And So We Come to the End....Of January.

So how did the Full Bore Goals January go? 

Not bad. 

Terrible. 

Really well.

Just depends on how you look at it. 

Let's see, I did write a blog every day. So that's really good. I also did my public gratitude mostly daily, I did have one day I thought about posting it but didn't so I had to do it the next morning. But still counts. I also did the daily POD (I need to do today's to have it count as all 31 days but I'll get it done). So those things went really well. 

The Daily Calm thing was a not bad I guess. I did not do 31 days of following their prompts, or 31 days of daily meditation. Some of the prompts just didn't mean anything to me. And meditating is a thing that will get pushed off the list even with scheduled time for it, I discovered. I need to find someplace to do it that is quieter. Which you would think in a house our size with only two people living there would be easy. Tig and Tux would let you know that maybe not... They are not fans of meditation. Even if I started it while they were sleeping they would seem to know I wasn't supposed to be paying attention to them so they would get into things. Which is all excuses that I could manage if meditating were more enjoyable to me. I know that too. I'll probably keep working on it for February. 

Weight? Okay so...I lost my targeted amount early in the month. Then gained it back. And a little more. I actually ended up January, well up. About a half a pound. Which is bad enough but when you know that I LOST ALL OF THE GOAL WEIGHT first and then gained it all back plus that half pound? Super fucking frustrating. I will also say, that logically I know it's not that bad. Why? Because I also am taking measurements as any pro weight obsessive will tell you to do. And I lost circumference from my waist to my knees. And my body fat was 1% lower at the end of January than at the beginning so the weight I gained was actual muscle from the increased workouts over the past two months. So yes, logically I can tell you that it's not that big of a deal. But you all know that when it comes to weight the logic train does not pull into my station...so it still really sucks.

I'm also behind by 3 books for my reading goal. I'm not really worried about that one. I was reading Obama's book to start the year and it was LONG and not a fast read so it slowed my pace a bit. But there will be plenty of fast reads in the year to make up for it. I've already read 4 books for the year and the first 19 days of it were just the Obama book so...I'm okay. I've finished another of the Discworld books and have the next one in the series queued up for February. Racing toward the end there. 

I haven't found any submission items yet, but I did write a couple fiction pieces so that made me happy. 

Buying fewer things from Amazon? Yeah, I think so. I have to figure out a way to track that that makes sense. I used them for four things in January. One was a donation to a charitable organization that had a wish list set up that would ship to them. The others were small things that I couldn't get shipped from someplace else and one item that their website directed back to Amazon to buy the product so... I also need to clarify that Kindle books aren't a thing I'm counting in my Amazon purchase slow down. And as Brent and I talked about, it's not a never shop from them, it's a shop less from them and make an effort to go direct when possible. So...yeah. I'll keep working on that. 

So January overall was decent. I'd give myself an A for a grade if I you caught me mid day, or a C+ if you caught me right after getting off the scale and realizing I hadn't meditated in two days...so you know it's eh to good. 

Today I'll work on what I want to do with February. I'll probably write that out here tomorrow. Every blog counts, donchaknow? I'm thinking about tweaking my scheduled time, I will probably shift some of that around now that I've spent a month seeing what works and what doesn't. I know we are going to do the inflammation test diet so that will be worked in there. I'm not sure about POD or Daily Gratitude. Weight and writing and reading were set at the beginning of the year so those will just be still worked toward. I'll probably try to get better about meditating as well. And also starting to work on flexibility. 

OH! And one last one! 

I was successful in not doing dry January.  Whew...

Another First...Not the Worst. Mostly.

 I got the first reminder two weeks ago.

Then another one this week, "Hurry before it's too late!"

Brent got one this morning when he woke up and I got the last one shortly after that. 

Everyone clamoring to remind us that today is Ann's birthday. 

The first two were pretty frustrating because I went through it when my mom died. The flower company I use to send flowers sent the reminders. Now, when Mom died I sent them a note saying hey, how can we fix this? And they were very sorry, and would look into it and...

When Ann died I went in and removed the relationship from my file pretty quickly. So 6 or 7 months ago. Thinking that if I did that they would have, surely, fixed their algorithm in the year since I messaged them about Mom right? I mean, I cannot be the only one to send them a message saying DON'T DO THIS! But nope...and the Hurry before it's too late message was just a peach. 

Well...

Actually...

The calendar reminder was just me forgetting to turn off the notification. I had it set so I would remember to remind Brent and Christopher to call her. Because that was my job on her birthday. Send a gift a few weeks earlier, then remind the boys to call her so they could take credit for remembering. It was a well oiled machine.

We have a break now for a stretch. Until the worst part in May. But we've made it through the anniversary of Brent's father's death, all of the holiday cluster and now her birthday. So that's good. It's good to make it past the first milestone markers. The first year just sucks. And this year blending with the first year of my Mom and the year of Covid (which, of course considering that's what she died from) and just the mess that time is right now...it just sucks.

It's a slog. 

The memorial that Biden did as part of his inauguration was lovely. And moving. And it helped. To have someone in authority say, yeah, this happened. This was not okay. We know this hurts. That helped. There has been too much denial. Too many people who want to act like the hundreds of thousands of Americans alone who have died are no big deal. Well...

Hurry before it's too late!

It is a big deal. To each and every member of their family it's a big deal. And we all hope you never have to face it up close. But we wish like fuck you would at least understand how awful it is and how incredibly insulting, and hurtful it is when you deny it is real. That it's happening. That we could all be doing things to help stop the spread but...you know...government control or what the fuck ever...

Brent and I are still working through her loss. It's always hard to lose someone, it's harder when the relationship was complicated. And I think a lot of adult children/parent relationships are complicated. Or at least mine with my mother was, and his with his was. For me I still go between grief and guilt and little anger is still there as well. But mostly grief. And I think the guilt and anger are probably part of the grieving process so I guess all grief. 

But we are past (or in the middle of today) the bulk of the firsts. Her birthday isn't the worst. I think Christmas was. That was the day that we both forgot at different points in the day and thought to ourselves, "Oh we need to call...oh wait..." Remembering is hard, forgetting is the worst. 

One more first down. Two more to go. 

 

Two Sides?

This is going to be one of those kind of mashed up blogs. And there might be a point where you are wondering how they are tied, and even thinking I'm being kind of hypocritical. Just have a little patience and I swear I'll tie them together. 

So I saw one of the most ridiculous things today. Some one tried to say that the Left's hatred of Marjorie Taylor Greene was just like the Right's hatred of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Well now let's see...

They are both women in Congress. They are both in the House of Representatives. They are both women so...yeah, no. The difference is in the substance. 

The Left is having issue with Greene's anti Semitic, anti Islamic, put a bullet in the head of Democrats, harangue the Parkland survivors, the election was STOLEN, ways. 

The Right has issues with Ocasio-Cortez's feed the poor, everyone deserves healthcare, green energy should be a priority, dancing in the hallways, ways. 

Do you see the difference?

Greene is hated because she's hateful.
Ocasio-Cortez is hated because you disagree with her policies. 

I'm not saying the Right has to or ever will agree with Ocasio-Cortez on policy. They aren't. But the level of hate and disdain they push her way. The times she's reduced to less than by sexist and classist comments. Just the negative energy they spend on her is way out of proportion to policy disagreements with a junior representative from one district in New York. It's insane. 

Now, the Left will never agree with Greene either. But it's not policy. It's the aforementioned anti Semitism. The fact that she tried to chase down representatives who swore in on the Quran and tell them that they HAD to use a Bible. The mocking Parkland students. The fact that Representative Cori Bush just had to change her office space because of abusive treatment from Greene. And so many other examples. It's not policy, it's that she's insane. 

It's like the argument right now that Democrats are being so divisive. They don't really want unity. And the proof? That they are trying to get Democratic ideas and policies passed. That's not being divisive. That's what we have elections for, so the people who win them get what they wanted done, done. 

(slight shift)

I hate the two party system. It doesn't serve us well. We need to change it. Get more parties involved, get ranked choice voting. Let the marketplace of ideas choose the winners. 

In fact, I'd love it if we got rid of parties all together. I just don't know how to do that. I suffer from a lack of imagination in this regard because I've never seen it done. But I think parties just reinforce the us vs. them mentality. It makes us choose teams. 

And we as a species are primed for that behavior. It's from our earliest days. Just hardwired into us. We needed to know that our tribe was safe, and we weren't sure about other tribes. They might have been safe, they might have been coming to kill half of us, steal our resources and enslave who ever was left. It was a brutal system. So knowing your tribe was important. Identifying with your tribe was everything. 

Because we don't have tribes like that anymore, we make them up. We search them out. Look at how seriously we take our sports teams. But we've done it with politics now too. Like HARD. 

Look at how often in the past four years the Republicans accused the Democrats of just hating Trump so nothing was good. Well, yeah, I hated Trump. But I didn't hate his policies because I hated him. I hated him because of his policies. I hated what he stood for. The Central Park 5, the Birtherism, the Muslim ban, the child separation policies, the trying to keep refugees out, the lies, the sexism if you want to phrase it nicely, the multiple accusations of sexual assaults if you want to be specific, the winking and nodding to racists, he is a bad person. It wasn't some sort of out of thin air hatred. 

