Blowing in the wind

Yet another mall shooting, after a week of school shootings, and it's starting to feel ho hum. Is it really OK to fear going out into public all the time? Do we like living in a war zone? Yeah it's people who use guns to kill people, but if want the shooting to stop, shouldn't we get rid of (most of) the guns? After all, we can't get rid of  people, can we?

Hero or Traitor?

I don't know about Snowdon. The information needs to be made public. We all should be aware of how much information the government ( and commercial interests for that matter) collects about us, our every thought and deed. We give so much away on blogs, facebook, credit cards we use, and "customer loyalty cards" we get from the grocery stores. There is a difference between giving it away and having it forcibly extracted. In some contexts we call that rape. Snowdon shouldn't have gone to the Ruskies, but then again what choice did he have? In the pre-9/11 era, the pre-Bush era, he might have been able to get a fair hearing, and a chance at a fair trial. Not so in today's America of torture and secret prisons.

Anyone remember Bradly Manning? Is he even alive? Is there a chance that poor tortured soul has any shreds of sanity left?

More Bad News

Climate change deniers have been spouting like a pod of conservative whales during the recent cold snap here on the east coast of the US." Al Gore was full of balony!"" It doesn't feel like global warming now " We all heard the bloviators chortle and snort with glee. Meanwhile in more southerly regions of the hemisphere elderly people were dying from intolerable heat,

It's easy to minimize the dangers from something we aren't fully experiencing. Humans have a tendency to go with the flow, as long as things change gradually we tend to accept the changes as normal. But like the proverbial frog in a pot of water we may live to regret our casual complacency.

One of the arguments that deniers toss out is that Earth isn't heating up as fast as predicted by the amount of carbon dioxide we are pumping into the atmosphere. Most people don't consider or realize that two thirds of the planet is covered with water. In fact much the waste CO2 has been absorbed by the oceans. This mitigates the heat but comes at a terrible cost. CO2 and water form a mild acid called carbonic acid. The acidification of the oceans is setting us up for extinctions at a cataclysmic scale. Look at a map of human population centers. Most all of the major settlement areas are on the coastlines. They depend in large part on seafood for sustenance. What will happen when the oceans become deserts and the food disappears?

Unfit to govern

The only conclusion we can draw from the notorious emails about the George Washington  bridge lane closures, is that public officials, appointed by Chris Christie to serve the public, instead used their power to deliberately sabotage the public safety and well-being. That must be against the law, surely. If it isn't, it needs to be - starting last year. It really doesn't matter so much why they did it. It's not as if there could be an acceptable excuse in any case. So what does that say about the Christie administration? They are felons, or capable of felonious conduct, and stupid as all get out. These were Christie's right hand men and women. Why would they cook up a scheme like this all on their own, if they believed that their boss wouldn't approve? Why would they imagine that the Governor of the state would approve of actions that would cost so much money and risk to lives and livelihoods? There is clearly a culture of retribution and power-mad politics in Christie's administration.

Christie has a reputation for bullying those who oppose him.  Now we see his staff are also bullies, on a scale that hurt thousands of the taxpayers who paid their salaries. Christie is a dangerous man. He is unfit to govern, at any speed.

Who owns your body?

If you are female, maybe you don't own yourself. Maybe the government owns your body and gets to decide what happens to it. This brain dead woman is being kept on life support against the wishes of her husband and her family because there was an embryo growing inside the woman's body when she died. According to the article there are 31 states where a woman's body becomes state property if she is pregnant at the time of her death. Maybe Marlise Munoz would have chosen to have her brain-dead body be hooked up on machines for months in order to incubate an embryo. Or maybe not. I would not want a child of  mine to come into this life via a dead mother. This pregnancy is not a joyful event filled with loving anticipation. It is a constant ongoing tragedy, and reminder of loss.  In this case the woman's closest kin does not want her to exist as a living incubator. Why are their wishes less important than the government's decision?

I wonder who is paying the bills for this medical torture? It must be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Will they bill the family who doesn't want it to happen? Will taxpayers pay the bills? Who has responsibility for the fetus if it does survive til birth?

This is an example of the sickness in our society. Women are not living incubators. They are living breathing human beings with volition, and consciousness and dreams, goals, and desires. When a woman dies, she deserves the dignity of a peaceful death. Her family deserves closure.
Shame on Texas and the bureaucrats who robbing her of the right to die in peace with dignity.

Beautiful snow day

I'm enjoying this Danish word I recently learned - Hygge. It embodies a concept related to coziness, safety and warmth, companionship and friendship. Right now snow is falling and there is a strong breeze with bitter cold temperatures outside. The rhododendron leaves are tightly curled, which as all mountain folks know, means it is really cold. Meanwhile I am warm and comfy by the woodstove enjoying a nice 3rd cup of coffee, and the company of my dear spouse. Feeling very hygge now.

Let it blow

The arctic blast is predicted to storm in tonight, with temperatures colder than anything we have experienced in 20 years. I swear it used to be colder when I was young. We had snow on the ground for weeks and months at a time. Now we are lucky to see it 3 or 4 times a year, mostly little piddling events that don't even come up to your knees. Last November we had warmer nights than what we used to see during summer days! It would get below freezing for days on end, a week or more at a time during January, February, and even March.

I'm not complaining mind you. It's a whole lot easier on my old bones, this mild weather. Summers are still tolerable here in the Southern Appalachians, as long as we stay on the mountain tops and away from the flatlands. I will likely be gone from this earth before the real global crises begin to set in for good. I shudder to think about my grandchildren though. They may be in for a really rough ride these next few decades.