Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

I just reread the blog I wrote last night and realized I didn’t actually write about the one thing I intended to write about, which was not the poetry reading but some cool wall art I saw on the way there.
I’d intended to walk to the reading, if the weather wasn’t too horrible, or a combination of foot and tram, which is the quickest, but I turned into the Metro station out of force of habit (and it was kind of drizzly) and only remembered my final destination as the doors were closing. No matter, many ways to get there. So, I changed at Florenc, went the one stop to Vltavska, and then caught a tram one station to Pražka Tržnice, and walked from there. A lovely walk, along the river for a ways and then there’s a bend in the road. As I approached this bend, I noticed a huge mural, at least a couple meters high, and it was four people, heads, inside frames, but I didn’t recognize any of them, and then as I saw further around the bend, there were, 5,6, probably 8 or 9 in total and I thought, well, that’s pretty cool, maybe I’ll recognize some of them closer up.
Here’s the cool part: close up, they are just splotches of paint, you have to see them from a distance, and they are clearly meant for the benefit of people driving by more than pedestrians but it was an amazing optical illusion.
I mentioned this to a couple of people at the reading and one guy knew exactly what I was talking about and knows the artist personally because artists in Prague, you know, small world.

Then today, I saw on Facebook a proposed new work by David Černy, the Czech artist who did the babies climbing Žižkov tower and the big, purple middle finger that was floating in the river for a while a few years back, and it’s going to be a pedestrian bridge between two buildings modeled after the Montparnasse Train Wreck of 1895. It’s definitely be something to take tourists to look at.

So, three cheers for Prague artists!

Just got back from one of my regular poetry readings and it was a lot of fun, largely because it was also a birthday party complete with a very chocolatey, almost fudgey birthday cake which I was very surprised to find out, after I’d tasted it and praised it effusively, was vegan.
Costumes were passed around so I read as a bear, which I felt very comfortable with, and the mask actually distorted my voice to make me sound bear-like, or so people said.
There was some good stuff, someone read a poem about wanting to be re-incarnated as a bug and that was interesting and a big crowd favorite. A couple of love poems. A couple of birthday tributes. Almost all in English which isn’t always the case but there were a couple of Slovenian girls and they read stuff in Slovenian. One girl read a poem in Turkish, and she was also playing a very strange instrument, it was a keyboard but there was a tube she was blowing into so it was sort of like a bagpipe. One guy said he didn’t have a poem, just questions, and so that led to a couple of interesting literary discussions.
But, that used up everything I’ve got written. Must come up with something new, and shiny, for the next one.

One percenter by birth Anderson Cooper just can’t seem to get the Democratic Socialism idea through his privileged little head. The first time I saw him interview Bernie Sanders was back in 2016 and Sanders corrected him on it three or four times in one interview.
And Bernie had to explain it to him again in a recent interview. Then Cooper said “You honeymooned in Russia.” Which is true, as far as it goes. Yes, Bernie and Jane were newlyweds when they went to Yaroslavl, along with 10 other people from Burlington, so it was a honeymoon, and kind of an awesome one for such a political couple.
It was part of the sister-cities program, which was started by Eisenhower and is an attempt to foster world peace and understanding. Kind of a weak and symbolic attempt, IMHO, but harmless and a small step in the right direction.
And then, in 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia abandoned communism. Does Bernie get credit for that? I’m kidding here. Bernie didn’t bring down Soviet Communism, any more than Reagan did with his speech in Berlin. It just fell down under its own weight.
But, the main point, the thing to remember, is that diplomacy with hostile countries is important. In fact, it’s the kind of diplomacy that matters most. If an American leader will only visit friendly nations, like Canada or France, they accomplish nothing.
And Anderson Cooper should take his unearned hundred million dollars to the Bahamas or someplace and stop infesting the rest of the world with his ignorance.

