Life blood of freedom

Have you been on the internet in the last day or two?

A trick question, right, given that you are reading this on the internet right now? But that's my point, really: "the internet." I think it needs to be capitalized. "The Internet."

Not "AT&T's Internet." Not the "Official Internet," or "NYT Internet," or "Internet by Fox." This is critically important, and under severe threat. The true power of The Internet lies in the fact that it is universal and not subject to the goals of any corporation or government.

This is about access to information. Access to the good and bad, truth and lies, accurate and false, valuable and worthless. Access that does not belong to anyone, and needs to stay that way or we lose something more valuable than can be calculated.

Threats come from Verizon, and AT&T. How? Because they own your mobile access point to the internet and want control. You can't just buy a phone and use it as you want. You must buy their phone, and they have disabled certain functions and added others you know nothing about. You can't change those functions, either, you don't have the freedom to do so.

Cable companies, too. They have limited who sees what at what speed.
The day is coming when these companies will only display search results from companies that pay a fee. Better yet, from companies they own or control. They will display news only from their favored political party.

Thomas Jefferson advocated for freedom of the press even as he was being savaged by the merciless press of his time. That is why we have the First Amendment. In our electronic age, that freedom is threatened both by governments and corporations, by those who would limit our access to information as if in an earlier age they wished to control which newspapers could be published, which books would be read, who spoke to whom.

Access needs champions, in Congress and in the streets, Republican and Democrat, willing to advocate for freedom, freedom of information, internet freedom and freedom of access.


If "The Internet" is fragmented into Verizon's Internet, Comcast's Internet, Democrats Internet, or access is controlled, there is less hope for emergence of "truth." This is the weapon of dictators and oligarchs around the world and has been long before the days of Nazi and Communist propaganda machines.

Who controls "truth?" Almost by definition, no one, truth must fight falsehood everywhere. That is how it should be. But if the battlefield is fragmented, it takes truth much longer to win.

That is why there must be "The Internet," and equal access must be guaranteed. Then information will fulfill the powerful role Jefferson envisioned, his "market place of ideas" will eventually reveal truth, bad ideas will fade (to be replaced by others), good ideas will endure. It is crucial for democracy as well as a free market economy.

This is not about providing a certain service, it is about inalienable rights. This is not about buying ice cream, it is about finding water. There is a role for government in protecting rights, and this is one of the most fundamental of rights. It is the well-spring of our freedoms.

Threats to the internet are threats to our internet, broadcast over our spectrum, by companies under supervision by our government.

Don't tread on me.

The politics of humiliation

Writing for the New York Times on Tuesday, January 23, 2012, Thomas L. Friedman cautioned Russian leadership:

Humiliation is the single most underestimated force in politics. People will absorb hardship, hunger and pain. They will be grateful for jobs, cars and benefits. But if you force people to live indefinitely inside a rigged game that is flaunted in their face or make them feel like cattle that can be passed by one leader to his son or one politician to another, eventually they’ll explode. These are the emotions that sparked the uprisings in Cairo and Moscow…

I can't be the only reader struck deeply by the irony of Friedman's words. Russia? He was writing about the United States of America!

That's what the Occupy Movement was about. That's what the Tea Party is about. It's about humiliation. It's about the existence of special classes of people in America who get to live by different rules, who have to obey fewer laws, who do not have to face consequences for their actions.

Friedman writes: "…nothing spurred the protests (in Russia) more than the daily experience of Muscovites having to sit in traffic while a car with a flashing blue light carrying some Putin crony behind tinted glass speeds past. 'It is all about dignity,' said (Aleksei) Navalny. 'Who are these people? Why don’t they care about our rights? It doesn’t matter at all how good a career you build. You will stand in this traffic, and these people and their sons will drive past you with their blue lights.' ”

Who are these people in America who get to profit from manipulating our mortgages, get bailed out with our tax dollars and take a small bit of their huge bonuses to buy a Mercedes that cost more than the houses repossessed by my local bank?

