This is a stressful week for a lot of us and that’s probably why this came out of me when I turned off the world and stopped to draw…
Normally I alway write words on every drawing but I don’t have them for this doodle yet. What I do have though is the knowledge that even though the future is a place we can never see clearly, so many of you hold a light up in the world…so many of you are a light in this world. We may not be able to see what comes ahead but I know that no matter what, I’m here with you…around a flickering candle that will continue to shine. And I know that when my candle goes out you’ll lend me your flame…and vice versa. That’s how hope grows. That’s how kindness spreads.
Thank you for shining in a world that sometimes appears dark. It may seem such a small ember, but it glows like a lighthouse in the world, reminding us that we are so very far from being alone.
Music was a haven for me when I was young living in my parents’s house. Much of what I’ve heard and enjoyed throughout my life has had Quincy Jones’s hand involved. May he rest in power. This is sad.
You cannot write the history of Black music and entertainment without Quincy Jones. During his 70 year artistic career as a musician, producer and composer, his impact has been felt throughout our culture. According to a statement from his family, Jones died Sunday night at the age of 91, at his home in Bel Air, Calif. (snip-much MORE; tissue alert)
November 4, 1811 A group of men in Bulwell, near Nottingham, England, armed with hammers, axes and pistols in the dark of night, broke into the workshop of a master weaver named Hollingsworth and smashed six weaving machines the men thought threatened their jobs. They and their supporters opposed the industrialization that had turned home-based sustainable textile work into factory work with significant loss of jobs through mechanization (and those at much lower wages), as well as the attendant air and water pollution. Luddites smashing loom. They called themselves followers of the probably fictional General Ludd and continued their attacks for months, with over a thousand knitting machines destroyed. In response, thousands of troops were sent to stop the rebellion, and Parliament passed a law making destruction of weaving machines a hanging offense. Luddites has since become a term used for those who oppose technology.
November 4, 1956 Two hundred thousand Russian troops with 1000 tanks stopped an anti-Stalinist uprising in Hungary and installed a new pro-Soviet government. Although civilians had set up barricades along all the major roads leading to Budapest, the Soviet air force bombed the capital and troops poured into the city in a massive dawn offensive. Hungarian Army and National Guard troops participated in the resistance; only Communist Party functionaries and security police fought alongside the Warsaw Pact troops. The help promised from the U.S. to protect and aid the anti-Stalinists never came. 20,000 Hungarians ultimately died as a result (as well as 4000 troops), and ten times that many left the country permanently. Hungarian ‘freedom fighters’ temporarily forced back Soviet tanks and troops. Soviet tanks in Budapest. Pictorial history of the Hungarian Uprising
November 4, 1984 The first free elections in Nicaraguan history were held. Nicaragua’s ruling Sandinista Front claimed a decisive victory (70%), defeating six other parties, in the country’s first elections since the revolution the Sandanistas had led five years previous. The high-turnout election (83%) was monitored by 400 independent election observers who said the election had been fair. Read more
November 4, 1995 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was fatally shot minutes after speaking at a peace rally held in Tel Aviv’s Kings Square in Israel. The rally in Kings of Israel Square Yitzhak Rabin Read more
November 4, 2008 The first African American ever nominated by a major political party as candidate for president went before the electorate. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and his Democratic vice-presidential running mate, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, faced Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin; independent candidates Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez; Green Party candidates former Representative Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente; and former Repepresentatives Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root.
OK, so it didn’t take me this long to eat lunch; I’ve had some other things to do, and wanted to let the first post settle a bit. Since I got that all out, some of my urgency has abated, though I still want to tie the subject up, until/unless there are comments where we can discuss and enjoy however long we want.
Lunch was brunch. My plate was frambled eggs with toast. I know I said it wasn’t a cooking post, and look what I’m doing. When I make frambled eggs, I cook the eggs as if for over-easy (yolks runny, whites cooked.) Turn the eggs when it’s time, let them get a bit of heat on that side, then gently drag your spatula through, to break the yolk and drag the white through the yolk. My personal goal is not a hard-cooked yolk, but what I guess they call a jammy yolk; you get a bit of liquid, even, but it’s not drippy. You just keep gently lifting and turning until you like the consistency of the eggs. I had whole wheat toast, and oatmeal that I apple-pie spiced, and sweetened with honey. We’ve been having a rain “event,” so I’d got the laundry to the laundry room to run and to dry between/before rains.
