I had intended to research and write a post while the baby napped this afternoon. I did a quick Google, read two sites that did exactly what I was hoping to do with my post, and then gave in to the pressure to finish the cleaning project in the dining room.

My dining room is a lot less cluttered now, and if we ever find the money for a wood stove, the space is ready for it.

You do not, however, get a well researched and argued piece about how to read news stories skeptically. If you would like that, I found this piece from the American Press Institute that gives you six questions to help evaluate a news source.

Mondays are hard days for me to gather my thoughts. They are the days when I get the chores done and play with the baby. Mondays are days off, but not days of rest.

Two thoughts for this Monday:

One of my friends posted Kali Holloway’s essay, “Stop Asking Me To Empathize with the White Working Class” and asked for comments.

Before the election, I read this article on Cracked (I know! See above about evaluating news sources; turns out Cracked has some actual news! Or, at least, thought-provoking opinion) that attempts to explain Trump’s appeal to a certain segment of the white working-class population. And I definitely think that there is something to the idea that this population feels unheard and left behind. And that sucks, and something needs to be done about it.

But I confess that my initial response to that segment of the population was closer to Holloway’s.

What I struggle with is how to talk to that population in a way that they can hear the message that things are changing and they will be better for changing, too. Just telling them they’re racist and wrong and other people have it worse leads to things like President Trump. At the same time, we as a nation have to face some hard truths about who we are and how we got here, and racism is a big part of that.

I am definitely feeling the burden and the obligation as a white woman to do something about the 53% of us who voted for Trump.

Which leads me to thought #2. I was invited to a brand new, unformed and unfocused chapter of a fledgling activist organization for Litchfield County. I am excited to have a potential tangible way to actually DO something right now. Based on the demographics of Litchfield County, it is likely to be comprised of mainly white women, so this is an opportunity to see how we as a demographic can start to do better.