All It Takes Is A Little Love

I have a love/hate relationship with social media. On the one hand it has allowed me to make my writing public even if just for a handful of people. On the other hand it has opened the very keen possibility of having people lambast me for my thoughts. 

I am so happy that social media has provided me with the opportunity to reconnect with people from so many of the junctures of my life. It’s wonderful to see how they are doing and to realize where their lives led them after we parted. At the same time the honest comments that come from people that I have known sometimes shock me because they provide way more information about them than I actually wanted to know. In some cases my own honesty has led long term friendships to sour or even end. 

Most of what I dislike about social media involves things that I see from strangers that are ugly, racist and judgmental. Sometimes I know that what people are posting is an outright lie whose purpose is to turn us against each other. All in all because I am an older woman with a great deal of living under my belt I am able to ignore the worst aspects of social media. Nonetheless I worry about how it is affecting younger individuals or persons who are already fighting demons of their own.

Social media has become a political hammer in many regards, bashing people and groups and ideas with hateful rhetoric and lies. The untruths are the worst and quite often people do not take the time to determine what is real and what is not. Some of the worst possible posts come from our president who likes to air his grievances with anger and threats. 

Right now the official government site of the United States is pushing a series of computer games supposedly designed for children that are so horrific that they should be widely condemned. In one of them the goal is to detain and arrest as many brown skinned illegal aliens as possible. Once a figure is captured the screen dresses them with orange jumpsuits and congratulates the player for ridding the world of the despicable characters. 

It is difficult for me to imagine adults who seem to worry so much about whether or not the ten commandments are posted in classrooms or that our children are reading questionable books would endorse the kind of hate that these games provide. Never in the history of our nation has a president been so openly vile about certain groups of people and even certain persons. The example that he provides to our youngest citizens is crude and vile. Surely they see him bullying his perceived enemies and begin to think that acting that way is okay. 

Stories of young people being harassed and beaten down on social media are legendary, sometimes even leading to their deaths. Once a hateful post is online it might stay there forever making it almost impossible for the victim to ever again find peace of mind. For those of us who have lived through the slings and arrows of life for many years ignoring is easy, For a child who is still in the process of becoming it can be impossible to simply look the other way. 

I don’t know what the answer to social media actually is but I believe that it has in many ways created far too many problems and complications in the world. We have to spend so much time determining what is true and what is not as well as laughing off horrific comments aimed at making us feel small. It is as though under the screen of the internet people believe that they have permission to hurl threats and create lies. 

I suppose that someone reading this post might argue that when I complain about the president I am actually spreading the kind of hate that I so totally dislike. The difference is that Trump is speaking as the leader of our nation and as such he should be more uniting than dividing. He is supposed to be leading us all, not just those who bow to his every whim. He wants to be able to call people pigs but grows angry when someone pushes back with an insult of their own. 

Social media has been mostly good to me. I have enjoyed the good side of Facebook but I don’t go much beyond that. I don’t do Instagram or TikTok and I rarely find my way back to X. I like Bluesky and Substack where I follow certain people for information. I do write my own opinion pieces in my blogs but nobody has to read them and I try to choose my words carefully but honestly. Most of the time they do not venture into political issues but when something is bothering me I exercise my right to point out what I see as problems in our nation or world.

I suppose that throughout history there have been aspects of living that have been both good and bad. Perhaps one day we will learn how to use social media in positive ways. Until them I’ll keep writing and enjoying the kinship with people who mean so much to me. I hope my points of view do not bother them too much. 

One of the hardest parts of living through this moment is the weight of watching terrible people do terrible things and feeling, in some deep and constant way, helpless.          —-Heather Delaney Reese

I will be the first to admit that I have an obsessive personality. I am someone who continually worries. Perhaps it is so because I have endured many tragedies in my life that have made me a bit wary of what the future may hold. 

I have also been a mother and a teacher and in that role I have seen life change in an instant. I have had to be ready to react to danger and difficulties in order to protect my children and my students. I developed eyes in the back of my head and a kind of sixth sense that made me able to see bad things coming and deal with them before they became inevitable. I have slept in a state of alert for much of my adult life, listening for the cries of my babies, hearing the thump in the dark that was my elderly father-in-law falling. I learned to see the signs of my mother’s mental illness long before they were apparent to others. My almost psychic abilities were born from experience and a need to be ready for whatever tragic moment came my way. 

