Month: January 2025

“Everything has a way of coming back around, What seems unstoppable and inevitable never is.” — Jimmy Carter

As we embark on a new year and a new era in politics I am feeling a bit anxious as I have already indicated in several of my blogs. I don’t particularly like being a worry wart but it has always been part of my nature, spurred on mostly by unexpected events that rocked my world. 

I was a fairly happy go lucky child until the day that I awoke to learn that my father had died in a car accident. It was not something that I ever would have imagined much less fretted about and yet here was my little family locked in a kind of horror that would alter our lives in palatable ways. The old soul that had previously been locked somewhere in my DNA took center stage at that moment and I became serious and filled with a notion that I needed to take care of my mother and brothers. I altered the trajectory of my life to fulfill that obligation. 

Just when my brothers and I were entering our grown up years and I was feeling liberated from my task of watching over my younger siblings my mother showed the first signs of her bipolar disorder in all of its frightening behaviors. Suddenly I was thrown back into a caregiver roll that I never expected to so define my young adult life. I had to learn how to advocate for her and how to watch for signs that she was becoming sick again. That journey would last for more than forty years and it taught me that we can never get so comfortable with our lives that we might assume that nothing bad will happen to us. 

I suppose that my experiences have had both good and bad consequences. I had to draw on my observational and compassionate skills in dealing with my mother which also made me a much better teacher in my work life. I used my abilities to stay aware of underlying difficulties that my students might be experiencing. I understood the impact of life events on the ability to concentrate and learn. I tried to create a safe environment for my students that assisted them in balancing their school and home lives even when times were tough for them. 

I suppose that I am a person who delves more deeply into the pulse of the world around me because I know all too well that life can change in a second. I sometimes observe things that others do not see. I have taught myself to be ready for instantaneous changes that may rock my plans. I always have alternatives to steady even the worst situations, but my deliberate way of viewing the world can be exhausting. I often fantasize being able to just relax and look the other way when I see signs of trouble. Unfortunately I am an old dog and learning new tricks does not come as easily as it once did. Thus I worry, sometimes silently and sometimes with very trusted individuals. 

Right now my instincts are on high alert. I foresee much trouble in the coming months. I am not exactly sure what form they will take but the world is too uneasy for me to simply laugh away my vague fears. I wonder if another big test of my stamina and flexibility is on the horizon. Perhaps it will be quite personal or maybe it will instead involve all of the world. Maybe it will be a combination of both possibilities. 

I suppose that my greatest concern is that we as Americans remain so divided in an ugly way that I have not seen since I was a young woman in the late nineteen sixties. I wonder if we will be up the tasks that I fear will challenges us all in the coming times. Will our leaders finally be willing to work together or will we witness hardship, trauma and maybe even injury to our fellow humans? I will watch with a heightened sense that we all must be ready but I will also cling to the hope that I am just being silly and that all will be okay.

I am particularly calmed by the wisdom of Jimmy Carter. I believe that he is correct in noting that no matter what hardships my befall us we humans will correct them and return to a time when we were much more willing to work with each other. The turmoil never lasts forever. We grow weary of ugliness and offer olive branches to bring us together again when we have had enough of trouble. 

I suppose that even if the new year brings us a bit of hurt we will ultimately move beyond it. I still have faith that there is always more good in the world than bad. My life has shown me that again and again that I am right to rely on my faith in humanity and myself to find the right pathways into the future with the help of a God who urges us to remember to love.   

Life has been tumultuous for many of us during the last few years. I suppose that during such times it is easy to forget the good things that are happening rather than focusing on what appears to be wrong. Optimism often suffers when people are continually worried and most especially when those worries seem to be based on reality. It would do each of us much good to make a habit of noting something wonderful and positive in life on a regular basis and particularly when times feel the most demanding. 

I had more medical problems last year than I had encountered in all seventy six years of my life. That is the bad news but the good news is that I have brilliant doctors who have guided me to better health through it all. My blood pressure is now under control. The concerns about calcium deposits in one of my breasts were set to rest by a biopsy. My back trouble is under control and improving through a series of exercises. I may not have the energy or ability to tackle the world as easily as I once did, but I am still here and still able to get things done at a slower more deliberate pace thanks to the brilliance of caring doctors and nurses.

