SMILING ON: 2nd Tuesday of April 2018

The weather gods are smiling on Mendocino because the weather is just beautiful up here. So spectacularly gorgeous. And to think she worried about cold etc etc etc

Anyhoo, self’s favorite parking spot was not taken, she couldn’t believe her incredible luck. She sailed her 98 Altima into the space like, you know, she owned it.

SMILE SMILE SMILE

Also, she decided to treat herself to a cup of Mendosa’s clam chowder, MORE REASONS TO SMILE:

Harvest at Mendosa’s, a Mendocino mainstay on Lansing Street

On the way up (the trip took her five hours, including two stops to keep awake and five pull-overs on 128 to let faster vehicles pass and one ten-minute wait due to roadwork), she stopped by Big John’s Market in Healdsburg. A group was selling cookies for a dollar. Women got the 100% cookies, and men got the 80% cookies, good way to make the point that women should get EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK. It’s really troubling that, in this day and age, women still get only 80% of what men get, simply because of their gender.

Outside Big John’s Market Today

The cookies were dee-lish! Put a big smile on self’s face, for sure!

More WordPress SMILES:

• Blog of Hammad Rais
• Wandering for Money

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

 

 

Why Is This Happening To Us? Conservatives Call the Parkland Survivors “Hitler Youth”

Here is one explanation, which self found in a back issue of The New Yorker.

It was the lead essay in Talk of the Town: The New Yorker, 28 August 2017

“The Divider”

. . .  speeding toward yet another airport last November (2016), Obama seemed like a weary man who harbored a burning seed of apprehension. “We’ve seen this coming,” he said. “Donald Trump is not an outlier; he is a culmination, a logical conclusion of the rhetoric and tactics of the Republican Party for the past ten, fifteen, twenty years . . . “

For half a century, in fact, the leaders of the GOP have fanned the lingering embers of racial resentment in the United States. Through shrewd political calculation and rhetoric, from Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy” to the latest charges of voter fraud in majority African-American districts, doing so has paid off at the ballot box.

And make no mistake, Trump is planning to do it again in 2020 — he’s planning to call upon that mass base of Americans who turned Charlottesville, Virginia into such a spectacle. And the only ones, it seems, who can stop him are . . . Parkland Survivors.

As I’ve told anyone who will listen: The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High are people who had eight years with Obama. They know what a good president is. Thank God.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

 

Favorite Place 5: Courthouse Square, Redwood City, California

Saturday, 24 March 2018

During the March For Our Lives

The Blue Wave is coming.

Vote this November.

Stay tuned.

Quote of the Day: San Francisco Chronicle, 17 August 2017

After the deadly white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend, people have taken to social media to identify or “dox” the participants in order to shame them. The criticism doesn’t just land at the feet of participants, but often extends to their employers, leading to lost jobs over the exposure. Some people see this practice as violating one’s freedom of speech. Yes, this country is based on freedom of speech, but not freedom of consequences. It’s not a slippery slope. People are marching to intimidate and oppress other Americans.

There’s a real difference between disagreeing over politics and hate speech. No one is obligated to walk on eggshells for those who call for oppression. If you’re concerned with privacy, don’t show up to a public protest spouting racism — and then be surprised if people want to identify you.

— Spencer Whitney, Assistant Editor, San Francisco Chronicle

Betsy DeVos, Have a Breakdown

Because, at this point, I do question your mental health.

Smiley face when confronted by angry Black students.

Absolutely the right response. Absolutely.

How dare you, woman have you no shame. Race issues obviously mean nothing to you. Nothing.

Then if you can’t understand, be afraid.

Afraid of your own poor judgment.

So I look at the video again. There you are: Keep on smiling! Adjust those podium mikes! Look helplessly at the Black University President by your side! (A completely idiotic and inappropriate response, let me tell ya: “Help me! I’m a vulnerable white woman! In a sea of angry Blacks!” Thus prompting racists of all stripes, those in plain view as well as those merely lurking, to go: “Look at what those people are doing to this poor, helpless white lady!” I wish never to see another such performance in my lifetime)

Betsy, you are doing so much damage to education, every day that you continue in your position. Because you’re just sleepwalking. You know it, the President knows it, the GOP knows it.

To the graduating class of Bethune-Cookman: I salute you. You will go on to do great things.

Link.

Emily Doe: Changing the Conversation

You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me, and that’s why we’re here today . . .  Future reference, if you are confused about whether a girl can consent, see if she can speak an entire sentence.

— Emily Doe to her rapist, Brock Turner, quoted in Glamour, December 2016

From Emily Doe:

I had forensic evidence, sober unbiased witnesses, a slurred voice mail, police at the scene. I had everything, and I was still told it was not a slam dunk. I thought, if this is what having it good looks like, what other hells are survivors living? I’m barely getting through this but I am being told I’m the lucky one, some sort of VIP. It was like being checked into a hotel room for a year with stained sheets, rancid water, and a bucket with an attendant saying, No, this is great! Most rooms don’t even have a bucket.

After the trial I was relieved, thinking the hardest part was over, and all that was left was the sentencing. I was excited to finally be given a chance to read my statement and declare, I am here. I am not that floppy thing you found behind the garbage, speaking melted words. I am here, I can stand upright, I can speak clearly, I’ve been listening and am painfully aware of all the hurt you’ve been trying to justify.

I yelled half of my statement. So when it was quickly announced that he’d be receiving six months, I was struck silent.

