Have just found out that a fellow Peace Corps volunteer with us in Honduras, a father, community activist, and world citizen, has died. Apparently, his death was not Covid-related. He lived a good and active life, which is a blessing. I always view deaths from the vantage point of my own age. so any of younger persons, such as my son and Cuban foster son, I regard as tragedies. My late Peace Corps colleague was Rajit Shah, age 49.

Now that all Peace Corps volunteers have been pulled back to this country, the National Peace Corps Association says that in light of the virus spread, “we must evolve our models of service, our training and support, to meet these challenges.” Just what a new Peace Corps might look like remains to be seen, but probably sending volunteers abroad again will have to wait for widespread vaccine development and use. As a PC health volunteer, I often participated in community vaccine efforts, so that may be a task that future volunteers can get behind.

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” But the venerable Post Office, now under a new Trump cost-cutting leader, has drastically cut hours just when mail volume is increasing. And mail delivery has become less reliable since. Just recently, I did not get a daughter’s Mother’s Day card nor did my nephew get his birthday card and check. An Express Mail package was delivered 3 days late. Trump may be counting on this guy to seriously delay mail-in ballots in November. Of course, Trump himself mails his own ballot to his “home address” in Florida.

According to the latest information I could find, Cuba, with a population of 11 million, had only had had 87 reported virus deaths and no new cases. The government had imposed very strict measures, which was possible on an island and under an authoritarian system, which in terms of virus control, turned out to be beneficial. However, a few cases may have emerged again after victory was declared. (New York City with a somewhat lower population has had 23,000 deaths.)

Trinidad and Tobago are reported to have sent fighters to join with Islamic State on Syria. Now after a number have been killed, some of their women and children are coming back to the islands. The ISIS Phenomenon in Trinidad and Tobago https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox

Jamaican school now says 7-year-old girl with dreadlocks may attend Washington Post, Aug. 5, 2020

(Cuba, Trinidad, and Jamaica all fall within my jurisdiction as volunteer Caribbean Coordinator for Amnesty Int’l USA.)

How did wearing a face mask, or not, during the pandemic become a political statement? It became political because Donald Trump, by exhortation and example, made not wearing one a constitutional right and a display of political allegiance like openly carrying a gun, thus asserting your independence, your individual freedom, and your rejection of fake news and alarmist elitist science. So, the result of freely showing your face, breathing, coughing, and circulating at will among others is that now you are at liberty to get sick and possibly die and to kill others at the same time.

Trump also had wanted a big in-person convention, with face masks optional but MAGA hats obligatory, where he would look good on TV, while railing against fake news and promising the prompt reopening of the economy and schools, and return to normal life. Herman Cain’s unfortunate demise from Covid 19 after attending Trump’s rally maskless in Oklahoma is an object lesson. Rarely seen wearing a face mask in public himself (only once so far), Trump is still trying to pin blame for the virus on those sneaky “radical leftists” leftists Obama and Biden. (They unleashed the virus to just to make Trump look bad?) Trump is cutting funding for testing and changing reporting requirements, reasoning that virus numbers won’t rise so fast if we don’t know what they are.

However, Trump has been keeping track of his poll numbers and, as he sees them plummet, suddenly he is doing an about face, promoting masks and hand washing, rather lukewarmly, and reluctantly cancelling his big Florida convention, better late than never. It has been getting harder to dismiss the virus as “fake news.” Now poor Dr. Deborah Birx is under attack by Trump for warning that the virus is spreading fast and furious.

Don Jr. sent me a heartfelt cyber appeal for a contribution to help his father win and also keep a Republican Senate for his next term. Sarah Sanders and Mitch McConnell have sent similar appeals. A friend in Miami told me that he and his wife are staunch Trump supporters, so such folks definitely exist. He believes Trump’s assertion that Biden was up to no good in Ukraine.

Some Biden supporters are recommending that he not debate Trump, why give him that forum when Biden is so far ahead? We’ve already heard Biden debate Democratic Party opponents. Biden should probably agree one or two debates so Trump cannot accuse him of being debate-shy. Trump may fall even farther on his face debating Biden.

