Now Is the Time to Choose Your Purpose

One of the many commercials promoting the US Marine Corps says "Many are called, few are chosen."  At this time in our history of the United States the majority of us are hearing the call to act, to stop this mad descent into white nationalism, isolationism, and overt discrimination and oppression against members of the human race.  Now is the time to choose our purpose going forward and stand up for what we believe and I hope that more than a few choose to do this.  Let's stand up and be counted!  We're off to a good start after last week's Women's March on Washington reports that more than 1,000,000 people attended the march there and in extraordinarily large numbers across the country and around the world. We have a fight song, Quiet, and more and more ways to make a difference popping up.  Today I pick up my postcards to send off to my representatives, all of them, describing the issues that are important to me.  I have a long list.  This is the first of ten actions in 100 days being promoted by the march.

It's certainly not been a boring first week of the Trump administration.  We've seen our President stress the country out over how large his inaugural crowds were, continue to blame his popular election loss on illegal voting for which he has shown absolutely no evidence, remove the Joint Chiefs from the National Security Council and add-in Steve Bannon his chief strategist who is  described by Matt Taibbi on twitter as "tactically a Leninist and ideologically a racialist/white nationalist..".  Some at the CIA, like former Director Brennan, expressed anger at Trump's speech in front of the wall of stars while at least 400 agents accepted open invitations to hear him speak.  

The week was topped off with an Executive Order banning entry to Muslims from many countries in the Middle East including Iran, Iraq and no surprise Syria.  Not included on this list are the countries that quietly fund terrorism and from where the 9/11 hijackers all hailed from like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE.  Unless you were out in the woods yesterday with no access to a mobile device you know that Green Card holders, people legally residing in the United States, were detained at airports across the country, placed in handcuffs, their social media was searched and they were asked their views on Donald Trump.   The lack of due process in all of this is glaring which prompts me to see if I can find a good class on the US Constitution on iTunes U that we might all want to take.

In other news, George Orwell's book "1984" is topping the best seller list and I began to think of other books that speak to American values that we might want to read as well like Walter Van Tilburg Clark's "The Ox Bow Incident" and Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird".  Feel free to add your own ideas in the comments, which I'm sorry to say I have to moderate now.  I embrace dissenting view points but not abuse and after my last post on the Women's March on Washington a particularly mean-spirited and abusive comment was made which I deleted.  I think some found the march threatening to them personally and felt the need to strike out.  If the commenter is reading this know that if you can't engage in civil discourse, then you're cut off.  

I watched a video this morning of an interview with Jane Elliott on the Rock Newman show.  It's under an hour long and well worth taking the time to watch.  I think it solidifies what we need to do today.  We can't sit back and wait for someone else to act.  She specifically says she has a purpose.  She calls on white women to be the leaders in ending racism.  We have so many issues today that are rooted in racism, white supremacy.  Today is the day to make the choice to make the difference as Jane says and stop living in ignorance.  Choose your purpose. 

The Women's March in DC Was Huge!!

UPDATED BELOW (1/25)
In keeping with my theme this year, yesterday I and about 500,000 other people chose to participate in the Women's March in Washington, D.C. and it was awesome!!  My sister Diane traveled from New Jersey so we could go together along with her sister-in-law and some close friends.  We were a group of seven traveling to DC via car and metro.  Another good friend offered parking at her house near the Takoma Metro station where we hopped on the Red line to Union Station and were part of something HUGE!!

Our Group of Marchers

Our new President likes to say many things are going to be, or will be HUGE, but this truly was.  Far exceeding organizers expectations, women traveled from all over the country to be in DC yesterday and those who couldn't make it here, marched in their local cities and suburbs in HUGE numbers as well.  On the way down from New Jersey my sister called near the Delaware Memorial Bridge to tell me she was in a "Women's March Traffic Jam"!  Everywhere she looked were cars of women, by themselves, in pairs and in groups heading to DC.

I've heard reports that at least 1200 buses applied for parking permits and I saw many pictures of planes filled with women flying to DC.  Some of my friends turned their homes in to Airbnb for the weekend to give many people a place to stay when local hotel prices were out of reach.

Why did I, and all these women decide to go to this march?  Is it the birth of a new women's movement or something even bigger?  I don't know.  I hope the momentum from yesterday turns in to something spectacular.  Before I go further describing the march experience though, I will tell you why I marched.

