I Can’t Run Away

Published December 30, 2024 by Nan Mykel

It’s tempting to just “forget” what’s happening today in the world, but running away gets me no place, even away. So while I’m drawn to try and escape acid reflux topics, I will at least mix the two for awhile, at least until my readership vanishes. That said, today’s mixture:

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“INDIAN GIVER?”

Was Jimmy Carter already dead when Trump announced his intention/wish to take the Panama Canal back? The Canal Zone was constructed following Jim Crow policies of segregation. Privileged white U.S. citizens and their dependents were granted certain rights based on race. Black Panamanians and migrant laborers, mostly from the Caribbean, took the bulk of low-paying jobs and lived in the Canal Zone’s segregated neighborhoods. (Google) When President, Jimmy Carter signed https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check

The stretch of land 50 miles long and 10 miles wide in the middle of the Panamanian isthmus had been under U.S. control since 1903, with construction of the canal starting in earnest the following year.

The U.S. Canal Zone had its own government, court system, schools, police force, fire department. It had its own governor, appointed by the president of the U.S. Living in the zone meant access to free housing, free schools, state-of-the-art medical facilities, manicured lawns, clean streets, little-league football and Fourth of July parades.

But when Panamanians set foot in the Canal Zone, their citizenship rights were void and they could be prosecuted under different laws and regulations.

The Panama Canal Treaty promised to give control of the canal to the Panamanians by midnight Dec. 31, 1999. The Treaty of Permanent Neutrality and Operation declared the canal neutral and open to vessels of all nations and allowed the U.S. to retain the permanent right to defend the canal from any threat.

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Voters in Odessa, Texas, have overwhelmingly rebuked the city’s anti-trans reputation by replacing the three city council members who supported its infamous bathroom ban – and also by electing Odessa’s first-ever gay council member.

Craig Stoker, executive director for the local Meals on Wheels, campaigned on improving the city’s infrastructure, while his opponent – incumbent Denise Swanner – campaigned on homophobia.

From <https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/12/voters-oust-visciously-anti-trans-city-council-trio-elect-the-citys-first-gay-councilmember/

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‘Godfather of AI’ shortens odds of the technology wiping out humanity over next 30 years

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FORTY DIFFERENT FRUIT ON ONE TREE

Why can’t we do it?

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I GUESS I COULD BE CALLED AN ALLIE IN GHANA

An Amendment in Ghana would classify LGBTQ+ people, allies, and related acts as “fugitive criminals.” In the same vein as murderers, rapists, bank robbers and more. This means anyone engaged in LGBTQAP+ activities who are merely deemed to have committed offenses would be subject to extradition to Ghana. Under such extradition law, Ghana could potentially request the extradition of individuals from countries with which it has extradition treaties. The treaty with the US, for example, was extended from its initiating UK treaty which covered Commonwealth countries.

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FRIENDLY AMPUTATIONS

Combat can leave the ants with leg injuries. But as scientists recently discovered, these ants have evolved an effective wound treatment: amputation.

In the journal Current Biology, on Tuesday, researchers report that the ants bite off the injured limbs of their nest mates to prevent infection. Although other ant species are known to tend to the wounds of their injured, typically by licking them clean, this is the first time that an ant species has been known to use amputation to treat an injury.

The ants in the study performed amputations on only certain leg injuries, suggesting that they are methodical in their surgical practices. Aside from humans, no other animal is known to conduct such amputations. The prevalence of the behavior among Florida carpenter ants raises questions about their intelligence and their ability to feel pain.

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Male Versus Female —

“We need the humility to acknowledge that we haven’t come near to solving male versus female issues in the United States. But at least we discuss them openly, shattering taboos — and throwing stones from a glass house is still preferable to silence as women and girls are murdered and assaulted in large numbers around the world.” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/18/opinion/sexual-violence-women.html

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Erin in the Morning

120 Anti-Trans Bills Filed Across the United States This Year

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NAN says: Well, I experimented good vs bad, but I think I stayed a little more down than up…

TO TAKE YOUR MIND OFF…

Published December 25, 2024 by Nan Mykel

The following is probably from an Edgar Cayce Dream Course I took years ago:

The ancient Greeks paid close attention to certain dreams that seemed to predict illness. Hippocrates,the Greek physician called the father of medicine, thought that specific dream images prognosticated future ailments. Such dreams are probably responses of the brain to minute bodily symptoms of sensations that are magnified and dramatized during sleep. Symptoms of illness often appear in dreams long before they are observable while awake. As you learn the common dream signs of both illness and improvement, you have the opportunity to pick up forewarnings each night. When the images are dire, you can take action to protect yourself. For instance, if you dream that you are driving a car that’s going too fast and its brakes have failed you should find a way to slow down your waking lifestyle before you crash.

