Let's Go Fly a Kite

 Let’s go Fly a Kite

“When you send it flying up there, all at once you’re lighter than air…” 

--Richard and Robert Sherman 

My daughter and I watched Mary Poppins a couple of nights ago. That was after we watched “Saving Mr. Banks,” how Walt Disney persuaded P.L. Travis the author of Mary Poppins to allow him to make the movie.

Neglected kids had a magical nanny come to take them on outings, play games, never be cross or cruel, never give them castor oil or gruel and never smell of barley water…. They got to laugh on the ceiling, jump in and out of chalk drawings, and Mary Poppins, instead of allowing Mr. Banks to fire her, tricks him into taking this children, Jane and Michael, on an outing to the bank where he works.  The father, George Banks, gives Michael, his son, a tuppence to start a bank account.

On the walk to the Bank, Michael sees the old Bird Lady at the Cathedral and wants to spend his tuppence to feed the birds as the old Bird Woman pleads but is dragged along reluctantly to the bank.

The bank wants the money, the tuppence. They want it enough to grab it from the boy’s hand. In the tussle, noise and confusion there is a run on the bank.  

Any reference here to us?

The movie was about saving Mr. Banks, about personal crisis and redemption. It takes Travis’ tragic childhood and writes a happy ending to it.

 The healing value of Art.

When you don’t know what to say, say a nonsense word like  "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

Take a sad story and write a happy ending.

And go fly a kite.

 

"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,”

Jo

 

I took my book Your Story Matters off my blogs and decommissioned it. That is removed it from Amazon. It will come out as a new version.

 

 

However, you can read Chapter 57 here:

Art is Anything You Can Get Away With*

*Andy Walhol

Although I look back and see the beautiful scenes of my life, and I was an obedient child, I never gave my folks any problems that I know of, yet I carried a lingering sadness. And I would come home from school every day with a headache. My body was telling me something.

 

One day, later on—after I was married, I said, "The headaches are gone."

 

I could say I have a problem with low blood sugar, and I know that all through high school, I would leave the house with little on my stomach and probably little protein. At around twelve, when I was about to have my tonsils removed, they found I was anemic. 

 

Yes, they removed tonsils in those days—I remember waking up with a throat that felt ripped, and I thought the nurse who kept telling me not to roll over on my back was my mother. My mother was there, though. And that sage doctor and parent’s ploy trying to cover the hurt with ice cream is a crock of bull. 

 

By taking away my tonsils, they took away my defense mechanism, for after that, I got strep throat and had to guard against getting it every winter.

 

But back to the headaches. How much was physical, and how much was psychological? 

 

We can paint rosy pictures of our lives, remembering the good times and the highlights, or we can dig deeper and say, "What was bothering a child that she would have a headache every day?"

 

I didn't dwell on things. I put my love on the animals. I did wonder if my father ever thought of me. Grandma was gone. Tiny was gone. It appeared as though that didn't matter.

 

It mattered.

 

Mike molested me.

 

It mattered. 

 

Sometimes, it is as simple as that. Acknowledging that it mattered. 

 

Your Story Matters.

 

We lived in the town of The Dalles for about a year and a half, and I remember that as good. I played with the neighbor kids and the little boy next door and went fishing in Mill Creek, near our house. 

 

The day I caught a two-inch fish and ran home all excited, I stopped short when I found my Aunt Marie from Illinois there. Dear Marie. I loved her. Mom was a bit embarrassed for Marie to see that I was such a tomboy, which surprised me, for Mom was not a girly girl. Tomboy isn’t a word we use anymore. But then there was an issue with a girl wanting to do what I wanted. I wanted to ride bikes, play with toy cars in the dirt with the boys, and read comic books. But then, didn't everybody? 

 

I loved being a tomboy. But did it bother me?

 

Yes.

 

Within that first year after leaving Illinois, we got the dog mom promised. Somebody shot it while he was still an adolescent pup because it reared up on his rabbit hutch. I was home and off my feet because I had gotten stitches in my ankle from a teeter totter swinging into my ankle as I was on the swing. This was a collision on a swing set in someone’s back yard.  The kids from the neighborhood ran to tell me that Mike had hit the dog in the head with a hammer to put it out of its misery. 

