Marmalade I love you forever. The most loving, passionate, magnificent creature ever. Now you're healed forever. I hope and pray and demand the other side is a far better world with everything you want and love. Someday I'll catch up to you. Words and thoughts and emotion and life itself fail me. Anger Pain Guilt Rage Devastation All Of It consumes me forever. I hope and pray you are purely healed and reborn and return to me. I hope and pray you are purely healed and reborn and join a family who give you endless love and everything you need and everything you want and lay down their lives for you. January 2009 - 1st September 2019

https://disjectamembra2014.blogspot.com/2019/09/marmalade-i-love-you-forever-most.html

Marmalade, my little lude dude (completely and totally forgot about this one.....)

sweetening our days and sweetening our nights, sweetening our lives, all our lives through

Marmalade you sweeten our days and you sweeten our nights, you sweeten our lives, all our lives through

bronze gold copper sunshine, caramel, twizzles, drizzles, cinnamon swirl, whip of papaya

flaming firebolt

sun spun its rays into a brassy bar of fur

my cinnamon buns

cinnamon tootsie roll, bronze nugget

my peanut butter cream puff pie

my peanut butter brittle

my delicate puss, my delicate swan, swan legs, legs so slim and delicate, fragile, beautiful, always made me

think of a swan, my swan

you are made of earth's precious metals

you are made of the same stuff as stars

he bows, then does a trick that wows, he's the original bow wow wow, cats are the original bow wow wow

you come from Egypt, you were worshipped because cats were considered stately, dignified, royal, and wise,

and you are

you are made of the sun and the moon and the stars

stardust kitty

purr baby

furr baby

slim jim, mr. slim jim

juice up (to get ready for your walk, patio time)

honey bear, bear of honey

are you the puss? are you the hairy pussy? yes you are, you are the pussy of the house, house puss

Mr. Cockala

slap dash, dash of slap (you rubbing past, you rubbing against us, slap then dash, my rap kitty)

my rap kitty

cocky pussy

you're my baby

my little wild maniac

you trill like a nightingale, like a bulgarian polyphony singer

honey bear, my bear of honey

wildcat

he whips me with his tail, tail whipped

whip that tail

there you are Marmalade, there you are

hustle and flow, hustle flow

praline crunch

hiss of the house

passion puss, my puss of passion

passion puss, where is the passion puss

puss-say I say

peach cream fuzz pie

sexy pussy, he's all kinds of sexy

sexula of the house, mr. sexy

big puss, little puss, fast puss, finicky puss, all kinds of pussy, all kinds of puss

good puss, bad puss, fast puss, finicky puss

stubborn puss, stubborn pussy

my little nomad

Hey puss, I see you

puss, puss, puss

house puss, puss of the house

yo pussy, soul pussy, fast furious finicky pussy

passionate puss

pusses tusses

wild puss

fast furious finicky ferocious

my sphinx, you are a riddle

sexy strut, strut of sex

strut swagger, swing those hips, swing those hips round, strut those legs, pump those legs, slap those paws

down, slap, slap, slap, slap

strut that body around, strut that body round

swing the bommaly boms around

stretch that body, spread those toes, close those legs

we have a puss in the house, a house puss

we have a pussy in the house, where is the pussy of the house

lounge like a lion
leap like a leopard
lurk like a lynx
jump like a jaguar
prowl like a panther
pounce like a puma
taunt like a tiger
chaunt like a cheetah
balk like a baboon
swing like an orangutan

woolly bully, my little woolly bully

soul brother/brutha
yowl

Marmalade I love you forever. The most loving, passionate, magnificent creature ever. Now you're healed

forever. I hope and pray and demand the other side is a far better world with everything you want and love.

Someday I'll catch up to you. Words and thoughts and emotion and life itself fail me. Anger Pain Guilt Rage

Devastation All Of It consumes me forever. I hope and pray you are purely healed and reborn and return to me. I

hope and pray you are purely healed and reborn and join a family who give you endless love and everything you

need and everything you want and lay down their lives for you. January 2009 - 1st September 2019

______________________________


Borrowing from When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloom'd


My Marmalade crying trilling pure deliberate notes that spread and filled my heart/mind/soul and the early

evening night when Kenny cut down those trees, cats lived/hid out in those wild tangle of trees behind his house,

Marmalade you cried anguishing meows that night watching Kenny cut them down, I'll never forget, haunted me

everyday of my life, Marmalade's little heart deeply deeply devastatingly broken for his comrades of the night,

meows of uttermost woe, looking back it was like an omen that Marmalade would always suffer, meow notes

long panoramas of visions of cat disbelief and heartbreak, you were born into suffering that you NEVER

DESERVED, YOU NEVER DESERVED THE SUFFERING/TRAUMA that entangled you (Elsie's dog almost

attacking you that resulted in your badly injured paws/claws because you dug your claws into the ground when

you set your body up to "stand your ground" and defend yourself, the other guy's dogs jumping through the

screen, Shirley's dog, the guy with the small motorcycle and you re-injured your paws/claws, when you broke

your femur climbing the planter, you joined our family and ended up suffering our NEVER ENDING BAD

LUCK). I'm sorry Kenny did that, I went from not liking him to viewing him as a worthless piece of shit, he did

not want us back there or on his lawn, I understand that, all he had to do was fix his fence (which he did do, in

the most rudest ignorant scumbag way possible) or simply shout over one day, hey, please no more crossing

through the fence. My heart broke that day watching your heart break, I tried to console you but you were

understandably inconsolable.

Marlade's trilling meow the song of my soul, clear, low, wailing, flooding the night, bursting with disbelief,

covering my heart, his powerful psalm in the early evening I heard forever from that evening forward, I see him

trying to stand and peer as high as possible and meow in devastating disbelief and anguish that his cat friends

might be harmed, I tried to commune with you, confort you, but your piercing deeply deeply deeply sad meow

gutted me and I knew  you your heart broke, wonderous meows of my bronze gold copper sunshine Marmalade,

the sound full of woe, I felt the same and your heart pain was my heart pain, meow on my pussy cat, I had no

right to sharply yell at you to get you stop meowing ALL THOSE NIGHTS when you meowed wildly to your cat

friends and to the wild night, you poured your meow all across creation itself, limitless

My Marmalade's meows free and tender and wild and loose and wondrous, mastering me, my trilling bulgarian

polyphony singer, your meows received all existence, thrilling

But that early evening (Kenny cutting tries) your meows sang the carol of innocence broken, of a heart broken, a

carol that rapt me, rapt the night, my songbird, this Marmalade is the best I can do for you, heavily borrowed

from Whitman, this is my chant for you, I love you above all, I voice with my husky ragged voice this for you,

hear this, come back to us.

______________________________


Walt Whitman

Of your real body and any man's or woman's real body,
Item for item it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners and
    pass to fitting spheres,
Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the
    moment of death.

______________________________


Walt Whitman - Unnamed Land

O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any more
    than we are for nothing,
I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as much
    as we now belong to it.

I believe of all those men and women that fill'd the unnamed lands,
    every one exists this hour here or elsewhere, invisible to us.
In exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out of
    what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinn'd, in life.

I believe that was not the end of those nations or any person of
    them, any more than this shall be the end of my nation, or of me;
Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products,
    games, wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets,
I suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen world,
    counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world,
I suspect I shall meet them there,
I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those unnamed lands.

______________________________


My beloved Marmalade through with your part: you're only sleeping, you're merely sleeping, you have a new

part to play, your new part is waiting, wake up and commence with your new part, nine lives not only means

nine human lives in your lifetime, it means nine human lives in my timeline, nine of you in my lifetime, you owe

me countless years, you owe me nine more lives, return home, I love you
______________________________


You're still tied to September because you were grafted to September, having lived through the early morning of

September 1st, closing your eyes for the last time that morning. You are engrafted to September 2019 for having

lived through that September 1st Sunday morning. September 1st was your last day (and Sunday, our shopping

day, forever changed) but you're engrafted to September each and every day of the month.


Tomorrow is October 1st, a whole new world because September will be complete, closed, your final day no

longer attached to the month. My real first day KNOWING it's a world without you alive running around by my

side in it. My first real day in the world by myself, on my own, a whole new world, after the time we had. You

will not be engrafted to October 2019 or the months and years beyond. Billions of calendars have turned the

page and you are left behind in September 2019.

But you are engrafted IN ME and I will carry you with me and in me through the remainder of my life, you will

be carried alive in me for a duration of probably close to twice my age. I'm old yet have twice my life left to

live (although I see no future, I have no sense of any future). Myself and mother (and worthless excuse of a

human being grandmother who really stopped caring about you several years ago because she finally aged into a

geriatric stage) are the two people who will carry your entire 10 year and 8 month and 1 day existence inside

ourselves for the rest of our days. I will carry you in me for the rest of my life. You were and are and always

will be worshipped. You are engrafted in my brain, heart, bones, cells, soul.

