Doorway to Nowhere

This is my special secret door that takes me different lands. It is a door standing all by itself in my side yard.

It used to be the entrance to a fenced-in garden, but my husband decided we weren't gardening anymore (not exactly the time to be deciding that with the way food prices are), and he took down the fence last year and planted grass.

For unknown reasons, he left the door. Maybe he thinks we may garden there again sometime.

At any rate, it's now my magic door. I can enter from one side and come out as someone completely different.

Or I can walk through it and be on another planet.

This door will take me wherever my imagination leads.

I wonder if I should spray-paint it pink.

Things Going On

A mish-mash of things -

My husband's cousin passed away on Monday after a long bout of Covid. He spent some weeks on a ventilator before succumbing. The funeral is tomorrow. I have an earache and so will not attend. George was well known and a respected member of the community, so there will be a crowd. My husband looked upon his cousin like a brother. He will represent us at the funeral.

Russia invaded Ukraine yesterday, or I guess really Wednesday night. Many people see this as the first step in World War III. I think another world war will not look so much like the last two - this one will be fought with technology. Computer hacks, degradation of lifestyles, loss of the electric grid, downing satellites, plus drone bombings in various cities - those things I expect. This is not how I expected my senior years to play out, watching the world fall apart. But we all can only do what we can with the time given us and play our mostly insignificant roles therein.

Still, there are boots on the ground in the Ukraine, so traditional warfare also continues. I watched a video earlier of a Ukranian woman telling off a Russian soldier. She called him a fascist and gave him sunflower seeds to put in his pocket so they would bring up something beautiful when the soldier died. It was an intriguing notion, to bring something lovely from the destruction that was coming, or rather, has come, and continues to come. She also cursed them, not just with foul language but as in an actual curse or hex. As well she should.

For some reason, the video of all of the talented singers who participated in USA for Africa and sang We Are the World in 1985 popped up in my youtube feed, so I watched that. I remember when the song came out, how it much impact it had. I believe most radio stations agreed to play it at the same time, and the song was everywhere. I doubt we could ever have such a thing again. I will hope, though, because we are indeed the world, all of us, even those who are different in whatever way. We're all one, really, little grapes in the great vineyard of life. Some of us are purple, some are blue, some are withered raisins, some are squishy, some are seedless. I hope I'm a Concord grape. They're my favorite. I haven't had any in a long time. They're hard to find. My husband's grandmother used to grow them, but I don't know of anyone who grows them now.

At my age, I am still learning life's hard lessons. One of these is trust. I trust people to do the right thing. To do what they say they're going to do. To not hurt me. To be kind. To be nice. And guess what? I'm wrong to do that. I should trust no one. This morning's lesson came to me via a video game I play. It's a city building game called Elvenar. Not a war game, or a shot people game. A game where you trade goods to create new buildings and advance through a research tree. It's the first, only, and will be the last multiplayer game I have ever played. In this game, you have fellowships. You can have 25 people in your fellowship. Some of these people I have been playing with for five years. You do get to know people a little over that period of time. I am the archmage of my fellowship, which means I'm the leader. I can promote people to mage. My mages are the people I've come to feel are trustworthy.

This morning, I woke to find one of them had violated that trust. I have a chart on my google drive where I keep track of various things in the game - players have goals to meet, for example - and I'd given the chart to three of my mages. This morning, when I went to the chart to update it, someone had turned the thing into a garish, difficult-to-read document. I copied it over so I would be the only one with the link and then had to spend about 45 minutes trying to get it back to the way it was. It upset me so much that I cried. I also left a message for my three mages, and I let whoever had done this know that I was not happy. I demoted the fellow I think did it, and if he confesses (which is doubtful), I will throw him out of the fellowship. 

At any rate, I think I am done with the game. It takes time, but I enjoyed it. It kept me thinking and was an exercise in patience and creativity, because one really had to give thought to the goods and how to keep things equalized, and suddenly not have more planks than marble or whatever. I shouldn't have to give up something I enjoy because of someone else, but I have found that to be the story of my life.

It is no wonder I have about given up on people in general.

Too bad I can't give myself a hug.

Where Goeth Community Pride?

Grass doesn't cut itself.

The brush along the sides of the road grows scraggly and into the power lines if the state or the electric company doesn't keep the trees trimmed back.

I am old enough to remember when the state mowed the grass during the growing seasons not just two times, but about every 10 days or so.

I am old enough to remember when the power company actively worked to keep the power lines clear of brush and trees so that if the winds blew hard, we didn't have outages.

I am also old enough to remember when the state planted flowers - yes, flowers! - in the medians so that drivers would have something lovely to look at as they breezed by.

We don't have that anymore. We're lucky now if the grass in the median is trimmed back twice a year. Whatever flowers bloom there are either wildflowers (or weeds imitating wildflowers), or leftovers from a time long past when oodles of daffodils danced merrily in the spring sunshine.

And forget about the power company or the telephone company ensuring that the trees aren't growing up in the power lines. Only brush and scrub trees along the rights of way where the lines run buffer the area between the road and a farm or a lawn these days, though I remember when they used to be kept clear. Neat as a whistle.

At some point, the leaders of the state determined that we needed to not spend tax dollars on ensuring our communities looked nice. Who cares if you can't see to pull out onto the road because the grass has grown so high one must be a giraffe in order to see over it? What's a few deaths compared to a couple of dollars, right? 

This cut jobs, too, which saved more money. Good move, said the leaders. Let's get rid of the fellows who mow, or the teams that clear the rights of way. We won't give the money to the taxpayers, though. We have big friends in the corporations who can use those dollars.

And of course, when other leaders took over, they didn't restore the monetary cuts to what by this time had become a frivolous and useless task, in their minds. 

We went the way of the dollar bill, sniffing along after the ass of the capitalist, watching the tax dollars shift to private companies that were supposed to do things like cut the grass or clear the roads of snow, but didn't do it very well (they failed so badly at the latter that the state has, for the most part, taken that back). Who needs flowers in the median, after all?

I do. You do. We all do. We all need to feel pride in our community, in the area we live in. We need to feel like part of something. Having decent roads and lovely waysides are a part of that. They offer a sense of completeness, a knowledge that someone cares about the area.

Cutting the grass in the median helps make us a caring society, not a bunch of greedy individuals grasping for the biggest grape in the pile of wrath we all are carrying around with us.

Bring back the mowers in the median. (They could be electric tractors so they'll be green and economical, really, they could!) Trim the grass so people can see to pull out of roadways. Have some pride in this state, for heaven's sake.

Virginia should not be bound by overgrowth and tangled weeds.

Let's bring back beauty and civility.

Come on, shake hands. We can do it!

Longing for a True Leader

Yesterday, my husband and I celebrated Valetine's Day by exchanging cards in the morning. Later, I had a haircut. I stopped at a Chinese carry-out we like and picked up sweet and sour chicken and egg rolls.

