Falling in love

My heading above must index one of the most discussed topics there is but I have come across a commentary on it that seems original to me. So I am putting the opening part of it up below. The author is one lucky lady. She seems to be a real-life version of what Johnny Cash was talking about in his extremely romantic "Ring of fire" song. I will add a personal note at the foot of the post below

Jenny Mundy-Castle

“That was when,” Michael reflects as we sit in front of a semi-roaring campfire, his back propped against a large gray rock, “I realized there was no act of falling in love. By the time I knew I’d fallen there, I’d already been there for months.”

My head sinks deeper into his lap as I stare at the black, black sky, orange sparks like infinitesimal fireworks leaping into that depth. “So you just sort of, found yourself there? Like it was a place?”

He’s been showing me love, teaching me what it means, though I’m not yet certain if he understands the extent of this lesson, this need of mine.

“Exactly,” he continues. “People use that verb, ‘falling,’ when they talk about love, but I was so drawn to your words, your character, and didn’t know why. I kept it from myself, almost like protecting myself from this massive thing I’d never have let happen if I caught myself falling.”

I close my eyes and think back to the first time he wrote those words, I love you. I lived seven thousand miles away and we were both embroiled in messy divorces and there was no present, certainly no future, all we had was this crazy situation, this fact of where we’d clearly, irrevocably, found ourselves: in love. “I think it was like that for me, too,” I say.

Since that time in front of that campfire in the mountains of Northern Idaho, seven years have passed and millions of tiny moments that are also stories; moments that have shown me more about the nature of love as I now understand it, because this is what the man I’m about to marry has taught me.

https://medium.com/the-memoirist/the-man-im-about-to-marry-showed-me-these-three-things-fb4f969ce723

The idea that falling in love is a gradual process is what struck me about the story above. There is loving and there is falling in love, with the latter being a more intense process. And that process usually seems to be portrayed as sudden.

I think my own recent experience followed the outline above. Zoe and I are not an obvious match but we appealed to one-another from our first meeting -- at the very beginning of this year. But it was certainly not love at first sight. We kept seeing one another frequently and our appreciation of one another grew over time.

There were a lot of issues between us that we needed to sort out but we had a lot of good and fun times too. But we eventually got the issues sorted out more or less and I knew for some time that I had come to love Zoe. Very recently, however, I realized that I was actually in love with her. I think of her all the time. And that makes me very happy. Fortunately, she reciprocates my feelings. Pretty good going for two people in their 70s!



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NYC pols demand DA Alvin Bragg drop Jose Alba’s bodega murder charge

Self-defence is no defence in NYC?

A group of New York City elected officials is demanding that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg drop his case against bodega clerk Jose Alba in the stabbing death of an ex-con who attacked him behind the counter.


The contemptible District Attorney Alvin Bragg

The bipartisan group of City Council members said the DA’s controversial, progressive approach to law enforcement was “rewarding the guilty and punishing the innocent.”

“The fact that you are even prosecuting Mr. Alba reveals how your perverse sense of justice not only protects violent criminals, but actively seeks to destroy the lives of crime victims,” the lawmakers wrote Bragg on Thursday.

The group also called Bragg’s handling of Alba’s case “particularly jarring” in light of his generally soft-on-crime policies and the “countless cases where defendants were allowed to plea down to lesser charges and then later go on to commit additional crimes.”

“Your approach is not a policy of restorative justice or de-incarceration,” according to the letter.

“You are simply rewarding the guilty and punishing the innocent.”

In a milder statement Friday, Councilmember Shaun Abreu (D-Manhattan), whose district covers the slaying scene, said the murder charge against Alba “should be reexamined based on publicly available video evidence which appears to strongly indicate self-defense.”

“The events of July 1, just two blocks from my office, underscore the need for public safety and a fair judicial system,” Abreu said.

The officials’ statements followed remarks Thursday by Mayor Eric Adams, who said, “My heart goes out for this hard-working, honest New Yorker that was doing his job in his place of business, where a person came in and went behind the counter and attacked him.”

Alba, 61, is charged with second-degree murder in the fatal stabbing of Austin Simon, 35, inside the grocery store at 3422 Broadway in Hamilton Heights shortly after 11 p.m. July 1.

Surveillance video shows Austin shoved Alba against a wall of merchandise and was trying to lead him away when the older man fought back and plunged a knife into his neck.

The dispute was allegedly instigated by Simon’s girlfriend, who accused Alba of grabbing a bag of chips from her daughter’s hand when the mom’s electronic food-stamps card was rejected as payment.

In a statement to cops, Alba allegedly said, “He wanted me to come apologize to the girl. I took the knife we use to open boxes and I stabbed him.”

“Despite having no criminal record and video showing Mr. Alba acting in self-defense, you charged him with second-degree murder and asked the court to hold him on $500,000 bail, which was only reduced to $250,000 by the judge,” the councilmembers wrote in the letter to Bragg, a Democrat.

“This approach to justice makes most New Yorkers think the city is on a self-destructive path to oblivion.”

