"Start panicking!"

 At 10 a.m. on Monday, October 5, 2020, Chief Justice John Roberts will mount the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States.  

Dressed in a black robe, followed by seven others dressed in black robes, he will bang his gavel, call the court to order, and issue the following proclamations:

• Abortion is now illegal.
• Roe v. Wade has been overturned.
• Gays can no longer marry.
• Transgenders no longer have job protection.
• Blacks can no longer vote.
• The South can revert back to Jim Crow.

From the way people are reacting to the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that is exactly what it going to happen.

Monday, October 5, 2020, 10 a.m. is when the new session of the Supreme Court will convene.  It will do so without Ginsburg, who died on Friday after a battle with pancreatic cancer.  Pancreatic cancer is an awful disease, and I am glad she is no longer suffering with it.  

Her death has sparked discussions about her legacy (there was a time in this country where a married woman couldn't open a bank account without her husband co-signing, for example.)  

Her death has also sparked near-panic among many in social media.

Because now, there is a new spot on the SCOTUS, and there's a rush to fill it with a conservative justice before the November elections.  

Never mind that the party rushing to fill the vacancy is the same party that insisted that a SCOTUS vacancy under Obama shouldn't be filled until after that particular upcoming election.  

The last I checked, the SCOTUS does not have the power to unilaterally grant or take away the rights that I just listed above.  Chief Justice Roberts does not have the power to bang a gavel and say that gays can't marry, for example.  

What the SCOTUS does have the power to do is to listen to a case and decide what the law is.  Granted, the SCOTUS has made some dreadful decisions in the past.  No pun intended, but the Dred Scott decision comes to mind; also, Plessy v. Ferguson.  

The SCOTUS has also responded to changing times and bad decisions with decisions that reversed previous rulings; probably Brown v. Board of Education is the most famous.  

But Brown, and Roe, and others had to follow a long process to get to the SCOTUS.

This isn't the time to panic.  If you are genuinely worried about the direction the country is going in, educate yourself, make plans to vote in November, follow the docket of the SCOTUS, and write your representatives. And if you're genuinely afraid of the direction the country is heading -- and a majority of people are afraid -- then start looking for another country to call your own.  Maybe that is the best case for some who are able to do it. 

Panic feeds on panic, and it's panic that leads to bad decisions and ultimately to mob rule.  I don't want to live under mob rule, but I fear that in these days of social media cancel culture and fake news, it may happen.

Then it may be time to start panicking.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Tina's TEOTWAWKI Journal, Day 1-3, Quarantine Edition

I haven’t done a TEOTWAWKI journal lately.

I mean, what is there to say? 

We’re in the midst of a pandemic, the response to the pandemic in the USA has been and is being mismanaged by both incompetent leadership and selfish people who refuse to wear masks and take appropriate precautions, all in the name of “my freedom” and “I refuse to live in fear”. 

Race relations in this country have sunk to a terrible low. 

And don’t get me started on the coming election.

Like probably all of us, I feel weary and burdened.  I struggle with feelings of depression, of being buried under the weight of everything going on in the world, and also being buried under the weight of dealing with everyday life.  I am grateful for the work I have and for the money I can earn.  But sometimes, carrying everything is exhausting. 

Monday, the five letters, two numbers, and hyphen that have come to define our lives hit home. 

My husband called me and said that he’d been exposed to someone at work who’d tested positive for COVID.  He was sent home immediately.  At the moment, he is quarantined in our home office.  This is Wednesday, his third day of quarantine; which is why this is Quarantine Edition, Day 1-3. 

He is showing no symptoms.  Neither am I and neither is our son.  At the time of exposure, he was wearing a mask, as was the other person, and they were both practicing social distancing.  

The odds of any of us getting sick are low.  But he is going to have to be tested in a few days.  

Since the rise of COVID numbers in my state, I’ve made sure to wear a mask when I go out and have my family wear them also.  I wash my hands.  This past Saturday, my son and I went to a gathering at our church.  It was outside, we all wore masks, and when we sat down, the chairs were six feet apart.  

Today, I had an appointment with my ear, nose, throat doctor to make sure that I was doing OK with my CPAP.  I called the office yesterday to tell them that my husband had been exposed, and when I said that my husband was quarantined in the office, that he’d worn a mask when he was at work, and had practiced social distancing, the office person said that I was at very low risk.  

When I went there today, they asked me if I wanted a COVID test, and since I was there, I decided to do it.  

They use a swab and insert it into your nose.  

A long swab. 

Inserted WAY up your nose. 

I said after it was over that that test seriously cleared out your sinuses! 

I will know the results by Friday. 

(As far as the CPAP is concerned, I’m doing okay.  I use it every time I go to bed.).

So, life in my house consists of going to necessary places and coming immediately home, wearing masks, working from home (my husband was cleared for working from home even before he was exposed; he was at the office due to problems with our WiFi.).

