Difficult

Two key- on my computer did not work for m-ny month-. I thought I fixed the problem with  - downlo-ded  progr-m,  -h-rp Key, but when Window-  upd-ted my computer it deleted the progr-m.

Luckily I got one key to work well enough to log on. Then I chnged my p---word to one without  -ny - or -- in it.

Tying to fix the problem without the two letter- w-- difficult, but even  -fter  downlo-ding   -hrp Key-  one more time I di-covered it will not work on my computer  -nymore.

I'd like to think I don't need -uch letter-, but obviou-ly I do! I c-n       copy/p--te  them I did it for month-.

I'm not doing it from now on.

New computer coming!

Loved ones

The older I become, the clearer I see where I come from. That isn't always a good thing, but it's not bad either as long as I remember that in the end I am still responsible for who I am.

The people in my family seem to believe that being passive aggressive is the same as being compliant, or agreeable. That's only half of it. The other half is what makes it so destructive. The sneakily aggressive part. There is nothing noble about suffering in silence, especially if you use that silence to get even.

Most of us are seething pots of anger and frustration. Even when we hide that anger under smiles, it is simply underground and eventually it explodes into terrible out bursts that might have been avoided in less passive aggressive families. Cups, chairs, even dogs, are thrown in moments of madness the world would be shocked to see.

And last, but not least, is our need to exaggerate and blow things out of proportion. When the doctor told my brother to walk more, he walked seven miles out to the farm and back -- but then he didn't walk again for months. If someone is told not to do something, they don't do it beyond ridiculousness. We know better, but it's part of our passive aggressive personalities even when we are the one who suffers.

I recognized some of this before I even had children, but it is hard to break old habits and what you are raised with is as old as they come. I've spent a life time trying not to be like those I love.

Call words

I like it when things are orderly and neat.

My sister has a sock drawer, so do I, but mine has all the socks paired and folded, then placed in like piles. My closet is set up in similar ways.

My books are in box-like cubes divided into carefully separated categories.

My calendar is marked out in black ink and my cupboards are equally neat.
 
A few years ago my exercise routine was also aligned in nicely designated  segments. I would drive fifteen minute to hit tennis balls for twenty minutes, then walk thirty minutes. Even then the walks took will power to complete, but the routine pleased me.

I am trying to get back into exercise mode, but I am so far out of it that none of my old ways will work, so I have had to devise new ones. I've worked up from three five minute walks to three, or four ten minute ones a day and I think I may have hit upon something that actually works for me. Ten minute walks almost always feel doable.

And they are neat. Starting at my door, I go out and around a set path that guarantees me the time and distance I need. I spice it up, by trying to walk in the shade, or going right instead of left. If I'm lucky I get stuck composing some poetry, or creative bit in my head, but anything is bearable for ten minutes. I don't go for the burn, or count steps. I just get through it the best I can.

Nothing works for me if I don't believe in it and I have a hard time believing in anything that is too random, or messy. Small, compact, and neat are my call words.

Mottos

I have always loved to read about family mottos. Things like To a valiant heart nothing is impossible, or We are ready. 

I used to try and imagine what ours would be. I wanted it to be something like Mind over matter, or perhaps, We follow our books! Something inspirational and romantic.

Of course I am descended from German farmers (with one woman physician thrown in during the 1800s for good measure,) Welsh pirates, coal miners, poor Scottish nobility, and an assortment of other people more known for their escapades than erudition.

In more recent times, my grandfather was a self-made man who often arrived home via the union workers of the 1930s. They would beat him up and toss him on my grandmother's front porch late at night. Then there was a brother who would call different family members in the wee small hours of the morning to keep them up to date on his most recent pharmaceutical experiments.

I came to realize, just lately, that we all have our own peculiar way of maneuvering through this life. While my father was a professional student who placed our utility bills in the circular file under his desk, my mother felt she was the incarnation of Super woman and could still drink and smoke like a chimney as long as she was a martyr when it came to work.

I think we have had a family motto all along. My brother uses it whenever I call him on the phone. It is Still alive dammit!

