More Fantastic [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

I dreamed that there were grizzly bears swimming in my pool. I don’t have a pool. In the dream, the bears were friendly. I enjoyed their antics. They were showing off because they knew I was watching.

On our walk, the maples in the park are beginning to turn. I look forward to this time of year when the color of the leaves knocks my socks off. Isn’t that a funny image? My socks flying off my feet from the sheer force of color. It’s a dream image. Metaphors are like that.

They are pulling the boats out of the harbor. We watched as the rolling crane lifted an enormous yacht from the water – as if it was a toy – and then slowly rolled it into the boatyard for cleaning, shrink wrap and storage. A surreal experience.

These days I go outside with Dogga to keep an eye on him. He wakes us before dawn. I have been enjoying watching the moon wane. This morning it was a sliver. Orion was high in the sky. The only sound was a distant train engine idling. Dogga was suddenly at my feet. We sat on the cool stone of the patio and had a sweet pet.

Everything seems dreamlike to me in this era of mass disorientation. I don’t know about you but I’m having a much easier time believing that grizzly bears are swimming in my pool than I am that anyone still supports this pedophile president and his feckless republican party. Unlike the bears, he is not friendly and his followers are not a joy to behold.

Like me, do you dream of a time when truth is once again valued and integrity restored, when dreams are more fantastic than the daily tsunami of outrage and lies?

read Kerri’s blog about THE MAPLES

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Think About The Words [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

“O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain…”

~ Katharine Lee Bates, America The Beautiful (1893)

Have you read the poem or thought about the words in America The Beautiful? We learned them in school. We sing them or hear them sung in moments of national pride. Consider this stanza:

America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

They liberty in law. It is not a random phrase meant to fit a rhyming scheme. It is a celebration of our difference, the foundational guarantee that separated us from kings and opened the path to equality for all people, regardless of race or religion or gender or sexual orientation. Our liberty is a function of the law applied equally to all.

Think about what it meant when John Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, elevated the president above the law. It is not a mistake that we are now struggling to maintain our grip on our liberty. It is not an accident that our right to vote or the freedom of the press is under attack.

Liberty means “the quality or state of being free, including the freedom to live, act, and express oneself without unnecessary or oppressive control by an authority.” ~ Merriam Webster Dictionary

America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

This not a lyric celebrating mass deportation or the ruin of our alliances. It is not a rousing cry of division. It is the opposite. It is a prayer for innate good that inspires brotherhood – friendship, loyalty, support – as a defining characteristic of the diverse people and leaders of the land.

Think about the ugly divisive rhetoric pouring out of the White House and amplified by the fox. Then consider these famous words:

“A house divided against itself cannot stand” ~ Abraham Lincoln

We watched the maga dairy farmer weep. She is in danger of losing her farm. Her work crew has been deported or gone into hiding. She has no help and can’t afford to pay potential employees a living wage. I indulged in a predictable rant and Kerri was generous enough to listen throughout. Here’s the nutshell: She voted for it. She cheered and waved a sign that read “Mass Deportation”. Why is she surprised?

I’ll never understand why working people EVER vote for a republican. For the majority of my lifetime, the Grand Ole Party has exploited working people, demonized immigrants and the poor using vile stereotypes. It is a strategy meant to divide people in order to move the nation’s wealth to the upper 1%. It is not a mystery that the majority of Americans can no longer afford to live. Leo Tolstoy‘s words perfectly capture my belief about republicans:

“I sit on a man’s back choking him and making him carry me, and yet
assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his
load by all means possible… except by getting off his back.”

America The Beautiful. It is penned with words – and beliefs – like Grace and Freedom and Nobleness and Brotherhood and Mercy, inspired from the moment a poet – a woman – stood atop Pikes Peak and glimpsed our nation’s potential. An aspirational poem for a diverse nation, written by a social reformer, and made into a song for all people – all people – to sing.

Think about the words – really think about the message carried by those words – and carry those words with you when you step into the voting booth next month.

