QUICK–Change the Subject!

Published September 29, 2025 by Nan Mykel

If I were a MAGA I’d sure welcome anything to get the spotlight off the sex ring topic. Be clear: I’m against anything to do with guns. But the idea that hunting season’s now open on Democrats instead of focusing on the Epstein connection is a little too handy….But war?!

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Is it a joke?

Marjorie Taylor Greene demands pardon for George Santos: He’s being forced to drink tap water!
“He’s only allowed to buy stamps from the commissary and is drinking water from the sink… This is torture.” {It’s difficult at times to know when she’s joking; or not.}

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URI LEARNS TO CLIMB STAIRS, brief video:

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Prison Workers Lose Union Protection:

The Federal Bureau of Prisons said that it was canceling a collective bargaining agreement with the union representing more than 30,000 prison workers.

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WHO WAS IT that said “empathy” is a dirty word?

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POEM-ETTES FROM THE PAST

War Poems — 1981

I.

They’ve banned a book in Bangor, Maine

Seems it painted Nam as too profane.

Didn’t anyone

Tell them

It was?

2.

Raggedy Andy’s gone to war

G.I. Joe bought Tonka’s

and the bombed baby milk factory

Wasn’t Willie Wonka’s.

3,

The Persian Gulf runs black with oil

Bumps in the night aint spooks

That aint wind you hear a whistlin’

Let’s hope those scuds aint nukes.

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FINIS

We blew it. The big one fell

and the world is changed.

The soft spring breeze is deadly

as it blows across

the silent fields. My God

how silent is an empty world.

The laugh’s on us but no one else

Is here to know. We blew it big.

as I paint upon my canvas these

images no one will ever see,

crying sometimes takes me by

surprise.

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WHEN ALL the head officers gather in one spot with Hegseth and Trump, will they be asked to pledge allegiance to Trump, like they did to mein fuhrer years ago? Pray. No laughing matter. Does Trump really have the key to the bomb? Time for the posturing to end.

Homefront News

Published July 24, 2025 by Nan Mykel

Still living from pillar to post. I’ll protect the name of one motel we stayed at briefly, following the second flood of my basement condo. The toilet must have been built for potty training and the door would not open or close when one sat on the throne. Since I am not of potty training age, I could not arise from that throne but had to go on my knees, crawling out into the main room. BUT from my position on the floor, by the bed, I could not arise, not even with the aid of my daughter. Finally I asked her to call the police. She did and they connected with a free EMT and lo and behold three hefty weightlifters appeared and lifted me to the security of my motel bed. Two of the three wore uniforms which I thought were police uniforms, and the third was a young professional in training with a jolly disposition. I had thought to call the police because not long before, a groundhog had gotten his head under, but not out, of, strong fencing around a locked trash enclosure. A neighbor knew to call for help. Two men I assumed were police had wirecutters with them and also the strength to lift the edge. See that grateful groundhog run! He had been trapped with his head under the wire for more than a day.

I’m still out of my condo but this time staying with a friend in her updated trailer home that has an adult potty. Recently there was major sewer work on West Union, by my condo, and they suspect workmen may have sent a wrong sewer into and through my condo. I finally got my computer back from the condo. Thus endeth my personal report. Now for real news:

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1995 NEWS/VIEWS on WOMEN — We found a March 21, 1955 Time magazine in the library’s free book shelf : From A Piece of Equipment in The Farm Quarterly: “When a farmer buys a cow, wrote Farm Editor R.J. McGinnis, he looks at her long and carefully, goes over her point by point and weighs his pocketbook against her virtues and her faults. He should be no less calculating when he takes a wife…This flint-hearted approach ….will appear to many, especially the female sex, as a way of saying that a wife should be regarded as a piece of farm equipment. That is quite right.” (Other good remarks but some more proper wording is suddenly suggested by Word Press’s Gutenberg AI, I presume: 12 ways to show deep respect for your wife....Go figure.)

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OH, THAT’s WHY!

