Two big deals from last evening: the many things exposed about Trump by Savannah Guthrie’s way-to-go-girl questioning of him on NBC, and Republican Senator Ben Sasse speaking the truth about who and what Trump really is. Both, together, could end up being additional nails in Trump and the Trumpublicans’ coffin on election day. So far, with 18 days to go, this has been a politically brutal last two and a half weeks for them, since the first disastrous debate on September 29.

I’m reminded of a wonderful song sung by Pete Seeger: God Bless the Grass: “God bless the grass that grows through the crack. They roll the concrete over it to try and keep it back. The concrete gets tired of what it has to do, It breaks and it buckles and the grass grows thru, And God bless the grass.——God bless the truth that fights toward the sun, They roll the lies over it and think that it is done It moves through the ground and reaches for the air, And after a while it is growing everywhere, And God bless the grass.”

I was interviewed about this fast a couple of days ago by Josh Fox for his show on the The Young Turks network, and at one point he asked me if I thought that, if Trump is defeated, we could really bring about significant change under Biden. I said yes, because Biden is not even close to being like Trump, and because of the strength of the progressive Left, as reflected in the Sanders and Warren campaigns, the incredible breadth and power of the Black Lives Matter upsurge after George Floyd’s murder, and other examples.

That’s why I am fasting, because I can see a new day coming for this country and this world, I really can, despite all the lies and “concrete” we have been contending with the last four years. The truth is coming out, and the people are rising, as shown by the massive turnout of voters in early voting around the country.

But it’s not time to coast; it’s time to keep pushing to get even more people to come out and vote. Everything hinges on a massive voter turnout.

Healthwise, I’m doing OK. I’m pretty stable, with today’s blood pressure reading again being just fine. I wouldn’t say I’m feeling good; I’m not. Every day feels like another day to grit my teeth and slog through towards that time, two and half weeks from now, when I can begin consuming something that actually has taste to it and that gives me energy. If I let myself, I can really long for that day, that time, which will be the evening of election day after the polls have closed. Until then I plan to hold on and keep the faith, growing through that concrete as high as I can.

I’m glad to write that my daily blood pressure readings continue to be very good. My fourth one this morning was 122/75, with 120/80 being the desired reading. Definitely good news.

My weight loss is slowing down, and that’s also good news. For the last two days I’ve lost about half a pound/day, which is what I’ve been expecting would happen, before now actually. If that continues to be the case over the next 18 days, that will mean I’ll lose about 30 pounds.

I am definitely looking different, in my face and the rest of my body. When I was taking a shower this morning I really noticed it as I was moving the soap bar over my legs and arms. Right now, the fuel source to keep me going, from experience and what I’ve read, is the muscles in my extremities, my legs and arms, so it makes sense that they’d be shrinking.

I know from experience that when I start eating again, those muscles will come back, over time. I look forward to that process, through healthy eating and a steadily-increasing exercise routine.

I was interviewed by Josh Fox for a half hour yesterday evening on his “Staying Home With Josh Fox” show, which will be aired on The Young Turks network in about a week. I appreciated and enjoyed the discussion with Josh. I continue to work to find ways to spread the word about this action.

Yesterday Jane and I took a short trip to the Palisades Interstate Park along the Hudson River. While sitting by the Hudson enjoying the quiet and the sun and clean air, a monarch butterfly flew past us going south. Given that Jane and I are big monarch raisers each summer (we raised and released 134 this summer), it was really nice to see this. And then just today I received an email reporting that there are a number of sightings further south of lots of monarchs being seen as they proceed to their winter home in Michoacan, Mexico. Two good things to keep my spirits up.

Tonight is no-debate night because Trump wouldn’t agree to a virtual one. This is Trump’s loss, a self-inflicted wound at a time when he is in desperate need of something to change the dynamics of the campaign which are not looking good for him or the Trumpublican Party. We can have a big win on November 3, which the world desperately needs, if we all do what we can to mobilize a massive voter turnout!

Day Twelve

I was pleased to see a very good story in my county’s local Patch.com about the fast. I continue to work at outreach to various media outlets, with some developing interest. I’m hoping that as the days go by and the fast continues, there will be more stories that spread the word and, most importantly, therefore help drive the massive voter turnout so clearly needed.

I’ve now lost 19 pounds since this started, about 10 the first few days and 9 since. I expect I’ll lose 30-35 by the time I begin drinking fruit and vegetable juices and then food, progressively phased in with the foods most easily digestible first (fruits and vegetables) leading up to sweets, coffee and oils last. I’ve begun to think of what I’ll drink first, probably a homemade vegetable soup.

