Let's think about that

I acknowledge that a lot of what's in this post comes from the wisdom of others.

Someone says "The illegals are coming into the country and taking our jobs."

Let's think about that.  Someone can't really just take a job.  They have to apply, usually be interviewed, sign paperwork.  Were you standing in line for the busboy job and just as you were about to be hired, a Honduran stepped in front of you and grabbed the hire slip?  The premise is bogus.

Someone says "Late term abortions are horrible, murder, criminal."

Let's think about that.  If a woman is in the last trimester of her pregnancy, she has probably already chosen a name for her child, bought clothes and a basinet, painted the nursery.  Late term abortions are not done casually.  They are tragic.  They are based on there being a serious threat to the health of the mother or a serious defect in the fetus.

Someone says "The Jan. 6 rioters weren't Trump supporters, they were Antifa or Black Lives Matter or Democrats pretending to be Trump supporters."

Let's think about that.  Do you think it's possible that Antifa or BLM adherents or Democrats wanted to disrupt the election certification and keep Donald Trump as President?  That's completely backward.

Someone says "There's evidence for massive voter fraud, even if no one has presented it."

Let's think about that.  If you were accused of a crime, would you want the prosecuting attorneys to say "We have evidence of this person's guilt.  We'll present it a few years down the road.  But we really do have it.  We promise."  Wouldn't you want there to be clear, concrete evidence, undeniable proof of your wrongdoing before you could be convicted?

Someone says "Homosexuality is disgusting, it should be illegal."

Let's think about that.  I happen to find your attitude disgusting.  Does that mean I get to make your attitude illegal?

Too often it's easy to get caught up in a strongly voiced or cunningly phrased assertion, but almost always, all it takes is going one question further to start to unravel that assertion.  Perhaps that is a key to having conversations that actually have substance.  There are too many meme-driven opinions strangling critical thought these days.  Time to look deeper. 

Sad, but not all sad

Yesterday morning a vet came to our house to assess our sweet boy cat Flow, who has been slowly declining.  We had prepared ourselves for the possibility of euthanasia, but were also hoping she might be able to suggest some way to give him more time.  She listened to our descriptions of how he has behaved, the changes in his habits, and looked him over very gently.  She never urged us in any one direction, but she did agree with our inevitable conclusion that to wait any longer would be to let him get to a point where he would be suffering. 

She gave him a mild sedative, so artfully delivered that he seemed not even to notice it.  Then she slipped away to allow us a few moments to love on him, whisper sweet nothings to him, reassure him that he is loved and has been one of the best parts of our life.  Finally she very respectfully and almost invisibly gave him another sedative, and then that last fatal dose.  It was all done quietly and kindly.  She took our boy away, and now the house seems much emptier.

Good-bye, Flow.  Thanks for all the purring and playfulness and for waking us up at 4:30 in the morning but being so darned cute that we couldn't mind it.  Thank you for making us a family and our house a home.  Thank you for all the lap time and bag love time and for the way you used to patrol the perimeter to keep us safe.  Good kitty.

So it was a sad day for us, but not all sad.  It was the first sunny day in quite a while, a squeaky clean sky, crisply blue, sunny but not hot, fresh fresh fresh.  Sweet Hubby and I took a walk in a nearby wooded park, so peaceful and cool, bird songs, people out with dogs, glimpses of hummingbirds.  I made us some wonderful muffins, baked with a dab of jam in the middle and a cinnamon-sugar topping.  We ran errands together, and held hands all day.

The nicest part of the day was getting an email from a theater company in Florida which had chosen my play Want for development and production.  They wanted the rights to a world premiere production, but those rights belong to the company currently rehearsing the play for an opening here in Seattle, so I had to turn down the Florida theater.  The Artistic Director wrote back, of my rejection, that he was "pierced through the heart!"  (The exclamation point was his.)  It was very reassuring to see another theater excited about this play.  It is gritty and provocative enough that I have been concerned about whether anyone would embrace it.

So all in all, a good day, a full day, with a portion of deep sorrow in it to balance, but not cancel, the goodness.

The Professor and the Artist

I think Sweet Hubby and I should be a sitcom.  We're practically one already.  It would be called "Gus and Trudy" or maybe "Augie and Gin".  They are an older (not old!) couple dealing with family, politics, money, and their sometimes colliding world views.

He's a professorial type, sort of grizzled, very, very smart, retired from a job at NASA.  (Sweet Hubby used to work at NASA.  When I first learned this, while we were still courting long distance by phone, I said "Wait wait wait, let me just take that in.  My boyfriend is a rocket scientist!")  He's grounded, practical, skilled at almost anything he tries his hand at, loves doing project around the house.  To stimulate his great big brain, he often will spontaneously take a class in some subject he knows nothing about.  Although he sometimes seems gruff or anti-social, he's got a fluffy soft spot for cats and a wicked sense of humor.

She's an artsy type, a writer, or so she thinks of herself.  Her career path has been more checkered, a wildly curving road to his straight line.  She is highly social, loves books and parties and dancing and travel.  While not actually bipolar, she does experience high high and low lows, but for the most part her moods are happy and energetic.  She has written a moderately successful series of romance novels, and has been working for several years on a literary novel, which she despairs of ever finishing.

In one episode, their beloved cat has died.  He wants to get another cat, but she wants a dog so that she will have a companion when she goes on her long walks.  It turns into a fight until they realize that they can have both.  In another episode, she has invited a houseful of people to come for a weekend visit but forgot to tell him (or did she just pretend to have forgotten because she was afraid he'd say no?).  In another, she sets up a threatening situation, without telling him it's a set-up, because she wants to see how it plays out so that she can put it into one of her books.

As in most sitcoms, it's not the situations that cause the comedy and poignancy, but the characters, the people who come into our houses week after week until we feel that we know them as friends.  I think people would like Gus/Augie and Trudy/Gin.  I know I already do.  

I probably won't ever write this myself, of course.  TV writing requires a stringency, a discipline I'm not sure I have.  But it's a fun idea to play with, one of the many hundreds which plague my waking dreams.  This is another case of what I call Writer's Deluge, the opposite of Writer's Block.  It's a mixed blessing, or a mixed curse, one I relish and am grateful for but which can be exhausting at times.  After my death, if someone bothers to look in my "Incomplete writing" folder, oh what treasures they will find.

Rights

 I have the right to own a dog, but must keep it on a leash.

I have the right to freedom of speech, but may not use it to slander someone, or tell a lie under oath, or yell “Fire!” in a theater.

I have the right to own and drive a car, but not to drive it on a sidewalk, or 100 mph on a residential street, or against the flow of traffic.

Every right comes with restrictions and limitations, all of them agreed upon for the sake of public safety.  Shouldn’t this be true for gun ownership as well?

Shouldn’t every gun owner be trained and licensed and found to be fit to manage a lethal weapon?  Own a gun for personal protection or a rifle for hunting, fine.  But who besides a mass murderer needs an assault rifle?

What has happened to this country that our supposed leaders would quite seriously promote the idea that school buildings with only one door is the solution to school massacres?  What has happened to this country that our supposed leaders continue to be held in the sway of the NRA when well over half the country, even gun owners, believe there should be more restrictions on who can have a firearm and what kind of firearms should be available for purchase?

Madness, madness.  So very discouraging, and frightening.