MADNESS IN MARCH

Ready for a break from life-or-death matters?  To ease your ongoing suffering in the Time of Trump, I bring you my second composition from the Caligula Suite, “Divertimento #2: Variations on The Madness of March.” Enjoy!

Anyone can play Bracketology.  And watch the NCAA basketball tourney on the telly. Be assured it’s good clean fun, exciting to see the world’s best pure athletes compete in a game famed for its nonstop excitement.

You need not bet on the madness in one of those popular brackets you have heard about.  Not mandatory.  But for me, the absence of a monetary stake in the games has all the thrill of kissing a sibling.  So I advise putting some fleeting spice in your life and plunge a fin or a sawbuck or next month’s mortgage payment into the nearest pool.

The odds of picking every winner in the pool are approximately 3.4 trillion to one, I’ve been told.  Not an easy task, even for a seer like me.  So I trust that if I miss a pick or few, you’ll cut me some slack.

Donations to your favorite gambling guru are not required but welcome.  No, I’m sorry to say, such humane and worthy acts are not tax deductible.  I do stand by my standard guarantee, however: if you do not profit from my predictive powers, I will provide you with the same service next year absolutely free!  How fair is that?

May the peace of Pacifica be with you.

Going to Vegas?   Remember to reserve your Brinks truck rental early.

BRUSH UP YOUR RUSSIAN

 

Start quoting your Vladimir now!  Brush up your Russian, and the Trumpenproles you will wow!*

Yes, folks, I could be wrong, but it would appear that behind all that smoke there is a major fire about to break out in our earthly house.   It will start in Washington and quickly spark to life in London-based WikiLeaks, and then engulf the Putinites in Moscow.   If you’ve read the newspaper the last few months, you know of the Russian pro-Trump interference in our last national election; you also know of the suspected collusion of Trump and Putin in fixing the surprise outcome, and of our new president favoring policies agreeable to Russia.  (By the way, why hasn’t he denounced Russia for its latest dump via WikiLeaks of CIA secrets on a waiting world?)

For months now you’ve heard Trump and his cronies deny there was any hanky-panky; no, they never even met with any Russians, they claim.  Now we know differently: General Michael J. Flynn, once the president’s closest advisor and a foreign agent working for Turkey, had to resign for lying about his conversations with the Russian ambassador on the day then-President Obama levied additional sanctions on Russia; Attorney General Jeff Sessions committed perjury when he denied before the United States Senate any meetings with that same ambassador (there were two); Paul Manafort, Trump’s second Campaign Manager and former fixer for the deposed pro-Russian president of Ukraine, is up to his ears in ill-gotten gains; then there’s the American investment banker Carter Page, former policy advisor to Trump who is now doing business in Russia; and, of course, the master liar himself, President Trump, who denied as recently as last month any contact with Russians during his presidential run.

Expect more dirt to come soon; prepare to be shocked.  And while you’re brushing up on you Russian, do the same for your Swedish, German and Ukrainian as well.  You’re going hear more names trickle out, some of them hard to spell.  Keep a note pad handy so you can keep track of the players during the House and Senate hearings to begin shortly. Also, be on watch for revelations of a companion conspiracy involving Trump, Putin and a few of their shady minions to conclude a Ukrainian peace deal...favorable to Putin, naturally.  Bigger than Watergate?  Bet on it.

We should all make our voices heard, firmly and loudly and now: GOP congressmen must choose an independent prosecutor, and not allow Republicans (those hatchers of such past scandalous entertainments as Teapot Dome, Watergate and Iran Contra) to investigate themselves.   You know where that leads.

We must resist!  Let’s make sure Pacifica survives any intended Russian coup to carry forward that ever-fragile idea of democracy.  We may be its last hope.  Those of you who don’t know what and where that is can find the first two chapters of my Pacifica manuscript here. Courage, mon brave!

*Apologies to Cole Porter for mangling his lyrics from "Brush Up Your Shakespeare,” in Kiss Me Kate.

OFTEN IS THE QUESTION ASKED: ARE YOUR PRESIDENT SANE?

At long last (has it been only a month?), the mental health professionals have stepped forward to evaluate our new president...without any close-up examination, they concede.  Fortunately (if that’s the right word), our reichsleiter exhibits his psychic wounds like campaign ribbons for all to see.

The shrinks seem to have come to a consensus diagnosis:  Mr. Trump is a Paranoid Narcissistic Sociopath.  I’ve also heard a professional in the field describe him as a malignant narcissist.  Yet a third suggestion, that of infectious disease specialist Steven Buelter, in a recently run piece in the New Republic, opines that Trump may be suffering from neurosyphilis, perhaps picked up during his extended, carefree, salad days that even he admits were fraught with risk.  Beulter adds that this king of STDs can be easily cured if treated. But who among us has the courage to tell the emperor he should get a Wassermann Test?

Meanwhile, we’ve lately heard that the Russians are building a psychological profile of Trump in advance of his first post-election meeting with his Russian chum, Vladimir Putin.  Do you think Donald is doing the same?  (Given his low regard for intelligence in all its forms, I doubt it, too.)

So what do we do?

First and foremost, go back and read my blog entry of October 7, 2016, in which I made light of my fears, reproduced here.  Note the section in bolder face.

Mural by Mindaugas Bonanu.

THE RUSSIAN CONNECTION

Why won’t Donald Trump show us his income tax returns? Every other presidential candidate has in the last 35 years.  Why should he deny us a look into his bona fides?  They would shed much light on the claims and character of a man who wants to lead us? 

Trump has an oft-invoked answer.  He can’t because he’s being audited by the IRS.  Lame response; the IRS itself says an audit should be no hindrance to their release.   Donald and his son Eric tell us the current return runs to more than 12,000 pages—apparently more than we could digest and understand is the clear implication.  Try us; surely we can hire a skilled accountant or two to explain the contents.

Hillary Clinton in the first presidential debate echoed a common speculation that Trump was hiding the fact that he was worth a lot less than he claimed—not a billionaire at all.

And that he was most likely gaming the tax code and paying no federal tax at all.

Investigative reporting by The New York Times has since confirmed the likelihood of both, though Trump stays mum on the subject.   The greater part of the story—a complex one of international import at the highest level—is yet to be fully told.  We only know it in its sketchy outline as The Trump-Putin Affair.  Yes, the short and fit Russian assassin and the American Master of Bluster have something going.

Open and Inquiring minds want to know more about this strange match.  Just watch the orange heap light up at the mere mention of Putin‘s name.  What’s behind it?  Is it a joint power grab...or...what?

Well, it’s widely believed that Trump, who has for many years wanted to build hotels in Russia, is deeply in debt to Russian oligarchs.  Putin, on the other hand, flatters Trump with kind words, including the Russian word yarki, which Trump chooses to translate as “genius” while Putin prefers “flamboyant.” (Western analysts believe Putin’s flattery is meant to encourage Trump in his disruptive view of the West’s geopolitical interests, thus serving the Kremlin’s own.)

