There are so many beautiful songs by Walela, which is comprised of
Rita Coolidge, her sister and niece ... I will post a few and hope that
you will enjoy them. I have always resonated with Native America
and its Great Spirit.

There is no particular order, but these were posted sort of "backwards"
so bear with me but please do listen, relax, and breathe deeply. Bless
you all, from your SisSTAR.

"I Have No Indian Name"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03luO1WMUik

Video by Shakespears Sister "Stay"

I hope you will click to watch this video. I have one cassette by them from the early '90s and just discovered videos (but don't know how to embed them so they play differently here). I found this to be intense but awesome. Hope you'll enjoy it's strangeness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iSwzHjpOzI

Love from,
SisSTAR Kylita
xoxoxoxo

Happy Friday the 13th

Found this photo of me and CJ, our little buddy who lives in the U.P. with his Mom, Kristine (my SisSTAR) and loved it. This is a kitchen window, embellished with too much "stuff" ... but a very nice view looking towards the Trees of Heaven growing. CJ's much older now (as am I) but I know he's a happy boy. He called me his Fairy Godmother and I would use a special wand with a star on the end and give him various blessings, then he'd do it back to me. We love him very much. Not much to do with Friday the 13th or the poem that will follow here, but one I thought I'd like to post. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day and in case I don't get back here, this one will do for the love between us.
***
Last night I opened an old stationery box and found lots of old photos and notes etc, even a ltr from my brother! I found all this because Tuffy Boy was climbing on my dresser! and knocked a stack of CDs off and I'd forgotten to clear them off my bed--so at 2:30 am had to do that and noticed this box of stuff. This poem I'd written on my mother's birthday after she'd been dead 1-1/2 yrs. Just wanted to share it with my bloggie friends.

Outside Yourself

Take time out to help another
Friend, foe, sister, brother
Go beyond your comfort zone
Share that which is your own

You will note when reflecting later
A peace transcends discomforts therein
In aiding somehow in another's Plan
"Help," she said, I said, "I Am."
-klh 11/26/95

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY
With Love from your SisSTAR
XOXOXOXOXO

Happy Full Snow Moon

Moon Phases

Keep paces

Reflections of the Light

Dance to the beat

of the One Heart

Celebrate the feat

of Living

New Moon to Full

Hard to resist the pull

When the Light is

so bright

and the Soul will

abide

by the Call of

the Tide.

-klh 11/11/94

***

Affirmative Prayer

Breath of God

I am whole and free from bondage.

I am the Breath of God,

giving and receiving in equal measure

that Substance that is my life.

All unease, constriction,

anger and tension

float away with every

out-breath

and I breathe clearly

and freely.

My life is harmonious,

abundant in health,

prosperity

and

relationships.

I Am the Breath of God.

-klh

Om Sweet Om

Mom and Dad'isms

These tidbits were written down after my folks died and I found myself spontaneously saying these things out of my own mouth. When my husband or others heard some of them and I realized no one ELSE heard such things, I decided to write them in a little book for posterity, so I won't forget what characters my parents were, realizing they probably got these little sayings from their parents, grandparents, friends, historical items, etc. So here are some of my little "Book of Mom & Dad'isms" ...

INTRODUCTION
Hello! My name is Kyle Lynn Haswell (and, no, they didn't want a boy!) and my parents are both in that Parallel Universe I call Heaven. This book of their sayings, jokes, songs, and my commentary scattered sparsely throughout is a form of grief therapy. Remembering with many emotions, this short, very short list of the words I thought EVERYONE heard and spoke..but have found this not to be true. (I believe it is genetic, as I've become afflicted with inane strings of words only the genes of my ancestors could've assembled.) Most were as heavy sighs, before a yawn. Ennui got fun...
It is notable that they were married 3-29-43 and Pa was buried 3-29-86 and Mom 3-29-93, on what would've been their 50th anniv.
OK, It's "Twilight Time" (beautiful song):

