Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Just got back from our next to last dance lesson and my  feet  are  sore and there’s nothing that really moves to write about  in  the politics  of  the day, maybe Kim Kardashian’s White House visit, which I don’t really see as a big  deal, lots  of  presidents have entertained celebrities who weren’t necessarily experts on government policy, the Clintons had plenty of Hollywood pals and Kennedy had Marilyn.  But, Kim Kardashian is there to talk policy and, it’s not unbelievable, because, shocking as it may sound, she’s on the  same intellectual level  as Trump.

One nice thing happened at the dance lesson.  I’ve been  in a bit of  a funk  lately as far  as the writing goes, haven’t written a good poem in a while and have started to doubt the worth of those that are out there but then, I was thinking about it while staggering around the floor, and the thing is, my poems have a value other than commercial, or how much they are read by other people.  Often, while writing, a certain line would come and it would actually be educational to me, help  me to see the world in a different light, and as soon as that thought came into my head, a little poem followed  it:

Writing rhyming poetry
for me, fulfills a basic need
because I’m trying to write the kind
of thing I know I’d like to read
and I always know that I have done
the very best I could
when I read it back again
and say “Hot damn! That’s pretty good!”

It ain’t exactly Shelley, but it happened in a moment, it cost nothing, one moment it did not  exist in the world  and then it did.  I love it when it happens like  that.

Not really.  She hasn’t appeared in public for almost three weeks, but she’s tweeted and said she’s in the White House, recovering from an  operation, which is probably true because she did just have  an  operation.  Nonetheless, 3 weeks (it’s actually, now, 19 days) is a long time for somebody who is in the  public eye as much as she is.  And, according to  the laws  of  nature, wherever there is a lack of information, rumors will flood in to fill the void.  Has she been abused? (not out of the question), has she moved back to New York?, was the operation actually a facelift?, has she been abducted by aliens?
Actually, I’m inclined to take her tweets at their word, in this case, but I’m short of a blog topic and let’s talk about Melania while we’re at it.  She  is the most popular of the Trump family, by far.  Most everybody is  willing to forgive the fact that she’s a gold-digging, social climbing slut puppy.  The left because we forgive stuff like  that, the right  because  she’s one of  their own.  And therein lies my problem  with her.  She is not an innocent victim of an evil, old man, she is not trapped in this marriage.  She could, at this point in her life, divorce him and get very wealthy in the process.  But, no, she plays the role of supporting  wife, which means her politics are probably just as vile and racist as his.  Like Eva Peron,  she has not  so much forgotten where she came from as just put it as far out of her mind as possible.
Sure, she’s a pretty woman, and I suppose was very sexy  in  her youth.  Sure, she has faced challenges in her life and become very successful.  But she’s totally on board with right wing tyranny, and that is  not O.K.

Roseanne Barr is finished, and  deservedly so.  The tweet that got her show  canceled was vile, ignorant, racist, and offensive and there’s no way she can play this off as  a joke.  With the national anthem, I  figured that was a joke  and I remember seeing her on Leno, I think it was, but some talk show, and  the host asked how she felt about President Bush’s criticism of her performance and she said “Well, I’d like to hear him sing it.”
I liked her in the beginning, her  standup stuff and  the  first Roseanne series.  It was  actually quite groundbreaking  for  the time,  a  sitcom about  a  working class  family, like, who weren’t rich or beautiful.  And, it was funny.
But, this was out  of line.  She’s done, and she’s not  coming  back.  Her  career has as  much possibility of a future as Victoria Jackson’s.

In other, sadder news Alan Bean passed away.  He was one of the few men to ever  walk  on the moon, to  ever  walk  on any natural body  in  space other than the Earth.  He was 86.  Some day soon they  will  all be gone, like the cowboys of the Wild West, like the knights  in shining  armor of medieval times, and there will  be no more.  That’s what’s  sad.

On the poetry workshop site where I  mostly lurk, because my idea of  poetry  and everybody there’s idea of  poetry  are  two  different ideas and I don’t want to get all negative on people, so I comment occasionally but try not to do  it much more often than when I post, which is only when I’ve written something, which hasn’t been for a few days now, maybe  a week, I saw something I liked today.
Not the whole  poem, I  can’t even remember what the whole poem was about and didn’t understand it at the time, just one line and I  can’t even  remember that exactly.
But, the idea was that sanity is an unnatural suppression of the mind.  The way I  see it, society needs both kinds.  We need the average people, the sane people, because that’s what gives us social cohesion.  Almost everybody agrees that an  evening out with friends, with some good food and drink,  is a positive thing, and people generally avoid talking politics or saying anything  that other people  are going to object to , or fail to understand.  Almost everybody  agrees that killing people is bad, that animals should  not be abused, and that we should have  clean air and water.  Only the insane would find arguments with  that.

Hoo boy, do I have some crazy friends on Facebook.  But, I’m digressing.  We need the normal people.  They keep our families and communities together.  We also need the crazy, or at least the eccentric, because without that element, life would get boring.  So, it’s a mix.  but I liked  the idea of sanity  as being a misshapen mind, and I’m going to try  and  work that into a poem.

The stories of American border guards taking children from their mothers and their families and detaining  them in separate facilities is true.  What’s worse is that  the government has claimed to have ‘lost’ 1,475 of those children.
“The ORR was tasked between October and December 2017 with checking on the welfare of the more than 7,000 children supposedly placed into the homes of a sponsor or guardian. Along with the nearly 1,500 missing children, an additional 28 ran away and 52 were living with someone other than their initial sponsor,” according to the article I just read.  (on HuffingtonPost)

The ORR is “Office of Refugee Relocation,” and it’s safe to say that, being eager partners in  this administration’s border control efforts, they are probably thoroughly incompetent and  would  be  doing a shitty job even  if  their intentions were good,  which I  doubt  that they are.

But, this is a step too far if there was ever a step too far.  You don’t just lose 1,475 children.  It is not the same as losing 21 trillion dollars, which also should  be prosecuted, but this  is much worse than that.  This  is child neglect.  This is a seriously horrific  case of child abuse.

If the ORR can’t locate the  children, do they have  a list of the foster homes they  were left in, and if not, why not, and if so, do those people know what happened to the children or maybe they need to be prosecuted for  child neglect?  If they have  escaped  the  facility because the  fat guard  was drunk and fell  asleep, then  you should fess up to  that.
But I think it’s much worse than that.  I don’t even want to say  what I  think it is.
Whatever it is,  it needs to be looked into  right now.