Take one walk in nature and call me in the morning.

Cue my beloved Beatles:

"Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head..."

Only make it a brush.

Anyway, I'm proud of myself this morning because even though I'm afraid right now, not to sugarcoat it:  it's pretty much abject fear, regarding no income (although I'm okay on that front for a while, but I don't want to be burning through my savings!!!) and no health insurance (ABJECT fear, 24/7), I got myself up and fed the pets, ate a super healthy breakfast (three ingredients, people:  one organic banana, organic plain yogurt, and organic cinnamon--woot!), and then went out and WALKED with my dear dog.

What a beautiful morning in St. Petersburg, Florida!  I thought it was going to be too hot already, as the sun coming in through the windows was already intense at around 8:55 a.m.  But no, though it was sunny, it was also still mercifully cool and there was a blissfully refreshing, cool sea breeze coming in from the Gulf, if I'm not mistaken about the wind direction.

The star jasmine is in wonderfully fragrant bloom throughout my neighborhood, including on my own little fence between the front and back yard, and Hurley and I got refreshingly oxygenated with fresh air, infused with jasmine.  I noticed that a jacaranda tree was also in lavender bloom, and so many other plants and trees are flowering away.

I highly recommend getting outside and walking as the best anti-depressant, anti-anxiety, anti-fear, empowering tonic available!

The jasmine, the jacaranda, the sea breeze, all were saying, in their way, a line from a song that I can't stand EXCEPT when nature says it to me:  "Don't worry, be happy."  When nature says it, I believe it.  "Be here now," it followed with.  And I was able to.  And I'm grateful.

A Little Jab'll Do Ya

40,000 children under the age of 18 in the United States have now lost *at least* one parent to COVID-19.

All:  get vaccinated.  For yourself, to be here for your children (and/or fur children!), and literally for all of humanity.  It will take most of us getting vaccinated to stop this thing.  The two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) have proven to be very, very (amazingly) effective and safe.

I personally, while definitely NOT an "anti-vaxxer", am a critical consumer of vaccines, as well as of all pharmaceuticals.  I am not on ANY prescriptions, which is highly unusual (sad to say, since it shouldn't be!) for an American, period, let alone for an American over age 40.  Because I ask questions and I say no to things.  I don't even usually get a flu shot, because I take elderberry, strategically, during flu season.  So I'm not one to just blindly jump on a vaccine bandwagon and ride, Sally, ride.  But on the COVID-19 vaccines, YES, I am 100% gung ho.

Why?  Because if we don't box this thing in, giving it nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, we will never get out of THIS.  As in, this last year-plus that we've all lived through.  We will never get back to anything resembling, as I heard someone so poetically and poignantly put it a while back, "The Before Times".

Twitter version:  get your COVID-19 vaccination, for goodness sake.  I've got one dose of Pfizer on board and cannot wait for my second (but I will wait, and get it at the 21-day mark).  I don't have human children, much to my own sadness.  But I was still first in line the nanosecond I became eligible.  For ALL the children of the world!  If one has children of one's own, I can't imagine that one hesitating for a moment, as two little jabs in the arm (one, with J & J, but personally, I'd go--and did/am going--with Pfizer...but I digress) will ensure that you are here for them.

Cherry Blossoms

When I was a child
We’d go downtown
To see the cherry blossoms
It was a rite of Spring
Beautiful pale pink blossoms
Against the true blue sky
Reflecting in the water
We’d walk around all the monuments to democracy
To solving things non-violently
To freedom
To the rule of law
We’d walk all around the Tidal Basin
In my hometown
Washington, DC
Celebrating freedom
Today, on this beautiful Spring day
I felt lighter than I have in years
And more relaxed
Until I turned on the news
This afternoon

When I was a child
The cherry blossoms were so beautiful
In my hometown
This afternoon
I turned on the TV
And my Spring went away
My lightness left
My heart sank
Police tape surrounding
A cherry blossom tree
Police tape everywhere
A car, hazard lights flashing mutely
Driven into a barrier
Driven into Capitol Police Officers
A man with a knife
What are they saying?
What happened?
It is with a heavy heart
Said the grieving soul with a mask
The Acting Capitol Police Chief
That I tell you
One officer has succumbed
My heart went to my throat
We used to walk around the cherry blossom trees
We, the people
The children
No barriers, no fear of our fellow countrymen and women
We surrounded the cherry blossom trees
Not police tape
And grieving people
In shock
In Washington, DC
Washington’s at its best in Spring, my mom would say
With the cherry blossoms
Let’s go see them
Let’s go
To the impossibly pink blossoms
And sky
And Tidal Basin
And monuments to democracy
Can we go there?
Please?

