Late (for me) Tuesday evening, I got a text from my friend
(who is also my yoga instructor), asking if I’d be available to take her to her
physical therapy appointment the next morning. (She had total knee replacement
surgery two weeks ago.) I immediately texted back that I’d be there. For one
thing, she’d taken me to a couple of PT appointments after one of my surgeries;
for another, having gone through this twice, I know the drill.
I actually cleared the passenger seat of my Saab for her,
but when I got to her house, her husband looked at my car and suggested we take
her SUV. (For those who have not yet had the pleasure, one of the big
difficulties about getting into/out of a car is bending your leg as you pivot.
In the early post-op days, that’s nearly impossible, so a big boxy thing is easier
to negotiate than something low slung.) I have enough experience driving behemoths
from piloting Das
Auto, so the drive was uneventful.
(I did forget to lower the rear hatch after getting the
walker out when I dropped her off, but I realized my error when I found a
parking spot.)
After her session she very kindly took me out to lunch, and
we had a most excellent conversation, which we very seldom get to do, as our
meetings are yoga focused. The drive home was smooth and I did not need to bother
with dinner after having a club sandwich for lunch.
But here’s my gratitude: that I was able to do something
for a friend who’s done so much for me. That I was able to rough in some
expectations for her recovery (she’s doing really well). That I was able to
have a general conversation that, you know, people do.
I don’t know why, but for some reason I’ve had this song in
my head for a couple of weeks. I know Three Dog Night was the first group I
heard sing it—they wrote it, after all. But I just love Tom Jones’ cover. So
here it is.
I believe that it’s time for me to tart up the primary
bathroom in my house. When I moved in, it was clear that previous owners had
slapped up some tiles in the shower cubicle and called it a day. Leaving it
essentially as it was when it was built in 1970.
Which is to say, dark, poky and not a little creepy.
The home inspector informed me that the shower knobs
leaked, and a plumber informed me that to fix that, he’d have to go
through the tiles and the wall. It was easier for me to just use the shower in
the hall bathroom.
That was not possible in the first couple of days after
each of my knee replacement surgeries, and it’s recently occurred to me that I
really ought to consider the walk-in option, as opposed to the step-over one.
So last week I went to a Ferguson showroom and mooned about
the plumbing. In the process I came across this, which I absolutely do not get:
Whatever in the world is the point of a three-person sinky
thing with only one faucet?
I believe we are just past peak Autumn colors now; probably
a week or so later than “normal”. (Which, I hope, means that my cluster
landscapers should be out blowing away the foot-deep carpet of leaves in my
back yard. Come on, people: I have birds to feed here.)
Interesting thing happened last week. I’d finally said out
loud what I’ve been feeling for months: that I have no skills that any employer
would value, so there’s no reason for me to be competing in a hugely cutthroat
job market. I’d stopped even looking at the job search alerts LinkedIn sends me
five times a day.
But the thought of having to depend on Social Security
(which the Republicans have been trying to kill since FDR implemented it during
the New Deal), Medicare (which they’ve been trying to kill since LBJ got it
passed in the 60s) and my 401k (as we head into administration whose policies
the vast majority of economists say will tank the global economy) really wigged
me out.
I was in a bad way.
Then, Wednesday I saw a listing for a PM job that I thought
I could do, generally useless though I be. But their applicant tracking system
crapped out every time I hit the submit button on the application. (Tried
multiple times on three browsers.) I looked on LinkedIn for a connection, and
there was a product manager connected to a friend/mentor of mine. I reached out
to the latter for an introduction, which he graciously gave. Thursday morning
the PM responded, saying he’d already passed my “very impressive profile” to
the hiring manager, who’s already in interviews, but was interested. He sent me
an internal referral link to the application, but I still encountered the
submit problem. He also contacted a recruiter, who at least looked at my LI
profile.
I can’t tell you how much this basic interest and
acknowledgement lightened my perspective.
But then, also on Thursday, I was scrolling through
my Twitter feed and came across this tweet:
It had only been posted a few minutes before, so I was the
first to stick up my hand. The poster DM’d me with the job description and a
link to the internal referral. It’s a job I cautiously think I might be able to
do, and my background at least carries gravitas in this field. As I was filling
out the application, a guy I know only on Twitter, CISO for a law firm and an
elder in cybersec, tweeted, “Recommend!”
As of time of writing, I’ve heard nothing further on that
first job (remember—they were already interviewing), and I have a screening call
tomorrow with a recruiter for the second job. (The tweet got 17 replies, and several were from people also interested.) I’m not delusional—scores of people
go through multiple rounds of interviews for every job in tech out there and
still don’t get hired. But the fact that—after months of considering what I
need by way of Plans B through R to feel financially secure in the coming
chaos, to have two actual human connections, from people willing to help
me, is such grace; it makes me cry. Whatever the outcome.