 

I know Mike did what he thought was right because he didn't harm the animals.

 

It was a year or so later that I got Silver. 

 

I became friends with a little girl from a Catholic school whose parents were both doctors. A woman doctor of her age was rare as she was quite a bit older than my mother. But I thought those doctors must be a bit cuckoo, for their son, younger than the girl, had ulcers. Mrs. Doctor wanted her kids to have the same birthday, so she had a cesarean section with her son. And I wondered why both parents made such a fuss if one of their kids was injured in the slightest way. 

 

They weren't Catholic but thought the Catholic school was the best in town, and thus sent their kids there.

 

My mother got a job cleaning Mrs. Doctor’s house. Once, they took us to an island for summer vacation. I often went home with the girl after school—we were both in the second or third grade. When they served a meal, they used more than one fork. However, often, when I went home with the girl, her mother would fuss at her to practice the piano. I loved piano music, but I thought if that's the way it is, I'm not taking piano lessons.

 

Later in life, I met the girl at a high school reunion. The Catholic kids transferred to The Dalles High when they reached high school age, but we had not seen each other since the fourth grade, and in high school, we hardly knew each other existed. Had she not introduced herself, I wouldn't have recognized her—a Burnette had become a blond-that’s common, but her entire countenance had changed. The last I heard she lives on a Hog farm. Fascinating. Who would have thought? And she seems to be someone I would like to get to know.

 

When I was in the fourth grade, we moved from the town to a more rural area called Chenowith. I rode the bus to Catholic school for a year. There are nearly always some comments, however small, against the new, the strange, the different, and there I was a Catholic in a pack of Protestants.

 

I’m sure the same would happen the other way around.

 

After the fourth grade, I joined the Chenowith public school and soon joined the Protestant church.

 

I was an only child, which was okay; I like time alone. And I like having friends. And I had Silver.

 

Once we joined the Protestant church, it occupied many hours each week. There was church service on Sunday mornings and youth meetings at night. I joined the choir, and we had a Wednesday night choir practice. I met my first boyfriend at church and my future husband there. 

 

Changing churches felt much like moving from Horace Mann to a Catholic School. I felt as out of place in Sunday School as I did in Catholic school. I didn’t know the books of the Bible and couldn’t recite verses as the other kids did. Odd, that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, to quote my mother, but it shows how we want to fit in and feel left out when others are more advanced in some subject.

 

I went to church camps and sat at a camp meeting, doubting that there was a God. And I wondered about all the "true believers" and how believing seemed so easy for them. I couldn’t mix the vengeful God of the Old Testament with the loving God of the new, and why did people attempt to mesh the two? Jesus clearly stated that he came to put aside the law.  I thought those people never doubted. I wondered what happened to the miracles.  And why couldn’t I be as sure as the true believers appeared to be?

 

I saw Billy Graham in a tent meeting once when I was Catholic and thought he was full of it. Later, as a Protestant, I saw him again. At that time, I thought he was arrogant because he said he knew he was going to heaven. I'm sorry, Mr. Graham. I believe you were a nice man. I just couldn't stomach some of the religious aspects. 

 

But I set off to find God and found that he/she lives in all of us. How we express that concept is up to us. Finding people with whom you can agree, discuss, and have a great relationship is fine and dandy; if not, travel your own road.

 

Almost everyone could go over their childhood, and each would have different experiences but with similar wonderings, longings, disappointments, and questions. We were, after all, babes in the woods. Looking back, I can see why so many feel different or left out, as though they don’t fit. I was a country girl in a sea of professional people’s daughters. Those girls shopped at Williams Store, the upscale one, while we shopped at Penny’s. And I could tell the difference. Isn’t it strange that that matters?

 

A great number of people now take antidepressants—like one-third of the American population. Why?

 

We have friends, a couple, who used to work at an Elder Facility. They told us that the same cliques occur there as they did in high school. That reminds me of a refrain I often heard at The World Healing Center, “If you don’t work on yourself, as you get older, you get worse.”

 

We have yet to learn that a smorgasbord of life is laid out for us, and we must choose what we want on our plate. We think something on the smorgasbord is going to jump onto our plates, when in truth, we must pick it up and place it there. Leave that liver, which I can’t abide, for someone else.

