UPDATED March 25th:
We elders, at risk, missing part of a lung (I am all of the above), should not have to look for toilet paper any more. This is more than just the Koch Brothers and Angel Soft stepping up. Enough is enough. We need the services. Going back to the store every few days to search for toilet paper is crazy. Counties or stores need to sort and organize something.
“…New Jersey has already invoked its own version of the laws by charging a man with making a terroristic threat by coughing on a supermarket employee and claiming he was infected with the virus. Authorities in Illinois, Missouri, and Pennsylvania reported similar offenses…”
I wrote to Angel Soft. They have been distributing toilet paper to worthy recipients. That is wonderful – they need to add some worthy recipients to their list. I wrote:
“…OK, I guess there are many places where all the toilet paper went to. This is one very worthy recipient. I also see posts by you about your employees that we all support. But I think I would like you to tell us where all the toilet paper went. We learned with the masks, after pointing fingers at consumers that the AG of the US tells us the issue is people who were sitting on warehouses of the masks. Is that what happened to toilet paper, paper towels, napkins, tissues? Are the states also stocking up? The national guard? What about the high risk groups? No, we in the high risk groups have to just search? It is ironic, all non-essential businesses are closed, people are off the streets, but there are seniors, missing parts of lungs looking for toilet paper. Pictures from around the world of those shopping for essentials wearing masks. But no masks for Americans. Uber drivers with no masks told to work until they are sick. Is that ‘are sick’ or ‘look sick’? And cashiers with no masks, checkout customers with no masks. People back every couple of days but no toilet paper…”
What don’t they own? At times I have read that this group or that group has tried to boycott the Koch brothers. It won’t do any good. But as the glass-is-half-empty-people get more and more angry, we learn that long lines are forming in front of some gun stores in California. It is a lot more than toilet paper that people are stocking up on.
A news report said some guy pulled a knife on another over toilet paper in Costco. Gave me pause for thought as I heard there will be drive-through testing centers. So how will that work in open carry states? And when the first vaccines arrive, who will be first in line then? The health care workers, some my cousins, who deny this is a crisis have made it much more terrifying. One patient after another has been pooh-poohed in the ER and sent away, shamed for falling for a “hoax.” How many were sent back into the community after leaving their ERs and doctors’ offices filthy with viral cooties? The man is Rome, Georgia was fortunate.
My half-sister is dead. Robin Anne is dead. I heard my aunt once talk about her and I was astonished. Our aunt thought she was a bad and unruly girl. Her school assistant principal found me in 1980-81 maybe it was. Robin gave them my number. He described meetings he had with her parents. He had been my assistant principal a decade before and he said the same then with me, “we will help you get away from them.”
I wish my sister had gotten away. They tell me she… She had not even had a way to call me. Cut off from everyone with mean ass people. She got to be the scapegoat for misfortune.
But for a while she had tried to fight back and at times when I feel threatened, I use her words and her speech to make my shield. She could curse like a sailor and she had girl globes made of stainless steel.
When she was pregnant with her first, she and that man let their female friend stay because she had broken up with her boyfriend and she had no place to go. Now a couple months later and Robin Anne was about 7 to 8 months; her man and the friend came in of the evening and told her how things were going to be.
They explained that they were in love and were going to get married. They were going to let her continue to live there until his baby was born, and then they were going to keep the baby and she could leave. Then my sister said, “Sure.”
Robin Anne described how she went into the bedroom and got the double barreled shotgun and loaded it. She put a handful of shells in her pocket, and two more shells in her mouth, ready for reload. She walked into the living room, cocked the shotgun and shot the first shell into the ceiling. Then pointing the gun at the two of them cozy on the couch, she asked, “What did you say?”
She told them both to get the F-bomb out, which they did falling all over themselves. Apparently he got out the door first not helping his girlfriend get up after tripping. I have a story of another Alabama jerk who stepped on my fingers running over me to run from my father once, but that is another story.
Soon after the state trooper who lived across the street yelled out, “Robin Anne, Robin Anne, now you come out of there we got to book you.”
People are angry and frightened and with good reason, Robin Anne certainly had every reason to be angry and very afraid, but we need to help each other. If I hear one more person say this is a hoax, I will have a stroke. I see the glass as half full but the world has all kinds and we have to live with the naysayers.
I don’t want to die fighting over toilet paper so the Koch brother need to step up. They own…
Soft ‘n Gentle, Northern, Quilted Northern, Angel Soft, and Brawny and that is just some of the paper. People give Koch a lot of money – pay some back brothers
They could have sent disposables everywhere, anywhere in the snap of a finger. Still could. So we are left to curse each other and hope the supply chains do not fail.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said we will all loose someone we know of, someone we love, before their time. We lost Robin Anne a long time ago, but her legacy lives to now. Maybe we think of those around us and their and our legacies. Some of us will not be strong enough to fight this. Some of us are tired. Some of us will do what public health warns against. Some will help the virus and spread the virus. Some will be suicidal like Robin and want to be the first to go. We have many people, family, friends and neighbors to see after – even if they do not call.
It is these times when I do not want to be as strong as I think I need to be, that I draw on the hope my late sister had for her own capabilities and strength. She looked and acted and sounded tough. I can mimic her and plod on.
But she was never tough. None of us are. We need to respect each others soft underbelly and be kind.
I had music for blogs for many of my stories – this certainly needs and has one.
In the great flu of 1918, the records of some people were lost. People will need memorials, this is a great time to sign up to enjoy findagrave.com it is free.
They have an amazing feature where you can make, on your profile page, “virtual cemeteries.” Then you can search their database – for free and search for your people, then you can save them to your virtual cemeteries. (I have a cemetery for my paternal side and one for my maternal side).
Here is Robin Anne and you can see on her page that I made the memorial at the bottom. When you click that you see my profiles and then you can click and see my virtual cemeteries. We have lots of time being isolated and so this might be an amazing thing to discover.
And since it is free you can add your own people. And you will see that you can link people to children and parents.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/31121330/robin-anne-glover
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Abraham Lincoln
Cherie Lynn's Herstory 