'We've got to get ourselves back to the garden'

One thing I like about the new year is that I get to buy a new calendar. Last year I bought a Star Wars one, but for 2018 I've gone back to buying the one I usually get - The Secret Garden. It has pics of beautiful and peaceful garden-y spots. If there's a heaven, I hope that's what it's like - a garden. When I'm in places like this, even in my own raggedy yard, I feel safe and also expectant, as if some wonderful truth is about to finally be revealed.

Maybe I feel this way because it reminds me of my grandparents' yard, where I spent a lot of time growing up. They had a couple of acres, a little pocket of peace in the midst of a suburb, filled with fruit trees, nut trees, vegetables and flowers. Every day they worked in the garden and we helped ... we picked peaches and grapefruit, knocked almonds from the trees to peel and set in the sun to dey. There was a trellis with so many roses attached that it looked like a wall of flowers, and we would snack on the nasturtiums and boysenberries and figs.

When my grandfather died, my grandmother could no longer keep the place up and she sold it. It doesn't exist anymore - the house was destroyed and the land partitioned up and not even the address remains. It makes me sad to know that it only exists in memory now. So I buy a garden calendar and imagine myself back there again.
xx

2017: books and movies

Some of the books and movies I enjoyed in 2017 ...

- The Autobiography of James T. Kirk by David A. Goodman

- Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden

- Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport, the Most Audacious Hostage Rescue Mission in History by Saul David

- Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow

- House of Spies: A Novel by Daniel Silva

- Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response by Aaron J. Klein

- Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam by Mark Bowden

- Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics by Lawrence O'Donnell

*

- Snowden ...



- Doctor Strange ...



- Arrival ...



- Assassin's Creed ...



- Rogue One ...



- Logan ...



- Kong: Skull Island ...



- Gifted ...



- Alien: Covenant ...



- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ...



- The Mummy ...

The Letter

Leon Russell and Joe Cocker do The Letter. I think this is 1970 at the Fillmore East ...

Joe Cocker Leon Russell The Letter - Video Dailymotion from orlando heredia on Vimeo.

xx

Roll Away the Stone

From Leon Russell ...




xx

Christmas eve

Remember this? :) How times have changed for the worse. We miss you, President Obama! ...

It's almost Christmas

- me when I was married (Christmas time)

So much of what Christmas is has to do with family.

When I was a kid my family had the typical gatherings at Christmas. We would visit my aunt, uncle, and cousins on Christmas eve, my grandparents would visit us Christmas morning, and the whole family would go to my grandparents' house Christmas day for dinner. Then my grandparents passed away and the cousins drifted away and my sister moved away.

I had two Christmases as a married person. The ex and I would drive to the Bay Area near San Francisco to visit the in-laws and extended family. So stressful ;) I wasn't the in-laws idea of the best possible daughter-in-law, I guess because I was six years older than the ex and worked at a nothing special job at a hospital. And I wasn't Japanese. When I was a little kid I had hoped to grow up to be like my grandmother, with a big family coming over on holidays to my home .... I had no idea I would only be married for a little over a year and would never for the rest of my life find anyone else I felt romantically about.

Eventually things looked up. I moved in with my mom, my sister moved back here, my four cats appeared. Then my mom got lung cancer and died, my cats got elderly and sick and died.

My Christmases now are spent with my sister and the new pile of cats. It's a good thing but I worry about what the future holds.

Oh, I must cheer up. Maybe some music will help ...



OK, better now :)

Cardinal Law is dead

When I first saw the news last night, I was tempted to post this song ...



Here's why ...

The New Yorker: The Death of Cardinal Bernard Law and the Legacy of Clergy Sex Abuse

In the spring of 1989, a group of black-clad clergy gathered to bury one of their own—a Boston priest named Father Joseph Birmingham. Presiding at the funeral was their leader, Cardinal Bernard Law, who died himself on Wednesday, in Rome. As the obsequies for Birmingham drew to a close and the crowd began to disperse, Law was confronted by a man named Thomas Blanchette. He identified himself as having been sexually abused as a child by Birmingham, who would ultimately be accused of having molested more than forty boys. In 2002, Blanchette told the Boston Globe what happened next; Law “laid his hands on my head for two or three minutes. And then he said this: ‘I bind you under the power of the confessional never to speak a word of this to another.’ ”...

