Back to Politics.

The first question for today is this: what has Donald J Trump done to destroy our nation during the first year and a half of his second term?

Let me count the ways:

1. He has eviscerated foreign assistance to struggling countries. He has eliminated the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and drastically cut back on foreign aid including PEPFAR, the successful Bush 2 initiative that saved the lives of over 25 million people with AIDS, mainly in developing nations. Public health tracking models and independent research estimate that between 600,000 and 760,000 people have died globally due to the abrupt shutdown and deep funding cuts to USAID with roughly two-thirds of those victims being children.

2. He has ripped apart the social safety net in the U.S., including cutting SNAP (food stamps) to needy families and has imposed stiff work requirements for food stamp recipients. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities as of April 2026 4.5 million people had lost their food stamps due to Trump’s orders and the number is increasing every day.

3. He has initiated U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) patrols, which have arrested thousands of undocumented immigrants, many living here on expired visas. ICE assaults have resulted in deaths of three U.S. citizens. ICE arrests totaled some 400,000 before July 2026 and have averaged almost 1,700 a day since then. In July of this year 51,000 immigrants were arrested with the vast majority ending up in so called detention centers. At least 52 people died in ICE custody during the first 500 days of Trump’s presidency. This marks a sharp surge in fatalities, resulting in the highest annual mortality rate recorded in immigration detention in 20 years.

4. He has initiated the funding and construction of massive concentration camps run by private prison companies to house thousands of immigrants with hundreds more to follow and is trying to eliminate birthright citizenship. Currently there at least 225 detention centers with many more in the pipeline. Daily capacity is now about 70,000 detainees per day projected to increase to over 90,000 by the end of the year.

5. He has allowed the subsidies of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) to expire, which will cause millions of lower income Americans to lose their health care—estimated by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities to affect 15 million people, mainly lower income Americans.

6. He has ended effective strategies for addressing homelessness that pair rental assistance with supportive services. I serve on a board of a nonprofit group that provides these services and our budget has been slashed, our staff reduced by almost half and the case load for our social workers expanded. Clients have lost their housing vouchers and do not receive the supportive services they need.

7. He has tried by executive order to eliminate the Department of Education. Most experts see this as hurting low income people. Student aid and Pell grants are being reduced.

8. He has given huge tax cuts to the wealthiest households and weakened the estate tax. Donald Trump’s tax cuts—originating from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and extended or expanded through subsequent legislation like the reconciliation acts of this year—provide a disproportionate share of their financial benefits to high-earning individuals, wealthy families, and large corporations. Nonpartisan analyses indicate that the top 1% of earners will receive the largest monetary reductions, while lower- and middle-income households see only modest gains, if any.

9. He has reduced the federal work force eliminating over 200,000 jobs with more massive cuts to follow, mostly to people who know what they are doing. Sycophants are replacing dedicated public servants.

10. He has enacted broad, disruptive across-the-board tariffs that have fueled inflation, strained supply chains, and created economic hardships. President Trump’s sweeping tariffs have increased consumer costs, averaging a tax increase of roughly $900 to $1,000 per U.S. household per year, kept inflation going, and shifted global supply chains as legal battles continue.

11. He has issued pardons to all involved in the January 6 takeover of the Capitol and has attempted to provide reparations to them.

12. He has used federal agencies to investigate political rivals and critical media organizations. Objects of his wrath include James Comey, Letitia James, John Bolton, Adam Schiff, Jerome Powell, Lisa Cook, and Elissa Slotkin, most of whom have had to hire expensive lawyers to defend themselves.

13. He has appointed inept rogues to head up federal agencies and other leadership roles like Pete Hegthseth, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche and others and has surrounded himself with sycophants. The guardrails that were present in his first term have disappeared.

14. He has championed the coal industry, embraced fossil fuels and attacked efforts to expand wind farms and solar energy operations and remains a diehard climate change denier, taking the U.S. out of the Paris Accords.

15. He has continued his relationships with buddy-buddy authoritarian leaders like Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un, waivered on his support for Ukraine and supported Netanyahu and other rogues.

16. His net worth has more than doubled during his second term, surging from an estimated $2.3 billion in early 2024 to approximately $6.5 billion in 2026. This represents an increase of roughly $4 billion in less than 18 months. This does not include the vast increases to the fortunes of his sons and son in law. He has been described by many as the most corrupt president in U.S. history with no one else coming close.

