I tried to get it all in there so you could see what a fiasco this is first hand.
First of all this is sacred Native American Land that Trump is stealing from the Native Americans. The Native Americans might win this fight in the Supreme court eventually but their sacred land will be destroyed by then by Trump. Next, this literally is a place where Alligators and pythons hang out so it's really not safe to be there for most people including those who will be put there (for whatever time they are there). So, it's pretty safe to say that people are going to die there at pretty high rates after being stolen from their families nationwide. So, anyone who thinks this will turn out well for anyone is a sadist at core.
So, the money we invested in land and building our A-Frame wilderness house was priceless in that I felt completely healed there while home schooling our children there which was 10 miles from the nearest gas station and 20 from Towns and about a mile or two from the nearest paved road. So, this was really remote.
We found then because Solar was too expensive for us in 1980 that Kerosene Aladdin lamps were the best for lighting along with Candle lanterns or candlesticks with reflectors for reading where the light is all directed one direction.
So, downstairs we kept our big Aladdin Kerosene lamp and mostly kept our candle lanterns and reflector candles for reading upstairs in the loft where it was warmer during the winters above the wood cook stove and Cast Iron stove we used for heating the A-Frame then.
When we bought the land it already had a septic Tank on it and a toilet in a shed outside so this was both helpful and useful to us in keeping the land sanitary. Many people then had outhouses but they can be a lot of trouble. The worst problem we had with the shed and toilet area was the Porcupines loved the glue in the plywood of the inside of it and would chew their way into this shed to eat and knawp on the plywood which would wake us up night after night. However, a neighbor of ours eventually shot that porcupine so we all didn't have to wake up at 2 to 4 am every night listening to the loud knawing of the inside of our shed and toilet area.
The only problem was that this shed wasn't heated so in the winters the bowl in the toilet would freeze over so we had to do whatever was necessary then by digging a latrine.
It was an experience sort of like Mt. Shasta Family Robinson in many ways and we loved it because of the constant adventure living in the wilderness a long time can be with deer and animals like porcupines and flying squirrels around there all the time.
IN 1983 I believe I bought a 1974 International Harvester Scout II which was the most amazing 4 wheel drive I ever owned. Though it was a stick shift it was also a 6 cylinder engine with excellent mileage and enough power to tow a small trailer too and it had a locked rear end which gave better traction than most 4 wheel drives have too.
At one point the U-joint broke and I just put it in 4 wheel drive after I removed the U-joint and drive shaft and drove it for a while until I could get it fixed somewhere in 4 wheel drive just off the front wheels and that worked too.
The only bad thing was when I got it fixed in Santa Cruz, on the coast was that my buck knife I kept in a leather case on my emergency brake handle was stolen which I was sort of sorry to see that because I had found it open on Highway 89 years before with my first wife while exploring out there when my son was a baby. He is now 51 years old and lives in Portland and lives here with his wife and son.
My father was visiting one time and we saw a black bear out in the wilderness miles to the east of McCloud on a dirt road. The bear was a male and a big one and reared up on his rear legs in front of our vehicle so I backed up so it wouldn't break a window or rip one of our doors off our vehicle which is common for them to do. Finally the big bear realized we were not going to fight him and he went back on all 4s and walked back into the wilderness. I don't think he had ever seen humans before because of his reaction to us because we were so remote then. Amazing times and my son and my father were there to see all this then!
It's because of the way the ideas of an Autonomous peaceful Robot are interwoven with the Wildness of Nature. I have never quite seen it like this before.
It also gives me ideas of how Autonomous robots could help breed species that would otherwise go extinct.
Watching this gives a real feel for what service peaceful robots actually could or would be like.
Military robots are a whole different thing that we all should be afraid of because they basically would be "Murder Machines" like military drones and missiles of all kinds now bombarding places like Ukraine and Russia and Israel and Iran about now.
So, I find watching "The Wild Robot(2024) very emotionally healing in a way that no movie since "Castaway(2000) was for me. I must have watched Castaway about 50 times because I found it very emotionally healing at that time in my life.
Then I was dealing with a divorce 1994 and near death for a year 1998 and 1999 and I was trying to find a way to physically and to psychologically go on at all in my life. So, Castaway(2000) was very helpful for me in moving forward in a healthier way than before.
