A new profile picture

Each year I change my profile picture to a picture of me from the preceding year that speaks to where I am or was in the recent pass.  For instance, when I started this blog about 13 years ago, my first profile picture was me standing in a park on Staten Island, where I grew up, with the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in the background.  I was running the New York City Marathon the next day and it seemed a fitting portrait of my blog at that time.

Over the years I had profile pictures of me, if I remember correctly, standing before an Indian battlefield in Wyoming (the Fettermen Fight, formerly known as the Fetterman Massacre), eating a pizza, visiting a baseball park and attending a protest rally now that my Street Fighting Man days from the early seventies during the Nixon years have been necessarily revived during these Trump years.

Last year, 2019, my profile picture was a snapshot of me from November 2018 as I headed out to canvas for a democratic challenger, Jennifer Wexton, in the Tenth Virginia Congressional District running against the Republican incumbent in a seat that had been Republican for forty years.  We flipped the seat, the first seat to be announced to have flipped during that entire historic blue-wave night.  I was pretty proud to have contributed a meaningful effort that fall in the fight to preserve our rule-of-law nation.

For this year's profile picture I reached back to March 2019 when I visited Omaha Beach in Normandy, one of the five D-Day beaches that the Allies stormed 75 years earlier during Operation Overlord, the success of which presaged the utter destruction Nazi Germany eleven months later.  Omaha Beach was the bloodiest and most bitterly contested of the five landing beaches and the initial shallow lodgment there almost failed, a catastrophe which would have unhinged the whole Allied line those first days and might have caused the American, British and Canadian troops to be driven back into the sea.  Unlike at the other four beaches, the first wave of American troops at Omaha suffered mass slaughter wading ashore and for almost the whole day the Americans reached only the seawall, perhaps thirty yards past high tide, under which they sought shelter from the murderous fire raining down upon them from the bluffs beyond the narrow coastal strip.  Orders were being prepared to withdraw them but in the afternoon intrepid soldiers singly or in pairs or clumps went up into the nearby hills, engaged the enemy and the beachead was preserved and enlarged as more troops came ashore.  It was a close thing and a costly victory, with hundreds of Americans killed and thousands wounded on that beach alone.  It is a reverential place for Americans to visit, haunted no doubt by the ghosts of shattered young men roaming ceaselessly among the ruined detritus of war still there decades later.  It was a time when Americans were great and proud and wanted to make the world a better place, and weren't victims of seemingly hopeless circumstances wanting only to keep the world out by building a thousand-mile wall, separating families and caging children.  My dad fought with the First Marine Division in the Pacific driving towards Tokyo and my girlfriend's dad fought with Patton's Third Army driving into Germany, and I was humbled to stand upon that hallowed beach in France yet suffused with pride at the can-do American spirit it represents.

How can you start reviewing the year...

... when there's still so much left to do in it.  Like impeach this lawless, thoroughly corrupt faux president for Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress (a co-equal branch assigned oversight by the Constitution over the Executive Branch so the president doesn't dangerously smash all constitutional norms and precedents in a demagogic grab for power).  The constitutional remedy for a rogue president so he doesn't destroy our form of government or our hard-won place in the world.

I thought I'd never see a repeat in my lifetime of the dangerous, nearly fatal national malaise inflicted upon our centuries old democratic experiment by a corrupt president  like I saw in Watergate, which I experienced as a young man.  It's baaaack in the form of the overt narcissistic egocentric ignoramus named Donald Trump who, if left unchecked, will destroy our fragile republic, a shining beacon of representative responsible government that free societies the world over covet and yearn to be like.  An American hero standing tall for the Rule of Law, US Congressman John Lewis.)

A distinct minority of voters elected through the failed apparatus of the electoral college (along with their overt or covert support of slavery, our founding fathers' worst idea enshrined in the Constitution) and now the tail is wagging the dog, the 40% is lording it over the 60% enabled by corrupt interests, powerful and unethical political kleptocrats, money (including foreign money) in politics and foreign agents like former KGB agent Vladimir Putin controlling beholden unpatriotic dummkopfs like Donald Trump.  The man on the right, in the MAGA hat, went by trolling the demonstrators outside the Capitol today, giving us the finger and assuring us that we'd have 5 more years of Donald Trump. I went over and spoke with him later and we shook hands upon parting, agreeing that we would never agree but that we were all Americans.  His name is Tom, from Maryland, and when I urged him not to "hate" he said he didn't have a hateful bone in his body.)

