KKWRITES

Now

Posted on May 3, 2020 by kkwrites8739

The thing to do these days is to try to “be in the moment.”

Is this difficult for others? Maybe it’s just a single mom thing, but I seem to constantly be thinking in terms of the future. What’s for breakfast, lunch, or supper? If I don’t do laundry today, will there be enough “?” for tomorrow? What needs to go on the shopping list? Do I have enough cat food and cat litter to get through the week? The PLANNING of life doesn’t seem to coincide with being in “the moment.”

How do others LIVE their life and stay in the moment at the same time?

I guess the Mindfulness Movement isn’t so much about not thinking ahead, but being thoughtful about WHAT you are thinking. I can think and do things at the same time. I think.

It really is difficult to think about what you’re thinking. Our world is full of distractions (did I mention the cats?) I know I am bombarded with self-consciousness about almost everything I do. That may stem from being raised by a narcissist who always made me feel like crap, but I want to give this a good try. I believe I CAN push out the buzzing thoughts that keep me awake at night, but how?

That “monkey mind” seems to be creeping into the background more often than not. I’ve been told to “just stop, and breathe.” Listen to what I’m thinking. Do I really need to think about that or allow it to control my emotions? So I’ve been trying to greet my onslaught of thoughts with “hello, I hear you, but I don’t need you.”

Wanna know who my best teacher for this is? My cat, Ninja. No matter what I am doing, when he needs his Ninja Time he needs it right in THAT moment. I used to push him aside and think he was being obnoxious. Currently, when he jumps up on my lap and I’m mid-search on the computer, reading a book, or whatever I may be doing he continues to head-butt me or the object until I empty my lap and focus only on him. Ninja Time can take anywhere from 1 minute to 10, but during that time I MUST pet and scratch him and do nothing else. He jumps away when he’s done.

So during that time I decided it was also a good time for me to do this be in the moment stuff. I think of how freaking soft his fur is, how loud can I get his purr to go, and wonder what he’s thinking? If thoughts about not finishing what I’d been doing prior sneak into consciousness, I recognize that thought, then try to get back to how calming it is to simply pet my cat. Sometimes he will let me give him an actual cat massage, but he’s not as big on that as my cat, Blizzard, is.

Resting on stillness, simply noticing my breathing is easy when I’m petting the cats. What about at other times, though. Meditating doesn’t come easy when I’m in pain. I like to do walking meditation when walking doesn’t hurt. Enjoy the singing birds. Try to discern the different bird sounds. Hear how the wind makes different sounds depending on where I am on the walk. Breathe in sync with every other step. I wish I could do this stuff without sensory input. I need to visualize, listen, touch, etc, or that monkey mind takes over.

I’ve been told “Mindfulness involves being with your thoughts as they are, neither grasping at them nor pushing them away.” Awaken to experience. Sure, except when I have insomnia. Having a nonjudgmental presence in my awareness just doesn’t work then. My mind is screaming “why can’t I sleep?!” Same thing when I want to snack, but know I don’t need to eat. “Mindful people can hear negative thoughts and feedback without feeling threatened.” I hope to get to that place.

It’s in our culture to shame over eaters, people who are tired at work, nag about things not getting done, and multi-task. It’s near impossible to focus on what’s going on in the room around you when you’re thinking of what you think everyone else’s expectations are for you.

Personally, I think I also have a hand-up to not “hear” all that droning and mumbling in my head. I can shut off my hearing aides! It’s a great pro about being mostly deaf. You really CAN hear yourself think better. I LOVE taking off the aides when I do art or read. The distractions of the room around me just don’t exist, because I can’t hear them. It’s easier for me to get lost in what I’m doing. Suddenly it’s been hours and, wow, look how much I got done!

Maaaaybe that’s not quite what being in the moment means, but I like it. It’s a sudden awareness of how cold or hot the room is, how thirsty I feel because I let my coffee go cold, how sore my hand suddenly feels from doing the art for so long. Instead of thinking ahead of time that my body will get sore, I’ll forget to stay hydrated, and oh ya – the sun goes down when you’re not thinking. Just doing.

Not to say I don’t fear the pain that I know will come, but maybe I don’t notice it as much? I’m not focusing on belittling myself for fearing the coming pain. I’m not avoiding things I “should be” doing. I’m actually enjoying the process. I didn’t think about the drama feelings of what others will think of my art. I’m not stuck on how long it’s taking to get done and will others feel it was worth the time. It really works for me to not hear all those evaluations and/or rejections when I turn off my hearing aides.

I have to admit, too, that I really savor my eating. I think THAT is another area where I am in the moment. I love food. I’m about forty pounds overweight. I KNOW I should eat more healthy. However, I love the taste of good food! I enjoy swishing something really nummy around my tongue and use all the tongue’s different tasting spots to really think about what I’m eating tastes like.

I also savor music. Ironic I know, since I can’t hear all the nuances that someone else might hear due to me hearing loss. I absolutely love good live music. I can close my eyes and see it. Feel it. I can’t go a day without listening to music. It’s often on in the background while I’m doing other things, but when a great song comes on I have to just stop what I’m doing, turn it up, and REALLY listen and enjoy.

I guess it’s all about how you interpret and react to what’s in your mind. It’s self-control.

Oops, had to do a 5 minute Ninja Time there. I’m back. Damn his little face is so beautiful.

I’ve noticed that the more I try doing this Mindfulness the less often I get upset about things that used to get to me. Hmmm, maybe I AM doing it right? I guess I am feeling less bad about having emotions. I’ve been told throughout my life that I was “too sensitive.” Now, I’m getting to be OK with the knowledge that feelings are normal and natural. It’s OK to feel, just not get into all that “wishing” about not feeling an emotion.

No, I’m not resigned to feelings. For example, my pain, I used to get angry at the pain. Angry at my body. I wish…blah blah blah. I can now think it’s OK to be angry, but know that the anger isn’t going to help.

Right now I started to think about what if what I’m writing is rambling nonsense and no one cares?

Guess it’s time to take some Ninja Time.

Goodbye Dear Brother

Posted on May 1, 2020 by kkwrites8739

Monday, April 27th, 2020 around Noon Central Time my brother left this world. Covid-19 proved to be too much for him.

At 53 years old a blood clot in his lung caused a massive heart attack after a 3-week battle with the virus in the ICU.

I can’t put into words how much I loved him and will miss him.

His life was not an easy one. He took the brunt of abuse by my father and mother that created life-long mental illnesses. His path was full of hills and setbacks, but if asked he might say he “lived.” Some people just coast through life. My brother had many wonderful experiences mixed in with the bad.

He was one hell of a cook and a master Gardener. He thought about chef school. He could grow anything. He told me of times when he went camping and prepared four-course meals over the open fire. People from all over the campground would wander into their spot, brought in by the intriguing smells, with mouths watering.

He loved to walk with his dogs. He loved dogs. I didn’t like his dogs, LOL! He didn’t discipline them at all. They were his babies.

If you ever thought to hear what an angel sounded like; it would be my brother singing. I cried while he sang a choir solo in the Cathedral in St. Paul, MN. I had the honor to sing many duets with him in choirs, at weddings, at funerals.

My brother loved beauty. That IS OK for a man to do. He loved all his beautiful houseplants and yard and garden plants. He enjoyed art and music and the people who created those. He was learning to paint. He loved being outdoors. He loved the beauty in a person’s soul, not only what/who a person is on the outside. He loved to watch his dogs run and play. Simple beauty.

He put passion into everything he did. He did everything the best he could do. He loved hard, was hurt hard.

He enjoyed a damn good party! I will miss his laughter ringing out over the skies at a bonfire. He looked ridiculous when he danced, but … he…danced. He would throw caution to the wind, and dance. OK, liquid inebriation helped.

He knew MANY people in his life. People of all colors and creeds and customs and cultures. There were times when people were mean or abusive to him, but he gave them second chances. Often third or fourth.

He was my protector and playmate as a child, my driver and roommate in college, my friend and mentor as adults. We had conversations that lasted for hours and went into the long hours of the night. We could talk about ANYTHING. Of course, we didn’t always agree, but usually we did. Often, it seemed like he and I against the world. We understood each other.

I could write about the bad stuff. The prejudice against his being Gay. The times he was bullied and beaten for being fat or for having the rare disease we both have. His suicide attempt. His abuse by others. His HIV status. His diabetes. The last few years of his life which were very bad.

I’d rather talk about how intelligent he was. How much he loved animals. How much he lived a good life. How he chose to go back to college when he lost a job he’d had for 25 years and try again. How he tried every day to not let depression lead his life. His creativity, his passion, his bright aura.

That smile. His hugs. His deep bellied laughter. The way he could just do what he wanted despite those who might judge. The way he was…him. The entire body of stubborn and wonderful him.

He believed in God. Where he is now may he be at peace. May he be with all his dogs walking through a field at sunset and singing.

Covid-19

Posted on March 21, 2020 by kkwrites8739

The government is already breaking in the the stockpiled items. Blood is at a critical shortage. Medical workers don’t have the protection they need: masks, gowns, gloves. This is in the US AND WORLDWIDE.

The US so-called “President” is a joke during all of this.

Whether or not you follow the CDC guidelines, YOU CAN STILL GET SICK. Some hospitals are having to make triage decisions about who can and who can’t get treatment.

Poor Italy.

I am one of the high risk. I have asthma. IF I get sick at any time of the year, it always turns into bronchitis. If I get this? I WILL get pneumonia. My mother has worse asthma than I do. I don’t want her to get pneumonia.

Yes. I am staying home. I usually stay home a lot anyway, but now? Most of the reasons and events I would have gone out for have been cancelled.

