Plight of the Disabled

“In time of war, when truth is so precious, it must be attended by a bodyguard of lies”

-Winston Churchill

Truth is truth whether anyone believes it or not. Perhaps in war, truth must be protected by a body-guard of lies. And, Since, in my lifetime, America has been constantly at war, we are "jaded" by war, "tainted" by oppression. Most Americans, under the oath of servitude taxation, have little time to philosophize about freedom or truth. Only a blind person can understand the life of another blind person. Only a person who spends his or her life in a wheel-chair, can understand the crippled. My good friend, Dr. John East, who served in the US senate from North Carolina, said to me from his wheel-chair, "The disabled life is hardly worth living." He was called a cripple on the floor of the US senate by another senator, his reply, "You're right I am a cripple." DR. East later killed himself. America does not mind sending its young men and women from its poorest homes to fight for her lifestyle. When they come back battered, they're mostly disowned. More veterans kill themselves than those killed in battle. Without a peep from the churches, America kills 3,000 babies each day. Without a peep from the school house, courthouse, church house, tax paid buildings were any type of exciting activity is going on (libraries, concert halls etc). Americans are able to totally ignore the disabled.

The disabled do not like to play the victim card. Even though, in my lifetime, I have seen politicians and pastors become profanely politically correct and interested in correcting discrimination against other minorities such as blacks, gays, women. The disabled, is the largest minority.

There was a law passed supposedly giving some attention to the disabled, "Americans With Disabilities Act" (ADA). Believe me, this is a totally useless legislation, I have brought many matters to their attention. Discrimination in stores-parks-cell phones (It is impossible for a blind person to use a cell-phone unless you have one you can speak into). I always get back the same letter from ADA, telling me to "hire a lawyer."

This totally blind, 100% disabled service connected, medical officer veteran of the Korean war era, was born in poverty, on a dirt road without power, phone, or water lines, In the dearth of Democrat debauchery of eastern North Carolina. I will never forget, as a small child (sighted then) seeing what went on at the negro insane asylum (now called Cherry Hospital, Goldsboro NC). The black men were all castrated, the women tied on the porches of the buildings, I still remember seeing those with the intelligence and energy to pick beans, picking green beans in a field, a man on horseback riding around them with a whip. This was the treatment of the disabled- mentally handicapped, in  North Carolina

Blessed to later travel the world (DR. Morris' passport has been stamped in 157 countries) I could not see but could sense what goes on all over the world. There are images which I wish I could erase from my mind... A burden to me in my prayer life...Refuges and hungry children at borders. Much of the turmoil of earth, so senseless, "we will bomb them until they want freedom." Bush 41 said, "a world in which there is the very real prospect of a new world order" (Speech before congress, Sept 11, 1991).  To president Bush 41, Bush 43 ,and anyone else who will listen, The only promise of a "New World Order" will only be when men have learned to love one another, "be kind to one another" (Ephesians 4:32).

The disabled desire to live productive lives. My friend, Catherine Vasalou, blind from birth, college at ECU and UNCCH, went to work as a typist at a local hospital everyday. An only child, she cared for and supported, both of her parents until their deaths. Catherine died in a nursing home. She told me by phone, just before her death "I have been ignored in life, I do not want anyone around me after my death. I have told the funeral home just to take me to the cemetery and bury me next to my parents." This writer feels very much the same way. The last thing that I would want, is for those who have stared at me and my disabled condition in life, to at last file by and stare at me in a box.

The worst thing for most disabled citizens, the attitude of American commerce (businesses) toward them. It is a known fact that disabled people make the best employees. They want a job, need a job, want to live from their own work, not from the slavery-taxation, of others or government.

I cannot speak for many, only for myself. I started making my living many years ago, selling collectibles online After the computer become popular. Before the computer, I sold rare books, vinyl records, ephemera, antiques. Mostly on a one-to-one basis with photographs to dealers.

With the internet, answer to prayer for home business I started selling online (Ebay, Etsy, OnlineAuction, AbeBooks, Gemm, Bananza, etc). I had 10,000 items on Amazon alone. A sabotaging employee, got my business kicked off from Amazon. I could give the police report, trial data etc. But it would do no one any good. Its suffice to say I lost my selling privileges with this huge company. Amazon has no empathy for the disabled. Any communication with this giant company, just an automatic-response. Most disabled people do not write something like this, or offer any complaint about anything. So many get a small government check, on which they must depend to survive. Many have told me that they will not jeopardize their check. As one women preacher told me, who went to a nursing home to pray for a member of my church, she told the man that she wanted to pray for his healing, he said, "You can pray, but remember I get a welfare check."

One of my cousins came to this city to visit me. I said, "I want to take you to lunch, were do you want to go?" He had just lost his beloved wife. "Lets go to the restaurant that you Marie and I went to the last time Marie and I were here with you." The two of us received no service at all (Middle of the Island, Wrightsville Beach NC). At the cash register, I asked the owner, "Why did we not get service?" I know that most of you will not believe this, why should I lie? The owner of this restaurant said, "I do not want disabled customers, It makes our normal people uncomfortable." Churches, schools, governments, businesses like Amazon, come to your senses, get generous, make everyone's life more comfortable. 

#1724

Thinkism

Proverbs 23:7King James Version (KJV)

7 For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.

There are many -isms that should be -wasms. Socialism, Communism, Nazism, Fascism, even Nihilism. Genus Homo (Human Being) is the only member of the animal kingdom who has the ability to think-reason-make predetermined decisions. In my lifetime (84) I have personally seen human beings dumbed down by a secular-state news media who are determined to do all of the thinking for you. We call such, "Stinking Thinking." Satan is in control of such thinking, it should be very obvious to anyone with an IQ above their shoe size. Madison Ave., the world, flesh devil, would have you believe that government knows best... that government knows best with your values judgment, political correctness, the necessity to be popular. There was a time we called such "controls" brainwashing. We have seen the cheapening of life (abortion, euthanasia), the greatest gift in God's creation. It is beyond the comprehension of this writer, one who has spent his entire life in science and healthcare. That those who should know the "magnificence" of the human body, even a rudimentary knowledge of epidemiology, could not with certainty COMPREHEND THE HORRORS OF A VIRUS.

