PHANTOMS - OF THE OPERA OR NOT?

     Yesterday we saw another production of Phantom of the Opera, one of my most favorite shows. It was magnificent, performed at the Broward Center and greatly enjoyed by a packed house. But there was more to this performance - at least for me.
     Perhaps because of certain life events and the general social climate and environmental disasters of our time, things seem to have other meanings for me. Good? Bad? No clue, just that these thoughts come to the fore and so I think and muse.
     The phantom. Real or imagined? Threatening figure or pathetic one, needing love which he was forever denied? Symbolic of the ills of our society, of the dilution of the good, or simply just one misshapen person whose methods were dramatic, to say the least.
     Today, we have many phantoms in our lives. Nothing seems to be what it appears to be. The opera house of Paris then has transformed into the grand opera of the world today. Is there a monster among us, or perhaps more than one, or is there a man behind the monster, or perhaps the monster is the true face? Now who could that possibly be? Hmmmm. Think about it.
      But seriously, there have been earthshaking changes to the world in recent years.  Our climate has rolled downhill in ever increasing speed and the size of it grows, just as the snowball does in its downhill journey. But we are throwing or rolling that snowball at ourselves and there is no snow fort to climb into. We have abused the earth so, the atmosphere so, that we are shortly going to , as the show points out, the point of no return. And yet, just as there are deniers of that reality in the show, there are deniers here, most prominently the idiot illegitimate President we now have and his selfish and ignorant and corrupt Cabinet. So who and where is the monster - or the monsters? Answer that yourself.
     The Phantom pleads for attention, for love, even as he admits he cannot truly love in so many ways. He is different, overwhelmingly so. And so is our chief Phantom, ours who cannot show love either, uses tortured excuses for it, pathetic attempts to find it, any which way he can, and ends up contaminating all he touches.
     But we have no beautiful Christine to help us counter the Phantom and his nefarious plans for all those whom he claims to have opposed him, have made his life a living misery, parked in the cold and damp netherworld of the opera house. Our supposed possible Christine Daae is instead a robotic woman of little outward emotion. I would rather not go to her inner emotions for I cannot fathom her behavior and how she got into this situation. Perhaps she fell under the spell of our own Phantom as did Christine, but there appears to be no rescuer here along the line of the Comte, who loves Christine so.
     So what do we do with our Phantom? Perhaps we should send the troops after him in the form of legal charges against him. Perhaps he should be impeached. Perhaps we will have a better answer after the midterms when hopefully there will be a Democratic House. Perhaps we should somehow ignore him, but how can that be done when he is in such a powerful position. 
     His interview last night on 60 Minutes was horrifying. A paranoid, overwhelmed man of little talent, little trust, and poor judgement, to say the least, was fully presented to the world. He is a man who finds much to admire in Kim, the horrific dictator and killer at the head of North Korea. He mistrusts all else, including his own handpicked people! He is so out of touch with reality that he hangs a picture of himself drinking with ten Republican Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln who is probably looking down and wondering how the hell his Republican party turned into this? Where did all the hate come from? Why do they persist in welcoming right wing extremists, haters , into their hearth as they did in The Republican Club invitation to a hater in NY. Our Phantom is no longer hidden, but exposed to us all and with it come the ills of his twisted mind.
     There is no one to croon to him that he is loved. There is no one who will sacrifice himself to save the world. There is no one who can defeat this Phantom - unless, unless, we all go out and  

VOTE!!!! This man, this Trump and his cohorts are no friends to the opera of life here in this country. They are instead monsters of the netherworld, phantoms who would repress free speech, as did Senator Perdue who grabbed a phone from a Georgia Tech student who dared to ask a question which challenged him as to how and why he could support Kemp who openly and abusively has taken voters off the roll and need I tell you the color of those purged voters? So he grabbed the phone, tried to stop the recording and then  stomped away.

     They are the monsters, the phantoms who terrorize 13,000 children as they make millions off their detention. They are the phantoms, not of the mind, and not of the opera, but of the world, of our country, who would destroy it, who would destroy the rights of women over their own bodies - and when did they ever try to control a man's body? They would like to roll us all into a dystopian world which could only survive in a damp and unhealthy netherworld.

     You do not like these images, these possibilities? Then wake up and realize, be you Democrat or registered Republican, no one is immune to the repressions that will follow if this man and his minions are allowed to remain in power. No one will be exempt, but here is a thought. Perhaps it will not be for a long time as they are destroying the world, the physical world, right around us, bringing it down around our very ears, so hey, silver lining?! Seriously, and very seriously, get out there and VOTE. VOTE for the right people, for the caring people, not the billionaires who pay no taxes and even get a refund even as we little people keep paying.

Vote for humanity, for kindness, for justice, for hope, for goodness. for the true realization of what is important, what is needed and the right path to get there. VOTE!!!!!!!!

     And if you need a reminder of the damage they have inflicted upon the world, upon our country, just go check out the people of the Panhandle, of Mexico Beach, of Panama City, of the Carolinas, who are desperate for help, for water and food, for a roof, for a working toilet!! And then read about the newest forest fire of California. We cannot deny reality forever. It will always be right there to bite us in the rear, and like Venom of the movies, bite off our heads, those nonthinking heads that helped allow this to happen. VOTE, people, VOTE. For the sake of us all.

C'MON, REALLY?!

     Evidently we are back in Bizzaro land, where things are the opposite of what they are supposed to be. We appear to be in the midst of one of the lowest periods in our history, what with politicians definitely taking the low road, the high roaders are just about useless, and the people on the side are chiming in with their oh so lovely comments and contributions that seriously, wish they would keep to themselves.
     The hypocrisy is overwhelming. Trump curses out the media on almost an hourly schedule, but takes to calling them early mornings or late evenings when his coverage is not the way he wishes it to be. There is only so much a network will cover when it is the same hate filled garbage spewed out of the mouth of an orange person who knows only viciousness. How much will a network cover before even its own news people rebel, especially when the coverage is so demeaning and insulting, hate filled, towards women, towards minorities, towards anyone who is not actually in that man's camp! And then we are supposed to believe what he says about a journalist who has been disappeared by the Saudis! I think not.
    The latest? Evidently we are not allowed to criticize Melania for evidently she is "our" FLOTUS and thus beyond criticism or negative comment. Any negativity towards her is reckoned disrespectful and on the level of the seven deadly sins according to Sarah Sanders! Sanders is nuts; we all know that. How she swallows the crap she then spits out as a spokesperson for the Trump administration is mind boggling. And that she thinks that Melania is some kind of goddess because she married that sleaze? Puh-lease!!
     As for Melania, that dummy's model, who has decided now to 'speak out' but not really, and when she tries to do so speaks out of both sides of her mouth, trying to hit some invisible middle that she thinks will make her a classy dame? That and her 5 inch heels? Sexual assault is just that and for her to go back to medieval times or to the backwards lands of the present world and blame the victim or demand more 'evidence' is just too much. Perhaps next time one is raped, just pull out the phone and take pictures, take notes and perhaps that will be the proper evidence these characters need! Evidently a woman's voice alone or standing or sitting in front of a nation is not enough and then she is open to Trump's nastiness and filthy mouth and lowbrow speech.
     And hey, do not forget the tax non paying schemes of these uber wealthy people that Trump and camp contain. Do not pay taxes is their motto and even if one does, make it a tiny percentage of what is truly owed and then sponsor a tax cut to make it even less. After all, they have expenses too for fancy cars must be replaced and mansions built and ridiculously priced clothing bought. As for the 'workers' that Trump has been hoodwinking into believing that he cares for them - wake up! C'mon! How do you believe this crap from him? Is it that the hate appeals to you? But hatred spews forward, backwards and sideways and leaves no one untouched. That means you!
     So for how much longer do we need to play at this low minded campaigning and awful politics? How much longer must we tolerate a man and his weak kneed followers who have sold their souls to this devil, who have turned their backs on the people of   this country, who have allowed a minority vote to run the country over the wishes of the majority? How much longer can we have faith in our system when the man at the head apparently has learned to be a good patriot - for the Russians, and turns on his fellow Americans? Hw much longer can we stand aside and watch our country be riven in two - or even more - pieces?
     How much longer can we tolerate over 13,000 children incarcerated - yes, incarcerated, because that is what their detention truly is - because they tried to immigrate to a country which is supposed to welcome the "tempest tossed".
    Where are our hearts? Our souls? Our minds? Our thoughts? Our pride? Our Americanness, if there is such a word? C'mon! Really and truly - what the hell are we doing.
     For now, before the world literally goes to pieces because Trump et al says there is no climate change, no environmental consequences, just take a moment or two to think and then, in the right frame of mind - VOTE!! VOTE!! VOTE!!

