Mac Davis, Dead at 78

"Oh Lord, it's Hard to be Humble...

When You're Perfect in Ev-ery Way!

 

I Can't Wait, to Look in the Mirror...

'Cause I Get Better Lookin' Each Day...

To Know Me is

To Love Me!

I Must be a Helluva Man.

Oh Lord, It's Hard

to be Humble,

But I'm Doing the Best that I Can..."

-----------------

Well Life ain't no easy freeway, just some gravel on the ground. And you pay for ev-ery mile you go, and you spread some dust around... But we all have destinations, and the dust will settle down... oh, life ain't no easy freeway! Just some gravel on the ground... (At the best, we'll end up lovers; at the least, we'll make a friend!)

---------------

You Got to STOP! and smell the roses... You got to count your many blessin's ev-ery day! You gonna find your way to Heaven, is a Rough and Rocky Road, if you don't stop and smell the roses along the way...

----------------

 Before we forget, we're not cheaters yet... Let's keep it that way.  (Cuz I don't wanna have to tell her a lie, when I get back home. Cuz it would tear apart her fairytale world, if I did her wrong.  Lying to her, would hurt me more, than leaving you this way... Before we forget, we're not cheaters yet, so let's keep it that way...)

 

------------------

RIP Mac.  A masculine singing icon from the 70s...

 

Wiki:  Davis was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son of Edith Irene (Lankford) and T. J. Davis, a builder^.  He graduated at 16 from Lubbock High School in Lubbock, Texas. He spent his childhood years with his sister Linda, living and working at the former College Courts, an efficiency apartment complex owned by his father. Davis described his father, who was divorced from Davis' mother, as "very religious, very strict, and very stubborn". Though Davis was physically small, he had a penchant for getting into fistfights. "In those days, it was all about football, rodeo, and fistfights. Oh, man, I got beat up so much while I was growing up in Lubbock," Davis said in a March 2, 2008, interview with the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal newspaper. "I was 5 feet, 9 inches, and weighed 125 pounds. I joined Golden Gloves, but didn't do good even in my [own] division." After he finished high school, Davis moved to Atlanta where his mother lived, to get out of Lubbock.

------------------

"Making castles out of building blocks, and a cardboard box: Well that's m'boy. MickeyMouse says it's thirteen o'clock... well that's, quite a shock! But that's m'boy... What's that ya say, Mama?  "C'mon and keep ya feet warm"?  Well save me a place, I'll be there in a minute or so... I'll stay right here and say a little prayer, before I go... Cuz me and God are Watching Scotty Grow."

---------

:It's a burning thing... Baby it's got a hold on me, it's a burning thing... Way down deep, in the soul of me!, it's a burning thing... Baby my love for you, it's a burning thing..."

Make it a great day, friends and buddies!

------

Bonus Track:

"She's my friend. She's my lady. She's my lover. She's my wife. She's the answer to my prayers... she's the reason for my life. She's my lover, she's my lady... she's the mother of my baby! And I thank God, I'm the lucky man she loves..."

I never read Mac Davis as a cad. (Of course, I was young...) Did you?

------------

And of course, his most famous song-writing credit:

"In the ghetto... People don't you understand? The child needs a helping hand. Or he'll grow to be an angry young man someday.  Take a look at you and me. Are we too blind to see?, or do we simply turn our heads and look the other way... While his mama cries. Cuz if there's one thing that she don't need, it's another hungry mouth to feed, in the ghetto. (In the ghetto...)"

I kind of listed them in order of my favorites though, Hard to be Humble being my favorite.  Hey, I was 12 in 1980 when that album came out! (So, ex-cuuuuuuuse me!)

Thw Way Real People Communicate... Adelante!

 Seriously?  You folks are objecting to the passion, the interruptions and the demand to follow up and provide important points in understanding where the country is going?

You can bitch all you like about the lack of... "decorum", and the politically incorrect style of debating, but if you want real answers in a rough world, that's how people who care communicate in real life.  (No wonder I can't much "succeed" in the professional world.  I communicate like President Trump does:  nevermind the style points, let's get to the substance...)

I can't tell you how many times last night I wanted to tell Chris Wallace, the "moderator" to stay out of the way, despite the agreed-upon "rules", and let the two men talking on stage (not yelling, not swearing, simply talking passionately -- communicating in real terms) stick with a topic, get to the root of their differences, and answer honestly.  Interjections, snide comments under the breath that allow the opponent to continue -- albeit not in a nice quiet good-mannered way... 

Sorry folks, you really can't put the cat back in the bag, so to speak.  Real life means that's how people talk... nobody dropped the f-bomb, and truthfully, that's where verbal sparring in this country is going, so last night's debate did not bother me at all with the passion on display.  Could it be... no one in the media really wants to focus on the substance, on the differences these two men display in where they want to take the country?