June 20, 2014: The Centers for Disease Control sign is seen at its main facility in Atlanta, Georgia. (Reuters)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed on Tuesday that a patient being treated at a Dallas hospital has tested positive for Ebola, the first case diagnosed in the United States.

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas officials said in a statement Monday that an unnamed patient was being tested for Ebola and had been placed in "strict isolation" due to the patient's symptoms and recent travel history.

Presbyterian Hospital says it's taking measures to keep its doctors, staff and patients safe.

CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said that the patient arrived in Texas from Liberia earlier this month and exhibited no symptoms. The patient sought care last Friday and has been hospitalized in isolation since the weekend. Frieden said that officials don't believe there is any risk to anyone who was on the flight at that time.

State health officials say no other cases are suspected in Texas.

The hospital had announced a day earlier that the patient's symptoms and recent travel indicated a case of Ebola, the virus that has killed more than 3,000 people across West Africa and infected a handful of Americans who have traveled to that region.

The CDC has said 12 other people in the U.S. have been tested for Ebola since July 27. Those tests came back negative.

Four American aid workers who have become infected while volunteering in West Africa have been treated in special isolation facilities in hospitals in Atlanta and Nebraska, and a U.S. doctor exposed to the virus in Sierra Leone is under observation in a similar facility at the National Institutes of Health.

The U.S. has only four such isolation units but the CDC has insisted that any hospital can safely care for someone with Ebola.

According to the CDC, Ebola symptoms can include fever, muscle pain, vomiting and bleeding, and can appear as long as 21 days after exposure to the virus.

Jason McDonald, spokesman for the CDC, said health officials use two primary guidelines when deciding whether to test a person for the virus.

"The first and foremost determinant is have they traveled to the region (of West Africa)," he said. The second is whether there's been proximity to family, friends or others who've been exposed, he said.

U.S. health officials have been preparing since summer in case an individual traveler arrived here unknowingly infected, telling hospitals what infection-control steps to take to prevent the virus from spreading in health facilities. People boarding planes in the outbreak zone are checked for fever, but symptoms can begin up to 21 days after exposure. Ebola isn't contagious until symptoms begin, and it takes close contact with bodily fluids to spread.

God wanted me to sense the world. Though sightless, I could smell, hear and understand matters that were described to me. I remember going to the hospital on Easter Island, not one patient in the hospital, so careful were these people in keeping an island of healthiness-righteousness in a sea of paganism and disease (an island five hundred miles off the coast of South America in the Pacific Ocean). In my eight around the world trips, I found that in many countries, anyone even suspected of a disease was isolated... prohibited from entering their country. I saw a large group isolated in Israel. With all this so-called scientific competence of America, we would dare allow disease to enter, via airports overnight. In most of the world, there are few hospitals, fewer nursing homes etc. The people have an acquired immunity to most diseases they come into contact. Plus, they do not live such sanitized-sterilized lives.

I was in almost every African country, will never recover from their sick-care system. What was called a hospital, a building with mats on the floor... families outside cooking on open fires (I will never forget all that smoke). Themselves cooking for and taking care of their loved one in the so-called hospital. It's just the grace of God that most people do not succumb to any disease in these places. But, is it any better here? We allow just about anyone to enter at our airports... the mad rush to just get through and grab a cab. Anyone, when ill, difficulty in getting diagnosed, visitors in and out of the hospitals bringing in on their shoes, clothing, every type of germ. Anyone ill enough to be in the hospital, should not have visitors. This writer was astounded at a local hospital, actual carpeting in corridors, draperies on windows, stuffed chairs in rooms. It would seem that the "scientist" managing these facilities were attempting to harbor every germ possible. But of course, big pharma, big medicine, big sick-care staffing, big houses on "pill hills", do not get rich from healthy or dead people, only sick people. The objective is to keep as many people sick as possible, keep everyone taking as many medications as possible. This is the reason America spends more on sick-care than any other nation, why there is never a cure for anything... ONLY TREATMENT. As it spreads, and it surely will spread, people and projects will get rich from Ebola.

Veterans

"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by our nation."

                                                                        -- George Washington

            This writer is a totally blind, 100% disabled, service-connected, medical officer veteran of the Korean War era. I have been honored to stand at the 25th anniversary celebration at Normandy, where thousands of our finest Americans died; honored to stand at the large cemetery in Manila, Philippines, where 18,000 are buried, to have visited Arlington many times, where thousands are buried. The recent disclosures regarding veteran's care is not news to many of us. I was honored to have served my country, and since, to have been fortunate enough to travel most of the world. I know the pride of saying, "I am American," with its warts, as well as its thrills.

            I was born in poverty on the parched earth of Easter North Carolina's tobacco fields. I know the sweat and hard work of parents and ancestors. I know what it was like to work an entire day to make one dollar. In the blight of the America in which I grew up, life was built around hard work, frugal living, the church-house, and the schoolhouse.

           

            I graduated from a small country school, with 13 in my graduating class. Concerned educators, seeing my possibilities, got me into the university at Chapel Hill. Back then there were no scholarships or grants. I still feel now, as I felt then, that I had died and gone to heaven-- all that knowledge. I worked at night so that I could go to school during the day, and worked my way through eight years of education, selling bibles door-to-door in the summer, covering every pig path in Eastern North Carolina. I matriculated through eight years living on one dollar per day. I graduated without owing any money, and since then, now at the age of 84, I have invested 50 cents of every dollar I have made. This has enabled me to live without help from anyone. Even the NC Commission For The Blind told me recently that they had never heard of me. I can say, with all honesty, that until recently, this blind veteran has never received anything from the V.A.-- not even a white cane, not one minute of rehabilitation.

            The greatest concerns of any blind person are robbery and fire. I still put cement blocks to the interior of my doors each night. Living alone, I take care of myself, totally.

