A pet cat was lost and found through the neighborhood website. Other apparently lost felines were posted there, also a cute kitten.
Flamingos in
Florida all huddled in a bathroom to wait out the hurricane again this time, just
as in 1999. Here below they were just now and further below, back in 1999.
Later on that same evening of Sept. 29, I participated in a zoom session with members of our local Amnesty International Group 211, which I’d helped found back in 1981 before even some other current members had been born. Jim McDonald, volunteer Siri Lanka country specialist, gave us a rundown on the history and recent troubles of that beleaguered island nation, whose leadership has made a series of mistakes and miscalculations and where ethnic tensions and violence are still ongoing. Tourism dried up with the pandemic, government leaders resigned or left the country, the presidential palace was invaded, and protesters have been killed, as well as a member of parliament. The nation has borrowed heavily. Now China refuses to forgive Sri Lanka’s foreign debt, Japan is considering reducing the debt, and the IMF has promised to help with a bailout if the nation restructures its financial system. I’m still Amnesty USA’s volunteer leader for the Caribbean, a position I’ve held for the last 18 years. My 2 volunteer assistants resigned last December, but I don’t want to quit until someone replaces me and I’d like to have a hand in choosing that person. So far, there has been no movement on that nor has the local Amnesty International office, located blocks from my home, reopened yet. Meeting via the internet, as we did on that Sept. night, is fine, but there is nothing like real face-to-face interaction.
After leaving Florida, the stormy weather moved north and we experienced several days of rain and cooler than normal temperatures; in fact, it was downright chilly. Our area saw lots of rain, flooding, downed trees, and some power outages. Thankfully, I heard once again from my family in Florida who had ridden out the storm without major damage. President Biden and Gov. DeSantis displayed a temporary détente while the president was surveying Florida hurricane damage and promising aid and the governor seemed grateful to accept federal help without making any snide comments. At least 100 people died in the hurricane.
In-person events here are starting up again as bad weather recedes and people realize that Covid is not going away any time soon. Tired of hunkering down at home and now, after getting vaccinated, many are venturing out. Some, like my daughter in Florida, will still get Covid despite being vaccinated. She has now recovered.
Great-grandson De’Andre, who just celebrated his 15th birthday this week, is back at school in Florida after the hurricane, wearing pink socks and gloves for breast cancer awareness while playing football after classes.
Best regards this weekend for
Indigenous People’s Day, a holiday whose name does not exactly roll off the
tongue. When it was called Columbus Day, that was more succinct. My son Jonathan,
adopted from Colombia, has some indigenous heritage according to a heritage website.
Kamala Harris certainly did “misspeak” when she referred to a strong alliance with North Korea. How did she get out of that one?
Political ads are appearing everywhere, including among my email messages. One from Adam Schiff seems almost surreal.
|
The attack involves building a catapult and launching watermelons with Adam’s face on them. No, seriously. Kash
Patel, a former aide to Devin Nunes and chief of staff to Donald Trump’s
Acting Secretary of Defense, wrote a children’s book titled The Plot
Against the King — featuring characters such as “King
Donald,” “Hillary Queenton,” and one particular “shifty knight.” Who,
you guessed it, is supposed to be Adam Schiff. Literally
repackaging the Big Lie about the 2020 election into a children’s book to indoctrinate kids. Then,
over the weekend, this MAGA cultist hosted a children’s event to promote his
new book — an event featuring a castle, a catapult, and watermelons adorned
with, you guessed it, Adam’s
likeness. |
While many Republican candidates running now publicly agree with Donald Trump that his 2020 election was “stolen,” they consider their own victories in the same election legitimate and seem to have faith that they will be reelected again. Somehow, was Trump’s defeat due to selective tampering that zeroed in only on him and left the rest of the field untouched? No one has explained that or why candidates keep running if the whole system is “rigged”?
The Georgia Senate seat is key to which party
controls the Senate, which is why Republicans are going all-out to defend Herschel
Walker, their candidate chosen because of his football fame.
New York Post, ‘State of emergency’: Adams says
NYC migrant influx to cost city $1B I have some sympathy for the governors of Texas and Florida sending migrants to northern
cities, spreading around some of the responsibility. Mexican cartels are
apparently recruiting both smugglers and migrants to increase border crossings.
