The Traditions and the Families We Take for Granted

As far as I can remember, Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations were depressing for kids unless it snowed heavily and they could go sledding, ice skating in the streets, and having snowball fights with all the children residing in the apartment complex. Being stuck in a cold apartment, layered to the hilt to stay warm, with nothing to do except read, was really miserable for most kids. We wanted to be outdoors.

It was depressing to watch our parents struggle to find food to cook a special meal for Christmas, for the New Year, and to make ends meet on small state salaries. We were too young, but we understood the word “no” and the phrase, “we can’t afford it.” There was more food in the stores provided for the masses, but the lines were still endless.

Dad always found a small Christmas tree which brought into our small apartment the fragrant essence of fir, bright, shiny colors, and cheer. The kitchen smelled like roasted chicken and pork chops, potatoes, fried sausages made by grandpa, mamaliga (polenta made with yellow corn meal), and mom’s special cornulete (little horns) baked with walnuts, cocoa, sunflower oil, and powdered sugar.

When mom could find beef, she made us a special salad called salata de Boeuf, boiled chopped beef, boiled and chopped potatoes, green peas, and mixed with homemade mayonnaise. The job of mixing the eggs until the mayo took shape was mine on account of my young hands and arms which did not get tired and achy as quickly. We did not have a mixer and frankly, I had never seen one until I came to the United States as an adult. I had never seen any other kitchen appliance or vacuums that most people in the West took for granted.

Mom also made a special Christmas bread, cozonac, with Turkish delights and chopped walnuts folded in cocoa. The loaf was drizzled with a mixture of egg and butter, and it smelled divine while baking in the gas oven.

We were not drinkers, but dad brought home for the holidays two bottles of wine and some plum brandy or rum. It was a tradition to toast the New Year with a full glass of wine in hopes that life in the coming year would be easier and good health and luck would prevail.

We went to grandma’s Orthodox Church in the village on Christmas Eve. When the mass ended, the congregation circled the church three times with burning candles in celebration of Jesus’s birth. The church was empty throughout the year, save for the older ladies in the village who attended regular services, but during Christmas and Easter the church was always full. Those who mustered the courage to attend came to church to praise the birth of Jesus and to pray for a better life.

People shared their extra holiday food with the less fortunate, those alone, sick, widowed, or left without any family.

Christmas time was for families to be home with their loved ones and New Year’s Eve was the time to have a party with the extended family, usually in the country where food and drink was more plentiful. People had gardens and canned a lot, and some raised pigs to feed many at Christmas. It was the time of the year when we had the most protein and everyone shared in the bounty.

Holidays became more sedate as the years flew by and we got older. We have plenty of food now but fewer and fewer people to share it with. The Christmas tree seems lonely without the laughter of children. There is no Bogart to drink the tree water and to sleep under the low hanging ornaments and the twinkling lights. He crossed the Rainbow Bridge five years ago.

Mom died a year and a half ago and her loss changed our lives fundamentally. She was our matriarch, the super glue that kept our small family together. Her happy spirit is always with us. She is finally reunited with my dad in Heaven.

Our people have scattered around the world, with their own families, unable to visit their loved ones. Many passed away. Gone are the times when the children remained in the same village or even the same town with their parents. They have dispersed everywhere for better opportunities and to build their own homes, seldom returning to the place they were born in or spent their formative years.

It is true, you can never go back home, you will not find what you were looking for because life has moved on, but the Christmas traditions we once took for granted will endure no matter where we are, and so will the memories.

Chilly Air, Draft, and Other Superstitions

My people are a superstitious sort. It goes back to our ancestors, the Dacians, to their culture, and the influence that the Romans had upon them when they were colonized and brought into the vast Roman Empire fold. The Dacians had been a thorn in the Roman Empire's side. 

Trajan defeated Decebalus, the king of Dacia, in 105 A.D. and reduced the Dacian capital Sarmizegetusa to ruins in 106 A.D., absorbing some of Dacia into the Roman Empire.

The superstitions and strange beliefs they held have traveled across the centuries into our modern society, i.e., turning around when a black cat crosses one’s path, not walking under a ladder, sprinkling salt over the left shoulder to blind the bad spirits at the dinner table, spitting three times to ward off evil and a bad fate, avoiding the “evil eye” of a blue-eyed or green-eyed person by wearing a red ribbon, not returning home to retrieve a forgotten object once one left the house, not stepping on the threshold when entering a house, and not stepping between cracks of tiled floors, just to name a few.