He committed bribery by seeking to illegally withhold previously authorized (by Congress, which controls the purse strings under the Constitution) foreign aid from a needy ally (Ukraine) under siege by an adversary of ours if not an outright enemy (Russia) for personal political gain (initiating a made-up investigation into Trump's political opponent Joe Biden) until the president of Ukraine agreed to announce such a bogus investigation on CNN here in the US (thus seeking to prompt Ukrainian influence in our 2020 presidential election).  Back to my street fighting man days, just like in the early 70s, man.  (Ready to Rummmble for Our Republic. . .).

...

Changes

I don't do much with this blog.  Mostly I just post experiences and musings on it.

I have a facebook account to which I post once most days, musings mostly.  I regard each platform as a mostly hopeless way of leaving the door open for a rapprochement of sorts with my three estranged sons, the divorce you know.

Once a year I change my profile picture, to a photo from the year prior.  Last year I posted a picture from the second week of the current administration, enroute to another demonstration against an amoral president, just like in the sixties and seventies all over again.

This year I am posting a picture from November when I was doing more than just protesting, I was actively working in my own small way against the current president's outrageous use and abuse of power by working against his enablers and volunteering to work for the Democratic candidate opposing the Republican incumbent congresswoman in Virginia's Tenth District.  I am proud to have been a small part of the blue wave last fall that put our country back on the path to a republican democracy again, with checks and balances.

2018, 2d quarter.

In April, I viewed the flowering Cherry Blossoms in the District when I ran around the Tidal Basin once with a friend and also walked around it twice more, once with a friend and once alone.  I also made stops at the National Tulip Library near the Washington Monument and enjoyed its three-week burgeoning glory.  Other flowers important to me came out that month, including flowing phlox and spherical alliums.

In May, I visited downtown Leesburg, forty miles west of my house, and had a delicious lunch there in an old restored bank building, afterwards wandering around its shopping outlets.  I picked up my running pace as I increased my three-times weekly mileage from a mile or two each time to 5-mile loops around the greater neighborhood and a couple of 10K runs on the W&OD Trail, including one weekend run where I was given a free bottle of chilled water from a for-pay fluid stand set up at the top of a long hill by a child, supervised by his mother, because I looked so hot and sweaty.  I ran in the Memorial Day 3K fun run in Falls Church, my first race in a year, and had lunch at the local gourmet pizzeria afterwards with the Empty Chair.

I acquired an I-Phone in June, obviously a life changing event, for the better, right? and donated blood products for the last time to date (maybe I'll get back to it again someday) and went out to lunch or dinner with friends a few times.  My running continued, with 5-mile runs around the 'hood and with friends in the District a few times at noontime.  I enjoyed lunch at the Lost Dog Pizzeria in Westover on Father's Day with the Empty Chair again and arrived at a plan to forego this so-far useless exercise on future holidays and birthdays when my youngest estranged son turns thirty, which will be happening soon enough.

The most notable day in the month was the last day of June when the Protest Against Zero Tolerance was held at Lafayette Park in the District on a very hot day.  This well-attended rally protested against the inhumane current administration's policy of tearing babies from their mother's arms at the southern border and jailing the children at points all over the country, possibly for forced adoption later by eager American parents.  Again I was the Street Fighting Man, just like in the late sixties and early seventies, decades after I thought those days were long gone in America.

Looking at 2018, the first quarter

In January I published my settlement with the FTC for its age discrimination as evidenced by my premature retirement in early 2016 due to a hostile work environment created by management in my former division.  The Commission agreed in September of 2017 to pay me $5,000 in settlement of my claims, to change my latest evaluation from Acceptable which was biased and wrong to Outstanding which it should have been all along, to issue me a certificate of superior service and most importantly to me, to provide training to the managers in my former division specifically for age-discrimination and to, in what I informally call the Chris Clause, require the same training for any former manager of mine who left the agency and who also returned within five years.  I am proud of the settlement I achieved against my agency by myself after a year and a half of litigation and negotiations, in a blow against what I consider to be prevalent age discrimination, and which importantly to me did not contain an NDA agreement so that it would be buried in a veil of secrecy.

I also attended a rally at the Supreme Court protesting voter suppression emanating out of a case brought against Ohio for aggressively purging voter rolls of persons who didn't vote and then check their mail from the voter police, and I predicted to the spineless Republicans in Congress that "We're coming for you in November."  Which us Dems did, to the tune of a turnaround of going from four Democrats in Virginia versus seven Republican Congresspersons then to seven Democrats versus four Republicans now, and a blue wave sweeping over the House by forty flipped seats.  We're coming for you all in the Senate and White House in 2020 too, just you wait.

In February I kept up going to lunch program at the local pizzeria on holidays and my estranged sons' birthdays, since two of them have birthdays in February and someday I hope to see one or all of there on one of those special days.  I also started running again, slowly, after letting my restricting Achilles strain heal for half a year.  My doctor threatened to schedule me to see a surgeon if it didn't get better by wearing a Boot, so I gave it plenty of time to heal since I'm not a surgery-first guy.

