Why Can't I See God?

 We were watching TV and a commercial popped on, supported by some Christian organization, and with kids asking questions like this title. It concluded with the assertion that Jesus welcomes questions. I barely noticed the rest of the details in the ad, as a single one caught my attention.

"Why Can't I See God?"

I'm going to leave aside the question of whether there truly is a God out there somewhere and if so, which theology best conveys what a God is all about. There are too many opinions - yes, opinions - and I'm not picking one. Instead I'm going to ask that child - or any child  - who asks that question a question of my own: What is it you expect to see that you would call "God"?

Are you looking for some aged white-bearded man in flowing robes? Lots of paintings and other art forms do their best to minimalize a God into such forms. If something deserves the title of God, why would it look like us? Do we think we are gods? Getting past the first  question, why would any God look like a hairy old person? If that is what you are looking for, there are all kinds of old, white-haired men all over this planet. Which one would you pick out as God? Why not that other one over there? Or  those dozen? Why a man, and not a white-haired old woman? I assure you there are plenty of us out here as well, with our own founts of wisdom, and some of us are perfectly capable of growing white whiskers as well if that's what your God-image needs.

Let's assume you have seen the art and decided they don't fit the bill for you, then what are you looking for? Maybe it has to be some old guy (I bet you can't get past that depiction yet, right?) with special powers it shows off all the time in order to be noticed. Does it fly? Fade in and out of visibility? Bring a fist down on your enemies of the day, and smite them and all they possess to smithereens? Cure your particular sick person because you asked nicely with the perfect special words?

Perhaps you've grown up a bit and are looking for something more.... special. Unique. Awesome. Scary. Lovable. Reassuring. Magic. If you've gotten past the old geezer in robes, how can you tell then whether what you are seeing is God or not?

Maybe you define God as the Creator. Do you mean create art? Ideas? Life? We people can do all that, and we're not alone in that. This post is an idea, and I'm creating it. I assure you I am not any God, despite being old, white haired, and even very competent at growing whiskers. I've made art by manipulating things, and the quality is nowhere near what I'd call God-like, as much as my ego is vested in making it. And yes, I can create life. I have three times. Each time another tiny cell is required to start the process, and after some months a new life pops out that is separate from me. All animals do it. Plants do it. Microbes do it. Are any of us God? I'm sure not feeling like one. I certainly won't/can't do that kind of creation again.

Many describe God as eternal. First we need to ask whether anything is eternal. We used to define it more or less as time longer then we could comprehend, starting before a beginning and lasting after an ending. As for the "can't comprehend" part, that definition sure fits the bill. Besides, it begs the question of "who/what created God?" Not to mention where the void came from... and so may others. We're figuring out, the more we learn, that we have just no idea.

Our scientists, particularly astronomers, are finding out how much further back in time from now other things existed. We call the most likely process starting that the Big Bang, pegging it around fourteen billions years ago. Is  that God? Galaxies spread out in all directions, bits of energy and mass coming together making stars and planets and nebulae which swing around each other, joining into larger and larger parts that move in patterns to make all the varied pieces of galaxies which make up the observable universe, Galaxies in turn start to eat themselves from the center out, sometimes even eating their neighbors. We call those black holes. Are those gods? What's on the other side of those black holes? Where does everything go and will it come back? Has or will it be a never-ending process? We try to put a before and an after on all that creation and discover our minds can barely grasp the concept, much less all the processes involved. Is the universe God?  However you answer that   question, where did God come from? Or, a bit more worrying, if you can't find or explain God, what did start it all, and even where did God go if there used to be one? 

Is God just a word we came up with to try to explain the incomprehensible? Or just a concept we needed to shift blame from our powerlessness and ignorance when some part of us can't tolerate chaos?

I'm not claiming to have the knowledge to answer those questions. I can only say they exist, and need to be answered before anybody or group can claim to know who or what God is, much less what something we designate as God looks like or wants from us.

Maybe we  can see God and look at God all the time. It does seem to be in our nature to ascribe God to being behind everything we cannot understand. I can see a flower and find it beautiful, watch it feed bees with pollen and nectar, understand how to water one and select seeds or cuttings to grow new ones of the same, or even something slightly different. But I can't "make" one. Each has its own rules for life and I can't change those. I can appreciate. I can also destroy, though only on a limited basis. A flower can wilt, eventually crumbling into pieces of scattered dust. Though changed, all are still in existence. I take that as proof as my not being God. I would so love to eliminate poison ivy!

When I was young, my religion taught me that God was visible in (his) creation. God was visible in the kindness and love of those around me. All those other trappings of formalized religion were added in too, like paying money to the church, obeying the laws as set forth in the book(s) deemed Holy, all of which in my case could be reduced to only recognizing one entity as my God, and behaving well to all around me. Despite contrary messages all around me, both from religious people and society, those were the top two things. 

So for what it's worth from this inexpert source, I see love and kindness as coming from whatever one wishes to believe in as god-like. Even if it isn't seen coming from others, it can come from us. We can choose it. The capability is inside us. It can be seen as a gift from God, or not. We are free to decide our actions in many things. If we were God, we could decide everything. We can be, in a very tiny way, God-like, depending on how we define what we call God. It does not make any of us God.

Second, as I get out and see more of this magnificent planet we live on, I am in awe of whatever forces made it and the unfathomable time scale it took it to be this way. I figure that awe is what most people feel when they label something as being god-like. The more we learn of what this planet is, what we are, what the universe is, the more awesome it all becomes to us. I can't begin to explain it. Words are too little to have enough meaning. I can't even understand it except to acknowledge the crushing enormity of it all, and yes, the humbleness of realizing it's a universe that's still changing and hidden and being partly revealed to those who work to see. It can be crushing, particularly because it is in our nature to find ourselves the center of everything, though we're not. The child first finds the maker(s) of all things possible in their parents, and when things are well-ordered, their world expands and grows to the awesome, uncontrollable, and scary. How we deal with that is the measure of ourselves, not of God.

I still have questions, of course. As far as I know, no human will ever be able to answer them. We're working around them, and calling it knowledge. Or understanding. Or at least progress. Let's go straight to the Big Bang. If everything wasn't here, and somehow exploded out of somewhere else into here something like fourteen billion years ago, and is still spreading out all over here and growing and growing, where did it all come from? Is or was there another universe that was somewhere else  first, and overcrowded it's space somehow, and exploded from some tiny point into this giant enormous "here" from a single point source? What happened to start it? Where did it come from? Where is it going? And why? The realization of the huge unknowable is what prompts us to not only create God as the explanation, but also  to create the definition of God, a cosmic mobius strip.

We will never know the beginning nor the end. We will only know our own, and only if we're paying attention at the time - a challenge for sure. Being able to see God will require clearly seeing ourselves, not because we are what we declare God to be, but because what is within us demands a form of completeness only served by the concept of God. We do our best, despite never being capable of getting there. God is what we invent from need, and define God as unknowable. That is why we can never see God: we've made God that way. If there is something more out there that is seeable, we will have to change.

Wait! You Bombed A Frickin' Girls' School ???

Do I need to say I was shocked at yesterday's news about tRump and Netanyahu bombing Iran? First thought wasn't the alleged build-up of nuclear weaponry capacity. It wasn't true back when Dubbya claimed it was, and tRump is so much more of a liar. Not better, since he's so transparent, just it's a constant stream of what he wants to be true running from glimmer of a thought, likely gained off watching TV, straight through and out of his mouth - or fingers on a keyboard -  without a stop for some coherent reflection, were he even capable most days. The man is demonstrably unwell.

