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?

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?