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http://www.globalgrl.com Sun, 12 Apr 2020 18:25:03 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://i0.wp.com/www.globalgrl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/cropped-flaneur.jpg?fit=32%2C32 http://www.globalgrl.com 32 32 165359756 Optimism during Covid-19 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=183 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=183#comments Sun, 12 Apr 2020 18:25:03 +0000 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=183 I am not sure we will ever return to the normal we once knew but if we do what will everyone do?
Will we once again clog up the freeways, see each other only from our cars or otherwise hurried existence?
It might be hard for some to see but in some ways we are more alive than ever before. We have slowed, we are seeing people instead of passing people. We are helping our neighbors, heck for some people just knowing who their neighbors are is a big step up.

Mother Nature is taking big gulps of clean air and rejuvenating herself. It took the Corona Virus for us to give her a much needed break from our pollution. How can humanity deny climate change now? The proof is in the pudding. Los Angeles pollution levels are way down, Venice Canals are clear, you can see the Himalayas from Delhi for the first time in 30 years.
Here is a wonderful story about the changes in air pollution since people have been forced to self quarantine.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/11/positively-alpine-disbelief-air-pollution-falls-lockdown-coronavirus

We are very much alive and seeing the best of ourselves in spite of the biggest polluter of all, the narcissist in the white house whose polemics of self-aggrandization have saturated our souls. His lies, his callous cruelty permeate our souls even if we swear to ignore him. And yet we do not go under, we keep swimming toward the light, rising to the top, flailing but surfacing each time. You can see it in the young people who are out of work, yet delivering groceries to their elderly neighbors at no charge. You see it in our first responders and health care workers who are bent but not broken.
Our bloviator-in-chief talks about the economic impact, he talks in numbers that he does not understand past his own interest. And yet we the people talk in numbers of human sacrifices and loss.

We are a broken nation right now, we have been careening out of control in this direction since Trump took office. Many of us remember the feeling, I was numb for days and I knew something momentous had happened that was going to set us back or even destroy our nascent democracy and yet I could never have guessed this chilling event. I have been flooded with a free floating anxiety and terrible uneasiness ever since he was given the election by the antiquated mechanism of the electoral college. I watched in dismay, horror and great pain as our country became more and more divided, the ugliness became exposed and evil seemed to be winning. I know the racism and xenophobia has always been there but it absolutely gobsmacked me to find out it was almost half of our country. And there is no getting past it, we have been set back immensely with the conservative- to -the -point -of -kookiness, right wing judges whose appointments have been rammed through our courts and yet still we fight, we hang on, we persevere. WE RESIST!

I have never felt that more strongly than now with the slow time that has been forced upon us, time to reflect and see some way out. The virus does not discriminate yet our discriminatory practices are exposed everywhere from Detroit to New Orleans and most of the hapless south which has been hit the worst by Trump as well as the virus.
Many times in the past 3 years, some awful thing has been said or done by Trump and his callous cadre of Republican enablers and I have thought to myself that this event will finally be the one for people to see the light, expose his evil nature and yet it does not happen. He has two kind of supporters in my opinion, the ones who know exactly who he is but enable him for the judges and economic gains. Gains for themselves, already rich but obsessively wanting more wealth while bludgeoning the marginal and poorer Americans. Then there is the Cult and these people are sadly uneducated and ignorant to anything but schadenfreude, they enjoy watching him bullying the people they despise, the elites and libtards. They are fueled by an anger and resentment of feeling left behind. They are the most dangerous because they have the least to lose and they do not want to be educated. Hate and blaming others is their comfort level.

Yet still, this is another of those times where I feel optimistic that people will finally tire of him and start to look deeper and recognize his malignant narcissism even if they do not understand the diagnoses.
We are much more involved right now and I want that to be a wake-up call for ourselves and our precious Mother Earth, I do not want to see us go back on auto pilot.
No matter what we will fight on, RESIST and PERSEVERE.

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VIGNETTES Part 2 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=140 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=140#respond Sat, 26 Jan 2019 01:02:41 +0000 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=140 Sometimes I think we no longer see older people and this is significant to me as I find myself careening more and more toward that age of invisibility. I always remember the old adage ‘if only we knew then what we know now’.  It could not be anymore true.  And I am sure I was also guilty of young arrogance.

I arrived in San Diego in 1979 in my 1969 Cutlass 442 that I had bought for $300 from someone who worked for my Dad. I am sure I got a deal but it was kinda beat up, it was drab olive green with light green vinyl seats and the roof was peeling. It was very loud but hey it got me to SD with my 2 boxes and 1 American Tourister red suitcase and matching overnight bag that I got for high school graduation from my parents.

And no fear of anything.

San Diego in 1979 was a different time not only because a person could work A Job, I will repeat that, A JOB, any job and still have enough to support themselves.  A SRO (Single room Occupancy) was not high flying, in fact it was seedy and low class to most but I had fun. It was called the Gordon and was at 1334 7th Ave, near 7th and Ash and just down from the Hotel Cortez which had just closed the year before. The Cortez had a Travolator that was a moving flat escalator that carried guests to the Holiday Inn across the street. Once the hotel closed bums often slept on the Travolator. I thought that hotel, even shuttered was the coolest building I had ever seen and I dreamed about living there.

Broadway was full of Sailors on leave, tattoo parlors and bars and pawn shops and not much else after dark.  There was no redeveloped Gas Lamp Quarter and no one went much past Broadway after dark, certainly not past Market and we never ventured to Island.

Seaport Village opened in 1980 and it seemed way far out there, in the middle of nothing—no convention center or towering hotels.

When I lived at the Gordon, (and I would give anything to see a photo, but I remember it had this cool green subway tile on the outside).  I think it was about 3 floors with maybe 36 rooms, so it was rather small compared to the St. James or Plaza, Hotel San Diego or Churchill.

 We had a TV in the lobby and we all knew each other from meeting in this tiny area. I don’t really remember actually watching much TV but I do remember the plane crash at Chicago O’Hare in May of 1979.  It was the most horrific thing most of us had known and we gathered around that old black and white TV set, united in our shock and grief.