Our laundry room is at the front of our front carport, front being the direction the front end of the car points; we park in front of the laundry room. Our house is a whole post in and of itself, but not quite as Scottie’s and Ron’s house; they may run theirs by crisis and we rarely have a crisis, but their house is nicer and more modern than ours. Also, while Sat. and Sunday are fitness rest days, I still do 10 min. every hour on the rebounder to get my steps. So, lunch hour took a little while. It’s a rest day! 😎 And the first day of Standard time, so everything’s a little later because our bio clocks are still running on Saving time. 🕰
I wonder if everybody has that one or two commercials that the last time it airs cannot come too soon. For me, right now, (and I know the winter holidays commercials are coming…) it’s that Wegovy commercial. I just want it to stop. Interestingly, while I’m not a big fan of Big Pharma, one of the ads I enjoy, all its versions, is the Jardiance ad! It makes me dance. Well, the newest one’s tempo is too slow for fun dancing, but it’s still a nice ad. This is neither a plug for or against either drug. Those have their place and may be discussed with a person’s doctor. This is just about the ads. The ones that use music from my youth especially tick me off, so I just ignore them and dance to their background music. I hate that King Harvest’s “Dancin’ in the Moonlight” is one that’s been appropriated. It’s been one of my top favorites forever, and they can’t take it away from me!
I turned all the clocks back last night, except one. But our son came out, noticed, and said, “Aren’t we supposed to turn the clocks back? The bathroom clock is an hour fast.” Truly, I’d turned the clocks up. I find the semi-annual time change abhorrent and stupid, but I disdain Saving time the most, because there goes another hour of my life, every year, that doesn’t come back, not really, so I guess changing the clock put me in a negative mindset and I went the wrong way. Anyway, it’s been enough years of my life now that I don’t care which we have, we simply need to pick one and be done. I don’t change the analog clock in the kitchen; it’s over the kitchen table, and I can’t reach it unless I stand on the kitchen table. Some day there could be a reason for me to stand on the kitchen table, but I’m not doin’ it to change the damn clock. The guys will get tired of it sooner or later, and I have the stove clock. And my Fitwitch on my wrist.
Well, that’s a sort of round up of trivia and drift. I hope readers have enjoyed it, at least smiled or giggled, and maybe feel a little better.
We can do this stuff. It’s still way too early to let Republicanism mess with our mental health.
It has struck me that we need a reduce-stress-be-in-the-moment-self-care sort of thing. Some of us have chronic conditions, some are recovering from surgery, some of us are physically fine other than great stress that may be getting the better of us, and some of us may have a combination of some or all, or even something else. I’m pretty sure we’re all aware of tools, but sometimes things are so worrying that we forget about that, as we urgently try to fix things, or even submit to our brains’s workings with cortisol and fear and what all. So. I don’t know what, if any of this, might help someone, but I gotta try. So here’s what’s likely gonna be a long post, with a mixed bag of stuff. Actually, I think it may turn into 2 separate posts, because I see I’ve only got one item covered, and it’s already post-length. So there may be Part 2. And maybe yet another one.
I think I should first refer people to the hotlines where professionals want to and can help. Maybe someone thinks they don’t need or want to call, or maybe someone thinks they’re not there yet. It’s just good to have the resource at hand, is all. Some gain strength from knowing they can call. So, of course, there’s 911, or whatever the 3 digit emergency number is where you live. Then, more specifically, there are numbers for mental health assistance, like 988 where you can text Q to 988 if you want an LGBTQI+ affirming counselor. National Domestic Violence Hotline , (800) 799-7233. Crisis Text Line ,Text HOME to 741741. National Sexual Assault Hotline , (800) 656-4673. SAgE’s Farmer Support Hotline , 833-381-SAGE. Veterans Crisis Line , 988, then PRESS 1 Text 838255, Chat online. Much more at https://www.apa.org/topics/crisis-hotlines . Also, https://glaad.org/resourcelist/ . No doubt I’ve missed something, so please put it in comments.
I will share a bit about myself here. I’ve been diagnosed with generalized anxiety. Could be brain chemistry, could be that my life has not been a calm flow, both, something else. Whatever it is, I have it. Having treated and therapized, I know which tools work for me, and I use them, sometimes unconsciously. Anyway, I don’t like seeing people having trouble, or being troubled, or being hungry, sick, cold, hot, traumatized by war, etc., etc. My mindset has always been to do all I can to fix. Mostly to fix things immediately for the people I’m trying to help, but also the bigger working to fix. We’ve all seen my posts where I’ve shared some of the issues and items on which I work.
