It’s 3:17 am and I am in between my first and second sleep, as usual my mind is pinball machine with a little silver ball of thoughts going around and around, popping up and sliding down- going from thought to thought. It’s been rough, these past few weeks with chaos, destruction and death; and the news and media seem filled with hot topics while the heat is adding to our collective discomfort. A gentle breeze is tickling the chimes outside our window and a few acorns have dropped on our roof while beside me my sleeping partner is breathing slowly and peacefully, our little dog’s paws are gently flicking my leg as she is running through some forest in her dreams and our big dog is softly barking at a squirrel in her reverie during this all too familiar scenario of insomnia; an inherited trait passed down my family line from my great grandmother, Minnie. I turn on my tiny book light attached to my current book, for I must have a book at the side of my bed for these inevitable bouts of sleeplessness. Currently I am reading ‘Beyond War’ by Douglas P. Fry  as I have been searching for solace from the negative messages relentlessly permeating our world. Last week’s deluge of Agent Orange blown through the media via a convention has me in search of positive viewpoints. It was ugly and it was loud.

My college roommate and life long friend used to be a fan of Stephen King, VC Andrews and the like, she enjoyed sitting in a theater watching horror movies until she began to have regular nightmares and realized that her choice in literature was the cause. She stopped reading graphic and horror novels and her nightmares subsided, the connection was obvious. With the plethora of reading topics available there is much we can fill our minds with that enhances our sleeping and waking life. The internet and media are very much like a library- we can choose whatever genre we want. We don’t have to select anger, horror, violence and hate, we can chose other themes. However, I understand, it’s difficult to not see what is happening around us. It’s hard to not be afraid to go to an airport or a night club. Life is presenting us with many challenges, jobs aren’t easy to come by, our debts may be high, and stress is prevalent. Certainly if the proverbial alien life form landed in Cleveland last week and entered the great gathering hall they would have quickly gone back to their planet and declared Earth inhospitable and dangerous but I would have grabbed their hand and told them to wait and come to Philadelphia this week. Did you notice the difference? There was some dissention- we are humans after all- but there was also comradery. The messages of the speakers was about actions people have taken to help, not hinder. The sea of people was colorful and varied, a more accurate reflection of the outside world.

We have so many options to fill in the library of our minds.

I’m not very good at conflict, I don’t handle it well, I usually walk or run away from it instead of facing it as it upsets me more than what people see on the outside because I am a bit like Gem in The Empath episode of Star Trek. Gem is a fully functional empath who can transfer other people’s pain to herself, while I don’t have Gem’s capacity to actually feel other people’s pain I can imagine it. It’s a gift and a curse. A curse because I get angry when I see suffering and injustice just as most people do and I can’t tolerate watching as people are cruel to each other. There’s been a lot of that in the news, evidence of just how cruel humans can be. Sometimes I say and do things in that moment of anger just as others do. I usually regret it quickly but I can’t undo it or take it back. If had a scarf and every stitch was a regrettable action or word I have said in my life, it would be a mighty long scarf. Every day I work towards knitting a scarf of happy words and positive actions and I hope that at the end of my life the second scarf will be much longer.

It is really easy to be negative when all we see and hear is about the awful things that are going on, the droughts, floods, wars, brutality and angry speech of our family, friends and colleagues. As we walk through the orchard of life it is much easier to pick up the apples that have already fallen to the ground, the ones that have a bruise or a worm hole or are slightly dirty. We could collect a bushel of those apples because little effort is involved. When we get home we say to our family, “Well, that’s all I could find, these damaged apples.” OR we could walk with a friend and look up and see the new apples, unblemished and beautiful. We could help our friend, lift them up to reach that fresh, sweet apple and when they come down we can share it, that way we both get a delicious apple. OR we could help each other collect many apples from up above us, bring them home and make a pie for all of our family and friends to share. I made one, would you like a piece?

