April 9, 2017-A Thousand Words A Day In April

April 9^th, 2017

Exciting News!!! For me anyway. I’m starting to brainstorm for my next book!!! The title will be: Places I’ve Had Car Trouble. It’s a prequel to Yoga Mama’s Buddha Sandals, and will be a series of stories about some of my wackiest adventures that have been brought my way compliments of some form of unusual automobile experience. For some of you who were biting your nails that you were going to be in YMBS, starting biting. If you were involved or possibly even near, during any of my many hairy automobile experiences, now is the time to mention whether or not you want your name changed. Off the top of my head, I don’t think anyone should be worried about appearing in any unflattering light as every single one of those experiences I remember fondly. But then I haven’t started full delving yet. I plan to use a lot of the Thousand Words A Day in April to start rebuilding the bone fragments.

I am grateful for those experiences. This may come as an immense shock to anyone who knows anything about me, but I’m grateful for ALL of my past and every challenge. I Love who I am and I wouldn’t be me if not for every pebble in the brook shaping who I’ve become. I’m grateful for being on my own at an early age and being forced to carve out a life using tools I picked up along the way. I’m grateful for doing that poor. I’ve had so many amazing adventures, so many spiritual affirmations, all because I didn’t have any money.

Poor people who decide to take up traveling have incredible adventures that those with money may never tap. They have to try so much harder to test themselves. On any given trip, how many nights do they spend under the stars, how many meals eaten quietly around a campfire, listening to the crackling flames and watching the coals pulsate with color. Because they can't afford a hotel. Sure they might go camping, on occasion, with all the best gear, their friends, their credit cards. But they will never know the feeling of being raw out there. To be “out there” with no safety net. I got to do it. As if contained by some invisible force, I’d felt tethered not only to a town, but to an existence. Blockaded mentally, physically, and financially to a life I didn’t want so much I finally concluded I’d rather die than stay the course. I’m not recommending this path for anyone. Not advocating one single foot in the direction. Not even a little bit. I should have died. Many, many times I should have died. Strange to think of it, but Death plays such a role in shaping my Life.

And it all started with cars. Fast cars actually. My father, may-he-rest-in-peace-and-I-sure-do-mean-it, had a sense of honor I still don’t fully comprehend but one of his life’s principles was that if he told me he was going to do something, he kept his word, at what cost to him, I may never know. If you already know the story about him telling me he was going to kill me, you know that that could also be a very bad thing. That’s actually the worst thing he ever told me he was going to do and he hasn’t done it yet and I’m pretty sure he’s dead himself now. Anyway, he made two promises to me that he kept despite, well, a great many things. Number One: Until my parents divorce when I was twelve, I’d been a Southern parent’s dream. I was quiet, meek, and scared of them and God almighty. To keep it short I’ll just tell you that their divorce was such a crazy affair that it caused me to change completely in a matter of months. I went from a shivering chihuahua to a rebellious tween who ended up getting arrested six times in six months and having Juvenile Court decide that I had to spend a year in a Catholic, ahem, boarding school. My father told me the day he dropped me off with the stern-faced, habit-wearing Mother Stephens, that he would get me out in a year. Mother Stephens was recommending two years in order to more fully…banish my rebellious nature. He was good to his word. A year to the day, we were loading my suitcase into his pickup truck and heading away for the last time. I would have been more grateful to my father for this act of heroism, which it was, except that he was such a very bad father in so many other ways. No time for details about that and I pretty much never want to spend much time on those kind of details anyway. Let’s just say that I was removed from his custody several times by social services because neighbors or friend’s parents turned him in for child abuse. Even in Tennessee you can’t actually beat your children enough to leave marks. I was sixteen the night he told me he was going to kill me. The night I crawled out my window and ran away with a friend, then turned myself in to my probation officer the next morning telling her to lock me up, I couldn’t go back. Cliff notes: I got immancipated, made an adult in charge of my own affairs. After awhile, I kept in touch with my father because…well, this probably won’t make much sense, but he was the only father I had. While I moved from friends house to friends house, sometimes after only a week, over the next two years, I still managed to make it to school most days of the week. I just barely managed to make high enough grades to graduate from High School. Here’s the other promise. My father had a 1979 Camaro that he had promised to give me if I could pull off graduating high school. True to his word he gave me, he gave a feral teenager suffering from PTSD brought about by him, the keys to a 1979 Camaro with power-steering and an eight cylinder 350 engine. Again, his sense of honor was commendable. His judgment? What do you think?
 To be Continued. 

