Monday, December 10, 2018

Thanking the Journalists in My Life; Listing Them One by One




These are the journalists who have meant the most to me during 2018. Their praise and encouragement of my topical poetry has kept me going over rough patches and depressing hollows. So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to:

John Schwartz   NYT

Jon Talton  Seattle Times

Lela Moore  NYT

Hanna Ingber  NYT

Joseph Palazzolo  WSJ

Corey Kilgannon  NYT

Rachel Abrams  NYT

Christina Zhao  Newsweek

Dennis Overbye  NYT

Fred Melo  St Paul Pioneer Press

Dan Barry  NYT

Peter Baker NYT

Paul Vigna  NYT

Jack Dolan  LATimes

Benjamin Oreskes

Vidhi Doshi  NYT

Esther Fung  WSJ

Karen Kaplan  LATimes

Theresa Vargas  WaPo

Jennifer Maloney  WSJ

Lois Collins  Deseret News

Michael Corkery  NYT

Robert McMillan  NYT

Becky Krystal  WaPo

Paul Berger  WSJ

Sheila Kaplan  NYT

Amy Gardner  WaPo

Brad Plumer  NYT

Dominique Fong  Peking News

Joshua Dawsey  WaPo

Anne Tergesen  WSJ

Anupreeta Das  WSJ

Vanessa Fuhrmans  WSJ

Jonathan Rockoff  WSJ

Elizabeth Dwoskin  WaPo

Amy Nutt  WaPo

Melissa Gomez  NYT

David Pierce  WSJ

Amy Wang  WaPo

Martine Powers  WaPo

Marc Fisher  WaPo

Jen Bendery  Huffington Post

Rachel Pannett  WSJ

Lisa Rein  WaPo

Bob Davis  WaPo

Coulter Jones  WSJ

Jim Hegland  Minot Daily News

Scott Shane  NYT

Katie Benner  NYT

Brian Hershberg  WSJ

Catharine Hamm  LATimes

Drew Harwell  WaPo

Vipal Monga  WSJ

Newley Purnell  WSJ

Kirsten Grind  WSJ

Jonathan Emont  WSJ

Kate Aurthur  BuzzFeed

Doug Tice  StarTribune

Dan Kelly St Paul Pioneer Press

Jordana Green  WCCO Radio

Penelope Green  NYT

Amy Argetsinger  WaPo

Andy Newman  NYT

Andrew Jacobs  NYT

Joshua Zumbrun  WSJ

Bob Hagerty  WSJ

Melanie West  WSJ

Matthew Goldstein  NYT

The Ceaseless West Wing Backbiting -- Got 20 Thousand Dollars? Then Go Shoot an Elk! -- The Fractured British Political Landscape -- Butina and the Fixed American Elections




The ceaseless West Wing backbiting that captures headlines has belied the reality of working there, which is that aides form tight cliques and burrow into those friendships to endure the chaos of the work environment.
by Maggie Haberman for the NYT

The Founding Fathers knew that when America grew great
that cliques would form the backbone of Democracy's mandate.
They wrote the Constitution so that cabals could supervise
policy decisions and detect all foreign spies.
The clannishness of West Wing clerks, who dress up in tight slacks,
is really inspirational -- and proof against attacks.
If anything will save our land from ruin and infamy,
it's got to be those guys and gals who form a coterie!

*****************************************

Hunting generates up to $2 million a year in revenue for the company, with hunters paying up to $20,000 to shoot elk.
by Louis Sahagun for the LATimes

Shooting elk is something I have never done before;
they seem majestic creatures with a natural rapport.
Once I shot a rabbit in my bathrobe at one blow;
how it got into my bathrobe I shall never ever know . . . 

******************************

The fractured British political landscape makes it difficult to find a deal around which lawmakers can coalesce. If Parliament can’t decide on a form of Brexit, then the default option is for the country to leave the EU with no deal at all in March.

Sunday, December 9, 2018

Small and Simple Things


Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.  Alma. Chapter 37. Verse 6.