I am not a worry-wort type of person. I usually believe in taking risks. My son has extreme anxiety all the time. Right now he won’t leave the house. He even cancelled a doctor appointment I wish he would have gone to. He says he doesn’t want to bring anything home because of my asthma.

53% of Americans still don’t think this is an emergency situation. All of those people are not staying home. They don’t care about the high risk people. The fact that the number of people affected by this virus doubles and triples daily doesn’t get to them. It will when someone they know tests positive, but not before. They are selfish. Period.

It only took 3 months for this virus to become a pandemic. In comparison to other historic pandemics this IS a bad one; if only because the rest didn’t take place during our modern medicine capabilities. People like to compare it to the Sars, or other, epidemics, but it’s capability to effect millions has already surpassed them.

Am I sitting at home worrying about it? Not yet. Not for myself. However I do worry about people I know who are at high risk. So few numbers of people are actually getting tested WHEN they are sick. People are told to stay at home even if they’re sick and they are NOT getting tested. So the numbers of affected people really is a larger number than what the news says.

For now we’re OK here in my house. We have a lot to keep us busy. I have a house full of books. We have ample food for humans and cats. Possibly not enough cat litter and TP. I didn’t go out an hoard ANYTHING when others were, so now I can’t find TP anywhere.

I don’t care what other people say. I think this is a historic time. Life as we know it is changing before our eyes. What side of history will you be on?

Now. Remember to tip the deliver people. Wash your hands with SOAP.

Chasing The Rush

Posted on January 11, 2020 by kkwrites8739

I dedicate this article to all those kids looking to the summer sky and searching for the why, what, where, and when.

A tornado outbreak with cape at 5,000 feet is incredible. Give it huge inflow bands of warm air. The “fingers of God” will reach down.

You start early in the morning. The temperature and humidity are already egging you on. You could have 7 to 12 hours to wait to find the beast of a wall cloud, follow it both in the sky and on radar. The sky begins to turn green and your mind spins. The air steadies at ground level. You can feel the damp air on your skin and smell the storm ready to explode. When the funnel lowers, get those cameras ready. Goosebumps arrive on every cell of skin on my body and my spine is raging with electricity of my own. You can feel the presence of ethereal power in the air.

When you can see the cone circulating from above and the radar is pink and extreme warned is MY adrenaline rush.

There are hundreds, or maybe thousands, of people who feel this way and call themselves Tornado Chasers. As kids we watched the sky and loved the beauty of clouds. Some of us as children were involved in tornadoes and instead of developing fear developed fascination. Some are highly trained meteorologists driving for that scientific knowledge equipped with weather machines and computers to collect data. Some chasers are simple hobbyists who only chase on a Sunday in their own locations, and some of us will travel hundreds of miles to find the right circumstances that stir the gods to throw up a tornado. ALL of us should, and most do, have the respect for Mother Nature to learn how to spot and chase safely.

Sometimes storms can be predicted days before an outbreak, but when you’re standing outside and your skin begins to prick up, is when you “know” it’s time. The humidity, the temperature, the darkening skies; if they don’t get your motor running then you’re not a lover of storms. You can have all the “should be” information telling you one is coming, but that is why tornadoes are studied. We still can’t tell when, why, or where. The time spent anticipating the storm can be quite a build-up. You watch the radar and you do the math with the mesoscale, but there is never a guarantee that a tornado will show up.

Despite the unknown, we chase. We love it; every step of the day. I recommend any reputable chaser to attend the NWS SKYWARN Storm Spotter Program. … SKYWARN® is a volunteer program with between 350,000 and 400,000 trained severe weather spotters. These volunteers help keep their local communities safe by providing timely and accurate reports of severe weather to the National Weather Service. Our priority is to keep people safe, especially in our “own back yard,” our communities that we live in. Storms are beauty in motion, but a tornado can rip apart lives. There is knowledge you should know BEFORE you set out on the road.

The pros of having the home-court advantage are knowing the local terrain and roads. If you don’t have a team of at least 3 people – ideally 4, you may put yourself into a dangerous situation. Your teammates need to trust each other. I mean Trust with a capital T, because you are putting your lives into each other’s hands. The driver needs to trust the navigator to find the safest roads while at the same time putting you on the track of your target. The cameraperson needs to trust the driver, so they don’t have to watch the road at all, but only concentrate on getting the best shots of the storm/tornado. Everyone needs to trust that the goal might be getting a good picture or video, but everyone’s lives and safety come before ANY picture.

The entire team might have differing ideas of where to go during a large storm system. Some team members like to stay safer than others. Meaning they want to stay at a longer distance away from the actual tornado. Others follow their adrenaline and their gut or depend on years of meteorological knowledge to find the best path and know they can get close and still stay safe. I can guarantee there will be disagreements among the team. Try to keep team camaraderie up, get enough sleep, bring your snacks, and know each other well.

Which team member is best at judging how fast a tornado is moving and usually determines from the storm’s wind speed, the wind’s direction, and the other involved winds about where to go? Which member actually understands the science of the meteorology and can decide if conditions are right? Who is best at reading a radar AND reading local maps? Who has the eyes that can shift quickly to catch many motions at a time? All this and more is necessary to put together a safe team. Yes, you need to be able to “read” the clouds, but you need to read each other, too. Decisions often need to be made in seconds: here’s a road to turn on, a hill will be coming up, that area has too many trees and little visibility, the base of the tornado just turned, where’s our safe route and other types of questions need fast determinations with little to no argument.

Does your team have a team leader or is every question up for debate? Often this is up to who’s car are you in or who has spent the most money on the trip, and those shouldn’t be determining factors if you make a few guidelines and rules before ever starting to chase. Hopefully you have someone, or two, on the team experienced and trained for medical emergencies. Not only may one of you become injured, but if you are the first people on the scene in a town or at a home after a storm has passed it simply isn’t up for debate; stop to help. The adrenaline turns sober as you find destroyed places and possibly dead bodies. It is part of the job. Staying psychologically healthy after such incidents is also important to the team.

You just can’t make decisions based on emotions while you’re out there. While some say the adrenaline rush can cause you to make hasty and ill-thought choices, the best decisions are based on facts and not on “I’ve got to have that picture” or “Oh my god I’m so afraid.” Someone has to be the calm in the storm person; the type of person who could run a busy ER during a mass casualty. Fear is not a good decision maker, but you also need to acknowledge your feelings and be able to set them aside. Yelling only gets you so far to be heard and you can’t hold a grudge against a decision made and voted for. Personally, I think the best way to be able to make informed decisions is by being prepared.

Of course you need wi-fi capable electronics. Chasing takes money. No, you don’t need to trick-out your vehicle with all the latest in meteorological equipment, but you need gas money and you need capable radar. Getting stuck in the middle of nowhere with an aged cell phone isn’t ideal. A proper, if not the latest, level of smart phone, iPad, or even a good laptop is often your guide. If the radar you’re watching has a lag in time, that’s no good. If you have to keep re-logging on or restarting your electronics you could put the team in danger. You ARE going to go to places where wi-fi is sketchy, cell towers may be downed, and at times there’s a hundred miles or more between towns. Where I spot, the towers are far away and only service one phone company or the other. When your radar is down you depend on training, preparation, and each other.

It’s a LOT of driving. Being cramped together in a hot muggy vehicle for hours or days can drive the best of us nuts. The atmosphere inside the car can get sketchy, too. Hot, hungry, and tired chasers can turn on each other if you’re not prepared. This means spending more money. Make sure you have enough liquids for everyone to stay hydrated, yet don’t argue about “potty” stops. If you have cigarette smokers on your team you need to make some sort of deal about how often to stop for a cig break BEFORE you leave. Cranky smokers are no fun, but if you have a destination to get to the non-smokers don’t want to stop. It also sucks up more gas if you use the air conditioner in the car. You simply can NOT try to be a beauty queen and a chaser. You’re going to want to wear clothes that can get wet, muddy, or even torn. If you wear make-up it’s going to smear, smudge, and sweat off. Bring along “small” warm weather clothes, such as just a T-shirt or tank top to wear when it’s hot and humid, but you need warmer clothes for after the storms and during the chilly evenings. I also recommend agreeing to buy your own meals on the road so there’s no argument over who owes how much. Bring sturdy and sustainable snacks.

You need gas, liquids, various layers of clothes, snacks, good electronics, emergency medical supplies, and possibly bathroom items if you’re chasing for more than a day. This all needs to be packed tightly in small packs, because it’s going to take up space. You definitely learn how to live sparsely. Bring the basics of the necessities. Bring spending money for hotels, more snacks and liquids, etc. A cooler takes up room. Get used to warm liquids. If you’re addicted to caffeine your soda will be warm and your coffee will be room temp. Seriously, deal with it. If you’re used to looking good, get used to looking rough. Bring a hat. It holds your hair out of your face and rain out of the way.

Oh let’s see, what else to bring? Wear a pair of shoes and bring a dry pair. Same with clothes. Bring rain gear if you have it. Long hair needs scrunchies. Sun glasses. Tylenol. Tools come in handy for car breakdowns. Orange cones, road flares, or other auto emergency supplies are nice, but not necessary. Gloves, orange vests, eye goggles for protection, and possibly even a helmet (in case of hail) are all included in MY personal kit. It is safest to use cones or flashing lights to warn other drivers that your vehicle has pulled over and people are milling around. I can’t stress enough how important batteries for flashlights, NOAA radios, etc are. Remember all your electronics’ cords and charging supplies. If you’re using a video camera bring extra batteries, lenses, extra of anything that could possibly be needed plus dry rags to wipe screens, lenses, etc.

