honestly, not one of my favorite comic series...
Sisters of Mercy
Sisters of Mercy
Sisters of Mercy
Sisters of Mercy .
Sisters of Mercy
Sisters of Mercy
Sisters of Mercy
Sisters of Mercy .
I think the comics were another of Poison's rebeling actions. they had just had Flesh and Blood banned and pulled off store shelves and parents were screaming to get there songs pulled off the radio station...some stations did stop playing their music...most stations did actually...I gotta admitt some of the words are pretty bad, not stuff I'd ever dare repeat...anyways Rikki was the most vocally pissed off over the way the censors were tearing their latest album all to hell, and he did all kinds of interviews on radio stations in newpapers, or TV, in magazines...he just went all out and let everyone know what he thought about the whole cencorship thing being anti-American,(with lots of bleeped out words too:^O), it was right after that that he created the Sisters of Mercy series....and like everything else Poison did, fans grbbed them up while critics went though the roof. The series was short lived...7 issues I think, it was pretty much Rikki saying, "You think our songs are bad, look what else we can do!".
Rikki's the one who' got the "in you face" aditude, you know the LCA and PETA, throw buckets of blood on your fur coat type of guy, stageing puppy mill protests and stuff...he's the one, you tell him he can't do something, he'll end up picketting around your house just to prove that not only can he do it, but he'll get the government to back him up too...of course anti-Poison critics blame it on the fact that he's a redhead.
That album, by the way was what both made and broke the band. One song "Unskinny Bop", went #1 and stayed there, that song commbined with the album being banned, sent fans into frenzy trying to get copied of it...it was like Cabbage Patch Doll mania...everyone wanted one, but stores didn't have them, K-Mart was one of the few stores that hadn't pulled the discs off the shelves, but that C*C* went gun crazy around that same time, and Brett blamed K-Mart for selling guns, and than Brett demanded a "recall" on all Poison albums from K-Mart stores...it made the album even harder to get, fans started getting Japan imports insead...finally the censors allowed a "second edited edition" of Flesh and Blood to be released to the public, and sales went through the roof, makeing them a 5 time platnium group, and sending them from rich rock stars to multi-billions...C*C* did a major crash under the stress of hitting the big time...he's a hermit-like recluse normally, and being thrown into the public like that sent him into cocain in order to block out the public and the paparazzi, the drug addiction resulted in an onset of scizophranic attacts, and that's when he went really wild, shooting at everything and anything, he was convinced that monsters were out to get him.
The band had finally reached the top, playing sellout shows all around the world, averaging 15,000 people at each show. It was the "Unskinny Bop", that did it, the song was selling like hotcakes and it was what everyone was requesting they play at every show. Right up until their last show...the MTV music awards. No one's really sure exactly what happened that night, all that was reallt known was that reporters and paparazzi where everywhere, and C*C* couldn't handle haven't them following him everywhere he went...the show was being broadcast live, every music magazine under the sun was waiting for an interview after the show, and Poison got onstage to play the "Unskinny Bop" and C*C* just snapped, did a major flip out and and him and Brett instead of singing were at each others throats, and about a million fans world wide say the whole thing happen. And than just like that, Poison was no more. The rest of the tour was cancled, rumors flew all over the place about absolutly everything, the band totaly dropped out of the public eye, and no one at that time knew why. C*C* was fired, and went solo, while Poison tried to re-group with a new guitarist, so they could finish the tour. Turns out Poison couldn't survive without C*C*...2 reasons, 1) thr riffs he played were so complex and complicated that none of the guitarists who auditioned could play them, they finally had to settle for the best they could find, and change C*C*'s guitar riffs in the songs...the result was the songs didn't sound the same, and fans started walking out of shows...Poison was quick to relize what guitar fanatics had been saying was true...no one can play guitar like C*C*...no one can touch his style---he was THAT good....C*C* was to a guitar what Liberace was to a piano.
problem #2 was, that if they couldn't play the songs without C*C* than they needed to write new songs that could be played by regular guitarists...unfortunatly, without C*C* they didn't have a songwriter anymore either, he had also been the group's songwriter. Brett was songwriter too, but the songs he wrote were the ballads "Every Rose Has It's Thorn", "Something to Believe In", and the sad un-Poison like lulaby "Life Goes On"...Brett is a great singer and a wonderful songwriter, but fans who liked Poison for the heavy metal, didn't want anything to do with Native Tounge when it came out...Poison's only non-heavy metal album, an entire album of bluesy ballards written by Brett. It sold less than a million copies worl wide and they lost their record contract.
