August 2008 th

Elizabeth Edwards talks to People magazine this week about living life to the fullest and at the same time preparing for the worst as she battles cancer.
Elizabeth tells the magazine she "feels an urgency" to do things like sort through old toys and clothes. She's also got a computer file named "dying letter," a message-in-progress to the three children she will leave behind. It's full of advice such as how to choose a spouse and a church, she says, and was inspired by the movie Terms of Endearment.
Edwards says she has felt no side effects from chemotherapy she started two months ago and is losing weight because she wants to, not because she's ill. She's got two benchmarks coming in July: a bone scan that will tell her how well her treatment is working, and her 30th wedding anniversary on July 30, when she wants to be able to fit into her wedding dress.
You may remember that John and Elizabeth Edwards held a press conference in March to tell the country that the breast cancer she discovered at the end of the 2004 campaign had metastasized to her bones. They said John would continue in the Democratic presidential race and Elizabeth would be active on the campaign trail. Elizabeth wrote an account of her illness and her eldest son's death at 16 in the best-selling book Saving Graces.

August this year will be known for the Press focus on: The Olympics in China...Americans killed and mobbed; John Edward's love affair & illegitimate baby scandal, and his wife Elizabeth's answer via her brother and friends in "People" mag. above; the Democratic Party Convention sans the former...but including Bill Clinton who is the all time winner of love affairs and disloyalty; War and more War; recession and hard times in the US while Bush is sending more troops and aid to Iran, Georgia and Afghanistan, confronting Russia, and allowing HIV immigrants to come into the US so we can put them on our welfare and medicare tickets...which means more of our taxes all around spreading thinner. Our taxes pay for illegal aliens' healthcare and welfare when they don't even speak our language and expect to have social services speak Spanish...and our own soldiers and their families have to struggle for proper healthcare coverage and hospital care!! It's an outrage!!

Higher oil prices, home and business forclosures at record highs, stockmarkets down at lowest since the 1920's. Joblessness that is demoralizing men and women across the Nation. More crime, more murders, more suicides, more bankruptcies... Medical care waining as more healthcare assistants and doctors are either leaving the profession, or students are deciding not to become doctors because of the gov't restrictions on healthcare and insurance being put on them. More frustration with our own government leaders and the losses our own country is feeling.

On the bright side: Babies are still being born. Many families are still holding together. There are thousands of people of faith who have hope in God. The seasons come and go and we find joy in that. Children still laugh and some still don't know the anxieties and stresses their parents face. Football season is coming up. The players still get paid big bucks, as do the baseball, basketball, hockey players and golfers....we know our priorities in this Country...so our husbands, sons and fathers are distracted for another little bit of time. We still have cars and gasoline. But travel is down because of expensive gas. Air travel is expensive & sketchy because of fuel, explosions, higher fees, passengers bumped from flights and delayed for hours or days in other cities, and when the airlines lose money...we fear they don't get new equipment, they just repair things alot... :[ We still have grocery stores, so far, though some are closing. We still have our local banks, so far, though some are failing. We've lost many shops in our area like Starbucks, AC Moore, KMart and others, but we still have WalMart.

Does this sound like I'm mad? Along with alot of my friends, I'm mad and frustrated. I'm sad about the way we've lost touch with our government leaders. We feel as if our Country has become locked in by a dictatorship or something which has set about the destruction of our society to an unbelieveable degree and so quickly that it's impossible to stop it! I feel it's like soaking a thin cookie in hot tea....it's melted away before you can catch it! It's a frightening time in the USA. The presidential candidates are mediocre at best in most peoples' opinions. It's been a vote of "the lesser of two evils" so far in the elections. It's a frightening time such as the older people say they've never seen.

For the first time in 30 years, women friends of my age are talking about walking on the White House in Washington, DC, with plaqards and petitions. That hasn't happened since we were protesting for Women's Rights in the '60's and '70's. No matter who the next president is, he's going to have alot of angry Americans to deal with!

Sorry about the downer, but sometimes people around the world need to know how Americans feel in these times. It's not all stitching and roses over here. The only people who aren't affected as much are the super wealthy...and by that I mean the multi-multi-millionaires and billionaires. Men such as the Bush's and the Exxon execs., and the heads of industry that support the war efforts....people such as that.....

I do feel indignant for Elizabeth Edwards, for the man killed in China and his wife who was stabbed, for the stockmarket thrashing around, and for darling little Caylee Anthony, 3 yrs old, who has been missing in FL for 8 weeks. But, the news just uses these things to distract us from the larger problems at hand. We're in big trouble in this Nation...and we know it. We are becoming the proverbial "camel with its head in the sand."

Deb