Today after a brief court appearance, I will drive back to Brookside to exercise the right for which Susan B. Anthony suffered beatings and incarceration.  Then I will spend the day as a tiny part of a massive voter protection effort designed to insure the peaceful exercise of the right to vote around my city.

I have no complaints about this great, wonderful nation of ours.  We have freedom of speech and religion; freedom to marry whom we please and travel where we want.  Though at times events seem to threaten or curtail those rights, still, they stand bold and immutable. We rise as one and battle any threat to our individual or collective freedom.

At a Rotary luncheon this past Saturday, I sat with my friend and fellow Waldo Brookside Rotary Club member Baylee Delaurier.  Baylee works for Stop  Hunger Now.  She glanced at my vegetarian entree and asked how it tasted.  Not very good, I admitted, nibbling gummy pasta and over-cooked carrots.  Oh well, she shrugged.  We’ve got food, and warmth, and we’re sitting in a well-lit room at a conference.  I didn’t ask for the comparison.  I know how blessed we are, here in America.

Or at least — how blessed most of us are.  And the most of us, must look out for the rest of us.  Here in America.  Land of the free, home of the brave, where every one of us has a chance to live complaint-free if we all work together.

It’s the eighth day of the thirty-fifth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

My outfit for today, as patriotic as I could assemble.