My weakness abated a bit yesterday, for reasons unknown. Maybe it’s because I have regularized a reduced daily work routine, with more time resting. There are a couple of other new things physically, though. One is a tendency towards dry, cotton mouth and a less strong voice. When that happens and I drink a glass of water, it does help, temporarily. The other was the need last night to put a pillow between my legs in bed after having difficulty with them feeling OK without it when lying on my side. The pillow did work.

Today Jane and I are taking a few hours to drive to Palisades Interstate Park along the Hudson River. The leaves are supposed to be at peak color. I’m looking forward to that.

Day Eleven

I sent out a press release yesterday. In it I said, “Following the indictments of 13 far-right, Trump-supporting extremists for plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, instead of decrying the plot, Donald Trump criticized Whitmer, andnot the extremists.  At the same time, while trailing in the polls, Trump refuses to say he’ll accept a peaceful transition of power if he loses, continues to undermine mail-in voting, and repeats his call for his supporters to descend on polling places on November 3.

‘Trump is clearly appealing to extremists to disrupt this election,” Glick said. ‘It is time to recognize the grave threat he represents to everything progressives stand for. The most effective way to counter the threat is to muster the largest voter turnout in history, led by people of color, young people, women and working-class people.’”

I received an email from a good friend of mine this morning, Mike Tidwell, Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network where I worked for 10 years. He said that he’s working 15 hours a week to mobilize voters in the battleground states for Biden, using a Biden campaign app that he said was very easy to use and effective. You can check it out here.

Two personal highlights from yesterday: I made a second, in three days, batch of uniquely-mine cole slaw, using about 10 different ingredients besides the basic cabbage and mayonnaise: apples, pickles, black and pimento olives, raisins, walnuts, cauliflower, zucchini, dried tomatoes and chutney. When I gave a little to Jane to see how it tasted, she said “very good” as she wolfed it down, which was nice to see. We gave some of it this morning to a neighbor whose husband and mother are in the hospital.

And I saw a doctor. We had a good discussion about fasting. She wanted me to come off it, but she wasn’t pushy. Checking my vitals she said all was good. She encouraged me to check my blood pressure daily, which I’m doing with a blood pressure monitor we bought for $30 from a local drugstore. I’m pleased to report that both yesterday and today it was almost exactly the 120/80 which a google search indicates is very good for a person my age.

What are you doing today to swell the voter turnout in battleground states?

Day Ten

Today is Indigenous Peoples Day. 28 years ago on this date was the 42^nd and last day of a long, water-only fast in Washington, DC that I did with about 15 other people. It was initiated by Brian Willson, Karen Fogliatti and Scott Rutherford and was called the People’s Fast for Justice and Peace in the Americas. It was one of many acts of resistance in 1992 to the planned government celebrations of Christopher Columbus being found, lost, in the Caribbean by people who had been living in this part of the world for thousands of years. We all took action that year to say that the next 500 years are going to be very different than the 500 years since Columbus initiated racism, genocide and ecological devastation in the Americas.

I’m going to think about all of this throughout the day.

I just made an appointment with my doctor for this afternoon. I had wanted it to be for the end of the week, about the halfway point of the fast, but this was all she had for this week. I’m not seeing her because I’m feeling sick or have a problem; this is precautionary and, frankly, in response to the urgings of others. But I will be glad to see her and find out how she sees my body handling this very different time.

My relationship to food on this fast, in part because I’m doing it at home, is not what most people would expect. Although I’m not eating, that doesn’t prevent me from smelling foods with a pleasing smell, which I do quite often. More than that, I have found myself making soups, salads and main dishes for wife Jane, and enjoying the experience. I enjoy working with the food, I enjoy making something that tastes good (according to Jane) and I am glad to be doing more than my usual share of cooking to give Jane more time to do other things. It feels very right.

I almost never feel a strong urge to cheat and eat. My mind is very locked in, and has been for nine months, on my belief that this is the right action at the right time for me to be doing. I guess it’s a form of mind over matter, belief over usual human nature.

I feel at peace knowing I am doing everything I can in this last month before the election to defeat the worst and most dangerous President ever, literally a threat to the entire world.

Fasting every day on water only, as I’ve done since October 3, has led me to research other political fasts, or hunger strikes. There’ve actually been a lot of them.

Mohandus Gandhi is the most well-known person to have fasted. He engaged in 17 of them, the longest for 21 days, between 1913 and 1948. Two were in South Africa; the rest were in India.