I brought them home, and we had the movie Independence Day on while we ate. So we had lunch and a movie for our Valentine's celebration.

The movie, in case there is someone on the planet who hasn't seen it. is about an alien invasion on July 2. Large, massive ships move in over every major city on the planet. Bill Pullman plays the president of the United States. It is soon apparent that these aliens aren't here to exchange daisies or chocolate chip cookie recipes. They annihilate the major cities with a big blast from their spaceships. The president and his young daughter barely escape, and they flee to Area 51. It seems there is a spaceship and a deceased alien there, under study.

A character played by Jeff Goldblum figures out how to upload a virus into the alien mothership. Will Smith's character, a fighter pilot, joins Jeff's and they fly up and insert the virus, which breaks down the alien ships impenetrable shields. The big alien ships are brought down. Earth is saved.

At one point near the end of the movie, Pullman as president makes a speech to bolster the scared young flyers who are going to attack the alien ships.

After we finished eating and the movie ended, my husband wondered when we had last had a president capable of such leadership.

Maybe JFK, I suggested. I was six months old when he died.

Perhaps Eisenhower, long before my time.

No one who has led the country in my lifetime could have stood up to an alien invasion. We can't even stand up to an invasive virus, a pandemic that has taken as many lives as one of these alien ships took when it blasted away a city. We have not had leadership since 1963, and who knows how Kennedy would have turned out if he hadn't been shot. He may have been a political puppet, too, in the end.

Having a bully for a president does not mean he is a good leader. The former guy showed us how he would deal with an alien invasion - he'd either hide in his bunker, or he would tell us not to worry about it and wouldn't care how many died. He'd call the alien leaders and offer them the world if they'd leave him alive.

Having a president who would walk out onto the White House lawn with his wife and dogs and offer the aliens a teddy bear is not the kind of person to lead the country during an alien invasion, either. He would be first among the dead. The current president tried for about 8 months to lead the country out of the pandemic, but he was not able to. He could not bring the country to heel.

The people resisted. Not for the good of society, but because, well, we're assholes. While resisting an actual alien invasion would be a good thing, resisting a viral invasion instead of nodding to science and stepping forward to take a vaccine and do the right things was beyond us. We are no Greatest Generation here, ready to stand up to moral ineptitude, capable of marching off to save the world. We are a bunch of whiny pansy butts who sit around and cry about our second amendment rights and things like CRT, about which we know nothing, and fume and fret because we aren't getting what we believe to be ours, whatever that is.

If we had a real alien invasion like in this movie, I know of no one in government who could step up to lead, to inspire, to literally talk us into saving the world. Even Obama, as well spoken as he is, could not do it because the white people wouldn't listen to him. The racism runs so deep many people don't even know it's there.

This was our Valentine's Day discussion. We talked about the loss of leadership, the demise of democracy, the changes in humanity that are not for the better. Capitalism may have made some people rich, but it also turned everyone into individualistic automatons, incapable of caring for their fellow man. It destroyed the social network that is, ultimately, vital for the survival of the human race.

We are lesser people than our forefathers. We are soft and stupid. We have all the knowledge of the world at our fingertips, and we look at pictures of cats.

What wimps we have become. What a shame. What a disaster. What a deformation of character we have suffered as we moved through the Industrial Age and into the Technological Age.

If the aliens arrived tomorrow, we'd all deserve to die.

My Morbid Mind

Thinking about dying is not something I sit around do. It does, however, cross my mind more frequently than I would like. This has been particularly true as I've seen the obituaries of people my age, and especially when my close friend of 20 years passed away in early December. That one still hurts.

I don't think about it so much in terms of when I may die - that could happen anytime - or even how (though I really don't want to die from Covid). It's more along the line of what will be lost when I leave.

No one will care that my grandfather gave me the Yamaha guitar. Or that my father gave me the old electric one I have in the closet. Nor will they know the thrill I experienced when I bought my first guitar, my very own choice, not one given to me or handed down. They will only be guitars.

Nor will my books mean anything to anyone, except perhaps by then books will be illegal while guns are the collectible item of the day. The books maybe will be burned, Fahrenheit 451 style, and no one will know that I think Phyllis Whitney wrote one of the best writing guides ever and it was totally underrated and dismissed by the "establishment" writers, or that I consulted the Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition and out of date somewhat now) hundreds of times.

The story of how we came by the bedroom furniture, which is a lovely, sweet memory for me, will vanish. Will anyone even know it's by Virginia House (which no longer exists), and one of the last sets of handmade furniture from the company before another larger furniture conglomerate gobbled it up and turned its products to a parody of the great items it used to produce? Will there be anyone to remember that we bought it at Da Longs, a furniture store in Roanoke that is now long gone?

No one will know that the scrap on the molding in the corner of hall came from the day we brought in a large piece of furniture. They won't know that my husband and I held hands every night while we watched TV, or that we built this house ourselves, for real, each of us nailing in boards, staining woodwork, working jobs and then spending long hours in the summer evenings to build ourselves a home. A small house by any standard, but big enough for us. And it's a home, not a house.

After we are gone, it will be just a house. Someone else will have to make it a home.

My material goods will be simply what they are, things that someone else may use, or rubbish that will end up in the trash.

My friend who passed away spent much time trying to rid her home of her stuff before she passed away. She had keepsakes from her family - a brother who died young. What to do with them? she asked me. Her son, she knew, had no connection to her sibling as he died long before her son was born. I wonder what happened to some of the things I gave her, things that meant something to the two of us, but would mean nothing to anyone else. I don't know.

I have similar items. Nothing much of value, junk jewelry that belonged to my mother and my great aunt, things my friends have given me that I treasure because I love that friend. A wise old owl sits atop my bookcase - my friend Leslie gave me that. In the end, it will be just another dust collector. A board with a collection of sayings also sits up there - my friend who passed away gave me that when I received my master's degree. She also gave me two of the clocks I have in my office.

No one will know I love clocks.

These are the things I think about sometimes in the quiet, when I walk through my house. I notice a nick in the wall, a scrape on the door. I know (mostly) how it got there, what happened to make it so. When I am gone - when we are gone, my husband and I - they will only be nicks and scratches, things to be repaired.

We are not our stuff, and we can't take it with us, but sometimes we are bound and connected to our stuff. The letting go can be cathartic, but it can also be sad.

This also reminds me that I am connected and somewhat in love with democracy, with the ideals of a world of equality, with the knowledge that the world is mean and cruel because it wants to be, not because it had to be. Those ideals mean as much to me - more to me - than the stuff I have around me. But just like my material things, these ideals simply sit and become nothing without someone to make them function. Where are those people?

