Manchin's daughter and so many other ills.

From the Intercept:

"According to newly unsealed court documents acquired by The Intercept, Sen. Joe Manchin’s daughter, a former pharmaceutical CEO, collaborated directly with the CEO of Pfizer to keep EpiPen prices artificially high.

Heather Bresch — then the CEO of Mylan, which holds a patent for EpiPens — orchestrated a scheme in which Pfizer would divest from its EpiPen competitor, giving Mylan a virtual monopoly on the lifesaving medication. In just a few short years, the price for two EpiPens skyrocketed from $100 to $600.

As Manchin threatens to tank President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion infrastructure package, which would threaten pharmaceutical profits by allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices."

Oh God give me STRENGTH! 

 I'm tired and want to run away to Iceland, or maybe Greenland.  Yes, most likely Greenland...

So, that's where I'll be if anyone still cares.  I'll be in Greenland, studying the ice, or what's left of it.

Wolfie Update:

He dances on the edge of his days.. sometimes up and sometimes definitely down.  At times we feel like we should make "the call", but then he will rally and be his own little self again.  However, we can see that final edge coming somewhere in the near distance. 

I  remodeled and mended his bed, with DH's help, so that Wolfie can get in and out of it comfortably.   Using a trusty upholstery needle from our re:upholstering days, I sewed an entry into the bed wall, and even got enough to make a little wrapper (yet to be finished off with an crochet hook) from the scraps. 

 And now, the future soap holder for my nice handmade soaps. 

A little soap pouch will be prettied up..

There you have it.  And welcome to my Quiet, Peaceful, little Mundane World.

Oh Swell.....

Go HERE for the scoop on how to make your mind more effective.  It's something that can be learned.  

Forget that it's the way that monks and nuns remember what's important to them as they do their prayers for enlightenment....assuming that we are talking about Catholics.  

The Buddhists are already THERE!

Monday Music: Ha'a Hula Eric Lee.

I've been a  fan of Hawaiian music since I was a kid.  My family faithfully watched Harry Owens and his Royal Hawaiians every week.   

Slack Key artists Cyril Pahinui and Fran Gundrey, more traditional Led, IZ, Eric.... love them all.  

Anyway, I love Eric Lee's music.  He's AWESOME!  I just wish he recorded more of the beautiful island music is all.

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (1964

Welcome to Saturday 9. What we've committed to our readers is that we will post 9 questions every Saturday. Sometimes the post will have a theme, and at other times the questions will be totally unrelated. Those weeks we do "random questions," so-to-speak. We encourage you to visit other participants posts and leave a comment. Because we don't have any rules, it is your choice. We hate rules. We love memes, however, and here is today's meme! 

Unfamiliar with this week's tune?   Hear it here

1) John Lennon sings that he's been working like a dog. What's the hardest job you've ever had? What made it so difficult?  

Cutting out and putting up the rafters for a complex roof on a house. Complex hips call for a lot of geometry. This was well before truss roofs. 

2) Despite the hard work, he likes his life and asks, "So why on earth should I moan?" What's the last thing you complained about? Who were you talking to? To be honest, what would he have had to moan about?  I don't complain about my life.  It is what it is.

3) John was raised by his Aunt Mimi. She meant well when she told the teen-aged John, "The guitar's all right, but you'll never make a living out of it." What's the worst advice you've ever received?  I can not think of anything at the moment. 

4) This week's song was cowritten and also sung with Paul McCartney. Paul's father was more supportive of the lads' show business aspirations than Aunt Mimi was, but he still worried that his son wouldn't be able fully support himself as a musician. To please his dad, 17-year-old Paul worked over the Christmas holiday season as the "second man" on a delivery truck. Paul would be the one to hop off the truck and drop off the packages while the driver could keep the motor running and the heat on. Where was the last package you received from? (Extra points if you share what was in it.)  It was a used book. It came from a book seller in the Midwest. Boy, was I happy to get it. 

5) After Christmas was over, Dad insisted Paul get a full-time, year-around job. He ended up at a factory, winding heavy coils to be used in electric motors. He hated the work but enjoyed the lunch hours, eating jam sandwiches and, weather permitting, kicking a soccer ball around the yard with his coworkers. What's for lunch at your house today?   Greek Yogurt with dried fruit (cranberries) added.  I almost always have that.

