![]() |
He walks the edge of ruin and revelation |
Tuesday, September 09, 2025
When a Man Is a Witch
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
The Parade, the Protests, and a Moment of Empathy
I was sorry to see that the military parade marking the 250th anniversary of the founding of the Armed Forces wasn’t exactly a proud or inspiring spectacle. Or at least it wasn't from what I saw on Facebook and in the media.
My sorrow was for the participants, who may or may not have been there willingly. I also felt a little sorry for the president, who I suspect was not a happy person when it was all said and done.
I didn’t watch the parade. Nor did I watch any of the No Kings protests. I posted a small No Kings protest on my blog and felt like that was all I could manage right now. I’m not much into marching.
According to historian Heather Cox Richardson, whom I trust on such matters, June 14 really was the birthday of the Armed Forces. She wrote:
…on June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress resolved “That six companies of expert riflemen, be immediately raised in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia; that each company consist of a captain, three lieutenants, four serjeants, four corporals, a drummer or trumpeter, and sixty-eight privates… [and that] each company, as soon as completed, shall march and join the army near Boston, to be there employed as light infantry, under the command of the chief Officer in that army.”
And thus Congress established the Continental Army.
Unfortunately, the original justification for the parade was the president’s birthday. That announcement raised eyebrows even among his most devoted followers, especially with a $50 million price tag. After public outcry, which also happened when he floated the idea during his first term, the event pivoted to commemorate the Army’s formation instead.
But by then, it was too late.
No Kings Day had taken hold. And depending on which estimate you believe, anywhere from five to thirteen million people marched in opposition to the practices, projects, and prejudices of the current administration.
I was surprised to find that I felt anything at all about the military parade. I consider myself a pacifist. Intellectually, I know that if everyone simply put down their weapons and walked away, there’d be no need to kill. I also know human beings don’t work that way. I took enough sociology courses in college to understand that the forces behind many of our emotions and actions don’t always make sense. They just are.
Empathy is part of who I am, even for people I disagree with—or actively dislike. Hopefully that speaks well of my character.
I see it as layers. The military folks were just doing their jobs. Some probably weren’t thrilled to be part of a PR stunt. Many may have had mixed feelings or were simply ordered to participate without a say. And even the president, behind all the spectacle, looked like a lonely, grasping human. I admit I felt a flicker of pity for him. Where was his family? He seems to have no support. I don’t like to see anyone flailing in public, even if they are powerful, abrasive, and dangerous.
Empathy doesn’t mean approval. It just means I’m still able to feel. I guess that makes me very “woke,” to have empathy for a man I despise.
But I’m human, and I think a lot.
Sometimes, that leads me down strange paths. And in this world full of noise and division, I wonder if empathy might be the last quiet act of rebellion.
Tuesday, June 03, 2025
Beater or Bird Flu?
AI Image |
One of the things my grandmother did was bake.
enviroliteracy.org
www.fda.gov
www.usatoday.com
MedCity News
Food Safety News
Biospace
www.cbsnews.com
Friday, May 23, 2025
Is Anybody Listening?
A reflection on AI, loneliness, and the lost art of conversationAI Image
The other day, I was talking with a friend who mentioned she’d been having issues with her boyfriend. I remembered their brief breakup over the holidays. She hadn’t taken it well.
“I got through it with an AI therapist,” she told me.
Really? There are AI therapists?
Apparently so. A quick Google search brought up a list of the top-rated ones for 2025. Most offer a 7-day free trial, after which there’s a fee to continue. Some still provide access to basic advice even without a subscription.
It made me wonder if AI will eventually become everyone’s therapist. There’s something to be said for in-person talking. A chatbot might express concern or outrage on your behalf, but how would you know if it says that to everyone? It’s certainly not your friend.
Then again, therapists aren’t supposed to be your friends either, although over time it can feel that way. Still, we’re paying to be heard.
And maybe that’s what gets to me. That we’ve reached a point where so many people need to be heard, and not enough people are listening. So here come the AI therapists, who will now step in where actual humans no longer tread. We don’t take time anymore to hear each other’s stories, to ask why someone feels the way they do, or to understand the long path behind someone’s point of view.
We live in a 140-character world with short bursts of thought, shouted into the void. Background and context get left behind. Everyone’s yelling, typing whatever comes to mind, and in the end, we’re drowning in half-told tales. Most of them signify nothing, because stories told in fury rarely carry truth.