• Never get well if you pick it. (a scab)
• Never notice it on a trottin' horse.
• You don't want much for a quarter.
• Were you raised in a barn?
• Shit the bed and kick it out with your feet!
• Yehudi did it. (anything strange, noise, etc. that no one new where it came from)
• Balls! cried the king and he laughed 'cause he had to (two).
• Guess you need to be born on the other side of the road to get there. (heavy traffic)
• Put something on your feet!
• Cracker ass.
• Fizzy farts and rattlers.
• Don't drop it in the mud.
• Close the barn door, your horse is going to get out.
• Noasitol--best form of birth control.
• Poopin' in high cotton. (got it made)
• Don't get mad, only dogs get mad.
• Pretty fart smeller.
• You're so bright we shoulda called you Sunny.
• Take care of your pennies and your dollars will take care of themselves.
• Winklehawk. (a pimple)
• Like putting silk stockings on a hog. (mostly referring to dressing me up)
• Ask your father.
• Ask your mother.
• Wait 'til your father gets home.
• You're my favorite daughter. (only one)
• She was my 46th birthday present. (me)
• It's the meanness coming out of you. (a blemish/pimple)
• Up your bucket!
• Hanging in there by the skin of my teeth.
• A little bit of powder and paint makes little Kyle something she ain't.
• Talk's cheap but it takes money to buy beer.
• I'm gonna sack in/hit the hay/turn in...
• Daylight in the swamp and the devil's beating on the tan bark.
• You don't mind if I have a little nip, do you? (dad's 'holy water' Christian Brothers brandy mostly)
• 'Tomorrow kick away the stool and dangle from the beam.' (from a poem dad would recite, usually when inebriated--perhaps from Robert Service or Oliver W Holmes?)
• Wash those meathooks. (hands)
• You sound like a coupla Jew peddlers. (dad referring to me and ma bugging him)
• Yak! yak! yak!
• You and your mother are like a couple of plump quail. ;o(
• It's hell to get old, but I'm too old to die young now.
• No bigger than a fart in a mitten.
• Let's get chakkin'. (eating)
• This meat is cooked to rags.
• Shit or get off the pot. (make up your mind)
• Cat fur to make kitten britches. (in ans to: "mama, whatcha got?")
• Ass over diddleberry. (ie falling down a hill)
• Here's your hat, what's your hurry? (ie can't wait til you leave)
• You had a marcelle wave and sounded like a baby crow when you were born. (dad's description of me as gooey wheezy newborn)
• That was before you were the twinkle in your father's eye.
• What ho!
• "Is Mass out?" said the little girl to the priest after falling while trying to get there. "No, little girl, but your skirt is badly torn."
• Nickname for me: Tookey
• Nickname for brother: Buckshot
• ...some spoonerisms: A speen o' boons (spoon of beans); Slopped your dripper (dropped your slipper/from Rindercella as quoted on TV show HeeHaw); The Sonata Rag (Kleenex), Fart smeller (smart feller); Shake a tit (take a shit).
• The shades of night are falling.
• Oh! Horsepucky! (mom heard me say this in junior high and never let me forget it)
• These four walls...
• Someday you won't have me to worry about.
• Hang in...
• Booootiful.
• "...so never run down limburger, just stop and consider, please, you never know when your life may be saved by a poor little piece of cheese." (wish I'd have written the entire poem down but it was one of those roll-my-eyes, oh god, no, he's reciting THAT one again type of thing--if anyone knows it, please let me know!?)
• Two in the hill.
• The sun was hot to Johnny's ass and the sand was hot tamales. (to Molly's)
• Grassy ass (gracias)
• Cookie duster (mustache)
• I could stretch to Boston if I didn't have to walk back.
• I'll beat the bejesus out of ya.
• You look like a Billygaloobird. (?)
• Judas Priest!!
• I'm the Campbell Kid (5' tall 180 lb little apple-cheeked mama--got called it as a kid)
• Titty pink. (Pa's embarrassing reference to color)
• That's certainly nice!! (being facetious)
• Quitcher bawling. Your bladder is too close to your tearducts!
• Where'd you get THAT outfit!? (usually one I was SO proud of)
• You don't even look like yourself any more (drunk mom crying because I'd let my hair grow long and had a perm)
• Take a P-T-A bath (you figure it out)
• Ready to blow my cork!
• Don't pry into me!