You NEED a good driver. You don’t want someone driving who has only been driving for a couple years ever or has no experience driving in adverse weather conditions. It’s easy for the most experienced driver to hydroplane on standing water or not know whether to drive into or away from certain wind variables. You’re going to want to speed. You may HAVE to drive at high speeds to get away from danger. The driver needs to know what conditions are safe and when to pull over to let hail or torrential rain go by. Your driver needs to be able to drive on dirt or mud. Your driver should also know the feel of the vehicle they’re driving. If they aren’t driving their own vehicle you need to give them time to drive the one they will be several times prior to any chase. Do the brakes need to be stomped on or just a soft touch? Does the steering wheel tend to pull? Does this person know the engine and its knocks and quirks?

The navigator needs to know how to give directions that are coming up before the need to do them in a calm manner. This person is often watching road signs zoom by, so you always know your location, while they are simultaneously watching a radar and watching funnels outside the window.

In my opinion this is too much for one person and I like having a team of three or four to break up roles. Good eyes need to watch equipment and tornadoes. The navigators need to be able to make those quick decisions about what direction to drive. Knowing your GPS coordinates is great, but second to that you need to know your physical location to a town so you can notify the authorities of tornadoes on the ground. What’s near to you; a farm building, a nestle of birch trees, what can you see to tell someone else who isn’t with you? I am not the type of person that can look and know what direction North is, South, or whatever. I’m not the main navigator, but I am good at reading the radar and maps. I can tell you where the storm is going to be at any given time or where we need to be safe, but I can’t tell you what that last road sign said. I’m too excited about the radar and I have eye problems. The Main Navigator always needs to have a safe route in mind .

The person with the camera needs to know the camera. This sounds like, duh, but sometimes you just can’t see out your window and need to pass the camera to someone with a better vantage point. Having everyone on the team know the camera is great, but The Cameraman gets the best shots. They understand how to operate the camera in low or high light, what speeds or pixels, in wet conditions, and all that technical stuff. Some chasers use a simple phone camera, and some have expensive high-tech models. Some chaser teams have cameras hooked to the vehicles sending information to the team via computer. Some teams live-stream video to social media and send pictures to news outlets or the National Weather Service. So, the videographer needs a calm strong voice and a steady hand. I’d like to mention that you are often wiggling around in the compact and confined space of the interior of the vehicle. Being in good physical shape so you’re not getting sore from wiggling, twisting, etc, is a bonus. Sometimes team members will work-out together to stay in shape.

The most dangerous part of chasing is getting into traffic. Who makes the worst traffic during a tornado? Other storm chasers. There are times in the Midwest Plains of the US when there are hundreds of storms chasers on the road for the same outbreak. Those who just want a nice picture should be considerate of the scientific crews. GET OFF THE ROAD AND LET THEM THROUGH! Yes, I am yelling that, because getting caught in a line of chasers going 25 mph because they’re “close enough” isn’t just frustrating it’s dangerous. When you see the trucks and vans outfitted with scientific gear, they know there is a tornado nearby and you are putting everyone in harm’s way, and they need to get to where they’re going. They are getting science data to prevent future storm deaths. If you don’t pull over and let them through, you are directly interfering with the saving of lives. THE question is; why do some supercells form tornadoes and some don’t.

In the past there has been the TIV: Tornado Intercept Vehicle run by people filming for an Imax movie, and they were also carrying science equipment for the TWISTEX team: a 40 to sometimes 80 vehicle team of tornado scientists. Reed Timmer and the TVN: Tornado Video Nation team has also done incredible work carrying scientific equipment on his Dominator tornado intercept vehicle. The weather engineer, Tim Samaras, and his team did nonstop research until they were killed in a tornado. Let teams like this through.

Those teams were professionals. They had been chasing for dozens of years or decades. We still lost the TWISTEX team. This IS dangerous. There is a distinction between spotters and chasers. Spotters are watching the storms and reporting to local authorities and the National Weather Service about local extreme weather. Chasers are also spotters, but often the chasing is a weekend hobby. Some chasers do it as extra income from the documentation or even run Tornado Chasing bus tours. Spotters usually see the tornado, call it in, and leave the area for safety. Chasers stay in the danger zone often only 100 yards or so from the core or in the RFD winds. Spotters can be in danger too, though. Downbursts, multiple-vortex tornadoes, microbursts, intense damaging hail cores, flash flooding, bow echoes or derechoes with straight-line winds, lightning, debris, fog banks, high-precipitation or rain-wrapped storms, and tornadoes at night can all put spotters in danger if they’re not trained.

Most chasers and spotters are not professional meteorologists. Knowing a bit about weather can only enhance your experience. Being able to report certain aspects of a storm at its location is something the weatherman back at the newsroom needs. Reporting factual weather details to the NWS so they can put out watches and warnings and local cities can turn on the sirens is part of being a Certified NSW Skywarn Storm Spotter. If you want to be a reputable spotter, you need to know certain terminology; the basics at least.

There are a lot of good reputable ways to learn about extreme weather. Pick up used meteorology textbooks, study mesoscale discussions on the NWS website, attend workshops and conventions. The National Weather Service and NOAA both have a plethora of websites and links to learn from. National Public Radio hosts informational discussions. There is no reason for anyone to not be educated before spotting or chasing. I highly recommend the NWS Skywarn Spotter training and certification, but don’t ONLY depend on that one training then head out into a storm. Avoid mayhem. Get trained.

Good Tornado Chasers don’t need drugs or alcohol. Our “high” is chasing. It’s ecstasy. Other times of the year we watch TV shows about chasing, gear up ourselves and our vehicles, and even chase other types of severe weather such as blizzards and hurricanes. Some people want to jump off a building with a bungee rope. Just put a radar screen full of extreme weather in front of us. We can’t only see it; we can smell it. It’s in our blood. We must watch. If we can’t watch from our cars, we watch from our living rooms on laptops. Some of us have expensive computers to help organize data and talk with other chasers and weather networks. You may call it an addiction, but for us it’s pure fascination and reverence. When day turns black and all light is gone; Stay safe out there! The power is incredible.

Pictures via my own or another well-written article about chasing:

14 unbelievable photos that capture the chaos of storm chasing

https://www.weather.gov/SKYWARN

https://www.weather.gov/oun/spotterglossary#Introduction

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-storm-chaser-changed-face-tornado-science-180968688/

For the Men

Posted on June 14, 2019 by kkwrites8739

“Eleven states have passed laws restricting a woman’s access to abortion, with some states approving near-total bans of the procedure altogether. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio and Utah have all passed abortion-related legislation that has been signed by their Republican governors. Lousiana’s Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards also signed a bill restricting abortions.

Alabama’s law, signed by Governor Kay Ivey, is likely the strictest in the nation as it makes it a felony for doctors to perform abortions even in cases of rape and incest. Laws passed in Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Ohio ban abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can happen as early as six weeks into pregnancy (before many women are even aware they are pregnant). Less severe laws like those in Indiana and North Dakota ban the use of clamps and forceps during second-trimester abortions.

According to a new FiveThirtyEight analysis, which examined all 50 state of the state speeches given by governors in 2019, the term “reproductive health” was not uttered once by a Republican. Meanwhile, the term appeared in approximately 21.7 percent of Democratic speeches.

https://www.newsweek.com/republican-governors-reproductive-health-abortion-laws-1443902

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade, made it clear that states may not ban abortion outright before the fetus is determined to be viable, recognized by the medical community as around 24 weeks’ gestation. In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Planned Parenthood v. Casey that states may not place an undue burden on a woman’s right to choose an abortion. Like laws that attempt to ban abortion at 20 weeks’ gestation, bills banning abortion after detection of a fetal heartbeat are intended as a direct challenge to these U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

Let me be razor clear why all these states are even proposing abortion bans right now, even if they don’t get passed or they remain being argued over in session for long periods. They WANT to be taken to the Supreme Court. Their target IS Roe-vs-Wade. They want people to think that their are a lot of people who want to overturn it.

THERE ARE NOT.

Polls being done put Americans in total at about 50% in favor of keeping Roe just where it’s at and another 30% in favor of keeping it but tweaking it just a bit, and the last 20 % being unsure OR for overturning. Even polls among republicans show 1/3 in favor of keeping Roe and another 1/3 in favor of keeping it but tweaking it, with only the last 1/3 being the radical fundamentalists who want it overturned.

Many of these abortion bills are called “heartbeat” bills. How do you detect a heartbeat in an unborn fetus? (I’ll explain later that at the gestational stage these bills cover it is not a fetus, it is still an embryo.) By using a VERY INTRUSIVE and embarrassing measure at 6 weeks:

Ohio required an abortion provider to use an abdominal ultrasound to detect a fetal heartbeat and banned abortion when the pregnancy has progressed to 12 weeks and a fetal heartbeat is detected. North Dakota went even further, passing the most stringent anti-choice legislation in the country—a bill that bans abortion as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected using “acceptable medical practice,” which is approximately six weeks through the use of a transvaginal ultrasound.

At least sixteen states (Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia) have introduced measures to ban abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

MN, where I live, is what concerns me. I am 50 years old and Peri-menopausal. No I don’t plan on getting pregnant any time soon, but this is where I live and as long as I do it is no one’s business to tell me or any other woman what to do with my/her health, rights, or body. I will fight for my fellow women.

