Category: Susie’s musings

In 1969, Maya Angelou watched children playing Hop Scotch. Remember what was most important? Staying inside the line. If you stepped out of the box, you were out. Angelou saw life in that hopscotch game as she wrote:

Harlem Hopscotch
One foot down, then hop! It’s hot.
Good things for the ones that’s got.
Another jump, now to the left.
Everybody for hisself.

In the air, now both feet down.
Since you black, don’t stick around.
Food is gone, the rent is due.
Curse and cry and then jump two.

All the people out of work,
Hold for three, then twist and jerk.
Cross the line, they count you out.
That’s what hopping’s all about.

Both feet flat, the game is done.
They think I lost. I think I won.

The poem was written in 1969! It hit me that … It is the end of 2020 and nothing has changed. Women go to graduate school and get higher paying jobs, but do black women? Who cleans most of the houses and offices? Who is out of work and homeless with hungry children right now? Who is getting more Covid possibly because they are all crammed in tenements; no fresh air to breathe. If we would consider offering work to young black men, would that change things? Would working men begin to think they can win? We might have to take care of the women and the children. Are there any projects that need to be done in your community that you could find someone to finance? Do you have any more ideas? "Food is gone, the rent is due." What are we going to do? God bless us.

What if we all stopped shouting and made a list of 3 things we need done in the next 4 years? Here’s my list and I’ll bet you will find it close to yours as it is something we can control. Please email or text me with your items. We can do this.

1. Voter registration and voting: We hate the process; so change it: Access to the polls and manual counts with paper ballots. No machines. No algorithms (whatever they are anyway….). Keep all the ballots after counting them manually (so we will have proof).
2. Make a plan to get the entire US (350 million people 700 million shots); So we don’t end civilization.
3. Feeding starving children and mothers in the US. (Put the men to work – remember the WPA? Chuck’s Uncle JB was starving. He worked for WPA and got fed at the age of 14 to 16. Then he joined the military). If we figure a way to feed mothers and children we might just make headway against abortion.

If you have a better idea, please add to this list, but keep it at something we can do. If we make a plan… If we work the plan and pray, God will be with us. Mother Teresa did it. We don’t have to go very far to work this plan. Oh God bless us. Angels with us.

Sir Walter Scott, in a tale called "Marmion", contemplated the mess we can make when we don’t lay things straight out, but rather, we create convoluted messes that eventually lead to a "tangled web". We’ve done it with the Electoral College. In 1787, the men who wrote the Constitution put lots of checks and balances into the design for the new government so we wouldn’t get a dictatorship. The nation was big already (13 colonies stretching from Georgia to Massachusetts. I looked at an old map, and, while New Hampshire stood north of Massachusetts, Massachusetts claimed an area we know today as Maine. So the colonies stretched from the "Florida line" to Maine…). … It was quite a long trek on horseback to carry electors to New York where central government resided. …. Votes were carefully counted as the states (who all had their separate powers,) were "under" the federal protection of the President. And the electors were sent to the central government to name the president. He had a limited term and he was carefully selected by the electors. All was carefully controlled because the people did not want another king or absolute ruler, like they had in England. So today, for probably the first time, sequestered as I am, I watched the electoral voting! It was as we knew it would be as the tally has already been determined by counting on computers. (can you imagine hand counting 150 million votes? So anyhow. With yesterday’s very carefully orchestrated following of the Constitution, we still have the electors’ results to go to Congress on January 6 where Mike Pence has to name the new President. Wow! Now the count can’t change because the computers got the vote already. So many people (150 million people) are probably asking, and should ask, "Why all the hoopla? I voted. One. My husband voted. Two. etc etc… to 150 million." That seems so reasonable. We got the vote out. We counted it. The person with the most popular votes won. Period. (not always the way it was folks…) There are great cries of "cheat" and "fraud" on the Dominion machine software. So change it!!! We have 4 years now to make some changes. So my dear friends, let’s go for it. How do we change the Constitution? We will probably need 4 years and 150 Constitutional lawyers to do that! Oh to change the great old Constitution isn’t easy, but doesn’t it sound right? I don’t want what is called Gerrymandering to ruin things. Look it up! It’s interesting and it’s costly to "poor folks and individuals with no influence"…. like most of us). Give each of the 150 million citizen who can vote one vote. Oh let us all get along to make the US right and peaceful. Don’t say if you didn’t win a state, there was fraud. But I could say the same about states you won. Let us be at peace my friends. Angels with us. Pray!!! God bless us.