Meanwhile C*C*, with his ever growing ego, took the world by storm...literally. Poison was not his first group. He's started out with Screaming Mimi, and when they broke up, moved on to Stryper, but quit with them because they decided to become a Christian Rock Group, that's when he joined up with Poison to replace their original guitar play Matt Smith. He figured he'd gotten into a bigger band each time, Poison was a big as any band could ever get, so he'd go out on his own now...who needs a band. He did a solo gig, but before making an album, fought so baddly with his new back up group that they all quit. C*C* was quickly becoming a holy terror. Fans, friends, and family began begging him to get help with his drug addiction, but he was in denial over it and retaliated with a new group called Needle Park. Needle Park actually stayed together long enough to get into a recording studio, and record a movie soundtrack. Only one song actually made it onto the soundtrack, and they fought and the band quit once again...sometime around this point it hit Cecil, that maybe he was the problem and not all the bands he'd been with...maybe it was his wild temper chaseing people away from him...and it hit him for the first time that he didn't use to be like this, that it was the drugs making him act that way. Cecil dropped out of the public eye after that, got himself into an institute and got help. It took 8 years for him to get off the drugs, during which time devoloped an obsessive eating habit, and went from underweight to overweight. He became a depressed recluse after that, moved in with his parants and was not heard of for quite some time. Than suddenly without warning he was back....aperently while Brett and C*C* had not spoken in years, Rikki had kept kept in contact with him, and upon hearing that Cecil had been off drugs for some time now, told him that Poison was recording a new album Power To the People, needed a guitarist and would C*C* come back? C*C* rejoined the group for that one album, much against Brett's will---they still were not speaking to each other, what a recording session that must have been!:O Brett only let C*C* back in the group because Rikki had said it would be good for their image, and it was, with C*C* back in the group, fans came back and sales went up again. So they went on tour. Cecil says it was the worst tour they ever did, he and Brett fought the whole time, neither one could wait to be away from the other.
Cecil than left Poison again and started Samantha 7, a group that by most standards was a total flop, but is still going today. Poison regrouped again to make Hollyweird, and once again Rikki called back C*C*, this time would be a wierd switch: he was gonna be singing lead vocals for Poison!....Anyone who's ever heard Poison will instantly recognize Brett's deep slinky croon....When I first heard the Hollyweird album I didn't know about the switch in lead singers...YOW!...now, C*C* can play a mean guitar, no one questions his ability to play guitar, but wither or not he can sing is debatable. Poison fans were split down the middle over it, half loving C*C* on lead, and half screaming what the hell is that high pitched tuneless idiot doing singing lead? There was actually a more practical reason for C*C* on lead...Brett's failing health has never been a secret, and he's not supposed to be driving a car. All of Brett's fans were of course shocked, when he was in a car accident that almost killed him. Brett and C*C* have since made up, and now the 2 of them take turns singing lead for Poison, and while I've never seen a Poison show, I'm told they are much less wild today, also considered tame. They do more special appearances at bars now rather than the stressful stage shows. Fans are glad to have Cecil back in the group, but like always he's ruled by his wierd obsessions, and now his latest one is, as a result of his fight with drugs, followed by his fight with overeating, he's become a chocolate loving health nut that runs 6 miles a day, with a goal of 20 miles a day.
And Poison in Maine once again...last month's show was cancled due to Brett's health, but was redone yesterday, and now today they are leaving Maine:( .
Rikki's the one who' got the "in you face" aditude, you know the LCA and PETA, throw buckets of blood on your fur coat type of guy, stageing puppy mill protests and stuff...he's the one, you tell him he can't do something, he'll end up picketting around your house just to prove that not only can he do it, but he'll get the government to back him up too...of course anti-Poison critics blame it on the fact that he's a redhead.
That album, by the way was what both made and broke the band. One song "Unskinny Bop", went #1 and stayed there, that song commbined with the album being banned, sent fans into frenzy trying to get copied of it...it was like Cabbage Patch Doll mania...everyone wanted one, but stores didn't have them, K-Mart was one of the few stores that hadn't pulled the discs off the shelves, but that C*C* went gun crazy around that same time, and Brett blamed K-Mart for selling guns, and than Brett demanded a "recall" on all Poison albums from K-Mart stores...it made the album even harder to get, fans started getting Japan imports insead...finally the censors allowed a "second edited edition" of Flesh and Blood to be released to the public, and sales went through the roof, makeing them a 5 time platnium group, and sending them from rich rock stars to multi-billions...C*C* did a major crash under the stress of hitting the big time...he's a hermit-like recluse normally, and being thrown into the public like that sent him into cocain in order to block out the public and the paparazzi, the drug addiction resulted in an onset of scizophranic attacts, and that's when he went really wild, shooting at everything and anything, he was convinced that monsters were out to get him.