Minnesota Fetal Heartbeat Abortion Ban (HF 271) , proposed Jan 22, 2019

Minnesota Fetal Heartbeat Abortion Ban (SF 869) , proposed Feb 7, 2019

Minnesota Fetal Heartbeat Abortion Ban (HF 2101) , proposed March 7 2019

Minnesota Fetal Heartbeat Abortion Ban (SF 2245) , proposed March 11 2019

Some reproductive rights groups argue that the term “heartbeat” bill is a misnomer, since the fetus does not yet have a heart at six weeks’ gestation — the cardiac activity detectable at that time comes from tissue called the fetal pole. Up to the 10th week after fertilization the pregnancy is called an embryo and it still has no brain or spinal cord. Most malformations (birth defects) occur during this period when organs are forming. During this period, the embryo is most vulnerable to the effects of drugs, radiation, and viruses. Not until after 10 weeks is it called a fetus. It is still not viable, it can NOT live outside the uterus.

At about 14 weeks the sex of the fetus can be identified. Between 16 to 20 weeks the mother can finally feel the fetus move. Sometimes for women who don’t have regular periods, are overweight or don’t know why they are gaining weight – this is the first sign that they are pregnant. Not until after 24 weeks does the fetus have a chance of survival outside the uterus. The lungs continue to mature until near the time of delivery. The brain accumulates new cells throughout pregnancy and the first year of life after birth, but the people who want ALL fetuses born no matter what don’t care about their health care after they are born. Even if they need extreme medical care for underdeveloped lung and brain problems.

Nor do they care if the mother has medical issues during pregnancy. Make her suffer through it, no matter what, and deliver that fetus. Even if she KNOWS her body isn’t doing its job to give the fetus the required nutrients or safety/cushioning or whatever. Even if that mother feels like shit knowing her body is harming her child from her own medical issues. It takes two people to GET pregnant, even IF the pregnancy was a “mistake.” However, now what she’s going through is all on her. REMEMBER, THE ACTUAL TERM, REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, NEVER GETS MENTIONED!

This issue is all about being educated and informed. It is NOT about being pro or anti birth or children or about killing. Those words are for the fanatics and lunatics and the super-religious. In NO way do politics and religion belong in the same debate for ANY topic. THIS is a medical and personal topic.

When it comes to abortion some people have morals and some people don’t. I have known women who use it as birth control. Got pregnant? Oh, go get an abortion. Got pregnant again? Just go have another abortion. Never feeling any emotion about it. Oh, had too many so that there’s so much scar tissue that you can’t get pregnant any more? Oh well, never wanted kids anyway. I have also known SO many more women that have had abortions that have felt the weight of the world on their shoulders at having had to get an abortion that they thought it would emotionally kill them to do it. The levels of guilt and self-hatred, shame, and disgust and depression left them in despair for years, but they had such heart-wrenching reasons for having to do it: usually being in violently abusive relationships, being molested by family members, being gang-raped, other rape, severe medical issues, or severe poverty or no medical or health care.

People of color, queer, and low-income people are who are disproportionately likely to seek abortion care. Then add in people with cognitive or physical/medical disabilities. And now these new laws could allow women who terminate pregnancies to be charged with murder!

Think about the barely mobile disabled person with cognitive disabilities who says yes to sex, but doesn’t really even know what sex is. That person can in no way raise a child, but will be forced to go through the pregnancy not understanding what is going on with her body, often doing things that put the fetus at risk. If she does, she will be arrested for causing the fetus harm? Many LGTBQ+ are beaten/raped just to “show them what they’re ‘supposed’ to be,” by ignorant assholes. Now they must carry a baby even though they look like a man? I could go on with the horrible stories. The fanatics don’t care who got pregnant or how or what will happen to the child after it is born. All they want to do is toss around scare-words without real facts.

“Late-term” abortions are generally understood to take place during or after the 21st to 24th week of gestation, which is late in the second trimester. That gestational period roughly corresponds to the point of “fetal viability” or when a fetus might be able to survive outside the womb with or without medical assistance. However, there is no precise medical or legal definition of “late-term,” and many doctors and scientists avoid that language, calling it imprecise and misleading. They say “late-term” may imply that these abortions are taking place when a woman has reached or passed a full-term pregnancy, which is defined as starting in the 37th week.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1.3 percent of abortions were performed at or greater than 21 weeks of gestation in 2015. In contrast, 91.1 percent were performed at or before 13 weeks and 7.6 percent at 14 to 20 weeks.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) said in a statement released this week that pregnant women may experience conditions such as “premature rupture of membranes and infection, preeclampsia, placental abruption, and placenta accreta” late in pregnancy that may endanger their lives.

“Women in these circumstances may risk extensive blood loss, stroke, and septic shock that could lead to maternal death. Politicians must never require a doctor to wait for a medical condition to worsen and become life-threatening before being able to provide evidence-based care to their patients, including an abortion,” the ACOG said.

In a paper published in 2013 by Foster and Katrina Kimport on women who got abortions for reasons other than a danger to life or health or a fetal anomaly, they cited logistical delays such as difficulty finding a provider, raising funds for the procedure and travel costs.

Foster and Kimport described five “profiles” of women in the study: “They were raising children alone, were depressed or using illicit substances, were in conflict with a male partner or experiencing domestic violence, had trouble deciding and then had access problems, or were young and [experiencing their first pregnancy].”

“one woman was told by her doctors that something in her 20-week scan looked suspicious but it wasn’t until 24 weeks that it was clear the fetus had significant abnormalities.”

(Oops, I forgot to add what the article was that I took the above quotes from. My bad.)

Humiliation, agony, and the risk of sterility or death. Is that what we want to go back to? That’s what women went through before Roe-vs-Wade in the 50’s and 60’s. Back room abortions with dirty medical instruments or at home do-it-yourself by a coat hanger. Just because they want to make it illegal doesn’t mean women will stop doing it. Women will still want to keep their fortune 500 jobs. They can’t do that if they get pregnant. Ah-ha!

There it is. The Ah Ha moment. That’s what this is all about! Men trying to put women in our place. Take away our power. Get us out of the business and other work-places so men can be back in charge. They want to go back to the 50’s when women met them at the front door with their evening drink and dinner on the table.

That will actually be impossible to do. No one in the middle class down can live like that. It’s mandatory for family’s to have both parents working just to pay the bills. Think about having kids? You’d better not have a part time or a low-income job if you have a kid or two. Need to dish out $5,000 for an abortion? Insurance will only pay for it if it’s medically necessary.

I would really like to see someone do a poll/survey on the middle class to upper class to find out how many of them have abortions -vs- the middle to lower class, where most surveys are usually done via social services or Planned Parenthood. They wouldn’t have to scrape and scrimp and save every penny for months just to afford the abortion. They could just think, “oh shit I’m pregnant, oops! Better get an abortion before mommy and daddy find out. Boom. Done.” Plus, the family doc of rich people isn’t going to rat out some little rich kid. He knows who pays for his “coke.”

OK, sorry, there’s MY “ism,” richism. I know, that’s not a word. There’s racism, sexism, I have richism. I’m rich-ist. I have issues with rich people. Rich people who don’t use their wealth to help society in any way, or only to make themselves “look” good.

Back to the issue at hand: abortion IS an elitist issue. It is one more way for those with to push down those without. You think rich people are going to be going to jail for having illegal abortions? Of course not.

It’s also a sexist issue for sure. Rapists even get rights to the kids they spawn from their rapes these days. You can NOT convince me that’s OK. It is NOT OK to force a woman to have the child from being raped. This is one more thing that a man truly can not in any way possible remotely begin to understand. A man can be raped, but a man can not become pregnant from being raped. Have to live with it growing inside you, like the rapist is again inside you, but not for minutes this time – this time he is inside you for 9 MONTHS! Then, if you don’t give it up for adoption, you live with this child possibly for the rest of your life; remembering. If you are unlucky enough to live in one of THOSE states, you might also be FORCED to have your rapist in your life, have to see him, talk to him, etc, forever, as he is allowed to be the rightful father of your child and receive parental rights and visits. You will never be allowed to forget your pain, humiliation, and how he broke your will and spirit as the state you live in goes on to do so day after day.

Mind you, I am pro-life for myself, but pro-choice for all other women. I would never tell anyone what to do in any situation and no one else has that right either. I have never been faced with that particular scenario, and I have no idea what I’d do. Thankfully, MN would never make me deal with the father of a child from rape.

I did, however, have to make the abortion decision. Being a social worker, I knew that fetal alcohol syndrome gets part of its parts from the man’s sperm, and I became pregnant by an alcoholic. I was a pretty bad social drinker myself at the time. I had also just been in an auto accident and I was in a pretty bad amount of pain. Being born with a rare genetic disease, I also had that to consider. So, given all of that what was I about to pass on to my child? Should I or not take pain medicine? How much had I drank before I learned I was pregnant? How badly did the auto accident damage the embryo? I had several x-rays in the ER, did they do any damage?

Of course as soon as I told my boyfriend, he dumped me and took off. I quote, “I don’t want a kid who’s a freak with your genetic disease.” I was hot enough to date, but… So, now I was also alone, single again. Guess what? I also lost my job! The accident mixed with my disease had caused 5 problems in my spine and nerve damage in my shoulder. I was super depressed and in a LOT of pain. Things that are not good for developing fetuses. Since I couldn’t pay rent, you’d better believe I was thinking of abortion. I had no idea, but was thinking every minute of what kind of damage my injured body was doing to my child. I wasn’t taking anything for the pain since that would cause more damage. I began spotting and was afraid I might lose the baby. It was then that I knew for sure that I couldn’t have an abortion.

Despite everything that could be wrong with the baby I knew I would love him. It would be against everything I believe in as a nature based pagan who reveres life to abort this thing growing inside me. If my body didn’t naturally abort it for having something wrong with it, then it was meant to be my child. That is MY belief. I don’t expect anyone else to follow my belief or force it on anyone else.

