How’s Your Day Going?

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“How’s your day going?” So many friendly exchanges begin with this question. But today, I’d say, ask me anything else. I got up more or less on time even though my husband said up front that we were out of coffee. We had some ancient ground espresso in the freezer for our stove top espresso which is fifty miles away at our new digs right now. I figured that I would use that in our French Press. Desperate times call for desperate measures, right? 

Actually, no. Just do without the coffee until you can get out to a store or an espresso stand. That’s my advice after running this experiment. 

So we are moving. That’s great! But if I was ever in doubt about the wisdom of this move, this morning’s brief trip to the grocery store has removed that doubt. Sunday, 10:00 a.m., ought to be uneventful, right? My first stop at the store was the in-store coffee bar. As I got to the counter to order, the barista was just finishing up a sign that said, “Closed.” It seems that she was the only person who turned up for work today, and nothing was ready for customers. She was closing so she’d have time to put pastries and other food items in the display case and basically get the shop ready for customers.

Since I got there before she got the sign up, and I only wanted to buy beans that she could grind, she took my order. I reached for my phone, which has my coffee app, my wallet app, and my store card. Damn! I’d left my phone at home. Fortunately, I had my actual, physical wallet with the actual physical coffee card and another credit card. So I paid with real plastic, took my freshly ground coffee, and proceeded to look for the other items on my short list.

Croissants, check. Bananas, check. Ice cream, check. But where the heck are they hiding trash bags? I asked three people who guided me to various aisles that turned up empty. Fourth person, bless her heart, knew right where they were. So trash bags, check. 

Then, as I was making my way to the checkout counter, I saw a security guard closely following a bedraggled person with a handful of items. I’m guessing he recognized her because there are enough bedraggled people in my neighborhood that store security couldn’t possibly tail them all. In any event, she bypassed the checkout counter and headed for the door. She was told to either pay or leave her items behind, at which time she started screaming and accusing the guards of bad behavior, knocked over flowers on display thus creating a great pool of water in the entrance, and made a commotion that I’m sure you can picture. Hard to say if she was actually injured at any time in the process, but as I left the store a few minutes later, two cop cars and an aid care were at the entrance.

This is the same store, mind you, at which an assault on a employee about a year ago led her to transfer to a different location. I saw her at her new store one day and said I recognized her from my neighborhood store. She said she was still recovering from the assault there several months earlier. 

Nothing truly awful happened to me directly today, but there was one final bit of frustration: once I got home and opened a bag of coffee to make a new pot of actual French Press, the beans looked more like fine gravel than the usual somewhat coarse grind I’m used to. Good news, though. They work a lot better than the ancient espresso. So now I can chill for a few minutes with a decent cup of coffee – and then get busy packing again. 

How’s your day going?

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Israel Did What?

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Remember Bari Weiss? She left her job as a columnist for the New York Times, started her own Substack, then turned that venture into a new effort called The Free Press. She’s Jewish, somewhat conservative on some issues, so to some of you that will mean that you don’t have to pay attention to anything she says, especially about the Middle East. And it’s true that she is more likely to accept an Israeli version of events than the Hamas version of events. 

But then sometimes she reports some verifiable facts, like this story about the damage to a hospital in Gaza that was widely reported yesterday. 

Here are the images. Please read the article for the story behind these headlines. 

My thoughts: It’s not impossible that Israel could strike a hospital in Gaza. It’s just very unlikely that they would do so deliberately, while it is full of patients, without warning, and without evidence that it was being used as a cover for terrorists. I just trust Israelis more than Hamas and other Palestinians to report the truth.

No, I’m not so naive that I believe everything the Israeli government says. But a vibrant free press exists in Israel, and sooner or later the truth will emerge to clarify any government spin. These headlines all end with “Palestinians Say” which to me suggests that I best remain skeptical until more is known about the event. Why would the NYT be so gullible?

Odds and Ends, September 2023

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Why Not Trump?

I have a fun exercise for you today. Watch this video clip of Sharyl Atkisson interviewing Donald Trump on September 24, 2023. Why wouldn’t voters love Trump if this is their image of him? (No, I’m not persuaded, but I think this is a fascinating video. Some of her other programs are worth a look.) 

Don’ y’all have a backup camera?

Recently I drove a friend to the Department of Licensing. I had to parallel park when I dropped her off, and I didn’t start from the perfect position. So I struggled with much to-ing and fro-ing. And I backed into the parked car behind me. The driver got out, checked out his front end and my back end, and said, “Don’ y’all have a backup camera?” 

