When Butterflies Die

A haiku: I don't know the lifespan of a butterfly.
But when I see one dead
I feel sad.

My apartment complex is on a very busy street in Fort Worth, TX. There is a mall about three blocks from where I live. It has been there since I was in high school, and it has gone through some major renovations over the years; adding some stores, removing some, added food shops, etc. The last three years it has added free standing restaurants to the perimeter, all chain restaurants, though not some of the worst ones. They are adding a new one now, and since I don't know the rules about naming names in blogs, I'll just say that it's a place that specializes in hamburgers. Big, over-stuffed, (juicy or greasy, depending on one's point of view about burgers) burgers. Since we have lived here there have been two other big name burger chains that went up in the same area. Mind you, I'm not talking fast food burgers. I'm talking about burgers where the sandwich itself is about eight dollars or more, let alone a whole combo meal price! My question is...why? Does America really eat that many hamburgers? Can any one of these places really show us anything different? My brother waxed poetic about one of the places, and so I tried it, and it really didn't do all that for me. I guess I've reached a point where a burger is a burger. So...why?

My state, Texas has been in the national news spotlight a lot lately. Not for particularly good reasons-our state government is set to severely limit a woman's reproductive rights, and to close all but a few of the places in which a woman can get a legal, safe abortion. Our governor, Rick Perry, who has held that office longer than anyone in history, crosses between joke and jerk in the national mind. But he's a hero to a majority of Texans. The people I talk to in Texas can't stand him, but we are a minority here. Even with a huge national hoorah over one of our female state legislators, Wendy Davis, who filibustered this bill for eleven hours, and is now considering a run for governor in 2014, in a poll conducted last week, Gov.Perry wins by 14 points. The thing is, when someone asks why Perry doesn't recognize the unpopularity of his position nationwide, the answer is that governors don't have to. And Perry knows this very, very well. He tried a run for president last year, and made a serious fool of himself. But often governors do well as presidential candidates. This can possibly be boiled down to having run a state, or having been an "executive." Senators don't often do well as presidential candidates; they must compromise in order to "get things done," and so it is easy to paint them as "flip-floppers," anathema for a president. But governors must make big decisions on big things, and even if they are wrong, they did what they believed is right...in the minds of those who would package them as national candidates. So if Rick Perry (I'm working so hard to be respectful here, and not use the nicknames that my tiny cadre of liberal Texans use for him) is eyeing another presidential run, he is doing exactly what often works for former governors; standing by his "principles." However odious those principles may be.

Speaking of the big issue that has thrust Texas into the national spotlight, reproductive rights, it occurred to me this week that all these white, male governors who are signing these laws restricting women's freedoms keep using terminology that says things like "protecting women and children." Have forty years of advances since the women's movement of the early 70's gone unnoticed by men? Women get more college degrees than men, and in many cases are the primary breadwinners in the household-not only when they are single parents, but sometimes when they are married. We don't need their "protection." We certainly don't need this kind of protection. Reproductive choice should be the decision of the one whose life is forever altered by carrying a child and raising it. I'm not pro-abortion-but I am anti-a bunch of middle aged, white men telling me what my decision must be about whether to have a child or not. I am anti-seeing women killed by unsafe, illegal procedures, as has been the case throughout history until the Roe vs Wade case legalized abortion in 1973. I work in a doctor's office, and we bend ourselves into pretzels to protect patient privacy; privacy was the clause that the Supreme Court used to affirm that a woman's medical choices are between herself and her doctor. Why do we now, suddenly, need men to "take care" of us again?

Speaking of SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States,) after their ruling two weeks ago regarding the voting rights act, I can't help but wonder if they ever regret decisions they make. And if one of them did regret a vote, would he or she admit it publicly? What they did was strike down the provision of the voting rights act saying that states with a history of discrimination must get federal approval before making changes in voting laws, such as voter ID laws, moving polling places, etc. Within two hours of this ruling, my Great State of Texas showed its gratitude by initiating voter ID laws, and moving to redistrict (or gerrymander, depending on one's point of view) so that minority representation would be reduced. In many ways, my beloved state makes a mockery of social evolution and "Justice for All." Now, I'm sure that Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas would never, ever, ever admit to mistakes. But would a more humble justice, with nothing to prove to white America, perhaps say, "You know, looking back now, I should have voted differently."

