So I admit to more than a little anxiety about election results. We COULD get Trumped just as Russia is rattling sabers again and the Middle East is, well, afire! And the planet, of course, is on fire…millions of environmental refugees knocking on doors where people don’t want to let them in.

I’m a die-hard optimist, however, so sticking to these 3 (or more) principles:

We need to listen to each other – do YOU understand the great differences between say, Catholics and Muslims? Or how we are alike? One hint: If we’d stop bombing Muslims and help several stricken countries heal, we might begin to lose our label as Terrorists of the West (or whatever label you believe fits).

We need to create jobs where there are none or few – and stable, solid jobs that lead to home ownership and college attendance. Suggestion on last night’s World Affairs Council was huge number of infrastructure jobs could be created a’ la the Roosevelt presidents. Robert Reich this week opined that Hillary COULD become a modern day Roosevelt. THAT would be good.

Bill McKibben at this year’s Bioneers Conference incited us all to Give It All You’ve Got to stop and reverse the major crisis of our age, climate change. If the front runner, Hillary Clinton, is elected President, we have a heap of work to do, he warned, to push her to make good on whatever she can of the Bernie Sanders’ inspired Democratic Platform, considered by many to be the most progressive in recent history or perhaps ever. Hillary, we are reminded, does believe the science about climate change and it is assumed she will take major steps to combat it. If we get Trumped, the scenario is scarily worse – he’s a climate change denier.

From the ):
“…America’s most well-known climate activist (is) really, really worries about the possibility of electing Donald Trump, whom he calls “the worst choice that we’ve ever had” in an election. “It’s quite possible to me that we may lose the climate fight anyway,” McKibben said. “If we’re going to, I’d just as soon not do it living in a semi-fascist state to boot.”
Of course, McKibben, who teaches at Middlebury College in Vermont, was and is a big supporter of his “neighbor” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who was Hillary’s main primary challenger. In fact, Sanders put McKibben on the Democrats’ 15-person Platform Drafting Committee, which in turn ended up very green.

McKibben spelled out some of his views on the election last month in a Nation article, “The Climate Movement Has to Elect Hillary Clinton — and Then Give Her Hell.” The key point is whatever you think about Clinton, “she can be pressured,” whereas Trump is “an ecological and moral disaster.” …So why are many of us out there working to beat Trump and elect her? Because Trump is truly a horror. He’s man who looks at fourth-grade girls and imagines that he’ll be dating them in ten years. He’s a racist. He knows next to nothing and lacks the intellectual curiosity to find out more. He’s a bully. He’s almost a cartoonish villain: If a writer invented a character this evil, no one would believe them. But he’s very nearly president.

(me again) Hillary (I believe wrecklessly) said of environmentalists “Get a life”? We’ve got a planet, just one.

So I’d say stay close to your friends and family, take excellent care of body and spirit (yours) and pay attention to those who would harm you but with compassion. We’re going to need heaps of that to help heal a very frightened, seething world.

Here in Sonoma County? It’s GORGEOUS and I’m now going out to vote (after I find a new home for the pony next door).