More crap

On Friday, we learned that the Trump administration denied North Carolina's request to extend FEMA's Tropical Storm Helene relief funding for debris removal.

The storm caused about $60 billion in damages for the state and killed approximately 100 people. It was awful. North Carolinians are still trying to figure out how a storm with the force of a hurricane could ravage the mountains.

To be fair, FEMA is still providing 90 percent funding, but the remaining 10 percent is the equivalent to $200,000 million, which is not insignificant when people are still living in tents.

A few months ago, Kim and I went to Asheville to hear one of our favorite bands, Underhill Rose, perform. On the way up, the first hint of damage we saw was at Old Fort. Trees were still down. Some buildings were uninhabitable. 

By the time we reached neighboring Black Mountain and Swannanoa, the scope of the damage was clearly evident – and almost unbelievable to process from the inside of a car.

When we finally reached Asheville, the Interstate still had a layer of river silt imprinted on its surface and storm damage – particularly fallen trees – lay strewn on either side of the road. And this was five months later. It's going to take a long, long time for complete recovery.

But on Friday, the Trump administration said nope, further assistance is "unwarranted" and gave no reason why. So much for the transparency they claim to have.

And this coming from a guy who criticized then-President Joe Biden for abandoning the state and mishandling the hurricane response. Forgotten, I guess, was Trump's own response to North Carolina in 2017, during his first term, when the state requested $929 million in aid in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. North Carolina received just one percent ($6.1 million) of what it requested. Thanks, bro.

In the back of my head I'm thinking the only reason to deny the state recovery funding is retribution. Governor Josh Stein is a Democrat who doesn't mind sparring with Trump now and then. And Buncombe County, where Asheville is located, voted heavily Democratic for Kamala Harris in the 2024 general election. She received 98,602 votes (61.47.percent) while Trump totaled 59,016 votes (36.77 percent). So the payback presidency continues because a child pretending he's a clown sits at the Resolute Desk.

Roy Cooper, another Democrat, was the governor in 2017, in case you're looking for a pattern.

Meanwhile, the idiocy continues. When he's not denying FEMA funding, Trump's trying to punish Harvard University by banning the enrollment of foreign students for absurd or inexplicable reasons. Fortunately, a federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order to block the ban. That action puts a stop – at least for now – of a potential brain drain that could hurt this country for decades. Harvard, like most prestigious universities, do invaluable work in research and development. For example, Harvard is probably the leading university in the world in cancer research. So, yeah, let's shut that down.

•   •   •

On a side note, I've noticed that whenever MAGA responds to criticism of Trump, the explanation often given is that the critic is suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), as if it's an actual thing that is treatable with counseling.

I've been seeing and hearing that for years. I suspect I'll get a few TDS's for today's blog. 

Political debate is a natural, even a genetic, part of this country's heritage. Unless free speech is suddenly declared illegal by executive order, agreeing to disagree is part of a normal and healthy exchange. Declaring that an opponent has TDS amounts to nothing more than a tired, childish ad hominem attack in an attempt to extinguish a person's viewpoint from the debate with a weak insult. 

Be better than that, MAGA.

 

 

 

 

Immigration game

The other day I saw a story published by The Wall Street Journal – a conservative newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns FOX News – that the Department of Homeland Security is considering a reality TV program that pits desperate immigrants against each other in a competition for U.S. citizenship.

I thought this was pretty much more dystopian Trump administration nonsense until I got to the part where TV producer Rob Worsoff has been pitching a show like this as far back as the Obama era (Worsoff, by the way, helped produce Duck Dynasty).

The story gained further credence for me when it noted that DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said she has been in contact with Worsoff and that the Trump administration is interested in the concept, revealing the idea is "in the very beginning stages of that vetting process."

Holy hell. Is there no end to Trump's indignities? His excessively corrupt administration (see: gold-plated Qatari 747 jet airliner) thrives on the pain and despair of others, and immigrants are an easy and special target for him. Not all immigrants, mind you. South Africans, who are white and speak English, are coming to the United States as asylum seekers and are welcomed by the Trump clown show. But Hispanics, who are usually non-Whites, don't generally speak English and are often being labeled, without due process, as MS-13 gang members, are being deported (probably unconstitutionally) to foreign nations not native to them. Cruel and unusual? Well, yes. That's the point, isn't it?

