politics

I’ve been thinking about the state of things lately because, well, they’re inescapable. Those darn things. And their twisty state.

What has been so curious to me are people’s reactions—my own included.

When I don’t stay high, as Michelle Obama in her infinite wisdom advised us all to do, and instead go low, like subterranean, send a search party, “where are your pants?” low—I am NOT my best self.

I know that’s shocking but it’s true!

After I find my way back into the vicinity of common sense, (no thanks to GPS, you useless piece of shit), I have begun to reflect on the familiarity of these feelings that have left me all feely and not in a good way.

I remember these feelings of acute frustration!
I remember this rage!
I remember feeling completely disempowered, gutted and left for dead.

Most of all I have the clearest sense of Deja Vu when “alternative facts” are used. That’s because we had a very similar parallel universe in my house when I was growing up.

Up was down.
Day was night.
Cats were fish.
Dogs had more value than actual human children.
And A’s on your report card were mandatory but being smart, or a “smart-ass”, (as it was called if you questioned ANYTHING) was discouraged and by discouraged I mean cause for punishment.

Sound familiar?

We kids coined the phrase “Koo-Koo talk” because, well, nothing our step-mother said ever made sense except to her, her dog, and occasionally our dad. She was a Kellyanne Conway doppelgänger, a decade younger than our father, a man who had ended up on the sad, lonely and desperate side of our parents 1970 divorce. When she came along with her platinum over-teased hair, thick black Carol Channing false eyelashes (not the good kind like I wear), and age inappropriate mini skirts, he was…let’s see…the word grateful comes to mind.

She hated kids and was nuts (maybe not in that order). And not charming or funny nuts. She didn’t wear silly hats or knit sweaters for hamsters. She was mean nuts. Infuriating nuts. She was a giant windbag of salty, mean nuts. And she was fluent in Koo-Koo talk or as we’re calling it all these decades later—alternative facts.

Or lies. Let’s all call them what they really are—lies.

I suspect that one of the reasons I get a bit twitchy when people lie is because of my childhood. And I also suspect the reason you all might be feeling like strung out wacko is for the same reason.

We’re all smart people whose stock has recently been devalued and we have finely tuned bullshit meters. Can you blame us?!

I don’t know about you, but when I go low I want them all to choke on their lying lies. I want karma to make a speedy round trip, like a boomerang thrown by Thor to dispense justice. I want heads to roll.

Then I pull back, find the stairs and make the long and arduous climb back up to the land where I’m in charge of how I feel.

That is what the Koo-Koo talking, mean-as-hell nut-job taught me four decades ago. That I can stay in the fight, pointing out all of the injustice and lies which just bounced off the Teflon bitch—or I can rise above it, intellect intact (because all that Koo-Koo talk kills brain cells), pick my battles and stay sane.

Because as we’ve all witnessed, you cannot reason with crazy. It will drive YOU crazy!

If you can relate—I advise you to try to do the same.

Carry on,
xox

Hello my tribe,
Well now.
I wish I had all the answers. I wish I knew what to say to lift all of our heavy hearts.
All I can do is share what I believe and how that’s helping ME make sense of all of this madness.

I believe in energy. That everything is energy. Love, hate, optimism, fear.
It’s all energy and that energy has power.
And after a while, if you focus on one thing long enough it gains momentum.
We just saw the proof of that with this election. Lots and lots of folks whose fear and anger morphed into a blind rage. I say blind because everyone wants to be heard, right? We all want to think our needs are being served. So, in their own self-interest they blindly (and deafly (is that a word?)), followed someone who said, “I hear you.”

I believe he took the momentum of their fear used it against them.

That being said, I’ve alway remembered what someone wise once told me “Don’t be against something Janet, be FOR something else. Don’t be anti-war, be pro-peace.”
They explained how, from an energetic standpoint (yes, we’re still talking energy), it’s cleaner. It’s clearer.

Because, when you rail against something by yelling and waving your fist at it—you give that very thing MOMENTUM. That’s what causes rioting and violence in the name of peaceful resistance.

