Archive for September 29, 2020

I Protest!

It started out peaceful, with signs and shouted slogans. Then someone spray-painted a mural. Another broke a mom-and-pop grocery store’s window. Another set fire to some parked cars. Someone else punched someone whose sign they disagreed with. Meanwhile, people were loading their vans with items looted from several stores.

This is how our protests are going. It could be because the protesters feel they aren’t being heard.  It can also be people coming from other areas who don’t care about destroying neighborhoods not their own. It could be orchestrated by a group with a political agenda. The “who” doesn’t matter; the actions do.

What point does it make when people’s businesses, especially the small ones who are hanging by a string, struggling to survive this pandemic, are burned, smashed, and looted? Or when public art, owned by all of us, is covered over with statements and profanity? Or people are injured by cars speeding into the crowd?

The protests are about the violence of inequality.  Does it make sense to create more violence and destroy the livelihood of families belonging to any ethnic group, let alone the group who is already dealing with the injustice being protested? Can we really believe that our demand to do the right thing will even be heard above the cacophony of destruction and greed being created?

If the message of a protest is intended to make positive change, the protest itself should reflect that, not contradict it.

10,000 Chemicals in Our Food

here’s no way to avoid them. The FDA is not protecting us from them. If you’re pregnant, they affect your unborn baby.

Read FDA must do more to regulate thousands of chemicals added to your food, petitioners say to learn more.

Do It Even if you Don’t Normally Do It

I’m talking about an annual flue shot. If you haven’t already done it, do it now. You don’t want to get the regular flu anytime, but this year you don’t want to get it and have it weaken you, making you more susceptible to Covid-19. And you REALLY don’t want both at once.

I got my flu shot yesterday. Please get yours today.

And the Fortune Cookie Says….

Gotta love those fortune cookies. Not that they’re very tasty. But some give us a chuckle, others leave us scratching our heads, and some, like today’s Thursday Thought quote, remind us of an important truth.

“No act of kindness, however so small, is ever wasted.” — fortune cookie

Is Social Media Our Friend?

When I go on Facebook from time to time, it’s fun to catch up on what friends and relatives are doing so many miles away from me. I avoid the games and things like matching my birthday to a mood or character trait, because those things are often gateways to getting info about me to either advertise to me or set me up for fraud or future contact I don’t want. I admit to giving in to checking out what my FB friends have passed on as “truth,” especially in these politically violent times, just so I can keep up with the misinformation and manipulation that’s being fostered. But I’ve felt like I had some measure of control over what I see and take in.

A Netflix documentary I just watched changed my mind. I didn’t realize what all the algorisms are doing, how I’m being monitored and molded. How I don’t realize what’s happening within my brain.

I recommend you watch this. As I said, it’s on Netflix, and it’s called “The Social Dilemma.” It will give you something to think about.

Do it…TODAY!

If you haven’t yet registered to vote, this day was created for you in 2012. The idea is to get as many people as possible registered to vote, because everyone should have a voice in how our democracy will be run in the coming years. If you think your one vote doesn’t matter, think about the math. Your one vote, added to another single vote, added to another…that’s how elections are won and lost and how propositions win or lose. And who gets elected and what propositions we’ll have to live with really DO affect each one of us.

Here’s a safe, bipartisan site you can go to to register on line (there are many others, of course): https://nationalvoterregistrationday.org/ Or at the federal government’s site at https://www.usa.gov/register-to-vote. Or fill out and mail in a paper voter registration form. However you do it, just DO IT!

Make a difference. Decide your own future. Register now, and be sure to vote.

K-Cups: Love and Hate

K-cup coffee pods are very easy, very convenient.  Which is why we buy 10 billion of them every year, enough to encircle our planet 10 – 12 times. The package says “recycleable” (at least the plastic portion), but the problem is that they often are not. That’s because the machines in recycling plants can’t process items that small.  So they go into the landfill instead, which the Earth hates.

One bright note is the small program in Canada that turns them into cement. They dry out the K-cups, shred them, then burn them up at 2000 degrees Celsius. The ashes are turned into cement.

Although this is a small program, it offers hope.  We aren’t going to give up our K-cups, except those of us who can handle reusable ones.  We must, therefore, find a way to recycle them.  Come on, scientists—Get with it!

As We Begin A New Year in Sept.

Happy New Year! Or L’shana tovah u’metukah (long version of “Shana Tovah“), which translates to “for a good and sweet year.” As Rosh Hashanah begins, it brings good feelings we all need right now, Jewish or not. It’s a feeling of putting the old year, with all of its trouble, mistakes, and wrong-doing, behind us and getting a fresh start. It’s incentive to do things right, treat each other according to the Golden Rule, make wise decisions, have compassion for others, treat all of our brothers and sisters with dignity.

I’m not Jewish, but I thank my Jewish brethren for their tradition and the gift of Rosh Hashanah. Shana Tovah, my readers!

A Cure for Our Country

When I saw this I had to pass it on, because it expresses the feeling that has been pouring out of my gut for a very long time. I believe this attitude is what will cure our sick nation.

CA Wildfires: Plea to Pres. Trump

I shouldn’t have to defend my state (CA), but I’m going to because of a gap in reasoning and action going unrecognized right now. This isn’t a tirade or denigrating of our President, just a request for him to do something to take care of the problem he has pointed out, to meet the responsibilities of his administration.

President Trump keeps repeating what he perceptive as the cause for all the CA fires and the destruction, death, loss, and heartache those fires are causing: forest mismanagement. If he truly believes that, he needs to recognize that 60% of our forests are federal lands and that federal agencies should be doing a better job of managing those lands. If it means, as he says, raking leaves in forests, why isn’t it being done–or at least managed–by the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, or other arm of the Dept. of the Interior? He believes that climate change, which scientists say play a large part in these fires, is a hoax. He’s entitled to his opinion. Even so, why isn’t our Federal government giving us the protection we need, protection he promised that would take care of us?