A Dog in Spring, Raccoons Feeling Right at Home, Royal Exit, Floyd Verdict Pending, Trump’s Lessening Grip, Benefiting from the Pandemic

 While going to and from my son’s place in W Va. recently, I marveled at the abundant blooming “redbud” clusters, really more lavender than red. Set against redbud were new yellow-green leaves and abundant white blossoms, creating an array of contrasting colors. My son enjoys walking neighbors’ dogs in nearby woodlands, as his apartment does not allow pets. 

Spring has sprung and the raccoons are growing ever fatter and bolder. 

I do need to have branches cut soon to block their access to my house, though tree experts advise waiting until November to protect the trees. By November those raccoons will have become an army, so no time to wait. What are they eating? We take pains in my household to always put garbage out for collection in a bin, not in a plastic bag. The city won’t trap raccoons, but, in extremis, homeowners can pay services to capture them “humanely” and take them elsewhere. Where?

                               [ Apologies for odd spaces. I am unable to correct them.]

 

Prince Charles is already in his 70s and has not yet had a chance to become king. Now might his mother finally decide to give up the throne?

The Dereck Chauvin-George Floyd saga continues. In my own assessment (nor I am alone), while Floyd might have had underlying conditions contributing to his death, the proximate cause of his death was the neck and chest pressure exerted by the officer. Without it, he would not have died when he did. Probably the death was not intentional, but a reasonable person would/should have realized the need to let up on the pressure, so I would consider Chauvin guilty of manslaughter, at the very least. People deemed at fault for an auto accident can be charged with as much.

Donald Trump is still making mischief, misinforming and dumbing down portions of the electorate and hampering Republicans from having meaningful policy input. I saw Trump yard signs again on my recent visit to W Va. Yes, Mr. Trump is still firing up extremists, but with his finger off twitter, he is hobbled, though stubbornly clinging onto the cult of personality that he fostered as president, dividing the Republican Party when it needs unity. Because of his blustery primary threats, few Republicans dare go against him. As a Democrat, I am not so sorry to see this, but in the long run, our country needs a vigorous, informed, and credible 2-party system. The man is still also promoting distrust in elections, in government, and in medical experts, though Trump himself got vaccinated after recovering from Covid, a hypocrite through and through. Of course, Mr. Trump is not just a cause of division, but also a symptom of it, as per this recent article: Why Political Sectarianism Is a Growing Threat to American Democracy, NY Times, 4-19-2021, “The two political parties see the other as an enemy. It is an outlook that makes compromise impossible and encourages elected officials to violate norms in pursuit of an agenda or an electoral victory. It turns debates over changing voting laws into existential showdowns. And it undermines the willingness of the loser to accept defeat — an essential requirement of a democracy

 

An 8-month-old boy died recently after being shot by his 3-year-old brother at a Houston apartment. The older child had found and fired an unsecured firearm. How often does this need to happen before parents keep guns locked up, or better yet, out of the home altogether? It takes only one gunshot to kill someone. I remember a case not long ago where a child sitting in a grocery cart opened his mother’s purse and killed her instantly with her own gun. That is not something a youngster should have to live with for the rest of his life. A handgun is rarely protective of the owner; statistically, it’s a hazard. It’s proven to be hazardous even for police to carry firearms. And, sadly, mass shootings in our country continue unabated, Indianapolis and Kenosha, being the latest, or perhaps not the latest by the time this gets posted. These shootings have become an epidemic. Some are probably copycat events. The public is almost becoming numb to news of gun killings, which make us all into sitting ducks. A century from now, when I and anyone else reading this are no longer here, the availability of guns and US firearms deaths may have become greatly reduced after a waning of the gun culture, at least, let’s hope so. There does seem to be a gradual overall shift in attitude against gun-ownership, but far too gradual. And to counter it, some gun owners are clutching onto their weapons even more tightly, creating another sharp social division.

A pull factor for would-be immigrants rarely emphasized is the presence of family members in the United States who are willing and able to pay smugglers. Migrants themselves don’t have the means.

