Tag: Patriotism

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Patriotism, by Lewis T

· “See the USA in your Chevrolet.”

· “See America first.”

· “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.”

· “On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and Country.”

· “Duty, honor, country.”

· “Loose lips sink ships.”

These are all valid expressions of love and loyalty to our native or chosen country. It is natural and normal and expected that we feel some sense of obligation to the people and places that nurture and sustain us. That is why we sometimes refer to the United States as our Mother Country. It is why we usually react more strongly to reports of patricide, matricide, and, especially, infanticide than to other murders. How could anyone do harm to those who have given so much to us–freedom, opportunity, sustenance?

· “Love it or leave it.”

· “My country, right or wrong.”

· Manifest Destiny

· American exceptionalism

· Genocide

· Religious intolerance

· Prejudice

These are manifestations of extreme forms of love and loyalty to those places and people that have nurtured us. There is a flip side to that coin. Just as we love the nurturer (and, perhaps, question how worthy we are of that love), we tend to distrust the stranger, who may not be disposed to see us so favorably. In long ago times, it was the tribe to which we owed our loyalty. It was Arian against the Jew, the Montagues against the Capulets, the Hatfields against the McCoys. All others were with the favored tribe or against it. The “Other” was deemed less than human, disdained by God, fit only to be slaughtered and their bodies left to rot in the sun or be picked clean by vultures.

Thus, America can wage a geopolitical war on Viet Nam or Iraq on the pretext of threat to the homeland while counting only the American dead and wounded and ignoring the order-of-magnitude greater losses on the other side. We systematically and mercilessly brought the Native population of the United States down by 95% over 400 years–an estimated 11-3/4 million people, almost double the number of Jews murdered during the Nazi Holocaust. Every year we hold a celebration in honor of the white man who “discovered” America but about the near extermination of an entire race of humans we are silent. During World War II, we built concentration camps for 110,000 Japanese-Americans, 62% of whom were American citizens.

What constitutes a “tribe” these days is changing. Some Americans have figured out that there is a lot of money to be made by exploiting the very human capacity for pitting “us” against “them”. Thus, the NFL has become a multi-billion-dollar industry which uses human beings as the raw material, violence as the lure, and attachment to a geographical place as the motivator. Only within the past ten years or so have we begun to understand the toll that “cash cow” has taken on its gladiators.

Homo sapiens is almost unique in its capacity to devour its own. No wonder so many are unwilling to acknowledge the fact that we evolved from the primordial slime. How, if true, could we then think of ourselves as the “chosen people”? How, then, could we call others “gooks”, “slopes”, “niggers”, “redskins”, or “chinks”?

In the final analysis, we have to ask ourselves a few questions. Why is it so important to engage in countless hours of tedious research to be able to show that our ancestors came over on the Mayflower or, still less likely, Noah’s Ark? Wouldn’t it be more worthwhile to really get to know our relatives in order to understand whether they were worth giving them the time of day? What I want to know about a person is what they are like on the inside, not the outside. What things were like for them growing up, not where they grew up.

What does their soul look like, not their skin. What makes us unique and wonderful cannot be seen with the eyes or learned from examining their DNA. If you must classify something, measure the temperature of their heart, the depth of their compassion, and the breadth of their wisdom. If these things measure up, then I don’t care if they come from Uranus.

© 11 November 2013

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.
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Patriotism, by Phillip Hoyle