Not the most romantic or inspiring words in the world, but actually pretty descriptive of the way we all catapult ourselves from one situation to another -- with great gusto and a minimum amount of consideration for any reality that does not appeal to us.

Money talks

He wants to be king of the country, tsar of the west
Anyone can be elected, but he will confess
He will not be fettered by rules, or by laws
The truth begins truly when he moves his own jaws.

Every breath that he takes ushers in a new moment
It's those in the past that cause him such torment.
Woe to the science books, bah to the facts
The country is bound by his whimsical acts.

He lives for good ratings. He twitters and tweets.
He thinks pictures lie when they're taken of streets.
He likes to make deals that are deep under ground
But presidents are visible even when they're just sound.

His thoughts are all tumbling, jumbling, rumbling.
His truth and his lies he is constantly juggling.
He swears that this country is going to be great.
Then he wanders around parties carrying his plate.

He insults the women and angers the men
Without any thought of the pickle he's in.
If you ask him I'm sure that he'll claim his true testament
Is simply because he paid to be president.

My mother's eyes

I leaned over the lavatory this morning getting ready to brush my teeth and I was startled to see my mother's face in the mirror.

Not really my mother, but close enough that it really did give me a start. I spent the next three minutes taking care of my teeth and wondering what it was I saw.

I don't have her red hair, or small bone structure and most people claim to see her in my sister's face. I don't, for whatever reason and I don't usually see her in mine either. Probably the closest to her is actually my middle brother.

I think it is the eyes. She had green eyes. I have hazel eyes that migrate anywhere between gray, blue and yellow, but I think that is what I saw. Something about my eyes and perhaps the intensity of the gaze certainly made me see Mom.

In general people see what they want. I have no desire to be my mother. She had many admirable qualities, but she had a few others that were the antipathy of who I want to be, so I have always been on the look out trying to avoid becoming too much of a legacy.

And yet, today, I saw my mother.

Who are you?

Where do you come from?

Deep inside. In the place your dreams spring from?

Far away from all the trials and tribulations of this world.

What really makes you smile?

In the place where fairytales come from, who are you?

Do you fight dragons, or rule the kingdom?

Are you a troubadour, or perhaps a great magician?

Who are you?

Maybe you make the armor, or the Emperor's clothes!

Can you bake a cherry pie, grow a pumpkin big enough to live in?

Whatever it is, you need to find it, because that is what will make you happy.

The Pied Piper of Purgatory

Fear is the dragon that plagues society. It flies in from seemingly nowhere, breathing fire, threatening to burn us alive, long nails ready to rip us apart if that fails and, at the very least, stands among us with foul breath, scaly skin and terrifying eyes.

It is the not knowing, the ignorance, the randomness of it, that makes it so terrifying.

In the past we were given role models that said, "Breathe. Think. Do not panic. We will deal with this in a reasonable, rational way." Some people still panicked, but they were surrounded by others who could cope and that made society work.

Dragons still existed, but there was a sense that we were dealing with them as best we could and might some day neuter them, or find a way to tame them.

Now our leader runs around holding onto his toupee so it won't blow away and swings golf clubs at every gnat that whisks into his eyesight. He screams invectives like a truant school boy, bullies his own entourage and sets an example of brutal chaos where anyone could be the next victim.

Many who live in the shadow of the unknown take their fear and hide; or gorge on hate and cast stones at every scapegoat they can find. As long as it is not them, it could be the enemy.

And the Pied Piper of Purgatory leads a nation of ignorant followers straight into the inferno.

Both sides now

“I’m saying this is the South, and we’re proud of our crazy people. We don’t hide them up in the attic. We bring ’em right down to the living room and show ’em off. See, Phyllis, no one in the South ever asks if you have crazy people in your family. They just ask what side they’re on.”

Julia Sugarbaker

When I heard the above said on Designing Women something about it caught my ear, because in my family we don't hide our crazy people either.

