By Bob Gaydos

The defiling of The Kennedy Center.

    He slapped his stupid name on The Kennedy Center. The *@*%+#*ing Kennedy Center! Are you kidding me? The master of sloth, pride and lust had to remind us of his penchant for envy?

    Of course it’s illegal, but honestly, it’s obscene. The John F. Kennedy Center is not only a cultural landmark in Washington, D.C., it is a memorial to a slain president. Yet Trump slapped his name above Kennedy’s on the memorial to Kennedy, a president loved, admired and respected by millions of Americans, a true patron of the arts. And a war hero to boot.

   The new, handpicked-by-Trump board of directors supposedly voted unanimously to change the name of the center, apparently to reflect the tackiness and total lack of class he has brought to the institution. Having also named himself chairman of the board, he has transformed it from first-class to no class with the ease and skill of a onetime reality TV show host. 

    No, he’s no Jack Kennedy. Mr. Bone Spurs undoubtedly never saw the movie or read “PT 109,” a book about Kennedy’s military service in World War II. In fact, a lot of Americans today probably aren’t familiar with the story, so here’s Google AI’s summary:

    “PT-109 was an 80-foot Elco motor patrol torpedo boat famously commanded by Lieutenant John F. Kennedy (the future 35th U.S. President) during World War II. The vessel is best known for its sinking in the Solomon Islands on August 2, 1943, after being rammed by a Japanese destroyer.

• The Collision: While patrolling Blackett Strait at night, the radar-less PT-109 was struck and sliced in half by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri, which was traveling at high speed.
• Initial Loss: Two crewmen, Harold Marney and Andrew Jackson Kirksey, were killed instantly in the collision and explosion.
• Heroic Swim: Kennedy and the 10 remaining survivors clung to the floating bow for hours before swimming 3.5 miles to a small, uninhabited island (Plum Pudding Island). Kennedy famously towed a badly burned crewman, Patrick McMahon, by a life jacket strap clenched in his teeth.
• The Rescue: The crew survived for several days on various islets by eating coconuts. They were eventually discovered by two Solomon Islander scouts, Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana, who were working with an Australian coastwatcher.
• The Coconut Message: Kennedy carved a distress message into a coconut shell, which the scouts delivered to the coastwatcher, leading to the crew’s rescue by other PT boats on August 8, 1943.”

— A life jacket strap clenched in his teeth.

— Navy and Marine Corps Medal.

— Purple Heart

— Pulitzer Prize for book, “Profiles in Courage”

— Youngest person elected president, at 43

As president:

— The goal of putting a man on the moon and returning him.

— The Peace Corps

— The Cuban Missile Crisis

— “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

   In his 1961 inaugural address, Kennedy, a cum laude graduate of Harvard University, famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” 

The law creating the memorial, signed by Lyndon Johnson.

   Trump, whose words mostly serve as fodder for comedians, has been bleeding this country for every dollar he can get ever since he set foot in the Oval Office, both times. Putting his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is not only obscene and illegal, it is an affront to the office of president, an insult to Kennedy and his family and a sorrowful reminder to Americans (like me), who lived through the Kennedy years and in 1963 mourned his assassination, of the pitiful depths to which Trump has dragged this nation.

     When this chapter in our history is done (the sooner the better), Trump’s name must be ripped off the facade of the defiled memorial/culture center and that garish, golden ballroom, if it ever gets built, torn down. Day One.

     If you’re around, that’s what you can do for your country. 

National Guard troops picking up trash in Washington, D.C.

By Bob Gaydos

The National Guard is picking up trash in Washington, D.C.  This, my fellow Americans, is apparently the crisis Donald Trump felt could not be handled by regular employees of the nation’s capital. It is also an insult to every member of the National Guard units on duty in Washington and, indeed, to anyone who now serves or ever served in a National Guard unit anywhere in the country.

These are private citizens with jobs and families and responsibilities and lives to lead who signed up to help their communities, their nation if need be, in times of crisis. Like, maybe, an angry mob assaulting the Capitol, assaulting police officers, running wild through the seat of the nation’s government, threatening the Vice President, trying to undo an election. A time to be of service.

Instead. Picking up the trash. At a million dollars a day, no less. Simply because someone in the White House apparently got tired of all the criticism levied at the absurd reason given for the callup in the first place. Crime is running rampant in D.C., Trump claimed. A lie. The crime rate is down.

Beyond that, the National Guard is not a police force. It is not trained or even authorized to make arrests. It does not do riot control. It is not authorized to fire on its fellow citizens and, in fact, it showed up for duty in D.C. without carrying weapons.