I had a bad pregnancy. Many medical issues. I was in the hospital twice with infections. Due to my disease, my son’s kicks broke 3 of my ribs. I didn’t have enough amniotic fluid. My blood pressure was too high. I was constantly in pain from injuries. I was depressed. There are many reasons a woman thinks of abortion or a doctor suggests it.

He is 20 years old now. It’s been a rough ride from all of his medical needs, but I do love him with all of my soul. I will fight for women everywhere to have their rights though. NO ONE should ever tell another person what they can and can’t do unless it comes to harming life willfully and with evil intent and forethought. AND…yet with that; what defines life? Humans can’t even agree on that!

There are over 100 definitions of life have been proposed, with most focusing on a handful of key attributes such as replication and metabolism. Virologists: seven processes that supposedly define life: movement, respiration, sensitivity, growth, reproduction, excretion and nutrition. Chemists: polymers – namely nucleic acids (the building blocks of DNA), proteins and polysaccharides – virtually the entire diversity of life is built. Astrobiologists: microorganisms capable of surviving in extreme environments.

Technologists: artificial life can involve biologists creating new organisms in labs by stitching together parts of two or more existing life forms. But it can also be a little more abstract. There are even teams that are beginning to explore the creation of robots with life-like traits. Ever since the 1990s, when Thomas Ray’s Tierra computer software appeared to demonstrate the synthesis and evolution of digital “life forms”, researchers have been trying to create computer programs that truly simulate life.

Philosophers: Maybe the things we think are essential are really just peculiar to life on Earth. After all, everything from bacteria to lions is derived from a single common ancestor, meaning that on our chart of life in the Universe, we only really have one data point.

In the words of Sagan: “Man tends to define in terms of the familiar. But the fundamental truths may not be familiar.”

What a tragedy it would be if in the 2020s the new Mars rover trundles straight past a Martian, simply because it does not recognise it as being alive.

“The definition can actually hinder the search for novel life,” says Cleland. “We need to get away from our current concept, so that we are open to discovering life as we don’t know it.”

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170101-there-are-over-100-definitions-for-life-and-all-are-wrong

Put A Fork In Me

Posted on March 11, 2019 by kkwrites8739

Um, ya. It’s supposedly the first day of Spring in 10 days. We got 6 more inches of snow up here in the Nort’land in the last 24 hours. Supposed to get more on Wednesday. Yup. This IS Spring for us. Mm hmm. We’ve all had about enough now, though. Really. We give up. This winter of the 2018-2019 season has been a doozy. We. Are. Done.

I live in Minnesota. This is not what you would call the normal winter for us, but it’s close. Yes, we always have snowy winters. Yes, we always have cold winters. However, this winter has been ridiculous. The usual would be some parts of MN getting a lot of snow and some parts getting the usual amounts and some parts less. Over the last 20 years or so, due to Climate Change, the norm has been less snow and MAYBE 5 or so days of minus 40 below zero degrees Fahrenheit temperatures without the wind chill.

Oh, SO not this year. THIS year decided to blow us for a loop. This year decided to remind us just what a MN winter used to be. This year decided to remind us what it means to be a hearty Minnesotan. This year decided we needed to remember why Babe the Blue Ox is Blue and why Paul Bunyan is so friggin tall.

Paul’s tall so he can see over the damned snow banks and Babe’s blue because it’s 55 degrees F BELOW F*CKING ZERO! That’s 75 F below zero with the wind chill for you warm people who never had the balls to step foot in this frozen hell. Yep. It really got that darn cold this winter. More. Than. Once. Consequences? Extreme cold blamed for 17 deaths in the Midwest thanks to the polar vortex. (www.weather.com) That was early on in December. We still had 2 more months of polar temps to go.

Aaaand just how much snow did we get this year, you ask? Well, I’m 5 feet 1 inch tall. The snow piled on the sides of my driveway is over my head. When I have to leave my driveway I inch my way out VERY carefully and very slowly to make sure no one is coming down the road that I can’t see, and who can’t see me hiding behind the snow pile. It’s like a game of hide and peek; to see all the cars doing the same thing coming out of the other driveways. There are places in MN where they got 6 1/2 feet of snow.

Of course we can’t JUST have the snow. We get freezing slushy icy slippery messes that cause wonderful driving conditions. We started the season in October with freezing rainstorms that left slick layers of ice covering everything. I had just paid $100 to ready my snow thrower for the season. I never got to use it. It remains out in the yard, frozen to the spot where I unloaded it the same day and we got hit by an ice storm that night. Heavy snow and slushy conditions were blamed for 3 fatal Midwestern accidents before December had ended. Now that MN body shops are breaking out the bubbly, we finally have warmer temps in sight. We should be celebrating, right?

With 40 degrees Fahrenheit expected within the week you would expect us to be celebrating. Not yet. With trepidation, now we must haul sump pumps down into our basements and lie in wait. It’s coming. Remember I said another storm is coming on Wednesday? It might be snow. It might be rain. Most likely it will be a mix of both, then freeze solid after the sun goes down. The Big Melt is coming. When you have this much snow and ice sitting on the frozen ground where is it going to go? They say 1 to 2 inches of rain is possible in places. Where is all this liquid moisture going to go? Exactly where is the glacier in my yard going to go?

Storm drains in the streets have snow and at LEAST an inch or two of ice covering them. Driveways? Even if you’ve been diligently shoveling or plowing them after each snow or ice storm, driveways are still covered with several inches of frozen tundra. Houses have snow packed up the outside walls several feet high. Except for the places smart people have hopefully dug out around the pipes and things that vent toxic fumes and things out of their houses. I know I can’t open my front door due to the snow comes up about 3 feet high. Ya, my boy was lazy and never shoveled the steps. So, ya, um…all this snow and ice so close to the houses is going to go…where? You guessed it! Right into your basement! Fun, right?

I don’t have a sump pump.

Here’s the latest report I’ve read and why I think I might be screwed: “The snowpack over the entire upper midwest remained in place or increased over the past two weeks. The amount of snow water equivalent in this snowpack is in the upper 10 percent of historical records over a widespread area…leading to high flood potential for many river basins in the area. At least half of our forecast points now indicate at least a 50% probability of reaching major flood stage.”

I don’t personally live ON the lake. I live about 4 to 5 blocks away from Lake Bemidji. I’m very happy that the lake is wayyyyy downhill. However, I have many family and friends who live on or near the 11,842 lakes and 92,000 miles of rivers, streams, and wetlands in MN. I’ve seen the Mighty Mississippi at flood stage. She IS mighty indeed. The town I live in, well the river flows through us. We are called “the first town on the Mississippi.” We are “sister” cities with New Orleans; the last city on the Mississippi. The headwaters of Ole Miss begins 35 1/2 miles from us. So, yes a lot of the snow and ice will go to feed her, along with all the water from 31 other states.

Right now though, I just don’t want all the frozen white stuff to go into my basement. I’m tired of “hide and peek.” I’m tired of sliding around on the ice, on my tires and on my feet. I’m SO very tired of being c’c’c’cold. My checking account is wondering where my money went. (All to heating costs!) Worst of all, though, my poor old body just wants to curl up into the fetal position and yell, “NO MORE, PLEASE?!” I live with a genetic disabling rare disease that causes chronic pain and the cold of this winter has exacerbated all that pain and increased it to monumental proportions. I’ve tried to help with shoveling and it hurts! I’ve fallen on the ice and it hurts! I can’t afford to turn up the heat and it hurts! I’ve been stuck in the snow so many times and have dug and slid and sug and slid and it hurts! Now flooding is coming? Ah, c’mon?!

Put a fork in me, I’m done!

Addendum as of 3/14/19: All this liquid has decided it wants to be inside my house via the basement. Spent 5 hours in the middle of the night using the wet/dry vac. I had just taken my folder of warranties/instruction manuals for various items out to look for something last week and just left it on the floor. MY bad. Now all those papers are spread out all over the place left to dry out. 6′ x 5′ area rug ruined. As things dry I’ll see what else is ruined.

NOT a happy camper.

Save Lives Not Guns

Posted on March 10, 2019 by kkwrites8739

Just have to say it, again. For those who don’t get it. I still haven’t heard a politician say they are going to come and take away the guns from law abiding citizens. I HAVE heard that they and over 75% of the law abiding citizens in this country want to ban bump stocks, semi-auto, and automatic weapons from anyone but the police and military, instill background checks for purchasing a gun at ANY time a gun is purchased by ANYONE, make it more difficult if not impossible for people who have been convicted of any violent crime (including domestic violence or rape) to be able to purchase a gun weather or not they SEEM to be a law abiding citizen now, have a person who has HAD a diagnoses of an emotional or behavioral disorder be tested prior to purchasing a gun, but nowhere have I seen or heard that anyone would be coming into anyone’s homes to take away anyone’s guns that they legally have now. THAT would be illegal and unconstitutional and only people who don’t understand jurisprudence think that way.

The police already have voluntary programs where people can come to places, usually police stations, and hand in weapons/guns with no questions asked. This could take place if/when new gun policies ever happen. OFTEN these programs also give money to those who hand in the weapons. Also, many countries that have already done what people in the US want with these new gun policies, is to grandfather in the people who already have those types of weapons, but make sure they are registered to law abiding citizens. They are already supposed to be, right? Now all you have to do is tell the people you register with that you’ve added the bump stock, so IF the weapon is stolen they know it was already altered.

