AWAKENING FROM THE NIGHTMARE

It couldn’t be real.  Maybe it’s just a nightmare that’s lasted too long.  Student protests indicate that the young are thinking, feeling and energized.  I am encouraged by those who speak out in their local papers and radio for national sanity to return.  I was especially encouraged by author Luman Slade’s letter in the local Athens News this week. Sorry, I believe I said I wouldn’t mention the T word any more, but hey, I’m just quoting someone else.  What do you think?

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

To the Editor:

We Americans, probably due to our Christian upbringing, have been too polite and too tolerant when it somes to would-be-tyrants, such as Donald Trump. We have sat back and allowed him to remove  civility from our discourse. We have allowed him to divide us and pit us, one against the other.

We have allowed him to set new standards as to the use of vulgar language, slander, insults, and lies. We have allowed him to upset customs and morality. We have allowed him to  impede and threaten our judicial and legislative bodies. We have allowed him to weaken our honorable world standing. Finally, we have allowed him to misguide our children  into believing that bullying is OK, that people who are different are inferior, and that cheating and lying are normal behavior.

Isn’t it about time  to begin taking a stronger and more meaningful stand for what is true, what is right, and what is good? Isn’t it about time for us to become less compliant to the ugly messages of Trumpism? Isn’t it about time to begin using our voting rights and our voices to take this unscrupulous predator and false prophet out of the picture before he does unreparable damages?

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My Smart Ass Petunias

In 1900, ornithologist Thomas G. Gentry authored Intelligence in Plants and Animals which argued that plants have consciousness. Historian Ed Folsom described it as “an exhaustive investigation of how such animals as bees, ants, worms and buzzards, as well as all kinds of plants, display intelligence and thus have souls” OMG!  In addition to the newly conceived foetus?

In the 1960s Cleve Backster, an interrogation specialist with the CIA, conducted research that led him to believe that plants can communicate with other lifeforms.

Studies on the vine Boquila trifoliata has raised questions on the mode by which they are able to perceive and mimic the shape of the leaves of the plant upon which they climb. Experiments have shown that they even mimic the shape of plastic leaves when trained on them.^[9] Suggestions have even been made that plants might have a form of vision.^[10]

Plants are considered carnivorous if they have these five traits:^[18]

1. capture prey in traps
2. kill the captured prey
3. digest the captured prey
4. absorb nutrients from the killed and digested prey
5. use those nutrients to grow and develop.

Other traits may include the attraction and retention of prey.^[18]

Sorry, my title was a come-on.

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ryinger77

May 5, 2024 at 4:17 am

“I like being wealthy….Wealth is only a problem for those who don’t have it.”  (Comment to Jill Dennison)

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DOOMED STRUGGLE

Some Republicans have struggled to defend the inconsistencies of calling for the prosecution of the college campus protesters while defending those accused of breaking the law on Jan. 6: ny times

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YIKES!

A study found that online trolls genuinely enjoy causing pain and distress. Their personality is an amalgamation of psychopathy and sadism. They aren’t the most empathetic people out there and don’t possess any understanding or caring for others. –Edge of Humanity Magazine

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GREEN THOUGHTS

How much do plants know? How much

do I?  If all life shares  a

microbe grandparent, then who

got what? Humans got the words.

 

What encompasses plant selfhood?

How does photosynthesis

feel?  How do I?  Hot and cold,

thirsty or frozen on the vine.

 

Plants favor siblings when they

share water supplies.  How do

they know who’s who? What level

of  comprehension exists?

 

Plants know when they are touched,

they say, and dogs dream, wordless.

I probably already

know the day that I shall die.

Admitting My Envy

I’ve been reading Who Dies,  by Stephen and Ondrea Levine (for a second or third time), and am reminded “to become wholly born, whole beings, we must stop postponing life….There is much of ourselves we wish not to experience…” So alright, I’ll admit being envious of, a little mad at, and if truth be told, enraged at the bloggers I ran into who have the costly super duper blogs with out-of-sight images.

