Month: July 2016

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Stacy

Here I sit, contemplating my words, should I measure my speech or go all out? All out it is. 

I really never thought I would get to write this, for 34 years this day has caused me deep grief. Today it gives me great joy. 

Happy Birthday Stacy,

34 years ago today I thought I had given up all rights to tell you happy birthday. To tell you that your birth was not a cause for pain but a reason for celebrating. 

The pain this day used to cause me was not due to you being born but being separated from you. 

I know without a doubt I made the right decision, allowing a stable, steady couple raise you. The thought never stemmed the missing you, especially on this day. 

I’m incredibly fortunate that you chose to seek me out when you were older. I’ll be forever grateful you did. 

I’m proud of the adult you are, even though I played no part in getting you there. 

You’re a great human, an amazing mother and an incredible woman. 

Happy Birthday!! 

Angela

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Angie Thoughts

I haven’t written a lot lately because I am disheartened, no, not disheartened, not sad, angry. I am angry, I am angry at all of the murders, the slaughter of our police, men and women. I am angry that instead of the focus being on our freedoms stripped away people are more interested in voting in a woman to the presidency. Rather than look at her record, her really bad record, her criminal activity, her dishonesty when it comes to women’s issues. Her disingenuousness when it comes to the military, she is so anti-military and law enforcement her greeting to one of them saying good morning was fuck you.
The way she defended a man and got him off for the rape of a twelve-year-old girl and years later laughed at how she knew he was guilty, but she didn’t care.
The way she vilified the women her husband sexually assaulted (allegedly), had multiple affairs with and behaved in a predatory way with. The things she has said about them, why are feminist not up in arms?
Let’s talk about plagiarism since that seems to be the news d’jour; in 2008 Hillary Clinton plagiarized Senator John Edwards on multiple occasions during her failed presidential campaign. Michelle Obama plagiarized Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals during her 2008 DNC speech. Where was the outrage? The memes making fun of them?
Meliania Trump’s speech used common words to describe her childhood and how she feels about this country. No, scratch that, her speech writers used common words to describe her childhood and how she feels about this country and her husband.
I watched her speech, I thought she was poised, well-spoken and thoughtful. She came across as genuine, someone who worked to come to this country and became a citizen, the right way. She didn’t come illegally, and she is viciously attacked for it.
This country is in shambles, there is literally fighting in the streets, our Commander in Chief has facilitated the hatred for law-enforcement. That is a fact. Now he is trying to backtrack.
He also will not call certain attacks what they are, Radical Islamist Terrorists are tearing up this country and the world. He called the attack in San Bernardino violence in the work place. Violence in the workplace, let that sink in for a moment.
Here was a husband and wife, the wife that we, as a government did not vet at all when she came here on a fiancé visa. If we had, we would have found the address she gave on the application was fake. We would have trolled her Facebook posts and seen where she pledged allegiance to ISIS. Instead, we waved her in, come on in, wreak havoc on us, kill a few of us.
Disgusting, that is what it is, and criminal, there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to halt all immigration from countries that actively want to kill us and our way of life until we have a vetting system in place that will not allow Radical Islamist Terrorists in.
There is nothing wrong with not wanting ILLEGAL ALIENS crossing our borders ILLEGALLY, there is nothing racist about that. NOTHING.
There is something wrong with wanting to bring over hundreds of thousands of refugees when we have homelessness of our citizens. When we have children going hungry in our country, when we have veterans living in the street and in shelters.
There is something wrong when our government does not put our men and women who have fought for this country first, above ILLEGAL ALIENS and Refugees from countries who want to kill us. There is nothing wrong with telling people who want to come here that our Constitution is above Sharia Law. And if they do not feel that way they do not need to come here.
There is nothing wrong with not wanting a president who wants to do away with the 2nd amendment and I’m guessing wants to quell the 1st as well.
There nothing wrong with me not wanting a woman who is crooked, evil, vile and is against women.
One who says Margaret Sanger is her hero, Margaret Sanger, a blatant racist who created Planned Parenthood to weed out black people and poor people.
In her own words:
Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. Page 12.
We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities.  The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.