And I need to get my son ready to start back to his program.  And figure out what to do when his program ends in February.  (We are in the system with Vocational Rehabilitation, and there are other options available.).

This will not be an encouraging entry.  Outside events and internal issues have drained me.  Just like the vast majority of us on this earth. 

Instead of being snarky, today’s theme song reads:

It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it . . . 

And I don’t feel fine. 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Letter to the editor, but not mine . . .

On June 4, 1980, in response to the Florida Legislature's raising the legal drinking age from 18 to 19, the St. Petersburg Times published the following letter to the editor:

Tina Sergent was my name before I got married.

I did not write this letter.

In fact, the very first thing I ever heard about this letter was when a classmate of mine walked into first period and said, "I didn't know you were 18."

I wasn't.  In fact, I was 16 in June of 1980.

I don't know of anyone else named Tina Sergent who lived in St. Petersburg, Florida and who was 18 years old in 1980.  So, unless there was another Tina Sergent who wrote that letter to the editor and had it published, the only other possibility I can think of is that someone wrote that letter and signed my name to it.

My piano teacher even asked me about it, and my father's response was that probably one of my "friends" wrote it. 

Here's my question:

Why?

I may not be able to find out, after 40 years, who wrote this letter and why, but I'd like to know why.

Was this a calculated attempt to embarrass and humiliate me? 

To be honest, I would not be surprised.  I went through public school and didn't have a year where there wasn't a bully.  

This week, I proofread a harassment case.  The lawyer doing the deposition commented that there wasn't any touching involved. 


That comment reminded me of what abusers sometimes say:  "I never laid a hand on them."  "I never hit them."  "I never touched you." 


I never got in a knock-down, drag-out fight during my years in school.  I did get punched in the back one time on the bus, and I hit back twice. 


But I:  was blocked on a sidewalk and in the hallways, had my books stolen, had stuff played "keep-away" with, had my shoes thrown in the trash, was gossiped about (even was falsely accused of shooting crumbs at lunch one time), and for me, the crowning insult:  the embarrassing question.  I was shown a picture of a naked person and then asked later, did you see such and such?  I wore and Adidas shirt to school and was later asked if I went to the Adidas concert.  I had my attempts to play volleyball mocked.  I was asked, will you do my homework for me?  I was asked, can I borrow your textbook? from a person I didn't trust.  I had a boy attempt to shove a ring onto my finger.  That same person also asked me if my little sister drank milk from my breasts.  I had a group of people yell at me that the bus was coming, and when I ran, they laughed at me because the bus wasn't coming.  When they repeated that trick and I didn't fall for it, someone said, "You'd walk if the bus came, wouldn't you?" and then threw a piece of paper in my face. 

And this is not the end of it. 

So I think I can be forgiven for suspecting that that letter to the editor signed with my name was a calculated attempt to embarrass me. 

Here's what I would like to know, and may not get an answer to:

What in God's name did I ever do to you that you treated me like this? 
What did I do to you that was so horrible?
Why did you do this to me?
Why did you target me?
And why was the system around me structured so that I feared that if I fought back, I would be the person punished and the bullies would not be?



This week has not been a good week.  Like everyone in the US, I am tired of living under the chronic stress of COVID.  I am disheartened by the racial animus in this country.  (I am not referring to peaceful protests, nor am I referring to African-Americans' insistence on "we need to expose history, all of it, and we need to be heard."  One can be passionate and insistent without being hateful.)  I dislike the animus between the parties as the election draws closer.  In fact, I hold out very little hope of this country ever getting better. 

I put in a lot of energy this week into work and drained myself of so much physical energy that I took a day off on Friday because I was just sapped.  When I don't feel well physically, my mind turns absolutely black, and sadly, remembering the bullying is one place where it goes . . . and this is one question it asks. 

Why?


Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Will you still hashtag tomorrow?

"Will you still love me tomorrow?"

The Shirelles asked this question in their 1960 hit of the same name.  While they were asking about a romantic relationship, I think the question, or a variant on it, is a good one to ask.

Recently, social media celebrated "Blackout Tuesday".  People put up black squares as their avatar, passed around the hashtag #blackouttuesday, #blacklivesmatter, and other similar slogans.  (A backlash attempt, "whiteness Wednesday", backfired when K-Pop fans stormed Twitter and posted K-Pop videos with that hashtag.) 

I looked at the hashtags, and the posts, and thought, this is a good gesture, but what about tomorrow?

To call these last few weeks "convulsive" is a bit of an understatement.  We're dealing with coronavirus, a very contentious election, and now, more violence of whites against blacks, and specifically, white police officers against black suspects. 