Last
weekend while travelling south along I-25, we approached the Broadway exit. A
large American flag held aloft on a sturdy pole sunk in concrete and sitting at
the top of a rampart flapped in the breeze. “I’ve never noticed that before,”
my friend commented.
“Nor
I. Must be new,” I responded.
Her
next comment was about how good it is to live in America. I agreed with my
rather minimal statement that I, too, was happy to live here. I believe for her
the sentiment is rather standard fare formed from listening to too much
conservative talk radio. We don’t talk about that. For me the issue of being
“proud to be an American” is something quite different. She seems some kind of
absolutist while I am surely a relativist. So are we philosophers? Since we
spotted the flag on I-25 I’ve been thinking about patriotism—perhaps that does make
me a philosopher of sorts.
I
believe patriotism most dramatically relates to an image of heroes who put
their very lives on the line for their identity as part of a particular people.
The history of any Fatherland or Motherland obviously has its origins in the
LAND. For me the land is always the Flint Hills of Kansas. I grew up in wide
open spaces with a broad river valley and low bluffs nearby. The landscape was
further defined by creeks: so grassy highlands and wooded valleys with stretches
of plowed fields in the bottomlands of waterways are all a part of my
fatherland. Agriculture abounded there.
In
my particular patria a military
presence with a long history lent gravity and opened me to a larger society and
world. I grew up around the U.S. Army’s Seventh Cavalry; Custer was once
stationed at Fort Riley just across the river from our town. The presence of historic
stone buildings that housed both the officers and the fine horse stock of the
cavalry, of wooden barracks for the enlisted men, of parade grounds, of rifle
ranges, of helicopters coming and going in the air around the base’s heliport,
of convoys made up of personnel carriers and artillery, jeeps and guns, trucks
and heavy machinery often impeding traffic on highways, and of our lively
community that entertained GIs provided endless variety for a Kansas town me.
Then there were the children of Army families in our school population, and for
me, the family-owned IGA store providing groceries for families of GIs, Civil
Service employees, as well as the townies like me.
Thus
my patria was racially mixed, with
multiple languages, mixed-race families, and people who had lived all over the
world—especially Germany and Japan as I recall it. Soldiers marched in local
parades and cannons and other Army equipment impressed the youngsters and brought
tears to the eyes of elders.
My
fatherland was rather new by world standards yet as a youngster I felt
connected to the antiquity of the place by the presence of an old log cabin church
and by stories of my ancestors who had long lived in the area. Still the Hoyle
and Schmedemann families arrived only three generations before my advent. My
great grandparents came to Kansas to homestead. Some may have come to help
assure that Kansas would be a free state in the political heat up that
eventuated in the US Civil War. Yet in my family there were no ultimate
patriots—those who made the ‘ultimate sacrifice’ for their country—in any of
the stories I heard.
Growing
up I heard lots of talk of such sacrifices of life, but most of them were in sermons
not about the country but quoting a “no greater love” value as applied to the
ultimate vicarious death of Jesus as the Christ. Religion figured heavily in my
fatherland.
I
became aware of the country as something much larger than my state when I heard
my parents talk about the differences between Ike Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, then when I met men who had served in the Korean conflict, when I
further realized just what the US Army did besides entertain us with wild
stories and exotic tattoos, when I became aware of missile crises, the Cold
War, the building of the interstate road system, the anti-communist diatribe,
the deaths of national leaders, the threat of the draft, the Vietnam non-war,
the peace movement, and the growing realization that our USA motivations
idealized in myth and PR announcements didn’t well match my own vision of reality
or basic values.
Welcome
to thoughtful adulthood, Hoyle.
AND
EVEN MORE THAN THAT, THERE WAS ALWAYS THAT NAGGING REALIZATION THAT IF ANYONE
REALLY KNEW ME, THEY CERTAINLY WOULDN’T LET ME BE A PATRIOT IN ANY SENSE OF THE
WORD.
But
I am a patriot who feels a deep sense of meaning in being American. I love it
but not in an exclusivist, better-than-any-other identity or country.
© 25 Sep 2013 

About the Author  

Phillip Hoyle
lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In
general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two
years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now
focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE
program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
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Patriotism, by Ricky

