Isa-Lee Wolf's Blog

It’s a cloudy, gray day today, looks like rain, at least for now. We’re not supposed to get any but I guess you never know.

Thank you so much, Modern Mulan, for the coffee, and while I do get your logic, it definitely counts for me but not as much for you!! Please spoil yourself a little, don’t think I miss how much you support and do for others.

And you too Bev! Thank you. You thought you’d get away without a mention, but you truly deserve kindness for yourself too. Sometimes it seems you’re carrying the whole world. I see that as well.

You’ve got a mission, Ladies!

And so does everyone else!

Yesterday I issued a challenge, to do One Nice Thing for yourself every day this week, Monday through Friday. It doesn’t matter if you missed it yesterday, you can always start today and do two.

And Professor Kyle even came up with a tag for it, #OneNiceThing!

I did mine yesterday, it was material, I ordered a face cream I’d been eyeing, it’s a refill, really, but finally gave myself permission. How about you?

How did it go?

You don’t have to be specific if you don’t want, and it doesn’t have to cost a thing. And if you find it difficult, that’s OK too. We are so conditioned out of taking care of ourselves, out of doing nice things for ourselves.

Not this week, my friends.

Not sure what I’ll do today, it will present itself, no doubt.

Hmm, from the time I started this until now, the clouds have cleared and I’m seeing blue sky.

Nice for us, but I wish the thugs terrorizing my beautiful, beautiful city were getting some of the worst weather we have to offer, rather than the best.

I wonder how many of these people have ever driven on ice and snow.

I wonder how many know that feeling where your scarf is soggy with your breath but the rest of your face is frozen.

I’d take an early winter for them to find out.

Anyway, I’m drifting from this week’s theme, which is self-care. It’s awfully easy to do, isn’t it, to end up back in the despair.

But we strengthen ourselves so we can continue our fight. So we can continue to speak out, to act, to keep ourselves in reality and not in the false world they’re building.

Anyway, that’s it for me for today, have a lovely Tuesday and don’t forget to do your #OneNiceThing!

Buy me a cup of coffee!

It’s a bit gray today after a clear sunny one for the Chicago Marathon, which went very smoothly. Amazing, considering our city is allegedly in so much turmoil the government thinks it needs to call in the military.

While no world records were set this year, an American broke the American record, so that’s cool. But it was typical Chicago, people out on the streets cheering on strangers they’ve never seen before and will never see again, people braving swaths of closed streets, section after section, to cheer on friends. Professionals running like running is the easiest thing in the world.

Yup, what a disaster.

I planned, since yesterday, the topic for today, and now that I’m here and typing away, I don’t feel like it and I suspect that, itself, is an issue.

You see, I had a conversation with a friend over on Spoutible who is finding everything pretty rough right now. I won’t name her because I don’t know if she’d like that, but I could see her normally vibrant world draining to shades of gray.

So I issued a challenge.

And I issue it to you as well. I suppose I have to issue it to me too, but we’ll see how that goes.

I know, I know, that’s not fair.

Every day this week, Monday-Friday (weekend too, if you’d like) I challenge you to do one nice thing for yourself.

It doesn’t have to be big or extravagant or expensive or cost anything at all. Just one thing that will make you happy, whether in a big way or a small way. A walk, a show or movie you’ve wanted to watch or one you love and want to return to, a craft, a hobby, a catch-up with someone, a small silence just for yourself, whatever it is, you do something nice every day.

I was going to say something different each day but I think that’s putting too much on it, if it’s the same thing, like eggs every day for a week fine. Just so long as whatever it is doesn’t actually hurt you, which I guess eggs every day for a week might do for some.

We can chat about your things, or you can keep them to yourself, it’s awesome either way.

The only task is to carve out a corner of the day to make yourself feel better, whatever form that takes.

And with that, I wish you a wonderful Monday and a great day one of being kind to yourself.

Buy me a cup of coffee!

The clouds are drifting in and out today, as are my thoughts, but not in anywhere near such an easy fashion.

Things are a lot.

Yesterday I was angry, today I’m mostly anxious. That vague, on edge kind, where it feels like something is happening or something will happen, but you have no idea what, when, how.

There’s enough in the world to do it, heck, there’s enough happening in the city and the suburbs to do it.

I do wonder, though, if somehow within all my careful label-reading and my very limited array of restaurants, I crossed paths with some MSG or one of its cousins.

A lot of people aren’t affected by MSG, but I am, and if that’s the case, if it’s not simply the world catching up with me, I’ll be staring down a fun migraine cycle.

And who doesn’t love a migraine cycle.