Me again, no plagiarism here. If this is her hero, then who is she trying to get rid of?
I am pro-life, I make no secret of that, I am not for the extinction of any ethnic group.
I am not voting for Trump because I love him, I am voting for him because our country cannot handle another 4 to 8 years of not naming an enemy, of bad economic understanding, of destabilizing our stand in this world, of weakening our military, of complete rhetoric against our law-enforcement and saying that all white people are to blame for the woes of this country.
If anyone hasn’t noticed, Hillary is as white as they come, in fact the Democratic party only gave you white people to choose from. They ran the gamut, old, crazy, criminal and very, very white.
The Republican party gave you choices, white, African-American, Hispanic, old, young, in-between.
They in fact gave a choice of an African-American who had risen from poverty, who had sought an education, an education that enabled him to help heal people. And you shunned him! You called him names, you made fun of a man that embodies everything right with this country.
Someone who took advantage of educational opportunities, someone who worked his way out of poverty. A Godly man, a man of character, for what?
A crazy old man and a criminal woman. Interesting.
And now all you can do is focus on a few words that are everyday common words, from a woman not running for office.
Once again, this is my world, my views, and as always, any hate mail can go to angie@angieworld.com.

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Humans

I saw something, for once not on Facebook, it struck me, the person said that the five slain officers were overshadowing the civilian deaths that had recently taken place.
I admit I sat there for a long time just looking at it, the words, the sheer audacity, the sheer non-understanding of why these five deaths are resonating with the nation. No, the world, they ran into the line of fire to save the people protesting them. How does that not express the profound meaning that their lives had? That their deaths have? They ran towards gun-fire to save people who protested them.
I have seen a lot of things recently spouting “race” as if ones’ race is based on skin tone. It’s not, we are the human race, created in God’s image. He did not create different humans with different skin tones, He didn’t say “you know what, I’m going to separate these people I have created by color”. He didn’t color code us. He created man in his own image and saw it was good.
Good. We were created good, prejudice is not inherent, it is learned. I was taught all of my life to judge a person by the content of their character not by the outward appearance. A hard lesson for me, oh, not by skin tone, apparel. I judged by what a person wore, their hair style, shoes, oh my, yes the shoes. My poor mother, she really had her work cut out for her with that one. I remember one Sunday, in Owasso, OK at the First Freewill Baptist Church, a woman came in with jeans.
WHAT!? This had to be 1979 or around there, I was aghast, one simply did not do that in 1979. As soon as we got in the car to go home I just could not contain myself. The judgements flew out of my mouth at a rapid rate. I could not believe someone, much less a woman, would come to church in jeans.
I’ll never forget the look on my mothers’ face, it wasn’t anger, it was sadness and disappointment. She looked at me for a long time and said Angie show me in the bible where it says don’t come to church in jeans. Or for that fact where it says all ye women come in a dress.
I sat there in that back seat and just stared, then I said well you won’t let me do it, she said no, I won’t. Here’s why, when we go to God’s house we wear our best, that’s why it’s called our Sunday best. You are very fortunate that your Sunday best is stylish, nice, pressed and what we, as your parents, deem appropriate.
Not everyone has those kinds of garments, did you ever once, in the middle of your judgement think that the jeans were her Sunday best? Those are the best jeans she owns, they are clean, no holes and fit, her shirt was nice, clean, pressed and she was presentable. She was dressed in her Sunday best and here you sit, judging her. I never forgot that, disappointing my mom it was up there with disappointing God. I learned a strong lesson that day, it is one, I admit, I still struggle with.
To judge a person by something they cannot control is idiocy, people cannot control the color of their skin. The pigment they are born with, it is who they are, that is not something we should be judging on.
No matter what color your skin is, if it is white, peach, ghostly white (Irishman shout out there), brown, light brown, dark brown, black, olive (Tammi shout out there), tan, red, yellow or any other color that can be found in a child’s Crayola box, one should not be judged for it.
Before my life in Owasso, the one I don’t talk about too much, I lived in Oklahoma City, as a matter of fact, I lived in a really tough neighborhood. Capitol Hill, if you are from there, then you know, it’s rough. Or it was when I was a kid.
In the 1970’s Oklahoma began desegregating, I know, 10 years behind everyone else.
