Long in the tooth, VOTE BLUE in Georgia

God, y’all, I am tired. Can we just inaugurate President Biden already? I am so sick of the revolting, destructive, anti-science, anti-fact, anti-reality, racist, bigoted, violent, embarrassing republicans and their psychotic idiot-in-chief, cheeto satan.

The past few days in review:

> More than 300,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 and new infection and death records are being set on the regular.

> There is a giant tantrum being thrown over on the Right because Dr. Jill Biden likes to be called Dr., a degree and title she earned and has every right to be called.

> There is another giant tantrum being thrown by the Right because Biden’s campaign manager said the Republicans on Capitol Hill were a bunch of fuckers. Nicolle Wallace responded best to this inanity by asking, “Are we really talking about the f word in any context other than the f-ing people who stood by Trump as he boasted about “grabbing women in the pussy”, smeared “shit hole countries” called black NFL players “sons of bitches” and assaulted our democracy while ignoring covid?”

> Trumpers taped a threatening letter to the back door of the Jacksonville, FL, Democratic Party HQ saying "We want blood. You lost the election. Redress our grievances now or we will be back later." The note included names and faces of the group's officers.

> AFTER receiving classified briefings about Covid, Georgia senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue downplayed the virus publicly AND invested in body bags.

> Chief of critical care at Houston Memorial Medical Center told NPR that “half of his nurses won’t take the COVID vaccine for ‘political reasons.”

I am having just a bit of trouble with all this fuckery and the fuckers instigating and propagating it.

THE SINGLE BEST thing we could do to remedy a lot of broken America is to kick Loeffler and Perdue out by replacing them with RAPHAEL WARNOCK and JON OSSOFF, the two incredible Democratic candidates running against Barbie and Chicken in the January 5 US Senate runoffs in Georgia. Over one million Georgians have already voted early. If you live in Georgia, please vote Warnock AND Ossoff. If you live outside of Georgia, please make calls and texts and donate money to the Warnock and Ossoff campaigns or to anything Stacey Abrams tells you to. Fair Fight and the New Georgia Project are great organizations doing important work in GA on behalf of ALL Georgians, not just the white ones.

So, please stay involved (I know we’re all tired as fuck) and keep the hope and determination. In the meantime, Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, and cheers for a happy, healthy 2021. And, keep your eyes on the Cabinet Pres Biden and VP Harris are currently seating. My god will it be nice to have smart, patriotic, fact-based humans in charge again.

24 May 2020: Daily

If you are remotely prone to worry, catastrophic thinking, or are one millimeter beyond rather than shy of complete terror over the state of America now and as relates to this fall’s election, I cannot in good faith advise you to watch The Plot Against America, the six-part series based on Philip Roth’s eponymous novel. The book was published in 2004. It could almost literally be about our current march to the November 2020 election. Gripping, tense, terrifying, and everything is on the line.

I’m sure you saw the swarms at the Lake of the Ozarks water park from this weekend in Missouri. Perhaps you’ve also read about the surge in cases of Covid-19 since Texas reopened. Or seen the news that more than 40% of Republicans think Bill Gates will use a Covid-19 vaccine to implant a location-tracker in recipients. THAT is all the real plot against America. Grotesque ignorance perpetrated by a horribly anti-Democratic, venal, corrupt “government.”

Do these same people care about the front page of today’s NYTimes? U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, An Incalculable Loss.

Do those Republicans, those crowing “pro-lifers” care at all?

Hillary was right. About pretty much everything.

And Trump golfs. At your expense. At our expense.

I feel like I have failed in some fashion as I’ve let all activism go since starting to shelter in place on March 13. Suddenly, my world feels so small, so constricted. It seems all I can do to feed and parent and tend my three boys each day, every day, much less myself, and my closest friends and family. But please know that if we don’t protect our right to vote, freely and securely, we will lose this country in November. I will do everything I can. I hope you will too.

In the meantime, Tom and I celebrated our 16th anniversary on Friday, today we re-roofed our shed, the one we’ve been refurbishing, and the boys and I helped a neighbor set up her new raised bed (they dumped 30 bags of soil and compost in the frame!). Then we did expressive art with old fence posts: how do each of us feel during this pandemic?

Jack’s “Czech hedgehog” which was incredibly well conceived and explained.

Mine

And some pretties, for some zen: fresh collards from my garden; an Eden rose; a coming Calla lily.

19 May 2020: Daily Pretty

Oliver’s art teacher is knocking it out of the park with Zoom learning. He has done some really neat projects in recent weeks. Look at his nature mandala of today.

What would I do without my yard and garden?! The wonder of alliums, peonies, anemones, ferns, bees, worms, the birds, dahlias, things that aren’t classified perennials but are so happy they come back year after year anyway…Magic all around.

And my pretty girl.

Ruthie