We'll take a cup of kindness yet...

Just thinking about something.  A lot has happened to our world, in our world, and thus, to one degree or another, to all of us, in the last ... at least six-ish years.  For example, we've lived through 45, January 6, an epic global pandemic with over a million Americans dying of COVID-19, massacres of innocent people happening in our country on an almost non-stop basis... a lot.  Just this week, 19 children slaughtered, and two adults.  Right before that, innocent people in a grocery store, just for shopping while black.  It's all too much to bear, and that's just what we've gone through together, as a world and/or as a country.  I personally have also gone through a lot--a lot--in those same years.

So what is striking me this evening is simply this:  tread gently.  I think we are all way more traumatized than we sometimes realize.  As we go through our day to day lives, let's all try to be kind to each other, and ourselves.  Try to see beyond the surface to the weight that we are all carrying right now.  We may each be in varying processes and stages of trying to carry it, to let go of it, to work through it, to make sense of it... let's try extra intentionally to be kind to each other.  Just take that extra beat, that extra pause, to think about our words and actions.  That little bit of extra kindness just might change the world.

Spring

Passover and Easter both have themes of rising above persecution.  Spring itself is about surviving, new birth, transformation and hope.

Every morning, after the dark night, the sun rises.  Every Spring, after the cold, stripping bare minimalism of winter, new life bursts forth in a gentle green act of hope and faith.

In this season of survival, rebirth and hope, I pray that I, and all of us, can do the same.  I pray that I, and our weary world will trend gentle and green, life-affirming and hopeful.  Nature does.  May I, and we as humanity, take our cues from her.

Don't be silent in the face of genocide, stand with Ukraine

 I have to go to work in a few minutes but something is weighing on my heart.

You may feel like the atrocities, the crimes against humanity, the war in Ukraine, is very far away.  Maybe you think it doesn't have anything to do with you or your life.

I say that any time you have a Hitler in power, committing genocide, it has to do with all of us, and all of us have to choose:  do we turn and look away, or do we stand up for our fellow human beings and what is right?

However, what I just wrote above may not faze you.  Maybe it isn't personal enough.  How about this?

I personally have two friends who both were born in Ukraine.  Both came here to America when they were young.  One was brought here when she was very, very young, just a tiny child.  She is one of the brightest, most talented people I know, yet what stands out the most about her as a person is how very kind she is.  When she first met my dear, gentle dog, she was so movingly loving to him.  Maybe she sensed that he had been through a lot as a puppy, as she had when she was a baby and tiny child, too.  Whatever the reason, she is one of the kindest people I know, and she just has that "old soul" feel emanating from her, yet she is still very young.  She has a bright future--very bright--here in the United States, where she has been for most of her life.

But she had a half brother still in Ukraine, as well as a sister and a very young nephew.  Here is what has happened to them since Putin began his genocide.  Her half brother went to the front lines to defend Ukraine and try to stop this madness.  He has been killed.  Her sister and nephew have had to make the decision to leave their country, their home, and everything and everyone they know, to flee and try to stay alive.  They have now, with a lot of help from very good people, made it to Poland.  My friend is traveling there from the US to get them and bring them here.

Is this personal enough to make those of you who are not speaking up against this genocide realize that we all have to?  I spoke up when Putin committed war crimes in Syria, though I did not personally know anyone impacted.  I said and wrote incessantly about the need for the US to open our doors to the refugees.  I say that again now, and have been, re Ukraine.  The Ukraine genocide is in progress and, I strongly believe, it is each of our, and all of our, duty to do whatever we can to stop it.

I was not alive during the Holocaust.  But my relatives, my recent ancestors, were.  Emphasis on were, for the ones in Germany.  Had I been alive then, and in Germany, I very likely would have been exterminated in a gas chamber.  Had I been in the United States, as my grandparents were, and my mom was as a child then, I would hope I would have used my voice to speak up.  I'm alive now and I'm using it for my Ukrainian brothers and sisters, as humanity is really all one big family.  It is also personal, when I think of my two friends, who are both two of the dearest souls imaginable.  Think of all the souls who are trapped there.  Don't be silent.  Let's all use our voices.

Hey, world: we need to heed the lessons of WWII and remove war criminal Putin from power NOW.

I'm so horrified about what Putin is doing to Ukraine.  He has a history and present of committing war crimes.  He is a war criminal.  I know the man has nukes and that does give us all profound pause regarding applying the lessons of World War II here.  Otherwise, I would have written weeks ago that the man should be taken down by any means necessary.  However, in the last few weeks, it has become clear that, nukes or no nukes, the lessons of World War II apply:  fascist war criminals, who commit crimes against humanity, need to be stopped by the rest of the world BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.