Who are these people who lie to Congress while flaunting the so-called free market with monopolies on medications or cell phones, who corrupt congressman from Oregon, who write obscure state laws taking away the rights of the average man and spend millions of their obscene wealth buying state legislators to pass them?

The Koch brothers want us to breathe the foul pollution of their profit and go without health care when it starts to kill us. Goldman Sachs wants the keys to our bank and for us to admire them when they run off with our money. Rupert Murdoch and his Wall Street Journal want us to consume the crap they charade as news so we will be unable to vote as the informed citizens idealized by Thomas Jefferson.

Murdoch has broken privacy laws and he is free. Executives at Goldman lied to Congress and they are free. The Koch brothers should be jailed for crimes against democracy, and they are free!

It's humiliating. The privileged of America have their laws and impose a different set on us. The "Bush Dynasty." The very concept is nauseating. Since when did America succumb to adulation of royalty? I don't care if it is a Bush or a Kennedy: when did the name grow to mean more than accomplishment?

The right wing has successfully portrayed poor black Americans, Latinos and illegal immigrants as special classes who don't have to live by the rules. Those who believe these groups are privileged need to trade places with someone living in the ghetto or barrio whose children live a far harsher life than many can even imagine.

The left wing has fumbled the ball every time they point at the "one percent" and then get hit with the charge of "class warfare." Get over it, Liberals. Yes, it may be class warfare, but it wasn't the lower classes who started it. It was bankers flouting a system they own to rake in hundreds of millions while many of us can't afford to see a doctor.

The poor white guy driving a pick-up with a gun rack to one unemployment line after another is as tired of the humiliation as the poor black mother unable to buy a car to get to a job. They are on the same side. The wrong side. The humiliation side.

My pet phrase has been that unless you give people opportunity, they will take it with either a ballot or a bullet. Clever, but inadequate. Friedman puts his finger on it exactly. Humiliation is the most underestimated force in politics.

It's long past time to bring that message home.

Trump endorses a winner!

In an amazing display of narcissistic self-aggrandizement, Donald Trump (a rare triple redundancy), supported the likely winner of the GOP nomination process.

"I will be making a major announcement tomorrow (Thursday, February 2) at 12:30 pm at Trump International Hotel & Tower, Las Vegas, Nevada," Trump the gasbag tweeted on Wednesday, February 1.

Of course Trump endorsed Romney. And in a week or a month, Trump will say that it was his endorsement that gave Romney the nomination. Trump would also like to point out that the Mississippi flows into the Gulf of Mexico, in which Trump has dipped a toe, so of course the river seeks that direction.

Nobody cares, Donald, you dweeb. It doesn't matter to any of us what you do, what you think, who you endorse. The comb-over is still ridiculous, the narcissism boring. Go away, now, you sad clown of a man.

Protect the free market! Block AT&T!

The government is soon going to authorize the sale of some more of our mobile phone spectrum.

Should the goal of the auction be:

(1) Get as much as possible from that auction, regardless of who buys the spectrum?
(2) Manage the sale for the long term good of consumers?
(3) Get government off the back of god-fearing, job-creating businessmen?

Okay, okay, you're right. It was a trick question.

Next month, bills will be introduced in Congress that may include language that allows the FCC to structure who can bid on the spectrum. The "Government is bad! Always bad!" crowd will of course scream "Freedom! Let capitalism work!"

Except we know that market capitalism can harm market capitalism. Where limited resources are concerned, like oil or railroads or tobacco in the 19th century when the Sherman Anti-trust act was enforced, sometimes the government has to protect market capitalism from itself.

In the 1890s, the Rockefellers crushed many companies and put many people out of work with their money. The same threat exists today. We need competition in the mobile phone industry and there is national interest in seeing that competition can flourish.

Fighting monopoly is fighting for free market. Fighting concentration of power is fighting for small businesses and is pro-business.

