Gorgeous Spring Days Don't Bury Reality
This was originally posted on Facebook on May 12, 2022.
I went out for a walk in my perfect beige neighborhood right at dusk.
Still enough light to see the color of brand-new grass, and suddenly-flowering trees.
None of it buries the emotion, though.
They say taupe is very soothing.
Yet a whole neighborhood of taupe houses and fresh spring isn't enough to take the edge off.
It's too damn much.
The news tsunami is out of control.
We're not upholding the rule of law.
The Supreme Court is fixing to throw out decades of precedent.
In fact, they're fixing to throw out an entire legal system built on precedent.
Plus the rights of women and god knows who else.
It's all I can do not to physically throw up when I let myself think about it.
Elected officials have just decided not to follow the law anymore. Especially subpoenas.
This follows four years of the Trump Administration completely ignoring every request of Congress, any and all ethics, security requirements, and any kinds of protocols established for good governance.
Political appointees appointed now to enforce the law have opted not to show visible signs of intending to enforce the law for anyone at a high-level.
It's been too damn long since the insurrection.
I totally understand how long law enforcement investigations take, but it's starting to look like the higher-up people who planned an insurrection and a coup are not going to have consequences.
It's really, really, really starting to look like that.
Because they certainly haven't had consequences yet.
I talked to a friend in the front range of Colorado this week. They have a red flag fire warning.
It's freaking May. Fire season shouldn't hit Colorado until July. California continues to have off-season fires.
Decades of dead timber and messed-up landscape-scale hydrology all over the American west didn't suddenly spontaneously get fixed.
We're going to continue to have really bad fires, and they're just going to get worse as the average temperatures increase.
~~~
I will say this.
As sad as I am, and completely and totally ticked off, and angry, and frustrated, and all of the other things... I still have faith in this damn country.
I have faith that the majority of us can find a way through this.
I have faith that we can turn this crap around. At least some of it.
Turn the ship.
I'm not losing that.
We have options. We have things we can do.
And honestly, one of the first things that we can do to start is to talk about all of the things.
To see them for what they are.
Here's what they're not:
NORMAL.
Nothing about any of this is normal.
We're not going back to that. We're just not.
Everything is different. It's going to stay that way. Actually it will probably intensify.
Being in denial of it isn't going to help us solve it.
It's okay to have emotion about it.
Just because it's not normal doesn't mean it doesn't suck. It sucks a lot.
We can start there.
And it's not a small thing.
A whole hell of a lot of people are still in denial.
Lots of folks think there's some normal that we're going back to. Whether it's 5 years ago or 60.
Once we're ready to accept that everything is different and it's all a big < insert stream of cussing > then maybe we can get serious about what we're going to do about that.
I guarantee you it's going to involve more than protests, and more than voting.
We're going to have to get into our uncomfortable zones and do some different things if we want to hold this democracy together.
One of the keys to that is going to be telling our stories.
It's hard. Sometimes it's really hard.
I've been a woman working in male-dominated fields for a chunk of my career... so believe me when I tell you I'm not great at sharing my emotions.
But when I take the time to go for a walk and let my mind wander I can't help but cry. It hits in waves.
And like a scene out of the show Friends... I'm crying because I'm angry.
And I don't know what to do with that.
Only I do.
I know that we need to tell our stories, and start there.
We need to tell our stories and we need to get people - including the media - to listen to them.
And that is going to be a foundation of what we're putting together in this new nonprofit organization to help with some of this that’s ramping up in early June.
But I wanted to share about the taupe neighborhood, and the spring.
So freaking beautiful - but so surreal.
Who would know that a massive, ongoing disruption to the world's biggest superpower would have such a beautiful backdrop... at least some of the time?
It's easy to be lulled into complacency with all of that beauty.
It's a false sense of security.
They're coming for our rights. Decades and decades and decades of rights.
Yet we're the damn freaking majority. We're going to have to start acting like it.
Be safe out there. Keep the faith.
We can make this shift happen.
And so we will.