Lastly today, in this mostly political post, I must ask about the farm bill. This is the bill that our congress could not bring itself to pass a few weeks ago, because they want so badly to reduce food stamps for the poor, which are attached to said bill. The farm bill has not failed in decades, and this is something that voters on both sides should look at carefully, as it includes what can only be characterized as corporate welfare because of the subsidies included for giant agri-businesses. I lived for over eight years in a farm state, in a heavily farmed region of the state. My husband worked for an ECG there, and he had considerable contact with some of the farmers who used seed from that company. These are large family farmers, and all of them had crop insurance. When they had a bad year, they could file claims on that insurance. Do they need government subsidies on top of that? Even many family farmers are under the thumbs of agri-business anymore, and many of these subsidies go to those giant corporate farm interests; this is not new. I remember stories in news magazines from the 80's regarding corporate welfare for agri-businesses, especially corn, soy and sugar cane. The republican complaint against the farm bill had to do with cutting food assistance to families, not cutting subsidies to farmers and their corporate overlords. Why, why, why does corporate welfare continue to be okay with republicans, and some help in buying food for families is so loathsome to them? Are there people gaming the system for food stamps? Yes. Does the fact that the small minority of cheaters mean that a program that helps people who work put food on the table should be cut? I daresay, the answer is no. If a few cheaters mean that a program that helps so many should be cut, what will we do with bank and oil subsidies? And what if the taxpayers could get all that corporate welfare money back? Can you say "budget surplus?" I knew you could!!!

Beware the Ides of Mercury in Retrograde

Last week it seemed that I and many people close to me were having a collective bad day. One of my dearest friends, who is pagan, and very in tune with universal movements attributed it to a phenomenon called Mercury in Retrograde, during which the planet Mercury looks as if it is going backward. She says this phenomenon throws the world out of whack, which is just as good an explanation as any that I could come up with. But then, just before Mercury got his act together, this Monday, came the Ides of March, which all of us who read Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" know can also be a pretty bad day. So, I thought I would dedicate this post to her. Hopefully we are spinning in the right direction for now, and things are looking up.

I'd also like to include an addendum to the conversation we were having about cruelty free cosmetics. I contacted a company whose products I have used for years, but they are no longer on PETA's "good list" because they are now owned by a giant conglomerate the does use animal testing. They directed me to a statement from the ECG (Evil Corporate Giant) in which they stated that they completely understood consumer concern about animal testing, and said they are working hard to eliminate animal testing from their products. They also said, however, that their primary concern is that their customers not have allergic reactions to any of their products or product ingredients. It dawned on me as I read the statement that we, the consumer, have probably asked for this with our litigious behavior. They don't want to be sued by a customer who has a reaction to their products. Now, I would be happy to volunteer to test products as long as treatment was paid for, but I'm not sure how many consumers would be with me on that. So, on the one hand, we can't seem to escape animal testing-either directly or indirectly, so it would be easy to just say, "Well, screw it, I'll buy whatever..." And on the other hand, we all want risk free results. So we may be stuck for now. We'll have to keep an eye on what happens in the EU now that their ban on animal testing is on.

Now, I have a question about the laws of physics. Wouldn't it be logical that larger items would displace smaller items in closed spaces? So, why is it that in my purse, the smaller things, such as my wallet, always float straight to the bottom, and the larger things, such as my notebook computer go to the top?

Spring is upon us now, and it seems that eggs are in everything. So, since everyone seems to love deviled eggs, and their are typically a dozen eggs deviled for any given event, why does my deviled egg plate only have egg shaped spaces for eight eggs? There is empty space in the middle, where I usually put the other four eggs. But does that make sense?

And can anyone tell my why these words were printed on a bag of ice: "Ice. Tasteless. Odorless." Really? Is there any other kind of ice?

I've also wondered recently if some parents ever stop and think about the names they are giving their babies. Or am I the only one who feels an inappropriate desire to giggle when I meet someone called "Randy." Do the parents of LeRoy and Regina really think their children are royal? And poor Patsy-do they know they are sentencing her to a life as a fall guy?

Why do people keep falling for some ridiculous beauty myths? Such as if you drink from a straw it will make your lips wrinkle. How silly is that!!! Do we suppose that people who don't wrinkle never drank from a straw? And did you know that your pillow case wrinkles will also cause actual wrinkles to one day appear on your face? DNA and sun damage cause wrinkles. Or can we never escape from the warning, "Your face is gonna freeze like that?!"

I hope this question doesn't offend, but I am quite curious about nail salons. It seems that nearly all of them are owned by Asian women, and all the staffs are Asian women. The owners, in my (admittedly) limited experience are Asian American, and the nail techs are immigrants. Are there people in Viet Nam telling ladies that if they come to America they will have a guaranteed job, and will be able to live the American dream? I don't mean this in any racist way-but Asian owned salons and techs are pervasive, and these women work very hard, long hours. I just can't help wondering how this tradition or movement got started.

