TRUE ROMANCE, TRUE CONFESSIONS

(POSTSCRIPT FIVE YEARS LATER)

OK, that was a smarmy tale.  But, you cynics will ask, how did this love match turn out over time?  Allow me a pause while my heart and my head work out a compromise answer.  Well, hot and cold, in a word "uneven"...like all affairs of the heart tested by years.  If I had to give it a grade, it would be a gentleman’s B.

We’re still good friends, and we have our moments of intimacy, but our relationship is no longer in balance.  I’m more smitten with her than she is with me.

Before I explain the many turns our tryst has taken, let me bring you up to date on Heidi, that pup I rescued at six weeks and used to call Moriarty, after the nasty professor who was Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis.  She’s mellowed since then and has earned the name of Heidi, virtuous orphan girl of the Swiss Alps.  Let me also say that at age five she physically shines in her pale tawny prime, never more brightly than when her long uneven hair is backlit by the sun, enveloping her in a lustrous golden halo.  And let me tell you more about her adult looks.  In overall appearance, the Golden Retriever genes of her mother dominate, with the long, wavy hair and the puppy cuteness that remains in her fluffy white rump area.  Only a slightly lighter coat, a broad and deep chest, and that wolfish snout remain to tell you she transcends the mere sweet gentleness of her older, purebred Golden Retriever “half-sister,” Gypsy (also a rescue).  

It was those very physical anomalies in Heidi that prompted me to get her DNA checked in the first place.  Turns out the Shepherd genes (German Shepherd and White Swiss Shepherd) of her paternal line dominate her behavior.  Intelligent, curious, protective, duty-driven, aloof, often mysterious, she is frequently moody, on an emotional pendulum, and would prefer to explore than eat.  She’s first up each morning to patrol the house to see if all is safe, intact.  If something is new or moved, she makes note of it with a satisfied sniff.  Before going out to answer nature’s call, she stops and freezes at the open door, surveying the yard for possible threats or intruders.  Once outside she patrols the property’s periphery to confirm that nothing’s amiss.  Her nose knows all.  

I should also number among Heidi’s virtues her protective nature.  She has this uncanny way of sensing the weakest, sickest, most vulnerable person in any social gathering and crouching in front of him or her, as if to protect them from any insult or assault.  Reconcile that with her reversion to wolfish ways when presented with a new toy animal.  She sinks her canines into the effigy’s throat and shakes it violently from side to side until it’s reduced to a slack rag emptied of its cotton innards.  A kill to please her ancestors!

But not my wife—not when it extends to dismembering gentle Gypsy’s toys.  Timarie has sternly warned Heidi that those are off limits, never in season, on the forbidden list.  Strangely, Heidi understands.  I have watched her approach Gypsy’s treasured little brown bear with the liquid stealth of a leopard, smell it, then turn reluctantly away without baring a fang.   

It’s hard to figure out Heidi’s many peculiar ways.  Take her relations with other canines—dogs met at the beach or on the street.   A few she warms to immediately, as though they were old, well-sniffed friends; with some she is permanently standoffish, silent, and keeps her distance; and to some she suddenly extends an olive branch, welcomes them into her circle of friends without visible motive.  She is, in sum, consistent only in being inconsistent, predictable only in her unpredictability.    

With one exception.  Play.  She has a passion for athletics and games and will play them anywhere at anytime with anyone—though it's most often with my son Franz, who roughhouses with her in daily no-holds-barred bouts.  And she loves it!  She becomes a blond streak ricocheting off living-room bookcases and coffee tables without a flinch or a moan.  If she had two legs instead of four, she’d be a first-round pick at running back in the NFL draft.   

Wrestling shows off her muscled body to great advantage, but I think she really prefers playing ball—you know, you throw it and she chases it for as long as your arm holds up, then brings it back for more.  (For me, it isn’t long; I’ve needed Tommy John surgery since before it existed.)  Others, too, tire of the game in time...certainly before she does.  I’ll never forget when she, having exhausted all the human arms in the house, trotted over to Marie the cat (since deceased in her twentieth year and off to cat heaven) and dropped a ball between her feline paws.  In vain.  Marie was disinterested.  Being a cat, she couldn’t grasp it was hers to throw.  I had a new respect for Heidi’s mental powers after that.

Stop!  Enough!  Quit dodging the issue, I hear you shouting.  Get back to the amour and how it’s going between you and your dog!  Finish your true romance!

Well, it’s not as torrid as it used to be.  In truth, Heidi has extended her circle of affection to include my wife and my son...at my expense, I must add.  We’re still good friends, of course, and there are days (increasingly rare) when she seems to remember who first rescued her and first loved her, and she cuddles up with me as on the most passionate of past days together.

I rationalize my slip in status.  After all, my wife feeds her, walks her, grooms her, medicates her.  My son also feeds her, plays with her, sleeps with her.  All I do is worship her and stroke her coat when she lets me.  I understand the whys of my demotion in affection, and in my heart I know that if our foursome had to be reduced to a threesome, she’d vote me out. 

But then I remind myself that love is rarely at parity between lovers.  With time and wear comes an imbalance in feelings exchanged.  I got a reminder lesson of all that just last week.  Franz was away on vacation and I was home alone with Heidi at midday.  Suddenly, only ten feet from me, she lifted her head and let out a heart-rending bay I hadn’t heard from her in a couple of years.  Those who have heard the sound of wolves in the wild howling their feelings know what it sounds like.  A call from the deep past, the sound both chilling and reassuring, a fellow mammal’s complaint of life’s loneliness.   

I tried to comfort her with words.  No response.  She gave another heart-felt wolf howl.  A cry for help?  I moved toward her to comfort her with strokes.  She moved away from my hands, trotted down the hall, and stopped for a third loud lament.  She was in front of Franz’s closed bedroom.  Oh!  That was it.  I opened the door.  She went in, leapt upon his bed, curled up in the ancestral way, at rest at last.  Sure it hurt.  Another reminder of my diminishing place in our pack’s love hierarchy.  But I’ve come to accept my reduction in rank and treasure the more what love I do get...the gentle way she takes a proffered treat from my hand, the morning leap upon our bed to give me a nose-to-nose wake-up-call, her evening eagerness to get a back rub when I have settled into my recliner.

Yes, love is, like gold, where you find it.  And when you do, hoard it.  Remember always the Prioress’s wise words on her way to Canterbury: Amor Omnia Vincit.  (For those of you who have forgotten your Chaucer and your Virgil and your Latin: “Love Conquers All.”  Or, in the Beatles very loose translation, “Love is all there is.”)

 Old reliable Gypsy is ready to play ball with the geezer while uppity Heidi has to be begged.

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BELATED BIRTHDAY WISHES TO MY BLONDE ON THE SIDE

Happy Birthday to my Heidi!  Yes, I’m late in wishing my girl a happy fifth birthday; the actual anniversary date of her birth was last November 28, but that same day my right lung collapsed and I was carted off to the hospital for surgery.  Recovering at home now, I’d like to make amends by bringing you up to date on how our turbulent love affair turned out.  Some of you may remember that I began this blog some years ago with an account of our stormy romance.  Well, for those who weren’t tuned in then, I’m going to retell the tale here, and next week publish the sequel,  an candid tell-all update on how our torrid and unlikely romance has passed the test of time.

MORIARTY AND ME

What Happens when an Ailing Geezer Takes in an Abused and Testy Rescue Pup and Tries To Tame Her?  Love and Mayhem.

It’s never too late to fall in love, and suffer the consequences.

I’m talking dogs here.  Yes, I love them as a species.  Most of them love me.  On the other hand, my wife of 33 years loves all animals, preferably rescued, and all animals love her.  No surprise then that Timarie assembled early in our marriage a rotating complement of a rescued dog (presently a sweet six-year old Golden Retriever named Gypsy), a rescued cat (currently a 14-year-old, 12-pound, tough tabby named Marie) and a purchased canary (called Zorro for the black mask that covers the front of his canary yellow head). Most pet lovers would say three’s enough.  

But on a fateful day this February we added another rescue, a nine-week-old puppy  (cruelly taken from her nursing mother at three weeks) that my wife agreed to have over for a viewing, a neglected and reputedly abused blonde of alleged Lab ancestry who came advertised as housebroken.  