6) In early March 1961, the Beatles accepted a booking to play lunch hour gigs at Liverpool's Cavern Club, and so February 28, after less than two full months, Paul said goodbye to factory work. What's the shortest you ever stayed at a job?  That would be as a part time Library assistant.  I found myself homeless a few weeks after starting there, and I needed to get a fulltime job that paid the rent.  

7) Enough about these Brits! Labor Day was introduced to celebrate the achievements of the American worker. How many different employers have you had? 6. One full time and the rest part time.

8) This weekend may offer a golden opportunity for napping and sleeping in. Do you snore? No, I don't snore.

9) Labor Day traditionally marks the beginning of the new school year. When she was a kid, Samantha was crazy for her brand new box of 96 Crayola Crayons. It even had a sharpener in the back! What do you remember about preparing to go back to school? If you're an educator, let us know how you get the classroom ready for the kids.  Pass... 

Thanks so much for joining us again at Saturday: 9. As always, feel free to come back, see who has participated and comment on their posts. In fact sometimes, if you want to read & comment on everyone's responses, you might want to check back again tomorrow. But it is not a rule. We haven’t any rules here. Join us on next Saturday for another version of Saturday: 9, "Just A Silly Meme on a Saturday!" Enjoy your weekend! 

This is absolutely Heartbreaking.

 

Photo is c/o Lynsey Addario

 When I read the books about building schools in Afghanistan several years ago, I was enchanted by the thirst for knowledge among these wonderful people.  

 Little did the world know what would eventually happen in Afghanistan.   This LINK goes to an article from the archives of The Atlantic Magazine.

What is it about the rights of women, over half the human race, that men are afraid of?  Maybe it is time to just wipe the slate clean.. maybe we are defective as a species.  Maybe it's time....

We in the United States still can't get the Equal Rights amendment passed.  So, don't say that something isn't hidden in the species psyche that isn't in operation here in our own country. 

My heart is just breaking.  I'm not reading any more news until I have done all that I can do to fulfill the dying wish of my daughter.  She asked me to knit SF gloves for her clinic, and the friends that she had made there.   

Knitting for a good cause makes me a whole lot happier than sitting and contemplating the stupidity of the "dominant" sex.

"Dead Man's Clothing" ....

PHoto and the article C/O Lintin Besser Foreign Correspondent for ABCnet Au...

 

This is an article about what happens to clothing donated to countries, in this case, Ghana.  Much of it is brand new. Other articles are used.

35 or so years ago, when the twins were teens, - so it was a long time ago -  I was recycling cardboard and other things to keep it all out of the landfill.  

One of my regular stops was at a small charity for a local hospital in North Park. 

In back of the store, in the side alley, there were two HUGE dumpsters, the kind that are pulled up onto the bed of a semi. They were over flowing with brand new and beautiful clothing.  

I'm sure all of it was destined for a country like Ghana, where some of it was needed and served well.  Now these countries are drowning in such largess.  This was before "Fast Fashion" was a "Thing".  I can only guess that it's much, much worse now. 

So we have sweat shops paying pennies an hour to girls and women - mostly (who are enduring outrageous working conditions with poor pay) in the developing world. These shops make billions of $$dollars$$ for wealthy "designers" in the developed countries, and a shed load of that "product", the overproduction as it were,  goes into OTHER third world countries. It's estimated 40% ends up on their trash hills.  No wonder our world is grinding to a halt ...   

Follow the links within the article to other articles written about the problem it has created.  

All of this is avoidable, and I guess the remedy consists of not buying fast fashion.  Don't buy it, unless you are desperate.  Tell yourself that it has a terrible cost that neither humans nor the planet can now pay. 

 

Article of how the communists exploited low troop moral after end of WWII

 “ The subject of the troops’ low morale became a subject of newspaper editorials and articles. Someone who must have been pleased was Erwin Marquit. A lifelong Marxist and a U.S. Communist Party member from a young age, he’d joined the Navy in 1945. Marquit’s detailed, personal memoir, “The Demobilization Movement of January 1946” (Nature Society and Thought, 2002), recounts with pride and in detail how “the Communists and those allied with them helped guide this GI outburst into a powerful, well-organized movement.”

From this article at History.com 

Covid19 Variants can still arise.