I've heard of and seen wave after wave of protests across the country.  I know people who have participated in peaceful protests.  I have heard people say "we are sorry", "we repent," and I have heard African-Americans say, "I'm exhausted," "I'm beyond exhausted."  In our virtual lobby last Sunday, an African-American woman spoke of her feelings about recent events, and you could hear the exhaustion in her voice and see it in her demeanor. 

But people cannot march in protest forever.  No one can keep up the level of intensity that's permeated this country for the last several weeks.  Eventually, the public protests will die down and hashtags will not be trending quite as much.

What then?

What are you planning to do tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, to fight racism and other sins in our country? 

Today, the hashtag is on your Facebook and Twitter posts. 

But will you still hashtag tomorrow?

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Spiritual Echolocation

“Joy still comes in the morning.”

I heard this line in a song on my car radio this morning, while taking my husband to work.  Yes, my husband has gone back to work for the first time since March!

On the way back, I asked myself, “Joy still comes in the morning, but what do you do when the night seems so long?  When there’s no light except for the occasional teasing of the sun, like the perpetual twilight people in Alaska live in for so many months out of the year?”

These last few weeks have been some of the most convulsive our country has ever seen.  I know there have been worse times in our country’s history (Civil War comes to mind).  But these last few weeks and months?  The isolation of coronavirus turned our world upside down and inside out, and then the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd — and now, the shooting of Rayshard Brooks by an Atlanta police officer — has burst open the abscess of racism in this country. It is not a clean surgery, either.

What do you do when there is no light at the end of the tunnel, not even the headlight of an oncoming train?

Whenever you take a tour of a cave, inevitably, there is the moment when the tour guide turns off the lights so that you can “see” what it is really like underground.  If you want the definition of “ink-like blackness”, that is it.  You can see nothing but black.  There’s no light for your eye to catch or to focus on.  It is truly terrifying.  You don’t dare move, you don’t dare take one step because you have no way of knowing if you will put your feet on solid ground or go hurtling down into an abyss.

What do you do?

Bats and other creatures who live in caves, who live in that sort of darkness, use what is called echolocation.  Since they can’t see, they use sound to navigate their way in the darkness.  The sounds they make bounce off of walls and help them find their way.  Dolphins and whales also use echolocation to navigate in the ocean.   Sonar uses the same principles.

I wonder if there’s such a thing as spiritual echolocation that helps us find our way in the dark, when we can’t see the joy that will come in the morning.

When the coronavirus really started to hit, it was March, right before the beginning of spring.  I kept saying to myself, spring will come, spring always comes.  Even in the middle of coronavirus, spring will come.

Well, spring came; and now it’s only four days until the beginning of summer.  And we are still dealing with the effects of coronavirus and now we are dealing with the open abscess of racism.

But spring comes, summer comes; summer will turn into fall and fall into winter.  God promised, after Noah left the ark, that summer and winter would not cease as long as the earth endured.

Right now is a time of darkness for so many of us.  The night is long and we don’t think morning will come.  Maybe you’re there right now.  I’ve been there and probably will be there again.

Maybe now, if we can’t see, maybe now is the time to use some spiritual echolocation.  Make some noise.  Pray.  Scream if you have to.  Then wait for the sound to bounce back.  Listen.  Listen for what God might be telling you.  Maybe it’s nothing more than, I’ve got this; or, remember what I have done for you before.

Spring does come, even in the middle of a pandemic.  So does summer.  So will fall, so will winter.  Sunrise does follow sunset. Even in areas of Alaska, where there is perpetual twilight during so many months of the year, the morning does come.

Joy does come in the morning.  But while we’re waiting for morning, let’s practice some spiritual echolocation.  Because God is there for the sound waves to bounce off of.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

"Oh, hell no."

"Oh, hell no."

That was the response that one woman put on another woman's Facebook post.

C. is a Christian woman.  She's African-American, a single parent to a wonderful teenage boy.  I know them both.  

Yesterday, she wrote that someone she knew posted the following on Facebook.

"All of this could have been prevented if:

1. George Floyd would have used an actual $20 bill and not to try to pass off a counterfeit bill.

2. Gave the cigarettes back to the store when they asked for it.

I don't agree how the officers handle [sic] the situation.  I believe all of them should and have been held responsible for there [sic] actions.  They all have been arrested and charged.  There has been a lot of lives and business lost over something that could have been prevented."

C. went on to write, "I really wonder if people understand how much this hurts."  Then added:  "I am tired of the justifications ... if if if . . . He was murdered on camera over eight minutes."

J., another woman, who's white, and whom C. and I also know, wrote the following in reply:

"Oh hell no.  Y'all.  It's time to take back the church from this kind of co-opted, tone deaf, insulated Americanism.  No. No more."

Some of you that read that sentence are going to be offended at her use of the term, "Hell no."  After all, she's a follower of Jesus and she shouldn't swear, right?

