The below simple painting was committed to canvas by me in Havana, Cuba as a reminder that somewhere other than where I was at, flowers grew, children played, and people lived in freedom. It’s not a masterpiece, but everyday I would look at it and smile knowing one day I would walk away and claim my rightful place because I was not trapped as I was an American. Actually, I was supposed to be in Nicosia, Cyprus but when the need was the greatest for someone to go to Havana, I rolled up my sleeves and jumped in the trench. Having been on the Pentagon compound when some fool tried to fly a jet through the building, something in me questioned how bad could it be?

It was worse than anything I could ever imagine, because the tender-hearted Cubans live daily under a totalitarian government with most never having known anything else, totally without personal freedoms or liberty, and are given the barest necessities of life. Truly, they are treated as second class citizens, but the thing is, they rarely complain and are thankful for the tender mercies that sometimes are bestowed on them.

The two events coming one after the other left me somewhat jaded and cynical, and put a bad taste in my mouth I believe is mine to have forever. These days I live on a sixty acre farm surrounded by cornfields, and although its a mundane existence there does come a sense of contentment living in such a rural environment.  I never worry about jets flying through my windows as we sleep, or terrorists hanging out in the cornfields, although, coyotes and deer use our yard for a runway to the woods, and I worry about ticks and Lyme Disease.

So here I am watching the aftermath of the Election and the chaos resulting from a win apparently no one expected, and I wonder what the hell is going on. Its just an election, WE have them every four years, and if you don’t like the outcome get off your duff and go vote the next time. The biggest surprise seems to be the middle of the United States from the upper Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico who did go vote, and it seems the East and West Coast were caught unaware because they forgot we were here. In a sense, they viewed us a second-class citizens, but given a voice we knew what to do with it. This system we live in is a democracy, and everyone gets a say, but it seems the biggest outcry is coming from those who did not vote and undocumented persons who cannot vote, although, as usual, dead people were voting in Chicago.

Is it me, or is there something wrong with this picture; people who didn’t even vote throwing temper tantrums like spoiled brats, and making absurd demands they will never get.