do not define me.

Life is not business, it’s personal.

I am not an entry in a spreadsheet.

You cannot build an algorithm to define me or predict my behavior.

My love of oil paint or yellow roses or green rocks is not important marketing information.

You cannot make predictions about my quality of life based on my age, BMI and current use of government assistance programs.

You can not pigeon hole my vote because of my age or my sex or even my registered party.

Statistics may tell you a lot about a population, but they tell you nothing about an individual.

The average American was born in the same state they live now.  They are white.  They are slightly more likely to be female.  They are middle-aged.  They have a year or 2 of college education but no degree.  They are buying their home. They live with 1 or 2 other people,  and have 2 pets.  They speak English.  They are protestant.   They work in retail sales.  They have an IQ of 100.  They make $38,000/year.  They are overweight.  They are heterosexual.  They have been married at least once, but may or may not be single now (50/50 split)

While all of that is statistically true, I don't know a single person that all of those are true for.

Statistics are for describing populations not individuals.

Yet we are faced with stereotypes, assumptions, classifications about ourselves, about who we are, about how we choose to live or not to live, about what we are interested in, should be interested in, should want to buy, to read, to listen to and the silly corporations that are leading this drive to define, are trying to make choices for me, trying to lead me by the nose to buy their product--they have no idea who I am.

So,  here you go.  I am a white, middle-aged female.  I have way to much college and have several paid off student loans to prove it.  I have never been in retail sales.  I do own my own home.  I don't live with 1-2 other people, but do live with more than 2 beasties.  I'm not protestant.  I have never even met anyone that actually had an IQ of 100 (a stat for sure, but not a person), and do not make $38,000/year.  I do live in the same state I was born in.

I'm as average as the next person.

Don't send me republican donation invites just because I'm from a red state.  Over 40% of my state is blue or independent.  Don't keep trying to sign me up for a web-based college degree in marketing, business, or medical assisting and please don't begin the conversation with "you requested information about our school".  I didn't.  Don't keep inviting me to follow and like Walmart.  Don't try to buy my house fast for cash.  Don't offer me a deal on the latest diet book or plan.

I also don't want to reorganize my closet, purge to simplicity, shop with coupons to save big money, or receive the beer of the month or the rose of the month or the plate of the month.  I know what I need to purchase.  I know were to find it.  And if, by some chance I decide I need something I have never had or needed before---I understand the Google search pretty well.

My life is not your business, it's personal.

THE KARMA OF WAR

CALLING OURSELVES THE GOOD GUYS, THE HEROES, THE WHITE HATS, WHEN DO WE RECOGNIZE OUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE DEATH TOLLS, THE REBELLIONS, AND THE PAIN AND SUFFERING THAT OUR TACTICS HAVE BROUGHT TO THE CIVILIANS OF OTHER NATIONS AND TO OUR OWN PEOPLE.

The United States currently has military personnel on 800 military bases in other countries.  No other country has bases in as many foreign lands as the United States.

World armies, in order of number of personnel is: (*rounded to the nearest thousand)
     China--2,333,000  (this is the bear that our president elect is currently poking)
      USA--1,492,000
      India--1,325,000  (apparently we should stop acting like they are just workers at call centers)
      North Korea--1,190,000  (most likely to do something unexpected)
      Russia--845,000  (Our new ally?--oops--was our ally in the previous world war, also)
      Pakistan--643,000  (I had no idea, I thought they were little and disorganized)
      Turkey--510,000  (I thought they were tribal)
      Vietnam--482,000 (a familiar name here, both halves now apparently on the same side)
      Egypt--438,000 (do they like us?)
      Burma--406,000 (What?)
      Thailand--360,000
       Brazil--318,000
       Taiwan--290,000
       Iraq--271,000
       Mexico--270,000
       Ukraine--250,000
       Japan--247,000
       Saudi Arabia--233,000
       France--222,000
       Germany--186,000
       Afghanistan--185,000
       Israel--176,000
       United Kingdom--169,000
       Bangladesh--157,000
       Greece--143,000
        Phillipines--125,000
        Syria--125,000
        Jordan--100,000

Of those countries, nine have nuclear capability:
Russia, USA, Israel, France, China, the UK, Pakistan, India, and North Korea.  We don't know that anyone else has the ability to not just blow us all up but ruin it for everyone's future.  Our intelligence doesn't say they do.   But you know, what we don't know, we don't know.

We do know that when it comes to spending on defense--that strangely incestuous military-industrial complex born of world wars and the industrial age has made the USA a winner.  Spending by nation, in order of most money spent:
USA--596 billion
China--215 billion
Saudi Arabia--87 billion
Russia--66 billion
UK--55 billion
India--51 billion
France--50 billion
Japan--40 billion
Germany--39 billion
Brazil--24 billion
Iraq--21 billion
Israel--18 billion

Hopefully, we weren't buying $1250 hammers and $50,000 toilets.

There is a lot of money in WAR.  Eleven Fortune 500 companies are in defense/aerospace industry. Many of them got there during WWII. Lockheed/Martin, general Dynamics, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, L-3 Communications, Precisions Cast Parts, Huntington Ingalls, Spirit Aerosystems Holdings, United Technologies, Textron.  And these don't include those smaller companies--making uniforms, making boots, making MRE's, making all the little pieces and parts that it takes to keep an army (or air force or navy or marine) outfitted, trained, housed, and equipped).
Amazingly small amounts of that money are paid to the men and women that are serving.  At least 2,000 of our lower ranked families qualify for SNAP benefits.  Shades of Walmart business Methods.

AMERICAN WAR DEATHS,
The American Revolution had about 4,435 deaths, 217,000 fighting, or about 113deaths per100,000  total population.
The War of 1812 had about 2,260 deaths, 286,730 fighting, or about 31  deaths per 100,000 total population.
The Mexican War had about 13,283 deaths, 78,718 fighting, or about 78 deaths per 100,000 total population.
The Civil War had about 618,0020 deaths (we were both sides of this war), about 3,263,363 fighting or 1,965 deaths per 100,000 total population.
The Spanish American War had 2,449 deaths, 306,760 fighting, or about 4  deaths per 100,000 total population.
WWI had 116,516 deaths, 4,734,991 fighting or about 126 deaths per 100,000 total population
WWII had 405,399 death, 16,112,566 fighting or 307 deaths per 100,000 total population.
The Korean War had 36,574 deaths, 1,789,000 fighting or 24 deaths per 100,000 total population
The Vietnam War (?) had 58,220 deaths, 3,403,000 or 32 deaths per total population.
The Gulf War had 383 deaths, 694,550 fighting or 0 deaths per total population. (the number is too small for the total to actually equal 1, we all no that 383 people are not 0 people)
The Iraq/Afghanistan War (still going on--maybe forever) has had 6,607 deaths--so far, 2,500,000+ fighting or 2 deaths per 100,000 total population

There are lots of numbers out there (but not matching numbers) for the number of civilian noncombatants killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  The smallest combined those 2 with Pakistan and they listed 210,000 (this is less than 1/2 of the largest estimates).  This is not military personnel or rebels or terrorists.  It's children, sick people, old people, women--and doesn't include the people that die of malnutrition due to destroyed supply lines or chronic illness deaths due to no more healthcare system or deaths of people that are injured or poisoned by infrastructure damage.  It should also be considered that when there is war, the government is destabilized, crime goes up and human services are disrupted.  We mourn our less than 7,000 soldier deaths, but can't figure out why ISIS is gathering up converts so successfully.

We went to this war over civilian deaths from terrorist acts.