My defenses were firmly in place.  I’m eighty years old and heir to more than a few of the thousand natural shocks that living that long brings, ready or not.   So, I squared my shoulders and hardened my heart to say “No-- no way.” 

The pup raced into our home like a supercharged blur of vim, vigor and young mammalian exuberance, and just took over in a matter of minutes, proving it by immediately biting and badgering our beloved Gypsy, then trying to mount the eighty-pound matron of the house to let the Golden know who was boss. 

 On one of the pup’s rushings-by I reached down from my Laz-Y-Boy recliner (referred to in the family as the “Geezer Throne”) and grabbed her...a ball of the softest blond fur I ever felt, stretched taut over ten pounds of nothing-but-bones.  I melted.  Yes, she had been starved.  Suffered.  Survived.  And look at her now!  I was smitten.

 My wife suggested we think about it overnight.  I said that was unnecessary.  We had a place for her.   More putty-hearted than I, Timarie caved. “Very well, and we’ll call her Heidi,” she said, the decider in such matters.  Heidi.... Well, she was a girl.  Wavy blond hair.  Might have come down from the wilds of the Swiss Alps.  OK, Heidi it is.

We soon learned Heidi was not as housebroken as advertised; we also found she was addicted to serial acts of coprophagia.  More important, and, probably as a defense from ill-treatment received, she had an aggressive streak in her strange for a Lab, with a need to bite the proffered hand...even our rescuing hands.  That still seemed strange to me, a previous owner of two Labs, who knew and appreciated them for their kind dispositions.  Then there were those honey–colored waves of hair down her back that resembled Gypsy’s distinctive coat.  And what about Heidi’s wolf-like snout?  Where did that come from?

Yes, we knew the pup was teething, and my wife went right out and bought a surplus of plastic chew-toys to cope.   Wasted expense.    Heidi gave them a cursory chomping, then went for bigger, more important game that initially included Gentle Gypsy’s trove of stuffed animals; they were routinely eviscerated by the newcomer, the floor of the room where the atrocity took place covered with a fresh snowfall of cotton and kapok...and an occasional plastic eye (its mate presumably swallowed) staring up at you.  

Sensing an advantage, she used normal dog-play to bully early passive Gypsy into submission, chiefly by constant chewing on her vulnerable ears; she tried the same rough approach on the cat, but old battle-scarred Marie countered quickly with a wicked right cross that tore a gash under the pup’s left eye, drawing blood and a first yelp of pain from this embodiment of a panzer division invading Denmark.   Heidi showed her smarts immediately by backing off and giving the cat an extra-wide berth, moving gingerly around the diminutive feline; Marie mirrored that intelligence, not pressing her momentary advantage, sensing perhaps that in two months this impudent little canine would double her height and quadruple her weight.

Timarie and I watched in awe Heidi’s appetite expand daily from puppy pellets to broken glass, splinters of plastic, rubber bands, sticks, rocks, paper, scissors (thankfully un-swallowed...but a game there?), bananas, one of kind family photos, but above all, almost daily, pens.  Chewed up and spat out in small pieces right in the writer’s sight.   Was this getting personal?

This biting-chewing bender was interrupted big time three weeks to the day she joined us.  Timarie had advised treating her gently to control her aggressiveness, and on this early evening I was trying to play with her, gentrify her, when she bit my mildly teasing right hand with her needle-sharp milk teeth.  I’m on blood thinners.  A red rivulet ran down my index finger. I thrust again.  She bit again.   Drew blood again.  Instinctively, I drew back my right hand and extended my left to ward her off, just as she lunged a third time.  Her mouth closed on my fingers, then she fell back, onto her back, gasping.  Was she all right?  Seemed so.  It took me a minute or two to notice that my wedding ring was missing.  Oh, no!  Had she swallowed it?  

A frantic trip to the vet next morning for an x-ray showed in her stomach, slightly to the right of her little spine, my clunky, square, industrial-sized wedding band.  

What to do?  “Little dog, big ring,” the vet said. “She can’t pass it.”  And....? That meant abdominal surgery.   Surgery?  Yes, as soon as possible, so the gold’s weight would not further bruise her stomach.  We scheduled it for eight o’clock the next morning.

I went to bed that night trying to guess the cost of the cutting:  Fifteen hundred dollars?  Two thousand?  Where would we get it?   I fell asleep without an answer.  Then, just after two a.m. my wife and I were awakened by the sound of retching.  Lights on, we found a trembling little fawn-colored puppy standing in a small pool of barf...a big, square ring resting smack dab in the midst of the upchuck.

We rejoiced, but prematurely.  Surgery might no longer be required.  But her stomach had been damaged by the heavy ring.....Which meant?  She had to put on an expensive special diet, and her healing progress had to be monitored with continual checks on the amount of blood in her stool.  A small price to pay, we thought at the time.

It was a tribute to hardy Heidi’s genes and my wife’s loving care that the dog was restored to robust health in ten days—just in time for her to take her “welcome-back-Heidi” cover of goodwill to launch in earnest her spring offensive.  Misdemeanors now climbed to high crimes, which included chewing to bits my wallet, my wife’s prized silk scarf, the DIRECTV channel changer, and my Visa card  (a drastic means of budget control this child of the Great Depression does not need) in a mere two days. 

“We got to get rid of her!” I muttered one afternoon later as she ran from me into the back yard with a carving knife in her mouth.  My wife was within earshot.  Had she heard me?  Was she also wavering?  I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

 The biting had been bad enough.  But now she added stealing, skillful and unrelenting, to her rap sheet.  Turn my head to sip a beer and a piece of pizza vanished from my lap.  A roasted chicken breast on the kitchen counter beyond yesterday’s reach was within the compass of today’s stretch...and gone.  All you would see was her little blond rump, long bushy tail curled up, bouncing jauntily as she made an unhurried escape in an athletic trot.  She didn’t look like any Lab I ever saw.

If I witnessed the crime and chased her...it was in vain.   She knew at once I couldn’t keep up and would turn to shake the stolen article in her mouth (up to and including the weight of my Mac keyboard) at me, while wagging her tail.   To give back and make up?  No, to taunt me, and rub-in her superiority as she loped farther off.   

At first, I tried retrieving those pilfered objects by throwing her favorite squeaky ball within her reach, to get her to drop her loot.  She bought into that ploy just twice.  The third time, when she had run off with my computer mouse, she ignored the tossed toy with an “is-that-all-you’ve-got” look back.   I knew then the game had been raised to a level beyond my abilities to compete.  She stared me down with a clear, cold message in her unblinking eyes: Catch me if you can, old lame one, you with your spinal stenosis and plastic/titanium knees.   

I admit this hesitantly, but honestly. Though I lean to the skeptical side in my belief system, from the first I began thinking her crimes and the animus behind them were aimed at me, personally.  Certainly the evidence was there.  My cane got chewed up.  Ditto for my plastic pill containers that hold my morning  (11) and evening (7) medications.  She even chewed through the connecting cord to my Schwinn Recumbent Bike that is supposed to keep this cardio patient alive through daily at-home exercise.  (The only link in my at-home life-support network not savaged—at least to this moment--is my bedside CPAP machine, which I have seen her eye as an item of interest; I daily thank whatever gods there be that she hasn’t learned, as yet anyhow, how to turn a doorknob.)

Back to my hesitancy and honesty.  Though I could admire her crafty smarts and athletic skills, after the disabling of my recumbent bike I screamed at her loud enough for neighbors a half-block off to hear: “You sadistic bitch!”

 Almost immediately I felt ashamed.  What kind of behavior was that?  Yelling at a dumb animal.  Well, an animal.  And, really, how could dogs be sadistic?  Or bipolar, as had also crossed my mind?  Schizophrenic?   Or all of the above?    Well, think about it for a moment, as I did; their kind has hung out with our kind-- their  “best friends”-- going way back to Neanderthal times.  Maybe before. Why not?  

Such useless speculation aside, it was time for a name change.  Heidi had defaulted on her namesake of a Swiss Alps sweetheart beloved the world over for quite a different character of fictional origin: Moriarty . Yes, Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis, Professor Moriarty, the master criminal, the Napoleon of Crime. 