There was a good mixture of skin tones in my elementary school, we had everyone, white, black, brown, red, everyone. You know what, no fights based on skin color, I did have a fight with a boy named Kevin, he was my skin tone. He made me mad and I hit him with my lunch box. My metal, partridge family with the thermos in, lunch box. Mr. Jackson was our principal and I went to see him fairly often, only once did he call my grandparents. Never anyone else.
Did I mention he was black? A lot of my teachers were as well, I never thought anything about it. Skin color was never mentioned and as children no one cared. At all. There was one incident, but I really can’t talk about it here and it’s not “race” related it was more an explanation gone wrong issue. And yes, it had to do with me.
When I got to Middle School, Capitol Hill Middle School, things had changed, it was not an equal mixture of skin tones, it was roughly 75% black, 15% white and the rest Indian, I am using these terms due to the fact that is what we used then. Please take them in context to the time frame.
In middle school, still no issues, no one made any reference to skin color, a lot of classes, as I look back, I realize I was the only one in there that had a pale appearance. No one held it against me, I wasn’t called names. I was confused when I watched the nightly news, as it was talking about “race” riots, minorities and things of that nature. In my school, I was the minority, so I really didn’t understand.
Then I moved to a different part of Oklahoma City and started going to Jefferson Middle School, way different demographic, back to more of an equal balance of skin tones. Here is the funny story from there, I saw my friend Paulette from CHMS and we were thrilled to see each other. I said I didn’t know you guys were going to go here! She had a twin brother named Paul. She said yes, her mom and dad wanted to get out of the old neighborhood. She then said, and I’ll never forget it, there were too many black people there. I looked at her for a minute and said Paulette, you know your black right? She laughed and said that is what she said to her mom and dad. She said she really never got an explanation for that one.
Oh and before you think oh they must have been too light skinned for “the community” at that time. Not the case, her family was very proud of the fact that they were pure, no Indian and no White. I didn’t know what that meant until later, all I knew was Paulette and I were friends, her family welcomed me into their home and mine welcomed her into ours.
Then the move to Owasso, now, I have to tell you, Owasso was a shock to my system, a huge shock, on so many levels. Gone were the museums, the symphony, no orchestra at school, I was so depressed about moving I didn’t want to join the basketball team, I had played in OKC, I didn’t want to join the band, seriously, I was a cello player. No cellos in Owasso at that time, also, not a lot of people that didn’t look like me.
I remember the first day of school there, my BFF Tammi and I went, we took the bus, spent all day going from class to class. Then after school, we waited for our bus, I couldn’t take it anymore, I whispered what did they do with the black people, she said I don’t know, but don’t say anything because they might do away with us. Tammi came from Tulsa, huge diversity there as well.
Owasso is much more diverse now, however it wasn’t then, and it was a shock to my system.
But I still was being raised in a household where you did not judge based on outer appearances, especially based on something you cannot change.
Something has to give in this country, if you are judging me based on my pigmentation then you are prejudice, if someone is judging you based on your pigmentation they are prejudice.
I am a regionalist, I admit that, I judge on what region of the country you are from. I states, well, I am not overly fond of I states. I am not going to say what those are here, as I would get hate mail. Just know, that the job I have, I get to see how people behave when they think they can get away with speaking to humans any kind of way. I think we all know what that means.
Every day, I work side by side with people who do not look like me, we all get along, we all joke with one another, help one another and share knowledge and experience. We don’t base our opinion of someone’s ability to do their job based on the pigmentation of their skin.
We are one race, we are the human race, God made one race, humans, until the aliens come, and they totally are, but for now, on this big blue marble, we are it. Human. We might come in different colors, different shapes, sizes and have different thought processes, but we are all one. And if you are a Christian or even Jewish, then we are all descendants of Adam and Eve. We are brothers and sisters; we all need to remember that.
I do not judge a situation based on a snippet of a video someone took with their phone, from an angle that doesn’t show everything that happened. I do believe that the media and politicians and people who are in power want to keep everything stirred up. They want to keep humans fighting over pigmentation.
Just stop, stop and take a good long look at what the people in power don’t want you to see. Take time out to forge friendships with people of differences. Physical, emotional, intelligence and personality, those differences in us make the whole.
I’ll leave you with the words of Downtown Julie Brown, peace, love and gossip.
As always, if you have any comments or questions you can direct them to angie@angieworld.com

