Writing Up A Storm

We Are All in the Same Boat

I have loved having my blog be a place where the world of politics and wars cannot intrude, but I am heartsick at the kind of hatred that is being wrongly hurled at innocent Muslim Americans.

When my German-born father entered first-grade in Michigan, he could not speak one word of English. It was 1916, and we were at war with Germany. My father said he ran home through the alleys after school, trying to run fast enough to keep from being stoned by older boys who thought throwing stones at a six-year-old was the right thing to do, because he was German. That was World War I.

My father and his two brothers all served in World War II. During that war, we hurled our fear at innocent Japanese-Americans and put them into prison camps.

In 1968 I married a Vietnam War Veteran who had served in a war where the lines of right and wrong were terribly blurred, and where stones were hurled at returning soldiers. My first husband hurled his own self back and forth between the proud Marine that he never ceased to be and the far left hippie that he became. He raged a terrible internal war. It took the VA ten years to honor his two purple hearts with a rating of 100% disabled due to internal head injuries sustained in combat, and to try to give him the medical attention that he needed. His story does not end well, but wars do not really have happy endings.

Now we are doing a better job of honoring our military, but we are back to hurling stones at innocent Americans, this time at innocent Muslim Americans.

I can only put here on my blog my most fervent prayer that all Americans of good faith on both sides of the aisle please reach out to all Americans of all faiths and stand up for the freedoms that make us the great nation that we are. We are founded upon freedom of religion, and to infringe upon someone else's right to this freedom or to burn other people's holy books or their places of worship not only undermines our own freedom and safety at home, it will undermine the sacrifices of our military abroad who are fighting for the very freedoms that we cherish.

The hate-mongering that I am hearing is frightening me beyond words. I sit with bowed head before this kind of hate.

With our precious freedoms that we have in this country that we love so much comes an underlying assumption that we will treat others with respect and dignity. Let us please show the world that we really are who we say we are, a country where people of all faiths, all races, and all cultures live together in peace.

I am a pacifist myself, and I pray for human beings to find ways to solve problems that do not require killing one another. In a perfect world somewhere.

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September Update

"Woman Reading on Couch," T. F. Simon 1877-1942

Dear readers, how I wish I could tell you that all our house repairs have been completed, and that I am basking with a book with nothing but my kitty and a vase of roses and the night and my dreams surrounding me. But, alas, I am very far away from such fantasies.

I meant to post an update on the first of September, but I came down with a sore throat. We were under the house, you see, my husband and I, breathing in pure dust. Or rather, he was under the house, taking measurements and calling out numbers, and I was at the opening to the undersides of the house, writing down the measurements. A dust storm began to brew in those netherlands, and we were breathing it all in.

My husband was also pushing some cinder blocks in my direction, and I was dragging them out. These cinder blocks were at one point, several years ago, going to be used to prop up our slowly sagging house. We are old hippies who often use duct tape and cinder blocks to fix things. The blocks are now in a pile by the back fence, enough for the makings of a medieval city, and the underneath of the house is ready for the levelers. Proper levelers. I wonder if they will arrive in trucks full of duct tape and cinder blocks?

You'd think we might have made a little more progress.

But before the levelers can level, we have to prune our enormous pecan tree, and we are waiting to hear from the man who is going to do that. At least we have a kind of plan in place: the tree first, then the shed to put all our boxes in, then the levelers, then the outside painters, then the inside painters. I'm not sure where the flooring and the leak behind the kitchen sink go in our ordering system. And the extra insulation we are going to add to the attic and also underneath the house, too. And, and, and . . .

And then, of course, there are all the things we keep crossing off the list, as the costs mount up. Things like the underground bunker in case of tornadoes, the observatory on top of the house for watching the stars, the solarium, the conservatory, the aviary, the rumpus room, the stairs to the second floor, and, in fact, the whole second floor. 

My sore throat is gone, although I am still hacking away with a terrible cough. But thank heavens for gargling with salt water: it still works like magic. And being hoarse reminds me of how I always lost my voice the first week of teaching every year, so here is a special "bless you" to all the teachers who showed up for work for another precious year of teaching. 

I will try to update you on our progress from time to time, but once actual noise gets added to the commotion of boxes, I will probably be hiding in my closet with our kitty Boo. He has already been so traumatized by the removal of the cinder blocks from his little kingdom under the house that he has been hiding in the closet ever since. What will he do when actual strangers begin to show up and stomp around?  What will I do?? I wonder if Boo and I could be boarded together at our vet's? We'll bring our own bedding.

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