I had high hopes about the possibilities of our political system when Kamala Harris ran for President. She was exciting and brilliant and experienced. I naively believed that the American people would spurn Donald Trump for all of his shady and unpatriotic practices, but I was so wrong. I have been in a kind of darkness ever since his reelection and were it not for strangers who have shown me how to take defeat and turn it into a positive and hopeful movement toward the future I suspect that I would be deeply hurt and depressed. Instead I now know that there is a cadre of patriotic Americans who truly understand concepts of integrity, intelligence, compassion, and strength who are already demonstrating ways that we might one day return to a United States of America that is welcoming and fair for all. 

I have not been able to travel like I once did. I felt tied down to the responsibility of watching over my father-in-law. I actually became resentful that he was taking so much of my time and energy. I became a burned out caretaker who often dreamed of just running away. I gathered books on caretaking. I reached out to others who have experienced the same kind of situation. What I learned is that I simply just have to ask for help rather than stewing in the resentment that I now lack my freedom. I plan to travel again this year and will be able to do so because I am not going to be afraid to ask members of my family to help with some of the responsibilities that my husband and I have shouldered alone. I am also now able to speak more honestly to my father-in-law about concerns that I have heretofore stoically hidden inside my heart. I see happier times ahead for all of us now that I have a plan.

My brothers have developed many health problems in the past year. I became quite morose in worrying about them. Instead we have now promised to meet and spend time together on a regular basis. Rather being continually anxious about what may happen to them I plan to enjoy them and think about the worst case scenarios only when and if they happen. I don’t want to steal my own joy by overthinking what my future with them may be. Instead I plan to live in the here and now with them. 

As I grow older my life changes more dramatically than it once did. I attend more funerals of friends and family members. it is difficult to watch my circle of people grow smaller through such losses. At the same time there are new people entering my sphere and I plan to give more time to them. I know they will not replace those that I so loved but they will be new members of my evolving life. I know that they will fill the voids that I have been feeling.

My paternal grandfather lived a long and happy life. I think that his secret to longevity lay in his willingness to adapt all along the way. No matter what happened to him he managed to find joy even as the changes became more and more consequential. He was open to new ways of living and he always proclaimed that the good old days were all in the marvelous presence. He celebrated the goodness and ingenuity of humans while also marveling at the heroes of the past. He was a modern man who also cherished his history, even the most difficult moments. 

So here I am with the resolve to get past any difficulties that may arise by taking the time to notice what is good in my life. In doing so I suspect that I will find that my blessings far outweigh my challenges. I plan to make this a very good year.

My father was a patriotic man. He was in the Corp at Texas A&M College as it was called back in the 1940s. He entered the Army during World War II but never saw action because the fighting was nearing its end. He had recordings of speeches by generals who had guided the United States armed forces in that war. He spoke with reference of General Eisenhower who eventually became President Eisenhower. 

My mother was a patriotic woman. She recounted how her father, an immigrant, taught her and her siblings to cherish their citizenship which was duly granted to them by the 14th amendment of the Constitution. She would literally shed tears of gratitude for the freedoms of her country whenever she heard patriotic songs. She taught me and my brothers to be proud Americans not because we believed that our nation was inherently better than others but because it was right and just to honor the country that had provided opportunities to people from across the globe for so much of its history. 

Both my mother and father were learned people with college degrees in an era when they were the exception rather than the rule among their contemporaries. As students of history they were honest about mistakes that the United States had made but they marveled in our country’s willingness to admit to its error and right wrongs. They both understood that we were still moving toward a more perfect union but were not yet there. 

I am a patriotic woman. I have always felt fortunate to be a citizen of the United States of America. At the same time I realized that i did not have to do anything for that designation other than being born from two parents who were citizens. I often thought of people in what was then Czechoslovakia, the homeland of my immigrant maternal grandparents. For much of my life the people there were under the tyrannical rule of the Communist USSR. I imagined relatives that I had never known living in dire circumstances while I enjoyed freedom. It saddened me to realize that my own luck had randomly made my life so much easier than theirs. 

I am still a patriotic woman today. I love the United States of America and its people but in this moment I feel shame that we have a president who is taking down so much of the progress for minority groups that had been created during the decades of my lifetime. While I had been encouraged by the goodwill that prompted a recognition of faults in our laws I took for granted that once the necessary improvements had been made that they would remain forever. It never occurred to me that the kind of anti-immigrant fervor that made life so difficult for my grandparents and their children would suddenly be resurrected and used as a cudgel to place a cruel and vindictive man in the White House. 