Cesar Chavez is the most well-known of those who have engaged in political fasts in the USA. He fasted three times, the longest for 36 days. His most famous fast was for 25 days in 1968 directed in part towards members of the United Farmworkers Union to urge them to remain nonviolent in their multi-year campaign for union recognition from California large growers.

The most dramatic hunger strike was by Irish freedom fighter Bobby Sands and a number of others inside British-run prisons in Northern Ireland in 1981. He and nine others died as a result of this action, for Sands after 66 days consuming only water and salt.

During the Vietnam War African American comedian and anti-war activist Dick Gregory fasted for 40 days on water only in 1967, and he did a very long fast from solid foods, consuming a variety of liquids, for two years. According to an article by Vinay Lal in 2017, “Across the decades, he went on dozens of hunger strikes, over issues including the Vietnam War, the failed Equal Rights Amendment, police brutality, South African apartheid, nuclear power, prison reform, drug abuse and American Indian rights.”

Hunger strikes were a part of the fight to gain the vote for women 100 years ago. The more radical wing of that movement led by Alice Paul went on hunger strikes inside prison for weeks, ultimately being force fed, after arrests outside the White House. As described in the movie, Iron Jawed Angels, those hunger strikes played a major role in finally getting Woodrow Wilson to come out in support of women’s suffrage.

And just this summer, four people in Louisville, Kentucky fasted, two for 25 days, as described in the Louisville Courier: “After going nearly one month without food, the remaining hunger strikers seeking action against the Louisville Metro Police officers who fired their weapons the night Breonna Taylor was killed have ended their protest.”

I was strengthened on my fast to learn about this one in Louisville, for obvious reasons. Others taking similar action on a related issue was great to see. But it’s also significant because I hope that, if Biden/Harris win and especially if the Senate also flips, the tactic of fasting/hunger strikes will become more widespread within the activist, progressive movement. It’s one tactic, similar to nonviolent direct action, that underlines the urgency of an issue and brings added political pressure when there’s a specific target of the fast. I appreciate that fasting is not for everyone, but I have no doubt that during a Biden/Harris administration, more of us will need to use this tactic to get the legislation we need on many different issues.

In the meantime, nine days into this month-long fast, I urge all of us to do everything we can, every day, to generate the massive voter turnout, especially in the battleground states, that is the best defense against Trumpublican efforts to use outrageous tactics to maintain Trump and his accomplices in power.

Day Eight

I decided this morning that I’m going to schedule an appointment with our family doctor for the end of the week, which will be about the halfway point of the fast. Friends have been urging me to do this since I announced the fast. I’m not doing so because there’s anything new happening with me. The main fast “symptom” is weakness and loss of energy, nothing else. But the thought of 24 more days feeling like this isn’t a happy thought, so it does make sense for me to be checked out by a doctor I trust.

I remember doing this during my longest water-only fast, in 1992, which went 42 days. That fast was in protest of the planned government celebrations of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in what is now called the Americas 500 years before and a call for the next 500 years to be very different than the last 500. At about the two week point of the fast the dozen or so of us doing it went to see a doctor at a community clinic. I remember the doctor I saw becoming very aggressive with his questioning of me when I told him what I was doing. When I told him why, he let up a bit. He did tell me that I was dehydrated. When I said, how could that be, I’m consciously drinking a lot of water, he asked if I was in-taking salt. I told him, a little. He said, not enough, that I should be taking about a teaspoonful each day, that because I was drinking so much water it would be washed out of me and I didn’t need to worry about it being too much.

So I’ve been following his advice on water-only fasts ever since. On this one, I’ve developed a routine of drinking hot water with salt several times a day. It’s almost a highlight of my day, the nice feel of warm water as I drink and actually tasting something when I do so.

It’s hard to drink the amount of water I need to drink, but I’m doing it. I’ve come to see my doing so as pretty much “taking my medicine.”

I feel a little bit better this am, not quite as weak as yesterday, probably because I did consciously do less work yesterday, took more time off to rest, watch TV, walk around my yard or read.

The news this am reports that Trump is inviting 2,000 people to a rally at the COVID-19 hot spot, aka the White House. I think Trump is actually trying to spread the disease, following the advice of his non-scientist “scientific advisor” in the White House hired several months ago. He’s a big proponent of the “herd immunity” theory of how you deal with pandemics. Trump is pathologically off-the-charts sick.

