By Bob Gaydos

Trump as pope. SeriouslyPart of my morning routine, after tea and a friendly word game to get the brain cells active, is to scroll through my Facebook feed to get a handle on the news of the day.

Yeah, I check The Times, AP, etc. but for in-your-face-they-must-be-kidding stuff, Facebook gets it to me quicker and without the cautious prose of today’s major media. If You Know Who did something dumb, illegal or outright insane, I’ll know in a couple of minutes and from trusted sources.

Saturday was no exception. The hands down winner of the  “They-must-be-kidding, but-I-know-they’re-not” Award goes to the social media posting from the White House no less of Trump sitting on a throne dressed as the pope, crown and all. Seriously.

Disgusting. Crude. Callous. Ignorant. Egotistical. Obscene. Incredibly stupid. One hundred percent Trump. On the day Pope Francis was being laid to rest. After Trump having previously fallen asleep at the funeral service. An insult to every Catholic on the planet and a message to all Americans. Trump wants to be pope. Seriously.

The rest of the feed included what had to be the most obsequious cabinet meeting in history, as each member of the Trump team, seated around him with their red Maga hats on the table facing him, competed with each other to offer the most ingratiating, devoid of facts compliments to their leader, who was sitting self-satisfied in the middle. Pam Bondi and Marco Rubio duked it out for the coveted comfy knee cushion award. No one, apparently, was embarrassed, except for millions of Americans who saw this cult video and at first mistook it for a Monty Python movie.

There was also a post about, of course, Pete Hegseth installing a dressing room next to his office in the Pentagon, presumably so his eyeliner could be on straight when he has unprotected group chats on his phone with family and friends about U.S. military attacks in the Middle East. No Republican in Congress expressed any displeasure with the defense secretary spending taxpayer dollars in this manner. Because of course.

Then there was an item about RFK Junior, secretary of health, asking the Centers for Disease Control to look for some alternative treatments for measles because Kennedy believes the vaccine that has prevented the disease for  decades contains “aborted fetus debris” as well as “DNA particles” and doesn’t work. This, as the measles outbreak in the country reaches 900 cases as he bad mouths the vaccine. And, the man who says he once had a dead worm in his brain, also still insists that vaccines are causing autism and wants to conduct new testing on this theory even though it has been done and disproven.

Finally, one unrelated item on my feed informed me that May is mental health month.

Sign me up.

By Bob Gaydos

Trump snoozing at the pope’s funeral.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Someone once told us that. Either a Chinese or Japanese philosopher, playwright Henrik Ibsen or some advertising mogul named Fred Barnard back in 1921. Barnard credited the Japanese. I’m going with Confucius. Whoever was first, they all knew what they were talking about.

Of all the words written about Donald Trump’s appearance at the funeral of Pope Francis — how he tastelessly wore a shiny blue suit and blue tie to stand out in the field of black mourners, ignoring the dress protocol issued by the Vatican, how he staged a photo op with Ukrainian president  Volodymyr Zelinsky, surely pretending to broker a peace plan in Ukraine — none was more informative and symbolic of the Trump presidency than the image of him sitting there in the front row, next to an impeccably dressed Melania, sound asleep

At the funeral. Of the pope.

Make America embarrassed again.

Of course, if you depended on major newspapers in this country to inform you about that little bit of clumsy protocol, you’d be out of luck. No pictures. Not even words. No nothing.

But someone had the pictures because they were all over social media and YouTube and there he was, “Dozing Donald,” snoozing in the front row at the pope’s funeral. Of course, even here the bets were hedged. With the steady media normalizing of his erratic behavior, Trump only “seemed“ to be sleeping. That’s what everyone seemed to say. Well, it seemed to me that there was no doubt the dotard was dozing.

Just look at the photos. There he is front and center, all in shiny blue, chin dropped to his chest, eyes comfortably closed, mouth dropped wide open. Been there, done that. That’s the picture of a man deep in sleep, not in thoughts about the death of a beloved spiritual leader. In fact, not even able to fake it

But the New York Times, while taking pains to point out Donald’s attire and Melania’s, didn’t bother with a Sleepy Don. Too normal apparently. Nothing strange about that. That’s Trump.

Yet I seem to remember not so long ago when the public behavior of a president was all over the front pages of the daily newspapers in this country. Joe Biden, the president who rescued America from the depths of insanity and economic chaos of the Trump presidency, the man who served honorably as vice president of this country before that and decades as a United States Senator before that — that Joe Biden — the one with a stutter, wound up being called Sleepy Joe thanks to much of the press following the lead of Trump.

Biden was pressured not to run for reelection. Too old. Can’t handle it. That Joe Biden had the grace to step aside and let someone else run against Trump, who thought he could win the election if Elon Musk could steal enough votes from Democrats in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, which he could. That Joe Biden managed to stay awake through the entire funeral of Pope Francis because he has empathy and compassion and respect for other people’s feelings. Trump does not. But we all know that, right? So it’s no big deal, right?

