Archive for July 2025
The assignment for our Writing Group here at the Waters of Excelsior on Friday, June 13, 2025 was to applaud someone. The following was what I presented in honor of a resident whom I chose to leave unnamed, but who represents so much that is good in what seems like a tragedy. Today I was in the process of filing it away when I thought you might enjoy the message. So, here it is.
I APPLAUD YOU.
goodness,At least every half hour.
You ask what day this is.
And in between you.
Inquire about the time.
Then you ask when they will be.
Playing the game you enjoy,
The one you will engage in.
With full understanding.
When it begins.
When nothing else is going on.
You read your book.
I don’t know if it’s the.
Same book over and over.
Like the stories of your life.
family, husband and occupation.
And always you are the first.
To clear the table to make space.
For the newcomer.
Or help place the wheelchaired person.
Comfortably at the table.
And fetch a glass of water.
For the person who wants it.
Even as you pick up what the.
Person with the walker has dropped.
You’re always there to open the door
When you think I want to come in.
I applaud you for all this.
What really matters.
The essence of who you really are.
Goodness, generosity, kindness.
Mona
I’m sure those passing the collection plate won’t miss my piddly $5.00 and $10.00 donations, That’s not really the point. It’s sort of like my long-standing impotent single-person boycott of J.C. Penney back in 1976 because they wouldn’t give me a credit card in my own name when I became newly single. But somehow it’s satisfying just to say my thoughts out loud.
So why won’t I give any more to the democratic party?
- Because it long ago lost the Monopoly game of manipulating voting rights and judicial appointments, apparently not even realizing what was happening. They seem to be playing the same old lost game.
- Because they don’t tell the stories of what the MAGA principles are doing to real live people. I never see ads giving stories of women suffering and dying because of legal controls over medical practice. I never see ads of immigrants (not always, but they look like it) being separated from their families, humiliated by blindfolded captors, sent off essentially to distant prisons even, sometimes, when they are showing up as required to maintain their right to stay in the country. They just don’t show what’s happening to real people. They don’t even show legal and peaceful protestors being attacked for practicing their rights.
Oh, they show the sad, often sickening, stories to us dems when they are asking for money, but we aren’t the ones who need it. The people who should be seeing those scenes are the plain ordinary folks with their hearts of gold if they were brought up to snuff.
Maybe I don’t see any of those things on ordinary TV because I live in Minnesota and they take us for granted. But I think that those behind the providing of information to “real” people just don’t get it.
If you really want to win votes, please, first of all, improve your Monopoly game skills, and second … please honestly report real-people stories. Or tell me who I can complain to.
OKAY, I’m not a political scientist, or a tested purveyor of spin. But I do know something about people.
They claim the immigrants are dangerous criminals, or lazy parasites living off the largesse of the US. But they drag them away from their places of work where, of course, their federal tax is deducted from their paycheck like everyone else’s.
monagustafsonaffinito 