Recycling some good advise.

Always be yourself. Never try to hide who you are. The only shame is to have shame. Always stand up for what you believe in. Always question everything everybody tells you. Never regret the past it is a pure waste of your time. There is a reason for everything; every mistake every moment of weakness, every terrible thing that has ever happened to you. Learn from it. Grow from it. The only way you can get the respect of others is when you show them you respect yourself. Finally do your thing and never apologize for being you.
And remember it is none of your business what other people think about you. So don't ever make it your business. Instead just spend your time loving people. It will be time well spent.

Lola

It was a strength forged in the fires of adversity and hard times. The days of poverty and lack in the 1920's & 30's in the hills of West Virginia.
I knew and loved her in the late 1950's and 60"s. I think often of my grandmother these days perhaps because I'm now nearing the age that she was when she died. She was a strong woman. I mean she was unwavering. Once her mind was made up she never changed it. She loved Jesus, she loved her cigarettes and she loved the Democratic party and she loved them to her dying day.
She loved Jesus because, well to quote Bob Dylan "everybody's gonna serve somebody" and she chose Jesus. The cigarettes, we'll once again she chose them and they led to her demise. The Democratic party? Again she chose to be a Democrat. Looking back I know why. At twenty seven years of age she became a widow with five dependant children. No education, no income and no way to feed, cloth and shelter them. Enter FDR a Democrat with a plan called aid for widows with dependant children. That was her. She applied and began receiving a monthly check from the government. She was a Democrat hook, line and sinker.
She never left the cigarettes, and they helped take her life she never left Jesus and he saved her and she never changed political parties but her political party changed. I think if mommie Loly were alive in 2016 she would reluctantly admit along with alot of us that she never left the Democratic party the Democratic party left her.
She would never have agreed to a weak, anemic military for she knew that peace comes through strength. She would never even imagined that her Democratic party would vote to pay for late term abortions with her tax money. She would find it hard to believe that her beloved party had declared war on gun owners and the United States Constitution as well.

Disagree Agreeably

I used to be a judge. Yep. I sat on the bench. I judged others and sentenced them unfairly on the basis of whether or not they agreed with me. Anyone whose mindset differed from mine was condemned to the fires of eternal punishment! By some miracle I changed. I stepped down from the bench. I retired. Hey. Now you don't have to agree with me in order for me to like and even admire you. I'm enjoying my retirement. It's quite liberating actually. Live and let live is what i say now and i mean it. Honestly I was tired of always condemning everyone who thought differently from me . And while I am still of a moderately conservative mindset I no longer abhor those on the left who are liberal, progressive and even socialistic in their leanings. And while I sometimes get the idea that the folks I just mentioned do not give me and my ideology the same consideration it's OK. Really. They can feel any way they choose. Remember live and let live? I love this country for that very reason. It's called freedom. I accept everyone now for who they are. And in this crucial election year I find I don't feel hard against the Democrats for the things they believe just because I think they are misguided. No I celebrate their right to believe as they see fit. I slightly digress here to say this: I DO hope there are enough of us like minded people left in the country to keep another Democrat out of the Whitehouse. Now please, please don't condemn me for sounding judgemental, I certainly didn't intend it that way. I'm only exercising my right to express myself that's all.
See the new me can disagree with folks without judging them and condemning them as deplorable even when the sentiment is not reciprocal. That's why it hurts so badly when I hear folks like me being called names like bigot, phobiaic, racist, sexist and so on...
Cause I'm not. Hey if you're African American I can truly celebrate your blackness; Caucasian your whitness; gay your gayness; Democrat democratness; Republican republicaness; Jewish jewness; Christian christianess; islamist Islamness.  Hey I'm no longer in charge of the judicial system. I'm not gonna judge anyone. If you're an American Citizen you have inherited some inalienable rights like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  And as long as you're legal and not trying to hurt or kill me and my  fellow Americans I'm OK with you. Whatever your whateverness I like you just the same.

I'm a deplorable person.

Look. I'm not a political man. I'm no debater. I hate arguing. It upsets me. I can't even watch the political debates because of the awful  dread I have of seeing people argue and fight. However I do have opinions and beliefs regarding many issues. But it is not my goal to swing everyone over to my side. Go ahead and believe what you want. Your choice. I have so many better things to do than to spend my time trying to persuade you that you're wrong. How foolish that really is. I mean were all adults. I've often thought that if every man in 1776 had been like me there wouldn't have been an American Revolution and we'd now be Britts  instead of Americans. "Why can't we all just get along" that's my mantra. I know how silly that sounds. That's not how things are. Here's something else I'd like you to know about me. This. I've always cared alot about what others thought of me. I've always wanted every one to think highly of me. You know? That's why my feelings  were so hurt when someone I looked up to called me deplorable and then tossed me into a basket along with several million other human beings that she also considered deplorable as well?
Well that hurt me. I'm a sensitive person. Then I thought well maybe it's not all that bad. After all deplorable is not a word I often use and I really didn't know what it meant. So I Googled  it. Hum, interesting. Deserving strong condemnation? synonyms:disgraceful, shameful, dishonorable, unworthy, inexcusable, unpardonable, unforgivable;  Yikes. So that's what someone thinks about me just because I don't agree with them. That I'm disgraceful, shameful, dishonorable, unworthy, inexcusable, unpardonable, unforgivable and deserve to be do condemned? What? Hey remember me I'm the one who wants everyone to like me and think of me as being a swell guy. And to think that someone thinks I'm deplorable. There goes my self esteem. And what if everyone who identifies with this person thinks exactly as she does? That would mean that a bunch of people don't like me. Oh, i'm completely shattered. And what if this person became President of the United States of America? That would mean that the Commander in Chief thinks that I deserve to be condemned. That's scary. Whatever will I do?
Well perhaps I don't fall into the "half" group that she thinks is deplorable. Yeah that's a comforting thought, she didn't really mean to include me in with those deplorable people. That's  it. Im starting to feel better because I really, really care what she thinks of me, remember? Or even better... maybe she didn't mean it. Maybe she'll take it back. I hope so cause that would make it all better. I don't think I could bear it otherwise.