I marched for a lot of the same reasons that I consider myself a liberal and a progressive.  I want women to have complete and total control of their own bodies.  I want full reproductive freedom whether its access to birth control or safe abortion or my doctor telling me the truth about my medical decisions.  I want us to protect the environment.  I want us to invest in renewable energy and I want us to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry.  I want to keep the clean air and clean water act.  I want to protect Social Security and Medicare and I don't want the Affordable Care Act  to be repealed.  I want us to ensure public education is available to everyone.  I believe in raising the minimum wage and making college affordable.  I want women to earn equal pay for equal work.  I marched for Women of Color because I believe Black Lives Matter.  Finally, I believe that a lot of the progress we've made during my lifetime is now under threat with the new Administration unlike anything we've seen before and I want my voice to be heard.  I want to join with others who have similar inclinations and work towards changing not only our representatives at the national level, but at the local level as well.

Our group departed my house at 7am to drive to Takoma and catch the Metro.  When we got to Union Station around 9 a.m. it was already packed.  The line to Dunkin' Donuts as soon as you come off the Metro was long and we headed up the next elevator to grab a quick bite at Au Bon Pain.  We walked out towards the Capital where free signs were available and of course the non-official merchandise that is found at every single event ever.

My friend Tracey and I with our signs

Of course as we made our way towards the Capital we stopped for pictures and to buy a tshirt or two.  We even managed to run into a friend from school before we headed towards the larger crowds. Their were rows upon rows of port-a-potties up to and around the Capital building and the bunting and chairs were still out from the inauguration the day before.  As we approached the main area, which we still couldn't see, the crowds were getting thicker and thicker.  We saw a lifesize Hilary marching with a pussy hat on.  There were a lot of homemade signs too.  One said "Super Callous Fragile Ego Trump You Are Atrocious" (hopefully I remembered that right).  We managed to get ourselves in with a large group of people making their way up and around the National Museum of the American Indian.  A woman near me said she thought if we went that direction we could go up a block or two and see and hear the folks speaking on the podium.  Native Americans at the museum were engaged in a small gathering focused on stopping the Dakota Access Pipeline.  Everywhere we looked were women in pink pussy hats and the crowd was friendly and extremely happy.

Now, I didn't do all my homework about the march.  I had it in my head that the march started at 10 am, but apparently the speaking was starting earlier and the march itself wasn't starting until 1:15pm.  Okay, that's fine.  Of course, as we worked our way around the patios and steps of the museum, we were in a giant crush of people.  When I say crush, I mean that each person occupied a space as big as their person and not much more.  People pressed in on each other from all sides.  We were intimately close with one another.  You really couldn't inch any farther forward and going backwards was a bigger challenge than what a Salmon faces swimming upstream to spawn.

My sister and I attended Oakland Mills High School ('86 and '83 respectively) and the halls were packed with students and moving fast in between classes.  We know how to move through a crowd.  Not on this day.  There was no where to go, and some people were getting very antsy.  At about 10 am we were standing on the patio around the museum, off to our left we could glimpse the jumbotron, but we couldn't see it clearly and we couldn't hear anything the speakers were saying.  The crush of people was only getting greater.  No one had any phone service to speak of.  Diane and her sister in law were probably 15 ft away from me, but at least 30 people stood in between us.   Looking at my watch I was thinking I can't see the speakers, I can't hear the speakers and I'm feeling mashed and so I thought we should get out of the crush.  I tried to signal Diane but at times the crowd was loud and it was hard to get through.  I couldn't text or call because I didn't have phone service.

Looking across the sea of people towards
the Air and Space Museum

I looked across the street towards the Air and Space museum and I could tell that people next to the building had freedom of movement, but not a lot.  I also didn't think we could make it there when I looked at the sea of people.  I turned around and could see the National Gallery of Art and thought we might have a chance if we went in that direction.  I didn't see any way we could go back the way we had come.  I finally got Diane's attention and we turned our group around and made our slow way out of the crowd.

I said earlier that the crowd was friendly and polite, and that's mostly true, but put even the most polite people together in a crush and nerves are sure to be on edge.  Groups attempting to escape the crowd had linked arms and would push through a crack in the people and you'd be trapped, unable to move while they forced their way out.  Or you'd be faced with people who surprisingly were attempting to move deeper in to the crowd.  Folks next to me at the National Museum of the American Indian said Jamie Raskin was their representative and they were supposed to be meeting up near the podium.  I learned last night they had stopped people from coming into the area close to the podium because there were already too many people at that point.

