NO

Published March 13, 2024 by Nan Mykel

 

I love you  all but I’m probably going to kill this blog.  Concerns I have are the following:

1. Today a post was interrupted and viewers were told “Subscribe to continue reading,” which is usually a harbinger of a message to pay, but with my small following it sounds like a way to get rid of my account.

2. Gravatar has wiped out some followers’ photos  and their sites are now unreachable. Unsure if that means they died, and I’ve no free way to get an answer.

I’m not sure what I’ll do with all my thoughts, but I’m not worth squeezing people for money.

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Since I posted this, one person has urged me to stay, and I guess that’s all I needed.  (Thanks, Ned.)  I acknowledge I am wish-washy, almost constantly changing what I say I plan to do.  Maybe it’s from being old, or female, or just insecure.  Anyway, it also occurs to me that the above-described practice may be routine for Gutenberg, and if some of my referred articles are in Gutenberg, then maybe that’s what happens. (Gutenberg has a business-focussed blog opportunity.)

Ups and Down’s

Published March 11, 2024 by Nan Mykel

HI THERE

I may have mentioned that when I set up my blog posts I didn’t realize they wouldn’t be on my blog too, and I got tired of having them listed up there with no connection to my blog–really–so I’m getting rid of the pages and gradually adding tmy favorite page items to my blog. So here goes, a favorite post from a page headed for destruction.  Apologies if you have already visited and read it:

____________________

Please don’t anyone tell my daughter Mandy that this article exists. Every word of it is true, and that’s the problem. Her flair for the dramatic might re-ignite, even at 29, and there would be trouble again—hilarious perhaps, but too much misadventure for a sixty-five year old mother to experience.
We spoiled Mandy a little, though not on purpose. Not only was she a Down’s syndrome baby, but she was initially predicted to die in very young childhood due to a congenital heart defect. Then, just in time, a new medical procedure was perfected, and open-heart surgery gave her a new life.
Did I say she was also hyperactive? Technically, I mean; really, although she was not officially diagnosed until the teachers had experienced her for a year or two. Ritalin didn’t help her; we did, her two sisters and brother and me.
Mandy was a card from the first getgo. For instance, she early coined the epithet “pantihose” for anyone who crossed her. Looking back, the first of these dramatic episodes occurred while she and her sibs were visiting their father in Atlanta one Christmas. I mean the first really dramatic episode. Luckily I didn’t hear of it until it was all over. It was at her father’s house that the event unfolded.
Apparently Mandy had grown tired of a lull in attention and decided to visit downtown Atlanta. While her sister Sallie was attending to the laundry, Mandy put on her coat and walked a couple of long blocks from her dad’s house to Ponce de Leon Avenue. Somehow shew managed to traverse that busy thoroughfare without getting killed. Mandy was patiently waiting for the city bus when it pulled up, headed for downtown Atlanta. Her heart was almost surely singing as she boarded the bus in anticipation of freedom and new adventures.
It was a blessing that the busdriver suspected something was amiss and notified the police from the phone in the bus. He also let Mandy board the bus without paying.
Meanwhile, back at the home, silence suggested that Mandy was into something. Just what that something was became evident after several frantic minutes of searching –she was missing! A missing persons call to the police happily coincided with the found persons call from the bus company. When Mandy disembarked from the bus her family was waiting.
The children and I were living in Ohio when Mandy discovered Jones Boys grocery store and noted that it was within walking distance from our home. If given half the chance she would streak out the door, take the road through the cemetery behind our house, and pay the Jones Boys a visit. The police inadvertently contributed to her mischieviousness by feeding her treats while waiting for our frantic phone call. After a time or two they didn’t have to wait. They knew where her home base was.
When Mandy began school, new vistas of possibility opened before her. She was taught how to use the phone, and use it she did. Thankfully, 911 was not yet available. But she had been taught how to use zero for help. One slow, uneventful and boring day while her grandmother was with her, Mandy’s fantasies got the best of her. She decided that a nonexistent boyfriend had loved and deserted her, and she called the operator in gasping, heart-wrenching tears, presenting a situation which was understandably difficult for the operator to comprehend.
When I arrived home, two police cars had pulled into my yard (and I mean over the curb, noses pointed toward my front door. Mandy had turned her attention to other matters by that time, and upon learning that no acts of domestic violence, murder or torture had been perpetrated, the officers departed. One-sixteen Vinton Street was becoming a known address in Gallipolis, Ohio.
The next incident that swims into focus involves an old antique gun that had been left in the garage by previous owners. We had recently moved to Athens, Ohio, and when I came across the antique gun (actually old and rusted), I put it up high, near the rafters in the garage. Need I mention that Mandy can find any hidden thing, anywhere? She’d never seen the gun before, but found it and headed down East State Street, toward Super America, gun in hand. She had not traversed half a block before the police received two phone calls about pistol-wielding Mandy stalking down the street.
Fearful that she might shoot, one policeman cautiously snuck up behind her while another approached her frontally. I received a call on that one at work and was told the incident was included in the newspaper’s police report column. Thankfully, that was one column I missed, although several well-meaning friends mentioned it to me.
Mandy has always been very observant and had long ago learned the route her school bus followed. So it came to pass that on the first day of summer vacation that year, when no bus tooted for her, she found it a cinch to traipse off to school on foot. Her journey took her more than a mile and a half, past the Health Department on West Union.
I can only imagine the dramatic tremor in her voice as she grandly made her brief entrance, which was just long enough to announce to the nurses and those in the waiting room, “I’m pregnant!” With that she cheerfully resumed her journey to school, only to be intercepted by a friend who returned her safely home.
Mandy’s sister Elizabeth was watching Mandy not long after, when Mandy’s next adventure unfolded. They had both fallen asleep while watching television. The set droned on and on, and the next thing Elizabeth knew, there was sharp rapping on the front door. Mandy had awakened and, apparently bored by the program playing, had decided to go out dancing. She went upstairs, changed clothes, and walked more than a mile downtown to O’Hooley’s bar, where she joined in the fun until an employee recognized her and drove her home.

