Wipe your phone before leaving or entering the US.
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I just made another donation to a terrorist organization, also known as the ACLU. I hope it helps.
I also bought a pin that I shall wear next month when I travel deep into the country.
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I recall seeing a few posts in the past couple months here about people wanting to do more yoga or stretching or such but having a hard time building a consistent practice. I’ve had some good luck applying the principles of behaviorism to my own practice, so thought they might be useful for others.
Behaviorism is basically the most basic approach to learning theory and uses triggers and feedback to engender the desired changes in behavior, whether that’s learning a new skill or, like here, building a new habit. So here are my recommendations:
- Make a playlist. Include a “getting ready” song at the beginning.
- Download a timer (I use Insight) and program a routine (I often set it for 15 minutes with bells every 30 seconds, since that’s how long I hold most stretches. Be sure to select a different tone for the final bell so you know it’s done)
- Make a list of stretches (this might take some research. Currently I’m focused on legs and hips, so do some seated hip stretches, piriformis, leg and back, and quads). Make the list pretty and post it in the space you’ll most often do the stretches
It makes it so easy. Even if you’re not feeling it, start your playlist. After a time or two, you’ll be trained to just putter around, lay out your mat, make sure you have water, etc. Then it’s easier to just go ahead and do the routine.
Start the timer and go. Sometimes if I’m feeling lethargic, I set the timer for a minute or two longer than my actual stretching routine so I can start the timer and playlist at the same time, and still have enough 30-second intervals to get through my routine.
I generally hold each stretch for 30 seconds per rep and do three reps. Some I hold for a minute, which is easy with the 30 second intervals.
I’ve been finding it pretty easy to carve out one or two 15-minute sessions per day. And I’ve been finding that maintaining flexibility is really important as I get older.
I hope this is helpful at least as a starting point for any of you who want to get started or pick it up again. If you have other tips, please share!
Being able to move about the world is definitely helpful while we navigate this (insert adjective here) timeline!
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And the media is studiously ignoring it to curry favor with the Fascists. A protest ignored is a protest defanged.
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So true.
And even though we, back here, already know this, in my opinion it cannot be repeated often enough.
I wish the mass media in general would take a page from Fred Roger’s mom and “look for the helpers” and report on them.
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I once read an article about activism in UU World. One woman who was interviewed said that she didn’t march because she thought her issue would be resolved, once and for all. She marched so that her daughter could march one day.
That article changed my life. I wish I could find it!
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While I don’t believe this will be permanent (because fascism is so destructive it erodes its own foundation), I’m not holding my breath for those knees to unbend. It feels like there are two kinds of people- those who felt like they’d had enough by the end of 2015 (if not sooner) and have been internally screaming for 10 years straight, and those who will never have enough and never hold anyone accountable, even as they themselves suffer and die. I literally cannot imagine what it would take to wake people up if the past decade and the past couple months haven’t done it already.
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It’s a mystery to me too. Perhaps a crashed economy and losing a war to Canada.
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I suggest phone sideways for the poem…
Some MAGA types ridicule all this as “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” but they’re wrong. None of us has witnessed this degree of cruelty, this much disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution, this extent of nihilist destruction.
I will continue to give you the best analyses, most helpful advice, and most realistic assurances I can. But please know you are not alone in this nightmare that is now a daily daymare.
The poet Alison Luterman sent me this poem to share with you. (Thank you, Alison.)
At Albany Bulb with Elaine
By Alison LutermanSide by side on a log by the bay.
Sunlight. Unleashed dogs,
prancing through surf, almost exploding
out of their skins with perfect happiness.
Dogs who don’t know about fired park rangers,
or canceled health research, or tariff wars,
or the suicide hotline for veterans getting defunded,
or or or. We’ve listed horror upon horror
to each other for weeks now, and it does no good,
so instead I tell her how I held a two-day old baby
in my arms, inhaling him like a fresh-baked loaf of bread,
then watched as a sneeze erupted through his body
like a tiny volcano. It was the look of pure
astonishment on his face, as if he were Adam
in the garden of Eden making his debut achoo,
as if it were the first sneeze that ever blew,
that got me. She tells me how her dog
once farted so loudly he startled himself
and fell off the bed where he’d been lolling,
and then the two of us start to laugh so hard
we almost fall off our own log. And this
is our resistance for today; remembering
original innocence. And they can’t
take it away from us, though they ban
our very existence, though they slash
our rights to ribbons, we will have
our mirth and our birthright gladness.