 Add to this strange pairing Paul J. Manafort, a shady lobbiest who received millions for helping pro-Russian dictator Viktor Yanukovych to power in the Ukraine, subsequently becoming Trump’s second Campaign Manager before the press got wind of his past and the man was summarily demoted out of sight.

Complicating matters further is Lt. General Michael J. Flynn, the fired former director of the pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency and now one of Trump’s closest advisors, previously seen seated next to Putin at a Russian state dinner.  Apparently he was also present with Trump more recently at the top-secret security briefing given to presidential candidates.  Now season that mix with Russian hackers who seem to know every other secret we as a nation have, and feed them to Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, who has threatened to alter the outcome of the pending American election with an October bombshell.  Yes, it’s all a big puzzlement.

While no one has put all the puzzle’s parts together yet, Trump’s attachment to Putin was evident in the first presidential debate.  Though Trump had been informed of Russian intrusions into our cyberspace at a previous security briefing, and heard it again from Clinton at the first debate, he quickly came to Russia’s defense, saying we didn’t know for sure it was Russia, that it could have been China (always his favorite scapegoat) ... or somebody else, for that matter.  Trump as skeptic...now that’s a new one on me!

I despair of ever unraveling this Gordian Knot of international intrigue, preferring the less complicated and more hopeful back story I’ve been told by reliable sources who prefer to remain anonymous.  What if all this cloak-and dagger stuff is just a cover?  For what, you will ask.  Some good old-fashioned amour, that’s what!   Yes, I’ve heard it said by some very, very smart people, whose names you would recognize, who say the vodka the lovers share has been spiked with bearnip.

Moreover, while I have no first hand knowledge, I’ve been reliably informed by unimpeachable observers in the know that Trump recently went on one of those legendary manly rides with Putin and his biker gang, the Night Wolves.  Can’t you see them now, Vlad and Donnie (as they call themselves when mounted in tandem on Putin’s Harley) preparing for the adventure.  The short, fit conqueror of Crimea gallantly helps the pudgy would-be leader of the free world with his girdle as the “Wolves” look on.

Picture them now on their wild ride east at dawn over the Moscow River on Vlad’s hog, roaring across the meadowlands and past the Isle of the Dead before spending a stormy night on Bald Mountain, only to descend onto the steppes of Central Asia, there to pitch their tent and snuggle up against the autumn chill by generating some real heat in their shared sleeping bag.  Ah! A little warming of the earth to speed along the thaw.  Ain’t love wonderful!  And to think there might even be a split Nobel Peace Prize in the offing!  That’s the good news heard on the grapevine. Amor Vincit Omnia.                                                  

To echo Hamlet’s words, “oh my prophetic soul!”  Put aside my self-indulgent final paragraph meant to playfully show off my knowledge (and love) of Russian music that amused no one but me.  Focus instead on the bold-faced section and the names mentioned.  Flynn.  Montrafort.  Murky background players then, central figures in a widening scandal of truly unimaginable magnitude now.  I hope I’m wrong.  But the more I hear of the election last fall the more likely it seems that Trump and his alt-right associates have sold us out to Putin and imperiled our democracy.  Absolute proof may be lacking now, but evidence is mounting in spite of Trump’s desperate and diversionary attacks on the press.  And so we slip and slide rapidly toward at least a constitutional crisis.

Usually I fight fear by writing light and harmless fantasies intended to amuse. It’s not working this time.  I’m scared. 

So what do we do? Let’s first remind ourselves again that change is the only constant.  We should seize it and the opportunity it inevitably brings.  Let’s move briskly and peacefully away from the doomed union and establish ourselves as that sovereign nation, Pacifica, where we preserve and improve on the best of what was.

A TIME TO LEAVE AND START ANEW

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Law of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation...

It took us a mere two weeks to reach the  “necessary” stage—to confirm our worst fears.  Donald Trump has proved he is unfit to be president.  That brings to the fore my longstanding argument that it is time for the peacefully Pacific states to peacefully secede and form a new peaceful nation, Pacifica, allowing other former states to peacefully go where they will...or stay attached, if they choose.

Two weeks and The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists cites global warming and the accession of Donald Trump to the American presidency for moving the Doomsday Clock forward 30 seconds; that puts us at a mere two and a half minutes to midnight.  They mean the final midnight.

Two weeks!  Time enough to insult and alienate good neighbor Mexico, infuriate loyal ally Australia; ban Muslims from traveling to and from the United States; confound our long-time friends around the world with mindless declamations; welcome former KBG agent Putin into our family as dear old “Uncle Vlad,” and give him a seat by the hearth; reverse any number of Presidential Orders meant to protect the environment, minority peoples, and ordinary folks from our ambitious, heretofore shackled “entrepreneurs.”

What can we do?  Start by reading my book in progress, A Left Coast Manifesto:  Why the Pacific States Should Secede and Form a More Perfect Union of Their Own.  The first half of it has just been posted to my website—CHAPTER 1: BREAK-UP, in which I discuss the worldwide phenomenon of nations breaking apart in our times, and now the just-completed CHAPTER 2: PACIFICA, in which I suggest the time is ripe for the Pacific states to separate themselves from the Union to form a great nation of our own. 

You may have read that one third of Californians already favor secession, and that the #Calexit movement is growing by leaps and bounds.  I agree with them but think we should go further and invite the other Pacific states to join us.  In my book I discuss why we should secede and why we are likely to succeed in ways never dreamed.  All done peacefully, of course.

May the peace of Pacifica be with you!

IT'S A DOG'S WORLD

I’m back!  Again.  You thought I was hiding out somewhere from Herr Trump and the New Order (Neuordnung) and had deserted you in your hour of need.   Not so.  Got a cold and the shingles at the same time.  Not recommended for the living... and those who wish to go on with it.

Accept my apology for not covering President Elect Trump’s first press conference for you Wednesday last; I bailed on it early with the hope I could take an incomplete, pleading the above illnesses as an excuse, when it was really my state of mind that was hurting.  Every time I see our reichsleiter-to-be on TV I feel as though his angry eyes and fulminations are directed directly at me for stumbling into his alternate universe, and he means to persecute me for my faith (in science).

So what did I do?   What you should do. I changed channels.  To?

Dog TV, my usual refuge in trying times.  For those of you who know it not, I give it five stars in stress relief.  Yes, as you rightly guessed, I first subscribed to it for my two dogs, thinking they would enjoy having kindred company when I left them home alone.   Not to be. They just didn’t dig it, and went back to reading The New Yorker for their escapes. I think Gypsy looked up once while I held her and forced to view another Golden Retriever on the tube; not interested.  As for high-strung Heidi, true to her shepherd genes, she cannot be forced to look at anything when on the trail of imaginary possums.  And that’s almost always. 

