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Archive for the ‘Growing Old’ Category

A Series – Part ONE: Racism, Sexism and more…. – the structurally divided system we call the United States of America! But, it could also be called the World in Which We Live! This series will cover what maintains it in such an evil way with individual examples!

Friday, June 17th, 2022

We write and talk a lot about the bigotry of racism, sexism and so much more. We keep that talk on an institutional level. Very seldom do we write and talk with individual, real -true-to-life examples. That would interfere with our ability to deny – which is the foundation of what allows those structures to continue to exist. Start to talk about your real, true-to-life example of having experienced racism, sexism and all the rest and denial will immediately pop-up to explain away your real life experience. It is the most potent way we have of continuing bigotry’s existence. Raw, unwashed, in-your-face bigotry, maintained, continued, developed through denial.

We see denial being institutionalized in our educational system. Florida and the laws it is passing is an example. Those laws parallel the laws of old which made it a crime to teach slaves to read and write. Why criminalize something so seemingly harmless as teaching reading, writing and arithmetic? Because that was the beginnings of an effective way out of slavery. Today, we are trying to re-instituionalize a modernization of those criminal laws. Why? To maintain the “better than” in this society of white male northern-europeans peoples. And even to make a difference within that group of those who believe one way as against those who believe another. Bringing culture, religious beliefs and more into that “better than” equation.

Our world was rocked when we saw and got to know many of the victims of the bigotry against the elderly. We had seen bits and pieces of it pop-up, but to really experience the bigotry the elderly must live with, ignore and end their lives living in the most humiliating and vicious way – usually very broke after everything they worked all their lives to acquire – is an earth-shattering experience.

Society is structuring itself to maintain the elderly totally apart from the rest of world. That allows grifting, theft, physical – mental – medical – legal abuse to come to the forefront and happen with everyone looking on while denying what they are seeing and turning it into something positive. What is most annoying is that those doing this as the leaders of this pact are just like you and me. They look normal, talk normal, participate in their part of the world just like you and me with no one the wiser. They, however, begin to acquire wealth we don’t even give a thought as to from whence it has come.

We have published several articles on what happened to Rev. Dr. Robert Bennett and Marceline Donaldson. African Americans – Elderly – with fairly substantial assets. Mostly, what we published has been ignored except by those who experienced the same thing. We were surprised at how many elderly are experiencing this “putting the elderly into poverty” and then, let us use a small percentage of what is taken to keep them barely surviving and right under the nose of and with the approval of their families. Or, I should say because of the neglect of their families who are very, very busy. That is one real-life example which has uncovered many more. What we saw is that you don’t know when something like that will hit you. As a society we are taught “denial”. I am not my brother or sisters keeper – let them work it out on their own. That is our attitude towards bigotry of all kind. That is why it is so prevalent, long lasting and horrific in this society and in this world.

Guardianship is one evil in this society which has been practiced mostly against Jews, but is beginning to spread to other minorities as the wealth of different groups increases.

Murder of the youngest generation of minorities is happening because the numbers of minorities in this society are increasing and those who we refer to today as minorities are predicted to be the largest functioning group within a decade or so. How to cope and reverse that? Kill the children of these minorities. Well, you will get a few children of the majority group, but then Hitler targeted and killed Jews, but also included non-Jews to be most efficient and effective in his goal to remove Jews from the world. And the result of this killing of the children? When the oldest working group of minorities retires or dies there will be far fewer minorities to replace them, effectively re-establishing the inequality that currently exists. Those who would replace them have been murdered by the hundreds.

Corporate America has long had a very high wall, to protect those at the top, which they have built over time and are now re-enforcing so that wall will last many more generations. The wealthiest people in this society are those who have developed businesses, new ideas, etc. Those are all white-male-mostly Northern European types who are the world’s billionaires – or working very hard to become such with support of their cultural, racial, ethnic brothers.

How has that happened and how has that line been kept so free of minorities crossing into the land of entrepreneurial opportunity? From our perch, we have seen the ideas and hard work and success of minorities and women in the entrepreneurial area stolen by this group of white male, etc. There has been a re-definition of things like “theft” and more so this group of white males have a smoother road as they cruise down to reach that billionaire status on someone else’s back. Take a look at the history of Silicon Valley – only don’t leave out the minority businesses stolen; the women-owned businesses stolen; the refusal of investors to support and invest only in business brought to them by their “own kind”. Don’t leave out the young white males who raced through Cambridge and places like MIT, Harvard and more to see who was doing what that they could steal and take to investors who would look at the ideas with a cover to induce blindness against those from whom those businesses were stolen.

What has most disturbed us, because it is going unnoticed, supported by the extremely wealthy few, and within this group “theft” re-defined to make the actual theft going on constantly a non-event. If you break into my house and steal one of my artifacts, jewelry, furniture – even food, you are subject to arrest and jail for that theft. If you break into my computer and or corporate location, steal my business plan, take all of the ideas, structure, customers, experience I acquired while building a substantial business, etc. and at the same time do everything you can to destroy my business so I will be busy just trying to survive while you develop the model you coveted, that is not considered theft and subjects you to no criminal action. It also does not disqualify you from being considered for funding for the ideas and businesses you stole from others.

Every day, we come across people who have been crushed by such theft after 20 to 30 years of working to build a business with ideas all their own and have been successful in the process as they introduced to society a new way of doing something or a new product or something not out there before. We also see the people who crushed them and tried to leave them and their business by the wayside because they decided to set in place a copy of their business and because the people so crushed tend to be minorities and/or women the white males used to succeed. They have access to capital to grow their business, which the minorities and women don’t have; they have access to partners, those who have worked at the top of large white-male owned businesses which take an interest and the kind of theft and destruction which took down the business they copied is ignored. Unfortunately for all of us the ethics of such businesses are in the gutter, however, most of us go along with the growth of this stolen business as it becomes an intrinsic part of this society with which the rest of us have to live.

Real Estate is a biggy! The structure, wealth, schools in the geographic location of where you live depends upon your culture, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual choice, etc. and that institutionally racist structure was put in place eons ago. It began in slavery and was intensified when we changed our economic structures from “in your face” slavery to a more modified form with which we live today.

The importance of the geographic location where you live and work and have your being increased dramatically and became entrenched and unchangeable during separate and unequal days and today is becoming even more bigoted than it was generations ago. It is now easier to discriminate on such a level without anyone noticing or those who notice and complain being crushed and blamed for their plight after that drastic crushing.

As the world moved forward, that structure moved with it and has been kept in place by realtors, the real estate industry and its cousins. They maintain geographical bigotry in your living accommodations very effectively and much easier than a few generations ago, which in turn maintains racially divided schools which maintains racially divided businesses which occupy the retail spaces in those racially divided neighborhoods with the result that some of such businesses thrive and become very successful and some, in the minority neighborhoods, hang on by their fingernails for a lifetime.

These are some of the areas we will research and write about going forward with actual examples.

We have lots out there in the literature which talks about structural racism and how society separates unequally, but individual examples seem to be the most threatening and the least written about – especially in books used in schools of higher learning where to examine such things might cause a great disruption in this society. It is the area that many will read about and immediately engage in denial and denigration of those doing the writing.

We, at Bettina’s, have lived long enough that such denigration will not deter us. You are encouraged to join us with your stories. After all, we must all experience denial to understand how vicious it is.

In Scripture you will read: “Do you think I come to bring peace on earth. No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other; three against two and two against three”…….Luke 12:51-52.

We talk and sing a lot about “peace”. We knock those who we claim bring “divisiveness’. But when we do that what happens to such passages in Scripture? We think there is nothing wrong with “divisiveness”. We need to look at good and evil and separate those concepts instead of making divisiveness substitute for evil and coming together substitute for good.

Marceline’s Beauty/anti-aging Secrets

Friday, May 27th, 2022

We have published this somewhere in this blog on a previous date. Recently, however, we have been besieged with requests on what is it she does to look the way she does at 84 years old. We decided to republish -and it took quite a bit to get her acquiescence because she does not like to see her name in public places.

Firstly, she uses no soap. I can hear the scandalized cries on that one. She believes that soap dries out and strips you of everything natural to your body. Yes, that includes showers and baths.

Take a soak in the tub in organic apple cider vinegar. The next time take a soak in the tub in Epsom Salt.

Once upon a time she could afford a massage with Aloe Vera Whole Leaf Gel. Today, it is what she puts on her face after rinsing it those required ten times in plain water. Let the Gel (organic, of course) stay the morning until you are going out and then rinse it off and go your way. Yes – no make up.

Sometimes mix Organic Aloe Vera Whole Leaf Gel with organic powdered milk and put that on your face in the mornings. You will feel your skin tightening and that is a good thing.

Realize – none of this works overnight. It is a natural way to keep away wrinkles as long as possible so it takes a few weeks to see any really good results.

When you have time, after rinsing your face with whatever tightening agent you used, clip open a Vitamin A capsule and rub that on your skin. If you have lots of time, clip open a Vitamin E capsule and put that over the Vitamin A – it acts as a preservative and makes the Vitamin A last longer.

Rinse your face required 10 times before drying and going out.

No lipstick, ever. She believes lipstick has dangerous ingredients that can, overtime, possibly cause cancer. She also believes it looks horrible. Once upon a time only prostitutes wore lipstick and other kinds of make-up until the marketeers discovered they could sell billions of dollars of product convincing women they looked incredibly great wearing chemicals.

That’s it – with the addition of the occasional foot soak in warm water and Epsom Salts or Organic Apple Cider Vinegar. Except for the hair – controllable with Organic Avocado Oil. Daily put a small amount of the oil in the palm of your hand and massage it through your hair. Brush the oil into your hair and out the door you go.

Questions?

Retaliation or Coincidence?

Friday, June 11th, 2021

by: Marceline Donaldson

So much harassment has happened since the last Bettina Network Blog was circulated. That last article was about the $300,000.00 and counting drained from our assets by Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services. I should add, since our horribilis experience we have discovered several African Americans and Jews who have had similar experiences and wound up the poorer for the experience – by the same state agency.

That does not surprise me. I sent a copy of the $300,000.00 article to the Governor of Massachusetts’ office and received a response back which sent me to the COVID-19 resources available within the state.

That particular Bettina Network blog was released on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday, we received a citation brought to the door by a Cambridge City employee, citing us for having growth over the sidewalk, clogged sidewalk gutters, out of control grass that supposedly needed cutting and a lot more. None of the claims were true.

When we went outside to check, we realized we have no lawn and so no overgrown grass. We garden constantly and we love flowers and flowering trees. As a result there were flowers blooming all around the property. The Cambridge City employee was there supposedly because of a neighbor complaint. And we have had neighbor problems. Recently, those problems have escalated with new neighbors on the block who apparently have a real problem with African Americans living so close.

There were leaves on the sidewalk after a memorable weather time. Considering the many trees on the property that was no surprise. Rain for several days followed by a heat wave had many trees dropping leaves. We took pictures because we wanted to document what is clearly harassment.

We called the relevant Cambridge city department and were treated abominably. We called the Cambridge City employee and he was worse. Hope in this picture came from the Cambridge Mayor’s office which we hope is real and there is follow through.

We do have a fairly new neighbor who has, apparently, been shocked and angry about discovering an African American family on their corner.

One person from the fairly new neighbor’s house walked their small dog and brought him to our garden. We watched from the window as he picked up the dog and put it in our garden to crap. I went outside to say that is criminal trespass and I would appreciate him not bringing his dog to have its bowel movements in my garden. In a fit of anger he resorted to calling me the “N” word and stomped on my toes suggesting we move.

After he aggressively came to within an inch on my face he looked fearful, picked up his dog and practically ran away. I was a bit confused. All of that anger turned into fear within a few seconds? I realized why when I turned around and there was my husband coming around the corner. He saw what happened through the window and came out to make sure I would not be further hurt.

It was totally amazing to see the anger on this neighbors’ face turn so quickly into fear and watch him grab his dog and practically run away. Who was he running from? A very slightly built African American man. But then I realized, I saw a slightly built African American man who didn’t look threatening at all. I wondered what my husband looked like through his eyes.

We waited outside until he had gone around the block to make sure he was a neighbor. As he came around, walking from Brattle Street, we saw him with his dog enter the house where we had fairly new neighbors.

Next act of harassment came from the Department of Revenue of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Having filed joint income tax returns since we married several decades ago, imagine our surprise to get threatening notices from the DOR charging Robert for income tax they claimed he had not paid from his individual income tax returns.

Amazingly, Robert does not and did not file an individual income tax return. Someone called us from the DOR with threats. We thought it was a ruse or a scam. It turned out to be the real DOR. He said Robert needed to pay his overdue taxes from his individually filed return. Since Robert did not file an individual tax return ever, that was mystifying. Is there something about Robert that he must file joint returns with his wife and then individually by himself?

This all started happening around the time the SCES and the police started to invade our space. We challenged it for months, but to no avail. That telephone call came right after the $300,000.00 Bettina Network blog was circulated.

We have had enough such experiences that I could go on writing to produce a book. I won’t because as a younger person I read “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” and it took me a long time to recover. I don’t want to do that to others. However, I want this publicly known. We have come across too many people in this Cambridge area with similar and worse problems because of age, race, sex, etc. We have seen them ignored and broken. Clearly, the media in the Greater Boston area is totally uninterested in any of this. I have called them and had the reporters hang up on me. Others have had similar experiences, which were brought to us because of shared experiences and our interest in this community not glazing over serious and very long standing bigotry.

I could add the story about the bank which stopped sending statements for a couple years -timed very nicely to what happened to Robert – and restarted only very recently. That is only one such problem with the same bank – there are many more – but that is for another day.

Just a little bit to let you know what its like to be African American in the City of Cambridge and to be African American living in Harvard Square. Within our little historical district I have not found another African American buying into the neighborhood in 38 years. Is that by choice – there aren’t any qualified? Blockage by realtors? – goodness knows we have referred several moving to this area who seemed to be steered someplace else? Something in the air that pushed African American home buyers away? Something else?