Then again, you may be reading this, also with that unsettled undercurrent as the background to your day. These things, sometimes, are in the very air itself.

So far the courts have ruled well in the cases about ICE and the National Guard in Chicago and Illinois overall. ICE must comply with a consent decree from 2022, and limit warrantless arrests. ICE must also comply with reporting requirements for warrantless arrests.

A judge also granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) to prevent the deployment of the National Guard in Illinois. It’s good for two weeks, but donald’s thugs have already appealed.

There are far more cases going on, including the one focusing on the woman shot five times by ICE, where they claimed she rammed them and brandished a weapon, but neither claim is supported by evidence.

You’d think that good news would give a sense of calm, but it isn’t, it feels like it’s only further charged the air, like lightning is waiting, ready to strike.

Again it might be me.

It might be some of us. It might be all of us.

I can’t be sure. There’s a tiny, tiny, TINY possibility gulping down my coffee isn’t helping.

Anyway, that’s it for me today and this week, I wish you a wonderful Friday and an ideal, unanxious weekend.

Buy me a cup of coffee!

It’s sunny today, crisply cool, and it’s one of those days where I didn’t sleep well last night, so today, my brain is not cooperative.

Can’t imagine why I couldn’t sleep, everything in the world is going so well.

It’s not a day I feel like getting into specifics, it’s not a day I want to pick them up and examine them, one by one, these disgusting globs of fascist recklessness, these fetid acts of cultivated inhumanity.

I am repulsed by other people who welcomed this into the world; I am disgusted by the ones who blithely watched it float by them, as though they had nothing to do with it, as though they have nothing to do with it still.

This didn’t just happen.

Millions of people made choices.

Millions of people are making choices still, every single moment of every single day. They could make different choices starting from any single second.

And they don’t.

We are here because republicans, and REPUBLICANS ALONE are cranking the machinery. We are here because REPUBLICANS and REPUBLICANS ALONE have strived for decades for this destruction and dehumanization and artificial elevation of themselves.

For this power grab that is the exact opposite of everything they’ve ever claimed to believe in.

Because republicans are liars.

They lie so frequently, so easily, so constantly you might wonder if they understand that there is such a thing called truth.

But now they want the government to regulate the smallest act of speech; they want the federal government to eradicate the rights of states; they want the courts to strike off the rights of the Constitution, bit by bit and swoop by swoop; they have quickly shucked off their sandwich boards calling for “freedom” for the fascism they were wearing underneath all this time.

Republicans could end the shutdown. They haven’t because they want to take your health insurance away.

We know that because they’ve tried over and over and over and over again.

Republicans could end this fascism in two swift votes.

But they won’t.

It’s all been a cover, it’s all been a lie and frankly if you’ve ever believed it, that’s on you for wanting to believe it. It hasn’t been covert.

It’s a simple stroll of logic from Point R to Point F.

Those people who tried to gaslight us out of what we knew to be true, what we could see and those people who tried and try still to normalize and minimize that which should never be either, you can try to tell yourself you carry no responsibility.

But your soul knows.

Republicans, your souls know.

They know.

And you have stained them in a way that will not come clean.

And with that, I wish you a Thursday filled with productive, righteous anger.

Have a great day.

Buy me a cup of coffee!

I can’t really tell what the sky is doing today. Sunny a bit. Cloudy a bit. No rain for the rest of the week.

At least it should be clear for the marathon.

And before I get to what is likely to be a bit of an abstract Wednesday Wisdom, thank you, Deb, for the hug, and the coffee. They’re definitely needed this morning as I face the reality of reality. Greatly, greatly appreciated.

And here we go.

Last night, for this strange little pocket of time, I felt like I’d gotten my days and nights wrong, that this bleak world draining of its color minute to minute was the nightmare, and all I had to do was wake up.

I would open my eyes and it would be fifteen years ago, and I would be left only with that leftover haze when you can’t quite shake a dream.

I’ve had plenty of those over the years. Many of them about times like these.

But I digress.

It all seemed surreal, ungrounded in reality.

But I pulled up the covers and drifted to sleep, and woke up again right back here.

I’ve definitely been watching too many Kdramas. And sci-fi TV. And movies.

Wishful thinking and a writer’s brain make for an interesting bedtime, I guess.

I think it means I’ve gone all the way back to the beginning in the stages of grief, right to denial. Or maybe it’s bargaining, I don’t know, like there must be some way to undo what’s been done, to stop what’s rolling at us like a boulder disturbed from its trap in an Indiana Jones movie.

