The Calm Within the Chaos

After two somewhat lousy days as the side effects of the vaccine kick out, and I'm once again feeling good, I shake my head in disgust, wonder, and sadness at the behavior of my dark cloud. I was accused of pretending to be sweaty as a means of "announcing" silently my lack of desire to "help" the DC. 

Today is more of the same as we move to the realm of "just do what I say". I have capitulated in reality. DC no longer can think in a logical linier manner and consistently gives as evidence A + B = L. I went into his office to help without bringing a chair so my only intent was to express my lack of interest in actually helping. 

Make no sense? Of course not. 

He nearly fell into bed last night and when i went in to make sure he was okay, he breathlessly told me that I make him feel like a child by rushing in. "What do you want me to do in the future so that you won't feel that way?" I asked. "Wait for me to ask for help". DONE!

It is essential for me to continue to meditate and grow in the manner. It will help me not internalize the awful dark menacing cloud and it's spew. My feelings are just that, feelings that I can choose to indulge in or not. It is my choice. 

Like one confined in a prison, my mind is still my own. I will tell it any lie it requires to keep it quiet and out of my hair while I own who I am when and where I am able. 

I wish i had a facebook platform just for me. His nosy intrusions are not welcome. 

It is glorious and warm and I am thrilled that life is returning to some normality. I fear another surge, but I least I am on the way to being protected from the life threatening variety of Covid. 

I dream of freedom. 

How It Happened

    I don't exactly know when it happened, that feeling that would not go away. The feeling that I was stagnating and life was flying by and I was but a spectator. Undoubtedly if circumstances had been slightly different, I may have ignored it. But the circumstances were not slightly different. They were thus: I was trapped in a mudded-in/snowed-in woodsy haven. I often stayed there for a month or more without leaving. 

   That's how it began. The unease, the wandering aimlessly from room to room, the wasted time on worthless movies, games and internet chat. Nothing much mattered, the sameness, the inevitability of all those things we do day in and day out. The routine so undeviated from. 

    I moved us to New Mexico where I could come and go when I wished. I breathed deeply into the desert magic and walked the land, uncovering all those things one does when one is new to a place. I found a public pool, plenty of Catholic churches, and the renewed joy of cooking new foods. 

    I realize now that the desire for a tattoo (now four and counting) was really my wolf woman demanding recognition. "I have something to say!" Of course I waited to arrive in a place where tattoos were literally everywhere and quickly aging and greying white women went unnoticed for the most part. 

    As time ensued, and I do mean years, my husband's health deteriorated to the point that he lives in a recliner, wheelchair, and clings to oxygen. The pandemic has barely bothered him, he goes no where, twice in the last year. 

    Perhaps the restriction to being home virtually all the time is cause of my growing unease and restlessness. Perhaps it's because of my husband's life which leaves me responsible for literally everything. Which is nothing new to me, I spent most of my adult life taking care of me, doing all the crap of life, the taxes, the car repairs, the insurance claims, the shopping, everything. It's just back with an heavy stone to carry along with it. 

   This functions as my story, and will be told in segments as I figure it out and try to arrange it in my mind. I am coming into me and I am urged on by the women before me and the stories of women which have largely been kept from us 

   I am learning, I am growing, and I will howl at the moon!

The Times, They MAY Be a Changin'

It's hard to know, I mean if, how much and when. Harder now than say six months ago, when I pretty much concluded I had figured most things out. By seventy that seems fair, about right.

But then along came a pandemic, an economic meltdown and then ANOTHER murder of a African-American. I was going to add "without cause", but hell, murder is death without cause isn't it?

People took the streets. One was forced to wonder in the earliest hours of this tragedy if part of the reaction was people just wanting so badly to get out and mix with others. That notion was dispelled rapidly. Most were wearing masks, and astonishingly, lots of them were white.

Lots of people are discussing whether this is like the mid-sixties. I was alive back then, living in Flint, Michigan a factory town with very segregated neighborhoods. I remember seeing the images of black men and women being blasted with water hoses and german shepherds raging to be released.

I won't say that I was outraged. I was a teenager and my head was filled with anything but social issues, morality, fairness, you know equality. I lived in white land, I went to school in white land. Most everyone I knew openly used the "n" word and I was no different.

