Anti-Life

Why do the people who are SO contemptuous of medical professionals that they disregard everything they say about Covid-19; who accuse them of lying about vaccines and plotting to use masks to harm people, then drive like a bat out of hell to the hospital when they get Covid (probably from an anti-mask rally) and beg these folks -whom they *just* defamed as incompetents- to save them?
Imagine attacking your airplane pilot and crew as idiots; refusing to do anything they say, trying to open the emergency exit in flight, (because “telling me not to infringes on my personal rights”) etc… and then demanding they give their parachute to YOU when the plane is going down.
 
Think of all the laws the right has proposed in recent years to allow medical professionals to refuse treatment to people who are gay, trans, “illegal” or just in some way offensive to their alleged moral standards. Do you think for a second that, if our positions were reversed, they wouldn’t be passing laws saying that hospitals can turn away people who haven’t been vaccinated or refuse to wear a mask?

Of COURSE they would!
 
Because their entire ethos is based on percieved superiority to everyone who is different and a God-given right to cast those folks out. (They always blame it on Jesus so they can hide behind “religious freedom” when they hurt people)
These are the people who want poor kids to have to mop floors in order to get a free lunch )because to be poor means to be lazy unless some trust fund baby makes you mop floors in middle school). Who want to peek into girls’ underwear to check their genitals before they can use the locker room. You bet your ass they would be checking social media posts and anyone who turned up at an ER begging for treatment for a disease they said didn’t exist would be thrown out!
 
But they know we won’t do unto them as they would do unto us. After all, we are not the ones running around infecting people with a dangerous disease just in the hopes that it makes *them* look bad. So the same people in Tennessee who verbally attacked medical personnel yesterday (for telling them how to protect their children) will drive to the hospital tomorrow and demand that the people they just *threatened* do everything to save them.
 
And they will.
Because they call us extremists, but we’re not the ones extreme enough to deny medical care to someone who needs it, no matter why they need it or how loathesome they are.
 
Their anti-trans laws are based on the idea that some people find it “Morally repugnant” to seek gender re-assignment and no one should have to help someone they think is icky.
But how many people did that trans woman “infect” with, uh, trans-ness? How many did she cause to spend weeks in the hospital? How many did she kill?
There is NOTHING more morally repugnant than deliberately forcing children into a dangerous situation day after day, knowing that thousands will get sick and some will probably DIE.
 
Even as they smear and threaten us, they are counting on the fact that WE ARE BETTER THAN THEY ARE- that we will never treat them as they would treat us in a heartbeat. They are smashing holes in the bottom of the boat and then demanding that WE do all the patching and bailing, secure in the knowledge that, no matter how angry it makes us, we won’t just chuck them over the side.
Nor should we.
But boy, some of them make it tempting.

Posted by Tracy on Aug 13th 2021 | Filed in The Daily Rant | Comments (0)

We Won’t Stop You (Secdee 2021)

We started hearing it the day after Barack Obama’s election and now the foot-stomping tantrum chorus of entitled bullies threatening to take their ball and go home if the rest of us don’t agree to play by their rules is growing again.
“This is not my America” you lament! “This is no longer the same country I know and love!”

Huh. You know what- you may be right.

Because frankly, if you demand that America in the 21st century should function under the same assumptions and with the same values and the same entitled majority that America did in the 18th century- then no, this actually isn’t your America any more.

If you believe that “Freedom of religion” means that you have the right, based on your religious beliefs, to make decisions about health care, family planning, equal rights, employment and education for people who do not even share your religion-  you’re in the wrong place.

If you think you have the right to say who other people can love, this isn’t that place.

If you believe that bullying and abuse is ok as long as you do it for Jesus, and that kids are better off in orphanages than with gay parents, that its OK for you to demand to inspect our daughters’ genitals before you let them use the bathroom but it’s “radical” for us to tell you to wear a mask to save lives and that rape shouldn’t be an ‘excuse’ for an abortion because hey, some girls rape easy… this is not your America.

