All posts by Teri

Freedom of Speech via Blood and Bones

Politics

Trump, Jeff Sessions, and the rest of his administration are trying hard to undermine and erode our press freedoms. I say good luck with that.

As American citizens, the appalling and worrisome efforts by our president to suppress our free press and freedom of speech should be our “red line.”

And I have unquestionable faith that if ever our press freedoms are in real jeopardy, most of us will do whatever it takes to protect our right to speak freely and the written word.

I must say though, that I am unnerved and alarmed not to be able to write “all” of us.

It is my belief and faith in “most” of my fellow citizens that Trump and his political lackeys underestimate the power of the written word.

Below is a heartbreaking but hopeful story about freedom of information, and the unsinkable power of the written word.

Syrian human rights activist Mansour Omari was arrested in his Damascus office in February 2012.

His crime? Fighting for freedom of speech.

For his offense, Mr. Omari spent close to a year in a series of wretched prisons.

Nine of those months were spent in a fetid underground jail overseen by Maher al-Assad, the brother of the brutal dictatorial Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The why and how Mr. Omari was released still remains unclear, but while he was detained he never gave up on the written word and the power of information.

On Tuesday, August 8, Mr. Omari carefully and tenderly laid out five scraps of worn material that had secretly traveled with him in the collar and cuffs of his shirt, to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s preservation center.

Those five scraps contained the names of 82 prisoners in the faith and hope of informing their families of their whereabouts as well as to document the atrocities against them.

The fading names on the five scraps, which included the prisoners’ names and location, were scratched on small bits of fabric cut from the backs of their shirts.

The invaluable information written on those five measly strips was produced by using broken chicken bones from their paltry food rations as pens, and a mixture of blood from their rotting gums and flakes of rust from their iron prison bars as ink.

The written word in blood and bones.

The scraps of priceless information were carefully and secretly sewn into Omari’s shirt, as ruthless Syrian government guards fastidiously watched over them.

Omari eventually smuggled those bloody scraps out of his deplorable underground prison, past brutal Syrian government forces, and safely across oceans.

Nothing was going to stop Mr. Omari from immortalizing the names of his fellow prisoners.

Let Mr. Omari serve as a courageous and heroic symbol of the power of the written word and the lengths someone will go to disseminate information and stand up for truth and justice.

 

Just Call Me Chicken Little

Politics

I recently posted the following messages on my Facebook page:

“Right before Trump’s recent visit to Poland, the White House insisted that he be met by cheering crowds. So Poland’s authoritarian and nationalist Law and Justice Party accommodated Trump and bused in untold numbers of cheering crowds who created the illusion of a strong American leader adored by masses of foreign citizens. WOW.”

Followed by:

“Too many people take for granted the freedoms we enjoy in this country. Instead of the left and right and everyone in between going after each other, we should take an “honest” look at what is going on and have the guts to speak up for the truth.”

A Facebook friend replied to my posts with the following four words:

“Don’t worry Chicken Little.”

CHICKEN LITTLE ??????

Now I remember those delicious mini sandwiches at KFC called Chicken Littles. (BTW, only people who were born before the 1970’s will remember the fried chicken square, topped with a weensy piece of lettuce and thrown into a mayo ladened bun.)

[I’m pretty sure that my friend wasn’t accusing me of being a chicken sandwich.]

I distantly recalled a children’s book having something to do with a worried hen, but I had all but forgotten the story line, so I looked it up.

I quickly discovered that Chicken Little was indeed a character in a book also titled Henny Penny.

So I kicked off my research frenzy with:

Henny Penny – The Book
Convinced by Chicken Little that the sky is falling, Henny Penny and a band of gullible friends march off to tell the king, only to meet their end at the hands of a wily fox.

[Whoa. Henny Penny and her gullible friends met their end? I’m most certain my friend meant me no physical harm.]

But Henny Penny’s unhappy ending caused me to curiously type on.

