Sai Baba

What matters is to live in the present, live now, for every moment is now. It is your thoughts and acts of the moment that create your future. The outline of your future path already exists, for you created its pattern by your past.

Sai Baba

What Matters?

Count your blessings instead of your crosses;

Count your gains instead of your losses.

Count your joys instead of your woes;

Count your friends instead of your foes.

Count your smiles instead of your tears;

Count your courage instead of your fears.

Count your full years instead of your lean;

Count your kind deeds instead of your mean.

Count your health instead of your wealth;

Count on God instead of yourself.

~Author Unknown~

Problem - Blankness or A Complete Loss - updated

If this problem has never attached to you, you have no clue as to what I'm talking about.  Blankness.  Total Blankness.  But wait; passage of time brings on this problem, most likely.  Fortunate you will be if it doesn't happen.

Blankness - it's horrible and SCARY i.e. like 'scared shitless' scary especially when it occurs TOO often, like several times a day.  I can lose words quicker than a flash.  Names of that one I'm speaking with?  Gone.  Just waiting for the day I forget My Name.  I'm already finding myself lost when out in public.  Scary, I'm telling you!  I am driving about and suddenly I don't recognize a place I'm located.

What do I do about it, people?  See a doctor and start taking a PILL?  Any doctors in the house to give me guidance?

I speak of this to daughterchild - child looks blank and utters no advice.  Hmm; Help me!
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Now my most current dilemma is this: I'm trying to put Word Pad documents onto a CD but have suddenly and completely forgotten the steps to take to do this.  I need HELP. There is no icon showing with the document to "burn to disc'. Any advice is welcomed.  Step by slow step.
Anybody?  

 ....Rick?  ( Hint, Hint)

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Update:  I've sort of figured out my dilemma.   Can I burn another?  Maybe.  Highly possible not.

Two Innocents + Ten = Grief

The Girl & the Apple - Updated and Revised - movie "The Fence"

 Enjoy
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The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously.  All the men, women and children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto had been herded into a square.

Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated. 'Whatever you do,' Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me,don't tell them your age. Say you're sixteen.

'I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker.

An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones.  He looked me up and down, and then asked my age.  'Sixteen,' I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood.

My mother was motioned to the right with the other women, children, sick and elderly people.  I whispered to Isidore, 'Why?'  He didn't answer.  I ran to Mama's side and said I wanted to stay with her.  'No, 'she said sternly.  'Get away. Don't be a nuisance. Go with your brothers.'

She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her.

My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany.  We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night later and were led into a crowded barrack. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers.  'Don't call me Herman anymore.' I said to my brothers. 'Call me 94983.'

I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead into a hand-cranked elevator.  I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had become a number.

Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald's sub-camps near Berlin.
One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice.  'Son,' she said softly but clearly, I am going to send you an angel.'  Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream.  But in this place there could be no angels. There was only work.  And hunger. And fear.

A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone.  On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone: a little girl with light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree.
I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly in German. 'Do you have something to eat?'  She didn't understand.

I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Polish.  She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life.
She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence.  I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, 'I'll see you tomorrow.'

I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day.  She was always there with something for me to eat - a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple.  We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both.  I didn't know anything about her, just a kind farm girl, except that she understood Polish. What was her name?  Why was she risking her life for me?

Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples.

Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia.  'Don't return,' I told the girl that day. 'We're leaving.'
I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the little girl whose name I'd never learned, the girl with the apples.

We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed.  On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM.  In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over.   I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.

But at 8 A.M. there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers.  Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open.  Everyone was running, so I did too. Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived;

I'm not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival.
In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none.

My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.  Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to America, where my brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U. S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years.


By August 1957 I'd opened my own electronics repair shop.  I was starting to settle in.  One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England called me.  'I've got a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date.' A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me.

But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma.  I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn't so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life.

The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with.  Turned out she was wary of blind dates too!  We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the
boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn't remember having a better time.  We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing the backseat.

As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, 'Where were you,' she asked softly, 'during the war?' 'The camps,' I said. The terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you can never forget.

She nodded. 'My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from Berlin,' she told me. 'My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers.'  I imagined how she must have suffered too, fear, a constant companion.  And yet here we were both survivors, in a new world.