Likewise, with drones and missiles (both potentially autonomous robots) and all the fear and death they automatically engender in mankind (which is completely justified) The Wild Robot(2024) is a breath of fresh air showing the helpful side of Autonomous Robots that is also possible beyond the death by robots of literally everyone on earth potentially.
I have always been healed when I go out in nature like this away from civilization which at best is an art form people live in and at worst a prison that kills people.
So, I find in "The Wild Robot(2024) this same kind of feeling that I get in nature on land or at the beach looking out to sea with waves crashing. The wildness of being human I find to be what is best about us not necessarily the civilized parts of who we are.
Nature Heals (even this Rossum Robot) in many ways.
Often one can ONLY find their way forward out in nature when one has been harmed in many ways in their lives.
Only when I bought land in 1980 remote at 4000 feet on Mt. Shasta was I able to heal myself from what I had experienced from 1948 to 1980 in my life then.
Nature healed me when nothing else could while I was home schooling my children on my own 2 1/2 acres with my wife then for 5 years. This healed me in a way I was amazed by at that time and set the tone for the rest of my life owning various businesses even now that I'm 77 years old and semi retired along with my wife who will be 70 this summer.
So, watching The Wild Robot(2024) or reading the book (that was a part of the summer reading for my 11 year old grandson from his school is a very healing while very informative read in the world we presently live and are going into now.
By God's Grace
Note: Hopefully enough of us can survive all the Autonomous robots of air, land, sea and space to continue to live here on earth.
This is why this movie and book gives me some hope for us.
By God's Grace
So, all the best and brightest young minds left for Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and other English speaking places around the world and this is continuing today and likely will go on as long as Trump is in office.
So, not only is he destroying the world economy with Tariffs he is also destroying our country as a number 1 nation by us losing all of our most promising and capable and educated young people.
Not only that by attacking all universities and colleges including Harvard he is pushing away good students from the U.S. and around the world from wanting to EVER attend college here again by making enemies of their home nations through tariffs and the end of US AID to those nations and others.
So, Trump is just making everyone's lives worse and worse except the Billionaires and now even they are starting to turn against him because of many different reasons too.
A similar thing happened to Putin when he declared war on Ukraine where 1 million or more of the best and brightest of Russia left for Europe and the U.S. and other countries who needed very well educated people.
So, Trump's reputation is sort of like Putin who is genociding Ukrainians.
But, Trump is instead genociding people from south of the U.S. Mexico border and Iranians mostly at this time.
So, what Trump and Putin have in common is that they both are making everyone on earth hate them.
I think you are going to see this more and more as the U.S. becomes more and more a pariah to the whole world through Trump. He is making enemies of all countries on earth by what he is now doing and this will continue as long as he is in office and destroying our democracy in various ways.
The more harm he does to other nations the more harm they will do to the U.S.
This is a given.
It doesn't matter what governments say as diplomats in the end it is what their people do in protest of the U.S. harming them so completely every day.
After crashing the economy through Tariffs and Ice crashing local economies like Southern California through food rotting in the fields because of Ice more and more Republicans are going to retire from the Senate and Congress as Trump intimidates them and their families with harm of various kinds.
Since Trump is now an authoritarian Dictator and seen by this around the world many countries are telling their people not to travel here because it is too dangerous here for them.
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Thinking this way makes it easier to endure whatever life has in store for us. When you are young you think everything is about pleasure like candy or love or Sex or whatever pleasure is in life.
However, that doesn't work very well as an adult because sometimes those pleasures might kill you.
As I grew up through my 20s I discovered this and how it often wasn't the highs in life that could kill you but often the lows.
So, I began to see that being somewhere in the middle in a state of peace or Grace not too high and not too low is how people survive to old age.
Everyone wants to be high all the time with pleasure or sex or candy or ice Cream or entertainment or whatever.
However, what lasts is enlightenment, compassion, Family, Friends, kindness.
Everything else is sort of very temporary and a waste of your time in the long run.
So, if you live long enough without self destructing through various kinds of pleasure you learn this lesson about life.
In the end if you are not very practical you don't tend to live very long anyway.
So, being compassionate to yourself and others while being very practical about everything is really how one lives to old age in the first place.
Compassion and family and friends are really what life is all about and this can then lead to Enlightenment and Oneness with God and Nature everywhere.