Exactly
what is “patriotism”?  Who possesses
“patriotism”?  What does “patriotism”
look like to me?  What does “patriotism”
look like to others?
Today
is November 11th, Veterans’ Day, the holiday Americans set aside to
honor and remember our country’s military personnel, past and present, and the
resulting deaths and heroic deeds.  At
least that is what it was following the Korean “Police Action”.  The unpopular “non-declared-war conflict” in Vietnam
with the anti-war protests, primarily lead by the under 21 draftees and
draft-dodgers, tarnished this holiday for many decades.  During the years that followed, politicians
and corporate board of directors expanded the roll of “capitalist greed”
destroying American citizens’ confidence and trust in the concept of benevolent
authority.
I
am very cynical about businesses and corporate “chain” stores offering veterans
special discounts on this one day per year. 
Corporate business do these public relations gimmicks to attract money
from those people they can fool into believing the corporation actually cares
about our veterans both alive and dead. 
If they really cared, the corporations and business groups would send
their lobbyists to Congress to demand that the Veterans Administration be fully
funded and have the best facilities to serve our veterans.  But instead, they send lobbyists to ensure
laws are passed that favor their greed. 
As I said, I am very cynical.
When
I was a child, I spoke as a child; I understood as a child; I thought as a
child; I trusted as a child: but when I became a man, I eventually learned to
use my intelligence and actually think
and reason.  This I can do fairly
well.  I only act childish.
        During the American Revolution, everyone was a patriot and a
traitor.  Colonists who were patriots for
England were traitors to the revolutionaries. 
Patriots to the revolution were traitors to King George.  Both groups believed they were “right”.
Lord
Baden Powell of England founded the Boy Scout movement.  It was an organization to teach British boys
the desired character traits, sense of honor, and moral values.  No boy would willingly join a character
building group, so the name became “Scouting for Boys” and was patterned after
Baden Powell’s experience in the British army, specifically his time as a
military scout.  The Scout Oath begins,
“On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country. …”  It is the duty to my country which is the
patriotic problem.
        Raising generations of children to believe without critical thought
that “duty to my country” means, “My country right or wrong” is a recipe for
disaster.  This is never more
historically apparent than during military activity.  For example, when the Redcoats retreated from
Concord and Lexington back to Boston, they marched in ordered columns,
shoulder-to-shoulder while those pesky and cowardly rebels shot them from
behind trees and rock fencing, and ran away without giving a fair fight.  Another example is the fighting at Gettysburg
during the Civil War; specifically Pickett’s Charge.  Thousands of brave men again stood
shoulder-to-shoulder and walked across a mile of open field into the point
blank firing of those damn Yankee soldiers and cannons all of whom were protected
by a rock wall.  Thousands of very
courageous Confederate soldiers died doing their duty to their country
as they believed it to be.  Nonetheless,
it was sheer stupidity.
        Back to the British: during WWI, the British army lost
approximately 60,000 men on July 1, 1916 (at the battle of Somme) by sending
them to cross an open field (the so called “no mans’ land”) into multiple
German machine gun emplacements.  Again,
sheer stupidity.  “Aye, but we showed the
buggers.”  At least by WWII, everyone
learned to make like Little Egypt and crawl on their bellies like a reptile
when crossing open fields under fire; except the Japanese whose “banzai”
charges into automatic weapons fire met with the exact same results obtained at
Gettysburg and the battle Somme in WWI.
        “My country, right or wrong” brings death and destruction to
soldiers and civilians alike.  This is
not a good definition for “Duty to my country”. 
I do believe that every citizen has responsibilities: voting, paying
taxes, engaging in dialog over public issues, serving on juries when selected,
and to use their God-given intelligence to think and reason and not to trust
blindly.  I do not believe that any
citizen need die overseas to keep Dick Chaney’s or Scrooge McDuck’s money-bin
full.
        I believe a true patriot: resists warmongers and bullies, speaks out for
truth, exposes government and corporate corruption, and when necessary or
unavoidable, makes the other guy die stupidly for his country.
© 11 November 2013 

About
the Author 

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale
and then in Redondo Beach.  Just prior to
turning 8 years old in 1956, I was sent to live with my grandparents on their
farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents
divorced.
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later
in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California,
graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force,
I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until
her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11-2001
terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be
therapeutic.
My story blog is, TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com
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Patriotism by Pat Gourley

“The
owners of this country know the truth…its called the American dream because you
have to be asleep to believe it” George Carlin

When I was in grade school in the 1950’s I attended a predominately Irish Catholic institution called St. Peter in LaPorte, Indiana. We would start each day with Mass and then once we had left the church and reached the classroom we would begin the rest of the day with the pledge of allegiance. In hindsight I now recognize both of these activities for the not so subtle forms of child abuse and indoctrination that they were.