CHILDREN BEHAVE!

     Remember the song sung by Tommy James and the Shondells? Well, we truly need a reminder from someone that we must behave. Wish all our parents up there and all those down here would remind us of that, but the trouble is, so many of those who know better right here on earth are the very ones who are breaking every rule of civility, or proper behavior, of courtesy, of human and humane behavior. One would think that certainly we should have learned better by now and perhaps we actually did learn better, but we have junked all that learning by the roadside.
     So Jeff Flake, that hypocrite, who tries to show everyone how bold and brave he is, how righteous he is, but then never follows thru on it other than to vote with Trump every damn time, suddenly wakes up and dies right!! He claims to feel that the incessant chant of "lock her up" is "disturbing". Ya' think!! Where the hell was he all the years of the campaign and the current presidency? Was he deaf, dumb and blind, willfully so? Did he never remember his parents or teachers telling him to behave?
     But what we have now is frightening and scary, immensely so. Trump and fellow idiots refuse to admit that there is climate change, disastrous change, and contents himself to comments that the storm is dangerous! Like the people in its path don't know that?! Or he looks at blowups that anyone can get on the NOA website and he wrinkles his ugly brow and that is supposed to comfort us, even as he rushes off to another toxic rally! Children behave!
     We have grown men returning to the schoolyard, following the current behavior of Trump. He behaves as a child, no, a tiny tot, with a big bully voice, and others follow, exasperated by him, and boast how they would have beaten him up in the yard and the idiot answers with yet another ridiculous statement. Children behave!! Like adults who are wiser than the current ones we now emulate.
     Next child up and please try not to choke on this one. Melania, that poor child, who has a zillion dollars to spend on her clothes, who got her parents permission to live - right here in America in the White House - who travels the world in luxury - claims that she is the most bullied person on earth!! Now that one choked me out. I could give her a list of kids from my life, as a child and  as an educator, who were bullied and none of them, nary a one, could have been compared to the life and times of Melania. And as far as I am concerned - she made her bed. Now sleep in it and stop whining. You look pathetic.
     Trump makes moronic claims stating that basically Clinton asked Russia to hack her campaign, interfere with the campaign so she might lose it!! Huh!! Sorry, this one is just over the top and yet there go the great unwashed out there shouting and chanting their toxic remarks and wearing those damned red hats. Their dangerously childish behavior will take away all possibilities of making America great as she once was and should always be, simply by their behavior, their prejudice, the hatred that emanates from their rallies.
     Children behave! So how do we show that oh so proper behavior? We stick little 4 year old girls on a plane to Guatemala, not telling her father that she is coming - and has been separated since April - and he lives eight hours away from the airport so there she goes again, into another shameful shelter. Does anyone seriously expect this child and the thousands of others maltreated in our country to grow up normal? Does anyone expect them to grow up with anything other than negative feelings towards the country that treated them so shamefully? There are consequences to dangerous childlike behavior when done by adults.
     I am so much and so often in despair at the current situation and the close future. What will be? What will be for the billions on this earth as food and water are scarce, as land is overrun by the ocean, as we lose even more of the humane traits of humanity? Can we stop the negative progression towards doomsday, even now? I look at my grandchildren and so desperately hope the answer is a positive one but we need to change NOW. We need to grow up. And we need to VOTE!!! For the right people. VOTE. It is our only chance.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY AND WHO KNOWS WHAT!

          What a whirlwind of activity these past two days have been. Going in for a procedure to 'trim' a heart muscle, finding out that uh uh, not enough, and need to do more and awakening to the fact that it was done, going home the next day, and then left to contemplate the enormity of what had been happening.
     Today's hospitals are like factory line assemblies in many ways. The people coming in early on the day of the procedure or surgery, the repeated questions and checks on identity, and the either get out of here phenomenon or the overnite stay, many under the 23 hour 'observation' stay.
     And in between, one is besieged by people pushing carts all around, taking vitals, dishing out meds, many on the wrong schedule from the patient, or a different generic, and yet, all is meant to be a good thing, dispensed with by good and hard working people. So at 5 AM I had a great discussion with the nurse, and another with the next nurse on the next shift. Everyone was willing to take the time, to hear patients out yet the work had to be done.
     So many people and yet not enough for when one is deemed a fall risk then one is supposed to have an aide to help for a bathroom call or whatever, yet those same people are busy doing other things, so what to do? I had a lovely person stay with me all night and it was great, but what if one cannot pay for that or does not understand the need for it? I do not know the answer, but it is only one of the many problems that plague our health system and still, I wonder at the fact that two days after my heart was messed with, I am home in the early hours of the morning and writing my blog. The state of the world is amazing and disorienting at the same time. And I am ever so grateful to all the medical personnel, from the doctor to the assistants, to the aides, to the hospital personnel- so many people for one person's health.
     And I return to the world and wonder why, if we can do all this and pretty well too, then why can we not turn our minds over to the problems of the world; why can we not weed out the 'ill' among us, those who would turn our world upside down, take away rights, harm children, demean women, minorities, the elderly, the poor, anyone who is not right up there complete with full assurance as to their own well being?
     We have become ridiculous in our search for power and wealth and yesterday's crazy drop of the stock market was a prime example of what will happen if we do not get our acts straightened out. The stocks dropped along with the bonds - a weird event - and people chewed their nails as they watched the ticker tape. We have no confidence in our supposed leaders as they hypocritically try to show concern and in a nauseating act tried to show their 'courage' as Trump took off after Murkowski for her vote at the Kavanaugh session. Where the hell was this supposed determination to stand up to Trump when it was needed? These people make me sick to my stomach; perhaps we need them to go on an outing to the immigration courts and watch the little ones being asked to defend themselves and their requests for asylum!!!!
     I do not know how to solve the problems of the world. What I do know is that we must change the watch, change the sentries who are supposed to guard us, change the watchdogs of democracy, for they have failed abysmally. We need to realize that there are good people out there who wish to join with others to change the look of things, to change the depths of things. So go and  VOTE!!!! Take that early ballot and VOTE!!!! VOTE whenever you can get to the booth, but VOTE!!! If we stand there twiddling our thumbs things will only get worse and we will have ourselves to blame. VOTE!!!!

