coming to terms

imagige via https://futurefreespeech.org/reason-free-speech-is-under-attack-in-the-u-s-but-its-on-the-ropes-elsewhere/

After several nights in a row of little sleep and my physical day on Sunday I went to bed early, was asleep by nine and didn’t wake up until eight Monday morning. I woke up briefly several times enough to wonder what that fuck that dream was about and then back to sleep. Pretty useless Monday, even took a little nap. I wasn’t just physically tired but spiritually depressed. 

This is kind of long y’all but better to be aware than blindsided.

People who voted for Trump are upset because they are being blocked on social media and are losing friends because of who they voted for, for what they feel is just a difference of opinion. But they just don’t get it. This is not a difference of opinion. This is not about whether or not you think pineapple belongs on pizza. What they did, what they support is a difference in a moral base. When you vote for a man who is an adjudicated rapist and self proclaimed sexual assaulter, a convicted felon, a man who refused to accept his loss last election and tried to take it by force, a man who scoffs at the rule of law and sneers at the constitution, a man who ran on hate and sexism and racism and lies, a man who has told us in no uncertain terms that he wants absolute power like the dictators he admires, you are de facto saying you support all that. Voting for Trump and MAGAt politicians says you don't think women are equal or should have life saving health care or the same opportunities as men, that rape and general law breaking are acceptable, that you think certain groups of people do not deserve equal rights, that law abiding contributing valued members of a family and community should be deported instead of giving them legal status, that separating/stealing children from desperate parents looking for a better life is not despicable, that you prefer a repressive dictator over democracy, that you have no problem with rounding up millions of people and putting them in detention camps, that you have no problem with American troops being used against Americans on American soil to stifle dissent, that you are OK with the DOJ arresting anyone Trump wants because they opposed him. People can agree to disagree over opinions, we cannot over a fundamental difference in morality. So, no, we do not agree to disagree.

It doesn’t really matter what your excuse was for voting for Trump because by voting for Trump you also voted for all that he stands for and intends to do. It is small comfort that you will suffer along with the rest of us.

Sexist and racist attacks have sky rocketed on social media and texts to people’s phones. School districts are issuing warnings to parents about the increased sexism and racist attacks in schools.

Jesse Watters of Fox said that footage of ICE taking people from their homes will be hysterical. So Jesse, is that hysterical like the SS pulling Jews out of their homes and loading them on cattle cars or hysterical like the IDF pulling Palestinians out of their homes and shooting them?

Vivek Ramasmarmy (purposely mis-spelled) says people brought here as infants or very young children by their parents illegally, people who have no memory of their country of origin and no connection to it, who speak only English, who have no other identification other than American and American culture, who are productive tax paying residents with no criminal record, even those who have served or are serving in the armed forces must be deported.

Governor Abbott of Texas requires all hospitals as of November 1 to ask everyone seeking care about their citizenship status. No one is required to answer and you cannot be denied care regardless of your citizenship status. This is just one more avenue to identify people for deportation.

Tuesday the House voted on H.R. 9495 which gives Trump’s Treasury Department the power to label any non-profit organization “a terrorist supporting organization” and strip it of its tax exempt status if Trump thinks it stands in the way of his authoritarian agenda. No oversight or justification needed. Just one more way he plans to stifle dissent.

The WSJ reports that Trump is drafting an executive order to create a board to purge the military of generals deemed unfit for leadership, in other words those who won’t follow Trump’s illegal orders.

Trump picked Pete Hegseth, a Fox News Channel show host of Fox and Friends, for Secretary of Defense, who says women don’t belong in combat roles and is opposed to the equity and inclusion measures in the Armed Forces. To say that the Pentagon is stunned at the pick of this inexperienced man to run the world’s largest and most powerful military is the understatement of the year.

While J. D. Vance is the elected VP it seems he holds the position in name only and Elon Musk is the de facto operating VP. Musk who is on good terms with Vladimir Putin and who has spoken with him numerous times over the last four years is a fixture at Mar A Lago and reportedly sitting in on phone calls Trump is receiving from other heads of state, calls which, by the way, are bypassing the State Department which monitors and records such communications.