Cardinal Law was in charge when the truth about the covered-up clergy child sex abuse scandal in Boston was broken in 2002 by The Boston Globe (they won a Pulitzer prize for this investigative reporting and a recent Best Picture Academy award-winning film was made about the topic: Spotlight).

The situation was so bad that 58 priests in Boston actually wrote a letter to Law telling him to step down. But when he scuttled off to Rome, he met with no punishment, not even a harsh word of criticism from the Vatican. Instead he was rewarded with the top job at one of the most prestigious churches in Rome, the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. People hoped that when Francis was made pope, he would get rid of Law. But though Francis did visit Law's church on his first day as pope, he didn't fire him, he had a friendly chat with him instead.

And now that he's dead, the Vatican has created more rage with its decision to honor Law with a state funeral, Pope Francis presiding ... Pope Francis presides over the final rites of Cardinal Law’s funeral Mass

Read more ...

- Bernard Law, a cardinal of scandal and disgrace by Fr. Thomas Reese SJ

- From Cardinal Law to Harvey Weinstein, how ‘Spotlight’ scandal paved way for #MeToo movement

- The Hurt Is Still There’: Abuse Survivors Grapple With Cardinal’s Death

Bourée

More from Jethro Tull ...

Teacher

A Jethro Tull song from the distant past. I can still remember all the words, which is kind of frightening ;) ...



Well the dawn was coming
Heard him ringing on my bell
He said, My name's the teacher
That is what I call myself
And I have a lesson
That I must impart to you
It's an old expression
But I must insist it's true

Jump up, look around
Find yourself some fun
No sense in sitting there hating everyone
No man's an island and his castle isn't home
The nest is full of nothing when the bird has flown

So I took a journey
Threw my world into the sea
With me went the teacher
Who found fun instead of me

Hey man, what's the plan, what was that you said?
Sun-tanned, drink in hand, lying there in bed
I try to socialize but I can't seem to find
What I was looking for, got something on my mind

Then the teacher told me
It had been a lot of fun
Thanked me for his ticket
And all that I had done

Hey man, what's the plan, what was that you said?
Sun-tanned, drink in hand, lying there in bed
I try to socialize but I can't seem to find
What I was looking for, got something on my mind

xx

Out in the yard

It's chilly but sunny. It's actually warmer outside than inside if you're in the sun, so I walked around with the cats today :)

Leaves ...



The wild grapes have climbed up a dead tree ...



Fig is getting some sun under the loquat tree ...

Yes !!!!

Doug Jones won the Alabama election over Roy Moore :) ...

Ah ha

Now I understand where those plush toys I never bought the cats came from ;) ...

Alabama voters: the deplorables

Apparently a number of those Hillary deemed "deplorables" live in Alabama ...



Those people deserve Roy Moore.

Some music

Wishful thinking ...



xx

The Alabama race and abortion

There's much in the news about the Alabama senate race between Democrat Doug Jones and Republican Roy Moore. I've seen speculation that if only Jones were not pro-choice, he would have a better chance of winning against accused pedophile Moore. I don't believe that's true. I think the pro-life issue for Republicans is much like the deficit issue ..... they don't really care about it but it gives reputable cover for the real reasons they will not vote for something (reference the tax bill's effect on deficit). And there's a poll that supports my view ...

Abortion Isn’t Main Reason More Republicans Still Won’t Back Doug Jones, New Poll Finds

[...] On Nov. 4-5, Clarity Campaign Labs, a Democratic polling firm, surveyed 707 Alabama voters in a survey commissioned by Planned Parenthood Votes. (Planned Parenthood has no involvement in the Alabama special election and has not endorsed a candidate.) The results were shared with HuffPost.

