No War No Torture

At 9:41 pm on Thursday, October 26, I got an email from an organization of members of the Democratic party that the House of representatives had voted to pass “a budget DESTROYING Medicare and Social Security.” Below is a link to an article published earlier today which says the Senate budget “sets up a tax giveaway to the rich, paid for by cutting Medicare and Medicaid.” You can read that article at the link below:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-senate-budget-sets-up-a-tax-giveaway-to-the-rich_us_59e649cce4b0432b8c11ea82

In my seventy-second year, having worked from the age of fourteen (in addition to getting an education in those early years), I have been retired since I turned seventy. As an artist, I never earned a lot of money but always managed to live without debt till I retired at age seventy. I am now living on my social security payments, which I did not claim till I was seventy. If Social Security, which I paid into from every check I earned (which I think all Americans do), were to be destroyed, I would now be without income. I am surely one of many people in this country in a similar situation.

Social Security old age payments are not gifts; we have paid into the fund for decades, we who retire after a long life of work.

Below is a link to a petition to the US Senate which you can sign if you choose to. It is something we can do in this time of peril for Social Security in this country.

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/senate-gop-budget-cuts-trillions-from-medicare-and-medicaid-take-action-now?refcode=huffpost

I urge you to sign that petition and to work to save Social Security for us all.

        Fall Color in Central Park in Past Years

A look out my window just now showed me a faint trace of fall color in some of the trees in front of the hospital across the street and going up 10th Avenue.  I remember well times when we would have masses of beautiful colored leaves by now, more like those in the photograph above.  Alas, not so colorful today.

I don’t know if we will have that beautiful color this year, just later than a few decades ago.  I certainly hope so.  What I do know is that global warming is real and is affecting New York a great deal.

The United States looks more and more like an underdeveloped nation, especially with regard to health care. Trump is doing everything he can to end healthcare subsidies of the US system, which was already noticeably inferior to the those of other developed countries.

                                   Hospital in Tours,  France

I was hospitalized in France with a colon perforation, had two surgical interventions by the best doctor on the planet for that procedure, was kept there for two months and sent home with a car load of medication the doctors wanted me to continue to take. Three meals a day were also provided for my sister who came to be with me. The total bill for that was the equivalent in francs of $6000.00–the cost of a weekend in the hospital in Dallas where I lived at the time.

That Donald Trump is attacking the already inadequate US health care system is egregious.

If one doubted global warming, a photograph taken during today’s Columbus Day celebration in New York City would give evidence of it.

                             Mayor DeBlasio during celebration

As the photograph shows, Mayor DeBlasio is without a top coat and his jacket is not buttoned.  On the 9th of October in New York!

I was out today in a cotton shirt with no jacket at all and was very comfortable.  When I first moved to New York nearly forty years ago, it was chilly in September much less October. Today was nearer a summer day than what we knew as autumn several decades ago.

In an article published on Common Dreams today, “Warming Soils Could Trigger Potentially Unstoppable Climate Feedback Loop: Study”, the authors report a quotation, “There’s a carbon bomb right under your feet,” that points toward “a potentially unstoppable feedback loop as earth’s rising temperatures drive soils to release more carbon emissions.”

Another quotation from a distinguished scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts says, “each year, mostly from fossil fuel burning, we are releasing 10 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere. That’s what’s causing the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and global warming.”

The four distinct seasons that I loved and the snowy winters which I enjoyed when I moved here nearly forty years ago have given way to winters without snow and hotter summers. It is the seventh of October and outside my window, people are on the streets in shorts and short sleeved shirts.

Aiweiwei looking at things in an exhibit today in NYC

One reason I live in New York is that I do not need to drive here. In the South where my family is from and the Southwest where I lived for a time it was imperative to have an automobile; indeed in most of the United States it is. I have lived several times in France where that is not the case; indeed, not having to have a car was one of the reasons I lived there. Even there, however, there are far too many automobiles pouring carbon into the atmosphere.

Will human beings stop this poisoning of our world? There are a few efforts now, but not nearly enough. Will my great-grandchildren and their children be able to survive on this planet?