There are awesome people out in the world doing great deeds and it takes just a little effort to locate them but like those fresh apples it takes effort to discover them. For example, Sgt. Stephen Wick and Officer Colin Mansfield who helped a blind and homeless man in Texas.  We don’t have to listen to the negative red and orange rhetoric spewing pollution out of golden towers. We don’t have to believe that the only thing left for us is damaged produce laying rotting on the ground. Bad food smells foul and affects our happiness just as the loud ugliness does. We don’t have to tolerate that. We can turn it off and chose a different way of solving our problems. We can accept the scraps and discarded offal that is being offered or we can shut it off. Rarely do we get everything we want, humans live in packs and tribes so we have to compromise. We can share what we have with many and we all thrive or we can accept the myth that some deserve more than others because they work so much harder than we do and are more deserving, when in reality, they are simply greedy and selfish. History has many examples of what happens when greed rules and many suffer. An opportunity exists right now for us to work together and make changes that positively affect everyone or we can allow the Non-Negotiables to dead lock us and Agent Orange to defoliate what we have. We all deserve a slice of the abundant pie that our world offers us. We all work hard and have earned the right to sit together and enjoy a slice, because who isn’t worthy of a fresh piece of pie?

We were not invaded. No towers fell. November 9 dawned the same as November 8. What is our problem? Why do we think we spent the last two years squabbling over who is to sit in the Oval Office? After all that din and invective, it is decided. We made our choice. It is over, until it starts again. It is called, “Democracy” – the noblest form we humans have for controlling our collective opinions and emotions. A peaceful transition; no troops in the streets; we all go about our business, as usual; sure, there are tears and recriminations; there are demonstrations. That’s fine --- that is what it’s all about. But, more importantly, it is over – until the next time. What more do we want?

That is the way it has been for more than 200 years. The flawed George Washington was the only unopposed chief executive. Since then, there have been forty-four flawed creatures to follow him – some more flawed than others. The beauty of it all, of course, is that the process always has been as fair as our flawed human capacity will allow. Without exception, it always has been peaceful. Lots of emotion, lots of recrimination, but never at the point of a gun.

Yes, there have been assassinations and attempts at assassination. It is significant that those were individual acts of excess. Even during the horrendous war that almost destroyed the nation, Abraham Lincoln, while not expecting it, was re-elected under the same conditions that prevailed for George Washington and Donald Trump. In that same way, as long as our luck holds out, thus shall it be.

Profanely, it just might have been divine intervention that will place Donald in the “Trump White House” alongside a congress primed to do his bidding. After eight years of doing as little as possible, perhaps they will allow The Donald to honor the one, big, noble promise of his campaign: To prepare our frikkin’, fractured infrastructure! Obama tried, but we know how that went. Trump railed against our decaying airports, as opposed to shining samples in foreign lands. Then, there are the bridges – some even dangerously collapsing. We thank Eisenhower for the national highways, but let’s now bring them up to millennium snuff. With all of the energy and communications cables strung across the mainland, who knows if putting them underground will protect them from Putin – but, at least, let’s try. Then, there’s the water – rivers, lakes, bays – let’s clean them up! And, the railway system: Shame, shame!

If Big “D” can accomplish that over the next four years, it would go a long way in helping us to forget the many other, less honorable assertions he made during the campaign.

***** ***** *****

When we chose to step out alone,
We knew we would grumble and groan.
Despite all the fuss,
All we’ve got is us.
We’re real – this ain’t no Twillight Zone.

Attesting to the perniciousness of the infected DNA carried by this nation, although he was not born at the time, Sen Jefferson Beauregard Sessions duplicates the same oily, vehement, skin-crawling southern drawl that I recall emanating from the lips of arch segregationist-racist Theodore G. Bilbo of Mississippi, back in the 1930s. Among the “Colored” community and as a fixture in the prolific Negro press, “Bilbo” was the watchword and dean of the southern legislators in Washington who made it their personal business to suppress any attempt by FDR or any of his predecessors to exert any federal control over the widespread, at-will, broad daylight lynching of Black folk all over the South. Although Senator Sessions’ southern drawl carries a 20th century patina, devoid of the “Nigras” and other de rigueur racial derogations in those same halls of congress, it still evokes that same, skin-crawling sensation.

