• Letters From An American - August 15th, 2026. Thank goodness for HCR.

• Hope For America with Heather Delaney Reese. I bookend my middle-of-the-night scrolling with the two Heathers.

The next three are enraging:

• The physical and mental health of 5,000 members of our Navy and Marines aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in 47’s war on Iran. Despicable.

• Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is being extinguished by the Secretary of the Treasury. It enforces the Bank Secrecy Act and sets rules for banks and businesses to track and report suspicious money moves.

• Todd Blanche (newly appointed Attorney General) declines to pledge independence from the White House. Of course. Who didn’t know that was coming, John, Thom, and Bill?

I always love to hear from the Sisters explain the law:

• Sisters-In-Law podcast with Joyce Vance, Jill Winebanks, Kimberly Atkins-Stohr, and Barb McQuade. Every Saturday. Latest, “Everything Is Illegal.”

A bit more sleep for a couple of hours after drinking a glass of Metamucil in water, falling out around 4:15 a.m. She rarely remembers her dreams. Perhaps the world exploded…

6:30 a.m., she walks into the kitchen, picking up her iPad and stand on the way. Until classes start this week, she regularly dials in to YouTube to watch and listen while brewing coffee. First, a couple of bites of FAGE Total yogurt to neutralize the tummy, which helps with what she’s hearing about AI on the podcast episode she clicked on:

• Pod Save America - Seriously, Is This Sh*t Going To Destroy The World?

By 7:40 a.m., she picks up a book she’s been reading, “The Shortest History of Japan,” by Lesley Downer, landing on a paragraph on page 40 about Emperor Shōmu ordering the creation of a giant statue of the Great Buddha in 749 CE:

Certainly Buddhism offered no consolation for ordinary people. For them, life was, frankly, terrible. Farmers paid enormous taxes to fund Shōmu’s building projects and endured droughts that caused dreadful famine. They also had to do forced labor. Copper and Gold reserves had been drained entirely to build the Great Buddha, and the country was pretty much bankrupt.

Gah! This sounds exactly like what’s happening now in D.C.

She cleans up and dresses warmly for a brisk walk up a hill to diffuse the anger. It’s August in San Francisco. Yes, it’s chilly.

Time to check in with the always fabulous Bulwark podcasts on YouTube as she makes breakfast. So many great minds here.

She needs a palate cleanser of some goodness and finds this gem of a video of the 2026 Barred Owl Cam. Four minutes of delightful bliss. Her jaw loosens a bit as she takes some meaningful deep breaths. Wishing to remain in the land of good vibes, she checks out the latest from Susan Speaks on Substack. Susan’s regular “Photo Friday—See Things Differently” and “The Substack Jukebox” are her regular go-to for relief from the quotidian anger-inducing newsfeed.

It’s 9:30 a.m. now as she scrolls over to the Substack app on her phone to find Jeff Tiedrich’s daily hilarious diatribe through “everyone is entitled to my own opinion.” I learned long ago to never take a sip of anything while reading Jeff’s stack. The same for the “I Fucking Love Australia” Substack. Hats off to Gman, 2 Sheilas, and Mitzi for their hilarious portrayal of America's madness, complete with a glossary. Go check out today’s post.

She checks email, responding to a few inquiries about upcoming classes from new students, then moves into learning time. After a few hours of good activity in the brain and more exercise, she’ll hop into a bit more American dystopian demise, care of the tech oligarchs, Russell Vought, and Project 2025 while Nero fiddles.

Starting Wednesday, the routine changes. She’ll be back to teaching…

Oh, and speaking of teaching, here are some former colleagues (retired) protesting AI and one getting arrested.

It’s truly astonishing how easy it is to overthrow the American government as we’ve known it for 250 years, dump the Constitution, and watch government officials enrich themselves (POTUS and family, SCOTUS, Congress, and 47’s entire cabinet). Many of us are left aghast with our mouths open as we learn of new atrocities waged by the aforementioned groups. Corruption is rampant and everywhere, and all of us rubes paying our taxes get to sit and watch in horror as our hard-earned tax dollars are being spent on a war no one asked for (and decades of intelligence steered other Presidents from), our neighbors being dragged out of their homes and cars, likely never to be seen again, outrageous (officially unapproved) building projects around D.C., and a thousand other abnormalities coming from the White House, several of which are rolled out on a daily basis to keep most of the electorate (who pay attention through a diverse connection to various media sources) in a constant anger of “WITAF is going on here?” The countries we border are on constant defense from the demented man in the WH who berates them daily, as we pay an ENORMOUS tax on imported goods due to the imbecile’s complete misunderstanding of tariffs.