All those thoughts were there of course, but the first one was why the hell do we in the US, any of us, think we have the right to tell another country how to lives their lives and choose their government or - since it's tied in - their own religion?  We have a petty ugly history of it for the most part, and try to glorify it for a lot of wrong reasons. (I hold out WWII as an exception.)

The second  was why now? My immediate thought was it was just another attempt to get us all to quit thinking about what's in the still missing Epstein Files, or of what was in but has been deleted from what has been released, how awful a pedophile tRump is/was (since so many of us forget how publicly he bragged about it), with the aim on his part to possibly raise his ratings here at home. Because they've been way down, and that's what drives him.

My shock was about him combining with Netanyahu first instead of going to the US Congress, which actually holds the authority to declare war, but then was followed quickly by the almost tossed off comment by the TV announcer I first heard that one of the bombs landed on a girls school with a resulting fifty-plus deaths. Students. Girls. Children whose lives are already severely restricted by their religious society who were still trying to better their lives if even minutely, who might have one day become mothers capable of guiding their children in better ways of human interactions than the ones these girls themselves grew up in, now never getting that chance.

I wonder who thought that these girls were a danger to the world? Was it total stupidity or just plain cruelty? I ask that like it could be either-or, when both are obviously true.

I wonder about the soldiers who sent the bombs. Do they have any clue which of their bombs hit that school? Are they proud that they killed girls? Or will it haunt them as they go about their lives, perhaps looking at their own daughters or nieces or random children on a playground back home, or in a school concert, or play, or science fair?

YOU BOMBED A FRICKING GIRLS' SCHOOL !!!!!!

Jellyfish Galaxy?

Boredom leads to fascinating discoveries on occasion. Boredom? Well, the Olympics' two weeks of wall-to-wall coverage is over, regular programming is coming back amid a ton of reruns, so there's some new stuff to watch, but all is mostly indoor activities still, despite the calendar building up with all kinds of medical appointments with more to schedule. There's no heading out to see the newest flower in the yard, or just walk down to the lake to see which birds are back north yet. Some snow has gone, but keeps getting replaced, including by ice, all of which reinforces the "keep indoors" injunction for anybody not willing to risk certain kinds of accidents. Even the garbage goes out to the big cans without one leaving the porch, and the cans don't actually fill often enough to require weekly hauling curbside. And no, spring housecleaning is NOT on the agenda! Yes, the dirt is visible, but the will to push the body right now has gone walkabout - ironic since the body itself can't. Even a pile of tax documents are sitting on a table sneering at me.

So there's lots of time spent online. Some of course is spent writing, including here. Other time is spent reading weird stuff, or at least weird for a lot of people. I got introduced to "Science X Newsletter" over a year ago, and get a new email containing dozens of links in various categories five days a week. Sometimes they build up, sometimes they are promptly devoured. I tend to ignore chemistry, physics, and astronomy, and stick with biology, earth news, medical news, and sometimes pop in to read "other". I might not get to one for a week, as a bunch piles up, but they don't go away until I delete them. Sometimes it's accidentally, though I did fix that glitch a while ago. In the beginning I tried to read everything and not just the teaser first paragraph, but the load grew heavier of unread stuff beckoning.

Suddenly it changed. The folks putting it out decided they either needed my money to keep reading any and everything that caught my interest, or I'd have to wade through ads for every in depth article I read. Screw that! OK, sure, I agree that they're worth it. The service is invaluable. But so are a lot of things online, and my budget isn't that accommodating, especially these last months when I'm not working. Five dollars a month here, and ten there, can build up in a hurry. I can't support them all. Decisions needed to be made. 

Since I still get the very short version of each newsletter, meaning a title and a couple sentences, sometimes a very tiny photo or indecipherable diagram, I can still browse through those. If something is really compelling, I can pull up the full article and fight a system of ads which has a very poor history of letting you clear it off the page after reading/watching it fully, meaning it still covers the article I clicked over to read even after the video ends. The result is it gets quicker and quicker to go through the teaser titles to see what's going on. 

If something looks more interesting, I find myself noting a key word or two and heading elsewhere trying to find more information. Maybe Google. Or Wikipedia even. I've been surprised by how brand new concepts (to me) wind up there, though the opposite is also true, and whatever it was doesn't seem to exist. Today was a good day.

Science X Newsletter had a teaser on jellyfish galaxies. What? Never heard of them. You? The thumbnail photo didn't really give me a clue, so first Google then Wikipedia. Both had information, or at least enough that I now know a bit what they're talking about. I'll even pass on the simple layman's version, since you've read this far.

I presume you are familiar with our own galaxy and its shape as spiral galaxy, more or less two dimensional with arms spinning off in curves along a relatively flat plane, maybe (or most likely?) with a black hole in the center. Got that image? If not, go Google it.... or use whatever search engine you please.

OK, now imagine something huge, like perhaps another spiral galaxy (don't ask me, I'm not sure) rams into it fairly flatly (aka broadside) and knocks a bunch of combined stuff through the "flat" to the other side, and some of that kind of dangles in strings as if still attached to the galaxy but trying to move away.  What's left of the original flattish spiral along with what it gained from whatever rammed into it that couldn't escape (yet?)  now resembles the head of a jellyfish. The tendrils of escaping matter - stars, planets, dust clouds, nebulas - that haven't fully separated (yet)  appear to be hanging below, like those on a jellyfish. (I doubt they move like an ocean jellyfish, but that  would be interesting! Likely very destructive as well.) Scientists describe the cause of this as ramming, so I'd guess there's enough color shift to suggest it's all still in motion. I haven't read the article for the above stated reasons.

I have no idea whether these are supposed to be static in their new confirmation, but I can't imagine they would be, just that the moment in time we observe them shows them that way, just like any constellation in our sky seems permanent. We know things move and that different forces like gravity hold them in a pattern. Observe our solar system, everything moving yet staying much the same. We can observe the evidence left of collisions in the distant past from craters on the moon, or even here on earth. Some of us have seen comets breaking up within our lifetimes, like Shoemaker-Levy 9 falling into Jupiter back in 1994 in 21 pieces.

Now go look up jellyfish galaxies and let your imaginations play, or bring out your crayons and design your own versions. Have fun! It's that or knock yourself flat on your ass with awe and/or fear.

You do you.

When Neither One Works

 Things got weird this last weekend. Going into the weekend, the right arm was somewhat mobile, pain free,  and looking forward to regaining muscles or tendons or whatever means of control it still lacks after 6 weeks of forced immobility. Its hand works perfectly, with great grip strength, but there's a disconnect when it comes to getting it elevated enough, say, to touch my head. It has to be placed in position. PT is the anticipated cure, with appointments scheduled.

When I woke up Sunday, the left arm still had the mobility it had the months before, only now any move forward and to the center is sharply painful. My plan of perhaps fixing that one in late summer just morphed into a plan to ask the surgeon at this week's "final" appointment  how soon we can schedule it, period.

