Anyone who has kept up with the egg crisis here in the U.S. knows this could be the perfect Valentine’s Day gift. Remember – it’s always the thought that counts!
Image: Bob Englehart
Happy Valentine’s Day 2025!
“I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you. “
Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist”
Image: Adelina ZW, Pixabay
Filed under News
Decode This!
If you have no major projects scheduled in the near future, consider taking on this challenge from the Smithsonian Institution. They’re offering USD 1 million to anyone who can figure out what this ancient manuscript says. For more than a century, no one has been able to decipher the various symbols carved into these tablets from the Indus Valley civilization. The Bronze Age society flourished in the northwestern regions of Southern Asia from roughly 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE. As one of the world’s first large-scale urban cultures, they developed grid-based layouts, standardized weights and measures and elaborate drainage and even sewer systems; domesticated animals; and of course, created a logosyllabic writing system.
The prize announcement actually comes from M.K. Stalin, an official with the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Recent archeological examinations noted similarities between the Indus script and early writing from Tamil Nadu, despite the considerable geographic distance.
Researchers at Tamil Nadu’s Pondicherry University digitized 15,000 graffiti-marked pot shards from 140 archaeological sites in Tamil Nadu and compared them against 4,000 examples of the Indus Valley script. They found that nearly 60 percent of the signs matched and 90 percent shared “parallels”. Despite the intensive scrutiny, the Indus markings remain enigmatic.
Hence, the reward!
Personally, I’d take on the challenge, since I love a great mystery and harbor a fascination with ancient cultures. But sometimes I even have trouble figuring out my own dreams! See what you can do!
Images: Wikimedia Commons
Filed under History
And Life Continues
As many of you might remember, one of my best friends, Robert, died last October. Late on December 23, I learned that another long-time, close friend, Carl, died earlier that day. We had met in 1990 at the bank where we both worked. We bonded over such mundane things as rock music and being Texas natives.
Last month I was equally startled to find out another longtime friend, Randy, had died following a freak accident at home; he fell down some stairs and never regained consciousness. He passed away just days before his birthday. We had met through a local Toastmasters group in 2001. A veteran of the U.S. Post Office, Randy had finally retired a few years ago.
Thus, since October, I’ve lost three friends – and my already small social circle has decreased even further. Damn!
As my parents often said, it’s hell getting old! And here’s another adage: aging isn’t for wimps!
But, as I’ve discussed with a few friends over the past couple of years, I’m at that age where I lose relatives and friends to death and not because I owe them money. It’s part of life.
In the late 1990s I saw a program on TV about people pushing the centenarian point in their lives and what their longevity secrets were. None seemed to possess any mystical key to putting mileage on their personal odometers, but they all had one unique attribute that can’t be measured in facts and statistics. They were able to accept the death of loved ones with few questions. It hurt, of course – but they understood such things happen. Our present realm is often brutal and cold. People die.
But people certainly live. And we can’t truly live if we break down every time someone we know and love leaves permanently.
Last year I came across an online editorial that noted millennials are referring to the 1980s and 90s as the “late 1900s”. Well…they are! And, as I told a close friend, I’m glad I lived through them! So did he – who will be 60 next month.
I told that same friend, as well as a few others, that I’m happier now than I have been in years. I have the same feeling that I did around the turn of the century, when the world seemed wide open and the future belonged to everyone with dreams.
For the most part, it still does.
When Ann Said to Hell with It
Recently Ann Telnaes resigned her position as a political cartoonist for The Washington Post – a role she’d held for 16 years – in protest over the newspaper’s refusal to publish this cartoon. It apparently offended the oligarchs who have taken seats at Donald Trump’s table, including Amazon found Jeff Bezos who owns The Washington Post.
Good for her! In an environment increasingly hostile to free speech and free press, with right-wing extremists banning books instead of childhood hunger, it’s great that someone has the backbone to stand up to the madness. Here is Telnaes’ editorial explaining her decision.
Filed under Art Working
Gallery of Nitwits
Well, just like the Earth didn’t self-obstruct when Barack Obama won his two elections, it hasn’t 75 7jpj56exploded now that Donald Trump has returned to the White House. But at least there was never any (real) question that Obama actually won. And I’m still feeling dismal.
It’s tough to remain faithful to the democratic process and the American vision of equality and happiness when someone like Trump keeps succeeding. But this is life on planet Earth and it’s imperfect. In fact, it’s downright screwy!
I don’t care what anyone says. In my adult life, I’ve never seen anyone as incompetent or unqualified to claim the title of U.S. President than Donald Trump. As I’ve stated before, I was embarrassed with George W. Bush in the White House. But I’m incredibly disgusted with this former real estate magnate / pathetic reality TV star / tax cheat / draft dodger / womanizer in the same role. U.S. politics has truly descended into madness.
Trump’s cabinet appointments have proven equally unfit for such prestigious and high-profile positions. Former Congressman Matt Gaetz was the first of Trump’s appointments to come under intense scrutiny – and the first to withdraw his nomination. Trump had wanted Gaetz to be his Attorney General, the nation’s top law enforcement official, despite not having any experience in the legal field – except as a litigant.
Trump’s second choice for the role, Pam Bondi, is Florida’s former attorney general and a corporate lobbyist. Like the rest of Trump’s nominees, she’s a devout Trump supporter and apologist, but she actually made it through her confirmation hearing in one piece and is now overseeing the U.S. Justice Department.
For Defense Secretary, Trump picked Pete Hegseth, a former military veteran and FOX New TV host. He also made it through his confirmation hearing – despite tales of his excessive alcohol consumption and sexual harassment allegations. In this latter respect, he’s Trump “Light”.
