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Last time, I mentioned the death of my friend Anna Adams, just days before we were
planning to celebrate her 80th
birthday. She had a “green” burial without a funeral service. Here is
something about her from my book Triumph
& Hope: Golden Years with the Peace Corps in Honduras (pp189-190):
Another
stateside visitor was Anna, whom I hadn’t seen since we were teenagers
together in Colombia. After almost 50 years apart, we hardly recognized each
other, but with our first embrace, it was like old times again. Valiant Anna,
who still remembered Spanish, joined me on a medical brigade to La Ceiba,
where a child’s father admired her beautiful blue eyes and begged her to
marry him despite being already married, a rather minor detail.
On
a side trip, Anna and I passed by some spikey pineapple fields en route to a
mountaintop resort, Pico Bonito, where wild monkeys and toucans chattered
overhead, then visited a Garífuna fishing village called Sambo Creek, and
ended up eating at a Ceiba watering hole called Expatriates’ Bar. Next day,
at a butterfly farm set among fragrant-blossomed orange trees, a crested
lizard darted across our path, black birds with yellow wings flitted up to
high-hanging nests, and flocks of wild parakeets chirped noisily overhead. We
sampled bitter cocoa fruit and seeds, scarcely resembling processed
chocolate.
Back in El Triunfo, Anna
contributed $35 to outfit Marina’s maid Sarita with prescription eyeglasses.
When Sarita first donned the glasses, she marveled at the crisp, tiny details
of flowers and insects never seen before.
Trump’s incitements to violence against Muslims, his
urging of police to “rough up” suspects, do have real world consequences,
such as with the attack on mosque in suburban Minneapolis. His threats on
health care and uncertainty about the future of the ACA have led to premium
hikes and triggered the very problems he direly predicted. Meanwhile, out
playing golf on his so-called “working vacation,” he should put his twitter
phone away.
Pence is wise to totally distance himself from speculations
about a 2020 presidential run of his own, since for him to arouse even the
slighest breath of suspicion of disloyalty toward Trump would put him
immediately on the blacklist. He is in a very delicate position.
Where have Jared
and Ivanka been? They were thought to be a moderating force. It will be
interesting to see what sort of reception daughter Tiffany gets from other students when she starts at Georgetown
Law School next fall. Being a Trump offspring is definitely a two-edged
sword.
Trump likes to pivot to Hillary Clinton’s e-mails whenever asked a hard
question about his own policies; now, reportedly Kelleyanne Conway has
pivoted way back to Benghazi.
Next, it’s going to be Monica Lewinsky.
However, as some pundits have warned, a national emergency, like 9/11, which
put unpopular GW Bush over the top for a second term, could rescue Trump from
the doldrums and have the citizenry rallying around him. Trump is already
bungling his way into inciting a possible conflict with Iran and/or North Korea,
which not only would be catastrophic in itself, but like GW Bush’s incursion
into Iraq, actually win him a legitimate second term. The North Korean
leader’s wild nuclear threats should not be met with the same from our side.
Two crazies facing off, each with nuclear weapons, that’s very scary. Hillary
warned during the campaign about having someone as unpredictable and unstable
as Trump with his finger in the nuclear trigger. The stock market reacted
negatively. Will I actually live to see the end of the Trump administration,
something which is sadly affecting my daily mood and well-being? And there
are millions more in the same situation.
Democrats desperately need an
understandable platform or message and a dark horse presidential candidate—not Hillary, not Biden, not Elizabeth
Warren, I fear, perhaps too far left, but still very likeable and smart and a
woman! We women got cheated last
time. Maybe she could actually make it?
“A Better Deal” trotted out as the new Democratic Party slogan does
not grab listeners the way “Make American Great Again” has done. Democrats
need to do better than that. Someone from Maryland has put his hat into the
2020 presidential ring, but the fact that I cannot even remember his name
shows how much steam his candidacy has gathered so far. Tim Kane, though he was not stellar in his one national
pre-election debate, is certainly a possibility too. As for the message, it
should include something about not falling into a dictatorship, which seems to be
what Trump is aiming for by making anyone who opposes him into an enemy;
trying to gain control of the media; promoting jobs, protections, and benefits
for himself and his family; falsifying data; controlling the electoral
process; and withholding government subsidies and authorizations from those
he does not like.
Jesuits close to Pope Francis are concerned about right-wing Catholic supporters of Donald Trump, according
to a recent interview on NPR. https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/376acfa0-5dda-37de-a678-f0fa9a0344dd/ss_vatican-addresses-catholic.html (Apparently Catholics voted for Hillary by
a slim margin.)
Someone freezing
their head at death in case it can be thawed out later and grafted onto
another (someone else’s) body is a fanciful and silly idea. Let’s assume it would
work (very doubtful, at least with today’s knowledge); while it might be quite
interesting for them to emerge later into a world that’s moved on from when they
first “died,” once again, they will face the prospect of death. As far as we
know, nothing is forever except maybe space-time itself. Everything,
ourselves included, has a beginning and an end, earth and all the planets, even
the sun and the stars. It could be argued that already some people are living
too long, losing mental and physical faculties, not doing anything useful or
even interesting in life, in a word, becoming bored and boring and needing a
lot of help from others just to survive every day. We are creating societies
of more people who need care and
who are not contributing. That doesn’t seem wise. I will say that even if I
end being one of them—hope not. Once I’ve started a steep decline, I’d like
to go quickly for the good of all concerned, including myself. (Ask me again
when that actually happens.)
Now, on the 72nd anniversary of American atom bombs being dropped on Japanese
cities, I recall that even as child, I never accepted that as a right and
moral action, something that sullied Truman’s reputation for me for evermore.
Reporters without Borders has asked me to post the following:
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