We The People

With the eyes of the world upon us, which I’m pretty sure are filled with astonishment if nothing else, we here in the United States are slogging through another pre-election campaign adventure.  I’m shying away from sharing my own political views … that’s not what this platform is for.  In fact, if anything, I’d like my little blog to be more of an uplifting and joyful escape from the world around us than anything else.  Though sometimes my own thoughts and observations do leak in here and there, (how can they not?), I certainly don’t see myself as a political savant.  Just an old gal with a mind of her own who refuses to drink anybody else’s Kool-Aid.  And if you don’t understand that reference, if you don’t remember, I don’t know whether to bless you or stick an old newspaper under your nose.

Anywhoo … regardless … I wanted to share this newest piece with you all.  Not because it’s great art, though I like it, of course, but in this case, because of what it’s trying to say.  I say “it” because, honestly, if you have a creative bone in your body you’ve probably experienced how sometimes a bit of something from the Universe seems to take hold and gallop away in the direction IT wants to go, dragging you helplessly behind.  I know it did in this case.

From the serendipity of the composition of the original photographic capture, to the idea for the color scheme and the editing choices themselves, “We The People” became my obsession and my nemesis for weeks.  And weeks.  In fact, my brains got so tangled with revision after revision of this that I finally just shut it down and walked away.  This was many months ago.  I finally decided that now, with the national events taking the twists and turns they are taking, that it might be time to clear the air a little bit.  Even if it’s only the air here in my own little office.

To remind myself … and the Universe … and anyone else out there who might happen to be watching … that the true importance of what is happening (and what will happen again in 4 years, God help us) is not the actors on the stages.  Not the rhetoric … not the yelling and the finger pointing … not the grimacing and frightful, childish name-calling.  It’s our Great Nation’s wonderful citizens.  Her People.  WE The People.  Like the guy who went to help a lady who had been gunned down in a Maryland shopping center an hour away from where I am sitting, yesterday morning.  And he himself was shot dead.  Like the old guy who smiled and said  “Isn’t it a pretty day” to me last week in the West Virginia parking lot of the grocery store.  Like the guy who helped my husband load a very heavy piece of equipment into his car up in Pennsylvania a while back.  The kind nurses and doctors in the hospital where my husband lay, close to death, a few short months ago.

These are our People.  They are America.  THEY are the United States.

So those of you out there in Great Britain or Germany or Argentina or Australia who look over at us and shake your heads, and for all I know are shaking in your boots.  Don’t worry.

We’re still okay.  In fact, we’re GREAT.