Talk about balms to hurt minds.  Dog TV delivers comfort and solace, a quiet joy along with a sense of what is right in nature.   The background barking is simple, pleasant, unobtrusive—and when a human voice intrudes, it is brief and muted.  And added plus for me is that some of the scenic footage was shot at my very own Dog Beach here in Surf City.  How do I know?  Because when I watch those pups splashing joyfully in the waves, I see in the background the familiar oil-drilling platforms in stubborn place.

As for our unaware canine friends, photographed mostly in the outdoors and free to be their antic selves, they run and roll at will, yip and woof without restraint, wag tails and sniff out all identities in soothing harmony.  Such a melodious melee!  It makes you want to pile right into the frolic and forget the millions of folks about to lose their Obamacare.  

The cost for Dog TV?  A measly five bucks a month.  Am I your best friend or not?  (By the way, this is Divertimento Number One in a series from my Caligula Suite, composed to get you through the Reign of Trump.  More to follow.)

Here are three happy subscribers to Dog TV,
With Heidi, left; Gypsy, right; I’m in the middle.
(We are real dogs and people, not paid actors.)

MERRY CHRISTMAS, READER FRIENDS!

Here is that Christmas gift I’ve wanted you to have ever since I exited the hospital this past August 23.  That was the day I was told I’d survived a second attack of West Nile Virus.   That’s when I realized I feared what most writers fear at life’s cruel end—with most of your books out of print, you’ll probably go down in literary history as just another anonymous and forgotten scribbler.  I didn’t want that sad fate for my books...to go unread.

And so I have PDFs of four out of nine so far uploaded to my site, available to be read at your leisure, free of charge.  The other five I hope to post once copyright issues are untangled; at present, hard copies are still available (not free) on Amazon and through other dealers who traffic in used books.

All you have to do is click on the book you want, then enlarge it to a readable page size by clicking on the little square in the lower right corner (these directions are for people like me who aren't particularly intuitive about "teckmology").  Below I include a brief note on the four available that should give you a choice of the free reading fare:

Number 1, Shadow of a Continent, was my first book, published during the USA’s Bicentennial 1976.  It’s a history of the imperial struggle between England, France, Spain, and the American colonists for possession of the American West.  It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.

Number 2, California Quake, is a history of earthquakes in the Golden State, covering also the cause of earthquakes, and the likelihood of predicting them.  Then-Senator Alan Cranston wrote the foreword for the book.

Number 3, My Summer with Molly, The Journal of a Second Generation Father, is the story of me playing ”mom” to my newborn daughter Molly for the first three months of her life.  It won the 1990 Benjamin Franklin Award for Autobiography.

Number 4, The Complete Works of Marcus Uteris, an experimental novel, accurately reviewed by one critic as “Samuel Beckett on the loose in Los Angeles.”  Read at your own risk.  If you read it and never speak to the author again, I will understand.  It has happened before.

Season’s Greetings!

                                                                        Lorenzo and Heidi

MAD ABOUT DYLAN

Is my envy showing?  I suppose it is.  I know I’m still seething.  About what?  About Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, that’s what.  Dylan?  Literature?  Come on!

True, I confess that I no longer polish my own acceptance speech for the Nobel Committee.  Yes, I’m man enough to face the fact that I’ll likely never receive the Nobel Prize for Literature...at least not while I’m among the living.  But Bob Dylan?  For literature?  Be real!

Maybe Bob Dylan agrees with me.  That would explain his rude behavior for the last month and a half, when he failed to acknowledge the Prize and planned not to go to Stockholm to receive it...until last Saturday when his singer friend Patti Smith showed up at the last minute to accept the Prize in his stead and read for him his almost acceptable acceptance speech.

Since when do guitar-strumming troubadours long over the hill win against serious novelists, dramatists or poets, many with a voluminous life’s work behind them, in competing for what has been considered in some quarters to be the world’s top literary prize?  Was Dylan’s body of songs compared to David Mitchell’s many brilliant novels, for instance?   Or if you Nobel judges were dead-set on wading into the shallower water of pop culture, why not Paul Simon or Leonard Cohen over Dylan?   Did you even compare them?

It is possible, of course, that Bob Dylan is not a reader and thus unaware of the gravity of winning the prize that is newly his. That would explain his inability to make it to Stockholm to claim the prize in person.  Talk about your chutzpah!  Something tells me he still managed somehow to collect the million dollars or thereabouts that comes with the honor.

If Dylan thought he was dissing the Nobel people with his above-it-all conduct, I have the pleasure of informing him he was beaten to that dubious achievement at least twice.  Yes, two predecessors had the gall to actually decline the award.  Well, it was the Soviet government, not honoree Boris Pasternak (a Russian poet and author of the novel Doctor Zhivago, 1958), that declined it for the author.   (The Cold War raged then, don’t you know.)

More telling, John-Paul Sartre (yes, the world renowned philosopher, novelist and dramatist) refused it outright in 1964 because, according to the French polymath and political activist, he would lose his independence as a writer, and if his name were tethered to the Western-biased Nobel folks, it would be used against the Eastern Bloc, where his true sympathies lay.   It gets pretty abstruse after that.  Yes, J. P. remains his hyper-intellectual self, and reading him is just as challenging as ever.

Or maybe all this is just symptomatic of the times in which we live.  Which leads me to ask the question that is becoming increasingly rhetorical.  Doesn’t anybody read anymore?  Does everything have to be reduced to a one-page gulp of  few words to get read or heard these days?  Has the tweet word limit been imposed on literature? I believe we’re all in trouble when the Swedes reading for the Nobel Committee think so.

Escaping the Big T

I thought a little skin might coax you in for my announcement that the blog is taking a slight turn in direction.  I’m guessing that many of you reacted as I when the doctor came out of the lab Wednesday 11/9 and gave us the diagnosis: “I’m afraid I have bad news. You have Trumpoma.”  I remember we asked as one unified but terrified voice: “Is it curable?”  The doctor grimaced, then turned away, saying nothing. It was then we knew our days were numbered.
 
Wait!  Don’t give up! Many of you already know I’m at work on my ninth book, A Left Coast Manifesto:  Why the Pacific States Should Secede and Form a More Perfect Union of Their Own, the first chapter of which is posted on this very website.  Indeed, one of you blessed readers quoted three lengthy paragraphs from it and posted same on Daily Kos, giving me national exposure and triggering a debate in the comments section.  Just what I wanted.  Thank you.
 
Obviously, the recent tumultuous election and its surprise results have stirred international concern; they have also spurred me to revise extensively a manuscript first completed in rough form back in 2011.  Chapter 2 (of a total five) of the updated version will be up later this week, and Chapter 3 in weeks following.  Don’t despair, ye of little faith.  I’ll be showing you the way to escape the grim fate of your quondam countrymen.
 
