LAST POST OF 2023

Published December 28, 2023 by Nan Mykel

FUN – I received an interesting calendar for Christmas: “Goats in Trees.” Apparently goats in Morocco climb trees and the photos are charming. The scoop and the poop:

THE ARGANIA TREE IS NOT the most aesthetically pleasing plant in the world with a rough, thorny bark and gangly, crooked branches. But these Moroccan trees still tend to attract admirers, thanks in large part to the hordes of goats. The animals stand on the impossibly precarious branches and get down to their seasonal feast. Far from just a single ambitious goat climbing a single tree, the animals tend to swarm into the branches in number.

Local farmers condone and even cultivate this bizarre feeding practice, keeping the goats away from the trees while the fruit matures and releasing them at the right time. There is also a secondary benefit to the goats’ habits which is found in their poop. After the goats finish eating the fruit and nuts off the tree, they pass valuable clumps of seeds which are then pressed to create the sought-after Argan oil. Check it out via Google at atlasobscura.com

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ROLL OVER, BEETHOVEN! — One of my recent “Likes” was from an interesting person in Malta…unfortunately I don’t think I can ever learn how to read those little funny boxes to say Thanks…

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WHAT THE H IS WEGOVY! ….A casual heading in this week’s The Week heralded a clipping about Wegovy without ever defining it. A first I was flammoxed, but after looking it up can I be proud that I’m not one of the weightiest who seek it out? (But not one of the oldest who has trouble keeping up with the times?)

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: If a man takes off his sunglasses I can see him better. –Hugh Prather, Notes to Myself

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Mandy/Molly! Fifty-Two Today!

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CAN WE ALL TRY to make 2024 better than 2023? Let’s go, TEAM 2024!

COINCIDENCE?

Published December 27, 2023 by Nan Mykel

Is it possible that the United States failed to prevent the attack of 9-11 in order to justify the following war for oil?

And is it possible Israel failed to prevent the attack by Gaza– when its female spotters kept warning Israel that an invasion seemed to be building– in order to justify the “responsive” war with Gaza?

I have been reading about the backstage shenanigans re the Bay of Pigs invasion on https://www.jfk Library and I just wonder how to make sense of it all. (I never resolved 9-11)

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Don’t fight a fact. Deal with it.” –Hugh Prather, Notes to Myself

NO ONE’S MERRY

Published December 25, 2023 by Nan Mykel

NOT IN ISRAEL, NOR GAZA, NOR PALESTINE, NOR ROME, NOR IN MUCH OF THE USA….

A note from the Sling Shot Winter 2023: ” I feel this sense of relef when I go to the San Rafael dump. It’s similar to the feeling I get when it starts raining. At the dump, it’s big and loud and chaotic, and the towering piles of trash make you feel like you’re in a dystopian sci-fi movie. For some reason they have peacocks there. You go to the dump expecting it to be a chore, the least glamorous part of fixing up your back yard, and instead you end up in another world for half an hour….

“….We are taught to believe it’s all part of the masterplan; people sleeping on streets, colonial states dropping bombs, supreme court rulings, elections, job interviews, getting engaged. Ingrained within us is this false notion that there is a point behind it all–that the path we are on has a destination. But what kind of masterplan is it if it does not honor life? If it has no problem killing thousands of children along the way? We don;t need to wait and see if things will work out. Things did not work out….”

How did I run into the Sling Shot? Serendipity via my granddaughter visiting from North Carolina via her mail from California, I believe…

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I CAN’T EVEN SAY HO HUM — Would/could Israel really have told Gazans to go to a safe spot and then dropped their heaviest bombs on them? If so, can the US stop the money they’ve been giving the Israelis? When is enough enough?

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QUOTE OF THE DAY — “Thr potential acts of good caused by religion can never exceed those that cause violence.” Hector Avalo, Fighting Words; The Origins of Religious Violence

ANOTHER DAY…

Published December 23, 2023 by Nan Mykel

AS PROMISED, no comment.

No one liked this in 2015, so I thought I’d give you another chance. It occurred in the waiting room between lives:…Then I spy Elvis himself–fat, paunchy and wearing sunglasses. The only trace of fame that adheres to him is the white-spangled costume which was his trademark. I wish he was singing a hymn from one of his albums, but then I realize that there is not much interaction between those who wait. He is not in an aisle seat , but I lean over and address him. “Mr. Presley?” He looks up nervously, as though he expects an autograph hound, then nods. You’re headed for a different life and different lessons. Before you’re all gone would you be kind enough to give us the gift of your ‘Amazing Grace’?” Elvis blinks, obviously surprised, and then looks all around him as though to assess his potential audience. Apparently satisfied, he stands and faces the main portion of the crowd. His voice is richly beautiful as he sings all seven verses of “Amazing Grace,” as only he can. He sits down when finished and instead of wild applause there was a total, respectful and moved silence, punctuated by quiet sobs.

