Virginia Farm Market
After
Mother’s Day, back again in DC, I
sat in my living room, wearing a t-shirt from my old days as a Rwanda Children’s
Fund board member. On the table behind me are portraits of animal mothers with
their young created by biologist daughter Stephanie, along with a Mother’s Day
card she made.
Stabbing below happened too close for comfort, just 3 blocks from
my home just the day after my return.
|
5/15/2024
1:39 PM
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Crime
Alert 1st District (PSA 101-108)
Alert: Stabbing Investigation in the 100 block of 7th St., NE. Lookout for
W/M, wearing a black hooded sweatshirt. DO NOT TAKE ACTION CALL 911 W/ EVENT
#I20240240403 Sent to 1st District (PSA 101-108) Alert DC Sent by MPD Cad #
5010
|
A neighbor then sent me the following after I’d mentioned seriously
considering not voting in the next presidential election, since I don’t care
for either likely candidate.
Opinions | Thinking of not voting? It’s music to Trump’s ears.
Sometimes it’s the people who stay home in an election who
matter the most.
Opinion by Colbert I. King, The Washington Post
https://wapo.st/3UTMjp1
Then I told her: “Both you and my daughter Stephanie are urging
me to actually vote in Nov., even though DC will go for Biden regardless. I’m
not particularly fond of Biden, though I did vote for him once and Trump
obviously is much worse. OK, ladies, since you insist, I will do so.”
Digital thefts from bank accounts, such as the one that I
endured last year, are apparently a risk of modern banking.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13421153/journalist-identity-thief-bank-account-court.html Linda Matchan noticed a
mysterious $5,000 withdrawal from her checking
account in June 2022.
I told the neighbor
who forwarded this article: “For heavens’ sake, this happened with a Bank of
Amer. account, not with Citi, my former bank, so in the digital age, it's
happening everywhere. After this victim tracked down the thief, she didn't get
her money back. I have the name and address of my bank thief, but don't plan
to press charges. The whole amount stolen was over $20,000, though I did get
about $15,000 returned voluntarily from merchants. My thief is unlikely to be
able to come up with the other $5,000. So, what's the answer? A home safe? Under
the mattress? The journalist victim in this story went
after her thief to no avail.”
My
neighbor replied, “not 2 b surprised. we live in n interlocking world.
r u saying that we should put our $ under the mattress? your
choice, but you won’t get any interest, or b able to buy things easily.
of course your $ can b safeguarded in a bank, and is. the
only caveat is ‘vigilance.’ check your account
online, look for unauthorized withdrawals or debits. we’re not
living in the Stone Age. you’re not Wilma Flintstone. be up with
what is commonly going on these days. take a deep breath. if you can’t swim, yes, don’t go to the pool. but what does
that get you? if you can’t b assured 100% that you won’t b hit by a car
when you cross the street, r u going to stay at home?! choices,
limitations, vigilance….or you can live like it’s the 1960’s.”
Actually,
I’d like to start back now even beyond the 1960s to my birth in 1938 with a childhood
spent partly in Latin America and then on to my marriage in 1959 at age 21, and
finally moving to DC in 1969, where I’ve remained (off-and-on) ever since. It’s been
an eventful and rather atypical life. I’ve written 2 books about aspects of my rather
unusual life, but they don’t tell the whole story. My husband, who was blind
and had never held a job before we married, was a man of much potential, so I devoted
myself to assuring his achievements, but then he divorced me in 1984 after 24
years of marriage, 4 kids, and my continuous contribution to his considerable career
success. I also was working part-time myself as a researcher and ghost-writer,
but my main goal was always my husband’s advancement, as he was astute and talented,
and I was not about to let his blindness hold him back. I also wanted to show
my family, who had disapproved of my marriage and did not attend the ceremony, that
I had made the right choice. But it was not to be, as after he became quite successful,
he then married a much younger woman, an all-too-common trajectory. It happened to
Melinda Gates and to the wives of other successful men, including Elon Musk,
Jeff Bezos, Rupert Murdock, and Johnny Carson, among others.
Why did
I think I would be exempt just because my successful husband was blind and
depended so much on me? It was quite a shock and very tough at first, as he
took all our joint funds and refused to even speak with me, doing so only once, in a
surprise phone call he made to me in 1994. Yet, our uncoupling freed me to
return to my bilingual roots and to eventually volunteer for Peace Corps
service in Honduras in 2000. Our surprise and shocking divorce was certainly a
calamity for me at first but with some favorable results in the end, allowing me
to revive my Latin American side. A subsequent suitor wanted to marry me,
but I was reluctant to tie the knot again. The only loss I could never overcome
was the death of my older son, Andrew, followed by the death of my Cuban foster
son Alex, which proved somewhat anticlimactic, as I was already at the lowest point
in my life. Andrew’s gravestone is still in my backyard and my oldest grandson
is named for him. Looking back, I now try to appreciate the years we had together rather than focus on the loss. Why am I reviewing all this right now? Probably to take stock of
my life as I approach the end. I don’t often dwell on these matters.