Excuses, Excuses

Hi folks,
In hospital overnight will be back with a new posting later today or Thursday, STAY TUNED!

ANOTHER MORNING

     So, yet another morning where after hours of staring at the ceiling, I now sit in front of the screen, staring, wondering, what should I write. Is it a lack of things to write about? Nope. Too bad about that, for the aggravation of life is certainly exacerbated by the people who make the headlines, but I wonder, does anything actually make a difference?
     Guess it is not too easy to be freshly optimistic at this hour of the morning or night or whatever one chooses to call it. Over and over again, all the news feeds are rife with Trumpian disasters, lies and even filth that he and they make sure to spread through the systems of life. Upsetting is not even near the depth of what it generates.
     Once upon a time I was so proud to be an American. We had a government that responded to its people, that searched for ways to improve life in our country and the world, and yes, made errors, some grievous, but always tried, at least eventually, to improve itself. Yet this very system of government has allowed the flaws in its design to overwhelm the rest and we are now stuck with a president whom in my mind and indeed in the minds of many others, is not a legitimate one, because the Founding Fathers, white men of wealth and education, were afraid of the great unwashed masses and so insured that the leaders o the country were elected by an arcane system which allowed the few to triumph over the many. It is a ridiculous system wherein a state with a population less than a small city in another state can have as much sayso, and even more, incrementally speaking, than the larger state and population. That is not pure democracy, is it?
     Now do not get me wrong; I do not wish to overthrow the government and start all over again! Nor do I wish to see how this country and many other countries in today's world are calling themselves democracies yet are ever more dictatorial and oppressive and yes, sorry to say, but we, the United States of America, is fitting quite nicely into its own slot amongst these countries. That is why there is a bromance of Trump with these dictatorial creatures while our traditional allies go hang as far as he is concerned.
     The question in my mind is how long can this, our divided house, stand? There are true patriots left and they are getting angrier by the day. There are true leaders who seek to protect and better their constituents, who hear and respond, but they are often overwhelmed by those in the majority of the Congress now who stand only for hypocrisy, for injustice, for perverse behavior and retrograde thinking. The only 'forward' looking there is to search for more and newer ways to confound and  deceive the populace, to seek from many countries the ways to steal elections. We have, among this party, including its ostensible head, thieves and liars, tax dodgers and evaders, sexual molesters, aged people who need to take their retirement as their minds are apparently lost somewhere and people with no moral backbone or perhaps even a memory of what it means to be upright and honest in thinking and action.
     So where do we go from here? Do we simply give up to despair and exhaustion or do we fight on to return our country to where it should be, to a place where perhaps we can rally the world to fight off the disastrous climate changes coming right down the pike towards us, that are already here? We need to think how to fix our system in the right way.
     As I sit here this morning I think of how we have influenced the world in good times. Our courage, aligned with the courage of brave citizens of oppressed countries, took down the Berlin Wall, won just wars even as we lost wars we should not have been in, encouraged the fall of the Soviet Union - and in turn allowed Putin, the bro of Trump, to start his own authoritarian state once more, and the same goes for all the countries once behind the Iron Curtain. They proudly installed democracy but look at what is happening now.
     Once our freedom of speech was a thing of which to be proud, our media going everywhere, seeking and demanding the truth, and yes, they were annoying at times, frustrating at times, and yet, that is what their job was. But today, we have a President who wants to shut down the press, who calls them the enemy of the people, who wishes to build a wall around this country, wants to cut off the lifeblood of this country, who, what can I say - stinks in every which way.
     Women, children, immigrants, ethnicities, the needy - all are oppressed here within our country today. Signs of prejudice, of hatred, of violent hatred at that, are rife. Yet I will not give up for I also see that there are good people out there who can and will lead given the chance. Are they perfect, free of all errors? No, for humans are by definition capable and even inspired to commit errors for it is often by those very errors that we learn. But they also admit to these errors, unlike the present ostensible leaders who deny, deny and deny further and then attempt to build upon them even more grievous errors.
     Our answer? Get out there and vote. Get out there and make noise. Get out there and demand attention from your supposed representative. Make sure the representative understands that. Vote out the backwards thinking Republican Party  in all its levels and get in a group of people who care for the people and not just themselves.
     I am so tired of all the crap that comes our way from the Republicans. Enough! Vote them out! In droves! Let us take back America, remember what it is and was and let it return to the leadership of the world and perhaps we can pull the nuts of the world out of the political and environmental fires it is in before it is too late. I so do deeply hope and pray that it is not too late.

AND THE WINNER IS......

     Take a look around and remember the promise of G-d, that he would never destroy the world again by water and sent the rainbow as a sign of that promise. The rainbow appears seldom enough to call forth comments and calls to 'come see' when it does. There is beauty in Nature that we often forget to see, hear and admire.
     But there is also ugliness in the world. Some of it is natural. The San Andreas Rift in California is one of the ugliest sights I have ever seen. It appears as if someone took a hatchet to the world and exposed what lays beneath. Ugly - and frightening.
     The power of the oceans during a storm, the strength of the downpour, the beauty of a world covered in snow - all stunning but all covering up danger and resultant ugliness. And when a nation gets struck by one disaster after another, earthquake, tsunami, volcano eruption, then one must think and consider. One must wonder what was left out? What are we missing?
     We are missing that which goes without saying, that mankind's worst enemy is itself. We are doing  a pretty damn good job at destroying the world all by ourselves and our harmful and destructive behavior. I do not understand why people are so willing to forgo the future for the chance of some money or power now, a fancier car or bigger house or more expensive clothes and apparently this is all having a major detrimental effect on our world and on our future - or if there is even a future out there!
     We would always hear a date - next century, end of this century and too many of us would think, well, I won't be here so okay.... Yes, our kids will be here but selfishness is amazing, is it not? But now we are hearing that we have so damaged the world, that we have increased the harm to it at such an exponential rate that 2040 is looking like the border, the point of no return. 2040!!!!! That is around the corner for all intents and purposes and how silly, how stupid, how blind, we will look at some point on some other planet as historians of the universe discuss the downfall of Earth and its population.
     Malthus was derided and denounced for his theory, the one that states that the world will outrun its ability to produce enough food, have enough clean water, and that was with its population increase. Now add to it all the damage we have done to the Earth and weep, my friends, weep hard and long. Take a look at the pictures around the world of starving people.
     Maybe it is past the point of no return right now for all practical purposes. China and India keep up with their pollution. America does the same and now we are getting worse with that creature and his minions at the head. We are gobbling up arable land for more ticky-tacky developments even as we crowd the life out of our living spaces. We throw up huge and unnecessary mansions on former fields. We cut down the trees and damage our air we need to breathe. We pour chemicals into the ground, into the waterways and we do it in the name of ease and money, of corporate profit.
     No country can go it alone and yet each country refuses to work together or groans at the thought and more and more are pulling out of an accord on this matter, the leader of which is US!!! So even as we dig ourselves further and deeper into a political mess, we are creating more and more of an existential mess. What does it matter, evidently, if we lose democracy, lose our very souls, if the corporations and their head honchos increase their accounts and the environment further deteriorates? Well, there are no lifeboats from the mess we make, are there? There are no new arks into the vast realms of space. Nor will there be, certainly not in time.
     So I take a look around. I look at traitors to their souls like Collins, like Manchin and wonder if they will face payback. I wonder at the creature of the White House, ruining our lives, tearing up the Constitution even as we allow perverts to take over. I wonder at the growth of false and fake 'factoids' that people choose to believe. I look at my grandchildren and cry.
     Who exactly is the winner here?

