Welcome!
Greetings to all you Gnusies, Gnewbies, occasional drop-ins, silent regulars, and first-timers! Come inside our virtual salon/saloon to find and share messages of hope and to celebrate all the ways good people are triumphing over the evil-doers in power. Today, I’ve been inspired by the 40th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens to look at the surprising ways nature rebounds after what appears to be total devastation. The parallels with our current political and public health situation are obvious.
As always, this roundup is a pot-luck, so please share your own contribution in the comments, which we consider to be The Best Comment Section on the Internet™.
After devastation, new growth
On May 18, 1980, Mt. St. Helens erupted. The force of the blast released 24 megatons of thermal energy (equivalent to 1600 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs) and triggered a collapse of the north face of the mountain, the largest known debris avalanche in recorded history. The blast zone covered almost 230 square miles, flattening trees to the ground, killing 57 people, nearly 7,000 large animals (deer, elk, and bear), and an estimated 12 million fish. It destroyed or extensively damaged over 200 homes, 185 miles of highway and 15 miles of railway. It was the the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in U.S. history.
Here’s a photo showing the eruption in progress. (For more photos, including a fascinating time-lapse slide show, check out this article from The Atlantic.)
My husband and I saw the eruption about an hour after it began. We had planned to drive from Portland to Longview, WA, to have Sunday brunch at the home of a couple of friends, and after the news of the eruption broke, we of course debated whether it was safe to make the drive. We decided to go ahead, though we quickly had to change our route when we heard that Interstate 5 had shut down. We saw a sight very like this photo (but much farther away!) from the side of Highway 30 when we pulled our car over to get a good view of the volcano. Our most vivid memory is that there was lightning inside the boiling ash clouds. It truly looked like a vision of hell.
We and our friends in Longview were spared the worst of the ashfall, since the winds pushed the ash cloud east. But cities in the path of the cloud were covered with up to five inches of fine ash, and people had to wear masks to avoid inhaling it. The ash traveled as far as the east coast – my sister-in-law in Massachusetts found ash on the railings of her porch about a week later.
At the time, it seemed impossible that the blast zone would ever recover. One of the most beautiful spots in the Northwest, Spirit Lake, located at the foot of Mt. St. Helens, was buried under 300 feet of mud and debris, an image that haunted us. No one who had ever camped next to the lake, as we had, could ever forget the way the clear, still water reflected the perfect snow-topped cone of the mountain.
But nature’s drive to survive and grow refuses to be extinguished, and today there is new life everywhere in the blast zone. In an excellent DKos diary by OceanDiver on Monday, funningforrest commented with a quote from the book Volcano by Patricia Lauber:
The healing of the slopes started with many small forms — bacteria, fungi, hardy weeds and seeds, insects, spiders, pocket gophers. Linked together, they formed a base that made possible the return of other kinds of life.
And there is even a new Spirit Lake. Not as clear and deep as it was, and not surrounded by lush forest, but very much alive, and beautiful in its own way.
The 40th anniversary of the Mt. St. Helens eruption, coming as it does in the midst of the double devastation of tRump’s presidency and the coronavirus pandemic, has encouraged me to think about what we might learn from recovery in the blast zone. Here are some random observations:
Some things will never return to the way they were. There will be painful losses (favorite restaurants and shops, for example) but there will also be positive changes, many of which we’ve already been talking about here in Good News Roundups. I like the way Obama put it in his speech to the HBCU graduates:
“More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing...”
As the famous quote (which I just discovered should be attributed to the poet June Jordan) puts it, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” I think more and more people all around the world are going to take that seriously.
Some changes will be rapid and easily visible, and some will be slow and difficult to see. Again using the blast zone as a metaphor, think of the rapid settling and sinking of the ash, the emergence of the new Spirit Lake (visible in photos as early as October 1980), and the first signs of new life. But as Patricia Lauber’s quote points out, some of the most important changes were happening so close to the ground they were invisible to us. I think that’s true in our current crisis as well. We can see nature rebounding where we’ve stopped impeding it, we can see political activity and humanitarian efforts large and small. But we can’t see the slow, unspoken transformations in people’s minds and hearts – and I believe those will have the greatest impact in the long run.
