4212 Olive

Several years ago, late 1990’s, I was siting on a white sandy beach in Sarasota Florida with a few colleagues.  Colleagues might be a bit of a stretch, we didn’t work for the same school, but we all did the same thing all across the country and had formed friendships and partnerships in an effort to help high school students find the best educational environment.  We all offered a four year bachelor’s degree in fine art.  Each school while offering very often the same thing, Painting, Photography, Design, Illustration, sculpture, ceramics, etc.  Some schools had different focus in those areas. One school was best for automotive design, one was best for medical illustration, one for photography, ceramics, one was better for something like Disney.

As we sat there in-between meetings to chart out the next year of recruitment across the country, the topic of those two simple words came up, thank you.  I had been thinking about writing a book about ‘thank you’ and mentioned that.  Beth from Maine, her eye’s lit up, that’s a great idea!  That was encouraging, I held her in high regard. And because more than once I’ve thought about writing a book.  

Today I started thinking about the two words, I’m sorry.  Maybe it’s just me, but have you ever noticed how people apologize for things that are out of their control or shouldn’t have to apologize for?  But often the apology that really is needed, needed to be heard or should be said, rarely happens?  

Four words, that just seem so simple to me.  It may be my imagination, but I’ve felt that since that conversation and a bit before it, I have said thank you more than some.  Maybe more than most?  Maybe not?  But if feels that way.  Because it’s simple and it costs me nothing.  It doesn’t have to be because someone pulled me out of the way of an accident, thank you. Or made some kind of grand gesture, two words for a simple gesture is good too, thank you. Moving their cart and themselves out of the middle of an aisle in a store so others can get past, thank you.  Gesturing for you to go ahead, thank you. Someone picking up a piece of trash on the sidewalk in your town, thank you. 

I’m sorry. Being in the way of someone getting down the aisle in a store, I’m sorry.  Dropping trash on the sidewalk in your town, I’m sorry. Believing someone’s story, not discounting them or their story. Believing them and if a bad story, maybe just say, I’m sorry.

But what I hear most often is an I’m sorry for something that the person saying it has no control over.  But they are saying it because maybe they think someone will complain. Think they are weak. Or not believe their story. Probably because they may not even believe it them selves.  Like they have done this thing on purpose and now need to apologize. We should stop apologizing for, number one; crying when talking about someone dying. Or the injustice of a love one as victim and even criminal.

This may be a repeat, but I had been thinking for a while, that old saying about walking in another shoes, just wasn’t ‘fitting’ right with me. It wasn’t making sense. How could I truly know another experience. I didn’t know enough of their history to know what in their life could impact a situation and how they would respond or react to it. Then I heard Brene Brown talking to “O”;

“So the idea of walking in someone else’s shoes and trying to understand what they are feeling has no merit. The call is much more difficult and powerful and that is, to ask the person for their story for what it is like in their shoes and to believe them – not about guessing what they are feeling – – why do we think we have to walk in other people shoes? The hard part is the believing part. Because it either challenges what I want to be true about the world or challenges my idea that there is one experience of the world. Or it makes me accountable in some way that makes me uncomfortable.”

We will forever have problems with believing someone’s story, some will never be okay with the vulnerability of uncomfortable.

I watch weird television.  Mostly because I can’t bring myself to listen to what people say about others, or see what we are doing to others so I watch crime shows and have been a bit in a rabbit hole lately of a show on youtube where this couple go around Oregon, mostly Portland, buy abandoned storage units and then sell that either in live auction or your typical for sale sites.  And crime shows and people talking about the crime or injustice that has happened to them or a love one. They get emotional, cry and apologize.  The two on Youtube apologize because the HVAC in the storage facility is noisy and it might impact the audio.  They apologize to people who complain in the comments about how they run their business, or how they think they run their business.  Or how they interact with each other. If you watch and pay attention, it seems they are having fun, rib each other and those complaining or saying things are the ones with the issues. Razz each other all you want! As long as they treat me the buying customer well, that’s all I care about.  And I would bet the fee to buy one of those units that they do that ten fold.

People who apologize for crying because their loved one was brutally murdered or their loved one was wrongfully accused of a crime, evidence to prove it and they are still either being prosecuted or incarcerated 5, 10, 20 or 30 years.  Or they did in fact commit a crime. Unless you are the one who did the crime, don’t apologize for them. You have nothing to apologize for unless you drove them to the crime, then that’s a different story.

Why are we not apologizing for the things that actually we should be apologizing for?  The things that we have done that will impact others? Things that we have done that could have been avoided or represent such a narrow concept or ideology that it impacts others negatively.

