"Now it is your turn..."
                               Now it is 'our' turn.
                     'We can never go back!'

 "...          When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something...." -John Lewis   
                                            Be hopeful. Be optimistic. Never lose that sense of hope.  -John Lewis                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
      In an op-ed authored shortly before his death and published on the day of his funeral by The New York Times, the Georgia Democrat reflected upon his own calling to join the civil rights movement following the lynching of Emmett Till.

                                                        The man was a living, walking every day  definition of courage

  "..John Lewis: ..When I was growing up in rural Alabama, 50 miles from Montgomery, outside of a little town called Troy, I would see those signs that said 'white waiting,' 'colored waiting,' 'white men,' 'colored men,' 'white women,' 'colored women.' I asked my mother, my father, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, 'Why?' And they said, 'That’s the way it is. Don’t get in the way. Don’t get in trouble.' ......But I was inspired to get in the way, to get in trouble..


             "Emmet Till,..He was 'my' George Floyd"'....                    ..Here, his lynching by a southern white mob....remembered.                

Do grown men cry? Some do. This one did, his wife, Florita, she cried too.

'Walking with the Wind'......“I believe in freedom of speech, but I also believe that we have an obligation to condemn speech that is racist, bigoted, anti-Semitic, or hateful.” ― John Robert Lewis.

Ken Humphrey

                              THE OTHER SIDE OF COVID -19
            What will our country, what will our world look like?

Stephen King reflects:  He has a vision, a frightening vision.  He puts it out there in:            THE STAND....and it is 'coming out'.. ............(Last, Dr. Tony Fauci, John Lewis.).

    King: He  has put it all out there in an exclusive preview, a new limited video series, a 9-episode run.. It was already already in progress BEFORE the word 'COVID-19' virus was known to anyone.
      Filming was not quite complete when the Corona virus hit us. They had to rush, to hurry production to get it done!             It is based, of all things, his 1978 book, called 'The Stand'. A global Pandemic takes all but a fraction of human life..When there are no rules. What track do survivors take? 
  
      Does it indulge dark, selfish instincts - becoming a dystopian, cold society, one run and controlled by a diabolical few: "We know what is right now for us all. We will make the world right again...for you.' Or, do we do what is right, right for the sake of all others?   In the last 100 years, we have seen both models:'The Thousand Year Reich'..... for one example was one model...We have seen the US as the World Leader for decades.

     CBS will air it later this year in the shadow.of...the real thing, a global Pandemic. King said: "I want to write about bravery."...... At some point (and this writer 'loved this line': .."At some point, we people do 'have to take a stand'!... To me, Ol' KH,  in the twilight of my life, the 'crepesculo de vida', ......that meant that we cannot just sit by and become victims.

     Yep. This is a dark story... ('surprise'!).....However...(good news)...King has layered in reassuring themes along with some very terrifying ones. He says: "It is all about the fundamental questions of what society owes the individual and what we owe to each other."

     Parallels will be drawn to today, but what happens in The Stand is catastrophically worse than anything we have seen in this COVID time now, killing more than 99% of the population.

      Aha! Survivors are drawn to the 108 year old Mother Abigail  (Whoopi Goldberg),  for she has endured the worse the world has to offer and has kept her strength and empathy intact. She has a dark and sinister counterpart, a demon named Randall Flagg. With warring tribes arising out of the ashes, it looks like the prophecy of Armageddon will be fulfilled. There is the young pregnant, 20 year old, Fran, pregnant during the time of the Pandemic. Fran is immune to the virus - but what about her baby? King, first, scares the hell out of us...sooo successfully..

     Director Benjamin Cavell, said, "It is hard to know what our world will feel like when The Stand begins its 9-episode run....... Over the years, we have sort of taken for granted the structure of Democracy..... Now, so much has been ripped 'down to the studs' - It is interesting to see a story about people who are rebuilding it ...from the ground up."

