Fully Present Post 50

I’m tired of hearing the talking point, “Build the wall!” Even more ridiculous was the promise that Mexico was going to pay for it. First, Trump said Mexico was going to gladly write a check and now he claims they’ll pay for it indirectly with a promised new trade deal. Until then, the president is demanding that Congress allocate American tax dollars to pay for it. My response is, “Oh hell no!” Walls don’t work. Desperate people will use a ladder to climb over it, dig a tunnel to go under it, or drill right through it. At the heart of the issue is why people are coming and perhaps our tax dollars can be used to get to the root of the problem.

Human migration is as old as humanity itself. Intelligent and able-bodied people will flee less than ideal circumstances in one location to a location that offers a better opportunity for economic survival and/or safety. And who can blame migrants for fleeing war or violence or persecution or oppression or starvation? Proverbs 27:12 says, “A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge; but the simple pass on, and suffer for it.”

The Evangelicals supporting this president and his call for the wall should know better than anyone that migration is a strategy that is repeated throughout the Bible with the righteous fleeing oppression, starvation, and persecution. They should recall their Sunday School lesson about the walls of Jericho that came tumbling down found in Joshua 6: 1-27. The fearmongering strategy put forth by this Administration is nothing but a proposed waste of tax payer dollars and a valed nod to racism against brown people.

I’m glad that some media outlets are countering the misrepresentation of statistics, gross exaggerations, and outright lies about the people seeking refuge and the danger we are in because we do not have a wall. The fact is that we are not being overrun by murderers, rapists and human traffickers. Drugs are coming in through legal ports of entry and through the mail to meet the demand of Americans for those drugs. The statistics show that fewer immigrants commit murder and rape than Americans. The few human traffickers won’t be deterred by a wall.

Here’s my point. If my family was facing the kinds of challenges these Central Americans are facing in their home countries, I would flee as well. I would hope that the 5.7 billion dollars we want to spend on a stupid wall would instead go towards helping to shore up the countries affected by our demand for drugs and finding ways to end the insatiable demand for drugs by Americans. People don’t migrate unless they are desperate. And a wall will never stop a desperate person who is fleeing for her life and for the lives of her precious children.

Already? Really? That was my reaction to the news that Senator Elizabeth Warren has established one of those interest committees for would be presidential candidates. The campaigning for the 2020 Presidential election is ramping up and I’m not ready. These last few years with Trump at the helm and then the resistance that successfully flipped the House of Representatives have left me exhausted. But I’d better take an energy drink and get ready.

What is clear to me is that our nation cannot afford another four years of Donald Trump. I’m amazed how he has lowered our expectations for what a president should be. His anti-intellectual, anti-law, anti-information, anti-immigrant, anti-truth, anti-news, and anti-decency and anti-morality has not only embarrassed our nation in the eyes of the world, but he has lowered the standards of common decency and further divided us. He has put the earth itself in further danger with his anti-environmental policies. So, I will gear up to support the candidacy of a person who actually deserves my respect and support. A hundred million Americans showed up to vote in the mid-terms. More will need to show up to elect someone new because of the way the electoral college works.

The next president won’t be perfect (no one is), but he or she will need to be intelligent, articulate, honest, experienced, and thoughtful. He or she will need a respect for the rule of law, knowledge of history, an appreciation for diversity, and a thoughtful approach to the environment. Only a candidate with these qualifications will deserve my support.

I hope the last two years have taught my fellow Americans that character matters and their votes matter. It’s been eye opening and disheartening to hear some fellow Christians continue to support this president who is clearly against pretty much everything Jesus taught us to be in relationship to God and our fellow human beings. I doubt Evangelical Christians understand how much their stance has revealed their hypocrisy and damaged the message of the Gospel. They have become a stumbling block.

I’ve also seem how gullible other Americans can be, blindly believing the lies of Fox News, the president, conservative radio hosts, and friends. Because of their own prejudice, ignorance, and fear of others, they cower behind this wall of lies that surrounds them. Trump, Fox News and conservative radio prey on these vulnerable people. With so much fear and hope for a return to a fictional past, the truth can’t penetrate their wall of lies. They will likely remain closed off while we tear down the wall with this next election.

The 2020 Presidential campaign is on our doorstep. This year I’ll be listening and watching carefully those who aspire to be the next president. The bar has been raised because we’ve all experienced the consequences of lowering the bar for the highest office in the world. It is clear that a huge fight is coming for the soul of our nation and the meaning of the presidency. Despite my political weariness, I’ve resolved to take a deep breath and gear up.