(IS IT ME OR A.I., BUT IT TAKES A SECOND OR TWO NOW BETWEEN TYPED LETTERS on my computer.  IT’S FIXED NOW– SOMEONE OR SOMETHING MUST HAVE READ ME.)

“There  is so much of ourselves we wish not to experience. So much fear, guilt, anger, confusion and self-pity. So much self-doubt, so many weak excuses.  Is it any wonder, considering the bizare insistence of our conditionin–the conflict of one value system with another in the mind–that we feel so incomplete. One moment the mind is saying, “Take a big piece,” and then the next it says, “I wouldn’t have done that if I were you.” p. 9

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• Energy: Companies like Shell are expanding offshore oil and gas drilling into deeper and deeper waters, especially in the Gulf of Mexico.  What will it take? 

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In 2022, DeSantis signed a 15-week abortion ban at a big church near Orlando. But when he signed the six-week ban, he did it behind closed doors. That signaled, I think, that he knew it was going pretty far for a state where public opinion polls still suggested most Floridians wanted legal abortion far beyond six weeks.

Critics of the ban channeled their efforts into gathering petition signatures to put an amendment on the ballot that would directly ask Floridians if they wanted to expand abortion access, and bring it back up to about 24 weeks. They had begun that effort after the 15-week ban was enacted, but it really ramped up after the six-week ban was signed. They were successful, and that question will appear on the ballot in November.

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BIRTH RATE DOWN?  I SAY GOOD

There’s too many people in the world without a home, a house or a country.  The more the merrier? I think not. Some say we need more people [whites] to save our “civilization,”  at the same time cutting  learning about it in college [humanities cuts].  The marriage rate is down, too.  Are the abortion ban simply a way to  increase our population, in addition to waging war on women?

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CAN YOU RECITE:

Hickory Dickory Dock? I learned it as Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck one, the mouse ran down. Hickory Dickory dock.

I think I have learned that the original was not taught to children because it is ungrammatical [to me, at least]:

Hickory Dickory Dock the mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck  one and down he run. Hickory Dickory Dock.

Some parent or teacher must have thought to “correct.”

The truth could have been a learning tool but  so much, the truth  is  expendable.  Oh  horrors there I go sounding like an  octogenarian again!

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UNMENTIONABLE

HAVE YOU WONDERED ABOUT THE BOOK MARKET RECENTLY?

I’m not privy to the entire story, only my part.  There must be several different things going on. I can talk about what I know.  Bookstores are happy to publish news stories on self-published books because it’s good for their business;  because the local library refuses to add them to their collecttion.

I can empathize with the flood of local authors’  donations (much of it admitted crap) and their (our) expectations for sharing with the public via our local library.  When I donated my book Fallout, A Survivor talks to Incest Offenders  to a library staff member she said thank you and I discovered it went directly into our Saturday Library Sale.  Thinking that I had not made myself clear, I submitted another copy for the library stacks to another library staff member.  I never checked into it further, believing it had been made available in the stacks.

Later I discovered that Picking Fleas,  Writers Grooming Writers, a 299-page book by the library’s writing group in 2002 and whose proceeds went to Friends of the Library itself,  was not available in the stacks.  When I asked, first it was that books without flat bindings carrying title and author info could not easily be displayed.   Over the years (since at least 20 years ago), self-published books are assumed to be inferior.

I think I understand the problem. Local “authors” of self-published books include some doozies that would diminish respect for the library’s holdings.  So a broad spectrum of the public might be alienated, while a much smaller untamed slice of self-published authors might be gratified.  Drawing up guidelines for what’s acceptable  would be setting such a big fracas in the face of the world’s other causes so as not to be worth it.

So why did I happen to blab about it here?  Because I’m a stickler for hidden truth, I guess.

