I dreamed again that I was in my home office but my home and yard had been lifted intact to travel through space. I dreamed that, as I had done in real life, I awoke and looked at my open windows. For a moment, in the dream, I worried that my windows were open to the vacuum of space and that all would be sucked out and destroyed. Then I knew, no, a bubble around the house enclosed and protected me. It provided me air and kept me and my household and its members safe even as we flew through space. Stepping to the window, I raised lowered my blinds and gazed out as the house rushed through black space, destination unknown.
Parroof(floofinition) – ‘Parrot Floof’: an animal or bird which enjoys resting on people’s shoulders.
In use: “Barry became known as Parrot, because the parroof was always seeking to rest himself on Klein’s shoulder, which wasn’t bad when Barry was a puppy barely larger than Klein’s hand, but more daunting when the Tibetan Mastiff achieved his full growth.”
He pulled his car up to the stop sign and stopped. No cars were visible on the mile long slope in either direction. He pulled out, going left, heading toward town. A car pulled up on each road that he came up on, left and right side, and pulled in behind him after he passed. It was almost like they were waiting for him.
I’m sitting at my desk at home, sipping hot black coffee. A cool breeze washing over my back through the window. Machine noises are carried in. Sounds like excavating equipment is hard at it in Ashlandia, where wine is made on one side of the valley, and beer is brewed on the other.
It’s a summer morning, Friday, July 7, 2023.
A weary state of mind has overtaken me. Just read about dark waters and the pollution causing cancer to humans and animals. Companies like DuPont do this to communities and fight against taking responsibility, while manipulating laws and lawmakers to make more money, more profits. They epitomize the worse of corporate greed. Unfortunately, they’re one of many. And our hugely right wing Supreme Court goes and guts laws to protect water and people and animals, and the right wing shouts, “Hurray. Freedom.”
That article was atop reading about the proliferation of shootings across the nation on this holiday week. How these murders are enabled by the NRA, with right-wingers heartily going along with it, shouting, “Hurray. Freedom.” Death doesn’t mean much to the pretend ‘pro-life’ party called the GOP.
The GOP party has become the party of minority rule — meaning a rule of one. One person in many GOP led states can complain about a book and have it taken off shelves. One person can take up an automatic weapon and go shoot up a school, a synagogue, church, workplace, neighborhood, resulting in deaths and the ruination of many lives and that party will continue to shout, “Freedom.” They write into laws against others, and shout, “Freedom.”
Naturally, thinking of all of this, my neurons sink back to Janis Joplin’s magnificent cover of the Kris Kristofferson song, “Me & Bobby McKee” from 1970. The lines so many of us remember from the song, the one I was reminded of as we celebrated a nation’s beginning that is supposed to be founded on principles of freedom, democracy, and equality, are, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose. Nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free.”
Stay as positive as you can as we endure this era. Try to look forward to what we can build, and don’t be dissuaded or disheartened by those trying to create something other than a land of freedom and equality for all. Or as it’s written in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The coffee is half gone. The breeze is fading and the heat is rising. 71 F now, it’ll be in the low 90s before the sun slips out of view. Time to take this show on the road. Here’s the music. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 