REASONS TO BE GRATEFUL TO MY MOTHER ON MOTHER'S DAY 2017:

--I admired Mother's devotion to the University of Iowa Alumni Association, a group in which she maintained a membership over a multi-decade period.

--I appreciate the fact that Mother in my presence was never once faulted by anyone for ever deliberately telling a lie or ever deliberately being dishonest.

--I admire the way Mother in my presence would routinely and frequently return pennies and other coins, if applicable, to supermarket store clerks who had given Mother more change than the cash register receipt on Mother's purchase had provided for.

--I am always very, very grateful to Mother for having raised me in a household in Westlake Hills, Texas, where Mother herself NEVER verbalized ANY profanity or ANY obscene speech at any time. The only off-color language I ever heard her verbalize within earshot of me was one total 1970s outburst of "Oh, Hell, it's Richard Nixon again!" in reference to a televised Presidential speech by President Richard Milhaus Nixon that was about to air on television at that time.

--I was impressed by Mother's admiration toward her own all-German-ancestry-and-German-speaking biological mother, Mrs. Helen Siegling Gardner, for having saved money of her own toward a special education fund Mrs. Gardner as a farmwife near Iowa City, Iowa, kept over a multi-decade period that each of Grandmother Gardner's children in Johnson County, Iowa, could make use of.

--I appreciated Mother's very kind willingness to visit me in person in the summer of 1980 or 1981 in the German-American community of New Ulm, Minnesota, where I was a gainfully employed resident and daily-newspaper reporter, and to herself dine with myself and Mrs. Janet Rosenbloom inside Haus Messerschmidt German-style restaurant in downtown New Ulm during Mother's visit. That restaurant was especially famous for its Sauerkraut Meatball soup.

--Mother's tactfulness during that 1980 or 1981 meal inside Haus Messerschmidt in New Ulm greatly impressed Mrs. Rosenbloom, who had herself asked Mother how she as an Iowa native could stand to live in a U.S. state, Texas, with so many Southern Baptists who were politically repressive, in the view of Mrs. Rosenbloom. Mother replied by referring politely to those "dear old Southern Baptists" (exact quote), while politely agreeing with Mrs. Rosenbloom that the Southern Baptists of Texas in the early 1980s were often in opposition to progressive governmental policies for Texas, in Mother's view.

--I appreciate the great devotion to me that Mother revealed through her weekly letters addressed and mailed to me over a multi-decade period.

--I savor the fact that Mother, a farmgirl in her youth who later obtained a Master's Degree in Botany at the University of Iowa, never once expressed any fear or anxiety toward any wild animal or beast, or any domesticated animal, at any time. She did not shriek when she encountered a mouse or a cockroach.

---Mother was very devoted to following news accounts and news analysis each day from the Public Broadcasting System and other television networks.

--Mother was very public-policy-minded, and she kept her focus on actual conduct by public servants that she either agreed with or disagreed with.

--Mother never once stated in my presence or within earshot of me that she disliked or hated ANYONE. Her emphasis instead was on conduct by human beings that she either admired or, at times, criticized. The closest that Mother ever came to verbalizing a dislike of anyone whom I myself had ever encountered in my own life was the day in 1990 or 1991 when Mother stated to me on the telephone during a long-distance phone call I made to her and her husband's home in Westlake Hills from my apartment in Sweetwater, Texas: "I (Mrs. Phyllis McMillan) wouldn't give TWO BITS (sic) FOR HIM (in reference to one total cited northeastern man who himself had the last name of "Goldberg")!!"

--I appreciate Mother's courageous observation to me in 1987, shortly after continuous noise pollution in Quincy, Massachusetts, began assaulting my own eardrums and my own beliefs and ideological outlook, in which she stated to me during a long-distance phone call I made to her home in Westlake Hills, Texas: "The voices (sic) don't do justice to you!" 
Mother later elaborated on that statement by emphatically stating to me in 1988, during a period in which I resided in Holloway Apartments near the University of Texas at Austin campus in central Austin, Texas: "I (Mrs. Phyllis McMillan) don't think they (the background voices involving anonymous communications being inflicted on you against your own wishes) are necessary!" 
During that time period, Mother did not cite to me any lawsuit I could file against any entity or person or group of persons or any criminal-law charge I could file against any cited defendant or group of defendants or media company or religion-affiliated organization or atheist group in Texas or Massachusetts that would immediately terminate the alleged pervasive daily and year-round 24-hour-a-day violations of my own privacy rights in Austin, Texas, at that time. However, I sense today that she would have strongly supported my legal right to file successful legal charges on my own behalf against a cited defendant or cited respondent during that particular time period.

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to be continued