SmokeSound

You have undoubtedly seen the headline: " Donald Trump Releases Birth Certificate " Whatever it was you thought he was clutching, you were wrong!  It was his birth certificate.   Actually, he let go on the second try.  The first time it really wasn't what he thought it was.  The first one showed that he had been born in Kenya of Mau-Mau parents from Kansas, who are suspected of plotting, since before he was born, to have him grow up and own, and then bankrupt, a casino in New Jersey. The Donald has had his hair conked.  That kind of hair is not natural on a Muslim kid from Kenya. You do what you have to do!  There is no other reason for it.   But he finally got it right.  His new, authentic, State-issued birth certificate sort of shows that The Donald is one of us:  just an ordinary guy from Kenya who is dreaming the American dream of becoming Czar.     Let's be honest:  Sarah Palin isn't going to be President.  Sh...

I wonder whether our health care system covers mental health issues; not for individuals, but for the nation. Look at the fix we are in!  We decided that banks and investment companies and stock market brokers were our best friends, with our best interests at heart.  Because they had our best interests at heart, we decided they should be free to do anything they thought best, and earn as much as they could get away with. They got away with nearly all of it:  a good slice of my pension funds, for instance.  They milked the cow until the cow collapsed from the suction.  We didn't want the cow to die, so we paid to get her onto her feet, again.  The cow paid big bonuses to those who had sucked her dry. There is nothing like a good war to pull us together, so we put 9/11 aside and invaded Iraq.  Then, when it was too late to remember 9/11 and bin Laden again, we remembered and went back to Afghanistan. The stock market collapsed.  Detroit coll...

This is a copy of Barack Obama's birth certificate; the one that no one has seen since it was released to the public three years ago, unless you looked for it.   It is a magic birth certificate.  No Republican has ever seen it, especially no Republican who would like to live in the White House where that Black guy is living now.  George Romney is very concerned about not having seen it.  Mike Mau-Mau Huckabee has seen it and says it isn't there.  (Like a lot of other things The Huck says, that is a little confusing.)  Our Belle Michele hasn't seen it either, and doesn't believe it is real because Jesus didn't sign it.   And now Donald Trump is getting nervous about not having seen it, so to calm our fears, he says he released his birth certificate to NewsMax.  I have searched the Web for a sight of The Donald's certificate, but I have not seen it.   The Donald has every right to live in the White House.  Or perhaps we should say...

Sometimes finding the right words eludes us.   Consider, for instance, how to describe the people who want to run against Barack Obama for the Presidency:  Newt the Serial Gingrich, Tiny Tim Pawlenty, Our Belle Michele Bachmann, the Former Half-Governor of Alaska, or Mike Mau-Mau Huckabee.  Something there is that eludes an accurate and appropriate description of all of them.  Not Brian Schweitzer, the Governor of Montana.  He has a knack for precision when it comes to common-sense description. In Montana, the Republican legislature has proposed a number of things.   Some Montana legislators think it might be a fine thing to secede from the Union; you know, kind of go it alone up there in Montana.  The Montana Nation.  Other legislators have suggested that allowing silencers on hunting guns might be kind of fun.  As you might expect, others Montanans believe that hunting with a spear is more their style.  And it is!   It's not al...

You can think of it as a retirement home, if you wish.  No stairs.  No snow to shovel. No lawn.  Someone to clean the windows for you.   Nearly a perfect retirement home!   At the Mall of America, some company--probably an insurance company trying to minimize its responsibility for you--or perhaps a friendly bank trying to find a place for you to live now that you have reverse-mortgaged yourself out of your own house, has built a glass box to show just how lucky you can be.   They found a guy who is just a tad overweight--maybe fifty pounds--who needs just a little nudge to live the healthier life with our support and curiosity:  "Does he really sleep in that bed by the window?  Is there a bathroom?  Can he order-in pizza, the way it appears he usually does?"   He does get out of the box once in a while.  This morning there was a sign saying he was following the signs for the "Mayo Clinic Mile":  a couple of times a...

We all know that Coyote is our ancestor and creator god, who formed the earth, and made people from things like feathers and twigs.  And that, sometimes, Coyote was a trickster.   All you have to do is to look around, and you will see that somebody had a sense of humor.   Oh, we have to admit that not everyone sees it that way.  There are people who trace their creation stories to places other than the great Southwest, who have other creation stories.  Quite a few, actually:  Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Fundamentalist Legislators in at least seven states.   None of them mentions Coyote.  In fact, many of them take Coyote's name in vain.  Foul stuff, that!  Cursing Coyote and scientists in the same breath!   You really cannot blame the people in Texas and Oklahoma and Tennessee and Florida and New Mexico and the other places that want to set the record straight about how the earth came to be, and the origins of human life...

