January 20, 2025 It’s early here in San Francisco on Martin Luther King Jr. Day – four in the morning, seven on the east coast. Today is the day that the United States celebrates the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King.
Today is also Inauguration Day, when, at Noon Eastern Time, the new President of the United States will be sworn in.
The irony couldn’t be more stark, and the visions of America so conflicting. The only saving fortuity, the only deliverance from a darker blasphemy, is that due to dangerously cold weather conditions in Washington D.C., the swearing in ceremony has been moved indoors from the National Mall where, in August of 1963, Dr. King delivered his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech before a crowd of more than 250,000 (King’s speech was delivered on the opposite end of the Mall from where the inaugural speech would be made).
for Pete’s sake A mild oath of exasperation, annoyance, frustration, anger, or surprise.
If you’d watched the Senate confirmation hearing of Pete Hegseth and all you saw were the questioning Senators, while the nominee was sequestered behind a screen, you wouldn’t have been faulted for thinking that two nominees were behind that screen.
One; the town drunk who cheats on his wife, shows up to work half in the bag, has tanked a couple of businesses and is generally considered an embarrassing lout.
The other; a good upstanding family man with good Christian morals who rose above some possible failings to be a pillar of society.
It could’ve been a guy named John. And depending on who was doing the speaking and the questioning, it was either Gotti or the Baptist.
Your choice of which ‘John’ was behind the curtain could have been based on the questions asked and the tones with which they were presented. To use a baseball analogy, the Democrats threw some nasty fastballs aimed right at Hegseth’s dome, while the Republicans gently placed the ball on a tee, patted him lovingly on the back and said, ‘go get ‘em, big fella.’
I started to watch from the beginning but my own well being and the well being of those people and objects around me compelled me to be content (or discontented) with occasionally rejoining the spectacle and then clicking ‘off’ on the remote when it all became too sickening to bear. It was a disgusting theater of the bizarre put on by the Republicans.
I skipped dinner and went to bed early last night; depressed, sick at heart, sick in my gut and sick of seeing the feckless, fawning of the Republican Party which is content to watch the country circling the drain.
January 11, 2025 Expectancy, anger, frustration, disgust and resignation.
When it comes to life in Donald J. Trump’s America, it’s my almost daily cycle of emotions. A loop that ends in a spin of hopelessness.
It was one of those days yesterday as Trump, convicted of falsifying business records in the Stormy Daniels hush money payoff scheme, received his sentence. Legal speak for the sentence he received is, “unconditional discharge.” In common everyday parlance, the sentence is, well, nothing. Nothing at all, carry on, nothing to see here, go along on your angry way Mr. Trump.
It wasn’t the sentencing hearing one often sees, in which the convicted stands before the judge and, with a downturned face, teary eyes and a look of remorse, apologizes, promises to do better in the future, and begs for the court’s mercy.
No, this time it was the over worn MAGA theater as the convicted felon appeared virtually and went on another, oh woe is me, I was treated unfairly by a rigged system, tirade. It included some of the usual Trumpian boilerplate: “political witch hunt,” “I’m totally innocent. I did nothing wrong,” “weaponization of government,” “lawfare,””I was treated very, very unfairly.”
In the sentencing, Judge Juan Merchan issued a stern rebuke to Trump and concluded with his wish of “Godspeed as you assume your second term in office.”
Fini!
When the first act opened with a bang on March 30th, 2023 with a grand jury indictment – I still have copies of the newspapers – there was plenty of expectancy. Nearly 22 months later the cycle was made complete; anger, frustration, disgust and resignation as the final curtain came down with a whimper.
There are still 12 days until inauguration day and the fatigue is already mentally and emotionally crushing. There’s a name for it. It’s called Trump Fatigue (let’s call it TF for short). TF was particularly taxing yesterday as Trump expanded on his plans for a revival of American imperialism.
His proposals range from the annoying to the frightening. All of them seem to have roots in that good old American tradition of jingoism and nostalgia for the days of Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine.
Ranked from the bothersome and the petty to the insane, following is a list of Trump’s proposals for remodeling the world’s geopolitical map.
Renaming Denali back to Mount McKinley A purely domestic issue, this is probably the most doable for him.
Between 1917 and 2015, North America’s tallest mountain was named for the 25th president. In 2015, under President Obama, the peak was given the name Denali, an Athabascan word meaning “the High One”; the State of Alaska actually predated the official U.S. name change by forty years.
There are probably two reasons at play for Trump. McKinley is something of a hero to Trump, likely because McKinley was particularly friendly to the “robber barons” of his time – the 19th century Elons.
The other reason is that Athabascan is a Native American language, and, well, you know, too much melanin.
All Trump needs to do is have a sit down with Doug Burgum, his Secretary of the Interior and the deed can be done.
Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America To answer the obvious question, yes, he can do this but he needs the approval of the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, which is a division of the U.S. Geological Survey. The USGS operates under the direction of the Department of the Interior. Enter Doug Burgum again.
The proposal, “We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Gulf of America — what a beautiful name,” had barely left Trump’s lips when Representative and Trump groveler Marjorie Taylor Greene announced that she had directed her staff to draft legislation to begin the process.
While the United States can unilaterally change the name, the international community doesn’t have to recognize the change.
“What happened here today was an insurrection, incited by the President of the United States. Those who choose to continue to support his dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate, democratic election will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy. They will be remembered for their role in this shameful episode in American history. That will be their legacy.” ~ Senator Mitt Romney, January 6th, 2021.
“The mob was fed lies … They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government, which they did not like.” ~ Senator Mitch McConnell, January 12, 2021. Six days after the insurrection.
“There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.” ~ Senator Mitch McConnell, February, 2021, after voting not to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial.
“Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures. You know, if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.” ~ Rep. Andrew Clyde (R) Georgia, May. 2021.
March 3rd, 2023. A song titled “And Justice for All,” is released. The song consists of Donald J. Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, interspersed with a group of men singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” with a backing track. At the end of the song, the choir chants “U-S-A!” six times. The choir is comprised of prisoners, incarcerated for their part in the January 6th, insurrection. Later that month, in Waco Texas, the song is used as an introduction to the kickoff of Trump’s 2024 presidential run. It isn’t lost on observers that Waco is the site of the Branch Dividian standoff.
March 6th, 2023, Tucker Carlson issues the statement, “A small percentage of them (insurrectionists) were hooligans, they committed vandalism … but the overwhelming majority weren’t. They were peaceful, they were ordinary and meek. These were not insurrectionists, they were sightseers.” Carlson makes that statement after airing a cherry picked video of the January 6th riot. After the airing, Representative Mike Collins (R) of Georgia says, “I’ve seen enough. Release all J6 political prisoners now.” Collins was not yet in Congress on January 6th, 2021.
Speaking of the January 6th, insurrection Donald J. Trump says, “They were there with love in their heart. That was unbelievable. And it was a beautiful day.” May, 2023.
“I call them the J6 hostages, not prisoners. I call them the hostages, what’s happened. And it’s a shame.” Donald J. Trump, November, 2023.
“January 6th was a disgrace. American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of domestic business they did not like. Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president. They did this because they’d been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth … There is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.” ~ Senator Mitch McConnell, January 9th, 2024, commenting on his remarks of February, 2021.
March, 2024. Donald J. Trump promises to pardon January 6th insurrectionists. It’s a promise that he will continue to repeat throughout the campaign and following the election.
“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States … It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.” Senator Mitch McConnell, March, 2024.
June 6, 2024. Former Capitol Police Officers, Aquilino Gonell, and Harry Dunn, who both suffered serious career ending injuries inflicted by the insurrectionists visit the Pennsylvania State Capitol. Republican members of the legislature either boo the officers or walk out.
November 5th, 2024. Approximately two-thirds of eligible American voters ignore Donald J. Trump’s part in instigating an insurrection, allowing him to become the 47th President. Say what you will about the deficiencies in the Democratic Party’s strategy, the fact remains that the majority of voters who took part in the election, along with those who chose to stay on the sidelines, decided to excuse Trump for his actions regarding the insurrection, and his actions since then.
“I’m a big fan of John Eastman. Y’know, he was right. He happened to be right. That’s why they changed the law and nobody wants to talk about that.” ~ President elect, Donald J. Trump, at a gathering in Mar-a-Lago on January 4th, 2025, speaking of the events of January 6th, and John Eastman’s strategy to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In attendance are Eastman, and other election deniers that include Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and former trade official Peter Navarro.
It’s been a minute since I’ve participated in the Len-Artists series. Probably closer to 525600 minutes and mostly due to the economics of not wanting to pay WordPress for the extra space to accommodate photos. But being partial to all of the end of year commemoratives I couldn’t stay away.
The year 2024 had me focusing mostly on urban photography; the ancient, the old, the modern, the shapes and the gritty. Before I knew that this iteration of the series was happening I’d already published an end of year post so I found myself looking for some other favorites (some are different images of the same subject).
Neuschwanstein Castle is almost like cheating, it’s so picturesque. It seems to be on every calendar and with good reason. My wife and I missed the tour of the interior of the castle but later on in the afternoon as twilight approached I took the bus back to the drop off and made the short hike to the Marienbrücke bridge from where one can take the classic images. I was lucky I had autumn colors and billowing clouds to dress it up. (Another image of this castle is in my previous post. This image is with a wider angle)
The year 2024 marked a change in this site, as I veered away from photo blogs. It wasn’t so much that I set the camera aside and lost interest in photography. It was more a function of WordPress affordability and not wanting to shell out the $$$ to support photo blogs. It was also a function of turning towards writing in a year that was filled with political and social fireworks. To celebrate the year end, here is a short collection of some favorite photos.
