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Archive for the ‘Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country’ Category

Aloneliness

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , on February 14, 2022| 4 Comments »

Happy Valentine’s Day! According to my husband, today is just another Hallmark holiday. But last night, as I was helping the Pumpkin finish his class Valentine’s day cards – a chore he did not relish btw – I thought about love in all its guises. I knew there was a certain girl who gave a certain 1st Grader butterflies in his tummy, but how does that initial attraction lead to true love later in life? And does everyone have a soul mate?

First, we have good old fashioned Lust; your eyes meet and your knees buckle. We’ve all been there. Although when I got my first kiss on the Kindergarten bus, I was less than overwhelmed. Scientists tell us that Lust usually fades after six months or so. Hence the serial monogamist, that person who falls in and out of love every year. It’s like having an addiction to adrenalin. Needless to say, not very good marriage material.

After the initial attraction, comes Obsession. That period where you stop eating and sleeping and all you can do is think about ‘the other’ all the time. When I first went off to college, I would sometimes “see” Bob on a sidewalk in Boston. I knew he was at Duke in North Carolina in my head, but my heart wanted him to be with me. It’s like being a tiny bit crazy, this phase of love. It’s a critical time – either your star-crossed illusion wears off, or you commit to each other.

Finally we have long term Attachment, ie marriage and all that entails. Not everyone is cut out for this kind of loyalty. Bob and I have been together for over 40 years now! But in the animal kingdom, only 5% of all mammals in the world practice monogamy. Surprisingly, 90% of birds are socially or sexually monogamous!

“Albatrosses mate for life, often after spending years—even decades—finding the right mate. To find a mate, they perform an elaborate dancing ritual that is unique to each bonded pair… I am blown away by how unique each of these dances really is. Once bonded, albatrosses spend very little time together, as most of their time is spent alone out at sea; but the time they do spend together tends to be filled with affection and cuddles.”

http://crosstalk.cell.com/blog/10-examples-of-monogamy-in-the-animal-kingdom#:~:text=Scientists%20estimate%20that%20less%20than,lizards%20practice%20monogamy%20as%20well.

Bob took tango lessons with me a number of years ago, and if that’s not true love what is? But going on three years of pandemic/inspired, isolationist/sheltering in place with our beloved, many of us would like to break free… just a little. Can we just have some ALONE time like the albatross? I for one, need time to sit and write alone, to paint alone, to just BE. And surprise surprise, I am NOT alone in this deficit of alone time, it’s called, “aloneliness,” the opposite of loneliness.

“Allowing someone 24 hours of rest, or even just a few hours of undisturbed time with themselves, “can change the way they can show up for others,” said Nedra Tawwab, a therapist in Charlotte, N.C., and author of “Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself.” ‘Many parents don’t have the downtime needed to restore themselves. It’s restorative to do nothing, and to be granted the ability to do nothing is a loving act.'”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/19/well/family/alone-time.html

If you’ve been having “too much of a good thing” with a partner working from home in the next room, I wish you a small stab at solitude this Valentine’s Day. And maybe a walk to the local chocolate shop! https://temperedfinechocolates.com/

My first two Valentines

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Prescient

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , on February 11, 2022| 3 Comments »

On Monday I was writing about fancy toilets.

Today we’ve learned about Mr T’s habit of tearing up documents and giving them a water burial. Did I ever in a million years think a president would flush paper down a toilet like a toddler? The answer is NO. Is it fair to jump on a certain NewYork Times author for withholding that little nugget until her book is about to be published? Maybe.

When I first started writing for a newspaper back in the Berkshires, I was happy just to have a job other than pioneering-new-mom-on-the-side-of-a-mountain. Bob was off working crazy hours and I was left tending to the wood stove while making my own baby food with a tiny Mouli grinder. I loved researching and writing about “black ice,” and anything else my editor had to offer.

And by researching, I mean calling people up on an actual phone and asking them probing questions. Writing while the Bride napped, then bundling her up and getting in my all-wheel-drive to plow through snow to hand in my essay at the office, only to take my red-penned papers back up the mountain for rewriting. Yes, I know I’m starting to sound like an old codger.

