Monday Mountains

Mountains were in the news this past week not for their beauty, but for the potential threat of landslides and floods resulting from climate change - hundreds of people are confirmed dead, thousands are still missing, and many towns have been wiped out from the collapse of a glacier in the Himalayas of Nepal. Perhaps this is a good time to admire the beauty and majesty of mountains from a safe distance.

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That was our last Monday Mountains collection for August - I hope it helped you relax and ponder the beauty of nature.

Have a good day and as good a week as the news allows. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Poetry Sunday

Those of you who are my age (mid-70s) have certainly noticed that the content of your mail changes - not just snail mail, but e-mail and spam text messages. You get fewer and fewer ads about concerts, hip new clubs opening up, and great vacation opportunities, and more ads for retirement communities, cemetery plots, and medications for aching joints. I remember my father commenting on this when he was older and now, as in so many other things, I'm becoming my father.

This poem, from the collection "Wilson's Revenge" by - of course - Wilson, speaks to that change that sneaks up without warning on us all ...

SIXTY

by Wilson

Nobody tells you sixty is the year

the mail changes, fewer invitations,

more statements, and the body

sending its first bill with interest

for everything you did at thirty.

I wish somebody would have warned me. I'd have ignored it, as the young do, but still ... the interest is a killer.

Have a good day and enjoy the rest of your weekend. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

Only two more days left in this @%$&! month. Thank goodness!

Dolly Parton, the beloved country star, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and genuinely wonderful person, died on Tuesday at age 80 - that sound you heard was millions of hearts breaking; in the latest example of gratuitous buffoonery vis-a-vis our northern neighbor, friend, and ally, Der Furor has signed a royal decree executive order directing that Lake Ontario be referred to in the United States as "Lake America;" hundreds of people are dead and thousands missing in the aftermath of huge floods in Nepal caused by the collapse of a glacier; Der Furor has formally proposed a pay freeze for most federal workers for 2027, but a 3.8% raise for law enforcement personnel; and in Monrovia, California, a wanted man who escaped police twice by running onto a freeway was arrested after officers recognized him when he walked into a Panda Express where they were eating lunch ... the Monrovia Police Department commented in a social media post that "... we're not sure if it was good police work, bad timing, or the irresistible smell of chow mein." 

This week, as children head back to school, I thought a collection of cartoons about modern-day education would be timely ...

So did RFK, Jr ...

You can tell how old this cartoon is ... all the "nows" look really cheap compared to the now now ...

Oh, the horror! ...

All of us who've been parents have been there ...

Ain't that the truth ...

When I was in grade school, our jobs included banging chalk dust off the blackboard erasers. Times change ...

When my parents took us to buy new school clothes and supplies, their defensive characteristics were less important than the cost ... 

I'm not so sure about that ...

I think the children are often a lot more perceptive than we know ...

I wonder if I'd have been recognized from some of the pictures my children and grandchildren drew of me ...

And that's it for the last Cartoon Saturday of August, 2026 ... I hope it helped give you a chuckle in the face of the tsunami of suck the year has offered up so far. 

Have a good weekend and be sure to come back tomorrow for the last Poetry Sunday of August, when we reflect on the warning we didn't pay attention to so long ago. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

Great Moments in Editing and Signage

Here we go with the last collection of editorial and signage ya-ha's for the month of August. Get 'em while they're hot. Or you're hot. Whatever ...

No matter which 44 magnum you need, they've got you covered ...

I've never had head in my car, period, much less extreme head ..

If the animals can't eat it, what's the point?

You have to think someone could have foreseen this result ...

I prefer the dead sausage, myself ...

I'm not sure this is as big a draw as he hopes ...

I've eaten at places like this ...

So, when do you get the $2.00 off? 

I wonder what happened to Wife #1 ... the "installation of top soil" might be a hint ...

Hmmm ...

And that's it for this week's edition of Great Moments in Editing and Signage ... the last one for this month. I hope you enjoyed it. And don't forget to send the great moments you find to ol' Bilbo for future use!

Have a good day and come back tomorrow for a Cartoon Saturday salute to the start of the new school year. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

Thursday Trees

How quickly a week goes by! It's time once again to visit the temporary home of Mike's Thursday Trees - together with our Monday Mountains series, a chance to let the beauty of nature help settle our frazzled nerves. And so, without further ado, let's bring on the trees!

1 - I almost mistook this for a picture of myself early in the morning, before coffee ...

2 - a banyan tree ...

3 - a ginkgo tree in Korea ...

4 - a resident of the Great Basin National Park, Nevada ...

5 - this fellow is interesting, but anonymous ...

6 - moss-covered beeches, Dartmoor, England (for my friends in the UK) ...

7 - a very, very old olive tree, waiting to help grace new generations of martinis ...

8 - a red gum tree, from Australia (for my down-under friends) ...

9 - a Sitka spruce, from Alaska ...

and finally for this week, 

10 - apparently trying to escape ...

And that's it for this week's edition of Thursday Trees. Enjoy the beauty and the shade, before Der Furor wipes it all out with another royal decree executive order.

Have a good day and come back tomorrow for another collection of Great Moments in Editing and Signage ... more thoughts then.

Bilbo

The Loss of Dolly Parton

We lost one of the last truly praiseworthy Americans yesterday with the death of country music star, actress, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and all-around delightful person Dolly Parton.

Hours of air time and countless millions of gallons of ink, both digital and liquid, have been expended in praise of the woman born to a poor family in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, who captured the hearts of Americans from all walks of life. I can't say more about her that hasn't been already said by people more eloquent than I ... what I want to talk about is what her death means for the country.

