United by Exhaustion: Divided by Dysfunction

April 15, 2020April 15, 2020 / RVSB / Leave a comment

Brief Reflection: South Florida

Day 30 of our self-isolation here at the Bean abode and although our household has been apart from everyone else physically in our Palm Beach County community, we feel as though we’re close to so many others given the collective circumstance we’re all experiencing during this COVID-19 global pandemic.

The first time I wrote on this subject of Covid-19 and most U.S. students’ lives being drastically changed we were having a full moon here —last week we had another full moon, and so life continues for the planet even while it seems it’s in an uncomfortable stasis.

Looking Around

Based on what I read in the news and social media coupled with communication between family and friends, it seems we are all in a fog of recognition that a great deal of change to our behavior has occurred in most everyone’s lives in the last several weeks in our American Republic.

Our social media feeds include random posts of photos to help distract, memes for medicinal laughter, media links to help educate, invitations to gather virtually—and then sometimes, for some of us like myself, we end up turning off our phones and other electronic devices to just take a break from it all.

Right Now: April 15, 2020

Wacky Wednesday…time to clean out the bathroom!

It’s Wednesday, “hump day”, the day that most workers during the week would herald as one to push on through and afterwards enjoy the “downhill” slide to the end of the work week. Today Wednesday is the day that most parents and caregivers woke up and could hardly see straight or move their broken bodies to keep up with the frenetic pace that their little ones (or even teenage ones) began this day with–ah, to be young again.

As a homeschooling mother of three children: respectively aged 11, 9, and 5 years old, I would like to take a quick moment to tell you that if you are a parent/caregiver to any child(ren) during this time and are having to deal with having them home when usually they would be at school: You. Are. Amazing! Please, give yourself grace and hug them as much as you can every day. This is a temporary period and there will come a day when the old routines will return.

Truly, there is no playbook for what is happening these past few weeks, and no matter if you have a background in education or have kids at home for your own curriculum or virtual school anyway— this collective arrangement is completely new to us all. It’s an overwhelming, bittersweet blessing in some ways and we cannot judge each other for however we manage our homes over the matter.

It’s Tax Day too. Good thing there’s an extension for those who haven’t filed yet!

Trying to Look Ahead

Our nation is united in a state of suspended grief and continuous exhaustion. We’re all trying to find our new normal after altering our habits. It’s said that it takes humans about 30 days to break a habit and about 30 days to make new ones—so here we are.

Unfortunately, as the coronavirus fatigue wears on, our federal and state elected officials are having a challenging time with how to coordinate efforts to help our healthcare and first responder workers along with trying to balance the adverse effects on our economy as a whole.

There is article after article citing the difficulties that American families are facing economically, mentally, and the long-term effects expected for our children. How can we as parents/caregivers see straight some days as we collectively squint ahead on what our new normal routines will be going forward?

There is a feeling of helplessness that can take hold and yet thankfully we can take stock of our immediate surrounding as well as our greater community to see if there is anything we can do to help. Obviously, staying put has been most helpful in areas trying to “flatten the curve” as we’ve all learned—but we need to be more active and there are ways we can do more with all the 21^st century tools we have.

No Time for Politics and Yet It’s Time for Politics

Old girl learning new ways to work to help others…

For those of you reading that know me, I have worked for congressional Republicans on Capitol Hill in the past. For my last paying job before I gave birth to my first child, I was honored to serve as a political appointee in the George W. Bush administration as a worker for Secretary Henry Paulson’s office. Watching from afar the respective Obama and now Trump administrations has been a rollercoaster ride for folks like me who were once part of the inner-workings of our federal government.

I’ve often defended both Democrats and Republicans in the various federal offices because I trust that many mean well for our nation, even if I don’t necessarily agree with their political stances. Then there are moments like this Covid-19 global pandemic that serve to fleece all those in elected positions of power and reveal who among us are the compassionate leaders and who are the consistently inconsistent ones that voters need to re-examine closely should they run again.