 I am no Holmes, nor was meant to be.  I’m not even much of a Doctor Watson, but one that will swell a progress...an easy tool.   That confessed, I decided there and then to find out who my tormentor really was...this hound from hell... or just the Baskervilles...whatever.   I would do that scientifically, by sending away the pup’s saliva to a laboratory that tests a dog’s DNA and tells you what you really have.  If, as my wife and I had long since doubted, that the dog could have any origins in Labrador, then where did she come from?  We would learn the truth.

One April day the mayhem suddenly stopped.  Moriarty became listless, moving lethargically about the public rooms, dropping into a corner, then rising to find another, collapsing again, her belly heaving, too weary to even look me in the eye. She was sick, suffering.  And so was I.   Something she ate no doubt...maybe some chocolate...residue from a cookie, or a purloined avocado, or a few grapes or raisins, or something else that’s supposed to be toxic to them.  Given her risky life style, there was no way of knowing what.

My wife gave me a probing look.  “You’re really worried about her, aren’t you?”

 “Yes,” I said, the truth forcing its way out.  The ease of the admission surprised even me. 

For a day the pup suffered thus.  Then she bounced just as suddenly back, all the spunk and sass intact.  I felt relieved. More than a little.  Why?  Well, I thought I was making some progress with her, taming her, seeing the aggression flag some and her tail wag more than it had.  Increasingly, I was getting more loving licks than nasty nips. (And if the truth be told, she has never yet bit me when I kiss her on the lips.) 

Another reason to celebrate her recovery was that she had reached a milestone in a local dog’s life.  Her forced confinement was over; all her shots were done and the danger of parvo passed; now our new family addition could make her social debut on a mile-long stretch of California costal perfection, on the north end of Surf City (aka Huntington Beach), where the combers come crashing in on dogs of all breeds, creeds and colors, on leash and off, accompanied by masters and mistresses of equally wide variety, united only by the plastic collecting bags they all carry.

Our extended family picked a perfect, surfs-up sunny day in the seventies to introduce Moriarity to Dog Beach, as it properly called locally, the happiest place on earth for dogs and dog-lovers to my mind.  And while the others took her and Gypsy to the ocean’s edge for that baptism in origins, I plopped myself down into a beach chair on the sand to see our cocksure Miss Mischief make her first public appearance.  So many questions to be answered... Would she like the salt of the sea?   Would she make friends? Would she pick a fight?  Hold her own?  Would she shrink and cower?  Squat and pee?  Whatever her pedigree turned out to be, I knew she was no lapdog, but born to run this sunlit surf-line as fast and far as her young and eager muscles could take her.

I watched.  Moriarity hugged Gypsy’s sheltering flank for the first minute-or- two-trot up the strand, her blond ears laid back and tail drooping, a sign she was unsure of herself but open to anything as she got her first look at her kinfolks, who came in all sizes, shapes and temperaments.  Then she suddenly bolted from the Golden’s protective bulk into the glorious middle of the Dog Beach Mixer.  She charged, dodged, bobbed and weaved, and just plain immersed herself in this fest of happy dogs sniffing out each other’s identity, with little friction and a lot of tail wagging.  I’m tempted to the say the breeds ranged from A to Z, but would have to amend it to B through W, because I did see her schmoozing with a Boxer and a Weimaraner.

Questions answered.  She could hold her own in dogdom and she loved the ocean.   

And then the tide turned.  A cocky Welsh Corgi spotted her and decided she had my pup’s number.  She did.  Moriarty panicked when the squat brown, black and white blur closed on her menacingly.  Fear I had never seen flashed across her face as she raced across the sand to...me!  Into my arms.  My arms!  I hugged her to reassure her before she suddenly broke free and rushed back toward the sea.  Not fast enough.  The Corgi, bred to the art of herding, cut her off.   But the ever-resourceful Moriarty cut a sharp left and U-turned back into my arms again.  I felt a rush.  Her patsy had become her protector!  I felt honored. 

Tireless as the pup she was, Moriarty extricated herself once again and swiftly made a third run for the surf--and made it ahead of the Corgi this time.  Then a most amazing thing happened.    My dog looked back at her adversary and started prancing laterally back and forth in the eighteen-inch-deep surf, daring the dwarf-legged Corgi to come and get her.  I read her thought bubble: “Thalassophobic, Shorty?  Come in, the water’s fine.” She was taunting her tormentor with the flair she had perfected on me; in football that would draw a fifteen-yard penalty.

Her triumph capped our action-packed two hours on the beach, and the entire family went home tired and happy--she to a deep and deserved field-dog’s sleep, me feeling like my affection offensive was paying off.   After all, I was now her last refuge, and that had to bring me some perks.  I had also lately noticed that her acts of mischief and meanness were diminishing.

Not so fast, Mr. Hopeful!  Two days later, while I was off to cardio gym, Moriarty went on another manic tear, found a breach in the security that denied two rooms’ access to her, where she proceeded to chew up my last check book, my replacement wallet and the three twenty dollar bills therein, not to mention the new channel changer, and the remnants of the rubber pedals on my recumbent bike. 

All of which prompted another day of rage.   After all I had done, the concessions made to earn her trust...and love!  I felt betrayed.

Tomorrow, I resolved, I would go to the bank with my scotch-taped twenties (still missing a few corners) to get them made whole; I would sheepishly call DIRECTV for another replacement tuner for the replacement tuner of two weeks ago; and I would contact the Schwinn people in Seattle to see if there are replacement pedals for my BioDyne model, and if so, what might they cost me?    I was depressed.

The next day, I didn’t get all that done.   I did go to the bank in the morning where they replaced the torn twenties, but when I returned home at noon I found an e-mail report from Wisdom Panel, the dog DNA testers, with Moriarty’s results: I quickly called Timarie in to join me in this moment of revelation.  And the verdict on the computer screen was: 

HEIDI IS A GERMAN SHEPHERD/WHITE SWISS SHEPHERD

                         GOLDEN RETRIEVER MIX

The detailed results that followed fascinated us the way adoptive parents might look for the first time into their ward’s biological family’s past.   On her father’s side she was half German Shepherd and half White Swiss Shepherd—an Alpine offshoot of the German Shepherd dog, also called the Berger Blanc Suisse in French and the eishund in German, recognized as a separate breed since1968.  Her mother’s father was the Golden Retriever in the family tree, who mated beneath his station with a “mixed” breed that got “mixed” so far back that no single breed could be identified for sure. There were, however, “signals” detected that suggested she could be part, in descending order of probability, Boykin Spaniel, Miniature Poodle, Pekinese, Schipperke and Norwegian Lundehund.  (I’d never heard of a couple of them.) 

We were left with wonder at this DNA dice throw of gene-jumping, chromosomal crossover and recombination that makes us all one of a kind.  In Heidi Moriarty’s toss, the German Shepherd contribution seemed entirely absent, save for a few stray black hairs on her face; no black or brown “mask” or “saddle” showing, as is so common with them.  Rather, in appearance, she seemed to us a near-fifty-fifty split between White Swiss Shepherd and Golden Retriever...except for that wolfish face of hers.

So we had been both right and wrong in our suspicions.  Right that Heidi had no roots in Labrador, and that she was at least in part Golden Retriever; but the White Swiss Shepherd and German Shepherd results came as a total surprise.  That sent us to immediately Google-up the traits of those closely related shepherd strains: “Intelligent (check); Courageous (seemed so); Alert (to be sure); Spirited (to a fault), Obedient (not yet); Aloof (in spades!), Vocal (yes, ranging from a woof to a whimper).  Courtesy of Gypsy, we were already familiar with the Golden Retriever’s Scottish heritage as a field dog with its easy-going, family-friendly ways.

Our hope was that strain would soften some those rambunctious shepherd genes.

“You were right on with the name Heidi and the Swiss connection, ” I said to my wife.  I had already decided to keep it as her first name.  But I would hang on to Moriarty as a surname...until she outgrew it...if ever.