I escaped the clutches of this myopic worldview I feel in no small part through the transformation that occurred with my getting in touch with my queerness. The idea of a person who calls themselves a patriot to me is someone who often unthinkingly is a member of a tribe and this results all too often in a blind and selfish xenophobia. A working title for this piece could have been “Patriotism- Tribalism Run Amok”.

You could view ‘patriotism” as a particularly perverse manipulation of our innate hard wiring to belong to a tribe. Quoting Edward O. Wilson from his great new book The Social Conquest of Earth: “People must have a tribe. It gives them a name in addition to their own and social meaning in a chaotic world. It makes the environment less disorienting and dangerous.” It is a bit ironic I suppose that I escaped the white, insular, Irish Catholic, lower middle class and very “patriotic” tribe I was born into by discovering and joining another tribe. For many of us our initial realizations of being ‘different or other’ were very disorienting and dangerous. The early coming out process is a struggle to give ourselves a name that will create meaning for us in what we correctly perceive to be a very chaotic and often hostile world.

Was Mother Nature though handing us little queers a truly change creating gift in the form of our ‘otherness’? Was this a possible genetic gift to the human race with the potential to allow us to actualize a more constructive way of relating to one another as human beings? Quoting again from The Social Conquest of Earth:

“…homosexuality may give advantages to the group by special talents, unusual qualities of personality, and the specialized roles and professions it generates. There is abundant evidence that such is the case in both preliterate and modern societies. Either way, societies are mistaken to disapprove of homosexuality because gays have different sexual preferences and reproduce less. Their presence should be valued instead for what they contribute constructively to human diversity. A society that condemns homosexuality harms itself.”


I would follow this by saying ‘take that’ all you queer theorists who think we are nothing more that social constructs resulting from societal oppression. A question I have often asked myself since the late 1970’s is have we abdicated our birthright or legitimate power to contribute constructively to human diversity in our often craven desire to be accepted and to emulate the straight world by insisting that we are no different than they are except for what we do in bed. Rather is our true purpose to be the valuable expression of some of humankind’s most altruistic impulses?

I was first introduced to the writings of Edward O. Wilson through none other than Harry Hay who turned me on to Wilson’s 1978 book “On Human Nature”. For those unfamiliar with Wilson he is a professor Emeritus of Biology at Harvard University. Wilson wrote in 1978: “Homosexuality is normal in a biological sense, that it is a distinctive beneficial behavior that evolved as an important element in human social organization. Homosexuals may be the genetic carriers of some of mankind’s rare altruistic impulses.”

Well you can just imagine what sort of manna from heaven this prominent biologist’s theories were for an activist like Hay who had been running around for years saying we were a ‘separate people whose time had come’. It was actually through an email I recently received from Don Kilhefner that I was alerted to Wilson’s most recent work. Kilhefner along with Hay, John Burnside and Mitch Walker birthed the Radical Fairies in 1979.

It is certainly my contention that we are a separate people who time is here and that many of our great queer thinkers long ago saw through the manipulative jingoistic, sense of exceptionalism that passes for patriotism as something beneath us as a people. We are the guardians and hopefully proponents of some of mankind’s rare altruistic impulses and certainly we must know in our hearts that as Oscar Wilde so succinctly stated ‘patriotism is the virtue of the vicious”. Patriotism simply does not suit us if we bother to own our revolutionary potential.