'There was a camp next to the farm.' Roma continued. 'I saw a boy there and I would throw him apples every day.'  What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy.  'What did he look like? I asked.  'He was tall, skinny, and hungry. I must have seen him every day for six months.'

My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it. This couldn't be.  'Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?'  Roma looked at me in amazement. 'Yes!'

'That was me!'  I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions.  I couldn't believe it! My angel.  'I'm not letting you go.' I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn't want to wait. 

'You're crazy!' she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week.

There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I'd found her again, I could never let her go.

That day, she said yes. And I kept my word. After nearly 50 years  marriage, two children and three grandchildren, I have never let her go.

Herman Rosenblat of Miami Beach, Florida
This story is being made into a movie called The Fence.

'Our' Shocking Universal Situation - This Particular Crime - - -a repeat post

Read and Be Alerted - Shocking Universal Situation  1-16-09

Reading the article (link ) regarding iPhones and young people, children (young as six) I got a bad feeling.. It is a very serious, harmful and easily dangerous situation. It is so serious. I felt others ought to become aware too;. so posting the complete article as the information needs to reach all who have any influence with a youngster or its parents. You can also access it with the link. Even pass it on to others if its helpful to them.  I'm certain it will or should be.

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/in-their-sites-20091115-igeu.html

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In Their Sites
JOHN SILVESTER
November 16, 2009

