Pulled From the Headlines

Ugandan President Signs Anti-Gay Law That Includes Death Penalty as a Punishment: The legislation is among the most restrictive of its kind in the world and was condemned by Western leaders and the United Nations human rights body. Afghan Women Who Aided U.S. Military Wait for Asylum in America: Members of the Afghan Army’s all-female platoon are some of the roughly 70,000 Afghans living in the United States whose temporary status has left them with an uncertain future.

Texas Lawmakers Pass Ban on D.E.I. Programs at State Universities: It’s the latest state to defund diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

I really try hard not to regurgitate what’s in the news in my blogs, but today was the final day! It started with an opinion writer last week telling us not to discount DeSantis’s run for U.S. president, and then Erdoğan won re-election as president of Turkey. I strongly prefer not to give print time to either of these two despots or the criminal known as Trump. It’s all too depressing, as I suspect it is for my subscribers as well. It is interesting (an academic way to imply neutrality) that many of my golden age friends are now on mood enhancers due to the 24-hour news cycle and reading the headlines.

In other countries, it is mostly older people who report pain, which makes some sense since their bodies are beyond warranty; but in the U.S., younger and younger people are in distress. Headlines report epidemic depression and drug use. Twenty-two mass shootings since the first of the year, the abysmal behavior of our Supreme Court justices, climate disasters, and an all-out attack on speaking truth in academia. In the vernacular of everyday speech, WTF.

However, while the U.S. is clearly in a state of emotional distress and lack of quality and qualified leadership, surely, we are not in as bad a shape as other countries (many of whom are failed states due to our constant interventions and machinations.) My doctor, a Pakistani by birth, assured me last week that Pakistan was on the brink of major disaster and chaos. She was thrilled to have to put up with the problems in the U.S.

I get that other countries, especially those that we have helped cause to fail, become tyrannies, but how do you explain what is happening here in America? I can’t—can you?

Automatic doors and the Post Office: Letter to My Senator

Hello, Senator,

There are many reasons to cherish our postal service, which is the best in the world, except when it isn’t. Our former president, Trump, and his henchmen did their best to destroy it and give it to private interests. Congress has for years sucked the life out of its budget, and many current employees are poorly trained and unmotivated.

Dville is lucky to have professional, courteous, and efficient counter agents at most of its offices. I have NO complaints. However, I do have concerns; and if I were disabled and not merely elderly, I would consider a class action lawsuit against the U.S. Government for violating the Persons with Disabilities Act.

Most post offices have some sort of automatic open door activator at the entrance. But if your post office has a mantrap or a separate lobby in front of the service desk lobby, there is no such helpful mechanism. No one opens the door for you, human or mechanical. It makes no sense; it is annoying at best and prohibitive at worst. 

My favorite local post office, in Dville, is a large, well maintained facility—with a great staff and only a single, heavy door to the inner lobby!

Is this matter the same as police violence, mass shootings, inflation, the Ukraine war, or immigration? No, this issue doesn’t keep me up at night like formidable problems do.  It’s not even a question of how we can contain the House Speaker and his minions. However, it is an issue worthy of your consideration. I want to retain our postal service, and making access better for all citizens is one step in that direction.

Sincerely,

 Carole

The Unintended Consequences of Altruism

All good deeds get punished. Yes, I know. It’s a cliché—but true. What I don’t have in my bag of truisms is that recipients of good deeds also get punished—and that may be more universal than its sister saying. 

Another related platitude is, “Please save me from the world’s saviors.” People with a savior complex often cause more harm than good. Both unexamined kindness and saviorism can result in enfeebling, lowering self-worth, reducing personal independence, diminishing self-respect and, in essence, changing the power dynamics between individuals giving the do-gooder power over those they mean to help. 

It is right and just to help the poor access what they need to survive and thrive. However, take this recent experience as an example of good intentions going wrong. I was at a COVID outreach event providing vaccinations to a relatively poor and immigrant community. We were offering $100 gift cards to anyone twelve or older getting a shot. However, the government changed its cost policy the week before, demanding that we collect a $21.17 administrative fee. This amount was too steep for most of these folks, and our goal was to get people immunized. Our Public Health Department agreed to accept as little as one dollar and still provide the shot.  

