never my president

Well, here it is a few days later and overt racism, bigotry, and hatred has exploded across the nation via graffiti, verbal attacks, and actual physical violence and, most troubling, a lot of it in our schools. The reports showing up on FB and Twitter are endless.

I did not like George W. Bush. He indebted this nation for his illegal war, created worldwide terrorism, took money from SS to pay for his folly and then claimed SS was no longer viable, he plunged this country into a severe recession through republican policies but still I accepted him as president. I will never accept the racist bigoted misogynist fascist admitted sexual predator Donald Trump who has encouraged violence, citizen against citizen, as president. Never. I won't go low with disgusting memes like the republicans have done for 8 years with President Obama, but I will never ever give him the title of President.

I find it amusing that he is calling for us all to come together. Who exactly is he talking to? The blacks he calls thugs, the latinos he calls rapists and murderers, the muslims and other non-christians he calls terrorists, the women he calls disgusting and thinks he can just sexually assault because he's rich, the other gendered he intends to let people discriminate against? What a fucking joke. Has he condemned any of the violence against these people that he has demonized for a year that has exploded since he was elected? No, he has not. But he has tweeted that he thinks the protests against his election are 'unfair' even though he planned to do the exact same thing if he lost..

And his repeated pledge to curtail lobbyists and rid the government of special interests, he didn't want them, wouldn't use them? His transition team is full of lobbyists, his financial advisory team is full of veteran Wall Streeters, and bankers are in the mix to be Treasury Secretary.

Get ready because Mitch McConnell has already said repealing the ACA will be their first act of Trump's presidency. They have nothing to replace it with of course because they don't really care how many Americans will once again die from treatable illnesses. You think your premiums for shit policy were too high under the ACA? They will skyrocket now under an unrestrained for profit health insurance industry. And that's just the beginning. Good job Trumpers.

Well, you people who voted for him, you got what you wanted. You swallowed a big turd and it's going to be stuck in your throat for 4 years.  Congress will now go after every social program that you depend on.  Food and housing assistance?  Gone.  Social Security and Medicare?  Slashed at best. Disability?  Go get a fucking job. The first amendment?  Go directly to jail. The EPA?  I hope you like your water and air poisonous.  Our national parks and preserves?  Sold to the highest bidder.  That heinous peaceful nuclear restraint with Iran?  Get ready for war.

You know, the worst part of this is not that all the liberal compassionate advances we have made that will be rolled back, it's the loss of any moral character that this nation had. It was a grand experiment, this melting pot, this democratic endeavor, but it's gone now. The constitution means nothing to them.

RIP America.  It was nice knowing ya.

un fucking believable

Well, I had a completely different post planned for today. Not political, just about some of the work I've been doing since I finished the A&M job.

I didn't watch the election returns which is my usual. I prefer just to find out the next day. When I woke up this morning, dread came over me and I just knew.

I am gut punched, shell shocked, disgusted and ashamed that the people of this country voted to put that hateful bigoted ignorant racist admitted sexual assaulter...a man who is totally incompetent, who for all his inherited wealth has a string of bankruptcies and failed businesses, who is indebted for millions to Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia, who has zero qualifications, a man who never served in the armed forces but thinks he is smarter than the generals, a man who has a trial for rape and one for fraud coming up in the next two months, oh shit, this list is endless...in the highest office in this country.

Just what the fucking fuck America?

Are you really that small, your heart that black and shriveled, that you only feel safe and good and happy when surrounded by white straight male christians that are so filled with hate and fear that they might just as well be spitting in your savior's eyes? Because that's exactly what you just did.

This is not the country I was taught about in school.

Well, all you people who voted for this disaster of a man are about to find out just how little he cares about you. You think he cares about the working class? He eats people like you for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You are about to find out just how incompetent he is and when the stock market crashes and our allies abandon us, when Russia grabs Eastern Europe, when we are at war with Iran, it will be your fault OK, maybe that last part was a little over dramatic but if he follows through on his rhetoric, it is all very possible.

Oh, and if you voted for Trump and are on Social Security, when he takes that away from you I want you to remember that you voted for that, when our women start dying in droves Texas closed 80% of the health care clinics in an attempt to stop abortions and the maternal deaths increased by over 200% in two years, when our water and air becomes polluted and poisonous, when you lose your affordable health insurance and your premiums skyrocket and they start denying care again, remember, you voted for that. When people start being imprisoned without due process, you voted for that. When free speech and the right to protest is gone, you voted for that.

So what do we do? What can we do?

