Good News

There really isn't any good news this week. The Supremes in their infinite wisdom trashed the Voting Rights Act. If i was President Obama i would send a bill to Congress today with the replacement plan the court said Congress needs to vote upon to protect blacks and other minorities in places where discrimination still exists. When that bill hits Congress and the Republicans vote against it the entire nation will know why those justices yesterday trashed the Voting Rights Act.

Oh maybe there is some good news...President Obama yesterday said he is ordering the EPA to set standards for emissions from power producing plants and to expand renewable energy projects on public land. Maybe the VI could tap into the later by immediately presenting ideas for renewable energy projects here. We could become a test model showing the nation how an island municipality can become energy independent through the use of renewable resources.

Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has introduced legislation that would force consideration of the FISA act two years earlier to 2015. It would also restrict NSA's collection of data from phones... again starting in 2015. I'm not thrilled about this but at least its a first step.

If you haven't already re-read the fourth amendment it pretty plainly lays out its intent.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

But..... and this is a big but....... court cases since the amendment was enacted have changed the scope and meaning of the above. Courts have been chipping away at protections guaranteed by the fourth so that today we find ourselves the enemy instead of civilians of a democratic society.

Today everything you put on line goes into a big data dump and is suspect. According to some interpretations once you hit send, post or talk on a cell phone you have lost your right to privacy. You don't own your content any more, you don't control it and the government and corporations working together and separately can do what ever the hell they want with it.

Maybe that's where we should start...making new laws about what we own and what we don't.

The good news is your government will protect you against terrorists. i'm sure all those at the Boston Marathon that died or were maimed are really grateful that our surveillance network is scooping up data on all of us instead of focusing on the job at hand.

Gore Vidal used to say, quite often, that the United States has two governments. There is the public, "show" government, designed to convince the gullible that this is a democracy; and there is the real government, the one that exists in the shadows, cloaked in secrecy, doing the work of the monied class, and the people be damned. i wonder what he would say today.

People forget that this nation was founded by traitors. King George passed the laws they rebelled against. Today we have become cowed by the propaganda machine that pumps out articles saying you are naive if you didn't already know you were being watched. Accept it sucker its been going on so long you can't protest any more. It's approved, its legal.

Don't ever doubt the power of an individual who lives by a set of moral values that impels him or her to fight for everyone to create change, even when the odds of success are against them. Remember, just because something is legal it doesn't make it right.

See Ya Next Week.

Tidbit day

Today is a tidbit day...mostly my takes on things happening around the world and photos of course!

St. Croix...it's raining cats and dogs here. This morning after the swim a friend said it felt like a soup day but another friend said eat oatmeal for breakfast because it will be 85 degrees by the time the soup is done.

Syria...do we really want the US to arm more terrorists? There are elements in Syria that could turn out worse than Assad.

Guantanamo...44 of the prisoners are being force fed...104 out of 166 have stopped eating. Wouldn't you want to kill yourself if there was no hope of a fair trial combined with a future of indefinite detentions? 86 of the prisoners have been cleared of the charges brought against them but are still incarcerated. It's way past time to close it down.

Brazil...middle class protesting a 10 cent increase in transit fares while blaming the billions in public funds spent on hosting the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016 for the rise. Over 200,000 people have taken to the streets. It's not really about the 10 cents, its more about corruption, lies, and financial raping of the population.

Turkey...people are on the streets to make the judicial system work. The silent man started a protest using peace instead of the violent opposition that had kicked in after frustration over the failure of government to hear the pleas of the protestors. The passive protest he inspired has been called “pleasing to the eye” by the Deputy Prime Minister today.

Nuclear arsenal...President Obama in Berlin renewed his call to the US and Russia to reduce our stockpiles by 1/3. Putin asked that other nations also reduce their arsenals. Sounds like a great idea.

Climate change...The President also acknowledged the need for the US to step up and act more upon the issues of climate change. He stated that Germany and the EU were leading the way but we needed to do more. Darn right says i...we should be leading not following.

The leader of the World Bank today also said that its time to stop arguing about whether climate change is real or not, its real he said. So the money men are agreeing do you think we will see some action now?

St. Croix...it is raining so hard here i've got all the windows closed up tight as a drum and i still feel minute speckles of water getting through the jalousie windows. Its a white out and the thunder is very loud!

PS...the Yellow-crowned Night Heron looks to be eating real food today.

See ya next week

Surveillance

****Photos at bottom******

Surveillance...what exactly does that mean in terms of government collecting data on their citizens?