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SPOUSE RAPE

After decades of efforts to change a provision of state law shielding people who rape their spouses from prosecution, the Ohio Senate has voted unanimously to remove that loophole.  Sen. Stephanie Kunze (R-Hilliard) said the gap in the law has suggested that either spousal rape isn’t taken as seriously as other sexual violence or that it doesn’t ever happen.  “This is especially concerning, as a spouse should be the most trusted person in a marriage,” Kunze said on the Senate floor. “And it is even more egregious to think that in our state in 2024, it is lawful to to rape your spouse.”  The only “no” vote was from Rep. Bill Dean (R-Xenia).   https://www.statenews.org/people/karen-kasler.

According to Google, Dean is married.

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UNITED METHODIST CHURCH REVERSES BAN ON GAY CLERGY

In a meeting on Wednesday, church leaders also voted to allow L.G.B.T.Q. weddings. __n.y.times

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Quote for the Day:

As Robert Morgenthau, a former Manhattan district attorney, liked to say, “You cannot prosecute crime in the streets

without prosecuting crime in the suites.”

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REFLECTIONS

Inside, nestled into a corner of the brain, lies a chapel tucked away just in case we need it.  Tear ducts have been installed for weeping.  We have fingers for painting and sometimes pointing.  When ecstasy or glee overtakes us, we are provided outlets for dancing or singing.  On those long dark days of need, there is our inner chapel,  the God gene.  “You wish!”

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SERENDIPITY AND SYNCHRONICITY

Since I was alerted to something by Word Press (Maybe my pages were all going Private),  I read through to see what we would be missing, and was reminded of my first recorded:

  My daughter Lili was curious about the IChing so I threw one for her.  Of all the possibilities of syllable pairing, it came up with LiLi,  so I threw one again and it, too, came up with LiLi….

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DOESN’T SEEM FAIR…

IT DOESN’T SEEM FAIR…

that the word black has so many negative meanings.  They could/should push “Black is beautiful” more, I guess, but then that’s such a divisive topic, like turning over a rock to see if is covers a black widow spider.

I can remember my beloved dixiecrat grandfather saying of the maid, “The only thing black about Charlotte is her skin.”   “Black humor” isn’t funny,  and now I have “black mold” in my condo, which is much less funny than green.  I shant include a photo of it so as not to add to the unfortunate pairing of the word with bad.  I thought of calling the shades of black “rainbow”–so it would be a “rainbow man.”  Then I thought of the link between “rainbow” and “homosexual,” so I went to Google for more info and found it: “Sexuality, or sexual orientation, has to do with who a person is or is not attracted to either sexually or romantically. There are many ways of identifying sexually, and a person may identify more with one sexuality than another at different points during their life”  The Medical News Today article discusses  what sexuality is and provides some definitions.  To date, I guess there’s  LGBTQIA+…

They could/should push “Black is beautiful” more, I guess.

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SPIDERS ON MARS?

Not really

Seasonal, spider-like features have been spotted sprouting through cracks in Mars’ surface. The European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter captured new images of small, dark features that resemble spiders scuttling across the Martian region known as Inca City near the Red Planet‘s south pole.  This phenomenon appears when spring sunlight warms layers of carbon dioxide deposited during the dark Martian winter. In turn, carbon dioxide ice in the bottom layer turns into gas, which builds up and eventually breaks through overlying ice up to 3.3 feet (1 meter) thick, according to a statement from ESA.

IF THESE were really spiders on Mars, would we not have already sent Orkin  aloft to make room for humans with souls?  What is the policy if and when we come across another life form in  outer space?  (I would add a photo of the suspected spiders if my helper wasn’t sick nor I so lazy).

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WHAT I DO FOR FUN

I read in bed but I write at my computer because not even I can read my handwriting.  Anyway, I guess this is a tricky way to get into my first entry.  I was taken by the writing this week (in bed at night) of parts of

Dean Koontz’s Odd Hours, and I wanted to share a couple of paragraphs with you. They occur at the opening of Chapter Twelve, and had an effect on me in the middle of the night:

“Paw after paw silent on wet blacktop, the fog crept along the alleyway behind Hutch’s house, rubbing its furry flanks against the garages on both sides, slipping through fence pickets, climbing walls, licking into every niche and corner where mouse or lizard might have taken shelter.

