Pretty was with our good friend Brenda this week when she found out we are having a granddaughter in October – and Brenda captured her immediate reaction…I love this picture, and I am beyond Thunder Dome excited about the baby girl who will be the center of attention and affection from so many family members.
Pretty and I celebrated at dinner with the parents-in-waiting last night and made name suggestions which were politely received but no cigar. (Oops – did someone just say cigar?)
We are also trying out names we want to be called by our granddaughter – that turns out to be more difficult than suggesting names for her. Never fear, we are on it. Any suggestions from our friends in cyberspace?
Alas, yet another member of the president’s cabinet bids us all a fond farewell – maybe not fond, but definitely farewell.
Kirstjen Nielsen, the US Secretary of Homeland Security, evidently felt it was the right time for her to step aside according to an article in the Business Insider today. Nielsen became the pretty face for the president’s ugly “zero tolerance” immigration policy of 2018 and she continued to defend the detainment of refugee children taken from their families – assuring Congress (and I heard this with my own ears) none of the refugee children were living in cages. Alrighty then. Clearly none of us have seen those conditions with our own two television eyes.
Ms. Nielsen attended Georgetown University’s school of foreign service and studied abroad in Japan. She worked for Senator Connie Mack of Florida before going to law school at the University of Virginia. During Dubya Bush’s first term who’s surprised she worked for the White House Homeland Security Council during Hurricane Katrina and had a hand in the less than stellar response by the Bush team in that tragedy. And still she moved on up.
In one of her Congressional appearances I heard her answer she had no idea how many asylum seekers had died during their internment in our camps. I could have helped her with that one. Two children died within one month of each other in December of 2018. Seven-year-old Jakelin Caal of Guatemala died on December 8th. Eight-year-old Felipe Gomez Alonzo died on Christmas Eve. We can start the death count with those two.
Now the courts have determined we may have to wait another two years to identify thousands of children still separated from their families at the border because of a policy Secretary Nielsen administered for a man with no concern for the welfare of anyone other than himself. Shame on him, shame on her and shame on all of us for a lack of moral outrage as a nation.
In Vision of Reality – a Study of Abnormal Perception and Behavior, author Alberto Rivas quotes Heinrich Himmler, another Minister of the Interior in a country across the pond during the Nazi regime:
“The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But we don’t ask for their love; only for their fear.”
So farewell to you, Secretary Nielsen. Don’t let your twisted lack of conscience hit you on the way out the door.
I would like to say this was photo shopped by my friend James Ray Couser from West Columbia, Texas when I saw it on his Facebook page today, but I pulled out my 1963 Gusher yearbook and there it was…
Okay – whoever thought up this pose for the Junior Class officers must have been smoking something other than cigarettes, and why I was holding a farm tool that was as tall as I was…well, all I can say is that I’m glad Charlotte and Claire thought it was funny – even then.
Thank you, James Ray, for resurrecting this picture. I have had a good laugh and enjoyed a flood of memories surrounding that time, place and the people in my life when I was seventeen. As you will probably remember, I will be 73 this year – actually two weeks from today – so this is a timely reminder of earlier days.
BREAKING NEWS – WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH MOVES ON TO APRIL!
If pictures are worth a thousand words, then you tube videos with the likes of Aretha Franklin and Eurythmics must be worth more than any amount of words available in the English language for me to describe my elation with the election results for mayor last night in our 3rd largest city, Chicago, when Pretty gave me the breaking news. Pretty is my personal Twitter crier.
By a vote of 74% of all votes cast in the run-off election Tuesday, Chicago elected its first African-American mayor, a mayor who identifies herself as “an out and proud black lesbian.”Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot had this to say in her acceptance speech Tuesday night according to Bill Ruthhart of the Chicago Tribune:
“A lot of little girls and boys are out there watching us tonight, and they’re seeing the beginning of something, well, a little bit different,” Lightfoot said with a smile. “They’re seeing a city reborn, a city where it doesn’t matter what color you are, where it surely doesn’t matter how tall you are and where it doesn’t matter who you love, just as long as you love with all your heart.”
While Chicago captured the biggest news, other election results around the country were also, well, a little bit different. For example, the city of Madison, Wisconsin elected 47-year-old Satya Rhodes-Conway, its second female mayor in history, with 62% of the vote. Mayor-elect Rhodes-Conway became the first openly gay mayor of Madison. The results of the Madison School Board election were to add three more women to the four women currently serving which means all members of the School Board for the city of Madison will be female.
Sounds like countless sisters are getting the gavel, and I don’t believe any of them will be afraid to use it.
Lawdy, lawdy. I have lived long enough to see the revolution of the sisterhood.
Sisters are doin’ it for themselves. Girls do rock after all.
Last night Congresswoman Waters (D – Cal) received the Chairman’s Award at the 50th NAACP Image Awards. Her acceptance speech included the following:
“After a long career journey, tonight I stand before you as the first woman and the first African American to chair the powerful U. S. House Financial Services Committee. It is indeed an honor to hold the chairwoman’s gavel and yes, I got the gavel, and I’m not afraid to use it.” (Katherine Schaffstall, Hollywood Reporter)
Today marks the last day of Women’s History Month, and I’m ending it with a bang – the sound of a gavel struck by a powerful Congresswoman who was celebrated for her service to her country for her many years in Congress as a lawmaker.
Whether we are making laws or trying to change them, I believe every woman has a gavel and the right to use it without fear. When we speak up for what we know is right and believe to be true, when we reach out to help others who may not be able to ask for our help, when we take a stand against injustice in any form – we honor the memories of the women who came before us and rightly celebrate the women of today and tomorrow…not just during Women’s History Month but every day.
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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