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Happy Birthday Alex

Today is my youngest son’s birthday, I had to actually do the math because there is no way he can be 25.
Alex,
I am so proud of you and all that you are doing. Your thought process always astounds me. You don’t simply go from a to b, you take routes people would never think to take.
Watching you becoming the man you are has been a privilege.
The conversations we have are always thought-provoking, funny and never ever boring.
You were named after the first member of my family, the Testerman side, who came to America. I know we call you by your middle name, you are so an Alex. However I see Thomas in you as well, the man who left everything behind to forge a new life.
To jump into a full-blown revolution.
Choosing to be an America, fight for freedom from England, the founder of our family.
You are brave, a little impulsive and willing to take up for what is right.
I love you beyond the moon. Happy birthday son!
Love,
Mom.

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My Thoughts

My heart is heavy, my mind is boggled, my understanding of this world is gone. Last night in Dallas, TX, 5 police officers were brutally murdered, shot down like dogs. Eleven more injured, one civilian injured as she protected her children.
During a peaceful protest shots began to ring out, police officers ran towards the shots, to protect the people protesting them. You know what, let’s take a minute to let that digest, ran towards shots being fired to protect people who hold them in disdain.
I understand they were protesting black men being shot and killed by police officers, however, I would like to remind everyone that the killings they were protesting happened in different states. Not even Texas, so it begs the question, why are you protesting Dallas police?
Do you feel a modicum of responsibility in this slaughter? If you had not been protesting police actions in a different state you would not have put our police officers in jeopardy.
They ran towards gun fire to save you, I cannot say it enough, for all of those that hate the police, that say incendiary words directed toward their demise, well, congratulations. You wiped out 5 of them last night.
To those of you that really want things to change in a peaceful manner, this is not directed at you, however, today, of all days, you need to go on your knees and thank God that they were there to run towards the gun fire to protect you.
I grew up in a household that respected laws and the law enforcers, oh don’t get me wrong, I did my share of skating the law. In my teenage years, drinking underage, drag racing, things of that nature. I didn’t rob anyone, the one and only time I have ever stolen anything was when I was four and ate grapes before my grandmother paid for them. She shamed me so mercilessly that I never stole another thing.
My dad taught me that if I disagree with a rule to practice civil disobedience. I have read Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience countless times due to my dad. Everyone should read it that wants to change things in our society, in our government, local and federal.
I am so saddened but not shocked at what happened last night in Dallas, TX. The world has taught me not to be shocked anymore at the cheapening of life that is happening on a global scale.
In our country, the United States of America, we should be above that. It is time people, time to understand that the white people who are alive today did not practice slavery. It is time people to understand that not all black people are thugs that want to rob you. EVERYONE in this country, has to work together for the betterment of EVERYONE, every citizen. The good of the many outweigh the good of the few.
Disagree with a law, disagree with what is happening, practice civil disobedience, stop waging open war on police officers.
Not all police officers are bad, not all white people are racists and not all black people are thugs. I read that on a meme. It’s true, it’s time to hold hands and sing Kumbaya.