Reading the Wisdom Panel report in detail had softened me.  So she was what she was, herself alone, as I am what I am, as we all are—in my case a human driven by nature to draw conclusions:  They were?  Knowledge usually leads to understanding.  Understanding almost always leads to tolerance, then to acceptance. Then, if it’s right, to love itself...surely among us mammals.

That night Heidi climbed up onto our bed between us, nuzzled us both without delivering a single nip,  then fell quickly asleep, the deep kind that comes with youth and innocence, at her beautiful best, her long,  lean body stretched out in all its functional athleticism, her pied coat glowing in plaited swaths of Swiss cream and Scotch butter.  “You know,” my wife said, “if we had lost her, I’d have to have another dog.”

Wow!  So my fate was sealed.  It was till death do us part then, and I was reasonably sure whose demise that would be.  You might ask, as I have myself, many times, was it wise at my age and state of health to try a new love?  The answer is “no.”   Did I make a mistake and reach too far?  Yes.  Can old men clinging to life and memories of being young not respond any other way?   No.  As the poet said, a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a dog heaven for?

Part 2 to come next week.

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JUDGEMENT DAY COMETH

Remember the “nothing burger?”  Fox “News” folks’ metaphor for the Trump-Russia Investigation?  Well, get ready for a big heap of Russian Dressing on that increasingly hard-to-find item—even at McDonalds, where our demented leader dines regularly.

Keep in mind that the national turmoil we watch unfold daily is not a war between left and right, but a civil war within the Republican Party.  Doubt me?  Consider the combatants:  Fox News, Hannity, Rush, Jones, half of the House and Senate and the rest of the Alt-Right zealots on one side, pitted against the more moderate, dutiful Republican civil servants on the other.  Proof?  Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller (R) is a Republican, Deputy Director of the Department of Justice Rod Rosenstein (R) is a Republican, fired Director of the FBI James Comey (R) is a Republican; current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray (R) is a Republican.  Point made?

I have previously admitted to my modest gifts of prophecy in calling baseball outcomes.  I never disclosed that I have similar predictive powers in political matters.  Now is the time to reveal that I do, and I sense a closing noose of justice in the very near future, around Reichsleiter Trump and a host of his inner and outer circle satellites.  On what charges, the Fox noise machine will ask.  Here’s what my paranormal informants tell me about The Donald’s legal future.  He will be charged and convicted of: 

• Conspiracy with the Russians to collude in breaking our election laws.
• Obstruction of justice.
• Money laundering.
• Tax evasion.

Verdict?  Guilty on all counts. Bet you a hundred rubles my sources are right.

Punishment?  My otherworldly informants have not transmitted that data to me yet, but when they do, I will pass it along.  In the meantime, let us fret about who’s really to blame for these demeaning times and our national humiliation on the world stage?  I mean, besides Vlad the Impaler. Well...I’ll tell you later...after I load up on term life insurance.

IN THE END IS THE WORD

Assaults on our enlightened democracy come so frequently these days that before you can absorb one mind blow, another slams you in the cortex.  And they come from within this great land of ours.  In case you haven’t heard, Dimwit Donald and his AltRight goons launched last week another sneak attack on Western Civilization and its institutions, this time on our own nation’s Center for Disease Control, of all bodies.  They banned seven English words from the Center’s discourse.  They are: 

1.  Fetus.  Why? Just guessing, but I suppose it’s so we don’t differentiate a fetus from an out-of-the womb baby—part of their anti-abortion campaign.

2.  Vulnerable.  Puzzling, this one.  Maybe it’s a subtle tactic in the coming defunding of the CHIPS program that addresses the health needs of nine million poor children.  They are surely vulnerable.

3.  Diversity.  No surprise here.  That’s a naughty word to Trumpenproles.  It suggests there are Americans who are not WASP descendants of transported felons and religious dissenters.  We know better.

4.  Transgender.  Obvious, this one.  There is no such thing.  And if there is, there shouldn’t be.

5.  Entitlement.  A favorite sleight-of-word trick beloved of Republicans everywhere.   In this enduring grand scam, they want to con you into believing the social programs you spend your working life paying into are really allowances they give you from the wealth they manage, stipends subject to cuts at their whim.  Cover your backsides now for what’s in the planning stage.  

6.-7. Science-based and Evidence-based.  A no-brainer.  Modern medicine rests its case.  Science, and its method, has brought us healing wonders never dreamt of just decades ago, and to impede its progress now is sheer idiocy and a threat to our wellbeing.  Yet that is precisely what Trump and his band of know-nothings are doing in their ongoing war on science, demonizing findings that stray beyond Biblical limits.

We should remind ourselves that language is the taproot of culture.  Our language, English, is not only the wellspring of our culture, and our success, but it has become the world’s default language, the go-to tongue for art, commerce and science.  It has also been “weaponized” by the Trump regime in its war on learning generally, but science particularly.  No surprise that this war is clumsily waged.  What would you expect from a leader whose vocabulary is that of a fourth-grader and command of grammar is less than that of a sixth grader?  A guy whose “prose” is a leash of misspellings, run-on sentences, Byzantine punctuation, and dead-horse diction that relies bigly on three fuzzy adjectives—“incredible,” “tremendous,” “fantastic.”  Believe me.

Will English survive Trump’s reign?  I think so.  Deliverance for it and us is on the way in the person of Robert Mueller and his relentless inquisitors.  And odds-on, Herr Reichsleiter will be found guilty of crimes against more than language and science.   We will welcome Judgment Day and its verdict—guilty of all charges.  But will our Dear Leader?  Not likely.  And how about his friends at “Fox and Friends?” A hard-sell, for sure.

Let’s try anyway, but with an approach suggested many years ago by a true mistress of our beloved language: 

Tell all the truth but tell it slant—

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

Tell all the truth but tell it slant--

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —

-Emily Dickinson

PORTRAIT OF THE BLOGGER AS A YOUNG SMOKER

Pardon me for my three-weeks’ absence.  Explanation?  Charon came for me but I jumped ship to be back among you, my living friends and associates, with a little less right lung.  I thought that 37 years off cigarettes somehow protected me from smoking’s ravages.  Wishful thinking.  (That is yours truly, above, on writing assignment in Mexico City in 1972, flaunting my habit.) 

The early morning of November 28 this year I awoke struggling to breathe. The 911 call was made.  The ambulance came. Within a quarter-hour I was in Orange County Memorial’ s ER, where they drilled a hole in my chest and re-inflated my right lung.

Two days later I was sent home to mend. A day and a half after that lung collapsed again. ER again.  The chest shaft was enlarged. Then off to the ICU for a two-day wait. Then to surgery where a golf ball-sized bleb was cut out of my upper right lung in a VATS procedure.  Five days later I was sent home to recover, with my lung anchored in a way I don’t quite understand. That’s where I am now.

I subject you to these unpleasant details because I think a cautionary tale is in order. Though all you health-conscious Californians have long since quit smoking tobacco and have moved on to other, more fashionable addictions, I remind you that quitting way back when does not shield you from a vast array of dire consequences later.  That includes cancers beyond that of the lung, namely bladder, blood, breast, cervical, esophageal, kidney, mouth and throat.  Yes, tobacco is an all-purpose killer, contributing as well to human deaths from heart disease, stroke, diabetes, CAD, emphysema, COPD, pneumonia, stomach ulcers, Crohn’s disease, gangrene,  impotence, infertility, among other of the thousand natural shocks our flesh is heir to.

Why do I preach so to the choir?  Because I’ve already lost my father, younger brother and sister-in-law to this lethal weed, and some living friends and family members are still lighting up.  I’m hoping they read this.

Done.  Message completed. Now I can get back to chronicling “President Trump’s Terrible Trek to the Apocalypse,” while I work on my next book,  The Discriminating Diner’s Guide to Hospital Food in Southern California.

DISRESPECTING GENERALS, PART II

Yes, I confess…I offended another four-star general.  That was back when General John Kelly was still in diapers.  It was unintentional on my part, but that made no difference when I committed the crime.  Recounting the event here, I believe, is instructive on why politics and the military make a volatile mix.

It was chill morning in 1953 at Komaki Air Force Base outside Nagoya, Japan. I was there as a member of the Air Force’s Twentieth Weather Squadron, detached to the Ninth Fighter-Bomber Squadron of F-84 Thunderjets tasked with hitting secondary targets in North Korea. 

