I am bone weary. Many others are, also.

When I see the outpouring of opposition to every thing our new president is doing, I wonder where were those people during the last presidential campaign and during the election. Maybe we the people were so complaisant with the order of the nation the past 8 years, we forgot how quickly that could change.

I agreed that we should “give him a chance” at first, but he began by making his advisors some of that one percent that Sanders said have all the money in our country. Trump, himself, is in that one percent. Now they not only have all the money, they have all the power in this country. That means they can take away the rights of the people and no one can stop them.

I am reading The Book Thief about a girl living in Germany just before WWII. In this book one feels the fear of Jews whose businesses are being vandalized by Natzis. The girl’s foster  father, Papa, is not a Natzi and takes in a Jew and hides him in the basement. This man can’t show  his face or even see the light of day because he will be taken away. So far, in this  book, that  is  all we know. Some people are taken away.

Having read about the Holocaust and talked with Holocaust survivors, I know what was  happening when Jews were taken away.  I think about what it would be like for me if our country became a dictatorship, and only certain people would be able to  live here and others would be killed or sent away.

If we didn’t have freedom of the press, if we didn’t have investigative reporters who dig for the truth, I wonder what unscrupulous people in power would do.

 

 

I

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ill even speak up.

This past weekend, when he signed an executive order to ban Muslims from entering this country, even those who had been vetted and waited for months to get a green card, crowds erupted in airports and their voices were hear

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

d by the mainstream media. But, will that matter? I am afraid not. His first order was to cut off funding for poor women in poverty-stricken countries around the globe. In  clinics in countries where women have no rights anyway, they could get proper education about birth control and that sometimes included information about abortion.

I can imagine a woman who has several children already, finding she is pregnant again. No matter the reason, she has to bear the burden of carrying it and then birthing it and managing to feed it and clothe it. In those countries where women are often raped and no one cares, she could be pregnant by a stranger. I believe in women having the choice of what to do with their body. I don’t believe a man in the

W

 

 

 

h

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What will I do next?

Life is taking a toll on me these days. What should I do next? Sell my older home and find a newer one? Spend money I don’t have now to fix up my house and yard? No one ever said ageing was easy. It ain’t for sissies, I always heard, but it seems much harder than I ever imagined.

Growing old with someone you love is much easier than growing older all alone. I know if my husband were still with me, I could face the challenges of late, not because he had the answers all the time, but because having him to talk with about the problems I face would give me confidence to go on.

How do I manage the last chapter of my life? Shall I stop working and just spend my time writing and working on books I want to publish? That will not bring in any funds to help pay the bills, but maybe I can find another way. I hope so.

A new blog? What am I thinking?

I really had no intention of using this WordPress.com blog site. I only set it up to make it easier to follow my friends who use Wordpress for their blogs. But tonight I decided I am getting off my subject on my other two blogs: Writers Circle and Writing Your Life Stories. Both of them were designed for writing.

The happenings in the world recently and most especially in our own country have turned by mind to more worldly topics. I find myself reminded of the days when women had fewer opportunities than today. There was a time, not long ago, when women could not have a credit card. The husband had a credit card and he could put his wife’s name down to have a second card, but he was the primary card holder. Often his wife was refused the right to use it because she was not the primary card holder.

When I was an elementary school student, we were not allowed to wear jeans or pants to school. I was a tomboy and loved to wear jeans at home, but in school we had to wear dresses or skirts. I was embarrassed when swinging high on the school swings, my dress would fly up and I knew my underwear was being seen by the boys. It made no sense our not being allowed to wear pants. In high school we had a dress code, and girls were required to wear dresses except when engaged in sports. We wore shorts for Physical Education, big baggy things that looked terrible on anyone.

I grew up a bit angry that I was not allowed to do what boys could do. My father had the idea that girls were not to be trusted so he kept a tight rein on my sisters and me. He was afraid that we would get pregnant out of wedlock, I suppose, and ruin our family’s good name. But we were good girls and never brought any shame on him until we went off to college at the University.

That shame came about when my sister innocently said to an Atlanta Journal news reporter that since Charlene Hunter, the first black student to enter the college, was there she thought people should just leave her alone. That statement, when read by family and friends in our hometown, brought a storm of phone calls accusing Gay of being in favor of school integration, when in fact Gay was 18 years old and completely unconcerned about who was going to the huge university. She had not been keeping up with the Civil Rights actions and was far more concerned about who she was going to date that weekend. But she saw the pretty young woman enter the dormitory where Gay sat at the desk answering the phone. She did not see a person who was a threat. Why, indeed, couldn’t they just leave her alone.

Looking back at that time, I think she and I were already pushing the envelope as far as the strict rules we had grown up with. We were open minded, non-judgmental and made friends with people from all walks of life. Perhaps that is why I find this new president such a backward thinking person. He reminds me of the men I often met in the sixties and seventies with little regard for women’s rights or for the rights of anyone different from him. That is why I think President Obama was such a breath of fresh air in our government. He, too, saw all people as equals not to be treated like underlings because of their race or gender. His age was also a factor, I believe, and having young daughters who saw the changes in our culture, the open minded people in their generation, had an affect on him. So quickly the progress he made and the progress we have all made is being torn asunder by this mad man who is so in love with himself and so insecure he can’t face the fact that he lost the votes of most of America, but won the electoral college.

I have vowed I will no longer keep my political thoughts to myself. This blog is where I will express my feelings about the state of the country. Maybe someone will find me here and join in.

 

 

 

 

 

Find me at Writers Circle around the Table: www.glendacouncilbeall.com Writing Life Stories: www.profilesandpedigrees.blogspot.com

www.glendacouncilbeall.com  www.profilesandpedigrees.blogspot.com