It Was 40 Years Ago Today

 

A Way With Words

 THIS IS CLASSIC!

It’s not just Trump that’s leaving... novelist Hari Kunzru has a special way with words...

"Mike Pence you repressed joyless would-be witchfinder, every time you spoke you always looked like you were straining to expel an enormous bolus of your own hypocrisy from your clenched sphincter.

“Betsy DeVos you blandly foolish soulless entitled child-stealing witch, rotting like a corpse inside your Chanel suit.

“All the generals, you spineless buzz-cut phallus-brained plastic Spartans fawning and wriggling to distract yourself from your moral cowardice.

“Kayleigh McEnenay, you evacuated husk of a mean-girl cheerleader, the cavity where your heart once was pumped full of spite and moronic lies.

“Bill Barr you vast pompous pus-filled bladder of casuistry, you are an enemy of justice, bloated with resentment and cruelty, wobbling like a jelly at the feet of the oligarchs.

“Jared Kushner you vacuous dainty preening overpromoted nub of mediocrity, squeezed like an entitled smear of toothpaste into a silk suit bought with tear-stained dollars wrung out of the suffering tenants of your slum apartments.

“Ivanka Trump you monstrous slug of vanity, you infantile ninny so marinaded in self-regard that in your pea brain you believe we ought to love you for your crimes.

“Mike Pompeo, you bubble, you booby, you flatulent zero, that roiling in your ample guts that you mistake for world shaking significance is just the acid reflux of irrelevancy.

“Don Junior, you scabrous single-nostriled unloved elephant-murdering human wreckage, vibrating with bitterness and impotent rage at all the opportunities you’ve squandered.

“Sarah Sanders, you crude hulking beetle-browed bully, working your multiple chins as you masticated another stinking quid of falsity, spitting again and again on the people you were supposed to inform.

“Interlude: all you staffers and interns, so eager to crunch your way in your shiny new work shoes over the bodies of the poor and powerless, I smite you and cast you out one by one.

“Eric Trump, you pallid clammy suppurating nocturnal semi-human grub, your absence of charisma is your only notable trait and the act of flushing you from memory will so be smooth and painless that in a month people will find it hard to picture your moon face.

“Rudy Giuliani, you capering cartoonish skull-faced bag of graft and corruption, too stupid even to ask who’s pulling your strings just so long as you can cake your crusty face in tv make-up and clack your jaw at a camera.

“And of course Stephen Miller, you weeping pustule upon the social body, you dreg, you homunculus, you noxious slime felched from the gaping cavity of Jim Crow, one day may you find yourself walking barefoot across hot sand, desperate for water, crying for your missing child.

“With that I'll rest a while, and go to find a street corner to dance on."

Sunrises

 12 month Sunrise from the same location.

Monday Morning Smile

 

MAGA thought process

 

Monday Morning Smile

 

A Time to Heal

 James S. Gordon: Covid is just one more crisis for this nation of traumatized people. We need to start healing.

America has long been suffering from chronic dysfunction and disorder, and 2020 has seen that reach a crescendo. But there are signs change is coming.

Nov. 29, 2020, 8:46 AM CST

By James S. Gordon, psychiatrist and author of "The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma"

Hippocrates first identified medical “crises” as times in the evolution of an illness when the symptoms of chronic dysfunction and disorder reach an inflammatory crescendo.

He observed that these crises could be extinguished by death or fester as chronic illness — but, if a physician understood the nature of the crisis and addressed its causes, and if its sufferers were both physically and psychologically supported, they could often transform the grave threat into what he called a “healing crisis.” He described a healing crisis as a cleansing, detoxifying process that gives birth to a new, more integrated and stable state of physical and emotional health and wellbeing.

Telling people to count their blessings this holiday season is a recipe for depression

This latter crisis successfully resolves when physician and sufferer stop trying to subdue its symptoms but instead regard them both as arrows pointing backward, toward the causes of distress, and forward, toward the means to resolve it.

America, too, has long been suffering from chronic dysfunction and disorder, and 2020 has seen our problems as a nation reach an inflammatory crescendo. We need to transform this into our own healing crisis — and there are some hopeful signs that this may be happening.

Our challenge as a society now is to sustain and embrace the changes the healing crisis is bringing to America.

The Covid-19 pandemic — with its invisible and unpredictable course, its forced isolation and rampant unemployment — created a global, national and personal crisis which few alive have ever seen. Like the crises Hippocrates observed, this one has brought unaddressed disorders and vulnerabilities to the surface, in our body politic, as well as in our individual bodies and in our elected leader. As it has unfolded, it has exposed our greatest inequities and vulnerabilities: Black, brown and Indigenous people who are more likely to have been weakened by poverty and discrimination, chronic illness, poor nutrition and inadequate medical care, have been dying at twice the rate of whites; and 80 percent of all Covid-19 fatalities are among older people.

