We were able to complete one of our bucket list items this past week when the family and I took an Alaskan cruise and were gone nearly ten days total. There are a few things we all learned along the way. The first thing we learned is that relocating to avoid the current state of our politics would be more difficult than we imagined. The cost of living in British Columbia (Victoria) was a little out of our price range and probably that of most people. The same is likely true for Alaska.

We saw the impacts of climate change first hand. The ship was able to go further and faster than in past decades due to the erosion of glaciers and icebergs. We went to the Mendenhall Glacier where we saw the dramatic effects of global warming first hand. People were able to walk on that glacier just 20 years ago. Now, we could see it from a distance. Additionally, there were all kinds of markers on the trails to denote where the ice had been in years past.

Yet, this screed is not about any of this. This is stuff we already know and really hasn’t changed. When you share a boat with 3000 other people you learn a few sobering ideas about yourself and others. There are just some really not nice people in the world. They are rude. They are mean. They are petty and the very sad thing is that I’m describing people I know in addition to strangers. So, I have to provide a shout out to people in that industry. They have to deal with the worst of us when we are at our worst and they do it with a smile on their face.

There are real things that divide us. These real things are ultimately discounted when we frame the world into a left vs. right world. We have honest people and dishonest people. We have nice people and mean people. We have caring people and we have narcissists. We have humanitarians and we have grifters. The most sobering (because this hits so very close to home) thing is that we have snipers and we have fixers.

Snipers are people that would rather complain about a problem than actually do anything about it. Mind you we aren’t even talking politics right now. It could be something as simple as not having any dinner rolls or being out of water or tea. Snipers will just complain. Fixers will take steps to fix the problem. They will talk to wait staff to get more water or a refill on rolls. Their immediate focus is just on fixing the problem and moving on.

In this world, we are led to believe that the main fault line is between left and right. I learned something very valuable this week. Granted, this is something we all instinctively knew before. The main divide isn’t left vs. right. What makes MAGA so dangerous and so disheartening is that it has given people on the opposite side of every other divide cover to behave badly. More than left vs. right, they are the dishonest, they are the rude, they are the not nice, and they are the petty. MAGA just gave them a cover to be the self-actualized versions of themselves. Ultimately, the decent and considerate people of this world have to bound together against the indecent and inconsiderate people. We have to find a way to form coalitions on specific issues where we naturally agree. We have to ignore the fact that we might disagree on 100 other issues. We have to cobble those coalitions together on the fly to make our world a better place to live. The alternative is to watch it all melt away.

Poor Marjorie Taylor Greene. She can’t catch a break. See, the news just said that the HFC (House Freedom Caucus to all you libtards) just tossed her A-Double-Scribble out of their club for cozying up to the wrong House Speaker. That’s one thing (Speaker) McCarthy has on (Speaker Emeritus) Boehner. McCarthy has an actual by-God sycophant that got herself thrown out of the KKK Klub for 1) voting for him for Speaker, then 2) voting for his Biden-laced debt ceiling bill.

Boehner cried, but nobody died.

Oh, and she also called Congressman Lauren Boebert, a fellow Caucus member, “a little b***h” for filing an impeachment bill that she herself wanted to file.

I know the feeling. In 7th grade, the class bully pushed me into the dirt when I beat him in a foot race to recover an errant ball. He didn’t call me “a little b***h”, but I did get pushed nevertheless. They didn’t kick him out of PE, either, but the analogy is there, I guess.

Poor Marjorie should take comfort in the encouraging words of Michael Bassey Johnson, poet, naturalist, and philosopher, who wrote these words in his book Song of a Nature Lover:

You can throw a seed away, but you can’t stop it from growing into a tree.

I have a game with several of my girlfriends. When we see another female behaving in outrageous stuff or weird things, our code phrase is, “I never have any fun.”  It is said in a dramatic voice with a slight eye roll.

This all started when a long-time local police officer’s wife chased him down a residential street, shooting at him with his own firearm. She unloaded the weapon on him but missed every damn time.  But, the clincher was that she was mostly barefoot all over when she did it, causing us all to say, “I never have any fun.”

Please meet Laura Olson, 50, a four-time-divorced mother of two.  Olson is the mistress that Texas Attorney General was mattress thrashing with and she is named in the indictment of Paxton because he was using his influence to get her jobs closer to him.

Well, come to find out, Olson has a kind strange taste in men.  She likes bad boys. Not only was she doing the wild thing with Paxton while he was indicted on seven counts of stock fraud, but she was dating a San Antonio councilman who pretty much defines “legal problems.” He’s a mess.

