Tag Archives: Election

12.04.16
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Mama Bear’s 2016 Holiday Wish List

Hello again, readers, and happy holidays!

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I’d be fine without a white Christmas if it meant living here. This festive one-of-these-trees-is-not-like-the-others photo was taken during my absence.

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a month since my last post and, more importantly, the election. When I last communicated with you, I was under the hopeful impression that we’d be looking back and laughing right now at how absolutely ludicrous it was that we ever even entertained the idea of a Trump presidency. Well, much to my–and the nation’s–surprise, I was wrong.

Though I’ve been legitimately busy over the last month, I primarily decided to pause on a blog post because I simply didn’t know what to say in response. Because my last message was one of unity, about our “our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another,” I didn’t feel comfortable with a gut-reaction rant. While I’d shower and think of a string of words to convey my incredulity, fear, anger, and resentment, they just didn’t feel right.

So, like I’ve done with the majority of my good life decisions, I paused. I decided I needed to calm, reflect, and observe before I came back here.

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It doesn’t hurt that my calm reflection period took place in Hawaii.

Now that I’m back, I decided that rather than write about my (probably obvious and widely shared) feelings about the election itself, I’d write about what I’m going to do in a post-2016 election world. This relates to the holidays, I promise.

My Post-2016 Election Promise

I hereby pledge to help those in need and at risk with more fervor than I would have before the election took place. Maybe that’s a sorry excuse for a lack of activism before, but I can’t exactly change the past and figure this is as good a time as any.

I’m going to take my passion for equality, justice, and the little guy and turn it into advocacy. As a stay-at-home mom, I don’t have the ability to physically volunteer a lot of time right now, but I am able to put a little money where my mouth is to help effect change and protect rights. And what better time to start than over the holidays?

Mama Bear’s Wish List: Donations

This year, instead of asking for gifts, I’m asking for (and making!) donations to the following organizations. Unfortunately, the list of deserving organizations to which I’d like to donate is long, but as I have limited resources, I forced myself to narrow it down to the ones that felt most personal to me. As such, I present you with my finalists. For more ideas, see this list from John Oliver or this list from The Cut.

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May my holiday gift boxes be as empty as this ornament. Strike that, I don’t even want boxes. Too wasteful.

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Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago

This 100-year-plus organization’s mission is to provide children facing adversity with strong and enduring, professionally supported one-to-one relationships that change their lives for the better, forever. Chicago is going through a particularly dark period in terms of violence, and I believe this organization is chief among those that can make a difference for children in the most affected areas. In fact, there is a ton of anecdotal and statistical evidence that proves what an impact the Big/Little mentoring program has. While I hope to maybe mentor a child myself one day, this month I can donate in hopes of changing a life now.

Donate here.

Gulf Coast Humane Society of Corpus Christi

This non-profit, no-kill shelter holds a very special place in my heart because it’s where Papa Bear and I found our fur baby, Doggy Bear (new nickname; not sure how he’ll like it). It’s the largest no-kill shelter in all of South Texas and therefore has a lot of work on its hands. This shelter saved our dog’s life and there are hundreds more whose lives will be saved with a donation. #AdoptDon’tShop

Donate here.

Planned Parenthood

I have long been passionate about Planned Parenthood and its importance, but I cannot emphasize how strongly I feel now given the disgusting political attacks it has faced in recent years. I firmly believe Planned Parenthood will be under more fire in the next four years than ever before, which is why I feel an urgency to donate now. Despite what “gynoticians” (politicians who fancy themselves as medical doctors) will have you believe, Planned Parenthood offers high-quality, affordable health care, education, and information. It’s not just an abortion provider (but I’m glad it does that too!); it provides comprehensive and life-saving care to millions of people across the country. In fact, one in five American women has gone to Planed Parenthood at least once in her life. Women’s health and sexual health are population health; they affect us all.

Donate here.

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)

Another organization that will need a lot of help in upcoming years (based on Trump’s climate-denying EPA Advisor pick alone) is the NRDC. This organization uses nearly 500 attorneys, policy advocates, and scientists, along with millions of member activists, to defend, protect, and safeguard the earth for its people, plants, and animals. Before it’s too late, we need organizations like this to help fight human greed and ignorance.

Donate here.

Final Thoughts

This holiday season, I encourage each of you to think of a cause that you hold dear. Instead of loading your wish list with frivolous goods, consider adding a donation to said cause. I’m not saying don’t ask for anything, and I’m not saying you need to give a ton of money (though, if you can afford it, consider an ongoing donation). Any little bit helps, and chances are pretty good the people (or animals or whatever) it helps need that money more than you need your stuff.

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11.07.16
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Your Dose of Perspective on the Eve of the Election: A Pale Blue Dot

It’s difficult to find a combination of words to accurately describe all my thoughts on the election tomorrow.

To put it most simply, I would love my son to take for granted a world where two formerly inconceivable things are a simple reality: that the Cubs are World Series champions and that a woman is President of the United States of America. 

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Not pictured: toddler who kept trying to run away from this beautiful marquee. At 1, he has no appreciation of the struggle. Hell, at 28, I barely do.

While I’m extremely happy to say we’re halfway there (#flytheW), I hesitate to say with confidence that the majority of Americans will cheer for the latter the same way they did the former (let’s be honest, the only people who cheered for Cleveland live in Cleveland). I’d be remiss to deny that there is a real possibility that America will elect that misogynistic, hate-spewing, turd-blurglaring, flaming hot evil Cheeto as our next President. In fact, there’s also a chance I’ll be thrown in jail for the aforementioned description should that apocalyptic possibility become a reality.

However, on the eve of this truly momentous day, a day that has been so long in the making and that has polarized millions of people, I came across the following refreshing and humbling reminder of our existence. Despite these paragraphs above, it caused me to focus on something larger than my personal views, those of my fellow Facebook friends Americans, and the great divide this election has caused.

My hope in sharing it is that it helps you, too, reflect on our collective past, present, and future, on the things that bridge us together, and on our foremost status as citizens of Earth. Regardless of who wins tomorrow–and to be very clear, I’m definitely with her–I hope we can remember that in the grand scheme of things, we are far more similar than different. As Earthlings, a term I so reverently use, I hope we can remember to be kind, compassionate, and united for the betterment of ourselves and for the protection and preservation of our planet. Enjoy.

Perspective: We Are a Pale Blue Dot

In 1990, at the suggestion of famed astronomer Carl Sagan, the spacecraft Voyager 1 took this photo of Earth from about 4 billion miles away. Here, Earth measures at less than one pixel and can be seen among scattered light rays as it was taken so close to the Sun. Sagan presented his reflections on this picture in a 1994 speech at Cornell University. What he said is as follows.

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Look for the pale blue dot in the orange ray. That’s Earth.

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“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

 

 

 

 

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