Mainly, we sat in this little lobby if we were waiting on a phone call or just wanting to meet people.  Just behind the little seating area with the TV was a genuine phone booth where whoever answered yelled out the names if they knew you or took a message and tacked it up on the wall if they didn’t.

The Gordon has been torn down now and nothing sits on the lot which is pretty sad and also amazing considering how there are very few vacant places left in downtown San Diego.

 I worked for Manpower Temp Agency which was just across the street, most people did this when first arriving in the city without a job lined up. Manpower was always a sure thing if you could just type 40 words per minute and show some basic clerical aptitude. I believe they had another side for assembly line/factory work but I only did clerical.  I worked at Solar and General Dynamics which were the big employers. I was offered a full time job at both and I am sure it would have been a good blue collar job but I had a newly minted college degree and wanted a job in human services which of course takes time to find.

Most of the people who lived at the Gordon were young and newly arrived like me but there were about 10 older guys who were Vietnam Vets and even a Korean Vet. They were down on their luck, victims mostly of divorce and PTSD but they had a disability check which allowed them to live decently, modestly but they were OK. They often seemed to go to family things on weekends and brought us back lots of leftover food, otherwise I only remember eating peanut butter with jelly from the jar or potted meat.

 I made friends with a woman about my age who was from Canada and in the same boat as me. She got a job at a sandwich shop down the hill and sometimes brought us sandwiches to share. Then there was the rich guy, also our age, I am not sure why he lived there and he wasn’t really rich, just compared to us, but he drove a laundry truck, like fresh sheets and towels for hotels and diapers and he made $400 a week. This was unheard of in 1979 and he once took me on a date to the fanciest place, a French Restaurant and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Having grown up in the Midwest I had not been exposed to very many cultural dining experiences outside of Italian and German.  I took to all the new food introductions like a duck to water. I honestly can’t think of a food I did not love. But during that timeframe, I especially loved FREE FOOD.

We walked everywhere, up and down all the hills, I rarely remember driving and in fact my car was a problem with regards to parking. That is one downtown SD situation that is pretty much the same from 1979 to 2019. No free parking and if you find some you must move it every three days so as not to get chalked then towed. It often would not start because I drove it so little and one day I was at Ocean Beach with a friend and I had on some Daisy Dukes. I don’t think they called them that yet but they were cut off jeans with pockets hanging down. I had my keys in the pocket and who knew a wave could be strong enough to turn me upside down and steal my keys!?! I had to pay $10 for my room key and that was the day I decided I had had it with that nuisance of a car so I sold it for $350 to a Navy guy who was dating my sandwich shop friend. In my 22 year old mind I did well because I made $50.  What I would not give today to have that car!

After the Gordon, I lived with a few different friends in forgettable apartments for a few months at a time. The coolest was on Brant Street just off of I-5 in Banker’s Hill and only a handful of apartments in a U-shape owned by Angie, one of the first female cops in San Diego. It had been her and her husband’s home and when he died she said her therapy was tearing it apart and having it made into several apartments. We could see the Rueben E. Lee, an iconic steamboat restaurant, from our deck and inbound planes came over so close that sometimes jet fuel dripped off. From our deck we could also see the boats floating in the harbor and and it was then that I decided I must own one.

Free anchorage was where poor people had boats and they rowed in to shore. I think it is still here or something similar but I believe they have cleared out all the really circumspect boats (bizarre old beloved klunkers to me) and it now seems regulated. But I have not been able to find out much information yet on the current free anchorage situation.

In 1982, thru a friend of a friend I found an old late 60’s TollyCraft, 32 ft. that was pretty torn up on the inside and had one engine maybe missing and one maybe fixable. I paid $350 down and $100 a month for $850 total.  I decided to live on it and save money and so I spent 3 crazy fun months. By this time, I worked as an Eligibility Technician for the San Diego County Social Services. I could row in and go to the County Administration building, take a shower and hop on the bus to work. Pretty simple and easy at the time.

There was this guy who had a huge boat, like an old steel hulled, maybe retired tuna fishing boat, probably 50 ft and it was black and scary looking, his name was Shooter and it was painted on his boat. Another guy had a trimaran and they both helped me scrape barnacles and work on my boat. Mostly we blew off the work and went sailing on the trimaran down to Baja. We took Marlboro and M and M’s candy and traded for lobster at Puerto Nuevo before it became overrun with tourists.  Good times!

Then my sister graduated college back at University of Arkansas.  She had her newly minted Architecture Degree and wanted to come live with me and make it in San Diego. Well, she was my baby sister and I always felt like I had to take care of her even when she didn’t need it, so I gave up the boat life.

This sister, Laurie, did become a very successful architect here in San Diego and in the way that I find life strange by things twisting and turning and yet always coming back around, I now go by the same Country Administration building that I showered in and see the outside, Waterfront Park, a 17 acre Civic Park, that was my sister’s project. I see kids playing in the beautiful fountains and find myself really moved to know that my sister created this.

The same sister who I am sure became an architect because back in our little hometown in the 1960’s, where horses and the woods and Indian lore were our life, I had been in love with Little Kiddle dolls and my favorite was Sissy Sailboat. Laurie and I would build a dam in the creek then blow it up so that Sissy could go faster in her little boat. As all kids do, we kept trying to make the dam better and the explosion bigger, Laurie would lie in bed and design them to blow up the next day. A star is born.

Later I moved to Golden Hill and it was considered truly seedy even then but I loved it.

I loved the Turf Club beginning in 1985. I found out since moving back that it is now considered a true Hipster joint and so I visited. The grill in the middle of room was the same and the steaks were the same and they still have black and white TV but that is all part of the act now. The lights are brighter, the drinks are fancy and at $10 a pop there are no shots in the dark and cheap bills. No dirty curtain to part as you enter, now they have a real bouncer, probably for the people who complain about the price of watered down drinks.

One of the best surprises I got was to see my corner mom-and-pop store still there– Jaroco’s but then I went in and now it is mostly a liquor store with high priced convenience store items. Sigh.