In March I got into the District a few times to run a mile or two with former running buddies and to walk around to see some of the city's omnipresent famous sites.  I had the unpleasant experience of dealing with the Social Security Administration trying to "disenroll" from Medicare after I had already quit the program by letter, including a dreadful visit to a social security office which is like visiting a third-world bus station and cooling your heels there for an entire day.  Late in March I played the Street Fighting Man in the District again at the schoolchildren's March for our Lives, as our offspring plead for sensible gun regulations like no more sales of assault rifles to teenagers and prohibitions against mega-30+ round clips, where I signed up people's pledges to vote in November.

   

Six minutes and 20 seconds...

Yesterday's million person march in DC, and elsewhere, was to stop the violence inherent in guns around schoolchildren.  The District is a beautiful place, especially in the spring, and that was evident yesterday as signs of life were everywhere springing forth after the long winter's solstice underground, even as millions of footsteps trod nearby.

The District was as usual well prepared to handle practically any exigency, in a mostly friendly, professional but thorough manner.  Its hardware was mostly kept off the beaten track but nearby, providing a rigid steel underpinning to its seemingly accommodating exterior.

The children marched and spoke, hope in their hearts, expecting change.  Oldsters marched too, some ruefully commenting that their journey, which started with working for McGovern who opposed the crooked Nixon and ran against the amoral war, has come to this, a Trump presidency running the country like a family business while trying to forcibly implement outmoded ideas from the silent-majority seventies.

Normalcy returns.  But hope springs eternal.

The first year report card...

The current president was inaugurated on January 20th last year and poured out his American Carnage blathering to paltry crowds. The next day millions came out into the streets to protest the faux administration given to us by the Russians.

Protests continued as the current occupant of the White House banned people from entering the country based upon religion, called the Fourth Estate "fake news" as he tried to weaken a bulwark of our liberty, cast aside American leadership of the free world, expressed admiration for white supremacists who ravaged my own college town, made accusations of illegality to his predecessor and called for an investigation into his election opponent, sold off the public lands, obstructed investigations into his wrongdoing, threatened other nations with intervention or destruction, gutted the access to health care of millions even as gave his billionaire pals a huge tax cut which impoverished the treasury, and then shut the government down.

He kept us on tenterhooks all year with his constant neck-snapping dithering, outright lying and stupid tweeting. But we fought back, as indicated by surprising election victories in Virginia, Alabama and Wisconsin.

Day one of his second year in office dawned with the government shut down and protests in the street across the country.  I would generously give him an F even as I pine for the good old days of Dubya, who not so long ago was the Worst ever, but November is coming... .

Street Fighting Man

"Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy." At a rally this year in front of the Supreme Court in support of voting rights as it heard a case based on Ohio's aggressive purging of its voter rolls disenfranchising thousands of citizens who didn't vote for two years and didn't read their junk mail.

"Because summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the streets boy." Voter suppression, that's what it is.

"But what can a poor boy do except to sing for a Rock and Roll Band."  For 40 years I never showed an i.d. to people who knew me by name in order to be allowed to exercise my right to vote, until now.

"Hey! Think the time is right for a Palace Revolution." We're coming for you in November!

2017 in Review, 1 of 3

Retirement leaves you with a lot of time to do nothing, as your friends from the workforce melt away.    But my world took a seminal change on January 20th while I listened in growing disbelief to the dystopian inaugural address of the new president--what was this bombastic fraud, this faux president, this Russian plant, talking about?  American Carnage?  Where?  Oh, I got it finally--he meant going forward.  Protest marches, my first in 45 years, ensued for the following three weekends, and more to come undoubtedly, as I and others did our best to protect our sacred democratic institutions from these destructive bomb-throwers and truth-levelers.  (The new line in the sand?)

Perhaps February was spent in a funk.  I watched a lot of CNN and MSNBC.  Something new and concerning or infuriating occurred every waking hour, it seemed.  I found it impossible to watch a Kellyanne Conway interview as she does not answer a single question, she only turns it into an opportunity to launch sideways into some unrelated anti-democratic screed and never relinquish the platform.  I thought Sean Spicer was almost equally unwatchable, but now in the days of the unprincipled lyin' Sarah Huxabee Sanders, I pine for him.  I do remember that the greatest football game ever was played sometime during this month, Super Bowl 51, where the Patriots came up off the mat when down 28-3 midway through the 3d quarter and prevailed in OT, 34-28.  Unbelievable.  The Patriots showed that there is hope for patriots, no matter how dark it looks.  (A patriot stands watch over Clarendon.)