The band had finally reached the top, playing sellout shows all around the world, averaging 15,000 people at each show. It was the "Unskinny Bop", that did it, the song was selling like hotcakes and it was what everyone was requesting they play at every show. Right up until their last show...the MTV music awards. No one's really sure exactly what happened that night, all that was reallt known was that reporters and paparazzi where everywhere, and C*C* couldn't handle haven't them following him everywhere he went...the show was being broadcast live, every music magazine under the sun was waiting for an interview after the show, and Poison got onstage to play the "Unskinny Bop" and C*C* just snapped, did a major flip out and and him and Brett instead of singing were at each others throats, and about a million fans world wide say the whole thing happen. And than just like that, Poison was no more. The rest of the tour was cancled, rumors flew all over the place about absolutly everything, the band totaly dropped out of the public eye, and no one at that time knew why. C*C* was fired, and went solo, while Poison tried to re-group with a new guitarist, so they could finish the tour. Turns out Poison couldn't survive without C*C*...2 reasons, 1) thr riffs he played were so complex and complicated that none of the guitarists who auditioned could play them, they finally had to settle for the best they could find, and change C*C*'s guitar riffs in the songs...the result was the songs didn't sound the same, and fans started walking out of shows...Poison was quick to relize what guitar fanatics had been saying was true...no one can play guitar like C*C*...no one can touch his style---he was THAT good....C*C* was to a guitar what Liberace was to a piano.
problem #2 was, that if they couldn't play the songs without C*C* than they needed to write new songs that could be played by regular guitarists...unfortunatly, without C*C* they didn't have a songwriter anymore either, he had also been the group's songwriter. Brett was songwriter too, but the songs he wrote were the ballads "Every Rose Has It's Thorn", "Something to Believe In", and the sad un-Poison like lulaby "Life Goes On"...Brett is a great singer and a wonderful songwriter, but fans who liked Poison for the heavy metal, didn't want anything to do with Native Tounge when it came out...Poison's only non-heavy metal album, an entire album of bluesy ballards written by Brett. It sold less than a million copies worl wide and they lost their record contract.
Meanwhile C*C*, with his ever growing ego, took the world by storm...literally. Poison was not his first group. He's started out with Screaming Mimi, and when they broke up, moved on to Stryper, but quit with them because they decided to become a Christian Rock Group, that's when he joined up with Poison to replace their original guitar play Matt Smith. He figured he'd gotten into a bigger band each time, Poison was a big as any band could ever get, so he'd go out on his own now...who needs a band. He did a solo gig, but before making an album, fought so baddly with his new back up group that they all quit. C*C* was quickly becoming a holy terror. Fans, friends, and family began begging him to get help with his drug addiction, but he was in denial over it and retaliated with a new group called Needle Park. Needle Park actually stayed together long enough to get into a recording studio, and record a movie soundtrack. Only one song actually made it onto the soundtrack, and they fought and the band quit once again...sometime around this point it hit Cecil, that maybe he was the problem and not all the bands he'd been with...maybe it was his wild temper chaseing people away from him...and it hit him for the first time that he didn't use to be like this, that it was the drugs making him act that way. Cecil dropped out of the public eye after that, got himself into an institute and got help. It took 8 years for him to get off the drugs, during which time devoloped an obsessive eating habit, and went from underweight to overweight. He became a depressed recluse after that, moved in with his parants and was not heard of for quite some time. Than suddenly without warning he was back....aperently while Brett and C*C* had not spoken in years, Rikki had kept kept in contact with him, and upon hearing that Cecil had been off drugs for some time now, told him that Poison was recording a new album Power To the People, needed a guitarist and would C*C* come back? C*C* rejoined the group for that one album, much against Brett's will---they still were not speaking to each other, what a recording session that must have been!:O Brett only let C*C* back in the group because Rikki had said it would be good for their image, and it was, with C*C* back in the group, fans came back and sales went up again. So they went on tour. Cecil says it was the worst tour they ever did, he and Brett fought the whole time, neither one could wait to be away from the other.
Cecil than left Poison again and started Samantha 7, a group that by most standards was a total flop, but is still going today. Poison regrouped again to make Hollyweird, and once again Rikki called back C*C*, this time would be a wierd switch: he was gonna be singing lead vocals for Poison!....Anyone who's ever heard Poison will instantly recognize Brett's deep slinky croon....When I first heard the Hollyweird album I didn't know about the switch in lead singers...YOW!...now, C*C* can play a mean guitar, no one questions his ability to play guitar, but wither or not he can sing is debatable. Poison fans were split down the middle over it, half loving C*C* on lead, and half screaming what the hell is that high pitched tuneless idiot doing singing lead? There was actually a more practical reason for C*C* on lead...Brett's failing health has never been a secret, and he's not supposed to be driving a car. All of Brett's fans were of course shocked, when he was in a car accident that almost killed him. Brett and C*C* have since made up, and now the 2 of them take turns singing lead for Poison, and while I've never seen a Poison show, I'm told they are much less wild today, also considered tame. They do more special appearances at bars now rather than the stressful stage shows. Fans are glad to have Cecil back in the group, but like always he's ruled by his wierd obsessions, and now his latest one is, as a result of his fight with drugs, followed by his fight with overeating, he's become a chocolate loving health nut that runs 6 miles a day, with a goal of 20 miles a day.
