Maria and I are not especially political people, our lives center around our writing and our art, we leave the arguing and hating to others.

She has some good friends who are strongly opposed to abortion, and she respects them and understands their feelings.

She is less understanding of the crankly old white Christian Nationalist Straight Man who have taken over many state state legislatures and who believe they can tell women like Maria how to think and feel and decide about having the babies that are born in their bodies.

Maria would never put up with that, and neither will most of the women that I know. We all have the right to our opinions, but do we have the right to make the most intimate and personal decisions for other people?

It’s going to be an exciting and painful time for strong  women in America who wish to be free in what was once the world’s greatest democracy.

My money is on them. They cannot be conquered or silenced.

I live with a strong willed and intensely ethical woman. No one is going to do that to her, certainly not angry old white men who think they will soon take over the country.

That will never happen, not while there are millions upon millions of women who will never bow town to it.

In a democracy, we are supposed to thrash this things out together, and give and take, and listen to one another, and respect the majority, not pass cruel and authoritarian and completely partisin laws because we don’t want to negotiate or see any other point of view.

These  horrid laws undermine demcracy and corrode the rule of law. Soon enough, people will be ignorint Supreme Court ruling every day, and that is an awful thing in a democratic society. It happens when the bond of trust and respect is broken.

In no way is this democracy,  Christianity or justice, it is simple dictatorship and the corruption of law. And ultimately, it will fail.

Destroying democracy is not just because you don’t always get what you want.

I now call this the Great Putin Ukraine Mistake, as it will always be known. I don’t care how many soldiers and sheriffs you have, you can’t subjugate that many independent people with bullying and laws, or even with guns and jail.

I wrote the day the Ukrain war broke out that Putin was doomed to lose,  the lesson of unthinking dominaton of other people has failed again and again in the world and will fail now, in America of all places. A lot of people thought I was crazy.

Only an arrogant white man would think you can invade a proud and free country with 43 million people living it and conquer them in a couple of days.

It’s cruel and stupid to think this can be rammed down the throats of outraged and very independent women, just as it was stupid for Putin to think the Ukrainians would greet Russian soldiers in the streets with flowers.

Freedom is embedded in our DNA, Louisiania Texas legislators and ambitious  and overreaching governers will not wipe it out.

This afternoon, Maria went upstairs to her office and made herself an apron to wear to a march for women’s rights she’s joining in Glens Falls, N.Y., this afternoon. It says simple: “I Will Decide.”

Three words that speak a lot of truth.

I’m betting on her, and the millions of other strong women who will decide also. And I’m standing with her. So, it seems, is Zinnia.

You will decide. I can testify to that.