That in the softer circles, the pampered professionals wearing the non-practical shoes and with the softer bodies like soft voices, sweet words, and a lack of true argumentation? Do you think we are interviewing for Sunday-school teacher? It's a rough world out there, and these debates should at best reflect that.  (My friend suggested the reason America leads the world in CoVid deaths compared to other countries is, "We're fatter here.  More obese people and the virus feeds on that."  (paraphrasing in so many words.)

Imagine if our soft bodied, talking heads heard that one! (I thought, "True, but you can't insult people voting for you.  Fatties vote too.")  OMG! Did I just use the term, "Fatties?"  Again, no wonder I don't have what it takes to take my skills and talents to the top.  I refuse to be verbally castrated like that.

You want to play in the real world?  Learn the way real people communicate, and have it out.  No threats, nothing verbal, but of course it's a competition, and within those basic parameters, it should be no holds barred.

Chris Wallace's father was a better man than he (is). He didn't get where he got being nice and mannerly. He had to work it. Coattails and legacies should have to learn to verbally scratch and claw their way to the top too, or else they should acknowledge the artificiality of their "successes". While there's still time.

#ReadyForRoundTwo...Ding!andGo...

#LetThemPlay~!LetThemPlay!LetThemPlay!

#Thursday, October 15, 2020 in Miami... (How you say, "Bring It" en espanol?)

Let the River Run...

 Let all the Dreamers Wake the Nation.

Come, the New Jerusalem.

(We're coming to the edge, running on the water, coming through the falls, your sons and daughters...)

The Court won't impose "Catholic values". The Court will ensure that even Catholics in society have a voice in our laws...

 The abortion debate today is not the abortion debate of your Grandma's generation or even your Baby Boomer Ma.

Too many birth control options, too much mandated sexual education, too many non stigmas to girls who have sex outside of marriage, and especially, too much science to show us there are three people involved in the abortion decisions:  the mother (who carries the baby in her womb), the father (who provides the sperm) and the growing baby itself.

We can't pretend this is just the woman's decision, like whether she wants breast reduction surgery or to donate a kidney or have another part of her lopped off.  The baby has rights too, and some States will recognize those unborn citizens.

Let the citizens of the State have a say in their laws and values.  Not the Justices operating back in the early 1970s...

At the very worst, we go back to being a society that more lovingly values sexual intercourse (p in v) and values mothers.  It's not just a screw, and screw you.  It's an act of reproduction.

If you don't want it just to be fun and done (and truth be told, those days kinda ended in the 80s with our understanding of AIDS transmission), you prepare, take protection, and understand the full consequences of "failure" of such protections...

No society has to allow death to innocents, if that society votes to outlaw such procedures.  A young woman who faces that -- even in our times of knowledge of birth control -- OR an older woman who finds herself having conceived a potentially "disabled" child even in our age of birth control for those who do not want to conceive "imperfects" at any age, especially late in their life, can travel to those states that will still permit the death of a baby in the womb, OR she can "give it up" for adoption at birth, OR, like so much in life, she can learn to live with her "misfortune".

The days of unquestioningly taking the life of a growing child in the womb (and make no mistake, if left un-interfered with, that is what it is...) are over, friends.  This new Justice has a Downs' Syndrome son of her own.  I am sure she is horrified at the idea that millions just like him are killed off for convenience every year in our country.

It's a child, not a choice.
Your time for choice and to have control over your body comes before the baby is created -- when the sperm meets the egg and the cycle of life begins...

"You Down with A.C.B.? Yeah, you know me..."

 Who's Down with A.C.B?  (apologies to Naughty by Nature, but the cultural shift has begun...)

It's long past time for the cultural re-balancing with more respect for sexual intercourse and the primary reproductive process for life.  Ladies, we're not living in your Grandma or Boomer mother's days, when being caught "pregnant" was something that Bad Girls were stigmatized for.

All of us with mandatory sexual education in public schools have been taught where babies come from, and how to prevent unplanned pregnancies.  AIDS in the 1980s changed the idea that sex could be without consequences for both parties, just for "fun".

We also must accept, in some States in our union, that the third party -- the growing baby in the womb that indeed develops into a life of its own if not interferred with -- will have rights recognized under the law too.  Society in some places is like that:  they will outlaw medical procedures that take the life of a growing citizen.

Choice begins BEFORE conception.  And yes, I understand too, some women do not want to bear an imperfect, potentially disabled child.  Then you really can't conceive, or you must travel to places that would permit you to take the life of an innocent, if you find yourself in such a situation and refuse to bear an imperfect child, give it up -- after birth -- for legal adoption, or decide you don't want to bear the consequences of your actions.

