Farewell to Facebook

In case you don't remember in 2004, in a conversation with a friend at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg had this conversation:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

(redacted friend's name): What?  How'd you manage that one?

Zuck:  People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don't know why

Zuck: they "trust me."

Zuck: Dumbf***s.

-India Today Tech 

New Delhi

March 22, 2018

While he was young then, only nineteen, it does still reveal something about his character, a callous arrogance.  When that conversation hit the news, I immediately closed my Facebook account.  To my disbelief, when I submitted "yes" to close the account the words on the screen read, "You'll be back."  Wow.  I couldn't believe the irreverence, the gall.  But you know what?  I did go back a few years later deluding myself that I needed it to promote my business.  I pushed down my personal pride and gave the website another try.  

In the past few years that I've been using Facebook, I have tried to keep to a moral code.  First, no bragging.  I asked myself before submitting each post, will this offend someone?  Will this make someone feel jealous or otherwise bad about herself?  Secondly I asked, is this meaningful?  Will it make someone smile or contemplate in a positive way?  And the third rule was to stay away from politics.  I wanted Facebook to be a safe space to share pictures with friends and family and to promote my books and artwork.  

Over the years, the political bit of my moral code became increasingly more difficult to follow as my feed became inundated with anti-Trump, anti-conservative rhetoric.  Slowly I began unfollowing friends, colleagues, family members whose posts left me feeling personally attacked, judged and criticized.  Then the pandemic hit and it was like everyone completely lost their filters.  I mean everyone.  People of Facebook, members of the media, politicians and Social Media itself all finger pointing, name calling, fact checking, and then finally censoring.  

I'll give you an example of censoring.  A few months ago when the Democrats unrolled the plan to promote mail in ballots across the country, I shared a popular quote that read something like, "If you can stand in line at Wal-Mart you can stand in line to vote."  A relative of mine replied with an article explaining how mail-in ballots were the same thing as absentee ballots and that many states use the terms interchangeably.  While this is true to some degree, it is only true that all absentee ballots can be mail-in ballots, but all mail-in ballots are not absentee ballots.  This is because for it to be an absentee ballot, a voter must request it.  This is a huge distinction because along with it come many implications.  Facebook would not allow me to post those words.  Every time I tried to send the reply, I got a notice saying something really vague about not being able to send at that time.  It allowed me to say all kinds of other things at that time, but not that.  

Whether you are a Republican, Democrat or Independent, this should give you pause.  I understand that many people have a strong visceral response to Donald Trump and I feel bad about that.  I know what it's like to have no respect for your president.  It's hard.  But I don't understand the obsession with hating him.  I see these news reporters who are supposed to be objective journalists acting like emotional basket cases.  Michelle Obama said, "Let's remember that tens of millions of people voted for the status quo, even when it meant supporting lies, hate, chaos and division." (USA today.com)  What?  Does she know what status quo means?  If anything is status quo, it's voting for a lifetime politician.  And lies?  Hate?  Whether you want to admit it or not, the same rhetoric is easily true about the other side.  

Whoopi Goldberg shouts on the view that Republicans should suck it up!  and says about the election results, "How DARE you question it?"  Well, this is still a democracy republic.  Any candidate is welcome to challenge election results or simply ask for investigations into them and any person interested in liberty and free and fair elections should embrace that about our system.  Stacy Abrams filed lawsuits in the Georgia Governor's race.  Democrats had no problem with that and have exalted her as a victim of the system and the rightful symbolic winner of that contest.  After the 2016 election, the Washington Post headline read, "'I would be your president': Clinton blames Russia, FBI Chief for 2016." And of course everyone knows the story of Al Gore and Florida.  

So let's all please stop pretending that the Republican response to this election is unprecedented because it's not.  The only thing that is unprecedented is the number of mail in ballots cast, and given this is the first time we've voted this way as a nation, it's not too much to ask that we get it right.  Another thing that is completely new to our time is media bias which brings me back to Facebook.  I tried to keep my Facebook experience free of politics until Facebook made it about politics.  Now, you can't get through any feed without propaganda links explaining how Joe Biden won the presidency.  Next it will be about your social duty to wear face masks, then to get vaccinated and then...what else?  I promise more will come because it is the nature of power.  

So the conservative response to things like this is not to burn buildings, topple statues or spit in peoples' faces.  It is to break the monopoly.  There have been other social platforms waiting to get a piece of the market share for years and we've all been too comfortable and complacent to go to the trouble of giving them a try.  Well I'm no longer comfortable or complacent and I will not be complicit in allowing the flow of information to the people to become stifled by big tech and their agenda.  

