It’s February 14th, the day when we all get to express our appreciation for the people we love, particularly our significant others/domestic partners/husbands and wives. So this post is about the people I love, including my husband and children. They are the foundation of my love for the world. I am grateful every day for their presence.

In this post, I also want to pan out to view the larger picture, since in some ways that’s what I’m about. In some ways, that’s what we’re all about. But let’s start with me:

I noticed recently that I have almost no pictures of myself after age 31. Do you know why? Because that’s when I became a mother. When I became a mother, taking pictures of myself became obsolete for the obvious reason: now I matter less and my children matter more. Of course that’s not an absolute equation, but it’s the essential bottom line. It’s why Rhode Island’s Future is called what it is — because the future is more important than the past, and we have to do what we can to preserve life for the future generations on earth.

For this reason, I have great hope for some of our leaders, particularly Barack Obama and Jack Reed. Both have young children and consequently may have a visceral awareness of what the future of our country, and our world, needs to look like. My hope is that they, like me, understand their calling as a challenging task of bringing people together to make the world safe and just — a place where our children can grow and learn and become productive citizens.

Coming closer to home again, I want to express my thanks and appreciation to our schools, particularly to the teachers who have taught my older daughter. It is a difficult task and you deserve to be given every opportunity to succeed. One way to make teachers jobs more successful is to make their class sizes manageable. In Cranston right now there are 50 lay-off notices going out to teachers, which may mean class sizes will again be expanding. This saddens me, and I hope we can do everything possible to retain as many of these positions as possible.

On the city level, I want to thank our leaders who have stood up to protect our community and keep it safe from environmental dangers. These leaders include Aram Garabedian, City Council President, and Frank Mattiucci, President of Cranston Citizens for Responsible Zoning and Development.

On the state level, I continue to be disturbed by the threatened cuts of childcare subsidies for low-income single parents, and the plan to take kids out of DCYF custody at 18. Right now is when our legislators need to look at the tax break they gave to wealthy Rhode Islanders (those with income exceeding $225,000) and ask if we want to give help to a handful of people with lots of resources, or if we want to give bare bones support to struggling families and young adults. I think you know where I think the love (also known as money) needs to go in this choice.

Nationally, my love goes to those who are trying to bring peace to the Middle East. This includes our troops, and those who are here at home asking that we find a way to extract ourselves from this intractable situation.

Worldwide, my hope is for peace and a modicum of prosperity for all people. No one needs to be fabulously wealthy, but we need to have a world where people are given the opportunity to survive –access to medicine, the ability to purchase the essentials, a safe home to rest and be with their families. We need to do what we can to prevent the disasters of war, even if this means the US stops trying to control the entire world.

Happy World Love Day.