AN EXPERIENCED detective was furious when he spotted a criminal he had arrested years earlier loitering near his eastern suburban home. He grabbed the man and whispered, ''Before I take you to hospital after you seriously injure yourself, you'd better tell me how you found where I live.''
The stalker, who quickly lost interest in any revenge plans, said: ''Your daughters are on Facebook.''
Welcome to the cyber world, where privacy is as outdated as whalebone corsets.
One of Australia's biggest private detective agencies now employs staff in Melbourne and Sydney to troll through Facebook and MySpace sites to search for leads on people who have tried to disappear to avoid mounting debts.
And employers are exploring sites to check the profiles of prospective staff. One university student who has appeared regularly on a reality television program wisely removed a series of pictures showing a different side of his character.
Police are now dealing with the crime backwash generated from surfing the web, and many detectives believe the internet is eroding community standards. The new trends have forced police to set up a specific internet division within the sexual crimes squad.
The team uses undercover tactics to trap men who target teenage girls on chat sites. They have arrested and convicted cyber-stalkers as old as 40 who have tried to procure under-age girls by befriending them through the web.
Police and adolescent developmental experts have found teenage boys and girls are creating false and dangerous images of themselves through online profiles.
One experienced investigator describes it as the ''cult of the self-obsessed''. The detective says police are now starting to deal with teenagers who have grown up with mobile phone cameras and who have taken hundreds of pictures of themselves since they were six or seven years old.
They post online details of their lives, from the mundane to the intimate, with little concern or understanding of the possible consequences.
The investigator says police are routinely finding teenage girls posting provocative comments and photos of themselves on the web. ''We see comments and you wouldn't know if the writer was 13 or 30,'' he says. He says the girls can portray themselves as sexually experienced in a bid to establish an edgy image. ''It is all make-believe but it can create a false image that comes back to bite them.''
One counsellor says girls from an exclusive Melbourne girls school have taken pornographic photos of themselves and posted them to their boyfriends. The pictures have then been forwarded to an unknown number of teenage boys leaving the girls' reputations in tatters.
Detectives are becoming increasingly alarmed at the sexually threatening nature of postings by some teenage males. Police were forced to close down a Facebook site set up to support two young footballers charged with rape after a team trip to Phillip Island. Up to 700 people joined the site that offered support to the accused teenagers, even though the case is yet to be heard in court.
Last week, The Sydney Morning Herald revealed a so-called ''pro-rape'' site, dominated by male students from the University of Sydney's St Paul's College, that had to be shut down.
Mainstream media now check Facebook and similar personal pages to provide information on suspects and victims in high-profile crimes. When Maria Korp was found slowly dying in the boot of a car near the Shrine of Remembrance in February 2005, the media soon exposed her private sex life after her and her husband Joe's profiles were found on a swingers' site.
As she lay in hospital for six months on life support, she was unaware her private sexual preferences had become very public property.
Joe Korp's mistress, Tania Herman, was sentenced to a minimum of nine years' jail for attempted murder. The two lovers had met through the internet.
Herman maintains Korp seduced her with a plan to manipulate her into killing his wife. Korp committed suicide in bizarre circumstances, hanging himself in the family garage after he completed a one-hour video autobiography that he wanted to sell to the media. Even the car his wife was concealed in after she was bashed and strangled was later put up for sale on the internet.
The managing director of one of Australia's largest private investigations firms, Mark Grover, says Facebook is now the major tool used to find people who dodge debts. His company now finds between 30 and 40 bad debtors a week through internet profile sites and social pages.
''It may be the person keeps their head down, but we can find them through their children or friends. They often leave a cyber trail though their social and family connections.''
Grover says there is also a trend for criminals and the mentally disturbed to use the internet to track people they want to stalk. ''If they are technologically savvy, they put all their energy into tracking the people they want to find.''
In one case under investigation, he says a Melbourne man used the internet to identify the home address of a high-profile singer, ''and is turning her life into a misery''.
According to Grover, young people post fantasy material about themselves on their sites unaware it could damage their reputations and harm their employment prospects.
''Most of our staff have nothing to do with these sites because they see the damage that can be done.'' One woman poured out her frustration and dislike for her boss on her Facebook page, having forgotten she had previously added him as a friend. ''She received a message to come in and collect her things after he read it,'' Grover says.
The head of the sexual crimes squad, Detective Inspector Glen Davies, says parents need to spend time discussing rights and responsibilities with their teenage children as the break-up party and schoolie season begins this month.
''Many of the victims and offenders we deal with are just young people who have been caught up in events that have tragic consequences for everyone. Young men should re-acquaint themselves with the concept of respect. Rape is an incredibly serious criminal offence. I cannot overstate this. We meticulously investigate all cases and will bring about charges against those who are found to be offending.''
In Victoria, rape carries a maximum penalty of 25 years. Assault with intent to rape has a penalty of up to 10 years.
Davies says that in some incidents young men fall into a pack mentality and appear to behave out of character or remain passive as they see events spin out of control. ''Young people, particularly men, need to consider their own behaviour and the way they treat women. Often these situations occur in group environments and young men need to take a strong moral stance and speak out to their mates and put a stop to their actions.
''What we are commonly seeing is young girls, who have often been drinking alcohol, being targeted by young men. Quite often these young women are incapable of giving consent and in some instances are being intimidated by large groups of men and taken advantage of because of their vulnerable state.''
He says male teenagers need to comprehend there can never be an excuse for sexual assault and they will be held responsible for their actions.
Melbourne adolescent psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg says there has been a substantial and worrying change in the behaviour of teenagers in recent years. ''There is no doubt that 13 and 14-year-olds are doing things that were not happening 10 or 20 years ago.''
He says many teenagers have unfettered access to the internet and their parents have no idea what their children are doing. ''There has been a fundamental failure in parental responsibility. There is neglect mixed with affluence. The parents have no idea their children are heading into so much trouble. And they are becoming younger and younger.''
He says many children are receiving unrealistic sex education through hard-core websites.
''We know that teenagers of 14 and 15 lack the capacity to predict the consequences of their actions and they fail to understand that what they are posting is not private.''
U-Nome party security expert and former policewoman Naomi Oakley says she routinely sees scantily clad and alcohol-affected girls as young as 14 leave parties without a pre-arranged lift home. ''Parents and these children have to understand the dangers.'' She says the party scene is becoming younger as 13 and 14-year-olds ''see it as the cool thing to do''.
Carr-Gregg says parents need to ''shoulder surf'' to see who their children contact on the web.
Last month, British police charged a convicted sex offender after he allegedly confessed to killing a 17-year-old girl he met through Facebook, where he masqueraded as a teenage boy. Peter Chapman, 32, was charged with the murder of trainee nanny Ashleigh Hall, whose body was found dumped in a ditch on farmland near Durham.
Her mother, Andrea, said, ''Tell your kids to be careful on the internet. Don't trust anybody and don't put your children on Facebook or other sites if they are under-age. We have learnt a terrible lesson. We don't want any other child to be a victim.''