Scary moments are when you feel a force pushing at your back and know that you are powerless to stop it.  Calls to cease pushing could be heard.  An ambulance appeared seemingly out of nowhere on Jefferson Drive and 4th Street.  The crowd could not part to let the ambulance get through.  As we weaved our way slowly through the crowds I could hear people calling to let the ambulance through and knew we could make it across Jefferson Drive and the ambulance wouldn't have made it to where we were the crowds were that thick.  In desperation to get through the crowd people started claiming, truthfully or not that they had a great need to move ahead of others.  A woman near me said that people she was with were having anxiety attacks.  I was concerned and asked where they were.  "Well, they're ahead of us now, I can't see them."  Another woman was softly calling "Lilly!" and peering behind me.  I asked if she needed help locating someone and my efforts garnered me a dirty look.  I'm not innocent of the snark.  At one point four tall men pushed their way in front of my friends and I, and I felt that I had been shoved aside.  I said "Don't worry, women are used to being pushed aside to let men through, don't worry about us."  The young man turned to me and said "We're marching with our Mom and trying to keep up with her."  Well, okay, good for you, but you still didn't need to push me aside.

A woman on a scooter yelled out "Scooter!! Coming through!!" and literally ran over the feet of a man near me.  He said "You're running over my feet!!"  The woman on the scooter didn't seem to care.  I heard that an elderly, sick woman needed to get through, that a child in a wheel chair needed to get through, that a woman in a wheel chair needed to get through, and when I or someone else in the crowd would ask where they were, they were not near enough to be seen.  I also saw people smile and help people catch up with their groups.  At one point my sister and I were separated and the crowd chanted my name as they parted enough to let me slide through and catch up with her.  That was the majority of the time.

I think it took us a good hour to move through all those people as we worked our way up 4th street to the National Gallery of Art where we finally had room to move about.  We also managed to run in to another friend who had grown up across the street from us.  We took advantage of the time to head in to the museum, use the bathroom, look at some art and regroup.  We decided to grab lunch a few blocks from the march and then join the march in progress afterwards.  When we made our way back to the march though, everyone was pooped out.  At least one in our party just wasn't feeling right and we decided to call it a day.  We hopped on the red line at Metro Center and headed out.

We listened to the coverage on the way home and got to my house and kicked back to take in all the televised coverage.  It was amazing watching all the people who had gone to the marches around the country and seeing how many people had shown up in DC.  I'm so glad that we went even if we didn't actually join in a moving march.  I felt and still do feel energized like something great is about to happen and this is just the beginning.  I hope the momentum sticks with us and that people get involved at all levels of government.  Think about all the people who have a say over your life that you vote for.  From the group of people deciding about reserved parking and what color I can paint my door in my townhouse community, to the Board of Education, the County Council, the State Legislature and all the way up to the President of the United States.  It's a lot of folks who are making decisions that impact the way we live, whether or not we thrive, and determining how much freedom we get to lead our lives in the way we see fit.

The importance of the march yesterday to me at least is, as I said earlier, I want my voice to be heard.  I want to be taken in to account when decisions are made.  I'm going to be writing and calling and attending meetings and if there's another march, I'm going to be there.  Today the women's march sent out a plan for 10 actions in 100 days.  The first one is a postcard that goes to your elected representatives.  They said have a party and fill yours out and mail them off.  Well, okay, I will do that.  I commit to do the ten things they're going to ask.  It's a choice I'm making that I'm involved and I'm committed because this is important.  We're deciding what we want our world to look like and I'm not sitting on the sidelines for that.

UPDATE 1/25 - When I originally published this on Sunday, crowd estimates were at around 500,000.  I'm now hearing that more than 1,000,000 people were at the march in DC.

The Choices You Make

Happy New Year to All!  It's just the second day of 2017 and I am going to work on a theme for my posts this year - Choices.  I think it's a good and important theme because as we are all aware, choices have consequences.  Sometimes we have immediate feedback on our choices and sometimes we feel no impact at all.   I want to touch on some simple choices like exercise and dinner, but I also want to talk about broader and bigger choices like who we choose to represent us in government and some stuff in between.  At the end of 2017 it would be nice if we could say to ourselves that we had made some really good choices in the past year.