None of us, however, is exempt from the virus’s devastation or the fear it brings. Physicians like me are observing that previously controlled chronic conditions like hypertension, type II diabetes, arthritis and migraines are flaring. Psychological and behavioral vulnerabilities, probed by pandemic fear and uncertainty, are surfacing: a study just published in JAMA Open Network revealed a “threefold” increase in depressive symptoms; the Disaster Distress Hotline of the US Government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reports a 900 percent increase in calls to its suicide hotline; child abuse is increasing; drug overdose deaths are up by 42 percent.

George Floyd’s murder in May put the depth and lethality of American inequity in bold relief and fueled the crisis even as it gave a long-traumatized Black population and its allies a renewed sense of purpose. President Trump’s continuous attempts to downplay both the severity of the pandemic and American systemic racism fed its flames.

Those who have faithfully taken their cues from the President are also manifesting symptoms of the national emotional crisis. Their furious armed mobilization against basic public health measures and the threat of inter-city invaders, the homegrown terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor and threats to “Stop the Steal” all resemble what Hippocrates called “aggravations.”

And now, as winter approaches, the crisis continues to broaden and intensify.

Pandemic-induced isolation has exacerbated emotional distress and physical illness, but also made many of us more grateful for the human connections we do have.

Over the last 30 years, my Center for Mind-Body Medicine colleagues and I have had the opportunity to help other populations to move through and beyond the trauma that has devastated them — after wars in the Balkans and the Middle East, opioid epidemics and school shootings in the U.S., and hurricanes and earthquakes that have killed thousands and shattered the lives of millions in America and the Caribbean.

Young people in Gaza who’d lost family members in wars between Hamas and Israel and aspired only to revenge and martyrdom have used our program of self-care and group support to discover unimagined resilience and transform despair into generous, compassionate hope. An eight-year-old boy who wanted only to wear the suicide bomber’s belt came to imagine himself as “the driver for the first president of Palestine”; a broken-hearted nine-year-old girl who wanted only to be buried with her father, two uncles and an aunt who were killed by Israeli bombs now aspires to be a doctor, tending to the war-hurt hearts of Gazans.

Here in the U.S., resident-Elect Biden has turned his own traumatic losses into a commitment to compassionate care that can nourish our national healing.

And we Americans have been readying ourselves for the healing and transformation for which we hope. Millions more of us are now embracing meditative practices that offer an antidote to chronic distress and confusion, as well as pandemic-induced anxiety, agitation and sleeplessness — practices promote “compassion” and “loving kindness,” as well as long term physical and psychological health. Many Americans, including those who do not formally meditate, report being more “aware” or “mindful”; they are bringing a new perspective on and greater appreciation for what is truly important to them.

Pandemic-induced isolation has exacerbated emotional distress and physical illness, but also made many of us more grateful for the human connections we do have. FaceTime calls, Zoom get-togethers, and online classes have increased exponentially. Though overwhelmed by non-stop childcare, parents I know are discovering new ways of playing and learning with their children. The masks we wear to safeguard others as well as protect ourselves are visible and palpable reminders that all of us are connected to and dependent on one another.

Routine activities — preparing and eating meals, re-organizing closets, nurturing plants, walking by trees — feel newly satisfying; absent luxuries no longer seem essential; and threats to the social fabric, the political order, and the environment are coming into sharper focus. Many white Americans, hunkered down in pandemic induced isolation, have become sensitized to the vulnerability and pain of others less privileged. Large numbers, recognizing the festering wounds of genocide and racism, have committed themselves to draining the infection.

Our challenge as a society now is to sustain and embrace the changes the healing crisis is bringing to America. We must cultivate the meditative mind which quiets anxiety and agitation, promotes reflection over reaction and values understanding more than argument. We have to engage ever-more appreciatively and kindly with the people in our lives. We need to look more closely and critically at the illusions of safety and superiority which have blinded us to our vulnerability and condemned us to self-limiting self-protection. We have to deepen our understanding that we are all connected to and responsible for one another and the natural world which sustains us, and to commit ourselves to faithfully fulfilling that responsibility.

From: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/covid-just-one-more-crisis-nation-traumatized-people-we-need-ncna1249143?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=news_tab&utm_content=algorithm

James S. Gordon, a psychiatrist, is the author of "The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma," a comprehensive step by step guide to trauma-healing, and the founder and executive director of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine. A Georgetown Medical School clinical professor, he chaired the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy under Presidents Clinton and G.W. Bush.

