grief, dreams, and living

Today is grocery shop day and one of my nights to fix dinner and on top of that it's my turn to do the dishes when all I want to do is crawl back in bed. I don't feel like I've really woken up and was having weird dreams before I did, a series of weird vignettes which I suppose were connected in some way. I dreamed I was trying to wake up, was actually up and moving around but struggling to get my eyes open and when I did things were either so blurry I couldn't make anything out or it was a whiteout. I was in a room going through boxes of clothes trying to find something to wear. I wasn't at home but some other place, not a motel but maybe some sort of residence where there was some sort of gathering going on. Another scene I walked into a building or out of an elevator into a small room with only one other door. A man was in there and he gestured towards the door. I was going to a doctor appointment I think and I asked him if he knew the room number. No, he said, you'll have to call. I went through the door into a small landing with a very narrow set of stairs going down. Then I'm trying to find the number but I can't get to the calendar on my phone. Another scene I'm telling someone I'm going to my place at the table which I think is sitting on the table but when I get there I see there are two empty chairs so I sit in one. Another flash I'm struggling to walk/climb up a steep slope that others have already climbed.

Grief. This is something new to me. I've never really felt grief. Not when my grandmother died, well, maybe when she died but not like this, not when my aunts and uncles died or my father or mother. Real daily life is intruding and all I want to do is crawl in bed. It was easy to keep it at bay when family was here. Denise and Greg left Friday, Robin moved in to the house on Saturday keeping me distracted. But yesterday was, and today is, a little rough. I've been wearing Pam's long sleeved shirts I kept. The rest of her clothes that no one wanted are going to SHARE with m on Thursday.

I was ready to start going to yoga last night but Abby couldn't make it and I wasn't in any kind of mood to lead so class was canceled. This morning I did my home routine for the first time in over two weeks. I've been picking up and shelling pecans I get cracked. So far I've picked up 109 pounds not counting the full 1 gallon bucket's worth I picked up yesterday. So far I have almost 8 pounds of shelled nuts and have given away half of them to family and a neighbor who gives me honey from his hives and eggs from their chickens.

Well, I got the grocery shopping done and dishes washed and thank goodness I have enchiladas in the freezer from the last time I made them for dinner.

Damn. I updated my phone and now it and the desktop I'm not supposed to be using won't talk to each other anymore so I can't download pictures. I'm on my desktop to write this and publish it because using the phone is a pain in the butt. Maybe I can add a picture from my phone.

 

tech is a pain in the butt and cats

Trying to do everything on my phone is a pain in the butt. I managed to figure out how to comment on Steve’s blog as me but can only comment as anonymous on other’s if it lets me comment at all. Says I need to sign in with my google account but I already am as far as I can tell. When I click on the link it tells me no can do.

My grandgirl Robin moved into Pam’s house yesterday so now the boys have a human in residence instead of all those people in and out the last two weeks. They know Robin as she always house sat for Pam when she traveled but now they have a new resident as Robin brought her cat Noodle since she will be there for nearly a year. There’s been a little hissing but they’ll work it out.

Speaking of cats, a homeless mom cat with 3 kittens moved under Pam’s shed some months ago. She worked with the animal rescue group SPOT to catch Momcat and get her fixed and released back at Pam’s. She had been feeding them all and so I have continued. Now I’m working with SPOT to get the kittens trapped and fixed and rehomed. SPOT says they can be fixed at 3 months and we believe they are that old. They have a program called Barn Buddies for people who want barn cats to keep the vermin down.

I haven’t figured out how to reduce the size of the images before I post them here so I hope it’s not the 3MB the info says it is.

starting the new normal

I hope everyone had as good a day as I did yesterday. This house was filled with love and laughter and loudness. Myself and Marc, my niece and nephew in law, my daughter and son in law, my granddaughter Autumn and her boyfriend whom we met for the first time and I hope we didn’t overwhelm him, all gathered here bringing various assigned dishes to add to the meal. In the midst of the loss we all felt, we affirmed our love and life.

I’m composing this on my phone, first time to try this. When my sister died it was as if someone threw a bomb into the middle of my life. 

This morning my niece Denny and her husband Greg left for home in Albuquerque. Robin doesn’t move in until tomorrow. So the house is empty, all family back to their respective homes, the first normal day in 2 weeks only not normal.