17. He has trashed the nation’s capital. Several thousand armed national guard troops patrol the streets every day, intimidating residents and giving Washington the feeling of a police state. He has spent a fortune tearing down the East Wing of the White House to be replaced by a massive banquet hall that dwarfs the White House, and which will cost over $600 million, half of which will be on the US taxpayer. The $300 million raised from “private donors” comes with strings attached and favors granted. (These efforts have been temporarily halted by a judge’s ruling, but a very large, ugly hole remains.) Trump has closed the Kennedy Center and is in an ongoing dispute regarding its name change to the Trump Kennedy Center. The National Symphony Orchestra is on the verge of bankruptcy. The Reflecting Pool fiasco has already cost more than $16 million, all on the taxpayers, and the algae problem is still not fixed. Trump is persisting in his effort to build the world’s largest arch dwarfing the Arc de Triumph in Paris and is estimated to cost more than $100 million, all on the taxpayers, of course. Homeless encampments have mostly disappeared, but no one knows what has happened to the homeless “campers.”

In summary, Trump’s Washington is a complete mess.

18. And finally, Trump has gotten the U.S. into what dangerously looks like another unnecessary “forever war,” this time against Iran. Trump’s reckless thoughtlessness regarding the War with Iran has already cost the U.S. over $37 billion, depleted a substantial portion of our rocket, missile, and drone arsenals, lost lives including over a hundred innocent Iranian children and 18 U.S. soldiers, and it is a war which the U.S. is not likely to win. The closing of the Straight of Hormuz has disrupted world trade, increased the cost of fuel, and created an international crisis, and there is no telling how this movie—this horror show—will end.

Isn’t this enough for the American people to say enough is enough, to impeach this man, who clearly is showing increasing signs of dementia, and move on? Any one of these atrocities would be enough to get a normal president impeached but not Trump. To his base he is feared and worshipped.

Trump should be impeached, even though it would mean we would get Vance, who may not be much better.

And the second question of the day is what will it take to get a Republican senator or congressman to oppose Trump on any of his outrageous initiatives that I have just listed. What is wrong with these people? Don’t they have any courage to oppose Trump on policies that they must know are wrong and hurt people who are suffering? Don’t they know that most of his ideas make no sense? Don’t they realize that Trump’s actions could bring down the country?

Critical times, these times, and the stakes are so high. Pray that we come through it.

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So the question for today is why do we humans treat each other so badly. Philosophers and theologians have struggled with this question for as long as we Homo sapiens have been able to ask this question. Psychologists, historians and scientists of all types have weighed in, and if you think about it, just about every human being at one time or another has thought about it since it is part of our human nature to try to figure things out.

However, the answer is not all that hard. We humans are animals and all animals struggle for survival. When we feel threatened, we fight back, just like the lowly fly or annoying bumble bee. Darwin got it right—“survival of the fittest.” Not only are we humans animals, we are herd animals, who instinctively follow our leader, even if that leader happens to be named Adolph, Mao, Atilla or Donald. You are right if you protest, “Not everybody follows a bad leader,” but enough do so that a bad leader can and often does do great harm. Conversely, an enlightened and kind leader can make a huge positive difference. But none of us humans get a free ride. We all have hurt others and have been hurt. And part of what causes us to act the way we do is how we were brought up and the difficulties we faced. In other words it is not necessarily all our fault. That is just the way it is on the planet Earth.

I would also argue that the question of why humans treat one another the way we do is at the heart of all the great religions of the world. It is certainly the heart of the Christian faith, which proclaims that one person was all good. That person, of course, was Jesus of Nazareth, who Christians believe was the one and only exception to flawed human nature and for that reason was declared in the creeds to be fully human and fully divine. That message resonated over the centuries and today almost a quarter of the humans living on the planet Earth—some two billion people–answer on Pew surveys that they are Christians. That does not mean that Christianity has got it all right and that the rest of the world has got it all wrong, but it does mean, I think, that Christianity is on to something and that the answer to taming our flawed human instincts is love, not romantic love, but selfless love or agape, as the Greeks called it.

But this still leaves many unanswered questions. I spent three years studying at Union Theological Seminary in New York City in an effort to figure out the mystery behind Christianity, religious faith, and the meaning of life. Like many of my classmates, I graduated with more questions than answers. That was in 1968, a turbulent time when a majority of us seminarians headed for other careers. I headed to Chapel Hill where I got a masters in city planning. Others went to law school, medical school, business school or to get PhDs to pursue academic careers.

Unlike some of my Union classmates, however, I did not throw in the towel on Christianity and have remained a loyal Episcopalian. Embry deserves much of the credit for this (even though she was brought up as a Presbyterian) in part because she loves singing in the choir. But I confess that I continue to have as many questions as answers. Episcopalians tend have more wiggle room than other denominations with regard to what you believe even though we maintain the ancient liturgy and creeds. And for me our involvement in our neighborhood church for decades is also due to the benefits that come from being part of a loving community.

Yes, we humans are part of the animal kingdom, and, yes, like all living creatures, we are programmed to survive, and, yes, this causes us to hurt others knowingly and unknowingly, and, yes, selfless love—treating others the way you want to be treated—is or at least should be—a guiding principle, but what happens beyond life remains a mystery and beyond my pay grade to fully understand. That is where faith comes in and where I confess that I struggle. But that does not keep me from celebrating and giving thanks for all the blessings that I have received—and I have received many, starting with a strong marriage to an extraordinary partner, wonderful children and grandchildren, good friends, and a fulfilling career– and for the gift of my relatively long life on the planet Earth.

