What ever happened to 2007?

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There's a bird chirping outside my window this Monday morning, New Year's Day 2007. He is chirping a sweet unencumbered song, happy to have survived the deluge of fireworks that exploded all over the neighborhood last night. Sweetly unencumbered, not aware, of the malaise of hate and division, killings and wars being spread on this planet by the United States very own son of Bush. Sweet bird chirping so innocently, not aware that he could be the next victim of this Bush world just because global warming might wipe away his tree to rest on, or the food he eats, or the luscious green of the landscape from which he draws his straw to make his bed for his children to come. There is a bird chirping outside my window, so innocently unaware that Bush is a butcher, a barbarian, a man pathetically void of compassion or empathy for any sort of life that he might just well take a rifle and hunt down a bird or two just for the sake of hunting, just to sow or show his prowess ... just like the propagandistic prowess he likes to flatulently flaunt when diarrhea comes spilling out of his mouth: "terror, terrorist, killer, killings, hunting, hunter, hunted ..." There is a bird chirping a sweet song outside my window-my window and yard beneath it filled with the early morning mist of life and the promise of a New Year into which we carry the baggage of the Bush maladministration and the Bush Crime Family. I wish I could feel as unencumbered as the sweet innocent bird singing outside my window at the start of this New Year. I don't. I already feel dragged down by the weight of unfinished baggage, the enormity of all which has to be righted by a democratic congress which promises to do much but does not have the spine to confront Bush, or his Crime Family, or speak truth to power. I feel dragged down by a congress which seems to be emulating Gerald Ford's silence not only over Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq, but over Bush's dismantling of our constitution, his creationism of a spy system to spy on Americans, his fear mongering and fear planting, his upper hand. I feel just about an almost certain hopelessness in a congress which buys into the Bush fear planting and lets him goad them into the incredible position of, "you are with us or you are with the terrorists" ... a bullying he may have learned when he told his father something about going, "mano a mano" over some differences of opinion between the two of them regarding Bush's drinking and/or higher education prospects or projects. There is a lull. A certain empty hole, a something that brings no anodyne to mind when I think about how the propaganda media, the empty talking heads, are sweeping 2007 under the rug and fast forwarding the year to the end of 2008 when a new president is supposed to be elected. And yet, has the propaganda media been paying attention? It is Paul Levy who has said, "Bush has no intention of voluntarily leaving Iraq." Does anyone believe he has any intention of vacating the oval office? The Bushes want power. They want power so bad they are willing to send 3,000 young men and women to their death without batting and eyelash. They are also willing to hang Saddam Hussein for crimes in which Hussein was their paid for accomplice. They want power so bad that the elder Bush has said that if Hillary runs he will beat the hell out of her if she runs. There is so much to be settled in 2007 and to be made clear and yet, so many are already sweeping it under the rug. Treating it as an inconvenient comma, an inconvenient parenthesis wedged between 2006-a year for which we Americans have much to atone for-and 2008, a year of good expectations but only if we play our cards right. I, unlike the bird chirping outside my window, start the new 2007 year, not with hope, but with a question in my heart. Why is the propaganda media, and why are the talking heads, hiding 2007 away, locking it in some dungeon, away from light and away from life?

Authors Bio:
E.T.SIMON ... Keeping the Bio Real and Transparent ...
E. T. SIMON is more often like a transplanted palm tree from the land of Santiago de Cuba where she was born to a Cuban, Tulane University, lawyer educated father and, a Mississippi, mother, great-granddaughter of American Revolutionary War hero, Brigadier General Andrew Pickens who is credited with the victory against the British in the Battle of the Cowpens. Although at times, E.T. Simon is more like, the fruit of the pecan of her Mississippi grandparents pecan farm of long ago, or even like the Sycamore so firmly rooted in the Florida Peninsula. As such, the daughter of bi-cultural, bi-lingual parents, E.T. Simon navigated the bi-cultural ties, bi-lingual shores of her birth, while learning to appreciate Cuban and Southern cuisine and cultures, from a very early age.

At the age of 15, two years after her mother's death, she dreamt about running away from her home to join the , "Bohemians" of the 1950s in New York's Greenwich Village and become a writer. She did not. In 1961, at the age of 18 her father sent her across the pond to her mother's family in Mississippi in an effort to keep her from falling prey to Fidel Castro's repressive agents who were on her trail for her opposition to Fidel Castro.
Bumpy rides, or not, In 1976, E.T. Simon, after twelve years of part time studies, with in-between times-off for parenting, obtained her B.A. in English with a Major in Literature and a double minor in Psychology and Philosophy. In 1985 she obtained her Master's Degree in Counseling and in 1987 her License in Marriage and Family Therapy.
Her quest to pursue a MFA in Creative Writing was derailed when a stuffed shirt Chaucer Literature Professor graded her paper on The Prioress Tale short of the A she needed to establish her credentials in the MFA Creative Writing Program, even while receiving the support of the Academic Dean who told her with a certain urgency, "don't stop writing. You'll find a way."
Prior to pursuing her graduate studies in counseling, Ms. E.T. Simon joined a Creative Writing Group where she honed in on some of the art and craft of writing and had the pleasure of attending poetry readings by Tess Gallagher, Denise Levertov, Rutabaga Rose and others.
Following her 1985 graduation, Ms. E.T. Simon proceeded to work as a counselor/family therapist until 1998 when, following surgery, she became a near recluse and has remained a near recluse for the last twelve years or so.
It was during those years that she worked as a counselor/family therapist that Ms. E.T. Simon learned that grief is a powerful agent which often contributes to the derailing of families; that human hearts can bury grief for generations and generations with the grief popping up unexpectedly as a symptom anywhere, sometimes even in someone else further along in the generations.
Ms. E.T. Simon also learned that when careful unearthing of buried grief happens and a person is enabled to truly grieve the pain of a loss they have been holding on to for years, then rebalancing of the derailment takes place and true healing occurs.

Writing is a lifelong love of E.T. Simon's, and whether she kept her writings buried in dusty drawers, or shared them with university professors, writers' groups, editors, or published them, the writer's flame burns undying in her. The flame of truth also burns in her along with the need to stand up for the underdog, of which, today, she finds herself to be one. This blended well in her throughout her years of computer activism for peace and social justice.

E.T. Simon's articles have been published under the name of TERESA SIMON-NOBLE, the pen name of ELENA DUMAS; and at times, under the additional pen name of SKYAGUNSTA, or SKYAGUNSTA PICKENS, both of which are a direct reference to her great-great-grandfather Brigadier General Andrew Pickens who was named "Skyagunsta," by Native Americans who came to appreciate him as a man of conscience. Please also know that whether the articles have been signed with one name, or another; with a pen name, or another, the writings have always come straight from my heart, my perception, and my core values.
In other words, it has always been me, and only me, writing the articles.