And it stood around for days in uniform, looking like a bewildered occupying army, occasionally walking through streets or standing in front of buildings. So Trump could look tough. The man who could have called up the Guard to stop the January 6 assault on the Capitol but chose to watch it unfold on TV for three hours without doing anything, now has his little private army surrounding him and standing around doing nothing, away from their families and jobs and meaningful activities

Someone in the White House eventually had the idea to allow them to carry weapons. Apparently Kent State was written out of U.S. history. Then some genius apparently said have them pick up the trash. Clean up some graffiti. At least they’d be doing something.

Insulting. Embarrassing. Infuriating. Ignorant and arrogant. Everything Trump and his toadies are. Millions of Americans have served or are serving in National Guard units in every state as well as D.C. They signed up for a variety of reasons, going through regular training as citizen soldiers knowing that there was always the possibility they would be called up to help in some legitimate local state crisis and possibly even to serve on active duty with the regular military.

Not to pick up the trash because at least it looks like they’re not just standing around wasting taxpayers’ money.

Trump says he’s going to do the same thing in other Democrat-governed cities because, well, just because he wants to try to scare people by sending in an armed force even though there is no justification for it. The man who has called people who serve in the military “suckers“ or “losers,“ likes to play commander-in-chief but doesn’t know anything but fear, threats and retribution. Hollow, shallow and, more and more, alone in his own mind. It’s beyond troubling.

Fortunately, some governors and mayors are telling him to pound salt. We don’t have a crisis and don’t need you to create one to feed your ego and your fellow racists.

Maybe some military folk should speak up, too. And some Republican elected officials, especially those who have served and may still serve in some Guard unit. The lies and insults and abuse of power can become routine when they are a daily occurrence. Even without a legitimate mission, an occupying army is still an occupying army.

If the Guard is going to take out the trash in Washington, D.C., it should start with the Oval Office. That would be responding to a legitimate crisis.

By Bob Gaydos

People viewing — and smelling — the corpse flower (titan arum) in Washington, D.C.

There was a distinct stench of decay in the nation’s capital last week and thousands of visitors showed up to get a whiff — heck, a full, deep inhalation — of it. What’s that? No, no, this had nothing to do with the White House or Congress … stick with me. The odor emanated from, of all things, a flower.

The corpse flower. These large malodorous plants are not for sale at your local garden store. For one thing, they’re huge — this one is 8 feet tall — and bloom rarely. Unpredictably, really. And then for only two days at most. This makes such occasions an excuse for people to line up around the block, as they did at the U.S. Botanic Garden Conservatory, to look and smell.

A plant scientist who is public programs manager at the U.S. Botanic Garden, told the website LiveScience “… once you get into that room, it really hits you pretty hard. It reminded me of a dead deer on the side of the road in the Florida Everglades with a big pile of really soggy, moldy laundry next to it. It was really, really unpleasant.”

I think I know what the man is talking about. In my neck of the woods in upstate New York, about 75 miles from New York City, some farmers have taken to spreading what they say is fertilizer on their land, but which, to noses familiar and comfortable with normal fertilizer, smells like dead deer times ten. Death smell, we call it. Really unpleasant. The farmers never said it was the corpse flower, though. Duck eggs is the story they’re going with.

Unlike the corpse flower, no one around here lined up to take a good, deep whiff. You really only had to drive by to get it. A lot of people did complain to public officials, however, and that may have stopped the practice. Lately, it’s just been good, old-fashioned cow manure.

In Washington, though, Amorphophallus titanum was holding forth last week to no apparent purpose. While it rarely blooms and no one can say when one will bloom, the plant can be long-lived and botanists say the blooming has a specific purpose. Get this: The corpse plant uses its death smell to attract flesh-eating bugs such as beetles and flies that will carry its pollen to cross pollinate other corpse flowers.

So its purpose is simply to perpetuate itself apparently. Thank you, Mother Nature. One bloomed in the Bronx last August, but the plant is native to the rain forests of Sumatra and I suppose it makes sense in the ecological framework of western Indonesia. As for the D.C. transplant, I’m not certain.

This particular plant, which blossomed for the first time, is said to have grown from 4 feet tall to 8 feet tall just in the time it was put on display in the greenhouse — less than a week-and-a-half. It reeked of death for a couple of days then withered.

The folks at the Botanical Garden said this particular plant was the first corpse flower to bloom in Washington, D.C., since 2007. So for eight years — from 2008 to 2016 — there was no call to line up for the smell of death in the nation’s capital. This year — bloom!

Hmmm. Maybe I was wrong about the plant’s purpose. Maybe it’s trying to tell us something. Let’s see … what blooms big and garish without warning for no purpose other than to promote itself, attracts a crowd, appeals to flesh-eating bugs, stinks to hell for a brief period and then withers and goes away for a long time?

Maybe they’ll have a clue at the White House.

rjgaydos@gmail.com