P in V sex, with ejaculation inside the woman, can create a new life.  This isn't a woman's choice... after conception, there are three parties who have stakes under the law:  the man who seeded the child, the woman who is incubating it, and the child growing and developing inside the woman.

Culturally, Hollywood has told us, "Sex is for fun.  Sex is free!  Sex is consequence-less!"  Look around and tell me if you think that is true... The results are in.  Societies that respect life, even the most vulnerable in our elderly and unborn, disabled and imperfect -- still exist.  We never all bought into what Hollywood and the entertainment businesses were selling...

States have the duty, under the Constitution to protect the health and safety and welfare of their own.  Some will outlaw medical procedures that take the life of another, some will not. 

We won't be returning to the days of back alley, coat hangar abortions, done out of shame and secrecy.  That's the danger of having 87-year-old Justices imposing their outdated remembrances and fearful views on the country.

But... we will see many more Downs' Syndrome citizens, especially if older mothers continue to have sexual intercourse without contraceptive protection.  More adoptions of these children, more disability paid to care for them.  Not in every State, but in many.

Fear not.  Benjamin Coney Barrett, like Trig Palin, won't be hidden away in institutions.  They will be accepted as full and equal members of the American family in many places.  Whether you like that idea or not, the cultural re-balancing has already begun...

"Who's Down with A.C.B.?"

Has it Really Come to This?

"Shoot It! ... and "Shoot!" are two of the most common hockey cheers.  They come when the players are passing, passing, or holding the puck skating around, including behind the net, trying to get the best shot available when they are in possession of the puck...

The danger is, the other side is right there dogging you: poking, poking and extending their sticks, trying to regain possession and skate it down to the other end themselves.  (Remember, they are doing all this on skates... It's a fast-action sport. Not the beautiful -- but sloooow -- game of soccer, for sure.)

I've watched enough prep hockey to know that these are common chants, that you never will score if you don't take a shot in the first place, and that so often, the goal comes on the rebound -- the first player shoots, the puck deflects off the goalie or the bar, and another fast-skating player positions himself (or in a more accurate description, gets his or her body and stick there in the millisecond it matters; it's a moving game, remember, faster even than basketball...) in the right place at the right time to stuff in the rebound.

I also know that passion abounds in that game, and fans even at home can get frustrated when their players have possession, but are not taking shots.  "Shooooot IT!", like I say, is a common chant advising players, and getting your own passions out... (Much more common than, "Put the Biscuit in the Basket!" say. But I've been known to holler that one in the stands too, but people tend to turn and look at you on that one, I realized...)

But we live in gun-happy times, it seems, and mostly: a Time for Fear.  

So it does not surprise me (Okay, yes it still does...) that somebody called the cops on neighbors watching the game -- the Stanley Cup / the game's final championship, "for all the marbles" ... -- on tv, when they overhead them hollering at the tv, like we all hear here on Packer Sunday say, or any gameday when you can kind of follow the game based on your neighbors' cheers or groans of disappointment.

 America?  We're better than this.  Really.

35 years ago today, Ferris Bueller had one day off...

 "Life Moves Pretty Fast. 

If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

 

(It's a bit of inside baseball, really...)

------------------------------

Baseball Prospectus' Larry Granillo figured out that the game Principal Ed Rooney watches from the counter of the pizza joint was played June 5, 1985. An 11th-inning pop-up by the Atlanta Braves' Claudell Washington gave it away.

But here’s the rub: The scene wasn’t filmed that day. Actor Matthew Broderick (Ferris Bueller) and Alan Ruck (Cameron Frye) did their “swing batta” routine from seats down the left-field line on Sept. 24, 1985.

Assistant director Ken Collins figured out the date based on the film’s shooting schedule — the German-American Festival’s Von Steuben Parade occurred Sept. 21 — the powder-blue uniforms of the road team and the comical final score of Montreal Expos 17, Chicago Cubs 15. Collins told Baseball Prospectus he recalled that at least 30 runs were scored.

 

"Let's Hear it for the Boy..."

I previously posted a photo of my niece leading the pack*, and just stumbled across this one -- from a past track season -- of my nephew. Equal opportunity means being happy for them being out front, both. (He recently received National Merit academic recognition too!) #TrulyBlessed,Iam,withThisFamily...

... and We Are Getting Stronger.

 

... and the littlest pumpkin, coming up...

Amy. Coney. Barrett.

