DAY 14 and 15 of 366 and the craziness keeps happening.

Looking at the headlines: Crazy is the new norm. I know without a doubt that no matter what is happening in my life, some one has it worse.

Airlines scrap thousands of flights as wintry weather disrupts travel. More Than 3,700 Flight Delays and Cancellations Monday as Arctic Blast Lingers. Dangerously low temperatures are affecting more of the country than not. This year will definitely be a year people will discuss in the future because of the different storms and the horrendous damage that followed. (1)

I remember the heavy accumulations of the winter of 1977 vividly because I couldn’t see out the first-floor windows of my home in Maine until April. It was like living in a cave. Unfortunately, window casings aren’t designed to be buried in snow, so we had a lot of water damage as the snow melted and froze again. The crazy ice storm the winter of 1998, schools, and businesses were closed for over a week because of the power outages. Our home didn’t have power for 3 weeks. Thankfully, we kept water stocked up in case our water lines froze. They didn’t this time because of the woodstove but water pumps require electricity, and the ice broke a lot of lines. We were more fortunate than some because we emptied our freezer and refrigerator and put everything in the majority of the coolers outside. (We camped a lot over the years, so we had quite a few coolers on hand.) One we kept inside for milk, eggs and butter which we added ice chunks to from outside. We heated our home with wood, so that stove became a cooking area as well as the gas grill in the shed. We melted snow for the toilet. We improvised as much as possible to get by. I’ve never forgotten either of those winters. They were definitely survival testaments.

In Iceland, long-dormant volcano erupts, streets on fire. ”Grindavik is a town of 3,800 people about 30 miles southwest of Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital. The community was previously evacuated in November following a series of earthquakes that opened large cracks in the earth between the town and Sýlingarfell, a small mountain to the north, ” according to Marco DiMarco a reporter for USA Today. The volcano’s seismic activity has increased sharply over the past day and another eruption has occurred. There were two eruptions in December and once it was safe emergency workers begun creating defensive walls to divert the lava but time ran out before they were completed. I can’t imagine seeing the lava flow knowing there is nothing you can do to prevent it.

Attorney Joe Tacopina withdraws from Trump’s legal team. The motivation behind Tacopina’s departure remains unclear. He confirmed to The Hill he was withdrawing from Trump’s cases but declined further comment. (3) ”A former Brooklyn prosecutor, Tacopina gained a reputation for cultivating high-profile clients long before he added Trump to his list. Over the years, Tacopina has represented celebrities like Michael Jackson, A-Rod, Meek Mill and Don Imus. He is also representing A$AP Rocky as he defends against two criminal assault counts, to which the rapper pleaded not guilty earlier this month.” Do lawyers have consciences? I’m looking at the cases this man has represented and wonder if at the end of the day was the money really worth it to represent these celebrity characters. The craziness of the whole Trump situation unfortunately isn’t a 2024 event, it’s been happening since the 2016 election and the insanity just keeps escalating.

One killed, 17 injured in twin attacks in Israeli city of Raanana. Why? It’s been one of the world’s longest-continuing conflicts. Key areas of the conflict include the status of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, borders, security and water rights, as well as Palestinian freedom of movement and the Palestinian right of return. It’s been over 100 days since Hamas launched an air, sea and land assault. According to The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) 2023 was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the territory since it began keeping records in 2005.

Over the past 100 days, Israel’s relentless bombardment and ground assault of Gaza has killed nearly 24,000 – roughly one percent of the besieged strip’s population of 2.3 million. Nearly 2 million displaced, thousands of homes destroyed and — 10,000 of them children.  (23,469 Palestinian and 1,200 Israeli) It’s appalling to me that we’re keeping track of deaths. Why can’t a peaceable agreement be achieved? Why is violence the first approach? (4)

(WASHINGTON) — A fake 911 call that the White House was on fire sent emergency vehicles to the complex Monday morning, when President Biden and his family were at Camp David. There’s been so many fake reports lately, I feel bad for the police, fireman, and first responders. The insanity of 2024 has to end..

My embroidery project is down to the last two sixteen inch squares. I’ve completed two sixteen inch squares with these planes: Kittyhawk, Spirit of St. Louis, Curtis Jenny, Fokker DR-1, P-51 Mustang, B-17, B-29, and the F-14 Tomcat. The square I’m working on presently has the 117-Nighthawk, Bell UH-1, Bell-X1 and the F-16 Falcon. Each of the planes is 7 inches by 7 inches inside the square. The final square only has a 10 inch images of this plane The Sikorsky S-42. I am looking at some other images to add to the final square so I have a balanced presentation. The Nighthawk is the first plane that the military require to be completely black in color. It was also called the Stealth fighter.

Each of the squares will be cut into smaller blocks and then surrounded with borders of navy, gray and black in the attic window design.

