Dream home

Knowing who people are takes more than fond memories. Every so often it becomes necessary to visit them in person and see who they are.

I know someone who used to live in my dream house, a lovely two bedroom house with extraordinary woodwork, crown molding, big windows, living room, dining room, sun porch, well made substantial bathrooms, surrounded by a park like atmosphere. It was exquisite.

They added on a family room and two story garage that didn't destroy the lines too much, but it is what they did with the rest of it that ruined it for me. Every surface, including the window sills and the check rails, the wainscoting, mantles, and furniture is now drowned in knickknacks. All sitting shoulder to shoulder to display, not its color or shape, because that is lost in the clutter, but its sheer volume.

The beautiful antique quilts that once adorned the beds and a wall or two now hang in mass profusion up and down the walls, halls, and rooms. The lovely Tiffany lamps are crammed up against so much stuff they just look like blobs of light in the darkness. The expensive furniture no longer invites you into rooms that are warm and elegant. The house feels more like one of those warehouse antique stores along the highway.

It is a sad, and sort of disgusting display of money gone bad. I don't know what it means. Perhaps all this stuff is an attempt to fill some sad void, or maybe it is just crass consumerism which seems to be in vogue now. I do know it reflects who they are, Trump supporters who proudly voted for a man whose misogyny, racism and bigotry cannot be good for their beautiful young granddaughters and African American grandson.

Money cannot buy clean air, peace, or equality. When the climate begins to change, causing floods, droughts, warm winters promoting bacteria and germs, too hot summers . . . When the first animals begin to die from lack of hospitable places to live . . . When the dictators and other unstable leaders in the world whip out their dirty bombs and point them at their antagonizers . . . no amount of money will help in the long run.

I will no longer mourn the loss of their beautiful home, because our beautiful earth will also be ruined.