AdventureMan always know when I need to roam . . . I get edgy. I get bored. I get this trapped, wild feeling and I have to go roaming. I have to hit the road. For forty five years, God bless him, he has hit the road with me. He loves Adventures 🙂 and he is my best travel partner.
So we are up at oh-dark-thirty to catch the early flight to Atlanta and the ongoing flight to Portland, and the longer flight, Atlanta to Portland, isn’t full! We each have aisle seats, and we each have an empty seat between us and the closest other passenger! In this era of cattle-car air transport, we revel in space and celebrate these rare occasions.
When we arrive in Portland, the car rental pick up is right in the airport, just a short trek from the baggage pick-up. We are with Enterprise this time, and it was an easy check in and then a concierge car service as he told us to pick a car from those available. They were large trucks, and vans, and very big and not what we wanted, and then a Nissan came in and we said that one would be just fine. Within minutes we were on the road, and mere minutes later, at our hotel.
I am livid. I am almost breathless with the shocking audacity of it. “Harden our schools.” And what does that mean, exactly?
“Harden our schools” means putting more armed people inside and outside. Arming our teachers, if Trump and the other NRA supported politicians have their way. More guns. More opportunity for fatal human error.
Our grandson goes to one of the sweetest elementary schools on earth. The thought of his teachers packing heat makes me ill. The thought of armed guards on his school outrages me.
What message does this send our children? Schools should be SAFE, fun places to learn and explore who they are and all the wonderful ideas in the world, places to learn to tools of learning. Guards? Guns? That describes a prison, not a safe, fun place to learn.
Yes, I am all for better mental health. Since the Republicans put the mentally ill out on the streets, back in the good old days of Ronald Reagan, we’ve had increased problems with crime, homelessness, and heartless policies of incarcerating the mentally ill because we no longer give them asylum. The prisons are full of the mentally ill.
Many mass killers have no prior criminal record. The Las Vegas killer was a very “normal,” if strange, man who had a lot of weapons, assault weapons.
I’m not opposed to guns. I am opposed to people owning guns that are neither for hunting nor for sport, weapons designed for killing, weapons that make a mass killer efficient.
“Guns don’t kill people,” say the NRA, “people kill people,” but killing people without an automatic or repeating weapon is a much less efficient kind of killing. While you are in the slower process, you can be attacked and overcome. Banning assault rifles just makes sense. Tightening who can own weapons just makes sense. Oregon just passed a landmark bill taking weapons away from domestic abusers, some of the smartest, most progressive legislation in the nation, passed by lawmakers with backbones and brains. You tell the parents of Sandy Hook students, tell the parents of Parkland students that “guns don’t kill people.” They will have a very different point of view to your own.
I challenge you to Google this: Mass School Shootings in the United States.
Wikipedia has a comprehensive, if incomplete record of many, not all, of the school related shootings. Some take place in school parking lots. Some target school buses. Many shooters have no criminal records, no mental health records, but – they DO have guns.
2nd Amendment rights were created to protect our country; the rights were for militia, not people with a grudge against a woman who is divorcing you, a teacher whose assessment prevented you from attaining your graduate degree, the woman who scorned you, revenge against those who bullied you, showing what a big “man” you are (not a single mass shooter has been a woman.) Owning a gun should be a privilege, not a right.
Those who know me, know I grew up with guns. The first thing we did, in the Alaska where I grew up, was to go to rifle club to learn respect for our weapons. We learned how to clean and care for them, we learned how to shoot them safely, and we learned how to lock them up. We used our rifles for hunting (we ate the meat) and for occasional target practice. We didn’t even carry them when we went berry picking or hikes in the woods; we learned to avoid bear and other dangers, to walk away. I am in favor of responsible gun ownership.
I am opposed to hardening schools as a solution to mass school shootings. It isn’t effective, and it sends a terrible message to our children.
Grandchildren activities take up a goodly portion of our current life here in Pensacola. They are a lot of fun, and they are also exhausting.