As you can sense from my recent blog posts, there’s a fire burning within me, and nothing can stop me now from saving myself, family, and you favored children of paradise on earth.  I have even agreed to bare my breasts as I hold high Pacifica’s flag and...let’s agree to call the whole heroic spectacle “Larry Leading His People to Liberty.”   Note also I hired a painter of ample gifts.
 
Together we’ll make Pacifica greater than great again.

 Believe me!

Your Verse for the Day

Today, I’m speechless.  But fortunately W. B.  Yeats (my favorite poet) is not; he saw all this “coming” almost a hundred years long ago.

       THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

MONDAY'S POLITICAL CLEAN-UP: AND THE WINNERS ARE...?

Fresh from successfully predicting the World Series participants six months in advance, I’ve decided to put my newly discovered powers of prophecy to work on tomorrow’s election.  Why?  To calm your fears if you’re a Clinton voter, ease you into your impending disappointment if you’re a follower of Gauleiter Trump, and advance my own late-in-life change of career from aging scribbler to internationally celebrated soothsayer with my own prime time, hour-long show on Fox TV.

So, without further ado (as we say in show biz), here are your final results for president and senate two days in advance.  (Yes, you may quote from them to astound your friends; all I ask is that you credit me as your personal prophet and guru.)

You're welcome,

Vaya con Lorenzo

MONDAY'S POLITICAL CLEAN-UP: SO MANY QUESTIONS

And so little time to find the answers before that fateful November 8.  For example?  Why did FBI Director James Comey release such sketchy information on newly found e-mails eleven days before the election?  Why was the bombshell so vague in its particulars?  Did Obama’s Republican appointee break the Hatch Act by divulging to his party’s congressional members what must be called a tenuous connection bound to raise doubts about Hillary Clinton’s character and take her off her message?  Most importantly, why did Mr. Comey break protocol if not the law by making public his renewed Clinton E-mail investigation, yet mentioned not a word about his current probe of a possible link between the Trump campaign and the Russian government?  Is not the subversion of our democracy of more pith and moment than the waywardways of some nutcase smitten with his penis?

Hillary’s predicament reminds me of the one Josef K faced in Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial: Being charged and convicted of a crime never named by people you can never confront.  Or is my allusion to Kafka’s masterpiece dead on arrival?  As dead as K is after his execution?  Or is Kafka even read any more?  Shouldn’t it be required in high school?

Questions seem to beget more questions, until they start sticking together to form a many faceted major question/nagging puzzle that you want to forget about but can’t because the answer seems too threatening.  Normally, I am not big on conspiracy theories.  That said, I confess to being deeply troubled by what I call the Trump-Putin-Assange Triad.  What are the three up to?  Trump says on telly that he’s met Putin and he finds him an agreeable fellow who considers him (Trump) a genius. He’s also said on the telly that he’s never met Putin.  So Trump’s a serial liar, but we already knew that.  Putin flatters Trump but appears to put some distance between himself and the American entrepreneur.  Doth he protest too much?  Where does Wikileaks fit in this sorry scheme of things entire? What moral justification does Julian Assange have for meddling in U.S. domestic politics?  Is he merely an indifferent conduit for Russian hackers?  Acting at Putin’s behest?  Is Trump wired directly into the operation as well?  We know the Ruskies have hacked the Democratic National Committee and individual Democratic politicians; we also know they’ve attempted to penetrate several of our voting systems.  What other institutions have they compromised that we don’t know about yet?  The defense establishment, maybe?    Are we drifting toward a renewal of the Cold War?

Am I coming down with an acute case of paranoia?  Ya think?

TIME TO PAY THE PROPHET

The World Series begins today, dear reader, and it’s time for you to pony up.  Pay the guy who made it possible for you to rightfully claim your place among the nouveau riche and buy that dream house in Newport Beach.  Yes, I’m that same guy who told you via this blog, early in April this year, that the Chicago Cubs would meet the Cleveland Indians in the World Series. 

I recall you were more than a bit skeptical, asking me where I got such a foolish notion that two such perennial losers could contend for baseball’s biggest prize.  Why that would make for one of the longest of long shots in the annals of wagering, you said.  I agreed, while attributing my insight to some mysterious late-in-life powers of reading the future that had been slowly invading my mind.  Your skepticism persisted, as it should have. Then why, you asked, wouldn’t I keep this knowledge to myself and thereby up the take I’d make from an all-in bet?  I countered by telling you that my religion forbade gambling, but not from passing the results of my prescience on to friends...and all of you out there in Bloggersville are my friends—good friends.  All I ask is to be remembered with a pittance...say a 15% agent’s fee...yeah, let’s call it a standard agent’s fee.

Here, if you wisely burned my message after making your Vegas bets (or even if you didn’t act on my inside information and regret it now), are those picks made then and given to you with the correct calls of playoff teams shown in All caps and bold face.  You will note that I correctly picked five out of six playoff teams; only with the Los Angeles Dodgers did I miss.  (Not even Nostradamus batted a thousand.)                                                                                                    

                                    (EXCERPT FROM THE PRESEASON BLOG)

NATIONAL LEAGUE

 

WEST                                      CENTRAL                               EAST

SAN FRANCISCO                     CHICAGO                                WASHINGTON

**Arizona                                  St. Louis                                   *New York Mets

L.A. Dodgers                             Pittsburgh                                  Miami

Colorado                                    Cincinnati                                  Philadelphia

San Diego                                  Milwaukee                                 Atlanta

                                                           

AMERICAN LEAGUE

 

WEST                                      CENTRAL                               EAST

TEXAS                                     Kansas City                                BOSTON

**Houston                                 *CLEVELAND                         TORONTO

L.A. Angels                               Detroit                                       New York Yankees

Seattle                                       Minnesota                                  Baltimore

Oakland                                     Chicago                                     Tampa Bay

 

         *Denotes First Wild Card Team

** Denotes Second Wild Card Team

You can take it to the bank.  Or to Las Vegas, if you’re so inclined.   Now you’ll no doubt want to know who among these powerhouses of the enchanted diamond will meet in the World Series?  And who will be crowned World Champion?  Prepare yourself for a shocker.  The Chicago Cubs will face the Cleveland Indians in the World Series!  And the ultimate winner is?  I won’t help you there... for personal reasons that I may or may not divulge in a later blog.   But haven’t I brought you far enough already?  So how do you pick a winner between two habitual losers?  Flip a coin or bet them both; either way, you come out mucho chips to the good.

By the way, these selections are guaranteed.  If they all do not finish in the order predicted, I will provide you picks for next year free of charge!  And be sure to reserve the largest U-Haul truck available when you arrive in Vegas to collect your winnings.   You’re welcome.