A Message from the Heart of an Elderly Person to your Heart!

Monday, April 19th, 2021

We found this in the office of an excellent geriatric physician – Dr. Hollis Day. It is quite an office with rooms in which beautiful dolls from many countries can be found. What a walk down memory lane scooping up the humanity on which we seldom stop to reflect.

“When I spill some food on my nice clean dress or maybe forget to tie my shoes, please be patient and perhaps reminisce about the many hours I spent with you when I taught you how to eat with care, plus tying your laces and your numbers too; dressing yourself and combing your hair.

Those were precious hours spent with you, so when I forget what I was about to say, just give me a minute or maybe two. It probably wasn’t important anyway and I would much rather listen just to you.

If I tell the story one more time and you know the ending through and through, please remember your first nursery rhyme when I reheard it a hundred times with you.

When my legs are tired and its hard to stand or walk the steady pace that I would like to do, please take me carefully by my hands and guide me now as I so often did for you.”

_____________________________________________________

and you can add to the above. It was embroidered and set into a frame so it was someone’s carefully thought out feelings. If you do add to this, please send your additions to us so we can add to this also!!!

A Petition to replace Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill

Saturday, December 12th, 2020

We took on this campaign a couple years ago when Donald Trump announced he would not honor President Obama’s plan – already set in place with the currency plates created and the date set to run this new $20 bill. He did not feel Harriet Tubman was someone who would do anything good for the United States and, indeed, would be an embarrassment. Trump cancelled the run of this new currency.

Since we started this campaign, many others have taken it up and adopted and adapted it as their own. Several people designed and created stamps for sale so you could take the currently available $20, stamp over the picture of Andrew Jackson before spending your money. That $20 could be spent with good feelings that the person on it representing the United States was someone who sacrificed much for her country and, indeed, as the end of her life was given military honors for the work she did leading many slaves to freedom – hundreds of slaves as the risk of her own life.

We just signed the petition “Replace Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman on the $20” and wanted to ask if you could add your name too.

This campaign means a lot to us and the more support we can get behind it, the better chance we have of succeeding. You can read more and sign the petition here:

https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/replace-andrew-jackson-with-harriet-tubman-on-the-20

https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/replace-andrew-jackson-with-harriet-tubman-on-the-20

Thank you!

Marceline and Robert

P.S. Can you also take a moment to share the petition with others? It’s really easy – all you need to do is forward this email or share this link on Facebook or Twitter:

https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/replace-andrew-jackson-with-harriet-tubman-on-the-20?share=b3d7f54b-5f01-4e2e-95b4-9e52a62bad05&source=email-share-button&utm_medium=&utm_source=email

Bettina Network Foundation, inc. and the elderly!

Friday, December 4th, 2020

As many of you know, we have been through some horrifying times over the past few months.

What we learned is that the elderly are at risk in this society and many are being exploited with their assets, freedom, health and more increasingly attacked and stripped away for the benefit of others.

We are adding “Project Old Age” to what the Foundation is doing and hope you will support our efforts. Of all our projects, this one will most assuredly touch your life because we all, finally, move into Old Age.

The project which took a lot of time, money and other resources is coming to an end. The Harriet Tubman Project. We hope you will sign the petition which we are sending to President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris telling them about our efforts and all of those who helped and asking them to re-start and bring to completion having the image of Harriet Tubman printed on the next print-run of the $20 bill.

It was, after all President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden who started this effort and brought it almost to completion. When they left office in 2016 they left everything needed for the next printing of the $20 bill to be one with the image of Harriet Tubman replacing Andrew Jackson.

That was scheduled to happen, with even the printing plates all done and waiting to be used, at the very beginning of Donald Trump’s time as president. However, Trump canceled that printing and was very clear there would be a woman on the currency one of these days, but it would not be someone like her.

All of that means the effort we put into the Tubman Project will now go into “Project Old Age.”

It has so many paths to take:

  1. We were horrified to discover how easy it is to have the police pick up a citizen of the United States and shove him or her into the psych ward for no reason – except their assets look good and they are moving ahead with civil rights activities that some folks think need to be stopped – or some other personal or civil rights reason.

2. In addition, we discovered that many taxing areas – like cities which tax real estate – made a lot of noise and took credit for helping the elderly stay in their homes. They passed laws making it possible for people over 65, or in some cases over 70 or over 75 to be able to lien their real estate taxes to their property – paying interest, of course.

That has become a joke. The cities have almost no one who has been able to take advantage of that possibility. Why? Because working with banks, the bank refuse to allow such and the city, working with the banks, will obfuscate and confuse to make sure that such a lien process does not happen. Especially if the property is one developers want to buy; or the person is not wanted in the neighborhood for race or other reasons; or fifty other reasons we are uncovering.

3. Elder and Protective Services are also very problematical, being used to destroy, incarcerate, abuse and do much more and worse to the elderly they are supposed to be protecting. People are beginning to call us with problems that are horrifying. Elderly forcibly taken out of their homes for no reason and usually by the police with defective instruments. When they have no protection from these “Protective Services” they are shoved into nursing homes and there – under constraints – end their lives. They just disappear. These days they become a part of the statistic of some 40% of the people dying from COVID-19 are dying in nursing homes. Our experience is that the elderly are placed in nursing homes – even ones already under quarantine, insuring that their lives will be at risk.

We could go on, but we want you to know what this “Project Old Age” is about because it will take in all kinds of problems and sub-projects. It seems to be where society is focusing. Why? Seems to us because with the elderly that is where a very large percentage of assets have always been and because it is easy to get out one’s racism, sexism, and more against families and look “legitimate” in the process. Destroy the assets of the elderly in a new immigrant family and the next generation does not have as great a chance at success as they would if the sacrifices of their parents and grandparents were to come to fruition in their generation helping them through the education and other needs we require as a society for many to move up.

We had no idea what was waiting for all of us out there as we move into “old age”. We are asking that you take another look. Think carefully over our requests and information as all of this unfolds and work with us to rectify and block and eliminate all of these problems so our old age comes peacefully and we can enjoy our last years instead of having to go through what so many have worked hard for and don’t get to experience because others decided to steal, destroy, oppress, and more those reaching the end of their lives.

And lets look at assets with a different definition. When you become elderly – assets include insurance, etc.

JOIN US! It is becoming one of the most meaningful things we have done and we intend to put as many resources into this as possible.

It is a formmula  for newly forming Guardianship Corporations to drain the assets of the elderly.  They were mostly interested in Jews – it was a way to make sure the assets of elderly Jewish families would not go to the next generation – making sure their families would not be able to accomplish as much in life as would be possible if they had what in many cases has amounted to millions of dollars.  

It is bizaar, but it is also life ending prematurely.  We think this is a criminal conspiracy.  They isolate – medicate – liquidate everything you own.

It is an issue where you will find extreme right wing Republicans taking it on as well as extreme left wing Democrats because families of all political persuasions are negatively affected.  Not only are they moving showing their anti-semitism, but they are also moving showing they are not respectors of political parties and have a sharp eye out for minorities – all minorities, African Americans, Latinx, LGBTQ, Muslims, etc..

To go along with the above we are pulling together a “Legal Defense and Education fund for the Elderly.”  We are starting it under Bettina Network Foundation, inc. and will hopefully be able to move it into its own non-profit soonest.  

We are looking for attorneys who want to affiliate with this Elderly Fund and are willing to take cases; do research, etc..  Local Massachusetts attorneys, but also attorneys  across the country.  

I guess I am following family history – my grandfather worked with Thurgood Marshall – Jack Greenberg and others to found the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.  I have pictures from way back in the 1940’s. How different a society we would be if the creation of the NAACP Legal and Educational Defense Fund had not happened.

Hopefully, what we leave in place will be an organization that works with the elderly on these legal issues.  Having people picked up by the police the way Robert was and illegally so because those doing the “incarcerating” have been to Court without the other side present or knowing anything about the “emergency hearing” making sure the case was set in place before anyone on the other side even knew there was a case. The elderly are defeated from day one and don’t know that because the papers so filed are either impounded or under seal.  A couple cases we found the people had no idea how what happened to them got started and defended against the wrong thing because they were led to believe something which was not true. We found motions from attorneys like the one filed in Roberts name as though Robert was filing it when Robert knew nothing about the motion, did not know there was anything in court about him, had not been notified that the Court had appointed an attorney to represent him. How could that be attorney representation when no one knew on Robert Bennett’s side about such an appointment and the person appointed and the Court appointment came from Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services – so they then had attorneys representing them on both sides of the issue.

The state is implicated because the claim of “indigent” opens the state pocket books so they can be picked to be able to facilitate what we strongly believe and everything we find backs up our belief that this is a “criminal conspiracy.”

The police were and usually are involved on the wrong side of these issues. In Robert’s case they forced him out of his home and into a psych ward with a defective instrument. One signed by a psychiatrist testifying to the fact that she had never met Robert, knew nothing about him, had never examined him, had never been to his home which she described as “unsafe” and yet out of the blue and violating all of the rules and regulations of Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services she signed out a Section 12 to have him picked up by the police.

The proof of the defectiveness of the instrument the police were given and used is proven by the fact that the hospital sent Robert home with no problems found, no reason for him to have been forced into the psych ward in the first place. That kind of proof after the fact followed through in everything that happened to Rev. Dr. Robert Bennett and what happened to him turns out to be a pattern used to do the same thing to other elderly people who have something the people sending out the police want and which they move to get through these defective legal means. And on from bad to worse.

So far, we have been blessed with many people cooperating and working with us. We owe a huge thank you and gratitude to the person who put legal papers through our mail slot which showed us what was really happening with Robert and we were able to break that case and now have what we need to file a substantial law suit against all involved.  

Work with us – let us know the problems – send attorneys to affiliate with this new Legal and Educational Fund for the Elderly.

Marceline Donaldson, president

Bettina Network Foundation, inc.

617 497 9166

Guardianship is a Civil Rights issue and evil!

Wednesday, September 9th, 2020

As we have moved along trying to understand all that happened with Rev. Dr. Robert Bennett, whose life was almost destroyed by Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services and its hangers on, we have come to realize that RACISM – SEXISM – ANTI-SEMITISM – and more are where the targets are aimed in this new area, discovered by those who are determined to keep bigotry as a part of this United States.

Slavery gave way to Jim Crowism. Jim Crowism gave way to Structural Racism. Structural Racism is giving way to a really vile kind of bigotry in the Health Industry where Guardianship is one of the star performers destined to keep slavery, jim crow and structural racism around for an eternity.

It is within the Health Industry where a person can be picked up by the police for no reason and have their lives ruined because of a number of reasons none related to your health. The kind of police power given to the health industry with no safe-guards is astounding. It is an area rife for the arrival and take-over of that industry and its institutions by a strong mafia.

The way there are no guard rails around Guardianship is unbelievable. The end of many minorities lives has been made a living hell by those who see themselves able to benefit financially from pushing into the lives of strangers and wrecking havoc for a few dollars.

Dr. Rebecca Warner needs to have her license to practice psychiatry seriously investigated and probably revoked.

With no prior psychiatric problems of any kind, Rev. Dr. Robert Bennett found himself in Mass General Hospital being given things like anti-psychotic medications, hallucinatory drugs and a whole lot more on a daily basis. This to a man with no psychiatric problems. The attempt to turn a fairly health man into an incapacitated sub-human was done exquisitely by Dr. Warner.

Remember – Rev. Dr. Bennett was not there for health reasons. The police went to his house and picked him up to incarcerate him in the hospital on a Section 12 – with no reason – except for the paper signed by Dr. Rebecca Warner who made the disclaimer with her signature that she did not know Robert Bennet, had never met him, never examined him, never been to his house and yet she signed for the police to pick him up and force him into the hospital to be psychiatrically examined because under the Section 12 she deemed him a threat to society and/or to himself.

He was supposed to be forced into Mount Auburn Hospital, which is apparently very amenable to and – on information and belief – have been practitioners of this ‘Guardianship Game” for quite some time. Instead, his wife insisted he go to MGH where the Section 12 was lifted because he should not have been so forced into a hospitable on such charges in the first place. So he was sent home.

Two days later the police arrived again at his house, this time to incarcerate him in MGH with the claim that his wife was “medically abusive” to him. This was introduced to the court without telling the court about the discharge of Rev. Dr. Bennett from the hospital just two days prior. This group of criminal conspirators were not to be rejected. They had a pattern to put in place and follow and nothing would deter them. Lying – cheating – trying to steal a man’s life for the financial or career gains that would accrue to them – fair game.

At MGH Dr. Rebecca Warner arrived and did what she was supposed to do at Mount Auburn Hospital, but didn’t have the chance because Dr. Bennett went to MGH and had been discharged with “no medicines prescribed” and all vitals in the normal range including blood pressure.

At Mount Auburn Hospital, they were waiting for the arrival of Dr. Bennett under the Section 12 to consign him to their psychiatric wing. There would be no examination, nothing just send him off. They would not have “lifted” the Section 12 at Mount Auburn Hospital because that was the start of the road to “incapacitating” Dr. Bennett. To drain his assets he had to be incapacitated, sent to a nursing home for the rest of his life as unable to be assisted to live any kind of life except tied to a bed. The court papers all say – not even with the help of all of the new technology

Unfortunately, he is not the only African American who has experienced what he has been forced through over the past several months. There have been many and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts needs to investigate what is going on with its Protective Services people.

Blacks, Jews, Latina’s have all been so incarcerated.

What had Dr. Bennett done wrong? He lived in the wrong neighborhood in the wrong house. A house that had been “red-lined” and we believe still is.

In addition, he and his wife and some in their circle of friends, consultants, business associates have been and still are very outspoken and have consistently and for months published how they see Donald Trump running these United States into the ground.

