Make a Joyful Noise

Or think of the Hallelujah Chorus.

Remember Barbra Streisand singing "Don't Rain on My Parade."And then there is *A Piece of Sky, with Yentel, an Jewish immigrant, on the boat to America, singing “Why settle for just a piece of sky?” and holding that last note longer than is humanly possible

It was with quivering fingers that I opened the computer and typed in “2026 election results”:

And the Hallelujah chorus rang out.

I was happy about it, but still felt I was suffering from jet lag.

And now under my desk, my space heater is singing, a little whine that sounds like music. At first, I thought it was picking up a radio station, like when I was a kid, people claimed they could hear the radio through their tooth fillings.

And last Tuesday, Old Blue hit a Crescendo. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I was happy about it, but still felt I was suffering from jet lag.

There is something about critical mass—a speech, a book, a dent in a belief system —all of those need to reach a certain decibel level before they are heard.

It took a company slamming down the Jimmy Kimmel show to get people's attention regarding censorship. Even people who didn't like Kimmel wanted to preserve his First Amendment right to free speech.

 

It took a group of monks, a small group, actually, 13, I think, plus one dog, to start a movement of Kindness. Throngs followed them—that’s when the crescendo happened. Monks walked in the bitter cold, and people stood in the snow or rain to encourage and thank them, to offer flowers and fruit or water. Those nearby followed them; others followed them on Instagram. All felt the love and kindness of those walking only for peace. (Except for those who attacked them for not being Christian—so much for brotherly love.)

The No King’s Marches helped us know that we were not alone in wanting to keep our hard-fought freedoms.  We saw that others wanted that as well—even if the President wanted to dump excrement on us. Indeed, he mimed it on Truth Social.

As one person, we often feel impotent.

If you stepped out of line to protest in an internment camp, you’d be shot; end of protestor. 

But as many, we are formidable.

We found that we can’t grow complacent. We must constantly guard our rights and freedoms, because some will take them away for their own gain.

It’s an old fact.

And Texas, bless you. Years ago, I was in Dallas right after Barack Obama had been elected President. A young clerk in the gift shop and I struck up a conversation, and together we celebrated Obama’s victory.  She was an awakening for me, for I had thought (wrongfully) that Texans were basically conservative; maybe they were, I don’t know, but light shines everywhere. A lesson one learns by traveling.

During this fiasco from the last two T elections, a T supporter told me I had been lied to. Duh. All the while, I was trying to find the truth in the mess we had created.  I guess that insinuated that she knew the truth. It wasn’t so much that she disagreed with me that set me off, but that condescending, “Poor little thing, she believes the lies.”

“I said, Bullshit!” and haven't heard from her since.

And I don’t know where in my brain to put the people who somehow think of T as a Messiah, a pedophile messiah; now that’s a hot one. My daughter, caring for a paraplegic man, was stuck in a MAGA conversation the day after the midterm elections. First, they were lamenting how they could survive the next two years. It sounded like the group wanted to bring about Armageddon. Maybe they want the rapture, which will wipe all of us out except for them. They will be the ones to inherit the earth. The loudest of the group was a man who bragged about having dead deer hanging in his garage, and it isn’t deer season. “I didn’t kill it, he said, “it was given to me.”

I don’t know, maybe it was struck by a car. I don’t understand it, but people who want the opposition dead still get a vote.

This appeared in my email box yesterday:

From sarahbessey@substack.com

“When it comes to biblical understanding, I always remember how Rachel Held Evans wisely wrote about interpreting the Bible, “If you are looking for verses with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to liberate or honor women, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to wage war, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to promote peace, you will find them. If you are looking for an out-dated, irrelevant ancient text, you will find it. If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it.

“This is why there are times when the most instructive question to bring to the text is not “what does it say?”, but “what am I looking for?”

“There are people who do want to hate the world, and so they will look for any excuse in the scriptures to justify that. Some genuinely believe it, more’s the pity, but others simply benefit from the consequences of it, so they’ll say it until you believe it anyway. The conviction that God hates everything and it will all burn someday can leave a mark on a person.”

Thank you, Sarah Bessey.

And bless Substack for providing a platform where people can vent their frustrations, where brilliant people probe into how and why we got ourselves into this political mess. It is a soft place to fall. And then there is a man with the audacity to call himself God, who can spit out the truth and humor in equal measure.

I love you guys.

"The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means."

–George Bernanos.

Distractions

 

I drove to the drive-up window of Dari Mart this morning for a half gallon of half and half creamer for my coffee (Not all in one cup). A drive-up window is so handy when you aren't presentable for a grocery store, you want your cup of Jo, and you used the last of the cream last night. (No fake creamer, it has to be half and half. Well, in a pinch, I'll use whipping cream.)

