2.13.2025 – we are doing this

we are doing this
for people that cannot speak
show up, support us

Adapted from the paragraph:

“We are doing this for the people that cannot speak, … we’re carrying the torch for people that feel like their rights are being violated,” said Bucardo, who ideally hopes the event “would stay peaceful and respectful, and our whole community, not just Hispanics, people from different backgrounds, places, show up and support us.”

In the article, Immigration reform protest planed for Feb. 17, by Mike McCombs in The Island News on Feb 12, 2025.

Remember those days when this, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door” used to mean something?

Something that made us proud.

I read the other day that one of the most maddening aspects of those who embrace Trumpism is that those folks, deep down, know better.

What do these folks think when they read, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

What do these folks think at night?

As Mr. F.S. Fitzgerald said, “In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.”

What do they think?

Where is their treasure?

Where is their heart?

What are they doing for those who cannot speak?

2.11.2025 – sixty four meanings

sixty four meanings
for noun, set, seventeen are
labelled obsolete

According to the Online Oxford English Dictionary.

Sometimes, we would go upstairs to the room where he worked, just the two of us, and go through his O.E.D. together. He was proud of that handsome set . . . ‘set’ — that word has one of the longest entries in the O.E.D., fifty four columns of nouns, verbs, adjectives, I think. That was what fascinated Thurber. I would read him the ‘set’ definitions for hours on end.

From Thurber : a biography by Burton Bernstein (Dodd, Mead, New York, 1975).

1.27.2025 – what if James Thurber

what if James Thurber
sketched Pablo Picasso from life …
what would he have seen?

Thurber in 1939 was half blind and Picasso was, well, Picasso.

I can wonder, how did Thurber see him?

Happy to say that for the New Yorker profile, One Man Group, written by Janet Flanner about Mr. Picasso we know what it would look like and here it is.

Here is how it appeared in the New Yorker …

I am reminded of Gertrude Stein telling Mr. Picasso that his portrait of her did not look like her …

Picasso is said to have replied, “It will.”

You can see more little or lesser known Thurber drawings here – https://muggsandrex.wordpress.com/

1.6.2025 – most travel, lot of

most travel, lot of
expatriate life under
heading “trespassing”

There is also an existential, parasitical, rootless quality to being an expatriate, which can be dizzying:

You are both somebody and nobody, often merely a spectator.

I always felt in my bones that wherever I went, I was an alien.

That I could not presume or expect much hospitality, that I had nothing to offer except a willingness to listen, that wherever I was, I had no business there and had to justify my intrusion by writing about what I heard.

Most travel, and a lot of expatriate life, can be filed under the heading “Trespassing.”

From the article, “The Hard Reality American Expats Quickly Learn” by Paul Theroux in the New York Time, Jan. 5, 2025.

There is no there there and there is no way out of here.

12.30.2024 – in your guts you know …

in your guts you know …
he’s nuts made rosalynn laugh – they
still got the last laugh

Back in 2016, my wife and I took a side trip out from Atlanta and visited Plains, Georgia and it was very plain.

And very plainly the birthplace and current home of President Jimmy Carter.

There was one very odd souvenir store that featured years … no, decades … of political memorabilia.

I was able to pick up a button from 1976 Ford vs. Carter but my wife was attracted to an anti Trump button that proclaimed, “IN YOUR GUTS YOU KNOW HE’S NUTS” with a picture of the Donald.

The odd guy who owned and ran the place maintained a running conversation with us the entire time we were in there.

When we got up to the cash register he looked at my wife’s button and laughed.

“The Carter’s were in here last week,” he said, “That one made Rosalynn laugh.”

Mr. Carter died yesterday at age 100.

That Mr. Carter did not like Mr. Trump is well known.

That Mr. Carter expressed a desire to live long enough to vote against Mr. Trump is also well known.

With his passing yesterday, all flags will be at half staff for the next 30 days which includes the January 20th inauguration day of Mr. Trump.

Beyond the grave, Mr. Carter gets the last laugh.

I think Rosalynn would have laughed at that.