On Jan. 6, there was a full moon. Below that is a painting by a local artist that includes a full moon.

Below are a few images of DC in days gone by.

Now I’m expecting a visit from my granddaughter from Florida, coming here again mainly to see her father who lives in northern Va. He lost a foot recently to diabetes and also helps care for his wife, in a coma for over a year now, still breathing on her own, but completely unresponsive. She lies inert, being kept alive by a stomach feeding tube. I was not consulted before the family authorized the feeding tube. I’ve specified no feeding tube for me in my will.

My son has told me that he had been on duty at the CoolFont hotel during the fatal murder/suicide there just before Christmas, heard the shots, saw the dead bodies outside, and was questioned by police. He then attended the funeral on Jan. 5 to support the couple’s 18-year-old daughter. But he had come home at midnight after the shooting, never mentioning anything to me then or the next day. I only found out about that tragedy after my return to DC when another town resident asked me about it.

On the last posting, I mentioned passing by “the castle” on my way home from Berkeley Springs.

Wash. Post, A ‘hate castle’ or welcome neighbor? A controversial group divides a West Virginia town.

In Berkeley Springs, the purchase of an iconic castle by the VDare Foundation, a group that gives a platform to white nationalists, has led to angst and ugliness in the tourist town.

Wikipedia has this to say:VDARE is an American far-right website promoting opposition to immigration to the United States. It is associated with white supremacy, white nationalism.

Here's New Year's eve from friends in Mexico City.

Wash. Post, Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano erupts again, and the pictures are stunning

On the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the capitol, I remembered being an eye-witness, albeit from a 4-block distance on E. Capitol St., not daring to venture any closer to the unruly mob.

I’d been lamenting the prevalence of local porch pirates with my older daughter, who told me she’d sent a package, when a neighbor posted this photo of one of the most notorious local “pirates” seen on a bus, but disguised as much as possible, with her bag of stolen loot behind her. I’ll need to keep a lookout for my package. Obviously, porch pirates are not a priority for DC police. A neighbor opines that porch pirates sell their ill-gotten goods on Craigslist.

Also saw photos on the neighborhood website of raccoons walking around last evening on our own A St. SE, so my household’s former raccoon visitors or their offspring are still alive and well in our neighborhood and apparently getting enough to eat. Cutting down my mulberry tree, though I hated taking out a tree, was the right decision as they are no longer pressing on the windows, trying to get in.

Despite not obtaining full funding to restore Peace Corps worldwide, the service is still sending volunteers abroad as much as possible and is also helping returned volunteers to find jobs here in the US.

Senator Rand Paul is the guy who single-handedly prevented approval of full funding for a resurgent Peace Corps. According to the National Peace Corps Association, “the Senate was unable to pass its version of the Reauthorization Act in the closing hours, due to a hold placed on the bill by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who prevented the bill (along with other pieces of legislation) from being passed by Unanimous Consent despite the strong Republican backing for it.”

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/01/05/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-new-border-enforcement-actions/ Here’s part of its statement (note that this administration officially refers to the Biden-Harris administration, unlike the former president who did not reference the Trump-Pence administration ): While the courts have prevented the Title 42 public health order from lifting for now, the Biden-Harris Administration today is announcing new enforcement measures to increase security at the border and reduce the number of individuals crossing unlawfully between ports of entry. These measures will expand and expedite legal pathways for orderly migration and result in new consequences for those who fail to use those legal pathways. They also draw on the success of the Venezuela initiative, which launched in October 2022 and has resulted in a dramatic drop in the number of Venezuelan nationals attempting to enter the United States unlawfully.

The subsequent Republican standoff in the House on choosing a speaker weakens the party or perhaps simply displays weaknesses already there. As I must have mentioned before, I have a BA and an MA from UC/Berkeley and lived for years in California. I once held a state job licensing children’s facilities there, requiring me to drive up and down the central valley, including all around Kevin McCarthy’s district. So, although a lifelong Democrat, I followed developments in his efforts to become House Speaker with particular interest.