                OPTIMIST HERE!  ...(I admit, it very hard at times) - but then, we have role models, Ummm, Like John Lewis and Tony Fauci..)..
                        Today...a 'near' out of body experience:
       I have never written or posted two blogging-Articles 2-3 days apart ....However.....it was an incident early this afternoon that was the 'sudden motivator! ....I was doing pretty good this weekend ....until
    IMAGINE!, someone in your extended family, coming for short hour visit, someone you particularly like. A cordial visit: someone we have not seen for almost a year....(no political talk..),..but this peson does mention . 'The COVID 'THING' ...and then says..."I have a mask, but I don't wear it. I have it,..IF someone absolutely requires it..But so much of this is really a hoax, an 'unjustified hysteria'. (Next):.."I honestly believe the hospitals 'are lying' about how many virus cases they have...for example,..'We now 'now know' 'they are counting every hospital admission, cuts, broken arms, whatever,... 'in the COVID totals."...Florita and I just glanced at each other...(....not done!): ..."I think, ....and almost all my friends agree,... these 'so called scientists 'have so twisted and so greatly exaggerated the virus danger, it makes me sick..I never put much faith in  science anyway.".....Ta-dah!...We changed the subject. The person 'took note?'.The words 'president' or 'Trump' were never uttered once.

     I believe in Dr. Tony Fauci and, that one day there will be more 'golden sunrises', but first, in this 2020 ending, and in 2021 early...there  will be very painful memories....The 'new day' it is coming .. one of hope and aspiration, one where Black Lives finally do matter - (much more) , and the same for our Hispanic friends, an all immigrants and nationalities who buy into and respect the history of America and what it can be and will be for ALL. Prejudices... like we are seeing..never die...seems they will be here forever- We are not going to 'change them'....We just have been better than 'them'..and in control of our government, protect it always and also all of our hallowed traditional institutions: The LAW, above all.

.........I yearn for the return of law where law is respected, our institutions are respected. Where everyone is treated equally. As  country, we have our warts, our flaws - as Winston Churchill noted so famously: "..Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time..."..been tried from time.".............Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947 

          With it all, I know we will not only come out of this, (too painfully, at first..) before our US world gets much better......To quote a favorite line from a  movie: One that I sincerely hope is not the case in our world, but in 'some cases':  What was broken in there, can never be put back together!"

The Rise of Fascism in the US.

                                  The Rise of Fascism in the US
July 24, 2020

                   
          IN THIS POST...Powerful statements: These two writers:.I 'lean' on the George Will and also the Atlantic magazine....  (My view):Donald Trump is desperate.  He is developing the same tactics Fascist governments use, 'goon squads'..........Now, that the election approaching, he will stop at nothing.   All quotes, opinions from the Atlantic are stated as such.                                       Question: "Is Trump turning the US into a police state?                                                                These are members Trump 'Goon Squad' ..Trump's 'Personal, Private army, not regular Army - They have no ID. So far, NO ONE has determined exactly 'where' they all came from??? Who are they? This is America not NAZI GERMANY, 1935.

Below: "The Jews will not replace us!...Charlottesville, Va.

     George will Quote: When Reagan died in 2004, the conservative columnist George Will wrote a moving tribute to his friend, saying of America’s 40th president, “He traveled far, had a grand time all the way, and his cheerfulness was contagious.” Reagan had a “talent for happiness,” according to Will. And he added this: “Reagan in his presidential role made vivid the values, particularly hopefulness and friendliness, that give cohesion and dynamism to this continental nation.”                                      Leon Neale, Getty image below

        Increasingly, as one looks into Trump's eyes....there is a sense of his 'feeling lost', .desperate. Consistently the polls (all 8 of the 8 major polls, including FOX NEWS poll - show him losing to Joe Biden..

  (Peter Wenger, Atlantic, writer.)  ......... "Donald Trump is a sad, sick, and pathetic individual. He is psychologically broken, embittered, and a deeply unhappy man..."  

         Re: Ronald Reagan, ...on Reagan;s death in 2004: "He has since been replaced by the crudest and cruelest man ever to be president. But not just that....One senses in Donald Trump no joy, no delight, no laughter.    All the emotions that drive him are negative. ."There is something repugnant about Trump."........  yes, but there is also something quite sad about the man. He is a damaged soul."      

