FOUST!!

Monday (2/110) was all about FOUST!!!  Janice was a FOUST virgin….so here she is signing in:  

An hour and a half later, she’s paying for her stuff:  

And I can’t believe how much fabric is in the back of the car for the 3 of us:  

although Pat did buy a few bolts for her Chicago friends....

After a quick stop at Joann’s to pick up buttons for a sweater for AJ, AND a rolling cart for Janice’s machine and all supplies, we were on our way home.  

Janice had a little bite of lunch and headed on home.  And I could not rouse myself to do another thing for the entire rest of the day and night!!!  Michael came home from golf and was happy with his 2 birdies, and Anne stopped by with birthday presents for him, but otherwise I read and dozed the rest of the day and night away.

This is an opinion piece by Marie Yovanovitch, Ambassador to Ukraine.  

While ambassador to Ukraine, Yovanovitch was the target of a conspiracy-driven smear campaign, amplified by President Donald Trump and his allies.^[6] In May 2019, Trump abruptly recalled Yovanovitch from her post following claims by Trump surrogates that she was undermining Trump's efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rival, former vice president and 2020 U.S. presidential candidate.  She testified as a whistleblower and of course, has been dismissed.

"When civil servants in the current administration saw senior officials taking actions they considered deeply wrong in regard to the nation of Ukraine, they refused to take part. When Congress asked us to testify about those activities, my colleagues and I did not hesitate, even in the face of administration efforts to silence us.

We did this because it is the American way to speak up about wrongdoing. I have seen dictatorships around the world, where blind obedience is the norm and truth-tellers are threatened with punishment or death. We must not allow the United States to become a country where standing up to our government is a dangerous act. It has been shocking to experience the storm of criticism, lies and malicious conspiracies that have preceded and followed my public testimony, but I have no regrets. I did — we did — what our conscience called us to do. We did what the gift of U.S. citizenship requires us to do.

Unfortunately, the last year has shown that we need to fight for our democracy. “Freedom is not free” is a pithy phrase that usually refers to the sacrifices of our military against external threats. It turns out that same slogan can be applied to challenges which are closer to home. We need to stand up for our values, defend our institutions, participate in civil society and support a free press. Every citizen doesn’t need to do everything, but each one of us can do one thing. And every day, I see American citizens around me doing just that: reanimating the Constitution and the values it represents. We do this even when the odds seem against us, even when wrongdoers seem to be rewarded, because it is the right thing to do."