Holidays and keeping busy

 Today is a holiday of sorts, Indigenous People's Day.  It used to be Columbus Day but they changed it.  I am sure some of my Italian- American friends are having a stink about it.  They do not tell you what a jerk Columbus was, that he did not "find" North America- he didn't make it this far and it was here all along and how come things are only "found" when white men find them anyway.

Ugh.  Columbus was a jerk.  His crew mutinied for goodness sakes.  He  got lost a lot.  We need to stop worshiping the myth.  

I am home and I am going to get off the computer for  a while.  I have stuff to do.  I have to make my final decisions on the ballot and decide if I am dropping it in the box by the Library or waiting and voting on my day off in person.  I have already decided who I am voting for for the main offices ( big shocker, huh?) but I need to look at the propositions to see which way to vote.  I need down time to do that.

I made granola and granola bars this morning,  It's fairly easy, I just need about an hour uninterrupted to do it.  I might make beer bread in a bit.  it's cooler and fall brings out the baker in me.  I love to make food!

I finished my ARC commitment yesterday and am waiting for another assignment.  So far, four of the five books have been good.  I did not finish, therefore did not review the last book, the Warriors by Glen Lazar Roberts.  Here is my take on it, I only got about 50 pages before I gave up and  I TRIED for three days.  Disjointed, it hops from cliché to cliché with no real purpose.  The lead character is a lesbian Roller derby queen.  I think Mr Roberts has never met an actual lesbian and is working from the vantage point of a junior high school boy.  It's supposed to be Science fiction mixed with satire- ala Christopher Moore.  It missed the mark.  Avoid it ( and if you read it and it tickles you, do let me know what I missed about it.  The fact that the former lover of the lead character was a Sasquatch and she supposedly was a "professor at UCLA" of some stupid thing or another, just made me give up.  It sounded very junior high.  When I was in high school, we wrote a collective story about an alien who came to earth and opened a chain of hamburger stands.  It was better than this.

I am avoiding watching the news and hoping at least two Republicans will grow a pair or get a vagina. I can't stand this.  the election can't come soon enough and I hope the idiot loses, even as they try their best to cheat their way in.  FAKE election boxes?   I hope their people place their ballots there in droves.

sigh.

Banning books and other Sunday musings

 The news about Trump dominates everything.  It's a shame that he is such a con man and a liar ( it's a PROVEN FACT the guy LIES- not misspeaks- LIES) that people think this is another of his misdirections.    I feel bad about questioning his health status, but not too bad.  Time will tell.  The most interesting thing  is all his minions, when announcing their infection status, don't call it the boss's preferred sobriquet, "The China virus"  suddenly, it has become "Covid-19" as if by infecting Trump, it gained real status and is no longer a hoax that will miraculously disappear should they decide to try to postpone the elections.

It's  been a bad week for the Trump camp anyway.  His tax returns show him in hock up to his eyeballs and hemorrhaging money.  No way to sugar coat this.  The returns either show he is a broke and bad businessman, or he filed fraudulent returns- which even for the President of the United States- is a crime.  While his lapdog, Bill Barr won't bring charges, I wonder if the all powerful IRS will.  They should.

It's Banned Books Week, and every year, I look at the list of books and shake my head.  No one should have the right to decide what I read.  If YOU don't like a book, and don't want kids to read it then by all means, forbid your children from cracking it open ( fun fact about kids, they will read a "banned " book quicker than one you recommend)

I keep going back to books and authors whose long ago written works are now getting a modern morés.  Laura Ingalls Wilder got taken down as being a beloved children's author for ACURATELY QUOTING her mother's view on native Americans.  The current take is that we should not expose children to Ma, I suppose.  Was Ma wrong?- well yes of course.  Was it the prevailing thought of settlers?- yes again.  Do we take this opportunity to talk to children about how people felt 150 year ago and how things have changed and why Ma might have said what she said in the first place?  You would THINK so, but instead, now Laura and her family are OFF the list of books to read and Laura herself is being disparaged.  Put what you don't agree with in a box, never again to see the light of day.  

It reminds me of the story of Sleeping Beauty.  Cursed at her christening that on her 16th birthday, she would prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die ( which was later amended by a fairy to fall into a hundred year sleep) He parents overreacted.  Instead of TEACHING her that the darn thing might be dangerous to her, they hid ALL of the spinning wheels in the kingdom ( how anyone got clothes made in that place is another thing to ponder, but I digress) so when she was confronted with one- or a roomful of them depending on which version you read- she touches it and , well, the rest is history. ( the original story of Sleeping Beauty, written by Basile of Naples is far more horrible and the Grimm Brothers Fairy tales in the original also would have wound up on the Banned Books lists)

Banning books and putting out false news narratives do not "protect" us.  Instead, they make us skeptical of anything coming from a certain source and while questioning is the best way to learn, having to challenge EVERYTHING is exhausting.

