About that cup of kindness – –
Let’s take a cup for a few of the auld lang synes of 2017, in the highest hopes for this brand new year.
A cup for the planet. Despite the best efforts of the Environmental Destruction Agency to foul the air and water, and similar efforts to open up our lands for desecration and private development, this fragile globe survives. You can Google “Good news for the planet” to boost your spirits. Here’s a toast to everyone who switches to solar, picks up litter, and pays attention to ways we can protect our grandchildren’s heritage.
A cup for women! Beginning with the inspirational Women’s March and marching through to the #MeToo movement, women have earned more than a little kindness yet. They won’t get much of it in the reproductive justice realm. You cannot confer rights on a fetus without denying rights of the woman carrying it.
Anti-abortion forces sneaked wording about rights of “the unborn” into the harsh new tax bill, so chalk one up for regression into the dark ages of womankind. But here’s a cup o’ kindness toast to every #MeToo, as well as to heroes like Willie Parker out there fighting to protect all women.
A cup for people of all faiths working together. There may be constant headlines, not to mention tweets, designed to set us against each other, but interfaith groups across the country are determined to keep respect and mutual support alive. Google “Interfaith work” in your city or state and find how many kindnesses are underway.
A cup for the hopeless. Remember those huddled masses yearning to breathe free? They’re still out there, in force: refugees and asylum-seekers, people mired in poverty or joblessness, sick children without healthcare, undocumented immigrants in families being torn apart. 
But if our government is turning its back on them, a multitude of individuals and organizations are working around the clock to get the lamp lifted again. Google “Help undocumented immigrants,” or “Fighting poverty in my community” for starters. Cups of kindness abound.
And a cup of kindness for kindness’ sake. A group of people with vastly diverse backgrounds and philosophies met just after New Year’s Day to talk about how to retain optimism – hope, at least – on all of the above in the face of current divisiveness and a mentally unbalanced president. Said one member of the group: “It helps to commit conscious acts of kindness throughout the day. Might be just a tiny thing, but it makes you feel better, and kindness can be contagious.” Pope Francis thinks so. In his New Year’s Eve homily he expressed optimism about ordinary people going about their lives doing ordinary acts of kindness. The “artisans of the common good,” he called them. So here’s a toast to every artisan of the common good. May we all join their ranks this year.
Belated Human Rights Day greetings to all. In case you missed it, Human Rights Day was celebrated around the globe on December 10. It was the 69th anniversary of the proclamation of the 
Another woman with a passion for human rights was 
“Take a minute to breathe,” my watch said. How did it know? This message arrived, unbidden, in the late afternoon of a day full of unpleasant chores, contentious meetings, unexpected crises and the usual daily events. It made me laugh. And breathe. Or at the very least, sigh.
After I finished working out in the park on the first day of San Francisco’s recent, obscene heat wave, it told me how far I’d walked, how much energy I’d expended, how high my heart rate had gone – and then it said, “It’s 96 degrees, dummy, what are you doing exercising in 96-degree heat? At your age??” Or something like that; I don’t remember its exact words. Of course, it doesn’t know everything. Such as, if I want to take a nap, shouldn’t it know I don’t want to be nudged to Stand after 15 minutes? I take it off for naps.)
Calm, measured, thoughtful breathing may be the only answer to finding peace in these days. North Korea firing nuclear missiles? Breathe. Hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, record-breaking heat waves and climate change deniers? Breathe. Air and water pollution, thanks to relaxed environmental regulations, threatening the very lives of your grandchildren? Breathe. And that latest tweet, post or whatever startling message from cyberspace? Breathe, breathe.
Such an action would require engaging the brain, and how much personal and national angst might be avoided if brains were required to be engaged in advance? A small reduction in lies, vulgarities and scary messages . . .?
Denigration of the press may be a way to excite some (happily minimal) percentage of Americans, but for all Americans – Democrats, Republicans, geezers, millennials and certainly everyone wanting to preserve our fragile, shared democracy – it is beyond dangerous.
she said “I’d be far more afraid.” Looking at the videos of journalists – and others – being led to trials that will most certainly lead to long sentences at best is a sobering view of where Turkey is now, under an autocrat (whom the U.S. theoretically supports.)
“No. It’s just hard. But it’s what we do: get up in the morning, every day, and go to work at 8 AM.” Some extraordinary examples of Schumaker’s work were assembled for the latest show – creating them took about a year and a half, not all of which time was clouded in depression. My personal favorite is a piece titled “The cloud of unknowing.” Schumaker conceived the piece as a meditation, referencing the ancient (late 14th century) work of mysticism which suggests that contemplative prayer might lead to an understanding of the nature of God.
Postcards take a little more time than a phone call or email, but are a powerful way to make one’s voice heard. Especially if one is worried about human rights, the future of the planet one’s grandchildren will inherit, and the protection of our democracy.