I don’t know how to cope with it other than to write it out. Feel free to skip if you need to for your own sake. It’s been so much.

I was not going to watch the video. Which quickly became videos, because so many Minnesotans have turned out in the bitterest cold to bear witness with their friends and their phones.

But my friends are there and they are experiencing this madness in person, and so in the end I did.

A woman found herself somehow a little too far away from others and the ICE predators went after her. They sprayed her in the face and as she bent over in agony, they pounced, pulling her downwards to beat her.

The white tall male ICU nurse from the VA had been recording but that quickly became not enough for him and he went to her aid, moving as if to first tend to her stricken face and then trying to pull them off her.

The last decision in his life was to defend the innocent from harm no matter what they might do to him for it.

ICE pulled them apart and pushed him to his knees, they bashed his head with tear gas canisters, then spotted what he had a permit for. One reached down into the scrum and walked away with it–how ’bout them jack-booted government thugs some claim their 2A rights are all about–and then, with him disarmed and on the ground and never having threatened them in any way other than with the truth-telling of his phone, they shot him in the back. And again. And again. And again. And again.

All this started with electing a man who rapes children who resurrected the South’s pre-Civil War Slave Patrols against all non-whites.

Now the dementors he’s let loose are fighting anyone who won’t surrender their every right as an American, especially against anyone who by showing compassion shows them who *they* are so they respond with murderous fury.

The state sued to have the scene be preserved for investigation. ICE defied them.

First they came for… goes the poem.

Maybe, said my sweet husband a few days ago, trying hard to find any way to make any sense of the ongoing horror of all this, maybe all this will be what finally gets America to turn away from her racism for good.

One of the former owners of Purlescence, my favorite yarn store during its ten years, lives in the Minneapolis area now, as does her ex. He teaches at one of the local schools.

He posted that he is riding the afternoon school bus to the end of its route now in order to make sure every child on it makes it home. He said it’s not just fear that something could happen, it’s reality–kids have been snatched there by ICE between the bus and their front doors and as a white man and a teacher and just plain a decent human being he felt heavily the responsibility to do whatever he can to protect those kids and to spare their parents the horror of them disappearing for the color of their skin.

DHS is circulating a memo to its agents falsely stating that ICE have absolute immunity and that anyone who interferes with them in any way is committing a felony. Who decides what is interfering? They do. Ergo, you’re a felon and going to jail. American or not.

The NY Times broke down that claim: ICE are not cops and immunity was always qualified.

One agent was so horrified at Renee Good’s murder that they leaked the names and info on several thousand agents to an Irish relative living in the Netherlands. Who is not rushing to immediately publicize them but rather is checking each one out: do they still work for ICE? In what capacity? Nurses, daycare workers–leave them alone. Beating people up on the street? They want to verify that first.

Because good people have ethics.

Thankgsiving travel: a millionaire with a real answer to the required FAA cutbacks. Wow. Who knew that even that was designed to favor the oligarchs?

Edited to add Abigail Disney’s text in case the link doesn’t work:

“Private planes make up nearly 12% of all flights. Instead of grounding 10% of commercial flights at 40 major U.S. airports, why doesn’t the DOT ground 100% of private flights instead?

So good luck traveling in the coming days, unless you can afford to charter a plane! Because yet again, the Trump admin is prioritizing the interests of the ultra-wealthy at the expense of everyone else.”

Sean Dunn has been exonerated: the man who had twenty officers sent to arrest him after he threw the Subway salami foot-long (video) he’d just bought at a Border Patrol agent in order to deflect the goons, as he testified in court after they’d tried to charge him with felony assault. And it had worked! They ran after him!

He had been warning people in the neighborhood that the gay bar over there was hosting a latin night so, look out, Trump’s guys had come.

Note that he was arrested and released but then they decided they wanted to arrest him again. Don’t want those pesky onlookers. His attorney offered to have him surrender to the authorities but they refused to accept that surrender and those twenty men broke his door down instead. It’s more fun that way.

