Monday, July 26, 2021

Kindness

Besides this blog, I write another one about kindness.  Both are written seven days a week.  (There was a time that this one was only on weekdays, but the kindness blog has always been every single day).  I've written 1,676 entries in the kindness blog since I began that back in 2016.  This one I began in 2009, so considerably more entries.  Anyway I mention all of this today because there was nothing on either of them the past two days.  (Did you notice)?

I have had some health issues and went by ambulance to the local hospital on Friday morning.  I feel fine right now, although I am concerned because I have no idea what is wrong.  I have a number of medical appointments in the days ahead, and hopefully we can figure this all out.

It's NOT about me is a place where I try to write things that are inspiring.  Most of the entries here are either general in nature or are about specific people (heroes I like to call them) who are helping to make our world better.  If you are not a regular reader, I invite you to come back for more.  Tell your friends about this too!  This is not a place where I detail my medical history.  The name is quite accurate, It's NOT about me.  It did seem appropriate this morning though to explain the absence.

Oh and both of these blogs could use some help by the way, especially that one about being kind..  I'm not an expert.  I try to be a kind person, but sometimes I just can't think of anything that is all that inspiring.  If you read that blog, would you kindly leave a comment or two as well?  Your thoughts could be very helpful.  Together I really believe we can make this a kinder world!

Friday, July 23, 2021

A Day In The Life

No teenager should have to face cancer, especially not during this pandemic.  Those of you who read this regularly, know that I make mention of cancer here often.  My mom died because of cancer.  So many of my other relative and friends have battled various cancers.  This blog though is NOT about me, so today I want to make mention of Josh Cottle, a guy who has fought and is winning.  

First, I want to say that I don't know Josh at all, and my only information about him is what he has shared publicly on social media.  He inspires me though.  We need to be inspired these days!  Cancer sucks.  I am sure we can all agree on that.  This guy though is not only fighting his own battle, he is also encouraging others and I think that's pretty remarkable.  He has a youtube channel and at the beginning of his cancer fight he recorded a video called “Day in the Life of a Teen with Cancer.” 

How many drugs do you need and what kind of food will you eat? Does all your hair fall out like in the tv shows? Does cancer always win? There are so many questions that someone might have and whether you or someone you love has cancer, knowing what to expect can help you cope with the days ahead.  Everyone's story is different of course, but Josh tells his story.  Josh shares a very personal journey and I think this kind of awareness can make a world of difference.

I'm not going to tell you the Josh Cottle story.  That isn't my place.  He does such a great job of tell the story himself and I hope you will check it out HERE.  I haven't even tried to reach out to him.  He deserves his privacy.  I'll keep watching though as he shares more and more and I will keep being grateful that a day in the life of this young man is truly making a difference.

Sunday, July 18, 2021

being healthy

Being healthy does not just mean eating right and going to the gym.  Our individual health depends on a number of factors and it is important for us to pay close attention.  Regular check-ups are important and knowledge of changes in medicine and in healthy living standards.
 
I've written here about leukemia and other cancers and about AIDS, and although I'm not a doctor (and certainly am not trying to be everyone's mother), but we should all know a little about the many diseases that exist, not to diagnose ourselves, but to be aware when something in our body just isn't right.  Early detection is often the key with many things that can attack us.  

If we want to change the world, we need to have the strength and energy to do it!  It's also good when we can be there for friends or relatives with various health issues.
 
It should be obvious, but being healthy leads to being happy.  If our bodies feel good, our minds will likely join in!  Eat your fruits and vegetables and get plenty of exercise, and see your physician on a regular basis.  Be well!

Friday, July 16, 2021

The Gay Gene

There was an article in the UK Daily Mail 28 years ago today back in 1993, reporting on the possibility of terminating pregnancies if the "gay gene" was discovered. The author of the piece, Jason Lewis wrote in part "Isolation of the genes means it could soon be possible to predict whether a baby will be gay and give the mother the option of abortion."

Of course that wasn't the end of it. There have been other reports. In 2019, analysis of half a million people suggested that genetics may have a limited contribution to sexual orientation. There are other factors to consider as well. Another report says that genetics are involved in sexual orientation, but that there are no specific genetic predictors.

My reason for bring this up this morning was the abortion option. No this isn't going to be a debate on a woman's right to choose. My issue is terminating a pregnancy because you don't want a gay child. If you knew you were going to bring a gay person into the world, would you want to?  (There was even talk at one time about mandatory abortions if a gay gene was found).

How far have we come since the 1993 report I mentioned?  Not far enough I'm afraid.  There are still those who would like to find a gay gene and use it to insure that there never be another gay person born,  I'm curious though about what YOU think.  Let me hear from you.

Monday, July 12, 2021

On my soapbox

Some days this seems more like my soapbox than the blog I originally intended. There are also many days when I don't go nearly far enough. Oh and then there are days like today when I post several hours late. (I did have an excuse. I coronary incident sent me to the ED and I only got home from hospital a few minutes ago). Anyway, I try not to talk about me in this space and I also try not to spend too much time on my soapbox, but sometimes things just HAVE to be said.

Over the weekend a gay couple was subjected to homophobic and xenophobic verbal insults on over a parking space dispute in Alexandria, Virginia. In Las Vegas, a woman spewing anti-Asian remarks and punching a 6-year-old boy has been arrested and charged with a hate crime. New York City experienced more hate crimes in the first half of this year than in all of last year, according to data released last week by the New York Police Department. Hate is bigger and bigger all the time.

