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CAN YOU NAME EVERY STATE ON THE MAP AND THE CAPITAL OF EACH?

9/27/2020

"A hilarious, bizarre, sometimes ribald tale." -R. Bruce Logan, author of As The Lotus Blooms

"Liszkay continues to dazzle with fresh and funny characters from beginning to end." -Daniel B. Oliver, author of The Long Road

"Hail Mary"
by Patti Liszkay
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CAN YOU NAME EVERY STATE ON THE MAP AND THE CAPITAL OF EACH?

Can you?
Can you, for example, name all of these states without Googling?

Do you know which of these is which?

I confess I didn't.
Not that I couldn't name all fifty United States in a pinch, and if you asked me if a state was north, south, east. or west, I could tell you...though now I see that I didn't know exactly how north, south, east or west.
I learned of my geographic ignorance a few days ago when I was indulging in my election season past-time of checking the Presidential polls on Fivethirtyeight seventeen times a day. (Why I still do this I cannot even say, considering how accurate the polls were last time around).
Anyway, there's a page on the Fivethirtyeight site that offers daily a number of possible electoral outcomes based on mathematical probability, or some such esoteric concept. On this page there are maps of the potential outcomes, such as:

It was while studying these maps that I realized that I didn't know to which states the majority of these unlabeled shapes were referring. Which one is Iowa? Where's Montana?

Which one is actually Utah? Colorado? Arizona?

And what's this one to the left of Texas? And what's the one to the right of Texas?

I pulled up from online a labeled map of the U.S. to make some sense of the unlabeled Fivethrityeight maps.
It was a moment of epiphany: It hit me that so many of the states were just sort of vague disembodied outlines on the map in my mind, even the states I've been to numerous times; in other words, I might know a place, but I still couldn't find it on a map.

But how intriguing was this map of my country that I hadn't take a close look at probably since sixth grade geography class (And probably not even then). I'd imagined Colorado, with its mountains and ski resorts to be farther north and Utah, with its deserts - Utah has deserts, right? Or maybe not? - in any case, I thought of Utah as being more south. And Arkansas was more west on the map in my mind. And Georgia was more west, too. (Even though I did know, having seen "Gone With The Wind," that General Sherman marched from Atlanta to the sea. But which sea?).
And look at Illinois (which I mentally interchanged with Chicago, probably because that's the only part of Illinois I've spent time in): it touches Kentucky, which is the actual South. And Illinois is likewise just a small edge of Kentucky away from...Tennessee? How interesting, how enlightening, once the light bulb of interest has snapped on.
I've heard it said that most people once they graduate from school don't conquer any new mental horizons such as learning a new instrument, a new sport, a new language, a new art, a new mathematical subject.
However I've decided that this graduate is going to conquer something new: I am going to learn where every United State is located on the map. To this end I ran off a passel of blank U.S. maps and every day I'm going to study and give myself map quizzes until I have all the states correctly labeled. Oh, and I'm going to learn all the state capitals, too, because I don't know all of those either. What's the capital of Missouri? Mississippi? South Dakota? South Carolina? New Mexico? New Hampshire?
Ask me next week.

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The Otherization Of Jon Husted

9/23/2020

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Jon Husted has spent the past twenty years as an Ohio state lawmaker,

...serving as Ohio Secretary of State, Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, and a member of the Ohio Senate before he was appointed as Lieutenant Governor in 2019 by Governor Mike Dewine.

This past year, since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, Jon Husted has picked up the gauntlet with Governor Dewine and side by side (formerly side by side by side with Ohio Health Director Dr. Amy Acton until Dr. Acton was driven from the job by extreme harassment from hostile right-wing protesters) ,

...the two men have risen to the challenge of keeping the Ohio citizenry safe, informed and updated on the latest news and developments in our state on the COVID pandemic, following the science, making the hard and often unpopular decisions, in any case putting the health and welfare of Ohioans above any political considerations.
However Jon Husted is a Republican and co-chair with Governor Dewine for Trump's re-election campaign in Ohio.
And so the day before yesterday when Trump showed up for a campaign rally in Vandalia, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton,

...it should have been normal for Ohio Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted to be at the rally to whip up enthusiasm and excitement prior to Trump's on-stage appearance among his fellow Republicans, all of whom were there for the same purpose as he was: to show their love for Donald Trump.
Or so must Jon Husted have believed. But Husted made the mistake of likewise believing that he could show support for Trump as well as for fighting the spread of COVID-19 by encouraging the packed, mostly maskless crowd to wear masks, which, as everyone knows, Donald Trump is as against as he is other anti-pandemic measures, such as social distancing at his campaign rallies.

