The French Open

Tennis when played on clay
Groundstrokes should win the day
But there are always curves
Which amount to nerves
And determination will have its say.
#ItDontMeanAThingIfYouAintGotThatSwing

Oh What A Beautiful Morning

Conjuring up the powers to beguile
With the simple aim to make you smile
As the day begins it's very sunny
That should be paired with a bit of funny.
#TheDispositionProposition

The Kids Do Grow Up.....Eventually

When the children become adults
The thing about the results
They want happy p's
So aim to please
And even enjoy the technology consults!
#AcrossTheGenerationsAffectionAndLiberation

We Are Descending Beyond A Happy Ending

When the Beast
Has lost his yeast
And Beauty is no more

Then the game
Becomes assigning blame
And pining for Elsinore.
#DealingWithNowEvenJeanCocteauWouldntKnowHow

Junk Food Makes ForJunk Ideas

The irrelevant elephant
Made an argument
That was elegant

While the bandito mosquito
Made a chomp
With a Cheeto.
#FoodForThoughtIsWhatYouOught

Related and Obligated

The siblings
Began their quibbling
Because there was no appetizer for nibbling.

While the cousins
Of whom there were dozens
Hope the long email simply wasn't.

#ADifferentTheoryOfRelativity

A Simple Way To Enjoy The Day

Starting the day with a treat
A way to keep the disposition sweet
Then a bad joke or two
Before bidding adieu
And you too will feel complete.
#BeforeTheNewspaperOrTVNewsShow

Our Fallibility In The Simple Puzzles We Play

In wordplay taking a tumble
So cheating while doing the Jumble
What a relief
To end the grief
Next time on the theme you won't fumble.
#UnlikeTheRangeSometimesThereIsADiscouragingScrambledWord

The Long Term Consequences Of Sustained Isolation

Slithering into madness
After a prolonged sadness
It would seem
A frightening dream
Repeatedly making a bad mess.
#DescendingIntoTheAbyssCanBeHardToResist

When The Road Not Taken Turns Into The Beaten Path

Drained by repeated convention
So looking for personal reinvention
Then trying something new
With which to make a to-do
Yet wanting early success defeated the intention.
#AimingForASplashLeadsToACrash

With Apologies To The Doors

Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Practicing their form
Becoming the new norm
We feel so all alone
Weird skills we do hone
Riders on the storm.

#TheyAreTheBellwetherForRepeatedNastyWeather

Our National Politics in Metaphor

The Congressional Republicans are Jabez Stone.  Who will be their Dan'l Webster?
https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0602901h.html

It occurs to me that we can't talk rationally across party lines, but metaphors such as this might still be possible topics of conversation that can be batted around.  The original story by Stephen Vincent Benet is definitely worth the read, in its own right.  And as a metaphor for now, I think it illuminates as well.

Civil War Seems The Inevitable Conclusion

Connecting the past to the present
The conclusion is rather unpleasant
Hoping appeasement
Will provide an easement
Simply enables the torment to ferment.
#TheRoadToFascism

When People Are Perceived As Things

When someone always speaks in the first person
Anyone else then becomes an object
After that the situation will worsen
Lacking kindness and showing no sense of respect.
#WeMighEvenDiscardThoseWeDisregard

The Dwarfs After Snow White Married The Prince

When Grumpy felt frumpy
He would chat with Doc
Who said Sleepy was creepy
And that's no crock.

Since it was Happy who took a nappy
To counter the shock
While Dopey was mopey
As his timepiece went tick-tock.
#WhatAboutSneezyAndBashful

Nathaniel Hawthorne Junior High

Like their older siblings who came before
They too attended seventy-four
Where you had to take shop

And homeroom was a prop
To park your coat, then offer so much more.
#7thGradeWasNotQuiteAnEscapade

This One Is More Than 280 Characters

The nestling became stuck in the tree
Where no other birds could be found
The nestling struggled to be set free
To be able to walk on the ground.