The entire Republican Party, having given a blood oath to Project 2025, stands by idly, enabling the hatred and corruption. Nothing the Founders built into the Constitution works if an entire party barely in the majority ignores what was written to prevent this. Emoluments Clause? “What’s that?” Article II, Section 4? “Never heard of it.” 25th Amendment, Section 4? “Who me? I can’t do that.” Those of us without the power to do anything but protest can’t believe how the docile Democratic Party is utterly useless right now, as we are hearing the DNC is in a perilous position regarding finances. Who could have guessed when Ken Martin was chosen as the leader of the DNC? FFS, this is a total DISASTER. The Dems have no message and only a handful of Dem members of Congress are trying to fight back.

All of this leaves me enraged on a daily basis. Yes, I have outlets to assuage the anger to ensure that I don’t fall apart. But if you’re not hoppin’ mad and looking at every way we can all contribute to ending this horror, then you’re not getting the message. We are being manifestly looted as a country: monetarily, militarily, and morally. It will take at least a generation to try to heal this country, if it’s even possible.

• Citizens United vs FEC must be overturned.

• In order to accomplish this, SCOTUS must be restructured

• Term Limits for everyone in Congress and the SCOTUS

• No stock trading for ANYONE serving in the government (put that shit on hold until you’re a regular rube like us

• No more free healthcare for life for Congress until WE ALL HAVE THIS

• So much more…this is a start (what are your ideas?)

I wrote and recorded this 5 years ago. How interesting that it works as a thematic musical statement for these times.

OFTTAH!

In the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, the first entry for the word “woke” is

1a chiefly US slang: aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)

1b chiefly US slang: reflecting the attitudes of woke people

2 chiefly US slang, disapproving: politically liberal or progressive (as in matters of racial and social justice) especially in a way that is considered unreasonable or extreme

At the very end of the U.S. slang definitions (defined first) in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

past tense and past participle of wake

And what, may I ask anyone living in the mindset of the 15% cult in America, is so wrong about being AWAKE or the past tense of being awake? Awake means feeling alive. Awake means to rouse from sleeping or to be in a state of not sleeping. More Merriam-Webster: Actionably, it describes someone who is completely conscious, alert, and active. In a broader sense, it means to become aware of or attentive to something (e.g., "awake to reality"). It’s time to celebrate being alive, woke, and conscious of everything around us.

You bet your sweet pituitary glands, I am AWAKE and WOKE, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. President Obama said, “Remember what is best in us,” in an interview about the meaning of July 4th. Being awake and woke is what is best in us. It means we care for and love our neighbors. It means we find the light in everything.

Speaking of being awake, this new song and video from Bobby Haywood is the perfect share for America’s celebration. Check out “Hey Man” here. I’m sure you’ll like it. Turn it up!

Some feel-good personal accounts:

This past Wednesday in the stylist chair at The Barb Shop getting a short, tight haircut by the wonderful Atlas, I heard someone call out, “Is that Dana Jae Labrecque I see there?” Atlas paused; I turned my head toward the door. I yelled out, “Oh my God! I can’t believe it’s you!” when I saw the former Dean of my school at the college, who had retired a few years earlier. I jumped out of the chair, warmly embracing her. I went back to my chair, and she sat down in the stylist’s chair next to me. She was there for a haircut with the other stylist! We had a lively chat about the college and about what she’s been doing in her four years since retiring; she’s a fantastic artist. The stylists were tickled by our happy conversation. We had so much fun that we decided to schedule our next cut for the same day and time again in August. Ahhhh, community!

Two weeks ago, I taught a broadcasting/podcasting camp to 19 middle-schoolers (grades 6-9) at the California Historical Radio Society in Alameda. I had no idea what to expect, as I teach adults at a community college. Turns out, they were great teens and worked well together. Every team completed a podcast episode and a Public Service Announcement. They went from ideation to writing their own scripts, followed by recording their voices (they loved that part), and finally editing it all together with music and sound effects. It was an exhausting week for me. If you’d like to listen to the future, listen here on YouTube. The topics range from satire by “The UnHelpers Badvice” to “Healthy Bee” and “Online Safety,” both good advice podcasts that focus on health tips and the other on how to keep your child safe online, to an interview regarding a bad movie from “The Procrastinators,” an episode of Florida Man by “Ranked,” and random topics by “The Three Nerds” with this particular episode focusing on music in video games. It’s fun, and I’m proud of their work! Let’s face it. Many of us tune into podcasts explaining the horror show in our current government; this listening will be a nice aural cleanse.

I swam in the Bay yesterday, and what a delight! There is nothing like open-water swimming. It’s always a lovely adventure with dear friend Jody, whom I appreciate so much for gently reminding me that the water is lovely and that I should go.

