What Are We Willing to Put Up With?

“If You Could See Me Now:”

I’m driving—well, not driving, I’m parked—but a minute ago, I was driving the brightest, yellowish vehicle I had ever seen outside of sports cars. Every inch of this vehicle is screaming yellow. I feel that I’m glowing as I drive down the road.

I just dropped off my champagne-colored Ford Fusion to have a solenoid replaced, and they gave me this loaner car. Bless those people. I love that this company offers loaner cars, and they are probably the greenest (environmentally) repair company in Eugene, Oregon. “The car’s out front,” they said, “the key is in it. “That yellow one!” I exclaimed. It’s great, I was just surprised.

 

I bought coffee, grateful I had transportation, and drove to the park in Eugene, Oregon, to talk to you guys.

The park runs alongside the Willamette River. It’s gorgeous. Two Maple trees in front of me are providing shade, and behind them acres of green lawn spread out before me. A cement path is beyond the green, and a line of trees frames the North side of the path. I can see a bit of blue that is the river, river peeking through the trees.

So, what do you want to talk about?

This calm, tranquil place with only an occasional biker cruising down the cement path is not a setting to get into world politics—Oh, rats, someone parked beside me, but then, we will share the shade: two maples, two cars.

What I have been into the last few days, besides physical therapists coming to the house for my husband who broke his hip, contractors coming, nurses coming, dogs out for the nurses and therapists, in for the contractors. Dirty dishes into the sink, clean dishes out. It’s like the children’s book “Big Dog Out, Little Dog In.” “Little dog out, big dog in.”

I’ve been thinking about my old analogy about how one’s life perspective depends on which window we look through.

I hit a window the other day—on the computer—and saw a picture of bloody fighters having a cage fight on the white house lawn. Now, how can you unsee a picture such as that?!  First, the gladiators. Will we have lions next?

 

What are we willing to put up with?

 

With my window analogy, looking through one window will show you wars, bombings, and chaos in the world. But then another window will show you that the trees are leafed out and delicate in their spring newness. The flowers were dressed in their Sunday best—looking like Easter with flashy, fuchsias, golden yellows, yummy oranges, pinks, reds, and all of them basking in glorious sunshine.

And here I’m outside, well, no, I’m not. I’m sitting in a car looking through a window.

 

Incidentally, as I mentioned, the car repair shop I just left is green. It used to be for foreign cars only, then a couple of doors down the strip, they added another shop for domestic vehicles. We can now use them again. And they said a third shop was coming—I don’t know its specialty.

I was reading a newspaper clipping on the wall while waiting for my loaner car, about how the owner bought the property, renovated it, did the right thing from the beginning, insulated the structure, placed solar panels on the roof, buried tanks in the ground for various fluids so that they would reduce the amount of deliveries and trucks, and the amount of plastic bottles. I don’t know what else my car loner arrived, but I remember that we used to be greeted by a Standard Poodle, and they had a loaner bike.

Gunfight at OK Corral

 

The Gunfight at OK Corral

 “The Gunfight at the OK Corral remains an archetype of the American Old West, illustrating the blurred lines between heroism and lawlessness.”

 We‘re a young country. Our founding fathers tried to establish a Democracy, a system of government we believed was the best. “It’s a federal constitutional republic characterized by a separation of powers among three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial.”

We thought a division of powers would keep Kings, Pharaohs, Priests, Dictators, and the Power-Hungry Controllers away from our doors. It would be a government by the people, a democracy, with representatives who supposedly have our best interests at heart.  Our population was large enough to require a CEO to keep things in order, and we assumed our leader would use the legislative, executive, and judicial branches to assist in the process.

 We goofed.

 We let the CEO have control of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, so he stacked the deck.

 So, here we are back in the Wild West, where they had the moguls, the rich and powerful who controlled something like the railroad, or the land, or loans. Mortgages before the 1930s typically lasted only 3-5 years. And those loans required an enormous down payment—up to 50% of the price of the land and dwellings. And then to make matters worse, they had a balloon payment at the end of the term. Those old silent movies of the mortgage collector, “You must pay the mortgage,” “I can’t pay the mortgage,” were accurate, akin to tying someone on the railroad track.

