Blog

21 Jan

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi, age 78, married to the same man for more than 50 years, mother of five (five) children and grandmother of eight, may be the most strategically brilliant political leader since Elizabeth I (Tudor) of England. Both women went into the family business, although Thomas "Tommy" J. D'Alesandro, Jr., a Maryland congressman and then mayor of Baltimore, was not lethal to his (one) wife, unlike Henry VIII. Pelosi herself was the last of six children and the first daughter—who had to negotiate herself out of expectations that she would honor the family by becoming a nun. An activist behind the scenes in local Democratic politics while raising her own kids, she then ran for and was elected to Congress from California in 1987 and has served ever since, posting landslide electoral victories and dropping beneath 80 percent of the vote only twice. She made history being...

14 Jan

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

Susan Zerinsky, age 66 and 5’1” tall, has just become the first woman to head the legendary CBS News division. Yes, that CBS News, as in Murrow and Cronkite, which once set the gold standard for broadcast journalism, of late severely tarnished by #MeToo scandals necessitating the firings of Charlie Rose and Les Moonves. Zerinsky came to CBS at age 20, worked her way up, has produced “48 Hours” for years, exercises seven days a week, boxes, lift weights, does Pilates, and has taken SLT classes because she heard they might make her taller. Of the sexual misconduct at CBS, she vigilantly declares, “#MeToo isn’t behind us, it’s part of us.” Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg is working from home since being released from the hospital after surgery for two malignant nodules on her left lung. She’s 85 and this was her third bout with cancer. She expects to be back on...

17 Dec

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

COMPASS There’s a lost south in me, a place where joy,though costly, was a common middle name.Tomorrow, there, had elsewhere stayed today, solstices changed places, nothing was the same. There at the world’s edge, the antipodes,with all the stars and seasons rearranged,earth’s axis seemed to shift and gravity’sforce drew me in. My latitudes since then have changed. A lost love, like a phantom limb, gesturesemptily, making itself felt through pain.So ached this south in me for many years.But the world is round, and the lost self was regained once, seeking my own south, I ventured forthin due course, with due diligence, due north. "Compass" is from Dark Matter: New Poems by Robin Morgan, published earlier this year in the United States and the Commonwealth by Spinifex Press. Copyright 2018 by Robin Morgan. This blog will return on January 14, 2019. ...

10 Dec

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

Warning: this is about nothing relevant—except reality. Poor reality, it's so threatened these days. Now, I am devoted to imagination and, as you may have gathered, quite a fan of the surreal and the supra real, though I’m not always sure what that last is. But I feel so bad for plain, poor reality. After the Age of Enlightenment, it seemed that human beings had promised reality a better future. And in our modern, rational society, many of us thought we had finally reached the point where reality was dismissed only by folks certain that a bearded old white guy on a gold throne in the clouds was their salvation, or else that drinking Kool-Aid would hasten a comet coming to bring them to another planet.  Alas, no. For us to have thought that was, well, unrealistic. There is a new so-called therapy gaining great popularity for use with people who have...

03 Dec

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
Now that the U.S. House of Representatives is back in relatively sane hands, we can dare look to the future. That feels like a luxury, since we've been scrabbling for moment to moment survival.

12 Nov

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

Progressives woke up the day after the election anxious and downhearted. The Blue Wave had turned out to be a Blue Trickle, and progressives, so accustomed to losing, felt predictably lost. Trump, using his deflect-attention-from-his-failures tactic, shrugged off his midterms disaster and promptly fired Jeff Sessions, naming a Trump loyalist (under FBI investigation!) as the acting attorney general who would close down or sharply limit the Muller investigation. Then Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg fell and fractured three ribs, and progressives thought oh god oh god Trump will now get to make three Supreme Court appointments! And then a white (again) male (again) killer slew 12 people in yet another mass shooting, this time in California (again). Not to speak of that state being on fire (again). Progressives were pretty depressed. OK, progressives! Time to wake up, sit up, and perk up! Democrats won the House of Representatives—by a little at...

05 Nov

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
This is a thought experiment, an exercise in imagination. No, it’s not touchy-feely, and there's nothing mystical about it. Imagination is a precious capacity we humans have (I suspect and hope other animals do too), although we often waste it on petty or even nefarious purposes. Only children and artists (and some scientists and inventors) stay in constant touch with the profound power of imagination.

29 Oct

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
What they once called Krystalnacht has just struck again, this time in Pennsylvania. What they call "domestic terrorism"—but is actually "white male Christian supremacy terrorism" has struck again, in mailed pipe bombs. But I refuse to forget what has dropped from the gorged news cycle. The Caravan.