Unfortunately, the flyers for this event went out prior to the change in fee policy and advertised the vaccinations as free. Another sponsoring agency at the event arranged to donate a dollar for each person getting a shot.  

My job at the health department is to register people for the shot and collect the fee. I explained to the first couple of people in line that the shot was no longer completely free—there was now a fee. I explained that they could pay as little as a dollar or two but, if they could not, we would happily cover the cost. Each one wanted to pay, maintaining their desire to pay something from their own pocket. They dug in coin purses and pulled out wrinkled dollar bills from their pants pockets. They saw it as a way to contribute personally to their own health care. One man even said, “Please save the dollar for another who doesn’t have it.” 

The other agency’s worker ran over. “No, no,” she said. “Don’t ask for money. We advertised the vaccination as free, and we can donate the fee.” I stopped. She was not going to listen to me; she did not understand their desire to be self-accountable. Even the small contribution that they made gave them back some pride and independence.  

I wasn’t happy at the end of the event. I thought that we took far more than we gave.  

We are again trying to tie welfare to work … the last time the government did that without providing adequate day care the result was disastrous. Children left unattended, and worse abused by make-shift care-givers. When will we stop and consider the affects of our decisions on those we impose our will upon.

Honey Badger

According to the news magazine, The Week, arrau turtle moms talk to babies while they are still in the egg. Amazing, right? I mean, I know many pregnant women who sing, talk, and play music to their pregnant bellies and firmly believe they are communicating. However, these mommy turtles communicate to their future hatchlings a certain time to break out of their shells and head for the sea. Going en-masse increases the likelihood of more babies making it to the protection of the water without being eaten by predators.

I learned this bit of turtle trivia back in February 2023. Since then, I have visited Jekyll Island on the coast of Georgia and met Honey Badger, an injured loggerhead turtle. The local turtle center rescues injured and sick turtles, in addition to protecting the nests of turtle eggs to increase the hatchlings’ chances for survival. On my visit, I met Honey Badger, a loggerhead juvenile who had suffered a fractured carapace (shell). I also learned that the gender of these long-lived survivors isn’t evident until they reach 30 years of age—so we are just assuming that Honey Badger is a girl.

So, imagine that humans can really communicate with their embryo growing in the womb. What would you tell it? “Hi! Welcome to the world where you can be shot and killed in your kindergarten class, raped and forced to have an unwanted child, trafficked for sex or labor, forced into child soldiering, and deprived of basic necessities while the top one percent owns mansions and yachts on three continents. You can watch as much violence and sex on TV and social media as you can stomach, but don’t expect to grow into an empathic and loving adult. Oh, and did I tell you that, due to climate change, you may not have food to eat or water to drink? But don’t worry! There are plenty of folks who will get you hooked on fentanyl, so you won’t care.”

Mifepristone, Narcan, and the Politics of Hate in America 2023  

Mifepristone, Narcan, and the Politics of Hate in America 2023  

The catastrophic climate change may not be the weather but the social climate—here in the U.S. and abroad. We are experiencing social behavior drastically and negatively escalate into an era of hate, selfishness, intolerance, and violence. The attempts to limit access to life saving and life altering medications like Mifepristone and Narcan are examples of intolerance and ideology, not medical science. We should be progressing from the enlightenment; instead, we are regressing faster than icebergs are melting at the North Pole.  

Why the malaise? Could it be over-population? Like rats in a cage, people exhibit happy copulatory behavior, until the cage gets overcrowded, and they begin to become aggressive and even cannibalistic. Could it be the dome of gloom hanging over the planet? What is there for young people to aspire to if it’s all going to end in fire, drought, floods, or the mushroom-shaped cloud of nuclear war? Could it be the media and its false lies, conspiracy theories, and gun fetishes that invade our space into our deepest private sanctum?. Or perhaps it’s the fact that the news cycle is immediate, gives no time for perspective, and lets everyone see who has the good stuff and who doesn’t. 

Maybe it’s as simple as the lack of moral leadership worldwide in politics and religion, education, and business. Whatever the reason(s), we are in deep doodoo, and only we can get ourselves out of it! 

