Decided to consolidate my replies here. When I was growing up in Hawai'i, every schoolchild...

...every adult, every Hawai’ian knew of the work of Fr Damien De Veuster.

Leprosy was a devastating, contagious, disfiguring, and fatal disease. It still is, if untreated. There was no treatment whatsoever for leprosy, and as it was highly contagious, especially among native Hawai’ians, the afflicted were simply taken to the remotest part of a remote island and let go into the surf. The remainder of their days was Hell on Earth, as their bodies decayed to the bone, fingers and feet fell off, noses collapsed inward, and maggots took residence.

Father Damien went to them, lived with them, gave them hope, helped build a place to live in with some measure of dignity before death. And he himself contracted this terrible disease and died of it.

AOC speaks from a place of profound ignorance if she thinks he was a “white colonist,” and nothing else. In Hawai’i there were and are many religions. No one else came. Only Damien.

Perhaps as a person born and raised in NYC, perhaps she confused Fr Damien with Fr Junipero Serra of California? Serra has been in the news lately, after all.

Both my states are very far away from her center of the universe, and both these men were priests of the Roman Catholic Church. They were born centuries apart and operated in different parts of the globe, but no matter.

Junipero Serra could rightly be called an agent of European colonialism: in his zeal to convert, he broke apart and virtually enslaved indigenous tribes with the assistance of the Spanish Conquistadores.

Father Damien, on the other hand, went to a leper colony in a kingdom where the native culture was already devastated, but no matter I guess, if you are simply trying to make an important point about race and gender.

After statehood, the sculptress Marisol Escobar was commissioned to create the statue that now resides in Statuary Hall. She chose to work from photos taken in 1889, the final year of his life, and it is no exaggeration to say the result shocked the hell out of people in both Honolulu and Washington DC. Here is no plaster saint. Here is no faux-Roman marble bust in a toga. Here is no conquering hero with a chestful of medals. Here is a man, dying for those he served.

AOC is a rising star in the Democratic Party, and I watch her career with interest. But she is capable of error. I think she tried to take back the implications of what she said, but the fury with which her defenders are attacking even the most on-point corrections is not helping her or anyone else.

For anyone who is interested in the life of this man and his place in the history of Hawai’i, I suggest “Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai” by Gavan Daws, University of Hawaii Press, 1973. It is an entirely secular work of scholarship, for those to whom it matters.


PS for Anamnua: I am not writing as a Catholic, though my grandparents were of that faith. I write as one who cares about my home state, its history, and the truth, as best I can. Peace. See you around.
~~Hekate

Frankly, I think this is it. COVID has ripped away every shred of the stories we told ourselves...

...so that we could sleep at night. Linking health care access to specific jobs, and making it a for-profit enterprise, is now nakedly the scam it has always been. Naked and ugly beyond words. 20,000,000 people laid off, furloughed, fired all at once — and however many family members they had dependent on their jobs for medical care would make it what? 80,000,000?

In all the heroism of doctors and nurses in hospitals trying to save lives, there was just one story I saw and one comment made that put the lie to overarching story of our country: (1) medical personnel being laid off by the agencies they work for, and (2) someone who lived who was presented with a bill over a million dollars. Didn’t see these two items? I almost missed them when I blinked.

I think there are going to be any number of hospitals that go bankrupt and close their doors before this is over. But Blue Cross and the rest won’t be hurt.

So, the “medical plan” that Trump and McConnell promised? The current situation may be it.

My brother Joe passed on Saturday night

A friend found him today on his couch at home, and our younger brother called me.

Think a good thought for him, my friends. He was 71 and it was COPD and emphysema that got him in the end. We remaining siblings are grieving from SoCal to New York state and up to Oregon, where he had lived for over 50 years. We don’t know when we will be able to be together again, but I told our younger brother that from the first time I heard Liam Clancy sing The Parting Glass, I knew that song would be Joe’s elegy. So he pulled it up on You Tube and we cried together.

Thank you so much. Over a million women marched the day after he was sworn in. Airports...

...were swamped with Americans offering support and legal advice to Muslims when Trump denied them entry.

When the bastards tore infants and children from their mothers’ arms, people tried to find them, they sent what money they could to the ACLU and RAICES.

Every godsdamned DAY the fascists find some new atrocity to commit, and it is exhausting, and The People have stood up. By the time George Floyd was murdered in cold blood, the country went ballistic and it has not stopped.