WHAT TO SAY

     To say or not to say? "These are the times that try men's souls." With deference to our great authors throughout time, we need you - desperately. We need an inspirational writer, a thinker, one who can rile up those despairing souls that know that there is much work to be done but who are, at present, stunned, hit by that poleax, in awe at the nastiness, the depth of it, as men go in search of power, and of the moral cowardice of some women who still squat and bend and bow and concede all to the men, even going so far as to make ridiculous 45 minute speeches which amounted to this hill of beans - I am giving in to the pressure and hereby announcing and acknowledging my moral cowardice and my emulation of men in power.
     Yes, I know. Revenge will come, I am told. The Republicans will get their due. Every dog has its day. What goes around comes around. Any more I should quote? But the point is that we are ruined for decades to come. We have a boor of a man, a man who lied throughout his hearings, who had the Senate Judiciary Committee complicit with him as they hid 1000's of papers from his career, as the men, 27 years after Anita Hill went right down the same path and this man now will control the decisions that women can make over their own selves, will control the travesties of justice that are planned for voting rights, will encourage the right wing bigots, the misogynists, the ignorant and the nasty and along with him go the biggest throng of unqualified judges in lower Federal courts.
     For all this we have to thank that chinless wonder, McConnell, who has singlehandedly taken giant leaps and bounds on the road to perdition, who has forced the United States to go down a pathway that will doom its democracy, that will force it to join all the dictatorships of the world if we do not do something. Anything!
     Listening to McConnell's speech on Friday I had to control the rising nausea. How that man stood there and lied so blatantly, so openly is beyond me. And the ever more demented and characterless Republicans sucked it up as nectar from the gods, with Graham, and shame on him, invoking the name of McCain who would never have stood for this.
     And meanwhile the media goes into fits of what? Glee? Criticism? Nonsense reporting? I could care less about Melania in Africa, that continent of s...hole countries according to her husband. So she took off her heels and put on a colonial hat and then dressed as a man with oversize fedora type hat, a jacket and a tie So she fed a baby elephant even as her husband encouraged the killing of them for their tusks, even as her husband tweets away his dementia, his nastiness and spreads it thickly over the country. She is a nonentity who was bought and paid for, has a son in payment, and a fortune to spend on her 5 inch heels and ridiculously expensive clothing whose cost could feed a world of kids and certainly help them to BeBest, her ungrammatically phrased supposed program.
     We, in America, have allowed the Republican party, even as the Nazi party, or any fascistic party - and yes, they are right there on that same road - to subsume our government into their selfish and most undemocratic plans and ways. If votes mean nothing, then what does a legislature mean? And if justice is partisan then what is a court for? What is a judge? The judges of Germany claimed they were following the law, their job, but is that really so? Have we forgotten morality in our law? Have we forgotten justice is not necessarily legality in certain times? Have we forgotten that we need to have inner courage and strength?
     This whole confirmation process was a sham from start to finish - and we are not at the end goal yet. There are far more nefarious and dangerous plans afoot and read the essays of so many who are warning us of the impending death of democracy in America, of the danger we are allowing, of the injustice that pervades the very air of the country, of the prejudice that is growing apace and the violence which accompanies it. Read them and weep. Read them and worry.
     I am not so worried for myself and my generation for our lifespan is on the down side and if the medical coverage gets any worse via the Republicans and their plans, hell, we will not have to worry for long. But I am worried, terribly so, for the kids and their kids. They are young with full lives ahead of them and those of you who think you have elected a prize in that demented , angry and hateful man, those of you who think you won a victory for men, for the submission of women - think again. Anger tamped down explodes and the result is not pretty. Look at the way one writer has phrased it and tell me you are not frightened at what has been wrought by us.
      
       But despair often turns to rage, hopelessness into a thirst for vengeance, and a small spark into a raging inferno. Republicans just gave Democrats lighter fluid, a match, and a reason not to care about how many blocks of this democracy get burned down.

What have we done? What have we wrought? We must get out there and vote and take our country back, for greatness is certainly not in its mirror now, not looking forward anyway. We must improve on that and the only way is to get Democrats into office and then guide them to the right path, to put away violence and revenge and just do things the proper way. If so, it will be good. So go and VOTE!! Work for a candidate, Donate money - even for an opponent of Collins! Against people who are so power hungry that they say they would leave a daughter's wedding to vote!! Where are the values of family? Why have we arrived at this extreme end of nastiness?
     I do not want to burn anything down. I just want to impeach a few judges, recreate protective legislation, cancel the tax cut for the rich which is swelling our debt by crazy numbers, have a sane and humane immigration policy, cast out the enemies of mankind from the government and recall those decent souls who left.
     What do I want? What should we all hope for? 
   A return to sanity and decency. A return to America.

IT'S LIMBO TIME!!!