(the largest voting block in the USA are people who do not vote. Please help people find their way to the polls. Help them to protect their rights, to ensure their liberty through law)

Earth Interrupted 1, 48″x53″, mixed media on canvas

read Kerri’s blogpost about GLOWING PLUMES

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And We All Know It [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” ~ Mark Twain

The boats are slowly returning to the marina. The beach at Eichelman Park has been combed. Signs of summer’s onset. The Saturday Farmer’s Market moved from its winter quarters and has returned to the mall in front of the museums, running all the way to the Tap House. Signs of normalcy. The people are leaving their houses to purchase flowers and vegetables and mingle in the public square.

Yet, amidst the signs of normalcy, everything is different.

There is so much that the republicans claim to know for sure that just ain’t so. Despite what they espouse, despite what they “know for sure,” the 2020 election was not stolen. Our elections to this point in time are not and never have been rigged or corrupt. The January 6th insurrectionists are not innocent and they are not victims of the justice department. The president is not of sound mind. He is not innocent of his enumerable crimes. His cabinet is not competent.

They want us to believe what they know for sure, that this is normal – but it just ain’t so.

And now they wonder why they are in trouble. They’ve ridden a herd of lies for a decade. They ask us to not believe what we see. And now their only route to holding power is to gerrymander. While currently holding all the cards-of-power they claim to be the victims in this hot mess that they’ve enabled. Midwives to autocracy.

It’s their insistence upon the lie, even though stripped bare-to-the-bone and completely exposed, that is the most troubling. For years we’ve asked what might be a bridge too far for these lemmings in cowboy clothes, these guys and gals that swear they are cleaning the swamp and representing the common folk, all the while engorging their morbid wealth by sucking the lifeblood from the people they pretend to defend. Vampires all.

It’s what we know for sure. It is so. We can see it. And no amount of gaslight can obscure what we see. Afraid of their constituents, they cancel their town halls, they flee the capitol rather than vote to intervene in the criminal-in-chief’s latest war-of-choice.

The boats slowly return to the marina. The beach at Eichelman has been combed. Signs of normalcy in a time when nothing is really normal. This would-be-despot and his party-of-pretenders are naked and corrupt – and falling apart. And we all know it.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE BEACH

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Certain Distinctions [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

There are certain distinctions that, although simple, reveal all you need to know. For instance, we sprinkle birdseed on the top of Barney-the-piano because we enjoy watching the birds. On the other hand, my maga-neighbor maintains a bird bath near a feeder, positioned low to the ground, to lure birds as bait for his cat. I am disgusted by his cruelty. He is disgusted by my empathy.

This is an irreconcilable difference. It is also a good shorthand metaphor for the contrast between maga and woke.

I visit this contrast every day as I try to understand the news-of-the-day. There can be no other explanation for the horrors of ICE, for the protection of the Epstein Class, for the bombing of fishing boats, for the dismantling of USAID, the incessant lies, the tax breaks for billionaires at the expense of Medicaid, SNAP and affordable healthcare…than this: cruelty is the republican drug. Like my neighbor who snickers every time his cat kills a bird, this confederacy of dunces gets a high with every atrocity.

And, to be clear, they are disgusted by democratic-woke-empathy just as we are disgusted by their maga-cruelty.

Here’s the problem: democracies are by their nature and definition empathetic. A government of, by and for the people is predicated upon the care and concern of elected leaders for their constituents. Service to the betterment of others. A capitalist republic such as ours cannot last when cruelty is in the driver’s seat. It collapses when elected leaders prioritize personal gain above the needs of the people they were elected to serve.

Autocracies, by definition, thrive upon the exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few. No brutality is too malicious. They applaud the “double-tap,” they cheer their leader’s swagger-brag that”A whole civilization will die tonight.” They protect the pedophiles and turn their backs on the victims.

It’s an irreconcilable difference. If you remain confused about what you believe. all you need do is ask yourself, “What is my reason for feeding the birds?” And then vote for what you believe.

read Kerri’s blogpost about BIRDS

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Blue Blue Blue [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

“The GOP is no longer made up of conservatives. It’s now wholly made up of (white) nationalists.” ~ Adam Kinzinger

“A one party system is authoritarianism.” ~ Heather Cox Richardson

If you are like me you spend a good part of the day looking to the sky for an explanation or some sense to be made of the madness plaguing our country. And, if you are like me, there is none to be found. Take this for example: the House Speaker in Alabama just called for a repeal of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Apparently equal protection under the law for all citizens is anathema to the Alabama GOP. They would rather go back in time and deprive “certain citizens” of life, liberty, property and due process. Those “certain citizens” are of course, black.

