Good morning! My month in Portugal seems to have put me in permanent vacation mode, which is probably not a bad thing, but not productive in political terms! I hope you have been enjoying the summer wherever you are. Our visits with long-time friends and family in Portugal were heartwarming in so many ways, and it didn’t take long for the questions about DJT to surface. “When will he be gone?” “Why are the Republicans supporting his lies?” “How long do you think he will be in power?” “Are you going to move?” All legitimate questions, and ones that many Americans ask themselves every day. The briefest description for what it’s like to live here, as a political progressive in the U.S. at this time was and still is “Every day it’s a new nightmare.” But we can’t sustain healthy lives by living the nightmare every day and so we do what we can to counter the attacks on our freedoms and then continue to enjoy life as best as we can. I hope you are able to turn off the nightmares, too, and live life as it is meant to be.

For today, I have no action to send along. If the politicians can take a break, at a date of their choosing, so can we. I will do some research and send upcoming noteworthy actions. Happy summer! Betty

And now the music:
After the trip to Portugal, when I sat down at the piano I was restless. I couldn’t slip back into Chopin’s melodies, or Mozart’s clarity. I needed something jarring, dissonant, almost percussive—something that fit the turmoil I felt in reading about our political climate. I found it in Prokofiev. He knew about jarring political turmoil, living through WWI, WWII, the Russian Revolution, and civil war in Ukraine. His first major composition, the premiere of his Scythian Suite in 1916 was met with a mix of silence and angry protests from the audience due to its harsh, dissonant, and “barbaric” style. But Prokofiev succeeded in incorporating this part of his creativity with the innate lyricism shown in “Romeo and Juliet” and the joy of “Peter and the Wolf.” This piano Etude in d minor, the first of four in Op. 2, fit the bill for my musical, emotional and political needs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hZK8TwWPvE&list=RD5hZK8TwWPvE&start_radio=1