2024 US Election ( with additional revisions , footnotes )

INAGURATION DAY  Jan 2025 

[Update]

         J M STARZ           SHEPARD FAIREY

My Personal View of New Administration

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 First, they came for the illegal and legal immigrants

and I did not speak out because I am not an illegal immigrant. I am a second-generation immigrant.

Then they came for women who asked for an abortion or had one in the past and I did not speak out because I am too old to get pregnant nor did I have one in the past.

Then they came for transgender people and again I did not speak out because I am not transgender.

Finally they came for me, a poor, disabled senior on .... with social security and no savings.

and there was no one left to speak for me.

(an adaptation of 

a poem by Niemöller in Hitlers Germany)

"It is what it is...."

I will speak out, even writing this blog may allow the administration to act in retaliation. I am a second-generation immigrant. We are a nation of immigrants.

I am now a "foreigner in a foreign land."

I, as a woman , live in the most sexist nation, even over racism. As a 75-year-old, I have fought  every inch for the right to live, work and educate myself.My parents had to leave school to survive the depression. I have a graduate degree. The first!

Voters have chosen a political puppet, criminal, convicted felon, womanizer, liar, with plans to trash our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Two strong women ran in opposition in 2016 and 2024 and America chose Donald tRump.

The American Dream is an illusion and will be only for the wealthy 1%.

NOT PROUD to be an American Citizen

I AM a proud American woman born into a lower middle class suburban home outside Portland Oregon. 

I chose in many battles to stand up for my rights to live , work and be educated.

I accomplished high grades in order to escape my abusive neglect filled home and family. And with scholarships and two jobs, attended three state universities.

I graduated in 1973 with a graduate degree ,BFA ,after several battles to receive the same respect from professors as did my male counterparts.

I stood up to a rapist in 1970 at 19, when even my family did not believe me.

I did not back away from workplace threats of termination, 1971, by my supervisor to keep a "dress" code when slacks were needed to perform my job.

I demanded my family name be returned to me by the judge at my divorce proceedings 1975.

I led a strike , 1982, in a large construction camp of 200 men in Alaska.  My all-female crew, kitchen and housekeeping, were continuously harassed verbally along with sexual graffiti. We won.

I stood my ground, 1989, verbally in  public to the Abbot of the Zen Community/monastery over his verbal and emotional abuse.

J M Starz

November 7, 2024

Privileged Entitled?

PS: My final observation and conclusion IS that the stronger women in America become, the more attempts there will be to oppress US. Keep moving "Forward". " Keep the light on".

Lyrics from female contribution to new release , song by Cold Play September 2024.

                "We Pray"

Pray that love will shelter us from our fears

Oh I pray, you trust to let me wipe off your tears

Confront all the pain that we feel inside

With all the cards we have been dealt in life

Pray I speak my truth and keep my sisters alive

So for the ones that parted the seas for the ones following dreams

For the ones that knocked down doors and

Allowed us to pass down the keys

Pray we speak with a tongue of honesty,

And that we understand how to be modest

Pray she looks in a mirror and sees a queen, a Goddess.

And so we pray..  

Footnote: Election numbers show 208 million eligible voters. Republicans received 35% of eligible voters and 51% of registered voters. A minority of voters will dictate to the other two-thirds including millions of non-eligible voters. The future generations. This is democracy for a minority vs the majority.. and American citizens are ....?

From recent interviews with minority ethnic groups the American Dream is alive.Yet it is clear by their voting for this leader/party they are willing to give up human rights for the money they believe is proof of success in America. They may have left a war torn , poverty stricken and economic disaster of a country, familiar, and now in America they are willing to accept a loss of liberty, even if OTHERS do. By 2050 half of citizens will be Latino. I fear money over life and liberty will become the distorted " American Dream". I will not be here, yet I can see it already in the 2024 election...  Including a national abortion ban planned, more anti-LGBTQ laws especially transgender, "Snitching" laws about abortion, as in Texas, and an erosion of enforcement of the Constitution and Bill of Rights..........

