STORYTIME TAPESTRY

The Newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world

June 9, 2005

I am very happy to introduce Robyn Dear as writer # 212 for Storytime Tapestry.   She is a poet who writes from the heart and reveals her soul in the process ??“ just my kind of writer!  Please give her a warm welcome to our wonderful family.

I have a second new writer today for you.  Maria Keller a friend of mine from Tennessee, who has been there for me through thick and thin.  She is now facing losing her life??™s partner and of course as we all know it is not an easy transition.  Hard Boiled Eggs is a very poignant story of coming to terms with having to cook for one.

Please welcome both of these wonderful new writers in our Storytime fashion.  We are the greatest and friendliest newsletter out there.  And we love our writers!

Now on to the good stuff..........

Animal awareness series endorsed by Shiloh and Hank our mascots; all stories must receive their approval.

Rainbow Bridge Gang Report

Tink and Poo

Tinkerpoo2000@yahoo.com

We was all setting here talking while Princess is munching on her apples. You remember she stopped under the apple tree, Annie got her a sack full of apples. Horses like apples, we don't need any apples to keep the doctor away,  we all are healthy here.

Just before lunch a pretty little gal came trotting along, Pomeranian, she is a beauty, Parked her self right down.  We got to chatting right off with her. She told us her name, "Gizmo Hoepker."  Said she feels a lot better now that she is here, got that young feeling.  We told her that is normal, we too had the same feel, at first it is tough to have to leave, but the aches and pains is left behind,  here there is no more of that.

Poo said something about, "hey your not Agnes little girl are you?"   "Why yes that is right," Gizmo said..  Poo said,, "well we hear she is the one putting our book together."   Gizmo  said "you the guys that wrote that??  Well she had heard all about it at the dinner table.. How good those two was at writing. Something about their writing is just great, the book should be a real great in demand book."  Poo said. " well we did have some help. Some nice lady was always doing a little nit picken, sometimes she would turn into a Witch about something called proper grammar."  Auggie said,  "why do you have to bring her up, remember I had to put up with her,  talk about a dog's life, rough."

Well it was getting lunch time,, and we asked Gizmo what would she like.   She said,  "how about a plate full of French fries and a hamburger on the side, hold the onion."  Auggie said what was he to do with the onion. Poo said,  "Auggie you nut, she don't want any onion, what you do is don't put onion on the burger."

You know those fries just hit the spot,  We all had a few with our burgers, guess Auggie still holding the onions.

We also had a visit with Bobby. You remember Bobby of Greyfriars of Scotland. Well he tried out the burgers and fries, said he thought those was quite good. We asked him about his visits to the Pubs. He said,  "yes  there was kind hearted people that seen he had food and a fresh drink of water"

Well that is the report for today. We got a lot to talk about here.  You know a new member of the gang has to tell the latest news on your side.  Like the high cost of people food that we like to eat. Man them burgers just hit the spot with them fries,, wonder if we could get seconds

today. Hope that Ma Baker gang don't wont seconds.

We was thinking we were all done with this report.  A  nice looking chap just got here. Said his name was CharlieBoy Pickett.  Pops jumped up and said Pickett, that kin folk. Auggie dropped the onions  he was holding,  Auggie grabbed the last plate of fries and burger out away from Fancy,  one of that Ma Baker gang,  well it was thirds anyways for Fancy.  Charlie said he hated to leave, his family there in Florida, but the Angel came and said Charlie, "I am going to take you where there is no more pain."    Charlie said., " thanks Auggie, those fries and that burger just hit the spot."  Poo told Charlie to just make his self right at home and wait a bit.  "Tinker and I know about his Dorothy, she is a nice lady. We remember Bill talking about her a few times., and if Bill said a lady was nice, that she is.  He said that Dollie T was nice, and we found out she was." 

So once again, for all those yet to come, remember, we are not gone as long as you have a place in your heart for us. We are just out of sight, but live on here waiting for the time you come up the path.  We will wait no matter how long it may be, till we meet again.  