That even 39% of potential voters still support Mr. Trump is surprising to me. Not only are Americans dying in the thousands but the man is obviously cognitively impaired and he knows it, which is why he keeps bragging about how he “aced” a simple cognitive test for potential dementia subjects. I have met a few ardent Trump supporters, including recently in W Va., with all of us wearing masks and maintaining a safe distance, contrary to Trump’s own previous virus exhortations. I certainly don’t argue politics with them, but am curious about how otherwise seemingly normal folks can still believe the man and stand so faithfully by him. Some cite the need to listen to “both sides,” so I have been listening, but haven’t heard anything convincing, just that some still have a “gut” feeling for the guy. Maybe his supporters see Trump as “one of us,” a man with little book learning or expertise, who still makes important decisions on his own for the whole nation. They vicariously enjoy the power he exerts.

After his death, I’m glad for my fleeting interactions with John Lewis. I posted a tribute to him citing his outlier support of Cuban political prisoners on a bilingual website, Democracia Participativa. Now Trump has been dissing Lewis, even in death, for not attending his inauguration!

I did attend Obama's first inauguration with my daughter Stephanie who came out from Hawaii, all of us crammed in together, with hardly room to breathe. Since I live on Capitol Hill, I walked over to observe Trump's pitiful inauguration crowd, and attended the rousing women's gathering the next day.

The outdated Electoral College system allowed the fluke of someone who lost the popular vote by a massive 3 million votes to assume the presidency, and Trump has not been able to close that deficit, nor has he tried--nor is he capable of doing so, as he does seem to have learning and other deficits. It's not advisable under a democracy to continue with a system that allows someone with so little voter support to assume the presidency. Trump has done a lot of damage to our country and the world, not least by facilitating so many premature virus deaths

A perhaps useful development is the unexpected rise of “Rednecks for Black Lives,” creating an alliance among poor folks of all races. It really is an anomaly that so many poor white people still support Trump, perhaps identifying with him, when they have virtually no chance of ever acquiring his status. Now maybe all poor folks can be inspired to band together against him.

Sending heavy-handed armed federal agents into Democratic-leaning cities that never asked for them and don’t want them there is a violation of the state and local rights that Republicans have always vowed to support. Is sending federal agents into Democratic strongholds a tactic to distract from the virus and display the strength of the Trump administration? Is it an effort to foment civil unrest? By letting the virus surge out of control and seeming to arouse conflict in major cities, many citizens, myself included, are feeling vulnerable and unprotected by the federal government—in fact, as though our government is actually working against us. If Biden wins election, I hope he can reverse this trend and bring people and the various levels of government back in sinc.

Beyond his lies, colossal ignorance of ordinary facts, and dismissal of expert advice, Mr. Trump displays scary psychological traits such as a deep lack of self-esteem that he overcomes by boasting and making impulsive, vindictive, and harmful decisions, harmful to others and also to himself. His staff must go crazy trying to keep him in check. His niece Mary in her best-selling tell-all book reasons that he has always been protected by those around him. But now, even some Republican lawmakers, worried about their own reelection, are quietly peeling off.

If and when Joe Biden wins election in Nov., many of us who will have voted for him will heave a huge sigh of relief. But we won’t be cheering as wildly and jumping up and down as we did when Obama was first elected, or even how we women would have felt had Hillary carried the day. No, we will just be relieved that it’s finally over, allowing us all to start pitching in to undo the damage. Biden’s stature is growing in contrast to Trump and some of us who might have been lukewarm before are starting to really like the guy. He will need to reach out to Trump supporters to join us in healing the divide that Mr. Trump has deliberately created.

If Trump should somehow manage to prevail once again by another election fluke, losing the popular vote by an even wider margin, no telling what might happen next. Assumption of the office of president by someone with a big vote deficit is a recipe for division and partisanship. Most citizens resent being governed by someone they never voted for. Pressure to end the Electoral College system will mount as citizens rebel against governance by a president most do not support.

Yet some voters, myself included, at first, were willing to give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt and time as a novice to learn on the job. He needed to close that gap in support, but he has just gotten worse and lost support over time. Should we even consider his idea to delay the election? Better, to have it early! In any case, if he loses, he is going to protest. If he loses, then late-night shows will have to come up with new material.