 

All for the rights to buy MORE.......costs will always be on the rise here and around the world. As populations soar, demand grows for jobs, commodities / especially food ( also affected by climate changes), housing, this list goes on... as more immigrants flee countries in already dire conditions. At the University, 1970, over population was the main issue facing us. Now 55 years later, I can see where we are headed after little concern by next generations to this issue...anti-abortion laws will only add to this future of ...   ?

                                                           **************"

"Ask not what your country can do for you... ask what you can do for your country"..JFK 1960

We PRAY

Baraye Song from Iran

Casualties at Home

 it might as well have been a warzone. from 1954 to 1967.
 my diagnosis of PTSD at the age of 57 was proof
 of the battleground that described the house
 on 4400 SE Howe Lane in Arden Park, Milwaukie Oregon




To this day I have not been able to go back through the door, even in therapy as a meditation exercise. I stop at the front door, unable to touch the door nob or knock. As the oldest, I remember more painful events and to this day I am told by my sisters they do not believe many of my recollections. This is the main tragedy of a dysfunctional family, especially for the siblings. The age differences create different memories and a need to forget does not make room for other painful ones. Memories of domestic violence, child abuse, and neglect are best hidden away and forgotten. More easily done amongst strangers.

We were children, helpless to affect the events around us, yet learning how to manipulate as an individual survival strategy. There was no sense of a combat camaraderie as soldiers have, "in this together." And a lack of this attitude is even stronger as adults. It is as though we are all MIA as in "May [prefer] not return home". As of this date, it has been 8 years since my three younger sisters chose to stop seeing me or have any communication. Hurting each other is what we do. Forgiveness is what we need. Healing is what I pray we all will want for ourselves and each other. Mathew 18:21-35

This 1959 photo reminds me of a Christmas that was not an example of how we saw our family in 1993. My mother was at a loss for the reason we all were so willing to leave "home", in Oregon. All our cousins lived within a few miles of my aunts and uncles! So in 1993 on Christmas, my mother did not see or hear from any of us. I was in a Buddhist monastery in Carmel California mountains for 6-month silent retreat. Teri was in New Brunswick Canada with her two kids and a business to run. Lana was in Alaska with her new fiancé and Lisa in Miami running her Travel agency. We could not have lived any further from each other and from my mother. Hawaii was still a possibility? We all received calls, my mother was in the hospital in January and had a code blue twice. We should come to her asap.

I actually took two days to decide to leave. It was a long journey by jeep, bus, plane, and taxi to get there, and did not know if I would make it in time. I decided to go. The plane was held over in San Francisco because of bad weather in Portland. I could have been there faster by Greyhound bus! I asked to speak to my mother in her hospital room while waiting at the airport. They could not locate anyone by that name during my call. Then everyone near the check-in desk heard me yell out, "you have LOST my mother?". The next voice was my mother on the phone asking when will I be there, saying," I am fine, I am sitting up and finally eating some prime rib!" All my three sisters were there. My mother's broken heart from Christmas was already on the mend. My reunion with my mother was healing for us both. As I entered the hospital room she asked everyone to leave us to be alone. She looked up at me and smiled as she confessed she no longer was afraid to die, yet she must share her knowledge of the way I had been all my life as a child. "You have always been afraid, and I have not known how to help you." I was later to fully understand this fear as to how much I felt unloved by my mother and her inability to show me, until that day in the hospital. She loved me enough to tell me the only way she could express it. Psalm 147:3

What has Love got to do with it? 

From a distance, I have seen how each of my sisters survived and endured over the years.  Created fulfilling lives for themselves. I am very proud of them. Happier now for them than I am saddened by my not being able to share in their successes and triumphs. I miss not being able to love them directly, yet from wherever we are, I want them to have all they strive for because I know what we lived through as children and have all overcome. Acts 20:24

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