Now if I might ask a political question: Is a lack of understanding of language the reason that the filibuster is being abused so dreadfully now? About two weeks ago Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky filibustered a cabinet nominee. Now, I have to say that I find Senator Paul to be a rather loathsome character, and I think he's wrong on just about everything. But I do agree that our use of drones is a huge problem. The question about language though, came to me because the Honorable Senator's actions were referred to as a "talking filibuster." A filibuster is supposed to involve talking. That the threat of a filibuster is now called a filibuster, and is being used to hijack democracy rather than protect the minority party from being silenced by the majority. Perhaps if the language were respected this process would not be so onerous.

Lastly, there is a movement afoot to remove reproductive choice from women, despite the fact that this question was determined by the Supreme Court of the United States forty years ago. Now there are some states that are trying to pass laws that claim life begins at conception, and therefore, any abortion is murder, even if a fetus is not viable. There have been very emotional campaigns that insist fetuses feel pain, that they are, in essence, human at conception.  Now, in the United States, perhaps because of the Judeo/Christian traditions in our country, little boys have been circumcised shortly after birth. Many doctors tell parents that the pain is minimal and harmless. I see a problem here...if zygotes are considered living human beings, why would anyone claim that they can't feel pain? I have been told the same thing about fish-that they don't have nervous systems and don't feel pain. But the last time I was fishing, I caught the first and only fish that day. The fish was attached to a tether and was doing its best to escape. I don't know if it was the hook in its jaw that tied it to a stake in the shallows that was causing the poor thing pain, but I could see that it felt fear, and I believe pain, though I can't prove the pain part. But doctors  are basically telling parents that their sons feel no more than a fish, and yet women are told that their fetuses are human and feeling pain from conception? Do they really think women are not smart enough to see the discrepancy here?

Some Questions For A New Year

I haven't posted in a couple of weeks, and since then we've begun the year 2013. The last post dealt with a very emotional topic, the arming of teachers to prevent school shootings, and I didn't want to throw my usual tongue-in-cheek attitude "out there" when the Sandy Hook shootings were still so fresh. Not that the conversation around arming the whole country decreasing gun violence is over. The gun crazies, and I know that all gun owners are not crazy, but the mics are going into the faces of the complete gun psychos right now, and I'm fairly glad. These guys are absolutely confirming the point for the people who are applying some rational thought to this question. But I digress...there have been some things I observed recently that made me ask myself questions. Maybe you have answers, maybe not. Maybe you find these things amusing, as I do. If so I'd love your comments!!!

I realized that the economy is really bad when I saw an Infinity SUV delivering pizzas on the day I did my Christmas shopping. Yup. This person had one of those magnetized pizza signs on the top of the vehicle. I'm guessing it costs more to gas that sucker up than the guy will make in tips in a day. Or could it have been a repo that someone like me, strictly working class, got for a steal and is using for a part time job?

Could we make elocution lessons mandatory in scholarship athletes? I'm not talking about "coach speak," as in "We went out there and didn't execute. We just didn't get the job done." Or, "The momentum was on our side, and the other team just played better." That's just meaningless drivel that sports fans expect. But when a sportscaster puts a mic in a player's face, and I hear marble-mouthed, repetition of the phrase, "You know..." (I don't know! If I did know, your comments would be unnecessary!) it annoys the hell out of me and makes me want to slap the coach for letting these guys speak to the public. We've tamped down the over use of the word "like." Can we also learn to speak eloquently again? No, that's too much for our pop culture. Could we make it a priority to be understood, not repeat phrases, and not sound like a moron?

For Thanksgiving I was asked to make my pumpkin cheesecake. When I got to the grocery store, the graham cracker crumbs were gone, so I bought a couple of those ready made graham cracker pie crusts, that I was planning to crumble up and make my crust the way I normally do. Now, my recipe for graham cracker cheesecake crust uses graham cracker crumbs, a tiny bit of flour, butter and some cinnamon. The store-bought pie crust contains twelve ingredients, including hydrogenated oil, which is a known contributor to heart disease. Sugar AND high fructose corn syrup. It also lists leavening and corn starch. What for? I don't want it rising underneath my cheesecake, which, I admit, isn't something one who is concerned about heart disease should be eating anyway. I'm just questioning the purpose of all those other ingredients. And this is from the company that advertises its cookies are made by elves, in hollow trees? I think not.