Because of Rosh Hashanah, the President is respectfully deferring to Ruth Bader Ginsburg's family decision to wait to formally inter her, in Arlington, next to her prominent husband Martin whose role in her life (can we be honest?) was so crucial in financially and socially advantaging RBG to achieve both motherhood and career, and prominent judicial appointments in a time when so many other women with dreams had to defer (Martin Ginsburg was a close friend, and tax lawyer for Ross Perot, who -- in his own way -- helped to elect Bill Clinton, if you recall...). Typically in the Jewish tradition, the period of mourning is not extended out -- like those Catholics who die during the period between Good Friday and Easter, but shiva is effectively "cancelled" by the fall of the High Holidays in the calendar. The body is buried immediately in Jewish tradition, so as not to defile the dead. ------------------------------------------------- Part of President Trump's winning ways are in his common-sense diplomacy, and understanding of the skills necessary to advance causes and purposes to achieve an end goal in a diverse business world made up of many types. (Witness his decision -- in other countries still "evolving" -- not to antagonize and push for gay rights symbolism that would further inflame cultural wars, much as America was not ready, until Joe Biden blurted, to formally and legally advance the marital equality cause here at home. Neither the Clintons, nor the Obamas were ready to press the fight on that hot topic before the time was right -- the path more fully blazed, remember...) ------------------------------------ For this good-spirited reason, he is being respectful of the Ginsburg family by waiting until her end-of-week interment to announce who he has selected to advance for Senate approval as the next American Supreme Court Justice: Amy Coney Barrett. ---------------------------------- It's not really fair to pretend other candidates are ... "in the running", as some pundits and social-media analysts are inclined to do, primarily because -- when those alleged "also rans" are not chosen, it might appear that they were not up to the job. Not true. Their ticket might still be punched one day, but for now, Judge Coney Barrett has the experience, the education, the family background (eldest of seven; mother of seven), and the respective youth shared by recent male Supreme Court picks that will make her essentially untouchable in Senate confirmation hearings. ---------------------------------- Pundits are suggesting there might be a fight to ... "run out the clock" but the clear difference between President Obama's pick of Merrick Garland to the Court, and President Trump's still-to-be-formally-announced choice of Amy Coney Barrett is that one was a lame-duck president, for sure, and the other is not. -------------------------------------- President Obama could not run for a third term. President Trump can, and is. A 4-4 Court decision, in an election-case possibility like Bush v. Gore (God forbid it again come to that), must be avoided, with the highest of non-partisan judicial reasoning guiding the nation and binding up our wounds. The nation has never been more divided, in most living voters' memories. Families, workplaces, houses of worship, neighboring states. It seems President Obama's beautiful words about red people in blue states, and blue people in red states and how we should all peacefully co-exist in our un-shared culture and economy, just humming Kumbayas until the nation was healed, simply never came to fruition. ------------------------------------------ Thare was a time, if you were tuned in, in President Obama's later years before the election, when many understood that a torch had not been passed to the first black president, but that his actions -- or lack thereof -- were essentially beginning the Great Party Divide of the 21st Century fully on display between the Middle American states, and the Coastal states and those with dominant urban centers, that we are finally forced to acknowledge today. (Oddly, even after President Trump's election in 2016, many politicos and pundits refused to acknowledge it -- preferring to blame foreign interference, cheating or something else for why so many Americans whose voices are more equally represented in the Electoral College system voted the way we did.) ------------------------------- I am glad President Trump is the type of man with the couth not to nominate Judge Amy Coney Barrett as Supreme Court justice while the family and country waits to formally eulogize former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose title and service to the country ended in her death. ------------------------------------------ But make no mistake, nor spend any time "analyzing" the qualifications of others: Amy Coney Barrett will be the choice to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and I am sure she too will have the class to thank her predecessor for helping to open doors -- as Martin's wealth and connections did for Ruth -- for high-achieving women like themselves to display what they could and can do when provided the opportunity to advance. -------------------------------- Nobody is owed anything in America, that's the beauty part. -------------------------------- But as MaryAnn Trump and most women, and men, if they are honest, understand: lucky breaks, connections... networking are often necessary for one party to forge ahead, while others just as capable and qualified, do not similarly advance. ------------------------------------ In the coming days, as we transition from summer to autumn with the accompanying natural signs in much of the country, let us keep in mind that ours is a moveable feast: that in our land of plenty, we have an obligation to understand that sharing, sacrifice, and thanksgiving are part of our cultural traditions too, and that though the faces at our annual national gatherings may change over time, the core center holds... ------------------------------------ That's important to value and cherish too, no matter who the players temporarily are. And make no mistake: we are all but temporary players here. ----------------------------------- #AmyConeyBarrett, for the win. ************************************************************ *Apologizies for the crude formatting, but Blogger seems to have temporarily taken away my ability to make the hard paragraph breaks that would make the copy read easier, and thinking through writing, not typesetting, is my forte. For now, this will suffice. Please read the words, and ignore the rough breaks... Think on these things? Thanks! MEG

"It's OK, friend. We'll get through this, together..."

