An Open Letter to Everyone Who Represents Me: President Biden, Vice President Harris, Governor Polis, Senator Bennet, Senator Hickenlooper, Representative Neguse, State Senator Lewis, and State Representative Bernett

It’s been a while since I’ve written. It seems that by the time I formulate something to say, there’s another new thing that arises that erases whatever I had to say before. But Boulder is my stomping ground (at least when there’s not a pandemic). We have shopped in that store. There’s a restaurant in that shopping area that makes vindaloo hot enough to please my husband.

 

 

 

 

  

One of my daughter’s best friends lived up the street. My daughter went to middle school around the bend. My son played concerts in the park nearby.

 

 

 

 

So I offer another open to letter to everyone who is supposed to represent my interests. I hope this time my letter makes some sort of difference.

 

23 March, 2021

Dear President Biden, Vice President Harris, Governor Polis, Senator Bennet, Senator Hickenlooper, Representative Neguse, State Senator Lewis, and State Representative Bernett,

  Today it was in my/our backyard, but yesterday’s shooting at the King Soopers grocery store in Boulder was no more horrific than any of the ones that have happened from that horrific day at Columbine High School until now. Of course it could happen in Boulder. Of course it can happen to any of us.

  I have watched so many politicians refuse to give direct and unequivocal answers when asked whether we need stricter gun laws. The answer should be “Yes. We need to discourage people from carrying guns. We need stronger guns laws that restrict the number of guns any person, family, or household can own. We need to outlaw assault rifles and all such weapons designed to inflict maximum damage to humans. We need our children to go to schools that are not fortresses, where they don’t have to absorb the pre-emptive trauma of preparing for a shooter entering their classrooms and playgrounds. We need to change our culture so that we no longer glorify guns and violence.”

Will you take a political hit for such an answer? Yes.

Will such an answer require a whole lot of courage? Yes.

Will giving such an answer be the right thing to do? Yes.

Please: we are looking to you to make Colorado and the United States a safer, saner state and country that will be examples to other states, to our nation, and indeed to the world. Let us show the planet that we know how to face our failings and change.

 

 

 

 

 

And let’s not scapegoat this latest devastation onto the backs of those of us with mental illnesses. 1 People dealing with metal illness are not prone to violence. 2 Let’s look at what almost every one of these shooters has in common: they are men. Let’s start there. What is wrong with the men in our country that any of them have to go slaughtering others and ruining the lives of those of us who knew the victims and, in other ways, the lives of those of us who didn’t? Let’s stop deciding retroactively that someone who commits murder is insane and unstoppable. Let’s stop only talking about getting those with mental illness the help they need and do it, and let’s also talk about getting our boys the help they need so that they don’t pick up guns and kill children in schools, congregants in houses of worship, people shopping for their evening meals and getting vaccines that will help protect us all from COVID-19. 

And let us not forget all those who are shot, but in numbers too small — one, two, or three — to be considered worthy of attention. EVERY DAY, 316 people in the U.S are shot; twenty-two are children. 3 Let us remember the victims of domestic violence, most likely to be killed when they try to escape; the children who find the guns their parents have not locked away and who play with them because we have taught them that guns are toys and who end up shooting themselves or siblings or friends; the folks who maim themselves or others; the ones who shoot in the air in a moment of excitement and end up harming someone, if only through inflicting the terror of finding a bullet lodged in a wall of their home.

Over two years ago I wrote a blog post 4 after the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. I opened my essay stating that I doubted anything would change, and I was right. Sometimes I really, really hate to be right. If the deaths of the children at Sandyhook couldn’t shock us into sanity, I don’t know what ever will.

 

Back in March of 2018, Garrett Epps wrote in the Atlantic an article titled “The Second Amendment Does Not Transcend All Others: Its text and context don’t ensure an unlimited individual right to bear any kind and number of weapons by anyone.” 5 Every child in school should read it; so should all our elected representatives. Epps quotes the judgement that Justice Scalia, that bastion of conservatism, rendered in Heller v. District of Columbia:

Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

I have gotten to the point that I hate all guns. I didn’t always. My grandmother and mother were incredible shots. I played with pop guns and fake sheriff’s pistols and water guns as a kid. But now I would happily see them all, toys and the real ones, disappear from the face of the planet. 6 

But I am willing to compromise. I am willing to talk with those who disagree with me but are also willing to find a sensible middle-ground. (Perhaps we could agree that people who have been cleared by background checks may own guns that were in existence at the time our Constitution was written. Surely that would appeal to strict constructionists.)