Q, who loves to read, is the happiest we have ever known him to be. He has a teacher who truly loves children and facilitates their success. He is excelling; it is like flying to him, he loves learning. We dance for joy that he loves to read; it is one of the most valuable tools in the tool-box. He is full, each day, of joyful energy. He comes in and immediately starts to jump on the trampoline, and, after snack, will climb back on to practice his spelling or vocabulary words. Baba / AdventureMan enriches his lessons and helps him research anything he doesn’t understand. Stopping by the grocery on his way home from school this week, AdventureMan asked if Q would like a cookie, and he said “No, but some of that smoked trout would be nice.” LOL! I love it that he loves smoked fish; it’s in the genes.
N, the four year old, is hilarious. Daughter and granddaughter of women who don’t accept boundaries (her mother played rugby!), she is all girl. She loves to wear dresses, especially those with twirl and sparkle, and skirts made out of netting, skirts that remind me of ballerinas and tutus. At the ballet last week, she was totally engrossed, moving her hands in attempts to mimic that motions of the dancers. She gets into my Middle Eastern perfumes and ends up smelling like a babe from the house of the rising sun. She loves to practice writing her letters, and she paints wonderful pictures.
I think of this one as “In a Gadda Da Vida” because of the leaf and the glued on droplets :-). You know it is me in the upper right hand corner because of the eyelashes.
I can only guess that the smiling face next to mine might be AdventureMan. Maybe he is wearing the fig leaf?
And here am I, in all my radiant glory. Can you figure out how I know it is me? No, not the green complexion, it is the big eyelashes and lipstick. Go girly girl!
That might be AdventureMan/Baba down at the bottom. We are never entirely sure without obvious clues.
It’s been a strange year. I fought depression a lot of the year, faced with a political administration that is rolling back everything I believe to be good about my country. I watched our culture degrade, environmental protections roll back, air pollution standards roll back, financial institutions restrictions roll back, oversight disappear, the State Department erode, and truth become astonishingly irrelevant, civility hard to find. I also found friends, who, like me, welcome immigrants, fight against those who would restrict voting rights only to people a whole lot like them, and who support equal rights and the belief that we are called to be better people, and to do what we can to lift people, rather than to stomp on them.
One great wonderful event happened this year, my grandchildren were baptized. It was a private event, with friends and well-wishers, and it was joyful, and very funny. If I want a big smile, I think back on that precious day.
At that same time, two people we know were diagnosed with cancer, diagnosed in the very prime of their lives. One was the father of our dear daughter-in-law. He and his wife welcomed our son, and then us, into his sweet family, a family full of women as wild and wacky as I am. We laugh, my daughter-in-law and I, about how our relationship is “unnatural.” We are supposed to be hostiles, but in truth, we genuinely love one another and we enjoy one another’s company. I admire her, as a wife, a mother and an environmentalist. We enjoy her parents, and we spent two weeks in Zambia traveling with her father and his wife. We had a great time with them.
Her father was a poster boy for chemotherapy. He smiled and laughed his way through it, cheering up those around him who were trying to cheer him on. If he ever had moments of self-pity, we never saw it. He chose to spend his time loving others, and continuing to make this world a better place.
In November, he caught a cold, and then pneumonia. The family gathered, and he rallied for a while, and then sank slowly, unable to get enough oxygen into his lungs. Before Thanksgiving, he was gone.
Yes, I am faithful, and I also have a hard time accepting that it was this man’s time to go. I am guessing that part of it is being unable to accept my own powerless to stop this horrible thing from happening, this good man, cut down in his prime. He was just making plans to retire, to travel. He and his wife were excited. I couldn’t help it, his death made me angry, it was such a waste. Yes, you can be faithful and be really mad at God.
This man loved his grandchildren.
He loved fishing, and spent time teaching his grandchildren, nieces and nephews to love fishing, too. Here he is on the Zambezi, seeing what he might catch.
Every life he touched, he left better for it. He was a fine man, and I grieve for my sweet daughter-in-law, for this terrible, painful loss.
We breathed a sigh of relief when the crew came and took down our hurricane protection on the upper story. Our house has been very dim on the upper level with the ballistic covering over the windows. That was ummm . . . . Monday? Tuesday?
Wednesday, we started hearing little rumblings about a fast-developing storm called Nate. By Friday, many activities for this weekend have been cancelled, even some church services on Sunday. Our guidance was “even if you are signed up to read or to sing in the choir, if it is a hurricane, DON’T COME.” You have to spell things like this out for Episcopalians, or they will kill themselves trying to keep a promise, to fulfill a duty.