Dolly Parton would have been famous as a singer and actress in any case, but her real impact came in the type of person she was. Fame didn't go to her head. She shared the bounty of her fame with others and was a genuinely loving and thoughtful person. Millions of children have benefited from the five years of free books, one each month, they received from her Imagination Library, founded in honor of her father, who could neither read nor write. Her generosity was legendary, and the size of her heart far overshadowed the size of the feminine superstructure for which she was famous (and her explanation for which was hysterical). She was eloquent in her folksy way, and she loved everybody - regardless of race, creed, color, sexual orientation, or anything else - in a way that the so-called Christians of the far right can never match or understand.

Dolly Parton represented the very best of what America could be in a time when many of us are horrified at what it has become. At a time when many Americans cheer on a boorish, childish, greedy, petulant, self-absorbed president who exemplifies the worst of our nature, Dolly balanced ... indeed, over-balanced ... the scale to remind us of who we can be ... and who we ought to be.

I've only ever had this kind of reaction to the death of one other celebrity - Jimmy Buffett - and even he vanishes in the shadow of the towering figure of Dolly Parton. America, and the world, are much the less for her passing.

Have a good day. In a world of Pam Bondis and Kristi Noems, be a Dolly Parton.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

WEIRD

I'm an avid follower of the PBS show "Otherwords," in which sociolinguist Dr Erica Brozovsky presents interesting observations on language*. In a recent episode dealing with the universality of how we communicate with infants ("Infant-Directed Speech (IDS)," not "baby talk"), I learned a new expression: WEIRD. In the context of the linguistic discussion, it stands for the types of countries in which most IDS research has been conducted - Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic, but it occurs to me that it has quite a broader meaning nowadays.

You may recall that Minnesota governor and former Vice-Presidential candidate Tim Walz stirred up a lot of controversy when he described many of Der Furor and many of his top appointees and ardent followers as “weird” during the 2024 presidential campaign … Western they might be, Industrialized perhaps, Educated more or less, Democratic (with a small d) certainly not, and Rich hardly (except for the top tier of multi-billionaires in administration positions). Of course, Mr Walz was not using the term in the linguistic research sense, but weird surely applies to much of what passes for serious and responsible government in today's United States. And yes, in true Der Furor-ish fashion, it needs to be in ALL CAPS.

It's WEIRD that Der Furor is hammering Canada, our nearest neighbor and closest ally, with huge tariffs, despite having negotiated his own trade agreement to replace the former North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA (that would be the US-Canada-Mexico Agreement - USMCA) during his first term.

It's WEIRD that Der Furor has ordered the Department of Defense (not War) to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea because those exercises are "insulting" to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un ... who is supplying supplies and troops to Russia for its aggression against Ukraine and has developed a deadly, if small**, arsenal of nuclear weapons.

It's WEIRD that Der Furor is going all-out to cripple the renewable energy sector, at the same time that his war of choice against Iran is wreaking havoc on energy markets and sending the price of gasoline, diesel, and heating oil soaring for Americans and others.

It's WEIRD that Der Furor's regime has rolled back laws and policies that have protected the environment and addressed the cascading effects of climate change.

It's WEIRD that Der Furor and his spokesweasels consistently deny the obvious, clearly-visible reality of the affordability crisis that faces everyday Americans.

It's WEIRD that a crackpot conspiracy theorist with no medical background whatsoever has implemented policies that make Americans less healthy and have led to outbreaks of viral diseases once thought to have been conquered (like measles) and food-borne illnesses once kept in check by government food inspections that have been scaled back or eliminated. 

It's WEIRD that Republicans line up to ignore and justify the complete disappearance of a sitting senator (that would be Mitch McConnell), who has not been seen in public or heard - in person or in a recording - since February of this year.

It's WEIRD that Der Furor's closest aide appears to be a 35-year-old woman with no qualifications other than slavish devotion, who has been joined at the hip to him in the most sensitive of meetings despite having no security clearances***.

It's WEIRD that more presidential time and public money is being spent on vanity projects (the begoldening of the Gilded House, the construction of a gigantic ballroom nobody else seems to think is needed, the construction of a useless and garish "triumphal arch," and the renaming of the Kennedy Center, among many other things).

It's WEIRD that we have a president whose idea of oratory is built around exaggeration, rage, avoidance of reality, and childish insults, yet is persuasive to the MAGA world.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Have a good day and be sure to inform yourself before you vote in the midterms and the 2028 presidential election. Our nation has grown weird enough ... don't let us make the same mistakes again.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* For those of you new to this blog, I have a bachelor's degree in Linguistics from Penn State University. I also have a masters in International Relations from Troy State University. Neither of these makes me an expert on anything, but I like to think I'm reasonably well educated, at least on some things.

** But how large does it need to be to represent a threat in the hands of a bizarre dictator?

*** I was repeatedly investigated, re-investigated, and polygraphed throughout my 43-year career in the Air Force and as a contractor in sensitive positions. I guess the difference is that I was a run-of-the-mill, average-looking male worker bee and not a cute blonde sycophantic hanger-on to a person with the authority to wink at the rules everyone else has to follow.

 

Monday Mountains

It's time once again for Monday Mountains - your weekly collection of soothing and inspiring natural beauty to help you cope with the political and religious ugliness around us. Here we go ...

1 - mystery mountains ...

2 - along the Li River in China ...

3 - looking out toward the Alps, with the fairy tale castle of Neuschwanstein in the foreground ...

4 - autumn near Silverton, Colorado ...

5 - Cathedral Rocks in Yosemite ...

6 - Crater Lake, Oregon ...

7 - anonymous mountains ...

8 - mountains in Patagonia ...

9 - Reine, in Norway's Lofoten Islands ...

10 - the Sierra Nevadas near Virginia Lakes Pass ...

You can have your beaches ... I'll take the mountains any day.

Have a good day and a good week. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo