Both dogs and cats, lost or otherwise, are often featured on our neighborhood website.
I’ve always had a
serious cat allergy myself, but now Kathrine Wu writes
I was Allergic to
Cats, Until Suddenly I wasn’t https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/10/cat-allergy-disappeared-tolerance/671662/?utm_source=apple_news
Apparently, allergies can come and go, so how do you know if an allergy has gone away and that exposure to the former trigger is safe? People have actually died of anaphylaxis from accidently consuming food to which they are allergic, often peanuts or shellfish. In the food category, I seem to have developed a peanut allergy late in life, though not in a lethal form, but still enough that I threw away my last jar of peanut butter.
Since allergies can appear but also disappear, dare I now pet a cat? There are reportedly lots of lost cats wandering around my Capitol Hill neighborhood. Here are some.
I’m getting online ads for funeral homes and burial sites. One offers tips on How to Plan a Great Funeral. Someone out there knows that I’m now closer to the end of life than the beginning. Of course, owning my house for more than half a century provides a clue.
I’ve listened to some of the hearings of the House committee investigating the January 6 assault on the Capitol, an assault I witnessed myself, albeit from a few blocks away, so don’t try to tell me that it never happened! Donald Trump is certainly a danger to our country because so many blindly follow his dictates. It’s good to hear that Mr. Trump himself will be subpoenaed to testify. But whatever his current political plans may be, his presidential prospects do seem to be fading. Whatever he eventually decides about 2024, he will insist it’s always what he had intended all along.
Keeping the economic system in the US and around the world coordinated and working well has proved quite challenging for policy makers, who must consider international, national, and local repercussions. Not only will people everywhere suffer if a global recession cannot be headed off, but the fortunes of the entire Democratic Party are also in play. What’s frustrating is that actual productive capacity won’t diminish, only people’s ability to put it to use—too many folks will find themselves unemployed despite their willingness and ability to work and the need for their services. Not being an economist myself, I’m not quite sure why this happens or how to remedy it. Mortgage rates are already back to where they were when I was still paying off my mortgage many years ago. Will putting the brakes on the economy in this way actually help to reduce inflation? We certainly hope the benefits outweigh the risks.
AP, Suspect arrested after 5 killed in North Carolina shooting, police say News reports are not naming the reported teenage suspect. Though I would agree with the jury’s decision not to give the death penalty to youthful mass murderer Nikolas Cruz, I do wonder if that decision somehow influenced this other juvenile mass murderer? In both cases, the easy acquisition of firearms by volatile young men has had lethal consequences for innocent victims, victims who could have been any of us just going about everyday activities
Insider, Two
fathers started shooting at each other from their cars in a road rage chase.
Both their daughters ended up getting shot, police said. Fortunately, the daughters were not fatally injured after their
fathers grabbed firearms after trying to run each other off the road.
Blavity
News, Trump Supporter Pleads Guilty To Setting His Home On Fire And
Blaming BLM
When all the evidence pointed to him, he
apparently confessed. Now this Minnesota man is awaiting sentencing.
Modern DNA test yields arrest in 1989 Vermont double murder WATERBURY, Vt. (AP) — A drop of blood subjected to modern DNA testing enabled Vermont State Police detectives to make an arrest in the 1989 murder of a Danby couple found stabbed to death in their home, police said. Michael Anthony Louise, 79, was arrested Thursday in Syracuse, New York.
‘The Cash Monster Was Insatiable’: How Insurers Exploited
Medicare for Billions https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/08/upshot/medicare-advantage-fraud-allegations.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare The health system Kaiser Permanente called
doctors in during lunch and after work and urged them to add additional
illnesses to the medical records of patients they hadn’t seen in weeks. Doctors
who found enough new diagnoses could earn bottles of Champagne, or a bonus in
their paycheck.
That opening paragraph of an article on Medicare fraud certainly stings for me, since I’m a Kaiser enrollee. I joined Kaiser thinking that practitioners there would be discouraged from finding excuses for unnecessary treatment because they are salaried. What is actually the case? Our local Kaiser doesn’t seem to try to provide any extra treatment; in fact, it’s hard to even get an appointment!
Pro-Trump Rally-Goers Blame Mysterious Bogeymen for Latest Event Flop https://www.thedailybeast.com/pro-trump-rally-goers-blame-mysterious-bogeymen-for-latest-event-flop They blamed “paid agitators” and the federal government, among others.
Yahoo Life, Golf influencer Paige Spiranac says she feels 'this immense pressure to look perfect, all the time' When a star or champion in any field takes his or her own life, as several have done recently, is it perhaps because of secret doubts and failings amid intense pressures to always maintain an “image” of perfection and capability? I can imagine that fame has many drawbacks. I’ve always sought privacy myself, despite authoring 2 books and writing on this blog. A certain distance is involved in writing and not appearing in person, a selectivity about what is said about one’s private life.
Desperate people now trying to better their circumstances by migrating are facing new challenges.