And Poison in Maine once again...last month's show was cancled due to Brett's health, but was redone yesterday, and now today they are leaving Maine:( .
now that Poison's gone (and I'm home more often!;)) I can get back to Scrooge and comics again.
My 'Topi came back last night. He's been gone for 6 days now, ever since the lawyer came over to inspect the house...the court assigned a lawyer to work for the 3J's, neutral of my mom or dad...he's suppose to interview them find out what they want to do, etc, inspect the house and Wayne's apartment, assign a counselor to talk to the 3Js 😞 (counselors are not good by my book--be there, done that as a teenager, hated it, stopped talking because of it)...anyways while he was here this week, Utopia ran out (nervouse little Siamese, we haven't had a visitor to the house since the police guards during the house/court battle over 2 years ago, so he hasn't seen any strangers in a long time.) he ran out and into the woods out bac, and we hadn't seen him since. Looked everywhere for him, but where ever he went he was hiding good. He came back last night, and has gone super-obsessive, not letting me out of his sight now...every move I make he's right there, tripping me, crying, howling, he sis on my shoulder when I stand up, curls up on my lap when I sit down...last night he slept on my head. There's no mistaking that he's glad to be home, I don't think he's ever gonna set a paw outside again. :^O .
My 'Topi came back last night. He's been gone for 6 days now, ever since the lawyer came over to inspect the house...the court assigned a lawyer to work for the 3J's, neutral of my mom or dad...he's suppose to interview them find out what they want to do, etc, inspect the house and Wayne's apartment, assign a counselor to talk to the 3Js 😞 (counselors are not good by my book--be there, done that as a teenager, hated it, stopped talking because of it)...anyways while he was here this week, Utopia ran out (nervouse little Siamese, we haven't had a visitor to the house since the police guards during the house/court battle over 2 years ago, so he hasn't seen any strangers in a long time.) he ran out and into the woods out bac, and we hadn't seen him since. Looked everywhere for him, but where ever he went he was hiding good. He came back last night, and has gone super-obsessive, not letting me out of his sight now...every move I make he's right there, tripping me, crying, howling, he sis on my shoulder when I stand up, curls up on my lap when I sit down...last night he slept on my head. There's no mistaking that he's glad to be home, I don't think he's ever gonna set a paw outside again. :^O .
I remember waay back in school, which was waay back since my mom pulled my out of school at age 8 saying that Satan controlled the government, the government controlled the schools, and it was the schools job to brain way children into serving Satan. But the 4 years I did attend school from age 5 to 8 I remember that each Thanksgiving we had to write a list of things we were thankful for, so I figured why not make one to post here?
Things I am Thankful For:
Life:
On thanksgiving I think about life and death a lot. I’ll explain why at the end of this list…death and Thanksgiving go hand in hand in my family, this is a hard day to find a reason to be thankful.
If you observe everything around you the way I do, you’ll realize how close we are to death each and every day…. at every intersection there is always a car that jumps the light and goes before it’s green or runs the light and goes after it’s turned red… in the past 30 years I’ve been in 12 car accidents that were caused by red light runners and jumpers… each time we missed the car that caused the accident, thanks to my dad’s quick set the car into a spin and halt action (he should be a stunt driver, he is good), we end up rear ended by the car behind us, that didn’t see the light jumper in time to stop.
And I don’t know how many times we are in a traffic jam on Rt One, waiting for a multi car pile up to be towed away… speeders, drunk drivers, over medicated drivers, tired truckers, and light jumpers are always the cause of those accidents, people often die on Rt One… there are a 4 or 5 white crosses every few miles… it is both he longest and deadlist road in the State. and a road we travel on almost every day as our street is off it. So the first thing on my list is always Life…. My life, my families life, all life. Taken in the odds of death by car on that road, we are very lucky to say we drive that road every day and lived to tell the tale.
My Family:
My three brothers are the greatest thing to ever happen, they are more than just my three brothers, they are also my three best friends. We do everything together. I am ever thankful for them.
My Dad, crazy, animal loving, mountain man, hermit that he is, my thrill driving stunt man want-a-be Dad, is the greatest Dad this world ever saw. I am a ever thankful for him.
My Mom, totally wacko, usually to lost in the world of prescription drugs and singing in bars to remember to spend time with her children even today on Thanksgiving, I still am thankful to have her, in her own strange way she has taught me to see life through the eyes of patience.
My animals:
In my lifetime more than 5,000 pets have called this place home, some for their entire lives, others for just a few weeks of recovery, others, spent their senior years in sanctuary here have an early life of hardship, many wild babies who’s mothers have been killed by cars, have grown up here and released to the wild after reaching adulthood… and no drought thousands more will come and go over the years. Two wild babies have stayed on here, now 7 years old… a Pigeon and a Siamese Kitten, every time I am here typing these posts to you, they are here at the computer with me, my constant companions…Pidgie and Utopia.