But the marches got bigger and well, legislation passed and Johnson signed it into law amidst smiles and congratulatory backslapping.

Outward appearances changed but not much else. I know, real change did occur, but I saw no difference in MY neighborhood, MY school. And for all kinds of reasons not much changed in Black America either.

So I'm not especially capable of judging whether today is different in a serious way from the 60's.

But I'm betting it is.

I'm betting we are on the verge of an awakening in the world, and I'll explain why.

It's a thing called cosmic consciousness.

Take the LGBTQ community. For years public opinion didn't budge much. Those who favored equal rights for our gay and lesbian friends were a minority and nothing much changed. But then, suddenly, in the blink of an eye (certainly not to the men and women who were victimized by hatred) things changed. Now a majority favored gay marriage and gay adoption. At least it seemed that way.

As more and more businesses, aware of the demographics of their customers, began to feature gay couples and gay families in their ads, sure there were boycotts but they were almost universally ineffectual. While no one was looking a whole bunch of folks decided that gay was okay with them.

We may be looking at something similar today. Now solid and rather huge numbers of white folk believe that indeed there is systemic racism in this country and always has been. The system as they say was set up to promote and protect the rights of white people to control the lives of black people one way or another.

But that doesn't explain how it happened.

That's where cosmic consciousness comes in.

The God I believe in is a persuader rather than a "fixer". I just can't reconcile free will any other way than to accept that God wills us to our highest self but does not force. He calls to each and every one of us each moment urging us to our most human.

Some of us hear really well, most of us don't but occasionally. Some of us reject goodness, rightness, out of hand, believing that weakness makes one a "loser". But regardless the whispers go on for all our lives.. But we do change, some of us, over the years. God brings it to bear on us and sometimes we listen.

We are finally struck by the logic, the evidence, the MORALITY of this new idea that finally takes hold. We convert ourselves and we become "better" people.

God, as always has been busy, whispering all these centuries. Finally, I am suggesting, the tipping point has been reached. The flood gates blow open and the waters surge around the world.

People are gathering everywhere. Statues are being torn down WORLDWIDE, that represent men (sorry but I've seen no statues of women) who were authoritarian, traitors, and other such refuse. We shout, no we scream, "Black Lives Matter" .

We see and feel that this is a holy moment. I call it the recognition, either directly or by "feeling" that when we raise up this "other" all of us rise with them. That is the idea that I think is taking hold.

We are beginning to see that so many of us are other. Not just African-Americans but Latinos, Asians, women, gays, transgenders, and the first "others" in this country our Native peoples.  We are starting to recognize that right now those among us who need  the most are those we  were brought here against their will.

My hope and my dream is that this movement will continue and will travel to the next location and we will raise our voices to raise up that group who is being treated unfairly, and then another and another.

To those who think that we will simply become the new oppressors, think again. I don't think that will happen. If it does we deserve whatever fate lies in store, for we will have learned nothing.

But what I'm seeing around the world is not people who have learned nothing, rather the opposite. There is a quietness, a determined look, a steady eye. There is great pain, and deep frustration and a spilling of angry words often enough. But there is strength and a determination that this minute will not pass us by.

For God's sake, my generation, the generation of flower children and no more war, and countless claims of righteous equality to come, ended up failing America so badly that we are faced with a deranged madman at the helm of state. He will gladly take us to the pit of hell if it serves his interest of one.

Damn, we will not let this minute pass us by.

Tripping Over A Loose Neuron On the Way to the Pandemic

In times like this, one has entirely too much time on their hands. And when hands are idle, well, forgetting about the devil, I can get into plenty of trouble on my own.

So, I often spend lots of time wandering around in the logic, feelings, data, intuitive leanings and flotsom of my brain. A nice normal brain I think, not a brain hemmed in with superlatives or self-congratulatory adjectives.

Oh, I see, this is leaving you bored already huh?

Well, if you got better things to do, I'll understand. I blogged for ten years and mostly people suggested to me that they indeed had better things to do. And that was a time when there were ACTUAL better things to do.

Okay, I'll begin with the burning question that I must get out.

But first, let me set the background. This goes back to my childhood and attending public school with a variety of people, some friends and some not friends, mostly . I went to an institution known as Hamady High School located on the outskirts of the factory town known as Flint Michigan. It was not a large school (my graduating class was 103 if I recall).

