Category Archives: Messages of mhere

Growing up out in the country, mhere loved spending time outdoors and she loved gardening.  Traveling around for years in the Army provided a wealth of experiences, but mhere constantly told hotshot82nd that someday she yearned for a garden of her own.  mhere loved to take care of plants and considering just about everyone where she grew up had at least a small plot to grow some vegetables, she had learned from an early age how important it is to be able to grow your own food.  She loved helping can vegetables and make pickles in the summertime.  One of her favorite chores as a child was to trim around the house and along the sidewalks, long before weed-eaters existed.  Her mother would hand her a pair of grass shears and she would happily work her way around the house and along the sidewalk.  Another chore she loved was to spend time weeding the garden.

When they had bought their home, mhere’s parents came to visit and mhere excitedly told her father that finally she was going to have a garden of her own.  mhere’s father walked around the backyard with her looking at the sky and then picking up handfuls of dirt here and there as they talked.  He pointed out which side of her yard got the best sunlight, then he kindly told mhere that her dream wasn’t going to be easy, because the soil wasn’t fertile like back home where seeds sprouted without effort.  He told her, “all you’ve got here is sand and clumps of clay.”  mhere had waited many years to have her garden and she decided, “I don’t care!  I am going to have a garden!”  She told hotshot82nd what her father had said and how she thought if she added plenty of compost, over time, she could build up her soil.  She went to the library and signed out books on Southern gardening and then she told hotshot82nd that what she needed was a compost bin.  He built her two large bins back by the edge of the woods behind their home and he started adding yard scraps to begin the process to build up her soil.  Now, hotshot82nd didn’t know anything about gardening, because he grew up in a city, but when she showed him books with diagrams and happily waxed on about her dreams of a garden of her own, he jumped in to help.

hotshot82nd had decided what mhere needed was a fence with a gate to keep the kids and dogs out of her garden, so he built a fence.  The first couple years mhere’s garden didn’t produce much of anything, but by the time this new scandal hit America, mhere happily told her mother that her garden actually was starting to grow like the gardens back home and mhere felt that the few years she had spent adding compost over and over and over had finally paid off.

One night, mhere got up during the middle of the night to use the bathroom and she noticed there were lights on at the house across the street where the neighbors had moved and the house sat empty awaiting new neighbors.  mhere glanced through the slats of her mini-blind and thought it odd that there were several vehicles in the driveway and the floodlight in the backyard was on.   She always had many chores to do around her home, so she put this out of her mind and didn’t give it more thought until much later.

One morning, mhere went outside after her children had gone to school and she started sweeping her front porch.  An odd sensation hit her, and she couldn’t quite describe it because she had never felt like this before.  This sensation continued wherever she went in her house and even in her backyard when she went outside to work in her garden.  It was Fall and mhere wanted to plow under her garden, but when hotshot82nd said he’d get the rototiller out to do that, mhere told him she liked doing it by hand with a shovel and there were many weeds she wanted to pull out when she did it.  As she worked this sensation of being “tracked”, would be the only word she could use to describe it at this point, followed her.

Strange things began to happen to mhere.  The sensation of being tracked continued and as the days passed many times when she was in her home near hotshot82nd, she started to feel jolts that knocked her off-balance.  She started to get scared, but since mhere was scared of everything, she kept her fears to herself.  All her life, she had been the little cry-baby – scared of the dark, scared of strangers, scared, scared, scared.  Her fearful nature caused her children and hotshot82nd to make fun of her often, because at the first hint of a storm, she’d rush to get the flashlight handy and start thinking about all the what “ifs”.  She worried about everything.

Days turned into weeks and these jolts continued.   One day mhere was back by the woods at her compost bins and she noticed that a nearby tree had a brand-new tree stand and it was situated to look directly into her backyard.  She thought that was very odd, because for the years they had lived there, an old dilapidated tree stand had been in that tree from years ago before this neighborhood had houses.  Fear rippled through mhere, because she was beginning to worry, but she kept telling herself, “stop being ridiculous!”  She had noticed that when she left her house that odd sensation disappeared, but when she returned home it started again.  When hotshot82nd got home, mhere told him about this tree stand and he walked back there to look at it .  He thought that was odd too.

