Around the country, around the world

 

After unusual winter precipitation, flowers are now blooming in California’s Death Valley.

The other evening after dinner, after I turned off the light to go upstairs, a flickering firefly lit my way.   

Local artists are featured at the entrance to DC’s Union Station.

A warning to local residents:   

NBC, Police search for suspects who placed skimmers around DC

This refers to credit card skimmers, one found recently on M St. SE, not far from where I live. I lost $5000 from someone who managed to steal from my debit account last year, so am super vigilant now regarding all banking activity.

Hispanic Heritage Cities: This list caught my eye as a fluent Spanish-speaker, though I have no actual Hispanic heritage myself. The following cities, in order of population, have majority Hispanic populations:  San Antonio, Tex.; El Paso, Tex.; Fresno, Calif.; Miami, Fl.; and Bakersfield, Calif. I know Fresno and Bakersfield well because I used to travel up and down California as a state licensing worker and many years before, as a child, I lived in El Paso. More recently, Miami has often served as the starting-point for my travels to Latin America and is where I’ve been interviewed in Spanish on public television regarding my books and volunteer human rights’ work. Those living in US cities with majority Hispanic populations, especially over generations, may no longer speak Spanish, although a sort of amalgam called Spanglish is popular in many locales.

This blog posting today has confronted a number of very resistant quirks, some impervious to correction. It looks easy, but it is not!! As mentioned before, this blogspot platform is free but offers users no guidance. We bloggers are completely on our own. I've been  posting here and on its predecessor blog for 15 years, ever since 2009, so really cannot complain to anyone, except to you, my readers, so I do appreciate your understanding 

My granddaughter, her stepsisters, and a Puerto Rican best friend all visited San Juan together to celebrate a stepsister's milestone 50^th birthday.

                                                                    

My dear friend Sonam in Bhutan has just sent an email asking: “Hi aunty, how r you. Have not heard of you for quite long.” 

After inquiring about her family, I sent her my blog link. The internet is pretty amazing, allowing us such instant communication with friends all over the world, even those in remote mountainous Bhutan.                                                                                                                 

But the internet also has its downsides. Last time, I mentioned a very annoying and persistent Google Chrome pop-up blocking the whole right side of my computer screen from top to bottom. Even after shutting down the computer overnight, the next morning there was that !@#$%^&* pop-up, still staring me right in the face. An invader like that seeks a ransom, which, if actually paid, would only inflict more damage. Thankfully, a computer specialist brought in remotely managed to vanquish the intruder in just minutes. Whew!

Working on the computer later that same night, I was assailed by a persistent ad from Christian Mingle, a dating site catering to self-identified Christian singles seeking “a faith-based love today that God will thank you for.” That ad seemed very creepy, featuring a young couple sitting together in a car while the man repeatedly rubbed the woman’s apparently pregnant belly.

Wash. Post, Massive Indonesia eruption sends plumes nearly 70,000 feet high

Volcanos can be pretty scary and unpredictable.

Years ago, on Hawaii’s Big Island, I hiked with a friend (since deceased) over dry lava to the edge of Kilauea, a live volcano, on a dark moonless night illumined only by hot glowing lava flowing down to the ocean below in a continuous cloud of steam. It was an unforgettable experience.

AP, Takeaways from this week's reports on the deadly 2023 Maui fire that destroyed Lahaina

Now there is a reckoning regarding the wildfires that ravaged Maui, a Hawaiian island where my biologist son-in-law often works.

CBC, Multiple arrests, 19 charges laid in $22.5M Pearson gold heist Daring theft, the single-largest gold heist in Canadian history, police investigator says

This happened a year ago, but the law apparently has only just now caught up with the perpetrators. 

Wash. Post, Arrests made in $14.5 million gold heist, the largest ever in Canada

AP, FBI opens criminal investigation into Baltimore bridge collapse

Let’s see what this criminal investigation reveals. Maybe the bridge collapse was not just a freak accident after all?  