Tonight I’m going to hear an 18-piece band, Jeff Sanford’s Cartoon Jazz Orchestra, perform. It’s going to be fab as they always are! I’ve recorded the band a few times at the college for composer Lenny Carlson, a good friend and colleague. He taught in the Music department at the college for over 2 decades. Sometimes I can’t believe I’ve been teaching there for 25 years. Mon dieu!

All of this is to say: live your life to the fullest every day. We have no idea what tomorrow brings. The more we fulfill ourselves with community, respect, pride, hope, and giving to others, the more love we bring to the world and to ourselves. Let’s make this planet a better place together!

America is being run (into the ground) by the id of one man who has been given carte blanche to do as his demented mind sees fit. (Thanks to fellow Substack subscriber, Mike Hammer, for a comment he wrote today inspiring this.) He lies, he cheats, he grifts…rinse and repeat every moment of every day. His entire cabinet, filled with spineless grifters, lies and cheats with every breathing moment in the roles he has bequeathed them (no thanks to an obsequious Senate).

If you’d like a refresher on the id, ego, and superego, let me direct you to this brief study. It’s helpful.

Daily, hourly, we Americans witness an abusive father (current POTUS) beat us into psychological submission while our mother (mainstream media) looks the other way. We connect with our fellow abused sisters, brothers, cousins, and aunts to make plans to escape the hellish wrath brought into our homes, but the father’s brothers (abusive uncles, i.e., the GOP) run interference for him, holding us down, thwarting us from our freedom.

We may be beaten, but we remain strong. We share. We talk. We organize. As the crumbling man in the White House attempts to vanquish the citizens of the U.S., more people join our forces to stop the madness. THANK YOU to those working diligently to uphold the law!

I’m sure you feel the exhaustion from living with Jack in Lord of the Flies. Let’s plan to be successful before the inferno takes everything.

Perhaps some lighter reading: try Heinlein’s “Tunnel in the Sky.”

For those of us just out here in the world, living our lives and wishing to stitch together a way to make ends meet—to enjoy our existence on this planet with our neighbors, this has become a huge dilemma across most national stages. How do we deal with a world that awards less than .001% of the human inhabitants with all the human-created ideas of money and power? Now, those humans are creating Artificial Intelligence with their money and power to rid the planet of a human working class. But, the hitch! The power required to run AI requires huge amounts of electricity in the cities where the data centers will operate, and pollutes the surrounding waters. The citizens LOSE while the billionaires cruise. And THEY win the tax breaks? WTF? {Shaking my head}

The most important “happening” is something that is NOT being reported enough. Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, and Palantir have been shouting about the 22-point manifesto, and few have heard it. Oh, but Business Insider reported it, not in the way one would think, however. It is, quite frankly, THE END of every way we now live. It IS THE DYSTOPIAN FUTURE written in plain sight for all to read. Skip the Business Insider if you like and read Dean Blundell’s Stack from April 20th that spells it all out quite appropriately…you know, from a working stiff POV and not from an oligarchic POV. This shit is real, and it’s a lot scarier than you can imagine.

I wrote and recorded a couple of songs that helped assuage my anger:

Neo Malevolent Reactionary Brood: https://on.soundcloud.com/T2aYXcGliLrVWXKTqK

The Big Grift: https://on.soundcloud.com/48OKuJ6ZFHD8yjRQKV

It’s Thursday. Let’s make it through today.

Why are those with so much wealth unable to pay taxes? Is there a course they take to teach them how to ensure more wealth comes from less sharing with the rest of the world they reside in? We all drive the same roads. The roads need regular maintenance. Taxes pay for the repairs. Someone earning a huge sum more than the rest of us pays NOTHING for the road repair they travel on, leaving the rest of us middle-income folks paying for ALL of it—how is this FAIR? Hot tip: it’s not, and they have rigged the system to work only for the .01%. Yes. That’s a zero first behind the decimal point. They are not the 1%. They rank among a teeny slice of the pie yet own and eat ALL of it. Bloated fucking evil.

Teachers, Nurses, Police, Firefighters, EMTs, and Paramedics, among many other worker bees in American society, are middle-income earners, and we all pay a LOT of taxes. Why does the guy who built Facebook or Amazon get a HUGE BREAK and pay next to nothing?

Here’s the worst part: they use their wealth to buy power. They grease the pockets of politicians (mostly Republicans) to rig votes in Congress to remove restrictions that protect the rest of us from polluted water and air, and protect other species living among us on this planet.

These men OWN our politicians. The American political system has been so degraded since the concerted effort began in 1980 that we are now living in the downturned pinnacle of an anti-Constitutionalism CONGRESS!