I was puzzled by the sudden drive against aliens (and those not so alien) in recent months, and still am.

As I’ve come to understand, via The Week of May 2, 2025, that Musk wants to seed the earth with more human beings of high intelligence “before the apocalypse.” I wonder if he assumes the high intelligence should come from the male or female parent. If that’s the case, why is he so against public school and university survival? Does intelligence mean being uneducated? Did he select the women of his fourteen children on the basis of intelligence or fecundity? Maybe hooking the brain up to AI would take care of all that? I hear that’s being developed.

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Pope Leo will bless same-sex unions: LGBTQ Nation Newsletter

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OH DEAR…

Did Netanyahu really nominate our president for the Nobel Peace Prize, or is that a Saturday Night show joke? I can’t tell these days.

ANSWER: Jill Dennison says it’s true…INCIDENTLY, read her blog today! (About our 902 U.S. billionaires)

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Poem by Milton Ploghoft, 2013:

DESTINATIONS

Where will we go for the sweet bye and bye?

No doubt we will aim for a Heaven on high.

But astrophysicists with views telescopic

Suggest that man’s gaze is gravely myopic.

There is plenty of space beyond cloud and star

But how to prepare from that which we now are?

Will eating and breathing be as we know here?

And will we bump into old friends so dear?

Will we greet kin from centuries ago

Or meet only family whom we so well know?

So many questions, who can tell

Will all the doubters go straight to Hell?

Religious Scenario

Published September 21, 2023 by Nan Mykel

WHERE ART THOU?

Squabbling in

the planet’s sandbox,

howling from a fistful of the stuff

into streaming eyes, bloodline

against itself.

Domesticated life forms,

not cloned, rather

tainted with the freedom

to differ in

their cousin rivalry.

Why are the Earth’s many

Gods only uncles?

Let us hear from Grandfather

who in His infinite wisdom

must surely re-unite us all.

From Time Wrinkles, 2015, Nan

Me and My Shadows

Published January 25, 2023 by Nan Mykel

I like being me inside my head
and never want to empty out
leaving my cavern of echoes.

What’s it like inside your head?
I wonder and wander–
can we try to compare?

Show me yours I’ll show mine.
Hear me think–no not that
I don’t smoke, snort, sniff or shoot

I’d choose psychotic
over robotic
any day or night.

Please! I don’t want to be a robot
instead of being me–not that
being me’s so hot but inside I can see

Pictures dancing in my head–
Metaphors chasing similes.
Feeling nothing’s what I dread.

I want me inside, not that.
Me and my shadows feel less lonely
than nothing and nothing.

Nan, about 2018

WITHOUT CONSTRICTION

Published February 8, 2021 by Nan Mykel

Night. Under bed covers Moon visible through gauze

curtains. A sluggish stream supports me. Kersplash,

a fish. A whippoorwill’s call, a dream bird. Comfy.

Moored in the here and now like it or not. Like it.

Here it all makes sense.

the good doctor reblog: Music Lesson

Published January 29, 2021 by Nan Mykel

Music Lesson
Jan 13th, 2021 by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
I can’t say for certain which music I’m enjoying more – Susumu Yokota’s Asian ambience on the laptop or the garden’s new water fountain concert.

Mr. Chipmunk, the gaudy flutterby, and the fledgling redwings all clearly prefer the fountain. And why wouldn’t they? What do they know about synthesizers, electronic percussion, or the meditative properties of fluid melody transformation? For them, the fountain’s water, singing its spontaneous aria, is life itself; is the music without which their lives—all lives—would cease to exist.

I reach out and tap the laptop’s mute.

Some creatures—most creatures—know far more than I.

From Guest Contributor Ron. Lavalette

Ron’s many published works, including his debut chapbook, Fallen Away, can be found HERE.

Quitting The Grave Cover ThumbCheck out Decater’s new novel, available now at Amazon. Plus, don’t forget his earlier books: Ahab’s Adventures in Wonderland and Picasso Painted Dinosaurs.