This is even more true of the mobile industry than it was with oil. This is our spectrum. And if We, The People decide to foster competition and protect free markets by selling that spectrum to competitors of AT&T and Verizon, that is advocating for the free market, it is not "socialism," despite what the fear mongers on the right, the pro-monopolists and their lackeys like Rep. Greg Walden, would have you believe.

Promoting free enterprise in this case means potentially limiting who can bid on the spectrum and potentially taking a loss in the short run so that competition can, in the long run, keep prices competitive.

(By the way, I almost included the Boston Tea Party as an example. I'll submit, just for the joy of it, that the East India Company was in collusion with the British Crown. It was their tea! That's the history of influence of business on government. If the "Tea Party" wanted to be true to its namesake, it would join the Occupy Wall Street folks and demand that corporate scofflaws go to jail.

Big pharma, Goldman Sachs, the insurers, those are the East India Company of today. Don't tread on me!

At some point, some smart grad student at Berkeley or Stanford or the University of Chicago or Wharton will do a study on the minimum number of competitors required for a market to remain healthy, and how barriers to entry into that market affect that number.

My theory is that markets with higher barriers to entry require more existing competitors to be healthy, because companies outside a market that see the attractive profits will find it more difficult get in.

I will join the right wing in saying the Supreme Court has failed America. The overturning of campaign finance laws was to allow the East India Company to marry into the royal family. Talk about protecting an institution from incest! )

The Conservative within

The schizoid ideology of the left and right leave me confused. The right believes in individual responsibility, but wants keys to my bedroom door. The left believes in personal freedom but wants to mitigate consequences for every bad decision I make.

Unfortunately for the left, without consequences there are no rational incentives. Even worse for the left, they will have to watch as a few generations are wasted, because it takes that long for consequences to take root and modify behavior.

Unfortunately for the right, bad things happen to good people. Even worse for the right, there is benefit for the entire society if together we provide opportunity for individuals, and not doing so guarantees decline for the very society that provides for their wealth.

I ran across three articles in rapid succession today in the New York Times. The first was a mild little piece on free will. The second was a Krugman opinion on opportunity. The third was about what the right gets right ("That ought to be a short one," snort my snotty leftist friends).

That they snort is part of the problem. Because the right snorts back, the argument becomes one of finger pointing and probing for vulnerability. If neither side is willing to listen, we have a shout down, no progress and everybody goes to bed angry.

One place where idealogues might find common ground, albeit a long way from where each sits, is around the concept of opportunity: America has some, used to have more, and needs as much as she can get.

Opportunity is the life force, opportunity is the dream that creates the energy, opportunity is the engine that pulls the train to a higher standard of living.

I believe the left and the right have a vested interest in creating opportunity. This starts with education in America, which has fallen to an abysmal state. The right blames the left for polluting the classroom with polemic and letting it become a sinecure for mediocrity. The left blames the right, for shunting education onto a side street in pursuit of the perfect consumer.

To fix this, the left has to quit trying to be everything for everybody and accept that there are consequences, often nasty ones, for certain behaviors, including failure by students as well as teachers in the classroom.

The right has to give up the idea that they have no stake in what happens to others, accept that a world of gated communities of the spirit will ruin the environment for everybody. We have to fund more than just police and fire departments.

I don't want to talk about income inequality in and of itself. I don't find inequality by itself to be a sin, nor do I hate other people's money as so many on the left seem to do. But if inequality perpetuates itself through an inheritocracy, it damages opportunity. We need to do what we need to do so that a farm boy in Idaho can share the same dream as a street kid in Buffalo. Then we might see a reversal of America's decline.

We spend more per capita on education than any other nation and we do so poorly. We spend more than any nation on health care and it is pretty lousy. So money, by itself, is not the answer here, and everyone has to accept there are limits to what we can spend.

But it is unAmerican to accept that this is the best we can do, and accept the status quo. If we continue this path, and if "We the People" do not believe there is opportunity, if not for themselves but for their children, they will get angry and will want to take it back, by ballot or by bullet.

