peaches, drawing, retaliation

I picked a dozen more peaches on Sunday and the rest last night, 45 in all. Peach cobbler planned for tonight.

I had a flat tire on the car yesterday. Coming back from yoga class Monday night, though it was daylight as the sun doesn’t set until 8:30 these days, still on the highway but closer to Wharton than not I ran over something I did not see but felt and heard when the passenger side rear tire went over it. Why just the rear tire I can’t tell you as I was going in a straight line. After I took the exit for the long stretch into town the low tire light came on. Great. Fingers crossed, I made it home before it was completely flat. I called AAA to come put on the spare. Marc and I both know how to change a tire and have done it but why are we paying for AAA road service if we’re not going to use it. As it turned out, the tire would not come off easily and the guy had to pound on it from behind to get it loose. Marc took the flat to the tire place where they plugged a hole and put it back on for $12.50.

I’m working on a new drawing/painting, preliminary stage. I’ve decided on subject matter but not composition yet. Right now I’m working on drawing different views of woodland violets, larger than life. Once I get the individual elements drawn I’ll play around with composition and size. I’m thinking I’ll do a colored pencil drawing before I try to tackle a watercolor. Here are two little sketches so far.

All that rain last week finally hatched a crop of mosquitos, big black aggressive ones. One of the bird baths was teeming with larvae. All three are empty now drying out so I need to go put fresh water in them.

------------

The retaliation has begun. Stunned by the now official count of 13+ million Americans rejecting him and his policies during the No Kings protests coupled with the low turnout for that poor excuse of a parade, Trump has reverted to form. Saturday night in a moment of weakness Trump ordered ICE to stop raids on farms, hotels, restaurants, and meat packing plants and put a halt on non-criminal arrests. Sunday night a post on his TS account stated ICE officers are herewith ordered to do all in their power to conduct the largest Mass Deportation Program in history doubling down on America’s largest predominately Democrat cities with his usual hate filled rhetoric against liberals, democrats, and the left ignoring the fact that even red states and red cities had large turnouts for the No Kings protests. Sunday US Marines accompanied about 60 ICE agents to a popular LA county swap meet questioning people, asking their names, and taking pictures and while only a few people were arrested, the point was intimidation. Monday he has ordered raids on farms, restaurants, and hotels to resume. And continuing Trump’s and his administration’s attack on his opponents, ICE agents arrested another democrat, NYC comptroller Brad Lander, as he tried to escort a migrant out of an immigration courthouse and Democrat congress members are being denied entry into ICE detention centers which is against the law as Congress has the legal right to unannounced oversight visits.

A woman I know is a card carrying member of the Trump cult and she often shares memes on FB that are if not outright lies then full of half truths. She posted one on Sunday maybe, 4 lies liberals are telling about Trump’s birthday parade. I don’t remember what the other three were but one of them was that our tax payer money did not pay for the parade, it was paid for by the sponsors. That is a lie. The money paid by the sponsors went to a fund called America250, a congressionally appointed nonprofit in charge of raising funds to celebrate the upcoming US Semiquincentennial and was tapped to handle spectator logistics and the attending ‘festival’ connected to the parade. We have a list of the sponsors but none of them have been forthcoming with the amount they donated and in 2022 a lawsuit was filed against the nonprofit for mismanaging federal funds, cronyism, and engaging in sexist behavior among other things. While America250 is reported to have paid for the auxiliary activities it did not pay for the actual parade; the movement of troops, equipment, and planes or the pledge to repair any of the damage to the streets of DC caused by the heavy equipment which the Army has estimated to cost between $25 and $45 million. Neither did the nonprofit pay for the security provided by DC for which the government is supposed to reimburse the city.  A link to the article here.

After being basically ignored, dismissed by the other world leaders, and laughed at, Trump left the G7 meeting early, ostensibly to deal with the Israeli/Iran war currently going on, to decide if he was going to send American soldiers to join against Iran or just heavier munitions to Israel since he gave an ultimatum of 60 days to Iran and Iran ignored him. He has sent the USS Nimitz Battle G from the South China Sea to join the USS Carl Vinson strike group already in the Arabian Sea along with Air Force refueling planes. The ‘no wars’ president is about to get us involved in a war in the Middle East, desperate to engage in a show of strength to counteract all the humiliation of the past several days. And to that I saw a video yesterday by Anonymous claiming to have evidence that a false flag attack on the US is not only planned but imminent. I don’t put much stock in videos like that but it is an alarming idea and I’m not sure that that would be a step too far even for this administration.