If you believe that the working poor, pensioners and veterans in America just want ‘free stuff’ but  when billionaires demand bigger income tax cuts its just for the good of the nation- no, this is not your America.

If you believe that it was wrong for your Irish and Polish immigrant grandparents to be called ‘dirty’ and ‘lazy’and ‘stupid’ 100 years ago but its ok to assume that Latino immigrants are all criminals carrying diseases, or that middle eastern immigrants are all terrorists (while you strut around the grocery store with a gun strapped to your back)… I don’t think so.

If you think that the reason there are so many single parent families today is a lack of shame attached to the mothers, and that the proper way to encourage better attendance at school is to take away the food stamps from the families of kids who miss school… you don’t understand what that “beacon of hope” thing is supposed to mean.

If the idea of massive walls and internment camps for people who are different seems like a good thing- but a gun license or a vaccination for you is government oppression… you probably would be happier somewhere else.

If you think that it is communism for a government that calls itself “By the people and For the people” to help take care OF the people and that “promote the general welfare” shouldn’t include making sure citizens don’t die from treatable illness just because they can’t afford health insurance, you may have taken a wrong turn.

If you believe that black people only vote for a black man because of race but white people never vote for a white guy just because of his race… if you defend the monuments of men who took up arms and committed slaughter to tear this country apart as your “heritage” but outlaw teaching the heritage of the people held in chains… if you believe that a 90 year old veteran who has been voting for 50 years should be denied a ballot because he no longer has a driver’s license… then it’s really not your America any more.
If you believe that having your candidate criticized is a witch-hunt but it’s ok for you to call the other candidate a pedophile and the Antichrist then yeah, you may be in the wrong place.

If you think that a nation which you boast is the Leader of the Free World and The Greatest Nation on Earth should ignore the needs of the rest of the earth, and even the needs to its own people, the you don’t understand the meaning of leadershipn.

And if you believe that it’s not possible for your candidate to lose an election unless the “urban” people cheat… by voting… if you believe that an acceptable way to win is to try to stop as many of those people as possible from voting: that “bipartisan’ means that all those other people must do things your way even when you are in the minority and that the “United” part of “United States of America” only applies when your party is running the show… then you fundamentally don’t understand what America- what a democratic republic- is.

Our Founding Fathers did not create a nation where groups of citizens can just ‘opt out’ when things aren’t being done their way, or where a bunch of you whining that you want to leave will make us turn our backs on our core principles in order to appease and accommodate you.
It’s not a place where beginning a sentence with “I’m not a racist but’ makes it ok to say that an unarmed black man deserves to be shot down in the street because he looked ‘suspicious’ or to design voting laws targeted specifically at communities of color. It’s not a country where rich, privileged old men can attack a young woman’s character in vicious and almost pornographic ways simply because they disagree with her politics- and not suffer consequences.
Where the entitled heaping abuse on the oppressed is just free speech, but dissenters criticizing them for it is cancel culture and communism.

It’s not a place where we believe that a helping hand in the middle of a disaster should come with a price tag or require the surrendering of rights, or that hungry children in a land of plenty should hunt through dumpsters for food because if they ask for bread, they’re lazy.

America is not a nation where we think it’s ok for poor people to die from treatable diseases because millionaire CEO’s don’t want to slightly reduce their profits. It’s not a nation with an endless tolerance for those who disdain  science and reason and basic human decency, or those that decry ‘government ‘freeloading’ by other people when their own hands are in the cookie jar up to the elbows.

And, thankfully, it’s not a nation where bitter, abusive, obscenely wealthy men can evade any and all punishment for the crimes they commit- including allowing the death of a half-million people for profit.

Not yet.

