Catchng Up with Trump

Trump has unleashed and empowered the worst of us. So sad.
*
Does Paul Ryan realize that raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 would throw us into the 1980's again, when it was hard for people coming into the job market to find employment? Think about it--if you hold onto five years' worth of workers at one of a spectrum, you squeeze out five years worth at the other end.
*
The word is that Trump told Howard Stern that he'd give Melania a couple of days--maybe a week--to lose her pregnancy fat after she gave birth. No news about how fast she shaped up, but four months later, Trump inaugerated an affair with a porn star.
*
Trump seems to share an interesting characteristic with his basest base--he is swayed, at least momentarily, by the the loudest voice around.  Thus he can agree with Kelly when he's with him, then change his mind when he hears from the next load-voiced person whom he's with.
*
It's a waste of time to try to understand why the pseudo-religious right continues to support Trump. In fact, we've spent way too much time trying to analyze and rationalize his adherents when we should have been blocking them. They are not going to understand our reasoned and well-meant responses and explanations because they don't want to. If Christ came to earth tomorrow and Trump called him the devil, Trump's followers would stone the Son of God. In fact, metaphorically, they already have..
*

Christmas Sonnet, 2016

Fiorella has received her first Christmas card of the season so now it's time to release her own greeting, a sonnet by friend Jeanell. And yes, it's political. She calls it her battle cry.

INSTEAD

HE COULD have come at the head of a howling horde,

a mob of wrathful demons recruited to scour

the earth and ravage it with fire and sword

in a full-court press to prove his might and power.

HE COULD have loosed the rivers, burned the sky,

melted mountains, destroyed the face of the moon,

have swept the planet clean, to purify

it for a New Creation, coming soon.

INSTEAD, he came as a child, a helpless babe

born in a stranger’s stable on a death-cold night

with neither shield nor buckler nor armored plate

to defend himself in the battle he would fight

and win, as darkness always yields to light.

As God prevails, and wrong must yield to right!

Christmas, 2016

Copyright,  Jeanell Bolton

Late and Early

Fiorella stayed up late last night to help the Easter Bunny arrange the baskets of chocolate, jelly beans, and Peeps.  Then she rose up early this morning to go out on the front porch, into the cool, still, hazy morning, and call out her usual Easter greeting to one and all:

HAPPY EASTER!  CHRIST IS RISEN!

One of Fiorella's First Christmas Sonnets

The Sacred Child

Two thousand years ago the kings bowed down

And from their packs three costly gifts brought

       forth;

Gold, frankincense, and myrrh were due the crown

Upon the wobbly head still wet from birth--

Two thousand years ago the shepherds came

And bent their shaggy heads in mumbled prayer

To call upon the power of His name,

A baby helpless in His mother's care--

Two thousand years ago the mother smiled

To know the joy of heaven at her breast,

Her future's hope, her God's own child,

Who mewled at her disturbance of His rest—

     Two thousand years today, lest we forget

     That every child is Christ among us yet.

Shady Story

Have to weigh in on Fifty Shades of Gray, just like everyone else in the world has.  Not having read the book, I speak only from hearsay, but I think it sets up a bad role model for women.  And women do identify themselves with romance heroines

It's too easy to let a man control us.  After all, they're bigger and stronger than we are, and more prone to violence. Also, it's been going on for centuries.  But it's wrong, not so much in the bra-burning sense, but in the relationship sense, as Nora, bless her addled little brain, finally realized in Ibsen's  Doll House.

And it's too easy to imagine our suffering as a man's redemption,  a Christ-like image if there ever was one.

Reading The Story of O years ago, I realized that by volunteering herself to be abused, O had surrendered her humanity.  She considered herself to be in a loving relationship but her "master,"  but he  saw her as nothing more than a plaything.

No happy ending there.