april 8- A thousand Words a DAy

April 8, 2017

Ok. I missed two days. One of them was my birthday when I turned wouldn’t-you-like-to-know. The other day was the day after my birthday. What can I say, it was a big day,  but I’d allowed myself only two days to miss and I’ve gone and missed two days right in row. So, today will probably be little more than jibberish, but a thousand words it will be. It’s been a big week for me. A few days ago my daughter asked me point blank whether or not there was a Santa Clause and my husband and I had already agreed if she ever asked us point blank we’d tell her. She’s a beautiful little believer in magic and fairies, Santa’s and Easter Bunnies and I’ve always felt that’s just as it should be. A child’s imagination is so full of magic already, having adults reinforce fantasy must magnify the potency of such power. And we have, at every turn, gone out of our way to show her real or possible magic in the world. After all, I still believe in fairies, too. I imagined that when we had the Santa conversation it would just be confirming something she already suspected, something classmates may have been trying to tell her for a couple of years now, but that’s not how the conversation went. Instead, she burst into tears and said, “So you’ve been lying to me all these years??? It’s a trick???” And I through my arms around her and said, “No, honey, not a trick!” And I started crying because the full impact of what was happening really donned on me. The monumental milestone when my little girl, who has always believed in Santa Clause, no longer does. And I saw how it could be seen as a trick. Before this happened, Darren had asked if we ever have to tell her at all. “Won’t other kids tell her?” He’d asked. But I knew they had already tried and it was we who used loopholes to reinforce her belief. Besides, I didn’t want her to find out from others and feel betrayed that we hadn’t told her ourselves. It was a tough night for all of us. In the end, I made homemade hot cocoa with real milk and real cocoa and we all cuddled up on the couch sipping cocoa and listening while Darren read from our new favorite family book: The Wind in the Willows. It’s weird sharing this…because for all I know someone else may actually be reading this. You might be reading this. But I can’t let that get in the room with me while I write because one of the many goals of this thousand word a day thing, the purpose of writing in this no-correction, stream-of-conscious style is to unclog…me. To clear out craft and be more authentically from my heart. That means getting some skin in the game. This could get hard some day. Right now: This is pure keep-the-keys-clicking fodder so I can get in my thousand words before my big date tonight.

Okay, what else happened this week. Well I turned wouldn’t-you-like-to-know and that could be a big deal. But it’s really not. For the first time possibly since I was 10, I just got excited about the presents. Is there something happening on the subconscious level? Probably. But ever since I’ve been on my own at 16 and had to fight for my right to be met on my own merit and not be defined by something as arbitrary as a birthday, I’ve worked hard to not let that define me in any way. Not by me. Not by you.
I had a woman in a store who happened to have the same birthday ask me how old I turned and I just smiled and said, “I don’t share that information.” She kept pressing, and I kept refusing to answer. I found it rather rude, actually. She was getting angry and offended that I wouldn’t tell her, something I kind of get a kick out of, a lot of people seem to become irritated that I won’t tell them. I mean they get UPSET! It’s baffling and amusing at the same time. Doesn’t anyone remember manners? Doesn’t anyone remember it’s actually rude to ask someone how old they are, how much they weigh, how much money they make, etc. etc. Yet they are the one’s getting upset. Shrug.

Okay 744 words so far. Less than 300 to go and I have five minutes. Can I do 300 words in 5 minutes? Told you, gibberish. Okay, so next interesting and personal thing happened this week. I got my period!!! Yep! For your info: I thought I might be pregnant. I was two months late and I’m never, ever late. Unless I’m pregnant. I’ve taken four pregnancy tests and they’ve all been negative but everyone I know, including my doctor and nurse practitioner knows a story of someone who tested negative a zillion times but delivered a baby somewhere between 7 and nine months later none-the-less, so we’ve been kind of sweating over here. On the one hand, it could really be cool to have a baby again. To raise it with my daughter. To raise it with all that I know now. To be less afraid, doubting and clueless than I have been for the last 7 years. This is really no fair to anyone reading this right now. I’m literally just trying to tap out …less than a hundred words now. Apologies. Hopefully I’ll do better next time, but that’s kind of the cool thing about this process. You never know what you’ll find and I never know what I’ll write. Maybe it turns to a gold story I sell and use the money for a trip to Mexico, maybe it’s absolute crap. Okay twenty words to go. Anybody got any ideas for the 20…now twelve words. Wait, my word counter isn’t working anymore, what the hey??? 1002. Done!

