I moved from small open air insane asylum Key West back to multitudes flew over the cuckoo’s nest Alabama

    I mostly lived in Key West from 2001-2018. Locals called it The Conch Republic. Before I lived there, the city briefly seceded from the Union, until it realized it depended entirely on FEMA to resurrect it after being clobbered by a big hurricane. 

    Locals also called Key West, Key Weird, where the weird go pro. I viewed the city as an open air insane asylum, where you couldn’t get locked up for being different, and unlike Hotel California, you could leave any time you wanted.

    A small city, Key West had people from many ethnic backgrounds and nationalities, and I concluded it was a proxy for the rest of America, and as Key West went, so went America. 

    I was wrong.

    Although Key West had a lot of churches, about 1/5 of the adults living there were not heterosexual and the religious right had very little sway. A lesbian Democrat living in Key West was elected to the city's county commission seat. A lesbian Democrat was elected to the city commission. Now she is the city’s mayor.

    I was further wrong.

    Key West voted Democrat in every national and state election. Perhaps that dated back to the Civil War, when Key West was a Union port, but the locals sympathized with the Confederacy.

    I was further wrong.

    Even the professional weirdos in Key West thought I was weird.

    In the late fall of 2018, I moved back to my home state Alabama, which bills itself as The Heart of Dixie. 

    Montgomery was the Confederacy’s capital. 

    When I was growing up, Alabama voted Democrat in national and state elections, until the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress and President John F. Kennedy and the Alabama National Guard and President Lyndon Baines Johnson de-segregated Alabama, and Alabama morphed into a Republican stronghold.

    Today, Alabama is MAGA country. 

    Today, Alabama is right-wing religious freak country. 

    What the fuck am I doing here?! 

    In Al.com’s Down In Alabama today...

Embryos and an alleged fetus

It's good to see y'all back, and I hope your weekend was a good one.

It's no surprise we're going to pick right back up with Story No. 1 in the state right now -- the legal status of embryos and its effect on in vitro fertilization.

Thanks for being with us.

Ike Morgan

Embryo-gate raged on through the weekend, even taking up time on Saturday Night Live, for anyone who might've been watching.

Heading into the weekend in Alabama, Democrats introduced a bill in the House and Republicans in the Senate said they were preparing legislation to preserve in vitro fertilization in the wake of the state Supreme Court's ruling that interpreted a state law as giving human embryos the same rights as children.

Gov. Kay Ivey also said she was working with lawmakers to preserve IVF.

Within days of the court's ruling, some clinics stopped providing IVF services. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said on Friday that the AG's office had "no intention" of prosecuting anyone using the procedure. That prompted some, including Hoover Republican Rep. Susan DuBose, to lean on clinics to restart IVF treatments, reports AL.com's Sarah Whites-Koditschek.

Note that while the AG's promise may have eased concerns over criminal prosecution, this issue arose from a civil case over destroyed embryos. 

 

to fetuses (or a lack of, in this case)   

AL.com did a story last year on the extent to which Etowah County has arrested women who allegedly used drugs while pregnant. It's happened more there than anywhere else -- 250 over a 10-year period -- and led to some women spending much of their pregnancy in jail.

Now, reports AL.com's Amy Yurkanin, a woman recently settled a lawsuit against Etowah County Sheriff's Office employees over being jailed for endangering a fetus that didn't exist.

According to court documents, the woman spent 36 hours in jail and wasn't pregnant at all. Apparently, her young child -- who does exist -- told a case worker that the mom was pregnant.

Young'ns, man.

According to court documents, the woman offered to take a pregnancy test but it didn't happen. Terms of the settlement were not released.

I emailed Ike:     

Your IVF and imaginary pregnant woman in jail howlers today, and what I already knew about The Make Alabama Great IVF FUBAR, left me laughing my ass off and wondering when the Jesus never knew me freaks in the Alabama Legislature will pass legislation to reopen Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa to shelter themselves and their birds of cuckoo feather Supreme Court justices and like-minded dodo bird Alabamians from the bright sunlight, which would reveal the truth that would set them free, if their heads didn't permanently reside where the sun never shines.

    In another of my 81-year-old play pens, Poetic Outlaws:

Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan’s Newsletter

81, with its physical aches and pains, waking up each morning wondering why I’m still here? Still hoping a miracle will cause my body to feel better, or the death angel will take me home, or somewhere new, to spare me what no beloved old, suffering pet has to endure. Living alone, a monk, all but a few months since late 2000, engulfed in metaphysics day and night, in all the way but not of this world, what woman could endure that regimen with no end? Lightly, what is that? Remember, I cannot. Perhaps it’s possible? I haven’t a clue. Is romance possible? Will viagra work? I haven’t a clue. Do I even want to try? I really don’t know. Back in the day, I would be all in.

Lasita

Lasita’s Substack

Sending love; sorry I cannot do it in person... but perhaps you can feel it.

Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan’s Newsletter

Maybe in person, I might go into cardiac arrest and depart this plane and see what happens then? :-)

    I went to Lasita’s Substack to see what was there:

Openness and Love

LASITA

AUG 12, 2023

How do I live my basic principles? Also, how do I continue writing a post? Being a newbie in this practice, makes it difficult. I feel a need to share since so many people are feeling similar emotions these days and to know we have support is important. I met a friend today on my walk by the Santa Fe River: Rachamana, and she asked me; "how are you feeling hope in these times?" I acknowledged that it was very challenging, especially since the invasion of Ukraine.

Lasita

I will keep adding comments UNTIL I work out how to publish new posts.

Today I want to share a LESSON from one of my Spiritual Teachers: HERMAN REDNICK. 

This is from Volume 1 of EARTH JOURNEY, p. 629

BROTHERHOOD

To break the hypnosis and see with a clear eye, imagine for a moment that you love everyone here. There is no criticism or resentment. Your heart glows and you are grateful for the person sitting next to you. You have no fear of how anyone will react or of what they think of you. For a moment you let the divine fire within your heart glow. You feel a sense of joy and freedom you never felt before. The hypnosis that gripped you in the past and your resistance to people is gone. Now it is not your personality but your true self coming through the heart. You experience what it means to truly love your brother. You realize that in the past you were in a state of bondage through a state of hypnosis. You can now taste the pure joy and freedom that come from love without reservation.

mantra:

I love my neighbor.

His (Her) soul and mine are one.

Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan’s Newsletter

I dunno, I just get up each morning and face the day and whatever it brings, the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, and even the horrible sometimes, doing the best I can, being as real as I can, which Includes sometimes getting angry and wondering what’s the point? Because I am somewhat woke after 81 years and climbing, what I see, in the main, looks like SNAFU progressed to FUBAR and even past that to FIDO. But I keep waking up each day, so I’m still supposed to be here, and since I can’t do a lot of things I use to do, I do what I am able, which kinda reminds me of a line out of a Rolling Stones song, "You can’t always get what you want, but you always get what you need," which kinda reminds me of the title of a Gloria Steinem book, “The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off."

This came to me as I was moving into something new in 1995.

Love without Truth

is mush

Truth without Love

is harsh

They live together, 

or die

I then proceeded to forget all about that and ended up in a black night of the soul, which made an earlier dark night of the soul seem wonderful. But, if I had not experienced the back night, I might not have been able to cope with what came after it, which was, well, not exactly a bed of roses, but it was a lot easier than the black night. 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com