You can’t ask for more.

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A few days ago, I got in the mail a large envelope from the Maryland Department of Transportation. With bated breath I nervously ripped open the envelop. Yes, yes! Just what I had hoped for with great anticipation—a handicapped parking placard that you hang on your rearview mirror! At last!

A few years ago, I had begged my doctors at Kaiser to sign a form saying I needed a handicapped sticker. I failed twice. One commented that anyone who could walk three or four miles a day, which I shamefully admit that I exaggerated –did not need handicapped parking. I should have kept my mouth shut. The other doctor shrugged and reluctantly said he would sign something but never got back to me with the form. That was then. What I would give to be able to walk three miles now without using a “prosthetic device,” but that is no longer the case; and when I made my desperate pitch this time, the third doctor shrugged his shoulders, agreed and signed the form. A couple of days later when I mistakenly left the form sitting on a table on our patio, it got soaked in the rain so that you could hardly read it. I painfully tried to make the form readable, marked up the doctor’s smudged signature so you could read it, and mailed it in, figuring it would probably get rejected because it was borderline unreadable. I was resigned to having to go through it all again. But no! They accepted it and I have my sticker!

I think they checked my age and concluded that that explained everything.

Do you realize what this means? This means I no longer will have to worry about finding a parking space close to where I want to go. Well, maybe not always, but I have been noticing that handicapped reserved parking is usually available in shopping centers and on the street in commercial areas. In fact, I have parked in these coveted spaces, placard-less, illegally a couple of times myself—one as recently as two days ago—but now I am free at last, free at last to park in a convenient handicapped parking spot. I could probably sell the placard for a fortune, but no, besides being illegal, it would be stupid. I am so excited about it that I now refuse to park in any unmarked space.

So yes, there are some advantages to being old. People will take pity on you at least some of the time, and most of the time–well, maybe not all that much– you are treated with respect, even in the United States. On several occasions starting a few years ago, on several of my so called “power walks” –when I was about five years younger but still hardly a spring chick–I was greeted by a middle aged man—African American in my case every time—who would grin and exclaim, “How you doing young fella? Way to go! Keep it up!” I don’t know why but I found these gestures sincere, genuine, and rather touching. It was a great way to show respect for old age.

And, of course, now on the few times I use a crowded Metro car, a younger person will usually pop up immediately. I used to shrug and say something like “Thanks, but I do not mind standing.” Not anymore. In fact, I realize now I should have gratefully accepted the other initiatives to encourage such gestures.
Which raises the basic question: are we human beings fundamentally good creatures or fundamentally bad? I think you could make a strong case either way. Think of the terrible things that we have done and continue to do to our fellow humans. Every society on Earth has its share of violent crimes, domestic violence, sexual and psychological abuse, and plain old nastiness to other people. And how do you explain atrocities that happened in places like Nazi Germany, the gulags, slavery in the U.S., and the Chinese Cultural Revolution? Or for that matter, Donald J Trump and many of his MAGA or tech bro billionaire supporters? At the same time, there are all kinds of examples of courageous humans opposing terrible actions and making sacrifices every day all over the world. These happen even when it means danger to themselves or self-sacrifice. Most religious have embraced the better side of human nature and promoted kindness as in “love your neighbor as yourself.”

The answer, of course, is that we humans have both sides, the good and the bad, but more on why that is in another post. For me, I am off right now to find my first legal handicapped parking space somewhere even though I do not intend to get out of the car….

 

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Ok, I admit, growing old is not easy. Try as hard as you can, you have got to fess up to the fact that there are many, many things you just can’t do anymore when you reach your seventies and beyond. Until I reached eighty, sailing was a passion. Then when it became apparent that getting on and off our last boat, Second Wind, was a disaster waiting in the wings to happen, Embry and I sold the boat to a young family who moved her to another marina on the Chesapeake Bay farther south. As sad as it was to say goodbye to Second Wind, it was the right choice, and we felt good about it. Last fall when given the opportunity to join a racing team (as an observer) on the Chesapeake Bay near Annapolis, I realized that I did not enjoy the experience anymore.

Then there were the power walks that I did five or six days a week for over a decade, if you can call a pace of 15 or 16 minutes a mile a “power walk.” I started serious long distance running when turning 30 and kept it up or a good 30 plus years before a bad knee caused me to switch to walking in my sixties. Now when I walk, I inch along using a hiking stick and occasionally a rollator and move very, very slowly, terrified of falling. I have only had two falls but one put me in the hospital for week. And I had to give up tennis altogether though I never was much good in that anyway. Nor have I been able to resume my serious lap swimming since my last fall about six months ago. Vigorous exercise was for me as much of an emotional, even a spiritual activity for me as it was a physical one. Those days are now pretty much over and I miss them.

