Twelve years ago, on this very date, on another Inauguration Day, I started this blog on a note of hope and change. Barack Obama was being sworn in as president for the first time and it was a day so overwhelming I felt as if I might burst if I didn't put my thoughts to good use. 

We had come away from what seemed like an awful eight years, brought to us by George W.  Bush and Dick Cheney. They took us into an unnecessary, deadly war. They took a huge surplus left by Bill Clinton and turned it into a massive deficit. They lied so often it became commonplace, and too many people accepted the lies and turned against the best of our programs. Ordinary people didn't have a chance.

 It seemed as if, with Obama, we were being rescued.

I needed to be a part of that, if only as an unknown witness, an observer, a chronicler. I look back on the pieces I wrote during those 12 years sometimes with joy and sometimes with sorrow. I didn't chronicle everything. I picked and chose whatever struck me and I didn't keep a schedule. I saw it as a blog and not a job. It was my place and I loved having it here.

I built a sidebar that showcased other writers doing meaningful and wonderful work. Most of them are still there, thankfully. They did see it as a job, and they never gave up. (The sidebar is still there, still up to date, still there for you to use.)

You'll notice I dropped out often after Trump was 'elected'. The heart went out of my political writing. I didn't realize as it was happening how broken-hearted I was. For four solid years I felt as if my country, our country, was barely surviving under the clutches of an abuser. I felt powerless. I was powerless. But I should have had more faith in my country's absolute requirement that democracy must prevail.

History will view Donald Trump's presidency as a warning that, as a democracy, we were far more fragile than we could have imagined. Those of us who warned against him early on couldn't imagine that a president of the United States could go that rogue. Trump was always an incorrigible liar and a crook. He was always a narcissist and a sociopath. What we didn't expect was the help he would get from a political party sworn to preserve the republic and to protect us from all enemies, both foreign and domestic.

I don't need to regurgitate Trump's four years here. In fact, I refuse. But as I write this, Joseph R. Biden Jr. was just sworn in as the 46th President of these United States. Kamala Devi Harris was just sworn is as the first Female of Color to ever advance to the Vice Presidency. The Democrats have a tenuous hold on both the House and the Senate, and Biden's cabinet is already at work to begin the healing and take us to a far different place.

And I see today, this very moment, as the perfect time to end this blog and move on. I love what I've done here, but the truth is, almost nobody sees it. I've lost the ability to allow comments and I haven't been able to figure out how to change that. It's not a community without comments. We need to have a conversation. Or at least I do. 

So I've moved to Substack, to newsletter country, and I hope I'll see you there. My general blog/newsletter is called Constant Commoner. It's a continuation of the things I write here and at Medium.

The second newsletter, Writer Everlasting, is geared toward writers and writing. Both are public and can be read at any time without a paywall. 

 You can also find me here at Bluesky. I look forward to seeing you there.

This blog will always be here, as long as Blogger allows it. The posts I've written will be available as an archive. And do keep an eye on the posts under "Necessary Voices", at the sidebar to the right. They won't disappoint.

2020 was a dreadful year for most of us.  2021 brings us new hope. I want to be there with you as we fight to make it right. But right now I want to enjoy this day. Let's all enjoy this day.

And wasn't Lady Gaga amazing?

_____________________________

No, seriously, I've just moved; I'm not going away. I still have much to say, just in another neighborhood. I'm over at Substack most of the time now. I've moved Constant Commoner to Substack, and I've added a blog called Writer Everlasting. (Geared to writers, though anyone can read it.)

I have an author's page. Sort of. It's all here. The doors are always open and I'm always ready for company.

 

Donald Trump has COVID-19. I know you know that. It’s big news. The biggest. We can’t get a break from the drama of Donald Trump having COVID. We watched with some interest as the president’s helicopter, Marine One, eased onto the White House lawn, loaded their precious cargo, and airlifted the president* to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, some 8 1/2 miles away.

Once there, Donald Trump wanted to go home. He at least wanted his visit to seem as unlike a hospital stay as he could. He was at a desk! He was still working! Don’t worry! He recorded two videos, supposedly two days apart, but discovered by the techies to have been filmed within an interval of around a half hour. He was still wearing a suit jacket, still wearing cuff links. How bad could it be?

