Merry Christmas

We had the gift of seeing all 4 children yesterday.  Doesn't happen often, due to life and work and just life, so I treasure it when it does.

I woke up early this morning, and I just wanted to tell you all Merry Christmas.  My wish for you all is simple.  I pray that you all find happiness and comfort today.

However that works, with whoever that means, I pray that today, you put all the burdens and slights and injuries and bitterness away.  For your own soul, for your own peace, please, enjoy the morning, with the freedom of peace.

Nothing more complicated than that.  We all deserve at least one day a year that we don't service all the negative things in our life, and instead focus on the positive and the heart warming.

Merry Christmas, wherever this finds you.  And peace to all the people of this earth.  God left us His peace, and it is enough for you.

GLYASDI

Today

Today is the day before the one year anniversary of my father passing.  It is 10 days before the one year anniversary of my sister passing.  It is less than 45 days to the one year anniversary of my oldest nephew passing.

The next six weeks bring me through a year after one of the most difficult periods of my life.  What do you do?  You have no control over comings and goings, that is the arena of God.  You can only absorb it, survive it.

I am not a sad person by nature.  I don't dwell on what is missing, because there is so much there.  But, not a day goes by that I have not missed my Mama for the last 19 years.  And not a day goes by that I have not missed my Daddy for the last year.  Not a day will pass for the rest of my life that I don't miss them both.

Neither of them would want me to live sad.  They understood that life contains separations, passings.  They knew that because they suffered their own.  Everyone does to some extent.  The price of relationships is longing and loss.  The trick of sanity is to not let longing overcome living, and to not let loss overcome the present good.

I don't know that I have good advice for that.  I am certainly no expert.  I have suffered a lot of losses.  But, I prefer to take the approach that I was blessed with many relationships.  Part of having a relationship is the fact that most likely, one of you will continue on without the other.  Friends, family, brothers and sisters, all of us that connect permanently, live with the knowledge that one will go on and the other will rest.

So, I try not to be sad.  I miss them, all of them.  I do not forget, nor do I ignore the pain.  The pain means I loved and I was loved.  And, it dulls, especially if you focus on the love.  It doesn't go away, and there are still days I have to let it out.  It catches you, unawares.  But, those are short lived moments, because the beauty of what God granted us both, in a relationship that so touched us, is far greater than temporary sadness at loss here.

I am convinced we will see each other again.  I am convinced that we will be whole, and without the baggage that we carry here on this side of the veil.  I look forward to that.  But, there are days where I just have to feel loss and sadness, because I am human.  There is nothing wrong with that.  But, it cannot be my existence.

I have to live outside of that.  I don't understand why's.  I don't understand the unknowable answers.  I don't have the inside knowledge from God.  If I stay focused on those, it will rob me of the joy that these special people brought into my life, all through my life.  I choose the joy.

Nor, am I trying to pass on "wisdom" to anyone else.  I am far from wise.  But, today, I woke up sad, missing them.  I remember Mama holding Emma, crying and smiling.  I remember Daddy laughing at me, leaning on the fender of a car he was fixing.  I remember Wanda and Lorne and I, and sledding down the hill.  I remember holding Tony when he was a fat baby, and that brilliant smile.

I choose those things to remember, because they warm my heart.  This is a very difficult time of the year for many people.  I do not know how to advise anyone.  But, I focus on things that bring me a smile.  I do not ignore the hurt, nor the missing feeling.  But, I treasure the times together that made us happy together.  It is easier for me.  Well, it is bearable anyway.

So, today, I hope that heaven has at least one '58 Ford requiring some love, a place for Mama to hold babies and give them that smile, and a hill for sledding.  And, I hope that they are watching me, so I can feel their presence.  That makes me smile through tears.  I miss them all.

Where the river runs

This time, before an inauguration and before any real events shaped by the newly elected administration, is always a tense time.  The river of American activity runs through the middle of the extremes of this time.

Because the media (I don't like Main Stream, because the actual Main Stream media for the last 5 years has been Facebook and Twitter and made up stories with no founding in journalism, just click ad returns), the supposedly objective media, failed miserably, this time is odd in comparison to the others I have lived through.

When Clinton was elected, half the country was convinced that we were going to fix Social Security, the minimum wage, taxes, and the outsized power of business to the detriment of the nation.  The other half was convinced that the young, pot smoking AntiChrist had just been given the keys to the kingdom.  Honestly, that is what the debate was like.  The only existing outlet somewhat similar to today's biased 24 hour news platforms, the McLaughlin Group, was must see TV.  Robert Novak and Pat Buchanan were predicting the end of the universe and all things Christian.  Bill Press and Jack Germand were predicting we had entered the streets of gold.

If you don't even remember that show, it was the forerunner to the personality journalist format that dominates CNN, Fox and MSNBC continually.  It would be, actually, instantly recognizable to any Millenial that watched it, except they would have no idea who all the dead people were.

When George W. Bush, (Lets call him Junior, less letters), got elected, Fox News had actual on air orgasms over compassionate conservatism and the advancement of the human race.  MSNBC had an entertaining guy named Olberman, who continually preached the coming of the Apocolypse, Ragnarok and the Fourth Reich.  No, seriously, that was how divergent the "main stream" media coverage was.  However, spiced through it all were actual facts that had been developed, sourced, confirmed and vetted by actual journalists.  Personality cult real news.

