Spring Comes Early, A Salute to My Friend Jimmy Carter, All Around the World and the Nation

 

Whatever happened to winter? Now in Feb., everything is all abloom. In my front yard, daffodils are out and flowering trees are budding. Don't we live in a wonderful neighborhood? 

 

Lent began on Wed. just beforehand, in Latin America and New Orleans, carnival festivities exploded. A friend in Mexico sent me this greeting below. 

                                                   Above, Mardi Gras on Capitol Hill

                           

Left, local artist Jacob Folger is back on line. 

                                                    Below, an alleyway near my home

Here was a local display for Presidents' Day.

                                    George Mason sits down to rest at East Potomac Park. 

Someone I know had a foot amputated recently and now uses a blade foot like Pistorius in South Africa.

I recently visited a well-known Capitol Hill resident in his last days. When he passes on, accolades will pour in and his legacy will then be revealed here. For now, his situation is private.

Former president Jimmy Carter, is an old friend, “old” in terms of years and old because I’ve known him since the 1970’s when he was president. At age 98, he is now apparently in his last days. After living a long and productive life, Carter has opted to forgo further medical treatment, preferring to stay home only with hospice care. 

 In 1979, my family met with President Carter at the White House. 

Back in 1990, more than 30 years ago, when Carter would have been in his mid-60s, I encountered him again when we both were serving as election observers in Nicaragua. A photo of us together appears in my book Confessions of a Secret Latina, How I Fell Out of Love with Castro & In Love with the Cuban People.

That was when Violeta Chamorro, now age 93 and a mother of 5, won the Nicaraguan presidency, going on to serve for 7 years, the only woman to have ever held that position. I was at her home with other well-wishers on the evening of her victory when former President Carter strode in, asking her in his twangy Spanish to delay her election victory announcement while he tried to calm loser Daniel Ortega and his supporters. The photo of me with Carter in my book was taken at that time. On those same pages are photos of me with former Costa Rican President and Nobel Laureate Oscar Arias after he’d inaugurated a brand-new pool by swimming the entire length underwater, also of Violeta during her victory speech, then of a supporter of Haiti’s Jean-Bertrand Aristide, carrying on his head a live rooster representing then-candidate Aristide. I also was an election monitor for Aristide’s 1990 presidential election victory.

I almost didn’t make it to the 1990 election that Ortega lost. Several visits then to Nicaragua had convinced me that Ortega was a dictator, so I applied to be an election observer there in 1990. At the Nicaraguan Embassy, a visa was duly stamped in my passport. But soon after, a letter from the embassy arrived, revoking my visa and warning me not to show up at the Managua airport. So I decided instead to try an overland route from Costa Rica via a remote jungle crossing where no word of my expulsion was likely to have arrived. That worked, so I became a witness to that historic election. I’m not sure that Ortega retains those old files, but I have avoided going back to Nicaragua or communicating with anyone there now, given my distinctive last name. Likewise, I was expelled from Cuba in 1997 and warned never to try to return and have not done so.

Back when our mother was 92 and her health issues had become insurmountable, my siblings and I had ordered a special hospital bed and asked a hospice nurse to visit daily to administer pain medications. We all stayed by her side until the end. May we all be able to go peacefully surrounded by loved ones. A dear friend in Vermont, who lived to age 104, commented before her death that she’d found the years after age 100 to have been especially hard, so then she was happy to go.

In magazines and online, amazing elders are featured, some lifting weights, others running marathons. These folks rightly deserve our accolades, but the best most of us can do, even with regular exercise and a healthy diet, is simply to delay our decline. Father Time is always snapping at our heels. In Honduras, my fellow senior Peace Corps volunteers had trouble mastering Spanish despite diligent efforts. Sometimes, I served as their interpreter, having learned fluent Spanish as a young person. (By knowing Spanish, I can also get the gist of conversations in Italian and Romanian.)

So we all are lucky to be able to maintain current skills as we age, as acquiring new ones becomes ever more challenging. A well-meaning friend gave me her old cell phone when she upgraded, but after several months, I returned it to her. At almost age 85, I just didn’t have the dexterity to use it properly. I prefer to contact friends around the world via computer, eliminating the constant ads on the cellphone. (My sister is quite content living without either cellphone or computer.)

Ads and advice aimed at seniors nearly always show a man and woman together, but, on average, women live longer, meaning that many older women are living life alone. Among US married couples, the husband usually dies before the wife, not only because he may be slightly older, but because male life expectancy is lower everywhere, not only in the US. While average life expectancy, both male and female, is also slightly lower in the US than in Canada or the UK, in all 3 countries, women still outlive men. The male hormone testosterone promotes greater average height and physical strength in men, but has some detrimental effects like producing “bad cholesterol”, whereas estrogen is protective. Additionally, because of both higher testosterone and male social conditioning, men are more aggressive and more likely than women to die violently or in accidents. But as women take on more of what were formerly male roles, the longevity gap between the genders is narrowing, perhaps because of greater stress on women, also amid speculation that women may already be approaching the maximum ceiling of the human lifespan. Heart disease is the major cause of death after age 85 for both genders.

The Hill, Most young men are single. Most young women are not. Women are marrying older men and some are pairing up with other women.

 I once met the late former boxer Muhammad Ali, but due to Parkinson’s, he could no longer speak, just nod and shake his head. His wife spoke for him. At the time, I was a writer and editor for an occupational therapy magazine, so our conversation focused on his coping strategies for living without speech and with a growing disability. He had 9 children and died in 2016 at age 74.

