Long days, short nights, soft breezes, celebrating life now in June

 

The month of June owes its name to Juno, a powerful Roman goddess considered the protector of marriage and childbirth. In the northern hemisphere, it’s a favorite month because school is out and the weather makes it pleasant just to be outside, day or night. 

Smoke from the Canadian fires seems to have dissipated somewhat now in DC. The fire season in that heavily forested neighboring country may have actually been fueled by a fairly mild winter with less snow and not enough subsequent snow melt to dampen down wildfires. 

Below, the US capitol and Washington Monument obscured by smoke from Canadian fires. 

 

AP, Plane destroyed after flying over DC, crashing in rural Virginia, leaving 4 dead

I heard that private plane flying over DC—or, rather, what I actually heard were military aircraft trying to intercept it during its unauthorized flight over our restricted airspace. The plane then veered toward Virginia and crashed into a mountain, killing everyone on board. The pilot apparently had become incapacitated. President Biden issued condolences to the families of those killed.

For new readers of this blog, know at the outset that some lettering quirks displayed here are certainly not of my own making and never were in the original posting. I always try to correct them, but the blog gods have a mind of their own, so please be forbearing. 

I was fortunate to be able to spend a few days in early June with my son in W. Va., up there in the mountain air with everything all leafed out and with passels of wild deer emerging by surprise from dense oak forests. My son’s rental home is located at the end of a narrow dirt path about a mile and a half from the hotel and lodge where he works. There is no phone signal out there, no radio or TV, no internet, and no traffic, just warm breezes rustling through the trees, so many trees, as far as the eye can see, millions, billions of trees. I can understand why my son likes living out there. 

Historical archives reveal photos of boarding schools where indigenous children were once educated, including this photo from 1900 of children at the Carlisle Industrial School not far from Washington. DC.

Some contemporary scenes and events have been playing out recently in our Capitol Hill neighborhood.

This below came in after I had already posted here, but now it's being added an hour later. 

 You’re invited to join Amnesty International, in partnership with dozens of other national and local organizations, at this summer’s annual “Fast and Vigil to Abolish the Death Penalty” from June 29 to July 2 in Washington, DC. Find out more and register at www.abolition.org!

For four days, death penalty abolitionists from around the country will gather at the steps of the Supreme Court to call for an end to capital punishment in the United States. It is an energizing grassroots week of training, advocacy, action, community and education.

Tens of thousands of tourists and locals, from all over the U.S. and throughout the world, pass by our vigil and table! 

Below, Anacostia River on a clear night

Local girls are ready to put on their dancing shoes.

Yes, a black bear invaded our city space, or maybe we invaded his. 

Wildflowers were planted along a local sidewalk. 

Below, a duck family wanders near my home.

DC artist Jacob Folger is back with a painting entitled Hope.

Below are a Lanternfly nymph and the adult fly. Lanternflies are pretty, but an invasive species very damaging to plants in our neighborhood . 

Juneteenth, a federal holiday, is coming up on Monday, June 19.  Back on January 1st 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation outlawing slavery in the original confederate states. Then on June 19th, 1865, Union Army General Gordon Granger proclaimed the freedom of enslaved people in the last holdout state in the confederacy, Texas. June is also designated as Pride Month, highlighting gay rights, with June 28 a special day celebrating the first pride march held in NYC in 1970. (One of my nephews identifies as gay.)

The internet, allowing a small number of people of any particular persuasion to find each other, even when they live geographically far apart, has incentivized the growth of transgenderism.

However, there are some true isolates, who prefer to live without any human connections whatsoever, like the recently deceased Unabomber, age 81, who recently hanged himself in prison.

AP, ‘Unabomber’ Ted Kaczynski died by suicide in prison A Harvard-educated mathematician, Kaczynski lived as a recluse in a dingy cabin in rural Montana, where he carried out a solitary bombing spree that changed the way Americans mailed packages and boarded airplanes. His targets included academics and airlines, the owner of a computer rental store, an advertising executive and a timber industry lobbyist. In 1993, a California geneticist and a Yale University computer expert were maimed by bombs within the span of two days. Two years later, he used the threat of continued violence to convince the New York Times and the Washington Post to publish his manifesto, a 35,000-word screed against modern life and technology. The tone of the treatise was recognized by his brother, David, and David’s wife, Linda Patrik, who tipped off the FBI, which had been searching for the Unabomber for years in the nation’s longest, costliest manhunt. Authorities in April 1996 found him in a small plywood and tarpaper cabin outside Lincoln, Montana, that was filled with journals, a coded diary, explosive ingredients and two completed bombs.

