By Bob Gaydos

Dandelion greens salad with crumbled pretzels as croutons.
RJ Photography

“I’m a medium.”

The words came out matter-of-factly. That’s a size, by the way, not an occupation. I’m a medium. I used to be a large. Actually, I used to be an extra large and there are probably a couple of double X T-shirts in the drawer somewhere.

I’ve changed. Time. Necessity. Survival. Sanity.

I had a dandelion greens salad for lunch yesterday. Prepared for me with care. Made delicious with dressings, spices, lemon juice and who knows what else. Didn’t even ask for it. Here. Eat.

Funny thing is, I had just taken photos of the dandelions growing out back a couple of hours earlier. Lunch was not on my mind.

I’ve changed. I used to be a city boy. Now I’m a country boy. Well, actually, I’m probably a city boy who’s gotten comfortable living in the country. The quiet is nice if you don’t mind the woodpeckers and owls and coyotes and lawnmowers and four-wheelers.

And I’ve written about the birds ad nauseam – yesterday, goldfinches and bluebirds. Today, cardinals. The geese who came to visit. I noticed. I’ve changed.

Necessity. Survival. Sanity.

I’ve been writing about stuff for 60 years and I plan to keep doing it for as long as I can. Necessity. Survival. But for me, I’ve learned the sanity part depends on paying attention to the finches and the dandelions and the geese and the ridge always looming in the distance. On being grateful for the moment whatever else might be going on elsewhere.

To be clear, I hate much of what is going on, not only elsewhere, but all around me. In my occasionally humble opinion, it is an abomination, an assault on decency. Sometimes, I actually take it as a personal insult to me. How dare they screw up my world this way? What’s wrong with them? What are they thinking? Blue suit to the funeral of a pope! Idiot.

So I write about it, because that’s what I do and that’s what I’ve always done. So It seems. But I’ve learned that my personal sanity requires me to be grateful for what I have around me. And so, as assistant birdfeeder filler, I feed the finches and the robins and the wrens and the sparrows and the cardinals and the blue jays and the crows and the doves and the red wing blackbirds and whoever else might show up for breakfast. Woodpeckers.

And later I will go to my Amazon Prime account to find new summer T-shirts, size without frayed collars and regular shirts that fit. Maybe new shoes, too, to be delivered before dawn. Before the tariffs kick in. Because the world has changed without my permission. I stole that line from an old friend. Thanks, Jeff.

Sanity. … If I make this a mental health day, I’ll be ready for battle again tomorrow. Now it looks like rain, which is good for the peonies. Do I want pizza for supper or sushi? What a gift to have such a choice.

Somewhere on my phone I have a note that says, “There is no next.” I think it’s from Eckhart Tolle, but I can’t prove it and I’m not going to waste time googling to find it. Because the message is the medium and, as it turns out, I’m a medium.

Words, words, words.

By Bob Gaydos
Way back when Donald Trump first descended into the political arena, I wrote a column that I headlined “A Vocabulary for the Trump Era.” It featured a bunch of words that had not been a regular part of Americans’ daily conversations. Words such as: emoluments, quisling, sycophant, misogynist, oligarchy. Common fodder these days.

Well, it seems Trump continues to have an impact on our vocabulary. The question is whether it’s now a positive one or not. The other day, as the TV wandered through YouTube, it stopped on a channel featuring an obviously angry young woman launching into a discussion of something Trump had recently done. I forget what.

Her intro was masterfully focused and seemed to go on forever. I was impressed with both her energy and her comprehensive use of adjectives to describe Trump.

The following was inspired by the introduction, using as many of her words I can remember and, in the spirit of improving vocabulary, expanding on it.

***

“Here’s what that lying, groping, grifting, greedy, dumb, fat, weak, narcissistic, phony, racist, lazy, cheating, callous, uncouth, grandiose, selfish, perverted, arrogant, evil, disloyal, cruel, crude, manipulative, malicious, bigoted, corrupt, disgusting, foolish, filthy, gross, hateful, horrible, ignorant, jealous, lecherous, malicious, negligent, obtuse, abhorrent, incompetent, opportunistic, petty, pathetic, rapist, reckless, ridiculous, rotten, sleazy, slimy, terrible, ugly, quarrelsome, querulous, quaggy, embarrassing, angry, juvenile, spoiled, scared, shameless, traitorous, toxic, useless, unfit, uncaring, unstable, quick-tempered, vengeful, immature, immoral, ridiculous, boastful, vain, vapid, wicked, wasteful, xenophobic, yucky, felonious zero did yesterday.”