All this abomination got me to thinking about immigration in this country. It's not a particularly pleasant picture when you get right down to it.

Oh, sure. We've seen the images of poor Europeans coming off ships at Ellis Island under the shadow of the State of Liberty, and it's as feel good an image as there is. It's what America is all about. It's the Statue of LIBERTY, for crying out loud.

Until you consider that Black Africans were brought to these shores in 1619 to serve as slaves – by white Europeans, and primarily, by white Englishmen and who were mostly Protestant Christians.

Which makes the white Englishmen this country's first immigrants, not to mention its first slave holders. And one of the first things the white Englishmen do is steal the land from native Americans, who are not white. Oh, my God! It's an invasion!

It's a slippery slide from there.

As the country grew, so did its biases. As humans, we don't seem to do well with things we don't know about. Like somebody else's culture. Or their religion. So when the great potato famine sparked Irish immigration to the U.S. in the mid-1840s, it also brought with them large numbers of Catholics, and well, you know the rest: Irish need not apply.

Then it was the Germans in 1848, crossing the Atlantic to escape revolution. The resident Englishmen were so confused by this they called the Germans "Dutch" because the German word for German is "Deustch." Makes sense, right? It's a dehumanizing tactic to label an ethnic group something they're not. Well, we know that now. Because we're still seeing it happen.

About the same time that the Germans came over, the Chinese arrived, hoping to take advantage of the gold rush in California. Here's a factoid: the Chinese were primarily used to build the western section of the Transcontinental Railroad. Approximately 12,000 Chinese immigrants helped with the construction of the project from 1865 to 1869, often working under horrendously dangerous conditions. Imagine that. The American railroad system, made in China.

Then came the Italians in the 1880s, trying to escape hardship and political strife. Oh, my God. Mafia. More Catholics. And that Mediterranean dark skin. Watch out.

Meanwhile, Jews are coming to the United States in three significant waves from 1820 to 1924. One of the most shameful moments in American history, to my mind, occurred in 1939 when the German ocean liner MS St. Louis tried to disembark 900 Jewish refugees who were fleeing Nazi persecution in Germany immediately prior to World War II. But the United States, Canada and Cuba refused to admit the asylum seekers. Some returned to Germany, only to perish in the Holocaust.

And, of course, we have the Muslim ban. After all of our past history, it's no surprise, I guess. 

We like to think of ourselves as a nation founded on Christian values, but our past often reveals us for who we really are: humans who struggle with prejudice, fear and ignorance. The hope is that we can learn from our past.

And then the next thing you know, we find ourselves with government sanctioned immigration games on TV. 

Do you feel like we're being set up for something?

 

 

 

 

Mom, again

There's this picture of Mom that I love when she had just turned 19. She's just graduating from high school, so I figure it's about 1947.

I don't think the photo was professionally done because the top of her head was nearly cut off. It might have been taken by a family member. Perhaps one of her four siblings. Or maybe her dad, Harry. Or even my Dad, who was dating Carol at the time. I'll never know. 

 But it's beautifully posed.

She's standing in an open field, in heels, wearing dress gloves and an above-the-knee skirt, complete with a shoulder bag. And a corsage.

She might be smiling, but I'm not quite sure. Maybe it's the hint of a smile. Or perhaps the suggestion of one, as if she knows some really good stuff and she's not going to tell anyone. At least not yet.

What I love about this picture is that she is standing firm on her ground, facing 45 degrees from straight on. She's looking ahead. There's confidence there, I think. She's holding her shoulder bag with a measure of authority.

Mom and Dad are already an item by this point, and it'll be three more years before they are married. I remember hearing stories that Dad would take the trolley from where he lived in Allentown to see Mom, who lived in neighboring Bethlehem.

There's no way she can clearly see what awaits her, however. 

She never goes to college (she did major in accounting in high school and worked for an insurance agency for a while) but she and Dad end up having three sons who kept them pretty busy.

