Hard and Soft

It’s better to have a soft heart and a hard **** than the other way around.

By the way, **** means body. What did you think I meant? 😄

Terrifying Experience

When I was a small child, large, unfamiliar, sometimes smelly people would appear out of nowhere and try to hug and kiss me. It was terrifying.

I get the sense that for women, that terror never ends.

Easter Wish

My Easter Wish this year is one of joy. May each day bring you happiness.

Free Time During The Pandemic

When the pandemic ushered in a new era of social distancing, closures, and lockdowns, people realized that they would have more free time, and with that free time, the opportunity to accomplish big projects such as catching up on reading or studying a new language.

I’m sure that we have all accomplished some fun and useful things during our months of isolation. Even if it was watching lots of programming on streaming services, it was still something that you would not have had time for under normal circumstances.

If you haven’t accomplished as much as you had hoped, take heart. You didn’t really have as much free time as you thought you would.

Sure, you did have to give up some treasured activities, and you had to spend more time at home, but you were also faced with an entirely new set of challenges. How do you continue working when you can’t go to an office, or if you don’t work in an office, how do you get to work safely and stay safe while you’re there? How do you register for unemployment when the website can’t handle the sudden surge in traffic? How do you find toilet paper and hand sanitizer when the store shelves are bare? How do you keep up with prescriptions and medical procedures?

Surviving this pandemic has not been easy. Give yourself credit that for everything that you have done that got you this far. You really have accomplished a lot in the past year even if it wasn’t the way that you expected to use your sudden windfall of free time.

Having Nothing

Having nothing

Is better than

Owing something

That you don’t

Want to give away

Just Get The App

This is what happens when you use antiquated voice technology to order lunch:

- Could I please have a bison burger?

- What kind of bison burger would you like, sir?

- Um, one that’s made from bison?

Just get the app...

Small Successes

Accomplish something every day. Small successes make big dreams possible.

Let’s say that you dream of becoming a gourmet cook and hosting multi-course dinners for friends and associates. That’s a wonderful goal, and you will have chances to do that, but along the way you’re going to prepare breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. That’s twenty-one chances a week to work on your cooking skills by putting them to use in the real world and evaluating the results.

Don’t just prepare breakfast. Prepare something unique and memorable. Try new techniques and ingredients and learn from the process no matter how it turns out.

For lunch, make the best salad or sandwich that you can imagine. Share some with your friends and colleagues. It they say, “This is amazing!” with sincere enthusiasm, then you’ll know that you’re onto sometime special. If they say, “Thanks for the sandwich,” keep working on it until you blow their minds.

Every day presents opportunities to learn and develop. Build the skills that will enable you to move closer to your grand dreams by practicing every day. Don’t let opportunities slip by while you dream of a wonderful future. Move toward that future moment by moment, step by deliberate step. That’s the surest way to get there.

The Politics Of Violence

Politicians who outlaw safe abortions won’t outlaw assault weapons. Mass murderers appreciate it.

Voter Suppression and Institutionalized Recism

I have been reflecting on the period between Election Day and Insurrection Day, November 3rd through January 6th. It was difficult to see these events in perspective while they were unfolding. The experience was highly charged, and emotions were running high.

After the election, more than sixty lawsuits were filed. The plaintiffs asserted that “widespread voter fraud” had occurred, although they offered no proof to support their claims, and all but one of the suits was dismissed or the rulings went against the plaintiffs.

Here is an interesting observation. Although the plaintiffs claimed that fraud was widespread, their actual claims targeted specific locations. For instance, the claimed that fraud had occurred in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukie. Why did they choose these three cities? Why not Cleveland, for instance? It’s in the same region. If you draw a line from Philly to Milwaukie, Detroit and Cleveland are both on that line. Wouldn’t it make sense that the alleged fraud had occurred in Ohio, as well. For some reason, they showed no interest in overturning election results in Cleveland.

Another city where election results were contested was Atlanta. The outgoing president even called officials in Georgia and urged them personally to investigate potential fraud in the greater Atlanta area. But why only Atlanta? Why not Birmingham in neighboring Alabama? Why not Miami or Jacksonville in neighboring Florida? Why not Columbia, South Carolina or Charlotte, North Carolina. All of those states border Georgia. If “widespread fraud” was happening in Georgia, wouldn’t it make sense that it was happening in neighboring states as well. That is in fact what widespread means.

The senior senator from South Carolina even tried to assert that fraud had occurred in his neighboring state. Why didn’t he occupy himself by investigating the elections that had occurred in his own state?

They weren’t interested in exposing fraud. That was a convenient excuse. Their real interest was in overturning election results in states where Mr. Trump lost by a narrow margin. They didn’t even want to overturn all of the election results, just those from cities where a lot of people tend to vote for Democrats.

There was no reason overturn the results in Ohio or Alabama because Mr. Trump didn’t lose in those states. If he had lost Ohio, you can bet that Rudy Giuliani would have made several outraged speeches from Cleveland.

This deliberate attempt to overturn democracy was even more insidious, because its core strategy was to disenfranchise minority voters. The plan was to throw out votes in communities with large African American populations, and in the southwest, to do the same with the votes of Latino and Native American citizens.

Who was pushing this plan? Who was representing the plaintiffs in the courtrooms? Who was holding the press conferences? Who was going on Fox News every night to express outrage over the alleged fraud, conspiracy theories, and a host of grievances?

Well, I’ll give you a clue. None of them were Black. They were all White people. White people spread the conspiracy theories. White people gave the press conferences. White people filed the lawsuits and complained when they were thrown out.

White people ransacked the Capitol. White people marched on Charlottesville. White counter protestors instigated violence at Black Lives Matter protests. White senators prevented the last president from facing accountability in two impeachment trials, and now white people across the country are passing hundreds of laws that restrict voting access, laws that won’t have an impact on small towns, but which will cause huge delays in urban centers with high population densities.

Racism is more than crude insults, housing segregation, and discrimination in the workplace. Racism is coded into the law. Any law that makes it harder for people to vote in highly populated areas is an example of institutional racism.

We must reject and overturn racially biased laws now, every single one of them. We must reverse the racially biased laws and practices that already exist. If we as a nation to do this immediately and convincingly, we will lose our democracy forever.

Grammar Police

I correct bad grammar. If that annoys someone, a kite can go fly them.