Chicken Little – The Book
A folk tale about a chicken who, when struck on the head by an object from above, believes the sky is falling, and the world is coming to an end, causing widespread panic.

[To be clear, I Facebook spoke about fake crowds and telling the truth. Who ever said the world was coming to an end? Although I’ll admit, I do believe civility in politics has come to an end. But could my words actually cause widespread panic?]   

And lo and behold, through my continuing and admittedly obsessive research, I discovered that in 2005 Chicken Little was made into a movie!

Chicken Little – The Movie
Chicken Little mistakes a falling acorn for a piece of the sky. After ruining his reputation, the young and inexperienced chicken is determined to restore his good name. But just as things are going his way, a real piece of the sky lands on Chicken Little’s head. Now he has to figure out how to come to the rescue of his fellow citizens against the aliens who have started an invasion.

[Hmm. Was my friend suggesting that I had ruined my reputation by posting that people were bused into the streets of Warsaw Poland to fake-cheer for Trump? If so, how will I ever restore my good name? And as an aside, don’t expect me to come to the rescue of anyone, because I am a bit of a…chicken.]

Once I googled around, there was no end to the Chicken Little definitions.

Chicken Little (Two Words) – Urban Dictionary
A man with a little penis.

[Obvi not what my friend accused me of, but I do know of a certain “someone” who was accused by Marco Rubio of having this “situation.”]  

Chickenlittle – Urban Dictionary – One Word
Nickname for someone who is dumb.

[I sure hope my friend doesn’t think I’m dumb! Being called dumb wouldn’t be a Facebook-friend deal breaker, but to quote our President, it’s not nice, it’s not fair, and it’s mean mean mean.]

Chicken Little – The Merriam-Webster Dictionary – Two Words
An alarmist or doomsayer. A euphemism for doomsday preppers. Someone who makes a big deal out of nothing. A person who constantly warns that a calamity is imminent. A vociferous pessimist. Someone who makes a big production out of a small event.

[Okay, I will agree that I can be overly pessimistic. Or maybe you could call me realistic. And you got me because I admit that I do think Trump is a calamity waiting to happen. But to be fair, a lot of people feel that way.]

Now you may think what I’m going to say next is way off track, but I can’t help my pessimistic self, so stay with me. Don’t go anywhere yet.

This past Wednesday, Trump called Venezuela’s President Maduro a “bad leader who dreams of becoming a dictator.”

Should we call Trump “Chicken Little” because he thinks President Maduro of Venezuela is the opposite of nice, and that he has managed to do a lot of unfair things such as:

  • Demeaned his opponents, including but not limited to journalists, governors, mayors, and even his attorney general.
  • Dismantled Venezuela’s rule of law.
  • Overly uses the phrase: “We need order and justice.”
  • Packed the Supreme Court with his loyalists and cronies of his political party.
  • Appointed Judges who have been overturning laws he and his party oppose.
  • Approved the Supreme Court’s ruling to dissolve the legislature entirely (This move provoked a “Chicken Little” outcry by hundreds of thousands in Venezuela, so the decision was reversed for now.)
  • Created a political body called the “National Constituent Assembly” who will be tasked with rewriting Venezuela’s Constitution and restructure or dismantle any branch of government seen as disloyal to the president and his political party.

Call me stupid, but it looks like Venezuela’s democratic sky is indeed falling.

So go ahead—call me Chicken Little if you so choose.

I haven’t said the sky is falling—yet.

Because I pride myself in thinking that I am part of the media truth tellers.  And all that talk of fake news, is well, fake. All trumped up so to speak.

And I’m not an alarmist—unless it’s time to be alarmed.

If I cry out that “the sky is falling,” in all likelihood, it will be.

Every Shoe Tells a Story

Observe & Ponder


I recently spent a euphoric family sleepover weekend at home with my loved ones.

In the middle of a sleepless night, as my loved ones slept, I passed the pile of shoes near the front door and was compelled to photograph them.