April 5, 2017 -- Day Five of A thousand Words A Day in April

Continued from Day 4

April 5, 2017

Hypothermia is a real concern for those of us who like to go outside and play and it only takes the body dropping below 95 F for it to set in. I had been reasonably sure I’d make it back to camp being only mildly uncomfortable before the wind kicked in. Now that the wind was blowing almost too hard for me to pedal into, and was bringing with it air cooled from the snowy slopes of the 13,000 ft.  La Sal Mountains, I was a good bit more worried about the possibility of hypothermia. I remembered seeing a hoody in a wash a mile or so back, when I was just beginning to worry about how much further there was to go. I’d come barreling down from a dome into a sand pit corduroyed by the wind and a zillion other bikes pushed through. I had to dismount and push my bike through the deep sand and that’s when I’d spotted the hoody. It was wadded and half covered in red dirt and looked small, like maybe a child’s size small. I’m small enough to fit in some children’s clothing, and it crossed my mind that maybe I oughta grab that thing, shake it out and wear it despite its complete question mark of an origin. Like maybe it wasn’t a lost hoody, but a discarded one, possibly because it had something on it too yucky to shake out. It occurred to me briefly that even wearing a hoody with someone else’s vomit on it might be better than no hoody at all if the weather turned.

The weather had turned. I briefly considered going back to see if I could even find the hoody, but my gut said, don’t backtrack, get going. So that’s what I did. I stopped briefly if I came across a spot with little wind so I could try to call Darren and tell him what was going on, but the only places blocked from the wind were between solid sandstone domes or canyons with no cell service. At one point I’d reached the top of a scoured dome and as I was heading down the backside of it, I was blasted by a gust of wind that literally knocked my bike out from under me. I managed to jump off, and then catch the bike before it tumbled down. I half ran, half walked down, using the bike’s breaks and tires to keep us stable on the way down. I jumped back on and started pedaling, and as I started heading back up yet another dome, I tried to shift into a gear that would let me spin a little easier, but when I did that, my derailer, a sort of chicken wing cog that moves the chain closer together or farther apart, was bent and poked into my spokes and stopped the tire from turning. I hopped off, wind howling, really not having time for this latest development and I saw the problem. A little panic set in. I reached down and tried to bend it out as much as I could, but I was worried I might actually break it off and make it impossible to ride. I tried to switch the gears back to where they had been before, where I could at least still ride the bike down hills, even if I had to push the bike up them. I pressed gears, lifted the back wheel off and turned the pedals until I found the gear that would still allow the rear tire to turn. That was comforting. Somewhat.

But that’s exactly what I did from then on. I walked, ran up the domes pushing the bike in front of me, using the breaks and the sticky rubber tires to keep us both from sliding down the steep hills, then at the top, wind howling full in my face, I hopped back in the seat and road down. I thought of a technique I’d heard about (and had actually used a couple of times in my deep past) where Tibetan monks meditated in their sparse robes sitting a top snow banks by stoking the fire of their inner chi. I was no expert and maybe I’m longer on imagination than chi, but it worked back then and it at least moderately helped on this trek. I was freezing and had nothing to lose so I started chanting to myself, “Firebelly. Firebelly. Firebelly.” After a few minutes I thought I detected a slight warming of my body. Or maybe hypothermia was setting in. I decided to believe in the technique and so I kept chanting, sometimes I screamed it into the wind, “FIREBELLY! FIREBELLY! FIREBELLY!”