We have lost 3,158 civilians to terrorism on US soil since 1995.  We are terrified, horrified, and angry about terrorism.

They have lost at least 210,000 from 3 countries--at least.
At Least!
Since 2001!
We should all worry about the Karma of that.

HAPPY NEW YEAR and PEACE OUT.




















 http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/4/#version:static

Ephemeral life

Stray cats, dead babies, mayfly poems, dead young warriors, dying--life goes on.

I am currently feeding a momma cat and supplementing a multitude of kittens, now grown and of various ages.

She is a tiny little calico, and when she is not hiding in her baby kitten place, she comes to visit.  She is both friendly and brave and when the kittens can walk well enough to follow, they too will come to my porch to supplement their food supply and take a drink when it is dry--all the time these days.

Right now, she comes once a day for food and drink, teats hanging, wrapping around my ankle.  The 2 from her previous litter that survived to self-sufficiency have a little temporary house my daughter built.  The permanent one is not quite done.  Call it a safe house or a refuge from the harshness of nature.

I have never been able to get close to any of her offspring.  She is like the momma killdeer that drags her wing to lead the danger away from her nest.  Red squirrels also distract, but considering how fast her kittens run from me, she must truly feel she is bearding a monster in its den.

I also put out my scraps for the passing possums and raccoons, occasional an armadilla or skunk and when there were strays and coyotes--instead we now hear frequent gunfire in the spring instead of the multi-pitched yodelling of new coyote pups--I would periodically see one of them eating or drinking also.

When she first starts bringing them over, there are frequently 3 or 4.  I never know how many she gave birth to.  But eventually the number will decrease  first to 2-3 then 1-2.  The first ones, grown now, still come by, not as often but certainly as skittish when they arrive.

She always seems a little lost when one is missing.  But she herds those still present with an increased vigor.

I buy food because I can't imagine how hard her life is, and how she is always attentive to babies and always brave about getting between them and me or a dog, or a raccoon, or another cat.

I don't know that I could continue to be that brave.

I remember a poem about the mayfly when I was a child.  I google it and am buried in mayfly poems.  Mayflies are archetypal to humans, apparently.  I must admit, the poems are all good, just as thought-provoking.  Making me feel as ephemeral as a--mayfly.

If you ever go to a cemetery and see the grave of a baby or small child, and feel sad, sad even though the grave has been there over 100 years and the child, if it hadn't died would still be dead, and realized--its not just death.  We want everyone to have a chance to live.  I think that is what makes the mayfly so thought-provoking--3 years in the ground, then one day to awaken, fly, mate, and die.  ONE DAY!

What expectations would I have if I knew it must all occur in one day?

I expect years.  I'm getting old and still expect years.  I still have things to do, goals to reach, experiences to experience.

And yet our young ones, the ones that expect to live forever and ever unending, sign up to go fight for our country, or their country or some ideal or some cause without once thinking--"am I ready to die".  "Why am I risking such an early death?"  "Why am I risking never knowing my children or grandchildren."

I like to think they are trying to be like the brave momma cat. (I wish I believed those ideals were as important as babies)

I hope someone is trying to protect them from the harshness of human nature.

building the world our grandchildren will live in

My grandfather was born in 1876.
My father was born in 1918.
I was born in 1956.
My daughter was born in 1986.
My granddaughter was born in 2006.

My grandchildren are born. Five generations in 125 years.

The world I was born into looks nothing like the world my grandfather was born into.

What will the world my grandchildren will die in look like?

Now, that's a question? 

With current expectations, they should both live past 2075--quite a bit past that.

I would love for them to have a future with close family, lots of outdoor time in places that are peaceful and beautiful and teaming with a plethora of species of animals and plants. I would have them eating plentiful, healthy food and living in homes that are both safe and affordable and convenient and maintainable.  I would have them healthy, wealthy, and wise.  But not too wealthy.  I don't want them to ever feel that they must have more than everyone else to be successful and happy.  And not too unwealthy--as that is a stress that leads to soooo many problems, stress illnesses, mental illness, chemical dependency, and that nightmarish existence that involves pushing themselves to always compete, beat, be better than, make more money than, have a bigger career, a better marriage, a more impressive resume--always more, even after the original lack is gone.  The never reachable carrot is not the answer to happiness.  Everyone wants their loved ones to be healthy--even as they watch them make unhealthy choices.  I guess I want them to have those choices--not be forced into a lack of health by poverty, environmental contamination and ignorance.  And Wisdom--everyone is on their own on that one. 

It is projected there will be just under 9 billion people by 2075 (it is currently slightly over 7 billion) and that Nigeria will have more people than the United States. While the human population of the whole planet is slowing, the 12 countries resulting in that almost 2 billion  increase will be in Africa and Asia. The United states is only expected to grow about 2% and the US birth rate is expected to decline to about 0.2%.  That is a lot of couples choosing not to have children.  So my grandchildren are less likely to have children or grandchildren than I was.

Sea level should be about 34 inches higher than it is right now.  Since my house is about 600 feet above and a 1000 miles from any sea, seems safe enough.  But moving to the coasts may not be an option for them, or perhaps they will just need to stay back a few hundred miles when they buy that sea side property.

My state will be about 13 degrees hotter on average--so pleasant winter and roaring hot summer--123 degrees in the August shade, anyone????

It is expected that climate change impacts alone—hurricane damage (currently less than 12 billion/year but projected at 142 billion by 2075),real estate losses( currently less than 34 billion/year but projected at 173 billion by 2075), energy costs ( currently at less than 28 billion/year but projected at 82 billion by 2075) , and water costs (currently less than 250 billion/year but projected at 565 billion by 2075)—will come with a price tag of 1.8
percent of the U.S. GDP, or almost $1.9 trillion annually (in today’s dollars) by 2100.  Fortunately, for those of us in the middle of the country, we won't see so much of that--it will be a coastal, southwest thing.

So far, all I predict is a return of all those rural families to the farmland.  Of course, all those giant metropolitan areas were also once farmland, so while we won't be growing as fast, we definitely won't be growing out.  Skyscraper apartments in Kansas-anyone?  (what? tornados? what?)

 http://www.global-warming-forecasts.com/

 https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/cost.pdf

Forecasts from 2015 to 2100  illuminate converging trajectories, potentially colliding events,  which will compound multiple stress events and create information gaps about the availability of remedial resources and assets. 

For example:

• Disease rates  ( think Zika, and other mosquito vectored illnesses, ebola--considered tropical only, asthma, heat-stroke, water infestations like algae and protozoa)  extreme weather events (hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms, snowstorms, droughts and floods) and heat wave forecasts (forest fires, outdoor workers collapsing in summer, poor people without air conditioners, old people without air conditioners being found with hyperthermia too late to fix) presented alongside forecasts of skilled workforce availability and the capacity to meet demand for health, medical and first-responder emergency services.( In this state, which chose not to take the federal medicaid expansion, there are still over 20% of the population without coverage.  What will happen in the next few years remains to be seen.  In hospitals that are already strained, financially and a current promise to do away with the affordable care act,  we may be facing a future of more closures of facilities in the face of more people needing care.)
• Projections of hospital and medical personnel shortages (already a reality and not getting better with healthcare going more toward for-profit conglomerates and away from community services are occurring concurrently with heat wave induced power outages and water shortages. If you have ever been in a hospital or even a nursing home with the power or water turned off, even 2 hours is a dangerous nightmare of trying to maintain patient safety.
• Water demand strains from droughts occurring simultaneously with wildfire mobilization and suppression efforts that drain water from reservoirs dedicated to meeting fresh drinking water and agriculture requirements endangering both human dwelling and the habitat of all other life in that area.
• Grid, energy and water infrastructure expansion forecasts juxtaposed to forecasts competing for the availability of sufficient-sized workforce resources for infrastructure construction, repair and maintenance--not to mention the resistance to taxes, to resistance to paying  people a living wage makes fixing and maintaining our infrastructure daunting.
• Food shortages alongside forecasts of feedstocks and raw materials for fertilizers necessary to meet food demands will make the purchase of basic foods as expensive as housing and healthcare (we may just cure that gross, Mall-rat consumerism after all and being overweight may once again become a sign of wealth.
• Critical and raw materials availability forecasts overlaid on projections for clean technology markets and the greenhouse gas control technologies required to mitigate and adapt to climate change  will create a balancing act. 
• Technology commercialization progress and market penetration forecasts juxtaposed to accelerating climate change impact forecasts?  Who will win?  I guess it will depend on how fast we start gasping for air or losing people en masse to dehydration.