Well, yes, I do have a backup camera, and yes, I was seeing his car and hearing the beeps warning me that I was getting close. And I chose to keep going because I really, really wanted to fit into that space. And, as things turned out, I was fortunate that the person in the car I “touched” was a kind soul. He would have been correct if he’s said, “Damn! You hit my car.” And he could then have gone into a rant and a rave. But he didn’t. And, in fact, the “hit” was really a “tap,” and there really, truly was no damage. But I was just tickled by his questioning whether or not I had a backup camera. Thank you, kind sir, for not turning a tiny tap into a major incident. I’ll try to do better in the future.

Mariners vs Seahawks

I confess, I’m a terrible fan. I only watch games when my teams are winning. I got into baseball this season once the Mariners got their act together and started winning more often than not. Now that we’re down to the wire, I check online to see how the game is going before I turn it on. Honestly, why do I care? I don’t know, but I can definitely get into fan mode when they’re winning. I have to say, that the rules changes this year definitely make the game more watchable. So congratulations MLB on a good decision. Now, would you Mariners just please get into the playoffs!

And what about football? You know, that game where players occasionally die on the field and frequently get concussions and other injuries. What excuse can I offer for watching football? Despite all the rule changes meant to lessen the number of concussions players get, it seems that every game has one or more head on crashes that trigger a “concussion protocol.” That’s a set of checks to see if a player has an actual concussion. If so, he can’t return to that game and has to wait for the effects of the concussion to wear off. The reason being that additional concussions before the first one resolves is correlated with more long term brain damage. Which is a bad thing.

Again, why watch a game that has done so much damage to so many players over so many years? Sigh. Fact is that really good plays are very exciting. Some of the pass plays, especially those amazing catches in tight situations. I’m in awe. But again, I can’t bear the pain of watching my team make mistakes and lose. Yup, I’m just a fair-weather fan. Sorry, fellas.

Trump Vs Biden, 2024?

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Following the 2020 election, I made it a point to find some Trump supporters who would talk to me and help me understand why they voted for a man who, in my humble opinion, is unfit to be President. I expanded my list of people I follow on Twitter, clicked on links that led to other links, and eventually I found a little group that started having weekly conversations on Zoom. The group was quite heterogeneous at the outset, included some Biden voters with concerns about Wokeness, as well Trump voters, and I learned a lot. 

Most of the Trump voters had leaned Republican over their voting careers, but some had gone back and forth between the Rs and Ds. The Biden voters in the group included folks like me who just couldn’t vote for Trump, but who were deeply concerned about everything that occurred in the summer of 2020 and responses in leftist cities. 

Some of the Trump voters could cite specific things Trump had done that they supported. But many just loathed Biden. Since I loathe Trump, that was a feeling I could relate to, even though I find it hard to attach “loathing” to Biden. He seems likable to me. My biggest gripe with Biden (at that time) was his treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. My primary favorites had been Michael Bennet and Pete Buttigieg, and I still love Pete. I’d probably still love Bennet if he were visible today.

The main thing I learned from those discussions is that whatever I thought about Trump, I could not apply that judgement to his fans. His fans in this little group were regular people who paid some attention to politics, voted regularly, and had justifiable concerns about voting for a Democrat. They either thought Democrats in general were too extreme about climate change or Covid policies or trans rights or too soft on crime and too hard on police. Whatever their hot-button issue, Democrats were on the wrong side of it, and Trump’s personal qualities didn’t frighten them.

I’ve had the good fortune to live where reasonable Republicans have held office in the past, so it’s hard for me to write off Republicans completely (even though the current iteration of the Republican Party leaves a lot to be desired). Also, during Trump’s term in office, I started listening to some “never Trump” Republicans online and found them to be a group I could relate to. Today, I consider myself to be politically homeless, but I doubt that I’ll veer Republican if things ever settle down again. Depends on whether or not the Democrats get reasonable again. 

The most troubling thing for me right now is how common it is to loathe a candidate we don’t like. Where did all this loathing come from? This is not normal, folks. I suspect it comes from the siloing we’re doing with regard to our media sources and friend groups. Years ago, I read a book called “The Big Sort,” by Bill Bishop. The full title is, “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded Americans is Tearing Us Apart.” Published in 2008, it’s still worth a read. One point made by Bishop is that it’s so much easier to use harsher language if we’re talking within a group that mostly agrees with us. We might tone it down a bit if we know that some of our neighbors are not like-minded. 

I experience this today because some of my neighbors don’t know how far I’ve drifted from the current orthodoxy that pervades my neighborhood. People say outrageous things that only prove that they have failed to read or listen to any contrary opinions or even look for facts about the matter. And when someone says something I consider uninformed, others nearby will chime in with, “Absolutely,” and other supportive statements. Although there are times when it just doesn’t work for me to object, I do on occasion, and I come off sounding shrill and scornful, when I want to sound well-informed and articulate. That’s partly me, and partly how others hear me.