Recovery will take a long time. This means we’ll need to balance urgency and acceptance. For example, the need to restore (or create anew) the social safety net is urgent and has to be pursued relentlessly. But other progressive priorities like free college may have to wait, because there will be less money available across the board.
There will be beauty and much to celebrate at each step of the recovery. Beauty emerged quickly in the blast zone (see the photo at the top). For all of us right now, the slow pace of life is allowing many of us to rediscover the beauty in nature that we overlooked when we were mired in the rat race. And of course there are daily celebrations on the news and on social networks of the good things that good people are doing to help. These gifts will continue for a long time.
So what are you seeing? Let us know in the comments!
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Volcano art
Portland Art Museum put together a terrific exhibit on the eruption, and because we can no longer visit in person, they put it online. Here are a couple of my favorite pieces from the exhibit.
Here’s the artist’s statement:
I made this vase from pure volcanic ash collected on the day of the big eruption. As soon as we heard about the ashfall, Rob Adamson and I drove to eastern Washington and collected a barrel of the stuff. That night, we melted it and I blew the vase. It looked black, but was actually a very dark green. The iridescent color came from a metallic fuming agent. This piece is the only one blown from pure ash that I know of.
It was a delightful surprise to learn that Ursula LeGuin was a talented amateur watercolorist. She could see the mountain from her home and loved to paint it. Here are two of her paintings, the one on the top before the eruption, the one below afterwards:
Do yourself a favor and open the link to the entire exhibit, if only to see the photos. They’re extraordinary.
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Now on to the news!
Good political news
Federal Judge Rules Lawsuit Against Trump Corporation Will Go Forward
Oh, yes! Bring it on!!
From Newsweek:
A federal judge ruled Monday that a lawsuit alleging President Donald Trump engaged in fraud by promoting a pyramid scheme will not be delayed.
District Judge Lorna G. Schofield ruled that the class action lawsuit can move forward despite Trump's legal counsel requesting a stay. The lawsuit, led by four anonymous plaintiffs, claims that the [sic] Trump and his children Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump are guilty of fraud, false advertising and unfair competition for their dealings with multi-level marketing company ACN, although federal racketeering and conspiracy charges were dismissed last year.
Schofield's decision came after Trump's lawyers launched interlocutory appeals in the case—a type of legal appeal filed while a case is ongoing rather than it after it has finished. The judge cited Trump's unsuccessful bid to force the case into arbitration "despite the absence of any written agreement" as a reason why an appeal was unlikely to be successful. Other factors in the decision included how much harm a stay would inflict on either party, along with what decision would be in the best interest of the public.
Women run for the House in record numbers
And 62% of them are Democrats!
From The American Independent:
As of Tuesday, 490 women had filed paperwork to run for the House of Representatives, breaking 2018's record of 476 female candidates, the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University reported.
"This is a sign that the momentum isn't letting up," Debbie Walsh, the center's director, said in a press release, adding that this year's number appears to confirm "the emergence of a new normal" that began in 2018.
Democratic voters in the last round of midterms elected a record number of women to Congress, even as the number of Republican women in the House dropped from 23 to 13.
More than 295 women have filed to run for House seats as Democrats; 195 have filed to run as Republicans.
Trump baffles everyone by announcing a ‘super-duper missile’ — and no one knows what he meant
The more the *Resident reveals what an idiot he is, the better it is for us.
From Alternet:
President Donald Trump on Friday afternoon said the U.S. military is developing a “super-duper missile” that can go 17 times faster than any existing rocket, earning him ridicule from critics.
“We have, I call it, the super-duper missile,” said Trump. “And I heard the other night—17 times faster than what they have right now, when you take the fastest missile we have right now.”
