Local Windmill 'de Hoop' = 'The Hope", Sprundel

Busy with the genealogy project today, but not intensively.

Maybe I'm adjusting after the schoolyear.  Maybe it's the heat.  Maybe it's all the horrific happenings and the resulting negativity.  Maybe it's a combination of all these.  Whatever it is, I have been unable to sleep well.  I notice that I'm not sleeping deeply enough.  I go to bed with a whirl of worry what-ifs in my head and I wake up quite unsettled.  Maybe it's because I realize hubby and I are much older and may have a more difficult time adjusting to any sudden changes that may occur in the society we live in.  We're not exactly old foggies yet but we're definitely no longer in our 20s.  A certain source of anxiety is the realization that 'our' government can do nothing for us and that it never could.  We've always had to earn our living, no question about that, and no problem, but we need to accept the fact that no one has our back.  We're looking at what's going on elsewhere and comparing it to the situation here, and it's exactly the same.  What is the difference?  The Neth hasn't been bombed yet, but in whose hands is that?  One incident is all it takes to ignite the far right and if elections were to be held now, they would win and they know it.  What power, if any, do we still have to live our own lives?  Or are we just puppets on a string?

Well, to calm myself, palpitations and shortness of breath and all, I try to focus on thankfulness -- we've been so lucky, so fortunate, and we've been okay, so far.  One year at a time, one day at a time, one breath at a time.  In these troubled times, every moment you make it through is gold.  I'm convinced of it.  I also believe it has always been that way, even since the end of WW2.  When haven't we been at war?  The 60s, 70s and 80s provided sufficient distraction, despite Vietnam and Cambodia and the Iron Curtain, but it has always been there and everything that goes with it -- discrimination, bigotry, hate, the gap between the haves and the have-nots, greed.  Now, globalization and digital communication have made it worse.  The far right have never disappeared.  And then there's the rest -- the terrorists, the radicalized, the dispossessed.  I have the feeling we should never have allowed ourselves the little bit of complacency we thought we deserved after the war.  But then, when haven't we been at war?  And now, after years of thinking it only happens elsewhere, it is here playing itself out on our streets, our cafés, our trains, our theatres.

Now that this is on the blog, maybe I will be able to sleep tonight.  In the end, my only demon is my own fear.  So.  And now I say, 'So what?'  We are still here.

Some extras for us all!  Shot between Sprundel and St. Willebrord.