Housekeeping

Don't worry, I'm not going to give you tips on dusting or vacuuming. Those definitely won't be coming from me! I've got a couple of blog housekeeping things that I wanted to be sure and mention.

First, thank you all so very much for your support and uplifting comments last Friday. I felt incredibly buoyed up by all the positive thoughts from all of you, and I'm very grateful. We live in dark days with some amazing bright spots, and this community of knitting bloggers and readers is one of the brightest and most positive spots in my life. 

I would also like to apologize for whining about what, in retrospect, was a relatively minor incident in which only my feelings got hurt. I'm a middle-aged, white, female, US citizen, not a promising Iranian student now banned from entering the US to pursue her PhD despite having a valid visa, nor one of the 65 DACA students halfway through medical school, but fearing certain deportation when the DACA program is surely ended. I'm not the Egyptian woman who works with my husband, now questioning whether she should return to her birth country, along with her US-born children to avoid being deported and separated from them because the application for her green card is at a dead end. I thank every one of you for your support, and for the support I am sure you are giving to everyone that needs it in these dark days.

In addition, I've now got quite a few ways to take constructive action.

• joined an email group in order to share small, productive actions to resist Trump.
• joined a local county-wide "Action Together" group
• downloaded the Indivisible Guide
• written postcards for The Women's March on Washington 10 Actions/100 Days First Action
• signed up for the Weekly Action Checklist for Democrats, Independents, and Republicans of conscience
• made daily phone calls to my representatives to voice my objections to Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education and Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. The 65 has great scripts for over a dozen issues that you can use when making calls. I used the one provided for Sessions, and plan on using the one for immigration this week.

It looks like a long list, but much of it is informational. The actions haven't taken nearly as much time as I initially thought. I put my senators' contact info. in my phone (their local office numbers, their DC office numbers, and their addresses), and that makes daily phone calls easy. While Cory Booker makes it tough to get through to an actual person, he does have a voice mailbox and it's never been full when I've called. The staffers that I've spoken to have all been pleasant and assured me that the senators get a full report each day of the number of calls received and the issues that we, their constituents, are calling about. Twenty minutes every day and another ten for postcards written on the weekend is time that I am finding worthwhile for productive resistance.

And look, I even knit most of a Pussyhat while I was on the phone this week!

My last bit of housekeeping is related to comments. I try to respond to every comment by email, but depending on how you sign in to comment, blogger doesn't always provide me with your email address. I've been trying to reply directly to your comment in the blog if I don't have your email, but that means you would have to look back at old comments to see a reply. This is my long-winded way of saying that I appreciate the time that each and every one of you has taken to read and possibly comment, whether I have been able to reply to you or not. You are always welcome to contact me (upper right, under the picture of the pi/e dish).

Once again, I offer my sincere gratitude. You've given me the fortitude for another week of phone calls and maybe another Pussyhat!