T minus 3 and counting

Blue skies, sunshine, temperature above freezing. I am truly grateful for each of them, especially the above freezing part. It’s supposed to continue for another week or so. 🥰

Another source of impending gratitude: our local PBS station’s (TPT) broadcast tomorrow night of the Buffy Sainte-Marie documentary, Carry It On. (I am feeling considerably less grateful for the design of the American Masters web site.) Watching the broadcast will help me relive my (mildly?) misspent youth during the era between the beatniks and the hippies. And, it’s being broadcast during Native American Heritage Month and just a few days before Native American Heritage Day.

American Indian Cultural Corridor, Minneapolis (2013)

Photo by J. Harrington

Since POTUS 46 recently turned 80, it’s as good time as any to say I’m grateful he’s so much more capable, and much less destructive, than POTUS 45, and that I hope he has a very successful two more years as President.

I’m also grateful that the Winter Solstice is a month away. Shortly after we celebrate that, the days will start getting longer again.

In a “funny” way I’m grateful that the Musk creature purchased Twitter. It’s causing me to seriously think about what better uses of my time there are than doom scrolling. I’m not sure I can limit my  screen scream time, so I may have to just quit. Instead, I can scare the hell out of myself by reading the daily headlines on slashdot, for example:

• US Government Begins Researching 'Climate Intervention’ Geoengineering
• Debate at COP27: Nuclear Energy, Climate Friend or Foe?

In anticipation of the Buffy Sainte-Marie broadcast, and in gratitude for, and recognition of,  the importance of her lyrics, today's poem is Buffy Sainte-Marie’s:

Universal Soldier

By Buffy Sainte-Marie

He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years

He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an athiest, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill 
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you

And he's fighting for Canada, 
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians 
and he's fighting for Japan, 
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way

And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide 
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls

But without him how would Hitler have 
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body 
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on

He's the universal soldier and he 
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war

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