The small and simple things performed
by unencumbered Saints
will bring to pass such miracles
the wise will cease complaints.

The jangles of the world recede;
the powerful and strong
will suddenly remorseful be
that they were in the wrong.

The strait and narrow pathway
that so many thought too mean
for their exalted travels
is Salvation evergreen.


Saturday, December 8, 2018

Taking It Off in Clown Alley

The common toadfish, to which I bear a passing resemblance first thing in the morning.




Upon awaking each morning nowadays I drag myself first thing to the bathroom to look in the mirror, in case the Good Fairy has come by in the night to restore my supple rosy skin, sparkling blue eyes, and insouciant laughing smile. No such luck so far. What I am faced with is an unnerving reflection of the common toadfish after a groggy night out on the town. One of these days I'm going to pull down that medicine cabinet with its mirrored door and be done with the insult for good.

Working as a professional circus clown for most of my adult life, I have spent an inordinate amount of time in front of mirrors putting on the clown white. And then taking it off again at the end of the day. 

Clowns in the Ringling Blue Unit alley used a variety of looking glasses when I was a First of May back there in 1972. 

Mark Anthony, the happy tramp, used the circular bottom of an old metal lard pail that he had cut out and polished until it gleamed like silver. Since he was forever dropping things, or sitting on them, this saved him a substantial amount in replacement fees -- not to mention all that bad luck he avoided.

Prince Paul, the dwarf clown, had a thick shard of silvered glass, irregularly shaped and covered around the edges with duct tape so he would not slit his fingers on it. He could barely see a few inches of his face at a time in it, but since he'd been putting on the same simple whiteface for the past fifty years he could do it in the dark -- the shard was more a paper weight than anything else to him. 

Sparky, who boasted of having the world's largest pair of clown shoes (each one about a yard long and two feet across -- he had to shuffle in them like a cross country skier) invested in a Max Factor Hollywood Professional Mirror Ensemble. It boasted not one, but three mirrors on hinges, so he could catch his profile, and had a dozen light bulbs around it like a movie marquee. Turned on full power, it could be seen from outer space -- and nearly blinded anyone foolish enough to sit close to him. I guess he needed all that light so he could place his half dozen zircons just exactly right under each eye. With the vivid blue eyeliner he also used I think he could have given Cleopatra a run for her money.

All the other veteran clowns used small round compact mirrors, the kind that women used to carry in their purses. They knew their own faces well enough to put on the makeup in the dark if they had to -- and sometimes clown alley was set up under a dim dark bleacher where there wasn't enough light to read a newspaper, let alone put on makeup. 

There were about a dozen of us First of Mays, and we all used the economical plastic hand mirrors you could get at Woolworth's for seventy-five cents. When the alley was sequestered in a dimly lit spot we all trooped to the nearest Men's Room to carefully apply the warpaint. We hadn't gotten to the point where we knew how to do it by rote, although we quickly learned to slap it on with a minimum of fuss on a Saturday morning, when the first show started at 10 in the ever-loving morning. Nobody in their right mind was going to come in an hour early just to get their makeup on perfect. Except Sparky -- he was always the first one in the alley, cleaning and polishing his zircons and adjusting his mirrors for maximum effect. He was never fazed when the alley lacked electrical outlets -- he simply brought along a Coleman battery-powered lantern. 

A typical circus day had me in heavy greasepaint for about twelve hours -- so when the time came to take it off, I did so with a gusty sigh of relief. I couldn't scratch my face once the makeup was applied and powdered; that would risk smearing the colors together -- so anytime I got an itch anywhere on my mug I had to twitch and pucker my skin much like a horse does with its backside when tormented by flies. 




In the movies you always see theatrical types removing their makeup in front of a big glamorous mirror, loaded with congratulatory telegrams and autographed photographs from John Barrymore, Sarah Bernhardt, and the like. They daintily open a small container of obviously expensive cold cream and dab it on their face, then have the maid or butler genteelly rub it off with a cashmere shawl.