Besides, if and when the shit does hit the fan, if my hair is on fire, I can’t be a part of any solution. I believe fear is disempowering. Because I know fear won’t lead me anywhere near the solution.

Plus, it feels like shit to hate. Doesn’t it you guys? The pettiness? The cattiness?
It feels like shit to think that fifty percent of the country is nuts. It feels like shit to be so freaking far away from love. Because you and I, we’re all lovers.
We’re the unifiers.
We like to think we’re spiritual, evolved, and open-hearted.

But look how conditional that has become.
It’s turned into “us” and “them.” And we’re behaving no better than “they” are!
“Think like me and I can love you/be your friend. Look like me, talk like me and vote like I do and only then can I love you.”

Yikes.

Don’t get me wrong. We must be vigilant. We must march our asses off, write letters, organize, protect, defend and sign petitions. And vote. For. Sure. We MUST Vote.

I’m just asking that you check-in with yourself. You’re intentions and the energy you’re giving momentum to.

It’s abundantly clear what you’re against, but what are you FOR?

I believe in civil discourse.
I believe it’s a small world and that we’re all connected.
I believe in using our voices.
I believe that the majority of the American people are decent, loving people.
I believe change can be a good thing.
I believe that our country needed a wake-up call. Many of us had NO idea how many “-isms” were alive and well and living under the rug.

I believe in us and that love wins. I really do.

Carry on,
xox

Now that we’re living in an alternate reality…I think we may need this this more than last year. I know I do.
Thanks Adele.

Happy Thanksgiving!
xox

Hi you guys,
Below is my latest Huffington Post. You see, after the election,once I stopped reeling, after I gave up on politics and put away the raw cookie dough, I decided to write to the girl/woman who will most certainly become our first female president.
Carry on,
xox

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-bertolus/an-open-letter-to-the-fir_b_12903170.html

Dear Future Madame President,

I find great solace in knowing you are out there.

Selfishly, for the sake of my eighty-year-old mother who was emotionally invested in this past election for reasons that are obvious, I hope this finds you occupying a seat in a college classroom, a non-profit, the senate, or some other adult occupation at which you excel–and not a bouncy seat at a pre-school.

If you’re currently a millennial well, I suppose that’s okay seeing that makes you tech savvy enough to never get yourself caught up in any kind of email kerfuffle.

By the way, watch those selfies and delete your Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat accounts–they may come to haunt you.

That being said, a long and arduous path was cleared for you this year with the nomination of a woman by a major political party, so you can cross that milestone off your list. But don’t worry, many more lay ahead.

It will be my great honor to call you Madame President. You are clearly a badass and I am humbled after witnessing the journey it took to get you here.

Just know, you have some pretty big heels to fill young lady. My wish is that you have the intellect of Hillary, the sass of Elizabeth Warren and the authenticity and oratory chops of Michelle Obama. I know this is a tall order but I think you’re up to the task.

A few more things: Be unapologetically smart. Go ahead. We can take it.

But practice humility and for god sakes learn how to say “I f*ed up, I’m sorry, I was wrong.” It forgives a myriad of sins and is even more rare than hearing the truth in Washington.

Please. Remain a student of history so you can learn from our mistakes.

We got so close this year and the loss still stings. Maybe we were overconfident. Maybe it just wasn’t the right woman. Maybe we underestimated the level of misogyny in our country. Perhaps we dropped the ball… Bigly.

You will bridge the divide. Without being perceived as harpy, bitchy or scary. YOU will be the “better angel of our nature.”

Most importantly, what history and the next four years will come to show is that you can’t keep women down. Numerous indignities have been heaped upon us over time and what did we do?

We got stronger. And we came back. With a vengeance.

Madame President, I trust you have had enough setbacks in your life to smooth out any rough edges–but not enough to put out the fire in your belly.

In closing, I wish you the winning trifecta of wisdom, intellect and wit–and the confidence to display them all in equal measure.

