Welcome to today's edition of the Good News Roundup. I'm keeping the seat warm today for our very own oldhippiedude, who I can only hope is well on his way to recovery. Love and support to ODH and Mrs. OHD!
I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter, if that's what you celebrate; if you celebrate Pesach (Passover), like me, I hope you're enjoying that too. I know I look forward to some of the special foods only available for the holiday all year long, and I'm doing my best to get sick of them for another year. If you celebrate neither, or some other holiday (EasterBunnyBroughtMeCandy, or Post-Easter chocolate sales to name a couple) this week has brought actual Spring weather, and here's hoping you have some of that!
I know we're all sick and tired of the 24 news cycle being dominated by the latest crazy, cruel, sadistic whatever. I know we're all sick and tired of being sick and tired, damn it! So I'd like to do something a little different - since when have I not in my short stint here on the 4th Thursday of the month? - and not talk about all that. I'm sure Mrmuni12 and possibly BeeD and maybe a few others will have something in the political sphere to share, but I mostly have something else in mind.
And that is the lottery.
The lottery you say? You mean Powerball, Mega Millions...Scratchers tickets?
Mostly the first two. I will plunk down $2 on a Powerball or Mega Millions ticket - or one of each - every once in a while. Not often, only when the jackpot's passed $250 million, more often $300 million. I know the odds. I know the chances of my actually winning are far worse than many other highly unlikely things.
I'm not really throwing money at an infinitesimally small chance at easy wealth. I have no delusions about my chances. What I'm doing is something else.
I'm giving myself permission to plan. A tiny scrap of concrete hope for a better - much better - future.
How many of you ask yourself, "What would you do if money weren't an issue?" How often do you do it? How concrete and detailed are those plans?
How often do you ask yourself that when you have a piece of paper in your pocket that could be worth a quarter billion dollars? Or, as the last jackpot I bought a ticket for was worth, some $750-ish million?
The answer to the first set of questions, for me, is "not often and not very." The answer to the second? All the time. Very. Aside from the ubiquitous paying of bills and making sure family is taken care of, the answer involves a nonprofit organization that combines newly released prisoners, training in ecologically sound construction and green technology, and rebuilding a local town that currently could be used to film post-apocalyptic movies or tv shows with very little set dressing. At this point it's probably a project I could get off the ground without winning the lottery, had I the sweat and tears to invest in it.
Lottery jackpot daydream planning is there for a reason.
“Hope is a form of planning.” -- Gloria Steinem (via WolverineForTJatAW )
I think collectively we're at - or quite possibly past - the point where we have permission to plan. Taking back the White House (and the Senate) is Step 2. (Step 1 was taking the House.) I think we should be planning for steps 3-10 and beyond.
The House is already doing this to some extent, passing legislation packages despite not being given a chance in the Senate much less the White House. But we could be doing more.
I remember reading about a study years ago which found that students who had a 5-year plan outperformed students who didn't by a wide margin. We need that. We need more than that, and for me, personally, the flat admission of "I'm f*cked" unlocked something, reminded me of something I'd though of as a necessity for the next President.
In the first few months of 2017, one of the things I thought of as a sort of litmus test for Democratic candidates for the White house come 2020 was having a binder (or two or however many it takes at that point) of all of the executive orders given out, and appropriate responses to them. Mostly reversing or reversing and expanding upon the reversal. (There was one limiting the involvement of ex-staffers in lobbying that I actually liked and would have liked to be expanded upon, but it was very much an outlier.) I haven't thought about it in a long time - not until the "I'm f*cked" admission.
The other connection is this: It feels like we're in a holding pattern, waiting for that ONE scandal, that ONE crime to take down the interloper in the White House, that ONE connection to destroy the GOP, but we have all these different things going on at the same time. Investigations from every angle in different districts and governmental bodies. It feels like we're stockpiling lottery tickets, and we even have one we know - because we're putting in the work to do it - will win.
Someone's going to hit the jackpot.