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Breaking Defense reporter Paul McLeary said on Twitter that he had not yet received confirmation from sources at the Pentagon indicating any knowledge of what the president was talking about.
So far two DoD officials who would likely know about this sort of thing have told me they have no idea what the president's "super duper missile" that goes 17x faster than any other missile might be.
Critics on social media roundly mocked the president’s terminology….“It is obvious our president is beyond incompetent,” tweeted California political activist Eric Garcia, “but how do the people who work for him not bust out laughing at his ridiculous statements.”
PBS finds no support for Tara Reade’s accusations
From Washington Monthly, via Alternet:
[PBS] identified and “tried to contact nearly 200 former staffers.” They ultimately interviewed 74 people, including 62 women, who worked for Biden over the years. Some were mere interns, others system administrators, and some were senior aides. Their experience spanned from his first run for Senate in 1972 all the way to his time as vice-president. Twenty of them worked for Biden in the early 1990s, at the same time as Reade. No one corroborated her primary accusation or offered anything that could reasonably be described as supporting information.
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We’re talking about something that is alleged to have happened almost 30 years ago, so all appropriate caveats apply. Reporters can only do so much to investigate the charges. In this case, they cast the widest possible net to find any possible corroboration. They investigated the supposed crime scene. Nothing they discovered adds credence to Reade’s story.
They did find someone who said she was fired for cause and others who said she was justifiably reprimanded for dressing inappropriately, which is at odds with her story. She said she was ordered to serve drinks at a reception, and this was directly contradicted by veterans of Biden’s staff who said he always asked men to perform that task. She said this occurred at a fundraiser, but the general consensus was that staffers were consistently banned from attending fundraisers or doing campaign work.
There are many other questionable things about Reade’s past that I could mention, but my interest isn’t in trashing the alleged victim. I just want to highlight that some laudable reporting occurred here, and what they found should help put people’s minds at ease about the possibility that Biden is some kind of sexual predator like the current occupant of the White House.
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Today’s pandemic musical parody
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Good news from Portland
BREAKING: Portland Region Voters Approve a Tax on Wealthy Households to Fund Homeless Services
The use of the word “groundbreaking” to describe this tax measure is definitely justified, since it was pushed forward by an unlikely coalition of nonprofits and business groups, including the Portland Business Alliance.
From Willamette Week:
By a sizable margin in early returns, regional voters appear to have passed a groundbreaking three-county tax on high-income households and businesses to fund services for homeless people.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic devastated the Portland economy, Measure 26-210 was projected to raise $2.5 billion with a 1 percent marginal tax on couples earning more than $200,000 and a 1 percent tax on profits for large businesses.
Business groups and nonprofits that serve the homeless became unbeatable allies, first in forcing the regional government to refer the measure, even after they were initially rebuffed, and again when the Metro Council appeared poised to refer a more modest measure.
Even in the face of the pandemic, the region was filled with lawn signs that read "We are all here together."
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This measure is designed to fund addiction treatment and mental health services as well as pay rent subsidies. It's not clear yet how much will be spent on which items. Those decisions lie ahead in the three counties where voters passed the tax: Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas.
Portland architect firm envisions look of workplaces following pandemic
The coolest part of this story is that the firm has made their re-design planning guide free for anyone to download.
From KGW:
A Portland-based architect and engineering firm is helping businesses adapt and remodel for a post-COVID world.
"The trend in recent years is to push for more collaborative work spaces and higher density, so we're having to rethink those and look to reconfigure and spread people out," said Dietrich Wieland, president of Mackenzie Architectural, Engineering and Design.
"This design guide is meant to boil it all down to a really simple easy to understand resource," Wieland said.
Good news from Oregon
Oregon middle schooler challenges other kids to grow victory gardens
From The Oregonian:
...in her time away from Lake Oswego Junior High, [7th grader Melanie] Gabriel, 12, has been researching topics that interest her. One of those subjects? Gardening.
