Here it is the middle of October and things are still weirdly in bloom. The small roses are blooming again. The morning glory is blooming for the first time. Even the lavender is putting out a few tentative flowers.
So, I went out and clipped a bunch of stuff and put it in a basket with the tiny bottle of whiskey I got from the Southern Festival of Books. I think that will all be good gate-opening stuff for the nine nights.
I am ready for some major spooky woo.
Honestly, I find this so disheartening I can’t even think too much about it. And to see Ron Ramsey gloating about it on Twitter literally made me want to throw up. It is the case now that, if you are poor and you need certain types of health care, you have to get it from the Christians. You have to go to church to get it.
And they don’t have to provide all the kinds of health care you might need because they are a religious organization.
And yet, that’s where you have to go if you can’t afford anywhere else.
And that’s considered a good thing by our state’s administration–forcing people to rely on healthcare from groups that will impose their religious beliefs on the administration of that healthcare.
People will try to tell you that what goes around comes around. But it rarely does. All those men will forever be able to send their wives, daughters, mistresses off to doctors who will give them whatever they need and that will never ever change and they will never lose a night’s sleep over the hypocrisy.
And poor people will suffer.
And women will have to sit here knowing that we don’t have the ability to make legal decisions over our own bodies.
And people will still try to tell me how “nice” Ron Ramsey is or how “thoughtful” Bill Haslam is.
And they won’t understand how it feels to know that you are not quite a legal person. I don’t give a shit how nice and thoughtful either of those men are if they can’t respect my right to my own god damn body.
And yet, they don’t.
So fuck them.
Edited to Add: This.
Really, he’s been running around for almost a full year now refusing to accept that he wasn’t elected governor and turning the lieutenant governor’s office into a co-leadership position with Bill Haslam, and he doesn’t follow the news? He doesn’t know the second biggest story to come out of Tennessee this month?
Lord help us.
I’m going to guess that WordPress has slightly changed how they accept comments, based on how many of you long-timers are putting your email address where your name should be. So, just a head’s up. Make sure your name is your name.
I’ll change it when I see it, but any system that relies solely on me to be paying close attention is a bad system.
It feels a little decadent to consider but I wanted to spend my whole yesterday reading and I got side-tracked. So, I am actually behind schedule in my lazing about. I am about halfway through Chuck Klosterman’s Visible Man and I am really, really enjoying it. I thought it would be good, but there’s something downright delightful about it. He’s got this way of kind of twisting the horror of the situation in kind of by half notches that I’m finding really fascinating.
I turned in my Ben and Sue Allen story. I hope they like it.
I also finally set my nine nights. I’m doing it later than usual, going to start up the 28th and cover all of the major Dead days. This is more by necessity than needing any major woo. Those are the nine nights I think I’m most likely to be left the hell alone. This month has turned out to be incredibly busy.
But I’m already looking forward to it. It makes me realize how important ritual is, how important it is to give yourself huge rhythms in your life.
Anyway, it’ll be dark in the evenings, then, and cool enough for a fire.
Tiny Cat Pants 