Or maybe they do mean something, but only to certain people. Bullies love a short format. It’s hard to argue with a tweet. Or an “X.” Whatever they call it now.
I’ve read that loneliness is becoming a major public health threat in the U.S. The kind that affects your body as well as your heart.
Can AI step in as someone’s best friend? I’m not sure. I’ve played with it, but I don’t have a mic on my desktop, so I don’t use the voice feature. My laptop has one and the one time I used it, it sounded robotic.
I’ve had Alexa for years. She’s chipper enough, but she can’t carry on a conversation. Maybe newer versions can, but mine are older and I've no plans to replace them. Frankly, between Alexa and Siri, I already feel like I’m under constant surveillance.
And Siri? She’s not much of a talker, either.
Once upon a time, people actually talked about deep things. They discussed the stars, big ideas, good books, the best way to diaper a baby, work struggles, or the price of hamburger. They shared stories and passed a beer between friends.
I still have a few people I can talk with like that, and I cherish them. Those rare relationships are the ones where we go deep and take time with each other. Most people skim the surface of every problem. Some made up their minds years ago and haven’t listened since. Maybe they never did. Maybe they were kids when they stopped, convinced they were always right.
No one is right about everything.
Not even AI. I’ve seen it get confused. Sometimes it spits out something funny, but other times it can be alarming. And if a computer bot can get that turned around, imagine what goes on inside the human mind.
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
I Think It Just Means I’m Human
AI Image |
Being a good person isn’t about being perfect. It’s about the choices we make every day, how we treat others, and how we handle challenges. If a person is kind, honest, and strives to do what’s right, that’s a strong sign of a decent human.
What other ways might we be good humans? How about these questions: Do you listen to others and show empathy? Do you take responsibility for your actions? Do you try to make the world around you a little better?
Hopefully, we all do that. But sometimes, we can be too hard on ourselves. Our perspectives might get skewed, or maybe they’ve been skewed by someone else. But one person’s viewpoint, including your own on a bad day, doesn’t define who you are.
For me, one of the biggest things is feeling heard. As a woman, it’s easy to feel voiceless in a patriarchal world, where male voices, especially white male voices, are often the ones that count. It’s painful when people don’t really hear us. It can make you feel invisible, like your feelings and experiences don’t matter.
But my perspective, everyone's really, is valid. All voices deserve to be heard.
Feeling unheard can be isolating and exhausting. You can do your best and still feel like a ghost in the conversation. But that reflects more on the listener’s inability to see or acknowledge what’s being said than on the speaker.
All of our experiences, our emotions, our truths matter. Whether or not someone else chooses to recognize them doesn’t make them any less real.
When someone feels unheard, it’s natural to build walls to protect the self and try to control how one is perceived. When your perspective is constantly dismissed, it can make you second-guess yourself. That can lead to habits like over-apologizing and striving for perfection. But perfection? It's an impossible standard, and no one needs to earn their worth that way.
Sometimes, all we can do is strive to create a connection. Maybe we share knowledge, experiences, and interests in a meaningful way that feels safe. It’s like extending a hand without exposing the deepest parts of yourself. We offer something valuable without the weight of vulnerability.
We all need to build a life, a voice, and a community that is ours. We get to choose who is a part of that. We get to shape our own story. Maybe the most important family is the one we create: the people who support us, who hear us, who make life feel lighter instead of heavier.
There’s resilience in that. It takes strength to move forward, even if it’s in tiny increments, every day.
Someone told me recently that when they look at me, they see someone who is thoughtful, who has endured difficult things without becoming cruel, who strives to understand herself and the world around her.
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Missing Jamie
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Musings of a Doom-Scrolled Mind
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
I Got Something to Say
Monday, January 20, 2025
Wake Up, Maggie
Today is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I don't know a lot about this man, something I need to rectify. I am not a big biography reader though in recent years I have attempted to rectify that. However, I mostly lean towards the memoirs of women.
From Encyclopedia Brittanica: "Martin Luther King, Jr. (born January 15, 1929, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.—died April 4, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee) was a Baptist minister and social activist who led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. His leadership was fundamental to that movement’s success in ending the legal segregation of African Americans in the South and other parts of the United States. King rose to national prominence as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which promoted nonviolent tactics, such as the massive March on Washington (1963), to achieve civil rights. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964."
