A friend of hers in Italy said to an FBI agent in America, "Tell Daryl, if you can, that today, the Mafia of Europe is in jail.  Every single one of them.  She is my friend, Sir, and I miss her.  Save her and send her home to me, please."

I AM!! The Moment God Awoke, Mysterious One
God has Spoken. She has sorted.  She has reduced the world's population to a few who are inherently non-violent and essentially good people.  They are good enough, anyway, for God's plans.  She intends to make of Haven, their new home, a living heaven.  All those chosen are close enough to angelic to, with a bit of work, become angels.  She sends the Guardians, those who have walked since time began, observing Her children and reporting back to Her about them, to guide this small group to angelic status.

There's just one small problem.  Mysterious and her mate, Walker, are the guardians.  Well, they are the Guardians' bodies.  But, well, you see, Mysterious and Walker got way-laid on the way to God's new world.  They got way-laid by two of Satan's favorite nasty demons.  And they have captured God.  She is locked inside Mysterious' brain with a nasty and rather smelly little demon and with a surprisingly insane Mysterious; that relates to a baby in a pot.  And of course She can see perfectly well what the demons plan.  They plan to destroy Her new world.  They plan to pervert it and corrupt and to make it Lucifer's sort of place.

God calls upon Another and says, um, you wanna get me outta here?  And the Other smiles with love and says, of course I will.  It's what I do, after all.  I do Thy will.  Be patient just a bit.  For there are others we must protect, too.  And God says, oh yeah!  Yeah, those I made of the Cloud I am, would you please be sure to keep the demons from them, because of course if one Child of the Cloud is destroyed, all of them are, and time itself is extinguished.   It starts all over with the Garden and Adam and Eve.

The Other smiles.  That isn't going to happen.  That small boy who is Cloud is brilliant beyond comprehension.  He will be smart and he will be careful.  As this book ends, Mysterious has had a hissy fit and sent all of God's chosen back to Earth and wiped their minds of all they knew of the new world.  But she's going to bring them to Haven and start over.  The demons are gone now.  So now we have Walker, who is pretty bland, and Mysterious, who is mad as a hatter running the show.

I AM!!! The Moment God Awoke: Mysterious II  Soon to be in the hands of my editor.
The rebirth of the world of the chosen didn't work out very well.  In fact, the cover of the book, which shows rampant raging fire, pretty much describes how this whole plan to restart worked out.

Sinead of God and her mate, Sean, are the Guardians.  But long ago, battered and worn by their walk upon Humankind's road, they turned to their Friend Above and said, enough.  We cannot walk this road any longer.  And She said then I will send others and you, My Guardians, will turn now and walk The Road Less Traveled.  And so the bond formed and was accepted.  Another pair would walk Humankind's road and incur the scars and battery of Humankind's wars and pogroms.  And in exchange for this, Sinead would serve God's every wish without demur.

But this one is hard.  This one requires that Sinead destroy Mysterious and then rebuild her without the madness.  Mysterious, for all her wrongs and weaknesses, is as close as Sinead of God will ever get to a sister.  To intentionally drive her to a complete breakdown by poking sticks at her insanity is too hard.  But Sinead obeys Her beloved God and Mysterious is wiped clean.  And rebuilt.


I AM!!!  The Moment God Awoke:  Sinead of God.  Soon to be in the hands of my editor.

But Mysterious and Walker take over the administration of Haven, free of demons and no longer in possession of God.  But they are not the Guardians, and the Chosen are beginning to realize that.  Mysterious and Walker are gray. Sinead and Sean are Technicolor in their love for each other, their respect for each other, and the simple open-handed generosity of spirit they carry.  And then there's the magic.  Sinead has a boatload of it.  Mysterious can make food and clothes when needed.