The one superstition I never understood was the placing of a large and sharp knife under the mattress of an unbaptized child. The knife was to protect the newborn from evil spirits while they breathed the air on earth without the blessing of a baptism. I have no idea how far back this superstition went.

One deeply ingrained belief, still alive today, is that a person with wet hair and without socks exposed to chilly air and draft can become sick. We are not talking about hypothermia as the result of spending hours in the cold and windy elements, just a short exposure to draft and chilly air. And pushing the irrational boundaries even further, eating ice cream or drinking cold beverages with ice cubes would certainly cause a sore throat; my people believe that to be true.

It was not just the occasional nurse, teacher, engineer, doctor, or other professional who held such beliefs, it went all the way to the top of the hierarchy.

After the first President of the socialist republic returned from a Moscow visit with a sore throat, those surrounding him determined immediately that he must have gotten sick from a draft during his travels or from eating ice cream. Only later did his doctors establish that it was a rapidly developing form of throat cancer. The next president that followed him after his death was convinced, according to his Gen. Pacepa, that the Russians had him radiated for insubordination.

The next president took precautions to preserve his voice and throat and drank lots of chamomile tea, an herb containing traces of a mild antibiotic. His irrational fear went as far as to avoid and prevent all drafts and chilly air indoors, including fans and air conditioning. The modern conveniences were specifically banned and removed from all his residences and offices. He went as far as removing the central air conditioning in all public buildings.

On every foreign visit the dictator requested that all air conditioning systems be turned off for the duration of his stay. His employees had to seal off leaky and drafty windows and air vents everywhere that he happened to lodge, sleep, and hold meetings.

Drafts could come under doors, so the doors were plugged if they did not reach the floor. The president and his wife wore silk and cashmere socks, suede slippers, and hunting boots with warmers in them. No chance that the president and his demanding wife, their collective pampered feet, hands, and heads would ever get cold.

They wore the warmest clothes, gloves, finest astrakhan hats, smooth calfskin boots, finest cashmere in every winter garment, while the rest of the population froze in the concrete Soviet era apartments.

Both the dictator and his wife had a wardrobe of 365 suits, 365 dresses for her, 365 pairs of shoes each, 365 purses, hosiery, one for each day of the year. Once they were worn, every item of clothing was incinerated. They even traveled with their own sheets, towels, and food, to cover all bases.

Indoctrination and College Lecturers

The 1960s in the U.S. experienced the expanded efforts by the communist propagandists to bring more youth into the fold of its evil philosophy. The Moscow Declaration of 1960 stated, “There are new opportunities now to draw the younger generations into the struggle for peace and democracy, and for the great ideals of communism.” Communism never had peace nor was it a democracy, it was tyranny.

Sixty-three years later the roots of communism have finally sprouted and exploded around the globe, among the naïve young who were bamboozled and indoctrinated in public schools and universities with empty phrases like “social justice,” "people justice," “racial justice,” “environmental justice,” and “climate justice.”

To the misguided youth, the promise was made that the communist ideology could deliver everything for free, with world peace, prosperity, no injustice of any kind, and perennial freedom. What they were not told, nor did they bother to read or even believe those who survived communism and fled to freedom, was that communism was and still is a form of tyranny, oppression, suppression, property theft, land confiscation, hunger, and imprisonment for dissention.

The indoctrination in the U.S. started in New York City’s communist party headquarters in May 1959 when it was decided to concentrate on colleges and universities around the country to promote Marxism among students. There was a “lecture bureau” in which students were invited to speak to other students around the country about communism. The speakers were taught how to distort the facts and “misrepresent communism in order to create a false picture.”

The academic freedom at the time allowed these indoctrinators to gain “respectability” on the lecture circuit. The students were lied to blatantly about communism. Communist tyranny does not allow freedom of any kind nor freedom of choice.

Nobody asked the question, why was not there one single country in the world where communists were unanimously voted into power in free elections and why were they kept in power by the sheer force and violence of a strong military and a government that confiscated all private guns, homes, land, and private property, leaving people to starve and obey, or else they were sent to gulags.

The international communist movement brainwashed the youth and emphasized the need for violence, force, and revolution to achieve its goals. And the agents were everywhere but especially in colleges and universities around the country.