            I jumped through every hoop to pass the boards, necessary to gain my commission as an Army officer. I had hoped that my diligence in life, hard work, hard studying, frugal living, would pay off in social and financial acceptance. I have brought the plight of the disabled veteran to the attention of many people in written letters, published articles, as well as speaking on radio talk shows. Speaking before a college group recently, I said, "The greatest sorrow involved in my disability has not been spending most of my life in blackness, the poverty I grew up in, the struggle to obtain my education, but the fact that I never received much encouragement." This blind veteran introduced Senator Jesse Helms at many meetings, yet he wrote me once and told me to apply for food stamps. I hear from many disabled veterans, "Bring their attention to power brokers, opinion molders." Rep. McIntyre (NC 7th), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, actually told me that I was not in his district. Sen. Burr, ranking member of the Senate Veterans Committee, and I am sorry to say, Rep. Walter Jones (NC 3rd) are unconcerned with my letters. I could give many examples of personal harsh treatment at VA facilities, mostly at the VA hospital in Durham, NC. I have this on tape: the chief of staff telling me, "We do not need your suggestions; we are just waiting for you to die." This is after I suggested that they have volunteers to help blind patients navigate the maze of clinics, such as they have at the Duke University Hospital - Eye Center, right across the street. At one time, I was physically able to travel the whole day. Able to pay someone $100 to drive me there, but the driver was completely lost, attempting to get me around. Durham opened a satellite clinic in Raleigh. The VA doctor there told me, "Your record is flagged. It says that you are a trouble maker," and he refused to do anything for me. At that time, and for about 40 years, I was using the fee-basis method of paying for treatment, whereby I could go to a private doctor, and the VA would pay the bill. Likewise, any meds prescribed by the private physician (Wilmington Health, etc.), were send directly to me from the VA's pharmacy in Salisbury, NC. All of this has been cut out. I am no longer in the program. The difficulty I encounter in getting meds from the VA's pharmacy in Fayetteville, NC, is a matter of record (blood pressure, eye problems, etc.)

            Through years of sick-care and struggles involving the VA, I have gone through ten eye surgeries at Duke, Massachusetts General, etc. Alone, with no family, trying to take care of myself (food, clothing, etc.), it has been my Christian faith, and nothing else, that has kept me from ending it all. I well understand why so many veterans commit suicide. One surgery, across from the VA in Durham, at Duke, Dr. Banks Anderson Jr.,  the best surgeon, was trying to save a shadow of vision. I was in the corner room on the second floor, right across from the VA hospital. Vietnam protestors were surrounding the VA facility. A black nurse came into my room, and, in great detail, told me how much she despised veterans. She punctuated her remarks by spitting in my face. No one at Duke, or at the VA hospital, did anything about the incident. Considering what I went through to be able to serve in Army hospitals, what I have lived through since, in a world of unconcerned people, perhaps I would have been better off if I had not been such a good student, if I had not worked so hard for my education, if I had not been such a good citizen.

Straight Talk

Straight Talk

"The democracy will cease to exist will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."

- Thomas Jefferson.

            This writer is a totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected, medical officer, veteran of the Korean War era.  I have been totally blind for most of life, now age 84.  One person accused me of being a victim, I am more a victim of the despair brought on by the complete unconcern of my fellow man than anything else.  If I have learned nothing else in my many years of disability it is that most people care only for themselves.  I have found those who care the least - family, fair weather friends, associates, even those who claim the name of Christ, disparage me the most. 

            Most of those around us just go through the motions.  It is like this perpetual-continual (have a good day) when they could care less about what kind of day you may have.  God knows what he is doing when he causes or allows blindness, cancer, or anything else.  The greatest blessings of my life have come to me because of blindness.  Because, I have had a relationship with my Creator which I would probably never have had otherwise.  But, I must admit, I have had a hard time understanding the minds of those who should care.  It makes no difference how generous or genuine to your own family, your own Christian-church associates, your neighbors, your tenants, even your employees -- whatever I do is never enough.  Never, not once, has my only child or my only two grandsons, ever given me one gift at any holiday, birthday or when on a visit (usually only once a year)... NOT EVEN ONE COOKIE even though they know how much I love sweets.  Most people, over the years, since I have gotten very few things from anyone... have the mantra - what can we give someone who has everything, needs nothing?  What can you give God who has everything and needs nothing from you?  At this late date, it is time many of us consider many things. 

            This writer, as I have already said, a blind veteran, received treatment at many hospitals (the longest time and best treatment, Massachusetts General in Boston).  I was at the veterans hospital in Durham, right across the street, Duke University Eye Center.  The VA put me there because they had better specialists to care for me.  I was in the corner room on the second floor.  This was during the time of the Vietnam era war, protesters from UNCH (where I graduated), Duke and other schools in the area were protesting the war around the VA hospital.  A black nurse came into my room, told me how much she hated veterans and spat in my face.  The VA, Duke, nor Dr. Anderson who was treating me did anything about this incident even though they were informed.  Those who go to VA facilities can understand what I speak about when I say there is no agency or administration as inept at the Veterans Administration.  They are just going through the motions.  Just this week, my driver took me to a VA facility, the haphazard attitude of the employees was beyond description.  And, it does no good whatsoever to report bad attitudes, bad care or inept management.  Even our NC senator, Richard Burr, ranking member of the Veteran's committee, even the Blind Veterans Association, even the ranking member of the House Veteran's committee, Myke McIntrye, from this area or Walter Jones, also from this area, have any empathy for veterans. 

            There is a big difference between walk and talk.  We hear talk about government waste.  Government healthcare... There will never be a better example of the lackadaisical attitude than that which I have already expressed in a blog I have titled "National Self Immolation - 1603" found in my blog dated December 19, 2013. 

            In this blog, I described, in detail and have hundreds of pictures to support every statement (by the way, I have never received any requests from a government-agency about pictures or information, even though I wrote many letters).  Fourteen rooms, one total floor in one of my buildings, was rented to an organization called Circle of Courage Ultimate Support Network.  Of course the rental-lease was handled by a realtor, but the chieftain of the group told me that her patients/clients were all Medicaid patients.  In other words, the government spent millions of dollars sending mentally sick people to this group and we found out, after much investigation, those there to treat these mental patients, dispensing God only knows what drugs, did not have a license to practice anything.  Of course, the taxpayers were cheated, the owner of the building was cheated because he didn't receive his rent, the NC Department of Labor was cheated because they did not get their taxes (they told me $150,000), but I think the MOST CHEATED were the patients who were there because they needed help and thought they were getting help.  I remember so well, after they had abandoned their office, turned off electricity, cut off the phone, left all of their records in the office, two black people banging on the door yelling they needed their drugs.