     The song asks, "How low can you go?" And how appropriate that question is today. Indeed, how low can this Republican party go. Their leader is a self acknowledged pervert, a hater of women, a proponent of awful treatment and behavior with and of women, sued by women, cheats serially on his wives, and makes nasty comments, acts as a disturbed adolescent in his verbalized comments about survivors of sexual assault and those men who have acknowledged their responsibility in   this behavior. In other words, he is demented and a nasty dementia at that. And his behavior in other spheres parallels this all.
     Worse than all that, though, is the fact that along with him he brings other perverted, nasty, low slinging critters whose primary function in life appears to be competing as to who can be the nastiest, lowest critter, who can shed values and morality faster than everyone else, and who can document the greatest loss of moral strength and the greatest growth of cowardice and immorality.
     Amidst the heart rending outpouring of grief, of hidden for years accounts of sexual harassment, from small to major, amidst all this, the male senators of the Republican Party, the creep McConnell, the demented one,Trump, place emphasis on a fake investigation and its results. Once again, Trump has shown the ability and the desire to co-opt all parts of the Justice Department and notice the lack of disturbance about that behavior by those who should be screaming about the danger to our democracy.
    We are warned that the global economy is at risk of imploding and woe upon us if that happens. We read of the death of an important character in the whole Russian investigation and something smells really stinky here. And we read of the unbelievable acts of moral cowardice and self hoodwinking. How can Collins and Murkowski, women, women first before Senator, how can they confirm a man who will overturn or limit Roe v. Wade to the point of uselessness? How can anyone in the Senate say that there is no proof of Kavanaugh's lying and moral turpitude? How can anyone call what the FBI did an investigation, a farce is what it was! And as for Jeff Flake - what a crock! What a fake! His crocodile remorse and face of agita in the elevator - he should get an Oscar for that acting!! 
     How low can we go? Very low indeed. But yesterday I experienced something that gives me hope, that shows that we can indeed raise that bar and there are some great people out there. We went to an event which raised money for Alzheimer's, for research into that, into Parkinson's, into neurodegenerative disorders and these people took the time out on a workday to chat, to clap, to admire a group of day care adults dance, hearing the music through the fog of their minds. There were volunteer dancers who rivaled professionals. There was a mood of yes, we can, rather than the depressed mood that one sees lately where any group of people gather.
     This gives way to the realization that perhaps there is hope to regain our balance here in the country. Perhaps we will be able to stop Trump, even as he walks quite appropriately with a piece of toilet paper stuck to the heel of his shoe. Could not have a better picture and analogy than that!!
     How low can we go? Evidently low enough to confirm a man for forty years of destructive power on the bench; enough to lose our morality, our inner strength, our values; low enough to have to depend on a future - hopefully soon to be future - when a blue Congress will impeach the liar Kavanaugh and nothing to do with sexual assault but with his lying under oath to the Senate about stolen documents. I could care less how we get rid of him, but that sounds as good a way as any! 
     It is up to us to dance the dance. But let us turn it around and ask how high can we go? How straight and tall can we stand in the face of a deteriorating morality? How much strength do we have in our legs and minds and hearts and souls to withstand the onslaught of crooked, immoral and amoral power hungry misogynists and suck ups to a creep? Let us, in these troubled and dark times, show that we can redeem ourselves. Get out there and VOTE!!!! Let your representatives in legislatures, in local offices, let them know how disturbed and upset you are and demand an accounting. Demand justice. Demand that we return to America as she is supposed to be, not a country that eats its inhabitants and its visitors, especially little children!
     Let us turn around that low point of ours and reach the highest point we can achieve. If we do not, we are lost. Permanently. There comes a tipping point and I believe we are perilously close to it. VOTE!!VOTE!! VOTE!!!!!

POLEAXED!!!!!!

     Well, you might as well hit me again with that steel pole, or wooden bat, or the tome of the justice system in America, for it is all the same. The system is broken. It is not working and the proof of the pudding is that after a many paged, year and a half intensive deep dive into the workings - and  mind -  of Trump, and revealing the fraud he committed on paying - or not paying taxes, his open lies about his supposed  Horatio Alger beginnings - well, and he is still in the Oval Office!!! Hit me again!!
     How many times must more and more filth be revealed about this man and his chosen henchmen before we get rid of them? How much more time do we need to acknowledge that he is a moral failure, a pervert, a liar and a cheat, the very polar opposite of a patriot, a misogynist, a narcissist, and any other name one can think of that would accurately pin down his issues. Demented would be a good start here!
     His obsessive and rather dangerous penchant for picking bad people is ringing alarm bells all over the country and the world, yet his Senate Republicans sit there fussing and moaning over the fact that they need to get this Kavanaugh in office, on the bench, so he can continue to destroy the country for the next four decades!! One pervert more in the mix so what does it matter, right?
     So a fake investigation, rushed, limited, and designed to force approval of Kavanaugh was reluctantly launched and the FBI was emasculated from the get go. No reinterview with Kavanaugh or Blasey Ford. No interview with the dozens that came out openly and spoke of their knowledge of the truth of his earlier years and the point is not that he was a drunk, or that he continues to maintain his love of beer; it is that he lies about it all. Denies that he could ever possibly have done such a thing, that he was a blackout drunk in those years, high school, college and law school. And going to Yale, as he stressed, so what? He was a legacy, he was a drinker, he was a drunkard, he was and is a liar and instigator and falls right into the presidential camp of women haters. And all we heard was that now wanted  from Prof. Ford was the record of her therapy sessions - without interviewing her again! Poleaxed again. Yet again!
     Now the scene is set, the stage prepared for the liar and cheat - no, not Kavanaugh but Trump - to get his way yet again. When questioned about his taxes he blusters away, lying through his miserable teeth and having his staff swear to those lies. And he follows through with this other 'minor' issue. Setting up the fake investigation, handling it all from the WH, scrunching the time down from the already inadequate week asked for, limiting its scope, limiting the time available for the Senators to read the report - not that it will make a difference anyway - and rushing through a cloture vote and a confirmation vote - poleaxed yet again! 
     WE, the country, are down for the count and the count is getting pretty damn close to a ten count. Will we get up yet again, stand up straight and fight back or are we going to concede and turn this country, this proud nation, over to a bunch of dangerous fools, implicit and/or complicit in this disaster? When famous writers are also talking about a Civil War - welcome to the club, late, but there - then I get truly frightened. What have we wrought?? And yes, it is our fault that we did not force this guy out from the beginning, that there are still fools and dangerous bigots who stand with him and cheer on his nastiness, that women!!! still could support him. Dear Lord! Where are the brains and heart of people? Certainly not with the thousands of kids now transferred to a desert camp, no oversight, left to rot due to this man and his followers Nazi like racial ideas.
    We, it seems, are all poleaxed. Will we get up yet again, or are we going to stay down and wait for that ten count? Are we going to cede all that is right and  allow the United States of America to have a government run by liars, cheats, criminals, insider traders, people who misuse our money, or are we going to stand up and demand justice and action? Will we do what we must, what should have been done months ago or will we wimp out, lose our own moral values and courage and let our nation fall?
      Poleaxed or not, we had better get up. Now!! The consequences of lack of action, of moral strength are too disastrous to contemplate and yet we must. Get the steel pole and bang it where there is far better place for it! Now!
     