         When faced with almost certain defeat, ...Ken Humphrey fears Trump will turn to influencing,  or disrupting, or even CANCELLING the electon..........'Due to Anarchists! Endangering Americans citizens lives!"...Last week the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency confirmed: Russia has been heaving  working, 24/7 to compromise individual states election servers, registration files, etc.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Former Secretary of State, Brian Kemp of Ga.now 'elected governor'..essentially 'ran his own state election - As Sec'y of State, just before the election, he closed 275 voting sites in minority areas of many towns and cities. He 'ordered' purged, anywhere from 300,00 to 450,000 'questionable names' off of the voter registrations of the statee............."STACEY ABRAMS lost by far less than 2% of the vote.,,,1.70%..... due directly to Brian Kemo's FASCIST ACTIONS. She is actually the real elected governor.

     He is working with several Trump-loyal state governors to 'pare the polls down'....Void even the slightest registration anomalies, ect.       

      

             HOW CAN WE STOP TRUMP AND HIS FASCIST CRONIES FROM DIRECTLY AFFECTING, INTERFERING WITH THE 2020 ELECTION?                                                  

          I would entertain 'SUGGESTED TOPICS' for discussion...I have made my 'newSpaper' accessible so that comments can now be made - and seen by others                                         

     

                        You are invited to make a comment....BELOW.

     

          

                         The Dystopian... New World of Trump

                             July 21, 2020                  

 Definition of dystopia.: an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, ...fearful lives.   

"...Miss Offred,..listen carefully. we cannot have anarchists ruining our country You see, dear, the president will not allow that to happen. So. I think it is in your best interests to change your way of  thinking .....perhaps re-direct your sympathies..... You must yield to authority. Your job is to reproduce..for your commander, his children, Offred.        ('The Handmaid's Tale' )                                                                                                                                                           

"Never mistake a woman’s meekness for weakness.

"Every love story is a tragedy if you wait long enough."

"It's lack of love we die from."

“......In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.”.

                                                                             "The simple-minded, the unread..they want to led, to be told what to think, what to believe. Those who know no history, they're the ones we can most easily manipulate."                                                       Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism and militarism are inherently patriarchal and hierarchical. Mona Eltahawy   

 "God is love. God loves order... I am the law, love, and the order........"                                                                           ......Plus, Our agents in Portland are doing an outstanding job!" 

 

   "....There is only 'the State' now, Offred, that of our Father,... our Father Trump, our leader, and our saviour ...You must learn to accept this new order Offred, or you will  have to go to 'The Farm'.."

.  

                                                                                                        .

                                    

                                                   The Fire Next Time

This issue:  'Deep thoughts' from an angry old white Suthin'a: man...

Early 1960, James Baldwin...a gay black man wrote and published this book...'that title'! The Fire Next Time (early 1960s) - Prescient? 2020?

"...People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.."

"...The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men..."

"....The videos of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks dying have combined with the vulnerability caused by COVID-19 and the feeling that the country is broken.. 'to bring us all to the brink of madness'.. and, apparently, to the precipice of significant change. 

     An odd admixture, but an understandable consequence of our troubled times. We now face a moral reckoning: Americans have to decide whether this country will truly be a multiracial democracy or whether to merely tinker around the edges of our problems once again and remain decidedly racist and unequal.We have been here before. Martin Luther King Jr. and countless others risked everything to persuade the country to live up to its stated ideals and to rid itself of the insidious view that white people..."

)By Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Time Magazine, June 25, 2020 AM EDT.)

       The Brink of Madness - SILENCE IS.... BETRAYAL?......Hmmm?               No question here! It is uncomfortable isn't it:..'putting ourselves out there'. (Safer to stay home and rage at the television). Just remember - Just remember -silence is betrayal.