Happy Thanksgiving

 

Rocky Goes Home

 Rocky, the tiny, beloved owl found inside the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, is released back into the wild in upstate New York, after a week of rehabilitation https://cbsn.ws/3mkjZIV

Monday Morning Smile

 

Keeping Louisiana's Newest Wildlife Refuge Running

 QUEEN BESS ISLAND, La. (AP) — After Louisiana officials finished restoring 37-acre Queen Bess Island in February, much of the vegetation planted on its small footprint of newly pumped sand didn’t have time to take root before more than 6,000 brown pelicans arrived for breeding season. The birds pulled up some sprouts to use in their nests.

So on November 13, the squawks of a few lingering pelicans mixed with the hum of drills boring shallow holes in the island’s surface, preparing spots for about 50 volunteers to plant another 6,000 seedlings on the state’s newest wildlife refuge.

Nicholls State University student-athletes clad in yellow Shell-sponsored shirts work to plant rows of black mangrove on Queen Bess Island, La., Friday, Nov. 13, 2020. After Louisiana officials finished restoring 37-acre Queen Bess Island in February, much of the vegetation planted on its small footprint of newly pumped sand didn’t have time to take root before more than 6,000 brown pelicans arrived for breeding season. The birds pulled up some sprouts to use in their nests. (Halle Parker/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP

Matt Benoit, who coordinates habitat restoration for the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, demonstrated how to take young black mangrove shrubs and matrimony vines out of their plastic pots and place them in the drilled holes.

Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority Executive Director Bren Haase pats dirt down and around a black mangrove on Queen Bess Island, La., Friday, Nov. 13, 2020. After Louisiana officials finished restoring 37-acre Queen Bess Island in February, much of the vegetation planted on its small footprint of newly pumped sand didn’t have time to take root before more than 6,000 brown pelicans arrived for breeding season. The birds pulled up some sprouts to use in their nests. (Halle Parker/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

“You have to pack the sand around the roots real tight. They don’t like any air down there,” he said as he pulled sand around a mangrove seedling. His agency brought about 1,500 of the plants, while Nicholls State University’s farm provided about 200 and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Foundation supplied the remainder.

Todd Baker, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries’ coastal resource scientist manager for wildlife, said the goal was to secure the plants with enough time for them to bolster nesting habitat ahead of the pelicans’ next nesting season three months hence.

“We could allow the island to naturally vegetate, but it’s going to take years for it to do it, so this is a good way to give it a jump start,” he said. “We’re losing a lot of pelican nesting habitat all around, so the more we can provide it here, the more it substitutes for the habitat being lost.”

Queen Bess, which provides 70% of Louisiana’s pelican nesting habitat, benefitted from $18.7 million provided by the BP oil disaster settlement. The island and its feathered inhabitants, located in Barataria Bay about two miles north of Grand Isle, were some of the first to be oiled after the Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010. The island’s population of brown pelicans, Louisiana’s state bird, had climbed its way back after a 1960s decline caused by the widespread use of the since-banned pesticide DDT.

“To see that money go right back into this habitat and for those exact birds is significant,” Baker said. “And then to see these organizations come together to make another investment in this island is pretty special. It’s not very often we get to do bird projects at this kind of scale.”

As the native mangroves and vines grow, the pelicans build their nests on top, squishing the plants slightly when they sit and care for their eggs. The plants also help hold sand in place, limiting erosion caused by the wind and water.

Between the coronavirus pandemic and the record-breaking 2020 hurricane season, Baker said, there was a lot of uncertainty around whether the Nov. 13 event would continue. That uncertainty only increased as Hurricane Eta approached the Gulf of Mexico, though the storm ultimately struck Florida.

Despite the number of storms this year, including a direct hit from Hurricane Zeta two weeks ago, executive director Bren Haase, of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, said the restored island fared well, with only a couple areas showing minor erosion and some water still held on the island. Other restoration projects that were still under construction, such as marsh-building efforts near Port Fourchon on West Belle Pass and at Caminada Headlands, were the most damaged.

While restoration project surveys continue, Haase said, “what we found generally just from looking at aerial photography is that projects that were done actually did pretty well.”

While tucking a black mangrove into the ground, Nicholls State graduate student Katie Gray said she was drawn to the Nov. 13 event to “do her part” to address the state’s land loss crisis. Because of Louisiana’s rapidly eroding coastline, “us planting these black mangroves to stabilize these barrier islands is so important,” she said.

Haase said the volunteer turnout showed “what the coast brings out in the souls of Louisiana.”

“These people are all out here on a work day on their own time volunteering to get plants in the ground for the sake of our state bird, for the sake of our ecosystem,” he said. “It’s a testament to the passion that people have for our culture and for our coast.”

Image from Louisiana Sportsman

Story from https://www.thehour.com/news/article/An-effort-to-plant-Queen-Bess-Island-for-15745674.php