Some of Mandy’s past adventures are understandably a blur, but I can’t forget waking up in the morning some time later and discovering that Mandy had deserted her bed sometime during the night and was gone. There was another frantic missing persons call to the police, who were at the house taking information when she appeared on the scene, escorted . The manager of the Shell Station catty-cornered from the house had discovered her asleep in one of his trucks parked behind the station. (She had fancied that one of the employees was her boyfriend and had apparently sought to be near his place of business in lieu of him).

Then there was her disappearance from the house during one of my Friday night soup group meetings. I had just missed her when a police car pulled in with Mandy in handcuffs, in the back seat.She had walked down East State to some halfway house near Children’s Services in search of a classmate to whom she was attracted. One of my soup group friends said she heard one of the officers indicate that she must have broklen free.

“They seemed to think you keep her chained up,” she said.

Apparently the handcuffs were applied after Mandy decided to play hide and seek with the police. The next to the last episode which I’ll share was scary and sobering, but reveals Mandy’s single-minded determination to accomplish her goals.

In addition to keeping Mandy safe, I was encouraged by the specialists to help Mandy take more responsibility for herself since she would soon be an adult. So one September I had an idea. Someone had always put Mandy on the school bus, and I thought this might be an opportunity for her to gain some experience with responsibility. There was a period of about fifteen minutes between the time I left for work and the arrival of her school bus. The day before school started I called the school and determined the bus’s scheduled arrival time. I suggested that if some day Mandy did not catch the bus, the driver should use his phone to report the fact, and I would come home from work to deal with her.

She liked going to school. I did not expect her to ever miss the bus.

I thought the agreement was in place, but in the world of treatment plans and paperwork, my words to the school staff had been processed as eventual possibilities, not present realities.

What happened was that one day Mandy missed the bus after I had left in my car pool. But she wanted to go to school! Up high, hanging on a hook, she spied an extra set of the keys to my car Eureka! She didn’t have to walk to school this time! She would drive!

