The national Christmas tree is alight again on the National Mall. Holiday celebrations keep up our spirits when it's cold outside and daylight hours diminish.
Here I was with Santa at the CoolFont Hotel where my son works, visiting at Thanksgiving in Berkeley Springs, W Va. The Christmas tree there was already up.
Like many hotels, CoolFont is more than just a place to get a good night's sleep. It is also a meet-up destination, a place to see and be seen. My son, often on front desk duty on weekend evenings, is in a prime position to greet all the ladies coming in.
A neighbor has shared this image of her unconventional holiday tree.
January 10 was Universal Human Rights Day, commemorating the day in 1948 when the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. While in the Peace Corps in Honduras, on that day I always organized a human rights parade featuring young marchers carrying homemade signs. Local folks always lined the parade route, cheering us on.
The shortest day of the year here in the northern hemisphere, was Dec. 21, so daylight now will start getting longer.
A friend living in Canada. where December days are shorter still, spends this season in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where she offers English lessons and from where she sent this photo.
Alas, alack, my 17-year-old great-grandson, living in Florida with his mother and near his grandmother,
had an accident while driving his grandmother's car.
As a former dog owner, I was interested in learning how and when humans and dogs first started bonding.
The regular diet of early canines included salmon, which they could not have caught
regularly on their own, indicating that it was fed to them by their owners.
[How do analysts even find out these things about matters so long ago?]
Like many young girls, I once studied ballet and have enjoyed watching dancers ever since.
A great-niece via my late ex-husband, who once stayed with me while dancing here in DC, just sent the photo above of herself with her fellow dancers and below in a recent stage production.
President Biden's speeches these days, as written out on his teleprompter, are logical and coherent, but his actual delivery becomes rather mushy and garbled. It's hard to judge how much his speeches may represent his own thinking when they are drafted by others. His delivery indicates a failing mental and speech trajectory. Even if he had been able to win reelection, it's doubtful that he could have fulfilled his presidential duties throughout a second term, perhaps not even surviving to that point. Age is more than just a number.
President Biden's commutations and pardons represent a record for a single day.
Capital B, Biden Appoints 40 Black Women as Federal Judges, Breaking Record
Another record for Biden
UnitedHealthcare boss Brian Thompson, 50, was fatally shot in the back on Wednesday morning last week outside the Hilton hotel in Midtown.
Yahoo News, UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting updates: NYPD says gun found on Luigi Mangione matches bullet casings at scene of Thompson killing Investigators were also able to match Mangione's fingerprints with those found on a water bottle and energy bar recovered from the scene, police said.
After such a high profile killing, copy-cat crimes are always a risk.
School shootings are all too common here in the US. What was unusual was that this particular
In September, 2024, before this recent female shooter had appeared, Wikipedia had reported:
"Since 1982, an astonishing 145 mass shootings have been carried out in the United States by male
shooters. In contrast, only four mass shootings (defined by the source as a single attack in a public place in
which four or more victims were killed) have been carried out by women."
NBC, Trump will 'most likely' pardon Capitol rioters on Day 1 and says Jan. 6 committee
members should be jailed
Mr. Trump has lots of plans for "Day 1", so it should be a rather busy day.
Voter enthusiasm for Trump's next presidency already seems to be waning. Nostalgia may have
been driving some voters' decisions, especially among men.
Trump is not being deterred, He has already started suing people right and left
whom he feels have wronged him. He probably feels the investment is worth the effort.
His adversaries may not dare to put up a fight now that he will become president. He seems to have
already wiped out most of the claims against him.
Among the perceived enemies Trump plans to punish and jail is former rival Liz Cheney.
AP, Trump promises to end birthright citizenship: What is it and could he do it?
salon, "Send them all back": Trump says U.S. citizens would be included in his mass deportation
plan
The President-elect has vowed to deport whole families, including US-born offspring, but to
where? Receiving countries apparently would not be consulted.
(This is unlikely to actually happen.)
A neighbor has sent me an article about a man brought here from Mexico as an infant who never had
become a US citizen He does not speak Spanish and is now facing deportation under Trump.
I don't know whether my readers can access the article.
As I told my neighbor, "Unlike the situation of my son adopted from Colombia, brought here as a baby,
whom I made sure became a citizen before starting school, this man's family did not do this for him
and his recent option to obtain citizenship was struck down by a (Trump-appointed) judge. Incidentally,
my son, living now in W Va., like most of his neighbors, voted for Trump.