I had just finished a twelve-hour shift and was trudging along the road that ran from the weather station to my barracks when a jeep approached me from behind, to my right.  Weary after a night of balloon chasing, I kept my head down as it passed, then, maybe ten seconds later, I looked up.  I saw the backside of the head of a tall man in the shotgun seat...and then the jeep’s license plate with the four stars.

At that very instant a second following jeep with a pair of Air Police inside pulled up abreast of me from behind.  “Airman!  Stay right there.”  I did as told.  “Were you taught when to salute?” the one driving challenged in a harsh tone.

I kinda knew, but if not I got a three-minute, detailed lecture on how it was mandatory that I salute the general in his vehicle.  And did I know what general I had failed to salute?  Before I could think, he told me.  It was none other than General Mark Clark, a somewhat controversial hero of World War II and now Commander of the United Nations Command, the highest mucky-mucky on the Free World’s side!  (Actually, I did know Clark’s name, and his exalted rank, but thought it best to feign ignorance; enlisted men are presumed stupid by their superiors, and that often works to our advantage when discipline is meted out.)

Then the cop who wasn’t driving pointed to my stocking cap:  “And you’re out of uniform, Airman.  Write him up for that too,” he told the driver

“I am not out of uniform,” I protested.  “Our commanding officer lets us wear stocking caps because we work 12-hour shifts and the nights get cold!”

They were having none of it.  Rules were rules, and I was now a double offender.   They wrote up my Discrepancy Report without another word and then drove off to catch another stiff without eyes in the back of his head.

Unfair!  Like a damn speed trap...or call it a salute trap...or call it plain old chickenshit, which I did under my breath.

What punishment came next?  Would I get busted in rank?  I only had two stripes as it was...that would mean a cut in pay as well...maybe even time in the stockade?  Dread fell heavy on my slumped shoulders.

Two days later I was summoned to the Squadron Headquarters office to face the martial music.  My commanding officer, Major Preer, was by far the best CO I had in my four years, eight months and fourteen days in the United States Air Force, and on this day of judgment he sat at his desk with what seemed a near-smile on his face.  A hopeful sign?  He waved me to a seat, then picked up a thin sheaf of papers, and turned toward his wastebasket.  It was a smile that spread to almost a giggle as he slowly tore my DR into little pieces over the receptacle.  Done, he grinned at me and said, “Now get outta here!”

Whew!  What a relief.  Before I could ruminate on why I got off so lightly, I already knew.  Major Preer was a MIT-educated meteorologist, not a service academy-trained martinet.  His view of life was much broader than General John Kelly’s narrow perspective.

Next week I will give you some opinions I’ve formed from my military experience and how they relate to our present nation, where three generals sit so close to presidential power.  Some of my conclusions may not please you.

HALLOWEEN DINNER MENU

Welcome Fox & Friends to Chez Traitres, where the GOP elite meet to eat dinner and plan their next criminal enterprise.  I’ll be your server this evening.

 First, may I recommend the crow.  We have Poe’s bird deep-fried, or in a fricassee or a ragout, or, for those of you who fancy yourselves true Trumpenproles, crow tartare.  Delicious!

Of course, for those less adventurous souls among you, we offer that good old American standby, the Nothingburger, which we have taken the liberty of slathering with our world famous Russian dressing.

For dessert, I suggest the Humble Pie.  It’s fresh.

Can I bring you a glass of Trump Blanc de Blanc (2009) to get you started?   We also have it available in the five-gallon box.

DISRESPECTING GENERALS, PART 1

Generally I don’t talk back to four-star generals, but since I’m out of uniform now and provoked, I’m going to make an exception for General John Kelly, our Dear Leader’s Chief of Staff.    No, I’m not going to pile on General Kelly for the bogus charges he made against Congresswoman Fredericka Wilson.  The utter falseness of his claims is readily accessible in the online video of the “empty barrel” making her dedication speech of the FBI building in Miami.  His doubling down on those libels by not renouncing them leads me to believe that he has been corrupted by the sociopath he serves. 

And yes, I’ve mustered enough courage to meet the challenge laid down by Sarah Huckabee Sanders; I do “want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general”—a debate she thinks “highly inappropriate.”  I think it is more than appropriate.  Necessary, in fact.  My beef primarily centers on Kelly’s use of the word “sacred,” and the absurd conclusions he draws, as follows:

You know, when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor.  That’s obviously not the case anymore as we see from recent cases.  Life—the dignity of life—is sacred.  That’s gone.  Religion, that seems to be gone as well.

Really?  It is my turn to be stunned.  I’ve been alive longer than you, General, and no woman I’ve talked to felt she was looked upon with “great honor.”  Quite the contrary.  Most think they have been treated like second-class citizens.  Of course we can always get a second male opinion, say from Harvey Weinstein.  Or better yet, let’s ask your boss, who openly brags about grabbing women by the genitals, and has been on the prowl for over four decades of groping.  How sacred is that?  

You also say that the dignity of life is sacred.  Again I balk at the word “sacred,” variously defined in the dictionary as “spiritual,” “religious,” “hallowed, “untouchable,” et alia. (Personally, I prefer the anthropologists’ definition of the word: That which cannot be discussed rationally.)   The problem is different religions consider different things and practices sacred, and find those differences reason for enslaving or slaughtering non-believers or heretics.  No dignity there that I can see.  That said, I will concede that human life has been cheapened some in recent years.  I, however, attribute that to the rampant human overpopulation that poisons our once-balanced biosphere.  The more of us that compete for space, the less we feel the loss of a few competitors.

Finally, you lament the passing of religion.  I will resist the temptation to say good riddance, and only point to one of the most “sacred” societies we have on earth, Islamic Pakistan, where it is a capital offense to be an atheist.  A violent country internally and externally, yet with Hindus to the east and Taliban to the west...what do you expect?  Moving east to west with the “sacreds,” we have Shias, Sunnis, Jews, Copts, Christians and many other believers in constant clash all the way to Casablanca?  No, I’m not cherry picking.  Closer to home, we recently had “troubles” in the north of Ireland where Catholics and Protestants also shed sacred blood.   Conclusion?  Secular societies are best at preserving the dignity of life.  

Sorry Sir, your sanctimony rings hollow.  

NOTE: This is not the only time I’ve disrespected a four-star general and lived to tell the tale.  That I’ll tell next week on this blog, Part II of Disrespecting Generals, with concluding thoughts on the danger of mixing politics and generals.

ANNALS OF CORRUPTION

How angelic can a crook look?  Know now the Price of lice has fallen!  Let us pray that Stinky Zinke is next to plunge from our spacious skies into the slime of the swamp.

An augur here?  Could this herald the coming fall of the greatest con man in the annals of featherless bipeds? The dump of chump Drumpf into the sump of corruption?  Oremus.

OK, an end to the word play.  Tom Price, the former Georgia congressman who used to rail against government waste (the innocent pictured here), is out as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, taking with him more than a million bucks in luxury travel expenses billed to us.  That’s in a mere five months!  More members of Reichsleiter Trump’s cabinet are reported to have their hands in the federal travel till, including the aforementioned Zinke, Secretary of the Interior, and the charming newly wed Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, who took his equally charming new trophy bride abroad for their dreamy honeymoon on our Visa.

Why would life-long Republicans in good standing do such a thing?  I could give you any number of possible motives, but perhaps the most charitable is they want to alert their buddies still toiling in the private sector that there’s better pickings in government, where the “management” doesn’t care much about what they do and the bennies are unlimited.

Some peevish quibblers will point out that every American administration has its scandals, some minor, some major.  Well, I only have knowledge of the subject going back to the Herbert Hoover administration, and by my calculation Trump and his gang are on their way to set a record for sleaze and theft that will never be equaled—kind of like Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak.

All of which leads me to ask all if the XXII Amendment to the US Constitution can be fudged, evaded or modified in some way?  You know, to bring back Barack—the one president who was scandal free...and that over eight years!

Oremus!

BETTORS AWAKE!

Here’s a course correction to securing your financial fortune this year!