I guess I need to add that neither man would fit the traditional definition of handsome. I guess when you’ve been married four times, you eventually run out of the top picks.

I never have any fun.

UPDATE: Last night, the Level 1 order was rescinded for our area. Folks on Underwood are still Level 3. Fire fighters are working to contain the 500 plus acre fire, now just 5% contained. Winds are quiet today, temps in the 90s so it’s hot work for the fire teams, plus lots of poison oak. I won’t unpack until the weekend, winds are supposed to crank up Thursday. We’ve had lots of offers of places to go so not worried about that part. Just want to get through July 4 without any new fires.

Fire Districts are important. I knew that, even while writing my snarky post the other day. We have had first hand experience with how critical they are, since moving to the PNW from Fort Bend almost exactly 16 years ago. Watching fireworks with our friends on Aubrey Butte in Bend that July 4 so many years ago, the last night on the road before we arrived in White Salmon, WA, we witnessed a few side fires that started from the annual fireworks display. They were quickly extinguished by local firefighters. The second summer we were here, a fire roared up the bluff from river level to devour several homes on Underwood, just across the White Salmon River from us. We were a little bit clueless then, to the dangerous possibilities should the wind shift, or strengthen. We nervously joked that we were living in a MASH episode, with helicopters constantly dipping into the river, then out to the fire and back. Right in front of our deck view.

Now, 15 years later, another fire has started very close to that first fire. This time it roared up the bluff, has taken 10 homes, caused evacuation of 1000 people, left wineries and vineyards to the powers that be. Whole livelihoods are at gone or at stake. I was with a bandmate in Bingen, practicing some marimba songs for the upcoming First Friday event in Hood River. We saw the plume of smoke go up. We saw the first aircraft arrive to start dumping water on the burgeoning fire. On my way home up the hill, the smoke intensified, by the time I got to my house on the bluff opposite Underwood, across the White Salmon River, the smoke was thick. The aircraft responding were impressive. Planes, helicopters, tankers…we had it all yesterday as the residents of Underwood found safety elsewhere.

We were assigned Level 1: Get Ready. So we packed. Clothes, toiletries, meds. Dog food. Important papers. Savings bonds. Passports. Computers. The 20 completed squares for my granddaughter’s afghan. Our best wines, waiting by the door to be thrown into the car. Hooked up the tent camper. Then at 8 pm, started making dinner and opening a good bottle of wine. Just because we were still at home. Our friend who is with Fire District 3 had been on the scene all day. He didn’t go home until midnight. He’s in his 70s. So much appreciation. We are all hoping that the wind gods decide to continue to lay low. Forecast is for 30-40 mph winds for Thursday-Saturday. This is why the windsurfers and kiters of the world gather here. In case you didn’t know.

Fireworks have been canceled in Bingen, Hood River, and Cascade Locks. They should be. Hood River is rescheduling their fireworks show for New Years Eve. Brilliant! Snow doesn’t burn. This is our new reality. Hotter and drier summers are not a good fit for fireworks, obviously.

We are hoping to escape bad stuff, like we did 15 years ago. Like we did when the volunteer FD came in to the newly opened (15 years ago) brew pub, Everybody’s, in town as a fire raged in the building next door to get us out before a propane tank blew. Like we did when I was in Charlotte at the National Convention in 2012, when another wildfire started a stone’s throw from our neighborhood and my husband was sending me photos of flames he could see from down the street. There are more stories, these are just a few. I won’t even go there with the Eagle Creek Fire, started by a teenager with fireworks, in the heart of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. All that said, I’ll take this over hurricanes, tornados, failed power grids, Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, Ken Paxton, hot and humid, you get the picture. I do miss my friends, though.

Bottom line, fires and their smoke are coming for all of us. People who think it’s funny to write in fictional or insane or totally incompetent names during an election belong in ‘The Basket’. Totally Deplorable.

When your entire life and legacy has come to this …

Lindsey Graham was booed for several minutes in his home state of South Carolina while he appeared to help stump for Donald Trump at the ex-president’s rally on Saturday,” Rolling Stone reports.

“From the moment the U.S. senator from South Carolina was introduced into when he was at the podium speaking, the gathered crowd mercilessly booed him.”

Later, Trump told rallygoers that Graham could help him get “liberal votes.”

I kinda suspect he went back into the far corners of his closet and sobbed.

I cannot think of a more satisfying day of karma than this.  A good spanking followed by a public slap on his naked hiney from the man he kowtowed to.  Just lovely.

I’m gonna smile all day at the thought that Lindsey Graham is a gatherer of liberal votes.  I wonder if he keeps them in a little basket.

Sumbitches.