July 29, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

A Battle Won

Justice and long prison sentences for the people who buy and sell people.

Today, the FBI orchestrated a large sting to find and help boys and girls in slavery.
Many pimps were arrested. They were arrested under Federal laws because they had moved the children across state lines.

The children were set free and they ranged in age from 13 years old to seventeen years old. They were being made to sell their bodies and commit many terrible sex acts. They had no choice and were often threatened with death unless they satisfied their owners/pimps.

The profit from owning people and forcing them to have sex to remain alive is twenty seven million dollars. Yes, I said twenty seven million.

The children are now free. Can you imagine how that must feel for them? Can you imagine how their families feel? The grief they have endured thinking their boys and girls were dead. Pimps were arrested and I think they need to have 1000 year sentence. Once out they will go back to their slavery rings and begin again. Long sentences are vital.

For the newly freed children, this picture is ended.

These families and friends must get to know their children again. This is going to require quite a long transition. These families have a long journey ahead. I am so happy for these kids and I worry about all of their memories. The ones that will remain for the rest of their lives. We do know that they have had the worst of living nightmares.

It is important to realize that supply and demand play into this story. The Johns, the people who buy sex are the reason that the millions of people are kidnapped and sold and become sex slaves. Johns are hardly ever arrested. The FBI says the demand is growing. Johns need to be stopped and held responsible for their actions. Men who buy sex are disgusting and need to be arrested and face jail time.

The sexual slaves have no choice except death

So, we have won a battle, but It still leaves millions of slaves in the world today. If you see someone who seems to be at risk call, 1-888-3737-888. This hotline helps people and prevents some children from being taken as slaves. We can also all pray, however we do it and pray for more people to be saved and allowed to be free once again.

July 22, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

Where are the Good People

A hero for us to be proud of every day

Been listening to the news today. This story caught my attention because it took place in Pennsylvania and I am from there. This little white girl was playing in her front yard. An innocent life about to be wretched from the love of her family. She is having fun and perhaps playing a pretend game.

Then evil entered that front yard and scooped her up and put her in his vehicle. I can only imagine how scared she was. Perhaps crying for her Mommy. Perhaps fighting restraints and tape over her mouth to stifle her screams.

This sick pedophile thought he would have his fun and just go on with his life. But there was a brave angel there. Temar Boggs at 15 years of age, got on his bike and chased the vehicle in which the frightened little girl was terrified. He rode his bike at record speeds, because he chased that car for fifteen minutes and saved this little girl from molestation and/or death.

So while young Trayvon died needlessly, here is a black boy who was brave beyond comprehension and he saved her young life. The point is that not all black people are bad. In any race, culture or religion, there are good people and there are bad people. Goodness is not limited by color. Zimmerman was a gung ho white man who needlessly took Trayvon’s life.

I feel this is a wake-up call to all racists. It is time to come out of the darkness and to see all other people as our brothers and sisters. We are all human beings and we are equal. I realize that some people have a hard time with the truth of this statement. Don’t let their sickening thinking influence you. Be strong and remember we all walk with God and the Universe wants us all to love and be generous to everyone we meet.

July 17, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

A Tale of Two Tragedies

The scales of justice

CBS NEWS/ May 12, 2012, 10:32 AM
Fla. mom gets 20 years for firing warning shots
Marissa Alexander of Jacksonville, Fla., received a 20-years prison sentence, Friday, May 11, 2012, for firing warning shots against her allegedly abusive husband. The judge rejected a defense under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law.

Marissa Alexander of Jacksonville, Fla., received a 20-years prison sentence, Friday, May 11, 2012, for firing warning shots against her allegedly abusive husband. The judge rejected a defense under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law. / WETV

(CBS News) JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – ‘A Florida woman who fired warning shots against her allegedly abusive husband has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Marissa Alexander of Jacksonville had said the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law should apply to her because she was defending herself against her allegedly abusive husband when she fired warning shots inside her home in August 2010. She told police it was to escape a brutal beating by her husband, against whom she had already taken out a protective order.

CBS Affiliate WETV reports that Circuit Court Judge James Daniel handed down the sentence Friday.

Under Florida’s mandatory minimum sentencing requirements Alexander could receive a lesser sentence, even though she has never been in trouble with the law before. Judge Daniel said the law did not allow for extenuating or mitigating circumstances to reduce the sentence below the 20-year minimum.