There was a little hair dressing shop whose window looked out on my driveway. As the owner later related to me, Mandy came out the back door and climbed into the car. The motor started up, and Mandy gassed it. And gassed it. The car slowly rolled back into the street from the driveway, with Mandy racing the engine in a goal-directed fashion. The scenario, witnessed by the beauty shop’s owner and a draped occupant of the chair, brought swift action. Within minutes the police were on the scene, and once again I received a phone call at work. Perhaps you can imagine the content of that call.

The school denied any plan was in place, and I was cast in the role of the irresponsible one. If it seems our entire life was in chaos, remember that this was over a period of years and years… But it wasn’t always like that–just most of the time.

My son Ian and his wife Laura participated in the final scenario reported here. They were coming home from running errands and turned into our driveway just as a police car was approaching. The cruiser pulled in behind them. Ian was wondering if he had done something deserving of a ticket when he heard screaming.

Mandy was running around the back yard,shouting frantically and waving her arms. Ian and Laura scrambled out of their car and the officer scrambled out of his right behind them. “What’s going on here?” he wanted to know. Ian and Laura were curious, too.

Mandy pulled herself together sufficiently to gasp, “There’s a bat in the house!” With that, she led the way in through the back door and suddenly Laura screamed. At that, Mandy resumed screaming. The bat was swooping again.

In the livingroom, oblivious to all the excitement, lay Mike, Mandy’s boyfriend, asleep on the sofa.

The officer stared. “What’s wrong with him?”

Ian shrugged. “Oh, that’s just Mike.”

Laura pointed to Bubba the cat, who was drinking from a fish bowl wshose water level was alarmingly low, and gave a little hysterical laugh.

The officer was bending over Mike. “Is he okay?” Laura explained the sedating effects of Mike’s medication while Ian observed the bat entering and leaving the room, swooping up and down the staircase.

Our representative of law and order decided to take charge of the situation. He assigned Laura the task of checking on Mike, grabbed a broom from the kitchen, and directed Ian to open all the windows. He then began following the bat as it swooped around the house.

Ian later recalled suspecting that the officer was checking all the rooms to be sure there were no more bodies lying about.

Laura got Mike to sit up, Ian continued throwing open windows and doors, and all the while Mandy was running back and forth from kitchen to back porch, issuing tearful wails. Finally the bat man successfully rid the premises of the uninvited creature and then departed, after giving Mandy a fatherly lecture to the effect that bats are our friends.

Mike went back to sleep.

Years have passed, and now Mandy’s dramatics are happily limited to shouting “Yes! Yes! Oh, yes!” a la the Herbal shampoo commercial. But, please remember…Mum’s the word. This article doesn’t exist.

*Appeared previously in Pickin’ Fleas.

 

OLD IS NOT THE PROBLEM?

Published March 11, 2024 by Nan Mykel

What’s wrong with women that we’re so easily abused and misused? It may be because we’re physically weaker than men, pushovers, literally. Is our empathy so easy to use against us? I hear “lady like” more often than “gentleman like.” Does the role of nurturer/caretaker overshadow other areas of life? What was behind the difficulty in letting us vote? Why were white women allowed to vote before women of color? What is the source of prejudice? Surely not fear. Allah (swt) says in the Quran, “O believers treat women with kindness even if you dislike them.”!! [That doesn’t exactly put women on a par with men!] In addition/as a result, many women have bought into seeing themselves as less.

According to Wikipedia, Males on average are more assertive and have higher self-esteem. Females were on average higher than males in extroversion, anxiety, trust, and, especially, tender-mindedness (e.g., nurturance).

After reflecting for most of today and reading on this topic (suffrage, Islam’s treatment of women, abortions outlawed in much of U.S., and FGM–female genital mutilation–in other countries–I was interested to see on a post from O.U. what appeared to be a woman’s view of her Muslim life: “Thus, in the Islamic tradition, a woman has an independent identity. She is a responsible being in her own right and carries the burden of her moral and spiritual obligations. Women have as much right to education as men do.” Why do I feel like a well-behaved Muslim woman wrote that, defensively?

I sought an additional version from the International Islamic University Malaysia https://www.iium.edu.my› articles: “What is a woman’s role in Islam? Men are providers for women and in exchange for support, women should be obedient and serve their husbands. They should keep their virginity and after marriage, loyalty, chastity and complete dedication to their husbands are prerequisite for securing maintenance. Women are seen as weak and as easily overpowered by men. (“Women in the Quran and the Sunnah – IIUM”)

During this long afternoon it occurs to me that the unspoken sentiment behind the complaints that “Biden’s too old” really is that no one’s willing to say it out loud without seeming prejudiced: Being too old means that he might die in office, leaving a female of color in his place. Biden can’t say it, nor can Democrats, without being seen as racist and/or misogynist. So everyone is quiet about it–at least in the print I saw (or didn’t see), and the [imagined?] concern is not being addressed. Republicans are also avoiding the “prejudiced” label, at least in their public proclamations. It almost makes me wish she’d bow out, but don’t tell her I said that! [“Any vote not cast for Biden is a vote for Trump.”]

Google describes Kamala Harris, the current U.S. Vice President under Joe Biden, as the first woman, second bi-racial, (Charles Curtis, a member of the Caw Nation served under Hoover), and the first South Asian American vice president. (She was born in the United States!} Her mother was a Tamil Brahmin, part of a “privileged elite” in Hinduism’s ancient caste hierarchy, but moved from India to the United States and received her PhD. at Berkeley in 1964. Now deceased, her mother became a biomedical scientist. Her father is Donald Jasper Harris (born August 23, 1938), a Jamaican-American economist and professor emeritus at Stanford University. Her parents divorced in 1971, after eight years.

How to deal with this problem? P.S. I’m 88+, so Biden’s just a kid to me.

WHY JOSH PAUL QUIT

Published March 4, 2024 by Nan Mykel

Before everything goes boom and burn, I’d like to understand why Josh Paul quit his State Department position over arms to Israel:
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“Today I informed my colleagues that I have resigned from the State Department, due to a policy disagreement concerning our continued lethal assistance to Israel. To further explain my rationale for doing so, I have written the attached note.”

From https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7120512510645952512/

His letter states:

“I joined the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs (PM) over 11 years ago, and have found it a
fascinating job with engaging, and often immensely challenging – intellectually and morally –
tasks and objectives. I have been proud in my time of service to have made many differences,
both visibly and behind the scenes, from advocating for Afghan refugees, to pushing back (with
not insignificant results) on pending Administration decisions to transfer lethal weapons to
countries that abuse human rights, to sculpting policies and practices that advance human rights,
to working tirelessly to advance those policies and decisions that are good and just; from our
global humanitarian demining efforts to our support for Ukraine’s defense in the face of
murderous Russian aggression.

When I came to this Bureau, the U.S. Government entity most responsible for the transfer and
provision of arms to partners and allies, I knew it was not without its moral complexity and
moral compromises, and I made myself a promise that I would stay for as long as I felt I the
harm I might do could be outweighed by the good I could do. In my 11 years I have made more
moral compromises than I can recall, each heavily, but each with my promise to myself in mind,
and intact. I am leaving today because I believe that in our current course with regards to the
continued – indeed, expanded and expedited – provision of lethal arms to Israel – I have reached
the end of that bargain..

Yes, PM can still do an immense amount of good in the world: there is still, sadly, a great need
for American security assistance – a need for American arms and defense cooperation to defend
against the multiple military perils that democracy, democracies, and humanity itself, face on this
earth. But we cannot be both against occupation, and for it. We cannot be both for freedom, and
against it. And we cannot be for a better world, while contributing to one that is materially
worse.

Let me be clear: Hamas’ attack on Israel was not just a monstrosity; it was a monstrosity of
monstrosities. I also believe that potential escalations by Iran-linked groups such as Hezbollah,
or by Iran itself, would be a further cynical exploitation of the existing tragedy. But I believe to
the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for
that response, and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper
suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people – and is not in the long term American
interest. This Administration’s response – and much of Congress’ as well – is an impulsive
reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and
bureaucratic inertia. That is to say, it is immensely disappointing, and entirely
unsurprising. Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither
security, nor to peace. The fact is, blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the
interests of the people on both sides. I fear we are repeating the same mistakes we have made
these past decades, and I decline to be a part of it for longer.