A good many of my graduating class consisted of people I had gone to kindergarden with, the rest mostly I had met by junior high when the three feeder elementary schools all led to the one junior high. In other words, many of us grew up together and knew each other well.

Our school, like many others was extremely cliquish. There was the perverbial "in" group consisting of those persons who did the sports, cheered the sports, and "ran" the school government. They were on all the committees for float construction, pep rallies, prom planning. They were also the candidates for all the "pretty" things like queen and kings of various extravaganzas.

There was the "other" group consisting of my friends and acquaintances, and we befriended others who were "cool" and all that stuff. We wore leather jackets a lot, smoked cigarettes and drank a beer now and then. We "ran" with boys from so-called rough schools. Our group was not a group but smaller neucleic groups who interchanged people as events might dictate.

The next group was also unnamed but clear. Almost all of us were working class kids but some seemed to be worse off. They were the poorer among us and looked it. They kept to themselves mostly, or we made it clear that we wanted nothing to do with them.

Last were the group of catch-all folks. These were the nerds of the day, the "serious students" , the religious types. They were all nice but frankly they often didn't enjoy or had stricter parents and didn't participate.

We all stuck to our group. We might interact in class rooms as needed but there was no doubt when in the hallways or bathrooms, you kept to your own kind.

I started out in the "in" group but was pushed out inch by inch and I finally realized that I was not wanted by at least 8th grade or so, and by 9th grade I was finding friendship in the "cool" group.

Now fast track to the present.

We have to one degree or another reestablished some contact through Facebook. I decided when I got friend requests from people from the "in" group, that I would lay aside past grievances, and see where 30-40 years had taken these people and the people I called friends in high school. I decided to give everyone a clean slate to work from and let "bygones be bygones".

Before too long I realized that many of the "in" crowd had become fundamentalists and politically conservative if that is today a fair term given the wacked out theories some of them spout. True conservatives now blanch at being connected to these folks. I was quickled "unfriended" by a good many of them. (while they would probably recognize themselves here, none will read it, so no worries).

That simmered for years and I left Facebook, suffering from burnout over the 2016 election. I went to rallies, marched, carried signs, made dozens of phone calls to elected officials. And then I truly gave up and turned inward. I worked on my spiritual life, I quilted (2) knit (2) crocheted (2), mosaiced (2) and beaded up things (6). I macramed bracelets and necklaces.

And then the virus hit and I felt I should return to the news in some form. And eventually I wanted to touch base with people on Facebook, mostly to assure myself that folks were okay.

And after weeks of Facebook and seeing the same people still fighting so vigorously over the same issues--all people I admire to be sure--it struck me.

The payOFF is coming folks!

I realized that the people who I had connected with on Facebook after all these years who were my original "group" were essentially all liberals, all left of center by a mile in their thinking about race and religion, about equality and fairness, about the need to redistribute wealth in this country and return to a strong middle class.

I realized that all the people I had reconnected to in the in group, were not these things. I was regularly pointed to read this and read that--regularly cited to World Net Daily, Breitbart, and other notorious rags with little truth content. It was even explained to me by one lady whom I knew quite well, that there was not a racist bone in her body which was proveable by the fact that she took in a pregnant Black girl and helped her until she gave birth and as she said, "my goodness she was darker than Obama!" as if shade of unwhiteness was proof of her open-mindedness.

Oh by the way, all the nerds? They turned out to be all over the place, but MOST were and are damn fine individuals who think deeply and logically.

Now, it's important to know that as far as I can see, this has little to do with education or profession or lack of either. The spread of jobs and careers is large. Some stayed in Flint or nearby all their lives. Others have traveled and lived many places in the country. Married and divorced, remarried or not, there is no common thread I can find.

My question is this: In our youth, when we are still mightily uninformed and have so much yet to learn about the world and our place  in it, is there something subconscious  that reognizes "kindred" spirits, people who will one day think essentially along the same lines as we do? Who will judge the world and it's people by the same standards and definitions of decency, fairness, equality and so forth as we come to?

Make no mistake, I was raised to believe white people were superior. I recall incidents of my youth where I stated that, mimicing my father and other adults around me. By 11th grade or so, I was going to the occasional party with friends where there were Black kids and Hispanic kids and I thought it was way cool. I started to read more about race  especially in college where I had *gasp* Black friends, black boyfriends.  By the time I was in my second year of college I was ashamed of my past beliefs.