Alexander was convicted of attempted murder after she rejected a plea deal for a three-year prison sentence. She said she did not believe she did anything wrong.

She was recently denied a new trial after appealing to the judge to reconsider her case based on Florida’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” law. The law states that the victim of a crime does not have to attempt to run for safety and can immediately retaliate in self-defense.

Alexander’s attorney said she was clearly defending herself and should not have to spend the next two decades behind bars.

Alexander’s case has drawn support from domestic abuse advocates – and comparison to the case of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who has claimed a “Stand Your Ground” defense in his fatal shooting of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.

This is a woman who has survived many beatings. A woman in a battering situation is always in danger and there is always the possiblity of death. There is a law that deals with the cycle of violence. Alexander was brutalized and beaten over and over. She was terrified and shot warning shots. She was trying to warn him away. What a tragedy. She could have shot and killed him but she didn’t. That was a choice. She chose to warn him off. Our justice system gave her twenty years for not shooting him. She is female and black and she chose not to kill her abuser. Twenty years is a horribly long time for her to serve for warning him not to hurt her. My heart aches for this woman. She had already been victim and now society is heaping on more victimization.

George Zimmeman was on his neighborhood watch. He came across a kid, a seventeen year old child. Travyon was not carrying anything but an evening snack. He wore a hoodie. That is his crime. Being black and wearing a hoodie. Zimmerman felt he was a threat. He and Travyon fought on the ground. Zimmerman was carrying a gun. He did not fire any warning shots. He simply held the gun against Travyon and shot him to death. After the trial, he was found innocent. Was he ever victimized? No he wasn’t. He is free to go back to his life. One person loses 20 years from their life and did not commit murder. The other was male and white. He killed another human being and he is free.

Both are tragedies in our justice system. It does not always work. These two cases, in my eyes are verdicts of injustice. This is a terrible miscarriage of our legal system.

July 11, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

No Box For Me

You go where you are free.

Our society likes us all to be conformist in how we live, what we do, ;and what we think. Even as a child I wasn’t able to do this, I couldn’t even fake it. My soul would just rebel at things like hypocrisy and injustice.

Society in every country makes demands upon its citizens that they be uniform in actions and thinking. I am not talking about good behavior versus criminal behavior. It is as Ghandi said when he was encouraging Indian citizens to use passive resistance to obtain their freedom from the English.

My hackles go up when someone is telling a person what to think or say. I will not be put into a box all neat and orderly. This has been true since I was a child and often I paid dearly for having my own thoughts. Human beings don’t all think alike or act alike, for which I am grateful. How boring it would be if we were all the same in our actions and thinking. It is true that sometimes people just know how to push our buttons, but you are in control of how you are going to react.

Women, for instance, are treated as inferior or as second class citizens. As I have mentioned before, we still are the only American citizens who are not legally equal. Minorities continue to suffer discrimination. It is a sad fact that often a person has a bad experience, and forms a distrust of all people of that race, culture or religion.

Living in a world of terror is frightening. However, I remember the Cold War and the drills at school where we would be told to get under our desks when the siren went off. I asked, one day, how the desks would protect us. The teacher was not pleased at all with me because the other kids heard and wanted an answer too. She didn’t have an answer.

I have Muslim friends. They are not jihadists yet every day people look at them with distrust. I was with one of my friends and we went to dinner. When the server came to our table, she was visibly uncomfortable. I started to talk to the server and to relieve the tension. It ended up fine but my friend was uncomfortable. It was shortly after 9-11 and we both understood but my heart hurt that this situation happened.

Sometimes, you can see both sides, but you must choose the ethical and morally right behavior. As a society, we need to remember that the Divine is within all of us and to try to correct what is hypocritical and unjust.

Yes, there are evil people in the world. But they often come from severely dysfunctional families. Sometimes they are so damaged they cannot heal or are not given the opportunity. My rule for measuring this life is hypocrisy and injustice. I cannot tolerate either in my life. So there are times I have walked away from people because they were an offense to my soul.