The last thing Sinead wants is to manage Haven!  It has humans on it!  Sinead wearied of humans a long time ago!  But the Chosen know that Mysterious and Walker are not the Guardians.  And they ask Sinead how it can be, that they are called the Guardians.  Sinead of God has no capacity to lie.  She cannot tell the Chosen that Mysterious and Walker are the Guardians.  And so that magnificently powerful girl kneels and turns her pretty face to heaven and says, Thy will be done.  Mysterious and Walker ascend to heaven for the last time.  And Sinead of God and her mate Sean return to the South cap of Haven, where there is a place called The Road Less Traveled.  There, they live with their growing family, and angels.  Angels are not Humans.  They are not fractious, and they cannot lie, and they are happy in their lives on Haven.  They are honored to stand in service to the true Guardians, who want no pomp and circumstance at all, but rather fishing trips with their children, and picnics and barbecues.  It all works very well.

But then North are the Humans.  And they do have to be dealt with.  Over and over again.

Sarah bat Jesus:  Nearly done and soon off to my editor

Bat means born of.  Sarah is the child of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.  She has lived since six months after her father died on the Romans' cross.  She has seen her mother die, and she has accepted God's charge that she must forever after protect her mother's body.  No, not her bones.  Her body.  Sarah's mother never putrefied.

Sarah travels 2,000 years and more, always being carefully spirited away by the Knights Templar, when it seemed she would be discovered.  Always, her mother's body travels with her, and it is a rare day that Sarah does not kneel at that casket and weep.

She finds a place, finally, where Mary Magdalene can rest in safety, and Sarah can let go her duty somewhat.  And then God proposes that Sarah become the mother of His new race.  She would never say no to God; it is unthinkable.  And so she becomes the single and unmarried and virgin mother of the new race.

She finds a man she much enjoys and in time, marries him.  But then God tells Sarah the most alarming thing.  It's time she expose Him.  Well, she won't say no to God, so she does.

God is a man from another galaxy who carried so much magic out of that galaxy that he could not live in a body with it.  So he became just his soul with all that magic.  But now the man has wants.  He is lonely and he is tired of being God.  He wants to leave the God bit in heaven and Walk on Earth.  And in his Walk, he fully intends to marry Sarah.  He tells her that.  Horror is not even a good enough word to express Sarah's reaction to this, but she finds the saving words. She's married to Mark.  She can't marry God.

So God kills Mark.  He simply removes Mark from the world.

Sarah is livid!  She is furious!  What more selfish act might God ever perform!

And so she leaves her home and rides out on her horse.

Four months later the man who walks Earth who was God, showed up in her rough camp and essentially advised her that she was going home.  Her children were there!

They are not my children.  They're yours. Your new race.  I meant nothing to you other than the incubator of your new race.  So have them.  Leave me alone!

Naturally, he's not going to do any such thing.

All of these and a few more will be published to the Kindle.  They will all cost a whopping $2.99.  Watch for them.

Oh, my pen name is MacKenzie Morgan, the last names of the two girls who bet with me in 7th grade that one of us would be the first of the three to publish a book.  When I got that blessed email from Amazon saying, your book has been published, I forwarded it to them.  Several days later, two money orders for $250 each were in my mailbox.  The pen name honors those sweet friends from days gone by.

The cover artist is Jenn Ryan.  The editor is Kitty Hamilton.

The Man in My Life

How I adore him.  His name is Cian.  He's Irish of course and has red curly hair and the brightest green eyes.  He's 6' tall and weighs 280 but there is not an ounce of fat on that man.  He's a year younger than I am.  We met on-line two years ago and became very close friends.  But in the way of the internet, we both knew that when you meet the right one, he or she is married, gay, or lives in Egypt.  So we were happy friends.  He was always so warm and open to me in a room full of men and women. He was always so glad to see me.  He would say, "Welcome back from your travels.  I hope you enjoyed them, but I also hope that now you're home, you will rest a while and be comfortable and chat some with me."  I liked him a lot.

A couple of months ago, he said, "It's too bad that we'll never meet although I am open to traveling.  I'm retired and I have the means and the time to travel.  I live in Ft. Collins, Colorado.  How far apart are we?"  I was thunderstruck!  We live not 45 minutes apart!  It isn't possible!  That warm, open, wonderful man named Watcher, on line, couldn't possibly live so close to me!

We talked about meeting someplace safe for coffee, but I can't drive; with two fatigue problems it's just not safe.  I have a driver, but one hardly wants to take a middle-aged woman with her on a first date.  So after much talk, we agreed that he would come to my house and we would have our first meeting.  In the back of my mind was the 9 mm gun I own.