HuffPost, Ginni Thomas Leaps Into House Speaker Battle Against Kevin McCarthy It’s no great surprise that Ginny Thomas supported the anti-McCarthy faction.

Another Republican House member garnering attention right now is George Santos, age 34, newly elected from New York, the son of Brazilian immigrants, who turns out to be a serial liar. After fleeing fraud charges in Brazil, he crafted a phony resume that includes false claims about his educational and work history and about having Ukrainian Jewish heritage on his mother’s side, with family members who had escaped the Holocaust, none of which is true.

Venmo Temporarily Blocked Donations To A Mutual Aid Group Supporting Migrants Bused To D.C. Sanctuary DMV, one of several local groups welcoming migrants bused to D.C., found its Venmo account locked for nearly a week over the New Year, after receiving an influx of donations. Venmo only restored the account on Tuesday night.https://dcist.com/story/23/01/04/venmo-sanctuarydmv-mutual-aid-migrants-dc/

The body of the late Pope Benedict was openly displayed at his Vatican funeral mass, carried in and accompanied by an all-male grouping. In the snippets I heard in broadcasts of the ceremony, Frances spoke in Spanish, not Latin. Tens of thousands witnessed Benedict’s funeral and filed past his body as it lay in state. The late former pope was known for wearing red shoes, but they weren’t seen in funeral photos. Benedict has now been finally laid to rest in the Vatican.

Now that China has suddenly relaxed Covid lockdowns and since its vaccines are thought to be inadequate, Covid has been ripping through the population, though accurate estimates of Covid deaths are hard to come by, since China strictly guards such information. In addition, as I have seen in Cuba and elsewhere, the cause of death may be deliberately misstated on death certificates in authoritarian countries. In Cuba in the 1990s to avoid frightening tourists, dengue deaths were attributed to “unknown virus,” as described in my Confessions book. A doctor I met there speaking out about the prevalence of dengue was imprisoned. Now with Chinese citizens venturing beyond China’s borders, will they bring new Covid strains with them?

While the Chinese government grapples with the Covid outbreak, neighboring India has now officially passed China as the world’s most populous nation, tallying 1.4 billion residents in a relatively young population. It’s likely to keep on growing larger, but probably at a slower future rate, as today’s Indian women plan on having fewer children than their mothers and grandmothers. Because for a time there, females were being disproportionately aborted before birth, now expectant parents in India are not allowed to know an offspring’s gender until he or she is actually born.

Most Americans treasure individualism and autonomy, often expressed in terms of personal rights, such as rights to housing, a living wage, health care (though that’s still not a given), and gender and sexual expression, including abortion. A woman’s right to abortion is expressed in terms of her right to individual bodily autonomy. Abortion makes the consequences of unprotected sex between men and women more equal, though not entirely. Now many American women who find themselves unhappily pregnant may feel they have an absolute right to terminate a pregnancy, as most had been legally allowed to do before Roe was overturned. And, arguably, an early-stage fetus does not experience pain, and some would not attribute any “rights” to an unborn, even up to the moment of birth, even though that’s the universal way we all necessarily started out. It’s very hard to backtrack now on what had once been considered a “right.” “Rights, Freedom. Justice” says a Planned Parenthood online ad. ABC News refers to “Opponents of abortion rights" rather than to “prolife advocates”. Language does matter. I have never been in sync with the current abortion stance of either the Democratic Party or Amnesty International (positions adopted only during my lifetime) nor a supporter of Planned Parenthood.

If you or I had been aborted before birth, we wouldn't be here today. Of course, there are many ways to prevent a life from ever getting started. I see a difference between speculations on possible theoretical humans prevented from existence by abstinence, infertility, sterilization, or contraception, and actual unique individuals starting out in the necessarily universal fashion of everyone on earth. Each life span is limited, but from prehistory to today and on into the future, together we all create the ongoing tapestry of human life.

Joe Biden seems to have changed his public stance on abortion over the years. More than a decade ago, he expressed the opinion that “life begins at conception.” Now, he has declined to define a prenatal being as human and deserving of protection until he or she actually emerges from the womb. Have his beliefs actually changed or is he bending to what he might consider political expediency?