One of our nieces reminded me that her whole life has been permeated by this violence; the same is true for my children who flank their cousin in age. I know a teacher who is retiring in part because he can no longer assure his students that they are safe at school.

Let’s give gun-law reform a try. Let’s give it a try for at least a generation and see what happens. Let’s save lives and children. Let’s take some of the pressure off the police who have to worry about whether everyone they approach has a weapon. Let’s be humane and moral and responsible and value each other more than we do weapons that can destroy us as individuals and as a national community.

Thank you for reading my letter. I hope, fervently and desperately, that you all will act — directly and decisively — to turn the tide of this every-rising flood of preventable violence and damage. I am 

Your constituent,

Ruth E Feiertag

  • 1. And if you want to improve the mental health of many of us, pass gun laws that will keep us safer. The barrage of anguish and death contributes to my sense of helplessness and depression.

2. https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/mental-illness-and-violence

https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/evidence-and-research/learn-more-about/3633-risk-factors-for-violence-in-serious-mental-illness

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2686644/

3. https://www.bradyunited.org/key-statistics

4. https://www.ruthfeiertag.net/2018/10/28/guns-and-tyranny/

5. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/second-amendment-text-context/555101/

6. I think about the story of the Israelites wandering in the desert for two generations so that all those who entered the Promise Land would have never known what it was to be a slave. Sometimes I think that’s what we need here in the U.S. Let us have two generations without guns, and when the last of us who have known what it is to have lived with a national consciousness pervaded with the awareness of guns has died, then let the generations who succeed us decide whether they want to re-introduce them into society.

2020 Review: February, the Unknowing Month

I think of February as the Month of Unknowing, because there was still so much I didn’t know and because there was so much that our elected officials did know, but chose to forget or ignore — to un-know. And that “unnocence” has cost thousands of lives and jobs, shattered health and families, and riven our country even further apart. I am trying to be hopeful that with a new administration in the White House and vaccinations in arms, we’ll be able to mend some of these rifts, but I do think we can’t expect politicians to take care of these problems unless we keep our eye on them and do some of the work ourselves. So be nice and play well with others, people.

Meanwhile, back to 2020.

The first of February, 2019, was the day my mother went to the hospital, the day we learned how ill she was, the day we were told she had little time to live. My mother, who had been an actress, had always wanted to play Hamlet; I always thought she should would have been a magnificent Cleopatra. At her funeral service, I quoted from the end of Enobarbus’ speech (the one about the barge) and, on the anniversary of the beginning of the end, my Shakespeare app served up the lines I quoted:

What do I make of this coincidence? Not much. It neither comforts nor upsets me. But I do think coincidences are usually kind of neat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

February also started off with a repeat trip to the Monet exhibit. We were lucky to get to go twice, but I happily would have gone a dozen times. I’d seen a few Monets here and there before, but this exhibition made me understand Monet’s genius and artistry and feel the emotion in his paintings. Suddenly his work wasn’t just another pretty face.

I hadn’t known that Monet had worked as a cartoonist. This drawing reminds me of my grandfather:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grandpa is the adult in the middle.

 

 

 

 

Many of the same paintings made me stop and re-contemplate them,

 

 

 

but the second time, others got more of my attention than they did the first time through.

 

 

 

This is a scene of the beach of Trouville, which reminds me of Gigi.

 

 

My new plan for our yard (which is a little larger than the frame of this painting):

      

 

 

 

I was, again, often taken by the details in the paintings.

 

Some of the paintings reminded me of California.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most didn’t. 

   

It was almost impossible to get my camera to catch the colours accurately.

After the exhibit, we stepped out into an evening that was almost as beautiful as the paintings.

We walked over to Civic Center Park. It was one of those evenings when the sky changed measurably from moment to moment and each change was more striking than the last. (The Capitol was lit red for Women’s Heart Health, a good cause, but against the clouds, it did look a little ominous.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was the sort of sky that made me think of the word “firmament.”