Above all else, since I am leaving Facebook and may not have a chance to express this to as many people as I can in this moment, to my friends and family who are Democrats,  I love you.  I think that you are smart and kind and have integrity and I am sorry that you have disliked our president so intensely.  I ask you to please consider what is happening in the media and become a voice against it.  Our media cannot become a series of propaganda machines as we have seen what's happened on Facebook.  You can think for yourselves and don't need the entire power of every celebrity and television network behind you.  The name calling has got to stop on both sides.  It is ugly and undignified.  We are better than this.  We are all so much better than this.  

So I will say farewell to Facebook and hello to any other non-biased platforms who want to join the ranks of social media.  And to Mr. Zuckerberg, I assure you, this time I will not be back.  

Protect Me From Tyranny Not the Coronavirus

Many Americans are willing to step into the post Covid 19 world. We believe the only path to its end is through it.  The vast disconnect between us and the ones who prefer to hide from it indefinitely demonstrates one core value, self-responsibility, a value that also marks a major difference between conservative and liberal ideals.  

Conservatives believe that the people tell government what to do.  Liberals believe that the government should tell the people what to do.  Conservatives believe that the people support the government.  Liberals believe that the government should support the people.  So in the case of protection, likewise, while conservatives are scrambling to protect the constitution during this government free-for-all of mandates, the liberals are looking to the government to protect them from getting sick.    

So who's right?  Who's wrong?  I suggest in this situation that once again, self-responsibility tips the scale.  In the case of the Coronavirus, we have the luxury to constantly take in education and updates regarding its spread worldwide, nationally and locally.  We know how to protect ourselves from it and how to treat it.  If I don't want to get Coronavirus I can choose to stay home.  I can order groceries online.  I can shop at odd hours when the stores aren't busy.  I can always wear a mask when I go out.  I can even wear a mask when someone comes to the door.  I can wash my hands incessantly especially when I've been outside my home.  I can be more mindful about surfaces I touch when I leave my house.  I can avoid friends and family members who I know are going out and living their lives carefree.  It is hard to imagine, but I can even avoid them in my own home and if they're grown and they choose to put me at risk, I can insist that they find somewhere else to live.  If they aren't grown, then they live under my house by my rules, so that's pretty simple.  If they are unpredictable teens, you can bet I'm keeping my physical distance from them.  If  I'm really serious about protecting myself, I might even start exercising and eating right.  Gosh, I'll even spring for vitamin supplements.  These are just some of the many ways that I can avoid dying from Coronavirus.  

In the case of Tyranny, it's not so simple.  When the government tells me I can't leave my house, can't shop in select stores of its choosing, go to work, open my business, attend church services, have a surgery I've needed for some time, attend school, send my children to a playground, ride around in my own boat...what am I to do?  When the government tells me if I don't wear a mask covering my nose and mouth everywhere in public, I will be educated and punished, what is my reprisal?  

When the government prevents my child from attending school while promising a great enriching online experience that by the way they have failed to produce, what am I to do?  I sent letters to every single person who voted.  I answered every survey they sent.  I'm aware that over seventy percent of parents surveyed said they wanted their children to go back to school in spite of the epidemic.  My twelve year old also sent a pleading message to the Superintendent Ann Levett.  She did not reply.  The few responses we received from board members aired on the side of safety, safety in a vacuum because it completely disregards all of the detrimental truths about confining children to screens in homes alone while their parents try to earn a living to provide for their families.    

Trauma from a pandemic has opened the gate for tyranny to invade our country in the guise of protecting the people, veiled in platitudes like Safety First, Follow the Science and Kindness Matters.  Anyone who dissents is labeled heartless, cruel, selfish and unenlightened.  So where then lies the self-responsibility conservatives hold so dear?  How do we retaliate as our breath is being crushed from us, our posts deleted and constantly censored, people we don't even know weighing in on every single thing we say in various forms of social media using group think terms like, "It's obvious you..."  "what kind of idiot..."  "How stupid..."  "ridiculous..." and my new personal favorite, an emojee face laughing hysterically, these all coming from the harbingers of kindness.    

Do we wait until the next election and hope that someone better runs for county commissioner?  For mayor?  For public school superintendent?  For school board members?  That's a big hope and November is far away.  Or do we get in the mix, fight back, get outside our comfort zones and sound the alarms, because right now everything Matters but us.  

