To Everything There Is A Season; We Have Two

Living on the tundra in Minnesota, people automatically assume (yeah, I know about assume) that we wear layers all the time, hats with earlaps, and you can always see our breath when we speak. Truth of the matter is we only have two seasons here: winter...when you can see our breath...and road repair. 

Road repair officially begins the day you can see pavement emerging from the black ice covering any given bridge. Immediately after that event, the road sinks into itself and a pothole forms. Some people get crocuses, we get potholes. Not the sinkhole-eat-yer-car kind like they get in Florida; ours will just snap your axles. Road repair is then divided into three categories: 1) road defrost heaving, 2) road flooding, and 3) road buckling. Laugh all you want. This is serious stuff. Today, the temperature at 4:00 p.m. was 100° Fahrenheit. Summer highs are usually 80s and 90s. But at 100°, roads were buckling all over the place. Northbound I-35 was shut down near Forest Lake, just north of the Twin Cities. Going home traffic (we don't call it rush hour here) was totally bollocks up all over the place. Not a great experience when you're stuck in a not-moving car. 

On a positive note, the humidity, amazingly, wasn't all that bad. Okay, this Long Island girl felt right at home. Seriously. I was comfortable. The only thing missing was the smell of salt water. And that, people, made me feel just a tad homesick. On days like this, you'd find me at the beach club...as a kid... or with my kids. But I was home, sitting outside both before and after my visit to the dentist, enjoying the heat...and wishing I was back on the island staring at the ocean. But that's not happening any time soon. 

Oh, for simpler times...when one could sit on the trunk of Zayde's beige Versailles eating a Brown Bonnet from Carvel. 

Instead, I'm mostly watching the hearings on Capitol Hill about the attempted coup on January 6th, 2021. Part of me is totally disgusted, part of me is totally angry, and another part of me is totally confused as to why, despite the preponderance of evidence, a significant portion of the population of these here United (for a while anyway) States seriously believes the election was stolen...even when GOP Feckless supporters were elected to high office over the county. 

How do you rig a voting machine to do that? Never mind we hear Feckless on the phone instructing the attorney general of Georgia:

“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.”

Listen to the call if you can stand it. The statistics he recites are conspiracy theories from social media. Listening to the call, it reminds me of trying to talk my mother into letting me do something she didn't want me to do: "Ma, but all the kids......"

Need I say more?

Yeah, probably. 

Here's the thing: A significant portion of this country believes everything that pathological narcissist says. No amount of video from the insurrection, or transcripts of his calls, or emails from Ginni Thomas is gonna change that. EVER. 

The best we can hope for is a resurgence of people who run for office will understand the difference between fact and fiction, who put the good and welfare of this nation first, and who believe that it is possible to be one nation with many faiths, ethnicities, orientations, etc, but one made up of people, for the people, by the people. Lincoln didn't say white people or Christian people, or straight people. He said PEOPLE. No label, no exclusion, no nuthin'. 

People. We, the People. We, as an inclusive term. All of us. No qualifiers...except probably for citizenship when it comes to voting. Citizenship. Not color of skin, tenets of faith, or sexual preference. Not one of those things is a barrier to being a citizen in this nation. 

Those people who are preaching hate, insurrection, and the dismantling of our democracy are certainly entitled to their opinions. What they aren't entitled to is shoving it down the rest of our throats. 

But we knew this. 

Or do We, the People?

I used to think I knew the answer to that question. I'm not sure I do any more. 

About the only thing I know is that when I listen to that recording of Feckless reciting garbage stats and pressuring the attorney general of Georgia to overturn that state's presidential election, I am sick to the bottom of my stomach. Listening to him and some of his supporters in the room, I know how the insurrection happened. Anyone who listens knows that, too. 

And someone needs to figure out how to at least recuse Clarence Thomas from any case involving the 2020 election ...and if he refuses to do that, figure out how to impeach him. He needs to go. 

The Wifely Person's Tip/Joke o'the Week

Sent in by a longstanding, loyal ZJOD reader in honor of 

Tell-A-Bad-Joke-Day

An old man goes to the doctor with his wife.   

The doctor comes out and says to the wife—“your husband is amazing.  He has the heart of a 20 year old, the strength of a weightlifter and the stamina of a long-distance runner.  He says it is due to the fact that he puts on his tefillin each and every day, davens with kavana and has never eaten treyf.  In fact, he says, he is so beloved by God that every night when he gets up to go to the bathroom, God turns the light on for him when he starts and closes the light when he finishes……” 

"Oh no,” she says, “he's pishing in the refrigerator again!”   

                        Thank you, MoJo. Ziggy woulda loved it.