How we lived back then...

 Our ancestors, that is.

Model of home in settlement of Çatal Hüyük; (from Turkish çatal "fork" + höyük "tumulus") It is a tell (a mounded accretion resulting from long-term human settlement) of a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7500 BC to 5600 BC and flourished around 7000 BC, Turkey (Thanks Wikipedia)

See a post earlier about Archaeology, one of my interests! 

Clay goddess figurine from the Early Chalcolithic period ca 5000-4500 BC, found at the archaeological site of Durankulak, Bulgaria.

It's interesting to see what has been made of clay, stone and bone. Fiber arts, even clothes of skins, unfortunately just don't survive through  the ages.

The Columbus Hypocrisy (and all Western European explorers/invaders).

Justice is often difficult to find.

But just look at all your ancestors!

You do the math...we're all related!

To seek understanding before taking action, yet to trust my instincts when action is called for. Never to avoid danger from fear, never to seek out danger for its own sake. Never to conform to fashion from fear of eccentricity, never to be eccentric from fear of conformity. 

-Steven Brust, novelist (b. 23 Nov 1955)

Arundhati Roy once said, “There’s no voiceless, there’s only the deliberately silenced, you know, or the purposely unheard.”

A voice - Maybe the Angry Women - 11

by Fine Art Photograph Mathilde Oscar, Le Cri

"Having the right to show up and speak are basic to survival, to dignity, and to liberty. I’m grateful that, after an early life of being silenced, sometimes violently, I grew up to have a voice, circumstances that will always bind me to the rights of the voiceless."

Your credibility arises in part from how your society perceives people like you, and we have seen over and over again that no matter how credible some women are by supposedly objective standards reinforced by evidence and witnesses and well-documented patterns, they will not be believed by people committed to protecting men and their privileges. The very definition of women under patriarchy is designed to justify inequality, including inequality of credibility.

To have a voice means not just the animal capacity to utter sounds but the ability to participate fully in the conversations that shape your society, your relations to others, and your own life. There are three key things that matter in having a voice: audibility, credibility, and consequence.

Audibility means that you can be heard, that you have not been pressed into silence or kept out of the arenas in which you can speak or write (or denied the education to do so—or, in the age of social media, harassed and threatened and driven off the platform, as so many have).

Credibility means that when you get into those arenas, people are willing to believe you, by which I don’t mean that women never lie, but that stories should be measured on their own terms and context, rather than patriarchy’s insistence that women are categorically unqualified to speak, emotional rather than rational, vindictive, incoherent, delusional, manipulative, unfit to be heeded—those things often shouted over a woman in the process of saying something challenging (though now death threats are used as a shortcut, and some of those threats are carried out, notably with women who leave their abusers, because silencing can be conversational or it can be premeditated murder).

To be a person of consequence is to matter. If you matter, you have rights, and your words serve those rights and give you the power to bear witness, make agreements, set boundaries. If you have consequence, your words possess the authority to determine what does and does not happen to you, the power that underlies the concept of consent as part of equality and self-determination.

Sexual assault can only thrive in situations of unequal audibility, credibility, and consequence. This, far more than any other disparity, is the precondition for epidemic gender violence.

Excerpts from Meditations in an Emergency by  Rebecca Solnit

My vase with four depictions of life as I see it. Here the demonstrations against the power-mongers.

"Americans are coming together over a shared fear. We know people living in fear. A higher percentage of people know the fear around what will happen to their children, their parents, their friends. We live in fear of being hurt while helping others. We live in fear of having more rights taken away. We live in fear of billionaires dictating our lives thinking they have our backs when what they do well is acquire money, sometimes ours, to do with what they will.

Those that feel powerless are watching the powerful. The powerful listen to each other. The tide will continue to turn as the powerless feel more disconnected and less in control of what their lives could be like.

The powerful won’t listen until they feel powerless.

Keith Kron

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Thanks to posts on the internet, which I'm re-sharing here!

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Lee Steadman from Minneapolis posted this on his FB page as of 2.13.26 at noon:

"ICE Activity continues to be high. Despite what Tim Walz, Tom Homan and National Media are reporting, the reality is that things on the ground in Minneapolis, Saint Paul, the surrounding suburbs and counties across Minnesota continue to see heavy ICE prescense, (sic.) abductions, staging at mobile homes, targeting schools, new tactics being implemented...

We are not in a drawback. Do not believe the headlines."

He gives an audio interview where he lists abductions and where ICE activities were happening as of Thursday.

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This last week:

Grand jury fails to indict Democratic lawmakers who urged service members to disobey any illegal orders from President Trump. https://cnn.it/4apwQ6u

Maybe the Angry Women - 6

This post was composed in late December. As of Jan 7th, the relationship of ICE to the protestors changed dramatically so I'm including it here, as well as some updates.