THE COMPOSTING THEORY OF GOVERNMENT

     A compost heap or pile consists of organic matter left to decay and then to fertilize a chosen area of growth in a field or garden. The goal is to take what is essentially garbage, waste, and turn it into something good and productive. Evidently we now have a composting theory or principle of government and I wonder how it will turn out!
     Evidently the 'swamp' of Washington was not good enough or roomy enough for the corruption of Trump and crew. They needed more - and thus the compost heap of American government today.
I challenge anyone out there to find anything comparable to this during our history. Perhaps if we go back to the Teapot Dome Scandal of Harding or Watergate or some other passage of history. Perhaps then we can find a comparison to the times of today, but I think not. Today, we have a compost heap of giant proportions. What is it composed of and what do we do with it?
     Today our heap is composed of all those who have sold their souls for the purpose of remaining in office and incidentally destroying our country. It is composed of those who in olden days would have gone to a crossroads and made the deal with the devil! I can just see a new Hieronymous Bosch painting with all of the day's politicians, all those small minded, crooked, heartless, lying creatures all in a heap of little squirming bodies cooking away in the heat of hell.
     Is there not one Republican who has not sold the soul? Jeff Flake admitted at a talk that if he were up for election he would never have asked for an investigation. Is there no one among them with the courage and righteousness of McCain whom some claim as their best buddy? Graham is just nuts, perfectly fit for his place in the compost heap of this administration, - and did you get a look at the face as he was ranting and raving at the hearing - ugly!! along with Cronyn, Trump, Grassley, Cruz and the rest of them and do not forget McConnell.
     Today our compost heap of governmental figures grows by leaps and bounds as politicians willingly and eagerly even throw themselves onto it, just so happy to be part of this corruption, this nastiness. So their leader, the biggest piece of organic waste matter, the magnet to this all, is exposed by others and by his own mouth and behavior, makes nasty comments about Prof. Blasey Ford and one can just about see the smoke rising in America. We have the smoke off the heap and then we have the building fires of anti composting all through the country. 
      And the compost pile grows in exponential fashion as fake investigations are set up, rigged to force a tampered conclusion and all to get a corrupt and characterless creature on the bench of the highest court in the land, a court which has changed our country throughout history, correcting errors of its own and of the legislature and the executive branch, doing its job, no partisanship but today we get a compost pile. And it stinks!
     The pile grows with the accusations and proofs of tax fraud, right from the top down. It grows with the accumulating stories of harassment, even unto rape. It grows quickly when a 1983 letter of Kavanaugh is exposed and such a lovely boy!! And such a lovely man who denies the truth, evades the truth, does exactly the opposite of what a justice is supposed to do. And Trump thinks he can rewrite history, change a think to a thank, put flowers over the compost, and makes believe no one noticed!
     He attacks the world, plays chicken with our navy and China. His NATO ambassador talks of "taking out" missiles of Russia so are we now going to nuclear war?! Is that what will prove to be the largest compost pile ever?
     Professor Ford's lawyer has it right when he calls Trump a "profile in cowardice". This man refuses to face the facts, lies and changes them to fit his pile of ….. and gains energy from the shouts of pain and anguish of children locked up in cells with no beds, just a thin non cuddly blanket and a hard floor or a thin blue mat. It grows with the anguish of people locked up for trying to have the same dream that our families had when they immigrated here.
     We, in America, have allowed the growth of this compost heap and the growth of composting in government but instead of gaining fertilizer for growth, we have allowed the stink of the resulting fertilizer to corrupt our gardens and hearts. We have forgotten what it means to be an American, to stand tall and proud and know that we are doing the right thing and will improve on it as we have always done.
     Time to retire this theory and principle of government, put it back on the compost pile of history, where dangerous and evil are consigned. Time to raise our voices loud and clear and permanently till we get our country back again. Time to demand that Manchin and Heitkamp, Collins, Murkowski and Flake remember their humanity, who they are supposed to be and have courage and stand up for the right! Time to take shovels to that heap, to use our votes as those shovels and get these leavings of history gone, consigned to a pure heap, one that will serve as a reminder to us all that we, too, here in America, came close to losing our country, allowed it to compost in a bad way.
     Civil disobedience? Who knows. Why? Because something needs to be done before we are totally lost and the outrageous plans of Trump et al become fact, like his plan to connect to all our cells so he can talk to us at a time that he considers an 'emergency'. Ugh!!Big Brother in life!!Down with the compost heap and their backward and just plain wrong principle of government. Vote with courage. Speak up with courage. Do the right thing and do not be ashamed at admitting that you cast a wrong vote last time - those of you who did - and you know, the majority was opposed to you!! We honor our heroes - so let us all become heroes of the day and work together to right this wrong pile, this heap of garbage.

AN APPEAL FOR DECENCY AND CIVILITY

  Where have we gone and what have we done. From Jeff Flake yesterday to retired Justice Kennedy, voices are being raised in appeals for decency, for civility, for unity, for remembering that we are one country, not two enemies facing each other at a border somewhere.
     It is not even about Kavanaugh and whether he did or did not and whether he remembers or is outright lying. It is about his demeanor, his savage behavior, his so unlike Justice behavior that to vote yes for confirmation means actually a confirmation of hatred, for a splitting of the USA into at least two countries and who knows - perhaps and quite possibly war. I am not the only one saying this now and quite frankly it scares the bejesus out of me!
     Have you carefully parsed Kavanaugh's behavior? Have you done the same with Graham who looked absolutely demented in his rantings on Thursday and Friday. Have you looked at the others, Cronyn, Cruz, etc. Trump has decided that the Democrat Party - and yes, he took off the ic at the end for he had decided that is what HE wants! Never mind that they were chartered as the Democratic Party. Graham is ripping away, raving almost, accusing other Americans of destroying  the country because they do not confirm Kavanaugh. It does not matter what the crippled investigation shows for it is already a decided vote for the Senators. It is a complete shambles and worse for all of us.
     The rest of the government has followed suit with spokeswoman Conway swearing to the lies of Trump and bolstered by Sanders. We have lost the moral center of gravity - all of us and the Republicans are leading the way. No more is there talk even of bipartisanship. Nope, it is one or the other and that is it.
     We are throwing out veterans. We are moving thousands of kids around again, putting them in the soul deadening desert tent camp in southern Texas. No education. No love. No attention. No proper care or food. No psychological help in the separation that has dragged on forever it seems for these kids. Nope. It is a rousting in the middle of the night, onto a bus with a snack and on for hours to get where they are going.
     What has become of us. What!! What will become of us in the near future? Trump has restarted the Cold War 2.0 and this time around we have no allies for he has made enemies of them all. Our products are costing us more now due to the moronic tariffs imposed by that man. Our factories and workshops are rolling back workers and hours as they cannot afford to absorb the rising costs and keep people working. Our air, our waters, our lands are all becoming more and more filthy and ruined by that same man and his dangerous and greedy 1%ers. The religious right is going nuts on all of us and who knows what will be as they keep pushing to violate the rule of separation of church and state. And as for women- I shudder at the future in store for them should all these people triumph in their destruction and madness.
     Our national debt is now at a record high with less funding comeing as the tax break for the rich slows collections of monies. Our debt service is out of sight! 
     And no one sees this, or pretends not to see it. So we will raise bigots and conspiracy nuts to the bench. We will turn back the clock on everything positive that we have achieved. And we will destroy our country. We will destroy families. We will destroy friendships.
     Decency. Civility. Hope. A future. Please. Please. Heed what we have done and try to get decency back in the lexicon. Civility as well. Respect for others and their right to differ. No one is putting a knife in your back when there is a difference of opinions. But we have forgotten that.
     We need to examine where we are and remember our past and the hope of a future.
     Anybody out there as frightened as I am?

    Please note that there will not be a new posting Tuesday and the next new one will be Wednesday. Again, please take the time to read and reread  earlier postings. See the patterns we have seen growing in our country, in our ally. Think and vote.

AWWWW, HE'S IN LOVE!