I'm supposing Mom was the ideal 1950s-60's housewife, but I have to guess this part: even though I lived it, I was in my world, she was in hers. Dad changed jobs fairly often, first as a high school English teacher, then a Red Cross counselor, then a teacher again, and then a Moravian minister before becoming a teacher once again and then, at last, back to the church again. I like to say he couldn't keep a job, but that wasn't it. I think he needed to find his true challenge; his authentic self. It always seemed to be somewhere he wasn't.

Consequently, the Wehrles lived in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Connecticut and back to Pennsylvania before moving to Ohio, and then, finally, to Wisconsin before Dad found himself. I'm pretty sure Mom never factored in all the traveling she would do as a housewife in her life, but there it was.

Sometime in the 1960s, Betty Friedan wrote a bestseller called The Feminine Mystique and a copy somehow ended up in our house. It wouldn't surprise me if Dad bought it for her because she was a voracious reader, but the book challenged the belief at the time that "fulfillment as a woman had only one definition for American women after 1949 – the housewife-mother."

I'm not sure if this book was life changing for Mom or not. I was only 12 in 1963. But I think an independent streak emerged and evolved in Mom. She got a job at Moravian College to help with finances while Dad was in seminary. A few years later, when Dad had a church in Coopersburg, Mom turned to oil painting. She was very good at it. I'm sure she found a sense of fulfillment in her talent and soon Carol Wehrle originals were hanging in many of the rooms of our house.

I have a few to this day.

She died in 1991 at the early age of 63 when she could no longer hold back the breast cancer that  ultimately ravaged her body. She outlived Dad by four years (who died of the prostate cancer that found his bones), and in those four years she displayed a courage and strength I don't think I'd seen in her before, even though she needed courage and strength to raise three sons.

I didn't see it then.

I see it now.

Thanks, Mom.

 

 

 

 

Home improvement

If you had asked me several years ago what a pergola was, I probably would have answered "Huh?" and shrugged my shoulders.

Our old arbor was in serious disrepair.

 "Something made in Japan?" might have been my guess. It's likely that I might actually have been thinking of a pagoda.

But we had this simple wooden structure in our backyard that over the years was seriously deteriorating. It was there when we bought our house more than 22 years ago. It was our decorative arbor and bench where the wisteria grew and climbed.

But the structure was in bad shape, even back then.

Finally, about a year or so ago – about the time we had our new backyard fence built – the arbor/pergola became a real eyesore. It had a bad lean to it, so much so that we figured it might collapse the next time a bird landed on it. Slats were falling off of it. The only reason it was still standing is that the wisteria was no doubt holding it all together.

We thought it was only a matter of time and that we needed to do something this year.

Our new pergola is a sight to behold.

 So we contacted Nico Barrie of A&K Quality Fencing in High Point, the same guy who built our fence.

"Help," I pleaded. 

Nico arrived in the nick of time to give us an estimate. I showed him a picture of an arbor that Kim and I liked at the Davidson County Senior Services Center and asked him if he could build us something similar.

He said he could. The day he started the job, he tore down the old structure within minutes, then set the new four main posts in concrete, which already made it different from the old one. He and his crew came back the next day, after the concrete had set, and finished the job within hours.

Just like that, we had a beautiful, brand-new pergola. (OK, OK. Turns out the terms arbor and pergola are pretty interchangeable. I think it might all depend on how upscaly you want to be). It's the perfect addition to our yard. I kind of wish we had done this a few years ago when our house was selected for the Master Gardeners garden tour.

Just for the record: By description, a pergola is "a garden or patio feature that creates shade and defines an outdoor space. It typically has vertical posts, horizontal beams and an open roof made of slats or of a louvered design."

By description, an arbor is "a vertical structure in a landscape or garden that consists of two or four posts with a simple slatted roof."

Nico settled the issue when he billed us for a pergola.

 

Finding our voice

More than 50 years ago, I stumbled into an antiwar protest on the campus of Kutztown State College, a small liberal arts school near Allentown, PA, where I was a student majoring in English.

This was probably sometime around 1970 or '71, and the war in Vietnam was in hyperdrive and dividing the nation. Protests were no guarantee of a safe space for free speech by that point: the shootings at Kent State where four young people were killed at the hands of the Ohio National Guard had occurred in 1970, and every gathering of demonstrators anywhere thereafter was fraught with danger and fear of the unknown. Uncertainty hovered over us like some dark, viral cloud.