We need to have plans on what to do after that, and not just in mitigating and repairing the damage done in the meantime.
The interloper's campaign slogan was "Make America Great Again." As a member of the LGBTQIA rainbow, and knowing how the term queer was reclaimed, I am looking forward to the day when we can reclaim that phrase.
How, you ask? How can we disconnect it from its current connotations?
I didn't have an answer until I read scifigrl47's Sixpence in His Shoe *, a fanfiction of the comics version of the Avengers (as opposed to Marvel Cinematic Universe, where the MCU in my handle comes from). Steve is, of course, Steve Rogers, aka Captain America. In this excerpt, he’s in the middle of a round table discussion with several journalists; Morrison is a right wing political hack, and Joy is (in Tony Stark’s opinion) an idiot.
"So what's your plan, Captain?" Morrison asked, with such disdain that Steve almost burst out laughing. "How're you going to make this a country to be proud of again?"
Steve looked down, and then back up. "We make it a nation of lasts."
There was silence. For a long moment, everyone just stared at him. And then Joy said, "I'm sorry, what?"
He smiled. "We spend all this time, watching for firsts, celebrating firsts. Know what? The firsts will take care of themselves. We need to focus on the lasts. The last case of AIDs. The last victim of domestic abuse. The last act of racial violence we tolerate. The last use of conversion therapy allowed, anywhere in the country. The last cross burning." His voice was vibrating with it, with the force of it, and he felt his hands go to fists against his thighs. "The last time anyone vandalizes a mosque, or a Jewish cemetery. The last time we, as a country, allow police brutality or sexual violence to go unnoticed, let alone unpunished."
His chin was up, his shoulders squared. "I believe, I know, we are moving forward, every day. Towards the last child thrown out of their house for their sexual orientation. The last murder of a sex worker or undocumented person that gets thrown in the cold case files because no one cares. The last time someone has to fear not being allowed to use a public bathroom, or simply exist in public."
The studio was quiet now, and he kept his seat by a force of will. "Let's let that 'last' already have passed us. Today. Yesterday. Last week. One more is too many, one more is something we should not bear." He looked at Morrison. "My goal, Mr. Morrison? So that we can all be proud to be here? To call ourselves Americans?
"Is to find every thing that should not be, and say, this is the last time we will stomach this. This is it. This." He stabbed his finger down. "This is where we draw the line."
He leaned forward. "You can focus on looking back, if you insist. But I'm looking at what is yet to come, and the things we have to leave behind, if we want to move forward. All of us." He smiled. "Together."
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* The entire work is here. If you choose to read it or make the attempt, please heed the warnings and tags and keep in mind that the back button is a Thing (tm). I have, actually, asked the author's permission to quote from her work.
It’s so much easier to make a plan for something we can see clearly. It’s like having an actual location to get to and then finding the best route there — it’s kind of hard to get to a destination when that destination is...nebulous. How do we know when we get there? What it looks like?
Even if our dreams of the future are Utopian in nature, we might as well shoot for the moon — even if we miss, we’ll land among the stars.
Thanks for tuning into today’s GNR.
As you read above, I celebrate Pesach (Passover), and you’ve probably guess I’m Jewish from that. I am Jewish, and several of my pieces today have to do with Pesach specifically or the Jewish faith and how faith intersects with other issues.
By its own admission, the Jewish community of the United Arab Emirates, composed of expats from around the world, is an informal one, quietly meeting to celebrate Shabbat and festivals over a number of years.
But this year its existence is being more openly acknowledged as part of the UAE’s “Year of Tolerance”.
The UAE’s Jewish community earns a chapter in a new book about religious diversity in the Gulf, Celebrating Tolerance, edited by the Reverend Andrew Thompson, canon of Dubai’s Anglican Church, and published to mark the theme of the year.
Tolerance may have negative tones in English as in simply “putting up with”. But the Arabic word taasamu has much more positive connotations, Canon Thompson explained at a book launch in the UAE’s London embassy last week: “It means love and acceptance.”
Jane Goodall was one of my heroes growing up. She still is.
