Life Lessons

On Friday I learned that falling backwards onto a walking stick cactus is really much more painful than you'd think.

On Saturday I learned that attending an outdoor music event during a hailstorm is really much more painful than you'd think. 

Today I learned there is such a thing as "light brie", which is much more painful as well as much more confounding than you'd think. 

Can't We Do Anything New Anymore?

 Can't we do anything new?

Hollywood insists on sequels to and "reboots" of old films.

Instead of a permanent residence, NASA is trying to get back to the Moon.

Mitch McConnell is still a vile little monster with a hammerlock on the Senate for the second consecutive Democratic administration.

Publishers encourage serial novels, just as Charles Dickens did in 19th century Britain.

Even Trump's "America First" is a re-visitation of some frankly racist movements in the 20th century.

And now Trump wants to resuscitate Newt Gingrich.

... former President Donald Trump has begun crafting a policy agenda outlining a MAGA doctrine for the party. His template is the 1994 "Contract with America," a legislative agenda released ahead of the midterm elections in the middle of President Bill Clinton’s first term. And, as a cherry on top, he’s teaming up with its main architect — Gingrich — to do it.

Living in a decaying civilization isn't so much horrific or terrifying as it is stultifyingly repetitious. 

 

 

Sometimes When I Think I Don't Know What to Think

 Over the weekend I had a pair of realizations that feel like they're maybe profound, but damned if I can see why.

First, with the passing of my mother two years ago, there is no one left on the planet who has known me from birth. 

Second, I am now older than my dad was in my clearest memories of him. 

See? there's got to be something important here, right? 

Lauren Boebert Stupidity Watch

 It's not possible the profound poverty of personal knowledge. 

Retirement, Day 3

This has been the longest Saturday in the recorded history of Saturdays.  😄

I Haven't Flown in So Long

In the 14 months since my last commercial airline flight, the world disappeared. Sars-cov-2 made troglodytes of us all. We became experts at binge-watching dysfunctional animal owners and figuring out which food delivery service our favorite restaurants use. I learned to recognize new staff members by their eye makeup: I'm not sure I'd recognize them without masks.

So when the pandemic began its painfully slow decline and travel began to become safer for an aging man with chronic lung disease the idea of travel began to take up more of my attention. This coincided neatly with an invitation to fly to Minnesota to attend my great grandaughter's dance recital. 

Now, in the Before Times I was a frequent flyer. I routinely qualified for TSA Pre Check. But without a recent history of flights that wasn't likely to be a available. I was resigned to the usual drudgery of opaque ticket kiosk interfaces, slightly grim TSA officers scrutinizing my ID, the invasive electromagnetism of luggage imaging and body scanners, the truly awful airport coffee, the worse Bloody Marys.

So I was unprepared for the new reality. Evidently the year+ of minimal business gave the airline industry time to refine their processes.The check in kiosk offered a clean, simple interface. The TSA agent smiled as she compared my briefly unmasked face to my ID behind her Plexiglas shields, the scanner operators were cracking jokes about SHOE BOMBERS, for crying out loud, and the airport Bloody Mary, reliably overpriced, was actually pretty decent. A far less Soviet vibe to the whole affair.

Still, the airports seemed weirdly empty, even for a Thursday morning. I've never been able to hear the echo of my own footsteps in an airport before. The loudest sounds came from immigrant housekeeping staff holding animated phone calls via Bluetooth as they sanitized departure lounge furniture.

It was a beautiful day to fly. It felt like my inner Cave Dweller was emerging from the dim recesses into the dawn. It felt, if I remember the sensation rightly, like optimism.

A Poem I Like

 

It’s Important I Remember that the Moral Arc of the Universe Bends—

Cortney Lamar Charleston

but it doesn’t break, and neither breaks toward justice nor away from it. It simply bends, as the bow does before propelling the arrow where it may, agnostic to everything but flight. I don’t mean to make morality a weapon in this way, but it already is one and has been for some time. The shackles, after all, were explained as saving us from ourselves, our naked savagery, though it was their whip that licked us and left a kind of tactile text on our bodies. The Bible will have a man beating on someone as easily as it will have another taking one, turning the other cheek, civilly disobedient even when the bombs blow up in their church, not to say saying no to violence isn’t commendable, just to say a strong case can be made for cracking a skull or two like an everyday egg in hopes whatever golden light resides inside shines through, throughs the crimson tide for the rest of time so the tide will, mercifully, recede.

Copyright © 2021 by Cortney Lamar Charleston. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 3, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

This Week in Organized Crime

 It looks like someone ought to be keeping track:

• Trump apologist and Big Lie enabler Sidney Powell is facing both a $1.3 billion defamation suit from voting machine vendor Dominion Systems and an effort by the state of Michigan to sanction her over her Big Lie activities in that state, plus $12,000 in attorney fees. In the Dominion suit, her attorneys are - seriously - arguing that  

  “no reasonable person” would believe that her false claims and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election were “truly statements of fact.”

   The Michigan Attorney General has asked the court's permission to include those remarks as evidence in a suit asking Powell and others to be sanctioned. 

  “As lawyers, fidelity to the law is paramount.  These individuals worked to further conspiracy theories in an effort to erode public trust in government and dismantle our systems of democracy. Their actions are inexcusable.”  

•  Deep State believer and Orange Acolyte Victoria Toensing had her house raided by the FBI, evidently as part of the same investigation the feds are conducting into Rudy Giuliani's business dealings in Ukraine. They got her phone.

• Donald Trump, Jr. has his own problems stemming from an investigation into the Trump inaugural celebrations that directed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Trump Hotel, which apparently tripled its room rates for the events. Mother Jones is reporting sworn statements by Junior are contradicted in numerous emails, planning documents and perhaps even by testimony his sister Ivanka gave in connection to the same investigation

• And Rudy Giuliani's troubles persist with that FBI raid that snagged his electronics and offered his son Andrew the opportunity to show us all why he's been kept away from media all this time. 

  "When federal agents raided my father’s home at dawn yesterday morning, the Biden Justice Department sent a clear message to America: If it can happen to the former mayor who led New York City through 9/11, it can happen to you, too."

Another Last Time

 In today's chapter of The Last Time I'll Do This Before I Retire ...

Tomorrow, May 3, 2021, is the last Monday of my working life.

Pulled the Trigger...

Waiting for the bullet to leave the barrel. I submitted my resignation yesterday. Just two weeks before I retire. 

Still waiting to see how I feel about that.