Good Morning
Oh God, help us
To be generous in our opinions of others,
To be considerate of all we meet,
To be patient with those with whom we work,
To be faithful to every trust,
To be courageous in the face of danger,
To be humble in all our living,
To be prayerful every hour of the day,
To be joyous in all life’s experiences,
And to be dependent upon me,
For strength in facing life’s uncertainties.
Filed under News
Once more, political divisions have caused the U.S. Congress to shut down the government. Sigh…again?! Ever wonder if a long-running TV show will ever have its final season?
I’m not a federal worker, but my current role relies on the U.S. government functioning at full capacity. Or at least at a rational level. Then again, that may be too much to ask in the current environment.
Gosh, I hate to interrupt someone during their nap!
While literally thousands of people across the nation have found themselves on a reluctant furlough, members of Congress, along with the president and vice-president, are still getting paid. Of course, they rarely suffer whenever such indignities befall the average peon. Having lived in a gilded cage most of his life, Donald Trump can’t feel that kind of pain – certainly not with the support of his blind faithful.
The shutdown has entered its first full week, and – as usual – the finger-pointing has been rampant. I’m almost afraid some of those fools will put their hands in traction!
I don’t care if any of them get hurt, though. They’re not worth the trouble. But Congress is as politically divided as the nation. Trump bears a great deal of responsibility for that chaos. He made it cool for some people to be hateful and bigoted. Yes, he’s taking America back – back to a time when only people who looked like him held the bulk of the country’s power and money.
But the nation has been growing divided for decades now. Technically I believe it started with the Watergate fiasco, but worsened the moment Bill Clinton first announced his run for the presidency. It only intensified after the turn of the century.
Thousands of federal workers are now not getting paid. That includes active duty military personnel; even those stationed overseas. But Trump has done the right thing in that case and ordered that they continue getting paid. Air traffic controllers also aren’t getting paid, but are being forced to work, as they are considered essential employees. Many, however, are calling in sick. They learned their lesson more than four decades ago. In 1980 the Air Traffic Controllers Union was the only labor group in the U.S. to support Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign. The following year they went through on their threats to strike – demanding better pay, updated equipment and more controllers. And then Reagan fired 11,000 of them. Needless to say that was the last time any work union in the U.S. supported a Republican for the presidency.
Even though things look okay for me now, I’m still concerned. The government agency my company contracts with has been the target of many public officials, especially Republicans. Trump, however, has issued another threat. He’s promised to terminate a number of federal associates and says that, when the government reopens, he’ll make sure they don’t get any back pay – which has always happened in the past.
Personally I think it would be great if every essential employee doesn’t show up for their job. I mean EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM! That’s not likely, however, but I’d love to see how these sanctimonious Republicans would respond.
In the meantime, average taxpaying, law-abiding citizen will continue to feel the adverse effects of this morass. It’s a never-ending cycle of incompetence in the highest levels of the political universe.
Image: Gary Larson
Filed under Essays
Filed under News
Every “Banned Books Week” because it highlights the ongoing fight against censorship. But it’s become especially critical in recent years in what has generally been considered the world’s most powerful democracy. Under our current leadership, we’re heading towards authoritarianism, and the number of book bans across the U.S. has increased and intensified.
The hysteria won’t stop – certainly not as long as we have right-wing extremists in the White House and both houses of Congress. Just remember: no one has the right to determine what’s appropriate for others to read! That’s counterintuitive to the First Amendment to the Constitution and won’t succeed. It will only drive readership underground and ultimately lead to anarchy.
Authors Guild Censorship Tracker: Monitoring Threats to Free Speech and Authors’ Rights
PEN America: Banned Books List 2025
PEN America: The Normalization of Book Banning
Keep writing and keep fighting!
Filed under News
Events in the month of October for writers and readers
National Book Month
National Reading Group Month
Around 1990 I met a woman who once worked for the now-defunct Braniff Airlines. She was the aunt of a close friend, and somehow we got to discussing business practices and how things function in the corporate world. I was already working for a major bank in Dallas. She noted how the former president of Braniff refused to accept the reality of bad news. Anyone who dared to step into his office and present him with less-than-stellar information about the company’s dire finances was promptly terminated. On the day in 1982 the company filed for bankruptcy, she mentioned that employees didn’t get paid and, in some clerical settings, they literally went ballistic and destroyed many pieces of equipment and office furnishings as retribution. I was shocked, but said I didn’t blame them.
In the summer of 2011 I landed a contract technical writing position with an IT firm in Dallas. One of the senior technical writers had worked for Braniff as a flight attendant until they went bankrupt. She confirmed what that other woman had told me two decades earlier. Braniff employees didn’t receive their last paycheck and lost their patience.
You don’t have to be a business owner to understand that bad news is an inevitable burr in daily operations. It comes with territory, but some people handle it better than others. The same goes for comedy. Cultural shifts can make individuals more or even less sensitive to certain aspects of their surrounding environments.
The U.S. currently has a president, however, who has no problem calling people names and making fun of them, but suddenly draws the line at people mocking him. “You’re a horrible person” is how he often prefaces a response to someone who asks him a question he finds intolerable. But, as I wrote in a previous essay, it appears the demonic world of American politics has become riddled with the emotionally fragile.