Trump has announced a new department, which by law he does not have the power to create, headed by Musk and Ramaswamy, the Department of Government Efficiency “to liberate our economy” whose goal is to “pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” You can be sure that ‘wasteful expenditures’ will be everything that helps the common people and protects the planet. This purging of the government into a ‘smaller, more efficient version’, meaning one that will do what Trump says with no push back, is to be completed in two years. How many people are going to lose their jobs in the next two years?

Trump’s other picks for important positions like Mike Huckabee for Ambassador to Israel, an evangelical christian who doesn’t think Palestinians have any right to the West Bank (I hope your protest vote was worth it), Kristi Noem who shot and killed her untrained puppy for Secretary of Homeland Security, Marco Rubio for Secretary of State which seems designed to put his daughter in Law Lara Trump in Rubio’s senate seat, nazi Stephen Miller for deputy chief of staff for policy, Tom Homan of stealing children fame for border czar who is eager to deport millions of people, Elise Stefanik for United Nations ambassador, Lee Zeldin who has zero experience in environmental issues to head the EPA, and Susie Wiles who managed Trump’s campaign as chief of staff. 

What could possibly go wrong?

edit, from bad to worse…republicans control the House and Matt Gaetz who has been under investigation has been selected for Attorney General and Trump is trying to push his selections through without going through the Senate.

 

a birthday with old friends, monster rose bush tamed

Sunday I vowed to myself to stay off social media and focus my attention on happier things or at least things that need attending to. The county lifted the burn ban Thursday so torching the burn pile was on the agenda. Also make more progress on the book I’m reading. Maybe put my sewing machine away even though I could start on the skirt hidden in the fabric I bought for that purpose over a year ago and maybe start a new watercolor. 

Saturday we went to visit our friend Gene who lives in Hockley with his partner Brian. It was Gene’s 77th birthday and they were having a gathering of friends. Gene is my second oldest friend. I met him in the second half of 1977. Sarah was still an infant and I was going around to the few stained glass supply businesses trying to make contacts for if they ever had anyone asking about etched glass. One such business told me to try Gene’s little stained glass studio he had with two other guys so I went there and introduced myself. Gene went out on his own shortly after and we’ve been friends ever since. We did the Renaissance Festival together for about 6 years early in both our careers, we collaborated on projects now and then, put on exhibitions together, started the Houston Glass Artists Association, we supported each other in many ways and became lifelong friends. This picture, taken in 1978 of Marc and I and our baby daughter Sarah and Gene, was taken in Gene’s studio for an article about us in a local little publication as I recall.

You might remember that when Gene and Brian decided to leave Houston he moved the contents of his studio into our shop for storage while he had his house moved, got a well and septic installed, fixed the house up, built the private deck out front, and finally, finished out the interior of the metal building erected for his studio, a process that took about three years. His place in the piney woods is so gorgeous, everything he does is done artistically, even his yard tools behind the studio are hung artfully. The man has an incredible touch, very serene with plantings and fountains scattered about on his acre, a small pond, bird feeders, a garden. He built a sweet little greenhouse for his tropicals and orchids and he did it, does it all himself, with found material and objects. He’s amazing.

So it was a nice gathering seeing friends we haven’t seen since our last open house at Dick and Kathy’s glass blowing studio right before covid. Bill and Larry for whom I did my very first etched glass commission were there, Dick and Kathy who were very involved in the arts and who were instrumental in dragging us our of our cave and into the light of the public, various other artists we have known and associated with over the years like Liz, Lesley, Michael, and Daniel.

And when we left I stuffed the car with 6 huge bags of pine needles, had to lay down the back seats to get them all in, to put around my azaleas instead of the pine bark mulch I’ve had to use.

