Author: Ann’s Aliens

I grew up in Minnesota in the 1960s. I was given outstanding opportunities which included studying conducting with the Minnesota Orchestra's Henry Charles Smith and the opportunity to play with the Minnesota Orchestra for outdoor concerts. I graduated from the College of St. Benedict in 1979. I'm a veteran of the Sixth US Army Band at the Presidio of San Francisco, California and the First Army Band at Ft. Meade, Maryland. I've worked as a waitress, bank teller, sales clerk, day care provider and more. I earned my Masters in Education in 1990 at Marymount University in Arlington VA. I taught for 12 years in public schools and 2 years in a private Quaker school. I withdrew from teaching because of MS, and not being able to stay awake in front of my students. I now spend my time reading, writing, traveling, and photographing my experiences. I'm married, with two grown children. I was an ambassador for Patient's Like Me. My husband Eric and I have a rescued Shiba Inu and a tortoise shell long haired female cat named Frankenstein Loggerhead Fantail Guppy.com. I have two grown children who are out having adventures of their own now. We live in the Northern Virginia area. How to see what I do? whiteawjwords.com, fineartamerica.com/profiles/ann-wj-white.html, or whiteawj@mac.com.

Falling in Love Again

Published on by Ann’s Aliens10 Comments

I’ve been married now for almost 36 years. For our anniversary my husband and I are going on a cruise to Mexico and Honduras with the intention of learning more about the Mayan Ruins. It was a great culture, one marked wit all of the traits that civilizations develop. I’m bringing my cameras, so there will be photos. The last time we went was in 2006, on the Grandeur of the Seas. We ended up with two photos that really showed the spirit of the people. I’m glad to be going, we’ve gone through so much in the last decade that time seems to have slipped a bit for both of us. We survived a recession when my husband gave support to those we love who lost or couldn’t find a job. We survived a mortgage that we had with Countrywide, and the change that made it a Bank of America mortgage. We kept our house, my two children married (not to each other of course), and one is now a proud homeowner. The other now has his dream job, and should soon be able to find a home for his wife and himself in the next year. But we’ve spent the last decade trying to do everything we could for family, and exhausting as it was it was worth the effort, and I think we forgot about the two of us.

Our differences have really accentuated themselves recently. We find things that prickle under the skin and have to stop and shake our heads. It never bothered us to be different before. We just had not taken the time to talk about these things. Little things wedged themselves between us, you know, the three things that most couples deal with. Children, even grown ones, money, and time. Those three things can become doom scenarios in a relationship.

We decided not to have a doom scenario. He had a week of vacation last week that we spent together.  I decided to become the romantic one. My husband decided to become the practical one. We talked about all of those prickly things. He made me dinner, I did the laundry. He pruned up the yard as I raked the magnolia leaves. He told me he liked the flowers I picked from my garden. I told him he was handsome. We went out to dinner. We walked the dogs together. All of these little bits of time spent talking. I told him I was worried that he wasn’t happy. He told me that he thought I wasn’t happy. We laughed. We made sure that as we walked or dined that we talked about each and every thought that was in our heads. In the end, it was the plain old boring things that you don’t have time to think of that made us both look at each other again. We’re partners, equal, willing to depend on each other.

Love isn’t that mad passionate wave that excludes people. Sex is nice (well, of course it is). That isn’t love either. Love is having someone there who isn’t trying to change you. Love is understanding that you will grow differently, but there will be so much to share. Music surrounds us both, and we find that our tastes have become more similar. Art surrounds us. Our families surround us. Our willingness to make a family less about love and more about the people that we surround ourselves with. Love is an adventure. It’s willing to take the wrong turn, but with a map to get it back on course. It’s the willingness to not give up. It’s the companionship of years of changes.

I’ve changed over time. I’ve kept the things that are the essential me alive though. I keep my silliness to bring a smile to his lips when he’s angry at the world. I’ve learned to understand that he needs to vent. He knows that physically I can’t keep up with the house. He doesn’t care. He wants me to be happy. He wants me to write. Dishes can wait until one or the other of us have the energy to do them. Usually it’s him these days. He said I don’t ever have to lift a hand to the house. He also likes working with me on the house when I can. We are at the point in life where we realize there is an end coming. It doesn’t frighten us. We just need the time to be together, the two of us.

A quiet room when the house is just us, and we sit and talk about the world. We read together, watch John Oliver together, and the house is tranquil. Our moral compass heading is identical. But the biggest change came this past week when he told me that he’s looking forward to the adventures we have coming. He wants to spend that time with me, exploring the world, taking a class together, being happy. I think that is what love is beyond all else.