The State of Maine:
I love Maine and all it’s wild beauty. I love the natives and their weird anti-social ways. I love the rocky coast lines and the fishing villages. I love the ancient old growth trees. I love the friendly French people who always seem to be bubbling over with joy and happiness. I love the tourists that come here every summer for our beaches, ever fall for our foliage, and every winter for our snow, and year round for antique shops and visiting historic houses.
My grandmother.:
Throughout my childhood I spent more time with Grammy than anyone. A wild schizophrenic, her mind never developed past the mentality of a 4 or 5 year old, her sense of logic and reason was beyond comprehension to most people, and she was shunned by all but 3 of her 12 children, and all but 9 of her more than 200 grandchildren. She lived in a world of butterflies, birds, animals, Halloween pumpkins, Santa Clause, Betty Boop, Miss Piggy, angels, and Jesus. She lived to celebrate every holiday. Holidays without Grammy are not the same… for every holiday we each received a card on each day of the month until the holiday arrived…not normal cards, but the biggest, gaudiest, brightest colored, often pop-up, and usual Disney cards, with their insides totally plastered with bright, glittering, sparkly, fuzzy, puffy, and/or scratch and sniff stickers.
Her house was decorated inside and out year around… 3 or 4 Christmas trees throughout the house, decorated with black cats, witches, jack-o-lanterns, Betty Boop, and lots and lots of tinsel. Tissue paper turkeys, Easter bunnies, and shamrocks in the windows, Pictures of Santa on every wall… Grammy’s house was a magical holiday play land 365 days a year. Every day was a holiday there. It was Grammy who taught me that Thanksgiving was the day to hug turkeys not eat them.
Grammy travels to 6 continents, and over 200 countries in her life time… it was her goal to visit each and every country in the world. She was a very vocal animal rights activist, a vegan to the utmost extreme, and she did more to help the homeless of Biddeford than anyone else ever has. As a child she was an orphan sent from one foster home to the next in a time when foster home children were nothing more than free farm hands and abused like slaves, the result was her activism for children’s rights, which lasted until the day she died. A Kickapoo Indian, she embraced her culture by living at one with nature and become a very spiritual person, taking up the arts of a “weather witch” shaman, though not a Wiccan, her lifestyle would today be considered as such. Grammy was an active promoter of Jesus as well, preaching his words to anyone who would listen; her religion of choice was the Seventh Day Adventist, because of their stand on animal rights, children’s rights, veganism, and Saturday worship… the rest of their teachings she often debated with her pastor.
She never drove a car and walked every where. She walked from Biddeford to Old Orchard Beach almost every week, and for those who don’t know how far that is…it’s one hell of a walk. Before she broken her hip in the early 1990’s, she roller skated every where she needed to go.
This was her favorite time of year… fall foliage season, when we, she and my family, drove across Maine, it was a vacation tradition with us, to stop everything we were doing, pack the car with food, and visit a different town in Maine, each and every day, from September through November… at one time or another we have visited every town in Maine south of the Hanesville Woods, and nearly every town in New Hampshire.
The last six years of her life she became less active and became to try repeatedly to reopen communications with her stuck-up holier than thou Mormon children… but try as she might, they continued to snub her, accusing her of being a child of Satan, saying she was possessed with an evil spirit, and telling her that the sooner she died and burned in Hell the happier they would be. They said that if she was dead they could force her to join the Mormon church by “baptism for the dead”. They told her that dead, she wouldn’t embarrass them with her child like ways, her outlandish cloths, her animals, her sinful lack of eating meat (the only gifts she ever received from them were each year they’ sarcastically send her gift baskets of ham, sausages, and chicken), her un-holy constant talk about Jesus (they say that as Mormons they are to saintly to call Jesus by his name…but I don’t remember the Mormon church ever teaching that). Their cruelty broke her heart, but she didn’t want their pity, she wanted their love, and so, I alone knew she had breast cancer, she said of over 240 children and grandchildren, I alone she could talk to, I alone she could trust.