And now you say that if we tell you to follow public health laws, or get a gun license, or to let people vote by mail, or tax the billionaires to fix our roads, you’re going to leave.
If the army makes me get vaccinated against Covid, I’ll quit!
If congress makes it easier for all citizens to vote, we’ll secede!

That’s awfully hypocritical coming from the same people who call us unpatriotic and yell “America- love it or leave it!” every time we try to update antiquated laws to simply fix the things that are broken so the system works for all people more equally. When we are dissatisfied with the status quo, you accuse us of hating America.
Then you wave your confederate and Nazi flags and tell us to move to Russia if we don’t love America with you in charge.

Now it seems like you don’t love America enough to stick around and work together.
That’s too bad.

Look, we’re not trying to run you out, but you are certainly free to go. I don’t think many of you have actually thought this out from an economic, educational or military perspective, but critical thinking doesn’t seem to be your strong suit anyway.
So pack your stuff, if you must.

Uh, no- you don’t get to take your state with you. Sorry, but that ‘Constitution’ thing you’re always going on about says these states stay together. We fought a war to prove that point.
And you don’t get to keep our flag: that belongs to America, along with the 50 states. You’ll have to pick another to hit people with- but that shouldn’t be hard. You seem to like this one better anyway.

But hey, you can leave, if that’s really what you want: if your entitlement runs so deep that you’d actually rather abandon this ship than continue on the voyage with people who don’t always agree with you. I’m not sure who will want you, but good luck to you.

The border is that-a-way.

Posted by Tracy on Jul 6th 2021 | Filed in The Daily Rant | Comments (0)

Not Authorized

15 months.
That’s how long it has been since my cousin Margaret died and, just as the Covid lockdown was happening, I dealt with her belongings, cleaned out her apartment and had her cremated.

After I picked up the remains, I put them in a nice box and put them in my closet, because obviously, no sort of funeral service could happen then. In the course of my conversations with her step-daughter Elizabeth, she mentioned that Margaret told her she wanted to be interred at what she called “the family tree” where her wife Stephanie and her step-son Nathan’s ashes were buried. I said that Margaret had mentioned the family tree to me as well. We made plans that, some day in the future, we would carry out her wishes together.

“What about her brother Andrew?” Liz asked me then. “Do you suppose he will try to demand her ashes?”
I said I couldn’t imagine that he would care about them, except perhaps as a power play. We agreed that if he did order me to turn them over, rather than start a fight, I would give him some of them. I said I would open the bag and put some of them in a separate container for Liz to take to the tree when she could. It’s not like he has any clue how much the crematorium gave to me.

Fast forward 15 months.
I am standing at Costco, selecting new eyeglass frames, when I get a text from Andrew Hawk:
“Can you call me when you’re available to talk about me getting Margaret’s remains?”
Oh boy. Here we go.

I sent off a quick text to my sister Becky, and to Liz, explaining what was going on.
“Tell him he’s too damn late and block his homophobic ass” Becky said.
“Uh oh, Well, blame it on me” said Liz.

I thought for a few minutes, then replied, “In accordance with Margaret’s express wishes, I gave her remains to her daughter ELizabeth to inter with Stephanie and Nathan. This has been done.”
As indeed it has.
The second week in June, Elizabether and her partner came to Ohio. We drove to the special tree and (amid the screaming of the 17-year cicadas) buried Margaret’s remains. Before we left, at the base of the tree, I left a rock I had painted with a butterfly on the front and on the back, We remember Margaret.

About 20 minutes later, he replied, “The court just recently finalized her case. You didn’t have any authority to do that!
?? Plus you didn’t let anyone of us know?”

Oh the things I could have said.
~”Authority”? What authority did I need? I didn’t open her safety deposit box or empty her bank account: I just gave her ashes to her daughter to bury.
~Your implication that a person’s remains cannot be disposed of until their estate has completed probate is absurd. Try again.
~I think I can be forgive for assuming that, after 15 MONTHS without a word from you on that regard, you didn’t give a damn what happened to her.
~If I had let you know there is every chance that you would have tried to stop me from doing what all Margaret’s friends knew she wanted to have done, just for spite and to be the boss of everythying. Why would I enable you in that?
~Bite me.

