Tone Deaf

After a terrifically terrible day at my job teaching elementary school, I have a very specific memory of coming home to my little boy who was not quite school age and holding him close. It reminded me of the reason I do most of the things that I do. There are not many things like it. Which is why I can imagine Ivanka Trump chose to celebrate her Sunday morning with her son. As fleeting as those moments can be, they are certainly worth noting.
On social media? While your father is busy tossing around rhetoric blaming others for his draconian measures that keep other parents from holding their sons and daughters in a similar fashion? Fifteen hundred children have been lost by the department of Health and Human Services. According to testimony given by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, it's not really their job to figure out where they got to, not "legally" anyway.
So while the fate of the parents of these children is excruciatingly slowly determined, those Sunday Celebrations will have to wait. As Ivanka's daddy's henchmen continue to treat each and every illegal crossing as a criminal event on a par with members of the MS-13 gang, more and more loving embraces are put on hold. To keep America safe.
Safe from the kind of horror unleashed by parents who are fleeing their circumstances in their own country with the hope that the best country in the world certainly can't be any worse. It is Ivanka's daddy who seems bent on the notion of showing them just how wrong they can be.
When I think of children being torn away from their mothers and fathers, I think of Nazi soldiers separating old from young as the trains pulled into concentration camps. This is not the way we do things in America, is it? Not the America that Ivanka wakes up in, anyway.
So what do we do to keep this embarrassing trend from continuing? That's a tough one, since the level of empathy shown by Ivanka's daddy is on a par with his level of tact in general. Parents everywhere should have the opportunity to cuddle their children on a Sunday morning. It isn't just a comfort. It is strength. And everyone deserves it. Especially the children.

The Young And The Beautiful

Hey, I've got this great pitch for a new nighttime soap for the networks. Or maybe Netflix. It goes a little something like this: Who’s going to give back the young and beautiful lives (and others) that have been devastated and destroyed by the phony Russia Collusion Witch Hunt? They journeyed down to Washington, D.C., with stars in their eyes and wanting to help our nation...They went back home in tatters!
The story of these naive public servants who had their lives and dreams crushed would include George Papadopoulus, who pleaded guilty to giving false statements to the FBI.I'm thinking maybe we get James Van Der Beek for George. Michael Flynn, also pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI, maybe we can talk Brad Pitt into taking this one? I'm pretty sure we can get Chris Pratt for Paul Manafort, who was indicted two separate times, once for conspiracy and money laundering, and later for bank fraud. Or maybe Chris is more of a Rick Gates, having confessed to conspiracy and making that plea deal.
I guess what I'm seeing here is a kind of feel-good family version of Ocean's Eleven. Except there are nineteen of them. And there's nothing that sexy about collusion, though Witch Hunts have always had an air of salaciousness to them. Then there's the matter of showing lives in tatters when so many of them have at least fifteen minutes of news-cycle fame to get them to their next consultant gig. I guess it's all about how we sell it.
Maybe the angle we want to pursue here is the beautiful lives that all these beautiful people were pursuing before they were lured into this tragic vortex of shame and degradation. The ones who got off the train from Noweheresville and landed in the greatest city of the world. Well, one of them anyway. When they still had stars in their eyes and a song in their heart.
Wait! It could be a musical! We could get Cher and Justin Timberlake! "I Wanna Go Back Home Because Robert Mueller Indicted Me." I'm telling you, this stuff writes itself. And a big dance number in the Senate chamber. This is going to be awesome.
What if they're guilty? We can fix that in post.