Her last year was the hardest, the cancer spread to her liver, and her bloodstream, she lost the ability to walk, the thing she had done the most in her life. Me and my three (than infant) brothers stayed with her. Only J1 was old enough to remember Grammy, but just barely. Those last few months I cooked, cleaned, and feed my grandmother. All the while she continued without end writing letters and calling on the phone, begging her children and grandchildren to visit her. Finally one week before Thanksiving she invited all of them to Thankgiving Dinner at her house…telling them she’d even let them cook a turkey if that’d get them to come…on the phone with her favorite son, he laughed at her request…my Dad in a rage took the phone and yelled “If you don’t come now you’ll never see her again, the doctors say she’s only got a few days left.” than hung up on them. That one uncle was on the next plane to Maine, soon followed, by the son and daughter, that lived here in Maine (both lived only a few streets away for Grammy), and one daughter from Utah also came….no one else. She died 1:00 AM in the morning on Thanksgiving Day, never getting her wish to see her children and grandchildren one last time. Those that came were the pooest in the family, and could not afford a funeral, together all we could afford was a plot next to her baby that had died so many years ago. We could not afford a coffin or a headstone, and she was buried in a cardboard box. With only us and the few sons and daughters that showed up. Less than 12 people, in a family of 246+. Later, out of grief at not coming when she had asked, one son bought a tomb stone which says “Have I told you lately that I love you?”, saying that were ever she was he hoped that she could forgive him. It was a quite a contrast to all the expensive pomp and circumstance of Grandpa’s extravagant Mormon funeral last summer. Grammy’s last Thanksgiving was a day of rejoicing for the Mormons of the family, and exactly 6 months later they celebrated as the baptism of the dead was preformed in the Salt Lake Temple. Grammy was so sweet and gentle, so innocent and loving, her mind never reached adult hood, she was never able to live or act like an adult, living forever in the blissful mind of a child, it was her simple ways that I loved her for, and yet it was her simple ways that her children were ashamed to admit they were related to her for, shame that over the years grew to outright hate.
Today those same relatives are ashamed of me, like Grammy, they call me the child of Satan, they say that when Grammy died her evil spirit possessed me. Unlike them I was never ashamed of Grammy, unlike them I learned to accept her for who she was. Grammy was for many years, my best friend, and I am ever thankful that I knew her, for she taught me to look at the world through the eyes of a child, to enjoy the simple things in life…the flowers, the trees, the rain, God’s glorious creation, she taught me to treat everyone as equals…wither they be rich businessmen, the homeless on the streets, animal, or child…she belied that Jesus loved them all just the same good or bad and that we should strive to love as Jesus did. I am who I am today because I had a schizophrenic grandmother who loved everything and everyone with a childlike innocence, and took the time to find happiness in everything in life be it good or bad.
This entire post is dedicated to and written in memory of ..
Eva Viola Atwater
Mother to many; Friend to all.
February 21, 1921 - Thanksgiving Day 1994
.
Things I am Thankful For:
Life:
On thanksgiving I think about life and death a lot. I’ll explain why at the end of this list…death and Thanksgiving go hand in hand in my family, this is a hard day to find a reason to be thankful.
If you observe everything around you the way I do, you’ll realize how close we are to death each and every day…. at every intersection there is always a car that jumps the light and goes before it’s green or runs the light and goes after it’s turned red… in the past 30 years I’ve been in 12 car accidents that were caused by red light runners and jumpers… each time we missed the car that caused the accident, thanks to my dad’s quick set the car into a spin and halt action (he should be a stunt driver, he is good), we end up rear ended by the car behind us, that didn’t see the light jumper in time to stop.
And I don’t know how many times we are in a traffic jam on Rt One, waiting for a multi car pile up to be towed away… speeders, drunk drivers, over medicated drivers, tired truckers, and light jumpers are always the cause of those accidents, people often die on Rt One… there are a 4 or 5 white crosses every few miles… it is both he longest and deadlist road in the State. and a road we travel on almost every day as our street is off it. So the first thing on my list is always Life…. My life, my families life, all life. Taken in the odds of death by car on that road, we are very lucky to say we drive that road every day and lived to tell the tale.
My Family:
My three brothers are the greatest thing to ever happen, they are more than just my three brothers, they are also my three best friends. We do everything together. I am ever thankful for them.
My Dad, crazy, animal loving, mountain man, hermit that he is, my thrill driving stunt man want-a-be Dad, is the greatest Dad this world ever saw. I am a ever thankful for him.
My Mom, totally wacko, usually to lost in the world of prescription drugs and singing in bars to remember to spend time with her children even today on Thanksgiving, I still am thankful to have her, in her own strange way she has taught me to see life through the eyes of patience.
My animals:
In my lifetime more than 5,000 pets have called this place home, some for their entire lives, others for just a few weeks of recovery, others, spent their senior years in sanctuary here have an early life of hardship, many wild babies who’s mothers have been killed by cars, have grown up here and released to the wild after reaching adulthood… and no drought thousands more will come and go over the years. Two wild babies have stayed on here, now 7 years old… a Pigeon and a Siamese Kitten, every time I am here typing these posts to you, they are here at the computer with me, my constant companions…Pidgie and Utopia.
The State of Maine:
I love Maine and all it’s wild beauty. I love the natives and their weird anti-social ways. I love the rocky coast lines and the fishing villages. I love the ancient old growth trees. I love the friendly French people who always seem to be bubbling over with joy and happiness. I love the tourists that come here every summer for our beaches, ever fall for our foliage, and every winter for our snow, and year round for antique shops and visiting historic houses.