They have lived in the Harvard Square neighborhood for some 37 years and have had to fight, all of those years, some of their neighbors who wanted that African American couple gone. Interestingly enough, almost no African Americans have moved into their neighborhood in all of that time. When they see someone dark of color they discover they are Harvard related and live in Shaler Lane or in another house owned by Harvard, thus assuring the neighbors they will not be permanent neighbors and will not be involved in whatever decisions and community that happens.

Acceptable as a place to live in the Harvard Square area is on the other side of Harvard Square – Definitely not the Brattle Street side.

They put their house on the market for sale. When they decided against selling and took the house off the market, some folks in their neighborhood went crazy. Finally, they thought, their neighborhood was going to ‘lighten’. Instead the ‘darkness’ stayed.

That is only one reason and one example for Guardianship being a Civil Rights issue. There are many more and unfortunately this is becoming true across the country.

Blacks you cannot touch because they are not criminals, not accused criminally can be brought into the criminal justice system and can be picked up and forced out of their homes by the police with just the signature of a willing psychiatrist and Dr. Rebecca Warner turned out to be such a person for the Donaldson/Bennett’s.

Jews are also targeted in this Guardianship scheme – which we consider a criminal conspiracy. The anti-semitism around Jews has to do with the propaganda that Jews actually rule the world – have all the money – and are constantly grabbing for more. That negative stereotype goes on, but I am sure you are completely aware of it.

Immigrants, especially are becoming targets of these schemes to gain Guardianship over and then deplete and draw down the assets of minorities so their next generation does not have the “push” from being left assets to begin to move ‘Up” financially and otherwise in this society.

The hard work of that first generation of immigrants is well known as the way to the American Dream tor their children, grandchildren and more down the generations. Stop that – with the Guardianship conspiracy which has overtaken and felled many immigrant families.

Las Vegas, Nevada seems to be the headquarters for such evil. But it can be found in many states and spreading fast.

In Massachusetts, the Courts – which we believe is the headquarters these days for the Irish Mafia – has been developing a very sophisticated system to strip families of their future inheritance by incarcerating their parents using “Guardianship”.

MA. Health is a supporter of this scheme and they do a fantastic job of ripping assets from families – are they a health insurer or are they a very vicious bill collector. Whatever, their structure totally supports this Guardianship criminal conspiracy.

And what will the state do about that? DENY? Investigate itself and find itself clean and not involved?

Don’t be ignorant – Don’t go along to get along – know what is happening in your neighborhood and to those you know and love. Take action and demand that those being so discriminated against be listened to and made whole – one day, that could be you.

A summary of what happened to Rev. Dr. Robert Bennett, being sent to their neighbors and friends because of a request for contributions sent to them by SCES!

Thursday, August 20th, 2020

To:   All of our neighbors and friends

From:  Rev. Dr. Robert Bennett and Marceline Donaldson

            49 Hawthorn Street

            Cambridge, MA. 02138

We just received a request for money from Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services.  That same request was sent to everyone in this neighborhood and probably beyond.

We would like you to know where your money is going and what it is supporting.  From the experience we have had and what we have seen others experience we ask that you please take a look at our experience and reconsider where you put your money and/or volunteer support.

___________________________________

In February, 2020 Rev. Dr. Robert Bennett had brain surgery at MGH.  The surgery was successful and after seven days he was discharged by MGH.

Two days after he left MGH eight white policemen, 5 or 6 EMT’s, two ambulances, police cars all over the block arrived without notice, without either of us having called them nor did we know anything about why they were at our front door.  It was such a circus people came running from the Charles River to see what was happening.

They were there to force Rev. Dr. Robert Bennett into Mount Auburn Hospital.  We understand, from one of the policemen that they were waiting for him at Mount Auburn to put him into the psychiatric wing of the hospital to be kept indefinitely.

No complaint issued, no investigation showing the need for such, nothing.

A “sectioning” is a psychiatric term.  A section 12 applies to a person who has had a psychotic break, overdosed on drugs, alcohol, etc. and imposes  substantial risk to the public or to themselves.

Rev. Dr. Robert Bennett does not drink alcohol, does not smoke nor take drugs nor has he had a psychotic break not shown or been suspected of a mental illness of any kind at any point in his life. He is a quiet, shy, unassuming Episcopal priest who is neither a threat to himself nor to anyone else.

A “Section 12” type action is beginning to be used by “front companies” across the country under different names to incarcerate blacks and other minorities in ways the IRS has been used in the past with people the government wants to silence, demean, discredit, disgrace, shut-up.

Guardianship companies are being formed to take over the life and assets of the elderly, spend them down, incarcerate the elderly in hospitals, nursing homes, substandard assisted living or other kinds of housing until their assets are gone and they are then indigent, destitute, etc.

Because of the lack of “reach” – the lack of political and other power of those so treated and the refusal of the media to investigate and publish this destruction of human beings, with only a few exceptions, you haven’t heard about this. Hopefully, that will change.

Jews are being targeted as well as other minorities and immigrants.  Why?  Because it is a way to reduce the influence of the next generation and “knee cap” the family.

What follows is being written by people we hired to investigate this:

Who ordered this and for what reason?  Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services. Under the control of SCES or other such ‘protective services’ one can incarcerate, claim any kind of mental deficiencies (without proof and without such diagnoses) , store the elderly in out of the way places and when their assets are gone walk away and give them over to the state.  Not only is SCES doing this, but so are the Protective Services across the Commonwealth as our investigation has begun to uncover.  The central place where this is happening in a very developed structural way is Las Vegas, Nevada.  Massachusetts is setting up to follow in their foot steps.

Dr. Rebecca Warner, psychiatrist, signed the order to have Rev. Dr. Bennett picked up by the police and forcibly incarcerated at Mount Auburn Hospital under a “section 12”.  Dr. Bennett had never in his life had even a hint of mental illness ever and “sectioning” is a psychiatric term under which all kind of destruction of the individual, their assets and more can happen and be sanctioned.

There are those who are serious about their vocation.  There are also those who will use their vocation to acquire more than they should destroying others in the process and money is not the only goal.  Power over others is high on the list, an instrument for bullying, especially where families try to gain an advantage over other family members using this ploy.

Robert’s brain surgery at MGH was because of a fall he took after unsuccessful eye surgeries which left him with limited vision.   His eye doctor provided no information nor guidance in such a circumstance and a few months after the two eye surgeries he was not as acclimated as he is today.

Dr. Warner said in this paper she signed for the police to immediately incarcerate Rev. Dr. Bennett in Mount Auburn Hospital, that she had never met Dr. Bennett, never examined him, never been to his house.  Neither had Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services.

That is a serious default in the law and Dr. Warner’s lack of professionalism and lack of concern for others is screaming in what she chose to do and how she chose to use her psychiatric credentials. Sign a paper, make a disclaimer and take away a human beings freedom while she went ahead with her life uninterrupted.

And it gets worse.

Dr. Bennett and his wife of 37 years – having lived in their home for 36 years were stunned.

This large contingent of police refused to give the Donaldson/Bennett’s any court papers which gave them the right to demand Robert be removed from his home.  They said he would either walk out of his house voluntarily or they would drag him out.  If they did any damage in the process that was not reimbursable because they had permission to take him out however and could break down the door to enter the house if they were refused entry.. 

What the Donaldson/Bennett’s were experiencing was the out of control power of the health industry.  Did you know about the police power of this industry and what it can do to you?  

The Greater Cambridge/Boston areas is one of the most racist places you can live.  It is a place  where structural racism is rampant and is kept in place with its set of denials by the educational institutions where “the spook who sits by the door for all to see and draw inaccurate conclusions”, or, “the minority held up as an example to say we are not racist” is an apt description of how this is allowed to continue.   The racism is substantial and unassailed.  

In the Donaldson/Bennett neighborhood they have been racially harassed during all of the 36 years they have lived in the Harvard Square/Brattle Street neighborhood.  A neighborhood that was red-lined and to this day is almost totally free of African American home ownership.  We tried to make an offer on a house just within weeks past and were told it was sold.  When someone else called it was not sold and is still being advertised for sale.

The latest extremely racist incident the Donaldson/Bennetts experienced – before Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services came along to make that last incident seem minor – was a new neighbor on the block who moved in bringing their racism to spread around by using the Donaldson/Bennett’s garden as a dog toilet.  When Marceline Donaldson went outside to tell the ‘gentleman’, who had just lifted his toy dog into their garden to pee and shit, that it was criminal trespass to do this and that she knew and had seen him and his dog in her garden several times,  his response was to be physically threatening and stomped her toes to show his “superiority” and ability to relieve himself with no consequences?

But that pales compared to forcibly being able to take an African American man out of his home to incarcerate him in an institution – without notice – without a court hearing – without cause –  to deprive him of his freedom for weeks.

The Donaldson/Bennett’s insisted Dr. Bennett be taken to MGH instead of to Mount Auburn Hospital, as Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services was insisting, since he was just discharged from MGH two days ago.

The police did that.  MGH discharged Dr. Bennett within hours without any medicines prescribed and with all vitals normal including his blood pressure and with comments by several of the professional staff that he should not have been picked up in the first place.

If Dr. Bennett had gone to Mount Auburn Hospital – where Dr. Warner is connected – the results of all of this would have been far different and has been different for many people so trapped.  An investigation into SCES and its connection with Mount Auburn Hospital and how that has affected other people seriously needs to be conducted and not with the result pre-determined and a letter of exoneration written before any investigation has happened, but with the serious intent to correcting a wrong which has and is destroying families.

Two days after he was discharged from MGH on this section 12 Dr. Bennett was again forced out of his home by the Cambridge police and forced into MGH and this time kept for 5 weeks.  Within hours of his arrival at MGH this second time he was given medicines he did not want – mostly over the counter, but also hallucinatory drugs, anti-psychotic medicines, anti-seizure medicines, medicines for schizophrenia and bipolar disorders without a diagnosis of such and more. 

This time he was forced into MGH on a section 19/20 which accused his wife – Marceline Donaldson – of medical abuse.  If they couldn’t incarcerate him on one thing they would try another.

The people who did this did not even know her name.  They claimed, in papers they filed with the Court that his wife’s name was Davidson, etc.  Their ‘facts’ showed they had not investigated anything if they didn’t even know the names of the people they were accusing. 

Rev. Dr. Bennett was kept in bed on an alarm blanket so if he moved or tried to get out of bed the alarm went off and a nurse came to make sure he was back in bed.  He could go from bed to chair next to the bed in a  space roughly 7 by 9 feet.  One arm of the chair hit the bed, the other arm hit the wall – in a double bed, that defines the space in which Dr. Bennett was kept for five weeks without cause, but suffering under all of this because SCES could use the health industry’s unbridled police powers to pick up and incarcerate a person just because

The “team” over Dr. Bennett while in MGH for those five weeks was mostly Somerville Cambridge Protective Services.  We know that because we were able to get an email sent to this “team” which included almost exclusively Somerville Cambridge Protective Services people.  This second time he was picked up the claim was that Dr. Bennett’s wife was medically abusive and he had to be immediately removed from his home or he would be seriously damaged.

When they could not seriously incarcerate Dr. Bennett on a claim of mental illness, they came back two days later to remove him from his home on a claim of an abusive home situation.  Prior to this invasion there had never been a hint of any abuse in that home at all.  Dr. Bennett did not make such a complaint to anyone.  Talk to him and he will tell you he loves he wife – has loved her for 37 years – they have a good marriage and some neighbors have sent us letters describing what they have seen of their relationship – all very positive about seeing this “caring relationship between the two of them for years.”

Dr. Bennett tells you he takes care of his wife and she takes care of him and that has been their relationship.  Neither one has gone to doctors or taken medicines over those years, not even aspirin.  That is their belief system and it has served them well over their years together.  

Both are over 80 and in good health except for Dr. Bennett’s fall – and that happened because of eye surgeries.  They will tell you they should not have and did not want the surgery.  Marceline’s daughter insisted and Rev. Bennett decided to go along – a decision he now seriously regrets.

What exactly was this invasion and violation of their basic rights guaranteed under the constitution about?  Is this the new way to be bigoted?  If you are black you don’t have to have committed a crime or be involved in the criminal justice system to be incarcerated, it can be done through the health care institutions with police power.  The assumption that it will always be used for good is nothing which is assumed in other parts of the society – why is there such a leeway for these things to go off the rail in the health care areas?

You can be incarcerated and force fed medicines just because that is how you can be incapacitated and moved full time into this health care system with your money and insurance drained in the process with no repercussions to the people and/or institutions which do such?

Are the traditional institutions with their structural racism and now defunding the police being moved out willingly and changed willingly because this new way and this new structural racism is being moved in as a replacement?

The five weeks he was in MGH Rev. Dr. Bennett was not allowed visitors, no telephone calls, kept in bed – until the last week when he was going to be released.  His wife was allowed to visit only three times during his five week stay.  She had to call the day before, make an appointment to see him, could only visit between 11am and 1pm, with her visits limited to 30 minutes strictly enforced and a Security Guard had to be present during the entire time of their visit.  

The week before he was going to be released he was able to walk the halls, receive telephone calls, and he was moved to the larger side of this two person room where before, his curtain was kept closed so he could not even see or know there was a window in the room.  Getting ready for release he was finally able to see outside through a very large picture window with space to breathe.

When Rev Dr. Bennett arrived home from MGH, he was in his stocking feet because his feet were so swollen his shoes did not fit.  He left his house forced into MGH walking on his own, talking, in good shape.  He returned totally disheveled, not able to walk and somewhat confused.  He had a walker and had to be helped into his house by two people – one on either side to hold him up because he could not stand on his own.  To see the man who returned when you had seen the man who was forced out of his home made your heart break.

Why did this happen?  

