It's Your Life

All You Need Is Love
by Anne Zoutsos

"There comes a time in your life, when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh. Forget the bad, and focus on the good. Love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who don't. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living." ~ Jose' N. Harris
~ A Story of Faith, Hope and Love

About this author:
José N. Harris was born in Detroit, Michigan on December 25, 1962. He lived there for several years before his family relocated to Juan Aldama, Zacatecas, Mexico and later the border town of Tijuana, Mexico. His mother, a migrant farm worker, would travel back and forth between Ventura County, California and Tijuana for work, sometimes taking José and his siblings with her. 

José eventually ended up in and out of the foster care system. At the age of 17, He enlisted in the US Army where he obtained his GED and became an Army medic. He volunteered for and became a Paratrooper and an Army Ranger. Later he was trained as a Special Forces Medical Sergeant. He served in Central America in the 1980s. He was honorably discharged from the US Army in 1987 and enlisted in the Army Reserves where he continued to serve in the 12th Special Forces Group.

Harris married and had two daughters while pursuing his education at the University of California at Irvine where he received his B.A. in both Psychology (with Honor’s) and Psychobiology. He entered the University of California at Berkeley Psychology M.A. /Ph.D. program. He completed his Ph.D. in Psychology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem/WUJS in Israel. He also completed post doctoral studies in behavioral neurology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at the Hadassah Medical Center. He remained in Israel, where he had private practices in psychology and neuropsychology. He served as the Chief Neuropsychologist at the Sarah Herzog Memorial Hospital in the division of Neuropsychogeriatrics and in the Neurobehavorial Clinic, where he supervised psychologists, psychiatrists and neurologists. He also taught as an Associate Professor, at both the Institute of Technology, Arts and Science, Holon and at The Technion University in Haifa, Israel.

Upon returning to the United States, Dr. Harris pursued a career in social services as a Family Law Mediator, Adoptions Specialist, and as a Program Director for multiple adoption and foster programs in the San Francisco Bay area. He also served as the chief operations officer at a large medical facility in Northern California.

A few years later, he began work on his book, MI VIDA: a Story of Faith, Hope and Love. He is currently working on his second book- UNDECLARED WARS: Central America in the 1980s. And also a Spanish translation of "MI VIDA."

José currently resides in Fresno, California with his Jackrat, Kilo.

Book Recommendation

"There's no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another.  What leads to what.  What destroys what.  What causes what to flourish or die or take another course."  

From the book by Cheryl Strayed.

In the time of your life...

Aniva Lighthouse @ Sakhalin, Russia

“In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed.

Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are the things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart.

Be the inferior of no man, or of any men be superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart. Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret.

In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”

― William Saroyan, The Time Of Your Life 1939

William Saroyoan was an American novelist, playwright, and short story writer.

Born on August 31, 1908 and Died on May 18, 1981

Advice for Parents

Puppy Love by June Dudley

Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what.  If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.

~Catherine M. Wallace

On The Issue of Self-Defense

By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News | The Ticket

Biden on self-defense: Get yourself a shotgun.

Are you looking into buying an assault weapon for protection after a devastating natural disaster (or the coming Zombie Apocalypse) plunges society into deadly anarchy? You’ve got it all wrong, Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday: Get yourself a shotgun.
Biden, doing a Google+ “hangout” to promote President Barack Obama’s proposals for battling gun violence, had been asked whether a new assault weapons ban might infringe on the Second Amendment rights of those who want one “as a last line of defense” to fend off looters after “some terrible natural disaster.”
“Guess what? A shotgun will keep you a lot safer, a double-barreled shotgun, than the assault weapon in somebody’s hands [who] doesn’t know how to use it, even one who does know how to use it,” the outspoken vice president, a shotgun owner himself, replied. “It’s harder to use an assault weapon to hit something than it is a shotgun. You want to keep people away in an earthquake? Buy some shotgun shells.”
With the fate of Obama’s gun violence proposals unclear in the face of stiff opposition from most Republicans and some Democrats, Biden urged supporters of ideas like imposing a new assault weapons ban, limiting ammunition clips to 10 rounds and toughening background checks to pressure their elected representatives. “This town listens when people rise up and speak,” Biden said.
Like Obama before him, the vice president emphasized that he's a firm believer in the Second Amendment—but compared proposed new curbs on assault weapons to keeping fully-equipped F-15 fighter jets off the market.
“You have an individual right to own a weapon both for recreation, for hunting and also for your self-protection,” he said. "But just as you don’t have an individual right to go out and buy an F-15—if you’re a billionaire—with ordnance on it, just like you don’t have the right to buy an M-1 tank, just like you don’t have a right to buy an automatic weapon" you should not be able to get other weapons for which there is "no reasonable societal justification, or constitutional justification."
Biden noted that "it's not about keeping bad guns out of the hands of good people, it's about keeping all guns out of the hands of bad people. There should be rational limits."
One of Biden's questioners asked why, if they're rational, there's the lack of political will to enact them.
Biden paused, then said he would have to watch his words. “Both left and right sometimes take absolutist positions," he said.
The vice president emphasized that the administration was not calling for armed guards in schools, a proposal recently floated by the National Rifle Association. Instead, schools would have the flexibility to hire a uniformed guard, armed or not, if they so desired.
But Biden warned it would be a "terrible mistake" to arm school staff. "The last thing we need to do is be arming schoolteachers and administrators"

Wealth

"Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants."  

~Esther De Waal

Life is about...