“These earthbound clouds swathed nearby things in mystery, made objects half a block away appear to be distant, dissolved the world entirely past the one-block  mark, and raised in the mind a primitive conviction that the edge of the earth lay near at hand, a precipice from which I would fall forever into eternal emptiness.”  p. 86, Bantam Books.  Then he ate a chocolate-Pumpkin cookie he had made.

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TYING UP ENDS

I once wrote a poem

called Tying Up Ends,

but never acted

on my Muse’s hint.

 

Now there’s so much more

to be confessed–yes,

flaws and selfish genes,

weaknesses galore.

 

I’ve so much unsaid,

and thoughts unproclaimed

if I started now

it would never end.                       Nan 12-12-22

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YES, I’LL SAY YAY BUT…

How can this be?  A search of Google for Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House of Representatives  includes an Intelligencer story titled “26 Things You’d Rather Not Know about Mike Johnson.”  I read it and although the title may have a fault (I couldn’t re-visit without money), the items were the most offensive positions he has taken in the past (Trump Won, Anti-Gay, etc._.)

“I never expected the music to swell and the credits to roll with Mike Johnson’s face in the center of the frame,” wrote Frank Bruni in a New York Times opinion piece.

Johnson, the House speaker, reversed a position that he’d previously held, banded with Democrats and infuriated some of the loudest members of his party — that’s Marjorie Taylor Greene you hear wailing in the wings — to pass a $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan last weekend.

“…In an era this intensely and corrosively partisan, it’s especially important that we give warranted praise and appropriate thanks to people with whom we usually disagree. Tribalism discourages that, but a healthy democracy demands it.” Guess I’ll say thanks and wait to see what happens next.

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MIND BLOWING

Conjoined at the head, living a life as a transgender man with spina bifida, and facing  the other direction  an able-bodied sibling,  Lori, who had musical talent and and pushed George on a stool that had wheels.  A blanket over one of them provided privacy during intimacy. The Schappell twins, who died recently at 62,  said that they never wanted to be surgically separated, and that they did not wish they had been born apart.  Read more about these and other conjoined siblings via Google.

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HICKORY DICKORY DOC

It feels strange to read that the ACLU is on the other side in the Tik Toc issue.  I’m unclear about which high road to favor.  In the end I guess it’s  follow survival.

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WHEN I WAS IN PHYSICAL REHAB a year or so ago, the occupational therapist stopped by my bed and asked if  could walk.  No, my foot was broken. Which foot?  The right foot.  The left? No, the right, whereupon she checked my veracity by looking herself.  The day before when  I reported to a nurse look alike that my heart was pounding, she asked me what did I want her to do about it.

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. According to the internet, 10% of Americans believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

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“ADL tracked 8,873 antisemitic incidents across the United States in 2023, the highest level recorded since ADL started tracking this data in 1979.” —  U.S. Antisemitic Incidents Soared 140% percent in 2023,   Thanks to Dr. John Persico Jr. for that tid bit.

MY INTERPRETATION

For some reason, I don’t see the unexpected widespread antisemitic sentiment, especially on college campuses, as being rooted in anti Jewishness, but the empathic horror and sympathy for those continuing to  suffer in Hamas.  Of course, contributing to a war on one side while offering aid to the other at the same time does seem a little  crazy to me.  And I still continue to secretly (or not so secretly) tend to suspect that both 9-11 and the “surprise” invasion of Israel were permitted to justify the resultant wars.

ON READING FALKOWSKI

The first science best seller was in 1665, and kept Samuel Pepys up until 2 a.m. reading “the most ingenius book that I have ever read in my life”.  (Falkowski 2015, 27). Falkowski describes the author of the book Micrographia (still in print) as “Roert Hooke, then a 30-year old hunchbacked, contankerous, neurotic hypochondriac who was also a brilliant natural scientist, polymath, and an original Fellow of the society.”