Think of it this way: with both hands working, I could mostly function. The right hand needs something to bring it left and high. Low mostly works just fine, though I haven't explored all options. Even when it needs effort to get in position or stay held in position, mostly it works. If I can brace that elbow on the arm of the chair, the hand can scratch my head when I move the head into place if it itches... which of course it does. That's just life. Braced, it can hold a hairbrush, but not move it to brush the hair, a job designated for the left hand since surgery. Same for the toothbrush. So those get done, when they get done, with sharp pain now.  With both hands working together I can manage to get a wet washcloth across my face, carefully.  Neither arm can replace the shower head back up on its hook. Not yet anyway. I'm considering the cost of a plumber to make some permanent height adjustment on that wall. Or perhaps there's a gadget one can attach without making a hole at risk of puncturing plumbing behind the wall? I'm open for ideas here.

I don't know enough of internal anatomy to understand why the sudden pain when the left shoulder has been the one relied on for so long. I'm sure its use has contributed to whatever suddenly changed. Imagination fills in the gap to suggest some chip of bone, undermined by the arthritis, loosened and relocated in an unknown spot where it grates between other parts of that shoulder joint when they move. But I've never dissected one, nor even seen diagrams, so who knows?

My supply of "normal" painkillers doesn't touch it, though the ache after movement does ease after around an hour. I can assure you I'm not at all tempted to go back to NSIDS since the pancreatitis. After resisting doing so for ages, I'm about to request an interim supply of the heavy stuff. Whatever the cause, it won't be needed much after surgery, based on past experience with the other shoulder. However, once again there'll be however many weeks of the sling before the needed PT to go through to restore function to that arm.

The frustrating part is not the pain. The frustrating part is just when I start thinking I can be independent and capable of doing normal things on my own again and soon, life has its way of laughing, in a way that's both full of irony and bereft of humor. It reminds me of my chronological age, not the twenty-year-old remembered me tucked away inside. She's still there on those mornings when I wake pain-free, read to go and take on the world again, at least until it takes on me.

A Shocking Milestone!

I'm not saying it's a terribly important one, even though it is worth note, just one of those that sneaks up on you and tells you that you're getting old. (Or older, anyway.)

First, I'm back driving again, at least for those things where I won't be medicated or otherwise disqualified from doing so. Hopefully that mostly won't happen again until... late summer? Considering the issues of wearing that contraption they call a sling in the winter, I've been giving thought to scheduling the other shoulder. I see that doc next week, my final check-out, and we'll have that discussion. But I'm hoping for no slippery snowy roads, no multiple layers of heavy clothing to fight with, and no contraption preventing me from wearing my coat outside in winter weather. So I'm going to push for mid July for the second shoulder, pending the surgeon's input. That doesn't even take into consideration how cold the house gets in February when you mostly just sit around for 6 weeks, even under a doubled polar fleece blanket, and can't even tolerate being in your own bed  because you can't/shouldn't roll over so it's still just life in a chair 24 hours a day, or how itchy my dry skin gets in winter, or being unable to pick up our own mail for fear of ice causing extra damage besides a bruise or two.

So that's my starting point on milestones and scheduling, based on too much experience.

My youngest has been very helpful with all kinds of things I/we can't do under these circumstances. I'm getting a chance to return the favor... provided he goes ahead and gets some of his own scheduling done. He's going to need his own driver soon. He'll be needing a routine procedure where he'll be released after waking from anesthetics, in no condition to drive himself. I'll be able to do that for him, even bring a book to read in the meanwhile, or who knows? I might still be working on taxes and bring that paper jungle along just for "fun", though this year will be much simpler than last year because we didn't move and sell a house. 

But this year my baby turns 50! And lucky for him, his doctors inform him he needs to come in for a colonoscopy! Not the box on the doorstep kind, but a full look-see kind. Lucky him he gets to start when they use propofol, aka "milk of amnesia" for sedative. I still have awful memories of stuff that didn't work, no pain relief, no ability to speak ( or scream - I tried), just wide awake paralysis. Oddly enough I just scheduled my next one for next month myself. I'll have Steve drive for me, barring some blizzard. He'll have a book or two to bring, maybe even just sit in the car if it's a nice enough day. March can provide anything. We geezers are used to getting our own medical stuff taken care of, based on symptoms and age. We almost take it for granted that X happens every Y number of years. But that's for us.

But OMG! My baby is old enough to start that cycle! Sure he's grown, responsible, holds a long-term job, switched to an electric hybrid car, pays his mortgage, grows and harvests fruits to make jellies out of, helps us geezers with heavy tasks. 

When did he ever get old too?

Bad Timing

It's been unusually warm after being unusually cold... at least in recent terms. This winter had lots of sub-zero days and piling snow. As a kid this would have been just "Winter", at least for Minnesota.  After many winters in  Arizona, and a mild first winter back north, this winter felt harsh. Add in being trapped inside for multiple health reasons, it added to the subjective harshness.

Then we get a week plus of highs in or near the 50s. Streets of black asphalt clear, despite their sides lined by piled snowbanks. Sidewalks finally lost almost all their ice and are safe even for me to walk on these days. News reports resume mentioning people breaking through the ice and either getting rescued or drowning. Ice houses are still scattered across local lakes while we natives give them the side-eye, wondering which fish house or vehicle - or combination - will be the first to break through and sink, and at what cost. They range from tents and snowmobiles to RVs! Around here cost includes, on top of everything else, fines for polluting the lake with fluids from vehicles or whatever non-native things just got dumped into the lake along with fees for pulling out whatever fell through. One might even be "lucky" enough to have an ambulance fee to top it off.

Aside from lakes, however, it's been great to finally be back behind the wheel, getting out to doctor's appointments on my own, shopping again, and planning that trip to the library to pick up free tax forms for filing in the next couple months. (Oops, holiday: closed! Sigh.) Days are getting longer, sun actually starts to melt snow off roofs and should it peek into the house, can add some actual warmth, a good thing after looking at the latest utility bill, a bit of sticker shock after last year's baseline bills.

I finally could walk safely to the mail center again. We (meaning my son) shoveled our half of the length of the paved walk running between homes to the next street over. The neighbors on the other end who had responsibility for their share went snowbird without making arrangements. Lumpy ice simply wasn't doable. Often mail in our box would pile up for a week until somebody younger and more able bodied could be persuaded to fetch it for us. That path's tail end is visible on its meandering path if one stands on our front porch and looks across back yards. Yesterday the last of its ice left.

Two packages, one catalogue, and one envelope were expected. (We get that service from the post office, often too optimistic, but at least letting us know when not to bother heading over.) After lunch I pulled on my winter coat, with help from Steve because that's still part of my life, and headed over on foot. I could have waited, but after all the warmth, we now have afternoon rain and snow expected. Talk about a safety reset! Clouds are starting to fill back in.

We still have ice over snow in places with a lot of shade, like where the garbage and recycling bins sit until their day curbside. Neither has enough in them to warrant fighting slick ice today. They are big, our refuse supply isn't. I have developed a system where they snug up against the porch. I can stand on the dry porch right outside the front door, reach over with a long grabber stick, lift the lids so they can be filled, and drop the lids back down. No snow, no ice, no stairs. And almost no contents despite clearing out the house this morning. So they'll stay, and I won't be pulling them over wet ice ( since the roof drains right there.) As I inform anybody nosy enough to ask or rude enough to raise an eyebrow, I just mention everything inside is frozen so nothing stinks. 

But the mail was calling, or at least Steve's two packages, promised today, were calling him. He was waiting for a return phone call, so I headed out after getting his assist with the coat. If I take the long path, I had a safe, dry way to get the mail and back. In summer I cut across the grass, but shade still left too much snow and presumably ice in that direction. 

