While there is time, let's go out and feel everything

 I wish I had written this this morning when it was fresh in my head, but I was on my way to work, so I didn't

I have been thinking about a lot of things regarding the current state of the United States. It scares me and I keep hoping that someone- or a group of someones can stop the tide of madness that is the current Republican Party.  Unstable, unqualified candidates for Cabinet?  Let them in without vetting because our Lord and Master, the Second Coming Orange JEEZUS says we must.

Again I wonder what he has on all of them.

I heard a song on the radio- well I listen to streaming so it was my "Jackson Browne station- that made me think

Stevie Winwood's "Finer things"

While there is time
Let's go out and feel everything
If you hold me
I will let you into my dreams
For time is a river rolling into nowhere
We must live while we can
And we'll drink our cup of laughter

The finer things keep shining through
The way my soul gets lost in you
The finer things I feel in me
The golden dance life could be

I've been sad
And have walked bitter streets alone
And come morning
There's a good wind to blow me home
So time be a river rolling into nowhere
I will live while I can
I will have my ever after

The finer things keep shining through
The way my soul gets lost in you
The finer things I feel in me
The golden dance life could be

We go so fast, why don't we make it last
Life is glowing inside you and me
Please take my hand, right here where I stand
Won't you come out and dance with me, oh
Come see

And lovers try
'Til they get the best of the night
And come morning
They are tangled up in the light
So time be a river rolling into nowhere
And they love while they can
And they think about the night so sweet

The finer things keep shining through
The way my soul gets lost in you
The finer things I feel in me
The golden dance life could be

The finer things keep shining through
The way my soul gets lost in you
The finer things I feel in me
The golden dance life could be

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Steve Winwood / Will Jennings

The Finer Things lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Universal Music Publishing Group

The lyrics spoke to me in a way that made me think.  Recently, several of my friends who are my age have passed and as one is wont to do when that happens, I am looking back over my life AND I am looking at the now of my life.  "While there is time, let's go out and feel everything"  I wonder if I want to feel everything? Maybe. Although I tend  to feel that Stevie is not talking about feeling scared or helpless, but about all that life has to offer. Letting our souls get lost in one another.

Nothing is certain, but we plan anyway. That is hope. People who know me say I am a planner, which to some extent I am. But I think my planning is rooted in the hope that my plans will be necessary and will result in the end product of hope; joy.

As we watch two of the most vindictive and cruel people in most recent times work to dismantle a 249 year experiment, we must retain hope and work toward the outcome we desire.  We must rise.

History Months

 I see the White Males who are currently fouling up ever part of our Nation are so FRIGHTENED  by the THOUGHT that someone might lean that there were people OTHER than White Males in the world they have canceled any "History Month"  removed any teaching of ANYONE who isn't a White Male from Armed Services Classes and either taken down or covered with brown paper, the portraits on the walls of ANYONE who isn't a White Male.

American History in school is mostly His Story with a few women or non White Males tossed into the salad for flavor..

I wonder if they are denying that Barrack Obama was President?  Oh yeah  They are still clinging to the Birther Story that The Republican Administration holds dear.

Poor sad little men.

They are afraid that if we learn any history other than that of White Men it will somehow damage them.  If THEY are not seen as the ONLY ones who can DO anything, then they can't keep their boots on our necks.

So, if you are reading this, please participate in the pissing them off by posting, for this month, Black History.  I want to learn about Black Americans who invented, who created, who changed things.  Give me new heroes in the world to admire.  

They can make it no longer official - or they can try, I see my City is still embracing it all!- but they can't stop all of us.

How we learn to be brave

 I am also reading "How we learn to be brave" by Marianne Edgar Budde.  If the name doesn't ring a bell, she's the Bishop who had the backbone to ask trump to show mercy.  

For all his photo ops with upside-down Bibles and groups of "ministers laying on hands" while he tries to look more pious and less aroused, He is not, and never has been , a Christian.

What is the saying ? "Standing in a church and declaring you're a Christian is a lot like standing in a garage and declaring you're a car"  

I went to Church as a kid. When I became a Teen, I saw the hypocrisy of the Church I went to and several others and decided that  this was not for me. I can, however spit out random Bible phases that might apply to the situation at hand

Matthew 7:16 says "By their fruits ye shall know them"

Take a look at the person in the Oval Office.  Does HE embody Jesus greatest command- "Love ye one another"?

I think not.

I was reading a mystery recently. I like Mysteries  there is usually a beginning a middle and an end and in the current state of the world, it's nice to have the solution in a nice neat package.   In the book , the choir was practicing "Onward Christian Soldiers"  and it struck me what an absurd thing that hymn was.  After all, they call Jesus "the Prince of Peace" but here they are putting him at the head of an army ready to do battle with some unidentified Foe with banners ablaze.

See why I stopped going to church?

Budde's book details her journey of faith and references many other leaders of faith.  It is well written and gives me a lot to think about.  I had heard she was getting threats and that there were a lot of bad reviews of her book- which became an overnight best seller, I had to buy a Kindle copy which would up on my desktop.   It looks like Amazon culled the bad reviews and are only allowing verified purchasers to review it so she is back to having mostly 5-star reviews.

My faith is my faith.  I do not feel the need to win you over to my way of thinking.  I cannot be shamed into changing my mind.  I do, however, feel that there are some who say they are Christian who use hate and fear to keep their flock in line.  I saw a video of a young girl, forced to apologize to the congregation for getting pregnant.  They were shaming her, but where was her partner in this. I'm pretty sure there was ne, since the last time that happened three guys showed up with weird presents (what the heck is Myrrh anyway?)  the minister was practically salivating as he shamed this poor child.

