Author: Sharron Burnett

I grew up in Texas. I was born not long after the end of World War II. I lived in Houston, Texas in a kind of bubble until I was in high school. I knew that Black people lived in my city but I had little or no contact with them. I saw them sitting quietly in the back of the bus that I rode to downtown Houston with my mother. I saw the separate water fountains and bathrooms designated for Whites only. Even as a child I understood that the accepted ways of life were wrong and I expressed my concerns to my parents who were unable to provide me with an acceptable explanation for why such things existed.

When I was growing up I only heard about members of the LGBTQ population in slurs that demeaned their very existence. I assumed that I would never know such people even as I later learned that it was not so. Some of my all time favorite people were hiding in plain sight, no doubt suffering from the anxiety of having to be secretive about who they really were.

Things would eventually change for both of these groups with laws passed to protect them and to allow them to become visible in society but the ugliness of my youthful years would never really go away for them. Racists still exist all over the United States and there are still people who somehow believe that members of the LGBTQ population are pariahs who should be scrubbed from society.

The truth is that here in the United States we still have individuals and groups who believe that only white Anglo Saxon Christian men should be running things. They operate from a belief that humans should be ranked according to race, gender, religion and sexuality. Anyone who is not a straight WASP is deemed less than. It is a kind of sick way of viewing the world that has infected our relationships with each other for most of history. It is a way of keeping certain groups of people in line with a kind of cruelty that is unwarranted.

Sadly the president of the United States has nursed and encouraged such beliefs to maintain his own power. He has little or no respect for women who dare to question him. He makes outrageous claims that create fear of people of color, immigrants, and even the tiny group of trans people who mostly live quietly in the United States hoping that they will be accepted and loved just as they are.

Surely we have advanced enough as humans to see that the most dangerous people are the ones who attempt to make us hate and fear certain groups of people. Right now that person is the personification of hate and his name is Donald J. Trump. In the guise of a great protector he is using all of the sordid tools of a vicious dictator to line his pockets and maintain his power. We should be wary of his attempts to poison our minds with outrageous and baseless fears of certain groups of people who only want the same respect and acceptance that most of us have just because of the luck of our births. 

Many in our present day society demean women and then warn them to beware of less than a handful of trans athletes while their biggest threat is being used as sex objects by straight men who all too often get away with their depravity. Our president rallies his supporters with lies about Muslims and immigrants and trans citizens even as he has a long history of sexually abusing women. He claims to be our protector when he is often the source of many of our most egregious problems. He started a war. He ripped apart our economy. He has made good honest people afraid of the members of the groups that he claims will destroy us.

Trump’s communist ranting are older than I am. It too is based on a fear that we will lose our rights and have to share with lazy people who do not deserve our help. The truth is that communism is not the same as someone who supports the idea of caring for all people in a democracy. Somehow the richest people in our nation have sold much of the populace a big lie that if they are exempt from sharing a fair burden of taxation they will insure that the rest of us have jobs. Even if we taxed them in a fair way they would still have more money than they would ever be able to spend in a lifetime. Their contributions would help us to feed every American and provide healthcare for all. Those are not communist ideas. Those are the ideas that Jesus taught us way back when he walked on the earth.

I don’t want to return to a time when only the wealthiest people ran things in this nation. I want every person to have a fair share of our bounty. I want our leaders to respect and protect our differences. We were never meant to be a white, straight, male, Christian nation. Our ancestors came here from all over the world seeking freedom and respect. We were heading more and more in that direction but have somehow lost our way. We are better than that and it is time to turn the tide and to remember the command to love our neighbors just as we love ourselves with no restrictions on who they are or how they choose to live. We can find our way back.

My mother fought mental illness from the time I was eighteen years old. I was stunned when she first became so ill that she was unable to leave her bedroom for days on end. I had no prior experience with anything like her symptoms which included a level of paranoia. My brilliant, loving, steady mother became unrecognizable and it would be up to me to find her the help that she needed. Little did I realize in that horrific moment that she would struggle with bipolar disorder for the rest of her life. 