I was not quite five years old when King was killed in Tennessee. I do not have memories of this man, though I may have seen him on television. I have no memories of his death, but it hasn't been all that long ago that I was reading something about him and ran across a chilling reminder of how deeply racism is instilled in the hearts and minds of so many in this country. The words in that article were something to the effect that many white people rejoiced and partied when they learned the King was dead.
That this would have been anyone's reaction never occurred to me until I read it. Looking around me now, though, I see that of course this would have been true. People probably drank champaign and danced on top of their cars. Racism has never left. I just didn't see it because I live in a relatively white area. I grew up with it and didn't even know it.
This day is also the day the USA ushers in its new gilded age. An oligarchy unseen in my lifetime takes over. Or maybe it has always been this way, just not this blatant. I am not sure.
All I know is that today is a day to think, to contemplate, and to wonder.
Try not to worry, and do not rejoice too much. There are winners and losers in everything, and what seems to be is not always what is.
The future remains as uncertain as it did in 1968.
I read the back issues of newspapers for fun.
Believe me, nothing much has changed as far as human nature over the last 150 years. The issues of today were the issues in 1875. They were only in less technological forms, but the class divide was as strong then as it is now.
Don't look for those issues to disappear overnight.
Monday, January 06, 2025
Hope v. Expectation
"Hope is the thing with feathers," says Emily Dickinson in one of her more famous poems.
It is also something I often feel I am at a deficit in.
Last night I asked my husband what the difference was between "expectation" and "hope." He said they were the same.
I said they were not.
These are the types of discussions I like to have, debates about ideas and philosophies and such. But he is not one to debate.
"When you go to the store, and I think, "Maybe he'll bring me a box of Tic Tacs," what is that?" I asked him.
"A hope, because it seldom happens," he said.
"If I tell you something in the house is broken, am I hoping you will fix it, or do I expect you to fix it?" I replied.
"You're doing both," he said.
And then I have to nag to get it fixed, I replied. And thus ended our conversation.
So, what is the difference between an expectation and a hope?
The kind of intersect, don't they? You can have both, for sure. They relate to our perception of the future and our desires for it.
An expectation is a belief that something will happen based on evidence, reasoning, or prior experience. For example, I expect my husband to fix a leaking sink because he has done so in the past. I do not expect him to pick up his dirty clothes because he doesn't do that often. So, expectations are often tied to specific outcomes, and its foundation is in predictability. I always expected to receive good grades in school, for example. I didn't hope for them. I prepared for tests and did the work necessary for the grade. I expected to be rewarded for my effort with a grade commensurate with the effort I put into it. Expectations are an anticipation that a certain result will materialize.
Hope, on the other hand, is more abstract. It is the optimistic yearning for a positive outcome. I hope my husband will bring me Tic Tacs, but whether he thinks to do that is out of my control (I never call and say, "Bring me Tic Tacs," because the point is I want him to think of me and show me that he does. The Tic Tacs are not the desired goal, really. The display of affection is.) Hope is not confined to logic, effort, or evidence. It is a forward-looking emotional state that allows people to endure hardships, persist in the face of adversity, and dream of possibilities that may seem distant or improbable. For example, we hope someone who is very ill will get better, or we hope we will live long enough to see a human walk on Mars.
The element of control seems to be crucial to the difference between expectation and hope. Expectations are often grounded in the belief that we can influence or predict outcomes. They are rooted in what we perceive as the logical progression of events, and unmet expectations can lead to disappointment or frustration. For instance, if I expect a promotion at work based on my performance and it does not happen, the emotional fallout may be intense, as the expectation was built on tangible evidence. I once angrily quit a job because of a situation like this, a job that in hindsight I should have stayed at.
Hope, however, thrives in uncertainty. It is most potent in situations where control is limited and outcomes are unpredictable. Right now, with ice on the fences and trees, I am hoping the power does not go out. Experience tells me that is a possibility but the odds in realty favor it staying on. I remember my mother held out great hope for her recovery from pancreatic cancer even though the odds were very much against that. Hope can provide comfort and motivation, not because the desired outcome is guaranteed, but because the possibility exists. Hope transcends the boundaries of logic and control, acting as a source of emotional strength.