While Bilbo and his supporters – either active or by default – throughout the U.S. were demeaning and marginalizing minority populations, during that very same period, similar actions were taking place in Europe. Although Jews in the U.S. were not subjected to the same, stringent restrictions as were African Americans, anti-Semitism was so strong throughout the U.S. that it would not allow FDR to take in those relatively few refugees from Hitler’s horror who lingered in vain aboard the S.S. St. Louis, off the coast of Florida.

It seems odd that these two cultures, with so much in common, would be locked in a death struggle at the end of the decade. It was even U.S.-produced science on, “racial inferiority” that fueled the continuation of those studies in the Third Reich. Apparently, the idealism contained in our 18th century documents is so much more enduring than the darkest of human emotions.

That is why, after struggling through the centuries and decades of inch worm progress, one wonders what on earth is this resurgent, “Greatness” being offered up via the accents of a skin-crawling southern drawl.

***** ***** *****

Once, I heard a scratch on the board.
What a sound, so cruel and untoward!
Time and workaday
Made it go away.
Now, it’s back again – ain’t y’all hoard?

Abigail Adams, in
ladylike tones

Implored them to give
her a break.

That was naught to
shake up their bones;

It fell on ears not
awake.

Harriet Tubman and
Sojourner Truth,

With nothing to gain
by petition,

Resorted to acts that
were then quite uncouth –

They actively sought abolition!

Florence Nightingale,
a world away,

Bloodied her skirts
in Crimean battle.

Clara Barton, on our
sad day,

Did the same, as we freed
human chattel.

Seneca Falls, now
more Abigail-formal,

Attempted to set
things in stone.

This was a start, by making
it choral;

But those gals were
still all alone.

That fact was proven
at Civil War’s end,

When Black men got
the first vote.

White ladies, their
fine garments could rend –

White men had sent
them a note!

With ankle-length
skirts still close to the floor,

A half-century more
did they struggle.

Just when they felt
they could take no more,

Did they the
Constitution juggle.

Smooth-sailing, they
thought, as up went the skirts;

They’d come a long
way, baby!

The voting thing’s
slow and issues in spurts –

Not now; tomorrow,
yes – maybe...

WWII’s auxiliaries,
here and there,

Showed something’s
better than nothing.

After Rosie the
Riveter and her snooded hair:

Just look, dear, the
house needs a dusting.

A little longer,
baby, quickly they found –

Now we can smoke with
the men!

But, that did not
make the body sound –

Wallowing in the same
pigpen.

Civil Rights
happened; Viet Nam began;

The wheel began to
creak.

Gloria Steinem, Betty
Friedan –

Gals were now a mystique!

No longer Ms. Nice
Guy – brassieres in the fire!

They had waited long
enough –

Out in the streets,
now, up with your ire –

Everyone get off your
duff!

Gloria did Playboy –

It was like saying
Nigger.

With opposition, it’s
okay to toy –

It just makes your
issue bigger.

Local elections and
governors, too –

The field was really
broadening.

Reps and solons were
thrown in the stew –

The wheel began
uncloddening.

Bella Abzug and
Shirley Chisholm

Said, Come on girls;
let’s go higher;

Constitutionally,
there’s no sexism;

It matters not one’s
attire!

Geraldine Ferraro
tried for Veep, and lost.

They played games of
sex and ethnicity.

Sam was on trial; we
all paid the cost

In the worldwide
publicity.

Now, up-steps
Hillary, all primed to go –

Barack who – how dare
he!

Him I will pillory;
this is my show –

He did – my word –
glory be!

They made a deal afterwards;

She would be next.

But, like some
chicken birds,

She was quartered,
drawn and hexed.

Thus twice denied,

Joined with other
causes human,

In the streets she
has cried:

Fool me once (like
George W. Bush,

The words may
scramble by brain),

Enjoy yourself –
that’s your last push –

But, you will never
fool me again!

Forged by time and
circumstance,

Be she virgin; be she
whore,

Now she proclaims at
every chance:

I am woman; hear me
roar!