Well, I guess we would have to have awareness to a certain degree that we even know that we have done or said something that is worthy of, I’m sorry.  

I have a friend who will randomly post on Facebook, “I love you”. A few years ago, 2017 I posted on;

So much was happening that was adversely impacting others that I was at a loss as to what I could or should do.  I couldn’t apologize for the masses. Much of what was happening was out of my control, completely. Same as today, but I can still say both as often as I can. Maybe someone or one person saw that I’m sorry that day and needed to see it.  Even to say I’m sorry to themselves for something. Maybe we should all do that from time to time.

I’m sorry.

Thank you.

Descending the escalator June 15, 2016 it began. Interesting choice to descend rather than ascend.  

D – To move from a higher to a lower place; come or go down.

A – To go or move upward; rise.

Permission was given to move to a lower place, down to a dangerous descent revealing our true selves word by demeaning word, lie by lie to where we are today.  Dare I say, an indoctrination? 

Decency be damned, don’t tread on me. I see no harm in balance, equality, fairness. Bring back decency. 

We all have work to do.

A place that some of us sensed, some of us knew, many dreaded, others celebrated.  Celebrated because they could now finally fully exhibit their true selves.  Their fears and those feelings that they had kept to themselves until that permission was granted.

Decency doesn’t negate what one might think it does. It is not necessary to be safe or comfortable.  You can still believe that people certain people should be deported, criminals.  You can believe that your religion is the only religion, it is not.  You can believe that everyone should do as you do, they should not. Decency is the part that stops you from acting on any of those beliefs that directly adversely impact another human for no legal, legitimate reason.

If properly maintained and balanced, justice will not let any of these fears you hold adversely impact you.  However, actions based on those fears and lies absent of decency, deport innocent people, kill or try to kill, those in opposition.  And creates unconstitutional laws and policies void of decency or justice by dehumanizing already disenfranchised individuals who are doing their best to create a good and safe life for themselves and their family.  Lives that essentially, have had no adverse impact on you or me. Yet some have been convinced otherwise because of weakness and carelessness. 

A good and safe life, just like the one that you hope for that for the most part before a few years ago had no real risk of being extinguished.  Yet you took the word of someone with little knowledge of the human condition or spirit validate your fears.  Validating them with unfounded, false stories that have no foundation of truth but are based in hateful vindication. 

Decency is the state or quality of being decent.  Behavior that is good, moral and acceptable in any society. When you want someone to be decent towards you, what does that mean?  How or what do they say or not say?  What has being decent done for you?  What has the opposite done for you?  

The deeper we go the less I understand.  I wish that my Mom and her clear mind of about 2005 or so was here so I could ask her what is it she thinks feeds the extremism.  

My head spins and I get that feeling in or near my heart that sometimes makes it way up to my throat, then out of my eyes.

It feels like an arrogance to a degree that is consequential, indescribable and void of description or definition.

In high school I think my Mom worried that I was on a path to extreme fundamental ideology.  I wasn’t.  But I guess it could have happened.  I soon recognized in myself what I was not comfortable with.  It was the extreme, the judgement of others that I had no right to judge and the arrogance that I thought it was my place to judge. That somehow because I was faithful, went to church, bible study or void of ‘sins’ that I was somehow superior and entitled to that judgement.  I was not.  That question ‘why’ was to prominent in my head and I asked it often.  Something my Mom loved and it drove her crazy.  I guess it’s one thing to have a child ask why over and over again, but a 20 year old?  

And as I have realized in the last 10 years or so of required daily medication, I have absolutely no addictive qualities or tendencies.  So a cultish space I would not be. That belief that it just takes three weeks, 21 days to create a habit, yeah nope.  Not me. Lack of motivation and what I’ve always considered an abstract brain, to maintain a single train of thought, single or otherwise, an attention span, interests, curiosity, grief, contentment, introversion, solitude, too much time to think?  Or maybe my aversion to redundancy is so deep seeded, that even remember to take a pill every morning for my health, even after 2 alarms, I’ll still not take it.

When I settle in and decided to go back to school in 1986 the liberal arts aspect of Kansas City Art Institute introduced me to more literature that I had been exposed to, Although I knew of most of it, I hadn’t read much of it yet.  It provided me with classes in Western Thought, Eastern Thought, Jungian Thought and Philosophy of Religion. Philosophy.

When I think about this word conform it is opposite, diametrically opposed to and counter to anything I know or understand.  I strive daily to bring my privileged existence to this world humbly with the values instilled in me by my parents and the Minister I listened to every Sunday for nearly 18 years. This statement does not fit into what I was taught.