It's over now, we had our time. Thank you Heather Nova for that lyric. It likely saved my life reading it today.

Marmalade I love you. I always told you, you're killing me, because I knew, deep inside, our time together was

limited (felines live out their lives faster than humans), I knew time with you was limited, you killed me. It's

over now, we had our time. This pain is agonizing.  I failed you, not vice-versa. All you ever wanted was for us

to be full of laughter and happiness and joy. You wanted our house to be a happy, joyful, laughing, home. You'll

NEVER know how sorry I am that that happy joyous home was never meant to be. You'll also never know that

you entered a NON-CHANGING situation, there was NOTHING you could do to unify myself and the other two

people. You did everything in your power to unify us and that was beyond ALL power. But you saved me. You

SAVED me. I failed you. It was up to me to change and exit and take you with me. But YOU NEVER FAILED.

You brightened our life for 10 years and 9 months. You brought us endless infinite eternal happiness and joy and

laughter for 10 years and 9 months. I'm sorry for all the screaming and fighting and screaming and fighting and

ever more screaming and fighting and endless damage that was done (which you always swept away without a

care, felines always do, that a major feline gift), which had nothing to do with you. Uniting myself and the other

two people was never going to happen, you did not know the damage was done, you were not yet in the world. It

took more than 4 billion years for your father's seed to be planted, for you to grow inside your mother, for your

mother to birth you into this world, for you to find yourself in our house. It will take 4 billion years for that seed

to return and be seeded again and for you to be rebirthed into the world. Whatever world there is then. YOU

NEVER FAILED. You saved my life. You were my life. You are my life. Know that I'm doing, I'm trying, my

very best, to draw strength from memories of you, from thoughts of you, through remembering your meows and

purrs and radiance and glory and happiness and contentment. All you ever wanted was for me to be happy and

calm and content, to be in a state of joy and contentment and ease. I am doing everything I can allow everything

you gave me to flow through me eternally: your endless passion and love and radiance and gloriousness and

joyousness and contentment and joy and happiness and forbearance and forgiveness and cockiness and complete

and utter joy of the world and everything in it despite the screaming and the fights and all the loud

neighbourhood noises and the maniacal dogs and Florida's holocaust heat. I always told you, you sweetened our

days and you sweetened our nights and you sweetened our lives, all our lives through, and that is what I must

remember at all times. You want me happy. The sad thing is if I ever get the actual happiness I want (and you

know what that is Marmalade, I told you a million times, moving back up north to a blue democratic state with

four seasons), you won't be here to enjoy it. I'm sorry I failed to move us to a blue Democrat state with 4 seasons

and a much cooler cleaner happier environment. That failure kills me every second I breathe. You deserved

better than me and the shit Florida weather and shit hood with shit people we were stuck in. I love you.

Nature/Existence/Evolution is evil and cruel for having designed felines (and canines) to live out their lives in

the blink of a human eye. The pain hurts like it should. Because that is the price of love.


And I'm not editing this message from this moment forward. I have to let it go now. I love you Marmalade. Puss,

puss, puss, where is the puss of the house? (Seeing you): There you are.

______________________________


Heather Nova - Feel You Like A River

( On ATB / Two worlds LP )

I could feel you across the miles of my body
Almost physical, spiritual
Like there was no separation
Like you were right beside me
Like a river

I can feel forever in my mind
I can always reach for you inside
We can stay together in our minds
Feel you like a river,
Never die

Ooh ooh ooh ...

Remember the bridge we crossed
Leaning out over the water,
With the sun streaming in
Through the leaves
We can keep it alive,
It's just energy

I can feel forever in my mind
I can always reach for you inside
We can stay together in our minds
Feel you like a river,
Never die

Ooh ooh ooh ...

And I feel I feel I feel you
Like a river
And I feel I feel I feel you,
Like a river

I can feel forever in my mind
I can always reach for you inside
We can stay together in our minds
Feel you like a river,
Never die

Ooh ooh ooh ...

And I feel I feel I feel you,
Like a river
And I feel I feel I feel you,
Like a river
And I feel I feel I feel you,
Like a river

______________________________

Tested

Simplicity, is what we need
And I know it in my heart
So many choices make us think we need
What we haven't got

I've been blessed, by you
I've been tested, by an angel
I've been blessed, by you
And I know and I believe
There's a way out to the sea of happiness

And if I knew what Buddha taught
And would my wings unfold
And if I had all that I want
Could I let it go

I've been blessed, by you
I've been tested, by an angel
I've been blessed, by you
And I know and I believe
There's a way out to the sea of happiness

And sometimes I feel I'm learning to crawl
Like I'm still learning how to love
And sometimes I feel like I'm losing it all
But I know there must be some way we can rise above

I've been blessed, by you
I've been tested, by an angel
I've been blessed, by you
And I know and I believe
There's a way out to the sea of happiness
And I know and I believe
And I know and I believe
And I know and I believe
______________________________


And even though I miss you, I know we're through (we, Marmalade, will never NEVER through)
And I need to find something new

And I need new love
And I need true love
And I need to be held
And I need to be told
There's more to come


I know you're gone, but you
You left me a song

Take the bitter with the sweet
Take the pain in search of joy

I'm still the child I was inside
Emotions that I tried to hide

Out of every sorrow
Another day will dawn

Sometimes you got to let love go
Even though it's hurting, even though
And sometimes you got to let love slide
With the river
The river of life

And though remorse comes easily
An act of love could set you free

______________________________

The Bowerbird

love walks beside me, but I didn't see til now; how tall and how good
and how rare a bower bird he is. for years he has laid out the path
of blue objects leading to the finest nest. the songs I made and all the
dinners were nothing in comparison. I catch him sleeping and it makes
me cry for all my wandering and darkness and for all his grace. kick
me out, let the folds of promise smother me; I have failed the biggest
test, a beginner cheating at the starting line. bind me up and throw me
to the sharks; I will rot in your lovely nest, I will mess it up and leave
feathers everywhere. you are too good for me; I swear G-d gave me
your heart on a bone china plate to make up for the pain i'd known.
and maybe we are given but one gift in life. we could go on, but you
are so rare and patient. I don't deserve your sweetness or your comfort
or your blue blue blue, perfect blue love.

______________________________


Marmalade, From You To Me, That Last Day, Your Eyes Squinting Closed And Face Beaming, Perhaps Lost,

Definitely Dying, Hopefully In Reverie Of Joyous Memories, Definitely Running Through A Million Memories

In Your Mind, Your Face Beaming Up Into The Sun, A Smile On Your Face, Hoping, Knowing, Knowing You

Were Going To Return To The Light: Heather Nova - If I Should Die


If I Should Die

If I should die and leave you here, just disappear
I know the sun will still shine
The day I'm gone, you'll carry on and on and on
And I know the sun will still shine

And if you wanna reach me
Just feel the sun in your face
And if you wanna hear me
Just sing out with your own voice

Life in each hour is delicate
As a jasmine flower in my hands
Just for this time
To kiss your face, to hold you now
To feel this grace
Just for this time

And if you wanna reach me
Just feel the sun in your face
And if you wanna hear me
Just sing out with your own voice

Cause I will always, I will always
I will always be a part of you
And love will always, love will always
Love will always, love will get you through

Yeah, I will always, I will always
I will always be a part of you
And love will always, love will always
Love will always, love will get you through
______________________________

Your voice and existence fills all my existence and life's existence, Marmalade your meows and purrs are being

heard long past your days, you will be heard long past your days, I hear you now, long past your days


You're lost in the silence now, deep in my heart
I'm starting again but I don't know how to start
Look out to the ocean, the green turns to blue
Crack in the sadness, the light filters through
______________________________


L-rd Byron - Childe Harold's Pilgrimage - Canto III

Adieu to thee again! a vain adieu!
There can be no farewell to scene like thine;
The mind is colour'd by thy every hue;
And if reluctantly the eyes resign
Their cherish'd gaze upon thee, lovely Rhine!
'Tis with the thankful glance of parting praise;
More mighty spots may rise, more glaring shine,
But none unite in one attaching maze
The brilliant, fair, and soft, — the glories of old days.
______________________________

To every life a light that shines
To every heart a beat that's true
Baby you're my yellow summer
Baby you're my winterblue
______________________________

Out Of The Cradle Endlessly Rocking

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child
    leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they
    were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous'd words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such as now they start the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing.

Once Paumanok,
When the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was growing,
Up this seashore in some briers,
Two feather'd guests from Alabama, two together,
And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown,
And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand,
And every day the she-bird crouch'd on her nest, silent, with bright eyes,
And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing
them,
Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.

Shine! shine! shine!
Pour down your warmth, great sun.
While we bask, we two together.

Two together!
Winds blow south, or winds blow north,
Day come white, or night come black,
Home, or rivers and mountains from home,
Singing all time, minding no time,
While we two keep together.