 

Civic Center Park has a rather splendid colonnade,

one that was set off by the glorious beauties of that evening’s show.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The evening display ended on a somewhat ominous tone:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were quiet days: more sunrises,

    

more sunsets, 

 

 

 

 

 

some snow.

 

 

 

And then another trip, this one eastward, to Kansas.

No going over misty mountains this time. Those were left behind for the stretching plains of Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas.

 

There was an odd, event-horizon sort of sunset.

  

 The cardinals were still living in the yard.

There were lambent sunsets.

 There was a full moon.

 

 

 

 

 

The creek near us tried to catch it.

So did the trees. 

 

 

 

 

The climbing ivy made some of the trees look green.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did some cooking.

 

 

 

There were more sunsets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I thought about my parents.

 

 

 

I rambled around at night.

The moon started to wane.

I rambled around during the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then I headed home. The plane took off several hours late. This time the sunset was less event horizon, more nuclear:

And I was back to the view from my front door:

  The old moon in the new moon’s arms.

 

 

 

I was still riding the bus, running errands, going to appointments, visiting the book store.

     

  My indoor plants started to sense the coming of Spring.

The sun and moon did more of that rising-and-setting thing they do.


 

 

 

 

And February was over.

It’s 2021. Let’s Review: January, Pre-Pandemic

So it is another new year. I am having a hard time saying “Happy New Year” because, honestly, it isn’t. I hear everyone saying “Thank God 2020 is over!” but there’s been no miraculous, overnight transformation of the situations in which we all find ourselves. The Atrocity is still in the White House; McConnell still makes the Senate the Graveyard for legislation; COVID-19 runs rampant through the planet; here in the U.S., too many people refuse to wear masks or maintain a safe distance from others; people are hungry and homeless and losing health and hope. I think I shall feel a new year has started at noon on the twentieth, when Joe Biden takes the oath of office and the Atrocity in the White House has left the building. Maybe the end of the year will be happy, but right now, all I can wish us all is that we survive the first part of 2021. Then let’s see where we are.

Meanwhile, I have been going through my photos from last year. I take photographs as a way to remind myself to notice the world, to see the beauty, the memorable, the stirring aspects my small space, as a way to distract myself from my depression. Sometimes it even works. I have monkeys-and-typewriters¹ approach to photography: I figure that if I take enough photos, statistically, some of them have to be half-way decent. It’s one of the few theories I have that seems to pan out.

If you like, come with me on a review of what I chose to see through my cameras last year. Here are some of my photos from January. I have come to think of it as the Pre-Pandemic Month, because even though SARS-CoV-2 was making its still insidious way into almost every corner of every country, we had no idea that there would soon be a pandemic. I was too busy hoping against experience that our president’s impeachment would lead to his removal from office.

 

 One the first day of 2020, I went out into the world beyond my yard. I saw mountains,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and farms,

 

 

 

 

and the ponds along my bus route.

 

 

 

There were graceful wisps of clouds and the moon up early in the day-lit sky.

 

 

I was out with my family, and we lingered until evening. The mall was still decorated for the season,

 

 

and the star that’s lit on the the mountainside every year was still shining over the town.

 

 

 

Our tradition is to visit the Boulder Book Store on New Year’s to take advantage of their Readers’ Guild inventory sale. We did not go this year, and I find missing that visit to my happy place has sharply reminded me of how my life has changed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We went out for dinner. We sat inside a restaurant. We didn’t worry about it.

 

 

 

I tracked the phases of the moon.

 

 

 

I tracked the changes to the pond (note the ice and all the geese).

I watched the sun set. And I watched the moon rise…

and set.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AND THEN — I went to the Monet Exhibit at the art museum. It was astonishing —

especially the details.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw a whole — shoot, I can’t find the word (stupid aphasia; I’ve had it since the time I was on Prednisone years ago) — phase? group? category? set? of Monet’s work of which I had been completely unaware: the winter scenes:

 

 

I don’t have the artistic vocabulary to describe techniques or effects properly, but what struck me about these paintings were the co-existing qualities, the way they were simultaneously subdued yet vibrant, misted in frost while brightened by it, exciting and calming. The chill of the icy blues was almost palpable, but so was the warmth of the coral tones.

Some of these qualities were apparent in other paintings,

 even those in sunny regions,

 and foggy climes,

and temperate zones.

