Usually I write the story first and then look for a song for the title. This time I picked the song first. It is the third week in January, the week between Martin Luther King’s birthday and the ending of the Obama Administration. I feel like it is the last week before our country descends into hell. I am trying very hard to believe we will be able to come back out of it, to overcome, not just some day but before the damage is irremediable.

I first learned the song We Shall Overcome when I went to Lincoln Farm Work Camp as a teenager. We learned all the songs of the Civil Rights movement, and sang them in multi-part harmony. We even performed an oratorio about the I Have A Dream speech, which I can still sing somewhat fifty-plus years later. (For more about this wonderful camp, see my story Summer Memories.) The world was changing for the better. The movement was making great strides, it seemed, and discrimination would soon be a thing of the past. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society had room for everyone.

By the time I got to college, the antiwar movement had replaced civil rights as the main focus of protest, at least in my world. When we went on strike in the spring of ’69, we started out with 6 demands, 3 related to getting ROTC off campus, and 3 related to stopping Harvard’s expansion into working class neighborhoods. When the black students joined us, we added a 7th demand, for the creation of an Afro-American Studies department. I do believe that all these demands were met. This led me to think that we really could overcome. Power to the people! Big bad Harvard University actually listened to us.

Even Richard Nixon, the President who seemed the personification of evil, was not unaffected by protesters. He finally brought all the US troops home from Vietnam as a result of the years of protest. He resigned from the presidency to avoid being impeached after Watergate. Funny to think that Nixon seemed like the worst thing that could happen, and now he looks benign compared to the incoming President.

So much time has passed since the Sixties and Seventies, so many battles that we thought we had won. Now, terrifyingly, it is all coming undone.

We are in the throes of a desperate struggle. African-Americans, who had made so much progress, who had even seen one of their own elected President, are losing ground at breakneck speed. Women are also in dire straits. We thought we too were going to elect one of our own, and then this tragedy struck. Now the Republicans intend to take away our right to safe and legal abortions,which we have had since 1973. In many states, between defunding Planned Parenthood and dismantling the Affordable Care Act, they will take away the right to any decent healthcare at all. Blatant discrimination and persecution against the LGBTQ community, Muslims, and of course Jews has been occurring ever since the election. Every day another new horror is revealed.

This Saturday I will join with millions of other women, and the men who support our cause, in the Women’s March, which is taking place all over the country. I have my sweatshirt and I am ready. In some sense it will feel good to be marching again, but not so good to contemplate the uphill battle we are facing. I have to keep singing it to convince myself.

“Deep in my heart, I do believe, that we shall overcome some day.”

I guess this is just getting back to the story of me being a 32 year old baby again I had to learn everything all over how to walk how to write left-handed after being right-handed for 32 years,,, my last 10 days at the civilian hospital I was at Brigham Women’s General where my vertebrae were refused together I had a throat trach that was removed from my throat good chance of damage vocabulary days after it was removed and supposed to be cleaned thoroughly was not had gangrene in my throat smells like something dead crawled up my nose real nasty before I got someone’s attention that something didn’t smell right anyway it was tooken care of and clean properly,parts if neck around the hole nothing but dead rotten flesh or was taken care of Before I was shipped off to a VA Medical rehab hospital in West Roxbury Massachusetts,,,  the title was WEST Roxbury VA Medical Center   …. Before leaving and in the ambulance I had my girlfriend meet me there so before they loaded me I could take that first drag of a cigarette she met me the drivers let her give me some cigarettes I remember taking two Puffs before I was being wheeled back in I thought to the same Hospital but it wasn’t I had been out for 45 minutes the cigarette messed me up bad my stay at this Hospital was a blessing to myself and to all the other patients that came after me because I was a wake up was told they hadn’t had a patient like me in years I was labeled a incomplete quad which meant I had feelings and Sensations even though my neck was broke I pinched my spinal cord between C6 and C7 giving me a two and a half inch screws on my spinal cord the doctors couldn’t exactly say which passageways would heal well today 2017 I have pushed myself and never giving up hope my strength and faith towards the man that died for my sins I got Road up close to 27 times because of my mouth but each time only thing that was recorded was my mouth my statements not that there was a reason behind each outburst I had to sit in a boardroom with the president of the hospital my nurse my lawyer physical therapy occupational therapist kinesiotherapist to decide whether or not to be kicked out of the hospital but once the president heard my reasons for some of the right Up’s he tore up the paperwork and wrote new rules and regulations benefiting patients like me and other patience I was at this hospital for Mom clothes for a year before I was released at my hundred percent that the hospital could do for me I came back and forth for months for therapy before heading out on my own into the world as a totally physically different person and let me tell ya folks, it’s been somewhat of a journey I falling forward busting my head totaling 50 or more stitches 1 fall backwards with a total of 9 stitches to the base my neck and skull and one more car accident total land falling asleep at the wheel going to pick up my mother from the hospital came out of it with no scratches I read in the Bible anger could be used in a good way and it did for me it was only thing that fueled me to better my circumstances and get me out of the position I was in I was going to be getting everything my savior was giving me back and I push for every service that they were giving I left the hospital label to be bedridden not my world soon as I got to the door of my truck I knew was parked in the yard I knew nothing could hold me back except for my savior I have seen life Inn so many eyes from the nastiest places on the street neighborhoods drug infested Street to the most luxurious house you could ever imagine since 2000 I haven’t stopped traveling looking for me looking for my reason my purpose !

The thrill of the hunt, the lure of the new. No, I’m talking about shopping.
Read More

Hello again readers  and again my first attempt to try to write, which I can’t,because I’m partially paralyzed on my right side can’t use my hand move my fingers can use my arm and such, this is from an accident that occurred months after the incident of me getting out of a moving car doing 35 miles an hour like a fool ,anyway this  accident occurred at a friend’s home and property he had a 650 on and off road dirt bike which I loved to ride only thing I couldn’t kick start it it had a air leak in it somewhere my friend weighed over 200 pounds and could kick-start it easily where me it would be one out of 20 kicks was at his house doing a side job when the morning I arrived and we were drinking coffee and smoking some loud when he told me he fixed the bike found the air leak and told me it would be no problem for me to start it so I got up and did so and proceeded to ride it on a track he had through the woods when coming out of the woods in his backyard I attempted a jump which didn’t go as planned I lost control of the bike but holding on to it keeping it from hitting a tree I attempted to stay on it slowing it down which was the last thing I remember before waking up 2 weeks later paralyzed from the neck down ! The report that was given to me from my friend as I came off the hill landed my feet came off the pedals and I was riding the bike like Superman when I hit a tree causing me too fly forward over the handlebars hitting the tree as the bike hit the tree I glanced off to the right luckily the surgeon said by me not having a helmet on probably saved my life I crushed C5 and broke C6 and C7 they had to fuse my vertebrae together with three titanium 8 inch plates, the surgeon that fused my vertebrae together told my girlfriend I had a 1% chance of ever moving below my shoulders ! Could anyone ever imagining after 32 years waking up and being told you’re never going to move again below your shoulders ? Can anyone even imagine the thoughts that can run through someone’s mind as they lay there and can do nothing but think can’t talk because you have a trach in your throat can’t scream all you can do is lay there and cry 4 day after day that is all I did then 20 some days later I barely moved my left big toe and that is where my 32 year old baby experience started !