This cost too much

Our city is doing sewer separation to keep the storm run-off from filling the sewer pipes and overwhelming the water treatment plant in the event of a large storm. The main sewer line runs down the center of our street so we were told to expect the mess and disruption of the street getting torn up.
In a good cause, of course, because naturally none of us wants the sewer to back up and cause problems for homeowners and potentially Lake Erie as well. All homes built after 1971 were required to separate waste water and storm water. Nearly no houses in our pocket neighborhood were built after 1971. Until recently, many homes had a ditch out front that the gutters and other rainwater drained to.  So, progress. Good for Lake Erie. Good for the community.

Unfortunately, our city chose to contract the job to the cheapest contractor who then subcontracted some work to an even cheaper outfit. As a result, the city -because that is who is ultimately responsible here, no matter what the city engineer suggests- is complicit in the destruction of no fewer than five trees over the age of 20 and at least two that were about 200.
Our neighbors' 200-year-old oak, older than the city itself, had withstood centuries of "progress" only to be deemed in the way by the lazy contractor and eliminated.
This tree had survived the founding of the village, the building of the little vacation beach houses all around it, the piping of sewers, water and gas lines. Electricity came in and worked around it. The houses it shaded were built respecting its presence, The street was paved, first with gravel, then with blacktop and the tree was undisturbed.
But somehow, the lazy corner-cutting shits that are replacing the sewer under that very road had to have that venerable 150 foot tall, 200-year-old oak which was perfectly healthy, cut down. That irreplaceable tree now lays in pieces at the side of the road, a testament to the expediency at the cost of long-term value.

Interestingly, there is a board of municipal utilities in my city. And they are elected. I wonder if that idiot city engineer is elected too... .

Black Lives Matter

I haven't posted in ages. And I'm posting now, not because I have something profound to say, and not because others have not articulated this better or more thoroughly, but because I feel like if I don't post something, I'll explode.

I ache to see these men (mostly) being executed based on racism and fear alone. But I feel so helpless to stop it. What can I do? Someone tell me, because all the letters and vigils and blog posts don't seem to be helping.I want this FIXED. NOW. I want to DO SOMETHING to make it stop. Philando Castile was killed in front of a child! For NO REASON. Just railing against the world seems so futile. 

I used these words last night before I went to bed. Then I woke up to news that five police officers were murdered while providing security for Black Lives Matter protests in Dallas. That is NOT the "DO SOMETHING" I had in mind. Violence begets more violence. Always. And it is an infinitely sadder world that we live in because of it.
The institutionalized racism in America needs to be addressed in a massive nationwide education campaign that will teach all of us (especially white men in positions of power) to see it. Because there are too many Americans who are unwilling to accept that the system is still rigged against people of color. It is. And we need to be told. Over and over again until we finally understand that poverty and racism are linked. And prisons and racism are linked. And extrajudicial murders and racism are linked. And the whole chain is holding all of America prisoner.

It's not okay

So with the protests and violence spilling over in Chicago and actually canceling a Trump rally there, Rachel Maddow did a piece (non-autoplay video link here) on Trump's escalating rhetoric and the relationship it has to this violence that we see at his rallies and no other candidate's.

"Anybody who tells you that there is no connection between the behavior of the mob at these events and the behavior of the man at the podium leading the mob at these events is not actually watching he's been saying from the podium. What he has been saying, and the way he has been egging it on, it has been escalating," Maddow said.

Back in Reconstruction South, the KKK exploited the fears of the poor white sharecroppers who were seeing freed slaves competing to take their jobs. The race-baiting led thousands of Southern (and some Northern) whites to lash out at blacks and institute Jim Crow laws in an attempt to maintain what they perceived as their superiority.
Hitler did a similar thing with the Jews of Germany (and later all of Europe) in convincing the poor, uneducated electorate that their economic predicament was due to "terrible" Jewish business practices.
Now we are seeing it with Donald Trump. He's whipping up fear of Mexicans and Muslims and dismissing blacks. He's tarring all protesters as thugs and encouraging (wink wink) his rabid followers to treat them as such. He offers to pay legal fees for anyone who "accidentally" roughs one up. He laments the era of "political correctness" which requires him to treat fellow human beings as human beings. He notes that back in the old days, it was okay to beat a protester and in the next breath expresses a wish to return to those halcyon days when white folks got to beat black folks at a whim.
And then he blames the protesters. And the media. And Bernie Sanders. And the Trumpbots parrot all that and add Obama and Bill Ayers and George Soros. In 1963 a lot of uneducated poor white people were saying it was all Martin Luther King, Jr.'s fault that 1200 Birmingham, Ala, students were arrested and hundreds injured when the police used water cannon and attack dogs to disperse the peaceful marchers. At Kristallnacht, many Germans believed the destruction of Jewish-owned businesses was something that the Jews had brought on themselves.
I don't know if Donald Trump believes even half the crap that comes out of his orange-tinted lips as he waves his stubby fingers about while ranting from his podium, but even if he doesn't, he's making it implicitly okay for others to act on their fear with violence and that will Make American Hate Again.