The emotional consequences of expectation and hope also differ. When expectations are met - when my husband fixes the leaking sink - they can bring satisfaction, but their fulfillment often feels transactional—a simple alignment of reality with pre-established assumptions. However, when expectations are not met, they can lead to bitterness, dissatisfaction, or even a sense of failure, as unmet expectations challenge our perceived control over life. For example, his not fixing the sink would lead to a lot of nagging on my part, creating an uncomfortable scenario for both of us until he fixed the blasted sink.
Hope, though, is more forgiving. If I hope (not expect) that he will fix the sink but doesn't, I eventually either fix it myself (I have many skills) or call a plumber. It doesn't become a personal failure because he didn't do as I asked. Hope nurtures resilience, as it allows individuals to remain optimistic and forward-looking despite setbacks (it would be why I call the plumber). While unfulfilled expectations can close doors, hope keeps possibilities alive.
So what do you think, dear reader? Are expectations and hope two different things? Branches from the same tree? Can you have expectation without hope? Are they two sides of the same coin? Both can influence how we perceive and approach the future. While expectation is grounded in logic, control, and predictability, hope is rooted in optimism, possibility, and resilience. I often say I need to live my life without expectations, because ultimately, expecting people to do what they say they will or behave in a way that their actions indicate, leads to let down. Do you find that to be true? Or am I simply expecting too much out of other people?
Well, I have sat here and discussed this with myself long enough. I think that expectations and hope are different things. I also think I have too many expectations and not enough hope. I wonder if there is some way to turn that around.
Tuesday, December 17, 2024
More Than a Feeling
Monday, December 02, 2024
When Newspapers Were Newspapers
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
Remembering 9/11
Wednesday, June 05, 2024
Writers I'm Supposed to Love
When I was taking Advanced Placement English in high school (it was, in theory, college level English), I remember a little argument I had with Dr. Shots (she had a Ph.D. and insisted on the title) about the deconstruction of a piece of work.
Apparently, I had had enough of the "they used yellow here for sickness, green for jealousy, why do you think this lamp is placed here," because I told her I didn't think authors meant for their work to be analyzed in such depth and detail.
"Sometimes a lamp is just a lamp," I said. Or something to that effect.
You'd have thought I'd blasphemed the chin of God the way she came after me. Of course, every word was carefully chosen, every sofa, every lamp, every blade of grass, had a deeper meaning than just being a blade of grass. What was I doing in her class, telling her (with her Ph.D) that writers didn't always mean something else with what they wrote?
"Because I write, and I don't do that," I responded. "Not consciously."
"Then you're not a writer," she snapped, putting an end to the discussion.
She was the only teacher to ever say that to me.
After that, I kept my mouth shut and dutifully turned in my papers or spoke up in class saying that of course the lamp meant that the character had an idea or had seen the light about some issue. It wasn't put there simply so she could read the book in her hand.
Then I went to Hollins College, now Hollins University, which is a women's undergraduate degree school that is well-known for the writers it puts out. Think Margaret Wise Brown and Anne Dillard, just to name two. Or Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle.
There the poetry in particular was analyzed in great detail, even that which was written in the 17th century. I went on to read Virginia Woolf and numerous other writers while taking eight long years to get my bachelors.
And I always found the examination of works tedious, and I stubbornly (and secretly) held on to my conviction that sometimes a lamp is just a lamp. But I wrote the essays about the books secret meanings and dissected the poems as required.
Of course, sometimes imagery has double meaning, and of course sometimes the more literary authors put cute language in their works to add to the character. The book I'm currently listening to has a daughter of a woman who was dying of cancer eat a chicken pot pie with her mother and the hospice worker. What does the chicken pot pie symbolize?
Damn if I know. Dinner table scenes are great for conversation; they had to eat something. Maybe it symbolizes the daughter's fears about her mother's upcoming death (she's chicken, get it?). Maybe it was just there.
Barbara Kingsolver, Ann Patchett, Anne Tyler, Elizabeth Gilbert, and now Ann Beattie (whom I am listening to - maybe it's something to do with the name "Ann"), are among the literary writers that I am supposed to like. They use great turns of phrases and create deep characters. Every word has been carefully chosen. I imagine these writers spend days pouring over one sentence until they are utterly sick of it, trying to make sure they've chosen chicken pot pie instead of Thai food for the correct reason.