Just before I left our yard's area on that dry path, I noticed a speck of motion. Slow, undulating, motion. Had it all been black on the black paved path, I might not have noticed it, but in the middle was a fuzzy band of orange. It was a woolly bear caterpillar! I hadn't seen one of those for over a dozen years!  Mostly I've seen them in the fall, doing whatever it is they do to get ready for winters. But we'd been spending so many falls, winters, and springs in Arizona, that I'd not even been reminded that they exist. Yet here one was, not warm enough yet to be able to hurry to get wherever it thought it needed to go next. Knowing the forecast, I wondered if it would be given enough time today to make it to its desired destination. The morning forecast suggested another hour in this part of the state before it needed to be wherever it was going, oh so slowly, slowly, in the direction of. 

In February? In Minnesota? Winter returning with an attitude?

Really?

On my return from checking for mail that hadn't arrived yet, I noticed it had made it about another foot across the path. It had maybe 5 inches to grass again, brown and almost thawed in the tips showing perhaps an inch above the ground where snow hadn't totally matted them down. 

Good luck little critter.

Reset

I roam wide and far online. Some places involve conversations. Some "merely" input programming, or some paragraphs of data.  And of course there's shopping, especially the advance grocery orders so we can avoid entering a store. Eventually it starts to catch up with you, particularly when some sites both quote something and for verification, add a link to the source.

I started having trouble loading stuff I wanted to read. I love a quick perusal of a site and lining up several articles to be read in depth along my search bar to pick later, waiting for me before I can forget them from that initial look. I started getting blank pages when I tried opening them.  Add in a few other issues, and it was time to clear out some stuff.

Of course I did it wrong. But my laptop, in the interest of speed, offers me a chance to clear great big everythings at once. After all, how would I know, one by one, what's sitting there months later and not completely cleared, or worse, connected to three dozen other unknown sources - for better or worse. I mean, if it's email, I can clear by category or individual message, quite easily. I just need to remember to check SPAM because sometimes my computer is really stupid on how it assigns things there. If you are a good friend with a long list of people you send good jokes to, it decides on its own that I didn't really want to hear from you. But it's incapable of figuring out that all the messages from a good friend who died three years ago are attempts at corrupting my system. Not only had she died but she is no longer sending photos to anybody... unless I'm really wrong about what happens after cremation! Just to make it a teensy bit more challenging, I also get supposed photos from one of my kids, which still have to be sent to spam unopened. He never takes photos, much less sends them. Those were a surprise the first time, but a totally weird-ass origin tipped me off before I opened what I supposedly needed to in order to view the "photos".

Once my laptop stopped letting me have good access to a favorite few sites, it was time to clear stuff off. My laptop gave me a quick three choices: history, cookies, or cache. You know what happens when you try to call the sure-fire person who could tell me which to delete and which to rethink before doing so, and they don't answer the phone? A couple moments thought later, and I clicked "yes" on all three. 

It worked! 

There was one little catch, however. Places where I needed to log in refused to recognize me. Oops.... was that the Cookies? Cache? Or History? Luckily the financial sites (where I needed to keep regular track of balances) I'd had set to require a full log-in every time. I remembered those from daily use, though some days better than others. But others, less financially sensitive, I relied on to just be there when I clicked. A third category, like various kinds of weather reports, needed no special access, just open and navigate. The whole of one site shows fire smoke for the continent, for one example, and just zoom around. Same with the lightening map. My road map site only asks for a location to display, whether a full state or some building, not caring who I am or why I need to know.

Lucky for me, I've been writing down my log-ins over the years, especially when they change. I'd gotten a bit coy with some of them, like making references to stuff I was sure I'd remember that nobody else could figure out. After ten-plus years and changes in passwords, you know what happens, right? Ever reference "dog's name" and wonder looking back which dog it was at that time? Some of those rescue dogs had fairly short lives, a big reason they were still waiting for homes.  Just note, however, if you try to figure out my passwords, that none of them were ever dogs' names. Just giving an example of how to confuse oneself. Good thing I never tried cat's names, since some of those I can't recall myself despite a clear image of the face/fur patttern, while I'm still pretty good with the dogs many years later. 

Earlier this week I was ordering something online, and was going to use PayPal. Usually when I open the link they send me a notice that they recognize my computer. Oops. Uhhhh..... what was that again? Oh, I got cutsey with that one? Fine, I'll switch directly to one of my cards instead. 

I wanted to add a couple shows to the YouTube TV lineup. We're on a family member's plan. When it got installed, I wrote down everything! All 4 lines of "everything"! Now I have a call in to that person asking which of those four lines I need in order to get back on. I haven't even gotten to BritBox yet, and that's a different person. I'll wait till after the Olympics, I guess.  Besides, Steve handles the cable for the TV. I've gotten as far, on occasion, as pulling out the plug, counting to 5, and replugging.  More than that, it's his problem.

Sick Of Winter Yet? #6

If you're reading these in numerical order, you might be waiting for the story behind why we stopped one blue agave from blooming. This is it.

Agaves, as already noted, have a well-earned reputation for keeping you at a distance, even worse than cacti, except for cholla. If there is one exception, it is the octopus agave. The leaves are smooth, and aside from the very tip of each leaf, don't stab you. They're even easier to deal with if, like me, you take an ordinary garden clippers and trim off the last half inch of each leaf spike. It won't grow back, and even if you bump into it after that, you'll barely get the meerest scratch, and then only if you work hard at it. 

I decided I had to plant one, and placed it at the front corner of the house, close to the wall. It thrived there, since even under the eave, there was no gutter to defer the rare rain, so whatever fell watered it well. It was a beauty.  In a short time it started its own flowering stalk.

 

 

An unfortunate effect of its location was the stalk grew up into the eaves, trying to shoot through them.

This started a week's tug of war with the top of the stalk: pull, check for movement, check for progress, check for house damage. Repeat. Repeat again. Still again. But don't! break! the stalk !

Once freed from under the roof, it thrived, kept growing, and started loading up in tiny flowers.

 In turn, the flowers attracted the local bees, who loaded up on pollen.

Lots and lots of bees,  for several days. That corner of the house was humming!

We had been expecting seed pods. Once the flower petals dropped, baby plants replaced them instead.

The plants grew, filled in, and suddenly we realized we had some work ahead of us! We had plants needing homes! LOTS OF HOMES! My son Rich put an ad for us in a neighborhood online location where one can sell, trade, even give away whatever. We used it previously to divest of a bunch of X-mas tree stuff we no longer wanted, free to a good home, or an organization who'd find it all good homes. In this case, we invited people to pluck off their own plants as wanted, free. We also invited anybody with ambition (and probably a business) to come over and cut the entire stalk and remove all of them. We had several phone calls for more info, some asking for care tips, easily given.

I had already plucked a couple dozen babies off the stalk, setting them on a wide window ledge in plastic 3 ounce cups of water. They quickly grew roots, went into potting soil in peat pots, in turn got  set into thin aluminum baking pans converted for the purpose, where they could go back outside in sun and be evenly watered from the bottom. Some of those I shared with friends for their yards, depending on their own green or brown thumbs. Some I planted in our yard after they were well rooted.

 One day I stepped out front and noticed somebody had come by quietly and taken us at our word that they were welcome to the stalk and contents. I wished them the best of luck in growing them. We'd had fun.