I passed the 1 mile marker painted on the sandstone. One mile to go. “FIREBELLY!” I growled. I know it sounds crazy, and if I actually thought more people were reading this, I might be a little embarrassed. Maybe. “FIREBELLY!!” Shortly after the 1 mile marker I could see the hill that rises up just before the parking lot. Less than a mile to go. I saw two other bikers beating it to the parking lot, and then saw one biker who was riding out on the trail in my direction. I thought, “Who in the world is coming out here now???” And then I recognized the blue helmet, the blue bike, the uber concerned look on the most handsomest man in the world’s face. It was Darren. I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see anyone. Nor him. He saw me and I smiled through my frozen cheeks, “CAN I HAVE YOUR COAT??” I yelled over the wind through chattering teeth. He looked like a man who had been back at a campsite with a little girl while both of them sat worrying about where Mommy was for way too long. He untied my own jacket he’d brought with him. He offered to push my bike up the steep hill. “I am sooooo glad to see you.” I said. Before we reached the trail head, a group of five or six bikers wearing down coats rode past us. I thought about the other bikers I’d passed before the weather turned. I’d assumed they’d all turned back since I hadn’t seen them, but the people who just rode passed us had looks like the one Darren had worn when I first saw him. Intense worry for loved ones. I hope they’re okay.

When we got back to the parking lot, Nila was sitting in the truck with the same kind of expression Darren had worn, and way too young to be wearing it. She threw her arms around me and started crying, “Mommy I was so worried about you.” She cried.

“I’m so sorry baby. I’m sorry I made you worry. Mommy’s okay now.” We were still hugging when Darren came up to the car and said, “Are you okay with us giving these unicyclers a ride into town?” The Unicyclers had made it back. They climbed in, red cheeked and shaky, like they had their own wide eyed adventure tale to tell. I remain immensely impressed by them, but I didn’t go into town with them. I asked Darren to come back with a pizza and I went back to the camper, cranked up the heat and ate a bag of cookies, a bag of popcorn, a bag of cheese crackers….

April 4, 2017 – Day 4 of A Thousand Words a Day

At the top of one of those amazing red domes, there, in the middle of nowhere, I saw a suspension bridge strung over a narrow canyon. I might not have noticed it if not for the heavy set person stopped directly in the middle with a small crowd on the other side trying to coax him/her forward. I hopped off my bike again to take a few shots of this picturesque scene. The group was part of a zip line course. I don’t know where they came from. There are no actual roads nearby and…well, some of those folks didn’t look like walking long distances was their forte. More important to me than taking pictures that are…beautiful, or composed, with all the right lighting, etc. etc., I like to take pictures that tell stories and this one would. I was too far away to make out whether the person on the bridge was a man or a woman, but something in the very way that they had positioned themselves on this narrow suspension bridge conveyed their internal struggle with moving their feet forward. The brightly colored parka and brightly colored hats on a few folks in the crowd backcast with the red sandstone domes stacked to the horizon, would add interesting dimension to the story.

At this point, the sky was that amazing turquoise blue I’ve only ever seen in the Southwest. The weather was cool, a bit too cool for my bike shorts and cotton tshirt attire, but as long as I kept going up and down hills, I’d be fine. I hurried up towards the footbridge to see if I could get more shots of the people, but by the time I got their they were all over the bridge and congregating further away, listening to instructions from their guide. I couldn’t hear what those were. I took a couple of photos of the bridge. I bet a few of those folks were scared. It looked like a metal 2 by 8 hung by too thin metal twine. As I walked back to my bike I looked off to the La Sals and their cloak of misty clouds. The clouds were moving our way.

The two guys I’d been playing leap frog with passed me as I was mounting my bike. We all smiled, waved or nodded. Another look over my shoulder at the clouds coming in from the La Sals and the word ‘ominous’ sprang to mind. Last night, I’d been sitting around a campfire telling Moab Wind-War stories and hearing about how bad the wind had blown the night before we arrived. Darren, Nila and I had nodded appreciatively, then shared the story of the time we’d come out in our vintage canned ham camper and the wind had blown so hard it’d torn the window off the back of the camper. Granted the window was having some problems anyway. The camper was pretty old and I was in the process of remodeling it, but still. That night we’d seen all the tents blown flat then held down by a wind that never ceased. The next morning we were the only ones in the campground and camping chairs, tarps, tents, even sleeping bags were scattered all over the place.