America is not the only country experiencing this, but we are the largest, with the most firepower and the most money spent on our military. The SUPERVILLAINS have their hands on all the levers through the grift of the demon regime.

SHAME ON YOU, TIM COOK.

SHAME ON YOU, MARK ZUCKERBERG.

SHAME ON YOU, JEFF BEZOS.

AND A HUGE send off on a rocket to Mars TO ELON MUSK AND PETER THIEL - the most evil of all the SUPERVILLAINS.

They all prove that extreme wealth and power cause a deep disease of the mind.

We must rise together as superheroes to wrest America from the demons in power.

I heard that today, the Winky Dink Sean Spicer had a word or two for the RepobliCons. Ha. Good! I had to look it up just now to find you a link. They need a swift hand to the head to wake them from their vile Project 2025 stupor, even if I don’t like the gist of his message to them.

Vile is an anagram of evil. Evil is vile. I detest the billionaire class and their vile, evil Marvel/DC Universe supervillain ways. They take everything that is beautiful in our world and smash it to bits, and then they pillage more. Now they find it quite convenient to declare themselves “Christian.” As if. There is not one iota of the heart and soul of a man who may have lived a long time ago. Any religion that uses the word “Amen” to mean “so be it” is a crock of human-created bullshit. Nomen is more like it. My aunt has always told me that to go to Heaven, you have to have Jesus in your heart; you don’t get to go if you’re just a good person. {shaking my head} Noise! The noise of Peter Thiels' declaration of a Christian Dark Enlightenment, the Curtis Yarvin madness, puts me in a dark place as I curl up tighter on my couch, saying names aloud like Arya Stark.

“And you knew who you were then. Girls were girls and men were men.” ugh

Black Gold Sun is a power trio of three black women who formed a new band just after the 2024 election. I had the immense pleasure of mixing their first EP these past few weeks, which will be released on Bandcamp soon. I’ve known Anita Lofton on guitar and vocals since the 90s, when she was DJing around S.F., and I provided sound for one of the events she worked. I’ve witnessed her grow into a wonderful musician and compelling songwriter. Veronica Savage on bass and Q on drums round out this awesome new presence in our music scene, locking in a fantastic groove together. An eclectic and excited crowd gathered at Thee Stork Club in Oakland last night, moving and grooving to the beat and connecting with Anita’s powerful lyrics about the times we’re living in. “I wanna feel the up! Bop! Bop! Bop! Bop!” as everyone caught the lyric and repeated together with a raised fist exclamation at every “Bop!”

The headliner, Skip the Needle, skillfully showcases fierce anthemic rock and funk with four of the best musicians I’ve ever known. To say the band is TIGHT is not a strong enough word. They are invincible together. Vicki Randal, Shelley Doty, Kofy Brown, and Katie Cash have been writing, recording, and performing live together in this incarnation for a little over a decade now. (All four with years before that with their own bands, including Vicki as a member of the Tonight Show band for a decade, and also with Mavis Staples, among many incarnations in her illustrious musical career.)

Their live performances ARE FIRE! Two guitars, drums, and bass - all four sing lead and harmony. The guitar solos are otherworldly. Their socially-conscious lyrics make you pump your fist into the air to the beat as you sing along. The crowded room was filled with smiling humans moving their heads and bodies, as one does when moved by the power of rock and funk. I call it “rock church.”

Check out this 2022 tasty tidbit preview for (a then) upcoming live performance in Berkeley with a great close-up photo on stage. That’s some inspiring music journalism right there by Lou Fancher. Here’s a link to their latest recording on Bandcamp, an album titled “Wake Up Wake Up Wake Up.” Check out the other albums as well.

This is the music we all need right now.

Lastly, I would be remiss to not give a shout-out to Chaos Fiction, a third band on the bill that I had not known before hearing them last night. Superb musicianship with a totally unique sound. I was intrigued. The rock-solid bassist never stopped smiling all through their set, nailing the groove in sync with the drummer.

Friday, January 16th, I powered up on groove, melody, and inspiring lyrics, providing the best therapy for the now. Find a groove near you.

The American Potemkin Village has burned. Left in its wake is a vast canvas we get to paint however we wish. With

Empathy

Love

Learning

Optimism

Living in harmony with all other living beings

Breathing

Listening

The demon regime is tiny. They only portray power through pervasive media that we can turn off in an instant. We can unplug. We have the power to change the story being fed to us. We’ve been drowning in it these past several months, but we can lift our heads from the waterboarding and grab the demons in a massive group hug to show them that love wins over hate. Love wins. They have been trying to steal our love, filling us with hate because that is how they win. I’m sick of feeling full of hate. I must cast their wishful hatred from my being. I need to heal with love. I need to heal with peace.