After Turner was convicted of rape last spring, a judge “sentenced him to just six months, saying anything more would have a severe impact on him.” — Cindi Leive, in Glamour magazine

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

WSJ, Monday, 26 September 2016: Women’s Rights

In WSJ World News, a piece by Margherita Stancati: “Saudis Press King Over Women’s Rights”

Saudis sent telegrams to the king on Sunday pressing the monarchy to end male guardianship rules for women, the culmination of an unprecedented monthlong effort to abolish the system.

By Sunday evening, activists estimated hundreds of people had sent a copy of the same message to the royal court asking King Salman to cancel regulations that give men the final say on many important decisions in the lives of female relatives.

It is a change for which women’s rights activists in the ultraconservative kingdom have long campaigned. The telegrams are one of several grassroots initiatives that have sprung up since July, when an Arabic hashtag that translated to “Saudi women want to abolish the guardianship system” first went viral on Twitter in the oil-rich Gulf nation.

Saudi Arabia’s ban on women driving has been criticized worldwide.

 

Reading for the Day: The Economist Article on the Killing of Trayvon Martin

From the 31 March 2012 issue of The Economist:

A shooting becomes an excuse for political point-scoring

(Highlights from the article)

Opening Sentence:  It took a month or so, but the killing of Trayvon Martin, a teenager who was shot in Florida in late February, has developed into a predictable political circus.

Leading Personalities:

• Rush Limbaugh, Al Sharpton and The New Black Panther Party:  Limbaugh is a “shrill right-wing radio host,” Sharpton is “equally excitable” and The New Black Panther Party is “a confrontational protest group.”

 Maybe you didn’t know that:

• An online petition calling for the arrest of the gunman, George Zimmerman, has attracted over 2 million signatures.
• LeBron James wrote “RIP Trayvon Martin” on his shoe before a game on Mar. 23.
• The entire Miami Heat team “posed in hooded sweatshirts like the one Mr. Martin was wearing when Mr. Zimmerman decided to follow him . . . “
• The shooting took place in “a gated community.”
• Mr. Zimmerman “had recently started a neighbourhood watch scheme and he frequently called the police to report everything from potholes to people he thought might be involved in a spate of burglaries.”
• At the time of his killing, Mr. Martin “had been walking back to the house of his father’s girlfriend in the gated community, having bought some sweets and iced tea at a nearby corner store.”
• The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People . . .  “has complained that the authorities neglected the case because Mr. Martin was black.”
• The President was quoted as saying:  “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

Schizoid Post: Listening to New American Media/ SNL Host Anne Hathaway

This is a fascinating website, dear blog readers.

Check out the video, “Oakland Reacts to Mesherle Sentencing.”

Just the faces of the people being interviewed, and their words …

Backstory:  Johannes Mesherle, an Oakland police officer, shot an unarmed African American man in the BART Fruitvale station on New Year’s Eve 2009.

*     *    *

After the intensity of that video, self refreshes on Saturday Night Live.  Host tonight is Anne Hathaway.  Opening montage featured Rachel Maddow with guests Nancy Pelosi (a hilarious Kristen Wiig), John Boehner, and Charlie Rangel (hilarious Kenan Thompson).  Anne’s monologue was the funniest in a long time.  Opening monologue was followed by skit on Transportation Security Administration (Which reminded self that Sully Sullenberger had just said on-air that during a recent pat-down search his wife was “touched in sensitive places” — the horror!), and then by another hilarious skit featuring Miley Cyrus (Who was that comedienne who did spot-on mimicking of Miley’s voice???) interviewing Anne Hathaway as Katie Holmes.

Self was absolutely in stitches for the last 10 or 15 minutes.

OMG!  Now there is a skit on Prince William and Kate Middleton announcing their engagement!  Featuring Andy Samberg and Anne Hathaway!  Stop, SNL, you’re killing me!  Self loves the way Andy Samberg keeps addressing the Queen as “GRA-ma-mah” !

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

The Amazon.com Reviews of Dicken’s BLEAK HOUSE

There’s some extremely fine writing about this book on Amazon.com, dear blog readers.

Here’s one self found particularly helpful (posted by a reader in Cambridge, UK):

Dickens was already a household name when he wrote it.  He’d already cast his net far and wide over an increasingly eager audience (Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby had all garnered great praise for him, and Martin Chuzzlewit’s extensive American episode —  after his trip there in 1842 —  had helped his popularity no end in the U.S.)  He was world famous.  He had also just begun editing the weekly journal Household Words, a publication he hoped would help highlight the social injustices of the age. Bleak House is confident and furiously angry in many respects addressing, as it does, much of the same agenda that Household Words railed against week in and week out.

(And, since it is a very long review, self will move on)

Here’s an excerpt from another review, this one by a reader in Chicago:

It’s dark, it’s absurd, it’s mysterious, and so complicated that one character actually spontaneously combusts.  It took me nearly six weeks to work my way through this book, and keeping track of the characters (many of whom have more than one name) was a serious challenge, but the book absolutely (if you’ll pardon the pun) blew me away.

And, finally, the last quote, from a reader in Boston:

As G. K. Chesterton said, when Dickens wrote this book, he had grown up . . .  One of the most amusing subplots involves various women involved in charity.  As the character Mr. Jarndyce says, there are two kinds of people who do charitable work.  Some accomplish a great deal, and make very little noise, and some make a great deal of noise, and accomplish nothing.

Yesterday, self was on p. 19.  Today, she is on p. 35.  Since the book is 900 pages long, and she’s reading at the rate of about 20 pages a day, that means it will probably take her over a month (and probably the whole of her trip to the Philippines) to finish it.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.