The work of a newspaper reporter, no matter where they happen to live, is essential to a happy and healthy democracy. I watched the Washington Post reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, cover the Watergate story and take down a president IRT. They chased after the money and helped to uncover most of the secret tapes Nixon had hidden, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling. Bob and I were just dating at the time, and I was writing for my own enjoyment.

Connie Schultz, a Twitter pen pal, received a Pulitzer Prize when she was writing for the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 2005. She had the audacity to ask some coat check girls where the money in their tip jars went after everybody left. She spoke to the management of the company, and wrote a most brilliant and truthful expository essay. The Pulitzer Board awarded her the Commentary Prize “…for her pungent columns that provided a voice for the underdog and underprivileged.”

“The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

https://robs1024.medium.com/journalism-is-not-activism-acedf41858c6

At the Berkshire Eagle, I knew I was in the midst of something sacred.

I asked my editor once if I should take a writing class, but I guess the nuns taught me well with all that sentence diagramming. He didn’t want me to “change my voice,” and over the years I never have. I’ve tried to connect the lines between what’s happening in our public life with my own private thoughts. Bob says I think in metaphor, and once told someone, “She writes about anything and everything.”

Which sounds bad until you remember I just wrote about toilets.

Last night we had dinner on the porch with cousin Peg who also happens to be a journalist. Turns out our little Bug is working on her school newspaper, so they had a lot to talk about under the outdoor heater! My granddaughter gets to interview teachers and ask them anything she wants!

I’ll have to tell the Bug about Woodward following the money, and Schultz asking young women about their tip jars. Journalism, at its best, is an honorable profession that can be dangerous at times. Now we’ve learned that Mr. T brought classified documents to Mar-a-Lago when he left office; kinda pales when you compare this to Hillary’s emails about lunch plans.

Sometimes Bob would read a piece I was working on and ask me if I was ready to be, ‘fill in the blank’ – arrested, stalked, fired, or worse. I’d just laugh and say my phone number is unlisted. We didn’t have Twitter on our dumb phones back in the day.

In 2021, UNESCO reported 55 journalists around the world were killed. It’s not an especially high number on average, but the kicker is “Eighty-seven percent of all killings of journalists since 2006 remain unresolved… The organization noted too that women journalists also face a “shocking prevalence” of harassment online.”

And that’s what bothered me about the criticism of a certain NYTimes writer in the Twitterverse today. When does a journalist have a duty to inform?

No animal was hurt in the making of this picture

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Home Redemption

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on February 7, 2022| Leave a Comment »

This morning Kevin the squirrel is happily munching on bird seed outside my window, when Bob calls. “Hey honey, do you want the third floating shelf in the kitchen above or below the cased opening?”

Questions like this come up day after day – where to put light switches, where to tile a shower niche. It’s not like building our house in VA, but it’s similar; like a slower, pandemic-style renovation of half an old house with two inch red oak floors they don’t make anymore. After years of renting in Nashville and feeling locked into a semi-permanent viral stasis, we’re finally going to move into our own home next month!

So far we’ve had fun planning our kitchen and master suite renovation. We bumped into an amazing daylight-like light fixture at Costco and bought two, one for the new pantry and one for the old laundry room/mud room. We’ve roamed around monstrous tile warehouses debating color and size. We’re researching garage doors and toilets.

I don’t know why Bob doesn’t want a “smart” toilet. After all, it would open and close itself; not a small feature in a home where the man always leaves the seat up! Oh and the seat is heated. Plus, for just $2,000, you’re getting a fully equipped bidet. But Bob’s drawing the line at the throne room door.

A ‘smart’ refrigerator is one thing, the toilet is a step too far he told me. I guess that means I can order the ‘smart’ window shades that open and close according to my whim? Sometimes I wish I could call up an HGTV star like Hilary Farr and forget about all the myriad decisions. But I’m not sure I could relinquish control. And leaning towards design with some therapy involved wouldn’t be a bad thing.

