https://www.freeimages.com/search/fly-dragon

“You better comply, you better comply, because otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding.”

“See you in court,” she shot back.

“Good,” he said, sounding surly. “I’ll see you in court. I look forward to that. That should be a real easy one.” He paused and then added, “and enjoy your life after governor, because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”   [Trump to Maine governor]

_____

The Trump Administration’s First 100 Days

• Cuts to 9/11 Aid: The group led by Elon Musk made cuts to a federal program that administers aid to 9/11 responders, drawing bipartisan pushback. President Trump also floated the possibility that money culled from budget cuts could be returned to taxpayers, but he offered no details.

• ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’: Trump embraced a House G.O.P. budget and dismissed Senate Republicans’ plans, just hours after he gave conflicting directions to Congress on cuts to social safety net programs.

• Air Force One: Furious about delays in delivering two new jets, Trump has empowered Musk to explore drastic options to prod Boeing to move faster.

• Sued Over D.E.I.: Civil Rights groups claimed that Trump had exceeded his authority in issuing executive orders targeting diversity programs, and that they discriminated against Black and transgender people.

• .Upending U.S.-Russia Policy: As peace talks opened in Saudi Arabia, President Trump made clear that the days of isolating Russia were over and suggested that Ukraine was to blame for being invaded, causing European leaders to recalibrate their relations with the ___________

• A TIP FOR TODAY
• Timmothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, a book which has been often quoted in recent times as a guidebook for how to deal with the kind of tyrannical government we are seeing under Trump’s second term, has a lesson for Whitman-Walker, other organizations, and all of us. “Do Not Obey In Advance: Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do… Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy.”   Source:
• preemptive capitulation isn’t just shortsighted—it emboldens authoritarians, sets a dangerous precedent, and paves the way for even more crackdowns on transgender rights.
• ____________

ABERRANT LITTLE BOYS…

• can be taught manners, honesty and empathy/love.  WHY NOT aberrant big boys?

This is a poem by Felix Gagliano, a member of the Athens Library Poetry Group.

“If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”

–Noted physicist Richard Feynman

IYQ 2025*

In the wee world where particles dance,

quantum physics has begun to prance.

A realm revealed where nature plays

by astonishing rules in a mystic maze.

Invisible waves weave through space,

entangled in a baffling, tight embrace,

Particles are paired, light years apart,

yet linked by a shared, quantum heart.

There’s duality in each photon’s beam,

both wave and particle, or just a dream?

Schrödinger’s cat in a paradoxical rest?

Both alive and dead, a quantum jest?

Quantum’s wonders are now on view,

a sub-atomic world, strange but true.

A cosmic dance, of chance or fate,

in every particle, a universe’s weight.

At very small scale. odd reality unfurls.

Even parallel lives lie in quantum’s swirls,

In each dimension where we now glance,

is the illusion of time and happenstance.

This challenges many basic assumptions

and previously sacrosanct presumptions.

With bewitching beauty we are newly blessed,

now ubiquitously, majestically made manifest.

Felix Gagliano, February 2025

Here’s the next and final part of a true fiction-like-but-true story. (Part 1 and 2 are in my two prior posts.)

“I have no memories whatsoever of living with my own parents. They were divorced when I was two years old, neither ready for a baby. My dad’s main priority was drinking, my mom was escaping the drinking and the abuse. Which landed me thank God, in my grandparent’s house. My parents were still around at this point, mom still had legal custody of me. But my grandparents were the ones who got me off to school, made sure my homework was done, my clothes were clean, I never went hungry, and I always was tucked in at night.  My dad was supposed to get me on the weekends…but only after he would go out drinking with his buddies.  He would tell me “I’ll pick you up at 8:00 tonight,” and funny enough every time he said that Papaw would send me to bed about a half hour early, just so he could say, “She’s asleep, why don’t you pick her up tomorrow.”  I watched from the window a lot, my dad rarely showed up, but that was Papaw’s way of protecting me.

“He’d walked to work every day, and at 4:00 p.m. grandma and I would go pick him up and I would see him coming and run through the guard house to meet him, I think it was his too.  He loved that people thought I was his little girl, he ate that up.  We would go home and as soon as dinner and homework were done, he would take me to the park. Some of my favorite memories…a place where I take my nieces and nephews now.  He would play barbies, and dolls, and waitress with me for hours on end.  He used to read me a book every night before bed, but I always asked him to read chapters out of sequence so normally they never even made sense. All of this and so many other little details of my life changed when I was about to start 2nd grade.

“I went with my mom for a few days (she and my dad still had joint custody) but this time I didn’t come back when expected. I started my second grade year in Florida. I wasn’t allowed to have any contact with my dad, grandparents or anyone. I was 7 years old…I had no idea why, but I knew I was supposed to listen to my mom. So a year went by and I hadn’t seen the rest of my family. I hadn’t talked to them, they had no idea where I was. They didn’t know I was living with my mom and her 3rd husband at this point.

“One day I was sitting in class learning about Blue Whales, and I had this pretty blue dress on. I was a good student so when I was overlooked when they passed out honor roll pins I was sure that’s why they were calling me to the office.  So I took the long walk down the hallway (I even did a cartwheel cause I knew no one would catch me) into the principal’s office to find a policeman, a very large man in a suit, my principal, and my Papaw.  sitting on one knee crying and waiting to see how I would react. I jumped into his arms, so confused and scared by everything, but so happy to see him. I was sitting in the room when they called my mom to tell her they would be taking me back to Gallipolis right then. My goodbye to my mother was hearing her scream and cry over the phone for them not to take me. That was it. I walked outside to get in my Papaw’s car (without my pencil I might add) and in the back seat was a blanket, pillow, and my favorite baby doll that I hadn’t seen in so long. It was going to be a long trip. But the blanket and the pillow were a waste. Looking back, I stayed up every second of that trip talking to my grandpa, laughing and singing with him like no time had went by.

