I thought this was brilliant so I wanted to pass it on. Conversation sparked by E. Jean Carroll’s success at holding her attacker accountable in a court of law.

The primary election season is coming up faster than we’d rather. So–and this is coming from a young and female point of view in a discussion that began for her with some friends in college–consider the candidates.

You’re on an elevator. It has no security cameras inside nor out. Someone else comes on. Do you instantly get off that elevator and wait for another one, or do you feel fine because there’s no need to have there be anyone else seeing much less recording what this guy’s going to do while you’re alone in a space together where nobody can intervene for you? Where nobody knows?

Now, if you’d want off that elevator car because you can’t trust that person with your personal space and body, why would you think he would have more empathy for the public at large than what you knew he didn’t have for the actual human being right in front of him? What kinds of choices would he make after being elected? After gaining the power he’d sought?

And then we talked about some of the political candidates we wouldn’t vote for but wouldn’t cry if they did get elected because we know they’re decent human beings with good intent.

Trustworthy.

It has been in the news that a far-right Federalist Society judge was asked to speak at Stanford and was shouted down by the crowd. Many, including me, are disappointed in those students and think they could have handled it better.

So it was interesting to read these two comments in the NY Times, with #1 providing context I’ve seen nowhere else and #2 being exactly what I think they should have done. (Hey! The Mighty Moo! WJ was built next to one of the last dairy farms in Montgomery County, Maryland, sold ice cream to the kids during lunch break, but later became the new headquarters of Marriott International while the cow mascot lived on. The resident alumna can brag all day about what a great high school it is.)

Quote 1: “I’m a Stanford law student and feel it’s important to share some missing context here. Judge Duncan did not enter the room with the intention to give a lecture. He taunted people. He recorded a video as he walked in of the people in the room, his phone inches from students’ faces, seemingly to force a reaction to escalate the situation. When students engaged peacefully, such as by asking him pointed questions, he mocked them. (Two examples: one student prefaced a question by sharing that it was a personal question to her, as a survivor of sexual assault, to which Judge Duncan told her “nice story”, and moved on. Another student asked about another one of his decisions that also impacted minority rights and, rather than respond to the question, Judge Duncan told them to read his judicial opinion and moved on.) He called students “appalling idiots”, among other names. Meanwhile, trucks paid for by some unidentified groups have been circulating around campus with students’ names and alleged quotes from the event printed on the side. These trucks were even driven outside the homes of parents of four separate students. Not to mention the threats they’ve been getting. Many many students engaged much more civilly with Judge Duncan than he engaged with them. And yet they’re the ones being targeted.”

(Me: Yeah, I’d like to hear a lot more reporting on that aspect, if it was as described here. I believe doxxing is illegal in California and threatening certainly is.)

Quote 2: “In 1969 I was a student at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland. Members of the American Nazi Party were allowed to visit the school and present their point of view that the Holocaust had not happened. The event was held after school in the cafeteria, and expectations for students who chose to attend were made absolutely clear to us by the principal. We were to be respectful at all times; we were not to interrupt the speakers; anything we had to say could be said in the Q & A afterwards. Those of us who attended prepared ourselves extremely well and did as we had been directed. During the presentation we took notes, sat on our hands, kept our mouths shut, and did not interrupt the speakers in any way. Then afterwards in the Q & A we absolutely shredded them. When they left, they knew they had been soundly trounced by a bunch of high school history geeks. It was a very valuable experience to me, and a lesson that ideas, no matter how vile, should be argued, defended, and defeated in public.”

Now: just imagine if those Stanford students had kept their silence and instead simply recorded what Duncan did and how he treated them and had waited for the Q&A afterward to speak up. Who then would be being excoriated nationwide?

He wouldn’t have been able to twist a thing.

One of the companies affected by the bank failure: Etsy. 95 million buyers, 7.5 million sellers, per the Washington Post. The Feds have declared that tomorrow all depositors are to have access to their funds after all, at no cost to taxpayers. Such a relief.

And to change the subject: the one peach that needs a pollinator is going to do just fine this year, rain willing. I love how similar and yet how different the flowers are. The Indian Free, with the darker pink interior, produces peaches with a dark red center.

Colourmart.com’s silk ribbon leaped onto my needles.