And if Donald Trump is against something, so are his followers, rabidly. The outcome of Husted's mistake in not realizing this was dreadful to watch.
Husted stepped onto the rally stage modeling a "Trump 2020" mask. "I'm trying to make masks in America great again and I've got President Trump's masks," he said.

The crowd booed. Husted must have believed - most naively - that he could win over the crowd by showing them an assortment of masks - apparently available for purchase at the rally venue - with Trump logos on them. He was further booed and jeered. "Hang on, hang on," he said good-naturedly, holding up the blue mask, the red mask, the MAGA mask to more boos. "Hang on, I know we don't like wearing 'em, hang on, hang on, I get it."

But the co-chairman of the Ohio Trump campaign was bombing miserably with these
Team Trump zealots, and the more Husted tried to convince them that he was on their team, the more they booed, jeered, and mocked him. They shouted him down, gave him thumbs down, yelled at him, among other things, "Tyrant," "Get off the stage," and "Not gonna work," when he quipped that they could tell people they were trying to save the country by wearing a Trump mask. The hostility from this crowd was palpable and brazen. Husted was even being booed by children. Here are a couple of videos of Jon Husted desperately trying to win the approval of the crowd:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1308147051495071745

https://twitter.com/GeoffWSYX6/status/1308139566558261253?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1308139566558261253%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fabc6onyourside.com%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Fdewine-husted-respond-to-booing-at-president-trump-rally-in-vandalia

Watching those videos is excruciating. Not so much because the Lieutenant Governor is being heckled and insulted by a rude, rowdy crowd; but because he tries so hard to put on a show of laughing off their mockery and insults, as if their obvious dislike of him is really all in good fun, he and they are all Trump supporters, after all. And because they were Trump supporters, he had no choice but to suck up to them. And they, in return, did all they could think of to humiliate him, to make it clear to him that he was not one of them, to publicly otherize him.
And so our Lieutenant Governor, who was attempting to support both the wearing of protective face masks and Donald Trump learned a biblical lesson: that a man cannot serve two masters, for he will either love the one and hate the other, or hate the one and love the other.
Which begs the question: The health and well-being of Ohioans or Donald Trump...which masters Jon Husted's heart?

References:
https://www.cleveland.com/open/2020/09/ohio-lt-gov-jon-husted-heckled-during-trump-campaign-event-in-dayton.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election/ohio-governor-jon-husted-booed-trump-rally-mask-mandate-b520484.html

https://twitter.com/GeoffWSYX6/status/1308139566558261253?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1308139566558261253%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fabc6onyourside.com%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Fdewine-husted-respond-to-booing-at-president-trump-rally-in-vandalia

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/22/politics/donald-trump-ohio-jon-husted-mask/index.html

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The White Squirrel

9/20/2020

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THE WHITE SQUIRREL

Today on this beautiful September morning I took my daily once (or sometimes twice - this morning it was twice) around the block.

With the country on fire over the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and how her seat on the Supreme Court will be filled,

...I found myself instead worrying over the fire still burning up the West Coast,

...and the smoky air going into the lungs of my sister who lives in Portland and my grandchildren who live in Los Angeles.
I ruminated over the COVID-19 epidemic still keeping me apart from those I love and nowhere near abating yet.

And I thought about all the people along the Gulf Coast who were once again suffering in the aftermath of yet another monster hurricane.