Her days turned into anxious worryings and mhere noticed something strange, some of her message boards comments were being borrowed by right-wing pundits on TV.   The jolts had now turned into anxious hours spent feeling like she was being pressed down almost, so she would sit and try to keep the fears at bay.  Gradually, she began to think she really was being deliberately attacked and as soon as she would let that line of thought play out, the possibilities seemed so far-fetched that she would pull herself back and tell herself, “that would be impossible! I am just a homemaker, who would care about what I have to say on some stupid message board?”  Back and forth she would think, “well, what if I am being targeted, who would do this?” Only to be followed with thoughts of, “stop being stupid, no one cares about a message board.”

For many years America had been engaged in a far-off country, embroiled in low-level conflict – maintaining a no-fly zone and pressing economic sanctions after a short war, that hotshot82nd had participated in almost a decade before.  Now, mhere held presidentmendacity in complete contempt when it came to foreign policy, because he followed the same script as in his speeches, – lies, disingenuous promises, backtracking and waffling. He didn’t seem to have any set core principles or objectives and every move he made was weighed against how it would impact his poll numbers and his image.  He governed by poll numbers and his cadre of what mhere thought of as “sewer rats”, spent endless hours talking about presidentmendacity’s popularity, even as the fall-out from this latest scandal escalated.

The scandal inched along toward talk of impeachment and removal from office and mhere’s message boards became even more contentious.  News broke of presidentmendacity launching a new round of air strikes in this far off country and immediately critics charged this was a lame attempt to deflect attention from the sex scandal.  One night, mhere pointed out to hotshot82nd that the only high-ranking military officer who had come out in support of presidentmendacity’s military action was a commander hotshot82nd had served under long ago, in a war in that far-off country.  Now, mhere and hotshot82nd had very differing opinions of this commander, now a retired general, whom mhere thought of as the americanrommel.   hotshot82nd considered americanrommel a fantastic commander.  mhere knew americanrommel hated her, because of some issues mhere and americanrommel’s wife had during that long ago war.  Of course, hotshot82nd didn’t like politics and he didn’t want to hear about a bunch of “wives” stuff, when mhere had tried to tell him long, long ago.

The Army, just like America, had signed onto this “two for one” idea and instead of a “co-president”, the Army had a “command team”.  americanrommel’s wife certainly had proved adept at grasping the reins of power.  mhere thought of her as the queenoftherock and in fact, mhere’s neighbor had heard her glibly exclaim that she felt like she was “the queen of the rock”. To mhere’s way of thinking she was more akin to a petty tyrant, almost as bad as thatwitch2016.   Of course, mhere cattily thought, “of course americanrommel would support presidentmendacity, because if the scuttlebutt hotshot82nd heard was true, americanrommel couldn’t keep his pants zipped either!”  mhere remembered hotshot82nd coming home and telling her that story circulating that americanrommel had to retire,  because he got involved with a foreign reporter while serving in another far-off country for presidentmendacity.   mhere thought to herself, “of course he’d be sympathetic to presidentmendacity’s problem!’  hotshot82nd thought amercianrommel was a great commander, but mhere knew that americanrommel hated her.

Things were starting to get worse for mhere at home.  Sometimes when the kids were off at school and hotshot82nd was at work, her TV started flipping channels on its own.  The jolts were turning into hours upon hours of feeling pressed down and her heart had started skipping beats sometimes and she’d take slow, deep breaths to try and steady her heart, because it was beating completely out of whack, as the fear nearly paralyzed her.

One morning she awakened early and she noticed that hotshot82nd had poop all over his butt and she thought at first that he had diarrhea, but fear rippled through her.  It seemed odd to her, because it was on the outside of his underwear and it smelled like animal feces.  She woke him up and he cleaned himself up and she kept telling herself, “it was just an accident, think about normal stuff and this crazy stuff will go away!”  It was Christmas time and mhere loved decorating.  For the several years they had lived in their home, mhere and hotshot82nd took the kids to a nearby Christmas tree farm to pick out a tree and cut it down.    Time to think about baking Christmas cookies, which mhere loved to bake at least a half-dozen different kinds and store them in decorative metal cans, so the kids and hotshot82nd could happily munch on them for weeks.