Senator Mitt Romney is warning that Trump may actually pull off another minority-vote Electoral College victory because Biden supporters may be either overconfident (as happened with Hillary) or lukewarm (also happened with Hillary) and won’t turn out to actually vote, especially during the pandemic. Meanwhile, Trump’s hardcore remains committed to voting, no matter what. If Trump should prevail again, it will be a total disaster for our country and the whole world. Then I might not even live to see the end of the Trump era.

This accidental president, his family, staff, and supporters are unbelievable in so many ways; we never saw a president or his family act like this before and hope we never do again. Fiction could not have invented him. Trump is already threatening not to go quietly. If we can just get him out of office, then pundits, political scientists (as I once was), psychologists, and historians can try to figure out what went wrong.

Mr. Trump is obviously unhappy in his job and is in way over his head. He would be much more content out playing golf, tweeting daily, acing simple cognitive tests, and holding rallies, possibly even with paying supporters.

Unfortunately, federal executions have been resumed after decades, now under this “law and order” presidency. Those being executed have been convicted of terrible crimes, sometimes even child murder, but, as a matter of principle, I oppose the government having the ability to kill its own citizens. And there is also a slim chance that the accused is not actually guilty, as some have alleged at their executions.

We just have to pray that 87-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, now undergoing medical treatment once again, hangs on past Nov. because if Trump loses, he won’t be leaving office until Jan. 2021 and could still name another Supreme Court justice with the support of a very lame and lame-duck Republican Senate.

The outdated Electoral College system allowed the fluke of someone who lost the popular vote by a massive 3 million votes to assume the presidency, and Trump has not been able to close that deficit, nor has he tried--nor is he capable of doing so, as he does seem to have learning and other deficits. It's not advisable under a democracy to continue with a system that allows someone with so little voter support to assume the presidency. Trump has done a lot of damage to our country and the world, not least by facilitating so many premature virus deaths.

Surprising now to see prominent Jewish-American journalist Peter Beinart publicly endorsing a one-state solution for Israel/Palestine! A few non-conforming Jewish friends have been suggesting that for a quite a while, promoting equal citizenship for all within what is now Israel, but expanded to encompass surrounding Palestinian territories. But after all the hard-won victories in creating the Israel of today, I certainly would not expect to see a combined state during my lifetime. Given all the animosities and grievances built up over the years and the economic disparities between Jews and Palestinians, would it even be feasible? It would certainly take a long time. Jews began pressing the British mandate, granted by the League of Nations to create a Jewish state in Palestine, citing Biblical claims back in 1918, long before the Holocaust brought the idea to fruition. But Palestinians were hardly to blame for the Holocaust and they also have been living in the area for generations. Perhaps all the upheavals now with Covid and the Trump presidency will spark a rethinking of the future of Israel? It’s good that the annexation of Palestinian land, at least for now, has been put on hold. A future hybrid nation might make for a more peaceful Middle East, though it’s hard right now to imagine internal peace prevailing within its own national borders. In our increasingly inter-connected world, where Covid-19 respects no national boundaries, contrary to Donald Trump’s “Fortress America” policy, such boundaries are blurring all over the world and may yet extend to both Israel and the United States.

After living in my house for more than 50 years, now I find that my backyard maple tree, which I’ve watered and nourished and which has shaded the back yard for decades, has shed its leaves and died. My children often played under its embrace. It’s a very tall, sturdy tree, towering over my son’s gravestone underneath. But it has to come down and that is proving problematic because of its great height, tight quarters, and a bunch of overhead wires. One company refused to even do it and other estimates have been extra-ordinarily high. But I do need to have it taken down somehow. Here is the dead tree, seen from my 3^rd floor rear balcony and also my son’s gravestone underneath.

After my last posting here, I’ve been asked more about my time in South Sudan in 2006, before it became an independent nation. South Sudan has a long way to go to heal longstanding tribal divisions and develop a viable economy, though its oil reserves do help. After a one-month visit and travels there, I am hardly an expert, though more informed than the average person. Here is a photo of me with one of many local women who often accompanied me to fetch water and held my arm or hand, fingering my earrings and offering me food. though we shared no common language, only the common language of our humanity.

It’s been rather amazing and wonderful to me to have been accepted so well everywhere in the world, especially in Latin America, where a common language helps me blend in.

Now my son living in small-town W Va. where feels right at home, has brought his wife and family there from Hawaii. It’s quite an adjustment. Let’s see how they do when winter comes.