
This annoyed me because I’d like to submit them weekly. Its not because Donald Trump’s depredations or Billionaire destruction of Earth or human cluelessness hasn’t give me enough things to write about. I thought I had a rough draft of “Trump’s Queer” I could whittle down to 1000 words. It wasn’t far enough along. I spent too much time yesterday putting small mountains of paper I left on the floor in December. I ran out of time then to file them before traveling to Colorado to meet my new granddaughter. I texted with my French pen pal in the late afternoon leaving me only three hours to do what would have been a night’s worth of work.
I have three daily writing missions now. This blog. A book (and translating it into French) and weekly columns for the Reader. If I get Reader columns worked out early in the week I can turn to the other tasks.
Today as I brushed off six inches of power (perfect skiing snow) off Abe and Tad I was listening to the Audible version of the gift my daughter gave me in 2017 when she learned I was using Duolingo to learn French. Its the 1950ish book Le petit Nicholas. It was all squiggles to me when I first tried to read it with only English under my belt. Yesterday I listened to several chapters and most of the grammar was in my head as it was spoken. Those are chapters I’ve waded through up to a dozen times. The test will be to understand some new book on the first listen. That will take some time.
Oh, and yesterday an acquaintance who caught my sculpture in his peripheral vision as he drove past realized instantly what it was. He rang my bell and gave me an envelope with 12 20 cent postage stamps with that image on them. 20 cent stamps. That was a couple decades ago.
Just saw a news story that said Trump’s new nominee for the Department of Education that he wants to destroy wouldn’t tell a Senate hearing whether schools could teach African American history under Trumps new anti-DEI regime. There were half a dozen other equally moronic stories today but that subject as might be inferred by my recent snow sculpture is particularly close to my heart. Among the emails I sent myself last night after reading about how Western Americans went of a Chinatown burning binge just before my grandfather was born in the 1880’s was this one: Zombie Christians vs. Wide Awakes. It a possible title for some new Reader Column or a chapter in a book. The text in the email?
Zombie Christians feed off of brains and (excrete) them out to pollute the planet. I had a ruder word where you see the parentheses.
As my better half and I watched a fanciful French romance about Gustav Eiffel (of Tower fame) I realized what I should have submitted for this week’s Reader Column. I should have written something about Trump and Karl Rove’s fascination with the tariffs of William McKinley. Trump claims he renamed Alaska’s Mount Denali, Mount McKinley. That man leaves five or ten piles of hot shit behind him every day. Some people thinks it shows that he’s getting stuff done. Too bad they only see it on TV. If they were following behind him they could smell what they were about to step into.