I wondered how the Administration that is supposed to be administering to the well-being of our country could continue to plug up its ears to the admonition of every medical expert in the world while almost 1,000 people still die every day in this country from COVID-19, and to the warnings of every climate scientist on the planet while our coastlines burn and drown before our eyes.
I thought of the Bible verse Luke 16:27-31, in which the rich man burning in hell asks Abraham to let him come back from the dead to warn his brothers to change their careless, greedy ways. Abraham replies that the man's brothers have the prophets, and if they won't heed the words of the prophets then they wouldn't listen even if someone rose from the dead.
In the midst of all these sober mullings I caught sight of something scampering across a front yard.
It was a white squirrel.
I thought I must have scared him because he headed for the nearest tree and ran high up into the branches.

But then he settled on a lower branch,

...turned to me,

...and smiled.

Or at least he looked like he was smiling.
I immediately called my sister to tell her about the smiling white squirrel. She googled "white squirrel" and read that these little apparitions are quite rare, and that the odds of seeing one are 1 in 100,000. She also learned that in mythology a white squirrel is a good omen and seeing one means that change is coming and so one should be ready for it.
I'm so ready.

Reference:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109281/covid-19-daily-deaths-compared-to-all-causes/

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Apocalypse Still: Hurricanes, Floods, And Fire

9/18/2020

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Last year around this time I posted over two days two blogs, the first about the hurricanes that were wreaking destruction along our Gulf Coast and the second about the wildfires that were ravaging not only our West Coast but forest areas around the globe, even in Siberia and the Arctic.
Today our Gulf coast is again being devastated by hurricanes and our West Coast is again an inferno, and not only our West Coast:
This year wildfires have raged in forest area outside Marseilles, France;

...in Andalucia, Spain;

... in southern Greece;

...in Australia.

The Amazon wildfires are surging worse than last year.
Wildfires are still burning in Siberia.
The Arctic is burning like never before.
According to the NASA earth observatory, "Following an active 2019 season, fires in 2020 have again been abundant, widespread, and have produced abnormally large carbon emissions."
And so, as this year's natural disasters wrought by climate change are merely a continuation of last year's and the year before's - except that this year the misery for those hit by these fires and hurricanes is worsened by the additional misery of the COVID -19 pandemic - I've decided to repost here those two posts from last year, "Apocalypse Now: Hurricanes and Floods" and "Apocalypse Now: Fires." Hence today's blog is a little longer than usual. But maybe you have the time.

APOCALYPSE NOW: HURRICANES AND FLOODS
9/4/2019

Dear Future Cyberarchivist who, while sifting through ancient internet postings from bygone centuries in search of the history of humankind, has come across this blog chronicling the events and observations of life in the first quarter of the 21st Century AD:
      Two years ago I entered in this web log a post about a monstrous hurricane that hit Texas, a coastal state along the Southwestern seaboard of the country where I live, known today as the United States of America. (You may, if you wish and are able to, look up that post, entitled "Hurricane Harvey, 21st Century Behemoth" and dated 9/5/2017).
       At that time Hurricane Harvey was among the worst natural disasters to the hit our country, and surely the worst, most destructive hurricane, destroying much of the Texas city of Houston.
    This hurricane was a new weather phenomenon in its size and in that, unlike previous hurricanes, it moved very slowly so that it stayed for days hovering over the city of Houston,

...where it dumped over 50 inches of rain.

At the time Hurricane Harvey was considered to be the worst hurricane in history - it had been preceded in 2005 by previous record-setting Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city of New Orleans, and in 2012 by Superstorm Sandy that hit the eastern coastal state of New Jersey - and forecasters pronounced Hurricane Harvey to be a once-in-500-years weather event.
But that very same year, 2017, two more equally monstrous hurricanes, Irma and Maria, defied the forecasters and wreaked havoc on the southeastern coastal state of Florida and some nearby islands in the Caribbean Sea and laid waste to the island of Puerto Rico, killing over 3,000 people.

Two years later the island of Puerto Rico has still not recovered.

Almost exactly one year later, in early September of 2018, another monster hurricane called Hurricane Florence churned up in the too-warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean and slammed into the south eastern coastal states of North Carolina and South Carolina,

...then swirled in place, barely moving for days, causing in that area destruction and floods of historic proportion.

A month later the Florida coast, not yet recovered from the destruction wreaked by the unprecedented storms Irma and Maria from the previous year, was again hit, this time by a a hurricane even more savage than Hurricanes Irma and Maria, a monster from the sea called Hurricane Michael,

...which reached record wind speeds of 185 miles an hour,

...and set a new record for size, strength, and destruction.

