The Week that Was

We must stay focused on the fight

I went for a walk at Catalina State Park.

This old white dude for Harris needed a break from the last couple of days, writing, painting signs and rallying with the troops.

I even had the joy of emceeing a volunteers rally. Came out of retirement to do it. At last Sunday’s mobilization rally for Kirsten Engel I proudly welcomed everyone to the “Kirsten Engel for Congress” event, “Fifty days out from this most terrifying, anxiety inducing, hopeful and joyful election.” Engel is beyond qualified to be Southern Arizona’s Congressperson. She has the blessing of Gabby Giffords, the pragmatic centrist saint who once occupied that seat. Engel is above all pragmatic politican who believes in evidence-based policies. Maybe that’s because she’s normal.

Forgive me, but the Cisco kid is just weird with his Patriot’s Academy and his allegiance to Donald Trump. Cisco-donny votes with Trump so often Trump wants Cisco-donny to play him when they turn the Trump saga into a telenovela.”Play me? He is me. Votes just like me. He kisses my ass. My besador de culo.”

And he must be ashamed of Donny because you’d think he’d never heard of Trump just like Trump has no clue what Project 2025 is. “Trump who? I’m Juan coward afraid to come out of the Trump closet. An MMA, a MAGA-mexican-american Trump humper, hiding in plain sight.

Kirsten Engel and David Fitzsimmons

I enjoyed saying things about her opponent a dignified candidate should not say. I called him “Juan Cisco-donny”, mocked his Patriot’s Academy as a “MAGA Madrassas for little Christian Nationalists” and pointed out Trump’s favorite song is “Cisco kid was a friend of mine.”  

Can Engel beat Cisco-donny on election day? Yes, she can. Cisco-donny likes walls. Here in southern Arizona we are going to build a huge blue wall that’s going turn the whole state blue drowning the red hats in waves of people standing in lines to overwhelmingly elect Kamala Harris and send Kirsten Engel to the United States House of Representatives.

As your Congressperson, Engel will serve you, the people of southern Arizona. All of you. She’s read the Constitution. She understands her role.

Cisco-donny serves only one constituent. Juan is a one man guy and he’s batting on the team led by the naranja pendejo, Donald Trump, the convicted con man. Can Trump end up in jail? Si se puede. When he loses to Kirsten I hope someone gives Mr. Ciscomani a whistle and a dayglo vest. I’m sure he has a job waiting for him at the Patriots Academy as a street crossing guard back home in Texas.

I fired off a few “When we fight we win” chants and got the crowd warmed for “our next congressperson from southern Arizona, Kirsten Engel.” I was still riding high, feeling joyful hope, intoxicated from the rousing Doug Emhoff rally a few days before.

(After 2016 I could not bring myself to dare to hope. Defeating Trump, sending him to the courts is within reach. Defeating Trump, and impeaching his judges is within reach. Defeating Trump and turning the House and Senate blue are within reach. It is possible we will witness monumental, historic change on a scale we who were traumatized by the sting of 2016 cannot permit ourselves to dare to imagine. Defeating the agents of Trump, we will enshrine the freedom to be, love, associate with whoever we want. Defeating the agents of Trump, we will enshrine a woman’s right to decide what happens to her body for all time. Defeating the agents of Trump, reproductive healthcare will be a human right. Defeating Trump we will fund our schools and our preschools and make our daycares the best accessible and affordable daycares on earth. Why not compete against the Finns and the Swedes. Defeating the agents of Trump, healthcare for all will be a right.

It is all within our reach if we unite, register, march, make signs, persuade the persuadables, volunteer, work phone banks, knock on doors, go to watch parties, donate and vote. It’s that simple. “Vive la révolution.”- Marquis de Lafayette. )

https://blogforarizona.net/kirsten-engel-for-us-congress-cd6-vows-to-fight-extremism/

And so is “Blog for Arizona” the must-subscribe source for all Arizona Democrats: https://blogforarizona.net/

On my hike under a pleasant 80° the end of summer felt within reach. Grassland grasses had dried and turned golden, the creek bed was dry, lizards were scurrying and butterflies were flitting about and I had the trail all to myself on a Tuesday.

