Category: Social Commentary
Back to the Moon!

Back to the Moon!

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As long as it’s been since I’ve posted on this blog, it’s been way waaaayyyy longer since humankind has ventured past the bounds of low earth orbit into deep space. The last time was the flight of Apollo 17 which launched from Cape Canaveral — at the time, officially known as Cape Kennedy in honor of the assassinated president who set the nation on the path to the moon — on December 7, 1972, and returned to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on December 19, 12 days later but more than 53 years ago.

Two of the Apollo 17 astronauts, Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, were the last humans to walk on the lunar surface, while their mission mate Ronald Evans orbited the moon in the command module. At least part of that history is to be added to now as the four crew members of the Artemis II mission hurtle toward the moon, escaping the grasp of earth’s gravity for the first time since the flight of Apollo 17.

There are naysayers today, just as there were in 1972, who question the value and purpose of the space program in general, and human space exploration in specific. My purpose in writing this essay isn’t to address those skeptics. There is ample evidence of the tangible value the space program has brought to both the U.S. and the larger world in the seven or eight decades it’s been a reality, and that evidence is easily uncovered. My answer to them is much simpler. We go into space, to the moon and points beyond, because it’s there. We don’t need any greater explanation or justification than that. It is in the human spirit to go beyond our known limits, our known frontiers, our known worlds, and space exploration captures and embodies and extends that spirit.

Back to the Cape

As a journalist who for some years covered the space program, I’ve spent a lot of time at the Cape and observing launches from both Kennedy Space Center and the Canaveral Air Force (now Space Force) Station. I can tell you from direct experience, seeing a launch on the tube or from a distance isn’t the same as being close up. I can see night launches, and occasional landings of SpaceX first stages, from my home, 120 miles (193 kms) distant, and even hear them, about 11 minutes later. But that’s not the same as being close-up to a rocket lifting off from the pad and heading for space.

I’ve become a bit complacent over the years and have only gone down to the Cape a few times since my career as a science and aerospace writer ended some decades ago. In truth, I almost didn’t go down for the launch of Artemis II (I was there when the initial launch of Artemis I was scrubbed shortly before launch time). It’s a bit of a trip, dealing with traffic and the crowds can be challenging, and the chances of a scrub all too real. As fate would have it, I had errands to run the day of the launch in Ocala, so I figured I was already part way there so decided in real time to just keep going. And that’s how I wound up on the shores of the Indian River in Titusville, directly opposite and just about nine miles from Pad 39A, where Artemis II was in final stages of preparation for launch.

It is always gratifying seeing the crowds of people who come from all over the country and, even more telling, all over the world, to see a launch. It’s especially gratifying seeing all the kids in the crowds, animated and excited as they await liftoff. One of the things that has struck me the most since the end of the Apollo program is how humankind waited and wondered throughout eons of history when a person might walk on the moon, and how whole generations have been born since that last human presence on the moon and were again relegated to waiting and wondering. And now these kids were again going to be able to see their dreams and wonderings realized.

My Personal Journey

My engagement with space and space travel goes back to my own childhood, growing up at the height of the Space Race in the 1950s and 1960s. I go into some depth on this in my piece Voyage to the Moon: My Personal Journey, posted in this space on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the first moon landing on July 20, 1969. That piece is as accurate and worth reading now as it was in 2019, and I strongly urge you to click on the link and read it. I won’t rehash all the detail included in that piece here.

That said, it is worth noting that, during my years covering the space program, I got to interview and in some cases hang out with half the guys who had walked on the moon. Most notable among them was Buzz Aldrin, second man to walk on the lunar surface, with whom I spent a few fun days palling around. Also notable, especially in light of the flight of Artemis II, was the time I spent with Walt Cunningham. Cunningham never walked on the moon, but he was part of the three-member crew of Apollo 7, the first manned mission of the Apollo program. That mission corresponds with Artemis II. The four Artemis astronauts — Mission Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen — won’t be walking on the moon, at least not on this mission. But they are the crew of the proof-of-concept mission that will lead to the first planned Artemis lunar landing in 2028. Unlike Apollo 7, which orbited the earth for nearly 11 days, in its 10-day mission Artemis II will travel to the moon, go around the back or “dark” side of the moon, and then sling-shot back for a return to earth. Its crew will have traveled further from earth than any other humans ever have.

