This year for theĀ A to ZĀ I am writing about the differences between democracy and the other things. This is your trigger warning. If you are going to be bothered by my descriptions of what I believe America should look and feel like, please stop reading and come back next year when my topic may go back to music or scrapbooking or interesting tidbits. Please respect my space and DO NOT leave disinformation or inflammatory statements in the comments. It’s my blog and I will delete them. Thanks for your cooperation.Ā
B is for Benevolence over Bigotry.
Benevolence
Bigotry
Kindness GoodWill Charity Compassion Volunteering Social Conscience Generosity
Now I am not saying that ALL Democrats are benevolent. And I am not saying that ALL Republicans are bigots. Let me make that clear. It just seems to me that the policies and laws that each party wants to make are so vastly different.
Take the new budget. Why in heaven would you want to take away funding from cancer research or giving food to children just to give tax breaks to the wealthy and fund a larger military presence?
Does the color of one’s skin or the fact that two men or women love each other change the fact that they are human beings?
And as we can see from what has happened in the last year, the situation has gotten much worse. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” did pass and funding for things like cancer research, public broadcasting and the like is gone. The aid we give to other countries has been stopped as well. The problem is in doing that we have made our country less stable.
Is it so hard to care about someone other than yourself? I just don’t get it.
The basis for this year’s A to Z has been taken from theĀ speechĀ that Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, delivered on the opening of the 218th congress, which was the least productive congress in history up to that time. This congress may be worse!
I really wasn’t sure if I was going to do the A to Z this year and I didn’t do a theme reveal. I don’t know if you remember but last year at this time I had to stop after the letter D to take care of my MIL. This year I don’t have any big life things going on until next month when hubby and I go on our first cruise…(maybe I’ll do an A to Z on that sometime!). I haven’t been blogging much at all lately but I do still have all the info I gathered for last year so maybe I will give it a shot. If I make it past the letter D, I’ll consider it a win. Here we go.
My theme is Democracy and I am taking the basis from the speech given by House Representative Hakeem Jeffries when opening the 218th congress in 2023. I will admit that I have lost a little of my admiration for Rep. Jeffries as I think that he and Senator Schumer could/should do more to try to prevent the awful things that are happening to our country and at the same time, I realize that there isn’t much they can do given that they are the minority, for now.
As I begin, let me get this out of the way…I am a Democrat but MORE IMPORTANTLY, I am a firm believer in democracy and the rule of law. If there was a Republican who was doing something good for our country, stood for something closer to my beliefs than a Democrat running for the same office, I might vote for the Republican. So far I am not seeing any of that. With the exception of Liz Chaney and Adam Kinzinger who both chose country over party, I can’t think of another Republican who was willing to turn his back on the dysfunctional group we have in control right now. Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t count. Too little, too late in my opinion.
That being said, this is your trigger warning. If you are going to be bothered by my descriptions of what I believe America should look and feel like, please stop reading and come back next year when my topic may go back to music or scrapbooking or cruising. Please respect my space and DO NOT leave disinformation or inflammatory statements in the comments. It’s my blog and I will delete them. Thanks for your cooperation.
Here we go then.
American Values
Autocracy
Community Independence Right to make our own choices Equality Rule of Law
Centralized power Strict control Unquestioning obedience Limited participation One person rule
It seems like common sense to me that a person would want to be able to make their own choices and live their life without having someone tell them what to do every step of the way or restricting access to things. Other than when raising a child, and even then most of the time it is a shared experience, I can’t think of any reason for one person to have total control over someone else. Even with parenting there comes a point where the child should be able to make some of their own choices, as long as it will not hurt them or others. I can remember letting my daughter choose her own outfits for school even though a) they were not things that I felt would go together or b) she was without a jacket when I thought it was a little chilly. If it made her feel good to dress this way then she would be more apt to able to focus on learning.
We should be able to question the people governing us and to express our opinions without fear of being retaliated against. We should have the ability to choose our leaders and hold them accountable when their decisions are detrimental to our country and safety. We should be able to read whatever books we want, practice religion or not and love who we want.
Live and let live is my core value. It is not my business to tell you how to live your life and no one’s business to tell me how to live mine. I believe we can be stronger as a community if we share our ideas and cooperate together. We may have different beliefs or ideas but mine are not necessarily better than yours and vice versa. Our uniqueness is what gives us strength when we work together.
In the year since I wrote that, look how much closer we have gotten to the autocracy side of things and farther away from the American Values side!
