Independence to Choose Civility

Our independence and freedom have come at no small cost.  Most can agree that we are enormously thankful for the sacrifices both known and unknown that have been made to supply that independence and freedom.  

We have an obligation to treat this gift with some level of reverence. What shall we do with this freedom?

~ Who Do We Want to Be ~

 

We have a choice.

Some appear to be choosing hate or even violence for “the other guy.”

Some appear to be choosing to try to cause friction between two groups for their own, self serving motives.

Some appear to be choosing honest debate, problem solving, and bringing groups together.

Freedom of speech does not mean you should call people names and belittle them for having views different than your own.  Have you  ever changed someone’s mind by yelling insults at them?  So is your goal to just hurt them? Sometimes that may be your goal, but chances are you will just succeed at getting them to yell back at you. Or, perhaps, just block you out and ignore anything you have to say.

Freedom of speech does mean that someone may challenge you on ideas that you express.  Sometimes they will challenge you in rude or insulting ways.  Someone may find your ideas insulting and tell you as much.  You can engage or not.  It is your freedom to choose.  You do not need to choose to take it personally.  You may believe that someone disagrees with you because you are white, black, brown, Asian, immigrant, male, female, poor, rich, college educated, not college educated, Republican, Democrat, or whatever subgroup of America you identify with.  Maybe you are right or maybe they disagree because they think you are wrong.  Maybe you ARE wrong.  It can happen.

Leaders and TV personalities are spending more time commenting on perceived motivations and personal attributes of those with which they disagree.  Maybe it is because in the medical field we are discouraged from making nonobjective remarks in our documentation. Maybe it is because many look to these individuals for some hard truths of what is real.  But it is disappointing that some of those that would lead are either fanning the fog or trying to reflect back what some in the community are putting out.  News and investigations will be reported and sometimes through red or blue glasses and that is fine. It is the school yard name calling that they have the freedom and the responsibility to choose to stop.

Party leaders seem to represent the extreme bases that they represent. They are worried about  primaries and donations during their next election.  Moderates have some representation in Congress but the game of politics does not allow their voices to be heard.  That would mean working with the other side that have been painted as evil, heartless, or un-American. If you have convinced your voters that someone is evil, how can you ever be seen negotiating with them?

Can we lead our leaders?  I do not know.  I will try to start to editing myself more and will be calling people out on social media when they cross the line.  Please call me out if my sarcasm crosses into rude or mean.  I will not bother trying to give a “freedom to choose civility” speech to everyone.  Some types of mean are just better to walk away from to avoid calling attention to the stench.

Let us friends use our freedom to choose to

BE THE CHANGE

that we wish to see.

Toasted Road Trip

• To the young man at the convenience store that just found out he won $3000 on scratch off ticket.
• To the baby deer that only made it across 4 lanes of a six lane road.
• The the sheriff that was behind me on the tail end of a speeding caravan of cars but did not stop any of us.
• To the trooper that passed me just as “paranoia strikes deep” danced from my speakers.
• To Jefferson Airplane for bringing me down but not sleepy.

“When the truth is found
To be lies
And all the joy
Within you dies”

• To the signs warning that bridges may ice first making me smile as I remember a time when I watched cars getting stuck on a bridge from my apartment window.  And how I now live too far south to see these signs on my commute.
• To the GPS lady that welcomed me to Georgia but did not seem to care when I left for South Carolina.
• To all of things that I forgot because, well, I was driving.  Can’t stop to take notes.
• To the rain that hugged the sky until just now.

How to Identify Mad Cow Disease

Just as I was about to go on a Twitter tirade over all the blind hate tweets, I remembered something I saw 20 years ago.

As luck would have it, YouTube has everything.

Always remember to laugh.  

 

How to Talk to Women

…or teach anyone anything.

Teach them the part they don’t know. What is obvious to you may not be so obvious to them. 

After decades of struggle, I have made a life changing discovery. How to avoid tangles in extension cords.

http://www.homedepot.com/

I have mentioned my struggle to men in the past. Each one of them was happy to help and as if handing down sacred knowledge from Yoda himself, they all explained in detail that one must be careful when coiling the cord for storage. I thought I had been. Each time I listened carefully because each one seemed so sure that he had the secret. Some seemed a bit amused. Not that I was a silly girl asking a stupid question. It was more like they discovered that I had not been let in on this secret. A sudden realization that guy code secrets have not been leaked. As these were all honorable men, they decided that a lady in need who had bravely wondered into the garage, must be let in on the key to a happy extension cord. And so, the tutorial on how to neatly wrap began.

After decades of trials, my issue was not proper cord storage.  I had been wrapping the cord neatly. My problem was in the un-wrapping. No one ever mentioned the unraveling process. The wrapping was supposed to be the secret. So, in my mind, how you unwind it should not have mattered. Well, I guess they thought that part was obvious.

Or maybe that was the sacred guy code bit they were not allowed to speak of in mixed company. 😉

The Broken Circle

The ecosystem in my garage.

A few years ago I witnessed a spider eating a mosquito. As he finished the meal, a lizard stepped in and had his own. 

Yesterday I spared the life of a small spider and told him to eat lots of mosquitos.  

Today, I find this: 

 

I just got bit by a mosquito and the snake is still in the garage. I guess I should be happy the bear did not stay.  

Apologies to the man who didn’t steal my trimmer

 

A few weeks back I took a nap.  I was in my car.  The car was in my open garage.

I woke to a noise but did not look.  I was comfortable. The car was locked.  I wasn’t moving.

There was news of a bear prowling around the neighborhood.  The bear had made the noise.

The next week I could not find my hedge trimmers.   There were multiple reports of stealing out of unlocked cars.  There were reports of items disappearing from porches.

My policy for lost items is that they will come back to me eventually.  The lost item suddenly appears.  It may take an hour. It may take a month.

Three weeks later I could not find my trimmer.  My plants are overgrown.  Maybe the neighborhood thief took the trimmer.

I spent a week thinking ‘the guy’ took the trimmer.  The noise was from him.  It was not from the bear.

Guess what I just found.

USA post election fear prediction: A table with no legs

My mind was musing this morning as I sipped my coffee and watched pundits pundit.

Most seemed simultaneously excited and fearful of the possibility of Mr. Trump becoming President of these United States.

There is a chance he may lose the Republican primary, but with every delegate that he gathers, there seems to be an unease.  By the end of my coffee, everyone seemed to calm down and settle into acceptance that he really may win the nomination.

He may, actually, become President.  Yes, he would need to win the general election but there appears to be a H-U-G-E (Trump voice over) enthusiasm gap that could lead to poor Democratic voter turn out and high Republican turn out.

I began to think…so what….if he really goes off the rails, then Congress can get rid of him.  Well, Congress has agreed to nearly never ever agree on anything. With Trump’s marketing skills, I cannot imagine anyone up for election in the next 4 years would agree to it.

So the Supreme Court could take care of it…..well, I suppose, but they will be short a