As you know from last year, I’m your ultimate source for wagering advice in the world of baseball.  And you lucky believers in my powers who played my picks laughed all the way to the bank with your take from those hapless Vegas bookies.  Yes, I told you in April of last year the Cubs and Indians would meet in the World Series.  Many of you laughed out loud, I’ve been reliably informed.  I assume you’ve been kicking yourselves in the tail ever since.  

For those who missed out, I gave you a second shot this spring with my selections to win for the 2017 season.  They were:

The bold face of teams above indicates the division leaders (and the qualifying wildcard teams) as of September 2, about a month away from the final standings.  Selecting seven out of the top eight playoff-bound teams ain’t bad, don’t you agree?  This year I also tabbed Washington and Chicago in the National League championship series, with the Nationals emerging the winner.

In the American League Houston and Cleveland would reach the finals, with the Tribe to triumph.  As for the World Series, I picked Washington over Cleveland in six.

Alert!  A last minute course correction!  There’s been an Indian uprising!  It’s now Cleveland over the Dodgers in the World Series!  Yes, the Dodgers may have a team that compares favorably to the great 1927 Yankees, but they have been slipping lately, while the Tribe is, as we say in the Clubhouse, en fuego.

If you haven’t yet made your bet, you’re in luck with the update.  If you have already wagered on my April choices, place another on the revised picks for the World Series as a hedge that should bring an ever bigger payoff.

Still skeptical?  How could I possibly tab jerkburg Cleveland over Newman-loved LA?  Besides the aforementioned momentum shift, Cleveland has the best pitching and the deepest pitching (starters and relievers), and we all know that pitching is the name of the game.  We also know that the American League has a slight edge in overall quality.

So what are you waiting for?  Reserve that Brinks truck now; hire that NRA brother-in-law of yours to ride shotgun; and head for Vegas in October to pick up your swag.

I modestly acknowledge your applause.  No, no charge, though gratuities are accepted.  If all goes well, I’m thinking of changing professions and investing in a pack of Tarot cards.

COULD THE END BE NEAR?

Back to the here and now with my seatbelt fastened.  If my tracking of our consuming national scandal is correct, we may be nearing a sudden end to the Terrible Term of Trump, with all its nation-shaking effects.

I am of course referring to the ten hours of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week by Glenn Simpson, co-founder of the research firm Fusion GPS that commissioned the controversial Steele Dossier for a nameless Republican client.

You will recall that the dossier, which claimed to detail collusion between Trump and Putin for over five years, was widely trashed when it surfaced in January this year, just before Donald Trump’s Inauguration.  The leaked report drew fire and rage from the President’s entourage, with Trump himself branding it “fake news,” from “sick people,” and it “didn’t happen.”  The cautious major media shunned it as well, citing ”errors” and “unsubstantiated assertions” and even “misspellings” (British instead of American?) in the 35-page document.  Only Buzz Feed (kudos for their courage) posted it online for download, allowing the inquiring mind to judge for itself.  I was one of those inquiring minds.

What most titillated the prurient public was the mere half-page devoted to Trump’s strange “revenge” on his predecessor in office—the so-called “Golden Shower” episode.  I concede that hiring two Russian whores to piss for him on the Moscow Ritz Carlton hotel bed where Barack and Michelle slept did border on the kinky, if not the pathological.  But far, far more important to me was what Steele describes in meticulous detail as a long-term, two-way secret relationship between Putin and Trump, with names and dates given.

It should come as no surprise that over the last eight months much of the Steele document has been corroborated by our own investigative agencies.  Christopher Steele, it turns out, is a respected retiree from Britain’s MI6 (spy-novel readers are familiar with that legendary outfit) with a long-time concentration on Russia and matters Russian.  As for Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and Steele’s employer in the “research project,” his Fusion GPS firm is likewise well-respected for what they do, and as he exited the Senate hearing this week with a smile, he was asked by a reporter whether his testimony would be released to the public.  He said it was perfectly fine by him if it was.

The same question was asked of Senator Chuck Grassley (R), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, by an Iowa constituent.  The ever-wily Grassley said he had no objection, then backtracked some and said his committee would have to vote on it…but he “presumed” there would be no problem releasinga transcript of the ten hours of secret testimony.   I long ago learned not to take the partisan Grassley at his word.  But if the “infamous” dossier that maintains a long-term tie between Trump and Russia to rig our 2016 presidential election is accurate, we may at last be able to decide for ourselves whether Trump and his minions committed high treason...or some other high crimes or misdemeanors. 

If such a release comes to pass, I will pop up some Orville Redenbacher, turn on the telly, crank back my La-Z-Boy and prepare to be amazed and/or entertained by this show of shows.  What?  You’re shocked that I could be “entertained” by the likely ruin of our nation as we know and love it?  What kind of American am I!

In self-defense I can only paraphrase Lord Byron: If I laugh at any human thing, T’is that I may not weep.

HAPPY DAYS

I’ve been away a week to give away my older daughter Molly in marriage to her beau Rama.  What a joyful break it was, far from the madding crowd, Charlottesville, and North Korea.  A bonus for me was being appointed Official Poet for the ceremony, and I here include my contribution in words to accompany some "sneak peek" official wedding photos that record the happiest of days.

Befitting two spiritual grandchildren of John Muir, Molly and Rama chose to marry in the wilds of California.  Well, call it semi-wild...on a Fort Bragg bluff looking down on the Pacific blue crashing into white on the rocks below.

copyright Helena and Laurent photography

By chance, without foreknowledge, Molly and Rama chose as their get-hitched date August 12, which happened to be the 32nd anniversary of Timarie’s and my own marriage.  That was in Ireland, in Sligo, during the Yeats Festival of 1985, in a modest ceremony.  Timarie had recruited the best man and matron of honor in a pub the night before.  The following morning they joined the photographer and our friend, Father David O'Connell, in an intimate wedding, at which I read this Yeats poem:

 

HE WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

copyright Helena and Laurent photography

Nine months and one day later Molly Margaret Meyer was born.  I emphasize the timing because I want to assure you this honeymoon baby was legal.  More important, though I had three grown sons, my first daughter was also the first baby I was allowed to see born.  What a soul-shaking experience!  I was so moved I went home and wrote the following verse of welcome:

 

MOLLY, DEAR

What a happy day in May

When little Molly Margaret

Came to us to stay,

Not trailing clouds of glory

But love to show the way.

Little Molly Margaret,

How trippingly off the tongue

Spring those words for this elfin girl

Whose time on earth has come.

I say her violet eyes

Are two of one of a kind,

And the smiles I give her now

She’ll one day repay in kind.

Molly, dear, born this day,

Putty wonder from my clay,

Teach me to know anew

The human heart at play.

(5/13/86)

copyright Helena and Laurent photography

I read that greeting as a bridge to the Fort Bragg wedding day of Molly and Rama.  The one below preceded the actual exchange of vows.

 

WED THIS DAY

Lady Molly Margaret,

To Rama wed this sylvan day,

May you walk long linked as one

Through the forest of the light,

The tiger kept in view and at bay

As you see to your own symmetry.

May wonders always seize your eyes,

Mindful always the journey is the prize.

Love with laughs works best to see you through.

With trees and words, blooms and song,

And with what issue might come along,

That love will only grow.

copyright Helena and Laurent photography

Yesterday I still felt the afterglow of witnessing as promising a match between a man and a woman as I ever hope to know. Today I’m back in the unreal reality of our time, watching the rapid descent of our own Caligula into total madness.  We must keep smiling through the dire spectacle.  Doesn’t hope still hide in Pandora’s jar?

copyright Helena and Laurent photography

TOUCHÉ!

Time for some answers!  You will recall that I challenged you on Monday to tell me what verbal linkage there was between “The Mooch” (Anthony Scaramucci,  President Trump’s director of communications for ten days before being fired for using some heavy-duty profanity) and a famous novel set in the time of the French Revolution, Scaramouche (1921), the name of the dashing hero who is described in the first sentence of the book thusly: “He was born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad.”