Occasionally I find myself imagining the front porch of the Big House, my grandmother's home, with it's wooden porch swing and old fashioned chairs. I see my grandfather's first wife, a post Victorian nymphomaniac, who I never knew, but my great aunt has described in great detail. Next to her is my Great grandmother who thought she could make tables walk and my aunt who had conversations with my dead uncle while holding his hand when she went to bed. In the corner is my grandmother's first husband who liked to come home after a hard day's work, take off his clothes and get a little sun in the front yard.  

It goes on, until I realize the front porch is full and I start putting them out on the side porch, the one with the green retro glider and matching rocking chairs. Here I see my brother who's, "Still alive dammit!" and my sister-in-law whose lovely country mansion is decorated in stacked wall to wall, floor to ceiling, early American flea market. Close by is my cousin who thinks he's the fifth Prince of the Universe, and my other aunt who used to send my father empty vials of water so he could examine the bugs she thought she pulled from her hair before she shaved her head. Behind them all stands my sister, a rug shampooer in each hand and fifteen empty milk jugs filled with mothballs.

After a while I realize we don't bring our crazy people down to the living room, or set them out on the front porch. They outnumber us and bring us out when they need to parade the family's sanity.

Adversarial

Our police are becoming some of the most dangerous people around; the ones who are licensed to carry guns and shoot people, but seem to lack the training and disposition to do this correctly. Why must they kill people violating traffic laws? Why is it necessary to kill a pregnant woman carrying a knife? If you absolutely felt you had to shoot, couldn't you shoot the arm holding the knife, or a leg? And killing children!  How can that ever be justified? It seems we need to do better at screening potential law enforcement officers and then train them much better.

Then our prisons. Forget private prisons, they are the embodiment of our whole country. Everything is about money and profit. Money is replacing judges as the deciders in justice. We need to consider what we expect from prisons. Are they simply a way to punish and warehouse people, or could they be a place to rehabilitate and get people out on the right foot to becoming useful citizens? Other countries have done this and it works. Especially our juvenile prisons. We need to teach them that they are valuable human beings who have worth and promise, but you can't do that in what amounts to giant dog kennels.

We are an adversarial government. The old white and black cowboy hat movies are not that far from our two parties. It has become what is good for the republicans and what is good for the democrats rather than what is good for the country. It is rich guys good, poor guys bad, or just the reverse depending on who you think you are.

Somehow we have begun to govern by stereotype and theory rather than reality. It doesn't matter how high and mighty you are if you lack reason and compassion.

Reality

Reality is a mongrel dog.

Viewed through the eyes of billions it is veracity at its most intriguing.

I am a reader and sometimes I read a book only to find the movie a gross disappointment. That makes me wonder if everyone else saw the book the way this director saw it, or if I just read the book differently. I'll admit that I have a vivid imagination. Sometimes I don't know if I saw the movie or not until I see the shorts and realize I have not.

Books have always offered me a way to live vicariously through experiences and in places I will never have a chance, and maybe don't want the chance, to do in real life. The forests are Hansel and Gretaly dark in the right places while the sunlight dapples others in charmingly Disney-ish, heart-stopping moments. The main characters look like people I know and the way they resolve things often calms my fears of losing control.

I am a people watcher. Whether in the school library, my apartment parking lot, out shopping, or on the television, I am looking at the way people move and talk and respond to each other. I wonder if people are consciously cultivating the looks on their faces, or if they are some inherited, or learned trait? I wonder if the bravado and ennui are genuine; if the sophistication is carefully calculated; if the fear is eternal?

When I am out walking and hear the jingle of a dog's tags, or a distant bark, my mind instantly and automatically goes to packs of wolves in dark forests, big teeth and feral eyes, but I know others who are filled with warm fuzzy pictures of puppies and wagging tails.

Reality. It comes to us through filters so diverse and intricately combined that it is surprising we live as peacefully together as we do.

Slow slow slow

Less than a month from now I will have had Annabel for one year. She has spent much of that time sleeping in her cat bed that matches her so perfectly I can barely tell she's there.

This past week she began to act a little more like a real cat. She attacks her toys, plays with my curtains, bats the rod that opens and closes the blinds and chases flies.

She also made two attacks at the window on birds outside that nearly flattened her little nose.

She actually meowed this morning!