Let us join the Buddhist Monks in their Peace Walk.

Let us join Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde in her wisdom of love and being.

BE GOOD.

Magpies in New Mexico

Arroyo Seco Backyard Bliss

Arroyo Seco_Rain_Birds_and the WuWu Electronic

Ode to the end of the Fall 2025 semester:

Enjoy listening!

This past year, I subscribed to the French newspaper, Le Monde (English edition) which provides a realistic look at our world with journalism untainted by the ignorance of American mass media. Today’s articles and editorials give you an interesting look at the world:

• Beyoncé is now a billionaire, Forbes reports (from the culture section)

• UK moves to ban boiling lobsters, shrimp, crabs and langoustines alive, recognizing their capacity for pain (from the food section)

• One year of Trump and of growing disorder (a short op-ed)

• Trump’s failing bet agains wind power (another short op-ed)

• China raises prices of condoms and birth control pills in an attempt to boost birth rate (from the world section)

It’s refreshing to read intelligent journalism. I subscribe to several independent journalists and historians in the U.S. who have also kept me sane this past year. The three I call my Dana Dailies are:

• Heather Cox Richardson’s "Letters from an American” Substack

• Jeff Tiedrich’s “everyone is entitled to my own opinion” Substack

• The many among The Bulwark on Substack and Bulwark+ on YouTube.

How to keep yourself in a positive light amidst the doom and gloom on the American horizon and in the rear view mirror? Play a music instrument. Strum a guitar, pluck a bass, bang a drum. Take out your earpods and listen to the natural world around you. IT HELPS!

Happy last day of 2025, everyone.

How can we claim that our brains are better when we have chosen to give currency to something that is exchanged for very little real value and something that is easily hoarded by the few?

How is it that humans believe in something better AFTER we are alive rather than making our lives and those of all other species on this planet better while we all live together?

Strange intelligence.

The hate-filled ghouls in the entire administration donning crosses around their necks while performing abject cruelty on the whole of humanity. We can ask, “How do these people sleep at night? How do they live with themselves?” The answer is before us every minute of every day: the entire lot of them is filled with seething hatred of others and likely each other. There is not enough sage in the world to cleanse the WH when this group gets expelled (if this ever happens…I have my doubts).

While the infantile inhuman 79-year-old throws darts of destruction and distraction at America and the world several times a day and night, horror humans like Peter Thiel, the (orthodox christian) billionaire architect of the current VP, AI, and the Project 2025 Republicans, speak of the antichrist on the waterfront of San Francisco, California. I had to read this sentence a few times. This is in America. This is in one of the most beautiful, progressive cities in America. One of the two governing parties in America completely enables this hellscape, while the other contains a handful of elected officials pushing back. (By the way, I won’t capitalize christian with those like Thiel who are monumental haters of everyone who is not a white male and have zero understanding of the teachings of Jesus Christ. They live the lord’s name in vain.)

As 7-million plus Americans practiced joy in the streets this past weekend to protest the wanna-be king, mainstream media looked the other way and barely covered it. They report on hate nonstop. The haters own the narrative.

We are all exhausted from the fight against authoritarianism. Madcap Mike Johnson (Shirker of the House) calls October 18th “No Kings Day” protests “a hate America rally.” Dweeb of Louisiana and taker of my fucking MONEY as a Californian middle income taxpayer (which means more taxes come out of my paychecks than the stupid-super-wealthy and the underprivileged souls of this nation) is telling Faux News insipients (yes, I made it up) that we are all standing up for a “Hate America Rally.” THE FUCKING NERVE of this flatworm pretending to be a leader of anything.

WITAF is going on with the RePUBICons and their protections of pedophiles? Is this the new defining feature of the Guardians of Pedophiles (GOP) party? Sure the fuck seems so. How on earth is this fungus allowed to grow(pe)? Get it? (Gropers, the fuck lot of them guarding the TrumpStein files.)

I believe wholeheartedly that DJT was the ringleader sending Jeffrey every teenage girl to his pedophile hellhole mansions and island. Donald owned a modeling agency and the MISS TEEN USA PAGEANT. How the flyiing fucksquad does anyone not read these fully immersed tea leaves? It’s so right out there in the public knowledge-sphere!

I wanted to make this post short and I shall:

The entire ICE and CPB workers need to STAND DOWN.

The Justice Department? Can we call it that? There is NO LONGER ANY JUSTICE in the 2025 department headed by Pam Bondi. NONE. She is an enabler of a mad king as the country careens into Authoritarianism.

