The eighth episode of the animated TV show, Justice League Unlimited, was entitled, “The Return.” When the schedule was announced, most of the show’s fandom assumed that the episode would feature the return of the character, Shayera Hol (Hawkgirl) who went into self-exile after the failed Thanagarian invasion (Starcrossed (part 3)). Instead, “The Return” featured the return of Doctor Ivo’s android, AMAZO, from the episode, “Tabula Rasa,” who was now on a mission to kill Lex Luthor.
I mention the episode because Luthor’s speech to the android helped me to make sense of three events that occurred last week and chart a course on what I’m going to do about them in the future.
1. Website crash – As it is wont to do, this website crashed last week as it seems to do every six months. For more than half of the twenty year life of this WordPress site, I ran a theme from the defunct company, Pagelines, entitled Whitehouse. I loved this theme. It was beautiful and functional. But it finally gave up the ghost in February of this year. I wrote about it here. I used another theme, Apostrophe 2, by Automattic until last Wednesday. It was functional, but it didn’t grab me. Then my website host offered me the option of “cloning” this site and finding and experimenting with themes and plugins on the cloned site while my original site wouldn’t be touched. To my lasting regret, I jumped on the offer. I made a lot of changes to the cloned site, but then couldn’t upload the changes to the original site and then couldn’t get back into the original site at all. To get back to the current site, I had to force delete the host tools which then allowed me to delete the cloned site so the original site could be back on the internet. Last Thursday, I switched to the current theme BlogHash by Peregines themes. Now I’ll just wait six months for the next crash. (Edited to add – The site crashed again within hours of adding this post. *deep sigh*)
2. Trump’s Re-election – I will admit that the reelection of Donald Trump last week disappointed me greatly. I’ll be honest. I don’t like Mr. Trump. I thought he was wrong for the country in 2016, 2020 and I think he’s wrong for the country in 2024. After my website crashed (see above), I realized that in the 4 years between 2016 and 2020, I wrote about Mr. Trump 25 times, mainly pointing out his constant lying, needless cruelty and distortion of facts. In comparison, in the 8 years between 2008 and 2016, I wrote about Mr. Obama eleven times.
It bothered me that I wrote so much about the former/future President, a man I don’t like, that I literally stopped writing – period. In short, I realize now that I literally gave up my voice because I was so angry about Trump’s behavioral failings and inept handling of the country during the pandemic. This brings me to my third point below.
3. Going to write again – I have a friend who suffered from breast cancer. She has been documenting her journey toward a cure in her own website, Armageddon and Waterloo. As she approaches the end of her curative journey, she wondered out loud about the future of her site once she was cured. I suggested she continue the site and write about about the things that pleased her; that she had a voice and shouldn’t hesitate to use it. It was at that moment that I realized the hypocrisy of what I was saying because I had allowed my voice to be silenced because of a man I didn’t like. So, I’ve said all of this to say, that I will start writing posts again to this website, at least monthly, effective immediately. The posts will be about things that please me because as I said when I started this site 20 years I am the audience I write for. I don’t know how long I’ll continue, but at least I’m starting again. As they say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single footstep…
