What?! Beauty before the Beast

 

Four days ago I snapped this Magnolia beauty on the way to my truck. Two days later the blossoms were almost all on the ground. The trees seem as frustrated as we do.

 

I have an attitude—so if it comes through, forgive me, but maybe you have one as well, and perhaps when we get “MAD AS HELL,” we will get something done.

Someone wrote the other day that she was sick of spiritual goodies coming her way; she had heard up the kazoo about creating her own reality —that she has it all within—hey, true statements, but becoming cliché and annoying. Like people try to tell you to wake up and be happy while Rome is burning.  The Substack writer said she just needed to get on with her own damn life.

I understand, and Thanks for sharing.

See, we need someone who shares our values and throws rocks at our enemies.

Word rocks, folks. Be reasonable.

Reasonableness—oh yeah, has that been lost too?

Yep, that’s what the controllers want—keep the populas stirred up, afraid, annoyed, disgruntled, separated, so they can get what in the F* they want. Cloud the Epstein files so we will forget about them. Start an illegal war without the approval of Congress, to get us worked up and afraid. How can that man in the White House do that? Why do we let him?

Have we lost all of our senses?

I’m frustrated and angry that we, the people, can do our little marches, eight million of us can come out, oh, the count is up to 9, the last I heard. And I know there are many more who agree with us but don’t go to marches, and others who want to march but live away from the big cities where the action is. Folks have asked, “Is there a No King March close to where I live?

Hey, I know folks who would walk as the Monks did, 2,300 miles to change some of the things they want changed in this US government, LIKE BOMBING! SHOOTING CIVILIANS, ICE IN OUR CITIES. THE PRESIDENT.

I feel frustrated that we can march--all 9 million of us, we can declare that we will not have a King run our country, and the government goes on business as usual. He’s still there.

La do da, go golfing, build a “Ball room, with a bunker beneath (oh that’s the reason it costs so much)—for National Security. We can bomb countries for National Security. We ban foreigners, even the foreign Routers for our WiFi and thus disrupt ‘we the people’s” home WiFi ’networks—for National Security. Continue to produce Roundup even though we have declared it dangerous to health, for National Security. Round up Immigrants—for National Security. Hook up AI to the military, when even the  programmers don’t think that is a good idea. not with Idiots at the controls. and some are talking about a “supercomputer” that can learn faster than we can compute—for National Security.

If we would stop being the f-*ing aggressor we wouldn’t have all this need for “National Security.”

“He’s toast,” some say, but he’s still there.”

“We must wait until the midterms,” they say. Really? Yep, I know he is frightened of them and tells his cabinet, “I Must Win,” or I will be arrested. So, folks, how can we assure a safe, sane, and accurate election?

We humans are wreaking so much havoc that the animals are drinking alcohol. They deserve a happy life. They came here to eat, drink water, make love, find shelter, raise their young, and be happy. We owe them the opportunity.

Hey, we’re animals.

What about us?

 

 

Trump’s dementia is a threat to the world-he must be removed from office! Humanity is at risk Dean Obeidallah Apr 5

On Sunday morning, Trump wrote a threat directed to the Iranian regime that read, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell--JUST WATCH!” He then bizarrely added, “Praise be to Allah.”

Allah? We’re under Allah now? I though T wanted us to be Christian. Oh well, whatever suits his fancy.

 

From Ray Bradbury:

“I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for 25 years now which reads ‘Don’t think.’ You must never think at the typewriter, you must feel, and then your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway. You collect up a lot of data, you do a lot of thinking away from your typewriter, but at the typewriter you should be living.”

 

Motive and Opportunity

I’m sitting in the car waiting for my grandson.  Moments ago, I read a post by Grant Faulkner, who in 2016 was the Executive Director at National Novel Writing Month.

“I’ve been remembering the 2016 election this week,” he wrote.

Normally, he said, November draws thousands of writers; however, after Trump’s election in 2016, writers’ stories literally collapsed.

It wasn’t just the NaNoWriMo writers. (Writers who commit to write 50,000 words for a novel in 30 days.) Many of his friends and professional writers stopped writing.