SCOTUS, can we call it the Supreme Court of the United States? No, we cannot. It’s the MAGA EXTREME Court of the UnTIED States at this point. There are two points here. One is that this “court” has six extreme members who are paid by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation in various cheating ways, thereby upending the U.S. Constitution. The second point is that the United States is NEITHER. We are not united. We are unTIED from the U.S. Constitution because the RepubiCON party has made it so.

What I do to keep my sanity?

I teach. I teach adults how to make a living as a creative and technical assistant to music artists, filmmakers, podcasters, and numerous individuals seeking to convey a thought, an opinion, an idea, and/or a theme. AUDIO is something the world needs. It sends a message. It forms an idea. It starts a revolution. It can be used for good (sound bath healing), and it can be used for terrible manipulation of humans (Hitler and audio tape).

I recently shopped at Costco and purchased enough toothpaste, toothbrushes, disinfectant wipes, and other essentials to last me for at least a couple of years. Why? We are on the brink of a VERY STRANGE TIME tonight. There has never been a time when ALL of the MILITARY LEADERSHIP has been called to ONE LOCATION the entire world knows about…EVER. Is this the Red Wedding? Is this the “Designated Survivor” Netflix series come to life? What in the FUCK is this? The demented POTUS doesn’t even know what it is. He’s let his alcoholic, Faux News Weekend host masquerading as a certain Dept Secretary with zero leadership ability, but has a beauty studio on set at the Pentagon call all the U.S. military leadership from around the entire globe, leaving them from their posts on a day when the U.S. government is set to SHUT DOWN. WITAFIT? (What in the actual fuck is this? USE IT WIDELY because it’s a statement we use several times a day.)

WITAFIT? The demented post of an AI video by PedoFelonAssHat47 on Saturday night. Read about it here. Thank you, Jeff Tiedrich.

WITAFIT? Let’s see what happens tomorrow after the 800 U.S. Generals around the world meet with “Secretary of War,” Pete Hegseth tomorrow morning.

What would you plan to do tonight and tomorrow morning if you knew the nuclear codes were going to be throttled by Donny Demento in the WH?

The photo is of Richard Painter with a mouth I approve. He is a former ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.

It’s a short written missive with a 4-ish minute video to listen to.

“Think. Think about what you’re tryin’ to do to me. Ohhhh-ohhh, think! Let your mind go, let yourself be free.” (Aretha Franklin - 1968)

The new terminal is dedicated to Harvey Milk and queer San Francisco. It’s an airport terminal that Pete Horrorbeth can’t erase. There are murals throughout that focus on the life of Harvey Milk, life in the Castro, Milk’s successes as the first openly gay politician to be elected to office in California, and the 1978 assassination of Milk by fellow Board of Supervisors member, Dan White (apparently high on Hostess Twinkies). I kid you not, the “Twinkie Defense” was a thing. George Moscone, the 37th Mayor of San Francisco, was also killed. This was followed by the devastating two decades of the Aids crisis, as depicted by the historic timeline mounted on a wall adjacent to the main entry before the security checkpoint. Walking through the rest of the terminal feels like a futuristic utopia where the design focuses on the comfort of passengers traveling.

Close your eyes and imagine living room/salon-style comfortable seating at every gate, featuring personalized swivel chairs that provide lower lumbar support, surrounding a low table where you can place your food and beverages as you wait for your flight. All of these are spaced apart with lots of open room. Colorful, creative mobiles hang 30 feet above in various areas. En route to the gate, feast your eyes on a giant video wall displaying HDR slow-motion aerial videos of iconic San Francisco spots: The Palace of Fine Arts, Coit Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge (of course), and I even caught a glimpse of Aquatic Park, where I swim in the Bay! The various food and libation spots (mostly closed as it was 4:30 a.m.) offer a plethora of choices, including organic foods, vegan options, and many boast sustainable farming practices. This morning reminded me that I’ve chosen an amazing place to call home since I came to the Bay Area to go to college at 17 and never left. People here care about one another and put in the time and effort to be helpful.

Compare this to my arrival in Phoenix, where the enormous airport features the familiar cattle car-style seating at the gates and a mix of industrialized food options, including Chick-fil-A, Shake Shack, and McDonald’s, as well as some local small business fare. It is packed here. I’m sure the people are nice and helpful, too. My favorite parts of Arizona are in the north: Sedona, Flagstaff,

From Phoenix, I fly to Mexico City (CDMX), where I can board a bus directly from the terminal that takes me to Cuernavaca. It’s an hour-and-a-half ride to a beautiful colonial city south of Mexico City in the state of Morelos. Here’s a briefer from Google: Cuernavaca is the lush capital of Mexico’s Morelos state, cradled by the Tepozteco Mountains south of Mexico City. The colonial city center features the 16th-century Palace of Cortés, the former home of Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés, now a history museum with murals by Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Just southwest of Cuernavaca Cathedral is a 1500s walled monastery complex featuring a mural depicting Mexico’s first saint.

