Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Candlelight

These days I’m with the magic of candlelight even as I read the news.

I was on a Zoom Call on Monday and AI gave a beautiful summary of the experience and journey.

We can thank Chat GPT for this as posted by Heather Cox Richardson.

When G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbersasked ChatGPT to fact-check an article for him yesterday, the chatbot couldn’t get its head around modern America. It told him there were “multiple factual impossibilities” in his article, including his statements that “[t]he current Secretary of Defense is a former talk show host for Fox News,” “[t]he Deputy Director of the FBI used to guest-host Sean Hannity’s show,” and “Jeanine Pirro is the U.S. District Attorney for DC.”

“Since none of these statements are true,” it told Morris, “they undermine credibility unless signposted as hyperbole, fiction, or satire.”

But of course, Morris’s statements were not “factual impossibilities.” In the United States of America under President Donald J. Trump, they are true.

May that change as people wake and vote for democracy, support, unity, and humanity.

A burning candle shows the many ways to give and offer Light!

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Democracy, Now

Yesterday, with a sold-out crowd, we attended a documentary on Amy Goodman at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.  It was inspiring and told with the blazing torch of truth.  While the credits rolled, Patty Smith’s powerful song People Have the Power rang out. Tears come even now as I reflect on Amy’s life and the battles she’s fought to defend our democracy.  The film isn’t yet out in full release.  This was the third showing and it will show tonight at 5:30 at the San Rafael theatre for the MV Film Festival.

Keep your eye out for “Steal This Story, Please.”  It’s a non-biased account of what’s gone on in the last 30 years in our country, in our name.

Pulse!

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Courage

Today from Heather Cox Richardson:

Yesterday, Biden awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal, given to those “who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens,” to twenty Americans including former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), who served on the January 6 committee. Today, Trump attacked Cheney and others who investigated the events of January 6, 2021, as “dishonest Thugs.”

Cheney responded: “Donald, this is not the Soviet Union. You can’t change the truth and you cannot silence us. Remember all your lies about the voting machines, the election workers, your countless allegations of fraud that never happened? Many of your lawyers have been sanctioned, disciplined or disbarred, the courts ruled against you, and dozens of your own White House, administration, and campaign aides testified against you. Remember how you sent a mob to our Capitol and then watched the violence on television and refused for hours to instruct the mob to leave? Remember how your former Vice President prevented you from overturning our Republic? We remember. And now, as you take office again, the American people need to reject your latest malicious falsehoods and stand as the guardrails of our Constitutional Republic—to protect the America we love from you.”

Our Wake is Clear!

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Reading

From Ron Charles today in the Washington Post:

At the opening ceremony of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Turkish-British writer Elif Shafak said, “In a world that remains deeply polarized and bitterly politicized, and torn apart by inequality and wars, and the cruelty we are capable of inflicting on each other and on Earth, our only home, in such a troubled world, what can writers and poets even hope to achieve? What place is there for stories and imagination when tribalism, destruction and othering speak more loudly and boldly?” (I’m quoting from notes that Shafak sent to me.)

Shafak, whose most recent novel is “There Are Rivers in the Sky,” spoke with longing for the 21st century that never arrived — or at least hasn’t yet. She recalled the flutter of international optimism when the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet empire broke apart, and the internet promised to create a well-informed electorate. In those heady days, for a moment at least, it felt possible to see a bright future for peace and democracy. 

“Fast forward, today,” she said, “we are living in a world in which there is way too much information, but little knowledge and even less wisdom.… As we scroll up and down, more out of habit than out of anything else, we have no time to process what we see. No time to absorb or reflect or feel. Hyper-information gives us the illusion of knowledge.” 

“For true knowledge to be attained we need to slow down. We need cultural spaces, literary festivals, an open and honest intellectual exchange.”

I continue to read that in reading novels we gain empathy.  Focusing, we enter another’s mind and world.  We’re exposed to lifestyles, characters, choices and worlds wider and broader than we may personally know.

It’s a challenge to continue to see lies reported as truth. It’s discouraging to know the money that is poured into a race to destroy our democracy, and yet there are books to read and places like the Bay Area Children’s Museum to go and return to joy, creativity, thoughtfulness, and trust.

A fish flies at the museum
Music vibrates the air
Looking through a portal
Reflecting
Touching and Seeing

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Inspiration

I watched all three hours of the seventh of the January 6 Committee Hearings.  I was shaking through most of it – riveted and astonished.  

I know most people can’t watch it all, but if you can, watch the four closing statements.  

Mr. Raskin.  

Mrs. Murphy. 

Ms. Cheney. 

Mr. Thompson.  

We’re not out of the woods but their words are a beautiful and promising start. 

Light at the end of the tunnel

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

A Book to Read

Yesterday I watched Dan Pfeiffer on Zoom.  He was speaking at Book Passage on his book Battling the Big Lie: How Fox, Facebook and the MAGA Media Are Destroying America.   He was very clear that if Democrats don’t work to win the midterm elections, democracy is over.  

One point is to stop talking about Biden as a one-term president.  Pfeiffer listed all the things Biden has done.  Let’s focus there, and then, in April 2023 we can start talking about who might run in 2024.

One key issue is the Supreme Court.  Not only must it be expanded but there must be ethical accountability and a limit to how long each justice serves.  His suggestion is that there are 13 justices and at a certain point, the oldest moves into a group to advise and step in when needed.  They would still be paid but that would allow a new, younger, more up-to-date court to make decisions that align with the wishes of the voters of that time.

We need ethics on the Supreme Court.  We don’t have that now.  That Clarence Thomas won’t recuse himself from a case in which his wife participated says it all.

Georgia O’Keefe said, “I got half-a-dozen paintings from that shattered plate.”

Our country is looking tattered and shattered. What do we do with the pieces? What do we create?

Rocks at Rodeo Beach

Looking Up

Surfers in the waves at Rodeo Beach on Friday