When they go crude, we go green!

Throughout the campaign season, I shouted from the cyber-rooftops that one of the first things Trump would do as President would be to eviscerate environmental regulation in this country. Well, now he has actually appointed someone to head the EPA who wants to ABOLISH it.

Folks, here's what we, as individuals, have to do: we have to divest from fossil fuel interests, and invest in green, sustainable, renewable energy/interests. We have to practice, every day, in every big and small way, what Al Gore calls "sustainable capitalism".

How do we do this:

1. At the grocery store, buy foods that are sustainably raised, and boycott companies with fossil fuel interests.

2. If you have a 401(k) or 403(b) at work, call up your HR department and/or call the company providing your plan directly, and tell them you want them to divest from fossil fuel business interests. Ask them if they provide any green investment options for you as an individual investor to *CHOOSE*.

That's the key here: make choices anywhere and everywhere you can to buy green! Even the seemingly smallest purchase at the store makes a difference if we are ALL making those choices--buy organic, buy sustainable, buy ethical, buy green. If your heating system at your house goes belly up, look into going solar if possible. If your car goes belly up, can you afford an electric car? I probably cannot afford that, but then buy a car with excellent gas mileage--make that priority one about the car. Change your lawn from a lawn to native and/or xeriscaped plants that don't need watering once established. Are you in school? Speak to the administration about divesting from fossil fuel interests. Employers, colleges, churches, anything you are a member of, employee of, student at--tell the powers that be there that you want them to divest from fossil fuel interests and INVEST IN RENEWABLE ENERGY AND SUSTAINABLE, GREEN BUSINESSES IN GENERAL.

We now have a federal government run by fossil fuel interests. It is now more important, more crucial, than ever that we as individuals and private organizations make an end run around their gutting of environmental regulations, and CHOOSE GREEN. If no one buys fossil fuels, if there is no market for it, that will kill it. The only thing Big Business listens to is MONEY. You may not think you have any of the stuff but you do, even if all you do is shop in a grocery store.

Choose wisely, grasshoppers.

We Will Triumph Over Trump

On November 9, when I awoke to the news that Trump had won the election, I was terrified. Terrified with a kind of terror I can't put into words.

But since then, my faith in my fellow Americans, and in the strength of our country to survive Trump has been restored, inspired and amazed by seeing so many Americans, so consistently, so passionately, so bravely and doggedly stand up for what is right. We're marching in the streets. We're dissenting in ways big and seemingly small. We're wiping swastikas off subway walls.

Since then, I've begun to hope...and then to have faith...and then to really know, that our country will not only survive Trump, but we will triumph over Trump. The crisis that is the Donald Trump presidency is also an opportunity for those of us young enough to perhaps never have seen it as clearly as we can now to see the breathtaking brilliance, power, wisdom and resilience of our constitution...and the bravery and basic decency of the majority of our people. Yes, we'll survive. And we'll come out stronger, with renewed awe at, and love for, the true greatness that already is and always has been the United States of America.

America is not walls and bans, it is tolerance and pluralism!

America is not about walls and bans, and "us" and "them". America is great because we are a nation of immigrants, we are a pluralistic nation. THAT is what is most inspiring, wonderful and special about us--that's what makes us great! Our tolerance and our pluralism are our greatest inspiration to the world and our greatest strength as a nation. And if we build walls, enact bans, infuriate our neighbors to the south, turn people away at the airport who have been told they could come here, and who want nothing more than to live the American dream...or at least to LIVE, not to be sent back to certain death, then we are willingly giving up what actually makes us great in the name of barricading ourselves behind false protections. What really protects us is our constitution, and our welcoming hearts. Without those, we might as well wave the white flag now, because we are done.

We are done when we become unrecognizable to ourselves.  We are done when we move from welcoming democracy to walled fascist state.

My dear fellow Americans:  we need to fight--show up and stand up--for the constitution now. We need to come together and not let those who would divide us for their own ends succeed in doing that. We need to protect and defend our constitution and each other. And I will just add that I am so profoundly heartened to see so many people doing just that. From the Women's March last week, which I participated in and which gave me great inspiration, renewed faith in my fellow Americans, and hope, to the many, many people who showed up in the freezing cold to JFK airport last night, and to many other airports both last night and today (and to the White House), chanting "Let them in!  Let them in!", we are showing up to stand up for our democracy.

The whole world is watching...and hopefully seeing that there are more of us than there are of Trump and those who support his hateful world view.  And that we will keep on showing up and speaking up.

Not that many years ago at all, in terms of human history, some of my own Jewish people came here on boats, fleeing for their lives from Nazi Germany.  Surely America would take them in.  But no, America turned them away.  They were sent back to their deaths in concentration camps.  I'm lucky because my mom's side of the family, also German Jews, had come here before WWII.  We were already here.  Already safe.  But I see my family's faces in the faces of those German Jews, captured in photographs, who weren't so lucky.  And I can never let it happen again.  I can't be like "the Good Germans" who turned away and said they "didn't know".  Maybe some of them didn't know.

But in America today, we have no excuse, no way to say "We didn't know".  We have a free press and we have news coming in from all over the world.  We have the internet--they didn't have that in WWII.  They didn't have Facebook.  They didn't have the face of a 5-year-old boy, who had been bombed, sitting shell-shocked and wounded in an ambulance in Aleppo staring back at them.  But we do.  We know.  We know what is going on in Syria.  Are we going to let our President just slam the door on refugees from there, who are fleeing for their very lives?  Are we going to turn away?  Or are we going to show ourselves and the world what America really stands for, emphasis on "stands for"?  Let's rise up and demand that our President let them in!