Being busy with the new "octo-babies", the remains of the old plant were ignored for a few weeks. As predicted, stalk and leaves died . We finally made plans to dig the remainder out, asking Rich for the favor of doing the work. Instead he called me out, having news. There was new growth in the bottom! A few fresh green leaves were poking out beneath the dead leaves.  We still had a nice octopus agave, or would very soon, once the dead was removed. Instructions changed, and the new growth thrived, The babies which were planted got ignored during our snowbirding northern vacation, despite promises before we left for regular watering. By the time we sold the house, we had "only" four new healthy ones in the back yard, still a good result for a favorite plant after a minimum of work.

Note the fat plant behind the octopus agave along the house is one of our large blue agaves I showed in the last episode. After photos of where this octopus ended up and knowing what was required to do in order to avoid damage to the house, but the next time with a real stabber of a plant, I hope you'll understand better why we cut that flowering stalk. Besides, I was informed it produced seeds, not plants, and those really are a lot of work!

Sick Of Winter yet? #5

It's time to talk agaves. There were some interesting ones in both our yard and the general neighborhood. Shapes can be spread out or a tight ball of leaves, but agaves are defined by sharply pointed leaf tips. Some  have sharply jagged leaf edges that rip the unwary, others are more well behaved. Colors for leaves mostly are either green, or blue. Flowers appear from a stalk coming up from the plant's center, and can cover a single pole or be on pads that branch out in ascending tiers to the top. Flowering usually marks the death of the plant. With each variety, what you think you know offers exceptions, except for that sharp tip. With all the possible variety, coupled with tolerance for desert conditions, they are a very popular landscaping plant. Other people farm specific ones to produce tequila.

The one I first fell in love with was across the street. It started as a large bunch of pointy green and sharp leaves near their driveway, about 3 feet out in every direction. One day it started sending up a stalk. It grew higher. Then higher. Perhaps ten feet up the stalk started branching, each branch horizontal, growing its own flat pad of blossom buds at the end.

The thing was, every bud was brilliant red!

It was so spectacular, and so rare, we had traffic stopping just to take pictures of it. I actually had to be careful of them when I went across the street to take my own pictures! The effrontery!

As blooming progressed, buds started to open, starting from the bottom branches up to the top by the end of a couple weeks. Red gave way to yellow.

 A careful look to the left side of the blooming stalk may look dusty, but it shows some of the thousands of tiny flying bugs swarming the open petals. I had to enlarge this photo enough that the other side of the picture didn't fit the formatted space and needed to be cropped.

It took about a month for all the excitement to die down. The owners had the whole plant dug out and removed. As far as I could tell, no care was taken to allow seed formation so more of these could be produced. I never saw another like this in the years we were down there.

It is a common flowering form for agaves. Only once did I see one like this that only sent a flowering stalk up about 6 feet.

Note how straight and green the leaves are that this short one springs out of.

Compare that to this one in our yard. Its leaf shape is broader, with totally nasty red curved barbs along the edges and viciously long and sharp  tips on blue leaves. A normally self-respecting person does not get too friendly with this fellow, popular as it is in landscaping for its large size and very blue leaves. Each leaf leaves it's imprint on its neighbor as they grow, separate, and spread out, adding interest to the plants.

When this one decided to send up its stalk, it was very thick and sturdy, and abandoned its blue for a more interesting palette, even as it maintained long sharp defenses. We didn't allow this one to bloom. It turned out it was planted too close to the house and would have run into the roof eaves. Our discovery of what happens then is another story.

Sick Of Winter Yet? #4

 There are a lot of tree varieties in the Arizona desert, whether natives or imports. Probably the most well known is the saguaro, now protected due both to its long slow life cycle, and its unique shape from arms. There are a lot visible in the Phoenix greater metro area. Some were likely "stolen" from surrounding desert before protection (for the most part?), and others permitted for movement when a river was damned to allow the creation of Lake Pleasant. Flooding would have killed all cacti in the area, so people were allowed to go in and remove them for replanting. Back when my parents were snowbirds down there, it was happening, so we drove out to the site to see what was up. Nothing appealed to them for digging up. Now, driving around the metro, many are still visible and healthy in the urban landscape, along with many other cacti varieties.

They bloom in the heat of summer, blossoms emerging from the top, with birds often taking advantage of a less prickly perch from the height. Others can carve out a hole in the side of the main trunk for nesting.The plant then fortifies the area around that incursion, behind the green covering,  making a solid chamber holding the nest secure. Water continues flowing through the green.

 In recent years the increasing heat is taking a toll even on them. Down at the west corner of our block we were surprised by one having toppled overnight. So, no doubt, was the homeowner whose car was trapped in his garage for nearly a month. The saguaros are tremendously heavy, as well as thoroughly spiny, and  it takes a special crew to remove a toppled one. You don't just drive over or around it. I would guess one might look for somebody who values the downed plant and it's unique skeleton ribs who might take it off your hands at less or no cost. Or maybe it's difficult finding the right crew... and price.

A couple years later, on the other end of our block, some new resident "required" different landscaping. They cleared off the site, which required a crew of four to topple this old saguaro. Of course half of the street was blocked for hours. Maybe the arms weren't weird enough to please them. Perhaps they really really "needed"  a low patch of prickly pear on that corner with the fine spines that worm their way into your skin and hang out for days before you can figure out how to shed them. The new look is boring and bland. I don't think I have forgiven these owners for the destruction yet.

Sick Of Winter Yet? #3

 There are a lot of photo files to sort through, over 4,000 currently in my laptop library, more on various thumb drives. Thumbnails need to be sorted for themes, and by the time 50 or so wind up on working desktop space, even once I change the name from a number, it's a jumble. So these will keep coming as time and patience allow.  (Sure, now I warn you!)

This funny faced blossom is not what one usually sees with this plant. It's such a tiny bit of a vine which quickly covers an entire fence and blooms off and on through the year.

This mass of color is what usually catches the eye. The white parts are subtle and need a close up, which then enable you to see the other fertile parts of you are willing to pay attention. This was a gift from the neighbor, rooted on their side of the fence, pruned into submission on ours.

Eventually the bouganvilla goes into full blooming mode and looks like this... before starting over again. I never tired of the colors or the work encouraging them.

There are many less tender plants around Phoenix with interesting colors. One from the front yard which I planted early after we moved in is called the red yucca. The name is a misnomer, as the leaves are not spine tipped, nor red, and is from the asparagus family. No, I wouldn't try eating it.

Most of the year it looks like this, often sporting old seed pods that nobody cleaned off.  Yawwnnnnn.

It sends up tall blossoming stems, often over two dozen flowering stalks a season. Pink buds open into yellow flowers, tiny enough that trying to capture the whole negates all the details.

Each fertilized blossom creates a hard seed pod with enough combined weight to bend the long stems, the way this one leans out over the driveway. Eventually the pods dry, open, and drop a multitude of hard black seeds all over. I never see new plants from those locations, so they must need something from either the processes of weather that the Arizona desert lacks, or traveling through something's digestive system to spread to new locations.

Lots of plants down there there produce hard round pods. This one is a tree, with blossoms better described as beige lace. We were usually north at blooming time, or without a convenient camera, when this bloomed in the neighbor's front yard. This is an unidentified variety of palm tree, about 12 feet tall when this was taken, but I've never seen anything remotely edible looking  emerge from it. They did have a yard maintenance company clean up while they returned to Canada, so they had no clue either. Typical palm tree care involved cutting the tops way back. I only ever saw one blooming or fruiting the year we stayed south for covid. I'm only guessing these were hard, since I'm not that tall.