Graceless in Oregon City's cemetery

Last month, I was with a remarkable family as they said goodbye to their cherished mother and grandmother, a woman who had given and received great love. Church services were thoughtful and warm, the motorcade from Sellwood to Oregon City ushered smoothly by police.

Before the casket was lowered into the ground at Mt. View Cemetery, it was odd how the funeral director went to great pains to state, more than once, that services were over. That his responsibility was over. Family may stay, but he would not. He had nothing to do with anything that came next.

It didn't take long to figure it out.

Apparently concrete vaults are now required now to hold a coffin before it goes in the ground. These vaults are heavy. This vault was suspended by rods that extended from one side of the burial pit to the other. After the funeral director left, an Oregon City crew standing 40 yards away with a back hoe came forward without much organization.

With the casket in the vault, there was only one winch strap to lower the vault into the ground. Which meant rather than lower the vault evenly, they had to drop one end in first. As the first end went to the bottom of the hole, gallons of water gushed out of the vault into the grave. It had been raining and the vault had accumulated water. Then we heard everything inside the vault slide to one end as the box poked out of the ground at an angle.

The workers struggled to move the strap from one end of the vault to the other. The unfamiliar winch jammed. Putting the lid on the vault was nearly as awkward, the chain holding the lid too short to allow adequate movement.

As they struggled, workers walked on top of grave stones with absolutely no thought that this showed disrespect and with total disregard for the damage mud encrusted boots might do to the marble. It was if the crew was laying water pipe.

There were still more than 30 people present. The man on the back hoe offered us the opportunity to use the shovel stuck in a pile of dirt to put our symbolic closure to the grave, which a number of us were waiting to do. After that, we filed back to our vehicles and departed, leaving them to their work of filling the grave.

While it is tempting to blame workers for this farce, it is not their fault. These men were working within the expectations of those who employ them and the limitations of their equipment. But not only was the burial insensitive, it put civil incompetence on display for all to see. Workers were willing, but their work was poorly guided and unpracticed.

This desecration belongs to the cemetery manager of Oregon City, who has either never been to one of these services or has no concept of how internment should be handled. Depending on the job description and expectations of the city council, that individual should be fired, transferred to another department, at the very least relieved of all duties relating to burials.

Here's a short list of recommendations.

There needs to be an immediate upgrade to training and adequate equipment on site and used at every burial. There should be a plan in place prior to the actual burial of who will be where and doing what, and some practice for those involved.

If possible, vaults should be in the ground before the casket and mourners arrive on site. Vaults should be covered with a tarp prior to use, water not allowed to accumulate. A lowering device should be available to allow pall bearers or trained personnel to lower the casket into the vault.

At a minimum, the vault should be gently and evenly lowered into the ground. The lid, closure if you will, should be placed smoothly. It should be anticipated that mourners will want to place dirt.

Employees should be instructed to walk around, not on grave stones.

If Oregon City cannot afford to show some decency at this moment, they should develop standards and put the work out to bid.

It's not a "free market"

It is stunning how many Republicans claim to defend "free markets," without seeming to know what they are talking about.

To begin with, there is no such thing as a "free market" in America, unless you are talking about selling used furniture on Craigs List. Maybe.

Effective markets require rules. Here's an obvious one: you have to own what you sell. Selling something you know to be stolen is a crime.

There are others. We don't want someone selling slug bait as cat food. We want to know what's in our hamburger (actually no, we don't). We don't want wheels to fall off our cars. We don't want a 50/50 chance that the light bulb we put in the socket is going to electrocute our children or burn the house down.

Each of these is a restriction on the "free market." So please, Republicans, stop asserting that any restriction at all on any business is unAmerican.

Secondly, money begets power begets money begets power. The very MARKETS that the Republicans claim to be defending REQUIRE PROTECTION from government.