A quick glance across the initial articles and even the pictures in the Washington Post after Biden’s State of the Union speech were–man, it was something. Did they watch the same thing I did? All the times he smiled: he was on top of his game, he totally knew it, the crowd knew it, and he was relishing the moment.

That State of the Union was a speech for the ages. Delivered with perfect timing, again and again. He had Kevin McCarthy of all people joining in giving him a standing ovation, not at first but as he got into it it happened again and again.

Marjory Taylor Greene, bless her heart (hah!), heckled him, following the example of Joe Wilson, who promptly got voted out after his shout of, “You lie!” at a President for telling the truth.

Biden stopped right there and shot back, I didn’t say bill I said proposal. You know that was the proposal from the Republicans, to sunset Medicare and Social Security. Alright (he grins.) Are you saying you’re FOR Social Security and Medicare? (He sweeps his arm around the room, inviting the camera to follow.) Everybody who’s for keeping Social Security and Medicare permanently, stand!

And nearly the whole room stood as one, clapping wildly, with the camera lingering on the crowd. The usual MAGAts were giving the stink eye like Cancun Cruz, but honey don’t you pay him no never mind.

Biden introduced the parents of Tyre Nichols and grieved with them.

Then he talked about the people in law enforcement with integrity, and that’s most of them, he said, with honor, who protect the public and whose families just want them to be able to come home to them at the end of the day.

He paused.

And so does everybody else. We need to reform policing to better serve all of us.

McCarthy stood up for that one.

Again and again he called out members of Congress from both sides and thanked them for bills passed and described the good that has happened because they did. He thanked them for their bipartisanship and invited them to do more.

He said, We’re the only country in the world founded on an IDEA.

Democracy is what keeps us together! Democracy is not a partisan issue, it’s an AMERICAN issue.

And then to the best of my memory it was, G_d bless the United States of America, thank you, and G_d bless all of us. Good night!

Pescadero is a bit south of there. Want to watch a road go, Nope, I’m out of here, guys, ‘bye, in 59 seconds? I believe that’s highway 84 in the backdrop, looking just like it did the last time I drove it.

Foggy, cool, quiet, farmland… Like the much-missed Phipps Bean Ranch there, where they grew every unusual type of bean you ever or never heard of, including what looked like a lima bean to fit in your palm rather than between your fingers.

That family lost their farm to the long drought and they were renters; our rains that took Stage Road in the video link came years too late. The little farm-animal petting zoo my kids liked is gone. Last I saw, their land had simply returned to nature.

Up Highway 1, the next town is San Gregorio, then Half Moon Bay, and friends of ours decided to brave the commute and build their dream house there with views of the ocean. Beautiful spot. Not crowded. Buy your fish straight off the boat from the captain, come for the famous pumpkin weigh-off in October. The flower farms. The nurseries.

The little yarn store in the little downtown that had Holz and Stein rosewood knitting needles when nobody else did anymore. The manufacturer’s discontinuance was for good reason, I found out later: some varieties of rosewood were on the CITES list and sellers had to be able to show provenance of the wood. Now all varieties are simply banned.

The road home again. The commute goes through open space and redwoods as it goes over the hills, and those woods alternately run dark and deep mid-day to blinding you with sudden patches of sun above the road and it has a high rate of crossover accidents. Our friends bought a Volvo as life insurance along with that house.

My heart went straight to them at this afternoon’s news–and of course to everyone there no matter who they are. They’ll all know someone who knew someone who had a gun suddenly aimed at them today, it’s a small town.

The updates suggest it was all fellow farmworkers.

Which just means that those with the least means to deal with the fallout are the ones who will most have to.

Why we aren’t doing better by all of us, I can’t for the life of me understand.

Katie Porter is running for Senate ’24! I’ll finally get to vote for her!

Meantime, I had to make a quick run to the post office: please keep my mail out of the rain and all that.

I pulled off the road at a small gravel turnoff by the bike path along the marsh looking over towards the Bay, because I had never seen water in most of this. See that dark wooden fence in the foreground there? (Click for a bigger view.) The bottom of it is underwater. One might not want to go birding down that trail today.

A diagnosed, demonstrably mentally ill man who has put a gun to both his ex’s head and his own?