"When I discovered so many young people were losing hope and they said, "Well, you compromised our future. There is nothing we can do." And we have compromised their future. The Institute is to give young people hope. You hear this thing, "Think globally. Act locally." But don't do that. Act locally. Do something that you care about. The Institute has young people doing projects they choose to make the world a better place. Together we can. Together we will!"
We are so much stronger together.
Zendaya presented her first collection with Tommy Hilfiger on Saturday night in Paris with a soulful backdrop of music and featuring an all-Black cast of models.
The actress, singer and now fashion designer wanted to pay homage to the Black women who have paved the way for her success. With the encouragement of her creative partner and stylist, Law Roach, Zendaya decided to go for it. She told Hilfiger, “I want to make a show inspired by the women who made it possible for me to be in the position where I am now. Honestly, I just wanted to say “thank you” to them through this show. I said to Tommy, ‘If we do a show, this is what it needs to be about.’ And Tommy said, ‘Great. Go for it.’ And he actually meant it. I mean, look,” said the 22-year-old, according to Elle.
There are now bandages in different [read: dark] skin tones.
They are called — I kid you not — Browndages.
Have a laugh (warning: put down your coffee, tea, beverage of choice, and/or food):
I apologize for using the Wayback Machine for this — the original source’s website does not work for archival material.
I’m at synagogue on Saturdays, but if my pager goes off, I drive in to the hospital, because saving a life supersedes the Sabbath. Many people I meet believe that my faith is at odds with my career. But my work allows me to practise the medicine that interests me while helping a marginalized community. I deal with patients who, by and large, have had negative experiences with hospitals and the health care system, and I give them the care they deserve. That is very much in line with my religious practice.
...
And that is the real source of discomfort: many Orthodox people see gender-affirming surgery as an admission that God made a mistake. They see me as calling God out on that mistake by correcting it. Which is odd: nobody’s accusing God of screwing up someone’s pancreas when they have diabetes or suggesting it’s a sin to inject insulin.
I can hear echoes of the fight against the anti-vaxx movement there. But it’s so so so very applicable to other issues, too.
Worth taking a second look:
Library and Archives Canada (LAC) acquires the declassified journals and military records of Canadian supersoldier James "Logan" Howlett.
Logan was born in 1882 in Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada, to wealthy landowner Elizabeth Howlett and her grounds-keeper Thomas Logan.
Logan’s journals provide valuable insight into his early life in Canada, including work as a miner in a British Columbia stone quarry, a fur trader for the Hudson's Bay Company, and a homesteader in the Canadian Rockies. His military career spanned multiple conflicts, making his personnel records an unprecedented study in Canadian military history. Logan was gravely wounded in action many times, and gained a reputation as a gritty survivor.
In part because I have a rather morbid sense of humor:
When Rivers Were Trails is a "Native-themed decision-based RPG" based on the classic Apple ][+ game "Oregon Trail," in which you play an 1890 Anishinaabeg person who has been forced off your land in Fond du Lac, Minnesota and must migrate through the northwest to California.
The game was created by Elizabeth LaPensée -- an Anishinaabe game creator from Baawaating -- and a team of more than 20 indigenous writers and artists, including visual artist Weshoyot Alvitre and composers Supaman and Michael Charette.
By now we know the outcome of the 30,000 strong strike against Stop&Shop. [Spoiler: the workers won.] This is probably, in part, why:
Some New England rabbis are advising their congregations not to cross picket lines to get their Passover essentials at Stop & Shop supermarkets, which have deep roots in the local Jewish community.
One Boston rabbi said it's "not kosher" to purchase "products of oppressed labor" as Jews mark their ancestors' escape from slavery in Egypt.
More than 30,000 Stop & Shop workers walked off the job April 11 over what they say is an unfair contract offer, a claim the company disputes.
Apparently, kosher for Passover sales are a significant part of Stop&Shop’s yearly profits.
And to wrap it all up, I give you Six13’s acapella medley of A Lion King Passover: