The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own. – Aldous Huxley
You ever wonder how people end up the way they do?
Yeah. Me, too.
All the time.
So, anyway, I was sitting on the deck of the bay, reading a free copy of the New York Times Book Review (4/10/22) and right there on the front cover, I saw the most amazing sentence sitting just on the last corner of the page like an orphan.
Not even gonna tell you what it is. Just read this. Jennifer Wilson’s introduction to ‘Home Front.’
In 2019, I read about a condition called uterine prolapse; it occurs when weakened pelvic muscles cause the uterus to detach, drop down into the vagina, and in some cases, even slip out. I learned that more cases than usual were being reported in a city in the Donbas region of Ukraine, where skirmishes between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian Army had left the area war-ravaged long before the full-scale invasion currently strangling the country.
A gynecologist in Avdiivka, a suburb of Donetsk, told The New York Times that the uptick in cases was most likely due to a combination of stress and heavy lifting; damage to pipes and other infrastructure forced residents to carry pails of water up flights of stairs. One woman with the condition, Liudmila, said she now had to decide between an expensive medical procedure and repairing her roof, which had been destroyed by shelling. “The winter is coming,” she said, “and I am going to stay either without a roof over my head or with my uterus falling out.”
Currently 89 degrees, mostly sunny. Slight refreshing breeze.
Speaking as an old white man sans uterus with a roof over my head, a military veteran, living in Florida’s Trump Country, you all gotta hit the streets and help get votes accurately counted and maybe squeeze in a couple of sane folks who want to do the right thing for the right reason.
Imagine you live in an H.O.A. – where the rules have rules – on a fixed-income of declining value.
And Ron DeSantis is in charge of EVERYTHING.
Is that the future you want for America?
Because winter is coming.
https://nypost.com/2022/05/13/ukraine-us-politicians-rip-rand-paul-over-aid-bill-holdup/
Here’s those book reviews.
GREY BEES by Andrey Kurkov | Translated by Boris Dralyuk