 

How can I say you are good enough? How can I tell people they aren't broken and need to be fixed? 

 

Experiences come and go; happiness comes and goes. We search for meaning, fulfillment, and our place in the world.

 

You might have noticed that I do not have much written about how to change your life or how to become a Baddass. (read Jen Sincero’s book, You are a Badda**) 

 

I want to offer a tease to say, yep, the world is out there for you to grab. Take a chance. It’s possible. Go find a way. 

 

Once you declare that you want to achieve something, believe it’s yours, and take action to get it, you will be amazed at how the universe fills in the blanks. God, the great Spirit, the Force, the Source, the Universe, you name it, has your back. 

 

But there’s a glitch. You don’t just sit on the couch, yawn, and wait for magic to drop. You need to ask for what you want, believe it is possible, and start walking, driving, rowing, flying, whatever moves you.

 

 

Andy Warhol said, "Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art."

It is Today. It is not Yesterday. It is not Tomorrow. It is Today.

 

I want something uplifting.

I want my life back!

This morning, I made a conscious choice NOT to read anything political. I didn’t read the “experts” who popped up in my email box. I didn’t get caught by any Google images or headlines with dire warnings. I didn’t go to any of the “expert’s” sites I’ve been reading. And I never watch regular television news.

As I searched the Internet for uplifting sites, a quote from Jane Roberts popped up as an image.

“Suffering is not good for the soul unless it teaches you to stop suffering.”

I woke up this morning from a nightmare—which I rarely have—grateful the dream wasn’t real.

If you’ve been reading me, you will know I’ve been in grief over the election and how I feel about our country. I felt, and still feel, that our freedoms are, one after the other, being dragged from us.

Then I read that suffering is not good for the soul unless it teaches you to stop suffering.”

Teach me.

I have no magic wand. I have no brilliant advice to bestow.  I have learned that you do not change anyone’s opinion or belief by arguing. It just makes them dig in deeper. They have a principle to uphold, and so do I.

However, we can inch toward the light.

Our souls are good, but we have been neglecting nourishing them, at least I have.

Last night, from the documentary The Mindwashing of My Dad, I learned how Nixon turned a blue US into a red one. A media mogul groomed him to think that Americans were dumb, lazy, and wanted to be fed. From Nixon, we learned that the only thing that trickled down from the Trickle-Down Theory was meanness.

WHO ARE WE?

Actually, we are people who want TO TRUST.

We want to learn THE TRUTH.  

Once, we looked to Newspapers, columnists, and journalists to bring us the news. We can’t all go out into the world and collect it. We have lives to live, families to feed, work to do, creativity to express and enjoy, so we trusted the collectors to bring it to us.

We paid them to do their job.

We trusted that they had reliable sources, that they were ethical, and that truth in reporting was not only morally essential, but the law.

That morphed into television- a great potential to bring us together, give us information, and tell us how the world was doing. However, it can be bought like most everything else. It became a fight for control and attention. We didn’t think it was our job to legislate morality. Foolish us.

We have been blatantly lied to, fooled, bought, or wrestled by nefarious means into a corner. And this wrestling has been skillfully orchestrated—so much so that people don’t trust anything. We can be manipulated. Take a good magician using the shell game: They can remove the ball from under the cup without us even seeing it. I once heard a magician say that even magicians can be fooled.

We aren’t lazy people. We are confused people. We’re tired.

Keep the people stirred up, and they are controllable. Give somebody the military, and we are sitting ducks.

WHO ARE WE?

WE ARE THE PEOPLE who once stood behind the principle that we are a GOVERNMENT FOR THE PEOPLE AND BY THE PEOPLE.

Once, we believed that “our problems were caused by man; therefore, they can be solved by man.” (Or women or humankind.) Then we got the idea that it wasn’t happening fast enough and that we ought to force it.

The mystical part of who we are is bleeding.

I searched Oprah and found that the real purpose of her show was to teach responsibility. That the choices we make every day have to do with what we receive.  She has paid attention to the soul since beginning of her television appearance. At first, she was afraid television wasn’t ready for it, and it wasn’t. Now she isn't afraid to mention the Soul--as in Soul Sunday, and her interviews. Many of us believe our internal Knowingness can lead the way.