Not again...

I think when something terrible happens, I'm obligated to NOT be frivolous.
But when horrible things happen that are beyond our control, all I want to do is be frivolous.


So, here is the link to contact your representatives and tell them --TELL THEM-- you want meaningful reasonable regulations on gun and ammo purchases.

And here is a kitten dressed up as a banana.

All I'm saying about that man

I've been tempted to write about Trump recently, but have held back simply because too many people are talking about him. So I'm just going to say this: 
The fact that this arrogant, ignorant asshat is the front-runner in the race for the GOP nomination for PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES is so horrifying and desperately sad, that I fear for my country. Seriously.
If the racist jerks who feared an Obama presidency felt even ONE QUARTER of the trepidation and revulsion I feel for "the Donald" then I empathize. The difference being, Obama wasn't an incompetent buffoon who made our nation a laughing stock, whereas --even before the election-- by virtue of his leading in the polls, Trump has managed to elicit the scorn of every civilized country on Earth.
Enough. Please.

Two things

Took a couple days off. Because.
Now I'm back. Two things:
1. Changing my avatar on Facebook to a rainbowed thing, is not an insult to LGBT people. Some hard-core activists are throwing shade at the rainbow avatars because they feel all the allies who are posting them aren't "invested" enough and don't deserve the right to rainbow. These whiners fail to understand that most of us are just celebrating the recognition that gay and lesbian people have *gasp* the same fundamental rights as every other American. As a hard-core feminist, I celebrate whenever human rights are validated. Yes, I am not gay. Yes, I have not ever filed an amicus brief with the court on behalf of LGBT rights. Yes, I recognize that we have a way to go. But for some to call the celebration "slacktivism" misses the whole point of the rainbows.
2. When the media spends nearly no time reporting on the arsons of historic black churches in the South, the point of whether there were 5 churches burned down by arsonists or 3 churches burned down by arsonists loses the thread. Outrage that there is ONE black church destroyed by arson is appropriate. Reporting that focuses on the two that were "likely" electrical or lightning, is just a palliative to our white guilt. We will cling to the two church fires that weren't arson, so we don't have to confront the truth of systemic racism and work to counter its effects.
That's it for now. Thanks.

#BlackLivesMatter

RIP:
Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41
Cynthia Hurd, 54
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45
Tywanza Sanders, 26
Myra Thompson, 59
Susie Jackson, 87
Ethel Lee Lance, 70
Daniel L. Simmons, 74
Depayne Middleton Doctor, 49

 

 

Who would have believed that in this day and age, --50 years after civil rights legislation, 6 years into a black presidency, 150 years after the Civil War-- there are still Americans so full of hate.
Sad. Let's stop striving for "post-racial" and admit we see race. And once we admit that, maybe we can try to see the privileges and depredations. And once we see those, perhaps we can do something to bring about true equality.

 

 

 

 

A little help here...

Have you seen that meme with the sign that says "Stop making stupid people famous."?

How can we put that into action?

Let them eat cake

Back at the turn of the 19th century there were a lot of very poor immigrants living in cities (mostly New York City) in the U.S. There was no "social safety net" then. Children as young as 6 were caretakers for their younger siblings. Poor families lived in squalor with no access to clean water, food, medical care, reliable wages. If the bread winner(s) were injured or killed or fired, the whole family could starve or be forced into crime (including prostitution).
There were "Christian charities" that attempted to mitigate the deprivations: soup kitchens, orphanages, etc. But it took the Great Depression, when millions of "deserving" poor were forced out of work because of the market crash, before our government conceived a role for itself in the fight against poverty. That role has been re-defined over the decades to a highly specific list of "benefits" that we collectively -as a society- deem necessary for the dignity of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
One of these benefits is SNAP, or what we call food stamps. The federal government has a complicated process for figuring out how much a family should receive in food stamps, but the maximum allowable for a family of three is $511 per month. It must be spent exclusively on food. You cannot use it to buy toilet paper, tooth paste, or soap even though you need those things as much as you need food.
$511 might seem like a lot, but remember, that's the maximum allowed and it has to feed three people for a month. The lucky beneficiaries get to spend $17 a day to provide 9 meals (3 each of breakfast, lunch and dinner.) Can you do that?

All of the above is by way of saying, if some poor soul in Missouri wants to by a ribeye with his food stamps, leave him alone and let him. Steak is food.

Crazy cold

We are now officially in the portion of winter where the weather actually causes temporary (we hope) insanity. What else could explain this?

Or this?

Or this?

Je suis Charlie

Late last year, Slate compiled a visual guide to what they called "the year of outrage." In the accompanying article(s) they did concede that a few of the things that outraged us last year were deserving of it. They also pointed out that "it’s fascinating to look at how our collective responses skipped from the serious to the picayune without much modulation in pitch."
So what should we be outraged by? Slate's guide offered reader input, so you can check each outrage in hindsight and see what the collective thought. (ex: John Travolta's mispronunciation of Idina Menzel's name was voted overblown by 1195 to 107, while the non-indictment of the NYPD officer who killed Eric Garner was declared to be truly outrageous by a 1530 to 113 vote.) But if Slate continues to follow our Twitter and Facebook outrage in 2015, I can already tell you what will be legitimately labeled outrageous.