Sick Of Winter Yet? #2

 Perhaps you're tired of white upon white upon white. Sure, it can be spectacular. But for months on end? Trapping you in a world of blaahhh, waiting for even a glimpse of color. It's especially dull after living where color is always present.

Every sunset seems full of color. This is a typical shot. If you are up and peek out early enough, you can even see gorgeous sunrises, but one of the joys of retirement is sleeping in, if that suits you. It did us.

Inside the back fence, skies take a backseat to a Mexican Bird of Paradise. Properly pruned, it gets bushier and more brilliant every year.

If you wish more variety, a similar but larger plant is a local favorite. It's called a bird of paradise, but isn't. I tried for one of these, above, looked it up, went to garden centers, and found a lot of blank faces. The formerly reliable place insisted what they gave me was  what  asked for, but the blah yellow with sparse petals didn't appeal.

Another common flower, the lantana has variations from yellow through pink through lavender, often on the same plant. This is a neighbor's. We removed one when we moved in, due to location and thorns, but later discovered a volunteer in a more out-of-the-way spot and started tending it.

Trees can be spectacular too. This is one of the first of those I planted, after noting the back hard had 3 citrus trees removed before we even saw the place. It was a bank repo, and they chose not to water thirsty plants.  This is a desert willow, and while needing water its first year, it shoots down deep roots and thrives with minimal attention. It also provides great shade in a few years. Note the abundance of buds waiting their turn to bloom, then picture covering the whole tree with these clumps.

If you like purple, this tree gives a show in the spring. I never did manage to name it, which probably means it's an import, like many other landscaping plants. It seems to be something one person plants, the next sees it a few years later and puts their own in, and three more repeat that in a few more years. Then you can go miles without seeing one. The bloom is brief, and mostly after the snowbirds head north. It's worth finding a parking spot to shoot.

The logistics of that are simple, spelled $$$. Most snowbirds have their primary residence in a northern state, and deal with homeowners rates on their property tax. They have to spend the majority of their time up north in order to get a discount. w\Wherever they live in the south, they either rent, or own something much less expensive.  this means they miss half the year in the Phoenix area, and probably have never seen a thermometer registering 123 degrees F. On the other hand, we sold the northern house, bought something less expensive in the south for our primary residence, and spent 9 months there for our property tax discount. Summers in Minnesota were a great time to see the grand kids while they were out of school. Also, of course, a great time not to air condition the AZ house.

Sick Of Winter Yet? #1

 I don't know about the rest of you. Perhaps you love to ski or skate or go ice fishing. Maybe you just hate the heat. I mean, I can get that. This thermometer was accurate when we were in Sun City, and I was impressed enough to immortalize it, right before heading back into the air conditioning!.

But after all, we did spend our winters down there to get out of the cold. And we've had more than enough snow and ice and cold this winter to bring on a bout of nostalgia for those good old days. This was one of the best!

                                

We went down as a committed couple. Covid came along, we reexamined our priorities, and held an official, legal wedding, covid-safe, in our carport, social distancing and all for the 5 people there. This is the "after" shot, both of us holding a Maricopa County wedding license, shot by one of our witnesses and a best friend, Joan Kroll. Our anniversary comes up in a few days.

The spots of orange behind us is a plant called Orange Bells. When we moved in, one of our projects was to remove the water -thirsty plant in that desert yard, and replace them with more heat and drought tolerant ones.

This is a close up shot of a branch.

We weren't the only ones who appreciated the blooms. Hummers were all over the place, so long as a steady supply of food was available.

This little one was a bit too optimistic. The cage it hovered over did have a plant in it, but no blossoms yet.

In contrast, the Phoenix Botanical Gardens had a year-round supply of food for them.

 

Conquering The Irrepressible Itch

Ever had one of those? It could have any cause - a bug bite, an allergy, a rubbing irritation. Or, like me, you might combine any/all of these with a skin condition known as dermatographic uticaria. I heard that translated once as  'skin writing", where one could raise a lasting red pattern on the skin by simply gently scratching it!  Short version - everything that can make your skin pay attention will find it reacting as if to repel an invader, with a combination of red, rising, and itchy surface patches. Yep, that was/is me.

There are meds for that, though they were just coming on the market back then, prescription only and pricey, back when I first was "blessed" with it.  My first month's supply was $81. Some allergy meds hint at fighting it. Others are better tailored specifically for it. Those which fight respiratory issues "are not the droids you are looking for."

My first tactic, once I could afford insurance years ago, was to see an allergist, identify everything I react to, and get shots. As for the identification process, a patch was affixed to my back, with a grid where each square held a different common allergen. Once removed a few days later, the Doc can identify what one reacted to and start treatment, coupled with imparting knowledge of what to avoid. In my case my back was so solidly red they had to hold up a grid to figure out what I wasn't allergic to. The adhesive turned out to be one of the culprits. Lots of shots followed, coupled with one of those new drugs.

Mostly they work... pretty much. With the doc's recommendation, I still take twice the daily dose of my allergy pills. Fortunately the price is way down now, and they are widely available OTC. I'm told there are better ones out, but... $$$.

Now try adding a "sling" you have to stay encased in for weeks. Six lonnnnng weeks. And "sling" is so-o-o-o not a cloth triangle slung around your neck and holding the forearm loosely. Start with a bulky padded box,  hard plastic straps encasing your fully dressed torso from multiple angles, with buckles mostly out of reach and beyond your strength, at least initially, tons of rigid velcro obviously made for strength, not softness or comfort. It is designed as a prison while your joint heals.

 Really good job on that "prison " part, folks. Kudos. Mission accomplished.

One needs assistance with almost everything. Allegedly you MAY remove it for "hygiene". Of course it has to go back on, so maybe reconsider that first sling removal part unless you have memorized the reverse process. This means somebody else deals with your clothing, your bathroom duties, cleaning after your bathroom duties,  and your clothing again. Whatever in your life requiring two hands now gets one, plus whatever another person can assist with... on their schedule. This last in no way is a comment on their willingness to assist, but an understanding that their schedule for waking, sleeping, time involved in standing and walking with a walker, etc., does not often accommodate a requirement for "Right Now!" The heart is willing, the flesh is older than my own. Even when help is quick, many times the body's demands don't wait at all. Oops. Just a warning. Prepare ahead if you can.

Don't be embarrassed now. Remember even astronauts and our current President wear diapers. Just a thought.

Then, just for grins and giggles, there's the factor of multiple layers of clothing. Shedding pants, the most frequent ones needing moving, is one thing more easily done, providing one has the right kind of clothing and sufficient need, with both layers at the same time. Replacing them can be done simultaneously or individually. Elastic and stretchy fabrics are pretty much a must. But occasionally, even in the best of circumstances, they do not come to rest in identical locations, resulting in an uneven pull against a moving body part, like a thigh top, as one changes from sitting to standing to walking. ITCH! Let's add the obvious complication of lumpy body shapes to deal with. It's mostly a good thing , because how else do pants stay up, (unless one uses suspenders, which also happen to require multiple hands). I adapt to doing it automatically. I know where all the lumps are. I make adjustments.  Less familiar hands are still learning, so the process is a tad less perfect. Again, fabric binds, irritation grows, and ITCH!!!

