April 12, 2026: “Part of Eve’s Discussion,” Wild Week, “A Whole Civilization”

It has been a wild week.  

Tuesday morning, President #47 threatened to wipe out “a whole civilization.”  You read that right—he said he was going to genocide the country of Iran if it didn’t open up the Strait of Hormuz.  After his post on Truth Social, the whole world seemed to be holding its breath, not sure if the orange lunatic was going to actually start World War III.

If you’ve ever lived through the threat of some kind of apocalyptic weather/environmental event—hurricane, blizzard, tsunami, volcanic eruption—that’s what it felt like.  The planet was teetering on the brink of something cataclysmic, and only one person could prevent it.  And that one person was/is a mentally unstable Putin wannabe.  

Don’t worry.  This post isn’t going to be a political rant.  Y’all know I stand on the side of compassion, kindness, empathy, and freedom.  You know, all that shit you heard in church last Easter Sunday.  No, I won’t go all Sam Kinison on you (The man’s a fuckin’ baby with nuclear codes!!!!  Ahhhh, ahhhhhh, ahhhhhhhh!!!!!).   I’m more interested in that collective held breath—everyone waiting to see what was going to happen.  Like Christmas morning, except Santa Claus has missiles packed in his sleigh.

Marie Howe writes about just-before moments . . . 

Part of Eve’s Discussion

by: Marie Howe

It was like the moment when a bird decides not to eat from your hand,

and flies, just before it flies, the moment when rivers seem to still

and stop because a storm is coming, but there is no storm, as when

a hundred starlings lift and bank together before they wheel and drop,

very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you

your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin, like

the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say,

it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only

all the time.

Howe is talking about an anticipated experience that never materializes—a bird right before eating from your palm, a river right before a squall, a car right before it starts spinning on lake ice.  If you’re anything like me, you’ve already imagined the experience in your mind.  The bird has already gorged itself on the seed.  The storm has already whipped the river into froth.  The car has already spun and spun and spun like an amusement park ride.  

I think the world has become so focused on speed.  We want the fastest cell phones.  Fastest cars.  Fastest WiFi connections.  Call it the Era of Instant Gratification.  Anticipation is practically non-existent.  Movies don’t even stay in theaters all that long anymore.  They’re released, and, four weeks later, they’re streaming on Netflix or HBO Max.  You don’t have to wait six months or a year for the DVD or Blu-ray.  

President #47 did NOT go through with his threat.  Supposedly, there’s a two-week moratorium on bombing between Iran, Israel, and the United States.  (Somebody needs to let Netanyahu know about this ceasefire, by the way.)  The bird flew off without eating the seed.  The storm blew itself out like a birthday candle.  And the car’s tires found traction.  For two weeks.  Then, all bets are off.

As Howe says at the end of her poem, “. . . it was still like that, only / all the time.”  It’s exhausting living in a state of constant anticipation.  Even if Tuesday’s  threat has been postponed, it’s still present.  And the people of the United States have been living on this edge like this for close to ten years now.  Almost an entire generation of young people only remember #47 and Joe Biden as Presidents of the United States.  (You can argue with me if you want, but at least President Biden never brought us to the brink of armageddon, and he isn’t a convicted felon.)

We are a divided country.  That’s a fact.  Also a fact:  the inmates are in charge of the asylum right now.  When my kids and grandkids read this post dozens of years from now, I want them to know I stood on the side of love and kindness during this held-breath moment.  And I will continue to do so.  

I have friends who are incredibly pessimistic about the future.  That’s not me.  I believe that democracy is still alive in the United States.  The fact that Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán lost the election in his country by a landslide today gives me hope.  In the end, good people win, and despots end up on the trash heap.  We will recover from the past ten years of MAGA-induced insanity, but it will take a while.  No instant gratification available.  Sorry millennials.

In the meantime, we gather, protest, speak up, speak out, listen to and recite poetry at readings (like I did today), and sing songs.  

Here’s a poem Saint Marty wrote last Tuesday . . . 

A Whole Civilization

by: Martin Achatz

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
                    --- Donald Trump

We sit on this side of the world,
complain about egg prices, milk
prices, pill prices. We pump gas
into our SUVs, complain about that, too.
We have to get to Florida for our spring breaks.
Because we’re civilized.

