Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

I know my blue no matter who friends will say this is no big deal. It wasn’t illegal for Jim Clyburn to endorse Biden, and it isn’t illegal for Bill Clinton to praise him for it.
But to any Bernie Sanders supporter, it was a kick in the teeth, a taunt, a fuck you of epic proportions, a neener -neener, we screwed you good and now you’re nothing.
He thanked Clyburn for “ending the intra-family fighting in our party.”

It’s clear he’s referring to Clyburn’s (and several other prominent black South Carolina politicians) endorsing Biden directly before the South Carolina primary. And there’s a big implication there that Bill Clinton had a part in that. As did Barack Obama (who was praised in the same sentence), as we have always suspected.
But they haven’t ended the intra-family fighting in the party. If anything, Clinton has heightened the anger and revulsion Sanders’ supporters feel toward the DNC, with his sneering, mocking tone.
One of the worst things about it was this was supposed to be a eulogy for John Lewis. And Bill Clinton uses it to celebrate the coup against the one Democratic candidate who’s been supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Maybe it was actually a eulogy for the Democratic Party.

We’re at the cottage, it’s a short trip, we got here about 5, had to wait for Sam to finish work, and we’ll head home tomorrow afternoon. It’s deadly hot, but haven’t done any hard work yet. On the way up, H had suggested that maybe I’d be called on to pick red currants but as soon as we arrived I saw somebody had already picked several bowls full so the bushes were denuded. And I found a couple of ripe blackberries but for the most part they were still hard and pale green.
Have been eating too much, as is often the case here. A meat strudel one very nice old woman had made, a bowl of goulash, a couple of very sweet vanilla cream pastries, and then I was called on to pick some fruit, a thing I’d never seen before, in Czech it is rakytnik, Google tells me that is Sea Buckthorn although we are about as far from the sea as it’s possible to be on this continent. Kind of sour, kind of citric, but apparently good for making jam and full of vitamin C.
Then grilled meat, coleslaw, and a beet salad for dinner.
Then Helena and I walked up the hill to check out the sunset. Beautiful views of farms and fields all around, this region is a picture postcard of agricultural prosperity. All the cows came up to the fence to check us out.

I spend a lot of time telling people that Kanye West can’t, and shouldn’t, be taken seriously, because being a candidate involves things like applications and petitions just to be listed on the ballot, and he’s done none of that.
When Donald Trump said he would delay the elections, I informed lots of people who were truly worried by this that he can’t do that. U.S. presidential elections are the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and have been since the 18th century. It’s kind of a fixed deal.
Now, Trump says he wants to ban Tik Tok in the U.S., and I’m not so sure. It’s certainly not covered in the constitution, since it didn’t exist then. Also, I’m not really an internet expert, so I don’t know if he could legally do that or not. Other countries (and I believe China is one) have banned various segments of the internet before.
What I will say is that it will be totally ineffective, and eventually over-ridden if he does.
First, of course, there’s the numbers thing. China has well over a billion people. Their population is 4 times that of the U.S. There are also Tik Tok users in Canada, Mexico, South America, Europe, Africa and, of course, the rest of Asia. The loss of the U.S. market would not be near as devastating to Tik Tok as Trump thinks it would be.
Then, there is the ease of inter-platform communication, which is truly one of the great things about the internet. I don’t even subscribe to Tik Tok, but I frequently see things that go viral there, because someone will post them to Facebook. I’ve even seen some of them reported on on TV, social media’s slower, dumber cousin.
Trump can’t shut all that down, any more than he can stop people from talking to each other.

A bit behind on the old blogging as I came home late last night, well, late for me, that is, it was almost midnight, and I was high as hell. Had just come from a poetry reading. Then, this morning, couldn’t get signed onto the internet. Don’t know what’s up with that, Helena found a kind of back door connection so I guess that even as I sit at my keyboard and type now, the internet is reading it as if I am on my phone. I’m cool with that, and the regular connection will get fixed eventually.
The poetry reading was nice, a lot of musicians, which adds to things greatly, a new space, which is essentially an art gallery but there is a big overlap between people who like poetry and people who like art. Also, the whole front was open, like a space big enough to pull a truck in, so there were lots of people gathered in front who had a perfectly good view of the stage, and it was much cooler after the sun went down and a bit of a breeze kicked up.
I was introduced as ‘the inimitable’ Willie Watson and that’s cool, that’s a positive thing, I should be flattered by that, but I think it’s incorrect. I am pleased with my poetry, I think it’s good, and a worthy method of transferring the thoughts inside my head, but it’s imitable. In fact, it’s super imitable. I rhyme, I always use some kind of meter and very often the most standard ones, and I generally stick to words that are part of the English language. In that, I am in fact imitating the great poets of yore, from Percy Shelley to Shel Silverstein. And others will imitate me.
And that’s fine.

What if there is no intelligent life in the universe? I mean, no life more intelligent than us. What if the conditions for intelligent life to evolve are so freakish and rare – you have to have the right atmosphere, and a larger planet further from your sun than yours to shield from meteor strikes, but just one huge meteor strike to hit and wipe out the giant yet unintelligent creatures, and maybe a wide variety of climates so that beings will be forced to adapt, and so on and so forth.
On the one hand it would be kind of a bummer because I’ve always looked forward to the Star Trek future, with lots of alien species to communicate with and learn from. On the other hand, it would mean the entire universe is ours to explore.
On yet a third hand, it imposes on us a frightening responsibility. If we don’t survive as a species, it may well become as if there never were intelligent life in the universe. All history of it will be gone with our passing. Think about that.