Some of the issues are simply the wrong wardrobe to start with. I'm not allowed to lift one arm. It has to go into a sleeve or two anyway, staying vertically down during the process. The official clothing recommendation is have everything for your torso join in the front middle so each arm goes in independently. Of course they tell you that just before surgery. Perhaps your life is arranged well enough that you can just head out shopping, find the exact things you need, and prepare them for use, like by actually checking how they work, and laundering. My life hasn't been that accommodating recently. Browsing my closets and drawers turned up three such garments, all for cold weather wear. Two were hoodie sweatshirts with center zippers. Imagine those metal teeth plastered to your skin and grinding in with every movement. No? Not your ideal? All else in the wardrobe is essentially a tube with openings. 

Exceptions which have front openings are coats, now ruled out - surprise! - due to the requirements of keeping the extremely bulky, never intended to fit inside any sleeve, sling. Do you have a coat sleeve which can accommodate your bent arm in a fat padded box with straps heading out from it in all directions?  Me neither.  Maybe a cape...? Don't have one of those either of course.

Start from the skin and go out. First, forget you ever heard of a bra. It's just too many complications in too flimsy a package, and at my age nothing provides support there anymore anyway. That ship fell off the dock and sailed away over another ocean. So, back to the skin layer, the only accommodation in my wardrobe is a selection of smooth knit summer tops with wide necks and almost no sleeve, donned by putting the surgery arm in first and then maneuvering the top up over yourself - with help - so one head and a second arm go into the appropriate holes.  (You do have just one head and a single remaining arm, right? Not trying to be insensitive here, but I can't help you with ideas if that's not the case.) 

Then of course, adjustments are made, some never considered. In fabric selection, a couple factors become important. First, said tops were not made to be worn for a long time inside another garment. They're for summer, for god's sake!  Mine are loose, not snug. Every little wrinkle, trapped under a "sling" for hours on into days, depending on how many shirts fitting the bill well that you have to switch off,  and what shape you are actually in when first home from the hospital, becomes an itch to swear at, loudly and long. Second, summer clothing just isn't warm. (Duh!) You need more layers to maintain body heat, or possibly a humongous bank account to accommodate really heating up your Minnesota winter home. My budget says no, so this might mean your solution is one of those zipper hoodies like I happen to have, added between layers. (Did you ever select cool weather clothing for softness and lack of skin irritation? If not, good luck. Me neither.) It might be a double polar fleece blanket you try to drag with you around the house without tripping over it, or snagging it on furniture when you come to a stop and try to cover up, but folds keep it in lumps anyway, leaving you to spend hours while minus that second arm trying to arrange it for best effect. Or all of that and more. My surefire plan for next time, if there is a next time, is to ONLY DO IT IN THE SUMMER!!!

I know you're laughing at all this now. You find this all minor. I can hear you! I'll forgive you for now, but just you wait till you find yourself in a similar situation for whatever reason. Listen then for me snickering back. I do recognize the absurdity. But you are forgetting all the movements under that contraption called a sling are resulting in dozens of reasons and locations for unsolvable itching! A stab here, another there, a wiggle won't ease it for more than a half second and you're back like a pig against the farm fence, rubbing, scraping, trying not to make new holes, praying that you can somehow ease the itch for more than a third of a second. (I'll imagine you oinking! I promise!)

What? Lotion, you say?  Go back to page 19 in your post surgery care booklet if you can still find it in the stacks of handouts, where lotion is strictly forbidden. Recall your instructions from your occupational therapist in the hospital who stressed the same thing. The skin surface needs to be kept clean and dry for proper healing, especially to avoid infection, their worst case scenario post joint replacement. 

I wonder if those people ever had an itch? Do they even understand having one?

I finally got fed up with most of this. I've seen the surgeon and healing is coming along well. I've been to the physical therapist who has some teenie weenie exercises I can/should do now and warnings against others. My son and husband have worked to get the "sling" on and off and back on so both are now experts in its workings. I've strengthened fingers so they can work the buckles loose and know which ones are needed in which positions to remove it. I'VE MANAGED TO TAKE MY VERY OWN SOLO GLORIOUS SHOWER! Even a one-handed shampoo. Yep, it took about 4 times as long, but I didn't have to wake up anybody to do it.

And I did not put the sling back on! Ahhhhhh...!

It isn't on now, though I have compromised by wearing it at night when I have no control over arm movements, and am holding my arm mostly in the needed position during the day, never in the forbidden one. 

It turns out I have the perfectly placed pockets for tucking the hand in comfortably in a very cozy polar fleece vest I bought decades ago on a trip to Alaska. I treasure it and thus rarely wear it. The not wearing part just ended. It will show wear when this ends, the end of this month, but be well worth it.

Most of the chronic widespread itches are gone with the removal of the sling. But life is seldom perfect. There is one small, nagging issue. Overnight something pinched and rubbed under the sling AND ITCHES! Because of course! I have dug out the lotion, as that is nowhere near the surgery site. So far I've applied it twice this morning. It helps only until I stop. Again, because of course.

Later in the day I'll tend to laundry and hope some almost microscopic something will get flushed out of the fabric, and not replaced overnight from the sling again.  See how optimistic I am?  Considering how strong and brittle the velcro is, I suspect a single piece broke off and found a new home, hopefully in fabric, not me. I have heard, when I stretch a bit or turn in a torso twist, the loud sound of it sliding across whatever surface it was currently sticking to. I make sure then that it's fastened reasonably- in my definition - close to where it should be, and tuck it back down. Things do get weird that way, but hey, welcome to my world!

Three and a half more weeks.........  Officially.

Differences In Networks: Who Bought Whom? And What Cost?

I tend to check around different news programs available in our cable package, far as we are from the Metro, aka St. Paul/Minneapolis. Sometimes it's just for differences in weather forecasts, or just in forecasters. Sometimes it's accuracy, sometimes in how it is explained.  KARE 11 (NBC) tops out there most of the time in our home. Since we can record, we  can easily compare.

News on TV is more emphatically different lately, especially with the invasion of ICE into the state, more particularly Minneapolis. There is a huge difference in local versus national coverage. Much of that is quantity, as expected for any local story. I can't fault an hour of national coverage spending less time on local stories. A whole lot of stories are local somewhere else and deserve their time. But where quantity suffers, details lose out.

I can and do condemn the slant often  given. Let's hop back several months to the cancellation of Stephen Colbert on late night TV, despite his high ratings, effective this coming June. He has a very liberal slant. One might note that there's such a lot of material to ridicule in anything Trump does. Never considered bright, except perhaps by sycophants, and to the advantage of fellow grifters, all of which can be easily seen to have both much to gain plus much to hide, Trump is the perpetual easy target. When money people saw gain in a TV merger, the skids were greased for retribution.

Coverage on the news changed at the same time, gaining a much more favorable slant to the right wing. If that became selective in how a story was told, which facts were stressed or ignored, it was subtle at first unless one was actively looking for it. In fairness, CBS local news by then had been pretty well but not totally ignored in this house shortly after the differences were noted. But we do still watch their national morning news, since we still like Gayle King, and the trumpet opening, having both played the instrument more or less (me less, him much much more) but only until the first weather break around 15 minutes in. The celebrity 'news" holds no appeal.