The Launch

It is said that when the powerful Saturn V rockets which last sent humans to the moon lifted off, the sound waves broke windows in Titusville, the vantage point from which I was viewing the launch of Artemis II. Given the 8.8 million pounds of thrust, making Artemis the most powerful vehicle ever launched — 7.2 million pounds of thrust from the liquid-fueled main stage plus another 1.6 million pounds from the two solid rocket boosters latched onto the main stage — I fully expected sound waves at least equivalent to those generated by Saturn V’s 7.6 million pounds of liquid-fueled thrust. In truth, while I certainly heard the sound of the mighty rocket as it headed for space, I can’t say it was remarkable. Having witnessed many Space Shuttle launches, with their 6.4 million pounds of thrust, from the KSC press site — just three and a half miles from the launch pad — and feeling how those launches shook my insides, I expected more. Nevertheless, the liftoff was still a majestic moment, the sound of launch almost drowned out by the cheers and claps of the gathered crowds around me.

There had been a number of points in the last hours before launch, as I waited with the crowds and able to listen to the broadcast of a space group tracking the launch, when things looked iffy. There was the weather, which at times looked more than iffy. That fortunately improved toward launch time. There was a hangup closing and sealing the main hatch. It was found that a human hair was preventing the perfect seal needed, so that problem was corrected. There were high temperature readings with an onboard battery, and the mission management crew subsequently decided the readings were an instrumentation error and not a problem with the battery. Perhaps the biggest issue was with the Flight Termination System (FTS), a range problem. Flight controllers were unable to communicate with the system which would terminate the flight — read that as blow up the vehicle — were something to go wrong during ascent. At one point I was giving the chance of launch no more than 70%. To me, it’s always preferable, if there is to be a scrub, that it come sooner rather than later. In any case, finally, Shuttle-era gear was hauled out to deal with the FTS issue which resolved that problem. Things were looking better for launch.

Launch time — 6:24 p.m. EDT — came and went, with no launch. I had moved into position close to the shoreline where I could get a clear view of the launch site, through an opening in some bushes that would frame my photos, and waited, like everyone else. There was a Russian or Ukrainian family to my right, and their kids kept running back and forth in front of me on the rocks, a source of some annoyance. A number of different nationalities, mostly Asian and Latin, were to my left. There was a two-hour launch window, but I decided I’d give things 10 minutes before abandoning my post to see if I could learn the source of the holdup. Before that time tolled someone listening to a countdown report called out that launch would be in three minutes. I built in some time for a delay in the broadcast, which proved prescient since the vehicle ignited on the launch pad when the person was still calling out 30 seconds. Liftoff came about 10 minutes later than initially planned, but it was flawless as Artemis headed for space.

I won’t burden you with further verbiage about the launch. The pix and the videos that follow them below will tell you all you need to know and, if you didn’t have a chance to see the launch, wherever you are, you can share in it here. For now, three days in, things are going well with the mission, and if that trend continues we’re still on schedule for humans once more to set foot on the moon in about two years.

Click on the image links below for some videos of the launch. Here’s a hint: If you just click on the links, you probably won’t hear the sound of the launch. Instead, right click on each link, select “Save Link As,” and save the vids to your hard drive. Then view them with a video viewer such as VLC Media Player or Microsoft Media Player. Be sure your sound is turned up. It’s worth the slight trouble to hear the sound of the launch and of the crowd. Also, be sure to back click to get back to this post from the videos.

Alternatively, you can watch the vids, which play correctly with sound, on my Substack post. Just click on that link to go there.

All images and videos by the author.

This piece also appears on my Substack, Issues That Matter. Comment, share, and subscribe, here, and there.
A glimmer of hope

A glimmer of hope

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Tomorrow’s inauguration encourages many, myself included, to hope that the abuses and degradation of the past four years can be undone and things moved in a more promising direction. But there will be tremendous opposition, already begun, from the side that doesn’t realize it lost, and many things will take Congressional action, never an easy thing.

I have no doubt the newly inaugurated President Donald Trump will, in fact, be the dictator . . . ON DAY ONE, for the more simple minded among my beloved readers . . . he promised to be. He will close the border and open drilling leaseholds, both by executive order, and fix and undo many of the other biggest mistakes put in place by his predecessor’s own dictatorial actions on his Day One and the 1,460 days that followed it.

Just as Joe Biden set things in the wrong direction for the past four years, Trump will set a new and positive course beginning Monday afternoon. But after that kickoff to the new administration, things will get more challenging. Consider Monday a beginning. Or, more, the beginning of a beginning. But it is not anywhere near the end. Which, in reality, does not exist.

