Scarlet Stone

As I sit alone tonight in my little house on the Soudan hillside, I can’t help but wonder what will happen over the course of the next three or six months in the United States with Trump, Musk and this highly incompetent administration at the helm. I am deeply grateful for my sense of humor and seem to have evolved a rubber neck so that I can sustain the oncoming rounds of whiplash as new orders come from a tarnished White House and then are pulled back in a day or two. I just feel that something HUGE is gonna happen because people cannot tolerate what is going on. Who does this I ask? Competent leaders don’t and it’s a lot more grave than egg prices and frankly, I am sick of hearing the four letter word....eggs...eggs...eggs. There are no great policies being unfolded, prices aren’t dropping, it is not God’s will for this to be happening, but rather it’s sheer stupidity, recklessness...all topped off with a heavy smattering of insanity.  
I am personally so glad I get to work with highly educated and humorous colleagues at the Timberjay. Often, upon entering in the mornings, I will just toss out my current gloomy thoughts to Marshall and tell him I need to be talked down off the ledge. One of my co-workers recently told me that I was starting to sound like a reverse QAnon conspiracy believer and that I need to take a chill pill. He says, “There’s reasonable anxiety, and unreasonable fear.” I confess that it would have helped me to have paid closer attention during civics class in high school in order to have a better understanding of how organized government works. There are checks and balances and I pick it up as I go, but with so many norms and laws being violated, everything under the sun seems to be in a state of uncertainty. The fences have been torn down and prize horses are running willy-nilly through the fields, and I wonder if we can ever get them corralled again. I am not alone with these thoughts.
Starting before Jan. 21, I was riveted to the TV for so many hours a day to watch the events that were happening at lightning speed. Like so many of us, I started getting depressed as a result. This went on for weeks as I tried to balance the amount of exposure to the TV and other news sources with positive and normal daily activities. I am fortunate to have developed the ability to be flexible and to adjust quite easily and so I am not in a steady state of gut-wrench anymore. I decided that there is not too much that I can do except to try to be supportive of my friends, stay active in my community and “keep on keeping on,”  as they say. However, if prompted, I definitely would go screaming and marching down a street in protest with fists pumping and my hair flying madly in the wind. I am quite convinced that at some point, this could happen. So if you see a spectacle like this in Soudan it is most likely me. Until then, I am trying to occupy myself with positive things, like getting back into my knitting and crocheting after decades of abandon. It’s time to pull out all the stops on doing all things creative such as sewing, painting my upstairs, and working on some new T-shirt designs for one of my customers. “We still have to live”.... is something that my older brother said to me in one of his emails this past winter. He sends me writings of wisdom and spirituality every week and I have appreciated the positive and thought-provoking excerpts.
I think that my early life living in Alaska did give me some skills that could benefit me in a depression or dreadfully-awful-living condition. After all, I can build a fire, can and preserve food, haul water, take sponge baths and live a rustic lifestyle if need be. My dad used to preach “food, heat and shelter” are the three things you need to stay alive. I never forgot it because of the drama he used in his voice to convey these words of parental advice. I was doing more than just baking cookies as I would listen to him expound over a glass of Jim Beam while he sat at the kitchen counter in the evenings speaking his words of wisdom coupled with emotion-filled memories of his parents and by-gone days back in Chisholm, where he grew-up. Dad, too, was trying to cope with the concerns of the day, proving that no generation gets through this life without trial.
I was lying in bed last night thinking that if the electric power grid went down, I could set up an outhouse of sorts...so stocking up on toilet paper is not a bad idea. Suddenly, my thoughts raced as quick as a cockroach skittering under a rug to sensing the need to buy a propane heater because without power, my furnace won’t work. “Good grief,” I whispered to the walls in my room as I rolled over and freed my legs from a cat that was lying across them. I could have used a big melatonin sleeper pill for sure. Here’s another thought, “maybe I should get some of those big plastic buckets and load in some bags of rice, dried beans and get cans of meat and other things that have a shelf life.” I started thinking about what a waste of money it would be to have it sitting there for an extended period of time. I fell back to sleep and left all of those tumbling thoughts behind.
It can get rather grim, so in the mornings when I wake up, I often put on fun clothes, a colorful hat, jewelry, and some wild eyewear purchased from online sources and go out somewhere to do something social or take in a bit of retail therapy. After I do retail therapy, however, I feel guilty about spending money when there are people who need food and clothing because Trump has shut off foreign aid.
What a balancing act it is to move through the days of this administration, and we still have about 3.5 years left of this. I do know that I am of no use to anybody if I don’t take care of my mental and spiritual health….so I confess, a bit of retail therapy has helped. I have a couple of male friends who have rushed to buy new vehicles to beat the tariffs and I just may buy a new hat.