Sunday I did not read, did not sew, did not start a new painting but I did stay off social media. My grandson Mikey came and got the original heavy plastic formed stairs that came with Pam’s house that we never got rid of after Rocky built the little front porch and steps on the house to use for the travel trailer he and Audra and Paisleigh are living in. While he was here he torched the burn pile for me. Since I had been waiting to heavily prune the monster rose bush over there until we could burn I got my baby chain saw and worked for the next hour and a half. The days of the monster rose bush’s unrestrained growth are over. What is left is about one fifth or one sixth of what was. No before picture of course.

Trees and wild grapevine and virginia creeper had grown up in the solid thatch and had to be cut out. I’m going to keep it pruned and cleared from the ground so that Joe can mow and trim under it. I tried to find a recent picture but to no avail, apparently I didn't keep any of the pictures I took of it this year. This is what it looked like two years ago when I pruned enough of the bottom out so that I could get under there and clear out the trees and virginia creeper and had gotten even bigger. 

Later I spread out three of the bags of pine needles. Still have the other azaleas to do but they can wait until next weekend.

The sky Friday evening.

aftermath and object #2

Now that the shock has worn off and the dread is settling in people are questioning the ‘lost’ nearly 15+ million votes for Harris, the number of voters and the number of votes not adding up. It doesn’t make sense. Democrats and disaffected republicans voted down ticket but not for president? Other people are reporting that they have checked their ballot status to make sure their vote was counted and their names are not on the lists, either mail in or in person. I checked mine and my name showed up. People are also making some decisions for the next two months, big dollar items they were planning to purchase next year they are going to purchase now before the tariff price increases take effect or are put off altogether. They’re expecting fresh produce to become very expensive and some are making plans to start gardens. People are trying to think what they can stock up on now, even clothing. Plans to buy a new car are changing to fixing the cars they have. Hopes to buy a house in the next year or two are vanishing. Others are researching other countries to move to.

I did not sleep well Wednesday night ( or Thursday night for that matter), probably only got a couple of hours total, and then I had to go to SHARE Thursday morning and work with people 98% of whom probably voted for Trump. It's a good thing we were busy because I just couldn't bring myself to hang around with any of them like I do when it's slow knowing that for all their christian values, they still voted for that skunk and have wrought disaster on us all. And I think, hope, they will be truly shocked at the result of their vote and how fast it comes and I will give them no quarter. They got what they voted for. Well we have about 2 months of relative peace and then we must be ready to resist and protect the marginalized.

Alright, enough of that.

My life in 100 objects #2. My sewing machine. 

My mother had a small sewing room that she shared with the chest freezer. When my sister and I were young she made our Easter dresses. I’m sure she sewed other things for us but that’s what I remember specifically and she made things for herself. I remember one evening gown in particular. I taught myself how to sew one summer when I was 9 making clothes for my Barbie doll. By the time I was in junior high and was required to take sewing and home economics in the ninth grade there was little the sewing teacher could teach me and after I did whatever work on my garment, which I think was a skirt with a placket, I helped the other girls thread their machines and their skirts. I loved going to fabric stores with my mother, picking out patterns and especially looking at all the bolts of fabric even though the sizing the manufacturers put in the material at the time made my eyes burn. I had my own sewing machine and dress makers dummy in high school and the first two years of college and made many of my own clothes. I made my prom dress from a swirly purple, blue, and orange voile and my wedding dress when I got married the first time and the robe he wore instead of a suit as the hippies we were. I didn’t sew much during that marriage, couldn’t afford even the material and pattern, and really never sewed for myself again. The next time I set up my sewing machine it was to make my kids’ Halloween costumes. You can see those here.  After that I was far too busy with raising kids and the etched glass studio making a living. I didn’t set up my sewing machine again until I had three granddaughters who wanted to learn how to sew and so for about three or four years of granny camp I taught them to sew and we made shorts, tops, dresses, a quilt until they lost interest. I started sewing for myself again several years ago but just simple gathered skirts that I prefer in the summer to shorts. And yes, I did finally finish remaking my blue skirt this week.