Most of all, and I’m sure I speak for women all over our great nation–I wish you grace.

May grace be your superpower and your co-pilot as you take on the Herculean task of being the most powerful woman on Earth.

Rest assured you have my unapologetic admiration and support until the day we finally meet.

With great anticipation,
J.B.

That’s it! I’ve had it! I’m breaking up with you, politics.

I simply cannot handle the disappointment.

I feel mislead and bamboozled and I can no longer participate in your dysfunctional behavior.

Even though you told me who you were, in every moment, I held out hope that your higher nature would prevail.

I’m embarrassed to admit that instead of making me a better person, you often unleashed my inner she-devil, scum-bag asshole. You never wanted to spend time with my friends and I up on the high ground, so, in order to spend time with you, I went down into the swamp.

I had trouble Ommmm-ing my way out of the muck—and the toxic yuck you surround yourself with got harder and harder to wash off.

So consider this the end, politics.

Stop calling.

Loose my number.

I need my space.

I’ve deleted your emails, unfriended you, and changed my status to disillusioned.

I know you won’t miss me one little bit. That’s okay, I have my own happiness to focus on right now.

My wits are scattered and badly need to be gathered.

So, it is with a broken heart that I say…

Carry on,
xox

Suffragette Susan B. Anthony’s Headstone covered with women’s “I voted” stickers.

“In the midst of the chaos
When the wind is howling I hear
The ancient song
Of the ones who went before
And know that peace will come.”
~Susan Stauter

I woke up this morning and opened my eyes. Peace.
That is until my neurons started firing, thoughts flooding in, reminding me what day it is.

Election day here in the U.S.

No peace today, right?

I voted early so I have plenty of time to go bite my nails down to the nub, watch the election results with my eighty-year-old mom.

Just that I can do that makes today a victory in my book.

As far back as I can remember my mom has followed politics. More than followed.  If you look up the phrase “political junkie” online my mom’s picture will pop up. She could give Tom Brokaw a run for his money. Seriously. She has lived and breathed every aspect of this game called politics going all the way back to waiting breathlessly as a young girl for election results to be announced on the radio. A child of the thirties, she was among the first generation of women born with the right to vote.

That was huge and she taught me never to take that lightly. The common thread throughout my life has been this single phrase: This is history, Janet.

I’d like to say I’ve always shared her passion and respect for politics but I have to admit there have been many elections through the years where I just didn’t give a shit. When Reagan ran against Mondale I was in my twenties. They were two boring old white guys and I can say in all honesty—I gave less than a shit.

Not my mom.

There have been decades where I would have to change the subject immediately (usually to football, another passion of hers), so as not to get caught in a political discussion because let me tell you—she will not suffer the fool who can’t name the candidates, their platform, and where they stand in the polls.

Eight years ago I got lured back in by Obama. I cared about hope and change. So did my mom. I hadn’t seen her that fired up for a candidate since Bobby Kennedy all the way back in 1968.

God, she loved Bobby Kennedy; well, all the Kennedy’s really. Camelot had been the real deal to her. Jack and Jackie were just like her (except for the rich and movie star gorgeous part) and their children were even the same age as hers!
Then, when it ended so tragically, we all sat in front of our little black and white TV for three days so my mom could try to process her grief and mourn with the rest of the country. Watch this. This is history, Janet, she said to someone too young to understand fully what she was seeing.

She wanted Bobby in the White House so badly that when he won the Primary in our state of California that warm June night in 1968 she went to bed jubilant, only to be woken up early the next morning by my dad. “Bobby Kennedy was shot last night. He’s dead.”

God. What a brave man, my dad. I can’t imagine giving her that news.

By the time my ten-year old self stumbled out of bed that morning, my thirty-year-old, optimistic, resident of Camelot, political junkie of a mom had been transformed into a somber, red-eyed cynic. “This country has gone to hell.” she sobbed. Pay attention, this is history, Janet.  This time I understood. But something in her had changed. She stayed in the game but the light went out of her eyes where politics was concerned.

And yet she still had her opinions.