Scandals seemed to follow this president and mhere thought of him as presidentmendacity.  Often she would watch him on TV and his oratorical skills amazed mhere, who due to her own lack of public-speaking ability, admired great public speakers.  Now, presidentmendacity fell into a category of his own, he oozed folksy charm, connected with people, and his mastery of using words struck mhere as totally amazing.  He wasn’t just a “good” public speaker, no, mhere thought he was right up there with President Ronald Reagan, who was one of mhere’s personal favorite presidents (of course, no president, good public speaking skills aside, could top President George Washington in mhere’s estimation – she just loved reading about George Washington and anyways, no president could top building his own army from scratch in mhere’s book).  Often,  mhere would watch presidentmendacity speak on TV and then she would seek out a transcript of the speech, to compare what she thought he said, to what he actually said.  mhere thought he might be the best liar in the world, because he had mastered lying so well that he didn’t even have any obvious “tells” that she could detect.

America embraced presidentmendacity, but the left-wing partisans and mainstream media tripped over themselves singing the praises of presidentmendacity’s wife, whom mhere thought of as thatwitch2016.  Oh my goodness, the press could not say enough about thatwitch2016, “smartest woman in the world”, “America was getting two presidents for the price of one”, “a co-president who wasn’t going to sit at home and bake cookies”  and the tributes to her abilities were hailed far and wide.  Now, mhere loved to sit at home and bake cookies and she didn’t see what was wrong with baking cookies – everyone likes cookies.   As a small child mhere loved playing for hours with her play kitchen set and as a teenager, her favorite job was babysitting.  mhere loved babies.  Of course, growing up in the girl power era, mhere felt compelled to think in terms of “careers”, but her romantic little heart led her to feel like all she really wanted to do was find her Prince Charming and live happily ever after in a castle filled with lots of children.  mhere loved reading books on interior decorating. Her grandmother had given mhere’s oldest sister a set of decorating books, which mhere read through many times and she loved to look at the pictures of the different decorating styles.  In fact, she loved reading about decorating almost as much as she loved reading about military strategy.

Many things confused mhere about presidentmendacity and his “co-president”, thatwitch2016.  mhere wondered why people thought she was such a trailblazer, when it seemed to mhere thatwitch2016 rode her husband’s coattails to power, because on her own mhere didn’t think many people would like her strident, harpy ways.  As time went by, scandals dogged presidentmendacity’s footsteps and mhere noticed something odd about thatwitch2016.  Instead of sweeping her house, like mhere did, thatwitch2016 spent her time sweeping presidentmendacity’s scandals under the carpet.  Oh my gosh, mhere thought, she’s got so much power as “co-president”and no one to check it except presidentmendacity (and mhere’s beloved The Federalist Papers warned about that danger)  And another fearful thought struck mhere’s heart – thatwitch2016 lied even more than presidentmendacity and she wasn’t going to let anyone get in her way to becoming “the first” female President.  mhere often thought thatwitch2016 believed it was her destiny to be the first female President, because as so many people told her, “she’s the smartest woman in the world” and she believed it.

When this new scandal hit America, mhere waited like an avid spectator to see how it played out and she wondered, “how many ways will they lie this time?”  Her answer came quickly and like those hordes of Genghis Khan, who swept across the Steppes, thatwitch2016’s storm troops operated using what mhere thought of as most like a “swarming tactic”.  They began immobilizing the opposition using spin (lies) to bombard all avenues of information dissemination.

mhere felt like the very pillars upon which America stood were under attack.  In her youth, she had sworn an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, from all enemies foreign and domestic, when she joined the Army.  Another one of mhere’s pet subjects to read about was propaganda and oh my, Army post libraries were filled with books on that and military intelligence operations (another one of mhere’s favorite hobbyhorses), where she loved to read about how everyone else in the world ran their operations.   Being a cold war era little soldier, mhere focused mainly on the Soviets, but boy mhere read a book on Czech intelligence one time and she was impressed.  mhere liked cowboys too and she sure liked reading about the US Army in the American West.  In one Army post library she had found a really fascinating book filled with actual photos of the Army in the American West that she spent many hours looking at.  Americans like innovation and thinking outside the box, so mhere learned about the US Army Camel Corps too.

