MY 'REAL' ID

 Soon, my PA driver's license will no longer be an acceptable form of ID to enter federal buildings or travel by air. I would need a 'real' ID.

Fortunately we have had a few years notice of this change and I had set about gathering the required documents. 

First was my birth certificate (not the original but an official embossed one). For this I had to locate my District's State Representative's office. They took my information and sent for my paperwork. I'm glad that I did this when I did. The Representative we had at the time had a very constituent friendly local office. From what I hear, the current Representative's office would have been more likely to hand me an address to submit myself if I asked really nice.

Second was my Social Security card. That wasn't a problem. I have that.

Third was proof of why my name doesn't match my birth certificate. I had been married. I needed my marriage certificate. I'm sixty years old and have moved many times over those years. I was fortunate, I actually found that particular piece of paper.

Lastly, I needed two proofs of residence. My current driver's license and a bank statement in my name sufficed.

I arrived at the DMV with all of the required paperwork in hand and $30 to cover the fee. Now I am a 'real' person.

I feel that I am very lucky. Not everyone can get all of these documents as easily and as cheaply as I was able to. Even for me, just the fee for the ID represents half of my weekly food budget. 

I hope that all of my fellow Pennsylvanians can manage to get their ID as well. Start early if you hope to gather the documents you will need.

I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO YOU?

Forgive and forget? Sorry, but no!

Over this past year, I have done all that I could do to protect myself, my family and the rest of society. How? By simply wearing my mask. I have been able to go anywhere and do anything that I chose to do. The only thing stopping me has been you, the maskless people who 'choose' to put the entire nation at risk by enabling a virus to continually spread and at this point kill over a half a million fellow citizens.

When businesses reopened and my job was available to me once more, I returned to work. As a responsible adult, I was contributing to the economy and supporting myself. My job does not offer insurance so if I were to get sick, it would be an extreme financial burden for me. The risk had been low until Covid came along. Even so, I was ready to do what needed to be done. I took the precautions available to me and continued to do my job.

In November, after many months of doing my part and being ridiculed for being a 'sheep' and being 'afraid' and being 'controlled' while protecting these same people, I was tired of placing myself and my family at risk while being treated so poorly. It is very hard to work in customer service, smile and be pleasant to people who obviously cared nothing at all about you (or others for that matter).

When our local firehall decided to go ahead with their annual gun raffle, usually the social event of the year, complete with the all-you-can-eat buffet and the all-you-can-drink beer tent just one week before the Thanksgiving weekend, the writing was on the wall. Covid was about to surge in my area. I opted out. I quit my job and stayed home just as these anti-mask people had been saying to do.

I have been unemployed now for four months with no income. The only thing I did get was insurance, Medicaid. Yep, I'm a drain on society. Too bad folks.

I recently have had the opportunity to receive the Covid vaccine and jumped on the chance of returning to a more normal life. Research and statistics show that these vaccines provide extremely good protection against the virus and total protection against hospitalization and death. I can reenter the world with confidence.

The varients that are appearing are more contagious and possibly more likely to lead to hospitalization for those who had previously avoided the worst outcomes overall, the young adults. I see these people going about their days as if there were no pandemic, gathering together without masks. As we go forward and these people now start falling very ill, I find that I have no pity for them. I really don't care, in the words of the former first lady. Let them reap what they have sown!

Life and Morality

 The headline reads: Aunt's boyfriend arrested after child dies during visit to home over weekend.

We have all sadly seen such headlines. The mother in this case, despite her shock and grief, decides to sign an organ donor slip. In some small way, she wants her child to live on through the lives his death can save. It is a way to honor a life cut short.

Do the organ donations of this child become somehow immoral because he was murdered rather than in an accident? I don't see how anyone could think so.

Today, I read that some church leaders are calling the J & J vaccine immoral because of the use of embryonic stem cells in its development. 

Johnson & Johnson confirmed in a statement released Tuesday that the vaccine formula itself includes no fetal tissue. So what does make their COVID-19 vaccine so much more controversial than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines?

The particular cells that are involved in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are called PerC6 cells. "These are retinal cells that came from a fetus that was aborted in 1985 in the Netherlands, which were treated in the lab to allow them to reproduce in lab settings since that time," Barker explains.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are different—they involve HEK293 cells, which also came from an aborted fetus in the Netherlands (in 1973). These cells have also been reproducing in lab settings since that time, Barker says.

I don't care where you stand in the pro-life, pro-choice argument. The point is actually moot when it comes to these vaccines. None of the cells used came about by someone intentionally getting pregnant for the purpose of generating those cells. 

Whether you consider an aborted fetus a child with a soul or not, these cells have led to extending the lives of thousands over the years. The research and development of stem cell therapies, vaccines, and tissue regeneration programs honor the lives of these embryos and to call this immoral is equivalent to saying their existance did not matter at all.