On Thursday afternoon, Bragg’s office reversed its position on Alba’s bail and asked a judge to reduce it to $50,000, allowing his family to raise $5,000 in cash and secure his release on bond.

Alba refused to answer questions from reporters when he later arrived home at his Hamilton Heights apartment wearing an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/08/nyc-politicians-demand-alvin-bragg-drop-jose-alba-murder-charge/

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Larry Summers doubles down, says steep joblessness needed to beat inflation

Former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is defending his comments from last month in which he claimed that millions of Americans may need to lose their jobs in order for inflation to come under control.

Summers, who has emerged as a chief critic of the Biden administration’s economic policies, told the London School of Economics recently: “We need five years of unemployment above 5% to contain inflation — in other words, we need two years of 7.5% unemployment or five years of 6% unemployment or one year of 10% unemployment.”

Summers said those figures were “remarkably discouraging” compared to the Federal Reserve’s prediction that it could tame inflation while keeping unemployment at or around 4%.

Summers said Friday that unemployment, which is currently at 3.6%, needs to rise to 5% in order to bring down inflation. Summers told Slate magazine that his statement was a “back of the envelope calculation.”

“A calculation like this is highly uncertain and every business cycle is different,” Summers told the online news site.

“So I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that there was any iron law of this being necessary.”

He added: “But I thought a calculation like this was probably a better approach for thinking about it than the Fed’s approach.”

The comments drew an angry response from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive Democratic Party lawmaker from Queens and The Bronx.

“It’s reckless to manufacture a recession that would devastate our most vulnerable,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell told a forum of European bankers late last month that there’s “no guarantee″ the central bank can tame runaway inflation without hurting the job market.

Powell repeated his hope that the Fed can achieve a so-called soft landing — raising interest rates just enough to slow the economy and rein in surging consumer prices without causing a recession and sharply raising the unemployment rate.

“We believe we can do that. That is our aim,″ he said.

But the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he said, had made the job more difficult by disrupting commerce and driving up the price of food, energy and chemicals.

US job growth increased more than expected in June and the unemployment rate remained near pre-pandemic lows, signs of persistent labor market strength that give the Federal Reserve ammunition to deliver another 75-basis-point interest rate increase later this month.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/08/larry-summers-says-steep-joblessness-needed-to-beat-inflation/

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After Trump Gave Medal of Freedom to American Heroes, Biden Just Gave One to Anthem-Hating Megan Rapinoe

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest honor that a civilian can earn in the United States. Based on who President Joe Biden just handed the award out to, you wouldn’t be able to tell.

In a ceremony on Thursday, Biden bestowed the award upon professional women’s soccer player Megan Rapinoe. A narrator for the awards called her “a champion protecting the rights of fellow LGBTQI+ Americans.”

While Rapinoe has seen massive success on the U.S. Women’s National Team, she is hardly known for her love of the country. In fact, she has publicly demonstrated her vehement disdain for the U.S. multiple times.

Rapinoe was a leader in the movement to disrespect the country by kneeling during the National Anthem, USA Today reported. She first pulled the stunt on Sept. 4, 2016, during a game with her professional team, the Seattle Reign.

On Sept. 15, 2016, she knelt during a U.S. women’s national match while wearing the nation’s colors on her chest.

In a Nov. 9, 2020, appearance on NPR’s “Fresh Air” podcast, Rapinoe criticized a statement from U.S. Soccer saying players should stand for the anthem because “representing your country is a privilege and honor for any player or coach that is associated with U.S. Soccer’s national team.”

“I couldn’t believe it,” Rapinoe said of the statement. “I think I was truly sort of dumbstruck. It really upset me. The nerve and the audacity to say what they did in that statement — it is an honor and a privilege that we all have in this country?

“I don’t think so. I don’t think we do all have that in this country. So it missed the entire point, clearly.”

She later made the false claim that America was “founded not on freedom and liberty and justice for all” but instead on “chattel slavery.” In spite of her obvious hatred for America, this is the woman Biden chose to honor with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

According to ESPN, Biden also gave the award to Simone Biles, the Olympic gymnast who infamously quit on her country in the middle of the Tokyo Olympics. These recipients are stark contrasts to the Americans who received the award from former President Donald Trump.

While Trump did give the award to multiple athletes, he chose people who proudly represented America in international competitions. They included golfer Tiger Woods, as well as Olympic champion runner Jim Ryun, according to the White House archives.

Trump posthumously bestowed the honor upon George Herman “Babe” Ruth Jr., an American baseball icon who led the New York Yankees to four World Series titles. He also gave the medal to NBA legend Bob Cousy, who was an advocate for minority athletes.

In an opinion article for the left-leaning NBC News, reporter Gary Waleik said Cousy deserved the award for his “stellar record as a player and human being.”

“He helped form the NBA Players Association union so his fellow players could make a better living,” Waleik wrote. “He spoke out against racism and befriended African American teammates who played in a city that was often hostile to them.”

Amazingly, Cousy fought racism in America without denigrating the country itself or spouting off lies about “systemic racism.” What a novel concept.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/trump-gave-medal-freedom-american-heroes-biden-just-gave-one-anthem-hating-megan-rapinoe

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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