Well I??™m a story teller, not a writer. Never learned the art of fancy English. I

happen to live in Nebraska, but I??™m still Missouri. Never married, all the Dollies I

ever took a second look at was too smart. Now at 74, just turned that other day, I

figure they all home safe. I love Doggies and Dollies in that order. Lost my two

true friends this year, that be Tinker and Poo. So I found me a new one. This

time a little girlie Peke. She is a normal female. Got a mouth, talks all the time.

She will never be a great writers of stories like Tinker and Poo. They have

about 50 stories on HWS. And now writing back from Rainbow Bridge.

I just try to write about people, places and things best I remember. Have something

over 250 stories on HWS. under three names.   

Today's Queue Stories
~**~**~**~

~**~**~

Ray And Tom

Maria Keller

This pearl was inspired by Krystle's recent posting about her friend, Karl, who has returned from Iraq but has been lost to her, and she fears for his safety and life.

Once upon another lifetime ago, we had new next door neighbors move into the house next door, in North Lauderdale Florida. They seemed fairly young to be "empty nesters," but they were. Their names were Ray and Lou.

They were very friendly, and Ray had a mass of tousled brown hair, late 1970's style like John Travolta, only a lighter shade of brown. Lou was the "studious looking type" with hornrimmed glasses and was very thin. As we got to know them, details of their past were gradually unfolded.

They had just moved to South Florida from Ohio, oh it was probably about 1978 or 1979 . They bought the house next door to us, the one with the built in, screened pool. It was December and we could hear them jump in and dive into what was, to us, very cold water. "They're nuts!" said my husband, and I agreed. It was surely weird to Floridians to go swimming in December in an unheated pool!

Over the next few years, until they sold the house and moved to Lighthouse Point, closer to the beach, we got to know them a little better. Ray had voluntarily enlisted in the Army in 1965 and was sent to Vietnam. He thought he was fighting for freedom, or at least fighting against Communism.

Lou told us quite openly, in the presence of Ray, that she was a battered wife.

She said, that Ray would wake up in the middle of the night with nightmares about what happened in Vietnam. And that he would literally "beat the living hell" out of the woman he loved and pledged his life and love to be with. And she endured it, because she loved him.

Because I would never have tolerated that kind of behavior from a husband, I nodded sympathetically when Lou told me of all the physical abuse she suffered. That was until..

A flock of my (not yet then ex) husband's friends moved to Florida in 1980. They all settled in the North Lauderdale area at first. Tom had also been to Vietnam, as a Marine He had problems with his legs related to Agent Orange, but because the government wasn't acknowledging then that there WAS a problem, he was receiving neither treatment for it, nor a partial disability for it. And when I got to know his wife a little better, she told me....

That they had gotten married in 1972 and, while they were still living in New York, she had to pack up the baby and her things and move out for two years. Because he would wake up in the middle of the night and start punching her and screaming about the VC (Viet Cong) who he had imaged in his nightmares was somehow with him in his bed.

My husband and the rest of his friends had all joined the Navy. They were willing to trade four years of their lives instead of two, for the relative safety that being in the Navy seemed to provide. The closest one of them ever got to Vietnam was seven miles offshore. He was able to join the VFW (Veterans of Foreign War) because of that, whereas my husband and his other friends could not.

Tom managed to improve his behavior and hasn't laid a hand on his wife since. They are now married for 33 years. I don't know what happened to Ray and Lou. And people do get divorced anyway. There's a multitude of ways that people who love each other can cause each other pain.

War is hell, and the soldiers who survive bring that hell back with them. I just have to ask, "why?" I never dreamed when I was holding my newborn son in my arms in 1984, that he would ever have to go to a war, after the Vietnam debacle. Tommy, I miss you. Please come home soon!

Copyright 2005 by 

sommerTN @prodigy.net

~**~**~

Hard Boiled Eggs

Maria Keller

It was either very late January or very early February, 2004. I really can't exactly remember. We were about to go off again, on one of our Great Escapes from Tennessee. That it was winter, and so very depressing, with all the leaves off the trees and so very little green, made it easy. We were off to sunny climes. If it had been snowing here, it wouldn't have been so bad. When it snows here, it's like a fairy dusting of powdered sugar. Never sticks long enough to get dirty or sludgy, like up North, where I grew up.

We always spent the night before at the airport Radisson. All the folks there knew us and were always so kind. But not much could be said for their room service menu. We'd taken to bringing our food with us; besides it was the frugal thing to do.