And today, does not fit into how we should be as a nation.  We have no right, would, should never have that right. As just one of a few billion unique people in the world, I see no one in this world who has the right to say this let alone someone with potential platform to put it into action. This is limiting and restrictive in a way that leaves no room for respect, love and compassion.  Not to mention a level of arrogance that the Bible speaks against.  Opposition to pride, grace to the humble.

So many years ago I was sitting in a class.  It was a class that studied what some would say is not a religion, but a philosophy or text that an underlying premise is the act of simply gaining a full “awareness of love’s presence”, that teaches forgiveness, love and peace through it’s principles.

Nothing real can be threatened. 

Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.

In that small class the topic of fear came up.  I had thought about it a lot.  Noodled it around in my heart, head and said, that I don’t have fear in my life.  I can’t say I truly knew the others in the class yet, the class was new, but boy did I get crazy looks!  What??  No fear?  I was an anomaly, a weird one. Seriously? Yes, seriously.

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.

Still today, fear for me is in check.  It’s not in my DNA, never debilitating or creating any type of anxiety that impacts me living.  Mostly it is fear for others. Fear for what they fear.  Fear for what is in their world to harm them.  Real and manufactured baseless fear.  Fear of justice denied or unbalanced justice.

Is it this lack of fear that has me where I am socially, politically, spiritually, physiologically?  Is it what keeps me clear about what is happening, that nothing real can be threatened?

Emotionally, I am a wreck.  Today, June 12, 2025 I had the TV on a few times, read a few posts on Substack and crying each time had to walk away.

License has been given to cruelty, abuse of power, abuse of the law by the will of so few.  Those few have manufactured a world of fear for some that does not exist.  Thanks to press and media, they manufactured this for us.  A reality show was more important than reality. Where we are today because it was more important to get the rating than to work within a level of justice, democracy and a true rule of law.  All three of those seem to be slipping away from us and some believe this will get us, I’m not sure where, but it will not be the world they imagined or even dreamed.  

There will be no line in the sand for some to stand on the other side of.  The us vs them will be a bastardized version of destruction and the demise of while not perfect a world we will never have again.  It will be gone if this regime is not checked and true democracy and rule of law are brought back into favor.

I don’t think there is.  We are in a slow and on some days an escalating freewill into a place, regardless of beliefs or any agenda, that a majority never wanted or hoped for.  A very small number of people have somehow silenced and concerned the majority. 

The end of 2022 MAGA was around 15%. *He claimed in 2024 it was 75%.  Nope. At the time only 24% of Americans had a favorable view of MAGA.

I’m not torn in anyway about how I feel about any of this. Every single bit of it, what *he is doing is unconscionable.  Anyone who supports *him, doesn’t speak out against what *he is doing is equally unconscionable. 

A while back someone posted, how you treat those who voted differently than you says a lot about your character.  Now that can be read two ways. How you treat me because I voted for the felon or how you treat me because I voted for a qualified black woman. Who you voted for speaks to and tells me your character and more.  That one of a few things is possible or true;

• You’re a die hard hold your nose and vote republican.  
• You are a one issue voter and vote for just that issue nothing else.
• You vote based on the headline, not the full issue.
• You DO NOT pay attention or care too. You’re too busy.
• You think, I’m not part of that, it won’t happen to me. (heh)
• You only listen to one news channel.
• You’re just mean, angry and have no capacity to care about anyone.
• You don’t read.
• You’re a racist.
  
  

• • You’re a billionaire and want a good tax break, damn the rest of them.

Don’t think I know any billionaires.

I think I did this before I started reading A Course in Miracles back in the 90’s.

Was it or is it because competition hasn’t ever been something that drove me or I felt necessary in my life.  I didn’t need to be better or best.  I just needed to be.  So sports was out.  I had some skill, but maybe not enough to compensate for my lack of completive nature to WIN.  What did winning mean anyway?

ACIM ~ Lesson 153 “in my defenselessness my safety lies.”  

That lack of the need for competition carried over into relationships.  I didn’t need to be right.  I didn’t need to be in charge.  I didn’t need to be the leader.  I just needed to be.  I’m sure my introversion impacted this as well, but it was who I was.

I didn’t need a lot of friends.  And certainly too much ‘peopling” was always a challenge.  Even before that was ever spoken or used to describe too much interaction with others.

This week the situation at hand has odd familiarity.  It feels the same internally, that while not exactly, similar.  I am the defendant and only the prosecution gets a voice.  There is only one side to this story.  This story, only one side is given light and attention.  Guilty.  