 My old place there, a Victorian on A street that was converted into a duplex, cost me $600 a month that I split with a roommate in order to afford.  I found out it now rents for $3000 a month. But it looks mostly the same.

My first real job (I mean obtained with a college degree) was down at the San Diego County Welfare Office in Logan Heights, at 25th and Imperial in an old Safeway building. I drove by there and it is now a new fire station. I would say quite an improvement.

By 1989 we had the SD Trolley, but it only went to Popular Market on 12th Street. The Gas Lamp was humming along and Horton Plaza had opened in 1985. By this time, I was working on Beech Street and we walked down there often at lunchtime. It was such a radical departure for mall architecture and people loved  it, the crazy levels and outdoor concept.  Before Horton Plaza there was a small park fronting Broadway called Horton Plaza Park and that is where almost all the homeless of San Diego hung out, it was about the size of a football field.

I left San Diego in 1989 but because my sister and family still lived here, I visited and still kept up with the development although nothing like being immersed in it as I am now.  The homeless population has exploded, my conservative guess would be 10 times.  Gaslamp was 1st to 6th south of Broadway and downtown ended the east to west part at 12th (also called Park Blvd.)  Now the streets 7th -12th are called East Village which really is just like Gas Lamp only less touristy and as of very recently they have added the next 4 blocks to 16th and call it Maker’s Quarter.  All very trendy with the restaurants, brew pubs and the like and the reverse migration is something to behold.

The further east you go the more homeless you must walk thru in order to get anywhere at night. Gone are the days that a person could have A JOB and support themselves. I mean an Average Jane or Joe, I won’t even go into homeless Vets who return having served their country and are unable to work and become homeless, that is a separate blog post or book would be more fitting and decent.

At any rate, now I live in East Village with all my trendy little fellow Idea 1 dwellers and I look out at my spectacular view and see the sign for the Hotel Cortez or Hotel St. James or Churchill, all swanky and redone and I remember who lived there back in 1979 that I knew and I remember that they paid even less than my $35 a week because they were on the wrong side of Broadway afterall.  Always a caste system! I once had a sociology professor who loved to pontificate on this, he called it Social Stratification and being from the Midwest we all knew rodeos, he spent one entire class lecturing us about how even a rodeo had a caste system. It somehow revolved around people who paid simple entry fees to ride a bull vs. people who owned and trailered their animals and lots more, pretty silly it seemed at the time but cool beans to this hipster now and 40 years later I see it everywhere and in everything.

But I look back at my younger life in San Diego, I was a Social Worker and I guess I would be called lower middle class or working class, I know that I was 1-2 paychecks away from dire straights and we all talked about this even then. It seems to be a popular talking point now but it was then too. Nevertheless, we could afford what we needed and going out to eat or drinks sometimes (if we didn’t have kids, then you probably needed two incomes for sure). But in 1989 B street was kind of a cool street with lots of great restaurants and just like Hillcrest the sidewalk cafes were always full of people with disposable income and fun on their minds instead of bills. Now I see so much money in new buildings here in East Village, but I do not see the restaurants as crowded as I think they should be by correlation. I hear a lot of talk about people barely making it and on the local news, Channel 10 they even have a daily segment called “Making it in SD”. 

All in all, San Diego is truly the finest city in the US but the cost of living here is prohibitive to so many. I see the stress and toll it takes in restaurants that fail, in the road rage, in our numbness to the homeless.

And yet people seem to be willing to do almost anything to call San Diego home and that brings me a smile because in that respect nothing has changed from 1979.

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VIGNETTES Part 1 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=137 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=137#respond Sun, 13 Jan 2019 21:27:03 +0000 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=137 I fancy trendsetting. Certainly not in fashion but in just being ahead of the curve, unafraid to try new things or new ways of doing something.

Way back when we all got our movies from Blockbuster I thought it was outrageous that you had to get a new Blockbuster card for every city. My partner and I have lived many places and I can still visualize my stack of Blockbuster cards.  In 1997 we moved to North Carolina and I went to get yet another Blockbuster card. Problem was we had no landline which evidently one needed for the damn Blockbuster card. I told the guy then that very soon no one was going to have landlines anymore and he made me feel like I was from Mars.

Look at my previous blog posts and you will see I called the demise of Facebook so long ago that by today’s standards it is ancient history.

Then there was the time I invented the little doohickey that keeps the pizza cheese from sticking to the top of the box or the time I invented the Chinese take-out cartons without the stupid metal handle that could not go in the microwave.

Maybe I dilly-dallied around about getting down to the Patent Office but I dreamed them up first I am sure.

I think I come by this naturally. My bio father who I really did not know, I only met him a few times but one time in the mid 70’s I went to his house and he had a piece of a 2 x 4 , a little block of wood with a toggle switch on it with a wire running to the TV and every time a commercial came on, he toggled it which muted the TV.  Hooray for remote control! In the end of his life he was called Ole Doc Clock because he loved classic cars and had figured out a way to put quartz clock movements in the old cars that still looked original on the face for those guys who are meticulous about their restorations. He was quite famous in that small circle of classic car purists.

His father owned a Studebaker dealership and the building was a Frank Lloyd Wright that still stands in Mena, AR as Studebaker museum. Double trendy for that guy.

Then my maternal Grandpa from Oklahoma drove an Indian Chief motorcycle all the way to CA and back in the late 1920’s.

But the real topper is my 3rd Great Grandmother. Like many people I became fascinated with genealogy and tracing my family history. I was extremely lucky in that a stamp collector bought a batch of letters from my family that were from the Civil War times and he tracked me down to give them to me. The letters are fascinating for sure but the fun part for me was that my 3rd Great Grandmother was writing from Kansas to her family in MA and in all the letters she referred to my 3rd Great Grandfather as simply Pike, his last name.  I have seen letters from that period and women often called their husbands MR.  or sometimes by their first name but she called him Pike and they were growing grapes for wine. How cool is that?!