Speaking of my frequent rants against advertising, I have another one, but let's start with a definition:

Gluten (from Latin gluten, "glue") is a protein composite found in foods processed from wheat and related grain species, including barley and rye. Gluten gives elasticity to dough, helping it rise and keep its shape and often gives the final product a chewy texture.

Some people have a digestive problem that makes them highly sensitive to gluten. Not many people have this, but it has become the "disease of the week" for those in the advertising game. "How do you know?" you may ask. Well, as in the definition above, gluten is made from wheat and flour products. Not meat. But I was buying groceries and saw a package of SMOKED SAUSAGE that was labeled as "gluten free." Well, hoodathunk!!!?

There is a sitcom that uses the term "cougar" for an older woman dating a younger man. This is a pretty common term, and I guess it isn't too sexist since philandering men have been said to be "catting around" for many years, and are sometimes referred to as "tom cats." My question is to the young men who date these women. Or to the women who are "cougars," as well. One of the things that happens to us as we get older is that the motility of our gut decreases. The fermentation, therefore, of food in our guts, not moving through the sausage skin that is our intestines sometimes creates unpleasant gas. This is just a part of getting older-I'm not trying to be funny. There is a lack of control over this feature, and I'm wondering what happens when one of these couples is, um...together, and this happens. It can create moments of great humiliation, and I'm married, so I am just wondering what happens. It seems to be one of the things that they don't address when talking about He's May, She's December relationships.

I live where there are hundreds of oak trees. This is not an exaggeration. Hundreds of oak trees create thousands of acorns. I love the look of acorns, and never knew until we moved here that there is such variety in them. My question is this: Acorns are the seed of oak trees, and they make so many to assure the passing on of their genes. So, when I'm out walking and I step on acorns, am I creating an oak abortion?

Now, to share an "Aha!" moment that I had during the Christmas season. Now, anyone who has ever read me knows that I am an atheist. I do not believe in the purported meaning of Christmas, but I celebrate it for many reasons. It is an important part of my family and my Northern European cultural mythology. As is the pagan Saturnalia, Solstice, etc. I've said here before that the attempts of Christians to deny any other tradition a celebration at this time of year are disingenuous because even Christian scholars admit that Jesus could not have been born in late December if the stories about him are to be believed. Christians incorporated pagan traditions of a celebration of light, or the solstice and the daylight beginning to return, in order to make it easier for pagans to accept the Christian myth of Jesus being the light before Christians began killing and torturing anyone who did not accept or dared to question their religion. But once again, the talking heads on Fox News whined and whined about the War on Christmas, and some of the patients I talk to on the phone took obvious offense and corrected me with a STERN "Merry Christmas" if I wished them "Happy Holidays." Now (one of my short rabbit chases) I love language, and I frequently go look up the roots of words when I learn a new word. But the root of the word "holiday" is clear. It is a shortening of the two words "Holy" and "Day." But the commercialization of the so-called "Celebration of the Birth of Christ," and the horrible behavior of some Christians toward other humans and other life forms has moved this day so far away from the realms of "HOLY" that the word no longer applies in our "gotta get more material stuff" culture. So now it is clear to me why so many Christians take offense at the phrase "Happy Holidays." But I hope all my readers, whoever you are, had a Happy Holiday season. I wish you a peaceful, prosperous and healthy new year.  