After a week of taking-the-piss choices for the Kleptocrat’s
new kakistocratic high government posts (plus his announced plan to evade the
constitutional requirement of Senate confirmation for same), seems to me that
the only choice for today’s earworm is Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in
the Name”.
In addition to the beautiful,
I’m also looking for the cute. So meet Scooter, who is a part-time resident of
my back yard.
You will note that his cheeks are full of safflower seeds. (I toss them for the ground feeders, as squirrels don't like them. But apparently chipmunks do.)
I was on my morning walk Monday (a day in November when we
reached into the 70s), when I glanced down and caught a glimpse of some
sparkles on a leaf. I was already about ten paces further when I stopped and
literally muttered, “Go back and shoot it.”
So I did.
It’s beautiful, and I need all the beautiful in life I can
get.
Here’s a follow-up to my saga
about getting my flu vaccination. The gist of it was OneMedical (now owned
by Amazon) screwed up on the dosage, even though my records indicate I get the
high dose and I specified high dose when I made the appointment, and I had to
return the following day to get the job done.
When they sent me the obligatory Net Promoter Score (NPS)
survey, I gave them middling scores (indicating I am not a promoter of
their product or service, based on my recent experience). I also laid a few
choice words on them in the verbatim sections and answered “yes” to their “may
we contact you for more information” query.
So—here’s their outreach: from “Valerie” at “Amazon
OneMedical” (all previous communications have come from the OneMed only domain):
I would have said that this was AI generated, except I don’t
see much intelligence of any origin. It absolutely does not address the issues
I brought up and I am at a loss as to what she means by “a greater experience”.
Possibly, English is not her first language.
However, as in all the Jeff Bezos empire, she gives the
appearance of a response, without the expense of the substance of one, so all’s
well, eh?
At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh
month in 1918, the guns of the War to End All Wars fell silent. The survivors
crawled out of their trenches, scraped caked mud off their uniforms and tried
to understand how to live normal lives again.
Well—that was a pipe dream; societies always try to return
to normal after cataclysms, but the fact is, “normal” is one of the first
casualties of wartime service. Along with truth.
I thought a lot about that as I visited the military
cemeteries of the Western Front—French, British, German, American. More than
other graveyards, military cemeteries display the true democracy of death: the
uniformity of the headstones; regular rows; whatever the rank, no one more
elaborate than any other.
But that’s the dead: the living (more or less) returned to
their homes to find that their governments wanted them to resume their pre-war
stations on pre-war terms, and their families wanted them to pretend they
hadn’t been through what they had.
We still do that—send men and women out to do the worst
things imaginable and then ignore the human consequences, pretending that being
a sapper or a tanker is just like being a plumber or a marketer. The fact that
our longest-war-ever was not even a national effort, the way the World Wars
were, keeps the blood-and-treasure costs out of mind for most Americans. If
you’re not serving or know someone who is, it’s easy to ignore the price of
policy.
Well, it’s Veterans Day here in the US, one of only two
days that we pay lip service to the sacrifices made by those who serve in our
defense. Who take their oaths to support and defend the Constitution against
all enemies, foreign and domestic, and pay a steep price for it. I am grateful
for all of them, all the generations of them. They are not now, nor have they
ever been, suckers or losers; they are men and women the practice of whose
profession is called “serving”, a concept unknown to the members of our future
administration.
Who also do not understand the concept of gratitude.
NGL—we are in for it. Faced with the choice between a convicted
felon, adjudicated rapist, racist, misogynist, lying, unhinged thief of classified
documents, who’s cheated at everything from golf to his three wives, and a
dedicated public servant with a clear record of advocating for the people—a majority
of American voters went with the criminal.
Which means we will have 12 years of rule by Republicans so
radical they’d make Edwin M. Stanton blush, handing out goodies to the
oligarchs while they clamp down on any non-White, non-cis, non-Christian
non-rich, non-native (except for the First People; they don’t count; they never
counted) folks in the country and cause chaos throughout the globe.
I’m talking: three SCOTUS picks in the next term; they’ll
be ideologues vetted by the Federalist Society, and young. They’ll be ruling
for decades. Additionally, scores of judges on federal benches, which will soon
look in total like the Fifth Circuit.
Pulling the US out of NATO. Bugger Article 5, we’ll just
leave. Which will give Putin and his lackeys permission to do whatever the fuck
they want to do.