Though I'd tried to teach him and my other kids Spanish, they refused to learn. So I am the only one in my
family bilingual in Spanish."
Elon Musk modestly brushes off taking any credit for Trump's election victory, though he spent really, really big. The president-elect has promised to slash regulations and taxes, and also to erect tariffs against foreign competitors, much to Musk's evident satisfaction. His considerable investment promises to pay off.
CNN.
Musk spent more than a quarter-billion dollars to elect Trump, including funding a mysterious
super PAC
Fox Nation has given
Donald Trump a "Patriot of the Year" award. So Trump is flying high right now, promising to immediately slash the federal budget and federal workforce. He doesn't want any nosey "feds" interfering with his plans. Republicans will hold a narrow majority in the House. But the promises made by Trump and Musk to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget while not touching social security seem like a pipe dream and not all Republican lawmakers are on actually board.
If President-elect Trump tries once again to move agencies out of Washington, DC, it's going to be a rather messy and contentious 4 years. It could be even worse than last time, when such efforts failed to work out as planned. Furthermore, less than half of Americans voted for Trump this time and, even then, he was victorious by only a small margin, hardly the "landslide" he has since claimed.
According to a recent Washingtonian article, moving federal agencies out of DC during the last Trump presidency didn’t accomplish the stated objectives, or improve services. "The Agricultural Applied Economics Association released a report challenging the Trump administration’s claims that the government would save $300 million over 15 years by relocating ERS and NIFA; the findings, cited in this Congressional Research Service report, concluded that the move would actually cost the government between $83 million and $182 million."
One analyst has warned that, "Our experience may have been a trial run for some of these agencies. It was a bad experience and net loss for American taxpayers. This was not efficient. This did not save money. This did not make the government more productive.”
Is Donald Trump even listening?
Harris is not letting her election loss keep her out of the spotlight:
WWD,
In the past, I have served as a human rights monitor and election observer in Haiti.
I've also made several trips to Cuba on human rights missions, but not been back since being arrested and expelled some years ago. Here below in present-day Havana, cars wait for gas, something I'd often witnessed there myself.
Syria just experienced a rare bloodless revolution after the dictator whose family had ruled the country for more than half a century departed for Russia. Citizens have gathered out in the streets, wildly celebrating. Prisoners, including apparently at least one American, have suddenly walked free. But Syria's ongoing human rights situation still remains uncertain. Israel has apparently taken advantage of that uncertainty by trying to annex territory, vowing to keep its forces in seized Syrian territory "for now."
LA Times, Israel will close its Ireland embassy over Gaza tensions as Palestinian
death toll nears 45,000
So many Palestinian civilians are being killed daily by Israel in Gaza.
As the streets of Syria fill with joyous crowds after the bloodless coup that just took place,
the country with its various ethnic groups still faces an uncertain future. But now everyone is out
celebrating.
CBS News speaks with man who says he's just been freed from Syrian prison A man identifying himself
as an American from Missouri, Travis Timmerman, was found Thursday in Syria after he said he was freed from a prison
American Travis Timmerman was found walking around barefoot after the jails were opened in Syria.
Mr. Netanyahu has finally appeared in court in Israel. He faces numerous charges, but none for being the blatant war criminal that so many of us consider him to be. Israel continues daily to kill and injure Palestinian civilians without apparent constraints, while the US keeps on supporting and funding the Israeli government. Why?
Former victims of abuses, out of feelings of grievance and an urge for retaliation, may then become victimizers, as seems to have happened among many Israelis after the Holocaust and after the October 2023 attack. A widespread sentiment there now seems to be, "We will simply wipe you all and your offspring completely off the map to make sure that you can never attack us ever again."
Not surprisingly, Amnesty International has now accused Israel of "genocide", which Israeli officials dismisses as outright "lies." More than 44,000 Palestinian, just ordinary civilians, have been killed, not only non-combatant older men, but also countless women and children. Israel justifies these many thousand civilian deaths as "collateral damage," while other observers call it simply "ethnic cleansing."
Report: ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza https://www.amnestyusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/You-Feel-Like-You-Are-Subhuman-Israels-Genocide-Against-Palestinians-in-Gaza.pdf
Then in South Korea,
Moving now back home to Washington, DC, I've just heard from my friend Jose (who's dropped the accent on his first name).
Jose escaped from Cuba as a rafter, then spent a year at Guantanamo after being rescued by the US Coast Guard. His early months in Washington, DC, back in the late '90's, were spent in my own home where he proved to be a wonderful cook. He is also an artist and photographer whose work has been featured in local shows. More than 25 years after we first met, Jose, now in his late 50s and a US citizen, works at the Library of Congress. He did make a trip to Cuba in recent years, but has no desire to return, feeling hopeless about the future of his birth country.
