Perhaps he forgot the U.S. Administration cut WHO's funding. But then again perhaps he's forgotten the chaos Trump and friends are causing all over the world.
Or maybe he just doesn't care like his boss.
Todays prompt was a tiled coffee table, the scene almost identical to a village next to a chalet where we all have spent time.
D-L's Free Write
Why can't we live like this all the time, Ellen wondered. "Bobby wait for me," she called to her eight-year old son galloping across the bridge over the creek.
Next week would be their last week before going home. She was trying to make every minute count. Today they were going hiking up the mountain to where the wild asparagus grew. She'd serve it for supper.
She turned to look at the creek, the trees, the cows. Well, their smell was less than wonderful.
She and her husband had escaped the hectic rush of jobs in Boston with too much to do. Not that they were work-free here in this Alpine paradise. They still spent hours working via the internet. That was the price of being able to do the hikes, sit among the garden flowers and breathe the clean, sweet mountain hair.
Jason, her husband, caught up with her and Bobby. "Thank goodness for the time difference. Fred will be able to get my stuff when he wake up."
Ellen didn't want to go back home. "Do you think . . . work . . . full time from here . . . It's just so . . .
Julia's Free Write
What a lovely day it was!
High summer, and they had taken a few days to head for the mountains.
Stayed in a cabin, enjoyed the fresh air and being away from “normal” life.
That last hike saw them truly out and about. Rivers in full spate, they came to a clearing where there was not only a wooden cabin, but totally unexpected, also a church. What was it doing so far from any village? Any city? It didn’t look abandoned though. Still, as it was mid-afternoon, they didn’t have time to linger and explore.
They were faced with another more difficult challenge: crossing the river! Fortunately, there had been other hikers who had built a very rudimentary “bridge”. It certainly wasn’t the beaver standing there watching them.
And there they were: 70 years later, approaching 100, both in comfortable chairs, flipping through old albums of their youth… Thank goodness they had kept the photo!
It brought back wonderful memories.
Rick's Free Write
Switzerland, oh Switzerland.
It really is a postcard. Everywhere.
The snow-blanketed Alps, of course. But also the mountain streams, placid lakes, centuries-old glaciers (sadly receding).
The cows in the meadows, bells tinkling in a pleasant cacophony.
Vine-covered slopes.
And the cities. Vibrant. Large enough to be significant, compact enough to be comfortable.
Chocolate. Cheese fondue. Rosti. An abundance of homegrown foods – just around the corner – fresh.
A proud history. Independent. Neutral. A mediator for the world.
I was not born here. I did not choose to live here. It chose me. And made me one of its own.
An immigrant. I learned the language. The customs. The laws. The culture. Visited every canton. Became a citizen.
Switzerland, of Switzerland.
Home.
Rick Adams is an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices.com, a weekly newsletter reporting the airline industry top stories . He is the author of The Robot in the Simulator. AI in Aviation Training.
Visit D-L.'s website https://dlnelsonwriter.com, She is the author of 15 fiction and three non fiction books. Her 300 Unsung Women, bios of women who battled gender limitations, can be purchased at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/300-unsung-women-d-l-nelson/1147305797?ean=9798990385504
Visit Julia's blog. She has written and taken photos and loves syncing up with friends. Her blog can be found: https://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.com/
FROM ABORTION ON DEMAND*
“Some 100,000 women
every year, California women alone,
subject themselves to improper or illegal abortions.” Patricia Theresa Maginnis
There always will be abortion on demand as the film, From Danger of Dignity: The Fight for Safe Abortion pointed out.
Sadly although the film was made before Roe v. Wade, the story they tell is being retold over and over in America today. Check youtube.com for this film and others on the topic.
If a woman is wealthy, she can find a doctor, even go to another country, to have a safe abortion. If she is poor, she will find a back-alley abortionist. If she has no money, she can do it to herself with whatever poison she can swallow or find a pointed tool to shove up her vagina.
No law will ever stop this.
Dorothy Fadiman’s documentary is filled with stories and statistics on what it was like to need and get an abortion before it was legal. The numbers are staggering. The number of women filling hospital beds and dying will be repeated if abortion becomes illegal as it is in some U.S. states.