The sun is shining and the icy snow from several weeks ago hopefully will disappear soon. In its place, we will have mud, but also growth. The daffodils will begin making their way from the bulbs to the top of the earth, their little leaves sticking out, specks of green among the brown grass. The forsythia will bloom.

Life will go on, regardless of the state of the nation, the state of my home, or the morass of my soul.

Tyranny

If someone had told me 20 years ago that I'd be having a conversation with a friend in early days of 2022 about what to do when the government breaks down, I'd have dismissed them as ludicrous.

But the government has been collapsing most of my lifetime. I didn't see it because I was living it. I wasn't planning for it because I don't think like that. 

The collapse, though, has been in the works since FDR undertook his policies to give US citizens a social safety net, since he denied big business and the very wealthy, and instead acknowledged that every soul deserves, at the least, a little something near the end of life. He called it Social Security, and the government itself has always called it an "entitlement."

Bill Maher, whom I have mostly stopped watching because he (a) makes fun of obese people and (b) is terribly misogynistic, occasionally has a guest I want to see.

Friday night, he interviewed Timothy Snyder, whose book On Tyranny is not one I've read, but one I've read much about.

It was an interview that should have been highly noted. But even Maher himself apparently barely registered it, because I never saw it cross my twitter feed, while another guest's comments about being "over" Covid and the protocols in place for public safety, did.

Here is the interview. It's worth listening to all 10 minutes of it.

They discuss a "business crash" in 2024-2025 (long about 2:53 in the interview). That's concerning. We're already having supply shortages and inflation. What will a "business crash" look like?

"If we stay in this cocoon of The Big Lie," says Snyder, "we're not going to have a country in a few years down the line." (He's talking about the former guy's continual pounding away that Biden is an illegitimate president, and that the former guy had the election stolen from him. The former guy lost. It went through the court system. That should have been the end of it. He attempted a coup.)

This stuff scares me. Why doesn't it scare everyone? There are, apparently, a minority of very loud and powerful people who want the United States of America to fail as a nation. They apparently believe they will have all the power - they will have the guns; they will be able to live like the assholes in that show Yellowstone (which I've only seen a few episodes of, and I don't plan to watch more). They will be able to make their own reality and if my reality interferes with theirs, they will, quite plainly, kill me and get me out of the way.

Snyder goes on to say that he thinks in the weeks between the election of 2024 and the inauguration of 2025, if the former guy runs for office and loses yet still wins because of the changes Republican states have made to election laws, then we will have a major crisis. "The country can break down," he says in the interview above. "I imagine Americans in blue states going to red states and American in red states going to blue states, worrying about what's going to come next."

Americans may have to run to places where they feel safer. "The majority of Americans think we're heading for some kind of collapse," Snyder says.

Other countries have noticed. Canada is preparing for our collapse. "By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence," [political scientist Thomas] Homer-Dixon writes. "By 2030, if not sooner," he adds, "the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship."

A 2014 study [note the date - 8 years ago] by Princeton University Professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Professor Benjamin Page concluded, in essence, that the United States is now an oligarchy. Specifically, the authors found that “A proposed policy change with low support among economically elite Americans (one-out-of-five in favour) is adopted only about 18 percent of the time, while a proposed change with high support (four-out-of-five in favour) is adopted about 45 percent of the time.” They also found that “When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose.”

Persistent, dramatic and growing disparities between voter preferences and government policy are radically unsustainable. Sooner or later, a social explosion is liable to occur. In a nation drowning in guns, a mass rebellion against a government beholden to the billionaire class could prove particularly violent and destructive. (Here's the link for this article.)

If other countries are seeing this, what are we seeing from the inside? We're seeing neighbor pitted against neighbor - over masks, for one thing. But is it really masks? No, some consider it control. (It's not control that people have to wear pants or otherwise cover their butt, I note, and I suspect if we'd grown up wearing masks during flu season, no one would be complaining. It's the newness of this that some object to. Change.)

Then there are mass shootings, supply chain issues, climate change, lack of health care, low wages, etc. etc. We may be number one in arms, but when compared to other countries, we are low on the stats when it comes to taking care of one another.

I don't have any answers to what I see as the demise of this nation. I'm just one useless old woman with a little bitty blog that few people read.

I'm probably one of the first people that some people around me would kill off. Useless old women don't stand a chance in the coming days, whether those days are in 2025 or 2030. Nor would it matter what "side" I might be on. There are already so many sides that we're all the enemy of someone, whether we know it or not.

Scary things to think about. Sobering things to think about. And it's not hyperbole to think like this. The signs are everywhere. The stories are no longer confined to fictional books about government overreach, espionage, and overthrowing those in power. We're living these stories now, daily.

And there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

But What About . . .

A long time ago, about 2005, I think, for we were at war in Iraq at the time, my husband and I went to Myrtle Beach for our vacation.

Being a news reporter and somewhat gregarious when I'm in public, even though I'm more reclusive and introverted than most folks, I tend to strike up conversations with people as we stand in line or sit and wait for tables or whatever. It's the Gemini in me.

That year, I struck a conversation with a nice couple. They were a little older than we were, and we were talking congenially about the weather and the beach, the things that had changed over the years, and this and that.

Suddenly, abruptly and bristly, and frankly out of nowhere, the man spoke up and said that his wife's cancer, which we'd not even mentioned, would not be cured because of abortion.

"Excuse me?" I said.

"We've let so many people die, probably the one who would have invented the cure for cancer has been aborted. The people who could make the best inventions are the ones women are killing off for their own personal perversions." The man's face reddened. He was nearly apoplectic, and my initial thought was something along the lines of, Holy shit, he's a nut and we're trapped in a line here.

But I also am not one to back to down. And abortion, my dear reader, is a touchy issue. I'd never have had one myself, but I don't think it's my place to tell anyone what they must do, even if it is only for 9 months and they can give the child away after they pop it out, as a Supreme Court Justice recently noted. 

After all, pregnancy carries great risks, emotional, physical, and financial, to the pregnant woman, and who I am to force gestational diabetes on someone, or to make a 12-year-old give birth to her half-sister conceived through incest with her father? Or force a woman to lose her job, or possibly her life, carrying a child she doesn't want?

That was not the tact I took, however. As I am a pacifist, the current war was a better target.

"Could be that we've just murdered the child who could cure cancer in the war in Iraq," I responded. "Or the mother who would have had that child. We're killing so many."

His wife gave the slightest of nods of her agreement with me but said nothing.

"The child who could cure cancer would have come from the United States," he retorted. I raised my eyebrows at that.

"You mean a white child, I suppose."

He nodded.

Fortunately, my husband, ever nonconfrontational, grabbed me by the arm and said, "They've got us a table," and dragged me away before I could become embroiled in an argument with a bigoted white supremacist.