The day after Dr. Bennett was released from MGH a Constable came to the Bennett home to serve papers to put Dr. Bennett under the Guardianship of the Jewish Center for Family and Children who would also have control of his assets to be able to draw them down to pay his expenses.  The Guardianship would then place Dr. Bennett immediately into a Hebrew Nursing Home (did we mention that Dr. Bennett is a retired Episcopal priest?) These papers were asking the court’s permission to administer psychotic drugs to Dr. Bennett in this situation and to keep him restrained.  The papers claimed Dr. Bennett was “incapacitated” and even the newest technological innovations would not be of help to him because his “incapacitation” was so severe nothing would help.

So far, it has cost the Donaldson/Bennetts tens of thousands of dollars to fight this.

We put the entire saga as it happened in Bettina Network, inc’s blog because we didn’t know what was happening and wanted to make sure all of this was publicly recorded in case the worst happened there would be a record for anyone interested to know about these incidents.

The Donaldson/Bennetts lost their business and the time spent on all of this took over their lives.

Because this was published in Bettina Network’s Blog we have received telephone calls, emails and people stopping us on the street to tell us their story.

It is beyond appalling that this has happened not only to Dr. Bennett, but to others.  Those who contacted us included Jews, African Americans, immigrants and other minorities.  Their families and lives have been destroyed by Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services as well as Protective Services across the Commonwealth.

To incarcerate Robert Bennett a second time, SCES went to court for an emergency motion during which SCES, through its attorney James O’Sullivan, asked the court that Robert Bennett not be notified of the hearing and he was not.  We think this violated Massachusetts Laws because major things were done during this “ex-parte emergency hearing”.  

In that hearing, Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services asked the Court to invalidate the Health Care Proxy Dr. Bennett had drawn up by a probate attorney in November 2019.  Dr. Bennett had that November, 2019 Health Care Proxy created because he discovered there was a Health Care Proxy in existence which he did not sign, did not want and did not want the person named as his Health Care Proxy. He was very consistent that he wanted his wife as his Health Care Proxy. When he discovered its existence he invalidated it by having the November Health Care Proxy created which was signed November 18, 2019.

SCES, in its emergency hearing – about which Dr. Bennett was not notified – also asked the court to invalidate the Health Care Proxy MGH created.  It was totally amazing that SCES would accuse MGH of being so irresponsible as to have created a Health Care Proxy for someone SCES described as being unable to understand what he was signing. That from SCES who interrogated Dr. Bennett without anyones’ knowledge or consent when he was just out of surgery and minutes after he was out from oxygen and barely knew where he was. The stress, anxiety and much else they put on a man just recovering from serious surgery is amazing and ugly.

In the place of these two Health Care Proxies, Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services asked the court to validate a Health Care Proxy which they knew Dr. Bennett had not signed and they knew Dr. Bennett did not want that particular person as his Health Care Proxy.  This unsigned and unwanted HCP was validated by the Court at SCES’ request and was put in place of the November 2019 Health Care Proxy and the MGH Health Care Proxy. It is amazing that a Court would take that stand, especially in a hearing to do exactly that while excluding Dr. Bennett from any knowledge of the hearing. The Court invalidated two Health Care Proxies that Dr. Bennett had created and wanted as his choice and validated one he specifically did not want and had moved to have invalidated by replacing it with a new one dated and signed November 18, 2019 created by a probate attorney.

An attorney was appointed for Dr. Bennett by the court who he has never seen, nor met, nor spoken to and who did not return his telephone calls nor the telephone calls made to her by his wife, nor emails sent to her.  The attorney so appointed was involved in another case in Peabody, MA in which the family claims a Jewish man was so treated because access to his assets was the goal – over $6 million in assets.

The attorney appointed by the court, during this “emergency motion”, has served as a space holder so others could not file motions nor do what is needed for Dr. Bennett. This has also discouraged other attorneys from stepping in to take this case because they did not want to start with a fight to remove a court appointed attorney. 

Major things happened in that hearing which, we believe, made it illegal under the laws of the Commonwealth.  You do have the right to defend yourself in these United States.  That ex-parte emergency hearing totally took away that right from Dr. Bennett.

Rev. Dr. Robert Bennett – with a Harvard University doctorate; full tenured professor at Episcopal Divinity School (retired); was adjunct professor at Princeton University, Atlanta University and others – living for 36 years in  a seven figure home was characterized in court as “indigent” with no one around to take care of him.  SCES had their attorney describe someone in a destitute position.  This was some of the reasons Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services gave the court requesting Rev. Dr. Bennett’s immediately removal from his home of 36 years and to be forcibly separated from his wife of 37 years. This request was made through SCES attorney James O’Sullivan who apparently uses emergency motions for such activities with frequency.  

What was the Bennett/Donaldson family doing when this happened?  What was this “indigent” man who was destitute, as described by SCES, and in despair in his home doing?   – The police arrived moments after he sat down to a candlelight dinner with his adult son, daughter-in-law, daughter and his wife.  His children were visiting and staying at the Donaldson/Bennett home to spend time with their father because of his recent surgery. They were there to do whatever they could to make sure their father was comfortable and had whatever they could provide.

How did the SCES describe this to the court?  A man who was destitute with no one to look after him or protect him from his abusive wife.  This destitute man in so much danger he had to be immediately removed from his home by white police, ambulance, EMT’s and more was happily enjoying the company of his son who was VP at CBS, a daughter who is a film producer and more, a wife with a masters in Theology running a business with her husband which they created decades ago , which had a great reputation and through which they met some of the world’s leaders who stayed with them at different times throughout their career.  

SCES managed to  demean, disgrace, destroy this African American family.  That is beyond vicious and clearly borders on evil. When you support SCES with your money and/or volunteer work this is what you are supporting.

What does SCES say to those who have contacted them and questioned what was happening?  They say “It is complicated.”  We think it is straight forward unless you are trying for a cover-up.

To so abuse the emergency court motion puts the opposing side in a very bad position because lots can be done without the other side present and you have a willing and cooperative judge – which apparently was the case.  The judge was called out of retirement to hear this case which had no proof.  It only had a sworn affidavit from Ms. Nora Al Wetaid who is head of Protective Services at SCES.

We believe her testimony rises to the level of purgery and have asked several times that this be investigated.  Especially when other minorities have had the same experience.  The other minorities were destitute  at the end of their experience with SCES and other such groups, but not at the beginning.

In addition to the incarceration, this entire incident opened the door for Dr. Bennett to be sexually abused. He was threatened that if he did not strip naked and get into the shower it would not go well for him.

We could go on for pages, but we are asking that you seriously consider what you are supporting when and if you make contributions to such groups which have a vicious structural racism and sexism which is denied by everyone, not investigated and when it was investigated at Ms Donaldson’s request the organization investigated itself and found itself not guilty of anything.  

Mr. Paul Hollins needs to be removed as head of this organization.

Mr. Hollins claimed to investigate – without the particulars of the complaint from Ms. Donaldson even being considered.  She called the elder hotline to make the complaint.  She was told it was recorded and would be investigated.  On information and belief, Mr. Hollins made his decision without access to the hour long recording from the hot line.  It was an hour long because they claimed that was the limit of such recordings allowed over their hotline.  Who is that hotline? Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services.  So they investigated themselves without identifying to Ms. Donaldson that this is who would be investigating her complaint against Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services.

Ms. Donaldson brought the complaint to the next level up in this state hierarchy and sent a written complaint.

Ms. Bree Cunningham called Ms. Donaldson to say she could not find the written complaint and would Ms. Donaldson send her another copy.  However, without having received another copy of the complaint, Ms. Cunningham found no basis for the complaint in a letter which was an exact copy of the one sent to Ms. Donaldson by Mr. Hollins.

The Donaldson/Bennett’s rights were stripped in every way.  Dr. Bennett was incarcerated for no reason and forced to take medicines which he neither wanted nor needed and was subjected to horrors in the process.   

The complaints were so flimsily regarded that when the court complaint was sworn out, Ms. Al Wetaid didn’t even know Ms. Donaldson’s name.  Any basic investigation would start with moving against a person knowing who it was you are so charging – in Ms. Donaldsons case – with abuse.  She was named  Davidson by Ms. Al Wetaid and Ms. Angela Clary and that misnomer continued for quite some time without anyone from SCES knowing who they were actually filing against.

If you want to read the details as we recorded them – see www.bettina-network.com/blog

If you have questions we can be reached at 617 497 9166.

The racist tropes are clear and certainly don’t need to be spelled out further.

There is an affidavit from Ms. Nora Al Wetaid who is head of SCES Protective Services in which she claims under oath that this time (this second time picking up Dr. Bennett) she would “conspire” with others at MGH to make sure Robert Bennett was not immediately released (as he was on March 4th) but would be kept in the hospital

This was a first for us.  We had never heard anyone talk about “conspiring” to keep someone in a hospital.  It certainly calls into question the hospital’s ability to do its job.

Several things happened to Dr. Bennett during his stay at MGH:

  1. He was put there, not for medical reasons, but the SCES claim was he had to be removed from his home to get him away from an abusive wife. Yet major medications started immediately.

2)  In spite of that he was treated the way one would treat a human being you wanted to “incapacitate” for other reasons.  Isolate – Medicate leads to Incapacitate.  Someone who called us gave us that formula for what happened to them.

3)  He was given an assortment of medicines daily – usually five pills in the morning and five later in the day – to someone not in the hospital for medical or psychiatric reasons.  The psychiatric part had been put to rest by Dr. Bennett’s discharge from MGH from the section 12 claim.

4)  The pills Dr. Bennett was given included anti-psychotic pills; anti-seizure medication; hallucinatory drugs which kept him in a horrible state.  This given to him after he was discharged from MGH the first time on March 4th at 3:30am with “no medicines prescribed”. Two days later, MGH allowed heavy medications to be given to Dr. Bennett.

5) We were able to get the name of several of the pills Rev. Bennett was forced to take, but were not able to get the names of all – only the reaction Rev. Bennett had after taking them.  We sent the list to MGH’s compliance department.  

6)  Rev. Bennett and his wife were told by Dr. Schweitzer, the doctor who headed the surgical team doing the brain surgery on Dr. Bennett, that he was given anti-seizure medications the seven days he was in the hospital after his surgery.  That was the limit and Dr. Bennett should not receive anti-seizure medications after that period because that could be harmful to his recovery, his brain.  Ms. Al Wetaid was outraged that Dr. Bennett’s wife had not even continued  anti-seizure medications and after such serious brain surgery.

7)  Rev. Bennett was given ( by a different group of people from the neurologists who performed his brain surgery and in a different area of MGH) anti-seizure medication for the five weeks he was in MGH having been forced into the hospital by the police and the court.  When Dr. Bennett was finally sent home after 5 weeks, medications were sent with him and he could only go back to his house if his wife agreed to make sure he received those medications daily as was happening in the hospital for those five weeks.  They also insisted that the Blissful Home Care Agency visit daily to make sure Robert Bennett took the medicines the SCES sent home with him.  SCES also insisted that the only Home Care Agency the Donaldson/Bennett’s could use was the Blissful Agency. 

8)  MGH also insisted the only way Rev. Bennett could leave the hospital was if his son, Mark Bennett came from Washington, D. C. to pick up Rev. Bennett from the hospital to take him home to Cambridge – the home he was forced out of five weeks earlier by the police and forced into MGH because he was so poor and alone and endangered because of who Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services called a “medically abusive wife.”  They were now sending him back to this wife.

9)  It seems to us the medical abuse came from the “team” MGH allowed to be over Dr. Bennett while he was in MGH and from the Home Health Care Service SCES insisted be the only one he could use who had to come into his home daily .  When that happened, the only one properly dressed to do that in this Pandemic time was the nurse.

10)  Dr. Bennett was also subjected to sexual abuse  at the hands of one of the Blissful Agency people.  

11)  After Robert returned home from this second forced stay at MGH his son, Mark Bennett, called Dr. Goodson to complain about all the medicines his father was given and to describe to him what happened when Rev. Bennett took some of those medicines.  Dr. Goodson said those were some of the medicines given to Rev. Bennett while he was in MGH.  He agreed that all of the pills except the blood pressure medications could be stopped. 

12)  The day after Rev. Bennett returned home – on a Monday – that Tuesday Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services through their attorney James O’Sullivan – sent a Constable to Rev. Bennett’s home to serve Guardianship Papers – a motion to commit Rev. Bennett to a nursing home because, as the  court papers claimed, he was “an incapacitated person” who not even the latest technological advances could help.  The papers also asked that the Jewish Center for Family and Children be appointed Guardians over Rev. Bennett which Guardianship included control of Rev. Bennett’s assets being able to draw down whatever was needed to cover Rev. Bennett’s expenses and that Rev. Bennett be immediately sent to the Hebrew Nursing Home for life with constraints allowed and anti-psychotic also allowed to be given with Dr. Bennett in constraints because of his extremely incapacitated state.  

For those of you who have seen Rev. Dr. Bennett and his wife around the Harvard Square area that can be a bit hard to believe that this is a man who Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services claimed was so “incapacitated” he had to be consigned to Guardianship; taken out of his home for life; taken away from his wife of 37 years and separated from a large family who cares about him and did not want to see this happen; and to be incarcerated for life in a nursing home under constraints.

At that point we understood why the person who gave us the three word code was so concerned.  Their experience with their family member had been – Isolate – Medicate = Incapacitate.  That family spent all of its resources trying to get their family member – an African American elderly gentleman – away from SCES.  He had been isolated – medicated – and while he was not incapacitated from the experience he was treated as though he was and stored in a nursing home.  He escaped and left the state.  He is not the only one which is probably why SCES asked for constraints on Dr. Bennett in the Hebrew Nursing Home.

Contemplate these things as you think how you will respond to this request for money from Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services.

Please, also, pass this around to as many people as possible. We are trying to make sure everyone in Cambridge, Somerville and surrounding areas in the Commonwealth receive this information.

Responses from Bettina Network Lifestyle Community Members!

Saturday, July 4th, 2020

Member 1

Rev. Dr. Robert Bennett is the second African American – that we know of – who has had a negative interaction with the police. He is the second African American who had done nothing even remotely criminal and yet the police came to his house twice and forced him out and incarcerated him. The second time for five weeks.