I have a wonderful son in law who just became a U.S. citizen last year. One of the things I appreciate most about him is that he brings a different perspective to discussions about life, health, and especially money. For Christmas this year, he gifted me the book, “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos” by Jordan B. Peterson (whom he admires). He vowed to pay me $60 or $5 per rule to read the book and write a reflection on each rule. So, my first resolution is to read and reflect on this book in 2019 and collect that $60.

My second resolution is to find a way to improve my sleep. I’m on a quest to sleep more than 5-6 hours a night, convinced that getting more sleep will help me lose more weight and improve my overall health. I’m open to suggestions because everything the experts have suggested thus far has had very little affect on me. I’m grateful that I don’t wake up sleepy and I don’t have trouble concentrating during the day. But sleep is essential to a healthy body and a healthy brain. Sleep is an important time of healing and restoration for the body and mind. I simply need more of it.

My third resolution is to pay off my daughter’s student loan this year. I took on the loan because of her ongoing health struggles that sometimes causes gaps in her employment. Too many deferments only caused the loan to grow over the years and I wanted to release her from this added burden. Financial planners don’t like it when people who should be saving for retirement take on their children’s debts. However, I’m on track with my retirement savings and taking on this debt really only meant not taking another vacation to a far away land for a few years. Besides that, I don’t like the terms of this loan. The interest rate is high at 5.125% and making extra payments below a certain amount does not go strictly reduce the principle. So, I will be happy to get rid of it this year.

My forth resolution is to put my heart and soul into the planning of our 2020 family reunion in San Diego, California. At our 60th reunion in Charleston, South Carolina this past July, I volunteered to host the reunion in California since it has been 20 years. My goals in taking this on are to strengthen the commitment of younger family members to continue the reunion tradition that my grandmother started, create more interaction and stronger connections between family members at the reunion, and to establish a digital information transition process to pass along to the next host. I’m looking forward to building a California host family team to work on the reunion. The creative juices are already flowing and my daughter and I began the work of developing our infrastructure during her holiday visit.

My fifth and final resolution is to continue to do my best everyday to: a) Love and show love to my family and friends; b) Contribute to society as a citizen of the country and world; c) Make healthy eating choices; d) Exercise 5 days a week; e) Save money; and f) Continue writing my blog.

Here’s to a very Happy New Year!

It’s no surprise to those around me that I’m a planner. I tend to be forward looking, thinking about the opportunities and challenges that are known and hedging against the unknown. I’m cautious, but generally optimistic. I embrace innovation and change as avenues toward improvement. In order to plan, I need time to reflect on the past and how my actions, inactions, and decisions have played out over the year. I would say that 2018 was a mixture of good, not so good, and the downright horrific.

Anyone who has adult children knows that your love and deep caring about their welfare doesn’t end when they reach adulthood. Parental love never diminishes and therefore the worry never ends. So when one of my children hurts, I hurt. The difference is that I no longer exercise control over the response to a crisis. I no longer have the right to put a bandage on the booboo. And nor should I. That is the very definition of adulthood: the ability to take responsibility for oneself. As a parent of adults, I can only offer my wisdom, love, and support. Above all, I am silenced. I don’t feel at liberty to openly share the fear, the pain, and the worry I experience with the entire world. This was one of those years when I often had to cry alone, pray alone, and hope against hope for a good outcome. Enough about what I can’t control and on to areas where I’m the master of my ship.

First, I failed to improve my Spanish in 2018. I didn’t practice everyday as planned or even once a week. I chalk this up to the distraction in spring where major workplace changes, precipitated by false accusations had to be dealt with. That emotional fight left me too exhausted and a little too demoralized to work on my Spanish. Although the issue did get resolved, the whole ordeal sent me to the therapist couch for three sessions and two key people running for the exit. They understandably left our department, finding employment elsewhere where they thought they might be better appreciated and treated. On the bright side, to relieve stress, I found a new happy place in Chinese and Taiwanese soap operas on Netflix and I’ve picked up some Chinese phrases and learned a lot about modern Chinese and Taiwanese culture.