Then there are the other challenges. I have had a serious hearing disability since my fifties, which has only gotten worse the older I get. But thank heaven for hearing aids, which have gotten much better over the years. However, ambient noise in restaurants and other crowded locations makes it almost impossible to hear, and I fake it a lot by nodding and saying something like “very interesting” or “really?” until I see a horrified look on someone’s face and respond with “sorry, I think I misunderstood, could you repeat that?” And hooray for subtitles that are now available for most television programs and for some movies. Without them I would understand zilch. Remembering names of new friends and acquaintances is also a challenge. Even worse is not being able to recall the name of an old friend even though you know exactly what that person looks like—or at least used to look like. We now live in a continuing care retirement community where we all wear name tags or at least are supposed to. That way makes it easier for me to remember names– including my own–though still it often is not all that easy.

And unlike in some cultures where elders are revered and honored, in the U.S. we are often cast aside as being “over the hill” and “out of touch.” Sadly, for some experiencing memory loss or other disabilities there is some truth to this. And I do have to wonder why given all the experiences we have had we are not wiser, but we are still hanging in there and doing the best we can, and this should be enough for us old codgers to cherish and to celebrate.

I won’t go into complaining about the usual aches and pains of old age, the visits to doctors, “organ recitals”, urgent care centers, and not being able to do a lot of, ahem, other things which we used to be able to do–and which I will not go into! That is the price we humans pay for the privilege of living long lives—a lot longer than we used to. The average life expectancy for someone born in the United States today is 79 years (81 for women and 76.5 for men). But it was not that long ago when it was much lower. In 19th-century America, average life expectancy at birth hovered between 40 to 43 years though this low number was skewed by high infant and child mortality rates, since 30% to 40% of children died before the age of five. Those who survived childhood frequently lived into their 60s or early 70s but not a whole lot longer. And if you go back to the time when, say, the New Testament of the Bible was written, the life expectancy was only 25 to 35—at least according to my friend, AI. It was not all that unusual for a man to die in his early 30s as Jesus did.

My goodness, we have come a long way, baby!

But there is also much to praise about old age and to be thankful for. Maybe we aren’t as sharp as we used to be but most of us are wiser. We have been there, done that, and have seen and experienced a lot. We do not have to worry so much about what we wear, what we look like or what we say. There is no need to try to impress anyone. At our advanced age we are what we are. Humility does not always accompany old age but for many it does. We all have made our share of mistakes and done dumb things. And most of us have to face up to the fact that we did not accomplish all our dreams. The question is not whether we made a lot of money, were powerful, rich, or famous, but whether we were good people, did the best we could, “loved our neighbor,” and whether we gave life our best shot.

And if you are still breathing and kicking at any age, give thanks for that. You are a survivor.

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I read with great interest The New York Times front page story yesterday (August 2) about the Paul Weiss law firm’s Faustian bargain with Trump to back off from all things “woke” and contribute millions of dollars of pro bona work to his various causes. This is a sad time for a firm that used to be the crown jewel of public interest legal work.

But what really caught my attention was the reference to how much money the partners of this “formerly prestigious” law firm make. Before the surrender happened, according to the Times, partners at Paul Weiss were making about $2 million a year on average, which itself seems on the high side to me, but I understand that prestigious law firms pay the partners a lot. But what caught my eye was that following the Trump sellout, the top partners according to the Times are now making about $20 million each with all other partners making on average about $8 million each. What I am trying to figure out is how they get away with this and who pays them all this money. According to “Glass Door,” the organization that tracks legal compensation, legislative assistants make about $ 63,000 a year at Paul Weiss and associates start at about $275,000 a year and top out about $400,000. How do you get from those numbers to $20 million or even a meager $8 million? And how typical is this among so called prestigious law firms?

The only way that you can get to these high numbers is that if these firms somehow get a piece of the action (or a fee based on a percentage of the deal) in lucrative mergers and acquisitions or similar work. They will tell you that this does not happen because lawyers must remain independent and objective and compensation is based exclusively on hourly billing rates. So, what would the hourly billing rates have to be to support an income of $20 million a year? Assuming the Big Hitter partners work seven days a week, 15 hours a day and never take vacations or holidays, to generate an income of $20 million would require a billing rate of about $3,600/hour. For $8 million it would require a rate of about $1,500/hour and that also assumes a work week of 15 hours a day, seven days a week, no vacations, holidays or time off and no pro bona work.

This reminds me of the story about a lawyer from a prestigious firm meeting St Peter at the Pearly Gates when the saint exclaimed, “Oh my goodness, you died so young. I have reviewed your billings at your firm and calculated that you had to be at least 150 years old!”

And of course, these people do not put in 100-hour work weeks routinely. They also take fancy vacations and eat at expensive restaurants. If they worked a “normal” 40-hour week, the required billing rate for a partner making $20 million would be $7,150/hour or about $120/minute. For someone being paid $8 million, the hourly rate would be mere $4,000, a real bargain.