 The biggest impact on all these projections is whether we decide to continue to deny Climate Change for the good of the people making money with the current directives or actually start working toward decreasing the things we do that are destroying our resources--not the gold in the ground, or oil, but the resources like the water we need to  live and the air that allows us to breath and the trees that provide our oxygen, and the ecosystems that fertilize the grounds with decomposing leaves and plants and animal waste/decomp, and unpoisoned earthworms and flies and other insects that allow that decomp and functional bacteria for finishing the processes.  We are in the odd position of not knowing if we will continue the current slow slog toward a greener, more responsible capitalism that admits we have to be better stewards, or if we will jump backward into a time where we pretended nothing we did for money had any impact on the world around us.  While I can also be crazy kid in a candy store and really love that whole treasure-hunter mentality that goes with found money--or with even with garage sale treasure with almost no cost.  I also know that candy will not only not sustain me--it will kill me if not moderated.  And found treasure always costs someone. 

There have been a lot of predictions about the future.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Next_100_Years

 http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a3120/110-predictions-for-the-next-110-years/

 http://www.sylviabrowne.com/g/The-Next-100-Years/172.html

 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16536598

 https://youthextension.wordpress.com/2016/01/15/predictions-for-the-next-100-years/

https://dailyreckoning.com/a-prediction-for-the-next-100-years/

and so on and so on eternally.

They are interesting and range from the Rapture (always in every century's predictions among the devout christians) to utopia on earth (picture the artwork of the watchtower pamplets) to dystopias so sinister not even Gaspar Noe could do it justice on the big screen in 3-D in whatever is juicier than Technicolor.

So what can I do to make sure they still have a place on this earth?  How can I make sure that if they have children or don't have children, it is their choice?

What kind of world do I want us to build to leave to them?

I want  them free and able to participate fully in their own governance.

I want them to be treated as well as any other person on the planet--equal opportunity, equal justice, equal voice.

I definitely don't want them worse off than we are now and would really like it if their world was better---for everyone. 

Any suggestions on how to get there from here?

It's closer than we think.  The last 60 years went by in a flash.

The elephant in the country!

We have all heard about the Elephant in the room---and no one is talking about it or to it or even looking at it--it's huge and apparently invisible.

Countries can be a lot like rooms.

I once worked with a woman that used the expression "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree" at least once a day.  She was usually talking to people with a parent in prison.  Granted, she eventually lost that job for getting caught going to the bar down the street the minute it opened and not returning till time to clock out.  She worked there 3 years.  Her room had its own elephant.

While apples may not fall far---gravity, you know--that has little to do with anything.  The apple and the tree are both dependent on their roots.

Everything has roots.

Countries call those roots history.

Our Elephant is hooked to our roots, but while it CAN be seen and is definitely felt, most of us don't want to talk about it.  We would rather have a root canal without anesthesia.  We think de-nile is a river in Egypt.

Now about the  roots of our own history---and how they relate to the roots of all human history.

It starts with little groups, fighting over the best cave to survive the winter or the best tree to sleep in without getting eaten by predators or the best stream for water for not dying of dehydration or poisoning.  It starts with one of those biological imperatives--the need to survive and procreate so our DNA continues.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/science/two-surprises-in-dna-of-boy-found-buried-in-siberia.html

Speed forward about 23,620 years--to about the year 1492 to the Age of colonialism and the time of Imperialism.

Colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another. One of the difficulties in defining colonialism is that it is hard to distinguish it from imperialism. Frequently the two concepts are treated as synonyms. Like colonialism, imperialism also involves political and economic control over a dependent territory. The etymology of the two terms, however, provides some clues about how they differ. The term colony comes from the Latin word colonus, meaning farmer. This root reminds us that the practice of colonialism involved the transfer of population to a new territory, where the arrivals lived as permanent settlers while maintaining political allegiance to their country of origin. Imperialism, on the other hand, comes from the Latin term imperium, meaning to command. Thus, the term imperialism draws attention to the way that one country exercises power over another, whether through settlement, sovereignty, or indirect mechanisms of control.

  Imperialism was its own worst enemy, creating rebellions and independence movements by those whose lands have been taken over while the majority of the people are not of the group that is in power..  Imperialism is for profit, for control of resources.  India rather recently won its independence from Great Britain--which never really colonized the extremely populated country.  They sent military and leaders to control those already there--by force.  Colonization, in which immigrants from the controlling country come over to make a new life thus displacing the population that is already there is not as common but did create the beginning, the roots of the United States of America.  While Great Britain colonized the Atlantic Coast, France was more focused on the natural resources of what became Canada, and Spain focused heavily on the areas that later became Florida, Louisiana, Texas and the Southwest--and most of Central and South America.  Russia had Alaska.  In places where imperialism rather than colonialism controlled the relationship, you end up with a population that is mostly indigenous with some genetically mixed people--"brown people".  Where colonialism occurred, you get some "brown people" and many people that look more like the place that colonized the area, and very few indigenous people--call it genocide, if you wish to approach honesty.  But why colonize?  Why did some nations focus on grabbing resources while others just kept sending out colonies?

Great Britain, without its colonies is a little Island.  They loved shipping off their poor and criminal element with about the same proportion of military and leaders that the already populated places like India required to control the populace.  That gave us Australia and eventually parts of Canada. That gave us the United states before the revolution.

And now we are approaching the Elephant.

In those countries that used imperialism and colonialism to gain money and resources and to get rid of their excess of poor people, it was inevitable that people began to judge themselves and each other based on how close to the appearance of the rulers they were.  In India, a caste system, originally hooked to the Hindu religious beliefs and altered over time to use skin color and poverty as part of the levels was useful in maintaining control.  It soon became nothing more than a stepped class system like the feudal lords had used for a thousand years.  There was a reason that women using toxic metals like lead or powdering with arsenic so they could be particularly pale was seen as more important than good health.  A berry-brown girl was never going to be anything more than a servant or farmer's wife.

And now, we are getting within touching distance of the Elephant, and while the blind men and the elephant is my very favorite metaphor for understanding different religions, this elephant is scary and ugly and angry and HUGE!  And calling it out has killed many good people.

 http://www.constitution.org/col/blind_men.htm

This country was originally colonized by people of the British islands, and later, as their ability to farm efficiently and effectively was challenged by William Penn, who brought in all those Palatine Germans  (Pennsylvania Dutch),  there were other European farmer-types from Europe.