Migrants targeted in Canadian immigration scam on Facebook, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/14/facebook-whatsapp-migrants-targeted-canadian-immigration-scam
DeSantis Stunt Backfires: Martha’s Vineyard Migrants to Get
‘Victims of Crime’ Visas
https://www.thedailybeast.com/texas-sheriff-says-migrants-flown-by-ron-desantis-to-marthas-vineyard-qualify-for-victims-of-crime-visas
DHS expands Trump-era policy to Venezuelans while opening new pathway to US https://thehill.com/latino/3685595-dhs-expands-trump-era-policy-to-venezuelans-while-opening-new-pathway-to-us/ Instead of just coming across the border, as they have been allowed to do, Venezuelans must now have a sponsor inside the US before being admitted. This change will create a major hardship for those already en route, those exhausted folks who have already made the arduous journey through the Darien Gap and all of Central America and are now arriving at the Mexican border, though they will still be admitted if they’d crossed the Mexican border by last Wed.
Fox News, https://www.foxnews.com/us/venezuelan-migrants-surprised-learn-will-returned-mexico-new-biden-admin-policy
NY Post, https://nypost.com/2022/10/13/mexico-refused-to-accept-venezuelans-under-bidens-new-deal/
Do Cubans' hunger strikes matter? /¿Importan las huelgas de hambre de cubanos? Cuba Archive info@cubaarchive.org
Reuters, Inflation, blackouts and collapsing peso pile pressure on Cuban govt https://www.reuters.com/article/cuba-economy/inflation-blackouts-and-collapsing-peso-pile-pressure-on-cuban-govt-idINL1N31C2T7 Havana cafeteria owner Claudia Ramirez likens the Cuban peso to a piece of chocolate in hand on a hot day. “It has melted, faster and faster and now is almost worthless, making running my business nearly impossible,” she said. The peso, worth roughly four U.S. cents in July, is now officially valued at less than a penny. The unofficial rate has soared since then to 200 to 1, a historical low that has slashed Cubans’ savings and buying power.
AP, US,
Canada send armored vehicles to bolster Haiti's police
Violent gangs in Haiti could pose similar threat to US as MS-13, Sen. Cassidy says: 'Might be a rhythm there' | Fox News
Wash. Post, British crown blocks Bermuda’s cannabis bill, straining ties
Ukraine Pravda, Renowned conductor Yurii Kerpatenko killed by Russians
Yahoo News, American
veteran dies while fighting in Ukraine, family says
This was a man from Idaho, the father of 5. Some 4000 Americans have joined the fight in Ukraine and at least 5 have died.
Across the world, Kim Jung Un in North Korea wants to make sure that the war in Ukraine doesn’t deflect attention away from himself, so he’s again flexing his country’s nuclear muscles.
A rare protest
took place in China just before the Communist Party Congress that's starting today. Protestors
carried a banner calling Xi Jinping a “dictator and a traitor of the country” and
demanded his removal. Their voices were soon quelled and they are probably in
prison. Xi did not want his bid to win an unprecedented 3rd 5-year term
disrupted. A million people were reported to have been arrested prior to the
congress.
Wash. Post, ‘New tank
man’: Rare protest in Beijing mars Xi Jinping’s moment
Amazingly, protests have continued in Iran for a month now despite fierce
official efforts at control.
So, while I didn’t plan to comment again on abortion, it’s a topic that won’t go away, becoming even more salient now as the Nov. elections approach. As said before, I confess to not really understanding the rationale for abortion—at least not on a gut level. I realize that women can and do become pregnant unexpectedly and also unhappily or may even decide sometime during a pregnancy that they just don’t want to go through with it. If having the option of abortion is regarded as progress, then it’s hard to go back. Abortion rights advocates repeatedly stress that it’s just a matter of a woman’s “choice.”
I doubt that my
adopted kids, whom I love dearly, would have ever been born if abortion had
been available to their birth mothers. Actor Jack Nicholson discovered later
in life that his “older sister” was actually his birth mother and, likewise, he
well may never have been born if abortion had been an option back then. In Honduras,
where abortion is still illegal, I know of children secretly adopted
informally, that is, taken right from the hospital with the new parents’ names inscribed
on the original and only birth certificate. There will be some explaining to do
if those children ever seek genetic testing, as has happened here in the US, revealing
so many secrets.
Being pregnant and giving birth are not necessarily fun—interesting and exciting perhaps, but something most women may not want to go through more than once or twice, if at all. And it’s not just a matter of 9 months of pregnancy, then childbirth, but also of raising an infant all the way to adulthood. Many of those tiny helpless infants grow up to make their mothers proud, but there are always a few bad apples among them, including a miniscule number who even end up murdering the woman who gave them birth.
Now partnered woman have ways to stop producing babies and many of them are stopping. I won’t get into a discussion about the exact point of conception, whether it happens when the sperm penetrates the ovum or when the fertilized ovum implants in the uterus. In any case, by the time a woman misses her period and starts feeling somehow different, she then is pregnant. A few younger couples of my acquaintance and even some folks related to me have decided to remain childfree, but more often have had one or 2 kids, then stopped right there because that’s more than enough for them to handle, as the women are usually working. In days gone by, women didn’t work outside the home, but now they do and juggling work and family life gets harder the more kids there are.