That was back in April.  Let’s return to the here and now.  Yes, I know that a few of you did not take my baseball predictions seriously and did not act upon them; you now feel left out of the company of swag takers.  Take heart.   I will soon be putting my predictive powers to work again on the upcoming national election.  I will be posting on this blog November 6 the winners and losers of the presidency and the U.S. Senate, with the hard numbers –in time for you to lay your wagers in Vegas and make a social splash at your Election Eve party by calling the results before the pundits do.

Until then, happy days!  And kindly remember your agent.  A measly 15%.

THURSDAY'S POLITICAL PRE-DUMP: SELLING OUT TO A GENIUS

When I played football (poorly, to be sure) many years ago, the game exacted a 15-yard penalty for“piling on”— that is, for leaping on the heap forming over a player already on the ground.  Apparently that transgression is now covered under the catch-all words “unnecessary roughness,” because I haven’t heard the specific foul cited for many years now.

I prefer “piling on.”  Not just for its specificity, but it also soothes any guilt I might feel at this, my piling on Gauleiter Trump along with the many other fault-finders.   Yes, I realize you will accuse me of missing the forest for the trees...or fixating on one insignificant sixth magnitude star out of the entire Milky Way array.

Point well taken.   Hasn’t he’s been branded with virtually every neurosis and psychosis and mental shortcoming known to man by those more learned than I?  What could I possibly add?   Well, I do have a modest past in academia, and I feel professionally obliged to protect our beloved language from every very terrible, horrible, disaster of a Trumpian trampling.  And I must defend our noble tongue from a self-proclaimed genius no less. 

Genius?  Who says?  Vladimir Putin, according to Trump.

At issue is the Russian word “yarki,” used by the shrewd ex-KGB agent in his wooing of our vain sociopath.  The word can be translated as “very bright,” but is more commonly rendered by western scholars to “colorful.”  When recently asked for clarification of what he meant when he first used the word, the wily Putin chose “flamboyant.”

Trump will have none of this pointy-headed hairsplitting.  Once a genius, always a genius.  And the good news must be spread.  Tellingly, the day after Trump bragged at the first presidential debate about his brilliance in avoiding paying taxes, his top two lickspittle knaves, Chris (“Rosenkrantz”) Christie and Rudy(“Guildenstern”) Giuliani, appeared separately on the tube trying to convince the world that only a “genius” (parroting their master’s word choice, under orders no doubt) could come up with such a scheme.  Really?  Hasn’t many a common tax cheat done the same thing many times over?

But I digress from the subject of Trump and Language.  Let me submit that Trump communicates by Twitter because its word limitations fall nicely in line with his working vocabulary. More than a few linguists have applied their scientific tests to Trump’s tweets and addresses and found a third-grade level vocabulary in use and a high-fifth-grader’s command of grammar; that’s somewhat below the levels of your garden variety genius, but good enough, I guess, for a six-year-old bully vying to remain king of the sandbox.

My own year-long analysis of Trump’s diction confirms these studies.  You will find among the limited and recurring words disgusting, terrible, horrible, believe me, rigged, crooked, lying, by the way, huge, great, tremendous, bad, good, very, very very.  Not only are they few in number, there are often vague in meaning.  As a former teacher of writing and editing, I feel professionally obligated to tell The Donald there are remedies. Vocabulary building would be priority one, Donald.  And that’s best done the old fashioned way—reading.   That means “reading up,” challenging your mind (something by Frederich Nietzsche or Martin Heidegger might have special appeal), not escape reading like Playboy. That may mean getting help with your ADHD, but it’s worth the investment, believe me Don.

Unfortunately, limited vocabularies invite a related fault: word repetition—a sure sign of an amateur at work.  And when those words are “terrible," "horrible," "disaster,” and the like, the reader concludes that the writer flushed his morning lithium tablet.

Then there’s the vagueness problem.  You solve that with the words you employ.  Choose concrete words over abstract words, nouns over adjectives, short words over long, words with Anglo-Saxon roots over those with Latinate origins. And it’s no crime to have a model, by the way...someone you admire, feel comfortable with, providing he or she has a definable writing style.  I recently heard you on the telly voice your affinity for Ernest Hemingway.   A worthy model — especially for you.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I believe I can make a writer of you yet.  But it won’t be easy and I don’t come cheap.  Giving you my standard politician’s discount, we could seal the deal in the mid six figures within the month.  Payment in advance, of course.

Good.  A deal, then.  What I want you to do is spend the next four years immersing yourself in Hemingway’s oeuvre, then bring me a 10,000-word essay on what you’ve learned from Papa.  Then I can spot where more work needs to be done...all contingent of course on my being back from Cap Ferrat.

THURSDAY'S POLITICAL PRE-DUMP: THE RUSSIAN CONNECTION

Why won’t Donald Trump show us his income tax returns?  Every other presidential candidate has in the last 35 years.  Why should he deny us a look into his bona fides?  They would shed much light on the claims and character of a man who wants to lead us?  

Trump has an oft-invoked answer.  He can’t because he’s being audited by the IRS.  Lame response; the IRS itself says an audit should be no hindrance to their release.   Donald and his son Eric also tell us the current return runs to more than 12,000 pages—apparently more than we could digest and understand is the clear implication.  Try us; surely we can hire a skilled accountant or two to explain the contents.

Hillary Clinton in the first presidential debate echoed a common speculation that Trump was hiding the fact that he was worth a lot less than he claimed—not a billionaire at all.

And that he was most likely gaming the tax code and paying no federal tax at all.

Investigative reporting by The New York Times has since confirmed the likelihood of both, though Trump stays mum on the subject.   The greater part of the story—acomplex oneof international import at the highest level—is yet to be fully told.  We only know it in its sketchy outline as The Trump-Putin Affair.  Yes, the short and fit Russian assassin and the American Master of Bluster have something going.

Open and inquiring minds want to know more about this strange match.  Just watch the orange heap light up at the mere mention of Putin‘s name.  What’s behind it?  Is it a joint power grab...or...what?

Well, it’s widely believed that Trump, who has for many years wanted to build hotels in Russia, is deeply in debt to Russian oligarchs.  Putin, on the other hand, flatters Trump with kind words, including the Russian word "yarki," which Trump chooses to translate as “genius” while Putin prefers “flamboyant.” (Western analysts believe Putin’s flattery is meant to encourage Trump in his disruptive view of the West’s geopolitical interests, thus serving the Kremlin’s own.)

Add to this strange pairing Paul J. Manafort, a shady lobbyist who received millions for helping pro-Russian dictator Viktor Yanukovych to power in the Ukraine, subsequently becoming Trump’s second Campaign Manager before the press got wind of his past and the man was summarily demoted out of sight.