Everyone has been sort of sure that the storm will head toward New Orleans, as it usually does. We don’t wish New Orleans any harm, we all love New Orleans and it is a favorite overnight or weekend getaway. They, in turn, love Pensacola Beach, and many spend a week or a month here ever summer. So they are our neighbors and we wish them well. But would we voluntarily take a hurricane for them . . . ? I’m not so sure.
I was up this morning at six, checking the most recent weather channel forecasts, and it doesn’t look good. Even if we get peripheral winds, they could be up to 100 mph. Just to be doing something to calm myself, I hit good old Home Depot for a tarp or two. I was home before eight, and AdventueMan was up sorting through the hurricane protection bags, the ones we just put away. The ones we just put away THIS WEEK.
As we are trying to prioritize, our contractor and his crew that installed the hurricane protection called and said he was in the neighborhood, did we want their help getting the protection back up. What a relief.
If we had done it yesterday, when the humidity was low and the temperatures were lower, it might have been a piece of cake, but this morning, even with the garage door open, we were sweating buckets just sorting out the upstairs and downstairs covers.
The crew is here now. I had to scurry to take a shower; did not want to give someone putting up window protection a bad shock. I have the cat cages ready to go, and extra food. I have a couple loads of laundry ready to be washed and dried, and I have packed the emergency bag in case we need to leave in a hurry. Extra money, important papers, a couple days worth of clothing. Shoes. Underwear. I’ll pack my computer with me, and I hope I remember my charger. Having had to do things now and then in a big hurry, I know that sometimes your mind goes on hold and your forget the most essential thing. AdventureMan filled his gas tank, and will put up the garage supports when we get home from the movie this afternoon (the hurricane is not expected to hit until early tomorrow morning).
And, honestly, when you live with hurricanes, their terrifying power (as the Psalm says “terrify them with your hurricane”) you learn that the most important things of all are not things, but the people you hold most dear. Everything else can be replaced.
“Where are the empty sacks upstairs from yesterday’s commissary run?” AdventureMan hollers from upstairs.
I am folding dried sheets that need ironing before our next house guests come. He comes down the stairs, asking again when I don’t answer.
“They are upstairs in the linen closet, on the ground level toward the right middle,” I respond, proud of myself for not saying “where they ALWAYS are.”
He shakes his head, no.
I just look at him. Coldly. After forty four years of marriage, I no longer drop everything to run go get him something he needs, especially when I am busy trying to finish things up before our house cleaner gets here, just as he is. He gets the message.
In thirty seconds, he hollers down “I found them!” and I holler back “Thank you for giving me that feed-back.”
I can hear the laughter in his voice when he responds “I knew you needed that feedback after my shake-head response.”
A local school district is using “abstinence only” as it’s sex-ed class guidance. Has abstinence, among any population, ever worked? Give our hormone-ridden teens some information, please! Tell them that if they are going to have sex, how to use a condom, and explain a wide variety of contraceptives which will prevent an unwanted pregnancy. How many teens do you know who are ready to become parents? Teens are greatly at the mercy of their bodies, teach them to use their bodies responsibly.
It’s not just teen-agers in the US.
One recent fact I read recently is not included in this article; one of the greatest increases in STD’s in our population is among adults 55 and older, and people in retirement homes and nursing homes. We need to get these grown-ups some sex-ed, too!
“All it takes is a simple STD test and antibiotic treatment to prevent this enormous heartach,” said Gail Bolan, director of CDC’s Division of STD Prevention, of STDs that are passed from mother to child (AFP Photo/BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI)
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Washington (AFP) – Sexually transmitted diseases surged to a record high in the United States last year, with more than two million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis nationwide, officials said Tuesday.
This was “the highest number ever,” said the annual Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance Report released today by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Most of the new cases — 1.6 million in 2016 — involved chlamydia, a bacterial infection that affects both men and women.
Gonorrhea also increased among men and women last year, but the steepest rise was among men (22 percent), said the report.
Nationwide, gonorrhea cases reached 470,000, with a large share of new gonorrhea cases among men who have sex with men.
These trends are “particularly alarming” because of the growing threat of gonorrhea becoming resistant to the last recommended treatment, according to the CDC report.
