Rest well!! You deserve a peaceful rest as do we all! So enjoy a quiet time and hopefully, there will be no distractions and demands as you take your night off!!! 😴😴😴
We suffer the relentless news with you and appreciate both your insights and your need for time to turn everything off, even for a moment. Don’t worry about us. We worry with you.
You deserve more than a night off but am grateful you don’t take too many nights off. Amazing how much the truth does calm the chaos out there! Thank you, always as I don’t say it enough how much these daily letters have meant to me. Your dedication to us doesn’t go unnoticed! Sleep well, you truly deserve that! Thank you for the Beautiful photo!
HCR….you are indefatigable!! I very much appreciate how you wade through all the sh*t that is going on—and putting it in historical perspective—but you do not wallow in it. Yesterday I had a moment of fantasy that TFFG never made it on anyone’s radar….was just a normal shmuck like the rest of us….was briefly liberating and calming. Then I thought, no, it is good he barged into the path of our democracy and slapped us awake…we had grown too complacent (longstanding struggles for equality and justice notwithstanding) in our “democracy”. It’s like a sneaker wave…seems harmless at first, then you realize as it pulls back that you are, indeed, in deep trouble. To me, our democracy is like walking the shores of my wild far northern CA coast…never turn your back on the sea & pay attention always….while, at the same time, enjoying the beauty as well.
Your analogy of the sneaker wave is spot on. Do not take your eyes off the ocean, and never turn your back on her. There's a bluff in Yachats, Oregon, along the 804 trail. We lost two local high school students there when they were washed out to sea by a sneaker wave. The bluff is about 15' above the shore line.
Yeah, Ally…oddly this is the second time today that brought such a story to mind. Earlier I was at the Humboldt Home & Garden show & was speaking w/ a Forrest Service employee & we discussed the hot-shots…I said I knew one from years back & said his name….he knew him!! We then spoke of the family mom, dad (the hot-shot), daughter, son and their dog walking along the spit of Big Lagoon Thanksgiving weekend 2012….when Fran, the dog, got caught up in a sneaker wave…Geddie went in after Fran, but was soon in trouble, then Howard went it, then Mary….Olivia was held back by folks on the beach. They could not revive Howard or Mary when they were pulled from the waves & Geddie was lost to the sea….they were consummate outdoors folk and would have known the danger….to me it will always be that they died for love. They were beloved in the community and their memorial service filled to standing room only the Arcata High School Gym/Auditorium. Biden is right, in my experience as well, there comes a time when thinking/talking about those who have left us, brings a smile to our face before tears to our eyes….sometimes, for me, it’s both at once. ❤️🩹☮️
I have my own “smile through the tears” memory this week. Monday is the 13th Anniversary of the murder of one of my fellow negotiators as he was effecting a traffic stop. Sadly, the 22nd that year was Good Friday, so it is always a double anniversary…
💔 Ally, what I find especially hard is when it is unexpected/sudden, no chance to say goodbye & love and appreciate you being in my life. I’d seen Mary at the CoOp just before Thanksgiving and we hugged and chatted and said we need to get together soon…..not knowing it would be the last time…. I carry them with me and was very lucky to have had them in my life.
Canadians have a dark cloud in the horizon.......the closet Trumper wanna be Pierre Marcel Poilievre already has come out agaist LGBQ and was endorsed by Alex Jones. MAGA Doug Ford is stacking the courts with hard core right wingers and decimating environmental protections........Alberta is a lost cause
Light and darkness, the trees surrounding 'Seal Bay', a wonderful vision faraway from the noise. Thank you for this sensory relief, HCR and Peter Ralston,
I just want to reiterate how important you and your daily letters have been to me and to my wellbeing.A network of amazing historians,wordsmiths and others have contributed to my and I am sure others, sanity.Take good care.
The shot is so perfect.........Mother Earth will still be her once the last full Depands diaper is buried 6 feet under in the corner of some bankrupt golf course........
Last Thursday at about 5 am, the Maine Senate completed a very long day that started Wednesday morning. This is how the 2024 short session as they call it ended. The House closed its session Wednesday night.
Those of us who worked the last week of this session straight through for passage of gun safety bills, saw our work pay off with several bills finally passed onto the governor. One bill called the “governor’s bill” that Janet Mills promoted included improvements to the existing yellow flag law, expanding background checks to more types of gun dealers, and greater funding for crisis centers & mental health. A bump stock ban was passed. Bump stocks convert weapons to automatic weapons which are already outlawed. It’s amazing how much wiggle room our laws and courts allow. That converting a firearm to an illegal weapon is not already illegal? But then lynching in the south during Jim Crow wasn’t outlawed, I am told. A 72 hour waiting period to buy a firearm was passed. Intended to reduce suicides which are reported to be mostly impulsive. Suicides are the greatest number of deaths by gun by far in the U.S. Guns are currently the greatest cause of death for those 20 years old and younger. The “pro-life” movement is not pro-life for already born children. Most “pro-life” advocates are also Second Amendment advocates standing against all gun safety laws, having deregulated guns laws until there is nothing distinguishing between the “good men with a gun” and the “bad men with a gun”. In fact you never know until you are shot and probably killed.