He had to put a Schlafley on it.

Breaking: Trump just said "Phyllis Schlafley was a great lady."

Evidently, we weren't already sufficiently terrified tonight. He had to put a Schlafley on it.

Thank you, President Obama

Well, O, you weren't the change I can believe in--and I always knew you wouldn't be. I was hard on you from the beginning for that. But you know what? Now? I profoundly appreciate you and am so glad you were President from 2008 - 16. You weren't the change but you were the steadiness, in a time that called for a steady, calm hand. You were the steadiness I could believe in. You were the calm in a storm. You were the eloquence when we desperately needed it. You were the class and the civility in a society descending into something else--you remind us, stay civil. You were the pragmatist in times that absolutely called for it. I'm an idealist but 2008 - 16 was not a time that was open to my ideals. It was a time that critically needed a pragmatist. It was a time that needed you.

Someone to pull us back up onto the cliff (our economy had already slipped off the edge) and onto solid ground, or at least back from the edge. Someone to unify during polarizing forces. Someone to compromise and be reasonable with uncompromising and unreasonable people surrounding you.

Thanks, O. My deepest thank you. You weren't the change, but it turns out it wasn't quite time for that. You kept our ship from going under. You gave us courage in the night. And now. Now is the time for the change I can believe in. And we all have to help bring it about.

A look back at 2016 and forward to 2017...

A lot of people are saying that 2016 was a bad year because we lost a lot of brightly shining stars from life here on earth to back up in the night sky, and/or because of the horrific things that have unfolded in politics and the world in general. To the first thing (so many deaths of famous people): I think it would be interesting if someone actually compared the number of famous folks who passed in 2016 to how many are lost, on average, in any given year, as I think we'd find that we did not, in fact, lose more than usual. What I think happened is this: this was the first year that Baby Boomers started dropping off at an alarming (to us Boomers!) rate, and that has scared us about our own mortality. I'm at the tail end of the Boom, so hopefully I've got a few more good years in me *lol*, but many of the older Boomers are still very vital and healthy, too, so not to worry loves--hopefully, our best years are yet to come for many of us!

Moving on to what unfolded in politics and the news this year, I can't argue with how horrifying much of it is. However, there was something else, too: Bernie. BERNIE! <3 His message was spot on, and his campaign and the passionate following and movement it brought to flower was absolutely inspiring, breathtaking, and so hopeful! As I said in another post on FB today, it was a beginning, not an ending, so take heart. We could be in the darkness before the dawn right now.

Finally, I will say that, for me, personally, 2016 was actually a good year. Yes, I have some ongoing sadness over important stuff I don't have, and challenges I do have, but instead of focusing on that as I look back at this year, what I'm struck by are the blessings I did have: my aging mom held her own this year and actually improved a bit from recent years; my four furkids are all healthy (versus in 2014, my dear dog had two operations to remove a cancer--two years later, he's healthy and cancer-free); I still have my job which, while incredibly stressful and grueling, does pay the bills; and I think I've finally recovered from all the major stressors and upheaval I went through in 2013 and 14 (took me all of 15 just to do that), so 2016 was, for me personally (not for the world!) a very and much, much-needed stable year--loved ones healthy, job still there, no selling or buying of houses, or moving twice in 10 months...2016 (again, other than the political!), for me, was a year of calming down. Which I very much needed. So I just wanted to take a moment to express my appreciation to the cosmos for that.

Now, about 2017: I pray that my loved ones and myself stay healthy, and that things stay stable for me in most ways, though I do think I'm ready to maybe take a leap off a cliff in another way, if the opportunity were to present itself for such cliff leaping. But other than that, I'm good with things staying calm and stable! Let's just hope that, as I pan out from the personal to the macro level, the world, which is anything but calm and stable right now, will somehow have good and healthy forces come to the fore and take the wheel...as I said, if we glance back a moment at Bernie's campaign, we get a window into those forces, and we can take heart and hope in knowing that they are still there, beating within us...they haven't gone anywhere, and neither have we. 2017 will be a time to stand up, speak up, and let our light shine.

Still waiting for something to trickle down...

Status: If I pay my mortgage payment today, I am not going to have anything in my checking account. Been working full-time since 1985. I never go to movies, I don't take vacations, I don't eat out much, I don't buy clothes (ask my co-workers--my dress code is "rags chique"). What's wrong with this picture? Yes, I can dip into my savings, but the point is, one should be able to earn enough to live on when one has a college degree and has been working one's butt off since 1985, and I don't even have a car payment right now. And the only reason I even have a "savings" is not from actually being able to "save" anything in all those years of working full-time, but because I was bril enough to buy a house in a down market in 1995 in an area where everyone told me I was crazy to buy, but I knew had potential. Only from selling that house in 2013 do I have any "savings", so don't let the word fool you into thinking that a working person in America can actually "save" enough (or anything) from their paycheck every month to accumulate anything in the bank. My smarts in buying that first house and spending 18 years bringing that 'hood back is what did that.

Anyway: thanks, Reagan. You are the gift that keeps on giving, you and your damn trickle-down economics. In the workforce full time since 1985 and can't make ends meet from my salary. I don't see anything trickling down. How long does it take? Been waiting over three decades up in hea'!

And now my fellow workin' stiffs have mistakenly voted Trump in, thinking he is somehow going to help us? HOW, with more of the same, failed, repug, doublespeak policy, which is actually trickle-UP economics?

Something is very wrong with this picture. We need Bernie but we got stuck with Trump, the anti-Bernie. I am not happy.