WWII and the holocaust are examples of people who ignored their inner guidance and some even assisted the Nazis. One person whose name you are probably familiar with is Coco Chanel. She began the designer line of the House of Chanel. She collaborated with the Germans when they took Paris. People died because of her actions. But she took care of herself and her Chanel line thrives to this day.

I encourage everyone to be true to who you are and what is true in your life. If you do not betray your own soul and heart, then you will be able to trust your inner guidance to lead you to your higher good.

If you are being your true self, you will then be the person that the Divine, The One, Adonai intended you to be in this lifetime.

July 6, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

There is a Time

A time for everything on this earth. Photograph and copyright by Barbara Mattio 2013

” There is a time to work and play,
A time to eat and sleep;
A time to study and to pray,
A time to laugh and weep;
A time for fellowship that’s sweet,
A time for sacred song;
But never is there time to treat
A human being wrong.

There is a time to lift men up
And help them on life’s road;
A time to drain their bitter cup
And share their heavy load;
A time to bless them with our grace
And boost them all along;
But never is there time and place
To treat our fellows wrong.

There is a time to help men seek.
Our God who saves the soul;
A time to show them that the meek
Shall reach life’s highest goal;
A time to help them turn aside
And leave the wicked throng;
But never did our God provide
A time to treat men wrong.
——–Walter E. Isenhour

For each day there is that which is stable and that which brings change. May we each know when it is our time to stand strong and a time to embrace change. When we can be sure of these times, then we are in atunement with the Divinity of the Universe. We may not always understand but we can trust and follow our Divine intuition. This poem is from a book called “For This One Hour. My father gave it to me when I was sixteen years old. I have drawn comfort from it many times over the years. I hope you will also enjoy this selection.

Forest stream in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Photograph taken and copyrighted by Barbara Mattio 2013

June 29, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

The Ecological Self

Black Mountain NC. Photograph copyrighted by Barbara Mattio 2010

The United States President, Barak Obama has gone on the record that he is against the Keystone Pipeline if it will hurt the environment. I was waiting for this announcement and knew he would come out on the side of Mother Earth.

Politics right now in Washington stink. Congress was elected by their states to represent the will and wishes of the people. They aren’t. Out of 365 days, they have worked 126. They are doing this without censor from the party leaders. If you or I showed up to work a third of the days we were supposed to work, we would be fired. If you don’t believe me, try it and please let me know if your boss pats you on the back and tells you not to worry about it.

The ecological self, like any notion of selfhood, is simply a metaphor, but it is a dynamic one. It involves choice. We can choose at different moments to identify to different aspects of our interrelated existence. We each can choose whether we care about those who hunt whales or not. We can care about homeless human beings or not. We can choose to participate in the long-standing rape of Mother Earth or we can choose to care. We can choose to recycle, support politicians who care about Mother Earth and whose voting record proves it.

“Look deeply, I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone…
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up.
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.”
—–Thich Nhat Hanh

Dolphins breaking water

June 14, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

In Praise of Dreams

A profile in color

” In my dreams
I paint like Vermeer van Delft.

I speak fluent Greek
and not just with the living.

I drive a car
that does what I want it to.

I am gifted
and write mighty epics.

I hear voices
as clearly as any venerable saint.

My brilliance as a pianist
would stun you.

I fly the way we ought to,
i.e., on my own.

Falling from the roof,
I tumble gently to the grass.

I’ve got no problem
breathing under water.

I can’t complain:
I’ve been able to locate Atlantis.

It’s gratifying that I can always
wake up before dying.

As soon as war breaks out,
I roll over on my other side.

I’m a child of my age,
but I don’t have to be.

A few years ago
I saw two suns.

And the night before last a penguin,
clear as day.”

—–Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
Written by Wislawa Szymborska

I love to travel and live in my dreams. I can do anything. I am young and a genius. I am a clown crossed with Newton. I am capable of soaring to the top of Everest and I can fix anything anyone needs to have fixed. I am always capable of happiness and I love every experience I have. Perhaps I will see you tonight!

Celtic woman

June 10, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

A Possible Cancer Cluster

Relay for life at fairgrounds

While visiting my daughter and her family; the Fabulous Floozies were making the final preparations along with schools and churches and other groups of men and women who care about the amazingly large amount of deaths due to Cancer. Officials believe there is a possible Cancer Cluster. A study will be beginning at a local college to investigate and see if there is a Cancer Cluster there and what is causing it.

