The Safety Myth . . .

 Dear you,

July was blurry for me, speeding by with shocks and bumps and plenty of screams.  Like me, I am sure you too were frequently on high-alert (mouth agape, eyes wide open, palms up in surrender or resistance).  Yeah, I get it.

But you know what? There is no reason for me to "fear" anything. It's not like I'm running from a wild boar in the woods or dodging incoming fire in Ukraine.  Nevertheless, sometimes I really do feel alarmed, very alarmed. This happens when I regress, lapse back into a Safety Myth state of mind. Crazy tendency. Nothing about this existence is safe. Danger is normal. Danger is my friend. She starts and ends my days. Her messenger, that little Limbic System zing, is my constant companion too. When I am steady, I simply embrace them as part of my morning routine. Coffee, cigarettes, pushups and zing. This morning's zings:

1.  My Phone shrieks an Amber Alert.  A child from Escambia County has been kidnapped.

2.  CBS News informs me "Brain-eating parasite found in Iowa lake, 1 Dead."  The amoeba, if he gets into your head, is 97% fatal.  I also hear the state of Missouri is checking its public drinking water.  Just in case. 

3. I learn monkeypox cases in my state of Florida are on the rise; we have around 300 cases reported in 17 counties.  CNN says that the World Health Organization's chief has advised "men who have sex with men to reduce partners to limit exposure to monkeypox."  Another pandemic.  Another ugly opportunity for ultra-conservatives to target the gay population.

4. My Google news-feed slaps we with unwanted lawsuit updates. Apparently Skittles are deadly. They contain titanium dioxide, also found in sunscreen, plastics, and paint. Heads up; candy kills.

5. A flyer in my mailbox delivers a "vote for me" message from a guy running for Walton County Commissioner.  According to the flyer, David Buchanan will "fight" for "preserving our Christian values".  ("Our" values, David?) He will also "fight" any "effort to teach Critical Race Theory or sexual indoctrination in our public schools."  David apparently loves to "fight".  Total idiot.

6. I discover that my upper arms and lower back are slightly itchy. I am guessing my beloved fresh-scent Gain Detergent may be the culprit.  Laundry is now another subject for cautionary choice.

Zing, zing, zing, zing, zing, zing!  All this before noon.  And the day is still young.  How to stay steady?Repeat, repeat, repeat to self:  "Danger is normal. Danger is my friend."  Besides, it's unlikely I'd ever stop drinking tap water, interacting with people, eating candy or washing my clothes anyway. I'm not that scared.  But, on the other hand, there's candidate David . . . 

Repeat, repeat, repeat to self:  "Danger is normal.  Danger is my friend."

Carry on.

End of July, Joyce

Distance and #Ohio, oh my oh . . .

Dear you,

Intending to visit the state capitol in Tally during my escape from 4th of July beach wackiness, I drove around downtown and could not find a parking spot.  Tally has these intense hills in town, almost like vertical climbs, challenging my little car who is accustomed to flat terrain.  Stopping at the peak of one of these hills at a red light, I felt like the vehicle brake was not going to hold.  Back-sliding felt imminent.  I was losing a grip on the ground beneath my feet, off-center and tilting, distanced from my usual sense of placement on planet Earth. After this, I decided to just pull into a "reserved" space for a few seconds, just long enough to jump out and take a photo or two of the capitol.  See above photo. That was as close as I could get and still keep an eye on my illegally parked car.  Again, I experienced distance from that sense of placement.  Literally outside the seat of power and metaphorically too.  What goes down in the Florida capitol seems/is so out of my control.  I have lost whatever I thought my grip was there too.

Tilting.  Back-sliding imminent. Reversals of power from us to "them".  

One of them, someone who surely feels empowered when she looks at the Tally capitol building, was parked outside a store I visited after my return.  A sticker on her rear window featured a picture of a handgun; the message under the visual read "we don't call 911".  So proud of that, this taking the law into one's hands.  No expertise.  No restraint.  Just force without measure.  Well, I suppose it could be worse.  It could be OHIO.

Ohio.  Last week, the report about the ten year old girl (a rape victim) who was denied access to abortion in that state shocked almost all of us.  Abuse by the rapist and further abuse by the "state".  She was taken to Indiana for the procedure.

Ohio again.  This week I hear about a state Republican representative who put forth a bill requiring educators to teach "both sides" of the Holocaust.  Both sides of what?  I wonder what the other side would openly claim.  No expertise.  No restraint.  Just force without measure.

So ends my 4th of July week.  It ends with a massive space between me, them, and whatever our dream of independence was.

But still, I will/we will persist in our pursuit to be autonomous, to be in control of what goes down in all our state capitols. And our lives.

