Crossroads...In More Ways Than One

This is a reality check. The blog I was writing just got pushed down a bit, but not to worry, I'll finish what I started

It seems that SCOTUS has "privately" voted to overturn Roe v Wade.

From the NY Times: Leaked Supreme Court Draft Would Overturn Roe v. Wade

I can't say this is much of a surprise. And while I haven't been commenting much since they changed their format, I did submit the following:

Red flag, red herring, call it what you will. This is a full frontal attack on women, modernity, and the belief that this nation is a meritocracy. Clearly, equality is no longer a priority for SCOTUS and possibly Congress as well.

We, the People, managed to elect Donald Trump and kept him in office despite his crimes against the nation. If Congress swings at the midterms, the United States, as we know it, will cease to exist. The nation will split along party lines. It will not be pretty.

The US is the longest lasting _continuous_ democracy in history. No democracy/republic has ever lasted as long as this one. All We, the People, can say is that it was nice while it lasted.

UPDATE: The NYT is now backpedaling. All the comments have disappeared, and now they are saying this is older than what Politico is saying. Regardless, if this document reflects the current court, it must be taken seriously. Not to take it seriously would be at our own peril. 

I cannot imagine why anyone would want to go back to pre-1900 America where epidemics killed millions, women had no civil rights, and People of Color had even fewer rights. How can citizens of this nation stand by and allow a primitive, uneducated, backward band of troglodytes shove approximately 334,000,000 people into the dark ages? Are we so shackled that we cannot even find a voting booth? 

While some are already saying this is a call to arms that must be heeded before November, I believe November will pass with a sigh and a red congress determined to change the insurrection hearings to a Hunter Biden attack campaign, another distraction from the reality that our nation is collapsing. 

That's not hyperbole. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

For the last few months, the number of hits on this blog has tanked. Now, I know Blogger stats have never been overly reliable, but the hits are almost non-existent, and that doesn't match what I know from email and other references. 

When the cookie wars started in Europe, people stopped allowing their personal hit information to be collected. I know I did. I reject almost all cookies. I have no desire for third parties to be tracking anything about me, so I limit it where I can. I ratchet down my own privacy settings accordingly, and encourage others to do the same. At the same time, I know that behavior means I have an even less accurate measure of how many people are reading this blog.

Add to that, I had a significant following in Ukraine because The WP was used in several English classes. I've written about that before, but now, even remaining hits from Ukraine and from Russia have stopped, as have the emails I used to get from readers in that part of the world. 

Were they all real or bots or spam collectors? Not a clue. But I never got much in the way of spam comments. The emails, however, have been great over the years and... except for the occasional death threat... I've answered every single one of them. I've made some interesting friends along the way, and I would not trade the last 11 years and 613 posts for anything.

Yeah. 613 posts, not including this one. And to be perfectly honest, I did not know that was the number until I went to grab the total for this episode.   

Unless you're Jewish and somewhat educated Jewishly, you might not catch the significance of that number. 613 is the number of positive commandments, or mitzvot, contained in the Torah. 248 of them are considered mandatory, while 365 are prohibitive. So 613 is one of those mystical numbers that populate Jewish tradition. 

Here we stand at 613 published episodes. 613 posts that began on July 19th, 2010 with Welcome To My World.  I thought I was writing about being a widow. That lasted a week. You know what they say: my blog, my rules ? But it was that very first tip what was the clue.

Hey! I never said I had any answers, but boy, do I have a lot of questions! And if I have questions, I'm thinking there are a lot of us asking the same thing.

No, I don't have a joke, but I have a tip o'the day:

Keep asking questions even when they tell you not to;

you never know when one will be the _right_ one.

The intent was to never monetize the blog, so I never really advertised it. I used to get a great deal of traffic from The New York Times when I could sign my comments with the blog address, but them days are gone. Those old comments opened the door to MPR, the NYTimes Google Hangouts, and some really cool correspondence with famous op ed writers. 

I am open to suggestions and opinions. Comments attached to the blog are particularly welcome this week, although commenting in general is almost non-existent these days. If you have something to say to me or about the blog, go for it. Or send me an email. You can send it to:

thewifelyperson@gmail.com

and I will answer you.

I have given myself until July 18th to decide what I'm gonna do about The Wifely Person Speaks. Honestly, I don't know. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week
Keep asking questions even when they tell you not to; 
you never know when one will be the _right_ one.

It's still a good tip almost 12 years later.