A top priority

Among a field of many priorities, a top priority has to be paring down the gargantuan and wasteful and inefficient megalith the U.S. government has mutated into. It is no wonder that many of us wonder why we continue to pay taxes just to see them pissed away to stupid, counterproductive, and corrupt purposes and programs. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are perhaps the perfect two individuals who have the best chance at succeeding at this seemingly hopeless task. There are powerful vested forces who will fight them every step of the way. But if we have any chance at getting government to fulfill its true purposes and to divest it of the rest, this is it.

The list of agencies that need fixing, reform, reduction, or reorientation encompasses virtually every arm of the government. I have put in my own bid to help fix our very broken non-immigrant visa system, the sole job that could get me to go back to Washington and the State Department. I’m not terribly hopeful I’ll be selected for the position, but we all need to do our part, no matter how small that part, if things are to be fixed. And to keep up the pressure on Washington that they be fixed.

A new wind blowing

It’s a new wind blowing in the land, and the incredible fireworks display staged as part of the pre-inaugural events Saturday night in Sterling, Virginia, is symbolic of that new and refreshing wind. Of all the fireworks displays I have seen over the years, including the amazing ones I witnessed — even from literally underneath them — while posted to Brazil, none come close, not even by a fraction, to that display. Accompanied by operatic singing, and ending with a dramatic presentation of America the Beautiful, the display symbolically blew away the timidity and senility and sclerosis and deceit of the past four years.

The fireworks display, which had to run into the millions of dollars to put on, are part of inauguration events that might cost up to $200 million — a new record — funds raised from private donors, not public sources.

Many, many of us — encapsulated in the 312 electoral votes and 76.6 million votes won by Trump in the 2024 election — have been awaiting with less than saintly patience for this change of the national guard. As Biden made himself more of a non-entity almost by the hour since the Nov. 5 election in which his vice president went down in flames, Trump has emerged as a true leader, more of a president as a president-elect than the actual president is or could ever be.

The subject line of a friend’s email to me today says it well: “Last day!! A brighter future tomorrow”

As the old wind continues to wheeze

It falls somewhere between highly entertaining to seriously pathetic to watch, since election day, those on the left melting down, in many cases quite spectacularly, over the defeat of their less than beloved Kamala. You can’t find a better example of intolerance, outright hatred, and propagation of bogus ideas they bought into fiercely — and many still do — as if they were true.

It turned out the American electorate bought the doughnut and not the hole. That shouldn’t be a mystery, but the Harris campaign never seemed to grasp that was what most people wanted. And many in the corrupt and misguided media still haven’t gotten the memo.

The lack of logic defies description. If you’ve seen claims, as I have, that Elon Musk bought the election for Trump for the $250 million he contributed to his campaign, do these people not question how Kamala couldn’t buy the election for $1.5 billion, six times as much? Even with the most heavily bankrolled campaign in U.S. history, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t pull Kamala and her empty vision across the finish line.

What the anti-Trump crazies completely miss in their blindness is that it takes more than money to win elections. It takes actual ideas, good policies, a candidate with whom people can resonate and not one simply installed by the party oligarchs, and a sense that change is needed. The map below, showing the 2024 vote by county — red for Trump, blue for Kamala, Alaska still counting votes but it went red, too, in the end — illustrates the breadth and depth of the dissatisfaction voters had with the existing order.

It’s a tall order that Trump and his team have been handed to fill. Given the tight margins in the Senate and especially the House, it’s going to be a struggle every step of the way. If we see results, those tight margins could go against historical precedence and increase in 2026. If we don’t, the Dems could reestablish control in the Congress, which would be nothing short of a catastrophe. The rapidity and sense of urgency with which Trump has approached the task ahead gives hope that he has learned the lessons of his first term and won’t be taking any prisoners in his quest to put in place his program and — to use his favorite phrase — Make America Great Again.

America, and the rest of the world, is watching.

Featured image, TravelScape, Lake Sunrise, Freepik, used with permission.

Donald and Melania Watch Spectacular Fireworks, Alex Brandon, pool, Associated Press, used under Fair Use.

Disappointed Kamala Voters, Howard University on Election Night, Daniel Cole, Reuters, used under Fair Use.

Electoral Map by County, 2024, Karina Zaiets, USA TODAY, used under Fair Use.

This piece also appears on my Substack, Issues That Matter. Comment, share, and subscribe, here, and there.

