Walk with me. Walk, I said, not run, I can’t keep up.

Running would make me tired, though, helping with sleep. Too many thoughts intruding, among them repeat disbelief when thinking about the filmed German interview of average people in an average small town wishing for the return of the NSDAP (National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei – Hitler’s Party) while planning to vote this weekend for the right wing extremist AfD candidate in local elections. Apparently they are not extreme enough. When confronted with the question” What about the 6 million Jews murdered during the NSDAP’s rule, they shrugged. Literally shrugged. The AfD now shows 20 % in national polls.

Then again, this week saw the extremist group ˆMoms for Liberty” posting a Hitler quote in one of their newsletters. This is the group trying to get their members on every school board in the country, known for harassment campaigns against teachers, educators and parents. The group has backed bills banning transgender women and girls from playing women’s sports, and encouraged book bans. Their annual summit this year will feature multiple 2024 presidential candidates, including Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Also this week we have yesterday’s Supreme Court 6 : 3 decision Jones v. Hendrix, written by Clarence Thomas, that has been called a tragedy, and I cannot detect a smidgen of exaggeration. Basically you no longer have recourse in this country when you were sentenced to prison for a crime that turned out to be no crime, or for a time period that exceeds a legal limit. Habeas Corpus proceedings to correct the errors made by federal courts have been effectively denied by the right wing of the court. Justice Jackson wrote a powerful dissent, worth a read.

Meanwhile in Texas, Governor Abbot made sure that my insomnia continues: signing a new law that deprives outdoor workers of water breaks, undermining any safe guarding of the health of manual laborers. With temperatures up to 122 degrees ( 50 Grad Celsius!) this week, it is no surprise that the first workers are dying from heatstroke.

Death by maritime creatures was also on the table this week: BBC reports that the Russians have doubled their population of dolphins, trained to attack divers and/or spy, at their naval base on the Crimea naval base, that part of Ukraine they annexed illegally in 2014.

A video from 2020 is going viral again: California Kayakers getting swallowed by a humpback whale and then spit out again…. they survived. How is that going to help getting to sleep, when your kids kayak in CA???

In D.C., in the meantime, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is received with all the bells and whistles of a government courting the business opportunities and strategic relationships with the Indian Subcontinent, particularly in view of recent developments involving China. Never mind that Modi has abetted mass murder, is yielding an iron fist against any form of resistance, engages in religious persecution and has forced, bribed or persuaded mass media and social media to prevent access to any information critical of him and his government. Here is a short essay by Arundhati Roy in The Guardian that fills in the facts. I am also re-upping a link to a lecture she gave this March in Sweden on the issue of Freedom of Speech and failing democracy – a masterpiece of political thought.

And talking about democracy, before we all despair, here is some good news: last week the Michigan House and Senate both passed a package of eight election bills implementing large parts of Proposition 2, a constitutional amendment that called for numerous pro-voting changes within the Michigan Constitution. Elections matter!

In times of irritation there is always the cop out of Positive.News, a British news website that tries to make you less upset, I guess. This week I learned that a zero emissions shuttle service debuted at Glastonbury, UK, an AI pollution-preventing ‘crystal ball’ was launched to help alert swimmers in Devon when the water is too dirty, Sea Watch celebrated the return of minke whales and 60 percent of Brits now carry a reusable bottle, compared to just 20 per cent eight years ago, giving plastic bottles a shove. And no, dear British Readers, I am not making fun of this effort. Just documenting how desperately one has to look for something, anything good to counterbalance the upsetting in the world….

I also learned here that “Sleep matters for the grey matter,” with researchers from the UK and Uruguay asserting that daytime napping may help to preserve brain health by slowing the rate at which our brains shrink as we age.

That’s what I’ll do: nap. Thinking of June meadows, counting lazuli buntings and swallows instead of sheep, dolphins, humpback or minke whales.

Sleep WILL arrive. Or a shriveled brain. One or the other.

And here is a summer symphony.