wondering

So the postman beat me to the mailbox. I had letters to post but he was gone before ten( some 5 hours before his usual time!).  There was mail in the box. Notice I say mail not letters. Letters rarely make their way to my box.

Letters those missive detailing the joys, pains, hopes, and news of family were handwritten and brought the writer's voice to the reader. In past times letters were written to invite, congratulate and to comfort and mail was delivered several times a day to handle the flow in bigger cities. They connected family, bonded relationships and broke them too.They were a staple of life and checking attic boxes one often find stashes of letters between people covering years of the correspondents lives.

The telephone stopped many of the letters to and from people in the same city. The phone was good but a degree of intimacy was lost. Perhaps due to party lines. However email has created a new correspondence. It can and does maintain contact but much of it any more consists of advertisements and political sentiment. Too many emails are not personal and end up in the trash. This has affected the flow of relationships which email might have enhanced.

My grandmothers both sides lived far from me but their letters to me kept us close. I learned of their lives and the lives of my kinfolks near them. They learned of my schooldays, my small wins, and my first years as a teacher. What riches those letters held  and how they blessed me with wisdom and love.

Pencils were part of my life also. Those beautiful stamps lit up my life, and the letters detailed a life  I might otherwise not have known. My two longest were from Greece and England. Kathy and I still exchange letters after nearly fifty years. I have visited her several times and she has visited me. A simple hello my name is and I am ??? years old letter opened a new world.

So I miss the envelopes addressed by hand containing love, news and thoughts about life. Mail comes to my house. Advertisements, charities with hands out(some I support) political messages and bills  fill my box. I take them out and walk to the trash barrel and only the bills go in to my house. It makes for less clutter but also less connection.

Frankly I miss letters.

Ok I am heading to bed soon. It is not even 8PM but I am ready for quiet space and reading. This weekend has been busy and Saturday was really intense.

Two pre move items have been bugging me--- clearing out the basement, and one closet that was built in over the stairs. Sara came down to help and brought 4 of her five adult children and 15 children 10 and under, I can see the eyeball here, and believe me, I had my doubts.

However it went well. Better than well.IT IS DONE!!! Sara is coming down in a few weeks to gather items that they claimed but could not take back now. Sacks of clothes and boxes of books went to the salvation army. Still a bit more of those to go but I will get it done. Trash needs to be hauled but I can handle that.

So it was chaotic, busy and insane but it worked and I am exhausted, and like Pepys said " and so to bed"

Sunday

Dana is in London  watching the new Dr. Who  and I am jealous. Funny  with the jobs and such I could not join her and for three days the cost was way too high, still I envy her the ambience of the city, and the respite from the ordinary life. Travel can create a bubble in which you can put daily cares on the home front on hold. Yes they are there when you return but the relaxation gained during the bubble allows you to face them with a new perspective.

This will be an odd week here also. Tuesday is no school for me as I have  the annual mammogram and bone density tests. they have always been good in past so I am fairly sure the results will be the same. Then over the weekend there will a family incoming to help clear some spaces I need help with and to pick up some things( furniture and such) they might want. Busy time but I hope when they leave on Sunday or Monday what is left is manageable to finish before December the 14th.

Selecting  what to keep and what goes is not easy. I do this with each move but this time is harder for some reason. Memories are with each item and they reach out and grab me. Some are stronger and some less so. Still it is not easy. I am doing what must be done but it is hard. Life is what it is and I will survive.

More later--here's to becoming southern

Daughter 2 just called on her way to London for her job. comes home on Monday. would love to be with her but too much money for a short trip. We are opting for a longer trip within a year. life is changing. packing up more stuff this weekend. glad is a three day event

Georgia on my mind--becoming southern

So change is a given and any life is full of them. Some are forced on us and others we choose. I am about to make a big change and am doing to by my own choice.

I am moving to Georgia. Seems simple but it will be a big change.

First it will fulfill a bucket list item to live near the Atlantic ocean.I have always loved the grey toned waters of the Atlantic and hoped to live near it. However but it always way north of Georgia like one of the New England. Yet last Christmas I walked on a Georgia beach on Christmas day and made my decision.