With my trendsetting persona firmly entrenched in my mind (or imagination), I recently moved into a young person’s PERF heaven. Let me explain.  My partner has a job that requires us to be in San Diego for 2 years. I lived in San Diego from 1979 to 1989. I was the original runaway bride before Julia Roberts made the movie.  I was just out of college and had $350 saved. I told my Dad I was going to Dallas (about 3 hours away) to see a friend and I got to Dallas and just kept driving, I drove until the road ran out and that was San Diego. When I first arrived, I rented a room in downtown San Diego. It was then called an SRO (single residence occupancy). My little room with the bath down the hall was $35 a week.

It was a heady time for me filled with the best of times as I discovered myself and reveled in the city life, having grown up in the Midwest in a town of about 5000.

When we knew we would be living in San Diego I thought let’s go big and live downtown which is the happening place now. But when I lived downtown in the early 80’s it was when the suburbs were the place to be and big city downtowns were for the derelicts or near poverty people. That trend completely reversed itself.

So here we are, 2018, we moved to East Village, Idea 1, a brand new place. 600 sq. ft for $2300 a month. Long way from my $140 a month in 1979.

The lofts and apartments are billed as live/work space. Apartments are built in a U shape or 2 L’s and the interior courtyard is called the Hub. It is a large collaborative space to create and connect. There is a coffee shop as well as extra cool gourmet taco shop that anchor our building, they also are open to the street.

There is almost always something going on here, a very wide variety of events are scheduled. Overall, the feeling is one of excitement and creativity.

It probably would have been heaven for me to have been surrounded by such forward thinkers when I was younger and had no direction, felt adrift.  Of course, I would never have been able to afford it even if I could do the math and figure what this place would have cost in 1979’s economy. 

At any rate, I often feel out of place because I am surely the oldest person living here at 61.  But once a trendsetter always a trendsetter so I found a little trick to make myself relevant. We have key cards for the elevator and people are always digging around in pockets and in bags to find them. I put mine on the back of my phone with a phone case covering it so when I get in the elevator I just put my phone up to the sensor and bingo! I have had no less than 7 people in the elevator questioningly exclaim ‘there’s an app for that?”.   Then I say nope, it is just between the phone and case.  No matter, they now think I am a pretty cool old broad.

When I was about to turn 60 and my 24 year old nephew called me a hipster. It was maybe the best compliment I have ever received although I was not exactly sure what it was.  Many months later I brought it up with my niece who said it means someone who is an old hippie who shops at thrift stores. There went my vison of a beatnik poet from the 60’s with John Lennon glasses but my sweet sisters all jumped in to assure me that nephew meant the first description. Back on track, LOL

Besides, how many 61 year olds have a side hustle with Turo?

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#Delete Facebook http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=134 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=134#respond Sat, 24 Mar 2018 21:39:19 +0000 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=134 I have always had a love/hate relationship with FB. Mainly because of boundaries or lack thereof.  I originally joined to keep up with my nieces and nephews and now like most kids, they have moved on. I also liked keeping up with friends overseas but the rest has been a bittersweet paradox, touching and intimate, annoying and irritating, oxymorons ad infinitum.  While I think the ‘roles of our lives’ are, of course, intertwined, I definitely see a problem with FB and the complete overlap, blending and immersion of roles.  Seriously– wives, mothers, lovers, friends, daughters, employees, bosses—we can be all and more but not at the same time and not with FB as a Narrator and Videographer. At best it is the equivalent of your Mom reading your diary, at worst it is like running around naked.

Compartmentalizing is good, folks!!  I might just be an old fogey because I confess that I am totally bewildered by this. My nieces watch Reality TV and YouTube videos that are average people living very ordinary lives. Even boring, dare I say? My niece was just showing me one of these YouTube ‘stars’ last week and the setting for these reality stars was their house. I said ‘wow, that is a nice house’. They were young so I was assuming they lived with parents but she said it was their home and they make 8 million per year. Well, color me interested so I quizzed her on all this. Near as I could gather they get income from YouTube ads, the number of people who watch their videos. So I tried to watch a few and my niece picked out some ‘really good ones’.  In one they picked up dog poo from their Mother’s yard as a Mother’s Day gift, in another they had a giggly friend over and made cookies from a box and in another they did a Lush Haul. This is where you go to the Lush store and buy lots of very expensive crap like bath bombs then you come home and do a YouTube video of yourself unpacking your bag.  I don’t know if this is a step up or step down from the Kardashians but another niece showed me that one years ago and I didn’t have a clue then either. Yet another niece has watched Big Brother for years. I saw a clip of that recently because it was on World News.  So Omarosa got fired by Trump and now she went on Big Brother and she was whispering to someone about the White House gossip.  I called up my niece to ask how she could be whispering this info when she knows she is being filmed. Seriously, what am I missing?  Is this the new purpose driven life? They are taking self-validation to a whole new level. Are they doing it for the money because I might be persuaded to make a video of me cooking or gardening with cats. Or just plain old chatting with my cats as I do this anyway several times per day.  I would have to work to master the 8 million dollar giggling bit but I could do it.

When I was a teenager we ‘dragged main’ which just meant we went ‘riding around’ in our cars and oftentimes pulled over at the Chicken Hut or bank to talk to friends. These conversations were private or semi-private and I can’t imagine having them with my parents or teachers, this is what I mean about boundaries. We have multifarious roles in life and there is a time and place for each and never the twain shall meet.   As an example, if someone we knew went to what we considered a weird church and we discussed it at the Chicken Hut and then that person pulled over to talk to us we certainly would not bring it up. That is ‘polite company’, an anachronism in today’s world.

It is not that I think bullying did not exist when I was a teen, I know it did but now I think Social Media has emboldened kids in a way that is toxic and so scary. I tried to think of FB as today’s generation of ‘running the streets’ but I just could not make the pieces fit.

