Opening Doors in Time and Mind: The Bookstore Resistance

It was such a comforting moment. I was reading a book where the main character, a bookseller, was watching a customer reading the classic novel, The Count of Monte Cristo. The man was old and seated in a cushioned chair, at a table, sipping coffee. Books were scattered everywhere, not just on the wood shelves. There was mismatched artwork on the somewhat peeling walls. Lights hung from the ceiling creating areas of clarity amidst the soft darkness. Snow increasingly falling outside as the world turned dark. Yet inside, it was warm. A fire was going in the woodstove. Such a comforting moment.

 

The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown is part urban fantasy, part mystery and adventure, part romance⎼ and partly an examination of the psychological effects of pain and grief. Shortly after the book begins, the main character inherits a magical book that allows them to travel from any unlocked door to any other they can clearly imagine. There are all sorts of magic books in the story⎼ a book of shadows, for example, enabling the holder to disappear and become a mere shadow passing through any space. There’s a book of Illusions, one of luck, destruction, etc.

 

We never know what a book might reveal. They’re all around us or used to be. Like doors. Like places in the mind, or in our homes, schools, or workplace; memories, ignored bits of reality. Places we can step through to taste or digest; or to dwell fully and beautifully. Some with a hidden power.

 

When I was 18 or 19, I walked through an open door into the old Barnes & Noble Bookstore in the Village, on 8th Street & 6th Avenue, in downtown New York City. Back then, it was a smaller, more intimate store, not like the chain stores of today. I was just wandering the aisles, hoping to find a treasure, when I noticed a man and woman, maybe in their 70s, in the philosophy section in the back of the store. They were discussing the French activist and philosopher, J. P. Sartre and his concept of authenticity. They were both dressed in old but expensive clothing. The woman looked sort of regal, the man very professorial. They intrigued me but I respected their privacy and felt too embarrassed to get close enough to listen in on their conversation. So, I moved on.

 

I ran into them 2 more times. One time was at a lecture on Thoreau in an upper middle-class neighborhood on the West Side of Manhattan. Someone at the lecture told me they had escaped from the Nazis in Austria. I don’t know the truth of this, but supposedly she was from a noble family, and he was a professor, but I don’t remember in what field. And later, back downtown on 6th Avenue, I was surprised to see the woman alone on the street, begging for money, and aggressively berating those who pretended not to see her.

 

Another doorway, in a recent dream. I entered what at first appeared to be the home I grew up in, where my parents lived for almost 30 years after I moved out. But in the dream my parents had sold that house. The dream home was slightly different, and in bad shape. The bathroom was not working. I had to sleep on the couch in the living room, not my old bedroom.

 

And my parents were very old. Someone said my mom was near death. My dad was in only slightly better shape. All at once, several people I didn’t know, mostly younger, in their twenties or thirties, came out from the back of the house, talking loudly amongst themselves and crowding the living room. Outside, through a window, I saw someone park, get off a motorcycle, and walk away. One of the younger people claimed the bike had been stolen and now returned. My dad, who had never in his life been on a motorcycle let alone driven one, put on a leather jacket and helmet, climbed on the bike, and tore off. Maybe he had stepped through a doorway to a younger self, as he looked so much younger, with his back straighter than it had been in years…

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

When we Run Too Long from the Truth, We Become Imprisoned by Our Attempt to Escape: The War on Truth

How long can anyone actively ignore the truth before the truth comes back at them? Certainly, anyone who was or is being abused and traumatized carries an extremely difficult reality as a burden, and need compassion and support to face it. But for those who want revenge, who strike out to disappear not only a truth they didn’t like yet heard spoken, but the person who voiced it⎼ there’s something very wrong. Attacking someone because they say something that opposes their way of thinking is simply wrong. Eventually, the reality must break through. Like in a dream, if we run from a nightmare image it pursues us even more vehemently; running from the truth can imprisons us.

 

This is DT. I don’t know if he’s just emotionally incapable of acknowledging any reality other than one he’s fashioned; or if he’s so unstable, so on edge he gets vindictive if he’s challenged. Or maybe he just uses edginess as a strategy to frighten others into giving him what he wants. No matter what, his power and actions have been scary and dangerous for so many of us.