• Don't know shit from straight up.
• Which ancestor is coming or going? (dust balls under the bed)
• Goodnight, Irene.
• Blacker than Toby's ass.
• Worthless as tits on a boar pig.
• Coddy Codfish (mom's embarrassing nickname for me)
• That's the only brother (sister) you'll ever have!
• Nobody yikes me. (making fun of our mournful quote when we'd get yelled at)
• The clean plate club (a lie: finish your plate and we'll go on a picnic)
• You can catch a bird if you put salt on its tail (a lie!!! that was my 1st recognizable lie mom told me as she watched the scene from her kitchen window of me sneaking up and when the little yellow canary flew away, I saw her crack up laughing! I was crushed! I think I got over it ;o)
• Sweet violets, sweeter than all the roses--covered all over from head to tip ... covered all over with ssshhweeeet violets.
• In ONE long INHALE I learned to recite: "Happy-go-lucky Bobby Racoon sat on the edge of the laughing brook--Mr. Round-Red-Purple Sun popped up behind the purple hills. Bobby Raccoon's been out all night, you see, and he's apt to get into mischief." I truly DID this, of course, to make Pa proud (even with asthma). ;o)
• The Farmer's Almanac said it was gonna: snow/rain/be nice/freeze, etc. (I just bought myself one...it's fun to read again.)
• You're big enough to play with the Green Bay Packers! ... "No! I yust play with Ole's packer." (joke about Helga off the boat to meet Ole Svenson)
• Hunde scheisse (spelling?) (dog shit in German)
• Hit the nail on the head.
• That's the way the pickle squirts.
• Don't that take the rag right off the bush!
• It's a one-egg cake all right!
• What'd you buy brown for? (this could be for any reason having nothing to do with buying anything or anything brown?)
• If I'd've said scoop shovel, you'd've said pitchfork!
• Play "Far, Far Away" (dad's request re: my piano playing--;o(
• You have those bedroom eyes. (shame game)
• Your eyes look like two burnt holes in a blanket.
• You know, we've just got to say no to you. We can't keep helping you every time. (Pa finally telling me how it was)
• We gotta go find Old Baldy. (a sand dunes seemed like 10 miles out into the dunes, as I flogged along with no one but my cousin Wink noticing I'd sat down waaayyy behind them--and "Old Baldy" grew hair, let me tell ya! 'cause we never found it!)
• Must've slept too close to a crack. (caught a cold)
• Your mother's getting her head baked. (beauty parlor)
• Gotta go to the sawbones. (dad's reference to doctor)
• Day late and a dollar short.
• You fried the wrong damn egg!
• Really eating high on the hog!
• Six of one half dozen of the other.
• Three dog night (such as how cold Eskimos are to sleep with how many sled dogs)
• Back to the old grind (and Pa was actually a grinder--in a factory, not the music type)
• Sweet essence of squat drops. (?)
• Sounds like the tune the old cow died to.
• T'ain't me, McGee.
• Shave and a haircut--two bits.
• You can be replaced, you know. (we were told this often ;o(
• You'll be crying before the day's over. (if I was laughing too much)
• Well! By the Great Horned Toad!
• There's a kiss for ya (a fart! ;o(
• Have a little soup with your crackers (or ice cream with your syrup, or salad with your dressing--referring to overuse of crackers, etc.)
• Howdy, Penelope!
• Howdy, Muldoon!
• Ass deep to a tall Indian.
• Back to the Salt Mines.
• Get some shut-eye.
• Your ass sucks buttermilk.
• You dance you gotta pay the fiddler (kinda like, you play you pay, you made your bed now lie in it)
• Got your snorkel, Tookey? (my asthma inhaler)
• If you don't snap out of it, you're going to the hospital! (when I was having trouble breathing!)
• Is that your hatchin' jacket? (a maternity blouse--I never had a baby)
• All I get is a duck pond. (busy signal on the phone)
• This won't hurt, did it? (two bunnies, you-know'ing)
• Moose milk (beer)
• Your mouth runs like a bell clapper to a duck's ass.
• Skinny-well-fed.
• Aw, get up the hill!
• Jigs and Maggie (corned beef and cabbage).
• You have to accept your lot in life. (bull shit)
• Manana (sp? 'tomorrow' in Spanish)
• C'est la vie!
• Get to bed or you'll never get up in the morning! (I always was a nightowl!)
• To have a friend, you need to be one.