When Obama was elected, before the inauguration, there was a period where MSNBC was like soft porn.  Same funky music, same kind of satisfied smiles.  All that was missing was the white sheet drawn up over the nipples and the post coital cigarette.  Over on Fox, I think they held an actual funeral for America.  The end of all time was routinely predicted, followed up by continual surfacing of some new "evidence" of Obama's Kenyan birth.  At this point, we had kind of lost any interest in whether "news" had been sourced, fact checked, vetted, confirmed.  If it sounded good to whatever demographic was buying the stuff being advertised in the commercials, that made it true.

Now, in the new era of Trump, we don't even have the bookend cable channels.  No channel can actually embrace Trump and what he espoused, said, did and is doing.  Fox tries hard, but, after Sexual Predator in Chief Ailes was bounced, they are working hard to find a journalist, if one still exists in America, and figure out how to do that news thing.  That search for facts, truth and the American Way kind of makes it hard to just trumpet Trump (like that?).  So, Fox is left to report their joy at the Far Right appointees that parade in and out of Trump Tower.  MSNBC may have actually televised several anchors performing the harikari ritual.  Most of them have lost their pacifier and make as much sense as a toddler searching for binkie.

You can't even believe the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times.  All of them have been embroiled in some scam, scheme or cesspool of bias.  Admittedly, only on their editorial page, which seems to shock rank and file Americans that they are opinions.  Hard working reporters, doing the unfun and highly tedious work of triple sourcing, on air record, back channel confirmation, development of sources and informants, are painted with the tar brush of skepticism that America has come to give everything but whatever click bait they repost to prove that Obama is holding Bin Laden in Guantanamo to trade to the Martian for pristine birth records in a real state like Nebraska.

It has gotten that pitiful.  And, while I am not any less prone to listening to the side of the story that sounds best to my personal beliefs, I like to think that I work to figure out if what I am told has any factual basis or is, in fact, made up in some small town in Macedonia to creat revenue for some kid trying to get laid in the local night club.  I ignore anything that comes from Breitbart, the Blaze, is cited by Toni Lahren or Rachel Maddow.  There are lots of sources out there, but not all are created equal.

The Cabinet being appointed should scare us all.  Not because it is full of non-government people.  Nor because they have ideological positions.  Every Cabinet has had those exact same things.  What should scare us is the fact that there is a large component of this Cabinet that either utilizes this trumped up "news" and actually can't help themselves but to repost it and put it out there.  What that does is make me wonder if they actually have the skills to sift fact from fiction, or they are knowingly perpetuating false narratives and lending their positional credibility to erroneous material.  That is a text book definition of lying.

See, we all know Trump is no more suited to be President on Day One, than say, Obama or Clinton.  Whereas Obama and Clinton did some homework and had the requisite intellectual curiousity to dig around for a path forward, Trump has Breitbart Steve and Raisin Pringle.  Neither of those individuals has been much concerned with truth, justice or the American Way, in quite some time.  That is wrong.  They are heavily invested in an American Way that includes white people that are far enough removed from their families immigration that they are actual Americans, per their standards.  What they don't know, they will make up to suit their needs.

I pray every day that President Trump will be successful.  But, I worry every day that it is not his goal or his focus to be successful.  I don't think he much cares about the economy except as it is reflected in the success of his brand.  I am positive that he does not give a crap about anyone that is not in his social circle, except in how he can "bless" them and strengthen his brand.  It is kind of creepy.

I don't know what it means long term.  But, there are very few actual dictates on what a President has to do.  We have been lucky to usually have good men, that cared for the state of the union.  Some were ineffectual and some were corrupt.  But, most gave an effort to not appear to be solely concerned with actual profit, personally.  We don't live in that time any more.

The river of America runs through our conversations, which are mostly on line today.  It has always been where the river of America ran.  We miss the genteel time when it was at the pace of the Post Office.  It gave us time to think, to consider.  It prevented the immediate emphasis of hurt, anger and indignation to color our words and discourse.  No longer.

Now, at the speed of your internet connection, you are able to weigh in.  Facts be damned, either you are pissed or you support it 100%.  Life doesn't work that way, and after reflection, you usually end up thinking, man, I should not have said it that way.  Of course, we never post that, because we are human.  But, it is true.

The river of America used to run clear and deep and while we were on opposite shores, we were not afraid to wade the river and meet in the middle.  It was clean and it didn't hurt.  Today, the river is green, polluted and it actually burns and hurts to wade out in it and come to consensus.  We did that all on our own.  And, we can't figure out why nothing happens, why nothing works.  But, without thought and consideration, nothing works, except fire fighting.  Fire fighting is necessary.  But it is a terrible way to work every day.

Maybe, just maybe, we all work to see what the facts are, before we condemn, cuss and belittle each other.  Maybe we consider someone of a different opinion as worthy of listening to, taking seriously, even if we never agree.  Maybe we act like the Founders assumed we would and treat each other like adults.  Or, we can follow the President Elect's lead, and refuse to accept facts that contradict our public narrative.  That is what we will figure out in this Presidency, and it is going to be a painful figuring.