On top of this there is a greater division in this country than I have ever seen.  I personally witnessed some hate in the past 24 hours.  It was disgusting.  There are people who think COVID-19 is fake.  Yes, even after sixteen months and massive deaths all around the world, some people still think it isn't real.  Oh and the vaccine?  Even more say they won't get the shot and they won't wear a mask either.

Laying in bed in the Emergency Department, I had a lot of time to think.  Why does hate exist?  Why does it seem to be growing?  Why do people seem to care less about each other?  I sure wish I had some answers.  I do know we need to do something.  Good people need to stand up and say "Enough!"  The other blog I write is about kindness and I can't stop thinking that one thing we so desperately need is more kindness.  Are you with me?  Can we put the bitterness and mean attitudes aside and make this country friendlier?  What do YOU think?

Saturday, July 10, 2021

Stand up for animals

Abusing an animal is one of the most horrible things I can think of. An animal cannot call the police. An animal cannot send an email. An animal cannot contact a doctor when they are injured. Animals are among the most vulnerable, and yet they are taken advantage of at an alarming rate.

Neglect and abandonment are the most common forms of companion animal abuse in the United States. According to the Humane Society of the United States, the shocking number of cruelty cases reported every day in the media is only a small part of the picture. Most cases of animal abuse are never reported, and most animal suffering goes unrecognized and unabated.

This is one of those things that CAN be solved though. This is a people problem. People can stop being cruel. Of course that is the simple answer. The bigger answer is that we all have to care and we all have to get involved and do our part. At the top of the list: do not tolerate any cruelty to animals!

Know who to contact in your area if you witness or suspect animal abuse. (Your police department is always a good place to start). Teach children how to treat animals and to respect them as living creatures too. The earlier the better. Let kids know that it is NOT okay to abuse an animal EVER.

If you have animals of your own, take care of them. If you don't want putties or kittens, be sure to spay or neuter your animals or don't let them spend time with other animals while they are outside.

Support the local shelter or humane society and get to know the work they are involved in. Donate also, if your are able, to your local shelters, pet abuse organizations or the ASPCA.

Animal abuse and neglect can be ended if only we all just care.

Thursday, July 8, 2021

What can you donate?

What can you donate? Well, the list really is endless. Sometimes when we think of giving, we divide into categories such as time, talent, and treasure. The treasure grouping is the one that gets the most attention. Give some money or canned goods (to a food drive) or a car (many charities now look for used cars or even boats). Art work might also be part of this list, and books too.

Donating your talent is a very valuable thing. This is true whether your talent is taking blood pressures or giving tax advice or reading to children.

Donating your time is another wonderful thing. Can you spend a few hours helping out in the office of our non-profit? Can you come in one day and help hand out bags of groceries?

As we say every day here, giving takes many forms. Sometimes we are speaking of the various kinds of donating. What a rewarding thing it is to do!


Sunday, July 4, 2021

The Declaration - ALL of it

It's a Sunday and it's a holiday, Independence Day.  I think most people know the significance of this day, but how many of you have actually read the Declaration of Independence?  Many are familiar with a line in the second paragraph "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."  The other words are significant too.  How about this?  Before you go about your business on this holiday, take a moment to read the full text, which I am sharing here below, and then do something at all Americans would be proud of!

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

(Signed)
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Friday, July 2, 2021

The Wish

When you were little, did you ever make a wish and then blow on the dandelion to see if your wish would come true?  Perhaps you looked up at the night sky and made a wish on the first star you saw or before blowing out the candles on your birthday cake, hoped for something.  We have all made wishes at some time or another.  Some of us spend our whole lives wishing.

Do you wish that COVID-19 would disappear?  We ALL do!  Do you wish there was an easy solution?  Do you wish for different leaders?  Do you wish things were being handled differently?  Make a wish, and then make it happen.  We all can do our part.
 
Tossing a coin into a fountain or breaking the wishbone of a cooked turkey may be fun to do, but I happen to think that wishes are good things and that they all can come true, wish a little help.  That's the important part - the little help.  Sometimes we help ourselves fulfill our dreams and our hopes - you might actually think of them as goals.  Sometimes we can help others with their wishes like when you donate to charities.  The Make-A-Wish Foundation helps make some wishes come true, but I'm really talking about dreams we ALL have.  We wish and then sit back doing nothing more sometimes.  What we need to do is wish and then make that wish a reality.
 
Difficult?  Well yes.  Sometimes it is difficult.  Life isn't always easy, but anything really worth having is worth working for!  So, don't give up on that wish.  Make it come true!

Thursday, July 1, 2021

A Few Notes

All of June I wrote here about LGBTQ matters, it being Pride Month.  You know what?  There is so much more I could write.  Nothing says though that we have to save it all for one month out of the year, so of course some of the things I left out will be coming up in the days ahead.

There has been a lot in the news lately and while I don't usually use this space to give opinions or commentary, I have to point out continued evidence of global warming.  It's been very hot is places that don't normally get that way.  There was also recent news of the disappearance of a massive, icy lake in East Antarctica.  Something must be done NOW.

There have been a number of heroes in the news lately too.  That always make me happy.  Our world needs more heroes.  By the way, if you know of heroic incidents, let me know about them so we can share the information with others.

In just a few days we mark the anniversary of our nation's independence.  The United States was founded on the principle of freedom for all.  Do you have that?  Sadly the answer of course is no.  There are many great people working on it, but until there is real justice for all, we will not have achieved that great American dream.  Think about it.  Please.  Make a difference.