You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
Reprise
The amount of wildlife in our yard continually impresses me,
especially compared to Oakdale Avenue or Woodbine.
The abundance of squirrels, of course, and possible rats
but also skunks, opossums, the groundhog can be added in
plus snakes and insects.
We must be doing something right, or just be in the right location.
A first: amid a throng of blue jays chasing a crow, a mockingbird:
was its nest raided or threatened?
~*~
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So much yellow, this time of summer! Sunflowers, finches, goldenrod, corn drenched in butter. Banks of black-eyed susans, too.
~*~
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Would they live by the Golden Rule? Could they live on the minimum wage, much less raise a family? Will they even donate as much to charities serving the poor as they give to political campaigns? Especially considering how the middle-class has been impoverished?
Let me confess, I hadn’t intended to blog about the political conventions, but as events unfolded, I couldn’t resist.
But I am intrigued by the unexpected counterpoint my earlier scheduled postings are providing. There’s more to life, after all, than politics, though they can make daily affairs easier or more cumbersome. So here we are, bouncing between the experiences of camping in the high Cascades or walking around town or tending the garden and the manipulated circus that’s become the new Mistake on the Lake. Maybe the real wilderness adds an essential ballast or balance or at least a breath of fresh air.
I suspect this wild ride’s going to continue quite a while. Let’s try to keep our feet on the ground as we go. And don’t forget to smell the roses or coffee. Keep our priorities straight. Maybe even with a sense of humor.
When I see this …
… I think of this.
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As the voice across the room says of Donald Trump’s 75-minute nomination acceptance speech, the longest in American history: His is not the America I know.
Maybe that’s how it looks to someone whose billions came from his parents and casinos, but to real working Americans?
Ours is not a place overrun with fear and loathing. We’re not rich in worldly terms, barely middle-class, in fact, but we have good friends, neighbors, an adequate income, a comfortable house, health care, decent folks as our police and firefighters; we can talk to our elected officials, the downtown has rebounded into a charming district, we even feel safe in our frequent visits to Boston.
Not that things are perfect. We are appalled by the police shootings of innocent American black citizens, as well as the shooting of police officers themselves, but that’s a consequence of the current interpretation of the Second Amendment, nothing we can blame on the Democrats. And we are appalled by the redistribution of wealth from the middle-class to the richest one percent of the population, but that, too, points to Republican decisions. And that’s before we get to climate change, which the Republicans won’t even admit is happening, much less that its causes can be mitigated. In other words, those who won’t even admit they created the problem aren’t those I’d trust to correct it. Yes, things could be better — much better — but we know there have always been problems.
Trump-Pence keep portraying as America as broken, but from everything I’ve seen, the country’s in much better shape than it was when the Bush-Cheney squad left the White House. And, let’s be clear, for the past eight years Republicans have done everything they can to sabotage that economic and societal turnaround. In fact, for a list of the biggest troubles and their solutions, you need to listen to Bernie Sanders rather than billionaire Trump. When it comes to fixing anything — other than in an underhanded fashion — Trump remains clueless.
If I take my car in for service, I want a mechanic who can diagnose the condition correctly before I’ll allow him to touch anything more. I don’t want him messing with the brakes if the problem’s really the latch to the trunk. I don’t want to be paying to rip good parts away or to do anything that makes the situation worse. You know what to call folks like that.
Bottom line? The Trump-Pence promises are empty, based on largely campaign-manufactured problems.
By the way, demonizing three-quarters of the population is no way to “make America one again” unless, of course, they unite in response — then you might say Trump-Pence has made the majority one again. Just not the way or the agenda Trump-Pence envisioned.
Last night will remain a dark moment in American history. But we’re praying for Light.
Sitting down at the edge of the indoor swimming pool the other day, I noticed the blue-and-white banners hanging above the lap lanes were reflected upside down on the water. Since I was the first swimmer to arrive, the surface was relatively calm, swayed only by the slow, repeated ripples my legs produced.
At first the upside-down banner images reminded me of a string of shimmering pine trees reaching more and more for the sky. Pines, of course, are also Christmas trees, so while my mind was drifting off somewhere along the holiday theme the images began squeezing, so that a blob of some kind began floating upward from each of the trees, which were shrinking in response. Almost melting. Or maybe dancing.
