Category Archives: America

America

Who will you be when history calls?

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This is a picture of the American Flag with the statement "History is calling" on it.

Who will you be when history calls?

Trevor Noah asks this several times in his recent Netflix special and it hits so hard. As someone who has had to redefine myself due to chronic illness, I am well aware of how much work goes into actively choosing who you are going to be.

If you live in the United States of America today can you really think of a better time to put in that work?

Our very way of life is under attack. Not rhetorically, not by diversity or advancement, or immigration, or change, but by rich, white men intentionally dismantling it while we fight over bathrooms.

So who are you?

Are you someone who ignores what’s happening and just lives their life?

Are you someone who thinks that they will benefit from what is happening and is helping them destroy our nation?

Or are you a fighter, a resistor, dare I say a patriot? Someone who is willing to fight to take this country back from these maniacs?

Think of the pledge of allegiance. As GenX I spoke it every single school morning, hand over my heart, while it was read over the loudspeaker.

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Liberty and justice for all.

Every single day I swore a pledge to a flag that stood for liberty and justice for all. Everyone. Every single person in a supposedly indivisible nation.

It didn’t say “Liberty and justice for whites” or “Liberty and justice for citizens” or “Liberty and justice for the rich”.

Liberty and justice for all.

So I am choosing to fight for the rights of my fellow Americans, and the immigrants that have come here, like my ancestors before them, seeking a better life. I am choosing for fight for equality, for science, for diversity, for all the things that actually make this country great.

I am choosing to fight for my flag.

That is what being an American means. Standing up for liberty and justice for all. So many of our countrymen have let the ultra-wealthy asshats in charge convince them otherwise.

But I’m GenX and I am here to tell you that you are acting like the Russians in a bad 80’s movie if you are still supporting Donald Trump. You are not the good guys in this story. You have lost the narrative. There is simply no other way to write your choice.

It’s not too late to make a different choice though.

So who are you going to choose to be? History is calling.

#tired, America, conservation

Use what you have…

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An attempt to withdraw from knee jerk capitalist self-soothing.

They work us long, hard hours at less than generous wages so when we have free time we spend our money on things that feel like luxuries to reduce our stress, anxiety, and depression.

What we need is time together, time in nature, time creating things, and so much less stuff.

Not a popular opinion.

As a woman whose Mother has had to hire two dumpsters and two junk removal teams to dig out of my Father’s lifetime of consumerism I’m taking the lesson to heart.

This is the year I begin to use what I have in earnest. Repurposing what I can, trading what I can’t, and donating what I don’t need and what I don’t love.

I can sew a little bit by hand so instead of new things this year I’m refreshing my old things with needle, thread, and things I won’t wear anymore. YouTube and Google have all the free teachers I require .

Cardboard boxes make great storage and fabric and glue make them as pretty as any you can buy at IKEA, it’s not like the Drona boxes are made of anything else.

Handmade food wraps and wax wraps replace store bought plastic wrap and reduce waste. If you don’t want the hassle of pine resin in your wax wrap recipe rubber bands or nylon hair ties will hold these reusable items closed just as well.

I’m tired of living in a world that tells me I have to spend all my time working to afford the next brightest toy. I want to spend my time with my family, my friends, my dog, and the natural world.

For as long as we still have one.

America

In the heart of the “new” America

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I’m at some remove, being in Colorado where the full force of Trump’s attack on our freedoms hasn’t truly begun but we’re just waiting. As the untrained, uneducated, and at times unhinged thugs he hired as his gestapo grow increasingly willing to murder American citizens in public and on camera there is a tightness in the air around us.

Don’t read the comments could be a prayer as well. If you want your soul to die read a story about a fellow citizen being murdered by a federal agent and then see the long line of mental gymnastics people will do to make it ok.

Nothing here is ok.

We are watching the death of the country we were born into and even worse, the dream of the future. Everything is being sold to the highest bidder as fast as he can get his greedy little hands on it. A wealth of environmental beauty torn apart to feed the endless hunger of a man who will never have enough.

Some of the people are fighting but others are embracing this madness. Then there are the ones who love to tell those of us who are fighting that there is no point because we reinforce the machine. What are we supposed to do? Nothing?

No, I am not doing nothing. I am not capable of doing much but when it comes time for me to be dragged to a concentration camp I will have spent the time until then fighting.

I just don’t see how people can’t see it. Then I remember, they probably can.

The fact is, if someone is still bending over backwards to make this administrations action ok then they are the bad guys. They are complicit. They want this.

The number of sirens I hear through my window every night seems to be increasing. I don’t know if that’s just a city responding to an ever increasing tension or if there’s more going on than I can see but it certainly adds to the tightly wound sensation that things are not ok here.

Thank god my Dad is no longer here to see this.