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Patriotism

Patriotism runs deep in my blood, I know I talk about that a lot, but it is worth repeating. Thomas Testerman fought for the independence of this country from England. We fought a revolution to throw off the tyrannical rule of a mad man. Mad King George, that was the moniker he was known by.
Unreasonable taxes were levied, unreasonable demands made, the ruler wanted to impose his empirical laws on a part of the world that was increasingly independent. That independence is what contributed to the making of this country.
I am going to choose to celebrate that instead of making this a political statement on what is happening today in this country.
Of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence 48 were born on American soil, 48, let that sink in. only 8 were born in Great Britain. Gwinnett Button and Robert Morris were born in England, Francis Lewis was born in Wales, James Wilson and John Witherspoon were born in Scotland, George Taylor and Matthew Thornton were born in Ireland and James Smith hailed from Northern Ireland.
The amount of people in this country that believe no one lived here until the Revolution astounds me. I am doing research on my grandmothers’ family and I am in the 1600’s and I still can’t find when they came here! They were born here!
Yes, I know, the Native Americans were here first, the Vikings were here as well, which is when I suspect her family first showed up.
We have been around for a long time; we have been through incredibly trying times together. Outside forces want us to implode, we cannot allow them to win.
At this time of the year patriotism should be at its highest, in light of the horrible things that have been done to our fellow countrymen, patriotism should be at an all-time high.
Our founding fathers were correct, all men are created equal, all people are created equal.
It is what we do with the opportunity The United States of America affords us. All of us.
As we are having our picnics, our cookouts, barbecues and watching fireworks, let us think of the men and women that bravely gave everything they had so we could have our freedoms.
From the Revolution to today, the bravery of the few keep the multitudes of us free, free to enjoy our unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Never forget how and why we have those rights.

As always the thoughts and opinions expressed are mine, Angie, that’s why it’s called Angie World.
Any questions please feel free to email me angie@angieworld.com

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Self-Sufficient?

Ok, so, on Facebook, where I find fascinating things, a woman, not a friend, posted a meme. Not any old meme, one that said something to the effect that a man should find a woman that can pay her own bills and is self-sufficient. 

My jaw dropped, not due to the message, but the one posting it. One should really not post things of that nature if one regularly asks men to pay their bills. 

A few days prior to that post she had just asked a man to pay her water bill. What was the wording she used, oh yes, “I’d be ever so humbled if you could see your way to giving me some money”. 

Seriously? Women like this give all of the real working women who have never asked a man that is not Living with them,  engaged to them or married to them for money to pay their bills. 

If I have needed extra money to pay for anything I simply went to work and sold more Mary Kay. Mary Kay payed for all three of my children’s class rings. Hard work enabled me to buy refrigerators, furniture, extra books or anything else we might need. 

This is not the first time I have heard of women doing this. It’s seriously disheartening in this day and age women still do this. Especially when they have jobs, yes people, this woman is employed! And has no small children!! 

If you are one of these women learn to budget, live within your means and stop begging men for money. 

I’ll never understand these women, of course I was raised by good, Christian parents. Maybe she wasn’t, maybe her mother behaves in the same way, men in and out, married men, engaged men, giving money for services rendered. Perhaps that’s where she learned that behavior. 

I had parents that taught me to stand on my own to feet, work for what I have, pay bills first, then food, then what is left over is for children’s clothing or whatever else is needed. If there’s anything after that, well, that was my book fund. 

Ruth’s are far and few apart, If you have a choice, choose to do the right thing. Lift other women up, don’t beg for money, get a job, a second job and if that doesn’t do it get a third. 

After my divorce, before my job at the major telecommunications corporation, I worked three jobs and went to school full time. Never asked a man for money to pay my water bill. Interesting. 

As always, if you have an issue with the views expressed here, remember, it’s not called Angie World for nothing. angie@angieworld.com

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