By God's Grace
For example, from Fall of 1998 until May of 1999 Doctors thought I was going to die and told me they weren't sure if I would live or die during this time. So, this was very hard. Luckily, the angels had come to me that day in the fall as I had called my son to come pick me up in his car and take me to the hospital because I believed I was dying. So, as the Angels surrounded me they said in unison over and over again.
"You aren't going to die. Your Life will get better now". And after 9 months of passing out and almost dying over and over again this became true.
The thing is most people who had a heart virus like I had in California died then. In fact, I was the Only one I know of that year from 1998 to 1999 that actually survived a heart virus like mine. It is often caused by getting your teeth cleaned when you have about a 1 in 1000 chance of getting a heart virus like mine when a particle of food gets into your blood stream from the teeth cleaning process.
However, because I had had whooping cough as a child and because I had learned Tibetan Buddhist disconnection meditations I survived.
So, as I began to black out I knew if I panicked the way most people do I would die. So, I refused to panic as I passed out each time. So, mostly I would just lay down on the floor so I wouldn't be injured as I passed out wherever I was in our house then. And in a few minutes to an hour I would awake again and usually I would be alone going through this not really sure whether I would survive this or not. But, somehow I did.
So, finally in May of 1999 my heart specialist said, "Fred, you are very very lucky because most patients would have died because of what you have been through. By the process of elimination we realize now you had a heart virus that somehow you survived."
I was in shock and because I had promised God if I survived that I would start a blog to sing God's Praises I did in June of 1999. Then in fall of 1999 I took my mother and my older daughter then 10 to England and Scotland where her father and mother had grown up to be adults after both of them had been born in the U.S. one in Boston and one in Philadelphia and then had been forced by circumstance to return to Scotland because of family disasters there in the U.S.
So, those 9 months I think were the hardest long term. Then after that I got Lightning migraines which are not painful but when you see lightning bolts running through your retinas that don't go away and are not a nurse or medical doctor you might think you are dying because you don't know what they are which is what happened to me. So, each time I would see these "lightning" things in my eyes I believed I might die and actually this scared me more because of my ignorance at the time of what they were. I just tried not to talk about it much to my wife so I didn't scare her anymore than I already had by almost dying from fall of 1998 to May of 1999.
So, I guess what I'm saying to you is that you really have to be disciplined in not panicking in order to survive things like this. IF you panic all is lost and you could easily have a stroke or heart attack but if you find a way to stay calm and soldier on then you just might survive whatever you are going through at that time of your life.
By God's Grace
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Many Home Depot parking lots, where day laborers congregate to find work, now sit empty. Familiar taco trucks have vanished from street corners. Fresh produce is left to rot in fields because employees are too afraid to report to work.
LOS ANGELES — An abandoned ice cream cart has become a symbol of resistance to residents of a west Los Angeles neighborhood who oppose President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies.
The cart belonged to a beloved ice cream vendor who was arrested by federal agents Monday afternoon while walking his usual route through Culver City.
The sudden disappearance of Ambrocio “Enrique” Lozano stunned residents who said the vendor was a welcome fixture in their neighborhood for more than 20 years.
“There was always a bright light around him,” said Patricia Pande, a Culver City resident who spent countless days enjoying Lozano’s ice cream with her granddaughter. “The happiest times I know with her are from the ice cream man.”
A photo of Lozano’s lone ice cream cart spread quickly across social media, triggering a tidal wave of responses from immigration advocates, residents and lawmakers.
Hyperlocal grassroots organizations like Siempre Unidos LA began sharing the image, and soon a crowdfunding campaign for Lozano and his family hit its goal of $6,000 to cover their legal fees and living expenses. The campaign topped $57,000 after the photo drew national attention.
The response to Lozano’s arrest highlights a new strategy emerging after large-scale protests overtook downtown Los Angeles earlier this month. Instead of focusing on marches outside federal buildings, residents of sprawling L.A. County are zeroing in on their own blocks and neighborhoods to show their opposition to Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
A loose coalition of dozens of grassroots organizations whose cellphone-toting members are broadcasting immigration arrests in real time over social media to millions of followers has taken shape across the region.
These groups post and repost the locations of arrests, organize spontaneous protests, help families find information about relatives who have been detained and set up donation drives when needed.
It’s difficult to measure the direct effect these actions have had since Trump’s immigration crackdown, but affected families say the outpouring of support is immeasurable.
“I’m in disbelief,” said Kimberly Noriega, Lozano’s niece. “We felt so hopeless, and then suddenly there was this whole community of Culver City and now an even bigger community behind him.”