“While I was Google searching,” Gabriel said, “I came across an article on victory gardens also known as war gardens. I decided to start a COVID-19 victory garden in my backyard.”
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Gabriel, who is also a Girl Scout, decided she wanted share what she’s learned and also help out her community. So she chose to take the money she has been saving for a trip to Japan and give it away all while encouraging other kids to grow gardens and make food for their families.
Her plan is to hold a victory garden contest.
Protesters Held a “ReOpen the Coast” Rally in Seaside Today [May 16]. Barely Anyone Showed Up.
Oregonians aren’t taking the “freedumb” bait.
From Willamette Week:
The right-wing demand to immediately lift all stay-home orders traveled across Oregon today without seeming to gather any momentum.
A small group of conservative activists held a sleepy protest in Seaside, Ore., on Saturday called "ReOpen the Coast," equating public health shutdowns with tyranny and seeking the attention that has followed similar rallies nationwide.
"I would rather die a patriot than a coward," said Haley Adams, one of the event organizers and an associate of a violent men's group called the Proud Boys. ...Adams spoke to a crowd of roughly 50 demonstrators...
Across the state, in Medford, a somewhat larger crowd attended a "Faith and Freedom" rally that appeared to attract a wider base of support. But the crowds did not expand from the May 2 rally at the Oregon Capitol, and any prospect of a Willamette Valley political fight spilling into small towns did not seem to have materialized.
Perhaps the small turnout in Seaside was a result of Saturday's dreary weather. But it might also indicate the increasing irrelevance of the "ReOpen" movement.
Good news from around the country
64% of Americans Have Experienced Transformative ‘Eco Wake-Up Calls’ During COVID Crisis
From Good News Network [I’m comfortable going over the fair use limit here because GNN’s paragraphs are mostly single sentences.}
A poll of 2,000 Americans revealed 64% have had a moment since the pandemic started wherein they realized they needed to be more eco-friendly.
This might be a result of paying closer attention to their lifestyles—70% said being home more due to COVID-19 made them more aware of their eco-unfriendly behaviors. These eco wake-up calls included becoming more aware of wasting food (44%), using paper products more sparingly (43%) and being more careful about where they buy meat (38%).
While these behaviors might have been influenced by the pandemic, however, they aren’t going away when COVID-19 does.
Commissioned by Avocado Green Mattress and conducted by OnePoll, the survey found 81% of respondents plan to keep their newfound eco-friendly habits.
The top way they’re doing this is by continuing to recycle more often (55%), followed by continuing to reduce the amount of paper products they use (44%).
Furthermore, 42% of those surveyed plan to work from home one day per week, instead of commuting, in order to reduce their carbon footprint. In fact, another survey found that working from home has so many benefits, that 48% of workers would even take a pay cut to continue indefinitely.
More than that, respondents also plan to continue composting more often (37%) and take public transportation more frequently (35%).
Those aren’t the only habits respondents are picking up right now: One-third (32%) plan to continue wearing a face mask even after receiving the “all-clear” from the CDC.
More awesome accomplishments from José Andrés and World Central Kitchen
From WCK.org:
Working alongside local leaders in the Navajo Nation across New Mexico and Arizona, WCK began this week in Rough Rock, supplying families with ingredient boxes to cook healthy meals at home. With little initial support from the Federal Government, the Navajo Nation struggled to keep COVID-19 from spreading and now has the highest rates of infection and deaths from the virus per capita. WCK is focusing on reaching families in rural communities, which have little access to food due to restricted travel and quarantine orders.
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WCK is now working with over 1,500 eateries across the country and has already put more than $18 million directly into the hands of restaurants. Through our Restaurants For The People commitment and with your continued support, we will keep feeding seniors, children, and other vulnerable populations, while also keeping restaurant staff employed and the businesses open.
Is The National Enquirer in Its Final ‘Death Spiral’?
From Daily Beast:
There are...countless reasons why the once golden fortunes of the Enquirer and American Media Inc., the weekly tabloid’s parent company for the past two decades under the thrall of accountant-turned-celebrity publisher David Pecker, have suffered their painful reversal.