What Am I, Chopped Liver?

For me, so much has changed in my life in the last few years.  I think this is true for so many of us even just in the last year, with the pandemic.  It's changed everything in just the space of a year, with some of us impacted more than others, but all of us impacted.

Today, I went to Jo-El's Kosher Deli.  As far as I know, they are still the only kosher deli in all of St. Petersburg, Florida (and possibly all of Pinellas County).  There is a much smaller Jewish population here in Florida than in the Washington, DC burbs where I grew up, and certainly than in NYC, where my mom hailed from.  Jo-El's really serves a critical need in this community, especially for observant Jews (the term used for Jews who try to follow all the laws/commandments of the Torah--there are 613!--strictly), as it is very important to them to keep kosher.  Everything at Jo-El's is kosher, so this is a vital resource for the Orthodox and Conservative Jewish population as, like I said, it is the only kosher deli and store in this entire area.  Beyond that, though, for all Jewish people in this area, and even just for those with Jewish heritage/roots, Jo-El's is a place to go to feel less "homesick" for all of the above.

I'm Unitarian Universalist and Jewish (it's complicated--but really not:  it's only complicated to anyone who doesn't want to listen to my personal roots/history and understand; it isn't complicated at all to me anymore, though it used to feel that way.  But now I embrace the complexity and am grateful that nothing in the two conflict, they only complement each other and make me a deeper, better, more interesting person--or so I hope 🙂).  Anyway, like I said, when I go to Jo-El's, which I have not done in years due to I was always at work when they are open on weekdays, and never seemed to make it over there on my busy Sunday day off, I instantly feel less homesick for my Jewish people, culture and FOOD (<--last but not least *lol*).

A friend of mine has been rhapsodizing of late about this wonderful chopped liver he discovered, and the first time he did so, I interrupted with "Was it from Jo-El's?!"  Indeed it was, which I somehow knew the minute he started rhapsodizing.  Ever since he called it to mind, I've been pining for some classic, proper, wonderful, delectable chopped liver from Jo-El's.  So, even though I've been jobless since September (zero income, as I resigned, so I didn't even apply for unemployment), and I'm super worried about money, I realized that sometimes doing something wonderful for yourself is every bit as important and necessary as paying your mortgage, electric bill, etc.  And I further realized that half a pound of chopped liver (and half a pound of whitefish salad!!!) was not going to be the difference between remaining okay or financial ruin.  So I decided to take a break from all my fretting and adulting and job hunting, and drive over to Jo-El's, with, as it turns out perfectly, the Beach Boys blasting on my cell phone.

Jo-El's is kind of off the beaten path, just a bit (the beaten path is only a block away, yet it seems farther, once you turn onto the little road where Jo-El's is).  It's kind of on a weird little road, on which you think "this is a weird little road".  Your first time going there, you further think "this can't be right".  But once you are a seasoned Jo-El goer toer, you know it is right.  Then, when you get to the building, you further think "Is that it?  That can't be it."  But it is.  The whole location adds to the "hidden gem" effect and impact.

Anyway:  I didn't realize how much I not only needed some CHOPPED LIVER (that part I realized!!!), but how much I needed to go somewhere that has been there longer than I've been in St. Pete (and I've been here 27 years now).  Before the pandemic.  Before all the stuff that I've been through in the last four years.  Before all that our country has been through in that same time.  Before, before, before:  there was Jo-El's.  And I didn't realize how hard it would hit me (in a good way), when I pulled into the little parking lot, and laid eyes on the building that doesn't seem like it could be a kosher deli and store, yet I know it is, and especially when I walked inside and saw Ellen, one of the owners, who was there, just where she was last time I was in the store:  before, before, before, and when I was greeted with a bellowing "Hello!" from all the way behind the deli counter (how did the young guy who bellowed that out know immediately that's where I was headed?), that I so, so, SO needed SOMETHING to be "the same".  The same as it was the last time I was there, before any of the last, surreal yet so real, four years happened.

