300 Words: Thoughts of a pretired French Teacher

I need the catharsis of writing down my thoughts.

Despite thinking about it and having subjects I would like to treat, as I sit down and start letting the words flow from the head through my fingertips, I have no idea where this is going.

Maybe that is good.

I have just come off of several days of posting George Santos photos with catchy expressions that make us aware of the lying and modification of truth that he has been involved in as he worked toward being a member of the House of Representatives. It amazes me, or maybe not, that he is getting away with it.

I remember back before the elections of 2016, when I was nervous about the outcome, that I always thought that the lies and truth modifications would catch up with the individuals. I was wrong. For whatever reason, lying seems to work for some people as they become covered with some sort of teflon that allows them to continue on. How they avoid criminal prosecution and prison is beyond me.

We are living in a strange time when that kind of lying is commonplace. For some reason, it is okay for some, and not for others. I know, deep down, that this is not a situation that will last forever. I know that at some point in time, as for other horrific times in history, people will look back and say, “How did that ever happen? How did those people get away with that?” I long, though, for that and I wonder how long it will take.

It is a time period when the news is nothing but depressing. It is a time when the clock seems to have turned backwards instead of moving forward. It is a time when it seems as if respect for others and their lives doesn’t seem very important to some factions of the population. It is especially bad when people perpetrate their negativity on others under the guise of religious beliefs.

I still believe in the basic goodness of humanity and long for it to blossom and become more evident than the hate that seems to grow out of every crack and crevice of our society.

Let’s leave my thoughts there, for the moment. The day is relatively warm for a winter day and the sun is shining. Tonight, we are going out to dinner with beautiful friends to celebrate a job change. I am looking forward to that. Sometimes, you just have to hold on to those small, wonderful moments to get through the tough ones.

WWMLKS?  What would Martin Luther King say?

A gurglng British pitcher…apparently commonplace in most English homes…

The weather is gloomy. The skies are gray and there is little view of the sun. That is the way it has been for the past few days. The dark days have been brightened by the young, shining faces of the grandkids in our house, creating a beautiful chaos that brings great joy. It is tiring and yet it is rejuvenating.

I don’t even know where to go with the insanity of the times in which we live. The politics and craziness in the world is overwhelming. The crazy leaders, the false narratives that abound, even a politician in New York who made up his own history, falsified everything, denies that he is a fraud and even though raised a Roman Catholic, said that he was Jew-ish… When does this end and when will the insane people who fabricate realities to sell to the masses be prosecuted or at least shut down? How is it possible for liars to continue to get away with things and how is it possible for criminals to continually avoid being put in the slammer?

Meanwhile, across the world in Europe, of all places, a war continues to be waged in which a huge superpower is performing so poorly that what I had thought would be a short invasion like maybe, that of Czechoslovakia, is now almost a year in length. The destruction and chaos this war has produced boggles the mind. Once again, an evil ruler who has his own narrative is at the forefront of the struggle and his own people, for the most part, have no real understanding of what is taking place.

I pity the poor Russian people who in 1917 thought that they had finally gotten rid of an oppressive government only to find that it was alive and morphing into different forms. I am saddened for the Ukrainian people who had found a better way to live and are now under siege because of a mad ruler in a neighboring country. At this point, they are fighting for more than just the country, they are also fighting to manage and live what they believe is their true destiny.

Surprisingly, I have hope. I realize that although things change, as they French proverb goes, they always remain the same. Things are no worse now than they ever have been, it is just a reconstituted version. Human beings have not changed. There are good ones and bad ones. Unfortunately, in the age of the Internet, we hear more information.

Hope, hope, hope, a four letter word that we need to hang on to as we all do our best to remain vigilant and work toward maintaining our democratic ideals.

Happy 2023!