Tanking the economy. Not just tariffs, not just tax cuts
for corporations and the wealthy, not just whatever crackbrained idea the
Kleptocrat comes up with—it’s all of them together. Plus putting Elon Musk in
charge of “eliminating government waste”. He promises he can trim $2T off a $6T
budget, although he allows there will be “some hardship” involved in that. Not
for him or his ilk; for us.
Destroying the environment. Between handing over whatever
they want to big oil, there’ll be lifting of EPA regulations on corporations
all over the place. Like hellscapes? Great—one coming right up.
The death of Ukraine.
Utter calamity for women’s lives. It’s not only the death
of Roe v Wade, as horrifying as the results have been just in the past few
months. It’s the intrusion of state governments into all of a woman’s decisions—if
and where she should work outside the house, how many children she should
produce, what redress she has in an abusive relationship, what control (if any)
she has over money and property. We’re headed back at least one century, maybe
more.
Oh—and ditto for people of color: they’ll be put back in “their
place”, which will not be anywhere you or I would like to be.
And let’s talk about deporting immigrants. That’s a big
promise, and it always got big cheers; no doubt it played a big part in
electing the Kleptocrat and the alleged couch-shtuper. Millions and millions of
Americans voted to have law enforcement and the goddamned United States
military round up “millions” of immigrants (who may or may not be here
legally), park them in purpose-built “camps” and then ship them like lettuce or
bags of rice to “where they came from”. Millions upon millions of Americans are
looking forward to watching that—spitting on the “others” if in person, or
toasting the aktion with their cans of Coors if viewing on TV.
They'll start with immigrants and then move on to anyone who dissents. Not deportation; just imprisoning and possibly killing.
Oh—and all you morons who voted for the Kleptocrat because "the price of eggs": what are you going to do when all those people who harvest the crops and work in the meat packing plants are gone and the price of everything shoots through the roof? Yeah, I know—loosening up child labor laws will take care of that, eh?
BTW—let me point out that millions of these people claim to
be Christians, and they are looking forward to building out a theocracy that
has never been a pillar of our democracy. Right up until the point where
they start killing each other over which is the only Jesus-approved form of baptism—foot dipping
or full immersion—they’ll enact laws that make fundamental Protestantism the
paradigm for behavior. Look—we currently have a Speaker of the House who
considers himself Moses; this isn’t such a stretch.
Also BTW—these are the people who are rooting for a
cataclysmic war in the Middle East to usher in the End Times. They care deeply
about Israel; not at all about Jews.
And I do not forget national security. There will be none—everything
discussed in the halls of our government will be blabbed immediately to the
Kremlin. Because that’s how these people roll. After four years (with the
Kleptocrat’s toadies heading up intelligence and military branches), we’ll be
devastated. By year 12 we won’t exist as a power.
Because there’s also a plan to eliminate career civil
servants in the federal system—the backbone of government—and replace them with
suits whose only expertise is sucking up to Cadet Bonespurs. They wrote this down,
that’s how confident they are.
As for the nation’s health—well, RFK Jr. is going to tackle
that. He’ll balance removing fluoride from the water with eliminating the FDA
(and probably the NIH and CDC) as well as the Department of Health and Human Services.
Finally—let me remind you that, in addition to the absence
of guardrails that come with him bringing in only the ideologues who’ve pledged
loyalty exclusively to him (not the Constitution), we also have a situation
where SCOTUS has declared that anyone whose ass is parked behind the Resolute
Desk has absolute immunity for any criminal acts committed in the course of conducting
business. We are well and truly fucked.
And that’s what my fellow Americans voted for—a Christofascist
autocracy. Because the price of eggs is up and they didn’t want another non-White
person in the White House.
So what do I choose for today’s earworm? Stevie Wonder
singing “Higher Ground” at this year's DNC. That's what we need to be thinking about.
TBH, I find myself without words today. I don’t know how
long this condition will last; I don’t know whether there’s any point in doing
this at all. So here are some photos taken when I thought—hoped—we were better
than this.
Today I am trying to have no thoughts. The American people
are at a crossroad and they’re choosing which way this country will proceed. All
the doomscrolling and fretting in the world will not affect that.
NGL, my anxiety level is looking at Mercury in the rearview
mirror and I’m terrified of what happens to the world if the Kleptocrat wins
the election tomorrow. It is not hyperbole to state that putting an insane autocrat,
backed up by authoritarian White Christian Nationalists at the head of the most
powerful nation on earth—the strongest economy, the most effective military—spells
disaster not only for the United States, but for everyone else. (As Sancho Panza
says, “Whether the rock hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the rock, it’s
going to be bad for the pitcher.”)