No one in my immediate family or friendship circle has more than 2 kids. I suspect that’s pretty typical and why the US population as a whole is not achieving replacement. Only immigration is making up some of the shortfall, though possibly at a loss for countries sending immigrants. The proportion of people in the US growing fastest are over age 65, myself included.
Observer, The U.S.’s Low Birth Rate Means the Nation is Headed For a Demographic Crisis While the number of babies born in the U.S. increased in 2021, it's still too low to prevent an aging society. https://observer.com/2022/05/the-u-s-s-low-birth-rate-means-the-nation-is-headed-for-a-demographic-crisis/20CDC%20statistics.
Econofact, The Mystery of the Declining U.S. Birth Rate, https://econofact.org/the-mystery-of-the-declining-u-s-birth-rate The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007. This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes.
Until abortion had been declared a “constitutional right,” also described as a matter of “reproductive justice,” “choice,” or simply as “healthcare” and “routine medical care,” partnered women couldn’t do much about becoming pregnant and didn’t think there was much to be done about it anyway. Relatively few actually felt desperate enough pre-Roe to bring out a clothes hanger. Instead, they just accepted this as normal and then gave birth, considering it part of being in a partnered life, usually raising the child or, in rare cases, giving a baby up for adoption. I had an unmarried friend, now deceased, who gave birth to an infant many years ago relinquished for adoption. She herself never married or had another child, but she connected later with her offspring, getting along better with that woman’s son than with the woman herself. My own great-grandmother who gave birth to 12 babies just considered that her destiny. After all, pregnancy is not an illness but a natural process, an essential part of human existence ever since humans first walked on earth. That’s how it was in the US before Roe. And of course, I came of age long before Roe was decided.
Then, suddenly, years ago, the US Supreme Court made abortion a legal option and many American women now understandably don’t want to give up that option even though the current Supreme Court has now overruled the Roe decision. Attitudes and practices regarding pregnancy have also changed on the meantime. But abortion laws elsewhere, even in Western Europe, are still more limited than here in the US. American movies and TV shows have now started depicting abortion as the best option. “Choice” is the key concept and one that is often repeated. Taking away or reducing a “right” or a “choice” is going to get pushback. Yet I still cannot wrap my head around completely disregarding the life of a helpless unborn human, a life that is obviously already underway. What about his or her “choice”? Didn’t that (potential) person have a right to go on living? Frankly, though a registered lifelong Democrat, I cannot approve of the killing of that unborn life, of obliterating that unborn human—and calling that exercise a “human right.” There are many ways now to prevent that human from ever coming into existence in the first place.
If someone wants to use birth control, become sterilized, be celibate, or even choose euthanasia, that’s their decision. No one else is being directly harmed. And perhaps morning-after pills act swiftly enough to actually prevent a pregnancy, though the line gets fuzzy there. I have no problem with that nor do I “feel” much for early clusters of cells wiped out before sensation starts to develop. But it’s different to end an unborn life that is already well underway, that is growing daily, can feel pain, and which will otherwise continue to exist, just like you or me or anyone else until we meet our natural death. (My concern also extends to death row inmates awaiting execution.) Our time-limited, everyday life, with its alternating mix of joys and travails, its daily challenges, is all any of us ever has. Shouldn’t someone barely starting out in that life, in the very same way that we all have necessarily started out in the womb, be allowed to continue to go on living just like all the rest of us? I feel even more strongly that the answer is “yes” after having been pregnant myself and having felt independent internal kicks and movements. No doubt, I’m also influenced by caring for adopted children and a foster son whose birth parents were unable to care for them.
Yet, at
the same time, I do recognize that African American women are statistically
more likely to seek abortions because they don’t have access to birth control
or lack the financial means to raise a child, problems that could be better addressed
if pro-life folks put their money where their mouth is. Financial need is one
of the many disadvantages that disproportionately affect black people raising
children, including some in my own family.
While
being hard to gauge, could it be argued that women now denied abortions after
expecting them to be available will end up resenting their offspring, leading
to their kids’ experiencing unhappiness in childhood and maybe in adulthood?
Happiness, of course, is a very subjective quality and no one has a perfect childhood
or a perfect life, though some do better than others. As occupational therapists
would say, everyone seeks purposeful activity and often that activity involves
overcoming obstacles, which most lives have in abundance.
USA Today, The
real story behind America's population bomb: Adults want their independence
Yahoo
Finance, America is facing a diaper crisis, and the
anti-abortion movement may not be helping
After striking down Roe, Supreme Court DECLINES to hear case on whether
fetuses are entitled to constitutional rights | Daily Mail Online
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11303273/U-S-Supreme-Court-rebuffs-fetal-personhood-appeal.html
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Freelance Spanish Interpreter
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Writer-Editor U.S. Customs and Border Protection Washington, DC
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