A federal judge in Detroit sentenced six communist party leaders in 1954 for conspiring to violate the Smith Act of 1940. U.S. District Judge Frank A. Picard told them:

“Your admiration for Russia is so great that there isn’t any doubt in my mind, and there wasn’t any doubt in the jury’s mind, that there is nothing you wouldn’t do – lie, cheat, or even worse—in order to attain your objectives . . . There were times during this trial when I felt that you just despised capitalists and brass hats because you weren’t one of them. I have discarded that thought. This morning I’m giving you the benefit of saying you believe in your cause but whether you do or not is immaterial for that cause has so engulfed your thinking, so dominated your every move to the extent that five of you took the stand and lied about what you believe because you thought the end justified the means . . .  You really think you are martyrs. But you’re not going to jail for your beliefs. You’re going to jail because you want to force those beliefs on others . . ..” (J. E. Hoover, A Study of Communism, 1962, p. 172)

The results today of 63 years of indoctrination are highly visible and heard in colleges and universities around the country where freedom of speech is only allowed to the Marxist segment of society and of the campus. The rest who contradicts Marxism are prevented from speaking or appearing on all campuses and any efforts to present their views are met with violence and bodily harm. The police stay on the sidelines and watch the violence unfold. The faculty, president, and the staff in general often hold Marxist views as well.

The sad thing is that none of these activists and ordinary citizens who believe them understand what communism truly is, the pain, suffering, and death it causes, and how their lives are going to be fundamentally transformed for the worse once every segment of society becomes socialist on a transition path to full blown communism.

 

 

My Perfect Christmas Treats

On December 6, all children waited anxiously the arrival of Saint Nicholas, the old, bearded man with ragged clothes. Everyone put their shoes outside the door in hope that they would be filled with candy and chocolate.

Many do not know the story of Saint Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra from Turkey. The story goes that he had become the symbol of anonymous gift giving when he donated three sacks of gold to an old man whose daughters could not marry because he was so poor, he could not afford their dowries. St. Nicholas threw a bag of gold each night into the old man’s house through an open window. When the story was told in colder climates, St. Nicholas dropped the gold through the chimney instead of an open window.

Thus St. Nicholas came to represent the secret gift giving. He was portrayed in meager clothes with three round discs, the three sacks of gold. In the town of Bari, Italy, where the bishop was buried, pawnbrokers hung three gold disks in front of their shops in remembrance of St. Nicholas’ gift of gold.

Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate services on the night before December 6 when St. Nicholas appears as a bishop, not in a red suit. Parishioners leave their shoes outside the door and, upon departure, find gold disks of chocolate wrapped in foil inside their shoes, in remembrance of the three gold dowries that St. Nicholas provided to the poor man.

My childhood friends in Romania left their galoshes outside the door. The one pair of leather boots each of us owned in winter was too precious to leave out in the elements. We wore galoshes over boots in order to protect them from rain and the dirty slosh when snow mixed with salt began to melt. We trusted that nobody was interested in taking our rubber galoshes.

Every morning on December 6, I would find an exquisite orange, a banana, a large chocolate bar filled with raisins, and a small bag of hard candy. I felt very special and was always curious why I could never catch St. Nicholas bringing the delicious treats.

The communist economy we lived under never delivered enough basic and decent food for everyone, much less luxuries such as fresh fruit in winter. A banana or an orange were exquisite gifts that we dreamed about all year long.

People waited in long lines for the lone salami in the window of a butcher shop. Unlike the privileged elite that shopped at their own stores, we had to contend with empty shelves and long lines. To pacify the masses at Christmas time, the communist party leaders would order extra food, fresh fruits, and the lines were shorter.

December 25 was a secular holiday with “Mos Craciun,” Santa Claus, who was dressed in red with a fake cotton beard. We still believed, however, that he had the power to place a small gift by our pillows the night before. I would wake up to find a small rag doll with a porcelain head, a book, or a small puzzle.

Although the communist party did not allow people to go to church, we always went to my grandmother’s village for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, circling the church with lit candles three times for the Holy Trinity.

Groups went caroling from house to house at night and were received with gifts of food, hard pretzels, or a warm cup of plum brandy. No matter how hard the communists tried to suppress our traditions, faith survived.

Magically, a tree decorated with real candles, colorful handmade crepe paper baskets filled with candy, hanging apples, cookies, and a few ornaments appeared. The glass ornaments must have cost my dad a fortune since they were hard to find. The Christmas tree did not have electric lights, but we would light up candles carefully for a short while on Christmas Eve. The scent of the blue spruce filled our small home and made me happy. I was walking on air, oblivious to my parents’ financial sacrifice.

