Wayward Landlubber

    I'm a socialist. It took me a long time to admit it to myself, it took even longer before i could be confident enough to admit it publicly. That is a good thing. It shows thought, it shows deliberation. We liberals are used to that. It's what makes us what we are.       I grew up in a time during which, and just after, congress was having communist witch-hunts. People then had no clear idea between socialism and communism. The same ignorance exists today, some 70-odd years later. Mostly in one particular party. A party well-practiced in witch-hunting. Today's witch hunters have made witches from LGBTQ PLUS people. They have made witches of teachers and school boards for teaching Critical Race Theory (which is not taught until first-year law school) though any history that places slavery in a bad light would be too critical. They have vilified any mention of DES (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) in the workplace, though they do not have a seat in the ex...

     I am competant in one language. I'm not bragging, but I can usually find a pretty good word and if I can't, I know where to go to find one. By most recollections that makes me a liberal. By today's standards there are few on the right that claim that honor. Mark Twain once said the "difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug". Conservatives today could be more correctly compared, not to the lightning bug, but the dung beetle. Lightning bug is an etymological, or is that entymological continent away.       As a youngster I used to hear from people, who had the wisdom lines to support their thesis, that Adolph Hitler was known as a dynamic speaker. Some of the film of his speeches would seem to confirm this. Since my linguistic competancy is not German, I cannot say if his syntax and sentence composition were competant or not. Judging by recent experience, there are some well...

     My youngest son Aidan has a wry, ironic sense of humor. I don't  know where he got it. His mother has a good sense of humor, that would be one place to look. When he was in 3rd grade his mother moved them to Dundee, from Northeast Portland. New school, rural location, conservative politics. Aidan was out of his element. Even worse, he started school in Dundee after the winter break. I had the boys on weekends and I tried to provide them with fun, enriching opportunities. When in the car, I would play DVDs of music I liked, this was the early days of streaming and i'm not an early adapter. I also searched the library files for old humorists, to cater to their developing sense of humor. Tom Lehrer's musical parodies (First you get down on your knees, fiddle with your Rosary, then you bow with deep respect and/ genuflect, genuflect, genuflect), Smother's Brothers, Allen Sherman (Hello muddah, hello fawda, here I am at Camp Grenada). Aiden was also into Weird Al Yan...