      Out of the closet? That would be the best excuse for Trump's declaration of love for Kim Il-Jung, the North Korean dictator. There are some other reasons, possibly. One, the man is more and more insane with less and less control over his mouth, or two, the man is just continuing his rather treasonous remarks at the same time that he pacifies his partners in treason. First we had admiration of Putin, then Duterte, a few random dictators here and there and now, Kim. Awww, how sweet it is! Not!! Seems there is no scuzzy guy on this planet's surface that Trump does not admire! Such a great guy!
     His chosen pick for the Court is just another example of his warped sense of values. Watch SNL and see how they caught the true Kavanaugh. The sniffles. The sniffing. The incessant water drinking and do they make colorless beer? (LOL) His over the top ranting and raving, conspiracy statements, even bringing in the Clintons for heaven's sake! Maybe we should go back to the moment of his birth for perhaps the conspiracy began even then!
     There is no excuse for his behavior as a teen and college student, and yes, I believe Prof. Ford and if he cannot remember - which I do not believe - it is because he was blotto! And no, he did not explain 'skis' or Keg Club or answer any questions that drew blood and no, I do not believe that the yearbook would include his "ralphing" from 'spicy foods" - it was the beer, stupid!! The many beers!! And how do we know if he will come drunk to the bench for we are told over and over again that he likes beer. He really does and don't they all? He was disrespectful, disturbingly violent, annoying in his sniffling and drinking, abusive in behavior and in no way can he be considered to be of judicial temperament. If he were to admit and apologize it would go a long way, but his ranting and obvious wrong temperament for a judge are  too obvious at this point. Even the ABA and the Jesuit organization have disavowed him and asked for investigation. Even the ACLU has chimed in and they never do this with judges but this guy!
     And sorry, folks, read up on the investigation and it is a farce, set up for failure for justice. Shocking, huh? It is limited in scope, no Swetnick, and why not throw in false allegations as well even as true ones are banned and then, to insure a proper outcome, at least for Kavanaugh, the White House and that creep of a guy drew up a list of witnesses who can be interviewed. Nothing like an open investigation is there?
     This administration is disgusting and now the chief creep is off on yet another rabble rousing tour, calling the Democrats evil and mean. Guess he has not looked in the mirror lately. His focus on chief villain is now Feinstein for how lovely to have yet another woman to demean and abuse.
     Trump and Trumpians have allowed this country to fall by the wayside of the world. We are a laughingstock to the world, diplomats openly laugh at Trump's ridiculous false boasts and threats. Jeff Flake finally comes out and admits that this is tearing the country apart but he is actually a tad late, for we are already torn, perhaps past the time and place of being fixed - ever.
     We have lost our souls. We have lost our vision. We have become mean spirited and vicious, particularly the 'conservative' side. True conservatives such as Goldwater, true founders of the Republican Party such as Lincoln, are turning and rolling in their graves, distraught at what has happened. What do they think has occurred when high school students spell out the n word, openly, allowing the hatred to spill over and out? Why have these incidents been 'blossoming and blooming'? Because Trump and his followers allow this, enjoy this and it will never stop unless we do something!
     And do not think that we have stopped our war on children. A young Korean woman, adopted by her uncle, a biochemistry student in college, poised to graduate and contribute to her country, America, is now being told that she will be deported upon said graduation! Yup, true enough! So we throw out more kids, throw out foreign born servicemen and does anyone realize how many foreign born soldiers we had in our armies of various wars? 
     What is the matter with us that we allow this disgusting behavior, that we continue to harm our country by allowing these things to take place? And yes, there is hope, for there are many out there who are disgusted with that man and his followers, with his violations of the principles of America but I wonder. Is there still time? Will all come out to vote in November? Can we mend the breach of the country and its people? And most important of all - will it be peacefully or with violence and civil war. Will there be a legal transfer of power or will it be a forceful imposition by Trump and his authoritarian followers over the rest of the country? Will we remain America or will we be simply yet another dictator run country and the once upon a time Camelot and dream will be discarded in the streets? Our choice folks, our choice, but the timeframe is quickly narrowing. Very quickly.

MOUTHS ARE MOVING

     Sitting beside a lovely woman, both waiting for tests and our turns, she asked me if I knew when a politician was lying. I said it does not make a difference since most lie most of the time so I never believe them anyway. She remined me that if I just look and see if the mouth is moving - for then they are lying.
     What a sad commentary in our political disposition today. And she is 100% correct. With the entire country watching the hearings, glued to the radios, the tv, screens in bars and stations and stores, the politicians lied through their teeth and I mean the Republicans. They praised the affective behavior of Kavanaugh as he deflected, ignored, shouted, talked over, interrupted, and then cried crocodile tears to impress the Senators. I figure he must have had onions in that glass of water he was constantly drinking. What about the 'skis" - no answer. Why not the FBI- no answer. Why not wait and investigate - deflection and yelling. About drinking  - he asks the Senator about her drinking. There was not one true answer there and his girls that were treated seriously because they were from Catholic schools and so were they? Read the statements of the women from there as they break that wall of silence. Hear the truth!
     But no, the mouths are moving and even those with a tad of conscience, those who admit there is more doubt than certainty - voted to confirm this morning. The pressure now is on Collins and Murkowski, as well as Manchin and Heitkamp. Will consciences be raised or will politics asdn our ever increasing tenses situation of tribalism rear its ugly and evergrowing head?
      The mouths are moving, led by the biggest mouth mover of all - Trump! Yet another corrupt, perverted, dishonest pick for his administration and I fear for the women of the next generation or two for we will have allowed the clock to be turned backwards and restrictions reapplied. When it comes to women - they lose in the Senate. Hopefully there will be more women in the new one after the elections and hopefully they will be able to raise protective laws, push thru more sanity and truth but the damage will have been done for forty years or so what with two perverts on the Court - Thomas and  Kavanaugh and even as the people acknowledge that there was a travesty of justice with Hill, they do the same thing now with Ford, a brave woman indeed. Were she to have behaved as did Kavanaugh - whoa! The criticism would have been flying as the Republicans would have mouthed off. Those mouths again.
     I as afraid, so afraid, that this chasm is ever growing and soon there will be no way to fix the breach, to get across that abyss and try to return to a country and not a land of tribes. I worry that there will be actual war, civil war, for there is pressure building, with no outlet and little hope.
     We need to get our mouths moving, our people mouthing words, words of truth, words of compassion, words of decency, words that lend itself to brotherhood, unity, and not the other way around.
     Dear Lord in Heaven!! We are in a mess, are we not? No need to destroy us with water or fire or anything else, for we are doing a great job on ourselves all by ourselves. 
      We need to use mouths for love, for trust, for truth. Heaven help us if we cannot get that message through to where it needs to be.

APOLOGIES

     My bad, folks. Overslept, early morning bunch of med tests and gotta run! Quite frankly, I am also trying to make sense of what I know will happen today with a vote and I am just...…
     So please come back in a  few hours when I will have written something new for today.'     See ya' later.