Long after every unsold Tesla
has vaporized, and earth has closed over
even the names of these temporary tyrants,
somewhere some women like us
will be sitting side by side, facing the water,
telling human stories and laughing still.
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I love this part… especially the highlighted part…
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As some of you may recall I am now watching the documentary “The World at War” for the third time. I saw it first as a small child on PBS, second in the early 90s on VHS, and now on YouTube.
I have recently come to Chapter 16, Germany 1940 – 1944, which seems very pertinent to the US right now. A downward spiral that you can’t control, so you make what decisions you can.
I recommend seeing the entire thing, but if you cannot, here is a brief summation of points that stood out to me. Highlights, if you can really call them that:
- It starts in the summer of 1940. Germany thought the war was over and they had won. A war economy had not been introduced, because the Nazis didn’t want the people to be unhappy. People were encouraged to live exuberantly.
- 5:05 Women are being encouraged to stay home and have large families. They could earn the “Mother Cross” award.
- 7:00 Two comedians humorously demonstrate why a good German doesn’t listen to foreign news broadcasts. In a modern interview — average Berlin woman describes how listening to foreign broadcasts was commonly done, but had to be done very carefully.
- 8:58 A film explains why doing away with mental incurables is better for them, and for reasons of eugenics. THIS, was considered so outrageous that the German people protested against it, and it was stopped, temporarily.
- 10:08 Description of the cooperative press, printing what the government wanted them to. In a modern interview, a man describes how he was actually happy to be drafted, because it allowed him to leave behind the mental oppression of living in a censored society. Soldiers, he says, don’t read newspapers and have to listen to propaganda.
- 11:03 War declared on the USSR comes as a shock to the German people. No one in Germany was asking for it. It is only the desire of Hitler. As a matter of fact, Nazi Germany had it’s best trading relationship with the Soviet Union. This makes me think of the US’s deliberately sabotaged relationship with Canada.
- 19:15 By 1943, Hitler was isolating himself and ignoring advisors more and more. He surrounded himself with yes-men. A fake world was built around him to keep him happy.
- 29:40 A modern interview with Traudl Junge. She says working for Hitler at that point was like living in a monastery, no contact with the outside world. A general told her that it was like a concentration camp — alll using the same phrases, all thinking the same thoughts, all hearing the same information.
- 31:40 Government control of the arts.
- 34:40 Modern interview with ordinary Berlin woman. Tells how she found herself part of an invisible network of people smuggling Jews around the city. She never found out who it was that brought her into the group.
- 35:42 Modern interview with another ordinary Berlin woman. Tells an anguished story that ends with “…after they left, I realized that Hitler had turned me into a murderer.”
- 39:38 Modern interview with ordinary Berlin woman. She was telling everyone she knew that the Jews were being murdered. People refused to believe her. Her husband told her she had to stop talking about it, telling her “a dictatorship is like a snake. If you put your foot on its tail, it will just bite you and nobody will be helped. You have to strike the head.”
- 42:52 A modern interview with Traudl Junge. Recalls the 20 July bombing. Hitler told her from his hospital bed “You see, fate has saved me for my mission. I am to do what I must do.” This is almost exactly what Trump said.
- 46:05 Actual film from the show trial of the 20 July Plot conspirators conducted by Roland Freisler. The actual broken defendant and the shouting of Freisler is shocking to see.
- It ends in 1944 with teenagers and old men matching off to the east through the Brandenburg Gate.
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We sure aren’t passing that test, are we?
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In a very depressing, “yes, and…” one could draw an almost identical timeline (though a bit more stretched out) regarding the climate crisis.
The way this fits into the thread topic, I think, is that it reminds us of the indefatigable nature of the human spirit. We shall persevere!
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