With the end of summer in sight I thought of the books that kept me company and cheered me when the heat was punishing.

• “James”

  by Percival Everett

  A sharp satirical and profound retelling of Huck’s river escape from the POV of Jim, his enslaved companion.

• “Democracy Awakening: Notes on the state of America”

  by Heather Cox Richardson

  Powerful and enlightening essays on the current moment by the most brilliant insightful historian of our time.

• “Mary Astor’s Purple Diary: The Great American Sex Scandal of 1936”

  by Edward Sorel

  I loved this delicious book! Here’s the blurb: “Featuring over sixty original illustrations, Mary Astor's Purple Diary narrates and illustrates the travails of the Oscar-winning actress alongside Sorel’s own personal story of discovering an unlikely muse.”

• This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets

  Edited by Kwame Alexander

  Wow. A keeper. The range! Any random page hits like scripture.

• Good Night Irene

  by Luis Alberto Urrea

  What? His mom was a donut girl in WWII? Wonderful storytelling.

A notice on my phone interrupted my listing. And her I am trying to watch bees furiously collect pollen from daisy-like flowers that were at eye level on long stems. Another voter rally is coming! Friday September 27^th. Desert Diamond Casino. Something to promote. The Dems are busier than the bees I see buzzing among the flowers everywhere. Because when we fly we pollinate-and when we pollinate-we win!

On the trail I saw some fresh horse plop that looked like it was alive. It had landed right next to an ant hill. Thousands of black ants were clamoring out of their home to feed off the horse plop and once again I couldn’t help but think of Donald Trump and the millions of American ants, feeding off his horse plop and grinning at the TV cameras when they’re interviewed, with his horseshit smeared all over their reason forsaken souls.

In an earlier substack I listed headlines I’d like to see. This one captures the deranged spirit of this week.

So a walk to escape the madness seemed to be in order and it seems I can’t escape Trump under these perfect skies.

Later at home, I added wild bird birdseed to our three birdvfeeders. We spend less on birdseed than we would spend at the movies and watching birds is much more entertaining than watching endless previews and eating popcorn that cost a small home loan. I confess I am looking forward to “The Apprentice”, the new Trump movie about his youth. As I measured out the birdseed into each feeder at dusk I thought of Trump, the seed planter and the toxic seeds he was planting across our nation, on his way to dismantling the federal government and FDR’s welfare state. If you don’t vote he will to destroy this country.

Finished with the main loop I was happy with my pulse, so I walked over to the bird trail and rested in the shade among the small forest of old tall mesquites that had survived the fire. The Buddhist in me enjoyed the timeless nature of the moment, my deep measured breaths and my strong, calm heartbeat and the techno alternative music in my AirPods.

I’m wearing my Harris hat and my Harris Walz T-shirt and I just parked my vehilce plastered with 3 KAMALA bumper stickers in the general lot. I have one 10 foot banner and 6 yard signs in my yard and 15 small American flags are posted on the length of my rail fence. If WalMart sold an inflatable 12’ Coach Walz it would be up on my roof tethered to my house.

I turned my Apple radio off to listen to the birds and the wind. I heard a Gila woodpecker, a chuckling Cactus Wren and an Albert’s Towhee. I like my Cornell labs bird identifying app. Damned thing can’t idenitfy my neighbor’s rooster. I heard a Gray Vireo singing a complex song, serenading the day, welcoming the season we used to called “Indian summer” down on 27th street. Oh man it feels good to feel good. We are not going back to not feeling good.