Whenever migrants have been unceremoniously dumped by sly red state officials in Martha’s Vineyard or, more recently, in Sacramento, California, to the evident surprise of local folks, the migrants have found a warm welcome nonetheless. And those bussed from red states to New York City, Chicago, or even here to Washington, DC, have not done so badly either, although any sudden influx of unexpected and rather confused folks, lacking resources and usually not speaking English, does present a challenge to local officials and residents. Also, these migrants may not even know where they are or might have court appearances scheduled elsewhere. Everyone needs to be helping out with migrants these days, wherever they happen to land, partly because it’s the humane thing to do, but also because we Americans really need more migrants to make up for our nation’s anemic birthrate. And unlike babies, who will take years to enter the workforce, many migrants, even today, are ready, willing, and able to get right down to work.

 

Donald Trump’s supporters ignore the evidence against him as “fake news” and don’t mind his clumsy and childish way of showing off. If anything, his outrageous behavior incentivizes them to double down, gleefully identifying with his bravado. But will their support be enough to allow him to win another election? He won before only because of a fluke in our electoral system allowing him to “win” without actually getting a majority of votes, something unlikely to be repeated.

Miami Herald, Trump pleads not guilty in classified documents case in Miami federal court Donald Trump entered his plea in response to a 37-count indictment that marks the first federal prosecution of a former president. Twitter erupted in comments including this one: “Donald Trump has been indicted more times than he's been elected.”  

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/06/christians-have-lost-a-modern-day-hero/

Christians Have Lost a Modern-Day Hero by Nina Shea

Bishop Macram Gassis valiantly defended Catholicism and helped millions of all religious backgrounds in Sudan.

 

Here is the message I sent to Nina.

He was my age. Even though he was very unhappy to see me there when I arrived back in 2006 and tried to shut me out, I do appreciate having known him. One of the priests warned me from the start and tried to shield me. The bishop was certainly happy to have your contribution to his work, but not at all welcoming to me, quite the opposite. People in South Sudan (or, as it was known then, south Sudan) really admired him; I would almost say that they worshipped him. With his close associates, he often spoke in Italian (and spoke very unkindly about me, right in front of me) but little did he know that Italian is similar to Spanish and so I could get the gist of his conversation, though I don't speak Italian and therefore was unable to respond. He was a complicated man. Everyone else was kind to me, as if trying to make up for his hostility. He certainly did a lot for the people of south Sudan in terms of providing health facilities and access to water, as well as leading them in religious worship. He seemed to hesitate when I lined up with others to receive communion, but gave it to me anyway. I was very glad to have gone there, to have known him, and to see his accomplishments in south Sudan.

 

Thanks Barbara. His biography to which I contributed is aptly entitled The Angry Shepherd. He certainly did not like being monitored and reported on by Westerners. He saw it as a form of colonialism. Unfortunately that attitude only raised suspicions by those fundraising for him. I really appreciated you going there and your balanced report. Those were frightening times over there (it seems always to be the case there) and you were very courageous. I’m sorry he took out his paranoia on you. Overall he set in motion many impressive works. He warned us that Islamist terror was coming for us too. I told him not to say that (it was the late 1990s) because people would think he was an alarmist, which they would have. He was proved right a few years later on 9/11. 

 

Another death notice awaited me on my return home and back to the computer, namely that of Amitai Etzioni, who had died here in DC. He was 94 and was born as Werner Falk in 1929 in Germany. Etzioni, at age 8, moved with his family to Israel and changed his name. I met him in 1957 when I was 17 or 18 and a junior honor student at UC/Berkeley, tasked then with teaching English to him and his first wife (one of a series of wives and mistresses). His wife soon returned to Israel, but he went on to get a PhD at Berkeley, then did widely recognized work in sociology at several universities, including Harvard, Brookings, and GW here in DC, authoring many publications. He died at the Watergate Apartments where he had lived for more than 30 years with his 3^rd wife.

Wash. Post, 4 children were rescued after 40 days in the jungle. How did they survive? While no one survived our local small plane crash, yet 4 indigenous children, whose mother did not live for very long after a crash in the Amazon jungle, actually survived after 4o days all alone there. They ate cassava flour that had been on board and drank water from streams. The oldest was 13 and the youngest was only one and still being bottle fed. Grandparents have now stepped forward to care for the kids after their release from the hospital, where they are recovering now. 

AP, Police: 3 dead, 3 wounded in shooting at Maryland home stemming from dispute This happened in Annapolis, not so far from my home in Washington, DC. Instead of arguing or perhaps even having a fistfight, folks just bring out their guns and start shooting in the heat of the moment. Was this particular dispute worth risking life and limb? Even those involved, provided they’ve survived, would probably say that it was not worth it and now may even have forgotten what the dispute was about.

I do not often respond to online petitions, but added my name to this next one.

From California Governor Gavin Newsom

Today, I am proposing a 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution to do just that. The 28th Amendment will:

Raise the federal minimum age to buy a firearm from 18 to 21.