I said none of those thing. I simply did not reply.

It is 2 days later Andrew still hasn’t contacted me any further, so hopefully, that’s the last I’ll hear from him. I’m sure my name is now mud in his family, but no more reviled than his is in mine. And Margaret is safely at rest, under the tree with the people who loved her and not the ones who judged her.

Posted by Tracy on Jul 3rd 2021 | Filed in General | Comments (0)

Memento Mori

Yesterday, a year and a day after her passing, we finally gave up on “some time when we can gather in person” and had an on-line memorial service for my cousin Margaret Hawk.
Ted put together a slide-show set to the music of “Sing You Home”, which I had always thought I would sing for Margaret, since she said she wanted me and Byron to sing for her funeral. I suggested the song because it refers to that- but it worked best paired with the pictures. (and anyway: it wasn’t the Tracy show. That’s why I ended up not singing anything at all).
I was asked to go first with my remarks/eulogy/whatever and though it wasn’t my first time writing an obituary/eulogy, I struggled with this one. I worried that it was too hokey or preachy or just… I don’t know. In the end I think I did alright. It was sincere, anyway.

I felt a little anxious when members of the Hawk family startted logging onto the Zoom meeting- not that my remarks said anything even indirectly about how badly some of them treated her. I funeral is no place for that crap! I was glad that one of them went to the retirement home and helped Aunt Patty watch. I just really hoped that they have forgotten I exist- and then there I was on the screen.  Oh well. Not the Tracy Show!

Since I still have her ashes, I was asked to make a little altar of sorts and have it in the picture, as it is traditional to have the loved-one’s remains “there” for the service. That turned into a whole thing involving taking pictures off the kitchen wall and hanging up a big piece of orchid-colored fabric, dragging over a corner cupboard that was the right height and covering it was a swath of black velvet (its sometimes handy to have a crate of fabric in your basement).
I put the decorative box with ashes on the cupboard top with a candle and a tiny vase of tiny flowers on top of that. In front of the box I set a nice geode that had belonged to gramps and which Margaret gifted to me before she died, and the rock I painted with a butterfly which Margaret chose and said she liked to hold in her hand while she was praying.
I think it was nice.

I also got dressed up (well the top half of me anyway, which was all you could see) and even changed my earrings for the first time in a year! I put on a litle mascara- and my eyes felt weird and heavy the whole time and I took it off again right after it was over. One year without and you realize you dont need that crap any longer! Plus I’m old and no one else cares.

I enjoyed seeing the names I remember from long ago at New Creation Church popping up as they logged on. I think there were about 40 “attendees”.
Afterwords about 15 people stayed on the call and chatted for a little while, until Tucker came in and positively glared at me to let me know he wanted to be fed. When I excused myself, that seemed to be the signal for everyone to log off.

I’m glad we did something at last. Such a lovely, loving person deserved a send-off. It was so unfortunate that her passing coincided with the perfect storm of the pandemic lock-down. Someday “when we can travel safely” (which will be never if the Covidiots in this country have their way!) Elizabeth is going to fly east and take Margaret’s ashes to the tree where the ashes of Margaret’s partner Stephanie are buried, so she can join her there.
Maybe I’ll sing for her there.

********************

Hello everyone. My name is Tracy and I am Margaret’s cousin.
I would like to talk to you about what Margaret was like as a child, but I can’t, because I didn’t really know her then. I know we met occasionally as kids, but I really have no memory of her other than as the owner of the box of hand-me-downs that our grandma would sometimes bring.
It was my great good fortune, however, to get to know Margaret as an adult. We discovered that we both had a love of rocks and geodes inherited from our grandfather and shared memories about our grandma’s thrifty ways and her amazing whole wheat raisin bread.

