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The Alchemy poetry reading for June was not bad.  It was in a new place, which was a sparse, second story space, reminiscent of a cleared out attic or  abandoned warehouse.  Interesting, and very Prague.  There are interior courtyard spaces everywhere you go, completely unnoticeable from the street, and that’s what this was.  Right in the heart of Prague 1, less than 60 seconds by foot from Powder Gate, a little passage I’ve passed by a million times and never even suspected was there, and there are these buildings all around it, mostly empty.

Apparently, it’s owned by the city of Prague, but they’ve turned it over to Charles University, which is going to be using it for various artistic functions, like ours.

There were only about a dozen people there, maybe 15 at peak, but 5 read, in addition to the feature, and it was fine.  The feature was a British lady, with some nice stuff, she talked about a spooky, old cottage deep in the English countryside, and expats in Hong Kong, and a cheese room in a posh restaurant.  She seemed to have sort of a theme of ‘rooms’ going on.  I liked her, better than I like most non-rhyming poets.

The announcements section added one more poetry reading to my upcoming events list.  This Thursday is a magazine launch and now there’s a poetry reading at the Tchaiovna, the Spit it Out event, so I’ll have to  get something written for that.

It’s kind of encouraging that so much is going on, but there is a flaw.  There are several different English language poetry groups going on in Prague, and they don’t all attract the same people, but for any of them, any number of spectators over 30  or so would be considered a raging success.

I wish  we could bring them all together.  Once, just once,, I’d like to be able to read something in front of hundreds of people.

It seems like just yesterday it was Friday.  Well, it was just the day before yesterday, but what I  mean to say  is that the weekend has  flown by and no significant goals were accomplished, which is about par for the course.

I’ve got a poetry reading on for tomorrow, and I’ve got slim pickings.  One short political poem which isn’t that good, one that’s sort of half  formed and I hope I’m not forcing it, and kind of a half-assed idea  and a couple of stanzas on one more.  Ah, well, I am doomed to being one of those people who alternates rapidly between procrastination and cramming.  It’s a stressful way to work, but it’s the M.O. I know.

Finally managed to drag the family out to the Agricultural Museum, to get our money’s worth out of the free family pass I  got a few weeks back.  It was a nice, morning outing.  We stopped for breakfast at Baguetteria, and it was actually  not a bad deal at all.  Had a nice ham and egg sandwich for 59kc.  We sat outdoors, it was after a rain so the air was nice and clear, but the seats and tables were dray, and we watched the people going by.

The museum is misnamed, it should be the Fish and Wildlife museum.  It wasn’t bad.  They had a couple of old tractors out front, and some goats and chickents, but inside it was mostly fish.  I think a couple of sections were closed for renovation.

Then we took Sam to the bus, he’s headed off on a school trip  to England for a week.

When ex-Bill Clinton met with then Attorney General Loretta Lynch, privately, on her government jet, on a runway at Phoenix airport, last June, both Bill and Loretta brushed away any charges of impropriety, (because as the  spouse of someone who is under investigation, the Attorney General shouldn’t have  been talking with him at all) by saying “Eh, we just talked about golf  and grandchildren, you know, regular folks stuff” and most people bought it.  At least, most people in a situation to do anything about it.

Now, an orthodontist in Florida who likes going up against the government is trying to force the NSA to release a transcript of that meeting.  He was previously obsessed  with Benghazi, so he’s more likely  coming from the right than the left but, what the heck, release all the information.  Information is good.

The NSA is saying “No way.  This is a matter of national security.”

I’ve got a couple of questions.  First, how was there a transcript?  Whether they discussed golf and the grandkids, as they said, or how to get the FBI off Hillary’s back, as I suspect, or matters of national security, which shouldn’t really be a factor since it isn’t an issue in either one of their jurisdictions, there was no reason to tape it.  That sort of defeats the purpose of meeting privately.  Or all  all government aircraft bugged?  How about congressional offices?  That would be kind of awesome, actually, except that if the NSA is gathering dirt on everybody  in congress, they have so far totally failed to use it.

I’m mostly just asking on that one.  It seems weird to me.

The big question, though, is if it’s a matter of National Security, then Clinton and Lynch both lied.

Also, we should have a permanent review board for declassifying classified information.  Taken from a pool of average Americans, like a jury.

You never know what will set people off.  It wasn’t the selling of hundreds of millions of weapons to what is conceivably the least Democratic country on Earth, with the possible exception of North Korea.  It was the orb.  And then the whole covfefe thing.

It’s easy to get caught up in triviality.  I do it myself.

That’s why I am pleasantly surprised at the public reaction to  Trump’s unilateral, ill considered, and possibly not within his legal authority decision to pull out of the Paris Accords.  I’m pleased that people, who are, as I just said, prone to be distracted  by things that don’t matter, are suddenly jolted into action over  a serious issue.  I’m also pleased that that issue is the environment.

With all  the talk of  politics, and money, the environment is sometimes abandoned in the woods, and nobody talks about it for months at  a time.  Yet, it’s the most important issue facing mankind.  If we destroy the environment, everybody dies.
So, lots of mayors, and Jerry Brown in California, and ex-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, are all  setting him straight.

So in response to Trump being an  asshole on the environment,  people are fighting back, and forming alliances.  Maybe we needed this.

Covfefe is nonsense but his supporters don’t care.  He’s just like them.  Occasionally they type something that’s absolute nonsense and makes no sense and they say, haha, got you on that one, made ya look ya dirty crook and the fact of the matter is  they have  no idea what they were saying because when you make a goof like that it’s generally because you’re a bit out of it and didn’t know what you were typing anyway.

I imagine he meant coverage.  What confuses me is that even after translating that word into humanese, the sentence still makes no sense.  Despite negative press coverage what?  It’s as if he started to make some coherent point, like ‘Despite negative press coverage, my moron base still loves me” or “Despite negative press coverage, I really enjoyed riding in a golf court while everybody else walked” or “Despite negative press coverage I didn’t really shove the president of Montenegro all that hard,” or “Despite negative press coverage, the Pope really loved me” or “Despite negative press coverage, Melania holds my hand all  the time, it was really just those two  incidents,” or “Despite negative press  coverage, I didn’t really flip anybody off, I  was  just scratching the side of my face, sort of, with my middle finger.”

But no, he just kind of trailed off after writing covfefe.   Maybe he was tired and sleep-posting.  I’ve done that, sort of.  Maybe it was drugs.  Maybe alcohol.  Maybe he got distracted.  Maybe it’s the Alzheimer’s.  I don’t know.

The other thing is, though, he completely ignored that squiggly red line which not only tells you that you’ve written the word wrong, it lets you know that the way you spelled it doesn’t bear any resemblance to any other known English word.

But, Trump apparently didn’t pick up on that.  Because he’s a moron.