The first we heard about was “Skip” Gates.. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder.

The attempt was to arrest Skip Gates. There are now pictures in the papers which show him on his porch in handcuffs with the police standing around.

Even if they could not be held, their images could be tarnished and it gives jokes among white supremacists.

And, by the way, how come the police in Cambridge, Ma. are becoming whiter along with Blacks being “arrested” for no reason.

Why was Gates “arrested”? For breaking and entering into his own home.

And Bennett? To be “sectioned” at the local and apparently ‘going along with the program’ hospital. He who had never had a hint of any kind of mental problems was picked up by the police, forced into the hospital to be psychiatrically examined because he was considered a threat to the public. Someone who might do harm to those around and about.

Both are living in areas of Cambridge which are known to be “for white patrons only.” It is an area which traditionally was and is “red lined.”

Rev. Dr. Bennett lives in that area and he is not Harvard connected. Well, except for a Harvard doctorate, however, he was supposed to live in faculty housing so the neighborhood would be confident he and his family would be moving along once he retired. Disappointed and having to come to grips with the reality of where they lived, they decided to sell their house, but then took the house off the market. Shortly thereafter white anger was unleashed and this is the result?

Member 2

What is incredibly disturbing in what I have read about all the things happening to Rev. Bennett is the fact that he had a probate attorney draw up a Health Care Proxy – which we are all advised to do – and that was drawn up months before he went into the hospital for surgery. Apparently, a judge, at the request of an attorney- who really seems ‘sketchy’ – invalidated that Health Care Proxy and put in its place a Health Care Proxy that Rev. Bennett did not want, had not signed, with a proxy he did not want and that Health Care Proxy was the reason Rev. Bennett had this new Health Care Proxy drawn up. Rev. Bennett was forced by the judge’s decision to have that proxy. Rev. Bennett apparently tried to correct that awfulness by having a probate attorney draw up a Health Care Proxy which invalidated the one he knew nothing about and the Court validated that proxy – the one not signed by Rev. Bennett, one he did not know existed and invalidated the one he clearly wanted. It is mind blowing! Are our attorneys and court that crooked? That said clearly to me this is all about setting up the situation to rip off Rev. Bennett’s assets and not about anything else.

Attorneys who have no ethics about what they are doing and who possibly have hidden interests in so doing can change our wishes to what benefits those attorneys and their clients. What kind of court system do we have? The way it is developing is that of an extreme dictatorship that wants to present a good “front” with no problems letting such things happen. Sadly, some folks have discovered the pots of gold at the end of United States citizens lives and have figured out how to put those citizens into extreme pain, make the end of their lives a torture and wind up with everything they managed to save so that end of life would be decently lived.

People who do not have endless money to be able to hire attorneys to go to court for as long as is necessary to correct this horrible wrong are at the mercy of tainted courts and -should we say ‘crooked’ attorneys? Even then, I suspect it would be a waste of money because the first attorney and judge did ugly things. Isn’t that illegal? Shouldn’t that be illegal? And what recourse do you have except continuing in court – bleeding money to attorneys – and even then – nothing.

Keep publishing. We need to know these things!

This entire thing has upset me and my family unbelievably because we have a probate attorney we hired to make sure we were all covered with what we need and want for those times we might not be able to or not allowed to control our own lives and this says to me that was just a waste of time and money. Money well into four figures. The court and an attorney can invalidate all of it in seconds.

Whatever happened to the United States and its honest court system? Was there ever such a thing and we only knew the image and not the reality?

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Member 3

Thank you for all of your postings about what is happening to Rev. Dr. Bennett. I was a student of his years ago and it grieves me to see what he is going through today.

He is a lovely person. Very quiet, self-effacing and extremely shy!

I was a student at EDS at the time and took his Hebrew Bible Class and a class on Racism he co-taught with his wife, Marceline Donaldson. They also taught that class at Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston, but it was more complete at Episcopal Divinity School.

At the time, when they invited the class to tea at their home, my thoughts were – one day this community is going to attempt to destroy them. They were the only African Americans owning a home in that neighborhood and I knew a few of their neighbors who were not happy with “those folks” living close to them. Besides their comments to me, they smiled nicely when they encountered the couple. I know that because I was with them when one of the neighbors greeted us. They didn’t know Dr. Bennett and his wife so I introduced them. I was so shocked at their response – smiling, lovely, welcoming and just two days prior they were bitter in their comments to me about “such people” living so close.

If there is any way I can help, please let me know. They can’t be left alone in this fight because it is one that affects us all.

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Member 4

My husband and I have been calling Robert and Marceline who we have known for years. At first, I could not believe what was happening to them. After some thought, I realized the same could happen to any of us. My work has made me aware of the result beginnings of these Guardianship Corporations which fly under the banner of “helping the elderly who are alone”. We had one problem in our church with a member who was fairly well off and all of a sudden was embroiled with one of these Guardianship groups trying to take them over. It became clear that they were trying to take over and drain off their assets.

Given what we went through with that family, please know that we are here to do whatever we can for Marceline and Robert. They have always been a very beautiful couple. Their sense of humor with each other is great! It is a shame that this is what they are experiencing at this time of life.

We are praying for them – however, we also want to know what else we can do. My husband thought about organizing a group in the church to work with them and keep that group going after their problems are solved to work with others in the same place.

Stay in touch and please keep those write-ups coming so we all can keep up with what is happening with Dr. Bennett and his wife. When I receive mine I send it around to as many people as I can think of who would be interested and the feed back has been dynamite.

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Member 5

Reading about all of this it is startling and very disturbing.

We have pictures of Skip Gates – from Harvard University – in handcuffs on his own porch – being arrested by the police for breaking and entering his own home?

And now we have Robert Bennett picked up in a huge drama, which we watched and were appalled at the Cambridge Police for allowing themselves to be so used. Or – were they a part of this whole drama before it happened and were attempting what was attempted with Skip Gates?

Do you realize how the Cambridge and Boston police are becoming “whiter”? Now that we are decades away from what caused these areas to attempt to diversify their police force, that has gradually slipped away and we see the whitening now happening. Will we now see more of this happening in Cambridge? Clearly, African Americans can be picked up in Cambridge, by the police, even though there is not even a hint of criminality involved and they can be imprisoned for indefinite periods of time for no reason. And what happens after that? Any and All Americans can be picked up in Cambridge, by the police, even though there is not even a hint of criminality involved and they can be imprisoned for indefinite periods of time for no reason. Do you doubt that? After this, I don’t!

I guess we consider ourselves so influential that we can make those same African Americans pay for their own imprisonment. Isn’t that what happened with Robert Bennett? I would love to know who paid for all of this? Hopefully, not my tax money and hopefully not the Bennett’s insurance money. Either way I am getting ready to protest all of this somehow.

If you are all sleeping and not paying attention to this and not intervening to make these things stop you could be next. I was raised with the saying – Nazi Germany is what happened because good people did nothing. You are seeing the same thing happening in these United States and what are you doing about it?

#BlackLivesMatter

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How to Look 50 at 80 years old!

Sunday, May 28th, 2017

We took advantage of Bettina Network Hedge Schools and stayed at a house where we wanted to know the wife’s beauty secrets.  We’ve seen her for years and thought she was at most 60 years old.  When we discovered she was actually 79 we almost flipped out so we immediately made reservations and said in the process that we wanted to spend time talking with her about her lifestyle.

We didn’t say we were going to share it and didn’t intend to, but it was so ‘out there’ that we just couldn’t resist.  And, sharing on Bettina’s Blog information about a Bettina family should not be forbidden.

  1.  The first thing we discovered is that she uses no soap and thinks soap is what makes wrinkles.  Well, we asked how do you stay clean?  By showering or soaking in a tub of hot water.  What else do you need?  God created water to wash you clean.  Man created soap to take away your money.  Why would you follow that?  There are side affects to what man makes – and the side affect of soap is wrinkles. Well, with that I knew this was going to be an incredible three days.  What does she use when dirt won’t be washed away by plain water?  Well, organic powdered milk, of course, and to my amazement it works beautifully. – And listen people, I discovered she does have “correct” language and when she says “man” she means “man”.  That is not a sexist ‘men’ being a term which is inclusive of everyone on the planet.  If she didn’t mean “man” she would have said “human” or some other word in that politically correct lexicon of hers.

2.  OK!  Recovering from that we wanted to know more so we rose early – something difficult for us – and discovered she’d been up for hours.  Well, whatever affect that has we just left it alone because no beauty or youthful look is worth getting up at 3:30-4am.  She doesn’t say “youthful looking” by the way.  It is “looking healthy”.  Ageism, you know.

3.  The first thing she does is have a cup of one organic lemon with the juice squeezed into a cup of very warm water and drinks it down like medicine.  I thought that was great and I could modify it a bit with the addition of sugar, but that was forbidden so I tried straight lemon juice.  Not bad, but it takes a lot of getting used to.

4.  Then things got a bit rough.  No smoking – we don’t smoke so that’s alright.  No alcohol of any kind.  Well, what is wrong with alcohol, I protested.  It causes wrinkles, she said.  Well – this is not going to be the walk in the park I anticipated.

5.  I searched the refrigerator and the food cabinets and found only organic foods.  No nothing else –  even the spices and coffees and teas were organic – everything was organic.  Water was in a pitcher with a filter and she apologized because she didn’t know how to get purer water.

This is going to take time – especially since that means also – no prepared foods even if they say organic and no gluten free prepared foods – they are just as bad as everything else.  So as I re-searched the refrigerator – looking at things on a different level, everything was food – real, unprocessed, food “the way it comes from its creator”.

Now that to me was impossible, there must be cheating someplace here,  so I watched closely and they ate only those real foods.  Milk, eggs, butter, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers (which were actually there for beauty reasons rather than food for eating) chicken, beef, lamb – all organic products.  Oh, this is going to be hard.  Her response was – this has to be a lifestyle that you feel is good, right and easy.  Oh, and the bread – organic whole wheat flour and home baked – if they haven’t had time to bake bread, you get fresh out of the oven biscuits.  One day we even had croissants.  Those were several days in the making because she doesn’t have that much time to bake croissants straight through.

I was amazed – this was better eating than I’d done in years and watching a cake being made while breakfast was being prepared was amazing.  The cake took maybe ten minutes total to be prepared to put in the oven.  More time processing – for example – she put sugar (organic turbinado) in the mixer with organic butter and let it beat for what seemed like forever.  She ignored it until she had time to add the rest of the ingredients with a little more beating and then into the prepared pans for baking.  I am going to try this because it is 1-2-3-4 and even I can remember those ingredients.  Even when I can’t remember what is one cup and what is three cups – common sense gets into the mix and I know one cup must be butter because we want butter to be the least of the ingredients and two cups must be sugar because we want medium sweet and three cups must be flour and four must be eggs.

6. Exercise is a part of her day.  But – and this is a big but – I exercise daily, jog, etc. but that is not a part of this exercise regime.  She exercises parts of the body I don’t even think need exercising – your eyes for example (and she wears no glasses at 79 years old), and your toes, and your fingers.  No jogging, she’s never liked that and the incredible exercises I do she thinks is a waste of time and energy.  She suggested I wash the walls, or shampoo the rug or do some gardening outside in the sun without sunscreen.

7.  Make-up doesn’t exist.  Vitamins are the skin care products – vitamin A, E, liquid C and for those aches and pains a good soaking in organic apple cider vinegar switched off with epsom salts.

I could go on because that is the tip of the ice berg.  However, I should say, since I left I understand this is not hard at all.  It takes re-doing your lifestyle and ignoring what the cosmetic and other marketeers have trained us to think is absolute, essential and all the money spent on such is going to result in results.’  I knew that last part wasn’t true – I spend about $200/ month on cosmetics and at 57 I look older than my host family looks spending money only on foods.

Her biggest health purifier comes from the fact that she hasn’t been to a doctor in over 50 years and doesn’t expect to see one any time soon. Right thinking – giving to others – being aware of the messages your body gives out – those are the things important in that Bettina Hedge School.

Totally the reverse of everything I was ever taught.

Thanks for the experience.  It is one I will never forget.

Bettina Hedge Schools rock.  I am not sure where I am going next, but I think living with a classical pianist for a few days while I go to meetings, etc. to give her time to do her thing without me hanging around, sounds like a good deal for both of us.

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to bettina-network@comcast.net

A New World Order

Tuesday, April 21st, 2015

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2015

We first heard of a “New World Order” when George Bush was president and let those words slip.  We want to pick up those words and expand and change what that means – just a little.

We live and see others prosper as we recapture the past and move into the future world order.  Some of us see the past as that place full of light and goodness.  Others see this new technology creating that place full of light and goodness.  We think they are both wrong and totally destroying what they are trying to achieve and capture.  How does that happen?  How did and do they get it so wrong?

We have to go back to the old world understanding that we don’t own anything on this earth.  We contribute those ways of thinking to the ‘primitives’.  Those groups of people who didn’t understand and were very ‘unintelligent’ in their ways of thinking.  Their basic belief was that we don’t and can’t own anything in this world.  All of that changed.  But did it really or only in new constructs we chose to use to define who we are and how we live!

When we enter this world we do so with nothing except the body we take on at conception.  When we leave it, we leave with nothing – not even the body with which we have identified for as long as we have lived on this earth.  So how have we gotten everything so messed up, mixed up, confused and just downright wrong?

We need to go back to accept the fact of who we are instead of who our leaders have created us to be through their mythology – which we have accepted – and look at and accept who we really are and what we really own, if anything.  Once we do that, the Bettina Lifestyle is simple – it is a “New World Order” based on our shared humanity – and a joy to live.