Outside on the street, within Trump’s view, crowds of his admirers gathered, waving Trump and blue line flags, honking horns, blowing whistles, and the man inside, already high on steroids, it would appear, was elated. His people! He had to get to them, to let them know how happy he was that they were there! Nobody knows yet how it happened, but Trump appeared on camera again, giddy with a happy secret that would be revealed within minutes — so stay tuned, America. And again we were glued.

Then, minutes later, there was real breaking news: The President of the United States, a COVID patient sick enough to have been airlifted to the hospital just two days before, was heading out the door, was getting into a black SUV, was masked but clearly joyful to be out of there, was waving and thumbs-upping to his fans — so, see? If there was a living, breathing Superman Donald Trump was it. What a moment!

And then it was over. The SUV drove through the crowd and headed back to the hospital, where Trump got out on his own, climbed the steps and went back inside. Every medical expert was and is horrified. Trump, an active COVID patient, deliberately, recklessly exposed the Secret Service members inside the hermetically sealed van to possible COVID because he couldn’t stand the thought of being inside, quarantined, away from his beloved cameras.

At this writing, he’s still high on steroids and talking crazy. He’s invincible! He beat it! “Don’t let it dominate you”, Trump tells a country still in the throes of a pandemic.

On his victorious return to the White House, he stood on a balcony, clearly breathless, but, ever the actor, with thumbs up, shoulders back, maskless. Tough guy. He went inside to greet his masked staff, who, if they had any sense about them, must have been terrified. They should have been outfitted in PPP gear, but they weren’t. Their masks were their only defense against that lunging, spewing germ factory.

The thing Donald Trump cared the most about, after his release (clearly against the hospital’s warnings), was the positioning of the cameras. They had to make him look good, the picture of health. His first thought as he entered the White House was to make a video designed to let his public know he was all right. He, Donald Trump, got through this. Everything was going to be all right.

So this morning we woke up to what might be considered his most bizarre video if there hadn’t been so many that came before. (The video is out there. It’s bizarre enough. But here are the words. Donald Trump’s words.)

From CNN:

“We’re going back. We’re going back to work. We’re gonna be out front. As your leader, I had to do that. I knew there’s danger to it but I had to do it,” Trump said in the highly produced video, which he taped after reporters left the South Lawn.

“I stood out front. I led. Nobody that’s a leader would not do what I did. I know there’s a risk, there’s a danger. That’s okay. And now I’m better and maybe I’m immune? I don’t know. But don’t let it dominate your lives. Get out there, be careful,” he said in the video, which was filmed within close proximity of White House staffers all without wearing a mask.

Of his battle with Covid-19, Trump said, “I learned so much about coronavirus. And one thing that’s for certain. Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. We’re gonna beat it. We have the best medical equipment, best medicines.”

“I didn’t feel so good. Two days ago- I could have left two days ago. Two days ago, I felt great. Like better than I have in a long time… I said better than 20 years ago. Don’t let it dominate. Don’t let it take over your lives. “

There is nothing normal about what Trump, still under the influence of steroids known to cause mental fog and feelings of invincibility, said there. It was a reckless performance, worrisome enough coming from an ordinary patient, but Donald Trump is, at least until January, 2021, the President of the United States. He must relinquish his hold on the presidency until he is well. But he won’t do it. We know he won’t. Mike Pence, along with members of Congress, are in a position to demand that the president temporarily step down, but they won’t do it, either.

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment:

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

So it’s up to the people now. Is Trump well enough to assume the duties of the presidency? (Okay, I’ll say it. Elephant in the room: He never was.) Have we had enough of this shit show or is it just too fascinating, too delicious, too crazy to let go of it now?

Trump, as his doctors have warned, is not out of the woods yet. His fans will get louder and more rabid as his illness progresses. The noise will not stop. Will it give him a boost among voters?