A quick check in.  This is nothing legal or legally actionable.  Just life.  Don’t want anyone to think otherwise. 

I will admit, that this time, while I won’t say I defended myself, I did stand up for myself.  More than I ever have.  So a different kind of defense.  

What was unspoken was not just me here, as it normally would be.  The unspoken of the other party was for me spoken in the acceptance of the counter.

If you know me or have been in certain situations with me or maybe read something here or there, you might have heard me speak of the solar plexus in relation to chakras.  I was told several years ago by a someone that I take information in through my solar plexus.  She said, good news is, you know what people are thinking and feeling.  Bad news is, you know what people are thinking and feeling.



Daily I work to use this to an advantage or a benefit and certainly not a weapon.

When I heard it, the usual happened.  Words swirled my head, there is always more and so often deeper meaning.

“the innate sense of right and wrong.”

Right and wrong.

I said to someone the other day that over the last 8 years or so, this liberal on some days feels more conservative than the most vocal self professed “conservative”.

Those that I thought or perceived as conservative, today find acceptable things that even this liberal never imagined acceptable. 

I have to come to terms with the idea that we’ll never know why.  We’ll never hear the true reason they turned their head, held their nose and filled in the circle or pulled the lever, twice.  We’ll never know. 

We’ll never know how some compared a DUI nearly 30 years ago, to felonies, rape, bankruptcy, fraud, adultery, racism and just everyday verbal abuse to any and all.

Those who use the Bible as their guide, isn’t that the one book that more than any other book speaks to and about right and wrong?  Yet, those lines have been blurred.  Is God’s law perfect and should we follow it to avoid making wrong choices?

Righteousness – serving God

Evil – rejecting God.

Rejecting God, lines blurred.

Love they neighbor, lines blurred

The Bible forbids bearing false witness, slandering others,  Right judgment is commended and being discerning.

Right judgement, lines blurred.

Every person has a conscious, lines blurred.

Read Mathew chapter 24.

Truth is always more important than politics.  (Acts 23:1)

It’s more than blurred lines.  It’s the changing of all of what once had purpose and a definition that meant something and retained value. 

Character.  

Morality.  

Ethics.  

It feels some have, for reasons yet to be known, changed how all of this guides not only how they live, but how they think WE all should live. While saying don’t tread on me, treading on those that don’t fall inline.  

And what is that line?  Why was *he allowed to move the line, thin it or stretch is range?



Issues are blurred. There are no lines. Issues are dealt with on the surface. There is no depth. Depth would take effort, energy and with that effort to fully understand the issue, one might have to change their mind. Vulnerability feeds and maintains the fear. So we continue on the surface. We all know, each and every one of us that we all want the same thing. But one side admitting that they want the same as the other side, is political suicide. Like that’s more important that life itself or the life we hope to live.



Last election my issue, my one issue, voting for Black excellence, joy, resilience, decency and respect.

How often do you think of gullible?  Or think damn they’re gullible.  What other characteristics does a person who is gullible have?  Are they smart, not smart?  Are they needy?  Lost, lonely, lacking purpose and place so find it anyway they can?

What does the “Google” say.  A gullible person is someone who is easily deceived or tricked, and is too trusting of others. Gullible people may be naive, unsuspecting, or innocent. 

Gullibility is a lack of social intelligence, and can lead to people being taken advantage of. People who are gullible may make decisions based on unlikely claims or propositions that lack evidence. 

Ah, social intelligence.  

Now that is interesting!  

Is gullible an insult? 

Yes, the word “gullible” can be used as an insult because it can imply a lack of intelligence or judgment. It can also be used in a light-hearted way in jokes or pranks. 

Okay, so I want to be careful here.  Before I did the Google I started this because I had this thought.  While I’ve thought or wondered over the last 8 years or so, just what it was about this person who once again occupies the Oval, that I could put my finger on to think or maybe even say, this is why he is the way he is. 

I have no education for it, no factual first hand information or any data, medical, phycological or otherwise to say any of this, But I’m going to say it.

While he lacks many things, I’m going to say he has no social intelligence.  None, zero.  The ability to understand one’s own and others actions.  He is gullible.  He is naive.  He lack moral character.  He lack the ability to feel emotion or the cause and effect of bad and good things that can happen to a person.  He is an empty silo.  Which is also why, while I feel many different emotions about this person, I often find myself feeling sorry for him.  

Who are his friends?  Who cares about him?  Who cared about him?  