There is tyranny and there is self-responsibility.  In one paradigm, a select few win.  The few who make the most noise, point many fingers and accuse instead of seek to understand.  To the person who chooses safety over freedom, your victory will be short lived because Tyranny does not stop when the tragedy fades, when the natural disaster has long been cleaned up and life resumes.  It takes hold and grows.  It is a living thing and it will eventually attack something you hold dear and when it does, just as conservatives feel today, you will be powerless to stop it. 

In the realm of self-responsibility, we protect ourselves.  Oh we are happy to protect others as well and eager to do so, but not because we've been forced to, but because it is the right thing to do.  People are given the choice to wear a mask or not to wear a mask.  If it suits the greater good, people are highly encouraged to wear masks.  Private businesses can help by requiring masks in their buildings or at their venues as well as social distancing like making aisles bigger, seating people further apart...the possibilities are vast especially when equipping the private sector.  We are free to avoid people not wearing masks and you can even think bad thoughts about them if you want.  Just don't harass them!

We can make virtual learning available to all the students and teachers who aren't comfortable going back to school in person.  Goodness knows we're already in deep with this program "It's Learning" and I don't even want to know what it cost.  This will reduce the overall in person class sizes and allow children to have the proper education they deserve.  When people take responsibility for themselves, everyone wins.  All of these things help us to inch closer to a herd immunity that will never come if we continue to hide away.  Eventually we may even get a vaccine that helps quell numbers each season.  

This is America.  We are Americans, whether your family has been here since the first boat arrived or like most of us, your people trickled in through out her history, it wasn't easy to get here.  Every American is either a fighter or born from fighters where freedom was the prize.  Don't give it away for the comfort of wellness.  Something else will get you eventually, I promise.  That's how life works.  But freedom, this freedom did not come easy and if you preserve it, it will last long after your death for your children and grandchildren.  Just as it takes years to build a skyscraper and seconds to bring it down, freedom will disappear like a vapor in the streets. 

The Globe Tree

Five years ago, I sat at this computer in a similar melancholy state to find catharsis.  SIP was going to kindergarten.  A week from tomorrow, he will be finished with fifth grade, finished with elementary school.  My introverted low-key boy eventually got the hang of school and went on to GEP and then to MN4K, the school's morning media program, and Safety Patrol.  He's a brown belt at Master Jaime's Ultimate Martial Arts Studio.  He plays tennis once a week.  He's tall and funny and occasionally wears deodorant. 

Marshpoint has done a great job preparing the kids for this transition.  In hind sight, I think I might have benefited from finding a therapist myself.  The past couple of months, the ride to and from school in the afternoons has become more cherished and less chore.  Quite unfortunately, this sacred mom time has been rudely disrupted by the sudden and brutal destruction of the forest that lived alongside the car pick up lane.  Please don't misunderstand me.  I understand that deforestation is a hard truth of our world and in many ways necessary and beneficial.  But these woods were personal to me.  And the older I get, I see more beauty and life and potential in those woods than I do in ball fields.  So, with just a month of school left to go, they began taking the trees down literally in front of us as we sat captive in the car line each afternoon.  Heavy machines fell them and slung them into piles like dead bodies as I looked away. 

The carnage drew closer and closer to the sacred tree, the Oak that SIP and I called, The Globe.  I prayed that they would not take it down.  It was along the edge of the property line, not unreasonable to think it might be spared.  And sure enough, as all the others disappeared, The Globe remained and a part of me was comforted.  It gave me a sense of civility, the idea that in the clear cutting, there was some humanity, planning and forethought, even respect for the greatness of nature that was eliminated for ball fields or parking, whatever goes there in place of the thousands of wildlife members who were suddenly killed and misplaced.  Perhaps the Globe would stand as a monument to the forest that once lived there.

For days and days after it appeared all the trees had been taken, I drove there in the morning and again in the afternoon, comforted by the sight of that beautiful unusual tree that eventually stood alone in the landscape.  We are now down to one week of school.  The teachers have all but clocked out and SIP has summer camp on his mind.  No more homework.  No more testing.  Just showing up left to do.

This morning, against the soundtrack of For King and Country's new hit, "God Only Knows," I drove SIP to school as I have each morning for five years.  Today, the Globe Tree was gone.  Just gone.  I wept.  Tears poured from my face for so many more reasons than the death of that beautiful tree.  But I think in some way, SIP knew them all.  He reached over and patted me on the back never saying a word.  What a wonderful child.  How blessed I am.  God only knows.  I wish someone had fought for that tree.  It was so lovely, I just assumed no one would take it down.  I wish I had fought for it.