We can stand up against hate and bigotry and racism every time we see it happening. We go stand with and for the target of their hate. We get between them and their abuser, we stand next to them, we hold their hand, and we resist. When someone in the grocery line gets berated for using food assistance if food and housing assistance survive, we come to their defense. When someone on public transport starts being verbally attacked, we go stand with them and record the attack. When we see injustice anywhere we step in to stop it. When we hear hateful bigoted racist speech we speak out against it. We resist the destruction of all the progress we have made as a people and as a nation. We work to make this a one term presidency.

Now, get to work. Tomorrow. Today we grieve.

yesterday and today

First thing this morning I kicked the door jamb. I think I broke my toe. OK, not really but it hurts like hell. Still. We're dog sitting my sister's dog while she is in London for two weeks and as soon as I got out of bed I let them out in the Little Backyard. It had rained last night so the ground was wet and Minnie's first reaction was to head back in the door. I didn't mean to kick the door jamb. I meant to impede her progress back into the house. This was after she decided we had slept long enough and was doing her fake sneeze thing she does to get attention when bouncing around us on the bed doesn't work.

Yesterday was another day spent out in the yard. I did some pruning on an althea and cut more gone by ginger stalks and pulled out the mistflower that was taking over a spot where I didn't want it as well as the wild petunias that were crowding my rosemary bush that doesn't look so great.

I did fire ant remediation with the soapy/orange oil water and I used the trimmer around the culverts and the beds in the front yard. I planted a flat of pansies and moved the buddha forward and added another row of bricks to his platform since the wandering jew with the little white flowers was starting to overcome him. 

I finally spread out the sandstone slabs that formed a walkway through the yard to the driveway at the old city house that have been waiting, stacked up for me to lay them out here but I decided that was a project for another day.

Since it was supposed to be a rainy day today it wasn't we decided to go to the movie to see Dr. Strange which was really good and definitely worth the extra for 3-D. In fact if you don't see it in 3-D then you are missing some really great effects. If you are a Marvel fan then you probably already know this but Marvel adds scenes during and at the end of the credits so it's usually worth sitting through them even if you have to pee really really bad like I did. And, there is going to be a new Guardians Of The Galaxy movie coming out next summer which explains why the first one showed up on TV the other night.  And a new Wolverine movie coming next year as well!

OK, I'm off to yoga.

the mark of the chicken

I know y'all have been just waiting with baited breath to get the last update on my wound.

Six weeks to the day after the incident, what was left of the big black thick gnarly scab over the entry point came off.

It was still a little moist there so a normal scab formed and it came off exactly 2 weeks later.

About a week after that it looked even better.

So, 9 weeks from injury to scar though it may take another six months or so for all the redness to away.

in support of Hillary Clinton

Last Monday week early voting started in Texas. It was the first thing I did that day after coffee and breakfast. I voted FOR Hillary Clinton. I was probably the only one in the room at the time that did but I could be mistaken. I think there were about 20 people ahead of me, another half dozen in the room waiting and 4 booths. The line was a little longer when I left.

The conventional wisdom out there is that this election features the two most corrupt people possible but that is not true. One is accused of being a crook and a murderer by the other who is actually a crook with a thick trail of lawsuits and penalties trailing behind him and two very serious court cases, one for rape and one for fraud, coming up in the next two months and while he may not be a murderer, he uses the courts to ruin anyone who opposes him.  Most recently his ties, political and financial, to Russia have come to light. 

Hilary Clinton may not have the charisma that some would like, she isn't a perfect human being and that is no more and no less than any other human being but she has devoted her life to public service helping women and the underprivileged and has faced such monstrous opposition that I have to believe that she is in fact devoted to public service because why else would anyone put up with the sexism and misogyny and investigations and examinations and accusations and the absurdity of spending millions of dollars to bring her down for 30 years. For money? For power? Well, she has achieved both money and power in her lifetime but that wouldn't even be an issue if she were a man. They have hounded her for 30 years and have not ever once had evidence for a single indictment. She hasn't even been elected yet and already the Republicans are threatening to stonewall her the way they did President Obama and promising years of investigations against her. They have been afraid of this woman for 30 years. That right there is reason enough to vote for her but, of course, I do have other reasons. Will she support things I do not? I'm sure she will. So does Obama and I have nothing but admiration and respect for him.

During this election cycle, every item that has come to light about Trump has been projected onto Hillary. When the proof of Trump's crudity and sexually predatory behavior came to light, they gleefully attacked her for her husband's infidelities as if it was he and not she who was running for president. Now, their newest outrage is, of course, the new emails and, having been cheated once again when the FBI investigation closed without pressing charges and cleared her of wrongdoing, though Comey couldn't resist chastising her in the press conference by offering his irrelevant opinion of her behavior, they are desperate for this to be real except these emails, the ones the FBI director felt it so important to apprise congress of right now right before the election, have nothing to do with Hillary Clinton. They are not from her, they are not to her, they are not on her server, and they are not on a device she used but that didn't stop them from trying to link them to her and, of course, the media is playing it up.