And she thinks I don't know that she sneaks into bed with me after I am asleep.

In the morning she moves down under so that when my feet hit the floor she is ready to pounce on them.

She comes to greet me when I come in the door and I've caught her standing on my table.

This might be a nuisance, but I find it reassuring.

Maybe by next year she'll be a lap cat.

Orwellian speculation

I just read that as little as .1 second decline in walking speed can predict dementia.

I am picturing the elderly in two hundred years.

Getting up in the morning and eating a half cup of steel cut oatmeal with one prune, then stepping on their treadmill and playing brain games until noon.

Lunch will be a small green salad with a tomato thrown in for excitement followed by a twenty minute power nap and then back on the treadmill. This time it will include selected social interactions to stimulate certain parts of the brain.

Another twenty minute power nap before a dinner of baked chicken, broccoli and carrots. After dinner a slow walk on the treadmill while watching a senior movie picked out by people in their thirties who think they know what seniors like, a bath in their walk in tub and bed for precisely eight hours.

Every Wednesday they will have an afternoon free to do what they want and one will find the lines at the euthanasia clinic getting longer and longer as people try to opt out of such a life.

Gifts from above

My windows look out on a greenspace filled with a tulip magnolia tree, locust trees, a few yews, and other shrubbery. This is unique for the apartment complex I live in. Most apartments look out at the pond and the apartments on the other side of it.

I treasure the little rabbit, the squirrel and the birds that make this space their home. I even enjoy the fact that quite a few people walk their dogs back here. They are good about picking up after themselves.

I don't mind that people walk through here on their way to the Convenient mart whose back butts up against it.

I am often a little bit less enthralled by the trash people leave in their wake, although we do have a person who walks through and picks it all up periodically.

Then there are the things that come from above and fill me with wonder. Not awe, but confusion type wondering. Like where did the can of McCormick's black pepper come from and why did no one retrieve it? It lay here for nearly a week before the lawn guy drove over it and shredded the metal, leaving only strips of coppery strands in the grass. Or the ball of rubber bands the size of a softball still out there? These seem like things that might be worth picking up, if they were yours.

They aren't mine.

I have three very large ferns hanging above my balcony and one sitting placidly on a table below them. I like things that are alive and move, but require minimal care. These are it. When I sit in my green wicker chair I can gaze up through their fronds and imagine all sorts of things.

But sometimes I am only thinking, who dropped the ball?

Good guys

Scurrilous people think that good guys are push overs.

They believe they can lie to them, tell them sob stories, and misuse them because they will be afraid of confrontations.

A  good guy has learned to be civil, quiet, tactful  and use good manners while enforcing his standards.

Letting people walk all over you does not make you a good guy. Weak willed people are often not good guys. They are afraid and fear is a terrible companion. It can pull you into some very bad places.

If you can brow beat someone into doing things they don't believe are right -- that isn't a good guy. That is a push over.

Push overs and good guys can both be very appealing for a while, but at the end of the day the real good guy's strength and character will leave the push over in the dust, where he stands quaking in his shoes wondering what he did wrong.

Sunny side up

I was feeling very guilty about walking my half hour in three ten minute segments until I read an article that says this may, in fact, be better for my blood pressure.

What is it with us? Why do we believe that everything must be hard, or uncomfortable, or unpleasant, in order to be effective?

Part of it is people looking for things to write about, or run tests on. After all, if everything is fine the way it is, where can the entrepreneurs of the world make money?

Part of it is this strange sadistic streak in people that seems to enjoy watching others suffer. It's the, if I have to feel bad, at least I know you're feeling bad too, or, why should you enjoy your life if I don't enjoy mine, syndrome.

And part of it seems to be the American way. Perhaps stemming from our Puritan ancestors, or fundamentalist religious groups, there is this undying feeling that God wants us to suffer. That suffering somehow purges the soul.

I'm getting tired of it.

I want science. I want tests that prove what people are saying and not 200 people in an undocumented fun fest, but thousands over a number of years with every control available, before they make unsubstantiated claims.

No more idiots saying measles shots cause autism, or global warming is nonexistent, or the earth is flat, or evolution didn't occur.

