Thank you.

I hope to be back up and running with a computer at home by next week! The old Compaq will, I hope, work in place of the decrepit Dell. I apologize in advance if I am delayed in my responses and emails!

I appreciate you being here!

Sadness and pain on as many levels as there circles of hell, and all felt and reminding, me anyway, of all the blood we have had flailed from our bodies and the souls left trampled in the mud by so many storm troopers.

We must remember that we are built of stronger stuff. And while I have made it a practice NOT to sound like my mother, here I sit, held (though never warmly) by her veiled memories and firsthand accounts of living through the bombings of London when just a young woman. She attended University by day, was a volunteer nurse by night. She spoke of the horrors that good folks would never recover from. She told of walking down streets filled with row houses on the way to school and their smoldering shells that managed to still somehow stand a mere half day later. The surrealism of it all never left her in all of her 88+ years. Its indelible memories watercolored her subsequent actions, thoughts, words and deeds.

Our world is not much different from 1940′s London. The bombs are theoretical, financial, hypocritical and meant to maim, destroy and leave naught but ruination. The bloodied and screaming a soothing sound to the ears of those who wrought hell here on earth.

And while We have retreated into shells of our own, our collective consciousness knowing that it is We who must survive if there is any hope for humanity, watch with disgust, dismay and desolateness while the cronies and crooks rape us, one and all.

But We must stay protected. WE must have our Underground, whether it be rail trains or a Railroad, for as the Europeans knew, the ones who live through the terrors had to be the ones who knew how to rekindle the hope and the balance that would necessary to take the next step out of the morass.

You are building a community that will be of the ones that carry us past the downfall. We, all of us who are drawn and share your fears and realities, are the ones whose bonds will see each one of us through the despair and despotic madness that has seeped across our world and tainted us one and all.

My mother was not a hero to me as a parent, but as a human being she was stellar. And so are you, and so are We. Jumping in a boxcar and riding the rails of our Underground to preserve the best of what this world has as its creations is not a sign of weakness; it is recognition that we must band together, rag tag though we may be, for We know that tatters and pennies are meaningless when we are protecting the hearts, souls and driving forces that will keep us from darkness again.

Starvation, exploding bombs, hatred, prejudice, bullets and twisted politics and its henchmen couldn’t defeat my mother and the rest that stood up when the sirens were silenced. Nor shall they defeat thee and me.

Don’t give up on Hope. She’ll be here soon. She’s just running a little late.

(sigh)

D~

Thank you, Jane.

and thank you Kate,
I HOPE we can!