 This latest incredible event of Renee Nicole Good's murder is shocking, and will be of ongoing concern for many of us.

"A parking lot just exposed ICE’s biggest weakness — and reminded us what real community care looks like. In Takoma Park, Maryland, people started noticing a pattern. The same unmarked vehicles idling for hours. No badges. No explanations. Just the low-grade fear that comes when enforcement hides in plain sight.

So residents did the most disruptive thing imaginable: they showed up for each other.

Every day, neighbors began occupying that parking lot. Not with threats or confrontation, but with presence. Coffee. Conversation. Music. Knitting needles.

The goal wasn’t to provoke ICE — it was to deny them the conditions they depend on: silence, isolation, and invisibility. When a space fills with people who care, fear stops working

This wasn’t a stunt. Montgomery County is more than one-third foreign-born. Parents walk kids to school wondering who might not come home. Workers worry about routine errands turning into life-altering encounters.

By occupying the lot daily, residents created a zone of watchfulness and care. According to organizers, once the gatherings became routine, the suspected ICE vehicles stopped using that location altogether

When people refuse to look away, enforcement built on intimidation starts to fail.

What makes Takoma Park matter is that it’s not an exception. It’s part of something spreading. Across the country, everyday people are stepping in where systems have abdicated responsibility.

Neighbors escort immigrants to court so no one walks in alone. Volunteers monitor and document ICE activity. Communities flood hotlines when unmarked vans appear.

Jurors push back against prosecutions tied to immigration crackdowns. Judges are limiting courthouse arrests. None of this is coordinated from the top. It’s happening because people are choosing to protect one another.

ICE’s strategy depends on people being separated — by language, by legal status, by fear. What these communities are doing is stitching those divisions shut. They’re saying: if you threaten one of us, you’ll have to face all of us. And you won’t get to do it quietly.

Takoma Park didn’t wait for permission or a press conference. No injunction told them to act. No politician led the way. A neighbor made a Facebook post. Others showed up. And then they kept showing up.

That’s the part power doesn’t know how to handle — care that’s persistent, public, and shared.

A parking lot isn’t supposed to matter. But when a community decides it’s a place where neighbors keep neighbors safe, it becomes something else entirely."

Published Dec 27, 2025 by The Other 98% on FB

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Current events this week demand that we also acknowledge the murder of Renee Nicole Good by ICE!

One description said Renee Good was a trained "legal observer." That isn't an accident; it's a choice. She and her wife Jillian Good were leftist activists there to disrupt ICE, though her mother says she was just going home from dropping her son at school. The truth will eventually be discovered.

Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who killed a US citizen Jan 7, 2026. There is not enough  legal effort going  on to examine his actions at this time.

SOURCE: Facebook posts

 I saw many photos on FB from people in Minneapolis Wednesday and Thursday being in their streets. And their schools were canceled Thursday and Friday to protect the children and staff.

 Facts. No AI about it.

Life. Death. Justice!

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Here are some demonstrations that were posted on social media:

The "Say Her Name" meme is kind of owned by Women of Color. But Renee Good's name needs to be spoken these days! 

Asheville, NC

Asheville NC

Clintonville neighborhood, Columbus OH and next 4 photos

My family took part in the demonstration Jan 10, 2026

As I keep stoking the fires of women's anger, I'm reminded that this is the emotion which brings us to action. Of course men can also be angry, but our society has options for men which seem more acceptable than for women. Not going to argue that, because it's a great source of inter-gender discussions.

But anger is needed so much these days, to cause our government to back off, to stop the lying and abuses, and to get those we've elected in congress to actually do their jobs!

People power is what I'm relying upon. The laws that are meant to protect us, to guide our leaders, are being ignored daily. And the penalties for those infractions are not being prosecuted!

Any agreement which is broken must have repercussions. If there are no enforcers, or enforcement, then it's up to the people. Justice demands it.

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In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Artemis is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, transitions, nature, vegetation, childbirth, care of children, and chastity. In later times, she was identified with Selene, the personification of the Moon. She was often said to roam the forests and mountains, attended by her entourage of nymphs. The goddess Diana is her Roman equivalent.

Artemis - The Louvre

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Uniformity is not nature’s way; diversity is nature’s way.

VANDANA SHIVA

Maybe the Angry Women - 4

 Considering women's rights to their own bodies!

Considering a woman elected president and having to live in hiding from a dictator who would not leave office. Maria Corina Machado. Then she won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025...and how to collect it (see below)

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'She's awesome': How U.S. veterans helped Venezuela's Machado escape
December 12, 2025 5:33 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — It's an extraordinary achievement to win the Nobel Peace Prize. But for this year's laureate, even getting to the ceremony was a feat of its own.

