I second that! You, Heather, offer so much history and context, minus the hyperbole and hysteria, as well as hope to those of us struggling to preserve our democratic way of life-
His sponsors and handlers need him too much, even if just in the mold of Bernie the murdered Insurance fraud committing executive that Richard and Larry found themselves passing off as alive in the 1989 movie, "Weekend at Bernie's." The unexpected arrival of party goers necessitated the charade.
Like Grover Norquist's infamous, "We just need a President to sign this stuff," once he gets them through the door a second time, they will have a lot less need for him, and I'm betting would want to replace him with someone they could pass off as more reasonable, much smarter, and at least more tolerable to half the population after we see how bad things can get under him in a second term.
Without an example of a horrible President beyond our worst nightmare, they couldn't pass off another more effective Quisling as noticeably less bad.
...and we pretty much know that everything he will do will be bad for the country...in his mind, the only person that matters in the entire world is HIMSELF.
I have grown to dislike July 4th. I live sorta out in the country and right now there are two municipalities with an endless 25 minute fireworks program with zero rests between explosions. It sounds like a war zone. I feel so sorry for animals/wildlife/people with PTSD.
Louise, we live in suburbia, and there have been fireworks displays since Tuesday, from our city and surrounding towns, as well as some private shows from well-heeled obnoxious local citizens who get their jollies that way, I guess. This doesn't include the bozos who set off individual ones with loud bangs after midnight.
My wife told me she read of a local dog that became frightened from the noise, ran off and onto a highway and was killed.
Doug, some years back while I was between doggers, I went to the back of my property on a July 5th morning to see a lovely, very scared, retriever there. She seemed so frightened, I just sat down on the ground and waited, talking to her softly until she approached me and climbed into my lap. Lovely, sweet dog! I spent a week fostering her whilst trying to find her people—leashing her up and walking her through my very small town, hoping she would lead me to her home….she was obviously well cared for…finally located them via flyers I’d put up. LOL….they only lived a two blocks away and as I walked her there & they were approaching, she did the best “happy dance” ever. Found out her name was Brandy…which matched her russet-colored golden retriever coat. She was such a sweetheart & gave me a dogger fix I needed after losing mine just a few months before. 🐾💖
Barbara, that's lovely! Dogs are marvelous creatures, aren't they? Give them love and kindness, and they reciprocate unconditionally. We've adopted several, including 2 presently in our household and they give such joy. Cheers to dogs everywhere, and the people who love them!
We spent my post bedtime hours walking up a fairly busy country road calling for my daughter's oldest dog, two of us with one little head mounted LED light dimming enough so my wife stepped in a pothole and fell in the dark as the phone fell from her hand going off into the dark on the road. She wasn't injured other than a bruised wrist and we found the phone to let the rest of the family and friends know where to pick up two exhausted searchers just as they found Petey had been stuck in the garage all the time. He seems to have almost never gone in the garage, but the fireworks in the distance might have had something to do with it.
I haven't been a fan of fireworks since Vietnam, and the many fires and injured people from the past (many burns, and a friend blinded in one eye), since then. The kicker for me was reading of the Portland, Maine fire that burned so much of the city on July 4, 1866. See https://downeast.com/history/the-great-fire-of-portland/
Jim, my current dogger, Piper (aka “hyper-Piper”) just turned 3 & does not like fireworks at all. In my life, filled with a number of doggers over time, I’ve only had a couple who were not bothered a whit by them…amazing. Piper, however, ran around the house barking furiously at the ceiling. I finally had to tether her right next to me—TV up loud to try to counter the noise (didn’t really work, her hearing is much better than mine!)—and soothe her the best I could. Luckily this was not a bad year for them—I think the heightened fire danger & current heatwave in northern CA played a part. Sadly there was a terrible event about an hour north that injured several folks, including children: https://kymkemp.com/2024/07/05/mass-casualty-incident-on-crescent-city-beach-after-fireworks-accident-yesterday/. I like that many locales are now using synchronized drone flights instead of fireworks, but such is far beyond the reach of the family fireworks displays….it’s the neighborhood ones, methinks, that cause all the distress (folk with livestock also lament how it distresses the horses, goats, etc.). I can’t imagine the distress of folks having experienced war-torn areas must feel….I wonder if they made no sound, how much the visuals would still trigger them. Sigh.
When stationed in Colorado around 1982, a friend's neighborhood had people doing things like attaching toilet paper streamers to acetylene filled balloons that would rise as the paper slowly burned then set off an extremely loud explosion. they also set off small rockets that had one go under the lawn chair of an elderly woman. The incident where a friend was blinded in one eye was part of the news that night and after, though it was away from where we had been and different people carelessly launched rockets, one of which him in the eye. The warning he spoke of on the newscast didn't mention that he had been doing exactly the same thing earlier that night where we were.