Three other Trump nominees – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for Health and Human Services Secretary, Kash Patel for FBI Director, and Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence – are facing tougher paths. Kennedy, son of the late and legendary former U.S. Attorney General, ran as an independent candidate in last year’s presidential race. But his past comments questioning the efficacy of vaccines, including COVID-19, have come back to haunt worse than one of Trump’s ex-wives. He’d once declared that AIDS in Africa “is an entirely different disease from Western AIDS” and claimed that work done by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is akin to that of Nazi death camps. He also propagated a popular conspiracy theory that vaccines cause autism in children.
Patel said recently that, if chosen as FBI Director, he’d terminate as many of the agency’s employees as possible and shut down its headquarters building, before reopening it as a museum to the “deep state”. That “deep state” reference is common among right-wing conspiracy theorists, especially after FBI investigations into Trump’s antics during his first term in office.
Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii and a military veteran, may have the toughest road of all of them. She has insinuated that Russia had some justification for invading Ukraine three years ago; denouncing the administration of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as a “corrupt autocracy”. She backed Russia’s unfounded claims that the U.S. and Ukraine have collaborated to engage in clandestine biological warfare.
One of my closest friends, Preston*, is a Trump voter who had told me last year that he was concerned – if Vice-President Kamala Harris won the presidency – she’d send U.S. troops into Ukraine. He has two young adult sons who could face military conscription, if a military draft was enacted – which hasn’t occurred since the early 1970s. I can identify with that sentiment. In 1991, I feared something similar would happen with the Persian Gulf War, when I was in my mid-20s. Preston believes wholeheartedly in Trump (which I don’t hold against him), but I’m worried now that Trump could send U.S. troops into the Middle East to help Israel fight against Iran. Both those countries have nuclear weapons.
Another disquieting possibility is that Trump will enact the classic Republican tax cuts – that bullshit “trickle-down” economics regimen every GOP official has pushed onto the American people for over a century; the kind that has always shoved the U.S. into financial despair. It happened with the Great Depression of the 1930s, the savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s, and the Great Recession less than two decades ago. Trump’s round of tax cuts and deregulation measures during his first term only exacerbated the trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic. I fear it’s going to happen again, and the U.S. will find itself in more economic distress.
But don’t blame people like me. I didn’t vote for either Trump or Harris, but – as with Hillary Clinton in 2016 – I have to concede Harris would have been the lesser of two evils. That’s never a pleasant position in which voters should find themselves, but it’s how I view politics in the U.S.
Now we’ll just have to see what shenanigans occur with Trump 2.0. Fasten your seatbelts.
*Name changed
Filed under Essays
February 2025 Literary Calendar
Events in the month of February for writers and readers
African-American History Month (U.S.)
Library Lovers’ Month
- February 1 – Abolition of Slavery Day; Change Your Password Day; National Freedom Day (U.S.)
- February 2 – James Joyce’s Birthday
- February 3 – Norman Rockwell’s Birthday; Take Your Child to the Library Day
- February 4-10 – Children’s Authors and Illustrators Week
- February 5 – World Read Aloud Day
- February 7 – Charles Dickens’s Birthday; Sinclair Lewis’ Birthday; Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Birthday
- February 8 – Jules Verne’s Birthday
- February 9 – Read in the Bathtub Day
- February 12 – Judy Blume’s Birthday; Charles Darwin’s Birthday
- February 14 – International Book Giving Day; Library Lover’s Day; Valentine’s Day
- February 15 – Galileo Galilei’s Birthday
- February 17 – President’s Day (U.S.)
- February 18 – Toni Morrison’s Birthday
- February 19 – Amy Tan’s Birthday
- February 20 – Ansel Adams’ Birthday; World Day of Social Justice
- February 21 – Erma Bombeck’s Birthday; International Mother Language Day
- February 22 – Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Birthday
- February 23-March 1 – Freedom to Read Week (Canada)
- February 25 – Pierre Renoir’s Birthday
- February 26 – Tell a Fairy Tale Day
- February 27 – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Birthday; John Steinbeck’s Birthday
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In Memoriam – Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024
“We have a tendency to exalt ourselves and to dwell on the weaknesses and mistakes of others. I have come to realize that in every person there is something fine and pure and noble, along with a desire for self-fulfillment. Political and religious leaders must attempt to provide a society within which these human attributes can be nurtured and enhanced.”
Image: Dave Granlund
Filed under News
Happy New Year 2025!
“On New Year’s Eve the whole world celebrates the fact that a date changes. Let us celebrate the dates on which we change the world.”
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January 2025 Literary Calendar
Events in the month of January for writers and readers
National Braille Literacy Month
- January 1 – J.D. Salinger’s Birthday; Copyright Law Day; Global Family Day; New Year’s Day
- January 2 – Isaac Asimov’s Birthday; National Science Fiction Day
- January 3 – J.R.R. Tolkien’s Birthday
- January 6 – Carl Sandburg’s Birthday
- January 9 – Judith Krantz’s Birthday
- January 12 – Jack London’s Birthday
- January 12-18 – Universal Letter Writing Week
- January 14 – Poetry at Work Day
- January 16 – Book Publisher’s Day
- January 18 – A.A. Milne’s Birthday; Thesaurus Day
- January 19 – Edgar Allan Poe’s Birthday
- January 20 – Martin Luther King, Jr., Day (U.S.)
- January 22 – Library Shelfie Day
- January 23 – National Handwriting Day
- January 25 – Robert Burns’ Birthday
- January 27 – Family Literacy Day (Canada); Nazi Holocaust Remembrance Day
- January 31 – Zane Grey’s Birthday
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Chief Writing Wolf 