The disconnect is real

In the midst of a partial government shut down  putting cold chills through many people,today is 50o and bright sunshine. If one didn’t hear any news or talk to anyone it would seem a beautiful, magical world.

Unfortunately I did read USA Today and heard NBC nightly news. I know that parks are being cleaned by volunteers on their dime,federal employees who are furloughed are worrying about how to go without paychecks while others forced to work are not showing up. 45 simply says they will work it out..as if late fees and utility disconnects are ok. My heart aches for the many who are trying to keep all the plates spinning and knowing it will not work. As was pointed out, this new year resets the deductibles on health insurance so this is the most expensive time to have health issues.

While the workers are greatly impacted,immigration courts are closed, NTSB is hobbled,  TSA screening is taking a hit, research is at a standstill, food safety cut,prisons that were understaffed are now massively understaffed. I felt a chill when I read nurses in prisons are now being pressed to cover for guards. when I investigated Wexford and found their prison nurses were forced to work double shifts routinely,that frightened me, but a tired nurse being forced to do a job she is neither prepared for or likely has the temperment for terrifies me.

This whole mess comes about because one uneducated,insulated,vulgar man screams he is making the country safer with concrete and steel bars. Look how safe his temper tantrum  is making the country. As a mother, I know how to give him what he wants and save the country: put him in a prison cell in the black site at Terre Haute where the wall is concrete and the door is steel.Then the 325million of us will be safe.

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Enough!

Words have meaning and actions speak louder than words. I want to yell this into the White House and bang on the door. Except I physically can’t right now, so I am seeking all the different ways to be heard.

#45, You are the President, you are responsible, the buck stops with you… full stop. You said you would be responsible for the shutdown and now you are blaming others. It doesn’t work that way. Every family that winds up homeless or ill because of your temper tantrum is on you. Every child that is sick or dies on the border because of your abusive handling of asylum seekers is on you. The mental anguish of parents and children crying for each other is your responsibility and since I know how long that pain lasts I wish it to last for you 5 times longer.

Well learned people, not you, have come up with humane, efficient ways to deal with immigration issues and NONE of them involve the primitive use of a wall. Sending troops to the border over holidays is abusive of them and their families not to mention incredible waste of funds.

Do NOT even think of whinging about being alone in the White House! You clearly do not know what responsibility and service are about and if you had not wasted so much money on useless, self aggrandizing campaigning we could have used more money to deal with increasing infant and maternal morbidity and mortality. Then you complain?? If you weren’t such a dolt I would stick you in a newborn nursery of addicted crying babies to learn what compassion is, see pain and vulnerability and put someone else’s needs ahead of your own.

#45 wanted to make history, he has.  The worst example of leader in free world, the worst caretaker of the American people, the most ignorant ,lying-est, most rude,  divisive unprincipaled, ugliest  and most likely to drive women to be lesbians. I really can not stand him any longer as stress makes chronic illness worse so it is accurate to say he makes me sick.

Despite Myositis , I will dance in the streets as soon as he is removed and imprisoned. I so can’t wait til we ,the people, can get back some measure of domestic tranquility and rights to pursuit of happiness. Please God , make it so in 2019!

 

Biggest changes start with one word

Twenty years ago today at 5PM I was asked a question that was yes or no. It changed my life and caused immense pain and expense.  I thought I knew what I was getting into and would be supported.

Forty years ago I was asked my party affiliation, simply answer Republican or Democrat. I knew that I stood with law, order, integrity,environmental protection, education, health and I was raised in IL, the Land of Lincoln. Again, I thought I knew what I was getting into.

Ultimately, both these choices showed me the absolute worst of  machinations and were a royal pain.  How I wish I had said the opposite and enjoyed a much easier life and been able to make a more positive impact instead of wasting so much effort on people who never should have been in my life.

 

The little deaths

Watching the magnificent funeral for Bush 41 is both inspiring and humbling. Several readings talking of life beyond death have struck a peculiar chord with me.

I am thinking about the many little deaths… miscarriages, betrayal of mate, injustices of all measures, loss of home, loss of health.  Each of these are major events at the moment and our worth is how we live after them. None of us will hear our own obituary or know the hour of the big death so we have to struggle on to live as if each our days matters, no matter how badly they play out.

Today, in the paper ,many people younger than I ,have their obituaries printed.  Sadness for their families, curiosity about what claimed them so young and did they press to live life or figure they didn’t matter. contrasts so sharply to the life of 41 whose life unspooled to the very end in grace and love.

The last few years have been a slow death for me, losing abilities and energy and re-prioritizing daily what will be done. From knowing errands and writing would be done before work to choosing the highest needs of the animals and myself to ultimately being glad if I shower, eat and get dressed in the same day. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in challenging the law for right to family, foster care reform to family support for adopted kids, better working conditions for truckers enforced by law not whimsy, improving Danville and restoring this house. It simply means I have experienced a faltering of health that after many months of struggles to find/get appointments is now looking like a death of health at the hands of the disinterested. All the other little deaths were hard,really hard but health made persistence easier than today.

So I commission everyone reading this who is to grieve the little deaths, comfort those who are grieving, cherish your strength to whatever level you have and throw your weight into improving what is in front of you.

Remembering

Today Bush 41 and Nelson Mandela are being remembered and lauded for the impact they have made on so many people. The most astounding thing is they  never thought they were too good, too important to relate to people and do more.

Bush 41 could have grown to be a royal prick like Trump but he was willing to join the military and suffer the terror of war and being shot down over the ocean. He struggled to stay in integrity and service to family and country. It was done day by day,never knowing what the end result would be.