But because he is a Republican there were a large number of people for whom that was enough. He was on their team. 

And it definitely feels like the whole platform of the Trumpublican party is to "own the libs" and if that's by branding them as baby eating Satanists, then that's what they are going to do. And I'm sure that there are those on the Right that feel that the base of the platform for the Left is to call the Right racists and make them pay taxes. And the taxes part is true, for sure, the Left does think people should pay taxes. And well, if you are doing things that look like racism then maybe you need to be the one to relook at what you are doing instead of complaining about being called a name.

(back to tying it all in)

But how much of all of that animosity is due to the two party system? If we didn't have teams to pick would we still look at "the other side" that way? 

If we didn't have the two party system would Marjorie Taylor Greene have been elected? If there had been other viable choices than Rs and Ds would she have made it out of the pool of choices? And backing it up even further, if we didn't have Rs and Ds would there have even been a Qanon for her to follow? If we had no teams to swear allegiance to would there be a desire for that stuff? If there were no Rs and Ds would the animosity for Ocasio-Cortez go away? Would it just become, I don't like her ideas. Would she have been elected? I think she would have been, because I like her ideas, but who knows who else would have run if it were wide open?

Shouldn't we get a chance to vote for the best ideas? To stop worrying about whose team is in first? To stop thinking in teams at all? 

I think that would be great. 

As long as the ideas I like win out. 

(just kidding)

(mostly)

It's Been One Week...

..since Trump is no longer the President of the United States. 

A week ago yesterday was inauguration day. A week ago today was the first day in four years to wake up and not have Trump be president.

I talked about the feeling of relief and of a weight lifting in that moment of transition. 

And it's still there. 

Some.

There is still frustration that Trump is going to remain as a power in the Trumpublican party. That even the insurrection wasn't enough to shake him loose. That right now the Minority Leader from the House of Representatives is on his way to Florida to kiss the ring and bend the knee. To beg forgiveness for saying that the mob storming the Capitol was Trump's fault, because he, you know, told them to storm the Capitol. 

It's frustrating that we are going to get yet another unsatisfactory ending to an impeachment trial. It's frustrating that Trump and his team were able to stall off the emoluments cases against him until he left office so then the Supreme Court could say, well this is now moot so no case. It's frustrating that he will probably slime out of the cases in New York. Now, there has been no move on that front, but it just feels that it will happen that way, because it always does. Slime and slip and out he goes. 

I've seen on my more conservative friend's posts their friends and them talking about how Trump lives on as the bad guy in a liberal's dream. That we all have TDS and just can't get past him. 

And in a way they are right. 

There is a lot of focus on him. On why he's awful. Why he needed to be voted out of office. Why he needs to face some sort of punishment. 

But they should be glad for that focus. 

Because once you stop looking at Trump and as bad as he is, then you have to look at why he was voted in. Why his claims of voter fraud were so easily swallowed. Why Qanon even exists. Why the racists support him. Why he is still your party leader. And those questions have much harder answers.

Because that's you.

We then have to look at you and wonder what the hell happened. 

Now, to be fair, most of us have. We've looked at family and friends that we thought we knew and wondered how in the world that happened. How did the people that told us that God is Love and he who does not love does not know God were comfortable being told to hate? And not only told to but took to it really well. But we've tried to be sort of charitable. That this man, for whatever reason, held sway. He was charismatic enough in your eyes for you to think he was okay. We've all made bad judgement calls on people before so we tried to see that.

But...

If we stop focusing on him and see that it doesn't matter where he is you aren't backing away from what he was selling?

Well, that's you.

And we don't want that to be you. 

We want you to be the person we thought you were.

And I get it, you want us to not be the way we are either. You cannot understand how we got to be so intolerant. So rigid. So self righteous. We don't view ourselves like that, just like you don't view yourself as putting up with racists and extremists and holding hands with people who believe that Sandy Hook was faked, that the kids from Parkland deserve to be ridiculed for standing up for themselves, for being pissed that we adults still don't protect our kids from mass shootings. But if we take away our focus on him and put it on you we don't like that. 

You probably shouldn't either. 

It's not comfortable for any of us. These lenses we view each other through now. 

Biden wants to bring unity. I love that about him. I think it's a really noble cause. But his problem is going to be we don't want unity with each other. Not yet. I'm not sure what will bring about the shift, if anything can bring about the shift. 

It wasn't a global pandemic that would have had less disastrous effects if we had all worked together to make it better. That was quickly politicized and wearing a mask and staying at home somehow became a sign of weakness instead of compassion. Or maybe compassion is always thought of as weak by half of us. 

It wasn't an insurrection. An angry mob chanting to hang the Vice President. Focused and aimed by the sitting president. Oh sure, we got a day or so of "That's awful, that's not who we are!" but that was really hard to swallow so it quickly devolved into "what about them? those people!" and still not letting go of the Big Lie that lead up to it. That constant drum beat of voter fraud, of a stolen election. There wasn't and it wasn't. How do we reconcile with people who think our votes, just by way of not being like theirs, are fraudulent?

We are all still really angry. Maybe about different things, but we are angry. And I don't know how we stop.

So it's been one week...I'm not sure how long it will take until we say we're sorry.

Waiting...

The first Wednesday was Insurrection.

Then we had Impeachment.

Then last Wednesday was Inauguration.

What will it be today? 

Inspiration? Inoculation? Innovation?

I mean we've got a Wednesday "I" theme going. Seems a shame to let it go now. 

Unless it's a bad "I", though that would be fine, I guess. I mean a good "I" would be better. But any "I" would bring completion to the pattern. And we all love a good pattern. I'm just afraid that the "I" that will fit will be Ignorance.

And only because you can pick any day right now and that could be the theme. 

Willful or otherwise. 

Willful ignorance is one of my greatest pet peeves. It's right there with Intellectual Dishonesty. They hold hands and skip down the path to Douchelandia.

And it's so frustrating because you are never entirely sure if someone is doing it on purpose or if they are just stupid. 

But most of the time you can tell by how they argue. How they move goal posts. How they switch sides if the politics change. Inconsistency. That's almost always your first sign. That and those fake drop the mic moments. The ones where you know they were holding a comment back to drop it in the argument as their BIG MOMENT. BOOM! Gotcha! And often those moments don't actually fit the argument. They don't actually make sense. But they are good markers for you to recognize what is happening. Willful ignorance. Don't spend another moment trying to have a discussion with them. It's not worth it.

You see it around the virus right now. But they told us before that 15 days would flatten the curve and here we are it's like they don't even know what they are doing. They said schools had to close, now they are saying that there isn't much spread in the schools that are open. It's like they don't even know... Now they want us to wear two masks? But before they said we didn't even have to wear one. It's like they don't even know....

No, you dumb fucks, it's not like they don't even know, it's like that's how science works. You keep getting new information and changing what you are doing based on that. 

It's called the Novel Coronavirus. Novel means it's new. It means that we will continue to get new information about the best ways to prevent the spread, to treat the disease when you catch it, to deal with the mutations that are already happening as well as the ones that will come. 

Science is like that. It changes with new information. It's like they don't even know everything there is to know and will continue to learn new things. Stop being willfully ignorant because you don't want to make any changes in your life. Just admit you're spoiled and selfish and move the fuck along. 

Maybe the "I" for me is Insomnia? Leading to Irritability? The other "I" days were more universal though so I'll still hold out for something better...

Silence...

 Silence has a weight to it.

The butterfly wings on your cheek.
The soft fur of a bunny just beyond your finger tips.

Silence has a weight to it.

The crush of a weight on your chest. 
The press of walls closing in.

Silence has a weight to it.

Laying next to the one you don't need to say a word to.
Their sigh matching yours as the sun presses against your face
Warming your body and your soul.

Silence has a weight to it.

Laying next to the one you no longer have anything to say to.
Their sigh matching yours as the heavy gray presses against you
Waiting for the oncoming storm to break.

Silence has a weight to it.

The moment the crying stops. The baby sleeps.
The quiet presses against you like a heavy blanket and you sleep. 

Silence has a weight to it.

The moment the house is still. No video games, no TV shows.
The quiet presses against you and you lay awake and worry.

Silence has a weight to it.

The held breath. Thick air pressing in. Filled with love, hope, potential.
The deep breath, then the cry, the release of sound lifting the weight of fear from those who were waiting.

Silence has a weight to it.

The machine turned off. Thick air pressing in. Filled with love and loss of hope.
The last breath, then the crying, their quiet now pressing against those who are left.

Silence has a weight to it.

It's Just Nasty...

I don't like graffiti. Actually that's a little soft. I hate graffiti.

I've always hated it. I don't understand it. I don't understand the drive to do it. It just makes things look ugly and gross. 

And I do differentiate between a lovely mural, and street art and graffiti. Which I know a lot of people don't. For a lot of people if it's painted on a wall it's graffiti. 

For me if it's just the ugly spray paint tag of initials, or the (and this one just pisses me off) carved in Joe Was Here type shit on railings, I hate it. It's ugly. It ruins things. 

When my friend Corrie came to visit about 10 years ago (crazy it was that long!) she remarked about how clean Portland was. I hadn't really noticed, but she was right. Compared to the East Coast especially and where I grew up in the Southwest there was a real lack of graffiti. We just didn't have much. When there was some it was cleaned up pretty quickly. Street art? Sure. But just graffiti? Not so much.