My grandmother.:
Throughout my childhood I spent more time with Grammy than anyone. A wild schizophrenic, her mind never developed past the mentality of a 4 or 5 year old, her sense of logic and reason was beyond comprehension to most people, and she was shunned by all but 3 of her 12 children, and all but 9 of her more than 200 grandchildren. She lived in a world of butterflies, birds, animals, Halloween pumpkins, Santa Clause, Betty Boop, Miss Piggy, angels, and Jesus. She lived to celebrate every holiday. Holidays without Grammy are not the same… for every holiday we each received a card on each day of the month until the holiday arrived…not normal cards, but the biggest, gaudiest, brightest colored, often pop-up, and usual Disney cards, with their insides totally plastered with bright, glittering, sparkly, fuzzy, puffy, and/or scratch and sniff stickers.
Her house was decorated inside and out year around… 3 or 4 Christmas trees throughout the house, decorated with black cats, witches, jack-o-lanterns, Betty Boop, and lots and lots of tinsel. Tissue paper turkeys, Easter bunnies, and shamrocks in the windows, Pictures of Santa on every wall… Grammy’s house was a magical holiday play land 365 days a year. Every day was a holiday there. It was Grammy who taught me that Thanksgiving was the day to hug turkeys not eat them.
Grammy travels to 6 continents, and over 200 countries in her life time… it was her goal to visit each and every country in the world. She was a very vocal animal rights activist, a vegan to the utmost extreme, and she did more to help the homeless of Biddeford than anyone else ever has. As a child she was an orphan sent from one foster home to the next in a time when foster home children were nothing more than free farm hands and abused like slaves, the result was her activism for children’s rights, which lasted until the day she died. A Kickapoo Indian, she embraced her culture by living at one with nature and become a very spiritual person, taking up the arts of a “weather witch” shaman, though not a Wiccan, her lifestyle would today be considered as such. Grammy was an active promoter of Jesus as well, preaching his words to anyone who would listen; her religion of choice was the Seventh Day Adventist, because of their stand on animal rights, children’s rights, veganism, and Saturday worship… the rest of their teachings she often debated with her pastor.
She never drove a car and walked every where. She walked from Biddeford to Old Orchard Beach almost every week, and for those who don’t know how far that is…it’s one hell of a walk. Before she broken her hip in the early 1990’s, she roller skated every where she needed to go.
This was her favorite time of year… fall foliage season, when we, she and my family, drove across Maine, it was a vacation tradition with us, to stop everything we were doing, pack the car with food, and visit a different town in Maine, each and every day, from September through November… at one time or another we have visited every town in Maine south of the Hanesville Woods, and nearly every town in New Hampshire.
The last six years of her life she became less active and became to try repeatedly to reopen communications with her stuck-up holier than thou Mormon children… but try as she might, they continued to snub her, accusing her of being a child of Satan, saying she was possessed with an evil spirit, and telling her that the sooner she died and burned in Hell the happier they would be. They said that if she was dead they could force her to join the Mormon church by “baptism for the dead”. They told her that dead, she wouldn’t embarrass them with her child like ways, her outlandish cloths, her animals, her sinful lack of eating meat (the only gifts she ever received from them were each year they’ sarcastically send her gift baskets of ham, sausages, and chicken), her un-holy constant talk about Jesus (they say that as Mormons they are to saintly to call Jesus by his name…but I don’t remember the Mormon church ever teaching that). Their cruelty broke her heart, but she didn’t want their pity, she wanted their love, and so, I alone knew she had breast cancer, she said of over 240 children and grandchildren, I alone she could talk to, I alone she could trust.
Her last year was the hardest, the cancer spread to her liver, and her bloodstream, she lost the ability to walk, the thing she had done the most in her life. Me and my three (than infant) brothers stayed with her. Only J1 was old enough to remember Grammy, but just barely. Those last few months I cooked, cleaned, and feed my grandmother. All the while she continued without end writing letters and calling on the phone, begging her children and grandchildren to visit her. Finally one week before Thanksiving she invited all of them to Thankgiving Dinner at her house…telling them she’d even let them cook a turkey if that’d get them to come…on the phone with her favorite son, he laughed at her request…my Dad in a rage took the phone and yelled “If you don’t come now you’ll never see her again, the doctors say she’s only got a few days left.” than hung up on them. That one uncle was on the next plane to Maine, soon followed, by the son and daughter, that lived here in Maine (both lived only a few streets away for Grammy), and one daughter from Utah also came….no one else. She died 1:00 AM in the morning on Thanksgiving Day, never getting her wish to see her children and grandchildren one last time. Those that came were the pooest in the family, and could not afford a funeral, together all we could afford was a plot next to her baby that had died so many years ago. We could not afford a coffin or a headstone, and she was buried in a cardboard box. With only us and the few sons and daughters that showed up. Less than 12 people, in a family of 246+. Later, out of grief at not coming when she had asked, one son bought a tomb stone which says “Have I told you lately that I love you?”, saying that were ever she was he hoped that she could forgive him. It was a quite a contrast to all the expensive pomp and circumstance of Grandpa’s extravagant Mormon funeral last summer. Grammy’s last Thanksgiving was a day of rejoicing for the Mormons of the family, and exactly 6 months later they celebrated as the baptism of the dead was preformed in the Salt Lake Temple. Grammy was so sweet and gentle, so innocent and loving, her mind never reached adult hood, she was never able to live or act like an adult, living forever in the blissful mind of a child, it was her simple ways that I loved her for, and yet it was her simple ways that her children were ashamed to admit they were related to her for, shame that over the years grew to outright hate.