Clarity Campaign Labs was specifically interested in Republican voters who might be persuaded to back Jones. The survey found that less than 1.5 percent of Moore’s supporters said they had considered switching and backing Jones.

The pollster then tried to figure out why those voters decided to stick with Moore. Was it because of Jones’ support for abortion rights?

But Clarity didn’t want to limit people with a list of possible answers. So they were asked to explain, in their own words, why they continued to reject Jones.

“Abortion wasn’t really in the top couple issues people gave us,” said John Hagner, the Clarity pollster who conducted the survey.

More than one-third of those Republican voters who said they decided not to switch to Jones gave a reason that fell into the category of just generally not liking him. Ten percent said they didn’t like his personal history. (Jones is a former U.S. attorney best known for finally putting Ku Klux Klan members behind bars for blowing up an African-American church back in 1963.) Eight percent cited abortion as the reason.

“Of the people who were undecided, they weren’t citing choice as the major driver,” Hagner said. “Of the people who had considered voting for Jones and decided not to, there was a whole range of issues.”

Clarity conducted the poll before women came forward and alleged that Moore had pursued them when they were in their teens and he was in his 30s. Presumably, there are more Republicans giving Jones a second look. But Hagner said he didn’t think abortion would now become a more significant factor in the race ...

Doug Jones stood up for those little girls who were murdered in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and he's standing up for women's reproductive rights today. The idea that Alabama voters who support Moore do so for moral reasons ... a man who thinks LGBT people shouldn't be allowed to marry, that Muslims should not serve in Congress, that the best time in America was in the era of slavery, and who is now believed to have preyed on teenage girls ... just beggars belief.

X-Men directors accused of harassment, rape

There's been much in the news about those who have sexually harassed or assaulted women/men. One story that hasn't been as much in the public eye but which I noticed because I'm a fan of Marvel films, is that of two different directors of X-Men movies: Bret Ratner and Bryan Singer. The reason I bring this up is the silence from most of the actors of those movies, guys like Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart ... have I just missed it?

Here's more ...

- Brett Ratner Accused of Sexual Harassment or Misconduct by Six Women (Report)

- Brett Ratner and Russell Simmons Accused of Working Together to Carry Out Sexual Misconduct

- New lawsuit alleges 'X-Men' director Bryan Singer raped a 17-year-old boy

- The Deeper Significance of Bryan Singer's Firing

The stray cats, continued

- Snowy and Fig

Today I had a visit from an Animal Control officer ... the neighbor across the street lodged a complaint against me as having a lot of "sick and injured" cats. I've been dreading this ever since that neighbor yelled at me from his yard "keep your stinking cats on your own property". I had thought of all the stings I would say, like how I had contacted all the animal agencies and charities I knew of for help in finding homes for the cats but how none would help .... the SPCA even suggested I just have them all euthanized as being semi-feral would make them impossible to adopt out. When the lady came to the door, though, I was so upset I couldn't remember all my lines.

First, though, I did say that none of the cats was sick, though one does have a permanent limp from an old injury (Mouse). She wanted to know how many were spayed/neutered and I said all but the most recent additions ... the five kittens who appeared this spring. I gave her the name of the veterinarian place I took them and told her that Mouse's leg had been examined by the vet. And I told her I had been in contact with someone from the Animal Control place before, discussing the cat situation and asking for help finding homes for the kittens.

It wasn't as bad as I feared. She isn't going to take the cats off to kill them. She said that as long as I got them all spayed and neutered and as long as they were in good health, they would leave things as they are. But she took my name and number and said she would check back. I think there's a new reality .... there are just so many abandoned and feral cats and dogs in neighborhoods now. The County kills thousands every year. If some people take it upon themselves to feed and spay/neuter some of these animals, I think the County is willing to look the other way much of the time.

But with the neighbor across the street having made a complaint, I don't know what the County may decide to do about my cats. And what about the neighbor .... when he realizes that the County probably won't make this problem go away, what might he do to the cats himself?