Syphilis cases numbered 28,000, a rate that increased nearly 18 percent from 2015 to 2016.
Most cases of syphilis occur among men — mainly gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men.
But women too saw a 36 percent increase in rates of syphilis.
There were more than 600 cases of syphilis among newborns — known as congenital syphilis — a 28 percent increase in a single year.
These syphilis cases led to “more than 40 deaths and severe health complications among newborns,” said the report.
“Every baby born with syphilis represents a tragic systems failure,” said Gail Bolan, director of CDC’s Division of STD Prevention.
“All it takes is a simple STD test and antibiotic treatment to prevent this enormous heartache and help assure a healthy start for the next generation of Americans.”
Experts say despite growing concerns about antibiotic resistance, these three STDs can all be cured with antibiotic treatment.
If left untreated, however, they can lead to infertility, life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth in infants, and increased risk for HIV transmission.
“Increases in STDs are a clear warning of a growing threat,” said Jonathan Mermin, director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention.
“STDs are a persistent enemy, growing in number, and outpacing our ability to respond.”
(Women have been driving in Saudi Arabia for years. Brothers, fathers, take the women into the desert and teach them so that in an emergency they will have the skills. Saudi women drive outside the kingdom. Now, they will – legally – be allowed to drive in their own country. Hallejujia!
What an irony, that women are gaining rights under repressive regimes, and losing rights in the USA under our current regime)
Saudi government says it will allow women to drive
Saudi Arabia plans to lift ban on women driving
The change aligns Saudi Arabia with virtually every other country in the world, including other conservative monarchies in the Persian Gulf. (The Washington Post)
Women in Saudi Arabia will be permitted to drive in the kingdom for the first time, according to a royal decree issued in Riyadh on Tuesday that overturned one of the most widely criticized restrictions on human rights.
The change may be the most visible sign yet of a modernizing Saudi Arabia, with reforms implemented by the heir apparent to the Saudi throne, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Signed by his father, King Salman, and broadcast on state television, the decree said that the “majority of senior scholars” had deemed the change legitimate under Islamic law and ordered the government ministries concerned to make whatever legal adjustments are required to implement it by June 24.
For much of the rest of the world, the prohibition on women driving has long symbolized the many restrictions on individual freedoms in Saudi Arabia, particularly those applying to women.
The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Khaled bin Salman, who spoke at a news conference in Washington, hailed the development as a “historic, big day in our kingdom.” He said that female drivers would not need to travel with male “guardians” or seek permission to obtain driver’s licenses, and that women’s licenses from other countries in the region would be recognized.
The change aligns Saudi Arabia with other conservative monarchies in the Persian Gulf that have long allowed women to drive. It was unclear whether the lifting of requirements that male relatives accompany women or give permission for them to leave their homes, still implemented in much of the country, would apply to activities other than driving.
Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud speaks at a ceremony on Sept. 20, 2017. (Bandar Al-Jaloud/AFP/Getty Images)
The Saudi government, which has long endured negative publicity over its restrictive domestic policies, was eager to broadcast the change. In addition to the news conference at the embassy in Washington, the Foreign Ministry contacted reporters offering to arrange calls with selected Saudi women to comment on the policy.
The ambassador said the decision was not based on religion but on social and economic considerations, and was part of the modernization reforms being implemented by the crown prince.
“There is no wrong time to do the right thing,” the ebullient ambassador said. With more women entering the workplace, “they need to drive themselves to work.” He said the implementation delay was needed to ensure that the legal and logistical environment was prepared for the change. “We have to make sure our streets are ready” for a potential doubling in traffic, he said.
When we arrive back in Pensacola, we realize that things will not be so easy as usual. It is usual that we can go right in through the garage, wheeling our bags right into the house. But AdventureMan spent the last hours of our last day in Pensacola before the trip installing three huge steel custom-made beams into our garage door to protect from hurricane damage. We can’t go in through the garage.
We had also called our son and our contractor, who as Hurricane Irma at one point looked like it was wobbling west, decided to put the ballistic fabric covers over all our doors and windows. The front door is covered, and we can’t get in. There is a way to get in, it is complicated, but we manage.
It is dark inside, very dark; the ballistic covers also keep out light and air.