Complicating matters further is Lt. General Michael J. Flynn, the fired former director of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency and now one of Trump’s closest advisors, previously seen seated close to Putin at a Russian state dinner.  Apparently he was also present with Trump more recently at the top secret security briefing given to presidential candidates.  Now season that mix with Russian hackers who seem to know every other secret we as a nation have, and feed them to Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, who has threatened to alter the outcome of the pending American election with an October bombshell.  Yes, it’s all a big puzzlement.

While no one has put all the puzzle’s parts together yet, Trump’s attachment to Putin was evident in the first presidential debate.  Though Trump had been informed of Russian intrusions into our cyberspace at a previous security briefing, and heard it again from Clinton at the first debate, he quickly came to Russia’s defense, saying we didn’t know for sure it was Russia, that it could have been China (always his favorite scapegoat)...or some 400-pound bed-ridden nobody, for that matter.  Trump as skeptic...now that’s a new one on me!

I despair of ever unraveling this Gordian knot of international intrigue, preferring the less complicated and more hopeful back story I’ve been told by reliable sources who prefer to remain anonymous.  What if all this cloak-and dagger stuff is just a cover?  For what, you will ask.  Some good old fashioned amour, that’s what!   Yes, I’ve heard it said by some very, very smart people, whose names you would recognize, who say the vodka the lovers share has been spiked with bearnip.

Moreover, while I have no firsthand knowledge, I’ve been reliably informed by unimpeachable observers in the know that Trump recently went on one of those legendary manly rides with Putin and his biker gang, the Night Wolves, on a magical musical tour.  Can’t you see them now, Vlad and Donnie (as they call themselves when mounted in tandem on Putin’s Harley) preparing for the adventure.  The short, fit conqueror of Crimea gallantly helps the pudgy would-be leader of the free world with his girdle as the “Wolves” look on.

Picture them now on their wild ride east at dawn over the Moscow River on Vlad’s hog, roaring across the meadowlands and past the Isle of the Dead before spending a stormy night on Bald Mountain, only to descend onto the steppes of Central Asia, there to pitch their tent and snuggle up against the autumn chill by generating some real heat in their shared sleeping bag.  Ah! A little warming of the earth to speed along the thaw.  Ain’t love wonderful!  And to think there might even be a split Nobel Peace Prize in the offing!  That’s the good news heard on the grapevine.  Amor vincit omnia.

THURSDAY'S POLITICAL PRE-DUMP: RETURN OF THE GEEZER

I’m baaack!  From?  A twenty-three-day unwanted stay in the hospital (two hospitals actually, but I wont go into the details, since I wasn’t conscious half the time).  Turns out the doctors, after a seemingly endless number of highly intrusive tests on my tired old torso, have concluded that my July 27 seizure was a legacy of the West Nile fever that I contracted two years ago and thought I’d kicked for good.  Apparently not.

What might you gain from my pain?  Well, I advise you guard against the mosquito, and not just for its carrying the fashionable Zika virus, but the West Nile as well.  How do you do that?  The old familiar precautions: Liberal use of insect repellent--particularly from dusk to dawn when mosquitoes are most active.  Wear long-sleeved shirts as well; the same for long pants.  Close your doors and windows at dusk when the bugs are on the hunt.

Most importantly, rid your home and yard of standing water: in gutters, pots, barrels, old tires, bird baths, pet bowls—anything that might pool it for their breeding; wipe down likely breeding sites with a cloth to kill larvae.  Water plants at the soil line, not their tops.  Report
the presence of dead birds—often an indicator of the virus’s presence—to authorities.
Another plus for you from my minus?  Well, you have another fact to drop in the lap of your climate-change-denying Uncle Ed at this coming Thanksgiving Day dinner.  Yes, tropical fauna are moving north with the heat, bringing their unwanted viral baggage with them, infecting our Southern California paradise.  Doubters need only consult their local county health office records to see the alarming rise in casualties, including a sobering spike in deaths.

Leaving a hospital alive is almost always a cause for joy.  This time I had to wonder.  I found myself walking out and onto a stage in media res of a play that might be titled “The Further Follies of Gauleiter Lumpen von Trump,” a farce co-written by the ghosts of Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka.  First there was cristalnoche (if I may be allowed a neologism in a language I don’t speak), playing out on two stages in one day—first rather awkwardly in Mexico City, hours later raucously so in Phoenix, where roasted Mexicano was served on the rare side to the angry local white folks.

Had nothing changed?  I found myself in need of some peace and quiet to speed along my recuperation.  Not to be.  Seems Donald, almost overnight, had transformed himself from clumsy diplomat to would-be admiral; Iranian patrol boats had buzzed a U. S. Navy destroyer in the Persian Gulf and insulted its crew with gestures.   An incensed Trump told his Florida audience he would have handled it differently: Those who circle our “beautiful destroyer with their little boats...and makegestures at our people that they shouldn’t be allowed to make, will be shot out of the water.”

What!  Go to war just for getting flipped off in international waters!  That’s insane.  Perhaps I was better off in the hospital where one is shielded from the news of the day.  OK, so I was in no personal danger, having done my five years of military service during the Korean War.  But counting children and grandchildren, I had eleven hostages clutched in fortune’s cruel hand.  Instead of more conflict, what the world really needed was a little love.  Even a whiff of romance.  

Patience, and the media will provide anything and everything.  

For some time I had been reading of a mutual admiration between Mister Bluster and the Short Assassin.  Could it be?  Normally I consider conspiracy theories and the theorists who spin them products and occupants of the nut bin.  But the persistence in the press of a Trump-Putin romance has triggered in my insulted forebrain a conspiracy theory of my own.  It’s a great, truly terrible and horrible shocker that’s going to change your whole world view.  No, I can’t give it to you now.  Believe me, though, it’s yuge. And some think it’s disgusting.  Greatly disgusting.  I’ve got some people in Moscow right now and you’ll be shocked at what they’re finding.   But before I expose the truth, I want to validate it with more research in the Book of Revelation and Nostradamus.

It’s absolutely coming.  Within a week...or two.  Right here.  It’s going to be the best blog, believe me!  IT’S GOING TO BLOW YOUR MIND!

MONDAY'S POLITICAL CLEAN-UP: RECOVERING FROM THE HATE FEST

My cardiologist warned me not to watch the Republican National Convention. And I tried to follow his advice. But as your faithful reporter come out of retirement, I gradually—half out of duty, half out of curiosity—let myself be drawn in. And now I’m suffering a hangover of huge, horrible, terrible dimension. That’s what an over-consumption of hate can do to one if you’re not a hardened Trumpster.