I did not handle the situation very well in the beginning. I was too unfamiliar with the concept of mental illness. I made many mistakes but I learned on the job and eventually settled into decades of helping my mother through relapses and times when medications stopped working properly for her. For a very long time I kept her illness under wraps. I made up excuses for missing work rather than being honest about my caretaker role for someone with a mental illness. Society had taught me that people with such difficulties are all too often considered weak, somehow subpar.

It was not until over twenty years later that I tearfully blurted out the truth about my mother to a colleague from work. He immediately counseled me with all the right words. He understood the situation because he had once cared for an aunt whose depression was so deep that she had even attempted suicide. He listened to me without judging either me or my mother and then we prayed together. I felt as though a heavy weight had been lifted. I had needed to talk about my mother’s strength in navigating the demands of life while dealing with a chronic disease. Instead I had bottled up my feelings out of fear that somehow both me and my mother would be misjudged.

Once I had spoken honestly I found myself telling more and more people what was going on in my life. I found not just sympathy but also great wisdom from others. I also found that far more people than I had ever imagined were dealing with similar situations. I suddenly became a kind of spokesperson in defense of the mentally ill. I learned that by being open I was not just helping others but was also learning more and more about the commonality of people afflicted with mental challenges like PTSD, depression, bipolar disorder, and a host of other forms of mental distress. I realized that the human experience all too often leads to breakdowns that must be addressed.

I became an expert in the language of mental illness and how to express the challenges in words that did not demean the individual who was striving to become well. I began to view mental illnesses in the same way that I looked at heart disease or cancer. Having a mental illness did not make a person somehow weird or defective. It was simply a medical condition in need of the same kind of care and understanding as a broken bone.

What often made me the most angry about how people treated my mother once she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder was the way so many of her former friends shunned her. I realized that it was difficult to be around her when she was having a dark day or a bout of mania but there were good people who never left her side. She worked in an office full of people who beautifully understood when she needed time to regain her footing. They even went so far as to create a quiet place for her to rest when her medications made her drowsy. They were cheerleaders on her team who saw her has a brilliant and unflaggingly kind person who now and again became ill. I loved that for her.

I was sick when I saw that Ken Paxton and Donald Trump were poking fun at James Talarico when he was sick with the flu needing to leave behind the campaign trail or a time. They joked that they wanted proof of life, unwilling to accept that he had done the right thing by resting and taking care not to spread his illness while he was contagious. Because of their outrageous taunting a total lie took hold that Talarico had actually checked into a mental facility in Ohio. What enraged me the most was the insinuation that Talarico was somehow tainted if he needed help for a mental problem. It was the old trope that anyone who becomes overwhelmed or sad or anxious is broken and not to be trusted. It was the same kind of ignorance that left my mother wondering what happened to some of her former friends.

As it is, Talarico was not in need of medical assistance for a mental illness. The lie was dirty because it indicated a total lack of understanding and kindness for anyone who actually seeks help for mental distresses. It was more of the garbage being hurled at Talarico that has nothing to do with his ability to hold down the job of a Senator. The only thing that Paxton and his minions have is throwing mud at Talarico by questioning his manhood and religious beliefs. The irony of it is that if there is indeed one of the candidates with a sordid resume it is Ken Paxton. He is a man who has no idea how to be a true Christian or how to be loyal to his wife. Paxton is the one who steals and cheats and lies.

I know how mental illness can destroy a life if it is misunderstood. Fortunately my mother only lost the friends who were never truly friends. Instead she learned who loved her enough to help her through the hardest times. They knew her strength and her goodness and not even those moments when bipolar disorder threatened to take her down did they treat her like a freak. Truly good people never act that way and neither should Paxton, the president or those who want to drag Talarico through the mud. Evil exists in our midst but it is not coming from James Talarico.

We Americans are easily distracted. We have had it so good for so long that we find ways to ignore signs that our democratic republic is faltering. Instead of becoming livid when we see signs of the president restricting the press we just shake our heads and try to sanely explain that he has always been that way and there is little that we might do to change things anyway.

