Fidel Castro resigns after 49 years in power!

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1941945720080219?sp=true

It was a lovely spring day today, even if it is still winter. I took all of the plants in the house outside and gave them a through watering. It is a lot easier and I don't have to worry about the excess water as it just drains away. It was winter here in Hickville at the end of last week and I have the photograph above as proof. It is a view from the house looking towards the street. Along that fence under the snow are daffodils ready to bloom.

I am in worst shape this year than I was last year. However, I will somehow manage to scrape together enough to share what I can. I will toss my coins into the kettles so that those out on the streets can have food and shelter from the cold nights. I will bake goodies with love and share them with my family and friends. While the base of my tree will be void of gifts, I will have a joyous celebration of the holiday in my own little way.

From Newsweek:
May 21, 2007 issue - Growing up in Corinth, Miss., J. T. Hayes had A legacy to attend to. His dad was a well-known race-car driver and Hayes spent much of his childhood tinkering in the family's greasy garage, learning how to design and build cars. By the age of 10, he had started racing in his own right. Eventually Hayes won more than 500 regional and national championships in go-kart, midget and sprint racing, even making it to the NASCAR Winston Cup in the early '90s. But behind the trophies and the swagger of the racing circuit, Hayes was harboring a painful secret: he had always believed he was a woman. He had feminine features and a slight frame—at 5 feet 6 and 118 pounds he was downright dainty—and had always felt, psychologically, like a girl. Only his anatomy got in the way. Since childhood he'd wrestled with what to do about it. He'd slip on "girl clothes" he hid under the mattress and try his hand with makeup. But he knew he'd find little support in his conservative hometown.

In 1991, Hayes had a moment of truth. He was driving a sprint car on a dirt track in Little Rock when the car flipped end over end. "I was trapped upside down, engine throttle stuck, fuel running all over the racetrack and me," Hayes recalls. "The accident didn't scare me, but the thought that I hadn't lived life to its full potential just ran chill bumps up and down my body." That night he vowed to complete the transition to womanhood. Hayes kept racing while he sought therapy and started hormone treatments, hiding his growing breasts under an Ace bandage and baggy T shirts.

Finally, in 1994, at 30, Hayes raced on a Saturday night in Memphis, then drove to Colorado the next day for sex-reassignment surgery, selling his prized race car to pay the tab. Hayes chose the name Terri O'Connell and began a new life as a woman who figured her racing days were over. But she had no idea what else to do. Eventually, O'Connell got a job at the mall selling women's handbags for $8 an hour. O'Connell still hopes to race again, but she knows the odds are long: "Transgendered and professional motor sports just don't go together."

Our only hope lies with the new young emerging transsexuals. The old farts are worthless! They have allowed labels to be placed instead of demanding, DEMANDING, just as blacks did in this country, to determine their own labels. They are still allowing the shrinks to determine if they are sick or not, to whether or not they will be given PERMISSION to be their own self. They are still allowing transsexuals to be FORCED to jump through hoops that many can not afford while the fat arsed in organisations such as the HRC are drawing ridiculous salaries off of donated money. The old farts are worthless, if they are not wasting money or allowing idiot laws to be passed, they are hiding. Hiding; that is a joke in its self. Do they really think that they are hiding just because they have a 30 thousand dollar face? Do they really think that one can not see the wide shoulders, thick waist, no hips, large hands and feet? They might just be surprised one day when they are forced into the "transgender" toilet or the "transgender" dressing room. Don't think the "F" on the Federal ID, if one will be allowed to do so, will make a difference. BECAUSE IT WON"T!

Our only hope lies with the new young emerging transsexuals. They will DEMAND to be treated with respect. They will DEMAND to choose their own labels. They will DEMAND to use the same toilet as OTHERS of their gender. They will DEMAND the rights and respect that is entitled to them. And this old fart will be right in there with them.

My sister Arlene has an interesting post on her trixiestar.com/news blog. She mentions how it was at a time when one could thumb a ride and if the VW bus that stopped had a peace symbol on its side, you had found some people that were willing to help with not just the ride, but food and shelter as well. I don’t know that time, but it sounds wonderful. I do know that if I try to thumb a ride today, there is a good chance that I will wake up dead. The hippies that she references were a real community and they were willing to help each other and others as well, without thinking, “what’s in it for me?”

