Kerry and President Obama

This was taken in the Presidential Holiday Inn in Little Rock. The lobby was like a little museum with photos, articles and other presidential memorabilia – both Republican and Democrat. My husband has a Flickr and Getty Images website https://www.flickr.com/photos/zeesstof/ Don’t look at his photographs – they are better than mine. 🙂 He often posts photographs of me and I was highly amused that he had to block yet another person who ‘liked’ me a little too much… He blocked the person (who was female!) when he looked at her R (X) rated site. I know I am wearing shorts (expensive J Crew shorts) but it was very hot in Little Rock. It was hardly ‘Reader’s Wives’!

Happy 4th July

HAPPY 4TH JULY!
Last week I received a parcel in the mail which included a certificate and this beautiful bronze medal. This is my reward for volunteering for X amount of hours in the US. If it included all the volunteering I have done in my life it should be platinum and diamond encrusted. Not that I am one to boast…

When I reflected on when and why I started volunteering, it was when I was offered the choice of community work or physical sports at school. I am, and always was, pretty fit and even athletic at times but hated team sports so this was an easy leap into volunteering. Our first job was to visit an older couple who lived in a senior citizen house close to our school. They had very few visitors and loved our nonsensical chat about school, boys and life. We were the grandchildren that they either never had or never visited.

The two friends that did this with me then decided to volunteer for the Scottish Youth Hosteling Association and went straight onto the publicity committee. For me volunteering just fulfilled some desperate need. My family were good neighbors and citizens but were perplexed by this need to volunteer. “Why don’t you get a paid job?” I did have various paid jobs – working in the fast food industry, hospital kitchens, cleaning; all while I was studying at college. If I look deep into myself, it was an opportunity to be a good person, following all the rules that had been taught to me in the Catholic Church, but it was also a way to shine in an occupation without all the restrictions and criticisms of a paid job. Once I started I couldn’t stop and sometimes it was advantageous to my career path and other times not. Let me list them.

• The Downs’s Syndrome Association
• Homeless People
• Dementia Patients
• Community Internet work
• Rural Transportation
• Psychiatric Hospital
• Airport
• Animal Shelter
• Community Center

Some of these crossed over with paid work that I did with non-profit organizations but they were always at a slight tangent to give me perspective with life in general. My bronze medal is a beautiful thank you but all I really need is for the people I help to appreciate it. After some thought, I decided that I would probably never work in the field of drug and alcohol abuse because I could feel so little empathy or thanks.

I try very hard not to have my volunteer work made public and find it hard to understand those who do. A year or two ago, I attended a fancy event to benefit some charity. It was such a waste of money and time. Many of the people who attended were there for photo and social opportunities casting a dark shadow on the original intent of the charity. My father in law was a both a devout Christian and Rotarian. We had many conversations about the intent of the Rotary Club. I have no doubt that their scholarships and charitable donations have helped thousands of people but I feel unsettled about charitable work that has a really obvious benefit to the giver. Not only do you have the status of belonging to the group but you benefit from connections to each other and a social club. It sits badly with me and the Rotary Club is just one example of many other groups like that.

I accept that volunteering almost always gives us something tangible back but the intent should be fully giving without receiving anything, even gratitude. There is always someone who does something utterly remarkable such as opening their homes to complete strangers during Hurricane Katrina. In Egypt I was in awe of the volunteers who volunteered with working horses in deplorable conditions or illegal refugee prisoners from Sudan mostly. Sometimes I worked on the periphery, donating funds or a reference to a refugee who had been offered citizenship in a Western nation because they were penniless or employing someone from a poor African nation that did not have refugee status.

My husband and I give generously to a variety of charities benefiting animals mostly but most of my current volunteering is with humans. I speak a smattering of a few languages and recently someone that I helped asked me to lean down so they could give me ‘besos’ – kisses in Spanish. That is all I ever need.
Happy 4th July and remember to be a good citizen wherever you live.

Kerry xx

Kerry not Charlie

Quelle horreur! There is no good ideology that assassinates someone who is blasphemous. Civilized societies have a legal system to address this. As a writer, I try very hard not to be disrespectful to other people’s religion or ideology unless I find it abhorrent. I am a humorous writer so sometimes I may poke gentle fun at a culture or religion. In all honesty, having lived in an Islamic culture, I do not understand why cartoonists would show an image of Prophet Mohammed when they know how offensive that would be but free speech allows them to do so. Living in Texas, I often feel that free speech regularly slides into hateful rhetoric and is used as an excuse to spread repugnant ideas. Small acts can accelerate hatred between opponents. I live in a predominantly Republican area and some people who had VOTE OBAMA bumper stickers had their cars scraped by keys. No wonder we have so many social problems in the USA. I am full of grief and sadness for the current events in France and all the murdered victims; their relatives and the mostly innocent Muslim French population who will now be discriminated against, further aggravating the situation. When I was a teenager the IRA and Loyalist (Irish Catholics and Protestants) were actively terrorizing the UK and Ireland. I went to a Catholic school in a predominantly Protestant city and our school had regular bomb threats. At the time, I felt that there was no solution to a centuries old problem but life has changed and I married someone from a Protestant family in a civil ceremony. COEXIST.