He showed up with a pizza from my all-time favorite gourmet grocery store.  I found out later that they have closed all of their stores in the United States.  He called Germany for that pizza and had it delivered to his home, frozen, by jet, and then he brought it to my house and we cooked it!  He did that because I had mentioned once on-line how much I had loved their pizza!  Is this guy a keeper, or what?  He also brought salads and various drinks and we had a wonderful evening eating, drinking, and talking a mile a minute.

He came back several more times just to talk and eat and drink and laugh and talk.  And then one night he said very quietly, "I wish I were making love with you right now."  And I said, "Oh, and what are you going to do about that?"  He was out of his chair in an instant and had me cradled in his arms, and he kissed me all the way down the hall.  What's not to love in that?

He found out that my problem, a new one, with sleeping, since my shoulder surgery, is non-existent when I sleep in his arms.  So now I do, every night.  He's here for dinner, which he usually either makes or brings, and we spend the evenings together, and we sleep, me like a rock, for hours.  And then he leaves in the morning.

It sounds perfect, right?  Well, factor this in.  Cian is an alpha male and I am an alpha female.  Fire and fire!

He said the other night, "You have bruises on your forehead from falling asleep suddenly at your desk and your head connecting with the edge of the desk, right?"

I said that was so, yes.

He said, "All right, then you need to start going to bed by 10:00 every night so you're not so tired at your desk that you're getting hurt either hitting your head or falling right out of your chair."

I said nothing.

He said, "So let's start that tonight.  We've been staying up till midnight and that's not helping you."

I said nothing.

He tipped my chin up and looked at my face. He said, "This is nothing to get angry about. I'm trying to help you."

I said, "You are not old enough to be my father, and you don't even look like him.  The last person who presumed to tell me what time to go to bed was my father."

He was instantly angry.  You see, Cian and I met in a Gor chat room.  There, he is a Free Man and I am a Free Woman.  He is also Ubar-San, the Leader of All.  We are not quite equal on Gor.  If I am disrespectful to him on Gor, he can force me into slavery.  It is a delicious dance that I love.  It requires a shade of deference but at the same time, if a Free Woman is too submissive, she can become a slave.  What I said to Cian was utterly disrespectful.  And that is not OK.  You see, Cian and I are not Free Man and Free Woman just on Gor.  It is who we are.    We found ourselves in John Norman's Gor books and we believe in our places.  I am never disrespectful to the men in that chat room.  I was never disrespectful to Cian before.  But this was a huge issue.

Factor in here Cian's profession.  He was a psychiatrist.  Surely he knew better than this.  Sleep has been my demon since late 2008.  I am 56 and I sleep half of every month.  I am sleeping my life away.  It makes me crazy.  I hate it!  And now I have central sleep apnea that keeps me from REM sleep so I'm never rested, so now I'm even more tired and more inclined to fall asleep and stay there.  This is HUGE.  To plow into it with no regard for my admittedly extreme feelings about it did, in my view, change the rules.  If he wasn't going to respect me, he wasn't getting any respect from me either.

He turned and walked out the door, got into his car, and drove away.  I watched him go in a flurry of feelings.  First, I was glad; we needed to be apart for a time and calm down and address this rationally. But second, I was afraid.  Was he gone from me forever?  He had once said that though the typical punishment for Free Women who are disrespectful is slavery, many Free Men choose to handle it differently.  Most force her to sleep on the floor under the bed; that's silly considering my health and sleep problems.  Some force her to stand and take several slaps across the face.  He is all muscle and I am fragile.  He rejected that utterly.  And so what he decided on was to separate us for a week, or if I tried to contact him in that week, for longer.

He had said, before walking out the door, "Punishing you with a week of separation punishes me, too.  But I won't take that mouth.  You know better, and you know punishment is correct in the circumstances."

And I said, perhaps unwisely, "No, it isn't, Cian.  This isn't about Gor.  This is about a man and a woman, both alpha, reaching a substantial disagreement and that's all it is."

And that was when he walked out the door.  The father remark was a mistake.  The response to his punishment statement was a mistake, and calling him Cian when I had shown him such disrespect was also a mistake; his name at that point was no first name; his name when I had disrespected him was My Lord.  And my final mistake was pretending that anything between us was NOT Gor.  We are Free Man and Free Woman.