Every single day we make hundreds of choices.  I will try not to run down a bunch of rabbit holes that make your head swirl as I write, but instead, I want people to think about what every choice means and whether or not you can live with the consequences of those choices.  What does a choice mean to you?  Why are you choosing what you're choosing?  Does the choice you're making bring value to your life? What would happen if you made a different choice?  What would happen if you couldn't get your first choice?

Years ago I read the following:  Make your decision and then live your life like you had no other choice.  It's about not having regrets, or looking back.  However, sometimes we make a choice that turns out badly and it's good to look back to try and figure out where we went wrong.  Maybe we'll conclude that given the same set of circumstances we'd make exactly the same choice again.  It never hurts to have a 'debrief'.  What you want to make sure to do is learn and grow and keep moving forward.

When I was little my parents would take us over to the Columbia Swim Center in the evenings.  Unlike today's Splashdown, we had a high dive to climb up and jump off.  I was eight and my sister was five and we loved going off the high dive.  On my way up the ladder I'd stop and let go to show off my bravery.  My sister wanted to show how brave she was too - and she slipped and fell hard on to the concrete below, cracking her skull.  I was a little kid of course, but I knew my sister liked to copy me.  Younger siblings are doing everything they can to keep up with older siblings.  I knew she'd try to do everything I did.  I didn't know she'd slip and fall.  She and my Mom went off to the hospital in the ambulance and my Dad followed in the car.  No, they didn't leave me alone at the pool, a neighbor watched out for me while they looked after my sister.  In case you're wondering, she's fine.  She grew up and is having a very good life.

Okay, so while today's parents are freaking out over this story, I'll fill in some more details.  Where were my Mom and Dad?  Why weren't they hovering over us like today's parents making sure we didn't fall off the high dive?  This was 1973 and kids were given a lot more space then.  All of the parents were swimming laps or chatting at the other end of the pool.  All of the kids were swimming in the deep end of the pool and jumping off the diving boards.  There was a lifeguard sitting in the stand.

In 1973 Columbia was a small town.  Nearly everyone we knew was on swim team, including our parents.  My sister was a "Mini-Might!" - the name of the group of kids in the 5-6 yr age group.  All of us went to swim practice multiple times per week and all of us were excellent swimmers.  Jumping off the high dive was part of regular practice for the younger kids.  We did it all the time with no incidents.  My sister is athletic - she was jumping in to the pool and swimming by age two.  My Mom tells a story of her standing on the edge of the pool saying "'mere Daddy" and signaling to my Dad to come over because she was jumping in.   Sometimes she would say it and leap before my Dad was ready and he'd have to quickly move to her.  As a Mini-Might she swam quite a distance without taking a breath.  She hadn't gotten the breathing part down yet.  That happens with a lot of kids.

My Dad heard my sister fall off the high dive.  She didn't scream, but he heard the thunk as her head hit the pavement and he knew it was his little girl.  He said he felt it in his heart.  He was in the pool at the time, at the other end in a lap lane.  He leaped up and ran.  So did the lifeguard, my Mom and a lot of adults.  It happened really quickly.  As I said before, my sister had cracked her skull and had a minor concussion.  She missed a day or two of school.  After all of this, she still went off the high dive again.  We went back to our normal routine and my Mom said "Don't let go when you climb the ladder."  She didn't.  At least not for a while.  Neither did the rest of us for a while, because we had seen what happened.  Of course as a kid there comes a time when you do it again to see if the same thing will happen.  I never ever did it in front of my sister though.

My Mom and Dad made the decision that the pool, both before and after the high dive fall, was a safe place for their kids.  Like all environments, and I mean all environments, it comes with hazards that you need to be aware of.  Should they have stood over my sister as she climbed the ladder to the high dive?  Should they have forbidden her to use the high dive even while all the other kids were using it? They made the choice that this was a one off incident.  Also, they know that my sister has a bit of a daredevil gene and that they wouldn't be able to protect her from everything.  On our recent trip to Hawaii she was racing down steep mountain roads at top speeds on her bike.  She's jumped out of an airplane.  She likes to ski fast.

All through our childhood my parents encouraged us to try stuff, physically and mentally.  They didn't want us to get hurt, but they also knew that some of the stuff we did had an element of risk. They let us do it anyway.  I personally think they made good choices.  From swimming in the ocean, to skiing in the mountains we learned how to handle ourselves and to know when we were taking on too much risk.  That's a choice our parents made for us.  I'm glad they did.  Different people might have made different choices and everything would have turned out just as well for them.