On the health front, I’ve had all my screenings, including testing my DNA with 23 and Me. Thankfully, I’m no worse off than the year before. I have a little peace of mind that I don’t have DNA markers for some of the more frightening health concerns that I was worried about. With the exception of my avocado oil potato chips, I’ve been pretty good with my 80% Paleo diet. I haven’t lost all the weight I had hoped to, but I have been consistent with 35 minutes of exercise on the treadmill or bike five days a week and the addition of weights three of those days. My Fitbit shows that I reached my 10,000 steps a day almost daily, and I’ve hit my 250 steps per hour, averaging 10 out of 12 hours each day. I continue to fall short in the sleeping department, rarely hitting my seven hours. I consistently get between 5-6 hours each night. I’m not sleepy during the day, but the experts all say I’m falling short in this area. My lack of adequate sleep and my refusal to give up on my avocado oil potato chips have likely prevented me from losing all the weight I want to.

It’s been a good year financially if I ignore the recent stock market downs on my retirement accounts. I’ve been a big saver this year, increasing an already adequate emergency fund, adding to my 403b, and starting a separate Roth IRA. I’ve made big dents in the student loans and I even paid off my Lexus. Being on an automatic savings system takes away the urge to spend that money on other things. It’s as though it doesn’t even exist, so there is no temptation.

I’m glad we traveled to Charleston, South Carolina for our family reunion this past July. It was my first time in that state where the greatest number of people who share my DNA reside. That’s according to Ancestry.com. But Ancestry disappointed me when they sent me an update on my DNA this year. I was happy to be 48% Nigerian for the last several years. But now they say I am only 3% Nigerian. Instead, I am 34% Benin/Togo; 31% Cameroon/Congo; 13% Ivory Coast/Ghana and 16% (Great Britain, Scotland, Norway and Sweden). That gigantic shift really threw me off, especially since I know a lot of Nigerians and they share my love of education. I was planning to visit Nigeria as a heritage trip. But not anymore. This change really messed with my thinking about my heritage and personal pride in it. When I’m ready, I’ll invest some time in learning more bout Benin, Togo, Cameroon, and Congo as I did with Nigeria.

I don’t think I need to reflect too much on the politics of 2018 except to say that I am glad that the Democrats took over the House and I am especially happy that we were able to flip the 25th District, getting rid of Republican Steve Knight and putting in Democrat Katie Hill. That was huge.

The myth of living in one of the safest areas in the country was shattered by the mass shooting at the Borderline where many of my students spent so much time. My own kids frequented that club when they were college students and beyond. Our community suffered through that shooting followed immediately by wildfires without being able to catch out breath. Collectively, it has been an emotionally exhausting few months. Personally, it has been an emotionally exhausting year.

Overall, 2018 is not a year that will go down as one of my favorites. There were too many periods of turmoil, stress, pain, and disappointment. There were moments of joy, learning, and victory, too. Progress was made on a few fronts, but not nearly enough to tip the scale into the favorite year category. However, I am optimist about 2019.

When I observe the many indictments against those who worked for the sitting president, I can’t help but wonder why so many Republicans are still supporting him.  I heard nearly 80% of Republicans continue to support this president.   It seems like a strong case  of cynicism has taken hold of too many Americans, making it exceedingly difficult to hold this president accountable to the rule of law.  Think about it, if Obama had been implicated in just one of this president’s many scandals, to say nothing of the numerous accusations of actual criminal behavior, we would have already been in impeachment proceedings. 

The difference is that we’ve entered an era of cynicism.  Too many people hold the view that it is normal and even acceptable that human actions are only motivated by selfishness.  When cynicism takes hold of people’s thinking it becomes okay for a person to lie, steal, cheat and break all kinds of laws in the interest of becoming president.  And since that president is doing their bidding by nominating judges to overturn laws they don’t like, then they’ll overlook the corruption.  It becomes okay for a sitting president businessman to use his public office for personal gain.  If we have actually become so cynical in our thought processes, then moving forward we will get even more corrupt government officials.  

This will be a short post because my thoughts around this subject are simple.  We cannot afford to allow cynicism to define our expectations of each other.  We absolutely must raise our standards to once again value the collective good.  Public service officials must be of service to the public not to their own personal interests.  Anything less becomes a fleecing of the public trust and wallet.  This is happening before our eyes and too many people are looking the other way as if this is not only okay, but expected.  That is cynicism and it leads to widespread corruption. We and our children and their children’s children will all pay for it if we refuse to hold the blantant corruption of this current administration to account. 

Impeachment isn’t just a political choice, it is a responsibility to the American people.  Our Founders put it there to protect our country against corrupt and self-dealing high public officials. They knew what we are experiencing today could happen and impeachment was the safeguard against it.   We must hold our House and Senate members fully responsible by ensuring that they hear our collective voices demanding a strong defense of our nation, its Constitution, and the rule of law.  We cannot allow cynicism to rule the day and ruin our nation.

