http://www.blogtalkradio.com/tabernaclefaith/2017/11/20/did-saudi-prince-al-waleed-bin-talal-help-facilitate-vegas-shooting-in-oct

TUNE IN TO THIS EPISODE

Do you know why 58 people died in Las Vegas? (and many more injured?)  King Salman was in town at the Tropicana.  His Uncle (I believe) Prince al Waleed bin Talal,  owns several floors at Mandalay Bay and has controlling interests in Las Vegas.  He had his own private security network that operated in Las Vegas the weekend of the October 2, 2017.  It has been detected that Stephen Paddock possibly had a weapons streaming business through the Phillippines that benefitted Prince Al Waleed bin Talil.  There has been suspicion that there was a plot to overthrow the Saudi King Salman in Vegas that weekend, and country music massacre was just a smokescreen.

Al-Waleed is a grandson of Ibn Saud, the first Saudi king, a half-nephew of all Saudi kings since, and a grandson of Riad Al Solh (Lebanon's first minister).

He is the founder, chief executive officer and 95-percent owner^[ of the Kingdom Holding Company, a Forbes Global 2000 company with investments in companies in the financial services, tourism and hospitality, mass media, entertainment, retail, agriculture, petrochemicals, aviation, technology and real-estate sectors. The company had a market capitalization of over $18 billion in 2013.  Al-Waleed is Citigroup's largest individual shareholder, the second-largest voting shareholder in 21st Century Fox, and owns Paris' Four Seasons Hotel George V and part of the Plaza Hotel.Time has called him the "Arabian Warren Buffett". In November 2017 Forbes listed Al-Waleed as the 45th richest man in the world, with an estimated net worth of $18 billion.

The previous year, he announced that he would donate his fortune to charity at an unspecified date. Some of the reasons he cited were to foster cultural understanding and empower women.

On 4 November 2017 he was arrested in Saudi Arabia, in an anti-corruption drive, together with, among others, Waleed bin Ibrahim Al Ibrahim and Saleh Abdullah Kamel. The allegations against Prince Al-Waleed include money laundering, bribery, and extorting officials.

The Saturn rings of Suicide: Kristin

She lived in a tempered shadow
her whole life
comparing herself to the brother-Doctor
sister-lawyer
father - pedigree
she was a self deprecating noose 
in college
swarming off the remains
of others good intentions
she was lost in small town America
I don't know what she did to turn it around
but at one time she seemed happy
Maybe she was fully present
yet disengaged
and put on a bald faced lie
Now we have to spend the rest of our life
wondering why she did it
being angry
and malcontent
The cops have the suicide note
there was no romance to her death
a carved out death promise
of an engine key
that she planned 
without 
anyone's approval

did you want to die at 57
because Prince did?

A Christian visitor from Florida on our radio show.

Listen to our radio archive on how certain relatives who held grudges til their last breath affected other family members.  We also discuss the after effects of UK departure from the EU and how it will affect their nation-state and autonomy.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/tabernaclefaith/2016/06/27/what-not-to-do-on-your-deathbedplus-englands-arrogance

Memories of Prince

Our episode on Prince, Part II-for other shows --follow my radio link which is embedded into the right side of profile page with the 3 cohosts picture up.  I felt that Jon and I got down to more details, theories about his life and legacy.  I believe Prince had a pure mind the last 5 years of his life.  He was a do gooder and he wanted to spread his joy of God.  Jon is more of cynic about his prescription drug situation which I really don't have inside info on--just speculation.  If you are a Prince fan or voyuer, you will enjoy this episode.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/tabernaclefaith/2016/04/30/things-that-fall-away-manifesting-the-power-of-prince