While the future is full of surprises, and I’m not much better at predicting it than anybody else, there are, in broad terms, three ways the upcoming presidential campaign could go after July.
In scenario 1, the scenario I like, it will be Trump against Sanders. I like our chances pretty well, but the point I want to make with tonight’s blog is that it will be a great election, an uplifting and exciting election, an election we can be proud of.
It will pit a smart candidate against a stupid candidate.
It will pit a working class candidate against a billionaire who was born into extreme wealth and has nothing but contempt for the poor.
It will pit a man with a comprehensive plan to save the planet against a global warming denier, someone who accepts the reality of science vs. one who doesn’t understand science and doesn’t give a shit.
Although the two men are only two years apart in age, it will pit a fit, vigorous candidate against a fat old man whose favorite sport is riding in a golf cart.
It will pit a decent human being against an absolute pig.

I’m sure we’ll be able to win it, but either way, we’ll feel good about the race.

If the DNC decides to screw Bernie and pick one of the other candidates, it will not be a fun campaign. If it’s Biden, we’ll have to listen to him speaking for 4 months, and he is not a good speaker. It will occasionally make headlines when he calls somebody a lying, dog-faced pony soldier, or starts talking about the hair on his legs, and it will be an embarrassing election for all involved. Many people will stay home, not wanting anything to do with it.
If it’s Warren, we’re going to hear a lot of “Pocahontas, Pocahontas” which shouldn’t be a big deal except it kind of is. It reminds everybody about how she lied about getting fired for being pregnant and lied about none of her kids going to private school, too. Not big lies. But, lies.
If it’s Pete, the one thing that Democrats haven’t discussed will become the central issue of the debate. I know, I was as surprised as anybody that a black man won the presidency, and maybe a gay man can do it, too, but not Pete Buttigieg. Gay people aren’t even into him that much, and black people hate the fuck out of him. And he has no platform.
If it’s Bloomberg, it’s a disaster. The Democrats might as well just announce that they are no longer opposed to Republicans. It becomes a non-election, a choice between two racist, sexist billionaires who don’t care about the average person. Even if Bloomberg wins, America loses.
If it’s Klobuchar, it’s the battle of the bad hair. She hasn’t really distinguished herself on the debate stage, didn’t know the name of Mexico’s president, and her voice trembles when she’s nervous. Of the candidates who are not Bernie, she’s one of the maybe two who I could be persuaded to vote for, as I’ve seen little evidence that she’s actually a monster, but she doesn’t inspire anybody, either.
Scenario 3 is the DNC decides to screw Bernie, but to draft somebody who stayed out of the primaries altogether. No matter who that is, you can be sure it won’t be somebody who will offend the oil companies, or the insurance companies, or the banks, or the military-industrial complex.

And then, from July until November, all we’ll hear is “Nobody gets exactly the candidate they want” and “a shit sandwich is better than ground up razor blades” and “lesser of two evils” and “You must like Trump!” These are all terrible arguments, they did not work for Hillary Clinton, and they will not win this year. In scenario 3, Trump wins.

I agree with all the people who say Chris Matthews should be fired for his extremely weird reaction to the Nevada Primary. I don’t necessarily think he was being deliberately anti-semitic, although that’s how it came across.
I just think it was a dumb analogy, Matthews is an old codger who is just so filled with Bernie hate that he can’t repress it, and it keeps him from thinking straight.
First of all, it was a very strained analogy. “I was just reading about World War Two,” he began, as if everything he reads isn’t a deliberate effort to find something to use in his next speech. “and (I’m paraphrasing a bit here, for the sake of simplicity) it reminds me very much of the French being overrun by the Nazis in World War Two.”
So, it’s offensive because Bernie’s father lost all of his family- all of his extended family, cousins, aunts and uncles, and so on – in the holocaust, but on the other hand he’s comparing Sanders campaign to a highly tuned, well oiled war machine.
And he’s comparing the Democratic Party to the French. Personally, I like the French. They make good bread, they make good cheese, they are interesting people and fun to be around. But, in the context of this analogy, it doesn’t make the DNC sound like the heroes of the story.
Bottom line, the extremely offensive statement should be enough to get him fired because he’s less than brilliant as a pundit, there are a million younger, better informed people who could do the job just as well, and he’s been around forever.
It’s not as if he’s a brain surgeon, or a teacher, or something that requires abilities and does some good for society. He’s a talking head on TV. Might as well just fire him. Problem solved.