OK. So we have media silos and back-yard BBQs with like-minded neighbors. And now it’s looking like we might have a rematch of Trump and Biden with fear and loathing again the dominant mood. I want to cry. This really, truly makes me think that democracy is just not viable in the long run. 

Although I personally think that life under Joe Biden has been OK, and that his ability to manage the crisis in Ukraine is remarkably good, I don’t expect to convince anyone who thinks otherwise. But I absolutely hope to convince anyone and everyone that we can only vote for candidates who accept the possibility of losing without insisting that an election is rigged. 

Elections in America are reasonably well run. (Let’s just not talk about the Electoral College.) I love our mail ballot system in Washington even though people have tried to spread fear about mail ballots. Many states have a slew of volunteers who spend a very long day helping people sign in and cast ballots in person. Some of our voting machines in the past have not had a paper trail, and that needs to be fixed. A paper trail is essential to maintain confidence in machine voting. People who think our elections can be rigged have not spent time volunteering or even learning how many protections are in place to secure our ballots. 

No election, even in the US, is perfect. But there simply isn’t wide-spread fraud. The term used in the latest indictment of Trump is “outcome-determinative” fraud. I like this term because it allows for the possibility of anomalies that occur in most elections but don’t affect the outcome. 

I worry that if Trump were to become President again, Ukraine would vanish from the face of the earth and the US would become one of those “democracies” led by an authoritarian who stays in office forever, clamps down on dissent, installs cronies throughout the government, and forgets to help the people who supported him. You might view those outcomes favorably, or have a completely different set of concerns that lead you to support him. We can differ on those things.

But we must agree that a candidate who cannot accept the possibility of losing should not even be running for office. Some candidates lose. It could happen to your candidate. It happened to Trump. That’s the reality of elections. 

My Very First World Problems

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I got a parking ticket yesterday. $47 for backing into a space that was signed for parallel parking. No matter that every other car north of mine was backed in to their spaces. There was a sign that said, “Parallel Parking Only.” I thought it only applied to the space south of mine in which one car was parked correctly.

I could maybe contest it. But for me to get a ticket for following the mob instead of thinking for myself only seems appropriate. I’m always, always preaching that the mob could be wrong. So I think I’ll just pay it and count it as a. lesson. 

Meanwhile, the parking ticket was placed on my car while I was in the nice, new County Service Center, the place you go when the Department of Licensing won’t issue you an enhanced driver’s license because there is no record that you changed your name 56 years ago when you got married. Yes, you got that right. But hey, I took a number, got in line, spoke with a very nice civil servant, got two copies of my recorded marriage license (filed under a name with a typo, thus not easy to find – also fitting as I am the Queen of Typos). After pouting a bit about the parking ticket, I realized that the document I got did not actually verify that I changed my name when I got married, and the name change is the only part that the DOL really cares about. 

I intended to go back today, take another number, and try again to obtain proof that I changed my name, but, of course, it’s the 4th of July. So I will try to remember to try again tomorrow. 

Meanwhile again, we still need to clean up the living room after dumping all of our camping gear in it when we came home last Friday. Did I mention that we went camping last week. What. A. Treat! Yes, camping. Tent, cots, sleeping bags, outhouses, picnic table, fire pit. The whole works. Perfect weather. Not crowded. (We went Sunday – Friday because it’s impossible to get reservations on the weekend.) 

It seems that I love to get out of town. I try not to complain about the constant city noise constantly, but I don’t love it. Makes me love winters when we close our windows. We live close to a freeway and a bunch of hospitals, a fire station and crime, so in addition to the general traffic noise, we have sirens and sirens and more sirens. It’s pretty handy to walk across the street when your heart is failing, or your abdomen is shrieking in pain, but I’m not certain that that convenience makes up for the noise. Hence the joy of getting out of town.

We had one other first world problem, namely a drug that my husband takes daily (for about 20 years, that makes his life tolerable) was unavailable as we were leaving town. Back ordered! Out of stock! Couldn’t be found anywhere! He had enough to get through two weeks, so we went camping and hoped it would get resolved by the time we got back. It wasn’t, but we got a text today saying his Rx is ready. Hope it’s that one ☝️.

All of this has reminded me that my life is so good. Just imagine if we couldn’t afford a car (or gas), or if we didn’t have a government service center a mile away with friendly civil servants eager to sort through gazillion documents to find the one with the typo that was actually mine, or if I couldn’t afford to pay the parking ticket, or if we couldn’t escape the noise of the city now and then, or if we didn’t have ready access to medical care and prescriptions, mostly covered or very low cost, or if we couldn’t live in a retirement home with activities and good neighbors and food that I don’t have to cook, or if I didn’t live in a country where I could speak my mind without going to jail, or live with the luxury of not being in a war zone. 

Folks, I will take my first world problems, with gratitude, any day.