Profits are good. And the left needs to lose the attitude that everybody else's money is tainted. The first responsibility of a business is to make money for owners. It has been shown that, in a "competitive environment," the best way of making money for owners is taking care of customers.

But without someone to enforce rules, the big dogs eat everyone else, grow into monopolists and soon customers are forced to transfer income in excess of "reasonable" profit, taking money from other sectors of the economy if the need is critical. We pay $200 for a loaf of bread, $50 for a gallon of milk, 5$ for a gallon of gas. Ooops.

What's reasonable? Dunno. Let's let a competitive market decide that. A market where there is real and vigorous competition, the lowest possible barriers to entry to encourage new players, and a fair and level playing field. I have no interest in assigning a percentage.

And that's the rub. In the effort to make money, it is obvious that every business wants to reduce competition, so it has to spend fewer resources "taking care" of customers and can make more money for owners. That is why government is necessary to protect the markets. to ensure competition.

I don't care if Romney fired people while at Bain. I do care if ATT gobbles up T-Mobile.

And bankers who broke the law need to go to jail, along with any other CEO or VP who lies under oath or engages in activity which is a crime. Letting a company settle for a pittance and letting perps collect a bonus is to guarantee a repeat of behavior that has a high reward to risk ratio.

That is what Occupy Wall street was really about, and the fact that those same CEO's who broke the back of our economy for the last five years are putting people in Congress to reduce competition turn the rest of us into serfs living on the edge of their wealth.

End corporate welfare. End corporate control of our government, and the resulting abuse of our economy. Recognize that corporate tyranny enslaves as wrongly as any government tyrant.

Bad movie, great film, Ricks the fascists.

It's been a week up here on Raptor Ridge, what with trying to train the magpies, watching movies in town and being frightened by the news.

The problem is, magpies are so damn smart. The other day there was an article about pigeons doing higher math. If pigeons do math, magpies do quantum mechanics. Magpies make pigeons look like bird brains. These clever feathered foragers in their bold black and white communicate complicated ideas verbally to each other and I think they've got a side deal going with the crows, too.

Last night I went to see "Real Steel." If I had paid more than $3 I would have walked out. Maybe I should have walked out because I only paid $3. Great price, horrible film. Formulaic, derivative, manipulative.

Oh, wait. Here is where I have to give a moment's consideration to those who question my audacity in judging a movie...

There. That ought to do it.

"Real Steel" featured Hugh Jackman's biceps, Evangeline Lilly's weepy smile, and Dakota Goyo's ability to show 'tude. There was no acting. For storyline I think the writers got loaded and slurred out "Rocky meets Iron Man!" In spots you can overhear the director demand of the key grip, "get camera on tears of joy, here, now."

Though I did really like their truck.

But tonight, the hangover from that awful movie was washed away by "The Wall." This film was written by Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, and with no dialogue is a tale of abandonment, self absorption, loss... the seeds of fascism ... yeah, ambitious. But the movie has held up rather well over the decades.

And I didn't even get a flashback from the music.

Oh. Speaking of fascism: The Ricks.

Rick Perry wants to attack Iraq again, and take their oil. I know. It must be something in the water down there in Texas. Bush was dumb enough, but Perry is just stupid. We just go the troops home after spending a hair less than a trillion dollars on George W's war in Iraq. I don't know how much we spent on George H.W.'s war in Iraq, but wars haven't been cheap in quite some time.

Now Perry wants to go back and fight both Iraq and Iran!

Somebody please tell him to shut up and go back to giving great health care to the children of Texas.

It is not a good sign for America that manufactured political packages like Perry or Bush (and yes, it started with movie actor Reagan) can be created and presented as if they were real people with real ideas. Manchurian candidates, Chauncey Gardiner, I don't know, my mind must be on movies.

And that brings this bramble ramble to the other Rick, Santorum. He is more dangerous than Perry, because he is twice as smart. Where the men coincide is that each is a zealot. Perry is a zealot for cowboyism, which is opposed to communism and capitalism, but we won't go into that here.

