GRRR!  I fell asleep in the recliner yesterday afternoon for a couple hours because Charli plopped herself onto my chest for a nap and I didn’t want to disturb her, so I joined her in a serious snooze, so now I’m wide awake at 1:31 a.m.

 

After watching two episodes of COSMOS from 5 to 7 or so, I tucked myself into bed and fell asleep for a while, but by 12:30 I was tossing and turning, trying to find a way to stay asleep.

 

It didn’t work because I suddenly realized I was awake and alert and not even a little bit weary.

 

So I got up and did some household chores. That didn’t take long.

 

And now, here I am, trying to think of something positive and uplifting to write about.

 

The problem with that is, I made the mistake of reading a little bit of news.  Yeah, that was stoopid!!!

 

I need to stop doing that so many times a day. Once at noon, maybe, and then move on. Because the news is not designed to make readers feel good. The news is designed to inform (and these days, in too many cases, to incite) and it does.  And of course, “If it bleeds, it leads,” followed by “If it incites, it’s right.”

 

It wouldn’t be bad to be so well informed if it were possible to demand better of powerbrokers and get some satisfaction, but doing that is a long, slow, tedious, ever-present process, and it sometimes feels like we’ll be extinct before they get around to addressing what really matters.  I watch COSMOS and get to feeling hopeful, and then I read the news, and get deflated and angry. “WTF are we doing to fix what’s  wrong?!”  There’s very little about that in the news, because there isn’t a whole lot being done on that front.

 

It makes me very, very tired and I’m glad I won’t be here a whole lot longer.  I’m almost 72.  I’l probably make it to 82 — a few weeks away, as fast as time flies these days — but probably not a whole lot longer.  And that’s fine with me. I’m totally okay with it.

 

I’m with Mark Twain.  “People call me a pessimist in my old age, but I’m not.  I am an optimist who did not arrive.”

 

I thought racism and sexism and misogyny and xenophobia and homophobia would all be behind us by the time I became an old codger. Certainly it felt that way following the civil rights movement in the 1960’s and the women’s movement in the 70’s. It looked like things were heading in the right direction.  They were, for the marginalized. Slowly but surely, our voices were being heard and we were getting some power of our own.

 

And then came the backlash from the rich, racist, sexist, misogynistic, white male supremacists  in our midst, the ones sitting in the catbird’s seat.

 

And now look where we are. Fighting for bodily autonomy. Fighting for equity and a level playing field.  Fighting to retain and protect DEMOCRACY itself, for Christ’s sake!

 

I’m astounded by what has happened since 1980.  For every two steps forward, we’ve taken at least one and a half steps backward. Strident far right voices in Congress and on the Supreme Court are calling most of the shots. Batshit crazies like Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene are leading committees. Insurrectionist advocates in Congress continue doing their level best to finalize the coup and send everyone to the poorhouse (or worse) except themselves and their greedy white male supremacist corporate overlords.

 

There’s an old Chinese curse: “may you live in interesting times.”

 

We are, indeed, living in interesting times.  Right now a little boredom and sanity would not come amiss.

 

So, we continue to fight.  The minute we give up, we will most certainly be toast…