Despite the very best intentions, the strongest discipline, and possession of the highest esteem for morality, no one is publicly perfect.  And in the day of social media and the 24 hour news cycle, each imperfection is quickly put on display to ensure a swift and public shaming.  I’m all for accountability, but how that accountability is executed in our society is far from ideal.

This past week Kevin Hart was announced as the master of ceremony for the Oscars. There was a lot of excitement around the announcement.  After all, he’s a funny guy.  But just two days later, he backed out of the gig when 8-10 year old negative (and hurtful) comments he made about the LGBTQ community resurfaced. Several years ago he had publicly apologized for those comments and expressed how his thinking had evolved.  Not wanting to revisit the issue and not wanting to be a distraction to the event, he pulled out.  I was sad because I think he would have done a great job.  But at greater issue is that I think our society is shooting itself in the foot with this kind of accountability.

True, we absolutely need to hold people accountable.  However, I question the fairness of holding people accountable today for actions that society had deemed acceptable at the time of their occurrence.  The collective social morals of society change over time.  At one time, it was unacceptable for a girl to call a boy on the phone.  It was considered scandalous for unmarried couples to live together. Such a couple were whispered about as “living in sin” or “shacking up”.  It was a normal part of the workplace for men to flirt with and even pursue women.  Now we call it harassment, but when it  first became an issue, the offense had to be unwanted, persistent,  and “pervasive”.   So, men who once tried to kiss a female employee without express permission in the past, got a pass.  But I wonder if it is fair to derail any person’s career or life today by bringing up a once acceptable (though obnoxious) behavior from ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago?  

The rules in the past did not honor nor protect minorities or women.  I quit science behind the unwanted sexual attention of a teacher.  I quit a lucrative job in finance behind the unwanted amorous attention of the boss.  Both men were considerably older than me, so I assume they are either long retired or more likely dead now.  But what if they weren’t?  Would I seek to derail their careers if they apologized and explained how they had evolved with the changing societal norms?  Most likely not.  Would I want to be held accountable for things I said and did 20 years ago when times were different and I was different?  No, I wouldn’t.  

Times are changing more rapidly than ever and so our societal norms.  I think it is counterproductive to hold people accountable for past behaviors using present day norms.  We need to give people space to express their moral movement with the times.  I would really like to see our society hold people accountable in real time for real time offences like constantly lying to the American people, posing with Nazi salutes, and shooting innocent black young men.

 

Before going to bed Friday night I heard the news that the 41st President, George H.W. Bush, passed away at age 94.  It was just this past April that his wife of 73 years, Barbara Bush, died at 92 years old.  Saturday morning, I listened to Bush’s former White House staff talk about the man and the manner in which he served and led the nation.  Talk about a contrast to what we have now!  While I offer the Bush family my condolences as it is painful to lose a family member at any age, I hope the nation is mourning the loss of presidential dignity and integrity.    Continue reading “Mourning the Loss of Presidential Dignity and Intergrity”

It takes me a full six days to get the most out of Thanksgiving and to transition to Christmas.  So, I use two vacation days each year to prepare, enjoy, transition and rest. Continue reading “Transition from Thanksgiving to Christmas”

When I was in the seventh grade, I had a classmate named Joyce who went around talking about everybody.  She wasn’t just a gossip, but she was also a person who used the information she obtained by cozying up to people for her own purposes.  Sometimes she used the information to boost her own favorability in the eyes of a teacher by tattle telling on someone.  Other times she used the information to undermine the credibility of someone she saw as competition.  And at times she used information as revenge.  Many times she wasn’t completely honest in her representation of what she knew.  She stretched or contorted the information to make herself look good or someone else look bad.  She created conflict where there was little or none.  Her behavior was disruptive.  On the surface Joyce was caring and likable,  but beneath her charming façade she was devious and manipulative and we all knew it and hated that destructive behavior.  One day, I had had enough and I was determined to do something about it. Continue reading “Backstabbers”

Coincidentally, the day before the Borderline mass shooting, I did a workshop on the March for Our Lives movement for colleagues on campus. The movement promoted “Turnout Tuesdays”, a key element showing that the students recognized the need to get lawmakers in place to enact reasonable gun control laws. On election day, the day of my workshop, the democrats took over the House of Representatives and we rejoiced. Just one day later, the unthinkable happened yet again, but this time the gun violence struck the community where I work and shop: Thousand Oaks.

Continue reading “Gun Violence Strikes Home”