And one year later, today, September 4, 2019, Hurricane Dorian, a behemoth hurricane every bit as destructive as Hurricane Michael was last year, is churning off the beleaguered south eastern coast of the United States, with predictions that it will make landfall soon.

But since its nascence in the Atlantic Ocean several days ago Hurricane Dorian has already laid siege to the Caribbean Island group to the southeast of the United States known as the Bahamas with 185-mile-an-hour winds and rains that have caused terrible devastation and loss of life.

"Apocalyptic," "Unprecedented," "Truly catastrophic," "A historic tragedy," are the words that are being used by those who have seen the destruction of Hurricane Dorian to the Bahamas.
And yet for the past three years at the end of summer monster storms have been rising up out of the Atlantic Ocean, each one worse than the previous, each one breaking unprecedented records of size, strength, and destruction.
        And note this, Historian of the Future: we, the people of the planet Earth, know perfectly well the cause of these apocalyptic weather events.
      For years every reputable scientist on the planet has been reporting that climate change caused by global warming caused by humans' overuse of fossil fuels is the cause of, and will continue to be the cause of, these monster storms. According to scientists bigger, slower, wetter - and consequently stronger, more intense and more destructive - hurricanes are the product of the rising temperatures of the ocean in which they are born.
        And we know, we absolutely know on this day, September 4, 2019, how to stop this terrible climate trend that we have caused. We even have the the technology to to replace fossil fuels with clean energy sources.
       But our country, The United States of America, the most powerful country by far on the planet, is currently ruled by foolish old men devoured by greed and personal power, which they put far above the welfare of our nation and our world.

These foolish old men refuse to stand up to the obscene wealth and power of the fossil fuel industry because they themselves are in the pockets of the rich men who rule that industry.
And so, the worried scientists tell us, year after year the hurricanes will come and they will get worse as the planet warms. And we could stop this. But as of today we are doing nothing.
And while this part of the world is being destroyed by wind and water, other parts of the world are being destroyed by fire.

References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/02/world/americas/hurricane-dorian-bahamas.html

"A Warmer World Makes Hurricanes Wetter and More Intense,"
https://www.apnews.com/47d8e0bf05354260931de08ad9976a37

APOCALYPSE NOW: FIRES 9/6/2019

Fires detected over the past year, 2018-2019:

Dear Future Cyberchivist:
By the year 2019 the world has become too hot.
Human's excessive burning of fossil fuels - oil, coal, natural gas - over the last few decades to inexpensively feed our existence such as it is has caused the formation of a layer of carbon gases called greenhouse gases that traps too much heat of the sun in our lower atmosphere.
This has subsequently raised the temperature of the earth to a dangerous level.
Hence our too-warm oceans now spawn behemoth hurricanes,

...that leave in their wake horrifying devastation and death.

And while coastal areas and islands in the sea are being ravaged by hurricanes and floods, fires of historic proportions are burning around the world.
Over the past few weeks, monster wild fires have been raging across Europe.
In France,

...Spain,

...Greece,

...Turkey,

...and Russia.

Fires are flaming in the jungles of Indonesia and across the African Savanna.
Wildfires are raging in cold places where fires rarely burn: Greenland, Alaska, Siberia,

... the Arctic Circle.

Meanwhile the layer of ice at the top of the world known as the Polar Ice Cap is melting. The sea-ice of the Arctic Ocean is melting. The glaciers, moving frozen rivers of ice in polar regions, are melting. All the ice in the world is melting.
And here in the United States of America, my country, while Hurricane Dorian besieges our East Coast (see yesterday's post), our West Coast burst into flames yesterday from a new wild fire in the city of Murrieta, south of Los Angeles in the state of California.
1,000 acres have already been destroyed by that fire.

Scientists see this plague of fire as being driven by the earth's rising temperature; but the fires are in turn exacerbating the heating of the earth by releasing more heat-trapping greenhouse gases and killing the trees that help remove those climate-warming gases from the air.
And so its a vicious circle: the global warming causes the fires which cause more global warming.
But the most tragic and destructive fire currently ravaging the planet is, ironically, not one that has been cause by global warming, but one that has been set by humans.
The Amazon, the world's largest tropical rain forest,

...covers much of South America and has been called "The Lungs of the Earth" because its two-million square-miles of cooling trees and plant life release oxygen into the atmosphere,

...and remove carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping greenhouse gas that is a major cause of global warming. The thousands of rivers that flow through the Amazon bring cooling humidity to the planet and rain to the surrounding areas.
However in recent years cattle and soybean farmers in the country of Brazil, where most of the Amazon rain forest is located, have been deforesting the Amazon, cutting down the vegetation then burning the area to turn it from jungle to cattle grazing and farmland,

...to feed the world's voracious appetite for beef and soy.
Brazil is the world's largest exporter of beef cattle. The United States used to be the world's largest exporter of soy beans, which thrive on the fertile plains of the American West and Midwest.
However the current President of the United States of America, a foolish, greedy, power-hungry rich old man named Donald Trump (see yesterday's post),

...has plunged our country into a reckless trade war with China, to the end that China, the former consumer of a quarter of all soybeans produced in the United States, no longer buys soybeans from our farmers, but has turned to Brazil for its soy bean imports.
Subsequently American soy bean farmers are going bankrupt while their fertile fields lie fallow and Brazilian farmers are burning down more of the Amazon rain forest to produce more soy beans to send to China.
The fires set in the Amazon are up by 80% this year over previous years and the Amazon is being destroyed at a record-breaking rate..

Scientist warn that if the loss of the Amazon passes a certain threshold it may never recover and will no longer be a rain forest,

... but could become a savanna, a grassy area with few trees.

In that case, we're told that the death of the Amazon rain forest would release billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere that had previously been absorbed by the rain forest vegetation, making the planet even hotter and dryer.
       And so, dear Future Archivist, that is where we stand today, September 6, 2019.
       Scientists tell us that if we are to preserve the planet as the green, verdant, life-filled, productive, beautiful gift given to us by our Creator we must act now to clean our atmosphere of fossil fuel emissions, clean our waters of the pollution, plastic and chemicals we've dumped into our rivers and oceans - well, that's another global problem besides the warming - and change our life styles to become better stewards of the Earth.
       Scientists say this is the moment. Some say it's already too late.
       Of course, only you of the future know.

References
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/climate/fire-amazon-africa-siberia-worldwide.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/world/americas/amazon-fire-brazil-bolsonaro.html

https://www.vox.com/2019/8/22/20828219/amazon-rainforest-wildfire-photos-fire-greenland

https://www.newsweek.com/nasa-images-show-africa-has-five-times-more-wildfires-burning-amazonheres-why-theyre-1456382

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/26/unprecedented-more-than-100-wildfires-burning-in-the-arctic-in-worst-ever-season

https://www.mintpressnews.com/MyMPN/goodbye-flying-rivers-amazon-rainforest-drying/

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-rainforest-experiencing-record-breaking-deforestation-2019-7

https://www.edf.org/climate/will-wildfires-keep-spreading-climate-change

References
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/climate/wildfires-globally.html

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/14/us/california-wildfires-monday/index.html

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-08-19/amazon-rainforest-fires-burn-continues-despite-promises

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147083/another-intense-summer-of-fires-in-siberia

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02568-y

https://www.dw.com/en/thousands-evacuated-in-france-as-forest-fires-rage-near-marseille/a-54443041#:~:text=Thousands%20evacuated%20in%20France%20as%20forest%20fires%20rage%20near%20Marseille,-At%20least%2022&text=Fires%20have%20spread%20through%20camping,the%20evacuation%20of%202%2C700%20people.

https://www.dw.com/en/brazil-amazon-rainforest-fires-surge-in-july/a-54405259

https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2020/08/29/600-evacuated-from-series-of-forest-fires-across-spains-andalucia/

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This Most Unexcellent Canopy, The Air

9/16/2020

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My daughter lives in Los Angeles, where a on a September morning the sky should have been a clear light cerulean blue, the trees green, the air balmy. Here's a picture I took of her neighborhood last year:

Here's a picture my daughter sent me of her neighborhood the other day at 9:55 am:

The landscape has turned grey with a dull red sun that looks like a dying star. The air is noxious, one can feel it in one's lungs if one stays outside for very long. The children, still schooling at home because of the COVID-19 epidemic, now cannot even go outside to play.

