By Lee Lynch
The Amazon Trail: Covid 19 Pioneer

As a seasoned Polio Pioneer, sixty-odd years later, it strikes me as funny that I felt a little proud, just as I had in grade school, to be part of this mass health effort. There’s a bond now, between my neighbors and myself, that we went through the unknown together, that we believed in the science and the medicine and did our patriotic duty to keep America safe.

Now that President Biden and Vice President Harris are in office, I’ve been able to have my first Covid 19 vaccine shot. It was no big deal. I went to our county fairgrounds expecting to be injected through my car window, the way I was tested. I thank my lucky stars the test was negative. I’m grateful to the medical profession that persisted in making tests and vaccines available despite the disinformation and profiteering of our former leaders.

Turned out, the vaccines were administered in the same exhibit building that’s used for our winter farmers’ market, a very familiar and reassuring space. The six-foot tables that usually serve to display crafts or local mushrooms and goat cheeses, were now place markers.

By Lee Lynch
The Amazon Trail: All Along the Watchtower

When it’s dangerous to represent the citizens who elected you—we need to pay attention. We need to acknowledge that anti-democratic power is quietly accruing and will lash out; will harm rather than protect this too-trusting nation.

Oh, hell, what can I say at a time like this? Did we think they’d simply go away?

When angry white criminals occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon back on January 2, 2016 and the seven miscreants were charged with federal conspiracy and weapons violations only to go scot free;

When, in the 1980s and 1990s angry white Christians organized to legalize discrimination against their scapegoats-of-the-day, gays, in order to build a vast political machine;

When a woman was killed by a white supremacist at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia;

By Lee Lynch
The Amazon Trail

But…

The year 2020 wasn’t a total bust except for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who should not have died or have been permanently harmed by Covid 19. In the U.S., many lay those deaths and disablements at the hands of the greedy, power hungry 2020 administration and its followers.

Personally, I’ve been taking inventory of the bad and the good with my sweetheart, and finding some surprises.

Yes, over seventy-four million Americans voted to keep the traitorous officials in office, but eighty-one million plus voted to restore our democracy.

By Lee Lynch

I can’t save our democracy, but I can do a little good in the world. We are adopting a dog who needs a home.

It’s been five years, seven months since our dog Bea died and we’re finally ready and able. I inherited her at age six. I lost her to my sweetheart soon thereafter, as those two bonded immediately. When they were together, Bea would growl to keep me away.

We would not have brought another animal into the house in any case. Our cat Bolo had health problems. We, and the Vet, feared the stress might kill her. Bolo took her only pet status as her due. I lasted three weeks after she died and started looking.

Guest Column
The Amazon Trail: Nah, We Ain’t No Sissies
By Lee Lynch

I have been resting. A strange activity for me, but I had no choice. I was so worn out, I remember promising myself that I would never hurry again as long as I lived. The first two of six weeks I mostly slept, or lay unmoving beside my sweetheart. Awake, I read thrillers, and when those books didn’t ease my mental and emotional exhaustion, in desperation I read Ann Rule, the master of true crime.

So many people are afflicted or have died from what my sweetheart coined trump flu; so many people have died or lost their homes to the fires around us; so many people are suffering under the current administration; so many people are fighting the loss of democracy in the United States; so many people are victims of blatant and insidious racism—I feel like a sissy to have needed rest.