Anything can happen between now and November 3, but at this moment, Donald Trump is clearly not able to run this country. Nobody could have predicted that the president would be hopped up on steroids, telling the country to ignore a deadly virus that HE exacerbated, that HE tried to hide, that HE literally worked against fighting, that has infected many millions and has killed an unconscionable number of Americans.

Millions of us, along with the ghosts of more than 210,000 victims, say “enough”. Will it finally be enough?

__________________

(Cross-posted at Indelible Ink/Medium)

Insulting America isn't the way you do it, buddy.

I know what you’re thinking: Wasn’t I one of those people who thought Hillary couldn’t lose? Yup, I was. I seriously, sincerely couldn’t see how Donald Trump, that loathsome clown whose life was completely antithetical to the norms of common decency, that shady businessman without an ounce of knowledge about how government works, would EVER become America’s president.

Hahahahahahaha.

That was me. And probably you. And almost four years later we’re still shocked. I can’t go into how it happened. I don’t KNOW how it happened, and neither does anyone else. We’re all just guessing. But here we are, and Trump was, and is, far, far worse than we could ever have imagined. We imagined he would be as stubbornly stupid, as bombastic, as ridiculously full of himself as he turned out to be. What we didn’t count on was the Republican Party’s willing capitulation to a moron and a monster.

Trump, it turns out, was a dream come true for them. He didn’t CARE how they did it before. His job was to make the rich richer (including and especially him), and, by God, he did it.

His job, as he saw it — thanks to some friendly nudging from his pal, former KGB expert and president-for-life, Vladimir Putin — was to sow chaos and create division, and he did that.

His job (and he especially enjoyed this part ) was to bring the media to its knees in order to float above any criminal exposure or criticism — and the press rewarded him with some of the silliest whataboutism I’ve ever seen.

But along the way Trump has made some dreadful blunders. I mean, terrible. He’s a happy despot, momentarily, but he’s alienated every sane military, scientific, medical, social services, and educational expert in the country.

He has his fans and followers, and it’s true they’re louder and more obnoxious than the rest of us, but they’re not the majority. Every legitimate poll shows that far more Americans go against Trump's cockamamie decision than agree with them. Every one.

Pollsters are giving Joe Biden a bigger and bigger edge, and we’re a little more than a month from the election. (Okay. Remind me again about pollsters and Hillary Clinton and how that all went down, but (perfunctory cliché ahead) that was then and this is now.)

More than 200,000 COVID deaths, most of them completely avoidable but for Trump’s stubborn pretense that his giant brain is far superior to every scientist and epidemiologist in the land.

Kids in cages. They’re still crying, their parents are still crying, we’re still crying.

Attacks on women, minorities, the disabled, and the disenfranchised.

Name-calling and childish insults, laughable word-salad adlibs thrown in to speeches written by Stephen Miller, as if despots were still in vogue and this wasn’t America.

And now Trump, always so insanely inappropriate for the highest job in the land, has the chance to select a third Right Wing Supreme Court nominee and get her in place before the election.

And he's not done yet.

To the delight of his followers, and, let’s face it, the press, Trump is impishly pretending he might not leave office if Joe Biden should, by some slim off-chance, win. But he will leave, and we even know the date: January 20, 2021.

Donald Trump will not win this election. Joe Biden will.

Has Joe Biden made mistakes? Uh huh. Will he go on making mistakes? Uh huh. But, when it comes to mistakes, Joe is a piker compared to Donald. Trump holds the world’s record for the most hilarious, the most egregious mistakes ever made by a U.S president. Nobody comes even close. And if we’re lucky, nobody ever will again.

So I rest my case. Donald Trump should not, cannot, will not win this election. We’re going to make sure he doesn’t. Joe Biden will win in a landslide, the likes of which we’ve never seen. (Yes, I stole that from Donald.)

He will not steal our pride, our legacy, our heritage, our privileges, our rights.

He will not.

Let's say there are two villages within yelling distance of each other. They almost never get along, what with cattle rustling and wife stealing and fence moving and all, but now there's a monster in their midst. Village Number Two hates the monster and is afraid of it but thinks it's best to go along with it against Village Number One because, you know, they did those THINGS.

