reminding the world of its values … that seems like a radical stance
Adapted from the article, A point of resistance’: the Normandy village that said ‘non’ to Pete Hegseth by Ashifa Kassam (The Guardian, 6/14/2026) where Ms. Kassam writes:
“I think our statement helped people to come out from the woodwork,” Richard said. “If it gave others the courage to speak up and say that they think the same, that they’re not OK with the ideology of the Trump government, that’s a good thing.”
The sentiment was echoed by [Julia , member of the Langrune en Commun, a residents’ association]Breen, who said she was proud to be part of an association that had emerged as a small “point of resistance” against those who had looked to protocol as a reason to remain silent in the face of someone who “promotes rhetoric that is bellicose, racist, supremacist and imperialist”.
She was swift to add, however, that what they had done in Langrune-sur-Mer was far from extreme. “It’s crazy that resistance today is just about reminding the world of its values,” she said. “And that doing so seems like a radical stance.”
As Edmund Burke really said, When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
Doesn’t this just sum it all up?
It’s crazy that resistance today is just about reminding the world of its values.
then tell me where all past years are and teach me to hear mermaids singing
Go and catch a falling star; Get with child a mandrake root; Tell me where all past years are, Or who cleft the Devil’s foot; Teach me to hear mermaids singing, Or to keep off envy’s stinging; And find What wind Serves t’advance an honest mind.
Song by John Donne as printed in The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250–1918 (1939 edition) but first published the first edition of Donne’s collected poems in 1633.
Back to 1633 when the poem Song was first printed.
Back to 1989 when I finally got to go to the beach by myself for the first time with the lady.
come mollygrubs and collywobbles! come, gloom that limps and misery
Come, megrims, mollygrubs and collywobbles! Come, gloom that limps, and misery that hobbles! Come also, most exquisite melancholiage As dank and decadent as November foliage! I crave to shudder in your moist embrace To feel your oystery fingers on my face
This is my hour of sadness and of soulfulness And cursed be he who dissipates my dolefulness I do not desire to be cheered I desire to retire, I am thinking of growing a beard A sorrowful beard, with a mournful, a dolorous hue in it With ashеs and glue in it
I want to be drunk with despair I want to carеss my care I do not wish to be blithe I wish to recoil and writhe I will revel in cosmic woe And I want my woe to show This is the morbid moment This is the ebony hour
Aroint thee, sweetness and light! I want to be dark and sour! Away with the bird that twitters! All that glitters is jitters! Roses, roses are gray Violets cry Boo! and frighten me Sugar is stimulating And people conspire to brighten me
Go hence, people, go hence! Go sit on a picket fence! Go gargle with mineral oil Go out and develop a boil!
Melancholy is what I brag and boast of Melancholy I mean to make the most of You beaming optimists shall not destroy it But while I am it, I intend to enjoy it
Go, people, stuff your mouths with soap And remember, please, that when I mope, I mope!
So Penseroso by Ogden Nash as published in I’m a stranger here myself by Ogden Nash (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1937) and meant to be a response to Il Penseroso (“the thinker”) is a poem by John Milton that opens with a prelude to author’s invocation of Melancholy.
Don’t know about that but gosh and boy howdy, if I could sum it all up right now ….
Melancholy is what I brag and boast of
Melancholy I mean to make the most of
You beaming optimists shall not destroy it
But while I am it, I intend to enjoy it
Go, people, stuff your mouths with soap
And remember, please, that when I mope, I mope!
WHY do I feel this way?
It’s like that quote of Robert Kennedy SENIOR along the lines of ‘I dream big dreams and ask, why not?’
I mope and I welcome megrims, mollygrubs and collywobbles, gloom that limps, and misery that hobbles because, why not?
PS: According to wikipedia, At the time of his death in 1971, The New York Times said his “droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country’s best-known producer of humorous poetry.
I was also interested to learn Mr. Nash had lived for a while in Savannah.