I asked my doctor which he prefers surgery or flying. I chuckled because he said both. Surgery pays for his love of flying.

 “Any idiot can get an airplane off the ground, but an aviator earns his keep by bringing it back anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances that man and God can dream up.” Walter Cunningham, 

(1) https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/over-11-000-us-flights-were-affected-monday-by-severe-winter-storms

(2) https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/really-nothing-else-we-can-do-new-volcano-eruption-in-iceland-sends-lava-flowing-toward-homes

(3) https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-lawyer-joe-tacopina-withdraws-from-ex-president-s-cases/

(4) https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/one-killed-17-injured-in-twin-attacks-in-israeli-city-of-raanana

(5) https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fake-911-report-of-fire-at-the-white-house-triggers-emergency-response

Day 13 Another day, another list of crazy

Oklahoma City had an earthquake Friday night the 4.3-magnitude quake. The Saturday morning earthquake. with a 4.1 magnitude Saturday morning. State seismologist Jake Walter told USA TODAY the area has recorded about 18 earthquakes in a 12-hour span.  Friday night the 4.3-magnitude quake had an epicenter about a mile away from the Saturday morning earthquake.

The Midwest has freezing temperatures and blizzard conditions. Governors from New York to Louisiana have declared it an emergency, with harsh conditions expected in St Louis. Experts with National Weather Service have issued warnings about “life-threatening” cold. temperatures.

Yet, the wildcard game is still happening in Kansas City between the Chiefs and Miami. The dangerously cold’ Chiefs-Dolphins game could be one for the NFL history books. WHY????

Go Miami! Yup, a Dolphin fan since Larry Csonka played. Yup, I’m dating myself here.

Why is the NFL subjecting the players and the diehard fans to such extreme conditions?

Is anyone familiar with the author Octavia Butler and the book Parable of the Sower? I highly recommend reading it. In case, you don’t know Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947 – February 24, 2006) was an American science fiction writer and a multiple recipient of the Hugo and Nebula awards.  Her story written in 1993 depicts a future America ravaged by ecological collapse and civil unrest.  Sound familiar, Butler indicated that the issues faced by the characters in “Parable” and by the United States today in 2024 were inevitable. (1) I’ve just finished reading the book, I bought it during Covid when it was on the NYTimes best sellers list, twenty-seven years after it was written but unfortunately my book hoarding got out of hand, and it was shuffled down in my stack to read. After reading the book, and then seeing George Bass’s article in the Washington Post I’m inclined to agree with him. Dystopian fantasies are beginning to look, like everyday life these days.

 Butler saw our tendences of enforcing hierarchy through abuses of power as the root weakness of humanity. If you’re watching the political circus going on around us her words ring true.

Let’s all send positive energy into the universe for these two U.S. Navy SEALs who are missing off the coast of Somalia after having fallen into the water during a nighttime boarding mission on Thursday, according to two U.S. officials. It’s a dangerous hotspot to be missing. I remember when my son served in the Navy, and his ship was in dangerous places how hard it is to simply wait to get an email. My heart goes out to these families. (2)

My Wiccan spirit asks we send positive energy in the universe so that the non-stop violence around the world ends and we remember that we’re all family on this planet called earth before we destroy it. How crazy is that? One family…one planet.

My embroidery project update: I have completed the B-17 and the B-29 today. I’m still in my nightgown and I’ve been vegging in the recliner sewing. I didn’t sleep well last night, though I thought I would after being so emotionally drained. Instead, I watched my cats playing and read about the B17 and the B29. I’ve been learning about each of the planes, what their color schemes were so my creative endeavor is as authentic as I can stitch it for my doctor.

Both of these planes are Boeing aircraft, a generation apart. Both were considered flying fortresses. The B29 was designed to operate faster at higher attitudes with heavier bomb loads. The B-29 was primarily used in the Pacific theater in WWII whereas the B-17 was used primarily in the European theater of WWII. Theater is an interesting word in this commentary, don’t you agree? Why would anyone refer to any area of the war as a theater but that’s the wording used. I looked it up, “In warfare, a theater of theatre is an area in which important military events occur or are in progress. It may include airspace, land space or sea areas.” (3)

It changes the feeling when going to a show for me. Maybe it should have changed Lincoln’s desire that night to attend the theater and history might have had a different outcome for African Americans sooner than it did.

Ignorance grows. All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.” Octavia Butler

(1) https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2024/01/13/octavia-butler-2024-parable-sower/

(2) https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/two-navy-seals-are-missing-after-thursday-night-mission-off-coast-of-somalia/ar-AA1mVkZ1

(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theater_(warfare)#:~:text=In%20warfare%2C%20a%20theater%20or,become%20involved%20in%20war%20operation