DAMN DAMN DAMN HO HUM: http://nedhamsonsecondlineviewofthenews.com/2023/12/23/airstrike-in-gaza-kills-u-n-worker-and-more-than-76-of-his-relatives-the-new-york-times/

MORE EMPATHY OR SYMPATHY? Oh I feel for the members of Congress who are quitting. I can both empathize and sympathize for them and their families. We’re all entitled to give up when both the task and the experience is too unravelling. It’s especially difficult to make that decision when one is a linchpin to the possibility of a better tomorrow. So, move over, baby, we’re in for a winter in the heart and a climate that’s brewing inevitable. Quick; find a god you can believe in. Or have they all quit too…

QUOTE OF THE DAY: The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is a more violent world.” –Hannah Arendt, quoted in The Week from FEE.org

I Didn’t Kill Myself…[“The Only Poem” Reblog]

Published December 22, 2023 by Nan Mykel

http://nguyenthiphuongtram.com/2023/12/23/day-la-bai-tho-duy-nhat/

Reblog from Lobotero

Published December 21, 2023 by Nan Mykel

This is a good one:

http://lobotero.com/2023/12/21/trump-will-not-win-but/

Poem: Worst Job in the Universe

Published December 20, 2023 by Nan Mykel

TOUGH JOB

Of all the jobs in the universe

the worst is at Heaven’s gate.

When the day arrives and they

stand there before you

with a choir of evangelicals

singing, while thousands

behind them still weep and the

Virgin Mary protests;

children still searching for

mommies and daddies, for

parents they lost forever.

How many good enoughs are needed

to cancel out all the bad?

Your job is to count all the

ways they failed themselves

and others, worshiping the god

of money and power, lying

for personal gain;

turning with vengeance on friends,

killing thousands by inaction;

adultery; booby trapping

their country’s future.

Gatekeeper, what’s your decision?

Karma! As many lifetimes as required.

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EEEK!

By now you have probably heard that Trump cannot be listed on Colorado’s Republican primary list for the 2024 General Election, due to a ruling by the state’s Supreme Court earlier this week, based on the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids anyone who has caused an insurrection from becoming President. Next to the Supreme Court of the land? Do you think the Fourteenth Amendment is unreasonable?

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Miscellaneous Question: When you say something is on the right side or the left side, are you inside looking out outside looking in?

What’s a Person to Do?

Published December 20, 2023 by Nan Mykel

SOMETIMES IT SEEMS LIKE THE LOAD is too huge to bear. Sometimes I get washed off my feet by the weight of it all. At such times a list of concrete goals strikes me as handy. A random list of worthy causes I try to remember, in no special order, includes: OOPS–Sorry. I didn’t get beyond the first cause today: Women:

1870 — African-Americans may vote now, but women may not.

1918 — Doctors in New York are permitted to advise their married patients about birth control for health purposes. My mother was six years old.

August 18, 1920 – Women allowed to vote – Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote. Only a smidge over a hundred years ago. Victory took decades of agitation and protest. I’ve experienced that fact like a fairy tale, not fully realizing that it occurred only fifteen years before I was born. My mother was eight years old when women were “given” the right to vote. (African Americans were granted that right in 1870.)

1936 — Judicial approval of medicinal use of birth control is established. I am one year old.

1964 — The Civil Rights Act passes, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex.

1965 — In Griswold v Connecticut, the Supreme Court overturns one of the last state laws prohibiting the prescription or use of contraceptives by married couples.

1971 — In Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corporation, the U.S. Supreme Court outlaws the practice of private employers refusing to hire women with pre-school children.

1972 — Title IX of the Education Amendments prohibits sex discrimination in all aspects of education programs that receive federal support.

1972 — In Eisenstadt v. Baird, the Supreme Court rules that the right to privacy encompasses an unmarried person’s right to use contraceptives.

1973 — With its Roe v. Wade decision, the U.S. Supreme Court declares that the Constitution protects women’s right to terminate an early pregnancy, thus making abortion legal in the U.S.

