A Country Run By Cat Ladies? in Everyday Ramblings

Look at the light! The angle, so low, of the sun, just up over the foothills to the southeast yesterday morning. You have seen pictures from here before, it is a small park area about a mile up behind my place with a marvelous view of the east and Mt. Hood. The angle of the hill is amazing coming from the other direction as it makes the mountain loom huge on the horizon and is particularly stunning when the ornamental trees are in bloom. I can’t wait. I told them that as I walked by.

From this direction it is the river that is so beautiful with the line of fog above it.

There was much inner dialogue about the safest, most appealing way to get groceries in the midst of this huge surge of Covid cases. The weather for once was not the major issue. Although, when I went to do the loop by the track, it was covered in a sheen of slippery frost. I ended up having to walk all the way around the track two blocks out of my way.

There are groups of energetic runners and walkers out taking loudly in the fresh morning air. Two, three, four people huffing along with no masks or any sensitivity to transmission. It makes me wonder. Am I an overly cautious outlier here?

I mean Neil Gorsuch said in Supreme Court arguments last week that isn’t Covid like the flu? Over 100,000 people die from the flu every year here. Well, Justice Gorsuch, between 12,000 and 52,000 thousand folks sadly succumb to the flu in this country every year, not 100,000 or more, and over the last year 433,000 Americans have died of Covid. Not exactly equivalent. But your opinion matters!

You get to make Public Health decisions and heck if folks want to come to work sick, well, that is their right.

God given, apparently.

Friday, I spent two hours with a group of smart, knowledgeable people drafting questions for candidate forums on every level from Congress to the City Council. It was all very refreshing.

As opposed to the Yale Law school graduate code-switching internet troll J.D. Vance, who calls himself a Hillbilly, running for the senate who said recently…

“We are effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they have made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. And it is just a basic fact…”

As a (powerless not valued in any global sense) childless cat lady who is, in fact, not miserable I take offense to this statement.

Deep offense, however spiritual I might be, I am not sure I can forgive you for this statement, offense.

Did you know that lawmakers have passed or proposed nine laws since the 2020 election shielding drivers from liability if they plow vehicles into protesters? A University of Chicago researcher tracked 72 such attacks in 52 separate cities in a six-week period in 2020. (This is from “The Long Authoritarian History of the Capitol Riot” by Rick Perlstein in New York magazine)

Vehicular assault! Who needs a gun?

If, I do indeed effectively run the country as Mr. Vance says, I would like to do something about all this please.

Okay, I need to get back to prepping my classes for the week on hands, wrists, and forearms.

Diego, standing right here, agrees.

Last updated January 10, 2022