Mandate universal background checks.

Institute a reasonable waiting period for all gun purchases

Ban civilian purchase of assault weapons.

Wrap, Cornel West’s Presidential Bid Draws Heated Response: ‘It Will Only Help Secure a Trump or DeSantis Presidency’ Yes, West will take black votes that otherwise might have gone (perhaps half-heartedly) to Biden. Third-party candidates have affected Democratic votes before. If he wants to prevent a Republican victory, West should throw his support to Biden before the election, though he probably won’t.

Wash. Post, All the unexpected ways ChatGPT is infiltrating students’ lives

Wash. Post, ChatGPT took their jobs. Now they walk dogs and fix air conditioners. Meet the people who have already lost their jobs to AI.

Yahoo Life, An eating disorder chatbot was shut down after it sent 'harmful' advice. What happened — and why its failure has a larger lesson. It seems that chatbots are not yet good substitutes for real people. 

NBC, A quarter of all children in the U.S. are Latino, U.S. census study finds

NBC, Ben Crump takes on Marion County case after woman shoots mother over argument about children playing This is a rare case of a woman shooting and killing another woman. It happened in Florida, a state that supports “gun rights” and also has “stand-your-ground” laws. The woman who shot the mother of the 4 children whom she thought were playing on her land was white, while the neighboring mother and her children were not. Why are some folks so anal about their “property rights”? Be glad if local kids of any ethnicity feel welcome to play on your property, so how about offering them a few treats just to be a good neighbor? Anyone obsessive about guarding their own precious property should build a high fence all around it, then sit fretting alone inside the house, never going out to meet their neighbors or going anywhere at all.

AP, Black Florida mother killed by white neighbor remembered for faith, devotion to 4 kids The 58-year-old neighbor who killed her has now been charged with manslaughter.

 

NBC, Florida man points gun at woman's head after vehicle briefly backs into his driveway, officials say Driveways are now private property, sacrosanct for their alleged owners? What about sidewalks and streets in front of a house?

CNN, A woman is dead and 6 others injured after a Chicago memorial gathering turned into a deadly shooting Should folks take guns to memorial events or to any gathering where an argument might break out? Should people be carrying guns at all times, taken with them wherever they go? That seems to pose a huge risk to everyone. Now a woman is dead, other people are injured, and someone is likely to go to prison. Better to have a shouting match or a fist fight that might leave someone only with a black eye.

 

AP, Haitian businessman gets life sentence in 2021 assassination of Haiti's president A federal judge in Miami sentenced a Haitian-Chilean businessman Friday to life in prison for his role in helping Colombian mercenaries get weapons to assassinate Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. Rodolphe Jaar, 51, is the first person to be convicted and sentenced in what U.S. prosecutors have described as a broad plot by conspirators in Haiti and Florida.

 Wash. Post, Religious leaders, once mostly spared Haiti’s violence, are now targets

NY Times, Vigilante Justice Rises in Haiti and Crime Plummets Civilians have killed at least 160 gang members in recent weeks. Residents say they feel safer, but some worry that it will lead to even more violence.

NY Post, ‘Dead’ woman wakes in coffin at her own funeral: ‘Miracle from God’ This happened in Ecuador, but has also occurred here in the US, when someone already declared dead but actually still alive starts banging on the coffin to get out.

                Above, protests flare in Brazil with approval of bill limiting recognition of tribal lands.

Wash. Post, Witnesses recall horrific details as India train crash toll passes 260 A massive operation attempted to rescue more than a thousand people from the three-train pileup in Odisha. It was one of the worst train accidents in India’s history. 

 

Wash. Post, Three Israeli soldiers killed by Egyptian police officer near border

CNN, Overseas Hong Kongers carry Tiananmen’s torch as vigils to remember massacre victims are snuffed out back home

Wash. Post, As China sees a surge in coronavirus cases, rift between zero-covid camp and others grows Critics call them paranoid; they call themselves prudent. These Chinese people are continuing to observe strict zero-covid rules amid a new surge of infections.

Is China’s current Covid surge happening because people there are just now mingling after being protected, or because Chinese vaccines are less effective, or because this is actually a new virus strain? It would be helpful to know, and maybe Chinese researchers are on the task, though unlikely to share any useful information with the outside world.

NYTimes, Nearly 90 Afghan Schoolgirls Were Poisoned, Officials Suspect Students and staff members at two schools in northern Afghanistan fell ill with respiratory and neurological symptoms.

Someone there (probably a man) didn’t approve of girls going to school at all, even at younger ages.

Wash. Post, Texas becomes largest state to ban gender-affirming care for minors

Neighborhood pets keep getting lost and found. 

 

Dog above was dropped off at the fire station a few blocks from my home.

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¡Prepárate para una avalancha de ofertas digitales en nuestra Cyber Week!