No doubt you watched the same four-day orgy of anger that I peeked in on periodically, so you’ll understand I write this still shell-shocked after the final night. Of course, your own eyes and the mind behind them are your best judge of Trump’s version of “Song of Myself.” So I tried to focus on just a few specific areas of the acceptance speech. Primarily, I wondered whether he would he run true to megalomaniacal form and make grandiose and improbable promises of what he would do as president. Surely an acceptance speech of your party’s nomination (which he “humbly and gratefully” accepted) would be the time and place to give us specifics to go with the generalities, means to the ends, “hows” to the promises made.

I resolved to note all the “hows” as I listened to what turned out to be a 73-minute self-coronation. In upcoming posts (that I hope to make daily), I will parse Trump’s acceptance speech paragraph by paragraph for content, sense and accuracy.

For now though, with the “LOCK HER UPs! and “YES YOU WILLs!” still rattling through my hurting head, I’m going to get a little rest from the hate fest just past.

Before I do, let me leave you with a few peripheral observations of the Gauleiter’s night to shine. There were moments during the speech when Trump’ s stance and style of delivery reminded me of Benito Mussolini; yes, I was alive then and watched Il Duce bluster in the newsreels that preceded the Saturday matinee’s cowboy flicks back in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

About half way through Trump’s message of gloom and doom, I shifted my focus to the faces in the crowd, and then the hands and whether they were clapping or being sat upon. What surprised me most was that at times some sections rose to cheer or chant, while others went silent and frowned. Moreover, the sections kept shifting, as well as waxing and waning in size, as though I were viewing them through a kaleidoscope. Only occasionally did the crowd come close to unanimous and noisy approval, and that was when von Trump was pillorying Hillary.

I was looking forward to the end of the endless jeremiad for a reason beyond its vacuous, fear-mongering content. I was anxious to see when the cameras panned the crowd how the audience had received it, make my final rough calculation on how well Trump had connected with his faithful.

Not to be. Just as the Republican nominee finished by relaying God’s blessing to us and telling us loved us, the avalanche of red, white and blue balloons cascaded from the ceiling (or was it the heavens?) between the camera and the crowd, obscuring the answer from view. Foiled again. Was this planned? A deliberate cover up? Frustration led to anger. I had joined the crowd, in immediate need of some anger management therapy. Goodnight.

Guest Blogger: On Flag Etiquette

Greetings Neighbor:

I was driving by your house one day last week, and noticed what appeared to be an American flag stuck into your trashcan, sitting there in the street awaiting pick up. I stopped my car and got out, convinced that I must have seen an umbrella or a used awning or an old striped towel or some other such rubbish--certainly not an American flag.

But it was the US flag, wound around its staff, pushed unceremoniously into the trash receptacle, union down. At the same time, I noticed that you were flying a brand new flag from the side of your house. Apparently you were preparing for the upcoming Fourth of July.

It occurred to me that you may be unaware of the United States Flag Code. The Flag Code, passed by the Congress of the United States, describes rules for how the American flag is to be treated respectfully and with honor. It indicates that the flag should not touch the ground. It indicates that the union (the star field) should never be flown down, except as an emergency signal. It indicates that the flag should be cleaned and mended when necessary, among other provisions.

It also states that when your flag becomes too tattered and torn to be flown, it should be destroyed in a dignified manner, preferably by burial or burning. Various military or service organizations -- the US Army or Marines, the Boy Scouts, the Girls Scouts, Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion -- are willing to dispose of a worn-out US flag in a dignified and respectful manner. As you might expect, throwing the flag into a trashcan is not indicated by the Flag Code.

I pulled your flag out of the trash and unfurled it. It was not tattered, it was not torn – just a little faded. When I looked at your flag my thoughts went to various Americans I have known, Americans who fought in the Second World War. I thought of Waist Gunner E. Robert Gipple; I thought of Radio Gunner Luis Quijada; of Army Airman Dell Herndon; of Infantryman Phil Janssen; of Navy Lieutenant Jack T. McDonough; and of Army Air Corps Captain Henry C. Spooner. These men, all of whom I was fortunate enough to grow up around, fought bravely and relentlessly for the United States. Despite tremendous hazards, all of them were able to come back alive, back to their families and to the country they had defended. As you know, a great many of their comrades did not.

Indeed, when these men fought, they did not fight for the American flag--they did not fight merely for a piece of colored cloth. They fought to protect the land, the people, and the ideals for which that flag is a symbol.

And you just don’t throw that kind of symbol into a trashcan.

Needless to say, I removed the flag from where it had been tossed, and I took it home and cleaned it off and reset it onto its loops and halyard. I flew it on the Fourth of July, and I will be doing so every year from now on.

When it comes time to dispose of your new flag , I hope that you will think about what the flag truly represents, and about the people who have risked – and often lost -- everything to keep it flying.

I hope that you and your family had a happy Fourth.

Sincerely,

David Fretz

(BLOGMEISTER’S NOTE: Our guest contributor is from Whittier, California. A Professor of Biology at Irvine Valley College, Fretz says he is a registered member of the Green Party, and identifies himself politically as a Libertarian Socialist.)

ACKNOWLEDGING YOUR MANY THANKS

You’re welcome, you’re welcome, you’re welcome. Yes, we have reached Major League Baseball’s mid-season All-Star Game break and you checked out my picks to click that I so generously gave you without charge on April 4. And you’re ecstatic! My prediction of a Cubs-Indians World Series is looking great. And your wager with the Vegas future book promises to make you as rich as Trump! Don’t mention it.

I suppose if I were forced to list my many virtues, modesty would be on top. That said, I feel the need to resurrect my pre-season picks—not to gloat-- but to point out how truly astoundingly accurate they are. Bold Face indicates they are currently in the exact same place in the standings as I predicted they would be at season’s end.

Note that I have picked five of the six division leaders correctly; and the American League East is a wide-open affair and may still go to the Red Sox. Note also that I have placed all five teams in the National League East in their exact order; and not a bad job calling the National League Central, either. (Some of you captious fans will point out that I fudged with boldfacing the Cleveland Indians; they are picked second, not first in the spring analysis. Yes, but they are boldfaced because they are picked as the first Wild Card team in the AL and to face the Cubs in the World Series. Fair enough?

Anent that World Series.... I told you this spring I couldn’t pick a winner between two habitual losers. Told you to flip a coin. Well, in the wake of the Cleveland Cavaliers upset of the Warriors, and wearing my Chief Wahoo cap as I write this, my powers of prophecy have returned. I’m picking the Tribe in six. You should hedge your bets accordingly.

Penultimately, you Angel fans who heaped all sorts of hurtful abuse on me for picking your Haloes third, I’m awaiting your apologies. Check the standings and tell me how kind I was for starters.

Finally, no doubt you will be wondering as you load up your Brinks rental with Vegas swag at season’s end how I fared, monetarily speaking. Well, that’s a sad and complicated story, and has one of three answers possible:

1. Zero. Gambling is against my religion.
2. Nada. I’ve taken a lifetime vow of poverty.
3. Zilch. My short-term memory failed me and I forgot to go to Vegas and place my pre-season bets.

