{"id":21387,"date":"2017-11-02T10:31:37","date_gmt":"2017-11-02T17:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=21387"},"modified":"2017-11-02T16:13:12","modified_gmt":"2017-11-02T23:13:12","slug":"also-too-its-nanowrimo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=21387","title":{"rendered":"Also, Too, It’s NaNoWriMo"},"content":{"rendered":"

My niece Rebecca takes National Novel Writing Month seriously. I think the world of her, so I’m taking it seriously too. She\u00a0sent a Google Doc link to\u00a0her\u00a0work in progress. I\u00a0reciprocated with\u00a0a link to mine, a chapter of a planned memoir. I was happy with\u00a0it\u00a0when I finished it a couple of months ago, but am less so now. The voice is wrong; it isn’t me. So … we both have work to do, and\u00a0this is the month to do it.<\/p>\n

Sue’s funeral was yesterday. The minister read something I wrote<\/a> at the service. I didn’t expect that, but it’s good I was there in a sense. Rest in peace, dear sister.<\/p>\n

My youngest sister Charlie posted this on Facebook today:<\/p>\n

Over the past two weeks, I\u2019ve grieved the loss of a sibling, reconnected with dear family members, celebrated the birth of new granddaughter, and feared the loss of a daughter. In short, I\u2019ve experienced great sorrow, tremendous joy, and every other emotion in between. I don\u2019t know how I could have withstood it all without my family, my co-workers, my friends, and my faith. Thank you, all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By way of explanation,\u00a0Charlie’s youngest daughter Laura delivered by emergency C-section and had some serious, scary bleeding.\u00a0This happened a day or two after Sue died. Laura’s still in hospital, recovering, and all seems well now. Charlie is strong and good. We were raised right, or at least my sisters were. We were five; now we’re four.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_4404\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mary, in red, is the next youngest after Sue. Cecelia is next; she’s on my other shoulder. That’s Charlie,\u00a0the youngest, behind us. I don’t need to say I’m the oldest, do I? I think it’s obvious!<\/p>\n

\n

A question about airline travel: can it get any worse? I hope\u00a0to manage\u00a0my golden years\u00a0in such a way as to avoid further air travel. It would perhaps be different if I could afford to fly first class, but I don’t know: big\u00a0jets with proper first and business class cabins don’t operate out of Tucson, only small ones, and when I squeezed through the front sections of the 737s and 717s I flew on last week, the seats didn’t look that great and the aisle was only an inch or two wider than the\u00a0one in back. Honestly, the\u00a0gentry didn’t look any happier than the peasants. As for the peasants, of which I am one, oh the humanity.<\/p>\n

There wasn’t a spare inch of wasted space in steerage, not even for the cabin crew, for whom I felt especially sorry. The cabins were cramped, dismal, dark, and hellish. A trip to the lavatory meant\u00a0hip-on-shoulder contact with\u00a0aisle seat occupants. Fatties like me oozed into the aisles, making passage even more difficult.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t bend my right knee for almost 24 hours after arriving in St Louis. Coming home I paid extra for exit row seats, and if I hadn’t checked in exactly 24 hours before my flights, the earliest they allow you to, they’d all have been taken.\u00a0Add anxiety over tight connections, missed flights, and\u00a0lost luggage (or overhead bin space if you rely on carry-on … but hey, you can also pay extra to board earlier), and it’s a thoroughly\u00a0miserable experience. You can’t say never because you never know, but I’m determined not to fly again.<\/p>\n

\n

I celebrated my birthday on Hallowe’en. Mr. B, our new dachshund, was my early birthday present, just as Shatzi was in October 2005. Lots of cards and calls, lots of greetings on Facebook. Donna made a great dinner. We had a record number of trick-or-treaters, to the doggies’ delight. I topped off the day with two episodes of Stranger Things 2. Life is good!<\/p>\n

\n

I haven’t invested any hope in US Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. I\u00a0expected\u00a0him to slow-roll it, based on the fact that he comes from the same FBI leadership cabal as that two-faced James Comey, who despite anything he’s said or testified to since, deliberately torpedoed Hillary Clinton just a few days before the election.<\/p>\n

I may be wrong. Mueller has now indicted some key Trump campaign associates, and perhaps more indictments are coming. I’ll be surprised if Mueller goes after Trump himself, but what if he does? What\u00a0happens then?<\/p>\n

\n

Say Mueller reveals hard proof that the Trump campaign knowingly colluded with Russia, strategically using leaked emails to hurt Clinton\u2019s campaign. Say the president\u2014backed by the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Fox News, Breitbart, most of the US Cabinet, half the panelists on CNN, most of the radio talk show hosts in the country, and an enormous network of Russian-paid hackers and volunteer shitposters working through social media\u2014rejects the evidence.<\/p>\n

They might say Mueller is compromised. It\u2019s a Hillary\/\u201ddeep state<\/a>\u201d\u00a0plot. There\u2019s nothing wrong with colluding with Russia in this particular way. Dems did it first. All of the above. Whatever.<\/p>\n

Say the entire right-wing media machine kicks to life and dismisses the whole thing as a scam\u2014and conservatives believe them. The conservative base remains committed to Trump, politicians remain scared to cross the base, and US politics remains stuck in partisan paralysis, unable to act on what Mueller discovers.<\/p>\n

In short, what if Mueller proves the case and it\u2019s not enough? What if there is no longer\u00a0any\u00a0<\/em>evidentiary standard that could overcome the influence of right-wing media?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That’s from an article on Vox.com<\/a>, well worth the read. Two separate worlds, two separate truths. It’s been that way for a while now, and it’s getting worse, and I don’t know what anyone can do about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My niece Rebecca takes National Novel Writing Month seriously. I think the world of her, so I’m taking it seriously too. She\u00a0sent a Google Doc link to\u00a0her\u00a0work in progress. I\u00a0reciprocated with\u00a0a link to mine, a chapter of a planned memoir. I was happy with\u00a0it\u00a0when I finished it a couple of months ago, but am less […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,40,250,10,2,8,827,414],"tags":[2322,1639,2439,2438,1292,2024,669],"class_list":["post-21387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumerism","category-critters","category-culture-wars","category-current-events","category-personal","category-politics","category-social-media","category-tv","tag-air-travel","tag-funeral","tag-mueller","tag-nanowrimo","tag-pets","tag-trump","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21387"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21397,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21387\/revisions\/21397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}