Good Morning All,
On The Road and In Your Backyard is a weekday feature spotlighting reader submissions. From the exotic to the familiar, please share your part of the world, whether you’re traveling or just in your locality. Share some photos and a narrative, let us see through your pictures and words. We’re so lucky each and every day to see and appreciate the world around us!
Submissions from commenters are welcome at tools.balloon-juice.com
Have a wonderful day !
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I meant to write yesterday about how horrible it was the morning of Oct 2 last year, with my mother asking me about the news and what was going on, not knowing of the events the previous night. In her weakened, very vulnerable state, she’d stopped watching cable news just a few days before, and I collapsed into a chair, sitting for a moment and crying while thinking of the previous night’s horror in Las Vegas. Then I quietly said “nothing good” and after a prolonged pause while I wiped the tears away with the backs of my index fingers, asked her what I could make her for breakfast.
For the first time, I began to realize how much the world from Trump’s election-on had weakened and threatened her, before her cancer, but even more so when she was weak and fighting for her life. Trump and Brexit and the general right-wing/fascist ascendancy terrified her to her core, no doubt contributing to her decline. I spared her from any coverage of the massacre horror as she did not need any visceral reminders of the evil that our species can cause.
Backing up a bit to this whole Trump horror show, more than a few of us have been dealing with the stress and fear that this shanda engenders in countless, often unproductive or damaging ways, but it’s important to preserve perspective. Bad events outside your control can weigh on you in outsize ways; do not surrender them more credence than necessary. Sometimes you can’t escape them, but if you’re lucky, you can briefly glimpse how much more there is to appreciate in this world and forget the shit for a few blessed minutes.
And so I thank all of you wonderful commenters and submitters – past, present, and future – for helping make this feature something positive for each of us to explore or take refuge, if only for a brief few moments each day.