“Asking for help, after all, runs counter to many of America’s most adamant myths: the moral superiority of self-sufficiency, the quiet dignity of suffering. “Tough Love”  https://www.hgtv.com/shows/tough-love-with-hilary-farr rejects those ideas. Instead, it celebrates the people who realize they have a problem they can’t solve on their own. It treats the admission as the first step toward salvation. “I’m not here to judge,” Farr tells a client whose home, and whose life, she has come to rehabilitate. “I’m here to help.'”

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/02/self-help-hgtv-home-improvement/621493/

Honestly, I have no problem asking anyone for help with anything. I’ll have to ask Aunt Kiki what she thinks of all this smart technology. Of course she can’t say who her celebrity clients are, but she may explain to Bob why a ‘panic/tornado pantry’ is a good thing. Did you know we now have therapists who specialize in climate anxiety?

I remember the coal furnace in my foster parents’ kitchen. Center stage was an orange formica table with metal legs looking out the window at a large flowering dogwood tree, I can almost smell the cinnamon toast I would dip into Daddy Jim’s morning coffee. If home is a metaphor for our life, the kitchen IS the heartbeat of our family. It’s where I’ve passed down beloved recipes; it’s where TLC is put into action. And call me crazy, but I’m loving our blue kitchen cabinets.

First a McFlurry stop!

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Viral Crossings

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , on February 4, 2022| 2 Comments »

During this latest surge of the Omicron strain of coronavirus, I’m beginning to think this little bug has staying power.

If you’re of a certain age, you’ve had your childhood case of Measles back in the 1950s. For that matter you survived the German Measles, Chicken Pox and Mumps! You heard your mother pleading with you not to scratch itchy pustules as she ministered to your fevers and spread Vicks Vapo rub all over your chest. And when you recovered, she’d whip up an ugly tasting eggnog out of raw eggs.

Lucky for us, we were the generation of the Polio vaccine. We knew children in wheelchairs because of Polio, but we were the test subjects for a worldwide Polio vaccine. I dutifully lined up at Sacred Heart School to suck on my first sugar cube. We all had a Smallpox vaccine scar on our arms. Around that time, smallpox was completely eradicated by a strong public health response.

But this time, something is different. Just as researchers miraculously create a coronavirus vaccine in record time, the virus shifts into a different gear. And this time, an uneducated, anti-science cult of the misinformed disdains vaccines. So we are left with its every day presence, and its death counts are everywhere.

To escape from the constant undercurrent of anxiety, my reading habits have changed. I want my bedside tableau of books to reflect a happier time; or at least something non-controversial. Like say animals – I picked up Susan Orlean’s On Animals because I thought it would be happy and light. I was wrong. With a journalist’s eye, she delves into the myriad ways in which humans have historically used and abused animals.

I thought On Animals would be perfect to read before bed because it’s a series of short essays. Orlean has a splendid way with similes, making each animal chapter sing. Poor Willy the Orca (actually Keiko the actor whale with a wilted fin) is portrayed as a victim of circumstance who swims to Norway to panhandle tourists! But it was the noble rabbit that caught my attention and elevated my stress level.

“The most recent essay… takes up outbreaks of hemorrhagic disease among rabbits, a timely issue. Orlean effectively explores the conundrum surrounding the fact that some rabbits die during the vaccine production process that protects other domestic rabbits — and wild rabbits remain unprotected altogether.”

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/12/1043293943/book-review-susan-orlean-on-animals

Granted one rabbit must die to save 10,000. Still, the population of wild rabbits may be extinguished forever by an Ebola-like virus. And the problem is those little bunnies are stoic. They never let on that they don’t feel well, they just keel over and die! We once bought a lop-eared rabbit for the Bride at the Monmouth County NJ Fair from a 4-H tent. Bob built a large elevated enclosure in our yard for the rabbit, who managed to escape eventually.

Orlean tells us that rabbit meat was commonplace on American tables before the cattle industry ramped up after WWII. And of course, Bugs Bunny signaled the end of rabbit farming in the states. But this particular rabbit virus causes a disease, myxomatosis, that was first detected when pet rabbits started dying.