Or the thoughtful, compassionate, accomplished successor to Martin Luther King, Jr?

I’m not sure why it was even a question. But thank you Georgia for doing right by all of us today. It feels like they’ve got the best of Sam Nunn back.

We did it. They just called Nevada. 50 in the Senate. Done.

All those people in Georgia who told reporters that yes, Walker was a terrible candidate but they were going to vote for him anyway for the sake of Republican control of the Senate–

–but now that that’s not happening, they can vote in the runoff for a person they want to be able to proudly tell their grandkids years from now that they had. Because Warnock is a profoundly decent human being who puts people first, and we will only learn more about that as these next six years happen.

So very kind of you to take such good care of those conflicted Georgians, Nevada. Thank you.

I was trying to see if Colorado had had the good sense to kick out their Rep who failed her GED exam multiple times and who gave guided tours of the lower-floor hallways to some of the Jan. 6ers the day before the attack on the Capitol.

I keep waiting for the justice system to hold all the insurrectionists ineligible for public office per Amendment 14 of this thing we call the Constitution. Only one has been so far–but it’s a start.

She’s down by 64 votes with 1% left to count.

But what that search led me to that I hadn’t heard about was that Colorado had a ballot measure (with a 10 point lead tonight) to tax the richest to pay for school lunches for all kids. Across the board. So that getting a free lunch wouldn’t be a stigma to be avoided, so that kids wouldn’t go hungry for the sake of peer pressure, but instead they and everybody else would simply pick up their tray and go sit with their friends to eat. Food would just be food, and much of it would be locally produced, helping out Colorado farmers as well.

I remember how surprised I was in high school when a friend mentioned she had to be at school early. I asked why?

She didn’t want the word to get out, but, she was eligible for a free breakfast as well as lunch.

I didn’t even know they did breakfasts.

She never told me any details about the boats and the guns and the escape and the ones who didn’t make it and having to learn a new language in a place where only a few classmates looked like her. She simply showed up one day, along with a few others, studied hard and learned fast and was friends with everyone who showed the least bit of kindness, grateful to be welcomed and safe and out of the war.

I was so proud of Maryland for doing right by the most vulnerable.

California just voted down a tax on the richest to pay for wildfire protection and electric charging stations after the governor said the rich would just leave.

But wait. If all the states asked those who’ve benefited the most from our political system to contribute a more just share towards maintaining it, where exactly would they all go?

After all, (looking at Boebert) the US has some of the cheapest politicians campaign contributions can buy.

For now.

The politicians are playing musical chairs and racing around those last few unclaimed seats but the music’s about to stop.

And it looks for this moment like, welcome to the new Congress, pretty much the same as the old Congress.

There isn’t a word for relieved+exasperated, but there should be. Exasperieved?

Tuesday we the voters decide whom the faces of our states will be before the rest of the country:  whom we choose and thus who *we* are.

Destruction of the social good? Of the election process? Overt fascism like my father put his life on the line to fight against to the death if need be?

How many people cheering on those committed to ending Medicare and Social Security are thinking this through? Why do the grandmothers need to starve in the streets so that (name any oligarch) can become even more twisted in their substitution of money and power for human empathy and connection?

Why do women have to be afraid of pregnancy for fear that a miscarriage will land them in jail? This has already happened. But only to women who aren’t white.

Do we want a Beto O’Rourke who drove to every county in Texas to meet and listen to people he knew would never vote for him, but whose voices he wanted to hear in hopes that he could represent them well? Who tried to make the gravity of the power of the Senate a personal responsibility both for him and for those whom he met up with? Who made democracy feel real?

Or Herschel Walker, who held a gun to his ex-wife’s head and threatened to kill her? Who paid for his girlfriend’s abortion and tried to coerce a second but would throw you in jail if you had one? Is there anybody that thinks that man would put anybody else’s anything before himself?

More just. More united. More committed to the ideals of democracy. To supporting and cheering on one another as our fellow Americans. United we can stay standing.

The Ukrainians have gotten a taste of what it’s like to have people in power with integrity who care passionately about them and about their country, and they want to preserve that with everything they’ve got.

We should, too, and all we have to wield is a ballot.

We can do this.

VOTE.