That's all changed now. We have a lot more graffiti. We have a lot more trash on the streets. Part of it is due to an increase in our houseless population. That's the trash. We don't have the collection sites we need for that many people outside. Part of it, the part with the graffiti, is we don't have the budgets for cleanups anymore. And the way a lot of the tagging type graffiti goes is once someone puts their mark someplace then someone else needs to add theirs, and so on and so on. 

I really hate it. I wish it were all lovely murals, or even really well done lettering. But it's not. It's just messy initials or nicknames or symbols for whatever is being protested for or against at the moment. And often it covers up the lovely things that were there before. The things that people worked to craft.

And I understand that people do some of it to get a message out there. It gets shown on the news. It's hard to ignore when you look at a building. But it's still ugly. 

And all of that being said, it's not something that should be a felony. And it's certainly not violence. It's something that should be able to be punished with a bucket and some cleaning solution. You made the mess, you clean it up. Which, of course, a lot of it is being sprayed on certain buildings with just that intent in mind. Pointing out who made the mess and who needs to clean it up. 

I feel the same way about shit posting on social media, by the way. It's the graffiti of social spaces. It makes things ugly. It hides away the actual valid posts that people could be making. Mars the murals so to speak.

I think if you are making these "ironic" posts it generally means you actually feel that way. At least part of you does because you are propagating it. You are spreading it. Friends of mine who have made them know I will call them out. I will question their motives. I will point out, over and over, if necessary, that spreading ignorance for the joke of it just means validating someone else who actually believes those things. 

There are no ironic racist posts. You see it over and over again. People who made their name being edgelords on Twitter, or making "Ironic" jokes on YouTube or Facebook who then are suddenly discovered to be ACTUAL racists! How shocking! It's not. To make a shit post joke you have to at least see the humor in it a little. And generally more than a little. You are just aware enough that it's not acceptable behavior to try and make the spin that you are pointing out some deeper truth. 

You aren't. 

You're showing your ass. 

The people laughing with you are showing theirs.

I'm not shocked when I find out you were actually a terrible person. 

I already knew. 

I hate shit posting. 
I hate graffiti.
I hate people who aren't brave enough to own their own shit and try to hide behind "it was a joke" or "I was just being ironic."

I'm not joking. 

I hate it. 

One More To Go...

One more week left in January. One more what should I write about Sunday blogs. 

*checks calendar*

Oh wait...this month ends on a Sunday. I have two more Sunday blogs to go. 

Dang it. 

Don't you hate it when you think you are almost done and then realize you've missed an important item or you just have more to do that you forgot about?

It happens to me All. The. Time. 

Like thinking, hey! I'm almost done for the day. I only have to scoop the litter, run the sweeper, change the laundry around, start dinner, meditate, clean the downstairs bathroom...well hell. That's not anywhere close to almost done. 

A week ago I was already at my goal weight loss for the month. Boom! Done! Anything else is bonus! I lost another pound, this is great! Then I gained over five pounds in two days. What? How? Are you kidding me? So I've been losing that, again. Now I'm a week out until the end of the month and back at what I was at the beginning of the month, like I hadn't done anything at all. 

We see the light at the end of the tunnel and almost get waylaid by the train. 

It's probably a good life lesson about living by schedules and check lists, but I've tried not doing that and well... *gestures* 2020.

So what do we do when we realize that we aren't anywhere close to the end like we thought? What do we do when we think we've made so much progress and yet the goalposts are still not in sight? 

We just keep going. 

Brent and I were talking about this with the current political situation. There are so many things that need done. So many goals the Democrats would like to reach. And there are two years with micro thin majorities to get them done. It's not going to happen. There are too many things. It's too much. But what can happen is we can keep moving toward them. We can set our sights on the horizon and go.

And we need to. If the Biden administration can't move the needle, if the Republicans are able to Republican them with nothing but obstruction then at midterms they are lost. And we are lost. 

There is no benefit to a Republican in a well functioning, effective government. They will do what they can to make sure it stays that way. So they can continue to redistribute the wealth up the chain. So they can keep pointing to how ineffectual the government is, how broken the system is, so they can stay in power to break it more. To make more opportunities for a small handful to keep doing well. We are on the knife edge right now. 

I just want to move forward. I want there to be progress. I'm a progressive, after all. I want there to be movement toward a system that is for the people. 

There is a lot left on that to do list, and it keeps getting longer as we think about it. 

So we need to keep going.

Last Wednesday wasn't an end point. It was the chance at a new start. 

Fingers crossed we take it and go!

Be Careful What You Wish For....

Some say The Spring is where everything started. 

Everything.

Something in the movement of the water whispered a wish for life.

Spring forth.

His people believed that they were the first people. The first ones to crawl out from The Spring. And as such they were the ones who took care of it. Who tended to its banks. Who kept it clear and running through the land. And when the land changed, the ones who took The Spring underground. Who protected it from those above. 

Because those that came later were not the same as the People of The Spring. They didn't understand where they came from, but they came in droves. Stomping through the woods, cutting down the trees, killing the animals for food. And then there was the first one to find The Spring, to drink from the cold clear water and to wish for a cool breeze. Then to wish for a good meal. Then to wish for an apple, just to test his theory. Well, he changed everything. 

The People of The Spring hid The Spring shortly there after. When he told his family and and his friends of the wonderous thing he had found. When they started to scour the woods searching for what he had assured them was there. When a few found it and wished for grand things. For awful things. For things not a single Person of The Spring would have ever thought to wish for. That was when they took it underground. 

But those from above kept looking. They were relentless.

One of his ancestors came up with the idea of The Well. To let a small amount of The Spring feed the bottom of The Well.  It would not be as potent as drinking from The Spring was. It would not always work for those above. But sometimes it would. And that would be enough to keep them at bay. That's what they hoped. 

But they would need to manage it. To make sure The Well worked. To keep The Spring from filling it, or from draining completely out. His people also found a way to track those above from their wishes. They asked The Spring to help. To find a way to know who was asking. What they were asking for. If it was something to worry about or something they could manage. 

The People of The Spring understood you could tell about a person by what they wished for. 

They made a Keeper of The Spring. Someone to log the wishes, to track to people above. Someone to clear The Well. To tend to The Spring. There would be an honored line of Keepers of The Spring, the People of The Spring knew it was important work. And it was lonely work. The Keeper must live above. Hidden in the woods, but closer to the people above than to the People of The Spring who had gone into deep hiding. It was an important job, taken on with seriousness of purpose and an understanding of what was given up in exchange. 

When The People of The Spring began to die off the current Keeper was at first unaware. It wasn't until the log books he meticulously kept were not picked up at their regularly scheduled time that he began to worry. He had not realized that the wishes from the people above that had turned more and more to wishes for health were tied to his people as well.

The diseases of those above had reached The People of The Spring. Their pollution had filled the water, the land, the air. And it had devastated them. They could have wished for it to stop, but they understood that would mean wishing for the death of all those above. And they did not do it. 

When he felt his last days coming to him The Keeper of The Spring hung up the stone key in his house, closed his book and left a note hoping that his people might recover and come to take care of The Well and The Spring again. 

When she found the house in the woods she found the log book, she saw the letter, but she couldn't read the language it was written in. She recognized the picture on the book as the old wishing well near the village and how the stone key on the wall would fit into the side of the well. She didn't know what would happen when it was placed there but there was only one way to find out. 

It changed everything for her. 

Camels and Needles...

I hate the prosperity gospel.

I know, I know, hate is a really strong word. But I hate it.

Now I know a lot of you are saying that I don't like organized religion as a whole, and you're right I don't. I think it's possible, and even preferable to be good for good alone instead of for the shot of a reward after you die. But the prosperity gospel is the worst of the worst. 

And it's woven itself through most of America and on to a good chunk of the rest of the world. It's deep in the Republican party view of life. It's in there with a lot of Democrats as well. It's odious. 

Basically the prosperity gospel tells you that if you are a good Christian, god will show you his love by giving you things. That if you just are pious enough and pray hard enough you too can be rich. 

What?

What god is this? It's not the one I grew up learning about. The one who said there was a better chance for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven. Whose son said that if you did not take care of the least of these then you've not taken care of him? Who told his followers to sell everything they had, give it to the poor and THEN they would have riches in heaven? 

He didn't say hey, pray harder and I'll spot you a few million. 

And remember before when I talked about to believe a thing you have to believe everything that goes with it?

If you believe in the prosperity gospel teachings, that if you are good enough you will be rewarded here on earth with material things, then what does that say about the rich and the poor? What halo effect do we give the rich? Well obviously they are good people because god has blessed them. We think the rich are smarter than everyone else. We think they are better people overall. They must be, they are rich. God gave them these blessings. Who are we to deny that they are favored?

And if the rich are blessed by god what does that say about the poor? Not a tough through line there. And we see policy decisions based on those beliefs. If the poor were just smarter, worked harder, were better people they would have money of their own. Why should I give away anything that I've earned to those lazy bums? And the prosperity gospel tells you that they are just ungodly so you can feel pretty good about not supporting their wicked ways. Maybe you should just pray with them? 