Whatever we receive in this life is a gift and something we own only temporarily.  It really belongs to the earth – whatever that means.  So we should take care of every pin, every dot, every tittle and iota that comes into our possession because it is not permanent and it is not ours.  We keep all of these things for a second and then pass them on to someone else, unless we have ruined all of what we have possessed in the meantime and then we throw our things into the landfills.  Those things we claim to own came from someplace else and are going someplace else when we no longer have use of whatever we have acquired.

Enter the Estate Sale – the Yard Sale – the Garage Sale.  All ways we use to get rid of our ‘old’ stuff’ that we no longer want nor think we can use.  The thought of taking care of our things because we are passing them along in the future very seldom enters our minds.  We are the throw away society.  We use it and throw it away.  And what happens to those waiting to receive those throw away items?  Sorry, but they were trashed, discarded, uncared for because the person using them interrupted the cycle by their inability to recognize their humanity and the need to share everything with those waiting to receive.  We have dehumanized those waiting to receive to justify the way we have dehumanized ourselves.  We have re-created ourselves in the image of the god we created who would put up with our sins, and wastefulness and uglinesses to ourselves and to others.

If we had taken good care of what we ‘owned’ temporarily, and understood that what we have must be used by someone else, those things would continue their lives and would continue to be useful someplace else and to someone else.

Some people can only buy and use “new” stuff.  Some of us delight and cherish the ‘old stuff’ that we find at Estate Sales.  It is like winning the lottery to find something wonderful for a fraction of what we would have to pay for the same item “new”.  It is living on society’s throw aways, but what a luxury life.

Clothes are the best example.  If you wear your clothes carefully, you can pass them on to continue to be used by someone else.  So Bettina provides for that.  Bettina Network, inc. has estate sales.  Bettina Network Foundation, inc. gives away that which is given to us to those who need the give-aways to be able to participate in this society.  How wonderful to find those give-aways in good condition.

There is no understanding of the ugliness and selfishness of the society in which we live until one becomes homeless.  You can understand it on a very small basis as you interact and see the political fights, the petty jealousies, the coveting thy neighbors belongings. You can understand it only so far, if you also have a position which pays you money to work; friends in the same or better position of whom you can be jealous; belongings which don’t quite measure up to those of your neighbors.  Homeless,  you are cut off from all of that and are standing outside alone or with children or with other family or with friends- all of you alone -it is a stark emptiness, fear and feeling of what was it all about and what is it all about now that I am on the street!  But oddly enough, that tendency to create negative structures in which to live is so strong that the homeless recreate the same scenarios only on a different level from that which we find in the society at large.  What stops that?  What intervenes to get rid of all the myths which we have created to continue this insanity?

To be homeless raises the question as to what got me in this place? Did I do something or not do something that I wound up homeless and cut off from everyone and everything except those in my condition?  There are a few people who reach out to help, but they are not my friends.  They are making themselves feel good as a part of their “belonging,”‘  enhancing their position in society; reaching out to ‘do good’, but going back into the lifestyle and the society which created the underbelly of people that are not doing so good.

Why do we throw away our children onto the streets?  Why do we cast our elderly into buildings which harbor and collect all of the germs and diseases one gets as one gets older and keeps them from being seen and interacted with by others – the normal younger ones?  Why do we eliminate youth and family from these buildings and put those who are only one step above the elderly in such places to ‘care’ for them?  Is there something about youth who don’t tow the line and the elderly who shouldn’t be seen with the rest of us that makes us segregate?

As racism subsides are we so quickly replacing it with this form of elder-ism and creating more isms – so we don’t run out and might have to acknowledge our equality?  Separate and unequal now true for the elderly and for our children?

It is interesting that one sees, on the streets, people active until about age 70 and then it is rare to see those much older unless we see them amongst the homeless.  We have to go out of our way to these elder-buildings to see anyone older than 70.  Why do we so desperately need to be better than, that we will destroy other human beings to fill our need to be better than?

Marketing and advertising create the image of being stunned by those over 40 who look good (translate young) – who are not ill – who are active in society.  We just gasp at a 50 year old who looks younger and is still very active.  Corporations almost totally refuse to hire anyone over 45 and we go along with that.  Somehow, wisdom does not count.  And we can see that in how our society operates.  If wisdom were allowed in, and we commonly shared the experiences we have acquired  from having lived many years through much,  that might change the structures of our world and those who are busy creating this horror might have to give way to others who understand, acknowledge and act out of our common humanity.

If we treated our possessions as being with us only temporarily would that change all of this?  If we consciously understood that when we leave this earth we would not even be able to do so taking our own bodies?  Would that make a change?  If we passed on what we now own and use when we either no longer want or need it and we passed that on in good shape to others would all of this change?

As of now, wearing clothes someone else bought and wore and now throws away is not considered great.  Many of us won’t wear other peoples’ clothes.  We expect to immediately get sick and die from some terminal disease we catch in that process.  This need for new stuff and only new stuff has been created by a marketing and advertising campaign which has made us deathly afraid of each other and sometimes of ourselves.  We must feed the “growth through throw away” societal structure.  The faster we can get others to discard and throw away the faster new industries and companies can grow.

Look at this, –  we can’t stand to be around someone who has an odor. That has created a whole industry, which is thriving.  Try it sometimes and see how repulsed your friends and even your family can be if you smell.  And we all smell.  The exception is those who temporarily get rid of their smell by using chemicals which in the long run are harmful to one’s health.  Maybe those products need the addition in their television commercials to list all the bad things they do to the body, if you use them, as soothing music plays in the background.  Your smell is as unique as everything else.  Get used to it.  Can you walk into a room and know any of the people who just exited by the odors left or do you know the odors left by the brand of the chemicals used by the individuals?

We prefer to be around those who have more than we do and we will do some strange things to each other reaching ‘up’.  We cater to those who seem to have more, hoping they will acknowledge us and pull us ‘up’ with them.  And those already ‘up’ are doing their best to distance themselves from those who have less because they don’t want their ‘position’ compromised, especially by the unwashed.

Take a look at what keeps us without an odor – full of chemicals.  Take a look at what  keeps us clothed – chemicals, oil, especially in the middle classes and you will find these  chemicals and processed oils giving off gases into our bodies.  The food the chefs, who now make millions of dollars for the prattle produce, – can be really fowl, only we claim it to be exquisite because we repeat what we are expected to repeat to stay a member of the group.  Once upon a time these Chefs touted Olive Oil as the only Oil to cook with if you wanted to be healthy.  Slowly, too slowly, word got out that one can’t really cook with Olive Oil because it goes rancid as the temperature in the pot goes up and it doesn’t have to go up very far for the rancidity to appear killing all of the B vitamins in our system.

Try life in this New World Order.  Take good care of what you currently own,  with the thought that it will be owned by someone else in the not too dBettina Trademarkistant future and you want to preserve it so it can continue to be used and enjoyed.  Pass your belongings on to those who either won’t or can’t pay the top dollars required of the people buying new stuff.  What is this new stuff they are buying?  Shoes full of chemicals way into four figures; New pocketbooks which show off a certain status costing into five figures.  Instead of landfill, make sure those items with which you currently live are in such good condition they can be passed on to others to enjoy.

Find someone homeless and bring them into your social circle.  Include them in your parties, your dinners, your outings, your vacations.  You don’t have to provide them with permanent housing.  When dinner is over they go back to their homeless state.  When you return from vacation, they go back to their homeless state.  When you pass someone homeless on the street – smile and speak.  When you pass anyone on the street – smile and acknowledge your common humanity.  What will that do?  Possibly cure this society’s penchant for creating homelessness and then not taking responsibility for what we have created.  How? By acknowledging our common humanity.  If I have a lot in common with that person on the street how can I do otherwise than to at least speak.  Maybe one day……………..

As the homeless are more included in your life and the lives of your friends and family maybe they will see another way to move out of the state they are in.  Maybe doors have been opened for them and within them to help move them off the street.

Try this beginning of a truly New World Order and see how far it takes you and us.

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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The Rev. Dr. Lillian D. Anthony, my friend

Monday, December 1st, 2014

by: Marceline Donaldson, president

Bettina Network Foundation, inc.

 

There are some people one expects to go on forever, but none of us lives forever.

Lillian was a force of nature. Her strength came from the clear, truthful, fearless and love filled way she lived her life.

I have always called Lillian ‘my friend’, but as I look back over our lives I realize she was also one of my mentors from whom I learned a lot.

I met Lillian back in the l960’s in Minneapolis. She was challenging the City of Minneapolis about its lack of civil rights and was in the process of becoming the first head of one of the first city civil rights departments in the United States.

It was amazing for me – a young, southern, quiet, full of my early training.  A person who wore gloves everyplace and usually with an umbrella at hand, who had been trained to always remember who she was and act accordingly – to meet this woman who always knew who she was and she was neither quiet nor southern.

I was just coming out of a not so great marriage and trying to stand on my own two feet for the first time in life. I’d found a beautiful house I loved and tried to buy, but the owner declared he would not sell to an African American. I was furious; was not going to take such; and wasn’t sure where to go or what to do when someone suggested I call Lillian Anthony – which I did.

Lillian responded immediately. She was head of the newly established Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights starting in l968 and had some power to address what happened to me.

We met and talked and hit it off right away. Lillian went off to address the problem and in a couple days called and we met again. She told me the problem was solved, the owner had no problem selling the house to an African American woman and she knew that for sure because she’d just bought it.

We started to laugh, almost uncontrollably. It was a joke that was funny far beneath what was on the surface and so off we went on a lifetime of what can only be described as a hilarious friendship full of one-upmanship’s. When we met at social, civic, or other events we would point and laugh uproariously because we knew we were the sharpest looking people in the room. I knew I looked better than Lillian and she knew she looked better than me.

We often went shopping together – to estate sales, of course – but we had to fight to buy what we wanted because we always saw the same item at the same time and it was a free-for-all as to who got to it first.

I was invited to a meeting in Chicago in the early 1970’s of 100 Black Women and so was Lillian, who was one of the coordinators of that event. Once there I met Elma Lewis – who had not yet become Miss. Lewis. There was a skit in the room with all of us gathered and a woman dressed as a waitress came in with her clothes askew looking very stressed and disheveled, crying out – ‘help me, they shot him’.

No one in the room moved, except me, who jumped up to run to this woman to help her in her obvious distress, while telling everyone else in the room how they should be helping also. Elma wanted to know “who is that woman”. Lillian, who was sitting next to Elma said – that’s just Marceline. She is always in the middle of everything saving the world . Elma called me over to sit next to her and she and Lillian laughed and carried on – at my expense.

Turns out, the waitress was a part of the skit to see who would respond and to then start a discussion on being involved. However, that didn’t work because Lillian, Elma and I couldn’t stop laughing and just having a great time out of all of this.

That was the start of a great trio of friends. We weren’t together a lot, but when we did get together it was always a good time.

Lillian designed the Afro-American Studies Department at the University of Minnesota, becoming its first chairperson. She did an amazing job of helping to found the Department and headed it in a way which helped develop the entire field. No, Skip Gates was not the first and neither was Harvard.

Lillian ran into trouble at the University as Black men challenged her position which they thought should belong to an African American man who they claimed should have better credentials than Lillians’. So Lillian resigned and went off to the University of Massachusetts to obtain a Doctorate in Education. In addition she also served on the faculties of the University of Nebraska, George Mason University and Towson University in Maryland.

Even before all of this, Lillian went to seminary at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and received her Master of Religious Education in 1953 long before women were even beginning to see the possibility of a seminary education. Before that, Lillian received her undergraduate degree from Lincoln University in Jefferson City, MO.

After leaving seminary Lillian worked at Witherspoon Presbyterian Church as the director of religious education. A job most women found if they were lucky enough to finish their seminary education and find a job. The Church was way behind the society- still is today – in addressing the equality of men and women and Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans.

Lillian also taught in Assuit, Egypt and was the North Central Area representative for the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Ordination was not possible then, even though God’s call to Lillian to the ordained ministry was strong,  so she went instead into Religious Education. Lillian did not ignore this call to ordination into the Presbyterian ministry, which wasn’t realized until decades after she turned to listen to what God was calling her to do. What was clear in Lillian’s life was that God calls and man decides to ignore God’s way and pursue his own, blocking the path of women and minorities. It was clear looking at Lillian’s life, that it is dangerous for men to block God’s call, but they never seem to get that message because they are still today blocking as best they can – only today being joined by a few others who are not White European males!

Before I met Lillian, she had served the Federal Government from 1965-1968 as the district director for the Department of Labor establishing anti-poverty programs in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

When I moved to Massachusetts, Lillian was already there at the University of Massachsuetts working on a doctorate in Education. She insisted I join her because she felt I would need something to fall back on and with a doctorate I could teach in Academia someplace.  I was not an academician, nor anything close and I decided that was not my path. She, Elma and I got together several times while Lillian was studying and both tried to push me into this doctorate business, but I resisted and took another path.

Several years after I moved to Massachusetts, Elma Lewis called to say she had heard from Lillian who was concerned about me because we hadn’t been in touch for quite some time and wanted Elma to make sure I was alright. They both knew my penchant for jumping into the fire and they both have had to pull me out several times.  According to Elma, there were rumors and they were worried about me.

Elma called me to say John Ross was picking me up to bring me to her house for lunch, but before he did he was going to take me on a tour of Boston. I told Elma I already knew Boston, had been living here for a few years and that was great, but I preferred lunch times to tour times. Elma said nothing and John Ross picked me up and took me on a tour of Boston. Elma was now Miss Lewis and you did her bidding.  John Ross asked all kinds of questions – how are you, what are you doing, are you alright financially, can we do anything for you, and on and on he went. I finally stopped him to ask why he was trying to get into my business. John Ross said he wasn’t he was just instructed by Elma to ask all of these questions because they needed to make sure I was alright and didn’t want me to say everything was fine – when we talked over lunch – and everything was not fine.

John Ross took me to Elma’s, where she was on the phone with Lillian and they both demanded I not stay out of touch for so long and whenever I had a problem of any kind they were just a phone call away.