I’d definitely fallen into a mesmerizing time warp and hoped it wouldn’t be contagious, should anyone else show up. This was, quite simply, trippy. Very trippy.
Considering that era, I had to admit this was so much better than the lava lamps my recently retired eye doctor had in his exam room. He’s the one who’s beheld almost all of the world’s surviving Vermeer paintings in person – some of them in private collections, at that. So that, too, was stirred up. Hope he’s delighting in his freedom.
Well, it was over in a flash. Or should I say splash? Had to get my laps in and didn’t want the lifeguard coming over to ask if I was OK. How on earth could I answer that one?
“Do you see what I see?”
But that would revive those Christmas trees, and who knows where that would lead? I just might have to explain the whole hippie era to her, and we wouldn’t have that much time or spacey whatever.
Simply wondering. Does anyone remember:
More specifically, just what do you remember? Anything about their agenda? Or their record? Or has it come down to hair style and bluster?
Miss any of them?
Simply wondering. Just for perspective.
We knew it was coming, but it still comes as a shock. As one conservative tweeted last night, the Republican Party has lost its mind. Or another, more bluntly, “voted to die.” Some said the GOP has even endorsed Putin or at least invited him to speak. And those were the ones who were seeing more or less clearly. Compare that to, say, Chris Christie, who’s still lusting after some crumbs from the table. Is it purely pathetic or worse, tragic? Time will tell.
This is nothing like the party I grew up in, where reason and civility were honored and respected. At least on the surface, in our small part of the world, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was in command. But now?
Donald Trump has had pretty much of a free ride up to this point, but now he’ll finally have to start facing the facts, which aren’t adding up to his boasts. Just how much is he really worth? How bad has his business leadership been? Why is he afraid to release his income-tax statements — or, for that matter, how soon before the public demands to see his emails, too? As for his claims to the Art of the Deal? His co-author’s outing him as a phony.
As I’ve previously explained, the experience of living in New Hampshire, with its test-market role in the presidential campaign season, instills an alertness for the unexpected trip-up that fatally rips through a candidate’s mask. Trump evaded that possibility by largely refusing to engage in the face-to-face encounters with everyday voters here. His not-too-frequent events were largely stage-managed shows, rather than the two-way conversations of Granite State tradition. He never exposed himself to anyone to any significant degree.
His big trip-up — the one that somehow unpredictably takes hold or, as we say in the news business, “has legs” — may be emerging from his staff’s attempt to paint him as a compassionate and caring person. The notion of currying sympathy by having his (third) wife come out from her wall of privacy to say something that would soften his image might have worked. Who knows, maybe the thick accent would have been seen as charming and counter his stream of blasts at immigrants and their American-born children. Or maybe it would harden the perception of hypocrisy. That part was a risk, and it’s hard to tell how it functioned. Instead, the discovery of the lines brazenly stolen from Michelle Obama’s 2008 address in what Melania insisted was a speech she wrote herself now casts questions on all of the positive attributes she tried in invoke. After the cruelty of Trump’s attacks on Ted Cruz’ wife and family, few are likely to show mercy on Trump’s, no matter how much privacy she expects. Remember, this Republican crowd hates President Obama and the First Lady, yet Mrs. Trump turned to them as models to emulate. You can’t have it both ways. Let’s be honest, Michelle Obama is a paragon of intelligence, decency, and tasteful style, hardly what’s come out after Melania’s speech on the opening night in Cleveland as it points to organizational dysfunction in her husband’s campaign staff — his blaming Hillary Clinton’s camp for uncovering the plagiarism rather than his own failures is all too telling in its own way. You’re letting Melania go prime-time without the standard safeguards? From there it’s a short leap to falsehoods about her own accomplishments, from the failure to complete college, as she’s claimed, to the success of her modeling career before Donald came along. Oh, how long before the flood of questions of whether she’s fit to be First Lady, especially in comparison with Hillary’s success there.
It will be fascinating, maybe even painful, to watch Melania’s role in the coming months. Her absence from his side will be noted, as will her silence when she’s in public in his presence. And then if she opens her mouth?
This will not be pretty. But then neither is the nomination.
Or maybe it’s just a nest?
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