“Now, given the importance of newsstand sales for AMI, the impact of the virus has got to be disastrous,” said media consultant Peter Kreisky, who has known the 68-year-old Pecker since they worked together at CBS’s now-defunct magazine group in the 1980s. “This is a plague that is devastating the publishing industry.”
As for the Enquirer, among other AMI titles, “I don’t hold out much hope for its long-term survival, frankly,” Kreisky said. Indeed, a supposed $100 million sale of the Enquirer to Hudson News impresario Jimmy Cohen—announced with great fanfare more than a year ago—has yet to happen, and many industry observers are skeptical that it will.
“It’s the last of the dinosaurs,” Kreisky said. “It’s past its sell-by date—not only from the point of view of its content but also its style, which is a throwback to the past. So the question is, is it a dinosaur or a cockroach—a cockroach that will survive the end of time?”
Let’s hope it’s a dinosaur.
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Good news from around the world
WHO launched apps to support health workers
From Positive News (UK):
The World Health Organization launched two apps this week: one to support health workers during coronavirus and the other to keep the public informed. The WHO Academy app provides health workers with up-to-the-minute guidance, training and virtual workshops to help them care for Covid-19 patients and themselves. “With this new mobile app, the WHO is putting the power of learning and knowledge-sharing directly into the hands of health workers everywhere,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general. The other app, WHO Info, was launched to keep the general public informed.
Thousands of Young Adults Are Volunteering to Catch COVID-19 to Save Others in the Future
From Good News Network:
The “1 Day Sooner” campaign is an initiative that is rallying for healthy, low-risk adults to participate in a “human challenge trial” (HCT) for developing a novel coronavirus vaccine.
Typical medical trials test the safety and efficacy of a vaccine by administering the treatment to several thousand people and comparing the outcomes to a control group of patients who have not received the treatment.
“In these traditional trials, after receiving the treatment, participants return to their homes and their normal daily lives so as to test the treatment under real world conditions,” reads the 1 Day Sooner website. “Since only a small proportion of these participants may encounter the disease, it may take a large number of participants and a good deal of time for these trials to reveal differences between the vaccine and placebo groups.” An HCT trial, on the other hand, could only require 100 participants to willingly contract the infection so that researchers can immediately begin to test the vaccine’s efficacy. In the past, HCT trials have been conducted on treatments for typhoid fever, cholera, smallpox, dengue, and Zika.
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“...study participants would be isolated in highly controlled environments under constant observation,” reads the campaign website. “If infection is detected, they would be provided with excellent medical treatment. Hopefully, pharmaceutical treatments will also be available by the time a study is conducted.”
Adults who have signed up as volunteers for the 1 Day Sooner campaign are not currently bound to any legal obligation to follow through on their offer—but the initiative has already been flooded with support. Since 1 Day Sooner began searching for potential volunteers, almost 24,000 adults across 102 countries have expressed interested in an HCT trial.
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Earlier this month, the World Health Organization released new guidance on how an HCT trial could be ethically justified in the case of a global pandemic. The guidelines emphasize that the participants would have to be thoroughly informed of the risks involved in the trials.
Hundreds of Cities Worldwide Make Streets into Cycling and Pedestrian Walkways—With Plans to Stay That Way
From Good News Network:
The World Health Organization says walking and cycling are considered the safest means of transport to reduce exposure to COVID-19. So cities around the world have been building new cycling paths and scaling up their car-free street initiatives.
Now, it looks like many of these environmentally-friendly changes will be permanent.
Bogotá, Colombia had...an existing tradition, called la Ciclovía, where it closed its main roads to cars every Sunday. Mayor Claudia López decided to scale the program up, and according to one report, “within days, Bogotá opened nearly 47 miles of new temporary bike routes, adding to 340 miles of paved protected paths, and converted almost 17 miles of automobile lanes to bike routes overnight.”