I wish I had been able to run and play with Margaret the cousin, but my life was immeasurably richer for knowing Margaret the woman, and Margaret the pastor and shepherd of the flock.
I came to New Creation once, at my sister’s suggestion, just to say hello to my cousin- and I stayed for years. It was easy to stay because the church community was a wonderful place where I felt accepted and welcomed… but the reason I stayed was Margaret. Every week she said something that really resonated with my life and in my heart, something that kept me coming back for more.

She was blessed to have a lot of wonderful and talented people to lean on for help in her ministry; still I don’t think I mis-state when I say that like Peter, Margaret was the rock upon which that church was built for so many years.

After a time, when my kids were in school and I was looking for something more to contribute to the world, she asked me if I would be her office assistant for the salary of “consider it a tithe to the church”, and I did. I kept us stocked in paper, figured out the weird paging system for printing out the bulletins we had back then, and spent a lot of time deleting icky spam email that got sent to the church.
Eventually I was given the grand title of “Music director”, choosing hymns and rehearsing & leading our “Choir” which usually consisted of between 3-5 people. That job was a wonderful gift to me, because I have an undergraduate degree in music which I had written off as a waste of time and something I would never use. Margaret found a way to turn that “frivolous” education into something useful, and joyful.

She was like that.
Margaret was patient and kind, cheerful and usually able to stay calm when things were boiling over around her.  Now I’m not going to paint her as some kind of saint: that would make her sound boring, and she certainly was not! Like anyone she got sad and lonely, frustrated and angry, but always seemed able to put that aside when someone needed her.
She gave of herself unsparingly, but hated to ask for help from others. When things got tough she always tried to make a way out of no way and pull herself through.
In a life with so much difficulty and loss, she knew despair but never surrendered to it.

Because what she was most of all, I think, was faithful.
She had faith in the many, many friends that she helped and who were there to help her. She had faith that life was still worth living if you just let it be.
She had faith that there was a greater love encircling her, promising not that there would not be storms, but that she would not be swept away and lost in them.

Her faith allowed her to be both a realist and an optimist. Her faith shone out in her eyes and echoed in that chuckling laugh she had, in the kind words and steady strength she always seemed to find in times of crisis. Her faith radiated warmth and it kindled faith in others.

Because Margaret believed in the transformative power of love, she transformed others.

With all that she suffered and lost in life Margaret never lost sight of the fact that she still had in abundance that thing that matters most: Love.
Margaret gave love by listening, by laughing, by giving advice, by praying for help, and by rolling up her sleeves and giving it, by standing up for people when they felt weak and by speaking truth to power.

She did a lot in her too-short life. But it’s not those many kind and important things that Margaret did which have us all here today (at our computers in our homes around the country) to remember her.  It’s the love she felt, and made us feel: a love that inspired her to do those things, which calls us here today.

All we are in this world is love.
All we are, when we come to the end ouf our days
Is the people who love us and the ones that we’ve loved.
All I’ll leave when I go is love.
all we are I this world is love.

Margaret left behind her great love. It is right that we gather to celebrate Margaret and talk about the reasons we loved her, because the love we felt for Margaret helped to make her who she was, just as her love for us is now forever a part of who we are, and who we will always be.

I miss her.
My life is better because I knew her.
Through her love of us and our love for her, Margaret lives on.

Posted by Tracy on Mar 28th 2021 | Filed in General | Comments (0)

Rite of Passage

It was a solemn occasion, I realized.

Yesterday Ted and I drove an hour south to Logan to get our first Covid-19 vaccine injection from a pharmacy there that started booking appointments for our age group before local ones did. It was a sunny day and an easy drive so we decide to just get it done.

That morning I dressed more carefully than usual. I chose a colorful shirt, my nicest jeans and my good black suede boots. I even put on a little bit of eye make-up.
I laughed at myself as I was doing it, joking that we are all such shut-ins these days with so few chances to go anywhere that I was even dressing up to spend 5 seconds getting a shot. How silly!
I even moved my wallet into my best small purse.