I am not ignorant when it comes to the situation in the Middle East. I was raised surrounded by
debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; my Master’s thesis was about Israeli
counterterrorism and civil rights (in researching it I met two men who have since been among
my lifelong heroes, Uri Avnery, and an Israeli Palestinian advocate I shall not name here); I
served for the U.S. Security Coordinator, living in Ramallah while advancing security sector
governance within the Palestinian Authority and liaising with the IDF; and, I have deep personal
ties to both sides of the conflict. Those who know me best know that I have opinions, and they
are strong ones. But this is what is at the core of them: that there is beauty to be found
everywhere in this world, and it deserves both protection, and the right to flourish, and that is
what I most desire for Palestinians and for Israelis. The murder of civilians is an enemy to that
desire – whether by terrorists as they dance at a rave, or by terrorists as they harvest their olive
grove. The kidnapping of children is an enemy to that desire – whether taken at gunpoint from
their kibbutz or taken at gunpoint from their village. And, collective punishment is an enemy to
that desire, whether it involves demolishing one home, or one thousand; as too is ethnic
cleansing; as too is occupation; as too is apartheid.

It is my firm belief that in such conflicts, for those of us who are third parties, the side we must
pick is not that of one of the combatants, but that of the people caught in the middle, and that of
the generations yet to come. It is our responsibility to help the warring parties build a better
world. To center human rights, not to hope to sideline or sidestep them through programs of
economic growth or diplomatic maneuvering. And, when they happen, to be able to name gross
violations of human rights no matter who carries them out, and to be able to hold the perpetrators
accountable – when they are adversaries, which is easy, but most particularly, when they are
partners.

I acknowledge and am heartened to see the efforts this Administration has made to temper
Israel’s response, including advocating for the provision of relief supplies, electricity, and water
to Gaza, and for safe passage. In my role in PM, however, my responsibilities lie solidly in the
arms transfer space. And that is why I have resigned from the U.S. Government, and from PM:
because while I can, and have, worked hard to shape better policy making in the security
assistance field, I cannot work in support of a set of major policy decisions, including rushing
more arms to one side of the conflict, that I believe to be shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and
contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse, and which I wholeheartedly endorse: a
world built around a rules-based order, a world that advances both equality and equity, and a
world whose arc of history bends towards the promise of liberty, and of justice, for all.
And I would note with concern in parting, as regards competitions well beyond this current
conflict, that if we want a world shaped by what we perceive to be our values, it is only by
conditioning strategic imperatives with moral ones, by holding our partners, and above all by
holding ourselves, to those values, that we will see it.

I want to close by noting that while bureaucracy is not without its automatons, and that, as I have
learnt, physical courage comes easier than moral courage, I have had the privilege of working
with a large number of truly thoughtful, empathetic, courageous, and good civil servants, and
many of them can be found in PM, from its entry level to its most senior level. As they carry on
advancing the interests of the nation and the world in a field in which, perhaps more than any
other, it is easier to be better than it is to be good, I can say without hesitation that they are the
best. I wish them continued success, strength, and courage. And I wish all of us – peace.”

Josh Paul, October 18, 2023.

From:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7120512510645952512/

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Nan’s Quote of the Day:  “It is easier to be better than to be good.” …Josh Paul

HOW LONG IS LOONEY?..

Published February 23, 2024 by Nan Mykel

Dreamers, 1899. John Brown. (USPD.pub.date, artist life/COmmons.

wikimedia.org)

 

HOW LONG IS LOONEY?

If we live long enough

it’s gonna be tough.

Tell-tale signs of age

spoken off the cuff

betray us and oh

how long and how sad

will it get to be

before…until…we

write bad verse and yet don.t hesitate

to remember to meditate

on what’s gone before

and what lies ahead instead?

Hey nonny nonny

honey, if it it’s not funny

why do we laugh at

our forget-me-nots?

When will we touch base

and head for home?

Not funny, dammit,

unless you’re like me

easier to laugh

than it is to pee.

Ha ha got you there.

You expected “cry.”

