Divinest Sense

South Dakota passed a law making almost all abortions illegal in that state. The law is designed to be sent up to the Supreme Court to challenge Roe. You will see a lot more states ramping up their anti-choice legislation in the coming weeks and months - not only in hopes of accelerating a direct challenge to Roe, but to have state laws banning abortion already in place when Roe is overturned. Overturning the landmark decision won’t make abortion illegal, but will allow the separate states to legislate it however they please. And the states - mainly the ones containing the poorest Americans - are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of making reasonable healthcare for women officially against the law. It’s already next to impossible for women to get an abortion in some states, with the barriers that have successfully been put into place.

Thank goodness I live in Maryland. I feel like I should be driving south and picking up women, and bringing them here for safe and legal abortions. Is there some kind of undergound railroad yet? There has to be.

We can’t give up yet, though. Even though we face seemingly unsurmountable barriers in all three branches of our government, we have to keep fighting and educating. There is still not an anti-choice majority on the court. So far. And I believe that there is enough of a majority among the American public supporting safe and legal abortion that the outcry will be deafening if any attempts are made on Roe.

I got an e-mail from NARAL a couple of weeks ago entitled “Birth control: something we can all agree on.” OK, that may be true, but the e-mail looks like a big white flag to me. I’m sorry, NARAL, you have “abortion rights” in your name, so you had better think real hard about what you’re doing. This is not the time to give up and go for the next best thing.

Update:  Whoops, sorry about those line breaks.

Have you heard of “carbon credits” or “carbon offset”? This is where you invest in renewable energy production and research at the amount of your personal “carbon footprint”, or how much fossil fuel you and your vehicle burn up every year. It’s a great way to do something to compensate for the amount of energy you use. Anyway, the Hinkle Foundation has agreed to donate $100 to carbonfund.org and other carbon offset organizations for every person who reads their 6 emails about global warming. It takes about 10 minutes and it’s very interesting reading!

One of the climate change reports referenced in the Hinkle Foundation’s emails is the recent summary report from the National Academy of Sciences, Understanding and Responding to Climate Change. It’s a succinct and fact-laden report from a host of studies that you can wave at any skeptic and say, “see?!?” Anyway, here is the info about getting the $100 donated:

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Dear Carbonfund.org Friends,

We were about to send out our first newsletter in the next week or so, but an opportunity to do some significant offsets came up, and we couldn’t resist sending you this e-mail first.

Recently, the Hinkle Charitable Foundation made a sizable donation to Carbonfund.org for which we are very grateful.

They are now generously offering to donate $100 to Carbonfund.org for every person (up to $100,000) that reads their Global Warming e-mail series. This is a huge opportunity for Carbonfund.org. There is no cost to you and no catch but we are on a very short timetable.

Please take just a few minutes and follow the directions below and then forward this to as many people as you can so we can maximize this generous contribution.

1) Go to www.thehcf.org
2) Read the six e-mails on Global Warming (takes 5-10 minutes)
3) Go to the Challenge (http://www.thehcf.org/challenge.html) and send an e-mail to Renewable@thehcf.org with your name, address and email
4) Lastly, please send us an email to thehcf@carbonfund.org so that we can track our progress.

As we understand, a $100 offset contribution to Carbonfund.org will be made in your name by the Hinkle Charitable Foundation.

Many thanks,

Lesley Carlson
President, Carbonfund.org

Didn’t have much time this weekend to deal with the template - between unsuccessfully shopping for x-country ski bindings (apparently these well-to-do DC folks are more interested in wearing cute sweaters at the lodge in Aspen than in slogging along going nowhere fast in the snowy backcountry - pfft!), contemplating the arrangement of the new furniture, shoveling snow, cooking meatballs, setting the kitchen on fire, trying to figure out the difference between champagne silk shantung and light harvest gold silk dupioni, and coming down with some sort of lung-filling illness. I have got to start getting my priorities straight. So, what’s on the internets today? Best thing I’ve seen so far, Medley responds to a post from long-dormant John Perry Barlow. Very important stuff there, go read.

Well, as you can see, I’ve got my past entries imported from Movable Type into Wordpess, but I haven’t managed to bring over my fabulous stylesheet yet. So you’re looking at the wretched Wordpress default theme. Hopefully I will have some time this week and/or weekend to work on it. The gallery will now be at jenniferbishop.org, and I’ll be attempting to bend “gallery” to my will and make it look like an interesting online portfolio rather than a generic repository for my many, many kitty pictures. That’s what Flickr is for. So anyway…. hang in there! Things are going to be looking a lot better Real Soon Now.

Hi everyone, I have decided, after a 4-year relationship with Fatcow that just ain’t got no magic no more, to move over the Dreamhost, which has much better support and flexibility and lots of cool stuff you can do automatically. These people are smart. Anyhew, I’m also attempting to convert my Movable Type weblog to Wordpress, so we’ll see how that goes. Hang in there, my beloved audience of 3!