On the drive down, chatting quietly and listening to music, I found myself oddly touched with- awe, I guess, over what we were doing. The two of us, embarking together on our part of this step to… change the world.
I took Ted’s hand and said how amazing it actually is that humans, many of whom are too stupid to come in our of the rain, have been able to unlock both the secret of how something as tiny as a virus works and causes illness, and figure out how to stop them. Polio. Smallpox. And now Covid-19.
In a year the best minds in the world solved the puzzle and in doing so, changed the world.
And now we were about to be part of the change: part of the growing herd of “Humans Who Do Not Have to Hide in Our Houses Because the Covid Virus Will Not Harm Us.”
Incredible.

And I realized that this was why I had dressed with such care that morning. It wasn’t that I am such a shut-in that even going to get a shot felt like an outing. It’s that this was actually a very solemn occasion. One dresses nicely for the rituals of life.

The last time I got dressed up was last April when I went to the crematorium to collect my cousin Margaret’s ashes. I knew I would speak to only 2 other people there, and we would both be masked and standing on opposite sides of the room, but, with no funeral or memorial service possible for her at that time… well, it was kind of her funeral. One shows respect by dressing nicely for a funeral, and so I did.

Yesterday, although we just sat in an almost empty room, got our temperstures checked, arms swabbed and then (after a 15 minute wait to make sure we weren’t going to have an anaphylatic reaction to the serum) sent on our way, we were taking part in a rite of passage, of sorts. One that, at that very moment, people all across the globe were taking part in, or waiting for their turn to take part in.

 

Except of course for the agitators, bioterrorists and just plain fools who will not: because freedom! Because conspiracies (it implants a government tracking device!) and ignorance ( it will alter your DNA and you won’t be human!) and just general “if those people made it: if they are for it then I won’t take it, even if deep inside I know it will save my life” cussedness.
It’ll be hard to get herd immunity when 40% of the herd refuses to get immune and instead rips off their masks and goes to bars and gyms and parties while Covid-19 is still out there killing people at a somewhat reduced but still alarming rate.

The people who never criticized the Orange Idiot (who said that windmills cause cancer and maybe we should drop a little nuke in hurricanes to blow them apart and Covid is just like the flu and it will magically disappear soon) when he basically ignored the pandemic, allowing it to claim hundreds of thousands of lives, are now criticizing Joe Biden because people are still dying.
As if “red” states lifting all Covid restrictions in the name of “not letting the government tell us what to do” has no part in that. As if the Covidiot mask-deniers who charge maskless into stores that require masks and attack staff and patrons who try to remove them aren’t trying to undo all the good the new administration is doing. (We’d rather die than let a Democrat help us!)

Thanks to the Biden Covid team, we are now on track to have enough vaccine to innoculate *every* adult in America by the end of May!! The trick is getting it done, of course. That’s a big job and the $7B earmarked to help state and local authorities set up and staff more vaccination sites is being blocked by the Republicans who… want more people to die, I guess. (What other explanation is there? They also tried to yank health insurance from millions of people during a pandemic so clearly their “Pro-life” policy doesn’t extend to any actual, living people)

But those of us with functioning brains and human decency are wearing our masks and lining up for our shots and dreaming of a day when we can just run into the store for a jug of milk, hug our kids and eat at a restaurant again.
Until the next one comes along– and it will. Hopefully when it does we will not have a narcissistic sociopath in charge and won’t play politics while a half-million people die.

I took a few pictures and found myself thinking about making a covid memory box, with some of my masks and my mask bin and my vaccination card, to tell the future that I was a part of this.

Yeah definitely I should hang on to a bunch of those masks…

Posted by Tracy on Mar 6th 2021 | Filed in General,The Daily Rant | Comments (0)

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