Back
now to our world today.
“Planet Word,
the museum of words and language, announces new experiences that celebrate
Spanish-language stories and spotlight multilingualism. To mark the
occasion, Planet Word will host Spanish-language family activities on
Saturday, June 8. All events are free. Planet Word’s immersive Family Library
will bring to life five Spanish-language stories, representing the first time
the museum’s Library gallery has featured books in a language other than
English. Each one-of-a-kind book is embedded with an RFID chip that, when
placed on the Library’s Story Table, triggers illustrations, narration, and
insights into the book and its author."
About
the following, I say “Oh, no! not so!”
Now on
to a momentous event. How would someone cope with having 5 births all at once? One
baby at a time is hard enough. These quintuplets are obviously not identical.
The five Povolo siblings — Victoria, Ludovico, Ashley,
Michael and Marcus — accepted their college diplomas
from Montclair
State University on
Monday, May 13, according to a release shared by the institution.
Now on to Nicaragua, where I once
spent many days and weeks on human rights and voting observation missions. I
was an election observer there in 1990, when Daniel Ortega suffered a surprise defeat.
But I was not surprised because I knew many Nicaraguans were completely fed up
with him and his autocratic ways. In 2007, Ortega made a very stealthy presidential
comeback, even allowing the US Peace Corps to continue operating in Nicaragua initially.
But does the zebra ever change its stripes? Ortega slowly tightened his grip and
is not letting go ever again. Now, 17 years after his return, he’s 77, and still
there. His wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, age 72, is just waiting to take
over when he is gone.
Nicaragua’s
Ortega gets moral and economic support from far away.
The Palestine/Israel war still
occupies center stage.
AP, Police break up another protest by pro-Palestinian
activists at the University of Amsterdam
Guardian, US interior department staffer is
first Jewish Biden appointee to resign over war in Gaza Lily Greenberg Call, special assistant to chief of staff, accused Biden of using Jews to
justify US policy in the conflict.
Wash. Post, The Latest |
Palestinians mark 76 years of their dispossession as more catastrophe unfolds
in Gaza
Gazans
fled in 1948 and are on the march again today. Amnesty
International, Damning evidence
of war crimes as Israeli attacks wipe out entire families in Gaza Crisis in Gaza: Nowhere is safe
“For 16 years, Israel’s illegal blockade has made Gaza the
world’s biggest open-air prison – the international community must act now to
prevent it becoming a giant graveyard.” Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary
General
NY Times, Israel Says It Will Send More Troops to Rafah, Defying
Global Pressure The announcement signaled
that Israel intended to press deeper into the city, where more than a million
displaced people had been sheltering.
Gaza: Discovery of
mass graves highlights urgent need to grant access to independent human rights
investigators [Amnesty International]
CNN, US assesses Israel has amassed enough troops to launch
full-scale incursion into Rafah, officials say
The Biden administration has assessed that Israel has amassed
enough troops on the edge of the city of Rafah in Gaza to
move forward with a full-scale incursion in the coming days, but senior US
officials are currently unsure if it has made a final decision to carry out
such a move in direct defiance of President Joe Biden, two senior
administration officials told CNN.
One of the officials also warned that Israel has not come
anywhere close to making adequate preparations – including building
infrastructure related to food, hygiene and shelter – ahead of potentially
evacuating more than one million Gazans are who currently reside in Rafah.
If Israel were to proceed with a major ground operation into
Rafah, it would be going against months of warnings from the US to forego a
full-scale offensive into the densely populated city. Biden himself voiced that warning in his most
explicit terms yet last week, telling CNN’s Erin Burnett that the US would
withhold some additional arms shipments to Israel if they were to take such a
step.
“The president was clear that he would not supply certain
offensive weapons for such an operation were to occur,” national security
adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House Monday. “It has not yet
occurred.”
As the war enters its eighth month, US officials are
increasingly questioning Israel’s approach to the war, including publicly
suggesting it is unlikely to achieve its stated aim of destroying Hamas and
eliminating its leadership.
On Monday, Kurt Campbell, the State Department’s number two
official, said there have plainly been tensions between the two countries on
“what the theory of victory is.”
“Sometimes when we listen closely to Israeli leaders, they talk
about mostly the idea of some sort of sweeping victory on the battlefield,
total victory. I don’t think we believe that that is likely or possible,”
Campbell said, in a seeming allusion to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s repeated references to a “total victory.” “We view that there has
to be more of a political solution. That’s one of the reasons why the
president’s team has been so engaged with the surrounding region,” Campbell said
at the NATO Youth Summit co-hosted by the Aspen Institute.
Going “headlong into Rafah” could have dire consequences,
Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned
on Sunday.
“Israel’s on the trajectory, potentially, to inherit an
insurgency with many armed Hamas left, or, if it leaves, a vacuum filled by
chaos, filled by anarchy and probably refilled by Hamas,” Blinken said Sunday
on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Barbara E. Joe giving a donation to the Honduras Red Cross