Tweedle Dum & Tweedle Dee
Tweedledee and Tweedle Really Dumb

Tweedledee and Tweedle Really Dumb

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The characters Tweedledee and Tweedledum came out of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Later, in 1871, they were transformed into Tweedledee and Sweedledum by the famous political cartoonist Thomas Nast, to parody the corrupt Democratic Tammany Hall politicians, headed by William “Boss” Tweed and Peter “Brains” Sweeny, who ran New York as their personal fiefdom. Well guess what? The rolly-polly identical twins are back, this time in the guise of Tweedledee and Tweedle Really Dumb.

We’ll get back to Tweedledee and Tweedle Really Dumb, but let me say that this piece has been sitting unfinished in my draft file since July. So with less than three days to go until the most consequential U.S. election since the Civil War, I figure I should actually finish it. One thing that has happened in the three and a half months since I first decided to write it is that my focus has shifted. I still think Kamala Harris is perhaps the most dangerous and ill-prepared major presidential candidate we’ve ever had, and one of the absolute dumbest, so that hasn’t changed. She has added an even dumber and less qualified person, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, as her running mate, so that is one change. But the overall premise of Tweedledee and Tweedle Really Dumb remains.

What has changed, in terms of the focus of the piece, is not how dumb these candidates are, but how dumb, uninformed, and just plain ignorant are the people who can’t or won’t see through their charade and lies and will wind up (if they haven’t already) casting their votes for these frauds.

I was accused in 2020 of denigrating Joe Biden’s voters. The past four years have proven me right, not just about the catastrophe Biden’s term has proven to be, but how millions of people were taken in by him and the Democratic Party’s autocratic selection of him as their candidate. I don’t feel I have anything to apologize for there. Many of those voters have since come to their senses — we can forgive them, perhaps, since they were misled by the state media on some key facts, like the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop and the crimes it revealed — but the majority of them still haven’t seen the error of their ways and are all too ready to be fleeced again. It’s not like the real facts can’t be found. There are so many sources for debunking the lies of the left that in this connected era it is hard to excuse ignorance of the facts.

The bigger issue

It’s low-hanging fruit to quote the nonsensical word salads dealt up by Harris over the past four-plus years. That’s what I originally planned to do in this piece. She truly is Tweedle Really Dumb. But I think there is a far bigger and more troubling issue, and that is how the blatantly bogus campaign points raised by Harris and Walz and the Dems are so readily accepted, absorbed, and trundled out by those on the left. These people think they are so smart, but really this is a classic case of ignorance with impudence.

Does anyone really believe Trump is a fascist, a Hitler, a Nazi, and a threat to democracy? This is the main basis for the Dems’ campaign. The accusations are so ludicrous that no sensible person, with any even basic knowledge of those things, or of Trump, would give them any credence. It’s also a total affront to those who were victims of Naziism. But we see them repeated like Gospel truth by a range of self-avowed Harris supporters across the social spectrum. A kind explanation would attribute their accusations to pure political malice, aimed against the person they see as a threat to their candidate. But like the question of whether the failures of the Biden-Harris Administration and the Dems are the result of mere incompetence or are deliberate, the kind explanation does not apply.

This past week I actually saw one of these sheep with an inflated sense of their own intelligence compare Trump to Zimbabwe’s former dictator-for-life, Robert Mugabe. Who is next, in what passes for these peoples’ minds? Idi Amin? Jean-Bédel Bokassa? Caligula? Will Trump soon be not only rounding up and executing his opponents, but he’ll be keeping their body parts in freezers in the White House basement to serve up at state dinners? And these people consider themselves intelligent.

They accuse Trump of being anti-Semitic when, in counterpoint to Harris, who rejected Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate because he’s Jewish and she wanted to appeal to the pro-Hamas wing of the Democratic Party, he has been Israel’s biggest supporter while in the White House, and made the biggest advance in bringing peace to the Middle East with the Abraham Accords.

Harris, like Biden, claim Trump is a threat to democracy, when both were installed by behind-the-scenes and very undemocratic dictate of Dem Party elites. Like Hillary Clinton was installed as the party’s candidate in 2016 to push out the peoples’ popular choice, Bernie Sanders, Biden was installed in a similar fashion in 2020. And Harris was installed as his running mate — I am convinced — as a poison pill to keep him from being either impeached for his crimes or 25th Amendmented for his senility, already visible in 2020. She never won a single vote in either 2020 nor this year, she polled as the least popular Vice President in the history of polling, and in July she was hand-picked to take the top of the ticket by Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and James Clyburn, after deposing Biden as the party standard bearer in what effectively was a coup. And they say Trump is the enemy to democracy.

Their plot in 2020 was even laid out by one their own in the media, and a similar play book is being followed this year. As egregious as all this is, supporters of Harris and Tampon Tim Walz are unfazed by it. A reasonable person would ask, what is wrong with these people?