Nobody exchanged presents, the holiday was about our faith in God, children, togetherness with the extended family, visiting each other’s homes, eating and drinking whatever we had. Villagers slaughtered pigs for Christmas and shared them with family members. The leftovers were preserved in a cellar or smoked to feed them throughout the year when meat was hard to find. 

Eating chocolate was an acquired taste. Grandpa convinced me to try the gooey confection I melted on the heater to spread on my doll’s face. I was playing house and feeding my doll chocolate. Grandpa never told me how many bars of chocolate I ruined this way. Once hooked, chocolate became a favorite treat for special occasions.

My Christmas banana was always green, and I had to wait until it turned golden and sweet. I placed both fruits in the middle of the table so I could see them from every angle in the room. The orange was wrapped in white onionskin paper. I kept it for days admiring its perfect orange color and the fragrant smell emanating from its pores. It came from a faraway place, Israel, whose language I could not read.

I wondered what exotic place grew such perfect fruits and how long it took to travel to me. Will I ever journey to see the tree and pick this perfect orange myself? The wind was always howling outside, and the snow was coming down very hard, but I was dreaming of the tropical location that grew my perfect Christmas orange.

U.N. Agenda 21/2030 in full Operational Mode

U.N. Agenda 21 of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio is finally in full operational mode after decades of concerted efforts to bring western civilization to its knees and reshape it into its Vision of Sustainable Development Goals. The losers are the people and their Sustainable Freedom.

Various NGOs and their American and European elite financial sponsors developed and implemented the three major documents issued at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

President Clinton formed in 1993 the President’s Council on Sustainable Development (the 28 members included major Cabinet Secretaries, select NGO managers, and a few business elites) to force the implementation of the three documents adopted in Rio and signed by 179 countries.

The Senate ratified the Framework Convention on Climate Change because it contained no legally binding requirements.

A young Nancy Pelosi urged House Members to adopt the full U.N. Agenda 21. Thirty-one years later, every element of society has a climate change plan for the invented manufactured planetary Armageddon. https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4362236/user-clip-nancy-pelosi-pushes-agenda-21-dispite-fact-haarp-culprit-global-warming

The Convention on Biological Diversity passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (vote 16-3) on June 29, 1994. However, it was pulled from the calendar one hour before the scheduled full Senate vote. Because the Senate did not ratify the treaty, the Clinton administration implemented the treaty’s recommendations anyway through a policy called Ecosystem Management. This is Federal Land Use Control through Ecosystem Management. https://www.epa.gov/eco-research/ecosystem-based-management

The Convention on Biological Diversity was implemented thus administratively and a 1140-page instruction book, Global Biodiversity Assessment, was written to describe how protected areas can be “fashioned after the Wildlands Project which was published in the U.S. in 1992.”

Global governance was and is implemented administratively. “The 111^th Congress introduced HR5101, the Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act of 2010, which authorized the connection of wilderness areas with corridors of wilderness, just as it was described in the Convention of Biological Diversity.” Text - H.R.5101 - 111th Congress (2009-2010): Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act of 2010 | Congress.gov | Library of Congress

U.N. Agenda 21 has now been converted into U.N. Agenda 2030. Agenda 21 was a “soft law” document, meaning that its recommendations are not legally binding but the 179 nations that have signed it are “morally obligated to implement them.” Congress has never debated or adopted Agenda 21, but many provisions have been included in other legislations.

The main goals of global governance are government control of land use and control of all people and businesses. It is for this reason that many conservatives never called it U.N. Agenda 21, they were advised to call it instead, property rights.

Wise Americans, who bothered to read the 40-chapter document, have informed, and warned others about the evil behind the globalist agenda but they were ignored.

One prominent person who had a “golden microphone” daily for three hours and the opportunity and responsibility, as a famous American patriot, to inform the public properly about U.N. Agenda 21 was Rush Limbaugh. He would discuss issues within the U.N. Agenda 21, but he always stopped short of calling it what it was.

A.J. Cameron wrote, … “his legion of listeners refused to believe the agenda exists because he said it did not exist. When a caller would utter ‘U.N. Agenda 21’ on his show, he would swiftly go to an ‘obscene profit timeout,’ and most of his listeners never put 2 and 2 together."

