Swirling Waters

I liked the way the water was moving over these rocks...made for a nice abstract.  A couple more from the Olympic Penninsula are  in the extras.  They are the Elwa River, Lake Crescent, and  Madison Falls. Thank you all for the stars and hearts and nice comments on Mr. Kingfisher!
     Now I've told these stories before...but I think it's a good time to repeat a couple of them.  I'm very impassioned about the tone of our political environment and how this Pres. elect and his cronies will impact expecially immigrants, people of color and minorities.
   When I was growing up I was best friends with a little boy whose family came to this country as refugees from the then Yogoslavia.  My folks church sponsered them and his family lived over a garage on my Grandfather's tree nursery property.  The actual living space was quite large and was just another "home" to me as a kid.  We  met at two years old and were steadfast best buddies when we began kindergarten together. It was shocking to me that my little buddy was made fun of at school because of his name....Drago Slav Cvetkovic----not funny to me...normal.  But to those who had never heard it before it was different and to be made fun of.  It was hurtful....hurtful to see my friend hurting.  It was then I realized , at a very young age, just how cruel other kids could be to someone different.  It really made an impact upon me ...one I've carried in my heart all these years. 
       We lived in a area mostly composed of white Protestant and Catholic famlies....but once you crossed a main road the neighborhood was almost all Jewish.  And the school I went to was mostly Jewish. When I was five and in kindergarten my second  introduction to prejudice came when a Jewish family moved right across from us.  My mom took us kids over to meet the family and she suggested we walk home with them from time to time as they were new in the neighborhood.  One day walking the girl home, whose name was Rosalie Roth , other kids from further up our street began yelling "Jew Jew" at her and throwing stones at them.  My older brother and I tried to defend her best we could...a small altercation occured and we all ended up hitting one another....well...I was pretty small but I still was trying to push and hit.  I didn't understand why thery were yelling at Rosalie and doing mean things.  But I knew it was wrong and it was mean....this was the early fifties and just post WWII.  My mom was in the hospital at the time and one of my aunts was house sitting us.  She saw us fighting and so when we got home we got into trouble dispite our trying to defend what had gone on.  She took our favorite tv show, Rin Tin Tin, away from us that night.  It took me quite awhile to realize that my Aunt didn't really listen to us and that we really were trying to speak out against this very wrong anti semetic behavior.  These two instances have stuck with me all my life and been a major cornerstone building a sense of justice in me.  
   A third influence was that my Grandfather housed a Japanese family above the nursery offices in the fifties too...at the time I just thought they were just more normal over the office family.  In reality he was giving them a safe haven from being sent off to an internment camp and had lived there for a long time basically in secrecy.   
     So yes I continue to fear seeing my country take this sharp turn toward legalizing discrimnatory behavior...seeing hate crimes on the rise , and hearing national leaders speak of  building walls, clamping down on immigration, deporting millions, changing laws that would strip us of hard earned civil liberties.  See Leonard Pitt's editorail Maybe we aren't alarmed enough here