I didn't go to the next year's neighborhood fireworks , when the particular air density, etc, led to blowing out several windows. The guy preparing the Acetylene balloons had one under his arm when static electricity set it off. Besides the burns, he was deaf for what seemed days after.
Barbara et al, as soon as I closed my HCR email, I opened my morning offering from the WaPo (deal with it, haters). Alexandra Petri has a funny opinion column, and today she wrote eight apoofingsongs for summer, including 'Fireworks!!!!! From the "Soothing Sounds For Dogs" collection." "
Our g’doodle starts quivering early in the day, and shakes nearly the entire night. Getting worse each year (also with thunderstorms but less severe, & briefer). Tried 5 Rx’s, some clearly worse. 😥
I'm a veterinarian. Do your little pup a favor and have your vet prescribe alprazolam, and gabapentin and or trazodone. Some use Acepromazine I'm not a big fan. There's absolutely no need for him/her to suffer! Works like a charm. My girlfriend's dog would Tower in the bathtub for hours during a thunderstorm. She was very anti-drug. Resisted resisted resisted. Finally I broke her down the next thunderstorm the dog was playing with toys. Now this is an extreme example but in great responses are very common
Michael, our vet prescribed them for anxiety and I tried both, and they didn't work. Come to find out you give them to the pet.
Just kidding!
Good advice, Michael. Ours are on lower doses of gabapentin/trazedone -- they help with various issues, including travel nausea (we have an RV and one is prone to car sickness.)
Thanks, Michael, I’m a doc and my son’s a vet, but we tried your first 3 and others, including CBD (but have not tried phenothiazines). Another dog owner reported success with noise desensitization, but sure sounds traumatic….
As a retired medical technologist, my 2 least favorite days to work was July 4th and New Years Day. Both had the ER,--and thus us in the lab-- working at a frenzied pace.
Amen. I could do with a quiet observation. When those damned fire works go off over the ocean, the paper and crud from them washed up for days.
PLUS several thousand people end up injured by them each year. And July 4 is apparently the highest day for pets getting lost.
With you.
All that $$ for fireworks could sure be better spent on ways to help homeless people, or to restore water, dignity, and sacred lands to the original occupants of this nation.
This is my first time commenting. My friends and I were talking this weekend about all the turmoil around the election and the last few years - the strain of being constantly gobsmacked by the chicanery and baseness - and we all agreed that we would be much worse off if your light and intellect were not keeping the story straight, the history alive and relevant, and the players honest. I can take credit for dozens of people who read you faithfully. But it was no sales job. I just had to say hey look at this. This is good. In your remarks this week on the Supreme Court decision about presidential immunity you absolutely reached a pinnacle of clarity and moral judgment that few others could rightfully claim.
Thank you so much, Heather. You are tremendously respected by a lot of super smart people for what that’s worth. 🤣
It took awhile yesterday, but I quit paying for Wapo having dumped T NYTimes twice. And, told each one why. It was tougher w the Times since I was a native New Yorker and a class mate of a woman who should have been mayor.
Best of rest and rejuvenation overnight.
I would like to express my gratitude for your wisdom, your calm and thoughtful letters. I’d be more of a basket case without Letters from an American.
I second that! You, Heather, offer so much history and context, minus the hyperbole and hysteria, as well as hope to those of us struggling to preserve our democratic way of life-
I cannot thank you enough! Robin Jeanne, NYC
And please take all the time you need to rest deeply, to restore body and soul.......
♥️
I echo that, most heartily. Thank you.
Thank you for the excellent articles over the past few days. Very informative, reposting and sending to friends.
Over the past several years! She thought she could quit after trump LOST the election, but the madman just would not go away!
His sponsors and handlers need him too much, even if just in the mold of Bernie the murdered Insurance fraud committing executive that Richard and Larry found themselves passing off as alive in the 1989 movie, "Weekend at Bernie's." The unexpected arrival of party goers necessitated the charade.
Like Grover Norquist's infamous, "We just need a President to sign this stuff," once he gets them through the door a second time, they will have a lot less need for him, and I'm betting would want to replace him with someone they could pass off as more reasonable, much smarter, and at least more tolerable to half the population after we see how bad things can get under him in a second term.
Without an example of a horrible President beyond our worst nightmare, they couldn't pass off another more effective Quisling as noticeably less bad.
We need you…rest well!
Joyce Vance observed Mary Trump‘s remark — when Biden says he needs a good night’s sleep… That instead he should call it Executive Time. Bingo!
Yep, chump redefined the presidency for himself. Joe should make it his, in every way.
So, so, much suspicious Official Duties included in "Trump special versions of Executive Time."
...and we pretty much know that everything he will do will be bad for the country...in his mind, the only person that matters in the entire world is HIMSELF.