But here we are, a state that is eleven states WORSE than Illinois in its violent crime rate has sent troops to help “curb crime.” Never mind that under law, military cannot do that, Texas is ranked 34 for “low violent crime rate,” so comfortably in the bottom half of the states, and Illinois is 23. There are only 16 states worse than Texas for violent crime.

How does that make sense?

None of it does. Much like a nightmare.

And back to the beginning we go.

Anyway, that’s it for me on this mixed-up Wednesday. Have as great a day as circumstances allow.

Buy me a cup of coffee!

It’s a rainy one today. On and off, right now it’s off.

I wouldn’t mind if it were on.

Thank you, Gail, for the coffee, it’s one of those draggy, tired days, and all extra boosts are greatly appreciated! It’s so lovely to have you as one the regulars here in our virtual shop. I wish the rest of the world always felt as cozy. Thanks you so much!

And on to the Tuesday of it all.

A judge apparently denied Illinois’ request for a restraining order to prevent the deployment of the National Guard in Chicago, including the use of Texas’ troops against the orders of the Illinois governor.

I’m only seeing this reported right now by our local ABC station, which is a very reliable source, so I suspect they had someone in the courtroom, though I don’t know for sure. Nonetheless, it’s a bit of a surprise, and a horrible disappointment.

The link also suggests donald threatened to use the Insurrection Act, but there is nothing in the article about it. Protesting is not insurrection.

We all know what insurrection looks like.

But here we are.

I have to say I assumed the judge, like the judge reviewing Portland, would block the deployment. Maybe it was the house of a judge who ruled against donald completely engulfed in flames that swayed this judge. We’ll never know for sure, will we.

But in that case, authorities are saying there’s no evidence the fire was deliberately set.

Mmm-hmm.

We are, my friends, officially off the rails. We are so far off the rails we couldn’t even find the rails with google maps and a searchlight. It’s everything we warned about, right here, already.

And in this case, that last line, the judiciary, seems to be gone.

Anyway, that’s all I can stomach for today, have the best Tuesday you’re able.

Buy me a cup of coffee!

It’s sunny right now, but it’s possible we’re getting thunderstorms. I wouldn’t mind if we did. Big ones. Loud ones.

With a side of appropriate smiting?

Probably too much to ask.

I mean you always hope the smiting will go your way.

I want to be clear, on this morning when the state and the city have filed suit to prevent a military invasion by the federal government, you know, that thing these same people always said the Second Amendment was for.

There are no riots in Chicago.

There are NO RIOTS in Chicago. Of course the federal government has made it difficult show that by banning any “non-governmental drone flights.” The violence is coming from the federal agents themselves, casually tossing tear gas on a street near an elementary school; tearing people from their homes in the middle of the night after reportedly repelling from helicopters, leaving a residential building in tatters, no discussion of a warrant. Yanking naked children from their homes and separating them from their parents for hours, reportedly zip tying them.

Something very strange happened when I tried to find coverage of that piece of information, that ICE reportedly pulled naked children into public streets for all to view. The google AI offered a warning about searching for child exploitation images.

My search was very specific, I don’t see how it could have organically triggered a filter:

ICE dragged naked children out of their homes

And yet that very important piece of information showing the brutality and dehumanization and sheer lack of legal objective is being hidden behind something that sounds like a vague threat for looking for it.

That is where we are.

It’s not reality that’s the problem, it’s talking about it.

Why wouldn’t they let the children dress? Or were they dressed when they found them?

Governor Pritzker has ordered an investigation into that act of racist terrorism, yes, that’s what it was, to verify eyewitness accounts of treatment of the children, including being detained, the reported zip ties and lack of clothing.

The fear in this city is real and grounded. We are not afraid of our fellow Chicagoans.

We are afraid of a government intent to punish us because we don’t like donald. We are afraid of the open and clear retribution against our exercising our right to criticize our government.

Even this blog, this small blog, with my comfy collection of readers, all of us able to fit in a small virtual coffeeshop, really, could, eventually, see retribution. My own words, barely above a whisper in the drone of all that is said online.

That is where we are.

And where we’re going depends upon the whims of John Roberts.

Not exactly reassuring.

Anyway, that’s it for me for today. I wish you an empowered Monday.

Buy me a cup of coffee!

So it may not sound like something that is possible, but honestly, today I think I’m just too worked up to write. I’m still shocked and horrified by the militaristic action taken in Chicago against people who appear to be US citizens, not that anyone should be treated that way.

I have contacted my members of Congress, I have shared the information, but what more is there to say?

Republicans, who control all three branches of government, have shut down the government, though there is language plastered all over official government sites claiming Democrats, who hold no power, are responsible.

On government sites.

