Short One

Tonight was going to see Barack Obama. It was crazy. Parking garages full. We wound up parking several blocks away and hoofing it. We may have even parked illegally. We speedwalked back to the car in the dark, talking about what we had heard. We were relieved that we had not been issued a ticket or been towed.

The line was 2 1/2 blocks long, and we stood in line for about 45 minutes. Everyone around us was pleasant and interesting to talk to. A lot of different perspectives. An faculty member from Gannon University in front of us. A heavily tattooed couple behind us. Behind them a scholarly looking black man and his wife. 

For whatever reason, it made me think of the old Simon and Garfunkel song: 'they'd all come to look for America...' I suppose that was true in a way, all of us nostalgic for the days when we were not all considered evil and that we hated our country, and moreover, our president hates us.

I did have one mild heart attack. As we approached security, people began to fish out their driver's license. That had not even occurred to me. Mine was in my wallet in a locked car several blocks away. We waffled back and forth about whether I should run back to the car. 

Tim did have my veteran's ID. He uses it regularly at Lowe's for the discount. I walked up to a secret service guy who said it would be fine. Such a relief. 

A drone hovered in the air. SWAT watched from the roof. But the lines moved right along.

We were as far away from the stage as you could get, but it actually was nice. We were on comfortable high backed stools with a bar in front of us overlooking the crowd and the stage waaaaaaaay down there BUT we had a waitress come around. You could order your drinks and snacks, an amenity not available to the people in the bleacher seats. Quite a bit of service for the cheap seats.

When he took the stage, the crowd went nuts cheering. He talked for an hour and a half, about the importance of bipartisanship, about current politicians who are still upholding that core value in these times. He talked about these perilous times but reminded us that political violence is not new in our country, mentioning JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King. About women's marches, Vietnam protests and civil rights demonstrations that turned violent. 

We have been at inflection points before, and he made it clear we are at another, that people are polarized and angry.

We need to take care of others. We needed to celebrate each other and our cultures. That that is where our strength would come from, but there is no quick fix for this and these will be difficult days, not just for us but for the world. When people see other people as 'less than' it emboldens cruelty. He didn't say anything new, really, but he seemed to put it in a different context.

 It was nice to sit with 8000 other people and realize that there are others who think the same and feel the same and have the same vision for the country as we do. 

There was a heckler who interrupted twice shouting things I could not hear. She was mad as hell about something. The first tirade, Obama reminded her that he was not the president now and hadn't been for quite a few years. The second go around, the moderator spoke up to say, "Please! The people have come to hear a former president speak. After that, she stopped.

Sorry this is a pretty disjointed report. I am tired. I am so glad we went though.

Hop over to Northsider Dave's blog and leave a kind word if you would.. His beloved wife has died.

Narnia

 One kitten off to new home. She was a birthday gift to a girl who had spent quite a bit of energy and time caring for their fish, dog, and other cat. She wanted, more than anything, a kitten of her very own.

The mother came bringing her two older children, who were all bursting with excitement at being in on the secret. It was a toss up between the two blue eyed cream colored one, but she specifically wanted a girl.

They had a little collar for her and a carrier. 

The mom sent pictures later. The look on that child's face was priceless. I asked her what she had named her. "Narnia," the answer came. "We read the books and all of them loved the series."

That's interesting. It does not seem like you have a lot of mothers who still read to their schoolaged kids. 

She said, "we just finished 'A Series of Unfortunate Events'. We are looking for our next book. I was thinking of 'Gulliver's Travels'.

I like that. I like it a lot. It is probably a bit biased on my part to believe that little cat has gone to a good life.

I am about to reach another weight loss goal, which is exciting. The weight loss is not fast, but it is steady. I do need to buy a couple new pairs of pants.

We had to go into town to sign some papers that the bank wanted for the house transfer. Then we needed to run to the library to print off a return label and our tickets for 'A Conversation with Barack Obama'. We are both looking forward to that so much. I am sure we will be as far away from the stage as you can get, but you know what? I don't care, as long as I can hear that calm measured voice speaking in sensible full sentences.

That's the ticket!

 Here is my Kitten Caboodle. I have the first one leaving tomorrow. She will be a birthday gift for a little girl who has worked very hard to prove herself responsible enough for pet ownership. I have advertised the rest and am hopeful to find homes for them. 