I am a patriotic woman. I love my country and because I do I cannot abide by what I am witnessing. I feel as though I am watching an arsonist put a torch to the hard work of citizens, congress men and women, and former presidents. We the people have tried to create a more perfect version of our nation. It is an enormous task but I felt comfort in knowing that at the very least we were inching forward in the right direction. Now I am confounded, anxious, and deeply saddened by the ugliness that I am witnessing and I worry that so much damage will be done that it will not be possible to repair during the short time that I have left on this earth. 

I am a patriotic woman. I love my fellow Americans but I do not understand how so many of them have been fooled by a dangerous man who appears to have very little concern for any of us. Every word he speaks and every action he takes is centered on himself and somehow the guardrails on which I have always depended seem to be failing, stolen from us with deceit and fear. I truly cannot understand why every American is not appalled by what they are seeing. I wonder why our sense of love for this country is paralyzing our willingness to speak out before so much damage is done that we will not recognize where we are. Everyone who has ever felt gratitude for our freedoms should be willing to protect the decency and morality of almost two hundred fifty years of ever increasing democracy for more and more of its people.

If a mother sees her child in a dangerous situation she does everything to save her little one. If a soldier sees his platoon in a dangerous situation he does everything to save his comrades. If a patriot sees the United States in a dangerous situation she does everything to save the most long lasting democracy on earth. 

So this is where I am. I will not stand by and watch the dismantling of the country that I love. I hope that every American will see clearly what is happening and join me in saving our nation. We can do it without violence and tanks in the street. We must exercise our rights and join in numbers that get the attention of those we sent to represent us. Contact the members of Congress today! Send your concerns to the White House. Let your voices be heard. If stand idly by our nation will become more and more unrecognizable. This is not a time to be silent.

I am a patriot. My democracy and my freedom are in danger. I will do whatever I can to save it.

There was a time when the average person living on the earth lived in a kind of darkness. The wealthiest and most powerful men had some access to learning how to read, write and calculate but most men and virtually all women were confined to ignorance. 

This did not mean that they were lacking in the ability to think and create, but it was certainly more difficult without the benefit of a more formal education. The rich and powerful were often able to maintain their hold over the peasants because they denied the common person the incredible gift of an education. In fact one of the most abusive ways of holding groups of people down has always been keeping them unaware by outlawing them from learning. 

It was illegal to teach slaves to read or write because the owners understood that keeping them ignorant made them easier to manage. One of the first things despots often do is tear down educational systems, burn books that suggest freedoms, deny certain groups the ability to learn truths. It is a devious plan that has been used again and again as in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge executed teachers, destroyed schools and kept a generation of children from learning anything but propaganda. 

We like to believe that we have come a long way from the times when only the elites in a community or nation were allowed the incredible gift of learning but in this year of 2025 there are still efforts to destroy public education and freedom of thought. Here in the United States of America there are attacks on the work of scientists. An anti-woke effort demonizes the idea of attempting to understand differing cultures and ways of living. Intellectuals are being scorned and bullied and even threatened for daring to submit their honest analyses of our society.

In the name of meritocracy we are reverting to backward time when it was assumed that women were less qualified than men, when certain races were deemed more intelligent that others. Some among us look at any woman or person of color who has achieved status as a probable winner because of DEI efforts  and rules. 

How sad and insulting it is. The diversity that we now see in our daily lives has enriched our nation, not made it less effective. The equity means that no one group can use its power to push out those that they believe to be inferior. The inclusion allows for a variety of ideas and skills that might not have happened had we simply stayed with the mindset in America when my grandmother was illiterate but her brother was a doctor simply because society believed that women had little to offer other than bearing children and caring for the home. We have all too often undervalued and underestimated the brilliance of those descended from slaves well into the current time. When the power of our nation did not include entire groups of people we were missing out on talents that had been hidden before we made the effort to give people a fair opportunity to demonstrate their skills.

it is insulting beyond measure when people automatically pronounce certain individuals as being inferior or when they insinuate that minority groups, including women, have stolen the rightful awards of White men. The truth is that once anyone is invited into a particular university or job they have to prove their mettle. People do not rise to the top out of pity or a desire to push them along. They always do it by their own hard work and merit. 

We have an incoming group of mostly men who will be running the important agencies of our government. Most of them are unqualified and lacking in the kind of experience and intelligence they will need. If ever there was an effort of Affirmative Action or DEI it is visible in the choices made for the Trump cabinet. With few exceptions these individuals have only one quality to offer, a willingness to be unremittingly loyal to Donald Trump. Rather than bringing resumes of success to the jobs they are known for spreading lies and hoaxes. To suggest that they represent a return to meritocracy is a joke.