Ellen was at the cash register, the chopped liver and whitefish were in the deli case, just waiting for me to walk in.  There were little signs and symbols about proudly exclaiming support for Israel, which I appreciate, as so many are so down on Israel, and don't really understand the history, complexity and importance of this tiny country.  It was nice to be somewhere where people do know, and do get it, and do support it.  It was nice to be with my people, just for a fleeting minute.  I wanted to buy a cap that had "Oy Vey" embroidered on it, but it's one thing to get the importance of treating yourself to a little chopped liver, and another to blow ten bucks on a cap you don't need and that would look terrible on you, so I decided, when I get a job, I'll come back for that cap.  And more.

For today, though, it meant a surprising amount to me, that little, seemingly ordinary errand to Jo-El's for some much-pined for chopped liver.  I got so much more than chopped liver (and whitefish salad--let's not forget the whitefish salad).  I got a little fix, a little infusion, of being around my people.  And a little reminder that some important things have somehow survived the last four years.  And so have I.

Thank you, Jo-El's.

Video about Jo-El's

The ACA "Coverage Gap" is all too real and I'm living smack-dab in the middle of it.

All:

I gotta run--ironically, in light of what this post is about--to get my annual blood work ahead of my check-up, all of which will be paid for entirely out of pocket this year, since I have no health insurance--but I really, really want to post this first.  It's important, please, please read this article (linked).

I can't tell you how many well-meaning friends (mostly who are ensconced in Blue states, so they have no clue about this, which is understandable), keep arguing with me and insisting that surely I am incorrect about not being eligible for ANY discounts on premiums on the ACA (Obamacare), now that I am between jobs ever since October (my insurance from work ended at the end of September).  These well-meaning, caring friends, keep INSISTING, quite vociferously, that surely I am not understanding the complexities of the ACA, and surely I'm eligible for a discount on the rates, as are most people, especially since my income is ZERO.

Those well-meaning friends are all wrong, and I'm, frankly, so tired of having to argue the point, because the whole situation is terribly upsetting and downright terrifying, and I don't want to have to keep talking about it, or one of these days I just might burst into tears, and then where will we be?

So I will (briefly, I promise) summarize the situation again, but this time I brought back-up:  the linked article.

The situation is this, and I have learned all of this since becoming jobless and attempting to ascertain what discounts I qualify for on the ACA's website, and learning that the answer is:  BUPKUS:  the ACA was conceived and planned to work in tandem with Medicaid.  That means that, people earning a high income would pay full price, people earning a middle or lower income would be eligible for discounts, and people--like me right now--who have ZERO income, would be referred by the ACA website to their state's Medicaid sites, and would get on Medicaid, at either no cost or a very, very low cost.  However, FLORIDA (which I love, but in this case:  😠), which is one of only 13 states, initially--now down to 12--that did this, decided to TURN DOWN something called "Medicaid Expansion", that Obama provided to the states to expand their Medicaid programs to work in tandem with the ACA.  Florida did this because it is run by rabid Republicans who, at the time and likely still to this day, couldn't stand President Obama and tried to obstruct anything and everything the man did at every turn, particularly the ACA.

Fast forward to Edna going onto the ACA site a few months ago and learning that I do not qualify for ANY discounts, and that I needed to proceed on to the link they provided for Medicaid.  At which point I learned that I don't qualify for Medicaid in Florida at all, which is somehow apparently due to the fact that, even though I have ZERO income (hello, what is wrong with this state?), because I am childless, I am somehow not a person who it matters if I live or die, is my takeaway, and therefore NO MEDICAID FOR YOU!  NEXT!

