The resin I ordered a week and a half ago appears to be shipping from an address in Great Britain by a guy with a Russian surname. A shipping label was created and then canceled and then re-created last week, but apparently it hasn’t left the facility it’s being manufactured at yet. I have no idea when it’s going to get here, but I’d love to take the next step with that project. In this day and age of Amazon and overnight shipping, I’ve gotten very spoiled.

This article hit my LinkedIn feed on Friday, and it answers a question I’ve had rattling around my head for a couple of months: How the cuts in foreign aid affecting my old employers at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health? The answer is: scorched earth. Hopkins will have to lay off 2,000 people across the globe, with a large percentage here in Baltimore. My program was called the Center for Communication Programs, which was focused on teaching family planning in the global south, with a focus on educating and empowering women. We did a ton of partnerships with USAID, which is where I developed my intense hatred for their current logo, which I still have to deal with to this day. At that time our program was focused on preventative measures (we did not advocate or promote for the A-Word) but I’m sure whatever shape the program has taken now, it’s directly in the crosshairs of the right-wing christians. It was good work and it raised women up in places where they desperately needed it. I hope there is a way those programs can be kept alive.

In the meantime, one of the main offices for Social Security is about three miles north of here, and apparently the stooges are already there poking around.