After more than a century of back-alley tragedies, a national movement to decriminalize abortion took root. The documentary combines rare archival footage with present-day interviews to weave together two parallel stories:
The evolution of underground networks
to help women find safe abortions outside the law
The intensive efforts
of activists and legislators who broke the silence to change the laws
In 1962 I was 22 years old. I was rushed to the emergency room with a fever of 105 and blood poisoning. I had had an illegal abortion, blindfolded and without anesthetic. I never saw the face of the abortionist…I survived…many women died.” A woman who lived after an illegal abortion. “This was a time when it was illegal to counsel a woman about abortion. A $1000 fine, a year in jail.” Howard Moody, founder of the Clergy Consultation Service (CCS)
“From 1961 until 1973 the struggle for abortion rights became the fastest-growing social movement in the history of the United States…People were willing to challenge the law and if necessary break the law.” Documentary announcer
“Historians estimate for more than a century at least 500,000 clandestine illegal abortions were taking place each year…most faced the back alleys. Every day hospitals admitted women infected and bleeding.” Documentary announcer
“The human costs behind the headlines were suppressed. This 1913 film which dramatized an illegal abortion escaped the censors. It dared to criticize the law at a time when even information about contraception was illegal.” Documentary announcer
“When I became pregnant, I was totally desperate. At that time poor women, many of whom were women of color, didn’t have the connections in that sense and access to safe abortions… I was living with an aunt… I was sitting in the bedroom figuring out what I should do. She had these plastic flowers…and I thought, well, you know, I could use this because it had a long piece of wire…that is what I did. I had to go to the hospital emergency because I was hemorrhaging, and it wouldn’t stop.” Diana, who lived after self-induced abortion.
“Some 100,000 women every year, California women alone, subject themselves to improper or illegal abortions. I think that in itself is a rather staggering figure and I feel great indignation as a woman to think that women have to subject themselves to a second-rate medical for a safe surgical procedure.” Patricia Theresa Maginnis, The Society for Humane Abortion and a medical technologist in a San Francisco hospital.
“Everywhere she turned she was refused but what had enraged her the most was that in one of the interviews the daughter was asked why she didn’t want to be a mother. You don’t do that to an 11-year-old kid.” A welfare mother whose 11-year-old daughter had been raped by a babysitter.
“Women were using Lysol; they would drink it or they would douche with it, anything caustic. They would stick needles, anything they would poke in the direction of their uterus in an effort to dislodge this pregnancy.” Lana Phelan, Jane member, an organization that went on to perform more than 11,000 safe abortions, mainly in the Chicago area.
Many people began to speak out against the restrictive abortion laws including a few brave politicians, doctors and clergy.
“California Assemblyman John Knox heard about a woman who was raped and forced by law to bear the child. In 1961 he introduced a bill for abortion reform to the state legislature…it died in committee. It inspired one of the nation’s first abortion rights activists.” Documentary announcer
“As I traveled up and down the state women would come up to me after my talks and tell me about their own personal involvement in abortion. Either they themselves had one at one time or another, always, of course, an illegal one, or their sister had, or their mother had, or their grandmother had or their college roommate had, but everyone knew of some other woman, if not herself, who had suffered through an illegal abortion… many million American women each year who were having abortions, every single one of them was a criminal, every single one of them was a potential felon.” California Assemblyman Anthony Beillsenson.
Doctors, Clergy Caught in the Middle
“(The) real law and me D dical questions are whether women should have abortions humanely and safely in our hospitals or whether we should continue our degrading system of unwanted pregnancies and criminal abortions. I am tired of having half the world tell the other half what to do with our bodies…Well-to-do women could always go to Canada…they could arrange it, but it was absolutely impossible for the young and poor.” Gynecologist Dr. Jane Hogdson
Doctors who took referrals from clergy could face criminal charges and lose their medical license. Despite these risks they were moved to act by what they had seen.