I spent yesterday dehydrating vegetables and making spaghetti sauce. I did 10 lbs of potatoes, a sheet of cherry tomatoes, a sheet of squash, green beans, and tomato skins from my sauce tomatoes. I threw three sheets of potatoes in yesterday evening and let them go all night. It keeps the house toasty warm. 

My daughter in law introduced me to refrigerator oats. Boy, are they a great breakfast. To a couple handfuls of oats, I add one tbsp of wheat germ, flax and chia seed. Cover with milk, stir, store in the fridge overnight. I put the bowl in the microwave for a minute, give a good stir and toss in a handful of fruit. Just that quickly, a healthy breakfast is ready. 

We have just one side of the house left to side and should be done this week, which will be a very nice feeling.

I was talking to a friend last night and she mentioned that she and her husband were driving to Erie to listen to Barack Obama speak. Tim and I looked at each other. I think we both were filled with a longing for the days when being a Democrat did not make you 'evil', when we had a president who spoke sensibly and calmly. I called and we were able to get tickets. 

Isn't buying tickets a strange experience? The tickets are bought up by different ticket selling companies. I did not realize this. After looking online and seeing that I could get tickets starting at $49.50, I called. I was told that tickets began at $140! EACH! He told me that he had no control over what other ticket companies were charging. 

"Wait," I said. "Didn't I call the sports arena?" He was a bit cagey on it, but when pressed he did say that the arena did not sell tickets directly. He also offered to sell me seats at $109. each. 

"Will that work for you?" 

"Not really," I said. We had just forked out for the next round of cat neutering and as a treat for getting the siding done, we had also bought ourselves tickets to see Kansas again.

The man immediately said, "I can get you two at $80." I was getting a bit uneasy, but Tim nodded.

I told him to go ahead. He came back almost immediately and said the $80 were gone, but made the $109 offer again.

I did not like how the conversation was going.

He pressed. "Is that going to work for you?" 

"No thanks," I said, and hung up. 

I bought us tickets on line. They were advertised at $28 each, but with their service charges, it wound up being $99, $105 with tax. They were deceptive too, but it did not cost us nearly as much.

My last words

 A relative has cancer. He was diagnosed probably a bit over a year ago. We all stood talking one summer evening. He matter of factly said, "It has jumped the fence."

I never heard that phrase before, but what he was saying was that his cancer had spread. It was now in his brain and his bones. 

A few of you took umbrage at my last post, feeling that poor Charlie Kirk had been taken out of context. 

Perhaps. 

So, I will give you another chance. He told a 14 year old girl that she should spend her school years looking for a husband. That women should go to college for a 'Mrs degree'. What is the proper context for that?

Ah...I see. She asked his opinion at an event. He was merely posed a question. He simply answered it in accordance to his own beliefs and faith. 

So, what about his thoughts on the whole Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce engagement. He called for her to become more conservative, to submit to her husband, to have more children than houses, that being a 35 year old unmarried woman made her a bad role model for young girls.

Pretty sure his opinion wasn't requested by the either of the two of them. 

He had lots of opinions, on black people "who stepped into white roles",  MAGA. On abortion. About Muslims. About immigration. He claimed democrats hated America.

Those are his opinions.  Like my sister says: "Opinions are like hiney holes. Everybody has one." It is important to see that his comments are opinions, not fact, and no matter what topic he spoke on, when you look at it closely, it falls apart. A lot of it isn't even biblically supported. Scientifically supported.

Is a person who believes Israel is behaving badly a terrorist who hates America and needs to be deported? Do you believe in the great replacement theory? Do you believe that abortion and women's rights brought about Auschwitz? 

I could go on and on. 

Let me say that he had, in effect, 'jumped the fence'. He was no longer a simple man living his own faith. He was demanding, like MAGA, that all of us live according to his faith as well. Over and over again, you can see that people who say, 'Yeah, but...' are painted as the enemy.

Years ago, there were the 'great translators', the fine folk who took trump's word salad and tried to make it sound sensible. That's exactly what people are doing now with Charlie Kirk. Some people believe that we must strive to put his words in context, we have to see the big picture, etc.

Do we, though?

Should we, though?

Isn't that exactly how MAGA grows? We white wash what they are saying until it becomes something that we can stomach. Meanwhile, the country moves closer and closer to true fascism.