She thought the whole Nixon/Watergate thing was deplorable (sorry Hillary, she said it first.)

She liked Clinton, she just couldn’t stomach his self-sabatoge—and she wished he’d just keep his dick in his pants.

She could hardly believe the shenanigans involved with the hanging chads, Supreme Court decision of 2000.

And don’t get her started on Bush. Or Cheney. “These two are ridiculous (words I can’t write here). Someone needs to reign them in. For godsakes, where are their wives?”

But my mom was ecstatic when Obama won in 2008. The fire was back. “ I can’t believe we have a black man in office. I never thought I’d see that.” she kept repeating as we both cried our way through his acceptance speech in Grant Park with his gorgeous, beaming wife and two young daughters by his side.  “I hope nothing bad happens to him”, she worried.

Pay attention. This is history, Janet.

“But I called it, remember?” she reminded me proudly, like she’d picked the winning horse while he was still a foal. “When he spoke at the Democratic Convention back in 2004? Remember? I said he could be President some day!”

I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning but I do remember her saying that. A lot.

So.. this election. This election has been…unprecedented. I think that’s the word that’s been used most often these past eighteen months. Can you believe that? This spectacle has been going on for almost 600 days!

But my mom will scoff if I throw that word around lightly. “What this guy is spewing is unprecedented!” I’ll lament into the phone. I can hear her take a deep breath, her political science professor of a brain quickly gathering the facts.

“That’s not true.” She reminds me. “People need to remember George Wallace. He ran for president in 1964, 1972, and 1976, as a Democratic if you can believe that!” she spits out the word Democrat like a nasty word. “And in 1968 as an Independent. Oh, 1968. The Vietnam war. The assassinations of Bobby and Martin. The Chicago seven. They had riots that year at the Democratic Convention.”

They say if you can remember the sixties—you weren’t there.  Oh, she was there and she remembers EVERYTHING.

“George Wallace was a bigot, and a segregationist, populist who used the Ku Klux Clan as his security. He was a man filled with anger and hate, so this guys not the first…but at least our party had the good sense not to nominate him.”

So, things have been just as bad… or worse. I should have paid more attention to history.

So, yeah. I’ll be watching the results with that woman. The woman who reminded me a while back that what was unprecedented was having the first female nominee of a major political party and potentially the first woman President of the United States.

History is being made and its gotten completely overshadowed.

But not in her eyes. I really hope and pray I get to see the glass ceiling shatter tonight, sitting with my mom the life-long political wonk as she reassures me that she’s seen it all— assassinations, hate mongering and undecided elections and that in the end—our democracy will endure.

Pay attention, Janet. This is history.

Carry on,
xox

My mom and me sometime during the Reagan administration.

Hey there,

Tiny rant…

I’m so freakin’ over this election! Who’s with me?

Dear Buddha, I want my peace of mind back. I don’t want to hear about walls, deportation forces, emails, hacks, or the “fixing” of anything.

I am currently on the lookout for my wisdom, serenity and divine nature. If you see them, will you tell them I’ll leave the light on for ’em?

As for the hat…who doesn’t love an acorn hat?

Which brings me to other breaking news: I have squirrels who love to bury their peanuts (don’t ask), in my planters so I sprayed squirrel repellant on some newly planted flowers today so they’ll stay inside of the pots for a change.

Word to the wise: Always smell the repellent before you spray it liberally around your garden. 

This stuff smells like the nastiest dog fart mixed with the smelliest teenage feet, with just a hint of Uncle Bill’s breath after a Hoagie—and a big fat cigar. Needless to say, it is some serious stank.

But they were right. I haven’t seen a squirrel all afternoon. I have also not been able to go out back without gagging.

Just another day in my glamorous life!

Carry on,
xox

“When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level.
No, our motto is, when they go low, we go high.”

I freakin’ LOVE this! It is my new motto too. Who’s with me?