Taking it all in was the giraffe
Who said to herself - what the heck?
She had to suppress an inner laugh
But then decided to stick out her neck.
#AFriendIndeedWhenSomeoneIsInNeed

College Kids On The Skids

Bring back Spanky and Alfalfa
Who really liked playing hookie
It's not a matter of nostalgia
But how 'bout a chocolate chip cookie?
#YouCantHaveFunWhenUnderTheGun

The Last Place You Look

Putting dishes away in the wrong place
Will that lead to you losing face?
Some cooking stuff
Seems exotic fluff
Knowing where it goes your memory will erase.
#WhenASenseOfResponsibilityAndAnInstinctForSlothAreOpposed

Will-O'-The-Wisp

An idea comes as a flicker
You'll lose it if you aren't quicker
Then with some dismay
You find that you will say
It won't reappear and that's the kicker.
#TheSubconsciousTeasesUsWithItsMysteries

When Monopoly Was A Good Thing

If you take a ride on the Reading Railroad
And do not pass Go
Your stash of cash may implode
Depending on who owns it, you know.
#TheRollOfTheDiceGaveTheGameSpice

Dissonance - Cognitive and Otherwise

I want to contrast the day to day life I lead - too much time sitting in front of the computer, wisecracking with friends and family during the occasional Zoom call, complaining about the various aches and pains mostly which are due to arthritis, on a daily basis doing some short form writing while much less less frequently writing something long form such as this post, worrying about what we should have for dinner, tracking how the Yankees are doing now that it's baseball season, and a host of other behaviors that I would describe as normal, even if they are not completely routine.  Our downstairs furnace/AC has not been functioning and today the guy from Lanz is here to do repairs and the semi-annual maintenance.  It turns out that the thermostat had gone bad (no idea why) and was just replaced.  So the unit is functioning now.  Hurray!!  Day to day existence does provide its little victories now and then.  And it provides its little pleasures too.  Yesterday to celebrate Mother's day we went to Sun Singer for happy hour.  We had a glass of wine (better quality than the normal fare we have at home) and a margherita flatbread which was very tasty.   We sat outside for that.  If the weather remains mild, we'll be doing that more frequently.  I wear a mask when going shopping, which now seems to be the new normal, but I don't wear one at home, even when the repairman is here to visit.  Not perfectly consistent, I will admit.  But it seems normal to me.

There is a non-normal part of my day that I will describe below.  But first I want to contrast my usual home life with what seems to be our disastrous national politics.  Here I will list and give brief descriptions about what bugs me that I'm not seeing discussed much at all. 

• The decline in manufacturing, which probably goes back to the 1980s but manifest for real in 1990s, coupled with the decline in unions (remember that Reagan busted PATCO, which was the start of the whole thing), was a complete disaster for White male blue collar types.  They couldn't or wouldn't adjust to service sector employment (at lower wages than they had been earning previously).  This is the fundamental source of anger among Trump's base. 
• The second war in Iraq, the one that followed U.S. involvement in Afghanistan after 9/11, was another complete disaster.  There weren't any WMDs.  The Iraqi people didn't want Americans there.  Many vets after returning home committed suicide.  Since the military is all volunteer, one wonders how many of these people enlisted in the first place because of poor economic prospects at home.  If that was typical, the Iraq war was rubbing salt into the wound.
• People who are not healthy from an economic perspective often become unhealthy in a way where they need to see a medical doctor.  The opioid epidemic was largely concentrated in these blue collar types and, in a downward spiral, made them unemployable thereafter.  Life became hopeless for them. 
• If the regular labor market wasn't going to solve this issue, then perhaps government spending in the form of massive infrastructure investment would provide a sufficient number of decent blue collar jobs.  Further, America's infrastructure has been declining at least since Reagan, so this would be killing two birds with one stone. This piece by Felix Rohatyn and Everett Ehrlich to establish a national infrastructure bank came out prior to the 2008 election.  That never got done.  You might argue that if the Democrats had fought off the Tea Party challenge in 2010 and retained control of the House, it would have gotten done then.  Alternatively, you might argue that this should have preceded the fight for Obamacare, since the case for doing something big about infrastructure should have had cross-party appeal and there would have been a better chance for the Democrats to maintain control of the House that way.

In sum, we don't connect our present social ailments to our history in a very good way.  This has let Trump own the MAGA types by feeding them red meat - xenophobia and racism - without doing anything of note to help them economically.  We know from history that movements toward fascism are prefaced by economic dislocation of the masses.  This gives a strong reason to connect to our history.  Nonetheless, we don't seem to do it.

Let me turn to the next set of issues which can be summed up with two points:

• Democrats are too reactive.  We knew that the Supreme Court was going to overturn Roe ever since Amy Coney Barrett was appointed an Associate Justice.  Why else was there a rush to get that appointment in while Trump was still President?  How come it takes Alito's leaked draft to elicit such a strong response?  Why wasn't a well planned strong response contemplated and articulated much earlier?
• Democrats put too much faith in the system and that it will correct itself.  There is ample evidence that the system has been manipulated by the Republicans in a way that is horrible for democracy.  Why should anyone trust the system now?  And if that's the right way to consider things, why not work through outside-the-system approaches that can be effective?  