In a previous blog I did the math on the numbers of vaccines needed (times two as each person has to get 2). The number is astronomical, but lately people are beginning to talk about other vaccines being developed and coming, "soon." It still might be a year before we are released from restrictions, and the restrictions must be self imposed until then! I read about traveling to Hawaii and getting into a room where the key card, used once to let you in, then locks you in for quaranteen…. Youch! Prisoners in waiting for a 10 day quaranteen! Sounds illegal. But we are being asked not to travel for a serious reason. Chuck and I were quaranteened on a cruise ship for 3 days when we got the flu two years ago. As it turns out I sneaked out to the ship library and got books. Thank heaven they didn’t "lock us in". I got pneumonia after that from that experience and it really didn’t heal up for at least 3 months… So my dears, I am very obedient to quaranteen! Please be careful when near people! Wear a mask. Please don’t get on a plane or a train and travel to visit family. Our neighborhood just sustained 5 cases of Covid, 3 are recovering and two are dead. The 2 who died traveled to visit family and "got it." I’m not advocating being afraid and running away screaming; I’m advocating those measures that Dr Fauci and those others who love and care for us recommend: mask up, don’t travel, bear with this isolation until the curve flattens! OK enough preaching! It’s time for University of Miami’s last football game. Next game is cancelled due to Covid. Make the most of this!!! Do something creative! Clean up piles. Make a quilt. Paint a painting. Decorate lots more than usual!!! God bless us! Angels with us.

My friend tells me of the gifts her walking friends have given to her. Good things are happening! Friends are walking every day… Outside, separated, talking with folks who are sitting outside in the sunshine on their porches. I am so amazed at people my age who have bad feet, bad hips, and other ailments including back pain… they can hardly navigate the path from couch to kitchen and here I am walking outside up the middle of the street for an hour a day. Well, except for lazy days when I fall into an easy chair and …. just sit. Don’t do that I say gently to myself. Get moving! Keep moving. Friends are sick, stiff, falling over and dying, but the rest of us must keep going. Get moving and keep going. I wrote this morning to my friend, "Don’t buy gifts!!!! make things." She and I made stuffed Christmas ornaments back I think before her beautiful son was born! I hardly remember the details of that long ago creative session, but I still have the stuffed toys hanging on my tree: Reminders of a time when two friends sat and stitched and told stories. I reminded another friend and my sister of times we painted together, drinking wine or champagne over paintings spread out over a table in a spot where spatters of paint on the floor… well, they are just decorative! My sister made me sew quilts when I visited her!!! Or was it pulling out threads? No diff, the quilts are beautiful! I’m supposed to be writing my Christmas letter right now and addressing and writing in 100 cards!!! I promised to get cards out this coming weekend. Better get going! No time to be anxious. Whatever is going to happen in our nation will happen without me .. I don’t feel helpless as I used to. I pray for peace. I have positive thoughts and I promise myself I will stay positive to our arts skills. Do what we can. Sit in the sunshine if the winds and chill aren’t too high!!!! If it’s freezing and windy then open curtains and put on lights! Put out electric candles or light real candles and soak in God’s beauty in the sky! The rest of us (living in central or south Florida,) get outside!!!! God bless us with an idea so we can "make something fun to give for a gift!!!!" Donate to a hungry family please. God bless us with charity. Anglels with us. !

For those who are still fighting the validity of the election, I would like to say…. you can get out the vote and try again in 3 1/2 years. For now, read the Constitution, read the amendments, and keep your Representatives and your Senators noses to those words. 3 1/2 years and then another vote. 4 years and our vote will be inaugurated. What if the leader wants to change things? There’s a lot of steps: and it takes votes. Paper your representatives and senators with requests and your beliefs. Promise someone else will replace them if they don’t do what we want. If I know history…. that is what this country was set up on. Because we don’t agree with 6 television networks, we set up an 7th who says what we want to hear? Problem… Just saying, my friends. Check out my December 2nd post, my "indecent proposal."

I hope you are staying health-safe this Christmas season. I hate not going to meetings and seeing my church friends, not going to art classes…. but I can’t risk getting sick. In case anyone doesn’t remember, Chuck and I had quite a "sick" event 10 years ago and I had pneumonia 2 years ago. That makes two of us who have to be careful. The news man says…. "blah blah blah, Fauchi" and I listen. God bless us!!!! Angels with us!