I think the first time my sister started up the ladder to the high dive after her fall my Mom was close by, but not right next to her.  My Dad was watching from a distance.  After she made it up without falling our lives went back to normal.  Would it have been better if she hadn't fallen?  Maybe, but maybe not.  No one wants their child to get hurt ever, but they do.  So, we make choices about what kids can and can't do and how much hovering we'll do as they go about their business.  We put helmets on their little heads when they ski and bike.  We make them wear shinguards when they play soccer and helmets and padding when they play hockey.  We try to teach them funny comebacks if they get teased or bullied at school.  We help them with their homework so they have a better chance at succeeding.  We don't drive the car until everyone has their seatbelt on.

We make considered choices all the time about the activities kids get to pursue and there are real consequences.  As we make these choices, the kids are watching and learning because they're making choices too.  My sister did not stop doing stuff after she fell off the high dive.  Two days after Christmas this year she climbed into a wind tunnel to do indoor sky diving and had a big grin on her face the entire time.



  

Denial Done...Moving on to Anger

I've noticed that we Democrats are following the five stages of grief after the Great Tragedy - which is how I'll refer to the election of 2016.  We're progressing very quickly though as it's only been a week and we're already in Anger.  We were only in Denial for a brief amount of time and I'll note that it came with a a heavy dose of Depression.

We are all looking for a single thing to blame for what happened last week and as I pointed out in my previous post, I think there's a LOT going on here.  There is no one answer to this problem,  Like the Democrat party itself, it's a mixed bag.

Here's what worries me right now that just like Republicans in 2008 and 2012 who were working on being introspective and fixing things for themselves, that we Democrats are sitting in our ivory towers and deciding what we need to do without actually listening or talking to the folks who we want to vote for us.

I think a key to a strong resurgence of a party who looks out for EVERYONE, is listening and talking to folks.  That has to start at the local level.  I think it's a good time for each city, county, and state to turn inward and figure out what we need to do for our local folks.  We need to win local elections and state offices in two years.  That's grass roots.

If we know what's happening in our own states I think the next time out our national candidate is going to pay attention.  At least, that's what I'm hoping if we don't fall victim to Ivory Tower thinking.

Pay attention too when at long last the press is finally asking Trump supporters why they voted the way they did and their expectations.  They don't expect Trump to keep all his promises, and they're okay with a flawed candidate, clearly.  We, Democrats don't need to worry about being perfect.  That is the best news ever as we go forward.

Does this sound like Bargaining?  It did to me too.

Thoughts On A Gloomy Week

I have voted for the Democrat in every Presidential election since I could vote.  I am a liberal - don't tune out, try to hang here and understand.  I want to know that when I turn on the tap clean water comes out.  Since the tragedies in West Virginia and Flint, Michigan I fear a water crisis in my own location - not only that it will happen, but that if it does, no one will fix it.  I understand that significantly more people die each year from lung cancer caused by pollution than were killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11.  Clean air and clean water are vital to our future but I don't see anyone taking that seriously.  Definitely not Republicans and I'm sorry to say, not so much Democrats.  We're fracking at an alarming rate and one of the smartest countries in the world refuses to innovate for clean energy at the same pace.  We're the country that put a man on the moon and created the Atom bomb and we can't seem to get off our asses to solve the problems presented to us by how we live our lives and the threats to our environment.

I'm talking about this because it's one of the reasons we've just ushered in one of the most terrifying people to occupy the White House in my lifetime.  As some of my friends are talking about White Lash I actually think things are much more complex this time.  I'll talk about the non-Obama voters in a minute, but first I think we should acknowledge that we, that's Democrats, forgot our purpose.  We are supposed to be on the side of the average man/woman - no matter their race or where they live or even their point of view.  That used to be the guts of our support.  We call ourselves Progressive, but we're not doing the things that progressives would do.

Bernie Sanders was in Michigan.  He got it.  Hilary didn't.  She has the power of the Clinton Foundation at her fingertips and could have made a point of visiting Flint and bringing resources, but she didn't.  If your kids have lead poisoning - a lifelong challenge they've been granted through no other effort than drinking the water in their house - and the Republicans are responsible for poisoning it and the Democrats don't show up to fix it, why would you bother to turn out to vote?  They were failed by Democratic institutions that we profess to love like the EPA.  Any time Republicans try to tinker or bastardize the EPA we scream and shout about how awful it is, but at the end of the day we didn't fix it.  Us, the people who pride themselves on looking out for the little guy.  Michael Moore pointed out yesterday on Morning Joe that 90,000 voters in Michigan completed every single line on their ballots except for President.  They opted out of a system that's failed them.

