OH, JOLLY GOOD!

   And the good news just keeps on rolling down the tracks. No sooner than one thinks a pat on the back is deserved for avoiding the virus, uh oh - now we have XBB and related variants, wonder if there is ever an end to this virus or will we keep on keeping on until death do us part. Actually, not so bad to put on a mask in crowded areas, but the concern remains and the suspicion grows; who among us is infected and not remaining home or not wearing a mask in public, endangering us all. So, thank you, XBB, and we will wear a mask when flying for the foreseeable future. As medical offices return to masking, do we need to get hit on the head in order to improve our hearing and understanding? Based on evidence so far, multiplied by the amount of Trump addled, well, it will be quite some time. Jolly good!

But wait, we have more good news to share as we stand to usher in the new year, hoping for all sorts of goodies. For me, topmost is peace for the world and good health, certainly, for my family. A more hopeful possible future would go a long way as well. Probably pipe dreams, though certainly not the pipes of peace as we can count now, to our great shame as humans, at least 15 wars, revolutions, insurgencies, drug wars, etc. going on round the world. Yup - that many and who knows how many more will be born this year and how many now present will grow. Yet another jolly good for humanity. We can be oh so, oh so, oh so proud.

A person caught in a great tragic circumstance, no good ending ever to appear, says that, despite the literally heavy physical and taxing emotional difficulties, says, "I do this easily. He's heavy but not that heavy because I'm carrying love. So it's not so heavy." Would that we were all to approach some of our greatest challenges this way, talk with each other, not at the other, hear, listen, and truly do the right thing, then perhaps, we would be taking one tiny step along a difficult road, but a most necessary one.  Now that would be jolly good!

I take a look around and stand there, Close my eyes again, take a deep breath and hope that I was wrong, not in my home country, misplaced through some trick of time and space. But no such luck for upon opening those eyes, they continue to see the truth, a desolate unfair, harsh truth for too many and the absolute absence of a determined nation to do and stand by the right, to gird its loins and take on the evil encroaching upon us. The courage to inspire the world to do what is right as well, to punish war crimes, crimes against humanity as they occur, rather than weaving excuse after excuse, allowing the pools of blood to expand geometrically, exponentially. Oh, jolly bad.

My country. What has happened to it. Somehow, some time, we shifted and are now seemingly doing our best to emulate the Third World conditions of less fortunate nations. Infrastructures crumbling, worn out, insufficient. People going hungry, children homeless, school-less, hopeless. Smaller governments wrangling, defying national law, instituting harsh, inhumane rulings, particularly against the "others". 

Those others are women, who have dared to achieve, tackle the glass ceilings, who demand to control their own bodies, make their own decisions. The others are those who are similar targets and share the same opinion as this statement re the constant hate directed at them, even unto the point of murder. "You don't get a day's relief from the knowledge that there is an organized effort to demonize us, to drive us into dark corners, to tell us lies about us. There is just no way to avoid it and it takes a toll." That covers the LGBTQ+ community, the Jewish communities round the nation, Asians, Indigenous, anyone who does not fit the mold of the haters and purveyors of death and blood.

Even more frightening is the apparent welcoming of a dictator to office right here in America. Trump.  DeSantis, an even more outright fascist. All the tagalongs, all those who connived and conspired to overthrow this nation's government, to declare an autocracy. Now in seats of more power, to waste funds on more corruption and let the people just drift with the currents of hopelessness and loneliness. How do we accept the new powers to be given to Jordan, Perry, Greene, McCarthy, Gaetz, Boebert, and the list goes on and on, way too long for this country to survive and abide. 

Action is necessary. It is called for. Will enough people hear that clarion call and react as is needed, restore proper democracy, cancel threats that eat away at us from the inside? Or will we drift in a pushed drifting into another civil war of great violence?

Do we have it within us to see reality as it is, and fight it till we return toa positive reality for this nation and for the world? Not as we wish it but as we make it. 

Will there be a jolly good, or a not so jolly good but rather a jolly bad at the end of day?

Your choice. My choice, Our choice.