Suffer The Children

Like most human beings with a brain and a heart, I was shocked to hear that Democrats were to blame for children being torn from their parents on our southern border. "Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release." Then I considered the source: our "President." As is his practice, he went on: "Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS."
How can we save this great country of ours from MS-13 and all that unnecessary capitalization?
Let's start with that separating families thing, shall we? Once it became policy for all illegal border crossings to be criminally prosecuted, that meant that parents would be taken from their children and those children would be left in the hands of the Department of Health and Human Services. This was the same organization that recently "misplaced" fifteen hundred kids who showed up at the border. If you're going to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs, right?
And if you're going to build a wall, you're going to have to lose a few kids. What's the problem? Well, how about those bloodthirsty MS-13 gang members? Maybe we should begin with the news to some that this is a gang with roots in Los Angeles, California. They tend to send more thugs south than the other way 'round. Most of the recruiting takes place within our own borders, and while it would be a really good thing to get rid of these bad guys, because they are, they are not the only bad guys recruiting within our own borders. The Proud Boys spring to mind. There is currently no stated policy to separate Gavin McInnes from anyone's children, nor is there a plan afoot to keep him out of America by building a wall or a cage or anything that might keep him from starting up any of his ultra-right shenanigans.
So why would we want to break up families at our southern border? I suppose someone imagined this would be a deterrent of some kind, though I don't believe that given the stress and anguish that cause families to flee their homes to try and find a new life in the United States makes that equation balance. If one of those kids managed to find peace and a new life here in Estados Unidos, then my guess is that the parents would be satisfied. Jailed, abused, sent back to a life without hope, but satisfied that they had given their child a future. Not in a gang. Not in capital letters. In the land of the free and home of the brave.

Memory Lane

I remember a lot. I remember riding my bike with friends from the neighborhood down to the 7-11. We descended like a pack of hungry pre-adolescent wolves, in search of Wacky Packages and willing to buy them by the case if it meant we could get those scarce stickers that had somehow remained elusive. It was downhill on the way there, and the way home was a bit of a struggle pedaling against the grade and carrying our purchases. But somehow we managed.
I remember throwing back the rugs on the floor of our mountain cabin to play with our Wizzzers. We had been given explicit instructions not to rev up our gyroscopic tops on the linoleum, but rather to use a strip of cardboard we had around for that specific purpose. Sometimes we forgot. When we did, we left long arcing streaks of rubber that needed to be hastily removed before mom saw and we had to put out tops away.
I remember the orange glow the corrugated plastic that served as the roof to my parents' patio gave everyone who sat under it. There are photos of birthday celebrations, graduations, barbecues and any number of sunny afternoons that fill albums with that oddly diffused light. That light means summer.
I remember the late night drives from my dorm in Colorado Springs to Boulder. The stretch from just outside the Air Force Academy to Douglas County was like driving on the moon. Only the vaguely flatulent sound of my Volkswagen Beetle and the new wave tunes that poured from the tape deck to keep me company. Sometimes I would slide in behind a semi roaring up I-25, where I would glide along in the wake of that big old truck until one of us had to exit.
I remember the dark wood and dim lights of Tico's, where my family went for dinner on Friday nights for more years than I can name. I remember how that vision changed when I got one of my first jobs washing dishes and the bright lights of the prep kitchen where I cleared plates of quacamole that had been used as ashtrays and scraped plates with cheddar cheese that had been fused on by exposure to some kind of nuclear reaction.
I remember the gift shop in The Brookville Hotel, where my brothers and I went after having one of the most amazing fried chicken dinners imaginable. It has echoes in every gift shop in countless hotels and roadside stops. My little brother came away with a cast iron toy ice truck. Thinking of it makes me think of the sweet and sour cole slaw that we attempted to recreate when we returned home and never fully managed.
I remember faces and places and moments and things that have long since been consigned to the dust bin of history, but I find myself going back there over and over again to clean off those relics and look at them once again with the eyes of someone who has seen so much more since then. When the ice truck and the VW and the Wacky Packages are gone, I have the memories. Thank you for those.

Sports Update

Do you remember football season? It ended some months ago when the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Patriots in Super Bowl Leventy-Seven. Or something like that. Currently, the sports world is focused on the NBA playoffs and the burgeoning baseball season. It's Spring, after all. So why are the owners and powers that be in the National Football League making all this fuss about the Patriots? Not the team so much as the notion that the players of that organization ought to be standing at attention and paying proper respect to the flag of this great land of ours. And now it's not just a notion. It's a rule. This was the "compromise" put forth by the very rich folks who own the teams on which the pretty rich folks play. If they don't want to give the flag the respect it deserves, then they should stay in the locker room.
This is supposed to take away that distraction of players who took a knee during the National Anthem, protesting the treatment of those who don't have television cameras on them on a weekly basis. Leave the social discourse out of it, guys. You're here to play football, not make a social statement. Show up at the White House when you win a championship and be grateful that you have a job in the first place.
Were you thinking that the owners consulted with the players before making their edict? I am sorry to break the news to you that this group of oligarchs felt no need to discuss this matter with those who will be impacted by this policy change. Tragic, since they apparently can't imagine just how ugly all this "winning" appears from down here. Players who do not comply with the new rule are subject to fines, which cost the team money, which could easily be turned into a reason for a player who is otherwise totally capable of playing the game to be let go because they do not fit in ideologically with the star-spangled league in which they now find themselves.
President in charge of Vice, Mike Pence tweeted a one word response to the NFL's decision: #winning. What exactly was won remains to be seen as some owners have already announced their distance from the hard line. The New York Jets' front office has already agreed to pay fines accrued by their players' choice to protest. And the NFL did just make an eighty-nine million dollar donation to organizations promoting social justice. So it's paid for.
And now back to our regularly scheduled sports entertainment. See you in the Fall!