 

In 1934, the FHA under FDR stepped in and helped stabilize the market, but it wasn’t until 1968 that anti-discrimination practices came into effect. Between the 30’s and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, there was a lot of graft, land grabbing, racial discrimination, and redlining, where finance companies would mark an area where they refused mortgages to people of color. Whites who would be fine living next to a black family wouldn’t move into that area because they feared their property value would go down, thus when it came time to sell, their house would be “Underwater.” Meaning they would owe more on their house than they could sell it for. 

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 was one of the best legislative acts to come across the board, along with the VA Loans and the FHA government-insured loans. Those organizations have been watchdogs that have enabled more people to own homes.

When people play by two separate sets of rules, the principles of compromise and dialogue fall by the wayside, cheating happens, and chaos erupts.

 

During the pioneer days, people didn’t get the message, and they still don't, that our land, all the money, and resources aren’t only for the rich. They are for everybody.

 

In the Wild West, people had different priorities, different focuses, and different dreams. They had the rich, the powerful, the would-be jailers, the haves, the have-nots, the bullies, the peacemakers, the helpers, the intellectuals, the scholars, the dreamers, the artists, the performers, and the religious extremes who wanted to convert everybody to their way of thinking. And they had the laborers who kept the cogs turning—who built the cars, created factories, invented labor-saving devices, toys, and tilled the fields so people could eat.

 

It’s the same today. We just have fancier toys.

 

And we still have the Wild West attitude: “Stone them back to the dark ages.” We have fights over resources, which have always happened (like water rights), but now that we are capable of feeding everybody, we have wind, water, and sun sources; one would think we could be more into sharing and negotiation. But no. It’s grab grab grab. Even the rich are into either a lack mentality (why would they want more, more, and more?) or into competition, like the one with the most toys wins?

 Are they going into the afterlife dragging a bag of what society determines to be riches behind them?

 

Oprah Winfrey said she comes as one but walks into a room with 10,000 behind her. “Our job,” she said, “isn't to worry about where we came from but about where we are going.”

 

Sometimes we’re proud of our heritage, sometimes not. We came from our parents, they came from theirs, many of our great-grandparents immigrated. (Gasp, Immigrants, a terrible word these days. It’s right up there with the word “Liberal.” And now the leader of our country calls Democrats, Dumocrats, and any election that doesn’t go his way he claims is  rigged. If the Democrats are such good election riggers, he wouldn’t be President.

 

He is the President of the whole country, not just his party. He has ruined our fun of complaining about the other side.)

 

Even if you’re a Native American, your folks came from someplace else—probably Africa. Our Native Americans weren’t created on the spot. As people, we go back some 300,000 years. (I don’t know if we will beat the dinosaurs in longevity; they were here for 165 to 180 million years. Our longevity of 300 thousand is paltry compared to theirs.

 

We have inherited a lot of stuff, physical and mental. Besides the rigors of childhood and society, we had the conditioning from parents, school, and society about “the way children were supposed to be raised,” like “spare the rod and spoil the child.” Many have been abused or molested by family members. It’s amazing any of us are sane.

 

So, like a bunch of kids, we got ourselves into a mess, but we have no parents to get us out, so we’re left to our own devices.

 

And here we are like a bunch of chimpanzees who are capable of extreme kindness, love, and caring, but also warring, murder, and intimidation.

 

However, the tide is turning.💓💓💓💓💓

 

An Awakening is happening.

💓💓💓💓💓💓

 

Here again is Jon Stewart’s great affirmation:

 

“Close your eyes and dream that when the electorate in this great nation repudiates this putrid regime, my brother, the day that happens there will be a joyful noise from the bowels of this great country that makes Hungry repudiating the Orban will look like an Amish Sabbath.”—Jon Stewart