HOUSE METAPHORS FOR THE BODY

HOUSE PART BODY PART

spine staircase

framework skeleton, bones

windows eyes

front door mouth, vagina

back door anus

furnace stomach, womb

pipes blood vessels, ducts

electrical wiring nerves

room inner space

balcony breasts

chimney, tower phallus

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AUTOMOBILE PART BODY PART

body (outer shell) body surface

steering wheel mind-set, control

brakes ability to control activity

headlights eyes

horn voice

fuel energy level

engine, concealed parts inner organs

tires or wheels legs

IF YOU DREAM ABOUT AN AUTOMOBILE AS A METAPHOR for your body, you should consider:

Which brand is it?

Which model (sedan, convertible, sports, racing)

What condition is it in?

How well does it function?

Are you at the steering wheel? If not, who is in control?

Is the car going too slow or too fast?

Do the brakes work?

Is the car moving properly on the road or has it swerved off?

Is it stuck in a rut?

Is there danger of a crash?

Is there a flat tire?

Are the inner parts malfunctioning?

Is the exterior rusty or polished?

Is there enough gas?

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UPDATE ON NURSERY RHYMES

Georgie Porgie: About the Prince Regent George IV of Britain, who was exceedingly fat and left a string of illegitimate children.:“Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, Kissed the girls and made them cry.” Seems to me there’s a piece missing somewhere.

Little children today don’t skip rope to rhymes about Bill Clinton and Monica. If you know what piece of the history is missing, please share with us. Maybe they will some day skip rope while singing about the Kennedy’s and Marilyn Monroe or the president elect and Stormy Daniels? My guess is there’s even more colorful events around the corner. What say ye?

Three Blind Mice – [Bloody] Queen Mary of England refers to her order to have three Protestant bishops viciously killed, possibly blinded.

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Well, if I don’t get back to you later today. Happy Holidays….Oh, just a late note that our incoming president wants to retake the Suez Canal.

HOLY COW!

Published December 20, 2024 by Nan Mykel

It’s fairly well accepted that the contents of a number of nursery rhymes reflect pieces of actual history. Why? Many nursery rhymes originated in times when life was harsh. They often reflected societal issues, such as poverty, disease, and war. The realities of life during these periods influenced the themes of the rhymes. Also, there was no internet nor telephones. So I guess the adults talked to each other. Still, I can’t imagine adults sharing references of that kind with children.

The domain of once oral “folk” material that children have kept alive—folktales and fairy tales; fables, sayings, riddles, charms, tongue twisters; folksongs, lullabies, hymns, carols, and other simple poetry; rhymes of the street, the playground, the nursery; and, supremely, Mother Goose, and other “nonsense” verse, bubbles around us, often forgotten or disremembered.

The idea that little children through the ages may have been parroting references to grizzly actions they surely did not understand is difficult for me to process. I can remember rocking one of my own while singing Bye Baby Bunting, and as a child myself skipping rope to Cinderella and joining hands with friends, singing Ring Around the Rosey, pockets full of posies. I knew nothing of the plague and that posies helped cover the smell of death during the plague. I must have been busy cleaning the blackboard or something, because I can remember only Cinderella…went upstairs to kiss her fellow and Black Sheep, Black Sheep, have you any wool while jumping rope. Maybe a trace of Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear also..

And I kind of always worried about the end of Rockabye Baby. Stay tuned for what’s inside those juicy rhymes.

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WHAT!?

“We’re living in a world where facts instantly perish upon contact with human minds,” George Packer wrote in The Atlantic this month. “Local news is disappearing, and a much-depleted national press can barely compete with the media platforms of billionaires who control users algorithmically, with an endless stream of conspiracy theories and deepfakes. The internet, which promised to give everyone information and a voice, has consolidated in just a few hands the power to destroy the very notion of objective truth.”

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Don’t Know Where I Was when this happened: Odessa, Texas became a national name after its strict anti-trans bathroom ban that allows individual citizens (whether or not they are Odessa or even Texas residents) to sue a trans person for a minimum of $10,000 in damages if they violate it (there is no cap on how large the bounty can be).