Proof that although I was stressed and sleepless, love was all around me.

The image of my families’ footwear told the story, without my having to say one word.

The adult female and male shoes, baby girl shoes, and little boy shoes, helter-skelter in the entranceway was the dead giveaway that a lot of my favorite people were “in the house.”

As I recently combed through my phone photos, the family shoe image jumped out causing me to pause and reflect on the whole shoe thing.

Shoes can speak volumes about a person and their personality. And shoes can oftentimes speak for themselves.

They can also serve as a symbol for family gatherings, historical events, and more.

No matter what the situation, shoes will most likely tell a story.

Where have your shoes taken you? What do your shoes say about you? If someone were to spend a day in your shoes, what would they experience?

Early in my life, I recall feeling horribly embarrassed by my shoes. Many of them had been purchased at the Salvation Army, and because my feet were so big (I still wear close to a size 9), I often wore boys’ shoes.

And everyone has heard the old adage: You can tell a man by his shoes. Or a woman.

Two starkly different perceptions are conjured up in my head when thinking about shoes: The dark vs. the light visual.

The light side first:

My baby’s first pair of shoes. (How I wish I would have bronzed them). My daughter’s orthopedic ankle-high boots attached to a bar brace at night, ballet slippers, tap shoes, and her first pair of heels. My son’s first pair of soccer cleats, ice skates, and wingtips. And all those uber-expensive sneakers the kids insisted they had to have because everyone else was wearing them.

My despised but admittedly comfortable saddle shoes I was forced to wear at Saint Ambrose Catholic School for eight long years, my white go-go boots, penny loafers, and Mary Jane’s.

My first pair of designer shoes; Manolo Blahnik’s bought in error. After an afternoon of champagne celebrating at the Four Seasons, I saw a gorgeous pair of black bowed heels in a store window. When I tried them on they fit like a glove. I thought the price on the box said $77.00. I charged them in my champagne stupor, and only realized on the train ride home that my receipt said $770.00. Non-refundable.  What a difference a 0 can make.

If you are a regular reader of my blog posts, you know there will always be the darker, more sinister side of things.

The dark side now:

I insisted on burying my grandmother in her slippers because she always complained that her bunions were killing her. Except lung cancer killed her in the end.

On 9/11, as the towers burned and then crumbled, women yanked off their high-heels so they could flee the cataclysm as quickly as possible. Heels don’t make for fast running. A pink spike here, a black slingback there.

Blood-stained, dusty, almost-unrecognizable shoes from that unfathomable Tuesday. One woman got her shoe and foot caught in a piece of twisted steel and thought she would die there. Someone helped to free her foot, and she recovered her shoe. He saved her life but she never found him to offer her thanks. Maybe he died.

Others discarded their shoes as they trudged through stairwells flooded with water from fire sprinklers. And the entire floor of the Battery Park tunnel was strewn with shoes from people taking them off to run as fast as fast could run.

A grisly photograph sent to me by a colleague of a pile of bloody shoes belonged to victims from a site of a terrorist blast in Kabul, Afghanistan on July 23, 2016.  Some still had bodiless feet and legs attached to them.

On a visit to D.C., a lone pair of dirty old boots left at the Vietnam Memorial Wall.

And the hundreds of shoes piled high at the Washington, D.C. Holocaust Museum. In a room full of smelly, nauseatingly musty shoes. Heels, flats, sandals, loafers, wide, narrow, old, new, worn, withered, scuffed, colorful, dark, white, leather, cloth. Men’s and women’s shoes.

And baby shoes. Lots and lots of baby shoes. A mountain of baby shoes. No missed bronzing opportunities for them.

On the wall of the shoe room was the following poem by Moses Schulstein:

We are the shoes. We are the last witnesses.
We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers
From Prague, Paris, and Amsterdam.
And because we are only made of fabric and leather
And not of blood and flesh,
Each one of us avoided the Hellfire.