And then this, it is possible my 14+ year old computer, so old it cannot be updated, is seriously compromised. In the last week or so I’ve gotten two emails, one on each of my two EarthLink accounts, from me to me citing different reasons why that email would be deactivated if I didn’t click the button to validate it. Spam, I ignored them. But then in between those two I got a another, from me to me, on my personal account claiming to have hacked me and a virus installed that gave access to every keystroke and unless I paid $600 in bitcoin he/it would release all the videos they captured of me masturbating to porn. Also spam except my password for EarthLink was included in the email. So I spent about an hour on Marc’s computer changing the password for all the email accounts, though I may have given access to the new one when I logged onto the Webmail and had to enter the new password. Anyway my tech guru nephew in law Greg said turn my computer off, don’t use it again, do everything on your phone and he’s sending me a Mac mini as soon as they get home. So now I have to spend the day changing that password on every account I used it on…on my phone.

And because shit comes in threes, my neighbor on the east side told me the other day that he’s thinking about selling his house and acre, has already shown it and got an offer but hasn’t made up his mind. He has several other houses so I expect he might go through with it.

Note to Steve of Shadows and Light: while I have been able to comment on other blogs on my phone, yours won’t let me. Says I need to log in but I already am.

no escape from reality

All the family has gone home with the exception of my niece, Denny, and her husband. They are staying at Pam's (the house is still hers in my mind) through Thanksgiving and leaving for Albuquerque on Friday. Saturday, my grandgirl Robin moves in to care for the house and the cats until next summer when the boys will go to Pam's grandgirl Abby in Cincinnati. And then Sunday, life will return to normal, or the new normal anyway, shy one very important person.

My sister has often been gone for two weeks at a time when she would go visit our brother or her daughter. So, two weeks, only this time she's not coming back. All her potted plants have gone to new homes, some taken by family, some taken at the memorial. I have enough of my own to care for without having to care for all hers though I am keeping a few.

There was a snafu regarding the death certificate that the funeral home was supposed to take care of. A doctor I never heard of texted me last Sunday to call him about the death certificate. He had no idea who Pam was, how, when, where, or why she died. He kept asking me questions about her health, interrupting me, not really listening to what I was saying. When I finally told him to stop interrupting me so I could tell him what happened from beginning to end (and he still tried to interrupt me twice...I'm not through, I told him), he said he was going to refuse to sign the death certificate, that the doctor at the hospital should do it. Good I said and how were you even contacted to do this. Some state agency which I forget what he said asked him to do it. Anyway, we contacted the funeral home and they took care of it. Death certificate has been signed.

Speaking of plants, my brother helped me dig up and move the plumerias and the night blooming cereus into the garage before he left. Another cold front blew in yesterday though it's just supposed to get down in the 40s. Next week I'll start moving all the small tenders into the house for the winter.

There will be eight of us for Thanksgiving and we're going to have it at my house this year instead of my daughter's. Today I made the cranberry sauce and did all the prep for the dressing...making the corn bread, chopping the veggies, cutting off the crust and cubing the bread set out yesterday to get stale; my two contributions to dinner. Tomorrow morning I'll fry the bacon, saute the vegetables, mix it all with the bread cubes and spices and chicken broth and stick it in the oven.

There is much to be thankful for and I will focus on that.

remembering my sister and holding her in our hearts

A week ago today I found my sister and just like that my life has changed irrevocably. Heartfelt thank yous to all who have expressed your love, sadness, and support. There is no way I could ever reply to each of you individually.

The first few days most of the family that gathered were still here, each of us supporting the other, while we dealt with the immediate tasks required after a death...contacting a funeral home and retrieving the body for cremation, acquiring the death certificates, reading the will, figuring out which of her bills were outstanding, getting access to her phone, etc. Her house reverts back to me and we have decided to just let everything sit for now although her kids, grandkids, me, my grandkids have tagged the things we would like to have, small things have already been taken. It's weird though to walk through the house and see little bits of blue tape with names written on it stuck on just about everything. We're going to keep the house as a furnished guest house for now since I don't have a spare room for when people visit. Her granddaughter who lives in Cincinnati wants 'the boys', Pam's two cats, but can't take them until next summer so my granddaughter Robin who lives here with her parents is going to move into the house in the interim and take care of them.

My sister was not religious and so there would not be a funeral or service or viewing but the family decided to have a life celebration for her on the following Friday at my house because it was bigger than Pam's house. While I had called everyone else to spread the word, Monday afternoon Denise and I went to Hesed House, a community resource center where my sister volunteered arranging the monthly EarthLab lectures, to tell the director, Stephanie, in person and she offered to hold it there on the back deck and pergola behind the Welcome Center which we accepted immediately since Pam was very involved with Hesed House and it is a beautiful space.

