tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-204177512024-03-13T04:23:22.993-07:00hedera's cornerThis is hedera whom you may recognize from my posts at Adam Felber's Fanatical Apathy site. Felbernauts and others of good will and good manners are welcome to comment here.hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.comBlogger596125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-66907113355952208812023-12-04T14:04:00.000-08:002023-12-04T14:04:00.717-08:00The Middle East is Not Listening to Us<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> Once again, today, there's a news article about a street demonstration in San Francisco demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. Several Bay Area cities (including mine) have passed resolutions demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. I've been thinking, and I have to get this off my chest.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Folks, neither side is listening to us and our "ceasefire resolutions." Certainly not to the cities of Oakland and Richmond, CA. The Israelis aren't even listening to US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/civilians-are-center-gravity-gaza-war-us-defense-secretary-2023-12-02/#:~:text=WASHINGTON%2C%20Dec%202%20(Reuters),the%20risks%20of%20their%20radicalization." target="_blank">said recently</a>, </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #404040; font-family: var(--tr-font-regular);"><span style="font-size: medium;">"In this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat," Austin said, drawing on his experience as a four-star general overseeing the battle against Islamic State militants.</span></span></p><p class="text__text__1FZLe text__dark-grey__3Ml43 text__regular__2N1Xr text__small__1kGq2 body__full_width__ekUdw body__small_body__2vQyf article-body__paragraph__2-BtD" data-testid="paragraph-4" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; color: #404040; font-family: var(--tr-font-regular); line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">"So I have repeatedly made clear to Israel's leaders that protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral responsibility and strategic imperative."</span></p></blockquote><div class="article-body__element__2p5pI" style="margin: 24px 0px; width: 707.325px;"></div><p class="text__text__1FZLe text__dark-grey__3Ml43 text__regular__2N1Xr text__small__1kGq2 body__full_width__ekUdw body__small_body__2vQyf article-body__paragraph__2-BtD" data-testid="paragraph-4" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #404040;"><span style="font-family: var(--tr-font-regular);">The real problem in Gaza is that neither side wants to compromise. Netanyahu has built an entire career on opposing a </span>2-state<span style="font-family: var(--tr-font-regular);"> solution, which (in my humble opinion) is the only peaceful answer to this. One of the reasons Hamas is in charge of Gaza is that </span></span><a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/" style="color: #404040; font-family: var(--tr-font-regular);" target="_blank">Netanyahu supported them against the Palestinian Authority</a><span style="color: #404040; font-family: var(--tr-font-regular);">, because he </span><span style="color: #404040;">knew they</span><span style="color: #404040;"><span style="font-family: var(--tr-font-regular);"> would never agree to a 2 state solution, and Mahmoud Abbas might have. So when Hamas started this (and they did), they knew that Netanyahu would throw everything Israel had at Gaza. Which is a lot. I'm going to guess that Hamas also assumed what has happened would happen - millions of people around the world would see Israel bombing civilians in Gaza and killing many times the people the Oct. 7 invasion </span>killed - and<span style="font-family: var(--tr-font-regular);"> would immediately assume that Israel is to blame for the horror.</span></span></span></p><p class="text__text__1FZLe text__dark-grey__3Ml43 text__regular__2N1Xr text__small__1kGq2 body__full_width__ekUdw body__small_body__2vQyf article-body__paragraph__2-BtD" data-testid="paragraph-4" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #404040; font-family: var(--tr-font-regular);">No, folks. Hamas started this. And Hamas' stated goal is to destroy Israel and take all of Palestine back, "from the river to the sea." Which Netanyahu will do everything he can to prevent. I don't know if Hamas didn't realize how much Israel would throw at them (I don't believe that), or if they simply didn't care how many Palestinian civilians got killed, because it would all make Israel look worse. (I wouldn't be surprised.)</span></span></p><p class="text__text__1FZLe text__dark-grey__3Ml43 text__regular__2N1Xr text__small__1kGq2 body__full_width__ekUdw body__small_body__2vQyf article-body__paragraph__2-BtD" data-testid="paragraph-4" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #404040; font-size: medium;">I'm in the camp that believes the only long-term solution for Israel and Palestine is a 2 state solution, preferably with Israel not run by Netanyahu and his right-wing gang, and with the Palestinian state not run by Hamas. Israel has a good chance of getting Netanyahu out of office - he was <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/4/netanyahu-corruption-trial-to-resume" target="_blank">on trial for corruption, and it just picked up again</a>, after being paused for the war. And before October 7, a lot of Israelis were demonstrating against him. </span></p><p class="text__text__1FZLe text__dark-grey__3Ml43 text__regular__2N1Xr text__small__1kGq2 body__full_width__ekUdw body__small_body__2vQyf article-body__paragraph__2-BtD" data-testid="paragraph-4" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #404040; font-size: medium;">I don't know what anyone could do about Hamas; but a non-Netanyahu Israeli government might be able to negotiate something with the Palestinian Authority. Except that Mahmoud Abbas was elected to a 4-year term as PA President in 2005, and they haven't had an election since then (not to mention that Abbas is 88 - definitely older than Joe Biden whom many are complaining about!).</span></p><p class="text__text__1FZLe text__dark-grey__3Ml43 text__regular__2N1Xr text__small__1kGq2 body__full_width__ekUdw body__small_body__2vQyf article-body__paragraph__2-BtD" data-testid="paragraph-4" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #404040; font-size: medium;">And the trouble with Israel "destroying Hamas" is that Hamas is not just an organization (one whose leaders, I might add, don't live in Gaza) but an ideology. Go back and read Lloyd Austin's comment again, he understands. Every Palestinian Israel kills have relatives who are potential recruits for Hamas.</span></p><p class="text__text__1FZLe text__dark-grey__3Ml43 text__regular__2N1Xr text__small__1kGq2 body__full_width__ekUdw body__small_body__2vQyf article-body__paragraph__2-BtD" data-testid="paragraph-4" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #404040; font-size: medium;">I wish I had answers. Should the U.S. quit giving Israel money? Are we then saying they shouldn't defend themselves? Is the only real solution the one that neither side will agree to?</span></p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-39170219513554072552023-08-29T15:54:00.001-07:002023-08-29T15:54:07.949-07:00There's No Excuse for This<p><span style="font-size: small;">My last post was about believing absurdities leading to committing atrocities. Well, we have one, and it's right down the block from my house, at Chabot Elementary School. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">We have no kids, but as neighbors, we're on the school mailing list. Last night about 11:10PM I got an email from the principal. They had arranged a playdate last Saturday for all the families and children of color who attend the school; they were trying to "<span style="color: #202020; font-family: inherit;">to increase a sense of belonging among all of our
students and their families." </span>It seems to have gone very well, especially in a school and a neighborhood that is mostly white, although the news reports suggest that the kids at the school are about 45% BIPOC. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">The email continued, "<span style="color: #202020; font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;">A
member of our community found the idea of this playdate exclusionary and posted
their thoughts and questions on Reddit. This post has gone viral inviting
emails and calls from all sorts of anonymous folks who do not understand what
we are trying to do at Chabot and in OUSD." And finally the principal included this appalling message:</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #202020; font-family: inherit; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 150%;"></span><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 7.5pt;"><em><span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">“Hi
there you racist pieces of sh**! Just wanted to stop by and let you know that
if you keep this sh** up we're going to put you back in chains or in the jungle
where you belong. Go ahead and keep pushing for segregation. If you want a race
war we'll f***ing give you one and you won't like how it ends. Have a wonderful
day :)</span></em><span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">This is a school that serves children from kindergarten to 5th grade. I was and am appalled. But I wasn't surprised when I left the house at around 10AM to go to an exercise class and saw the school intersection blocked off with crime tape, at least 2 Oakland Police cars there, a couple of Oakland cops walking around, and a person being interviewed by someone carrying a TV camera. I walked down to see what was up and was told by an ABC reporter (yes, I'm apparently somewhere on ABC's coverage, although I haven't found myself yet; 2 of my friends have contacted me!) that there had been a bomb threat! I now know from the news coverage that the bomb threat came via email at 7:30 this morning, fortunately before the normal start of class, and that the police, the FBI, and a bomb dog unit were going through the school to make sure it was clear.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">If you Google <i>Chabot Elementary Oakland CA</i> today you'll see all the coverage. By noon when I returned from my exercise class it had all been cleared away - I assume they didn't find a bomb. But it looks like the principal has decided not to have any classes today; there are no kids on the grounds. I was relieved to see an Oakland police car turning the corner by the school as I left on an errand this afternoon.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">There is no excuse for this crap. Wikipedia says, "There