           Silence is approval, acquiescence - to evil.  'Let someone 'else' make our case? So -  We are 'letting Trump and 'his people win'..perhaps? Are we not?. 'They' are not silent are they? They are what Ken likes to call: "The Great Loud, Commanding MAJORITY of the US 'Racist Minority'. They're loud. They're racists to very core of their white black souls - but they sound like 'a majority'.                                                                                                                                                             .             America at the CROSSROADS

      Will anything we say or do..change one acist Republican's mind? NO. If anything, each and everyone of them is becoming more hardened in the angry beliefs towards Blacks, Hispanics, 'Muuuuzzlims' (down where I live the emphasis is on the Muuuuzzz..) generally, against all people of color and those 'who talk funny' - foreign accent.. ('They ain't one of us!")

  

     In the coming days, I fear these types of photos will become too commonplace each night in our news...The racial decide - 'appears'  to be greater than ever? ....Red Ants VS Black Ants. In nature, when the two cross paths? They kill each other. 

Are we seeing indication of that intense emotion-level.. 'some' of that now?..Will this 'discordant' atmosphere go away soon? I hope so. I feel otherwise.

Ernest Hemingway, a great writer, master of 'short-concise' black-white; a complex, flawed, man later in life troubled  man...as so many great writers were...Is one of my Icons:
"/Sometimes life breaks us, then - we come back stronger in the broken places"'

Putin paid large 'Bribes' to Afghan civilians, soldiers to assassinate, kill US soldiers in times of  lulled fighting. Quite a few collected...The CIA informed Trump TWICE..April, early May...in the Daily Intel briefing ..two times. ..Trump said nothing.

Every day...I think about it: "I know people who not only voted for this traitor and Troll...They still support him!

                                                    

       

       

June 14, 2020, Sunday

       Trump Moves On....
"......The myth Donald Trump is modeling....." (opinion)
Opinion by Richard Galant, ..CNN .... 4 hrs ago

Away from protests..Away from Election Process Concerns

                    TRUMP:    Provoke and Persuade

America is moving on

By Richard Galant / June 14, 2020

........King Canute got a bad rap!... The Viking chief who ruled England, Denmark and Norway in the 11th Century became infamous for a stunt that historians believe was misunderstood, if it even happened: sitting grandly in a throne at the seashore and ordering the ocean to stop the incoming waves. But the myth of the leader who tried to hold back the tide seemed to apply this week to the President of the United States.

.........George Floyd died on Memorial Day, his neck under the knee of a police officer. In the three weeks since, protests against police abuses have sparked a swift and searching national conversation about racism.

Cities and states have moved to ban chokeholds and create new safeguards against police misconduct. Companies large and small have committed to changes in the way they work, and in some cases, have replaced executives. Military leaders have spoken out forcefully against racism and shows of force against peaceful protesters. Networks canceled shows built around police as heroes. A Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, Virginia, was toppled. And NASCAR banned the Confederate flag.

"Dare we believe," asked Marcus Mabry, that this is the moment when America finally changes? "The trauma of 400 years of soul-destroying racism is not easily forgotten -- some researchers believe it is imprinted in our very DNA. And we're all too cognizant of the dashed promises of the past, from liberation to Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement. But change does come. History teaches us that. It came to South Africa. It came to the American South. Is this our moment?"

Van Jones wrote, "This sudden, mass realization -- and the multi-racial demonstrations that give it weight, life and substance -- feels like a miracle to me. As a black man, I have spent my entire life trying to convince relatively small numbers of white people to take racial injustice seriously. I have usually failed.

"Now major corporations are making my argument for me. Hundreds of thousands of white protesters are risking their lives in the middle of a pandemic to chant 'Black Lives Matter.' And I have begun to believe that -- just maybe -- the world for my two black sons might actually be a better place."

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Yet with the ground shifting all around him, Donald Trump refused to be drawn into the national mood. Instead he stuck to his "law and order" message and even tweeted that the incident of a 75-year-old protester who suffered a head injury when he was pushed by police might have been part of a setup. He seemed to want to turn back the clock to the days of his youth when social unrest enabled Republican politicians of the 1960s to gain favor with frightened white voters.

