Happy February and Sorry for the Late Posting!!!

Okay, so I took a little break from this blog because things in my life got really complicated. In August I scheduled a complete knee replacement for my left knee and then in October, I had the surgery. It all went pretty well, but there was a month when I really did very little except stay in bed and get rehab and nursing at home and that was it. The next two months I spent in rehab and I got pretty far in the use of my leg. However, I had to stop due to insurance not paying for it anymore. I stopped in January and now with doing the exercises at home, I am pretty much mobile. It doesn't hurt much anymore, except for just before it is going to storm. Then for some reason, both knees hurt. LOL

I have also been pretty busy in other ways. Just before I had my surgery I published my very first poetry book called: You'll Probably Forget Me: Living With and Without Hal. It is a book dedicated to the memory of my husband. As everyone who reads this blog knows, he passed away in May of 2014. After he passed I wrote a lot of poems so these and some of my previous poetry are in this book. I am very happy to say it was published by Wildfire Publications by the lovely and talented Susan Joyner Stumpf. She published it on lulu.com and I have a button on the side of my blog now where you can find it. I am including the link here too so you can check it out. I am very proud of this and I think my husband is very well represented here. I consider it a memorial to him.

So you have an idea of why I didn't post a blog during this time and oh what events have occurred since then!!! I don't usually use my blog to talk about politics, but with this country in the condition it is in I had to write something. I have written poetry about it and signed petitions to stop what is happening. However, it is still happening. I know some people believe everything is fine and that this president is better than sliced bread, but I differ with this greatly. If my husband were alive he would also be very upset about events, but he had a way of dealing with them. I, on the other hand, do not. He would have been able to tell me how things fit in a historical timeline. He would have found a way to get through all of this. Without him, I have to depend on the people who have investigated and have a historical perspective on these events and that person. I am disgusted by the things he has done and I don't know how I will live for the next four years with a tyrannical dictator like him and the people he has dragged in with him. 

I am sorry to any who feel that I am wrong. I will never change my mind unless this so-called president changes his behavior. I have lived through presidents from Truman, Eisenhower,JFK, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama. That is a lot of presidents to have seen and experienced. Though Nixon was certainly a criminal and some of the others were not so great, I have never seen a president behave like this one. He has almost destroyed our country in only three weeks. That is terrifying to me and I feel he should be taken out of office. As you can see, I have had a lot of presidents to observe. Not one of them has done what this one has in so short a period of time. I fear that he will dismantle our entire government and destroy all of our freedoms. He is running roughshod over our Constitution. So yes, I think he should be gone. 

As I said, I don't usually use this blog for political use, but I feel I need to speak out. I am hoping that my author friends will feel the same way I do and start to speak out about how they feel. I welcome your comments, but if you are going to be nasty or mean I will delete you from my blog. I believe in peaceful resistance and I am not the only one speaking out against this president. The Association of Writers and Writing Programs is holding its conference in Washington, D.C. Guess what the topic is? Check it out! Plus there are all kinds of groups you can join on Facebook and in person now. #Resist.
Also if possible I try to listen to Robert Reich, who is live almost every night. 

I will end this with the poem I wrote for the wonderful page on which I have been posting my poems every week: The Garden of Poetry and Prose. You need to scroll down to the Week 11 poems and mine is the banner that is hot pink with a peony:

LIVING WITH HIRAETH AND THE INEFFABLE FEELING OF LOSS

I wake each morning with the
ineffable feeling of loss
Not for the spirit of my country
for that is still there in the
crowds that surged forward
to show the best of us

No, it is a greater yearning
that will probably stay with me
for the coming years
Unlike mourning a lost love
it is the loss of an ideal
as if somehow overnight
truth and justice disappeared

It seems like nothing has changed
and yet everything has transformed
And suddenly I feel the loss of power
for no longer will my voice be heard
And no longer will the people be heard
We are to watch on the sidelines as
a tyrant and his cohorts strip us of our rights

It is a Hiraeth deep in my soul that
will remain until his ilk are replaced--
the grabby handed, popinjays -- who
care nothing for human beings and
live in a world where only they are
the ones who know all the answers

Who operate under the assumption
that all of us little people are so dumb
we won’t notice the lies or as they say
“alternative truths” spewing forth from
their duplicitous mouths to cover their
reality in a blanket woven together
so skillfully they can fool their followers
into believing they are telling the truth

I feel that Hiraeth every time I think of
what our country could be and what we
will need to see in the coming years
And there is a sadness so deep I
find it ineffable and must carry it
as a burden until this nightmare ends.

© 2017. Barbara Ehrentreu. All rights reserved.

Until the next time, I will be doing my radio show on Blog Talk Radio, Red River Radio Tales from the Pages on Thursday, February 23, 2017, and my guests will be: Susan Strecker and Alex Maxwell. Susan has a best-selling book and Alex is an accomplished poet. It should be a really great show. Also, there may be some surprises as always.