I report this memory because it came to mind as I have read about the recent Supreme Court hearing on a southern state law that basically stops abortion. Many more laws will follow regardless of what the Supreme Court rules, but I write about this because it is a great illustration of what the abortion argument is really about.

It is not about women of color having abortions, or about killing women of color overseas in stupid wars that are for rich men and have nothing to do with protecting this country. 

It is about white women having abortions. It is about racism, it is about misogynistic ideas, it is about control. 

It is not about saving children so they can grow up to cure cancer. Because in order for a child, any child and every child, to grow up to cure cancer, that child must first have opportunity - the opportunity to be fed nutritious food, to live in a loving and supporting home, to have a quality education, to move about unburdened by depression or any other mental illness and be physically fit and appropriately raised.

We don't ensure any of that. In fact, the people who want abortion go to great lengths to ensure that children are not raised with such security.

Until we ensure that every single child born in this country has every opportunity to be the child who can grow up to cure cancer, and we ensure that the women we're forcing to have babies receive prompt, appropriate care, both mentally and physically, paid for and supported with tax dollars, then I support the right of women to choose whether or not to have a child.

This Is Not Like Me

 So unlike me not to have posted for three days - yikes!

And I still have nothing to say.

Too Poor For Heat

I wrote stories on a variety of issues during my tenure as a news reporter. I covered everything from the local governments (county, towns, even state offices) to endangered mollusks to pet awards and stuff in between.

One story that has stuck with me, though, was one I wrote about heating assistance through the Virginia Department of Social Services.

The story dates back to sometime before 2008, so it was during the Bush era. I can't find the article and I wish I could.

I'd like to say things have changed since then, but I'm not sure they have.

We have a thing against poor people in this country. People are poor, allegedly, because of some innate fault within themselves. They made wrong choices, or they're not godly enough, or they simply have bad luck - but whatever the reason, it's their own fault.

That was one of the first things the person I talked to at Social Services made sure I understood. People aren't poor because of socio-economic reasons. I called bullshit on that and didn't write the story that way.

While that was appalling enough, what really got me was the list of things that poor people do that kept them from obtaining assistance.

Having a cellphone was number one on the list. Cellphones weren't quite so necessary prior to 2008, I suppose, but even then they were becoming the number one way people communicated. But if a poor person wanted assistance, they would have to decide if a cellphone was a necessity.

The Social Services representative also gave me a long list of things poor people could do to stay warm in the winter.

One of those was to leave the oven door open after cooking, so the heat would escape in the house. That provides what, maybe 20 minutes of extra heat?

They were expected to keep the thermostat on 65 - that's too cool for most people - and wear layers of clothes, although if they couldn't afford heat I don't know where they were supposed to obtain the clothing. Goodwill, perhaps.

They could also use kerosene heaters, which my husband has told me causes more house fires in winter than anything, even fireplaces. He's also had to put out house fires caused by people using the oven for their only source of heat.

Basically, the poor were expected to burn the furniture in the middle of the room and hope the house, apartment, or mobile home didn't go along with it.

It gets cold in Virginia. We haven't had 0 degrees in a while, but it's not uncommon. It's been 26 degrees here already this month.

The Social Services person even gave me a brochure that listed all of these little things people could do to cut costs and find heat. Of course, I have tossed all of that information, but this story always aggravated me. It was demeaning and distasteful, and while it was successful in that it actually increased donations to the local Social Services office for their heating program, it left a nasty hole in my heart because it felt so mean and hard-hearted.

I can't find similar information on the Virginia Department of Social Services website today. Maybe at some point they changed the program and they no longer advise people to do these things. Maybe now cellphones are considered a necessity.

The attitudes toward the poor, though, are still prevalent. If anything, they're worse, and we have more people who are headed into poverty through no fault of their own. The current inflation woes (which I believe are corporate imposed, as they are posting huge profit margins) only add to the hard times.

I feel fortunate to have a home. We keep the heat low and I use a space heater in the room I'm in. I'm not sure that is the most cost-effective way to heat as a space heater can cost up to $4 a day in electricity, a representative with a power company once told me. I can't type well if my hands are cold.

This has been on my mind this weekend. I'm not sure why this old story has popped into my brain. Maybe the chilly wind and cold temperatures reminded me that there are folks not so lucky out there, people who are living in their cars. Yes, I know, there are plenty of jobs. Most are low-paying. I suspect some of the people living in their cars work these jobs.

No answers here, really. Just a lot of questions, and a desire to warm the world with goodness and love. It doesn't keep the body warm, but maybe it helps somebody feel better in other ways.

I Tried to Teach

I could not be a teacher. Not today, not ever. 

Not that I didn't try. Back in 1994, I decided to apply to substitute teach. I was having migraines and had quit my job as a legal secretary, because so many headaches in a month lead to an inability to think properly. 

Why I thought substituting would be a good idea I do not recall. Perhaps it was the promise that I could say "no" on the days I didn't feel like working. Perhaps I thought to see if I enjoyed teaching, and thus then would pursue a teaching degree and find a place amongst the English teachers at the high school.

Whatever the reason, the school board approved my application. There was no training, aside from an admonishment that I could not discipline. If I had a problem, I was to send the student to the principal's office. The fact that I had a BA apparently meant I would know how to handle any situation thrown at me.

I did not.

I recall a class of 4th or 5th graders at Eagle Rock Elementary who simply paid no attention to me at all. The teacher had left no syllabus, and I had no clue where they were in any subject. Finally, I read to them. And when I finished that book, I told them local history stories. I told them about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson being in Botetourt County. I told them about the author Mary Johnston, who grew up in Buchanan and became rich and famous. Most were bored but it did quiet them. I was happier than they were when the bell rang.

Then there was a class of 7th grade special education students that I was expected to teach for an extended period as the teacher had had surgery. That did not go well. I had no training with special education students. They basically ran wild and I simply let them because I had been told I couldn't discipline them. I believe I sent every single one of those students to the principal at one point or another, and he simply sent them back. I finally told someone I could not do that class anymore, and they found someone else.

A math class, also in the middle school, stymied me completely. I administered the quiz the real teacher had left, but when asked for assistance, I could offer none. Despite passing algebra and trigonometry in high school with straight As, I had no clue what this "new math" was about. When one student asked me why I didn't know, I simply replied, "I majored in English."

Finally, I remember a high school English class. This I could do, except high schoolers were about as well behaved as the fourth graders. I had to take some kind of gizmo from some boy, who pouted that the real teacher let him play with it. I gave it back to him after class. Fortunately, at this level, the classes rotated in and out and so I could give the same quiz over again and I had some idea what they were doing in an English class. It was the only time I felt like I could do it, but the teacher has also left me detailed notes. I had but to follow them, and I did.