Earlier in the week I went out to purchase poster board for my Harris sign painting project and I forgot my phone. Once I overcame the terror of not being able to contact everyone on earth in a nanosecond, I went through TikTok withdrawal, then texting withdrawal, then dictation withdrawal because I thought my tech dependency would make for a good column, and then I felt as though a leash had been severed and I was freed techno slave on the run.

I was 11 years old again, on my bicycle cycling on a similar day in the past where the only telephone was a black finger-smudged rotary phone on a top of a yellow pages phone directory on top of little table with postmodern gold triangles in the Formica top and an aqua blue cushion next to our dining table. Explain “party lines” to a Gen Z for giggles, you prehistoric things.

Back then the freest place on earth was the banana seat on my easy rider bicycle, look-ma-no-hands cruising to Revco to purchase whatever comics one dollar could buy. The spell was broken when the reminiscence made me wish I had my phone so I could play Beyonce’s “Freedom”.

Sitting in the shade at Catalina Park I decided the Democrats are poised to win statewide and I should keep hiking and see what the steps up the hill would do to my heart. I’ve never seen so much spontaneous enthusiastic grassroots organization spring up in my lifetime. We’ve been coiled for a lifetime. Trump’s tired act is toast, and speaking of toast I made it to the summit with a good pulse of 120bpm.

How is it a cardiac event hasn’t felled fat red-faced Trump?

I hope no fool assassinate him. That would only inflame the nation. I want Trump to live so that he may be tried in many many many courts of law and end up dying in the geriatric ward of a prison, confused and ranting. Now that would be a beautiful thing.

I pity our Haitian guest workers in Springfield, Ohio. This racist horror calls to mind one more book that was a favorite summer read, “American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson”. She was a brilliant, forgotten American journalist who was an advisor to Churchill and FDR and when she was young and reporting out of Europe, she was the first to interview Hitler. Dorothy called him a “little man” and unlike her peers who thought him a joke she traveled the country like Paul Revere warning Americans the Nazis were coming. “American Cassandra” is a riveting read.

I think Trump is serious about everything he has said. Camps. Deportations. Arrests. He has a fever dream. And it’s our nightmare.

Atop the foothills of the backside of the majestic Catalinas I drank in the vistas, so smug and happy I had renewed my state parks membership on this perfect toasty day. Earlier I told the ranger at the entrance to the park, “Beats spending this much on a gym membership. It’s cheaper. And it’s a lot more fun.”

I’m sure when I left with my renewed pass the nice rangers turned to each other and whispered, “What a dork.”

I descended crest of the hill overlooking Canyon Del Oro wash through a thick forest of Mesquites down to the dry riverbed where I was overwhelmed by the silence a second time, hearing only the wind and the occasional bee buzzing past my head. Ahead of me the tops of saguaros gently swayed in the breeze.

Whiptail lizards scurried ahead of me faster than Trump and Vance run from questions.

A glutton for hiking bliss I hiked up to Romero Ruins. I thought of Mayor Romero. Last time we met I smiled and said, “It’s a pleasure to see Tucson‘s first Italian American mayor.“ She laughed.

Last week she introduced the first gentleman, Doug Emhoff to the crowd at a rip-roaring rally for Kamala Harris that focused on reproductive rights.

I admired how Mayor Romero, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego and Flagstaff Mayor Coral Evans all stood up to the virulent and vocal anti-mask, anti-vax hooligans in the face of the Covid epidemic.

The ruins up on the hill are impressive. Left by former inhabitants centuries ago. The plaque says they made a mistake, back in the day, of electing a jackass name “Trump” their chief. Thus, the ruins.

Happy and exhausted I thought “When I get home, I’m going to go for a walk and forget about Trump and this election.”

Instead, when I got home, I found my “CHENGATUMAGA PENDEJO NO MAS NARANJA” sign had arrived. I put it out front on the street. I think it’s important to promote bilingualism in southern Arizona.

E Pluribus Unum, baby. That’s what this is all about. Out of many, one.

Ever onward.