Thanks, Mom and Dad.....and I hope any of you who chose to wade through any of this had some fun and a little insight into parts of why I'm who I am. Happy Saturday with love from your SisSTAR! Don't let the bed bugs bite!

bringing light into the world

I'd like to type the page of my Science of Mind magazine for 1/29/09 with the above title:

***

"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the power to turn a life around." -Leo Buscaglia

***

"Have enthusiasm and, above all, have a consciousness of love--a radiant feeling flowing through your consciousness at all times." - The Science of Mind, page 184

***

We attract what we mentally become. When we become kind, we attract kindness back. Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God and the second is to love our neighbors. When we do the second, we are living the first. Someone once said, "Money will buy a fine dog, but only kindness will m ake him wag his tail."

Rabbi Byron Sherwin relates the story of a man who was inconsolable at the death of his wife. Finally, he said to the rabbi, "You don't understand. I loved my wife, and once I almost told her." How many times have we almost said "I love you?" How many times have we almost asked for forgiveness? How many times have we almost offered to help someone? Today is a good day to begin. We never know how much a small gesture will affect someone else's life.

I read a story about a soldier coming back from the Vietnam War who was frightened about the reception he might receive. A young girl sitting next to him reached out and gave him a magazine. Her acceptance and generosity deeply touched him. Remembering this little act of kindness led him to a life of giving to others. He ended the article with these words: "I have to believe that my small gestures have the same effect on others, and to that little girl now a woman, I would like to take this opportunity to say again, 'Thank you.' "

affirmation:

Today, I reach out and tell someone I love them. I make kindness and compassion a regular part of my life.

*******************

Thanks for visiting if you did so. I consider it a gesture of kindness when someone reads my chosen words, be they my own or words from somewhere else. I would ask that all of you look others in the eyes with a twinkle in your own and a smile on your lips and say, "I love you," in whatever way is true.