Every community around the U.S., with help from the local boards and the Visioning of ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives), American Planning Association, EPA, and other governmental agencies, have followed the guidelines of the 1976 U.N. Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver that declared that government control of land use was indispensable, and governments had to mandate population redistribution to accommodate the needs of biodiversity.

The results of these recommendations are open borders, with the massive invasion of illegal aliens, and destruction of U.S. sovereignty. Europe is in an analogous situation as countries are invaded by foreign nationals just as recommended by U.N. Agenda 21/2030.

We are no longer in the testing or the beta phase of the globalist agenda, we are currently in the full operational phase of U.N. Agenda 21 converted into Agenda 2030.

It is a fast-moving hurricane which brings, among a myriad of changes detrimental to humanity such as a global digital currency, prohibition of combustion engine vehicles, no gas stoves, no gas heat, inefficient and insufficient wind and solar energy, fossil fuel energy control via smart meters, population relocation in 15-minute cities, 250 square foot apartments, destruction of suburbia, the GPS driven kill-switch in cars, no fertilizers for crops, medical and climate lockdowns, powdered bugs in food, and shortages of medicines.

Suppress the first world and the third world will die as a result. But impoverished populations from socialist countries have been encouraged, transported, and paid to migrate, and to occupy the land of the developed world. The taxpayers are footing the bill to add millions of Democrat voters who do not speak English and have no inkling of our history and political situation. They only care about welfare.

Agenda 2030 goals are implemented by government fiat control at the local, state, and federal levels. The globe has become one large “sustainable development” nightmare filled with “sustainable communities.”

Our Global Neighborhood final report of the 1995 Commission on Global Governance of has become a reality almost three decades later.

Because socialist nations (their taxes are more than 50-60%) have complained that it is unfair for the United States to have such low tax rates, the International Monetary Fund released a report in April 2010 which revealed the plan to create a global currency. The result now is the impending digital currency.

Most Congresspeople support global governance despite their constituents’ wishes. All international rules, institutions, and practices imposed by billionaire elites are aimed at “limiting the behavior of people in the United States,” the last thorn in the globalists’ side.

But America’s historic system of freedom and self-governance cannot survive in a world governed by the United Nations in collusion with globalist billionaires and a corrupt Congress.

 

 

 

How Many Christmases?

As my Christmases become more senescent, I think more about the fact that God only gives us so many Christmases to celebrate if we live the average life expectancy in our country.

With each Christmas, people should not be looking for gifts, but should be thankful for being because life is a perfect gift for each of us, we should be grateful for what we have and for our families.

As a child, living under an atheist, communist regime, I decorated our pine Christmas tree with ornaments I made from colorful crepe paper and filled them with candy. I strung a garland made from shiny paper links glued together, the occasional cookie, an apple, a rare chocolate bar, and an orange. A few expensive glass ornaments were handled with care and hung on the more solid branches. Metal holders with small red candles were clipped to the outer branches. I was allowed to light up a few on Christmas Eve while mom supervised, to make sure that the tree and our apartment did not catch fire.

As I decorate our Christmas tree, it takes us much longer than it used to.  We start early and do a little bit each day and it may take two-three days, but the final result is beautiful. I take down a few boxes of ornaments and realize that I have collected way too many over the years, but which ones do I discard? Some have special meanings, and it is hard to part with them.

Gone are the live blue spruce trees that Mr. Alan used to set up in our living room year after year. Mr. Alan is smiling from Heaven because our tree is now artificial.  His trees smelled so fresh and divine and filled our house with the scent of Christmas and the visions of frost, icicles, and snow.

We watered the tree daily but our Tiger, a bottomless ‘camel,’ drank as much water as we added. At least he did not try to eat the ornaments or climb the tree to chew on the electric wire and lights. When the needles started falling, the wonderful fir smell persisted for a short while. Despite vacuuming, we still found sharp fir needles on the carpet late into the summer.

Christmas is a different time for many people. But the left has tried to diminish and destroy it by introducing the Elf on the Shelf and the non-Christian Kwanzaa started in 1966 after the Watts riots.

On a recent trip to Disney World, although there were a few large fir trees with ornaments and red and pink poinsettias everywhere, there was no reference to Christmas at all but there was ample reference to Kwanzaa.  A black choir sang on a large stage, entertaining visitors, and advertised Kwanzaa celebration on December 26. No mention whatsoever of Christmas.