“Myxomatosis is a severe, usually fatal, viral disease. In some countries, it has been used as a way of reducing the number of wild rabbits. It first reached the UK in the 1950s and decimated the wild rabbit population at the time. The disease remains a risk today, to both wild and pet rabbits. The acute form can kill a rabbit within 10 days and the chronic form within two weeks, although some rabbits do survive this.”

https://www.bluecross.org.uk/advice/rabbit/myxomatosis

Our pillow talk has turned a dark corner. Last night, I told Bob all about those poor rabbits and followed it up with a summation of the BBC article I’d read about an elephant virus with a mortality rate of 85%. “Oh, and did you hear they found coronavirus in white-tailed deer?”

Bob turned to me and said, “Maybe we should talk about something other than plagues.”

A part of our menagerie

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Static Cling

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on January 31, 2022| Leave a Comment »

There aren’t too many streaming shows that Bob and I can agree to watch together.

The one exception is After Life on Netflix with Ricky Gervais. Funny while also being poignant, Gervais’ character tries to get on with his work as a small town newspaper reporter after his wife’s untimely death from cancer. I guess all deaths might be considered “untimely,” still he tries therapy to help him dig out of his depression. The only problem here is with the therapist.

Played by Paul Kaye, he is a self-involved, pathetic, know-it-all. While glancing at his cell to keep track of some Twitter feed, the therapist tells Gervais to “… just stop being sad.” Future psychologists take note – watch this show only to find out how not be a therapist.

While Zooming with Dr Jim, my psychologist brother, we laughed about the show. Of course, not all therapists are bumbling idiots. Jim told me he’s reading a book by a psychotherapist who has combined his Buddhist beliefs with his approach to analysis – it’s called The Zen of Therapy, Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life.

“…freedom lies ultimately not in understanding what happened to us, but in loosening our grip on it all, so that “things that feel fixed, set, permanent and unchanging” can start to shift. The goal, in a refreshing counterpoint to the excesses of a certain way of thinking about therapy, isn’t to reach the state of feeling glowingly positive about yourself and your life. It’s to become less entangled with that whole question, so that you get to spend your time on more meaningful things instead.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/books/review/zen-of-therapy-mark-epstein.html

In other words, let down your hair and get untangled.

Our Mother the Flapper was very Zen in her old age. She surrounded herself with Buddhas the way Grandma Ada (who was a practicing marriage therapist into her 90s) did with glass bluebirds. The Bride is also Zen-centric in her approach to life, becoming a Yoga teacher a few years back. I’m pretty sure her Yoga practice helped save her during the worst of this pandemic.

“What are you clinging to?” Jim asked me.

One might assume it is my grandchildren, but that is not true. I hope they find me interesting for awhile, and I love them immensely. But I’m not clinging to that love. When I look back at my life, my fundamental issue was not that I didn’t feel loved, if anything I felt an abundance of unconditional love.

Because of our Year of Living Dangerously, I would often suffer from a feeling of not belonging – I was shuttled between two mothers, two states, two entirely different worlds for the first 12 years. Today, I am a Jersey Girl in a Southern state; but over the years, I’ve made my peace with not belonging. In fact, I’ve come to accept it as a way of life moving forward. Besides, I married a gypsy who liked my pink hair.

That reminds me of Bob teaching a third year medical student how to suture a wound last week. I made vegetable soup for lunch, and with masks up, they started practicing their stitches on the kitchen island. The first stitch must realign the skin and not be too tight, Bob said. I continued knitting my scarf since I was practicing the cable stitch and thinking about tension on my needles.

And wondering if the postman will marry the sex worker.

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Curricularity

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on January 28, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Yes, I just made up a word, take note Merriam Webster. Curricularity is a noun – a state of mind expressing “… extreme amusement” of any school board member that has been criticized, harassed or generally polarized by parents wishing to be partners in their child’s education.

When I sat on a school board in NJ, I learned quite a lot about the Business of Education.