The
Hill,
Biden administration has reunited 500 families separated under Trump
Apparently, the Administration still has an estimated 700 to 1,000 separated children still to go.
Pope Francis is canonizing Giovanni Battista
Scalabrini, “father of migrants.” He served as a bishop for the city of
Piacenza in northern Italy for almost 30 years in the late 1800s and supported
migrants’ rights during a period that saw significant migration from Europe to
the Americas.
https://thehill.com/policy/international/3678267-pope-francis-to-canonize-father-of-migrants-a-saint/
NPR aired a segment on “abortion rights opponents”
(“pro-life advocates”?) that looked at adoption, examining the special problems that adoptees experience.
A problem for adoptees is that they are often regarded as “other” by both themselves
and society at large. That, like any problem involving attitudes, can be
overcome. Would it have been better had they never been born? In Ukraine,
adoptions have been stalled now because of the war.
USA Today, Republican pitch for people worried
about abortion bans: How about a discount on diapers?
Republican lawmakers are being taken to task for offering needy mothers relief in the form of a discounted sales tax on disposable diapers!
USA Today, Elon Musk says 'population collapse' is
a bigger threat than climate change. Is he right?
Though no
great fan of Elon Musk, I do agree with him on this, as I’ve indicated before
on these pages. The overpopulation die-out that Malthus predicted never came to
pass, as agricultural production rose to compensate. And thanks to immigration,
our anemic birthrate in the US has not yet had dire consequences, though it’s
just a matter of time. And I consider it a good idea to spread migrants around
the country, but perhaps not in DeSantis’s way by using false promises. The
ideal from a world standpoint is that population would remain steady or shrink
only very gradually, while folks would remain in the workforce longer. Perhaps
anti-abortion sentiment in the US and some other places is also a response to pending
population loss?
Biotech firm wants
to create human embryos from stem cells and raise them in a 'mechanical womb'
| Daily Mail Online https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11275385/Biotech-firm-wants-create-human-embryos-stem-cells-raise-mechanical-womb.html
Whew, that's going to create controversy and ethical dilemmas, but may eventually lead to babies being created outside of human wombs--though not in our lifetime.
A playful map of Central America appears in the most recent issue of Peace Corps’ World View, a magazine appearing once again in print as volunteers start returning in person to Peace Corps assignments.
I’ve spent time
in all Central American countries, often on humanitarian missions, not just in
Honduras.
After filing a request for a hearing with Consumer Services over a years-long billing dispute with Washington Gas, I spoke in both Spanish and English with a lawyer there originally from Panama. I’m not sure of her role, but I told her I had been to Panama and even sailed through the canal in my youth, and, most recently, that I was in Honduras and sent her the attached photos. Maybe that was getting too familiar, but too late now.
I also sent the photos below from my recent Honduras trip.
His arrest after so long may make other murderers worry that new DNA evidence may finally identify them after years of anonymity.
NBC News,
Suspect in custody after 5 people are killed in shooting in small Texas town
Most Texans seem willing
to allow everyone in their state to carry guns, so this result is to be
expected. The “right to bear arms” does need to be reinterpreted for our
current age. Our forefathers must be turning over in their graves.
What documents is Donald Trump hiding at Mar-a-Lago? Documents are still missing from the National Archives. Did he flush them down the toilet? He is also trying to exert executive privilege over a number of documents to keep them in his possession and avoid allowing them to be examined. If he actually slipping in the polls, that’s welcome news. Trump has reportedly vowed vengeance against all those he feels have wronged him once he returns to the presidency, asking whether Mitch McConnell has “a DEATH WISH.” Is that a threat? As Halloween approaches, Trump has been called Pumpkin Papa and some other less savory names. But since our Democratic president and vice president are not so popular either, in fact running neck and neck with Trump in some polls, it’s scary to now see the governors of Texas and Florida advancing in the Republican presidential lineup, as they might have a better chance of actually being elected.
GOP Rep. Michelle Steel sends out fliers falsely depicting Democratic rival Jay Chen holding 'The Communist Manifesto' With current technology, it’s easy to create convincing false photographs.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has now officially taken her seat on the US Supreme Court and so will have a say and a vote in future decisions. Below, the Supreme Court today and below in 1867.