See why I stopped going to church?

Still I am enjoying her book and admire this woman of faith and courage, who asked the newly elected president to follow the teaching he professed to follow (conveniently ditching them as soon as he was elected). Donny-boy looked pissed.  I suppose he thought he was going to be praised and blessed and fawned over (I wonder if that happened the last time)  He was in for a surprise and boy did his cult members take it personally.

Maybe they should read Matthew 5-7

I bought a book today

 I just bought my own copy of Timothy Snyder's brilliant , thought provoking book "On Tyranny Twenty Lessons from the 20th Century"

I had checked it out from the library, but quickly realized that having it for three weeks was not going to be enough and I needed to own it.  I am rather selective these days as I have more books than bookcases and my filing system has gone to shit- I am sure my librarian friends would be horrified!

I bought the book from Skylight Books , an independent bookstore in the Los Feliz area.  I am doing my best NOT to buy from Amazon and more from small businesses when possible.  It was a bit of a drive BUT I also stopped at Yuca's Hut and got a machaca burritos so TWO FOR TWO on small businesses ( Seriously if you are in LA and haven't been to Yucas'  WHY NOT???)

It's a small book. One could read it in an afternoon, but should not.  Each chapter has much to consider and much to digest.  In the chapter "Be calm when the unthinkable arrives" he compares the Reichstag fire that gave Hitler his power to what could happen here.  The Parliament of Germany gave Hitler the power to  rule by decree.  He then got rid of them.  Anyone who opposed him was taken to a Camp.  

The Republican lead Congress is close to doing this, unaware that once they do he will remove them from their power. They think he will let them keep milking the American public and do what THEY want and not what is good for the people. The think he will remove all the Democrats  from Congress. Nope.  He will just do whatever HE wants.

We live in scary times.  I see people I knew once CHEERING for the horrible things he does, but Karma is not a bitch,  She's a sweet old lady who serves you the same tea you've been serving people for years.

Let's hope the tea party happens before too long

Rough draft of a poem I have been kicking around.

 

The wind whipped the fire

into a frenzy

consuming everything

in its surroundings.

Ash blew before the wind

containing pages of  book that fell

into my hands

More ash contained

once living things

and people's dreams

that may 

be gone

and rise again.

GroundHog Day

 Well it looks like Punxsutawney Phil- that prognosticator of prognosticators- has seen six more weeks of Winter.

I am hoping for decent rain in Central California to fill the reservoir that Felon47 had emptied as a grandstanding play.  That water was the summer stock to water their fields and farms.

I bet they are glad they voted for him.

I am trying not to freak out, but Felon 47 is imposing tariffs and gleefully telling people that "the middle class will suffer" probably to assuage his supporters who are NOT Middle Class into thinking they will be spared the suffering.

They will not.

I wonder if Felon47 really believes that the countries being taxed will pay the tax or if he just wants YOU to believe it.  they taught this in Sixth grade when I was a kid, I wonder if it is addressed at all in schools .  He seems to have a thing for William McKinley who was so bad at the end of his presidency he single-handedly destroyed his party.

Make no mistake about it, even though he campaigned promising to lower the cost of "groceries" and watch his interview, it's like he never heard the word before and I almost expect him to say something like "nobody knows that word: Groceries" Food costs are going to skyrocket.  

Next on the list is converting from the dollar to Cryptocurrency.  We live in scary times.

We must fight back.  I am appalled at what appears to be the defeatism of the Democratic Party.  WHERE is the fight?  Our way of life, our very existence is being threatened and they do   NOTHING?

I don't know what we can do, but we can't let Felon47 and his ilk destroy us.

Rabbit Rabbit

 I woke up this morning, thinking that since it was the first of the month, I should say "Rabbit, Rabbit"

It's supposed to bring good luck and after the Year of January we just went through ( seriously, the longest month EVER) I thought it couldn't hurt.

Once again I am trying to write every day.  I had a dream in which I was told that what I would write this month would help someone and I needed to get to it.  I put some stock in dreams and I hope this month of work WILL help someone.

Maybe that someone is me. 

The speaker in the dream told me that it was important, so here goes.

I am horrified at what Felon47 is doing and yet he supposedly has a 50% approval rating . Polls are often super skewed and I wonder where they got these figures- certainly not by asking almost anyone I know.

Statistics can be tricky and can be made to reflect anything if you skew it right.  yes, I know Math is Math and not subject to opinion, but I often think about this example of statistics:

A man running for Sherriff in a  small town states "My opponent is soft on crime!  Last year our murder rate went up 100%!!!"  The statistic was the year before there had been no murders, that year there had been one.

Was he right?  Technically, yes but the inference that there was blood running in the streets was certainly a misleading use of statistics.

I think the polls are taken in areas where the pollsters will get the desired result, not the truth.

Felon47 is currently SUING a pollster who had the temerity to post a poll saying he would lose.  Poor little snowflake.  He currently holds the office of President.  I won't say he's sitting in the Oval Office, because I highly doubt he is going to spend much time there- after all it's SATURDAY and he spent all week writing Executive Orders, many of which are only meant for him to be able to tell his base that he did what he said he would, even if it is illegal and will not hold up in court.

I would be willing to bet he is at Mar-a-Lago , playing golf, The money he charges us for his trips and to put up his Secret Service detail in his hotels should make all of us ill.  He charges them top dollar.

I don't have the energy this morning to talk about what is going on, but he is certainly running the Hitler playbook.

So, Rabbit Rabbit!  I read that if you forget to say it in the morning you can say "Black Rabbit" before you go to bed or  "Tibbar, Tibbar"  that's Rabbit rabbit backwards