Some points I learned or were reminded of this morning are:

• Don’t try to convince anyone of anything.

(It leads to anger and despair with little chance of improvement.)

• Do my positive thoughts or negative ones affect the situation?

(You are in the gap from where you are to where you want to be. That is often the case)

• Get an idea that rings your soul.
• Find something you can focus on and allow well-being, like the pitty-pat of rain on the roof, to pour down on you.

It's Tuesday, Monday Remembered and Chapter 55

 I wrote this post last night on Word and forgot that I didn’t post it until this morning. —See how out of it I am?

So, back to Monday: By the time I posted twice on Substack today, SubstackJoyceDavis, it was 4 o’clock. I was starving, as I had only coffee, toast with peanut butter and apricot jam for breakfast.

I planned to go to Fred Meyer grocery, a distance from our house, however it is close by Mami’s Burrito who sells super burritos. A match made in heaven. I had a burrito the size of my lower arm--pork meat, rice, beans, veggies plus guacamole and chips, and their super-duper green salsa to spice it up. The open-faced, friendly young Mexican fellow who served me and I joked a bit about the pouring rain. I had an affinity with him, of course not knowing if he was legal, not legal, had a green card or was born here. I didn’t care. He seemed sweet. I thanked him, and as I was leaving, he said I had “good energy” which surprised me considering before that encounter I felt lower than a snake’s belly.

With Sweetpea sleeping beside me and the heater jacked up to womb temperature, I ate my burritos with a fork, huge as they are, left the holder tortilla, was stuffed, warm and sat dumb for the next hour about what I had read today. 

Trump confirms plan to declare national emergency, use military for mass deportations.

Deport “millions,” he said.

“In the early hours of Monday morning “reports” on Truth Social suggested Trump’s administration was “prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion.”

“TRUE!!!” Trump wrote in response.

Doesn’t that scare you?

I didn’t know we had a “National Emergency” with Immigrants.

I thought about the kid who just served me. Was he at risk?

I thought of all the Immigrant workers who tend our farms, pick our fruit, tend our lawns, start business and restaurants, raise their families, get jobs. We had a young man in San Diego who mowed our lawn every Tuesday. He would be sent back to Mexico on occasion, but every week someone of his family showed up and mowed the lawn. Then he would be back mowing again. I could depend on him.

That was 40 years ago. I fear what would happen to him now.

What is it with the deportation of Immigrants? Am I focusing on the innocents, and there are rapists and insane people Immigrants out there as T says?

Is this ethnic cleansing? No wonder the Statue of Liberty is hanging her head. Did you know there are broken shackles as part of the statue carved at her feet?

Are we a nation of bigoted prejudiced people?  I thought we were over that.

Dumb me.

And RFK Jr. wants to defund infectious disease control and research.

No wonder I couldn’t remember what I wanted to write today.

It appears that people are running on emotions and dropped their brains on the sidewalk. They want T to fix everything. They want a Messiah.

Be careful as you walk down the sidewalk, folks, or you’ll slip on a brain.

Before this present time, I was never very political. Elections were like an athletic event. You won or lost. You felt bad if you lost, but it wasn’t so serious. Now I feel that we ought to speak up. Like leave Transgender people alone. They are 1% of the population. Focus on Global Warming—that affects all of us.

(Oh, I forgot, Global Warming doesn’t have the emotional impact that transgender does. Sure, “Send your boy to school in the morning and he comes home a girl,” To quote someone when he was running for office.)

Many don’t believe in Global Warming anyway. Boy howdy, we had severe winters when I was a kid. Now they are like spring. Species are dying because the ocean is warming.

I don’t know if Global Warming is a naturally occurring event or how much we are contributing to it, but I know we are affecting the environment and we ought to give it huge attention.

The epic poem Gilgamesh is the oldest poem known to man. It is the story of a selfish king trying to achieve immortality, and his “Noble savage,” Enkidu. Gilgamesh angers the gods because he cuts down the ceder trees. Enkidu shows more respect for the gods for he knows that The Land of Cedars is not only a place representing nature and the wild, but also a place holy to a god. (Small g’s on purpose.)