When we got there Friday afternoon they had set up tables and chairs, vases with garden flowers, tables for refreshments and one for a sort of altar with Pam's picture and flowers and bits and pieces of things that related to my sister's life. The weather was perfect. We had notified her friends that I had contact information for, the garden club of which Pam was a past president, the museum people where she worked two days a week, Stephanie sent out a notice to her mailing list and people came to honor and remember my sister. All the family that had been at the hospital returned plus her stepson from Virginia, her granddaughter from Cincinnati, and her brother from the PNW. 

My daughter created and printed out a beautiful eulogy and remembrance. 

Stephanie arranged for us to plant a tree in Pam's honor there on the grounds of Hesed House during the celebration. She gave the eulogy, she read what I had written out for me because there was no way I was going to be coherent, other people got up and spoke. We had a memory book for people to write in, something I've not had the courage to read yet.

It was beautiful and the hardest fucking day of my life.

Afterwards we all went out to dinner to celebrate her granddaughter Abby's birthday which was that day.

Seeing all the family together, still missing ten people, my brother and I marveled at how big the family has grown from the days when we could count us all on two hands and didn't need all the fingers.

who will help me bury the bodies now?

I am bereft. I am bereaved. The last person who has known me my whole life is gone. My sister, the person who knew all my secrets, the person who suffered and endured the same upbringing as me, the person who showed me how to wear a menstrual pad, who showed me how to hook stockings onto a garter belt, the person who never shamed me no matter what I had done, who became a second mother and grandmother to my kids and grandkids, the person who would help me bury the body, my best friend is gone.

Last Sunday in the early morning my sister suffered an ischemic stroke in a large vessel in her brain accompanied by bleeding. I didn't find her til 6 PM when I went to check on her after her granddaughter alerted us that she had not been able to get hold of her. Her car was in the carport and her house was dark. I found her laying on her back on the floor by her bed breathing raggedly but unresponsive. I called 911, I called my husband, get over here now. I called my daughter. It's bad, I said, really bad. I'm on my way she said. I called her oldest daughter who lives in Albuquerque. It's bad, I said, really bad. I'm on my way, she said. Calls started going out.

Marc was there, the police arrived almost immediately, the EMTS shortly after. Then my daughter arrived. The EMTs bundled up my sister and life flighted her to Memorial Hermann in the Medical Center in Houston, Sarah and I followed in her car. When we got there, the doctor met with us immediately, showed us the picture of her brain half full of blood, swelling and putting pressure on the unaffected half and brain stem, discussed surgical options to relieve that pressure but prognosis would be the same with or without surgery...if, and that was a big if, she survived the event, she would be an invalid with little motor function, perhaps some language ability, and a feeding tube. The doctor assured me that it wouldn't have mattered when I found her, even if it had been 10 minutes later. When they let us back to be with her in the ER, she was in a self induced coma and had been intubated.

Family started trickling in to the hospital, my son from the city, her daughter and husband from Goliad, my granddaughters from San Antonio, my granddaughter from Wharton, her granddaughter from Dallas, her granddaughter, great grandson and husband from San Antonio, her grandson from San Antonio, her granddaughter en route from Cincinnati, our brother en route from the PNW but these last two would not arrive until the next day; during the night all these people converged on the hospital.

They moved her to the neurological ICU and when my daughter and son and I and her daughter and husband got to that wing the waiting room was closed and locked so we just camped out on the floor in the hall outside the ICU while we waited for the nurse to come get us. The nurses broke all the rules and let more than the allowed two visitors at a time to be in the room, never mind that visiting hours had ended long ago but they knew their charge was dying and the family was there. So there was a steady stream of people leaning close and saying their last words, expressing their love and sorrow. When one of the nurses finally noticed the 15 or so people camped out in the hall she got the key and opened the waiting room. I stayed in the room with my sister.