This year my wife Cora and I traveled to Chicago, Vienna, Bavaria (highlighted by Munich), and Krakow, all of which provided magnificent photo opportunities. As always I also ventured to San Francisco.
The cities provided opportunities to focus on both modern architecture and what I like to call urban grit. Both of these aspects have caught my fancy. Away from the cities there is always natural beauty and rural charm to focus on.
I’ve included twelve photos in no particular order, each one representing a month of the year (though in honesty there were months in which my camera sat idle), and just for the hell of it, one banner photo.
As you’ll see in a few photos I took some license as regards editing. I avoided AI (something that PS is making difficult to do), except for a feature in Lightroom which reduces noise (that fuzzy appearance when a shot is taken in low light using high speed).
Comments, both positive and negative, are encouraged. What style do you like and what turns you off?
Urban Geometry (San Francisco) What is urban geometry? Hell, I don’t know if it’s a correct term but it’s my term for close ups of modern buildings and the various patterns, shapes and colors that I think combine to make an interesting image. This photo was taken in the Financial District of San Francisco on New Year’s Day when there was less chance of a photo bomber.
Chinatown San Francisco This photo was taken during the same photo walk as the photo above. It’s an example of the urban grit which I like to feature in monochrome.
“My thoughts & prayers were out of network.” ~ A Facebook post reacting to the shooting of Brian Thompson
The vitriol was swift and caustic. Not against the gunman, Luigi Mangione, but against the victim, UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson. A Facebook post put up by UnitedHealthcare announcing the death of Thompson received 46,000 responses. UHC took the post down when it was discovered that 41,000 of those responses were laughing emojis.
Indeed, reading social media posts, one had to wonder who was the killer and who was the victim.
There’s something uniquely American about healthcare nightmares. The torments go something like this story seen on social media: “My health insurance denied a PET scan for my husband,” wrote one woman on social media. “He had been diagnosed with a very rare cancer with possible metastatic spread. The first denial claimed it was because he hadn’t had a liver biopsy yet, which he had. The second denial claimed it was because PET scans hadn’t proven their efficacy (they were the ‘gold standard’ test for a decade at that time). The cancer metastasized, and he died six months after diagnosis. He was 51.”
The preceding story begs the question, does one have to pull a trigger to be deemed a killer? Writ large, our broken system is the killer, and it’s a serial killer that’s been at it for decades and decades. The weapons of choice have been, and continue to be, politicians, corporations, executives, courts, and shareholders. And frankly, ourselves. Ourselves for allowing it to go on for decade after decade while screaming about the inequity and cruelty of it all.
Do I condone the murder of a man because he’s the CEO of a healthcare insurer or a pharmaceutical company. No, but more so, I condemn the deaths and ruination of millions of lives in order to gain wealth and to satisfy faceless shareholders. One user on X summed up the quandary quite neatly, “When you shoot one man in the street it’s murder. When you kill thousands of people in hospitals by taking away their ability to get treatment you’re an entrepreneur.”
And while death by denial might not be the outcome of an insurance claim refused, or a procedure delayed for pre approval, the outcome is often financial ruin and/or diminished quality of life.
When Sara England discovered that her infant son, Amari Vaca, who had recently undergone open heart surgery, was in distress, she took the child to the emergency room at Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, California. The doctors, who had to keep the boy alive by putting a tube down his throat and manually pushing air into his lungs with a bag until he was stable enough to go onto a ventilator, told England that the boy needed immediate specialized care at the nearest hospital; care that Natividad was not equipped to provide. When the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center informed doctors that they could care for Amari, the boy was flown by small plane and transported between hospitals and airports on ground ambulances. When the bill for $97,599 was submitted to Cigna, the claim was denied on the grounds that air transport was not medically necessary. Link to full story, here.
David Cordani, the CEO of Cigna, has a net worth of $570 million dollars. He could figuratively pull 98 large out of his pocket, pick off the lint, say ‘keep the change,’ and then go and have a quick $200 dollar lunch at Benjamin Steakhouse Prime. In the meantime, Sara England will likely spend years, if not decades, making herself whole, all the while conserving and foregoing while Mr. Cordani indulges in whatever the fuck strikes his fancy.
“Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.” ~ Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Kraków. It’s old. Fourth century old.
Put in American perspective, because for Americans it’s always about America, Krakow was the capital of Poland five centuries before a European landed in what would later be the United States. Jagiellonian University was graduating students three centuries before the first Harvard student said to the first ever Harvard prof, “My dog ate my homework.”