Joe Biden is the presumptive nominee for the Democratic party in the run for President of the United States this year. Both Senator Bernie Sanders and former President Barack Obama have come out publicly to endorse him in the past week or two (hard to keep up during coronavirus timeline).

I have made tentative predictions in the past when it comes to presidential elections and although they’ve not been popular ones with some of my Republican counterparts, they’ve stemmed from my assessment of where the American public seems to be emotionally.

Where are Americans now emotionally-speaking?

94-year-old Granddad Bean, WWII mentality during Covid-19, walking daily while self-isolated…

We are united in fatigue. We’re fatigued from the constant bickering between congressional Democrats and the Trump administration from the moment he was sworn in as President of the United States. We’re fatigued from the media’s energies and tax-payers’ money spent on investigating hacking from foreign sources like Russia when it comes to how our 2016 presidential election played out. We’re fatigued from the conspiracy theories that the Earth may actually be flat and that former President Bill Clinton had an active friendship with now-deceased Jeffrey Epstein. Finally, 2019 closed with impeachment hearings and votes by the U.S. House of Representatives and a drawn-out affair in the Senate that yielded no true outcome in President Trump’s “impeachment”. All while Covid-19 had likely already reached our American shores and sickened many without knowing what it was.

If Joe Biden wins this upcoming fall over President Trump, it will be most likely attributed to how tired the American psyche is as a collective and particularly because of who Biden agrees to have surround him in governance beginning with his selection of a running mate—preferably a female for his Vice President selection. While I grant that I’m biased as a woman myself, I don’t believe that women need to run the world entirely, rather that a balance in governance must be struck. 100 years ago, this August we’ll recognize when our federal government said women can vote (but that unfortunately didn’t include women of color). We need both men and women, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents…we need everyone to find a way to balance having constructive debates and at the same time keep our states and nation as a whole moving forward with productive compromises to thrive and grow as the United States of America.

Divided by Dysfunction

There’s no point in my writing about what we’ve all been witnessing as the Covid-19 crisis has unfolded in the last month or so here. Most of us have had much more time to read, research, and simply watch press conferences daily from all sorts of sources.

My prayer and hope as a private citizen today is that we can overcome our division by dysfunction and continue to work toward a better future for our nation and to leave a legacy that our next generation can build on.

In the meantime, I wish good health to anyone reading or a safe recovery to anyone still battling this virus or any other illness for that matter. May we all find ways to make the most of this bittersweet “Pause of 2020” due to the Covid-19 crisis and be able to move forward filled with hope for better days instead of fearing days ahead.

R.V.S. Bean

Some of my past related blog shorts:

https://ceoofthehome.net/2020/03/10/the-true-corona-nightmare-what-if-youre-cooped-up-with-children-and-covid-19/

https://ceoofthehome.net/2016/11/01/united-we-vote-and-slump-clinton-or-trump/

https://ceoofthehome.net/2016/03/16/fog-lifting-america-may-be-ready-for-trump-or-not/

https://ceoofthehome.net/2013/07/15/the-education-revolution-perception-possibilities-and-parents-prerogative/

United We Vote and Slump: Clinton or Trump

November 1, 2016November 1, 2016 / RVSB / Leave a comment

United We Vote and Slump: Clinton or Trump

November 1, 2016

We are a week away from the closing of this 2016 Presidential election cycle in America. If there is one thing that we can all agree on despite of our political party inclinations, age, perception of race, gender and sexual orientation—it’s that we are exhausted.

The Race

There are other contenders for the presidency but that’s not really a serious thought. Our choices are simple and ardently depressing as they can’t seem to cancel each other out effectively to help us avoid the inevitable. Either former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton or Mr. Donald J. Trump must win this election.

My Myopic View

Personally I lead a very busy life that includes perhaps 5 hours to myself per week to ingest information through the reading of newspapers, magazines or just listening to other folks who get to make a living off of speaking their mind with make-up, sharp clothing and bright cable news cameras rolling.