Which is it? I can’t remember. But I’ve been fair and balanced with you. You decide.

MONDAY'S POLITICAL CLEAN-UP: GUN VIOLENCE IN A TIME OF BREAK-UP

Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights, Dallas....The carnage continues, as does racism and the violence it inevitably brings. Must we live with its inevitability? Is there any hope we can at least reduce the casualties per shoot-out?

It is widely and correctly said, if you want a preview of things to come, look to California and the other Left Coast states with Pacific Ocean frontage. And if you weren’t looking last week amid the distracting avalanche of major news events shaking up the world, know that California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law six gun control measures. The week before that Hawaii’s governor, David Ige, signed into state law the most restrictive gun control legislation in the nation: already with the lowest gun deaths per capita, Hawaii tightened down further by putting all local gun-owners in a Federal criminal record data base. If an owner or applicant is arrested anywhere in the country, the FBI will notify Hawaiian police and they will determine whether the owner can continue to legally own a firearm.

Governor Brown’s gun control actions are much more modest. Of the six measures he signed into law, one requires buyers of ammunition for semiautomatic rifles to undergo background checks; another is a ban of the sale of automatic rifles equipped with “bullet buttons” that facilitate the quick removal and replacement of magazines. Brown, traditionally a skeptic on the efficacy of gun control legislation, also vetoed five gun measures brought to his desk.

That did not deter the ever-vigilant defenders of your Second Amendment right to slaughter your fellow citizens to come down hard on the lame-duck governor. Amy Hunter, spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action said Brown “signed a draconian gun control package that turns California’s law-abiding gun owners into second class citizens. The governor and legislature exploited a terrorist attack to push these measures through even though the state’s already restrictive laws did nothing to stop the attack in San Bernardino.”

Strange use of the word “exploitation,” with all its negative connotations. How about substituting the word “protection,” as in protecting our citizens from another San Bernardino or Orlando type attack? And “draconian?” Really? The word means “unusually severe or cruel,” and comes to us by way of Draco, an ancient Athenian statesman whose code of laws prescribed death for the most minor of offenses. So it’s “unusually cruel” to force you into a background check to buy ammo for semi-automatic rifles? Really? That’s going to be a hard sell in California.

Of course, chop logic and word abuse is nothing new for the NRA and its satellite groups. You know, “guns don’t kill people; people do.” (Ever hear of a drive-by knifing?) It’s reminiscent of the old tobacco lobby dodge: “Cigarettes don’t kill people; cancer does.”

We are told by pollsters that 90 percent of Americans favor some type of gun control. Yet nothing ever happens at the federal level, nor should you expect it in the foreseeable future. Forget about all that fussing and snorting in Congress last month in the wake of the Orlando massacre that “something must be done.” That was just Kabuki theatre. The Republican so-called Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives went home for the Fourth of July holiday, shot off their store of fireworks, and suddenly remembered who owned them. They have bottled up gun control legislation in the House...and therefore the Congress. Will the Dallas slaughter of police officers with automatic rifle fire change their minds? I wouldn’t bet on it.

It is a predictive sign of our splintering times that states are taking matters into their own hands, some choosing to tighten gun-access restrictions, others to loosen them. California and Hawaii rank in the top seven for strictest gun laws by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, along with Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts and New York. Tellingly, Illinois at number eight just missed making the top tier; it has the misfortune of being surrounded by five states with permissive gun laws, and weapons traffic moves across state lines with deadly ease.

Californians wanting more done to curb gun violence than their governor’s cautious measures do need not wait long to take action on their own. On the state ballot this November is a proposition strongly backed by liberal Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, the Democrat favored to succeed Brown as governor in 2018. It promises to be strong medicine for the gun violence that ails us, and will finally test the pollsters’ claim that Americans overwhelmingly want gun laws tightened and the gun lobby’s power reduced. We shall see.

B. N. Some of you know I’m currently deep into my tenth book, tentatively titled A Left Coast Manifesto: Why the Pacific States Should Secede and Form Their Own More Perfect Union; it should be out in the next six months. I’m predicting here and now that in Pacifica, the new nation composed of the four former states California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii, we will act against the epidemic of gun violence in ways that would please our original founding fathers, rational men who couldn’t imagine citizens packing AR-15s on village streets.

A LUCKY DAD

I am remarkably blessed to have six wonderful children, Eric, Kurt, Karl, Molly, Madeleine and Franz by name. As proof of my claim, I like to lightly say they are all out of jail, employed and paying taxes...admittedly an odd way of not putting too much pressure on them. Let me also say, I love and respect them all.

Today, though, I want to single out Molly, my tall, fair, willowy red-headed girl (a woman now, far too soon) for special thanks. You see, last week Molly wrote a very flattering item about me on Facebook. Turnabout is not only fair play, it’s long overdue. Molly is the means and reason for this blog of mine; she coaxed me out of journalistic retirement and dragged me, age 83, into the on-line world so I could comment on the tumultuous passing scene. Now she is my editor, my art director, my proofreader and my production manager all in one. Which brings me to how she came by her qualifications.

Much of my working life was spent as a magazine editor. We had a saying in the business about those we bought content from; there were word people and there were camera people, and rarely did you ever find a person with both talents. Molly is that rare exception. An insatiable reader as a child, she went on to graduate with honors from UC Berkeley in English Literature, with a special interest in poetry—always a promising sign. Her interest in photography came later in life, and I like to think I played a part in its flowering. She asked me one day who my favorite photographer was. A word person totally inept with a camera, I immediately said “Henri Cartier-Bresson,” a man who had a background in letters as well the graphic arts. Molly looked at me skeptically; she had never heard of the famous Frenchman. Apparently research remedied that. She was soon extolling the master of “street photography” to me as though I had never mentioned his name.

Though I see some influence of Cartier-Bresson in Molly’s work, she seems less intent on capturing people in candid moments than catching through her lens nature at its beautiful best. Her photographic art better resembles that of Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter and Philip Hyde, so much so that I’m starting to think of her as the spiritual great-granddaughter of John Muir. Whence this love of wilderness? Well, she was a Girl Scout for years. And as a family we took our share of camping trips into the Western wilds. But I suspect it is largely due to the influence of her gentleman friend and companion (and frequent model), Rama Geroux. (He’s the original nature boy grown to manhood.)

I’m pleased to say Molly’s photographic work has been accepted and shown in a few exhibitions. And her writing is clean, smooth and pleasant to the ear as you hear it, always the sign of a good writer. Yes, she is blessed to be one of the lucky few who has can marry art for the mind with that for the eye. Take a moment to check out my judgment by going to her blog, mollymargaretmeyer.com. See if you don’t agree it’s as spirit-cleansing as a day hiking the John Muir Trail.