I'm reminded of a quote attributed to preacher Tony Campolo: 

 "I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a $%*&. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said $%^& than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night."

We Christians, especially us white, American Christians, are very touchy when it comes to certain subjects.  We're especially touchy when it comes to sex and swearing.  We don't want to talk about sex because it might encourage kids to do it.  And we especially don't want people to swear around us because it offends us.  Not because it's offensive, but because it offends us.  There's a difference.

I am sick and tired of our white-bread, sugar-coated Christianity that emphasizes a shallow theology composed of "accept Jesus into your heart, and here's five ways to be a better Christian (man, woman, wife, husband fill-in-the-blank)."  Like the audiences Tony Campolo spoke to, we are more offended by swearing, sex, and the lack of prayer in schools than we are about poverty, racism, domestic violence, and the general poor treatment of people of people in our society.  We'd rather have our greed and our appetites filled than have any sort of care and compassion about those whose bank accounts and stomachs are empty. 

We women, especially, are encouraged to buy our pink, lace-covered Bibles with soft, breathy sayings from the current celebrity de jour of Christianity.  We're encouraged to keep a clean house and homeschool our many children and are shamed when we can't/don't.  

I don't plan to make a habit of swearing.  It is offensive and indulging in a steady diet of cuss words is a bit like eating junk food for every meal.  Lay's and Fritos taste good, but after a while, they make your body sick.  We Christians should be better than this. 

But isn't it time to lay aside our sugar coating, our white bread, our lacy pink Bibles, and confront our sin and engage in some serious repentance, on our knees and maybe on our faces?  

I don't know if George Floyd knew that the $20 bill he handed to a cashier was counterfeit or not.  (I probably would not know the difference between a real and counterfeit $20 bill.)  I've heard reports that "he was a criminal who was turning his life around".  I've also read where he had fentanyl in his system at the time of death.  I've read that he was positive for COVID-19.

Even if he had a criminal past, even if he had committed a crime, even if he was resisting arrest, does that give anyone the justification to put their knee on another person's neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds while that person is saying "I can't breathe"?

Isn't it time for us to think about how that is just one more piece of evidence that the life of a black man is not worth as much as the life of a white man?

Isn't it time for us to listen to our friends of color who are afraid to go jogging, afraid to wear a mask to the store, afraid that their teenage sons might be stopped by the police on suspicion of fill-in-the-blank and possibly shot even though they obeyed orders? (See Philandro Castile.)

Isn't it time to think about how what we post on social media will affect our Christian brothers and sisters of color?

Isn't it time to stand up and say, "Oh, hell no!"

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Breaking the Third Commandment

Last night the President of the United States broke the Third Commandment.

He walked over to a church, after protesters in front of it had been tear-gassed, held up a Bible, and had his picture taken, after threatening to send out “thousands and thousands of troops” to stop the violence currently taking over America if the governors did not do it themselves.

If you look up a list of the Ten Commandments in the book of Exodus in the Old Testament, the Third Commandment reads, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” (King James Version).  The New International Version reads, “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.”

Last night, in using the Bible and a church for a photo op, the President of the United States took two symbols of Christian America and misused them for his own purposes.  

There are people who have called him “brave” and said “well done”.  

No.  This is not well done.  

Trump used St. John’s Episcopal Church as a backdrop for his photo op.  The Right Reve. Mariann Buddy, who is the bishop of Washington, D.C.’s Episcopal Diocese, said she was “not given even a courtesy call that they would be clearing with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop, holding a Bible, one that declares that God is love and when everything he has said and done is to enslave violence.”

Earlier, Trump told governors on a conference call that they had to “dominate”, and take back the streets, and called them “weak”.

We have a man who died at the hands of police a week ago.  We have another man who died at the hands of two white men three months ago, and it took two months for video of that murder to emerge.    We have a woman who died at the hands of police who “went to the wrong house.” (Oops.). In case you have forgotten, their names are George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor.  

I know of two African-Americans — people I am personally acquainted with — who are afraid to go jogging in their neighborhoods, who are afraid to wear masks when they go out.  Another African-American whom I know personally has said, I don’t want to die.  I just want to go home to my wife.

And our President has the chutzpah to go to a church and hold up a Bible, after demanding that governors “take back the streets” and threatening to send out “thousands and thousands of troops”.  

President Trump, do you want a second Civil War?

Do you?

We Christians get very touchy at the use of certain language.  We should.  I find certain words offensive and I don’t like my ears and my brain being assaulted with them.  

But something is terribly wrong when Christians are quick to scream about a particular word which takes the name of the Lord in vain, quick to demand prayer back in schools and the Ten Commandments posted on the walls, quick to demand that abortion be outlawed . . . and yet see nothing wrong when a President of the United States misuses the name of the Lord by using a church and a Bible to make himself look strong, tough, and Presidential.

We, indeed, have lost our compass.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.