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I also didn’t know Musk had a transgender daughter, either, who in her alienation from him exchanges insults, back and forth.

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Louisiana bans staff from helping people get mpox, COVID & flu vaccines

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TOO CLOSE TO HOME

Published December 18, 2024 by Nan Mykel

WOW…and Trump isn’t even president yet….United Health Care is my connection, as well as CareMark. Slipping under my feet, with no suspicions. Will the investigations be dropped under our new president?

I’m referring to news items about…

Earlier this year, a Senate committee investigated Medicare Advantage plans denying nursing care to patients who were recovering from falls and strokes. It concluded that three major companies — UnitedHealthcare, Humana and CVS, which owns Aetna — were intentionally denying claims for this expensive care to increase profits. UnitedHealthcare, the report noted, denied requests for such nursing stays three times more often than it did for other services. (Humana had an even higher figure, denying at a rate 16 times higher.) /unitedhealthcare-ceo-brian-thompson

I didn’t bite on Medicare Advantage because it advertised so much.

No one knows how often private insurers like UnitedHealthcare deny claims because they are generally not required to publish that data. People who bought coverage under Obamacare, a government-funded plan, had 17 percent of their care denied in 2021, according to KFF, a health policy group. Other surveys have found that denials are more prevalent among those with private insurance than those who carried government coverage.

UnitedHealthcare, part of the giant conglomerate UnitedHealth Group, reported more than $16 billion in operating profits last year and employed roughly 140,000 people. The company is a frequent lightning rod for criticism over how it handles claims.

Oxycontin misbehavior: This week I read about so much illegal conniving that I got a little depressed, especially about one that detailed oxycontin illegal manipulation in the pharmacy/medical illegal activities. I guess I asked for it–read digitaldefynd.com’s 60 biggest Business Scandals in History for a jolt or

Fraud
2020 National Health Care Fraud and Opioid Takedown

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I GUESS I’M NAIVE –If all conditions are satisfied and the non-monetary terms – which still need to be determined – are finalized, CVS Health has agreed it will pay approximately $5 billion ($4.9 billion to states and political subdivisions and approximately $130 million to tribes) over the next ten years beginning in 2023, depending on the number of governmental entities that agree to join the settlement. (Re the oxycontin scandal).

The agreement would fully resolve claims dating back a decade or more and is not an admission of any liability or wrongdoing. 5 billion for no wrongdoing?

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I REGRET SO MANY suspicions, before Trump is even in office. But, when I read a UnitedHealthcare representative made humanizing remarks about their late CEO, including the statement that

“While the health system is not perfect, every corner of it is filled with people who try to do their best for those they serve.” Who are those they serve? The Stockholders? Grrr, as another blogger said.

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When I read that so many wealthy outfits are cozying up to Trump, my blood runs cold.

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I didn’t know there were so many school shootings: This year, nine shooting suspects were female compared with 249 who were male, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database.

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Headlines: South Korea’s President Is Impeached After Martial Law Crisis….Maybe this will make Trump think twice before doing it?

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DUMB: To ask folks who survived due to the polio vaccine to wipe out their saviour? {re nytimes post)

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ENOUGH HAND WRINGING — The good lord willing, my next blog will be about nursery rhymes (but not all necessarily happy)….

WEIRD?

Published December 14, 2024 by Nan Mykel

I’m not strange, but maybe a little weird. Or perhaps you do the following also, but don’t notice:

For years I have occasionally woken myself from dreaming by hearing various noises. What’s weird is that the kind of noise adheres to the place I’m sleeping. If I’m living in a house without a doorbell, the noise is knocking at my front door. If my house has a doorbell, it rings. If I have a cell phone that rings.

Once I woke to the sound of a dog in my hallway and went back to sleep, figuring it was my daughter with her dog making a surprise visit. In the morning I found the guest bedroom empty; no dog, no daughter.

Yesterday I woke to what I assumed to be my daughter’s radio alarm. I looked at my watch and it was 9 a.m. She has to be at work at 8:10 a.m., so I called out upstairs to see if she had overslept. When there was no answer I was about to go up to see if she was okay, when I saw that a sweater I had been helping her with the night before was no longer on the arm of the chair, so I relaxed.