what the actual fuck America

A new dark age is about to befall this country. The people have voted for a repressive, racist, misogynistic regime that is all about vengeance and absolute power. And hate. The senile fascist Donald Trump, the repressive christian nationalist JD Vance, the self inflated billionaire Putin buddy Elon Musk, the nazi Steven Miller, the anti vaxxer and anti public health Robert Kennedy Jr; these are who the people in this country have put in charge. Why? Because even the good people are racist and misogynistic. If Harris had been a white male, she would have won by a landslide. The people of this country would rather have the slime they elected than a woman and a black woman at that who would continue the policies that brought this country back from an economy teetering on the edge of a depression from Trump’s disastrous first term to being the strongest in the world in a record amount of time, that strengthened our standing as a world leader, that created a record amount of jobs, that brought manufacturing back and supported unions, that finally started repairing our crumbling infrastructure, that has produced record highs in the stock market, that instituted measures to benefit the common people instead of the millionaires and billionaires. 

Donald Trump did not get more votes than he did last election. He didn’t win because more people voted for him than last time, in fact he got less votes. He won because the people in this country, the ones who would not vote for him also would not vote for a woman regardless of how qualified she is. I am just sick at how much hate there is in this country toward women and toward everyone who is not a white cisgendered christian male.

Well, America, you got what you wished for, either through action or inaction. You have brought on yourself a world of hurt. You will receive your just desserts and I hope you choke on it. When Musk tanks the economy because he says you have to suffer hardship, when Kennedy destroys the public health of this nation, when your children start dying from preventable disease, when there is no FEMA to come to the aid of your community when it’s destroyed by the next hurricane or tornado or wildfire, when you lose your social security and medicare, when you lose your health insurance, when you lose your job and home and business because a billionaire thinks you need to suffer hardship, when your neighbors get rounded up for deportation and their earned citizenship or legal status revoked, when you are incarcerated for opposing dear leader, when American troops are used against you on American soil, when Trump gives Russia Ukraine and turns a blind eye when Putin invades the next country, when Trump tells Netanyahu finish the genocide in Gaza so his son in law can build resorts on the coast, when your rights are revoked, when repressive religious policies are imposed, when you realize there are no guardrails this time around only loyalists and boot lickers, when all those high prices you have complained about don’t come down but increase instead, when you finally realize that Trump doesn’t give a fuck about you, when the constitution becomes a tattered idea you wouldn’t stand up for, when it is far too late for regrets I want you to remember that you did this.

I am devastated that this country has shown us once again how little it thinks of women, that a senile misogynistic racist, adjudicated rapist and self proclaimed sexual abuser, and convicted felon whose previous administration members have said how dangerous and unfit for office he is, and who is bent on revenge is a better choice than a highly qualified woman who has spent her life in service to protect the American people.

 

new theme, crystals, and why is my subconscious dragging up my mother

I’m going to try a new recurring content in my posts, My Life in 100 Objects, the idea taken from Rosemary Murphy of Share My Garden. She has a separate blog for this but I’m just going to scatter them through my own future posts. So here is #1.

This painting, 47" x 37", by William Anzalone hung in the breakfast room of my childhood home directly across the table from where I sat. It’s what I looked at during breakfast and dinner. I have claimed this painting as my own almost from the time my father first bought it though I don’t remember what age I was. Anzalone would, in the future, have a big impact on my artistic ability. I took Drawing from him in college at the University of Houston during which I learned not only how to draw (as opposed to just sketch or scribble) but how to see the thing I was trying to draw and other rules (who knew there were rules for drawing) like how to render a curved object and perspective among much more. I remember the first class when he told us the hardest thing to draw was a straight line, not because it was so hard but because of our fear of putting pencil to paper. I didn’t get possession of this painting until after my father died and my mother went to live with my brother in the PNW. It currently hangs above my bed. 

Sunday I finally hung all the rest of my crystals that I've been accumulating. They look great. What took me so long! Well, beside the fact that my desk is up against that wall of windows and it’s a tight squeeze to get back there.