 

 

 

 

And of course there were water lilies. There none of the truly great and famous water lily paintings, but the ones in the exhibit were still breath-taking.

One prosaic note about the exhibition: the paintings were so numerous and the galleries so extensive that it took up two levels in the museum and, half-way through, visitors were allowed to take a bathroom pass, leave the exhibit, and return. I’ve never been to a show where one was allowed back in after leaving. My only complaint about the experience is that the museum was very firm in its policy of not letting me take any of the paintings home.

I haven’t figured out how to make movies work in my site, but I think if you click the link below, it will show you one of the “trees” on display in downtown Denver that evening:

Holiday “Tree”

Eventually the moon (Wolf Moon) got full.

It rose in a burnt-yellow colour, but brightened as it climbed the sky.

One of the books I got at the Book Store sale was Take Me With You, by Andrea Gibson:

I’m not entirely sure to what genre it belongs; it was on a sale cart. But several of the author’s observations stayed with me. This one seemed apt enough when I read it, but in retrospect, it now seems absolutely prescient:

I think, after last year and the beginning of this, we are going to have to learn to to say this and then find ways to speak our revival.

Some random shots of what caught my eye:

 

 

 

 

We took a trip to San Diego for a family gathering.

(“Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away, ere break of day,
To find our long-forgotten gold.”
—J.R.R. Tolkien)

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

And spent a bit of time at the beach (though not long enough).

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

               

I saw this person walking along the beach for quite a while, collecting things in a basket. I wish I had known how to approach her (?) and ask about her gatherings without being forward. I feel there’s a story in this photo.

 

 

          

  

Look where we went:

Proof I really was on the Surprise.

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, it was being renovated, so I didn’t get a lot of good pictures.

 

 

 

 

Back over the Misty Mountains…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

to the familiar light of home.

We attended the symphony. It’s almost frightening to think how dangerously reckless we were to go somewhere in such a crowd, but, like almost everyone, we had no idea was coming.

   

There were the usual interplays of light and shadow, real and metaphorical,

     

sunrises,

sunsets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pond stayed frozen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The moon waned.

 

 

 

 

 

And January was over.

___________________

1.”The Infinite Monkey Theorem is a proposition that an unlimited number of monkeys, given enough typewriters and an infinite amount time, will eventually produce a particular text, such as Hamlet or even the complete works of Shakespeare.

Eclectic Epiphanies: John Berryman, My Mother, the Pandemic, and the Curse of What’s Boring

 

 

 

I seem to be going through a poetry phase, which isn’t a bad thing. Berryman’s poem below has been running through my head lately as I’ve been trying to keep in touch with people over assorted devices and apps, across all this expanding time and distance, through the phone and letters, just like all The Experts say we’re supposed to do. The poem, “Dream Song 14,” was one my mother quoted a lot when I was young. She mostly tossed out the first seven lines. Have a read:

 

 

 

Dream Song 14*
By John Berryman

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no
Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,
who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.
The reason my mother liked this poem is that she was, indeed, bored. She found being a parent often boring (which is not to say that she found us boring, but the allure of diapers; laundry; square meals; schlepping us to school, to piano lessons, to doctors’ appointments; catering to our feverish demands when we were ill — somehow escaped her). And, unlike Berryman’s Henry (honestly, I’m kind of unclear about the relationship between the poet and Henry, even after a bit of reading around the ‘Net), my mother had no qualms about saying so.
       To be fair, my mother inculcated in us, her children, some decent Inner Resources. She did so mostly by opening one door or the other and saying, “GO OUTSIDE,” and then leaving us to figure out what to do when we got there. But she also taught us how to throw balls and make mud pies (the trick is not to use too much water) and expected us to climb as high as possible in trees.
     When we couldn’t play outside (often because of smog), we had clay and blocks and Lego and crayons and paper and I don’t remember anyone ever complaining about the mess. Our folks also had no problems about our covering the floor with pillows and blankets and doing indoor gymnastics, though they did get a bit nervous when we slid down the stairs on pieces of cardboard.
     We weren’t constant hoodlums; we also played quietly in our rooms, alone or together (I spent hours reading), and grew up in a civilized era when we could do our homework every night and still have time to watch lots of sitcoms — Gilligan’s Island, The Brady BunchI Dream of JeannieI Love Lucy. Inner Resources.
      So what does any of this have to do with the pandemic? Well, as I attempt to keep in touch with friends and family, I find these lovely people asking me questions such as “What’s new?” and “What have you been doing?” And I find myself answering “Not much” and “Laundry, paying bills, making dinner, napping.” One might assume that I am bored. But the truth is that I am not. “After all, the sky flashes…”
“the great sea yearns…”
“we ourselves flash and yearn…”
(this is as flashy as I get). 
     And I don’t find literature, especially great literature, boring.
             
