I’ve been recovering from a number of changes these last couple of years. Change is neither good nor bad, I suspect, except how it works out in the end. I suspect also that the definition of that is where you put the end.

This last month, for perhaps the first time in my life, I’ve been over political. I’ve had strong opinions and I’ve posted them broadly and widely. In truth, I’ve felt like I was fighting for our lives. As it works out, I think we all lost a lot in this election but time will tell.

Be that as it may, I am sure you’re opinion probably hasn’t changed. Neither has mine. I think I still will point out happenings that make me nervous and convince me something bad is happening. I’ll do my best to run them through snopes so it’s not nonsense. I hope you can do something similar.

But I’m tired of asking folk why they’ve made the choices they have and I don’t want to debate candidates anymore. Mostly I’m exhaustably tired of nasty angry men heads on my Facebook page. Yuck.

I wrote earlier about the flip and my high school reunion. It turned out to be pretty prophetic. I did have a pleasant time. Part of that was due to a choice on my part to offer an unspoken amnesty to people who hurt me in high school. If I can’t get over it in 45 years, I’m doing something wrong.

The election did stimulate that for me. The idea of ANYONE in a corner berated, battered, hounded, hated brought me right back home. But this time my fear was that I too would be standing in the crowd whistling dixey and be afraid to stop it. I’m afraid of becoming one of the people who permitted the abuses I’ve lived through.

What stops this kind of abuse? I’m not sure, but we’re going to have to figure it out or live with it. I think it may simply be the witness of people who actively don’t approve or permit it.

Years ago, when the Bosnian community moved into Chicago, I worked with a family there. One of the boys ran off to play ball with his friends. That, in that part of Chicago wasn’t great, but the park had a reputation for drug dealers and junkies. I went rushing off looking for him. I found him in the park, with a number of Bosnian children and adults ( by the way, these people are Muslim. And lovey, I might add). watching to keep everyone safe. Not a drug dealer in sight. Honest people who disapproved of them had moved in and taken the space.

So that being said, My studio is up. My web page is back up. I am back doing art. I forgive you if you said some smug, crude thing to me for not thinking the way you do. I hope you can forgive me for whatever I might have said that hurt you.

I would rather, in the end, be able to say you were right than I am. I’m not sure we’re going to survive this political clime as a democracy. I don’t know what will be left after the rapine that seems promised by our president’s elects’ choices.

So what else is left? Do art. Take care of the people in front of you. Write the best truth you can.

My apologies all around.