A MOMENT OF JOY

     Of late, the world has been ugly. Garbage that had lain beneath the surface has come to the fore and it is not pretty. None of it. It speaks of a time when men had no respect for women and unfortunately that phrase still resounds today.  We hear the pathetic mewling of men caught - with their pants down - who resent that fact and who seemingly have chosen the man who trumps it all (sorry for the pun) as their champion who cries over the myriad accusations sent his way by his victims. It is ugly and shameful but at least there is progress, be it in the shame of the men, in the realization that they face the consequences, like it or  not, or that 1600 men can sign a page in the Times supporting Ford, or that - we hope - we have finally turned the page and have some Republican senators who will finally vote the right way, vote their conscience.
     But in the midst of all this tawdry business, for me at least, there was a moment of joy, a moment I have been seeking my whole thinking life, a debt owed to history, to my Bubby (grandmother), and a smack in the face to those who would rather this moment had never been, had never been possible.
     Last night, at 7:30 in the evening, a literal door was opened and there was an immediate connection. I - who never do this - reached out to an unknown woman, just as she reached out to me. Why? And why were tears running down this woman's face? Tears of sadness and joy at the same time.
     This woman was my cousin - my cousin!! From Bubby's side, from a family we thought had been long gone, lost to the depths of madness and barbarity of Hitler's insanity. We cried at the realization that her father and my grandmother did not have to feel alone with no one other than their immediate family but alone they did indeed feel as each searched for survivors and found none. This was in the days of no computers and the aftermath and chaos of war and the ironies of fate that had missed moments. But thanks to the computers and the enormous help of caring volunteers and the willingness of my newfound cousin to open herself up to yet one more moment of possible disappointment - we met! And this time was the charm.
     So for two hours we laughed, we teared up, I was profoundly affected when I was told that there was a cousin whom I had resembled. I imagined my Bubby up there now, looking down at this, looking at her great niece and granddaughter and saying the Shehechiyanu, a blessing that we had lived to this moment, thanking G-d for this, appreciating the moment, the importance of it, the meaning of it. 
     Throughout the centuries, enemies, over and over again, tried to wipe us out, burning, killing, drowning, torturing, forced conversions, exiles, pogroms, and the horrific deeds of the Holocaust, and today, trying to disguise the traditional venom of anti Semitism with calls of anti Zionism, the calls to not recognize the rights of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland, to a land at all.
     And yet, despite it all, we remain. We live. We breathe. And we search the world over to find our Shearit Haplitah, the remnants of the tragedies that were forced upon us over the centuries. And last nite I had my own reunion with someone I had never met, with someone who two months ago I never believed existed.
     The joy of last nite is a moment of sadly and badly needed joy, of success, of victory over the forces that would deny me and my people. It opened the door to meeting the rest of the family, to meeting the branch of the family that had gotten to Israel before the war, even as the hatred mounted, who were found by a moment of fate, to get the younger generations to close the ties, to move themselves into the web of family.
     I cannot begin to even try to explain the depths of the emotions which still are roiling my mind and my heart. I so wish I could have given this wish, this moment, to my Bubby, but will carry on in her place and for the moment, will revel in this joy and try to shut out the current ugliness in the world. It is said that we cannot choose our family, but thank you, Dear Lord, for giving me this choice to find the remnants of mine.

WAR DECLARED!!

         No, not against North Korea or Iran. Not today, in any case and in fact, Trump appears to just love that chubby little dude! Can't always understand fixations, can one?
       What Trump and his minions have done is declare war on all that is decent, on all that is - or was - America. All that she stood for and hoped to gift to the world, to her own citizens. The opening line of the poem by John Keats says it all about America in her true glory. "A thing of beauty is a joy forever". Once we were that thing of beauty, a country that moved forward, making mistakes, doing wrong at times, but always willing to go forward, to change, to improve. That is, until now, when war has been declared by the current administration and its leader, so help us, a leader who is now laughed at by the leaders of the world. America's beauty dims once again because of this man.
     We, officially, have declared a war on our enemies. Nope, not the traditional ones, but on allies and friends. But worse than that is that we have declared war, open warfare, against those who are most vulnerable. We have declared war on children, taking money from education funds, from cancer research and using it to build more prisons - and yes, they are prisons - for children. We take the child who has aged out of these child prisons and put them in handcuffs and take them off to real prisons, right along with the felons. Their crime? Being separated from their parents or being unaccompanied minors as they crossed the border in search of a better, safer life. The American Dream. 
     Yes, those dangerous children! Our security rattles in fear from and of them! And to that we add war on women. The ugliness of past and present attitudes of men in power towards and with women has come to the surface and the men do not like it. When it hits their nominee, we hear excuses of boys will be boys and just excuse it, if he did it and if he did, he was drunk, so there ya' go! Or the girl was drunk or should not have been there, so there ya' go again - just blame the victim. Works all the time!!
     Just insult the accusers, doubt them openly and forcefully and do not be afraid to voice your thoughts. One Senator on the Committee openly states that he just "knows" that the accuser is wrong and Kavanaugh is innocent. He just knows it. So there ya' go. The tactics of war.
     And we have the disadvantage of having four Mormon males on the Committee. The  Mormon Women for Ethical Government have asked these four to postpone the hearings and investigate but that is like trying to keep a snowman in one piece in the depths of hell. The Mormon religion has always had a problematic attitude towards women, treating them as chattel, as breeders, as tools to gain government money and even among today's Mormons, women are strictly limited and even their afterlife depends on the husband! Boo on that! And boo to any religion holder that uses it to perpetuate violence and discrimination.
     We have declared war on immigrants, on the poor, on the needy, on the ill. Now the Republicans say they are fighting for health care for the chronically ill, for previously disclosed conditions!! What a crock!! They were the ones who endangered it with their insane war against Affordable Care. Own it. Own what you have done, Republicans. Own it!
     We, as a a country, have allowed our government to declare war on truth, on decency, on justice. We have dredged up old canards and polished them up but filth and dirt remain filth and dirt. The Republican members of the Committee openly state how they doubt the accuser and in any case, he did it when he was 17 so there! Really? So bad behavior is excused for age? Really bad behavior? I am not saying he should be locked up at this point, but at the very least he should be open and honest as was Cory Booker, apologize and make his amends via proper actions, not continue his anti women practices. His behavior in high school and college indicate a major flaw in his character and certainly it does not behoove us to appoint a man of this caliber to a life time appointment where for the next 40 years he can make life miserable for all of us.
     We, our government, has declared war on all that is decent and right in our country. We have abdicated our position as leader and  role model to the world. We have pushed a false 'patriotism', for hatred and prejudice are not patriotism but rather just hatred and prejudice, the nastiness of the "America First' movement which seeks to disguise its awfulness with a fake curtain. But we need to look behind the curtain and see that the Wizard here is a farce, a dangerous impostor, and must be exposed to the world as such and not as the true representative of America, the thing of beauty.
     Keep in mind the words of another poet, Yeats, and his famous words.
     "Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."
     The world, and indeed, America, has had times of anarchy before, times of bloodshed, times of Country Firsters. We have seen the results and if one needs a reminder of the level to which the world can fall, read any book about civil wars, world wars and for a consequence try reading a powerful book called The Stone Crusher,  a story of love and friendship, of survival in the flames of hell. Then understand, then know, the anarchy that can be set loose upon the world when war is declared on the wrong things. When we allow it to be so.
     Will our center hold? Answer that. Please. And be truthful, not wishful. And then do what must be done - and get out there and vote, send letters, make demands. Else understand what and why that anarchy is loosed upon the world.

MONDAY AND TUESDAY

Please note that I will be away from the computer for two days but will be back on Wednesday morning with another blog posting. Please take the time to read postings you might have missed. Thank you.