Then there is the flip side of this.  In a recent opinion piece by Jamelle Bouie called Why Republicans Are So Angry About the Supreme Court Leak, he argues that:

When McConnell led the Senate Republican caucus in a blockade of President Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court in 2016 and then killed what remained of the judicial filibuster the next year to place Neil Gorsuch in the seat instead, they diminished the legitimacy of the court. When those same Republicans looked past a credible accusation of sexual assault to confirm Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, they again diminished the legitimacy of the court. And when, with weeks left before the 2020 presidential election, Republicans ignored their own rule from four years earlier — that an election-year vacancy “should not be filled until we have a new president” — to place Amy Coney Barrett on the bench in a rushed, slapdash process, they once more diminished the legitimacy of the court.

I would add to this McConnell's blockade of Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland had a significant influence on the 2016 election as it strongly encouraged those who wanted to get rid of Roe to vote, with that having an immediate impact given the open seat on the Court.  Further, the Senate's perfunctory dismissal of the charges in the two impeachment trials let a criminal President off the hook.  The outcome of the first trial allowed Trump to nominate Amy Coney Barrett, even though she must have been well aware of his criminal acts. This followed William Barr's perfunctory dismissal of the Mueller Report. In our country's move toward fascism, there have been many steps taken.  The enablers are first McConnell, then Barr, and then other Republicans in Congress.  Their lack of spine in dealing with these dismal realities offers another reason to work outside the system to stop this descent into societal madness. 

We seem headed for Civil War.  How much of that will be violence versus information warfare of some kind or still some other form of warfare I cannot say.  But there doesn't seem to me to be a path that gets everyone back to a normally functioning society without such a civil war happening first.  I can't be the only one who thinks and feels this way.  

Now let me try to bring this back to me personally and how it impacts my day to day existence.  At home, my wife and I often do separate things.  She will watch TV - often gardening shows, or shows about house fixer uppers, some light comedy too, but then a good dose of MSNBC.  I'm sitting at my computer, which is in a different room, but when I don't use earbuds I can hear the TV.  And once in a while it sparks a rage in me.  Sometimes it's reading something online that sparks the rage. I don't do anything about it, but I do think about it.  I know from when I was working full time that anger is not a good emotion for me.  I lose my rationality when I'm angry and I get even more single-minded than I usually am.  I'm okay with getting angry when the ref makes a bad call in a basketball game I'm watching.  But that's about the only situation where I think my anger is okay.  Otherwise, I'm afraid that my anger will take me down a bad path.

I have thought for a while that high-level Democrats should model voters like me after the Walter White character in Breaking Bad.  In addition to the anger, there is substantial intelligence coupled with a demoralizing sense of impotence.  And some of this anger is directed at Democrats because they seem not to get this - they are still trusting the process implicitly.  

I hope they'll figure it out before it's too late.

Varying Points of View

The ineffectual intellectual
Advanced the proposition
That knowledge is contextual.

While the uncouth youth
Who grew up in Duluth
Went in search of absolute truth.
#ADifferenceInPerspectiveCanEvokeAnInvective

Mouthing Off

Function and Dys
Along with their sis
On treats they were nibbling
Each and every sibling.
#ThoughElatedTheyWerOrallyFixated

The Spirit of Norman Rockwell

The husbands are left to their own devices
As the wives converse about gardens and spices
In the suburban life we're getting to know
Everyone is your neighbor and taking it slow.
#TheSunIsShiningSoItIsTimeToMakeHay

 

The Winning Streak Is Over

All good things come to an end
We hope another one can extend
The Yankees hold on first place
Well positioned for the pennant race.
#ItAintOverTilItsOver

The Vicious Cycle

The overly frustrated
Are readily manipulated
By obtuse views
Supported by fake news
Then our politics becomes completely castrated.
#HistoryRepeatsButTheInternetGivesItANovelSpin

Twas Brillig

The Jabberwocky
Played knock hockey
But didn't use a stick.

He bumped into Puck
Then ran out of luck
As the board became too slick.

#WhatDoWeRememberFromEnglishClassInHighSchool

No Intents Offended

A social goof
During an innocent spoof
May inadvertently rile
The frown replaces the smile.

Then it depends
On making amends
In a way that's real
With touch and feel.

#SteppingIntoPooWhatNextShouldYouDo

Severe Storms And Changing Norms

When the lightning strikes close
And you wonder if you'll be toast
Then it's worth taking note
Of those Mother Nature hadn't smote.
#ForABriefTimeItWasVeryScaryLastNight