What's Next USA?

I was flabbergasted to see many of my USian female friends post the above as their profile picture on Facebook today.

The comments were chilling. Many considering sterilizing procedures, their husbands considering vasectomies. Others stockpiling birth control methods. Others putting out words for friends who need abortions. Canada is taking in droves of them at the moment and offering services free of charge.

And then I thought, of course. The Handmaid's Tale, long predicted by Margaret Atwood (a Canadian) has arrived and this is how it arrives.

It's 2022, I keep reminding myself and rights are being removed in the country to the south of us by a positively evil misogynistic Supreme Court who are planning to take away the rights of gays next and have gleefully announced it.

All this trailing back to the rapist and racist they put in power in 2016. One who promised he would take his revenge on every woman who rejected him. A psychopath, fraud, grifter and grafter - who will never be charged for all the criminal acts he performed before, during and after his election. His (paid?) fall guys will take it all on the chin for him. Because that's how a mafia works.

Meanwhile, this is all a great distraction for a country burning  up or flooding catastrophically while racist cops stop and sometimes kill  those who drive or walk while black, and AK47 wielding 18 year olds kill random children in schools as the cops cower outside, afraid. And enshrined by the NRA is the right to bear such weapons, concealed or not. And Monkey Pox declared a national health emergency.  And in the midst of this, the speaker of their house marches off and pokes the beast that is China.

All this while climate change is the only item that should be on the agenda of the USA - the worst polluters on the planet.

/end rant 

Kyoto Failure, Durban (and so on and so forth)...

Dateline: Edmundston, New Brunswick

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A distance of 455k covered today, most of it south of the mighty St. Lawrence river - a total of just over 1,100k in the 2 days I've been on the road so far. This part of New Brunswick is very French, I'm staying in a motel I've stayed in many times before which has a fabulous restaurant attached. Right in the middle of nowhere.

It was raining all day, ao I tucked in behind a Honda delivery truck for most of the distance. It helped through some of the mountains which had pea soup fog. Caused in no small part by this factory, Norampac





Road music were albums by John Denver and Cherish the Ladies followed by a CBC programme on how classical music influenced contemporary, like did you know that John Lennon came in one night and found Yoko Ono playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and told her that was easy peasy so to speak, and to really impress him she should play it backwards. She did. And that piece of music is The Beatles' "Because".

I'm a good driver. My dog rides beside me and she says so. Here's proof:




Posted Later

And here is where the French charm the pants off me: Dinner tonight was crepes. But oh what crepes. The older chef who moved like a ballet dancer. One crepe at a time he prepared: seafood, chicken, vegetarian, you name it, fresh grated local cheese top and bottom, fresh steamed asparagus laid just so on top, beauchamel sauce over, pasta pecan salad on the side. Dessert was the same but with chopped fresh fruit, custard, whipped cream AND double Devon cream laid on board like an artist's canvas. All there allowed me to speak my French and encouraged me greatly. Merci beaucoup, mes amis.

After this, the dog and I waddled a few miles up a wonderful converted railway track by the river in the rain and got into stride on the way back.