week 9

I have not paid close attention this week as my need to keep informed is at odds with my need to keep emotionally stable. This country is still in free fall and will be til November when hopefully we will land on our feet.

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Still no plan from the government, still no nationwide testing because Trump doesn't want to know and doesn't want the country and world to know how widespread the virus is here, infections and deaths still climbing. Trump still bored. Trump #2 son calling the shutdowns a Democratic hoax to defeat his daddy and thinks the virus will magically disappear on election day. Trump back to blaming anyone and everyone for his lack of performance. Trump yelling Obamagate with no specifics and says everyone knows what the crime is. Another inspector general fired, this time from the state department for opening an investigation into Pompeo's misuse of government funds and personnel. The Senate still does nothing. Trump and Barr still using their positions to retaliate against Trump opponents. People still protesting the safety regulations and getting ugly about it. People still refusing to abide by businesses' requirements to wear a mask to enter and getting ugly about it. Republicans deeply worried about their reelection chances because they have allowed Trump to get away with everything start accusing their Democrat opponents of pedophilia or dementia while actively supporting republican pedophiles and one very demented president. Trump and his sniveling family members still complaining that the American public doesn't appreciate them enough. And it just goes on.

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Some good news. Therapeutics company Sorrento has made what it believes could be a breakthrough in potential treatment of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that leads to COVID-19. Read the article here. 

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There's been a lot of claims of tyranny and trampled rights from the anti-safety regulation crowd about their temporary inconvenience. That they are out there protesting against safety regulations without being arrested shows no rights are being suppressed but still they act as if they were being marched into concentration camps instead of being asked to wear masks and wash their hands and stay home unless it's absolutely necessary. Amazing what the selfish crowd thinks is absolutely necessary regardless of who is put in harm's way as long as they get what they want. There was an outright physical tussle between an employee wearing a mask and a customer refusing to wear a mask when they had to physically remove the customer for refusing to complying and was doing her best not to be shoved out the door. (At the end of the video you could hear a person out of sight yelling that they had been standing in line for 3 hours for food. At Red Lobster. 3 hours. Seriously, go to the grocery store, buy a lobster, and cook it at home. It's easy and will taste better.) And the violence is escalating...security guards shot for not allowing unmasked people into a store, death threats against the governor of Michigan, threats of violence in general. None of which has been condemned by Trump or Republicans.

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With freedom comes responsibility.

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My county has one new case, up to 42, still no deaths. The state, however, after being opened prematurely by our Republican governor, has seen an increasing number of cases and deaths, just like all the states that have opened up.

Gee, who could have predicted that.

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So far all my family and friends are safe and healthy and staying in, working from home as much as possible. Nine weeks of no outside activities...no yoga classes, no estate sales, no events at Hesed House to check out, no neighborhood get-togethers, no running to whatever store for whatever is needed and to tell the truth, not much is actually needed, and I've managed to keep busy enough but now, it's summer and too hot for most of what has kept me busy. I have a new set of colored pencils that Jade sent me for my birthday I could draw with, I have watercolors and paper I could paint with, I have stuff to make models for new sculptures with, I could even get out the modeling glass and see if any of it is still usable but I'm feeling completely unmotivated in that regard. Is this quarantine ennui or just regular ennui?

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Current US statistics from Worldometer.com as of today  5/17/20, 16:00 GMT (last eight weeks' totals in parenthesis): cases – 1,512,267 (1,384,681, 1,168985, 976,403, 741,230, 534,494, 312,223, 123,958, 38,757); deaths – 90,206 (81,724, 67,954, 54,965, 39,103, 20,637, 8,483, 2,231, 400); (no longer care about recoveries).

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The rate of deaths has slowed somewhat but that may change soon as the effects of rescinding the stay at home orders and opening of businesses are made apparent.

week 1     400 deaths

week 2    1,831

week 3    6,552

week 4    12,154

week 5    18,466

week 6    15,862

week 7    12,989

week 8 (8 days)    13,770

week 9 (6 days)    8,482

death in America

Three shootings in a week. Thirty three people dead. Thoughts and prayers from Republicans. Demands for gun control and gun safety from Democrats. All guns all the time folks claim more guns in the populace would have prevented it. Except. Except there were 'good guys with guns' at the Walmart who not only did not stop the shooter, they fled, and the police weren't sure who the shooter was because of open carry. Except the shooter in Dayton killed and wounded those people in less than a minute. The police responded in 20 seconds, shot him dead in less than a minute but 9 people were still dead and 26 wounded. No good guy with a gun on the scene could have stopped that. Republicans: it's not guns, it's mental illness. It's not guns, it's video games. It's not guns, it's no prayer in school. It's not white supremacy rhetoric, it's absentee parents. Democrats: It's the GUNS stupid, other nations have mentally ill citizens, play video games, don't pray in school and they do not suffer gun violence. Meanwhile Trump golfs, McConnell issues a statement about how horrified he is but not horrified enough to bring the gun safety bills passed by the House to the floor of the Senate. Wash, rinse, repeat.