2018 Snowball Effect

2018 has brought more than actual snowballs to us in Savannah.  The New Year Resolution snowball, for example, is crashing through my life in an avalanche of under performance and disappointment. Like an idiot, I accepted the culture dominated challenge to become better this year.  Better at everything, planning, exercising, eating, communicating, painting, marriaging, parenting, friending, oh gosh just  better at myselfing. 

As the Millennial cheekily says, "Let me put that in my planner," and pulls out her sleek smart phone... I, the dull one from the nineteen hundreds pull out my five pound notebook stand-in for my short term memory that was shot during the dawn of motherhood.   Yes, I use a PLANNER, an actual book with blank spaces for information.  It requires a separate writing utensil for it to work.  Don't get me started on Microsoft Outlook and Calendar, etc. as my phone has let me down on scheduling more times than my German Short Haired Pointer puppy has destroyed something I love.

So among the many things in the queue that I carry on from day to day in my PLANNER is the need to make a CALENDAR.  This also is not a metaphor or the name of an app for my phone.  It is an actual book filled with real pages that represent months in the year.  I like to have a calendar on the wall in the kitchen, and because I'm an odd bird, I really like to make the calendar myself.  But all of this 2018 getting better at being ME campaign became very time consuming.  Hence, February launches and I still have not made my calendar and there sits a glaring blank space on the wall where it should be.

My nine year old son, SIP, has become accustomed to checking the calendar each day to apprise himself of coming events.  SIP was home all week with the flu and Thursday night in an attempt to orient himself for going back to school Friday, he checked for the calendar on the blank space in the wall where the 2018 calendar should be.  Dismayed, he said, "What's tomorrow's date?"  I grabbed the nearest thing with a date on it and no, it was not my phone, but my PLANNER.  I opened it up to February and handed him the schedule that had not been revealed in its proper sense on the wall.  He perused it for a few seconds and said in shock, "I"m having SURGERY next Friday?!"

"Oh yeah, about THAT..." and another snowball hit me right between the eyes...metaphorically this time. 

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Elephant in the Room

I'm a big picture person.  Details get by me.  It's a miracle I've made it this far in life.  I have no idea how I graduated from college.  I still have dreams that I didn't pull it off, nightmares really...depicting a class I forgot about and just quit going to...the living arrangements I failed to make and ended up slumming it in some crack den...the class I simply can't find no matter how many halls I walk or streets I drive down...

When I interviewed to be a sales executive at Savannah Magazine, my future bosses asked me the fully loaded question, "What is your biggest weakness?"  Now I know I'm supposed to cleverly turn this negative into a positive with some sort of contrived answer like, I try too hard, I care too much, I just LOVE overtime... But no, I said, "I CANNOT multi-task."  Their expressions were filled with a combination of amazement and disappointment.  I think they thought I was really going to be the one.  But I was not going to pass up my only opportunity to get this elephant out of the room.  I needed the alibi of, "I told you so," when things went south in some logistical blaze of glory.  Nope, I was going to have to rely on good old fashioned honesty and humility if I hoped to make it in this fast paced, multi-faceted modern world.

Since then, I've owned an art gallery, run my own businesses, managed to stay married and raise SIP, my now nine year old wonderful kid, who unfortunately inherited my gene of utter cluelessness.   Sometimes I look at him and wonder why oh why did you not get your father's since of wherewithal?  My husband was born with TYPE A stamped across his forehead.  If he could have walked the doctor through delivery he would have and then suggested somebody turn up the thermostat because it was a little chilly in there after sitting in a muggy 98.6 degree oven for nine months.  In fact, if he could have, he would have sent instructions ahead of his arrival along with clothes to change into and an iron for the clothes.

Anyway, for some reason, I planned to get ahead of things this summer.  Preparations for this camp and that, VBS prep, VBS week, Father's day, SIP's birthday, vacations all speckled in with work where I am the only person in charge...was not going to beat me this year.  I was going to stay on TOP.  As early as March, I had registered and paid for Oatland Island Camp, Centrikid Camp, Junior University.  I looked at my pen splattered calendar, put a smug smile on my face and kicked it into cruise control.