It's What's Outside

Finding a solution for mass shootings in the United States is a cottage industry for talking heads across this great land of ours. Hugh Hewitt, of MSNBC, suggested a ban on trench coats. “To the teachers and administrators out there, the trench coat is kind of a giveaway. You might just say no more trench coats. The creepy people, make a list, check it twice.” Creepy people like Lloyd Dobler. If you've seen that movie, you know that Lloyd might be considered creepy, but is more likely to be concealing a boom box under his trench coat instead of a gun. What about Rick Blaine? Sure, he's a subversive who carries a gun and fights Nazis, but does that make him a danger to society? In today's topsy-turvy culture, it might be enough to have him put on a list. 
Then there's this bill in the California legislature that would expand on the 2014 law that allows others to "red-flag" dangerous gun owners. The new bill would expand the list of people who can file for restraining orders to include a subject’s employer and co-workers and the staff of a high school or college that the person has attended in the last six months. It was not clear from a cursory reading of the bill if trench coats were part of the "red-flag" items to notice.
Meanwhile, we train ourselves to protect the children who are not wearing trench coats. We conduct lockdown drills. We attend active shooter training. We wonder if we could arm ourselves with pistols or rocks or any version of common sense that would keep our kids safe. The rocks? Really?
Yes. The superintendent of the Blue Mountain School District in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, announced last week that he had armed the classrooms in all his schools with five-gallon buckets of “river stones.” Armed intruders would be turned back by a hail of rocks thrown by kids who will, no doubt be trained and tutored on the effective hurling of such missiles. And they will never use them on each other. Ever.
All of which allows us to continue to ignore the guns being used in all these attacks. The Second Amendment is the law of the land, and it shall not be questioned. Rather than finding a way to make sense of a two hundred thirty year old document in today's society, we seek ways to lay the blame anywhere else: Ritalin. Video games. Rock and roll. Trench coats. I guess the Trench Coat Association of America just doesn't have the clout that some organizations do. 

Out Of This World Idea

Earlier this month, the "President" declared to the members of the Army football team, “You will be part of the five proud branches of the United States Armed Forces: Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and the Coast Guard. And we’re actually thinking of a sixth, and that would be the Space Force. Does that make sense? Because we’re getting very big in space, both militarily and for other reasons. And we are seriously thinking of the Space Force.”
Gosh, Mister "President," that sounds keen. Will there be lasers and stuff? Will we be able to eat our MREs in the vacuum of space? And how does one camouflage outside the earth's atmosphere? 
Back in March, he told a group of U.S. Marines something similar: “You know, I was saying the other day because we’re doing a tremendous amount of work in space, maybe we need a new force. We’ll call it the Space Force. And I was not really serious, and then I thought, ‘Maybe that’s a great idea. Maybe we’ll have to do that.’ ” Sadly no one was clever enough to ask the "Commander In Chief" if they would have to change their song to include Halls of Montezuma, Shores of Tripoli and the Sea of Tranquility. 
Well, as it turns out, this really neat idea has a few holes in it, which in space can lead to some pretty nasty trouble. The Air Force has had a Space Command division since 1982, and Defense Secretary James Mattis has no love for the notion. Still, some legislators and analysts believe the military needs a new branch devoted to war in the stars. Most of the action for this group, however, would be limited to attempting to shoot satellites out of the sky via ground-based missiles. The recruitment for such a group would not center so much on your Han Solo-types but rather your nerdy neighbor who is really good at video games. 
Also, Senate appropriations for the X-Wing fighter project have been held up in committee. So, dream big, Mister "President." And keep drinking that Tang.