T. claims to be a Christian—I wonder if he has ever read the verse in the Christian Bible that says: “And the King shall answer and say unto them, ‘Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.’” (“The King,” so say Christian scholars, is Jesus.)

Tonight, an acquaintance told me not to worry. It wasn’t worth getting upset about.

Really?!!

End of rant.

Thanks for sticking with me.

 

 

Are you still reading "Your Story Matters" to go there click HERE.

Chapters are also linked to the menu at the top of this page. It’s just a separate page on this blog.

Motive and Opportunity

I’m sitting in the car waiting for my grandson.  Moments ago, I read a post by Grant Faulkner, who in 2016 was the Executive Director at National Novel Writing Month.

“I’ve been remembering the 2016 election this week,” he wrote.

Normally, he said, November draws thousands of writers; however, after Trump’s election in 2016, writers’ stories literally collapsed.

It wasn’t just the NaNoWriMo writers. (Writers who commit to write 50,000 words for a novel in 30 days.) Many of his friends and professional writers stopped writing.

They were traumatized.

Faulkner said before that November, he didn’t believe in writer’s block, but then he saw that writing is difficult and sometimes impossible for a battered brain.

Trauma and depression can turn off the spigot of creativity.

 

“It’s easy to think that our art is trivial when it’s up against such a menacing and malevolent block of history as we’re living through, but the opposite is actually true: our art isn’t trivial; it’s what can deliver us.”

 

Faulkner said that James Baldwin (Go Tell it on the Mountain 1953, Notes of a Native Son, 1955) expressed the importance of the role of the artist better than he could:

 

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive.”

 

Howard Zinn’s quote, “An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian,” provided Faulkner with hope because we need to see that “compassion, sacrifice, courage, and kindness” are a part of every era.

 

Don’t let them destroy your connection to life and the joy of living. Appreciate the world we live in and the fantastic beauty surrounding us.

I look up from behind the steering wheel and notice that the great flock of Canadian Geese I admired before settling into this page have dwindled to about 25.

The 25 are scattered about the grass, their white breasts glowing like snow patches left after the bulk of snow has been absorbed into the ground. Some are preening, and occasionally, one—male or female, I can’t tell the difference –will spread their wings in a morning wake-up stretch, revealing dark feathers beneath.

(Like some of us, some geese are slower to wake up or are simply basking in the glory of the day before getting to work.)

The day is overcast. As am I.

As I reflect, I wonder how many of us who lived through the Second World War are alive today. Do they despair that the U.S., the land of the free, the home of the brave, has opened its doors to Tyranny?

 I don’t know.

 

Monty Python:

“Oh, king, eh? Very nice. And how’d you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers. By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society.”

--Dennis (Michael Palin)

 

I went to sleep last night more hopeful than days earlier. I wondered if somebody had thrown a monkey wrench in our electoral process.

Could it be that the numbers are off? Could more than 50% of the voting population see the danger of what just happened with the Presidential election?

Motive and Opportunity?

Do you have questions regarding the outcome of the election??

Oh, I know, Trump got the 270 electoral votes that declared him a winner. Harris conceded. It was over just like that.

The losers were standing around, going, “Huh?”

No one stormed the Capital. No hangman nooses hung from platforms. No one was clubbed to death. Harris promised a peaceful transfer of power. No one was yelling that the election had been stolen from them. No person clutched the white house carpet like a feral cat we were trying to extract from its cage.

That was quick and easy.  Sap, it was over.

But wait!  Were we really that wrong? Did we so believe in the goodness of humanity that we ignored the fact that a man running for the Presidency once kept speeches of Hitler on his bedside table? Did we forget that the President-elect once said he wanted his General to be like Hitler’s Generals?

 

See, people don’t remember WWII.

You might say I’m stupid or ignorant but look at it.

Number one: Trump faces criminal charges which, if elected, he can pardon.

Number Two: One of the wealthiest men in the world, who gave one person per week a million dollars to persuade them to register—no tampering with the election- he didn’t tell them how to vote. This person fired his workers because they went on strike. This person said the “Alpha Males” should run the country.

