Hello from Albuquerque, New Mexico, home of the largest international balloon festival in the world and part of a border state, where the current resident of the White House is building a wall that will intentionally shut out international visitors who are in dire need, disrupt the lives of people and wildlife who live on the border and damage archeological sites that sit in the way of his bulldozers.
Things are both easygoing and exciting here. We have a tendency to ride strange things, whether it’s 50 year old cars, hot air balloons shaped like penguins or my dog’s ball, which this baby lizard jumped on early one morning. (The ball is the size of a tennis ball.)
We also love dogs. At any outdoor event, 10% of the participants will be dogs.
But we are a state with issues. New Mexico frequently falls near the bottom of state ranking lists on issues like poverty levels, education and health care. After 8 years of Republican leaders at the state and local level who actively drove the state into the ground, in 2018 we elected an energetic new Democratic governor and mayor who are working hard to turn things around.
I’m telling you all of this because I’ve decided to start writing on this blog again. I’ve never been great at journaling, but these are “interesting” times, and I have a lot to say which doesn’t fit on my other blog, metawitches.com. So, I’m going to attempt to write some opinion pieces here, and see how it goes. They might be about just about anything. Maybe my health or my dogs or the end of the world as we know it or that whistleblower who’s currently being suppressed by the traitor in chief.
Maybe even a book review or 2! I’m currently reading “She Said” by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the story of how they broke the Harvey Weinstein sexual harrassment story in the NY Times after months of painstaking investigation into the breadth and depth of the sexist treatment of women in Hollywood and how women were (and are) manipulated into staying silent, so few realized how widespread the problem is. Current headlines show there’s much more work to be done, but these two reporters, and the team they were part of at the Times, have done us all a great service by opening up a door so that light could begin to shine on a long term issue.
Also, sexual predators are truly disgusting creatures and it’s hard to fathom what goes on inside their heads. Hopefully, thanks to the bravery of the women who came forward to tell their stories about Harvey Weinstein and to the diligence of everyone involved in the investigation, at least one predator has been stopped.
‘Til next time.
Witchy Ramblings 