Will Republican Voters Ever Understand?

I wish there was a way to make Republican voters understand that Republicans in Congress are not fulfilling their oaths of office. All government employees take an oath stating that they are to defend America against all enemies, foreign or domestic.

We currently have hundreds of people in the Executive Branch who are literally domestic terrorists. They are behaving in ways that are contrary to both the Constitution and federal law. They are behaving in ways that will literally kill sick Americans and discourage vaccinations which will kill more people. They are behaving in ways that will send thousands more Americans into the streets. They are behaving in ways that can deny jobs to women and minorities. Some members of the Executive Branch have stood up to the domestic terrorists, refusing to help them and some have resigned.

Some member of the Judicial Branch have stood up to Trump's lawbreaking, but they haven't made him accept any consequences. For example, the funds allocated to USAID were recently ruled that they must be spent as Congress decided they should be spent. And yet - Trump isn't releasing the funds.

A pity Republicans in Congress are so impotent that they won't stand up to obvious domestic terrorists. A pity Democrats in Congress couldn't be more organized in their protests against the Executive Branch.

Be Sure to Write to Your Rep/Senators About the SAVE Act (if you want to vote in the future)

The SAVE Act is "disguised" as a way to help keep non-citizens from voting. In reality, it's a way to deny the right to vote to trans people and most women. If you'd read Project 2025 last year, you'd know Republicans wanted to do anything they could possibly do to restrict many people from voting.

But they are particularly going after women and trans people by requiring the name on your voter registration to match the name on your birth certificate.

My husband and I married in 1977 and we spent much of our engagement year figuring out what last name to take. We had mixed feelings about hyphenated names and even thought about creating a new name. But, after long discussion, I decided to take his last name (but never, ever his first name).

I will return to my birth name in a second (though I know it will take longer than that) if the SAVE Act passes the Senate and is signed by Trump. No regime will deny me my right to vote.

It's already been passed by a House committee, so it's on the way to the House and Senate.

WRITE TO YOUR REPRESENTATIVE/SENATORS OR NOW!!

Here's what I wrote to Senator McCormick (and a similar letter to Senator Fetterman, but with a different last paragraph):

 

I am disgusted (but not surprised) that the House passed the Save Act which would take away the voting rights of millions of people (especially women since so many married women took their husband's last names).

While I took my husband's last name when we married in 1977 (by choice - we preferred to have a joint family name), he knows I will revert to my birth last name in a second should the Senate also pass the SAVE Act.

Please show that at least one Republican cares about voting rights. I haven't seen one support voting rights in a very long time.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I'm sorry that my original posting was somewhat incorrect and appreciate that a woman at a local Democratic Committee Meeting gave me a correction that it hadn't passed the House yet. And I will write to my Reprentative, Summer Lee, even though I'm sure she'd never vote for it.

The Readers Digest Condensed Version of "What I Did on My Summer Vacation"

I wrote this for Samantha Brown’s travel group on Facebook:

We had an often wet but wonderful 3 weeks in Scotland & northern England this summer.

Took a bus trip to northwestern Scotland and the Isle of Skye. Saw the Kilt Cliffs on a sunny day. Found a family marker at Culloden Field & learned one of my Scottish ancestors was a Jacobite.

Attended a conference in Glasgow where we went to fabulous restaurants including Ubiquitous Chip, The Buttery, Mother India & the Butcher Shop. Drove to northern England with friends where we visited Hadrian’s Wall, the Beamish Open Air Museum & Durham Cathedral & stayed for 3 nights in a stone barn that had been converted to a cottage.

Went to the Lake District & spent two nights in a lovely B&B in Windemere. Took a boat ride in a restored wooden boat & got amazing gingerbread in Grasmere.

Returned to Glasgow, found Sloan’s, a pub that’s been open since 1797. Took the Hop On/Hop Off bus & got off at Glasgow Cathedral & the fascinating Kelvingrove Museum.

So while the trip was fantastic, getting there and back again was pretty miserable. Both British Airways & Heathrow Airport are at the very top of our “Never Again” list.

Movie Review: Firebrand - Great Performances Ruined by Historical Fiction

I was interested in seeing Firebrand, as I'm a fan of both Alicia Vikander & Jude Law who were terrific in the lead roles of Queen Catherine Parr and her third husband, King Henry VII. Most of the movie was quite good, until about the last 20 minutes, which goes way, way off the rails.

Catherine Parr was a well-educated, twice-widowed young woman who caught Henry's eye after he'd executed his fifth wife, Catherine Howard for adultery. When Henry pulled England out of the Roman Catholic Church (after the Pope had refused to annul his marriage to his first wife), his new Church of England was basically "Roman Catholic Lite" and not particularly Protestant. But Catherine leaned, mostly quietly, towards being a Protestant. WHen Henry asked her to be his wife, Catherine married him.

I know movies about historic figures are often not at all accurate. This one was very frustrating as it was careful with things like costuming, music, lighting and messy facts around religion in most of the movie. I couldn't quite understand how this movie could only have a 6.5 in IMDB ratings until the movie started to diverge from the facts.

[[spoilers]]

While there was a warrant for Catherine Parr's arrest for heresy, it got lost in the shuffle of papers and she was never arrested, never imprisoned, and certainly never had to prepare to be executed. But certainly she feared she might be arrested on heresy as an old acquaintance of hers, Anne Askew, had already been executed for heresy.

Catherine was kept away from Henry while he lay dying. So the scene with Catherine at Henry's deathbed, breaking his neck (I kid you not) was complete fiction.