Thoughts... anyone?  Most of the children are still not vaccinated, as well as huge portion of the US adult populations.  Let’s get the kids vaccinated at least!  

 “I’m a nurse practitioner and vaccinated. I wear a mask both at work and when I’m in public. I have friends and colleagues who are both vaccinated and not vaccinated, and masked and not masked. My 8-year-old grandson just tested positive. My granddaughter will probably be positive soon. Their parents are teachers. I am done being polite with my words. Get vaccinated. Wear a mask. Think about someone other than yourself and shut your mouth about your rights. What are your responsibilities?”

— Diane Wright, Connecticut

This is from the August 6th Corona virus Briefing Newsletter of the New Your Times...  

Are plants sentient beings? A very interesting article about a study done in Germany...

Article from Nautilus 

 Go have a look in.  

Venus Flytrap from the Article.C/o Sergei Aleshin

From my point of view, they do. 

Heart Breaking stuff... 💔💔💔💔💔💔

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/24/swatting-mark-herring-tennessee-twitter/

 The Article in the Washington Post.  Herring's assassin has been sentenced.

"In the hours before, Herring, 60, and his family had been harassed by several people aiming to acquire and then resell lucrative social media handles through a range of intimidation — from phone calls and text messages to false reports of fires and unexpected, cash-only pizza deliveries at their homes.

But Herring’s refusal to give up his @Tennessee handle, federal prosecutors say, led to police surrounding his home with their weapons drawn, and caused the computer programmer to suffer a massive heart attack that killed him. His death in Bethpage, Tenn., was triggered by “swatting” — the illegal practice of calling in fake life-threatening emergencies to provoke a heavily-armed response from police."

Dreadful... And it's happened more than once.  Police shot and killed a young man who was "swatted", another totally innocent man.

The Police really need to step up their game so that they don't end up being a death squad.  This is a crying shame.  For the dead and for the police. 20 years, and I hope, without possibility of parole.

Article is from the Washington Post. You can find it on line doing a search ...

Drone Wars... and Daniel Hale...

 Daniel Hale,  whose famous ancestor was Nathan.. yes, that one....

Here's the Scoop:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/daniel-hale-drone-wars.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=One%20Great%20Story%20-%20July%2020%2C%202021&utm_term=Subscription%20List%20-%20One%20Great%20Story

Oh I know... You'll have to copy and paste this.  

But it's an interesting story about an amazing kid.  These smart kids are EVERYWHERE, and they all don't love money more than Honor....

 I think they are pretty dog gone impressive.  

 

I'm reading Scahill's book, Dirty Wars... 

Philo Farnsworth got robbed...

“ In 1927, at the age of 21, Farnsworth completed the prototype of the first working fully electronic TV system, based on this “image dissector.” He soon found himself embroiled in a long legal battle with RCA, which claimed Zworykin’s 1923 patent took priority over Farnsworth’s inventions. The U.S. Patent Office ruled in favor of Farnsworth in 1934 (helped in part by an old high school teacher, who had kept a key drawing by the young inventor), and Sarnoff was eventually forced to pay Farnsworth $1 million in licensing fees. Though viewed by many historians as the true father of television, Farnsworth never earned much more from his invention, and was dogged by patent appeal lawsuits from RCA. He later moved on to other fields of research, including nuclear fission, and died in debt in 1971.” 

From this article https://www.history.com/news/who-invented-television?cmpid=email-hist-inside-history-2021-0714-07142021&om_rid=&~campaign=hist-inside-history-2021-0714

RCA, The 60 ton Gorilla. 

Keep calm and carry on... Knitting with the Viccor.

 

My Grandmother's people..

Link to the Book

In addition, the authors are also related to my Grandmother by name... 

I told my hubby that my uncle looked like a kickapoo and that I thought he looked exactly like a kickapoo I came across in research, and he looked the most like my grandmother.

Anglos seldom distinguished the Native Americans along that fluid border as being Native Americans, until forced to. They called them all Mexicans.  Well, for a century or more, they were.

May the Beauty of Nature Heal your Hearts.

We have all had a very hard five years.  Dreadful ones.... 

May you walk with Beauty all around you.  

Maybe read some BadAss books. 💥

I'll be away awhile... Take care.  Love each other.