The contemporary Democratic Party has more in common with Boss Tweed’s Tammany Hall than the Democratic Party of Adlai Stevenson, JFK, or RFK. Party stalwarts loyal to its former tenets, such as Tulsi Gabbard — who has now left the party and joined the Republican Party — and RFK Jr., have denounced the party’s undemocratic reincarnation and are now supporting Trump. Speaking for myself, as someone who mostly voted Democratic through my adult life, I can no longer vote for a party that has betrayed my values, as well as its own. And, should Harris win, I have to question whether I want to remain in a country with so many ignorant people.

I think it is telling that the same party that called people like Dick and Liz Cheney warmongers and worse now embraces them and props them up on the stage to plead Harris’s case. Sheep of a feather flock together, it seems.

We know what Harris says about Trump, but does anyone really know what Harris stands for? It took one of my Australian friends to point out how, when she is asked a question (on the very rare occasions when she has given an interview), invariably her stock response is, “That’s a really good question,” and she then goes on to not answer the question, instead talking around it with a lengthy obfuscation about her alleged middle-class upbringing or how her neighbors valued their lawns or what can be unburdened by what has been. The few supposed policy positions she’s stated, such as not taxing tips or “securing the border,” a joke after overseeing an open border for nearly four years, she stole from Trump. Otherwise, she repeatedly has said she can’t see a thing she’d change from what Biden has done. And hasn’t that been a rousing success.

Don’t forget what got us where we are

It’s important not to get lost in the fog. Don’t forget what the last four years have been like, what got us where we are. If you’re among the 29% of Americans who think the country is on the right track, then that might not matter to you (who are these 29%, anyway?) But if you’re among the 71% who think the country is on the wrong track, what the past four years have been like should matter to you since you’ll be facing another four years not only as bad, but worse, possibly far worse, should Harris be elected.

Rather than detailing each of the failures in the areas that most concern voters — the economy, the border, crime, and the state of our democracy — I’m going to put here links to my posts over the course of the past four years. These should remind you of where things went off the rails and the importance of getting back on them. Read them, digest them, and then, if you haven’t already, go to your polling place and vote on Tuesday. The future of America rests in the balance.

We are soooo f*cked July 29, 2021

It all falls apart August 17, 2021

Ignorance with impudence August 25, 2021

Disgrace August 31, 2021

Stranger than fiction September 16, 2021

Ruining America: It’s by design September 25, 2021

Finally, something that *is* bigger than Watergate February 17, 2022

Twisted up in our own shoelaces February 25, 2022

The dismal state of the union March 2, 2022

Dancing with the devil March 13, 2022

Back to the USSR: America’s media corruption March 20, 2022

Sweeping up the mess in Biden’s brain March 29, 2022

Turning Twitter around: A battle won in the war on free speech? April 26, 2022

Striking thirteen: Where we’ve arrived May 31, 2022

It’s time to break up the FBI August 10, 2022

Nothing matters anymore August 25, 2022

One year later we must not forget: Disgrace August 31, 2022

Nothing to see here July 10, 2023

Covering up the cover -up August 12, 2023

Back posting: The myth of the independent voter September 19, 2023

Don’t believe your lying eyes September 27, 2023

Lessons unlearned October 12, 2023

Redux: The wizard is still dead, but the world has fallen apart January 23, 2024

Who is really in charge in the White House? June 19, 2024

It’s nice to be right, but at what cost? June 28,2024

Treason, by any other name July 5, 2024

Sticks and stones July 16, 2024

The undemocratic Democratic Party August 29, 2024

Featured image, John Tenniel’s illustration for Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, published 1871. Scanned from Modern Library. Public Domain.

This piece also appears on my Substack, Issues That Matter. Comment, share, and subscribe, here, and there.
Who is really in charge in the White House?

Who is really in charge in the White House?

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The question of who is really in charge in the White House has been a lingering one throughout the three and a half years of the current administration. Anyone with reasonably functioning eyes and ears and who isn’t sold out either to what can safely be called the state media or is so ideologically impaired that they can’t see the truth knows it can’t possibly be Joe Biden. His mental impairment, already visible even prior to his election in 2020, grows more evident by the day, almost by the minute (though his handlers are sure that his exposure to public view is limited to just minutes a week, not a day).

