WHEN LIGHTNING STRIKES

I was having a conversation with a coworker friend and he was telling me about playing Trivial Pursuit recently and discovering that lightning can heat the air around it as it strikes to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s five times hotter than the surface of the sun. First I wondered how close you can get to the sun before you evaporate into nothing. Like, how close did Icarus get before his wings caught fire? Then I wondered about all the stories I’d heard of people surviving lightning strikes, some of them multiple times.

The Weather Channel website keeps a list of lightning strike survivors along with a link to Lightning Strike and Electric Shock Survivors, International (LSESSI), a support group for survivors. The list on the Weather Channel is a spreadsheet of names, location of strike and medical impacts. I scrolled through the list, reading the various medical impacts of lightning strikes. Burns and fractures seem to be a common medical impact. Someone on the list had to relearn how to read and write. Heart problems, ringing ears, memory loss. A couple of people experienced no side effects at all, which I feel is a bit remarkable. A few people claim to have “psychic abilities”, which did not surprise me. Let’s face it. If you survive being hit with something five times hotter than the sun, you are going to be left believing that there is something freaky special about you in some way.

The CDC has a whole wonderful section devoted to facts around lightning strikes. The odds of being struck by lightning in a given year is less than one in a million, which is crazy since there are about forty million lightning strikes a year in the U.S. Males are four times more likely to be struck by lightning than women. This does not surprise me. Every time the tornado sirens went off, Chris would be outside with cup of coffee while I would be finding a way for all of us to fit into the ‘safest’ closet. The ‘safest’ closet was always the smallest one. Statistical data for lightning strikes finds that most often people are stuck doing outside leisure activities like fishing, golfing, boating, and beach lounging, activities most available to white men of a specific age with a certain income.

So yeah, it makes sense that they are four times more likely to be struck by lightning. What doesn’t make sense is how we’re still allowing this kind of man (or any man) to make decisions on women’s reproduction rights, LGBQT rights, or racial equity. It’s pretty safe to say that waiting around for lightning to remove these guys is a waste of time.

Vote. Vote. Vote.

Because we are not lucky enough for a lightning strike.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

List of US Senators who have taken the most amount of money in campaign donations from the NRA can be found here: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/national-rifle-assn/recipients?id=d000000082

Calling, texting, emailing your senators daily or at least weekly. Tell them to prove their claims of ‘pro-life’ by actually doing something to protect life. Tell them how embarrassing it is that this country is number one in deaths from gun violence in all of the first world countries.

You can support victims of gun violence by donating and or volunteering with Every Town, a non for profit group working for reform on all levels and providing mental health resources to families affected by gun violence.

Change will not come by posting memes on social media. Change will not come by raising our voices in protest. Thoughts and prayers are not going to solve this. Ever. The fight is in supporting candidates who will prioritize the health of the people of this country. The fight is ensuring that every American has easy access to voting. The fight is at EVERY election.

Vote like a parent who had to wait for DNA results to identify their child who was killed by a mass shooter.

VOTING ANXIETY

We got impatient and decided to do absentee voting today

See this Instagram photo by @elephant_soap * 5 likes

Usually, I'm pretty excited about voting on election days. Even when I was little, standing in line with Mom and Dad was a treat. I was fascinated by the voting booths and I always got a sticker. The act of voting has just always made feel like I am truly part of this country and going to the polls on election day is part of that. This year, though...I'm not so sure. This election year has been physically disabling for me to witness, mostly because those voices that support Trump have been so loud and scary. I cringe knowing that our country is filled with such hatefulness. There have been moments when I've been caught chewing on my lip with worry over Trump wining this election, even though everyone around me keeps telling me it is not going to happen. Every time someone tells me there's no way he'll win I have flashbacks of November 8th, 2000. 

I started having anxiety about making it to the polling place on time on election day and about how long the line might be weeks ago. I'm a planner and there is nothing I can predict about the state of our poling place on election day. They had technical difficulties when we went to vote in the primaries that resulted in long slow moving lines. A repeat of something like that makes me worry about logistics of dinner and the length of time the dog is stuck in her crate. I mean, what if we end up standing in line so long that polls close before we can vote?! When someone at work mentioned last week that you could do early voting at Union Station, I started to think really hard about just getting it over with. I knew we'd be at Union Station at some point on Saturday with Robin and S because Union Station is my favorite place to take visitors. I like to point out the bullet holes in the front of the building. So, I asked Michael on Saturday morning how he felt about voting early. He thought this sounded like a splendid idea.

Saturday morning, Michael and I voted in the 2016 Presidential Election. Since the early voting place was set up just like a regular voting place, I didn't feel like I was missing out on the voting experience. They even gave us our "I Voted!" stickers. I looked at Michael when we left the polling place and I opened my mouth to say "I just voted for the first female president of the United States" except a sob bubble of emotion just came out instead. I was a little over come by being part of a very big historical moment that has been too long in the making. I was also a lot relieved. The rush and hustle of getting to our polling place in time to vote is no longer even an issue or thought in my brain. All of that worry and anxiety floated away as I placed my ballot in the designated envelope, watched a lady notarize it and then hand it back to me so I could put it in the ballot box. 

I'd like to remind some people who I've heard say that they are not voting this year, that there's a whole lot more on the ballot than who will be our next president. Real change starts at a local level and in your own community. If you don't vote you don't have a voice in what is happening in your own community. You are also hitching your wagon to representatives who do not represent you and senators who do not care if they do their job. I'd also like to remind one young woman in particular that women had to literally fight for their rights to vote in this country. Suffragettes faced imprisonment and beatings. Some of them lost their children because the men they were married to kicked them out of their homes. VOTING IS A PRIVILEGE. There are women in other countries who risk their lives just by going to the polls even though it is their legal right to vote. VOTING IS A PRIVILEGE.  

VOTE!

Civic Duty: CHECK!