History take it or leave it

“Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Sunday, Bloody Sunday, Sunday, Bloody Sunday (alright)

And the battle's just begun
There's many lost, but tell me who has won
The trench is dug within our hearts
And mothers, children, brothers, sisters torn apart” (Sunday Bloody Sunday/Bono-The Edge)

On March 7, 1965, when then-25-year-old activist John Lewis led over 600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, and faced brutal attacks by oncoming state troopers, footage of the violence collectively shocked the nation and galvanized the fight against racial injustice.

"Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio."

"Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago."

"What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?"(Ohio/Crosby-Stills and Nash)

On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of Kent State University demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine Kent State students. The impact of the shootings was dramatic. The event triggered a nationwide student strike that forced hundreds of colleges and universities to close.

“There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind” (For What It’s Worth/Stephen Stills)

On July 13, Trump boasted that his agencies curbed an uprising in Portland that local cops couldn't control. "We've done a great job in Portland," Trump said. "Portland was totally out of control. We very much quelled it, and if it starts again, we'll quell it again very easily. It's not hard to do if you know what you're doing." "They are sharply escalating the situation," Mayor Ted Wheeler told CNN on Sunday. There have been nightly protests against police brutality in the city since the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in Minnesota in May. "Their presence here is actually leading to more violence and more vandalism. "They're not wanted here. We haven't asked them here. In fact, we want them to leave," he said.

"They're not wanted here. We haven't asked them here. In fact, we want them to leave," he said.

"Fools, " said I, "You do not know
Silence, like a cancer, grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells, of silence.” (Sounds of Silence/Paul Simon

And the longer we do not RESIST/SHOUT/SCREAM/DEMAND/DEFY, this nation's Democracy dies. There is history to learn from or history to ignore. Do we remain the FOOLS or the FREEDOM FIGHTERS?

no more

We are to accept, unidentified men in uniforms, as a form of the Justice League of Trump in Portland, to run roughshod, with lots of unidentified authority to grab, kidnap and arrest protestors at will…we are now told to expect the same bull shit by Trump, as he selects certain Democrat-run cities, he calls too liberal and run too stupidly. The nondescript name is Federal Agents, but we know not which agency and from which Federal Department they originate. We watch as both he Mayor of Portland, and the Governor of Oregon demand these Trump version of Secret Police become this country’s Dictators “Brown Shirts,” and exploitation of a paranoid despot’s latest move to completely forego the Constitutional rights of Americans. And nothing is done or said or screamed about by Congress!

In New Jersey, the husband, and son of Judge Esther Salas, were shot at her home in Brunswick New Jersey, by someone posing as a Fed Ex agent. Judge Salas has been on the U.S. Court for New Jersey for nine years, appointed by President Obama, presiding over high profile cases, and my oh my what coincidence,  she was assigned to a lawsuit against Deutsche Bank. This is the bank making questionable transactions for “high risk” customers including Jeffry Epstein, and his sex-trafficking cronies. This is also the bank that had refused to turn over documents, also questions about the Trump/Kushner/Putin accounts. We cannot, once again act surprised at a sudden murder at a Judge's house who had been given the responsibility of handling a legal matter involving the underbelly of Trump. Wham bam out the blue after nine years on the bench, a hit is put up for this judge's family. One more attempt, I ask in a rhetorical manner, to intimidate an American who Trump fears!

And now I find myself unaware that the so-called new normal has begun to infect, my brain. Asked about the possibility of losing, however, Trump noted that he does not handle losing well, and may not handle it well if it happens in November.

“I’m not a good loser. I don’t like to lose,” he said. “I don’t lose too often. I don’t like to lose.” When asked if he is gracious, Trump said, "You don’t know until you see. It depends.” He then claimed that mail-in voting, which Democrats have pushed as a response to the coronavirus pandemic, “is going to rig the election.” Asked if this means that he will not accept the election results, Trump said, “No. I have to see.” Asked again if he would accept the results, Trump said, “No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t last time either.” (FOX News) What the fuck kind of question is that. What other President had ever been asked if he would accept the results.

And then it hit me. All three examples in this BLOG prove a point, I had been trying to make, but somehow could not be EXACT in starting. We permit TRUMP to say and do and behave as WISHES. We let him suddenly change the Constitution to suit HIS whims. Secret Police, a murder of a Judges Family assigned to perform due diligence regarding Deutsche Bank, and we ask a sitting President if he will be okay with a democratically performed election? Now, is the time for that Nancy Reagan solution, JUST SAY NO, and may I add JUST SAY, FUCKING NO MORE!....all of us, the US who actually desire freedom and justice for all!