I got a crash course on marketing when the superintendent wanted to upgrade the track that ran around the football field. I learned more about the composite materials of running tracks than I ever wanted to know. It seems the age-old clay and ash track (or was it asphalt and rubber?) didn’t cut it with the coaches and football parents; we needed to allocate multiple thousands of dollars for a new age synthetic track.

In this country, “… building a 400 meter polyurethane track from scratch typically costs around $1 million. Resurfacing an existing track usually costs about $300 thousand.” https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-build-a-400-meter-track

We needed the other tax-paying-parents to buy in to the scheme, and we needed to convince the Borough Council it was necessary. As a newspaper reporter, I knew the economics of any new building project for a public school meant the money had to come out of some other fund, or you had to get a loan in the form of a bond. It was basic “Guns and Butter.” And most of a school’s budget is spent on… can you guess?

Teacher and Administrator salaries.

In an ideal world, public school board members should not be politically biased. Their mission should be to want only the best for their students; but in reality, many states have members that are elected and bring their own unique overt or covert bias right along with them. Unfortunately for TN, we are in the news AGAIN, for all the wrong reasons!

Parents yelling at and threatening public school board members in Franklin was bad enough. Now in a vote of 10-0, McMinn County members voted to ban an 8th Grade book on the Holocaust … on Holocaust Remembrance Day. But at least we’re not alone in our book banning.

“GOP politicians across the country have sought to emulate Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s successful campaign focus last year on “parental control” of education, which revived calls to ban Toni Morrison’s Nobel Prize-winning “Beloved.” In November, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) ordered a statewide probe of potential “criminal activity” into “pornography” in schools after two LGBTQ memoirs were pulled from some districts in his state. Around the same time in Kansas, a school board near Wichita announced it was removing 29 books from circulation, including Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” and “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.,” a history of the white supremacist group.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/01/27/maus-ban-tennessee-mcminn-county-holocaust/

The Rocker was in 8th Grade when he wrote a compelling essay on censorship. Thirteen year olds are smarter than we think, and in NJ, teaching middle-schoolers about the Holocaust is a requirement in the curriculum. Like teaching Math, there are actually right and wrong answers and parents mostly left that up to the teachers. I was never asked to opine about books that were purchased at my son’s school, not as a parent or a board member.

The banning of books in our public schools sets a dangerous precedent. At its best, It’s unfortunate that todays’ conservatives think it’s better not to discomfort our children; didn’t they accuse us of being soft, snowflakes? There is nothing humorous about what’s going on in certain states.

I’m going to buy the Pulitzer Prize winning book Maus, and donate it to our local free library so children can read it. Maybe we can start something? https://www.parnassusbooks.net/book/9780394747231

The Rocker’s 8th grade school picture on my desk

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Redhead Redux

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on January 24, 2022| Leave a Comment »

I was so relieved when Biden was elected, and breathed a big sigh of relief when he appointed his new Press Secretary, Jen Psaki. Finally, someone intelligent, who could untangle a president’s bumblings. She seemed to be having fun up there, dueling with the media en masse. Here was someone who showed up, and didn’t antagonize the press room. Plus, she’s a redhead at that!

Being born with red hair can be a comfort or a curse. When I was little, I always wanted black hair. I even prayed for my hair color to change so that I wouldn’t feel so different, so that I wouldn’t stand out. The Flapper once told me she used to rub lemons all over her face to get rid of her freckles; that wasn’t much help. But eventually, I learned to love my strawberry locks.

I was a chameleon, my head of hair turning more of a copper red in the winter months, and almost platinum blonde in the summer. Even as I grew older, I felt like my white streaks were highlights and not grey. So I was rooting for Ms Psaki, as if she were a part of my tribe. But Jen, you did us a disservice this week. Kickboxing?