There were people already here--Columbus, in his confusion and geographic dislocation called them Indians, they called themselves whatever their language used that meant "Us".  In 1800 there were 4.3 million descendants of European immigrants in the United States  (They started arriving in the early 1600's, while Columbus via Spain started exploring and occupying and decimating the area surrounding the Caribbean islands in 1492.  There are currently 241.9 million of European ancestry in this country, although far from all came before 1776 and many are not from the British Isles or Palatine area.

Before 1492, Turtle Island, later to be called The Americas was estimated to have 10 million to 100 million indigenous people living there, with an estimated 1-5 million of those in the area that is now the United States.  (NO Censuses, all estimates by historians)  The native population now is 3.7 million in the USA.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_Island_%28North_America%29

We also, long before the place was a country, when it was just a bunch of colonies and explorers, brought about a half a million African people as slaves--free labor.  (this was less than 4% of the total number of Africans brought to the Americas and Caribbean islands.)  There are currently 40.3 million African Americans by 2015 census.  Some of those actually immigrated to this country from African Nations after the Civil War and some came for the Caribbean islands and South America.  (less than 4% of total immigration occurring between the Civil War and the 1965 were of nonwhite and non-European descent--by law.  Between 1965 (law change) and 2000 that number increased slightly, and since 2000 about 1.5 million sub-saharan African immigrants have come to the United States.

There have been Asian immigrants here in the US since at least the 1600's.  Since Asia and our Pacific coast are  both on the same ocean, it is likely that Asian sailors have been here as long or longer than Europeans.  About the time of the 1849 gold rush, large numbers of Chinese immigrants came over to work the gold mines so they could send money back to their families and later to build the transcontinental railroad--for the same reason. While they were not officially enslaved, they were also not treated as equals to the European immigrants; were not paid as well and not treated well at all.  They were, if not FREE labor, very cheap labor that was also excluded from the government processes that made us a republic. Between 1880 and 1965 Asian immigrants were not allowed to come to this country at all. There are currently over 15 million people of Asian descent in this country and Asia is the 2nd most likely place of origin of new immigrants.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_immigration_to_the_United_States

January 1, 1892 The federal immigration station on Ellis Island opened on January 1, 1892 and was closed on November 12, 1954-- after 12 million immigrants were inspected and ok'd for entry into this country.   The vast majority of immigrants through this gateway were from European countries.

http://genealogy.about.com/od/ports/p/ellis_island.htm?utm_term=history+ellis+island&utm_content=p1-main-1-title&utm_medium=sem&utm_source=gemini_s&utm_campaign=adid-bfdb03d6-0848-4f90-99ae-58f36cd281c1-0-ab_tsb_ocode-33073&ad=semD&an=gemini_s&am=broad&q=history+ellis+island&o=33073&qsrc=999&l=sem&askid=bfdb03d6-0848-4f90-99ae-58f36cd281c1-0-ab_tsb

Did people from other countries, non-white countries, never want to come to the United States?  

Or were they not welcomed. 

We were told we were a melting pot when I was a grade school student---everyone welcome, everyone equal--one big happy nation. By college, we were really more of a warm and chunky stew with many cultures and each welcome to keep their own religious beliefs and eating habits and communities--just one big, happy and diverse nation.

Currently, we are not even pretending to be happy.  We don't want any more brown people coming in.  We don't want people wearing head scarfs unless its windy.  We don't want vegetarians.  We don't want people that have philosophies instead of religions, and while we believe in one god, it has to be the right, one god. (If there is one, how is there a wrong one)  

Don't get me wrong, while we were one big happy melting pot in grade school, there were no people of color in that school.  There were some kids that might have been Indian (in the 60's there were no natives or we were all native American unless we just immigrated--the one German girl whose parents moved here--she was never really accepted, and due to the state I was in, everyone was part Indian by family lore--no matter how blonde haired and blue eyes, but just having an Italian last name or going to a Catholic Church was suspect.   We were definitely still a colony of Great Britain.

So what is the elephant?  Is it racism?  Is it hate?  Is it xenophobia?  Is it just our roots? Is it we can't let go of the our own motherland, that world-class invader and raper of lands, Great Britain.  We, the white-we, are by majority, descendants of anglo-saxons and they were always invaders and rapers of other lands.

Its tribal.  (And everyone has tribal roots--not very civilized of us, but lets not quibble over words--tribes are based on protecting their own, enlarging their lands and resources and killing the competition.)  Every migration, every war, every colony, every coupe---all just tribal.

And tribes aren't that distant.  Israel had the 12 tribes less than 3000 years ago.  Europe had Celts and Gauls and Goths and Vandals less than 2000 years ago, Asia had Jews, Kurds, Aryans, Druze, Huns, Turks, Hmong, Mongols, Africa has Ashanti, Bantu, Mandingo, Zulu, Yoruba, Maasai, America had Aztec, Cherokee, Lakota, Navajo, Australia had Murrawarri, Koori, Nyungar and there were so many more in each continent that the list could be endless.

But tribes, while they have roots and shared DNA, are no longer the basis of human governance.  Unless we really are incapable of getting better than that, incapable of redefining our tribal roots, incapable of learning new ways to share and protect and educate and work together; then we are just acting in an instinctual way.  Not like animals.  With animals, there must actually be a threat.  We do it for baubles and recognition, for right of place and self-esteem.  We have spread our DNA so well that it is not we humans in danger anymore.   But we are still trying to have our  specific tribe's DNA dominate.   It's like none of us even know what the words equality, justice, opportunity, compassion---mean.  Just empty words unless they apply to everyone.  

"Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." 

 Maybe least is just our perception.   There is no least in equal.  We want someone to be less than we are since that means we are more.  Maybe we need to stop looking for a hierarchy and start  using the golden rule--for everyone, from everywhere, no matter what tribe.  (I actually think that is what the above was round-aboutly and in Old English, saying)

Why do people ignore elephants in rooms or in countries?  Is it just easier on us to ignore them. Do they represent something we are afraid of or something we need around to make us feel good about who we are.  Either way, as long as we can't recognize it for what it is, it is a problem.  The first step, in any recovery program is to recognize you have a problem.  Maybe we just all need an Intervention or a 12 step program.  But transparency, recognition of the problem and talking about it are always the first step to change.

 The only way to get the elephant out is to knock down some walls.

It's past time to bring out the sledge hammers and start talking about that elephant.

This one is nobody's friend.

don't fall asleep

While the title sounds like a great (or awful--in the genre, they are the same) horror movie, this is actually referring to the way so many people woke up and took part in the very recent choosing of our President-elect.

I have no intention of demonizing the newly elected and soon to take office president.

I do think that the people in this country usually don't wake up very much---focusing instead on their own day to day lives except to make a 5 minute decision on whether to go vote for their party's candidate or just depend on their neighbors to make the same decision they would.  In my state, where there is about a 60/40 split between  the registered party members, the 40% could vote for Pat Paulsen--even though he has been gone for 20 years, and it would not change the result.

This past two years woke a lot of people up.  We had not seen that kind of activism and participation since the 1960's. We polarized--not just college kids against the establishment but in families, among coworkers,  heating up marriages, stirring up kindergarteners in public schools-----even in political parties.  It was nothing if not extreme.  (In truth, we are not really past that)
While the fear and anger needs to calm down and be soothed, I really don't think  we have accomplished our goals yet.

It's not yet time to go back to sleep. ( it probably never was and never will be--this is our country, our home we are talking about)

It is time to regroup.  It's time to re-examine what is important for our futures--ALL our futures; take a deep breath so we don't let go with a knee-jerk reaction and decide,  really decide---what still needs fixed, what is important to us all.

