Just heard from my older daughter that her company was suddenly shut down. When do bank collapses, companies going out of business, and job layoffs become more than occasional blips or mere random events to morph into a more worrisome trend? Maybe that happens when folks start to panic to create a self-fulfilling prophesy. Keep fingers crossed, as we’re not quite there yet. Still McDonald’s layoffs happening right now are pretty scary.
While writing this blog just now, my older daughter, laid off only last Friday, called to say she is already starting a new job tomorrow. Wow! Congratulations on that!
NY Times, Job Openings Fell in February as Labor Market’s Slow Cool-Down Continued
The world certainly didn't need OPEC to reduce oil production right now, apparently to jack up the price of oil as demand is falling, though OPEC's action is probably just accelerating the move toward greener vehicles.
I spent a memorable 85th birthday with my son in W Va., who was also celebrating his 49th. When he came to pick me up, I asked him for a photo of the pink flowers on the left. Instead I got this of a plant not quite ready to bloom.
In W Va., we were invited to a birthday brunch by friends who live on a mountaintop. Below is a statuette welcoming us.
And this was our view from the front porch, then seen again from the front window below. .
The short person there is me--I've shrunk!
All around these friends' home are thick oak and maple forests, just like those surrounding my son’s place, but no leaves out yet. Forsythia was everywhere.
Redbud was also flourishing in W Va., like a tree outside my own house. Redbud leaves are not really red, rather, a pinkish lavender.
While my son was on duty at the hotel where he works, I stayed alone out at his rented house, deep in the woods with no internet, phone, tv, or radio. That was when back copies of the New Yorker, passed along by a subscriber friend, kept me company. Two articles stood out for me in the Dec. 12, 2022 issue. One was “Finding My Way, and Staying Alive—During the AIDS Crisis: A diary of nineteen-eighties Manhattan” by Thomas Mallon. My late Cuban foster son Alex had first revealed his AIDS diagnosis to me in 1990, but refused to take AZT, the only treatment then available. He died in 1995, one year after the death of my older son Andrew. Both of them died in Florida, but I didn’t even know Alex had gone there, so was frantically looking for him at every AIDS clinic and venue in the DC area. It turned out that a young woman whose brother had died of AIDS had taken Alex with her from the brother’s funeral to her Florida home to care for him there. She called me only after his death.
The other article that especially caught my attention in that issue was “An Anti-Abortion Activist’s Quest to End the Rape Exception,” about Rebecca Kiessling, herself the product of a rape and the mother of 3. Kiessling is a crusader who doesn’t believe the right to go on living after conception and to be born alive should rest on whether or not the father was a sexual predator. I admit to having skin in this game. My first child, Andrew, who died at age 26 after suffering a work accident, was born after his teenage birth mother was said to have been gang-raped. If any of our mothers had opted for an abortion, we wouldn’t be here today. I’ve seen both sides of this issue by being both an adoptive and a birth mother. I also saw my granddaughter being born and was at the hospital with her when her own son was born.
Right after my son brought me home from W Va., his beloved van dropped an axel, fortunately not far from home or causing any danger. Now he is carless, walking to his job 1 ½ miles away.
Lent, Ramadan, and Passover are all overlapping now. Before going any further here, my best wishes go out now to everyone for Easter, coming up on April 9. Palm Sunday is already behind us. On April 1, there was a children’s Easter egg hunt on the White House south lawn. I once took my kids there years ago.
How did Easter come around so fast? When we were youngsters, waiting for Easter or any other holiday seemed endless. Now, in my old age, days just whizz by. I look at my watch, and see it’s already 7 pm with nothing much accomplished all day. I don’t have tv, but the internet and radio are certainly attention-grabbers. And when I go out these days, it’s only on foot and walking rather slowly.
Now we just learned via the neighborhood website that a 12-year-old girl living in NE DC, some 15 blocks from my home, was shot in the stomach by an unknown assailant. It does seem that crime, both petty and more serious, has been rising lately in DC.