 “Musk, who has a history of sparring with regulators, also faces government investigations into his companies that could result in more lawsuits or even criminal prosecutions.”—Bloomberg News

“Bloomberg has identified more than half a dozen ongoing legal fights in which Musk is a defendant or a plaintiff, as well as about a dozen others involving his companies.”

Before the election, Elon Musk said, “If Trump doesn’t win, I’m F*****.”

After the election, he made 60 million dollars.

(“Tesla headed for a $2 trillion valuation after Musk’s ‘big bet’ on a Trump win.” Analysts say.") –story by Breck Dumas.

 

Follow the money, say the lawyers.

Motive and Opportunity? ask the courts.

Indeed, we have motive. Do we have opportunity?

I don’t know.

“Elon Musk said his satellite internet venture Starlink now has more than 1,500 active satellites in orbit above Earth.” –story by Kellen Beck

Could any of those satellites interfere with the ballots and their outcome?

Does anyone know?

Does anyone else smell what I smell?

Hey, there are good rats too, my kids had one.

P.S. Dear Readers,

We're getting close to the finish line in posting Chapters. So much has happened since we began this journey together. Probably if I wrote this book now it would be different, but that's the way life works. We're here now, and the next instant there is a new NOW. I see on the last page of this book that I completed in on April 29, 2024. It has 59 Chapters, 55,989 words.

Thank you for all who have read my story where I was also encouraging you to write yours.

To continue reading go to

https://www.wishonwhitehorses.com/p/your-story-matters-living-your-life-in.html

In Times of Trouble the Crème Rises to the Top

 

In times of trouble the crème rises to the top…such as the insights and creativity, from such people as Lucian K. Truscott.

I just read his Substack post:

“This is Our Rosa Parks Moment.” 

Truscott writes:

“Politics is not the only mechanism by which democracy works.”

“Democrats tried and failed to end the Vietnam war in 1972 with their votes for George McGovern and lost. Richard Nixon carried 49 of 50 states and won the popular vote by 18 million votes.

“The protesters at Fort Benning wanted the war to end, but it didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen.

In 1973, the soldiers were brought home, and two years after that, the war ended because we lost it and pulled out of Vietnam militarily for good. It was unrestrained power and idiocy that started the war in Vietnam. It wasn’t the power of the vote in our democracy that ended that war.

It was the hundreds of thousands of protesters just like those at Fort Benning who did it.”

Peter Greaves commented on Truscott’s post. The president-elect was only elected by 32% of those eligible to vote. He was allowed to be elected by 38% of eligible voters who chose not to cast a ballot.

He does not have a mandate.

Nine days before Election Day, Donald Trump delivered his closing argument at a Madison Square Garden rally that drew comparisons to a 1939 pro-Nazi rally in the same arena and characterized by similar anti-democratic themes: demonization of immigrants and political enemies, invocation of strongman leadership, threats of violent retribution, denunciations of the press.  

Enough Americans bought it to elect him.

We must conclude that most voters want what Trump is offering.

Or it could be that they have been gaslighted into believing his lies.

I know people are angry and want to strike out—we’ve been stirred up for the last nine years—people are on tenterhooks. Don’t you know, folks, it was planned that way?

From Paul Rosenberg:

“Like the conman in the original film “Gaslight,” Trump spun elaborate fictions, claiming that Obama had come out of nowhere, demanding to see his college transcripts and inventing a team of investigators sent to Hawaii (who did not exist). That got the anti-Obama base fired up, while presenting a pseudo-serious facade to the broader public. This is how he gaslights routinely in politics, rarely engaging directly with the right-wing mythologies he taps into, but freely improvising his own fantasy extensions.  

In this election, Trump relied on five key themes of gaslighting in various different ways, all of them adding up to an overarching sixth theme: Democrats are the real threat to American democracy, and Donald Trump is its savior. 

“It is the upside-down logic used in abusive relationships.

“Gaslighters may lie all the time, but when the chips are down, they gaslight.”

For example, “The hate you saw was really love, and if you can’t see that, you’re the hateful one.”

(Google— “How Donald Trump Gaslit America,” by Paul Rosenberg.)

 

Wow, that President elect isn’t stupid, he is devious.

Or, could it be that the idea that a woman of color could possibly become President is so repugnant to many that they would elect a rapist, misogynist, amoral man who cannot even take pleasure in winning but must still rail at the Democrats?

