A "hairy" entry from 2016; I had no clue these dudes would be so dangerous . . .

Dear you,

The top dude is Sir Johnson of the UK "we are out of the European Union" clan.  And you know who the bottom dude is.

Both have interesting hair in common.  Fluffy.  Crazy.  Strangely albino-like.

And under both of those hair-dos (or don'ts) we can find fluffy, crazy, strangely albino-like brains.

Shared nationalism of the 19th-20th century variety and fear of global anything dance around their gray matter.  Which I have now decided leads to hair-reaction!

Both share rebellious hair.  Those strands on each reactionary head long to fly free!  They want to EXIT those heads they reside on.  GET ME OUTTA HERE!

So, don't blame their hair.

Blame their brains.

And that is as deep as I am capable of being this hot June day, 2016.

XO

Your Joyce

Damage . . .

😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡

Dear you:


Closing out August and grateful for allies abroad who are tolerating our President and “handling” him.  Still, the Amazon is burning.  And we hash-tag away (#PrayForAmazonas) and hope.  Fire fighters and troops are acting, or so I am told.  This is beyond grief.  Yet another beyond grief moment during the Trump era.  That is the zoom-out perspective.  Here is the zoom-in, back at the Villas in Seagrove Beach:


The fall school session relieved us from massive children invasions, to an extent.  But others still appear with parents and baffle me.  Why aren’t they in school?  Oh, they are probably home-schooled.  Fine.  But, more importantly, why are they SCREAMING and having tantrums?  This morning, enjoying my coffee on the south landing, I heard “NO, NO, NO” over and over.  Yes, I know, young ones have fits and yell.  But this was weird and went on for an hour.  (I stepped out on the landing again later for a smoke and the drama continued.) I felt bad for the child and his parents.  This was not an abusive situation.  It seemed to be just a situation, an angry kid situation.  But what is happening here?  Why does this scream-tantrum festival happen so frequently in this zone?  Are our children as broken and fearful as our world, our leaders, our “adults”?


The CDC gave me some data that answers the question or is the beginning of another question:

Approximately 4.5 million children aged 3-17 have a diagnosed behavior problem.  Approximately 4.4 million have diagnosed anxiety.  Approximately 1.9 million have diagnosed depression.  (www.cdc.org)

Millions of damaged young humans.  What causes this dis-ease?  Bad food, lack of interaction with the natural world, weak parenting, social media (yawn, not that again), or the relentless popularity of The Real Housewives of _____________ series?


I don’t know. But something tells me a lack of being outside our own noise and noisy heads has something to do with it.  Be here now.  Let it be.  Don’t cry over spilled milk.  Mantras.  They probably don’t help.  However, given an opportunity, I would like to tell these little screamers that they have power; life is short; and most of all:

DON’T LET THE BASTARDS GET YOU DOWN.


Easier said than done.


Cheers to the day, to you, and good luck to Puerto Rico as Dorian approaches.  (Dear Dorian:  Could you please shift towards the Amazon and drop your rains there?)

Love,

Joyce

High Noon . . . animals on the brink.

Dear you,

The heat index in Seagrove Beach today is up over 100.  I got my outdoor workout done early, thinking it was still morning.  However, at the beach, friend Jake (beach equipment rental dude and cat caregiver for those felines remaining in Inlet Beach) informed me it was HIGH NOON.


Dumb move.  Me in a showdown with the sun at its height.  I dragged myself back to the Villas and finished random workout moves in shade trying to forget another HIGH NOON event going down:


Trump is gutting the Endangered Species Act.


Every day, another horror.  But this topic-area riles me the most.

This Act is 46 years old.  We still have bald eagles, grizzly bears, manatees, etc. due to its protections.

The Big Donald Administration is, of course, doing this to provide more access for drilling carnage, a little gift to big oil. I am pretty sure Sierra Club lawyers are all over this.  Help them:

www.sierraclub.org


And please call your congress-people, futile though that may be.

In this case, I don’t want to “let it be” and pray or act like a stoic.


Stay cool . . .

Love, Joyce

About last night . . . and Gillibrand

Dear you,


The Dem debate last night started as I feared:  a long discussion of health care policy.  Not to dismiss the importance of this, but since the world is literally melting and environmentally “sick”, the debate point seemed silly.  I have listened to these coverage debates for decades.  The only forward movement has been the evolution of philosophy considering health care to be a human right.


But still . . . something strange happened as the debate moved along.  My support of front-running hard- core candidates like Harris or even Uncle Joe weakened.  Why?  Because Senator Gillibrand disrupted the game.  There she was, all dedicated, experienced, and true to her word.  And on a panel of dark-suited tough guys and dolls (Gabbard’s white suit aside), Gillibrand seemed stronger, the strongest.


