Mulling…

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted here. It hasn’t been because I didn’t have anything to say. It’s been because I maybe had too much to say.

It started with the House of Representatives being so terribly short-sighted, nay, even unto say, MEAN, about the Farm Bill and the support of SNAP (formerly Food Stamps). You know hunger is one of my hot-button issues. Yesterday, Paul Krugman, in his column in the New York Times, put his finger on what I had been feeling.

Something terrible has happened to the soul of the Republican Party. We’ve gone beyond bad economic doctrine. We’ve even gone beyond selfishness and special interests. At this point we’re talking about a state of mind that takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering on the already miserable.

And then, just like the middle bars of a drum riff, came the stories of the out-of-bounds actions at the Texas legislature, when Capital Police searched women’s handbags and confiscated their feminine protection, because the senators were afraid they might be embarrassed by a demonstration using tampons and maxi pads during the draconian vote to further restrict women’s control over their own bodies and lives. As Rachel Hackenberg said on her blog,

It goes without saying that super plus tampons and winged pads pose a threat to the safety of Texas state senators. Licensed guns, on the other hand, are still acceptable accoutrement for those attending the legislative session.

And then, just to prove to me that the world had really gone mad, we got word of the verdict in Florida. I went to bed Saturday night with my stomach in knots and my eyes full of tears. I still don’t know what to make of a world that fears black boys, hates women, and mocks hungry children.

• I know this might be an opportunity to finally talk about race (and I am certainly not without guilt here).
• I know that this is just one more nail in the coffin of gun violence (although, if 26 dead in Sandy Hook can’t get people’s attention, what can?).
• I know that “the poor are always with us” (but also that we grow enough food to feed everyone in the world).

So I’m still mulling. I vacillate between discouragement, rage, sadness, and despair. I know – these are classic symptoms of grief.

And I grieve for our society, for my community, for the parents with dead children, for the parents who can’t feed their own children, for the woman who is forced to give birth to a child that she can’t afford to feed, for the political representative who would rather WIN than do what’s right.

And so, I haven’t been blogging recently.

Because I really don’t know what to say.