is broad consensus across the biological and social sciences that race
is a social construct, not an accurate representation of human genetic
variation." I agree with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_genetics" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a> that the genetic differences between the races are smaller than 1%. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"> The whole "race" business was invented by our European ancestors, centuries ago, to explain why they kept finding people (in the areas they were colonizing) who didn't look like them or act like them. You may not have European ancestors, but I do. I'm afraid the whole "race" business was really developed because a portion of the human race wants to have someone they can look down on, someone they can feel superior to - because they are disturbed by the people who (for financial, social, or political reasons) are "superior" to them. We clearly have some of those people making trouble at Chabot Elementary. I wish they would grow up and get a life.</span><br /></p><p> </p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-76490419065847686212023-07-31T15:31:00.001-07:002023-07-31T15:31:23.349-07:00If You Believe Absurdities ...<p> Apparently Voltaire never quite said exactly the quote that's been attributed to him: </p><p><i>Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities Can Make You Commit Atrocities</i></p><p>But that statement has been around long enough that, when I applied to attend the University of California at Berkeley, around 1962 or 63, it was offered to me as a possible subject for the 500-word essay I was expected to submit with my application. I don't recall what the other possible subjects were. I chose that one, and drafted a handwritten page or so (on the application) on why it is right. (At the time I didn't know it was attributed to Voltaire.) Cal admitted me for the 1963-64 year.</p><p>That was (my God!) sixty years ago. Voltaire has been dead for roughly 250 years. But the statement stands. And as I look around today, I see more atrocities being committed, by people who believe absurdities, than I want to consider. I'm not going to tell you what I think the atrocities are because I don't want to get into an internet screaming match. But there are dozens of them, being committed by people in the U.S. and elsewhere. </p><p>This isn't a good sign, people. I think I remember a time when we could agree on the basic facts of life and the world, but we seem to have lost that. It worries me. I wish I could close this post with a witty remark, but all I can come up with is, it worries me.</p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-22740026397296093952023-06-26T11:46:00.002-07:002023-06-26T11:46:23.037-07:00More Labor Issues<p>I can't get away from this. NPR this morning covered 2 labor related issues. The first one was the recent contract negotiations with rail workers - the guys who build and maintain the tracks - to provide them with <i>paid sick leave!</i> They've gotten 4 paid leave days <i>per year,</i> plus 3 "personal days," with most of the major rail lines. They're still negotiating with BNSF.</p><p>The second was about a new federal law providing pregnant works with "reasonable accommodations" at work, with tales of women who were fired because they asked for things like a bottle of water at their work station, and a temporary shift to a position with less heavy lifting.</p><p>All I could think as I listened to this was the lyrics from <i>Bodies on the Line </i>(see this post http://hederascorner.blogspot.com/2023/06/labor-issues-are-still-with-us.html) where the management was responding to worker requests for sick time by saying, "Die, and prove it."</p><p>Die, and prove it. And I thought we'd moved on.<br /></p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-57180605187916068332023-06-01T17:49:00.004-07:002023-06-26T11:37:41.318-07:00Labor Issues are Still With Us<p> On May 19, as a member of the Oakland Symphony Chorus, I participated in the spectacular (if I may brag!) world premiere of <i>Bodies on the Line,</i> an oratorio commissioned by the Symphony's late director Michael Morgan, about the 1937 auto workers sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan. I've been rehearsing that for almost 6 months. It's full of facts about what happened in the old GM auto plants, and what the strikers wanted, and every time I turn around these days, I hear echoes of those lyrics. </p><p>For example, the first of the strikers' eight demands was the end of piecework pay, to be replaced by a daily salary. A few weeks before performance, there was an article on NPR about the law, passed by California in <i>2022, </i>banning <i>piecework pay</i> in the garment industry in California! In <i>2022 </i>they were still paying garment workers piecework!<i> </i>And of course we regularly hear that Starbucks workers are trying to form a union, and the workers at Trader Joe's in Rockridge (a little over half a mile from my house in north Oakland) are trying to organize a union. And on and on.</p><p>Today I heard another story on NPR that brought the oratorio lyrics back to me with a bang. It was a story about a ceremony in (I think) Stratton, Ohio, where the W. H. Sammis coal plant will shut down in mid-July. It sounded kind of like a memorial, if not a funeral, for the plant, which has operated in the area since 1959. The plant had employed the people of Stratton (population under 300) for most of their lives. And listening to this story, another lyric came back to me. Late in the oratorio, during the strike, the chorus sings about it, and everyone but the altos was in favor of the strike (I sing alto). The altos sang, "What would we do without GM? It's GM who feeds us, who feeds the people of Flint." And you know, I listened to the story of the memorial to a dying coal plant in Stratton, Ohio, and those words ran through my mind; and I cried. I'm crying now. These are stories about human beings, and sometimes we're not as much in control as we think.</p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-14774123852098259852023-04-21T14:06:00.000-07:002023-04-21T14:06:41.668-07:00The A's Are Leaving Oakland<p> <span style="font-size: medium;">So - the A's have signed up to buy land for a stadium in Las Vegas. Many people in Oakland are furious - many of my friends are. I sympathise with them; but I'm not furious. This is going to annoy them, but I want to speak my mind.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I can't deny that the Coliseum is a mess, although it's easier to get to than the proposed stadium at Howard Terminal would have been. Coliseum even has a BART station, with a pedestrian walkway to the stadium, and lots of parking. The proposed stadium near the Port of Oakland is at least half a mile from BART and is not served by any major bus lines. At one point the A's were suggesting an overhead tram arrangement to get to the stadium, but I haven't heard that in quite a while. (For those who don't know, Howard Terminal is the name of a part of the Port of Oakland facility that the A's wanted do buy.)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I've been in Jack London Square, and I know the area around the port. It hasn't got parking. It isn't set up to manage heavy traffic. The main traffic street along the waterfront has an active railroad line, for God's sake, which I know carries Amtrak passengers and I'm fairly sure also carries freight to and from the port. How would <i>that </i>fit in with 35,000 people on game day?? I know that both the Port and the railroad people opposed the site.s</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The housing they propose would be nice, we can always use more housing; I don't recall hearing how much of it would be affordable. But they're also suggesting 270,000 square feet of retail space (along with 1.5 million of "commercial space"). If you don't live in Oakland you may not know how much of the <i>existing </i>retail space has "For Rent" signs, but it's a lot. Who do they think will rent all that retail space?? </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I've never heard an A's person admit to this, but I've been convinced since it was first proposed that they A's want a baseball stadium on a waterfront - because the Giants have one. That's all this is about. They thought they could con Oakland into paying for a lot of the infrastructure upgrades this would need. But they forgot one thing: Port of Oakland is a working port, a major container ship facility. There is water traffic (BIG ships!) in and out of there all the time. The Giants' nice waterside stadium went in long after the Port of San Francisco stopped being a working port, now it's mostly cruise ships, and they're farther north. Everyone thinks the people who hang out in canoes in McCovey Cove, trying to catch foul balls, are really cute. You couldn't have that outside a Howard Terminal stadium; not with container ships going back and forth in a relatively narrow estuary. McCovey Cove backs onto the Bay.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">So they're going to Las Vegas to play ball, they say, in a stadium they say will have a retractable roof. Have fun playing there in the summer, boys. I thought that about the Raiders, too, but they usually play in the fall and winter. Still, they start in September. I used to visit Vegas regularly to see my sister, and summer is not fun. I've seen 117 in the shade (and no shade!) in <i>September</i>. Better keep that retractable roof closed, and turn on the A/C.</span></p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-36931978527293171322023-01-10T17:01:00.002-08:002023-01-10T17:01:37.581-08:00Fighting the Phishers<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> We've all gotten them - the phishes. The email about a purchase on your Amazon account that doesn't exist, with a link that doesn't lead to Amazon. And others. Now they've found my cell phone number and they're texting me with phishes. In the last 2 days I've gotten 2 texts that claimed to be about my EBT card. (For the non-Californians - EBT stands for Electronic Benefits Transfer; and an EBT card is basically a debit card you can use to buy food. It's also called CalFresh, and SNAP, and it's food stamps. I don't have one.)