We allow ourselves to get tied up with concerns about things that have very little impact on anyone’s lives like trans athletes competing with young girls or going into their bathrooms. We don’t stop to find out that trans people represent less than one percent of the total population of the nation. The incidents of trans athletes taking the honor from women are so close to nil that we should not even worry. 

We then look the other way when the president starts an ongoing war with Iran without following the dictates of our Constitution that very clearly gives that right to Congress. So too do we watch ICE rampaging like masked mobsters in cities and towns without demanding an immediate end to their tactics. We sit back and only shrug went the Secretary of Defense gets rid of career officers and then brings in civilians to make massive changes in how things are done. We act as though there is nothing that we can do after DOGE tore down so many government agencies and those guys were just young men barely in their adult phase of live. We even look past the very visible truth that our president is not well. 

Our press is little better than we are. Comedians are doing a better job of pointing out the problems with our current government than those entrusted with providing us with truth. The majority of journalists seem more intent on currying favor with Trump rather than questioning the egregious things he is doing. The headlines rarely reach the heart of the horror of what our nation is enduring. We have to rely on independent souls willing to push for an honest assessment of what is happening while those from the networks seem to cower in fear save for a few brave souls.

The entire presidential cabinet as well as most Republicans bow and scrape to the president even as he becomes more and more unhinged. They witness his abandonment of our traditional allies and simply shrug. They see him constantly falling asleep and boast that he is so hard working that he just gets tired. When the president says that watching Iran bomb Los Angeles or San Diego would be a small price to pay, his minions insist that he is just telling a joke. Meanwhile many of us know exactly what we are seeing and hearing from the Oval Office and it is not good.

I love the United States with every fiber of my being. I have always believed that ultimately we are good people, citizens who care deeply about our nation. When Joe Biden began to look unwell I understood that we needed to insure that he did not run for office. I was proud of Democrats who realized that as well and even prouder of Biden for stepping down. It must have been difficult for him to do so but he so loved our nation that he did what he believed was best. Now we have Trump looking much more out of it than Biden ever did and nobody seems willing to stop him from reeking havoc on the entire world until after they resign and write a book.

I believe that Americans will vote against Republicans in big numbers but Trump is already shouting to his believers that Democrats are determined to cheat in order to win. He is setting up another attempt to change the results just as he did with January 6, 2020. This time he feels invincible because even with all of the evidence of his traitorous behavior his party fell in line, nominated him again, and returned him to office where he rules like a king.

I dread what will happen after this election. Things have fallen apart so much that the center may not hold. With Trump still in office for two more years his fear of being held accountable might lead him to declare martial law or to deny the results of the election long enough to create chaos in our government. He already jokes that he would like to run for a third term. He has a tendency to hide his very real threats inside what he claims is just a joke..

It is time for the press to be brutally honest about what they see happening. There can be no more pandering, no more headlines that make this moment in history seem normal. They need to focus on calling him out and standing with reporters who show the gumption to do so. It’s past time for being quietly polite when they know that what they are seeing is wrong.

I am a person who tells it like I see it. I have learned that many who are advocating for honest reporting have found themselves being threatened by Trump and members of his family and cabinet. They have been doxed and subjected to horrific invasions of their privacy. We all know that this kind of behavior is very wrong. This is the kind of thing that should warn us that our democracy is teetering under the pressure of fear. It’s time for us all to be brave. 

I have an old cookbook that belonged to my mother. My father purchased it for her before I was born. It was published during World War II and reflected the sacrifices that the American people endured in order to fight against fascism. Each recipe was created to reflect the rationing of certain ingredients during that time. In many ways that cookbook is historic in how it helped cooks to create tasty food without using difficult to find ingredients.

