For the Birds

A Downy Woodpecker, followed by a Cardinal, Goldfinch, and what I think is a young Rufous Sided Towhee.

 

Return to a Place of Godliness?

                                                                             

                                                                             

The following is from a NY times story:

 Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told a woman posing as a Catholic conservative last week that compromise in America between the left and right might be impossible and then agreed with the view that the nation should return to a place of godliness.

“One side or the other is going to win,” Justice Alito told the woman, Lauren Windsor, at an exclusive gala at the Supreme Court. “There can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised."

Ms. Windsor pressed Justice Alito further. “I think that the solution really is like winning the moral argument,” she told him . . . “Like, people in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that, to return our country to a place of godliness.”

“I agree with you, I agree with you,” he responded.

... Chief Justice Roberts, who was also secretly recorded at the same event ... pushed back against Ms. Windsor’s assertion that the court had an obligation to lead the country on a more “moral path.”

“Would you want me to be in charge of putting the nation on a more moral path?” the chief justice said. “That’s for people we elect. That’s not for lawyers.”

Ms. Windsor persevered ... “I believe that the founders were godly, like were Christians, and I think that we live in a Christian nation and that our Supreme Court should be guiding us in that path.”

Chief Justice Roberts quickly answered, “I don’t know if that’s true.”

He added: “I don’t know that we live in a Christian nation. I know a lot of Jewish and Muslim friends who would say maybe not, and it’s not our job to do that.”

Well, thank god (in whom I don't believe) for Justice Roberts.

I find this push from the right for a Christian nation completely terrifying. Particularly as this brand of Christianity has long since departed from the loving tenets of the one they say they worship.

 Christianity and organized religion lost me a long time ago as I learned about the history of the Crusades, the various Protestant/ Catholic bloody conflicts, the witch-burning, the Othering of various groups for their beliefs. It goes on today, in India, as Hindus increasingly target Muslims, in Muslim countries that target other religions and other versions of their preferred take on Islam. And in Gaza, as the nation founded as a result of Nazi genocide, embraces genocide as a final solution to the Palestinian problem.

I could weep.

But when religion is being wielded as a blunt instrument, when 'true believers' assign a messianic role to an individual as petty, vindictive, and increasingly loony as the felon/candidate, like Mrs. Alito, I find myself wanting to raise a flag-- but my flag would call for a wall between church (temple, synagogue, mosque) and state. 

And maybe some more flags: Tax the Churches! No Public Money for Religious Education aka Grooming. 

I could probably think of more. But we don't have a flagpole and, even if we did, no one could see it. 

So, consider this post, my flag. 

No Words

 

Hamlet and the Pirates (and Me Josie) at the Library

On Friday, I took the babies to the library to see a performance.  I am careful to buckle them in.

An actor was doing a story about a guy named Hamlet who is trying to find out who killed his father. (His father is a ghost now.) But then Hamlet got mixed up with some pirates. 

There were lots of kids there, including my friends Sylvia and Regan. (Meema was sitting in a chair back with the grownups and she had the babies.) We sat and watched and laughed and then . . .

...Hamlet needed our help! I was one of the kids he picked to be dragons. I do not have stage fright. When I was little, I did, but last summer I went to theater camp and learned not to have stage fright.

It was fun being a dragon. But one very lucky girl got to sword fight with Hamlet. (They were blow-up swords, so no one got hurt.)

When the play was over and everybody clapped, it was time to go to the playground! We had a picnic and I played with some kids and then went inside and played checkers with a girl, and I picked out nine books to take home. Our library is the best!

 

Looking East--Giving Thanks

Almost fifty years here and still not tired of the view.

 

June Means Daylilies

 

                                                                                    

Dress-Up Day

On Wednesday, I brought up four fancy skirts to Meema and Grumpy's so I could dress up. That is a pink purse on my head, not a helmet. It makes a good hat.

My dogs came up too for doggy daycare. I shared my pancakes.

In the room, I got out lots of my stuff and did a circus act with tightrope and trapeze for the babies.

I always get out lots of stuff but at the end of the day, I put it all away. Meema will tell you that is true. (Yes, it is--with no fusing either.)

I brushed Corycat. She is a little bit afraid of me but she likes being brushed. Angeline hides under the bed.

Bailey loves for me to brush her. She likes being pretty.

I had chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs for lunch. There has to be a lot of ketchup. Also there were carrots and blueberries and strawberries.

After lunch Meema made a shortbread crust and spread cream cheese on it. Then I decorated it with strawberries and blueberries like the flag. I took one flag home and Meema and Grumpy kept one for their dessert.

I put my tiara on Grumpy so he could be a princess too.

It was a fun day!

 

Japanese Iris

They always come as a nice finale to iris season, blooming as they do after the Bearded and Siberian irises have given up.

Years ago, a friend of mine visited Japan and was taken iris-viewing--walking on wooden pathways across shallow ponds filled with irises. What bliss that would be!

(For a quick virtual visit, go HERE.)

 

 

The Opening of Tomato Galette Season

This seems like such a summer dish to me. And there were some nice Beefsteak tomatoes on sale at the grocery... 

I love this recipe for the crust--it's quickly made in the food processer and can wait several days in the refrigerator till needed. And it's crispy and crackly, reminiscent of puff pastry.

The crust was made and waiting as I prepared the tomatoes for the filling, only to find I had no kalamata olives. So I substituted a mix of fancy olives we'd been given and left out the feta--saving it for the spinach and cucumber salad.

It was delicious, even with the changes. If you'd like to give a galette a go, you can find the original recipe on an earlier post HERE

 

At the (Goldfish) Pool

 

More About CASTE--the Book and the Reality

                                                                                              

The predictable knee-jerk reactions of so many true believers to the former's guy's conviction on 34 counts (kangaroo court, all political, Jesus was convicted too, sending money) saddens me.  

For a long time, the fact that this vulgar, manipulative, lying individual, a person I wouldn't let in my house on a bet, had so many avid supporters baffled me. But now, having finished reading Isabel Wilkerson's excellent analysis of the effects of caste on our country, at least I begin to understand.

                                                         

It's like LBJ famously said--

“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” 

Wilkerson addresses the question that has baffled me and so many progressives: why do so many working-class white people v0te against their own best interests (health care, social services, job creation etc.)?

Her answer: "...the people voting this way were, in fact, voting their interests. Maintaining the caste system as it always had been in their interest."

Like LBJ said.

I remember when Obama was elected, the reaction of a (white)woman I knew slightly to the Obama children in the White House, was a somewhat incoherent lament 'I think of my little granddaughters . . ." The unspoken subtext, I later realized, was that her granddaughters were more deserving of such an honor, because of their whiteness.

Wilkerson's book traces the long sad history of the effects of caste in India, Nazi Germany, and our own "land of the free."

It seems to be almost inherent in human nature to want somebody to look down on, somebody to be the scapegoat, somebody to do the nasty, unpleasant jobs that accompany life.

Wilkerson's thorough documentation (the book is about half reference notes) hammers home the operation of caste in our society. The enslaved were freed, technically, only to fall under the bondage of Jim Crow laws and more subtle forms of discrimination which still continue. The dominant caste was so successful at keeping the Black population in a subservient role, that the architects of Nazism actually studied the South for tips. (Terror and violence worked well, they found.)

The myriad examples of the physical brutality of the caste system are not always easy to read. Equally shocking to me was the fact that Black Americans were routinely denied so many of the benefits--Social Security, insurance, loans, education--available to the poorest white, thus perpetuating the class divide.

I found so much in this book that I either didn't know or hadn't quite understood. Highly recommended.

Flora and Fauna

 

Rabbit, Rabbit