I joke about taking hours to finally allow myself to relax and fall asleep but like many folks who are responsible for others it is not really so funny. Life has trained me to be much like a faithful watchdog perking up at the instant that danger lurks. I suppose that my constant attention to the world around me has developed over the years because time and again I have momentarily been taken aback by the vagaries of life only to have to snap back quickly.

The last many years have been personally difficult for me and my family but also for most of the world. I was rocking along in a state of elation upon retiring from full time work and for a few years I enjoyed travel and being the master of my own calendar. It felt good to be so freed from constant responsibility but around seven or eight years ago all of that began to change. 

My father-in-law and his wife had become more and more unable to maintain their independence as illnesses and the process of aging complicated their lives. Both of them battled illnesses and struggled during the pandemic. It became apparent that my husband and I would need to watch them more closely than ever before. Then a bit over five years ago my father-in-law’s wife died from congestive heart failure and he ended up in the hospital dangerously near death for weeks. When he finally overcame his medical problems he came to live permanently with me and my husband. 

In the meantime my husband’s own health problems seemed to dominate our days. So of course my vigilance became a twenty four/ seven challenge which I somehow managed to endure even as it sapped my energy. I was grateful to have the ability to handle the stress and the uncertainty but enduring such moments always takes its toll. 

Since 2024, the whole world has felt unsafe and demanding. For a “fixer” like me daily life is often difficult to endure and manage. I feel as though I should be doing something to set things right but the present moment is beyond the reach of one person. There is a great deal of ignorance and evil and jealously playing out on the world stage that should be concerning to everyone but is seemingly being ignored by so many people. Our very institutions are being threatened and in some cases have already been sacrificed by the whims of our ever declining president. So, yes, I feel somewhat helpless in this moment knowing that even my posts are little more than an outlet for my concerns rather than a successful rallying call for everyone to see.

I cannot even begin to express how much I love and appreciate the United States of America but right now the nation is hurting. I hear the cries but feel limited in what I might do. I try to warn people but they are so often unwilling to accept what I have to say. Instead they cling to ideas from our president that are not just false but destructive of our very democracy. There is not even enough hyperbole to explain my fears for the entire world as an elderly demented and vengeful man wreaks havoc by the hour. 

And so I watch in horror hoping that there are enough people like me to ultimately bring about the changes that we need to stop the purposeful damage to our very democracy. I am alert. I can see the truth. My only wish is that others who are seemingly looking the other way will one day also realize that this moment cannot stand and that the truth must unfold. We the people owe it to everyone who has ever struggled to set things aright by doing our duty no matter how difficult the coming days may be. The hard part of living is upon us and each of us must be ready.

The Republican ads are using all of the old canards designed to frighten us. What they are doing is not new. It is simply a repeat of dirty politics that knowingly spreads falsehoods and innuendo to make us wary of people in our nation who think differently than we do. It seems that for the midterms every sort of misleading information is on the table being funded by millions from wealthy people who already have way too much power over us. 

This is the season for ranting about religious beliefs and choosing one person’s spirituality over another. This one has been around for a long time. When John Kennedy ran for president the stories about the horrors of Catholicism were rampant. Ads insisted that our nation would ultimately be run by the Pope if Kennedy won. In today’s version of religious propaganda the Republicans are ramping up horror stories about Muslims and even Protestants whose views are more liberal than those of the Christian Nationalists. They are taking comments out of context and insisting that they are extreme. This kind of fear mongering goes way back and has always resulted in innocent people being harmed. 

Another big argument is that the Communists are trying to take over. This one led to giving power to Adolf Hitler in Germany. Later it resulted in witch hunts in Congress that ruined the careers and lives of ordinary Americans who were accused of wanting to turn our nation into a communist hellhole. The truth is that most voters do not appear to know the definition of a social democrat who simply wants the government and our taxes to work for the people rather than the few oligarchs who own most of the wealth in our nation. Wanting citizens to have access the healthcare and decent housing is not communism but the Red Scare tactic seems to always attract voters who have not taken the time to educate themselves with the facts. 

Somehow the MAGA driven Republican party seems to believe that the president should have unlimited power to do anything he wants. They prefer giving billionaires incredible tax breaks while ignoring the many problems of the middle and low income citizens. They look the other way when the president breaks the law or when a man running for the Senate has been accused of theft and other crimes as long as they are in line with the current beliefs of one man and his loyal followers.