Till of a sudden,
May-be kill'd, unknown to her mate,
One forenoon the she-bird crouch'd not on the nest,
Nor return'd that afternoon, nor the next,
Nor ever appear'd again.

And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea,
And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather,
Over the hoarse surging of the sea,
Or flitting from brier to brier by day,
I saw, I heard at intervals the remaining one, the he-bird,
The solitary guest from Alabama.

Blow! blow! blow!
Blow up sea-winds along Paumanok's shore;
I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me.

Yes, when the stars glisten'd,
All night long on the prong of a moss-scallop'd stake,
Down almost amid the slapping waves,
Sat the lone singer wonderful causing tears.

He call'd on his mate,
He pour'd forth the meanings which I of all men know.

Yes my brother I know,
The rest might not, but I have treasur'd every note,
For more than once dimly down to the beach gliding,
Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows,
Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and sights
    after their sorts,
The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing,
I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair,
Listen'd long and long.

Listen'd to keep, to sing, now translating the notes,
Following you my brother.

Soothe! soothe! soothe!
Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,
And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close,
But my love soothes not me, not me.

Low hangs the moon, it rose late,
It is lagging--O I think it is heavy with love, with love.

O madly the sea pushes upon the land,
With love, with love.

O night! do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers?
What is that little black thing I see there in the white?

Loud! loud! loud!
Loud I call to you, my love!
High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves,
Surely you must know who is here, is here,
You must know who I am, my love.

Low-hanging moon!
What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow?
O it is the shape, the shape of my mate.
O moon do not keep her from me any longer.

Land! land! O land!
Whichever way I turn, O I think you could give me my mate back again
    if you only would,
For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look.

O rising stars!
Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with some of you.

O throat! O trembling throat!
Sound clearer through the atmosphere!
Pierce the woods, the earth,
Somewhere listening to catch you must be the one I want.

Shake out carols!
Solitary here, the night's carols!
Carols of lonesome love! death's carols!
Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon!
O under that moon where she droops almost down into the sea!
O reckless despairing carols.

But soft! sink low!
Soft! let me just murmur,
And do you wait a moment you husky-nois'd sea,
For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me,
So faint, I must be still, be still to listen,
But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to me.

Hither my love!
Here I am! here!
With this just-sustain'd note I announce myself to you,
This gentle call is for you my love, for you.

Do not be decoy'd elsewhere,
That is the whistle of the wind, it is not my voice,
That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray,
Those are the shadows of leaves.

O darkness! O in vain!
O I am very sick and sorrowful

O brown halo in the sky near the moon, drooping upon the sea!
O troubled reflection in the sea!
O throat! O throbbing heart!
And I singing uselessly, uselessly all the night.

O past! O happy life! O songs of joy!
In the air, in the woods, over fields,
Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved!
But my mate no more, no more with me!
We two together no more.

The aria sinking,
All else continuing, the stars shining,
The winds blowing, the notes of the bird continuous echoing,
With angry moans the fierce old mother incessantly moaning,
On the sands of Paumanok's shore gray and rustling,
The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of
    the sea almost touching,
The boy ecstatic, with his bare feet the waves, with his hair the
    atmosphere dallying,
The love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at last tumultuously
    bursting,
The aria's meaning, the ears, the soul, swiftly depositing,
The strange tears down the cheeks coursing,
The colloquy there, the trio, each uttering,
The undertone, the savage old mother incessantly crying,
To the boy's soul's questions sullenly timing, some drown'd secret hissing,
To the outsetting bard.

Demon or bird! (said the boy's soul,)
Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me?
For I, that was a child, my tongue's use sleeping, now I have heard you,
Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake,
And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder
    and more sorrowful than yours,
A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die.

O you singer solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me,
O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating you,
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what
    there in the night,
By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger there arous'd, the fire, the sweet hell within,
The unknown want, the destiny of me.

O give me the clue! (it lurks in the night here somewhere,)
O if I am to have so much, let me have more!

A word then, (for I will conquer it,)
The word final, superior to all,
Subtle, sent up--what is it?--I listen;
Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea-waves?
Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands?

Whereto answering, the sea,
Delaying not, hurrying not,
Whisper'd me through the night, and very plainly before daybreak,
Lisp'd to me the low and delicious word death,
And again death, death, death, death
Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous'd child's heart,
But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet,
Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly all over,
Death, death, death, death, death.

Which I do not forget.
But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother,
That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok's gray beach,
With the thousand responsive songs at random,
My own songs awaked from that hour,
And with them the key, the word up from the waves,
The word of the sweetest song and all songs,
That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet,
(Or like some old crone rocking the cradle, swathed in sweet
    garments, bending aside,)
The sea whisper'd me.

______________________________

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
     Though nothing can bring back the hour
     Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
     We will grieve not, rather find
     Strength in what remains behind;
    In the primal sympathy
    Which having been must ever be;
    In the soothing thoughts that spring
    Out of human suffering;
    In the faith that looks through death,
    In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
______________________________

Marmalade my Love, you are the candle on the table that burned, you burned on the table (Zhivago: Winter

Night)

Heather Nova - The Sun Will Always Rise and bring the light, you, Marmalade, the sun that morning, 1st

September 2019, I will ALWAYS remember the sun beam radiating down and you seemed to be grinning (I

could only see your face partially, but your mouth, a grin), the light, returning home, and now I hate the sun more

than ever because of the memory, because you welcomed it, you welcomed the light, but the light, the sunbeam,

it's now you, beaming down, radiating down, shining down, on me

Your eyes closed, head tilted sligly back, face up, you felt a sun and time and tide coming to an end, you felt

another existence outside of our existence

On that chair that morning, I know you were not able to jump off, I move the chair to the couch to help you onto

the couch, you refused to be moved, those purrs, those three deep purring sequences, you let me know, you told

me it was time, it was at least the very last time you could be you, the last time you could allow what made you

YOU show, the last time you could let me know you loved me, the last time, telling me this was it, waiting any

longer to release you meant you would slip away into a dying sleep you would never recover from, you gave me

one last final burst of your life, YOU,
______________________________


Sometimes people leave you
Halfway through the wood
Do not let it grieve you
No one leaves for good
You are not alone
No one is alone
__________________________

I truly believe you willingly made the decision to leave to save us from the emotional pain and financial

circumstances.

It is impossible to put into words the profound effect that you had on my life. You taught me everything that I

know about unconditional love, joy, happiness, wonder, excitement, contentment, selflessness.  You were/are my

constant source of warmth.

My heart is absolutely crushed. Your radiance, joy, spirit, magic, limitless supply of love, everything, is here,

reminding me every day to be better.

I am forever honoured and humbled that you chose us as your caretaker. Please visit all of us in our dreams.
__________________________

Safire - Thinking Of You

As I sit
looking out the window
I can still remember

They call me to tell me
you went away
It was such a cold day

On a Sunday morning
It came without a warning
And all the pain I felt inside

I just can't forget you
I'm feeling so alone
Though many times I've tried
I can't get you off my mind

(chorus)

I'm thinking of you
Wonder where you are tonight
I wish that I could hold you tight
I'm thinking of you
Wish you could stay
But you're so far away
So far away

And even though you're gone
I know you're happy
where you are

And I know someday
We'll be together
Together again

On a Sunday morning
It came without a warning
And all the pain I felt inside
I just can't forget you
I'm feeling so alone
Though many times I've tried
I can't get you off my mind

I'm thinking of you
Wonder where you are tonight
I wish that I could hold you tight
I'm thinking of you
Wish you could stay
But you're so far away.
So far away...

I know someday
I'll hold you again
You and me, together again
But until that day
I'm thinking of you
__________________________


gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking
    sun, burning, expanding the air

Lilac and star and Marmalade twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

readapted: Failing to fetch you at first. I keep encouraged,
Missing you one place, I search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you
You stop somewhere waiting for me 

__________________________

readapted from Pasternak's Autumn, both translations

Marmalade

Keeping its promise without deception,
The sun penetrated early in the morning,
Tracing a saffron sunray streak obliquely cast
From the window to your resting sprawl.

Blazing ochre was outspread
Over nearby copse and homestead,
My tear-stained pillow, and the bed,
A stretch of wall beyond the bookshelf.

And I recalled the reason why
Suddenly came recollection:
This was the ancient First Day of September
This was your Transfiguration.

On this day a flameless radiant light
Issues from the autumnal sky
And you, my yellow summer and winter blue
Refulgent as an oriflamme,
Command enraptured observation.

You, my flaming firebolt, my sunshine coppered, made your way amid the sere
And starkly stunted autumnal grass
Through the loamy herbage of the earth,
Ablaze like glowing ginger biscuit.

Aloft, the trees' quiescent crowns
Had solemn heaven for their neighbor,
And distance echoed back the sound
Of your long-drawn age-old nightengale trilling polyphonic ululation.