Yes he has nukes, but it appears he has either gone crazy, or is a horrifying combination of sane, ruthless and limit-free:  either way, we--the rest of the world--have to go in there and stop him, now.  He may well use chemical weapons.  He may well use nukes.  He may well do all of that ANYWAY, which is one of the reasons he must be stopped now.

If a head of state is a war criminal, the world has a right to stop him from committing any further war crimes, either by capturing him and removing him from power, or stopping him by any other means necessary.

I believe in non-violence.  Whenever possible.  But when dealing with someone committing violence, on a huge scale, crimes against humanity, do we stage a non-violent sit-in, in which we all pray for peace and sing kumbaya, or do we TAKE HIM OUT?  The former has power, I passionately believe.  But the latter is, rarely, necessary in this world.  If you came home from work one day and someone was inside your house, killing your child, would you try to reason with the perpetrator?  Would you make a sign and protest?  While you might do the former for a moment or two, if it didn't work, you would STOP THE PERSON FROM KILLING YOUR CHILD.

Putin is killing many children.  He cannot be reasoned with.  He did this in Syria.  He has poisoned people who spoke out against him and were not even inside Russia (he poisoned a journalist with polonium in Britain).  He is a war criminal.  And right now, he has started World War III.  It's not if, it's here.  It's now.  It's happening.  All those air raid sirens that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I was a very small child were about THIS.  This is not a drill.  This is precisely what the Cold War sirens warned about, only minus a possibly violently insane person at the helm of the nukes on the other side.

PUTIN HAS TO BE STOPPED RIGHT NOW, BY THE REST OF THE WORLD, INCLUDING US HERE IN THE UNITED STATES.

He's not going to stop on his own.  It's not going to happen.  He won't stop until he has Ukraine, and then what?  Will he keep going?  Or even if not, will we allow him to set this precedent, that it is okay to take over another country by obliterating innocent, civilian targets in the most brutal, war crime-intensive way imaginable?

It's time for the whole world--yes, including us--to get involved.  Yes, Putin could literally go nuclear but the US should have thought of that during all the DECADES that some of us were passionately and loudly protesting nuclear weapons.  NUCLEAR WEAPONS DO NOT MAKE THE WORLD A SAFER PLACE.  They just give cover to mad men who have a stash of them.  Maybe now those in power here are starting to understand that.  Maybe not.  Maybe the world someday will get that nuclear weapons do the opposite of making the world a safer place, just as nuclear power is the exact opposite of safe, clean and affordable.  Maybe, maybe not, but right now?  PUTIN NEEDS TO BE STOPPED, even though he has nukes, and especially because he has nukes.

The world--including us--needs to go in there and remove the man from power.  By any means necessary.  The fact that he is a war criminal gives the world license to do this.  Get him out of power, NOW.

(And, P.S., as I said shouted many times over when Putin did what he did in Syria a few years back, we--the United States--need to welcome as many of his victims/refugees as we possibly can.  THAT is what makes us great, not walls or bans.)

Should we duck and cover?

Waking up to images on my television of what may be the opening salvo of World War III.

As a child of the cold war, the same age as the child in the iconic "daisy ad", with the mushroom cloud exploding as she picked flowers in a field (see video link in comment below), my generation grew up in the shadow of the mushroom cloud.

Seeing Russian tanks move into Ukraine this morning is what you might call a trigger.  Air raid sirens that blared as drills in my childhood.  I was a tad too young to have experienced "duck and cover" drills... but just the tiniest tad.  The older cohort of my same generation did.  As if getting under a wooden desk would protect you from nuclear war.

My attention shifted from nuclear war to climate change over the years, but you know what?  Nuclear weapons never went away.  The cold war may have unofficially ended yet the weapons remain.  And the worst potentials--just like the best potentials--within humankind remain.  There's a Native American parable that's message is:  "it depends which wolf you feed".  We should choose our loving wolves.  But this morning, the images on my television are not of that.

This could be what those long ago air raid siren drills, which always made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, were warning about.  If so, no wooden desks will protect us.

"The Daisy Ad", from 1964

Say The Words: Climate Change

The news this morning out of Kentucky, and all the states impacted by the tornadoes last night brings my heart to my throat.  The governor of Kentucky calls the tornadoes there "the worst storm in Kentucky's history".

As I see the devastation on my television set, and sit here in Florida, where we are in the path of hurricanes that grow more monstrous year by year, the words blaring in my mind, heart and soul are:  CLIMATE CHANGE.  Say the words, news reporters.  This is what climate change looks like.  This is what climate change is.

And while no one can say for sure whether any one given weather event is the direct result of climate change, surely any adult alive now, who is aware of the science (which has been warning us for DECADES) or not, knows that the climate is changing.  Some do not believe that climate change is induced by human activity.  Some don't believe climate change is happening at all.  Yet clearly it is.  And, for some reason, it is rarely mentioned when horrific news like what is all over cable news right now about last night's tornadoes is in progress.

Maybe the reporters feel it is too soon.  Maybe they feel that it would be disrespectful to the victims, to those in the path of the tornadoes last night, living and dead, to speak of climate change in their reporting right now.  But, to that, I say, NO:  it is disrespectful NOT to talk about it!  Saying it's too soon is exactly like the people who never want to talk about gun control after a mass shooting, who use the same excuse:  it's too soon.  NO:  it's too late!

It is very, very late days now with climate change.  Our climate is changing, our glaciers are melting, exponentially faster than even scientists had originally predicted.  And we'd better start saying it's name, and talking about it, when these things happen, and during all the time in between things happening.  And we'd better start changing our choices and behavior, right now.  All of us, from individual human beings, to huge corporations need to move off fossil fuels NOW.

Climate change is in progress.  Are we going to avoid even saying the words, or are we going to name it, talk about it, and actually change to try to turn it around to save ourselves, all the creatures of the earth, and our awesome environment itself?

The Health Care Shortage

I think I've hit a low in this whole (cue the Grateful Dead) "long strange trip" of job hunting.  My interview yesterday actually went great but their advertisement was false, stating that health insurance is a benefit.  Turns out:  no health insurance.  This is America.  You need health insurance through your employer.  Especially in states like mine that do not have a way for people with low or no income to get healthcare unless you can pay FULL PRICE for the ACA (which only has discounted rates for people who don't need discounted rates, because America--if you have low or no income, you are supposed to go onto Medicaid, but, if you are in Florida or 11 other states, you cannot do that, either, especially if you don't have a child, because why on earth would anyone without a child possibly need health care, per Republican logic).

So, even though the Deputy Director who interviewed me loved me, said "I can tell you, you are one of my top candidates", interviewed me for an hour and ten minutes, even though it was a preliminary interview and was only scheduled to last for 15 minutes, and told me that, as soon as she saw my resume, she said to herself (pointing to it as she said this to me), "that one", we hit it off amazingly, and the job sounds potentially awesome, I CAN'T TAKE A JOB WITH NO HEALTH INSURANCE WHAT THE ACTUAL H*LL.

The media just keeps insisting that there is a "labor shortage".  Really?  I think there is a health care shortage.  I think there is a wage shortage.  I think there is a shortage of sane policy in my beloved country.  I think, as hard as I look for work, I may never find a job again.  Because I have a shortage of ability to take a job without health benefits.  Because this is the United States of America, and your health insurance is tied to your employer.  The ACA is flawed and pathological and doesn't change anything that is fundamentally soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo wrong and unsustainable and obscene and infuriating about our private-insurance-based, for-profit healthcare system.

I personally have a shortage of understanding of, and patience for, the fact that so many in my country still do not grasp that we need single payer healthcare, and it seems to me we will never get there.  Even my beloved Bernie only talks about Medicare for All anymore, and Medicare is not true single payer health care.  But I would be only too thrilled if America went to a Medicare for All system, as I think that is the absolute most we can hope for in this insane country-o-mine.  So, idealist though Bernie is, he's still more realistic than I, and thus he is only pushing for that, and he isn't even pushing hard for that anymore.  He's just trying to get Medicare to cover things like dental, he's not even pushing for lowering the age.  No one is.  Not anymore.  It's like, it's over.  They won't even lower the Medicare age, let alone expand it to cover all Americans.  They now might even take the ACA coverage gap fix out of the Build Back Better bill, because Manchin et al. are acting up again, and somehow saying that because Virginia went Red last night, that means it is the fault of progressives, so we (the Democratic Party) now must veer back to being Repug Lite.

Same old, same old.  And meanwhile, I don't have health insurance.  Or an income.  And there's a shortage of calling things what they really are.  A health care shortage is called a "labor shortage".  Up is down, black is white, war is peace, Orwell was right.

Why are things like this, in the richest country in the world?