María Corina Machado spent more than a year in hiding after her opposition movement defeated Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in last year's election by a wide margin, according to voting records validated by international observers. Maduro refused to leave office and ordered a massive crackdown on the opposition.

Getting Machado out of Venezuela and safely to Oslo required an operation worthy of a thriller. At the center of that mission was U.S. Special Forces Veteran Bryan Stern, the bearded, broad-shouldered founder of Grey Bull Rescue Foundation. Stern and his team of U.S. military veterans have pulled off hundreds of extractions around the world. But this one, he says, was different.

She's the second most popular person in the Western Hemisphere after Maduro," he said." Because of that signature, that's what made this operation very hard."

Stern and his team had only a week to plan Machado's escape, a mission they called Operation Golden Dynamite — a nod to Alfred Nobel, the Peace Prize founder who also invented dynamite.

A land route was ruled out — too many checkpoints where she'd be recognized. So, they decided to move by sea.

But they had to be careful. The U.S. military has built up a significant presence off Venezuela's coast, destroying nearly two dozen alleged narco-trafficking boats in recent months, killing at least 87 people. Stern wouldn't discuss details, but says he coordinated with U.S. officials who were aware they'd be operating in the area.

He was careful to avoid using a boat that could turn into a target. "I didn't want a big giant boat with big engines that could go fast and cut through waves," he said. "That's what the narcos use — and the U.S. military likes to blow them up."

Then their plan hit another snag: Ms. Machado's boat never arrived at the predetermined rendezvous point in the Caribbean Sea. 

"We were supposed to meet in the middle, but when that couldn't happen, we pivoted and went to them," Stern said.

In pitch darkness, with 10-foot waves smashing the sides of both boats and only flashlights to guide them, nerves frayed. Each crew worried the other could be cartel members, government agents, or worse.

"I could be Maduro's guys, I could be cartel guys — anything really," Stern said. "Everyone is skittish approaching each other in the dead of night at sea. In 10-foot waves? This is scary stuff."

Finally, once they were close enough to hear one another, a voice cut across the water.

"It's me — María!"

Stern hauled her aboard. With the wind at their backs, the final leg to a Caribbean island — which he declined to name, but is widely reported to be Curaçao — was mercifully smooth. A private plane was waiting to take her the rest of the way to Oslo.

Stern says Machado was tougher than the crusty veterans helping her escape.
"We're all bitching and moaning — it's cold, it's wet, we're hungry, it's dark," he said. "She didn't complain once."

Stern admits he was a bit star struck by Machado. He'd followed her fight for democratic change for years. He'd always assumed Venezuela's "Iron Lady" got her nickname from her political steeliness. But after that night, he says it's something more.

"She's gnarly," he said, laughing. "Pretty awesome."

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Reuters published on Dec 11, 2025: Venezuela's Maria Corina Machado has arrived in Oslo just hours after the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony — defying a decade-long travel ban after spending more than a year in hiding.

This year's peace laureate Maria Corina Machado has been forced to live in hiding. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela.

Here she finally stands next to Jørgen Watne Frydnes, Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, with her Nobel Prize diploma and medal.

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I noticed many negative, uninformed and just stupid comments on the FB posts that I have read following these two postings. When some of them at least asked questions, like who is she? and why did she win? I do hope they make the effort to search for the answers!

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Did you see her speaking on the correct YouTube video? My link seemed to go elsewhere. But this goes to a newscast which includes her at the Prize Ceremony.

I must wonder if her win of the election and becoming Presidente' de Venuzuela in actuality might have changed the way the US (Trump and Hegseth particularly) are acting towards it today.

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'Whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise,' they are all comprised in this one word, love."

and...

"Do all the good you can,

By all the means you can,

In all the ways you can,

In all the places you can,

At all the times you can,

To all the people you can,

As long as you ever can."

John Wesley, born 1703, father of Methodism.

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Angie Buchanan

6.24.22

"No more civility. No more being polite. No more trying to get along, no more attempts to understand a different point of view. No more tolerance. The filters are out, the gloves are off. I am feral, unhinged. I will not be legislated by your religious doctrine. I'm not even trying anymore, Your way hasn't worked. Let's try mine.

Art: Circe Invidiosa by John William Waterhouse In case you don't know the story - she's poisoning the waters - turning her offenders into monsters.

This witch don't mess around."

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These posts came about after the 2022 Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and started the domino effect of many states declaring abortions illegal. Women (and a lot of feminist men) were outraged. Some who were pregnant died.

The Goddess Kali in Tampaksiring Indonesia

Kali destroys those who are evil-doers, collects the garbage of humanity.