However, as the sharp reduction in Monkeypox cases among gay men in the US has shown, when individuals simply make different personal choices, that is, with gay men now reducing their number of sexual partners, the Monkeypox outbreak has been brought under control, nearly eradicating it. While exercising unfettered choice in sexual behavior or anything else may be considered an individual’s “right,” it may also have unwanted consequences.

As with my stance on abortion, I am also out-of-sync with most Democrats on transgender sports, especially in individual competitions. I would oppose competition in women’s sports of male-to-female athletes who “transition” after puberty and after obtaining their male height and bone structure. Most of them remain in the same sports as before, but are then able to win competitions they lost while participating as men. I wonder whether once their sports days are over, if they will go back to being male?

Individualism is not such an overriding value everywhere as in the US, as I have found by living elsewhere. In other countries, much of what happens to people is attributed to fate or luck, not to human action or choice. In Honduras, women unhappily pregnant, or even pregnant after a rape, have gone on to give birth because abortion is illegal there. However, since sterilization is now legal, some go on to choose that option. Though male sterilization is easier, Honduran men rarely undergo the procedure. Obviously, culture and social mores influence personal choices and the designation of “rights.” My great-grandmother living on a farm in rural Alberta had neither abortion, sterilization, nor birth control as options, nor did she consider refusing her husband, so she gave birth to 12 children, the youngest being my own paternal grandmother. Unlike for many mothers at that time, all her children survived.

Now with ever-improving child survival, the world cannot sustain so many large families. The number of babies born to women worldwide needs to average about 2.1, assuming adequate care for mothers and children, so as to keep world population at current levels, though there is hardly any cooperative effort underway on doing that. Instead, birth rates are falling below sustainable levels in western Europe, North America, China, Japan, and South Korea, though rising above in the developing world, leading to migration pressures.

Reuters, Honduras extends, expands state of emergency meant to fight crime

In Cuba, migration pressure comes not from overpopulation, as the Cuban population is actually gradually shrinking, rather because folks simply want to get out and also because Florida is only 90 miles away. Private boat ownership is not allowed in Cuba, but people there do manage to craft something that floats.

Below, Cuban migrants gather on Duck Key.

AP, Facing migration flood, US resumes services at Cuba embassy

The American Embassy in Havana is open again after being closed for 5 years.

Views of folks lined up these days at the US Embassy in Havana brings back memories of seeing similar lines during the 1990s. Such photos also fill me with nostalgia and regret as I dare not try to visit Cuba again. Assuming I would not be arrested outright on some pretext, I’d still remain under constant surveillance and all my contacts would be suspect.

AP, US removes Cuban migrants from remote Florida islands The Coast Guard removed more than 300 Cuban migrants from a remote island national park off the Florida coast Thursday as the U.S. government sought to handle the latest influx in people arriving by boat from the communist island.

Homeland Security officials said the Coast Guard took 337 migrants from Dry Tortugas National Park on a 70-mile (113-kilometer) trip to Key West, where they will be processed. They were among more than 700 migrants, mostly Cubans, who arrived in Florida by boat over the New Year's weekend, prompting officials in Florida to appeal to the federal government to do more to deter migrants arriving illegally.

On Thursday, the Biden administration signaled a tougher stance on migrants coming from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, while offering a new path for migrants from those countries to enter legally. The government said it would immediately start turning away Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans who cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, as it has done with Venezuelans. At the same time. it would accept 30,000 people per month from those four nations who arrive legally, have eligible sponsors and pass background checks. It was not immediately clear what impact this would have on migrants who arrive in Florida.

Russia has been attacking Ukraine with drones, suffering no casualties itself in the process. Yet Ukrainians remain defiant, seemingly more so than ever, with their casualties and structural damage needing to be avenged, not causes for surrender. Ukrainian orphans are reported being kidnapped by Russian forces to be sent to Russia. To stop all this, maybe Ukraine could offer not to join any alliance with Western Europe for 10 years? By then, Putin might have died or left office, though with no guarantees about his successor.