“The hospital would have bed after bed of women with abortion complications. We were supposed to report these, and I had one that I did report. The police came. They harassed the woman. They threatened her, told she was going to die, frightened her into telling who had done the abortion. A very bad experience for her. I made a decision that I would never report that again.” Dr. Curtis Boyd
Women from all over the country came to Dr. Boyd’s office in a small Texas town after he joined the Clergy Consultation Service (CCS). “To have the service available safe and have it done with respect, the dignity and to know that your work is needed and appreciated and to get that reaffirmation every day from patients who you never met before. To have a patient look up and say, ‘Thank you, doctor. I don’t know what I would done if you hadn’t been here.’” Dr. Curtis Boyd
“In Mexico, illegal abortion was a thriving industry with no controls. Two levels of abortion providers: those that were in sanitized conditions so that the wealthy could go and have an abortion…the doctor was trained…dangers were terrible…young women could be intercepted at the airport. Cab drivers knew why they were there and they would go to so and so and he would take them elsewhere and he would get a kickback. It was better than picking them up in garbage cans.”
The Society for Humane Abortion, which compiled a list of places women could get safe abortions, said: “Some of us felt very strongly…I think we ought to break the law I think we ought to counsel women and help women get abortions even if it against law.”
Howard Moody, with a group of 21 clergy, organized help for women with unintended pregnancies. “I felt I could make a case to be there for her whatever her decision, not just for abortion, having the child and giving it up or having the child and not giving it up…there was no way we could do that without caring for their bodies.”
Are we going backwards in 2026? How many women will die needlessly?
*From Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles
As a writer I love visiting houses, statues and graves of writers. Listing all the places that were important to the writers I loved would require a book in itself, but here's some where I felt inspired in my own work when I saw where they exist in some for reality..
Louisa May Alcott
Visiting Alcott's home is like walking through the book Little Women. Between Louisa, her family and friends, the walls have seen a virtual Who's Who of New England writers and Transcendentalists. Emerson and Thoreau part of a long list. At any moment I expect Jo to burst or one of her sisters to burst into the room to tell us it's time to sit down to dinner.
Nathaniel Hathorne
If Hawthorne's House of Seven Gables was heavy going for a seventh grader, walking the streets of Salem MA over and over showing friends from other places the town, was not. Built in 1688 this house is said to be the oldest surviving house in New England. The museum tour is far better when an exam is not going to be given after the tour.
Longfellow
Henry Longfellow's Midnight Ride of Paul Revere has more meaning than the many times I walked by his home on a Cambridge Friday family night which included, a meal, street musicians and bookstore. With a wonderful friend on a visit to the Minute Man National Park in Lexington, MA where I researched my novel Lexington: Anatomy of a Novel, he and I stood and read alternate verses of the poem aloud.
COLETTE
Somewhere in my Argelès-sur-mer, France studio, is a small stone that rested for a few minutes on Colette's grave. I like to think as I was writing my Murder in (fill in the place) series, it inspired me. I've read only one of her books in French opting for English translations for the others. Her life was as intriguing as her writing.
DOSTOEVSKY
OSCAR WILDE
Before seeing this statue I pictured Oscar Wilde as Stephen Fry in the1997 film Wilde. Wandering Dublin, we came across the colored statue of Wilde. I knew the Greeks and Romans painted their statues in bright colors. Considering Wilde's character I think he would approve, although he might have liked more flamboyant colors. As I looked at the statue, I felt if I asked the statue a question it would answer, maybe in Fry's voice.
There are other writers whom I've come in physical contact with long after they've gone. Bits and pieces of their lives enriched mine.
When visiting Maine with my beloved stepmom after my Dad's death we visited the home of Pulitzer Prize winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. I loved the story when the pipes burst, flooding the home, it was so cold that the water froze. The family decided to use the ice for skating. It has been an example to me that when I have to face any setback of hardship. There is now a center that offer writers residencies.
In a way, being in the home, grave or touching a statue is a reminder of the person whose work I've enjoyed. Sometimes I can pretend we sit down and share a pot of tea, a glass of wine or conversation together. After I can go home, open my laptop, which they never had, and hammer out my own work.