Speculation has focused on Joe’s former boss, Barrack Obama, and clearly many of the same incompetents who were part of Obama’s administration, such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, haunt the current White House. Biden’s time in office has been called Obama’s Third Term, many of the similarities are so striking. Other speculation has focused on the power-hungry First Lady, Doctah Jill Biden, who has been so willing to engage in elder abuse of her own husband for the sake of power. And of course there is the cadre of faceless handlers who prop up Biden, write his speeches which he still manages to garble up, get him to wear shoes less likely to cause him to trip and fall, and surround him on walks out to Marine One so his stilted gait is less visible to the White House Press Corps.

Any of these explanations are plausible enough, but I think there is something larger and more sinister in play. I think there is a kind of ideological force, what I would term a kind of hive mind, that pervades the administration and has spread like a plague across the country. It has occupied college campuses for many years and increasingly has filtered down to the K-12 level, and it has found its way into the so-called justice system, into the military, into sports, and even into corporate board rooms.  It is this hive mind that thinks men can be women, women can be men, that the citizenry is too simple-minded to make its own decisions on everything from whether to own a gas-powered or electric vehicle, what kind of bulbs to screw into their lamps, to what kind of stove or dishwasher they put in their kitchen.

It is this same hive mind that believes open borders, allowing a dozen million unvetted aliens into the country and turning them lose on society, is a positive thing, and which will only further the objectives of the hive mind (the last part undoubtedly true). It is the hive mind that leads the administration to favor our natural enemies, such as Iran. And it is this hive mind that says criminals have more rights than law-abiding citizens and need to be treated with deference to undo centuries of supposed injustice, regardless the cost and injury to the rest of us.

Like bees in a hive, the hive mind governs everything these people think, do, and impose on the rest of us. It is a kind of mental affliction that puts its governing ideology above all else, which would accept having a doddering old fool who scares us domestically whenever he appears and who embarrasses us on the international stage, as Biden did recently at the G-7 gathering in Italy, and which would destroy our democracy on the false premise that it is saving it. It counts on the lack of awareness and good information, fostered by a corrupt media and the deaf-and-drunk show that is social media, to fend off questions about its premises. And we’re told to believe the fictions the bees weave and not our lying eyes.

As has been evident, and as I’ve said for a long time, the systematic destruction of the country and society cannot be explained by mere incompetence. It is clear that it is deliberate, and the seemingly benign phrase “to transform the country” embodies this hive mind’s intent to turn everything upside down and inside out. A more correct reading of that phrase would be “to destroy the country,” and that is embedded in the basic belief system behind the hive mind. Essentially stemming from a Marxist/leftist ideology, its intents and methodology mirror cultural and political revolutions from Russia to Cambodia, and stretching back to the French Revolution. We see it on the streets, in the courtrooms, on college campuses, and in the White House.

It is the blind ideology of the hive mind, further afflicted with the mental illness known as Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), that prevents the bees in the hive from seeing, much less understanding, why so many ordinary people want no part of the bogus honey it produces and does its utmost to peddle.

Saddled with a Chief Executive you wouldn’t trust to drive your kid’s school bus, much less fly your airliner, I keep returning to the point I’ve been at for some years now: We are soooo fucked. We really are. We have one chance and one chance only to turn this ship around before it grounds hopelessly on the rocks this hive mind has set its course for, and that is the election coming up in less than five months (and actually, due to the perversion known as early voting many states have adopted, in as little as three months). If we don’t make a firm statement that the goals of this hive mind are simply unacceptable for the country, the society, and our future, I see little hope. I think we all need to do what little or much as we can to grab hold of the wheel and change course. This is my small contribution to that effort.

Featured Image: Bee Hive, Mostafa Eissa, Pexels, used with permission.

This piece also appears on my Substack, Issues That Matter. Comment, share, and subscribe, here, and there.

 

 

 

 
A Grey November Afternoon

A Grey November Afternoon

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This piece is a short story that initially appeared on my fiction blog, Stoned Cherry. It is part of my Growing Up New Jersey collection. I am posting it now since today is the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, with which the story opens. That was November 22, 1963. A day to remember.

The afternoon was grey in that penetrating, depressive sort of way that November afternoons in New Jersey can be, and if you’ve ever been in New Jersey on one of those November afternoons you know the kind of grey I’m talking about.

Well, that’s the kind of grey that November afternoon was, and we were let out of school early that particular Friday since that night was our school’s Military Ball, the big social event of the year. You got to understand that my high school wasn’t in New Jersey. It was in New York City on 15th Street and I commuted into the City every day, riding the PATH trains or the Erie-Lackawanna, which we called the Weary-Erie or the Weary-Lackatrains, wearing my uniform since it was a military school.

