It is all closing in. He is the only species that
acts in one’s self-interest but only because
that species doesn’t have any alternatives or

choices. This example of a species has had
alternatives and choices but he doesn’t see it,
thus making him the equivalent of a pure species

without knowing he has alternatives or choices.
He is a pure animal, one who acts totally in his
self-interest as with all other pure animals be-

cause he doesn’t have choices about any of that
except that all those animal species know enough
to stop when enough is enough and then they will

stop fighting and killing and will go away except
the rats and this guy who would go on killing and
killing and killing in his own interest if he per-

ceived that that was the only alternative which
for him would be no alternative at all except to
do it.

Are the Kurds the Lord’s new covenant people —
Searching for a home, being persecuted everywhere,
Reviled by surrounding nations and now betrayed
By the great distant nation under the leadership of a
Crazed wannabe dictator, a man without a conscience
And concerned only about his hotel business and
Pleasing a once-great nation but now a third world
Country with a small economy but a lot of nuclear
Bombs, another crazed true dictator and a liberal
Policy of loans to the real estate developer disguised
As the president of the United States? The Lord calls
What is despised by the world but precious in God’s
Sight to find safety in the arms of unconditional love
And to reveal the bankruptcy of those who whore
After mammon, illusory political power and con-
Sequent nation-numbing violence through war after
War. Kurds have suffered from horror upon horror
But the Lord does not abandon the chosen and we,
Chosen to identify with the wretched of the earth but
The beloved of the Lord, must not abandon them either
For they are our brothers and sisters who through their
Unjust suffering for simply being human beings and
Pawns among the nations are helping us to see the
Universal covenant we have with all peoples of the
Earth.

The Republicans on the House
Intelligence Committee, obviously,
never had a basic philosophy nor
basic debate class in college be-

cause they don’t seem to know
the difference between Socrates
and sophistry/Sophocles and
sophistry. Socrates was a great

philosopher chronicled by Plato
as being victimized by lies and
false testimonies and finally killed
by the power politicians’ sophistry.

Sophocles was a great tragedian
recounting the tragedy of sophistry
because the Greeks were living the
tragedy of sophism. And Republicans

repeat the tragedy by telling the lies of
sophism in defending the Occupant
who is the Great Pretender, the
dispenser and defender of sophistry,

which he doesn’t even know but thinks
he, the self-proclaimed stable genius,
practices a philosophy as great as
Socrates and writings better than those

of Sophocles even though he doesn’t read
and only tweets. And the lies are dis-
pensed and defended by the Intelligence
Committee, sycophants of the Occupant’s

sophism, the Know Nothing’s of true
philosophy and the honorable practice
of debate with integrity without even
knowing they don’t know it just like

the Occupant.

I thought I had been fighting for the
environmental health of the world but
I had no idea how insidious the des-
truction of the planet was by simple
chemicals that are destroying us every
day in every way of every month of
every year of our life — chemicals which
now are in our DNA and we are concerned
about external things like hybrids vs. hy-
brid plugins vs. electric vehicles, which,
still are good things to be concerned
about when each and every day I see SUV
after SUV after SUV traveling fast up
and down the highway. We want to have
it our way as we move every which way
but loose because we aren’t loose of the
global warming noose hanging us up
every which way but loose.

She doesn’t claim to know everything
contained in the US Constitution

even though she has read it several
times and, probably, should read it

again soon given the political events
of the day, but she believes she still

knows more about it than the Temp-
orary Occupant of the White House

who, undoubtedly, hasn’t read it at all
as evidenced each day by his tweets

which are more in line with the thinking
and actions of King George III, Putin,

Kim Jong Un, Erdogan, the Crown Prince
of Saudi Arabia, Heckle and Jeckle,

Darth Vader and Ming the Merciless. She
wonders to herself, Where is Flash

Gordon when you need him most?

On the seventy-fifth anniversary of his birth
he had a medical procedure, passed the test
with flying colors and, because of his age,
won’t ever have to have that procedure

again. The physician said he graduated from
Colonoscopy U. In an unrelated health issue,
he’s been moaning and groaning about failing
eyesight in one eye. He has experienced some

tragedies over the years, but he has survived,
in fact, thrived and is still trail jogging, albeit
more slowly and with the assistance of his
beloved hiking sticks. He has a theory that

if time in the womb and the first five years go
really well with lots of love and hugs, a kid
can endure just about anything life throws at
him or her. On the same day, a kid celebrates

his sixteenth birthday by going to school and
shooting five fellow students and himself. The
senior citizen wonders how the kid’s first five
years went. Then he gives thanks for all those

hugs and all those kisses and all those sincere
declarations of love he experienced. He hasn’t
done any research on his early-childhood theory
and it might not hold water any better than a

rusty, old bucket, but he figures it can’t hurt and
he gives thanks for all the hugs, kisses and sincere
declarations of love his own kids got. They have
gone through some tough stuff, but they, too, have

survived and thrived and, as for the grandkids?
Ditto. Knock on wood, he thinks. He says a prayer
of gratitude on the anniversary of his birth and then
he prays for all those kids at that high school and

then he prays for sensible gun regulation and that
legislators will wake up, hear the screams and smell
the gun powder.

He’s afraid he has missed out on a lot of life
and love offered right before his eyes but to
which he was blind because he was staring
at a past that was gone and only lived in his
dreams and in the sentimentality of times
during the day and in the evening when his
mind would wander away to that which was
but no longer is here to stay. He thinks he
wasn’t present in that day and now he isn’t
present today. He wonders where he is as
it all starts to slip away.

He checked the list of authors
of the journal in which he had
published three or four articles
over the years and he, as the
years pass by more quickly
than ever, wished to see his
name again in black and white
listed among those distinguish-
ed authors. What he hadn’t
counted on was a change in
name for the journal. Oops.
Names in the journal by the
former name have been re-
legated to anonymity, utter
obscurity with seemingly
no way to prove one’s place
in literary history except the
weather-worn copies with
his byline mildewing in his
basement. And then he re-
called that four other journ-
als in which he had articles
published had gone the way
of all flesh, also. Then he asked
himself, “Where the heck are
those copies?”

He received a photo from a
scholarship luncheon via e-

mail of him, his wife and the
recipient of a college scholar-

ship in his late wife’s name.
He sent a note back to the

sender of the photo, some-
one he knew. He asked if

the photo could be photo-
shopped to give him hair,

eliminate the bags under
his eyes and remove the

turkey neck. He added a
smiley emoji. It has been

said that in the resurrect-
ion, everyone comes back

as beautiful thirty-five-year-
olds. See, he thought to

himself, hope springs eternal.
Then in a moment of further

rumination, he wondered if
there wasn’t a stage in later

life called “This Guy Is Totally
Delusional.”

In two hours Daylight Savings time
it will be 11:00 a.m., on the 11th hour
of the 11th day of the 11th month of
the year one hundred and one years
ago that the armistice was signed
ending what up until then had been
the bloodiest war in history and coined
the “war to end all wars,” and how did
that resolution go?