Secondly, the politics have always driven me nuts.  At first I was truly baffled, especially by people of my generation whom, as I said,  I know were raised to never discuss politics and religion in polite company.  I don’t really expect the younger generation to understand that old axiom as much, nevertheless it makes me so crazy.  Then I guess I reached a point of ‘if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em’ but that still left me stewing in a cauldron of rage over the sheer lunacy. And all that was BEFORE TRUMP!  

For the past couple of years, I thought I was fighting against fake news and brainwashed, angry people who lap up Fox news like a sugar addict working in a donut store. People who believe Breitbart and Info Wars conspiracies and gleefully post and repost ugly narratives and divisive rumors without ever checking the source. People who seem to enjoy creating turmoil and strife. We truly seem to have lost all civil discourse.

But I had no idea I was fighting FB and Cambridge Analytica– stealing my data, targeting, manipulating and fueling my proclivities!!

And so, I have discovered Twitter. I love that it is content driven, not social. Anonymity of a crowd which seems to suit me better. Fake news does not seem to fly as well on Twitter. People are called out immediately and there is a ton of support, not just from your sisters or best friend since first grade. Conservative religious hypocrisy is the focus of a lot of tweets and it is never allowed to stand and the comments are smart and witty. Also delicious schadenfreude if you enjoy seeing bigots and quacks get their due! Reminds me of one of my favorite bumper stickers from 1981—THE MORAL MAJORITY IS NEITHER.  Someone stole it off my car, I kid you not.

But I digress, I know why the #deletefacebook is trending and I want to join them.  The more time I spend on Twitter the less time I spend on FB but I am not sure if cold turkey is the right course for this flaming co-dependent. However that pendulum has started its swing.

 

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Guns after Parkland http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=131 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=131#comments Thu, 01 Mar 2018 19:55:09 +0000 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=131 Gun culture 2018.  I did not write after Orlando or Las Vegas or any other senseless gun violence since Sandy Hook because I was too discouraged and broken to say any more than what I have been saying for years. I could have just kept adjusting (upping) the numbers but nothing ever seemed to change. The same hypocrites as before were on TV talking about how horrific the tragedy was and sending thoughts and prayers then turning around and taking money from the N.R.A and motoring along as usual. Platitudes to the people mourning and calling for gun control then stopping any debate in Congress or the Senate. I never knew how they slept at night. I was adrift in the hopelessness of it all.

Now we have Parkland and for the first time in a long time I feel the earth moving, I sense change in the wind and I am so thrilled and energized by these young people who will not let it die. I will join them with all my being and my 60 year old energy but they own this movement. So much of the time since social media came about I have thought of it as a terrible thing, mainly because of our loss of civility, the immersion into our smart phones and computers while losing out on valuable human interactions, the way kids no longer have any filters with regards to bullying since they are online and removed from the face to face interaction.  And now the fake news that spreads like wildfire especially to the less educated among us who feel left behind and are desperately looking for any lifeline of hope. Or perhaps they are looking for validation of a miserable life in which their culture, experiences and environment have ingrained within them that minorities are responsible for their stations in life.  This is what MAGA is about to them. Some nostalgic fantasy they have been told about the past.  But with these kids tackling the issue I can see their energy in stomping out these embers of misinformation before they erupt and spread. And I am seeing the internet age and all Social Media as giving them this ability to unite and spread their message. It is the message of the majority.  All I want and all most people want is common sense gun laws, we do not want to take anyone’s guns that are used for hunting or home defense but there is absolutely no use for an AR-15. They should be used only by police or military. Assault weapons need to be banned, pure and simple. I have seen various statistics and arguments about how effective the 1994 ban was but bottom line is that it was effective in reducing the deaths in school shootings. How is that so hard?

Vote the politicians out who take NRA money, hit businesses with boycotts as their bottom line is simply profit. Immediately call the NRA and their supporters on their bullshit and false claims. Keep it up, young people, we are rooting for you.

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Gun Culture USA http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=125 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=125#respond Thu, 14 Apr 2016 14:19:19 +0000 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=125 The senseless American culture of gun violence: I wrote the below post a few years ago and a quick check of the stats today shows the acceleration as I expected.

The statistics:

Mass shootings:

There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, which catalogues such incidents. A mass shooting is defined as a single shooting incident which kills or injures four or more people, including the assailant.

Source: Mass Shooting Tracker

 

School shootings: 

There were 64 school shootings in 2015, according to a dedicated campaign group set up in the wake of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Connecticut in 2012. Those figures include occasions when a gun was fired but no-one was hurt.

Source: Everytown for Gun SafetyResearch

 

All shootings: 

Some 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and 26,819 people were injured [those figures exclude suicide]. Those figures are likely to rise by several hundred, once incidents in the final week of the year are counted.

Source: Gun Violence Archive

 

How the US compares: The number of gun murders per capita in the US in 2012 – the most recent year for comparable statistics – was nearly 30 times that in the UK, at 2.9 per 100,000 compared with just 0.1.

Of all the murders in the US in 2012, 60% were by firearm compared with 31% in Canada, 18.2% in Australia, and just 10% in the UK.

Source: UNODC.

 

The recent tragedy in New Orleans with a beloved Saints player being killed is a perfect example for people to wake up but they won’t.  Road rage between two huge men, one a professional football player and the other semi-professional. Exactly the kind of people who do not need to carry guns around. If they had no guns then there might have been a fist fight or brawl but no one would be dead. A father would still be there to see his children grow up. I don’t care who was right or wrong in the minor fender bender that supposedly precipitated the event. No one needed to lose their life and no one needed guns in those circumstances. The coach of the Saints said it best in his heartfelt plea. He said “I hate guns”.  Me too, Mr. Payton.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/columnist/bell/2016/04/11/will-smith-death-sean-payton-new-orleans/82899630/

 

Here is my post from 2012: Little change and still heart broken….

12-19-2012

Newtown, CN s

School shooting commentary and stats on guns in USA.