I don't recall my high school friends being any different from me. Perhaps they were but I didn't detect it.

So again, I ask, do we subconsciously see the "seeds' of the person others will become and gravitate to those like "us" whoever us is perceived to be at 13 or 16?

Did you have cliques at school? Anyone upon thinking back have similar experiences?

In the great scheme of things (gosh I just love lazy composing with phrases used by all), it's a fairly unimportant thing, but we have precious little to do these days left to our own devices as it were.

What say you?

I Am the Revolution!

Peeking in. . . .

Hello again.

Didn't really mean to drop in unexpected and/or uninvited, but well, deal with it.

I've been off on a sabbatical, timeout, vacation, or any other amusing reference you might desire to attach to my abrupt but publicized leave-taking of social media shit.

I have read immensely more. I have prayed more. I have knitted more, and laughed more, giggled uncontrollably for extended moments in time captured in my heart and laid aside for those dreary days that pop up here and there.

I have found my husband to be my best friend once again, which he always was, but gave way in quiet knowing to my love affair with my own written word and my insanely silly belief that someone cared what the fuck I had to say.

I cared. Was that not enough?

No.

For I was that proverbial fraud who claims they don't give a fuck when I of course gave the most massive fuck of all.

Validate me I screamed. I will not relent until you admit that I was right all along, and you were and are miserably wrong-headed and probably can't be trusted to get the "no pulp" orange juice except through a  pre-arranged call to the supermarket to alert them that you are coming.

Finally I asked, explain to who? or whom? shit I don't give a fuck about which one surely.

Well, the meds are kicking in, (the spiritual ones I've been watering assiduously for a month or more), and I'm not giving a fuck pretty good these days.

I watch maybe thirty minutes of the circus known as politics and then I say, "I really don't give a fuck," and find a baseball game. I'm up on both Arrieta's ERA and Noah Syndergaard's. That's something to give a fuck about I gotta say.

I'm finally sailing toward a pair of socks that I made with my own two hands.

I'm an ensconced at lane six at the pool as the first morning's swimmer from end to end.

I learned how to cook a few more dishes.

I've enjoyed pizza a number of times,

Parker thinks I'm way funner to be around since I'm not arguing any more with stupid people that I truly don't really give a fuck about anyway. I mean there is a FREAKIN' REASON why neither you or I bothered to look each other up for 45 YEARS ya know. So the, "hey you have 14 grandchildren do you?" has worn it's welcome out through the house and out the back door. See ya on the backside as they say.

Anyway, if you wanna read a really really good post on not giving a fuck and which explains me better than I can explain me, read forth.

THE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVING A FUCK

Working It Out, A Thought At a Time

Well, that's one way of doing it.

I've always been pretty confident in the way I look at scripture. I have always seen it as a most human endeavor.

We are a curious being. We like answers. When we are confused by the world, we seek to understand it. We seek to explain. We seek to predict if possible. We like answers, as I said.

I have mostly thought this way for a very long time. Common sense tends to dictate it surely. If indeed God wished to create a "manual for human living" I think he could have done so in pretty simple ways, similar to his alleged "giving of the 10". Concise, to the point, you know, CLEAR. While we may quibble about the parameters of some commandments, (does kill include all "killing" or only human defined "murder"?), for the most part they are pretty straight forward.

So when I began to formally study scripture with the assistance of learned teachers, it came as no surprise that however much we may infuse scripture with "Godly inspiration", it is still a human activity, meant to help other humans understand what is quite literally inexplicable. As such, it is open to an array of hermeneutical tools the average person has little contact with. There are form and source criticisms, redaction and textual, comparative, iconographic, psychological, anthropological , sociological, poetic, gender, feminist, liberationist, literary, and a host of others. They are all intent on trying to figure out exactly what the writer actually meant.

And I loved this more than you can imagine. It meant that there was really no end to the possibilities, no end to the new insights available. In that sense, scripture remains an alive and vibrant series of documents, giving endless bounty to the determined exegete.

I have, increasingly it seems, warred against the literalist, the fundamentalist, who is never one such except when it suits them. The bible must be read literally they exclaim, for some reason God waited until the KJV translation to use the "obvious words" that anyone with an 8th grade education can understand. But, that aside, they rebel at the idea that they need anyone to teach them anything. God teaches directly to the inquiring heart they claim.