My friend, whom I’m visiting, has just finished six months sailing around Mexico from Ventura, CA, with her husband, the boat captain. They experienced awesome adventures at sea. They decided to leave the U.S. after the election and now have a home in Cuernavaca, where I’ve been invited to explore the city, get lost in the vibe, and perhaps develop an escape plan. I squeezed in this trip at the last minute, as the new semester begins on the 18th. This will be just what I need right now. Getting the hell out of the U.S. always feels good.

Time to board. Happiness incoming.

Alas, we must continue to do things that enlighten us and keep our souls from being mired in the hellscape they have beset upon America. They want us to feel terrified. I’m not. They want us to feel sick. I am. They want us to hide. I won’t. They want us to cause civil unrest. They do this in cruel performative tricks every day. The bait will not consume us.

SO, be strong by doing things you love! Music, art, reading, writing, gardening, knitting/quilting/sewing, bird-watching, dog walking, cat petting, swimming, hiking, traveling. GET OUT OF THE HOUSE.

South End Rowing Club swimmers returning from the drop-off point at Alcatraz (the real one in the San Francisco Bay) where they swam across the Bay to our club. They came in to a hearty breakfast prepared for them by SERC volunteers (I was on the cleanup crew), who served breakfast to 125 members and a few from a sister swim club in Australia, called Bondi (pronounced “bond-EYE”).

Earlier in the week, I visited the always amazing Filoli down the peninsula from San Francisco in Woodside, CA. It’s a beautiful early twentieth-century country estate with the most magnificent gardens.

A few beauties from Filoli gardens, including a mama Peahen and her Peachicks roaming around, my pal Teri gazing at a bloom, some Dahlias, and a wondrous nature flower necklace (I’m unsure of the flower’s name).

Friday night, I hung out with some faculty pals I hadn’t seen in ages at the Ocean Ale House (near the college where we teach) to see and hear our excellent colleague, who teaches English and serves as our college curriculum chair, play bass in his band, Schleptet. Check out this video of the fantastic keyboard solo as they cover Sly Stone’s “If You Want Me To Stay.”

After the SERC event on Saturday, I was treated to an incredible evening at the venerable Bimbo’s 365 Club in North Beach with a performance by the band, Mustache Harbor. The guitar player in the group has been one of my audio students at the college. He is a fantastic guitarist and this band is SO MUCH FUN. They have a huge following. They play music from the 1970s in a “yacht rock” vibe, and dress up in nautical style, just as the fans do. So many of them had captain’s hats and Navy-style caps. My favorite were the free mustache face stickers they left on a table by the door, with varying mustache cuts. 3/4 of the attendees had their fake mustache planted above their lip. I adorned one as well.

Here are a couple of videos of them performing:

These were taken as a vertical video for the band to share on Instagram if they like. That’s Billy in the British flag jacket.

So, keep strong, citizens of America. We need to rejuvenate to keep ourselves fit for the resistance.

Why? AI states, “The Anthropocene represents a geological epoch in which human activities have had a significant and lasting impact on the Earth’s climate and ecosystems. It suggests that humanity’s influence is so profound that it marks a new era in Earth’s history, potentially replacing the current Holocene epoch.” (Check out this link to an interesting opinion piece on the npr website in the Cosmos & Culture commentary on Science and Society before the current regime of the U.S. pretending to govern wipes it away.)

(screenshot from the npr opinion piece: The Geologic History of Earth. Note the timescales. We are currently in the Holocene, which has been warm and moist, and a great time to grow human civilization. But the activity of civilization is now pushing the planet into a new epoch, which scientists call the Anthropocene.) Ray Troll/Troll Art

Some of the oldest countries in the world by date of self-sovereignty include Iran, India, China, Taiwan, Japan, Algeria, San Marino, France, and Austria. However, the list, which is based on a country’s constitution and is the oldest, yields different results. At the top is the United Kingdom, followed by San Marino, United States, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, New Zealand, Argentina, Canada, and Luxembourg, makes the top 10. (puzzling, no?) Research found here.

Here is another list, quite different from the above. The 10 oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world include Damascus (Syria), Jericho (West Bank, Palestine), Falyum (Egypt), Beirut (Lebanon), Byblos (Lebanon), Aleppo (Syria), Athens (Greece), Plovdiv (Bulgaria), Gaziantep (Turkey), Susa/Shush (Iran). Details found here on this research mission.