Jeanine Pirro at the Justice Department announced he’d been fired from his job there.

The officer who got sandwich-snipered said he’d felt it through his bulletproof vest. That he had mustard stains on his uniform and a piece of onion hanging off his radio antenna.

So scary.

Only problem is, the thing was still neatly wrapped up when it hit the ground and the video proved it. The BP guy had lied under oath.

The other problem is that one of the silly-in-order-to-make-a-point cliches of law school is the prosecutor who’s so good he can indict a ham sandwich–and here we are. Two grand juries had refused to indict the guy, though, so they’d had to make do with only a misdemeanor.

The jury thought the whole thing was ridiculous.

It was (and I am going to borrow freely from others’ comments here)

A salt with a breadly weapon.

BOGO at Subway’s when ICE shows up: one and Dunn!

Lettuce us celebrate that he got out of the pickle he was in. Now he can ketchup with the rest of his life.

Clearly, it doesn’t take years on the job to become a seasoned officer.

Hero goes free because charges were bologna.

When asked for her take on it, Pirro said, No condiment.

Jury foreman: Salami? Where’s the beef?

Trump’s Justice Department is out of hammunition; the defense is on a roll!

So what if he had a machine bun? Second condimentment rights!

If the sandwich doesn’t split you must acquit.

I’ll just add, I think the Pirrotechniques quite blew up in her face.

Writing this while awaiting our election results to start to post.

The doorbell rang this afternoon: a young woman doing some last minute canvassing for Proposition 50.

She was too young to remember the days when voters fervently wanted this stupid gerrymandering to be over with and, after years of trying, got a proposition on the ballot that neither party much wanted that set up an independent redistricting commission. Its members were required to be balanced between the parties.

But we did it and it passed. The districts finally made sense. We don’t have seats like what Georgia did, where Marjorie Taylor-Greene was certainly going to lose her first re-election bid so their legislature ran a rope down the cliff to swing it around in a town an hour south.

Today Schwarzenegger was claiming credit for that commission. No, sir. We did that.

So you would think Prop 50 would fail–but what is often skipped over in the national press is that this wasn’t imposed on us: the voters were being asked if the voters wanted to temporarily suspend our commission and adopt a map specifically in direct answer to Texas’s non-Census-year attempt to wipe out Democrat-held seats there. Right there in the official Voter’s Guide, the why of this, and what that new temporary map would be.  We got to choose the districts. Come the next Census, we would go back to our commission, or before, if we said so. We decide.

Texas having put a literal bounty on the heads of women fleeing its draconian laws, making no exceptions even for molar (turning into cancer instead of a fetus) or ectopic, there is no way we’re going to have them rule over us on a national level.

We already voted, I told the woman, but the smile on my face matched the hope in hers and I added, Absolutely, we voted for it, and thank you for doing this!

We had two other things on the ballot: the tax assessor’s office that was surprisingly important and a 5/8 cent sales tax to cover the Federal cutoffs to the hospitals to keep the smaller ones open and the larger ones fully functional.

I don’t like it much, he said last night as he filled in the Yes circle.

I don’t either, I said as I filled in mine, But we have to take care of the poor among us.

That was a given for both of us.

Now to go hit refresh on those California and local results… Sixteen minutes after the polls closed and they’ve already called it: 50 passed!

I grew up near the C&O Canal and always walk part of it whenever I’m back home. So historical footnotes on the subject tend to get my attention.

How is it that nobody ever taught us this one?

At the beginnings of the C&O and the Erie canals, and after traveling to Niagara Falls where he saw a ship run aground and all that had to be done about that, one bright young man foresaw the problem in the canals if the water should get too low in one section.

So he thought up a device to lift them. Someone made a model of it for him and he submitted it to the Patent Office, where it got approved.

The inventor?

Abraham Lincoln.