And there, among the endless blue sky with its burning hot September sun
Stood death, to make official survey
And look into my lifeless face
And size my limbs for their interment.

Then, near at hand and heard by all,
A voice spoke, calm and reassuring -
Your own, My own prophetic voice of yore,
Intact, untainted by time and death and corruption and tide:

Farewell to Transfiguration's azure
And to this Gold of Day
Inter into me the bitterness to me of this predestined hour.
Uncounted years
My heart is and forever witness to your life
You are alive as I am alive
Outstretched paw and eye and mind and soul
Free flight forever soaring onwards
Work of wonders
Heaven's Treasure

__________________________


Sweet 10 years and 8 months and 1 day into eternal time.. you stole my heart
I let it go with all the fear and doubt
Sweet cinnamon swirl.. you opened my mind
With all the sweetness that you left behind
And I'm living, with a vision of you
All the days grow colder, but I know
It's not the way I'm holding on but how I'm letting go
And how I will remember
Sweet pussy cat

And now you're with me
You're with me in the sun
I'm a baby in a world that's just begun
And now you're with me
You're with me in the sun and rain
I'm so glad that I will never be the same
Cause I'm living with a vision of you

All the leaves are falling, falling down like light
It's not the way I'm holding on it's how I'm letting go
But how, I will remember
Marmalade

Harm Reduction: The Cities That Said Yes to Drugs (The Atlantic)

 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/09/city-drug-addiction-harm-reduction-policy/687967/


Seattle’s Jose Rizal Park has become a favorite spot for addicts to smoke and inject fentanyl.


The Cities That Said Yes to Drugs

Policies that gave addicts clean needles and places to use drugs were intended to reduce harm. They created a “zombie apocalypse.”

By Michael Powell

Photographs by Dana Golan

July 30, 2026 


Late last year, I walked roughly a mile from downtown Seattle to the working-class neighborhood of Little Saigon and came upon a montage of human despair. An open-air drug market stretched along the intersection of 12th and Jackson: about 250 people, many smoking fentanyl or bent over in the thrall of the drug, tilting as if mid-fall. Three women lay passed out on the sidewalk, their chests slowly rising and falling, while fellow addicts stepped over them and dealers made sales. Young boys, schoolbags on their backs, stood on a far corner and watched.

I walked around the block to the Hoa Mai playground, named for a Vietnamese flower that signifies rebirth. City workers had installed gates to keep drug users away, but at 4 p.m. on a Wednesday, I counted 27 people smoking drugs and nodding off. No children were in sight.

Half a mile to the south, in the Beacon Hill neighborhood, I visited a 10-acre park named after the Filipino nationalist Jose Rizal. It has a playground and the remnants of an apple orchard, and at night you can peer downtown and see the city lights. As I arrived, a drug user squatted next to a child’s slide and relieved himself. Others had set up tents and colonized the park pavilion, where they heated fentanyl on tinfoil and inhaled the fumes with glass pipes. A few went old-school and injected it.

Across the street, I spoke with Angelina Monsegur as she waited at a bus stop. When she was a kid, she told me, she and her father ate candied apples in the park and watched Fourth of July fireworks. A few weeks earlier, she and her 6-year-old daughter had gotten on the bus and seen a man smoking fentanyl on board. “Are you serious?” she’d shouted at him. “My daughter has asthma.” I asked if she had called the police, and she smiled at my naivete. “All the city does is send out teams who hand out aluminum foil and fentanyl pipes.”

Seattle is one of the wealthiest and best-educated cities in the world. It can afford to try various strategies to address its drug epidemic and high rate of fatal overdoses. Yet many of the city’s leaders, apparently supported by voters, view enforcing bans on the open sale and use of narcotics, and forcing addicts off the streets and into treatment, as akin to an act of state repression.

Seattle, like a striking number of other liberal American cities, has embraced a radical form of “harm reduction,” which is more a philosophy about treating addiction than a scientific approach to it. Harm reduction’s adherents hold that police and outreach workers should “meet the addicted where they are,” which is to say without judgment. The New York State Department of Health, a bastion of harm reduction, describes it as a “social movement” committed to “building leadership” among drug users. In these places, de facto and sometimes legal restrictions on narcotics use have been greatly loosened; cities fund teams of workers to hand out drug paraphernalia, and in some rare cases they’ve created dedicated spaces for addicts to shoot up. Meanwhile, police departments struggling with staffing shortages and budget cuts have stopped devoting resources to sweeping users and dealers off the streets or out of parks and playgrounds.

Harm reduction was born 50 years ago of an admirable humanitarian impulse. Its most basic ideas, such as providing clean needles to users, deservedly draw broad support. There’s a debate to be had, though, about whether this approach has saved lives or added to the carnage of America’s terrible drug epidemic. From 2014 to 2024, roughly 862,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, more than twice the toll of the previous decade. Several studies have shown that addicts who shoot up at official injection sites are far less likely to die of overdoses than those who use drugs in, say, alleyways and parks. Over the past decade, however, overdose-death rates climbed sharply in nearly every city where the strongest harm-reduction policies were in place, and even with declines in the past two years, the rates remain well above those of previous decades. From 2016 to 2025, 7,089 people died of overdoses in King County, which includes Seattle—seven times the number of homicides in that period.

Harm reduction isn’t just a problem for addicts. In many cities, the autonomy of drug users has taken precedence over nearly everything and everyone else, not least working-class families like Monsegur’s who must live alongside addicts and accept dystopian decay. Keith Humphreys, a Stanford psychiatry and behavioral-sciences professor and a former adviser to President Obama, supports needle exchanges and opposes the widespread jailing of users. But when he argues that drug policy must take into account the impact on communities, he told me, some critics dismiss him as a reactionary. Their arguments, he said, “sound a lot more like gun rights and vaccine refusal. It’s no longer about the whole population; it’s about the subset who use drugs.”

In recent years, officials in cities such as San Francisco and Philadelphia have moved to rein in the excesses of harm-reduction policies. Nevertheless, these policies retain a powerful hold on public-health and political leaders in blue parts of the country. I witnessed this in visits to Seattle and Burlington, Vermont—two of America’s more progressive cities. Both are afflicted by high overdose rates, overwhelmed police forces, parks and public squares often captive to drug use, and the theft and disorder that accompany all of that. Yet many of their elected officials continue to insist, despite everything, that harm reduction is the most effective and moral solution to addiction.


In Seattle’s working-class Little Saigon neighborhood, where hundreds of people gather in open-air drug markets, businesses and playgrounds have installed gates to keep addicts away.

Harm reduction took root in the 1970s in the Netherlands, where addicts formed unions—the Junkiebond in Rotterdam, for instance—that distributed needles and pushed back against official insistence on abstinence from hard drugs. Not long afterward, this philosophy gained support in some American and Canadian cities. I first encountered it when I reported on a heroin-shooting gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn, in 1991. The work of harm-reduction advocates at the time undoubtedly saved lives. HIV-infection rates for drug users in Bushwick had reached 50 percent or higher, at a time when that diagnosis was close to a death sentence. Activists risked arrest to distribute clean needles and bleach to disinfect used ones. But some began to argue for a more radical step: There would be less death, they said, if addicts could inject drugs without fear of arrest.

That momentous step came about not in New York but in Vancouver, a city whose political culture was left-wing and libertarian, celebrating the rights of the individual. In 2003, as overdose deaths surged, the Liberal Party of Canada carved out an exemption to federal drug laws and established North America’s first sanctioned injection site, in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a troubled dockside neighborhood. Addicts could bring their heroin and cocaine to a 13-seat center where staff dispensed needles, swabs, and sterile water to cook the drugs and offered advice on vein maintenance. Clinic staff were trained to reverse overdoses, and if that failed, to call a hospital for help.

Initial opinion surveys found broad public support for the center, and it shone like a beacon for some activists, academics, and journalists in the United States and other parts of Canada. A stream of studies and articles celebrated Vancouver’s legal shooting gallery, which resulted in fewer cases of AIDS and other infections, and fewer deaths. Public-health officials coined a nonjudgmental nomenclature that persists to this day. The word addict was stigmatizing; better to refer to people who use drugs. People used rather than abused narcotics. They did not fail a drug test ; they tested positive.

Vancouver’s model spawned dozens of injection sites across Canada. Health officials in British Columbia went still further, championing a program known as “safer supply”: Former government officials started companies that provided addicts with free opioid alternatives such as pharmaceutical-grade hydromorphone pills—considerably more powerful than heroin. Drug users obtained these pills from pharmacies and specially designed vending machines.

By 2020, the rights of addicts in the province had edged toward the fantastical. In 2023, the province decriminalized small amounts of certain hard drugs. One hospital instructed nurses not to confiscate fentanyl or meth from patients and not to restrict suspected dealers from visiting patients. When British Columbia banned illicit-drug use within 50 feet of a public park, playground, or swimming pool, the provincial supreme court blocked the law, ruling that it could cause “irreparable harm” to drug users. “Harm reductionists had the force of a bulldozer,” Julian Somers, who studies addiction at Simon Fraser University, told me.