As I thought about that, I thought about how slowly the clouds seemed to be coming in and decided that, while I didn’t have any time for dilly dallying, I’d better sheath the camera and get moving. I figured I had two hours of up and down to get in. In a few minutes, I’d caught up to the fellas again. They were having some water while they admired yet another amazing view. I smiled and said, “I’m hightailing it before I find myself caught in a storm. I don’t even have a jacket!” They waved and I headed.

I passed several other spots that begged for photos, but I stayed moving, until I saw something that I just had to have a picture of: Two men on UNICYCLES heading my way. This would have been about the halfway mark for the once again and I can’t emphasize it enough, seriously tough trails in Moab and here’s the two on fricking unicycles. I stopped dead, smiled and said, well fellas, this I got get a picture of. I brought out my phone and tried to get a couple of shots, but was informed, by my phone, that I’d exceeded memory. Ah well, “You guys are awesome.” I shouted and pedaled on.

Somewhere around Mile 5, the phone rang and it was my husband. He’d expected me back by now and was wondering where I was. I apologized for forgetting to call him and tell him I’d decided to do the full trail, eyed the clouds that I was finally facing and said, “Hon, I better get moving. Looks like the clouds are moving in faster.” I passed a lone biker heading the other way and I called out to him, “Guess I’m not the only one crazy enough to be out here with a storm on the horizon!” He had a red beard and mustache and big, smiley blue eyes. He smiled and nodded. “You’ll be fine, hon. It won’t hit us.”

I’d just gotten started again, when a steel cold blast of air hit me head on. A chilling storm harbinger, though I hoped just a straggler. I picked up speed. A few minutes later I was pedaling my heart out straight into a fierce wind, 40, maybe 50 mph or more. I squinted my eyes for some protection from the sand that was being blasted against my face. I had moments of reprieve when I dipped briefly between domes, but those were scarce moments. I debated whether or not to duck between domes and wait out the wind, but the wind was only the first part of the storm. Dark clouds were being hurried by them and they looked endless. I think red was wrong. And I didn’t have a jacket. So I had to keep moving, driving straight into the wind.

I’d told my husband I was around mile marker 6 but half an hour later I passed the 6 mile marker painted on the rock. Four miles to go and the wind just kept coming. And I was getting cold.  

April 3, 2017

I decided I’d keep going for a bit, maybe just another five minutes or so. I was feeling fine and the bike was handling beautifully. I’d spent a few minutes exchanging pleasantries with a couple of other riders and they happened to stop just a little ways ahead of me. It’s been, like, five years since I’ve ridden the whole trail and I think I’ve really only done the whole thing three times in my whole life so I couldn’t remember…just how much farther was it? Could I make it pretty easily? Or if not easily, at least not miserably? I caught up to the guys and asked if they knew how much farther it was and whether we’d gotten the biggest chunk behind us. The older one of the young guys surveyed me up and down for a moment, more to get an idea of what I was made of rather than checking me out, and asked, “Have you never done this before?

There was a part of me that started to default back to the girl pretending or trying to maintain her position as a badass, the kind that makes me want to drop my voice a few degrees, to deepen it so it sounds more like a man’s, more like the voice of someone you don’t want to trifle with, rather than the sweet, dainty flower, I really am. Actually I’m both. Dainty and not to be trifled with. Anyway, I caught myself about to put on airs and made the conscious choice that I didn’t want to do that. Not anymore. Not ever again. I want to be authentically and confidentally me. So I told the truth, in the voice I’m still working on reclaiming, “I have, but it’s been many years.”

He asked if I’d heard of this phone app called, I think, Pink Trails. And I said that I hadn’t. He took out his phone and showed me a miniaturized map of the slickrock trail and our exact location on it. I was dismayed to see that it didn’t appear we’d even come half way. And it had been a bit of a bear of a trail. My shoulders must have visibly slumped because he pressed another button and it showed the topography of the trail and he pointed out that we’d already done the bulk of the climbing and just a few more hills and not only would we be at the halfway mark, but we’d also be done with the bulk of the climbing. He said it was all pretty much all down hill after just a few more up and down climbs.

