He Was The Best of Us

 

 

New Years Eve 2024

So tomorrow is the first day of yet another whole new year.

I wish I could say I feel…

…something.

I'm not breathless with anticipation and sweet hope for good and wonderful things in the New Year.

Nor am I depressed, angry or genuinely frightened of what 2025 might bring, mostly due to political circumstances inflated to dire disaster by propaganda and social media. We will bury a great man, and inaugurate a terrible one.  Sigh.

I think I'm just...in stasis.

Old enough and been through this enough times to settle on a "wait and see" attitude.

With confidence that there will be good, 

And there will be not-so-good.

Hopefully, more of the former and less of the latter.

To anyone still out there and reading,

Here's to the New Year. 

May it bring you joy, laughter, rest and adventure, 

Good times, and no more bad times than you can handle with grace.

On to 2025!

 

 

Jimmy Carter 1924-2024

“I have one life and one chance to make it count for something.. My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have, 

to try to make a difference.”

And he did.

Rest in power, Mr. President.

A job well done.

A life well lived.

A glorious rest well deserved.

Happy Holidays

 

 

 

 

A Reminder to Never Forget

I wrote this eleven years ago. Still achingly relevant:

 https://mlraminiakcomingtoterms.blogspot.com/2015/12/never-forget-newtown-december-14-2012.html

AAAnd…it appears that the only thing we never forget is how to allow this to happen over and and over again…

…and key in our inspired response:

On The Hunter Biden Pardon

 MAGAs and Dems alike are all agog over Joe Biden granting a blanket pardon to his son for all federal crimes.

MAGAs are screaming “Abuse of power!” as if Trump hasn’t already declared that HE will use that power to pardon January 6th insurrectionists, as well as any and all of his political allies. 

Democrats are wailing and wringing their hands that a left-wing politician would (finally!) rip a page out of the right-wing playbook, fly in the face of “precedent” and do something purely for the benefit of himself and his family. “Woe is us! It’s positively Trumpian! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!!!”

Well…

Here is what I think about THAT…

Question of the Day

 

 

The Day of Reckoning is Upon Us

 

Much as we have tried to put it in the back of our minds, to the extent that we could, election day 2024 is upon us.

I have voted, as have many of my fellow citizens.  We've been told that this is the only weapon we as common peons possess to combat the frightening advance of fascism, of oligarchy...the deterioration of our government, of our world, of our way of life.  We've been told this is a powerful weapon, and we need to wield it zealously.

But I can't believe that there are not others out there like me, who wonder exactly how powerful our votes are, any more.  In a world gone mad, where winning is everything and cheating is as good a way as any to carry the day, how can we believe that our votes will even be counted, much less have meaning if they are?

And then, there is this ominous undertone to our daily lives, a dark voice whispering that election day could be the start of something very large, very violent, and very evil in this country, no matter which side emerges victorious.  And if any of us believe that we won't be touched by it, we're fooling ourselves.  Before January 6, 2000, we might have been able to entertain thoughts of safety, of immunity from the kind of senseless violence that surely overwhelms only third-world countries?  We naively believed things like that didn't happen in the United States of America, so to worry about it was foolish...a waste of emotional energy.

Now? 

All I can think is,

"Be afraid.  Be very afraid."

How have we come to this?

Fall Farewell

Yesterday afternoon, I was blessed to witness one of the surest signs of the end of summer in the Willamette valley.

Here in western Oregon, the most reliable harbinger of spring and clarion of the coming of winter is the arrival and departure of a particular bird...no, not robins.  Nor any other cute sweet-voiced songbird.

It's the turkey vulture.

In early spring, their dark, v-shaped silhouettes arrive to repopulate the skies abandoned by wintering raptors after the birds of prey head to their summer hunting grounds in the higher hills. 

The buzzards, as we call them, spend the warmer months nesting, soaring, and cleaning up winter- and road-kill here in the valley.

Then, in early October, they gather in groups of several dozen birds, circle higher and higher and higher, until they are mere bird-shaped specks in the stratosphere, and file off in a column heading toward California...Mexico...or whatever parts south they choose to escape the winter months north of the Tropic of Cancer.

As I sat on my newly-built studio deck last evening, I spotted a group of about two dozen buzzards performing their farewell-to-the-valley pirouette, spiraling higher and higher, then sailing off to the south.  It conjured up a jumble of emotions...a tinge of sadness that good-byes always seem to bring, a sense of anticipation for my favorite months of the year, a bit of envy that I have neither the freedom nor the equipment to do what they do every year.  It occurred to me that while we humans enjoy one of the longer lifespans of the animal kingdom, we are destined to spend those many years mostly tethered to one place on the earth.  

Maybe a shorter life wouldn't be so horrible, if sailing thousands of miles to new adventures twice a year was part of the bargain.  

 

 

Goodbye, Hello

 It’s that time of year…