You Googlers have the answers by now.  Scaramouche is by Rafael Sabatini, world-famous writer in his time of swashbuckling adventure tales—ideal fare for Hollywood flicks, both silents and “talkies.”  You might just find Scaramouche, Captain Blood or The Sea Hawk (Errol Flynn gloried in such roles) or some other film version of them on Turner Classic Films some late night.  The prolific Sabatini died in Switzerland in February of 1950 and is buried there.  His tombstone reads: “He was born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad.”

Sic transit Gloria mundi.

THE REVENANT

My apologies for being absent over the last month.  I’ve been healing.  It was not by choice, but I did manage to prove another truism true: the older you are the harder you fall.  I proved that when I took a plunge out of bed at 5:45 a.m. on July 2 and my petit 253 pounds came crashing down on the tile floor.  I was trying to let the dog out in the near dark. 

The 911 call made.  Ambulance arrives.  Another vain attempt to talk the first-responders out of taking me to the ER.  Another bumpy, kidney-hammering ambulance ride to Hoag Hospital where they know me by my first name.  Rolled onto my own gurney waiting on standby.    Vital signs taken.  Alive.  X-rays.  No bones broke.  Good.  Contusions many.  Not so good.  What’s red and pink and purple all over?  Me, finally released to go home and heal.  Opioids optional.

That’s what I’ve been doing since—healing...and watching with you our republic devolve into chaos under Mad King Trump.  And what have I learned from my latest brush with mortality?  Exactly, let the dog piss where she wishes.  

Anyway, I’m back, and almost ready to guide you through Apocalypse Soon.  First, though, let's take a last moment to relax and watch the rubles tumble in the dryer. 

OK.  Time to ease back into the turbulence.  Let’s start with a little quiz that should be a breeze for you current events freaks, world literature majors, and movie buffs as well.  As you know, “The Mooch” (as he calls himself) lasted only 10 days as President Trump’s director of communications before being fired, allegedly for using some heavy-duty profanity in a New Yorker magazine interview.

That given, your questions to answer:  To what famous fictional character is The Mooch linked by name?  And who was the famous novelist who described that character with one of the most memorable opening sentences in world literature?  “He was born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad.”

Hints: Think Darius Milhaud.  Stewart Granger.  Errol Flynn.

Answers on Wednesday.

GIVE THE REPUBLICANS SOME CREDIT

Most of you probably think the Republicans crafted a “mean” health plan to cut their burdensome taxes at the expense of the poor.  That’s silly on its face.  Who needs a second yacht?

No, their main purpose is far nobler than merely lining their pockets further, if not as readily apparent.   And they are modest enough not to openly take credit for it just now.  

They know that overpopulation, not global warming, is humankind’s greatest threat.  Where to start with the fix?  Logic dictates that we begin the thinning with those less fit, least productive, non-consuming elements in our society.  And what better place to start than with health care—the prime turn-off valve in life’s flow.  Little will be lost and much is to be gained. 

Some bleeding hearts may protest that this controlled die-back amounts to mercy killing on a grand scale.  Semantics.  

The population crisis is real and action is needed—now.   President Trump, Senator McConnell, and Speaker Ryan—on the same page for once—intend to take care of the fittest first and allow benign neglect to run its course with the rest in a relatively merciful way.  The cutback in our numbers should not adversely affect the economy because the departed were mostly slackers, drags on the economy, and certainly not consumers of product. 

Additional benefits of the GOP plan would include a drastic reduction in our homeless population and the unsightly presence of their bedrolls and shopping carts and cardboard-box shelters cluttering city streets.  Ditto for those long supermarket check-out lines clogged with “shoppers” shuffling through their food stamps to pay for their T-bone steaks. 

In a more theoretical realm, we should consider the likely efficacy of benign neglect in ridding our common gene pool of genetic defects.  Take the weak genes out of circulation over time and return to a healthier homogeneity.  Perhaps the Cato Institute or the Heritage Foundation or some other respected think tank could undertake a study to prove it true...indeed, validate the entire Republican health plan while they are at it.

So let’s give the GOP a well-done tip of the cap for now, before our grateful nation buries them in acclaim in November of next year.

BETWEEN GOD AND GAIA

Representative Tim Walberg of Michigan (R) said last week he believed in climate change, but he is also a Christian who believes that God would take care of us if it were to become a “real problem.”  Tim and climate-change deniers generally should be informed that God is currently busy putting out the seven supernovae fires in the Arp 220 Galaxy and has turned Earth’s management over to Gaia.  No friend of her chief tormentor, the goddess may be expected to use all her considerable defenses against us featherless bipeds as we continue to spew CO2 into the atmosphere.  So count on more violent weather the likes of which we’ve never seen, and a hot time on the old globe tonight.

I am not a scientist, but I did go to weather school full time for six months.  That was at Chanute Air Force Base, Rantoul, Illinois, back in 1951-1952, preparation for what was to be my job during the Korean War: a rawinsonde operator serving the weather needs of our combat pilots.

If I remember one thing from that six months of marching to and from school in the prairie winter cold, it was Master Sergeant Bryant, our teacher, telling us every Monday morning when class began: “Remember, don’t confuse weather with climate.  Weather is local, climate is global. Weather is today. Climate is longer than you’ll live.”

That made sense to me then, as it does now.  Not, apparently, to our President, most Republicans, Fox News, and the overwhelming majority of Trumpenproles—a malignant minority overall that’s fond of flaunting every surprise snowstorm in May as proof global warming is a hoax and the climate scientists are wrong. 

No, they are not wrong.  Let me dredge up some basics from what I remember of my Air Force education.  Even then—1952—global warming was taught to us as aknown fact.  The culprits were CO2, methane, unburnt hydrocarbons, oxides of nitrogen, particulate matter, etc., vented into the atmosphere where it formed a canopy that trapped heat that would normally be sent back into space through terrestrial radiation.  The man-made source of the pollutants mostly came from fossil fuel consumption in industrialized nations, rising steadily and dramatically ever since the Industrial Revolution began.  The cumulative effect was to heat the earth itself, most importantly the oceans which retain more heat and retain it longer than land.  Warm oceans evaporate, sending skyward warm air that is able to house more water vapor in the process; rising moist warm air collides with descending colder air; add to the mix the motive power provided by winds and ocean currents prompted by the earth’s rotation, not to mention orographic lift and...well, we get weather—familiarly known to us as rain, hail, snow, sleet, fog, storm, lightening, thunder, gales, twisters,  cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons.   If severe enough, they bring us flood or drought and more human misery.

Satellite photos show an alarming shrinking of earth’s polar ice caps, decades-old plane crashes in the high Andes are ghoulishly revealed in the melt, oceans rise, crops fail, storms increase in frequency and intensity, record floods wreak havoc on communities, and the warming permafrost waits to release its carbon stash.

How can climate change deniers ignore the visual and experiential evidence?  And claim it is due to natural climate cycles, not caused by human activity?  Whatever, they do, at our collective peril.

Initially, I thought climate change deniers should be prosecuted for “crimes against humanity.”  Then I softened.  They were probably acting out of ignorance rather than malice; their direct contribution to the problem was likely no more than the carbon dioxide they emit whenever they exhale.  What they lacked was an education in the subject.  But that also posed a problem.  While not as daunting as quantum mechanics, meteorology could still be challenging for the science-shy among us. 

Then it hit me!  Why not appeal to the innate logic gifted to our species.  OK.  Here goes.  What if, against all scientific evidence to the contrary, Representative Walberg is right and global warming is caused not by our man-made carbon canopy, but rather by God’s...uh...oversight...or his will!  And Gaia is playing defense.  Shouldn’t we rush to her aid out of enlightened self-interest?  If we continue in our current wanton ways and add even more CO2 to God’s up-cycle dump, we’ll almost certainly pass into extinction...like the Dodo bird.

So let’s go on the attack and actively try to reduce CO2 by our own actions.  Go green...if that’s what it takes.  Take the initiative and compensate for others’ ruinous excessesTry to save our own hides.

Makes sense to me.  How about you?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t to our reichsleiter, Herr Trump, who, after peevishly pulling us out of the Paris Accords (had to, Obama put us in), gave his go-ahead blessings to the oil and coal industries to burn on. 

Utter madness!  Is he playing some kind of weird, lose/lose variation of Pascal’s Wager with the laws of probability?  You know, you see a guy with revolver in hand, about to play Russian Roulette and you rush over to stop him before he pulls the trigger; he waves you off, and with a superior smile says, “Don’t worry, one of the chambers is empty.”

