Update about blog

At the La Plata County offices in Durango CO

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Cute kittens and politics!

Some political notes from Jess Craven's Extra! Extra! post on Chop Wood, Carry Water for this week. (The environmental concerns mentioned there will be shared in another post of mine.)



On Saturday, across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., we came together across nearly 3,000 events for No Kings: Vote Early – the largest single-day early voting activation in American history.

In a win for democracy, a judge ruled the Trump administration must stop buying and airing taxpayer-funded ads featuring Trump for the midterms.

Hundreds of North Carolina A&T students marched an hour each way to early voting, because their on-campus polling site had been removed by the election board.

The Chicks brought James Talarico out on stage during one of their concerts this week! Oh, also the “Friday Night Lights” cast made a video for him.

The number of Nashvillians casting a ballot on the first day of early voting has risen nearly 1400% compared to the last midterm election in 2022.

Bernie Sanders and Angie Nixon spent the weekend holding rallies with massive crowds all over Florida.

As voters start casting their ballots, many of the seats the GOP hoped to flip are trending blue in spite of the White House push to rig the maps.

A GOP ad buyer mixed up Portlands, buying ads for Senator Collins in Oregon instead of Maine.

Georgians came to the polls in droves on the first day of early voting, breaking the midterm election early voting record with more than 188,600 ballots cast, an increase of more than 53,000 voters over the 2022 midterm election.

Mike Rounds, a Senate Republican running for re-election in ruby-red South Dakota, has joined a growing number of candidates putting distance between themselves and Trump by scrubbing mentions of the president from his website.

Senator Chris Murphy has promised to investigate Meta’s suppression of the No Kings account on Saturday.

Don Bolduc (R), the Trump-endorsed Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in 2022, is leading a group of GOP figures and prominent independents backing Democratic Senate candidate Chris Pappas in New Hampshire.

James Talarico announced he raised $64 million last quarter, with 97% of his contributions being $100 or less. Sen. Ossoff announced raising more than $33 million last quarter. Just like Talarico, 97% of these donations were $100 or less. NC’s Roy Cooper said his campaign raised $19.5 million last quarter. More than 95% of his donations were $100 or less. Talk about people power!

In a major ruling, a federal judge struck down the Trump administration’s nationwide voter roll campaign, delivering a damaging blow to the DOJ’s effort to obtain states’ unredacted voter rolls.

Political funding groups associated with Trump abandoned a pair of endangered Republican incumbents, GOP Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks in Iowa and Tom Kean Jr. in New Jersey, all but conceding their races are lost.

A Georgia appeals court allowed Gwinnett County's pro-voting policy permitting voters to hand-deliver mail-in ballots at early voting sites without drop boxes to stand before the midterms.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sent $1 million to Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed to boost his chances in Michigan’s Senate race.

Rep. Angie Craig campaigned for Peggy Flangan this weekend after losing to her in a bruising Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.

According to a new poll, 80% of voters want either complete and total upheaval or substantial change in how the country is run.

Cook shifted eleven more House races toward Democrats. All of them were in Midwestern red states.

Democrats are running up lopsided majorities of the early votes as Americans head to the polls and mail in their ballots, carving out a clear majority of the votes cast so far.

Nearly 2 in 3 Americans say Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself — and most of the increase over the past year has come from people who lean Republican.

A new NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll finds President Trump’s approval at 34%, while 66% disapprove — a new low in this poll.

According to a Texas political insider, Texas Republicans are “freaking out” about the midterms.

A federal judge dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit against New York City over city policies that limit the extent to which local law enforcement can cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

In North Carolina, Democratic early vote turnout is up 66% from the same point in 2022. Wow!

Abdul el-Sayed gave a master class in defanging (and humiliating) a troll today. A Christian Nationalist named Tommy—a paid plant sent by Michigan Republicans—went to an Abdul el-Sayed Town Hall to try to create a viral “gotcha” moment. Instead, El-Sayed schooled him brilliantly and the moment went viral because it made Tommy look like an idiot. (Seriously. Watch the video.) https://substack.com/@jesscraven101/note/c-363851562?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=160ms

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The No Kings Facebook page posted this:

Meta Suspended a No Kings account during a Historic Day of Action.
The account was restored, but organizers were locked out for hours. This is why we can’t rely on corporate social media platforms to connect us.
Meta claimed that an automated system mistakenly suspended the account due to high activity.
Don't let Meta decide what you see.
Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are all owned by Meta.
Building communities exclusively on these platforms leaves us vulnerable.
We encourage everyone to follow us on platforms outside of Meta.
Our ability to organize shouldn't depend on decisions of billionaires.


