I wonder: If Facebook didn’t exist, would I even know what “overwhelm” is? This only comes up for me because FB seems to be the engine block for the motor that is overwhelm. FB seems to be a sort of industry built with memes around not only talking people out of mental health issues but also convincing them they have issues in the first place.
Looking back on my life
3-5-2025
I just noticed where this falls in the order of blog posts days after I posted one. It falls just before my last post a few years ago about learning to mourn your actions without blame or guilt. Ironic? Coincidence?
I don’t mean to complain, but I’m going to anyway. I’ve been treated really shitty by work supervisors. First, I was let go so someone else — let’s just say it IS who you know — could replace me at a rate of 30% more than I was making. And they weren’t even qualified to do as much as I was in that communications position. For instance, they didn’t even know how to cut and paste in a Word document.
Secondly, I was let go from one of the best jobs I ever had after only a month or two because my supervisor lied to the executive director that I had forgotten my business cards when going to a news conference, That was when, in fact, SHE had forgotten HAR cards and I SAVED HER ASS CUZ I HAD HERS (both of ours) IN MY CAR. Funny, she didn’t know how to cut and paste either.I never told that executive director, and I used to see her in church after that happened. Just real crappy.
Then, I had a part-time job where the supervisor had everyone sign in on a sheet that had been Xeroxed a million times. When I asked about my two months of pay, she showed me “time sheets” on which my name had been whited out before they were copied. She was probably collecting everyone’s pay. She probably didn’t know how to cut and paste either, except with scissors and glue.
When I think back on the last 15-20 years of my life and how far I have come or not come — mostly not come — I realize there have been some really mean people who have just treated me very badly. Boohoo right? Yeah, boohoo. I’m writing a song about ruminating, and I’m pretty experienced, if not downright skilled, at “moving forward,” so don’t worry about me.
I’m just complaining because my life has been a lesson that has taught me there have been many times I should have done things differently. Jobs. Volunteering. Speaking out for one cause or another. Relationships. Sometimes, life deals us a bad hand. I was dealt a few because I made some decisions that had poor results. To anyone I have mistreated along the way, I apologize. To those who have mistreated me, Fuck You.
Did I mention, I never really deserved to be treated like shit in the first place? I’ve only ever tried to do good and be a good person. And by the way, just so you know, the shit keeps coming.
How ‘smooth’ ….
“How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.” ~ Black Hawk, Sauk
Fill in the blank with the same word or phrase
The word or phrase might be “love,” or “care for,” for example …. Why do we _____ others and expect them to _____ us in return when they don’t even _____ themselves?
Can art change the world? God, I hope so.
“Constructive ideas (not wars) mark the forward progress of mankind. Art can change the world. Art is a communication that is more powerful and more real to any human being than any gun or war. It changes people’s opinions, style, ideas, and even sometimes people’s way of living. We should concentrate on art and peace, not hate and war. The day we can truly trust each other, there will be peace on Earth.” ~ Anonymous
Just when you think you had it all …
“We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.” ~ Ursula K. Le Guin
‘Nonviolence is a kind of energy that resides in an individual’
“We do not need different individuals in power so much as we need a different kind of power in individuals.” ~ Michael Nagler, The Search for a Nonviolent Future
Trump’s Taxes Show Chronic Losses and Years of Income Tax Avoidance
The Times obtained Donald Trump’s tax information extending over more than two decades, revealing struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due.
Source: Trump’s Taxes Show Chronic Losses and Years of Income Tax Avoidance – The New York Times
Where can you find the truth?
“Why do you run around looking for the truth? Be still, and there it is—in the mountain, in the pine, in yourself.” ~ Lao Tzu, Conscious Arrival
When does it happen? When will it happen?
“It can only be after we stop hating ourselves that we have the opportunity to stop hating (and love) others.” ~ cjzurcher
Do you let yourself be enslaved by tyrants?
“The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support.” ~ Étienne De La Boétie, The Politics Of Obedience
‘Learn to mourn your actions without blame, without guilt’
“Learn to look behind your judgments to the need at the root of them. Learn from your limitations without losing self-respect. Learn to mourn your actions without blame, without guilt.” ~ Marshall B. Rosenberg
La clairvoyance “clear vision” is Camus’ word for lucidity
“On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.” (sans toute la clairvoyance possible) ~ Albert Camus from one of the more memorable passages of The Plague, in which he addresses the volunteer sanitary groups put together by citizens to clean the town’s overloaded hospitals.
Land of Plenty Leonard Cohen quotation
“For the millions in a prison
That wealth has set apart—
For the Christ who has not risen,
From the caverns of the heart
For the innermost decision
That we cannot but obey
For what’s left of our religion,
I lift my voice and pray;
May the lights in the land of Plenty
Shine on the truth someday.”
John Lewis: Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation | NYT
John Lewis wrote this article in the New York Times as he was dying.
Though I am gone, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe.
Read the rest here: Opinion | John Lewis: Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation – The New York Times
The masks we wear, inside and out
I started writing something about the masks we wear and this quotation from James Baldwin popped up in my email today:
“Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” ~ James Baldwin
Are the your dragons really princes and princesses?
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
What if we all stood by our beliefs like Liz McAlister does?
“I think the crime is the weapons. The crime is the money spent on the weapons. The crime is the money taken from the real needs in our country and in our world to spend it on these weapons of mass destruction. And we need to stop that. And that’s the message that I want to continue to stand behind.” ~ Liz McAlister
Read more about her sentencing for acts to save humanity from nuclear war
What moves your heart?
“My heart is moved by all I cannot save: So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” ~ Adrienne Rich
A message from Kings Bay Plowshares April 4, 2018
“We come in peace on this sorrowful anniversary of the martyrdom of a great prophet, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Fifty years ago, on April 4, 1968, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee as a reaction to his efforts to address “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism.”
…
Dr. King said, “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world (today) is my own government.” This remains true in the midst of our endless war on terror. The United States has embraced a permanent war economy.”
~ warresisters.org