Public Domain - Pixabay

Last week, after Donald Trump, the purported President of the United States, learned the Democratic-dominated House of Representatives would, in fact, begin impeachment inquiries, he took to Twitter to tweet more than 100 times in a single day.  He went from whining, to bragging, to threatening a whistle-blower, to predicting civil war if we didn't stop messing with him.

Trump has latched onto Twitter like a leech on the jugular and uses it as an unseemly venue for official policy, as his own personal PR firm, and as the delivery system for threats and intimidation against anyone or any organization threatening to expose or topple him.

It's because he understands the power of Twitter better than almost anybody.

Almost anybody.

There are Trump acolytes, there are trolls, there are bots, there are masters of disinformation everywhere, but I'm here to talk about those of us working against Trump, using Twitter to do it.

We are the #Resistance and we never sleep. We're out there and our numbers are growing. For us, Twitter is a battleground, it's a staging area, it's headquarters for those leading the charge against the tyranny that is Trumpism.

We're the witnesses, the couriers, the voices of the opposition. We follow the good guys and shed light on the disinformation coming from the bad guys, and, if nothing else comes of it, we take satisfaction where we can get it: We know we're getting to Trump when he has to tweet more than 100 times in a single day.

Through Twitter, we get real-time updates on the battles raging on every front, and we send them on, like smoke signals, to the resistance pods all around the country.

Is there a protest coming up? We know about it. Is there a March in the works? We pass along the info, right down to where to catch the buses.

When this rogue administration abuses citizens or foreigners or refugees, we've read the first hand accounts from the victims or their families and we send out tweets to lawyers or scholars or social justice warriors who are known to us now and are ready to help.

When someone fights the system and is in danger of being harmed, we expose the abuses. We know who to tweet to give them a hand. Millions of us retweet the information to give it more visibility.

Twitter is a morass of bad information but it's also a funnel for good journalism.  When the press and/or the pundits get it right, we send their stories into the viralsphere. When they get it wrong, we show them the error of their ways--and we often win. We win because they can't ignore the Twitter warriors coming down on them, forcing them to look again.

Because the other side Tweets, too, we know their thoughts and see right through them. In mere minutes we can counter and dilute their lies. In mere minutes.

As with any war zone, there is a dark side. You may have noticed. There are forces working against the resistance, and they're experts at obfuscating and gaslighting. They're ruthless and formidable and sometimes terrifying. They come from every corner of the planet. Sometimes they're real and sometimes they're not.  It's easy to get caught up in a whirlwind attack meant to intimidate and shut the resister down, but the Twitter Resistance community knows the difference and spreads the word.

That's where courage comes in, and we're bravest when we're not alone. The list below is my own personal list of people to follow on Twitter. I look to them for expertise, for analysis, for inspiration. I trust them. I know they've done their homework, and I know if they make a mistake they'll own up to it.

If you're new to Twitter, don't be intimidated by its uniqueness. Embrace it. When you follow any of these people, be sure to retweet their tweets. Retweeting begets retweeting and, if it begets often enough, it sends a viral message to the opposition. There are more of us than there are of them, and we're real. Don't buy into the lie that retweeting does no good. Getting our message out is part of being a community. This is how we do it.  Commenting helps, too, even if you disagree. This is a dialogue, a conversation, a convention. Be a part of it.

These are our people and they're preaching to the choir, they're using their bullhorns to yell it loud, they're showing us by their light that ethics and decency are not dead. (Some of them are hilariously entertaining, but we need that, too.)

If Trump wants a digital civil war, we're way ahead of him. We're already at the battlements. New recruits are coming in every day. We're an all-volunteer army and we won't stop until we've stopped the madness.