Even if he loses, the prospect of all the crap we’ll have
to plough through for months just wears me out. I am so tired of his shit.
But today is Gratitude Monday, so I’m focusing on what’s
good.
We’ve had a good run—248 years of democracy. Even with the
blip from 1861 to 1865, that’s not nothing.
I note that we were founded on violence—colonization,
rebellion, expansion across the continent, human chattel slavery, racism,
systematic exploitation of labor—and yet we became a beacon to the world of
representative government, rule of law, and social and economic possibilities.
That’s not nothing.
We made education available for free (if you don’t count
taxes) to everyone and built some of the best universities in the world, where
astonishing advances in science were made. Our technologies have pioneered everything
from space exploration to crop yields, such that other nations devote whole
divisions to attempting to steal them. That’s not nothing.
We do stumble on a lot of the social and economic fronts. I
recognize that as a White, middle class woman I’ve mostly sat in the catbird seat.
But only in my own lifetime has the policy of “separate but equal” been
declared null, have women been given the right to open bank accounts without a
male relative approving and has a Black man been elected to the presidency. We
have a long way to go—especially with the legislative and judicial pushback of
the past eight years—but that’s still not nothing.
It shows we are conscious of our actions, and we can
improve. (Or go the other direction.)
The innate violence and societal worship of guns to the
contrary notwithstanding, we’ve mostly celebrated our holidays joyfully, with
homemade parades, homemade floats, barbecues and fireworks. And until 2021, we
enjoyed peaceful transfer of power from president to president. And that’s not
nothing.
So I’m grateful for how well we’ve done so far and the
willingness of most to keep moving forward. I’m grateful that I can cast my
vote as I chose, up and down the ballot—my mother was born before the
Nineteenth Amendment gave women that right. I’m grateful for everyone who’s
made this shining city upon a hill possible for nearly 250 years.
It's All Saints Day and we’re at the final Friday before the election. I confess
that my anxiety level has been at Defcon4 for about the past month. There seems
to be nothing—no act of indecency, no whackadoodle promise, no vulgarity—that will
sway the Kleptocrat’s followers from the descent into insanity, so now it’s up
to the non-cultists to set this train onto the track of reasonable, democratic
government instead of the express to fascist autocracy that he’s openly
declared he’ll install.
We the people have to get this done, despite our opponents
firebombing ballot dropboxes, culling voter rolls days before the election (we’ll
remember this, SCOTUS, as we do all the other rulings), engaging in voter intimidation
at the polling places and refusing to let DOJ monitors observe the process. If
they’re that terrified now, we have to give them the biggest scare ever: a
landslide victory for Democrats all up and down the ballot.
They'll still scream RIGGED and try to steal it, but it'll be much harder for them to succeed.
So my earworm today is “People Have the Power”, by Patti
Smith. Crank up the volume.
This time of year, people around the world think about
things like the triumph of light over darkness, good over evil, life over
death.
Today—the holiday you know as Halloween—is also the Celtic
holiday Samhain. It marks the bringing in of the harvest and the envelopment of
the world in winter darkness. And tonight the wall between this world and the
next is more frangible, and it’s a time for lighting protective and cleansing
bonfires as the living and dead commune.
Today is also el Día de Muertos in the Mexican tradition,
when the living open their lives to the dead, who are celebrated with sugar
skulls, favorite foods and drink, both in the home and via picnics at
cemeteries. The celebration runs through tomorrow (All Saints Day, in the
Catholic Church) and Saturday, All Souls Day, which essentially carry on the
Celtic tradition.
One of my favorite holidays starts tonight. That would be
Diwali, when Hindus celebrate a number of events where princes of light and
good slapped down princes who would envelope the world in darkness and evil. I
find it interesting that this whole good/evil thing was not one-and-done;
evildoers are always trying it on, so we have to be alert, strong and brave.
This seems particularly apt, given the election surrounding
us in the United States—so clearly a fight between light and darkness, between
hope and hate, between building a future and lighting a fuse to nihilism.
One part of the Diwali tradition involves lights—candles,
fairy lights, fireworks, the whole spectrum—and I definitely can get behind
that.
This year, for the first time, I noticed that Costco is
selling Diwali fireworks. Because of course. And also, because why not?
(Another one is the sharing of sweets, which I also
endorse.)
So, tonight—more than other nights—I’ll amass candles on my
dinner table and consider how we in these times can turn back the darkness. I'm
grateful for the reminder that, while the struggle goes on, we always have
another opportunity to vanquish evil.
