My Home Away From Home

Right now my home is in my daughter's apartment near Jax Beach and I am caring for my 2 grandchildren.

My daughter, Eliza, just had one of the most momentous days of her life yesterday (Full Moon in Taurus, incidentally) at the immigration office in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.   After failing their first attempt to obtain a visa for her beloved two years ago, she has worked steadily at gathering proof of their devotion to each other.  Immigration people assume one is a phony until one proves otherwise.  (You can read all about it in her blog: AmorySabor.com).  The man whom she married on her last trip down there is from India and it has been an arduous task to assemble all the necessary documents, as well as an expensive one.  Corruption also plays a significant role.    When she revealed the news of their success on Facebook late yesterday, I could hardly get the words out, I was so excited.  I wept and when I was able to tell Marcos (he will soon be 9), he did too.  The children are aching for a dad and will be overjoyed to be reunited with the only dad they know.  Their original father is Dominican and, as it turned out, had another family.   He dropped the ball, which brought great suffering to the kids.     He stays in touch occasionally but the children barely remember him.    

 So this event will affect many lives.  I am so happy for my daughter and the children and may not have to be here quite as much in the future, freeing up my creative time.  I can't stand to be away from them for very long, though, which is why I am extremely desirous of making another trip to Maine soon.   Grandchild #3, Eli, age 4, is there and I have not seen him since May!...Much too long...In fact, I am hoping my son, Jake, will be getting some land up there before too long where I can start a big garden.  Then I would split my time between the north and the south.

Since tomorrow is Halloween, I will include a photo of Eliza & the kids at a recent Halloween party. (Elsa's smile is not exactly candid..haha). We trick or treat around this nice, safe neighborhood in the apartment complex and I hope they don't get too too much candy- but of course they will.    We need to carve our pumpkin asap.

Next blog will be in November... going camping with the Boy Scouts this weekend and I sure hope it warms up a little.  We were just socked with cold weather while our northern neighbors suffer through Hurricane Sandy.   Just went swimming in the ocean last week and now it feels suddenly like winter!

To the Dishonor of Christopher Columbus

Every time I listen to FreeSpeech TV and the Thom Hartmann show in particular, I learn something new.  Yesterday was October 12 and  the original date of Christopher Columbus day.  Now I know just how diabolical Columbus really was.

He sailed for the New World in search of gold and had told the king & queen of Spain that gold was so precious it could even "lift souls to paradise".  However, when he arrived on the island now known as Hispaniola,  (which is now composed of two nations; Haiti and the Dominican Republic), it was then populated by Taino indians, who welcomed Columbus' ships when they arrived there.  Apparently they had no iron and accidentally cut themselves when examining the Spanish swords.    Columbus found no gold on the island but something just as valuable: people - people whom he could enslave and sell. According to the writings of his own men,  Columbus reported that with as few as fifty men he could subject all the Tainos to do whatever he wanted them to do.  According to a letter in 1500 written by one of his men,  Columbus rewarded him with his own teen-aged Taino girl.   She fought him off so fiercely that he no choice but to "thrash her severely and rape her".  Columbus had started an international child sex slave trade.   He raped, pillaged, enslaved, and massacered many, many Tainos.  On his second trip to Hispaniola, Columbus and his men gathered 1600 indians as slaves, including sex slaves and it was reported that girls from "9 to 10years were in the greatest demand".   Tainos subsequently resorted to mass suicide to avoid being stolen by Columbus' men.

Christopher Columbus Day would more appropriately be called Taino Genocide Day.