Da-daa Shuffle

Good Morning, World! Where I live, in north central Texas, we are having some of the most glorious, perfectly beautiful weather lately. The sun is shining, but it's not hot. There are light breezes, and the nights are not too cold. We started this year off getting a good amount of rain, but we are now 2.76 below normal. We seriously need some rain or we will shortly be in one of those droughts that we were in just last year, when we went for months without rain, and with record breaking heat. So when I take my walks, I feel almost guilty to enjoy the beautiful days, knowing exactly what this means to the long term narrative. We are in a period of climate change that will have drastic effects on the planet. Dangerous storms, record heat, some areas of increasing drought, and exponential increases in extinctions. I've talked about this before, and I still take a pretty controversial position (at least for a life-long, unabashed tree hugger) in that I don't believe we have the will to make the changes that would be necessary to prevent the change from becoming entrenched. Therefore, earth and humanity as we know it will be ending. Just as mammals were tiny, rat-like creatures during the rule of dinosaurs, and when the dinosaur became extinct, mammals began to evolve in size and intelligence and took over every corner of the globe. (Yes, that mixed metaphor was intentional.) As our intelligence increased, so did our arrogance, and our belief that the earth belonged to us to do with as we wish, no matter how obviously destructive our actions might be. Changes in climate do speed up evolutionary survival strategies, and what kind of humans survive to pass on their genes will be different. Life in the deserts will become impossible, and in a geologic blip, the humans of the future will be unidentifiable to the humans of the future without DNA testing. So, on that happy note, I will walk on such beautiful days. I do not expect to be here for those future humans, as we are talking thousands of years. That does not mean that I do not believe in doing the responsible thing. In the short term, I am just about to have my fourth grandchild. I do not want her to grow up with asthma, which is increasing in incidence and severity due to our unwillingness to curb certain pollutants. I do not want her to spend her life in a concrete jungle, though concrete seems to reproduce faster than any rabbit or krill, creating urban heat jungles everywhere. My stepson, the new baby's dad, and his family live in the farm belt, far away from me, and even that part of the country is growing concrete as more and more families leave farming behind, and their farms are mowed over to build new subdivisions. I don't want my two grandsons, both (about) one year old, having to go to war over water or energy rights. But wars will soon be waged clearly over life-saving resources such as water and arable land. So, whether or not it is too late to keep us from evolving into a more heat-tolerant, drought-tolerant species, with fewer prey animals to eat because animals don't survive as well as plants on a planet with carbon rather than oxygen in it's breathing gas mix, TODAY I don't want to live on a dirty, smoke filled, hot planet without wildlife. And I don't want that for them either. I've enjoyed parks and hikes and walks in places where green was set aside for human pleasure. I hope we don't let that completely die out before those grand babies, and their children get to play there too.

It was not my intention to start on such a heavy note. So, here is one of my light-hearted questions, just so any of my friends, readers or members will know I'm still here: I love my iPod. I love the music I've chosen to have on it. ALOT! I know the songs-when I walk I see drivers laughing at me because I am singing along with nearly every song. Sooooo, so I don't know every second what is coming next, I often pick a playlist and hit the shuffle button. In my mind, that should mean that the computer "cloud" picks songs at random and plays them, then shuffles and picks another song at random. How can "shuffle" mean that the player will repeat songs? That frustrates me all to pieces. Random and shuffle should not mean repeating songs!!!

Yesterday I wanted a nap. But I made the mistake of turning on the 2003 movie, "Love, Actually." This sweet, cheesy romance with an edge has become necessary fare for me to get into the Christmas spirit. Well, this one and "A Christmas Story," but that's another story. I've seen both movies many times, but yesterday, I was so very distracted by the character of Sarah, played by one of my all-time favorite actors, Laura Linney, being in the bed, half naked, with a breathtakingly gorgeous man, Karl, played by Rodrigo Santoro, and the phone started ringing, I don't care who it was. The ringer would be turned off. The schizophrenic brother for whom I could do nothing would be moved aside so that I could have one night of fantastic (in the most literal sense of the word,) passionate love with the man who was at that moment, a bird in hand. Every other love story in the movie makes sense on some level, but that one-no. No way. (Big, lecherous smile on my face!)

So, the lightheartedness is over. We should be over politics by now, and as Don Michael Corleone said in Godfather III, "I try to quit, but they keep DRAGGING me back in!" For those on the right, as I said on election day, I feel your pain. I've been there. But once George W. Bush won in 2004, though I almost always disagreed with his policies, he was my president. At least  until he wasn't. I criticized the policies I disagreed with, and I did give him kudos when I could find something to agree with. I did the kudo thing loudly when in the presence of my majority republican family so that they would know that on my side of the question, there could be agreement. I guarantee you that I am never shown the same respect, whether or not there is a republican president. And the disrespect opposing view points get from the right has been worse than ever since President Obama was reelected. But when I ask for specific disagreements, none are provided. Which, please note if you dislike Obama, only feeds the narrative that it is not his policies, but something else the right has decided to disfavor.

While on the subject of right versus left, much of the discussion during this election season has had to do with income inequality, and the attendant questions of class and race. But I found a term rather disturbing on the news this week; the "donor" class. So now the political power in this country is not divided by party, race or gender-it is whether or not one is a member of the "donor" class? What does that mean for all the people who gave President Obama an average of $200? Shouldn't they be included in the "donor" class?

One of the things people tried to use to campaign against President Obama is that the financial recovery in this country is moving so slowly. Every economist, talking head and politician have called this "recession" the worst since the Great Depression. Well, historically, the Great Depression lasted from the stock market crash of 1929 until WWII, 1939. Ten years. Ten. But we expect the economy (and business) to come back in FOUR years? My, my, we are an impatient people. This has been a growing problem for years, "I want what I want when I want it" doesn't work in the realm of economic downturns, and we need to team up and work together, or it will last more than ten years this time. Ten years. Remember that.