I can’t stop thinking about the little souls in Newtown. From what I read I am not alone. Hopefully this is a good thing because these tragedies have happened a lot in the last few years and we always seem to mourn for a few days then mostly move on as the horror fades.
This time I hope for a real dialogue, a short one because what I truly want is real and meaningful action to address the problem of guns and also mental illness.
It seems we just survived a very divisive election and now we are confronted with this. I feel the same vitriol in this divide. It is political and should not be and yet it must be at the same time. Here is what I think and feel free to defriend me, I won’t be hurt.
Perhaps it is a paradox but I, myself, would never own a gun and never hunt, I admit to being repulsed by it but on the other hand, I have many family and friends who do and I have reconciled that with the fact that I do believe in the right to defend oneself and I also think if a person wants to hunt and they are responsible and eat what they kill then I have no problem with it. Since I go buy my meat at the butcher I can’t really complain and I won’t.
But I have absolutely no concept of how or why we would ever need assault rifles in anything other than the military. Or hollow point bullets. If there is some logical reason please tell me.
And why would this Mother have these guns and take her son to the shooting range when she surely knew his mental health issues?
I am so sick of hearing the one liners and clichés like ‘guns don’t kill, crazies do’ and ‘if we take away guns only the crazies will have guns’ and all the other ridiculous variations and bumper sticker blasts. People who use the word ‘crazy’ in that format tell me all I need to know about them and obviously have no understanding or compassion for mental illness.
I have my own stats and I think they are better than clichés, they speak louder and are harder to argue with.
Here are just a few:

A study in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery found that the gun murder rate in the U.S. is almost 20 times higher than the next 22 richest and most populous nations combined.
Among the world’s 23 wealthiest countries, 80 percent of all gun deaths are American deaths and 87 percent of all kids killed by guns are American kids.

Number of Murders, United States, 2010: 12,996 Number of Murders by Firearms, US, 2010: 8,775

Number of Murders, Britain, 2011*: 638
(Since Britain’s population is 1/5 that of US, this is equivalent to 3,095 US murders) Number of Murders by firearms, Britain, 2011*: 58 (equivalent to 290 US murders)

Between 1955 and 1975, the Vietnam War killed over 58,000 American soldiers – less than the number of civilians killed with guns in the U.S. in an average two-year period.

In the first seven years of the U.S.-Iraq War, over 4,400 American soldiers were killed. Almost as many civilians are killed with guns in the U.S., however, every seven weeks.

Guns were used in 11,078 homicides in the U.S. in 2010, comprising almost 35% of all gun deaths, and over 68% of all homicides. The risk of suicide increases in homes where guns are kept loaded and/or unlocked.

People of all age groups are significantly more likely to die from unintentional firearm injuries when they live in states with more guns, relative to states with fewer guns. On average, states with the highest gun levels had nine times the rate of unintentional firearms deaths compared to states with the lowest gun levels.

The percentage of people killed with their own guns or guns of someone they knew– When I worked in Battered Women’s Services it was around 80%. I couldn’t find a stat on this today. But to illustrate, if I am angry I might get in my car and head for the back roads, and SCREAM!! But a person with anger management or other mental health issues will grab a gun if they know where one is. Oftentimes it is just to threaten or scare someone but just as often it goes horribly wrong.

Domestic violence assaults involving a firearm are 12 times more likely to result in death than those involving other weapons. Abused women are five times more likely to be killed by their abuser if the abuser owns a firearm.

What bothers me the most about all of this is that so many of us are actually on the same side. Like politics, I have never understood why so many people vote against their own self-interests. The only conclusion I can draw is that they fall for the scare tactics and one- liners and dare I say it –don’t bother to take the time to read and educate themselves. The dumbing down of our society is appalling.
Let me be clear, most people who are for gun control, like myself, do not want to take away your guns or stop you from hunting. We want to take away assault weapons and those clips with multiple bullets and have better checks on people who are allowed to purchase guns. Responsible gun ownership. Jane Smiley wrote a great commentary on Huffington Post that was full of new ideas (to me) about how this might be accomplished.
And along the same lines, it greatly distresses me that the same people who do not want gun control are the ones who vote against more funding to address mental health issues.
Yesterday I saw the news that some stores pulled assault weapons off their shelves and then even more heartening I saw that CA Teacher’s Union was reconsidering their investment portfolio in order to make sure they did not have stock in any company that did business with gun manufacturers. Personally I have done this for years but was happy to see it even if a little sad to realize that money talks the loudest as usual. Segue to the NRA and I definitely think they perpetuated this whole gun culture in many ways but I will leave that issue for another day. I thought maybe they had grown a conscience when I heard they went dark but I guess they were just out buying more assault weapons.
Just when I was lifted yesterday by this news I then see the headline that ‘assault weapons are flying off the shelves’.
Sigh…
Most horrific and terrifying thing for me is how to put the genie back in the bottle. Even if we banned assault weapons how do we get back the ones already out there? I have no solution, only more tears.
Bottom of Form

 