One of the things I did like on the Radisson menu was the chef's salad. But then the lettuce was often wilty and he could never decide what he wanted from the awful rest of the selections, usually pouting as he ordered a "pizza for one". I decided to make a chef's salad for myself and bring it along.

Our entire relationship was based on sharing our thoughts on EVERYTHING. There were a few things that didn't seem to need discussing. However, when he saw me boiling some eggs to put in my salad, he demanded to know, "Why are you boiling eggs??"

In the nine years we were together, I can count on my fingers how many times I have made hard boiled eggs. Mainly, because he did not like hard boiled eggs. In fact, he detested them. As he did any form of liver. I grew up in an era where it was thought that liver was "good for you." I don't go out of my way for it, but I like a good pate on a cracker, sometimes even less fancy than that.

He did not like hard boiled eggs. He did not like green eggs and ham. (OK, that was a joke for all you Dr. Suess fans.) He did not like broccoli. In fact, that was the one good thing he could say about Bush 41, is that he did not like broccoli. He wasn't particularly crazy about mushrooms, either. He refused to eat anything that involved Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup in the recipe. I guess he didn't like Spam either, but since I didn't, I didn't test that particular theory. When we ordered pizza, it had to be thin crust, and have Italian sausage, green pepper and onions on it. It wasn't that my world was going to end if I didn't have broccoli or mushrooms. Or even pan pizza with pepperoni on it. It was that I slowly, without realizing it, deciding all my food preferences - and indeed probably all preferences - over to him.

"Why are you boiling eggs?!" he said. (Just picking up where I left off).

"I'm going to puree them and put them in your food," I replied. (Yes, I really said that!)

To make a long story short, he backed down and I boiled my eggs and took them as part of my homemade chef's salad to the Radisson that night. And we saved a few bucks and ate better (he had a roast beef sandwich.) And we were up before dawn to make our early flight that would take us to the Bahamas the next afternoon.

It was our last, most wonderful Great Escape from Tennessee. He passed away in early April. And now I go to the supermarket, and I don't know what to buy for myself. It's now almost August, and I just made hard boiled eggs for myself yesterday.

Maria Keller

Copyright 2004 by sommer@prodigy.net

Poetry Section

~**~**~

Angels Above

Tim Kevin

Where O' where is she, my lady fair
Her heart and body exposed all the night
Only to angels hovering above in the air
Privileged to just admire the lovely sight
-
In her dreams able to call out aloud
Come to me, my special loving angel
Lay beside me, with your head unbowed
Speak to me of a love we both know so well
-
Tenderly caress me and ignite the fire
Smoldering just beneath my consciousness
This physical need to extinguish my desire
So we may sleep unencumbered I confess
-
Of our restless bodies beneath the sheets
Tossing an turning all through the night
Awakened by our heart's rapid beats
Our bodies joined in an embrace so right
-
Exploding passions no longer asleep
Desire enflamed by each others touch
Seeking to soothe that need so deep
With tender strokes that we want so much
-
Reaching into the stars fulfilled with love
Bodies finally sated for one more time
Our thoughts drifting like the clouds above
To sleep safe in knowing our love sublime

IrishWarlock @ webtv.net

About Me:
-
 
Tim Kevin, is the owner of the Yahoo adult
humor group, BICs_Jokers_Wild and resides in
Punta Gorda, Florida.

~**~**~

The Tapestry Of Life

Robyn Dear

We are all born with the same blank mind

Yet our tapestry is always one of a kind

We have infinite choice when we set out

But the field will narrow when we learn self-doubt

Limitations set by our parents and teachers

Will be restricted again by religious preachers

Government authorities, customs and law

Will reduce our choices even more

Soon we are left with just a few threads

And we helplessly watch as the erosion spreads

We get in a tangle, all our threads in a knot

With growing frustration we ponder our lot

When we were born there was no limitation

But our experience of life has stifled creation

Now it is time to review our selection

And begin to create a brand new projection

Time to let go of those limiting beliefs

And the childhood traumas that perpetuate grief

Time to undo those untidy knots

And find a new way to fill in the dots

This tapestry of life is yours to live

The end result is your gift to give

Is your gift a brilliant display

Or have you let others take your colours away

Robyn Dear

ohdear@rocketmail.com

I am a writer, healer, poet and idealist.