They sit on the other side of the world,
wait for the whistle of missiles,
watch skies on fire, and dig
their daughters’ bodies from school
rubble. They weep, wail, tear their clothes,
wonder how frightened their children
were when heaven collapsed on top of them.
Because they’re civilized.

November 7: Strange Spinning Inside My Head, President-Elect, Pride

Merton suffers from vertigo . . . 

Pop had died in November 1936. Already, in that fall, I had begun to feel ill. Still I kept on trying to do all the things I was doing—following my courses, editing the Yearbook, working, and running on the Cross Country Team without going into training.... 

One day we raced Army and Princeton. I was not last, but as usual I was about twenty-third or -fourth out of thirty or so. When I got to the end of the course, I simply fell down and lay on the ground, waiting for my stomach to turn inside out within me. I felt so bad that I did not even mind what the people thought. I did not try to look brave, or to make any jokes about myself, or to hide the way I felt. I lay there until I felt better, then I got up and went away, and never came back to the locker rooms again. The coach did not bother to come looking for me. Nobody tried to persuade me to go back on the team. We were all equally satisfied: I was through. However, it did not help much to get rid of this burden.

One day I was coming into town on the Long Island train. I had a bagful of work that was already late, and had to be handed in that day. After that, I had a date with someone with whom I liked very much to have a date. While the train was going through the freight yards in Long Island City my head suddenly began to swim. It was not that I was afraid of vomiting, but it was as if some center of balance within me had been unexpectedly removed, and as if I were about to plunge into a blind abyss of emptiness without end. I got up and stood in the gap between the cars to get some air, but my knees were shaking so much that I was afraid I would slip through the chains between the cars and end up under the wheels, so I got back and propped myself against the wall and held on. This strange vertigo came and went, while the train dived into the tunnel under the river, and everything around me went dark and began to roar. I think the business had passed over by the time we got to the station. 

I was scared. And the first thing that occurred to me was to go and find the house physician in the Pennsylvania Hotel. He examined me and listened to my heart and took my blood pressure, and gave me something to drink and told me I was over-stimulated. What did I do for a living, he asked me. I told him I went to college and did quite a few other things besides. He told me to give some of them up. And then he suggested that I ought to go to bed and get some sleep, and then go home when I felt better. 

So next I found myself in a room in the Pennsylvania Hotel, lying on a bed, trying to go to sleep. But I could not. 

It was a small, narrow room, rather dark, even though the window seemed to occupy most of the wall that was in front of me. You could hear the noise of the traffic coming up from far below, on 32nd Street. But the room itself was quiet, with a quietness that was strange, ominous. 

I lay on the bed and listened to the blood pounding rapidly inside my head. I could hardly keep my eyes closed. Yet I did not want to open them, either. I was afraid that if I even looked at the window, the strange spinning inside my head would begin again. 

I have suffered from vertigo a few times.  Merton is pretty accurate in his description here.  It immobilizes you.  My first bout, I woke up in the middle of the night, feeling as though the planet was spinning so fast that it was about to fling me off into space.  I crawled to the bathroom, threw up four times, and then crawled to a couch in the living room.  I spent the rest of the night there, alternating between retching and drifting in and out of reality.

Since that first episode, I have experienced vertigo two or three more times.  It doesn't get better or easier.  The last time, I ended up in the ER and had a CAT scan to make sure I wasn't having a stroke.  I now take a meclizine tablet every morning to ward off vertigo.  I don't rise quickly from chairs or beds.  Instead, I sit up or stand gradually, like a diver returning to the water's surface after an extended deep sea dive.  I know that if I rise too fast, I may get the bends, if you know what I mean.

Today, after four days of counting and unsubstantiated allegations of fraud and misconduct, Joe Biden was declared the President-elect of the United States.  My Constant Readers know where I stand politically.  Over the past four years, I have been fairly critical of Donald Trump and the job he's done in the Oval Office.  Not because he's a Republican.  No.  If he were a Democrat and locked immigrant children in detention centers, reversed environmental protections, been accused of sexual misconduct by 26 women, and violated almost every law protecting the integrity of the White House, I would have voted Republican on November 3rd.

This election and current President have caused the most even-tempered people to sling a little mud.  This afternoon, a friend posted a meme of Amy Coney Barrett holding a sign that said "40 More Years."  (But this post isn't about what I see as the hypocrisy of that Supreme Court confirmation, either.)  Every person in this country, Republicans and Democrats, have allowed themselves to lose their minds and souls a little these last four years.  I include myself in that statement.  We're all off-balance.  The entire country suffering from vertigo.