The most cheerful sight this Fourth of July holiday! Our flag IS still there.Thank you and may you and yours rest well.
I have grown to dislike July 4th. I live sorta out in the country and right now there are two municipalities with an endless 25 minute fireworks program with zero rests between explosions. It sounds like a war zone. I feel so sorry for animals/wildlife/people with PTSD.
Louise, we live in suburbia, and there have been fireworks displays since Tuesday, from our city and surrounding towns, as well as some private shows from well-heeled obnoxious local citizens who get their jollies that way, I guess. This doesn't include the bozos who set off individual ones with loud bangs after midnight.
My wife told me she read of a local dog that became frightened from the noise, ran off and onto a highway and was killed.
Enough is enough, man.
Doug, some years back while I was between doggers, I went to the back of my property on a July 5th morning to see a lovely, very scared, retriever there. She seemed so frightened, I just sat down on the ground and waited, talking to her softly until she approached me and climbed into my lap. Lovely, sweet dog! I spent a week fostering her whilst trying to find her people—leashing her up and walking her through my very small town, hoping she would lead me to her home….she was obviously well cared for…finally located them via flyers I’d put up. LOL….they only lived a two blocks away and as I walked her there & they were approaching, she did the best “happy dance” ever. Found out her name was Brandy…which matched her russet-colored golden retriever coat. She was such a sweetheart & gave me a dogger fix I needed after losing mine just a few months before. 🐾💖
What a kind heart you have, you met up at the right time. Funny how that happens
Barbara, that's lovely! Dogs are marvelous creatures, aren't they? Give them love and kindness, and they reciprocate unconditionally. We've adopted several, including 2 presently in our household and they give such joy. Cheers to dogs everywhere, and the people who love them!
We spent my post bedtime hours walking up a fairly busy country road calling for my daughter's oldest dog, two of us with one little head mounted LED light dimming enough so my wife stepped in a pothole and fell in the dark as the phone fell from her hand going off into the dark on the road. She wasn't injured other than a bruised wrist and we found the phone to let the rest of the family and friends know where to pick up two exhausted searchers just as they found Petey had been stuck in the garage all the time. He seems to have almost never gone in the garage, but the fireworks in the distance might have had something to do with it.
I haven't been a fan of fireworks since Vietnam, and the many fires and injured people from the past (many burns, and a friend blinded in one eye), since then. The kicker for me was reading of the Portland, Maine fire that burned so much of the city on July 4, 1866. See https://downeast.com/history/the-great-fire-of-portland/
Jim, my current dogger, Piper (aka “hyper-Piper”) just turned 3 & does not like fireworks at all. In my life, filled with a number of doggers over time, I’ve only had a couple who were not bothered a whit by them…amazing. Piper, however, ran around the house barking furiously at the ceiling. I finally had to tether her right next to me—TV up loud to try to counter the noise (didn’t really work, her hearing is much better than mine!)—and soothe her the best I could. Luckily this was not a bad year for them—I think the heightened fire danger & current heatwave in northern CA played a part. Sadly there was a terrible event about an hour north that injured several folks, including children: https://kymkemp.com/2024/07/05/mass-casualty-incident-on-crescent-city-beach-after-fireworks-accident-yesterday/. I like that many locales are now using synchronized drone flights instead of fireworks, but such is far beyond the reach of the family fireworks displays….it’s the neighborhood ones, methinks, that cause all the distress (folk with livestock also lament how it distresses the horses, goats, etc.). I can’t imagine the distress of folks having experienced war-torn areas must feel….I wonder if they made no sound, how much the visuals would still trigger them. Sigh.
When stationed in Colorado around 1982, a friend's neighborhood had people doing things like attaching toilet paper streamers to acetylene filled balloons that would rise as the paper slowly burned then set off an extremely loud explosion. they also set off small rockets that had one go under the lawn chair of an elderly woman. The incident where a friend was blinded in one eye was part of the news that night and after, though it was away from where we had been and different people carelessly launched rockets, one of which him in the eye. The warning he spoke of on the newscast didn't mention that he had been doing exactly the same thing earlier that night where we were.
I didn't go to the next year's neighborhood fireworks , when the particular air density, etc, led to blowing out several windows. The guy preparing the Acetylene balloons had one under his arm when static electricity set it off. Besides the burns, he was deaf for what seemed days after.
😲!!!!!!!!!
❤️❤️🩹❤️
Barbara et al, as soon as I closed my HCR email, I opened my morning offering from the WaPo (deal with it, haters). Alexandra Petri has a funny opinion column, and today she wrote eight apoofingsongs for summer, including 'Fireworks!!!!! From the "Soothing Sounds For Dogs" collection." "
It goes,
"It’s worse than the vacuum!
There’s nowhere to go!
They say it’s in color, but I wouldn’t know."
Anyway, good morning everyone.