Claiming the Second Amendment as a right to own every and any firearm you want is pure hog wash. The courts know it and only recently came up with this idea with gun lobby help. Anti gun safety advocates brought their militia on Monday to the State House. A lady from another state in a colonial period dress and bonnet held a sign saying “Patriots Day celebrates disarming citizens”. What planet is she from? I lived in Lexington, MA, where we annually went to see the reenactment of the British march through Lexington to Concord to capture the local militia armory. We observed the organized & trained militia that the Second Amendment mentions gather on the green or commons. The British and colonists had their brief battle with the British marching onto Concord. The armory in towns were the weapons storehouses used by the militia to stockpile their firearms and ammunition, just as our National Guard does now. Firearms were more costly than most colonists could afford, so they held most of their defense in common on the “commons” in an armory. There was no expectation that every citizen would or could own a firearm for defense. They defended themselves as a community. The U.S. gun lobby only believes in one community today. Their customers, as many as they can create.
I got started on working for gun safety as schools and children were either shot in mass, or subjected to a life “active shooter drills”, trained to hide, be absolutely quiet, know where exits are, be under lockdowns, and go to school where fire escapes are typically locked to keep potential shooters from entering back doors. It’s sort of like injecting bleach to prevent Covid rather than accepting the prevention of vaccinations. I guess the active shooter drills and locked exits do work, but they traumatize everyone and risk being locked in during a fire.
We live in a society now that spends more time fixing things that we have intentionally broken, thinking the old days were better, believing that we can have our broken ways without the trouble of fixing them.
There is too much to fix to get it all done in the legislative sessions that most states have. And the fixing gets even more time consuming when some states like Alabama, Texas, Arizona and too many to mention break things and become models for other states to break things, which frightens states like Maine to fix things sometimes before they are broken, but because some Mainers admire the most broken states and want to emulate them.
Martin Luther King Jr has a lot of good writing about breaking and fixing. The fixing is always more painful before it gets better, and this fixing work is never done.
What a great post. My 30-year-old nephew shot himself. What a tragedy that reverberates through generations. Thank you. It would be so much better if we didn’t break things in the first place. How wise you are…
I feel, every day, that we have failed our children and grands. They need to know the real challenges that face us, not the crap that Fox and clones spew. Thank you
Yesterday, I had the chance to say to a women who does not want to vote in November because she does not like either the President or the defendant that she didn’t have to like Biden to vote for him and for Democracy because her children and grandchildren would thank her for it.
Yet another set of casualties that damage a family. I am so sorry. We lost a niece at age 32 to a diabetic issue that was the result of her insulin pump not being covered by her Oregon Health Plan...
Thanks for your comment, David. More thanks for your tireless work on gun safety. If you'd like an avenue for codifying gun safety legislation, here's a suggestion that I've been working on.
Take the traffic laws of Maine as they pertain to Vehicle Ownership and Operation. If you own a gun, it must be registered. To register you have to provide a license to attest that you are above a certain age for lawful operation, that you have insurance, and that you have been licensed to operate. Then go on to age requirements, training requirements, licensing requirements, and proof that the knowledge base for safe usage is met (compare a driver's ed class to a hunter/firearms safety class, as a for instance.) Then, match up firearms conduct with driving conduct, and make the status of violations/crimes relatively similar. When property damage or injury to another takes place because of firearms operation, dovetail that with how things like careless/reckless driving causing property damage or injury as it does with conduct that is not due to operating a motor vehicle. Utilize as much of the NRA's Range Safety Rule and language as possible and codify that.
Thank you for all you’ve done—and enjoy your recharging evening. Peter Ralston always delivers serenity—please thank him for sharing his art.
Rest well!! You deserve a peaceful rest as do we all! So enjoy a quiet time and hopefully, there will be no distractions and demands as you take your night off!!! 😴😴😴
Nina Truslow McKee
We suffer the relentless news with you and appreciate both your insights and your need for time to turn everything off, even for a moment. Don’t worry about us. We worry with you.
Bob, Tony's brother? Sorry couldn't help myself, I, unfortunately agree with you. Way too much focus on unnecessary worries
Not Tony’s brother.
Sleep well & sweet dreams. You're very special to us.
You’ve more than earned it! Have a restful night and thank you for the exquisite photo!
Good of Peter to brave a trip to Seal Bay to take that photo. It must be terribly hot there with the sun on the near side of that black cloud!