Doesn’t he know that an athletic event (since he likes fighting so much—as displayed on the Joe Rogan show) has two sides?

(The fighting they were so enamored with is extreme fighting where they kick to break their opponent’s legs, and sometimes the fighters carry a razor blade to cut themselves to make their injuries seem worse.)

If you win, you celebrate, but you do not want to annihilate your opponent, they were there so you could win.

Didn’t your coach teach you anything about sportsmanship?

The country elected a man by a democratic voting system—even Latino men whom he has threatened to deport voted for him. I’m boggled.  

I’m ashamed. When hate opens the door it gives other haters permission to be their worst. Some far-right men have taunted social media women, “Your body, my choice.”

That tells me the abortion ban is not about saving babies. (Nobody wants to kill a baby.) It’s about sticking it to women. It’s about control.

I always wondered when I saw how maligned an unwed mother was, how she was hidden, set off, made ashamed, and ridiculed. Sometimes, the man just ran off. Then, after the baby was born, “Oh, how cute it is.” Now, it is a person. While it was in the woman, it was a shameful sexual act, a biological blight that made the woman swell up and commit to the act of pushing what feels like a watermelon out of her body. And let’s make sure she did it, and hopefully in pain. (Evidenced by some nuns who facilitated childbirth.) The Bible said a woman was unclean after giving birth and had to spend a certain number of days to cleanse.

Back to the question I posed in an earlier blog—and it is not why Harris lost. Why did Trump win?

“Trump’s voters turned out because they believed him when he stood up there at his rallies and claimed that he would fix all their problems, whatever they were.  For them, it was what passed for leadership, so they followed him.  He won’t fix things, he doesn’t even know what their problems are, and he doesn’t care.  But that doesn’t matter right now.

“What matters for us is that the time for complaining is over.  Here is how my father told me to get over myself: 

“Buck up.  There are things to figure out and work to do.  We have the tools; we’re smart; we can do it.”

—Lucian K Truscott

The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
 
“Before he (the President elect) enters on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:– I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
 
Fourteenth amendment: Section 3 

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Why haven’t we acted on this?

There Has been a Great Disturbance in the Force

Women, we didn't pull off the blue tsunami. 

I don't know why.

And 58% of men looked at the rapist and said, "Hell yeah, That's my man."

I was on the planet when Hitler ran amuck over Europe. I remember the end of World War II when a Taxi driver sped down our street with his victory shirt flapping out the window.

I never thought I would live under a fascist regime.

I pray that will not happen.  

Is the United States an experiment that failed? Are all those liberties we fought so hard for being swept away? 

I went to bed the night of the election feeling that defeat was coming and awakened the following morning to the fact that it had.

 

When I was about ten, our Town of The Dalles, Oregon, had the worst snowstorm we had ever experienced. The Columbia River that flowed past our town had chunks of ice the size of Volkswagen busses. However, it was not snowing the night my Australian Shepherd/Cocker Spaniel dog Silver got sick.

It gave me a window of visibility when I went outside to check on him and saw tracks pressed into about two feet of snow leading down our long driveway.

As I trudged through the snow following his tracks, I feared the worst, that he was wandering away to die. I knew that sometimes dogs do that. I found him, picked him up and carried him home.  When I sat him on the kitchen floor his head was being pulled back, and he collapsed. My mother said, "He'll be dead by morning."

We placed him in the warm living room, and Mom sent me to bed. I prayed for my dog until I fell sleep. When I awakened in the morning, heart in my throat, I gingerly crept into the living room, fearing what I would find.

Silver was in a chair!

However, his hindquarters became paralyzed, and he lay helpless for days that spanned into weeks. My folks kept encouraging me to let them put him to sleep.   

Nope, Nada, No.

I spoon-fed him broth and water and cleaned up after him.  (We gave him castor oil, for he refused to eliminate it in the house.)

He lay helpless until, one day, his tail wagged. Mom and I were jubilant.

Silver recovered!

Silver lived to move to the farm with us, to run with the horse and me, to go camping with us, to protect me, to bond with the baby duck we hatched so that even as adults, they played together. Silver would catch errant chickens and hold them for us until we put them back in their yard. Silver lived to father a pup, that as a grown-up dog, saved a little boy's life.