And then there is the grift. The prosperity gospel ministers who ask you to cast your bread upon the water so it will come back to you greater. With them being the water, of course. See, when I was growing up casting your bread upon the water so it would come back to you was good deeds. Doing good things for other people. If you do good for others, good things will happen for you. Not monetary rewards, just blessings or that heavenly reward. You were supposed to take what you had and give it to people who needed it. Be that money or time or support. Cast your bread upon the water wasn't supposed to mean send it to the preacher on TV who needs a new jet.

And that grift is in our politics as well. Prosperity gospel writ large. We give tax breaks to the wealthy. We charge a different tax rate on income from investments than we do income from slinging burgers. We say if you die rich your wealth is protected from taxes to those that inherit it. We protect the money of the well off. And we use bullshit terms like "job creators" to make it seem righteous. Not those greedy job workers. Fuck those guys. But the job creators? Well they are special.

And the churches support it. 

And I hate it.

We shouldn't be protecting the billions in dollars that are stashed away in investments and bank accounts and real estate and whatever. We should be using that money to move people out of poverty. Off of the street and into homes. Making sure healthcare is covered. Assuring that nobody is going hungry. Freeing up that lower level of Maslow for EVERYONE. 

Oh and I know...I have friends who are cringing at this. "Why shouldn't I do what I want with my own money? Why should I be punished for being successful?" I'm not saying you should be punished and I'm not saying you can't have nice things. But there should be a level where we all say, that's enough. And fuck the "Who gets to choose that?" we all know there is level where it's more than enough. And anything after that gets taxed at an extraordinarily high rate, because apparently all of these blessed by god people can't be trusted to give away the money to the least of these. 

I hate the prosperity gospel.

I hate justifying the belief that somehow rich people are just better than poor.

I hate that there are people out there that believe this. On both sides. The rich who think that they somehow deserve their wealth. That somehow it does make them better, smarter, more loved by god. And poor people who think they've done something wrong. That if they just try harder to be good Christians, if they send just a little more money to that preacher, that then they will be blessed with wealth. Or the ones who have given up. Who think that god doesn't love them, or that they have done something so awful it cannot be forgiven. 

The prosperity gospel has wormed its way into so many aspects of our lives and we need to root it back out. 

Do you really want to be rich? Try being rich in kindness. Try having an abundance of compassion. Try to understand that your daddy leaving you money makes you lucky, not blessed by god. 

I hate the prosperity gospel.

The Boogeyman...

What do you do when the boogeyman is dead? It's a question I asked a friend when Osama bin Laden was finally captured and killed. We had spent so much time being afraid of him, of wanting some sort of justice for what he did, when it happened there was a feeling of relief from all of us. The United States and a lot around the world. But then there was also a feeling of...what do you do now?

Because killing Osama bin Laden didn't stop the terrorist activity. It didn't get us out of the two wars were fighting at the time. It took out one man, and he was still very much involved and recruiting, but others stepped up. It kept going. 

I feel like that about Trump leaving office. We've spent four years resisting. We've spent four years feeling helpless as he dismantled things we thought were important. We've spent four years working toward yesterday. And now...

I made it really clear four years ago that the person I was voting for in the 2020 election was the democrat. I didn't care who it was. I was Blue No Matter Who from the start. And Biden wouldn't have been my choice if I had been the one to decide. But I think he might have been the best choice for what needed done. 

I think Trump would have won if we hadn't had the pandemic and he hadn't handled it so poorly. 

I think he might still have won if the Republicans could have found something more to try and pin on Biden than the Bernie material they had been working on thinking it would be Bernie. 

Biden is non-threatening enough to win over the moderates. Biden is empathetic enough to make those that are grieving feel heard. Biden is Democrat enough to make those that were Blue No Matter Who happy. 

And now he's got his mission, he wants to bring unity. He wants to go back to a time where you could disagree without hate. 

I'm not sure he will be able to. 

I mean he's going to work towards it but...

Seventy four million people voted for Trump. Now, not all of them bought into the whole rigged election nonsense. But a good portion of them did. And right now, as we speak, we have the Right Wing Media and certain Republican politicians trying to get them worked up that in his speech calling for unity Biden called them all racists. Well, no, he said we need to fight against racism and white supremacy. He didn't call you anything. Are you self selecting the deplorable basket again?

There isn't a lot to gain for them in unity. In disagreeing on policy without villainizing the other side. Because if you are judged strictly on your policy you might lose some of those 74 million who realize they would benefit from some of the policy choices on the left. 

Trump might have been the boogeyman, the figurehead, but voting him out doesn't end that strain of Trumpublicans. Cult45 is still out there. They are looking for a new figurehead, and there are plenty trying to step into that space. 

Jumping right to a death threat when you disagree with someone didn't start with Trump and it's not just a Cult45 thing. Being threatened with rape for being a woman with an opinion didn't start with Trump and it's not just a Cult45 thing. Seeing people who disagree with you as less than you didn't start with Trump and it's not just a Cult45 thing. It's naïve to think it will end with him losing an election. And again, an election he never admitted he lost, and a large part of the Republican base and all of Cult45 believes he didn't.

They believe something was stolen from them and so they aren't looking to find peace and unity.

And it's not just the Right that isn't ready to make nice. I've talked about it too. There is no moving forward without accountability. You want to pretend the last two months didn't happen? That it wasn't completely ridiculous that the not even that close election should be contested at all? That the past year where you decided that wearing a mask, socially distancing, treating a deadly virus seriously was somehow against your politics? Let alone the embracing of the radical right that's happening. You know, the part where if someone speaks out against racism and domestic terrorism and white supremacists your feelings are hurt because you think it's speaking out against you? Why would you think that? I don't ever think people are talking about me when they talk about the Karens and the Beckys out there being vile white women. You know why? Because I don't do those things. 

I'm not ready to make nice. 

I'd like to be. 

It's who I used to be.

I used to believe in the common space we all held.

I used to believe we were more alike than we were different. 

But I'm not sure I do anymore.

Because you followed the boogeyman into the scary places and liked it there. 

He might have been chased out from under the bed but you are still lurking in the closet. 

So the boogeyman has gone to Florida and we are left with a nation divided. What happens next?

I knew what I was doing four years ago. 

What happens next?

Today Was a Good Day...

I said I would write everyday and so I am writing. But if I hadn't made the commitment I probably would have skipped it today. Because today? Today is just a day I want to wash over me. 

I want to soak it in. 

I want to appreciate the feeling of it. 

There was an actual sense of relief when Vice President Harris and then President Biden took their oaths of office. A relaxation of the soul. The tired and worn out cliché is releasing a breath you didn't know you were holding. The problem with that is I was very aware I had been holding it. 

But I don't think even knowing that I had been tense. Even knowing that I had been worried and holding my breath. Even then I was surprised by the instant feeling of relief. 

Because it's not going to be an easy fix.

We are in the middle of a pandemic.

We have a not insignificant number of people who honestly believe that the election was rigged. That they had something stolen from them.

We have a large group of Qanon right now having to decide if they let go of the conspiracy theories now that none of it came to fruition or if they double down and get even more embedded in it. 

And along with that we have other groups of extremists (White Supremacists especially) who are preying on all of those disappointed and angry Q people and trying to recruit them to their ideology.

It's not going to be easy to get back to where we thought we were. 

And we need to do more than get back, we need to get past that as well.

We really need to address the healthcare problem. The income inequality problem. The racial injustice problem. And so many other problems. 

But today I don't want to think about that. Not really. Not much. 

Today I want to remember starting to tear up just watching then Vice President Elect Harris and her husband walk down the steps in the Capitol building to take their places on the dais. Then actual tears when Lady Gaga sang the National Anthem and turned to the flag and gestured on "Still there" remembering that two weeks ago a mob tore down our flag and tried to raise their own. I wasn't expecting to be moved like that. I'm not a big rah rah patriotic person, but boy, it moved me. 

I want to remember the poet Amanda Gorman and her beautiful reading. Her wonderful words and her graceful hands as she recited her own work. And know that she has told me to mark 2036 on my calendar as the election she will be running in for President. Amazing young woman. 

And I want to think about how I feel right now. Knowing that when I go to sleep tonight a different President will be sleeping the White House. A different temperament. A different style. And I want to hold on to that peace. 

Just for another day at least. 

So I wouldn't have written today if I hadn't committed to it. 

And now I'm going to go back to soaking in more of the day. 

Deep breath...relax...for now. 

Looks Like We Made It...

Four years ago I was still in shock. I mean that was a big part of it at the beginning. From the moment he was elected until the moment he took office. There was part of you that was just still processing it all. How in the world could this be happening? 

Do you remember the deep breath moment every time you got a breaking news alert on your phone? And there were so many breaking news alerts. Each one telling the last horrific cabinet appointment or speech or promised first day action to "Hold my beer."

I have always suffered from insomnia, but that stretch? From the election to the inauguration? I can remember laying awake at night just sick. How could this be happening? How could he have been elected?

And there was the dealing with people who were telling you how you were being dramatic. How you were overreacting. How it wasn't going to be any different than any other Republican being in office. 

The good thing about having a blog like this is it gives me a space to write about what I am feeling. I like being able to go back and read my own words. To see if what I remember thinking is actually what I thought. What I felt. And mid to end of January 2017? This time period? I was angry. I had moved past just devastated and was pissed. 