I could not find one adjective that did not apply. If you’d like to add to the list, feel free to do so, but keep it clean so I don’t get banned from some social media site.

One word stumped me.

Quaggy: Soft, boggy, or spongy; lacking firmness or stability. For example, “The quaggy ground made it difficult to walk steadily.”

It’s always good to improve your vocabulary.

Pope Francis

By Bob Gaydos

  While millions of Americans marched to protest Trump policies on Saturday, millions more paused and prayed around the world on Easter Sunday, gathering with family and, perhaps, pondering the meaning of life.

   The weekend over, Monday brought some sad news and “Can you believe it?” news featuring familiar names.

    — Pope Francis died Monday of a cerebral stroke. The 88-year-old pontiff had recently been released from a hospital and had just avoided a meeting with J.D. Vance, the putative vice president, who apparently wanted to try to convince the pope on Easter weekend that the way America was treating immigrants was, well, what Jesus would do.

      Francis wasn’t buying it. An Argentinian, who in his 12 years as pope spoke out relentlessly in support of migrants and marginalized people, he altered the focus of the Catholic Church, not to the liking of many conservative Catholics, including bishops and cardinals. How that will affect the selection of a new pope is uncertain. There is no doubt, however, that his voice of courage, compassion and humility will not be easy to replace. And no, that’s not something that can be said about all popes. Francis asked that his tomb be inscribed simply with: “Franciscus.”

     — Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem, taking a break from posing as an ICE agent, took her family out for Easter dinner at a restaurant in downtown Washington, D.C. While she and her family were eating dinner, a thief stole her purse, which contained Noem’s driver’s license, medication, apartment keys, passport, DHS access badge, makeup bag, blank checks, and about $3,000 in cash.

    The Secret Service, which provides security for Noem, reviewed security camera footage at the Capital Burger restaurant and saw an unknown white male wearing a medical mask steal her bag. The key words here are “National Security Director” and “Secret Service.” Don’t you feel more secure? Noem said the cash was to pay for dinner and Easter gifts. Really? A burger restaurant? Easter dinner? Nobody’s watching her purse? You’re not in South Dakota anymore, Madam Secretary.

    — Pete Hegseth (yup, him again), was reported to have shared details of that surprise March 15 military strike against Houthis in Yemen on a second group chat on Signal, a group including his wife, brother and personal lawyer. The details were reportedly the same as those contained in another group chat on the same day over the same unsecure site. This group, unlike the first group, which was created by the White House security advisor and mistakenly included the editor of the Atlantic magazine, was created by Hegseth himself. In addition to his wife, it included about a dozen other people from his personal and professional inner circle in January, before his confirmation as defense secretary and was named “Defense | Team Huddle,” according to a report in The New York Times.

     The Defense Secretary reportedly used his private phone to set up the chat. No, his wife, a former producer for Fox News who has also accompanied Hegseth in meetings with foreign officials, does not work for the Defense Department. His brother and lawyer do, but not in jobs that require them to know about surprise attacks against Houthis in Yemen.

   Trump, of course, immediately attacked the source of the information. Not denying it, or expressing concern about a possible security leak that could jeopardize a military operation, just railing about leaks. However, there were some reports that Trump was wearying of mistakes by his fun-loving Defense Secretary. And Trump is well-known to be only too happy to tell those who cause him embarrassment or require him to do his actual job, “You’re fired.“ Hegseth’s career may soon be where he apparently likes it — on the rocks.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

The geese have arrived.
RJ Photography

By Bob Gaydos

They’re here!

        Honk!

    They’re back!

         Honk! Honk!

The geese have returned 

      on their annual fly

To make a squawk, a mess

       … and to multiply.

I’d begun to think they

      had passed us by.

Found some better digs.

      Somewhere else nearby.

But why, when there’s the             

 pond, the creek and the kill?

No better place …

       … they’re honking still.