This past 2 years were uncomfortable for a lot of people because we all like to think that we all have the same worries and concerns.  Sort of like at work, when 3 people start talking about the latest episode of survivor and try to invite the 4th person into the conversation, only to discover they don't have a cable TV or a television at all, they just listen to radio.  Those 3 will not question why they are watching survivor every week and talking about it like it is important and universal, but #4 just became a three-eyed monster--might be a serial killer or maybe a spy--but definitely not normal.  We are rarely a people seeking insight about ourselves.  We like to be a part of the majority--in a nation ruled by the majority.

So who is the Majority in this country? ( The Population Census, April 1, 2010  321,418,820)

 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00

So, we are about 62% white, and 50.8% female so white men make up  32% of the population.
No other single race exceeds 18% by itself but that makes 38% of the population "minority".  Add women, that strange majority with most of their power determined by their spouse and you have a country of minorities.  A country ruled by a small group because the rest are splintered and separated, and feed on hate and distrust and fear.

Thirteen percent of our population is foreign-born--and that includes all races and language groups and both sexes (so some of those people are in the  32% nonhispanic white male group.

About 21% of our population speak a language other than English at home.  And, we have never been a nation with everyone speaking English at home, ask the Choctaw or the Californians whose families were there before statehood or those folks in the swamps of Louisiana.

At least 86% of us have completed high school and  30%  of those have a college degree or two.

Over 3% of the total population in the US consider themselves part of the LGBT community.

Thirty-three percent of black men go to prison, and in 12 states they can never vote again.  

Does any of that matter--yes, and no.

Once again we have a winner of the popular vote that is different than the winner of the electoral vote and thus the new President-Elect.

Until 1824, there is no record of popular vote numbers available.  That year, John Quincy Adams won the election against Andrew Jackson despite having fewer popular votes AND fewer electoral votes.  Congress made that decision.  The people voting didn't know what was best or right or who should win so congress fixed it. Four years later Jackson won an overwhelming victory.  Which of the 2 did a better job as president is debatable--but nothing amazingly good happened under either.

http://civilliberty.about.com/od/historyprofiles/tp/Worst-Presidents-Ever.htm

The other 3 times, (besides the one that just occurred),  Rutherford Hayes (whose Presidency ended the reconstruction of the South and welcomed in a legalized segregation for the newly freed men), Benjamin Harrison(blamed for a big depression--who knows what really caused it, or if they were right), and George W. Bush (too recent to discuss--but I like him better now that he has taken up painting).

There are a lot of explanations for why the Electoral College is both more equitable and less risky than the popular vote.  I think, that if the people screw up that bad with their vote, they would take it better than if a bunch of highers-up make the vote for them.  We need to either be involved or call it what it is, a republic with citizens and regular people (that is what ancient Greece was, they were good with it until it fell.  Elite groups lording it over large groups of workers and service people doesn't go over well for long).

But, while the presidential election is over, the governing of our nation is not over.  The problems are not fixed.  We can all keep working on those problems.  We can keep the problems in the light for all to see.  We can take advantage of a new ability to communicate rapidly and openly over vast distances so that if something wrong happens, hundreds of people will know about it within minutes and it will not be easy to put those genies back in their bottles.

We need to keep things transparent.  We need to shine lights into those unfair practices that hurt people from one group while doing nothing harmful to people from another group.   We need to be our best selves--using our empathy and caring, not just for the neighbors in our proximity but for those we have traditionally seen as "other" or "not like us".

We will never fix the problems in places with poverty and poor opportunity by screaming "act like us" when they have never had the experiences of "Us".  We need to talk to people that are not like we are, that grew up in other places, with other experiences if we would understand how an intelligent and talented person could become a criminal or organized crime member or drug addict.  We treat all that as if no one in our group ever did those things, then make a million excuses for our own sister or cousin or uncle as to why they did exactly those things.

There is a lot of ugliness in the world.  It is not all in other countries.  It is not all in other states or other neighborhoods or even in other families.  We just avoid dealing with it.  It is easier to see systemic problems as the fault of each individual that fell into that trap.

So stay awake, look at the ugliness, not with hate or despair but like a problem-solver or detective.  We can fix these problems in our country and our world---one at a time.   The first step with each is to see who benefits from keeping that problem.  Eliminate the pay-off for keeping the problem and you can find a solution more easily. 

But not asleep,  we can't do it asleep.

We can start by finding ways to improve:

the election process--get rid of Citizen United and lobbying for corporate favors.

the justice system--the public defenders office needs to be able to pay its lawyers as well as the private and wealthy, currently the system is nothing more than making deals for poor people that may or may not be guilty.  Truth needs to be the basis, not winning and money.

the health care of everyone--we have the highest paid Doctors in the world and more people with no access to preventative healthcare than all but the most debauched places on earth.  (good grief, Rwanda has universal healthcare, what is with us and our need to make healthcare a luxury item)

the income inequality in this country has created 2 very separate nations living together, like parellel but very different universes, a group that wants to put spikes in concrete so they won't have to see homeless people sleeping near their walks downtown and a group that prays they don't lose any fingers or toes tonight if the temperature dips.

the policing of our people has become focused and militarized.  It is not about protect and serve, but about us versus them.  Poor people have no one to call if they need help, they are more scared of the authorities than the criminals because they know their rights are not going to keep them from getting "stopped and frisked" for looking nonwhite or poor.

the education system--lets face it, rich children do not attend public school.  The public system is not to offer opportunity but to provide basic minimum wage workers.  About 40% of public high school graduates go a 4 year college after graduating as compared to 64% of private schools--which includes both private religious and the more prestigious preparatory schools.

the availability of jobs is blamed for vast amounts of poverty, but why do we have jobs that will not pull someone out of poverty.  If a job is important enough to be done, it should pay enough to keep someone from needing government assistance.  If it is not that important, why have anyone do it at all.  The minimum wage should always be equal to more than poverty level income for a 40 hour week.  Less is just someone wanting to make a profit off someone without sharing it with the person whose time they are using.

the infrastructure is badly in need of attention.  I see holes above me where I can see sky when I drive under an overpass.  We are building tourist attractions (we want those out-of-towners money) when we need to fix what will eventually kill someone.

the sustainability of our energy sources,  I live in a state that is still trying to call itself the Oil capital of the world--had we used the time since the first oil shortage to change sources we would be a place with money and options but instead we are dying of our own need to stay in the past.  Our houses are shaking daily from the fracking waste water, oil prices are so low that no one is making a profit and we just keep trying to build more pipelines and drill more wells.  We are as silly as the coal miners griping about losing coal mining jobs while burying their relatives with black lung disease long before they should.

So, it's time for more coffee.  Keep that brain alert and stay engaged.

There is more to do than elect a president.

the little people

I once was told by an Osage man to "never mention the little people".   Just talking about them would let them find you and that was very bad.  A Cherokee woman of pretty tough stuff told me that there was  a place in Osage County that the "little people" frequented.  She didn't go there but she was not afraid to tell me what she knew.  Neither person considered them to be a good thing.

A family I knew that was 3rd generation from Ireland was not that skittish about them, but implied that they were not cute little elves and pixies--that was Victorian-era donkey dung.

I once read that in the middle ages, land of feudal kings and bubonic plague, the merchants and landowner and nobility called the serfs and slaves and servants and farmers the "little people" and they rarely spoke of them either.

Those little people left us little about the details of their lives--perhaps if they had not been over-worked, malnourished, and illiterate they might have shared a diary or two.