The joyous Merry Christmas has been replaced by Happy Holidays, in a progressive attempt to be “inclusive,” and now by “Merry & Bright.” I am personally confused what is “merry” and what is “bright,” but it does not seem to bother other people who go about their daily lives ignoring it, until the ‘Merry Christmas’ practice disappears completely. The stores look bleak, almost no decorations to remind people of the celebration of a very important tradition for the western world – Christmas.

It is a special day for Christians and a spectacular day for all children around the world. They wait with bated breath for old man Santa Claus with his white beard and Ho, Ho, Hos, to bring them some desired toy they wanted all year long. This magical man embodied the selfless act of giving:  toys, food, warm clothes, health, love, familial peace, friendship, and joy.

The flying Santa Claus is a tradition, an idea, and a miracle man who can make that special wish come true for all children of the world, small and grown.

Christmas is now for me a time of reflection of our past, present, and the future. The previous Christmases have flown by, with my small family around a table laden with food and our happy children with their toys, and now alone with my husband.

Instead of giving gifts to baby Jesus each year, we chose the less fortunate children who placed their wishes in the Angel Tree at our local mall, and we gave gifts to children who eagerly expected the miraculous Santa to visit them while they slept peacefully in their beds.

Like them, we do not have much family left and those remaining are scattered around the globe. Only the idea of instantaneously traveling Santa Claus with his magical sleigh and the amazing flying reindeer could reach them all. Santa can squeeze through any chimney, avoid any fire, open any door, and eat billions of cookies left by children eager to please him.

But in the material chase to bring happiness to others and especially to children, we forget the simple pleasures of Christmas, love, laughter, being here and now, songs, prayer, and the presence of God in our lives.

Photo copyright: Ileana Johnson

 

My First Flight, Part II

I wrote recently whether I would get on that Delta flight again as I did in 1978 to come to America, knowing what I know today. And my answer shocked many.

Unless you have left everything behind that you loved and knew, it would be hard for most people to understand the fundamental transformation that a person has to undergo in order to survive well in this country and become an American citizen.

The immigrants to America in those times were legal and had to undergo rigorous scrutiny by American authorities and by medical authorities in order to be allowed into the country. The immigrant had to prove that he/she had the means to support themselves or be supported by a spouse. The government did not want to support any immigrants with welfare.

As the plane from JFK landed in the middle of pastures, at a nowhere southern airport in the dark, and as we drove from that tiny airport another 45 minutes with nothing but fields, cows, and the occasional deer on both sides of the deserted country roads, I felt a sinking feeling of despair and grave loss. What have I done?

I started questioning immediately the sanity of my decision to leave my country which is what most human beings would do. I was hungry, thirsty, and I had a pit in my stomach the size of a rock. I just wanted to get back on that plane and fly back to my hometown, to my parents, to my friends, to everything I knew well.

I spoke British English which I learned in school, and the southern accent and idiomatic expressions I did not know threw me for a loop constantly until I learned the meanings of southern American English.

People ate strange and different foods, and got angry with me if I declined to consume their meals. Many were shocked and insulted when I refused abruptly certain generous offers as the cultural differences and values came into play. Nobody understood my culture, where I came from, what I spoke, where my country was on the map, and I did not understand their values and southern culture. Nobody was willing to allow me plenty of time to learn and adjust.

The fact that Europeans are blunt in their answers did not go well with the very diplomatic southerners who often hide their true meanings and feelings with sugar-coated phrases. Like the Germans say, if you are not prepared to hear the honest answer, do not ask Germans how they feel.

Trying to be American in a country where I was a foreigner at best to the locals and a permanent resident alien to the government, was very hard. And I was homesick every day, crying in a room away from prying eyes and ears.

I was told by in-laws that my marriage to their son in the Orthodox Church did not count, I needed to marry again in the Baptist Church otherwise our children would be bastards.

My dad had spent thousands to dollars on our very lavish wedding after the official marriage in St. John’s Cathedral in my hometown, marriage performed by four priests, and my new ‘relatives’ thought it necessary that we re-marry here. The in-laws contributed nothing to the wedding and it took my daddy years to save the kind of money he spent on our wedding.

The adjustment to being stuck in the country, ten miles away from a tiny town, population 3,000, no means of transportation, no public transportation, no ability to drive on my part, no money, no job, further exacerbated my adaptation misery and struggle. I would have gone back, had I had the money and the means to do so.