Descent into a Maelstrom

Help Me!  I’ve fallen and cannot reach my short sword.  Yes, I’m contemplating seppuku. I’m that depressed.  I didn’t think I could descend this low in the reign of Trump, but his just-completed trip abroad has sent me hurtling deeper into the maelstrom. And the bottom still is not in sight. 

Of course, Trump’s lickspittle lackeys (most Republicans and the brighter dull-normal Trumpenproles who watch Fox News) are touting the trip as a great success.  Sure, the Saudis gave Trump a Caliph’s welcome with the attendant pomp and pageantry.  (Authoritarians get along well with authoritarians, don’t you know.)

Then it was on to Israel, where, with the exception of Trump blurting out confirmation that Israeli intelligence was the source of our knowledge of ISIS’s laptop bomb-making capability, things went smoothly enough.  And Netanyahu gets high marks in Diplomacy 1A for his frozen smile during his guest’s unwelcome revelation that he passed along the info to the Russians.  (Thugs get along famously with fellow thugs, don’t you know.)

The Vatican?  No better than a perfunctory draw, from what I saw.  Pope Francis looked ill at ease with Trump, while our reichsleiter, rightly so, looked as comfortable as a whore in church.  Only with Melania (a Catholic, I assume) did the pontiff look his warm and loving self.

Next it was Brussels for the NATO meeting and...disaster!—to borrow a word from the fifth-grade vocabulary of our dear leader.  First to go viral was footage of his boorish shove of Montenegro’s prime minister out of his royal way.

Getting almost as much coverage was his practiced handshake-wrestle with newly elected French President Emmanuelle Macron, showing the world’s millions who the alpha-male ruler of the sandbox was.

Not yet done trashing the porcelain shop, Trump next turned his wrath on Germany.  (Full disclosure: my ancestral homeland.)  “Bad, very bad” was his terse verdict on Deutschland, our long-time ally and democratic bulwark in Europe.  (The crime?  It seems they sold too many cars in the U. S.)

Chancellor Angela Merkel, a loyal admirer of America but repeatedly insulted by our oaf-in-chief, had had enough.  She soon announced to her fellow Europeans (and the world) that their fate was now in their own hands and they couldn’t rely on its traditional guarantor of peace and reason...party unnamed but obvious to all.

Damage done, Trump flew to Sicily for a final stop at the G-7 meeting in Taormina.  He must have been bushed.  When the G-7 leaders walked the quarter-mile distance to the San Domenico Hotel, he went a different way by golf cart.  Short of that stamina he bragged about in the presidential debates?  Or was it a gesture of fancied superiority over those folks from the uppity smaller nations with their irksome claims to culture?  Only The Donald knows.

The biggest question remains, who benefits most from Trump’s Brussels body blow to the 68-year-old NATO alliance that has kept an uneasy peace?  I don’t believe Herr Trump really knows that much about geopolitics to assess the damage he’s done.  But the guy who could have scripted Trump’s trip could not have fared better.  Yep, that’s the oh-so-clever Vladimir Putin.  No, Uncle Vlad isn’t Uncle Joe.  Stalin starved to death more than three million Ukrainians in 1932-33 alone; Putin’s kills fall far short than that. But give him time and Trump’s continued help and watch him close the gap.

What should you do?  Well, you could always seek asylum in Saudi Arabia; just leave your Christianity and your drugs behind.  Or head to the Philippines and the open arms of Trump’s buddy Duterte; but definitely leave your drugs behind.  

Or you could secede with me and found a new land of liberty, Pacifica.

BACK ON THE BEAT...BRIEFLY

A reader reminded me recently that when I started this blog I said I was going to talk about the misuse of words in public discourse.  Be a word cop, in short.  I confess I’ve strayed from that mission, what with Reichsleiter Donald Trump threatening our very lives nonstop here on planet earth. 

In any case, I resolved early this week to find time to return to my original purpose.  

My first action was to put two much-abused words on the disabled list (DL), with hopes that they might return to health and use with rest. 

The first was “absolutely.”  You can’t listen to talking heads talk these days without set-up questions being answered with an “absolutely.”  Besides the lethal repetitiveness of the word, it’s risky usage: in a post-Einsteinian world of relativity, very little, if anything, is absolute.  Give the word a break.

Second is the puzzling popularity of “existential,” as in “existential threat.”  Why this fancy way of saying “real,” “factual,” or “empirical”?  Is it because of its visually close association with the word existentialism, the fashionable philosophy that makes you sound important?  Then quit showing off, I say as a practicing existentialist (Camusian variety).  You’re only confusing your listeners for no good reason.

That’s where I was when Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.  Why?  Front and center with the answer came the president’s back-up flack,  Sarah Huckabee Sanders: Trump did it “for atrocities [committed] against the chain of command.”  Really?  Against Trump’s chain of timid and misinformed toadies?  Atrocities? Really?  Did Comey bomb Yemeni hospitals?  Re-open Auschwitz?  Or not swear loyalty to the mentally deranged New York street thug who obstructed justice by demanding he do so?

I suggest all you Trumpenproles out there open a dictionary and look up the word “atrocity” for starters.  And do I think firing Comey after asking him to end his investigation of General Flynn for his ties to Russia poses an existential threat to our continued existence as a democracy?  Absolutely!

LATE, BUT WORTH IT

Sorry to be two weeks late and two rubles short, but here, by popular demand, are my (and your) picks to click in the 2017 Major League Baseball Season.  You’ll remember that last year, against the wisdom of my higher paid colleagues in the soothsaying business, I predicted a Cub/Indian World Series; those of you who listened, drove to Vegas, bet a wad on my prescience, shoveled your haul into the Brinks truck rental, and were rewarded by being bumped up into the 39.6% tax bracket.  You are welcome.

Why not do it all again?  I must alert you though that picking the winners this year is far more difficult than last—particularly in the American League East and National League West divisions.  In the former any team but Tampa Bay could win it all this season.  In the latter the Dodgers will have their hands full fighting off the Diamondbacks and Rockies; the Giants will do a major fade, however. (Ditto for the Angels, I’m sorry to report.)

Without further ado the final regular season standings for 2017 are:

What about those playoffs?  Well, the Chicago Cubs will face the Washington Nationals in the National League final series.  The Cleveland Indians will face the Boston Red Sox in the American League final.  World Series?  Washington over Cleveland in six.  You can take it to the bank.  Or to Las Vegas again, if you’re one of those greedy folks intent on passing our president in personal wealth.  And remember...per my usual policy, these selections are guaranteed.  If they all do not finish in the order predicted, I will provide you next year’s picks absolutely free of charge!   

By the way, I remain a baseball card collector in my old age.  And I’m desperately seeking the Major League Rookie card for the guy pictured below in an early photo.  If you have it, or know where I can find this guy’s rookie card, I will give you $25,000 cash for it!  Help me out.  Remember all I’ve done for you.

Jus' Askin'

Is the spy net closing on Putin and the Trumpsters?  Jus’ askin’.

Did British intelligence (MI6) really pick up on this crazy scheme to fix the 2016 U.S. presidential election back in late 2015?  Jus’ askin’.

Didn’t the French and Dutch, not to mention the Germans, Poles and Estonians, also know before we did of the treasonous traffic in what promises to be the spy scandal of the century?  Jus’ askin’.

Why did it take over a half a year for our CIA and FBI to take seriously the ample evidence forwarded to them from abroad that the clumsy Putin-Trump gang were up to no good?  Jus’ askin’.

If our worst fears prove out and we learn that our election was stolen by a bunch of lucky bunglers manipulated by uncle Vlad, do we hold another make-up election not provided for in our Constitution?  Jus’ askin’.

And what do we do with the conspirators, including Reichsleiter Trump, upon their possible conviction for treason?  Do we follow defendant Flynn’s advice given at last summer’s Republican Convention on what to do with the vanquished Hillary and “lock them up!”  Or do we bow to a more traditional arbiter of Old Testament American Justice, Clint Eastwood, and “hang ‘em high?”  Jus’ askin’.