            My assistants described the situation to me and made photographs.  Read to me from some of the records scattered around on the floors the following examples:  (A)  Patient DJ, age 14, diagnosis: "Oppositional Defiant Disorder - description: behavior such as back talking, suspended from school, etc."  (B)  Patient JG, age 8, diagnosis:  "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - history of physical abuse since the age of 3, having outbursts of anger and difficulty focusing."   On one sheet of paper found on the floor along with thousands of records, an evaluation of the services.  On this piece of paper, the following five items were found in default:

            1-Improper document

            2-Notes missing on dates of treatment

            3-Patient Care Plan not in file or completed correctly

            4-Signatures with credentials of clinician missing

            5-Incidents reports not reported in a timely manner to IRIS (NC Incident Response Improvement System)

            This writer, owner of this building, always went into the reception area to pick up his rent check.  I have all of the e-mails, telephone calls about the delinquent rents.  The daughter of the director worked in the office and handled this (she worked in an office behind the sliding glass window, which all of you have seen in such offices.).  Always, the excuse for late rent and later for no rent or worthless checks, the government has not paid us.  I said, "Surely as much money as the government has!?"  She said, "And, we get all we can.  This is the reason we have two hands."

            Just a fraction of the American population have died in war.  A larger percentage wounded in war.  Those who have given their all, our hard working, God fearing, tax paying ancestors, would never believe what has happened to our world.

Drop the Rock

"Drop the Rock"

Matthew 5:44 - But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

            During my long years of training and education in Memphis, Tennessee, some of my work was at the veteran's hospital at Millington.  In one room was four WWII veterans without arms or legs... just human beings with trunks and heads.  Of course, they were on special beds with specially trained nurses caring for them.  Men in this condition do not live long. 

            Veterans who are amputees, cripple, deaf, blind, know what they have given to their country.  I get so sick when I hear the pabulum about care for veterans.  Most veterans know they receive very little care.  Patriotism, like Christianity, is mostly talk.  This old blind veteran never even received a white cane from the Veteran Administration. 

            One preacher, seminary professor, said he had his students go to the cemetery and preach to the tombstones.  By doing this they knew what it was all about.  Some of the most impoverished people I have ever known, in my world travels, were missionaries on the foreign fields.  Of course with electronics all over the world, missionary zeal is different from hundreds of years ago.  Yet, it takes real courage to give your life for the cause of Christ among people who hate you, who do not in any way understand you.  Only those who have endured criticism in a home church or home community, could ever endure what might happen on the mission field. 

            Perhaps my favorite Psalm is Psalm 84, when David speaks of mountains and valleys.  I have written at length about one verse in the Psalm which changed my life.  Psalm 84:5 "Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee."  The race is mine, but in no way could I have engaged in the trials of life without realizing my strength comes from God.

            In my car, often at traffic lights, a car will come near me with the radio blasting or someone will walk down the sidewalk with a boom box blaring.  We can understand people who have this much ferocious noise around them have no tranquility of spirit.  In my years of selling bibles, door-to-door, in the summer, windows open, babies and old people unable to escape the noise inside the building.  There was no mystery to me about the depletion of all joys in the lives of some.  How could they have joy, solitude in living amid the clang, clatter, awful words in music which was always too loud for man or beast?  Just imagine a young, newborn baby, growing up amid such violent noise.  We should be surprised that many young people from many of these ghetto homes turn out as well as they do.  Yet, I have heard adults say they forgive their parents and siblings for the turmoil of their surroundings. 

            The most ecstatically happy person in the room when a child is born is the mother of the newborn baby.  She knows the pain of childbirth.  It took me a long time to discover why so many evangelists became preachers.  They had experienced the pain which sin brings and want to celebrate their deliverance. 

            The only time we find Jesus writing anything, he was in the outer court of the temple.  Some male religionists brought a woman to him caught in the very act of adultery.  (John 8: 3-11)  Of course, mosaic law demanded she be stoned to death.  There were so many stones-rocks in the holy land.  On three of the times I was there, in Capernaum, still mostly rocks, I thought that surely Jesus must of sat on some of these rocks.  I remember rock piles near the Muslim homes.  They still throw rocks at the Jews and Christians.  In a day of cell phones, newsprint and news broadcasts, there is not much need for the throwing of rocks.  It is also strange the man caught with the woman in the adultery was never mentioned.  Jesus said to these religious people, just as he would say to many of us who have been judgmental and hypocritical in our evaluation of others, "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone."

            The greatest deliverance in Christianity, forgiveness.  We must forgive because our fellow human beings are made in the image of God.  We must forgive because our we do not realize the baggage that some fellow human beings carry around.  We must forgive because God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven us.  In the disciples' prayer, where Jesus taught us to pray, he said, "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. "  (Matthew 6:12)  How can we expect forgiveness if we can't forgive?  I truly believe Jesus should have added to this prayer, "we should not put trespasses or temptations into the paths of others."  It is so necessary to start out each day asking God to keep Satan and his temptations away from us.

            I still remember the day our school principal held up a white piece of paper with one small black dot on the paper.  He said, "What do you see?"  Everyone said, "A dot on a piece of paper."  He was trying to squelch a rumor going around the school about a certain student.  The popular student had a perfect record in every area of life.  Someone was attempting to make one dot soil that record.

            In a day where the best seller is the worst smeller, when it is politically correct to excuse all bad behavior, it is so necessary to applaud-rejoice in good behavior, especially forgiveness of sins.  (Philippians 3:20).  When we realize the truth of sins ruin and Christ's redemption we know the full joy of forgiveness, both the joy of our forgiving and the joy of others forgiveness.  Truth is truth whether anyone believes it or not.

Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day

Psalm 27:  1-2

            At my father's funeral, many years ago, one of the preachers said, "When he had his stroke, he was picking peaches from trees he had planted.  I well remember those peach tree plantings...  just stalks."  You would have thought they were old sticks of wood to be thrown away but, these stalks in soil, water and sunlight grew into large peach trees.