 Effective altruism as defined by Google is "a philosophical and social movement that advocates using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others." I always try to make wise charitable giving choices, but because I often find flaws in existing beneficent enterprises, I channel most of my giving either to my own family or to projects in Honduras whose benefits I can observe directly. However, I do appreciate that my good friends’ made a recent substantial donation to Amnesty International in my honor.

Miami Herald, Bahamas announces crackdown on undocumented migrants, saying it’s affected by Haiti crisis

I just talked with a woman from El Salvador who admires current President Nayib Bukele because, she says, “he’s imposed order.”

On the eve of national elections, a Nigerian friend laments: “It has been indeed very challenging for us here. We have experienced the worst food inflation in Nigeria (currently at almost 23%) consistently in the last 2 years. We find it difficult to feed well because the cost of food is very high, changing every day. Unfortunately, the government is insensitive to the plight of the citizens. Organized labour has demanded improved wages,  but government is adamant. So, kindly pray for us as we go to the polls this Saturday. We are hoping the voters will elect people with character and capability this time around.  My wife and children send their best regards.”

President Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv, pledging more aid. 

One year on, Ukraine is resisting beyond any expectations, Russia is apparently conscripting common prisoners, of which it has a large pool. But after a year of senseless conflict, it’s high time for the warring sides to come to a truce since neither seems likely to actually “win.” Isn’t there some mutually face-saving way out? Maybe Ukraine can agree not to join any Western alliance for 15 years, by which time Vladimir Putin may be gone, either out of office or no longer among the living. 

The US is helping Ukraine to arm and China may be doing the same for Russia. If Americans are getting weary of helping out the war effort in Ukraine, imagine how Ukrainians must feel. My son-in-law's extended family still lives there. 

Turkey, which cannot seem to get a respite from the restive ground, has been experiencing additional aftershocks so severe that some are earthquakes in their own right. When will they consider to have stopped? Until then, recovery and rebuilding cannot even begin.

 

AP, Turkey: Couple saved 296 hours after quake, but children die

Aftershocks and rescue efforts have continued. But this couple’s 3 children did not make it.

NY Times, Powerful New Quake Complicates Rescuers’ Task in Turkey In the third week of a grueling effort, emergency workers battled exhaustion as the hope of finding more earthquake survivors dwindled.

NY Times, Death toll rises as Turkey hit by two new powerful earthquakes

                                            Below rescued dog and cat..

In Cuba, now that Fidel is no longer with us and Raúl seems to have retired, developing better relations between Cuba and the US might be possible, but the war in Ukraine has arisen as a complicating factor. Many Cubans have simply given up waiting and are trying to come to US by any possible means.

 

Regarding the classified documents found in former or current office holders’ homes, a friend had this to say: “When I was in the military, I had Top Secret clearance. The control of documents was incredibly tight. No one would ever take a document home. You couldn’t even leave it on your desk in a room unattended.”

 

NBC News, 10-foot alligator kills an 85-year-old Florida woman who was on a walk with her dog The woman died, but the dog survived.

 

CBS News, 1 person killed in New Orleans shooting along parade route, police say

 AP, Three teenage girls and gunman dead in Texas shooting

Is the “right to bear arms” more sacred than the right to life? Gun deaths in the US take their daily toll. Firearms proliferation and use needs much better control. Many firearms’ owners are careless and rarely is a “good guy with a gun” fortuitously there on hand to shoot a shooter. Even young children seem to have ready access to guns. Suicides often are carried out with guns. A majority of citizens, probably even in Texas, would support commonsense gun control. Why are the gun lobby and firearms’ manufacturers considered so untouchable? Surely there is a practical way to tackle this persistent and lethal problem which does not afflict other developed nations.

ANOTHER 6-YEAR-OLD CAUGHT WITH GUN AT SCHOOL, MOTHER CHARGED

“Digital nomads,” working via the internet from anywhere, proliferated during the pandemic, and now, pandemic or no, they are continuing their online work from wherever they happen to live. I have friends on far flung tropical islands still doing remote work. Spain and Portugal have now started offering incentives to lure remote workers. How nice to be able to avoid the daily commute and not have a supervisor standing over your shoulder! And such workers, by many measures, are as productive as those coming into the office. Not every job can be done remotely and office culture face-to-face does have benefits. But with most work now relying on computers, much of it can be done more comfortably at home.

We do have an ever more connected world thanks to the internet, air travel, and the use of English as an international language. That means we are all impacted by far off events, such as the war in Ukraine or the earthquake in Turkey. It may also mean that national ties are now less firm and that it becomes harder for authoritarian regimes like Russia and China to control citizen information.

Cincinnati Enquirer, Opinion: Being pro-life doesn't end when a baby is born The author here is Tom Brinkman, a Republican member of the Ohio House. May he put his money where his mouth by providing support for needy new mothers.

Now that many partnered women, at least in the developed world, can better control their fertility, many are having fewer children, allowing them to embark on independent careers. Two children seem the popular family limit now in much of the world while in China, Japan, and South Korea, many couples are having only one child or none. That’s also true in Western Europe and the US, where not very many women of childbearing age even have 2. My younger friends now with 2 kids feel they have done their duty by giving their first child a sibling, so that’s enough. Therefore, it’s no surprise that average childbearing in the US, while having recovered somewhat, is still not up to the 2.1 child per woman needed to keep our population steady, so only immigration helps fill that gap. Ideally, population--both worldwide and in our own country--would neither grow nor decline. However, countless individual and family choices all over the world result in uneven population growth and to immigration pressures.

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! 

In 1883, Emma Lazarus wrote that poem to raise money for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France. Her poem now appears on the statue’s lower level.

The copper statue is often hit by lightning. 

Lost and stray dogs and cats still roam our neighborhood, some lost and some found. 

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Here are some recent Spanish-language ads.

 

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