OK! I’ve been called Pushy Broad! … little Pushy!… Listen! I’m still having the discussions with friends about: Save your Money in case the house you are staying in is sold." "Save your money in case you get sick and work says you haven’t been there long enough to get sick pay." "Wait 4 years and then vote again. "Get up and get moving so legs won’t stiffen up and you will get warm!!!!." Yes! Pushy Broad is still alive! But …. Let’s say (I) we don’t shut up, we don’t move around, we don’t save money (for a rainy day – by the way; it’s pouring) …. Then what? We can, at least, shut up! I suggest we find a way to literally split the nation in half. Don’t try to get "the others" to agree with you. Just draw a line; Not a line in the sand, rather a line in concrete, don’t need a wall, but draw the line like they did at the Alamo. You can go to the side where you all agree. Just go there and live your "like lives." Stop accusing. Stop grinding your teeth at each other. Go to your own and love them. That’s it! It’s the answer! Go! I’m going to tell you right now, I won’t have to be pushy! We will bundle up, go to bed and sleep if we are tired and don’t feel well. We will drink (or not) (it’s your call just don’t judge) red wine or white wine, Scotch and other beverages, but we won’t overdo it. If you fall on the ground, we will move you into your house and make a lot of noise when you have a headache! We will use our words! No more imogees! (Words!) You disagree with me? Use your words and argue with me, but have rules: No name calling. We must come to a compromise or one of us has to move to "the other side." Wow!!!! I’m all fired up and hopeful! I probably need a trip to my favorite Sammy’s pizza joint to celebrate our new peace! Of coourse I’ll wear a mask except when I’m drinking a beer while waiting for my extra large Sammy’s beloved pizza!!!!! Take the pizza home, put my feet up on the coffee table, cover myself with a TV watching lap robe, and watch a movie. Then…. I’ll read or work on the puzzle.

Do you not like my indecent "split them apart" proposal? What has life become? People!!!! Pray for peace in our hearts and find a way to stop the "J’Accuse" mentality. In 1898, "Emile Zola addressed President of France Félix Faure and accused the government of anti-Semitism and the unlawful jailing of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Army General Staff officer who was sentenced to lifelong penal servitude for espionage." Are we still accusing? Get over it America. Wait!!!! In 4 years we can vote again. God bless us. Angels with us.

I was so hoping for a Blue moon month when the second full moon would be called the Christmas Moon, but full moon was last day in November. We could use a little fun and joy here. The news instead of joy states: "The vaccine is coming, but not soon, and we better get used to that". I heard one voice on TV give the bitter facts: There are 326 million of us in the US… Each needs 2 doses of the same virus each so the virus vaccine must be portioned out to all of us…. and each of us have to be given the same kind of vaccine twice! I hear there are side effects (it hurts, we will feel sick, maybe get a fever) and we won’t want to come back… and we have to come back and get the second dose then repeat: it hurts, we will feel sick, and we might get a fever. Then we have to wait until it fills us and makes us immune. There’s a scientific term for that that I know: "waiting for immunity"….. I’m assuming I’ll stand in line with the 1452 million people…. (thats 726 million times 2). Boy oh boy. I think I’m stuck in isolation for a long time…. I can’t even figure the math…. 1452 doses divided by days of the year…. When will I get my 2 vaccines? I wake to the knowledge that "this isn’t going to be over soon for me." Time to walk and pray, my friends. Pray for a child to guide us…. Pray for a new peace. As Christ rejoiced: Rejoice in the Holy Spirit of God who fills us with his peace (Luke 10:21). It’s chilly outside for most of us. 50 degrees here in Lake Placid. Stay warm. Stay safe. God bless us!

My dear friend tells me she might not go back to church because of the turmoil over abortion and other changes in the church…. Whether we like the President elect or not…. we got him for 4 years and many don’t like his abortion acceptance. …. While some of us don’t accept abortion, Pope Francis is offering solace to "same sex family" that the church has not approved in the past. I’m not sure we really understand the Pope’s words about "family" or the church’s stance on "same sex union", although I know plenty of good people who can’t be at a loved one’s bed side because they don’t have a same sex civil union. So, "who am I to judge," says the Pope. Give him credit. He’s not a judge just a spiritual leader. Maybe his legacy will be "no judgment." I have stated in the past that I don’t understand meanness, judgement, name calling, and now, I’m in Limbo over what to "do about the changing church." What will we find when we emerge from isolation? It’s going to be our role to find a way to live and to find peace. God bless us.

