October of the Year of Our Plague

As I sit in my California home, a fire that burned for seven weeks is officially extinguished, but I can't tell because a new fire started a couple of days ago and that smoke is now the smoke that pollutes and kills. It's October and the high is expected to be 100, so you can tell the fall is finally here.

The man that is in the White House, that gets to call himself president, contracted coronavirus after engaging in risky behavior for months, albeit not nearly as dangerous as he expected from the rest of us. He willingly told/tells people it was a nothing problem and he actively encouraged/encourages white supremacists to hurt people, to be ready to take to the streets when (God- please be when!!) or if he doesn't win. This election that is a month and a day away. Will we break into civil war again? I don't know. I am actually afraid that we will. He certainly fans the flames of hate and encourages people to hurt others, whether it is chants of lock her up, grab her by the pussy, or don't wear masks. 

But shockingly he is not really the biggest problem in my opinion. The Republicans in Congress who don't exercise their checks-and-balances power, that jump on the chance to block President Obama's nomination to the Supreme Court, but rush to push someone into the Supreme Court on the heels of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death. They won't pass a relief bill for those of us suffering in this pandemic but want to destroy health care options for those who aren't protected by wealth or jobs. They will jump on the chance to hurt us, to put someone into a lifelong position that they believe will erode rights.

So here I am in a state that is literally on fire and a country that is figuratively (and literally) on fire reading about a woman in the 1800s who advocated for better treatment of the indigenous people of this country. She threw herself into trying to improve the lives of others, of people different from her. 

In 1881 Helen Jackson sent her book A Century of Dishonor, which documented federal atrocities committed against the indigenous people of the US, with this quote from Benjamin Franklin on it, "Look upon your hands: they are stained with the blood of your relations."

Here I am thinking about Congress and I think, "Look upon your hands: they are stained with the blood of your relations."
 

"Look upon your hands: they are stained with the blood of your relations."