The idea that over half the population of the time was considered nothing more than disposable labor horrifies me.  And being good at genealogy and capable of admitting that I am not the forgotten remnant of some royal family, I am fully aware that those people, those little people, those little, disposable, never spoken of except as extras in the theater of some important person's life drama, people, are my people.

We still have little people.  They are poor and powerless.  They are given a free education that we have known is not effective for 50% of the students since we first started following statistics.  They are given the opportunity to find a job that will barely pay for a place to live and unhealthy food in an area in which they will be surrounded with other little people that can barely pay their bills.  They will be victimized by those that just keep hunting for a way to make enough money to get out of there (we call those "get rich quick" schemes, and call the perpetrators predators, but they are really just more little people that are flailing about trying to figure out how to be the star of their own life drama instead of an extra till they die.)

What does it mean to be a little person?  Well most can write now, though not necessarily well. And while slavery was ended by an amendment--one with a huge hole in it for those that have committed a crime--hence forced labor for convicts is not an infringement on their rights as the constitution stands now--but how does one without money live free.

You can't live off the land unless you own land and have the money to pay the property taxes.  A person who tries to live unimpaired by their own lack of cash is either a squatter or homeless.  Camping on park land or federal land without having paid and received permission is not acceptable.  You will be removed.  You will be subject to fines or imprisonment.

So instead we have debt-slaves.  People that want the "good-life", that have bought the American Dream;  that believe all those sitcoms with middle class people living in 4000 square feet houses while working as a laborer, or a low-level white collar worker while supporting a spouse and 10 kids that have every hot toy and all the latest fashion accessories.  They believe that we are all equally able to go from struggling to feed ourselves to living in a mansion with just a little hard work and perseverance.

They believe, shoot, I believe--it's what keeps me going-- there is some hope that the payday to payday juggling act and always looking for the best sale and never wasting money on fads and fun will eventually end.  And it will, because eventually we all die.

I heard that Capitalism was actually not the way of things until starting in the mid 1700's.  Before that, we little people were working for the rich.  We were at their mercy.  They decided what we got.  They decided when and if we had free time or could marry or could move somewhere else or change careers.  The rich,  the landowners and nobility, they already owned everything and the little people were like their personal army of laborers, and craftsmen and personal servants.  In the bigger cities, there were those that led less slave-like positions, frequently as beggars or working for the town as removers of the dead, rag pickers, junk collectors, handyman or baker's helper or what ever could be found working for one of the merchants.  The merchant class was neither as respected nor as wealthy as the landowners, but trade was becoming more important for those items desired that couldn't be grown or made by the local little people.

And capitalism begins.

So no, we weren't better before it.  But there is no reason to think that the acquisition of money is the best we humans can do.

The inclusions in our government's basic tenets about equality and opportunity are a sign that better things were desired.

The fact that 200 years after they were first mentioned we still haven't gotten past a division of the important people and the little people just shows how hard it is to make real progress as long those in power fear only being equal.

A teacher once told me the problem with egalitarianism was that while the bottom rises, the top drops down.  We would no longer have people with 60 summer homes or garages for their 50 collector cars.
And we would no longer have people dying of preventable illness while sleeping in a cardboard box.  Apparently having too much is much more important than millions of people with too little.

Money needs to quit being the scorecard for successful living.

We are all just people.  All the same size.  All the same importance.

We little people are not really scary.

lesser of two evils

As we get closer to the actual election of our next president, the news stories get more horrifying and the Facebook posts become more insane.  There are women of Mexican heritage touting Donald Trump with dire warnings about Clinton.  There are black men totally invested in Clinton while ignoring that the last Clinton presidency started this amazing new race-to-the-top with incarcerating black men for minor drug charges--I must admit, it took the wind right out of the sails of the drive-by's in our town, but now we have a militarized Police force using profiling and stop and frisk as an excuse to harass people of color--especially if they are large and dark, if they are surly or could be high, you can shoot them.
We have Wiki-leaks--showing up a little at a time so that no one knows what to do with the information.  And do we know where it came from?  Do we know if it is altered?  Is anyone checking and reporting back to us?
A random study (or poll, or questionaire or imaginary dream re-creation announced that our paid bureaucrats in positions of power think we are not smart enough to know what is good for us--the government needs to just tell us what to do.  Our female candidate makes the point that Lincoln spoke out of both sides of his mouth to get rid of slavery, My granddaughter has pointed out--repeatedly--that by fifth grade, she has learned about the pilgrims 6 times, complete with how they dressed and how they ate turkey and dressing and cranberries and pumpkin pie and had the meal with the Native Americans, but has never got that that they survived to that meal due to assistance from the Native Americans.  (Forget most of the rest of that lesson--the clothes and food are not accurate and they never discussed when this meal occurred or how many years went by before anyone found a need to commemorate it or if it really happened at all.  This year they added the story of Pocahontas.  At least she learned she married John Rolf and not John Smith.  It is like history is by Disney anymore and has no actual purpose.

It does make the nonspecific study results in which our bureacrats need to tell us what to do, more likely.

But back to the topic at hand--an election between two candidates that are seen as evil, choose which one is the lesser evil.  (what I don't understand is why so few people get that there are other candidates and with media attention and their votes, they are as viable as those 2 evils.)
So lets look at some other "lesser of two evil" choices:

• would you rather be bitten by a rattlesnake or a copperhead?
• would you rather eat dog crap or cat crap
• would you rather be murdered by a knife or a gun
• would you rather be falsely accused/ then framed for rape or for murder
• would you rather live in a single room with no windows, doors or light, or a glass room that is constantly bright as day.

I could go one, but by now, most of you are thinking, I wouldn't want either one, I can avoid a snakebite (in truth, most of the snake bites I've seen were to the hands of drunken young men that decided to pick them up on a dare).
I'm not eating crap, try to make me and I'll fight you.
I try to avoid being murdered--by anything--and have no intention of going softly into that....blah, blah, blah,
I hope not to have anyone try to accuse and/or frame me, but certainly should never be expected to choose one.
and the last--who cares, sounds horrible, and only a madman/woman would cause me to have to choose either one.

In other words--we humans do not have to choose the lesser of two evils.  We don't have to.  We can find other options and if someone or something tries to force us to choose--we can fight, we can even go so far as to fight for our lives, so why should we go to the polls and "choose the lesser of two evils"
 I think perhaps this election cycle is a sign of bad times coming.  I think maybe we Americans, that  are so quick to spout off about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and "living free or dying free" and "government by the people and for the people" are going to have to stop our infernal self-absorption; our non-stop focus on buying the latest craze and being entertained and making our kids feel happy-happy-joy-joy all the time, and try to find an actual way to get our country on track.  I'm not a "let's get back to how it used to be" kind of person.  It needs to be a country for all its inhabitants and we all need to wake up and think, empathize, look at our current lives and make some decisions about what it means to be a member of this society.

We can keep thinking in bumper stickers--"make America Great again", "we are number 1" "America, love it or leave it"---none of those mean anything because they are slogans, not plans, not goals, and not truths.  We aren't number 1 in anything we should brag about.  We were never great to everyone.  And if it keeps going like it's going, most won't love it and no other country is going to welcome our refugees anymore than they are those of Africa or South America.  Wake up.

Because, truly, the lesser of two evils is still evil.
No one should have to vote for evil.
We can do better than that.

 

We daugters of Eve.

When I was little, I remember the discussions of 2 piece swim suits and---god-forbid--the bikini.

We were definitely going to hell in a hand basket.

Woman showing their bodies, flaunting them even, no modesty...what man would want such a woman.  Might as well marry a prostitute.