But that ain't how we get the warpaint off in clown alley. You squirt a big pool of Johnson's Baby Oil into the palm of your hand and then rub it into your face like you were trying to remove your lips and nose with sandpaper. Blinded by the oil, you grope for a bunch of paper napkins (usually swiped from the arena Men's Room) and wipe off as much as you can -- then throw the greasy damp paper towels into the nearest corner, where they accumulate into a huge fragrant rat's nest by the end of the week. Sparky, of course, used a huge container of Pond's Cold Cream -- but he apparently had a passel of oil wells gushing somewhere in South America and could afford such luxury. Another clown, who I dubbed Saint Terry because his delicately shaded and outlined pastel makeup reminded me of the stained glass windows back at St. Lawrence Catholic Church in Minneapolis, insisted that baby oil drained the skin of vitamins and minerals -- so he used olive oil to take off his makeup. Made him smell like an Olive Garden on a hot day. 

Back then a bottle of Johnson's Baby Oil cost one dollar (I checked on the price of a bottle today at the supermarket -- a cool five-dollars-and-twenty-nine-cents.) And that was a lot of money to a First of May; we only got paid one-twenty-five a week, out of which we had to provide our own food, costumes, makeup, and twenty-five a week for our roomette on the Ringling train. I went through a bottle of baby oil every other week, and that troubled my wallet. My good old pal Tim Holst also thought it was a crime to have to expend so much of our hard-earned kopeks, and was always on the lookout for a cheaper way of taking off the makeup. 

One day Mark Anthony, the happy tramp, began reminiscing about the good old days under the canvas big top.

"Yessir" he rambled, "we only got one bucket of water for the whole day -- and we didn't use no fancy baby oil to wipe off the greasepaint, neither. Got a can of Crisco and smeared that on; it took the makeup off faster than -- (here he used a pornographic phrase involving greased barnyard animals that I won't repeat.)"

Holst was all ears. He calculated the cost of a can of Crisco against a quart bottle of Johnson's Baby Oil -- the savings would be significant. So in the next town he bought a big can of Crisco shortening and that evening after the last show he snapped off the key and unwound the lid. For those of you who haven't reached geezerhood yet, let me explain that long ago a can of Crisco didn't have a pop top or tab -- you pulled a slotted key off the top of the lid and used it to carefully unwind the soldered sealing strip around the top of the can -- which left a murderously sharp edge on the metal lid. Inevitably, Holst cut his right thumb right down to the bone on it -- so he wrapped his flowing digit in a towel and a few of us rushed him to the nearest hospital, where they stitched him up good as new. For fifty bucks. (Can you imagine? A visit to the hospital ER cost a measly fifty dollars back then!)

I couldn't help but remind him the next day, as he gingerly removed his makeup with the standard Johnson's Baby Oil, with his thumb bandaged up like a mummy, that for what he had paid the hospital he could have bought fifty bottles of baby oil. He gave me a dirty look in return and said:
"Tork, that big mouth of yours is gonna get you in trouble one of these days."

And he was absolutely right. But that is a tale for another day . . . 


 
It usually took me two handfuls of baby oil to get my clown white completely off. Cuz I made up my ears and the back of my neck as well, which a lot of clowns never did. 

Postcards 9






Friday, December 7, 2018

Apparently, Hosting the Oscars is a Career Killer -- Too Discouraged to Look for Work -- And You Thought Roller Derbies Were Just a Sitcom Cliche --



Jimmy Kimmel, who hosted the past two years, did not want to do it again, according to this source, in part because he was told the academy did not think the everyman-type comedy he did on the show — including surprising people at a nearby movie theater by showing up with Gal Gadot, Mark Hamill and other stars and handing out snacks — was prestigious enough for the broadcast.   by Josh Rottenberg for the LATimes.

Who will host the Oscars; it's a death knell for careers.
Comedians who do it are berated by their peers.
The prestige is tremendous but the burden is immense;
it's driven men and women to go live in goat hair tents.
Perhaps an algorithm from the Google people might
do the trick -- Alexa does not suffer from mike fright.