I could do nothing but wait.  If he was gone forever, my heart would shatter in a million pieces.  If he was gone for a week, I couldn't contact him to find out if it was just a week or forever, or the week would get longer.  I paced the house for a time, and then I went on-line to talk to a friend on Yahoo who I'll call Max.  Max is also a dominant man, but he's my friend, too.  I told him what had happened and I didn't get any support from him.  He was deeply disapproving of the father remark.

I closed Yahoo.  I didn't need both of them harping at me and it hurt my feelings that Max took Cian's side in it.

And then the door opened.  And Cian came in and sat at the dining room table with his hands folded on it.  He said, "Come, Woman, sit, and listen to your Man."

That's Free Man talk and all it could mean was that I was in trouble.  I went and I sat.  I was surprised when his hands gently covered mine.

He said, "I wasn't even ten miles away when I realized that Free Man that I am, I am also a psychiatrist and I dropped the ball.  We don't poke with sharp sticks at tender spots and I know the high wire of tension you walk over your fatigue.  I'm sorry.  I should not have approached that the way I did.  But I promise you that I was not trying to manage you or give you orders.  I was trying to take care of you and I handled it badly.  Will you forgive me?"

I said I would.

He smiled a little and he said, "OK, let's just drop the subject for now.  At some point later we might talk about how to deal with all this and keep you from banging your head and falling out of the chair and hurting yourself.  But that's for later.  We'll work together on it and see what we can do to help somehow, all right?"

I agreed that it was all right.

He said, "But hear your Man.  The next time we disagree, and we will, find a better way to say 'Cian, stop and listen to me.  You're not hearing me.'  Find a way to say it with respect.  Understood?"

I said that I understood and that Max had said much the same.

He smiled, stood, kissed my cheek and went to my study.  He was there a while, and I could hear him typing so I was pretty sure what he was doing.  He had gone to my computer, noticed that Yahoo was off, opened it, and was talking with Max.  Cian has been pretty jealous of Max.  Max and I were an item until I discovered that he had a slave girl.  In town, real time.  I gave him the choice of the alpha or the slave. He chose the slave. For a long time, we didn't speak.  And then I was cleaning up my Yahoo contacts and he emailed and said he would really like it if I would add him again and maybe we could be friends.  I agreed, and we are the best of friends now.  Cian has felt leery of that old love, but apparently he had things to say to Max.

He came out after a while and started making wiener schnitzel as he had promised to do for dinner that night.  We had dinner and it was a quiet meal.  I didn't have much to say, and that was wisdom.  I had annoyed him unspeakably, and it wasn't over.  He had given me a command to find a more respectful way to tell him to stop and hear me.  That wasn't just a suggestion.  That was a command to find that way and review it with him.

It was the next day before Max and I spoke again, and I told him what Cian wanted me to do.  We kicked around ideas and I offered the best I could find to Cian that night.  I said, "If I just walk right up to you, my body against yours, and put my arms round you and say, 'My Lord, please.  Stop a minute and hear me,' will that work for you?"

He gawked.  He did that for a while, in fact.  And then he said, "Lady, if you trust me enough to walk into my arms when you know I'm angry, you don't have to say a word; I'll be too stunned to stay angry."

I said curiously, "I'm not afraid of you, Cian.  Angry or not, I'm not afraid of you."

He held me for a long time.  Cian is a big man and he has to be careful with me, in bed and out.  And he is.  He is the gentlest man I have ever known.  I cannot fear him.  His muscles aren't there to hurt me.  They carry me to my bed and cradle me as I sleep.  They protect me and shelter me.  I am not afraid of him.  I know, though, that Cian had a life before America and it was violent.  I know that because when he holds me sometimes he says I am his path to forgiveness.  I am good, and I believe in good, and I cannot love evil.  He is not evil.  He is a man who has done some evil thing in his past but he is not evil.  So he reasons that if he is as good to me as he can be, he will earn redemption.

