Trying to post this in Classic.  Do you receive it?

Nan

There; did that get your attention? I’m not playing around. I’m trying to make up for not doing my part to sound the alarm about the disintegration of our country. When I began to read the text of his video, I wondered where this nut was going, but now that I’ve studied his entire alarm message I am ashamed of my relative silence. Sure I’ll be ninety Septembr 15, but that’s no excuse not to make an effort.

It’s the longest column I’ve ever read, and maybe you want to copy it to reflect over it sufficiently, again.

I’m so glad we can access and share it without a paywall… Apologies to the author for my first suspecting he was a nut. I may be, but he’s not: Greg Olear https://gregolear.substack.com/p/ramble-on-this-is-all-totally-normal?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share

My own heart was in turmoil. It is not easy to tread the line of empathy, to feel passion for both sides….There is a limit to which the human soul can stomach human atrocities and keep going. On the other hand. On the other hand, turning away from from distressing footage taken by Hamas terrorists, by surveillance cameras, and by people running for their lives or sheltering from missiles meant turning away away from their pain. I couldn’t do it…

The above is by Joanna Chen, a British-born writer and literary translator and resident of Israel. I regret not having captured the reference.

_____________

I just realized that I’ve been missing many blogs I want to follow by not looking in “Social.”

(Learning Gutenberg, so please forgive)

An appropriate poem for an earlier season by friend Felix Gagliano:

A TURKEY’S WISH ON THANKSGIVING

As humans gather with kith and kin

What I have to say may seem a sin.

I am just a talking feathered bird.

My wish to you may seem absurd.

I’ve got just one thing to say:

I seriously detest your holiday.

To me and mine it’s a hollow day.

We would be fine if it went away.

What you do to my fellow fowl,

to me and mine is really foul.

I don’t relish being contrarian,

but I wish you all were vegetarian.

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