I took the screen off the window first which I had been planning to do for some time now so I would have a clearer view of the bird feeder since the screens are old and cast a gray filter. Also I don’t ever open those windows (see above) and they won’t stay up anyway, have to be propped up. I just leaned the screen up against the bank of windows on the outside, hadn’t put it away in the garage yet, and the next morning a little green tree frog and an anole were taking shelter behind it.

The frog was still there when I put the screen away.

Every day when I go out there’s another branch or two or three that has fallen from the oaks and the pecans, ones that were broken during hurricane Beryl but not fallen. I’ve just been piling them up next to the magnolia tree during the burn ban instead of putting them in the truck which pretty much makes the truck unusable for anything else. 

As you can see I also pulled the kidney shaped small pond out of the ground since it was finally light enough with all the water evaporated and the water plants dead. Now I have this big hole to fill. I may set the pond up elsewhere in the future but I won’t sink it in the ground as before.

I had another weird dream Monday morning. I was in the kitchen of my childhood home and it was a mess with dirty dishes and empty food containers strewn over all the counters. I was shocked that no one was cleaning the place up or providing decent food for our old senile mother who I suppose was in her bedroom (where in real life she spent much of her time sleeping her life away). She wandered in and got a box of dry cereal from the cabinet and started just eating handfuls out of the box. When I tried to take it away from her telling her to at least put it in a bowl with milk she grabbed it back and wandered back out of the kitchen. When I walked into the family room and looked out the sliding glass door into the backyard, there were three men digging up bulbs and plants. I opened the door and yelled at them to stop and to leave and then I went back into the kitchen and out the back door to get the license plate number of the car they must have come in but it was a police car and there was no license plate and as I was writing down the name of the police department the men came around from the back and tried to drive away. There was more to the dream before I woke up but the rest of it is murky now.

Today is the day. I am not going to watch any election returns and plan to stay off social media, preferring the shock or awe on Wednesday morning but hoping to greet the day with jubilation. 

 

rain!, yardwork, weird dream

Getting a few fully open full size flowers on the confederate rose.

It’s been so dry here, no rain for at least two months, that big cracks were opening up in the shop yard, and neighbor’s yards as well. 

Pot plants had to be watered every day and flower beds frequently. It was almost to the point of not being able to water enough. And then last Tuesday we finally started getting little showers, five or ten minutes of light rain, I was so excited I went out and took a picture of the wet driveway. 

We had a thunderstorm Wednesday night, about an inch and a quarter cumulative of the week by Thursday morning. Several showers on Thursday and remarking how much happier everyone seemed to be at yoga that night, a little shower Friday and finally yesterday a day of real rain, periods of hard rain to light rain off and on all day. 

As of Saturday morning’s issue of the local paper the county’s mean KBDI (Keetch-Bayrum Drought Index) was 645. Anything over 500 and it’s a burn ban so I’m hoping with yesterday’s rain, my rain gauge showed 2 3/8" this morning, it will be enough to lift the ban because my burn pile is huge. 

Tuesday morning Joe and Mary, who maintain the shop yard and around Pam’s house, took out the completely overgrown herb bed in the front that Pam had. I had mentioned I was going to take it out over the winter and since they weren’t getting their mowing income as regularly, no rain no growth, they proposed to undertake the task and I agreed. So that’s done. And, yeah, as usual, no before picture. 

Friday after breakfast I worked over there pruning back and clearing some of the rose bushes Pam had that were being smothered by Virginia creeper and that invasive ground cover that has taken over after the Harvey flood and had blood literally running down my arm and leg from pricks by rose thorns (fucking plavix). I never bled like this on eliquis. So glad it’s only temporary. 

I have a correction to make. The flowering plants I’ve been calling Philippine lily is wrong. They are Philippine violets, barlaria cristata. I think I knew that originally. 

I had a strange dream this morning. I was home from school, as in didn’t go, but I was not of an age to still be in school. I wanted to disassemble my blue skirt to alter it and so my mother came and sat on the bed with me as we ripped out all the seams, taking it completely apart. She had to go do something then and told me I would have to receive all the deliveries that were due that day. Then I woke up. The woman in the dream was not my actual mother visually or behaviorally. My actual mother would never have sat on the bed with me chatting and helping me take apart a skirt. The mother in my dream was the one I always wanted. So I wonder what that was about so late in my life. 