Then, there's the economy.  In hindsight, I'm kind of shocked Hilary didn't get this.  Her husband ran on "Its the Economy Stupid".   Again, I'll point at the Clinton Foundation.  Bill Clinton is trying to change the world and good for him.  I think that's tremendous.  Guess what?  Here in the United States there are parts of our country that are in a lot worse condition than some of these undeveloped countries around the world.  Sometimes you should take care of your own house.  We are seeing high rates of addiction, high rates of infant mortality, and depression and suicide.  I shared an article about that on my Facebook page and no one felt empathy for these people at all.  It was a wake up call though.  These folks voted for Trump.

When something new comes along there are always early adopters or what politicians would call their 'base'.  These are the people who are in it and they're going to stick with you,  Then, there's the group that can be convinced to come along and says "Okay, I might be dubious, but I'll give this a chance."  That second group are the folks we just lost.  They gave Obama a chance and it didn't work out, so now they're going to try this other guy.

I want to talk about personal responsibility too and how the majority of the American people act just like most businesses - they have a model they follow and if it ain't broke they won't fix it.  We the people are and have been contributors to our own demise, and willingly.  We've allowed ourselves to be sucked into voting against our best interests with social issues that the Government should keep its giant snoot out of.  The gay couple down the street is not keeping you from getting clean drinking water or from getting a job but many people have been convinced that this is something they should vote on.

In the 1980s we hated drugs and we hated unions so we started incarcerating a ton of people who can't contribute to the bottom line from prison and we don't have any unions around who might have been able to keep jobs from heading out of the country.  We also hated regulations and started tearing down those protections because we were told they were 'job killing' even though there was no evidence.  Then we started eating a heck of a lot more food than we needed and industry gave us what we wanted - more, more, more.   There's a connection here between good union jobs with health benefits and no job and a bunch of sick, fat people.  We voted for that.

In the 1990s we continued our love of deregulation and started tearing down more of the New Deal that had kept the economy in decent shape since the Depression.  That New Deal was now no deal and we continued locking up anyone who looked at us funny and we wanted to kill people with the death penalty even faster - despite the fact that a lot of people on death row turned out to be innocent.  And, we reformed Welfare.  No more lifetime welfare recipients.  And guess who uses welfare more than any other demographic?  Poor white folks in rural areas who if they turned out to vote on Tuesday, voted for Trump.  What did it matter to us though?  The economy was great.  Because like everyone, even those early adopters, we don't act if things aren't broke.

We also started making Wal-Mart our best friend.  A store where nearly everything on their shelves is made in a country other than the United States. We're really mad that all those good union jobs are overseas, and then we shop at Wal-Mart because we want a bargain.  We work against ourselves on almost a daily basis.  We gave up on the Mom and Pop shops - those small, family owned businesses we profess to love.  My sister lived in northern Idaho for a few years and while visiting I took my nephews out and about and we walked into a little store that had art supplies.  A woman in the same store looked at the stuff I was buying and said "They have that at Wal-Mart for a lot less".  Knife in the heart to that small business owner.  We the people abandoned those folks.  That's us.  When you're bemoaning the loss of these businesses, think about where you shop.

Are you tired yet?  I still have a bit more to say and if you've hung in this long try to stick it out to the end.  Remember the Bush election of 2000?  He ushered in tax cuts, and a war we fought but didn't want to pay for.  Remember Al Franken bringing bullet proof vests to soldiers in Iraq because we weren't providing them to the military?  All those folks who think the Republicans are pro-military let me lay out a fact for you.  The military makes up less than 1% of our population.  You're useful as an election prop and that's about it.  The VA is a mess and that right there shows you how much either party is doing.  Once more, opportunity for Democrats but we didn't fix that either.  Still, we the people keep hitting our heads against that same brick wall and expecting a different result.