Some of our Twitter buddies, in first name alphabetical order. (Because it just looks better.)
Check them out. This isn't a complete list, by any means, and I've left off politicians and publications (because they're easy to find and I needed to save space), but it's a start. I'll be adding to the list so come back often. Let me know if I've missed someone you think should be here:


Adam Parkhomenko
Alyssa Milano
Amy Siskind
Andrea Chalupa
Andy Lassner
Ana Navarro-Cardenas
Asha Rangappa
Aunt Crabby Calls Bullshit

Barbara Malmet
Barb McQuade
Bob Cesca
Brian Beutler
Brian J. Karem 
Bryce Tache

Charles Blow
Charles P. Pierce
Charlotte Clymer
Connie Schultz
Chris Savage - Eclectablog

Dan Froomkin
Dan Rather
Daniel Dale
David Corn
David Rothkopf
David Weissman
Dean Obeidallah
Debra Messing
Dr. Dena Grayson
digby
Driftglass

Elie Mystal
Eric Boehlert 
Eugene Robinson

Glenn Kirschner
GottaLaff 
Greg Sargent

Heidi N. Moore
HoarseWhisperer 
Howard Dean

Ian Millhiser

Jacob Soboroff
Jason Johnson
Jason Karsh
Jay Rosen
Jed Shugerman
Jennifer Rubin
Jill Wine Banks
Jim Acosta
Joan Walsh
John Fugelsang
John Pavlovitz
Josh Marshall
Joshua Holland
Joy Reid
Joyce Alene (Joyce White Vance)
Judd Legum

Karoli
Kurt Eichenwald 
Kyle Griffin

Larry Sabato
Laurence Tribe
Lawrence O'Donnell

Malcolm Nance
Margaret Sullivan
Mark Hamill
Maya Wiley
Michael McFaul
Mimi Rocah 
Molly Jong-Fast

Natasha Bertrand
Neal Katyal
Neera Tanden
Nicolle Wallace
Norman Goldman

Patton Oswalt
Preet Bharara
Prof Helen
Paul Krugman

Rabbi Jill Zimmerman
Rachel Maddow
RAICES (@RAICESTEXAS)
Renato Mariotti
Rob Reiner
Roland Scahill

The stories coming out of Texas this week are horrific and heartbreaking. They're so far past maddening they've now entered territory where heads explode.

No other way to put this: our government has been kidnapping refugee children and hiding them all across the country.

They move them in the dead of night and won't say where they've gone.

They refuse to open detention center doors to concerned government officials--the ones who haven't gone over to the dark side and show no signs of budging.

They won't allow outside cameras or recording devices, releasing instead their own sanitized versions of nice places to incarcerate terrified children.

They hang "Dear Leader" posters on the walls, showing a smirking Donald Trump alongside a bizarre, irrelevant quote from his book, "The Art of the Deal". ("Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war", in both English and Spanish.)



We know now that, long before Jeff Sessions told those families they're going to have their kids taken away if they didn't stop fleeing the dangers in their own countries to get to the Land Of The Free And the Home Of The Brave, they were already taking kids away from fleeing refugees.

Now they have over 2000 of them--some as young as eight months old--and it's as if locusts suddenly appeared in their fields, out of nowhere, thousands of them, all at one time. What is happening??

It's as if the plan to forcibly remove children from their refugee parents ended at "forcibly remove", followed by TO BE DETERMINED in the middle of a whole lot of white space.

It's as if they thought nothing bad would happen if they forcibly removed small, helpless human beings from the people who love them and care for them.

It's as if they thought...

You know where I'm going with this, right?

They didn't think.

They didn't keep accurate records. They know where some of the children are, but not all of them. They sent them off to dozens of locations across the country without a fool-proof paper trail or electronic trail or any other kind of trail, and now that the cockamamie plan to steal kids away from their parents has been whomped to bits by millions of furious, vocal Americans, along with hundreds of members of the press, the clergy, and by God, Congress--all clamoring to know where the kids are-- they've been forced to admit they just don't know.

In a tone so nonchalant you would think they were talking about missing Kleenex boxes, they admit some of the children--the small children they kidnapped in broad daylight, along with the older ones who came alone many months before--may never be found.

They're okay with that. In fact, now that the crisis is over, now that they've stopped ripping children away from their families, their job here is done.

Lights out.

So today we're on a tear to find those kids. Everyone from governors to mayors to social workers to battle-scarred reporters to those of us who do our best work on Facebook and Twitter--everyone is trying to reunite families who have been torn apart by an American government getting off on teaching terrified refugees a lesson. We're so angry we can barely stand it.