One, I should know better than to ever listen to anyone on a mountain bike trail that tries to sell me on it all being down hill from here. It’s never been true and it’s not even possible. Mountains aren’t really shaped all uphill and then down outside of elementary school art walls. But I swallowed it whole. I guess I wanted to. I’d always heard that the other direction on the lollipop loop was the hardest but plenty of people said it didn’t really make any difference.

At any rate, I shot off. The truth is that the bike is soooo much easier than my old bike. It FEELS lighter and it isn’t wearing me out as quickly. I basically got off the couch and went riding the slickrock trail. One of Moab’s hardest and most dangerous. Although a quick survey and reading one actual list and it wasn’t even on the list. Gonna have to do this portal trail someday. Wait? Why? I don’t know, but I have the feeling, I’m gonna have to. Listen to the rest of this story and it’ll tell you why.

So I kept going, at my own pace which includes quite a bit of looking up and around at the incredible terrain, from far off vistas of red gulfing canyons (whatever that means) to the red rolling mounds of slickrock, seemingly blasted onto the turquoise skies, the likes of which can’t possibly be the same skies that float above the rest of the world. The view is one that can best be captured by this image: My eyes are down at the red sandstone passing under my tires as I pump my legs, pump my ass, and then I look up to get my bearings and have no choice but to swing my gaze in all directions, taking it all in, like I’ve just burst through a portal and I’m forced to say, yet again, “HOLY FUCK!” In appreciation.

At this point I’m hopping off my bike every other minute to snap pictures with my, inadequate to the task Samsung Galaxy. I have such high hopes that what I’m seeing will transcend bad technology, but it won’t. My phone will not capture these views for anyone and will only make me rekindle my drumming for my husband to replace it with an Iphone. Yes, I let him in on making those decisions. I don’t want to be selfish and the man never buys a thing for himself. How can I say, “Well, I’m taking half a grand or so and bloody well getting myself the best phone on the market, bub. Enjoy clipping coupons to preserve our future. And, truth be told, I have a helluva a jerky knee and have wasted money more than once in a moment of gotta-have-ititis. He’s my check and balance. He helps me take a breath and determine, do I really need it? Or am I falling for the hype? This trip, however, did it. I need it. I need the best camera phone available because I feel obligated as  a member of humanity to share these sights with you.

But I don’t have the Iphone on this day. When you see the pictures, you’ll see that. Professionally, I have Cannon G12 that I use for when I’m “on the job.” But more and more often, I’m seeing these opportunities in situations that I didn’t bring the ‘G’ because I’m pretty sure it would get destroyed on the journey. A phone is a lot easier to safeguard. But I digress and I’ve hit me 1000 words for the day. 1138 to be exact. Tune in tomorrow when you’ll hear me say …….

Rant Against Liberals (from a Liberal)
I spent New Year's Weekend with some good friends who live in Southwestern Colorado. These are friends that my family and I have known for over a decade and we were enjoying some lively political conversation when the subject inevitably turned to what could possibly compel anyone to have voted for Donald Trump. The election results have been something I (and millions of other voters) have been completely unable to understand--or believe. How could people put the health of our planet, protection from corporate self-interests and our advances as a society, as an evolvement of homo sapiens, at risk? How could they vote for someone who appears, at least to us, to be about to unleash the ravenous appetites of Big Business upon us, relatively unchecked in a time when the planet may be on the brink of not bouncing back easily?

Then someone said: Jobs. They talked about the kinds of things Hilary or other liberals had been promising that would address climate change and protect the planet, like shutting down more coal plants and dialing back the oil and gas industry, but they never offered any alternatives for the people employed in those kinds of jobs. My knee jerk response was that those folks were just going to have to find themselves some other line of work for the betterment of the planet and mankind. People change careers all the time these days, I reasoned. If there aren't other jobs at hand, they'll just have to move to where the jobs are. After all, that's what many of our friends have done over the years.

One of my friends struck me silent when he responded, "Donna, you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what it's like for the people who live in these places. They can't just find other work. There isn't any. They can't just pick up and move where the work is because they can't begin to afford it." An inkling of understanding began to grow. "Why don't they just move?" Why don't they just move? Well, for starters, it may be that their entire family lives where they are and some people are actually so close to their families that they can't imagine living without them. That's the sweet answer. The not-so-sweet answer is that if they are in some of the kinds of jobs we're talking about, they have probably barely been scraping by for years, or like many of us, have little or no savings with which to move.