Were there other classes? Yes, but those I've written about stand out as my big failures and the one I felt I was most successful at. They all felt more like babysitting than teaching. I did not substitute a second year. I may not have substituted a second semester. Maybe that all happened in the space of a 1/4 of a year. I don't recall.

After I obtained my masters degree, I had thought to teach at the college level. Maybe I could manage people who were almost adults. I started out teaching non-credit classes through the community college, expecting to mostly bring in older adults. I wanted to see if I could make it work, figure out this new world of education. My plan worked well. I taught two courses on how to keep a journal. They were well received. Then the college asked me to teach a summer course on "writing."

Four weeks into that class, my gallbladder went bad. I remember going into class a few days before I had surgery, and one of my students, who was a nurse, took one look at me and said, "You are sick." By that time I'd quickly dropped about 10 pounds because I could eat nothing. I took two weeks off to recover from surgery, and then had to return to finish the final two weeks of class. While the students gave me good marks for the course, I did not feel it was my best work. How could it have been, when I was so sick in the midst of it? And the two weeks I went back? I was still recovering and who knows how much that early return (insisted upon by the college) cost me? Is that why I have chronic abdominal pain today? Because I went back to work too soon? I don't know.

So standing in front of a class and teaching is not my forte. I know the schools are hurting for substitutes, but unless they offer a training course in substituting, I would never attempt that again. I wouldn't do it during a pandemic anyway.

However, I tried to teach in another way, and that was through my writing. Every story I wrote I considered a lesson of some kind. This is how government works. This is why it works as it does. This is where tax dollars are spent. This is why they are spent that way. This community is not a town, this is a town but not a community. These funds may be spent on this project but not on that. This person is noteworthy because he or she showed extraordinary courage. This person is a historical reference because he or she did thus and such. This land is being rezoned because of this reason. A hotel is going up across the street from where you live; be aware.

Today I see now that none of my efforts, my 35 years of writing, taught anyone anything at all. I see angry people accosting school board members about things over which they have no control. I see angry people not understanding that the county simply cannot take money from the state that's slated for roads and use it to build a building. Mostly I see angry people who do not understand the framework of their government, and who believe they understand the US Constitution without having a clue about it, much as Christians spout off chapter and verse of some Biblical passage when they really have no idea what they are saying. I see things taken out of context and put in places where it was never meant to be.

I wasted my life trying to teach through my words, to make people understand that Eagle Rock is a community, not a town, and therefore has no taxing authority. I tried to help them see that the school board can't raise taxes, they have to ask the county for money and accept what the state gives them. And the county can only tax what the Virginia legislators allow them to tax, because we're a Dillon Rule State, and I tried to explain what this means, too. (It means that localities only have the powers vested to them by the legislature, they can't simply decide to tax green beans, for example, if the state hasn't said they could.)

Looking at the things I see going on locally, and looking at the people who are behind most of the craziness - people who I know read those articles, because they're about my husband's age, and they read the paper and talked to me about it, and they should know better now, but they are people who are bigots and fascists and can't see who they are because they're too busy calling "the other side" bigots and fascists and socialists because they don't know what the words mean - I see only that I failed. Nothing I wrote sunk into their tiny brains. They did not get it then, and they don't get it now.

What is the point of trying to teach, if no one is listening or reading with comprehension?

Sturgeon Moon

 

Here I am on the night of the new moon, when darkness reigns and the starlight is all that lights the evening, posting a picture of the August Sturgeon Moon. I was trying to make it look like it was sitting atop the trees, but I didn't quite succeed in that. Close, I guess.

My mood matches the coming deep quiet of the long dark sigh that new moons bring. I have things I want to write, things I want to say, opinions I want to express, stories I wish to tell - and I keep my mouth shut. I do not respond to the things that disturb me on social media, I do not call people I want to talk to, I say nothing to upset the air, I try not to breathe, even, so that my breath will not disturb the path of some butterfly. It is as if I am full of fury and frustration, and yet I remain as silent as a thimble pushing a needle into a garment. Hush, my mind says. Speak not.

But here is my place to speak. This is my blog, the place I do, on occasion, allow myself voice. Sometimes it is a little voice . . . most times it is a little voice. Occasionally I will let loose with a very loud Fuck You, because that sums up all of the frustration and pain, in an odd sort of way. Just fuck you, fuck myself. Fuck it. That's such a great word, fuck. It sums up everything in one syllable.

The list of topics is long. I am angry that the abortion issue remains an issue. It has been an issue my entire life - literally since before I was born. When I was born, abortions were not legal. My mother told me (frequently) that she tried to abort me but backed out at the last minute. I don't know if this is true or simply words she said to hurt me, because she was more than capable of that. My mother should not have been a mother. Some women should not be mothers and mine was one of them. Maternal love is a myth we foist upon women simply to make them feel guilty when they don't want their children. It doesn't exist in every female. Maybe it doesn't exist at all.

When I was in high school, abortion also was an issue (late 1970s early 1980s). I remember feeling that I was a walking poster child for why abortion should be legal. I felt unwanted, always, and mostly unloved. I suffered terribly from depression that went overlooked and unchecked. I was moody and a troublemaker who made straight As. No one thought to address my mental health except for me and a few of my teachers, who sent me to see the school psychologist, which helped until my parents found out and put a stop to that. 

That is not say that there weren't good times or that my parents didn't love me - I have come to terms with the fact that they did the best they could with the people that they were. They were barely adults themselves, after all. My mother was 18 when I was born. She was only 38 years old when I married. Some women are just starting families then. It would never have occurred to my father that there were better ways of raising children, or that his offspring might have been better off not being around their mother. He was busy being a businessman, making his money, and people didn't think that way then.

This all came to mind this morning while I was reading the comments on the abortion issue and the new vigilante laws in place in Texas that allow for bounties on the parties who assist a woman in obtaining an abortion. One woman noted that her mother had wanted to abort her, and she wished she had been successful. Many other women expressed astonishment: do you mean you wish you'd never been born? And I knew that yes, that was exactly what she meant. She wished she'd never been born. The gods know I have wished it myself often enough.

Sometimes I take that idea out and examine it, that ol' It's a Wonderful Life thing. Haven't I made positive impacts somewhere? Doesn't someone have a better life because I have existed? Generally speaking, no. I cost my husband his chance to be a father - his choice, I know, he could have divorced me and remarried but he loves me - and while I can think of good impacts some of my articles made - thousands of dollars raised for Angel Trees, funds pouring in for someone with some disease, because I was really good at writing those heartfelt articles that didn't actually sound like pleas for money but were - I think too that had I not written those stories, someone else would have. I helped save a few historical landmarks. I helped keep the local cement plant from burning tires back in the early 1990s. Everything I have done, someone else could have or would have done, maybe even better than I did. In the grand scheme of things, my existence is about as significant as that of an ant with a broken leg.

