Tag: POTUS

Say it ain’t so, Joe

I cannot remember the last time I cried.  It was undoubtably over something stupid like stubbing my toe because I didn’t lift my foot high enough when coming inside the apartment from the terrace. Or perhaps reading something to my writing group that unexpectedly went deeper than I’d realized.

Sunday night I cried in shock.  Joe Biden has stepped down from running for President 2024. 

Yesterday, I cried again while reading the hundreds of accolades that important people are saying about him.  Someone sent me a parody of Kamala (Camelot) and I cried and laughed at the same time.

Where is the cynical Sara who thinks every move a politician makes is selfish, self-aggrandizing, and narcissistic?  I’m in shock at myself as much as in shock at this turn of events.  Since I’ve paid attention to these things, I have said that Joe Biden was a decent human being.  In 2008, when he was campaigning for President (stepping aside for Obama), I remember watching him at a fireplace during a fundraiser, speaking, making his usual gaffs, and loving him.  I also liked Obama and had no trouble switching my allegiance. Obama holds his cards very close to his chest.  We really don’t know much about him except what he has shared in his two memoirs.  Joe? We know Joe because he is an open book.  We watched him suffer with tragedy after tragedy. We’ve watched him pull himself together and work for the US because that was his job as an elected official.   We’ve watched him work with his stutter which tends to come back when he’s stressed.  We’ve watched him outsmart many of the MAGA Republicans during his SOTU addresses.

Joe Biden is not only a decent man, he is also a great man.

Yesterday, Hunter Biden wrote that there wasn’t much distance between the public Joe Biden and the private Joe Biden.  I believe him. 

When I learn too much about a famous person, for example JFK who I idolized as a teenager, I want to stuff it all back in Pandora’s box.  I want to hang on to my fantasies that these ambitious people who have to stoop to many compromises to raise money for their campaigns, who tend to misuse power the minute they have it, really are as good as they seem.  Then we have Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden.  They say that Jimmy Carter is the greatest ex-President the US has known.  I met him once at a conference on Aging.  My mother was getting an award, one I had nominated her for.  Carter was the keynote speaker.  He was very accessible, shaking everyone’s hand.  He didn’t need to.  He wasn’t running for anything. 

Joe Biden made gaffs.  TV and media made fun of him.  What you saw was what you got.  During these last three weeks, we’ve watched a defiant President try to tell the world that he still had what it takes.  I was convinced.  Heather Cox Richardson was convinced.  Defiance wasn’t a good look on him. He was angry, he was defensive, and he let us see it all.  That’s who he is.

It will take me a couple of days to make the switch to Harris.  I have an innate fear that the US will never elect a woman, much less a Black woman, or an Asian woman, to be President.  White Supremacists, who have an inordinate amount of power, believe a woman’s place is in the kitchen and there she should shut up.

Much of the news says Biden stepping aside has changed the whole geography of the election.  Now, Trump is the old man, the crazy man, who can’t finish a sentence, who rambles on and on not making any sense.  They are implying that Trump will receive the same treatment that Biden has been receiving.  But there aren’t any Republicans willing to stand up to Trump.  They are terrified of his retribution.

There isn’t a Joe Biden amongst them.  A man willing to make one of the most difficult decisions ever. A decision that serves his country and not his personal ambition.

I subscribe to Good News from The Guardian.  Every Sunday, I get four or five articles of good things that have happened in the past week. After a week of bad news, horrifying news, deadly news that fills up every page for seven days.

Maybe this is why I’ve been crying.  When I was in my early 20s and studying for my licensing exam (Psychology), I used to watch an episode of Bonanza (which I hadn’t seen it’s first time around) every day. Every day I’d cry at the end of the episode. I quickly figured out that I cried because it was about family, love in the family being a priority, and justice always won in the end.

I think I cried about Joe because I like him. And this man that I like did a courageous and selfless act that if unheard of in this day and political climate. In the end, he showed us his integrity.

I have a vision now that with nothing left to lose, our President will achieve more great things in his last six months.

And then?  Please stay alive, Joe.  Don’t let this be one tragedy too many.  Please muster that working class Delaware boy who has a real spine and served the country well for over fifty years. Be a great ex-President.

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A bientôt,

Sara

Just another day in confinement; Paris, France

I woke up at 7:30 after sleeping terribly. So badly that I’d pulled the bottom sheet away from it’s nice hospital corner tuck-in. Am I anxious? I don’t think so but I’ve never slept so badly that it appears I’ve been wrestling someone or something. I get out of bed yawning as I have for the last five mornings. After making coffee and filling a bowl with fruit and yogurt, I meander to my computer to read the latest bad news. I can’t watch the news. I have to read it. If I don’t like the headline I can scroll down. I can start with the sports pages or the culture pages if I want to and then scroll upward. What I read this morning was that the President of the United States of America said he would not send life-saving equipment to any state if the Governor “isn’t nice to me”. I started crying. I’m living in a nightmare. Maybe I hadn’t really awaken. My sister said yesterday that he was favouring red states over blue. She calls him malevolent.

