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speech Before City Council on proposed Data-Center

It used to take a long time to get a controversial issue before a legislative body. You had environmental requirements to be considered, legal issues, land-use, and concerns for over-taxing water and sewage installations. This was not that long ago within my political memory. At some time around the 1980s, this changed. Thanks to generous campaign donations to conservative groups in the political underworld, and a political party willing to kiss the ring of a president who can threaten their political future, the government supposedly, of the people, is now wholly in the greased palms of a conservative Supreme Court and members of both parties who mostly infest the right.  This is not just a national issue. It applies to local governments as well. Even in blue states. Which brings us to the proposed Data Center in SE Salem near the county jail. Not yet two weeks ago word emerged of a proposed Data Center. It has the stink of a done deal. Many of us speaking before you tonight do no...
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THERE IS NO EULOGY FOR LINDSEY GRAHAM

There will be no fancy speeches from our side to honor Lindsey Graham. Yes , it would be nice to say a nice thing about a politician from either side of the law, once they no longer require a skeptical eye, but that's not gonna happen, not today, not for this guy. Sure it's a decent thing that Sen. Graham did by supporting the arming of Ukraine even though the president of his party feels a closer kinship to Vladimir Putin, the guy who had Ukraine attacked. But that is insufficient for praise. One good thing is not enough to drag the political decency equation to the other side. Lindsey Graham may or may not be a closeted gay. I do not care where he gets his love or whether he pays for it. His party, the Republican party, makes life miserable for men and women who share an affection for people of the same sex. Lindsey has never gone to their defense. It is even more dire for those whose sexual organs may not conform to the way they feel about themselves. They are literally a ha...
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OUT OF THE BLUE

It happened nearly 50 years ago; only a couple months into my 27th year. I was in the process of failing to find a a crew position on a sailboat heading west to Hawaii. I wanted to feel three, possibly 4 weeks of sailing on a beam reach, a friendly currant adding to the knautical miles traveled. What could possibly go wrong? My first postcard invite fell thru, my next postcard will also fail but I don't know it yet. This was before email. Crew positions were applied for through the USPS after answering an ad from a yachting magazines. I was sitting on a bench in Marina Del Rey, the bronze statue of the Helmsman under a line of date figs off in the distance to my right. Before me in the bay, young people were renting  small sailboats named Sydney Sabots. Flat prow and stern, about 9' long, jibless spritsail and center-board. I was enjoying a burrito from a food cart when an old man approached the bench I was sitting on and sat down at the other end. I nodded to him and we return...
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FIREWORKS

4th of July means fireworks. Every adult, myself included, becomes a kid around fireworks. We look forward in anticipation for that day when fireworks displays will be going off once the sun goes down. In my early years 4th of July meant a family reunion at my grandma Ramsay's house in Molalla where the cousins would get together and play games and attendthe carnival, while the uncles parked cars in an unused piece of land behind grandma's house for fair-goers, rodeo-goers, or for the big parade. Meanwhile the aunts took over the kitchen and came up with scrumptious pies. Oh there were meals as well,  but those pies. And those three nights of the 4th of July weekend were rewarded by a spectacular pyrotechnic display. Later in about 4th or 5th grade I learned (or rather survived, a fundamental lesson in what makes a solid propellant, and what makes a huge bang, thanks to a used Estes rocket engine tube and my dad's 12 Guage shotgun shells. Over time a childhood friend, Lonni...
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MORE REFLECTIONS

Recently I wrote an essay reflecting on passive aggressive behavior. Old age being a time for reflection, I'm going to reflect on more things. Those of you who know me have probably asked yourself, "when is he going to bring up the Reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial?" You know me too well; I'm a walking cliche'. Unless you have been in a coma you probably know that the Goomba who Trump hired on a no-bid contract pooched the project,  not just fixing the leak in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool but making it worse. Floating islands of algae covered the reflecting pond between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, once the reflecting pond recieved its water. Two former presidents joining with the other 44 to do a collective metaphorical forehead slap on the 47th president. To be fair, this was an ongoing issue but has been controlled better by other presidents even during the Great Depression. To compound the problem, National Parks workers were...
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REFLECTING ON PASSIVE-AGGRESSION

People accuse me of being passive-aggressive. Yeah, so what? Is it better to be aggressive-aggressive? Or maybe you think I should  just be simply passive. Like republikkkons are, as they watch an 80-year-old supremely passive-aggressive guy turn their party into a cliche' of comically stupid/corrupt government. The guy who Trump hired to paint the Lincoln Memorial could have stepped out of  Central Casting, or the Soprano's. A short, fat, Italian-American with a fat cigar a bulky manilla envelope in their breast-pocket, and you don't want to know what's in the waistband under his suit coat. Vincent Pastore or Steve Schirippa.  Yeah, I know I'm a smart-ass; I'm a cynic, thats what we do. I'm not here to analyze myself, others can do that whether I approve or not. But I have developed my cynicism over seven decades of living life and noticing people who I admire for their activities on behalf of those who aren't insiders in some passive-agressive financia...
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i DONT KNOW HOW TO WRITE.

I don't know exactly how to write; it's a mystery to me. It's not that I don't write, I do. It's just that the process remains a mystery to me. Some people outline what they write. Some create a block diagram. There are other tactics I've been told about, but I'm  too lazy. So I write in a style and manner in which I have become comfortable. Mostly I write satire.  Political satire, because I'm lazy. Nothing says lazy like picking up a turd dropped by a Republican candidate and dropping it in the alphabet soup of presidential shenanigans. And the turds abound in this group of stooges. There are many ways to express yourself in writing. Fiction, history, humor, satire. I'm told there are physicists who write, though it's a mystery to me what they write. I write because I have something to say. Something others don't care to hear. So I put my thoughts in writing so I can, from some future promontory tell people who didn't want to hear that,...
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