            I well remember the day I went to Sears to buy shrubbery plantings for a rental house.  A horticulturalist who was there buying shrubbery for his own house said to me, "Tom, don't forget to prune the shrubbery each year."  I would not have believed by  looking at the straggly-stalks they would ever need pruning but, soil-water-sunlight and they became large shrubs.

            We have just had Groundhog Day, people wanting a rodent to tell us about the future.  Man has always wanted future predictions whether from a palm reader with a tent by the roadside, scriptures from the pulpit, or in this day of technology, models conjured from mathematical progressions.  Standing in the reviewing stand of a long parade, we know what has already gone ahead and what we see in front, but have no idea of what is to come in the parade.  Only God knows the beginning and the ending... our lives, this nation, world history.  The purity of Christianity is the trust that Jesus will always be at the crossroads before we get there.

            The one thing I learned in a long life of clinical care and military service is dead men all look the same.  You can not tell the wealthy, educated, successful from others.  Blind men, like those who cannot read or write, must remember things.  The mystery to this writer in dealing with men, some never think deeply or speak seriously... theirs is a casual lifestyle.  I have known men totally lacking in a museum or art gallery.  In Madrid's Prado or the Louvre of Paris, paint strokes of the masters would not be appreciated (canvases that would sell for millions of dollars).  The only strokes that would impress some men would be those on the golf course.  They clap and yell as millionaire ball players run down a ball field.  YET, in a church house or cathedral, a matter of eternal life-a matter of an abundant life, so quiet and dormant.  In a alcoholic bar setting many men sing with gusto, but in God's house, (AND, they all think they are heaven bound) you barely hear a sound when they sing "My Jesus, I love Thee I know Thou art mine."

            There are pulpiteers (preachers) whose spiritual thoughts go no further than their vestments, politicians responsible for crop controls who do not know a weed from a productive plant, Catholic priests who cannot marry who write books on family life and child care, print and electronic journalists (talking heads) who write and talk about countries they have never seen.  We hear almost daily about Obama appointing ambassadors to nations they have never visited.  (Most ambassadors buy their "ambassadorship" by raising tremendous political funds  i.e. Joseph Kennedy, ambassador to England, and Caroline Kennedy, ambassador to Japan.)

            On one of this writer's around the world trips, a trip of flying from one island to another, while on the Marshall Islands, I met two Americans who were living on a boat.  Both had been high-volume, wealthy financiers in Seattle, Washington.  One of them said to me "We got tired of the rat race, the hypocrisy.  Here, on these beautiful South Pacific islands, we live on a boat, eat fresh food, drink fresh water and enjoy fresh air.  You only go around once.  Why kill yourself in the mad, manmade gauntlet of deceit and persecution brought on by your fellow man?   God has given us life and our health has returned since we have learned to live life."

            I noticed, when visiting with them, they had many friends among the natives.  Each day was like a holiday, plentiful food, basking in healthy sunlight, rest and leisure living.  One said, "We are getting ready for heaven."  Man has the mistaken idea that God needs him.  For God to be God, he does not need anything.  Man needs God.  Living for God, living the Christian life is not complicated, just tough.  The nature of man is wanting to control.  God is able, leave the consequences to him.  "Whether we live or die, we are the Lord's."  Romans 14:8

            If a deaf person has never heard music, then music does not exist.  If a blind person has never seen the color red, then red does not exist.  Those who have never known the sweat of farm work think farming is exciting.  Those who have never known the horrors of warfare, think war is romantic.  The grunts on the front lines know the horror of war.  In Afghanistan, this year, hundreds of women and children have been killed just going through the daily activity of life.  Field grade officers, lieutenant colonels to generals, gain promotions during warfare.  The only truly great Americans are those who are the casualties through death or disability during war.  These are those who are forever young.  Their families and friends will never know them as older people.  A one day widow can not be comforted by other widows.  The things that get you through warfare are the same things that get you through other struggles of life.  You become a friend to pain and you trust in the belief that this, too, will pass away.  The soldier does not look too far ahead, just to a good meal and a warm bath.  Now is all you have.

            On the farm, early in the morning, before daybreak, the sound of rain... You knew the activities of the farm did not cease because of rain water.  You walked in the rain to milk the cows and to feed the livestock.  You were their god.  They depended on you.  If these animals had this reality of this perception, then why not God's chief creation?  God does not needs us, but we need him.  And, He has told us over and over, in His book, His instruction manual, "I will never leave thee or forsake thee."   Hebrews 13:5

Blind Faith

In the late 60s, there was group called “Blind Faith,” the two most well-known members of which were Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton. The news is that they are planning to renew their musical group. We are told in Scripture that we walk by faith and not by sight. As a veteran who has been blind for over forty years, I can attest to walking by faith and not by sight. I have always been amazed that those who have so little faith in God will go right out to the mailbox and put a letter in it addressed to someone in New York City, believing that through all the processes of the postal service, it will get there. Never have I known anyone to stay by the mailbox, follow the mail truck to the sorting room, follow the mail on the train or plane to New York City to another sorting room, and then make sure its put in the right post office box. We have the faith to believe that the postal service knows what they’re doing.

We exercise our faith in human beings all the time as we lay on a table in a hospital operating room, where we believe that the doctor holding the knife or the anesthesiologist administering the anesthesia know what they’re doing because either could kill you instantly. Likewise, we get on an airplane and go many thousands of feet in the air knowing that unless the pilot at the controls knows what he is doing, that is a long distance to fall to a certain death. Every day we drive down a highway at tremendous speeds with only a few feet separating your vehicle from an oncoming vehicle driving at tremendous speeds. We have faith enough to believe that the approaching driver is not going to venture on your side of the highway, which would result in your instant death. The definition of faith is action, based on belief, sustained by confidence. I believe that faith is a verb and that 90% of faith is just raw courage.

St. Thomas Aquinas, born 1225, who wrote 34 volumes said he gained more faith by looking at the cross than in all his study.