So I ask you, do you want more people to wake up and join us? Do you want this to be a movement that builds and builds and builds?

Or do you really want to tell them to fck off?

"Many of these tools have been available to us for centuries": that's what galls me so badly...

...and has galled me from the beginning.

We KNOW how to do this — or at least scientists and public health officials most certainly do, even if a segment of the population is pig-ignorant and hostile to science.

My gods, even a 3rd World nation with an intelligent leader could get a grip on an outbreak in their country if they mandated handwashing, masks, physical distancing, contact tracing, and quarantines.

There is no earthly excuse for what is happening in the United States.

Thnks for the post Rhiannon.

My letter to the Los Angeles Times regarding Naked Athena

They had an article today...


From cloud of Portland tear gas, Naked Athena appears

Please, more reporting on Portland, OR. I watched part of this last night on livestream, and was stunned by what I saw. A line of women proclaiming themselves to be Moms, including at least one heavily pregnant woman, were attacked with gas and smoke by unidentifiable camo-wearing thugs on the streets of an American city.

When I saw the the Naked Athena appear, I realized something profound was happening. She is aptly named for the warrior goddess of ancient Greece. But even more than that, when she took that iconic pose (thank you for printing it) I saw a mortal woman go Full Goddess: life, death, life. And for a moment, the forces of destruction were abashed.

May the Mother of All keep her safe.

Controlling knowledge: "There is no Izvestia in Pravda, & no Pravda in Izvestia"

Bill Penzey is completely right. Whatever happened to BBQ Becky & other monikers associated ...

...with what actual individuals are doing or are located at the time they misbehave? And why in hell pick a woman’s name and claim (as I have seen here, of all places) that it is “gender neutral”? The hell it is.

Here are a few for everyone’s consideration:

Dog-walkin’ Debby
Costco Cathy
Central Park Carrie
Walmart Wanda
Permit Patty
Lemonade Lucy

We can certainly do better than this lazy meme.

For the males among the throng:

Gun-totin’ Gerald
Concealed Carry Charlie
No-Mask Norbert
‘Roid-rage Randy
Walmart Walter

TLP is not talking to Democrats to persuade us to vote against Trump & for Biden....

What would be the ever-loving point of that? Anyone to the left of “moderate” is already going to vote for Biden — and if they aren’t, their head is too far up you know where to hear the screaming.

The audience The Lincoln Project is aiming for is (1) Trump himself, because he is so easy to bait and it throws him off his game. I notice they are using his own trigger-words on him: weak, loser, laughingstock — all the stuff he projects on to others are his own deepest insecurities and fears. Hillary told us, remember? (2) Swing voters who are now sickened by what they see and need to have the way out pointed out to them. (3) Any lifelong Republican who has a remnant of conscience, sense, and/or understanding of the Constitution — but has devolved into voting for the GOP out of mere habit, and is now sickened by what they see and needs a way out.

The cultists and tribalists and white nationalists are a completely lost cause. Hillary was being gentle when she called them “a basket of deplorables.” Dems shouldn’t waste our time and money trying to win them over — The Lincoln Project certainly isn’t bothering.

I see their ads online, and they just get better and better. The one with the doctor who is a SEAL veteran was a punch to the gut for any American appalled by the news of Russia offering a bounty for the Taliban to kill American soldiers. When he named one of his bona fides as being “pro life” — that was not for me or you, that was for any Republican tuning in who needs a reason to listen to someone telling them to vote for Joe.

And if they want to claim some credit if Biden wins? Fine by me.

Even without video, any computer work time is (or can easily be) clocked. If you stop to think...

...or to get a cup of coffee, or stop to pee. The Great God Technology has you on an invisible chain, and it can be yanked.

This observation of mine goes back decades, to when laptop computer manufacturers were running ads showing happy adults taking happy kids fishing or to the beach. Look! You can multitask! Your kid gets precious time with you while at the same time you productively work on your laptop computer. Riiight.

Jobs like my husband’s are really rare. He and his team work remotely and are paid for the finished product or ongoing process, and time is pretty fluid. Thank God this arrangement was grandfathered in.

The latest new boss wants to see people right in front of their supervisor, being physically monitored — or he did until India (where most of the workers who code now are) slammed everything shut because of COVID 19. Now they’re at home for the duration, but I bet he checks their computer logs to make sure they are giving full value as to time.