I watched Mr. Biden speak this evening, and he spoke of unity instead of division.  Healing instead of hatred.  It felt like I had just taken a meclizine.  The world slowed down, and I was able to stand steadily for the first time in a long while.  And I felt something else that I haven't felt in a long time:  pride.  

I was raised by a Republican father who flew the American flag at his house almost every day of his life.  He taught me to honor that flag and all it stood for.  I still do that.  And I vote Democrat, because that party aligns more with my moral and ethical beliefs.  While my father didn't agree with my choices, he respected me for making them.

My father voted for Donald Trump in the last election.  If my father hadn't died, he probably would have voted for Donald Trump again..  I respected my father's right to do that, not the choices he made.  Because that's what United States' citizens are supposed to do.  Respect each other, regardless of political differences.

Tonight, listening to the speeches given by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, I gave myself permission to feel pride again.  To put some trust in an elected official.  Donald Trump had four years to change my mind, make me believe he represented my interests.  He never did.

So, I am vertigo-free tonight.  The world isn't spinning out of control, and maybe, just maybe, Mr. Biden will return kindness to my country.  Compassion for the less fortunate.  Justice for LGTB people and people of color.  In short, following one simple commandment:  love your neighbor as yourself. 

That is Saint Marty's hope.

October 4: Saint Marty's Day Eve, Annual Reading, "'Twas the Night Before Saint Marty's Day"

Greetings on this Saint Marty's Day Eve!

It is late, I know.  All of you are probably setting out trays of Saint Marty's Day cookies and maybe eating some warm tapioca.  Possibly, you're watching a Saint Marty's Day TV special, like A Charlie Brown Saint Marty's Day or How the Grinch Stole Saint Marty's Day.  I will probably stay up late to watch Pope Francis celebrate the midnight Saint Marty's Day Mass at Saint Peter's Basilica online.

I'm wishing all of you a peaceful Saint Marty's Day Eve.

And now for the annual reading of . . .

'Twas the Night Before Saint Marty's Day

'Twas the night before Saint Marty's Day, when all through the house,

not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

in hopes that Saint Marty soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

while visions of tapioca danced in their heads.

And Mama in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,

had just settled our brains for a long autumn's nap.

When out on the roof there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

tore open the shutter, and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen leaves

gave the luster of midday to shadows by the eaves,

when, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

but a kind, saintly figure, full of good cheer.

With a laugh so infectious, so lively and hardy, 

I knew in a moment it must be Saint Marty.

More rapid than eagles, his coursers he came,

and he whistled and shouted and called saintly names:

"Now Peter!  Now John!

Now, Francis and Paul!

On, Theresa!  On, Bernadette!

On, Good Old John Paul!

To the top of the porch!

To the top of the wall!

Now bless away!  Bless away!

Bless one and all!

As dry leaves that before a wild hurricane fly,

when they meet with an obstacle mount to the sky,

so up to the housetop the courser's he flew,

looking like Brad Pitt, and George Clooney, too!

And then, in a twinkling, I heard up above me

saintly feet walking and dancing, so help me!

As I drew in my head and was turning around,

down the chimney Saint Marty came with a bound!

He was dressed all in black, from his head to his foot,

and his clothes were all dusted with ashes and soot.

A bundle of toys he had flung on his shoulders,

And he looked like a vision--a good, Christian soldier!

His eyes--how they sparkled!  His smile, how white!

His face, so angelic this Saint Marty's night!

His demeanor was gentle, peaceful and quiet.

He looked so handsome that he could cause a riot.

His halo and wings shone in the moonlight,

his robes were like snow, brilliantly bright.

He raised his hands in a blessing, filled with such grace,

that even the pope would hang his head in disgrace.

He was pleasant and smart, a saintly good fellow,

and I laughed when I saw him, and offered him Jell-O.

But a wink of his eye and a shake of his head

soon gave me to know he wanted tapioca instead.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work.

and filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk,

And laying a finger aside of his nose,

and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.

He sprang to the roof, and took to the wind.

I watched him with awe ascend and ascend.

But I heard him exclaim, 'ere he flew out of sight,

"Happy Saint Marty's Day to all, and to all a good night."

Joe Biden celebrating Saint Marty's Day . . .