Holding My Own?

 

Rick's parking karma held as he slipped into the last spot in the bibliothèque parking. I looked up to see pretty blue shutters and flowers in a house. The wall is on a house that is probably at least 300 years old. It was more than a pretty window. It was a reminder that not everything in this world is coming apart.

In the center of our French village, the houses, including ours, are 300-400 years old. The ground floors used to hold goats, cows and chickens, but are now modern living and dining rooms and kitchens. The streets are narrow and parking is non-existent which is why we search public parking. 

I've been fighting with myself against frustration and depression about the destruction of my birth country by incompetent, demented, immoral people. There are people too afraid to fight back, or too greedy to do what is right. I feel anger too at the people who voted them in, for not seeing what was there if they'd just taken the time to look.

In our village, we find many French who want to talk about Trump, usually with disgust. Canadians, Danes, Swedes, Germans, Brits ask us if we are relieved that we are no longer American. They were anti-Trump during his first administration. Now they express shock that America could sink so low so fast.

This tiny village has a long history of pain from bad rulers. It was territory that went back and forth between French, Spanish and Catalan aristocracy over the centuries. Towers still sit on mountain tops to help who ever was in power to see the latest invasion. 

Power struggles aren't new. Fighting against them isn't new.

In 1939 the 3000+ village residents became 103,000 as people crossed the Pryenees, fleeing Franco. These refugees were put in concentration camps along the beach. The bad treatment of refugees and immigrants is not new.

The village did not submit easily. Women protested in April 1942. An elderly man, who lived through it, told me how there were resistance fighters living in the village. He lived on the renamed rue de Resistance.

We tried going off grid to restoke our morale, but when we're on our computer information about evil acts of the administration sneak in. Then we give in and check news in France, England, Switzerland, U.S. and sometimes Germany. We see old and new frightening stories. I will look at Fox News on the internet and see a totally different world to what other news sources are reporting adding to my pain, fear, frustration at the lies and manipulation.

I am trying to hold on to hope for sanity, by hanging on to what is good in my little village: our friends, local and international, the wonderful fruits and vegetables, our pup, the smell of bread baking from the boulangeries, the cafés where we can sit and people watch, chatting with those walking by. There is the surprise of a beautiful window when we lucked out by finding a parking place. It helps, but it is not enough.

Hopefully, the village, the U.S., the world will survive the maniacs in D.C. and those enabling them, just as this village has survived everything over the centuries and too many battles to list here.  

I wish I could do more. Making phone calls, sending emails and writing essays isn't enough. On April 5, I wish I could be on Boston Common, in front of the State House where my grandfather did engineering repairs in the early 1900s. 

Can the people who failed to see the danger before November 5 see it now and act?

Will Republicans develop backbones and stop bleating their approval?

Will the many Americans who will suffer, and suffer they will even more than now, fight back?

Will the Army refuse to fight if America attacks other countries Putin-like? 

Meanwhile I will try and channel my pain, frustration, disgust, fear of what the U.S. is becoming.  

Those shutters are a lovely jade of blue. The flowers mean spring is coming. My dog wants to sit on my lap. The weeks of rain seems to have stopped lessening the drought. 

Hang on, hang on, hang on. 

Like all bad governments, rulers, things will change. Don't think about the price in lives ruined, think of the shutters which are a lovely shade of...

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