I hope in this democratic republic that when citizens go into the voting booth, they spend some time in prayer before they cast their vote because we need the faith to vote for the right person. So often the politician running for the job is so influenced by the money available from lobbyists or other corrupting influences that the politician forgets his principles. One of my best friends, Robert, was chief aide to a congressmen from North Carolina. He told me that their entire day was punctuated by buffets and other entertainment provided by people trying to influence their vote. He said the only time this congressmen ever paid any attention to a letter from a constituent was one time when a man wrote a letter on a brown paper bag.

Our court system is supposed to be a matter of faith. Lady Justice wears a blindfold, but those of us who have been there know that the last place to find justice anymore are the courts of this country. Almost daily we see a case reversed because a judge has found that a condemned person did not have adequate representation and cases on appeal and officers of the court such as those in Durham, North Carolina, where some students were wrongfully convicted, are a national disgrace. Even the Supreme Court has become a political zoo rather than a temple of justice. A FDR justice, Hugo Black, was a member of the Alabama Klu Klux Klan. Justice Felix Frankfurter would hold a large sheet of paper between himself and Justice Black because he would not even look at the man, he had so little respect for him. Nor was a photograph ever made of that court.

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? Galatians 4:8

So let us keep on coming boldly to the throne of grace, so that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Hebrews 4:16

These two verses from God’s inspired word will give any believer reason for faith. The greatest strength of the military, other than the esprit de corps which exists between men and women who work together, is the faith that they must have in one another that the systematic training in all areas of the military assures each other that one can depend on the other regardless of what happens, in time of peace or war. This is the main reason that most military officers advocate well-paid, well-educated professional soldiers rather than draftees. As we learned in the wars of the past, most who have been drafted do no want to be there, do not want to learn, and cannot be depended upon at the critical moment. That is why the death rate among draftees was so much higher than that of the professional soldier. It is a known fact that you must be able to depend on a soldier in the army as well as a person of total conviction in the church or in any civil responsibility requiring accurate, decisive action.

In this pathetic bail-out legislation totaling 789 billion dollars, if we get every job which this president expects to get from this legislation, each job will cost $600,000. Do you have the blind faith to put this type debt on your children and your grandchildren as far as the eye can see?

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. How does any person live in these critical times with the insanity embracing the political system and judicial system of this nation without the faith that we have someone who will care for his own?

A Chorus Line

#445

A Chorus Line was a long running Broadway play. I remember that it was in a theater next to Shubert Alley. Blind, when walking alone, I had to have certain land marks and Shubert Alley was my land mark for most theaters. The play involved a group of girls, mostly black, auditioning for a part in a Broadway play on a large, vacant stage with just the choreographer. Each one had a story to tell of being sexually molested as a child, or some other horrific experience, on their way up the ladder to performing in a Broadway play. Always, as with most of us who do not fit into the norm of the talented sophisticate, whether disabled or disowned, we know the hypocrisy of other people, particularly fair-weather friends, faulty family members and, certainly, the pretending found in most churches and schools. Ill treatment is as old as mankind. The first two brothers born into the world, born to parents without navels, one killed the other.

The “costume of compassion” has been placed on society in many forms. It is usually just a veneer, easily recognized, easily penetrated. Senator Reid showed his true feelings towards black people just as much as another Democrat, Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood), when she referred to blacks as “weeds”. 80% of all Planned Parenthood abortion clinics are found in black neighborhoods, targeted for black abortions. I will never understand why and how blacks can vote, in lock step, for Democrats when they know, just as well as I know, that white Democrats have a superior feeling towards them. Surely they have heard Hillary and Bill Clinton imitate them in speech patterns which, I am told by people in Arkansas, got Bill many white votes. One of the outstanding university officials, sitting in my house, told me in all sincerity that he believed, “George W. Bush had been coached to speak like a redneck.” Such is the “chorus line” of politicians.

In the fragmented Christian world, the black church is the first victim. My first experience in a black service was as a student in Memphis when I attended black services and learned the art of “hooping”, “squawling”, and other methodical, mystical pseudo-voodoo characteristics the black brought over from Africa and which have been used in the black churches since. Blacks have survived slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination, but their ancient methods of worship still persist. If you listen to a service, you will find the use of drums, or hitting a note on the organ every few seconds, to instill within the audience a medium of activity strange to those who like quiet worship. The holy dance, the use of hand cymbals, modulation of speech and music, is peculiar to most black churches, although some of this activity exists in the white Pentecostal denominations. Obama is very familiar with this type worship but he has tried to separate himself from the black worship service. The frenzy and emotion is the “gravy” of the black experience, along with the “meat” of the sermon. This is the art form our black ancestors brought over with slavery. This is their “chorus line”.


Attending many civic club meetings, speaking at some, I found it was usually a group of concerned men who come together to sing, eat, burp and then go home. This is the “chorus line” of the service community, and I was one of them for many years.

My last civic club meeting, I was asked by a local member of the local Lion's Club to speak. I had been turning down all speaking engagements for many years, it's just too much of a hassle, but he would not give up so I told him I would speak on the comparison of the North and South Poles. As always in travels, I used one camera for slides just in case of this. So, I had some beautiful slides of both the Arctic and Antarctic. My assistant, an older woman, helped me prepare my slide projector for the presentation. We selected the slides which she thought were most beautiful. She described each one to me and gave the ones I would use in the projector a number. I memorized the number along with the photograph. So, when he came to take me to the downtown restaurant location where the Lions met, I told him all he would have to do is just give me the number.

I have seen a pride of lions in Africa, laying, always sleeping with their feet in the air. This Lion's Club was almost as unconcerned about their speaker. Although I like good food as well as anyone, I told them to bring me just a sandwich and cup of coffee because I did not like to entertain people who get a kick from watching a blind person eat. I remember how I was dressed, a beautiful light tan suit and beautiful tie, and I believe I made a most impressive presentation. I wound it up by saying, “I want to express my appreciation for your interest in the blind. The photographs you have seen today, at the top and bottom of the world, were made by a blind man. Your speaker is totally blind, spending many years preparing to take care of the eyes of the public. His message to you, 'There are none so blind as those who will not see and who do not appreciate the greatest gift God gave other than life itself.'”

