The Bird

We are getting closer to the November presidential elections.

This scares me.

I'm not going to endorse any of the candidates. I just want to talk to everyone about how to go about choosing. Elections are serious business. Your vote DOES count.

1.  Stop reading the news. Or keep reading the news but fact check the stories. The major news outlets tend to give us just snapshots of events that don't tell the whole story. They also tend to give us stories that are unrelated, yet more reader friendly, so as to divert attention from the stories that don't jive with their philosophies.

2.  Think for yourself. Just because your favorite pop star or celebrity endorses a candidate doesn't mean they share your same values or thoughts.

3.  Vote the issues. Don't vote the candidates personality. Don't vote the party. Do a chart of where each candidate stands on issues (including candidates from the secondary parties) and see which one aligns with what is important to you. This little exercise may surprise you.

4.  Consider candidates that will do the following:

  Keep us safe from outside forces (ie global terrorism)

  Keep us safe from domestic threats

  Keep us safe from forces that threaten our ideals as a nation

  Appoint Supreme Court Justices that align with your thinking on social issues. Some of these folks are getting pretty old!

  Find a way to unite our polarized nation. I have never seen it so divided. 

5.   Remember to keep in mind that we need a leader who is for the whole. Again, we get distracted by individual incidents. Let's elect someone who will go to the root of those problems so as to further conversation on healing versus laying blame.

6.  Do your research. Vote on facts, not on rumors.

7.  It's easy to vote the emotional vote. But it is wrong to vote that way. Vote your beliefs. Vote the issues. Vote on who you think will be best for the country.

RIP

75+ dead in Nice, France as truck loaded with weapons plows into crowd after Bastille Day fireworks show.

Does anyone else find it creepy that there are invisible creatures all around us? There were two in my bathroom last night!

Cultural Appropriation is tearing us apart and it is getting harder and harder to know the rules. We have individuals spanning different cultures. We have people being accused of it when they are already part of that culture! We have people being accused of it when the actual people in the culture don’t even know the history or significance behind the element.

How about Cultural Evolution? People can trace the source of a cultural element back, but we won’t have to tell talented kids that they need to pick a different genre to sing because their face doesn’t match the music. We won’t have to tell kids who want to fit in with their friends that that while their friend can do it, they don’t have the proper (distant) ancestors.

Religious sacred rites, icons, etc. are off limits.*

Celebrate your heritage! Let people know where the music/fashion/whatever came from. But like any invention, let’s let it grow and see what happens. Otherwise, it will stagnate and die.

Hopefully, somewhere down the road we’ll all be the same color anyway.  

Power. Grace. Beauty. Strength.