He has an idea of an image of what success is.  It’s juvenile and singular, serves no one. Maybe not even himself.

So here comes, a young “billionaire” who showers him with who knows what and he sees what he had hoped to have.  Even who he thinks or thought he was.  A successful company minus all the bankruptcies and a perception of success and taking no prisoners.  So his lack of social intelligence makes him gullible and vulnerable to someone like Elon.  It’s fawning.  It’s the not so popular guy being friends with who he thinks is the popular guy.  Because he doesn’t understand the graces of social intelligence.  And has a pension for mean because he doesn’t understand why he doesn’t have friends.  He was a privileged wealthy white boy, why didn’t people like him?  

Back in 2006 I had started a new job.  In all the jobs I’ve had, that manager is still in the top 5 of managers I’ve had.  

As I proceed with my job, along the way I discovered some, well let’s just say some inefficiencies.  Weekly I would update the boss as to my activities and also what I was seeing, hearing or finding.  Part of my job was to add and expand a segment of business for this company so I found myself at or onsite with existing customers.

After about 10 months the boss says, I’m creating a new role and you will not be working more closely and directly with these existing customers and the people we have supporting them.  Don’t need to give too much here or want to, but the onsite teams working with companies.

One day I went to a company that I had never been too.  In the beginning it would not have been a place that would have needed the new business I was tasked to build.  I think I might have been in the role a few weeks, maybe a couple of months.

I set the appointment with the contact at said company and showed up at the scheduled time to meet.

Well, I kind of got my ass chewed by someone I had never met who had never met me.  I listen, probably took a few notes and when he was done, I said, you have every right to be mad, what you just explained to me is unacceptable.  You have my complete apologies and know that the minute I leave here this Director, this VP and this VP will be notified of the issues and I am certain that action will be taken.  And I will follow up with you once a day until I know you have resolution.  

Not a thing that this man was mad about, and rightly so, did I have anything to do with.  But I sucked it up and took the responsibility.  Not for a SECOND did I consider blaming it on the last person, or anyone before me who actually was at fault.  I took the hit and I did what I could to fix it.

But I wasn’t the f**king President of the United States.  I guess that’s different when you have the lives of MILLIONS of people in your hands you can just shove off any responsibility while you decimate the entire country. 



Asshole!

When I think of character, first to mind is my Dad.  My two Grandpa’s.  Men I knew as a child and now men who I grew up with who I am still in touch with.  Merle McConnell, Hillis Bowers, John Wallace, Dan Wilson, Jim Carpenter, Bob Magee, Richard Burry, Elmer Gibson, Ed Barnes Jerry Bauman to name a few.  Then the Bowers, Merle, Ed, Ricky and Rodger.   Bill Nichols, Leroy Burry, Steve Magee, David and Doug Wilson, Tim and Steven Carpenter.

How is it that “we” normalized one, one who for many or me is a morally bankrupt, convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, racist into the once most respected highest office in the land.  Who will be next?  Why not a Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Ted Kazinsky? 

I’ve started this several times.  Then get stuck.

I’ve said several times that I’m not here to understand,  Which lately is insurmountable.  Beyond any understanding.

Up until a few years ago, the idea of character rarely came into thought or conversation.  Now I think about it daily.

I think about how it feels like some have redefined character, morality and ethics.  It feels like for a reason or logic for me to put into words, none of those are an important aspect of leadership, or decency. 

Until a few years ago, I thought I knew what character was, or that the definition of character had not shifted or become a concept that was now void of meaning or importance.

Character as noun, the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.  Moral qualities, principals of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness(poor quality or low standard) of human character. 

What we have is a caricature of a human who will take an oath to protect and defend the constitution.  Someone who has with his actions and words disparaged and only defended himself not the constitution or any reasonable real rule of law.

A caricature is a picture, description, or imitation of a person in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic or grotesque effect. “there are elements of caricature in the portrayal of the hero”.

The soon to be President of the United States is a caricature.  As verb makes or gives a comically or grotesquely exaggerated representation of (someone or something). “he was caricatured on the cover of TV Guide“.

Mental and moral qualities.  Have we now normalized the fate of our future with a morales leader?  One who may have some level of a diminish of mental capacity?

Have we set aside our true idea or ideals about what character means or is to the degree that it is inconsequential?  We have jumbled words in the sense that if we move them over or back one direction and add a few other words we change the entire idea all together.

How you treat those who vote differently than you do say a lot about your character.

How you vote says a lot about your character.

And for what?  What is is that you hold so true and dear that you throw it all aside for this person?