Another topic that frustrates me is the ongoing battle of masks and vaccines. As someone who has spent her entire life avoiding things to try to stay healthy, this makes me want to grab people who are unmasked in the stores and shake the life out of them. Long ago, it was cigarette smoke. I'm allergic to cigarette smoke. My grandfather smoked and I was always sick after visiting my grandparents. I'm also allergic to milk. Foods I can avoid, but I can't avoid the thin curl of smoke from the glowing end of a Marlboro. 

Nor can I avoid the toxic wastes to my west that spewing out of the cement plant, which is my county's number one polluter, or the toxic wastes to my east that tumble from a truck manufacturing plant, the second largest polluter. I am caught in between them, living on a farm where chemicals are used constantly, Round Up© and other herbicides that settle in the body and transform DNA and does who knows what else to a person's internal chemicals.

So I spent my entire life avoiding cigarette smoke, which meant I didn't go to most restaurants, because they allowed smoking (or had a smoking area, which was always a joke - those vents to nowhere did nothing), and I sat in my car waiting for people to stop smoking in front of doors. I held my breath in mad dashes to my car if I had to wade through a cloud of cigarette smoke because I would be late returning to work if I didn't. I took (and still take) lots of showers to wash off the smoke smell. I didn't wear a mask because no one ever suggested it and I never thought of it. It's not our culture. I would have worn an astronaut suit if it would have kept me from being sick four months out of every year. I was sick so often I couldn't hold a job. I used to miss 35 days of school every year. Who does that and still makes As? Me.

Finally, back in the early 2000s Virginia wised up and implemented no smoking laws in restaurants. I could eat out without having a sinus infection afterwards! It was literally a breath of fresh air. A single law changed my life. It didn't help with other things - the smells of perfume that give me migraines, the colognes that send me into sneezing fits, the off-gassing of various carpets that ultimately make me ill. But it helped that I could go somewhere to eat without it being an anxiety-ridden event.

And now we're back to not being able to go places because people are assholes. They insist upon their right to make other people sick. These are stupid people, and if you're one of them and you're still reading this blog, I'm sorry, but I think you're an idiot if you haven't received the vaccine and/or you won't wear a mask. (You may have a medical reason not to take the vaccine, but anyone can wear a mask, I have asthma and I wear a mask, I know people on oxygen tanks who wear masks, so there really is no excuse, it doesn't cut your airflow or do anything dangerous like the dummies try to say on youtube or FAUX or wherever this shit fucking comes from. You just don't like it, is all. Grow up.)

These very same people think it's horrific that we left 100 Americans in Afghanistan, but they don't care that 650,000 Americans have died of Covid or that they might kill their own grandma if they won't wear a surgical mask. What kind of lopsided logic is that? Don't these people realize how hypocritical they sound? Why is one ok and not the other?

So yes, I am pro-choice. I would not have had an abortion myself unless the child was going to kill me and not live. If I were to die but the child were to live, that would have been a decent trade-off, I guess. But in any event, it's a woman's choice and not something the government should have any say in. It's certainly none of my business what you or you or you or anyone else does. I try hard to mind my own business, thank you.

I am pro-vaccine and pro-mask. I'm also pro stay-the-fuck-out-of-other-nations' business, cut the army in half, and spend the dollars on the children that have been forced to be born who could use a hand up instead of another kick in the ass.

This is what life is like on the dark side of the moon. I'm pretty sure no one wants to join me here. That's why I worship it when it is full and bright.

All of These Lines

Sometimes I look back over my life and wonder what I have done with it. What have I accomplished?

It's easy to count the thing I didn't accomplish. I didn't have children, which is the big one in the eyes of many folks (including myself). That makes me a DNA failure because I couldn't conceive.

Otherwise, though, I've had a good marriage.

We're not eating cat food for lunch. (I worry about this, that in my old age I will be reduced to eating cat food. I have no idea why it bothers me.)

We have a house that we built with our own four hands, my husband and me. I'm not sure many folks these days can say they did that, raised their own house up and nailed and painted and everything else it takes to build a house.

I have three college degrees. That was a lot of work and something that has helped me in many areas of life, from the way I approach people to the way I think about politics and life.

I worked in the legal profession for over 10 years. 

The thing that stands out, though, are the lines. The lines of written words that I have published or shoved in a drawer.

Hundreds of thousands of them. Just not in a novel form. Put them all together, though, and there are thousands of pages.

I began publishing articles in local publications in 2004. I have estimated that over the years I have published about 7,500 articles for various newspapers and magazines. At 500 words each, which is a low estimate, that's 3.75 million words. 

That is a lot of words. A book is about 300,000 words. So had I been writing books, I'd have written about 12 books, give or take.

This blog has 4,635 published posts. Many of those are photos more so than paragraphs or stories, but that's still a lot of posts. I've been posting in this particular blog since August 2006. That will be 15 years this summer.

All in all, not a bad showing, if one looks at all of these lines I've written over the years. 

I don't think I'm finished, though. 

Still other lines to come.

Let Me Know You're Here

Before my mother passed away in 2000 (gosh, so long ago), we had a discussion about the after life. I don't believe in heaven and spending time bowing to Jesus - doesn't sound like much fun, really - and I am ok with turning into ant food.

I do think, though, there is a spiritual part of living creatures that goes into the universe. Sometimes it stays whole, sometimes it moves on to another star. We're all breathing the air of our ancestors.

My family didn't raise me with religion. We didn't attend church. I went to church for a while after I turned 18, and was baptized, but as the evangelicals rose, my interest waned. I wanted no part of what they were preaching. They preach a small god. My goddess is vast and encompasses everything, and is all about love and goodness. She has no time for the pettiness of a small god, and the preachers I heard preached a very petty, mean and vindictive god.

Anyway, during this long-ago conversation, my mother asked me how how she could let me know there was an after life if there was one. I told her to send me something orange. Orange is not a color I am fond of, and it is not a color I have much, if anything at all, of. I remember sitting on the edge of her hospital bed, watching her say to herself over and over, "orange" before she fell asleep. 

My mother passed away that August. The following spring, about this time of year, my dog Ginger died. She was 17 years old. I was overwrought and terribly distraught at the loss of my dog, especially so close to the time I lost my mother. Ginger was an outside pet, but I had spent a lot of time going to the back door and talking to her. It took me a long time to stop watching for her to run up to the car when I came home.

Shortly after Ginger died, an orange cat showed up on the front porch. It was sick with distemper and had to be put down.

That was followed by a sandy colored (almost orange) dog. This was an older animal that seemed well-cared for, groomed, and smelling nice of powder. We put up flyers, called neighbors, and placed an ad in the paper (pre-Facebook, remember), but no one claimed the dog. This animal was obviously an inside pet, and we couldn't keep him because of my allergies, so we gave him to someone who wanted him. It bothered me that we couldn't find that dog's real owner.