The Wehrles and the Hoffmanns speak with one voice.

 The war was relentlessly chewing up American lives for a purpose we could not comprehend. More than once I wondered if I'd flee the country for Canada, even though my draft lottery number of 262 kept me safe. The highest number called in 1970 was 195.

Still, I came to the protest by accident. It wasn't a particularly large demonstration, but I was curious, so I wandered by to see. I carried no signs and I came without a true agenda. But the next thing you knew, I was raising my fist in defiance. Hell, no, we won't go.

And that was it. My days as a protester were over.

Until yesterday.

Less than three months into the second Trump administration, there's been nothing but chaos. An illegally created (and absurdly named) Department of Government Efficiency, headed by an unelected billionaire oligarch, somehow has been granted (or assumed) the power to cut one federal agency after another: slashed, possibly beyond repair, are critical agencies like USAID, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department  of the Interior (including the National Parks Service), the Department of Veterans Affairs, NASA, and NOAA, to name some.

The result of these cuts has – or will – stifle medical research into such fields as cancer research, Alzheimers, autism and Parkinson's. Cuts to the Department of Education will eliminate school lunch programs. student loans and civil rights protections. Even the arts have been hampered with cutbacks created by Trump's expanding net of autocratic power.

It's Project 2025 in full form.

All of which pisses me off. People are being hurt while Trump, a convicted felon who laughs at us daily from behind the Resolute Desk, gathers more and more power.

So Kim came to me the other day and said she wanted to go to the National Day of Action (Hands Off!) protest to be held on the steps of the Old Courthouse on the square on Saturday. Kim has been growing more and more frustrated by the cruelty and stupidity of this administration and wondered how we could respond.

So, Saturday afternoon, we joined the 55 or so people who collected on the square. I'd made each of us a cardboard sign – Kim's sign said, "Stealing women's rights is wrong," and mine said, "Hands off our Democracy."

As soon as we got there, we ran into Scott and Catherine Hoffmann, our former next door neighbors who are now living in Charlotte. Catherine said they had the option of protesting somewhere else yesterday, but she wanted to be in a place where she had lived for decades.

We stayed for a little more than an hour in the 80-plus degree weather. We were encouraged by the occasional car that honked its horn in support as it drove past the courthouse on Main Street. That was a positive sign to see in cherry red Davidson County. Another surprise was a pickup truck that pulled up in front of the courthouse from out of nowhere. Moments later, a young man was distributing bottles of water to the gathering.

Today is April 20. It's Easter. It's also 90 days past inauguration, the day when Trump issued an executive order to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 after falsely proclaiming a national emergency on the Mexican-U.S. border. The Insurrection Act could pave the way for Trump to institute martial law in this country, which could have implications for our First Amendment rights. Oh, and by the way, April 20 is also the anniversary birthday of Adolph Hitler. Just sayin'.

Will any of this matter? Is anybody listening?

I don't know, but the seeds of a grassroots movement (50501 decodes into 50 protests, 50 states, one movement) are often sown in the most unlikely places. The trick will be to grow and maintain momentum, especially as the crucial 2026 midterm elections grow closer.

In my hour of protest I felt something I hadn't felt in more than 50 years. It felt good. It felt like we had a voice. It felt important. 

It felt righteous.

 

 

 

 

The oligarchy

Oligarchy.  

Noun. 

A small group of people having control of a country, organization or institution.

I've been thinking about this a lot trying to figure out how our country has seen its democracy teeter on the precipice toward anarchy. Or worse. It might be above my pay grade.

I mean, how did we get to the point in our history to where we're scooping mostly brown-skinned people off the street, deporting them to a foreign prison, perhaps "disappearing" them forever, all without the fundamental right of due process? Due process. The original cornerstone of our form of government, based on the rule of law. Where is it? Has due process been disappeared as well?

Does this make you proud to be an American citizen?

I guess it's possible when your leader is lawless himself, a 34-time convicted criminal and adjudicated rapist who has been given the keys to your future, your fortunes, your very lives, because the cost of eggs was too high. 

So how does this happen?