And who would pay those kinds of fees to lawyers anyway? A lawyer friend told me that quoted hourly rates are much lower than what you would think because the partners make all that money by “leveraging” the work of the associates.

Okay, as one who started and ran a consulting firm for almost 20 years and certainly did not make anything remotely close $20 million a year—or for that matter, even a very tiny fraction of that– but worked just as hard as these high paid lawyers, I have got to say something is very wrong with this picture and that the excessive income and wealth of a very small percentage of the work force in the United States today is a big reason for the discontent in our society. And of course it is not just elite lawyers who are guilty. CEOs of major corporations are just as bad or even worse. We know about the excessive wealth of the tech bros caused by the boom in AI, but the disparity between management and workers in major corporations is also a huge problem and it is ubiquitous. Before the deregulation beginning in the 1980s the difference between the income of the CEO of a Fortune 500 Company and an average worker was about 30 to 1. Today it is almost 300 to 1.

And, of course, we know the problem is wide because a very high percentage of the population is struggling just to pay rent or the mortgage, put food on the table, and pay for health care. Some recent surveys in 2026 indicate that 81 percent of adults view the rising cost of living as a major barrier to financial stability, with nearly half of families reporting they fall short of what is needed to comfortably cover all living essentials.

Friends, we are living in the Second Gilded Age where the rich get richer and the average family is struggling. Unless we can figure out a way to get out of the mess we are in and create a fairer and more just society, we will be in deep trouble and our time as the “leader of the free world” will come to an end just as it has for all the great countries and empires that have preceded ours.

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Fortunately, I did not tune into the public hearing in the Senate Wednesday where Republicans grilled Doctor Fauci for almost three hours. That afternoon when doing errands off campus (of the retirement community where Embry and I now live), I overheard a conversation between two people whom I assumed were MAGAs that went something like this, “Well, you know that Fauci is guilty as hell because he wouldn’t answer any questions. He just kept saying ‘Fifth Amendment.’”

“Absolutely, totally guilty and he should spend the rest of his life behind bars!” his friend responded. “This proves he is a crook and a liar.”

With fear and trembling that afternoon I opened both The New York Times and The Washington Post to read the condescending, mean remarks toward Fauci by Rand Paul, Josh Hawley and other Republican senators. Paul, demanding that Fauci be jailed for contempt of court, insists the Fauci is responsible for the covid outbreak because his agency provided some funding to the lab in Wuhan, China, where Paul without proof claims the virus originated. Hawley’s comments, calling Fauci “a megalomaniac and a liar,” were mainly about the mask mandates and closing schools. But what really stuck me was the vicious tone that was used by both senators and other Republican senators who jumped on the pile insisting Fauci deserved jail time, even though Fauci had been preemptively pardoned by Biden before he left office.

I know that politics has been described as a contact sport in the United States and that the weak and timid need not apply. But good heavens, has it come to this? Fauci is 85 years old, spent most of his life in public service, played a major role in addressing the AIDS crisis and in other public health emergencies, and for a long time was one of the most admired and respected public figures in the country. And now this? What is going on and what do the Republicans hope to achieve? Fauci is now retired and is entitled to a peaceful and fulfilling retirement. I am only a few months younger than he is. I can’t imagine what it would be like going through an ordeal like this at any age but at the age of 85? It is not fair and it is not right. Hawley and Paul and the others should be ashamed of themselves.

Yet that is the world we find ourselves in today. I hold Trump responsible for creating an atmosphere of hate and contempt that brings out the worst instincts of our human nature. As I have said many times, we are essentially herd animals and a flawed species. We do terrible things to one another. And leaders make all the difference for setting the tone and establishing the boundaries for acceptable behavior. Bad leaders of the 20^th Century like Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot and others have done their share to make the world a cruel and tragic place. And now we have the likes of Putin, Kim Jong Un, Bashar al Assad, and Erdogan. Some would also warn that Donald J Trump is coming dangerously close to joining this rogue’s gallery. He is responsible for creating the atmosphere where people like Hawley and Paul can abuse good people like Fauci and get away with it. Shame on him and shame on them!

Friends, we are at a critical time in our country. If Trump continues to encourage this kind of outrageous behavior, interferes with the midterm elections or continues to move toward authoritarianism, we are all in trouble. It has happened in other great countries, and it could happen here. We are getting dangerously close.

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When our daughter, Jessica, invited us to accompany her family to what she described as a “terrific bluegrass festival” not far from her home in Portland, Maine, I admit that I had second thoughts. I had grown up in Nashville where I been exposed to a lot of music including bluegrass, old timey and, of course, country music, but had not been a big fan. My favorite music was what then was called rhythm and blues—Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, the Drifters and the like. And Embry and I had attended several bluegrass and old timey music festivals when we were living in Chapel Hill in the early 1970s. I found that with bluegrass a little goes a long way since there is not a whole lot of wiggle room if you are aiming for the authentic sound of Bill Monroe or Flatt and Scruggs. Three days of this might be a little much. Plus, there was the issue of camping since the festival was about an hour’s drive northwest of Portland, Maine, and most attendees camped. Sadly, for most people in our mid 80s or older, sleeping on the ground in a tent is above our paygrade.