Krakow has basked in the grandeur of royalty and been chastened by invaders; Mongols in 1241, Swedes in 1657, Nazi Germany in 1939 and the Soviet Union in 1945. As a part of the Eastern Bloc, Poland was under the yoke of the Soviet Union until 1993. In Krakow, one doesn’t have to look hard to see the remnants and scars left by the latter two.
Today Krakow is a historic treasure, with two of its districts, Stare Miasto (old town) and Kazimierz (the old Jewish Quarter), having been designated UNESCO World Heritage sites, along with other UNESCO Heritage sites within a short drive of the city.
Today, Krakow is also old world made young and vibrant by a large population of college students and a lively cultural and nightlife scene. One can plunge into jazz at the basement Jazz Club u Muniaka, just steps away from a 13th century church.
Arrival The cabbie brought us to the city from John Paul II International Airport using mostly backroads. There’s a first for everything and this was the first time I’ve taken anything but a highway to or from a major city’s international airport. The ride took us past a few stands of woodland and modest homes until we arrived in the city.
Once in the city itself, the driver looped onto Plac Dominikański, drove one short block and dumped us out. It wasn’t quite that unceremonious. He turned, put his arm on the back of his seat and explained that cars are not allowed onto the old square, and so we would have to walk to our hotel.
Well, that sent a shiver. Whenever we pass tourists trudging along a clogged street, weaving through crowds of tourists, and dragging luggage clattering on cobblestones, I’ve always muttered to myself, “there but for the grace of God …” Now, here in Krakow, God’s grace had apparently run out. Full disclosure, whatever grace I ever had is long past its expired date. Being the heathen that I am, I’ve been on borrowed time. Maybe I’ve just been pulled along on the coattails of my devout wife and in Krakow, God was firing a warning shot across her bow.
The driver must’ve noticed my brief look of terror and said, in a kind voice, “It’s only about 200 meters.” He pointed to our right, “Go up that way to the square, and once you’re on the square, turn right.”
Like most Old World European cities, the first thing you see when you arrive at an old town’s main square is an imposing old church. Kraków is no different. We turned the corner onto Rynek Główny (Central Square) and the gothic spires of St. Mary’s Basilica loomed before us. A magnificent centuries old building unexpectedly presents itself and you’re compelled to pause, marvel and say something like, “Damn! Look at that.” It’s almost like a usual drill except the there’s nothing at all usual about the imposing sight that soars from the square.
The Venetian House is located right on Rynek Główny, in an old building with its own courtyard just inside the front entrance. We arrived well before check in and after leaving our luggage we headed straight for the nearest T-Mobile office. The often spotty coverage that we normally get in the old European cities was non-existent in Krakow. Just like the old days, we were internet blind.
Crossing the threshold of the 15th century Barbican, the old city gate, was like time travel, as just a few blocks outside of Old Town, Kraków turns to modern kitsch at the three story Galeria Krakowska.
Malls all over the world are all more or less the same; tawdry shrines to commercialism and materialism. Malls dot countries around the world but they all scream the same language of shameless consumerism. The same steel and glass and plastic plants, the same garish, blazing light, the same drone of zombie-like shoppers looking for something in particular and nothing at all really, the same food courts serving the same international versions of plastic food, and all of it to the sound of piped in elevator music and semi-hits from long forgotten almost pop stars. For those who aren’t looking to buy, the mall is the land of “I don’t have anything else to do.” To quote Frank Zappa, “Like, oh my god, fer sure, fer sure,”* at Galeria Krakowska we could just as well have been in Encino, California. It was, “like, so bitchin’.” * From “Valley Girl” Lyrics and music by, Frank Zappa and Moon Zappa
The nice man at the T-Mobile shop told us that T-Mobile in Poland is essentially a third cousin many times removed from T-Mobile USA, and all he could do for us, if we wanted internet, was to sell us sim cards for our phones. I got a sim card and Cora decided to just stay tied to me at the hip. “If we get separated, just ask someone for directions to our hotel and I’ll meet you there,” I suggested.
I walk the streets. Aimlessly. Desperately. I’m looking for everything – and – nothing really. Oh, but there is that one magnificent place, or colorful stroll, or enduring taste that I have to experience just one final time.
Is there something that I missed?
Of course there is. I’ve missed what I ran out of time for and I’ve missed the hundreds of things I’ll never even know that I missed, until someone mentions something two months from now and then I’ll say, “No, I missed that.”
“We can’t see everything.” That’s what I tell Cora every time the itinerary is too full to squeeze in anything else.
This desperate exploration has become a tradition that occurs on every final day of a trip.
Back at our hotel, Cora is feet up, relaxing. She’s traveled-out, and walked-out, and ready to go back home.
Me? I’m the one who never wants to go back home. If it wasn’t for the dog waiting for us at home I’d be sorely tempted to stay. But right now I’m trying to squeeze the last drops of juice from the fruit.
The Life in My Years 