Wrong.

You know, looking at the photo of Dozing Donald, I wondered what was going through Melania’s mind. As far as I know, she never once threw an elbow into his ribs, as the wife in any normal marriage might, and whisper, “Wake up, stupid!” Maybe she thought that with all the cameras around it might draw attention to him. Or maybe, she just really didn’t care at this point. The second seems more likely to me.

Heck, most of the major media didn’t seem to care. That’s Trump, they say. He’s 78 years old. He’s weird. He rambles on and on nonsensically because he doesn’t understand questions. He lies compulsively. He’s a convicted felon and apparently a racist. He almost crashed the stock market and blames Ukraine for Russia invading it. He’s forbidden to be associated with any charitable organization in New York State and ran a phony college. A judge said that what Trump did to a woman in the dressing room of a fancy Manhattan clothing store amounted to rape. He incited an attack on the United States Capitol and encouraged the hanging of his vice president. He was handed the most powerful military and most vibrant economy on the planet when he took office in January and has proceeded to make a mess of both. He insists that windmills kill whales and thinks Hannibal Lecter is a real person.

So he fell asleep at the funeral of the pope. That’s Trump. Who cares?

I care, dammit, that’s who.

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.

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

Pope Francis … the smiling pope

By Bob Gaydos

Reflecting on the anger, bitterness and violence that punctuated much of the year just past, I resolved to start the new year with acknowledgment of some positive development. Some sign of hope, as it were. I found it in, of all places, the Catholic Church. Or rather, the Vatican. Actually, to be specific, in the Pope.

Pope Francis, the people’s pope, has been a revelation and a one-man revolution within an organization that has been entrenched in dogma and shielded by ceremony for centuries. Since his surprise election to the papacy nearly two years ago, the Argentinian prelate has seemed to revel in speaking and acting like a, well, like a man of God. A least what my definition of such a person would be: Humble, unassuming, honest, approachable, compassionate, non-judgmental, empathetic and realistic.

Francis, the 266th pope, brought a positive note to the end of a brutally negative 2014 by: (1) Convincing President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro to reestablish normal diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba, ending more than 50 years of pretending they weren’t neighbors; (2) announcing that the Catholic Church would be committed to fighting global warming. Diplomacy and science have not exactly been prominent issues for popes for some time.

These actions came at the end of a year in which Francis consistently and passionately criticized the culture of greed that has claimed much of the planet, resulting in the very rich getting even richer and much of the rest of the population struggling to simply exist. “The excluded are still waiting’” he has said of the false promise of “trickle-down” economics.

To top it off, in case no one was paying attention, Francis, who has shunned many of the papal trappings, used his Christmas address to the cardinals at the Vatican to scold them for their personal ambition, pettiness and attitude of superiority to the people they, in fact, are sworn to serve. In other words, time to change your focus, fellas.

Along the way, indicating that the Catholic Church is not, as some have suggested, totally anti-science, he has declared that the theories of evolution and the Big Bang are, indeed, real, and can co-exist with the Church’s teaching of Creation. “God is not a magician with a magic wand,” he has said.

He has also encouraged cardinals to be less-obsessed with birth control and homosexuality (“Who am I to judge?”) and more committed to helping the world’s poor. And he has moved decisively to remove more of the stain of sexual abuse by priests that has been the most dominant issue associated with the Church for several decades.

All of this has angered conservative Catholics and especially conservative politicians who have counted on implicit papal endorsement for their views (especially on social issues) for many years. Suddenly, the pope’s infallibility on how we should treat each other and the planet we share is open to, not just question, but outright challenge. Fox News is apoplectic.

So be it. As a leader with no armies, the Roman Catholic pope can sway millions simply with his words and actions. Yes, the church is wealthy. Yes, it has political influence. Yes, it has an investment in repairing its soiled image and attracting new followers to replace those who left it because of the sexual abuse scandals.

Still, whatever one’s religious views, I believe that sometimes a person comes along and takes everyone by surprise by doing the unexpected. In Francis’ case, by acting like a humble servant of his God, rather than like the exalted ruler of some chosen group of people. Given the symbolic power of the position, this is huge.

I am sure the former cardinal from Argentina — a supposedly safe,compromise choice — has many cardinals shaking their heads today and wondering, “Tell me again; why did we vote for him?”

And that may be the most positive thing of all about Pope Francis. He has begun a discussion within the Vatican, within the Catholic Church and, by his involvement in global issues, throughout the world, on what our role is in relation to each other. It may be a discussion that will reveal the hypocrisy and greed that permeate today’s society. Perhaps it will even answer the question of what it means to be thy brother’s keeper.

That’s pretty hopeful stuff to me.