And I listen or read their books and find they do not move me. Occasionally they write one that I find intriguing and enjoy, but overall, they are not my favorite authors. They may have a good sentence or two that makes its way into my little "writer's notebook," but the stories seldom stick with me.
Who do I like to read? I like Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton, Susan Wiggs, Kate DiCamillo, Debbie Macomber, Nora Roberts, Louise Penny, Kristin Hannah, etc. These are not literary giants, but they write well and have interesting stories that move along just fine. Sometimes they make me laugh and sometimes they make me think. I liked The Hunger Games and Harry Potter. I like a lot of fantasy writers, like Neil Gaiman, Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, Phillip Pullman, Ursula K. Le Guin, etc.
I wrote for newspapers. I wrote to educate and inform, not to puzzle people and have them wonder about the significance of someone eating chicken pot pie. I like my fiction to be straight up and to the point, anymore. I read Overstory and while it received rave reviews, I found it incredibly boring. Great concept, but my goodness, couldn't that have been put out into the world in some way that wasn't so long and drawn out?
It is good for me to listen to authors I do not like, to stories I don't always enjoy. I never know what I may find in such tales. I do it now as a part of my life's growth cycle, so I don't get stale. I listen to or read everything from memoir to nonfiction self-help to the aforesaid authors to Catch-22. I seldom listen to or read something a second time (Tolkien being the exception).
Life is a learning experience. This is part of how I live it. But sometimes it frustrates me, because I still think I'm right. A lamp sometimes is just a lamp.
Monday, May 27, 2024
Can You Hear Me Now?
I feel voiceless.
Silenced.
Quieted.
Not just because some football player told a graduating class that the women should have no thoughts and look forward to being mommies and wives. Not just because, all of my life, no one has listened to me, male or female. I have always been silenced, first by my parents, my grandparents, my uncles, my aunts, my brother. Then teachers, friends. Bosses.
No one wants to hear my side of the story.
They don't care about anything I have to say.
Society cares nothing about what women have to say.
This culture teaches young girls to shrink themselves, to stay quiet, to be small. That translates into someone like me, an old woman who is still small, even if she is fat, and still unheard, even when she talks.
Culture says to young women, go forth and be whomever you want to be, but don't expect too much, because you cannot have much, or we will judge you for it. You can be successful, but you will never be president. You will never be a CEO or a millionaire on your own terms.
Be a secretary, my mother told me, when I said I wanted to be a writer. Learn to do what the men say, just as she had done. She worked, but she had no ambition because she was not taught to have such. And when times came for promotions at her job, she told us at home she wanted those promotions, was qualified for those promotions, but she never, ever asked for them.
She was still labeled a file clerk after 30 years on the job when she retired. A file clerk from her first day to her last.
When I was 13, my father began planting peach trees. They would grow, he said, and the crop would put my brother through college. What about my college? I asked. You are just going to get married, he said. There will be no college for you.
My brother did not go to college. The peach trees did not grow.
I have three college degrees that I earned while I was also working a job. I also have a husband, but he was not my aspiration at the time. He was someone I fell in love with and wanted in my life. I did not seek him out.
But like other men, he does not listen. Men do not listen to women, not their wives, their daughters, their fiancés, their female friends, their female classmates, or their female coworkers. They simply do not hear.
And women do not listen to other women. Words may be heard, but they are not often understood. Other women come closest to listening to me, but even then, I do not often feel heard.
When I was listening recently to Liz Cheney read her book, Oath and Honor, and heard her warnings about the former president and the danger he presents to our country, I felt helpless yet again. Because I was listening to her, and I heard her.
That orange idiot has stated, multiple times, that he will trash the U.S. Constitution. He will surround himself with sycophants. He will not have elections again - all that talk about serving for 3 or 4 terms, does anyone think he will risk an election? He will undo the civil rights legislations of the 1960s, he will force suffering upon millions, remove Social Security for the old folks, and put women on a list so someone can keep track of their periods and possible pregnancies.
And Cheney warns of all of this, not in those words, but in better words, in good strong intelligent words, in her book.
And the people who need to read it are not reading it. They are not listening.
I watched the January 6 select committee hearings. I watched what happened on January 6. I reached my own conclusions about that day, and they mirror Liz Cheney's.
I know there are nearly 200 people in the House of Representatives who supported what happened on that day and are still in office. We've been in the midst of a slow-moving coup for eight years. It is not over.