I am bilingual in Spanish, as most readers already know, and had been working part-time as an on-call interpreter until the pandemic. At age 86, I've now fully retired, finding that just taking care of myself is about all can manage now, especially since having never fully recovered from Covid earlier this year.
Beef is reportedly in short supply in the US, nothing of particular concern for me personally, as I have not eaten beef or the flesh of any animal with 4 legs for decades now, rarely even eaten those with only 2 legs, like chicken. I do eat fish and plant protein, which has sustained me well.
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Now US birth and fertility rates have dropped to an all time historic low of 1.67 births per childbearing woman, while 2.1 per woman would be needed for population replacement. Abortions are also up. The teenage birthrate has plunged and ages 30-34 have become peak childbearing years. Not surprisingly, college enrollments have dropped and the workforce has shrunk with fewer people of working age in the population. Immigration may be halted even further by Mr. Trump. Meanwhile, the number of retired old folks like me has grown to record levels.
As pointed out before, those still touting their "child-free" status seem to forget that they were actually once children themselves, even fetuses, both being essential stages in human development. And the childless also rely on the offspring of others at various stages of their lives, including old age. While I side with Democrats on most issues, abortion is a major exception. I see a vital difference between avoiding or preventing a pregnancy and ending an individual life already underway via an abortion in the essential early stages of any human existence. All humans emerged from unseen embryos and fetuses. It's how we all started.
No one, even among the rich and famous, ever has a painless and easy life, and we all will die. Early deaths like those of my late son and Cuban foster son are especially hard for parents like me to bear, as we expect the next generation to carry on after we are gone.
Apart from my boys' deaths, another difficult personal challenge I've faced, was the abrupt departure of my blind husband, whom I had helped propel to success over our 24-year marriage. He then immediately married his office assistant and stopped speaking with me. He also took over all our joint funds (evidently with the help of his new wife). I had to fight even to get child support.
But after my late ex-husband's departure, I also felt free to revive my Latin American and Spanish-speaking side, including joining the Peace Corps in Honduras at age 62 where I've traveled annually ever since with my own special projects, including just now at age 86 in June of this year.
I've had countless adventures in some 30 countries since my husband divorced me, mostly involving medical and human rights missions as well as election monitoring Some years ago, after traveling around Europe on my own and confronting the wall around Eastern Germany, I crossed by underground train to the east side, then sat in a movie theater there with a West German friend, viewing a propaganda film featuring then-chancellor Walter Ulbricht. Loud hissing could be heard from the audience whenever his image appeared.
An unwanted divorce ended up expanding and enriching my life in so many ways. Suddenly, after more than 2 decades of marriage, I'd been freed to make my own decisions and go my own way.
Just now, I was delighted to hear from Luis at the Honduran Red Cross: "Con su donación el consejo de la Esperanza esta pintando nuevamente el edificio." He reports that the Honduran Red Cross was able to paint their headquarters building, using funds that all of you and I had donated back in June, with cash still left over to further their work. I am already missing Honduras.
These days at age 86, facing 4 more years of a Trump presidency, I am seriously tempted to return to Honduras where my social security would go much farther and where I still have so many friends.
A Capitol Hill neighbor just sent me a photo of her recent home remodel which includes a room featuring black furniture. Fashions do come and go. Black is now in vogue. Huckleberry is also a popular home furnishing color.
I now note that with online orders, the outside of the package often touts the great "savings" being made, with no mention of any spending.
At my age, I've recently gotten messages about former associates from my work or volunteering efforts now nearing death, including some who have already died with dementia in nursing homes. Better to be felled by a stroke than to undergo a lingering death. But do we have any control over that? Here is one recent message: "I want to let her friends and family know she is in hospice care.. She has dementia, and is mostly bedridden."
While we older humans may be in decline, there is a bird still going strong.
Seeing my last blog posting, with font sizes and typefaces rather jumbled, some rendered in all-caps, I know that any correction efforts will only make matters worse. Posting here is free with no guidance being offered. Postings are all trial-and-error, requiring both me and my readers to simply put up with the quirks.
Everything reported on this blog and on its predecessor has enhanced my memory, allowing me to always go back for a review, and also has simply proved interesting for me and, I trust, for my readers as well. I think we can agree that though I may look like an ordinary "little old lady," I've hardly lived a very conventional life.