Biting my tongue and always aspiring to do better, your faithful, sassy-pants writer/friend, me.

xox

This blog post by Seth Godin feels SO relevant right now you guys. Use your gut, your discretion, your instincts in order to make sense of the noisy rhetoric that’s being broadcast to us daily.
Bullies are LOUD! Try not to be coerced.
Carry on,
xox

Coercion

“You are with me or against me.”

“Being against me is the same as being against us.”

“If I determine that you are against us, you deserve all the problems that you brought on yourself by your actions. Don’t make me hurt you again.”

We are fortunate to live in a civil society that is governed by ideas, ideals and laws. Lincoln correctly warned us about the mob and the bullying leader who eggs them on.

Coercion can make change happen (in the short run). Coercion can look like leadership. But it doesn’t scale and it doesn’t last, because ultimately, it burns down the very institution it sought to change by mob force.

We can encounter bullies at work, coaching teams and even working in law enforcement. Wherever people organize, they show up.

Coercion gets its start because well-meaning people believe that the short-run cost of the mob mentality is worth it. It almost never is. Coercion uses force and blames the victim. And coercion is impossible to live with.

Real change happens because of enrollment because it invites people in, it doesn’t use fear. Real leadership patiently changes the culture, engaging people in a shared effort. It’s more difficult, but it’s change we can live with.

~Seth Godin

She told me she didn’t do it, but with my keen observational skills, the fact that I have opposable thumbs, a larger brain, and language (I know some words) — I knew she was lying.
Plus she was the only other “person” in the house.

The conversation went something like this:
ME: Hey, you. Where YOU going so fast and what did you do to the rug?
DOG: What rug?
ME: The one in a pile at your feet.
DOG: I don’t see a rug.
ME: Seriously?
DOG: Oh, that. Is that a rug? Because it looks more like…
ME: It was until your track and field event ran through here.
DOG: Track and field. That’s a good one. You should write a humor…
ME: Why do you lie so goddamn always?
DOG: It came with the cute. A package deal. You know, puppies and toddlers and twenty-year-old models named Raoul.

She was right. I straightened the rug feeling duped once again. If there’s a grudge in here somewhere…  I’m holding it.

Back in my jewelry days, I had a limey friend. He was unattractively attractive in that way that some men can be. You know, so ugly they’re sexy. A guy whose British accent was so thick that if you got any on you—it would stick and eat through you, like alien slime, taking with it any and all traces of your common sense.

Everything he said was melodious and beguiling— a perfectly wrapped gift to my ears.
It was also a lie.
He was one of the slimiest characters you could ever hope to NOT meet, but everything he said sounded like poetry.

Like a shitty smack-talk, lying sack-talk sonnet.

He once told me to “sod off” when I caught him in yet another lie. And even though I had no idea what that meant —I wanted to do it. Immediately. AND it made me a little hot all day — I’m not gonna lie.

So, lies. They come in all shapes and sizes. Tiny, white, “I didn’t eat the last cupcake”, ones — to giant, wtf, “I can be and do whatever you think you need. I’m here to save you”, delusional ones.
In other words, everything that comes out of a politician’s mouth.

Unfortunately, they become acceptable when they have a cute puppy face, a thick foreign accent, or apparently a shit ton of money, a stage to stand on, and a camera pointed in their face.

I don’t now about you, but it’s beginning to feel like we’ve all been slimed.

I, for one, am pretty sick of this shit. I’m not falling for it anymore. Is that because I’m old? Or too smart? Or did the slime wound finally heal and I regained my common sense?
I feel like I can’t be lied to for one more minute!

Not by the lying limey with the lilting language, (Okay, you gotta love that).

Not by the cuddly and cute but corrupted canine (I’m on a roll).

Not by any of the plotting, placating and prevaricating politicians.(Bazinga!)

Can we just call foul; tell ‘um to “sod off”; take our balls and go home?

What do YOU think? Ever had anyone lie to your face? How many times before you got wise to it?

I’ve gotta go now. I need to teach my dog that it’s not okay to lie. I’m going to ground her AND take her phone away.

Carry on,
xox