On one point though, Trump bent to criticism, rescheduling the date of his first rally since the pandemic began. He moved it from June 19, the holiday celebrating the end of slavery known as Juneteenth, to June 20 "out of respect." Commentators had questioned the original date and location of the rally -- Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Frida Ghitis wrote that Tulsa was "the site of a race massacre 99 years ago that remains one of the worst acts of racial violence in US history. In 1921, hundreds of African Americans were killed when white mobs looted and burned what had been a thriving neighborhood known as 'Black Wall Street.'"

Not buying in

As "Black Lives Matter" morphed from activist slogan to nationally recognized belief, Trump didn't buy in, wrote Dean Obeidallah. "While Trump has condemned the specific officers involved in the killing of Floyd as 'a terrible insult to police and policemen,' he refuses to address the racism embedded in the nation's criminal justice system."

Attorney General William Barr, acting Department of Homeland Security head Chad Wolf and economic adviser Larry Kudlow all disputed the existence of "systemic racism" in law enforcement. "Instead, they seem to believe in essence there are just a few bad apples," Obeidallah said. "This is stunning, given the data that makes it clear that our criminal justice system -- as a whole -- is far from color blind."

As for Trump passing along the conspiracy theory about the 75-year-old protester in Buffalo, Jill Filipovic wrote, "The President's potentially defamatory tweet deserves, like so many of his actions, swift response and condemnation. But members of his own party are so gutless and craven they deny having seen the tweet to begin with, presumably so that they might escape having to comment on it, or refuse to comment all together."

Privately, GOP officials are much more likely to express dismay at what their party's leader says and does, Washington reporters have noted. In New York Magazine, Andrew Sullivan wrote, "Trump's response to the epidemic has more plainly revealed a man utterly out of his depth in ways even his strongest supporters must now quietly understand."

Military chiefs who might be expected to share many aspects of Trump's conservative worldview have been withering in their scorn for his recent stances, as Peter Bergen observed. "It has been extraordinary to see over the past week the flood of public criticism of President Donald Trump for his handling of the protests over the death of George Floyd coming from so many of the United States' leading retired generals and admirals, including unprecedented criticism from four who have served in the post of top ranking military officer in the nation: chairman of the joint chiefs."

Ask those who know

Ask Andre McGregor if there's systemic bias in law enforcement.

Graduating from the FBI Academy was one of the proudest moments of his life. But, he wrote, "shortly after I graduated from Quantico, a cop friend in town ... proceeded to walk me through a scenario: one day, I might be off-duty at 7-Eleven or Wawa getting food when someone tried to rob the store. I will want to intervene by pulling out my gun to detain the criminal. The cashier would call 911 and somehow in the heat of the moment my description would be confused with the perpetrator's -- so much so that the local cops would show up, see me with a gun and shoot me."

His friend's advice: "If anything like that ever happened, I needed to put my gun down once I saw the red and blue lights pulling up, lie on the ground with my arms extended, let the cops handcuff me alongside the criminal, and they will sort out who I actually was later."

This, McGregor wrote, was the "the black cop version of 'the talk' to avoid getting killed by one of our own. Apparently, it wouldn't matter that I wore a badge too -- and even the gold FBI badge at that -- I should expect to be treated like the same criminals I was empowered to arrest."

Former NYPD captain and now Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams recalled participating in protests against "stop and frisk" by day and patrolling those protests at night. The key lesson for police departments, he wrote, should be to choose carefully those officers whose temperament makes them best suited for de-escalating situations that can turn violent. And taking action against abuses is vital.

"The history of complaints against Derek Chauvin before his encounter with George Floyd is a painful reminder that a failure to remove bad officers often leads to fatal outcomes," Adams wrote. "If an officer displays any form of unprovoked aggression, let alone wanton disregard for human life, they should be held accountable."