Bad Day at Black Rock

The phrase “Bad Day at Black Rock” implies a fateful day that brings disaster. This particular day was a bad day at black rock. Ella has had a great throwing season, surpassing her personal best at both discus and hammer each week since training began. She has won first place or placed in almost all of her meets. But today was the big one, the semi-final to go to State, and her dream turned to dust. She started off the meet badly, but ended up almost there—and then she wasn’t. To make matters worse, the scoring coach made an error and called out that Ella had placed fourth. Nine young ladies threw, but only four could stay in competition for the State meet. When the other throwers’ parents contested the result, the coach had to renege. The confusion was caused by a new rule. If applied, Ella would be going to the State competition, but the new rule was waived, and she is not. Lots of tears. Lots of parental angst. Lots of hand wringing.

When her mom lost a championship overtime match at a high school field hockey game, it had taken me two Friendly’s ice cream sundaes and a pot of chicken noodle soup to cheer her up.

What we grieve is not the loss of one match or one game or even a marriage. What we lose is how we imagined winning would feel: high school star, college scholarships, team hero carried off the field on teammates shoulders, a life-long companion to depend on, maybe children, and economic stability. Our investment is in the future, not the present, and whatever the potential consequences of winning—in this case, going to State finals and recruitment by college coaches—becomes a lot to lose.

I’m just feeling sad for my granddaughter and her parents because I have no words of comfort. My good advice is useless when there is no desire for it to be heard. They aren’t able to grasp that we are not disappointed in them, but disappointed for them. So, I stay silent, hoping they will figure it out for themselves. My latest fortune cookie at the sushi restaurant said, “If you see disappointment as an opportunity, then all will be well.” Let’s hope.

Holidays, Football and Hunting

The silly season has passed—starting with Thanksgiving and ending with New Year’s celebrations. In many parts of the country, it is also the hunting season, and everywhere it is football playoff season. I can’t help but imagine what the combination of these three factors might produce.

The turkey felt cold and dead to the touch; the dad had left before dawn to go up to the lake for the opening of duck season; and the girls were watching cartoons and pre-Thanksgiving Day pre-parade activities on television. By 11:30 a.m., the kitchen and the house had taken on the warm scents and nostalgic aromas from the comingling of turkey roasting, potatoes boiling, and sweet desserts baking. The mom anticipated having mashed potatoes and stuffing on the same plate smothered with gravy. She felt a certain pride in her prowess in the kitchen. Soon family started arriving for the early dinner, bringing their contributions to the festivities.

Everyone was too polite to mention that the dad, who had scheduled this early meal so as not to interfere with kickoff, was not yet home; and the turkey was well past the twenty-minute cooling off period prior to carving. The adults were still too polite to comment about him rushing in with three ducks slung across his shoulder, still dressed in their feathered finery due to the lack of time to field dress them before coming home. But this was a grim dose of the reality of daddy’s hunting trip for his two shocked little girls. Finally washed and seated at the head of the table, he signaled the start of the feast.

Not thirty minutes later, mother again stood alone in the kitchen. The heavily scented sweet aromas had given over to a greasy, leftover smell; the dining room was a table littered with the cold, skeletal remains of the dinner. As she faced the mountain of dishes and pots, the muffled sounds of kickoff drifted up from the family room.  She swore it would be the last Thanksgiving dinner that she ever prepared.

Years later on crisp fall days, when she saw a flock of wild ducks on the wing or a pair of Mallards gliding placidly on a canal, she smiled and gave thanks.

Is AI the End of Human Art and Intellectual Creativity?

Is AI the End of Human Art and Intellectual Creativity?Headline: U.S. Copyright Office: AI Generated Works Are Not Eligible for Copyright.

Wow! I wonder what the decision will be when the illustrations for a children’s book are AI generated but the story is not. Can you imagine book publishers, whose earnings are in chaos, begin to find out that they can now avoid paying an artist/illustrator and instead upload a good AI app?

A friend was able to create a graduate level course with goals, a syllabus, assessments, and deliverables as well as a 35-word course catalogue description in less than 30 minutes. He went through it with a fine toothcomb, looking for nonsense or inaccuracies—and found it to be 80% accurate. 