 

Even before first taking office in 2017, he showed a repugnance for speaking, perceiving, or even allowing the truth to be spoken in his presence. The number of distortions and lies he’s uttered is incredible. And he’s attacked, spread ridiculous lies and dangerous threats against those who oppose or speak against him, so much so that now no one in the GOP will reign him in. Many of those who follow him believe he’s the very voice of truth.

 

But if no one will challenge a would-be emperor, how will he know he’s naked? The case of the Epstein Files might be one step in the truth catching him. DT continuously fueled conspiracy theories about prominent people, mostly Democrats, using Jeffrey Epstein’s services to engage in sex crimes with minors. DT promised his supporters he would release the “Epstein client list.” He promised prosecutions, to name names and reveal evidence. He promised transparency. Instead, he had the DOJ redact his name from Epstein files.

 

And for his supporters, the issue of stopping child sexual abuse and sex trafficking is deeply important and emotional; they believed DT would champion their concerns and expose the crimes. Why they would expect a person convicted of sexual abuse with a long history of twisting the truth to honestly champion their call for honesty and transparency is beyond me; but this is what occurred.

 

What will happen when the reality of DT’s actions concerning Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s co-predator, hits more people? Maxwell is a convicted sex trafficker, who not only recruited young girls for commercial sex but participated in their abuse, and constantly lied about it. DT had Todd Blanche talk with her instead of her victims, and then ordered her moved to a low security, resort prison. What deals did he work out with her in terms of possible future testimony?

 

So now, DT is in trouble. His own supporters can’t believe him when he and his DOJ say there is no list, or the Democrats created the list, or the issue is not worth his time⎼ and those who waste his time pushing for release of the records he promised to reveal are “weaklings,” “idiots.”

 

DT is at war with truth and with reality itself. He’s at war with anyone who reveals facts or speaks truths or shares useful information.

 

He’s at war with any news media that reveals truths, reveals the reality that opposes his fiction….

 

*To read the whole piece, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

What Feeds The Waters of Heart: The Care We All Need

I woke up one recent Sunday morning with chest pain. As I got out of bed, the pain gradually grew until there was almost nothing else left in my mind and body but pain. Each breath was a question. Most of us know what’s it like when we have some physical ailment and don’t know the cause; and thus, we don’t know what to do about it. The not-knowing becomes an additional mountain of pain. We don’t know how serious our situation is. We don’t know if we should go to the ER. I would’ve called a doctor, but it was Sunday⎼ none were available. Was this IT? Was my life at stake? Could I die?

 

My wife and I were hesitant to go to the ER because we’d been there earlier in the week and had spent hours without getting any clear answers. But pain can overwhelm doubt and provide its own dictates. We went.

 

The drive was both horrible and hilarious. It was early in the morning. I wanted my wife to drive through stop signs and redlights. She wouldn’t. She said we’d get a ticket. I said if any cop stopped us, they’d escort us to the ER. I turned on the flashers. She turned them off. We laughed; we wanted to cry, or I did, but didn’t. It would hurt too much. I was never so glad to see the mechanical doors of the ER.

 

I had called the ER before leaving home, and maybe that helped get us in sooner. Still, it took hours before they could get a hint about what was going on with me and do anything at all to reduce the pain, let alone begin treatment. I wound up being admitted for 5 days. And this changed my whole perception of hospitals.

 

I’m lucky; I still have good health insurance from my former job. My room was on the fourth floor of a community hospital that overlooked a lake carved out of steep hills by ancient glaciers. At each different time of day, and differently each day, the quality of light changed. At 5:00 am, amidst the thrill of mutedly hearing through the thick walls so many birds greet the morning, the trees and hillsides appeared in the lake as cloudy representatives of themselves, vague mysterious hints of who they were. In the afternoon, maybe at 3:00 pm, the light was stark. The reflections, if there were any, were clear. They tricked my eyes; I could almost see the reflection as the reality.

 

Each day, I walked the halls as much as I could. And as I did so, I realized I was learning lessons I never anticipated. I was learning respect, for one thing. Not just an obvious respect, of not talking too loudly, not disturbing others at rest. But a respect for a shared humanity. This was a unique situation. All around me, the normally hidden was exposed. I heard people cry or shout out in pain. I heard buzzers ring for nurses. I heard a team of doctors explain to my roommate their diagnosis and need for possible life-saving surgery. Luckily, everything turned out fine. Pain and suffering were right there for all of us. Our mortality was right there. And it was accepted, let in, so it could be faced. So, it could be admitted.