Phillip Atiba Goff, co-founder and chief executive officer of the Center for Policing Equity, wrote, "We starve the most vulnerable of services that could actually help. We eliminate social services and job training. We defund treatment for substance abuse and watch affordable housing vanish. Then we send law enforcement -- the institution that was historically charged with enforcing our explicitly racist laws, from slavery to sundown towns -- to deal with the aftermath."

For more on policing:

Errol Louis: A head-spinning period of change on policing raises key question

Kenny Irby: Police reform is possible in America

Jason C. Johnson and James A. Gagliano: Defunding the police isn't the answer

Elie Honig: Where the George Floyd case must be tried

Toppling

The George Floyd protests quickly went international, shining a light on current practices along with the legacy of imperialist history. The statue of a slave trader in Bristol, England, was toppled by protesters, as Holly Thomas noted. "A very brief examination of the characters and associations behind some of London's most famous monuments reveals how many of our history's 'warts' are not only omitted by plaques and commemorations, but echoed in the racist views and expressions of Britain's leaders today. Sir Winston Churchill -- Prime Minister Boris Johnson's hero and the country's most celebrated wartime leader -- was outspoken in his belief of white superiority."

UK historian Richard Toye, the author of several books on Churchill, wrote that the man who led his nation's fight against Nazism in World War II was indeed a racist, but the matter is complicated. "Portraying Churchill as the root of all wickedness, as some of the more extreme social media comments appear to do, is as problematic as viewing him as the single-handed savior of freedom and democracy," Toye argued. "By elevating him to a place of supreme importance -- albeit by presenting him as uniquely wicked rather than splendidly virtuous -- it reinforces Churchill's own theory of history as driven by great white men. That is a vision from which, surely, we urgently need to break free."

Not far from downtown Atlanta, Georgia, is a monument that has long been as controversial as statues of Winston Churchill became last week.

Carved into Stone Mountain are giant depictions of Confederate leaders. The project was conceived in 1914, in the midst of the Jim Crow era and with backing from members of the KKK, which as George Shepherd noted, "met on the mountain's top to burn crosses..."

"After the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in public schools in 1954, Southern states vowed a program of 'Massive Resistance.' Part of the resistance was installing more white-supremacist icons. This was when the State of Georgia purchased Stone Mountain; finished the huge carvings -- bigger than the presidents on Mount Rushmore -- of two Confederate military leaders, Stonewall Jackson and Lee, and the political leader, Jefferson Davis; and added the Confederate battle flag to Georgia's state flag."

This was "not an innocent artifact of Civil War history. Instead, they were a middle finger both to African Americans and to the federal government that was trying to end discrimination. Stone Mountain was such an evil icon that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. invoked it in his 'I have a dream' speech." It's time to erase that and other Confederate monuments, as Germany has done with the statues and public swastikas of the Nazi era, Shepherd wrote.

On Monday, Bubba Wallace Jr., the only black full-time driver on the NASCAR circuit, called for the banning of Confederate flags at car rallies, and the organization swiftly agreed. "The elevation of the Confederate flag and the corresponding raising of monuments to soldiers who should be considered war criminals betrays our nation's deepest commitments and principles," wrote Peniel Joseph.

For other perspectives on race:

Jess Row: White people are already experts on racism

Jeff Pearlman: 'Sorry' is too little and too late, Roger Goodell

Bryan Monroe: America needs white people to step up

Ana Navarro: 19 ways to fight racism

The pandemic hasn't gone away

It may have been overshadowed, but the virus that causes Covid-19 is still spreading and killing. Experts projected that anywhere from tens of thousands to more than 100,000 Americans could die in the rest of 2020. They worried that the advice to wear masks and continue social distancing to stop the spread could be ignored in the rush to reopen the economy.

Debate continues over why some nations have seen much higher mortality rates than others, Dr. Kent Sepkowitz noted. Clues may be emerging in early genetic research, he observed, but there's a danger in overemphasizing genetic factors. "A genetic predisposition can easily be mistaken as a death sentence, but in many cases, luck, exercise, and a good diet can still play a role in reducing the risk of disease," Sepkowitz wrote.