Denise finally arrived at the hospital about 2:30 in the morning. Her arrival was the only thing I was waiting for. The floor doctor had already confirmed that my sister had only one autonomic reaction left and when that went she would be clinically brain dead, however long it took the heart to follow varied. I had medical power of attorney so it was my responsibility and order, my sister had a DNR and I knew her mind so I knew what to do but I wanted both daughters' confirmation which they gave. So when Denise was ready and since everyone was already there and there was no point in letting it go on another minute I told the floor doctor to remove the ventilator and allow nature to take its course. They let the closest family members, about 10 of us, be in the room while they removed the breathing tube and then we waited. They must have known that death was imminent to allow us all in there at one time and so it was. I say it took 10 minutes maybe for blood pressure and heart rate to zero out but really I didn't have much concept of time then. So sometime between 3 and 4 Monday morning, my sister's severely damaged earthly shell stopped functioning.

pecan harvest, boob job of sorts, giving the middle finger to democracy

We had our busiest day last Thursday, filling 46 food orders, since I've been volunteering at SHARE. I was already behind before I even got there a few minutes after 9. Our previous high was 33 families so yeah, busy day.

We have a digital scale in the storeroom there and all donations have to be weighed and written down how much and who gave. I've been weighing myself every couple of weeks. My weight has held steady at 124.7 for the past three or four years but this year it's been creeping up. Last Thursday, I weighed 130.7 pounds! I wouldn't mind so much but it's all in my stomach, well, most, my boobs are the biggest they have ever been though I wouldn't call them big by any stretch of the imagination, they barely qualify for small but they are definitely bigger, and now some of my clothes are getting a little snug (around my waist, not my chest, they aren't that much bigger). I guess sitting on my butt for 3 months of high 90s and two months of triple digits because it was too damn hot to go outside and be active was not a good way to spend the summer. I was so freaked out I skipped lunch on Friday.

It started raining at some point Thursday morning and continued to rain all day, sometimes a serious downpour but mostly just a steady light to medium rain. Rain gauge on Friday showed almost 3 1/2”. I took my first bucket of pecans to get cracked Thursday afternoon after the rain slacked off a bit. This is my evening activity for however long it takes me to get through my harvest.

Seven pounds of cracked pecans yielded me 3 lbs 5 oz of shelled nuts and 3 lbs 13 oz of shell. So far I've picked up 73 pounds of fallen nuts.

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I know I said I would start posting just one political item on a regular post but holy fucking cow...

After republicans were roundly defeated in last Tuesday's elections they continue to refuse to accept that the American public does not support their extremist policies and went on to show that they don't really believe in democracy anyway. Ex-Senator Rick Santorum in an interview on Newsmax said it out loud, complaining that young people voted on the 'sexy' (?) issues of abortion and marijuana, said “pure democracies are not the way to run a country”. In other words, they don't think everyone should be allowed to vote. And to that end, in Mississippi election officials failed to print enough ballots for 9 heavily black democrat precincts in a blatant attempt at voter suppression. North Dakota state representative and religious wing nut Brandon Prichard went further writing “Direct democracy should not exist…. It would be an act of courage to ignore the results of the election”.

Republicans are so contemptuous of the American public and our governmental system of democracy that that is exactly what they are doing. In Ohio after voters approved the new amendment to their constitution protecting abortion rights, republican legislators have signed a document vowing to ignore the results of the election and continue to uphold the 6 week ban and prosecute violators while they try to prevent the new amendment from taking effect and in Michigan, they are suing to overturn the 2022 election that passed the amendment to their constitution that guarantees abortion access and will of the people be damned.

On another front, as the deadline for funding the government looms large, House republicans cannot agree on anything and two funding bills were pulled from the floor because the small cabal of extremists that want to gut the government are tacking on anti abortion amendments (in particular giving employers the right to fire employees if they use birth control or get an abortion) and demanding steep cuts to the departments responsible for regulating businesses, promoting infrastructure, protecting civil rights, and providing the social safety net (social security, medicare, and food programs), all of which are immensely popular with the American people, both democrat and republican. While they can't seem to get a consensus on funding the government they did manage to waste everyone's time and bring to a vote several bills to reduce the Press Secretary's and others' pay to $1, their current response to any government official they don't like, to outlaw the use of the word latinx, and to defund the Vice President's office, all of which were defeated. And then Speaker Johnson sent everyone home Thursday afternoon. Here's a quick read on the dis-function of the House republicans. When the House is back in session on Monday, they will have four days to agree on funding before the government shuts down on Friday, right before the Thanksgiving holiday.   

excellent results, more shop and garage work, local life

Well, aren't we happy about the results of the elections yesterday. It wasn't a clean sweep for Democrats but they did extremely well. Americans are weary of and rejecting the extremism and downright meanness of MAGA and the Republican party but according to Marjorie Taylor Green, republicans lost because they weren't extreme enough and republicans are too nice...talk about a disconnect from reality. Now democrats need to build on this momentum for the 2024 elections.