When I said in the above paragraph that we all need to team up and work together and find solution to move recession to economic solvency in this country, I need to include all the employers who have freaked out and punished their employees for Obama's reelection win by cutting hours and staff in order to avoid paying for their health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. So now, their employees qualify for food stamps, and government sponsored health care. Which means more people on the roles of taking money and health care from the government, against which those business owners rail, and it may mean that we need to increase taxes on the wealthy a tad more to cover those additional Medicaid recipients, which will hurt the business owners even more. Not only that, it means that the federal government, which the right keep insisting should be smaller, is subsidizing YOUR payroll. How dreadfully un-American! So it is clearly NOT Obama who is driving the country toward socialism, it is you. How dare you, Sir! How on earth is your behavior conservative in a small government, boot-straps way? Pay your workers a fair wage, let them have some benefits. They will have higher morale and productivity. They will have money to spend on your products, increasing your bottom line. They will be healthier, also increasing productivity. It's a win-win, for them, for you, for the economy...for the country. God Bless America!

Lastly, I have two comments to make on the abortion question, as this is one of the prime drivers, in my opinion, of President Obama's win, and his win may make this discussion less relevant. It has been nearly forty years since the Supreme Court of the United States decided for privacy in the "Roe vs Wade" 1973 decision. Why this is still controversial is beyond me. I do understand everyone who has a moral problem with having abortion. I also understand that in the United States we have freedom of religion, which means that you cannot push your religious beliefs on me. No one, but no one, is pro-abortion. But whether to have one is a question only for a woman and her doctor. But the two NEW points I want to make are these:
1. Some individuals I've known and had discussions with regarding abortion have asked, "What if my (or Beethoven's) mother had known we would have genetic health problems and decided to abort us? The world would have been denied Beethoven's music, for example. But this is a false comparison. The child of rape, or a child born to a mother or family that do not want or can't care for the child, will be very unlikely to grow up to accomplish stupendous things. They are more likely to be poor, possibly neglected due to being unwanted to begin with, and uneducated. Every child deserves to be loved and nurtured. This doesn't mean wealthy; many loving parents in this country are poor or working class, but unwanted children do not usually enjoy a healthy, positive upbringing. If the child is born of rape, how on earth can the mother look at that baby and not see the face of violence and misused power? What if the child was chosen over the health of the mother, and the mother died as a result of the pregnancy? I've read stories of widowed fathers who couldn't bear to look at the children whose existence cost him the life of his spouse, and left him to raise the child on his own. The life of the mother must be a factor when considering this question. Rape and incest must be considered if the majority of Americans (which they do not!) thought there should be limitations on access to abortion. But what was decided by the Supreme Court is that the choice not to carry a pregnancy to term is a matter of privacy.
2. I heard Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, and former presidential candidate, on "The Daily Show" this week talking about this issue. He claimed that "biologically, life begins at conception. Indisputably." And yes, he is sort of right, though I'm not sure it can be called "life." CELL DIVISION begins at conception. When sperm meets egg, cells begin to divide, and eventually, these ever-dividing cells begin to look more and more human. But that is not until a few months have passed. I have heard (though I can't document, since apparently there is no unbiased place to go for statistical information about the number of abortions performed in this country has dropped. I did some research to get exact numbers, but there is little un-slanted information available, and the best statistic I could find only covered 1996 to 2005. I don't like using such imprecise statistics here, because I continue to hope that I will have more readers and followers who will comment or call me on it when I am wrong. I have heard a theory that since the technology to discover the sex, hear the heartbeat, see the baby in utero has come so far, pregnant women feel that it is a human life growing there, and fewer choose abortion. I am okay with that. I am not pro-abortion, I am pro-choice. Especially since this is a country that claims to believe in freedom, and the constitution guarantees equal treatment under the law. No one would ever tell a man he can't have a vasectomy (except perhaps the Catholic church, which is another posting altogether.) But those little sperms do swim, and seem to be able to direct themselves to try and join an egg (do they think?) So essentially, all those white males who keep trying to deny a woman choice are trying to deny her the right to control her own destiny. Family planning has been proven over and over to allow women to pull themselves from poverty, increase their education levels, and have not proven to mean that women do not have children later, even after they have had an abortion. But to call the cell division that begins at conception "life" is not exactly a scientific position to take.