What I see are two major party candidates that have started to sound very much alike and both have such a speckled past that if we wrote a sitcom on them there would be more seasons of material than Cheers, Friends and Seinfeld combined.

It’s belittling at this point to read columnists or listens to news pundits that claim that we the American people are at such odds with ourselves that we’re “hating” on our neighbors and strangers like. Of course I acknowledge that there will always be a subset of people who are unfortunately close-minded and try to strike out at others who won’t think the way they do.

Despite the incessant news cycle, the drunken-like tweet feeds and the stats-on-crack polls I believe that our nation is much more united in philosophy than we’ve been allowed to recognize.

Embedded Florida Early-Voting

As an unapologetic native Floridian I’ve enjoyed deep belly laughs listening to reporters over the years try to figure our state out especially during election season. We started voting last Monday and when I found out from a Facebook colleague I headed over to our local library that very afternoon.

Parents or guardians of young children can feel like an embedded journalist does when present in an active military theatre. I wanted to cut and run countless times, especially when my own 1-year-old started to fling her body onto the cement sidewalk and proceeded to roll for the curb. Visions of the hooded electoral college flooded my mind with doubts as to whether my vote mattered at all in the end.

Making it into the voting room itself finally felt like the sweet victory of your high school homecoming game until one of the volunteers looked at my driver’s liscense and then back at me as if I was an underaged kid trying to buy wine coolers—it struck me later that I judged the poor lady too harshly, I actually looked pretty war-torn and not a bit like the polished, pre-mother of three chick on that ID photo she was trying to compare with the stressed out bag and baby carrier mama in front of her.

The hour spent waiting for the chance to connect an incomplete arrow pointing to my respective voting choices gave me some time to work the public relations front with my fellow dutiful citizens around me. As I made the rounds of apologies, utterances of thanks and friendly exchanges with some of the sympathetic parents/grandparents around us I was able to get an idea of why there were so many people there on the very first day of early voting.

“I just want to be done with it.” “I don’t want to deal with this on THE day.” “ I want to get it out-of-the-way.” “I’m over this election already, just putting in my two cents and finish.” “It’s just the right thing to do.” And my personal favorite, “Stay in line that way you don’t have to try to do this another day.” (directed at me by the sweet soul waiting behind me and letting me know with another lady that my child lost her pacifier in a thicket of bushes next to us)

Character? Please. Next Issue.

Another united moment for us has to be this “character” analysis of Clinton and Trump respectively. Since this is my blog short I reserve the right to pose the idea that perhaps both of them have flaws and less than savory precedents for what Americans seem to have the appetite for in a president. We unanimously seem to dislike these choices before us and yet we’re still voting like it’s the rent or mortgage payment that we must abide by.

Future: Our Children and Grandchildren Have Gotten a Whiff

We’re united in understanding that our social structure as a whole has changed in the light of the rapid/non-stop information digital age. The younger generations among us are united in not understanding how we operated in prior decades without Snapchat, emojis, Facebook public journaling, computers in the guise of a telephone and the list goes on about technologies and softwares that I admittedly have no idea about.

We must move forward no matter what the result of this presidential cycle. Is it possible for us to learn from our prior mistakes in the past couple decades of trashing the incoming POTUS and his/her administration? Can we try to look at our own lives in our own cities and towns and see how much or little we can be involved in the political process even if it’s just volunteering on a subcommittee for your local town council? When will the “They” become “Us” in regard to our governing process in our nation whether it’s at the local, state or national level? Can the wrongs that will inevitably occur become ours to collectively own up to and then pick up together and move forward with better ideas learned?

Vote, Pray and Love.

I encourage everyone that is alive and of legal age to go ahead and vote. Pray for our country, think good thoughts for our nation if you don’t know/believe that something or Someone put our little planet in motion in an ocean of organized chaos. In the end, please have a little love for whomever or whatever political party “wins”. We are all Americans and we will survive what 2016 has brought us and this presidential election cycle will be a historic one full of many lessons for years to come.