In an interview on The View, she commiserated with Democrats’ despair over the Senate not passing the biggest voting rights bill in a generation by telling us:

“My advice to everyone out there who’s frustrated, sad, angry, pissed off: feel those emotions, go to a kickboxing class, have a margarita, do whatever you need to do this weekend and then wake up on Monday morning, we gotta keep fighting.”

https://www.newsweek.com/psaki-mocked-telling-those-upset-voting-rights-have-margarita-keep-fighting-1671786

Unfortunately, that just created a firestorm on Twitter. People were saying she was out of touch, that they can’t afford a kickboxing class that costs more than therapy. It even costs more than my drag queen haircut! Her advice for us to keep fighting, while the senators do nothing, was indelicate at best.

Bob and I did our Zoom Pilates class yesterday and took a power walk around the neighborhood. Luckily, Bob had some amazing football games to watch too, since we didn’t have the ingredients for a margarita. Our anger at our dysfunctional government only intensified…

This Monday morning I’ve only heard about Russia and Ukraine, while Tennessee is one of the top FIVE states in the country for Covid per capita. Woop WOO! Voting rights is old news. The very foundation of our democracy continues to be fodder for Mr T’s antics. His judges and legislators want to bend and contort the rule of law to fit their antiquated racist ideology.

So why would we consider defending democracy in Eastern Europe when we can barely defend our own house? When we’ve learned how close we came to the military seizing our voting machines for Mr T? Why are Republicans so afraid of letting every American vote?

And never mess with a redhead. Especially not one in need of some tequila, or gorilla glue.

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Rules and Rights

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on January 21, 2022| Leave a Comment »

We all know that person. The one who thinks the rules don’t apply to him; the unvaccinated star tennis player who was finally evicted from Australia ; the NFL player who brazenly lied about his vaccination status.

“How is lying – let’s call what Rodgers did for what it is – about being vaccinated against a disease that has killed more than 5 million people worldwide, almost 750,000 in the United States alone, representing the team the right way? How is exposing friends and teammates to COVID, as he might have done over the weekend, showing care for the well-being of those around him?”

https://sports.yahoo.com/opinion-aaron-rodgers-covid-lied-210942065.html

They must believe their wealth and fame would shield them from any major catastrophe. They pay the thousands of dollars in fines, sit one or two games out, and then get right back into the game clutching their multiple million dollar contracts.

But here’s the thing – in the stratosphere of elite sports, it’s still a man’s world. Take tennis for instance. After nearly dying while giving birth, Serena Williams chose to wear a black catsuit at the French Open in 2018. With her history of blood clots, she was not making a fashion statement. Still, her outfit caused quite a stir among the older, whiter French Tennis Federation rule-makers. They chose to BAN Le Catsuit!

To be fair, making a choice not to wear a frilly, white tennis skirt cannot be compared to risking the lives of your teammates and their families by lying about your vaccination status.

Which is why the sheer patriarchal audacity of the SCOTUS last week is so infuriating. Did you know why Justice Sotomayor has had to WFH (work from home) lately? Well, it turns out she has diabetes, a known risk factor for Covid, and Justice Gorsuch has chosen NOT to wear a mask during arguments. He is the only unmasked judge on the Supreme Court. It seems that Sotomayor had told Justice Roberts, the big kahuna, that since the Omicron variant hit, she was “… not comfortable sitting next to members who are not masked.”

My immediate reaction was why isn’t Gursuch working remotely?

Bob said, they should all be working remotely! Strangely enough, the highest court does not currently have any Covid rules in place, which may explain their latest ruling about workplace hazards and vaccination requirements. Still, I wonder, if Justice Sotomayor had been a man, let’s say a conservative man, would Roberts ask HIM to work remotely?

This singular display, of male over female, of a conservative leaning court over the liberal, is a metaphor for our time. The Right wants the freedom to do as they please – to buy as many guns as they want and strap them on without a permit, without a thought of the young lives lost to suicide and accidents partially because an unlocked gun was within reach at a vulnerable time. They would like to tell women what to do with our bodies. They’ve been passing laws at state levels for years making it harder and harder for a woman to access an abortion provider. Even though Roe is established law.

Their latest attack on voting rights is the last straw. I get that we have two recalcitrant Democratic senators. But we couldn’t find two Republicans?