I put in prompts for each of the original watercolor illustrations that my artist friend had done for a children’s book and replicated images for all of them. Both my friend and I found the illustrations to be awesome. Children would love them, but . . .?

We can’t wish AI away, just as we can’t wish nuclear weapons away. We need to figure it out, harness its phenomenal potential benefits, and mediate its potential harm. Robotics, Photoshop, Google—none of these genies are going back in the bottle.

Lessons Forgotten

The ACLU’s debunking myths about transgendered girls in sports makes a good read. You can find it at https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/four-myths-about-trans-athletes-debunked.

My blog does not regurgitate what you can find for yourself online or in the daily media. However, I do intend to raise issues that are important to me by tying them into my personal experience, my learning curve, and my hope to evoke civil discourse for the benefit of all.

I have a trans grandson. While he was a girl, he was into all manner of extreme sports, even receiving a national martial arts scholarship. But dresses, dances—no no, not his deal. His guitar playing was sad; his desire to continue as a female became unbearable until, in desperation, he dropped out of school and GoFunded a double mastectomy. Prior to changing, he, who was then a she, could beat any boy or girl at any sport in which he was active. Is he huge? No, he is petite—built like me (the only one of my grandchildren who is).

Before researching the facts behind the hullabaloo about transgendered children playing sports, I only had mixed feelings about this issue. Any other attempts to limit LGBTQ rights and needs is absolutely indefensible. I have a granddaughter who is a champion shot put thrower. So is her big brother. While she can’t outdistance him yet, she holds her own with the boys on her high school team. There is no mistaking her for a boy!

The consequences of making transgendered children ”other” is simply too heinous to contemplate. It feels a lot like the sports boycott against people of color. Do we really want to repeat the hate of the past?

The Scariest Man in America

It wasn’t too long ago that I considered Newt Gingrich a candidate for the worst of the worst. A little while later, my more progressive college students considered Dick Cheney to be the most evil man in America—but he managed to raise Lynne Cheney, so he can’t be all bad. Then there were the Trump years: campaign and time in office. Wow. Perhaps when compared to Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, he looks a little tame. Certainly, he is no match for the leaders of ISIS and the Taliban. Nonetheless, he is a wanna be tyrant and did incalculable damage to democracy and society.

Now racing to catch up to Trump’s mendacity and hubris—and perhaps even more dangerous to America—is the governor of Florida, DeSantis.

D Despotic

E Evil

S Sadistic

A Atrocious

N Nazi

T Tyrant

I Intolerant

S Supremacist

……..

Trump

T Tyrant

R Ruthless

U Unaccountable

M Misogynist

P Prevaricator

If the 2024 election is meant to select the most heinous man in America, it would be a tossup between these two with Ted Cruz in third place. Of course, there is always Marjorie Taylor Greene, if you want to throw a woman into the race.

I’m going back to bed, pulling the covers over my head, and hoping for better choices for Americans.

The Scariest Man in America

It wasn’t too long ago that I considered Newt Gingrich a candidate for the worst of the worst. A little while later, my more progressive college students considered Dick Cheney to be the most evil man in America—but he managed to raise Lynne Cheney, so he can’t be all bad. Then there were the Trump years: campaign and time in office. Wow. Perhaps when compared to Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, he looks a little tame. Certainly, he is no match for the leaders of ISIS and the Taliban. Nonetheless, he is a wanna be tyrant and did incalculable damage to democracy and society.

Now racing to catch up to Trump’s mendacity and hubris—and perhaps even more dangerous to America—is the governor of Florida, DeSantis.

D Despotic

E Evil

S Sadistic

A Atrocious

N Nazi

T Tyrant

I Intolerant

S Supremacist

……..

Trump

T Tyrant

R Ruthless

U Unaccountable

M Misogynist

P Prevaricator

If the 2024 election is meant to select the most heinous man in America, it would be a tossup between these two with Ted Cruz in third place. Of course, there is always Marjorie Taylor Greene, if you want to throw a woman into the race.

I’m going back to bed, pulling the covers over my head, and hoping for better choices for Americans.