The thing about that is, it helps me to feel like I’m doing something that can help somebody else. It overrides anxiety and introversion when I have a reason to be “bothering” people for the greater good.
In regard to current events stress, which is weighing on all people everywhere, there are many of us around the world who are able to do just that one thing that seems so tiny-an hour on the phone, say-to make a difference, and reduce our concerns and stress. So, here is the volunteer page for the Harris-Walz campaign: https://go.kamalaharris.com/ . They still need people to make calls. Making calls to voters in other states is one of my favorite parts of helping a campaign! With a cell phone it’s almost cost and pain-in-the-neck free. Again, I’m aware of various medical issues around the commentary; that’s why I say even one hour will help the campaign, and will also help us. In addition or instead of this, one could contact campaigns of legislative candidates, like Sen. Brown, Sen. Baldwin, Rep. Sharice Davids, Colin Allred, and so many more. An hour of calls will help. And, again, you will feel better having spoken with people to further the greater good.
Now calling is a thing I’m putting forward. To me, it’s personal for each of us, what and how much we’re doing about the stress of the things in the world. I neither need nor want to know if/what anybody’s doing. I’m only putting this out as a thing from which to take our power, to put our power to work.
Since this is this long, I’ll put the first post I read this morning, it inspired me. It’s good-one of those things I needed to read, though I didn’t know it until I got started. It reminded me that while I didn’t necessarily learn or have these experiences in the same way or as early in life, I know these things, and I can do them when needed. I bet we all do, and can. I’m going to share a goodly snippet, but we should read it all if we can. Then, I’ll stop for lunch, then bring back another post part. Well, unless any- or everyone comments that they’re good, and please no more! 🌞 😄 And now from Vixen Strangely:
I tell this about myself because its true and a little weird, but when I was small, my dad taught me how to hook my fingers up and around an eyeball in its socket–just in case I ever had to. I knew what a xyphoid process was at six years old. I knew where to drive the heel of my hand into a human nose. I was taught that I didn’t have the physical strength advantage in life, so I had to have the will. I was taught that you have to walk in awareness. I was taught you watch your drink. I was taught to carry improvised weapons. I was taught to see the world in terms of potential improvised weapons.
I was taught this because some boys never get told what they should never try. Or get told but don’t really learn it. (You don’t use your knee–it’s inexact. You grab them by it. You can squeeze and disrupt a generation of losers. And I never had to do any of that. Not once. Because it’s really only a small percentage of men who are actual monsters–most are reasonable and not actual sociopaths. I like men, really. They are interesting enough and some have valuable skills. They care for the people around them and often are smarter than they think they are. It’s a confidence issue. When you are told to value muscle over brain, you know.)
I was raised to think, more or less, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do. Math, science, art, politics. Sports. And it simply never occurred to me women were just out there, somewhere, either not voting because their husbands said they couldn’t or voting for exactly what their husbands told them to, until I heard about that in my early adulthood–because why? That’s crazy: we’re fully-fledged adult people, right? Even if I knew I was born just before Roe and just before women generally could even get credit in our own names.
I’ve been married twice. The idea of a man not knowing what he’s even getting politically going into a relationship is weird to me–this is me. We are talking politics. You don’t know me and not know my politics.
I was told to put in the work. Show it. Show up. I learned how to put a little bass in my voice. I learned respect is earned, not one time, but every time.
Donald Trump never had to earn the respect that he has from the bottom up, in any environment where respect wasn’t just his for showing up. Women can see through it. Do you not see his relationship with Jeffery Epstein? The couple dozen claims of sexual harassment or assault? How he speaks about women all the time? The religious right (that he has allied with) desire to end no-fault divorce and the grinning sadist desire to monitor our menses and try to punish us for our fertility and even stop us from travelling to other states to save our lives? (snip-More)
November 3, 1883 The U.S. Supreme Court, in its decision Ex Parte Crow Dog, declared Native Americans were ultimately subject to U.S. law, “not in the sense of citizens, but . . . as wards subject to a guardian . . . as a dependent community who were in a state of pupilage.” However, the Court acknowledged the sovereignty of tribal authority in the particular case at hand. The Congress, however, essentially overturned the Court’s decision two years later. Chief Crow Dog, 1898 More on Ex Parte Crow Dog
November 3, 1917 Bolsheviks, the followers of Vladimir Lenin, took control of the capital, Moscow, and the Kremlin, the fortress-like grouping of government buildings and churches at the center of the capital city, as the Russian revolution succeeded.
