Wayward Landlubber

He talks with Words thick  with hate. And you let it happen He walks impiously Among the pious Dripping hot sweat  As you bow with  unction before him. And you let it happen He told you What he'd do, Small voices from the back say, Listen to him, I beg you. You did not. And you let it happen. He appointed  Unqualified people  To positions critical To our very lives.  And you let it happen. A nation hostile To our interests  attacks our president With spies and innuendo  And you let it happen. In the near future We may find  Our fears before us. What else can we say but, You let it happen.

     When I first signed up on Facebook I used to type out to people whom I friended, or who friended me, that "I'm only here to piss-off righties, I don't do business online". I sort of got away from that in later years. No surprise, I would friend someone and after a while they would send me a message with the opening sentence, "Have you heard the good news?" At least I no longer get offered the opportunity to help a Nigerian prince.      As a writer of not very high repute Facebook has been very helpful. I'm better at editing my responses and posts. My spelling is better, I don't abuse commas as much, and I have polished my short, pithy, replies. Sometimes I'm like a jaguar sitting on a limb waiting for a lame MAGAt to wander into range. And they do. Arrogantly puffing out their chests as if they were unapproachable. Trust me, my day is made on these people. And I do not feel bad insulting them. Those who persist in our discussion will sooner ...

     I was born in the middle of the last year of the 1940s. By the time I was born, Joseph McCarthy had added one more drunk Republican to the Senate. While he certainly sought power, that was not what he was drunk on. A few years later, 1953, John F Kennedy entered the Senate. One of these men is celebrated, The other was another in the long list of public embarrassments from the Republican party.       Throughout my lifetime, Republicans have given a safe hiding place to fascists and proto fascists. Not all Republicans were part of the conspiracy, but they share the thing that should embarrass them all. Yes, I acknowledge that the Democratic party contained at that time the Southern Dixiecrats who spawned the KKK during Reconstruction, but they had been slipping into disfavor since the 1948 Democratic Convention seated its first black delegates. By 1971, the Dixiecrats would be invited, under the aegis of the "southern strategy", into the Republican...

     Writing is maybe our greatest individual accomplishment. Even if the characters don't make sense to us as written. Even when the characters are not what composes the words but WHO composes the words. We write for many reasons. We write to inform, to amuse. We write to tell stories. We write to organize our thoughts, to express a need, or to remember a friend or family member. We write for catharsis. We write because we must. Even Republicans write. They are the characters who don't make sense.      Some times we write because we have become a noun, though most of us are closer to an adverb. Sort of the Cartesian definition of writing, I write-therefore I am. But we write because it brings meaning to our lives. Sometimes it brings meaning to others. That meaning can be passed down, long after we're gone.      What makes a writer? Who knows. The Greeks gave all artists 9 goddesses, Muses. Why some people make pictures out of words, while o...

     Many of us lefties got some sweet relief on Sunday January 13, 2024. Taiwan held its election for President and the candidate China did not want to win, won. He has only 40% of the legislators backing him in the parliament and not a few Taiwanese officials chewing antacids, should China respond, but Taiwan is safe for a while, with its "strategic ambiguity". It was announced on the Monday, following the election, that a small island south of the equator, was dropping its diplomatic status with Taiwan. We may assume that this island is responding to pressure from China. So far, no other Taiwanese allies have followed suit and kowtowed to the PRC. This tiny spot of land (pop not quite 12000) has another, more interesting history.       The island of Nauru, lies south of the Phillipines just below the equator.. At one time it had strategic value. Over millions of years birds had nested on the mountain in the center of this volcanic island. It must ha...

     I started smoking pot in about my 18th year. It was not love at first sight, more of an occasional dalliance. Alcohol had place of honor for a while. At some point it became clear to me that the famous slippery slope to heroin abuse was a rightwing trope. People did not use the word trope at that time, there were more colorful descriptions, bullshit would be one. Since that time, so long ago, we have seen changes in alcohol, and the public houses you can go, "where everybody knows your name". Beer is now, more often made locally, or regionally. Taverns are now pubs, Stewart sandwiches and pickled hard-boiled eggs, have been replaced by bistro food or other edible delights. Wine is much better, and produced in American Viticultural Areas that are not dominated by California. Even distilled spirits are being produced by local craft distilleries.       More recently Marijuana has, in smarter states, been legalized, usually regulated by the same peopl...

     One does not need to travel far to find a canine obedience school. I would be SHOCKED to see a feline obedience school. Dogs are like having an adolescent child, cats are like having a teenager.       She was not supposed to be for me. I had expressed an interest in having a cat, but Pinky and I were living on my little 27' Bayliner. We had a covered slip, and were adopting to marina life. A cat living amongst the ducks, geese, and other assorted wildlife that teemed around our marina, would be problematic, I thought. But there was Pinky, standing outside of Moreland Veterinary clinic pointing to a picture of a cat in the window with a sign that said, "needs a home". "Why not"? The cat in the picture was no longer available, but there was a difficult to place cat. She had, the nurse suspected, been a feral cat and had suffered abuse. What was more important was that she had feline immunodeficiency virus, though she was asymptomatic. Bottom line--s...