1994 — Congress adopts the Gender Equity in Education Act to train teachers in gender equity, promote math and science learning by girls, counsel pregnant teens, and prevent sexual harassment.

1994 — The Violence Against Women Act funds services for victims of rape and domestic violence, allows women to seek civil rights remedies for gender-related crimes, provides training to increase police and court officials’ sensitivity and a national 24-hour hotline for battered women.

2013 — Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The new bill extends coverage to women of Native American tribal lands who are attacked by non-tribal residents, as well as lesbians and immigrants.

2017 — A worldwide protest called The Women’s March happens the day following Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration. It was the largest single-day protest in U.S. history with an estimated 4 million participating in local marches across the nation. The organizers’ goal for the march was “send a bold message to our new administration on their first day in office, and to the world that women’s rights are human rights.”

2022 — The Supreme Court rules that the constitution does not confer any right to abortion, thus overruling both Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) and setting off waves of protests across the U.S.

Dates selected partially from History of Women’s Rights in America (MARCH 16, 2017)

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Time

Published December 18, 2023 by Nan Mykel

Phot0: Ruth Scribbles

TIME

Given sufficient poetic license

Time can wrap itself around our

little finger where it can change

its mind and wipe us out

anywhere, anytime.

Or around our thumb, where

it can deny it exists at all.

Around our pointer: home of our

dreams, plans, wishes

and poetry,.

The entire index finger contains all

traces of life’s grasp of itself–

nursery rhymes, ant hills, mathematics

and all existent guesses of quantum physics.

A sad last finger is known as “The,”

and contains all hurting and hurtful howls.

Perhaps a potential is held in its palm.

Maybe not.

–Nan 12/18,23

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Sunday’s Late Journal

Published December 18, 2023 by Nan Mykel

Ho Hum: MOMS FOR LIBERTY

PROUD OF MY CITY — On January 6th of 2024 the city of Athens, Ohio will outlaw single-use plastic carryout bags. The ban applies to all stores and vendors in the city of Athens, including restaurants, and covers single-use plastic carryout bags provided to customers at checkout. The law does not apply to plastic bags (usually without handles) that a store or restaurant provides within the business to hold potentially messy items such as produce, meat, fish, baked goods or bulk items. Stores or restaurants that violate the new law will be cited with an administrative offense and fined $150. If they fail to pay the fine within 30 days, they’ll be cited with a misdemeanor offense. Customers will not be subject to citations or fines. Many stores and restaurants will be posting “Remember your bags” or “BYOB” (Bring Your Own Bag.)

The ordinance can be reviewed on the city’s web site, https://library.com,oh/athens/ordinances/code_of_ordinances?no-deld=1225501. “Plastics , including bags, contain thousands of chemicals that leach out and can’t be separated from the plastics at recycling. Most of these chemicals are not identified and many are known to be toxic. Plastics last for hundreds or years. They don’t biodegrade. They break into smaller microplastics and nanoplastics that leach out toxic chemicals.

Plastic waste threatens our ecosystem and us. It is found in soil and water and our bodies and is killing wildlife, both on land and in waterways. Eliminating single-use plastic plastic bags is a start in reducing oil and gas pollution. Promoting and increasing our use of plastic is Plan B for the fossil fuel industry as they see their profits decreased by our reliance on more renewable energy sources. More plastics means more fracking and more petrochemical facilities. For more information, email Athens ReThink Plastics at AthensReThinkPlastics@gmail.com. And BYOB!

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DID YOU KNOW? A group of buzzards is called a wake, though this refers to the vultures instead of true buzzards. This name comes from a reference to a funeral practice called a wake in which family and friends of the deceased would sit by the casket and watch for signs of waking. (The vultures or true buzzards wait to make sure their deceased is truly dead before eating.) Barf.

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GREAT IDEA

This may be evermore at the level of its inception idea, but realizing that it’s too late to orchestrate one of my homemade Christmas cards, I decided it would be Happy New Year cards, and then my eyes got big and I thought about making a card of a Christmas tree with ornament balls of friends in my life, past and present. Even a page of those I’ve forgiven. Now that I’ve told my reader, at least you will know I had the idea, if I never get around to accomplishing [finishing?] it.

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WELCOME IS THE NEWS THAT today Pope Francis is allowing priests to bless same sex relationships (but not marriages).

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Regretful is the old news that I still can’t can’t navigate to return to D’Verse Poets…Oh well, can’t be young and sharp forever….