“After the winds had calmed a bit and the court told my mother that she could now only have visitation with me if she was monitored and she resided in Ohio, I didn’t see my mom for 4 years. My dad had sole custody of me, but I know now the only reason he even bothered was so he could hurt my mom. I was back where I belonged though…

“Papaw was the president of the athletic boosters, he never missed one of my games, gymnastic meets, cheerleading competitions, parent teacher conferences. Nothing. He was always there along with my grandma. He was my very best friend. And how many pre-teen girls would have said that. I was never ashamed of him, as most kids go through the stage where they are embarrassed by the parents…not me.  And he knew that. There are 5 other grandchildren besides me, one that Papaw had never met one who is too little to remember him. But this person I described to you is how we all see him.

“I was only 13 years old when I lost my best friend and father figure….He lost his daddy when he was 5 and his mom when he was 13. It’s so hard now to think about it because I see the hospital, and I see the tubes, and machines that were keeping him alive. He had a heart attack, and after the surgery he just never came out of it. I was allowed to go back and see him once before they turned off the machine. And he squeezed my hand, which was the only movement or response he had in days, or weeks (I can’t remember now). Everyone says that it was probably just a flinch, or a reaction, he didn’t really squeeze my hand. And they are probably right, but I like thinking that it did happen.

“Now I am 24 years old. I’ve graduated college. I have a good job….I realize this may all seem so useless to you, but when someone has impacted your life so much and someone who has never met him has negative thoughts about him, you want to do your best to bring out some positive. I pass Cheshire several times a week, and before your poem, I thought about the park, and where my house used to sit, and I thought about the places where I learned to ride my bike; since I read it I feel a little sick passing through…I wonder where, and who wrote that on there. I wonder if they have any idea that there is more to Sonny Smith than just a bald guy.  Thank you for your time, Krista.”

Continued from  last blog:

And then on Feb. 26, 2009, I responded to someone who wanted to communicate with me, on an early Blogspot site.   I wrote   “Hi. You visited my site?”

She had, and she wrote:

“Hello…

“My name is Krista Smith, and I just had something to share with you. You may not be interested at all, but I would just feel better telling you.

“One day, a few months ago I decided I would google my grandpa’s name, because you just never know what you’ll find.  For me, I found your site, that had a piece in a poem about my grandpa, or Pawpaw, as I call him.  Sonny Smith.  Of all the things in the world I imagined I’d find, that certainly wasn’t one of them.  For months I’ve thought about it and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I knew for sure that it was Pawpaw in your poem, because Cheshire is where I was raised, he was  bald, (even I didn’t know that until after he passed), he did wear a toupee, and even when I was younger I could tell he wasn’t well liked by everyone. He was the type of person that you either loved or you hated and that was that. In your poem you said you still drive through Cheshire and I hated the thought that the bald man that no one liked might be a thought in your head. So if you wouldn’t mind let me tell you my version of this man so that maybe the next time you drive through Cheshire you can think of him differently.  Jumping right in” ….(Continued in tomorrow’s  blog)

The folks in Cheshire, Ohio
are mostly strangers
as I drive (slowly) through
their small quiet village.
But on an old garage,
a deserted house and a
boarded-up bar,
red-writ letters blare
(along the main drag)
for all to see:
SONNY SMITH IS BALD.

Who is Sonny Smith and
is he really bald?
And who cared enough to
take the time and risk
to proclaim it to the world?

Knowing that my neighbor
is Cheshire-bred, I asked
her about Sonny, and this
is what she said:

“Sonny Smith has a son twenty-six
and yes he really is bald.
He wears a toupee every working day
to his job at the energy plant.
A tiff, and someone got galled.
It was somebody’s wife, a dame–
whatever–enough to defame
Sonny Smith’s name
all up and down Route Seven.”
My friend giggled. “Some folks
don’t like him much.”

I still drive through Cheshire,
and I still drive through slowly.
But now when I see Sonny’s name
I nod as in greeting to red-lettered
Sonny, roue in toupee,
whom I never met and never will and
wouldn’t know if I did.
(Such are our braided lives).

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Back in 1982 we lived in Gallipolis, Ohio, and I drove daily to my place of employment in Pomeroy, Ohio. I had joined a poetry writing group at the French Art Colony in Gallipolis, and as one meeting closed we decided that for our next meeting we would write a poem containing the words “such are our braided lives.”

And so I wrote the above poem and published it in an old Blogspot blog.  Perhaps you can imagine my surprise when, in 2009 I received the following e-mail, to be continued in  my next posting, on this blog.

https://www.instagram.com/elephantsofworld/p/DEppP6_Nlq0/?img_index=1

Well, the authors of 2025, I guess, but since I have a smidge of hope left, I much prefer to believe that the majority of Republicans are embarrassed at our president’s  bully boy antics  that make a mockery of democracy.  I firmly believe…hopefully…that there is still time and ways to smidge this travesty of justice.  The attached photo seems to touch the heartbeat of compassion, which I feel for all of us caught in this unanticipated spiders’ web.

WATCH for a true 4-part touching story on this blog coming together in the next day or two, thanks to Kristar.