1. "Godfather part III," 1990, starring Al Pacino, quote from Al Pacino
2."Love, Actually," 2003, Made by Richard Curtis, ensemble cast
3. Michael Dale "Mike" Huckabee (born August 24, 1955) is an American politician who served as the 44th Governor of Arkansas(1996–2007).^[4][5] He was a candidate in the 2008 United States Republican presidential primaries, finishing second in delegate count and third in both popular vote and number of states won (behind both John McCain and Mitt Romney).^[6] He won the Iowa Republican caucuses.

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I haven't been here for awhile, not because nothing in life gave me pause, but because of the sensory overload that the last month has provided. The attack in Benghazi, Libya, Hurricane Sandy and the 2012 election providing bookends to the period, along with some happy times such as the marriage of my youngest stepson to a wonderful girl, and seeing that side of the family for the first time in four years. Believe me, there are many questions that have sprung to my mind with all this happening around me. I think I've said in every election since I was old enough to vote (1976) I've said that it is the ugliest I've ever seen, and this one is no different. But with the racism and anti-woman comments coming from the right, I think I can back up this comment. It's not the things the candidates are saying about each other this year, it's the things that the right is saying about the people they are hoping to govern that ASTOUND me. These things are included in the list below:

1. How is it that Mitt Romney is able to continuously bellow such bold faced lies, he faces no consequences? When he lies about Chrysler moving Jeep production to China, and he is challenged on it, he doubles down on the lie instead of taking it back? There are numerous examples of this, and yet the lies, while the tumult eventually dies down, no one is able to make the "Liar, liar" label stick and cost him.

2. I must thank Gloria Steinem for this one; how is it that no one running for office has figured out that if women earned equal pay for equal work, we would add billions of dollars into our economy, and a great deal of money into our tax system. When I saw this comment, it just made so much sense to me, that I couldn't help wondering how no one has thought of this as a campaign point.

3. George Carlin 2. used to do a great comedy bit about how airlines butcher the English language (probably in the late 80s.) I experienced some of this while flying to Illinois for my stepson's wedding. For example, "Fasten seat belts while seated." Really? Have you ever tried to buckle one of those damned things while standing? It is not even possible. Sorry, they don't extend that far.

4. There are commercials on TV for a certain brand of multivitamins that claim "research shows that cell health is important at every stage of your life." Really? All of our tissues, organ, bone and muscle, are made of cells. So how big of a stretch would it be to figure out that cell health is important? Do they really need to tell us that?

5. Every time I need to buy razor blades for myself or my husband, I get depressed at how much they cost. I look at this tiny piece of plastic with teensy shards of metal wrapped in it, and can't imagine that there is any possible reason for them to cost as much as they do. What on earth is the markup for them? It must be thousands of percentage points.

6. I saw at the grocery store some granola bars (like this should surprise me for processed food of any kind!) with a note on the box that said they had a "yogurt flavored coating." This coating is intended to fool the public into thinking these granola bars are a bit healthier because of the yogurt. But it is only "yogurt flavored coating!" Are American consumers so dumb? Maybe.

7. There is also a candy, to which I used to be addicted, called Sixlets. They come in tiny packages of eight. Why are they called Sixlets? I also noticed once, being a fervent label reader, that the little package said "chocolate FLAVORED candy." So I checked the ingredients and these little delicious morsels are made of carob. There was a time when carob was touted as healthy and sold in health food stores-why wouldn't they announce that these things are made of carob instead of chocolate. Well, I guess I can answer that one-we have since discovered that chocolate is good for you, and who buys carob anymore? Of course, the sugar coating on the carob can't be claimed as healthy, but that's another story.

8. Why can't people figure out when to use "less" versus "fewer?" When you go to the express lane at the grocery store, you should "Ten Items or FEWER!" Things that have a plural require "fewer." It is "less" when it is things that don't have a plural-"I have less and less time to get things done!" "I'm not making less money, it just buys fewer things than it used to."

9. I don't know anyone who still has a water bed. I never had one, but I once house-sat for someone who had one. I had never slept on one until then, and he was very proud that it was top-of-the line, and had a heater. This was in the early 80s, and he was very cool to have a heated water bed. Now it is the twenty-first century, and I am seeing commercials for mattresses that promise to keep the consumer cool all night. Really? Back then we wanted to be warmer, now we need to be cooler? Yes, there are millions of baby boomer women entering menopause, and we do have a problem with what some call "hot flashes," but I like the term "power surges" better. A cool mattress would be fabulous. But it also brings to mind for me that every part of our lives is getting warmer. On a television program that I love to watch, The Young Turks, (Current TV) the host, Cenk Ugyur 3. showed a chart yesterday that tracked the actual temperature trends for the entire last century, and there is no question that our temperatures are moving higher. This is not a hoax, this is real, and the data is there to prove it. Whether it is caused exclusively or partially by human behavior can be debated (if you don't like science) but the warming trend is undeniable. I have discussed here before that I'm not sure that we can still change the effect much, and evolution will take us where we have made plain that we want to go, human extinction, and another invasive species will take over the niches that we have carved out for ourselves.