In the USSR surveillance was used to manufacture fear in the populace. It was used to prevent the daily exchange of ideas that might subvert the status quo. Surveillance was a form of control that was used to

erode trust between individuals and divide society. It was used to humiliate and create areas of life that just were not discussed in public. 

Everyone was expected to conduct their lives according to proscribed rules of behavior that were much more limiting than what we have in the US today. Surveillance helped keep the population in line.

A citizen of any country overseen by the Republic could be brought up on trumped up charges for even discussing topics that independent thinkers may be contemplating and that we today may view as harmless, but that the government there considered subversive. Any data pertaining to non-political activities, personal matters and embarrassing details would be collected and could be used against you.

Going into the archives to get the dirt so to speak was performed routinely. Any thing implied could be used against you or to manipulate you into revealing things about other people. Everyone was targeted for speaking their minds.

For many in the USA the use of surveillance has taken on the patina of acceptance. What is wrong with collecting phone records if you haven't done anything wrong, say so many? Or storing e-mails? i'm innocent, i haven't done anything wrong, i don't care if they collect data on me.

Well read the above again. Fear was used in the USSR to manipulate entire populations. Collecting private information was a necessary part of keeping the citizenry in line.

Fear of “terrorists” is just one tool in our governments arsenal that is used to collect everything it can about you. It is used in a way that is all out of proportion to the actual threat.  More people have been killed by guns and cars than by “terrorist” incidents.  i'll bet you didn't give up any of your privacy to prevent gun deaths or car accidents happening to you.

If you were targeted as a potential threat even though you think of yourself as innocent all those phone records and internet searches could be used against you. They could be used against me right now to trump up some case and put me away so i won't write about privacy and why it is important to keep it private. You may not think this could happen but i do.

Did every American citizen and permanent resident in the USA check “agree” to be spied upon. To have data collected about us and stored for who knows how long doesn't seem wrong to any of you? Is that what we all want? To sign away all our rights to privacy without ever having a debate about it?

Edward Snowden is neither a traitor nor a hero. His leaks were done to start a debate about what our government is compiling on all of us. Already details are coming out that most of the population was unaware of. This man has sacrificed his entire life to defend our right to free speech and privacy from the government.

My mom crammed it into me as a child to always question authority. She believed that another complacent citizenry could lead us to the same place all totalitarian countries found them selves in. Russia, Germany, China, Cuba....

As Benjamin Franklin once said: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Is the fear of terrorism worth losing all your liberty for?

i believe Edward Snowden has started the debate. Government propagandists will be hard at it trying to convince the American population that giving up their privacy is no big deal. Think long and hard about where you see this country in the future.

See ya next week. A few pics below from the past few weeks.

People watching while waiting in Manhattan

Raining while waiting in Manhattan

Foggy morning in the neighborhood.

The flower section of Stew Lenards.

The counter at the Mexican restaurant.

The Killdeers having at it while i'm on my walk

Home to Sir Edgar who lives by our pool.

i think this Yellow-crowned Night Heron is carrying a piece of coral...but for what?

Life's Path

The bends in the road of life's journey never cease to amaze me. One minute you are going along following some plan and the next minute it has been completely changed by circumstances you hadn't anticipated.

Those who can shift easily without too much stress tend to navigate the road blocks more easily than those that don't do well with change.

Life threw a curveball so I won't be writing much for a bit. I enjoy the shifting sands and have been taking life as it comes and having a great time taking care of family.

See ya when I get back to the island.

Pill Millipedes on St. Croix

Life in the tropics(which is wonderful) means you never know from one day to the next what new insect on land or jellyfish in the water will appear. i swear even after 30+ years on St. Croix the things nature throws at us never ceases to amaze me.

You may think that you have seen it all but i guarantee something new will pop up and create havoc. A few years ago it was the invasion of the “Crazy Hairy Ants.” You can actually google them, they are real and they have invaded St. Croix and have no predators. They came in accidentally in plant pots and if you haven't experienced them yet and live here... you will... as they have been marching all over the North Shore now for years.

Here at home we have a mordor poison powder ring circling the house to keep them at bay but sometimes they break through the defenses and make it into the house. We have learned to stay vigilant(never running out of poison powder)... but they will win...they will break down the mordor ring and take over the world of that i am sure.

This year the invasion is different. It's been raining which usually brings out the gongolos, flying termites, and mosquitoes which are just the normal pests.