OK clerks... Who thought it was funny, in these pandemic times, to stick Elmo in the WINE section of the grocery store?!? -------------------- Okay, I did!* Thanks for the smile of the day! *Think it, not do it...

The Re-Emergence of Religion in Public Life...

 It's a balance long due: permitting the freedom of religious expression in our public institutions, as one of many voices represented in our pluralistic world today.  Taking God out of the closet or cupboard or wherever the law chose to stick him in allowing more freedoms for the those who do not believe God has a place, still, in our land.  That's where the Federal government overreached.

In trying to preference the non-religious  -- in the same manner the federal government tried to gender and racial preference in the last century -- they overreached...

Denying the religious in the public square -- when legally carried to the extreme -- is like preferencing women over men, dark skin over light skin, as we have seen individuals abused in recent days in the name of righting old wrongs.  It's why, the wealthy children of privileged African-American students can get admission preferences to (formerly) elite universities over second-generation students of European immigrants who outperform them in scholastic metrics...

It's why a well qualified man can be passed over for a job promotion in favor of a woman, struggling to balance family and career, and not performing at the same level as an unencumbered single man serving but one master, whose performance on the job simply surpasses hers, under the outlined metrics measured by...

Instead of comparing, and contrasting, individuals, we have allowed the Federal government -- legally -- to create  a masterful scheme of categories and sub-categories, definitions that don't work any more in the real world (ask a "mixed" individual how they choose to identify...), yet we struggle on against the tide believing that one day these legal discriminations will help to "balance" society.

The same happened with religion.

By shunning believers as outcasts in the public square, we have not eliminated them.  We have simply denied what happens in private -- that people in America still choose to use religious beliefs to shape their public and private behaviors and values.

By attempting to overbalance -- instead of allowing more federalism into the Federal government, we tried as a nation to legally force "one size fits all" cultural beliefs onto our real-life values in terms of sex differences, equal opportunity for all races, and the worth of religious thinking.

Historically, some knew this would never work, not in a country with America's history of religious pluralism.  Our nation was founded on that respect.

The tide is indeed turning... take heart, non-believers.  You still have the First Amendment and can roundly mock believers, in whatever voice you choose to use.  But now, the religious will also have a voice in the values in their children's public schools, in the culture of local areas, and  in how tax dollars are spent.

The newcomers to this nation, many citizens who worship and rely on faith values over commercialized instincts in business and relationships, will help to shape our nation going forward.  Don't be afraid. Achieving a better balance between all regions of the country can only make us stronger as a whole...

God Bless America.  Or not.

Our nation today subsumes the historical values of many cultures -- including religious ones -- as we move forward with new technologies in building new communities in new economies.

Let Freedom Ring...

------------------

 *  Happy Sunday, everyone.  Religious and non-religious, believers and non-believers alike... It's long past time to practice true tolerance and acceptance in our shared culture.

"Well I know Jesus, and I talk to God, and I remember this from when I was young... Faith, Hope and Love are some good things He gave us, and the greatest is LOVE."

** If you believe that Science negated God, as many no doubt do, believing the two cannot co-exist, I invite you to Google "Gregor Mendel".  Or Albert Einstein.  Marie Curie? Or other scientists who professed religious faiths, and -- in the case of Mendel -- whose callings in scholastic religious life enabled them to devote time and study in their scientific pursuits.  Those monks... they had the time to devote, and often chose wisely, and advanced our civilizations downline.  No myth!

2 Timothy 4:7 - I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith -

 I lost a good friend, here on Earth, at only 15, from childhood leukemia.  His pastor focused on that verse from Timothy, I remember, as it was not an easy death.  Not for him, nor his parents, or anyone close. June 4, 1984.

 Reminded of it tonight, as the world has lost another fighter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Nevermind politics, strategies or whether in agreement or disagreement with her views, she too was a fighter to the end, I am sure.  God bless and keep her, and her loved ones close, especially in the coming days and nights.

 

2 Timothy 4:7 - I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith -

May we all be so courageous and strong in our Earthly bodies, if God chooses for us to undertake a tough final race like that, in our deaths from this world.  Sincerely... MEG. 

The Twins' Josh Donaldson...

 in a dick move.  And the White Sox win the game. Show the lil boys in M/minne how the game is played by the Bigs...

Go Sox.

--------------------- 

* Minnesota is now three games behind the first-place and league-leading White Sox in the AL Central. Chicago clinched a playoff berth with the win. The Twins are seeded fourth, with the highest winning percentage among the AL's three second-place teams.

