Roller Coaster Ride

My week of lows and highs

March 22, 2024

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

This photo depicts the way I felt on March 16, 2024 at 9:21 a.m. when I realized my Facebook page was hacked. I careened into the world of evil hackers. I didn’t do a selfie, my real self would have really scared folks.

The past week has been a roller coaster of emotions. Angst, frustration and anxiety has exhausted me. I feel attacked, cheated and helpless. Hours have been spent trying to undo what someone did for fun or money, who knows. These anonymous people made my life miserable and I am determined to get revenge. But how? I am finding out it is no easy task. Here is who owns my account now. I have no idea whose address this is. Facebook was useless in helping me solve this problem.

Screenshot - new owner of my account.

The high for the week was on March 19th when my husband Larry and I celebrated forty eight years of life together. It was a repeat of our wedding day - sunny and 50+ degrees. The day long event started at 6:20 a.m. when spring officially arrived to the strains of “Morning Has Broken” a Methodist hymn made popular by the singer Cat Stevens. Chores, a horseback ride, and a return to the church to feed our guests completed the morning activities.

Friends, relatives and neighbors filled the basement of Buck Creek United Methodist Church for a dinner prepared by our family and served by the church ladies. The afternoon was capped off with a dance in the former schoolhouse in Marne, Iowa. Our musician friends, The Loose Brothers, a country rock band out of Omaha filled the gym with musical strains that had multiple generations rockin’ on the green linoleum floor. It was truly a schoolhouse rock.

Michael, Paul and David

We celebrated our anniversary with mixed emotions. The hacking incident definitely put a pall on the day leaving us wondering if our personal information was out for other hucksters to share.

A movie and dinner was our escape. The Bob Marley flick, helped us forget for several hours One Love. Reggae music blasted throughout the theater occupied by just the two of us. Comfortable in reclining seats with a beer for Larry and an Old Fashioned cocktail for me, these two septuagenarians loved it. We had no idea of the political unrest in Jamaica when we were first married. We were starting out life together and unaware of the turbulence in other parts of the hemisphere. Nor were we aware of the political unrest we would experience four decades later.

Our Harris O’Brien partnership has been privileged to take care of land that was violently stolen from others during the western expansion. Manifest Destiny, a political ideology with strong Christian nationalism overtones, declared that a Christian God had destined the United States to bring civilization across the American continent. The atrocities reckoned on previous civilizations is difficult to fathom. We own that. We have worked hard to respect and care for the land as temporary residents on planet earth.

The capture of my Facebook page and the political unrest we witnessed in the Marley film took on greater meaning. The authoritarian control of the Republicans who occupy the Iowa government has added to my unease. Lawmakers are determined to make laws as if it is their God given right. The majority of Iowans are against much of the Republican agenda, yet these privileged public servants believe they are better at making decisions for us. It doesn’t matter if the issue is education, women’s health, access to guns, the environment or shaming the LGBTQ+ community, their paternalistic attitude is disrespectful of the citizens of this state.

Frankly, the move towards an authoritarian form of government is downright scary. My friend

Robert Leonard

wrote in his last column “This is the Orbanization of the United States, and Iowa, as Republicans work to remake our country in the image of Victor Orban’s authoritarian and repressive Hungry so they can hold onto power and keep us—you and me, our children and grandchildren—under the bootheel of our corporate overlords.”

The hackers made me feel that my life was not mine, someone else was manipulating it. The legislature, the majority in power who believe they know what is best for me, also make me feel that way. Their attempt to control the political climate leaves me with such distaste that my inner fight mechanism has become engaged more than ever.

That is exactly why we need to run and recruit others to run for office from city, county, state, to national to take our country back. I believe that Iowans do not want a state that lacks compassion for those who live here. We live in a state where the moral core emanates fairness, respect and dignity, qualities that extremist, MAGA Republicans missed out on when they were born.

I have taken to writing “Peace, Health and Sanity” at the end of my correspondence. If we say this over and over again and work to elect people who care about our state, maybe it can happen!