Here’s a message I just got from Armando, a man from Cuba now living in northern Florida, whom I was able to bring to the US for medical treatment many years ago (see more details in my Confessions book). I’ll just leave you with his message below without corrections, despite my nagging editorial instincts. In summary, he says that he and his Nicaraguan wife, Blanquita, have welcomed her relatives from among the 200 political prisoners recently released by Ortega. Though their home is already pretty crowded, there are other Nicaraguans they still hope to bring out under Biden’s new policy of welcoming refugees with US sponsors. "Blanquita se puso muy contenta con la llegada de los doscientos presos a Estados Unidos porque son personas que protestaron pacíficamente y por sus verdaderos derecho del pueblo y sin embargo el gobierno de Ortega los encarceló y les hicieron cosas terribles en las cárceles. En Nicaragua hay muchos jóvenes huyendo y escondidos del gobierno porque participaron en las manifestaciones de protesta en contra de las leyes y las decisiones del Ortega. Estamos muy contento con las nuevas leyes de Imigracion. Blanquita trajo a su hermana y su sobrina y quiere traer a su hermano. Yo quiero traer a mi mejor amigo y su esposa. No se todavía como voy a hacer con tanta gente en la casa pero los tenemos que salvar."
It’s apparently not mere chance or a figment of our imaginations. Rather, it’s actually true that the US keeps being battered by severe weather outbreaks partly because of our country’s unique geography, exacerbated by an overall global warming trend. China, with more people and also a large land area doesn’t have the same kind of clashes of air masses, experts say.
An alert reader caught an error in the last posting where I said my late former husband had talked with me only once after he left (after 4 kids and 24 years of marriage). That’s quite true, but that single call occurred actually in 1984, the only time we ever spoke after he left our home in 1980 up until his death in 1999. I was off by 20 years on both dates last time. (That posting has since been corrected.) Chalk that up to my senior memory!
I may have an unreliable memory, but haven’t
felt myself getting more conservative in old age. My opinions and conduct have
not really changed over the years, except that I don’t move around as fast any
more. I’ve always had good friends of other races and nationalities, long
before that was common, or even acceptable in some quarters, starting out in
about 2nd grade. I have long been bilingual and multicultural, partly from
having lived in different countries while growing up. I am the only person now in
my immediate neighborhood and social circle who had married someone of a
different ethnicity, also with a serious disability--blindness.
Wash. Post, Trump
to be arraigned in N.Y. amid tight security
I still vote for Democrats and oppose the death penalty but have never rallied for “reproductive rights.” Language commonly used by the pro-abortion side is calculated to undermine prolife support, such as labeling it the “anti-abortion rights movement,” as on NPR’s morning news today. Who wants to support anything “anti”?
On the flip side, in Canada, twins born at barely 21 weeks (the cutoff for abortions in Roe was 24 weeks) and weighing less than a pound each, just celebrated their first birthday. Wash. Post, The world's most premature twins just had their first birthday These babies, each weighing less than a pound at birth, were born after only 5 months
The last
posting mentioned this state legislator’s dogged filibuster to bring a trans
protection bill to the floor.
It’s certainly true that trans persons
have existed throughout history, but in the past, before actual physical changes
from hormones and surgery were possible, they simply cross dressed to hide their
birth gender. Since all human behavior is based not only on independent
internal individual urges, but also on social support and the example of others,
it is not entirely illogical for some nations or communities to discourage or
even outlaw certain behaviors, as doing so is an essential aspect of human culture.
Will that work for stifling support for physical trans changes in the US, where
that genie seems to already be out of the bottle?
A much higher percentage of American teens and young adults (the very age of
burgeoning independence) have now considered becoming transgender than ever before,
something not true among older adults, indicating that cultural factors certainly
are in play. (No one is an island; even a hermit once grew up in a family.)