Then it was June and my birthday came around. I was 38 years old. My friends took me to lunch, or came to my house and had lunch.

One friend brought me a rose bush for my rose garden. I planted it, and not long after, the bud that was already on it bloomed out.

It was a brilliant orange. It bloomed orange every year around my birthday up until about five years ago, when the bush died. By then, I think I had resolved most of my issues with my mother in my mind.

After the rose, I received no more orange. I received a black cat. The black cat appeared on my mother's birthday, when she would have been 57. It was a feral cat, and I would see it in the front yard often. There was no reason for the cat to hang around the house, as I did not feed it. It would have been better off at the barn, but it seemed to like the front yard.

I decided it was my mother. I thought this because my mother had been sure that my grandfather had come to my grandmother as a black cat after he died. The day of his funeral, when my grandmother went home, there was a black cat hanging around the porch. It stayed for a year, and disappeared on the day my grandfather died, never to be seen again.

Apparently this had happened with other deaths in the family and was a well-known conceit about the dearly departed in our lineage. Black cats come along after the dead are gone.

So I felt sure the black cat was my mother's final way of showing up. Sure enough, the cat hung around until August the following year, and then it stopped visiting. The next time I saw it was when my brother had his daughter a few years later. I caught a glimpse then of the black cat slipping through the yard at twilight, and I woke the next morning and went to see my new niece at the hospital even though at that time my brother and I were not in a good spot in our relationship and I wasn't sure I would be welcome. My sister-in-law expressed surprise at seeing me, but how could I not go?

After that, when I saw a black cat in the front yard, I expected something was up in the family. Usually it was. But I haven't seen the black cat since the rose bush died.

I Need a Sign

I was able to feel comfortable for about a month and a half. That's how long it took the media to gear back up and decide to begin anew its rounds of horrific news.

Or maybe that's how long it took the news to become horrific again. Because we sent the children back to school, and the shootings started.

We've opened up the restaurants, and the Covid numbers rise.

The prejudice, bigotry, and hatred received a shot in the arm when the media reported on the former guy's vitriol at some Republican conference over the weekend. White supremacy still exists. Videos of Karens and Kooky Kens still pop up in my social media feeds. Don't these people ever tire of being mad, angry, and hateful?

I like nice. I like calm. I like quiet. A little peace goes a long way.

As a former news reporter, I find it difficult to ignore the news, to be uninformed, to not know what is going on around me.

Some days, though, I think being an ostrich would be a good thing. I know people who don't read the newspaper, who don't watch the TV news, who have no clue what is going on (although many of these people do seem to watch mostly FAUX news, so there's that. They're generally the angry ones.). 

I try to check out all sides of issues. I watch snippets of Tucker Carlson on FAUX, even. He's just a mouth with an opinion, but many people seem to take his opinion as fact, so I listen to see what his problem is. He's like a thorn on a dying rose. He's pretty to look at, but nothing but prickles underneath.

I don't watch the news channels, except for the local news and occasionally CBS evening news. I read the local papers, the New York Times, the Guardian, The Atlantic, and other sources for news and opinions. I'd rather read than listen to the irritating grunts of talking heads.

Racism is a big question for me. Am I racist? I'm sure I am. I suspect everyone is to some degree. But to what degree? I'm not sure. I don't go around making a big deal out of different races, or call people names. Frequently I don't notice color. In my video games, nobody knows who is what race, sometimes not even what gender, because we all go by made-up names. We also don't talk politics at all, and so that's a good getaway for me. Do I imagine that I'm playing with people of all races? I hope so. But I don't know. We talk about the game and sometimes the weather.

The Blacks are again marching in Minnesota because once again a police officer shot a Black man. In Virginia, my lovely state, two police officers pulled over a military lieutenant who was black, handcuffed him and pepper sprayed him, and one of the officers has lost his job over this man's treatment. I don't know why this keeps happening.

Many people believe, myself among them, that if the rioters on January 6 at the U.S. Capitol had been mostly Black instead of white, they'd have been mowed down with guns the moment they stepped over some unspecified line.

This world has always been full of turmoil and hatred. Humanity is full of strife. It does not stop from generation to generation. It may change form, but it doesn't go away. 

I'd like to think we're evolving into a better form of human, but the evidence indicates we're walking backwards, not forward.

De-evolving, as it were.

I'd like a sign that shows me I'm wrong in feeling so despairing about the state of this country and the world.

Friends

Ever since I learned that an old high school friend passed away, I've been thinking about friendship.

I do not think I am a good friend. I try hard to be a good friend, but I've had so many people pass through my life, I think it is safe to say that unless I am supposed to be learning an awful lot from a vast amount of people, many of whom I can barely remember, then I likely am not a good friend.

Many articles claim to know what makes a good friend. It depends on the person, the times, the types of people involved, though. I don't think one can make blanket claims as to whether this person is a good friend or a bad friend, although I just made such a claim about myself, I suppose. Everyone is different and so each relationship is different, and must be counted on its own merits. It does no good to try to compare people, one to another.

However, I have friends. Close friends. Acquaintances. Dear friends. Long-distance friends. Long-term friends. Friends with whom I once was quite close but now they're in another category. People come and go, sometimes quickly, sometimes not.

My friend from high school was not a long-term friendship in that we remained friends as adults. Friendly toward one another, yes, the few times we happened to meet, but not friends. She did not call me and I didn't call her. Many people I know from both high school and college fall into this category. We were friends, we would speak and be friendly if we saw one another in the supermarket, but we don't call, text, or much else. Maybe we make an occasional comment on a Facebook post, if that.

However, some of those relationships can turn. I was quite friendly with one of my high school teachers, and we have stayed in touch all of these years. For a long time we exchanged Christmas cards and that was the extent of it, but after she retired, we began to eat lunch together occasionally. We email and text. Sometimes we talk on the phone. It's a nice, easy relationship with no expectations, but I am always glad to hear from this person. She's also someone I turn to occasionally for advice.

I have over 500 Facebook friends. These people are not all my "friends." They are people I know. Some are people I barely know. Maybe I met them in passing, or I wrote an article on their great-aunt. Sometimes I'm not sure how I know someone, I simply recognize a name or face.

My husband and I are friends as well as spouses. I think friendship in a marriage is essential if the relationship is going to survive the inevitable up and downs of life. If you're not friends with the person you are in love with, what exactly do you have?

One of my longest friendship dates back to 1983. Leslie and I worked together, and co-workers in general are a class of friends in and of themselves. Generally, once you leave a workplace, those friendships end. Oh, there may be a phone call or two after you've left the building, but those relationships dissolve quickly. Fortunately, Leslie and I had a lot in common outside of work, and we've remained friends all of these years. There were times when we were not close, particularly when I was working in downtown Roanoke and attending college in the early 1990s, but we have always had a good friendship.

