Oh! All things are long passed away and far. A light is shining but the distant star From which it still comes to me has been dead A thousand years . . . In the dim phantom boat That glided past some ghastly thing was said. A clock just struck within some house remote. Which house?—I long to still my beating heart. Beneath the sky’s vast dome I long to pray . . . Of all the stars there must be far away A single star which still exists apart. And I believe that I should know the one Which has alone endured and which alone Like a white City that all space commands At the ray’s end in the high heaven stands.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on December 8, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
(This is a valid POV. Also, if you go ahead and click the links, you’ll get simply the embed you clicked on. If you click the link above, you can see the whole story with the embeds. The whole story is here, with the embed links.)
The response to UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson being shot and killed in Manhattan last week has been…interesting, to say the least. Dude, whose identity remains unknown and is probably somewhere cooling in Istanbul while the Feds and everyone else continue searching for him, has turned into a something of a pop culture icon.
The online reactions of Black folks to the killer and Thompson himself have run the gamut, from outright hostility, like this guy…
…to intellectually nuanced and dense articulations of why they are unmoved about the killing of this white man who theoretically became rich off the back of the misfortunes of the sick. (Let’s call this intellectual hostility.)
What’s most surprising is the amount of love this hoodie wearing, N95-masked gentleman who used a silencers to kill a man in broad daylight in the heart of New York City is receiving. There has not been this much adoration for a white man since Channing Tatum took his clothes off dancing off beat in Magic Mike. I mean, there’s already been a lookalike competition:
…ain’t no damn way a Black man would get this kind of love if he pulled the trigger. I’m quite positive that there are white people in the sundown town of Cullman, Ala. who are fine with a white man doing this crime but would pull out their big ass trucks with a Confederate flag on the front to find the perpetrator if he was Black.
Denzel Washington could have pulled the trigger, and folks would have thanked him for the years of joy he brought to their lives and thrown his ass under the jail.
The response to this murder (I refuse to call it an “assassination” because Thompson could have caught some lead for something as simple as sleeping with the nanny and her boyfriend pulling out the .44 on him.) is at once expected in our society and, well, pretty nonsensical.
And like all things that make no sense anymore, I blame this on Donald Trump…and that dude hasn’t even moved into the White House yet. I’m just glad the killer wasn’t a Black man, because we’d all be face-down in handcuffs getting profiled throughout the damn country.
There was always waiting in our mother’s eyes, Anxiety and wonder and surmise, Through the long days, and in the longer, slow, Still afternoons, that seemed to never go, And in the evening, when she used to sit And listen to our casual talk, and knit. And when the day was dark and rainy, and Not fit to be abroad in, she would stand Beside the window, and peer out and shiver, As small sleek raindrops joined to make a river That rushed, tempestuous, down the window pane, And say, “I wonder what they do in rain? Is it wet there in the trenches, do you think?” And she would wonder if he had his ink And razor blades and toothpaste that she sent; And if he read much in his Testament, Or clean forgot, some mornings, as boys will. But always the one wonder in her eyes Was, “Is he living, living, living, still Alive and gay? Or lying dead somewhere Out on the ground, and will they find him there?” She closed her lids each night upon that look Of waiting, as a hand might close a book But never change the words that were within. And when the morning noises would begin A new day, and a young sun touched the skies, Again she woke with waiting in her eyes.
But that is over now. She does not read The lists of casualties, since that one came A week or two ago. There is no need. She’s making sweaters now for other men And knitting just as carefully as then. There is no change, except that as she plies Her needles, swift and rhythmic as before, There is no waiting in our mother’s eyes, Anxiety or wonder any more.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on December 7, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
Nick Dumont, the actor who played Jackie Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer, has come out as transmasculine and nonbinary.
As first reported by TMZ on Thursday, the actor recently changed their pronouns and name on their Instagram bio. Though their handle is still @emmadumont, their name is now listed as Nick Dumont on their profile, and their pronouns are listed as “they/them.” Their bio includes a collection of heart emojis that appear to correspond to the lesbian and nonbinary flags, as well as the phrases “Carmy coded,” as in the main character from The Bear, and “McCutcheon apologist,” as in the polarizing anti-hero Shane from the original L Word. Now that’s a transmasculine nonbinary Instagram bio if ever we’ve seen one.
Though Dumont has changed their pronouns and name on their Instagram profile, they have not yet directly posted about their coming out to social media. A representative for the actor told TMZ that they identify “as a transmasculine nonbinary person.” “Their work name is still going to be Emma Dumont, but they will go by Nick with friends and family,” the rep said. (snip-MORE)
December 8, 1886 Samuel Gompers, a founder and leader of the American Federation of Labor The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was founded at a convention of union leaders in Columbus, Ohio. It was an alliance of autonomous unions, each typically made up of workers within a particular craft. Samuel Gompers, a leader in the Cigarmakers’ union, was a key person in creating the AFL, was elected its first president, and served as such virtually continuously for nearly 40 years. On Samuel Gompers from the AFL-CIO
===================================== December 8, 1941 Jeanette Rankin (R-Montana), the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress in 1916, cast the only vote (she was among eight women in the Congress at the time) opposing declaration of war against Japan, despite their attack on Pearl Harbor the previous day . She had also voted against the U.S. entering World War I (at the time called the war to end all wars). Rankin served served just two single terms in the House. She spent her early career working for women’s suffrage, later very active in several peace and justice organizations. Jeannette Rankin in 1940 Jeanette Rankin timeline Chronology and oral history transcript of interview of Jeanette Rankin ===================================== December 8, 1953 U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower addressed the United Nations General Assembly, proposing the creation of a new U.N. atomic energy agency which would receive contributions of uranium from the United States, the Soviet Union, and other countries “principally concerned,” and would put this material to peaceful use. The speech, known later as Atoms for Peace, included: “My country wants to be constructive, not destructive. It wants agreement, not wars, among nations. It wants itself to live in freedom, and in the confidence that the people of every other nation enjoy equally the right of choosing their own way of life.”