Listening to and watching Gillibrand, I thought about El Woods, the character featured in the above photo, and recalled how she was judged as fluff, too pink/too blonde to be smart.  Well, we know how that heroine won the day.  And, in my opinion, Gillibrand won the day/the night too.  Unexpectedly.  In a pinkish dress.  All legally, seriously blonde.  And her voice?  Light and kind even when passionate or pissed.  Are all these details, these signs and signifiers of  the “feminine” causing us to admire but dismiss her for a power position like POTUS?  


I hope not.
Check her record.

Look at how she is out there on the ground.

Look at how she won elections in a Republican district.

Consider and reconsider.

I am!


Love,

Joyce

Moving on . . .

Dear you . . .


Today, for the first time since Hurricane Michael hit us on 10/10/18, I did not drive to Inlet Beach and feed/water cat Dinky and her daughter, Bastet (named for the goddess as pictured above).  I finally surrendered the task to a good local young man and his gal.  They love cats and I can give them a little bill-paying cash to cover their time and energy.  Finally, I managed to let this go, the last heart-task connected to the old Inlet Beach property.


I miss their little faces. 

I miss their resilience and fuck-all bravery as their space was slowly dull-dozed down to nothing.

I miss their gorgeousness.


As my friend Eric says, I have passed the torch.

That makes me torch-less.


Hail to thee, Bastet, mythic and real.

And hail to the fur-ball feline (Vivo) who made the journey with me to this condo life. 

Simple thoughts for the day,

XO

Joyce

Looking for beauty . . .

Dear you,

My morning sound-scape fetaured monstrous children screaming and running all over the condo landing . . . stomp stomp stomp scream scream scream scream.  This added to my annoyance after hearing how POTUS thought yesterday's hearing (Mueller testimony) went his way!  No sign of concern about Russian election interference.  No sign of anything but his usual spin. I was hating everybody and about to go all out misanthrope today.  But why should I swallow that poison?

So, as a remedy, my task was to find beauty in the local humanity scene.  I looked hard and discovered:

1.  My banker dude at the local branch is very cool and lovely.
2.  The man doing external wall repair on building #1 is working with a kind of grace and efficiency.
3.  The owner of a unit perpendicular to mine greeted me during a balcony encounter with an actual morning smile and wave (instead of the typical head-down-into-phone pose).
4.  And finally, I realized that are dancers all around us.

The last point and the photo aren't meant to be literal.  But there are those who artfully occupy this space, this body, and make everything beautiful.

Do you see them too?

Please look.  Better still, please "dance" through and into all things. I am on task to do that 24-7, even if my aged-attempts at chorus-girl high kicks lands me on the tile floor with a big, bad bang.  Just consider it pay-back to the monstrous kids down below :)

Happy Day and Love,
Joyce

Summer time, and the living is . . . uneasy

Dear you,


The hottest June on record and the hottest July follows.  Everything is burning and I visit the beach carrying a little purple umbrella, shading myself from the sun like a cliché Southern Belle.  Shading myself from the other nonsense that abounds is not so easy.


Where should I begin?


Should I begin with the fact that my president tells opposition politicians that they should just leave the USA if they don’t love him?  Should I begin with the fact that his rally last night in North Carolina featured pissed off pasty people, some shouting “send her back”?  (This, as you know, referring to Rep. Omar, who is, by the way, a citizen.)  Or should I begin with the fact that yet another green space on 30A here in Seagrove Beach is being bulldozed?


The above posited questions/topics are too intense for me at this moment, so I will keep it light and consider the latest weird action by Kellyann Conway, Donald Trump’s advocate and fact-shifter.  During a recent encounter with the press, she seriously asked a reporter what his ethnicity was.  Oh yes, she did.  The question was so blatantly dumb-ass and horrifying at the same time I had to giggle it away.  But this did make me consider the obsession of many “white” folks I know, their pursuit of ancestral knowledge.  There’s a dot.com for that and no doubt an ap too.


I could care less what my ancestry is.  I am something from Europe, something from the Middle East, and something from the Mother Continent, Africa. (This is everyone’s home, no matter what nonsense they might be teaching kids in Oklahoma.) My last name is Fleming and I think my people were run out of Ireland.  And Dad said something about how during the Civil War his great-great-something or somethings was/were part of Quantrill’s Raiders, Confederate guerilla fighters.  Oh hell no.


If Quantrill is my ancestor, I want no part of that shit.


I make myself new every day. So, Kellyann, what is my ethnicity?


Again, I don’t care.  I do know my species, however, is devolving.  According to a piece in scientificamerican.com “Another point of view is that genetic evolution continues to occur even today, but in reverse. Certain characteristics of modern life may drive evolutionary change that does not make us fitter for survival—or that even makes us less fit. Innumerable college students have noticed one potential way that such “inadaptive” evolution could happen: they put off reproduction while many of their high school classmates who did not make the grade started having babies right away. If less intelligent parents have more kids, then intelligence is a Darwinian liability in today's world, and average intelligence might evolve downward.”    Considering that depressing factoid, ethnicity-niche is irrelevant.
  

Ciao for now!  I have to go handout birth control information pamphlets to our “guests” on the beach.


XO,

Joyce