Thinking about two people I love on this rainy day. Today is my daughter Èowyn's eleventh birthday. She is so passionate and full of life, destined to make her mark on the wide world waiting before her. And to inevitably be marked by it as well. The task to prepare her for this journey is overwhelming, and impossible to protect her against. Today my mother is drawing very near the end of her amazing journey through life that took her around the world and blessed the lives of everyone she met. A far too short path, with an unnecessary end from a stupid, preventable and treatable type of cancer that was allowed to lurk in her body because many of her countrymen (including friends and family that now mourn) decided, through their politics and vote, that people like her, people without lots of money and a great job, people who were already sick, didn't deserve basic healthcare. She fought bravely since 2000, but didn't have the resources to win that fight, and so joined the millions of Americans that we turn our backs on. Blessed are the poor and the sick, somewhere perhaps, but not in our country. We say we don't have the money, but somehow always find it for war and corporate subsidies. And we let corporations block cheaper Universal Healthcare so they can inflate their profits in a private extortionist market. And we tell ourselves it's good. We tell ourselves Jesus was a Capitalist too. We choose this reality, and everyone else in the world looks on bewildered. Life and death. Brilliance and stupidity. Selfishness and selflessness. It is the human story. It's beautiful and it's tragic. It's an incredible gift that dazzles and cuts deeply. It overwhelms. It is too short. And too much.
blakekathryn
pixelskylines
gracieabrams
amandla
stormborns
yousharknotpass
areudirty