After a few minutes puzzling, I realized that I didn’t even have my hearing aids in, so I couldn’t have heard the radio upstairs. Besides, I later discovered she doesn’t even have a radio alarm. Moreover, my short term memory surfaced and I realized I had called out “Mother!” [No wonder there was no answer?]

This dream awakening to match my living arrangements can’t be just old age, because it’s sporadically occurred over 30 years. Last time I had decided that next time I would immediately focus on what I had been dreaming, to see if there was a clue there, but I was too “out of it.”

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BRIEF BRIEFS

Since I’ve already begun being frivolous, here’s something I scribbled going to sleep the other night:

When upset how do you respond?

yell___ curse____ cry____ pout____ throw things____ clam up____ scream____ drink____

snort____ eat____ sleep____ laugh____ hit yourself____ hit others____ pray____ discuss____

write____ sing____ turn on tv____ OOPS, I FORGOT: kill____ swindle___ blackmail____

self immolate____

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DID YOU EVER TRY TO WRITE AN HONEST AUTOBIOGRAPHY?

If you have re-owned traits formerly projected in Jung’s Shadow, how do you handle it? How do you manage to not

sound like making excuses? Or bragging?

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OH PLEASE….

Mr. Trump ultimately sued ABC, accusing Mr. Stephanopoulos of harming his reputation. Shoulda gone to Court. What reputation? The one he usually brags about?

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YAY!

New Jersey’s governor just signed a law banning book bans to ensure kids can “read freely”

The Freedom to Read Act protects both the books and the librarians who curate them.

CLIMATE UNEASE

Published December 14, 2024 by Nan Mykel

And hopefully our new leaders will take the immediate future of our planet seriously.

Definition of a tipping point: According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), tipping points are ‘critical thresholds in a system that, when exceeded, can lead to a significant change in the state of the system, often with an understanding that the change is irreversible.

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Breaking news: President Biden is pardoning nearly 1,500 Americans, a record for one day. (A number of these are reportedly 
on Trump's hit list once he is president). He has also pardoned his son Hunter.  I am glad he and the vice president were polite during
the official meetings with the new regime, but I'm also encouraged to see them fighting fire with fire about more elemental things.

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Today, Erin Reed shared her latest update to her map of anti-transgender risk. The map is well known among activists and transgender people. It shows risks both by state and at the national level. Overall, the news is absolutely not good.

Wish I’d Said That!

Published December 12, 2024 by Nan Mykel

The Green Study has been a personal essay blog for the last ten years and the commenting community here is largely made up of smart, thoughtful, respectful, and considerate humans. Despite that, polarization of politics has affected many of us right down to the bone. No matter what side you’re on, heels are dug in, and many of us are not particularly good at engaging on controversial topics, myself included, without reacting with defensive anger. Be that as it may, I still consider this my turf and as such, will curate it to the best of my ability. My guiding principles for the comment section are civility, mindfulness, authenticity, and growth. Civility: No personal attacks, name calling or needless escalation. The use of stereotypes or labels and cutesy insult names are not appreciated. Mindfulness: Not everyone shares your life experiences or perspectives. Don’t assume. Authenticity: Save the talking points for the big dogs. I tune out people who recite memes, fake news, inaccurate science, or try to hawk their own wares. Be you and stick with your own perspective. Growth: Conversations get better when people expand on ideas or give a unique perspective. On that note, I have not always followed these principles myself when writing posts and am trying to be more mindful about that. I still like salty language in context and believe that humor which punches upward has its place. If I do not have the time, energy or wherewithal to curate comments on a post effectively, particularly if it’s controversial, comments will be turned off. Please feel free to send me a message via my contact page and I’ll answer emails as time permits. Thank you. Share this:
Comment Policy

Comment Policy

I Didn’t Know–Did you?

Published December 10, 2024 by Nan Mykel

OECD - Energy Education

I visited Google and saw a number of articles beginning with “OEDC countries,” with no explanation of what they were talking about. I figured OEDC was such common knowledge that I must be a dummy not to know.

Seems it was otherwise. More specifically on Google I learned that The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is a unique forum where the governments of 37 democracies with market-based economies collaborate to develop policy standards to promote sustainable economic growth. Non-OECD countries are called developing economies or modernizing economies. https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/OECD#:~:text

China has been an OECD Key Partner since 2007, alongside Brazil, India, Indonesia and South Africa. Since embarking on a programme of dialogue and co-operation with China in 1995, the OECD has contributed to policy reform in China through the sharing of policy experience. I’m unsure about the count list of member countries, since in one post the U.S. refers to the OECD’s number as “democracies,” yet Russia and China–and I don’t know what other countries would not be considered democracies. Incidentally, not surprisingly it appears the largest countries are not in favor of any international enforceable climate change laws, although its [“our”] response was more than 100 pages long.

