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

 

 

 

"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."--Andy Warhol

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 pity-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.

 

 

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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.