Love is when something happens, good or bad, and you want to tell that person first, before all others. That sharing bond of excitement or sadness bring you close and then closer. I want time to be gentle enough so that we can walk to the finish line hand in hand and know that the greatest gift we ever had was each other.

Fraud and Lies, phone calls from Conmen and women.

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The phone rings. Always the wrong time, always the disrupter of my reading, my serenity. It’s another conman wanting me to call him. “You are in trouble,” he murmurs, “You m…

Source: Fraud and Lies, phone calls from Conmen and women.

Fraud and Lies, phone calls from Conmen and women.

Published on by Ann’s Aliens6 Comments

The phone rings. Always the wrong time, always the disrupter of my reading, my serenity. It’s another conman wanting me to call him. “You are in trouble,” he murmurs, “You must call this number because the IRS has found you guilty of…Here he fills in the words he wants. Tax fraud, tax evasion, he wants me to know that I am guilty. He threatens me with court actions; having to appear before a grand jury, being arrested, embarrassing my family. He’s a fraud, living off the fears of men and woman who don’t have my knowledge of these things.

I am not a victim. I note the phone number and wonder who I could call to report them to. A phone crime isn’t a mail crime. Nothing passes through the mail that could be considered fraudulent. The conman is careful. I bring up the IRS website on my computer and notice that the con is one of the top violations, called in fact the Dirty Dozen. The conman isn’t careful enough. A google search reveals that over 5,000 people have been bilked out of over $26,000,000 dollars. I gag at the amount. Seniors who worry, those without knowledge that the IRS never calls to collect money, even people who might have something to hide, they are all targets. Why am I a target? Did they buy my phone number or is it just a random dialer. The more I read, the angrier I get.

There is a fraud line for the IRS. https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0048-government-imposter-scams or call 1-800-829-1040. It was easy to find on google.  Apparently the conmen also tell you that you might have won the lottery and will owe taxes before they can allow you to be awarded the money. They want to you wire them money. They say that it must be sent to Lloyd’s of London for security reason. The fake debt call from the IRS could also be said to be from the local sheriff’s office, the FTC, or any government branch. Anyone who demands or asks for you to wire money for any purpose should be treated skeptically. Anyone who offers you a scholarship you didn’t apply for, be wary. It’s a con. Anyone who wants you to pay for information about Federal Jobs is a con, as well. That information is free.

So, I reported the phone number to the IRS. They happen to be functioning under a little known organization called The Treasury Department. The Treasury Department has a small group that it coordinates with called the FBI. The FBI is responsible for over 200 different types of crime. I used the handy form on the IRS site for reporting fraud. It was easy, reassured me that I didn’t have to fill in all of the blanks, gave me a case number in case I’m contacted again, and promised that if I did owe money, I could talk to their counselors to find a resolution. Nice polite people at the IRS, much nicer than the student loan groups Sallie Mae or Navient who will don’t work with you and just order you around.

I don’t owe the IRS anything. I pay my taxes, and I do it on time.

What do they suggest I do? Report the incident. Write down the time and date. Write what department are they calling from. Write all of the details they give you. Keep track of the numbers they give you. NEVER GIVE OUT ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION. These folks are pros. They’ll use any information on you to steal your identity. Don’t be a victim. Check on elderly family to make sure they understand what is happening and that this is a con. Tell your friends. IF you start it as a joke, “Guess who called me at home, and boy is this a scam” it will get the word out. Even as I typed this, my father-in-law received a call too.

Get on the Federal Do Not Call List. Stay safe and pass the word.

Hamilton, Musical, Powerful, Soul Imprinting

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Don’t believe that you can truly understand more than one thing at a time. Not 100 percent if you are multitasking. Not even mothers will have 100 percent understanding as they deal with work, commute, screaming child, sick child, obnoxious child who learned how to blow chocolate milk through his nose. No, each of those things can balance the others, some outbalance the others, but you can’t experience the whole picture. If most cases, you don’t want that whole picture. But then there are musical performances, books of a pure truth, insights that leave you momentarily undone. So it is with Hamilton.

It’s the sound, the pulse that bleeds into your awareness. Music is the novel of passion, played upon a stage that requires your ‘mind’, body and soul. Great operas ripped the tears from the ones who got it. Madam Butterfly, The Telephone, Bernstein’s Mass, 1776, Westside Story, these will catch you and leave you breathless feeling that you have felt or learned something great. They are stories. Novels.

