On the left side of the page are four career foreign service employees of the State Department. Four of the people who exposed the U.S. involvement with the government of the Ukraine, and the 45th President of the United States, who has become the fourth President to be Impeached by the House of Representatives. Three of these people are immigrants.
On the right side of the pages is Greta Thunberg, the teenaged Climate Change Activist who has sailed the Atlantic Ocean, by herself, twice. She has become an icon for people across the world, who are under the age of 40. A symbol that is being ignored by our present Administration, who has a bizarre investment in the complete ignorance of factual evidence regarding Climate Change. Ms. Thunberg has been declared by Time Magazine as Person of the Year. She was also expected to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The award would have capped an already extraordinary year, in which Thunberg evolved from a student sitting outside the Swedish parliament, all by herself, to become the leader of a global youth movement, inspiring millions of schoolchildren around the world to join her in calling for greater action on climate change.
“How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” she told world leaders in a blistering speech at the United Nations last September.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/why-didnt-greta-thunberg-win-the-nobel-peace-prize/2019/10/11/e84e6efc-eba4-11e9-9306-47cb0324fd44_story.html
Apparently jealous of this 16-year-old girl’s placement on the cover of Time Magazine, the 45th President of the United States has been insulting her by way of his overworked Twitter account. This is the nature of the man currently sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
The most powerful man in the world, insulting a teenager, because of jealousy.
The middle section in the image above contains the last paragraph in the President’s Articles of Impeachment.
I’ve been apolitical for most of my life. Meaning, I’ve voted in most of the elections over the last fifty years; voting for candidates based on the information I’ve heard from friends and those I came to respect. I’ve read the voter’s pamphlets. Having worked for the City of Portland, I’ve become fluent in ‘bureaucrat’ as a form of language. Generally, I was always ‘busy’, when it came to the subject of politics.
My life has changed; somewhat unexpectedly. At present, ‘busy’ isn’t a word I can use to define my life. While working on my latest book for the last two years, an illustrated version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Scandal in Bohemia, I’ve been listening to commentary on the Scandal in Washington DC.
I’m currently volunteering with a Citizenship/English as a Learned Language program for Green Card holders seeking Naturalization as US Citizens. People who have prepared for Naturalization appear to be far more knowledgeable regarding US history and Civics than most high school students [Who wrote the Federalist Papers? The Federalist Papers were the foundation of the US Constitution]. Every week I am reminded of my own family history. My mother and her sisters were born in Norway. Early in the 1920s, my grandfather and his brother emigrated from Norway to the US. There was no work for them in their part of the world, partially due to a famine; they came to the US because they had an uncle who had emigrated to Oregon years earlier and had built a construction business. My grandfather and his brother did not know English; but they new how to work with wood. After a few years [?], they had the money to send to my grandmother and her daughters, so they could come to the United States.
Immigrant Eyes
Guy Clark/Willie Nelson
Oh, Ellis Island was swarming, Like a scene from a costume ball
Decked out in the colors of Europe, And on fire with the hope of it all
There my father’s own father stood huddled, With the tired and hungry and scared
Turn of the century pilgrims. Bound by the dream that they shared
They were standing in line just like cattle, Poked and sorted and shoved
Some were one desk away from sweet freedom, Some were torn from someone they love
Through this sprawling Tower of Babel, Came a young man, confused and alone
Determined and bound for America, And carrying all that he owned
Sometimes when I looked in my grandfather’s immigrant eyes
I saw that day reflected and I couldn’t hold my feelings inside
I saw ‘started with nothing and working hard all of his life’
“So don’t take it for granted,” said grandfather’s immigrant eyes
He would rock and stare out the window, But his eyes are still just as clear
As the day he sailed through the Harbor, And come ashore on that island of tears
My grandfather’s days were numbered, But I won’t let his memory die
‘Cause he gave me the gift of this country, And the look in his immigrant eyes
Sometimes when I looked in my grandfather’s immigrant eyes
I saw that day reflected and couldn’t hold my feelings inside
I saw ‘started with nothing and working hard all of his life’
“So don’t take it for granted,” said grandfather’s immigrant eyes
“Don’t take it for granted,” said grandfather’s immigrant eyes’
By the time I was a teenager, I occasionally helped my Great Uncle, with construction projects; I remember helping him hang sheetrock. Probably the only time I enjoyed working with sheetrock. At the time, it never would have occurred to me that this man had come to this country ‘with nothing’ more than a couple of suitcases. He probably had worked hard all of his life, and became the Provider for his brother’s family, when his brother was severely injured in a construction accident. My grandfather lived most of his life in a State Hospital.
My ‘Grandfather’ went Home a over 30 years ago. I still miss him. I will see him again.
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Tags: depression, faith, freelance illustration, illustration, intolerance, material poverty, mental-health, Nerve Pain, Neuropathy, pain, persistence, personal excellence, Polyneuropathy, self-employment, surviving
Chronicles in Ordinary Time 