This new scandal involved presidentmendacity and a sexual relationship with a young woman, because he sure liked women.  All through his political career, stories of his philandering ways followed him and thatwitch2016 had made it her wifely duty to fix all these scandals and manage the political fall-out, because she knew presidentmendacity possessed all the political dazzle that she lacked and if she stuck with him, then she could climb to the top too.

When these new posters invaded the message board where mhere had gotten comfortable prosing on about her pet political and cultural topics, it quickly became obvious to mhere that they had come prepared to silence the opposition.  mhere never liked bullies and this sure seemed like bullying.  And as mhere watched, this was happening on TV, in the press too and mhere began to think wow, the Constitution really is under attack.  She believed that those entrusted with preserving the rule of law would do their duty, so she didn’t worry at first and she decided that she wasn’t going to let them get away with that on this message board.  She fought back with all her might as they silenced one after another of the right-wing posters.  And since mhere liked to have the last word, boy, she was a natural at these message boards.  So much of their spin struck mhere as plainly idiotic, so she began mocking them.

She watched, totally disgusted, as thatwitch2016 and presidentmendacity got people with fancy titles to go before the American public and lie.  A law professor from a prominent American university actually sat on TV day after day talking about how lying under oath didn’t matter in this situation.  mhere felt total disgust for so much lying all to keep presidentmendacity in power, but even more alarming to mhere was how thatwitch2016 launched attacks to silence and discredit all the other women involved with presidentmendacity.  mhere felt there was some great irony that the supposed champion of women, so doggedly tried to destroy other women.

By nature mhere didn’t do things by half-measures, when she embarked on any new adventure, whether it be cooking, sewing, exploring, or this new forum of posting messages on these internet message boards – mhere gave it her all.  Even in family discussions mhere’s children knew her nature very well and in the words of her youngest daughter, “Mom’s always gotta have the last word even if it is just posting a news article.”  Web etiquette posed a whole new challenge for mhere, because she used capitalization to emphasize her points, without being aware that online that was considered rude.  Her first posts in trying to break through to marfark and to remind him of the oath she thought he had taken as a soldier were filled with capitalized statements like, “I BELIEVE IN THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES!’ and other loud statements.

Every day presented new and interesting possibilities to interact with these posters on the message boards, because the topics changed frequently and many provocative topics got tossed into the mix. During this time in America the mainstream media kept talking about dangerous, right-wing militias and mhere felt a few might be posting on these message boards too and she tried to reason with some of the more strident posters.  If there was one thing mhere believed in, it was in following the rules and in America that meant the Constitution of the United States.

In her youth, mhere felt privileged to be selected to attend the Presidential Classroom for Young Americans and she spent an entire week in Washington DC seeing the monuments, visiting museums and she even got to meet one of the senators from her home state.  Her mother had a booklet she received in high school and when she passed this booklet on to mhere, she explained that in America, everyone should know how to be a “good citizen”.  mhere spent many hours reading and rereading this little booklet titled, Good Citizen”.  In junior high school, mhere had a US history teacher, whose politics were very liberal and much different than her parents’ conservative views, but mhere thought he was a fantastic teacher.  He challenged his students to argue both sides of many of the more important Supreme Court decisions and mhere felt like she was on a scavenger hunt to research and then build her arguments.  A whole week in Washington provided a lifetime of memories for the young mhere, but truly she felt in total awe when she stood before the Supreme Court of the United States.   When she stepped inside that building, she felt like the luckiest girl in America.   mhere just loved reading about anything having to do with the Constitution and she bored her many siblings and her classmates with her fixation on “following the rules”.  Any game they played, mhere could be counted on to insist on clear rules.