I don't think he needs me for that.  When he came to the US, he went to law school and became a lawyer.  He then became a judge.  He sentenced a man to death.  That man escaped and killed Cian's wife and his eight year old son Connor.  He came back a few weeks later to kill Cian, too, but Cian was ready for him.  That's not the evil he did, though.  That's just justice.    

Then he went back to school and became a neurologist. Then he went back to school again and became a psychiatrist.  He's in the business of helping people and has been since he came to the US.  I am not his redemption. He is.

I adore him.  And he adores me.  And yes, there are arguments to come, but we've figured that out too.  One of us will say, 'We love each other and we want forever together.  Is this how we're going to get it?'  The other is then bound to stop and defuse.  We will find a way to stay together, that amazing man and I.

And I see that I failed to mention that when Cian speaks, it is with the most delightful Irish lilt!

I won't use the name so they don't get more publicity

OK Westboro Baptist Church aka the Family of Pastor Fred Phelps, some of whom have simply lovely singing voices, never mind that they use those lovely voices to fling hatred at the families of dead soldiers, mass murdered children, and a boy in Wyoming identified as a victim of a hate crime but see, even the killers know that's wrong.

Let's start with Matthew Shepard.  He was beaten nearly to death on the prairie near Laramie, Wyoming.  He was left tied to a fence post and he did die during the night.  The country was galvanized by the beating death of that sweet gay boy!  Except it wasn't about his orientation.  It was about his money.  Matthew had a lot of it and he flashed it around.  Two redneck Wyoming boys decided they wanted it.  They didn't get it, but they did not go after Matthew for being gay.  They went after him for being stupid.  He flashed his cash and he got killed for it.  That's all. So the Family Phelps wasted their time pelting his parents with hate at Matthew's funeral.  He was gay, sure, but he didn't die because he was gay.  How do I know this?  I worked for the law firm that represented the killers and until it became the media's delight to call Matthew a gay martyr, those boys didn't say a word about his orientation.  It was all about his money.

So let's talk about those hate mongers for a bit.  They seem to believe that they're going to heaven.  Now, I have to admit that I'm not a Christian.  But I was raised in Christian faiths so I think I understand.  If you're good and you obey God or at least admit you were wrong and ask for forgiveness, you go to heaven when you die.  If you don't follow God's ways, and Jesus' message, you go down, right?  So we have this family spreading hate and calling it God's viewpoint.  So that's not nice.  That's not Christian behavior.  That's hate and hate is not on the menu.  So they're going to hell; at least most of them will.  I don't want to think those sweet children can't be turned around and made to let go of those vile messages and be taught to love.  But at least Fred and Shirley and all the adult gang are going to plummet directly into hell fully clothed the instant they die because of the things they've been doing.  So I've been thinking.  What is hell?  Well, what is heaven?  No, I don't believe it's all angels and wings.  I think heaven is the nicest place the dead person remembers.  So on the other hand, hell must be the worst place.  So hell for the Family Phelps has got to be rampant with gay people!  I won't be there to watch since I am as I said not a Christian so I don't believe in the Christian hell.  I'm not sure I believe in any hell, actually.  But I would like a video, like a You Tube thing, showing Fred Phelps darting away from those foul gay people.

Micheal Moore painted a bus pink and loaded it with gay men and lesbians.  They exited that bus singing and dancing and moved toward the Reverend Phelps and that man ran.  So yes, I think his hell would be a small room in which he sat in a chair in the middle and gay men and lesbians danced all round his chair.

I do probably have a somewhat evil streak, but I feel justified.  They are vile representatives of Christianity,and I think the KKK and the Hell's Angels and all real Christians should stand together every time those mentally deranged monsters show up, and tell them peacefully and pleasantly that they're just not welcome.

And remember when Child Protective Services rousted the fundamentalist Mormons in Texas and took all their kids away?  I think someone had best be looking into the welfare of the Phelps children who are being taught hatred they don't even understand.  An 8 year old boy told a reporter that the reporter was going to hell, but he couldn't remember why until Daddy coached him from the sidelines.  The sweetest little 3 year old girl sings the same vile songs of hate that the beautiful voices of the women sing.  Those babies hold signs that say God Hate Fags and they clearly do not understand why the people across the road hate them.  Someone needs to rescue those babies and raise them in sanity and safety.

