"Love is a gift, Alex not an obligation.” -- Isabel, "Fools Rush In" (1997)
______
Every day is a special day if you're open to it.
Take today for example. It's not often that one of the most delightful stories crossing my desk (figuratively, that is, as I have no desk, only a lap) also illuminates a hidden corner of the vitally important current effort to vaccinate, well, *everybody*.
And it comes via our friend Hans Siegel who scoured the deeper reaches of that most intriguing of election sites, Electoral-Vote.com, to report the following:
"(M)any sex workers who make their living as BDSM dommes are ordering their clients to show proof of vaccination. If the submissives provide the proof, they get spanked. If they don't provide proof, then no spankings. And in the world of BDSM, at least, the former is a good thing, and the latter is a bad thing."
Certainly we can all agree that this is a hopeful sign that the urgent need to reach herd immunity is getting where it needs to go, albeit in a roundabout fashion.
***
So much news to mention, so little time.
My official voter information guide to the upcoming (Sept. 14) California gubernatorial recall election arrived Tuesday.
For those of you who reside in one of the other 49 states that make up our imperfect union, you may not realize what a spectacular mess of democracy we've been able to achieve out here on the left coast.
We have a perfectly good governor at the moment, Gavin Newsom, who except for a regrettable lapse when he attended a fancy dinner party maskless during the height of the pandemic, has done a fine job under tough circumstances.
Let's face facts. There are worse things that a governor might do than go maskless. Case in point: Andrew Cuomo, newly jobless (most appropriately) as of Tuesday.
For that matter, there are much more embarrassing things he could have done than showing his face naked. (Just ask Jeff Toobin.)
As to the many, many people on the ballot who would replace Newsom as our state's leader, we have a transgender activist/reality TV star who appears to have no clue what governors actually do, and a former Republican office-holder whose main qualification appears to be showing up with a pet bear named Tag at his campaign appearances.
What a waste of our tax dollars!
***
One extremely disturbing item in todays's lineup concerns the Afghan high school girls who are in harm's way as the Taliban takes over the country.
I've told this story before, but it bears repeating: Fifty years ago, the first girl to *ever* attend high school in Takhar Province sat in the front row of my ninth grade class at the Lycée Taloqan, the roofless mud-brick building where I taught English as a Peace Corps Volunteer.
Afghanistan was full of hope at that time under the benign administration of a westernized king. The nation's people were hell-bent on modernizing, which in Taloqan's case meant leaving behind the world as Marco Polo saw it when he visited in 1271 in favor of learning how to read and write and accept the reality that America had sent a man to the moon.
According to the Mullahs' interpretation of the Quran, the moon landing must be fake news because the astronauts would have had to glimpse heaven on their way to the rocky satellite, which Allah would not have allowed to occur.
As part of that urge to modernize, one family in town had sent their 16-year-old girl to school without her chadri, although she did wear a modest head scarf in the classroom otherwise filled with rowdy boys.
I wasn't much more than a boy myself at 22, but I found her presence inspirational. Equally inspirational was the way the boys in the class treated her with a consistent measure of respect.
They were not bad boys but they *were* teenagers, not a demographic known for treating girls well in the modern world let alone in 1271.
So when the tragic news broke Monday that the misogynistic Taliban have overrun Taloqan and are lighting fires and taking selfies in the city square, I thought of my student and wondered what's become of her life and her legacy.
She would be 68 now, in the unlikely event she has survived the multiple violent invasions of her town over the decades. During that time, the Russians have marched in and marched out, the Americans have marched in and marched out, the Afghan government troops have marched in and marched out.
Now only the ragged dregs of humanity, the Taliban, are left to rule over the place.
Even if my former student is no longer alive, perhaps her children, grandchildren, and/or great-grandchildren are.
Some of them would be girls. Have they been educated? Did they go back to wearing the chadri? And now that their town has returned to the time of Marco Polo, how will their modern selves perdure?
خدا حفظشون کنه
***
Yet there is so much more.
Ashes from western fires hang over the east coast cities.
Pandemic-era hunger is on the rise.
Too many elderly are finding themselves unprepared financially for old age.
High-risk, immunocompromised children and adults face new threats from the delta variant.
The long-term effects of Covid are becoming clearer and that is *not* good news.