Of course the playbook also wants us to be fearful of others who seem to be unlike us, Thus they look away when immigrants are being deported to countries where they have never lived. They argue that these people are all criminals because they did not come here legally. They argue that saving our young girls from trans athletes is more important than national security even though none of them has actually been in danger from a trans women. In fact, most have never encountered such a person because they represent less than one percent of the entire population. 

Their’s is an ugly platform that is attempting to make it harder for Americans to vote. They speak of freedom of religion when they truly only want one way of thinking about religion. They constantly create boogey men where there are none. They use fear to turn us against each other and to be cruelly judgmental about people that they do not even know. 

We are not yet at the kind of moment that Germany endured under the rule of Adolf Hitler and his henchmen but we would do well to understand that the propaganda being hurled in this elections cycle is very much like the kind that created concentration camps and the killing of innocent people in the long ago. We should all be wary of attempting to carve out a country that is based on an idea that only certain ways of being and thinking is permissible. Never have people been exactly alike and that is as it should be. We are a nation of many ideas, religious beliefs, and ways of living. That is what has made our country strong and resilient. The nasty ads that offer no positive supports for our citizens should alert us that many people running for office are only interested in increasing their own power and forcing their ways of thinking on all of us. 

I hope that the majority of Americans do not allow themselves to become victims of the nasty propaganda being desperately thrown at us simply because Trump and the Republican party fear that they will lose the midterm elections. They have made life more difficult than it needed to be. The economy is in free fall. We are mired in a war that never should have happened. People are losing their jobs. Efforts are being made to turn us against each other. We should not let this stand. Our duty for saving our democracy lies in educating ourselves and looking beyond the frightful ads that are classics of propaganda. Listen instead to what candidates have to positively offer. If the only way someone can win is by spending lies and innuendo we should be wary. When something sounds ugly or divisive take the time to fact check its reliability and its source. Turn the noise around to gain the truth.  

My grandfather was a finishing carpenter and lather. Much of the work he did still stands as a testimony to his skill and that of the men who worked with him. I have always been fascinated by the craftsmen who built the wonders of the world. I can only imagine the Egyptian engineers designing and carrying out the construction of the pyramids. Walking through ancient Native American sites I am in awe of what they accomplished without modern day tools. The medieval cathedrals of Europe are stunning. I marvel that humans have been so brilliant throughout history. 

I witnessed my grandfather’s skill in homes that he renovated. Every line was straight, corners fit smoothly together. His work was so perfect that it became a work of art. Little wonder that his son, my father, would later become a mechanical engineer and now one of my grandsons is following in his footsteps. There seems to be something in our familial genes.

I remember visiting my Uncle Harold who had built his home with his own hands. It was a small but sturdy place with arched doorways and built in cabinetry that fit perfectly along walls and in corners. Outside he built a workshop for his tools that was fascinating. My brothers and I became giddy whenever who took us out there to see how orderly he stored his many tools. Even better was when he showed us how to use them to create something wonderful. 

Much like my grandfather, Uncle Harold had the hands of an artisan. His fingers seemed to be perfectly shaped for the beautiful work that he did. They also showed the marks of the constant use that he had made of them in decades of building things at work and at home. 

Right now as I write there is a man redoing the wooden floor in my great room. After over twenty years there were unsightly scratches and gashes and much of the protective coating was beginning to peel away. For some time I considered pulling all of it out and installing a new product instead. A friend told me about her godson who repaired such things and so I decided to give the floor new life with his help. 

He has spent most of the day carefully sanding the boards. He has a masterful touch. Nothing is gashed. The wood is as smooth as it once was. He has created a stain that we like better than the one we had before. He has filled in the flaws that were always there. I see that he is a perfectionist like my grandfather and Uncle Harold so I am very excited about how lovely my floor will be once he is finished. 

He is taking his time not to cut corners. He is definitely someone who takes pride in his work. The job may be small but he is taking it very seriously. I marvel at the intensity of his efforts and understand why his godmother boasted that he creates beautiful floors. I think my grandfather would approve and Uncle Harold would smile because he too one day laid down a whole house of beautiful flooring. 

I greatly admire the craftsmen who take the time to do things right. They show pride in the work and never attempt to just throw things together. They admit when something is beyond their skills and often suggest someone else who is better. Not everyone is so honest these days. They take the job and the money and run. 