In typical mhere fashion, she started talking to the extreme posters and reminding them about the rule of law and droning on about the Constitution.  It pained mhere to think that marfark had lost faith in the Constitution and she kept reminding him about the oath they take and how important national defense is.  Her efforts to reach marfark ended up in angry exchanges and mhere felt like he was locked down in a personal hell of some sort, but when challenged he would berate mhere and angrily  shout, “mhere, you need to think anew!“.  Her hopes of reaching marfark and getting him to open up and talk faded and as time passed he rarely posted comments on the message boards.  mhere worried that her attempts to break through this craziness he was spouting had failed and it hurt to think that she may have driven him away, when all she wanted to do was help him.

mhere was starting to lose interest in the message boards, when out of the blue,  a huge political scandal rocked America.  The message boards became a frenzied, hot-bed of partisan flame-throwing, because this new scandal reached the highest levels of the US government.  Oh my gosh, mhere’s favorite topics to perch on her soapbox and ramble on about – the Constitution, following the rules and lying – all wrapped up in one scandal.  By nature, mhere avoided confrontations, because in real life she struggled with stuttering and only by rigid discipline had she learned to speak without stuttering non-stop.  From the time she learned to read, mhere spent time every day practicing how to say words.  When her parents bought a set of World Book Encyclopedias, a large dictionary came with the set and mhere’s siblings teased her constantly, telling her, “No one reads the dictionary!”  mhere did.  She would sit for hours on end trying to figure out how to say words and it could get confusing to remember, because some words could be pronounced more than one way and she worried about forgetting and having other kids laugh at her.  But mhere felt free to talk when she wrote things, because the rules in writing, especially in creative writing, allowed her to experiment and try new ways of saying things.  Of course, she could also use words in writing that she knew she would never be able to spit out.

This new scandal brought forth a horde of new, very determined, left-wing partisan posters, who swept onto the message boards like Genghis Khan from the Steppes (to borrow a John Kerry analogy).  These were smart, wily, organized posters, not like the usual amateurs posting here and these newcomers seemed to work together to silence the right-wing posters.  They came loaded with a political technique they bragged about called spin (lying) and they armed their ranks with talking points to repeat and twisted reasoning to silence their opponents.  mhere felt a new challenge, because she loved to win political debates.

Long ago, in America, there lived a young woman named mhere.  mhere loved to bake and sew and work in her garden. Growing up in an era where girl power had come into vogue, she believed girls were just as smart as boys and she wanted to learn about everything.  Her favorite question was “why” and she happily explored her idyllic neighborhood  in the countryside and she loved to read about just about anything.  As she grew-up, history fascinated her, because here she felt she might find the answers to her many “why” questions.  In high school she joined a club to play a board game called “Diplomacy”.  Poor mhere was the only girl in the club and she really lost very badly at first, because she trusted the boys when they negotiated and her feelings got crushed as the moves unfolded and she was betrayed over and over again.  When she confronted the boys and told them, “you told me you weren’t going to do that!”, they would laugh at her and tell her, “this is how the game is played!”  One boy played this game brilliantly and he won almost all the time (that boy grew up to become a successful criminal defense lawyer, imagine that).  Poor mhere never got to be very good at this game, but she did improve.  She started thinking,  “I am not going to give up my forces without a fight!”, but she never got the hang of lying – she hated lying with a passion.  This game set mhere on a path to trying to understand war and the more she read about military strategy and military history, the more she wanted to find out.  Of course, having a romantic little heart, what could be more interesting than dashing, brave warriors who actually did amazing things.  So much went on in the world  and mhere, with her inquisitive nature, wanted to find out about all the happenings in the world.  A high school history teacher started each class talking about current events and mhere’s father read the daily newspaper religiously, so she became an unrepentant news junkie too.

