A Little Less Shouting, Please......

So much noise!  The Democratic debate over two nights showed us some remarkable traits exhibited by the participants.  Warren is as committed and motivated as a freight train; Beto is all waving arms and not terribly charismatic; Bernie is old news and not much different from 2016 (seems strangely stale); Biden seems to be a step behind somehow and struggling to connect his thoughts; Harris showed critical mettle as a prosecutor with clear plans on how to accomplish things; and Gillibrand showed us she can outshout anyone and is not particularly interested in listening. All the others had their individual moments.

But the big surprise for me was how rude all of them were with each other, not letting others finish their statements, or shouting over them.  Harris characterized it correctly—it was a food fight.  The only two level-headed entries in this circus were Mayor Pete and Tulsi Gabbard.  Those were the two who had the most patience and seemed to be centered in the most secure way to comment and consider paths of action.

Who the Democrats choose as nominee to lead the charge against Edna will have to be someone who will meet Edna’s manic vitriol with a level of intelligence that is frankly beyond Edna’s ability.  Age has nothing to do with this ability.  This kind of intelligence is measured, razor sharp, and can search and destroy lies and fallacious reasoning like a hot knife through butter. 

If you listen to Mayor Pete, there seems to be just the right amount of humility and awareness of where things can and will go wrong. He seems to possess the brilliance to chart a course to overcome the possibility that those conditions might ultimately become real.  Gabbard exhibits the seasoned intelligent resolve of someone who knows war.  If you truly know war, then nothing can really rattle you. 

That is the kind of person I want navigating a world with hair-trigger dangers everywhere. She sees Edna for what he really is: a true threat to national security.  Dealing with that is certainly in her wheelhouse.  Besides, she seems to be the only candidate who really wants us to end the wars we are in, based on her first hand experience with it.

So maybe the dream ticket is Buttigeig/Gabbard.

Look at that spectacle over those two nights and you see an event made for media.  How important was that audience?  They were only there for media effect and wasted precious minutes with their clapping.  Wouldn’t it have been better to conduct interviews over a period of 5 nights with a panel of reporters querying 2 candidates at a time in a quiet setting so we could consider and analyze their thoughts and positions?  Not nearly as sensational, but we already have sensationalism and it is not edifying.

If the Democrats don’t stop shouting and trying to outdo each other with their Spanish, they are headed for defeat.  Let’s winnow down the candidates by making them discuss in detail their plans and strategy for restoring the country’s moral direction.  There needs to be a different format for that, and I am not sure Tom Perez, Chairman of the Democratic Party, is a believer in that process.

Also, in other news, there was a ruling by the Supreme Court on Friday that was an appalling decision for our democracy.  The Court declined responsibility to prohibit partisan gerrymandering. They basically cleared the way for state legislators to create voting districts in their states that favor minority rule.  For example, if the Republicans win in the State legislature they can create the shape of a district so it contains only their supporters, thereby insuring control over the next decade at least by their party.  Or they can draw a district in a state like Alabama where the shape of that district contains virtually all the minority residents in the state, thereby minimizing the effect of their voting power.  This is a clear abdication on the part of the Supreme Court to protect the voting rights of all of us citizens.  In states where there is already rampant disregard for voting rights especially of minorities, we will now see unfettered gerrymandering proceed to it’s ultimate unfair result.  Goodbye democracy!  This is the first of what will probably be many victories for the Republican strategy to stack the courts with right wing activist judges.  Goodbye rule of law.

Who Are We, America?

When I was in High School in the mid 1960s, I was a tenor in the A Cappella Choir. One of the most inspiring pieces of music we did was a rendition of “Give Me Your Tired Your Poor,” originally composed by Irving Berlin and, of course, written by the poet Emma Lazarus.

Lazarus’s words are inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. How many millions of immigrants saw those words as they arrived on our shores, fear and uncertainty in the faces, but hope and freedom in their hearts! As I sang those words over and over I always visualized the black and white pictures we all remember of the bedraggled masses gazing upon that Statue with those words writ large on the base as they sailed into the harbor.  Now I have a new portfolio of images to associate with the words.....

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send me the homeless tempest tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Close your eyes and imagine, if you can, finally arriving on a boat with hundreds of other people, all fearing the unknowable future, seasick from weeks of a difficult ocean crossing, but gambling their lives on a dream, seeing those words, feeling the presence of that gleaming statue with it’s outstretched arm and torch.

Was that feeling any different from the thousands of refugees crossing the borders of Mexico over the past four decades, fleeing drug cartels, war, poverty, looking for a better life for their children? I think not.  

Think of how our country’s emotional condition has morphed over those same four decades. We have changed from a nation of immigrants welcoming those seeking a better life to a nation of tribal selfishness that seeks to ostracize and separate all those “tired and poor.” We accuse them of crime, we accuse them of greedy indolence, we seek to deport them. Who cares if they are human? They are “other,” and therefore should not be here with us pure citizens. 

Take a moment and listen to Lazarus’spoem with Berlin’s music sung by the Norman Luboff Choir as you scroll through the pictures below......

Where is our humanity?