A Ukrainian woman visits her bombed-out home.

Taiwan’s leaders and citizens must be watching the war in Ukraine with concern, noting that the US and other countries are providing money and hardware, but not boots on the ground. China would be a stronger and more relentless foe than Russia, though Chinese troops like those, from Russia, may not have their hearts completely in the fight. Xi has shown some sensitivity to citizen sentiments by relaxing Covid lockdown rules and he is not sure how the US and other countries would react to a wholesale takeover of Taiwan. Any attack by China on Taiwan would result in a messier and more consequential fight than Russia-Ukraine, which is bad enough. Xi who just won an unprecedented 3rd term looks likely to remain in power for quite a while. He is 69 and Putin is 70, so both have some years left and could then be succeeded by someone else either better or worse. Putin actually now appears less vigorous than Xi, despite earlier photos showing him riding animals shirtless and bareback.

CNN, 6-year-old in custody after shooting teacher in Virginia, police chief says As of this posting, the teacher is hospitalized in critical condition.

The "right to bear arms” has taken more innocent victims AP, 8 found fatally shot in Utah home, including 5 children

Is possession of an assault weapon actually a “right”? During a 10-year US ban on assault weapons, 1994-2004, deaths from mass shootings fell precipitously. Unfortunately, the ban had only a 10-year life span, so after it expired, mass murders went up again.

In Touch, Sister Wives’ Kody Is ‘Actively Looking’ for New Wife After Splits From Christine, Janelle and Meri The cable TV star of a program called Sister Wives, 53-year-old Kody Brown, suddenly finds himself in an embarrassing predicament. He’s now been left with only one wife, something which may also impact his ability to stay on the air.

Food is an everyday necessity. I’ve tried “vegan” or vegetable based “meat,” finding it OK, though a bit “off” in terms of flavor. Veal is something I've avoided my whole life and beef for several decades now, also rarely eating lamb or pork, none in the last few years. I did eat goat meat in south Sudan in 2007, the only thing then being served. These days, I regularly consume milk, eggs, and cheese, also chicken and fish, though I’ve also gone for considerable periods without even chicken or fish. So, I really don’t have a firm opinion on all this. When my teenage great niece/grandniece (Google calls those terms interchangeable) was staying with me, although she needed plenty of calories because she was a ballet dancer, she ate only berries, coconut, and nuts. Somehow, that proved sufficient. In the Peace Corps in rural Honduras in the early 2000’s, vegan fellow volunteers had a pretty hard time getting enough to eat, mostly lots of tortillas.

In rural Honduras at that time, chickens ran free, laying eggs here and there, scratching for worms, and even coming into dwellings. Cows, though fenced in, enjoyed a wide range. I didn’t see any factory farms. I once saw a cow with a broken a leg being butchered, but refused to eat any of the meat.

Now labs are producing what seems to be actual meat, started with a single cell taken from an animal without killing or really hurting it, but the process is very costly. Still, these experiments hold promise. I hope to be able to eat lab-grown meat in my lifetime. (I certainly could not eat it otherwise.)

A recent NPR program featured a man 5’5”, who fretted for years about being too short. So after spending $100,000 and a year of his life, and reportedly often in pain, he was able to add 3 inches to his femurs, thus extending his height to 5’8”. His legs might have looked a bit odd then, but he got taller. What advantages that might have conferred in terms of employment or romance is uncertain, though it reportedly made him feel more confident. If I were a young woman seeking a partner of his age, his leg-lengthening stunt would definitely disqualify him in my book.

Paul Ehrlich, who predicted that mass starvation would wipe out humans decades ago, was invited recently to appear on an episode of 60 Minutes to revive his argument that current levels of human consumption will lead to the mass extinction of plants, animals, and humankind itself — echoing the case he first made in his since discredited 1968 book The Population Bomb. He’s still making that case and, depending on the timeline, he may eventually turn out to be right, but no one alive today will live to see it.

Cats and dogs keep getting lost and found.