Is this me

I was a senior in high school. Back in the day we had something called Senior Class Plays, a wondrous occasion beginning in January and ending in May, mine directed by a teacher I consider my mentor Mrs. Musoff and starring the kids in the Senior Class, who actually had talent, or in some cases, the guys who were hot for the girls who wanted to be in a play. (You always needed lots of boys for chorus way back then.) It was Peter Pan, and Peter written as a young lad (transgendered anyone) had always been cast as a girl. Our production, no exception, provided the lead role to a very talented female classmate, who was also an inspiration to me as someone who dreamed and followed through, successfully! The role of Wendy was handled by another student who could sing, dance, and act, and proved talent is real, and being talented went on to seek the lights of Broadway! (I will keep their identities as anonymous out of respect for their privacy.) But I also had a friend, named Daniel, who could provide just one note, and a few other flat or on key play exactly what you were humming or trying to vocalize, and his pitch-perfect piano playing was a marvel. Dreams were big back in 1967, and plans made to blossom, change, recharge, and be re-imagined. Friendships made during rehearsals on a stage, with the all the roar of the crowd and the smell of the greasepaint, were a valuable currency, in what most of us never realized would be but a fleeting flying high instant situated on the second hand of the clock that tick tocked us into our future.  I was cast as one of the Lost Boys and actually was the choreographer, Daniel was the musical director, and the girl playing Peter, a STAR. The three of us became close, and as seniors, all verbalized our soon to be adult plans to one another. (Secrets that are safe to share, because in all honesty, who knew what life could or would be like AFTER HIGH SCHOOL!)

Daniel and I had a plan, we would write a musical take it to Broadway, and our classmate playing Peter would star in the title role. Daniel and I actually wrote our first song titled “Is This Me.” Music by Daniel and lyrics by me. And little did I realize what most writers, I hadn’t assumed already understood, was the best we wrote was to write about exactly who you are. Daniel and I wrote the song, our leading lady sang it, and we knew we had a place on 42^nd Street! That was then, Peter Pan was a hit, graduation suddenly arose out of nowhere, and life, as presumed, moved along as might a whirlwind, and scattered all three of us, with it, our separate ways. “Is This Me,” was sung twice, and never again, Daniel has since passed away, and our co-ed, now, a woman of a certain age is still, as creative and vibrant as ever. Life was as it should have been, THEN, filled with promise and passion, purpose, and lots of perhaps. It is not necessarily what we accomplished, BUT THAT we wanted to BE accomplished. It is now 2020, I am 70, and those days of once upon, float and flitter by, and I count the magic potions taken and the journeys begun, ended, detoured, and tried. And as I sit and watch or listen or read the news of today, I have to thank, GOODNESS  (who or whatever that is) that I had the chance to take chances.

All of this reminiscence has been swelling up inside of me, due to the indecisions and delirium of this modern day. Like so many other Americans, I am feeling an onslaught of a tidal wave so enormous, that to run would seem futile, but to stand still even worse fate. I am not certain how much more we as humans can endure, whilst all around us is madness and chaos, which CAN WILLFULLY be tamed, but instead is permitted to contaminate our psyche. It was 1967, Peter Pan, a story about a boy who had no desire to grow up, best friends once in play at play, pretending we would grow up providing, the world with something new. I wrote a song, it was sung, I wonder if what the Seniors of 2020, and those of 2021 have to dream about or even sing about. “Is this me, is this me, is this feeling I’m feeling, real now, who have I been pretending to be, till now, tell me, I want to know, oh I want to know…” I want the past never to die in the hands of a future so demeaning full of dread and doom, dystopian,  dysfunctional, delusional, and depressive! I do want to find NEVERLAND, again!

really tired of

Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African American emergency medical technician, was fatally shot by Louisville Metro Police Department officers on March 13, 2020. Three plainclothes LMPD officers executing a no-knock search warrant entered her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky. We NOW discover, that MS Taylor was lying on the floor alive for 5 minutes and no police officer offered her any aid. (I don’t hate the police, I hate the murderers who work for the police force, and the politicians who cover up their murderous maleficence. I hate the fact that the police tried to hide this action as if it did not matter. I want justice as if Breonna Taylor were my sister, mother or daughter or best friend)

The Trump administration has taken control of COVID-19 data in the United States, leaving public health experts gravely concerned about whether anyone outside the administration will be able to access the vital information moving forward. Such data is critical for health systems to plan for necessary resources and coordinate efforts, particularly during a pandemic. (I don’t want to play dumb and eventually play dead. I want the CDC to ignore Trump, he is not a King, and we do have various branches of government, and whether or not Trump prefers “checks and balances,” as a citizen I demand the CDC ignore Trump. A man plans a murder, and you know about it, and you remain silent because he tells you he your boss…fuck him and save the world, not your own ass…Trump is always saving his own ass. I am tired of Trump saving his own ass at the expense of my life and the lives of my family and friends!)