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Well, at the end of the '90s, I was working in the data center of a major bank, and I was the team lead of the group that set up the bank's first SMTP server, which allowed email exchanges with the rest of the internet. I saw the first phishes develop, lousy spelling and all. I've watched them get weirder, but there's always <i>something </i>that isn't right. In the texts about my EBT card (which doesn't exist), the phone number to call was not the phone number you get when you go to the EBT site. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I decided to be a good citizen and make sure they knew they were being phished, so I called the real number and waded through the menus until I got a human. When I told her, you're being phished, she said grimly, "We know." (If you look at their main page, there's a big "Beware of Scams" notice.) So I said, OK, I just wanted to make sure you knew, and I hope you catch the bastards. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">There was a brief pause, and she answered in the least "official" tone you could imagine, "You are so right, sister, and I hope they put them underneath the jail!"</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I hope I made her day.</span></p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-16897390304773140582022-09-27T16:36:00.002-07:002022-09-27T16:37:12.599-07:00King Charles III<p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"> Queen Elizabeth II is dead, God rest her; and her son Charles Philip Arthur George reigns as King Charles III. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Why does that name bother me? He could have decided to use any of his names; his grandfather, George VI, was called </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Albert Frederick Arthur George, and chose to reign as George. So if Charles Philip Arthur George chooses to reign as Charles III, why not? Who was Charles II? </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;">For that matter, who was Charles I? </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I warn you, succession to the British throne depended on primogeniture (who is the eldest <i>legitimate </i>child - a son, for preference; daughters only succeed if there are no sons). So this gets really complicated. I've gotten all these details from Wikipedia.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #202122; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;">When Queen Elizabeth I died without issue in 1603, the Tudor royal family was extinguished, and the next family with an actual claim to the throne was the Stuarts, represented by </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;">James VI </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;">of Scotland (1567-1625). He added the title James I of England and Ireland when he succeeded (1603-1625). </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;">James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots and her King Consort, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who had a claim to the English throne through a grandmother, Queen Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England. And when James VI and I died in 1625, his oldest surviving son Charles succeeded him as Charles I.</span></p><p><span style="color: #202122; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_I_of_England" target="_blank">Charles I</a> (1625-1649) was born in Scotland but moved to England after his father inherited the throne. His reign was tumultuous and relatively short - he believed firmly in the divine right of kings, and he argued with the English Parliament almost immediately. For one thing, he believed he could impose taxes without consulting Parliament. He also married a Catholic (Parliament was heavily Puritan), although he supported High Anglican clerics. He went to war with Parliament's New Model Army (look up Oliver Cromwell), lost a couple of times, and was tried, convicted, and executed for treason in January 1649.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #202122; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;">We've all just learned that the crown passes to the heir immediately on the king or queen's death. But not in this case; the country was at war. Charles II was proclaimed King of <i>Scotland </i>by the Scottish Parliament on 5 February 1649. There was no King of England and Ireland during the period called the <i>Interregnum</i> or <i>English Commonwealth, </i>which was a de facto republic led by Oliver Cromwell. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #202122; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_England" target="_blank">Charles II</a> lost the Battle of Worcester to Cromwell on </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">3 September 1651 and ran to the Continent, spending the next 9 years in exile in the coastal countries facing Britain. Cromwell died in 1658, producing a political crisis that led to the restoration of the monarchy and an invitation to Charles II to return and rule, which he did. He was 30. He ruled until he died in 1685, quarrelling regularly with Parliament about religion, especially after his brother James became a Catholic. He left no legitimate children (but at least 12 illegitimate!).</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #202122;">That was the end of the Charleses, and pretty much of the Stuart dynasty. </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_II_of_England" style="color: #202122;" target="_blank">James II </a><span style="color: #202122;">succeeded his brother Charles in February 1685 and was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, mainly because he was Catholic and had just had a son, which meant he could found a Catholic dynasty. In 1688 Parliament invited William of Orange (a Protestant grandson of England's Charles I, married to James II's eldest daughter) to invade, which led to James eventually settling in France and William and his wife Mary taking over the throne by invitation, after a not very serious battle. Neither one lived very long and they were succeeded by Anne, James' youngest daughter) for about 5 years.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #202122;">But the Stuart dynasty produced one more Charles, who tried to become Charles III in the 1760s: </span></span></span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Edward_Stuart">Charles Edward Stuart</a>, also known as Bonnie Prince Charlie. He didn't do very well at it but he made a lot of noise. Just read the Wikipedia article.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">At this point I'll quit listing kings. In 1714, after Queen Anne's death, the House of Hanover was invited to the throne, because the Elector of Hanover was married to the granddaughter of James I and VI and heiress presumptive to the throne. Believe it or not, the Hanovers are still on the throne. Queen Victoria was in the Hanover line; the family name changed to Saxe-Coburg-Gotha when she married Prince Albert of that house. And yes, it's still there - Saxe-Coburg-Gotha became Windsor in 1917, by royal proclamation. In 1917 it was a little embarrassing for the royal house of Britain to have a German family name. So King Charles III is of the house of Windsor, once upon a time Hanover. </span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">But every time I see "King Charles III", I think of Bonnie Prince Charlie. I wish the new King Charles III better luck than the Bonnie Prince had.</span></span></p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-53343756359065259512022-08-30T15:29:00.002-07:002022-08-30T15:29:52.102-07:00I Can't Understand Why He's Not Behind Bars<p>I love the conversations I get into when I'm waiting for something - in this case for a shot, at Kaiser's injection clinic Monday. (What shot? None of your business.) The clinic has a set of chairs to wait in, you only stand in line to register; I started talking to the nice woman in the next chair. After some brief political rumbles about The Former Guy (we agreed about him), she leaned over and whispered that to me.</p><p>I have to agree with her - with everything he's done, he should be in jail, or at least under indictment. But I do understand why he isn't.</p><p>First of all, America has never (thank God!) had a president who behaved like that. Who assumed that the rules, the laws, didn't apply to him. (The attempts to declare the 2020 election invalid.) Who assumed everything in his vicinity belonged to him. (The multiple boxes of paperwork that should never have been moved to Mar-A-Lago.) He breaks the conventions and the laws with such aplomb that your first response is, "What the hell?" It's taken a while for all of us to realize just how bad it is.<br /></p><p>But he's used to getting away with stuff, and he always has lawyers in his service who are happy to delay and argue and put things off until everyone gives up. (Given how he tends not to pay people if they don't get the results he wants, I don't know why they work for him, but they do.) Also, if he ever goes to a trial, there may be people on the jury who approve of him. So any case against him has to be absolutely solid - iron clad and proven. Unarguable. I believe that's why Merrick Garland's Justice Department is taking its cautious time building the case - because they can't lose this case. I genuinely believe that if He Whom I Will Not Name is elected president again, we can kiss democracy and the rule of law goodbye. And I think Mr. Garland knows that.<br /></p><p>The founders who wrote the U.S. Constitution built a government that assumed all educated men of good will (that's who they thought would be in government) understood the rules of behavior, the checks and balances, that were laid out in it. They never in their lives imagined a man like this - who is not educated, who has good will only for himself, who doesn't think he has to obey anything or anyone, and particularly who cannot bear to lose. </p><p>I wonder who would now be Attorney General if Merrick Garland had been appointed to the Supreme Court in 2016.