*************************

. . . workers too discouraged to search for a job . . . ticked up to 7.6 percent in November . . . 
by Patricia Cohen for the NYT  

I've given up the search for work; rejection makes me blue.
That cardboard box with dumpster near has got a pleasant view.
Maybe I'm an addict or a victim of divorce;
whatever caused my 'liberty' is now a major force.
The wind is always cold upon my back and I'm ashamed
to wear this MAGA cap because I think I have been framed.
I'd rather search for meaning than employment anytime;
how about a dollar, pal -- okay, I'll take a dime . . . 

************************************
Roller derby dates to the 1930s in the U.S., and eventually all-female teams found an American audience in much of the past century. A renaissance of the sport surfaced in Austin, Texas, during the early 2000s.   by Nina Adam for the WSJ.
An evening watching women skate
around a rink in armor plate
and shoving with demented glee
is not the ideal date for me.
A Caspar Milquetoast, I confess;
such brute force causes me distress.
I'd rather stroll in gardens sweet
than view grim females in dead heat.
But I could use 'em, I admit,
when on the subway I would sit.
They'd clear a path and gladly beat
those bums who always take my seat!

****************************




Everyone is Guilty Down in Washington DC -- John F. Kelly Goes Belly Up -- Nuclear Calculus -- Make America Blush Again.



Mueller has obtained charges or guilty pleas from 33 individuals so far, and five of Trump’s former aides have pleaded guilty to various charges.  by Chris Megerian for the LATimes 


Ev'ryone is guilty down in Washington DC
and mighty Mueller sees to it they fess up prettily.
If you speak some Russian or enjoy a vodka shot
he will have you at the bar and trembling, like as not.
You might as well admit your guilt before he comes a-knockin',
cuz willy-nilly prison gates on you will soon be lockin'.
Don't try to flee the country; he can reach you anywhere
(unless, of course, you are an uncorrupted billionaire.)
If he were after me I wouldn't waste time being sore;
I'd hie me to the nearest Embassy of Ecuadore --
and there, like Mr. Julian, I'd stay forevermore!

*********************************
In addition, John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, is likely to leave his post in the next few days, ending a tumultuous 16-month tenure still among the longest for a senior aide to Mr. Trump, two people with direct knowledge of the developments said Friday.  by Maggie Haberman and Charlie Savage for the NYT.

Auf Wiedersehen dear Kelly, we hear you're stepping down
to seek a new career path as grinning circus clown.
Au revoir, you quitter; when Trump now needs you most
you let his temper tantrums just scare you like a ghost.
Adios, muchacho, and may you find the peace
that passeth understanding where politics do cease.
Addio, my soldier, who served for many moons
as a punching bag for so many media goons.
Ha det, and don't forget those who still remain behind
and slowly lose their marbles in that turgid White House grind.


****************************************
Meanwhile, warming inter-Korean relations are complicating the nuclear calculus.  by Andrew Jeong for the WSJ
eeny meeny miney mo --
who will north korea show
it can bomb most anyplace
or send nukes to outerspace
and will trump pretend to see
any peaceful harmony
from mad hatters in pyongyang
who believe in the BIG BANG.

****************************************
His company’s success is an example of the way politics, patriotism and commerce have converged in the Trump era. Most of Merritt’s bestselling designs reflect a sort of love-it-or-leave-it patriotism that Trump touts at his rallies. “Stomp my flag and I’ll stomp your ass,” says one popular T-shirt. Others capi­tal­ize on the news and frequently echo GOP talking points or Trump’s Twitter feed.
by Greg Jaffe for the Washington Times 


Talk about the wearing of your heart upon your sleeve,
people put their passions now on t-shirts -- you believe?
Just like bumper stickers, the vox populi insist
on showing with their t-shirt just how much they're really pissed.
Oh give me ancient Egypt where the hieroglyphics stood --
and no one had the stamina to chisel a falsehood!