So many approval processes that had to be gone through, none of them done because he didn’t want to be told no. He wanted to punish the country for Saturday’s protests in the way he knew would hurt the most.

And so the wrecking ball arrived today. At the White House. OUR White House. The People’s House. Our beautiful national symbol of hope to the world. Smashed in and torn apart.

The 9/11 attackers couldn’t do that to us because we resisted well enough. But Donald did.

There are no words.

My first thought when I heard the news was to my friend who had been through this before and how it must feel for her to see this again. Her cat had suddenly taken ill and instead of going to services she had taken him to the vet on emergency, where he died in her arms, while, unknown to her…

Someone in my Zoom knitting group tonight asked, with others nodding, Didn’t they have security?

The frank answer could only be, Mormons haven’t personally been put through this before.

(Well, the then-governor of Missouri ordered all of us to be shot on sight because we were threatening to outvote the slaveholders which would toss out the Missouri Compromise and end slavery hopefully peacefully, but that’s been awhile.)

I mentioned that our own ward had once been picketed by a group looking to intimidate.

But they got our start time wrong and almost nobody was there. Then there was a sudden hard downpour of cold rain and who was there to even notice they were even there? They left.

Then the sun came out for everybody arriving for church in the hour after that.

If only…

Meantime, my retina and cataract surgeries are in the morning. I have heard about bubbles and head angles and one person lying in bed for a week and a week of not looking up and not lifting anything–there’s a maybe on all of that, it depends on the doctor and the specific procedure–and I have no real idea what the next few days are going to be like.

Curious. This Supreme Court just in effect nullified its own Citizens United ruling.

Because it ruled in a shadow docket case, meaning one for which there were no hearings, was not aired publicly, with a decision that does not even have their names signed to it to hold themselves accountable to the public–that the president can decide to withhold funds that Congress had decided on a bipartisan basis to spend.

In this case, on foreign aid.

One of my high school friends was laid off from her USAID job months ago and she could tell you many a story about just how effective a peacemaker we were in the world in helping people learn to farm and feed each other better and in establishing public schools where there had been none. She saw it. She lived it. We were perceived as Good Samaritans. The Anya apricots that I go on and on about how intensely flavored and juicy they are? That’s how that original seed ended up here: a farmer from California working on behalf of the State Department befriended people along the Silk Road, who offered him their best to show the world what they had and that not everything there was about war. The good that’s done when individuals help individuals across cultures and backgrounds goes both ways and USAID, with little publicity or public knowledge, is how it happens.

And every year for decades, Congress has voted from both sides to sustain those efforts.

Power of the purse? Separation of powers? Constitution? Voting as a representative of one’s constituents on the matter? Pffft, who needs that. Wiped away with the swipe of an anonymous pen.The president controls all. And you know the only thing this one cares about money is how much of it goes to him.

So, since they can pay for nothing and do nothing now no matter how they vote, why would anyone donate to the campaign of any member of Congress again? (Or at least, of those who are going along with this.)

Besides, there are so many of them. Why bother when there are only six to have to deal with on the Court who have shown that they can be bought off.

Last week I went in with Richard to his appointment with the wound care specialist.

The doctor barely made eye contact with him, and me not at all. He dealt with the problem at foot, competently so. All business, all seriousness.

He had a follow-up Tuesday this week and again I came in in case there was anything the doctor wanted to teach me about taking care of those injured toes, since he had changed the protocol a little and who knows if he might again.

This time, I was wearing Galina’s gerdan with the small beaded bird perched on a Ukrainian bandura, singing its heart out. (Wow, that article: there was a time when you could be shot by the Bolshevik Russians for being a Ukrainian playing one. No wonder Galina used that imagery!)

The doctor came in, nodded hello, and did a slight double take as he seemed to be taking in the heart of that bird for a moment. Something in him seemed to let go of I could only guess what, and he exhaled.