<br /></p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-16660281533358672152022-07-04T17:14:00.001-07:002022-07-04T17:14:55.414-07:00I Spit On You<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> The message in the title is directed to certain members of the Supreme Court of the United States. SCOTUS has thrown out the Roe vs. Wade decision that made abortion legal at the federal level for 50 years. </span><span style="font-size: large;">And now that the federal protection is gone, state after state is moving to eliminate abortion entirely.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">This is going to kill women. Lots of women, especially poor and black women. Women who already have 3 or 5 kids and can't afford to feed any more. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">This decision was made by 5 men and a woman. I am appalled that a woman could do that to her sisters; but I understand she belonged to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/us/people-of-praise-amy-coney-barrett.html" target="_blank">a patriarchal sect</a> which believed that women should obey men. Hence the betrayal - she did what the men wanted.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Full disclosure: I don't have a dog in this fight. Yes, hedera is a woman, but I'm well past menopause, and I won't ever have to deal with an unwanted pregnancy. I'm not affected here. But I feel for the women who can't afford the contraceptives, who can't afford to feed one more kid, who are underage and can't have a child without blowing away the education that would allow them to feed and clothe it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The current majority on the Supreme Court is working on eliminating the 19th and 20th centuries, and throwing the U.S. back to the 18th century, when only landowning white men could vote, and women were their husbands' chattel property - along with the black slaves who served both of them. And nobody who wasn't a heterosexual white male had any rights at all. Am I overstating? I don't think so. Clarence Thomas has already suggested eliminating the court decisions that allowed gay sex, gay marriage, and contraception!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">With all that in mind, I repeat my initial statement to the 6 judges of SCOTUS who did this: I spit on you. You are a disgrace to your office.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I except the three dissenters. I do not spit on them; I thank them for their courage.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-15303373087270747402022-05-15T17:36:00.001-07:002022-05-15T17:39:51.951-07:00Guns and Originalists<p><span style="font-size: medium;">More mass shootings. More discussions of gun control. More worries about it, because a judge recently upheld <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Ninth-Circuit-overturns-California-ban-on-selling-17166113.php" target="_blank">upheld a California law</a> which would ban the sale of semiautomatic rifles to persons under 21 but was overruled by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, on the "originalist" assumption that "</span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke: 0.45px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);">the arming of young adults is a tradition dating to the nation's founding." This produced an absolutely reasonable letter to the editor a few </span></span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke: 0.45px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);">days later</span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke: 0.45px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);"> in which the writer made the following arguments:</span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke: 0.45px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>When the Second Amendment was written, most young people lived in rural areas and had to defend themselves against wild animals and roving bands of marauders, as well as having to hunt for food. Those in the more urban coastal cities had to worry about British invaders. Many had to provide their own weapons to serve in the militia.</i></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke: 0.45px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); background-color: white;">Thank you, Joseph Chance of Emeryville; you're perfectly right. But you left out some other important differences between guns in the late 18th century and now. I found all this information in an interesting site called <a href="https://www.ncpedia.org/media/video/firing-musket-18th#:~:text=It%20takes%20two%20or%20three,eight%20seconds%20for%20a%20musket." target="_blank">NCPedia</a>, a North Carolina historical site - I've linked it, and will now summarize what it says. But do go read it.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke: 0.45px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); background-color: white;">In the 18th century, European militaries used muskets. The British, being the ones we were fighting, used a musket they called a Brown Bess; but all muskets were alike. The NCPedia site links a video showing how to fire a musket. They were not rifles because the barrel wasn't rifled. They weighed 10 pounds. A 75 caliber musket had a barrel 3/4" in diameter and it could shoot anything smaller than that. They had no sights. You just pointed and pulled the trigger. It was meant to fire at a rank of men, standing next to each other, shooting at you. Also, you can load a musket in about eight seconds.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke: 0.45px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); background-color: white;">American settlers generally used flintlock rifles, although the British had made them illegal. Rifles had (of course) rifled barrels (which spins the bullet and makes it fly straight), and sights - you could aim them at something and probably hit it. Or him - that's why the British said they would hang any man caught with a rifle. The Americans tended to aim at officers, and medics, not just the front rank.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke: 0.45px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); background-color: white;">Here's my point: <i>It takes two to three minutes to load a flintlock.</i> It was designed for hunting, not fighting. And it has a lot of moving pieces. At this point I strongly recommend you go to the site - </span></span><a href="https://www.ncpedia.org/media/video/firing-musket-18th#:~:text=It%20takes%20two%20or%20three,eight%20seconds%20for%20a%20musket.">Firing a musket: 18th-century small arms | NCpedia</a> - and read the section labeled, <i>How a flintlock works, </i>because I couldn't possibly tell it as well as the man who wrote the article. He does this sort of thing to educate people.</span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-size: medium;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke: 0.45px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); background-color: white;">Having absorbed this very brief summary of the guns that were around when the Second Amendment was written, I now urge you to stop a minute and think about modern semi-automatic rifles. These are not the same as those old rifles, and they don't require anything like the skill and experience it took to shoot a flintlock. Any idiot can fire a modern semi-automatic, and a lot of idiots do. Which is why the originalist argument that modern 18 year olds should be able to buy automatic rifles because 18th century 18 year olds had rifles is ridiculous. Two of the 3 appeals court judges in this ruling were appointed by Donald Trump. The third was a temporary on assignment from New York, appointed by Bill Clinton.</span></span></p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-57141369719943689092021-12-27T16:45:00.000-08:002021-12-27T16:45:27.068-08:00Because We Say So - Marijuana<p>Full disclosure: I don't use marijuana. I tried it once in college and was not impressed. I also don't smoke cigarettes; with my tendency toward asthma, I don't like inhaling smoke. And I no longer drink alcohol. So I have no stake in this.<br /></p><p>But I have always wondered: why is it, that people can buy and consume booze and cigarettes with no issues, but for decades, if they bought marijuana, they were setting themselves up for arrest and possible prison. It's not the addictive properties; as far as I know, pot isn't addictive, and alcohol and tobacco are. Too much alcohol, too much tobacco, will kill you; even the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration admits that “No death from overdose of marijuana has been reported.” I've lost at least 3 relatives to entirely legal tobacco use.<br /></p><p>A very interesting post by Becky Little on <i>history.com </i>(<a href="https://www.history.com/news/why-the-u-s-made-marijuana-illegal" target="_blank">Why the US Made Marijuana Illegal</a>) confirms what I remember reading elsewhere. In the 19th century ("at least since the 1830s"), marijuana was a normal part of the medical pharmacy. It has real medicinal uses; we've determined recently that it can help with <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/24/health/cannabidiol-epilepsy-study/index.html" target="_blank">epileptic seizures</a>. I've seen boxes in museums that were used by 19th century ship's doctors; they have a partition for marijuana. This was a normal medical tool. You could buy it in a pharmacy. And yet, between 1916 and 1931, 29 states outlawed marijuana; and the <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Marihuana_Tax_Act_of_1937.html" target="_blank">Marihuana Tax Act of 1937</a> (they couldn't even spell it) banned it nationwide, in the face of objections from the American Medical Association!</p><p>Given all our recent discussions of systemic racism, I concluded that it was banned in the '30s because it was a drug largely used by people of color - I was thinking about the Harlem Renaissance in the '20s. I was right about the systemic racism, but wrong about which people of color. According to Ms. Little, during and after the Mexican Revolution in 1910, a lot of Mexicans immigrated to the United States. These Mexicans smoked marijuana to get high, and they terrified the good people of the United States, who didn't understand people who were too poor to drink booze to get high.