I have a strong desire to help make the world a better place. It is a team effort, are you in?

My collection of poems and prose is a free download at www.thecentreofinfinity.com you can also view some flash movies of my poems there set to music. To purchase the real deal or a laminated A4 poster of one of my poems visit my web shop. Check out the newsletter for updates on the latest poems etc.

That??™s me in a nutshell

Love Robyn

~**~

From Carbon Comes a Diamond

Sue Walsh

Do you resemble carbon or graphite

To become a diamond you must strive to set things right

Let the diamonds in you shine brilliantly for all the world to see

The diamonds in your eyes are what set ones soul afree

Call everyone your friend no matter what the colour or the creed

Whether of the human race or some other breed

The Creator??™s life force flows through every living thing

But do not love someone just for the material that they bring

Send your love out to the entire Universe

For not to feel loved is the most common of curse

It??™s the reason for conflict and war and why teenagers commit suicide

But when love reigns supreme then watch the length of their stride

As you sow so shall you reap

But mind your thoughts and not just the words when you open your

mouth to speak

Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you

That??™s what the Bible says and I believe it??™s true

We??™re all connected through our Super-conscious minds

And God??™s love really is the tie that binds

Whatever we do or give returns ten-fold

So make sure it??™s loving and warm and not something extremely cold

Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all other things will be given

unto you

Put this law into action in everything you do

Then watch the blessings come rolling your way

And don??™t forget to count them each and every day

If you cause these changes to come to be

There??™s no doubt, when we look your way ??“ a diamond??™s what we??™ll see.

Sue Walsh

Adelseal @senet.com.au

Bio

My name is Sue Walsh - I live in Adelaide, South Australia with my husband and two children.  I worked as a Legal Secretary for 25 years and then my husband and I started our own engineering import/export business.  I love to learn about spiritual subjects and have study many different areas.  I love to write spiritual/religious poetry and peace prayers, I am also endeavouring to complete a novel.

Writers Feedback

Hi  Sherri,
I so enjoyed your wonderful story about your Dad. I understand how you feel since  I also lost my Dad in 1994. We were very close too!

 I noticed you live in Utah. WE have thought about possibly moving to St. George,       Utah. Are you around there? We only went there for one week last year. Just curious if you are familiar with St. George.   I'd love any info you could give me as far as if this seems like a good, safe place to live. We live in Southern CA, near San       Bernardino.

Thanks again  for your story...

Bev

Hi Carol-  thank you for running "gull Trouble" the special story for
brother's birthday. He said he feels very "spoiled" to receive so much
attention. I'd like the Storytime  readers to know that he is also
Sandra Woodward's brother too. We are both quite the fans of his. Many
Blessings. --K>

Prayer Requests and Updates

 Dear Prayer Warriors:

Please pray for Brian, He is in need of our Savior's Healing Touch!

Here is a note from Tim:

Please pray for Brian H, he had some of his toes removed due to Diabetes. Pray that he will get his life in order.

-Tim-

Thank you for your prayers,

Love,

Barbara

SENIOR WRITERS

Agee, Vance;  Apted, Violet;  Baker, Kathy;  Batt, Al;  Berry, Nell;

Boda, Ginger;  Bryant, Sharon;  Buhagiar, Victor; Cassady, B.J.;  Crider, Mark; 

Deming, Barb; Goodier, Steve;  Harris, Kathy Anne; Hunt, Sharlette; 

Jacobson, Gary;  Kiser, Roger Dean; Kerens, Claudia; Jenkins, Pamela;

Liles, Norma;  Mazzella, Joe; Ojeigbe, Georgewaters;

  Petry, Dianna Doles; Roberts, Susan;  Shaw, Bob; Sims, Richard; Swarner, Ken; Vaknin, Sam;

Walker, Bill;  Walker, Joe; Warner, Gorden K;

Whirity, Kathy;  White, Robert;

STORYTIME TAPESTRY STAFF

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Moderator: Thelma Hartselle-co founder

Moderator: Clara Westerfer

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