Alas, won’t be forever, but then,

          nothing is.

For now though, there’ll be 

         honking and flapping 

… and building a nest. 

         Then the best.

Swimming lessons

       in the pond, single file.

Get in line.

Poppa in front, momma  

   in the back …

   or vice versa. I’m not sure.

Not a specialty of mine.

Matters not, though.

    They’re here!

Ours for a while, 

    on their annual fly.

To make some noise, some mess … and to multiply.

                               ***

The Willow in the wind. RJ Photography

By Bob Gaydos

I once penned a psalm about waves on the pond.

    Strove for an ode to a breezy day.

But reach as I may I’ve got naught good to say

     about forty-mile-an-hour winds all (censored) day.

No birds to behold. No blooms to unfold.

      Eliot’s Prufrock without his trousers rolled.

Of course, the dogs are fine.

       Things to sniff, things to leave behind.

In fact, let’s just call it a day.

        Forty-four’s the number.

Degrees and breeze.

        All day. All the ding-dong-doodle day.

By Bob Gaydos

Kristi Noem, Homeland Security secretary, posing as an ICE agent.

  Item: Sept. 9, 2016. “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Applause. Laughter.) Right? They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.” — Statement by Hillary Clinton, Democratic Party candidate for president. Thought by many to have cost Clinton the presidency.

  Item: March 27, 2025. Kristi Noem, Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security, wearing long hair extensions and a $50,000 watch, delivers a video declaring how tough the U.S. will be on immigrants while standing in front of imprisoned immigrants rounded up and shipped to a hellhole prison in El Salvador without any charges being placed against them or any due process offered as required under the law. She says they should “stay there forever.”

   Item: April 7, 2025. Wearing full combat gear and carelessly pointing a rifle at the head of an ICE agent standing next to her, Noem declares she’s joining an immigrant roundup in Arizona. Boem is not an ICE agent, she is a government bureaucrat. When she was governor of South Dakota she shot and killed her dog just because.

    Item: Attorney General Pam Bondi fires a Justice Department lawyer because he couldn’t provide a federal judge some legal justification for the U.S. mistakenly deporting an El Salvadoran immigrant legally here to a hellhole prison in El Salvador or evidence of steps being taken to return the man to the U.S., as ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court. This, even though she admits the man’s deportation was a “bureaucratic  error” and no one in the Justice Department has yet to provide any proof of attempts made to return the man that a Justice Department lawyer could actually present in court in response to the judge’s order.

    Item: Bondi accuses another federal judge, presiding over the case challenging whether any of the several hundred Venezuelan immigrants sent to that prison in El Salvador received due process (you know, proof of crimes, etc.), of “meddling in our government” because the judge asked for proof.

     Item: Too many to list. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt merely lies or makes stuff up at every press briefing in defense of her boss. Leavitt, 27, is married to Nicholas Riccio, a 59-year-old multi-millionaire real estate developer who helped finance her unsuccessful campaign for Congress in New Hampshire in 2022. They have a nine-month-old son. Riccio also is a contributor to the Project 2025 manual for expanding presidential power. Leavitt still has not paid back more than a quarter million dollars in campaign contributions that were ruled to have exceeded legal limits. She is alleged to have altered every filing with the Federal Elections Commission. 

     Item: Laura Loomer, right-wing conspiracy theorist, has a 30-minute meeting with Trump in the Oval Office in which she bad mouths six officials of the National Security Council, by name, accusing them of being disloyal to Trump. Trump fires all six after the meeting. Trump later says the meeting had nothing to do with the firings and calls Loomer a “great patriot.”

       … So, I’ve often said that when one writes editorials or columns on various issues, a primary function is to help readers connect the dots. Anybody want to help me connect these?

                                    ***

PS: I deny ever saying anything about bad nose jobs.

By Bob Gaydos

Trump announcers tariffs.

    I’ve been listening to and reading all sorts of analyses of the Trump tariffs for three days now and it’s pretty clear that anyone with any sense of how economics works thinks they’re the dumbest thing since way back the last time this country had a Depression. The numbers make no sense.

    They’re going to hurt a lot of ordinary people and some say that’s the point.

     They’re probably going to make some really rich people richer and some say that’s the point.