I know, poor taste

when e’re I try

and will until my

looney runs dry.

Ouch! Tell me I

didn’t write this.

——————————-

I know about the unholy National Christians; the Peru that forced sterilizations to reduce poverty;  our unpatriotic Congessional  turncoats;  our seething mass of  short-changed  individuals provoking a fight and talking secession; the increased bombing of Gaza during cease=fire talks; the estimated two and a half million persons in our country  who were driven from their houses as a result of  emergency weather conditions in 2023; Navalny’s murder; frozen embryos declared God’s children in Alabama; the wealthiest successfully heading to space; the Biden age argument….as well as the truly unmentionable.  How to select one to elucidate upon?  Any would raise my already endangered blood pressure, thank you very much.

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FUNNY HAHA?

Not in the least…However, I cannot overlook the dark humor (mustn’t say black any more–what happened to ‘black is beautiful’?)  revealed in the two opposing extremes arrived at by those who deign to de-humanize citizens by taking their personal rights away.  During the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori in Peru, more than 272,000 women and 22,000 men were sterilized in regions with high levels of poverty and a majority indigenous population, as part of Peru’s National Reproductive Health and Family Planning program.  idehpucp.pucp.edu.pe/…/Análisis-del-Dictamen-Fiscal-sobre-Esterilizaciones-Forzadas.pdf    One faction insists every woman should be denied an abortion–some even who are pregnant due to rape and/or incest.  Apparently politics has moved the repercussions from the pregnant woman to the professional facilitating the abortion.  As of 2024, CaliforniaMichiganOhio, and Vermont are the only U.S. states to have explicit rights to abortion in their state constitutions. Other states have implicit rights to abortion subject to state judicial review, such as Kansas and Montana, or simply protect it via state law such as Colorado and Massachusetts. The state constitutions of AlabamaLouisianaTennessee, and West Virginia explicitly contain no right to an abortion, even in cases of rape and/or incest.

So–we have on one hand the dictatorial folks mandating sterilization for the poor and on the other, forcing delivery by the pregnant woman, mandating no abortions for the pregnant.  One U.S. Supreme Court judge has even suggested being against safe sex.  This U.S. citizen (moi) is against limiting the personal rights of men or women, acknowledging that the rights disputed are most often against women, who were not allowed to even vote until 1920. Google says:

“Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote. The 19th amendment legally guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle—victory took decades of agitation and protest.”  WHY?  What do you think?

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PLAYING THE FIDDLE WHILE EARTH BURNS?

Published February 22, 2024 by Nan Mykel

Image from Katiemiafrederick

 

 

How could we waste life and energy on sandbox atrocities while Earth is heading for destruction,  not even seriously seeking an alternative?  Forcing women to choose between being hog-tied to home with a bundle of unwanted children and punishing trans children and their parents? It’s energy sidetracked into the trough of humanity. The unwanted youth may live to see the results of this foolishness after many of us are gone.

400 anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bills have already been considered in the U.S. this new  year alone, aiming to surpass the 510 anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bills  introduced in 2023, leading transpersons to scary and perjorative attacks.  

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INSTEAD OF OVERSAYING “No,” when my young children were engaged in an activity destined to end in an accident, I would say “Danger.”  I’m mentally hoarse from thinking “danger” to myself now, as I send you away to read elsewhere about nuclear bomb concerns.  I have to say “uncle,” and as a little (but fat) 88 year old southern-born old lady, I have to draw the line somewhere. so be aware that I’m too scared to think about it, much less write.  (Although I’m still subscribed to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists).

____________________

Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com › news › space_time › s…

June 25, 2021 — Scientists have developed an innovative way to use NASA satellite data to track the movement of tiny pieces of plastic in the …   PLASTIC IN THE OCEAN DEPTHS AND IN OUR OUTER/INNER SPACE!  And of course along our roadsides. and in our refrigerators.  Is plastic going to take us out in addition to fossil fuels?  And what have  I read about air contamination from charging electric cars?  And the “C” word is the largest exporter of electric cars in the world.