Jes persuaded us when she volunteered to reserve an RV for us to rent. And besides, the main attraction for us was spending the long weekend with her family and our son Andrew’s family, driving up from a New Jersey suburb of New York City, which included their spouses and all four grandchildren, all except one now in college. How could we say no?

So off we went on a Thursday afternoon, driving through an extraordinarily beautiful countryside under Carolina-blue skies, temperatures in the low 80s, low humidity and no billboards. Hey, if Maine does not allow billboards on country roads, why can’t all states do it too? The hour-long ride up to the festival was almost worth all the effort in flying up to Maine, having our first flight canceled earlier in the week and eventually arriving around midnight on a later flight.

As we turned into the main entrance to the festival located on the site of the Ossipee County Fairgrounds, we were behind a couple of RVs and soon greeted warmly by a welcoming committee where we got wrist bands and headed to the site that Peter and Jessica had claimed for our group of fourteen campers a few days before. Since all tent sites were first-come-first served, the only way to be sure to get a good one required getting there very early and staking out your campsite– as in several days ahead of the event. They chose a spot across from the reserved site for our RV. Plus, they wanted to be near the site of close friends from Portland. Someone had alerted us that arriving early to witness “The Great Hippie Land Grab” was half the fun. The massive RV that Jessica had reserved for us arrived almost at the same time—along with what seemed like an endless train of RVs of all shapes and sizes.

Let the fun begin! But what to expect? Would we be subjected to three monotonous days of Bill Monroe’s traditional bluegrass? Would the good weather hold? Would the camping work out?

In a word, I was blown away. The festival was not at all what I had expected. First, there was very little if any traditional bluegrass music. I attended around ten music sessions scattered over two and a half days and did not hear anything that sounded like traditional bluegrass music. An entire fresh music genre has emerged that is based onbluegrass–sometimes called “newgrass” — but much more versatile. Most of the tunes and songs were original, composed and written by the performers. What all the groups had in common in the sessions that I attended was that the same musical instruments used for traditional bluegrass were used here—one or two guitars, a standup base, a fiddle, banjo and mandolin. But that was about it. I could not begin to describe it accurately, but from my perspective the music was all good, all enjoyable and some of it spectacular.

The program that we received when we entered listed about 50 performing groups doing 45-minute sessions that happened over the two and a half days in four venues including the mainstage where the afternoon and evening sessions happened and which could accommodate over 2,000 people, all of whom brought their own chairs and some of whom stood in front of the stage dancing and jumping to the music, not so great for people like us sitting on the second row but indeed a spectacle. My favorite group were the Brothers Comatose but there were others with names like “the Traveling Wildfires,” “Slap Dragon,” “Red Skies,” “Tricky Britches,” and “The Faux Paws.” And they came from all over, several from San Francisco and New England, various parts of Appalachia, some from the South but also from Sweden, Norway, The Czech Republic and Mexico. And the performers were mostly young, 25-40 somethings, engaging, energetic and excellent musicians with almost as many women as men performing.

And what is about the Millennials generation that encourages so many men to have beards and women to have tattoos?

But as great as the music was, that was just the backdrop for what to an outsider like me seemed like a love feast. Old friends were embracing, small children riding on the backs of their parents, older kids riding bikes, teenagers chilling out in small groups, old folks sitting in rocking chairs around campfires. And the music was not confined to the formal venues. Jam sessions were happening everywhere. Maybe two or three people would pull out guitars and a fiddle at their campsite, and within minutes the group would begin to expand to include someone with a banjo or mandolin or even a standup base. I was told that there is an etiquette that before entering a jam session, someone wandering in with an instrument needed a nod of approval before playing. I was also told that about  a quarter of the 2,000 or so campers never attended any of the formal music of Ossipee spending all their time in jam sessions.

And if music was not your thing, there was always the Ossipee River where you could drift downstream in your large innertube where at the end you would be met by, yet another band comprised of friends of Jes and Peter. Throughout the week there was an endless march of people dragging enormous innertubes headed to the river or coming back.

And perhaps best of all there was no talk about politics, no Trump or MAGA bumper stickers, no political signs of any type. What a relief from our lives outside of Ossipee where we are bombarded by politics and the sad state of our democracy! At one point it occurred to me that if there is a heaven or an afterlife, this is what I would want it to be like– moving from one jam session to another, listening to terrific music, hanging out with close friends and family, embracing loved ones, sitting around campfires and surrounded by music which is hopeful, upbeat and affirming.