That is the truth.  No matter how much my friends in regular states (and some here in Florida who are from Blue states) insist I must be wrong, I'm shockingly, incredibly and infuriatingly not.  And, again, I can't stand arguing about this because it makes me want to simultaneously punch a wall and burst into tears.  So, please, read this article, and stop telling me that surely I'm missing something and I should hurry up and get onto the ACA.  I wish I could get onto the ACA, but I can't.  Witness:

Link: Please, please read this article about "The Coverage Gap"

Here, There and Everywhere

 I'm scared this morning.

As a person of Jewish descent (and not just descent, but who identifies as Jewish, though I'm also Unitarian Universalist:  it's complex, but it's who I am, and really the two fit together synergistically and form a beautiful theological/spiritual/religious complementary whole for me, but I digress), I'm scared.  As a liberal, with brazenly liberal bumper stickers adorning the entire back of my little hippie car, I'm scared.  As a student of the Holocaust, I'm scared.  As an American citizen who loves and cherishes all the best of what my country stands for, I'm scared.  As a loving, kind human being, I'm scared.

I don't even know exactly how to begin, how to write this, how to express this fear to you.  But I've been paying attention, for four years.  I've been seeing an arsonist in the White House, for four years, lighting bonfires of hate.  I thought, when he left, we could heal.  I still hope, and know, that it is possible.  That we can.  Yet it is literally sickening and terrifying to see:  we also might not.  Things might get worse, as those fires didn't just go out when 45 left Washington, DC on that plane.  The fires of hate are now burning out of control.  The fires he set.  For four years.  Before saying that he will "be back, in some form”.

I have zero fear of him coming back in 2024 as a presidential candidate.  Zero.  Not going to happen.  But I’m very afraid of all the hate he, over four years, summoned forth, blew dog whistles for and to, and told: it is okay to come out and play.  Now the haters are out and proud.  Now the haters are scary and loud.  And the scariest thing, as survivors of the Holocaust always warned, the scariest thing, is not the loudest voices of hate but those who enable them.  Those who are complicit.  Those who do not speak out against them, while there is still time. 

And that is why I’m so scared this morning:  because of the so-called “leaders” in the Republican party who aren’t even just silent and complicit, which would be terrible enough, but who are encouraging the loud, hateful, violence-inciting voices, and actively attacking and threatening anyone within their own party who does have the courage to stand up to it.  Q-Anon, specifically, is very anti-Semitic, using old tropes (such as the classic "rich Jews are controlling the media and the entire world"--their new code language for this is “George Soros” and “global elite”) and even the “blood libel” (new code:  their whole nightmarishly fantastical, delusional thing about rings of pedophiles drinking the blood of children, etc.--it is so bizarre that I literally find it too sickening to even write about, but it’s all just plain, old anti-Semitism, dressed up in new garb, new code words, which anyone who has a terrifying, chilling understanding of history can see directly and clearly right through).

Anti-semitism is on the rise, racism is on the rise, xenophobia is on the rise, hate is on the rise.  Hate is bringing weapons and confederate flags into the Capitol, and killing six people, trying to overthrow a democratic election.  Are the Republicans doing anything about this sedition and treason?  No, in fact, they are calling the impeachment, which is a constitutional imperative and necessary to uphold the rule of law, quote:  “vindictive”.  They say we should just let it go, for the sake of “unity”.  What are we uniting around, lawlessness?  Violence?  Sedition?  Treason?  Hate?

There’s a Q-Anon member of congress now.  She says the Parkland shooting was a “false flag operation” staged by none other than, you guessed it, George Soros. He really gets around, doesn’t he, controlling-the-world-wise? I mean, he also supposedly staged the entire original Women's March in 2016, which I participated in. I never got a check from George Soros, amazingly.  She (the Q-Anon member of congress) bullies and harasses teenage victims of said mass shooting.  She says that Jews started the wildfires in California via lasers from space.  Are the leaders of her party standing up and condemning all this, in the strongest language possible?  No, they are putting her on an education committee.  Let that one sink in:  the person who harasses Parkland victims was put on an education committee.