Dismantle the distancing project.

Carry on.

Joyce

Fuck these people.

Dear you,

No surprise that Roe v. Wade went down.  No surprise that the reddest of states under total fascist GOP control are dreaming up stringent punishments for those who seek abortions. See Alabama.  The rapist is likely to do less time than his female victim who is impregnated and needs an abortion. Florida, my state?  If you are waiting for my governor's next moves, keep waiting.  I don't think he is going to go beyond the current 15 week limitations until after the November election.  He is, as you know, up for re-election and will be challenged by a Democrat, probably Charlie Crist.  If #DeathSantis drops more Draconian rules about abortion now, he knows the turnout for Blue will be big, highly motivated.  It might also push the "moderate" Republicans a step away from Red.  So, I might be wrong, but expect semi-silence from Ron himself until after the midterms.

In the meantime, I know you are all scrambling to support whatever efforts can help support choice.  Women's autonomy.  We saw it coming, but the reality in print on Friday, 6/24/2022 was astonishing.  This was sadistic "jurisprudence" supported by sadistic citizens.  They are filled with glee and praising their savior, doing whatever version of the happy-dance they can execute without feeling sinful. Shall we congratulate these winners?  Should we give a nod to those "nice" Americans blandly smiling and telling women they'd be so happy to adopt their baby?

No.

Fuck these people. 

That's all.

Love (or should I say "moo" since women are now considered cattle),

Joyce 

#Resist

Heat Wave Tips To Stay and Be Cool.

Dear you,

The first killer heat wave of 2022 is messing with our already messy heads.  We need to fight through and for so much these days; these paralyzing temperatures aren't helping.  Pushing to do this or that becomes more difficult.  Juneteenth celebrations go on, but I worry about the impacts on attendants out there in all this. This applies to Gay Pride celebrations too.  See the weather map.  It's a dome that is going nowhere.  Weeks and probably months of this are predicted.  What can we do to stay cool?

1.  Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Yes, we know this. But do it A LOT!!!!

2.  Donate, donate, donate. A good way to feel cool and less paralyzed is to remember those who are fighting something deadlier than heat.  We can't let our minds drift away from Ukraine. I am still obsessed with #AnimalsOfUkraine (see above) and inspired by those working to save them. Suggestions for donations: 

International Fund for Animal Welfare - volunteers work with locals to get supplies to wildlife and animal shelters in the war zones.

Veterinarians Without Borders - a Canadian based group of vets on the ground in Ukraine helping wounded creatures.

Humane Society International - the organization partners with the Romanian Red Cross to transport pet food into Ukraine and care for animals in shelters, homes and on the streets.

All three of these groups can be reached online. Go to any, please, and donate. This will lift your spirits, wrap you in a cool breeze of relief.

3.  Rise, rise, rise above the buzz-killers - Anecdote that applies:  On the home front here in Seagrove Beach, an angry old man threw a hissy fit at our Coastal Branch Library.  The library closed all weekend and tomorrow to honor Juneteenth. Earlier this week, the dude, a typical local MAGA-cap fanatic, read the notice posted on the door announcing this upcoming closure and lost his mind.  He stormed to the checkout desk and confronted the librarian, who happens to be African American and a veteran library worker.  "Why are you closed for three days for that fake holiday?  Isn't it enough that you have your Black President's Day?"  The librarian was Teflon, unperturbed, and simply informed him of the re-opening time on Tuesday.  And then she smiled and wished him a "beautiful Juneteenth".

Very, very cool. Impressive rising.  How did she do this?  I could not have resisted the temptation to mock his twisty ignorance. "Black President's Day?"  Really?  Gee, I never knew Obama had his own holiday.  These poor people, bottomless pits of buzz-killing uncool.  Rise above them.

In summary, ways to stay and be cool:

1.  Hydrate.

2.  Donate to help the animals of Ukraine.

3.  Rise above buzz killers.

Done.

Wishing you all a beautiful Juneteenth!

Joyce

Graduation Season!

Dear you,

The weather people say the high today is 89 degrees.  Don't believe that.  The feels-like temperature is closer to 105.  The 30A beach scene is sizzling, and not in a sexy way.  The atmosphere is dog-day August hot and most visitors are crankier than usual.  They are huddling together in their crowded, overbooked, condos and perhaps pouting over the disappointing vacation.  Many among the current wave of vacationers are here to celebrate graduations.  Lots of car art in the parking lot.  Lots of congrats to the Brittney's, Bradley's and Bennie's scrawled on windows.  They made it out of whatever school they were in.  The messages seem to suggest nothing but over-ness.  But now and then, I see forward thinking messages.  In my building's parking area, I saw something different; I saw "USC 2026".