Long ago, when I worked for a dentist, 8 am to 1 pm Monday through Friday, a long morning, I would be starving around 10 o'clock, so I resorted to coffee and powdered creamer. One day, my boss filled my cup with a heap of dental plaster that was the same color as the creamer, stuck a tongue depressor in it with a sign attached: "Coffee gone bad."

I miss that guy.

Back to the drive-up window:  The servers at the window give out doggie treats, and on an auspicious day it might be a piece of bacon or a sausage link—those days renew hope for Sweetpea, as most windows give out dry, stick in the throat dog biscuits that she buries under her blanket.

I gave the lady a five-dollar bill, and she handed me one penny.

I stroked the penny with my thumb and forefinger, and thought of Marie Forleo, who said she always picks up a penny from the sidewalk—to honor money—so it won't be treated as something to throw away.

As I rolled the penny around, I thought, if every person who has clicked on my website paid a penny for it, I would have $10,000. Wish on white Horses hit one million page views last week. And I have all you guys to thank for that. Thank you, thank you for sticking with me.

Of course, that doesn't mean one million people have checked in; it means I have kept at it long enough to chalk up page views.  

No matter—I love my readers.

I try to give you something of worth—we'll see what happens today. 

 

I would like to know how you guys are faring out there. People are perking along, while off in the distance, I hear the sound of freedoms crashing against the sidewalks of the United States.

I want to go on with my life, to believe in the goodness of people, that we care about our fellow men and women ("Red and yellow black and white they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world. We used to sing that in Sunday School.)

The stalwart souls I'm talking about knew that people came to this country in search of a better life.  ("Send us your tired, your poor, your hungry masses yearning to breathe free"). Those stalwart souls fought hard to give Immigrants—yes we can use the word Immigrants, it isn't a bad word, the freedoms they wanted for themselves.

 I remember seeing an ad containing a picture of a beautiful little girl. The caption read: "A brain is a terrible thing to waste."

So, we fought for women's right to read, to be educated, to vote. We fought for Women's right to have equal pay for equal work. Lo and behold, we found that women made good doctors and other professionals. We fought for Birth control and the right of a female to own her own body when men were laughing and answering the question, "Do you have any children?" with a "I don't think so."

“Ha ha, boys will be boys.”

We knew that people came to this country so they could practice their preferred religion without incrimination. Some said, "There are many roads to God. You don't have to be a Christian to love God." Some said that the Almighty Spirit that give us breath is a loving God with no ego problem. He doesn't require adoration or sacrifice. Would He be offended if you didn't believe in Him? The same source that knows about atoms, and Quarks, and how to sling the stars in the sky.

We saw that some of our fellows were mistreated, so we marched, we lobbied, we formed a Civil Liberties Union, we kept on until we had an integrated society.

We had opposition all along, but we kept going. We saw that the immigrants were doing our hard labor, bringing food to our table, and we supported their cause.

We saw that there were Gays among us—as it has been since the dawn of humanity (read the Iliad), and we said, "Let them be how God made them."

We fought against wars we thought were unjust. We fought for animal rights, we fought against the slaughter of wild herds, and for humane animal handling.

We are good people.

And then we forgot.

 

P.S.

You see, how hard it is to go on when there is crashing and banging in the background?

Don't let them do that to you—Don't let them fill your brain with so much noise that you lose heart. And then you forget that there is joy in the world.

When that happens, they’ve got you.

I was going to talk about being an entrepreneur, doing what you want, and getting paid for it. We do need money to live after all.

That will have to wait for another day.

 

 

 

 

 

Putting Chickens to Bed

The Opossum has been relocated—lured by peanut butter into a live trap. (I read online that someone else’s opossum ate an entire Cosco Cake and looked queezy, so they took him to the hospital.) I took our opossum to a hay field where he beat feet over to the shelter of an abandoned house.

The chickens are still traumatized and have decided roosting high is safer than that fearsome little chicken house. (There is an opening in the back.)

 

 

I’m sad they don’t put themselves to bed at night, though, and I don’t want them messing up the boxes in the open garage attached to the Wayback—their chosen roosting spot.  So nightly, I crawl up on boxes to gather them up one by one and stuff them into that front door beside the window--that's where the opossum was.)

I blogged a few days ago but decided to check in today. How is life at your abode?

I’ve been trying to refrain from politics, but it’s hard to ignore the sounds of our democracy being smashed.

And Musk wants to do what? Fire judges that disagree with him?!!! Boy, howdy, who put him in charge?

Stupid question. I know who.

I don’t want to ignore so much that I become complacent. Probably that’s what the great powers now in the White House want, for people to follow their bidding or give up.

Either way, folks, get it; keeping people traumatized or asleep makes it easy for a hostile takeover.

Don’t eat our chickens, abandon our wildlife, deport our immigrants, mess with our freedoms, or shut us up.