His relatives will host an event in support of Lozano on Sunday in Culver City, where they hope to sell his remaining ice cream and popsicles before they turn stale.
Lozano is among more than 1,618 people in Los Angeles who have been arrested by the federal government since it began clamping down on residents without citizenship earlier this month, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
The detentions have spread fear across Southern California, where some 1.4 million people are estimated to live without full legal authorization, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
Many Home Depot parking lots, where day laborers congregate to find work, now sit empty. Familiar taco trucks have vanished from street corners. Fresh produce is left to rot in fields because employees are too afraid to report to work.
At one multilingual church whose members hail from Iran and Spanish-speaking countries, parishioners with tenuous legal status have been advised to stay home rather than attend service.
A pastor from the Los Angeles church posted a video last week of an Iranian husband and wife being arrested by federal agents on a west L.A. street. The woman suffered a medical emergency during the encounter, which was filmed by the pastor and shared widely on social media.
Activists who saw the video rushed to the hospital where the woman was being treated and recorded interactions with federal officials inside and outside the medical facility.
The woman was released from the hospital into federal custody, and the viral video has helped to warn the Iranian community that immigration officials are working in the area, the pastor told NBC News.
Liz Ramirez, founder of Siempre Unidos LA, which first reposted the image of Lozano’s ice cream truck, said the proliferation of videos developed organically and the trend shows no signs of slowing down.
“Everyone has a vision for what message you’re trying to get across and to whom,” she said of activists. “For Siempre Unidos, our main focus is to mobilize folks from the comfort of their own home.”
Another group, Union del Barrio, posted a video to Instagram that appears to show four federal officers detaining a U.S. citizen. The family of Andrea Velez said she was wrongfully detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and falsely accused of “forcefully obstructing” them during an immigration raid in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday morning.
She was charged Thursday with assaulting a federal officer while he was attempting to arrest a suspect and was released on $5,000 bail. She did not enter a plea and is due back in court on July 17.
The group also posted a video this week appearing to show Los Angeles police officers working with immigration officials, which drew widespread criticism from activists.
The Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement that officers had responded to reports of a kidnapping and encountered an aggressive crowd when they arrived to the scene. The department has a longstanding policy dating back to 1979 of not voluntarily participating in immigration enforcement.
Ron Gochez, a member of Union del Barrio, said dozens of volunteers patrol the streets every day and sift through hundreds of videos submitted each week. Not all content is posted — only what the group can verify through lawyers or firsthand accounts.
“We’re here and we’re here to stay,” he said Wednesday at a rally in downtown Los Angeles.
Centro CSO, a grassroots organization based in the Boyle Heights neighborhood in east Los Angeles, said its social media audience has more than doubled since the raids started this spring.
Like Siempre Unidos, Centro CSO shares videos submitted by residents who witness immigration arrests, and it organizes protests to draw attention to specific cases.
Organizer Gabriel Quiroz Jr. said the group depends on community members to text with information about immigration actions, which it can use to alert vulnerable residents.
“People trust us, rightfully, because we’re out there doing the work,” he said.
The first thing is you mostly have to give up being afraid of dying. Why?
Because it's something that is going to happen to each of us whether it is now, tomorrow or 1000 or 10,000 years from now.
It's going to happen you just don't know when.
Once you accept this then you can prepare for it psychologically by realizing you are already dead.
(Not physically dead psychologically dead).
This is likely easier for me than for most people because psychologically I have already died many many times already starting with whooping cough as a 2 year old and then concussion caused seizures at night sometimes between ages 10 and 15 years old.
It got to the point where I had to take physical risks to even believe I was still alive and sometimes this scared other people who aren't like me in this way.
But, as an older man now having survived everything to age 77 I find that if you can remain calm even when you might be facing death often you can survive almost anything and keep staying alive if you want to.
The biggest thing really is your attitude about all this.
You might go to sleep crying because things are not good but if you die to God each night you wake up as someone new each morning.
So, each morning there is hope of a better and new life with God.
Also, staying calm and rational allows you to make better decisions regarding your health ongoing.
For example, if you allow yourselves to panic this just hastens your death.
So, if you want to live for your family and friends it might be important to read how I stayed alive through many bouts with almost dying the last 77 years (mostly from 2 to 15) and then from 50 to 77. In between I had pretty good health.
By God's Grace