Mandela spoke his truth and endured decades of imprisonment and abuse. How could he endure that uncertainty and agony without rancor? How could he go on to lead the country that had imprisoned him without revenge?

Just taking it day by day. That was the key that sounds so easy … For everyone struggling through darkness, pain, poverty, injustice, I say  Hang on a little longer .Remember to be gentle, helpful as you stand in integrity.  Live today as if it matters forever because it does.

I am overwhelmed

National news is best taken through the late night comedians lately, for when I watch the national news from the newscasters chest pain and panic lasts for hours. When Stephen Colbert tells it shaking his head and swigging his drink , admitting his distress I can breathe deeply and know that I am not alone.

Barbed wire, tear gas, family separation, lying, hideous red Christmas trees, bullying, threats, double standards, oppression of free speech… it is all too much.  Too much I don’t support and want to stop. Too much pain set on display as if like those hideous trees , it should be normalized along with bad grammar and ignorance.

While Inclusion Body Myositis will not go away and frustration with that alone has seen me spinning alpaca fleece into yarn then plied,knitted into a warm shawl, this last month is beyond my ability to sublimate. I will not ignore this mess or try to repress it by putting up the Christmas tree and smile remembering the joy of Christmas past while mothers and children around the world are starving without even the shelter of a stable.  Displaced people are longing for home if only peace were there, imprisoned Americans long for true justice and community while children are processed and destroyed by money hungry incompetents at CPS in every state.  While the courts maintain that only those with legal standing, the very crushed among us can push issues to the courts … and the abuse continues going straight to the mitochondria of the cells.

What do I do next? What do we do next?

A person is a person no matter how small

Horton knew it.

That thought seems to be lacking in current time. From refugees in many corners of the world running for food, peace, freedom  of speech to domestic struggles to vote, have a home, get health care, be female and now being told to not worry about soldiers on deployment away from families  over the holiday. Every person does so matter!!!

From the newborn urged to take a second breath, the parents struggling with crisis on crisis, the children with physical and mental health issues, the young adult trying to find their way on to the older adult struggling with enigmatic disease… each one matters and has value no matter their color or bank account.  I have met so many people in 61 years. Seeing just a slice of their life, passions, talents and then they are gone from my life but knowing there was so very much more to them. Survivors all, surviving cancer, Khmer Rhouge, Viet Cong, pulmonary embolism, foster care, poverty,  illness and abuse, divorce, deaths to become caring people  in my life for a moment. In retrospect I wish I had spent a bit longer, listened more closely perhaps even taken notes.

Jessica Lynn died at 20 days long ago of a cardiac defect that was ignored til she melted from her petite 5 lbs birthweight to less than 4 lbs. I gave her her first bath and pressed for better care despite being only a student nurse and her parents being migrant workers. She drove me to learn more each day, speak up when all I really had was a feeling and challenge to be proven wrong which saved several lives.

Joey wasn’t supposed to live, born 1lb 15 oz at a time when that was a non viable birthweight but he grabbed my finger and I step past the man saying let him die and called  the neonatologist. Over the next 112 days I  had to stop loving him to life so his 16 yr old mother could be his mom, it hurt for months til she brought him back for me to see thanking me for the love and seeing him nuzzle her neck.

Several points in my life I have met survivors of Asian wars, educated, talented, resilient, traumatized and seeking joy and peace. I have loved and learned from each and every one and felt inadequate to smooth their way.

Whether a life blazes brightly as a comet or  is dull and solid as a brick or is shattered and reconfigured as a stained glass window there is a purpose, value which exists whether you are aware enough to see it or not.

 

For a minute

Just for a minute. Look at the light playing through the leaves, speckled and close to the ground,. It doesn’t matter what I did to get this shot, it doesn’t matter what happened the next day. For this minute the light is playing through the late fall leaves and there is beauty in my day. I hope it made you feel good too.

Yard signs

I really never noticed them until moving to Danville where a neighbor puts signs in her yard all the time, Easter, elections… she always has something to say. But then she is lonely and I figured it is conversation starter with everyone as was when I got too close.

This year there is controversy about full time mayor or part time mayor and for once I felt strongly enough to allow a sign in my yard. Unlike my neighbor I don’t pounce on people to defend the position verbally, the sign says it all. But slowly there have been signs opposing me, then supporting and opposing all up and down the street. Like cartoon bubbles frozen in the air and fallen to the ground our views are out there.

This year has been an arduous year of White House take backs, walk backs, denials to the embarrassment of every literate, thinking person in this country. The yard sign was the latest personal statement.  The van has a “Got integrity?” and “You had the power all along, My dear”  bumper stickers, not to bash my opinions in someone’s face but to start a thought process that with clarified thoughts we can move forward. I really wish for the peacefulness when yardsigns were all there was to ignore and the consequences of words wasn’t so dear.

Was just watching old Law and Order

A character said if you lied back then , how can we believe anything you say now?

In the current swirl of lies and abuse that line written for a fictitious scene on a TV show could be said once an hour and be spot on. Seems the flies drawn to the stench of rot at the head of the current government buzz from one “lapse of ethics” to another felony and for good measure flirt with treason.

I don’t believe these people represent most of the country, they certainly don’t show my values. I want to yell, march, demand an end to all this… if only I had the energy and stamina of a couple years ago.

That TV show was long before the voter hacking scandal, when you could believe your voting voice mattered. I will vote, hoping it really is fair and will make a change with the same optimism I plant seeds in the spring. Optimism. May it not be just in old TV shows.