When proponents of a religion massacre human beings in retaliation for drawing a picture.

It's a bad day to be an American

From "7 Key Points From the C.I.A. Torture Report" in the NYTimes:

1. The C.I.A.’s interrogation techniques were more brutal and employed more extensively than the agency portrayed. The report describes extensive waterboarding as a “series of near drownings” and suggests that more prisoners were subjected to waterboarding than the three prisoners the C.I.A. has acknowledged in the past.

I know there are assh*les out there who are all about the torture. They are upset that this report came out at all and that it seems to indicate that torture doesn't work. They are the same sadists who won't even acknowledge that most of this is torture. They call it a "taste of their own medicine."
But when we reduce our interactions with fellow human beings to the level of 5-year-olds on a playground, we dishonor ourselves more than the victims.

There oughta be a law

I can't discuss the elections yet. It's too soon.

Instead, let's virtually visit a country that has somewhat more voter turnout in their "midterm" elections. Hmmm. Let's see....
We could go to Malta where 94% of its eligible voters go to the polls on election day.
Or Chile where voting is mandatory and failing to vote is fined.

Or Austria. Or Belgium. Or Italy, Luxembourg, Iceland, New Zealand, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Greece, Venezuela, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, all of which have voter turn out at 85% or better. In fact the United States seems to stand alone in failing to have even HALF of its eligible voters cast ballots for its lower house of representatives of the 40 nations on the list who have direct elections for a similar body.

How about here: our erstwhile ally and nearest competitor for crappy voter turnout

 

If you guessed Pakistan, YOU'RE RIGHT! Congratulations. You win. Except you don't.

Turnout in national lower house elections, 1960–1995
Current estimates for average nationwide turnout yesterday are about 36½%.

Stop the insanity

For those of you who feel impotent when watching the clashes in Ferguson, Missouri, this week, here are two things you can do.

• Tell your mayor you don't want surplus military gear for the police force. Chances are it's unnecessary and not cost-effective.

• Tell your State Senator and/or Representative that you want all police-related deaths to be reviewed by an outside agency.

To find your representatives, type in your state name .gov in the browser. 

Just stop.

Israel is bombing schools and hospitals in Gaza. Hamas is using schools and hospitals in Gaza to store weapons.
No one is right. Children are dying. Stop. Just stop.

July 28, 1914

Almost exactly one month after the assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand (and his wife), most of the Western world entered into what would become known as "the war to end all wars."
The 23 countries involved by the time peace was declared included France, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, British India, Newfoundland, South Africa, Russia, Italy, United States, Japan, Serbia, Montenegro, Romania, Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria.


Over 38 MILLION killed, missing or wounded in action.
It redrew the map of Europe and western Asia. It redefined war. It redefined humanity.
It, like all wars, didn't have to happen.

tragedy in history

Has it always seemed to the current generations that our world is going to hell in a handbasket?
Back in 1914, were average middle-aged women lamenting the thought of their children growing up in a world where there was crazy wars and sinking ships and massacres and assassinations?
Our present-day seems so overwhelming, that sometimes a little historical perspective helps mitigate the horrors.

Can't we all just get along?

Remember when, just a couple of months ago, the big crisis was in Crimea?

Ahhhh. Those were the days!

Hashtag

Back a couple of weeks ago, I tweeted the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. I didn't (and still don't) think it would make a difference. Hashtag activism is knee-jerk and rarely does more than get the occasional jerk-off fired from a high-profile position. For complex issues like religious extremists in a nation torn by civil war kidnapping girls from a school that was instructing them outside of their religious faith, millions of tweets are not going to impact the situation.
It's a way for us, with our First World Problems to feel like we're making a difference without getting uncomfortable or inconvenienced: "I totally care about the unrest in Thailand. I tweeted about it." "Genocide in Sudan is terrible. #darfur" A lot of this loses even more significance when the following tweet is a spoiler for Game of Thrones or how much you hate the new Starbucks latte flavor for summer.
Now there is a study that also suggests that not only are the simplistic hashtags not working, the entire reason we latch onto them is because the issue at hand has been over-simplified for our snapchat brains. And once we do learn that the world is not divided into pure evil and innocent goodness, we First Worlders lose interest. Shame on us. Because, as the link points out: those girls are still being held captive just for going to school.

Stay away

While the situation in Crimea is unfortunate and likely will lead to a short (and decisive) war between Ukraine and Russia, we Americans just don't care.
It is sad. But more Americans are concerned about how weak we appear to be rather than how many Ukrainians die or become refugees.
And we want our nation to look mean and threatening, but we are unwilling to back up our bluster with actual troops and weapons. Good. We don't need to lose American lives just to prove that our president has a set of balls inside his mom-jeans.
Crimea is far away. We don't understand their history. Hell, we don't even understand their language. Let them sort it out.