Love from Your SisSTAR

xoxoxoxoxo

Some Memories on a Short Ride to Work

Quite often I don't have much time to listen to any decent songs on the radio on my way to work since it takes from 10-15 minutes to get there. But I do have time now and then to have little memory sessions. I live in the home my parents built and after Mom died in 1993, we bought the place and I've lived here since June 1994. I was sorta getting down on myself for not making much "progress" in my life, driving the last 2 yrs to the new location of my job, and even obtaining a 2nd job in the same new location on the same floor of the bldg. So I head 1/2 mi to Livernois where I turn right ... and on the left a ways up the road is a house my ex-sister-in-law lives in. She was the first one of the 4 sisters and 3 brothers I met when my brother was dating her ... then I met her brother, also my brother's friend, and ended up marrying him...for a little while. Traveling farther up Livernois I come to the intersection at Hamlin and right at that corner is a house where an elementary school friend lived and her mom was our Brownie Scout leader when I was 8 or 9. I'd gone to a pajama party sleepover and I guess I was just having too much fun laughing and ended up having a very bad asthma attack where all the rest of the little girls were staring at me choking for air as I sat on the toilet--once the old diaphragm gets going in and out like an accordion playing a hot polka, I seem to remember it creates some havoc with the bowels. Anyway, the parents had called the fire dept, an ambulance, and my mother. I was sitting on the toilet with the girls staring, when 2 very young and attractive paramedics came in to put an oxygen mask over my face. I was so very embarrassed sitting there on the toilet. I remember my little 5 foot tall mother flying in there flinging little girls left and right and saying, "get out of here and give her some air" and I kept clawing the oxygen mask off my face, feeling just suffocating. There weren't any inhalers in those days, but they must've given me some adrenaline or something and I had a horrible headache. I believe I ruined the pajama party for the most part, but one thing I remember before my mother took me home was my friend's father massaging my temples and helping my heart not hurt so much. I remember how kind that was and how much it meant to me. Strangely enough, he is buried at the cemetery by my parents, just a few gravesites away (about 1-1/2 miles from this same corner, on Hamlin). Then I travel farther down Livernois and pass Avon Rd and in a short while I see a big blue "H" signifying the back entrance to Crittenton Hospital, an entrance all of us silently took during a big full moon on March 27, 1986 at 3:30 a.m., to say goodbye to my father who had just died there. I keep driving on Livernois 1/8th of a mile and I can see Crittenton Hospital, where both my parents died 7 yrs and 1 day apart. But on the south side of Livernois is Rochester High School, good old RHS, home of the Falcons, where I graduated in 1970, going half days (unfortunately I went in the early mornings) while they built the 2nd high school of this school district, Adams. After school I'd walk across Livernois and up University to the little barn in the front parking lot at Crittenton and worked for Blue Cross Blue Shield billing for Co-Op. But for now, I turn left at the intersection of Livernois and once left, it is known as Walton Blvd...and I don't turn left on Rochdale where I used to go every week to have wonderful massages from Larry (someone I'd gone to high school with!) but I turn right into a building where my parents doctor used to have an office, and remember some of the times I'd taken either of them to their appointments, the last right after dad fell and hit his head on his dresser corner and was bleeding internally, developing pneumonia, and was supposed to have an appt, but instead he had to go into the hospital where he never returned from. There are stray cats out by the dumpster in our parking lot. I've been asked 3 times not to feed them and I complied a very long time, until more kittens were born just before winter and I sneak some food to them when I'm able to, and I see others do the same. They deserve better, but for now that's the best I can do.

So that is my 10-15 minute "memory lane" on the road to work. A veer this way or that would reveal so many more memories, and I can go past all 3 of the schools I went to thru the 13 years in this consolidated school district from Hamlin Elementary, to West Jr High and good old RHS, all in one trek to work or back, depending on if I do a bank deposit or not. So...I may not have progressed too far, but don't let anyone tell you you can never go home again, but I know that's not true. I'm sitting here in the "Blue Room", the same room where dad fell and hit his head, the room where my parents made their bedroom, probably the room where I was conceived, and I am facing northwest ... only 240 miles NW was where my folks came from, where my brother and I were both born, and where he died in a car accident.

When I grew up in this house there were cows and a few horses fenced in all around us, not ours but they could come right up to our driveway or orchard and we would feed them apples or sugar cubes. One cow had a calf right beside the driveway. I loved to hear the cows mooing and the horses whinneying, and I really loved to hear the old trains crying in the background, around Livernois somewhere. They're not around any more, but I am, and so are my memories.

Oh, yeah, one of the first things I can remember on my way to work, trying to make a left hand turn onto Auburn, was my mom saying, "I guess you have to be born on the other side of the road to get there." ;oD Yep! Lots of population around now. Dad always seemed to be ahead of his time choosing lands that became popular and over-populated. But much of what he planted and built here still stands ... and all 5'5" of me is part of that.

Happy New Moon and New Year of the Ox, Bloggie Souls xoxo

Your SisSTAR xo