For the rest of his life, Silvers's legs quivered after a run, and my dad got the message that you don't allow your kid to play with the dog in the house during the daytime, then put him outside at night during winter.

 

Right now, I am grieving like that little ten-year-old waiting through the dark night of the soul for her dog to live. My daughter is in the depths of despair. Almost 50% of us are suffering somehow. (People, support each other.)  Mary Trump, bless her heart, wrote her column "The Good in Us," where she told us over and over what sort of immoral man her uncle was. Few listened.

Mary Trump said that in the Trump family, cruelty was currency, that the man this country voted into the Presidency was a bully as a child, picking on his younger brother constantly.

It didn't matter.

We found out that he routinely visited the Epstine complex where they trafficked and used girls was young as 12 years old.

He assaulted a woman in a dressing room.

It didn't matter.

He grabbed women because he was a celebrity and because he could.

It didn't matter.

He had never read the U.S. Constitution that day he placed one hand on the Bible and the other in the air and responded "yes," to the vow to uphold it. We didn't know then, but we knew before this election.

Some say he wants to abolish that very Constitution, the cornerstone of the land he will again vow to uphold.

It doesn't matter.

He can wish a firing squad on someone, and it doesn't matter.

He can seek revenge on his opponents, and it doesn't matter.

Honor and decency don't matter.

Why didn't it matter?

Some want to diagnose why Kamala Harris lost. Better yet, why did Donald Trump win?

I can offer little hope to you except the belief in the goodness of people, and that they want change and are grasping at straws to get it. They and I see a different picture.

I hope it isn't as dire as it appears to me right now. Clearly, many people don't think so. Nobody in their right mind would vote themselves into a tyrant's grasp. Many would put down women and like to return to 1770s where once T. said he liked because they could deport Immigrants. Is that where he would place us to "Make America Great Again?"

The 1770's was before all those freedoms we fought for had been put into effect. It was before The New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, Separation of Church and State, Public Education, Birth Control, Civil Rights, and Roe vs Wade.

Why do some men hate women so?

Why would a woman vote for her own shackles?

Yesterday, I had errands to run, and that all seemed normal. People wished me a "Good day." I felt that a bomb had gone off, and no one had seen it or heard it.

Today, the sun came out. No one is sending flowers that our democracy has died; nobody is bringing casseroles. Nobody has flown the flag at half-mast.

 Am I all wet?

 

 

“The Resistance Starts Now”

From Robert Reich (Substack). Author, professor, Lawyer, political commentator, Rhodes scholar Graduated Dartmouth AB summa cum laude.

“I still have faith in America, but we must mobilize to protect those at risk if Trump achieves his worst impulses.”

Robert Reich

Nov 06, 2024

“How will we conduct this resistance?

“By organizing our communities. By fighting through the courts. By arguing our cause through the media.

‘We will ask other Americans to join us – left and right, progressive and conservative, white people and people of color. It will be the largest and most powerful resistance since the American revolution.

“But it will be peaceful. We will not succumb to violence, which would only give Trump and his regime an excuse to use organized violence against us.

“We will keep alive the flames of freedom and the common good, and we will preserve our democracy. We will fight for the same things Americans have fought for since the founding of our nation – rights enshrined in the constitution and Bill of Rights.

“We the people will resist tyranny. We will preserve the common good. We will protect our democracy.

“This will not be easy, but if the American experiment in self-government is to continue, it is essential.

“I know you’re scared and stressed. So am I.

“If you are grieving or frightened, you are not alone. Tens of millions of Americans feel the way you do.

“All I can say to reassure you is that time and again, Americans have opted for the common good. Time and again, we have come to each other’s aid. We have resisted cruelty.

“We supported one another during the Great Depression. We were victorious over Hitler’s fascism and Soviet communism. We survived Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunts, Richard Nixon’s crimes, Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam war, the horrors of 9/11, and George W Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We will resist Donald Trump’s tyranny.

“Although peaceful and non-violent, the resistance will nonetheless be committed and determined.

“It will encompass every community in America. It will endure as long as necessary.

“We will never give up on America.

“The resistance starts now.”