 

And care, compassion. This, too, surrounded us. It was the core of the place, despite the profit motive, despite insurance company dictates, rigid procedures made to protect the hospital and caregivers at least as much as patients. Despite an often-formulaic education that made it difficult at times for doctors and nurses to see me, the individual human in the patient. Sometimes profession got in the way of avocation. But the compassion was there, with both doctors and nurses. Patients learn to care for others from the nurses, to care for each other. I had a roommate and after 2 days we were sharing phone numbers. When we care, our perception and thinking opens. We see more.

 

And I noticed something weird as I walked. My mind was in a way like the lake. Amidst all the pain, a pain that felt unendurable at times, there was this quiet base. Just as I could see the beauty of the lake even as I felt in myself confusion and fear, there was this base of sheer knowingness in everything perceived or thought. There was an awareness without pain. That felt as real, as immediate as life could get. That made everything possible, all of this, all of what was frightening, what was hopeful, and what was joyous.

 

And who knows how this happened, but in the morning of the second or third day at the hospital my wife was helping me wash and change clothes. I was trying to put on shorts, and for some reason I felt incredibly astonished that I had 2 legs. Can you believe it? I had 2 legs? And I started laughing. My wife thought I was going nuts and asked what was going on. I tried to explain about having two legs being so much fun. And that my shorts, too, had 2 openings for legs. A perfect fit. And this was the most amazing thing in the world. And then she, too started laughing, giggling crazily, which made it very difficult for me to get my shorts on. It was a breaking or waking point, maybe, for us in dealing with the whole situation.

 

And it wasn’t drugs laughing. Some might say I sounded like I was high on drugs. But for various reasons, I can’t take painkillers and don’t do recreational drugs. Maybe this was the high, the delight that naturally inhabits the waters of mind but which we don’t notice often enough. Maybe it was just being absurdly tired or feeling the absurdity of the situation. Maybe we both just needed a great laugh to relieve the great stress….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

Raging Metaphors: Are We in A Race? A War? Or on the Verge of a New Revelation of Who We Are?

How do we communicate what we’re going through right now? How do we select from the infinity of choices and realities that we face where to focus, and where to begin any narration?

 

We are certainly in an age of superlatives and metaphors. Ordinary language or speaking as we did maybe just 10 years ago, feels inadequate. The news often leaves us mute, if not angered, fearful, crying, or laughing at the craziness. It can feel like language itself is on the edge of failing us. Or maybe we are failing it; maybe we humans, or many of us, are failing in how we use one of our greatest inventions, namely complex, structured, and symbolic language.

 

We think of the primary job of words as helping us communicate and thus survive, but to do that it must aid us in perceiving reality more clearly and in better communing, coming together with others. The words we use, and the metaphors we create, shape how we perceive, understand, and act. Metaphors, as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explain in their book Metaphors We Live By, are not just beautiful or extravagant ways of talking, but the way we define and frame reality. Truth. And relate with others. If we think of a moment talking with another person as a battle instead of an exchange of views, we are more likely to become physically embattled.

 

Or maybe words are working too well. Words could always be manipulated to deceive, distract, and hypnotize as well as utilized to analyze and focus. So maybe today our words are succeeding more in hiding than revealing. Maybe our words are failing to bring us together because too many of us are not examining our words to discern if they are bringing us closer or further away from the reality we are talking about.

 

And I realize I’m being contradictory, using language to point out how our language use is possibly failing us.

 

Today, too many political leaders are spreading disinformation, flagrantly distorting words, butchering language, and by doing so bringing us to the edge of butchering each other. The GOP have built a wall of lies dividing this nation of millions of real people into saviors vs devils, two sides in a war, 2 ends of a rope.

 

They are striving to win, to seize power at any cost, even if it means treating fellow political leaders, who used to be colleagues or at worst opponents, as enemies. The GOP lie about the 2020 election even though this undermines faith in, and the workings of, the government they swore to protect and serve. For example, they called a violent attack on Congress to stop a democratic election “legitimate political discourse.”