But what worries me now is the tone set by the punditry. The return of those children is the talk of the town. Every TV pundit is putting together panels to discuss everything from long term psychiatric disorders stemming from separation and incarceration (almost guaranteed) to whether or not Melania meant the kids when she wore the jacket screaming I really don't care. Do U? on a flight to visit the detention centers (who the hell knows?).

On every panel someone reminds us that there will be some kids who will never (not may never, will never) see their families again. Everyone nods in agreement. Yes. They'll never see their families again.

Sad face, everyone.

And then they move on. They MOVE ON.

I haven't heard a single person talk about punishment. Kidnapping is a crime. Terrorizing refugees is a crime. Sending children off to vanish without a trace is surely a crime.

Who's going to jail? Is anybody in trouble for this?

Not that I've seen. And I want to know why.

(Cross-posted at Dagblog, Medium, and Crooks & Liars)

Women's Liberation protest, 1971

Enlightened women of America, if I say we're at our most vulnerable right now, right this minute, and our gains are becoming losses, would you be tempted to smack me down?

Would you rush to remind me of the Women's Marches, the "Me Too" movement, the multiplying numbers of women seeking public office?

Would you send me links to maybe a dozen men whose careers have now ended, thanks to women coming forward about sexual abuse just last year alone?

I hear you. Now hear me:

Donald Trump, a serial sexual abuser, is our current president. Congress, led by a Republican majority, is still overwhelmingly male, many of them open chauvinists. ( Out of 535 members of Congress, only 106 are women--22 in the Senate, and 84 in the House.)

We're the only gender who can make babies, yet it's still left to men to decide how we control the process.

Red states outnumber blue states and women's rights are in danger in every one of them. Free contraception is looked on as a sin or a waste of good money. Kentucky could become the first state without a single abortion clinic. Many others are down to one or two. Planned Parenthood is under siege and may not make it this time.

Dismissing and disrespecting women's lives is back in vogue. It happens every time we gather in large groups and make too much noise.

And yet there are millions of women who don't or won't see what the fuss is all about.

If you ask Republican women why they vote the way they do, their answer, overwhelmingly, is "abortion". Nothing else matters, as seen by their approval of Donald Trump, the poorest choice for president this country has ever seen. Trump, the former pro-choice advocate, saw early on where the sun does shine and did a complete 180. The women still supporting Trump refuse to believe he lied for their votes.

We could argue all day long about the shortsightedness of protecting fetuses while ignoring the needs of our living children, but the fact is, millions of women will vote for inadequate, unqualified, impossible men as long as those men say the magic words: "Pro-life".

Even proof of sexual abuse and domestic violence isn't enough to sway them. Even threats to give to the rich and sell out the poor won't slow them down. They see nothing beyond abortion.

We should hate those women for their blind loyalty to the forces working against us.

We should hate the women who didn't vote for Hillary for opening the door to Trump.

We should hate Hillary for not winning.

We should hate that our decades-long work on equality and worth is about to become so much dust in the wind.

But if we waste even a minute honing our hatred to such red-hot degrees, we use up energy we're going to need going forward. With all the bad news, with all the setbacks, we're gaining momentum. Women's voices are being heard.

If we divide into factions, we'll lose.

This is not white women against black women, it's not progressive women against centrist women, it's not young women vs old women. It's all women against the forces that work to hold us down.

We're going to have our differences. We're going to want to steer each conversation our way, to stress what's important to us. To you, to me, to her. We can't do that yet. It'll have to come later. Right now we have to work together, without bias, without prejudice, without ego.

And we're going to need leaders. No movement ever succeeded without strong, mission-oriented leaders. The ones we choose won't be perfect. They shouldn't have to pass purity tests--we've had enough of that--but they're going to have to speak for us in inclusive, powerful, charismatic ways.

They don't have to be celebrities in their own right, but they'll need to be wise, articulate and, most of all, riveting. They'll be competing with shlockmeisters and celebrity noise--those folks the mainstream media lust after, no matter how much they claim otherwise.