What is Privilege?

Privilege is a wealthy man from a wealthy family who inherited much wealth complaining that since he transitioned into the female gender, with the accompanying writing career, tenured professorship, and guest spot on "I Am Cait", complaining when a re-affirming rock disappears from his garden and causes her great anxiety in this time over her (now) same-sex marraige (perfectly legal when he married her, pre-transition; likely still solidly legal today despite the implication she (the original wife) converted to lesbianism), and concern for his (also wealthy via family inheritance) son-transitioning into the full bud of womanhood, in (former) Dad's footsteps... "You Matter"? It takes a garden rock to spell out your societal privileges, lady? Please, at least get a slogan or campaign of your own, stop shoehorning in on those whose dark-skinned poorer children are threatened -- by neighborhood violence and poverty -- and whose social struggles are not invented in one's head nor erased by the temporary presence of a painted rock.

 I think the artificial hormones are making her more melodramatic...

-----------

Opinion

The Most Powerful Man in the World Thinks My Family Is ‘Less Than’

By Jennifer Finney Boylan

 

It was the worst of times; it was the worst of times. I’m an optimist at heart, but there were days this year when looking on the bright side seemed like the act of a lunatic. Every day I felt the heaviness in my heart.

Then, one morning in August, I walked down our dirt road with the dog. Mist was rising off Long Pond. When we got home, I found a small stone among the snapdragons and joe-pye weed in our garden. Someone had painted it with a rainbow. On one side were the words “You matter.”

This turned out to be one of a series of painted rocks that an anonymous person, or persons, have been leaving around my neighborhood. Some of the messages on them are generic, like “Maine: The way life should be.” But others seemed specific to their recipients. In front of the house of a neighbor with lots of children was a red rock inscribed with “Kids are great.” In the garden of a new arrival to our tiny Maine neighborhood: “Welcome to the lake.” By the house of a couple with a goofy black Lab: “Your dog is cute.”

It seemed as if a guardian angel had appeared among us, charged with the task of giving us hope at a time when many of us have never felt so lousy.

For me, a reminder that my big gay family matters right now was more than a pleasantry. It was like a message from heaven. For the last four years the message from Donald Trump has been the opposite: To him, we don’t matter at all. In so many ways, he’s made it clear he feels we’d be better off erased.

The messaging began the first week of his administration, when mention of L.G.B.T.Q. rights disappeared from the White House website.

This was just for starters. Later, he rejected plans to add questions about gender identity and sexual orientation to the 2020 census. He banned trans people from the military. On the anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting, he announced that his administration would roll back Obama-era health care protections for trans people. He prohibited embassies from flying the rainbow flag on flagpoles. For three out of four Junes he has failed to mention Pride Month — although one time he did take time out of his busy schedule to talk up National Homeownership Month.

His Department of Justice filed a brief with the Supreme Court endorsing the idea that employers had the right to fire L.G.B.T.Q. people just for being themselves. In the end, even the conservative-majority Supreme Court ruled against him. But the idea that the president of the United States went out of his way to put me, and people like me, at risk, is harrowing.

This August, at its convention, the Trump Republican Party re-endorsed its 2016 platform. You know, the one that sanctifies “traditional marriage” and condemns the Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality. Quoting Justice Antonin Scalia, a dissenter to that ruling, it describes a marriage like mine as a “silly extravagance.”

Last week the administration filed a brief with the Indiana Supreme Court making the case that a Catholic school can fire a gay teacher who marries. It’s a First Amendment case, the administration says. Because persecuting L.G.B.T.Q. people is a form of free expression, I guess. Like cake frosting.

Also in the last week, the president released a shortlist of potential Supreme Court nominees for his second term, a list rife with anti-L.G.B.T.Q. and anti-civil rights individuals. The legal director of Lambda Legal, an organization that fights for the legal rights of L.G.B.T.Q. people, described the nominees as “terrifying.” One of them, Allison Jones Rushing, has ties to a group called the Alliance Defending Freedom, which has espoused the idea that homosexuality should be criminalized. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls it a hate group.

So it’s been that kind of summer. Pandemic. Apocalyptic wildfires in the West. Economic collapse. National convulsion over systemic racism. And almost every week, another message from the most powerful man in the world that my family — which includes a same-sex couple and a young transgender woman — is “less than.” Less than what? Less than equal.

Would you be shocked to learn, then, that the president bills himself as the most pro-L.G.B.T.Q. chief executive in history? An August video by Richard Grenell — a gay man who has served as ambassador to Germany, and (briefly) as acting director of national intelligence — says that “President Trump has done more to advance the rights of gays and lesbians in three years than Joe Biden did in 40-plus years in Washington.”