The only thing that makes sense to me is the money.

Trump, the lawless leader, has stacked his cabinet with a coterie of maleficent billionaires intent on not serving we the people, but rather we the top one-tenth of one percent. It's why we've been inflicted with ridiculous and unnecessary tariffs that manipulate the stock market, and when played correctly, further enriches the wealthy. Has possible insider trading crossed your mind?

Money talks. It always has. Which makes Trump's power base all the more incongruous since his primary appeal seems to be with those who can never live the lifestyle. "He looks out for us," claims the working class, somehow never seeing the graft and corruption unfolding in front of their eyes.

So Trump surrounds himself with 13 billionaires in positions of control and whose combined personal wealth of more than $460 billion exceeds the GDP of 172 countries. Take a look:

• Elon Musk, department of government efficiency co-head: $439 billion. 

• Leandro Rizzuto Jr., ambassador to the Organization of American States, $3.5 billion.

• Warren Stephens, ambassador to the United Kingdom, $3.4 billion.

• Linda McMahon, education secretary, $3 billion.

• Howard Lutnick, commerce secretary, $2.2 billion.

• Charles Kushner, ambassador to France, $1.8 billion.

• Jared Isaacman, NASA administrator, $1.8 billion.

• Thomas Barrack Jr., ambassador to Turkey, $1 billion.

• Steven Witkoff, special envoy to the Middle East, $1 billion.

• Frank Bisiganano, Social Security Administration commissioner, $1 billion.

• Scott Bessent, Treasury secretary, reported billionaire.

• Vivek Ramaswamy, department of government efficiency co-head, $1 billion. 

• David Sacks, AI (not A1) and crypto czar, net worth unknown.

• Doug Burgum, interior secretary, $100 million.

• Mehmet Oz, administrator for the centers for Medicare and medicaid services, $100 million.

That's what an oligarchy looks like. I'm still trying to find where we the people are in here. 

What could possibly go wrong?

Sleep well.

 

 

 

The Covid couple

The one thing that Kim and I hoped to accomplish was to go through the rest of our lives without ever having contracted Covid-19. 

I mean, after all, we made it this far. We survived the deadly outbreak back in 2019 by doing everything we were told: we wore masks, we sanitized our hands, and, when it became available, we took every Covid vaccine the schedule offered us at exactly when the schedule offered it.

Well, so much for that.

Last week, around Monday, both of us started feeling a little punkish. I had a slight sore throat, a bit of a runny nose, aches in my joints. Kim was much the same way, but with a persistent cough to boot. She suggested we take a flu/Covid test, even though we've been vaccinated for both.

So on Wednesday evening we bought testing kits, swabbed our noses and immediately dropped our heads when the dreaded double lines showed up on our testing devices.

Covid! How the heck did we get Covid?

The first thing we did was try to contact as many people as we could after we attended a recent funeral over the weekend. Then we tried to figure out what to do next.

Apparently, there's not much more you can do. We called our doctor's office Thursday morning and told them our symptoms. By the afternoon, we had our prescriptions for Paxlovid, the treatment designed to mitigate the effects of severe Covid. It's not a cure.

Anyway, Kim's Rx was affordable, but mine was over $300. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What the heck? I wasn't feeling that bad.

"I'm not buying that," I told Kim. "Forget it."

That turned out to be a wise decision. When Kim opened her package, it came with a list of medications not to combine with Paxlovid. Lovastatin was on that list. I take Lovastatin. OMG. So I guess this is the one time the high cost of a medication saved me from further problems, if not something worse.

Kim, meanwhile, is taking her Paxlovid, complete with the side effect of altering her sense of taste. She said she feels like she's been licking aluminum cans.

So here we are, entering our fifth day of Covid. Neither of us can taste our food, and both of us feel more lethargic than people our age should probably feel. I do have more of my appetite back than I did a few days ago, but what's the point of eating if I can't taste anything? So now I'm on the Covid-19 diet plan. Yes, I've lost a few pounds. Yay.

Truth be told, I'm not feeling that bad. We did some light yard work yesterday because I hate to waste a beautiful day. Then we napped and afterwards watched a lot of television.

And we continue to test, impatiently waiting for the double lines to finally disappear.