In 2008 we gave up on Bush and put Obama in office.  Where the first thing he worked on was Healthcare.  His plan relies on all those young people who voted for him to now buy into the insurance plans, and they didn't.  People who really need healthcare bought in and they're seeing premiums that are bigger than their mortgage and deductibles that they can't pay.  We're also a lot sicker than we used to be.  Remember our need to eat, eat and eat again and the bigger the portion the better?  We drive places we can walk, we sit at home glued to television and we wonder why we're not healthy.  We wonder why health insurance rates have sky rocketed.  You can blame doctors and hospitals and drug companies, and I do, but we are part of the problem  Remember how upset everyone got when Michelle Obama suggested we shouldn't drink soda?  Drink up fatty fatty 2x4 can't get through the kitchen door (and I say this as someone who needs to lose weight).  We still smoke.  Despite all the evidence out there around cigarette smoking, we are still smoking.

We have been gluttons.  We are consuming things and food and never once stopping to wonder if what we're doing might not be the best thing for us, our kids and our future.  We are buying houses and cars we don't need and then wondering why we have no savings.  We don't know where our jobs went.  We don't know why our kids have lead poisoning.  Well, you do know.  It's us.  We did all of this to ourselves.  Some people tried to tell us and we scoffed at them for their political correctness and for being hippies.  We don't have a safety net to keep us on our feet - remember welfare reform? - while we look for a new job and try to make it in this world.  We keep hoping old jobs are coming back.  That way of life is gone.  Time to wake up and build something new.

Let me end on a high note here.  I have always said that we should never bet against America.  We're not perfect, as I have so plainly pointed out, but we can make America great.  I'm not going to say again because way too many people have been used and abused for what we had before.  This is a wake up call though.  We should protest what happened in this election.  We should organize and reach out and figure out how to make these politicians understand that they're not doing what we want.    The new president is being surrounded by excited Republicans hoping to get a piece of his magic and convince him that he should do things their way.  That is not good for us at all.  Let's really pay attention this time and we will be the change and stop relying on politicians to bring it to our door.

It's The End of the World....

Okay, I know it's not the end of the world, but it certainly feels like it.  Yes, I wanted Hilary to win, was pretty convinced she had it in the bag only to find out there are vast numbers of pissed off white people in rural areas who feel left behind by the economy.  Now I find myself in the position of being pissed off at them for what they've done.

This morning I had a great sense of humor that went along with my despair.  Like, when I got up this morning at 3:30 am because I couldn't sleep through the end of the world, my Dog seemed exuberant.  Then it occurred to me that he just might be a Trump supporter because he does try to hump me sometimes without asking.

Then as I was out walking I thought I should probably give up on physical fitness.  I don't want to get fit and really attractive so that I end up getting my pussy grabbed.  That would be awful.  So I ate some candy at work and had a big lunch to ward that off.

My sister had a great line this morning asking what the hell happened because we thought the election was rigged in Hilary's favor.  Apparently not.

Now it's the end of day one in this new, cock eyed world where a bunch of people have voted for someone they think is going to fix all their problems and I have some really bad news for them.  It ain't happening folks.  I know because I voted for Obama twice - the first time thinking he'd fix the mess and the second knowing that he'd be a lot less messy than Romney.  I voted for Hilary because I know that other guy (I can't say his name, I just can't) is a snake oil salesman you can see coming from a mile away - well, some of us could.

Worry has begun to set in for a lot of my friends and their families.  I saw the posts from the white supremacists - thank you Southern Poverty Law Center.  I think if you voted against Hilary and for the other guy, then you should own this one.  Attached to your vote is a lot of misogynistic, racist talk and I'm afraid action.  Don't try to tell the rest of us you're not like this because that's who you've aligned yourself with.  In their post they refer to the newly elected President as "Our Glorious Leader has ascended to God Emperor".  Doesn't that make your blood run cold?  It did mine.  They claim credit for his win.  He couldn't have done it without them.  So, yeah, you own this one.

I donated to Hilary's campaign.  I felt it was important.  Now I will be sending that money regularly to the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Planned Parenthood.   I'll keep reminding myself that this is not what the majority of the people wanted.  Hilary won the popular vote by nearly 2 hundred thousand votes.  It means that we didn't want that other guy.  Now we need to get rid of the electoral college.  It's screwed us twice and we can't afford for that to happen again.

I think we've missed out on a big opportunity to have one of the best presidents this country has ever seen.  She was smart, hard working and more prepared than anyone who came before her.  I guess we're not good enough for that kind of awesomeness.  Instead we're stuck with that other guy.