And the Westboro Baptist Church needs to have its church designation taken from it.  It is not a church.  It is hate group so virulent that the Ku Klux Klan cannot tolerate it.  That just grips me.  I can't get over it.  A group wrapped up in hate can march against the Phelps family in righteous indignation at the profaning of a solemn and heartbreaking event.  It is sobering indeed to know that men like the Grand Wizard can step outside their own dysfunction and say, enough!  You are the worst and we stand against you.

Let us all stand against them, Christian, Jew, Muslim, agnostic and atheist.  Let's join arms with the KKK and the Hells Angels, and with Michael Moore and his pink bus of gays and lesibians.  Let's run them back to the boltholes they came from and still, let's find a way to keep standing together regardless of faith, skin color, gender, age, or lack of faith.  Would I stand with the KKK?  Well, let's just put them at the far end of the line, OK?  The Hell's Angels.  Hell yeah!  I'd stand with them because I've know some of those men and their women, and you know what?  They're no different from anyone else.  They just wear leather, ride big bikes, and look scary.  But they are men and women who love and laugh and cry and mourn their lost ones.  They respect their dead and stand for the right of the dead to the respect of the living.

Whoever we are, whatever we believe, we must stand against this hate filled family that tells us that God hates America for accepting gay and lesbian marriage, so he's turning America's guns on small children.

I'm not even a Christian and I know God better than that!

Wanna trade hardcovers for audio?

I have about 1,000 books that I'm replacing with audiobooks since I have this nasty combination of things making it impossible for me to read books.

Central sleep apnea (my brain turns off my breathing on an average of 37 times an hour) keeps me from getting into REM sleep, that sleep which rests us.  So I fall asleep if I sit and focus on one thing.

The other problem is cornea dystrophy (cornea cells gather in clumps and die) which makes the words on a book's page move about. So I'm reading the first line of a new paragraph and the bottom line on the page moves up and obscures that line, or I see double.

So nearly 1,000 books moving on out.  Stephen King is moved out.  Agatha Christie is gone.  Those two are completely replaced on audio.  Oh, and some that are on cassette are going to be burned to DVD and the cassettes then discarded.  There is a very cool thing that does that.  You put your cassette in and push play.  The program that comes with the little box then shoots the sounds from the cassette to the DVD in the DVD burner.  Very cool stuff and if you want one of your own, comment and I'll post the link.

There are others that I am adding to my Kindle and today will be testing.  If I can listen to them as text to speech, I'm in business!  Those include all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes series (promised) and The Complete Father Brown by G.K. Chesterson (not promised).

So the Cussler books I've got almost all on audio now, but I'm missing a few of the most current and one pesky little book (Blue Gold) that persists in being available  on cassette in abridged version.  Abridged is bad.  So those books are promised but not released until I can find the rest of the audio.

There are lots and lots more authors on my list so if you have audios you want to swap for mostly hardcover with dust jacket in new or like new condition, comment and we can swap.

Some of the remaining authors not promised and with no audio found are:

Ann Rule, 

Jay Robert Nash, 

Time Life (the True Crime series), 

The Barnes & Noble 100 Series, like 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories which I actually doubt ever went to audio, 

the 007 series that I have in paperback, 

a bunch by Erle Stanley Garnder, mostly paperback;

Lyn Hamilton's Archeological Mystery Series,

Everything by Tony Hillerman,

A bunch by Alfred Hitchcock, mostly in hardcover with dust jacket

Anything edited by Cindy Manson, a few of which I have in hardcover,

Anything edited by Otto Penzler, a few of which I have in hardcover,

Anything by Ellery Queen, some of which I have in hardcover along with lots of the magazines,

Agatha's Christie's autobiography and both Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair books, promised but still needed,

Both of Elliot Roosevelt's series.  I have two Blackjack Endicott and most of the Eleanor Roosevelt in hardcover,

Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey series; I have a few in hardcover,

And so on. If you have audios, cassette or CD, that you want to swap but don't see your author here, comment and I'll check and see what I have for that author.

The Clive Cusslers I'm missing are:  Blue Gold, Devil's Gate, The Storm, The Race, The Tombs and Sea Hunter I.

Comment and we'll work out a deal!