Such people don't read stuff literally when it impinges upon their life style. No usury for me, THAT is a OT prohibition for Jews only, cancelled in the saving power of the Cross. They don't explain why they still cite Leviticus for the proposition that men should not "lay with men". But somehow that is "different." Like I said, they use literalism selectively. As many have said, "how curious that for the fundamentalist, God just happens to agree with everything they are against."

So, I was going along in my self-righteous assumptions, when as usual, the obvious hits me in the face. In reading something in a book on the early church fathers and the development of Christian theology, I noted that the New Testament writers quite often cited "scripture", and that included Jesus.

Suddenly it hit me. Did they cite scripture in a manner that would be akin to "literalism"? Did they treat scriptures as the "actual word of God"? If so, then wasn't my assumption that these were words of men in some difficulty?

As I mulled that thought over for a day, thinking of where I would search for an answer (since I knew there must be one), I of course ran directly into the answer. Funny how things work like that.

To know me, is to know that I cannot abide conflict. My brain simply screams FIX IT when confronted with believe in any two things that are in opposition. Drop one, add a third, alter one or both, but fix it. Make it make sense. My brain demands it. It has always been an utter shock for me to learn that some folks have no such problem with conflict. Fundamentalists are like this, blithely believing in things that are complete opposite, and never nagged in the slightest with the need to reconcile the disparate ideas.

A dear friend had sent me a box of books a while ago. I have slowly but surely worked on reading them. One is a Dictionary of New Testament Background, and I read an entry each morning. I am in the B's, and the day after my "conflict" I got to: Biblical interpretation: Jewish. 

And I learned that almost from the beginning, Jewish scholars interpreted their scriptures not at all literally, but rather more as a "living" document.

An example may suffice to explain.

Many scholars (I'd argue the best and majority) see the US Constitution as a "living document". In other words, they argue that the true genius of the Constitution is that our Founders were wise enough to realize that they could not possible construct a government that could foresee all possible issues and controversies. So rather than being too terribly specific in the "rights" and "duties" department, they were deliberately vague, assuming that later generations would use the "principles" stated to fashion the proper solution to the very current problems being faced.

In other words, unreasonable searchers and seizures in the 4th amendment will change over time, as we define intellectual "property" to be treated no different than one's home or car. Such property can also be seized, and thus the legislature and judiciary together will define it's parameters. Similarly, the Warren Court concluded that taken together the first ten amendments constitute a "protection of privacy" which is not stated specifically but is a rational deduction from the others together.

Similarly, Jewish scholars considered scripture to be living as well, the genius to them was that interpretations would change to meet the current crises facing the community. So a literal statement in the bible would be interpreted in light of the problem needing an answer. These interpretations were in extra-canonical writings. There was no interest in "what the writer meant".

When we turn to the NT, and look at instances of citation to OT sayings, we find a similar response. The interpretation is often borrowed from these Jewish interpretations, as needed to make the point that needs making. Scripture was often changed to more clearly reflect what the NT author wished to convey. Jesus did exactly the same thing.

A perfect example is 2 Timothy 3:8, wherein Jannes and Jambres (two magicians from Egypt) opposed Moses. Nowhere in the OT are the two men named. However, the names are found in several ancient sources used to interpret those portions of Exodus pertaining to the events between Moses and Pharaoh regarding the plagues. So extra-biblical material is added to actual scripture by the interpreter, in order to make his point in Timothy.

Far from putting into danger my belief that scripture is written by humans for humans, and interpreted by them to solve present problems, it actually makes it crystal clear that this is the way interpretation was done, OBVIOUSLY BECAUSE NOBODY FROM DAY ONE EVER THOUGHT THAT SCRIPTURE WAS THE ACTUAL WORD OF GOD.

This is what scripture is to me. An endlessly fascinating examination of what we believed, why we believed it, and how it has changed over time as we have learned more. It makes sense.

Surely not a single fundamentalist will be convinced. Their compartmentalized thinking won't allow it firstly and secondly, it is all too comforting to interpret in a way that allows God always to agree with you in the end. Their deliverance to truth must come when in some moment of weakness they open the door just a crack, and the facade breaks and falls. Logic will never move them, since logic is something they are deeply suspicious of.