___________________

I’VE ORDERED–Oops, tried to order…Have to subscribe to Foreign Affairs first.
—Rachel Glennerster and Seema Jayachandran, How to Get More Bang for Your Climate-Change Buck,” Foreign Affairs                                                                                                                     ___________________

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS   (an oldie from my files–date?)

My mind travels its own route when I drive.

Today it was especially alive.

Like…

Two years ago the small carousel horse

vanished one day from its small graveyard source.

Still gone.

I wonder, what is the name of those trees

that stand like a fork without any leaves?

Beats me.

Like baby bottles, the gourds hang growing

along Route 7, where I am going.

Striking!

Glad to see that camera surveillance

in Cheshire is in current abeyance.

Good!

Every “no edge” sign I spot

wears a garbage bag tied in a knot.

I kid you not.

Down home words used to be the mode

like Bear Wallow Ridge and Bone Hollow Road.

I like them.

I always check on that family plot

with 3 small; crosses, forgotten not.

By the highway.

______________________________

JENNY JOSEPH SAYS  (U.K., 1932-2018)

…Maybe I ought to practice a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

____________________________

 

>

WHO WROTE THIS?

Published February 21, 2024 by Nan Mykel

I DUNNO–will credit if I find out:

Perhaps we might still be able to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, but maintaining our current life into the next century and beyond is optimistic to the point of hallucination. To accept this outcome is difficult because it entails accepting that the future is no longer a space of infinite possibility–rather a house mortgaged to the hilt , a foreclosure waiting. We must create new ways to think about what comes next, but also about what came before. As coastland drowns, as wildfires thin the ground and thicken the air, as changes that used to take centuries begin to take years, it will become increasingly difficult to anchor our memories to a geography, to a stable piece of land. So we must find other anchors–anchors that link memory to people, to relationships, to the solidarity and compassion and resistance that will serve as our only useful lifeboats in this storm.  We have an obligation to document and preserve our stories, ourselves, and we have an obligation to do it now, meticulously, because the stories and the empathy they engender might save us still, might move people to act. And because in time the world in which those stories took place may well vanish, in its place a different, emptier world in which these stories took place may well vanish, in its place a different, emptier world –emptier of nature, emptier of life; the stories, once lost, lost forever….

  ______                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              MY earliest remembered story begins shortly before the age of two, with an early visit to the farm, and the mother bringing out her puppies to show and then my memory extends over time to the sound of coal settling in the grate in the dark, as I fell asleep…the sweetness of fresh picked figs, their pinked flesh awash in milkwhite ambrosia….I can’t describe the special, unique quieting and reassuring smell that gentled over the land after a heavy rain….The closeness of the attic along with the distant droning of an airplane while snuggling up on the cot in the attic, after climbing the steep stairs sleepily….my doll with the hole in her head to accommodate a hair ribbon….what seemed like hours watching the ant parade as it raced all in a line across the red clay beside the back steps, the ants greeting each other as they marched, and the time they left a gift for me: an old belt buckle….The shiny green leaves of a bush out front, which let you make faces on it with your fingernails, and even the wonder of the taste and weight of the scuppernongs hanging from the grape arbor….And the taste of my grandmother’s homemade peach ice cream after the harvest….and the softness of her lap in the rockingchair, the comforting sound of its squeaking, and the dimples in her elbows….

 

 

 

 

 

 

ThursdayThoughts

Published February 14, 2024 by Nan Mykel

Well, on Wednesday Night….

 

 

 

MY QUESTIONS RECENTLY WERE: Fill in the blanks: 1.  Halleluia I’m a ________ 2.  Jump back turn around ________ 3.  My ______ lies over the ocean  4.  _______  Happy little wash day song  5,  Don’t step on my ___________  6.  Mama Mia, Papa Pia,_________  7.  and on that tree I see, ” __________   8.I’ve got a hot rod Ford and a _________   9.  It gives me a thrill to wake up in the morning on ____________ 10. On the baby’s bottom or the baby’s knee, _________ ?11. Aint gonna study ______ no more. 12.You put your ______ foot in, you put your _____ 13. Who was combing his auburn hair by the light of the silvery moon ?__________  14.__________, where the deer and the antelope play  15. Put your shoes on, Lucy!, don’t you know you’re_________?