With greatness that we miss in our busy days filled with office, school, ball games, little league, ballet lessons, commutes, and tae Kwon do, because we don’t pause to see. Great novels make the soul weep. Flowers for Algernon, the first time I read it out loud to students ripped into my consciousness and left me crumpled in front of fifth graders. When the principal walked in on the weeping, he backed out and never said a word. The Reprieved Reformation about a safe cracker who found a reason to change, to lose his greed and save his humanity. AS I Stand Here Ironing, a look at a mother, whose daughter once again is in trouble. Whose teacher wants the parent conference (hear the drumroll of fate calling), but who is HER daughter, HER creation.

Hamilton, a poor boy, orphaned, witness to plagues and treasuries, a man hated and reviled, clung to by women and worshipped, a man against odds, the man who created the treasury, and a duel. It plays like a Shakespearean Novel on the top 20 list of the BOTM  (book of the month) club. And it’s the presentation.

I performed in Bernstein’s Mass (what does a Jewish composer know of Catholicism?) where the priest who loses his faith, his congregation and his soul was portrayed as a young priest starting out and the disillusionment, the delusionment, the despair he felt that tore him to shreds balanced on notes that are harmonic in their disharmony. It tore us as performers apart, it silenced the audience and they left quietly, thinking. I saw it at the Kennedy Center the same way. It was beautiful and framed perfectly. I saw it at Lord Albert’s Hall where the priest was portrayed as a pedipiile and that WAS WRONG. It made me sick to watch or listen to it. The tenor changed the entire message. He was a tenor. Really. A European, a German tenor with a skeptical look at any chance of purity in the Church. A tenor who thought that Bernstein was mocking the church. No really, a German tenor trying to understand a jewish composer’s view of the catholic church as the congregation took and used…never mind, it just didn’t feel like what I had performed and seen performed. Granted I am from the upper MidWest where even the atheists have a feeling of respect for some concepts of church and community, except for pedipiiles.

That’s what we are trying to do, isn’t it? Trying to effect our readers and public with our vision of the world at that instant. Music takes the instants and compounds the eyes with ears, the blood with pulse, the soul with wonder, fear or hatred. I should have put my two careers together before this, the narration of exploring a saga by pace made so much clearer to me now.

I’m an intellectual, know as a nerd in this time and place, and I am attempting to write the great novel of my time. Arrogance in the least application. No, not arrogance. I want to be a writer to leave a footprint that I understood something beyond what I am now. I want to be for the future to seek guidance from and to turn that which is bloody and awful to a tale told by a fool about the purity of man.

It’s the sound, the pulse, the overwhelming focus on one incredible thing at a time. It’s a message that must speak of itself. It’s the dark calling to the nightmares, setting them into patterns. It’s why children put their noses under the covers while their eyes search the shadows.

Then the man from Hamilton speaks of his upbringing in Puerto Rico, an American territory. He tells of the tragedy of poverty, of exploitation by hedge funds who now attempt to topple the people by placing demands for payment against a government not allowed to file for bankruptcy. He speaks in the language of the musical Hamilton. He appears on shows including John Oliver’s. We know John Oliver as a man of intelligence and integrity who has a campaign against cigarettes internationally with Dave, a diseased lung. We know him as the exposer of lies and corruption. That he sides with Hamilton in his pursuit for justice for his home gives it credence.

The sound of children crying from hunger, orphans, health care costing twice for the same system we have on the mainland. They became a territory as a result of war. They have an honor roll of US Veterans of War and believe in the US as part of their nation. They still see the our hope as theirs. So we walk away and leave them adrift in a world of greed where teachers can’t teach because there is no money.

Hamilton. Novels, Operas, Comedies, Lies, Justice, Defeat. Ultimately, in order to understand life, you have to stop and focus on just that. You have to let go of what you think and what you feel without the experience and open your heart to the message. Hamilton has a focus for today. It’s powerful. I hope to write a novel with that kind of power of exposure someday.

When Trouble Came

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When the grass was short,
Knees were barked and
Giggles lasted through the day.


When the weeds grew wild,
Skirts were short and
Glasses magnified the world.

When the leaves fell,
Streams were colored,
Work was life endowed.


When the ice blew,
Snow drifts suffered,
Adult eyes grew jaded.

When trouble struck,
Murder most cruel,
Debts buried mountains.



When color drained,
Blood was forgotten, but
Genocide prevailed.


When liberty hid her head,
Shamed and lonely,
Safety became an illusion of the past.

When false men screamed in anger,
Children met death,
Streets rained red with blood.