For the introduction to The Savannah Cook Book by Harriet Ross Colquitt (1933), Mr. Nash supplied this:
Pilgrim’s Progress is a good book, and so, I am told, is Deuteronomy, But neither is to be compared with this epic of gastronomy. Some people have to die to get to heaven, and others hitch- bike in fiery chariots, But really intelligent people stay home alive and have heaven served to them out of this volume of Miss Harriet’s, For as everybody knows, life on Savannah victuals Is just one long round of Madeira and skictuals. Certainly every schoolboy knows that famous remark made by the late Mark Hanna: “I care not who makes our Presidents as long as I can eat in Savannah.” If you like dishes made out of a piece of lettuce and ground- up peanuts and a maraschino cherry and marshmallow whip and a banana You will not get them in Savannah, But if you seek something headier than nectar and tastier than ambrosia and more palatable than manna, Set your teeth, I beg you, in one of these specialties de Savannah. Everybody has the right to think whose food is the most gorgeous, And I nominate Georgia’s.
Can’t say why I decided to include but that it made me smile a little bit on a dark morning.
And that piece, Four Seasons Opus 8 – Concerto No.1 (Spring) Antonio Vivaldi Live • Classic FM • Fri 12th is playing on the radio with Joshua Bell .. surely maybe this is my hour of sadness and of soulfulness, but there has to be more to today than this morbid moment.
Otherwise, And remember, please, that when I mope, I mope!
1 week to the Summer Solstice – Sun over Broad Creek on Hilton Head – 6-12-2026
lacks transparency accountability and proper oversight
Adapted from the opinion piece, Science Should Not Be Subject to Loyalty Tests by Melissa L. Finucane, a professor of social and behavioral science at Stony Brook University where Dr. Finucan writes:
The Office of Management and Budget has called for a rule change that would impose restrictions on the kinds of research that can be funded and give political appointees the final authority to deny federal funding for research deemed inconsistent with presidential priorities.
Such a revision is necessary, the agency said, because there is a “lack of transparency, accountability and proper oversight” in the way federal funds are dispersed.
It IS 2026 correct?
I am in the United States of America correct?
The Office of Management and Budget has called for a rule change …
that would impose restrictions on the kinds of research that can be funded …
and give political appointees the final authority to deny federal funding …
for research deemed inconsistent with presidential priorities.
Way back when I was lucky enough to attend one the world’s great universities (just ask them).
I was also lucky enough on my first day as a student to be assigned to a Professor who had to look over my course choices and ‘advise me’ on my choices.
He looked over my proposed class list and in a somewhat heated way told me that I was indeed at one of the world’s great universities and that I had better take advantage of that and take a variety of classes in different fields so that I experience what the university had to offer.
Which is why I ended up taking freshman Astronomy as a Junior.
I mean I wasn’t stupid.
I wasn’t going to take some 400 level survey course on fast breeding nuclear reactors.
So there I was, with 300 freshman in a very steep lecture hall, learning how to identify the constellations.
The Professor was this guy right out of central casting for an Astronomy Professor.
He was of indiscriminate age, shaggy black hair, glasses, about 5 ft tall, flannel shirts and some old as dirt pants, hiking boots and something that may have been a calculator hanging from his belt.
He would stand there and lecture like he was talking to you rather than teaching you.
And he loved the stars and the science of the stars and science in general.
He loved science so much that at least once a week he would some point about science in the news and then add a comment about ‘so long as those church goers don’t get involved’ or even “which ought to get those Christian’s worked up.”
After a while I waited after one lecture until the hall ended up and I walked up to the Professor, introduced myself, told him how much I enjoy his class but I had to ask, what was driving this, as I would later learn to call it, suspect animus about Christians?
I identified myself as a fundamental evangelical Christian and said I certainly was concerned about anything I was learning in Ann Arbor, in fact, I said I found the challenges I came across as reaffirming for my faith and I could still accept all that I was learning.
He looked at me for a bit and decided I wasn’t a threat or trying to trap him and he explained that he was aware of too many situations where science was stopped by political decisions and he was dismayed (this was during the Reagan era) about the growing influence of the Moral Majority.
“Whole fields of study are not allowed in the Soviet Union and it could happen here,” I remember him saying.
We ended up chatting for about 20 minutes and ever after that when he came into the lecture hall he would catch my eye and nod but he continued with his comments.
I enjoyed the class a lot and learned how to navigate the heavens for one semester at least but I think of that encounter whenever I hear of situations where restrictions for learning for any reason are put in place.
This latest is just one of so many straws being piled on that poor camel.
Too word out to be angry I guess I am just sad.
Science controlled by presidential priorities (not wanting to imagine the priorities of that man currently in office).
It’s been tried before.
There was this one country where physics was considered a Jewish Science deemed inconsistent with governmental priorities and a lot of science was abandoned and left to others to explore.