Instead of devoting whole posts to the political malfeasance of the group trying to force minority rule I think I'm going to just insert things as I come across them into ordinary posts. Unless of course I'm particularly inspired. So we'll see how that goes and here's today's item:

Trump and his MAGAts go on about how Biden is destroying this country and yet House republicans have introduced “a bill to cut more than 64% from [the budget for] Amtrak, as well as other significant parts of the country’s passenger rail system. Most of the cuts would come from the heavily traveled northeast corridor, which carries about 800,000 people a day and serves the region that produces about 20% of the country’s gross domestic product...In contrast, President Biden today announced $16.4 billion in railroad investment from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in the northeast corridor. It will rebuild century-old tunnels and bridges and upgrade tracks, power systems, signals, stations, and other infrastructure, enabling higher speeds on the route and cutting delays.” - from Heather Cox Richardson's newsletter Nov. 6. So once again republicans show how little they care about our infrastructure and the lives of ordinary Americans by devastating the budget for a system that people depend on to get where they need to go safely. They also voted to reduce the Transportation Secretary's pay to $1.

I'll probably put the political item at the bottom in future but I wanted to lead with the election results.

Last weekend I spent more time over at the shop adding to the trash pile and salvaging two metal shelving units that had been in the back storage area against the outside wall where the roof leaks and so they were very dirty and rusty. I sprayed them with Ospho to arrest the rusting and then used all my various leftover cans of spray paint to repaint them. Once I got all four (had already moved two) away from the wall I could access the crates and containers of all the clear textured glass from small pieces

to nearly full sheets plus some colored glass, bevels of all shapes and sizes, and all the glass jewels and lenses leftover from our commission architectural carved glass business. The jewels and lenses will go to a friend in Colorado but all the rest I posted on FB free for the taking. Two women showed up on Monday and between the two of them they hauled everything away plus the big crate and the ball mill and a box of craft use cookie cutters. Woo hoo!

Yesterday I cleared and rearranged the garage to accommodate bringing the plumerias and other tender potted plants in for the winter. Believe me when I tell you all that clear space was filled with recycling, a lawnmower, trimmer, leaf blower, chain saw, heavy extension cord and other boxes of miscellanea.

Seen in the yard...the pink trumpet flower shrubby viney thing has outdone itself this late summer/fall despite the horrid heat and drought of summer.

The mist flower is blooming and slowly spreading.

I happened to notice the pink penta had been chewed to within an inch of its life and further investigation exposed this, the caterpillar of a tersa sphinx moth.

Rummaging through a viney leafy ground cover for fallen pecans I uncovered this beautiful southern leopard frog. It sat motionless...if I don't move she can't see me. Usually this guy leaps away before I even get sight of it.

The monarchs are starting to migrate through.

I saw very few butterflies this summer and so far the mass migration of over 20 different butterflies has not made an appearance like it did last year.

And Cat, totally owning the place.

the intent of religious and far right extremists to rule, not govern

This is long but I hope you will read all the way to the bottom.

On my way to SHARE last Thursday morning I passed a guy walking along the side of the road holding a big sign in front of himself that said 'Jesus loves you'. There's also a big cross in the easement of one of the main north/south roads that has 'Jesus Is Lord' written on it. During the last election people put out 'pray for our nation' yard signs. At least one of the people I know thinks Mike Johnson's elevation to Speaker of the House is not just a good thing but a great thing. And that is fucking scary. I have no problem with religious believers for the most part as long as they understand that their religion and beliefs apply only to their lives. Unfortunately, too many think their religion and beliefs apply to everyone's lives and should be legislated and forced on the population as a whole. And that is exactly what Mike Johnson wants and plans to do. And not just Johnson, the whole Trump supporting extremist cabal in the House.

Not only does Johnson et al think he has the power given to him by god to force his religious extremism on the population at large, a member of the Seven Mountain Dominionists, he is also an insurrectionist who was instrumental in trying to get Congress to subvert the election, leading the amicus brief that more than 100 republican representatives signed supporting the Texas lawsuit that sought to invalidate the 2020 elections in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania even after 60 lawsuits filed by republicans claiming fraud failed to produce one iota of evidence. They support Trump because they see him as instrumental in achieving their goal of getting rid of the separation of church and state and turning our democracy into a religious authoritarian government. If you have any doubt that that is their goal, do a little research into this group.