      They’re certainly a way for Trump to try to extort concessions from weaker nations to make himself richer and some say that’s the point.

      Some also say that they will severely weaken America to the benefit of Russia, which has miraculously escaped being on the tariffs list, and some (not nearly enough if you ask me) say that is the primary point and, ever since Trump slumped out of that private meeting with a grinning Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, I agree with this assessment. Trump’s in Putin’s pocket.

     But whatever motivation the experts have attributed to the Trump tariffs, they all seem to be surprised by one thing — the reaction of other nations.

      Airwaves and the Internet have been full of commentary expressing surprise that European nations haven’t just rolled over. The European Union, after strongly criticizing the tariffs, immediately began working on countermeasures, “should negotiations not work.” France and Germany especially encouraged a strong response.

   Across the other ocean, China, Japan and South Korea formed a trade alliance to counter Trump. It takes some doing to get those three together, but Trump managed. China also slapped a 34 percent tariffs on all U.S. imports, matching Trump’s latest tariffs on Chinese imports.

      Maybe it’s just me, and I know America’s been strutting around like the big gun in town for some time, but this isn’t Europe’s first rodeo, people. Remember Ancient Greece and Rome? France, Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, heck Denmark, which told Trump to keep the hell out of Greenland, have all been around a lot longer than the good old USA. They’ve been through a lot of stuff and figured it out. Centuries of history is on their side.

    Which, of course, goes in spades for China and Japan. If those two ancient enemies can figure out a way to work together with the collective centuries of wisdom of the Far East, Trump, the shlump from Queens, hasn’t got a chance, whatever the point.

Oh, for a cup of hot coffee.

By Bob Gaydos

    When you spend much of your grown life sharing your  opinions on topics ranging from presidential politics to the marvels of watermelon, it kind of becomes a habit. Sometimes, as you grow older, fewer people are interested in your opinions, on politics or anything else. Also, sometimes as you grow older, you tend to voice your opinion on those watermelon topics out loud a bit more frequently. That’s when the ‘C’ Word sometimes enters the conversation.

    Curmudgeon.

    Translation: Old guy with opinions. This is not to be confused with senior political pundit, who occasionally might be an old guy with opinions.

    In any event, I embraced the curmudgeon label 18 years ago when I retired from daily newspapers. Had to. The heart-warming retirement tribute published for the occasion called me one. Me and Andy Rooney, I figured. Good company. (If you don’t know who Andy Rooney was, you’re too young to read this column.)

    So when the word popped up in conversations a couple of times recently, good-heartedly I should add, it didn’t bother me. Rather, it reminded me. There’s a place for curmudgeons in society. A need in fact. Else, how would people ever be aware of some of the little annoyances most people are just too polite to point out?

     For starters, I think every business that serves the public needs a resident curmudgeon to point out things that leave customers shaking their heads.

    For example, if you’re a legendary “fast-food” place with drive-through windows and arches and everything, shouldn’t you be able to pour two cups of hot coffee, any size, any time, to a customer without asking them to “please pull over to the waiting area while we put another pot of coffee on”? Isn’t that what you’re selling? Speed and convenience? Doesn’t anybody know how to say, “Hey, put another pot on”? And is there any reason other than lack of attention for this practice to become an acceptable routine? Just asking.

   While we’re on the subject of coffee, if you open a new, (very) small dining establishment, hoping to attract customers for breakfast, brunch or lunch, why would you serve your customers coffee in a paper cup? They can get that at the local drive-through if they’re willing to wait. Sitting down to eat should guarantee a real cup with a real handle. And honestly, is it too much to expect someone to taste the coffee to make sure it’s more than lukewarm?

   And, not to be picky, but if you happen to own a really busy dining establishment, with lots of satisfied customers coming and going, shouldn’t someone on the payroll notice that the front door, every time it’s opened, always closes with a loud slam. Always. Slam! It could make someone sitting too close to the door spill his coffee. It’s not … quaint.

   But then, maybe no one noticed … the waiting, the paper cup, the cold coffee, the slam. People are busy trying to do their jobs, maybe too busy. That’s why I think every business needs a resident curmudgeon to ask the annoying questions.

   And obviously, I could really use a good cup of coffee before I go back to politics.

        (Dedicated to Sean and Ernie.)