Reuters, Copenhagen stock exchange fire: Spire collapses as historic Borsen engulfed in flames

The fire that engulfed Denmark’s historic 400-year-old stock exchange, like one that had severely damaged a revered Paris cathedral not long ago, was also probably more than a mere random event. Fire broke out at each place only when renovations and repairs had just begun. This timing is no coincidence, as in both Paris and Copenhagen, an incautious workman might well have triggered a flare-up that suddenly spread. That’s just my guess, as the responsible party would never be likely to come forward. Such a structure, having endured for hundreds of years, isn’t apt to suddenly burst into flames without some triggering action, occurring coincidentally just at the beginning of renovations and thus probably attributable to a human actor. Before renovations of historic buildings are undertaken, strict and reliable around-the-clock surveillance needs to be put in place first.  

There may be a way for scammers/skimmers to get everything they need to know wherever a card is inserted to withdraw money, maybe even inside a bank. There is apparently no foolproof way to safeguard money. Nothing can be guaranteed or predicted 100% in advance, only probabilities, except for the 100% certainty of our own individual final death.   

Reuters, Haiti's PM called for security support. Who answered?

Haiti's Prime Minister Ariel Henry had asked for outside assistance back in Oct. 2022. Since then, nothing good has happened to his country. Henry had gone to Kenya to recruit help but was unable to return to Haiti after his flight stopped in Puerto Rico and he was prevented from returning. He then resigned and Haiti has remained at a standstill ever since mostly under gang control. 

Before the advent of birth control, women with male partners often had many children, sometimes with not all surviving. My own paternal great-grandmother, living out on a wheat farm in rural Alberta, gave birth to 12 children who all lived to adulthood. The boys worked outdoors with their father, tending to crops and animals, while the girls, including my grandmother, helped their mother inside the house with cooking, cleaning, and washing clothes. The work was largely physical and time-consuming. As a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Honduras from 2000 to 2003, I found myself sharing many aspects of such a rigorous country life, as described in my book Triumph & Hope: Golden Years with the Peace Corps in Honduras.

Now most people in the developed world gravitate toward towns and cities, living and working there together in close proximity. Women in those towns and cities are having fewer children and housework has become less demanding, allowing many women to engage in paid work outside the home. Much of that work can now be done by phone and computer, sometimes even from home. (How convenient that would have been for me back when I was a commuting single working mother with 4 kids!) Women in the developed world, if they have any children, now often stop at 2, enough to provide their first child with a sibling. Two kids have become a de facto ideal family limit here in the US, allowing more mothers to engage in paid employment, but resulting in the population shortfall previously mentioned. At the same time, US immigration has largely been blocked for illogical reasons, although most immigrants are already adults, ready and willing to go right to work. California especially has been suffering from a serious labor shortfall. Our country would not even have existed without immigrants.  

Canada has taken advantage of our country’s immigration myopia by welcoming refugees and immigrants, many already acclimated after having lived and worked in the US, but whose visas here expired. By staying on, those immigrants could have helped support an ever-growing number of older folks like me. Instead, many very capable would-be citizens have given up, uprooting their families to go on to Canada, our bordering neighbor with a similar culture but with a more challenging climate and costlier housing. Several of those who have ventured north have actually lived right here in my very own home and would gladly have stayed. All were very talented and personable, already contributing here but then were still expelled, so went on to Canada. I even helped a woman from Africa fill out the required paperwork to go there. We had a hard time finding Canadian currency to be submitted with her immigration application, so the Canadian Embassy helped out. She now lives in Toronto. 

What can be done to dispel the notion that immigrants to the US, especially those who have already been living and working here successfully, must then leave when their time is up? We really do still need them and they have already proved their worth. It makes no sense at all.

We commonly ascribe our personal actions and decisions to our own individual minds, yet all of us are constantly influenced by those around us, including by the particular language we commonly speak, even by the very words used in formulating our thoughts. We all influence each other continually every day in creating our shared culture.

