While driving through the Carolinas seven weeks ago, I sought out several bookstores looking, in vain, for a sold-out, five-year memory book. When we arrived back home in the rural Midwest I ordered one online from Amazon. They come in different colors and my book is powder-blue. It’s compact in size. Glancing at it now, I’d say it’s about 6 inches tall and 4 inches wide and about an inch thick. A friend recommended it to me, a friend who is a couple of years into her own book. The idea is to write one line per day, perhaps an observation of your day, a troubling event, something that made you laugh, a regret, an affirmation, a complaint... Later you can look back as the years pass and see where you were, what you were thinking, perhaps notice a worry that now seems without merit, you might recall a forgotten moment of joy, maybe notice that you repeat some negative behaviors, or find that you are maturing right before your own eyes…
Here is my problem: I have been so crippled by the events unfolding in my nation of the United States of America that I can barely pick up a pencil to jot even one single line. I manage to write a line two or three days in a row and then nothing for a week. Perhaps, I tell myself, I just need to get in the habit… but I know it’s more than that. I find myself without words. I who wrote 160 postings on my blog, I who routinely jots hundreds of notes, each thousands of words long, in my Evernote, cannot string two words together on paper.
I’ve never been a person prone to anxiety, however my brain is currently in overload trying to process the rapid-fire events unfolding and our 45th president has only been in office for three weeks! I have only a couple of trusted beings nearby with whom I am willing, at this point in time, to discuss my concerns, but I always have the most essential, Trusted Husband, so I am blessed.
Meanwhile, I have found support from people who I've never met, never seen in-person and who I will only come to know through their tweets. These new brokers of reason have popped up for me from all across my homeland, but also a couple from around the globe. I get my news mostly from reading. Trusted Husband and I have (and have for some time now) subscriptions to The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Washington Post. I’m considering adding The Atlantic as Trusted Husband has recently dropped the Wall Street Journal.
One person, in particular, who has become a source of solace for me during the past couple of weeks has been Pope Francis. This is funny to me, funny as in ironic, being a proud ex-Catholic, who no longer believes in the dogma or tenets impressed upon her, K-12. Yet there he stands, dignified head of what I consider a somewhat outdated theology, as a guidepost, an exemplar for me. I’ve watched Netflix’s “Call Me Francis,” a Portugal produced 4-part series (in Spanish with English subtitles) -okay, I confess, I’ve watched it thrice so far and am totally inspired by this man’s dedication to helping the less fortunate. He's had impressive first-hand experience with the events of the tumultuous years of Argentina’s Guerra Súcia (Dirty War). His present-day tweets remind me of the importance of staying focussed on providing calm and persistent aid where needed.
Other paragons of sanity I’ve discovered: Sr. Simone Campbell, Fr. James Martin, S.J., (again the Catholics stepping it up ), Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Al Franken, Senator Chuck Schumer, little Sophie Cruz, J.K. Rowling, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, numerous military veterans, artists, poets, writers, comedians, Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, SNL… they help me to realize I am not alone and that, in fact, I am in quite good company. They teach me, they inspire me, they make me laugh out loud, and my psyche grows stronger and my mind calms...
This isn’t about me, per se. I don’t think our 45th president (or his puppeteer Bannon) can hurt me, in any but a superficial way. I am retired so they cannot take away my job. Will they slash my Social Security? Will they take away the Medicare to which I become eligible to use this year? Perhaps, yet I am at peace.
However, that does not stop me from worrying about my fellow citizens who may be squashed under the 45/Bannon thumb. And apparently I am not alone. Millions of Americans have figuratively and literally stood up to say, “Enough! We will not sit silently while you strip away our democracy.”
When I was an 8-year old child in 1960 our teacher encouraged us to memorize Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the Preamble to the United States Constitution and The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus, words then coded by my brain as useful information and still stored in my cerebral cortex, under tons of useless junk like the one and only time I viewed The Apprentice because one of the finalists was an alum from the university where I was employed.
I’m fairly certain that the 45th president sees his term as nothing more than an opportunity to personally profit financially. It is his puppeteer Bannon who concerns me. From what I’ve read he is a very intelligent person with a possible white-supremacist slant, who is hell-bent on wreaking enough havoc and destruction upon his own country that it will necessitate figuratively, and possibly literally, rebuilding from scratch.
At some point Bannon had read, studied and then recommended to the transition team the reading of Halberstam’s “The Best and the Brightest,” a book that uses the title ironically, to show that surrounding yourself with the most brilliant of experts will not always yield the best results when it comes to solving the world's problems.
At some point Bannon had read, studied and then recommended to the transition team the reading of Halberstam’s “The Best and the Brightest,” a book that uses the title ironically, to show that surrounding yourself with the most brilliant of experts will not always yield the best results when it comes to solving the world's problems.
So as I view the 45th president and his puppeteer’s antics and their little missteps I wonder to myself: Bannon, is it possible you could have so mistakenly misinterpreted the American people? Did the feedback from your fervently-hateful Breitbart followers give you the completely wrong impression of the majority of your fellow Americans? Did you think that an elder white woman who is fortunate enough to find herself comfortably ensconced in retirement in the rural Midwest, where the livestock outnumber the humans, did you think she would not give a darn about those less fortunate than herself? That she would not open her checkbook to support the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and such organizations? That she would forget the words she once memorized as a child? That after the shock had settled she would not again find her voice and add it collectively to other voices? Did you underestimate our judicial system and people like Maura Healey? And don't even tell me that you were counting on any action or reaction from your arsenal-totin' Breitbart followers? Is there not now, visible to you, the chaotic infighting you'd hoped for, as we, the majority, set aside our differences to stand up for our democracy? Could it be possible that you think that "the majority" will tire of standing up and fighting for our rights and the rights of others? Because I’m certain that will not happen, not for me, not for others. No, puppeteer, you have woken the slumbering, fire-breathing dragon…
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Just last spring, just before the election candidates had been decided, I sat with my 2 1/2 year old grandson and told him about the Statue of Liberty, how she'd stood proudly in the harbor and welcomed newcomers to the United States, we looked at photographs of her on my IPhone and I recited, in a theatrical voice, the part of The New Colossus that I could still remember from 3rd grade:
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these the homeless tempest-toss to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
He liked hearing my dramatic recitation, but I could tell from his face that he didn't really understand the meaning. "Liberty holds the lamp and says, 'Welcome' ," I said to him, "She is holding the light and saying, 'Welcome! Welcome to the United States.' " A big smile of satisfaction came across his face.
Sorry, puppeteer Bannon, you may be well-read and the brightest in the room (for snicks though, take a look at the people in the room with you & then tell me, "How is this working for you?"), however I am of the opinion that your time as a Navy Engineering Duty Officer (and yeah, I'm duly impressed that you know how to use a sextant), your stint as junior staff at the Pentagon, your investment banker duties (BTW, your comparing the Jesuits with Goldman Sachs is similar in its unfairness to the comparison of the U.S.A. and Russia as far as political assassinations by "45"), and being "executive chairman" at Breitbart do not qualify you to be on the National Security Council anymore than my experience having applied ointment, bandages and kisses to my children's boo-boos years ago now qualify me to suture a wound. I just hope you don’t cause too much destruction before this is all over.
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I love how John W. Tomac’s illustration “Liberty’s Flameout” says it so much better than I can!!!
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I pick up my little 5-year memory book and leaf through January, 2017 looking for a line and find this.
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