I wish the Trans community was like the hippies of the past. Now I know that not all Trans people are the same and there are those who are willing to help others in the community. However, if the truth be known, the ones willing to really help are far and few between. It is estimated by Lynn Conway (I hate dropping icon names) that there are 30.000 to 40.000 post-op trans-women in the US, just the US, not the world. There are probably as many post-op trans-men. So just in the US we probably have close to 80.000 post-op transsexuals. Where in the hell are they? Evidently they must be in hiding as I only know of a few. I would think with that many post-ops that there would be more help available, real help not those useless support groups.

I recently saw first hand the quality of support from the Trans community. A while back I did a very stupid thing, well actually two things. The first was locking my keys inside of my car. The second was worst; I panicked and smashed the window to get back in my car. Now I am unemployed. I help clean flats a few times a month to earn enough to keep the electrics turn on and pay a few other expenses like petrol for the car. I am living at, no, below what is considered poverty level in the states. So I resorted to begging. I put up a page so I could accept donations and I asked for one dollar, just one little dollar. I was very surprised when not one member of the Trans community, either here on 360 or from my local support group, sent me a dollar. However, my dear sister Arlene wasn’t the least bit surprised. Yes, I know that I was begging and I was not proud to do it.

If I ever hit the lottery, I think I will buy an old VW bus. I think I will paint a peace symbol on its sides and start traveling the US looking for trans-persons just like me and my sister Arlene. I think I will ask my dear sister Arlene to travel with me. We will bring back the times she mentions in her post. We will really help those fellow trans-persons struggling to make a go of it. We will make sure that they don’t have to put up living as a woman with a beard, or a male face that is impossible to hide. Look for us; it will happen one day if I find a way.

I have no real need to share my life on 360 or my website blog. I am happy living my life as the woman I was born to be and I go about my life without any real problems outside of trying to make ends meet. As I have mentioned many times, I have no problems out and everyone treats me with general respect from the clerk at the DMV to the shop keep at the corner market. No, I blog because I feel that many who are a bit nervous about starting their life may learn that the fear is largely false. No one is going to chase you down in the Mall yelling out obscene remarks. Now I know there is hatred in the world towards transgender persons, but if one is careful then one shouldn’t have to worry about bodily harm. I don’t know why I feel that I must try to help others. I think it came from watching my parents do the same. I remember my father handing money out to strangers many times when he had very little himself. It was the way of my parents and I guess it is the way of me.

I will admit that I am becoming a bit delusional lately about the whole transgender world. It comes from my 360 hops. I recently read a blog about a trans-woman who has been struggling with being her true self and trying to keep her marriage intact. From her blog you get the feeling of a tortured soul who needs to be herself, yet the thought of losing her wife is unbearable. She loves her wife, or so the story goes, more than life itself. The struggle to try and quash the woman inside to stay with her wife has driven her to the brink yet living without her wife is just as horrible as not being her true self. It really pains me to see her suffering in this manner, yet I am really unable to offer any real help. Then the story seems to take a shift. She writes about attending a party as a woman. She has another transgender person approach her and starts “feeling her up” and giving her complements. Her response to this stranger is not, “hey, I am married and in love with my wife” as she has stated so often in her story, but instead is, I am not ready for a sexual encounter yet. Then later in the story she recounts about kissing several transgender persons. My thoughts were if she would like it if her wife was kissing several strange men. How would she feel if the situation was reversed and it was her wife doing the same things?

Then another hop took me to another trans-woman, another transsexual woman. I do understand there is a difference between a cross dresser and a transsexual woman. Both are just as viable, but there is a difference. I won’t go into a discussion on those differences here because that is not the point of this rant if you will. This transsexual woman was whining about being kicked out of the house by her wife. In fairness, her wife did offer to pay the first four months rent on a flat. The reason for the boot that this trans-woman thought was so unfair? The wife didn’t like her bringing home her Tranny friends for sexual escapades in their bedroom. Oh, they had young children in the house as well. It appears that this trans-woman thought it was OK if Daddy went into the bedroom for some wild sex and made a lot of noises such as moans and groans that the wife and children could hear out in the living room. The wife was being unfair to her because she expected her husband to have a little bit of decency and respect for her and her children. They were in a marriage after all. Maybe it is just me, but I feel that there is sanctity in a marriage, especially when you are saying how much you are in love with your spouse.

Yes, if the “outsiders” are seeing some of the things I have seen on my 360 hops, no wonder they think it is all about wanting to live an alternative lifestyle and that I have made a choice to be a woman.