Mother’s Day 2024 and Beyond

 

Mother’s Day is coming up, a day I will be spending with my son in W. Va. So, I’ll be taking a brief respite from the computer and from this blog. My other kids/grandkids are far away but close to my heart. All have sent greetings.

WDVM, Black bear spotted in Northeast DC neighborhood

This black bear seen wandering around the city surprised residents.

Ty’ah Settles, a 3-year-old killed recently in SE DC, was the unintended victim of a drive-by shooting during an evening gun battle. “She loved Mickey Mouse and she loved the doll babies,” her godfather said. She was killed while riding in a car with her mother near their home, just across the river in Anacostia, not so very far from where I live

Neighbors hanging out on balconies is typical of the area where I live, as in an image that arrived in the mail. 

To my cousin in California, not seen in person since my late mother’s 90^th birthday on Nov. 30, 2003, I sent recent photos of myself with daughter Stephanie who had been visiting here in DC. 

My cousin, in turn, sent this photo of herself and her husband kissing after decades of marriage. The internet instantly propels such messages and images across vast distances without any fuss or muss. Born in an earlier era, I still marvel at such everyday exchanges.

 

I can recall the days when the home telephone was considered a marvel of human connection, with party lines that sometimes allowed us to listen-in on others’ conversations. A switchboard operator like Lily Tomlin’s character Ernestine—with her cheerful “hello, ringy-dingy”—would connect us to the number we gave her. 

Among folks remaining alert and engaged long past their 100^th birthday is Yoshiko Miwa, born on Feb. 28, 1914, in Guadalupe, California, to Japanese immigrants, the fifth of seven children. When her mother and infant brother died in 1919, her father struggled to care for his family who then were interned at a camp in Arizona during World War II. Despite these challenges, Yoshiko Miwa has thrived and survived, as has her whole family: three sons, 10 grandchildren, 20 great-grand kids, and one great-great-grandchild. (So far, at age 86, I have one great-grandchild, hoping to live to see a great-great grandchild.)

More racial equity and understanding is likely to come about via contact with mixed-race, mixed-ethnic families like my own, though perhaps more such families will only emerge in an atmosphere of more equity and acceptance. It’s a chicken and egg situation.

In my case, I married my late ex-husband when I was 21, after college (UC/Berkeley, cum laude), while working for local government. I married against the express wishes of my family, who did not attend the ceremony. My husband was of Korean descent and, more importantly, was totally blind and had never held a job. We went on to become parents of 4 children while I did part-time research and editing jobs, allowing me time to assist my husband. With my help, he went on to excel and won a MacArthur Genius award after he had divorced me and married his much younger office assistant, never speaking with me again, except in a single phone call made to me in 1984. When my husband departed, he took all our joint funds with him so I had to fight for a share, but I’ve never left our house bought back in 1969. Afterward I revived my Latin American/Spanish-speaking side kept dormant during my marriage. I endured the loss of my older son and Cuban foster son all alone. You may have already heard my story, unique in many respects.

’DOUBLE-HATERS’ https://www.politico.com/playbook

That’s a term for those who don’t plan to vote for either Biden or Trump, myself included. While I might consider Biden the lesser evil, I’ve decided to sit out the vote, making no difference anyway here in DC.

Can Joe Biden still count on re-election when so many young people reject him over his Gaza policy?
If Trump should be jailed for contempt, his own followers will still rally around him.

NY Times, Election updates: Barron Trump will serve as a delegate from Florida at the Republican National Convention.

 

Independent, 17 students on hunger strike at Princeton as graduation ceremonies roiled by Gaza protests

NY Times, After Weeks of Protests, Columbia Cancels Main Commencement Ceremony Columbia’s president had earlier said that she did not want to deprive students of an in-person celebration after many graduated high school during the pandemic.

Wash. Post, Police clear University of Chicago camp in latest move to quell protests

Wash. Post, U-Va. president, other leaders defend steps that led to arrests at 

Independent, 17 students on hunger strike at Princeton as graduation ceremonies roiled by Gaza protests

NY Times, After Weeks of Protests, Columbia Cancels Main Commencement Ceremony Columbia’s president had earlier said that she did not want to deprive students of an in-person celebration after many graduated high school during the pandemic.

Wash. Post, Police clear University of Chicago camp in latest move to quell protests

Wash. Post, U-Va. president, other leaders defend steps that led to arrests at protest

Students and faculty marched together at UCLA.

Refugees from Honduras have been attending English classes in Columbia, SC.

Haiti has been largely forgotten now, except by me.

NY Times, How 360,000 Haitians Wound Up Living in Empty Lots and Crowded Schools In a worsening crisis, Haitians have been forced to flee their homes in the face of gang onslaughts, and the international response has failed to keep up.

Wash. Post, Israeli closure of Rafah crossing cuts off Gaza’s most vital aid lifeline

Israeli tanks have amassed at the Gaza border.

AP, Israeli army tells Palestinians to evacuate parts of Gaza's Rafah ahead of an expected assault

Why does the Israeli military keep threatening an all-out assault on Rafah when everything there has already been destroyed? 

dpa international, France warns that forcing civilians from Rafah may be a war crime

The Hill, Tlaib calls for court to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Israeli officials Rep. Rashida 

Tlaib (D-Mich.) has called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials.

Reuters, Israeli strike leaves rubble, debris in Rafah  

President Joe Biden’s administration has indefinitely delayed a report investigating potential Israeli war crimes in Gaza, according to a Politico report.. The development comes after the US State Department was expected to release the report on Wednesday. If the State Department were to find that Israel violated international humanitarian law, the US may have to stop sending foreign aid. Under the Leahy Law, the US government cannot aid foreign security forces found committing “gross violations of human rights.” Democratic Senator Peter Welch, an outspoken critic of the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) conduct in Gaza, called on the Biden administration to halt Israeli aid on Tuesday. He argued the US is already in violation of the Leahy Law. “We write with concern regarding the US government’s failure to apply the Leahy Law consistently to all recipients of US security assistance,” Mr Welch wrote in a letter co-signed by eight other lawmakers. “Recent articles documented that successive administrations have neglected to implement the Leahy Law in Israel,” he continued.

Last week, dozens of lawmakers also called on the Biden administration to reconsider aid to Israel. A coalition of 88 Democratic members wrote to the White House on Friday, arguing that Israel’s “restrictions on US-backed humanitarian aid efforts have contributed to an unprecedented humanitarian disaster for Palestinian civilians and to credible reports of famine in parts of Gaza.”…

The Palestinian health ministry says Israel’s continued assault on Gaza has killed almost 35,000 people, most of whom were women and children. The United Nations also says that restrictions on humanitarian aid have created a ‘man-made famine,’ with half the 2.3 million strong population of the strip at catastrophic levels of hunger.”

There was apparently an Israeli strike near the border meant as a warning, with that key border crossing now reopened. The Biden administration has been deliberately delaying an investigation into whether Israel has committed war crimes.

NY Times, Biden Puts Arms Shipment to Israel on Hold Amid Dispute Over Rafah Attack President Biden paused the shipment last week, officials confirmed, a sign of the growing rift between the U.S. and Israel over the war in Gaza.

NY Times, Biden’s Warning on Weapons Supplies Creates Outrage in Israel Some reacted with defiance to President Biden’s comments that the U.S. could withhold more weapons if Israel launched a major assault in Rafah.

NY Times, President Biden’s decision to pause the delivery of 3,500 bombs to Israel is testing U.S. ties to Israel.  President Biden is showing some backbone and is finally listening to his constituents.