Some rather subtle and gradual social changes might actually be occurring right now, influencing each person’s willingness to become a parent, a status that had fallen out favor in recent decades when DINK (dual income, no kids) became a popular slogan. Since our country actually needs additional children are more people reconsidering that choice? Incentives are falling into place to influence them to become parents.

            Basketball star Brittany Griner and her female partner recently announced their pregnancy, while her wife, who seems to have assumed a female role in their relationship, is the one who is now actually pregnant with some outside help. It’s doubtful that Grimes, who seems to have adopted a masculine persona and style of dress, while a parent of twins in her previous marriage, has ever actually been pregnant herself. In both marriages, there has been assistance from an unidentified male. 

AP, US vetoes widely supported resolution backing full UN membership for Palestine

Why? Apparently, Mr. Biden thinks he must still publicly support Israeli leaders 100% in this election year, despite their seemingly excessive—even terroristic?—actions. We might have hoped that his administration would manage to deter an attack on Iran, but that didn't happen, although apparently the damage to Iran was marginal, so the US may have had an impact after all. Israel had actually started this particular round of attacks with a high-profile Iranian assassination. 

So I won’t be voting for Biden myself next time, despite perhaps the greater threat from Trump. But if Biden is reelected, let’s hope he will become more even-handed as a Palestinian state is way overdue, though Israel can still do considerable damage meanwhile, damage both to Palestine and to Israel itself and to its international reputation, as well as to the US, which has lost considerable support and standing in the world.

Independent, Rep. Ilhan Omar's Daughter, Isra Hirsi, Suspended From Barnard

This is really going too far.

Wash.  Post, Google just fired 28 employees who protested its contract with Israel

Wash.  Post, More than 100 arrested at Columbia as police clear pro-Palestinian protest

Americans may continue to be fired or arrested, but that won’t stop support for Palestine or criticism of Israel, perhaps only inflame it.

CNN, Thousands of Palestinians attempt to return home to northern Gaza, but face Israeli fire

After weary civilians had begun the arduous trek back to their homes in northern Gaza, Israeli forces inexplicably started firing on them. So then many, some now with serious injuries, turned around to head south again, back to a place that Netanyahu has threatened to imminently attack. As Israel’s main and perhaps only remaining supporter left in the world, providing a continuous flow of money and ammunition to Israel for the last 6 months, doesn’t the US have any leverage now? President Biden himself needs to speak up and to actually halt aid to Israel to stop still further escalation.

As for Iran, Israel should have considered resting on its laurels by declaring victory after successfully resisting Iran’s latest bombardment, thus avoiding gratuitously risking prolonging the fight ad infinitum by retaliating. Israeli forces already face enough problems. And now the US has even announced more sanctions being levied on Iran as a result. Beforehand, President Biden had urged Netanyahu to just “take the win”—good advice. But Netanyahu decided to publicly defy Biden and go forward with the attack, though perhaps not at full strength. War is obviously a matter of will and appearances as well as of actual fighting and weapons. Netanyahu strives to display independence in the face of actual dependence on the US. And he is becoming too much of a Hitler-like figure, using a star of David instead of a swastika as his emblem. 

        

Wars have sometimes gone on for generations, even after combatants may have forgotten why they or their forebears ever first started fighting.

 

There was the “hundred years war,” 1337-1453, in what is now France, whose aims had become murky. 

A war fought between invading Moors and local residents in the territory that later became Spain lasted a full 781 years. It was estimated to have led to 7 million deaths over nearly 8 centuries, with the original impetus for the war probably long forgotten.

 

As said before, the best way to stop the current Mideast war is for Israel just to declare victory and simply to stop. Israel has already done excessive damage to Gaza and its suffering people while also tarnishing its own standing in the world. 

Of course, I am just one person whose opinions may make little difference all by themselves. Only if others agree can we accrue enough critical mass to influence actual policy changes.