Nice to get up in the morning to new snow. Freshens things up. Covers all those bare patches. Muffles the sobbing.

Sometimes it is all about the oil. When the oil companies are in charge, it is all about the oil. Sometimes it is coal, or canals, or tulips, or gold. Whenever the business people are in charge, it is all about money.   When we invaded Iraq, it was all about the oil.   Saddam Hussein had once been a ferocious tiger,  perfectly willing to kill Iraqis or Iranians, Kurds, soccer players, or his own relatives.  But when we invaded, it was not because Hussein was a monstrous threat to humanity: he was contained, snarling, bluffing, blowing air, pretending to be what he had once been:  a monster.  When we invaded, it was because Iraq had oil!  Lots of oil!  Oil we need! We pretended Iraq was about humanity, about savagery, about chemical warfare, and nuclear (in)capability.   George Bush and his business friends thought it was possible to establish a democracy right in the middle of mid-eastern oil that would be a light unto t...

The New Urban Pioneer came home from school with an assignment:  to learn how once it was done, and to do it again.  Shrewd Sophie had her own link to the distant past:  someone who made quilts.  "Would Mari show her how to make a quilt?" The New Materialism Mari would. Sophie would choose the materials, and create a design.  Sophie tilted her head to the side and thought and thought about it, cutting swatches, switching swatches, watching swatches switch; imagining how it ought to be.   Sometimes what is "old", and what is "new", gets all mixed up.  Mari has had her new sewing machine for a long time.  It was brand-new to Sophie.   They made a plan.  "It's like an old fashioned quilting bee!" Mari said.  "Why did they call it a 'bee'?"  "I don't know.  You can look it up on Google, just like the Pioneers did, probably." New Technology, New Generation "How small my boat, how large the sea!...

It is the last day of winter!  There are signs everywhere!  Most of them are farther south.  The snow that has covered the ground for about four months is still in the yard but, here and there, the wretched remains of last autumn's grass are being uncovered. Up on the roof, though, the ice dam that built up over our doorway has, just this day, been reduced to what we all finally get reduced to:  a fragile remain. A dam of ice it is no more!  It is scarcely a pathetic lump of its former attempt to force water up into the house.  It is, in fact (since I just went out to check), gone!  Just in time for spring! The weather man says we will get more snow next week. Next week, I will show you a picture of the weather man lying up there on the roof.

3.14159. . . . π.  Or  Pi. More or less. Divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter, and you will get a number slightly larger than three that never  comes out even, or repeats itself.  Apparently, it could go on forever. It is a nuisance.  For that reason, several State legislatures have, from time to idiotic time, passed laws that decreed that pi should equal 3.  Much neater!  Easier to remember. Wrong!  Stupid!  Ignorant! But that is old news.  Right now, the Republican-led House Energy and Commerce Committee is busy denying climate change; you know, ice-sheets melting, more moisture in the air, a lot more snow here, a lot less rain there, the ocean levels rising:  that kind of dumb stuff.  Every Republican on the panel said it is not true. That should take care of that! It proves, once again, that if you take a House Committee, measure its diameter, and divide it by its circumference, you will get a...

That is not Our Belle! Michele, Our Belle Bachmann, is going to clear up something we have wondered about.  Rumors here in the Sixth Congressional District of Minnesota are that Our Belle, like Athena, sprang fullgrown from the head of Zeus.  That, she says is not true, and if she decides to run for the Presidency, the first thing she will do is to produce a birth certificate!   Our Belle is just one of us!  Not a goddess!  Probably does not even know Charlie Sheen! You know why some of us have been worried about where she came from.  She is the person who thinks Democratic Presidents might cause flu outbreaks.  She said the "Hoot-Smalley Tariff" caused the Great Depression.  She said our Founding Fathers worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States (which must have come as a surprise to all the slaves the Founding Fathers kept).  She believes the President and a lot of members of Congress are anti-America.   ...

Adrian Peterson is a hotshot running back for the Minnesota Vikings.   As soon as the NFL and the Players Association can get their acts together, Adrian will earn almost $11,000,000. in base salary  for playing football next year.  But their acts are not yet together. Doug Farrar interviewed The Eleven Million Dollar Man. The Eleven Million Dollar Man said that working in the NFL  was "modern-day slavery", and that the players are getting "robbed". Now I assume that The Eleven Million Dollar Man is just making the argument that slavery is not as bad as we had once thought, and that young guys walking around with $11M. in their duffel bags are having trouble on the side streets.   It must be that.  Adrian's agent says that "the game means  an awful lot  to him"; "that he would love to play".  Better yet, "nobody should really look at the words and take them  out of context".   So please do not do that!  ...

