This post started out as something entirely different – 3 months ago! No, make that 4 months ago now! I still feel the title is a good one – maybe sometime I’ll manage to talk about that a little – but really the amazing thing is how hard it is to write a blog post that seems worth asking someone to read it right now. What feels important is how far we have to go to be who I want to be – honest, kind, fair, just, uplifting, empowering, inspiring. I lived through the 60’s and Vietnam, witnessed political assassinations and riots, saw presidential malfeasance of what seemed like all kinds, watched the towers fall from Disney World, and saw our first black president elected. I have voted from the moment I could and unfailingly since. And heaven knows, as a woman in STEM, faced a number of challenges. Really, with LGBTQ rights, I thought we were succeeding. And yet, not yet. As a white baby boomer, I am deeply pained and sorry. As a woman and a human, I am angry. A part of me is glad we are here because it has uncovered how deeply flawed my country and I still are. But I would much rather we weren’t so deeply flawed. How do we keep going? I keep going because a) we have to if we want to effect change and b) it is the morally right thing to do. But it doesn’t make it fun and I sometimes despair. I wish I could say that despair drives me to art, but it actually drives me to nothing. It is my friends who are enlightened, who are also fighting the fight, who inspire me every day. And, of course, those little grandchildren who will inherit all we leave behind. So onward, I guess, because the alternative sucks, right?

Just to show what I had been thinking about other than the current climate when I started this post all those months ago…