But a woman wrote that book, that brilliant warning of what will be. And she is being, will be, and will continue to be, ignored.
There is no cure for what ails society when it has made half of its citizens voiceless. What are we to do, we who want to speak out, cry out, and scream into the night about all of the bad, not just political but personal, all of the very bad and evil things we have seen and suffered?
Wednesday, May 22, 2024
The State of Things
This is not something one can blame a president for, or Congress, or anyone in politics, really. This is a corporate problem. A business issue. A capitalism thing. A people thing.
Shrinkflation is real; I've watched everything get smaller from my Dove soap to my box of Cheerios. Batteries don't work as well as they once did and I am finding that newer ones corrode much more quickly than the old batteries used to, as well. Nothing purchased now seems to be properly made. It's more like it's tossed together by people who don't know what they are doing.
I have thought about this a lot. Is this because the corporations have fallen into using poor materials? Do the people who are working there now not know what they are doing? Is it a combination of both?
I suspect it is a combination of many things: greed, the need to pay stockholders in big companies, the higher cost of materials thanks to tariffs put in place by the former president and now also by the current one, as well as changes in personnel.
It's important to remember that over 1 million people in this country died during Covid. They weren't all 88 years old languishing away in a nursing home, either.
Also, Covid hit just as baby boomers were retiring, and Covid sent some 2.6 million more people than expected into early retirement, according to PBS. (My husband was one of those early retirees.)
So theoretically, that's over 3.6 million people no longer in the workforce. I know some of the older people who died weren't working, but for numbers sake, there you go. Millions of people no longer working.
Imagine the scenario. I don't know how batteries are made, or if they are even made in the United States but let's assume they are made here. There is a lot of automation in most manufacturing now. So a battery plant might employ something like 400 people. About 150 of those would be salespeople and upper management, because companies these days are a bit top heavy.
That leaves 50 more for support staff to upper management, so now I have 200 people doing the actual work of making batteries.
Then 2020 came, and Covid struck. On the floor with 200 people, the head floor manager dies of Covid. Fourteen of the oldest employees retire. Over the next two years, five more people die from Covid or something else, and three more leave. That's 11.5% of the floor workforce knocked out.
Maybe upper management decides not to replace them. So now there are only 177 people doing what was a 200-person job. Of course, some of those who died or left took expert knowledge with them. Maybe only the head floor manager knew that if you didn't flick this particular machine in just the right way, you would get too much alkaline or too little alkaline in the battery. Maybe nobody has figured this out yet.
Or maybe management hires new people. They have to be trained, but the person who usually trained new employees is one of the retirees. Someone else steps up to do it but leaves out a few crucial steps that the person who had been there for 20 years knew.
So, you end up with a poorer battery. Serviceable, maybe. Acceptable by whatever quality assurances the company has in place (if any), but still not as good a battery as one purchased in 2019. And now it costs more, too.
And people who don't stop to think things through blame the government.
The problems in this country go way deeper than just who is president or who is in Congress, although many of the issues start there. The problems start with us. With who we are and who we want to be. Do we want to be the best darned battery checker in the world, or just draw a paycheck? Do we take pride in our communities anymore? Do we volunteer for civic work, help the town council put out flower arrangements to make the entry way a pretty spot? Do we donate to the library, check on a neighbor, or just sit around and bitch, moan, and whine on Facebook (or a blog) about all the things we see wrong around us?
I am older now. I'm in chronic pain. I don't get out as much as I used to. But in my younger days, I volunteered for the ladies auxiliary in the volunteer fire department. I peeled potatoes to help them raise money at various events. I volunteered for the library. I volunteered for a historic preservation organization.
I did stuff. Some of it was important stuff. Maybe some of it wasn't, I don't know, but I gave it my best shot.
During all of this, I worked a job, kept a house, stayed sick a lot, and put myself through college not only for an undergraduate degree but also my masters. I never once did a job just for a paycheck. Sure, some of the places I worked I worked for the money, but I also did the very best I could at the job. Maybe my best wasn't good enough for some particular work, but it was my best.
Ok, I'm losing my train of thought, but I think the problems in this country can be boiled down to two things: you, and me.
We need to learn to get along and how to work together to bring about a better world. It can be done.
Let's get off of Facebook and get to the real world.
The solutions begin with us.