The Republican "leaders" say we should just not be “vindictive” about a violent, treasonous coup attempt incited by the then POTUS.  Just let it go, they say. That was, what, three weeks ago? Don't be stuck in the past! They think they should be allowed to carry guns into Congress, and not wear masks in Congress during a lethal airborne pandemic.  They think Q-Anon members should be put on education committees.  They don’t stand for the rule of law, or up against hate.

The anti-semites, the racists, the xenophobes, the "us and them"ers, the haters, were emboldened for four years.  Now the bonfire is burning out of control.  And the Republicans aren't speaking out against it now. They are adding kindling.  And gasoline.  And I think of Germany, before I was born.  Really not too long before, in the entire span of human history.  It seemed like “so long ago”, when I first learned of it.  History.  Something traumatizingly terrible even to learn about, yet it could never happen here in America, thank goodness, thought I as a child.  Thank God I’m in America.  Thank God that happened a long time ago.  How could the German people let that happen?  We would never let that happen here.  That’s what I thought I knew as a child, when I learned of the horror of the Holocaust.  Anne Frank never, ever thought what happened in Germany would happen either.  She was German.  And Germany was a civilized country.  Why would her fellow Germans turn on her? It never crossed her mind, until it happened. The German Jews were proud Germans, going back many generations in many cases.  Just as my German Jewish family did there.  My family that I’ll never know.  Because it did happen there.  And it could happen here.  Or anywhere.  If people don’t stand up, and speak up, in time.

Radical Coziness

I can't say the following thing with 100% surety, as I know there are many, many, many, many, many other people who, like me, love Bernie Sanders with every fiber of their being.  Yet I can say that it is *likely* there is no one, but his own family, who loves Bernie as much as I do.  I love what he stands for--both policy-wise and character-wise, what he has courageously fought for his entire life, how he's not afraid to stand alone, yet always reaching out a hand to bring others along.  I could go, and have often gone, on and on about Bernie, Bernie's platform, and why I love Bernie.  Suffice it to say here, though, for the purposes of this post, just to recap for anyone who has only known me for two seconds:  I love Bernie Sanders.  He is one of my handful of true heroes.

So it is funny that I, of all people, somehow missed this whole Bernie-mitten-meme viral phenomenon this week, yet I all but did.  I say "all but", because I kept hearing snippets, fragments, little laughs and smiles and references on the news, to Bernie and Bernie's mittens and some Bernie meme, and I kept thinking:  okay, what are they talking about?  I don't know why I didn't follow up earlier by checking into it, but I didn't.

Today, though, one of my friends had a photo of Bernie in homemade mittens as her profile photo, and it hit me:  oh, that's Bernie, apparently at the inauguration.  Apparently, to people who never lived in Vermont, it is hilarious that he would wear mittens to the inauguration.  But to Vermonters, it's like:  hey, they're WARM, okay?  What's the big?  They're warm, they're cozy, they're even cuddly, none of those are bad things.  You've heard of bringing sexy back, right?  Well, now Bernie's bringing cozy and cuddly back!

If you ask me, our country could use a healthy dose of cozy and cuddly right now--let's hear it for radical coziness!!!

What's bugging me is the projecting going on that, oh, he looks "grumpy".  During the 2016 and 2020 campaign seasons, anti-Bernie people kept trying to create the false narrative that he was always "angry"--which is totally not anything resembling what or who or how Bernie actually is or acts, and now it is "grumpy" because he actually was practicing good physical distancing in the midst of a pandemic.  I myself have been attacked--nothing short of that--for gently keeping six feet of physical distance from people who apparently didn't get the memo and/or didn't understand the memo, simple memo that it is, and/or are in denial about the truth of the memo, re:  we are in the middle of a lethal, highly airborne, global pandemic.  Keeping six feet of distance is the opposite of "grumpy":  it is LOVING.

So, let's review, Bernie is LOVING, and his mittens are cozy and cuddly.  I think those are three things that we need desperately right now and I hope, and have confidence, that Joe Biden will work with Bernie to weave a lot of love, coziness and cuddliness into the fabric of all the policies of the Biden administration!  So long live Bernie and his inaugural fashion and seating choices, and this photo/meme!

We need a little Bernie, right this very minute...