Illegal in our city. Large fireworks displays around. Near Seattle.🗽🇺🇲🇺🇦
It’s as if we have bred the ability to moderate anything right out of our DNA 🤷🏻♀️
😟😢
Our g’doodle starts quivering early in the day, and shakes nearly the entire night. Getting worse each year (also with thunderstorms but less severe, & briefer). Tried 5 Rx’s, some clearly worse. 😥
I'm a veterinarian. Do your little pup a favor and have your vet prescribe alprazolam, and gabapentin and or trazodone. Some use Acepromazine I'm not a big fan. There's absolutely no need for him/her to suffer! Works like a charm. My girlfriend's dog would Tower in the bathtub for hours during a thunderstorm. She was very anti-drug. Resisted resisted resisted. Finally I broke her down the next thunderstorm the dog was playing with toys. Now this is an extreme example but in great responses are very common
Michael, our vet prescribed them for anxiety and I tried both, and they didn't work. Come to find out you give them to the pet.
Just kidding!
Good advice, Michael. Ours are on lower doses of gabapentin/trazedone -- they help with various issues, including travel nausea (we have an RV and one is prone to car sickness.)
Thanks, Michael, I’m a doc and my son’s a vet, but we tried your first 3 and others, including CBD (but have not tried phenothiazines). Another dog owner reported success with noise desensitization, but sure sounds traumatic….
what’s a g’doodle??
Golden Doodle; cross between a golden lab and a poodle.
Hi Leslie, a golden retriever - poodle mix.
This one is silver, and LOVES human contact - can’t get enough…
Because of tstorms and fireworks, my dog was afraid to go out in the rain for a few days.
Yeah… People like me, for example. I don’t mind the firecrackers, actually, but the M 80s… Not so much.
And just like history repeats itself, fireworks accidents happen time and again.
My nephew had a call on the 3rd where a 10 year old boy had blown off 3 of his fingers. They ended up amputating his entire hand.
Why would anyone buy M-80's or other powerful fireworks for their kids?
As a retired medical technologist, my 2 least favorite days to work was July 4th and New Years Day. Both had the ER,--and thus us in the lab-- working at a frenzied pace.
Horrific.
Me too, it has been commercialized to the max.
Amen. I could do with a quiet observation. When those damned fire works go off over the ocean, the paper and crud from them washed up for days.
PLUS several thousand people end up injured by them each year. And July 4 is apparently the highest day for pets getting lost.
With you.
All that $$ for fireworks could sure be better spent on ways to help homeless people, or to restore water, dignity, and sacred lands to the original occupants of this nation.
Biden has us on the brink of nuclear war, something I never see HCR discuss, and you are worried about the noise of fireworks?
Totally agree.. what is the need to simulate war???
Thank you for bringing the truth to us each day! I value your imput and praise the detail that you cover in such perfect acuracy!
Well deserved, dear Heather! May you sleep until your toes curl!
“to sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there's the rub..."
Unlike Hamlet's, may yours be sweet dreams, energizing dreams, dreams to encourage us all.
Sittin on the dock of the bay…
This is my first time commenting. My friends and I were talking this weekend about all the turmoil around the election and the last few years - the strain of being constantly gobsmacked by the chicanery and baseness - and we all agreed that we would be much worse off if your light and intellect were not keeping the story straight, the history alive and relevant, and the players honest. I can take credit for dozens of people who read you faithfully. But it was no sales job. I just had to say hey look at this. This is good. In your remarks this week on the Supreme Court decision about presidential immunity you absolutely reached a pinnacle of clarity and moral judgment that few others could rightfully claim.
Thank you so much, Heather. You are tremendously respected by a lot of super smart people for what that’s worth. 🤣
Kathy and friends, Northern California
Thank you Kathy-
Several letters to the editor in our local paper quote HCR. One new reader can bring in dozens of others.
On the other hand, I wonder how many subscribers to The NY Times, WAPO and other papers have quit because of the uneven coverage of MAGA vs. non-MAGA.
It took awhile yesterday, but I quit paying for Wapo having dumped T NYTimes twice. And, told each one why. It was tougher w the Times since I was a native New Yorker and a class mate of a woman who should have been mayor.
Good for you!
Thankyou Gary:-)
Wow, spread the word, desperately needed
Thanks, dear Heather, for all that you do.
Your recent interviews are so powerful and on point - I've sent them out in all directions.
I hope you are sound asleep right now.🙏🏽😴❤️
Non-sense! Take a week off. The fight has just begun! We shall still be around, l assure you. In the meantime, have a blessèd rest, ¿okay?
What about doing it? Actually taking a week to replenish yourself for these next months?
Thank you for all your support and insight to these crazy times!! You deserve a wonderful weekend off and family time and peace!
Have a fun weekend. Beautiful picture of America the way I remember it.
Sleep well.