While a gay identity has become fairly acceptable
now, at least in most parts of the US, that was not always the case. How much of
being gay is due to inborn qualities and how much to outside influences? Because
of my long life and having lived in many different places with travels to more than 45
countries on various missions, and after hosting visitors from everywhere in
the world, I’ve had close relationships with a wide variety of people from
everywhere, from Bhutan, Nepal, Japan, China, the Philippines, Morocco, Mali, Kenya,
South Sudan, and Ethiopia; and various other countries in Asia, Africa, Europe,
and Latin America. A man of my acquaintance born in Latin America credits his own
adult gay orientation to having been groomed as a young boy by an older man. I’ve
known 2 single women living together in the US for years in “Boston marriages,”
as well as men married to women, fathering children with them, both in the US
and Honduras, but also expressing gay tendencies. So, is being gay their real
orientation? For some, these matters may not be not so black and
white.
Most Democrats seem to have adopted the belief
that being gay or trans is always inborn, an immutable orientation from
earliest childhood, as, indeed, it may be in some cases. Republicans, however,
tend to think that being gay or trans can be inculcated or encouraged in a
child, which may also happen at times. Is the surge of trans explorations now common among
young adults in the US mostly a product of a more permissive attitude, coupled with
the advent of hormone and surgical treatments, or are these youthful explorations
more in response to a culture that now encourages and abets such changes, as conservatives
contend? Perhaps both sides are correct to some degree.
Telegraph, Nashville school shooter ‘was hunting pastor who was counselling her’ This was a rare born-female school shooter who “identified” as male, a former student at a private Presbyterian school. She apparently harbored unhappy memories of her earlier experiences at the school. Since she presented as male, might she have been taking male hormones, thus encouraging more aggressive tendencies? (Testosterone is associated with aggression in both humans and animals.) Though news reports initially delayed saying so, she was shot and killed by police. She had killed three 9-year-olds and 3 teachers, just another day, another mass shooting in the good old USA.
NYTimes, After Mass Shootings, Republicans Expand Access to Guns In states around the country, Republican lawmakers are pushing laws to expand the ability to own and carry firearms. Are they trying to get guns into more peoples’ hands before restrictions take place?
During his campaign, Fetterman underwent a stroke. He now wears a hearing aid and a pacemaker to manage his heart conditions, and he also uses a device to transcribe spoken words because of his trouble speaking. Despite having these crucial handicaps, if he can deliver for his constituents, then they will continue to support him.
Wash. Post, Minnesota
train carrying ethanol derails, catches fire; nearby residents evacuate
Are there really more train derailments now, or are we just paying more attention?
Wash. Post, Activist group led by Ginni Thomas received nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations
Unexpected events, like the worldwide pandemic, also impact human behavior. The pandemic plus growth of the internet have made work from home not only a realty, but a preference for many folks. They can work while their kids are napping but they are no longer going out for lunch or drinks with coworkers, not driving to their jobs or paying for parking, so downtown offices may be left sparsely used and office culture has certainly changed.
AFP, US prosecutors win
first guilty plea in murder of Haiti leader
Yahoo News, U.S. couple held for ransom in Haiti as violence, kidnappings surge in the Caribbean nation They were visiting relatives there. (I certainly would not dare return to Haiti now myself.)
Wash. Post, Finland officially joins NATO, doubling the military alliance’s land border with Russia
The Czech Republic is credited with supplying decoy tanks to Ukraine, which the Russians waste their missiles in destroying.
Netanyahu is in a quandary now about going forward with proposed judicial changes opposed by the US and many Israeli citizens, but supported by rightwing members of his own governing coalition key to his continuing political survival. Israel is very dependent economically and politically on the US, so Netanyahu has now opted for delay, waiting to see if anything changes in his favor.
Mr. Pickles is a 90-year-old endangered turtle, living in a Houston zoo with his 53-year-old female companion ever since 1996. Recently, to zookeepers’ surprise, his wife laid 3 eggs. Mr. and Mrs. Pickles have had only one other little Pickle, born 26 years ago. These new additions — named Dill, Gherkin and Jalapeño—are being kept out of the public eye until they are big enough to safely join their parents. Radiated tortoises, native to the southern and southwestern parts of Madagascar, are critically endangered.
Below, local artist Jacob Folger is back online.
Some of these missing pets have now been found by their owners while some are still lost.
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