When I returned to the house, my excited assistant said, “Oh, I know they were all so happy over your presentation.” I said, “Never again.” I said to her, “Would you believe that an organization of men dedicated to helping the blind would not even show one minute of gratitude to a totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected, medical officer veteran?” I said ,”Not one walked up and said, 'We thank you, you are an inspiration to us.'” I have been asked to speak many other times to civic clubs but I give the same answer always, “No.” The games people play are not only at the churchhouse, the courthouse, the schoolhouse, the civic clubhouse, or your house. It will be interesting to see how these game play in the “chorus line” when we are asked to give our credentials at final inspection by the Creator of the Universe. The soul is the only thing we possess that will never die (John 11:26).

For the disabled, for the disenfranchised, for those in despair over conditions in this world, there are 8,885 promises in God's word and, so far, he has kept every promise. His greatest, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hbr 13:5).

Committee of One

Everyday, as we listen to the news, we wonder how the world can get any crazier. Reverend Al Sharpton gave a news conference in which he expressed despair that Tiger Woods did not show enough diversity in his mistresses. He said, “It is a reflection on beautiful black girls and makes them feel very bad that he did not have a black girl as a mistress.” We learned yesterday that in one year President Obama has spent more tax funds than all 43 previous presidents combined (George Washington through George W. Bush). This morning the featured headline in the local paper, just off the busiest thoroughfare in this city, an 86 year old woman dead in her home and probably had been dead since spring. Even though paid caregivers were in and out of the house each day. A New York City fireman told me that any time a fire was in a government housing project in Manhattan it was routine for them to find closets full of dead people covered in lime. Any time an older person dies in one of these housing projects, the body is put in a closet and covered with lime so whoever can keep cashing the social security and welfare checks that come in.

As a totally blind, 100% disabled, service-connected, medical officer veteran of the Korean era, most of my time is spent inside staying abreast of everything with radios. I refuse to listen to the sewer known as television. Participating on many national talk shows, I stay in contact with disabled veterans and handicapped citizens from around the country. I have appointed myself a committee of one to write letters and bring the plight of the disabled to the attention of the power brokers, locally, state-wide and nationally. I will assure you that none of the people paid handsome salaries to act as agents for the country's largest minority are doing anything. Evidently, the ADA, elected senators, and congressmen and the agencies which they are supposed to regulate and give oversight, are just “paid to sleep”.

Recently, an aide from Senator Burr's office (each Senator and Congressman has 50 assistants) called me about a matter I had brought to the Senator's attention. She said, “We have never heard from you before.” I said, “That is strange because I write you almost everyday about some matter of interest to me.” In a few minutes she called back, they had discovered a filing cabinet full of my correspondence which evidently, had never been read. Senator Burr, being the ranking minority member of the Veterans Committee, had been contacted by me about many problems concerning many veterans.

One of my early telephone contacts in this city was a lady named Catherine Vasalou. Catherine had been born blind. She did have one young brother, Billy, who fell into a pot of hot wash water when her mother was doing the family wash. Young, blind Catherine said she would never forget his begging her to do something for him as her mother went out to the highway trying to flag down some help. She told about the small casket and her weeping parents. Catherine went to the School for the Blind in Raleigh. She told me about her mistreatment there but, more than her personal mistreatment, the mistreatment of the blind students from the segregated Black School for the Blind in Garner. They would bring the black, blind children to the white, blind school to rake leaves and do the yard work. She said, “As bad as the white blind students were treated, the black blind students were treated worse.” I can testify to this because, as a young child, I saw the treatment of the black mental patients at the NC Asylum for the Negro Insane in Goldsboro (now Cherry Hospital).

Catherine graduated from ECU and did graduate work at UNC-CH. She came home to care for her parents until their deaths while working full time at a local hospital as a typist. After her mother's death, Catherine lived alone until her death at age 85 three years ago. I asked Catherine once, “During all your years as a blind citizen in Wilmington, NC, how many times did any church, civic group, state agency, ever do anything for you?” She said, “When my mother died one church brought by some food to the house.” During hurricanes or holidays she was left to live alone and died alone. She told me she had left instructions with the funeral home just to take her body to the cemetery and bury her next to her parents without any services, any obituary...anything. She said, “The world left me alone while alive, I want to be alone in death.”

As chief of a clinic at one US Army hospital, a sergeant under me who had survived WWII and the Korean Conflict, was the EKG technician (he did all the EKG tests and readings). He and his wife had one child, a son which I saw once, who was both deaf and blind. There were no military facilities for this child and the public schools in Alabama did not make arrangements. The child lived very much as an animal. Can we even imagine what it would have been like for Helen Keller, also from Alabama, if her parents had not had the money to furnish specialized care for her deafness and blindness. She describes all this in her 1903 book, an inspiration for any life. When Hitler was burning books in Germany in 1933, her biography was the first book on his list because he so despised disabled people. He put 275,000 disabled German citizens to death. This seems like a small number compared to the 6 million Jews who went to the death chambers, but where were the sane, responsible citizens who saw this inhumanity to man going on? Are we really doing any better in this country?

Veterans know what it is like to be second class citizens, those who have returned disabled...blind, deaf, crippled, mentally disparaged. There will be more from these wars taking place at the present time. Think of young men seeing these spattered remains of their comrades from the brutality of suicide bombers taking place at present. I can tell you without fear of contradiction, that this blind veteran never had one minute of rehabilitation. It took 30 years for me to get the disabled housing allowance wherein I could put a security system in my house. For 30 years, I put cement blocks by my exit doors so in a break in I could try to get some help by phone. Since my windows are all nailed shut I fully realize the disaster of fire since I cannot see fire.

On radio, and at other times, I have offered to give anyone $1,000 who can show that any veteran's group, civic club, church, and I could almost say family member, has done anything for this disabled veteran. I would not even attempt to describe the insults, such as the nurse spitting on me in a University hospital because of her disdain for veterans and military activities. Veterans did not serve for recognition, but this veteran has tried to bring the disparity of the disabled and the handicapped, the largest minority in the population (est. 33%), to the attention of the media and the public.