You deserve more than a night off but am grateful you don’t take too many nights off. Amazing how much the truth does calm the chaos out there! Thank you, always as I don’t say it enough how much these daily letters have meant to me. Your dedication to us doesn’t go unnoticed! Sleep well, you truly deserve that! Thank you for the Beautiful photo!
HCR….you are indefatigable!! I very much appreciate how you wade through all the sh*t that is going on—and putting it in historical perspective—but you do not wallow in it. Yesterday I had a moment of fantasy that TFFG never made it on anyone’s radar….was just a normal shmuck like the rest of us….was briefly liberating and calming. Then I thought, no, it is good he barged into the path of our democracy and slapped us awake…we had grown too complacent (longstanding struggles for equality and justice notwithstanding) in our “democracy”. It’s like a sneaker wave…seems harmless at first, then you realize as it pulls back that you are, indeed, in deep trouble. To me, our democracy is like walking the shores of my wild far northern CA coast…never turn your back on the sea & pay attention always….while, at the same time, enjoying the beauty as well.
Love your California metaphor, Barbara. Someday may get to visit some of that, for now, only virtually.
Your analogy of the sneaker wave is spot on. Do not take your eyes off the ocean, and never turn your back on her. There's a bluff in Yachats, Oregon, along the 804 trail. We lost two local high school students there when they were washed out to sea by a sneaker wave. The bluff is about 15' above the shore line.
If I recall, you're in Humboldt County, right?
Yeah, Ally…oddly this is the second time today that brought such a story to mind. Earlier I was at the Humboldt Home & Garden show & was speaking w/ a Forrest Service employee & we discussed the hot-shots…I said I knew one from years back & said his name….he knew him!! We then spoke of the family mom, dad (the hot-shot), daughter, son and their dog walking along the spit of Big Lagoon Thanksgiving weekend 2012….when Fran, the dog, got caught up in a sneaker wave…Geddie went in after Fran, but was soon in trouble, then Howard went it, then Mary….Olivia was held back by folks on the beach. They could not revive Howard or Mary when they were pulled from the waves & Geddie was lost to the sea….they were consummate outdoors folk and would have known the danger….to me it will always be that they died for love. They were beloved in the community and their memorial service filled to standing room only the Arcata High School Gym/Auditorium. Biden is right, in my experience as well, there comes a time when thinking/talking about those who have left us, brings a smile to our face before tears to our eyes….sometimes, for me, it’s both at once. ❤️🩹☮️
Wow. Such a loss to the community.
I have my own “smile through the tears” memory this week. Monday is the 13th Anniversary of the murder of one of my fellow negotiators as he was effecting a traffic stop. Sadly, the 22nd that year was Good Friday, so it is always a double anniversary…
Monday will be tough.
💔 Ally, what I find especially hard is when it is unexpected/sudden, no chance to say goodbye & love and appreciate you being in my life. I’d seen Mary at the CoOp just before Thanksgiving and we hugged and chatted and said we need to get together soon…..not knowing it would be the last time…. I carry them with me and was very lucky to have had them in my life.
❤️🩹💔❤️🩹
Heart breaking, how long before the smile comes first…
Heather, there are many of us in Canada who follow you and share your concerns. And love your posts.
Hello fellow Canadian! I'm from southern NB, been following Heather for a couple years. You?
Canadians have a dark cloud in the horizon.......the closet Trumper wanna be Pierre Marcel Poilievre already has come out agaist LGBQ and was endorsed by Alex Jones. MAGA Doug Ford is stacking the courts with hard core right wingers and decimating environmental protections........Alberta is a lost cause
Light and darkness, the trees surrounding 'Seal Bay', a wonderful vision faraway from the noise. Thank you for this sensory relief, HCR and Peter Ralston,
The moon is wide awake.
I just want to reiterate how important you and your daily letters have been to me and to my wellbeing.A network of amazing historians,wordsmiths and others have contributed to my and I am sure others, sanity.Take good care.
Lovely photo! A night off is a great idea.
Wishing you deep and dreamless sleep! In the arms of the Angels, darlin’ - In the arms of the Angels!!
The shot is so perfect.........Mother Earth will still be her once the last full Depands diaper is buried 6 feet under in the corner of some bankrupt golf course........
You’re the BEST!! But yes, we can only drink from the fire hose for so long. 🥺 Have a restful weekend.
You rock and now you sleep!
Thanks so much!!!
Beautiful. Enjoy your night of rest.
Last Thursday at about 5 am, the Maine Senate completed a very long day that started Wednesday morning. This is how the 2024 short session as they call it ended. The House closed its session Wednesday night.