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The Constitution is Alive! http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=117 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=117#respond Tue, 16 Feb 2016 20:20:24 +0000 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=117 What is the proper amount of time to mourn someone you actively disliked? Of course I am talking about Justice Scalia but my grandma always said say something nice so I will start with not one but two things– 1. He was Italian! 2. He was a brilliant writer, his style and wit were clever, sharp and on point.
Yesterday someone asked me why I disliked Scalia so much and they assumed it was his term ‘homosexual agenda’. They guessed wrong.
I disagreed with his view that the constitution is static, dead. Textualism–only the words matter, not the legislative history. It is a subject that fascinates me. It was Scalia’s tendency to claim intimate knowledge of the “Founders’ intent” when such knowledge is impossible. Context is everything in terms of the Constitution, which makes it a living document by nature. I just can’t see how it could be any other way and I don’t understand how we can pretend we knew their intent when they could not possibly have imagined assault weapons, computers, stem cell research and where that would/could lead– just to name a few.
If I can’t imagine something how can I have an opinion on it? Haven’t your opinions evolved and changed based on your increased knowledge of something? On a personal level, the first one that comes to mind for me is tattoos. I would shudder at the sight of them, the sorts of people who got them, they certainly were not my chums! Now my nieces think they are de rigueur, badges of angst, like my Birkenstocks and bad poetry in the day.
On a larger scale, we as a people have changed and grown throughout our history, for example when the constitution was written we had slavery. There were actually some decent people who owned slaves and yes I know how that sounds. But their opinions changed, evolved and hence we have the 13th amendment that abolished slavery.
The Constitution—the document itself is beautiful and should always be the beginning but elasticity of interpretation and room for growth is essential for the document and the government to function.
We must understand the philosophy behind the words. The right to bear arms is a good example — since the people were the armed forces, there was no issue in having them armed with the technology of the day– pistol, rifle, or cannon. Citizens were the soldiers. However, once we had professional, government-run armed forces, the issue of who should be armed arose.
If we take the strict constructionist point of view on the right to bear arms, under the terms of the 2nd Amendment, should muskets be the only legal firearms today as they were when it was written? Or to the other extreme, should tanks and machine guns be available for public purchase because it only says “arms” and we should interpret that strictly? An argument for another day but I bring it up to illustrate how arbitrary the argument of an originalist is—much like the Bible and those who love to pick and choose what they deem relevant. I have no problem if they want to apply it to themselves, just keep such unyielding hypocrisy away from me. I hate hypocrites so much that anyone who brings it up quickly regrets it when they can’t get me to shut up!
And following my complaint of cherry picking for relevancy, originalists have no answer to Thomas Jefferson’s famous question: why should we allow people who lived a long time ago, in a very different world, to decide fundamental questions about our government and society today? Originalists do not draw on the accumulated wisdom of previous generations. That strikes me as unequivocally ignorant and serves again to validate their subjective, preconceived notions.
And what about women and blacks? Women were not even mentioned in the constitution and blacks would remain slaves for nearly a century more before the 13th amendment was ratified. They had the same status as criminals. If a slave escaped he was to be returned to his owner whereas a criminal returned to jail.
How does an originalist square that? Oh that damn cherry picking again.
Bottom line to me is, Scalia’s opinions and those of all ‘originalists’ that are based on this strict interpretation are just an excuse for their arch- conservative views to fly forward into law and consequently giving legitimacy to their enforcement.
So yes, my views were fundamentally opposite of Justice Scalia’s but that’s ok, let’s go with that for a minute— you had to admire that Scalia was consistent in his rulings until Bush vs. Gore 2000 presidential race. Scalia stopped the recount. Aside from the fact of that being such a divisive and polarizing event for our country, he made a U-turn on his previous reluctance of advocating federal intrusion into state’s rights. I believe that was the end of a smattering of respect I had for him.
I wonder who Clarence Thomas will copy from now? Too soon?

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Facebook Induced Insanity http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=1 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=1#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2015 15:22:14 +0000 http://www.globalgrl.com/?p=1 HOW FB STOLE MY BRAIN:  the plain unvarnished truth as revealed through private diary excerpts:

A Friday in AUGUST:   I love FB, it is filled with such fun and loving activities from my large family. We live all over the country and it pulls us into a close circle. Almost like a group hug.

11:00 pm: who can understand kids? One of the main reasons I joined FB was to keep up with my nieces and nephews.  Blue Niece put something on FB that scared the bejusus out of me, I thought that she was suicidal and I panicked, I didn’t have time to care if I embarrassed her in front of her friends. Then I found out that her post was simply some song lyrics that she liked. Well who would like such morbid downer crap?  Now she is calling me a creeper. I don’t know what that is but I don’t think it is good.

Saturday: Morning coffee, opening FB and Red nephew has posted an old photo of the two of us. Sweet!  I am sure he is trying to make me feel better after the family panic and ripple effect I caused last night. But why don’t kids call their Aunts Aunt anymore?

I love FB, my brother in law grows the most gorgeous flowers that he shares with us all!

Afternoon:   FB is so irritating, the spelling is atrocious and the grammar is offensive.

I am annoyed.  Ms. Obsequious likes everything within 2 seconds of posting. And why is she ‘liking’ something from 4 years ago? It brings the old photo back to the top of the feed. This is not scrapbooking!

Purple Niece thinks a ‘party line’ is where you line up for shots at a party. I need to get Lily Tomlin’s record, “This Is a Recording”, for her but I doubt she has a record player.

I am trying to see if my sister has posted photos of her bike trip and I have to scroll though endless baby and animal posts. Does anyone remember when we actually went weeks without taking a photo?

And Sally Stupinda is a fatuous dunderhead. I cannot believe she does not check her facts before posting. Does she not know she is voting against her own self interests?

And the spelling and grammar, I am disgusted, going to stay off here the rest of the day.

Saturday 5:30: I am only going on to check on my Mom since she has not returned my phone call. I see she is on FB talking about all the genealogy research she did today. That is quite the positive, her finding all those connections. Even if they can’t spell.

Late night: How the hell did my chat get turned ON? I turned it OFF. It is like having to keep a constant vigilance over a naughty child that you have sent to their room and they keep coming back out. FB has no manners.

Sunday:  Last night I happen to know that Ms. Mary Maudlin spent the evening looking at old yearbook photos, glory shots of her youth and yet she posted all kinds of excitement. On FB she lives the life she wants to have instead of the one she has. What bunk.

How can dead people ‘like’ things? And post things? Is FB available in heaven and hell?

Lugubrious Lori has posted 30 depressive MEME’s in a row, blowing up my feed, I am seriously getting off of here.

And supercilious Sally is a dry drunk. Weekends are her worst and TMI, this is not group therapy, people! Mispelled and bad grammar TMI to boot!! Have they no shame?

Monday: Lots of posts today from Paula Poser and Bill Bumptious. It is that old adage of familiarity breeds contempt.

I hate that people I thought I liked are now running around buck naked. They like weird music, they hunt, they watch reality TV, they eat bacon chocolate donuts. I feel like I am watching bad porn.

I think I am getting FB Tourette syndrome, I am itching to make snide comments.