Anyway, we can talk about my high school later. The only important thing to know now was the afternoon was grey in that New Jersey November sort of way and I was home from school early. And I was locked out of my house because my parents were still at work and I didn’t have a key to the house. So here I was, locked out of my own house in my school military uniform, hanging out in the front yard on this November afternoon, when some of the local kids starting coming home from school. And they were coming home early, too, even though they didn’t have any Military Balls or anything to go to that night.

They were coming in groups of twos and threes, walking through the shortcut across the Laceys’ backyard, their school bags in hand, trooping along like kids let out of school do.

“What are you guys doing home so early?”

“Didn’ja hear about the President?”

“What about the President?”

“He’s been shot. They shot the President, and the Governor of Texas. The President’s dead. They told us about it at school and then they sent us home.”

“C’mon, really, what’s going on?”

“No, really. No kidding, President Kennedy was shot, and so was the Governor of Texas. No kidding. Kennedy’s dead.”

They say it’s one of those moments you always remember, like where you were when you heard about Pearl Harbor being attacked. Or where you were when Germany surrendered. Or, now, where you were and what you were doing when you learned that JFK had been assassinated. And I guess that’s true since I still remember it after all these years. And that’s where I was, in my front yard in Kearny, New Jersey, on a grey November afternoon, home early from school and locked out of my own house.

“Wow, man, I can’t believe it. That’s terrible. Do they know who did it?”

Little did I know that would be a question people would be asking for years after that grey November afternoon. But for the moment, I was in shock.

When John Kennedy ran for President, it was the first political campaign I took any interest in or probably was even aware of. Sure I knew we had a President, Ike and all. And Nixon was Vice President, Nixon who was running against Kennedy. But that was about it. Later on I learned my mother liked Adlai Stevenson, at least I think she did, but she never had any use for Truman after he dropped the Bomb on the Japanese. My Dad, who was a life-long Republican, didn’t adhere to that opinion, though, since he said it ended the war sooner and saved a lot of American lives.

Now even at the age of 10 I knew I wanted Kennedy to win. Part of it was that he was Catholic, the first Catholic to run for President, and of course the nuns in grade school all wanted him to win and told us why we should want him to win, which in the end came down to his being Catholic.

But for me it was more than that. He was young and appealing, and he had some good ideas, though I would have been hard-pressed to tell you exactly what they were. I even started wearing my hair like him, kind of puffy and combed over in front, in what was called “the Kennedy cut.”

And I actually got to see him, too. The March before the election I happened to be with my family in New York City when John Kennedy the candidate came out of Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and waved at the crowd gathered across the street from the enormous, staid, grey Cathedral, and got into a black Cadillac limousine waiting by the curb. I actually got to see him, even snapped some pictures with a little black box camera I had, and for a 10-year-old Catholic boy from New Jersey, that was like the biggest thing that ever could have happened. And of course he was “my candidate” – I called him that, “my candidate” – and he just had to win.

Now I had a kind of bad track record with famous people. I got to see Pope Pius XII at the Vatican in Rome when I was 8, and then he upped and died a few months later. So much for that claim to fame. And in later years I killed off more than one Pope, got to see them at the Vatican or out at Castel Gandolfo and, bang, they’d die shortly afterwards. And now John Kennedy, my candidate who became my President, was dead, too, and I had seen him that March day at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

So here I was out on the lawn on that grey November New Jersey afternoon as kid after kid trooped by, telling the same terrible story. The President, my President, was dead, and the Governor of Texas, Governor Connally, was wounded, and the Governor’s wife, too. Jackie wasn’t shot, though.

I was still in shock, and still locked out of my house, when Mrs. Allen came home. Mrs. Allen was our neighbor and her husband, Don, was our town clerk, which seemed like a very important office to me. And Mrs. Allen, Helen Allen, saw me out there and invited me into their house which was next door just up the hill from ours.

Mrs. Allen knew the gravity of the situation and must have thought how it was affecting me, and she turned on the TV in their living room and we both stood there and watched the news, both watched in silent disbelief, as Walter Cronkite related the details as they were known, in minute detail and in dribs and drabs as the reports came in from far-away Dallas.

Names that would become part of the history of that day began to filter in. Lee Harvey Oswald was believed to be the assassin. Officer Tippit was killed as he tried to apprehend Oswald outside some movie theater. Jackie Kennedy, alive but silenced, trying to flee the motorcade limousine as her husband was hit and slumped over. Lyndon Johnson, LBJ, who would become the next President to succeed JFK. There was little that Mrs. Allen and I said to one another or could say to one another as the reality came across the TV in black-and-white and tones of grey and sank into our consciousness.