Mike Johnson wants a national ban on abortion, no exceptions even though it is a life saving procedure for women with ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages, dead fetuses, severely underdeveloped fetuses with no chance of life, or other health conditions that make it extremely life threatening to continue a pregnancy and even though the majority of Americans are against banning abortion. Already the maternal death rate and newborn death rate has increased in states with abortion bans. Johnson supports banning IVF and common forms of birth control, he voted against ensuring access to contraception and believes every American woman should be required to have at least one child to insure future laborers for the Hegemony. His wife engages in conversion therapy for gays, a completely discounted and dangerous therapy, and they are busy scrubbing all mention of it from the internet. He would make same sex marriage illegal and blames love between members of the same sex as the source of all evil.

And then there's his financial statements in which he declares neither he, his wife, nor their children have a checking or savings account and declares no assets. How does that work? How does he pay his bills? Does he cash his paycheck at the bank? He makes $174,000 a year and that excludes his wife's income. As long as we're on the topic of suspicious stuff, he claims to have adopted and raised a black teenager though there was never a legal adoption, Johnson just 'took custody', whatever that means, but there is no evidence of this 'son' he claims to have raised, not in pictures anyway, not in family portraits, not on any of their websites.

So far in his tenure as Speaker he has split support for Ukraine from support for Israel, offsetting the financial aid with an equal cut to the new funding for the IRS to go after the ultra wealthy tax cheats which if passed would actually add to the national debt by reducing the amount of money collected. As it stands now, with the extra funding, every dollar spent on the IRS returns two or three dollars in owed taxes but republicans don't like it when their obscenely rich donors have to pay their share of taxes. The House has also voted to cut the EPA budget by 39%, the NPS by 13%; reducing the salaries of the EPA administrator, the director of the Bureau of Land Management, and the Secretary of the Interior to $1 each; and are pushing to eliminate Biden's $35 cap on insulin. What Johnson and the House are not doing is working on funding the government, which current funding expires on November 17. Fortunately none of these extreme bills have a chance of passing in the Senate and I expect their refusal to work on and pass a budget for the government for the coming fiscal year is because they see shutting down the government as a plus, a black mark against Biden, hoping it will erode support for him and enable them to take back Congress and the Presidency. However, this man as Speaker of the House, is second in line for the presidency after the Vice-President. If Trump's constant calls for violence against those who oppose him succeed, Johnson could become president before the next election.

As for Trump, his republican supporters, and their desire for an authoritarian government you need only listen to Trump's own words. They will replace everyone in every agency and the civil service with people suitably loyal to Trump, not the Constitution, and are working to acquire a team of lawyers who are willing to try 'innovative' approaches, read unethical, and are already making lists of names. Trump makes no secret of his intention to weaponize the justice department to punish his opponents, detractors, and those who have testified against him (the list of names is long) and, if he wins, is floating plans to invoke the Insurrection Act on the first day of his second term to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations. If re-elected Trump's supporters plan to move quickly and aggressively to consolidate power in the West Wing with that nazi Stephen Miller playing a leading role. There will be no stumbling and bumbling. All of this planning, Project 2025, is going on now by an outside group. If you are unfamiliar with Project 2025, I suggest you research it. It's the republican game plan for when they get control of both Houses of Congress and the Presidency.

Scary times.

And of course they aren't focusing just on the upcoming national election but every state election from the governor to the school board. Virginia and Ohio have important elections on Tuesday and both republican dominated states have removed thousands of qualified voters from the rolls preceding these elections while tossing out twice as many mail-in ballots submitted by blacks than whites continuing their voter suppression tactics.

Hopefully Trump will be in jail or disqualified though the plan will go forward no matter which republican may get elected. The movement is larger than Trump. If we want this democratic republic to survive, if we want the will of the people to govern us and not the will of the far right white christian nationalists intent on religious authoritarian rule every last one of us must vote and vote democrat. What's happening now is exactly what the founding fathers rebelled against.

If you don't already get Heather Cox Richardson's newsletters you should sign up for them. She's a historian and an excellent source of information about what's happening in this country and how it ties into our history.

Another good source for keeping tabs on the ridiculousness and stupidity of some of today's republicans is Jeff Tiedrich. He is astute and funny and says fuck a lot.