 

The Common Sense Party

Politics

I think it’s time for a new political direction. And maybe even a new party.

I like the sound of the Common Sense Party because it speaks volumes about the current situation.

And a new party completely meshes with the various debates I’ve recently had with family, friends, and colleagues who are on both sides of the political spectrum.

Republicans currently control the Senate and the House, and almost two-thirds of governor’s offices. Over the past nine years, Republicans have gained about 1,000 seats in the state legislature and currently dominate at a rate not seen since the Civil War.

Republicans control both chambers in 32 states, including 17 with veto-proof majorities.

I keep asking myself how it is possible that so many U.S. citizens are okay with the
the top one-tenth of 1 percent owning more than the entire bottom 90 percent.

Can someone in the 90% please answer that question for me?

Last month Republican Congress approved one of the cruelest pieces of legislature in history.

And yet many Americans don’t seem to care that 23 million of us may soon be without health insurance while billionaires will enjoy ridiculously generous tax breaks.

And according to the Congressional Budget Office, not only would the American Health Care Act leave 23+ million of us without insurance but they also warned that premiums for older workers and lower income Americans would soar.

A month ago, while cases of celebratory beer were wheeled into the Capitol, President Trump praised the House version of the AHCA. Last week Trump called it “mean.”

Thanks for your flip-flop and take-charge input Mr. President.

Speaking of take-charge, the Republicans seem to be in charge of everything these days.

Well, maybe not everything.

Powerful corporations with selfish agendas also have significant influence over all things economic and political in our country.

So here it is folks: Republicans and big business are the now the masters of the American universe.

They are winning, bigly.

The Republicans insist that low taxes on the rich are the key to prosperity.

Prosperity for who?

Not the struggling middle class. Not the lower income Americans.

And now the American Health Care Act Part Two is in the competent hands of the Republican Senators, right?

But why is the plan top secret? And why are there no female Senators in on their cloak-and-dagger pet project?

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell created a working group of 13 male senators, including himself to work on the health care bill. He made sure to include staunch conservatives and ardent foes of the Affordable Care Act, but not one woman.

Thirteen senators in the group and Mitch couldn’t give one of those seats to a female?

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat in New York’s 12th District, said it best: “Women are half of the population but make up only 19.4 percent of Congress.”

Shouldn’t every woman in America be alarmed by that?

The Middle class keeps shrinking, women continue to get the shaft, and the poor are getting poorer, while Republicans are focused on providing the top 1% with $3 trillion in tax cuts.

Why are Americans allowing our government to coddle and reward the 1%?

What about the rest of us?

Why aren’t the 99% of Americans outraged that while we struggle to get health care, housing, education, and even clean drinking water, the Republicans along with the 1% hold our purse strings?

Here is why America is in this pickle:

The United States has one of the lowest election turnouts of any major country on earth.

Sad but true.

And think of it this way: If liberals voted at the same rate as conservatives, Hillary Clinton would be president and the Democrats would control the Senate.

Some will say that would have been terrible, which is why a new political party might be what’s needed to heal our wounds and come together as one America.

An America that works for all of us, not just the 1%.

In 2016, 43% of eligible Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 voted in the presidential election, vs. 71% of Americans over the age of 65.

Midterm elections were even worse: In 2014, 17% of Americans between 18 and 24 voted, compared to 59% of seniors. An appalling 36.7% of eligible voters cast ballots in 2014.

Think about that. Do the youth in America not realize that this land is their land?

Stop texting and listen up kids: Are you completely oblivious to what’s happening to your future? Americans over 65 had their turn. It’s your turn now. The future is up to you. Start voting already.

Otherwise the GOP keep on winning. And a YUGE tax cut for the wealthy is on its way.

I will end this blog post with a recent quote from Speaker Paul Ryan: “Transformational tax reform can be done, and we are moving forward. Full speed ahead.”

Full speed ahead.

Where’s the outrage?

And can someone organize the next massive protest march ASAP?