This is a descension we knew was coming but didn’t want to see. I had zero desire to be right about all the dire things I’ve been saying for almost a decade.

I would have loved to be wrong.

I was not wrong.

We were not wrong.

And here we are.

A nightmare that grows deeper and more terrifying day by day by day. And we’re not even a year in.

What gets to me but doesn’t surprise me are the Constitution-thumping republicans who suddenly have never heard of anything within the Constitution, aside from the Second Amendment.

The Bible-thumping republicans who claim to be “good Christians” who, instead of (from google’s AI summary):

Leviticus 19:33-34 (NIV): “‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God'”. Exodus 22:21 (NIV): “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt”. Deuteronomy 10:19 (NIV): “And he loves the foreigner, giving him food and clothing”. Matthew 25:35 (NIV): Jesus teaches that welcoming a stranger is a way of welcoming Him. 

In the New Testament 

Believers are encouraged to see themselves as “strangers on earth” and to view all believers as fellow citizens and members of God’s household.

are happy to participate in atrocities against “foreigners” and citizens alike.

Are there none who actually “practice what they preach?” Are there none who can look at what is happening, what THEY are doing, what THEY are enabling, what THEY are supporting and funding and say “this is fundamentally wrong?”

Every ounce of “morality” is a show for republicans, every Bible quote a fraud. If donald wants to prosecute “anti-Christian” ideas, he should start with his own party and policies.

Anyway, that’s it for me for today and tomorrow, I won’t be posting, so I will probably see you Friday, and if not, I wish you great days for all of those days until we speak again.

Buy me a cup of coffee!

Still sunny, and today I am thinking about how people in militarized gear, fully armed with a candy store of weapons, are still so helpless they need the military to protect them.

They’re so afraid of moms tying their kids’ shoes or tiny women asking questions in a courthouse or…the actual Chicago river? that they need the big bad military with even more weapons to come and take care of them.

How scared are they?

Are they crying themselves to sleep at night in terror after essentially touring the most beautiful spots in the city in full regalia, most of them covering their faces because of all the things they fear, they fear consequences the most?

Is there anything more fragile than they are?

They need the MILITARY to protect them?

So much for guns keeping people safe, I guess. Because they have guns. Lots of them. Big ones.

I just spent a few minutes contacting my reps and my governor. And maybe you can too, to express how shocking you find it that DHS agents are so afraid of their jobs that they need the military to make them feel safe.

That they are so bad at their jobs, they need back up.

And if they are that scared, perhaps they should find other lines of work.

I mean think about the message it is sending, that all the killy equipment and all the protective equipment to prevent being killed in the world and they’re still scared.

Maybe it would be better to follow the example of the leader of the most powerful military in the world and ask their moms to get involved.

Anyway, that’s it for me today. Let’s do our best to get through it, even if we’re scared, we don’t have all that equipment, and if the military shows up, they’re not showing up to help US.

Regardless, have an empowered Tuesday.

Buy me a cup of coffee!

It’s sunny, and a beautiful day in Chicago, but for the masked thugs with guns intimidating people and arresting them based on “how they look.”

They have to be breaking state laws in the process.

Before we get on to wherever it is we’re going, thank you Bev (!) for saying something kind and Deb (!) for the very much appreciated coffee. The attack on free speech is definitely working, I do have to wonder if my words in my small, quiet bit of internet are now a danger to me. Thank you for your encouragment.

And now Monday.

All of it is happening. donald is trying to send National Guard into Portland, Oregon over the objection of the governor, who has sued. As another state where he keeps threatening military deployment, it’s a chilling development in a sea of them.

I feel the obligation, as the drumbeat blame of Democrats starts up again, to point out that republicans have within them the power to stop all of this. They could stand up for the Constitution, for the rights of Americans, for the rule of law, and use their congressional power to rein in the executive branch.

That’s why they have it.

And when the government shuts down, they are the ones with the power to prevent it. Not Democrats.

Republicans.

And they better get to it, because I suspect a number of them are, a this point, concerned for their safety.

Use it while you’ve got it, folks because when it’s gone, it’s gone, and you’ll be on the enemies list too.

As I sit here, the sun shining, my street, at least, quiet, it is difficult to fully take in where we are, where things have already gone, where they could yet go. I know in the intellectual part of my brain.

It’s syncing it up with reality that’s the problem.

Anyway, this small splinter of what’s going through my head this morning is all I seem to be able to pull together, the rest is too diffuse, and perhaps, too scary. It’s not longer academic.

It’s no longer a warning, but an observation.

Regardless, I hope you have a great Monday, as we figure out how to muddle through.

Buy me a cup of coffee!