I learned to cook from that book under the guidance of my mother. She got me started by showing me how to make cookies for Christmas. She explained to me how I would be making treats that used fewer eggs and less sugar but still tasted amazing. Making those cookies year after year kept me attuned to the past because each year she reiterated the stories of how every American did whatever was needed to support the war effort. She joked about driving around in cars with tires patched over and over to divert rubber to the military. She was quite proud of the national efforts and made sure that I understood how incredible the American people had been during that time.

I would later find a ration book among the belongings of my husband’s Aunt Elsie. I saw the accounting of her meager purchases as she too supported the war efforts, often with even more fervor. She was an immigrant from Great Britain and still had family in England. At one point in time she even offered to take in the children of her relatives there so that they would be safe from the bombing attacks from the German army.

I grew up understanding what World War II had been like because my father and all of my uncles had served in the military. I was born at the beginning of the boom of children that occurred after the war was over. My parents and relatives and the parents of my friends reminded me constantly of the sacrifices that everyone was willing to make during that time.

After the war it became apparent that Russia was going to create new problems for the world. My mother told me that she witnessed her father crying only two times. The first came when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. The next time was when Russia invaded Czechoslovakia. My grandfather had a massive stroke shortly after that event and died before I was born. My mother always believed that watching his beloved nation fall into the hands of another tyrannical government was more than her father was able to take.

I grew up under the constant threat of the USSR. I remember the air raid practices that forced us to crotch under our desks at school. I recall the Cuban Missile Crisis and listened to my teacher telling us what to do in the event of an attack. Growing up was punctuated over and over again with warnings about fascism and communism and the hot and cold wars that Europe and America endured. 

Eventually when I was an adult the USSR fell. The wall that imprisoned the citizens of East Berlin was taken down bit by bit. I have a chunk of that wall to remind me of the horrors that dictators inflict on innocent people. There was joy across the globe as we saw ourselves moving into a new era free from the brutality of the old USSR. Sadly other international difficulties would continue to arise. It was as though we were engaged in eternal conflicts of one kind or another.

The rise of Vladimir Putin in Russia did not bode well. I learned that he had been quite disturbed when the old USSR fell apart. I watched as he attempted to reinstate the former glory and dominance of Russia over much of eastern Europe. I saw his hand interfering in elections in those countries that sometimes ended with leaders who cozied up to Putin. I watched him coveting the industrial areas of Ukraine and using his influence in the elections there. More than once he tried to claim territory that was not his and finally invaded Ukraine in February of 2022.

Since that time the Ukrainian people have bravely defended their nation. For a time the United States and much of Europe rallied to their needs by sending military supplies, sanctioning Russia and freezing Russian assets in European and American banks. It seemed that the people of Europe and the United States were determined not to allow Russia to regain dominance again. Then came the election of Donald Trump in 2026, and with him the unraveling of the support for Ukraine. Trump demeaned President Zelensky in the Oval Office while at the same time feting Putin with a red carpet welcome. Trump unilaterally decided that Ukraine needed to accept its losses of land and make peace with Russia.

After declaring war on Iran without the Constitutional agreement of Congress Trump has created a worldwide economic disaster that has affected the price of oil across the globe. In particular the cost of diesel is outrageous, making American farmers and truck drivers pay a price that is ruining their businesses. In an effort to regain the support of some of his key Republican voters Trump has once again supposedly unilaterally signed a deal with Russia to purchase diesel fuel. This arrangement will provide Russia with the financial boost that will allow them to continue the war against Ukraine. Unbelievably Trump also insists that whole situation is the fault of Ukraine and President Zelensky. He urges Zelensky to either give in to Russia’s demands or resign as president of Ukraine.

Upon hearing of Trump’s latest traitorous dealings I wept like my grandfather had done. I fully understood what this meant to the people of Ukraine who have so valiantly fought for their freedoms. I thought of Trump as a turncoat who has always been overly friendly and subservient to Putin and it sickened me.

