To be honest, I am scared.

These are really dark days in America

Jun 28, 2025

Too frequently I feel hopeless and powerless as I watch this administration stomp on the Constitution, science, truth, health care, our immigrant communities, care of the planet, our global reputation…

Which is exactly what Trump and his followers intend. “Flood the zone,” Steve Bannon called it. My head spins and my soul weeps. People like me who consume reality-based news just want to curl into the fetal position with a binky in our mouths.

But I’m not so down I couldn’t figure out how to get ChatGPT to create this image—my first AI image!!

Alas, I don’t have a binky, and even though this political moment deserves ALL HANDS ON DECK-aOOga, aOOga! I would rather be writing about almost anything else. I’m sure you’d prefer reading about almost anything else as well. Can’t say I blame you, so my rant is at the bottom of this post, not here.

I’d much rather tell you about how privileged I feel to spend a couple of hours just 18” from a color client—trying to SEE them for who they are in order to assemble a palette of their most flattering colors. It’s a sacred honor to be that intimate with a stranger, who becomes more beautiful the more I look. Having felt unseen growing up (a common experience), I know how rare and empowering it feels to be deeply SEEN.

I’d also rather describe how marvelously creative is Portland Center Stage’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest—the clever script adaptation, the fabulous costumes, and the deadpan comic genius of the actors. We howled with laughter and it felt SO GOOD. (Alas, it closes Sunday…still some tickets!)

As I lay on my couch feeling hopeless considering all the shit coming down, I heard that little voice in the back of my head that, dammit, catches me when I’m enumerating all the ways it sucks, saying “Uddy tuddy…Is that what’s troubling you, Bunkie?” You may be too young to know that famous little routine by comedian, Eddie Lawrence, which he called “The Old Philosopher,” but that’s the voice I hear. This routine of escalating disasters could have been the inspiration for Garrison Keillor’s Rhubarb Pie skits on the late Prairie Home Companion—elevated to the stratosphere thanks to Fred Newman’s mouth sound effects.

When I’m upset I don’t have the attention span to read a novel, so I turn to watching amusing videos on Instagram. Here are two spoofs about the “Big Beautiful Bill” (by all accounts, a disaster for everyone—yes, YOU too—unless you’re filthy rich) by the unique and multi-talented Elle Cordova:

An alliterative tongue-twister:

ellecordova

A post shared by @ellecordova

Such clever lyrics:

ellecordova

A post shared by @ellecordova

A week after 9/11—a time that felt as scary as today— I left on a two-month drive around the US in my Toyota minivan, accompanied only by my standard poodle Molly. Feeling extremely vulnerable. As we traversed Montana, surrounded by OMG! purple mountains majesty and amber waves of grain, I felt such a burst of patriotic love I broke into “America the Beautiful.” [I still believe it should be our national anthem—fuck the machismo “bombs bursting in air” song.] Before I could get the first two lines out I was sobbing.

Yesterday, faithful listener Brian shared a soulful updated version of “America the Beautiful” from a singer named Eden whose sweet voice and powerful lyrics made me cry all over again.

IT’S THE BLATANT RACISM

[So many extremely serious threats happening simultaneously, I can only address one at a time—the one that is the cruelest, most inhumane and morally unjustifiable.]

Race-Based Immigration enforcement

White? Welcome mat and red carpet—Trump intends to welcome 1,000 Afrikaners. Meanwhile other undocumented white people are ignored, like Russians in Brighton, Irish in Boston.
Black? Suddenly 300,000 Haitians, here on temporary protected status because the situation in Haiti is untenable, have this status revoked. Sending them back to their shit-hole country.
Brown? treat them like vermin who must be eradicated. Very telling chiron on FoxNews… interpreted by some clever person:

White supremacist Steven Miller is hell-bent on meeting Trump’s goal of deporting one million illegal immigrants a year, although less than 56,000 have been detained since Jan. 20. According to the libertarian Cato Institute, 65% have had no criminal convictions, and only 7% were violent offenses. (The report details arrests since July 2024, so not just Trumptime—but it’s really worth reading.) What’s most horrifying about these raids:

The anonymity of the ICE agents: black masks and hats to hide their faces (Ku Klux Klan?), often with no badge numbers or official warrants. People are reporting that fake ICE thugs have used ICE-like outfits to assault and/or rape innocent people.
The brutality. In most cases the person arrested does not fight back, but that doesn’t stop the agents from ganging up on the person and beating the shit out of him. The videos are everywhere.
The inhumanity. Showing up at schools, pulling people out of cars, off their lawns in front of terrorized kids, wives, mothers. Young kids left without parents, having to show up at immigration hearings with no understanding, no representation… these will leave traumatic scars for a lifetime.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If you show up at your mandatory immigration hearing you may get arrested, and if you DON’T you will get arrested.
Violations of habeas corpus. The Constitution says individuals have the right to challenge their detention in court, and the government must justify holding them. The courts are trying to halt this but the DOJ is fighting every one.

Race-Based “Science”

From NYTimes, “The Daily” podcast:

The National Institutes of Health plays a huge role in American life and in the American economy, and even in the economy globally. Worldwide, it is the largest public funder of medical research. NIH funding has led to countless breakthroughs, countless Nobel Prizes. Many of the drugs and medications we have on the market today would not exist if not for NIH-funded research. So it has been this enormous engine of innovation and of medical discovery.

The NIH is facing massive funding cuts. Research grants that are supposed to be funded for three to five years suddenly stop getting their monthly payments—no notice. Others, that were supposed to expire in 2027 suddenly expire in 2025. These cuts are based not on Waste, Fraud and Abuse™, but on who the research might benefit or who is doing it. Any mention of diversity, race, equity, sexuality, gender… out! If the researcher is the wrong color, disabled, not cisgender, etc…out!

The administration says the grants getting cut are for “niche” populations, but when you really look at medical research historically, it focused narrowly on a very specific population, and that is white men. US maternal death rates, for example, are the highest of any first world country, and for black women it’s through the roof.

They also want to defund fighting vaccine misinformation, instead start a study on how autism might be related to vaccines (long debunked). They also plan to do a study on the adverse effects of gender-affirming treatment. FYI: this is NOT how you design a proper study—if you want to find out about the outcomes of an intervention of whatever kind (chemotherapy, behavior modification, gender-affirming care, etc), you study the whole group (or a statistically representative subset) who got it—for better or worse.

I could go on an on… listen to this episode of the Daily and you’ll get the drift. I’m exhausted.

But nevertheless…

Put yourself in the way of beauty

Some eye-popping poppies! Such a happy flower!

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Alive! with Joy

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