This car art predicting a future graduation from an elevated West Coast university is not typical of this zone and its visiting demographics.  Who is this youngster and what made her/him aim for the strange of out there, aim for continuing and not ending? I imagine the story, based on the limited facts I have which are the following:  this grad is traveling with 8 other teenage boy pals, their license plates show they're from Tennessee, and they appear fit, healthy, and happy.  They wear t-shirts testifying to prior membership in wrestling, tennis or soccer teams.  They don't walk around drunk or scream "Yeehaw".  And even if they are loud beneath my feet, it's because that's what happens when you load nine teenage boys into one condo.  Testosterone times nine. Now, back to this USC-bound graduate, his imagined story . . . 

Kirby just graduated from a private high school in the suburbs of Nashville.  His mother is a legal aide and his father works at a local bank.  They, the parents, Lucy and Roberto, moved to Tennessee from San Francisco, CA, right after they were married.  The Bay Area was getting too expensive.  Where to go? The couple was fearless, funny, and trusted the randomness of fate.  So, yeah, they literally threw a dart at a map of the USA and it landed on Tennessee. They thought this was hilarious!

Lucy and Roberto didn't really understand the South and they really hated country music.  But they trusted the fateful dart and jumped! Within a matter of months the couple settled into an affordable first home, landed good jobs, and made new friends.  Two years later, Lucy gave birth to their first and (so far) only child, Kirby.  Kirby was a golden child.  He excelled in school and athletics and managed to rise above local "good old boy" influences.  By the time he was fifteen, he could burn through his Dad's daily copy of The Wall Street Journal in an hour.  He also had an affinity for animals; lost or lonely stray dogs and cats gravitated to Kirby's yard.  They seemed to know love lived there.  These two talents, business smarts and a connection to wild things, defined his professional future.  He would become a venture capitalist whose investments supported animal rights causes and wildlife preservation efforts.  Kirby will be one of the good guys, a VC who creates and saves.  But right now, at this moment in the summer of 2020, he is spending time with his best buddies before flying away, possibly forever.  The guys will miss him. They're already planning the next graduation party when he exits USC (summa cum laude) in 2026.  This time they'll decorate his car window with another prediction:  Stanford 2030, The White House 2050.

That's it.  Predictably corny, I know, but I never claimed to have a literary gift.  I can lay down a coherent journal entry but fiction eludes me. Anyway, indulge me if you will. It isn't often that I imagine sweet back-stories for the visitors I live with.  I usually predict these youngsters will be serial killers or racist mall cops. But there is something different about this specific visitor, this "Kirby" and his best buds. I like them (even if they are rambunctious below my feet). Their existence is very reassuring to me during these turbulent and too hot days.  I don't know why. I don't know them at all, but I trust them with our tomorrows . . . 

Congratulations Kirby.

Happy graduation!

Love,

Joyce

Memorial Day 2022

 

Dear you,

Memorial Day, 2022.  Driving back from a visit to Tallahassee, I stopped at a McDonald’s.  Something about road trips triggers my need for fish filet sandwiches and fries.  I indulged a few miles from the condo home.  Snacking in the car, legs dangling out the door, I looked up and saw this flag (above).  The symbol flapped in the breeze, tattered but still there.  Perfect symbolism.  We are a tattered nation, flapping around in random winds.  Such as . . .

Another mass shooting.  This time at an elementary school.  You know the numbers, the faces, the grief.  You also know the excuses.  But we all know those children died while armed men waited outside their classroom.  They waited.  The institutions of protection and defense are playing around with handbooks and protocols that are insane.  JUST GO.  DO SOMETHING.  THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE BUILT TO DO.  They waited.

This was brutal.  This was big.  We are in destructive mode, even in mundane daily encounters. For example, at a McDonald’s in Polk County, not the home of the previously mentioned tattered flag, Tianis Jones went berserk when her pre-ordered Happy Meal was incorrect.  She stormed the store and called 911.  Her rant lasted for ten minutes, “I’m at McDonalds, I’m five months pregnant . . . these people don’t know how to run a fucking McDonald’s.  I want my money.  They tried to cheat me out of my money.  I want my money!”  She then trashed the condiment station and went behind the counter to toss cups.  Before leaving, she made sure to twerk for the security camera. 

Yes, we are feeling rather tattered in ways big and small.  I hear our allies are worried we are about to collapse and making plans just in case.  Google the topic.  You will find op-ed pieces and studies like the one by Canadian political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon titled “The American polity is cracked and might collapse. Canada must prepare.”  In the editorial he claims that by “2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability including widespread civil violence.  By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.” He cites the decades long influence of outlets such as Fox News and Newsmax and voodoo-men like Rush Limbaugh as causes.  And the right-wing voodoo-men and women are “armed to the teeth” with around 400 million firearms.  Homer-Dixon agrees with other political experts that predict “under a second Trump administration, liberalism will be marginalized and right-wing Christian groups super-empowered, while violence by vigilante, paramilitary groups will rise sharply.”

