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[bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

Susan , I'm going to reply to this email in two posts.  Thjis post is because 
I find your background so interesting.  I am always very vague about my 
family and background, so be as vague in your answers as you please.  

I thought your family waere all "plain".  From my understanding "plain" 
people don't put much emphasis on formal educationa.  I thought you being so 
highly educated was an exception, rather than the norm. Now, you indicate 
that your siblings are like you?

Also, what is the realtionship with the chicken poop stepping person who gave 
press conferences.  that paragraph was confusing .  Answer what you wish and 
ignore anything else..............bobford


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--- On Sat, 12/6/08, sjc <indexer AT fairpoint.net> wrote:

> From: sjc <indexer AT fairpoint.net>
> Subject: Re: [Homestead] Economy & family
> To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Saturday, December 6, 2008, 7:32 AM
> Lisa K.V. Perry wrote:
> > Fast forward two years. I saw the same people just
> last week. It was a much
> > different and somewhat subdued gathering. We all
> tip-toed around the economy
> > and the election. This experience has been eye opening
> to me on many levels.
> > I need to learn to trust and believe in myself. I am
> brighter than I thought
> > I was and will no longer think my brother knows it
> all.
> >   
> I've been watching this whole thing unfold, Lisa, and
> several times been 
> struck by the similarities to my situation.  I've
> always been the 
> 'crazy' among my birth siblings, and they
> weren't sky about stating 
> their opinions.  Rarely have they deemed it worthwhile to
> visit me; the 
> accommodations are lacking, services are lacking, they
> I'm sure, could 
> go on for a long time.  Only one of them can even see the
> peace & quiet, 
> the ability to be self-reliant to a great degree, clean,
> decent, 
> reliable food supplies, and all the other things that have
> to me a 
> higher value than to them, obviously.  Always I have been
> the butt of 
> jokes, some of which would be actually cruel if I
> weren't so dense as 
> not to 'get' it :-) .  They had prettier (true),
> smarter (debatable), 
> blah, bhah, kids, who would go out into the world to do
> great things; in 
> the meantime said kids were educated solely by the school
> system, mostly 
> public, occasionally private.  And so it went for many
> years.  It was 
> clear to me that they considered themselves successes and
> if I wasn't 
> already a failure, I was about to fall in a hole any
> minute.
> 
> I'm a ways from where they are (no accident) and so
> haven't had all that 
> much contact.  I was busy, there were kids to work with,
> chores to do, 
> didn't take too long till these guys just sort of
> receded to fleeting 
> thoughts.  As the last of my kids went out the door
> permanently I 
> contacted the brothers more often, with little reciprocal
> contact, but I 
> just sort of put things on a 'schedule' and
> eventually they began to 
> soften a bit (for one thing, more manipulatable family
> members died, 
> thereby reducing the numbers to the crazy sister). There
> were a few 
> visits, and you haven't lived until you see someone who
> spent 46 years 
> in a govt job we've all heard of, 21 years at the helm
> of it, 
> "providing" press conferences, hobnobbing with
> those who can't chose 
> their own clothing in the morning (he views this as a
> positive, or did, 
> anyway) tiptoe around a splop of chicken poop.  Actually,
> that vision is 
> firmly lodged in my head, and comes to me at the most
> inopportune 
> moments, causing me to smile at DMV clerks, even...... 
> 
> By a few years ago, maybe 3-4, I began to wonder how such
> totally 
> inexperienced, unwilling, people would even survive in a
> crash; money's 
> the only answer to a situation.  Carefully, I broached
> their wives 
> (totally clueless and no clue what to think about me, but
> both the kind 
> of people to put nose to grindstone if need be) with the
> idea that I 
> didn't think things "will always be so good
> financially" and pointed out 
> that I would be keeping the Maine place or replacing it
> with another at 
> least nominally agricultual piece of land "for all of
> US".  Blank looks, 
> in both cases, some extra explanations, parroting of their
> husbands' 
> words, not much else said.  But this past fall I started
> getting more 
> interest......now I notice, no one's laughing anymore. 
> I'm not waiting 
> (or wanting) for them to say 'you may have had a
> point' but the 
> harder-nosed one of them said to me in a phone call last
> week, during a 
> conversation about selling his house (mansion, hideous,
> hard, cold even 
> in FL, inside three nested security gates, every item
> dictated by a HOA) 
> "It seems like nobody wants a house with high
> ceilings" (main ceilings 
> are 27', bathrooms and spa only about 14-16'). 
> 
> So, no matter how they blind themselves, whether through
> ignorance or 
> deliberate refusal to look at facts they find unacceptable,
> it's really 
> a hard fall for folks like that.
> 
> Nobody's asking for help, and indeed, they may never. 
> But I see them 
> gradually letting in information bit-by-bit, so eventually
> it will 
> actually sink in. 
> Boggles the brain how perfectly intelligent people (at
> least one is a 
> lot smarter than I, speaks/translates/interrogates in 11
> languages plus 
> many dialects in some of those!) can walk around with
> closed eyes is 
> beyond the ken of this old slow woman with her goats. 
> 
> Your sister's situation is even a bit sadder in that
> she got hit before 
> she saw it coming.  And your subdued Thanksgiving may be as
> near as 
> anyone comes to saying that you were right, but they have
> to know it 
> whether or not they own up to that.  It's just going to
> be really hard 
> for them to say.....and you have it clearly in your head to
> trust 
> yourself and your knowledge and abitilites, so just hang in
> there, be 
> available, they'll come when and if they're ready,
> Lisa.  then you can 
> worry about the next step!!
> 
> SJ
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