I am happy simply to realize that I am still on the road, I haven't fallen into a ravine, or waded too far into the raging current to recover. I am still, by fits and starts, leaps and crawls, working my way to unity with the divine.

Come, join us. The ride is wild, but oh so rewarding.

Why We Love Her

It's been a brutal season for primaries. Even with great candidates, the war managed to get rather ugly. Bernie Sanders followers blame Hillary followers and the opposite is also the case.

There is truth to both sides no doubt. I've seen that personally, although I must say, that a good many people I know who believe in Mrs. Clinton's candidacy, try hard to stick to real issues and differences and not fall victim to the game of pointing out failures on the part of the other candidate. Mostly they don't at least, except when anger takes over.

We all get tired of hearing Mrs. Clinton referred to as "$hillary and HilLIARy". And we are very tired of "paid speeches" crap. Why do we call it crap? Because the Bernie folk admit right up to the top of their team, that they have not a clue if there is any incriminating in her speeches to various banks and other corporate types. But as long as she doesn't release them, they claim they feel free to insinuate that "there must be something bad in them."

Well, that is probably not true for a couple of reasons. Why would Mrs. Clinton risk (in a large venue speaking engagement) assuming that all those present are lovers of her such that they wouldn't record "evidence" of her vile speechifying and release it? And then there is the argument many attach to this, Mrs. Clinton's well-known history of refusing to give in to the crass bullshit raised by her opponents by dignifying their charges with actual proof to the contrary.

But I'm not here to explain and defend Hillary.

I'm here to tell you unabashedly, that we do love her.

And I'll tell you why.

You see, I"m just 66. I was born in 1050. Do you remember the world then?

I grew up as a preteen knowing a few things. I could NOT be a fighter pilot in the Air Force. I could NOT expect to ever be part of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the military. I could NOT be a police officer, except as a jail matron. I was not EXPECTED to be a lawyer or a doctor, but rather a nurse or school teacher. I was most suited to being a secretary, executive or otherwise. I could be lots of things no doubt that I had no idea about, such as a physicist or chemist, but nobody encouraging me to be a psychologist or city manager.

In other words, I was either utterly not welcome in a whole list of professions because of my delicate composition (uteri and bosom), or I was dissuaded from trying because only the best of the best of the best of my gender was given a chance in this or that endeavor.

In the 50's women were expected to stay home and take care of children and husbands. They might work, but only at certifiable "ladies" jobs, such as check-out clerks, waitresses, the aforementioned secretarial jobs and so forth. We weren't paid much, but then we were only supposed to be "supplementing" our hubby's salary. We were, if employed expected to do the laundry, clean the house, do the shopping, the cooking, and well, most everything else other than car repair and perhaps run the lawn mower.

We had trouble signing contracts, buying cars and houses without male assistance. We were looked upon suspiciously when it came to jury duty. We could vote, but most of us followed the lead of the male in our lives.

Hillary grew up in the same world.

As we attained near adult hood, things had changed. Universities were setting up "affirmative action" for women like other minorities. Some law schools, and no doubt medical schools started with quotas, trying to increase the numbers of women in their classes. We benefited from that process, and we became lawyers and doctors and all the rest in much bigger numbers in the late 60's.

We saw Hillary as Bill's wife. But slowly, we discovered she was not like other first ladies. She actually had a brain and intended to use it. You might recall when she got in all sorts of hot water by "insulting" homemakers with her, "I"m not Tammy Wynette, standing by her man" and references to not "staying home and baking cookies."

You see, we were not the least offended, but we realized that a lot of women were. The women who remained in the same old stereotypical roles that has always been assigned for women? Oh they were insulted, and angry that we "professional" women had the temerity to look down upon them.

In fairness, we did of course. It took us some time to get over our radical rhetoric and realize that we were attempting to give women choices, not turn them all into CEO's and engineers. It was enough if you had the real choice to be WHATEVER YOU WISHED.

But I don't think some of those housewives ever forgot. We had made them feel small and insignificant, unwilling but more likely UNABLE to make it in the world of business where real decisions were made.

So secretly, (or not so) we were outraged at how Hillary was treated thereafter. She was the subject of every one's ire it seemed. The GOP of course, but also women who were "traditional".