<br /></p><p>This has been fully written up by Eric Schlosser in his book <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/9780618446704/Reefer-Madness-Sex-Drugs-Cheap-0618446702/plp" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><em>Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market</em></a>, but I have to share some of the details because they are hilarious - and sad. The Texas police apparently believed that marijuana incited violent crimes (it doesn't), including a "lust for blood" (ditto), and that it gave people "superhuman strength" (no, it doesn't do that either). But people were additionally terrified by a 1936 movie (?!) called <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028346/" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><em>Reefer Madness</em></a>, which warned parents that drug dealers would invite their teenagers to jazz parties and get them hooked on “reefer.” The Marihuana Tax Act passed the next year, and the feds and the states continued to increase punishments for the substance until the people they were arresting morphed into upper-middle-class white college students, in the late 1960s.<br /></p><p>Marijuana is now legal in California, and in a number of other states; and so it should be. I know people who use cannabidiol for medical conditions, especially cancer treatments. It's still illegal at the federal level. </p><p>We banned the use of marijuana because we didn't like or understand the people who used it, because they didn't look like us or speak our language, and in spite of the fact that we <i>knew </i>the substance was medically useful. How stupid was that? Let's eliminate the Federal ban and go back to the 19th century, but with better technology.<br /></p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-43810618929187984252021-10-17T16:04:00.001-07:002021-10-17T16:04:50.627-07:00Education in Texas<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> One of the people I follow on Facebook is Heather Cox Richardson, a political historian who writes interesting posts about current events. She wrote one yesterday (10-16-21) on a new Texas law which requires teachers to <span style="font-family: inherit;">"</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">present opposing views on controversial subjects." </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Like racism. And the Holocaust. That's right, Texas teachers may be expected to present "both sides" of the Holocaust. I didn't think the Holocaust had another side, unless you are a Nazi who believes in Aryan superiority - aka white superiority. </span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Worse, Texas has passed a bill on Critical Race Theory (S.B. 3), which will go into effect in December, laying out exactly what should be taught about what we used to call civics: <span style="font-family: inherit;">"</span></span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">the fundamental moral, political, and intellectual foundations of the American experiment in self-government; the history, qualities, traditions, and features of civic engagement in the United States; the structure, function, and processes of government institutions at the federal, state, and local levels.” This new law essentially limits the study of these things to certain specific documents and people. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I don't want to quote her entire essay, it's quite long, but if you are on Facebook, look it up. We should all read it.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">What blew me away were the items and people who may <i>not</i> be taught: the writings of George Washington! Anything about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings! The history of Native Americans and of "founding mothers and other founding persons!" Frederick Douglass! I could go on. It essentially restricts the history of the U.S. and its government to the brilliant deeds of a few white men, leaving out anything that might make white men look bad. Like systemic racism, and genocide of Native Americans, and the fact that until the 20th century, married women were essentially their husbands' property.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I stewed about this all morning - really. History is important to me. If we don't know how we got here, how do we know where we're going? And facts are important to me - if you don't know all the facts, you make wrong decisions. But as I stewed, something occurred to me.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">These legislators have forgotten the Internet. (Based on observation of various elected bodies, many of the people elected barely know how to send email.) Many of the kids whose education they want to warp have access to the Internet, and know how to use Google, especially after the last year and a half of virtual learning. If you know how to ask the questions, the Internet will tell you anything you want to know, whether the State of Texas likes it or not. I encourage myself that at least some Texas kids may start wondering about what was left out, and asking the questions.</span></span></p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-77985048117458398612021-09-19T16:38:00.000-07:002021-09-19T16:38:35.922-07:00Anti-Vaxxers<p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"> I had the impression that the anti-vax movement started with <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02989-9" target="_blank">Andrew Wakefield,</a> a British doctor, because of the flap around 1998 when he published a paper in the <i>Lancet</i> which suggested that the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccine (MMR) had not been properly tested and could cause autism. Usually publication in the <i>Lancet </i>means good research, but it turned out that he'd been paid to find out if there was evidence to support a legal case filed by parents who believed the vaccine had harmed their children. He invented the evidence to support his conclusion and his results couldn't be reproduced. By 2010 the British General Medical Council had ruled against Wakefield on several issues and the <i>Lancet</i> withdrew the paper. Wakefield is no longer allowed to practice medicine in Great Britain. This is just a summary, if you're interested in the Wakefield incident, read the linked article on him.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">I got a lot of this from the <i><a href="https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/history-anti-vaccination-movements" target="_blank">History of Anti-Vaccination Movements</a>, </i>a 2018 article on the site <i><a href="https://www.historyofvaccines.org/" target="_blank">History of Vaccines</a>. </i>I recommend the article to the interested. It reminded me that people have been objecting to vaccines since before vaccines existed as such (the concept was developed by Edward Jenner in 1798). The reasons aren't very different from what we're seeing now: people don't trust doctors, or the government. People don't like being told they have to do something. People are afraid vaccines will harm them.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">A lot of people on social media have been referring to the general acceptance of the <a href="https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/blog/video-polio-story" target="_blank">polio vaccines</a> in the 1950s, in the United States, as the standard for public acceptance of vaccines against a horrible disease, and comparing it to current rejection of the COVID-19 vaccines. It was the exception. There were public objections to the smallpox vaccine, to the Diphtheria, </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span face=""Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">Tetanus, and Pertussis (DTP) Vaccine, and of course to the </span><span face=""Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) Vaccine. </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;">The only reason there were no objections to a vaccine for the 1918 influenza is because a vaccine was never developed. There </span><i style="color: #333333; font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;">were </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;">objections in 1918 to wearing masks.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Apparently people in the 1950s were simply more afraid of polio than they were of the vaccine, a reaction we haven't seen in the people refusing the COVID-19 vaccines. At least until they're in the ICU.</span></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-2216554709612356242021-09-10T16:44:00.000-07:002021-09-10T16:44:09.798-07:00Remembering 9/11<p>Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attack. I didn't start blogging until several years later, so I don't have a contemporary record, but I remember it. Boy, do I remember it. Living in California, I was getting dressed to go to work when I found out about it - I was working at the Bank of America's Concord data center, in the email support team. </p><p>I usually listen to the news on NPR while I'm doing things like that, and I kept hearing some very strange things. I remember going downstairs to get some breakfast and calling out to my husband, "What the <i>hell</i> is going on?" Back in 2001 we had a television that we occasionally turned on, and he had it turned on, and I got a look.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/9-11-attacks" target="_blank">attack happened at 08:45 EDT</a>, which was 05:45 PDT, so by the time I got up and got moving it had been going on for some time. (I'm not a morning person.) By 07:00 PDT or so, which is my guess on the time I came downstairs, the attack had been going on for an hour and a quarter. Both towers and the Pentagon had been hit, the south tower had collapsed, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93#Passenger_and_crew_phone_calls" target="_blank">hijacked Flight 93</a> was within 10 minutes of crashing in the field near Shanksville, PA. </p><p>The flight 93 hijacking seems to have begun around 09:31 EDT. At 09:57 EDT, the passengers took a vote and decided to attack the hijackers, so during that period of a little over 10 minutes from 09:57 to 10:10 EDT when the hijackers crashed the plane, there was an active fight going on for control. This is about when I came downstairs to have breakfast.