**********************************


Thursday, December 6, 2018

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Arrest 'Em -- It's 9 p.m.; do you know where your goat is? -- The War on Santa




The arrest of a top executive at one of the most successful Chinese global companies threatens to upend a delicate detente between the U.S. and China in its months-long trade war.
Meng Wanzhou, deputy chairwoman and chief financial officer of telecommunications giant Huawei, was arrested Saturday during a transit stop at a Vancouver airport and could face possible extradition to the U.S. and an appearance in federal court in New York.   by Robyn Dixon & David Pierson in the LATimes. 
China has ambitions for technology; they steal
as much of it as possible from underneath our heel.
And so with misdirection, as Trump chats up their new Mao,
we sneak up on their technocrats to throw in our hoosegow.
Wars have started for much less, and certainly we need
another war about as much as English worsted tweed.
*******************************
UNITED STATES AIR FORCE ACADEMY — The mules are locked down. The goats are in an undisclosed location. With the Army-Navy football game coming up this Saturday, West Point and Annapolis are at Threat Level Red — for their mascots.  by Dave Philipps for the NYT.
Instead of stealing goat or mule
why don't they take that darn old fool
that in the White House sits all day
and keeps coherence far away?
He's a mascot of the fear
that's ruining our own country dear;
so put him in a barn somewhere --
and keep him out of all our hair!
**********************************


Move over, war on Christmas; it’s time to fight the war on Santa. This yuletide predicament is not isolated to New Jersey. During the Cape Coral Festival of Lights in Florida, a man with a large sign walked around shouting “There’s no Santa Claus!” Actors Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell told Us Weekly that they decided to inform their daughters, ages 3 and 5, that Santa is “pretend.” And on Fox News this week, Sean Hannity made the tension a topic of debate on two separate segments.  by Katie Mettler for the Washington Post. 
So many souls are shriveled and they want to share their bile
with others quite defenseless 'gainst their irritating guile.
They rage about Kris Kringle, and refuse to recognize
that Father Christmas lives inside the heart and soul and eyes
of children all across the globe who need a happy cause
to celebrate their innocence -- like good old Santa Claus!
A figure of goodwill and joy, and elfin jubilee;
he represents our yearning for complete felicity.
So let the children have the hope that somewhere in the sky
a blithesome figure knows their name and loves them at first try.
And may this hope in little minds turn into firm belief
that giving unto others is the finest cure for grief.

Traditional Christmas Song Banned from Airwaves for Encouraging Rape -- California Republicans are Irrelevant -- The Art of the Apology



Cleveland radio station WDOK decided last week to remove the classic song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” from its holiday rotation over lyrics that, through a #MeToo lens, now seem a little rape-y.  by Libby Hill in the LATimes


The Holiday season begins
with cleaning up gender-based sins.
Old classics of song,
if they hint at wrong,
are stuck full of feminist pins.

***********************

LOS ANGELES — The California Republican Party — a once dominant power in the nation’s largest state, the party of Earl Warren, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan — is teetering on the brink of irrelevance.
by Adam Nagourney in the NYT
I want to vote Republican, but they have left the state.
Amazon will ship me some, but I can't pay the freight.
For following that Awful Man in Washington DC
Republicans have been reduced to bleak obscurity.
I guess I'll start a Party of my own next time I vote
and run on any platform that will grow a big banknote.
************************************
Wells Fargo & Co. is firing around three dozen district managers for oversight failures related to a sales scandal that erupted in its retail bank more than two years ago, according to people familiar with the matter.   by Emily Glazer in the WSJ

Overzealous managers who stretched the truth a bit
have lost their cushy banking jobs as morally unfit.
I'd like to offer up myself for one of those swell jobs,
because I won't do nothin' that will irritate the mobs.
I'll sit upon my leather chair and do nothing with panache; 
wear a silken necktie and spout nothing but pure bosh.
A model manager I can become with little push,
avoiding controversy as I sit upon my tush.

********************************

So why issue a long and drawn-out public apology, a year after the fact? 
by Antonia Noori Farzan in the Washington Post

The art of the apology consists in going long
with a list of cliches that are struck like Chinese gong.
A lengthy mea culpa will dilute the controversy
until the public in despair will grant a tired mercy.

************************