||| MIDNIGHT MUTTERINGS BY JACKIE BATES |||

I had planned to return to voter suppression tonight, and mutter about the efforts of the Georgia state legislature to pass new legislation that makes people of color have a more difficult time voting. More difficult even than in the recent rerun, when a Black man and a young man who isn’t even Black, but is far too liberal for his britches, became the new Georgia senators and thereby robbed the conservatives of dominance in the 2021 U.S. Senate. A little like crows stealing stuff that people seem to think is their birthright.

However, today around noon I had my second Covid-19 vaccine.

(I’m going to take a moment to mention that the music made by our Orcas musicians is divine as you wait in line, get your jab, then wait to see if you are fit to leave. You might have read that YoYo Ma gave an impromptu cello concert in the 15 minutes he waited after his own vaccine in Massachusetts. I can admit that YoYo Ma is stunning, just as always, and you can see his brief concert on YouTube. But YoYo has nothing on our own boys and girls who grew up making music and now play for us at the Orcas center while we do our civic duty as well as protect ourselves by getting vaccinated.)

Anyway, I can’t quite get my brain around the specifics of the new voter suppression laws tonight, much less write coherent sentences. Microsoft Word doesn’t like the sentence I just wrote, but I can’t seem to work out the problem. Possibly it’s because of the small headache I have post-vaccine, or the slight fever (99.7 F) or just the feeling I’d be having a better time lying in bed rather than sitting up in that same bed. I’m fine, really. It’s just that crow smarts are even smarter than mine are than usual. (Can’t fix that sentence either.) Possibly another time I will relate one or two of my own crow stories here and maybe get you to respond with your own.

For now, though, here’s a link to a talk John Marzluff, PhD, gave at the University of Washington in 2015. It will take just a little less than an hour of your valuable time to watch it.

Yep, it’s on YouTube. And if almost an hour is more than you can afford, you can find a Ted Talk by Marzluff, also in YouTube, on the same crow subject that will cost only 22 minutes of your time. I would find the second link and considerately post it here, but I’m really ready to lie down and look forward to tomorrow when I’ll be more alert and maybe a tad smarter, even if I will never be as smart as a crow.

 

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