We did it. We delivered our ballots at City Hall. It felt so deeply satisfying to know we’d done our part. The rain let up for the time it took to walk from the car and back before setting in again as if cheering us on.

Now we wait.

The mail came.

Rarely does a political flier at election season bother me enough to make me go, WHAAAAAT?

He claims our House Representative, a Democrat well known locally because she’s worked hard these many years at serving her constituents, is in cahoots with Kevin McCarthy to destroy Medicare.  And to back himself up he references his Mercury News op-ed, offering a link to–notice, not at the Merc but his website. Data harvesting R Us.

I’m on her mailing list. I know for a fact that if she’d had her way we’d have Medicare for all by now, but that she’s also a pragmatist who was thrilled to see Obamacare pass. She wrote part of it!

I searched every way I could think of on the Merc’s site, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, but clearly there is no such op-ed there. Even just searching his name and the word Medicare–zero results. He’s lying again.

So having run against her before and lost, now he thinks he just wasn’t dishonest enough? Wow wow and wow.

I have friends who got audited year after year, who got told their quarterly tax payments hadn’t arrived even though they had the stamped registered mail proving they had and pictures of themselves handing the envelopes to the postal clerks. An offhand comment made it clear that one agent took great exception to the (completely innocuous) name of one of them, and they finally in desperation called our Rep’s office.

She promptly slapped an investigation on the local IRS office.

And suddenly everything was resolved and they were told that yes, in fact, they had indeed done everything correctly and on time. Then it happened again the next year. All they had to do was call our Rep and the problem vanished before the investigation even started that time. There was never a problem again.

And nobody knew about it except my very grateful friends, our Rep, and her staff. (And me, because the wife spilled the story one day.) Just part of the job.

Can you imagine, say, Ms. Jewish (sic) Space Lasers bothering with the likes of you if there’s not a camera involved?

We have to pay attention in this election. We have to do our homework. We *have* to vote!

The guy is right about one thing: McCarthy has said outright that he wants to do away with Medicare and Social Security and that if the House goes Republican he will do everything he can to make that happen. Not to expand healthcare to all but to yank it away from all. The rich can live but the rest of you, die, suckers, and women, especially. That’s. What. That. Means.

Roe Roe Roe your vote. And remember that every office matters.

An official letter was read to the congregation today: a reminder that the Church is officially neutral on all things political, but asking that members consider the words and teachings and example of Jesus Himself: to seek for those who try to live by His message of love and empathy towards all others, be that office-seeker of whatever or no religion they may.

(And then get out there and do right by your fellow citizens and VOTE.)

I will add here that, Utah notwithstanding, the actual stance of the Mormon Church on abortion is that although it is highly discouraged in cases that are not medically necessary, it is ultimately rightfully only the choice of the woman, her doctor, and her God.

Anne gets the thanks for this one. A note from her got me looking: Ukraine is of course known for its sunflowers and as a large producer of sunflower oil.

What happens when you grow lots and lots of big bright yellow flowers?

You get lots and lots of honeybees.

I had no idea that Ukraine produces 10% of the world’s honey, although of course they do; it’s just that most of it never makes it over the ocean to here.

In the US, Congress has allowed corporations to adulterate both olive oil and honey and to sell deliberately mislabeled blends as the real thing. If you’re allergic to corn like a nephew of mine, that’s kind of a big deal on both counts. Can we please vote in people who care about people?

Which is why it’s wonderful to find a company that tracks its sources down to the individual farmers and verifies that what they’re passing on to their customers is nothing but true pure honey. (Re the olive oil: California’s law requiring Californian-grown organic extra virgin olive oil to only be that has been grandfathered in. That one you can trust.)

So. Anne found a jar of Ukrainian sunflower honey from a company that not only does that source tracing but is donating 100% of profits for it to World Food Kitchen and to Medical Teams International’s efforts on behalf of Ukrainian refugees in Moldova.

Even with the FedEx shipping, that sixpack of bottles comes to $12.50 per two-pound jar. The local stuff I’ve been buying is a dollar an ounce.

Do you have friends who need Ukrainian sunflowers in a jar for Christmas? Some of mine suddenly do. And it’s already here on our side of the ocean. While the money heads over there where it’s so badly needed.