We've watched her over the years. We've watched as a totally different set of rules and standards were set for her, unlike any of her male counterparts. We have seen her soldier on, overcoming, holding her head high.

She was accused of all sorts of things when she didn't throw Bill out for his sexual misadventures. She was judged, plain and simple. And there was no right to do that. Nobody knows what goes on in anybodies relationship, and nobody has the right to judge another for their decision to stay or leave, or what conditions they imposed for doing either. It was her business.

Hillary represents to us professional women of a certain age, all that we went through and endured in this "man's world". I can sit here and tell you a dozen examples that I faced as a lawyer, still operating largely among men. I was called to the bench one day by a judge that I had probably never spoken ten sentences to that didn't revolve around the law. He asked me out to lunch. When I demurred, he got mad, asking his court workers "what was wrong with her?" When they told him that I was dating a police officer, he really blew. How dare I turn down a judge for some silly cop?

Sometimes you paid for such "wrong answers" for weeks or months, before some semblance of professionalism returned to your relationship.

Hillary was one of our role models. When we grew weary of playing "the game" ( and make no mistake we all played), we looked to her and gained renewed strength. I don't want to make more of this than it was, but to all you men out there, and perhaps a certain segment of women who stayed home, it was rather awful at times. It was simply not fair. And it was the "way things were".

As the years have ensued, and Mrs. Clinton has gone on to success after success, the hatred of the right wing has if anything grown greater. They are still determined to take her down. Mostly they have not been successful. She is not down. But they have made life harder for her certainly. And over the years and decades of such attacks, a certain degree of it inevitably sticks.

Mrs. Clinton is perceived as "untrustworthy" by men and women who should know better. It is this vague thing they speak of, for they surely are unable to point to anything specific when you put it to them.

Now, by and large, we are prepared for that. Such is the life of all politicians to a degree. But with her, it has been over the top. And to hear people on our own "side" call her slanderous names in the hope that somehow that will translate into somebody, anybody, being will to throw a vote their way, is maddening, sick, and troubling.

Bernie's followers have been merciless. Out of control often, and not within his ability to control apparently, they flock to her events and try to cause trouble by calling her names. They threw money at her recently and referred to her as "Hey, HO, Hey HO, Hillary has got to go." in some sick sing-song reminiscent of her being propositioned as a streetwalker.

When you do this, you do it to us. We feel it, just as stingingly as if you had said it to us directly. You are reducing her to a vagina, unworthy to be talked to on equal terms. We have tried to gently explain this to you Bernie Bots. But you won't listen because you have found (or have been told it is possible) that all this attack business with garner a vote or two. Perhaps it will, but never enough.

Never enough because with each slur you offer this woman, you make US more determined than ever. And of course, it is all over now. You can of course continue to help the GOP by running her down, but we kind of all know how this will end. And we will remember.

You may suggest that we "friend" up again on Facebook. I'd suggest you don't bother. We are gulfs apart you and I, I suspect. I don't place all the blame on you. I share in it as well. Apparently we never impressed upon you younger men and women just how fucking UNFAIR it was when I was a kid. Apparently you think this "women are paid 79c on the dollar business" as some relic from something you can't even imagine.

Well, we can imagine, because we endured. We lived through it. We struggled, never sure where our professionalism did or should leave off and our womanly attributes be thrust forth. We had to figure out where to "draw the line" a dozen times a week, sometimes in a day. What to resent. What to react to with hostility. What to ignore. What to forgive. What to SMILE THROUGH AND TAKE!

We didn't teach you fools just how bad it was, so you could be protective of FREEDOM to be who and what you want. It's why we are so damned supportive of gays and trans people, and immigrants, and all the "others" of the world. Because WE DAMN IT HAVE BEEN THERE AND DONE THAT.

Yes, kiddo, Bernie is a fine fellow with a fine agenda. He tells us what we can dream for. His sort are always necessary and desirable. But she is one of the doers. She translates the dreams as she has over the years, into policies and legislation and coalitions of people ready and willing to work to improve the lives of average women and children and men too in incremental ways. And as the decades go by, all that incremental stuff adds up and we make another leap forward. We moved from DOMA to full marriage equality didn't we?

So defriend me all you want, I'm better off for it I'm sure. But know this. If you attack her, you attack me. And I'm not nearly as nice as she is.