I don't know who they'll be and I'm not up to making predictions. We'll know them when we see them and we'll raise them up--but not so high the mission will get lost in their celebrity. They'll have to weather brutal storms, assaults on every aspect of their past, a constant parsing of their every word.

 My choice, for that reason, would be someone already seasoned--already past all that--but I'm open to new voices, to new ideas. We need to talk about this now, reasonably and honestly, and we need to keep the anger down.

It's the Year of the Woman. Momentum is on our side. Now we get to prove who we really are.

Yesterday, 9/11/17, was a bittersweet day for me.  I couldn't forget it marked the 16th anniversary of the day the Twin Towers went down in NYC, but the day was something of a celebration for me:  It marked the last of  30 radiation treatments, ending, finally, a long journey that began last November, when a biopsy of a breast lump confirmed what we all suspected: cancer.

I've purposely not written much about this part of my life. While it took almost all of my energies, the ugliest parts don't need to be revisited. But if I could, I would heap mountains of rewards on every single professional person who helped me through it.

Between Tidelands Cancer Center in Murrells Inlet, SC, where I had my mastectomy and aftercare, and Karmanos Cancer Center in Petoskey, MI, where I did the chemo and radiation, my care was simply amazing. 

Because cancer is such an awful diagnosis, I suspect a good part of their training is in kindness and empathy. If it is, they all passed with flying colors.  They touch, they hug, they look you in the eye.  They sit and listen. They come up with little take-home gifts you can't help but love. (One was an ingenious hand-made temporary prosthesis called a "knitted knocker", complete with a nipple.)

They worry about how you're doing when you're not with them and sometimes call, just to make sure everything's okay. They worry about finances, drive times, and lodging, and do what they can to help.

They were, in short,  my indispensable life-lines. I told them all that I would miss them terribly but I hoped I never had to see them again.

(This is not to diminish the incredible love and support from my family and friends. They were wonderful throughout--and still are.)

In five days I'll be celebrating my 80th birthday. Even after all of this I don't feel 80 years old and I can't see spending the rest of my life dwelling on either my age or my cancer. As I rebuild my energy and regain my health I have time now to think about how this will change things. So far I haven't come up with anything. No epiphanies, no revelations.  I want to get back to how it was before this. That's all.

I hope I'll be writing more, and if I've learned anything it's that I really must stop double-spacing between sentences. It makes me sad that I have to do it, and I'll probably mess up now and then, either accidentally or on purpose, but it seems to drive even really nice people crazy and I hate that I might be responsible for that.

I'm still going after Trump and Hillary-haters and those guys in Michigan who are ruining my state.  Some things never change.

For a couple of months now I've been away from here more than I've been around. There are many reasons for that, but the main reason--the major reason--is because one week ago today I had a radical mastectomy. My right breast is gone, along with a nasty tangle of lymph nodes. 

I'll have a bit of a reprieve while I'm healing but chemo is ahead, followed by radiation.  It won't be a walk in the park--I'm not looking forward to baldness and barf buckets--but the one thing I have going for me that too many women in my same situation don't is the reality and the promise of excellent care.  I've had plenty to worry about, but throughout it all--expensive tests, surgery, after-care--cost has never been a factor.

I have Medicare and a moderate-cost, very good supplemental plan. As long as Trump and his cohorts don't foul it up, I should be okay.  But too many people--men, women, and children--are facing frightening medical issues exacerbated by worries based solely on their ability to pay.

We live in a country where most of our wealth has been shuffled to the top 10 percent of our population, where wages and benefits have dropped like rocks and are dropping still, where social and health care programs are at the mercy of reckless, thoughtless, profit-driven politicians.

In every city, in every town, concerned friends and families are forced to set up Go-Fund-Me pages or place money jugs on store countertops in order to pay for desperately needed health care. It kills me to see it, knowing it doesn't have to be this way. It's obscene.

There are bigger fish to fry out there, and I don't plan on using this blog as a personal heath diary.  Ever. I want to be here and everywhere, still fighting against a system that has to be challenged at every turn, and, if necessary, stopped. 