Having said this I certainly own the fact that we often as a people do not live up to our potential as change creators for the better. I do think we veer off course most frequently though when we try to emulate straight society and particularly certain qualities most often seen in the heterosexual male of the species.

American patriotism seems to have a very dangerous component of exceptionalism – we are God’s chosen people. What could possibly go wrong with a worldview in which might makes right especially when driven by a sense of manifest destiny? I think much of the social unrest and sharp disconnects between segments of our U.S. population today are caused by the fact that many folks are realizing that America is not particularly exceptional as a country creating a cognitive dissonance that is truly unsettling. In fact we are responsible for much of the grief inflicting the planet from climate change to drones and kill lists to tapping everyone’s phone on the entire planet to name just a few examples. The war against terror and certainly our last two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been made possible in part by the unscrupulous manipulation of our misguided sense of what true patriotism might be.

I am aware that we are reading our pieces on patriotism on Veterans Day. It seems particularly crass of me I suppose to be trashing patriotism on such a day but I have no problem separating the men and women in the armed forces from the puppeteers manipulating the strings of false patriotism. Chelsea Manning as a young, frail, tormented teenage queer from some God-forsaken part of rural Oklahoma saw military service as the only honorable way out of hell. I am sure she felt she was also doing her patriotic duty. But you see the playing field is not level. The interests of corporate America are really not the interests of the 99%. The corporate oligarchs have no compunction when it comes to playing the patriotism card in order to sustain their empire. A recent example was sited in a piece in Salon today called “Stop Thanking the Troops for Me: No They Do Not Protect our Freedoms” by Justin Doolittle.

(http://www.salon.com/2013/11/11/stop_thanking_the_troops_for_me_no_they_dont_protect_our_freedoms/).

Doolittle pointed out the patriotic stunt from the opening game of the World Series where Bank of America pledged to donate a dollar for every posting of a troop supporting video to an agency or group helping veterans. No mention was made of the many, many homes of active duty personnel and veterans foreclosed on since 2008 by the Bank of America.

It was either in one of his more provocative moments, or perhaps something I just dreamed up, that Harry Hay once said something to the effect that there are really only two races on earth – gay and straight. I certainly can view queer folk as change creating seeds sprinkled throughout the globe in every country and among every people. This it seems to me lends a compelling element of universality to the human condition that gives lie to the false concept of patriotism. If you buy, albeit, this rather fanciful picture of the human family which I guess I do then our responsibility as queer folk is too pursue in every country on Earth that wonderful and subversive change creating Homosexual Agenda. We truly are all one people on one planet, One Taste.

© November 2013 

About
the Author 

I was born in La Porte Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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Patriotism by Jon Krey

THE 14 CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM or 
WHAT CANNOT HAPPEN IN THE USA

Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt (“Fascism anyone?” Free Inquiry Magazine, Spring 2003, page 20) has studied the fascist regimes of Hitler, Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile) and found they all had 14 elements in common. I believe any country can fall into such an abyss, often unaware, especially when in a crisis of magnitude. We are not there at this point but we must be aware that making ourselves vulnerable through lack of present awareness and overlooking history could provide a dangerous precedent through which democracy could fall. Those of us who are aware should begin educational processes to prevent such. The characteristics listed below are a warning only. Let us be ever mindful as a nation to stave off such a calamity.

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism

Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for Recognition of Human Rights

Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/ Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe; racial, ethnic, or religious minorities; liberals; communists, socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism

The government of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

6. Controlled Mass Media

Sometimes, the media is directly controlled by the government. But in other cases the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war-time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security

Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are intertwined

Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the governments policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected

The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation, often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/ government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed

Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment

Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption

Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even out-right stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections

Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

REMEMBER, GEORGE- GOD DON’T LIKE UGLY

“There are six things which the Lord hates, seven which are an abomination to Him:

1. Haughty eyes

2. A lying tongue

3. Hands that shed innocent blood.

4. A heart that devises wicked plans

5. Feet that make haste to run to evil

6. A false witness who breathes out lies.

7. A man who sows discord among brothers.”

–The Book of Proverbs—

© 13 November 2013

About
the Author

“I’m just a guy from Tulsa (God forbid). So overlook my shortcomings, they’re an illusion.”