No more alternative truths. These are called lies.

I want specifics and by golly I want them from the sunny side of the earth.

100%

I just heard that if  I drink 2-3 cups of coffee a day it lowers my chance of dying by 12%.

I can do that.

What else can I do?  Could I beat the odds and live forever?

My refrigerator looks like a color wheel for rainbows anonymous. I have enough fruits and vegetables in there to hide the pots of gold for a football team of leprechauns.

I get 8 to 10 hours of sleep every twenty four hours, in chunks and naps if not long prolonged bed fests.

The grain in my bread is so whole I almost need to eat rocks like a bird to grind it up in my stomach.

I exercise like a geriatric hamster walking round and round the block of my apartment complex.

I have a best friend to share things with and several other social outlets available throughout the month.

So, with all this great work, what is my risk of dying?

One hundred percent!

When, where and from what?  That is the question.

The last third

Lives are filled with beginnings, endings, turning points and all sorts of other milestone markers. Sometimes they manage to slid by unnoticed and sometimes they nearly knock us flat as they rise up to greet us.

Last April I had all sorts of unexpected things happen. First and foremost my apartment's rent went up much more than I expected. Then I couldn't stick to the diet my doctor suggested and I began to experience medical problems.

Medical problems turned into anxiety and despair and that coupled with other changes that normally occur in life sent me spiraling.

I felt like Dorothy when she watched the wicked witch riding off with Toto.

It all sort of came to a head last week when I passed a kidney stone and spent a very long twenty four hours alone and in  agony.

Friday I had a doctor's appointment with my regular doctor in a small clinic in a small town just north of here. She is worth the ride out of town because of the way she listens. She ran some tests right there and gave me some of the results right away. She gave me the other results this morning when she called me herself to tell me all is okay.

That was a huge relief. It was also a great relief that the medicine she prescribed has caused me no side effects so far.

Today I began downsizing my life once more to make up for the rent. My doctor knows where to order my prescriptions so all I pay is five dollars a month. I have been waiting for a three year contract with cable to end so I could drop everything except internet. Good old cable tried to get me to use other contracts. They even tried to get me to upgrade my internet, but I persevered and came out exactly where I hoped.

I am pretty sure this is the last third of my life.  And I want it filled with the things that are important to me. I want to be looking forward to adventures and joy, not worrying about darker things.

Who am I

I was taking a shower this morning and a strange thought came into my mind.  Who am I really?  Not who do I want to be, or who do you want me to be? It was this feeling that I have never taken the time and chance to find out who I really am. Who I would be if the world had touched me less.

The idea that I probably don't know myself as well as I know other people struck me as very important and I tried to write a Thot about it with no success at all.

The frustration left me spending the whole afternoon trying to write a Thot, taking walks and killing time in between.

I ended up watching a film on Amazon Prime that wasn't overly impressive until this woman talked about how she didn't think she was beautiful until she quit thinking that she, an African American woman, must look like Wonder Woman, or the Bionic Woman, or some other white super woman. I perked up and began to pay more attention.

The movie reminded me of how I can be shopping and not finding what I want, but not giving up. Believing that what I want is there, I just haven't found it yet -- and then, I do!

It also made me think of some of the miraculous things that have happened in my life. They were all preceded by my fixation on what I wanted.

Of course when what I want shows up, I tend to brush it off as coincidence, or luck, but is it really?

Why not focus on the very best? Expect it? Dream about it?

And while I'm doing that I want to get to know this woman I have lived with for sixty seven years.

Trying

There is nothing funny or cute about diabetes.

I can't cheat my own body. It knows when I eat Ben and Jerry's.

It knows when I am sleeping. It knows when I'm awake. It knows if I've been bad or good.

But it doesn't bring me presents when I'm good.

It takes the hard road. When I do the wrong things my body takes it out on my kidneys. It messes with my vision. It sneaks into my heart . . .

And not with music accompanied by little pulsing hearts and flowers.

It fills me with lethargy. Which masquerades as depression and makes my doctor want to prescribe happy pills when what I really need are diabetic meds.