It’s now about one week that I’ve been consuming only water, as well as potassium, salt and vitamin C. I’ve lost 13 pounds, 10 the first three days and three the next three. I expect that I’ll continue to lose ½ to 1 pound a day from here on out. The primary difference as compared to when I’m eating is weakness; since the second day that’s the main thing I’ve been feeling. Yesterday morning and into the early afternoon I did feel better, but after working at my computer for five hours, the weakness came back. This morning it’s again been a time of weakness, three hours after getting up.

I did do a lot of work yesterday, up until my last zoom call that went til 8:30 pm, 14 hours after I got up.

It’s clear that I need to be cutting back on how much I work and take breaks during the day to consciously rest. I wonder how much work I’ll be able to do at all in the latter stages of this ordeal. I remember my 92 year old father, toward the end of his life, telling me that he only had the energy to work at his desk three hours a day.

I am feeling my 71 year old age. During my last, long water-only fast of 25 days, in 2007, I definitely had more energy and was more active over the course of it.

How do I keep doing it? It’s easy; I just need to think of monster Donald Trump staying in the White House for four more years. All of us should be doing all we can over the next 25 days to not just defeat Trump but also many of his Trumpublican accomplices in the Senate and House. The polls are showing that this is absolutely possible, with Biden ahead by 10 percentage points in the realclearpolitics.com average of major polls and many Senate races looking like likely or possible wins.

What we need is a massive popular uprising at the polls. And it is possible if more and more of us get involved in the absolutely critical work of mobilizing voters in the battleground states. That, that massive turnout, a decisive victory by Biden/Harris over Trump/Pence, is the primary way to prevent successful Trumpublican efforts to overturn the democratic election results.

I thought that, overall, Kamala Harris did well in the debate last evening. She needed to at least tie, and she did that, possibly better than that. That’s a good thing. But the main problem with what she said for me was these two sentences: “I will repeat and the American people know that Joe Biden will not ban fracking. That is a fact.”

I know why the Biden/Harris campaign has taken this position. It’s not because the US economy is dependent upon fracking for gas and oil to meet our energy needs. There are renewable alternatives, and a lot of the fracked gas and oil is intended for export overseas anyway to pad the bank accounts of fossil fuel industry executives and investors.

I think for the more centrist Democratic elected officials they have been supporters of fracking primarily to appeal to the construction and pipeline and related unions. They have not had the courage to speak the truth about the dangers and polluting negatives of oil and gas production and the threat to our planet that it represents.

This is one reason I supported Bernie, who is strong on the need to ban fracking, as well as the need for a very ambitious Green New Deal to give world leadership in the battle to prevent climate catastrophe and escalating societal unraveling due to not just increasingly worse extreme weather events but declining access to water and disruption of food production because of heat waves and drought.

But Bernie didn’t win, Biden did. And the next President is going to be either Trump or Biden. That’s why, despite this very real criticism I have of the Biden/Harris position on fracking and, frankly, waffling on what they think about the Green New Deal, I’m doing this fast because Trump is so-so-so much worse, off-the-charts worse.

On a personal note, I woke up this morning feeling a little bit better. I’m hoping that this is the beginning of what I’ve experienced in the past on most, not all, long fasts, that around the 5^th-6^th day, the body has adjusted to this new routine and I’m less weak, have more energy for a week or more. We’ll see how it goes the rest of the day and beyond.

My weight loss has slowed down significantly. After losing nine and a half pounds the first three days, when I stepped on the scale this a.m. I was pleased to see that I lost just half a pound yesterday.

It was good to lose that excess fat, but it’s also good to now see what I’ve seen on other long water-only fasts, a slowing down of the weight loss as the days go by and there’s little fat for the body to feed on.

Of course, one reason for this result is the fact that, for various reasons, I didn’t do any physical activity yesterday, no short walk, which I usually do. Today Jane and I decided to drive to a nice park we’ve never been to before and explore it. I was able to walk about two miles, with several stops to sit down, so I’ll probably have more than a half pound weight loss tomorrow when I step on the scale.

I’m looking forward to the Harris-Pence debate tonight. It is hard to see how Harris can do anything less than a draw, and that’s not what the Trumpublicans need, given how far behind they’re falling in the polls. Hopefully, it’ll be a win for Kamala, and she’ll be good and strong on the issues.

I’ve begun to regularly drink hot water with a little salt. It’s nice to have the heat sensation as it goes down and the taste of something other than tasteless water. And I need to be taking salt, as well as potassium, for the electrolytes I need during this long ordeal. It’s an ordeal physically, that’s for sure, but my conscience and spirit are just fine.