 

one last plea

With five days to election day, many of us are fluctuating between hope and terror. Five days until we find out if we have a democracy or a fascist authoritarian bent on destroying this country. Trump and his campaign have dropped all pretense, at least when he’s not accusing Harris of his own intents.

Republican Speaker of the House Johnson has come right out and said they will get rid of the Affordable Care Act in the first 100 days depriving millions of people who can’t afford private insurance of getting healthcare and depriving those who can afford private insurance but with pre-existing conditions of healthcare and denying care for new problems just like it was before the ACA. Of course Johnson denies it now that his statements in a closed door meeting have become public. He denies it because it’s unpopular but he still intends to do it. And worse, Trump is going to put anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of public health.

Trump has told us he will round up millions of legal and illegal residents and put them in detention camps for deportation, hard working tax paying people our economy depends on, even revoking earned citizenship and ‘remigrating’ them which in his own words will be ‘bloody’. Or maybe he’ll decide to use them as forced labor instead when industries that depend on those people start to fail.

He has said he intends to use the Justice Department to round up everyone who opposes him who he calls the ‘enemy within’, not just other politicians but judges, lawyers, election workers, and I suppose that includes people who voted against him and jail them. 

He wants to use the military against Americans on American soil to stifle dissent. He intends to silence the press, already threatening to revoke the licenses of news outlets who don’t praise him. 

Trump wants to put Elon Musk in charge of the economy and has said they will cut the federal budget by $2 trillion. You can bet that the military budget won’t be cut so that amount will come out of all the programs and departments he wants to get rid of. No one will even notice the cuts, he says, as he gets rid of FEMA, the Department of Education, the National Weather Service, the EPA, SS and Medicare, food assistance just to name a few. Musk has been posting on X and saying in interviews that the American people need to suffer hardship and that they are going to intentionally crash the economy so a new order can rise out of the flames. You know who benefits from a crashed economy? Rich people, millionaires buying up all sorts of assets at bargain prices and basically getting a labor force that is little better than slaves while we lose our homes and businesses. 

They will implement Project 2025, or Agenda 47 as Trump currently calls it, and turn this country into a christian nationalist theocracy forcing their religious extremism on the population at large.

An adjudicated rapist and self proclaimed sexual assaulter; who is responsible for ending Roe v Wade, the women now dying because doctors are refusing to treat dangerous pregnancies and miscarriages out of fear of being prosecuted, and the rising maternal death and infant mortality rates in states with extreme abortion bans; Trump is now telling us he is going to protect women “whether the women like it or not”. By that I assume he means keeping us unemployed, pregnant but without the healthcare we need to survive pregnancy and childbirth, and under the control of a man.

Don’t count on the courts to protect us, he already has the Supreme Court in his pocket, or the other checks and balances that stopped his worst last time. They’re going to fire everyone and replace them with loyalists not to the constitution but to him and they’re already making lists and vetting people. They also already have a list of people they are going to target immediately. If you don’t vote for whatever reason, if you put party over country this election or think it’s all just talk and they don’t mean any of it and vote Republican, when it all comes crashing down it will be your fault. 

Trump has been using nazi language against Americans when he calls certain segments of the population vicious bloodthirsty criminals, demonizing those he wants to purify the country of. He is calling his opponents the ‘enemy within’ straight out of Hitler’s playbook. His Madison Square Garden rally reminiscent of the nazi rally there in 1939 was non stop racism and misogyny, full of complaints and grievances, calling America a garbage country. His ex-wife Ivanna told us he kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside. His father was a known nazi. Trump claims he is not a nazi and yet he holds hate rallies, his speeches echo Hitler’s, his plans to cleanse the country of ‘undesirables’, and his desire for a police force to do his bidding…this is nazism. Trump, Musk, and that slimy little weasel Steven Miller are telling us exactly what they are going to do. 

Are you going to let them?