Many women currently in the limelight, actresses and influencers, are revealing that years ago, they were sexually harassed or touched without their consent. Yes, that was common once-upon-a-time and still is. I don’t consider such revelations particularly shocking or surprising. Nearly all women would have similar stories. Even in my 60s as a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras, I experienced it. Only now in my 80s is that no longer the case. Women do have a right to complain and to resist, especially if they are physically punished in the workplace for not responding to male overtures, but it’s nothing unique.
However, I doubt that sexual overtures by men toward women can be eradicated or totally eliminated at work or elsewhere, as it’s been part of normal behavior since time immemorial. A website attests: “Courtship is a social behaviour in which there is an interaction between the male and female members of a species leading to mating and reproduction.” Nor is the divide between work and other situations so stark either and many romances and even marriages have begun with a meeting at work. At the same time, if a woman is not interested, the man should not persist and should never physically touch her without consent or retaliate at work if she resists. Again, as per another website, “Sexual harassment is behavior characterized by the making of unwelcome and inappropriate sexual remarks or physical advances in a workplace or other professional or social situation.”
Inflation has kept on rising in a continuous upward spiral. Supply bottlenecks raise the price of goods, incentivizing workers to demand higher wages, so the cost of everything keeps going up and up.
After its currency tanked, the UK has abandoned the plan to give tax relief to high earners.
High stakes cheating among Great Lakes fishermen, in world chess championships, and in videogames has recently come to light. Psychologists say the vast majority of people are not cheaters, but there is a small subset of those who regularly cheat, both for glory and financial rewards. Once these folks start cheating, they usually don’t stop on their own. And many of these habitual cheaters also apparently cheat on their romantic partners. Likewise, there seem to be habitual liars and cheaters in politics, who once they get started and become apparently successful, seem unable to backtrack or start “going straight.” One of them has even served as a US president.
National Endowment for Democracy: “Now you have Cubans across class lines aligning with the protests and aligning with change in Cuba,” says University of Pennsylvania professor Amalia Daché. What’s different is that the protests include former regime supporters, which suggests that the demonstrations are “a movement, not just a moment,” she adds.
Wall St.
Journal, Cuba Makes Rare Request for U.S.
Aid After Devastation From Hurricane Ian This is something also entirely
new.
Daily Beast, American Tourist Murdered in Turks and Caicos Ambush Was a Beloved NAACP Leader [Kent Carter; these Caribbean islands are part of my volunteer responsibility for Amnesty Int’l]
Reuters, Nicaragua asks EU ambassador to leave the country - diplomatic sources
Yahoo News, Expert: If Putin uses nukes, U.S. could wipe out
Russian forces in Ukraine
Vladimir Putin seems hell-bent on restoring the former glory of the USSR, but his own citizens are not going along. Ukrainians are fighting for their lives, while Russian forces are less than enthusiastic. Putin’s rattling of a nuclear saber is extremely risky for all sides. And what’s to stop Russia from wiping out Europe and/or the USA with nukes if he chooses? Putin cites Truman’s first-strike use of nuclear weapons in Japan as precedence. I have never accepted Truman’s decision to go nuclear in our name or his justification for wantonly attacking Japanese civilians.
Whew! I've had so much trouble posting this time. Why? It's a mystery. But a blog like mine is the most modest type of internet item reaching out to others today. To have a real voice and influence these days, one has to be more obviously out there, audible and visible to the world, launching a podcast, appearing regularly on Facebook or Instagram, competing for Tik Tok followers. But to remain in the public eye involves duties as well as privileges and a loss of privacy, so to avoid it, I have not launched a live interactive online format nor made any twitter postings. I’ve also failed to fully activate a retired I-phone gifted to me, as such devices seem to be a portal through which personal invasions might take place. This blog, a public diary of sorts, is as far as I’m willing to go, though I’ve sometimes participated in person at book talks after being specifically invited. My blog readers, including former foreign visitors, often contact me by email in response to postings made here; through their eyes, faraway conflicts and events become real for me and my life becomes real to them.
Therefore, the
wider world remains accessible to me thanks to the internet, unlike for my
sister, although she together with her husband has also lived and worked all over
the world. We lost our brother, a frequent foreign traveler as well, in 2019,
so now only have each other. My sister and brother-in-law, without any internet
and with some health challenges, live a completely private life now circumscribed
by their own immediate neighborhood, which is enough for them. Their only son
lives one block away.
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