So, I have to be good - for goodness sake, and also my heart's sake and my vision's sake, and the fact that I like walking on all ten toes.

My brother goes before me. He drank. He smokes. He had bypasses. He plays games with his insulin and food and he has had two toes rot off his feet so far. Some days he can barely hold his head up and look straight at me. Some days he is so confused it is scary and other days he jokes about how he's, "Still alive, dammit."

He is a living horror movie. A zombie in the making. A man dying in bits and pieces, having the pieces cut off when they turn black. It terrifies me.

And so I am trying to do better in every way I can.

The continuing tale of a cat named Annabel

Annabel came to live with me in August of last year.

Our apartment says all cats must be declawed. I did not believe in declawing. I bought copious numbers of scratching posts. I allowed her to decimate all my leather furniture. My arms and legs still bear the scars of the torture of trying to live within her boundaries.

I got her declawed.

She can leap four feet with her tiny paws, open doors with barely a flick of one paw, enter the shower without a sound.

She has never, not once, even cocked an ear to the sound of her name.

She shows affection by attacking me whenever I walk by the foot of the bed. Or by sneaking up and cuddling close to my legs in the middle of the night. She even butts my legs when she wants to be petted now and she has a very specific preference for that. It goes from her head to the tip of her tail on one side at a time.

She loves to run in front of me when I rise from my chair and if I go into the kitchen she will run over and eat like I just unlocked the pantry. She could eat anytime, her bowls are lit by a nightlight twenty four hours a day, but if I pet her while she eats, she purrs like mad.

It is the only time she purrs and I feel honored to be able to do this for her.

Today I closed the computer, a sign that I will be rising, and Annabel dashed in from the other room! I am not sure what this means, but I think it means that she's gonna keep me.

New home town

I know someone who knows someone.

And that's what it's all about.

The connections that keep us together, the ones that replace living next door, or even on the same side of the country.

It's today's new home town.

People who care about people's people even if you don't know their names.

It's Joe's mom and Sue's grandma. It's Sally's nephew and Billy's daddy. They become family by extension.

We take care of them because we love Joe, or Sue, or Sally, or Billy.

And we know they'll take care of our family too.

You absolutely cannot have too many people who love you.

Through the tube

I am watching some of the Twilight Zone marathon and it is evoking some strange feelings.

Not just because of the subject matter, which is thought provoking enough, but because now I am looking at it from so many different places.

These black and white vignettes mostly deal with archetypal subjects, man's greed, or hate, denial, or willingness to be shallow. Those are eternal subjects, but viewing them encapsulated here they speak of the way we viewed them in 1962, or 1964, or whenever.

I remember watching these at nine o'clock at night from 1959 on. In the beginning I was allowed to stay up late just to watch them with my dad. We lived in Springfield, Illinois and I went to the only grade school I had ever known. I wore poodle skirts. Mom bobby pinned my hair every Sunday night after she washed it in the kitchen sink and I shared a bunk bed with my sister. Life was good.

By 1964 I was fourteen, we had moved three times. I had gone to four different schools, moved through saxophone, to violin, to oboe due to a variety of reasons, curled my own hair on brush rollers and become a teenager. I was growing into the studious introverted person I was going to be and struggling to fit into a world whose façade was passed off as absolute by most of the television shows of that era.

My father, who was thirty two when it began seemed so old and wise to me at the time, but looks so young in retrospect. He was thirty seven when it ended and trying desperately to take care of a family with four not so healthy children and an unhappy wife who had expected a grander life style than they were living.

He and I always shared an affinity for these shows. We were dreamers and thinkers and I think both of us found more truth in these stories than Donna Reed, Gomer Pyle, or Andy Griffith. Later on we would watch The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Star Trek, but Twilight Zone was the beginning.

The secret to happiness

I don't really believe in Fate, but I do believe in love and I absolutely believe that you cannot have too many people who love you.

We are human beings who live and grow, change and grow, experiment and grow. All that growing means that things don't stay the same and what worked once, may not work now, but just because things have changed does not mean everything that once was is now bad.