Christ never appointed a committee, he always called upon a man to do His work, Abraham, Elijah, Paul. Perhaps, as was the case with civil rights and voting rights, attention to the disabled will occur. It was said, in Germany, that when the Nazi's came for the gypsies no one cared. When the Nazi's came for the disabled, no one cared. When they came for the intellectuals, no one cared. When they came for the Jews, no one cared. When they came for the rest, THERE WAS NO ONE TO CARE.

Kleenex Mentality

Twice in my life, in traveling the world, this totally blind man became lost from his guide. Once, in taking the ferry from Dover to Calais, my guide and I became separated and I got on the wrong train to Paris. I was supposed to ride, of course, in a first class train but someway, somehow in the spillage of the train station, with all the school children on holidays from England to France and France to England, I got into a second class train full of French school children. Of course the trains travel very rapidly, and they take up little time for problems in railroad stations. The French children were very excited to have a blind American in their car and when the conductor came through, contacting the teachers about the tickets for the children, they all said that I was traveling with them. When I arrived in Paris, and debarked from the train, I thought, “Now what am I going to do?” Through sounds, as usual, I made my way out of the station, then decided to go down the street because my chances of getting a taxi there would be much better than around the train station. I did find a taxi. I knew the hotel in Paris in which I was staying and in my broken French, I told the driver to go to that hotel. When I asked him if he would take American dollars for his fare, of course he said, “Mais, oui!” When I walked into the Sheraton, my guide was at the front desk, arranging to call out the French army, evidently to find me. I said, “Surely you realize a man who has traveled the world many times can get from Calais to Paris!”

Again, when in the Dhaka, Bangladesh, the poorest, most frustrating, most populated place on earth, I was separated from my guide by a mob on the riverbank near a very populated part of of the city. According to AP, over 7 million people are snake-bitten in Bangladesh each year, and of that number 6,000 die. Much of the year, as now, about half the land is covered with water, so there are snakes everywhere, and I am deathly afraid of snakes. Finally, some police officer took me to a police station. In Bangladesh, women are mostly in charge of government, and they are very corrupt; the last two Prime Ministers both went to prison for corruption. A cold, calculating woman took me into an interrogation room and I think, just to get her kicks, began questioning me about what I was doing in Bangladesh. She said, “You Americans are so transparent in your aggression- you like to come into poor countries, make photographs of poor people, and then return home with arrogant pride, and bask in your opulence.” I said to her, “Dear lady, I am not a political or media figure, I am just passing through your country, and if you will be good enough to help me get back to my hotel, where my guide is trying very hard to find me, I will make sure he gets me out of your country, and I promise to never return.” About that time, my frustrated guide came in the room, relieved to find me, and my interrogator said, “I have tried to give him a hard time, but he is one slick blind man.” To this day, I have no desire to return to that God-forsaken country and their snakes, reptiles, and mammalian.

In this “Kleenex Mentality”, where it is difficult to remember horrendous news flashes from one week to the next, our problems are incomprehensible by the “pile on effect”: one problem just piles onto another, and before we can understand the problem of this week, we are deeply involved in the problems of next week. Instead of solutions, one after another, in the canyons of Wall Street, in the sorcery-ridden streets of the nation's capital, in the state house, and even the local court house, most debauchery is not discovered and that which is discovered is seldom brought to light or solved. Instead of light overcoming the darkness, darkness just keeps enveloping the light.

A frustration, to most Americans, is the knowledge of the obscenity and insanity of Wall Street thievery, the parasites who are sucking the very life out of the economy, awarded with tremendous bonuses. Incompetence in business and elsewhere, bailed out by hardworking, sweating, pockets-picked citizens, the politicians who claim to be able to fix the problems are the very ones who cause the dilemma.

An administration, the most anti-life, culture of death ideology ever to be in power (abortion, euthanasia), claim to have the answer for all health care. Will you even imagine that Kathleen Sibelius, Secretary of Health and Human Resources, who was the largest contributor to Dr. Tiller, who killed 60,000 babies each year, is now interested in the lives of babies, and certainly not in the lives of the elderly who engulf most health care dollars in their last years of life? The “Kleenex Mentality”, in health care, as with every other tax supported care- just use if possible, then throw away.

Supposedly, the new digital television “is an advanced broadcasting technology that has transformed your television viewing experience. DTV has enabled broadcasters to offer television with better picture and sound quality. It also offers multiple programming choices, called multicasting, and interactive capabilities”. There is something very strange about the evolution of television. I have always been suspicious of television reception and perception. Since this invention has become the “idol worship” in most homes, adults and children bowing down to this idol, glued to it for many hours, “dumbed down” by its mediocrity, and failure to challenge intelligence development. I believe that Satan has engulfed the mind with a tissue of subliminal impotence not sustainable in a world of accomplishment. I am told that in this new system (digital) school children, when watching programs on this new television, immediately go to sleep- they simply cannot stay awake. And, that adults, already couch potatoes, are more incompetent than ever. Please answer why perfectly good television sets are no longer usable without the attachment of a digital converter box? In a 'cash for clunkers' program, why not pay citizens for their old, turned-in TV sets? In the Obama world, those who have never worked for anything just get paid for turning in old things since somewhere, somehow under the “rules for radicals”, borrowed money will pay for disposables!

In the world of psycho-physical, where evil men have such black hearts, it is incomprehensible that a child can be kidnapped at age eleven, kept completely isolated from the world as a slave of the kidnapper, and then show up eighteen years later with two young children of her own, who have never been exposed to life outside of a small fortress. Our neighbors and law enforcement so totally immune to the world around them, our service repair people, even other children in the community so deaf and so blind that they cannot have suspicions about one house in one community. In our “Kleenex mentality”, do we just spend every day in such a routine that we no longer are afforded suspicions or imaginations? Was it the Stockholm syndrome? Is it conceivable that one physician certainly known by pharmacists and other physicians to be a “rock-star” care-giver, could be using medications not normal to pharmacists or law enforcement? Have we become so indoctrinated by the bizarre, and infected by mediocrity, that wholesome introspection is no longer expected? Our “Kleenex mentality” applies to not only physical objects, but mental callousness- we just don't care, anymore.