loving art, science and creative kids

GOLD STATIC 

It requires stamina to wade through the static  interfering with your happiness.

Walking at the Speed of Remembrance:   One of the quiet shocks of aging is the way time begins to accelerate. Memories no longer line up politely in order. They arrive in flashes, scenes tumbling through the mind like leaves caught in a sudden wind. Some are warm. Others still sting.

My earliest memory is of my father leaving for Europe during the Second World War. My grandpa, too old to fight, patrolled the neighborhood streets at night, making sure blackout shades were pulled tight against the windows. Grandma tended a tiny victory garden next to their garage. My aunt and her young son moved into our house. She and my mother counted food coupons carefully at the grocery store, stretching what little they had.

On Saturday afternoons, I was sent to the movie theater where I sat with over a hundred children, watching newsreels before the matinee. Nazi soldiers marched and saluted Hitler. Jewish families were herded into trucks and trains. Books burned in towering fires. On the American home front, we also saw Japanese American families forced from their homes, boarding buses bound for relocation camps in places I had never heard of. I was too young to understand what any of it meant. Only after the war ended did I learn that more than six million Jewish people had been murdered, and that 120,000 Japanese American citizens had been imprisoned by their own government.

For years after the war, I distrusted Germans, even those who may have been powerless bystanders to what was happening around them. At the same time, I believed Americans would never commit such cruelty ourselves. I did not yet know about the internment camps scattered across our own country. I thought only, how could the Germans have allowed this to happen? Then came the Cold War, and fear took on a different shape. The McCarthy hearings ruined the careers of movie stars, artists, and scientists I admired. Newspaper headlines shouted about communism, socialism, the Red threat, and the looming possibility of nuclear war. Schools practiced air-raid drills. Kids crouched beneath desks as if thin wood could shield them from a bomb. My friends and I envied the families wealthy enough to build bomb shelters in their backyards. I was living in Boston then and imagined our city would be among the first to vanish in a flash of light.

When the Cold War finally ended and the Berlin Wall fell, I again found myself asking uncomfortable questions. How had I, a college-educated woman, absorbed so much fear without questioning it? The nations that had lived for decades under the Soviet flag were suddenly struggling for independence. The world I thought I understood had been built partly on propaganda about fighting for peace. Yet the wars did not stop.  Cuba. Korea. Vietnam. Cambodia. Afghanistan. Iraq. Ukraine. Gaza.  This week, Iran. The numbers of the dead blur together: millions here, hundreds of thousands there, depending on who is counting and how the counting is done. Behind every number is a body, a family, a life interrupted. Heaven only knows how many survivors carry injuries that will never heal.

Now, when I watch the devastation in Gaza and see immigrant families sent to concentration centers in our country, I  hear the same questions echoing back to me. How does such suffering become possible? Why does the United States keep fanning the flames rather than putting out the fires? How do ordinary Americans accept what is going on? All my life, I was told these wars were necessary. We were different, our leaders said. We are not cruel. We were defending freedom. We were protecting democracy.  I believed it for a long time.

But age has a way of stripping away simple stories. The world looks less certain now, our country less righteous than it once seemed. Power has concentrated in the hands of the wealthy and the ambitious. Leaders speak openly about expanding influence in Canada, Greenland, Cuba, Gaza, Venezuela, Mexico, as if borders mean nothing. From beyond our shores, many people look at us with confusion. Some with anger. They ask how Americans allowed such a moment to arrive. Are Americans stupid, spineless, or just plain mean? Lately, I find myself asking the same questions over and over.

The memories and the fears keep coming, faster now, as if time itself were urging me not to forget. Despite it all, I believe my countrymen and women are basically good, willing to help each other and those who are less fortunate. They won’t let a few power-hungry billionaires control our democratic institutions—or will they?

The Declaration of Independence states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (and women) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” To me, that means voting for people who will guarantee those rights. It means having the right to pure air, clean water, and a land devoid of pollutants. The good and evil within each of us engage in ongoing fights for superiority. The Rightfully Mine Series was started, in part, to nudge these battles to end on the high ground, benefiting all.

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In the Rightfully Mine novels, readers witness how people balance extremes. The greedy are at times generous, the weak are often strong, and the charitable can be self-centered, harming others. My recently released thriller, Antheia in the Thorns, shows this complexity beautifully. Abdul Dillinger learns how to control others, eliminating threats he deems necessary. Yet he is a loving father, a family man, who is also good to his wife and the mistresses that she does’t like but acknowledges. Jennifer Russo becomes so wrapped up in her depression she can’t see is blind to how her illness affected her husband. Her husband, who used to hike and preserve natural areas, practices law that keeps polluters from being punished. The characters are complex, with egos that occasionally get in their way. There is much to learn about the environment and my books, but there is more to explore about human nature. Advanced copies of Antheia in the Thorns and The Water Factor can be purchased online at AMAZON SERIES

Art is alwasy for sale and shipped free in the continental U.S.  Gold Static can be purchased online at https://www.eichingerfineart.com/workszoom/4268940/gold-static#/