However, at least the available data does *not* support the reports that delta causes more hospitalizations in kids, despite scary anecdotal reports to the contrary in U.S. media.
In a historical note, it fell to one of the earliest black reporters to expose the U.S. military's lie that dropping atomic bombs on Japan did not sicken or kill people. If you needed a reason to understand why diversity matters, think long and hard about that one.
And finally in the realm of hope, always one of the most important realms, a girl believed to be the tiniest newborn ever, weighing about as much as a large apple, is reported to be doing fine.
***
HEADLINES:
* The U.N.’s dire climate report confirms: We’re out of time (WP)
* Climate Change Is a ‘Hammer Hitting Us on the Head,’ Developing Nations Say -- Leaders of vulnerable countries, as well as activists, said Monday’s blistering United Nations report must galvanize global action. But major emitters are dragging their heels. (NYT)
* Firefighters and residents battled into the night Monday for a seventh day against a massive fire on Greece’s second-largest island Evia as the nation endured what the prime minister described as “a natural disaster of unprecedented proportions.” The fire, which began Aug. 3, is the most severe of hundreds in the past week across Greece. [AP]
* Welcome to ‘Trump world,’ the climate future that scientists fear (WP)
* The Ashes of the Dixie Fire Cast a Pall 1,000 Miles From Its Flames (NYT)
* The smoke from wildfires across western Canada, Oregon and California has traveled as far as Iowa, Minnesota and even New York City. Research suggests that the smoke may grow more toxicas it ages. (California Today)
* Triple-digit heat, ‘dangerously hot conditions’ brewing in Pacific Northwest (WP)
* A Race to Contain the Dixie Fire Amid Evacuation Orders (NYT)
* Wildfire Risk Is Growing Everywhere, Even As More Americans Move Into Harm's Way (NPR)
* California’s desert has increasingly become a hotbed for thieves stealing water. (CalMatters)
* Despite being located along several waterways, forested Mendocino has relied on wells for its water supply for the past century. But the drought crippling the West is drying up the tourist town’s aquifers. (The Guardian)
* Flash Flooding Hits Omaha (Storyful)
* Rise of Flash Flooding Highlighted in Climate-Change Report (WSJ)
* New Study Shows Just How Much Kids' Mental Health Has Suffered In The Pandemic -- Anxiety and depression doubled among children around the world, according to an analysis. (HuffPost)
* Nearly 94,000 Kids Got COVID-19 Last Week. They Were 15% Of All New Infections (NPR)
* Delta variant is derailing plans for normalcy as schools reopen (WP)
* How To Keep Your Child Safe From The Delta Variant (NPR)
* Families of High-Risk Children Despair Over Covid Resurgence (NYT)
* Florida continues to be the COVID-19 epicenter of the highly transmissible delta variant, with record new cases and rising hospitalizations as some schools start their new year ― but the deadly dilemma does not seem to faze Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. There's been a surge in severe cases among children, but DeSantis still opposes vaccine and mask mandates. [HuffPost]
* Pediatric ID specialists from the UK clearly lay out what is happening with kids & delta. (Monica Gandhi, infectious disease expert UCSF, MD/Twitter)
* (T)he Delta variant is more transmissible than other variants & cases have 
rapidly, even in kids. Around 1 in 200 kids exposed to #SARSCoV2 will be hospitalised but, if anything, it looks like delta variant might have lower hospitalization rates in kids. (Shamez Ladhani, pediatric infectious disease expert/Twitter)
* Just 43 percent of eligible Tulare County residents are vaccinated against Covid-19, and some communities within the county — called “vaccination deserts” — have even lower rates. Community advocates blame distrust and misinformation. (Fresno Bee)
* Ravaged by delta outbreak, Southeast Asia shifts away from China’s vaccines (WP)
* The economic toll of the pandemic has left thousands of Californians without enough food on the table. (California Today)
* U.S. turns to social media influencers to boost vaccine rates (AP)
* S.F. has a higher case rate than the U.S. — but nowhere near as many hospitalizations. (SF Chronicle)
* Hospitals run low on nurses as they get swamped with COVID (AP)
* Hunger isn’t just an American problem. An estimated 270 million people worldwide are expected to face potentially life-threatening food shortages this year, compared with 150 million before the pandemic. (California Today)