R.V.S.B.

Fog Lifting: America May Be Ready for Trump…or Not

March 16, 2016March 16, 2016 / RVSB / Leave a comment

Mama Bean should be asleep or washing more dishes but my philosophical-political train of thought won’t stop…

The Setting

The morning following Florida’s super Tuesday had most of eastern Palm Beach County drenched in a heavy fog. Literally 10-15 minutes from where I live was where both former Secretary Clinton and Mr. Trump gave their respective victory speeches. The irony of the intoxicating mist in the hours following yesterday’s results was not lost on me.

The Climate

People are tired. People are stressed. I’ve said it to family and friends alike that you only have to look at how people drive on the roads to see the reflection of the public’s emotions played out. (Note: see old blog post for sociology opinion on the matter https://ceoofthehome.net/2012/03/11/driving-exposed-souls/) At the end of every work day, most Americans have hopefully enough energy to feed themselves and loved ones and find peace to go to bed in time for the grind awaiting in the morning again.

The Unthinkable

Both major political parties may be portrayed in the news media outlets as not agreeing on much but I’m confident enough to believe that we may all agree that the last several election cycles have been tiresome with their choices for President of the United States (POTUS). This technological age we live in today also makes personality faults ever-present at the click or tap of a “button”.

The Unreal Reality Revealing

How could we possibly be facing the choice of a former First Lady, turned U.S. Senator, turned jilted 2008 POTUS candidate, turned concessionary Secretary of State to now all-but-crowned Democratic POTUS candidate versus a businessman who could care less what anybody thinks of him including the GOP establishment that he has signed up to represent as he runs for POTUS? With the delegate numbers where they are today, the American media outlets are now a-chattering about the possible ways this can play out for either side.

The Sun Will Set and Hopefully Rise Again

Our nation is big, dare I say “great”. Truly, I’m not worried about who becomes the next POTUS even if the race is down to the major candidates being Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Our country has survived since it declared its independence in 1776 and I believe there is a majority of folks in every U.S. political party that are not about to lay down and allow anyone to take our nation down a lifetime path of being indentured.

Too bad we can’t just run single candidates and make the runner-up the Vice President–it might be refreshing in some ways to force us to learn how to compromise instead of always pitting ourselves against each other. Perhaps we need to start by putting things in perspective and respect the American voting public’s voice in the end, there is little excuse for not exercising personal responsibility to educate oneself about the people running for our nation’s highest elected office.

R.V.S.Bean

Florida, Trump and the moment of truth…

March 10, 2016March 11, 2016 / RVSB / Leave a comment

A Sleepy Homemaker’s Take:

The GOP debate at University of Miami earlier this evening on CNN was a refreshing change in tone from the latest character attack antics we’ve seen–especially between Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz with Donald J. Trump in last month’s debate in South Carolina.

Mr. Trump rightfully had a more relaxed air about him as his numbers favor a victory over his Republican counterparts in the Florida primary come Tuesday, March 15th.

Senator Rubio is very talented but it’s clear already that there’s not sufficient backing for him to clinch Florida at the very least or even come second at the very best. I keep hearing from colleagues and reading columnists that say he needs to bow out to help make this a cleaner two-man race.

Governor Kasich seemed a bit impatient, not that anyone can blame him. He does come to the stage each time with the most experience working in the “system” of local, state and federal government. Unfortunately the collective media and seemingly voting public don’t acknowledge him as a real POTUS contender. Running mate/V.P. candidate? Perhaps.

Senator Cruz is positioning himself to be the contender against Trump. I am too biased to reflect on Cruz simply because it’s difficult for me to listen to him in general. There are those who do listen to him and are supporting him–all are entitled of course to his/her own opinion which is a great freedom available in our nation.