Eventually mhere grew up and she married her own warrior, hotshot82nd.  As they moved around,  from one Army post to another, mhere spent her time doing housewifey things, taking care of her children and volunteering in her neighborhood, because her mother had instilled in her a belief that this is a “duty”.

Years passed and hotshot82nd decided to retire from the Army and he was looking forward to that.  Around this time the PC craze hit. Now mhere wasn’t much sold on the PC craze spreading across America and the idea of having a computer in the home seemed bizarre and just another expensive toy, which she had come to know quite well with sons and their endless demands for more gaming systems.  Of course,  hotshot82nd kept saying, “it will be great for the kids and they’ll use it!”  So, finally  hotshot82nd went out and bought their first PC.  At first, mhere felt intimidated by this new gadget, but her inquisitive kids quickly learned how to do all sorts of interesting things on the PC and mhere cautiously started exploring this brave, new world too.  Compared to the days when mhere had to rely on her trusty World Book Encyclopedia, this internet age linked her to so much information that she would spend hours upon hours “surfing” the internet, captivated by the amazing “sites” she saw.  Very quickly, the kids started complaining that mhere wasn’t sharing computer time and hotshot82nd kept reminding mhere that she was the one who thought a home PC was a ridiculous idea.

As the days went by, mhere started thinking, that while finding so much information entertained her, she thought, “boy, wouldn’t it be nice to write to other people and make friends in this new world.”  In typical mhere fashion, she started looking for pen pals, but then she discovered “message boards”.  She stumbled upon a politics message board and, oh my, mhere just loved debating politics.  She loved to gather facts and figures to hone a good argument for her point of view, but mhere hesitated jumping into this new community.  This new world had a new language and new rules on how to communicate and mhere spent a long time “lurking” before she ventured into “posting” messages.  And most of all she wanted to figure out who these posters were, because in this new world, people selected “user names” and she learned that some people changed their “user name” frequently or posted under several identities.  It reminded mhere of the masquerade balls in the historical Regency romance novels she loved to read.

One poster, marfark, posted frequently about some new form of governance he was proposing – that would lead to world peace.  From years of reading about government and politics, mhere placed her faith in the Constitution and she loved reading “The Federalist Papers” for fun.  From her life experiences, mhere, too had been reading and reading,  searching for many years for a path to peace, because she felt certain that “war” was a man-made invention and that somehow, some way there must be steps that could be taken to lead to a more lasting peace.  Of course, since mhere loved the Army, she thought in terms of “missions” and she felt that humans must have a purpose, because God would not give us an impossible mission.  Peace must be possible on a long-term basis.

So, mhere started reading everything she could about marfark’s ideas, because she was thinking about the same thing.  Many posters mocked and ridiculed marfark’s ideas, but he never backed down.  One old Marine struck mhere as the smartest poster on the entire message board.  He delighted in ripping marfark’s ideas to shreds in a wickedly funny manner.  Finally, mhere decided she wanted to talk to marfark, because she thought he was so against war, because he had been a soldier who had gone to war.  The way he argued caused an uneasy feeling, because mhere began to think she knew marfark (or a soldier just like him) long , long ago.  And mhere felt she needed to try to reason with him, because he had certainly lost his way with his pie-in-the-sky political system he was advocating.

Many years before, hotshot82nd had gone to war and as is the case in all wars, some of the brave warriors come back traumatized from the horrors that doing their duty entails.  The way that marfark argued brought back many memories of a friend of hotshot82nd’s, who spent many hours at their home, with mhere and the friend arguing about politics and many other issues frequently.  A year or so after this war, hotshot82nd left home to train in another state.  Lots of people liked to talk to mhere about their problems, even though mhere often felt like she wasn’t really much help at solving most of these problems. This friend kept getting in trouble with drinking-related incidents and despite having a bright future in the Army, he was struggling to cope with his war experiences.  One night the friend stopped by to talk to mhere and despair filled her heart, because she didn’t know how to help.  This friend had gotten another DUI and she knew he was going to run away from his problems and he did – he went AWOL.    Many, many times over the years mhere thought about this friend and hoped he had found inner-peace from the war still raging in his head.