Vice President Mike Pence called his Democratic opponents socialists and warned that presumptive nominee Joe Biden was a "Trojan horse for a radical agenda" in a speech Friday at Wisconsin's Ripon College. (I am so tired of Mr. Pence ass licking and ass lying his entire tenure as the dangling participle of a run-on sentence which is Trump. I am tired of this whole Socialism thing being worse than Trump’s being led by an ex-KGB agent, desiring for total authoritarianism and nationalism. Nepotism, theocracy, dictatorship, and Russian Assets governing by divide, are THE Trojan Horse, for Trump who is beholden to Putin and God only knows however many criminal players in the world. I am tired that we do not have immediate government intervention in payroll assistance/housing assistance/unemployment assistance and housing assistance during a time when SOCIALISM might be the one good thing to help balance the evil which is both at the same time the CORONOAVIRUS and the Trump Administration. 

And I AM SO FUCKING TIRED of the S-I-L-E-N-C-E from the Republican leadership regarding the criminal and immoral acts Trump and his band of Flying Monkeys have performed in the broad daylight against the average American. And I am tired of the MEDIA for not staking out each and every perv, who has helped commit these crimes against humanity, but instead report as if these are normal times. AND FINALLY, I HAVE GOTTEN SO TIRED, as so many of us, knowing we need to see being done, and having just the opposite happening!

no rose is a rose

“A rose is a rose is a rose…”/Gertrude Stein. Except when that rose is in a garden, and that garden is on the side of a White House and standing at a podium is a thorn named Trump. All around us is chaos, confusion, calamity, and what we hear is that in four years we will have windowless offices, and cold offices in the summer and hot offices in the winter, and that monuments will no longer prevail as the once beautiful Confederacy had existed… All of this as the citizens of the US, paid taxes for an illegal Campaign Rally, by a mad man going crazier and more dangerous let alone delusional day-by-day- by day! All of this and at the same time in the REAL WORLD…

As South Florida grapples with being described as the epicenter of the new COVID-19 pandemic it’s also among the worst in the nation when it comes to its residents experiencing food insecurity and scarcity, according to the Census Data Bureau Over 14 percent of South Florida residents — about 1 in 7 households — reported sometimes, or often, not having enough to eat in the last seven days. Last week it ranked first in food insecurity; this week it’s second only to the Houston metro area. Despite the governor’s insistence that Mississippians now need to wear masks and take social distancing seriously, his new stance appears to have come very late. Hospitals across the state had already said they were overwhelmed. Five of the state’s largest hospitals reported last week that they had run out of ICU beds and four others reported having fewer than 5 percent of their ICU beds available. Aggravating the situation further is the fact that Mississippi is one of the states with the fewest health care resources in the country and it doesn’t have enough medical workers to contend with the huge influx of patients, which includes coronavirus cases and people who put off their elective procedures during the shutdown.

That rose is a rose in that garden grew some weeds as Trump in his no longer segregationist sermon added, "The Democrats in D.C. have been and want to at a much higher level abolish our beautiful and successful suburbs by placing far-left Washington bureaucrats in charge of local zoning decisions," And in the REAL WORLD!

The Russians are at it again, this time trying to hack the industries and manufactures, scientists and medical experts who are working on a vaccine for CORONOAVIRUS, the people from the same country whose leader has paid the Taliban a bounty to murder Americans, and what has Trump to pronounce in his ROSE GARDEN, nothing at all as a US reaction to once again being attacked by Vlad the Dad Putin! Oh yeah, just in case the Trumpster’s are still pretending this is just a FLU, which will magically disappear, and only on that affects that New York East Coast elite, 3.53 Million cases, 138 Thousand deaths, and even in the heartland (lots of people are heartless there, and in the Deep South (where they assume the Civil War did not bode well for the Union Forces), death, doom, and Trump's delusional denial has found its footing!

GOYA

Goya Foods, Inc. is an American producer of a brand of foods sold in the United States and many Hispanic countries. It has facilities in different parts of the United States, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Spain. Robert Unanue is the CEO. Robert recently decided that Donald Trump was a cool kind of Racist, the kind of guy who may not permit Robert Unanue to play golf at Trump's exclusive Golf Resorts but would certainly let him become a gardener and perhaps Roberts wife a housekeeper. Why, Trump, according to Unanue might even be the kind of guy who would forgo the usual “PAPER’S PLEASE, and hire him, just because kissing Donald’s ass is a way to forget any Red Tape or Bureaucratic Bull Shit. Oh yeah, and even a Princess, named Ivanka, held a can of GOYA BEANS in her hand, and most likely, IMMEDIATELY had her Hispanic MAID remove the can and bathe Ivanka’s hand in some anti-immigration lotion.

