lichens don't know it's supposed to be winter...

 watching, "the invisible war".  it's pretty sad.  a documentary.  rape in the military.  our military.

 the women are basically abandoned when they dare to report their rapes.  often it's what happens after a rape that stays with you.  that kills your spirit.  in the military you have to go up the chain of command to complain and often members in that chain of command are the ones doing the rapes...these women are then powerless.  the men that are raped often fare even worse. they don't even want to admit what has happened to them.

 the rape victims are often victimized further by being accused of lying or of having an affair.

 all this talk of respecting our veterans, but there is a whole segment of veterans that get the shaft...that is veterans who have suffered at the hands of their own military comrades.  my heart aches for these poor veterans who believed their enemy was not in their own barracks.

 rio joined us today for our walk.  we went up a dog sled trail and then back down the main trail.  campbell airstrip was busy, the usual weekend crowd.  with rio out there it's a slower walk.  so i pulled out the macro and took my time. it's a more enjoyable walk for rio when she's not pushed.  the monday walk can be a bit much for her.

 blossom wasn't too keen on this falling back thing.  it's always an adjustment...dogs are very into their schedule.

 still watching this documentary.  an extremely small percentage of the sexual assault perpetrators are ever convicted..this means that these people are eventually released to the general public and continue to rape.

 not much else out there to take pictures of today besides the lichen, but the lichen are everywhere, tough buggers.  i'm always amazed at the variety and toughness of lichens.

 movie over...excellent.  these victims deserve better.

 pretty lazy today.  pick up poop, feed the birds, trash out, laundry, dishes, cookies...guess i did get a few things done.  lay about in bed and read the paper.  got Halloween put away as well.  even changed the lights out front to actual Christmas lights.  i never do that.  it usually snows after i put up Halloween lights and it's too much hassle to change it over once everything is covered with snow.  no snow sticking here.

 i get paranoid...am i just lazy or is the laziness due to the increased darkness or is there something else going on.  too much time spent around sick people.

 need to get booking on getting ready for Thanksgiving. i have a trip and want to have the Christmas stuff ready for family that i will see out there.  save me shipping costs this year...though it would have been way cheaper to not buy plane tickets and mail everything.  oh well, always good to see family.  i'm always nervous about the flights and find i don't prep for trips until the last minute, i'm in denial of the whole travel thing, which i hate.  i like being other places i just hate the coming and going.  such a bother.

 i love Alaska and i think i'd be fine if i never left the state.  life doesn't work that way though.

 several women post Chernobyl did just that.  they stayed.  there was an area around the nuclear plant that was called the exclusion zone and it was cleared out.   a small group of elderly women refused to go.  they were born there and would die there.  it's been over 27 years since that nuclear disaster occurred.  amazingly, these women had somewhat better long term survival rates than many who left.  home and homeland mean everything to some people.

 nuclear energy seems like a grand thing to some people and it can be until something bad happens.  that is the thing with nuclear energy, we don't have the ability to deal with the waste safely and forever and when the shit happens it happens big time.  watched a tedtalks this morning by i think it was holly momus? on this subject, these elderly women who stayed.

 the wildlife has returned as well.  from what i could tell they didn't have extra legs or anything.  not sure how much research is actually happening in that area post disaster.  enough to suspect that humans would die off way before the animal kingdom would.  these lichens are probably still there.

 talked to my sister for a bit today.  we've been playing phone tag all week.  once my phone rang while i was helping pick up a patient that fell on the floor and then began bleeding from his dialysis shunt...no time for chatting on the phone.
we got talking about the weakness in our general population.  we've all had pretty easy lives compared to many others on this earth.  makes me think we would mostly be unable to cope with the severe issues that the rest of the world deals with daily.  we are weak.  not only is the general public weak, we have a high percentage of  people who are considered disabled.  a large percentage of the children we are raising in this country may never be able to be productive members in our society,  of those that will be able to hold jobs many of those will be limited as to what jobs they can hold.  aspergers, autism,  adhd,  asthma, allergies, the list goes on.  many of our healthiest people are on drugs or in jail.  we can't continue to ignore the needs of the poor, we may need them one day.  healthcare and education are vital for all.  poor, unhappy and undereducated is just a very bad combination.

 the immigrants are having healthy large families, it's important to make sure this segment of the population is also afforded good educations and assisted with adapting to life here.  we can't afford to be as judgemental and exclusionary as so many seem to want to be.

enough rambling i guess for one night.  movies like that just get me thinking and that is never a good thing.  i must be tired or else it's some sort of early dementia...keep losing words tonight.