And then there is the guy who thinks every public place should have an armed 'discreet' professional security force I thought that's what the police were for like his church has, proud of the fact that he thinks his church is well protected. I can remember an America when we didn't need private security forces, discreet or otherwise, to feel safe in America from Americans.

Just another week in America, the country that loves it's guns more than it's children with a government controlled by Republicans, the party that loves it's NRA money more than protecting Americans, the party that allows the very people they accuse, the mentally ill, to buy whatever guns they want, led by a president that demonizes certain Americans and laughs when his supporters yell 'shoot them'.

We have a chance in November 2020 to put an end to this. If we don't, we may never get another one.

and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out

I am anole. I am turtle at the bottom of the tank. I am cold and not inclined to motion, at least until the dog starts bouncing off my chest wanting her walk. 

Properly bundled and outside it's not so bad, as long as the wind doesn't blow. We walk briskly, the short walk, and even she is ready to be back inside by the time we return. Cold or not, these are the days of laying low as the last week of the year ticks by.

But it is cold...overcast, drier than the past two or three days, temperatures hovering in the low 40s, the high varying only a few degrees from the low. When it changes it will get both warmer and colder, cold enough that plants will have to come in again and others covered.

2017 has worn out its welcome and it's leaving in a wintry snit dumping feet of snow on much of the country. Good riddance I say.

Politically, it started out bad with Trump's inauguration and continued downhill from there. In one short year Trump has destroyed our standing in the world, ruined our relationships with our allies, sold off our national lands, admired our enemies, insulted our free press and intelligence agencies, rescinded decades of protective regulations for workers and the environment, gave the very rich a trillion dollar ta x cut...basically, if Obama did it then he is undoing it...and cost the taxpayers $100 million for him to play golf every weekend, Nazis actually paraded through the streets of America and Trump called them good guys.

Personally, I spent far too much time in doctor's offices and endured far too many tests. An exploration of my weird choking and throat spasms which was a colossal waste of time and money with an ENT who ignored the reason I was there and just wanted to fix my broken nose and then a stress induced 2 week period of episodes of rapid heartbeat sent me to a cardiologist who never addressed the episodes of rapid heartbeat but otherwise gave me a clean bill of health, no sign of any blockage. So, yay that!

The planet continued to produce extreme weather with a tornado that peeled off the roof of the antique store so no more Saturday job, a long hot dry summer here, drought in California, direct hits on the country from three major hurricanes in a row the first of which caused half our house to flood with us being rescued by airboat, 

record breaking wildfires in the Northwest and California, and this last month we woke up to 2” of snow one morning while the Northeast, in these last few days, is being buried by the stuff.

It wasn't all bad though. We spent a week in Hawaii with our twin granddaughters Jade and Autumn, their reward for hard work, graduating with honors and scholarships, before their first year of college. 

We had no commission work this year and with Marc's birthday this past Wednesday, he will start getting SS which will boost our income enough that we have decided to retire from the etched glass purposefully. The Wren Box and the Peach Box sold. I got my studio room remodeled from ceiling to floor.

And our spring garden produced an abundance of tomatoes and potatoes which I put up in the freezer and then lost it all when the electricity went out due to the flood. 

Three more days and I'd ask what else can possibly happen except that I know better than to invoke the gods.

this is who we are

So. Once again, for the 273^rd time in 275 days in this year alone, (383 in 2016), the nature of this society called America has shown itself in spades. And it ain't pretty. But apparently no massacre is bad enough to do something about the gun violence in this country. No group of victims is too heinous to do something about the gun violence in this country. No, anything besides unfettered access to whatever and however many guns a person can have, no matter their criminal or mental or social dis-functions, is unAmerican.

Captured from FB

Hard to argue with that.

I also read an article from the Atlantic about the dark truth of this society...

“No other society allows the massacres to keep happening. Everyone around the world knows this about the United States. It is the worst aspect of the American national identity.”

As long as it's white male 'lone wolfs' whatever they do is tolerable.

The other truth is that this is who we are and we know it. We know this will continue, and it will, because we do nothing to change it. 

No other nation that is not ruled by anarchy allows this to happen.

The 273^rd mass murder, defined as four or more casualties, and the worst to date in terms of casualties inflicted, in 275 days. That's almost one a day. One mass murder a day not counting just the one or two killed. The thousands of women killed every year not by an unbalanced individual but by someone they know and possibly love. The hundreds of children killed every year, now the third leading cause of death. The thousands of people shot because someone was enraged and had a gun. The thousands of suicides every year.  Some statistics here from Newsweek.

And because the body counts aren't high enough, Congress, the lap dog of the NRA and gun lobby, wants to throw silencers into the mix.