When jealous greed drank a draught,
Slowly sip by sip, glad
Blindness filled our eyes.

When police dressed in shrouds,
Denying other’s truth,
Armed repressions stole freedom.

When children looked for justice,
Winter came early,
Paris was set aflame.


			
		

	
	



			
				



			

			
				
			
		

	
	

		
		
I’m Happy

				

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I caught a glance of myself from the corner of my eye this morning and had to stop and look. I looked…happy. Not the usual answer to people who look at me and say, “Are you happy?” but an unbidden, unjudged slightly smiled unthinking happy. It took me by surprise. I was in full thought about the book I’m writing and had put the dogs out for a break. Surely, that was an optimistic moment. I was writing and working through new thoughts, trying to put them in words that weren’t too redundant. And I had been thinking that I had missed Renkian’s birthday two days ago, summer was coming, shh, don’t wake the daddy, dogs. It was all in a rush, just as I typed it, but I was happy.


My trees behind the house are still filling in and suburbia has disappeared. The flowers in front are blooming with no assistance on my part. The kitchen is clean. I should have expected the happy feeling. There are enough trials I’ve gone through and difficult times that I smiled though, but that isn’t the type of thing that brings my inner happy out. It’s simplicity.


When I was small I would sing to the fairies who lived in the rose bushes. I would dance for my springer spaniel and enjoy the tea I served her. I took naps with the puppies she had so they would not be lonely. I followed my mother wanting to move with her mysterious knowledge of what was important in her life. I would pretend to be asleep so my dad would carry me in from the car, jealous that I wasn’t younger still. I would look at snowflakes for hours through the window and be the great SNOWMONSTER in my blue snowsuit and red boots. I knew the names of all of the ladybugs that swarmed in my yard searching for aphids for dinner. I found the inside of boxes most fascinating and would sit in them for hours just looking at things.


People say they don’t understand women. I’m so simple though. If a thought bends toward the color of the sky, rose, rainbow, I’m full of the happiness that small things bring. Bring me a cup of tea, happy. A dandelion, happy. Spring rain, happy. A book, happy. Let me make you something? Happy. I want to share things with the world. I want the world to understand that today, I’m kind, sweet, silly but most of all I’m happy.


Give me a moment to watch a ballgame and I’m so happy for the young men who play and try to keep that game focused on Baseball. They’re happy. I watch Rendon on TV hit the ball with a graceful swing, I’m happy. It’s not things in life that make life important. I believe it’s enjoying the moments of life. So, today I found myself happy as I hadn’t been in a long time. My reflection spoke in loud whispers. I can’t hide the fact that my nature will not dwell for long on the sad, worrisome or terrible. Somewhere that little voice will call from, just loud enough for me to hear, and I’ll see that little smile in the mirror again. I’m happy.


 


			
		

	
	



			
				



	
	

		
		
Why?

				

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I was young and foolish once.

I was wise beyond my years.

Strong and powerful

A new mother

A fight to save my love

I was a prizefighter too.


Now I look back and smile,

I was powerful once,

I am alive now

Because of those memories.

Looking back, gives

Me pride, a surge of resilience,


And I can make it through


Today.


			
		

	
	



			
				



			

			
				
			
		

	
	

		
		
My Secret Garden

				

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In winter, my yard survives with drab browns that have ten thousand shades, and yet still seem the same. My husband paces, back and forth, thinking of all the work we need to do. It’s too cold, windy, or just depressing in winter, so we stay inside and warm ourselves with sweaters.


I have secrets about my backyard. Sometime at the end of January, snowdrops lift their cheery white bonnets and lean towards each other to whisper that Spring will come. They keep me from feeling lost with all the browns. Even though I can see my neighbors behind me, little things start to happen. In March, we had the grape muscari lift  blooms taller each day. The lilacs budded, cherry trees bloomed, pear trees followed, then the lilacs opened and the smell in the evening like the sweetest perfume. My azaleas always bloom after the rest of the neighborhood’s have finished. Green creeps along the branches, maples flower, seed, then leaf. And all of the time, when small things are growing, my house begins to disappear. Oh granted, there is weeding to be done. Trimming has to start sometime, but I stall. I like the violets in the grass. The yard needs sprucing, who am I to complain. I need sprucing myself.


The tall black locusts, once used for main masts on sailing ships, thrive in the common ground where no one bothers to mow. Blooming every other year, they are trailing white pea flower shapes that chart the wind for me. Pawpaws, dogwood, four red buds, two towering plane trees fill in the missing puzzle pieces.