And then suddenly my parents came home, late in the afternoon, while it was still light out. Both school teachers, they knew the news, had gotten out of school, and then went grocery shopping. Grocery shopping!

We heard the car arrive in our driveway, or they came to get me at the Allens’, I can’t really remember, but I was outside and in shock as much that they went grocery shopping as at what had just happened that afternoon in Dallas, Texas.

“Did’ja hear what happened? The President is dead and the Governor of Texas has been shot! Did’ja hear about it?”

I sounded like the kids who first broke the news to me, and I repeated the same unreal words.

“Grab a bag and help with the groceries!”

It was my father speaking, barking out an order in the annoyed, impatient way he had.

The groceries? The darned groceries? Is that what is important at this moment? More shock set it.

“Of course we heard about it. Now help get the groceries in the house.”

I don’t think I ever saw my father and mother the same way again after that, and a little later, the groceries in the house and the car trunk shut, that’s all I could think of as I stood there watching the news, this time in our living room, was how the groceries were more important to my father and my mother than that the President of the United States had just been shot and killed in Dallas. How could this be?

The big question now was whether the Military Ball would still be held tonight or canceled. And the decision, relayed through phone calls from the school and then from parent to parent, was made to go ahead with it since it was being held at the Waldorf-Astoria and the room and the entertainment had been reserved and paid for and it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to change everything now.

So now it was time to tear ourselves away from the somber news coming across the TV screen and to put on my dress uniform and get ready to pick up my date for the evening, my second cousin Patty Lynn.

I wasn’t much into girls yet, even at 13 and all, and as a freshman in an all-boys military commuter school I didn’t have anyone to ask to the Military Ball. So my parents came up with the idea of asking Patty Lynn to go with me to the Ball.

I actually hardly knew Patty Lynn, even though we lived in the same town, and it seemed a little odd to me to go out with my cousin, even a second cousin. She was okay, cute and nice enough and all that, but the real issue was that I was in the ninth grade, in high school, and Patty Lynn was still in the eighth grade, still in grade school. Or so my parents thought. As it turned out, Patty Lynn wasn’t in the eighth grade, which would have been bad enough. Oh, no. Patty Lynn, as I came to learn, was still in the seventh grade. I was going to my first high school Military Ball with a girl who wasn’t just my second cousin, but who was in the seventh grade!

And so we went, me in my dress blue uniform, Patty Lynn in her nice white dress-up gown, my parents and me in our car, Patty Lynn and her parents in their car, and we drove over to New York, through the long fluorescent tube of the Lincoln Tunnel, to Mid-Town Manhattan and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and the Military Ball which was, as one might expect, all a-twitter with talk of what had happened that day in Dallas.

I don’t remember how or why it got out, but it did get out that Patty Lynn was in the seventh grade, and from then on all I heard from my classmates was, “Eh-heh, Yacenda went to the Military Ball with a seventh grader! Eh-heh!” Again and again and again, for weeks if not months afterward. Oh, the ignominy! Oh, the humanity!

Patty Lynn and I actually had a kinda nice time at the Military Ball, and we even got away from our parents, all of whom sat around the big round white table cloth-covered tables talking about what had happened in Dallas, who was behind the assassination, who this Lee Harvey Oswald was, did he act alone, how this could happen, what would happen to the country, and I got to put to use the dance lessons I had to take at the Cotillion, mostly the fox trot, and Patty Lynn and I got to hang out some and enjoy each other’s company. But overhanging everything, besides the shooting of the President, was the thought that I was at the Military Ball with a seventh grader who also happened to be my cousin. And that and the taunting of my classmates for weeks afterward meant that I would never ask Patty Lynn out again.

Patty Lynn eventually grew from a slightly reticent and okay seventh grader into something of a very cute and attractive young woman. But by then it was too late, and years later when I happened to be back visiting home and we went to see Patty Lynn and her parents she was still living in that same town, was married to a fireman, had kids of her own, and was living what to me was this totally boring, uninspired fixed life. And I felt bad that I had let the fact that she was a seventh grader stop me from asking her out again and, ultimately, saving her from this dull, boring life, married to a fireman and living in some cramped little place in her folks’ house in that dull, boring town. But by then Jimmy Carter or somebody was President and it all came too late.

Sorry, Patty Lynn. And sorry, JFK.

Featured Image: JFK shot, one-sixth of a second after. Mary Ann Moorman/Wikimedia Commons. Used under Fair Use.

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