That was a very emotional moment for me, but I knew that was how they both were and I must have had some kind of publicity or gossip which made them think they needed to circle the wagons.

Having had that kind of mentoring, I have tried to live up to their example and be there for others – although I have not been perfect following my mentors. I do fall away and still get busy with my own business and have missed many such opportunities presented to me by the universe.

One passion in Lillian’s life was ‘collecting’. It is a passion we both shared, but mine was about 18th century French furnishings, art objects, etc. Lillian’s was about collecting negative Black images throughout history. She had an amazing collection and her house – wherever it was – reflected this passion.

At one point in Louisville and again in St. Louis her home was a place classes of school children visited with their teachers to take the tour of Ms. Lillian’s home.

Oddly enough – or should I say expectedly enough – our two passions ran parallel because as Lillian became more knowledgeable about her area of collecting she ran across many objects which were from 18th century and beyond  in the time frame of my collecting and items made by some of the same people and companies I loved. Lillian knew about and owned items made by the Dresden, Meissen and other factories of negative Black images and while artistically exquisite the subject matter made you wonder about this use of the artists talent. I remember when Lillian bought a beautiful piece of Dresden china which depicted a Black child being born out of an alligators egg and others pieces that went downhill from there.

My thoughts about negative Black images had to do with the Aunt Jemima dolls and the Uncle Tom depictions, but they went far beyond those simple objects into incredible works of art meant to support the racism against African Americans in as many and as subtle and not so subtle ways as possible.

Lillian brought a part of her collection to Boston for an exhibit along with a program speaking to this form of maintaining the structure of racism. It was well attended and the curiosity and amazement from those who had my early thoughts about this area was astounding.

Lillian was head of the Afro American studies department in Louisville, Kentucky and moved to Maryland to become a professor in the same area at Towson University.

Her life and career extended across the country and in several institutions. She left each one better for having served there.

Lillian’s last job before retiring was as the associate for equal employment opportunity/affirmative action in the human resources department in the Prebbyterian Church’s national office in Louisville, Kentucky.

Lillian was also able to function as an ordained minister before her death and her sermons were memorable, moving and caused you to rethink who you are and how you were responding to God’s call in your life.

Lillian was clearly one of God’s chosen and never forgot that she was called by God to spend her life ministering to God’s people and she did that with love, compassion, fearlessness, dignity and grace.

She received many awards and honorary recognitions like the Mary McLeod Bethune Award, presented by the Louisville National Council of Negro Women. She was also appointed to the President’s Disability Task Force.

What many people did not know was that Lillian lived with Lupus most of her adult life. How she did all of what she did and dealt with a very debilitating disease we will never know. Lillian was never a victim and nothing that happened to her turned her into a victim. She was always a child of God who she believed was the active force in her life and to whom she owed everything.  She lived that life to the fullest – always.

Unfortunately for me, I did not stay as close to Lillian as a friend should and so my grief is not over the loss of a friend – who I know is celebrating with all of her friends right now having a joyous time – but over the loss of my opportunity and responsibility not to lose track of someone who I was close to and loved like a sister.

Through all of this I have learned that life and our society separates friends and families and thereby increases the burden on those we love and don’t keep up with because of our busyness trying to keep body and soul together.

Each time this happens I resolve to not let it happen ever again and then I hear of a close friend who has died and my guilt, regret and sense of great loss starts all over again.

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Making Old Feet New Again!

Friday, July 25th, 2014

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2014

I love breakfast in a Bettina Home.  No matter how horrible I feel arriving, I leave refreshed.

The last breakfast from my most recent stay was great!  The food is always good, but the conversation unbelievable.  I am going home to work on my feet so I can wear high heels again.  I have a closet full of shoes, which are sitting idly on the floor collecting dust and drying out because it hurts so badly to wear them.  The shoes I can wear are so ugly they ruin every outfit I put on.

Would you believe old women at breakfast having a hilariously good time about a conversation over feet?

One woman, who was 80 years old if she was a day, had on these really elegant shoes with high heels in which she was going to spend the day.  I advised her to take another pair with her in a bag of some kind because she was going to be finished for the day before she reached her car.  She just looked at me shaking her head.

The next morning we were all back around the table and I was packed and ready to go.  Before leaving, however, I wanted to know how her day went since she was back at the table in another pair of really fantastic shoes – high heels, of course.  She said her day went just fine, like all her days and suggested I learn to deal with my feet if I wanted to get back into something other than the slip slops I had on.  Expensive flip flops, but no support, no heels and comfortable as could be.

She took off her shoes and her panty hose, as we all howled with laughter, and we went through her exercise regime.  We all shed our shoes, but she was the only one wearing panty hose.  She said she wears them for the girdle effect she gets from the panty part – doesn’t want her tummy to ‘pout’.  We had on ankle length stockings or knee hi’s under pants.  She was clearly from a generation that dressed to the nine’s and she still did with a great figure, beautiful hair and my jealousy is really showing since I am about 20 years younger than she is – at least – and she looks younger.

I really don’t exercise any part of my body – especially my feet.  Who would think of foot exercises as being relevant or doing the body any good?  My bias is showing, but really, I have enough trouble keeping my energy level up to just getting up in the mornings, let alone complicating my life with exercise.

This woman exercises her feet before going to bed at night and before getting up in the mornings.  She widens her toes as far as possible  – spread them open like a fan – and closes them while she watches television or reads.  She also makes circles with her feet going clock-wise and then counter clock -wise moving her feet in these circles from the ankle and sometimes she does the spread-the-toes with both feet at the same time and the circles with both feet at the same time.

We were sitting around the table exercising our feet making sure we got it right.  Unreal!  Must be losing it because I was very avid about doing this and intend to go home and take up this exercise every night and morning.  Nice that I can do these exercises before getting out of bed in the mornings.  Maybe that will help me be diligent about it.

Before I showed up at a Bettina Home I was a little depressed about my feet becoming so old and stiff,  limiting my shoe wearing possibilities. ,  so this did cheer me up a little bit!  I wanted to take pictures, but the women were adamant they didn’t want their feet showing up in  pictures anyplace – so respecting that – and you certainly aren’t going to see my naked feet in pictures, you will have to imagine the scene.

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______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

 

 

Going to the Toilet

Sunday, October 6th, 2013

copyright 2013 Bettina Network, inc.

What a horrible title for a blog!  We have postponed writing this blog for a couple weeks, but it has been such a great find and the topic of several breakfasts so with fear and trepidation – here goes!!!!!!

We discovered – would you believe across the breakfast table – one of the reasons we think our ‘cultured’ cousins have such a problem with things like colon cancer, bladder problems, etc.  It was an off-hand remark by a guest which, of course, we could not let go of and kept her talking about for quite some time (after everyone had finished eating, of course).

The off-handed comment was about how difficult it is to travel in America and in some European countries because of the problems it generates with the simplest things like going to the bathroom.  We asked why – especially since we felt we had a really up to date bathroom complete with a toilet seat which could also act like a bidet, close by itself, work via remote control and provide heat or no-heat as the user desired.  That comment was totally deflating and one of the few times I became defensive.  All the money we spend in those bathrooms and someone has a problem, not just a problem -a complaint?

As it turns out, all that money spent was spent in vain.  I had a problem that those of us growing older have and it can be embarrassing – and that is, not being able to control the escape of air from the body at the most horrible times.  Nothing like letting people know you are gross without even trying, especially if that escaping air comes with a bit of noise.

That conversation has changed all of that.  It took about a week, but after that time frame I have no more problems with air escaping.

We, in the ‘cultured’ part of the world,  go to the toilet in a very comfortable way which helps to disintegrate our bodies instead of shaping them up and its getting worse.  You can now sit on the heated toilet seat and have a spray of water wash your bottom when you finish.  I thought that was the ultimate luxury, but wow have I ever changed my mind.

Have you ever thought of squatting instead of sitting on a toilet seat?  It is cleaner, quicker and strengthens the muscles which need strengthening to keep your colon, bladder, legs, stomach and balance in good shape.  I used to feel sorry for those third world people who had to squat to go to the bathroom.  I didn’t know how they survived such a throw back to primitive times.  Well, I feel sorry no more!  I can go anyplace, do anything and not be embarrassed by that escaping air – it just doesn’t happen anymore.  My legs are firmer, my stomach tighter and even my balance is better.  It took a couple weeks to make this a habit and to stop complaining because of how difficult it was to form this new habit at my age, but form it I have and a few others have come along for the journey.  We had to form a small support group – a telephone call when we were about to quit for a pep talk.

Today, there are no complaints, we are all healthier for this new way of using the toilet and a bonus – we can use any toilet anyplace and not worry about catching anything the former user of the toilet may have left behind.

Try it!  But you have to give it a good try of at least 14 days before you decide.  It takes that long for the good results to show up and you will be surprised at how many good results there will be.

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

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______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Health and Beauty Tips – Who Holds Truth?

Thursday, February 28th, 2013

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2013

We had a wonderful breakfast with a small group of ladies all over 80 and I am under 35.  It was not what I was used to, but I am going to change my lifestyle.  I learned a lot, laughed harder than I ever have in life, and have some new values to put in place.

I wanted to take notes to write a blog about this breakfast, but didn’t want to offend the ladies or look too commercial or whatever was going on with me.  I am new at this blog business – I can write, but how do you get the information without being obvious?

What I learned is that you can’t.

I kept running back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room and back, trying to make notes.  As really great things came up, I would run into the kitchen to add the discussion to my notebook.  I don’t know how reporters cope.  I wanted to be a part of the conversation, yet I also wanted to document it.

We did talk about everything.  On one of my trips to the kitchen, when I arrived back in the dining room, one of the women presented me with a pencil and paper and suggested I stay at the table and take my notes.  They didn’t mind, but my back and forth was maddening.  They were laughing uncontrollably and had been since I started these back and forths, but I didn’t realize they were laughing at me and my antics.

Relieved – what follows is that breakfast:

I loved the way one of the women – at 83 years old – had almost no wrinkles and more energy then I have ever had.  I sat next to her because I wanted to know her secrets.  She said she didn’t have any.  She just kept the lifestyle she had as a young person and didn’t take part in the food, cosmetic, housing revolution which she witnessed over her lifetime.  She thought it was all quite dangerous to one’s health.

She smelled of roses – and there was her first secret.  She used organic essential oil of roses and no perfume.  The oil was in her rinse water when washing her clothes and not on her skin when she got dressed.  I will probably never be able to pull that off because a quick trip to the internet and Yahoo-ing ‘Essential Oil of Rose” put me into a state of money shock.  Organic Essential Oil of Rose I didn’t even bother Yahoo-ing because I knew that would be even further out of my financial reach.

So what else could I copy?

None of the ladies used commercial cosmetics – no lipstick, no lotions, no makeup – like foundation, etc.  They took care of themselves out of their refrigerators and their cabinets.  I knew that was the coming thing – I didn’t know that was the past thing.  I knew my grandmother used stuff out of her kitchen, but I didn’t pay attention to what she was doing or using.

One lady used beta carotene capsules for lipstick and a little red for her face here and there.  She clipped a capsule of the beta carotene and used it on her finger.  I knew about that from an article on Bettina Network’s Blog about using beta carotene to color your hair, but hadn’t thought about it for lipstick.  She gave me a couple capsules and I tried it.  The color was a bit orange.  It looked great on me so I am a convert.  I don’t know if it would do well on everyone, but it is going to be my choice from now on.  I notice it changed colors as the day progressed and didn’t last all day, but then neither did the lipstick I wore.  I carried the lipstick in my pocket book and reapplied it during the day.  I don’t know how I can do that with beta carotene, but necessity is the mother of invention and this is all new to me so let’s see what happens.  It is worth the effort to get this down to a great new habit.

The comments and sharing I liked best were from the woman with almost no wrinkles and some 83 years old.  She did this “hot and cold” thing.  She splashed water on her face in the mornings when she woke and it was first warm to hot water and then very cold water.  When she took her shower in the morning, it was without soap – in fact, none of the ladies used soap or soap substitutes – water was all they used on their bodies.  She said she showered in the mornings,  first in a warm shower and while standing in the shower she gradually turned the water to cold – showered a few minutes under very cold water and then turned it back to warm again.

Her friend objected because she used this hot and cold water thing, but she got out of the shower after turning the water to cold.

Apparently, this was big when they were my age, which is when they got these beauty tips.  One read – and had her collection of Prevention Magazines  in her basement.  Hers are from the time before Prevention Magazine was sued and taken over by the Meds (their words, not mine).  They all used to read the magazine religiously, but cancelled their subscriptions after the law suit and it became, according to them –  “an arm of the AMA.”  The hot and cold business was something either someone wrote in about or the magazine wrote an article on and it became big in their circle at the time.  Not many people they know today still adheres to the regime, but they do and they look fantastic.

My great-great grandmother used to do this – but that was because she didn’t have hot and cold water in her bathroom.  She lived well into her 90’s and looked great.  I don’t know why I didn’t follow her example – probably because I was quite young and not worried about health or beauty.  My mother clearly did not follow the family example and today one hears all kind of ugly comments made during many commercials about looking like, acting like, wearing clothes like your grandmother.  The one that comes to mind is “your grandmother’s jeans”.  I guess I was made for this breakfast conversation because I like Jeans that fit and don’t hang around my hips on their way to below my butt.  Isn’t there somewhere a history which says the Jeans being foisted on young people today are clothes that were worn in jail to let your fellow inmates know you were up for prostitution?  When we lose our history, we lose ourselves.

We acknowledge that it looks obscene when we see young men in the “ghetto” wearing pants which show the crack in their butts, but nothing is said when young white women wear the same jeans which show the crack in their butts.  That is considered high fashion.  As a young white woman, keep those butt-crack showing jeans and all those marketing promotions away from me.  I will look to my grandmother for advice, hints and more.

All of that – plus more – which would take me a book to write about – made me think about all the marketing that goes on around products that cost a fortune and deliver next to nothing.  I have been going along with their story and buying some of their products because the ads attracted me.  After using ”stuff”  for a few months and having nothing except buyers remorse.  I think before I do anything else I am going to look at the person recommending some kind of cosmetic to me to see if they use it and how they look as a result.  The people I look to will not be the 13 year olds who model these products –  I want to know what the 80 year olds are doing when they look fantastic, healthy and full of energy with few wrinkles. There is nothing holding truth like seeing results and I have not been getting any from the $300-$400/month I have been spending on cosmetics because I saw an add which made me think it was truth – and finding out it was clearly hype.

This was my first morning on my new regime.  I splashed my face with warm to hot water and then a lot of cold water before I had coffee.  A nice feeling – and I looked better than the person who usually straggles down for coffee early in the morning.

I also took my first hot/cold shower this morning.  After I finished my coffee I tried standing in the shower under warm water, gradually turning the temperature up to hot (but not too hot, I am no martyr for beauty) and then turning it all the way to cold.  It was an unusual experience.  It takes a little getting used to, but I thought of those women and how great they look.  I am going to slug it out until this is as normal to me as it is to them.  They are going to be my inspiration. And – the biggy – the cost is only of the water, which I would have to pay for anyway.

My first Bettina Network Blog!  Hey editors – you don’t have to copyright this under my name, its a gift.  My next blog, however, will be a different story.  Although, maybe I would like the term I just coined under copyright or whatever I need to do to claim it!!!!  I think Yahoo-ing will give Google a run for its money in the search world.  I love Marisa Meyer.

Ed Note:  The highlighting of “Yahoo-ing” was done by the editor. It was an interesting word and since our author saw it as her creation we thought we should give it a boost.

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

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______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

A Tribute to The Rev. Patricia Riley Colenback (1931-2013)

Sunday, February 24th, 2013

taken from “Alla Bozarth-Campbell’s – From Womanpriest: A Personal Odyssey, Paulist Press 1978

Bakerwoman God

 
Bakerwoman God,
I am your living Bread.
Strong, brown, Bakerwoman God.
I am your low, soft, and being-shaped loaf.
 
I am your rising bread,
well-kneaded by some divine
and knotty pair of knuckles,
by your warm earth-hands.
I am bread well-kneaded.
 
Put me in fire, Bakerwoman God,
put me in your own bright fire.
I am warm, warm as you from fire.
I am white and gold, soft and hard,
brown and round.
I am so warm from fire.
 
Break me, Bakerwoman God!
I am broken under your caring Word.
Drop me in your special juice in pieces.
Drop me in your blood.
Drunken me in the great red flood.
Self-giving chalice swallow me.
My skin shines in the divine wine.
My face is cup-covered and I drown.
 
I fall up
in a red pool
in a gold world
where your warm
sunskin hand
is there to catch and hold me.
Bakerwoman God,
remake me.
 

And how many times, Pat,  did you say these words over others…………………..

                              “Give rest, O Christ, to your servant Pat with your saints, where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting.”

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

 
 
 
 

Thanks for your Presidential Post!

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012

I would like to add just a couple things, which I think need to be highlighted:

We read lots about minorities playing the “race card.”  No one has said one word about the races taking place today – presidential and otherwise where one person running is blatantly using the ‘race card’ against their opponent.  For example, in Massachusetts Scott Brown is heavily using race in all of his campaign ads and rallies.  So much so that his staff has taken to making tomaawk chops and the supposed Indian war cry at his rallies.  They have picked up what is really being said and they are letting the rest of us know what’s really going on by their actions.

Romney’s campaign is doing the same thing.  It was much discussed after Obama won the presidency that racism would intensify in this country because of his win.  But, no one said why or how and this election cycle we are seeing why and how.  When your opponent is minority or part minority, use the race card to highlight their minority status or do other things to incite the racism which is either active or latent in these United States.  It is how many politicians in the deep south in the 1940’s stayed in office and won office.  They kept their voting populace stirred up over race.

Your breakfasts sound fantastic.  Keep up the good work.  When I retire I am going to put my house in the Bettina Network.  I have to keep active and ageism has made me much aware of racism and sexism.  I must confess I ignored it before I started to realize my age would keep me from credit, jobs and more.  Amazing when things come home to where you live how sensitive you become to others suffering that you hadn’t even noticed before.  Forgive me my transgressions!  I am sure I was one of those letting my racism out against others without realizing it and without taking responsibility for it to make the effort to change.  Well, now I get to fight ageism because I didn’t help lessen the ‘isms in this society.

________________________________________________________________

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

 

Lifted from Vogue Magazine

Sunday, September 9th, 2012

We hope Vogue Magazine doesn’t object, but the end of an article in the August 2012 magazine about Bel(le) Kaufman was too good not to share with you.  It puts so succinctly what its like to grow oldl  The entire article is worth reading, but the ending is really special.  It follows:

“I’ve lived a long time, a very long time, 101 years and I’m, still here.  I’ve done with the doubts and struggles and insecurities of youth.  I’m finished with loss and guilt and regret.  I’m very old, and nothing is expected of me.  Now, provided good health continues, I can do what I want.  I can write my memoirs. I can edit my works for future eBooks.  I can even do nothing – what a luxury that is!  I have new priorities and a new appreciation of time.  I enjoy my family more than ever, and also a sunny day and a comfortable bed.  I keep up my interest in books and theater and people, and when I’m tired, I rest.  My former students write to me and visit me.  i had many problems and disasters in my life, fortunately at my age, I don’t remember what they were.  I’m glad I am 101.”

I think everyone over 70 years could write a variation of that paragraph.  The older you are the freer you become – and that crosses race, sex, finances, education, and all the other things which separate, motivate and define us as younger people.  All of that drops away and we move closer to the diverse universe promised and worked for, but not achieved, when we were young.  Humanity becomes more humane as year adds to year.

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

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______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

In Memory of Roger Fisher

Tuesday, August 28th, 2012

by:  Marceline Donaldson

Sprinkled through Bettina Network’s Blog you will find memories of people we knew and with whom we have interacted over the years.  This time, it is someone who was one of those – along with Larry Susskind of MIT – who were majorly responsible for the growth and survival of Bettina Network, inc.

Roger Fisher was on my mind over the past week – because I wanted to thank him for helping us begin and move forward with the bed & breakfast part of this business.  I didn’t know where to find him and didn’t push to discover his whereabouts so the newspaper informed me this morning of Roger Fisher’s death.

A long time ago, in 1984, Roger Fisher and Larry Susskind turned up at our front door to talk about the possibility of using Bettina’s for their guests coming from around the world.  I remember Roger Fisher sitting in our living room when one of those working with him took me aside to ask if I knew we were entertaining “God”.  That was my introduction to Roger Fisher.  My response was – then “God” has come to the right place because we are building heaven’s annex.  Clearly, we understood there were at least two major ego’s in that room that day!

We were just starting this business and unlike those who claim to have started on a shoe string of maybe $10,000 in debt, we started this business with some $1,000,000 in debt.  I had no idea what I was doing – I knew why – I thought I really knew all there was to know about business – we had some experience with bed & breakfast in another house, but not much – so here we were not sure where we would land, how we would pull this off or where to turn and “God” walked into our living room.

Roger Fisher and Larry Susskind sent us lots of guests and set the tone for what we would become.  Larry and Leslie would come to stay when the weather was bad and they couldn’t make it to Southborough.  Unfortunately for us, they now live in Cambridge.

Over that time period, there were White and Black South Africans in the house at the same time just across the hall from one another before Nelson Mandela and the dismantling of apartheid.  They had never been together before and it was exhilarating for them and for us as they giggled together; went to dinner together; worked together and with Roger and Larry tried to bring about something that hadn’t been seen in South Africa for generations.  We became a bit worried when the last two days of their stay the house became as quiet as a tomb.  The White South Africans and the Black South Africans had separated; went to dinner in their separate groups; stopped going back and forth from one room to another and generally pulled apart, leaving for the airport in two vans – one with the White South Africans, one with the Black South Africans. We called Larry because we were concerned something had happened and learned about “re-entry”.  Something the soul does for you when you are going back into the separatist situation from which you’ve come.

We had Hindu’s in the house the day Gandhi was shot and we were expecting another couple the next day who were Sikh’s.  We had Greek Cypriots and Turks’ sharing the house at the same time during some difficult days for them and before all of them we had Russians before Perestroika.

At one point with the Russians we knew we were going to be picked up by the CIA and hauled off to federal prison because we knew nothing about what was coming, we only knew the Russians were the enemy and here they were exchanging research across our breakfast table with their American counterparts and who were their hosts? – Roger Fisher and Larry Susskind.

Our breakfasts were nothing short of sensational and we were heady being able to talk and listen and understand what was happening in the world outside of the very narrow vision of what was normal for Boston and Cambridge.  We were spared guests who talked about the weather, their aches and pains and their miscreant children.

We thought this was what bed & breakfast was all about and we shaped a business following the path laid out for us by Roger Fisher and Larry Susskind.  Without them we would have taken a different turn and probably would be sitting on the street corner wrapped in a sleeping bag – although a very elegant one!

You go through life and never really know what or how you have touched someone else’s life.  My procrastination in reaching out to Roger Fisher to say thank you is kind of typical of the way most of us live with the assumption that life is forever.  It is not and those words of gratitude and appreciation need to be said long before the end comes.

This is very late Roger Fisher, but thank you!!  Thank you for helping us understand how we could carry that $1 million in debt, survive and grow a business which contributes goodness to life.  We don’t pretend to know much about Negotiation the way you and Larry Susskind developed it, but we do know how human and equal we all become around a table sharing food and good conversation – that alone gives hope that one day we will stop the intense violence, pretending that it will solve our conflicts and bring about peace.

Those first few years when we entertained bed & breakfast guests from the Negotiation Project sent to us by Roger Fisher and Larry Susskind were days we shall never forget and days we always keep uppermost in our minds as a paradigm for this Bettina Network business.

We reached the point, in those days, of not wanting to have guests if they did not have great wisdom to contribute over the breakfast table.  Today, we have some remembrances of that and we strive to bring everyone who visits our homes and our host families into an understanding of what that was like and how fantastic a business this is when we keep those standards, that conversation, those dreams of a world full of diversity where we can come together, disagree, work through those disagreements and walk into a very bright light after breakfast.

Roger, may you walk into a great light and enjoy the fruits of your life’s work as you enter another sphere of growing in wisdom, knowledge and understanding in a way we will not understand until we reach that end point where we join you in your endeavors.

________________________________________________________________

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______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

A CALL TO ACTION

Thursday, December 15th, 2011

copyright 2011 Bettina Network, inc.

There are larger and larger pockets of people, organizations, families who are interested in their health – outside the so-called healthcare industry – and who are very disenchanted with the way the health of the average world citizen is being negatively affected by the joining forces of  the technology industry, the food processing industry and big Pharma along with other medical research groups  working together in their research labs looking for ‘greater’ discoveries for their mutual benefit while being blind, deaf and dumb to the health and well being of the rest of the world (including themselves and their progeny).  There is no attention within these groups as to what affect their developments and research will have on the rest of us.  We are interconnected in this world and it is time for these research groups to develop a model which acknowledges that and moves away from the model which allows their research scientists to wear blinders when developing their products and new breakthroughs.

There are drugs, protoccols, research going on to “treat” diseases which were non-existent just a generation ago.

I have talked with many people around the breakfast table about these issues – different serendipitously convened people with much the same conversation.  This breakfast was special because it ended with a call to action.  Hopefully, you will begin to hear from those who were around that table, their friends, relatives and all who they can enlist in this small attempt by one breakfast group to bring about change.

The breakfast ended – after much discussion about “organics,” “drug”, “genetic research”, “medical marijuana”, “acetominophen” and on and on – with a challenge to the few of us around that table to spread the word.  We would like to see at least 25% of the monies spent on medical research – drug research, genetic research, new product research of any kind, all of it – spent on prevention and an understanding of how the results of all research will affect human beings – humanity – the animals, plants and humans who live on this planet.

Research to go into what is causing this huge disease epidemic in the world today.  One which is spreading and will soon affect everyone in every country.  Research on what is the best way to live avoiding the degeneration happening in our society from the processed foods, the poor environment, the new technologies which have serious health implications for all of us without our knowledge and more.

How are we going to put this into affect?  We don’t know!  We didn’t leave the breakfast table with a plan other than we would use our lives, work, friends, family, acquaintances, to spread that word and for each of us to do what we could where we were.  My first action is to send you this blog from breakfast,  hope you publish it and hope it strikes a nerve worldwide to start this movement.

NO COMPANY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO DO ANY HEALTH or MEDICAL or DISEASE or NEW PRODUCT RESEARCH UNLESS TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT OF THE MONIES AND RESOURCES THEY SPEND ON THAT RESEARCH GOES INTO RESEARCH WHICH WILL KNOW HOW WHATEVER THEY ARE DOING WILL HELP TO PREVENT WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE HUMAN RACE  AS WE MOVE FASTER INTO A DISEASE RIDDEN SOCIETY.

Our conclusion was that we don’t need more drugs developed or more protoccols or more supposed responses to a ‘genetic’ deficiency causing bad health, new technology or other new products until we know their affect on the planet and it is positive with no side-affect.  We need much more prevention research.  Prevention, which will reach into all parts of the world to stop whatever is causing this incredible epidemic from which we all suffer.

Soon, the older people who lived and grew up in a society where the diseases and degenerative health we suffer from today as a general society was rare.  People lived longer and healthier lives – goodness, scientific heresy – we were also tired of statistics being taken out of context to attempt to smooth over and cast in a different more acceptable light the reality of where we are all headed and that is not into a gloruous world of longer lived people who are happy and disease free.  We are moving into a world where people live shorter lives, are miserable most of the time and don’t know why there are such growing numbers of people who can’t sleep, etc.

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

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______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

 


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