All of this probably would have worked out ok if I hadn't put the wrong dates down for VBS.  See, they changed it this year from ALL THE OTHER YEARS IN THE PAST, to the week prior.  And all the other things I scheduled for the summer were based on this one tiny error.  Then it was time for Junior University, SIP's first year at the one week long summer school at Savannah Arts.  That Monday at drop off, his teacher was so nice.  She introduced herself and said, "SIP will come here every day for the two weeks of camp."  Hold up, TWO weeks?!  How did I miss that?  How on earth did I miss that?  Now, I have double paid for camps as SIP is scheduled to go to Oatland Island the following week!!!!

I have failed failed failed in so many ways this summer.  I have missed important meetings, been late on birthday gifts, showed up for karate when there was no karate that night.  I say all this to say, I've never stopped trying.  I write things down, granted in places I forget on paper I can't find, but I try.  I put clues in my phone that I discover weeks after the events have passed.  I still have not written thank you notes for SIP's birthday gifts.  

SIP had a friend over today and they decided to make a fort in the studio.  As I was working elsewhere in the house, SIP came to me and asked if I would help him pull the couch out into a bed. So I went in there and rearranged the room because the room is filled to the ceiling with my work accoutrement (I used a fancy French word here to distract from the fact that my studio looks like a set from Hoarders) so that I could pull the large mattress out from the belly of the giant couch.  When I finally uncovered the layers of blankets and pillows and dog toys and furniture, I looked down at the couch and laughed.  I laughed harder than I have ever laughed in my life.  Then SIP laughed and his friend Olivia began to laugh even though she didn't know why we were laughing hysterically.  I had sold the fold-out couch over a year ago.  This was a different couch.

I Voted for Trump...Seriously

Personally, I like him.  I like that he says what he thinks without fear of retaliation or debate.  I believe he is fair in his perspectives, giving credit where it's due and criticism when warranted.  He has the ability to disagree fundamentally with a person without hating him.  He has a sense of humor.  He slips up when he speaks, as though he hasn't practiced every word that comes from his mouth earlier that morning.  He has the courage to say it again when no one can believe he said it the first time and the humility to correct himself when he's wrong.  His eyes smile.  This says a lot about a person.

Publicly, he has passed the integrity test for decades without any real necessary reason to do so.  We as the American people know him.  We've known him for a long time.  He has led a transparent life to the point of putting himself in a reality television program to highlight various forms of business from the value of street smarts to the virtues of higher education.  People laughed in the beginning and said, Trump on TV?  Seriously?  But then they started watching and listening and learning while at the same time smiling, remarking and marveling that the apprentice show was quite interesting and entertaining. 

Professionally, he is more accomplished than not only any politician in Washington, but than most people in the world.  At the end of the day, we're looking for a CEO, not a lawyer.  The problems of this world and in our country cannot be solved or even addressed with rhetoric and litigation.  Maybe I'm just a dreamer and if that is so, then write me off as one of those artist types and take no offense to my endorsement.  But I want a guy who builds skyscrapers for president.  I want a guy who successfully manages thousands of people on a daily basis all around the world and still finds time to show up at fund raisers and meaningful events (by the way long before ever entering the political arena.)  I want a guy who stars in his own reality television show and isn't afraid to say the words, "You're Fired." 

I'm tired of hearing the condescending statement, "Trump? Seriously?"  I've suffered through eight years of politics I didn't agree with and had the decency and respect for my friends and family and neighbors who supported that administration to keep my mouth shut.  Well, that era is coming to a close and it's time to find a new Commander and Chief.  I'm going with the guy whose buildings still stand, whose show wasn't cancelled like the 65% that get cut in their first season, and who didn't go to school to learn how not to lose.  I voted for Trump...seriously.    

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My Crazy Aunt

My Crazy Aunt

Taught me to laugh at myself because
She was going to laugh at me regardless of whether or not I approved.

Paid me to wrap her Christmas presents and said they looked great even though I was only six...and they didn't.

Rescued my hair from the hot iron curling brush...several times. 

Never scolded me when I got into her makeup drawer and applied the lipstick with extreme force.

Told me secrets about my mom when I thought I could never measure up.

Could go through a box of Ritz crackers in five minutes.

Loved children, Craved company, Cooked like a maniac, And seemed lost without something to paint.

Showed no tolerance for fun outside her presence and punished those who didn't comply.

Stayed up later and got up earlier than anyone I've ever known.

Could drink you under the table and then wallpaper a room while you slept.

Almost died while delivering her children and then lived longer for them than was humanly possible.

Packed a full life into a half life and never seemed to age.

Left for Heaven and has been reunited with my Crazy Grandmother. 

Well, they've probably been separated by now.

In Honor of

Paige Porter Hyatt

1965-2016