When I watched this video, all I could think of was the line from the old Sylvia cartoon: “That woman must be on drugs.”

It’s not that I don’t applaud the appointment of an openly gay person to a cabinet-level position; that’s a sure sign of progress. But the idea that this outweighs the relentless assault on L.G.B.T.Q. families is absurd. The Log Cabin Republicans, whose members are L.G.B.T.Q., defend the president by saying that tax cuts he promoted “have benefited L.G.B.T.Q. families and helped put food on their tables.” They’re also enthusiastic about “opportunity zones” — areas where investors face a lower tax rate — and the “hard line on foreign policy.”

Listen, Log Cabin Republicans, I’m glad you’re happy about tax cuts. But somehow the prospect of my marriage being considered a “silly extravagance” and giving an employer the right to fire me because of who I am does — I admit it — reduce my glee somewhat.

Maybe some people think that L.G.B.T.Q. equality is a done deal. Maybe there are straight, white, suburban moms and dads who think their queer children are safe, now that the culture wars that once threatened their sons and daughters are a thing of the past.

They’re wrong.

The good news is that L.G.B.T.Q. people can make a difference in the next election, if we show up. That’s a big “if,” though; an estimated one- fifth of queer adults are not registered to vote. As Sarah Kate Ellis, the president of Glaad, told me in a recent interview, “It’s imperative that we bring our voices from the street to the polls.” The struggle for families like mine is far from over. But if we sit out this fight, it most definitely can still be lost.

Last week, I came outside one morning to feel the first cold wind of autumn blowing over the lake. On the maples, leaves had begun to turn red. Winter is coming.

I looked into the garden. The rock with the rainbow had vanished, just as swiftly as it had come.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

--------------------

* I think someone should refer this woman to a private attorney who can help the family protect their assets and privately contract for the family relations they wish to be.  The original wife stayed in the partnership, likely for financial as well as emotional/famlial reasons.  This one mocks home ownership programs, and mocks a working gay man, calling him "a woman on drugs", and dismisses the concerns of people working to put food on the table for their own families.

 Privilege, capital P.   Best spend some time buttoning up the lakehouse, dear.  Indeed, it will get colder this winter, naturally... 

Be prepared, or find a hired man to help your family .... "survive" ?  The audacity of a (privileged) dope.

---------

 ADDED:  Are the editors asleep at the NYT again?  Nobody flagged this article for common-sense review? Seriously? The 1619ers must not be reading anymore...

 

 

Feeding Feral Cats...

 Just, don't do it.

Nevermind the birds, rabbits and other wildlife they will prey on to eat, there are plenty of other reasons not to "help" feral creatures grow stronger and gain an unnatural advantage against their prey.

Namely, it's not easy to later "tame" them except by arduous personal and continual effort. You can't shift this work off on others, the way you can -- parental care to the state, say. (and who would want to do that to their parents?) Think best needs of the child, the elder, the feral creature in the wild... (Each has their own needs and society has established ways of providing for them, to maintain their strength and allow them to prolong their lives, naturally. Respect.)

Those who lack common-sense foresight of the natural world (they used to kill kittens at birth -- I am reminded in William Maxwells's story They Came Like Swallows, not out of cruelty but because it's well known what happens when cats breed without care, without humans to continue providing for them, a lifetime commitment when you begin to take a pet...) do not yet understand the cruel death they are often simply postponing for the half wild, now dependent creatures moving between the true state of wildlife and the domesticated world.  Learn what the ages teach:  you simply cannot feed the wildlife, no matter how cue the little fawn looks or what you've "named" the critter -- without sentencing it to a painful, non-natural eventual death.  Witness:
"The couple comes, the transfer takes place. The worry never ends, of course. If it doesn't work out, then the couple will be returning the two girls to us. That's the deal. We'll keep on trying until there is a good fit. But for at least tonight, we are two cats down here, at the farmette. Five of the teenagers remain. So many have been lost to the great outdoors and to speeding cars! We can only hope that the remaining guys will stay safe." *

But hopes without firm girders of support are of no relief. And all the promises in the world are no match for the truth in reality. Stop feeding feral animals, today.  Let them learn to make their way, without your artificial, and temporary, support.  You will encourage and facilitate less to easily breed. and take better care of the pets that you do adopt and make a lifelong home for.

------------------

* No, this is not from the Maxwell story.

/PSA, longtime coming, over.

The block I used to work on... in downtown Minneapolis.

I worked in the building right next to the courthouse.*  It's already been "shut down" by the pandemic and then the riots arising from George Floyd's death.  I've been back downtown once, several months ago, to check out a job lead -- they were working from home, but I confirmed the building -- and to get my hair cut in a deserted skyway...