Well I’m trying to post here to see if it will go through with my pictures. I am almost at capacity and I really don’t want to pay for more space. I’ve already deleted a lot of photos so who knows what my past posts look like. So time consuming to check them.
Anyway, did a fun thing with my daughter and her fiance recently. We have a really historic mansion with some gorgeous gardens about 20 minutes down the road from us and I have never been there before so when I saw an ad for an event they were having I thought it would be the perfect time to go check it out. You may have heard of the place. It’s called Filoli Gardens and in 2023 President Biden took a walk around the gardens with Chinese President Xi.
A while ago I read that there was a troll exhibit in the garden and it looked intriguing. Then I read that they were having a Halloween event called Nightfall. Then I knew I had to go.
We got there just before the sun set and were greeted by the first troll, Ranja Redeye. There were TONS of carved pumpkins all in the field. Then we walked through a gate to get to the trail. There we met Sofus Lotus, the Listening Troll. That is my husband standing next to her. I think he’s whispering in her ear, “How did I get trapped into this?” LOL. Truthfully, it was a little hard on him because there was a lot of walking on uneven ground which is not good for his back or legs. He made it through though. There was a group of scarecrows standing in a field. Reminded me of the movie “Children of the Corn.” There were colored lights on the trees and as the night got darker it really started to come alive. There was a huge pumpkin decorated ring that you walk through to get to the main area. Once it got dark it almost looked like a ring of fire.
We came across a group of banana slugs. It looked so cool. There were a lot of other scenes too, including a forest of mushrooms all lit up. Those reminded me of the display in Golden Gate Park that I saw when I did the Illuminate SF A to Z. There was a spot to get a beverage and sit down for a spell by some fire pits if you wanted. It was there that we came across my Spirit Troll, Kamma Can, the Treasure Troll. She can see the potential in any little scrap to turn it into something beautiful! We ended up back at the main entrance and it was spectacular. It was a great evening and lots of folks were there with their kids dressed up for Halloween.
After I got home I looked up the trolls and it seems that we missed one because we only saw 5 and there are 6! I guess I will not see it because the trolls are going away on November 11 and I don’t think we can get down there again before that. I know my hubby won’t go because it took him a day or two to recover from this visit. Poor guy.
I know that Filoli (which stands for Fight, Love, Live) has a Christmas display as well so I think my daughter and I will check that one out because we didn’t go into the mansion on this visit at all and it was decorated too. I was feeling bad for my husband so we stopped once we had made it back to the main area.
Well it looks like I’m able to get this post through without hitting the wall. Thank goodness. Have you heard of the Filoli Gardens? Have anything fun like that in your neck of the woods? Happy Tuesday!
Hello and welcome to my ongoing series of adventures in Seattle. As you may remember, my husband and I took a recent train trip from the SF Bay Area to Seattle, Washington. I am writing about it as part of the October Ultimate Blogging Challenge.
Until I figure out how to make the simulcast work, I’m just gonna link my blogspot blog here. Please check it out if you get a chance!
Gotta figure out that IFTTT bit. That’s what happens when you step away from the blogging bit for a while. The whole thing changes and you gotta learn it all over again!
Hi folks. I haven’t posted since May! I’m trying to get into the habit again and I’ve joined the Ultimate Blog Challenge for the month of October. I am trying to use IFTTT to simulcast my Blogger posts but it looks like this one didn’t go through so I’m gonna link it here:
It is the beginning of the story of our recent train trip from the SF Bay Area to Seattle, Washington. Hopefully tomorrow’s post will go through automatically.
Here are a couple of the photos from the first part of the trip. It takes 23 hours to travel from our area to Seattle.
Check out the full story by clicking on the link above. See you tomorrow.
Well we’ve come to the end of the month of May and also the end of the journey for Bill’s mom. She passed yesterday morning. I was there with her until the end and even though she didn’t quite make it to her 100th birthday (July) she definitely gave it quite a ride.
This is her shortly after we brought her down to live next door to us on December 31, 2022. Fortunately she made her wishes known to us and we are not left wondering what to do. Arrangements have already been made for cremation and she will be buried next to her husband. There is not a lot of personal stuff to go through and her finances were all in order.
When I see this picture, though, I realize how far she had declined in the past year. At the time this was taken we were going on weekly trips to the library and the grocery store. For the last year she has had no interest in reading at all and she rarely left the house. Our last outing was in March to get biscuits and gravy for breakfast. She loved her biscuits and gravy.
Anyway, just wanted to put this out there as the last few of my posts have been updates on her. She will be missed.
Janet's Smiles 