 

DJT labeled the FBI as an agency with a long, unrelenting history of corruption. Yet, while in office, he tried to force the FBI to serve his personal interests over the nation’s, and fired the FBI director partly to stop an investigation into himself and his own long legacy of corruption. DJT and his GOP sycophants attacked the FBI’s legal seizing of documents he had illegally taken from the White House and secure quarters by saying if they can go after an ex-President, they could go after anyone⎼ when that is precisely the point of a law, that it applies or should apply neutrally to everyone. Their blatant, malignant distortions sometimes evoke an anger so deep we can shout but not speak.

 

So which metaphors fit best?…

 

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of Lies and Hate

I grew up with a love of Sherlock Holmes. Millions of us have. When I was teaching a class on logic and debate to high school students, I used a book of quotes and incidents from Sherlock’s cases to study critical thinking and teach informal syllogisms. So, when I saw a review of a modern version of the detective, not written by Arthur Conan Doyle, and read about the plot, I was intrigued.

 

The author of the book is Nicholas Meyer, a contemporary scriptwriter as well as novelist. It’s called The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols. The plot is built around actual events from the past that are still haunting the present.

 

The Protocols mentioned in the title are actual screeds, lies, disinformation that were first published in the nineteenth century and, unfortunately, have been reproduced even today. They are called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

 

The document was created to deceive people into believing Jewish leaders had come together to plot the takeover of the world. In the novel by Meyer, Sherlock is asked to find out if the plot is real and, if not, expose the lie so the truth could be revealed.

 

In truth (as well as in the novel), the Protocols were plagiarized from a work of satire called The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, by a writer named Maurice Joly in 1864. It included no mention of any Jew. According to Wikipedia, Joly’s piece was an attack on Napoleon III, elected President of France who later made himself absolute ruler.

 

Joly has Montesquieu speak in support of democracy and argue that the “liberal” spirit in people was indomitable. Machiavelli argues it wouldn’t take him even 20 years to “… transform utterly the most indomitable European character and render it as docile under tyranny as the debased people of Asia.”

 

In the end of the satire, absolutism wins, and Montesquieu is consigned to remain in hell.

 

The piece would have been consigned to oblivion, except probably for Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky, head of the Russian Okhrana or secret police of the Tsar Nicholas II. He commissioned a re-write, to replace the attacks on Napoleon with attacks on the Tsar. And to turn the meeting between two dead philosophers in hell to a meeting in Switzerland by Jews.

 

In the original, Machiavelli argues “Men must not scruple to use all the vile and odious deceits at their command to combat and overthrow a corrupt emperor…” Just change a few words and we get the tenth protocol, “Jews must not hesitate to employ every noxious and terrible deception at their command to fight and overturn a wicked Tsar…”

 

And there were in fact meetings by Jews in Switzerland in the nineteenth century, but they were not secret. They were Congresses called to create a Jewish state. Unlike the plot of the plagiarized and fictional Protocols, the meetings had nothing to do with overthrowing the Tsar or any other state.

 

The document was created by Rachkovsky as disinformation, to stoke a fear of Jewish people in the Tsar and hate in the Russian people⎼ and to justify anti-Semitic violence….

 

**To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

The Cold of Winter, the Heat of Summer, and our Neighbors are not Abstractions

It’s snowing again. It has snowed heavily for a day or two, lightly for over a week. More snow. More cold.

 

Yet, it’s beautiful. White flakes fill the sky. When the wind speaks, the flakes whip around, the air itself excited.

 

How can we look at the snow and simply enjoy it, see only the white flakes, and see no other time but this? Back in November, the first snowfall was exciting. I couldn’t help but let my eyes delight in it. But now?

 

The snow and cold is what we mean by winter. Winter is not just a date on a calendar and time not just an abstraction. Dogen Zenji, a 13th century Japanese Zen teacher said, in reference to spring, “The time we call spring blossoms directly as an existence called flowers.” The time we call winter falls directly as an existence called snow. If we don’t like the cold, we can’t suddenly decide to love it, but we can love the fact that we can feel. Then, although we won’t suddenly warm up, rip off our winter clothes and run naked in the snow, we can be naked in our response and dress accordingly.

 

When we feel something we don’t like or that threatens us or is hurtful, we turn away. This is crucial to our survival. And when the threat is ongoing, we might want to turn away from anything or everything that reminds us of the danger. This can give us needed relief whether we’re facing immediate danger, trauma, or a malignant political administration.