REBLOG: HOW OLD IS GENDER?

Published December 9, 2024 by Nan Mykel

Hopefully this reblog from an early post by gendermom.wordpress.com will serve to clarify some lingering transgender questions: Let a Gender Mom address the question: https://gendermom.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/how-old-is-gender/

When did you first know what gender you were? Chances are, by age four or five, you were firmly and comfortably established, for life, as a boy or girl. I know I was. But it’s not like that for everyone.

My recent post on the Bitch magazine blog got a fair number of responses, among them several questioning whether five years old was too young to be talking about gender, let alone to be “allowing” my “male” child to live as a girl. I hear this kind of thing a lot.

I, too, probably would have raised similar questions until my child appeared on the scene and began, as children are so apt to do, to teach me all sorts of things I didn’t know I didn’t know.

According to my child’s preschool teacher, four-year-old children are pretty preoccupied with gender. This is when they’re trying to sort the world out into the categories that we adults are so famously obsessed with. This is when girls become enamored with pink, and when boy decide that it’s all about the trucks and Legos.

Unlike sexual orientation, which does generally develop later, children at age four and five are aligning and identifying with the gender that they will likely carry with them through the rest of their lives.

But, my dear reader, you already know that. You already know that we don’t keep kids in a gender-neutral limbo until adolescence. You know that the parents have already selected the color of the baby shower invitations, decided on a name, and dreamed a thousand gendered dreams for their child based on whether those ultrasound pictures showed what my young nephew Adam calls a “ninky.”

I did this, too. And for this I have to pause for a moment and just say, to my child: I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that, before you even breathed on your own, I loaded you up with a big steaming pile of gendered expectations. I’m sorry I didn’t realize until recently how silly this was. I know it could have saved you a lot of angst if I had. (I’ll pay for the therapy, OK?)

So, here’s the deal: If my five-year-old child had a vagina, would anyone be giving me shit for letting her wear dresses and call herself a girl? Would anyone be telling me that “five years old is awfully young to be assigning labels, dear.”

Imagine everyone you know taking a “wait and see” attitude about gender among the four- and five-year-olds you know. Can you imagine that? Let’s take a second and imagine it together: You meet little Ella, your co-worker’s daughter, at the company family picnic. Ella is three or four or five years old. When sweet little Ella is out of earshot, frolicking with the other kids, you quiz her mother: “So, are you sure she’s a girl? I mean, can you really know that already?” Ella’s mom would think you were insane.

But this is exactly the question people ask me on a regular basis.

A few months ago, I found myself at the county courthouse, waiting for the judge to finalize my divorce, and hanging out with my attorney, a smart and ambitious lad in his early thirties. I told him about my child, and how she had recently transitioned to a female identity, after months and months of agonizing on my part about whether this was the right path to take.

He then told me that his wife was pregnant. “It’s a boy!” he said as we walked out of the courthouse.

I hesitated. Should I say this?

“Or so you think,” I said, giving him a playful nudge on the shoulder. We both laughed.

But I really hope I made him think.

DOWN TO BRASS TACKS?

Published December 7, 2024 by Nan Mykel

HOPEFULLY: Legal expectations and consequences for nations who ignore or do not follow through on climate responsibilities are being currently thrashed out at the International Justice Court in the Hague now. The hearing is in response to a filing from the republic of Vanuatu, an archipelago with 80 islands. Before its independence in 1980, Vanuatu was jointly administered by France and the U.K., and known as the New Hebrides for 74 years. Today Vanuatu is a republic with a non-executive presidency. nytdirect@nytimes.com

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Romanian Court Annuls Presidential Election Results and Orders a New Vote The decision came days after the government asserted that there had been “cyberattacks” meant to undermine the vote and security council documents indicated possible Russian meddling. Imagine that!

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POETRY CORNER

An Up Poem

Let’s see…balloons go up,

tempers go up,

phalluses go up

And hopes do too.

We get up each day,

sometimes snuggle up,

soprano voices go up

and Subway’s prices too.

Pets lap up good food,