Also, I have this blog where I can range around the scattered ideas that ping madly in my head. Inner Resources.
       So what’s my problem? As I said, I’m not bored. The problem is that I am boring. Most people want to hear about the hassles of working from home (I’m not working right now) or about ventures outside the house (I’m staying put) or about dealing with family (my folks are dead, my kids are grown). I think about Henry Higgins’ admonition to Eliza Doolittle, his “strict orders as to her behavior. She’s to keep to two subjects: the weather and everybody’s health–Fine day and How do you do, you know–and not to let herself go on things in general. That will be safe.”** Everybody’s health is of course the first subject discussed and, if no one has COVID, disposed of. Discussion of the weather currently seems to be insultingly banal. Politics is either too risky or too distressing. I’m not sure how to get conversations properly balanced these days.  Most don’t want to hear me read John Berryman or Richard Wilbur or Anne Sexton and then ramble on about their poems. Maybe you don’t either, yet here we are together. 
Thanks for sticking around.
________________________
*John Berryman, Dream Song 14 from The Dream Songs. Copyright © 1969 by John Berryman, renewed 1997 by Kate Donahue Berryman. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC, http://us.macmillan.com/fsg. All rights reserved.
**Henry’s mother presciently responds, “Safe! To talk about our health! about our insides! perhaps about our outsides! How could you be so silly, Henry?” And of course Eliza ends up telling the genteel gathering about how her aunt “come through diphtheria right enough the year before. I saw her with my own eyes. Fairly blue with it, she was. They all thought she was dead; but my father he kept ladling gin down her throat til she came to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon.… What call would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? What become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it; and what I say is, them as pinched it done her in.”

Random Ruminations: Invisible Illnesses, U.S. Elections, and Dead Mothers

Sorry about the long hiatus – again.* My accustomed afflictions raised their unlovely heads — again. You’d think they’d get bored with this game, but no; they are constant companions, committed to keeping me off kilter.

What energy I have had has gone into writing more Get Out The Vote letters, this time for the Georgia Senate run-off races. (Just when we thought is was safe to go back in the water….) For now, I am writing letters for Vote Forward:

These letters have to go out ON the seventh of December. Apparently that’s a magic date. I’ve managed to write one hundred so far, and will plug away as best I can until the seventh. If anyone wants to join in, I believe it’s not too late to sign up and download letters of your own. (If you’re a fountain-pen user, invest in some sugarcane copy paper. It’s much more welcoming to fountain-pen ink than run-of-the-mill copy paper.)

After that, I’ll be writing postcards:

 

 

 

These are for Postcards to Swing States — pretty, right?

 

 

 

 

And then there will be some for Moms Rising:

 

Also very eye-catching.

 

 

I have no idea whether there’s a chance that the Democrats might take those Georgia seats; in fact, I rather doubt it. But if they don’t, I have no idea whether our new president will be able to effect any meaningful change or get any useful legislation passed. So I’m writing.

And in the midst of the pandemic and the politics and the personal perturbations, there was Thanksgiving week. When I was a kid, Thanksgiving was a simple holiday, purportedly celebrating the amity between Indians and the settlers in the “New” World. Now the day is rightly complicated by the realization that the stories we were told as children were heavily skewed to support the colonial hegemony about to displace, enslave, and murder the indigenous populations, to justify the actions of the white people who would corral in reservations the Native Americans who survived, while attempting to eradicate cultures, languages, and identities of the civilizations that were here for millennia before any Europeans stumbled upon these shores. And yet my family celebrates the day because it is a family occasion — except not this year. And that was hard. Zoom just doesn’t replace prescence.

Moreover, this week, for us, held the anniversary of the death of my husband’s mother, the wedding anniversary of my parents, and the birthday of my mother, so it was a week of remembrance.

