“I have zero interest in being a professional politician but conservatives like us need a squad of our own, so Alabama put me in the game.”
WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way.
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles –
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
Gary Snyder
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
— BY THEODORE ROETHKE
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Comments on this entry are closed.
What do you call people that say they want to solve problems they created?
They never solve anything, they just create more problems.
Paid for by you.
Well, if I lived in Alabama she’d have my vote!
(And I’m so glad to not get a 404 when I accessed comments! Thanks, Gerard!)
Savvy lady. I wish her well.
Ghostsniper around here we call them Commie Bastards.
I would vote for her.
Everything about this lady spells CLASS. A true American in spirit and courage. I would vote for her.
Ghostsniper is on target in regards to Jessica Taylor. Here’s the thing. While Taylor is hitting all the right melodic notes in that ad, which sing sweetly in conservative folks’ ears, and she’s attractive to boot, I’ll bet serious money that she already has a little list of new bills/laws she would like to see instituted. Until such time as political candidates get up on their soapboxes and state unequivocally that they desire to be elected so that they can begin the dismantling the bureaucratic state under which Americans suffer, rather than institute new rules, regs, laws, etc., all are simply blowing smoke. Trump is the only individual in political office who has made that promise. He’s delivering a little here and there, but his efforts are continually attempted to be thwarted by Demorats, and Republirats, in both the House and the Senate. Politicians are not Americans’ friends.
John Venlet has hit the nail on its head!
More than any new legislation, we desperately need to winnow out the multiplicity of laws we have that don’t work, or don’t do what was hoped they’d do, or have bad unforeseen side-effects.
These days, all of us commit at least three crimes every day, I’ve read; these are crimes on the lawbooks, but none of us even realize that we’re committing them since we’ve never heard of them & don’t even know of their existence. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” though, so if we get arrested & charged we have no defense.
I long for the days of old when felonies were obvious, and everybody knew what they were; nowadays lots of things that aren’t capital offenses, or even bad crimes, are felonies, though I don’t think they should be. A person can lose their 2nd Amendment right to own a gun forever, just by being accused of domestic violence; that’s a misdemeanor if convicted, but in many places no conviction is even necessary because of “Red Flag Laws” which are on-their-face unconstitutional (but so are almost all gun control laws.)
Let’s mow down the field of bad laws, and put a Sunset Clause on any new ones that are passed!
The 19th Amendment and women’s involvement in politics have corrupted the American body politic.