This year needs to be over

 Geez.

When I was a teenage girl, I used to go body surfing.  Every summer my friends and I would don our bikinis and hit the water.  Body surfing was fun.  We would time, catch and ride the waves, surfing without equipment.  I remember hanging out in pods of fellow enthusiasts, waiting to catch the swells.  We would talk about the sets, how the waves were coming- usually in threes- but sometimes fives.  We would time them together and take off on a glorious ride.

Until one summer.

For some reason the tides were strong or my timing was off but in the middle of the day i got SLAMMED by the first wave, pushing me down to the ocean floor.  I remember remembering not to struggle but to relax until I felt the wave pass over me so I could rise to the surface.  Unfortunately, there was another wave behind it and I repeated the cycle.  I came up the third time and motioned to my buddy to get me to shore,  She grabbed my wrist and dragged me out.  

I stopped surfing that summer and have never really found the joy in body surfing, although I have been back in the water at least once since then.

This year is kind of like those waves.  Every time We surface, another one slams into us.  ENOUGH already.

This afternoon, I learned that a long time friend had died.  Trina was a friend from High School and we reconnected via Facebook.  She was always posting something political or photo-memes of a dog named ( I think) Norbert.  She had a marvelous sense of humor and a great heart.  She also had Diabetes.  We can't even gather together in her memory, to hug each other tight and honor who she was in our lives.  F-YOU Pandemic.

We keep saying we need to be done with 2020, but the yearend is not like some journey that finishes just because of the tick of the clock or the flip of a calendar page, even if we wanted it to be.   I think of this year as if Fate is having a ginormous yard sale and every horrid thing she has is being flung on the lawn.  I hope that her garage of awful is empty soon and we can get on to better things.

Hug your friends, even if it's virtual. If you are reading this, consider yourself hugged. 

Hässlich

 I was thinking about how hateful the world has become.  How anger and violence have become the norm in my country.  It has somehow become acceptable to scream invectives, to name-call, to belittle in order to get your way.

It's like Biff from Back to the Future is in charge of things.

It's funny, I have been trying to remember my German, after forty plus years of being away from any formal schooling in the language.  MY father and I spoke it with each other- he had learned  a bit in his teens working in a place in upstate New York at a place called the Dutch Mill.  The owner was German, but Germans were not acceptable after World War One, so they all became "Dutch" ( the Amish were Pennsylvania  Dutch for instance)  I thought of the word for "ugly" this morning for no particular reason except for its literal translation.  Hässlich means hate-like  To be considered ugly , you must have hate in your heart.

Peaceful protests are being taken over by those whose agenda is contrary to the mission of the protest and what begins in a lawful assembly can de-evolve to a riot in the blink of an eye.  The problem is exacerbated when the President cheers on those who are creating mayhem and branding those people who are protesting for a change in policy as somehow being fascists ( look up "fascist" to see the irony of that statement)  Antifa is literally anyone who is anti FASCIST, so all your World War II dads and grand dads are now on the WRONG side of Trump-ism.

Back to my original thought.  Hate makes you ugly.  Hate grows around your heart and makes you a bitter person.  We need to get back to where we can listen thoughtfully to all sides of an argument and move forward as one.  

Faith- and I will probably offend someone here

 My husband and I had an online argument with  a "distant " relative ( to be precise she is related to his half-brother on his mother's side and since they share a father, I wonder if you can even count that)  She thinks Trump was sent by God himself and got all up in our faces about her faith and her "personal relationship with Jesus Christ"  Ok. 

The thing I find about most hard-core evangelicals is that when they are LOSING an argument, they drag Jesus into it, as if he is some sort of Deus ex Machina to end any discussion, as if accusing someone of being Godless is some kind of victory lap.  I went to Sunday School and can quote  ( or look up) Scripture with the best of them.  When I threw a few NEW Testament verses at her, she went all Old Testament on me. She went off on me about "Fearing God". Why the HECK would I fear God?  I read somewhere that a Hebrew word meaning ' respect" was poorly translated and the word "Fear" was used instead.  Some religions try to scare you into faith ( much like the current "platform" of the Republican Party, but I digress)  I gave her tit for tat and she blocked us.  Probably better that way.