I had to look up San Marino as it is listed as among the oldest self-sovereign cities. I couldn’t recall a country of this name, even though geography, sparked by my 10th-grade class, had ushered in my love of maps and geographical history. (San Marino is a teensy country inside Italy, close to the Adriatic Sea, but landlocked! It’s considered one of the oldest existing republics in the world. If you already knew that, I applaud you. I’ll go down the San Marino rabbit hole later and report back.) Most of us are familiar with the thousands of years of history of the other aforementioned countries. I wanted to research the youngest countries, thinking the United States is among them. However, although we are considered a young nation, we are not in the top ten due to the numerous countries that have been established in the last 50 years, mainly in Africa.

OK, I’m done with my preface to this.

We are in a strange timeline. The country that changed the world's trajectory in the 1940s and prospered from it has become a demon nation-state to itself and the world. How? The most moronic individuals living in our timeline have managed to take control of the country with the most money and arms. Simple as that. The United States is unique among all countries that have existed since the establishment of sovereign statehood, which elevated the town clown to the highest office. We have a complete moron (who now suffers from dementia in addition to his ignorance) running the country with the most nukes on the planet and the largest budget for military—and now internal Gestapo = ICE). This is a Molotov cocktail of horror.

We can all point to horrific times in the human existence: the Mongol Empire under the hellish Genghis Khan expanding their empires in Asia and parts of Europe simultaneously with the Christian Crusades focusing on religious wars in the Middle East (the Dark Ages), to more during the 19th and 20th centuries including Hitler, Stalin, and more. Never has there been a time of such advanced technology and communication as now, under the most dumbfuck kakistocracy that ever existed in the timeline of humanity, than what we have in America today in the regime known as the second Trump presidency. Our very own Felon47 is a real entity, and he is descending into a dementia-induced level of revenge and hate that the world has not seen in some time. Putin is evil, but at least he loves his country. Felon47 despises America, despite it having laid at his feet an untold wealth of riches.

He’s been enabled by a completely derelict group of Americans calling themselves “Republicans” (MAGAts) who allow him to be the most cruel human living on planet earth today. We are a pretend nation of freedom, but it has now become a police state in only 6 months of the Trump presidency. I only type his name with the word “presidency” so that future search engines find this. He is NOT OUR PRESIDENT, as a huge number of Americans did not vote for him. A larger number than voted for him voted NOT AT ALL. Go figure…

Recently, I subscribed to Le Monde (English version) as a way to monitor what and how the world thinks about America and to gain an objective view of our actions in the world regarding various issues. It’s a great journalistic vibe for you all to consider. It costs $50/year and is worth every penny. Our newspapers and (most) news outlets are compromised. You must look outside of America for objectivity in current events. Our mainstream media sanitize every word from his rancid mouth, and they hide his dementia-laden word salads of hate.

He can bring about the end of life on Earth. I feel in my bones the chill that if he is allowed to remain in power, we are doomed.

___________

A few positive asides because we all need as much relief as possible these days. This is a beautiful location in Norway, not currently dealing with the American Hell Epoch:

If this isn’t the picture of peace, I don’t know what is.

My new digital friend, Susan Niemann, shares her thoughts on a fabulous Substack titled Susan Speaks. Her latest speaks to me.

I recently tried a fabulous Empress 1908 Elderflower Rose Gin from British Columbia. Thank you, Canada, for the reprieve. Thank you, Mexico, for sending your first responders to help the flood victims in Texas. Make America Mexico Again. #MAMA

If you’re paying attention (and you should if you’re not), then there’s no way you can take in the information about our country's treatment of other humans and feel good about it. If you’re someone saying, “he’s doing what we want,” as I hear from my one remaining sibling on this planet, then you are a racist and a horrible demon with zero kindness to be found anywhere in your being. I abhor people who think ANY of this is OK. We are so far from the Americans who worked together in the 1940s to fight fascism and Hitler, via the German people (MAGA now), attempt to overtake Europe while annihilating Jewish people. Currently, Latinos are the scapegoats in this 21st century version of the hellscape of nazism. It’s sickening. My entire life in California has been surrounded by people from Mexico and other parts of Central and South America who are here to work and be free of several hellscapes in their countries of origin. They are happy people doing EXCELLENT work in restaurants, landscaping, hotels, hospitality, and various other service jobs that GIVE BACK to America tenfold of what we give them.

The bill passed on Thursday by RePUGniCONs sets in place a series of horrible new laws unrelated to the budget. We’ve been focused on the loss of Medicaid, which they neatly tucked into starting on a date post the 2026 midterm election. I see why this is an important part to focus on, but there are other, even more heinous aspects of this bill.

I hum “Killing Me Softly,” but I mean it to sound like a Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails, version of the song with yelling out loud. I need that therapy.