CT is in a bad drought.
It's threatened to rain all day, but hasn't. A few misty, moisty moments, but no real rain.
Thunderstorms are forecast for tonight.
But we don't need storms.
We need three or four days of gentle, steady rain.
Lord, I wish it would rain.
Several communities around the state have put severe restrictions on water usage.
Not like with Noah, of course, but a week of rainy days would help a lot.
(all opinions here are mine and mine alone)
What the pandemic has one to me is make me think about dying.
Not just because I'm over 70 and have had asthma and have both a cardiologist and a cancer doctor, but because I think about dying occasionally anyway.
Scientists have said, recently, that people who die know they are dead for a few minuets before their brain shuts down.
I don't know how I feel about that.
I'm not sure I want to know I'm dead for some moments before I'm really dead.
I want to be cremated. And I was looking at my feet and legs beneath my shorts a few minutes ago, imagining them turning into ashes.
Bleak thoughts, I know, but they are my thoughts and I must be honest about them.
If the president wins re-election, dying wouldn't be the worst thing.
That's how strongly I believe that Biden/Harris must win.
Truly.
Death would not be the worst thing compared to four more years of this....
(all opinions here are mine and mine alone.)
OK, I'll admit it. I root for the New York Yankees, the L.A. Lakers and the Chicago Bears.
It's the Yankees because when my father was in New York, waiting to ship out to WWII, someone gave him a ticket to a Dodgers/Yankees world series game and he decided to root for whichever team won the game.
That was the Yankees. So I grew up in southern West Virginia being a Yankee fan.
I love the Lakers because Jerry West, from East Bank, WV who led the WVU Mountaineers to their only trip to the NCAA finals, played his entire pro career with the Lakers and became part of the management after that.
I love the Bears because as a kid I admired their uniforms--Black helmets and jerseys and white pants at home; Black helmets, white jerseys and black pants on the road.
Anyway, all my teams are doing great!
The Bears were behind to the Falcons 27-10 going into the 4th quarter today and I stopped watching. I shouldn't have. They scored three touchdowns in the 4th to win 31-27!
The Yankees are in the MLB playoffs, not as high ranked as I wish, but they had lots of injuries and all those guys are back for the post-season.
The Lakers won the Western Division 4-1 and will play either the Miami Heat or the Boston Celtics in the finals. I hoped it would be the Celtics for old time's sake, but they're down in the Eastern Division and might not make it.
For those of you with no interest in sports, I apologize for this post....
Ever so often I feel called to remind people who may be new to this blog, what the name means.
Read the book of Jonah--my favorite book of the Bible, except maybe for Luke's Gospel. I love Jonah because his journey is a lot like mine and because, of all Biblical texts, it ends un-resolved, with Jonah just sitting on a hillside pondering his life.
Like the whale that swallowed Jonah, my whale was a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to divinity school. It took me away from a Ph.d. at the University of Virginia or a place in the graduate writing program in Iowa.
It also saved me from being drafted for Viet Nam. The only deferment in 1969 was to study in Seminary.
I was eventually spit up--as Jonah was spit up in Nineveh--on the Episcopal priesthood...somewhere I never wanted to be.
Jonah, in God's name, saves the people of Nineveh. But when that's over, he sits on a hillside asking God why he brought him half-way around the world to save a city God could have saved on God's own.
God causes a Castor Oil Tree to grow over Jonah to give him shade, then sends a worm the next day to kill the tree.
Jonah is outraged about God killing his tree.
But God tells him, "Jonah, you are upset about a tree you did not create, but not about all the people of Nineveh that would have died if you hadn't come to save them?"
And it ends with Jonah, still angry, pondering that.
I ponder still. I've loved my life as a priest, but I never wanted to live it.
Just like Jonah, I sit and ponder things.
That's why my pondering is called "Under the Castor Oil Tree".
Me and Jonah, pondering on....
You want her as your Supreme Court Justice?
Good luck if you want the affordable care act and its inclusion of preexisting conditions.
Good luck if you want Roe V. Wade to protect women's right to choose.
Good luck if you believe in clean air and clean water and all Environmental issues.
Good luck if you GLBTQ protection under the law.
Good luck if you expect the High Court to continue to provide for racial and gender equality.
Good luck if you want anything to get better in the next decade.
Good luck if you thought Republicans would honor their pledges not to appoint a Supreme Court Justice in an election year.
Good luck if you honored Ruth Baden Ginsberg's term in any way.
Good luck.
You're welcome to her.
(all opinions here are mine and mine alone.)
The president (who will not be named here) is trying to undermine the election.
His constant criticism of mail-in-ballots (though he votes by mail) is meant to undermine voter confidence. The truth is this: there is no 'fraud' that has been found in voting by mail ever, anywhere.
His constant echoing of 'rigged', referring to the election is to set the stage for his not accepting a peaceful transfer of power should Biden win. Which he has said out loud and in public!
News out of the White House reveals he will ask legislators in Red States to 'rig' the electors should he lose those states.
All this is unprecedented in American history and strikes at the basis of our constitution and democracy.
Nothing like this has ever happened.
It is beyond disgrace. Beyond imagining.
His rush to fill RGB's seat on the Supreme court is to hopefully make the court agree with him that the election was faulty should he lose.
No person in this country, no citizen of this democracy should not be outraged by what he's doing.
Vote!!!!
We must end this nightmare.
Too much is at stake.
Lots of things are up with me today.
RBG's lying in state in the Supreme Court.
(Where does the term 'lying in state' come from? I'll google it later.)
Chief Justice Roberts' loving remarks. The woman rabbi who did prayers. The thousand of people--most of all mothers' with their daughters--who came to mourn an icon of feminism.
The nonsense in Washington about replacing her before the election. And the lack of Republican Senators to remember what they said nine months before the 2016 election about Obama's election year appointment--9 months, not 45 days.
No Supreme court appointment after July was ever approved. Between January and July, 8 were nominated, only Merick Garland was not approved!!!
Mark Kelly's campaign for Senate in Arizona, where he could be in place on November 4 since Martha McSally was 'appointed' to John McClain's job.
McClain's wife endorsing Biden.
Waiting for my Biden/Harris bumper stickers. (We got a yard sign, but got a letter telling us the bumper stickers were delayed! How hard can it be to print bumper stickers?)
Wearing a mask has become normal to me.
A NetFlix show called "Away" about a trip to Mars, is amazing. I've watched 3 episodes--all of them great.
I'm almost finished with a thousand page novel about Cormoran Strike called Troubled Blood, it, like "Away" is incredible. It's written, under a pen name, by J.K. Rowling, who wrote all the Hogwarts novels. She's been in some controversy about transgendered people--but the woman CAN WRITE!!!
I'm still mourning RBG and not yet ready to truly attack the president and Senate.
But I will.
I will.