Donald Trump is an unserious man who has gathered together a stunningly unserious group of individuals to help him guide our country. In the meantime this ship of fools is promising to attack the very bedrock of our educational system, our medical and scientific excellence and our willingness to recognize the need to hear all voices, not just those beholden to a single man or set of ideas.

I hope that the damage done to the incredible progress we have made in reaching toward the ideals of our Founding Fathers will not be too destructive. It would be a travesty to create an oligarchy or to take an axe to public education. it would be wrong to shut out huge blocks of Americans and to send them into a modern day dark age. I truly hope that those of us who see the danger will be ready and able to right the ship of state when the storms arise.  

Many years ago I was studying for a Masters Degree at the University of Houston Clear Lake. I had some phenomenal professors who introduced to to ideas and knowledge of which I had before then been unaware. I took a class in Labor Law that was so enlightening that if I had been a bit younger I might have considered going to law school as the professor encouraged me to do. Another class on Public Administration taught me all about the agencies in Washington D.C. and the people who work at them. I learned the importance of keeping such agencies as free of political influence as possible. The trouble with them is not that they are attempting to ram regulations down our throats but that some political parties are attempting to reshape them to represent certain ideologies. 

I also became convinced that there is great benefit to everyone when individuals work together within teams to create and work for common goals. When the initial phase of arguing and storming does not lead to cooperation it is a sign the the institution is severely broken. This is where we appear to be today within all three branches of our government. The executive branch of the incoming president is attempting to choose a cabinet whose loyalty will be to him rather than to the Constitution and the American people. The Congress and the Senate accomplish little or nothing because they are always bickering. They have surrendered their focus on making laws to the president who just issues executive orders that change with each new election. The Supreme Court has decided that the chief executive is immune to the same laws that everyone else must follow. The result is a federal government that seems to go in circles and cater more to a particular ideology than to the idea of working things out and compromising for the good of all the citizens. 

Perhaps the most informing class that I took was called Benefits and Compensation which focused on the kinds of perks that companies and institutions provide for employees beyond salaries. Some are specified by unions, some by law, and some are related to Social Security and Medicare rules. I remember the professor warning of the ultimate crash of Social Security if the Congress continued to refuse to make needed changes bit by bit. 

The prof explained that when Social Security first came to be an actuarial study was made to learn when the average American would most likely die. At the time is was the age of sixty five so when that age was used as the time of retirement and payout of the funds most of the people who had contributed would already be dead. In other words they understood that there was no way that the program was sustainable unless most people never made it that far. 

Over time medical care improved but the age at which citizens could claim the SS benefits only slightly changed. In the nineteen nineties when I took the class on benefits and compensation the average age of death for Americans was in the late seventies. I would suspect that it may be even a bit higher by now. Not only that, but the Boomer generation is huge and there are even a few older folks who are still hanging on in their nineties. As the prof pointed out the system will only work in the future if we are willing to make changes. 

I remember an uncle who was fairly well to do saying that he felt it was wrong for him to take the Social Security payments even though he had paid into them. He commented that many of his retired friends would joke the SS was paying their greens fees so that they might play golf more often. He suggested that there should be some kind of cutoff point after which a person is no longer eligible for the payments much like they do with retirees from the military, firefighting, politicking and teaching. I don’t know how much of a dent such a thing might work out to be but I would hate to think that those who really need those payments might one day lose their checks otherwise. 

My husband has pointed out that a while back Congress put a cap on payments to Social Security after reaching a certain income. We now have billionaires who don’t pay another dime after they very quickly reach this plateau. Maybe we should return to a time when there was no cap. If someone reaches a very high income it would help if they would have to continue paying their proportional share. 

I could go on and on about what I learned in the class that so changed the way that I think. I have ideas about Medicare as well and even health insurance. All I know is that we seem to be speeding toward a crisis caused by our need for basic security and healthcare. Like far too many things our government fears the idea of doing the right things and working together to solve the problems. Instead we are now faced with the prospect of unelected billionaires deciding the fate of so many of our agencies. Somehow I suspect that some of my old professors would be shaking their heads and reminding us that they tried to warn us about what was coming. When will we learn to look ahead rather than waiting for the last minute? There have always been feasible answers but they will only happen when we finally decide to work as a team and assess payments and needs according to proportion.