The ranch house was about a tenth of a mile from the gate and the road and from there the closest store was about a mile on a gravel road at the intersection with a paved highway. This store carried necessities such as milk, bananas, ice cream, flour, sugar, etc. But I had no money.

My parents never called because international calls were very expensive for them and I could not call either because I did not have money and I lived in my in-laws’ house.

International calls in 1978 were about $10 for three minutes after 7 p.m. and, after placing an order for the call with the operator, I had to wait 24 hours to be connected. When the operator did connect, she would call me and tell me that she has my Romanian party on the line and I could talk. The calls often sounded garbled as if they were coming from the bottom of the ocean. Little did I know that the telephone cables back then did run at the bottom of the Atlantic.

So most of my connecting with my parents was through letters which took weeks to arrive. Did I tell them the truth of my situation? Of course not, I was too proud to admit that I was in an awful situation by my own making, everything my father had brought into question about my future husband and the rich in-laws had turned out miserably true.

A couple of ladies who befriended me at church drove me a few times into the small town nearby and one of them gave me a gift I will never forget, a $20 pair of Wrangler jeans. I never forgot Gayle’s generosity. I had no money so $20 was a fortune to me. The minimum wage then was $3.10 an hour.

I eventually earned my driver’s license and was able to drive to town to a minimum wage job. I was the most educated in that office and the lowest paid. I did not mind because my monthly salary was so much bigger than anything that I could have earned in Romania. And I was completely broke without this job.

Four years later I became an American citizen, but, to do so, I had to give up my Romanian documents, I was not allowed to have double citizenship.

To say that I have lost my roots over the years, would be an understatement. I have longed and still do for the wonderful places and customs I grew up with.

I hated communism, and escaping it, and the sacrifices I made to be here, was the freedom which I gifted to my children. Do they appreciate that? I don’t think so because they have never set foot in Romania as adults. If they had done so, they would not have been able to understand what I escaped from because the communist dictatorship had been long gone, following the 1989 Revolution.

Through me, my mom was able to get freedom as well and she escaped communism two years later. Unfortunately, they did not allow my dad to leave and he died under the communist boot and regular beatings.

One of my adult children told me recently that I benefited all my life of “white privilege,” repeating the leftist construct she had been indoctrinated with. If she had only seen what I had experienced in order to become an American citizen by choice, and what parts of my soul and mind I had to give up in order to survive in a foreign land, surrounded by foreign people, foreign customs, foreign food, foreign religions, no friends, and hostile in-laws, she might have understood. Telling someone about pain and suffering endured is not the same as experiencing it.

As the years passed, the country where I found relative freedom, pursued higher education, had children, bought a home, started changing more and more in the direction of Marxism. A large number of American citizens started praising socialism and communism and pursued the destruction of capitalism, the very capitalism which gave them a good life, better than any other country in the world.

In light of political developments in the last fifteen years, the rest of my life in America will be spent under a combination of global Marxism and corporate fascism, not a good prospect for anybody.

Would I get on that Delta flight again to come to the U.S.A. for freedom, to escape communism? Had I known that I would have to spend my golden years under Marxist/corporatist tyranny in America, my answer would be no. However, I would have missed the love of my life to whom I am still married today.

 

 

                                                       

Misconceptions

To paraphrase Leo Tolstoy, all humans have misconceptions, and many people will always mistake these misconceptions for the truth. These misconceptions arise from the battle between the spiritual and material inner nature of humans.

Jean Jacques Rousseau said that “we have misconceptions not because we think illogically but because we live our lives badly.” He believed that ignorance could not lead to evil, misconceptions do. “It’s not what people do know, it’s what they pretend that they do.”

Arthur Schopenhauer argued that “every misconception is a poison: there are no harmless misconceptions.” The purposeful poisoning of the mind is very real.

Tolstoy believed that freeing human beings from misconception is a charitable act that cannot be compared to acts of mercy such as feeding the hungry, giving clothes to the needy, or visiting someone in the hospital when they are sick.

Misconceptions are often accepted as truth and the person holding that misconception does not bother to search for its veracity or falsity. Misconceptions are generally false, and they arise from conventional wisdom, stereotypes, superstitions, fallacies, misunderstandings, and a lack of understanding science.

You could call misconceptions ‘factoids’ delivered by ignorant of “fact checkers,” who, in a purposefully deceptive manner, disperse political opinions covered with a veneer of truth. Disinformation leads to misconceptions because that was the intent.