Last week conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed by a young man while holding an outdoor question-and-answer session at Utah Valley University. The 31-year-old Kirk left behind a wife and two young children. Right-wingers immediately jumped into the chaos and started pointing fingers at liberals and the entire Democratic Party.
“Democrats own what happened today,” South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace groused to reporters the day after Kirk’s death. “I am devastated. My kids have called, panicking. All the kids of conservatives are panicking.”
President Trump ordered flags flown at half-mast in honor of Kirk; something he didn’t do in the bloody aftermath of the January 6, 2021 riots on Capitol Hill.
It’s ironic, though, because Kirk once said that gun-related deaths were merely a price to pay for Americans’ right to own firearms. “It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment,” he stated matter-of-factly in 2023. Now he’s being lionized as a martyr to conservative ideology.
Kirk also believed firmly in free speech, declaring that saying even “contrarian things” is acceptable. I have to agree with that statement. But, as the adage goes, be careful what you wish for…
The general concept of free speech is now under attack, as it always has been with Trump and his MAGA mafia. Recently the Federal Communications Commission ordered the ABC network to cancel or at least suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s nightly talk show, after he commented on Kirk’s murder. Kimmel didn’t gloat over the assassination; he simply pointed out that Trump supporters are using it to enhance their own anger.
For some folks, free speech only seems to have consequences or responsibilities when someone says something they don’t like. How free should someone be with their own words? You can’t threaten to kill someone or you can’t call them a rapist without tangible proof. Slander and threats of violence aren’t covered by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Banned Books Week 2025 is coming up soon, and I recollect a news piece I saw back around 1986 – the centennial anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. Several foreign-born and newly-minted American citizens discussed the oppression they escaped. One woman, a Russian, noted that she was a reading a book at an outdoor café, when said she suddenly got the feeling someone was watching her. But she remembered she was now in the United States – and she could read just about anything she wanted, even in public, without fear that someone would report her to authorities for being a traitor or disruptive; merely because of what she was reading.
Is that where we’re headed? People need to watch what they read, as well as what they say? Or is the First Amendment now subject to political interpretation?
Do any of us want someone else to determine what we say and read? I’m not willing to give up that type of freedom. No one should.
Image: Dave Whamond
Filed under Essays
“Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change – this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress.”
Image: John Darkow
Filed under News
Events in the month of September for writers and readers
National Hispanic Heritage Month
National Suicide Prevention Month
World Alzheimer’s Month
Filed under News
Recently American Online (AOL) made a stunning announcement: they’re shutting down on September 30 – this year. As in one month from now! What had once been THE email service for many internet users has apparently run its course and – like most lifelong politicians – is no longer relevant.
Introduced in 1991, the screeching sound of AOL dial up served as the soundtrack of those early days of the cyber universe. I definitely remember it! AOL came with my first personal computer in March of 2000. The “You’ve got mail” voice alert was exciting at the time.
The influx of broadband remedied the nails-on-chalkboard tone that signaled a connection to the internet. But, as with dial phones and 8-track tape players, AOL may have become a victim of technology. It’s just what happens with technology and trends.
Despite my initial love for AOL, I had two major clashes with them; the second of which severed our relationship forever. In February 2004, AOL published a piece on how Christopher Columbus allegedly used Leap Year Day of 1504 to trick the indigenous Taino people of Jamaica into providing food for him and his stranded crew. In the comments section, someone posted a completely unrelated remark; something to the effect of “no one has suffered like the Jewish people.”
I have no idea what prompted it, except ethnocentric arrogance. But I replied with a remark that included the term “politically correct bullshit”. Apparently that hurt someone’s feelings, so they reported me to AOL who promptly deleted the verbiage and suspended me from commenting for a short period. In other words, AOL did something that reeked of juvenile behavior – they put me on “probation”.
“Excuse me?” It was bad enough I could hardly understand the customer service representative through her heavy accent. Like several U.S. companies at the turn of the century, AOL had outsourced their technical support and customer service to India and other parts unknown. But, when she told me about the probationary status due to my foul language, I retorted, “You don’t place me on probation! I place you on probation!” I was a paying customer, plus the U.S. Supreme Court had already ruled that foul language was protected speech under the First Amendment to the Constitution. Neither truth would change their cyber mind.
Seven years later I committed another more egregious act – in the minds of AOL leadership. I emailed a nude image of myself to a close friend in a joke message. This time it was AOL who got their feelings hurt and literally shut down my email address. I had to scramble to find another service and settled on Gmail. But I kept thinking – if everyone who used foul language or sent a nude photo got banned from the internet, well…you wouldn’t have an internet!
My father – who was born in 1933 – told me that, as a kid, he thought the voices he heard from the radio were from tiny people inside the device. Radio was a popular form of technology in the 1930s and 40s. Then television, then computers and now…well, who knows what will come up in the future.
Goodbye to AOL. And life continues. Like technology itself, it always does.
Filed under Essays
Events in the month of August for writers and readers
Family Fun Month
Happiness Happens Month
Romance Awareness Month
Filed under News
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