 

But also crucial is noticing⎼ are we protecting ourselves from the threat, or from feeling the threat? Or from both? It’s awful to fear our fear so much we can’t see clearly what frightens us. We then don’t take needed action. As much as we are able in each moment, we need to see clearly enough to act.

 

Even though it was cold and snowing, I shoveled the path from my house and then took a walk up our hill. It was tough going. My wife and I live on a fairly steep rural road. A neighbor, who I had gotten to know slightly since I started taking daily walks during the pandemic, was out shoveling. After greeting him, he said to me, “Where is global warming now?” I thought, at first, he said it as a joke, but then realized it was a barb. We had had discussions about the climate before.

 

He said natural events, like volcanic eruptions, magma and the clouds they cause are warming the earth, not humans. I replied that global warming did not mean there would no longer be snow or cold. It meant there has been a raise in average temperature all over the world and an increase in destructive weather events, all happening too fast for it to be explained by volcanoes or other non-human processes.

 

I realized he wasn’t really listening to me and, distressingly, I didn’t have all the facts at hand. So I tried what I thought was common sense. “Isn’t it logical that all the air pollution caused by human manufacturing, fossil fuel energy, etc. would cause problems? That the released gases like carbon dioxide would create a sort of hothouse effect over the earth? And that we bear most of the responsibility for this increase in global temperature?”

 

He didn’t seem to know or want to know anything about carbon dioxide. So we switched gears. I wished him a good day and continued on my walk, resolved to go online when I got home to update my knowledge of global warming….

 

To read the whole piece, go to The Good Men Project.

What Do We Do When Faced with Someone Who Proclaims the Coronavirus a Hoax?

The Coronavirus, and DT’s mismanagement and exacerbation of it, has put many of us in a state of stress, grief, anxiety and trauma⎼ and that doesn’t count the feelings of those who have been sick or have lost a loved one. So what do you do when faced with someone who believes the coronavirus is a hoax and refuses to wear a mask? How do you talk to such people without losing it in anger or dehumanizing them as they might be dehumanizing you?

 

This is becoming too familiar a situation. Political discussions are notoriously difficult to have, and the coronavirus has become severely politicized. We have the example of DT refusing to wear a mask. In Georgia, where the coronavirus is spiking, where 50 people died yesterday (7/15) and 3,441 new cases were reported, the Governor sued the Mayor of Atlanta for issuing a mask ordinance. The lawsuit comes one day after the Governor issued an executive order suspending such mandates. He did not sue any of the other cities with mask ordinances.

 

There have even been instances where store clerks have politely confronted customers, or one person on the street confronted another, and the response was violent and in a few instances, deadly.

 

But let’s say we know the person, they are not prone to violence, and we are facing them, maskless, on the street or in a store. It might help to be prepared.

 

In all the cases I know of, the maskless person was white, often but not always, male, so just imagine a white male. What might be going on in his mind? It would be helpful to hear his response and not make assumptions.

 

So I imagine asking him, directly, “Why aren’t you wearing a mask?” Of course, his actions put the health of other people at risk. But in his mind, there might be no risk, because the threat is unreal. A lie even.

 

Maybe he is only listening to GOP politicians and right-wing propaganda sources and hasn’t questioned what he heard. To him, Dr. Fauci is the threat. News outlets that check the reliability of their sources, like the NY Times or the Washington Post or NPR, are the threat. Simply presenting facts as we know them won’t work.

 

Maybe deep down he feels powerless and his belief covers that up, replaces it with the potent sense that he is one of the select few with the inside information. To him, I am a dupe, blinded by the “media” or whomever, either lacking information or the thinking capacity to see through the deception. And what a deception it must be. Just think about all the people in the media, politics, police and medical profession that must be conspiring together to create the hoax.

 

And he must not know anyone who has gotten sick or died. He must not know anyone who has cared for or treated or is the friend or loved one of one of the sick and the dying. He might not know that according to a recently released report by the CDC, people of color are 3 times as likely to become infected with the virus as white people. Or maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe racism is involved, and another sort of conversation is needed here….