November 3, 1969 President Nixon announced the “Vietnamization” program to shift fighting by U.S. troops to U.S.-trained Vietnamese troops. “We have adopted a plan which we have worked out in cooperation with the South Vietnamese for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat ground forces, and their replacement by South Vietnamese forces on an orderly scheduled timetable.” The last U.S. troops didn’t return home until 1975.
November 3, 1972 Five hundred protesters from the “Trail of Broken Treaties,” a Native American march, occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices (part of the Department of Interior) in Washington, D.C., for six days. Their goal was to gain support from the general public for a policy of self-determination for American Indians. Read more about the occupation: Read the Indian Manifesto:
November 3, 1979 Five members of the Workers Viewpoint Organization (later the Communist Workers Party) which had organized a “Death to the Klan” rally, were murdered and ten others injured when the rally was attacked by 40 Ku Klux Klan members and Nazis in Greensboro, North Carolina. The political organization had been joined in the march by a group of local African-American mill workers. At the time of the shootings, not one police officer was present. Two all-white juries acquitted the murderers despite the fact that the whole incident was on videotape. But in 1985 a federal jury found two policemen, a police informant/Klan leader, and five Klansmen and Nazis liable for the wrongful death of one of the demonstrators.
November 3, 1985 The Rainbow Warrior bombed Two French agents of the DGSE (Secret Service) dramatically changed their pleas on charges related to the bombing and sinking of the Greenpeace’s ship, Rainbow Warrior, and pled guilty. The ship was attacked in Auckland (New Zealand) harbor in anticipation of sailing to Moruroa Atoll to interfere with French nuclear weapons testing. It was the first act of terror ever committed in New Zealand. Read more
November 2, 1920 Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs received nearly one million votes for President though he was serving a prison sentence at the time for his criticism of World War I and his encouraging resistance to the draft. More on Debs
November 2, 1982 Voters in nine general elections passed statewide referenda supporting a freeze on testing of nuclear weapons. Only Arizona turned it down. Dr. Randall Forsberg, a key person behind the Freeze movement Dr. Randall Forsberg
November 2, 1983 A bill designating a federal holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (to be observed on the third Monday of January) was signed by President Ronald Reagan. King was born in Atlanta in 1929, the son of a Baptist minister. He received a doctorate degree in theology and in 1955 organized the first major protest of the civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated nonviolent civil disobedience of the laws that enforced racial segregation. The history of Martin Luther King Day (pdf)
Disillusioned members of the US military have turned to Vietnam war-era policy to terminate their service because of religious or moral convictions
For Joy Metzler, a second lieutenant in the US air force, joining the military had felt like answering a calling. An adoptee from China who was raised in a conservative Christian family, she believed she owed a debt to the United States.
But the Hamas attacks in Israel last year, and Israel’s war that followed, rocked Metzler’s convictions. Within months, she filed for conscientious objector status, one of a small number of US military personnel seeking to end their service because of their moral opposition to US support for Israel.
“I didn’t know Palestine was a place before October 7,” Metzler told the Guardian.
“All of a sudden it felt like a light clicking on for me.”
As the war in Gaza enters a second year, some disillusioned members of the US military have turned to the Vietnam war-era conscientious objector policy to terminate their military service because of religious or moral convictions.
There are few avenues to express dissent in the army. Earlier this year, Harrison Mann, an army officer assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency resigned in protest of US support for Israel. In a far more extreme gesture, 25-year-old US airman Aaron Bushnell died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington in February.
The conscientious objector route is a seldom-invoked alternative that few service members are aware of – though some advocates say there has been an uptick in interest in the last year.
The defense department referred questions about the number of conscientious objectors to each branch of the military. A spokesperson for the air force said that it has received 42 applications since 2021 and granted 36. Applications since 7 October “are on trend with pre-conflict averages”, the spokesperson added. (The army, navy, and Marine Corps did not respond to requests for comment.)
But while the numbers remain relatively low, the war in Gaza is top of mind for those service members who have considered conscientious objector status this year, said Bill Galvin, a Vietnam-era objector and director of counseling at the Center on Conscience and War, one of a handful of groups that helps military members navigate the complex bureaucratic process.
Galvin said his group helps roughly 50 to 70 applicants a year, across military branches, and that there’s been more interest than usual this year.