My sister lives in Portland, Oregon. A temperate rain forest, Portland is - was - a beautiful city of parks and pine trees bordered by mountains where plant life grows so abundantly that it springs up through cracks in the sidewalk. And the air in Portland is - was - always so fresh and cool and clean.
Here are some pictures I took while walking around my sister's neighborhood on a September day a few years ago:

Here's a picture my sister took from the parking lot of her neighborhood grocery parking lot a few days ago:

At this moment Portland has the dirtiest, most hazardously caustic air of anywhere on earth. And though my sister has three air purifiers and her air conditioner running, she says the inside of her house smells like an ash tray. In spite of being an avid hiker, swimmer and outdoorswoman, my sister dares not tax her lungs with much physical work, even indoors.

My daughter has lived in Los Angeles for 15 years; my sister has lived in Portland for close to two decades. Neither has experienced air events anything like what they're experiencing now. In fact it's only been within the past few year that the West Coast has been plagued by these episodes of an atmosphere so polluted by fire smoke that the air changes color, consistency, and smell and forces the population to stay indoors. This is because for the past few years - since 2018 - the American West Coast has suffered the worst wildfire seasons in history, with each year the fires progressively deadlier, more destructive, and producing more poisonous - and farther reaching - pollution of the air.
But it's not only the West Coast suffering the atmospheric fallout from the wildfires that have burned more than 5 million acres of land in the past two weeks. The foul smoke released from the wildfires has been picked up on the wind, the jet stream that travels across the continent and around the globe. By yesterday there was a haze over the sun in Chicago, Columbus, Ohio, and Washington D.C. Based on satellite data, by this weekend that smokey air from the West Coast wildfires will be in the atmosphere of Europe .

And so people around the world will all be breathing in a greater or lesser amount of the same pollution born of monster fires born of global climate change that we human beings have caused and are now not doing enough to stop. And all I can think about are the people I love breathing in that terrible air.

References
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/09/16/wildfire-smoke-reaches-europe/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_wildfires

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Keep On Chuckin' Kamala!

9/10/2020

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You know you need
Something good to read!

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KEEP ON CHUCKIN' KAMALA!

Ah, Kamala Harris, how do I love thee?

I could count the ways, but I, like the rest of the nation, have just recently learned that the Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate regularly wears Chuck Taylor Converse sneakers to important public campaign events.

And for that I love Kamala Harris to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach. Because if Kamala wears Chuck Taylors, then that means that I can wear them, too, and not just for kicking around in; especially if, thanks to Kamala's example, wearing Chuck Taylors or other sneakers as business or dress attire - and not just what you wear to give you feet a break before you put on and after you take off your uncomfortable dress shoes - becomes the acceptable norm.

  I've long been an advocate of over-throwing old perceptions of required of work and formal footwear, especially for women. To quote myself from a March 12, 2014 post entitled "What Do We Want? Sneakers! When Do We Want Them? Now! (Or At Least I Do!)":
       I've always felt that men were more fortunate than women when it came to footwear. I mean, when a man is dressed in a power suit he stands on solid shoes with firm support. When a woman is dressed in a power suit she teeters on high heels that kill her toes and restrict her movement. So how powerful can you be when your feet are bound? Because when you think about the function and purpose, aren't high heels just a more evolved form of foot-binding?
      And now, out of my dreams and into my news feed steps Kamala Harris, the woman who may be on track to become the understudy for the most powerful position on the planet, striding from her plane and across the airfield like the powerful, important woman she is,

...in sneakers. Chuck Taylors, no less.

It was a breakthrough image, a moment of epiphany and a call for foot fashion liberation for me and, hopefully, all women.
And so I pray that Kamala will keep on wearing her Chuck Taylors everywhere she goes. I hope that from now on she wears them to every important public event she attends.
I especially hope she wears those power sneakers to her debate with Mike Pence.

(The better to walk all over him with).