"Despite this, it's easy to imagine that the emphasis on genetics could take the heat off political leaders like President Donald Trump or Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, who have downplayed their responsibilities during this crisis. How convenient it would be for them to be able to suggest that a disastrously managed, highly lethal pandemic outbreak was actually nothing more than the result of the wrong genes in the wrong place at the wrong time."

April 22 was Jose Andrade-Garcia's 62nd birthday. It was supposed to be the day he retired from his job at a pork processing plant in Marshalltown, Iowa, where he had worked for 20 years, wrote Thomas Lake. "There should have been ice cream cake, and a big party with the grandchildren at the house in Marshalltown, but the patriarch was in Iowa City, about 100 miles away, and a Zoom call was the best anyone could do. Through the rectangular frame of her cellphone, (his daughter) Maria saw her father. He wore a white gown. His eyes were closed, his eyelids swollen. His dark hair was turning white. His face was unshaven. He had a feeding tube in his nose and a breathing tube in his mouth."

Maria had urged her dad to stay home when other workers started getting sick.

"'Yeah, I should stay home,' he said. But he kept going to work. ... She couldn't persuade her father to stay home when staying home might have saved his life." Andrade-Garcia was determined to work till his retirement day.

Election worries

Less than five months before the November election, concern mounted about states being ready for the challenge of more than 130 million Americans voting during a pandemic. Enormous lines at Georgia polling places in this week's primary were a bad sign. "Georgia was, essentially, a third-world country Tuesday," wrote Issac Bailey. "Citizens attempting to cast their votes in the state's primary had to stand in line for several hours, particularly those in areas with a higher percentage of black and brown residents. Many reasons emerged -- none acceptable."

Peter C. Goldmark Jr. and Steven L. Isenberg wrote that the threat potentially posed to the election by hacking needs to be taken more seriously than the federal government is doing and argued that a special effort by the National Governors' Association could be the answer. "If we fail to act wisely and immediately against the threat of interference in our voting, we risk vast damage to the foundations of our democracy and our ability to continue as a self-governing society," they wrote.

For more on Election 2020:

Michael D'Antonio: Time for Pence to jump ship?

James C. Moore: Trump may shoot himself in the foot with a split-city GOP convention

John Avlon: Trump drops 'socialism' tack and goes after 'defund the police'

Douglas Heye: How does a governor get sweeping approval from the opposing party?

Don't miss:

Steven A. Holmes: I love the New York Times, but what they did was wrong

Samantha Vinograd: Trump's use of unidentified security forces echoes Putin's 'little green men'

William Doyle and Pasi Sahlberg: Reopen schools with a 'golden age of play'

Paul Rieckhoff: Trump's VA is treating veterans with unproven drug

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Attacks against US journalists are a stark warning

Christopher Reddy: A dangerous leak of diesel fuel in the Arctic

AND...

Gone with the Wind

The 1939 Hollywood blockbuster "Gone with the Wind" was pulled from the new streaming service HBO Max in the wake of the George Floyd protests.

Jacqueline Stewart, who hosts "Silent Sunday Nights" on Turner Classic Movies, which, like HBO Max and CNN, is owned by WarnerMedia, wrote that "the film romanticizes slavery as a benign and benevolent institution." The highest grossing film of all time when adjusted for inflation, it leaves out most of the cruel human costs of slavery, she wrote.

"Some complained that taking the film down was a form of censorship. For others, seeing Gone With the Wind featured so prominently in HBO Max's launch felt like salt rubbed into wounds that have never been permitted to heal."

"But it is precisely because of the ongoing, painful patterns of racial injustice and disregard for Black lives that Gone with the Wind should stay in circulation and remain available for viewing, analysis and discussion."
HBO Max is planning to eventually bring back the film with Stewart offering "an introduction placing the film in its multiple historical contexts."

With books on racism dominating the bestseller lists now, she wrote, "this is an opportunity to think about what classic films can teach us ... If people are really doing their homework, we may be poised to have our most informed, honest and productive national conversations yet about Black lives on screen and off."

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