When i first got back from the sailing trip i thought we had mice in the house. i wasn't wearing my glasses but i kept finding these odd black balls. Naturally i swept them up and looked for more mice evidence but couldn't find any. A few days went by before i asked my husband if he had been seeing them also. He wasted no time in telling me to put my glasses on and take a closer look at those mouse turds next time i saw some.

Well this morning after waking up and finding a total invasion all over the house i put my glasses on and discovered they were wiggling. Hundreds of little black peppercorns with little white wiggly legs were all over the living room and kitchen floor. i swept them up and put them in a dust pan so I could get a better look. Of course you all know my pseudo scientific side kicks in and is more curious than alarmed. i'm pushing them around in the dust pan, getting out my magnifying glass, taking pics and salvaging the ones still alive.

i know other women may have been screaming for the exterminator but i wanted to know why they were here and where they had come from.

i remember as a kid finding these out in the yard and playing with them. i think we called them rolly-pollys or something like that. They were always so cool the way they would roll up into a ball when disturbed but will unroll if you leave them alone. Some of the ones i found this morning were dead but a lot of them were still alive so i tossed them over the railing to give them another chance after immortalizing them with my digital camera. You can double click and really see how lovely they look.

A quick search on line got me the name i was looking for...Pill Millipede... not wood lice. Turns out they are pretty harmless and will probably stop invading once we dry out. It will mean a lot of sweeping up until they go off somewhere else but this is a first in all these years and it makes me wonder what new and interesting insect the island has in store for me.

See ya next week.

Panama Canal Transit

Note: If you want to look at these pics on the blog more closely you can double click and it will take you to the larger versions. i couldn't do justice with my poopy Ipad but it is better than nothing.

After you have gone through all the bureaucracy, paid your fees, rented your lines and fenders and been given your date and time of transit you wait.....................................................and wait until the day

you are told to go to a place called the "Flats" to wait some more for your adviser to come on board. He climbs on and stays by the helm to tell the captain what to do while the rest of us wait for our instructions.

Finally we can go...but it was pouring rain

Our adviser was cool as a cucumber while he instructed us to motor up to the locks in the torrential downpour and wait for the other boats to join us. We all looked soaked but he never even looked wet.That smaller guy in the background is the adviser for the boat that was on our port side.

He had us raft up with two monohulls.

 Then proceed into the locks. There are three on each side of Gatun Lake.

See those guys in orange...they are the Port Authorities line handlers and they throw you a monkey fist to tie off on your rented line that they then drag back to them and use to walk with you into position.

Once inside and all tied off the gate starts to close

When the gate is all closed the water

starts to bubble and whirlpool and churn  in and you raise up. The captain and the outside four line handlers do the bulk of the work, keeping the three boats straight, not hitting the walls, and not tearing the cleats off the boats.

Going up is a trip.

We were heading up to 72' in this one but were only in the 40's

We finished the first locks in the evening and were instructed to separate the boats and motor to very large buoys in

Lake Gatun to spend the night.We had our first fresh water swim of the trip but didn't venture too far from the boat as we had already seen a very large crocodile.

Then next morning a new adviser was delivered at 6:00am. He waited until we were awake and then instructed us to start motoring across Lake Gatun

which would turn out to be a four hour long journey.

 We passed

 some

great scenery

with good birding

 but we had to stay in our lane at all times

 buoys marked our way

The Photographer

 but we ate and chatted and noticed

 bright red dragonflies on our lines.

When we neared the next set of locks we offloaded our professional photographer(my friend) onto this boat so he could take pics of us looking back. They had been transiting alone just ahead of us and agreed to take him on. He had loads of pics of their boat too.

 We rafted

 back up

with our now buddies and their new advisers

checked the fenders

and headed off. This time we were going down, down, down to the Pacific.

 They closed the gates behind us. Can't see them this time except that people are walking across behind us.

 the line handlers watched us go down

 i thought these Virgin Mary type rope holders that were never used by the canal workers were really cool.

 We dropped down and the touristas dem watched the whole show from the balcony above at the Miraflores museum above the locks.

 My friend

 got some

great shots of us from in front.

The gates opened and we greeted the Pacific side.

Got dropped off at the marina

and took the bus back to my friends...the end of a great sailing trip...a great adventure...and a chance to reconnect with people i hadn't seen in a very long time. Plus a bonus visit with someone who added a dimension i never expected to the whole experience.

See ya Wednesday!