======================================== December 8, 1987 U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the first treaty to reduce the nuclear arsenals of the two superpowers. The Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty eliminated and banned all ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of 500-5,500 kilometers (300-3,400 miles). By May 1991, all intermediate- and shorter-range missiles, launchers, and related support had been physically dismantled.
========================================= December 8, 1988 On the first anniversary of the INF (Intermediate Nuclear Force) Treaty, twelve Dutch peace activists, calling themselves “INF Ploughshares,” cut through fences to enter the Woensdrecht Air Force base in The Netherlands. They made their way to cruise missile bunkers where they hammered on the missiles, carrying out the first disarmament action in Holland. Read more about this action
To the hostages of our policies, my apologies— the petty stenographers of the crooked rulers in the once fancy now crumbling cities of our fading Empire lied then. They lied then and they lie now. Everything they say and write is a lie, about law and freedom, about equality and justice, in the rubble of the bombs we make and sell, in the silent cries of limbless orphans, in the night lit by white phosphorous and the relentless sound of buzzing drones. They tell us we used to have things of value, even things we ourselves made, and that it was a place like no other. All I know is that Sinbad once sailed to Gaza and so to Gaza he’ll sail once again.
December 7, 1964 A leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, Mario Savio, was arrested. One-third of the 27,000 students at the University of California campus, along with faculty, were on strike to protect their first amendment right to distribute political literature and to organize on campus. A faculty resolution passed 824-115, supporting the rapidly growing Free Speech Movement. “There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop.” – Mario Savio Mario Savio as remembered by journalist Robert Scheer ——————————————————————————– December 7, 1993 The arrested: Phil Berrigan, John Dear, Lynn Fredriksson, and Bruce Friedrich Four Plowshares activists were arrested for disarming an F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina. Pax Christi-Spirit of Life Plowshares newspaper article
Yesterday I was reading Oliver Willis’s Substack (with a great photo of Kal El, as always,) and he’s begun a news aggregator for liberals/progressives called Breaking News USA. Oliver Willis knows of what he speaks, so I’ve bookmarked it to look at every day. Today, I ran across 2 I want to post here today.
Women walking into the bathroom on Capitol Hill Thursday morning found a buoyant dance party in progress: A group of trans artists and activists staged a protest in a women’s restroom in the U.S. Capitol, dancing to the song “Meeting in the Ladies Room” by the all-women pop and R&B band Klymaxx.
Thursday’s dancing protesters include trans actor James Rose, nonbinary influencer Jerome Trammel, comedian Elizabeth Booker Houston, influencer Alexis Rose, transgender model June Raven Romero and activist Hope Giselle-Godsey. A video posted online starts with a panorama of the Capitol building’s interior before panning to a nearby restroom filled with dancing women. Some wear shirts with the colors of the transgender pride flag, pink, blue and white, and slogans like, “Flush the Hate, Not Our Rights” and “Trans People Are NOT Dangerous. You Are!” (snip-MORE)
The campaign is over; the election is done. The cases against Donald Trump—for the theft and improper storage of sensitive and classified government materials; for the effort to obstruct election administration in Georgia; for the attempt to overthrow the government of the United States on January 6, 2021—are wrapping up, unfinished in some cases and never really started in others. His sentencing for the 34 felony counts where he was found guilty of falsifying business records to hide election interference has been postponed indefinitely. In the executive branch, the transition is underway, complete with smiling photo ops and assurances from President Biden that he won’t stifle or undermine the incoming administration the way he was hampered—by the very man Biden is welcoming back to power. Everything is on track for January 20, 2025: the day that Joe Biden will cease to be president, and Donald Trump will be crowned as king.
There is no question that Donald Trump will not be limited by the Constitutional strictures on the presidency. Not only has the Supreme Court granted his absurd and expansive view of executive power as per Trump v. U.S., but Trump has spent the last four years out of office actively campaigning for the right to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants, without consequences. The incoming Republican Congress won its power on much smaller margins than Trump took the presidency, and he is barely two million votes ahead of Harris in the popular vote. Neither the slim and chaotic majority in the House nor the thoroughly Trumpified Senate will reject his whims, either because they’ll agree with his interests or they’ll be too cowardly to object if they don’t. Trump’s early appointments—sex pests and conspiracy theorists, incompetents, lackeys, bootlickers, and sycophants—reveal the nature of what this administration will be. These aren’t people put into place to work for the American people; they will be installed to preserve, protect, and defend the interests of one Donald J. Trump, damn the country.
Yet King Trump, first of his name, is not an inevitability.
It’s his blatant disregard for the Constitution, the disinterest and disrespect for its limitations, checks and balances, that provides us with one last chance to derail the coming coronation. On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump stood at the Capitol of the United States and swore an oath to the country, the one every president has taken, as prescribed in Article 2, Section 8 of the Constitution. And on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump broke that oath in an attempt to overturn the election, overthrow the duly-appointed government of the United States, and install himself as dictator. It was, in word and deed, an insurrection. And, despite our republic’s long history of peaceful transfers of power, we have an answer for that, if we will only ask the question.
Does the 14th Amendment apply to Donald Trump? (snip-MORE)
Scottie's Playtime 