New Year Eve And Dorothy Stratten

Good morning, Everyone!

Today is 8-31-24 and thus constitutes the "Real New Year Eve" since the following commence with September: school year, football season, cars, network television shows!

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I recently viewed the following on You Tube: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAlK83ZyRzs

I was fourteen years old at the time of Stratten's murder. She was prominent enough that Newsweek magazine featured her death with the weekly transitions:

"Dorothy Stratten, born Dorothy Ruth Hoogstraten, aged twenty."

I discusses the Newsweek blurb with my university student sister and some of her friends; my attitude at the time being: "How the hell can someone who LOOKS LIKE THAT have problems?"

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Dumb, yes.

Suffice to say I now know better.

At the end of the above documentary Stratten mentioned what she would like to accomplish during her life and how she hoped at age sixty she could look back with satisfaction.....well those of us who are less than a year and half from a fully sixty years of age....maybe we should just be content to be here.

For me viewing the world "sunnily" is a constant struggle.

And my viewpoint predates the peer abuse activities.

I remember negative feelings at age seven and the bullying ordeals commenced at age eight.

I AM I AM I AM

 

In Fifteen Months I Celebrate My Sixtieth Birthday!

 What it means to turn sixty: 

Once I thought that age was so old!

My grandparents were in their early sixties when I was born!

It is not "the new fifty" or even "the new forty"....it is the new sixty!

1776 The Movie

 Based on a musical stage play the original release year was 1972.

I was six years old then and I remember my mother stating the movie wasn't "suitable" for a child my age.

July 1976 I was ten and observed the movie via network TV.

I am currently unsure how much dialog the network censored but I just recall the action consisted of a lot of busy gentlemen subsequently singing and arguing  AND MORE ARGUING....at that time I didn't understand why at age six it had deemed forbidden viewing.

I watched it yesterday on streaming service; the first blue comment was Richard Henry Lee's "I will go home (to Virginia) and refresh the missus..."

HA HA HA; Lee is also making a rather large assumption by presuming Ms. Lee WANTS REFRESHING.

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When I was a child such comments would have soared directly over my head; even though my mother said in 1976: "John Adams is upset that Thomas Jefferson wants to make love to his wife. Adams feels that Jefferson has lots of better things to do...like writing 'The Declaration Of Independence'."

I do recall wondering why that particular job had been delegated to Jefferson; the documentation chore that is!

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Re Ben Franklin (not the store of course) the TV network must have eliminated the "drinking and whoring" references....but man was Franklin a LOUSY FATHER!

The Merry Month Of July 1976......

 The July 4 Bicentennial Celebration Of The United States Of America....culminating on Saturday July 10 when Big Daddy tripped over a tent post and anointed the entire back of my dress with Schlitz! Luckily no one was hurt; however he did waste a perfectly good brew and I don't remember if there was a blanket in the car to protect the upholstery from the liquid effects of his clumsiness....

The July 15 Chowchilla California school bus kidnapping! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Chowchilla_kidnapping. There still exists discrepancy who was the "big hero": the now deceased bus driver or the oldest teenager. From Wikipedia: "By 2022 all [three] kidnappers had been paroled." To anyone unfamiliar with this case I encourage to you research it. You will learn exactly how to achieve the status of "stupid criminal."

My family leased a beach house in Ephraim, Door County, Wisconsin for at least a week. We rented a television in order to view the first portion of the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics. These games began on July 17. Re the vacation itself I specifically recall nightmares about Lake Michigan snakes, the lack of kitchen space, and abundance of breakfast meats from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Chowchilla_kidnapping.

The property was pretty and located at the bottom of a hill from the main road; I could currently pick out the site but after nearly fifty years I have serious doubts about the building durability.

The July 29-30 Olympic Decathlon! GO, CAITLYN! Of course back then it was not "Caitlyn" but "Bruce!" I explain to young people that if there was a god of 1970s United States track and field it was William Bruce Jenner. He subsequently became a Wheaties man, divorced his first wife and within less than a week married second wife Linda Thompson (an ex girlfriend of Elvis Presley and forever a favorite friend of Lisa Presley) then obtained a second divorce, then in 1991 married the former wife of attorney Robert Kardashian. The entire Jenner/Kardashian clan then obtained a reality television show depicting the self described "Brady Bunch From Hell." 

Jenner conceived four children during the first two marriages.

Bruce transitioned to Caitlyn following the demise of the third marriage.

And Caitlyn remains friendly with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykola_Avilov; the defending Olympic champion (from 1972) and the ultimate 1976 bronze medalist. I firmly believe Avilov did not personally desire to repeat the competition; very likely there was active Soviet coercion.

Avilov presented as extremely fatigued during the 1976 medal ceremony!

Four Years And Ten Months...

 ...until I am sixty-three and a half years old!

The Lusty Month Of May!

 It's May...that holiday....that shocking time of year....

It Is The Twentieth Anniversary Of My Divorce

 Yes the proceedings were finalized twenty year ago today!

A lot has happened in those twenty years.

I keep on repeating to myself that it doesn't matter WHY I am here; the important fact is that I AM!