Dear (Local) Sirs

To the Madison County Board of Commissioners:

I would like to understand why you feel it necessary to take control of the current Board of Health. At present we have a Health Department to be proud of and willing, volunteer board members with medical backgrounds. 

What makes you think you can improve on this? Have you not enough to oversee already? Your stated reasons regarding liability simply do not ring true. 

Yes, this is a very local issue but it seems to me to be part and parcel of GOP overreach and GOP disdain for qualifications other than a fervent worship of their Dear Leader.

Our local Health Department is excellent, receiving high ratings. What is behind this projected power grab? Will a politicized BOH deny vaccines and refuse to treat LGBTQ patients?  What might they change about Family Planning? 

There are petitions to sign and folks are encouraged to make their feeling known to the commissioners. There will be a meeting on July 8 at which the public will have a chance to be heard. 

An excellent article HERE.

 

Summer Solstice

                                                            

     I consider my life well spent, watching the sun in its yearlong creep back and forth across the morning horizon. Today it's at the far northern end of its invisible tether and will begin its stately progress south.

May we all find peace in these troubled times.

Defending Women

                                                                             

 

Every day brings more outrageous decrees from Dear Leader as the so-called party of small government extends its reach ever farther. The following article is from The Guardian (a quite reliable source.) 

VA hospitals remove politics and marital status from guidelines protecting patients from discrimination

Department of Veterans Affairs says the changes come in response to a Trump executive order ‘defending women’

Aaron Glantz

Wed 18 Jun 2025 15.55 EDT

The Department of Veterans Affairs has imposed new guidelines on VA hospitals nationwide that remove language that explicitly prohibited doctors from discriminating against patients based on their political beliefs or marital status.

The new rules, obtained by the Guardian, also apply to psychologists, dentists and a host of other occupations. They have already gone into effect in at least some VA medical centers.

Under federal law, eligible veterans must be given hospital care and services, and the revised VA hospital rules still instruct medical staff that they cannot discriminate against veterans on the basis of race, color, religion and sex. But language within VA hospital bylaws requiring healthcare professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated from these bylaws, raising questions about whether individual workers could now be free to decline to care for patients based on personal characteristics not expressly protected by federal law.

Explicit protections for VA doctors and other medical staff based on their marital status, political party affiliation or union activity have also been removed, documents reviewed by the Guardian show.

Trump LA protest response risks turning US military into political force, veterans warn

Read more

The changes also affect chiropractors, certified nurse practitioners, optometrists, podiatrists, licensed clinical social workers and speech therapists.

In making the changes, VA officials cite Donald Trump’s 30 January executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”. The primary purpose of the executive order was to strip most government protections from transgender people. The VA has since ceased providing most gender-affirming care and forbidden a long list of words, including “gender affirming” and “transgender”, from clinical settings.

Somehow, I don't feel safer . . .

Josie Does a Blog Post

 Hi  this is Josie  speaking.   I am making a doll  house  for  my Chelsea doll . here it is so far .

                                                         
there is a bed, some shelves and a rug. this is my Chelsea doll. 

                                                         

she has a mom and a sister but I did not bring them today.

💖💖💖💖💜💜💜                      🐭🐭🐭🐭🐭🐭🐭🐭🐭🐭🐭

 I am reading this book.

                                                

I love  fancy Nancy. 

This is all Josie. She took the pictures and did the keyboarding. Meema helped her spell: speaking, Chelsea, sisters, and shelves.

Looking East--around 6 AM and 7 PM

I'd hoped to catch the actual sunrise but the mist blocked everything within minutes of this shot.

       

 And then, in the evening . . .

                                                     

Sexual Cannibalism . . .in Spiders

Early morning and I found what appeared to be a paralyzed  or dead spider on the mat by the door out to the deck. And there on the door above me was the biggest Wolf Spider I've ever seen--the size of my hand with fingers outstretched. 

I carried the mat outside and got a closer look. Yep, definitely deceased. And eviscerated.

By the time I got my camera, the giant spider had disappeared and has not come out of hiding. 

I hypothesized that perhaps this was a situation like preying mantises and the male spider had paid for his fun. A little online research confirmed that this is a definite possibility. Read it for yourself HERE.

She did a thorough job.

 

Up Close Daylilies

 

Flag Day

                                                                     

The Stars and Stripes used to evoke in me a feeling of pride, of community, of a Norman Rockwell sort of well-being.

Not any more. Our wannabe dictator surrounds himself with flags and his more rabid supporters fly them from their giant trucks.

"When fascism come to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross."

(Attributed to Sinclair Lewis)

Maybe we could add "and enjoying a costly parade of military equipment while cutting aid to veterans (aka 'losers.')

Cons and Criminals

No, I'm not talking about the current administration. (Though they certainly deserve the title.) I'm talking about the delightful, wacky, precisely drawn characters that inhabit Elmore Leonard's novels.

These cons and criminals generally turn out to be pretty good guys--and capable of turning a terrific phrase or two. "Terry's answer to any problem was based on the Serenity Prayer. If you can handle it, do it. If you can't, f**k it." Or "I'm an ordained minister of the Spiritualist Assembly of Waco, Texas, though I started out doing nails." Or "The publishing business isn't about writing, Jack, it's about selling books."

Leonard's plots are as devious as his characters and every bit as much fun. His novels are a great escape from the sordid day to day criminality at work in DC. Highly recommended.

 

Wild Daylilies

 Early June and the wild daylilies are ablaze along roadsides and branches. I planted his particular clomp during our early years here and they always make me smile when they begin to open.

Back when we were living in the barn, I experimented with tempura daylily flowers--delicious and slightly oniony tasting but a lot of trouble--and we also added the buds to stir fry--pretty good but, as I recall, a tad slimy.

Half a Century Ago

                                                                                  

I suddenly remembered that it was fifty years ago in early June that we packed all our belongings into a U-Haul for the move from Florida to the mountains and the mountain farm we'd bought two years before.

We said goodbye to Odessa and the little house (already sold) that John had built on Lake Juanita. 

We were a caravan. John was in the truck; behind him Mark, pulling a trailer; then Mark's mother, our friend Betty (she was recently divorced and looking to move also;) then came Vicki and 3 year-old Ethan; than John's sister Fay and her son Andrew, also 3.

The poster on Mark's trailer says "Damn Everything But The Circus." and somehow it seemed appropriate for our adventure.

Our house had been begun and dried in the previous summer, thanks  to the work of John and Mark with some other occasional help.  Dried in but far from ready to move in.

We set up camp in two barns. It was amazingly pleasant.

r

And fifty years later, John and I are still enjoying the rocking chairs and a glass of wine.

 

Layers

 

Some Questions, Dear Sir

Dear Senator Tillis, Senator Budd, and Representative Edwards,

Is this our USA? A place where unidentified, masked, armed, and armored thugs snatch people away from court dates, worksites, family gatherings, churches schools? And then, usually without due process, these detainees are whisked away to points unknown.

Who are the terrorists here? And why are ICE wearing masks and no ID?

And the recent power move by the regime of sending troops into California "to quell a rebellion" is right out of a dictator's handbook. 

The fact this extraordinary act is at the whim of the president--the same one who pardoned the Jan. 6 rioters who attacked law enforcement and damaged government property while trying to disrupt the lawful business of the government--underscores the massive hypocrisy at work in DC.

What are you enabling? When will you take action against the terrible chaos of this regime? Where are your morals? Who has the bravery to stand against this wannabe dictator?

Why are you silent?