He talked to us. He made eye contact this time. He took off the bandaging. He saw that all the open wounds but one were now healed and that that one was making progress, and that was very gratifying to him: last week he had said this could still go either way (meaning he could still lose those toes), but now, six weeks in, he said with clear relief that we were finally getting there.

We don’t have collection plates nor fundraisers in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, he reminded us.

With the exception that the youth are allowed to have one activity every year to raise money for camp: locally, that’s at the church-owned campground up in the mountains that the kids put many volunteer hours into cleaning up after the CZU Complex fire burned the facilities down a few years ago. Most of those redwoods have begun to green out again, thank goodness.

They have really earned getting to go and to see the forest renew year by year after the devastation.

Last year there was a carwash.

Today was a party. Balloon animals for the little ones and showing them how to make them, cotton candy, come have fun.

We had baked goods by volunteers. Those, you paid for, one of two prices: Original, and Generous, trying to meet everybody’s budgets. First claim first served.

And a silent auction: a picture of the thing offered and a sign-up sheet to put your bid on. Dog walking by one of the teens, water your plants while you’re away. Lessons in various languages. A tour of Filoli Gardens.

Sue likes to knit socks and offered to knit a pair to fit.

I offered a Malabrigo Mecha hat.

The dad of the now-grown Eli, who used to take care of my mango tree when we were away and who loves the teal hat I knit his son, took one look at the blue twin to it and made sure that that was going to be his and made my day.

Someone wrote down $10 for Sue’s socks and probably thought they were being generous for a pair of socks.

She was going to have to bid a whole lot higher than that if she wanted those. After the huge expenses of this past week I hadn’t been going to spend a dime but I knew she wasn’t offering even the price of the yarn (unless it was a really good sale and/or old stash.) But how would she know that.

How about a different number to look at. After that it’s up to her (and hey, I would dearly love a pair from Sue’s hands.)

I got pulled away to family errands before I found out if I’d won but I was assured I would be emailed and could take care of it then if I did.

To quote the good doctor (as in Suess), Who sees who sew whose new socks, sir? You see Sue sew Sue’s new socks, sir!

Sue’s note said pick your size and color. I think forest green sounds good.

It’s one of those old family stories that it turns out not all our kids knew.

So for the record.

My grandfather was elected Senator in 1951 and served four terms. My grandparents became close friends with Prescott and Dottie Bush.

Grampa was in his 90s and retired for some time when one of his grandkids was going to make Eagle Scout and the proud parents asked if he might speak a bit there.

I have to give a speech! I have to give a speech! He fretted and worried about it; it had been awhile. He was a good writer himself but I imagine he missed having his Congressional staff to vet it for him after having been able to rely on their expertise for so long.

The stress got to him and suddenly he’d lost decades. A TIA? A stroke? Don’t know. He was hospitalized. (Later, the family would tell him it was okay, the Eagle ceremony was over, they were so sorry he’d missed it and that he did not have to give a speech. Grampa bounced back to being himself and was discharged. But on with the story.)

President George H.W. Bush, knowing how close his folks had been to them, called that hospital to offer his best wishes.

Grampa was gobsmacked by the outrageous swagger of the kid he remembered–what on earth did he think he was trying to pull on him!?–and exclaimed, EISENHOWER is President! He slammed down the phone.

The hospital switchboard cut in with an apologetic, I’m very sorry, Mr. President. There seems to be a problem with the connection.

He made himself a millionaire by the unsheathed swords of his words and today he died by the sword that he’d been okay with–for others.

I don’t care how hateful he got paid to be, shooting him was devastating to the entire country no matter any political party. We don’t want to be this. We don’t want his kids growing up without their daddy. We don’t want his wife to be the widow she now is. We absolutely don’t want more of this violence in response; for those with the memories, one 1960s is enough to have lived through.

Were there retaliatory threats after the shootings of the Democratic Minnesota lawmakers? There were not. There was profound grief.

And today that’s the whole of it. Profound grief.