The iris sprung straight from the ground in April. Hurrying to be counted, they stood straight and tall in the rain. Sixteen days of rain, which turned the yard greener than I remember it. It’s like this every spring. Daffodils, roses, everything bloomed before its time this year, and I’d not give it up. So many different colors beaming at me.


The best of all, though, are the small green tree frogs that sing every day at sunset, into the night, until exhausted, they sneak away to hide until the next evening. Their song cheers me when nothing else can. It’s only May, and the garden has had its own thoughts of bluebells, zinnias, geraniums, and fuchsia. Looking down the back hill into a small runoff of water, to small for a stream, there will be fireflies. And the yard hides the world of worry away from me until November returns.


			
		

	
	



			
				



			

			
				
			
		

	
	

		
		
Buzz

				

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Catastrophic bees in tees
Seek the edges of green lawn,
While night workers, oblivious,
Try sleeping behind drapes
Of white noise.

Teams of green clad
Buzzing monsters attack,
Tool driven, belt drives engaged,
Soon replacing one buzz
For an informal hum.

They are a constant.
A suburban flock
Outnumbering locusts 
And Grasshoppers, snails,
Slipping competition for wages.

Grooming nature, using comb,
Scissors that are automatically
and Mysteriously changing in form
It rained, grew, and in growing
Fertilized the minds of the Suburbian.

Nonsense you might cry,
But you'll never be heard.
Seen and unseen as they mow,
Edge, and disappear
Rush hour will never see their like.

The grass wars have begun. 
Who is the cheapest?
The fastest? The meanest?
The honest? The overpriced?
All on paper, awaiting signatures
 
Of concession. Sign here, please.


			
		

	
	



			
				



	
	

		
		
Now for Baseball

				

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We spent over 5 hours and 56 minutes watching the Minnesota Twins and the Washington Nationals spare on Sunday. In what Dusty Baker called the absolute weirdest game ever he ever managed, the Nationals managed to come out on top. Both teams were running low on players. The ninth inning save goes to Bryce Harper who said he’d hit a homer and tie the game, which he did. The first seven innings go to Steven Strasberg, for incredible pitching. Then Petit came into the game and held on for more pitches than he had pitched for many years. The out fielding was outstanding. Werth, denDecker, Heisey, Taylor all made significant catches. Add a glorious actor named Perez and and his acting and dancing ability, two catchers named Ramos and Lobaton, speed demon and shortstop Espinosa, Murphy, Drew, Papalbon, Rendon, Zimmerman, and a partridge in a pear tree and you have us sitting on the sofa. Yup, me the eternal optimist and my husband, king of gloom and doom. It’s good to believe in a team when they win. It’s good to believe in a team even if they lose. But it is priceless to have such a good competition between two tough teams and yours wins by a squeak. I was exhausted at the end.


There was some savvy decision making. I am pretty sure that Dusty didn’t know that Perez hadn’t hit a ball since 2010. I’m pretty sure he was afraid that he would have to use Trienen who had played two days before. He was wise to switch out the catchers. How do those guys keep from having knee cramps all night long after a game? Dusty picked and chose who did what carefully, and having put our all on the table, created a memory that will be on MASN TV all next winter. I won’t forget the game.


May I add that Dusty Baker’s philosophy of life is making baseball “fun again.”  His way of enthusiastically pumping up the players, of believing in them, and of keeping his word are new to Washington. I hope he stays for many years. We need someone like him. Oh, the keeping the word, in case you hadn’t heard, was telling Bryce that he could since hit, but because he had the day off, that was ALL he would be allowed to do. Barry Bond had gone into a game with 16 innings in the ninth, and he played until the win was secured. So much for his day off. Funny he had mentioned that to Bryce. I hope he buys a lottery ticket. His words, “If man can move a mountain, surely man can move a baseball.”


Oh, we saw you Ben Revere and your gnome outfit. You keep coming. You are our lucky gnome of the year. I can hardly wait to see you as a bobble head. The hat, the hoodie, the scarf, the hope that you kept going with your being willing to be silly and support your team even when injured. Nice going. Effort noted and best wishes to getting 100% well.


I was glad the Twins won their game by a squeak in the ninth last night. They deserved a good win too.


Fifty-eight years old, and somehow over the last four years, I changed my spots. I love baseball and I understand why we need it. We need something to believe in. We need the normalcy of a tradition that started somewhere around 1890. As long as we can step away from our problems and be part of a great effort, things have to get better.


Sports reporter, Ann White, heading back into the real world.