About Thanksgiving: On the third of October 1789 (yes, I wrote 1789), George Washing issued a proclamation that the US would celebrate a day of Prayer of Thanksgiving as recommended by the Houses of Congress. We can read this proclamation today!!! Maybe our Houses of Congress should read it!!!! Any way, Washington asked, "Let us unite and render to God thanks for his protection; for our safety and happiness and favor; for tranquility and union. For his pardon." (I might be paraphrasing a little.) It would be good to pull this proclamation up in Google! It is built into our hearts to be tranquil. Imagine a baby being hugged with a belly full of warm milk and a changed diaper. Ah!!!! That baby has received all it needs. Now we adults need to Thank God for fields, rivers that run through our land, flowers that will grow for us if we plant them, and even weeds grow flowers for us! Go out to your private bench and think: What are the good things that grow for us? The day before Thanksgiving, my sister and I spoke of our mother who was the first of her large family to become a "professional woman." Mom was a great nurse who went on in my childhood to finish college and study for and receive a Master of Science degree in Nursing. Mom taught at the University of Miami and I benefitted by being a faculty daughter! Thank you Mom. Often quiet and sad due to a bad marriaage and a lost child, our Mom continued … She often said she had to continue; she had 3 remaining children. Mom taught us to sustain and to grow despite criticism and rages from her husband, my father. (I wonder why I cannot take the "mouth" and criticism and rages of our President…. It might be that, as a child, I used to hide from a big man’s anger and shouting)…. Oh well… I am what I am. Mom taught us to respect family. She never let us disrespect our father even though we came to her crying, she would not be ugly. She taught us love for the Blessed Mother of God. She taught us to pray. Mom loved to hug, and with her touch, Mom healed. Mom flew to the bedsides of my two sisters when they had babies, and she was with me in my surgery. I will never forget looking down at my mother’s fingers assisting the doctor remove stitches from my sewed up belly! Let us remember the ones who loved us and taught us to love. It might not be a Mom, but you can remember the one who taught you to be true to your heart. We are separated by Coronavirus-19, but we pray daily for health, joy (doesn’t that seem far off?), and peace. Pray!!!!! Thank you Lord, for your promises that you keep with everlasting love. Thank you and thank you!!!! God bless us!

There are a few things I don’t understand and it probably is because as a human being, I’m wired to be practical which is unusual because I love sunshine, butterflies, blue skies, sunshine, puppies, and Jesus. Wouldn’t these last few make me a Pollyanna? She’s a little orphan with an "indominatable will to see the good side of even the worst situations and bring it out for the betterment of all." I’m always trying to see the sunshine and blue sky! I’m out for the good and I’m for what is right, and I’m always surprised when people don’t do "right." It actually hurts my belly when I encounter what we have been through with the election this term. It hurt that people could sink to yelling things like "Antifa is funded by Biden’s side and Antifa is here…" and don’t forget "Dominion voting software (written in Canada) was written in Venezuela and will turn the vote to Communism." Yep. I got that and lots more thrown at me along… With, "Watch out Susie, you sound like a Socialist." I couldn’t understand living under an authoritarian who didn’t seem to love the little people. In Ezekiel 34, the Lord says, "I will tend, gather, give rest… I will shepherd rightly." I just want us to have a good shepherd for a while….. One flock. United. Not gonna happen is it? I have stopped talking, although that isn’t like me. I’m always trying to "get people to understand!"… Like I don’t understand people not being hopeful…. I don’t understand being in debt, but spending spare money on gifts, and "things". Nope says the practical one (me): "Get out of debt first." I am a practical bad girl when it comes to paying interest and fees!!!!!! I yell "don’t do it!!!" Pay no fees or interest on debt!!! So What I don’t understand is, why can’t everybody be just like me? OH NO!!!! Is that what I want? Wouldn’t that be … I can’t think of the right word. You fill it in. It’s not going to happen. When I get the belly ache, I have to shut off the TV and the phone and go sit on my bench. That’s where you will find me and hope it isn’t raining!!!!

God bless us!!! Be one who loves. Be one who thinks of Susie, the "do the right thing girl," and… grab an angel or two and move forward.