Stepping in the Write Direction

Facebook is cautioning against viewing information containing reported C-19 vaccine side effects/injuries without context by providing the linked article below from “health feedback . Org” which states, “...reports of adverse events in people who received COVID-19 vaccines don’t demonstrate that these events were caused by the vaccines.” As long as the articles can still be viewed, I will not see it as censorship. When access/materials are removed entirely by media platforms/big tech, then it certainly is censorship, as we have often seen by the removal of content by YouTube. That is problematic on many levels. The VAERS https://vaers.hhs.gov/ website’s archived self and professionals’ reports of vaccine side effects or injuries are critical, and represent the first shots across the bow for issues with specific vaccines that may ultimately be shown as causal, resulting in those vaccines being removed from the marketplace.  Vaccines are normally vetted for years before coming on ...

The threat to freedom is so near right now, I can almost feel its hot breath on my neck. The world is watching us.  The lamp of Lady Liberty has been a symbol of hope for generations. All nations have iconic structures, but the Statue of Liberty embodies the core belief of this country that when you come to America you are in a land where all men are created equal, that you have rights, and an equality of opportunity exists.  The flame of liberty burns in many hearts, often in places you must keep it hidden. So strong is the promise of Liberty’s flame, that people risk dying to reach our shores. When I lived in Miami boats of Cuban refugees were a common and often tragic occurrence. Trucks of people driven across our southern borders were found with bodies inside, abandoned and trapped by those entrusted and paid to bring them to a land of opportunity and freedom. People risked death regularly just to get here, and many died trying. They were refugees from places run by those ...

Melania and Me by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff reads like a study of all the intrigue and machinations seething below the surface of a venomous blended family Thanksgiving dinner that goes on for years. Normally books written by seemingly disgruntled employees have credibility issues, but this book is one of the most believable behind the scenes depictions of the nest of vipers that West and East wing factions devolve into. The author comes across as gifted in organization, details, and intelligence, all assets in recounting such a multilayered, complex tale. Her book is a flashlight beam that sweeps across the darkest recesses of egotistic and antipathic manipulations of political, professional, and family cabals, tearing at each other like hyenas over a fresh kill. It could be retitled, How a Would Be Sacrificial Lamb Escapes the Grill and Survives to Tell about It. The lecturing self righteous rants (though therapeutic, cathartic, and well earned) scattered throughout, diminish the pow...

Educated, A Memoir by Tara Westover is a stunning, breathtakingly powerful book. It is a recounting of her childhood as the youngest of seven children in a survivalist, fundamentalist mostly off the grid family ruled by the worst kind of patriarchy, one encompassing mental illness, paranoia, delusional religious pathology, and authoritarian tyranny focused with laser like intensity on targeting and controlling the most vulnerable. It’s about the human instinct for survival, the internal fortitude required to reject the fictions jackhammered into developing minds from birth, and the resiliency to thrive in the absence of a lifetime’s imposed structures of autocratic control, an authority often co-opting other family members into reinforcement. Family members live in a concentration camp without locks and keys, trapped by repeated humiliation, threats, deprivation of educational and medical resources, emotional and physical abuse, degradation, and shunning. It is proof that truth can be...

In her book Memorial Drive, A Daughter’s Memoir (7/28/20), Pulitzer Prize winning (poetry), two term Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey describes events in her life that occurred up to the age of 19, giving wings to the past.   The wounds and injustices are carried inside for years, ghosts resurrected in haunting dreams, a wound that never heals. This book is a coming to terms with childhood demons, demonstrating how a single act of brutality in a family can overlie a thousand smaller deaths suffered by the vulnerable, held hostage for years by a tyrant who rules behind the facade of neatly closed doors.  A chance encounter in a Decatur bar becomes a key to unlocking details, providing structure and context to her memories, and an opportunity for healing. The pattern of domestic violence is unconscionably further enabled by those confided in, who signal disengagement with, “sometimes adults get angry with each other.” The narrative is so well expressed, but the chapter of phone t...

The book Notorious RBG, The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik is an engaging overview of RBG’s life, marriage, education, legal career, and days on the Supreme Court. If you don’t have time for the 24 hour audiobook, this 5 hour one will give an interesting, balanced outline of the life experiences shaping her advocacy, insights into a number of her precedent setting cases, and who she was as a judge, woman, wife, mother, and friend. I wondered if male judges would have been equally pressured to retire from the Supreme Court, insuring a like minded replacement; at the very least, it would have cost her a minimum of four years of service. She fought so hard just to have a legal career, and serving the underserved with masterfully crafted precedent setting opinions was her passion and her purpose; it feels unseemly to even have asked her to cut her life’s work short by even one year, let alone several. The greatest judges have earned that fullness of...

I had to read the memoir Flat Broke with Two Goats by Jennifer McGaha when I learned it takes place in a rustic century old three level cabin with a 150’ waterfall in plain view from the front door, adjacent to North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest. The title alone compelled me. It’s a true story spun around the expression, “Life is what happens when you have other plans,” not unlike the couple in movie “Funny Farm” who leave their big city jobs in search of a more authentic life in rural America. Growing up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, I have spent many years driving through North Carolina, decades reading Blue Ridge Country Magazine, and hiking mountain trails, so I had to hear this tale. I thoroughly enjoyed these stories about her life after an involuntary eviction from the high life, leaving her family to “reboot” their lives in a neglected but affordable cabin surrounded by 50+ acres, complete with wolf spiders, snakes, and possums (some of them uninvited hou...