Part of it was the way I get pissed every MLK Day. The way white people use Dr. King as a cudgel against Black people and poor people and any people who are fighting for their rights. They pick and choose the most innocuous of his quotes and say, "Look, this is the way you should act." There has been a movement in the Republican party of late to try and claim him as one of their own. Like they do Lincoln. Which, yes, at least with Lincoln he was a Republican. But he wasn't like the modern day party. And Dr. King wasn't either. And honestly, if you have to go back 60 years to find a decent Republican instead of just being a decent one now what does that say about your party anyway?

The American Carnage Inauguration Day Speech? Holy shit...That was fucking something else. 

I was pissed about the reaction to the Women's March. Oh they were so upset about the hats! The hats that came about because of what the person they elected to office said. What he bragged about doing. That didn't bother them, but the hats! 

I was so angry.

And I don't think that baseline anger ever left. It floated around pissed to disgusted to just perturbed, and back again, but never gone.

And now here we are. By this time tomorrow we will have a new president. 

And I'm worried. I've never been as worried about the potential safety of a sitting president as I am right now. And I was plenty worried during Obama's terms. I'm not sure if you have noticed, but we've got a really deep seated racism problem and people who are willing and ready to act on those impulses. I mean the person who is our current president (for less than a day to go) actually jump started his political career on the back of a racist claim against Obama. And instead of it disqualifying him, it found him an audience. Because they didn't want Obama to be president. And marking him as illegitimate made that seem possible. And if they "removed" him wouldn't that make them patriotic heroes? Again, I had friends who thought I was overly dramatic, but it turns out that he got a LOT of death threats, and most of them were wrapped in very colorful racist language. So... yeah... no. 

But now I'm worried about Biden. Because those same people, the ones who looked at Trump and thought he was something they needed, those people have eaten up his lies about the election being stolen. A large group attempted a coup at his behest. Though, of course, he's trying to say that's not what he meant. I'm waiting for the "it was sarcastic" moment, but I guess getting Twitter taken away from him short circuited his normal route. You know the one where he starts by saying it's Fake News he didn't say that. To then saying even if he said it it's not illegal. Then on to he was just being sarcastic. Rinse and repeat over four years.

We've had members of the National Guard removed from their posts because they can't be trusted to guard the Capitol from insurrectionist. And let's back up just a bit on that one, we have the fucking National Guard in place to protect the inauguration of the new president.  The NATIONAL GUARD is on hand to protect against INSURRECTIONISTS. And now we are finding out (or at least some are finding out, some of us have been warning about it for awhile) that members of our own military would gladly be part of an insurrection. 

What 

The

Fuck?

So yeah, I'm scared. I'm worried. I don't know where we go from here. I don't know what happens next. 

Looks like we made it...left each other on the way...

I don't know if we find our way back to being able to see the other side. I'm not sure I'm ready just yet to even try. I need them to all climb out of the deplorable basket (and as your friendly reminder, she gave you two baskets, one was all about economics and feeling abandoned, the other was the deplorable basket of racism and sexism and you all said, she called me deplorable! No, she didn't. You self selected.) I need you all to own your shit. 

I'm worried. 
I'm worried for Almost President Biden. I'm worried for Almost Vice President Harris. I'm worried for their actual safety. For their lives. 

But I'm also worried for all of us. 

Because that whole climbing out of the basket part? It's not happening. They are hunkering down. They are unapologetic. They can't own their own shit because they don't think they've done anything wrong. We aren't past this. We have just started. 

So less than 24 hours to go. Looks like we made it...

Sort of. 

Let's see what the next four years bring and what we can make of them. 

If Wishes Were Horses...

The day she found the wishing well everything changed.

That was what she always thought. That if her life could have been divided into Before and After that would have been the point. But truthfully, if she had ever thought more deeply about it, the day she found the abandoned house in the forest was when everything changed. Or even before that, the day the previous occupant of the house died everything changed. 

But that had been a long time before she was even born so for her, it didn't really mean much. 

And even before that, the day the Keepers of the Spring had built the well, that had been when everything had changed. 

Or was it when the Spring itself came to the knowledge of those that lived above ground, was that when everything changed?

Or was it when those that lived above the ground came to be? Because the Spring had always been. At least as far as they knew. And we are all only concerned with things we know. The unknown is never even considered. It's not part of our stories.

Except it is. 

But the day she found the wishing well she felt like that was the moment everything changed. 

When she inserted the stone key into the notch on the side of the well and the stairs leading down into its depths were revealed. When she found the stacks and stacks of pennies that had been used for making wishes. She knew then that everything would be different. 

She had been wrong in how it would be different. 

Her first thought, that there were thousands of dollars in the well had fallen to the side when she realized that thousands of pennies was not actually very many dollars. A hundred dollars worth of pennies more or less. It was more work to clear the coins out than she had gained in raw dollars. When she got to the bottom of the well there were some older coins that she thought would be worth something to the rare coin collectors. But by the time she reached those her life's direction had already shifted.

It was the first handful of pennies she brought back to the shed that had done it. She was still thinking that it would be life changing. The access to that much money. Just there for her to take. Imagining the things she would buy, the lifestyle she could have. No more worries at all. Just the lap of luxury for her. The shoe had not yet dropped as to how many pennies would be needed for that to come true. But as she started to count she noticed things out of the corner of her eye. 

Flashing lights, she thought at first it must be sunshine reflecting off of the coins. But that didn't make sense, she was inside, under a canopy of trees. She had leaned away from the table she had placed the coins on and noticed the flashes again. As she realized what she was seeing her brain tried to convince her that it was not possible. But it was possible. Because it was happening. 

She moved one penny out from the pile so it stood alone, the flashes of light stopped, they settled into words. Projecting on the wall behind the desk. "I wish I had a puppy." and then written under that the name Belinda Jones.

She knew Belinda. She lived in the house down the street from her. She was 9, and her brother had terrible allergies and asthma. Poor Belinda was never going to get that puppy. Or at least not as long as she lived at home. But she might be able to get her a stuffed animal. That would be something sweet for her, and maybe make her think her wish had come true. She had liked Belinda after all.

And if she had stuck with the easy wishes. The ones the children made things might have been different. But the next penny, well the next penny was different. 

"I wish I hadn't stolen the money." Peter Carom

Peter Carom was the bishop in the local parish. 

What money had he stolen? From whom? And what would he do not to be found out? 

And that was when her life changed. 

If wishes were horses then beggars would ride. 

It sounded better than if wishes were blackmail then grifters would thrive.

But it was the day her whole life changed. 

Working Those Goals...

 #DailyCalm | Believe in your capacity to change. You've got this.

That is the prompt today from Daily Calm. Calm is the program I've been using to try AGAIN to get the hang of meditation. I actually picked it up for the sleep stories and other sleep programs. Part of my never ending search to rewire my head so I sleep more. And as it's a never ending search and it's the way my head is wired you can guess how it turned out. 

But to get access to all of the good things on Calm you have to pay for their system. And once I paid I had to get some use out of it. So...trying again at meditating, and I downloaded their daily reminder calendar for January as part of my DO ALL THE THINGS KICKSTART!

Some of them have been really interesting little prompts. Some direct you to use parts of their program you might not have. Some are just little pep talks, like this one. Because we are halfway through January and this is where most people start dropping their resolutions. January 19th is the average day of quit. By that point most people are just done. The newness has worn off, any quick gains (or losses) have already been had and now you are in the slog. The realization that to lose weight you are going to have to KEEP eating the way you have been. To get stronger you are going to have to exercise ALL THE DAMN TIME. To not drink you have to still NOT drink. 

When you start it looks easy. When you are doing it day after day it gets to be a lot harder. 

And there is the point where you wonder why you even bother. I have battled my weight my entire life. I get it where I want it for brief moments in time and then...well I'm either under or more likely over again very quickly. So why do I keep trying? Why do I even bother? Why not just indulge in a life of bon bons and relaxation? 

Well, I've talked about it. Sure, vanity is part of it, but really it's health. If I get too heavy my joints ache. If I want to live the life I want to live I need to be fit and healthy. Right now that's the driving goal to undoing the weight gain and fitness loss from 2020 pandemic time. The 2021 pandemic time needs to be getting back in shape because it's going to end. The lockdowns will be lifted. And when that happens we're going to Disneyland. I want to be able to fit comfortably in the rides and I want to be able to walk around the parks without feeling like I am going to die.

And then at some point when we figure out who can watch the cats, we will go to Hawaii. I will want to hike and kayak and swim daily. And, most importantly, I don't want to have to buy a new swim suit. I HATE buying swimsuits. Yuck.

So I have an end reason. Which helps. But you do have to believe that you can do it. 

And it's not just the basic stuff, the weight, the eating better, the staying hydrated, the quitting smoking, the not biting your fingernails, not just those sorts of changes. But the big ones too. 

Do you believe you can change?

Really change?

If I believe in anything I believe I am constantly changing. And hopefully always for the better. 

Not the core of me, I think who I am is who I am. But the pieces that I pull around that core. If I learn something new I hope I incorporate it into who I am and how I act. If the world around me shifts and new ideas come forward I hope I am able to listen to them and act on them if they are good ideas. I hope that the person I am not is not the same as the person I was ten years ago and the person I will be ten years from now. If I am then I've become rigid and unchanging and that's not really living. What a shame that would be. 