If only. If only….

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If you have been following my blogs for a while, you have read about some of my unhappy encounters with airport security. If you do not know me personally—and since there almost 500 of you out there who are reading or subscribing to my blog posts– I assume many do not know what I look like. Well, I look like an old man struggling along in my 85^thyear. Not only that, due to balance issues, I now use a hiking stick, sometimes two sticks, and years ago we discovered that the best way to get through airport security is by reserving a wheelchair. This is what we did this time when flying on Southwest Airlines from BWI to Portland, Maine, where our daughter and her family live and where we will be attending a blue grass music festival.

All was going well until we were wheeled by an attendant to the first of the line to go through the metal detector screening device. Embry sailed through. No problem. When I emerged from the screening device, I was met by a team of three armed security guards, all men and all looking stressed. One took command and gave me a thorough body search, the same kind that I had a couple of years ago when a group of concerned five- or six-year-old kids asked their parents, “What are they doing to that poor, old man?”

This took several minutes. Embry was laughing again on the sidelines. Fortunately, I had checked my bag but did have a briefcase containing a computer, several books and some miscellaneous items, which fell out when they turned the briefcase upside down and shook it. They carefully examined the computer and the books, and then directed me to take off my shoes. One of the guards took the shoes and returned a few minutes later, scowling. “Okay,” he snarled, “You can go now.”

The frisking procedure took about fifteen minutes as a dozen or so other passengers whizzed past, giving me puzzled looks, then breezing off to their gates.

Embry, still giggling, asked, “Why is your guardian angel asleep at the wheel when we go through airport security?”

 What is it about me that causes alarms to go off at airport security? Do I look like a terrorist? But how would they know what a terrorist looks like anyway? When was the last time a plane was hijacked in the United States?

The last time an airplane was hijacked in the U.S. was in 2001 when the World Trade Center was attacked.    And how many flights are there in the U.S. every day? The answer is 44,360 on average.  And the number of people employed to screen passengers? The TSA website says that in the U.S. there are approximately 50,000 security officers, who are involved in screening passengers. So in the United States alone every day you have 50,000 people engaged in an effort to keep something from happening that has not happened for over 25 years. And we are just one country! And according to TSA the annual cost in the U.S. is over $11 billion!

Does this make sense? And just think about how boring this job must be! You work hard every day to keep something from happening that does not happen. I am still not sure why an 84-year-old man like me might be considered high risk, but if there is actually zero risk, your job is meaningless.

Such is life on the Planet Earth in 2026. A visitor from outer space would conclude, “Beam me up, Scotty, no intelligent life on this planet!”

Headed off to the Ossipee Blue Grass festival where there will not likely be any WIFI connections but some good stories should follow.

Stay tuned.

 

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As the saying goes, I have talked (“written”) about myself enough, now it is your turn—to talk (“write”) about me.

No, just kidding, but it is time to return to the times we find ourselves in. Of course, my guess is that you already know what is happening in our country, so perhaps you have already heard or read enough. I promise to weave in more of my favorite stories going forward, but for today my post is all about being apprehensive. We should be scared, even terrified. If you have not read Heather Cox Richardson’s post for today (posted on July 17), you should, but mix yourself a strong drink before you start. She focuses on a book called Unhumans, by Trump loyalists, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec, who make the argument that anyone who opposes Trump is a communist and that makes them “unhuman” implying they deserve to die. Trump is now ranting and raving on Truth Social about the communist threat to take over America and destroy our freedom and way of life, but these are not Chinese communists he fears but Democrats and progressives– home grown Americans, people like you and me.

Richardson observes:

In “Unhumans,” Posobiec and Lisec argue that the United States is under siege by “the left,” which in their view means anyone from communists to progressives. “For the purposes of this book, we will call them the ‘unhumans,’” the authors write, “because they oppose everything that makes up humanity. As they are opposed to humanity itself, they place themselves outside of the category completely, in an entirely new misery-driven subdivision, the unhuman.”

Trump is implying the same thing in his rants on Truth Social.

Most of his behavior can be explained by Trump’s belief that if the Democrats retake the House or the Senate in the 2026 Midterm Elections, it is game over for his agenda and even more important, it will be a huge blow to his fragile ego. Trump in the view of many, including me, is an extreme pathological narcissist obsessed with himself. Stated another way, the dude is nuts, mentally ill, whacko. Yet here we are, with a whacko President, who is followed by an aide carrying his brief case with the nuclear code. And all the guardrails of Trump 2016 are now gone. None of his former advisers like Bill Barr, Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson, Mark Milley, John Kelly, and John Bolton—are part of Trump’s 2024 team, and there were many others in his first administration who kept him from doing dumb things (like getting into what may now become another “forever war”) who are also gone. Those people have been replaced by sycophants and “yes men and women” who when Trump says “jump,” they ask, “how high.”

