It seems particularly important in this era to be neighborly. Offering people the benefit of the doubt, since we’re all struggling with current circumstances.

It’s hard though, people hurt people hurt people, even when they don’t mean to. I gave some money to a neighbor, who was asking for more than usual to buy her medication. She proceeded to remark on my appearance, in ways that she thought were complimentary, but I found insulting. I had another elder accuse me of rudeness for not greeting him quickly enough when he greeted me (I didn’t hear him). Finally I’ve seen so many pleas from desperate Palestinians and Sudanese people on social media. Begging is undignified by its nature, and it’s jarring and unusual to see so much of it. It’s uncomfortable to witness this, and sometimes the tactics are sometimes crass and maudlin. Still, we must strive to treat our neighbors with dignity and respect, always.

I must have watched Bad Bunny on Tiny Desk at least 10 times in April (May Public Media thrive in this era of violence and uncertainty):

Word of the Day is: okpa

I encourage you to support National Nurses United in their effort to Reinstate NIOSH – National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and keep basic workplace protections: https://act.medicare4all.org/sign/tell_congress_reinstate_niosh

Join the $15 for Palestine campaign; send $5 each to the following organizations to help provide critical and sustained aid to the people of Gaza:

• Gaza Mutual Aid
• Healing Our Homeland
• The Sameer Project

Contact:

San Quentin https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/facility-locator/sq/

California Correctional Health Care Services Lifeline@cdcr.ca.gov ,

CA Governor Newsom https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov40mail/

Sample email:

San Quentin and CCHCS would rather have not have nurses than have teleworking Nurses. 

San Quentin has ordered a number of high risk nurses, who have been successfully and diligently working remotely, to report to San Quentin on Monday, 7/6. San Quentin is currently experiencing an outbreak of over 1300 COVID-19 cases

Essentially they are forcing nurses ready, willing and able to telework, to choose their job over health and family safety. 

Repeat. Ready, willing and able to continue to work remotely, but essentially, Nursing management is forcing them to go out on disability or sick leave. 

This is a further example of irresponsible decision making collectively by the SQ, Regional and Statewide Chief Nurse Executives working for the receivers office. They join Kelso’s ongoing incompetent responses to the COVID crisis. While the CEO, as hiring authority, could override these bad choices, he passively signs off.

I always say that in the movie of my life I would want to be played by Sissy Spacek. Many people don’t get it, she looks nothing like me, I know, I’m black, and she’s white. But as a minority, I don’t have the luxury of a huge selection of people in movies who look like me. But more importantly, I don’t think it would matter, Sissy is a queen and I’m sure she would find a way to play me anyway, black or not.

Why do I identify so much with her? Like most actors, I identify more with her characters on screen, than her real life, (which I don’t know a whole lot about except that she has been married to the same man for 40 years, which is a triumph in and of itself). I first saw her as Carrie, the ultimate revenge fantasy for a high school misfit (actually, don’t tell anyone but I saw Carrie 2 first, it came out when I was having a rough time in Middle School). I also loved her in Badlands, where she played an adventuresome prairie girl, who takes up with a charming stranger and goes on a violent crime spree in the heartland. In 3 Women, she plays the awkward and demure character of Pinky, who has a nervous breakdown and changes drastically as the movie goes on. I could go on, but I won’t.

In her personal upbringing, Sissy Spacek was a self-described tomboy. Her character Holly turned into a bit of a tomboy, after learning to shoot a gun, but she also played the very feminine Pinky and Loretta Lynn. She’s played introverts and extroverts, Type As, type Bs and everything in between. What strikes me about Spacek is her ability to be sensitive without seeming frail on incapable. When I picture a sensitive person, I think of Sissy Spacek.

I tend to fall into the trap of thinking that actors are bad people. As an introvert, I don’t have a huge amount of respect for extroverts, but actors are some of the worst it seems, because they feed on the love and energy of others, and they make their living lying. Sissy Spacek almost makes me think that actors may not be so bad.

Two weeks without a post. Sry reader(s), I went out of town and then had to catch up on work. I have a couple longer blogposts coming, but in the meantime, you can:

Read this Bad Machinery Story
Listen to this Chicks with Hits Mix
Do any number of other things, I’m going to bed.

“I want to believe,”–the mantra that Fox Mulder has pinned to his office wall in The X-Files–applies in different ways to these two companies; Mac partisans want to believe in the image of Apple purveyed in … ads, and in the notion that Macs are somehow fundamentally different from other computers, while Windows people want to believe that they are getting something for their money, engaging in a respectable business transaction.

–Neal Stephenson, from In the Beginning was the Command Line, as true today as it was 13 years ago.