Keep learning new things, keep working to make yourself the best version of you that you can be, keep believing that you can change, keep working towards a better world and belief that the world can change as well.

That's what hope is anyway isn't it?
The belief in positive change?

Well I hope we are all holding on to that hope right now. And I hope that it helps. We could all use some positive change right now.

Saturday Morning...

We have two mourning doves in the tree outside. They come by every once in awhile. Yesterday one of them stood on the railing and looked at me for awhile. I believed she was saying, "Umm, yeah, about the peanuts? We aren't really fans."

See, for most of the year we've had multiple bird feeders up. Different shapes and sizes including just an open dish. There have been peanuts, seeds, dried fruit, sunflower seeds, and of course hummingbird nectar. But a few weeks (maybe 6 now? Pandemic time dontchaknow) we started to notice that the HUGE influx of pine siskins were having some issues. There were some that were acting a little odd. Puffy, lethargic. Then Brent found a dead bird. 

A few days before I had been looking through my Facebook stories and a friend's boys had found a dead bird and had a funeral for it. Really sweet story but there was a comment under it from someone who said, "Pine Siskins are really susceptible to salmonella poisoning." It popped back to the top of my head and off to research I went.

And yeah, they are super susceptible to it. Their normal habitat is, well, you can guess from the name. And forests and woods are a lot more spread out than porch and backyard feeders. But with the loss of habitat from building and forest fires and the drought they have come down into the cities to take advantage of those feeders. 

But they were spreading a killing disease amongst themselves. 

So we pulled in all of the feeders. Dumped the feed, washed everything. Cleaned up the porch and raked the area under the porch to discourage them from gathering there. And we waited to see if they would move on. 

It took awhile. They would come and land on the hooks and stare at us. They would hop around looking for scraps. We felt badly. We had been feeding them, and the other birds who were like, We didn't do anything! We can handle this! But our good intentions were literally killing them. So...we waited.

Last week we put out some peanuts for the squirrel. Just plain peanuts, no extra seeds or fruit. We didn't even put out the water dish again. And with the peanuts the Jays came back. Then the black capped chickadees. They would all snatch some peanuts and go on their way. And of course the squirrels. 

But yesterday the mourning doves came back...so we decided to put a little of the seed and dried fruit mix in with the peanuts. 

We've had a good collection of birds this morning. Finches have come back. Some birds that I don't know what they are except pretty...so far no pine siskins. Which is good. Because if they flock back we'll have to take everything back down (except the hummingbird food) and start again. 

Because it's our responsibility. Even though we love to see the massive amounts and varieties of birds just covering all the feeders we know that that crowd isn't good for the pine siskins. The finches don't crowd like that, and as city birds aren't as vulnerable. The Jays pretty much scare everyone off when they show up so they don't deal with the crowds either. And the hawks love the crowds but that's a different story...

But the pine siskins can't survive without us shutting things down. 

And honestly, I didn't intend on this being a metaphor for Covid-19 but it sure turned into that didn't it? 

The virus is killing us. Some of us aren't as susceptible to it, some of us don't deal with crowds. But for some of us we are dying. And as a society we should be as responsible for our most vulnerable as Brent and I have been for the pine siskins shouldn't we? 

We shut everything down for awhile and are now in our slow open. (one dish of seeds, started with just peanuts now there are seeds and dried fruit as well) It will be few more weeks before we try out the other feeders. We need to make sure the pine siskins have moved on before that happens. Because if they all come flocking back we'll just have to shut it all down again. Because what we were doing before was killing them.

Even when the other birds were giving us guilt looks, even when we knew that the Jays could handle it. And the finches and the chickadees. Even when the squirrel pooped all along the rail to let us know how mad he was; we still kept the feeders down, because it wasn't worth killing the pine siskins over. 

And that's the truth of it. 

When we didn't know that crowded feeders were killing them it wasn't our fault. But as soon as we knew, if we didn't act, we would have been. 

If we know that crowds spread the virus, and we do. If we know that wearing a mask can help protect people, and we do. If we know that a little isolation right now while we wait for a vaccine will keep the virus from spreading even more, and we know that. If we know all of those things and we ignore them, then we are saying that killing our more vulnerable isn't that big of a deal. You might not like that that is what it's saying, but it is isn't it?

We have to weigh the risks. Still. It's not over yet and we need to stop acting like it is. 

Be glad when you have immunity. Either from surviving the virus yourself or from getting your vaccines. But until that happens be careful. Not just for yourself, but for the pine siskins among us. 

Wear your mask.

Keep your distance.

Stay home when you can.

And then eventually, we'll get to the point where we have more than peanuts to look forward to. 

Look...

Yesterday Brent sent me a text to beware of the latest Radio Lab. It's a podcast we both listen to and he had started it during his workout and had to turn it off. He said it was brutal. 

I listened to it today and I am super grateful for the warning. I was able to listen during a light walk cooldown instead of while doing something that needed a lot more concentration and breath work. Because he was right, it was brutal. It was about a series of photographs taken during the Afghanistan war. Really good podcast, and I highly recommend you searching it out and listening to it. 

One of the things that really struck me was the photographer talking about the limits of what is shown and what even could be shown. During Vietnam those restrictions weren't in place and she really believes (and I agree) that the pictures and the video is a large part of what turned the tide in American feelings about the war. 

Seeing the coffins, seeing the bodies, understanding the cost of war makes sending our children to fight a lot harder. 

We are visual. Pics or it didn't happen right?  How much longer has our time in Afghanistan and Iraq lasted because we didn't have those pictures?

I've talked about this before in reference to things that seemed obvious to me but didn't get traction until the video was released or the photos. You can tell people the number of troops that are dying, the number of people who were coming back missing limbs or with traumatic brain injuries, but if you don't see the carnage yourself it's easy to dismiss. 

We need to see it to believe it. 

We are starting to see that with the Capitol Insurrectionist right now. For four years people (not just me) have said that a large part of Trumpists were white supremacists, were ready for a civil war, ready for violence. But until the pictures came out it was easy for some to dismiss it. "I voted for Trump and I am not those things." Right now the images make it hard to deny that you might not feel like that's who you are but a large group of people who support the same person you do are. And don't you think that's a thing you should wonder about?

If I voted for the guy that a large group of "crazy" people voted for what does that say about that guy? What does that say about me?

I can tell you that a lot of the people on the far left don't really represent me. But what I generally have to clarify is that I don't think their methods are effective. Or that I think they are farther left than I am comfortable with. But what I cannot do is deny that the majority of the people on the left hold ideas that I also hold. Maybe varying places on a spectrum, but I believe that there should be a base health care coverage for every American. I believe that our college costs are out of hand and if 1-12 is free, why not 1-16?  I believe in the social safety net. And I'm willing to have a discussion with anyone on the left as to why they believe in further left ideologies than I do, or in lesser. But I know that most all of us have a baseline that is the same belief. 

There are always some on the way outer fringe that you have a hard time identifying with. But usually that's a small handful. 

So when you see a large percentage of "your group" that believes things that you claim not to, then you have to ask why you are in that group?

And did it take seeing a guy with a Confederate Battle flag roaming the halls of the Capitol to question that? Why didn't seeing a large group of people complaining about taking down Confederate statues do it? If you couldn't believe it when they tore down the American flag to put up a Trump flag why didn't you notice when they manipulated the flag for Blue Lives Matter or for those Trump with an Eagle superimposed over the US Flag abominations?  All of that falls under desecration of the flag. You hated it when Kaepernick kneeled but those things were okay?

Right now there are people grappling with not recognizing themselves in those images but still those images represent something they believe in. So what else do you need to see? 

And understand that a lot of people who do look just like you, and like me, were in that crowd. They just don't make as good of a photo as a guy in fur cape. 

The very respectable looking politicians who supported the false claims of a stolen election. The ones who have fomented this insurrection, they all look just like all of us. You've been looking at those images for years. 

The question you have to ask is what are you seeing? 

You need to look at the photos. You need to see the outward crazy looking folks that were there. You need to ask yourself if you really are aligned with people who brought zip ties into the building to handcuff members of Congress who were ready to do their jobs. And what were they going to do with those that they handcuffed? Well...they were chanting "hang Mike Pence." They also shit on the floors and spread it on the walls.  Are these the people you identify with? 

Because they aren't done yet. 

They still are ready for their war. 

They need the respectable looking folks for cover. 

So who are you? Will you be in the next picture? 

We need to see the images of war to understand the costs.
We need to look at the images of terrorists to understand who they are. 

We need to look at the mirror and ask who we are.

I told you yesterday I know who I would have been. I know who I am. 

Do you?

Who Would You Be?

When I was working out today the phone rang and it threw my podcast off of my headset and I couldn't get it to reconnect. I was already going at a good clip on the treadmill and just gave up trying and went to listening to the trainer instead. Not something I normally do, I've tried it a few times but mostly it's not that interesting so I just watch the pretty scenery and do my own thing.

Today was not one of those days. It ended up being really interesting and really inspiring. 