Where I differed with the one killed is that I believe it IS the guns, stupid, having lived through an age when gun culture was very very different from what it is now and knowing we can have regulations and that those have, in the past, been fine by the then-Supreme Court. And Congress.

The guy they initially held because he said he was confessing to it? That was a Republican who claimed he’d shot the Republican. A relative of mine who ran for office there said that every time there was any official Republican anything in that district, that man showed up and tried to get attention for being there while clearly not being all there.

But the real crazy guy was whoever out there thought that choosing to be the absolute worst of America would somehow bring forth the best in America.

The news from Texas has been heartrending. Historian Heather Cox Richardson says the National Weather Service did publish flash flood warnings, but the head of Kerr County said the warning systems that would have conveyed that locally were not in place because they had decided that cost too much.

Man.

My husband got his ham radio license after 24 hours of not being able to reach his aunt’s family very close to the epicenter of the big 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (they were okay but their house had stories to tell) and from there he did emergency communications volunteering with the city, the county, and the Red Cross.

I said in agony over the lost campers in Texas, Don’t they have reverse-911 there!

And then went, Wait. Do they?

Which got him reminiscing. He knew all the people who started that. It began with an idea: the city had topography maps and it had 24 fax machines. What if… So they kluged up a system where if there was a risk of flooding, the homes in the lowest elevations could get a warning phone call by having a switch that disconnected all incoming faxes, because that’s not the priority in an emergency, and took over the faxes’ phone lines to call out to those homes with a pre-recorded message.

Twenty-four numbers at a time. That’s all.

But then you have the computer call 24 more, and 24 more…

That concept got tested pretty quickly thereafter: we had our 100 year flood in 1998. There were kids boogie-boarding down our street. There was the friend who saw his koi from his back yard swim past his feet in the front yard to go live happily ever after in the Bay (good luck). The elementary school principal hauled a canoe out and got himself in the paper paddling across the playground just for fun but there really wasn’t much water there. Might have drowned a few gophers, though.

There was one notable fire department rescue operation where someone thought his big pickup could easily do that puddle and tried to drive through the steep railroad underpass. Oops.

So anyway. Instantly it became: how do we make it so we can reach everybody? In time? Can we do it all at once?

Well let’s see: the Feds had passed a law requiring the phone companies to provide the phone number to every address for 911 calls so that the first responders could know where to go no matter how much information the caller was able to give them. Early cell phones weren’t covered. The Feds made them cover them, too.

That database existed. How about if you invert it?

You could draw a circle on the map and say, everything in this boundary, or you could say everybody in the city.

And thus they created the reverse-911 system that lets you know there’s an emergency.

The surrounding cities thought this was great and copied us.

The county thought this was great and copied us.

And it took off from there.

I thought by now everybody had it. I cannot for the life of me imagine why on earth any municipality wouldn’t.

There’s a book club being put together by a friend who moved here in the last year.

She announced what the first book was going to be, so of course I ran and looked it up.

Twenty-four hours later and here it is: “By the Second Spring: seven lives and one year of the war in Ukraine,” by an American who had grown up there and has a PhD in history. You know I couldn’t pass that one up.

The first thing I did was to look for a list of chapters, hoping for names, but right after the title page there it was, a list of them. I knew there wouldn’t be someone I knew–but you just never know… (Thinking in particular of the gerdan artist who trusted me with photos of the shelling damage to her home inside and out and whose town has now been evacuated.)

I didn’t want to start reading yet. Not at this time of day. I didn’t want nightmares tonight; I wanted time after the first dose of the book to sift through my emotions and make peace with what I would encounter inside.

And yet.

I opened to a random page.

There were two mug shots and a poem.

Quoted in part:

Oh human, I cannot believe your life is

just about looking into my cell?

you stand in my heavy sorrow, my aching heart is filled with your misfortune

because you are just twice as sad as I am.

I have myself, and you are just a shadow

I am the good, you are the dust, decay

we are both prisoners…

I closed the book. Tomorrow I start.