Santorum is a religious zealot, and as we see with extremist Muslims, that is the most worrisome kind, because they believe God blesses all that they do. It isn't just their opinion, it is God's, and whatever they do is justified, by definition.

Which gives Santorum the right to say gay people are godless. To say gay people should not love children, or can't, I am not sure, but in any case, if gay then remain marriageless, childless. To equate being gay to bigamy, as if it were all about sex.

It is interesting that in speaking of marriage, Santorum does not speak of love. But, maybe that's because love transcends the laws of man. Or sex is to be only in the service of God, as his church maintains.

I accept that Santorum and his wife slept with a dead fetus and then took it home so their other children would welcome it into their family. That would not have been my choice on many levels, I accept that it was theirs. But Santorum, like other religious zealots, thinks his values should be mine, and I don't want to live his life.

And unless the government is giving handouts to health industry corporations that paid Santorum millions of dollar to lobby for them, he's not much for public healthcare, either. Your church will provide, your neighbors, and that will be good for America. So his zealotry is mixed with hypocrisy, too, and maybe with a bit of bigotry thrown in.

Santorum wants to bring Catholic extremism to America. Like Sharia law in Saudi Arabia, and maybe soon in a few other places we wish were a little more ... secular.

Yes, there is a boiling and often irrational (on both sides) disagreement in America over individual freedoms, individual responsibilities and the role of government in society. But this needs to remain a philosophical and political discussion, not a moral or religious one. Or we are in trouble, because religious wars are always bitter and never settled.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion ..."

In one of the last scenes in "The Wall," jack-booted soldiers use their moral certitude to condemn, pillage and destroy. We fight that when it is Muslim extremism (and not in our self interest, when we tolerate it). But we need to be vigilant, here, too.

The Ricks are bad men. They do not care about the lives of others. The American People have embraced zealotry before, but rejected it when our common good was in danger. That time is now. We don't have the luxury of giving the Ricks more stage.

Please pass the popcorn.

Verizon, on the other hand...

... just bought about $4 billion worth of spectrum from Comcast.

Why do I like this deal, after showering AT&T's takeover over of T-Mobile with so much bile?

Because Verizon's deal brings new, unused spectrum to the market, actually doing what AT&T falsely claimed their deal with T-Mobile would accomplish. Because the Verizon deal still leaves the competitors on the field, especially the scrappy one (T-Mob) known for good prices and good deals. Because, in the final look, Verizon isn't AT&T.

Did you note last week that Verizon was the one major cell phone provider that did not use the sneaky software from Carrier IQ that knows more (a lot more) about you than your mother?

There is an obvious difference between Verizon and AT&T. One is good, the other is ... well, not so good. The corporate cultures seem vastly different. It's like going into a restaurant where staff is smiling and professional and eager, versus going into one where the first words you hear are "We close in fifteen minutes." Don't you just wonder what they're doing to your burger back there in the kitchen?

AT&T just seems to be in it for themselves, ya know?

We post this to let our conservative friends understand that we are not anti-business. We like business, and we like functioning markets, where they exist. Which does not include the U.S. pharmaceutical industry or anything that travels in the same wheel rut as AT&T.

That is not to say Verizon only wears a white hat. They were astoundingly silent about the AT&T and T-Mobile deal. Verizon's execs knew even if AT&T succeeded in swallowing T-Mobile and moving past Verizon to become the largest cell provider, even being second largest would increase Verizon's bottom line in a less competitive market. That's how oligopolies work.

But being silent is not the same as openly trying to undermine market competition. Verizon bought $4 billion of spectrum and will bring it online, while AT&T was taking a $4 billion charge for likely blowing a deal with T-Mobile that was a blatant attempt to subvert market dynamics so beloved of the right wing if in name only.

AT&T is anti-business, except their own. Rep. Greg Walden is anti-business,too, except for AT&T's business which Walden conducts quite well as a mole for AT&T at the government level. He is not working for small Oregon companies that need a functioning market in which to buy phone service. But then, we don't give Rep. Walden nearly as much money as he gets from AT&T.