The posts may be shorter for a while, using links to pieces I've found that I want to share, possibly adding more guest posts, but I'll be here. This blog has been up and running for eight years, and with that fool Trump out there stomping our country to bits I'm not about to give it up.

One thing I need to stress: You should know me well enough to know this is not a call for sympathy. In fact, I forbid you to feel sorry for me. I'm in good hands, both personally and professionally, and I have great hope that after the long haul I'll be fine.

There is a cancer among us and it's much bigger than the one newly removed from my body. It will keep growing unless we weaken it, stop it in its tracks, and  then find a lasting cure.
 
We're not quitters and never have been. The GOP is banking on short attention spans to get them through this, but we're paying attention. We've been paying attention. And nothing's gonna stop us now.

This year I joined the National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO (NWU).  I advocate for unions all the time, and this just puts the icing on the cake for me, but more than that, more than how it makes me feel, union membership joins us, arms linked, as we struggle to give our labor force the respect it deserves.  (Yes, even those workers who rail against unions.  We fight for them, too.  Because who else will?)

As I do every Labor Day, I went looking for Labor Day mentions, and the first thing I found was a list of Labor Day quotes to use on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.  Hey!  Great!  But after reading a few of them I noticed a pattern:  They were all about the rewards of hard work, the joys of labor, the shame of idleness.  Nothing about unions AT ALL.  On Labor Day.

It came from the International Business Times, and their lead paragraph is a study in how to say so little about organized labor you would think it never existed:

Labor Day is more than just a pseudo end to summer.  Most Americans throughout the nation are off work on Monday, and that's because more than 100 years ago laborers were forced to work 12-hour days, seven days a week.  While you kick back and relax with some delicious food and cold drinks, here are some interesting quotes social media users can share with family and friends, (etc., etc., etc.)

Enough said, apparently.  What follows are 25 quotes from people  like Maya Angelou, MLK, and Ginger Rogers.  Work is good!  Everybody should work!

And a little shame can't hurt, says Henry Ford in Quote #24:  "Nobody can think straight who does not work.  Idleness warps the mind." 

But the last thought is the kicker--I think:

Bonus for the fashionistas:  "Rules like 'don't wear white after Labor Day' or 'shoes matching the handbag' are antiquated.  Modern women should feel free to experiment."

(Look, I just report these things, I shouldn't be expected to explain them, too.)

But Labor Day is traditionally a celebration of organized labor and a reminder of the sacrifices that came before.  It's a union-invented holiday, celebrated by all workers everywhere, union or not.

As I write this, Joe Biden is giving his annual Labor Day speech in Pittsburgh, talking about how productivity went up about 73% while wages went up only 9%, and. . .

(What the hell? MSNBC just broke into his speech, saying they'll come back to it if he says something important.  They're waiting for him to talk about a run for the presidency.  Nothing else is important on this LABOR DAY.)

So guess what C-Span 2 put into their programming this morning--on LABOR DAY?  "Gretchen Carlson on 'Getting Real.  Fox New anchor Gretchen Carlson shares her life and career in 'broadcasting'."   (Oh, honey, I wish I was kidding.)

News flash:  MSNBC just cut off the president's LABOR DAY speech, too.  CNN didn't cover it at all.  As far as I know, the LABOR DAY speeches by POTUS and the Veep were not broadcast in their totality anywhere on television.  If I'm wrong, please tell me.  Unbelievable.  (If it's not Trump, it's not news.)

But on to the better stuff.  A round-up of Labor Day observances on this, our day:

The Nation:  Top Ten Labor Day Songs

Bernie Sanders:  Stand Together and Fight Back.

L.A Times:  Uncertain Times for American Labor.

Dylan Petrohilos (ThinkProgress):  Seven Union Heroes to Remember.

The Atlantic:  A Labor Day 2015 Reading List.  (A list within a list.  It's all good.)

Ben Railton (TPM):  The Forgotten Radical History of Labor Day.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:  This labor Day.

Ramona (That's me):  Friday Follies Labor Day Edition, 2011


This is our day to enjoy.  To celebrate our successes.  We've earned it.

And--I don't like to brag--but isn't it just like us to want to share it?  (Insert Smiley Face here.)