P.S.

 I struggled with the idea of touching politics. A place I don’t want to go. Then I remembered a day in the life of my little 6-year-old daughter. 

#The Sound of Music movie credits had rolled, the theater lights came on, the Von Trapp family had hiked over the alps to escape Germany and to enter Switzerland. 

My little daughter turned to me and asked: “Would we be that brave?” 

I don’t know. 

• I know it’s easier to let the powers that be decide our fate than to choose it for ourselves.

• I know that it’s easier to keep quiet than to speak up. 

• I know it’s easier to laugh at racial slurs that to speak against them. 

• I know it’s easier to go into our own world, to study being successful, or how to be happy than it is to care for those who need a leg up. 

• I know it’s easier to write or read 150-character Tweet, which seems to run public thought than to delve into the subject at depth. 

• I know it’s easier to watch the news, to know they are skewed, but to let them permeate our brains anyway. 

• I know that belief is stronger than evidence. 

• I know that humans, like animals, have a strong territorial instinct, a fear strangers, and anyone different from them, and that overcoming that bias takes work. 

• I know that people fear what they can’t understand and are willing to be taken care of. 

I know that the human spirit is indomitable if fanned. 

I know that people have an instinct to run to the rescue. 

I know that beneath layers of injustice, injury, and persecution can come a person of power and influence. 

I know that people want to love one another if given half a chance.

These people exist--don't forget it. 

 

PPS. The Sound of Music was initially released to terrible reviews who called it too saccharine and then the film went on to become one of the all-time best-loved movies winning 12 Academy awards, with the indomitable Julie Andrews pulling out all stops.

Who doesn’t love music, dance, love, exquisite scenery, and courage? I saw myself as Mother Superior singing “Climb Every Mountain,“ but I didn’t have the voice or range of Patrica Neway, but neither did Peggy Wood who played the part. (Nor was I her age when the movie was made.)

I don’t care that the story varies from the true Von Trapp family, it’s a heart-warming story, and Hollywood takes license when a film is “Inspired-by.”

The true Von Trapp family. 

 

The Fox in the Hen House

“Let’s build a wall between us and our neighbors,” says the Fox.

“Okay,” says the farmer.

“Oh, and build a mote around it, and put alligators in it.”

“Alligators? That’s not a good idea.”

“Shoot the people if they come over to our side of the fence.”

“But Mr. Fox, you can’t kill your neighbors. It’s against the law.”

“Well, shoot them in the leg.”

“Mr. Fox, you can’t go around shooting people, that’s against the law too.”

 “Really? But, I’m The Fox, I can do anything.”

The farmer, because he was fed up with the way things were going and wanted a change, invited the Fox into his chicken house. (He has roosters too.)

He believed the story when the fox told him he would clean up the hutch, put in new straw, keep out the riff-Raff. The chickens would have a better life, he said. He would throw a few crumbs their way and the chickens would be happy. 

The farmer was so enamored with the Fox that he forgot that the fox ate chickens.

And so the story goes…

This came to my attention yesterday: A sixty-five-year-old woman fears that she might be sent back to Germany in the sweep to clean up the chicken house.

She was adopted as an infant but does not have papers to prove it. 

Her folks are gone, what does she have now to prove she has lived in the chicken house for over sixty years? She provided eggs for the farmer and thought she belonged.

And the hapless farmer, fearing repercussions from The Fox, has orders to pull baby chicks from beneath their mommas on cold nights and leave them to their own devices.

We have to help that farmer. He has lost his marbles.

And get that frick’en Fox out of the hen house!