What is the matter with these people? Look to the sky for answers! Nowhere on earth is there sense to be found for the Alabama GOP’s desire to return to life before the Civil War (read: a return to slavery and a world in which only white male landowners have the right to vote).

Here’s another example of the priorities of the modern GOP: “As of March 2026, the Ohio House passed House Bill 249, the “Indecent Exposure Modernization Act,” which aims to restrict “adult cabaret performances” in public spaces, defined in part by clothing choices.” It essentially polices what people wear. If it passes the state senate, a woman could be arrested for wearing a sports bra or going braless. Kerri could be arrested for wearing her flannel shirt because it might be deemed too masculine for a woman.

I’m not kidding. Their national priorities include a ballroom, mass deportation of any person of color, and an assault on voting rights. The end of women’s rights. And a tax cut for billionaires. And the elimination of healthcare and the social safety net. And the protection of wealthy pedophiles from prosecution.

The sky is not big enough to explain such malfeasance.

Perhaps it is way past time to look to the sky for answers and we need to begin looking at each other. This modern GOP is less interested in protecting our rights than they are in stripping rights from us. They want to control the news, academia (what we learn or do not learn), what we wear, who can and cannot vote, who has rights under the law and who does not. They want politicians to choose their voters because they fear what will happen if, as is meant to happen in a democracy, voters choose their politicians.

Our choice in November now has little to do with democrats or republicans. It is not about policy choices. It is whether or not we will return to life in a democracy, if we will have representatives – that is, people elected to government that serve the will of the people rather than being exploited by the whims of a dictator and his enablers. The past year and a half has given us a glimpse into life in an authoritarian state.

There is no help or advice coming from the blue blue sky. We are our last, best chance. The only path forward, the only escape from authoritarian red, no matter where you live or how gerrymandered your district, is to vote blue blue blue.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE SKY

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What The Hell Are We Doing? [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Sometimes it pays to look up. Cutting the tall grasses, cleaning and preparing the flower beds, I was hyper-focused on the task at hand. A distant rumble caught my attention so I looked up from what I was doing. Dark dragons were flying around in the sky. They breathed lightning, a flash followed by thunder. I dropped the metal clippers and headed inside. I thought it best to finish my task another day.

Once seen, the dragons in the sky were obvious. The lightning they breathed was unmistakable and dangerous. The action I took – dropping the lightning rod clippers and exiting the scene – seemed prudent. Easy and clear choices.

This morning I heard a distant rumble and I peeked at the news. The danger to our nation is obvious. A single delusional man, a retribution dragon encased in sycophants. A convicted felon, found civilly liable for rape. Does anyone really believe that he does not figure prominently in the Epstein Files? The Supremes granted him absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for all official acts and one wonders why grift falls under the umbrella of official acts. Is insurrection an official act? Is obstruction of justice an official act? Is threatening an entire civilization with annihilation an official act? Is falling asleep on the job or slurring speech or incoherence covered under the umbrella? They’re not crimes but would certainly be grounds for removal from any other job.

One wonders when the republicans will stop pretending that the sky is blue when they can see – as we do – that it is filled with a dangerous swirling delusional dragon? Will they drop their clippers in time or will they continue to hold tight to their metal rod and wave it at the lightning-filled-sky? You’d think they’d have the good sense to head for the door. You’d think that they might consider that the lightning they tease could be – will be – the death of us all. One wonders what must be lost, what lightning must strike, what line must be crossed, before they ask themselves, “What the hell are we doing?”

read Kerri’s blogpost about STORM CLOUDS

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Jiggle The Eyes [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

I inverted the canvas. Turning a canvas upside down jiggles the eyes and loosens the grip of a mind that is fixed on seeing what it wants to see. It helps to pop the assumptions and see what is there and not what I think is there.