In fact, it may be better than before. It doesn't have to be, but it could.

The secret to happiness is to take what IS (not what was, or will be) and make the most of it.

Some people are better at that than others, but anyone can do it.

What is love

Young people know all about love. They know that if you just love and love and love it cures anything and everything. It's all about persistence and "real love."

And then reality strikes.

After some experience we ask ourselves, "What is love?"

Is it being loved, or loving? Is it forever? Is it doing the hard thing, the right thing for the beloved? Is it limited? Can it end?

And the answer is, "Yes."

It is ego reaching out. Replicating itself. Searching for itself. It is the infant still reaching for it's mother's nurturing when her lap is long gone. It is passion and lust, caring and need, the best and the worst all lumped together under an umbrella called love.

In it's purest form I believe it is what a new parent feels upon meeting its child.

After that it mimics all else in nature from the ivy that strangles the plant that carries it, to the guppy who devours her own young, and the spider who eats her mate. It is the Robin raising the cuckoo as her own, the sun warming the tiny seeds in the earth, an eagle teaching its young to fly. It is a friend holding you while you cry and your enemy's understanding.

It is so deeply felt it is often painful and yet we seek it out like a drowning child does air.

Love is personal and unique and no one else can really define it for you.

What's it all about

Once in a while the world hits that one point where everything is balanced -- even if only for a minute in time.

There are no miracles. No tragedies.

Angels don't trumpet in the skies and rainbows don't arch over the horizon.

It is a simple sunny day with a gentle breeze ruffling the hair of children playing in a park. Cartwheeling across the grass, hanging hand over hand on a jungle gym, laughter defining the moment in all its glorious simplicity.

Maybe this is what it's all about.

Our great American family

Americans like simplicity. They may like it painted, studded, covered in knickknacks and sprinkled with glitter, but they want it to fit neatly into a little niche in the drop top desk.

All gays could work at the Bird Cage. Lesbians are rough, tough and militant. Transgender folk equate with Ripley's Siamese twins.

Our fifty shades of race lay on a sliding scale of value.

Democrats are bleeding heart liberals and Republicans are budding Hitlers.

The list goes on, but the truth is that most of us are much more alike than we want to admit, or care to believe.

We act out of fear and ignorance. We are quick to jump on bandwagons as long as there are other familiar faces on board.

We believe in karma and heaven and hell, for those others who threaten our being.

We are tweens in a world that is watching us grow up in a painfully dangerous situation.

Usually governed by a president who is chosen because he is older, wiser, and more grounded than the masses, our Rumspringa has not yet destroyed the earth.

But now the head of the family is riding around with the top down, honking the horn, shouting at passers by and indiscriminatingly throwing trash out the window.

That is definitely not so great.

He's only a bird in a golden cage

Perhaps our president knows his limitations better than we think. He's already back on the campaign trail. It's the one thing he's really good at.

How will he be remembered?

Alternative truth?

Locker room talk?

Tweeting like some frantic canary banging it's head against the bars of its golden cage?

The one thing you can count on is that no matter how low we set the bar, Trump can get under it.

Out of the mouths of babes

Is life about passion or showing off?

Do we only work for carrots?

If everyone is doing their best why shouldn't they all make a decent living?

It is difficult to know if anyone is doing their best, but we have used that as an excuse to misuse people since time began.

Is it really necessary for one person to make a hundred, a thousand times more than another? Are people truly motivated to create, invent, or be more useful if they have more than they will ever need in ten lifetimes? Does keeping hard working, good people eternally poor benefit anyone?

My five year old grandson was playing and had to come up with a problem He said one man has double money and the other has none. When asked what the problem is, he says they need to learn to share.

That is pure logic.

The future

When I was young there was the future.

That distant place where whatever problem I was dealing with at the time, might be fixed.

That place that held hope in its cupped hands.

I suppose there is still a future.

A time that is still to come where things will be different and maybe better.

A place that is a little shakier than it used to be in my sixty seven year old hands.

I have less time to consider the future now.

Distance becomes more daunting when my bones ache and breath gets shorter.

I think I need to do more dealing with now.

Now.