Canada is, no surprise, planning ahead.  They are theorizing ways to handle millions of American refugees seeking political asylum in their sane country.  I wonder if Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, etc. etc. etc. are doing the same.  Picture it, millions of liberal minded Americans re-enacting the past, fleeing tyranny and despotism just like their ancestors did.  It could happen.

However, I refuse (at least for the moment) to let gun nuts, abusive twerkers and super-empowered “American Christians” run me out of this gangster nation.  On this Memorial Day, I think about all those good dreamers who wanted something better than what we are.  They don’t want me to run.  I imagine they would say:  JUST GO.  DO SOMETHING. THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE BUILT TO DO. 

I think we can do it.  We outnumber “them”.  Let’s mobilize as well as memorialize.

Forward, not back.

Joyce on Memorial Day, 2022

Things that truly suck!

Dear you,

We got a picture this week of our galaxy’s black hole, Sagittarius A*.  It is 4 million times the size of our sun and 27,000 light-years away from Earth.  These holes suck in everything that comes near them; they’re massive gravity pits.  But this one, experts say, is tame and not aggressively on the hunt. I feel bad about that. Look at that photo!  He’s adorable.  Maybe little Sag* just needs encouragement.  He needs tempting snacks.  Let’s feed this little sucker some of the things that really suck here on planet Earth.  That would be a win-win for both of us. These people and things suck and deserve to be sucked up (suckage karma), banished from our Milky Way:

Republican Senate candidate Kathy Barnette:  Some of her tweets have surfaced saying things like “banning Muslims is NOT unconstitutional” and (my favorite) “Please PRAY for my babies and me.  We are about to board the plane and there’s a homosexual female.”   [There’s a homosexual female where?  On the wings of the plane?  And why is this prayer-worthy?  If God is gay, and he probably is, I don’t think these prayers will be appreciated.]  Kathy, Kathy, Kathy. #SheSucks

Cryptocurrencies:  The current stock market dips and dives are making us sick. CNBC won’t stop talking about things like Bitcoin and their plunge in value. I don’t know anything about Bitcoins or crypto in general, so now I am forced to self-educate and stumble through tedious articles on Yahoo Finance filled with incomprehensible (to me) stuff like this, “One difference between the current environment and other prolonged downturns such as the ‘crypto winter’ in 2018 is the amount of institutions now involved in the market, which may be a source of support, said Paul Veradittakit, a partner at digital asset manager Pantera Capital.”  I lived through a crypto winter four years ago and didn’t know it. I’ve never heard of Pantera Capital.  Don’t they make sandwiches or something? Oh, wait, that’s Panera. This makes me feel old and crypto-ignorant.  #ThatSucks

Marvin Peavy and Herschel Walker:  The Trump Won, Let’s Go Brandon banner guy down the street just added a third piece of visual pollution to his vulgar house on 30A, a Herschel 2022 banner.  Herschel Walker, former football player, recipient of a restraining order for domestic violence, and bloated head-case suffering from dissociative identify disorder, wants to be the Georgia Republican candidate for the US Senate.  He hopes to replace the honorable Raphael Warnock.  For the love of god, Sagittarius A*, make these deplorable men go away.  #TheySuck

Leaf blowers and lawn mowers:  In addition to the stomping and slamming noises produced by our condo “guests”, I have to endure the nerve-shattering screams of gas-powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers. I remember talking to someone from California once about these devices.  She was shocked and asked, “but aren’t they illegal?”  Sure, if you live in a civilized state. These damn tools aren’t just noisy, they are nasty sources of carbon emission and air pollution.  CNET.com’s Brian Bennett wrote about this and quoted the California Air Resources Board as saying “just one hour of gas leaf blower use is the equivalent of driving 1,100 miles.  Running a gas lawn mower for the same period equates to a 300-mile drive.” They blow.  They mow.  And #TheyReallyReallySuck

My bad mood:  Covid, the Trump thing that won’t end, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, inflation, the housing shortage, global warming, etc. etc. etc.  I have a million reasons to be in a bad mood.  But I am sick of being sick of things.  Please, Sag*, take my bluesy mood away.  #ItSucks

There’s today’s menu for my new friend in the galaxy.  Surely, there’ll be more suggested entrees next week, and the next, and the next . . .   

Help us, Sagittarius A*!  Bon appetit.

Love and kisses from your favorite Earthling,

Joyce