I hope wearing Chuck Taylors subsequently catches on like wildfire not just for the younger set but for women of all ages. Even my age. I say this because today, in a moment of hopeful exuberance I ordered myself a pair of teal (because that was the clearance color) Chuck Taylors.

I'll wear them in solidarity with Kamala and all women who, thanks to her example, decide that real power is born of daring to wear comfortable shoes. And clothes.

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A Mask Thing

9/4/2020

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A MASK THING

Since my last post four days ago, signs of kindness, as I call them, have sprung up in two more yards in my neighborhood (See previous post, "Signs Of Kindness And Other Things").

But along with the signs of kindness there's something else I've been noticing as I take my daily (or twice daily or thrice daily) walk/runs around my neighborhood. Apparently there's a new thing - at least in my neighborhood - in rear view mirror ornaments:

Some have his 'n hers (or maybe his 'n his or hers 'n hers),

And some opt for the old dash board toss:

Which for me begs the question: is the mask mirror ornament a bonafide thing? Or do my neighbors happen to be on the hip cutting edge?
In any case, if it's a new wave, I'm riding the crest.

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Signs Of Kindness And Other Things

8/31/2020

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SIGNS OF KINDNESS AND OTHER THINGS

Five months into the COVID-19 epidemic, and other than a weekly errand or two to the supermarket to keep the larder stocked, my only outing these days continues to be my daily run/walk around the block.
Every day, often twice a day (three times a day is not unheard of), I run and/or walk through the neighborhood. I usually go at around 9:30 am, though sometimes I go at 6:45 am and other times at 8:30 pm because I like seeing the changes in the light from sunrise to mid-morning to sunset. When one is travelling the same route day after day one starts noticing and appreciating things like variations of light and color in the landscape.

And one starts noticing and having more of an appreciation of other things, too, such as the decorative flora that one's neighbors have so considerately planted in their yards for the visual enjoyment of the passers-by,

..and the equally enjoyable yard art.

I've especially become an afficionado of yard flamingos in all their variety and ubiquity.

And then there are the signs that have been popping up in yards in support of the Presidential candidates, one always inducing a flutter of optimism the other a shudder of gloom.

But lately there have been other kinds of signs appearing in the yards of my neighbors. One day I saw this one on a front lawn,

...then another day on another lawn this one appeared,

...then sometime later on yet a different lawn I noticed this one.

Day by day, yard by yard, I'm seeing these signs multiplying throughout my neighborhood.

And I wonder if my neighbors have any idea of how much, every time I pass by, their signs fill my heart with hope.

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The Mime And The Nazi

8/27/2020

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Things are seldom what they seem.

"Hail Mary" by Patti Liszkay
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THE MIME AND THE NAZI

...Continued from yesterday:
Years before Marcel Marceau achieved fame in the art of silence he was a member of the French Resistance during World War II who was fluent in French, German and English. After the Americans landed in France in 1944 he was recruited by the French army for his linguistic skills and assigned to the position of liaison officer with General George Patton's army.
If the Americans were impressed with the young French liaison officer's talent for languages, they also took note of his genius for acting, and after the liberation of Paris Marceau was asked to entertain the troops. He gave his first major pantomime performance in an army tent before an audience of 3,000 U.S. soldiers. And so Marcel Marceau, who would go on to become the world's most famous mime, was first discovered by the United States army .
As it turned out, there was someone else who was also discovered around that same time by the American Army.
After the war, among the Nazi war criminals being hunted by the French government was German SS officer Klaus Barbie, known as "The Butcher of Lyons" because of his cruel torture of Jewish adults and children and suspected members of the Resistance during the German occupation of France. (See previous post, "Silent Hero").