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The League of Women Voters posted this:
Today, our partner, No Kings Coalition, reported that Meta took down its Instagram account during the coalition’s nationwide #NoKingsVoteEarly day of action. It took hours for access to be restored, which was only due to the massive outcry on social media.



Fort Myers, FL

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More photos as I see them...lots of people are sharing them to another newsletter I receive daily: 

roberthubbell@substack DOT com


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When we are open to beauty, it is more likely to appear to us. When we share that gift by pointing it out to others, we find we have even more of it to celebrate.

Trebbe Johnson

Monday, October 19, 2026

Taking flight

 



Two favorites of mine...Pan Am and Peter Max








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If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.

ROBIN WALL KIMMERER




Sunday, October 18, 2026

Healing!!

 Halleluiah! 

Woke up and put drops in my eyes at first light.

Blotted the extra which leaked out. Put on my glasses...

I can see out of my left eye again! Focus works with the glasses. I was looking at the temperature of 34 degrees F on my phone. I blinked. Yep. There were the clear details.

Just so grateful! Drops and warm compresses worked.

Any good wishes from friends certainly didn't hurt! 

SO I'm off to read blogs, drink my Americano, and get ready to go to church.

Just wanted to share the good news. Somehow I think there will be lots more good news coming along in the next month or so.



Several Ute Reservations are near my new stomping grounds.


No Kings demonstration yesterday in Asheville NC...my former stomping grounds.


Saturday, October 17, 2026

Not the eyes!!

WARNING: some people might be uncomfortable with images of my eye close-up.

There is not a stye on my left eye. It's something else, which I can't pronounce, nor spell.

I realized Thursday night that I couldn't focus my left eye. I'd been treating it with an antibiotic ointment for a supposed stye for 6 days. Before seeing the doctor who prescribed it, I'd been uncomfortable with it for at least a week. But I could see out of it, except right after using the ointment.

I also used a warm compress about 4-6 times a day. And my vision would return to normal, needing glasses to read, but fuzzy otherwise. Thursday I found it was fuzzy no matter what. I stopped the ointment!

It was 5:30 so too late to talk to any medical personnel about it at my doc's office. I wasn't happy, but tried not to freak out (sorry, you know I'm a former hippy.)

Actually I had had the redness and itchy feelings since the day I went to the Fiber Festival and kissed the lama. I'm glad I didn't let it stop me from doing that. And I was glad that I already had had the appointment the next week to see my primary care doctor. 

So Friday morning (yesterday) as soon as the office opened at 8 am, I made the call. Left a message about all of the above. An hour later someone called and said I could get in to see their new Nurse Practitioner. I've had good care in the past from NP's and said I've be there at 10 am.

She has a wonderful name (I love thinking of the parents who chose it!) Renaissance! She found that since I had no pain, nor any discharge from the two little spots on my lower eyelid that it was...(I'm looking it up...) chalazions (or chelezions.) That was a new one to me. She said an eye doctor would have to use a needle to remove the two little red spots.

Ouch! But they did find an optometrist that had an opening in an hour...so I drove right there. I liked that I already needed a local optometrist, and this set me up with one to keep my glasses prescriptions up to date. I was tested, the inside of my eye was photographed, and nothing wrong was found that was causing the fuzzy vision in just that eye (other one working normal still!)

The spots are the floaters in my eye, with the bright center connecting to my brain, and the dark area to the right of it being the macula, which she said looks normal.


I also enjoyed the art that they'd decorated the office with!

In the waiting room.


In the exam room...


Well, you might already know that I'm a visual person. All my life I've learned about seeing more, differently, with all the possible ways that artists learn. So my vision is how I learn about the world around me. (You can say Duh! about now, having seen so many photos here on my blogs!)

Having the next two weeks of treatment for supposedly just dry eyes...I'm hoping the fuzzy left eye resolves, as well as the "chalazions." If that doesn't solve it, she would refer me to an opthamologist...because she doesn't do the needle thing. OK. I'll see her in 2 weeks and we'll go from there.

A friend also has one eye that isn't working properly (her right one!) and is wearing an eyepatch. We both have lousy depth perception with only one good eye. We laughed at how hard it is to get toothpaste on the toothbrush! 

The number of specialists who are helping with my strange and wonderful old body continues to increase. At least I can still drive, very carefully, leaving lots of space between my car and the one in front of me. I don't want a toothpaste episode. Of course I'm putting the driver's license on hold for now!

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In other wonderful news...I got my ballot yesterday in the mail!

Now to fill it out for hopefully the best candidates. And deposit it in the drop box near the Fairgrounds.

I'm very pleased to hear the early voting results!

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Sometimes there is an opening
 in what you call time. That’s when you hear the voices
 from long before your own silken life of a soul was born.
— Linda Hogan