And the thing that astonishes me even more is that except for those who have lost in the primaries, in 2026 there do not appear to be any elected Republicans who are in the House or Senate who will stand up to Trump. Certainly, they all can’t be in favor of the Iran War, increasing inflation, the high cost of living, eliminating USAID, global warming denial, and the brutal ICE arrests and killings.

Trump is determined to do whatever it takes to keep from losing Republican control of both the House and the Senate. His main push has been to require “proof of citizenship,” to vote (eg. birth certificates) though this is just a start and remains a long shot. Who knows what he will try next? Some believe he will find a way to cancel the 2026 elections altogether. Others see things even more ominous like arresting and locking up people whom he brands as “unhuman.” This gets us perilously close to Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. If either of these things happen, this will mean the end of our democracy.

So yes, I am apprehensive. In fact, I am scared. This would not be the first time that a mighty country has done itself in. Every great empire in the past had its heyday and its downfall. Germany is just one in a long list. Russia and the Soviet Union have had their days in the sun, so have Spain, France, the Roman and Greek Empires, Japan, China, Egypt, and many others. This seems to be the way the world works. No country is Number One forever. I read somewhere that 250 years is about the average for being at the top of the heap. How close are we to our final days?

These are the questions that are lurking in the shadows today as Trump continues the Iran War, demeans all who oppose him, shreds social safety nets, enriches himself even more, and threatens our fragile democracy and the rule of law.

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So, what about guardian angels and do you think they really exist? Of course, they do. All you need to do is think about your own life and the close calls and challenges that you have had. No one goes through life without close calls and challenges. It is part of being human. And what if the circumstances had been different, that something terrible happened or that you got wiped out? For the fact that you survived, you can thank your guardian angel. And what I am calling close calls refers to a lot of things, not just near-death experiences—but also things like the right job or career, the right spouse, the right kids, your health, your friends…. The list is long. It has to do with how we humans manage to get through life. Close calls and guardian angels are part of life’s mysteries. One could argue that the fact that we manage to get through life at all is due not to how capable, smart or gifted we think we are but rather to how capable our guardian angel is.

I know what you are thinking. All I am talking about is blind luck. Everyone understands that. Well, I am saying that blind luck may be another way of looking at it, but the same question remains: where does blind luck come from?

But I agree that the big question is why guardian angels seem to help some people more than others. Why do some survive close calls and others don’t? Well, I have thought about this and my theory is the sad fact that some guardian angels are just better at what they do than others. We get assigned one at birth and the angel sticks with us as long as it can; and when the guardian angel gives out, makes a mistake, or does not do its job, that is when we get into trouble. Plus, all guardian angels are not equal. We do not know exactly why, but many have attributed the differences in effectiveness to how smart the guardian angel is, how the angel was brought up, its education, temperament, and its personality.

And how do I know all of this? Of course, I don’t. That we humans get through life as well as we do most of the time remains a mystery and always will.

And doesn’t the mystery of life apply to life on the Planet Earth for all of us living creatures? Of course it does. And there is so much we still don’t know. Look, we live on one relatively small planet in one solar system containing nine planets circling an average star in a galaxy that contains at least 100 billion stars and maybe as many as 400 billion. And how many galaxies are there? Well, scientists now think the number may exceed two trillion. And that our universe may be part of a multiverse. Yet there are many people on our small planet who believe we humans have all the answers. They believe that the only life or advanced life—if you can call human life “advanced”—exists right here and nowhere else in the universe. There are some who will tell you that they have all the answers and that their own belief system—their own “religion”—is the correct one, that all other religions are fake or inferior, and that if you do not believe what they do, you will not go to heaven. They base their beliefs on ancient texts, creeds, and liturgies that have been handed down through the ages as humans have evolved over the centuries. And they base it on their own experience.

Well, people who believe in guardian angels base this belief on their own experience too.

Besides, what do we really know? We humans are newbies. We have only been around a few million years—Homo sapiens only a few hundred thousand—on a planet that began from cosmic dust some 4.5 billion years ago. Life on the planet Earth has gone through five mass extinctions and there are likely to be more. Scientists know our sun will give out in another five billion years and will turn into a red giant “only” in another billion years, making all life uninhabitable on the planet. What is this all about?

So why not guardian angels? Their existence explains a lot of things though it does not explain the ultimate meaning of life. Beyond our pay grade to figure this out conclusively, as they say in Washington. So, we soldier on doing the best we can, groping for straws to find meaning where we can. This is our plight. And whether guardian angels can be proven or whether it is just plain luck is less important than the fact that we made it through another day and are still going. That is enough for many, and it is enough for me. For that we can give praise and thanksgiving for whatever mysterious force might have made this happen. Many people call this force “God.”

Thank you for sticking with all 22 episodes about my life. Now back to the things that are driving us all crazy, the current situation in our country and in our world. And along the way I will be throwing in some of my best stories which have been posted before on my “Gullible’s Travels” series. I hope you will stick with me.

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