Some addicts learned to game the system by obtaining daily allotments of hydromorphone pills—15 or more a day was typical—and then selling them to dealers in exchange for stronger fentanyl concoctions. Dealers could then sell the original pills on the street. An investigation by the National Post reported a price drop of 70 percent or more for black-market pills in cities that had instituted safer supply. This, in turn, expanded the circle of the addicted and led to more overdoses.


Medics attend to a man who overdosed on drugs in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighborhood. Thousands of addicts have poured into the city since it opened North America’s first sanctioned injection site, inspiring similar programs across the U.S. and Canada.

The consequences were predictable. Over the course of two decades, many thousands of drug users poured into the Downtown Eastside and other Canadian neighborhoods in search of narcotics and places to shoot up. Overdoses spiked. In 2014, British Columbia recorded 369 overdose deaths; in 2023, the figure peaked at more than 2,500. Fatal overdoses last year decreased to 1,826, as Canada moved to reverse decriminalization and tighten regulation of narcotics, but that still represents a nearly ninefold increase over 15 years. Advocates of harm reduction have long held that more addicts would die if officials closed injection centers. But a recent study found that after an injection site in Alberta closed, there was no increase in the number of overdose deaths, and more addicts sought treatment. Advocates have also insisted that crime does not spike near injection centers, but the data are more mixed than they admit.

Not long ago, I walked through a park in Toronto to a fence with hundreds of purple ribbons tied to it. Each represented a resident who had died of an overdose, and I was unavoidably moved. Then, as I read a leaflet, I realized that the memorial was the work of the Harm Reduction Advocacy Collective, “a liberation movement of people who use drugs,” along with public-health professionals and academics who “stand up for the rights of drug users.” It’s one of a number of similar groups in Canada, such as the Substance Use Health Network, which condemns “anti-euphoria prohibitionist principles” such as “the idea that illicit drugs are inherently bad.”

British Columbia is starting to rethink its runaway experiment. In 2025, the province began requiring addicts using the safer-supply program to consume their prescribed narcotics in front of pharmacists, and earlier this year, the drug-decriminalization program expired. Provincial health authorities are now making attempts to encourage addicts to get treatment. The sense is of a political culture reluctantly shaking off a decades-long stupor. In 2024, the premier of British Columbia appointed Daniel Vigo, a psychiatrist and public-health researcher, as the province’s chief scientific adviser on toxic drugs. Vigo has spoken of the terrible toll that repeat overdoses take on addicts’ brains, and has advocated for a new policy of mandating treatment for some addicts. Progressive activists and journalists tend to talk about forced treatment as a conservative-driven return to a carceral state, but considerable data show that addicts who enter mandated treatment are as likely to avoid drug use and rearrest as the relatively small number who seek treatment voluntarily.

Vigo’s words today would have amounted to heresy a few years ago. “It’s as if we forgot that the goal was to try and stop people from getting addicted,” he told me, adding later: “Harm reduction gets people in trouble when it stops being one part of a holistic strategy and it becomes an ideological movement.”

But even as Vancouver has begun the painful process of revising its harm-reduction policies, the city still exerts a powerful hold on the imagination of liberal leaders in the United States. In New York City, which established two injection sites in 2021, health officials and academics point to the perceived success of Vancouver as inspiration. Rhode Island, where an injection center opened in Providence in 2024, also holds up Vancouver as a model. The Washington State legislature appointed a working group that in 2025 recommended establishing a safe supply of narcotics for addicts, and officials repeatedly cited the Vancouver program.

The shadow cast by Vancouver extends to Burlington. Last year, the city council approved the establishment of an injection center. The group that the city chose to run it noted that Vancouver “remains the source of much of the evidence” showing the benefits of such spaces for drug users and the community.

Burlington sits on Lake Champlain, the Adirondack Mountains rising on the far shore. It’s a beautiful city, but its drug scene is not covert, spreading over downtown and several other neighborhoods. Users pitch tents in churchyards and parks and along the waterfront. When I sat in City Hall Park last September, I counted at least 70 users and dealers, many looking hyperkinetic in the way of the strung out. I walked through an alley next to city hall where, a few weeks earlier, a group of young people had allegedly beaten a man to death in an argument over drugs.

Vermont has strict laws against possession of heroin and cocaine, but users in Burlington are rarely arrested or prosecuted for possessing small amounts. Although it’s hard to isolate the effects of these policies, in 2024, the city of almost 45,000 recorded 585 drug overdoses, 28 of which were fatal. That is more than twice the rate of fatal overdoses per capita in New York City the same year.

Beth Sightler walked me around her working-class neighborhood in the Old North End. Burlington’s progressive political culture and tradition of caring for the poor are well established; Bernie Sanders served four terms as mayor in the 1980s. Sightler, a liberal who runs a mental-health center, said she has fished needles out of her flower boxes and seen people overdosing in cars and cemeteries. She carries naloxone, a medication that can reverse an opioid overdose, when she walks her dog. One morning she saw a young woman on the grass near her porch wearing underwear, a bra, and sandals. “There was this beautiful woman, absolutely beautiful, sitting there trying to find a vein and inject,” Sightler recalled. “I told her, ‘Sweetie, you gotta move along.’”

Many people in Burlington offer similar stories. A block from City Hall Park, the King Street Center provides tutoring and recreation programs for families living in poverty. Staff members arrive early to sweep up needles outside the building. When drug dealers began playing dice out front last summer, Shabnam Nolan, the executive director, called the police, who eventually chased the dealers away. “We’ve tried to sound the alarm, and yet people are not taking us seriously enough about what’s happening,” Nolan told me. Why does a drug user’s “right to ‘dignity’ violate children’s right to come to our center without seeing blood and needles?”

“It’s as if,” she said of Burlington and its culture, “we are frozen with fear that someone might see us as uncompassionate.”

The city’s political class has compounded these problems. In 2020, activists launched a campaign to defund the police department, although it was regarded as relatively progressive and community-oriented. The city council cut almost $1 million from the police budget. Six years ago, Burlington had about 100 officers; now it has fewer than 70. The current city-council president, Ben Traverse, a liberal Democrat who has grown uncomfortable with Burlington’s direction, told me that sometimes as few as five officers are on duty citywide after midnight on the weekends. It used to be that if you wanted to deal drugs, “you did not come to Burlington,” Traverse said. But that’s changed: “Open-air drug sales are a common occurrence here.”

State’s Attorney Sarah George, the prosecutor for the county that includes Burlington, is a progressive Democrat who once wrote that the American legal system “was built on the oppression and caging of black, brown, and poor people.” She told me that the combination of COVID, ever less affordable housing, and a cascade of evictions fed a drug crisis that has devastated Vermont. But she doesn’t blame addicts, who she said are “rarely dangerous” and are suffering. “I’m very frustrated with this narrative that City Hall Park is the end of the world,” George added. “That park is still a very safe place to be.”

I asked her how Burlington might balance drug users’ sometimes dominant presence in the city’s parks and streets with the desire of residents to use and enjoy those same places. The city, she replied, should start by opening its planned injection center so that addicts can use drugs in private. The state legislature has allocated about $2 million that it obtained from a national opioid settlement to help fund the center, though potential neighbors have pushed back against the sites that have been floated so far. More broadly, George opposes pushing addicts to the margins. “They cannot be disappeared,” she said. “They are part of our community.”

In 2022, George announced a new policy: If police officers stopped cars with broken taillights, tinted windows, or expired licenses and found a cache of narcotics, her office would most likely decline to prosecute the cases, on the grounds that racial discrimination could have motivated the traffic stops. She emphasized to me that police officers could in any case confiscate and destroy the drugs. But she questioned the need to go beyond that. “Is prosecution needed?” she said. “Or have we done enough already?” George has been reelected twice and is running for a third term.

In April, I spoke with Burlington’s mayor, Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, of the Vermont Progressive Party, which has governed the city for much of the past four decades. She has seen firsthand the effects of the drug epidemic. When she lived in the Old North End and her child was a toddler, they awoke to drug dealers beating on their door. She told me that she supports police and Drug Enforcement Administration investigations that target dealers, although she noted the “whack-a-mole” nature of that work, as new dealers replace those who are arrested. She said that without more help from the county and state, the city lacks the funds to build larger shelters that could help keep addicts off the streets. She is aware that Burlingtonians have grown impatient living with a drug-abuse epidemic. “We are fatigued with our compassion,” she told me. “All of the attention on harm reduction and public health—I get that.”

But, like George, Mulvaney-Stanak has not backed away from harm-reduction policies that she sees as humane and essential. Last summer, she opposed a city-council resolution calling for police officers to be stationed in City Hall Park to clear out users and dealers, arguing that the drug traffic would only go elsewhere and that there were not enough officers to enforce the policy. She signed off on the resolution, but she shares George’s philosophical objections: “Displacement and removal of people is not the solution,” the mayor said.