Tuesday: I have made many friends from all over the world that I would like to keep up with.  FB is an easy, auto pilot vehicle for that endeavor. Minimal effort and yet maximum rewards. 6 degrees of separation is now 4 or 3. I am sure FB had a big hand in shrinking our world and this is a positive. Their spelling and grammar mistakes are quite understandable but the rest of you, please, you are driving me crazy.

Tuesday 8:00 PM I googled my brother’s favorite fishing magazine, Honey Hole, to buy him a subscription and now I am getting porn ads on the side of my page. I am hopping mad.

Wednesday: Jeez I have an email from my real life best friend who wants me to give ‘thumbs up’ to his posts. I think he has an abacus for each of his friends.  After a few days he will repost it under his Mother’s FB and I will have to ‘like’ it again. I think his mother would be amazed at her presence on FB.  I told him this is how Norman Bates got started.

I hate FB, they changed my privacy settings again and now my group called “redneck relatives” knows that I came to town and did not call them. And my group called ‘”hanging by a thread” saw my snarky posts that were ‘sorta-kinda’ directed at them. I got defriended by 17 people, maybe that is a Guinness record.

I must escape this Church of FB.  I developed an algorithm to correlate time spent on FB with lost intelligence and I think I could file criminal charges or maybe win a civil suit.

Time stealing is probably only a misdemeanor but I am thinking more like one of those Robin Cook novels where your body parts have been harvested and you are either a walking zombie or in suspended animation. I tried to find a lawyer to take the case but so far can’t find one that is not an addict, a Facebook User, pun intended.

Thursday: I was probably over reacting yesterday. Today’s posts are very uplifting and intelligent, lots of food for thought from my very intellectual friends. Maybe a few MEME’s that I have seen 100 times before but no biggie.

Noon: My Mother wrote on the WALL a blow by blow depiction of my sister’s hysterectomy. She said her uterus was bigger than a baby head.

When questioned she said she thought that she had put it on the PRIVATE Wall which is what she calls messaging we think. Although she thinks her cellphone is FB so I am not certain.

I just had a long conference call with my sisters trying to set up a schedule to take turns monitoring Mom’s Facebook activity. 3 sisters, so the list of complaints is long: TMI, religion and politics are NO-NO’s, why does she share (steal) our photos and add her own braggadocious narratives?  How do we stop her revisionist history posts, why does she not understand that the WALL is public domain? The list is exhausting and the task of monitoring daunting.

Friday: Mom is on FB having a ‘private’ argument with my sister-in-law on the WALL about her Yoga addiction. She said her grandson is in danger of having pretzel shaped bones by his exposure. Not sure what that means but it is not my turn to monitor her. Smiley face.

Pink niece posted, her day is ruined, her 5th hair color this month did not come out right. When I was young a ruined day was when you tried to swim faster than the water moccasin next to you in the creek and didn’t make it.

Saturday morning: Need to get moving, have a weekend at the lake planned. Slightly annoyed, I must check FB first because I will have no service at the lake and need to make sure I don’t miss anyone’s birthday.

Saturday afternoon, feeling FOMO. Not liking my ‘no service at the lake’ and need to walk up the hill to get a signal and make sure I’m not missing anything. I think people secretly like it when I take the time to point out their spelling errors and correct their grammar.

Sunday morning: Volunteered to drive to get ice since I knew I would have a signal and could check up on some simmering sagas on FB. Annoyed as I had to scroll through so many PP’s (prolific posters who think they are so profound). READ: Bumptious Buffoons who can’t even spell. Back to boat with half melted ice, what a time slaughterhouse!

Sunday afternoon: I am happy that dark clouds are rolling in as it gives us an excuse to leave the lake early.  Once we get into a service area my FB alert chime seems to be blowing up so I know something must have happened.

OMG, I am annoyed . I did not ‘like’ a family member’s status and drama is flying. In fariness I did not see it but when I went back to look I see it is just the 23rd photo this week of her kid winning the MVP on his Tee Ball team. I spent 20 minutes pulled over on the side of the road searching for it so I could like it and call off the family heat but just as I was about to write an obsequious comment I got a phone call. After I hung up I went back to it only to find that I am ‘defriended’. Well good riddance, she was the worst spelling and grammar offender anyway.

2 weeks later I had a friend request from same said family member who defriended me. She says she has no idea how we could have been ‘knocked off’ each other’s FB. I’m going to make her wait a bit before I accept the refriend.

I refriended Ms. Touchy Tammy and tried to set up a special alert so that I will not miss any of her posts. I tried to pay my 10 year old Green niece who can make apps to make me one that will ‘like’ her stuff automatically without my having to look at it but I could not afford her.

SEPTEMBER: I am learning how to make ‘apps’ myself so haven’t had much time for this diary. I am trying make the app that will automatically ‘like’ the things I like plus all family members. So far the glitches are numerous and people might be getting suspicious since I ‘liked’a photo of Cheney and Rove hunting.  I have to work on the parameters.

OCTOBER: I live to ‘like’.  Likewise I am sustained by ‘likes’.  I think I have a pretty good system of never missing any ‘likes’– the giving or getting. And to think I once signed a petition to put a ‘dislike’ button on FB. How silly of me. I am not going to reveal my system  here until I have secured the patent. Which I will do as soon as I winnow the daily application hours to under 18.

NOVEMBER: I have not had any time for this diary, the ‘Never Miss a Like’ patent is going full steam ahead and now I am working on the ‘sub likes’.  Or some way to ‘like’ that someone liked your like.  It is so much easier just to ‘like’.  Whiners are as unattractive as bad spellers.

DECEMBER 26th How I spent Christmas: it was truly divine, my secret diary! An Italian pick plate, wassail, jammies, African hair oil treatment, Perry Mason marathon– but I can’t put that, instead I post that we woke up with a roaring fire (started by elves I presume), mistletoe and perfect kisses, then a huge perfectly cooked dinner with family, joyous caroling and hot toddies, and in between I fed the homeless, rang the salvation army bell, and ended the evening contemplating Angelina Jolie goodness over a game of monopoly with similarly minded friends.

My New Year’s resolution is going to be making an app that corrects all spelling and grammar.

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