I remember a time when a neighbor asked me to come to her home to give my honest opinion of some tile repairs that a contractor had done in her bathroom. I was so shocked by the shoddy work that I had few words to express my dismay. I simply said that the whole thing needed to be redone. I hated giving her that news but she had spent a great deal of time and money planning the renovation and the work was as horrific as anything I have ever seen. She was actually relieved when I gave her my blunt opinion because the man who had done the work accused her of being picky. Ultimately she fired him and had someone come to start over again. It was a massive loss of time and fortune that nobody ever wants to experience but in the end she found a tile artisan who somehow performed a miracle and made her bathroom gleam.

We should celebrate the people who are exceptional builders as much as we laud other geniuses. These craftsmen and women have skills that go beyond just getting things done. When their work is completed it almost becomes a work of art like a painting or sculpture or a story well told. The human intellect shows its glory in so many forms. We must always celebrate them as the wondrous people that they are.

September is a big birthday month in our family rapidly followed by October when another round of birthdays commence. I’m the November gal and then there are two more in December. The result is lots of fun for three months when we go into celebration mode. Sadly two more follow in January so soon after Christmas that we have to pinch ourselves to remember to acknowledge them. 

One year my daughter who was born on December 20 decided that she wanted a birthday at a normal time of year, not in the middle of the Christmas rush. We let her choose the date when we would have a party and she leaned toward the summer, mostly because she wanted a day that would not include going to school. She ended up choosing a date that sounded good and we went along with her wishes. As you’ve probably guessed it totally bombed out. Somehow it never seems quite right to attempt to change the birthday date lottery to one that is seemingly better. It was too early in the year and when her actual birth date arrived she felt funny pretending that she had already enjoyed her special day months earlier. We never again tried to fabricate her special celebration.

I sometimes laugh when I see how complex birthday parties have become. Doors are adorned with balloons and often there is a huge sign in the yard announcing the joyful moment to everyone who passes by. Gifts are staged sky high and fancy food is either brought to the house or found at five star restaurants. Of course there are often formal photography sessions with special outfits purchased just for the occasion. My propensity for doing math begins to add up the cost of such mega celebrations and it boggles my old fashioned mind. 

I suppose that I was just an ordinary mother to my children. I usually had a homemade cake and a few gifts and called it a day. If I remembered to take out my camera to record the day with a few photos I was lucky. Mostly it was a low key affair  with perhaps a few close friends or family members joining us. I don’t know if I should feel guilty for hosting such plain celebrations or if I should congratulate myself for being frugal. I suppose that it’s all just a reflection of the changing times and perhaps if I were still a young mom I would be a bit more willing to demonstrate how much I loved the birthday boy or girl by planning an extravaganza.

My mother threw a few birthday parties for me when I was young. They usually involved having a few of the neighbor kids and my cousins over for some cake and ice cream. If she was really in party mode there might even be a game of hang the tail on the donkey with prizes for everyone. Oh how simple times were back then!

I admit to causing my eldest daughter a bit of grief when she was a child. We decided to celebrate her July birthday by filling a blow up swimming pool with water and telling the kids she invited to wear their bathing suits. Our plan was to let them go wild with the hose in the backyard and then have some cake and ice cream. A few of those that she invited assumed that we had built a pool in our backyard and they were stunned to see that the tiny rubber pond and hose would be their entertainment. It took a long time for my daughter to live down the insults that followed. Not even my urging that she overlook their rudeness seemed to salve the emotional wounds that she incurred. 

Now that I am an older woman I am even more low key when my own birthday comes around. I haven’t had to work on that day in quite some time and I often do something by myself that makes me happy. I don’t seem to need the attention that I so enjoyed as a child. My birthday reminds me that the happiest time of year is on its way with Thanksgiving and all the frivolities of Christmas. During those weeks I get to see people that I had not encountered all year long and I find that just being with them is the only gift that I desire. 

This year my husband and eldest grandson will launch the three months of celebration with a party together. It seems that three of my all time favorite men were all born in September My dad is on the second, my husband on the twentieth and my grandson on the twenty sixth. We’’ll have a small quiet gathering of family with some fajitas from our favorite Tex/Mex restaurant and a small cake. Nobody eats sweets in quantities like they once did. We are all watching our waistlines and thinking about eating clean and healthy food. Birthdays are an exception to our new routines. 

I think it’s rather amazing that we humans decided to celebrate our circuits around the sun. I wonder who first had the idea to do so. Who thought of bringing gifts? How did it all evolve? That’s something I need to research. I’ll get back to you when I find the answers. Until then let the celebrations begin!