 

To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

Exploring Our Humanity with Mindfulness: What Our Bodies Can Teach us

How can we, as teachers, use mindfulness, visualization and inquiry practices to study history and what it means to be human? One way is to look clearly at our own body and the way our mind works. We often overlook the obvious. We are our own most direct example of what it means to be human. And what could be more important in this time of high anxiety and threat than a better understanding of our shared humanity and ourselves?

 

Ask students: Did you ever consider that inside yourself might lie answers to some of the deepest questions about human history and what it means to be a human being?

 

Standing Practice:

 

Ask students to stand up from their chairs and stretch. Raise their hands over their heads, rise up on their toes and reach up to the sky. Then drop their heels and stretch to one side and the other without getting too close to their neighbor.

 

Say to them: Now stand with your feet about shoulder width apart, hands resting comfortably at your sides, eyes partly or fully closed. Put your focus on your breath. Feel how your body breathes in, and then out.

 

Put your attention on the area around your eyes and feel what happens there as you breathe in. Do you feel a slight expansion in the area as you breathe in? Then breathe out, and feel how that area breathes out. You might feel a release of tension, a settling down. You can feel the same in your jaw as you inhale, and exhale.

 

Then put your attention on your shoulders as you breathe in. Do you feel your shoulders expand as you breathe in? And as you exhale, feel how they contract, pushes air up and out.

 

Then put your attention on your hands. They, too, breathe. As you breathe in, feel your hands expand with the in breath—and let go, settle down with the outbreath.

 

As you breathe in, feel the air with your whole body. Feel the space around you, in front, behind, at your sides. And as you breathe out, just allow your attention to take in how it feels to stand there, strong, relaxed, and attentive.

 

What does standing upright like this enable you to do? Dogs or cats are amazing beings. They can leap, twist, and run for a short distance faster that you. They can smell and hear better than you. But not see better, not see over the grass or tables as well as you. A dog or cat uses their paws to run. But by standing upright, you can walk for long distances and free your hands for other activities. What else does standing enable you to do? What are the limitations of standing?

 

Now slowly breathe in. And as you exhale, open your eyes and come back to the room, noticing how you feel.

 

Sitting Mindfulness, Visualization and Other Inquiry Practices:

 

Choose and combine practices from those that follow, which fit your course material, age and interests of students. Have students sit up comfortably, breathe calmly, and close their eyes partly or fully. Then ask them to:

 

*Rest your hands comfortably on your lap or desk in front of you. Feel how your hands feel resting where they are. Move your fingers and feel their dexterity and strength. How many species are there that can do that? How are your hands different than a paw, your fingers different from a claw?…

 

To read the whole post, go to MindfulTeachers.org.

 

Protect An Open Internet: Protect Net Neutrality

Imagine seeing, on this or other websites you use:

THIS SITE HAS BEEN BLOCKED BY YOUR ISP.

It hasn’t, but soon might be. On Thursday (12/14), the Federal Communications Commission, under the leadership of Trump appointee Ajit Pai, intends to vote on whether to end net neutrality regulations, unless you, millions of you, us, speak up. Why is this important? Instead of the internet being an open forum for content, speech, information, it will be turned over to existing ISPs (Internet Service Providers) like Comcast and Verizon. Ending net neutrality will allow ISP’s to censor, slow, and charge extra fees. You can think of the internet as a common resource, which the FCC now intends to give away to large corporations, as their property. Pai has, at times, misrepresented the whole issue, for example, by claiming net neutrality hurts small ISPs, but provides no facts to back that up, according to Jon Brodkin, in an article in Ars Technica. New York State’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said his office investigated the comments being sent to the FCC about net neutrality and found that hundreds of thousands of false comments have been submitted. Schneiderman asked the FCC to cooperate with his investigation, but it didn’t happen. Requests by many parties to delay the vote on Thursday, in order to examine which comments were sent by real people, were rebuffed.

Please call Congress now and ask to delay the vote until the comments can be examined further, and/or to oppose ending net neutrality. (Also, while you have Congress on the line, tell your representatives to oppose the tax bill and support the Mueller investigation.) For further action steps, phone numbers, and information, use this link.

 

Have A Happy Holiday

I am taking the week off and hope that you have time off, too. If you celebrate any of the winter season holidays, may your celebrations be happy and bright. If you don’t celebrate any of these holidays, may your days also be happy and bright. And may understanding, insight, compassion and love slide down everyone’s chimney this  New Year. (I can dream, can’t I?)