In March a couple of friends and persons important to me professionally passed on, one older and one younger.  I saw one on her last night, after many years of no contact, and the other one's passing was a shock.  We celebrated their lives and said our goodbyes to these two fine people at two separate wakes amidst laughter and tears.  But as always, nature rewarded us with its annual display of resilient life in DC with the blooming of the cherry blossoms.  (A goose serenely glides along in the Tidal Basin with its back bejeweled with cherry blossom petals.)

April represented to me, as a history major, the centennial of America's entrance into WWI and pathway to global greatness, and a friend and I ran around DC to see as many of the WWI monuments as we could find, like the Pershing statue downtown and the cardboard cutout doughboy temporarily outside the Navy Memorial at the time.  There were other historical runs around the District later this month visiting sites associated with the end of the Civil War in April of 1861, like the Surratt Boarding House where the Lincoln assassination plot was hatched and the Ford Theatre where President Lincoln was shot.  And, of course, there was a resistance march, the Science Rally.  (Statue of Homeless Jesus downtown outside a church.  If you look instead of looking away, you'll see that the humble soul without possessions has pierced feet.)

Picture this

Pictures from last winter all come from my old sports camera, as I didn't get my new camera until April.  It was the winter of discontent, no time for sunshine patriots, as the faux president was inaugurated in January and immediately started putting into place the permanent diminution of American power and prestige with his disastrous policies.

Here I am as a protester at the women's march in DC, the first time I have protested in the streets since the seventies.  The more things change, the more they remain . . .  .

Another weekend, enroute to another protest, this time at Lafayette Park.  Strangely, on each of these days of protest, the subway curtailed service before it crossed over or under the Potomac and "provided" overcrowded or non-existent bus service to continue the journey into the District.

Freedom of speech and exercising the right of assembly.  I did get out for a few early morning runs last winter.

Street Fighting Man

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.  Martin Luther King, Jr.  The new president hit the ground running, formulating policy by tweets, breaking protocol dangerously like accepting a phone call from the leader of Taiwan thus vitiating the longstanding One China policy, issuing a meaningless yet all-encompassing executive order on the ACA which is subject to great swings of individual interpretation, and generally acting like a banana republic dictator by trying to rule by edict.  (Off to the Women's March.)

A very dangerous man, exposing the country to international conflict by threatening China over their artificial islands far from our shores, and internal conflagration by, for instance, his Muslim ban.  In this nation of immigrants, supposedly neutral with its separation of church and state, he would do well to know that we are governed by the rule of law, not by daily decree from a tin pot tyrant.  (They couldn't believe the garbage they were hearing about American Carnage.)

But the opposition has formed, and swiftly.  A half-million person march in DC emphasizing our traditional basic values within twenty-four hours of his ascension, and a swelling protest against his selective immigrant ban at international airports and at the White House the very next weekend.  (Off to the White House Protest.)

Having lived through the civil rights demonstrations and anti-war protests of the sixties, I am impressed with the speed at which the meaningful roar of the people has coalesced.  The Women's March on Washington was like the leadoff hitter in a baseball game hitting a home run, followed by the next batter up dumping a single into right field.  Game on, Mr. President.  (Not on my watch.)

Putin's Poodle

My sister in St. Paul sent me some photos of the march in the Twin Cities on day 2 of the Trump administration, when millions of people nationwide were marching peacefully to express their concerns over the president's statements, actions and intentions, stated or secret.  At the same time, Sean Spicer, the brand new White House press secretary, was administering his notion of a beat-down to the press in an unhinged, 5-minute howl at  "youz guys" for reporting on the relative size of the inaugural crowd while the president was standing in front of a wall honoring fallen CIA heroes at the CIA giving a stump speech, as shameless sycophants in the audience applauded him when he promised that the "dishonest" (substitute the word "critical") press would pay big time in his "running war with the media."

My sister reported there were about 100K marchers in St. Paul.  The top picture is by David Joles of the Minneapolis newspaper, the next three are by David Brewster, formerly of the St. Paul newspaper.

On Sunday, advisor to the president Kellyanne Conway gave her notion of a beat-down to the press in a cringeworthy 13-minute yowl in which she laughably cited to "alternative facts."  Meanwhile the president still falsely claims that the reason he lost the popular election by almost 3 million votes is because millions of illegal aliens cast votes.

Russian strongman and former KGB chief Vladimir Putin and FBI Director James Comey would seem to be unlikely bedmates.  They gave us this meglomaniacal narcissist.

Putin--The Elephant In The Room

Why did I march yesterday?  To protect our democratic institutions, because when they come under dangerous assault similar to what happened under the Nixon administration, the voice of the people becomes paramount.

"Truth--Not Twisted Tweets."

(Picture of a resting, watchful pussy cat with its claws showing.)  "Grab Back."

"Fascism--Still A Bad Idea."