Falkowski’s research is  impeccable. “Darwin indeed took a microscope with him on the Beagle. Along with his Bible and natural history books, he took two pistols, 12 shirts and two books to help him learn Spanish and a coin purse.”  [And pants?]

He quotes Carl Woese and George Fox who state that all extant life on Earth is derived from a single, extinct microbial organism.  “There could have been only one common ancestor from bacteria to us…a microbe.”

“Indeed, microbes are not mentioned in the Bible….They certainly weren’t taken deliberately by Noah on the ark, nor are they woven into the Turkish tapestries depicting the Great Flood.”

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BOOKS WITH HUMAN SKIN COVERS?

No thank you.  I won’t bother you with that one today…

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OUCH

Environmental Group Asks RFK Jr to End Presidential Bid

I’m glad, but that must hurt!

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HOME SWEET HOME

The median home-sale price as of February 2024 was $384,500, up 5.7 percent from one year ago, according to NAR data. The nation had a 2.9-month supply of housing inventory as of February, which is low enough to be considered a seller’s market.

Mom, you would not

recognize your boy today.

Without a home or job

he is lost to the world.

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

The Freedom Caucus, where many of these extreme conservatives call home, has long cared more about upsetting apple carts than using them to deliver apples. …Keith Wilson

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THE END?

We came, we tried, we fought

and ate each other up.

We lived and died by our own hands.

If two survived and met on a plain,

would we hug one another

or kill again?                                                          Nan  4-24

HOW NOW, BROWN COW?

Wikimedia commons

A Google find:

I’m 58 years old and I can count how many times I’ve heard that expression on one hand. It’s not, and hasn’t been a common expression since about 1780. A brown cow was a nickname for a barrel of beer, specifically in the early 18th century in Scotland. “How now brown cow” was a way of asking for another pint.

Another wrote that the sentence is used in elocution lessons.

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WHICH EAR?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Van Gogh

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:  Re Life Elsewhere —

If we are alone, we need to understand our inadequacies.  If we are not alone, we need to be humbler.

–Paul G. Falkowski, Life’s Engines

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INTROSPECTION

Has the well run dry?

Is nothing left inside?

A vacuum with fading memories.

Be here now!

That’s the catchword.

Climb up, jungle girl!

Peek over the top.

What can you see, hear,

feel? Ah, locked inside with my

my feelings, my song.

Adrift in my bath, the sea!

The third eye blinks

and I am here with you

once more.

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BYE BYE…

BAD POOR PERSON!?

Opinion Today: The push to criminalize homelessness

The New York Times <nytdirect@nytimes.com>

 Read it. No comment.

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Experts estimate that at least $1 trillion a year is needed to help developing countries adapt to hotter temperatures and rising seas, build out clean energy projects and cope with climate disasters.  (I forget why we didn’t raise income taxes on the wealthy?)

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I THINK

Going deep inside to lick

my paws, I wonder whether

the core of my unconscious

knows the truth of existence.

I don’t, that’s for sure, but if

I didn’t have some pillar to

hold onto beyond my ken–

poof! I wouldn’t, couldn’t, be.

Nan 4/19/24

 

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OH MY GOD….

 

Thanks to Ned Hanson for calling attention to the following:

nedhamson

Far-right US Senate candidate tells crowd to carry guns ahead of election | Arizona | The Guardian

“They’re going to come after us with everything. That’s why the next six months is going to be intense. And we need to strap on our … ”

Lake briefly paused before deciding on the item her supporters should strap on. After suggesting a “seatbelt”, a “helmet” and “the armor of God”, she said: “And maybe strap on a Glock on the side of us just in case…”

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Nan says: She must want to be his running mate?

She’s a U.S. Senate Candidate?  Piffledinger!

Is it the  media coverage that draws this kind of woman?  I’m willing to go back to the old kind of news if it would clean up this appalling kind of situation.

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

How far must you travel away

to reach your old home place?

How far down must you climb to

reach the life you’ve always known?