4.23.2025 – here I sit with my …

here I sit with my …
shoes mismated – lawdy mercy
I is frustrated

Bad Morning by Langston Hughes

Here I sit
With my shoes mismated.
Lawdy-mercy!
I’s frustrated!

As printed in The collected poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes, New York, Knopf, 1994.

Three days a week, I have to get up and drive into the office.

I may live in podunk but it’s an island podunk and there is only one way in and one way off and while there isn’t the volume of traffic that there is in Atlanta, for example, the drive is, in its own way, more exasperating than an Atlanta commute.

So I do the what I did when I lived in ATL.

I get up early to try and beat the traffic.

I get up early before the sun is up.

So I don’t bother the wife, I will get my clothes together the night before and set them out in the living room.

Before I go to bed I’ll check to make sure I got underwear, socks, pants, shirt, belt and shoes.

But there are those mornings where I forget something.

More often than not, it is socks.

So I stealthily sneak (always wanted to write that phrase) back into the bedroom and feel my way over to the dresser and open my sock drawer.

A sock drawer filled with … dark socks.

In the dark, in a dark room, fumbling in a dark drawer for dark socks.

Often I end up with socks that mismatch.

Maybe not as bad as shoes, and looking at my kids, I wonder if it matters.

But for me it is going into my day with one boot off.

Socks mismatched.

Shoes mismatched.

Lawdy MERCY!

I is frustrated.

4.18.2025 – we are all afraid

we are all afraid
because retaliation
is real – that’s not right

“We are all afraid,” Ms. Murkowski said, speaking at a conference in Anchorage on Monday. After pausing for about five seconds, she acknowledged: “It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”

Alaska Senator, Lisa Murkowski as quoted in the article, A Startling Admission From a G.O.P. Senator: ‘We Are All Afraid’ By Annie Karni.

Retaliation is real.

And that’s not right.

I am reminded of the James Thurber fable, The Wonderful O (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1957) that takes place on an island where the letter O is banned along with everything and anything with the letter O in in it.

Two geese were fine but if there was just one bird, that goose had to go because of the O.

Of course the people finally revolt against this madness.

This speech by Andrea, one of the islanders, stands out.

“Be not afraid to speak with O’s,” said Andrea at last. “We cannot live or speak without hope, and hope without its O is nothing, and even nothing is less than nothing when it is nthing. Hope contains the longest O of all. We mustn’t lose it.”

We cannot live or speak without hope.

Hope without its O is nothing, and even nothing is less than nothing when it is nthing.

Hope contains the longest O of all.

We mustn’t lose it.

Hard to have hope right now but it is about all we have left.

At least Thurber ends his fable with:

“Was it a battle? And did we win?” the children cried.

The old man shook his head and sighed, “I’m not as young as I used to be, and the years gone by are a mystery, but ’twas a famous victory .

We have to hope.

We have to have hope.

4.7.2025 – no authority

no authority
justification or grounds
facts say otherwise

In the matter of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, District Judge Paula Xinis wrote:

“As defendants acknowledge [United States Dept of Justice though the person who had the guts to acknowledged this has been put on leave], they had no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador — let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere,” Xinis wrote.

She said it was “eye-popping” that the government had argued that it could not be forced to bring Abrego Garcia back because he is no longer in U.S. custody.

“They do indeed cling to the stunning proposition that they can forcibly remove any person — migrant and U.S. citizen alike —to prisons outside the United States, and then baldly assert they have no way to effectuate return because they are no longer the ‘custodian,’ and the Court thus lacks jurisdiction,” Xinis wrote. “As a practical matter, the facts say otherwise.”

I should point out that House Speaker Mike Johnson has declared, “We in the Republican Party are the law-and-order team. We always have been, and we always will be, the advocates for the rule of law.”

Mr. Speaker … facts say otherwise.

Someone needs to refresh their memory.