Then the sixty's hit full blown, with nudity on beaches, free love, drugs/sex/and rock and roll.

Doomed, definitely doomed---at least we women were.

These days there are places making it unlawful to wear a burkini--which is similar to a swimsuit from Victorian England. If their religion won't let them dress like the rest of us--what is wrong with their religion.  What kind of modern woman would allow a religion to tell them how to dress and act.

If you stand around any water cooler or sit in any work breakroom, you will hear gossip about coworkers.  If the workplace is both genders, it might get raunchy.  If it is mostly women, it will get judgemental.

Sally's hair makes her look older and Alfrieda is putting on weight, but the big one is always about sex, sex and men, sex and women, too much sex, not enough sex, needing sex, or their daughter's sex lives or their mother's sex  lives and on and on.  And it is never complimentary.  And they are more judgemental about that than men.

Women expect other women to act like a proper woman.  I have heard 60 year old women refer to themselves as "good girls" and have heard 30 year old women referred to as sluts because they are single and go clubbing on weekends.  We talk about each other as if how to be a proper woman is a very specific thing with very specific rules.

We women want our women to be independent, but married.   We want our women to be fashionable but not too sexy.  We want our women to be ambitious and to always have a clean house and take good care of the kids.  And we want every woman to want children.

A woman that accepts a faith that places her in a submissive role is not acceptable, although a good christian woman accepts her place.  A woman that has children without ever marrying can never be accepted into the group of permanent "good girls" although if that same woman marries later its like that never happened.  Some of the strongest women I have ever met raised families alone and never married. 

And woman that are overweight but never talk about dieting, that wear their hair in an easy to care for pony tail or cut short---hopeless.  Did they wax.  Do their hands look too big or to work-worn.  Is there make-up polished.  Is it too heavy?  Is too little?

No one is safe from the judging until they are dying, and then only if their lifestyle couldn't possibly have caused the illness.

I have been told that women caused original sin.  That we are the weaker sex because of this.  That we need protected and need pampered and need guidance and need firm rules of conduct.  I have been told our shallowness is hormonal or in the DNA or is a result of our inborn role as mothers.

Yet every day I see women that are hunters, marksmen, athletes, CEO's, criminals, terrible mothers, great spiritual leaders, and on and on, like a list of every possible job and role a human can have.

Why do we try so hard to define women.  Why do we try to put them into a box that meets our standards.  Why do women do that to each other?  Why?  Why?  Why?

And why do we worry so much about how women dress and what they look like and what set of sexual mores they live by.

There is so much more to being a woman than how a woman looks.

There is so much more to being a woman than her sexual functions.

Maybe we need to stop being the foot on the head of the women around us.  If our partner is like that, we do not have to agree with him (or her).  If our religion is like that, we do not have to participate in that part of the religion.  If our coworkers can find no other way to feel better about themselves; if our relatives can't stop being that judgemental person, we do not have to join in.

We are all women, just women.  And there is no one way to be that.

Being a woman is just being a person.  That is a journey that is hard enough without a bunch of silly superficial and arbitrary rules.

If wishes were horses...

I was an idealistic child.  I expected a fair world.  I expected, in order of strength of expectation, a fair government, fair police, a fair school principal, a fair teacher, fair parents, fair friends and last--and probably least--a fair sibling.

Since I expected all this fairness, I was frequently disappointed and occasionally just plain mad.

I was also a wishy-washy child, not prone to confrontation (except with little sister) and always trying to be what I saw as nice--lady-like, even.  Because of that, I may have started a few too many of my complaints about the sad state of the planet with the words "I wish..."

As in,  "I wish that Mrs. Teacher didn't treat Lulu worse than Joseph just because she doesn't like her mother."  Or  "I wish we could all afford to go to summer camp"  or even  "I wish that the coaches didn't treat kids in glasses like they were hopeless at softball, they like to play too"  I may have been a whiner, and some of those things directly affected me, but some of them didn't.  I really did want a fairer world.

My mother's response was also, frequently, "If wishes were horses then beggars would ride."

She said that to me quite a lot.  More than the familiar "who said the world was fair".  Much more than "God works in mysterious ways" although I was prone to wishing God was fair also, so she may have given up on that one.

I am still pretty idealistic.  I still wish the world was fair.

I have figured out that with some truly awful things---perhaps God's mysterious ways are the cause, such as childhood cancer and tornado's sucking whole families into the sky and auto driver's having heart attacks and killing themselves and a van full of red cross workers--those I have to leave alone.  If I thought about those too much, I might become incapable of carrying on.

But other things?  There are a lot of things we could make fairer; systems we control and untruths that we agree to call true and plainly preventable ugliness.

I wish we could make it easier for everyone to get enough to eat.  And make it easier to get healthy food--no more food deserts in poor neighborhoods.   The government pays farmers to destroy excess food that would drive down prices and groceries and restaurants routinely throw out food that is completely edible just not purchased.  Some of them pour bleach on it in the dumpster to prevent anyone from eating that food safely since they didn't pay for it.

I wish we could get rid of poor neighborhoods--not by gentrification but income equilibration.  I remember a long boring car ride with parents in which I questioned why garbage collecting paid less than accounting.  Sitting behind a desk in clean clothes sounded much more pleasant than riding on a garbage truck in heat and rain and cold, and the smell could not be good.  The discussion about how the accountant had gone to college and the garbage collector had not, and that made his time more valuable became an argument about everyone's time being valuable, life was too short, and it made no sense to pay someone more for a more comfortable job.  I argued that maybe we should all get the same amount for our time since we all got a set amount of it and none of us knew how much that might be and "I wish jobs were fair"  ended with a "shush, you sound like a communist".

I wish every little nerd child  (we know who we were, and only want to learn more) and every older child and adult that found they had a passion to learn how to do something new had access to the education they needed to do that.  Not just college degrees but also skills and the arts.  I know many people that have piled up student loan debt--and not on the thing they are passionate about, but for a degree that someone talked them into because they could get a job, or a better job, or a good paying job, but not the job they really wanted and loved.  We don't really send people out to explore their options and we definitely don't encourage our children to find what they love.   We don't send our children in pursuit of their dreams, but of money--artistic children are encouraged to learn something saleable, hire-able, to make a better living.  Athletic children are encouraged to become professionals in a field that is so competitive and cutthroat that it eats their childhood then leaves them rudderless when they stop growing short of the body requirements expected in that world or get injured before they make any money.  And then there are those families that no member has ever had the ability to get an education.  Families in which they lose their dreams and hopes because reality calls for them to help earn money to feed the rest of the family long before they should have such pressure put on them.  If we stacked a single sheet of paper  for each person that wanted an education  but couldn't get  the one they dreamed of because of money or status or time requirements or responsibilities, it would be a terrifyingly high mountain.  But remember, at one time, there was no public education system, only rich children were educated to read and write.  There is no reason that our nation couldn't value education above weapons and make education free for those that wanted it.

I wish Walmart was a profit-sharing company.  That every employee shared in the profits at a rate of 50% divided quarterly with the employees and 50% with shareholders--which includes our own richest family.  And the profit sharing needs to be even, from lowest paid to highest--none of this million to the top and 10$ to the bottom.  Greed is ugly, we need to start valuing every person's time fairly.   (and the Walton' and the other shareholders would still get plenty--they didn't spend any time working, just bought some stocks)

We could all make at least a living wage doing whatever we chose as our life work.