No. I am not interested in trying to understand. Ignoring the big picture is exactly what brought us to the point we are at today. 

LATE EDIT: FROM HERE ON, THIS IS SOMEONE ELSE'S STORY

Adding to my last words with someone else's: 

One thing that has become really clear since yesterday is that we live in at least two different realities. Talking to a friend who only knew Charlie as a Christian motivational speaker because that's all that ever came across her feed. Showed me videos I've never seen before of him saying perfectly reasonable and empowering things. 

I showed her videos she'd never seen before of his racism, misogyny, homophobia, advocating for violence against specific groups of people. She was horrified by his remarks about Pelosi's husband's attacker being bailed out and celebrated for his violent act. She was horrified by a number of things that he said, but she had never seen or heard them before, the same as I had never seen or heard the generalized clips of him sounding like a perfectly nice loving man and father.

Neither of us had a whole picture of this man. I mentioned he was a known white supremacist and she thought I was joking. She talked about him giving a speech about finding your purpose and doing good in the world and I thought she was joking.

I saw why this friend was mourning the loss of a person she thought was a good person. My friend, bless her, saw why I feel the way I do about him. We understood each other better. In spite of a multi-billion dollar internet machine specifically focused on keeping us apart. Because we talked to each other with the desire to listen and to learn rather than the desire to change someone else's mind or to be "right".

None of those motivational things he said change my opinion about him because they don't erase the negativity, the subtle calls for violence, the belittling and denigrating of other races religions genders etc. His negative and blaming comments about homeless people, the poor, and victims of domestic violence. His comments about rounding up people who didn't think like him and putting them in camps where their behavior could be corrected. That time he said empathy was a made-up word he didn't believe in. That other time he said the Civil Rights Act was a mistake. The time he said most people are afraid when they get on a plane and see that there's a black pilot. His anti-vaccination rhetoric and his active campaigning against people being allowed to wear masks for their own health. His open support of fascism and white supremacy. To me, all of those are fully unchristian sentiments. Those are undeniable and just one of them would be a deal-breaker for me. All of them together are a picture of a man who was polarizing, enraged a lot of people and rightly so, but even with all of that I would never wish upon him or especially his children the end that he got.

Oh, and my friend had never heard, and God help me I don't know how she escaped the news, but she had never heard of the Minnesota legislators who were shot in June. The husband and wife and dog who were killed, one after throwing themselves over their child to protect the child. The other couple who somehow survived. Politically motivated attacks specifically because they were democrats. She learned about those shootings that happened months ago because I showed her Charlie Kirk's comments about them. The kidnapping plot against a female Midwestern Democratic governor. The assassination attempt against Pennsylvania's democratic governor. All things Charlie had plenty to say about while supporting the Second Amendment and bashing the Democratic party. She didn't know about any of it because we're all living in two different worlds and none of us have the whole story.

These days

The trip to see my son and his family was a good time. Both of the girls love fancy dresses, and it is my favorite thing to look for them at thrift stores. I find a dress or two every time I go, and it is fun to see how excited they get over their 'beautiful dresses'.  When you are paying $6 or less for a dress, they can dress up every day of the week if they want, because it is not the end of the world if a dress gets damaged. 

So it was a great weekend. My kids got a 'date night'. My grandkids and I had a movie night. It has been a long time since I saw '101 Dalmations'. It has been years since I read a Ramona Quimby book out loud. There was a fairy tea party. The youngest was very proud of a rock she had painted for me, which now sits in a dish on my window sill with other rocks, a flint scraping tool, pottery shards and fossils. We went to a chile pepper festival. We went out to eat an I had the best apple walnut salad I ever had in my life. We played in the creek and gathered walnuts for the 'queen of walnuts' who stood on a rock tossing them into the ripples and watching them float away. It was a wonderful weekend filled with both extraordinary and ordinary moments in perfect measure.

We are working on the siding. We will finish the third side of the house today. 

We had errands to run yesterday. We went up to see Levi and Mattie. We want to invite them to our house for a picnic. We are also hoping to be able to take them on a train ride. It is a three hour trip through some pretty scenic areas while listening to stories about the history of the oil boom days.

Levi is not sure. He needs to discuss it with his elders. For the first time, I really got a clear glimpse of what they are up against. There is a community meeting. The Kwik Fill wants to start selling beer. The Amish community is hopeful that it won't happen. There is one other place in town that sells beer, the 'Beer Bank', which is just what it sounds like: a local branch of the bank closed, someone bought it, and now it is a beer distributor. Levi said, 'if you see an Amish coming out of there, you know exactly what he is doing. Kwik Fill sells a lot of things. It is easier to sneak beer out of a place like that."

I said, "I didn't realize that was a problem in the Amish community."

He said, "it is a big problem."

That kind of opened a door to ask questions. I talked about the archery place, and the young Amish man who used trail cams and had a cell phone to receive the pictures. The surprising thing (to me) was that "when a business that huge goes up, it is because they are making big profits. They are ripping people off." Levi feels strongly about that. He also feels strongly about young people just ignoring the rules that the community sets. He sees a way of life going. 

We couldn't stay long. We just explained the train ride, and left it with them to decide. We will respect the decision.

It has been raining kittens. They are all over the place on the second floor of the garage, which means they are falling into the first floor on a pretty regular basis. One of the older feral kittens was quite aggressive. For the babies' own safety, we gathered them up and brought them into the basement, and are in the process of finding homes for them. 

I gave five kittens baths yesterday. They took that pretty well. They eat a surprising amount of cat food and are fat as ticks, very playful and come running when I go downstairs. Possum, the mother comes in to visit at will. She is the next to be neutered, along with the oldest kitten, from Sigh. Then in October, Tiger's two kittens. At that point, we will only have Possum's kittens, the ones that haven't gone to new homes. We are getting a handle on that problem.

Charlie Kirk. 

It is ironic that a man who publicly declared that "unfortunately, there will people who will be killed by guns", but that it was worth it to protect oursecond amendment rights. He called it prudent and a rational choice. He also felt that empathy was a liberal concept that "has done a lot of damage". His current talking points included pinning the blame for mass shootings on transgender people, even though the vast majority of shootings are done by young angry white men.

So. now he is dead. To the evangelicals, he has become a martyr. I hear the news reporting his death as "an assassination", words that I did not hear applied to the shootings of the Minnesota legislators a few months ago.

There are ultra conservatives putting out "calls to actions", urging people to avenge this.

You know, a couple days ago, we had a young man taken into custody for threats at our own high school, the one our William attends. Of course, social media was on fire. Someone commented that Obama started this. Someone else got a lot of likes for wondering about the young man's sexual orientation. He defended himself vigorously in a flurry of comments, and he had a great many supporting comments.

I can't grieve for Charlie Kirk. His words did a lot of damage, but I have a feeling his death will do even more.

Rain day

 It is raining today, so we cannot work on the siding. We are about 1/3 of the way done with the third side. Tim had some errands to do. I have tomatoes and beans to do before I head out tomorrow morning.

It is nice to have a rain day. We needed it. Five newly transplanted trees will enjoy the soaking. 

I had a leisurely cup of coffee and watched turkeys wandering through the yard. 

 I need to make sauce. I need to pack. Found this a Goodwill, still with the store tags, for $4. The youngest has headed off to preschool and this will be so sweet when the weather turns cool. I think it is so cute.

Not so cute:

This and that.

Red sky at night, sailor's delight.

We finally got our dressers moved down. 

I bought this bedroom outfit when I was stationed at Ft Belvoir, VA, in 1985, for $750 from an antique dealer. I was very brave. There was a vanity that went with it. I knew it would not fit in the new bedroom. I gave it away to someone who loved it. It was the right thing to do. 

Something that makes me laugh everytime I drive past it. A local business man who is quite an odious fellow put a message up on the sign in front of one of his businesses. "God Bless MAGA". 

Some hero snuck up there and swiped two letters: an M and a G. The sign now reads 'God bless AA'.

I laugh every time I drive past it. Mr businessman has not seemed to notice it so far.

Possum is the next cat to be neutered. She has begun to come in the house to eat, which got her lavishly fed as a reward. She will be much easier to catch.

I needed to pick up a bag of potatoes yesterday. Much to my surprise, they had a 5 lb bag of russet potatoes for $8.49! I could not believe it. 

Did I buy those potatoes?

No.

I will pay that kind of money when pigs fly.