If the United States was a canvas it is a fair assertion to make that we’ve been inverted. Our eyes are jiggled. Our assumptions are popped. We can clearly see what has been here all along and it’s not what we thought. Power protects the pedophiles and threatens the lives of those abused. The Justice Department refuses to seek justice and, instead, covers-up the crime. Thugs in masks brutalize citizens, invade homes and kidnap people from the streets, all the while claiming that they are making our cities safer.

We are upside-down so we can see it.

We clearly see the lies of those who insist that all is as it should be. They stand and applaud the liar. They attach themselves to the lie and so create a very low bar to jump, wrecking democracy and giving rise to authoritarianism. The enthusiastic embrace of an obvious lie. Huzzah! The felon convicted of over thirty counts of fraud concocts a “war on fraud” to distract from his ongoing titanic swindle. His party pumped their fists and cheered. And then he started an actual war, Operation Epstein File Diversion.

Have you ever for a moment mistaken the sun for the moon? The disorientation is temporary but inspires an immediate question: What time of day is it? Later it might seem a silly question but it is, in the moment, necessary for reorienting in space and time.

As a nation we are upside-down. We were momentarily disoriented. Now, it’s only a matter of time before go to the polls and remind the liar and his sycophantic tribe that we see what is there, that we reorient to the Constitution, the rule of law, and give boot to the clown-car-cult of the would-be king.

read Kerri’s blogpost about SUN/MOON

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Join The Work [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

We’ve had more snow in the past two months than in the past three years. I am getting reacquainted with my snow shovel who, I imagine, is delighted to finally have some actual purpose in life. My shovel is not old enough for retirement and would rather work than play golf.

I just personified my snow shovel.

I also just betrayed a bit of insight into myself. I would rather work than retire so I’ve projected that onto my shovel. That is how projection works.

It’s an easy leap for my brain to make and I know the same is true for all of you out there. Personifying a snow shovel is only slightly different than investing in a conspiracy theory or embracing a big lie despite an overabundance of facts. Personifying my snow shovel is less destructive than storming the Capitol.

Personifying my snow shovel is all for fun and is far less ruinous than gulping an obvious misdirection narrative that claims poor-Black-women-are-taking-your-tax-dollars, all the while the wealth of the nation is actually, factually, picked out of the pockets of the middle and lower classes and stuffed into fewer and fewer morbidly wealthy pockets. Robbing Medicaid to fund a massive tax break for the already-wealthy is how an oligarchy is created.

I know I am personifying my snow shovel, I know I am projecting and playing make-believe. Can the same be said for maga-nation or all the AWOL republicans out there? And, of course, their projection onto we-the-woke is that we are trying to destroy democracy. They betray a bit of themselves. That’s the way projection works.

It’s also worth noting that my newly personified snow shovel is equally adept at clearing paths through heaps of bullsh*t as it is mounds of snow. I know the same is true for most of you out there. Every time you clear a path through the lies or shovel out the inanity, you give me hope. It’s how a democracy is restored. You inspire me to grab my shovel and join the work.

read Kerri’s blogpost about SNOW

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Together We Chase [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

“Freedom is not just an absence of evil but a presence of good.” ~ Timothy Snyder, On Freedom

There is a game I play with Dogga that I absolutely adore. When he wants to go out he stares at me. I stare back at him. His stare intensifies and I intensify my stare to match. Our faces move closer together. When the intensity of the stare is like a bowstring pulled to the breaking point, I say, ‘Okay!” and like an arrow released he flies toward the back door. I let him out in a festival of enthusiasm. I could play this game all day. It is bliss.

“We chose freedom when we did not run.” ~ Timothy Snyder, On Freedom

My first thought when choosing this bliss-prompt was, “Chasing bliss is a sign of privilege.” That would have been my lofty theme but then I felt Dogga’s stare. I set the computer aside and met his stare. The game was afoot!

“In dehumanizing others, we make ourselves unfree.” ~ Timothy Snyder, On Freedom

Opening the back door and watching my joy-dog launch from the deck, fully invested in his Rin-Tin-Tin persona, I recognized the superficiality of my original thought on bliss, my snotty lofty theme. Bliss has nothing to do with access or possession or any soaring ambition. It is something we create with others.

