My mother is obsessed with the Pope. Of course she is. She’s 86, Catholic, and Polish. She’s had the Global Catholic Network filling the television screen full-time since Wednesday, when the Pope began his visit to his homeland.
Hey, we all have our obsessions, and she’s certainly welcome to hers. But what’s driving me crazy, is she tries like crazy to make it mine. She wants every episode of his trip videotaped, but, of course, she doesn’t know how to work a vcr, even if I set it to the channel and tell her to press “record” when she wants to start taping.
And it’s not just the Pope. It’s everything she believes that I don’t; everything she sees as desirable that I don’t. It’s been like this all of our lives. So, why, my friends often ask me, am I doing this.
Why do I live across the hall, almost constantly available to someone I wouldn’t have as a friend if she weren’t my mother? My only answer is — because she is my mother. When I needed her financial support she was there for me. When my kids got sick and I had to go to work, she got on a train and came up to take care of them. She’s my mother. In my family, we take care of our old people for as long as we can.
It just seems so bizarre to me these days. My country’s a mess. We are on the verge of destroying the planet. Yet, each day of my life is a separate reality, a world unto itself — decisions to be made, appointments to keep, food to prepare. I do what has to be done and find small ways to give myself something to keep myself going. I blog. I take sewing workshops (just started making a “bog coat”). I get ready to sell my shawls and hats at what probably will be my last craft fair. I begin taking over a partnership in a local dance magazine for which I write — which will mean more writing, more editing, learning how to do some things in Quark, and getting out to cover dance events in the region. I keep trying to create a life that has creative meaning for me around an existence that has at its core major responsibilities for taking care of someone who adds very little to what my life is or can be.
I tell my friends that, if there’s such a thing as karma, I’m building up some major stash of it. And, if there isn’t, well, I guess I will feel that I’ll have done what I believe was the right thing to do. Because I do believe in the golden rule. Because I can’t save the world, but I can make one person’s life — at least the last part of it — a little easier.
But I’m sure glad this Pope stuff is going to be over today. Then she can just play the tapes over and over again. She does know how to press “play” and “stop.”

Burningbird pointed to an Open Letter to America from a Canadian published in the Baltimore Chronicle that holds the mirror of truth up to the face of America. I don’t disagree with anything he says. No wonder I’m depressed. This is only some of what he sees reflected out to the world by this sad excuse for a free democratic nation:
With your government’s support, crooked multinationals like Monsanto buy up the world’s water supplies, and take possession of the world’s vegetation through Frankenstein technology already known to cause illness.
Does the FDA care about any of this? It does not. It has long been on the bandwagon to foist genetically altered food on the Guinea Pigs of the country–including every man, woman and child on America’s increasingly toxic soil.
You are a nation of suckers, America, to be bled dry of your hard-earned pay through outrageous bank schemes, Wall Street rip-offs and fake government budget grabs. Your Pentagon cannot account for trillions in lost dollars.
Does this bother you? Not in the least.
Your whole economy is controlled by what is for the most part ravenous, international private banking interests in the form of The Federal Reserve, which with your government’s consent leads you down the garden path to certain financial ruin thanks to a national debt you will never be able to repay.
How is it that private banks are responsible for issuing your currency? How is it that they are allowed to charge ridiculous interest rates on what they issue? By decree, this was supposed to be the responsibility of your government, which could create its own currency without charging interest.
Do you realize your congress could dismiss these banks in an instant if it so wished? But don’t ever count on it. More important matters are pressing. The upcoming election needs investment.
These very same money men are the ones who, through unmonitored and unrepresentative world committees, are driving countries like Argentina into hopeless debt and social upheaval. These greedy overlords are creating strife and suffering on a scale too tragic for words in nation after nation. Just look at Africa.
Read the rest here. It’s the end of the world as we know it. And I don’t feel fine.