So, no. We don’t want to ban guns for law abiding citizens. Knowing who has altered their gun, who has guns, and knowing only the police and military have the correct heavy-powered weapons to fight the heavily powered bad guys seems OK though, doesn’t it?

The gun nuts keep telling us that they “know how to use their guns.” So why would a legal gun owner need an automatic weapon to protect their home? If they are such a good shot and SO good at using their weapon, if someone broke into their home and they never get nervous and are just as trained as the cops are in such a situation wouldn’t they be able to shoot as well as a cop and handle the situation accordingly the same way with just the same weapon as a street cop and hit their target?

I see no reason for every day Joe’s to own semi or automatic weapons or use bump stocks. No, not for hunting either. What is sporting about hunting with them? Either you can make your shot without them or you are a shitty shot, dude, and have one small penis. Don’t try to come at me with “what do you know about guns, liberal piece of shit.” Last time I shot a 22 caliber was about 5 years ago and I’m still an expert marksman. I’ve got the trophies to prove it. Just don’t own a gun. Don’t want one in my home. I do enjoy shooting though.

If I had one in my home, it wouldn’t do me any good if someone broke in to attack me. They would already have a gun IN their hand. How would I have time to go get mine? Duh, I’d already be dead. Really, IF you store your guns the way you’re supposed to; away from the ammo. The gun is supposed to be either locked in a cabinet or the ammo is, and/or stored up high away from any children. How would you get to it if you are about to be robbed?

If you are storing a loaded gun in your nightstand while you sleep, well THAT’s how the robbers in this country are getting away with suing the people they are trying to rob!!!!!! Because you were breaking the law! That’s also why so many youth have guns available to them for accidents, school shootings, and suicide; loaded guns in desks, closets, and drawers.

Even IF you have a license to carry, that does NOT mean everyone in your family does. When you take that weapon off it is supposed to be LOCKED UP. If it’s not and it’s used by any family member in an accident, school shooting, or suicide then I hope you feel like shit, because you are shit.

We need to fight the people who have guns illegally, not each other. Get it? We need to save lives. Get it?

Now, does anyone else want to send me a meme on Facebook about “They can take my guns out of my cold dead hands?” or “They want to take our guns away!”

Isms, White Privilege, & 1st World Problems

Posted on March 3, 2019 by kkwrites8739

I recognize that I am happy to know that my white privilege keeps me, even in poverty, better off than others. I am so very glad that the bad things that have happened to me in my world have never been as bad as living in the Congo or other places dealing with genocide, female genital mutilation, child soldiers, daily air bombings like Syria, night raids when your family is taken away and women and children raped, or even in the American South where a black person gets gunned down simply for the color of their skin or anywhere in the USA Native American women go missing at high rates and it seems no one gives a damn.

Across the world women are still stoned for having healing skills or when THEY are the victims of rape and it’s said THEY bring shame to their family because of it. No, wait. That still happens right here in the US. So, too, do child marriages, it’s lawful to rape your wife in most states, and the police state in the US is being granted more and more leeway and freedom every day – including the right to beat and rape prisoners. That’s right. In most states it is lawful to rape a prisoner. That is, we know rape is illegal; however there is no law against NOT raping a prisoner.

Why write about it all? Why me? Simply because I AM white. People of color experience atrocities at profoundly high rates. It’s sickeningly ridiculous. What do we do? We continuously keep telling them to “get over it.” “Rwanda is history, slavery is history, the Indian schools is history, it’s all history, blah blah blah…” but it’s not history to their living parents, grandparents, and for some of them – living it now. We are living in times where icky “isms” of the past are coming alive again at raging rates worldwide. When those “old times” are starting to happen all over again how do we tell them to “get over it?”

That purely is white privilege speaking when telling them to get over it. Do these things not happen to white people? Of course they do, but that’s not the point. We know they happen to people of color at proportionately much higher rates. That is the point. They bring up “people conquer other peoples, that’s what history is about. The conquered people assimilate and you get over it.” Tell that to Ireland and Scotland, who are still fighting to be free countries and people who are still learning their old ancient languages. The same goes for Native tribes all over North and South America, Africa, Asia, and well virtually everywhere you find Native Tribes. I don’t think any place ever completely assimilates. The old hangs on.

The thing is, the old, they don’t have a voice. They are our memories. What happens is, many don’t want to let those memories go; memories of place, culture, peoples, and time. Whether or not those memories are good ones or not don’t matter to those who are doing the remembering. Some are remembering bad times and want revenge or justice. Some are remembering their culture and language and want to share. It is the children who grow up hearing the memories who are caught. Caught between hearing what actually was, and what is embellished upon by the rememberers, the children can also grow up with scars from the past.

When any person is asked where they are from they usually say a place. How many people answer, “I came from my loving parents,” or “I came from adoptive parents who took me in because my birth parents were killed in horrible…” due to whatever holy war or government war or war for oil or against slavery, etc, happened. How many people answer that they come from, and then go on to describe their culture instead of either a person or a place?

In the United States we don’t really have one culture to define us, unlike most countries. We have regions of culture. Each town or city may even have different areas or spots of culture. Is that good or bad? I think it is very good, yet now there are many who think the opposite. As a child growing up in the 1970’s I remember learning that the US was a “melting pot” and we were supposed to think of that as a good thing. That was supposed to be the American “culture.” The “American Dream” was supposed to be that everyone was to look forward to each generation living a bit better than the last. Yet another aspect of American culture. However, what that symbolic idealistic culture was hiding was the fact that our dreams were hiding behind white faces on the TV telling us about all this melting pot. The actual melting pot wasn’t actually meant to be seen or heard.

Governments lie, people are treated like shit. We know this. Viet Nam happened, Kennedy was killed, Martin Luther King was Killed, The 60’s tried to rebel and help and we go some new laws and thought the isms would start to die. The 70’s got lax and we celebrated the love we thought the 60’s had won – OK I’ll give ’em credit for protests. We started to go back and forth between Republican and Democrat parties defining themselves in new and profoundly worse ways every presidential election. Everyone in the parties getting farther and farther apart, separating our country. Our political parties have pushed so far apart until they are unrecognizable today and our government doesn’t recognize our people or the rights fought for back in those days.

Atrocities have happened here in the US. Yes We do horrible things to each other every day in the name of our politics, religion, beliefs, etc. We have terrible murderers, mass shootings, rapists, hell we even have ass-hats who think it’s OK to run people over with their cars simply because they are protesting something. Our near-past is full of lynching people for being black or gay, going to your house or place of worship to shoot you because you aren’t the same faith, and priests and rich college boys going free for rape. Our daily newspapers are full of horrendous and unspeakably gory crimes, yet if they are done by white people they get a lesser sentence and if they are done by a person of color – or heaven forbid – a person fleeing through our southern border, they suddenly are taking over our electronic devices and our lives.

Put it all into perspective though, would you? White people, please. Do any of the daily horrible things that you read or hear about actually affect you personally most of the time? Is your brother, sister, son, daughter, etc being lynched or shot or followed through a store due to the color of their skin? Is your house or car fire-bombed or have a brick thrown through a window because you are gay, black, or called a witch? Yes? Ah, but how often? Now, if you were a person of color, these things would be happening to you multiple times over.

Now Americans as a whole should put it into modern perspective, too. Have we had the number of terrorist bombings here that France or other countries have had? Have we had to live through anything like a Rwandan genocide? I’m talking to white people here, because yes, our Native American brothers and sisters sure as hell have. Yes, the Indian Schools were still functioning in this last century. That’s not history. That’s modern. How about the barbarous actions in Syria? I am begging white Americans to stop whining about the trifles in their first world lives. Yes, even poor white Americans. Especially poor white Americans who keep voting for the Republicans who keep them poor. (Oops, my bad. That’s another post.)

There surely, honestly can’t be any white poor American who thinks they are worse off than a poor black person in Africa? A person living in the Syrian war? Anyone living in a cartel-ridden country in South America? If they do, then shame on them. Even if you live in a shack without running water in the South in America you can still find water to drink MOST of the time and you DO have that shack. Shit, I’m being one harsh bitch, right? I’m not stupid. I KNOW there is real abject poverty here in the USA that could be done away with if the richest 3 families in the US didn’t earn more than the bottom 50% of Americans. However, I also know that those poor families are not being bombed every day. They don’t have militia or cartels coming to their homes any time of day taking their food, or even worse, taking their family members away or raping them and then taking them or just killing them for fun.

I am part of poor America. I live below the poverty line. I am grateful that I am not being bombed, yet. With 45 in office, it’s an iffy subject. I have friends who don’t have running cars and sometimes go without running water or functioning heat. I also went to college and have a degree and a professional license. However, I became disabled and living on Social Security is not a living wage. Medicare is not a functioning health care insurance for my needs. I scrimp and save and go to food shelves.

I am so glad I don’t live in a war-torn country or anywhere else where crimes against humanity happen on a daily basis. Oh, I have to stop and laugh. I forgot who our current leader is for a moment. Sorry. No. Really. I AM happy to live here. We have SO many freedoms. I will fight tooth and nail to keep what so many in our country are trying to take away right now from so many in our beloved melting pot. I know it is my white privilege that allows me to live so freely in the US without fear. Having been a foster parent to several children of color I’ve seen the looks from the white folks. I’ve watched the managers of grocery stores follow my teen foster son for no reason. I’ve dealt with the school leaders giving harsher discipline to mine than others. There are different types and levels of fear.