Subtlety has vanished. I see truth doing likewise. Three recent local stories make my point. Take the murder of Renee Goode. I say murder because I've seen multiple video views of it, and one official interpretation claims the shooter was driven over while no video shot comes anywhere near to showing that. The shooter was up and mobile the whole time, easily avoiding a bump by Goode's slowly rolling car. The official story from Noem maintains that story of grievous injury, while other information offers that he did go through that... much earlier in a different incident, had recovered, and was now back on the job while having PTSD... untreated. In fact the local coverage still shows Renee stopping to talk with ICE to figure out where they did need her to go, letting them know, cheerfully, that she wasn't angry with them. We know how that story ends, including witness reports that when her car crashed after she was shot multiple times, those hoping to give official medical assistance were prevented from doing so for several minutes.

We may never know if they might have helped save her life. I personally think it is unlikely after three shots, but I'm no expert and the BCA has had all evidence removed from them by the feds.  The story version out of DC is still being pushed, despite what we have all watched repeatedly.

Alex Petti's murder has been covered the same way. Video shows him, an ICU nurse at the Veterans Hospital, trying to reach and help a woman protester who'd been shoved to the ground and pepper sprayed. It also clearly shows the legal pistol behind him which he never reached for, and which was removed from the scene before ICE shot him multiple times, killing him. But he was the aggressor?  You selling a bridge too, with that crap?

The same kinds of news coverage, the same patterns with  immediate blaming the victim repeated over and over, federal CYA to absurdity on other networks we pop in on, bystanders with video showing different stories showing up mostly in local, NBC coverage. Even at their best, NBC is still big on both-siderism. It does beat toeing the federal line at least.

Don't ignore all the mass demonstrations, remarkably peaceful in all locations, despite often subzero cold, getting the federal interpretation of rioting. Never mind candlelight vigils, singing, neighbors opening businesses to help others afraid to leave homes, employees afraid to come to work, especially with ICE out racially profiling, citizens or no.  You were born here, perhaps thousands of years of history here, maybe even had ancestors greeting the Mayflower, or taming early wild horses abandoned by the Spanish, but suddenly need to carry papers proving you belong?  Are you getting any of the stories of community unity? We do.

Then there is an ICE incident which just returned to news coverage with a happier ending - if in fact an ending - still with two different stories, the federal one and what ordinary witnesses saw. Remember that adorable 5-yer-old who was whisked away to a Texas prison along with his father? Maybe you'd recognize the little blue and white knit bunny hat he wore. Perhaps the expression on his face got you. At the order of a judge both son and father were returned to Minnesota where they may continue their case for asylum already proceeding along legal lines since well before ICE worked to maintain their quota without regard for law or facts. "Involuntary travel" disrupted that process, until then going smoothly.

They of course painted the father in the most reprehensible of terms, claiming he ran away from his son, abandoned just to avoid ICE. It could be understandable if true, a parent trying to keep his kid out of harm's way from the goon squad, especially after two widely shown murders. But both father and witnesses say the father had scooped up his son and was running toward their home to warn the rest of the family to lock the doors and not let anybody in. In that he was successful, but now was unwilling to be separated from his son in whatever hell came next. After all, everybody who's paid attention knows about Trump's family separation plan which still leaves 1,360  kids (by best possible count) separated from their parents, no names recorded on intake, many not verbal at the time to remember their given names. How old were you before you knew a name other than a version of Mommy? Daddy? Or when you were still called a version of Baby, Junior, Darling, Sweetie? He wasn't taking that chance with his son.

Now they have been flown back together, the "lost" blue bunny hat replaced in kindness by a stranger with a brand new one, and a judge's orders to ICE to leave the family alone. Imagine the fears that family has to face while recovering from this ordeal. Oh, and don't forget the Texas prison building that housed the two just announced an outbreak of measles as they left! After all, why would any Texas prison run by ICE take any care for the health of its inmates when they barely bother to even feed them? (The food on the airplane was reported to be their most food in the previous week.) I just hope the family took advantage earlier of Minnesota's immunization policies! But how many families will be too afraid now to get needed immunizations?

Where do you get your news? When it comes to being told over and over that what you just watched isn't what happened, and nobody was putting on a 'magic" show you had to pay to watch, who are you going to trust? And who will you trust next time? Where is the money going? Who is getting what favors and what is their actual price... for them? 

For us?

On Domestic Violence: How Bad Did It Get?

There was an event in St. Paul today to remember the victims of domestic violence. Obviously, since I'm here writing this, mine didn't get that bad. Violence can take many forms, and not all end life, sometimes just the desire for it. Since I haven't written those stories, and mostly never tell them, you don't know how close it got... and didn't. If you were around and very observant, you might have had questions, and perhaps told yourself that of course you were being silly. If you were the next one to marry him, I hope you learned early "enough" what to believe or not about his lies. I never heard about a third.

The first time I unwittingly almost did it for him. We'd been having one of those arguments about what I cooked for his dinner. I happen to have picked a recipe he'd liked a week earlier, and he was very hard to please.  It turned out - without warning since his rules were mostly silent until I violated one - a week was way too short a time. We were doing dishes, one of the rare times it wasn't just me, but he needed to continue haranguing me about supper. Well, what did he want? No answer of course. I suggested he step out while I did dishes and he'd have time to cool off. He declined. How about if I step out?  Denied.

The one thing I was allowed to leave his arena for was to go to the bathroom. I did, what turned out to be 7 times, a mark of how long that lasted. What he didn't understand was that was my only escape, in more ways than one. As a result of migraines, my bottle of valium was in there, and each time, since the last pill hadn't made him ignorable yet, I took another one. By the time I returned the 7th time in perhaps a half hour, , I must have been noticeably floating, or slurring, or something.

I wound up in the local hospital, "diagnosed" as a suicide attempt, getting my stomach pumped.  All I wanted was a way to shut him up. It never occurred to me that the pills might have serious consequences! I still doubt they believed me, since whenever I was awake the next 24 hours I was getting harangued by nuns offering to pray with/for me or find me counseling. In return I just asked if they could find a way to shut him up? Apparently somebody talked to him and he agreed that next time "I got him angry", he'd go walk or something. At any rate, we went home together, and some of the verbal abuse ended, 

I will confess to working  on talking him down when his "solution" to "my making him so mad" the next several times was to get in the car and drive into a bridge abutment at high speed. It worked.

Several years later we had our three kids, which I can pinpoint from- again- the kitchen we were in. I have no recall what the issue was, but he was very angry and backing me into a corner of the counter. I reached behind me, locating the butcher block knife holder. He was still advancing on me, and imagining no alternative, held the first knife in my hand out in front of me. Note that the handle was braced against the bottom of my rib cage for support, and the point was aimed straight at him with over a foot to spare. I wouldn't lunge. He had the choice of advancing or stopping. He stopped. Whatever his fight was about, it suddenly wasn't that important. He had a choice.  He backed off and the knife went back in the block. 

I overheard him later claiming me as aggressor.  It didn't seem important by then what he said.  He was proud of using words as weapons, and convinced me I had no options other than him. I was left with just hoping (silently) he'd just die. I have no idea if he noticed I quit arguing when he offered his bridge abutment solution.

We lasted 13 years. I have no excuse except hopelessness for an alternative. He did marry again, and I heard later that while he adopted her kids, they took the brunt of his abuse, lies, and whatever else he dished out. Wife #2 was much stronger than I. I hope those kids got what they needed to heal. 

I eventually did manage to, taking longer than the abuse had lasted, finally trusting the kindest, sweetest, best friend for years to become my #2. I'm lucky in many ways!

As for #1, we do know there was nobody willing to pay for his burial when he died a few years back.