Verizon is the nation's leader in customer service, the leader in basic service, the leader in high speed service, and it appears that lead will continue with this recent purchase of spectrum and marketing deals with cable companies.

Blessing in the loss

Her mother hovers near death, so light now she floats six inches above the bed while nestled small and frail so deeply in the sheets.

I am blessed, asked to sit in this room, asked to bring strong arms from which grief can be released. Blessed, trying to anticipate small needs, driving small errands, a presence to offer balance, solid with no weight.

Blessed, in this watching, to see here great beauty.

Two weeks since she fell and shattered bones in hip and neck, a week since she lost consciousness. Four adult children attend with children of their own, a great grandchild due in a month visits via the womb.

"Perhaps mom hangs on to meet her great granddaughter," someone says.

"I think it would be better if mom meets her before she is born," says daughter-soon-to-be-grandmother with a smile but not joking, the quickness of her response and the love in this room offers another chance to laugh.

With laughter and warmth they share stories of childhoods where Gaga played her important role, memories brought out and burnished like holiday silver.

So many meals for so many as her own children searched for channels into adulthood, moved back home sometimes with their own kids until fully fledged and swimming on their own. There are many stories.

Running through it all is the common theme: "She made each of us feel like her favorite."

A grandson reads a book, his grandmother had read it to him, he cannot continue for tears that flow from love and loss. His father sits at mother's bedside, head resting on one arm, his eyes to the floor while she looks to other vistas.

He caresses his mother's brow for a long, long time. There is is no measurement for this waiting. He cries, one of his sisters puts her hand on the back of his neck.

The mourning is as natural and accepted the laughter, as the need to go out and get fresh air, to go home for a shower. We attend in shifts. Tears, laughter, errands, waiting, nurses come in every two hours with an opiate to ease her pain.

Until the end each dose eased her breathing for a while, but then seemed to have little effect at all.

A grandson in the Air Force flew home from Arizona, he and his brother stand at her bedside, eyes bright to her. They just stand, holding her hand, no tears, no drama, peace emanates from them. In another world they wore robes and traveled by horse or mule, they are timeless.

Rebel son of rebel dad, long hair creeping from under cap, but pride earned and voice direct to her even as she cannot hear, the love she poured into him pours back to her, from pitcher to cup to pitcher.

The words "I love you" bring from her a smile. They are the words spoken in this room most often.

An Army Sergeant brings his family home from Texas to be here for the services, and uses his leave to be part of this, to help as he can. Soldiers, aviators abound in this family, tough men who do not flinch from their own weeping.

They attend, ageless youth. Baby blankets she made for them, satin edging worn away by their tiny fingers, return to the foot of her bed, warming her now and them now again.

"What will I do, her love was so important to me," asks a granddaughter, a professional pilot, overwhelmed in this moment by her helplessness.

"I just don't want to let go of her hand," responds her mother, who for years absorbed the pain of her mother's uncertain shuffle to flowers in the garden, worn by years of a long transition.

Daughters together here and now, their tears flow to her in one stream through it all.

Then, a smile, another story, one stands to go to her bed, to hold her cool hands, to feel her feet to be sure they are warm enough as circulation slows.

Over the last days and nights her breath slows, becomes uneven, long pauses cause everyone to stop, to listen, then she gasps as the body's need of oxygen overwhelms her soul's desire to flee, the breathing is ragged in her throat, softened only by sponged drops of water.

"There is a door," she said when she still had a few words left to share, "but I don't know how to go through it."

"Daddy waits and will show you the way, your papa waits and will guide you," her children reply to her stillness. "All those who have passed through will be there."

Finally, early in the morning her breathing slows even more and grows even more shallow, then just stops. This struggle is over, surrounded by loved ones through it all, not one moment of this departure did she spend alone in this room.

Such a blessing to be here.