I thought I knew fear. I know rape. I’ve seen the desire of a man to need to make his fist connect with my flesh, yet I held his eyes with mine in the moment of the dare and won. He may have had my body, but not the rest of my flesh. He had his moment. I wouldn’t give him more. I was able to fight back. That was but a moment in time. No, I don’t trivialize rape. There is so much pain happening to so many people at any given moment. There are too many of the people willing to “walk on” through their days and do nothing. My white privilege allows me to get therapy and keep walking. Can you all look into your soul and like what you see looking back? Have you looked at your isms and shaken them enough to know that you have them? Have you faced them? Do all the white people who are whining about their 1st world problems realize they are fearing what they fear in themselves?

Right now I fear I’ve rambled all over the place in this post.

The Good Life

Posted on October 24, 2017 by kkwrites8739

We planted a labyrinth. OK, I didn’t actually do any of the work, no, I was out there one day I think for an hour. Not hard work, mind you, sitting on my ass digging in the dirt with a garden trowel. I’d reach every once in a while for the cardboard flat of medicinal herbs and plop its tender little life into a hole. The other women, who are much more physically healthy than I am, did all the actual diagramming of the round-a-bout lines on the ground with jamming sticks into the soil and winding a thin rope around the sticks to outline where to walk and where not to walk.

We all donated to the cause to purchase the medicinal herbs to plant, and yes, again it was the other ladies who did most of that planting around and around in circles from the outside of the labyrinth to the center. It was large, I believe it was about 100 feet across in diameter. One lady and her husband and son owned the land it was on, way out in the country, next to the Mississippi River. When we were quietly working we could hear the river, but from the labyrinth we couldn’t see it. It was also a bit of a trek to get out to it from their house, at least 10 minutes to the clearing through the forest. To get to their house you also had to drive about 20 minutes from town.

We gathered there on Full Moons, Sabbats, and other celebrations. We ate marvelous food, shared delightful conversation, and laughed until our sides ached. Some of us went out to the labyrinth alone at times to meditate, pray, seek guidance, cry, or for another calls or needs. It was for women, though, for women’s synergy, partnership, and unity. It was for bearing each other’s good and bad and putting it back into the soil to turn back into Mother Nature, and all we could take away from it was the good bounty of medicine we’d grown and positivism and nurturance.

I had been out there alone one afternoon. I had come to the bottom of all I could endure and I was facing blackness all around me. I’d been to that pit before and I recognized it. Despair and depression, anger and suffering, and longing and I couldn’t hold it in. I should not have gone alone. I did put it into the ground, but I did not “ground” myself. I forgot to thank and walked away with dragging feet and unanswered tears and shouted cries. That night, lightning struck the rock I’d “placed” my anger within. If you’ve ever seen a rock that’s been struck by lightning, it’s pretty cool. For lightning to strike the exact center of our labyrinth, after I’d been out there-the last person to have been out there-is like what, one in a zillion?

The next day the owner of the land was calling us all to figure out the who and what. So, I the guilty party had to be present as we all gathered to heal the labyrinth. From the time we all arrived, yes, all eyes were on me. I had to be “healed”, too. It’s not as embarrassing as it sounds to have a gathering of supportive women to “cradle” you in a dark hour. I laid it out as best I could about what was going on in my life, all my needs, etc. No, of course they really couldn’t help, it was medical stuff mixed with my messed-up family stuff. Just having it out there and shared and knowing I wasn’t alone really did help. I could still feel that eyes were watching me though, but not from the group of women, this feeling was coming from the forest. It was behind me.

Whoever was watching me wasn’t bad. It didn’t make me feel creepy either. I just knew someone was still watching me. The feeling was moving around, from place to place, like telling me to hurry up. So, the women gave me healing hugs, told me healing stories, we danced “like no one is watching,” and giggled and laughed like cackling idiots. We went back to the house, walking through the wooded path with “someone” still watching me. I mentioned it to the owner of the house and she looked at me and smiled. As the other women were getting all the mouthwatering food ready to eat she took me aside. She gave me an stunning shawl that she had handmade, saying she’d thought healing thoughts for me while making it. She also said that was one of two things she had to give me, but the other had to wait.

Those “eye” still watched me from outside while I ate. Now it felt like someone endearing me to “please share?” I can’t tell you how I knew these thoughts. They just popped into my mind from out of nowhere. How could this “someone” know I was enjoying a sumptuous repast inside the house? What on earth was going on? Finally, it was getting late and I really did need to get home to my child. The ladies gifted me with the lightning stabbed rock to take home and leftover mini-doughnuts: one package of cinnamon flavor and one package of powdered sugar. The owner walked me to the door and to my car, and as I opened the back door to place all my “gifts”; out of the woods a black shadow suddenly charged and jumped into the backseat! The owner of the land said, “we’re all allergic, but she showed up last night after the storm. I figure since she’s been watching you all day she must be yours.”

A black cat imperiously sat on the back seat. Not afraid of us or anything. She came towards me, meowed, and rubbed against my arm and said “hello human.” Since she wasn’t afraid of people I figure she’d been thrown away by someone, just like me. I thanked my host for ALL of the gifts, told the cat she could stay, and got into the front seat and shut the door. She wasn’t very old, a little less than 2 years old, maybe? Skinny. Beautiful golden eyes. A very long cat with long legs and short sleek black fur. My infant would love to pull its tail. I did have one cat at home already. My sister called me one day and asked if I’d take hers before her asshole husband killed it. Of course I did. Tempest was a black & white very fluffy long-hair that slept with my son, sat next to my son always. I think that cat thought my son was hers.

As I drove home, the “eyes” stopped. I figured the cat had fallen asleep. My friend and I were deep in conversation anyway. Suddenly my friend burst out laughing! She told me I didn’t need to think of a name for my cat; it had one. What? She was busy eating the ENTIRE bag of cinnamon doughnuts! So, OK golden eyes, those cinnamon looking golden eyes…you are hereby dubbed: Cinnamon. When I said it she looked up long enough to give us a loud “meow,” so I guess that was an OK.

She was right at home in my adobe. When I brought her into the house she went right for the couch, like she’d been there before, lay down and went to sleep. Well, she did have a very full stomach. She and Tempest got along, too. They played together and they both loved my son. She never cared when getting her tail pulled or an entire handful of fur or an ear. I actually lived in a mobile home. As my son grew, their favorite games were throwing super balls down the hallway and watching Cinnamon chase them bouncing around or rolling Hot Wheels down the hall and watching Cinn try to catch them while on the tracks or off the “jumps” and ramps.

When my son was three we moved across town into a house. The cats didn’t mind the move. Actually, it was Cinnamon who alerted me to wake up when the house was on fire! A guy had been putting insulation in the attic earlier in the day and his light had started it on fire, but he’d thought he’d put it out. 2 AM ,Cinnamon on my feet, I awoke to the nastiest smell I’ve ever smelled. It was difficult to completely wake, though. I then wandered the house trying to figure out the smell. I went outside and saw flames coming out of the side of my house! I ran inside to get my son, but he was difficult to wake, too and the fire was burning inside his closet. I half held, half dragged him outside into the snow. It was Easter Sunday in MN, so yes, snow on the ground. I left him standing in the snow and went back inside to find the phone. I didn’t have a cell phone. I called 911 and went back outside to wait. They came, we both got oxygen for our coughing, and we cried for them to find our cats who had disappeared.

We were homeless for 2 months. The cats were found and housed in a kennel while I at first went from the couch at my sister’s, then to a room at my brother’s then to a hotel for a month, because as I stated earlier my family is screwed up. Getting back into our home and getting back to our beloved cats was a blessing. My son had lost everything in his room, but he had his Tempest. Yes, Tempest had become HIS. Tempest was his world. Cinnamon had become mine. We share a rare bone disease. Every time my son is injured Tempest was there. Tempest was better than ANY medication. Going 2 months without our cats was horrible. Cinnamon had saved our lives.

I believe Cinnamon was our/my body guard or something. At least she thought so. At times she was sort of like having a dog around. A watch cat. She always stayed in the yard when we were outside. If people were walking by she walked the perimeter of the yard, making sure they didn’t come over the threshold. If a dog was walking by with someone, oh boy did that dog get the stink-eye! IF a dog was on its own and came into the yard she actually chased them out of the yard! Yes, dogs were afraid of my cat. She turned into a big cat, too. At her biggest she weighed 18 pounds. She didn’t look round either. She was just big.

I am an animal lover. So is my son. At one time he even thought of becoming a veterinarian. He discovered how long they have to go to school though, and thought better of that. We volunteered at the local humane society taking care of cats and walking dogs. Mostly taking care of the cats. My sister called one day and said there was a couple of strays at her work and could I help. My son and I went to help. We caught them. Now what to do? I found a home for the adult male, but couldn’t say no to my son about the yearling. So now we had three cats. This one is a tortoise shell who was very well camouflaged under the bushes at my sister’s restaurant. Hence her new name: Camouflage, Cami for short. The other two cats didn’t seems to mind, too much.

A short year later a friend’s daughter’s cat had kittens and the mom said no, they couldn’t keep them. I made the mistake of visiting before she gave them all away. Now we added a little black runt of the litter to our house. The first male of the brood, hmmm, how would THIS go over? The first real kitten, too. OMG, yes, holes in the curtains and holes in my legs! Those little claws are hypodermic needles! Cinnamon was having none of it. My son LOVED it! This little guy was quite the acrobat and he played fetch! Right away he, like, did flying jump aerials off the walls! My son is a computer, Xbox playing total nerd. This kitten was named: Ninja! Cinnamon and Tempest and Cami DID get used to having a kitten around, eventually. I think it even perked them up and rejuvenated them a bit.