</p><p>Well, I still had to go to work, so I ate breakfast. And since this was during the period after my right knee went bad and before I got it replaced, I drove to Concord for work. Everyone in my department was trying to follow what was going on back East. I remember someone taking one of the TVs they used for video training and faking up an antenna with a wire coat hanger. They trundled it, on its wheeled trolley, over to one of the windows where it would pick up a signal, and managed to get a news broadcast covering the attack. In fact I think they hooked up antennas to two TV monitors. After that, everybody wandered past there regularly to see what was going on. I remember thinking, at one point that afternoon, I have projects to work on, and nothing I can do here will affect that. So I went into my cube, away from the TV, and tried to get some work done. I don't recall what I was working on or whether I succeeded in getting anything done. </p><p>I don't have any other particular memories of the day, although I'm sure I had the news on the car radio as I drove home, because I always do.</p><p>This is hardly great history, but it's what I remember of an event that changed our world, so I thought I'd share it.<br /></p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-31318147298043985572021-04-22T17:54:00.001-07:002021-04-22T17:59:27.722-07:00Cops and Guns<span style="font-size: medium;">There has been a lot of public discussion lately of why police are armed, and why armed police are called to situations which could be - and maybe should be - solved with something other than armed force. This is especially the case when unarmed people of color end up being shot. On one NPR discussion the other day, I heard a commentator ask why cops need guns anyway; and I didn't hear anyone respond with the reason that came to my mind.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Full disclosure here: I am a community policing volunteer, and have been for over a decade. I'm on the steering committee of a local council that is supposed to be a conduit between Neighborhood Watch groups in our area and the police. I've worked with a number of cops, who were about as varied as most groups of humans. As for their attitudes toward people of color, I couldn't tell you. The neighborhood I live in is about as white and upper income as Oakland, California gets. But I never heard of any of the cops we worked with shooting anyone; and believe me, in this area when a cop shoots someone, it makes the news.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">But why do cops need to be armed? British cops aren't, among <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_firearm_use_by_country" target="_blank">quite a list of others</a>. I say American cops need to be armed because Americans, as a group, are armed. In a 2017 survey <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country" target="_blank">cited in Wikipedia</a>, there were 120.5 firearms for every 100 citizens in the U.S., the vast majority of them <i>not</i> registered. And <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2021/02/10/this-is-how-many-guns-were-sold-in-all-50-states/43371461/" target="_blank">Money magazine says</a> that, during 2020, nearly 40 million guns were bought <i>legally </i>(note the caveat!), and another 4.1 million just in January 2021. There are literally more guns than people in this country.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">This has nothing to do with how cops are trained to handle situations, or their general attitude toward people of color, which is a whole different issue. But an unarmed policeman in America would be an absolute sitting duck. He assumes the people he's looking at are armed because, in fact, they may be.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Our problem in the U.S. today is not cops with guns. Our problem is too many guns, generally.</span></div>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-37472753263870315402021-01-06T17:23:00.001-08:002021-01-06T17:23:59.557-08:00Patriots??<p> We will all remember January 6, 2021. That was the day a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building, pushing past the Capitol Police, breaking windows to get into the building. If you were living under a rock and missed this, you can find details in any major newspaper or online; I followed it on CNN and in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/06/us/washington-dc-protests" target="_blank">New York Times</a>. You might prefer the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/01/06/dc-protests-trump-rally-live-updates/" target="_blank">Washington Post</a>, which provides the coverage free.</p><p>Donald Trump sat in the West Wing and watch the television coverage as his supporters mobbed and ransacked the Capitol Building, forcing the evacuation of Congress. I watched the coverage and was amazed that I saw so few firearms among the mob, although one woman was shot and killed. I gather from CNN that as the situation got worse, his staff begged him to go on television and try to calm the mob, and he refused.</p><p>These people think they are patriots; I think they are a mob. I <i>know</i> Donald Trump is no patriot; his only interest is his own interest, the state of the country means nothing to him, as we can tell by the way he ignores the pandemic death toll. Unfortunately, Donald Trump is one of the greatest con men since P. T. Barnum, and he has somehow managed to convince these people that everything he says is gospel, and if he says the election was rigged, it must be so. So the "patriots" mobbed the Capitol building and accomplished - absolutely nothing.</p><p>I suspect today's rally was intended to whip up the crowd to where they would do something, anything, to stop the certification of the electoral college vote, in hopes of delaying Biden's inauguration. It failed. Congressional leaders have already said they will continue the process tonight. </p><p>It is not patriotism to refuse to accept the outcome of an honest election, just because a liar says it wasn't. It is not patriotism, when an election has taken place and been certified by every state, to try to overturn the results because you don't like them. I've voted in a number of elections where I didn't like the results. I don't care what their t-shirts say, nobody who took part in that mob was a patriot, and I hope any who did actual damage (like, breaking windows) will be arrested and charged.</p><p>I have two worries about this. First, Trump is in office for 2 more weeks, what in God's name will he try now? Second, all these people will still be around after Joe Biden is inaugurated.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-18550345357498222532020-12-02T14:35:00.001-08:002020-12-02T14:35:26.017-08:00The 1918 Flu and Shakespeare<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">If that sounds odd, it was in fact the subject of <i>On the Media's </i>Thanksgiving podcast, which I listen to today while on my exercise bike. The name of the podcast was <i><a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-no-ado-about-much" target="_blank">No Ado about Much</a>, </i>but you can listen to the segments individually at the links below; the whole thing is about 50 minutes long.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The first half of the podcast, </span><i style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/why-press-downplayed-1918-flu-on-the-media" target="_blank">Why the Press Downplayed the 1918 Flu</a>, </i><span style="font-size: medium;">covered an interview with John Barry, author of </span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"><a href="https://bookshop.org/books/the-great-influenza-the-story-of-the-deadliest-pandemic-in-history-revised/9780143036494" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #048d99; fill: rgb(4, 141, 153); font-weight: 600; text-decoration-line: none;">The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History</a></em><span style="font-size: medium;">, and explained in detail that leaders on both sides in World War I refused to admit the existence of the flu after it hit the battlefields, for fear of admitting weakness. (Does this sound familiar??) Worse, in the U.S., wartime censorship and an attempt to "boost morale" essentially forbid </span><i style="font-size: large;">any </i><span style="font-size: medium;">mention of the ongoing public health emergency in the press. The </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918" style="font-size: large;" target="_blank">Sedition Act of 1918</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> made it a criminal offense to publish (or say!) anything that offended the government, cast it in a bad light, or interfered with the sale of government bonds! I was amused that the only U.S. newspaper mentioned as writing about the 1918 'flu was in San Francisco, which published a front page headline "Wear a mask - save a life"! San Francisco was very far away; a Pennsylvania paper was coerced into not mentioning the flu!</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The net result of this - unless you have (or had) a relative who lived through the 1918 pandemic, you may never have heard of it, until you grew up and began to read the history they didn't teach you in school! That's how I learned about it. My parents were born in 1907 and 1912, so they were children when it happened; but they never mentioned it. The U.S. lost an estimated 675,000 people to the 1918 flu, out of a population of about 103.2 million.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It wasn't just the U.S. that forbade discussion of the 1918 pandemic. One of my favorite detective authors is the great Dorothy Sayers, whose first novel, <i>Whose Body?, </i>came out in 1923. Lord Peter Wimsey, her detective hero, was an officer in World War I. He came home with a case of "shell shock" - we call it PTSD today. In <i>Whose Body?</i> and a couple of other early novels, Lord Peter had shell shock attacks that essentially incapacitated him for a short time. But I never heard <i>any </i>mention of the 1918 flu in her novels. She must have lived through it; she was born in 1893. But the English didn't mention it, and so she didn't.