[[spoilers]]

Two minor complaints about casting - it looks like they based the casting of Prince Edward on a famous Holbein painting of him when he was a chubby toddler. But by his early childhood, he was somewhat sickly and serious (he died at 16 probably of TB). And Princess Elizabeth was cast as a bit old, she was closer to 13 in 1546 when most of the movie was set.

So Firebrand could have been a stronger movie except that it was ruined by historic fantasy.

Movie Review: The Dead Don't Hurt (Directed, Written, & Music Composed by Viggo Mortensen, Who Also Co-Stars)

I really don't like Westerns. A few exceptions:

• The old TV show The Riflemen starring Chuck Connors.
• The Emigrants and The New Land (early '70s), a pair of movies starring Max von Sydow & Liv Ullman as a Swedish family who settle in Minnesota in 1850.
• Heartland (1978), starring Conchata Ferrell and Rip Taylor, about a widow who goes west to manage a household for a taciturn farmer in Wyoming.
• The Unforgiven (1992), starring Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman (directed by Eastwood) except that the violence was extreme.

These Westerns focus more on families.

The same is true of Viggo Mortensen's second movie as a writer/director, The Dead Don't Hurt. While it is violent in places, the focus is on the family.

This movie stars Vicky Krieps (Vivienne), Solly McLeod (Weston), Danny Huston (Mayor Schiller), & Viggo (Olsen). The movie is loaded with immigrants from Europe - Olsen is Danish. Vivienne is French via Canada.

The Dead Don't Hurt starts very quietly. A woman, Vivienne dies, a man, Olsen, holding her hand. At about the same time, there is a shooting spree & a person is accused of the murders, tried, convicted & hung. Olsen lives nearby & seems wary about the verdict but doesn't say anything.

The movie jumps around and goes back in time to the childhood of Vivienne. She grew up in a cabin in Canada; her family don’t like the English. Her father disappears; the audience knows he'd been captured and executed by the English. The little girl Vivienne grows up to be a young woman in San Francisco. She’s with an upper class twit type but sees a man who introduces himself as Olsen. They chat & find out they’re both immigrants. They rapidly hook up. She goes off with Olsen into the wild. It turns out she can shoot, a useful skill in the wild. There’s a funny scene about how to have sex in the wild while wearing layers of clothes from the 1860s. After a few days in the wild, they arrive at property Olsen had leased. It’s in the mountains in a desert-like area & it includes a delapidated cabin and no garden.

The movie jumps between the "present," as Vivienne adjusts to living in the middle of nowhere, and the future, a trip Olsen takes after her death. The scenes in the town can be violent—-mostly due to Weston, the man who actually did the shooting spree near the beginning of the movie. He does every ugly, violent thing you can imagine. Some of the violence happens when Olsen has gone off to fight in the Civil War so Vivienne needs to handle things for herself.

The photography throughout is lovely; Marcel Zyskind is a Danish cinemetographer who captures the "splendid isolation" of so much of the West.

The production design is all very raw and western. One minor issue - western buildings at that time (1860-1865 for the most part) were a big mix of old and new construction, but almost everything in this movie looks old.

The music sounds like it was all played on old instruments evoking the feel of the place where the action is taking place--mostly old fiddles & a piano. Viggo also wrote the music & it works very well. Using old instruments like this was a good effect in two of John Hillcoat's movies - his western The Proposition and his dystopic The Road in which Viggo starred. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis wrote the music for the two Hlllcoat movies.

The movie was mostly shot in Mexico, with a few scenes shot in Canada.

I enjoyed this movie very much. The performances are all excellent, and the script works, though I have some quibbles around the climax.

Gender Assigned at Birth

I remember learning about trans people in the late 1960s in Time and/or Life magazine.  It made me think that they were talking about me.  After all, I was a loud, large, competitive, argumentative girl who loved reading and chemistry sets.  Within about a minute, I realized no, there was no reason those characteristics shouldn't describe a girl.  My issues over gender were never about the biological parts, they were over how SOCIETY dictated girls and boys should present themselves.  Particularly through the '60s, society obsessively pushed girls towards marriage and motherhood, and men towards careers with much less involvement in their children's lives.

In college, I fell in love with a smart guy who was funny but generally quieter and less assertive then I was.  Over time, he's become more gregarious and more assertive.  He's also a much better cook than I, something he enjoys flaunting now as he's retired and has more time to cook.

We raised our daughter to let her know she could do whatever she wanted to do so long as she went to school.  Like us, she gravitated to computer work and is an avid online gamer (with a gender-neutral name online).

I have mixed feeling about the very technical term "gender dysphoria," as it sounds too much like an illness. Given the extremely complicated issues around gender and genes for some people, it's not an illness but it is a difference.  With a small percentage of babies, it's impossible to immediately assign a gender at birth.  Instead of only having female and male on birth certificates (and many other forms we fill throughout our lives), there should be at least a third choice.  "Other" isn't the best name for this.  "Intersex" is accurate for some infants where the sex cannot be immediately observed. But many intersex children eventually do adopt one gender or the other seeing as our culture is so rigidly defined by two genders?

We do we have to have two genders?  This notion has really upset a very loud minority, especially in the south.  Many people in the south have always been rigidly attached to old ideas.

If people want to adopt their own genders, why not?  I know "they" is becoming more common as a pronoun, but it mostly seems to be used by people assigned female at birth.  In some ways, I should adopt "they" as my pronoun as I believe we over emphasize gender.  There is way too much fussing over it.  BUT, I don't want to see "she" become invisible either.

It probably would be better to worry about gender less often.