Early the next morning, while it is still cool, we get up and take down all the covers on the bottom floor of the house, letting in light and air. It isn’t so easy, over the years some of the posts have rusted. Our contractor texts that he has ordered some new things which will help, and a spray, and will have his crew take down the upper floor when the supplies come in.
We didn’t even go to church. We were so tired from traveling, and from our early morning exertions taking down all the ballistic covers, that we just collapsed for the rest of the day. I felt like I might be coming down with something.
This morning, we felt like new people. We hit the grocery store, and wow, there were all the things I look for and can’t always find, like Italian prune plums, only available for a week or so every fall, and you never know which week. The fruit cake supplies are in, candied red and green cherries, candied pineapple, and candied citron. When AdventureMan sees the grocery bill, he almost pales. The cashier laughs and asks me “Why did you bring him?” It’s an on-going joke; AdventureMan worked as a bag-boy in a grocery store when he was in high school and he remembers the prices of the groceries then – like 50 something years ago. He gets sticker-shock in grocery stores.
After we get all the groceries home, sorted and put away, he takes me to lunch in one of my favorite Pensacola restaurants, Five Sisters. I have the Ceasar Salad with Andouille Crusted Shrimp and he has Fried Catfish. It’s good to be back.
And, later in the afternoon, it is GREAT to be back. Our grandson comes over to our house after school and it is wonderful to see him. AdventureMan introduces him to this blog, so he can see all the photos and read the descriptions. He asks what I call him. AdventureMan asks who he wants to be, and he says ReadingMan. He is an amazing reader, and I am honored he wants to be included in HT&E. I also can’t wait to see my little grand-daughter, four years old and smart and spirited. I asked her what she wants to be when she grows up and she gives me a sharp look and says “a wild animal.” I may call her that . . . my little wild animal 🙂
We can’t believe our good luck, after the clouds and rain in Oslo, Bergen and being shut out of Lerwick, here we are in Iceland, and the weather is PERFECT. Perfect, that is, if you are an Alaska girl who loves to chill 😉 as AdventureMan debates whether or not he needs to wear his long underwear to keep warm.
The cruise director, Aaron Syfert, has told all of us, his cruise-children, to dress “like onions,” in layers, so that we can dress down if possible, and be warm enough when it is really cold. As we enter the bus, we have three or four layers; within minutes, there is a loud outcry from those aboard “Please turn down the heat!” In our full-up onion garb, it is really hot. The driver laughs and said he had wanted us to be warm enough, and turns down the heat until everyone is happy.
We drive through part of Reykjavik en route to our first stop, and the place I have wanted to see the most, Thingviller.
I have a thing about sacred spots, that it seems to me that there are some places in the world where the interface between this world and . . . the next? . . . the former? . . . .the alternate? . . . the interface is thin and perhaps not open, but permeable. Thingviller is a very very old place, a place where all those spread out in rural Iceland would gather to made decisions for the community. It was one of the most ancient forms of democracy, or democracy of a sort, of course it was mostly chieftains making the decisions, advised by their counsel, and while those decision makers were probably mostly men, they made decisions by consensus, and vote, for the greater good of the community.
Some of the decisions they reached would chill you. You will see a waterfall, below, by which there is a pond where violates of the law were drowned. Our guide tells us that most of them were women who had children out of wedlock. “What happened to the men?” one guest asked. “They were beheaded, if they could be found, if they could be identified,” she replied. She added that most of the time, the women went to their death without identifying the man who had impregnated her.
Geologically, Thingviller is fascinating. Thingviller is a huge rift between two tectonic plates, the North American Plate and the Euro/Asian Plate. I had known of “The Thing” the Viking Thing, about the decision making places, but it wasn’t until Digg, or one of the other news sourcing articles I get told me in some spectacular photos from around the world, that I knew about the rift. There were photos underwater, photos of daring young divers with one hand and foot on the North American Plate and the other on the EuroAsian Plate, truly spectacular. I wanted to visit the decision making place, and I wanted to visit the rift.
Last – and not least – Thingviller is one of the locations where Game of Thrones is shot, many of the scenes north of The Wall and of The Wall are shot here. It gives us a thrill, first Spain and the Alcazar and Alhambra, then Dubrovnik, and now Iceland, we are on a roll.
We had a great day, a truly great day, and the weather held. For me, Thingviller was worth the trip to Iceland.