It was a hike through the Zebra Canyons in Utah. They are slot canyons and let me tell you, not someplace I would ever hike on my own. Not just because it's hot in Utah, but because the slot canyons are really small. The iFit guide was a super skinny guy and at times it looked like he was about to get stuck. All I could think is I would be wedged in there so fast it wouldn't even be funny. No way. But it was really pretty and he did little "ISN'T GEOLOGY THE COOLEST!" things that made me think of Steph so that made me happy as well. 

But on the walk across the open desert areas on the way to the slot canyons he was talking about what got him into mountaineering and hiking and just being that adventurer kind of guy. He read Into Thin Air at a young age. It's the story of the hikers stuck on Everest when a massive storm blew in. And when he read it it wondered "Who would I be?" Would he have been the kind that stayed with a friend who couldn't go any further, knowing that it could very well kill them too? Would he have been the kind that hiked back through the storm to try and get help? Would he have been the one who was left for dead but found an inner strength to get up and keep going? Who would he have been?

And then later in life he found out. 

The iFit guide was Aron Ralston which some of you might know from his book or the movie 127 Hours. It's the story of him getting his arm trapped while he was out hiking and eventually have to cut his own arm off to be able to get to safety. He said while he was trapped he remembered reading Into Thin Air and how it had influenced him to become an outdoor adventurer and now he was going to find out who he was. Turns out he was the guy left for dead who found a way to keep going. 

Amazing. 

How often do we get to find out who we would be?

We do it all the time when we read about important periods in our history. When we read the stories about the heroes who made a difference. And when we read about the villains who made their own differences, just not good ones. And I think we all imagine we would be the good guys. 

We would have marched for equal rights with MLK Jr. 
We would have hidden Jews in the attic.
We would have worked to get slaves to freedom.
We would have stood in Tiananmen Square.

We are sure we would have.  

But here's the really interesting part, we are always living in a moment in history that allows us to see who we would have been. Maybe it's not as dramatic as freedom fighters, or the underground railroad, or even getting your arm trapped in a canyon, but we are always able to show who we are. 

I've talked about it a LOT over the past four years, as you all know. What should I be doing? Can I do anything to make a difference? What the hell is going on with the world right now?

And I can say I've had a lot of friends who showed me who they would have been. I've had friends who marched in protests; starting with the Women's March on Washington the day after Trump's inauguration up to and through the BLM Marches this summer. I've had friends who spoke out, loudly and often, about injustices they saw. They posted statuses, they hooked people up with links to more information, they took on internet troglodytes and fought the good fight with their words. I've had friends who opened their pocketbooks and donated to worthy causes. Who helped to battle the injustices through good old cash payments. I've had friends who were overwhelmed by what they saw in the world and could do no more than protect their own hearts and try to keep themselves going while praying or sending love or just hope out to those who were battling. 

And, sadly, I've also had people around me rejoice in the injustice. Or if not rejoice in it, ignore it because at the same time they were getting conservative justices or tax cuts. The ends justified the means. No matter how mean they were. I'm not sure which disgusted me more. Those that ignored the injustice because they thought it would make for a more conservative judiciary, one they believe would do "right" by them and their religion or the ones who ignored it for money? If you are doing something immoral for what you believe to be a moral gain doesn't that make it all immoral? And if you are doing it for money that just makes you a whore.

And then there were those who are fine with it all. 

Fine with the insurrection. Fine with the Congressmen and Women who helped. Who endangered the lives of their fellow Congresspersons. Fine with a president who was impeached for the second time for trying to wreck our democracy. First by foreign influence and then by domestic. (Guarding against threats both foreign and domestic should be a priority, I mean I've heard it someplace before I'm sure) They are fine with it all because it's us against them after all and if they are unhappy then that's all that matters. 

We always have a chance to know who we would have been. Because that is who we are. 

I am the one who doesn't buy into the conspiracy theories. I am the one who ponders aloud and in writing what is going on the in the world. I am the one who believes that written words have power and we should use them for the most good that we can. I am the one who opens their pocketbook (or Brent's as the case may be) and gives to the charities and the organizations that I think will help. I am the one that calls bullshit bullshit. I am the one who is saddened by the number of people in my life that I have watched show me who they are, and they aren't who I thought they were.

I know who I am. 

Who are you? And does it line up with who you thought you would be? 

I will give you a hint, cheering the man walking through the Capitol holding a Confederate battle flag means you would not have been one of those supporting Martin Luther King Jr. and the fight for civil rights. 

Being okay that "only a few" of the people in Cult45 wear Nazi regalia or sweatshirts with Camp Auschwitz on the front means you would not have been the one hiding Jews in your attic. 

Who are you?

And are you okay with that?

Spoiler Alert!

I've been reading A Promised Land by Barack Obama for the past couple of weeks. I thought it might be a nice thing to read while waiting out the last part of the Trump presidency before starting the Biden one. Sort of a refresher course in what it was like to have a president I might not always agree with but at least believed their intentions were good. 

It's really long. 

It's taking me forever to get through it. 

Part of that is the way he tells a story. He tells one like I do. Instead of going from A to B you get all of the subset in between. The details. The little asides. I like all of that, obviously, I think it makes the experience richer, but it does tend to make a story a little longer. Part of it is it's just a really long book. It's 768 pages long. I'm about half way through which is a good sized book in its own right. And part is that it always seems to take longer to read nonfiction than it does fiction. I am not sure why that is, but for me it seems to be a constant. Maybe I slow down with nonfiction because I'm trying to learn something about someone or some thing or maybe it's just the flow of the writing is different. I'm not sure. 

And then there is the last part. The part that I was starting to figure out a few days ago but really hit home yesterday while I was reading. It's all spoiled for me. I know how the story ends. I actually know more about how the story is going than he did while he was writing it. I mean he knew Trump got elected. He knew Trump had been spending years undoing a lot of what the Obama administration had worked so hard to get done. But he didn't know that Trump was going to lead an attack on the Capitol. He didn't know that right now 1 in 5 Republicans support the insurrection. He didn't know what I know. 

It was bad enough when I was reading about him meeting with the Majority and Minority leaders of both Houses of Congress before the healthcare debates and knowing that the Minority leaders were stringing him along. That they were not actually interested in listening to him, or in helping him at all. That McConnell at that very moment was vowing to his party to make Obama a one term president. It's like wanting to yell at the movie screen DON'T GO IN THAT ROOM!

I keep having to put the book down and walk away from it. It's too frustrating. 

But it is incredibly interesting. I like reading about how the government works, or even doesn't work in a lot of cases. What goes into making things run. And because I have a lot of things that I disagreed with Obama on it's been really interesting to get a look at the reasoning behind some of those decisions. What was the thinking that went on to make those calls? Why was the end result so different than what I had hoped it would be? 

If you can understand someone's motives you can understand (or at least get closer to understanding) their decisions. 

But it's still like watching a future nightmare taking shape. 

Because I know that no matter what good things he gets done there is the orange menace on the horizon ready to undo them. I know no matter how good his intentions are, no matter how much I honestly believe he's incredibly smart and considerate and really weighing things, there are people out there who think he's evil. Like literal evil. I know that right now our country is not better than it was while he was president. I know that the work he did to stop the slide and then start the economic recovery will never get the credit it deserves from Republicans because they somehow don't believe it happened. I know that Trump is still here.

That Trumpism is still here. 

That Cult45 is not going away. 

Not even in 7 days when Biden takes office.

That the insurrection, the attempted coup, the storming of the Capitol, I know that the more we learn about it the worse it gets. That the more we find out the more we see (or more people see, some of us have been warning about this for awhile) that this is a deep division, a split nation division, a group that actively wants a civil war division. And some of those that want it are elected officials. In the seat of government. Who will work against unifying because it might not get them reelected if people aren't so angry all of the time. 

So reading about how Obama would go back to his home office in the evening and read everything he could find on Turkish history while trying to work with our generals in what to do in the region is amazing and also heartbreaking. Because you know it didn't matter. Trump undid so much of what was done with his jagged little sharpie signature. With his sycophants and with his let's burn the fucking place down crew. 

It's not the pleasant little palate cleanser read I was hoping for. It's a tragedy because I know how it ends. 

Or at least I know how this act is going. 

I hate spoilers. I really do. 

Bad Calls and No Calls...

Anyone who watches sports is familiar with bad calls. Or no calls. Or that moment the game is about to be out of hand. When the players take things into their own hands and it's out of control. The refs are supposed to stop that before it happens. And usually they do. Sometimes they don't. And sometimes after a stretch of not making the calls they needed to they make a lot of ticky tack make up calls. Which just pisses everyone off. 

Every sports fan is also familiar with the feeling that the game is being called unevenly. That your team is being penalized more than the other. That they are getting away with blatant fouls or cheating. But not your team. Your team steps out of line even a little and the whistle blows.

As a B1G football fan, there is also the belief that your refs just suck. Like as a whole. The group that is supposed to be making the calls can almost always be counted on to get at least one really wrong. And you just hope that in making the wrong calls they do it evenly. Yeah, the calls are not always going to be great, but as long as they are not great for both sides you feel like it's at least fair. 

And that's really the big thing right? We just want to believe it's fair. 