Today those same relatives are ashamed of me, like Grammy, they call me the child of Satan, they say that when Grammy died her evil spirit possessed me. Unlike them I was never ashamed of Grammy, unlike them I learned to accept her for who she was. Grammy was for many years, my best friend, and I am ever thankful that I knew her, for she taught me to look at the world through the eyes of a child, to enjoy the simple things in life…the flowers, the trees, the rain, God’s glorious creation, she taught me to treat everyone as equals…wither they be rich businessmen, the homeless on the streets, animal, or child…she belied that Jesus loved them all just the same good or bad and that we should strive to love as Jesus did. I am who I am today because I had a schizophrenic grandmother who loved everything and everyone with a childlike innocence, and took the time to find happiness in everything in life be it good or bad.
This entire post is dedicated to and written in memory of ..
Eva Viola Atwater
Mother to many; Friend to all.
February 21, 1921 - Thanksgiving Day 1994
hi Ek
nice post...:-)
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went junk store shopping today...
got the walt disney's mickey mouse cook book
for 10cents...guess what!? scrooge receipes :^O
nice post...:-)
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went junk store shopping today...
got the walt disney's mickey mouse cook book
for 10cents...guess what!? scrooge receipes :^O
{{{{{{ant}}}}}}}
I'm gonna have to look for one of those...:-x
ain't seen you around for ages! how's things going on the Cell? .
I'm gonna have to look for one of those...:-x
ain't seen you around for ages! how's things going on the Cell? .
you know, Sataurday, while we were in Target, getting catfood, I realized I did someting really stupid earlier this month...in fact it's prob'ly the most idiotic thing I've ever done...you all know I'm Scrooge crazy right??? of course you do! You all know I've been just dieing to get my hands on the DuckTales DVD...spent the last several years writing to Disney, protesting, petitioning...doing everything in my power to get them to release the DVD...than season 1 comes out and I'm all through the roof happy about it, gonna go out and buy this thing soon as it hits the stores right??? yeah right...than C*C* DeVille makes an unannouced guest apearance (or rather hideout from his fans???) here in Maine for a month and I just about kicked Scrooge out the window, totally forgot about my poor old duck, and went totally nuts over probly the only real live human guy I really like enough to go crazy over....that was about a week before the DuckTales DVD hit the stores...would you believe that I totally forgot about it's release??? Than 2 days ago we are in Target and...HEY! There's DuckTales...it's out! When did that happen? Why did I forget to buy it?...Oh yeah, that was the week C*C* showed up...WOW! I forgot Scrooge! I didn't think that was possible! Oh well, that's been corrected, with C*C*'s back in LA, I've now had time to remember to buy DuckTales DVD season 1. And so now I have it, a few weeks late of it's release, but who cares.
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Okay, since I started this thread last Spring, I've had nearly 2 dozen posters ask either by posting or emailing...what is the title of this thread mean...as I've told you all twighlightmanor was my old posting ID and mustangrockstar was a fellow poster, who has since seemed to have dissapeared off eBay..oh well.
that explaination has brought about father questions...most often..."What does twighlightmanor mean?"...
Okay, so I keep telling people that it's the name of the house from one of my books right? I've also said I had drawings of it, but that they were in storage....in bigfalls attic...well, this past month bigfall has been bringing back much of the items, and among those items included my drawings and illustrations for the Twighlight Manor and it's inhabitants...so finally after nearly a year of explaining and reexplaining, I can finally show you a picture of The Twighlight Manor...
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that explaination has brought about father questions...most often..."What does twighlightmanor mean?"...
Okay, so I keep telling people that it's the name of the house from one of my books right? I've also said I had drawings of it, but that they were in storage....in bigfalls attic...well, this past month bigfall has been bringing back much of the items, and among those items included my drawings and illustrations for the Twighlight Manor and it's inhabitants...so finally after nearly a year of explaining and reexplaining, I can finally show you a picture of The Twighlight Manor...
I'm afraid this picture was much larger to begin with and had to be reduced to fit the screen, and thus loses much of it's detail.
BTW, for those who have further asked..."What does EelKat mean?" EelKat is the name of one of the characters in the book, and you can see her picture just below in my sig... .
BTW, for those who have further asked..."What does EelKat mean?" EelKat is the name of one of the characters in the book, and you can see her picture just below in my sig... .