10. Rape (and the resulting pregnancies) are a gift from God, and therefore, no woman should be allowed to abort a child conceived during a sexual attack. This idea, promulgated extensively by white, fundamentalist Christian, republican males, is breathtakingly monstrous. I have been the victim of sexual violence, I have worked with the victims of sexual violence. I have come through the 1970s and the women's movement, for which no longer blaming the victim of rape was one of the major bullet points. Suddenly, seized with the dreadful fear that the America they fantasize existed back in the 1950s is changing colors and power structure-which means including women, who back then knew their place (in the home, cooking for the husband who works and brings home the only paycheck, raising the children during the day, seeing to his pleasure and comfort overnight) is disappearing before their eyes. We have a black president. The most effective Secretary of State in my lifetime is a woman. There are MUSLIMS in our CONGRESS!!! The country is turning more and more brown, whether due to mixed marriages, people immigrating from places where the skin is darker, whatever the reason, we are no longer a predominantly white, Christian country. This is a good thing in reality, but it scares the shite out of these people stuck in a time warp, Mayberry 4. fantasy. So since they slept through the beginning of these changes, now they are afraid, and think the only way they can bomb us back to the Dark Ages is by seizing control of what they used to control-women, minorities, etc. Reproductive choice is the first way to take back control over women, and removing protection for the victims of rape is a good place to start. I love babies. I do think babies are a gift (of nature, not God,) but if I had borne a child by the man who attacked me, I would probably remember that every time I looked at the baby, and remembered the event. I'm sure I would have loved the child as best I could, but by the time that happened, abortion had been deemed legal by the Supreme Court of the United States of America. It was determined by them that reproductive choice for all women is a choice between a woman and her doctor. Period. This should not still be a conversation that we continue to have forty years later. No one, not even my husband, can dictate my medical choices. My doctor and I know my body, and are the only ones who can make medical decisions for me. But I digress. The thing that makes me so passionate about this question is the notion that some God somewhere would give such a "gift" to a woman who is a victim of such a violent misuse of power. I don't believe in God, but I certainly could not believe in such a God as this. This medieval notion of sexual violence and pregnancy being a gift from God reminds me of the Italian judge back in the late 90s who said that a woman wearing tight jeans can't be raped because she must help take off her clothes in order to complete the act. There are thirty-one states in which a rapist can sue for visitation rights if their victims become pregnant and deliver the child. Can anyone imagine what it would be like to have to see one's rapist every other weekend, holiday, and one month in the summer?5. If republicans wish to deny that they are engaging in a war on women, then the attacks on a woman's health choices, on Planned Parenthood and other providers of health care must stop. The 1950s are over. The America of the television past and Norman Rockwell paintings never existed-it was all sentimental drool. There was poverty, suffering, racism, inequality, corporations raping the country and being questioned by no one, and now we won't stand for it anymore. Women make up more than 50 percent of the American population. We will not be reduced to second class citizenship, forced to accept violence and subjugation anymore. We won't know for sure until Tuesday, but I have a feeling that President Obama will be reelected next Tuesday, and I would advise the aging, white male, fundamentalists to admit that it is no longer 1530. It is 2012-deal with it.



1. Gloria Marie Steinem (born March 25, 1934) is an American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s.
2. George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, actor and writer/author, who won five Grammy Awards for his comedy albums
3. Cenk Kadir Uygur (Turkish pronunciation: [ˈdʒɛŋk ˈujɡur]; born March 21, 1970), is the main host and co-founder of the progressive Internet and talk radio show, The Young Turks (TYT) The Young Turks also appear on Current TV, a liberal cable television news channel.
4. The Andy Griffith Show is an American sitcom first televised by CBS between October 3, 1960, and April 1, 1968. Andy Griffithportrays the widowed sheriff of the fictional small community of Mayberry, North Carolina. 5.http://www.alternet.org/gender/number-states-which-rapists-can-sue-custody-and-visitation-rights-31-and-other-shocking-rape facts