 My question to Trump supporters- and it's a REAL question is- WHAT is Christlike about Trump?  You know Jesus helped the poor, stood for the downtrodden, tried to unite us all in loving one another.  He wasn't motivated to accumulate wealth.

I doubt he had a junior high style nickname for Pontius Pilate.  

These days, I am remembering why I stopped going to church.  It was the parishioners that drove me away. I saw their judgmental behavior, gossiping about someone's clothes or their lives in hand-rubbing glee that turned me away from belonging to any particular denomination.  I still consider myself to be a Christian, but the people who are waving their Bibles in the air and proclaiming Trump as God's chosen are exactly the kind of people who drove me from a faith community.

The people of faith I most admire are those who "walk in faith"  they don't just pay it lip service but really behave  day-to-day- in a way that speaks well of their faith- whatever it may be.  My dad used to say people would "Go to Church on Sunday and to Hell on Monday"  meaning the minute they walked out the church door the sermon was forgotten.

He was right in the case of the church I attended and a few years after I left it, the Church closed. They sold the building to another church of a different denomination, folded their tents and left town.

Still, I have a good Biblical education, although they did choose what to teach and what not to teach from the Bible.  There are so many horrific stories of rape and violence in the Bible, probably not suitable for elementary school kids to hear about..  I have no desire to try to read it cover to cover.  It's a hard thing to do and it takes a commitment I do not have at this stage of the game.

Doctor's orders

I had a long conversation with my doctor yesterday.  We talked about a lot of things, including the state of my mental health.  I told her about the house flood and the broken toe- all in the two months since we had last spoken.  We talked about being housebound, due to my medical conditions in the time of the Corona virus

"what are you doing  for self-care"

I knew she would ask, so I had thought about it.  I AM trying to cook more "interesting" meals ( last night's version of Marsala sauce was good enough to write down)   but I can't really exercise with the stupid knee high boot.  I can't go out and take photos and road trips are out as well.

"Are you writing?"

Well, no not really.  I hit a place where I couldn't write anything that I wanted anyone else to read.  HECK  I didn't even want to read it and most of it wound up in the deleted pile.

I need to try.  So I am sitting here, trying  not really succeeding.  I am trying NOT to think too much about politics, except to hope we come to our senses when it comes to The Orange Menace.  Even the Evangelicals are starting to get a clue, except those who believe God sent him to us  to save us.  Michael Cohen has a book coming out and he is TALKING about Trump.  I love that he says "You don't have to like me,you just have to believe me."  When so MANY people say the same thing about someone, it is time to take a closer look.

I had better get to work.  I will be trying to write something every day.  Whether it will be readable is another story.

Kamala!

We knew he would pick a woman, thought it would be a woman of color, so the choice of Kamala Harris as  Joe Biden's running mate is not a HUGE surprise.  

I like her.  I know if she were our presidential candidate,I would vote for her.  Trumplethinskin is already claiming she is not a citizen. uh  Fat Donnie, if her MOTHER wasn't a citizen ( but was here legally) she is.  The rules apply to YOU too .Did you KNOW  Fat Donnie's MOTHER was NOT a citizen when HE was born???  Truth.  So turn about is fair play, as the saying goes.  GEE.  Can we  delegitimize HIS entire presidency?  Food for thought.

I think Ms Harris will be a wonderful Vice President.  Republican heads exploded everywhere and there is now a black woman  a"heartbeat from the presidency" ( see Theodore Roosevelt)  This must make them VERY VERY nervous.

Ms. Harris was a prosecutor in San Francisco. People tend to HATE prosecutors,   I try to remember that while the Defense speaks for the accused, the Prosecutor speaks for the victim, often giving voice to the dead.  They speak to the rule of law.  And while I have seen some cases that were presented that were just miscarriages of justice ( where the police made up the evidence to suit their theories and to chalk up one more in their "win" column) I realizes that both sides of the case must be presented as much as is possible to gain the correct outcome.  People will complain about her record or incarceration.  She did her job to the best of her ability.  

I believe she will be a great partner to Joe and an asset to this country, unlike the current sycophant who practically drools when gazing on his Dear Orange Leader.  I wonder if "Mother" is jealous?  I personally think she's a beard for Pence.  What she got out of it , we cannot know.  Maybe she didn't know his true self, when she married him- may  he didn't either. He's so deep in the closet he needs a flashlight and a road-map

I am looking at the next three months with a mixture of hope and dread.  The Dear Orange Leader is doing EVERYTHING he can to "fix" the election in his favor.  We need to fight back, get our Democracy back and fix what he broke.