The US has subsidized Israel’s war in Gaza to the tune of nearly $18bn over the last year, and is growing more deeply entangled as the conflict spills into the broader region. The Biden administration recently announced the deployment of 100 troops to Israel to man a missile defense system in anticipation of an escalation against Iran.
“Almost everyone that I’ve talked to has at least cited what’s happening in Gaza as a factor in causing them to rethink what they’re doing,” Galvin said. “Some have actually said: ‘I know that the airplane that I’m doing maintenance on is delivering weaponry to Israel and so I feel complicit.’” (snip-MORE)
November 1, 1872 Susan B. Anthony and her three sisters entered a voter registration office set up in a barbershop. They were part of a group of fifty women Anthony had organized to register in her home town of Rochester. Anthony walked directly to the election inspectors and, as one of the inspectors would later testify, “demanded that we register them as voters.” The election inspectors refused, but she persisted, quoting the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship provision and the article from the New York Constitution pertaining to voting, which contained no sex qualification. She persisted: “If you refuse us our rights as citizens, I will bring charges against you in Criminal Court and I will sue each of you personally for large, exemplary damages!” The inspectors sought the advice of the Supervisor of elections: “Young men,” he said, “do you know the penalty of law if you refuse to register these names?” Registering the women, the registrars were advised, “would put the entire onus of the affair on them.” The inspectors voted to allow Anthony and her three sisters to register. In all, fourteen Rochester women successfully registered that day. But the Rochester Union and Advertiser editorialized: “Citizenship no more carries the right to vote that it carries the power to fly to the moon . . . if these women in the Eighth Ward offer to vote, they should be challenged, and if they take the oaths and the Inspectors receive and deposit their ballots, they should all be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
November 1, 1929 Australia abolished peace-time compulsory military training.
November 1, 1954 A war of independence to end French colonial rule over the north African nation of Algeria began when 60 bombs were set off on this day in Algiers, the capital. Over the next eight years 1.5 million Algerians would die, along with about 30,000 French. The French had dominated the country since 1830. French troops clash with Algerian civilians Read more
November 1, 1954 The U.S. produced the biggest ever man-made explosion in the Pacific archipelago of Bikini, part of the Marshall Islands. The hydrogen bomb, equivalent of 20 million tons of TNT was up to 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. It overwhelmed the measuring instruments, indicating that the bomb was much more powerful than scientists had anticipated. One of the atolls was totally vaporized, disappearing into a gigantic mushroom cloud that spread at least 100 miles wide, dropping back to the sea in the form of radioactive fallout.
November 1, 1961 50,000-100,000 women joined protests against the resumption of atmospheric nuclear tests by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The demonstrations, in at least 60 U.S. cities, led to the founding of Women Strike for Peace. Their slogan: “End the Arms Race – Not the Human Race.” See Photos from Swarthmore College Peace Collection “Women’s Strike for Peace” storming the Pentagon in a 1967 protest against the war in Vietnam. Bella Abzug demonstrating with WSP photo: Dorothy Marder
November 1, 1970 Detroit’s Common Council voted for immediate withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Vietnam.
November 1, 1983 A senior State Department official, Jonathan T. Howe, told Secretary of State George P. Shultz about intelligence reports that showed Iraqi troops resorting to “almost daily use of CW [chemical weapons]” against the Iranians. Saddam Hussein had invaded Iran in 1980. But the Reagan administration had already committed itself to a large-scale diplomatic and political overture to Baghdad, culminating in several visits by the president’s recently appointed special envoy to the Middle East, Donald H. Rumsfeld.
November 1, 1990 As part of the adoption of the International Law of the Sea, forty-three nations agreed to ban dumping industrial wastes at sea by 1995. Neither the U.S. nor Canada (along with Albania, Burundi, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan and San Marino) have ever ratified the treaty which thus lacks the force of U.S. federal law. More on the Law of the Sea
November 1, 2003 The Tel Aviv memorial for Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, slain eight years previously, was transformed into a peace rally with over 100,000 protesting the military policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.”Yitzhak was right, and his path just,” said Shimon Peres, the former prime minister and architect of the Oslo peace accords with Mr Rabin. “His views today are clear and enduring. There will be no retreat; we will continue.” Read more
Luddites smashing loom.
Hungarian ‘freedom fighters’ temporarily forced back Soviet tanks and troops.
Yitzhak Rabin
Chief Crow Dog, 1898
The Rainbow Warrior bombed
Scottie's Playtime 