Hillary Clinton is probably the most qualified candidate for the presidency than any candidate ever in the history of this country. As a woman, to be taken with any seriousness, this is a must. All women know this. We have to be better at something to be equal. She will not do all the things I would like, no candidate would, but she will do a good job.

Two well written essays on the demonization of Hillary:

How Hillary Clinton Met Satan by Susan Faludi

Thinking About Hillary - A Plea For Reason by Michael Arnovitz

small animal hospital at Texas A&M

The installation for the A&M panels was Friday and it went without a hitch. I don't know why I was worried because these guys always do an excellent job.

It was impossible to get good pictures of the individual panels. The sun was so bright and completely washed out the images in the photos. This was the best one I got.

Unfortunately, it didn't go without a glitch. Turns out in one of the panels up near the top in the clear area is a flaw in the plastic interlayer of the laminated glass that escaped detection and if I had just placed the pattern on the glass differently it would have been covered up by the etching. It's not very big, maybe 1/2” x 3/8”, but in certain lighting conditions it is visible and looks like a smudge. And of course, the owner of the art consulting company was there to oversee the installation and so she is aware of it and says it could be a real problem. FUCK. Fuck fuck fuck.

I don't want any problems. I just want to get paid and be done. We're supposed to confab about it later today to see what, if anything, should be done about it. Personally, I'd rather just let it be. People aren't going to be looking that high up, they are going to be looking at the etching and they are going to get dirty so it won't be the only smudge. The staff was already wondering if they were going to be responsible for cleaning the glass or if maintenance was. I've thought of a way to disguise it using the cream etch but worst case scenario is they are going to want us to replace it. At this point that's the last thing I want to do and not just because of the expense.

And if that wasn't enough to ruin my day, plus the fact that, let's face it, once installed and the protective film removed, these panels weren't our best work, yes I know I'm my own worst critic and yes we were asked to reproduce photos instead of letting me design the panels and yes we were working under conditions where we didn't have the control we usually do but that doesn't make me feel any better about the end result, as if all that wasn't enough, I missed one of my turns on the way home and ended up about 24 miles in the wrong direction before I figured it out and had to backtrack adding another 45 minutes to an already 2 hour drive.

I managed to put it all out of my mind over the weekend but now I'm here waiting to hear from the art consultant. This is why I don't want to do etched glass anymore. I'm tired of the problems and this job has been nothing but problems from the beginning.

flowers and flying things

Re my last post...It may have sounded like I am disappointed (I was) and unhappy (I was) with the way things turned out but I m OK with it now. In retrospect, when I was reaching for that gold ring, I was not having fun. Making the pieces had turned into work and going to the shows was extremely stressful for me, and then there was the debt we kept expecting to pay off when we finally 'made it'. I have a great life and I enjoy the work again and if I never sell another piece, well, that's not why I wanted to do this technique anyway. The whole point of doing this work was to give myself an outlet to do art for myself. I will continue to work at it and not be prolific and I guess my kids and grandkids will have to decide what to do with all the pieces I leave behind.

Last Sunday was a gorgeous day...beautiful blue sky, cool in the shade, warm in the sun, and most important, not humid...a perfect day for being outside. Which I was. All day.

The pool is now cleaned, dried, folded, and packed away where it will stay until one of the kids or grandkids decides they need an above ground pool or I decide to sell it or one of the grandkids begs me to put it up next summer.

Other fall tasks around the yard were tended to hit or miss. I have still to get anything planted for a fall garden though I did buy some broccoli and cauliflower plants and one bell pepper plant that are still in their little containers. I gathered the day's worth of pecans, cleaned out some of the gone by summer bloomers, used the trimmer around the flower beds and the Little Backyard (the mower won't fit through the gate), picked up the dead and fallen branches and threw them in the back of the truck for transport over to the burn pile, dug up the sprouting nut grass from the back bed because you know there was no way in hell I got it all the first time, and I don't know what all. Planted a few pots of stuff, taking them out of the nursery and into the real world.

The birds have vacated though. I've noticed in the last week or so that there are almost no birds around, not even the cardinals, chickadees, and titmice. Or wrens. Even though the amount of seed I put out every morning in the totem bird feeder gets eaten, I don't see them. I've had the tea cup back up for a couple of months now but I never see a bird come to it here lately so I don't know what's up with that.

Still have lots of butterflies. Saw this little hairstreak that allowed me to photograph it.

I spied this dragonfly and moth hanging out on the yellow ginger waiting for the sun to warm them up.

This scary looking guy convinced me I did not want to touch it.

I was taking pictures of the toad lilies 

when this hummingbird moth flew right in front of me, not at all bothered by me or my camera.

And the cosmos and other things are still blooming like mad.