I was strongly impacted by the Life and Death of Prince Rogers Nelson.  I was born in Minnesota and two years  younger than Prince.  He began affecting my life in about 1982 when I heard 1999 during finals week in Mankato in the Spring of 1982.  It was an electrifying feeling.  I enjoyed his hits throughout the 1980s when I was traveling around the U.S. as a Navy wife for 4 years.  When settling in L.A. in 1987, I would still keep tabs on him and his career.  I met a friend at the First Baptist Church of Beverly Hills whom I would say was borderline obsessed with Prince.  He used to blog on prince.org and made friends and enemies.  It was to the point where I felt that 75% of his identity was projected or reciprocated from Prince to himself. I learned a lot more about Prince and also realized he was just really into his musical evolution.  I met another BlogTalk Radio host named Chris who was equally a devoted fan.  Those 2 people and a girl named Brandi--we did a special edition on BlogTalk Radio when Michael Jackson died.  I interviewed 2 people outside Jackson's memorial in Encino where his parents lived.   When I was a nanny in San Francisco in 1996 for 4 months, I would walk into record stores.  I was homesick for Minnesota and bought 100% of my Prince collection during this time.   I listened to it in my nanny room and was absorbed with songs like "Sometimes it snows in April."  "7" and many more.  A few years earlier, Ernest and I went to Glam Slam in 1993 hoping to see Prince.  We got there early.  It was kinda a funny day because we dressed in the Mpls. library.  It was hot out and we got there 2 hours before anything significant happened.   In the last month, I was thinking about Prince a lot.  One of my friends, Chris, went to his Paisley Park studio for an evening event.  I kinda had that on my bucket list since I only live 3 hours from Chanhassen now.  He was a Minnesota icon, a true original and unique.  He wasn't a media whore and his music and wisdom spoke for itself.  He should be remembered also for his religious conversion and good works, not his sleazy days of pure sexuality.  He was long past that.

The someone who gave you the Prince shirt that you cut the sleeves off-that someone was me.

A reminder of the meaning of Lent and Holy Week

Lent is not a Ritual

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by Jane Hoffman

Alexa has straight brownish-black hair, is better looking than Eva Longoria, can sing equally as well as Kelly Clarkson, and presents herself with a demeanor of contentedness.  One can stand and look at her in awe of a beauty that few possess.  She is an adopted Latina who could easily be mistaken for Native Ojibwe growing up near St. Cloud, Minnesota.  Almost two years ago, she tried to end her life by driving 90 miles an hour in a car at will.  She only had one wish at that moment: to die.  She couldn’t think of a way out but a fast one.  The trouble was, she lived.  She hurt her spine, but now she can easily pick up a child at the day care where I worked with her, recite Dr. Seuss, and win people over much more easily than herself.  She was given another chance by the employer, family, the hospital and her staff. That was after she had to sign over her adult rights to her parents, surrender her driver’s license, and live in a group home with limited social access.  

Alexa did not intend to ruin her life or live on a fringe level where most of it was controlled.  That is where bad decisions led her.  Yet she perseveres with little outside effort.  She is naturally likeable with a daunting smile, someone who gives and receives love with the children.  She volunteered for three months without even being offered a job. I also met a South American soccer player recently with a temper, and he walks with a severe limp for trying the same thing.  He was going 120 miles an hour and rolled over multiple times in a ditch.  

Second chances.  It’s something everyone wants—or maybe doesn’t.  Ducking below the radar, I recently made a mistake or series of mistakes that were unforgiveable by my standards during Lent.  I had a hard time confronting those I offended.  When I did, they did not believe me at face value.  The C & E people wouldn’t understand.  They just go to church on Christmas and Easter and may dip into a midweek Lent service for the free soup.  The problem is, passive Christians take Lent as “oh so” ritualistic.  They aren’t the extreme Opus Dei Christians who endure real whips and lashes to their backs and try to emulate Jesus’ pain as the albino guy did in the movie “The Da Vinci Code.” No, they’re the ones who stand around church after coffee hour, smiling and nodding, who come for the lemon bars.  Are those people me? Am I the one who became the phony Christian?  

I heard on Christian radio this morning this question: “Which one were you who stood under the cross while Jesus died?” I guess I could have been the one who divided the lot of clothing for money.  In light of my recent failings, the question remains to my audience: is your sense of betrayal to your God unintended or conscious?  Do you go to church because you know you belong to a future kingdom due to a sacrifice by God’s son, or do you go just to get by and relieve the guilt of not fully living a genuine life?  The question is relevant in today’s times when so many people are dying.  There are hundreds of Duluth youth on crystal meth.  There are more young adults who have contracted HIV.  There are old people stealing money, even from their spouses, so they can gamble.  There are people who have become demented just because society offered them the wrong dish.  I met an ex-Marine near Wright, MN, who has 600 guns.  Does he need this many guns to protect against an unperceivable threat?   There are people who fell into the road of iniquity because someone did not stop them or they did not trust their support system for help.  