Like privileged, petulant teenagers, the GOP only follows the rules if they made them. Here are some countries we are trying to emulate, places in the world where it is also difficult to vote: Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uganda, Kenya, Oman, Qatar, Egypt, Nigeria, Papa New Guinea, and Zanzibar. Our country still operates a piecemeal, state by state approach to this fundamental right.

“In the United States, voting laws vary drastically from state to state. While Minnesota, for example, has same-day voter registration and no picture ID laws, other states, like Tennessee, require voters to register a month ahead of time and present a picture ID when they get to the polls.”

https://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/countries-easier-vote-united-states/story?id=17625616

Would you believe Estonia has instituted Online Voting, and absolutely every citizen in this Baltic country has the right to vote remotely! Since we also rank 138 out of 172 countries in voter turnout, one would think we’d try to make the right to vote easier. What does it say about a party that subverts and bends the rules to strip us of of our basic human rights? What does it say about an athlete, or a Supreme Court Justice?

Can 2022 have a do over?

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Color or Colour?

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , on January 17, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Netflix has my number. They know that I like film noir, thrillers of the John Grisham type – not too much violence with a psychological twist. A good old-fashioned intellectual mystery like Murder on the Orient Express is my jam. And since reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, there’s no place I like my intrigue better than a snowy Scandinavian country.

Enter The Girl From Oslo. I had finished with Succession, and had about all I could handle with Emily in Paris. We were between snow storms in Nashville, the pantry and fridge were full to bursting. The electrician was still working at the new/old house and Bob wasn’t feeling so good. I had the remote all to myself, when Netflix suggested https://www.netflix.com/title/81147725

It was easy enough to watch, short episodes filmed in Israel, Gaza and Norway. A young Norwegian girl is kidnapped by ISIS while traveling with a brother and sister from Israel. The acting was almost soap operaish, but the action kept me intrigued. So much pain and violence ‘in the name of God’ would normally not interest me, but I had to see how it ended. It is one of the top five streaming shows on Netflix worldwide.

Bob interrupted this reverie one night to tell me we had to pick a paint color! It was time to pick the off-white wall color for our remodeled kitchen with dark blue cabinets. Do we want lavender or yellow undertones? Who knew there are a million off white colors, not to mention the pale grays. The Bride had turned me onto Havenly, https://havenly.com/ for some help, a website trying to democratize design. Their algorithm said my style was somewhere between Boho and Transitional.

I was wondering why my style wasn’t Scandinavian, when I returned reluctantly to reality and let Ms Bean out in the garden.

She jumped off the porch and right onto a possum! They tussled for a bit, then the possum ambled slowly under the house. I thanked Ms Bean for keeping us safe at her elderly age and went to charge my phone before bed. That was when I read about the synagogue in Texas.

My fictional Netflix evening about Middle East terrorism turned into a real time terrorist news event. A Palestinian was holding four people captive after shabbat services, including a rabbi, and demanding the release of his ‘sister’ who was serving 86 years nearby for shooting at soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan. The terrorist was an Arab British citizen who had entered the US legally and then bought a gun, legally.

Needless to say, I was no longer sleepy. I forgot to mention that Bob had been running a fever and felt like he’d been hit by a truck. His rapid at home test was negative for Covid, but the Bride wanted us to drive through a Metro testing site to get a more reliable PCR done. We still didn’t know the result. But ever since the holidays, Bob has been so careful and deliberate, wearing an N95 if we venture into a grocery store, that I thought if HE can get this Omicron variant, we might as well all give up and toss our masks and cares to the wind.

This morning I’m grateful that all the Jewish hostages survived. But since the L’il Pumpkin will be joining his sister in Hebrew School this year, my gratitude in tinged with concern. Why are we still fighting over ancient, Biblical conflicts? Why have anti-Semitic attacks in the US reached a historic high in 2021?