"You're Not A Feminist?" I asked with surprise....

With all the stuff going on in the current Presidential election I’ve been reading a lot about how millennial women are not feminists.  Then today, a 30 year old woman I work with told me she’s not a feminist.  To give this some context, she was asking me if I wanted to take golf lessons in the spring with her and explaining that at the charity golf outing she attended last week there weren’t any women playing.  She said, “I’m not a feminist, but I thought more women might want to play.”  She was not making a statement that the golf outing had been sexist and excluded women, she just assumed that women didn’t know about it or just needed to take some lessons.  I’m 51 years old and my immediate response was, “How can you not be a feminist?”

Her response was she thought that feminists had a bad name and were very angry.  She didn’t feel as if there was any glass ceiling she was up against.  All of the things I know about being a woman in the United States and the world at large came rushing in on me.  “Do you think I’m an angry feminist?” She said she thought I was.  Okay, food for thought – at work I don’t go on rants about men but there are things I notice about the work place that I’ll point out in general conversation.  I’ve never said though “Let’s get a march together!!  Let’s protest!!”  I work with a man in his forties who repeats what women have just said in meetings as if they were his original thoughts.  He never does this to the men.  I do complain about this.    I will also admit to a sense of frustration that’s built up over the years from the time I was a teenager until the last few years in dealing with some men and even some women.  I don’t feel unsuccessful in the workplace, in fact I feel like I’ve done very well for someone who started this working life without a college degree.  However, there are daily reminders that come out of people’s mouths that I find frustrating.  Like the man who would see me coming out of his boss’ office and say “I should have realized that he was meeting with such a beautiful woman like yourself….” Blah blah blah.   

This wasn’t just a conversation about work though.  Sure, my young coworker doesn’t feel like there’s a glass ceiling in the office and when I look at her experience, she’s right.  She’s gotten her MBA and since coming to work at our company she’s had mostly female bosses and she recently got a really good promotion.  I also think that there’s more fairness in workplace hiring and salary because we’re sitting in the Federal Government’s backyard and they’re our customer.  We have a lot of VPs who are women and even some Senior and Executive VPs who are women.  All of this happened just before she started at our company though under our current CEO.  Up until probably six years ago, the majority of Executives were men.  It’s so recent that we have such a large number of women in very senior positions that I personally feel like this is just the start, but maybe she sees it as finished. 

Still, there’s so much more to being a feminist than just busting through a glass ceiling in your career.  We live in the liberal state of Maryland where we have free access to reproductive health services up to and including unfettered access to an abortion should we need one.  No one in Maryland has signed a law telling our doctors to lie to us about our condition.  That’s not true in all states.  Reproductive and general health services for women are being cut back left and right across the country in an effort to cut off access to abortion.  That feels like a much more serious glass ceiling to me that needs to be overcome. 

Then there’s the courtroom phenomenon that let’s off rapists with light sentences because no matter what damage they’ve done to the woman, he has a future to think about.  What about her future?  To be sure, there’s an added level of brutality here, Black men are not given a pass for rape.  In fact, they are convicted sometimes on scant evidence and punished whether they deserve it or not. 

As we close in on an election where we are very likely about to elect the first woman President of the United States I am reading more and more studies about how men, particularly white men, behave when women step out of traditional roles.  When men feel challenged they tend to act out aggressively which probably explains the chants of "lock her up" from the opposing bench along with outright cries to kill her.  Additionally, not just men, but women as well tend to judge women much more harshly for mistakes than they judge men for the very same mistakes. 

Can I feel angry about all of this?  I think if feminists are angry, they are totally justified in their anger.  When my co-worker told me she thought I was an angry feminist my feelings got hurt, and then, I got angry.  Here she was using one of the more popular criticisms used against women who are asking for a place at the table, for their voices to be heard, to influence the way we want to lead our lives.  It's an effective dismissal of everything women are trying to achieve.  Women are not allowed to be angry.  I had forgotten that.  Angry women make others uncomfortable.

My being a Feminist is not just about what is happening here in the United States either.  I want all girls to go to school, I want an end to female genital mutilation and honor killings.  I want women to be free to marry or not to marry whomever they choose.  I want all women to have unfettered access to health care including reproductive freedom so they can pursue their dreams. 

When women do well EVERYONE does well.  This is well documented and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has an article about how empowering women is smart economically.  It is in everyone's best interest to be a Feminist.