They were traumatized.

Faulkner said before that November, he didn’t believe in writer’s block, but then he saw that writing is difficult and sometimes impossible for a battered brain.

Trauma and depression can turn off the spigot of creativity.

 

“It’s easy to think that our art is trivial when it’s up against such a menacing and malevolent block of history as we’re living through, but the opposite is actually true: our art isn’t trivial; it’s what can deliver us.”

 

Faulkner said that James Baldwin (Go Tell it on the Mountain 1953, Notes of a Native Son, 1955) expressed the importance of the role of the artist better than he could:

 

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive.”

 

Howard Zinn’s quote, “An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian,” provided Faulkner with hope because we need to see that “compassion, sacrifice, courage, and kindness” are a part of every era.

 

Don’t let them destroy your connection to life and the joy of living. Appreciate the world we live in and the fantastic beauty surrounding us.

I look up from behind the steering wheel and notice that the great flock of Canadian Geese I admired before settling into this page have dwindled to about 25.

The 25 are scattered about the grass, their white breasts glowing like snow patches left after the bulk of snow has been absorbed into the ground. Some are preening, and occasionally, one—male or female, I can’t tell the difference –will spread their wings in a morning wake-up stretch, revealing dark feathers beneath.

(Like some of us, some geese are slower to wake up or are simply basking in the glory of the day before getting to work.)

The day is overcast. As am I.

As I reflect, I wonder how many of us who lived through the Second World War are alive today. Do they despair that the U.S., the land of the free, the home of the brave, has opened its doors to Tyranny?

 I don’t know.

 

Monty Python:

“Oh, king, eh? Very nice. And how’d you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers. By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society.”

--Dennis (Michael Palin)

 

I went to sleep last night more hopeful than days earlier. I wondered if somebody had thrown a monkey wrench in our electoral process.

Could it be that the numbers are off? Could more than 50% of the voting population see the danger of what just happened with the Presidential election?

Motive and Opportunity?

Do you have questions regarding the outcome of the election??

Oh, I know, Trump got the 270 electoral votes that declared him a winner. Harris conceded. It was over just like that.

The losers were standing around, going, “Huh?”

No one stormed the Capital. No hangman nooses hung from platforms. No one was clubbed to death. Harris promised a peaceful transfer of power. No one was yelling that the election had been stolen from them. No person clutched the white house carpet like a feral cat we were trying to extract from its cage.

That was quick and easy.  Sap, it was over.

But wait!  Were we really that wrong? Did we so believe in the goodness of humanity that we ignored the fact that a man running for the Presidency once kept speeches of Hitler on his bedside table? Did we forget that the President-elect once said he wanted his General to be like Hitler’s Generals?

 

See, people don’t remember WWII.

You might say I’m stupid or ignorant but look at it.

Number one: Trump faces criminal charges which, if elected, he can pardon.

Number Two: One of the wealthiest men in the world, who gave one person per week a million dollars to persuade them to register—no tampering with the election- he didn’t tell them how to vote. This person fired his workers because they went on strike. This person said the “Alpha Males” should run the country.

 “Musk, who has a history of sparring with regulators, also faces government investigations into his companies that could result in more lawsuits or even criminal prosecutions.”—Bloomberg News

“Bloomberg has identified more than half a dozen ongoing legal fights in which Musk is a defendant or a plaintiff, as well as about a dozen others involving his companies.”

Before the election, Elon Musk said, “If Trump doesn’t win, I’m F*****.”

After the election, he made 60 million dollars.

(“Tesla headed for a $2 trillion valuation after Musk’s ‘big bet’ on a Trump win.” Analysts say.") –story by Breck Dumas.

 

Follow the money, say the lawyers.

Motive and Opportunity? ask the courts.

Indeed, we have motive. Do we have opportunity?

I don’t know.

“Elon Musk said his satellite internet venture Starlink now has more than 1,500 active satellites in orbit above Earth.” –story by Kellen Beck

Could any of those satellites interfere with the ballots and their outcome?

Does anyone know?

Does anyone else smell what I smell?

Hey, there are good rats too, my kids had one.