Wouldn’t an injection center, I asked her, draw more addicts and dealers to Burlington? She acknowledged the possibility, but framed it as a necessary risk. She repeated the harm-reduction maxim: “It helps people where they are at.” The city’s problems, Mulvaney-Stanak insisted, were more image than reality: “People need to ignore the clickbaity articles that distort the nature of Burlington.”

Recently, Traverse and other Democrats on the city council have begun to challenge the mayor on harm reduction. Jennifer Morrison, the state’s public-safety commissioner, has also spoken up. She served as Burlington’s interim police chief for six months in 2020 before quitting, in part because of what she described as the city’s “mismanagement” and “social activism.” She and Governor Phil Scott, a moderate Republican, have clashed with Mulvaney-Stanak. They have periodically, at the city’s request, sent state troopers to Burlington to help local police with drug enforcement and patrolling the central business district. “I lived through the decisions that got us to the place that we are now,” Morrison told me. “We are exposing our youth to terrible consequences by normalizing drug use and addiction.”

The business community in Burlington has also pushed back. In more than a dozen interviews, local merchants spoke of feeling abandoned. In testimony before the state legislature, the owner of Outdoor Gear Exchange reported that in 2024, the business lost an estimated $400,000 to shoplifting, as addicts stole to support their habit. At Homeport, a 40-year-old home-furnishings store downtown, a co-owner, Mark Bouchett, told me that he lost $95,000 to shoplifting in 2024 and was forced to hire a security guard. Drug users defecate in the doorways of businesses.

Bouchett joined 170 other business owners and restaurateurs who last year wrote an open letter to the mayor warning that the city was in crisis. Their tone was reasonable; they sought treatment for addicts, not incarceration. But a broad coalition of the political left in Burlington—unions, harm-reduction groups, pro-Palestine and trans-rights activist groups, and the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America—countered with their own letter, in which they denounced the business owners and demanded that they open bathrooms and sheltered doorways to addicts. To call for more police to help address the city’s drug problem, this group wrote, would “further harm our most vulnerable community members.” One of the signatories, Food Not Cops Burlington, posted and then deleted a boycott map targeting the business owners.

Overdose deaths in Vermont dropped last year to 170, a 37 percent decrease from the peak in 2022, but still far above the 78 deaths recorded in 2010. At the Ben & Jerry’s on Church Street, I saw staff hand out cards to customers who asked to use the bathroom: “Vermont is experiencing a tragic increase in overdose fatalities. Our bathroom has also become a destination for folks seeking to inject drugs.” The bathroom was permanently locked.

Families and children speak of being left on their own to navigate these harsh realities. Through the King Street Center, I met a young woman who was earning top grades at the University of Vermont. When she walks her younger sisters home from school, they pass drug dealers on the way. A Burlington High School student told me that her teachers have instructed students to avoid eye contact with dealers and users. A week earlier, she said, an addict had trailed her home after volleyball practice. She broke into a run, yelling for help, and the person eventually turned away.

Then there was Britany, a mother of three young children, who moved two years ago from a homeless shelter to an apartment on King Street. (She asked me not to use her last name, fearing for her family’s safety.) She said that she often found drug paraphernalia in the apartment building and, on some nights, encountered an addict sleeping in the hallway; her next-door neighbor was a fentanyl dealer. She had constructed a safe room for her children to flee to in case of gunfire. “Everyone talks about needle exchange and harm reduction,” she said. “I mean, okay. But it’s like my children and I are living in the zombie apocalypse.”

Just a few years ago, voters in Seattle seemed primed for a change. In 2021, they elected Ann Davison, a moderate and independent-minded Republican, as city attorney. Sara Nelson, a Democrat who had advertised her willingness to challenge the harm-reduction consensus, won a seat on the city council the same year and became its president two years later. With support from Davison, she passed laws cracking down on open drug use, prostitution, and dealing downtown, and substantially increasing the number of surveillance cameras in high-crime neighborhoods. Nelson persuaded the city council to redirect money to on-demand addiction treatment. “You can’t meet people where they’re at, because where they’re at is on death’s door,” she told me, adding that she believes many addicts can be saved only by a firm push toward treatment.

An encampment in South Queen Anne, Seattle. Since taking office in January, Mayor Katie Wilson has authorized sweeps of encampments and signaled an openness to pulling back on harm-reduction policies.

Nelson also asked pointed questions about what had become the received wisdom in Seattle, such as why the county government paid millions of dollars to supply kits to addicts with tinfoil, pipes, and instructions on how to smoke fentanyl. (Incongruously, these kits came emblazoned with an image of Martin Luther King Jr., the namesake of King County.) What harm was reduced, Nelson asked at a 2023 council hearing, by helping addicts get high? Amber Tejada, an employee of a health nonprofit that had partnered with the city, raised her hand to answer. “I know it can be a little controversial,” she told the councilwoman, “but one of the key tenets of harm reduction that I see is that we want to be able to facilitate and champion autonomy of people who use drugs.” Tejada added, “There are folks for whom abstinence is not something by which they measure their success in life.”

Nelson was no hard-line conservative. She pushed to expand the number of treatment beds for addicts and talked openly of her own past struggles with alcohol. But in elections last November, voters turned out both her and Davison. Their replacements had concerns over the use of surveillance cameras and opposed laws that barred repeat public drug users from certain areas in the city. I spoke with Davison in her office shortly before her term was up. She wrestled with her sense of a job not completed. “It’s really sad to watch the slow death of so many people,” she said, adding later, “You cannot act like this is a victimless crime.”

I asked Sandeep Kaushik, a Democratic political consultant who has lived in Seattle for decades, if he could explain the persistent attraction of radical harm-reduction policies in his city. Kaushik described himself as an “unreconstructed Obama Democrat,” which he noted “codes me as a conservative in some circles here.” He told me that local leaders “really believe the city should be on the leading edge of translating progressive ideas into policy.” There is also a curious disconnect between the policies that political leaders put in place and the desires of voters. In many polls, Seattle residents list crime and illegal drug use as among their greatest concerns, and a Seattle Times survey three years ago found that 60 percent of respondents wanted police to arrest those who used drugs in public places.

Last year, the city elected a new mayor, Katie Wilson, a self-described democratic socialist with no experience in elected office. Wilson has signaled an openness to pulling back some harm-reduction policies. Before she officially entered the race, she wrote an essay for Seattle’s alt-weekly, The Stranger, in which she cautioned fellow leftists against smugness. “The central weakness of the left narrative,” she wrote, “is a habit of deflection that makes it sound, at best, as though we are in denial about the grim reality on the streets.” The left, she continued, should not trivialize “what anyone who spends some time walking around Seattle’s streets can plainly observe: People with acute mental illness whose behavior is disturbed and occasionally aggressive. People using drugs, often incapacitated or passed out on the ground.”

Since she took office, Wilson has backed up her words by signing off on sweeps of large encampments in parks. Police and city workers have dismantled tents and carted away garbage. In late June, the mayor emerged from what she described in a statement as a period of “deep listening” and promised to “disrupt the drug dealing” and “public disorder” that plague the city’s Little Saigon and Beacon Hill neighborhoods. The police, she said, would commit more officers to those areas, and arrest users and dealers or press them to accept treatment. For a Seattle politician to argue that tolerating drug crime and disorder amounts to harm enhancement registered as something close to startling news.

Yet Wilson runs a political risk. By pledging to crack down, she has broken with many of her allies and supporters. Now she will be judged by her ability to clear the city’s streets. Andrea Suarez leads a group, We Heart Seattle, that combines care for the homeless with a hardheaded insistence on legal consequences and addiction treatment for drug users. She was in Jose Rizal Park when police swept it one day in April, and watched users and dealers amble off into the woods or walk over to Little Saigon. They returned a few hours later, she told me. A day or two after that, the tents reappeared. “Everyone who lives in this park knows there is no consequence for being swept multiple times or doing drugs or vandalizing a park,” Suarez said.


People who live in Jose Rizal Park know “there is no consequence for being swept multiple times or doing drugs or vandalizing a park,” one community activist says.

What’s baffling is that none of this lies beyond the ability of city officials to address. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has instructed police to crack down on dealers and dismantle tent cities. Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker has sent officers into drug-scarred neighborhoods and established a treatment court, which offers first-time felony drug offenders a chance to avoid jail if they enter a treatment program. San Jose, California, has put more police officers in targeted neighborhoods, built emergency housing as police dismantle homeless encampments, and increased fines for landlords whose abandoned buildings are used by dealers to sell drugs and guns. In Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu was once enamored of harm reduction and injection centers. But she has ordered police to clear street encampments, and her administration now puts more emphasis on pushing addicts into treatment, by detaining them if necessary. Wu has also dropped all mention of injection centers from her plans.