We had a few years with the four cats running around playing together. Tempest became the matriarch and Cinnamon the bouncer. I tried to teach them all to use a leash. That did NOT work. Older cats will not do it. I though since Ninja was a kitten we could teach him, but nope. He was just too energetic and was not gonna wear something that might “keep him down.” Cami, she dances to a different drum. I made all the cats become indoor cats. They live longer that way, and it’s easier to keep track of them. No way was Cami going to do that. She is some kind of Houdini. She can slip between legs, open door slots the size of a pea, I swear it. I can NOT keep her inside the house. I can’t keep a collar on her either. I’ve tried all sorts of collars. She can get out of them all. She will get out of them, or die trying. She also goes on walkabouts. Yup. She disappears. In the summer she will be gone for 2 months at a time. Just when we’ve given up hope and think she’s been killed by something, she’ll come trotting up the driveway. She’ll be just a little thin, with a Cheshire grin on her face.

Drat. They figured us out. My nephew called and said there was a little cat behind the dumpster at his job. Said she was half frozen and would I rescue her, please Auntie? Oh, hell, of course. Another black one. This one has thumbs. No kidding, she looks like she’s wearing mittens. We soon discover her cuteness is a disguise so she can use these to grab your food while you’re sucked in by her itty bitty little cutey face. Yes, this polydactyle (geeze, I know I’m spelling that wrong,) creature uses this feature to actually stick out her thumb and inch it forward to grab things, like food off your plate. Like the Madagascar Penguins: You See Nothing. When we received her it was obvious that she had just given birth, as all her “plates” were set. We assume they froze to death, poor dears. So we named her “Lil’ Mama in remembrance to her lost litter. She stayed little, sort of. She is a short, stubby legged, little round barrel.

Don’t shake your head at us, yes, we did it again. I have since learned to say no. The elders, Tempest and Cinnamon, took me aside and begged me to say no. A lady called and said a cat showed up. She had large dogs and didn’t want this cat. Would I? Could I find it a home? She was SOOO cute? Totally white! C’mon, we had black cats. We had to keep the white one. It was Feng Shui! It was Yin and Yang! It was Karma! Her moniker became: Blizzard. Perfect for a MN cat. Until she grew up and her coat told us she was Siamese. My son then said, OK so there’s dirt swirling around in the blizzard. Sure, that actually makes sense for a cat that plays tag with herself at 10 PM every night. Well, I think that’s what she’s doing anyway. Not quite sure why she runs around to every room at that time of night, every cotton-pickin’ night. At midnight she and Mama play tag together. It’s like elephants rumbling around the house.

Don’t let dog-lovers tell you that cats are boring. They like to say that cats don’t play. Phooey! Apparently they have never seen more than one cat at a time. Cats like to play “wrestle” just like rag-tag little boys. It’s a silent pantomime of what the big cats do to their prey in the wild. It’s a lot like watching a pro boxing match, except there’s teeth involved. Cats also like to play tag; a lot. This game is best played when humans are around so you can be underfoot. Also, you have to tag the tail or it isn’t a true tag and you are still “it.” I’ve seen that. The same cat really does have to still go after the other one. Cats will also play hide-and-seek. Hiding under the chair that a human is currently occupying is the BEST hiding place, because waiting on top of the chair until you come out an inch at a time to peek, then the cat who is “it” runs down the human to “find” you is the best way to find you. Tag-team playing with human feet is allowed ONLY if ONE of you gets the sock. Chasing your own tail is only allowed within the confines of the human bathtub.

That last one was Cinnamon’s game. I never could actually catch her on camera playing it. When I’d see her in the bathtub chasing her tail in circles, I’d turn to go get my phone and if she saw me, wham, out of the tub. She was done. I have no proof. I couldn’t get her playing ANYTHING on camera! Like she just wasn’t going to allow me proof that she would ever do anything beneath being stoic. The old bodyguard standing watch over her family. If the herd, the other cats, got out of line and got too close to her, she just squashed them, literally. She’d put out a giant paw and squish their head down to the floor! Floof! As if to say, “stop it.” If they really pissed her off, which I can honestly say I only saw I think twice, she had a killer fast right paw that struck out so fast you could hardly see it, that hit 5 times in a row really really hard. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. I saw her do it to a dog, and it dazed the dog. I got in between her paw and the cat she was going to do it too when she got senile, and my hand went numb. She hit hard. She also had 6 toes, so her paw was large.

We’ve been in this house for 15 years now. A lively house with a family of 6 cats and two humans. We’ve had two other boys come and go, friends of my son who lived with us for a while. They loved the cats, too. A couple of other women lived here, too, friends of mine. It’s a small house, but full of love for our furry members. Tempest made it to 23 years old before we had to let her go. She nursed my son through 80+ broken bones and 10 surgeries. Cinnamon crossed that bridge two weeks ago, she was around 20. We grow ’em old here. Putting her “out of pain” was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

She was the bestest best friend I ever had. My constant companion. My best listener. My secret keeper. My tear dryer. She helped me to keep my courage when things were at the worst, for dignity is what a cat does best. I can see the days past when it was her who chased away strangers on my lawn. It was her who attacked any dogs, up to 4 times her size, that came near us, to protect us. She ruled this roost with an iron paw and kept all the other cats in line. She found me after someone else threw her away. Their loss was my gain. Her first hungry meal in my back seat of that bag of cinnamon doughnuts sealed the deal. Friends to the end. She became an elder and we taught each other a lot. We were together for 18 long years, but she was at least 20 or so (in human years anyway.)

The other cats sniffed around looking for their elder friend and seemed a little confused since she is not in her regular places. There is a palpable empty feeling, a definite knowledge that one is missing. A feeling in the room that is gone. Her essence, or aura, was so “there”, so felt. I think it will take a few days for it to all fade. She’s under the large Lilac with Tempest now. They liked to lie there in the shade in the summer and roll in the catnip. I let her outside her last day. One more time to walk in the sunshine. It was a beautiful day. She taught me a lot about mothering and a lot about chasing my tail with dignity. That’s what’s it’s about, right? Living the Good Life.

The Fire In Me Smolders

Posted on October 18, 2017 by kkwrites8739

They say outside today is a Red Flag Day. It’s 40 to 50 MPH wind gusts and only 20% humidity. Our area hasn’t received enough rain for the season. Put it all together and I guess that adds up to: duh, stupid people should try to remember not to throw their cigarette butts on the ground or burn brush today. I say “stupid people”, because that seems like a no-brainer to me.

So, just because someone “planned” to burn their brush pile today, or “planned” to have friends over for that outside fire with wieners and marshmallows, they’re still gonna do it. Why? Because that’s how they planned to do it, and by golly why should they change their plans just because the wind didn’t cooperate? I say, they’re stupid. It’s very easy to change plans and just do it on another day, but humans don’t like change. They like to make plans and stick to ’em. Why, it’s rude not to, right? Dumb-assess. It might not burn down YOUR house, but gee it could put your neighbor’s house in jeopardy. Or a person, like the fireman that has to be called, because of your stupidity.

When I say stuff like this people look at me like I’M the one who’s rude. Like there’s no possible way one cigarette is going to start a fire. I’m sure all the dead people in California feel that way right now. Try to say that with a straight face to their loved ones.

Just because we live in MN doesn’t mean we don’t have wildfires. In 1894 we had the worst one in Hinckley that killed 418 people and destroyed 12 towns and burned 350,000 acres. That was a drought year like this one and the fire was started by a small brush fire. In 1910 the Baudette fire also burned my small hometown of Roosevelt killing 42 people 300,000 acres and other small towns. It was a drought year and was started by sparks from trains going by. Let’s skip to modern days to the Ham Lake Fire that burned 76,000 acres and was started by a campfire. How about the 2011 Pagami Creek, Ely Fire that burned 93,000 acres that was started by drought/lightning. All of the MN wildfires in drought years have been started from things you would expect: sparks from trains, campfires, small brush fires, lightning and cigarettes.

As I sit here writing this I spun over to google just to check on the stupid humans. Sure enough, there’s a fire on the DNR website that burned 400 acres about 100 miles from my current town, cause: human. I just sit shaking my head. It just takes a “special” someone to go out and (“not” think) and play with fire when the winds are blowin’.

The 2017 western wildfire season has been unprecedented in terms of large, long-duration fires. As of Sept. 15, the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) reports a total of nearly 49,500 wildfires this summer with almost 8.4 million acres burned. I wonder how much of that was, cause: human. Yes, I realize a lot of it could be started by lightning or sparks from, well, anything. Realistically though, humans just live too close together and don’t have enough space between their homes and their stuff and fire-fuel. In a drought there is “fuel” everywhere. Our homes are just too close together and flames just jump from one roof to another in a chain effect like a cartoon image of an animated flame-thrower just grinning from ear to ear telling his mom, “look ma, no hands,” as the flames are effortlessly jumping from house to house in a giddy little dance.

It just makes me smolder inside as we continue to encroach on more wilderness to build more housing complexes without thinking ahead about fire season. Contractors, construction builders, and city planners should take these things into consideration prior to building. People will just keep moving into these area of housing as long as we keeping building them. It will take education, as always, to make people understand how to keep your home fire safe. A large buffer around your home between your home and your outside stuff and any wilderness “fuel” and the next home is necessary. We can’t just keep on building houses within arms reach of each other. The high loss of life will just keep continuing until we learn our lessons.

Yes, Nature will be nature and continues on through fire and renews itself. Stuff can be replaced. Even homes can be replaced. I just think the 7 billion people on this planet could use what’s between our ears to think more often, educate better, and maybe figure out how to continue our own species without taking out the others on all those acres. I don’t know the answers. I just know, cause: human, makes me smolder.