Lent and God’s sacrifice should never be taken for granted.  Unbelievers drive up and down this country seeing churches in every town.  Even small Minnesota towns have four to six churches of all faiths.   Churches will survive all social changes, even the fact that our nation has become 14 percent atheist.  That is why those Christians asleep in the light must awaken those content in the dark.  Someone may not have a looming crisis.  They may not have a death in the family or a drug problem.  Yet they still need to recognize that if you are a Christian believer and want to acknowledge the importance of God’s desire to be in our lives, then don’t take Lent in stride.  It is a true ritual made by a truly holy man who came down in the flesh to die once and for all for the sins of mankind.  A ham dinner isn’t going to transcend the importance of this supernatural event—only the forgiveness and love that come directly from God and determine what our second chance will be. 

My son's sister, Agatha, died.

She died Sunday night, August 30th in Philadelphia.   She was my son's only sibling.
I will miss her.  She was kind and warm to Loran and me.

Fading.

She peered through the window but not really good enough to see the full street view.
She crept back into the air bed a quasi creature comfort.
She pondered the ways of deprivation vs. enrichment.
She listened to the radio preacher who said don't live in the past, live for the future.
She embraced the bold gold walls the landlord insisted on keeping intact.
She ignored all living things that day.
Stalemate.
a predisposed curse.
Retreat.
loss of energy.
loss of life.
While her work hours increased.
her social life faded.
She climbed the walls of local coffee pubs but no one saw her.
She observed the fat guy on the stool at Beaners and wondered what his life meant.
She circled the rest room 3-4 times and watched its still graffiti.
She ordered one more latte
til she felt her soul perish.
She was tired of sitting so she woke up and walked the Lakeshore.
you could walk for miles on the infamous shoreline and maybe catch a glance but not one full fish.
She saw the earnest runners in their fiber something tights.
There were no waves on Lake Superior when it was placid but there was that icy breeze.
She lay dying in the winter
barely coherent in the Spring.
her time was up.


**I purposely put a few distinct taglines because the movie "Ask Me Anything" said it  catches a bigger audience.

Finding the Bones of Jack (Johnny Cash's brother)

She grazed over the damp, moist field.  She was determined to find him.  Breathing heavy, her woolen sweater stuck to her body in the morning dew and her skin raised with bumps of tingling.  Sh had got off on the Greyhound, two miles East.   Measuring the road in her footsteps one step of mild pain mixed with memorable recall, she searched for Jack's grave.  She had to find the place in the same way Flannery O'Connors soul tugged at her in the middle of the night.  In the South, the spirits would come alive.  The past and present collided.  The crimson lane of her traveling blood veins had brought her to this place of rest and a settled soul.   Shake the dice and she would find her history in other's pain.  Pain traveled through her body, trampling over the roads of the forgotten, a tourist's finger pointed by a passing car: "That's where Jack was buried.  Do you remember Johnny Cash?  His voice was rich like the clay of the earth, deep like a canyon that gave me some sort of warmth that comforted your ears."...  Yeah, that's my Johnny.  My new found blood kin.  As she strode through the streets, she found him in every shadow just like she felt Jack's bones.  The point of his death in 1944 traveled to the dark ashes of her soul into a ravine that she couldn't dig out.  It paralleled her sister's abandonment of her that standoffishness that was wasn't created from true grit, family lineage blood but from a certain air of disapproval.  Those feelings became a turbine mixer as she ousted her own bloodline and developed that canal of fame driven attachment.  The kind where you take on the mannerisms of your idols.  Her gray sweater creeping on her arms, she brushed her dirty blonde hair off her face and a truck slowed down on the highway.  "You wanna ride, miss?"  "Yeah," she sighed and lifted her checkered suitcase into the truck.

to be continued

Internet Stalkers vs. Real life Haters, the Why Questions, things that will never be answered: Robin Williams death.

Robin Williams death has rubbed me the wrong way.  Can't a smiling, spontaneous face just really be that?  Does there have to be a dark shadow even behind the enlightened, transcendent people?  People who are so gifted like Robin Williams and Jim Carrey that they somehow figured out the world by age 10 but couldn't get past that in real life?  Is Fame a death pill like poverty?  Is Fame a barbituate that cleans out your cells and turns you into Mr. Hyde? Why would someone who goes on bike rides in Marin County and own a multi million dollar mansion in Wine Country ice themselves?  Not to mention the eternal legacy of leaving 3 kids and 3 wives behind, two who are exes.  Can I get angry, Robin?  Or do I give you a pass and just pity you.  You didn't have to survive your daughter being cut from her neck to he belly button in an autopsy because the doctor's suggested they remove her heart but somehow didn't harvest the new one right?  This isn't my issue, but shit....Couldn't you have somehow come to peace with yourself.  Your last act was one of deep despair.  Who abandoned you?  Your mother or father in childhood?  What was that feeling you could not rectify?  Let me know.