THE ANSWERS:  My answers:  1. bum    2.pick a bale of cotton   3.Bonnie  4. Rinso white, Rinso bright!….  5. my blue suede shoes!  6. Baby’s got the diarrhea!   7. “I’ll love you til I die” [There’s a Tree in the Meadow]   8. Two dollar bill… 9. Mockingbird Hill  10. where will the baby’s dimple be?  11. war  12. left foot; right is ok  [and you shake it all about]  13. The old baboon [I Went to the Animal Fair…]    14. …where the buffalo roam [Home on the Range]  15. in the city?

_________________________

WHAT WOULD A BETTER GENETIC BUILDING STONE BE?    Not that we can influence it, but at least it’s a positive way of looking at the future…sort of.  Since our primary genetic motivation seems to be survival of the fittest and kinship selection, what else might work?  Survival of the kindest and comfort selection?  Survival of the honest and peace-loving selection?  Your ideas:

_________________________

NO ADDITIONS TO LIFE Part One? Don’t be shy…

________________________

WHO SAID THIS?  Bernie Sanders? …

Socialism is what they called farm price supports. Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance. Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.  No, Harry Truman

_________________________

JUST BE AWARE THAT…There’s lots more going on than I can cover.  Just topics to be aware of, if interested:

I’m going to ask how much my major stores charge when I use a debit card. Apparently it can be a problem, since New York has a new law that the amount must be posted.

___________________

In my town, efforts to raise goods for Ukraine met opposition with local food pantries’ requests instead. .  My thoughts:

  • “Which also has bombs dropping on their heads?”  Just my thoughts, of course. Besides, it shouldn’t be “either…or…”

_________________________

OUCH!  What a life…  In Gaza, assistance includes emergency self-delivery items for pregnant women.  Yikes.  Post partum depression?  Difficult to think about it, much less be there now.

_________________________

SOCIAL MEDIA TO THE RESCUE:

  • In Pakistan,  social media reportedly was used by the party of imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan to win the most seats in their Parliament.  AI also was used to simulate his voice.

In the USA, President Biden’s campaign has reportedly used Tik Tok to reach out.  (“lol hey guys”)

_________________________                                                                                                                                                ____________________________________

WHEN I FIRST STARTED writing about the NRA I was unable to discover how many members it had–at least easily, that is.  Now that it’s in trouble I see that it has lost more than a million members since an earlier peak of 6 million in 2018.  Gun Owners of America is one outfit that considers the NRA “too liberal.”

TODAY  I see there was a 20+ shooting after a Super Bowl party, with several cxhildren being shot.

_________________________

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

“If you’re reading this…
Congratulations, you’re alive.
If that’s not something to smile about,
then I don’t know what is.”
― Chad Sugg, Monsters Under Your Head
_________________________
WATCH OUT
I may be the only person who fell for this, but when I received a strange looking debit card in the mail without return address or note inside saying who it was from or why, I cut it up, assuming it was a con.  Then I discovered that it was my new card because my old one was out of date.  And that’s messed me up quite a bit.  Maybe I need a file for suspicious e-mails or snail mails for future reference?  Guess I thought if I confessed this it would make you feel better, or at least forewarned.

 

A BREATHER….

Published February 12, 2024 by Nan Mykel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fill in the blanks….

1.  Halleluia I’m a ________

2.  Jump back turn around ________

3.  My ______ lies over the ocean

4.  _______  Happy little wash day song

5,  Don’t step on my ___________

6.  Mama Mia, Papa Pia,_________

7.  and on that tree I see, ” __________

8. I’ve got a hot rod Ford and a _________

9.  It gives me a thrill to wake up in the morning on _____________

10. On the baby’s bottom or the baby’s knee, _________

11. Aint gonna study ______ no more.

12.You put your ______ foot in, you put your _____

13.Who was combing his auburn hair by the light of the silvery moon ?__________

14.__________, where the deer and the antelope play

15. Put your shoes on, Lucy!, don’t you know you’re_________

THAT WAS FUN FOR ME!  How’d you do?

Nan

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