And here's the really big thing. We don't. None of us do. We see the slights against people we agree with as massive and the slights against people we disagree with as minor. Even when there is data to back up one side being treated more unfairly than the other, we ignore it. Even when you can show numbers that say you were treated the same, you ignore it. You always feel the slights against your side deeper. 

And (my own bias coming in to play here as well as facts and figures so take it how you will, I mean, you will no matter what, that's the whole point) when we are talking about politics one side has done a better job at playing victim than the other. 

When you think of the IRS scandal during the Obama years with the 501c companies what comes to mind? A targeted effort by the IRS to hit conservative groups? A way to silence groups that disagreed with the current administration? Probably, something in there. But what if I told you that there were progressive groups that were denied tax exempt status as well? When it was reported it was always a small note, some progressive groups were targeted as well. Just a little aside. The big story was groups with names like Tea Party Whatevers and Patriots For Whatever were investigated a little more and often denied tax exempt status because it was determined they weren't charities, they were political action organizations. But the conservatives screamed the loudest. And eventually (under a Jeff Sessions DOJ) they got an apology. And the progressive groups that were targeted as well got a small mention in news stories saying things like "some progressive groups were targeted as well."

You are seeing it right now with Facebook and Twitter bans. Now, I will say, it's been pretty sweeping over the past few days but it's also not everyday that a sitting president incites an insurrection, we are, again, as usual now, in unprecedented times. 

But conservatives have been complaining for ages about bans and shadow bans, and targeting. Even though study after study shows conservative targeting doesn't happen. And not only does it not happen, the Facebook algorithms showed preference to conservative speech and elevated it in the recommendations. But conservatives have banged the drum so long and so loudly over how they are oppressed that people believe it to be true. It's not fair, it's not being called evenly. And they are right, it's not, but not in the direction they think.

And right now while a lot of groups are being banned and removed from Facebook and Twitter it's playing into that SEE??? narrative. But the fact that they were able to post about "stopping the steal" for weeks without removal shows that it took something extraordinary to get them removed. Just run of the mill false information wasn't enough. It was considered "just a different point of view" even though there were no facts to back them up, it was fine. Right up until they realized that repeatedly saying that something was stolen lead people to feel they should do something to take it back.

Parler has been shutdown from Amazon's hosting service. They said that it was due to the fact that they hadn't done anything to moderate the threats of violence. But there have been threats of violence since Parler started. That was the whole point of Parler. That you could say whatever the fuck you wanted and not have it removed due to "Terms and Services." So once the threats of violence became actual violence they "rushed" into action. Up until that point they were perfectly fine cashing the check.

I don't know how I feel about Parler being shut down, by the way. On one hand I say, yeah, of course. They provided a forum to foment insurrection, and let's be honest we were minutes away from massive bloodshed. It could have been much worse than it was, and it was already awful. They reveled in their fuck your feelings edge, right until they realized that they were honestly fucked. But none of those people have changed. They still want a civil war. They still would like to see all of the satanic baby eating democrats strung up. They just are someplace more private, someplace harder to see what they are planning. And they are still planning. They were planning on Facebook until they got banned from there. They were planning on Twitter until they got banned from there. They were planning on Parler until they got shutdown. So...

But I also think something needs to change. Allowing hate to find a new level and attract others to it more easily is a bad idea. And that's what has happened over the past few years. Groups have found each other. They've fed each other new and more amazing crazy ideas. Qanon is crazy. But a lot of people believe them. They honestly think they are saving children and how in the world can that be bad? And while they are saving the children they are not getting vaccines because evil satanic Bill Gates is going to inject microchips. And while that is happening Black and brown people are coming for your jobs and your money. And while that is happening the government is softening you up to be led to the slaughter by asking you to wear a facemask. And...

So what do you do? 

I don't know. 

But I do know that we all feel the refs are biased. We all feel like the other side gets away with EVERYTHING while we don't. We really need to try and look at things with a more jaded eye. Jaded toward our own beliefs, by the way. 

Though it's not easy. 

Especially when people are trying to whatabout their way out taking responsibility for an attempted coup. Fighting for the right to not be shot by police is not equal to fighting to overturn the results of an election you don't agree with. The reaction of the police to BLM protestors vs the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol couldn't be more stark. 

We are also seeing more and more reports about the number of police that were active participants in the insurrection. That were there. Off duty. To support it. Not to mention, though I am, the members of the Capitol Police in uniform that were also helping. Giving directions, posing for selfies, moving out of the way so they had easier access. 

How do you look at the refs and expect them to be fair when you know they wear the other team's uniform in their off time? Or in the case of Tour Guide Capitol Officer in the MAGA Hat while on duty as well... 

And that's not new information. People on the left, people at BLM protests, people who have watched issues with police brutality have tried to point it out for years. The white supremacy problem in the military has also been known for years. But now people are paying attention. So something needs to be done. 

How can you trust the game is fair when you know it's not being called evenly?

And I'm not saying that progressives need to start screaming as loudly about every slight the same way that conservatives have. I'm not saying I want the police to shoot rubber bullets and mace at every single protestor. I'm not saying that threats of violence against one group are okay but against another are not. 

But it needs to be called evenly. 

View your own beliefs with a little more critical thinking. Don't spread information before you check it for accuracy. Not just what "feels like the truth" but what is the truth. And no, I don't buy into the every side gets their own facts. Every side, every person, gets their own feelings about things, but the facts are facts. 

We've seen the "game" get out of hand, how bad is it going to get before we all pull it back under control?

Last week was bad. It could have been worse. They are still planning for worse. It's not over yet.

The refs need to get control of the game and we need to get control of the refs. 

Good luck to us all. 

Hmmm...

Now it's Monday and I'm not really any less stumped than I was yesterday. I've got a few threads in my head that are vying for space, but nothing really cohesive just yet. 

It's still tied to the insurrection last week. To the fact that we are still nine days away from inauguration and Trump keeps plowing along. He's making new rules, firing more people, trying to enshrine others in to protected positions, he's looking at heading to Texas to tout his wall though he's going to do it a the fucking Alamo. Tell me he's not going for the Remember the Alamo martyr bullshit there.

Democrats are calling for Impeachment since there is no way Pence and the Cabinet (what's left of it) are going to invoke the 25th. And REALLY no way he will swallow his pride and resign. I mean he still needs to issue the pardons for his family and himself, no chance he risks leaving before that's done. 

Hawley and Cruz and the rest of the Republicans who lent credence to the completely false claims that the election was rigged are still in Congress. Still holding positions of authority in our government. In the freaking legislative branch. You know, legislative...laws. The part that deals with fucking rules. They still sit there. 

There are still a lot of people who are sure the election was stolen from them. Because people in positions of authority told them it was. And still say weasel words around it. Cruz especially with the weasel words. He's a lawyer so he tried his best to make sure what he said was in the "people believe" realm instead of in the "this for sure happened" world. But when you want to hear someone verify your version of the truth, you hear what you want to hear. 

And, of course, we have those Republicans and some Democrats, who don't want to pursue any charges against Trump and his minions in the spirit of unity. It's time to reconcile, dontchaknow?

You know what needs to be the first step toward any reconciliation? Admission of wrong doing. Truly. There is no path to unity if one side refuses to admit they were wrong. If Lindsey Graham wants to hold hands and sing kumbaya now he has to apologize for the past few months of screaming about how something was stolen that wasn't. You cannot accuse me of taking something from you, that you knew all along I didn't take, then when you realized I wasn't going to give you what you wanted decide we should now work together, without apologizing for the accusation. 

They were wrong. And not just wrong, like they made a mistake, wrong like they were fully aware that they were lying to the American public and were doing it cravenly and kept it up just in case it might work or more likely so it would cripple the incoming administration and taint it as dishonest from the start. 

They did that knowing it wasn't true. 

They did that fully aware of the damage they were causing. 

They did that and now without apology they want to move on. For the sake of the country.

Fuck that shit.

I mean that sincerely and deeply. 

And I honestly hope that democrats do a very undemocrat like thing and hold them to account. I know it's against everything Biden normally believes but he and his administration need to bring these people to some sort of justice. 

It needs to happen. 

I don't want unity or reconciliation with a party that does not understand or admit what they've done is wrong. Because that's not reconciliation, that's denial. And we've had enough denial. Denial is what has gotten us to this point. Denying our past. Denying our problems. Denying the truth we should have been able to hear before we all had cameras on our phones. 

So much denial.

And until we, all of us we, both sides of the aisle and those not represented by either side, stop denying our problems, stop blaming others for our issues, start apologizing for our wrongs and more importantly working to make them right, there will be no unity.

So if you really want that; if you are truly ready for reconciliation and unity then it's time to work for it. 

And part of the work is clearing out those that are in the way. Get them to resign, if they won't resign see if they can be impeached or recalled, if they can't be impeached or recalled then sideline them. No committees. No interviews on talk shows about how they are so persecuted. No attention. And for fuck's sake do not vote for them to come back. 

If that doesn't happen then we know you were never serious about reconciliation or unity. You just wanted everyone to move forward and pretend everything is fine. 

It's not fine. 

Last week should have showed you that in stark relief. 

So yeah, I'm still a little stumped, and I'm not really bring tidy little cohesive blogs to life right now, but I think that's normal. I think that's okay. I think we should all be a little uncertain right now. Because as the ancient ones have said...This Shit is Bananas.