Lola

Watching from a distance she sees a drama unfolding. She recognizes the players; her brother Fred and Fancy his wife. Fancy the sister-in-law she loves. There is something unusual about the crowd that is gathering around Fred and Fancy as they they group together on the platform of the train station. Is it the expressions she sees on the faces of the crowd? Is it the absence of laughter or loud common talk? Is there a change in the air around McCorkle as unspeakable news is borne to this family on a telegraphed page? She ponders this as she watches these actors on this wooden stage performing their parts.
She sees Fancy now at the center stage. Fancy, kind, demure possessing not a trace of malice or ill will. She can see that in her hand is a small scrap of paper. Can sense that the paper is trembling as she unfolds it. Within a moment the deathly news has been delivered. And the lives of a mother and father are changed forever by reading the telegraphed words on a slip of paper. Lola, from her secluded place sees that the news is bad. She blinks away the quick tears that fall from her eyes as she sees Fancy fall to her knees on the wooden platform. She swallows the lump that arises in her throat as a sound reaches her ears. A sound of sorrow, of sadness so encompassing there can be no comfort.
  For all the years to come when Lola's mind would return to this day and its tragedy she would always wonder why she had been unable to move. Why she had been frozen in place. Unable to run to her friend throwing her arms around her comforting her. Why she had stayed hidden in safety behind the great tree. While Fancy, her friend, had wept and grieved for her young son lost in war, a son she would never see again.
Now Fred is lifting his wife to her feet. He is holding her in his arms. Her shoulders are bent. She sobs. The crowd now begins to move, as one single unit, away from the station. The awful drama is complete the stage is empty. They each make their way to share the news.
She does not know the words contained in the Telegraph ; the words that have broken her family so. She imagines the telegraph, the unusual way that words are arranged upon these forms. How that both good news and bad, uplifting and devastating tidings can be delivered on these harmless papers. She thinks for a moment about words, about their power. The Telegraph should have been sent from a happy young son "be home soon" but the cruel arrangement of words had instead been sent to this family from the war department and had spelled out death. "Your son is missing in action"
Lola does not know the details but she knows enough from watching the scene that the news is of her nephew and the news is bad. He is 19 and boyishly handsome with dark brown skin and hair so black it shines. She pictures him now as she remembers his carefree laughter.
How inhumane is war! How cruel is the thing called war to irrespectively and randomly choose to reach out and snatch the boys from the safety of the hills. Boys carefree, happy, young. Waiting before them lives to be lived. Yet without mercy this war stops their lives and they are gone and in their place emptiness.
  The crowd has gone. They've all walked away. Now a car and a truck cross the track and drive slowly down the McCorkle road. Walkers now pass by Lola, unseen, as she stays silent; obscured by the massive trunk of the old white Sycamore.
Then finally Fred's truck moves past her. She sees them there in the cab. Their profiles a study in grief; images of shattered hope. They pass. They carry their sorrow. The news they will share with the others. Their grief will be be no less though they were to share it with thousands. This Lola knows.
  She remembers still, her own sorrow. Her own loss. Those days and weeks after Van's death when grief had covered her with a weight so heavy she couldn't lift it to free her self. She couldn't move, couldn't even crawl out from beneath it. It was a cold dark blanket of sorrow. So real. So great. She remembers the friends who tried to help but she would not be comforted.
Fred has other sons, she thinks now. Me I lost the only husband I had; and not to a great cause like freedom but instead to a stone, a mill stone. (Here she remembers the day Van brought the giant round, flat stone home on the flatbed, his pride, his excitment)
Here Lola shivers at the selfishness and coldness that rises up inside her even after all these years. Then the guilt over her own selfishness and lack of sympathy. "Lord forgive me for my uncaring and selfish ways. Comfort Dear Fancy and brother. Hep me love them."
She thinks now of the war and why it had to be that even with all the other hard times - the hunger, the poverty, the loss, there also had to be war added to their difficult lives.
Would her own son too be drafted to fight in a foreign land? Is Evelyns young husband now fighting , now dying in faraway France? While she and a new baby girl awaits news?
It is too much to bear. She again sees the handsome face of her nephew and at once pictures him lying lifeless and white in a muddy, cold field in a land far from the hills of home. Now dead from a bullet fired from the weapon of a someone else's son they call the enemy. She trembles as she thinks of him now. Had he thought of home as he lay dying? Were his thoughts of warm sunlight upon his hills? Did he think of his mother and her hymns? Did he remember squirrel hunting, Beech trees and Autumn days?
She pictures his body still and lifeless and she again sees Vans dead body. Most of the time we do not see our longest night approaching nor the storm until it breaks upon us. She has learned that this is the way of life. Hard times and changes will always be there to face. And the storms must be weathered and the dark nights must be faced alone. Always hoping for the sunlight and praying for the dawn. The sun has dropped behind the hills as she steps out from behind the tree and onto the road leading home.