But the move entails another major change--lifestyle. I am a product of the midwest and plains states. Born in Ohio and raised in Nebraska I have lived in South Dakota and Kansas the last few years. however i had a brief soon of years in Missouri and a year in Arkansas. So this Yankee is about to move south and become southern. This is ( and I am not joshing you) a major change in language and customs. A challenge but challenges can be invigorating. keep reading as i describe the process.

                      

We are honoring a great American this year. His politics did not always match mine but if we had met he would have listened, explained his views and then did what he thought was right.He answered his country's needs during a time of war with no attempt to by pass his duty and spent 5 years surviving torture as a prisoner of war.
Hiss sons seve proudly today and his life rang true. He gave respect and thereby gained it.

   So  many thoughts run through my mind as the news coverage of this man goes on this his funeral weekend.  The honor due him is being paid and the good of his life its being recognized. He had  faults ,as do we all, but he was a man for whom the respect for our countries values were a guiding principle. My minds in bewilderment at what our country in the last  year has become. Where has the America I love gone?

 I was young in the era of MLK , Selma, Rosa Parks and the Walgreen lunch counter sit ins. i supported these cries for equal rights and felt joy when white only and blacks sit here practices began to fall by the wayside. My heart swelled with pride because America was beating down racism. I knew it would never completely go away(Hate clings to souls after all.) but progress was made. Now in the last year alt right and neo nazis are emerging, John Doe feels he can scream racial slurs in public at anyone he wishes to , and politicians ask voters not to Monkey up an election. Are people not aware that we are all human and that once the skin comes off there is no way to tell if that person was black, white, red or yellow.? I am ashamed that these racists feel they have the right to do these things, to move us back to the earlier racist mode. I can not point a finger at an exact cause but a leader who condones these people by saying there are good people among them is part of the problem.

 My father's family emigrated form Wales and Germany in the 1700's hundreds,.my mother's  came 100years later. Both families put down roots and were tax payers , hard workers and assets to our nation. Have we forgotten that without immigrants would not be great? So now we send away people even some who have become citizens and have fought for our country? We turn our backs on those who are fleeing injustice by drug cartels and dictatorial regimes because they speak a different language. We refuse to see the good they gave to us. George Washington Carver a son of the slaves, Albert Einstein, and Werner vonBraun to mention a few. If we are a truly Christian nation, then we must remember Christ turned no away who turned to him.

The current policies that threaten children elderly and others in need is not American. The favoring of those who have no need for financial security to provide housing, medical, nutrition and education due to the incomes is beyond my ken.  In Eisenhower's era the rich paid the higher tax rate and most people of middle income could buy a house , car, and educate their children without a go fund me campaign  and do it on one income. Yes, inflation is a factor and times change but the tax base saw that those who could afford to pay more did and all benefited. The current view in my home state and n the national level is that it trickles down. But be truthful ,it does not trickle anywhere but into the deep pockets of people who do not need it. Factories and businesses are closing, wages are static( Yes, employment is up but mostly in low wage positions) and it takes two incomes to put a house over the family.( Check it out. A minimum wage earner can not afford housing in most states; so many work several jobs.) Family life suffers because wage earners are too busy or too tired to be good parents. Not all our world's woes come this and I am the first to admit it. But once again are these the actions of a Christian nation. Did not Christ say: whatsoever you do unto the least of these , you do unto me?

 Rant time is over. let me however look closely at whom you support in elections. Look behind the positioned political speeches. Check their records, their value sn and who is funding their run for office. In closing  let me say John Mc Cain  you were one of the last of The Grand Generation and while My politics and yours were often at odds, I respected you and your vision of our country, It is my hope that your love of the vision will not entirely be lost.

  Just finished my sandwich lunch, and I really need to go get a few groceries. But as one my friends said yesterday" I am not ready to people yet." Weekends for me often mean holing up in the house and being alone. It does not bother me, and like this weekend I will often spend time figuring out how I can stretch supplies until a day I have to go out.  It is not that  I am anti-social, but that after a week of work in public situations the quiet stillness renews me.