A couple of weeks later, I was at another gathering where, again, we ended up having a similar discussion. To my own surprise, my position had changed slightly. Not about Trump (no, not a bit) but I had a different perspective about the concerns of some the people who voted for him. I casually shared my new perspective and found myself on the receiving end of the same type of argument I'd offered myself a couple of weeks before. Suddenly, I got it. I got why "they" might think "we're" the ones so terribly in the wrong.

The upper middle class lounges on their Ethan Allen couches waxing poetic about how those who work in "dying" industries like coal mining or oil and gas should just pick up and move to where the work is. But here's the thing: If these folks have been career coal miners, as were their father's and grandfather's before them, what entry level position in a new field would they recommend for a mother or father, or both, that would pay a decent enough salary to support a family. It doesn't exist and/or they aren't trained for it. to suggest they adapt or die out is heartless. No wonder they voted for Trump. He at least pretends to care about them. I heard that the republican party had depicted Democrats as "others" and therefore unworthy of compassion. From some of what I'm hearing, they aren't the only ones. No wonder they're voting for Trump. At least with Trump they have a chance at what is most pressingly concerning them: mere survival, and for "liberals," and I generally call myself one, to expect these people to go quietly into the night after their predecessors, their ancestors, have supported us and carried us into this "enlightened age," to suggest they adapt or sink, well, that makes us assholes. And we actually should be viewed with suspicion if that's as far as our concerns go.

I think the days where we can really isolate ourselves in communities or countries are over. We HAVE to have these confrontations now. It's one world. If we can mobilize to make protests, we can mobilize to troubleshoot. If we're going to shut down coal plants, for example, we need to replace them with another industry. Perhaps persuading alternative energy manufacturers to open shop in these areas. I don't know. I'm sure there are countless other solutions we can come up with if we start putting our energies in that direction. There are always solutions. We're at an unprecedented place in human history and moving through this challenging time with its remnants of bigotry, racism, chauvinism, etc. will require that we try to listen to each other's fears and concerns. All of us. We will overcome this. Struggle forces growth. And we'll be stronger and better for the forging.

I spent 4 years doing extreme environmental activism. I worked round the clock doing everything from direct actions, writing appeals, monitoring local environmental concerns, reading and learning all of the double speak that is standard protocol in environmental assessments, impact statements and decision notices. I worked myself into burnout and depression. I've always had a problem with taking things to extremes and establishing boundaries. Anyway, after those four years, I crashed. I decided I'd made my contribution and left politics to those I considered more tempermentally balanced, to carry the torch. I convinced myself that I'd done more than my fair share and there were plenty of others out there that would be looking out for truth, equality, conservation, and justice. That it was somebody else's turn to look out for the world. Lately, I've been convinced of something else. I've been convinced that ALL of us need to be looking out for each other and the world. That we should all be involved somehow with the betterment of our world, even if we can only make small contributions. How many of us waste hours every week online, watching t.v., going to bars? I'm not saying we shouldn't do those things. One other thing that I believe is that we also MUST keep having fun. That's just as important as everything else we can do. But how about giving up two hours a week to find some way to contribute to your community? Two hours doing less comparitive online shopping/facebook chatter/television watching, and more helping in some way, any way. Just an idea. This world doesn't get better on it's own and even the smallest act can help. Pick up some trash, donate time, money or goods. Make someone genuinely smile. Do it and do it anonymously. So your contribution goes right into your heart and builds it up. I say do it anonymously, but I think it could be really cool to share your ideas and activities on facebook. Just some line like, "Bought dessert for a family who looked as though they were having troubles in a restaurant today." "Left balloons tied to the front door of a neighbors house today." "helped elderly neighbor rake leaves/carry groceries." "Smiled at someone at the grocery store today and they smiled back." "Wrote congressman/presidient/mayor." "organized soup kitchen/passed out food/volunteered in school, etc. etc." It could inspire us and remind us of our goals and give us ideas of things we can do. That's it. Donna steps of soap box.