In Seattle, by contrast, efforts to reduce public drug use force afflicted neighborhoods to pay a high price. For years, when playgrounds and parks became drug hot spots, the city reacted by fencing them off, depriving families of access. In May, police and city workers returned to Jose Rizal Park and again booted out dealers and addicts, preparing the park for a renovation. As a first step, city workers dismantled the picnic pavilion where addicts smoked and shot up, its condition having deteriorated from all the misuse. Park officials do not plan on replacing it, acknowledging the obvious in bureaucratese: The park “has been impacted by activities not aligned with intended use.” The bus shelter around the corner, where drug users gathered day and night, was also ripped out “because of an increase in loitering, littering and vandalism,” a King County Metro representative told me by email. All of this felt like another admission of defeat—officials destroying Seattle in the name of saving it.

This article appears in the September 2026 print edition with the headline “The Cities That Said Yes to Drugs.”

About the Author


Michael Powell

Michael Powell is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Archaeologists Find Egyptian Mummy Buried With the ‘Iliad’

 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/science/archaeology-egypt-mummy-iliad.html

Archaeologists Find Egyptian Mummy Buried With the ‘Iliad’ - The New …

For the deceased of Roman-era Egypt, Greek literature may have offered a cheat code to a more comfortable afterlife.

The necropolis of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, where a nonroyal mummy was found with some lines on papyrus from Book 2 of Homer’s “Iliad.”Credit...Maite Mascort i Roca and Esther Pons Mellado, Mission of the University of Barcelona at Oxyrhynchus

May 15, 2026, 5:01 a.m. ET

Archaeologists working in Egypt have discovered a remarkable combination of Homeric epic and Egyptian ritual: a 2,000-year-old mummy with a papyrus fragment of the “Iliad” sealed in a clay packet outside its wrappings.

It is the first time a literary work has been found playing a functional, spiritual role in the mummification process. And it suggests that for a Roman-era Egyptian, the “Iliad” — specifically some lines from Book 2’s “Catalogue of Ships” — was perhaps as crucial for navigating the afterlife as a magical spell.

“The find is incredibly significant, primarily for the discovery of such a papyrus with Greek literary text in its original context,” said Foy Scalf, an Egyptologist at the University of Chicago. “We have evidence that such Greek literary texts could be used as magical amulets and that Homer was frequently cited in such amulets, as well as in the large handbooks now known as ‘The Greco-Egyptian Formularies.’ The new find directly supports that indirect knowledge.”

The mummy, a nonroyal male, was unearthed by the Mission of the University of Barcelona at a burial site known as Oxyrhynchus, as part of a project directed by Ignasi-Xavier Adiego of the university’s Institute of Ancient Near East. Leah Mascia, a specialist in the written and material culture of Greco-Roman and Late Antique Egypt at the Free University of Berlin, coordinated the collaborative breakthrough that finally brought the damaged text to light.

Recognizing that the heavily degraded papyrus required careful analysis, Dr. Mascia worked with a conservator, Margalida Munar, to stabilize the artifact, and Dr. Adiego, an authority on the Carian language, to study the text. Together, their combined expertise in preservation and linguistics allowed them to identify and read the document.

After six years of painstakingly reconstructing tomb fragments, Dr. Mascia uncovered a rare moment of cultural alchemy: Roman Egypt, where foreign and local customs merged. Her analysis, which identified embalmer seals and folding patterns of the papyrus packet, suggests that classical Greek epics were not merely read but physically repurposed.

Traditionally, mummified bodies were buried with sepulchral texts like the “Book of the Dead” and “The Book of Breathing,” formulaic manuals intended to protect and guide the deceased through the underworld. Yet, by the early Roman period, a major shift emerged: the introduction of sealed papyrus packets placed upon the dead.

These new packets contained a surprising mix of texts, including Greco-Egyptian magic, documentary records and even literary works like the “Iliad,” indicating a personalized, alternative funerary practice.

Fragments of the “Iliad” papyrus.Credit...IPOA (University Institute of the Ancient Near East)

Out of the dumps

The Oxyrhynchus necropolis, located near the modern village of El-Bahnasa about 120 miles south of Cairo, is not just a burial site but an archaeological mother lode. Located on the banks of the Bahr Yussef canal, the area is speckled with ancient garbage dumps that managed to preserve everything from wedding invitations and tax records to horoscopes and early Christian gospels.

The ruins of Oxyrhynchus were initially documented by Vivant Denon, a scholar during Napoleon’s 1798 Egyptian campaign. But they held a secret that remained buried for an additional century, until 1896, when British archaeologists dug up more than 400,000 fragments of papyri from the ancient trash heaps. The discoveries ultimately included lost masterworks by poets and playwrights like Sappho and Euripides, transforming millenniums-old refuse into a cornerstone of classical literature.

In the 1990s, the Mission of the University of Barcelona and the University of Cairo began a joint project largely funded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. This ongoing mission, directed by Maite Mascort i Roca and Esther Pons Mellado and staffed by archaeologists, epigraphists and papyrologists, focuses on various sectors of the necropolis, including No. 22, where experts are reconstructing the elaborate social and religious life of residents during the transition from the Ptolemaic to the Roman era.

Researchers exploring the multichambered burial site have exhumed a remarkable trove of treasures, among them mummies adorned with golden tongues — gold foil placed over the mouth — and at least one with copper, ritualistic additions that may have ensured that the dead could confidently speak their case to Osiris, the god of death and resurrection, before judgment.

A separate, distinct area of the necropolis — Sector 42 — has yielded large jars containing cremated remains. One vessel held the bones of an adult, an infant and a feline, along with fabric fragments. While these individuals most likely date to a slightly different period from the “Iliad” mummy, the immense complexity of these rites implies a wealthy, status-conscious class, providing fresh insight into the spiritual anxieties of the Roman-era community.

A cultural passport

Recovered in December from Tomb 65, the fragmentary papyrus packet contains a passage from the 2,800-year-old “Iliad” that functions as a detailed inventory of the Achaean army’s naval strength and regional origins, describing the forces arrayed against Troy to retrieve Helen. The text mentions specific commanders, such as Guneus, who arrived with “two and twenty ships from Cyphus,” and Tlepolemus, a “son of Hercules” who brought nine ships from Rhodes.

Dr. Mascia’s findings reveal a deliberate, intimate act: a document prepared in a mummification workshop and placed directly upon the body of the deceased. “These sealed papyrus packets may have been regarded as part of an alternative funerary procedure,” she said, adding that further studies were essential to prove this hypothesis.

This spiritual first-aid follows a long tradition. Dr. Scalf noted that “The Greco-Egyptian Formularies” even suggests the “Iliad” doubled as a literal medical kit. For a bed-bound patient shivering with malaria, the prescription was simple: Brace your head against a papyrus scroll of Book 4 to break the fever.

For residents navigating the complex, vibrant crossroads of Roman Egypt, Greek literary papyri may have functioned as a crucial cultural passport, said Anna Dolganov, a historian at the Austrian Archaeological Institute. In Egypt, being Hellenic connoted an exclusive social status and financial privilege — and had to be meticulously documented through genealogies going back across several centuries.

Buried with the dead, the “Iliad” perhaps served as a cheat code for a more comfortable afterlife. Dr. Dolganov wonders if carrying the epic poem was a deliberate strategy to secure entry into the Greek underworld, effectively sidestepping the torturous trials of Egyptian mythology. For these individuals, a Hellenic identity wasn’t just for this world — it was an eternal upgrade, offering a smoother path and higher status in the great beyond.

Robin Heather Cohen and Jason David DeLeon live happily in Connecticut

 

A Reader’s Guide to the Big Beautiful Bill: Part 2 Wi-Fi, Mars, air traffic control, and more. Gabe Fleisher

 https://www.wakeuptopolitics.com/p/a-readers-guide-to-the-big-beautiful-26e

A Reader’s Guide to the Big Beautiful Bill: Part 2

Wi-Fi, Mars, air traffic control, and more.

Gabe Fleisher

 

Hey, everyone! I’m back with Part 2 of my multi-part series walking you through how to read the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Today, we’ll break down Title III, the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee section, and Title IV, the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee section.

Here’s Part 1 if you missed it. For this installment, I’ve made PDFs for both titles (linked below), to make it even easier to read along with the specific segment that we’re covering.

As you read through today’s newsletter, I encourage you to try and pick out at least one thing you like about the bill (even if you’re a Democrat) and at least one thing you dislike (even if you’re a Republican). Also, try to think about one thing you learned that you didn’t know was in the bill — and one thing you still want to learn more about.

Feel free to drop your answers to any of these questions in the comments! And, as always, please comment with any new questions the newsletter raised for you, so I can try to answer those in a future edition.

With that, we’ll jump right in.