Other friendships continue but have changed. Walls went up, maybe on both of our parts, and there you go. Those walls are hard to bring down once they are in place.

I have another friend who is like a sister. We have known each other for about 10 years. I knew the moment we met that we would be friends. She's a helper friend, in that she likes to help out and is good in emergencies.

My brother is also my friend. It is a complicated relationship because we are siblings, but I consider him a friend as well as my brother. I can't say that about many other family members, that they are also my friends. Some are just the roles they have been assigned - aunt, cousin - whatever.

I have friends online, too. I have people I am in touch with that I met online back in the 1990s and still have some connection to, mostly through Facebook. These people are not "real life" friends, I suppose, but they are in my life. Peripheral friends, for the most part. I did have a daily communication with a person that I cared about deeply, but it seems to have ended. I guess in the end it was only a lot of words, and "I'm sorry" is not in her vocabulary. 

Many people are incapable of apologizing, I've learned. This is generally true of men, but some women refuse to acknowledge any fault or otherwise confirm that they have contributed to an issue in a relationship. I assume always that I have a 50% share in whatever happens, but I don't take 100% credit for it anymore. At one time, I think I did that, I took on all the blame if a relationship failed, but it takes two to make or break a friendship. Response to incidents is everything.

My old friend from high school, the one who passed away, left me a note in my senior annual that said our relationship was "on thin ice" at the time she wrote. I do not remember issues between us. I only recall good times and adventures we shared, some of which were probably not the best idea at the time, but we were young and it was part of growing up in the 1970s. She also signed the entry in my annual as "Toots" and I never knew why, because not once did I call her that. Then I graduated high school and she was a year younger than I, and so we naturally grew apart.

I prefer it when relationships end on a good note. A general growing apart is acceptable because people change; the things we need from one another may change. No one person can be everything to someone, and people needs friends of all kinds in order to live a nice rounded life.

Part of what we've all been missing during this pandemic is the nice rounded life we had before, where we said "Hi" to the checkout clerk who wasn't a friend but who was friendly, or to the ladies in the book club that you haven't seen in over a year, with whom you are friendly but not exactly close friends, or anyone else for that matter because I've been stuck in my house basically since November 22, 2019, when my husband had his ankle surgery and then we went straight from that to a pandemic.

These are melancholy thoughts, I think. The pandemic has made me a little crazy, along with everyone else. 

On Milk and Cows

My brother, who is a Republican, posted this on Facebook:

COWS DON’T GIVE MILK

A peasant used to say to his children when they were young: —When you all  reach the age of  12  I will tell you the secret of life. One day when the oldest turned 12, he anxiously asked his father what was the secret of life. The father replied that he was going to tell him, but that he should not reveal it to his brothers. 

—The secret of life is this: The cow does not give milk. "What are you saying?" Asked the boy incredulously. —As you hear it, son: The cow does not give milk, you have to milk it. You have to get up at 4 in the morning, go to the field, walk through the corral full of manure, tie the tail, hobble the legs of the cow, sit on the stool, place the bucket and do the work your self.

That is the secret of life, the cow does not give milk. You milk her or you don't get milk. There is this  generation that thinks that cows GIVE milk. That things are automatic and free: their mentality is that if " I wish, I ask..... I obtain." 

" They have been accustomed to get  what ever they want the easy way...But  No, life is not a matter of wishing, asking and obtaining. The things that one receives are the effort of what one does. Happiness is the result of effort. Lack of effort creates frustration. 

So, remember to share with your children, from a young age, the secret of life. So they don't grow up with the mentality that the government, their parents, or their cute little faces is going to give them everything they need in life.

Remember 👇👇

 "Cows don't give milk. You have to work for it"

This is, of course, the Republican version of not having government oversight and in particular not having a social safety net for those who fall through the cracks of society.

Let's examine this little morality tale.

First, the farmer is a peasant. In other words, the hard worker is poor. He may milk that cow until, well, the cows come home, but he's still a poor peasant.

The moral is that the farmer must take the milk from the cow. The cow does not freely give milk.

The farmer must also grow the crops to feed the cow, give it shelter, and keep it happy with a occasional scratch between the ears, because happier cows give more milk.

Which is to say, a happier populace would give more to society. If the farmer (peasant) gives the cow all of these things, then the farmer gets milk.

This is why people are poor. Because they work and work and only get a little bit of milk.

There are always two sides to these things. Let's not forget how hard the peasant is working for this tiny bit of milk.

Leaving out a lot of background to a little fairy tale might make for a good Facebook post, but honestly, all it is doing is keeping the impoverished down. It's hard to climb up by your bootstraps when you don't have any boots because you're so busy trying to get a little bit of milk from a cow you don't have time to go buy shoes.

What a Democrat does is come along and offer to go buy the guy a pair of boots.

A Republican just tells him to work harder for a little more milk.

Just Say No

The prompt for today is to make a list of things you would like to say no to.

I would like to say no to free market capitalism. I think it is bad. It allows the strong to prey upon the weak, and it has demolished the middle class. We need regulations and oversight to protect one another from those who would be predators. They just found lead in baby food, for heavens sake. We have a whole generation of kids with lead in their heads. What will they be like in 20 years? Things need to be checked, regulated, and watched to ensure half the population doesn't die from e-coli in lettuce or that children aren't smashed in cribs, or that cars just die on the highway, causing horrific crashes. That is what regulations should do. Protect people. That includes regulating costs. For example, we pay more for our prescriptions than any other country in the world. Why is this allowed? Free market bullsh*t, that's why.

I would like to say no to the word "should." As in, I should get up off my butt and do this or that. I should have been, or should be, doing this or that, or be this or that. I should be better, smarter, stronger, healthier, happier, prettier, etc. etc. No, I shouldn't. I yam who I yam.

Say no to worrying. I worry over everything. Money, health, friends, family, this or that. I can worry over whether or not an asteroid is going to hit the planet. No to worries!

Let's also say no to organized religion. I know that will offend pert near everyone, but religion makes the whack-a-doodles even more whacky. It also perpetuates the patriarchy by putting men above women, and helps to create this sense of "other" that has festered and become a big pile of pus in the landscape of America. If people need to believe in something greater than themselves, that's their right, but they don't have the right to foist it upon me or anyone else. If everyone would keep this stuff to themselves and mind their own business, things would be better. I worship how I want, and I don't particularly care what people think. Nobody actually knows my "religion" because I've never spelled it out. At least, not that I can remember.

Additionally, let's say no to fascism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, oligarchies, kleptocracies, and monarchies. (Say yes to looking those words up, even if one thinks one knows what they mean.)

Let's say no to the Electoral College.

Let's say no to children going hungry - to anybody going hungry - and to a minimum wage that's out of step with the times, to a world without a social safety net, and to plain ol' meanness.