Sarah Collingwood as Juliet

And here I must segue into a mention of an app that provides me with a Shakespeare quotation for each day. Why do I have such an app? Well, aside from the fact that everyone should have such an app, my mother was a Shakespearean actress at the Pasadena Playhouse in her youth and she passed on her love of Shakespeare to me. I majored in English lit, emphasis in Renaissance drama, and so, between my mother and my major, I must have this app. It often serves up eerily appropriate passages, like fortune cookies that seem to have an uncanny awareness of what is happening in the lives of those who area about to consume them.

 

And so, into this poignant week, on the very birthday of my mom, the daily Shakespeare quotation was

which pretty much sums up the last eighteen months for my family.

Oy.

_____________
*A perpetual question is whether to apologize for something that isn’t my fault. I certainly didn’t choose to have depression or M.E., and a number of my fellow-sufferers say we should not apologize because doing so makes it seem that we are choosing not to do whatever it was we were supposed to have been doing. Nevertheless, these conditions affect other people, too. So, in case there’s anyone out there who might have been kind enough to hope that I would have posted something new sooner: apologies.

Getting Out the Vote While Staying Safe At Home

I didn’t used to be a particularly political person. I was raised in a moderate family; my parents never voted a party line. Growing up and into early adulthood, I didn’t find politics particularly consuming, though I have been an avid, informed voter since I turned eighteen. Until relatively recently, I was able to understand both sides of political points of view. The irony is, now that I am eager to become more involved, to do more to return our country to some kind of sensible, civil normalcy,  my own health issues and the pandemic limit what I can do.

But the Sierra Club gave me an option that allowed me to help get out the vote from home, when I had the energy to do so, even in the middle of the night: writing letters to voters who tend to vote on Election Day, rather than during early voting.

I had hoped to write an even hundred, but we were told to print rather than to use cursive because so many people can no longer read running script. I hadn’t done any extended printing for maybe twenty years, when my second child was learning to write. I had to think about each letter as I wrote it and I could feel different muscles in my hand, ones that had become accustomed to a life of ease and indolence, coming into play. I was surprised how much printing slowed me down. I managed to write only seventy-five of these letters (they came in sets of twenty-five), so I was a little disappointed with my output, but am still very grateful have found a way to have, I hope, persuaded some more people to vote.

If you’re eligible to vote here in the United States and haven’t done so yet, please please PLEASE find your ballot if one was mailed to you and send it in or get out and vote in person. Lives hang in the balance.
************************

Note to fountain pen users: After I wrote my first set of
letters, I realized that I wanted more fountain-pen-friendly paper on which to print out these letters. I found recommendations for sugarcane paper on BestFountainPen.com, reddit.com, and MountainOfInk.com (see the comments section for MoI). I got a ream and it was a vast improvement. Not only did my inks show their sheen and shading nicely on this paper (not to Tomoe River levels, but still noticeable), but also, when I used the paper in the copier, the print was both sharper and darker. I’m pretty happy about it. The brand I got was Treefree from Staples.

(For what it’s worth, this post contains no affiliate links, no one asked me to post my opinions, and the opinions here are my own.)

Because I Like to Bang My Head Against Brick Walls: Another Open Letter to Colorado Senator Cory Gardner

Another Open Letter to Colorado Senator Cory Gardner

Senator Cory Gardner
1961 Stout Street, Suite #12-300
Denver, Colorado
80294

5 October, 2020

Senator Gardner, 

I see that you voted for the bill calling for the Justice Department to to withdraw its support for the lawsuit that would end the Affordable Healthcare Act. I also see that you have introduced your own bill that putatively would protect those of us with pre-existing conditions. I thank you for your vote and hope that it portends a turn toward listening to and caring about the needs and opinions of your constituents.

However, your record of voting against the ACA makes this vote suspect. After the election, if you are returned to the Senate or during the liminal period between the election and the Senate’s new term, will you continue to support the ACA? Your own brief bill, which at first glance seems so promising, does not guarantee that insurers must accept applicants with pre-existing conditions, nor does it it spell out what kinds of coverage a plan must provide, nor does it contain a provision forbidding discrimination based on gender or sex. There are too many loopholes to bolster the impression you seem to want to cultivate that you are ready to stand up for health care and affordable insurance for all of us.

