Somber Anniversary, Dreams, Kwanza, A New Year, Figures of Speech, West Virginia, Firearms, Desmond Tutu, Around the World, Updating Roe, Purposeful Activity

[Since  I am having trouble now posting this date's entire blog with all its photos, will stop this one here and continue it immediately next. So, the entire post must be read in 2 parts, going back.]

Dec. 19 is always a bittersweet date for our family, as it’s my older daughter Melanie’s birthday and the day my son Andrew died in 1994.

Only in dreams, my son Andrew, as well as foster son Alex (who died one year later), have solid flesh that I can actually pinch to make sure they are really there and really alive. My father, who died in 1996, once appeared to me as a shining orb that woke me up while I was sleeping in my parents’ home after his funeral. Was that perhaps only a dream as well when I saw it upon waking from a deep slumber in an upstairs room of their home?
Kwanzaa, a week-long holiday extending from Dec. 26-Jan, 1, was invented by an American of African ancestry in 1966 as a tribute his African heritage, a holiday not celebrated in Africa, though some Caribbean countries have adopted it.
So now, Happy New Year 2022, dear friends and readers, a time to start over new and fresh once again. 

Hearing someone warn recently that because of Covid’s resurgence, we are all “going to hell in handbasket,” I wondered about the origin of that term, which may have originated in the Bible when baby Moses was placed in a handmade basket, and was also referred to in an 1862 British journal article where the writer vowed “the Devil fetch me to Hell in a Hand basket.”
Another common phrase, “a dime a dozen,” apparently originated in the US in 1796, when eggs or apples were sold for 10 cents a dozen.
How to keep up with politically correct speech? It is now in vogue to say unhoused, not homeless, refer to individuals with mental health or intellectual disabilities, and describe pregnant people rather than pregnant women. And there is the awkward term mentioned before, anti-pro-choice rather than pro-life. Those of African ancestry were once called darkies or colored, then became Negroes, persons of color, afro-Americans, African Americans, and now Blacks with a capital B. Having folks in my family who are self-identified as such, I am now using “black”, but with a lower-case b. And I still refer to pregnant women. (A transgender “man” can only become pregnant by halting male hormone treatment and reverting to the female state.)

TIME, How Trump Stole Christmas—And Why Evangelicals Rally to Their Savior

During a Christmas visit to my son’s place in rural W Va., I saw ample evidence of locals’ enduring love of Trump, as well as of the Confederacy according to their flags (although W Va. actually sided with the north during the civil war), and that many folks there really don’t like Biden. In fact, in the last presidential election, Donald Trump carried W Va. by almost 39 points, second only to Wyoming in its fealty to Trump. 

West Virginians also like their guns, according to the appearance of various gun shops around the state. 

Other aspects of small-town W Va. life seem more benign, even charming. But, since I am having trouble now inserting more photos (is there a limit?), will continue the blog for this date of Jan. 1, 2022 next.