Still, seeing the streets here, the parking garages, the strip club** housed in the fancy former bank building***, and the lover levels you once walked daily (I liked the outside air and skipped the skyway level myself, even in wintertime) brought back memories of a time that will not be returning.

Still, we move on. What choice have we?

----------------

*the Family Justice Center

** the Downtown Cabaret

*** the Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank (1891 - 1942)

Why I Support Trump.

 It's probably hard for loved ones still coming to terms, all these years later, with the fact that their loved ones died and were crippled in meaningless wars that served no strategic national interest.  That their boys, and girls, were often but pawns in the war-making machinery that led to their meaningless early deaths.

I come from a generation, and a family, that emphasized brainwork, not "bravery" and brawn. Reason and intelligence over belligerence and bullying. Good Books over guns and bombs and the flashy power of shock and awe. Quiet comfort, modest long-lived lives over the bull roar and early rot of young bodies...

In my day, the young men who enlisted had few other options:  they were not students, likely could not find a suitable entry-level position, and entered the military as a last resort.  They needed personal leadership -- to be led -- and the accompanying government security of government preference points and extra help that their service status conferred.

As technology replaces more and more of the manpower needed in the military, as we have wised up to the need for only "get in, get out" defensive actions in the name of national security -- and less personal sacrifice to serve the interests of other players in other countries -- I am sure it is hard to take the blinders off and accept that our military men, and women, once cloaked in glory and "bravery" and self sacrifice -- were indeed often the pawns of poorer people who could not afford for them higher education, a life of the mind, or an independent life of their own.

God bless them today, but let's not continue to defend their deaths as meaningful, nor their long-lasting injuries and illnesses as noble badges.  Most of us learned from VietNam how men can be manipulated, and how... if many had to do it all over again, they might have tried to be stronger and craft lives of their own that went longer, deeper and were more meaningful that simply serving as animal-like sacrifices in the days of old.

Death and maiming don't make Americans great -- neither outbound nor internally.  That's but another truth that most of us have learned, and refuse to be cowed into playing along with.  The years without war are better for a nation -- that is why President Trump will be elected again in November, and why the Bushes, Cheneys, McCains and their enablers (and allll the Dem politicos who went along to get along in the war years) sat out this year's Republican convention.

Good riddance.  Unlike those still remembered and mourned in the hearts of their loves ones still struggling all these years on to calculate the price their own flesh and blood paid for...   what exactly again? No amount of chest beating, rhetorical flourishes or flag waving can make them whole again, sadly.

#IStandWiththePresident

#NoMoreMeaninglessWars 

-------------------

ADDED:  From the NYT propaganda rag, an editorial headline:

Dana Canedy

My Son Knows His Father Wasn’t a ‘Loser’ or a ‘Sucker’ 

Sadly though, the boy does not know his father at all, except through the fog of memory, and the stories puffed and shared about him. These children do not know their parents as men and women who are among the living, because they have been unduly sacrificed. No amount of NYT stories in the scrapbook can replace a living father, or mother, sacrificed in wartime. Let the child speak for himself later in life because his father no longer can. Was the price paid worth the loss of a living parent sheperding a childhood, providing for his own offspring, not the promise of... building schools for girls abraod, or destabilitizing other nations for the elusive promise of peace? When our journalists at formerly prominent publications stop asking hard questions and start simply swallowing lies and myths, we need a stronger class of Americans to step up. No guns needed; wisdom does not come with a trigger or flash, not that kind of weaponry... Truth be told? The child's father met his son only once -- killed when his Humvee rolled over a defensive landmine on the side of an Iraqi road. He had no legal committment to the Baby Mama who paints their bond so thick with her words in the NYT, and likely would not have been present in his child's life in a highly visible way, had the father lived. Myths. One day, the child will likely question them, and come to understand why exactly he was raised without a father, wearing his mother's name -- (a Canedy, not a King) -- instead. Lo and behold, the mother is exploiting the dead soldier's alleged fatherhood tales for monetary gain. Mother Raises Son With Father's Wisdom: Mother keeps father's memory alive for her son through his wartime journal. Nothing but pity here for the sons of single moms thinking they can replace a dead father with their own inflated memories and words of masculine wisdome. Dead, not in glorious combat even, but after rolling over a roadside bomb in a failed attempt to "liberate" another nation's peoples. Sad.

Baseball, hotdogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet!

Beisbol, hotdogs, apple pie and let's all play!

Beisbol, hotdogs, apple pie and Labor Day!

------------

Happy Labor Day weekend!

To those celebrating, AND

those celebrating at time and a half, too!

God Bless America. Union Strong.