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Patriotism by Terry

America is a lot of country to love. Patriotism is love of one’s country. So here are a few things I love, or recall loving about America.

I love America The Beautiful as opposed to the America of The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

I love that first job I got at age thirteen in Minot North Dakota, coaching 4th and 5th grade girls in softball and volleyball. I loved the look on my players’ faces when they got their first hit.

I loved my job as usher at the DCPA where I got to listen to The Brahms Requiem, and to witness performance of The Buddy Holly Story.

I loved my job at Sylvan Lake in The Black Hills. I loved honeymooning at one of its cabins three years later, where my new husband and I shared the same dream. I loved our family reunion forty years later where I met the twins, my grand Nephew and Niece, who rode peeking out from their grandparents backpacks most of the way on our hike up Terry Peak, memorably curtailed by a sudden thunderstorm that we mostly outran.

I love the freedom to risk, to make honest mistakes. I am thinking of my marriage that also found its final chapter at that same little Eden in The Black Hills. Where the emperors clothes no longer covered a young couple that grew apart in what felt like tragedy.

I loved the fields of North Dakota where I chased many a Monarch butterfly, so long unaware that I could neither reach nor outrun them in their high reels across the plain.

I loved the psychodrama plays at The Moreno Institute, its the stage with its balcony and colored footlights. I loved my International friends there who taught me French tongue twisters and who acted out their life’s stories in role plays or dramas based in their real worlds.

A lot of people mistake patriotism for unquestioning nationalism, my country right or wrong. I do not have any idea how to love all of fifty states, most of which I have never seen. It is a strange feeling to realize what abstractions replace a sighting of The entire South, not to mention Indiana, Kansas, Maryland Washington DC West Virginia., Nevada Utah., Hawaii, and Alaska.

I loved joining the Great Peace March across America in what year I forget, though I was probably the only person there where someone actually tried to start a fight with me for some unknown affront. Happily I escaped unscathed in time to head on to The Women’s Music Festival in Michigan, which I definitely loved until I fell asleep in the middle of the outdoor premier of Desert Hearts. I do however, own my own copy of the video.

I love teachers, music teachers, art teachers, I love learning and still do love teaching, my way of working to enhance my pupils and clients ability to enjoy their lives in the face of childhood mental illness, drug addiction and Alzheimer and dementia. I love that I was able to pursue that calling.

I love doctors and nurses who keep trying to pull rabbits out of hats, like the sorcerer’s apprentice trying to mop up the continual distresses of humans, each one of whom is destined for a tragic end.

I love the builders who raise schools and airports and hospitals from flat earth, I love astronauts and actors, their sense of adventure.

I love painting for several hours per creation. I love when I hear people express their in-loveness with my paintings. I love to write exactly what I want to convey, a story or essay or poem and when someone connects.

I love Carmel Sutra Ice Cream (Ben and Jerry’s).

I love talking or chatting online into the wee hours of the night with long-time friends who live far away.

I love playing Scrabble with two friends, one of whom grew up loving to read the dictionary, I don’t think I have won against her yet.

I do love women who love women. I love their wittiness and laughter, their wondrous sexiness.

I love good men with their spirit, generosity and pride and such widespread handsomeness of soul.

Lastly but not least, I love my cats, Charley and Star for as long as they are with me and I with them.

I guess you could say I am in love with my own world, but then, who could possibly get their arms around a whole country? Well anyway I’m imagining a gigantic hug.

© November 2013

About the Author


I am an artist and writer after having spent the greater part of my career serving variously as a child care counselor, a special needs teacher, a mental health worker with teens and young adults, and a home health care giver for elderly and Alzheimer patients. Now that I am in my senior years I have returned to writing and art, which I have enjoyed throughout my life.