Bad intentions.  I do something good for someone and they get pissed about it.  I give them a token money, it wasn't blood money or loyalty money or mob money.   It was just a token gesture.  We sort of resolved it but why does someone who has known me 25 years doubt my intentions?  I go Good Will Hunting in Potter's field.  I am looking for Jesus and find Judas.  A two face Judas with blood on his hands.  My blood.  My fate.  Loving and caring about the wrong people.  toxic.  name calling, game changing.  forgiving then forgetting.  

1,000 are dead in Israel and Gaza, no solution in sight.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/28/world/meast/mideast-crisis/index.html?hpt=wo_c1


LINK TO MY RADIO SHOW about details of Israel and Gaza, population boom, geo-political constrictions, political theory.....The nature of the Hamas charter from 1988; the military suppliers to the region, global system in lone democracy, the Iron dome air defense system, American financial support.

http://hosts.blogtalkradio.com/goldenrod1960/2014/07/28/why-the-hamas-cannot-win-the-battle-for-israel

Bob, Jane and Jon...heated debate over what Israel should do. Listen to Blog Talk Radio Political Gravity...tonight.

Link to Israeli-Hamas conflict beginning June 7, 2014

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/goldenrod1960/2014/07/14/will-revenge-achieve-israeli-goals

Listen as Jon, Jane and Bob debate the historical and current aspects of Israeli choices with geographic constraints.

What is the religious and moral response to Hamas-led killing 3 teenage Jews?

France should be ashamed at their violent protesters by bringing baseball bats into synagogues.

Hollywood Tempting death

I withdraw from the heartbeat of the city

I withdraw from the movement of the street

I withdraw from the need to migrate

from the winds, the willows, the caverns

of the lost souls journeying

into a raisin light of captive paradise

always spinning

jewel eyes

stare back

hoping for fufillment

but who defines them?

are you an actress acting out someone's words?

or a child in need of attention...branching out like relfective windows

only to find an original non distortion of yourself?

they wait like rapture candidates

in the city square

for an audition

or sign from Jesus

whichever comes first

but there is only one path to true redemption

there are no magazine covers in heaven

or twisted lies

no casting directors, no acid

just reality

Katie Holmes could pull off a drug addict

or serial murder

but Hayley Mills couldn't

Its all a delusion

of wit, charm and reels

the video camera was running

from the beginning of time

discovering how suicidal was Marilyn

how reckless was James Dean

how enigmatic was Hendrix, Cobain or Winehouse

Club 27 turned to grief

and they all dissolved like vampires.

Sui*c*de Fantasy/saying goodbye without affirming it

Wouldn't we all like to disappear into an Amy Winehouse exit? A vague ending, a non specific toxology text, no spin doctors to do her in with proposol....its like "I love you mum," later, dude.
Say goodbye with the slight wave of the wrist, a limp, thin, pale wrist that was often needle induced, being remembered for special talents. Going down with heroin or hard alcohol is a graphic kind of death, a David Kennedy kind of death, yet out of time and place. We as a health driven society are past the dirty drug phase, so why was Amy caught in the net? And why did she have to follow the network media prophecy that she would find her doom? Just a month ago, she staggered on a Belgrade stage and made a less than stellar spectacle of herself. So, I see people would rather relish in those few depricating moments than click on her more spellbinding videos where she still remains non chalant, uncaring but precise in delivery. So Amy Winehouse in her unguarded presence is my new anti hero, for the moment, to say goodbye with no regrets leaving the world to grieve her while they soullessly search for her worst moments while trying to find her hidden golden lining that she revealed to maybe two people: Blake and Kelly Osborne.

The temptation is....

to share before the capsule ripens. There are two separate activities between writing a novel and blogging. You can't put the jewels or cherished memories in the blog becuz then no one will read the book. The book is a gift and in my case, a capsule of my life in Stoughton, Wisconsin. So the book will begin and follow Alexis Hoffman's life and death. It will include all the relationships I formed there which were mainly good and the ones that went sour. I may not get too deep into my split with Craig. His wooden feelings erupted in that final hour of that final year in Dec. 1993, not unrightfully so but an accumulation of our griefs tethered and our separate directions.