 I often wonder (AND HONESTLY WHY I DO AMAZES ME), why American Jews support a guy who thinks Nazi’s are Good People, why the  Log Cabin Republicans support Trump and Pence, two homophobes, and how the HELL most Christians remain silent as the Evangelicals pretend Trump and Jesus are in a tie for morals and values! But back to Robert Unanue, just one question, and I will address it in three languages, similarly as Princess Ivanka Trump Kushner spoke when you bribed her to tout your own hypocrisy! 

“How many of your products have you provided for the children incarcerated in the Trump Concentration Camps? Is it a Hispanic tradition to let innocent kids die, or just your own company's refusal to admit Trump is a Racist, and now you also! And how do you say quid pro quo in Spanish?” /English Version

“¿Cuántos de sus productos ha proporcionado para los niños encarcelados en los campos de concentración de Trump? ¿Es una tradición hispana dejar morir a niños inocentes, o simplemente la negativa de su propia empresa a admitir que Trump es racista, y ahora usted también! ¿Y cómo se dice quid pro quo en español?” / versión en español

“They are the biggest best, hugest, most beautiful, and tasty food product in the Mexican world, and they love me.”-Trump version

  

one death

I was seven years old; it was September and soon I would be celebrating my eighth-year birthday in a month. Pittsburgh that year had actually had an accumulation of snow, earlier than ever predicted and for many, who had followed the Farmer’s Almanac, this was no surprise winter blast, but something which a true believer that nature roamed the world in cycles, considered just happenstance. I was seven years old and it was one of the coldest days I recalled for that time of year, when my mother answered our kitchen phone, the one with the longest cord ever, so she could actually walk into the living room, holding the phone, and she said “Howard,” (my father’s name,) “you need to speak to your dad.” I remember the way my mother handed the phone to my father, I remember how she stood by his side as if she was his shadow, and I remember, my father nodding his head as might a toddler communicating with an adult, and I remember my father handing the phone back to my mother, saying nothing, standing still, my mother still cradling the phone in her hand, never placing it back on that little hook, which held the mouthpiece in place, and I remember watching my father cry. Not a loud set of tears or a huge moan, but his body shaking, his hands trembling and his lips almost defying the rest of his face in gyrations of smiles, pouts, zigs, and zags.  My father walked into our living room, fell onto the one piece of furniture which was considered his, placed his hands on over his eyes, and through his fingers which seemed to form a mask, said to my sisters and me, your grandmother has died. 

I was seven, and it was not that I had heard of other relatives passing away, but this was the first time, a relative was someone I considered a part of MY family. I remember, my parents telling me that I was going to the funeral, as I was the boy of the family, and this kind of responsibility was a part of being masculine and a future leader of my own family. I remember the funeral home, and the small room, which had a long red set of curtains thick and moldy, tightly closed, and in that room, was an open casket, in which my Grandmother was lying. I remember, my Grandfather taking me by the hand and saying, you have a duty as her grandson to kiss her goodbye. I leaned in and kissed my grandmother's head. It was for me at the time an oddest sensory sensation. My head told me she would be warm, my lips expressed something cold and bitter as the was the day outside. My heart was confused, and my body ached, wanting to run away, but feeling stuck in place as my grandfather holding my shoulders, moaned and said to both his wife and my grandmother, your grandson loves you!

That was my first experience with the death of an immediate member of my family, and I remember all of it. I share this story, (of which many reading this of course have similar tales to tell) because death then and death now is not an easy moment in one's life to endure. So, when I hear the privileged, cocky, ignorant, selfish, self-serving spoiled Americans touting that all COVID-19 is, IS just a FLU, and why get so worked up by the deaths it may cause, as if there have not been hundreds of other reasons people die, so fuck the mask and fuck social distancing, and fuck anyone who thinks this disease is so special, I have to wonder, if any of THAT ILK of flesh and blood, was born without a conscience, a brain, empathy or a purpose in life except to be nothing but a wild animal. People are dying, and suddenly it seems, that a mere mortal’s death is nothing but an inconvenience, a pain in the ass, a political statement. Who have we become, and why have become this way. I am seventy years old and I can still remember when I was seven, the first time I witnessed the death of someone I loved. One death too many!