For my daughter, several of her husband’s family have lost their battle with Cancert. Her BBF, Karen died last year after her third struggle with a cancer that started in her breast. She left a Navy husband and two children near the ages of my grands.They are all struggling to carry on. My daughter is struggling with her grief and loss. It breaks my heart.She has another friend who is recovering from a double mastectomy.

The luminaries completely encircled a space larger than a football field.

The luminaires completely encircled a space larger than a football field.

I met survivors, caring people who want to work to help end Cancer’s hold on their town. There were schools, churches, women’s groups, and groups of people who came together to give of themselves to stop this unseen killer, They sold food and pop, bands played and people hugged each other and many tears were shed. There was dancing and singing for 24 hours.

Surviviors walked with crutches, canes and wheelchairs

They work all year to earn money for cancer research. The results of this research has the potential of identifying the cluster and saving the lives of people in this small town. My prayers are with them. My hopes are with them. Please remember these women, men and children who are affected on so many levels.

I am dedicating this blog to Karen and Iris. I pray they find the Cancer Cluster and stop the cruel hold Cancer has on this Eastern North Carolina county and town, I was impressed by the dedication of the thousands of people who live in the county and once again I remembered how much we can accomplish when we work together for good.

All photographs were taken by Barbara Mattio and Copyrighted 2013.

May 19, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

Honoring the Blessing of Children

I may have mentioned my nine grandchildren before. From now on I will call them the grands. I have 3 elder grands, the twins, the baby grands and the monkey. He is the only one who lives in town and so I get to see him more often. I had him yesterday. A day filled with laughter and tag and a ball stuck in a tree and Star Wars. A day for us both to cherish. My oldest grand is graduating Thursday, so I will be going for the festivities. I am so proud of him. His campus has been in lockdown several times in the last two years. No one has been hurt but the closeness of danger and evil is frightening. This is a part of my feelings about guns and the people who shoot others with them.

Children are so precious and people always say that they are strong and will get over anything that happens in childhood. In reality, we allow them to be scarred emotionally and mentally far too often. Some with therapy will work through it and lead a productive life. Some grow up with trust issues, or become rapists or serial killers. Some are batterers and pedophiles. We need to do a better job of protecting the children and encouraging them to fly and be all they can be and come back to the roost whenever they really need to.

Years ago, I found this poem and got it on little tee shirts for the grands that I had at that time. So, in honor of every child on our globe trying to grow up in a world we have filled with anger, hatred, danger, and stress; I give these words to them and to those people who are raising them or their parents.

A goal to ending violence, hatred and war

May 18, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

Walking on the Path of Peace

Let the creativity flow

There have been many spiritual teachers who have advocated the path of peace. In this path people walk without regard to race, religion or ethnicity.I believe that these people are very enlightened souls who carry the responsibility of lighting the path of peace for others to follow. It takes a special heart and an open, accepting soul to do all that is required for peace.

Let your light shine on the path of peace

It is not how much we do that is important; it is the love that enables us to walk on the path of peace. Peace is part of our journey if we accept it. It is one of the choices we make on our journey through this world. The smallest action done with love takes us further down the path of peace.

The beginning of the path of peace is within ourselves, in contemplation and prayer. Silent prayer within your own home where no one is watching you is the most sincere. Then what you are performing is not for the people to witness, but for yourself and God/Goddess. Many spiritual people recommend beginning and ending the day with prayer. Whereever your journey takes you, the desire for peace comes from the Divinity within.

Fear is an emotion which can destroy peace or prevent it from taking root in people. Fear of being humiliated, of being despised, of being rebuked, of being forgotten or wronged and the fear of being ridiculed can destroy a person as they walk upon their journey. There are curves and turns in the road, and not being able to see around the next bend can cause fear. We are all capable of good and evil. No one is all good or all evil .Divinity is always stronger than the evil in the world.

Look into a baby’s eyes if you want to see Divinity. It is all that they know. They learn to hate and hurt and to destroy only as they grow. So your heart being filled with Divinity and daily choosing paths that will allow you to walk in peace is the way to begin this journey. Once you have begun, life will carry you along until you are a shining light for others.

Be the light, be the inspiration, be the reason someone is living in a state of well-being.