A part of me wanted to crawl back in bed and have a re-do. Energy just seeped away from my body. I turned the television on, went to YouTube and clicked on Walk at Home with Leslie Sansone. I’ve seen more of Leslie in the past three weeks than any friend on Zoom. I chose a Boost Walk and hoped I could march away the blues. I walked and marched and swung my arms and stomped my feet and muttered.

The fun of walking at home with Leslie Sansone

Thirty minutes later, I sat down at my computer to work. I can’t catch up with work. I felt resentful. The Guardian, every day, has a list of movies and box set TV shows that we can binge watch since we have nothing else to do. HA! If I could watch every season of MASH, I might give up on work, writing these blogs, keeping up with e-mails and all the things my publicity agent wants me to do for my book which comes out May 12. I haven’t found MASH anywhere. If you, wonderful reader, know where I can stream MASH, please let me know.

MASH is no longer on Netflix but is now streamed on Hulu

I spoke with a close friend in California the other evening. She told me how she and her daughter are taking walks and respecting the six foot distance, how check out lines at the food stores have tape on the ground six feet apart and people respect that. I seemed to be hearing that she was spending a lot of time outside of the house. I told her I’d been out three times in the past two weeks. “You haven’t even taken a walk?” No I haven’t. So I told myself I would use my hour of outdoor time today to walk over to the Bois de Boulogne and back. Then I saw an interview with Bernie Sanders who told us, the listening audience, “stay at home unless you absolutely, without a doubt, have to go out.” I don’t think a walk falls in that category. I felt paralyzed. Go out, stay in. When in doubt, leave it out. I still haven’t completely given up the idea. In my heart, I know we are being given better instructions in France than in the US but then one friend writes about being at the beach and how beautiful it is and another about hiking on a lovely trail and another describes the eery, terrible, wonder of empty streets in the middle of the day.

Coronavirus Cases: 1,210,422 view by country

Deaths: 65,449 Recovered: 251,822

Thursday, as the US announced that the limits would last until May 3 and the newspaper publishes horrifying statistics of deaths doubling overnight (New York had almost 600 yesterday), it began to sink in that there was a good chance that we’d be in confinement for a minimum of another month and likely two months. Intellectually, I knew that that was probably going to happen but acceptance is a whole other feeling. That’s probably my nighttime tossing and turning. History books will describe this time in my lifetime as “unprecedented”. To me, it’s like trying to live one day at a time with the braille method, trying to sense what is the right thing to do for my own self-care but also for my fellow citizen of Paris. Hoping and praying that what I’m doing and saying will ultimately be the best that one can do. And isn’t that what we are all doing?: the best we can do with the information we are given.

In France24.com this morning, a reporter was confirming what most of us are already suspecting–that we are in this for a very long haul. He thinks that the lockdown limits will be lifted slowly but not all at one time. He pointed out that already China is getting a second wave as people travel around again. So government administrators will have to really be prepared to advise as to how to begin living our lives outside of our homes. “The prime minister cited the possibility of easing lockdown measures on a region-by-region basis and “subject to a new testing policy – depending, possibly, on age and other factors”. It’s a scenario similarly touted in Italy – one of the countries hit hardest by the virus – where Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has said that a “return to normalcy” will have to be achieved “gradually”-(France24). But it’s not going to happen for awhile.

police checking on the reason for a couple to be sitting in a British park

The Guardian says that in the UK, people are starting to rebel against the going-outside restrictions. I don’t think they get fined the way we do here in France. I’ve rebelled against limitations so much in my life but this time, I’m more scared of getting sick than of following the advised restrictions. Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, since 2018, is now live telling people if they don’t obey the restrictions and stop putting others’ lives at risk, all outdoors exercise will be banned. I think this might be called ‘lockdown fatigue’. I’m sure it is what I was feeling the other day.

“May you live in interesting times.” That is a Chinese curse. (There is actually no record of this being a Chinese saying or curse but an English saying from a translation. No one has ever found what it is supposed to have been translated from.) These are indeed interesting times, times when each one of us has to be creative, self-motivated to care for ourselves and others. Getting our high on being with others isn’t going to happen. The crowd euphoria of singing and dancing at a club isn’t going to happen. Taking a long hike in the beauty of our natural world isn’t going to happen. We have been challenged to find ways to entertain ourselves and our loved ones and live within the parameters set by our governments. I wish for everyone that they find their best selves within and call on that being hourly to stay safe, stay well, stay inside, wash your hands and don’t touch your face.

A bientôt,

Sara