...Paris...is building 650 kilometers (about 400 miles) of new “corona cycleways.” Mayor Ann Hidalgo has said many of these will be made permanent.
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In Italy, the city of Milan has announced that over 20 miles of newly installed cycling infrastructure will be kept in place after the quarantine has been lifted.
And there are similar plans throughout France, in Budapest, and in several U.S. cities.
Unprecedented truce in notorious South African slums as gangs join forces to hand out coronavirus aid
From The Telegraph (UK):
It is being hailed as a miracle. In the face of a common enemy some of South Africa’s most violent gangs have put down their knives and are working together to help their rivals cope with the coronavirus crisis.
The gangs, until recently at each other’s throats fighting for control of scarce resources in the poverty stricken suburbs of Cape Town, have begun to hand out food parcels to their former enemies.
Organised by an investment banker turned church pastor, the initiative has seen the likes of convicted murderer Preston Jacobs, 35, distributing aid parcels in the deprived suburb of Manenberg, including to members of rival gangs.
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Animal news
This story is somewhat out of date, but I like it so much I wanted to include it. What an ingenious idea!
Tokyo aquarium asks public to FaceTime shy eels under lockdown
From NBC News:
A Japanese aquarium is calling on members of the public to play a virtual game of peek-a-boo with its community of about 300 eels to help prevent the creatures from getting shy under lockdown.
Spotted garden eels at the in Tokyo are accustomed to streams of people looking into their tanks, but officials said...that appears to be changing since the facility closed its doors due to the coronavirus pandemic on March 1.
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"It seems like the spotted garden eels are getting used to a non-human environment and have forgotten about people. When the staff pass in front of them, they start hiding in the sand," according to a statement in Japanese.
The eels' instincts pose a challenge to their care at the facility. Staff are finding it harder to conduct daily health checks on the animals because they're increasingly burying themselves in the sand at the sight of aquarists and zoologists.
The aquarium has proposed a "face-showing festival" on May 3 through 5 where the public can video call the facility on their Apple devices to see the eels and the eels can see the callers.
Penguins visit an art museum
Who knew penguins could be art critics?! Thumbs up for Caravaggio, “meh” for Monet.
Goats gone wild!!
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An artist having fun during lockdown
A very creative friend of mine sent me a series of photoshopped images she made of the “walking man” traffic logo engaged in various activities. Here are my favorites:
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A few laughs
We got into a lively discussion about grammar in yesterday’s GNR comments. Here are some further ruminations on the use of a particular word by Finnish comedian ISMO:
I guess we should have warnings on all those baking videos...
If you haven’t been following Andrew Cotter’s sports commentary on his dogs Olive and Mabel, you’ve been missing out! Cotter is a Scottish sports commentator who’s been sidelined by the lack of any sports to cover, so he began producing commentary on his dogs. Here’s my favorite:
If you’re born Italian, you’d better learn early how to talk with your hands!
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Hot links
ohs.org/...Footage of the Mount St. Helens Eruption and Aftermath. If you would like to see how the eruption was covered on local news at the time, check out this compilation of video clips from the Oregon Historical Society.
www.livescience.com/...Scientists have discovered 3-foot-long saber tooth anchovies! Fortunately only in fossil form…
www.boredpanda.com/...Photographer Spends Eternity Waiting For Museum Visitors To Match Artworks And The Result Is Worth The Wait. These photos are truly amazing!
www.nytimes.com/...Can Genetic Engineering Bring Back the American Chestnut? This is a very long piece, but fascinating.
www.theatlantic.com/...Trump Has Lost the Plot. This deep dive by David Frum is excellent and contains the best quote ever: “Trump, the [former White House] official said, is not playing “...three-dimensional chess... More often than not he’s just eating the pieces.”
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Closing music
Stay safe! Stay home!!
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Thanks to each and every Gnusie for your smarts, your hearts, and your faithful attendance at our daily Gathering of the Herd.
❤️💙 RESIST, PERSIST, REBUILD, REJOICE!💙❤️