Who are we, America?

The Final Solution

Hearing the reports from the southern border about the conditions surrounding the captivity of innocent children being kept in squalid conditions, I am reminded of another time--I wasn’t alive during that time, but the reality of it was fresh and raw when I was a child.  Many people who read this only remember the efforts of those diabolical people of the Third Reich from history books and rare recollections from survivors.  My parents and grandparents, while not in Europe during those times, had relatives who lost their lives during the Holocaust.  But the echoes of those times are all too real today.

The way our government, and particularly the cruel way the Edna Administration is allowing and encouraging the mistreatment of children and migrants coming to America is horrifying in its similarity to the mindset of the Nazis.  Edna perceives migrants (brown people) the same way the Nazis perceived the Jews—sub humans who must be dealt with in whatever way is expedient.  There is no empathy, there is no compassion, there is only disgust and hatefulness.

Edna, like his German antecedents only wants to rid our country of them; get them out of here.  And the methods used to engineer their expulsion would be considered cruel and unusual punishment, even for criminals.  When confronted with the reports of conditions in the places where people are being held, Edna blames the Democrats for not passing financing legislation to mitigate the problem.  Meanwhile he thinks nothing of unilaterally bypassing Congress when he needs funds for his border wall or other illegal actions he wants to finance from our tax dollars.  Edna’s mission is to obfuscate and blame others for a policy that he alone is promoting.  The horrific part of this ploy is that the Republicans in Congress are defending his policy and finding ways to blame the Democrats.  And the Democrats seem powerless to counter the evil nefariousness of what is transpiring in Texas.  All they seem able to do is witness it and raise the alarm.

Is this America?  Is this the land of the free and home of the brave?  Is it???  Is our country a place where children are kept in cages in filth, suffering from disease and pestilence in their captivity?  Is this the Final Solution, “American Style”?  And what comes next?  How long can we allow this to go on?

The tragedy of this situation is that solutions are at hand.  Most of the children coming across the border have phone numbers of relatives already here.  Is anyone in our failing bureaucracy making the phone calls for these unfortunate souls?  How difficult is it to provide showers; how expensive to provide decent food and a blanket to sleep on instead of concrete floors?  This is unconscionable!

History will condemn all these people to hell and the rest of us all to the endless shame of allowing this to unfold without screaming “STOP” in the name of decency and all the ideals our country was founded on.

I ask again, “What comes next…….”

Hisnabiddy Shiva

The Hisnabiddies are dying one by one!  We are in distress, as you might imagine.  Cecily is bereft….Hercules bit the dust today, and Betty is not far behind.

We are just mystified as to why this is happening.  It seems to have started not long after we brought the new white chickens into the Chick-Inn.  Everyone was fine until one of them wasn’t.  It was Purtz.  She just started having breathing difficulties and within 3 or 4 days she was toast.  It was very traumatizing.

We cleaned the coop, started using diametaceous earth, examined their poop in great detail (not my favorite part of the post mortem, I can assure you!)  We could not figure out what was going on, because shortly thereafter, another of the white hens, Thelma started going downhill.  Then it was Cechman.....

Cecily spent hours on the internet researching exotic chicken diseases and how we might counteract what was happening.  We have been in regular contact with the folks at the Agricultural Extension service who have been stumped by our problem as well.

After Thelma expired we even considered an necropsy with a fowl expert, but turned away from that rather quickly when we discovered it would cost us hundreds of dollars.  So we waited somewhat resignedly for the next one to give up the ghost.

In the meantime, Goldstein and Buckley turned into roosters!---big surprise when we thought we were buying all hens!  The two of them started strutting and swaggering about two weeks ago and Hercules started acting lethargic.  We weren’t sure whether Hercules was coming down with whatever the others had suffered from, or whether he was just depressed that he was not the Head Cock.  He has been on a downward slide since then and this afternoon he is near death. 

Betty, the Rhode Island Red who came with Hercules is also on the way out.  She is sitting on the bottom of the coop just being….well… deathlike.

So now we have 4 white chickens left, and one of them, Louise, has been ill for the past week.  We have tried force-feeding them antibiotics, super cleaned the coop and tried to make it as antiseptic as possible.  Nothing seems to be stopping what seems like an inexorable process of losing these birds one by one.  We think we might have a fouled coop, or maybe one of the white birds arrived with a virus or bacterial thing.  Or we might be struggling with a Hanta virus from the rodents that abound in the wild outside.

As an aside, we have stopped getting any eggs as of about 8 weeks ago.  We attributed it to the heat, after all it is summer in Florida and it is beastly out there during the day.

The tragedy of all this is that we have become attached to the damn birds and when they pass it is very disturbing.  Our neighbors on either side of us each have a flock that is doing just fine, and we can’t figure out what the problem is with our birds.

We have done all we can, so all we can do is continue to feed them well, water them well, treat them with antibiotics and see what happens.  I will let you all know what happens.  Feels a little weird, but I will ask you all to pray for the birds…they need some help!

If the time comes when they are all gone, we might give up eating chicken and eggs for a while.

Anybody have any ideas?