“We enable freedom not by rejecting government, but by affirming freedom as the guide to good government.” ~ Timothy Snyder, On Freedom

My Dogga is free, not because I open the door and remove a barrier, but because he knows he is loved, he knows I am good for a round of the game. Going in and out could be a chore, something mundane, but together we’ve evolved a game of bliss, an affirmation of freedom evoked within each other. We’ve created it and each day continue to create it.

To chase bliss is to offer bliss, to open and be opened. I literally open the door and Dogga quite literally opens my heart-door.

“In a world of relativism and cowardice, freedom is the absolute among absolutes, the value of values.”~ Timothy Snyder, On Freedom

Painting is a bliss I chase, not because of the act of smearing paint but because it opens me to something much bigger than myself. Bliss happens when I get out of the way, get present, and revel in the dance. It liberates me because I engage, I step toward it. I never take it for granted or delude myself into thinking I can control it. In fact, trying to control it is a guarantee that it will dissipate.

“The absence of freedom threatens life, just as threats to life undermine freedom.”~ Timothy Snyder, On Freedom

It is a relationship with life, meeting the intensity of a stare, together peeking through the blinds to marvel at the full moon, placing an extra quilt on the bed on a frigid night is to chase bliss.

Delivering groceries to neighbors afraid to leave their homes, blowing a whistle to alert the community of masked invaders, gathering at the memorial of someone executed by a rogue state, singing songs of freedom together to remind the rogue state that freedom is not something they can take away, that we will meet their stare with an intensity that says, “Game on,” and remind them that, in our votes, in our pursuit of freedom-for-all, we hold the power to open or close the door. They do not. This, too, is to chase bliss. It opens us to something bigger.

Together we chase our bliss because we reject the wretched monster the republicans are pursuing.

read Kerri’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday

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It Is The Time [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Yesterday I painted the rail on the front porch. I sanded the small windows upstairs; they need repainting. One of the window sills in our bedroom has water damage. It is next on my list to fix before the snow returns.

I realized what I was doing; what we are doing. Since we cannot control or impact in any way the rapid destruction of our democracy – at the hands of those sworn to preserve it, no less – then I will do my best to attend to what I can control. I will be a good steward of our home. I will fix what I can.

She said, “We have to do something to pull our heads out of this madness. At least for a little while.” Yes. We bumped into them on our walk around the neighborhood, a couple who we admire. We shared our concerns and dismay. We have to do something to remind us of goodness, that people of good intention are all around, even when it feels hopeless. Our brief sidewalk chat gave us hope. We are not alone in our worry. We are not alone in our belief in goodness.

We harvested the last of the peppers. This summer our garden was prolific. The basil exploded. The tomato plant is still producing. The garden, the yard, the pond, the appearance of the frog…the exercise of intentionally coming into the moment, the place were common sense can be found when it is otherwise absent.

I had a revelation, the release of a judgment. David Neiwert told a story of the German people, living in villages just outside of the concentration camps, each morning sweeping the ash from their sidewalks and window sills. After the liberation the villagers claimed that they had no idea what was happening in the camps. How could they not know? Sweeping their steps, picking their peppers, painting the rail on their front porch…doing anything possible to pull their heads out of the madness.

This is not the time to look the other way. This is not the time to normalize the obscenity that is erasing our nation. People are already disappearing into camps. Due process and habeas corpus are gone. The Supremes ruled that racial profiling is lawful: it’s no different than sewing yellow stars on clothes. Now, we hear from the dictator wannabe that “the enemy is within”: the enemy is anyone who disagrees with the fascist fire raging across the nation. Anyone who protests or questions. My revelation? I do not want to someday sweep ash from my walk while telling myself that I have no idea what’s happening.

We know. So do the republicans.

This is not the time to normalize the obscenity. This is not the time to look the other way. It is the time for all people of goodness to join hands in the commons, to stand together, to call out the lies, to push our elected leaders to push back against this corruption, this out-of-control authoritarian regime.

It is the time, our time, to be good stewards of our nation-home.

BRIDGE on the album AS IT IS © 2004 Kerri Sherwood

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE LAST PEPPERS

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