Michelle's Musings

I am not going to call for unity in the wake of this debacle of a presidential election. It seems too trite, simplistic and cliché to implement in a country that is divided in half.

That is not to say, however, that I don’t think we need to work together to find common ground because I think we fundamentally all want the same things as Americans. We want food, shelter, health care, education, religious freedom, living wages, a means of retirement and peace, just for starters. But it isn’t just Americans that want those things, people the world over wish for the same.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) was a champion for human rights, those of women, minorities and the LBGT community. She was one of a small handful of women accepted at Harvard Law School in the early 1960s before transferring to Columbia Law School, something that was unheard of at the time.

I was 26 years old when she was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), and remember it was a big deal because she was only the second female Supreme Court Justice and the first female Jewish justice. At that time, she was considered a moderate, and had previously been appointed to an appeals court in the District of Columbia by President Jimmy Carter. As the SCOTUS shifted to the right, she became a more liberal voice on the court and would often dissent.

Against my better judgement I flew to Denver from Madison last week. Normally I would not have considered taking flight during a global pandemic, but duty called and I had to head to Colorado to help my husband get our house ready to rent. 

We had initially planned to Air BnB the property because it sits near the Royal Gorge, which is a tourist spot near Cañon City. We had just finished getting it ready back in March, and I flew out on March 11 and came back on March 18. I wrote about that experience in a previous column, and how on my return flight (after the lockdown began) Denver International Airport (DIA) was deserted. At that time I was one of just two passengers wearing a mask. 

It was 1974 when the moon was last full on Halloween. I was just seven years old, and I remember it well.

You see, I have always had a strong connection to the moon. I can’t explain it, but I have always been drawn to the moon, to the tide, to the cycle of waning and waxing each month, sometimes twice in a month in the case of a blue moon.

Anyway, I remember the full moon that night because I was completely enamored of it. I could not stop looking at it. I remember my aunt had taken me trick or treating in the tiny town of Somerset Center, MI, where my great-grandmother lived. We had stopped at her house when we got to town to show off my Wonder Woman costume, another of my obsessions at the time. 

When we walked out of Grandma Clark’s house, I could see it big and low on the horizon, in all its glowing and mesmerizing glory. I could not stop looking at the bright orb in the sky, so close it seemed you could reach out and touch it. 

I sat silent in the chair Monday night after reading a message from one of our friends in Cedar Rapids that the home Matt and I owned had been destroyed. 

“Destroyed?” I replied. 

“Yes, the big tree fell on it,” she said.

The tree she was referring to was a 100-plus-year-old white pine and the biggest tree in our old neighborhood. It was felled by the massive storm, called a derecho, basically an inland hurricane, that appeared to make its way downtown and through the city proper. Tens of thousands of people were without power in both Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, but Cedar Rapids took a lot of wind damage. 

The Internet was reported as spotty, but a handful of friends posted pics on social media, including downtown. Many of the buildings were missing part of their façade, roof or both. No photos of our old house, though. There were cars overturned and huge grain silos crumpled like a piece of aluminum foil.

I normally stay out of the fray of Nextdoor. I find it to be a good source of misinformation, innuendo, rumor and vitriol, for which I can normally not make the time. I had signed up for it at the urging of my neighbor, whom I met while walking the dog. 

Every time I check my personal email there are a list of posts offering free vegetables, missing pets, events, strange happenings in the neighborhood, and occasionally someone spewing venom about some minor infraction imposed on them by another. I had never made a post or even commented on one because I never open the email alerts, but we had been having a visitor at our house–a black and white cat with a little diamond shape on his nose. 

I have been wearing a mask since March, as I have stated before in this column. Furthermore, I have been calling for a mask mandate for months because I know that any variety of SARS, a classification COVID-19 falls under, is spread primarily through the respiratory system. Honestly, it seems like a no brainer.

We should never underestimate the ability of ignorance and stupidity to politicize something that is not political. Masks fall into this category. For weeks I have seen all sorts of nonsense on social media about “owning liberals” by not wearing a mask. Let me tell you, you aren’t owning a thing, except that ignorance and stupidity.

I have been wearing a mask since March, as I have stated before in this column. Furthermore, I have been calling for a mask mandate for months because I know that any variety of SARS, a classification COVID-19 falls under, is spread primarily through the respiratory system. Honestly, it seems like a no brainer.

We should never underestimate the ability of ignorance and stupidity to politicize something that is not political. Masks fall into this category. For weeks I have seen all sorts of nonsense on social media about “owning liberals” by not wearing a mask. Let me tell you, you aren’t owning a thing, except that ignorance and stupidity.

I was standing in the kitchen washing dishes (one of my least favorite things), when I couldn’t help but notice one of my favorite things–dozens of fireflies lifting off from the grass, flowers and vegetables in the back yard. They were mostly green with a few orange ones scattered in the mix.

I don’t remember ever seeing the oranges ones as a kid, but I have some distinct memories of fireflies in general. Of course, like many kids, I, and my friends, imprisoned them in clear glass jars, fascinated with their glowing hind ends. No firefly home was complete without a wad of grass to sleep in and a stick for them to hang out on. I remember waking up in the morning to find them all “belly up” as my grandma so eloquently put it. No matter how many holes you poked, they couldn’t survive in a repurposed mayonnaise jar.

Just about everyone has heard of Roundup (glyphosate), the herbicide made by Monsanto (now owned by Bayer), and spread generously on fields and lawns throughout the country. But, do you know about Dicamba?

When the efficacy of Roundup started to slip, and weeds grew resistant to the product, Monsanto needed a new weed killer, and the company began working to development soybeans and cotton that was resistant to Dicamba, which has been around, but not widely used, since 1959. The problem with the chemical is that it has a tendency to drift in the wind, causing the death of nearby crops that were not resistant. 

This drift caused farmers to engage in arguments with other farmers over the loss of their crops due to Dicamba drift, in some cases whole fields were destroyed by the herbicide.