Mr. Trump may have softened his tone in some rhetoric, namely the immigration/work visas, but he didn’t completely water down his stance when it came to the question of Islam or what he thought about muslims in the world. While it could be said that he “changed” his behavior or strong condemnations, he was not any different from the resolute businessman that we’ve seen before in these debates.

I’m a native Floridian and I grew up hearing the name Donald J. Trump. In fact, I lived across “the island” in West Palm Beach. There are many like me who are voting now (early voting) and leading up to our primary this Tuesday. It will be interesting to see what the final numbers turn out to be but my layman’s gut tells me Mr. Trump will win.

At the end of it all, however, whomever is elected President of the United States this upcoming November–either Democrat or Republican–I do believe America as a whole will move on and keep striving to be a nation committed to our principles and hopefully treating each other with more kindness as most folks are working hard to support themselves and their families. Anger and hysteria on either sides of the political aisle will not help heal and unite.

Says a mother of three that tries every day to teach her children how to play fair so that they can work well with others one day as adults in the world,

R.V.S.Bean

Mr. Donald J. Trump: Self-Made American Brand and Unintentional Manchurian Candidate

February 26, 2016February 26, 2016 / RVSB / Leave a comment

Post-CNN GOP Presidential debate before Super Tuesday Redux: 11:52 p.m.

Note: I’m a CEO of the Home (domestic goddess or the antiquated “homemaker”) here in South Florida at the Bean household with husband, children and grandparents asleep and am afforded some strength to write tonight.

I can easily agree that earlier tonight we saw Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz really come alive during the questions and getting into it with Mr. Donald J. Trump. But for lack of a more original assessment, too little too late. The brand has been seared into the psyche of most tired Americans–regardless of political affiliations.

Here’s what you cannot disagree with when it comes to Mr. Donald J. Trump: he makes headlines, he has children loyal to him and vice versa, it may seem he stumbles but he doesn’t fall, he might even be quoted with foul language and harsh words but in the end he makes the deal happen and even if he technically didn’t make the deal happen he is able to put the verbal stamp of approval by Trump himself. In essence, he is a smart man and though he may use simple words and repetitive phrases, most Americans are able to process this in a positive manner.

Simply put: The American political system, namely both Democrats and Republicans, have brought this opportunity to capture the GOP presidential nomination for Mr. Donald J. Trump by a collective ignorance of how most Americans are faring when it comes to their relationship with the government, especially the federal system (let alone their local municipalities).

John Kasich: He still has a place in the federal government, I believe he should be a Vice President nod or Secretary of State.

Ben Carson: Surgeon General? Please step down sir, it is time, but thank you for the gentleman fight.

For those family, friends and political colleagues of mine that are still not understanding how we are on this road now with Mr. Donald J. Trump: I am a native Floridian, I grew up in West Palm Beach and remember his name at an early age and both the ire and desire that it drew from folks irregardless their political or social background.

Despite the way people may feel about him, he is consistent in his manner and although he may seem like an unlikely choice for President of the United States, I ask you to look back at the last several cycles and ask yourself what is the “right” choice for this job? Our country is young and yet we’ve been blessed with incredible technological advances and also weathered some terrible social regressions (think domestic terrorism, chronic racism debates, lack of personal responsibility). Extreme islamic terrorism has come to our land and global neighbors abroad. Our domestic markets have taken hits and the generations following the “Baby Boomers” have names with letters at the end of our alphabet, just like the money that runs out for most of them each month.

Stay tuned America, especially you who like your brand names and your repetitive pop and R&B song refrains: will the 2016 winner of the presidential race bring us a spouse of a dynasty, an America brand businessman or a senator that has little support in general? Recall that our country is struggling with its own form of “bankruptcy” in its extreme debt.

Ramona V.S. Bean

P.S. To the question as to “where are the donors’ or Super PAC’s (sp) voices about Trump: They are not stupid. They are gauging where this is going and they don’t want to be on Trump’s bad side, he does not easily forget.