O Gina, where art thou? And how art thou?

I have been blogging more than it looks, because I have revived the travel and preparedness blog.

It does feel good to be able to do at least a little bit of  what I used to, but it also takes a lot out of me. That is especially true with the preparedness blog, where I am writing about processing my church having $100 billion scattered across hedge funds and through shell companies. My writing isn't even that condemnatory - I don't think - but that sure does sound terrible as I write it.

Also - and this is nothing new - my mother continues to decline. It exhausts and depresses me. A new medication seemed to help some, but today it feels like it doesn't.

Then of course there was the virus issue with that added stress, and yes, I have been feeling the issues with racism. No, I realize it's not anything new. There's a cumulative effect.

Technically, today could be a pretty good turning point. Things are cautiously opening back up on the virus front, and all officers involved in George Floyd's death have been charged. I am not optimistic for three reasons.

1. Those Memorial Day Weekend pictures make me pretty certain that the Coronavirus second wave is starting next week, not in the fall. I think it will be harder to get people to comply with safety precautions, given how reluctant the compliance was before. I foresee a lot of sickness and death coming up, and there has already been too much.

2. These charges - even in the result of a conviction - will not solve systemic police violence and white supremacy. In addition, they have highlighted more and more how dangerous this president is. That's not really news either, but that doesn't make me feel better.

3. People suck. A lot.

It's the way they proudly flaunt public health protection. That indicates a belief that no lives matter, which makes it that much weirder how many people are saying "All lives matter" again. There has been a major "All lives matter" revival. I guess it's because of the reminder that "Black lives matter"; people hate that one!

I have also seen a lot of invoking of the Civil War lately, in really stupid ways, thinking it proves something. I helped someone draft a reply to one comment yesterday. I wanted it to be really complete, and I felt like it was pretty good, but then it got taken down for being inappropriate somehow. (It was on a corporate page.) I will share it here, and if you can use it, go for it: 

The Civil War freed the slaves, and then the Ku Klux Klan was founded, and Southern sheriffs started arresting newly freed Black men on trumped up charges and selling their labor. That kept happening until WWII. Reconstruction started to bring better education to former slaves and poor white people, and it was abandoned and Jim Crow laws enforced, and the Daughters of the Confederacy formed and started pushing Lost Cause mythology and putting up Confederate monuments. Brown vs the Board of Education admitted that segregated schools were unfair, and white people spit on Black students and pulled their children out of public schools. The Civil Rights movement was always there, but it really took off in the 60s, got some key legislation passed, and that led to Lee Atwater's Southern Strategy, and new code words for continuing the criminalization of Black Americans which quickly led to the War on Drugs and the militarized police forces that are currently being focused on.

If the Civil War had actually accomplished equality, it would be fine to say "All lives matter" but it wouldn't need saying. Instead, there are people who are constantly working against equality, and people who refuse to see that are choosing that side by default.

Maybe it's just too long. Or maybe it's the reference to white people doing bad things.

In the midst of all this, I feel like I really need to become an expert in self-care, that maybe I will have to care for my mother until I can learn to care for both of us. I think at the root it may require wholeness and healing from trauma, even when the trauma keeps happening.

So that's the space that I am working in. There are good moments, but today hasn't been great.

I am still here.