The Rev. Mr. Rob Bell says that it would be cruel if God sent us to hell, even though we deserve it.   Mr. Bell does not think God is cruel, so he says that even after we die, we will get chances to repent, and sing in the choir.   The belief that eternal damnation is a damnable idea is not much of a surprise. But if the choice is ours, and if God is righteous and powerful, things do not look good, unless perhaps God did not really mean what he is reported to have said, and then God is . . . well, not much of a god.   Many years ago, one of my colleagues said that he was not sure about eternal damnation, either.  (It is offensive!)  I asked him if he believed in heaven.  He believed in heaven.   It was not fair, but I asked him about several other things generally associated with the Judeo-Christian tradition:  angels, demons, Satan, heaven, miracles, healing prayers, eternal life, and so on.  (I have forgotten precisely the items or...

In December, I was reminded again of Pearl Harbor Day. I was ten years old, walking home from Sunday School, when my mother called to say the Japanese had attacked. I didn't know where Pearl Harbor was.  I did know about the war in Europe, and rationing and Victory Gardens.   Or maybe they came a bit later:  rationing of coffee and sugar and gasoline.  That was sixty years ago. When my mother had been in high school, in a little sawmill  town  ten miles away, there had been Japanese students in her class.  I have her class pictures.  By 1941, they had moved away, probably to Fife, near Tacoma, to do truck farming. I think it is true that when I was ten, on Pearl Harbor Day, I had never met a Japanese person, nor a Black person, either. It is not that we were not diverse.  I had schoolmates with  Irish names, although I had never seen the inside of a Catholic Church, nor the Pentacostal Church, down the road, either. ...

February 

Is it not time we took off those seed corn caps?  At least while indoors?  Or at least while in a restaurant?  Or at the very least while not alone in bed? Of course they are useful!  If, for instance, you need a bit of shade or shelter from the rain, and a hooded sweatshirt will keep your neck warm, a seed corn cap is marvelous.  Some of us know that the brim of a seed corn cap is just a handle for the yarmulke that fits very nicely where our hair used to be.   But the days of the seed corn- or baseball-cap are numbered.  Baseball players ought to be wearing batting helmets, and not just while in the batter's box.  Ask Justin Morneau about his concussion! All right!  Baseball caps are good caps, especially for baseball players.  But millions of obviously non-athletes wear them, their bills rolled tight like soda straws, because . . . because . . .   No, I am just tired of seeing them everywhere.  Especially in bed. ...

Something ugly is happening.   Wealth in this country is being concentrated in the top 1%-2% of the population.   The people who earn the most are paying taxes at a rate that is lower than people who are earning less.   Faced with budget deficits, politicians cut tax rates on the richest people, and cut wages and benefits of working people, often in obvious offsets, and then plead that still more will have to be cut from wages and benefits of working people because the budget is still out of balance. The newly elected Republican Governor of Wisconsin, with open backing from wealthy corporations and individuals, has just made it illegal for public employees to bargain collectively, which is a way to make it extremely difficult for working people to maintain, or gain, wages and benefits.   In Ohio, the Republican Governor proposes, not just to eliminate collective bargaining, but the right to deprive small, financially stressed cities of the right to be cit...

In all other respects, Annie is a marvelous cat, but she likes ice! We found her at the Animal Humane Society several years ago.  The staff took one look at me and suggested that I get an older cat.  I think they did not want Annie to be an orphan.  Li'l Orphan Annie.   She waits for us in the morning, not complaining; just waiting and staring.  Only if we ignore her for too long will she generate a very tiny meow.   We dump some ice in her water bowls.  She prefers a mixture of whole and crushed cubes.  And single-malt water will do nicely, thank you!  Then she just sits there and listens for small snapping, crackling, and popping.   When she is damned good and ready, she gives it a try.  Most of the time, it is satisfactory.

Religions don't create values.  Religions endorse values. There are some very common human values, although none of them is universally accepted.  Tell the truth most of the time.  Don't kill unnecessarily.  Don't steal if it can be avoided.  Don't mess with someone else's spouse.  Such things.  Most religions have variants of those kinds of things.  There is no absolute agreement on those things; just general agreement.  The devil is in the details. There are, also, purely formal "commandments".  Be good.  Do what is right.  Be a good person.  Behave toward other people the way you would like for them to treat you.  That is just a way of saying:  be moral.  Just what  we should do varies from place to place and time to time. There is incredible disagreement, too.  Some religions endorse polygamy.  Some permit serial monogamy.  Some  religions acquiesce to slavery.  Some o...