Title III: Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (p. 55)

Here’s a link to the text of this title so you can follow along. It’s only one page! Shouldn’t be too hard.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is an agency set up by the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010 to regulate banks, credit card companies, mortgage lenders, and other financial services providers with an eye towards protecting consumers.

Here’s how this section would change the CFPB:

Not very helpful, right? We know a “12” is being changed to a “6.5,” but 6.5 what? Dollars? Employees? Apples?

Well, some context is helpful: when Democrats started the CFPB, they set it up with a unique structure where its funding came from the Federal Reserve, instead of the annual congressional appropriations process like most agencies, so that it’s funding wouldn’t be thrown into question every year. If you look at 12 U.S.C. 5497 (below), which this section amends, you’ll see that “12” sets the CFPB’s maximum budget, which can’t be larger than 12% of the Fed’s 2009 operating expenses:

So, going forward, the CFPB’s budget cap will be nearly halved, to 6.5% of the Fed’s expenses, significantly disarming the agency.

We already saw a similar provision in Part I. Language like this means that a previous act of Congress appropriated a certain amount of money towards a certain goal; under this provision (a “rescission”), any funds in that pot of money that haven’t yet been spent are no longer allowed to be spent.

In this case, Public Law 117-169 is the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022; section 30002(a) consisted of $1 billion to fund projects improving the energy efficiency and climate resilience of affordable housing properties.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulates the trading of stocks, bonds, and other securities in American markets. Another creation of the Dodd-Frank Act was something called the SEC Reserve Fund; under the law, the agency is allowed to deposit up to $50 million into the fund each year (from fees it collects) and use the money towards anything it “determines is necessary to carry out [its] functions.”

Republican have long tried to kill the Reserve Fund, saying that it allows the SEC to get around Congress by unilaterally spending funds in ways not approved through the appropriations process.

15 U.S.C. 78d(i) is where the fund is established, so striking that subsection ends the fund once and for all. This section also says that any remaining money in the Reserve Fund will be redirected to the SEC’s Investor Protection Fund, which rewards whistleblowers who report financial fraud.

The Defense Production Act (DPA) is a 1950 law that gives the president the power to order companies to enter into certain contracts or expand production of certain materials if he deems it necessary to “promote the national defense.”

This section would add $1 billion to the pot of money that exists to help carry out DPA orders. President Trump most recently invoked the DPA in March with an executive order to boost domestic production of critical minerals, including by providing loans and capital assistance. (His Energy Secretary also designated coal as a “critical mineral” in May.)

Title IV: Commerce, Science, and Transportation (p. 56-66)

Here’s your link to this title!

This section appropriates $24.6 billion towards the Coast Guard, the single largest infusion of cash the maritime security service has received in its history. (For context, the Coast Guard’s entire Fiscal Year 2024 budget was $13.1 billion.)

According to the Coast Guard, the new funding will allow the service to procure 38 new vessels, 40 helicopters, and six aircraft, while also strengthening its ability to “counter drug and human trafficking, conduct search and rescue, enhance navigational safety and enable maritime trade.”

Remember how I told you in Part I that this bill was an interesting tour through things you might not have known the government was involved in? Well, here’s a great example of that.

Let’s start with a physics lesson! In order for any wireless device — like a phone, radio, or TV — to send or receive signals, it needs to have access to a specific frequency on something called the electromagnetic spectrum. But spectrum is a finite resource; if too many devices are trying to use the same frequency, their signals can interfere with each other and stop working.

Here’s where the feds come in. In the U.S., slices of the electromagnetic spectrum are auctioned off by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), so companies like AT&T and Verizon compete to buy the right to transmit signals on specific frequencies. This brings order to the airwaves, and generates some nice revenue for the government.

But the FCC’s authority to hold such auctions lapsed in March 2023, and Congress never passed a law extending it, so there hasn’t been an auction since then. This section would strike the old expiration date and give the FCC back its auction authority until September 2034:

In total, the section calls for 800 megahertz of spectrum to be auctioned off. Like I said, spectrum is finite — so it’s not as if new spectrum has suddenly been discovered. Instead, when an auction is held, spectrum is really just being allocated from one recipient to another.

In this case, the OBBBA calls for 500 megahertz of federal spectrum to be auctioned (that’s spectrum that’s currently used exclusively by the federal government, especially the Defense Department) and 300 megahertz of non-federal spectrum (which is likely to come largely from a slice currently reserved for unlicensed Wi-Fi use). That’s led to warnings from some corners that the OBBBA could lead to slower Wi-Fi, since newer phones and computers currently use this band of the spectrum to deploy the speedy Wi-Fi 6E, which they won’t be able to do once it’s auctioned off for use by mobile carriers.

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’ve had some high-profile aviation screwups lately.

The OBBBA tries to address that by appropriating $12.5 billion to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which will be used to do things like improve the agency’s telecommunications infrastructure, runway safety technologies, weather observation systems, and air traffic controller recruitment.

Currently, when private companies (think Elon Musk’s SpaceX or Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin) send rockets into space, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) establishes a no-fly zone over the launch area and devotes time and resources to ensuring that no airplanes are in the way. These services are provided to the companies for very little cost: the FAA only pockets a small fee the companies pay when applying for launch licenses.

Not anymore. Under the OBBBA, these companies will now have to pay a fee indexed to the weight of the rocket, which will go into a new fund to support the FAA office that oversees commercial spaceflight.

The fee will start out in 2026 as 25 cents-per-pound (up to $30,000), and then get higher each year until they reach $1.50-per-pound (up to $200,000) in 2033, and then increase along with inflation after that.

This would be somewhat similar to how airlines pay FAA fees to fly planes; that money then goes into a fund that supports air traffic control operations and airport improvements.

The author of this provision is Ted Cruz and — in case you’re wondering — the idea predates the Trump/Musk feud.

We’re going to Mars! Maybe. This section appropriates about $10 billion to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), including for the “Moon to Mars” program, a long-term initiative that hopes to once again land on the Moon and then eventually take humans to Mars.

Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards regulate how far vehicles have to be able to travel for every gallon of fuel, in order to improve energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions. They date back to the 1970s, though they’ve been increased over time.

Here’s what this section says:

When we venture over to 49 U.S.C. 32912, we see that the subsection in question outlines the penalty for violating the CAFE standards (which are themselves outlined in 49 U.S.C. 32902).

If we strike “$5” in this subsection and replace it with “$0.0,” the penalty for violating CAFE standards will now be calculated with the equation, “$0.0 ⋅ 0.1 miles per gallon that a car goes below the standard.”

Now, I’m no math expert. But my trusty calculator tells me that equation will bring the penalty down to — you guessed it — zero dollars, zero cents, no matter by how much a vehicle flouts the CAFE standards.

What’s going on here? Well, as we know, a reconciliation bill can’t make outright policy changes. It can only fiddle with spending or revenue. So, by that logic, Republicans can’t just do away with CAFE standards with the OBBBA. But they can set the penalty for violating CAFE standards to $0, effectively eliminating the standards by other means, since there will now be no penalty for violating the standards.

These are the sorts of games that the reconciliation process forces you to play; in this case, Democrats say the penalty removal will lead to fewer fuel-efficient vehicles, while Republicans argue that it will bring down the price of cars.

The two airports in Washington, D.C. — Reagan National and Dulles International — are the only commercial airports in the country that are owned by the federal government. However, in 1987, the government transferred management of the airports to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) in a lease agreement.

That lease was most recently renewed last year, in a new agreement set to last until 2100. Under that agreement, the MWAA pays the U.S. government about $7.5 million a year. But the OBBBA preempts that agreement, requiring the MWAA to pay the government $15 million per year starting in 2027 (with the amount subject to negotiation every 10 years to ensure that it never decreases in inflation-adjusted terms).

This is the governmental equivalent of searching for change under the couch cushions: finding any lever possible to raise a bit more revenue, in order to reduce the deficit impact of the OBBBA (although the revenue raised by sections is still trillions dollars short of offsetting the package’s costs). In this case, the change-under-the-cushion could make flying in and out of D.C. more expensive, if the MWAA pays for the near-doubling in its lease costs by raising costs for airlines, which the airlines could then pass on to consumers in added fees.

More rescissions from the IRA. This section would claw back unspent funds that were supposed to go to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including for weather and climate forecasting.

The Travel Promotion Fund is the pool of money made available to Brand USA, a public-private partnership established in 2010 to promote the U.S. as a tourist destination. This section would reduce the annual amount that goes to this fund from $100 million to $20 million. (More change under the couch cushions!)

This section rescinds unspent IRA funds that were earmarked for subsidizing projects to produce low-emission aviation fuel.

And, finally: one more rescission, this one from the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. This section claws back funds that were supposed to go to the Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund, which works to support the deployment of 5G cellular networks by developing interoperable equipment that can be used by all companies.

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That’s all for today! I hope you learned more about the OBBBA and how to read a piece of legislation. As always, leave your feedback in the comments so I can make future installments of this project as helpful as possible.

Thanks for following along.