It occurs to me (woefully slow, I know) that maybe I should ask those so inclined to offer up a quiet prayer, or to Think Good Thoughts, that the many hats that have now begun to be sent out to Congress might receive a warm reception at their end points.  We’ve done and are doing our part in the cause of civility and respectful speech in the public sphere; from our hearts to our hands to God’s along the way, to, hopefully, the staffers’ and recipients’ willing ones as they open those packages.

Let them know it’s coming. Give them the happy anticipation. State our cause and our hopes upfront.

Meantime, the answer to the earlier blog question is, Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland gets the Malabrigo hat to match Parker’s, with my thanks for his work restoring the Chesapeake Bay, his hat done in the colors of the Bay.

Part of me will always belong to my home state. Whose beaches, mind you, know which end of the day the sun is supposed to come by for a visit. And with ponies! Don’t forget the ponies!

As I write the hat count is at 243.

By the sweet challah pattern on thy brow shalt thou greet thy braid all the days of thy life.

I was looking at the spreadsheet this evening for Warm Hats Not Hot Heads and was dismayed to find that nobody had signed up for Jackie Speier.

Jackie Speier is a hero to me. Until her speech, I had no idea Congress was trying to criminalize a procedure that not only is used on abortions but also when a woman is miscarrying a long-wanted and hoped-for child, as happened in her case, in order to protect her health so that no infection or massive scarring sets in that would keep her from being able to conceive in the future.

Wait. You mean the–wait–I had a miscarriage at nearly four months! And they want doctors not to know how to take care of women who *want* to have their children?! Wherever one may stand on abortion, those complications are what mine told me were a possibility if things were left to fester unattended. My loved, wanted baby had already passed away out of this life, just not out of me.

Speier was shot and left for dead while trying to help rescue her boss’s constituents during the Jim Jones/Guyana massacre. And when she spoke up back when she was in the state legislature about just what these men here were talking about banning, medically, back then too, and what she had endured with the loss of a baby she and her husband had tried so hard to have, one responded with, “Jim Jones should have finished the job.”

Wow.

That, in the commission of a crime, would have qualified as an enhancement under the hate speech laws.

She did manage to get pregnant again; she was expecting when her husband was killed by a driver who had no brakes and thought he could make it to work anyway. She’s been raising her children as a widow. She has persevered.

Speier represents the folks in San Bruno and has been holding PG&E’s feet to the fire more than anyone else. When they say that no, they didn’t know there were any welding flaws in the pipeline that blew up–there were 150 just in that section–and then say with a straight face that there couldn’t possibly be any more anywhere, she tells them, I don’t believe you. Do the work you must do to make these lines safe. Lives are at stake.

That same pipeline runs about 500 feet or less from my house, between two gas stations. Go Jackie go.

If ever there was someone I wanted to stand with, hat in hand, pressing Congress for accountability for their words and respectfulness towards one another’s life experiences in all things, she wins.

I have a lovely, soft yarn that was bought at a store I think in her district. I’m knitting it for her as fast as I can.