* North Carolina sees surge in vaccine interest (AP)
* The State Of Arkansas Has Only 8 Empty ICU Beds, As COVID-19 Cases Resurge (NPR)
* Millions of Americans Are Unemployed Despite Record Job Openings (WSJ)
* U.S. Signals It Will Release Some Still-Secret Files on Saudi Arabia and 9/11 -- The F.B.I. said it would review some long-classified documents for possible disclosure, a decision that followed a push by families of the attacks’ victims. (NYT)
* Biden Administration Violating Decree on Migrant Children, Court Filing Says -- The filing described “shockingly deplorable” conditions at two emergency shelters set up in Texas to handle the surge of children crossing the southern border. (NYT)
* Americans Feel Less Prepared for Retirement than Before the Pandemic (RetirementLiving.com)
* Getting Old Is a Crisis More and More Americans Can’t Afford -- The looming financial crisis for seniors. (NYT)
* The largest federal investment in the nation’s infrastructure in decades includes no dedicated funding for high-speed rail, once a top transportation priority in the White House. Transit advocates welcome the funding for intercity rail programs, but wish it would go farther with a high-speed component. [HuffPost]
* U.S. Senate passes bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill (Reuters)
* Senate Democrats Begin $3.5 Trillion Push for ‘Big, Bold’ Social Change -- A Senate budget blueprint, which Democrats hope to pass this week, would ease passage of legislation that would mark the biggest expansion of the social safety net in nearly 60 years. (NYT)
* Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said in a CNN interview she was afraid on Jan. 6 that she would be sexually assaulted if the pro-Trump mob that breached the U.S. Capitol that day managed to find her. “White supremacy and patriarchy are very linked in a lot of ways. There’s a lot of sexualizing of that violence,” Ocasio-Cortez said. [HuffPost]
* The Black Reporter Who Exposed a Lie About the Atom Bomb -- Charles H. Loeb defied the American military’s denials and propaganda to show how deadly radiation from the strike on Hiroshima sickened and killed. (NYT)
* All population growth in U.S. driven by minorities, upcoming census data likely to reveal (WP)
* Taliban control 65% of Afghanistan, EU official says, after series of sudden gains (Reuters)
* Students at a girls-only high school in Afghanistan face an uncertain future -- “Young boys are fleeing the country. But girls remain.” (WP)
* India shuts last consulate in Afghanistan and evacuates citizens (Reuters)
* On Afghanistan’s Front Line, There Are No Good Choices -- For the past month, Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city, has been under siege by Taliban fighters. Families stuck between them and government forces have almost nowhere to go. (NYT)
* Six EU countries warn against open door for Afghan asylum seekers (Reuters)
* Deceptions and lies: What really happened in Afghanistan -- The Afghanistan Papers (WP)
* Pay cut: Google employees who work from home could lose money (Reuters)
* The Perseid meteor shower, considered one of the best of the year, is coming to a night sky near you. (California Today)
* Google restricts ad targeting of under-18s (Reuters)
* Chinese state media has seized on a Swiss scientist critical of a covid origins probe. The one problem: He might not exist. (WP)
* “(S)ex workers who make their living as BDSM dommes are ordering their clients to show proof of vaccination. If the submissives provide the proof, they get spanked. If they don't provide proof, then no spankings. And in the world of BDSM, at least, the former is a good thing, and the latter is a bad thing.” -- (Electoral-vote.com)
* ‘World’s Smallest Baby’ Weighed as Much as an Apple. She Survived. (Vice News)
* After being stuck inside for 9 months, newborns will inevitably ask if they can borrow the car, hit the road, and go hang out with some friends. (The Onion)
***
"Love Me"
THE ECHO FRIENDLY
(Verse 1)
Treat me like a fool
Treat me mean and cruel
But love me
(Pre-chorus)
Break my faithful heart
Tear it all apart
But love me
(Chorus)
Well, if you ever go
Darling, I'll be oh so lonely
I'll be sad and blue
Crying over you
Dear only
I would beg and steal
Just to feel
Your heart
Beating close to mine
(Chorus)
Well, if you ever go
Darling, I'll be oh so lonely
I'll be sad and blue
Crying over you
Dear only
I would beg and steal
Just to feel
Your heart
Beating close to mine
(Chorus)
Well, if you ever go
Darling, I'll be oh so lonely
Beggin' on my knees
All I ask is please
Please love me
-30-
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