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">So what about Shakespeare? The second half of the podcast was <i><a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/on-the-media-how-shakespeare-became-american-hero-on-the-media" target="_blank">How Shakespeare Became an American Hero</a>, </i>was an extended interview with James Shapiro, author of <em style="box-sizing: inherit;"><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562046/shakespeare-in-a-divided-america-by-james-shapiro/" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #048d99; fill: rgb(4, 141, 153); font-weight: 600; text-decoration-line: none;">Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future</a>. </em><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">As Mr. Shapiro points out, the plays touch some very sensitive subjects for Americans: <i>Othello,</i> in particular - a white woman married to a black man! Listen to hear the story of the world's worst dinner party, where John Quincy Adams sat next to Fanny Kemble, the great British actress, and mansplained to her why <i>Othello </i>was so disgusting! <i>Romeo and Juliet </i>became an issue because there are places where Romeo expresses emotion. The 19th century American insistence that a man should never show emotion actually meant that American actors had trouble playing Romeo - in at least one case, Romeo was played by a lesbian! And <i>The Merchant of Venice - </i>how awful to see a Jew insisting on his pound of flesh from a Christian! And let's not even get into the issue of who is allowed to play Hamlet!</span></span></p><p><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Seriously, the discussion goes into why we Americans never did, and don't now, talk much about some subjects - I think we're slowly beginning to, but it doesn't hurt us now and then to be reminded of where we've been and why it wasn't a great idea.</span></span></p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-33729799149505901552020-11-14T20:29:00.000-08:002020-11-14T20:29:59.776-08:00Pandemics<p> The pandemic is on everyone's mind these days, as it should be. So far there are 54,318,841 cases world wide, and 1,318,044 deaths to date. (<a href="http://Worldometer.info/coronavirus" target="_blank">Worldometer</a>). In the U.S. we have 11,226,038 cases and, so far 251,256 deaths. (<a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/" target="_blank">Worldometer - U.S.</a>) This is terrible. And the restrictions placed on us to try to control it are irksome, and it's spiraling out of control because we're getting tired of them.</p><p>But in a historical context, how bad is it really? A little over a million dead worldwide, out of a population of 7.8 <i>billion. </i>That's one in 6,000 people, world wide, roughly .017% of world population. In the U.S., with a population of 331,740,396, it's one in about 1,320 people, or .76% - worse than the worldwide stats, but then we are the number one hotspot these days. Population statistics from the <a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/united-states-population" target="_blank">World Population Review for the U.S.</a>.</p><p>A recent <i>Candorville </i>cartoon claimed that the 1918 flu killed 1 person in 75. This is a little simplistic, because estimates of the total number of deaths range from 17.4 million (.95% of world population) to 50 million (2.7%) to 100 million (5.4%). World population at the time was estimated at 1.8 billion. (Numbers from the <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/spanish-flu-largest-influenza-pandemic-in-history#:~:text=Estimates%20suggest%20that%20the%20world,deaths%20by%20Spreeuwenberg%20et%20al." target="_blank">Our World in Data article</a> on the Spanish flu.)</p><p>Compare that to our estimate for the coronavirus of .017% of world population and .76% of U.S. population.</p><p>For an even more horrific example, consider the Black Death (bubonic plague) which devastated Europe in the mid-14th century. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death" target="_blank">Wikipedia </a>says it "is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population." That's between 1 in 3 and 1 in 6 people. It took until 1500 to reach the population Europe had in 1300. And at that period, medical knowledge was rudimentary and hospitals were run by religious orders. We now know it was caused by a virus carried by rats and fleas; the actual cause of the bubonic plague wasn't identified until the mid-19th century. So people died from a nameless disease and didn't know where it came from.</p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif;">I'm not saying we have it easy right now. I'm just suggesting it could be worse. We're also flooded with news about our pandemic, every day, all day, on general media sources and social media. We've also come to believe that modern medicine can cure everything, because up till now it's done a pretty good job overall. So we have trouble believing it can't cure this. It may yet, there are promising vaccines on the way. Until they get here, mask up and remember - it could be worse.</span></p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-7686367126918613462020-11-09T17:34:00.000-08:002020-11-09T17:34:28.395-08:00Election Results<p>I admit I was very relieved when the press called the 2020 election for Joe Biden on Saturday. I felt relieved and happy all day, although unlike some people I didn't go out and dance in the street. This was a major change from the 2016 election, in which I was happy all election day until the votes started piling up for Trump in the evening. After it was clear he had won, I spent about three days in a sort of stunned coma, before I recovered enough to resume normal life. I had a really bad feeling about that presidency, and it gives me no satisfaction at all to realize I was right.</p><p>Now, 2 days after the election was called, my elation has subsided. They're still counting votes, but it's clear that Biden is winning both the electoral college and the popular vote, by solid margins. But Trump is still <i>there</i>, and he's refusing to concede, claiming election officials are concealing massive voter fraud and Democrats are conspiring to "steal" the election from him. Unless someone can eliminate his Twitter feed, we'll never be rid of him.</p><p>I'm also disappointed in the Democrats. I can't quite identify what they did wrong, but they were convinced they were going to sweep both houses, and I think it went to their heads. As it is, the Republicans are on the edge of retaining a Senate majority and the Democrats have lost seats in the house, and we're facing another 4 years of Mitch McConnell refusing to do <i>anything</i> the President or the Democrats - or the people of the United States - want him to do.</p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-3896267388639517452020-07-12T15:05:00.000-07:002020-07-12T15:05:03.784-07:00Did my ancestors own slaves?I've been interested in genealogy for some time, and with the help of Ancestry.com I've traced my father's family back to the early 19th century. In fact, I recently turned up an ancestor who was born in 1777.<div><br /></div><div>I find several things interesting. I have yet to find an ancestor in my father's line who wasn't born on this continent. My mother's family came to the U.S. in 1921 (from Canada), but the Ivy line, and the associated Moody line (my paternal grandmother's people) all seem to have been here from quite early. Even the guy born in 1777 came from North Carolina; he moved his family to Tennessee between 1805 and 1810. They all seem to have lived, before the Civil War, in the "border states" - Tennessee and Kentucky. Based on census and other records, they all seem to have relocated to Missouri sometime after the Civil war.</div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div>Both Tennessee and Kentucky had slaves before the Civil War, despite the fact that the U.S. banned the importation of slaves in March 1807. At that time the South had a self-sustaining population of over 4 million slaves (<a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/congress-abolishes-the-african-slave-trade">https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/congress-abolishes-the-african-slave-trade</a>), as children born to slaves were automatically enslaved. It remained legal to trade slaves within the U.S., they only banned importation.</div><div><br /></div><div>Both Tennessee and Kentucky joined the Confederacy when the war began. For that matter, Missouri (where everyone eventually ended up) was a slave state until the Kansas-Nebras.ka Act in 1854. So it would have been legal for a resident of any of those states to own slaves before the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. </div><p style="text-align: left;">So, did my ancestors own slaves? I'm just beginning to do the research, which will involve trying to read filmed census records from a very long time ago, in handwriting which may or may not be legible. My initial guess is, they were poor dirt farmers and couldn't afford slaves. But slaves owned were included in U.S. census records through the 1840 census, and I have no idea what I'll find. I'll post again when I have something definite.</p>hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-57756798911872053072020-06-15T19:37:00.000-07:002020-06-15T19:37:53.078-07:00Literary RacismAs a reaction to the closure of libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, I've been re-reading some of my extensive collection of classic detective stories, collected over most of my adult life. Specifically, I've been re-reading Ellery Queen novels, which I've read off and on for most of my adult life. In recent years I've been exploring new mystery writers at the local library, but that stopped with the shutdown, so I returned to what I had.<br />
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The Ellery Queen novels debuted in 1929 with <i>The Roman Hat Mystery </i>and continued into the early 1960s, after which the authors, Frederick Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, also allowed other writers to create Ellery Queen novels which didn't feature their detective, Ellery Queen, as a character. Most of the novels and stories I've been reading were written in the 1930s.<br />
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Given the Black Lives Matter protests over the last few weeks, I'm unusually sensitive to racism. I didn't think of Ellery Queen novels as racist, but I notice that while the Ellery Queen character almost never uses racial slurs, the New York City cops who feature in many stories do. This includes the character Inspector Richard Queen, Ellery's father. I especially noticed the use of the phrase "the shine" to refer to what a more educated person would probably have called "the Negro." This was well before the use of phrases like black, African American, or people of color. I also noticed that even when not using racist slang, descriptions of Negro characters, such as hotel maids, were condescending at best.<br />