Trump and his minions are masters of propaganda. Somehow they convince many Americans that they are the good guys and everyone else is vile and hateful. They line their pockets and grow ever more wealthy and hide their intentions in traitorous lies. Trump has been a Russian asset ever since he was bailed out by Russian oligarchs when he was about to lose everything he had. In that time no bank in America or Europe would provide him with a loan to save his businesses and his wealth. He found what he needed in Russia and he has kept those people close for all time while turning on our neighboring nations and our allies in Europe. It should be evident to every American who is actually important to him. The curtain is drawn back. The wizard is a fraud and because I have always known that truth I weep for my country and for the world.

I rarely pass a Barnes and Noble Bookstore without going inside. Somehow I feel good just being there. I suspect it is because I associate bookstores with my father who let me tag along with him whenever he set out on a Saturday to purchase a new volume. Like him I have rather eclectic taste and never know what I might bring home to tuck away in the many nooks and crannies where I store by collection. 

I recently did some culling and filled a number of boxes with books that I read once and felt no compulsion to horde forever. I set aside the ones that appealed to my daughter and took the rest to sell at  Half Price Books. I earned a bit over five dollars which was a glorious coincidence because while I was waiting to learn what my pay out would be I found a book on Roman mythology that was so lovely and only cost five dollars. Of course I took it home.

I tell people that when I traveled with my father my souvenirs were always books. We once went to a store in Hollywood just down the street from the Walk of Fame that was several stories high and crammed with volumes of every kind. It appeared to be a place that had been there for decades and every cranny smelled like paper and leather. I remember that I had a difficult time deciding what to choose but my father was not in a hurry to leave so I was able to consider all of the dozens of options. I ended up with a beautifully illustrated version of Cinderella and my five year old brother chose a book about tying knots. 

There is a quaint bookseller in New Orleans near the Sr. Louis cathedral. It is off the beaten path in Pirates Alley and has been named for the author William Faulkner who once lived and wrote nearby. It is one of the places that I must visit each time I travel to New Orleans. I somehow feel my father looking over my shoulder when I am there and smiling to know that I too have become enchanted by books. I most recently found a copy of William Faulkner’s first novel that he wrote while living in New Orleans. Soldiers Pay doesn’t not quite reach the level of brilliance that his later works achieved but it demonstrates his incredible ability to weave a tale with descriptions and characters that are spell binding.

I also found a small volume of strange words that have cropped up in the English vernacular over time. It is the kind of fun book that my father would have enjoyed. I can almost envision him laughing at the illustrations and descriptions and taking great delight in finding such a jewel. The best part is that I left that store having spent only a bit more than twenty dollars but feeling as though I had purchased forever treasures.

My greatest joy came from a spectacular find at the New Orleans History Museum on Royal Street. There an entire floor is devoted to the Audubon study of North American birds. Every page of the coffee table book that I had to bring home is filled with gorgeous drawings of birds that John Audubon studied and recreated in life-sized watercolors. He spent years observing birds. Sadly he had to kill the birds to be able to accurately draw them which is a bit disconcerting but ultimately his The Birds of America is a treasure trove of beauty and information. 

I seem to find books that I must have wherever I travel. I laugh at the realization of how much my father impressed me with the joy of reading. I remember learning how to teach reading to very young people and the professor commented that when children witness their parents reading regularly they in turn want to learn that skill. I suppose that my father instilled that desire in me just as his father must have instilled it in him. I know for a fact that my grandfather was an avid reader who was still devouring books at the age of one hundred eight. Reading is firmly entrenched in my psyche and my family tree.

Most of the doodads and trinkets sold in souvenir shops end up being tossed aside over time but books are lovely reminders of our travels and the ways that we felt in different places around the world. I am often paying extra on my returns home because my luggage has become overly heavy with the volumes tucked inside. I gladly pay that price to have the ability to recreate my favorite moments by reading books related to them over and over again.

We can now read almost everything that has ever been written online which is wonderful but does not have the visceral appeal of holding a treasured volume in our hands. There is something quite magical about spending an afternoon sipping on a cup of tea while traveling to other worlds through the wonder of a good book. I suppose that I will continue adding to my collection wherever I go.