Klaus Barbie was directly responsible for the deaths of 14,000 people during World War II.
Barbie was found in 1947, not by the French, but by the American army. However rather than turn Klaus Barbie over to the French government, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps decided to sign him on as an informer. Barbie was clandestinely put up in a hotel in Germany and paid $1700 a month by the American Government to help gather information on Communist activity in Europe. In 1947 $1700 a month was a small fortune.
In 1950, after the French learned that that The Butcher of Lyons was being protected and paid by the Americans in Germany, the U.S. intelligence services, likely out of embarrassment, arranged with the help of the Vatican for Klaus Barbie to flee to Bolivia. There he went on to live and prosper greatly for 33 years, living a country club existence, traveling freely and occasionally visiting the United States, and doing business with drug cartels, dealing in arms, and serving as a collaborator with Bolivian government paramilitaries on how to most effectively use torture.
For years France tried to extradite Klaus Barbie but the Bolivian government protected him, and it wasn't until 1983, by which time Barbie was well into old age, that he was returned to France to stand trial in Lyons for his crimes.
Barbie was finally sentenced in 1987 to life in prison and four years later he died of cancer at age 77 in prison in Lyons. Klaus Barbie never repented and until the day he died remained a proud Nazi and supporter of Adolph Hitler. “I am proud to have been a commanding officer of the best military outfit in the Third Reich," he said, "and if I had to be born a thousand times again, I would be a thousand times what I’ve been.”

As for Marcel Marceau, who spent his life bringing joy and laughter to adults and children around the world.

...he had this to say about the choices he'd made in his life:
"The people who came back from the [concentration] camps were never able to talk about it. My name is Mangel. I am Jewish. Perhaps that, unconsciously, contributed towards my choice of silence.
"Among those kids (who were killed by the Nazis) was maybe an Einstein, a Mozart, somebody who (would have) found a cancer drug. That is why we have a great responsibility. Let us love one another."

References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Marceau

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mime-who-saved-kids-holocaust-180962533/

https://www.history.com/news/marcel-marceau-wwii-french-resistance-georges-loinger

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/26/world/klaus-barbie-77-lyons-gestapo-chief.html

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nikolaus-klaus-barbie-the-butcher-of-lyon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Barbie

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Silent Hero

8/25/2020

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Forget your troubles, c'mon get reading.

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Silent Hero

Everybody knows Marcel Marceau, the world's most famous mime.

Even those who might not know his name are familiar with the signature white face and graceful balletic moves of the silent actor who had a gift, as he described it, for creating objects where there were none, making the invisible visible.

But who knew that Marcel Marceau was a World War II hero who fought with the French resistance and saved hundreds of Jewish children from the Nazis?
Not me until last Friday night when I watched on Amazon Prime the movie "Resistance,"

...which starred Jesse Eisenberg as the French Jewish butcher's son,

...who took on the mission of shepherding orphans whose parents had been murdered or taken away by the Nazi occupiers over the alps from France to Switzerland and safety.

As for the movie, critics generally panned it, not because it wasn't in and of itself a good movie, but because there was too much fictional drama dressing up the factual events.
Apparently the hairpin escapes and heart-thumping rescues in the movie were mostly made up,

(though one would think there must have been a considerable degree of danger in belonging to the Resistance in Nazi-occupied France and smuggling children over the Swiss border);
... and there was actually no romance between Marcel and a fellow French Resistance fighter (played by Clémence Poésy).

Marcel didn't have a teen-aged orphan side kick (Played by Bella Ramsey),

...and apparently his path never actually crossed that of Klaus Barbie (played to a terrifying tee by Matthias Schweighöfer ‎), the sadistic German Gestapo officer known as "The Butcher of Lyons."

But in spite of - or maybe because of - dramatic liberties taken, I thought "Resistance" was a terrific movie, engaging, exciting, heart-gripping. And in spite of the embellishments, it told a remarkable story of a remarkably good man - and a remarkably evil one.
Juxtaposed in the film with Marcel Marceau was Klaus Barbie,

...who took up residence with his lovely young wife and adorable baby daughter in a luxury hotel in Lyons, France, where he had a space converted into a sort of operating room where he personally tortured to death both adults and children.
The story of of Klaus Barbie's reign of terror in Lyons as told in the movie was accurate. The story of Marcel Marceau as a rescuer of children (in real life of men and women as well) was also true. What was not true in the movie was that the two carried out their missions of good and evil in the same locale.
"Resistance," however, took both their stories, Marcel Marceau's and Klaus Barbie's, and interwove them into an engaging and thought-provoking fable of good vs. evil and a film well worth watching.
In real life, as it turned out, the story took an incredible turn beyond what was told in the movie.
To be continued...

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