Mehnaz Afridi:
I think for anyone antisemitism should be an important topic and subject. If it’s going on in Pakistan it should be important to someone living in Kansas City. We are a connected global community.

https://www.ushmm.org/antisemitism/what-is-antisemitism/antisemitism-today

Bob’s PCR is negative, YIPPEE, so we may venture out to a paint store for some samples. Wish us luck on our choice of “colours.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtJRJVdUFx4

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Occupational Risk

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on January 14, 2022| Leave a Comment »

I remember when Bob was in high school, he scored a summer job at our local munitions factory, ironically named Hercules Powder Company. The pay was ten times better than anything else around because it was considered “hazardous duty.” After all, make the wrong move and the whole place could blow up.

When we lived in the Berkshires, and the AIDs crisis hit, it occurred to me that he was also at risk when he went to work. If a nurse or tech could not find a vein in an HIV patient, they would fetch my husband. Needle sticks were a fairly common way healthcare workers contracted communicable diseases like hepatitis.

Today’s healthcare workers are at risk each and every day, but not from a Blood Born virus, from the Coronavirus. We all know how it’s transmitted. There are no mosquitoes or fleas or rodents involved, and sexual transmission was never an issue. No, this novel virus likes to just hang out in the air we breathe. And with this new Omicron variant, it’s absolutely everywhere.

I’m bringing this up in light of the latest stupid decision our right-leaning SCOTUS made yesterday – that the risk of contracting Covid is “not a work-related danger.” Therefore businesses (of 100 or more employees) do not have the right to require vaccinations for their employees… even though an individual could opt out by being masked and tested weekly. This decision affects 84 million workers.

“In the end, Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates stood or fell based on judicial interpretations of federal statute, not principles of individual liberty or appeals to the greater good. According to a majority of the Supreme Court, Mr Biden had the law on his side when ordering healthcare workers to get vaccinated, but using a 51-year-old workplace safety statute to implement a vaccine-or-test requirement on all large employers was a bridge too far.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59989476

So, the government can order vaccinations for government-funded healthcare workers, new armed forces recruits, and so far, for public schoolchildren, but not for private businesses. The reasoning?: “Although Covid-19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most.”

I disagree… IT’S IN THE AIR PEOPLE. It’s unavoidable – where ever you are – if you are a living breathing sentient being.. That’s why most of us have been limiting our indoor activities to a select few people, and not dining indoors, and not going to concerts or bars. If we venture into a Walgreens, we mask up!

Now this may be a jump too far, but I’m worried about how this thinking will play out when SCOTUS rules on the “All or Nothing” Mississippi abortion fight in the spring. One could argue that getting pregnant is an occupational risk if one is female. And pregnancy can indeed be hazardous – it can give you gestational diabetes, it can produce high blood pressure, anemia, pre-term labor, preeclampsia, infection, and like the Bride, you may end up needing surgery because the baby is upside down!

And surgery for a breech birth is not easy, let me tell you.

So I’m wondering how the government thinks that interfering with a woman’s Constitutional right to choose what she does with her own body is OK? Do you think it’s fine for old/White/mostly/male mostly Christian legislators to pass laws forcing women to carry a pregnancy to term, despite her wishes and her doctor’s recommendations? Isn’t this flying too close to a dystopian Margaret Atwood novel?

Let’s not forget, you can always leave your newborn at a firehouse.

In the middle of a two year pandemic, that has outwitted us largely because of the GOP’s strategy of misinformation and lies, our highest court has decided to bend to the pressure of big business. There was a time, early on, when the Groom’s ICU was filled with chicken factory workers. There was also a time when it was filled with pregnant women, who lost their much wanted babies.

If your work includes leaving your home to mix and mingle with co-workers, I’d argue that it is hazardous; whether it means in an office or on a factory floor.

I’m glad Bob has retired and doesn’t have to suit up in PPE just to see patients in an ER. The Bride is seeing so many people for stomach problems, bleeding and any random injury you could think of, and most are testing positive for Covid… as an aside, as an incremental finding. One of our friends was scheduled for knee replacement surgery, and her pre-operative blood work came back positive for Covid. She had no symptoms, but she was twice vaccinated and boosted.

Living can be risky. So be careful out there.

Keeping Calm and Carrying On

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