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You can't go back and change history, or classic novels. In fact I've seen much worse racism in "tough guy" detective novels by Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane. I think the explanation has to be that some people in the 1930s talked that way, and the authors put it in for realistic effects. I still think the Ellery Queen novels are worth reading for the amazing logical puzzles they present. I've always preferred puzzle mysteries to the shoot-em-up types.hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-59029052793005015872020-06-01T14:19:00.001-07:002020-06-01T14:19:39.347-07:00And now we have to admit...One week ago, a man named George Floyd died at the hands of four policemen in Minneapolis. On camera. <br />
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On the <i>same day, </i>May 25, 2020, in Central Park, New York City, Christian Cooper, a birder, asked a woman with an unleashed dog to leash her dog. This was in an area clearly marked "dogs must be leashed." The woman refused to comply and became abusive, so Mr. Cooper began recording the incident, during which the woman called the police and told them she was being "threatened" by an African-American man - who had done nothing worse than ask her to obey the park rules.<br />
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Christian Cooper and George Floyd were both African-American. The policemen, and the woman with the dog, were white. That's the point. <br />
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These two incidents, on top of a series of other incidents in various states where black people were killed by police, have set off a firestorm of largely peaceful protests, unfortunately sometimes accompanied by violence and looting, in major cities all over the country. For the last <i>6 nights</i>. My county (Alameda) in California was put under curfew last night because of disturbances <i>all over the county, </i>including such largely white towns as Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill. In my entire life I've never been aware of so many large public protests, in so many different places all over the country, all at once.<br />
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I attended public school, and a public university, in the United States (California, specifically). Apart from being told about slavery in the South and about the civil war generally, I don't recall any emphasis on the fact that the U.S. is a racist society. I came out of my schooling believing the legends of a free, democratic society, where everyone had a chance to succeed. This despite the fact that I got into a major fight with my father when I was in high school, because I signed an Open Housing petition circulated by the local Methodist minister. My father was from southern Missouri, but had never really talked about his attitude toward African-Americans. But we had the Open Housing petition because Napa, CA in the 1950s was "redlined." Black people couldn't buy there. I'll never know, because Dad is gone; but I've recently wondered if that was why we moved from Vallejo (very racially mixed) to Napa in 1950, when I was 4. <br />
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I've always been a student of history, and the more I've learned about American history in the years since I left university, the clearer it is that the basic assumption of our social arrangements is that people of color are inferior to white people. Even, occasionally, when they are well educated and well-to-do. And this is still so.<br />
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I think we all have to admit now that the society we live in is racist, and values or devalues its members based on the color of their skin. It saddens me; I thought we were better than that. I was wrong. I don't think I'll detail here all the reasons this is so; as an aging white woman, I have no direct experience of them, and there are memes all over social media which include them in excruciating detail. They start with inferior education and go on to low paying job opportunities, lack of access to health care, and housing options in food deserts, but the real issue is the treatment of people of color by the police.<br />
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I don't know what we do to fix this. But it's becoming clear that we have to do something, probably starting with major changes in policing attitudes and approaches.<br />
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It's also becoming clear that white people are realizing we must do something. The policeman who knelt on George Floyd's neck has been fired, and arrested for 3rd degree murder (whatever that is). The woman in the park has lost her job (she was fired when the story went viral) and the dog (the rescue operation where she got it took it back). <br />
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There were times when nothing would have happened to either white person; in fact the policeman had a record of 18 complaints, none of which had ever led even to a reprimand.<br />
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Ironically, I think we owe the last week of demonstrations to social media. If those incidents hadn't been recorded, and shared widely on social media, it's possible that nothing would have happened, again. But they were, and there were consequences. We've complained a lot about social media the last few years. But in this case it may be the driving force pushing us to look at our racisim - and fix it. So we don't have to look at any more terrible videos.hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-15026567975503840652020-05-03T16:59:00.001-07:002020-05-03T16:59:53.543-07:00Eight Weeks and CountingToday is the beginning of the 8th week of the COVID-19 shutdown. Everything has stopped. We eat, sleep, do what exercise we can. In the absence of the gym, and especially the water aerobics classes, I'm losing core strength. I have to do something about that, because it means my old lower back trouble is acting up again. Walking has been painful off and on for the last 4 days, and I'd give a lot for a personal appointment with a physical therapist, but all that's available are videos. The doctor suggested some exercises, only two of which help at all. I'm living on Tylenol and trying to remember to stand up straight because that seems to help; but if I want to sit anywhere, I have to use the inflatable lumbar rolls I thought I didn't need any more. Well, I do.<br />
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I'm reading a lot. I've gone through the 11 detective stories I borrowed from the library just before they shut down, so I'm revisiting my extensive collection of early 20th century mystery authors. Right now I'm reading through all the Ellery Queen I have in hardback; I may have to replace some of the paperbacks with e-books, they're pretty old. A friend has recommended Elizabeth Letts' <i>Finding Dorothy,</i> so I've borrowed the e-book from the local library and will start it soon. But I'd like to have something <i>real </i>to do. I love reading, but I also like to accomplish things, and right now all the things I'd like to accomplish are out of reach.<br />
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OK, I'm depressed. I'll admit it. I doubt I'm the only one. I miss my friends from the exercise classes, and my friends from the chorus. God only knows when either of those activities will be available again. And let's not even discuss the small businesses and restaurants I like to patronize. I talk to my friends on the phone and in Zoom, and I email them. It's not the same. I'm glad Governor Newsom is being cautious, but waiting for a vaccine to be able to sing in a group again is terrifying.hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-42091993300529204032020-03-20T17:49:00.001-07:002020-03-20T17:49:39.622-07:00Life While Sheltering in PlaceSo now we can't leave home except for "essential purposes," or to walk or run for exercise (as long as we stay 6 feet away from anyone we meet). I love my house but sometimes I have to get out of it; today I took a long walk, up to the top of the canyon where I live. I used to take this walk regularly, with a cane, when I was recovering from knee replacement surgery. It's 3/4 of a mile one way and goes up about 200 feet in altitude; a good stiff walk.<br />
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I wondered what activity I'd see, walking up the canyon on a Friday afternoon when everyone is supposed to be at home. Quite a bit, actually. <br />
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I passed the elementary school, and there were some small kids (with parent attendants) riding skateboards down the slight slope of one of the driveways behind the school. Riding, here, means "sitting on."<br />
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A little farther on, I passed the baseball diamond, where a man was pitching baseballs for his teen-aged son to hit. Further on in the sports field was a family with a picnic, a couple of guys batting a tennis ball back and forth on the grass, a woman kicking a soccer ball with her small daughter, and a couple of small boys throwing frisbees.<br />
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The major action was at the 3 public tennis courts at the end of the school sports field. Every court had an active game, and the practice wall at the side of the courts had 2 guys hitting balls. I assume all the tennis buffs were here because the private club, further up the canyon, was closed for the duration, with all the other fitness facilities.<br />
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Farther up the canyon, I saw people walking dogs, people walking without dogs, bicyclists with kids on bicycles, bicyclists without kids. There weren't many people, but I was definitely not the only one out. I'm not sure why but it made me feel better.hederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.com3