The most effective way to convince us that you do, in fact, care about the lives and health of your constituents, and of all inhabitants of the United States (we’re all too connected, as COVID-19 has taught us, to pretend that we need only be concerned with the health of our neighbours) is to oppose seating a new Supreme Court justice before the Inauguration. The push to put Amy Coney Barrett on the highest bench in the land before the tenth of November is motivated by the intention to destroy the act that has brought affordable insurance to millions of Americans. Commit to voting only for a nominee who will support not just the ACA, but who will also protect women’s health by preserving our reproductive choices, including our right to control our bodies, our lives, and our destinies through access to safe, affordable, and legal abortions. 

If you vote for the Justice Department to step away from the legal challenge that is trying to eradicate the Affordable Healthcare Act, but also vote to confirm a new Supreme Court justice to sit in Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat, a justice who will strike down the ACA and overturn Roe v. Wade, then you are merely attempting to have your cake and eat it, too. 

Senator Gardner, I remain

Your voting constituent,

Ruth E. Feiertag

Thirty Reasons to Vote: #28

  1. Covid in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count,” The New York Times. September 28, 2020.
  2. Sheryl Gay Stolberg. “Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Strike Down Affordable Care Act.” 24 September, 2020.

Thirty Reasons to Vote: #14

 

 

The constant denigration by elected officials of our leading researchers, of those who base their arguments on reason and evidence, erodes confidence in the science and research that produce the tested cures we need, that keep us safe from chemicals and pollutants, that track the food we eat. Remember last year when there was a sudden decision to shift USDA researchers from Washington, D.C., to Kansas City? That was an ill-advised move because

“Moving these researchers out of Washington puts them out of earshot from policymakers. A lot of the research that scientists and economists do at [the USDA] has policy implications, and members of Congress need this information and need to have face-to-face meetings with these researchers,” Rebecca Boehm, with the Union of Concerned Scientists, told The Hill.

“It keeps science out of the policymaking process. And we’ve seen many times that this administration doesn’t like facts or research that isn’t convenient or [is] an impediment to their agenda, so I think moving them away helps accomplish that,” she added.³

This separation of policy and science is outlined in a list compiled by the Union of Concerned Scientists. It includes, among many other items, “EPA refuses to Regulate Rocket Fuel Chemical in Drinking Water,” “White House Demands Rewriting of CDC’s COVID-19 Guidelines for Schools,” and “Trump Administration Disavows Own Meteorologists for Issuing Factual Statement on Hurricane Dorian.”4

The dangerous disrespect the current administration and other representatives show for the wisdom and advice of science have led to Scientific American, for the first time in its one-hundred-seventy-five-year history, to endorse a candidate for office, and its nod went to Joseph Biden. In the October 2020 issue, the editors explain that 

Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history. This year we are compelled to do so. We do not do this lightly.

The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September. He has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its greatest challenges. That is why we urge you to vote for Joe Biden, who is offering fact-based plans to protect our health, our economy and the environment. These and other proposals he has put forth can set the country back on course for a safer, more prosperous and more equitable future.5

Finding out that SA felt it necessary to speak out and take a side feels monumental to me. I appreciate that way that, in normal times, many organizations stay out of politics. But sometimes there is no virtue in silence and neutrality, and we are living in such times. 

I’m a humanities person, but I understand the vital role science plays, should play, must be allowed to play in our lives and society. So vote for science, for representatives who respect science and research and who will encourage and support with both words and funding the scientific leaders whose voices must be heard loudly and clearly for our society to survive.

****************************
Monteverde Fire Opal

 

  1. Governor Jay Inslee Calls West Coast Fires ‘Climate Fires.’” YouTube. September 15, 2020.
    Andrew Hammond. The News Tribune, “Wildfires one sign of the ‘New Washington’ created by climate change, Inslee says.” September 9, 2020.
  2. Philip Bump. The Washington Post, “The president who says the coronavirus will go away makes the same prediction about global warming.” September 14, 2020.
  3. Rebecca Beitsch. The Hill, “Scientists flee USDA as research agencies move to Kansas City area.” July 15, 2019.
  4. Union of Concerned Scientists. “Attacks on Science.” July 2, 2020.
  5. Editors. Scientific American, “Scientific American Endorses Joe Biden.” October 2020.

Thirty Reasons to Vote: #10