Those of us who worked the last week of this session straight through for passage of gun safety bills, saw our work pay off with several bills finally passed onto the governor. One bill called the “governor’s bill” that Janet Mills promoted included improvements to the existing yellow flag law, expanding background checks to more types of gun dealers, and greater funding for crisis centers & mental health. A bump stock ban was passed. Bump stocks convert weapons to automatic weapons which are already outlawed. It’s amazing how much wiggle room our laws and courts allow. That converting a firearm to an illegal weapon is not already illegal? But then lynching in the south during Jim Crow wasn’t outlawed, I am told. A 72 hour waiting period to buy a firearm was passed. Intended to reduce suicides which are reported to be mostly impulsive. Suicides are the greatest number of deaths by gun by far in the U.S. Guns are currently the greatest cause of death for those 20 years old and younger. The “pro-life” movement is not pro-life for already born children. Most “pro-life” advocates are also Second Amendment advocates standing against all gun safety laws, having deregulated guns laws until there is nothing distinguishing between the “good men with a gun” and the “bad men with a gun”. In fact you never know until you are shot and probably killed.
Claiming the Second Amendment as a right to own every and any firearm you want is pure hog wash. The courts know it and only recently came up with this idea with gun lobby help. Anti gun safety advocates brought their militia on Monday to the State House. A lady from another state in a colonial period dress and bonnet held a sign saying “Patriots Day celebrates disarming citizens”. What planet is she from? I lived in Lexington, MA, where we annually went to see the reenactment of the British march through Lexington to Concord to capture the local militia armory. We observed the organized & trained militia that the Second Amendment mentions gather on the green or commons. The British and colonists had their brief battle with the British marching onto Concord. The armory in towns were the weapons storehouses used by the militia to stockpile their firearms and ammunition, just as our National Guard does now. Firearms were more costly than most colonists could afford, so they held most of their defense in common on the “commons” in an armory. There was no expectation that every citizen would or could own a firearm for defense. They defended themselves as a community. The U.S. gun lobby only believes in one community today. Their customers, as many as they can create.
I got started on working for gun safety as schools and children were either shot in mass, or subjected to a life “active shooter drills”, trained to hide, be absolutely quiet, know where exits are, be under lockdowns, and go to school where fire escapes are typically locked to keep potential shooters from entering back doors. It’s sort of like injecting bleach to prevent Covid rather than accepting the prevention of vaccinations. I guess the active shooter drills and locked exits do work, but they traumatize everyone and risk being locked in during a fire.
We live in a society now that spends more time fixing things that we have intentionally broken, thinking the old days were better, believing that we can have our broken ways without the trouble of fixing them.
There is too much to fix to get it all done in the legislative sessions that most states have. And the fixing gets even more time consuming when some states like Alabama, Texas, Arizona and too many to mention break things and become models for other states to break things, which frightens states like Maine to fix things sometimes before they are broken, but because some Mainers admire the most broken states and want to emulate them.
Martin Luther King Jr has a lot of good writing about breaking and fixing. The fixing is always more painful before it gets better, and this fixing work is never done.
As Maine goes, so goes the Nation🤞🤞. Thank you for telling us about the accomplishments of the Maine Legislature!
What a great post. My 30-year-old nephew shot himself. What a tragedy that reverberates through generations. Thank you. It would be so much better if we didn’t break things in the first place. How wise you are…
My heart goes out to your generations Jeri!
I feel, every day, that we have failed our children and grands. They need to know the real challenges that face us, not the crap that Fox and clones spew. Thank you
Yesterday, I had the chance to say to a women who does not want to vote in November because she does not like either the President or the defendant that she didn’t have to like Biden to vote for him and for Democracy because her children and grandchildren would thank her for it.
What a good response. Hope she listens
I am so sorry, Jeri. Suicide is one of the toughest things for a family to go through.
It is, at least when my niece drowned at 19, it wasn't deliberate.
Ouch!!! I’m so sorry you’ve lost your nice/nephew in those ways.
Both deaths resulted in family problems for decades, painful for so many and for so long.
Yet another set of casualties that damage a family. I am so sorry. We lost a niece at age 32 to a diabetic issue that was the result of her insulin pump not being covered by her Oregon Health Plan...
Thanks for your comment, David. More thanks for your tireless work on gun safety. If you'd like an avenue for codifying gun safety legislation, here's a suggestion that I've been working on.
Take the traffic laws of Maine as they pertain to Vehicle Ownership and Operation. If you own a gun, it must be registered. To register you have to provide a license to attest that you are above a certain age for lawful operation, that you have insurance, and that you have been licensed to operate. Then go on to age requirements, training requirements, licensing requirements, and proof that the knowledge base for safe usage is met (compare a driver's ed class to a hunter/firearms safety class, as a for instance.) Then, match up firearms conduct with driving conduct, and make the status of violations/crimes relatively similar. When property damage or injury to another takes place because of firearms operation, dovetail that with how things like careless/reckless driving causing property damage or injury as it does with conduct that is not due to operating a motor vehicle. Utilize as much of the NRA's Range Safety Rule and language as possible and codify that.