We could all receive preventative healthcare--real preventative care--education heavy, exercise heavy, nutrition-heavy preventative healthcare, emotional coping mental healthcare--not just the insurance-will-pay-for-these-immunizations-and-these-screening-exams at these ages.  These days, healthcare is all about what can the healthcare provider get money from and not at all about improving the quality of life of the patient.  (The very name "patient"  implies a dependent, passive, and unimportant person.)

We could all receive basic financial and economic lifeskills starting in childhood.  Right now, public school is all about 1. following directions, 2. basic reading for comprehension, 3. writing for basic form-filling out, 4. Math for basic low-level work.  It teaches little regarding emotional health, caring for our selves, finding what we love doing or what we do best.  We could be aiming for helping each child reach their full potential.  Instead, except for those rare savants and the children blessed with a private education in an amazing school--the goal is to create minimally skilled, compliant, followers capable of low-level labor and office jobs.

It's not fair.

And the justice system--that is also not fair--which really sucks, since justice is supposed to be all about fairness.

I wish that people that have served their time were not pariahs afterward, relegating them to recidivism due to inability to become anything else.  Prison should not be for profit.  They should be able to get an education, psychological assistance, chemical dependency assistance, and learn skills beyond the current slave labor they provide to big corporations to make those companies have a higher profit.  Yes, they committed a crime, but if we are going to sentence every person that commits a crime to a death sentence of hopelessness and continued failure, maybe we should just decide that is who we are as a nation and kill them at entry.

 Our justice system is flawed, we have 2 adversarial teams, the prosecution and the defense.  The prosecution team includes law enforcement and the defense team frequently only includes a single unpaid and minimally experienced lawyer and both of their goals is to win.  It is not at all about truth.  It has nothing to do with justice or fairness or making the world a safer place.  And no one cares if the law that makes something a crime is fair or just or even sensible.  Our justice system has become a meat grinder that we put people into and what comes out in the end is broken lives and tears.

I wish that corporations were not controlling our government.  I wish the people running for office were not being paid for by those corporations.  I wish that the current voting system was clean and fair and unable to be hacked or twisted or bought.  Unfortunately, there is no actual oversight.  Every state is over their own.  Imagine if we all voted, 1 person 1 vote, and every person's vote counted equally.  Not this-electoral stuff.  No gerrymandering for party affiliation.  No closing of polling places or employers not letting people off get to the poll or refusing any ID's that are likely to be hard for a certain group of people to get.  Every person has a vote--and it counts.  That should not be hard.

I wish that life was fair: that the systems created by our government were fair, that the way we choose who represents us in our government were fair, that the way we decide who gets to be happy and who only gets to yearn for a chance at happiness was fair.

In my world--we all get to ride. It's only fair.

The path we took leads here.

"Guns don't kill people, people do,"
 We have all heard it, and many more.  Pro-gun is as American as rodeo's and college football. 

The gun issue has its own amendment--the second.
The first is 

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." 

The second is

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Interestingly, the amendment never mentions guns or firearms specifically.  They could be bearing anything from pocket knives, pitchforks, beany-flips, hunting rifles, muskets, slingshots, hand grenades or dirty bombs.  Arms is vague, and back when this was written, most people didn't even own a firearm and the usual firearm was a single shot packed just before taking a shot.  Soldiers used bayonets and tomahawks more frequently.  Less than 15% of the population owned guns at that time.

The purpose of the amendment was more to prevent the rise of a fascist government or the invasion by another country than to put firearms in the hands of every man, woman and child.

A well-regulated militia--the part that never makes it on the bumperstickers--implies the militia is-well---regulated.  It's organized.  Its members are known and some sort of training occurred.  The National Guard comes to mind, or a reserve.

In the late 80's there were a lot of militias.  They were not well regulated--as the capital of my home state can attest.  Everyone had a relative in a militia back then.  And while stories of black helicopters and groups building bunkers is now comedically portrayed in movies, there was a lot of fear--both of the government and of the militias.  The members spoke in NRA bumper sticker and wore camo to Walmart and bought lots of ammo and beef jerky and bottled water.  I was invited more than once to join one, presented like they needed Sarah Connors type females to fight for a free future, but with paper pamphlets with illustrations that combined the art of 1950's Betty Crocker and the appeal of Phyllis Schafly.  If their war had happened, I would have been shot right after the militia won.

This time was definitely when the NRA's message started overwhelming our history.  From 1620 to 1836, those guns made in the America were constructed one at a time by a gunsmith.  They were as good as that gunsmith, and not cheap.  Every little laborer was not packing heat.

Samuel Colt was first to mass-produce a revolver which was patented in 1836.   Guns aren't hooked to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  They are hooked to the Industrial Age.  If a good gunsmith could live a comfortable life making good guns one at a time--the owner of a gun factory could make himself into a tycoon.

http://business.time.com/2012/12/18/americas-gun-economy-by-the-numbers/

 The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) was founded in Virginia in 1871.

In 1975, the NRA-ILA, the lobbying arm of the NRA was started.  It is now one of, if not the most powerful lobby affecting our government. 

But politics alone did not create our gun-heavy, violence prone situation.  After reconstruction, we continued to move West, and we continued to find ways to make large quantities of things more cheaply through improved technology.  Things like 10 cent western novels and true crime novels--and America loved the gunslinger books.

When silent movies started, those same subjects, high drama, high violence--frequently called "shoot-em ups" were the rage------and still are.

It is estimated that 47% of U.S. households own guns.

Over 5 million U.S. citizens are members of the NRA.

Over 13.5 billion dollars revenue from guns and ammunition in U.S. in one year.

Over 229 billion dollars spent on the effects of gun violence in a year.

There are over 310 million firearms estimated to be in this country but less than 150,000 currently registered.

 http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/02/americas-gun-business-by-the-numbers.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/upshot/compare-these-gun-death-rates-the-us-is-in-a-different-world.html?_r=0

So, we went from less than 15% gun ownership when we built this country and its 2nd amendment to 47% gun ownership after we let the NRA lobby our lawmakers so heavily starting in 1975.

But the NRA is not the only For-profit fear monger with the ear of our lawmakers.

http://time.com/3984453/defense-contractors-lobbying/

Military contractors (53 different ones) spend millions on lobbying for increasing our budget toward defense spending despite the USA spending nearly 3x the amount of the next big spender (China) and more than all the others combined.

We cut social programs and tighten our belts to buy more weapons to store--or, god-forbid--use.  We could easily destroy the human life on this planet several times over without making another thing, but he need to keep building and stockpiling because the profit is in the making.

In 2012, I heard a podcast about "lonesome George", a 102 year old Galapagos Turtle, and the last of his subspecies.  It was one of the saddest stories I had heard, but not because of what they said or how they said it.  Empathy kicked in, and I realized that we humans WILL eventually have our own "Lonesome George".

Right now, it's hard to envision except on TV.  We have swarmed over the surface of the planet, sucking up resources, creating trash, fouling water both over and under the land.  We destroy other species for parlor decorations, facebook posts and fashion statements.  Our leaders are so far from where most of us live our lives that the 98% of us that are flailing about trying to survive and find our purpose are in a continuous low-level state of anxiety because of our own powerlessness and feared worthlessness.

We take our food money to buy guns, then use our guns to take money to buy food PLUS those highly advertised things that will prove we aren't worthless.

We drink and get high to mask that anxiety.

We search for hope--at church, at shrink, at retreat--where we can find something to take away that sourceless fear.

Or we watch a good thriller,  read a shoot'em up, do some target practice.

Because, what is a gun if not a symbol of power.  With power we are safe.

At least Lonesome George was not the author of his species demise.

Alas--that was us humans, also.

Don't shoot anyone.