Ramadan is now underway. I’ve had several past visitors who have fasted from sunup to sundown, finally breaking their fast with a single date. One visitor convinced me to join in Ramadan fasting, which I did, but only for 2 days. With the advent of the pandemic, our world seems to have shrunk. I’ve not had any foreign visitors for more than year now nor have I traveled outside the US during that time.

According to friends in Bhutan, almost their entire adult population was vaccinated against Covid, all in about a week. Bhutan is a small, isolated Buddhist mountain kingdom (population 700,000+) with well-guarded borders, making this feat possible.

Though I may be in the minority, I believe that the US should still leave a small deterrent force in Afghanistan. Now, we can only hope that some gains, especially for women, will remain.

Raúl Castro, at almost 90, is stepping down as head of the communist party in Cuba. He and brother Fidel have ruled the island since 1959. Doubtless no longer having a Castro at the helm means that Cubans may now feel they have a few more choices, so this may be the start of a very gradual opening up. Erich Fromm in Escape from Freedom argued that having too many choices could be paralyzing to people used to having none. So a gradual transition may actually be beneficial for Cubans, as long as it doesn’t backtrack, like the Chinese Communist Party appears to be doing now.

Reuters, 4-19-2021, Cuban dissidents decry harassment, as congress denounces ‘counterrevolution’ attempts, https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/cuban-dissidents-decry-harassment-congress-denounces-counterrevolution-attempts-2021-04-18/

The headline reads: Premature baby defies odds after being born at just 22 weeks. As mentioned before, I’ve been an interpreter for families with children born at 21 and 22 weeks who are full of personality and promise, so have become an advocate for preserving unborn lives after the first trimester. If a woman has already gone through the early weeks of morning sickness, why not go all the way?

An estimated 40% abortions are done through medication. Some states are now trying to outlaw medication abortions. Presumably, these are early abortions and, in my view, abortion opponents should not focus on preventing them, as attempted curbs on medication abortions, performed privately in a woman’s own home, will be largely useless. Even if medication abortions should be legally prohibited in a state, many women will find ways around them. As an adoptive as well as a birth mother, I would consider myself pro-life, but don’t think that medication abortions are a winnable fight for pro-lifers. Instead, alternatives should be offered to women further along in pregnancy. Women—and men—at all stages of parenthood do need support, which is where prolife efforts should be focused.

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If everything seemed smooth sailing for us for an extended period, if we were always on vacation or on our honeymoon, if we could finally rest on our laurels, then we’d soon get bored and restless. The effects of an achievement or victory are often fleeting, while losses seem to linger. Losses do actually make us work harder and call on all our faculties to overcome them. Certainly that was my experience after an unexpected and unwanted divorce after 4 children and more than 20 years of marriage. The even greater losses of my older son and Cuban foster son, 2 years in succession, were blows from which I’ve never fully recovered, but which spurred me on to join the Peace Corps in my 60s, seeking a new environment and new associations. I also started a brand-new career afterward as an on-call Spanish interpreter and translator. I cherish and protect my remaining children—actually adults—now more than ever, glad for time we can spend together.

 

Occupational therapists, with whom I worked for 16 years at the OT association, then as a Peace Corps health volunteer, and later on during medical missions to Honduras, have always emphasized the importance of engaging in purposeful activity, as each person defines it. I’ve mentioned purposeful activity before, but the pandemic has challenged us anew to seek and find it. We might well consider the pandemic a calamity, which it definitely is, but one that has also confronted us with a huge challenge both as individuals and collectively, giving new meaning to our lives. For one, the pandemic has facilitated the removal of Donald Trump from political office, a very meaningful task. The time to be thankful for the pandemic is not yet here, but it has had some positive effects. An unexpected and unpredicted event like the current worldwide pandemic is certainly an outlier, a big surprise, a real shock, in contrast to the sun always rising or the tides ebbing and flowing. As discussed in my Confessions book, chaos theory posits that such outlier events do disrupt our plans, upsetting the previous order. They really shake things up. It’s hard now to imagine a time before the pandemic. Yet we may still derive some positive changes from it. Of course, those new favorable outcomes, in time, also hold the seeds of their own demise. Nothing is forever.