I have a doppelganger of my father who died 44 years ago in Florida. My doppelganger lives in my French village with his aging mother.
Over the years we've become chatting friends, smiling friends. At first, he thought I was strange telling him he was identical to my father until I showed him a photo of my dad. My doppelganger's mother, who was sitting at the same café table, agreed with me.
Over the years we have talked more. She was part of the Retirada. In January 1939 Barcelonan Republicans lost to Franco. Many decided it was better to become refugees and began the trek across the Pyrenees to France despite the freezing weather.
Argelès with a population of just under 3,000 people was totally unprepared for an invasion of 100,000 leftist Spanish Republicans. The French built a concentration camp along the Mediterranean. Barbed wire came before shelter. For years the story was hidden, but in the last two decades people's stories from 1939 have been told.
Today, the doppelganger takes care of his Mom.* She is close to 100 with her full faculties. However, since the winter she has needed a wheelchair to come to her favorite tea room in the village which he pushes from their home a tiny trip compared to the one in 1939. She and her son chat with each other, friends, who are all more the son's age or even younger.
Her French does have a Catalan flavor to it.
Much of the world doesn't know about the Retirada. That included one high school friend who went on to get his Ph.D. in the Spanish Civil War. Now the history has been captured in stories, photos, art work and museums.
This almost 100-year old woman has given me an opportunity to touch and feel history. I can't help but wonder if years into the future the story of Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine refugees will be told as the Retirada has now.
What I wonder more, have we learned nothing since 1939.
*Note: To read what the doppelganger's Mom went thru go to Argelers concentration camp - Wikipedia
Place: A corporation of 122 employees
Participants: Sally White, Human Resources Manager
Jennifer Rice, Assistant HR Manager
Date: 15 June
*****
From: Jennifer Rice
To: All staff
Date: 15 June
Subject: (F*ç%&=?R) dirty underwear in lunch room
Get it out. Now!!! It's disgusting.
Thought I'd send it to you for comment before I sent it.
From: Sally White
To: Jennifer Rice
Date: 15 June
Subject: Your memo to staff on dirty underwear in the lunch room
I really appreciate you showing me the memo on the underwear before sending it. I think it does need to be toned down into corporate diplomatic language. If you need to vent, please stop by my office.
From: Jennifer
To: Sally White
Date: 15 June
Subject: Underwear in lunch room. Is this better????
To the idiot who left his filthy, disgusting underwear in the lunch room. GET IT OUT!
Is this better, Sally????
From: Sally
To: Jennifer
Date: 15 June
Subject: Underwear in lunch room
Not quite, but better. You're getting there. Give it another softer try.
From: Jennifer
To: Sally
Date: 15 June
Subject: Underwear in lunch room
The staff eats in the lunch room, it is better not to have dirty underwear on the tables where people eat.
From: Jennifer
To: Sally
Date: 15 June
Subject: Underwear in lunch room
From: Sally
To: Jennifer
Date: 15 June
Subject: Underwear in lunch room
I think that might be TMI, too much information, although our staff does like knowing reasons things are done. Please try again.
From: Jennifer
To: Sally
Date: 15 June
Subject: The lunch room -- personal belongings
Whomever left belongings of a personal nature in the lunchroom, please pick them up as soon as possible. You know who you are.
From: Sally
To: Jennifer
Date: 15 June
Subject: The lunch room -- personal belongings
Latest attempt. And it's whoever not whomever. I know you are taking a creative writing course, but corporate diplomacy is a different type of writing.
From: Jennifer
To: Sally
Date: 15 June
Subject: Personal items in the lunch room
Someone has left articles of personal clothing in the lunch room. Could you please collect them as soon as possible.
To: Jennifer
From: Sally:
Date: 15 June
Subject: You nailed it
Change "articles of personal clothing" to "personal items" and send it.
From: Jennifer
To: All Staff
Date: 15 June
Subject: Personal items in the lunch room
Someone has left articles of personal items in the lunch room. Could you please collect them as soon as possible.
To: Jennifer
From: Sally:
Date: 15 June
Subject: Thanks
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