Postcard to the President. (by Guest Artist Lance Read.)

Google and Facebook, Among Others, Face Huge Tax Bite From France and Britain

France moved on Thursday to become the first country to impose a so-called digital tax of 3 percent on the revenue companies earn from providing digital services to French users. It would apply to large companies, numbering more than two dozen, with robust annual sales in France, including United States-based Facebook, Google and Amazon. British leaders also detailed plans on Thursday to impose a similar tax, of 2 percent, on tech giants. And the European Union has also been mulling a digital tax.

NYT

The Wasatch Mountains pay heed to me.

And the pink clouds of sunrise are at my

beck and call.

Afternoon simooms tiptoe around my patio.

I'm in charge, see?

I ask the rocks for sweat.

The pigeons for song.

The sidewalk for ice cream.

Asphalt gets out of my way.

There's nothing can stick to me.

See?

Light bends around my wisdom.

Darkness dare not lap my feet.

I'm a Marvel comic book waiting

to be opened.

Got it?

Trump Says He Will Seek Citizenship Information From Existing Government Records, Not the Census

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday abandoned his quest to place a question about citizenship on the 2020 census, and instructed the government to compile citizenship data from existing federal records instead, ending a bitterly fought legal battle that turned the nonpartisan census into an object of political warfare.

NYT

I've stopped feeding the sparrows 

on my patio.

They take and take and take

in complete silence.

And they are a dull spotted brown.

But they still get my stale bread.

But I have spent sixteen dollars

this month

on black thistle seed for house finches

because they sing.

And some are red and some are yellow breasted.

Ring necked doves eat what falls to the ground.

As far as I'm concerned they are all

welcome.

Whether I feed them or not.

Whether I like them or not.

No questions asked.

Postcard to the President. by guest artist Stephen D. Torkildson

The Nordic Model Tames Capitalism. But Can It Survive Massive Immigration in Sweden?

Filipstad, Sweden. NYT.

White balls of lard hanging from the money tree

tremble at the suddenly unwelcome brown breeze;

the lights go out on top of the mountains

before marching bands can reach them with

glockenspiels.

Is this the end of pancakes as we know them?

Of homemade lingonberry butter?

Or can the common sand of humanity

prevail to uncover heads and hearts

in tandem?

A fine Baltic mist creeps over the steeple

and dampens woolen prayer rugs.

What mighty fortress will barbers build by day,

and wooden narwhals dismantle
by night?

Peaceful Children

 And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children.

3 Nephi 22:13

Peaceful children full of bliss,

taught though all the world's amiss

that the Lord remains steadfast

from the first to splendid last.

I was arrested for looking too happy

I was arrested for looking too happy.

I was fined for harboring a typewriter after curfew.

They persecute me because I won't dandruff.

My bank account is closed by the authorities

after I mispronounce Schweigert.

They refuse me bail on account of Mel Gibson.

Then my lawyer runs out of cream cheese.

The judge is growing chives on his bench.

A jury of my peers all look like Jerry Colonna

in a movie with Hugh Herbert.

I can't last much longer without a waiver.

They say jail food makes you look guilty.

I still have my friends, but they read the wrong newspaper.

I'm being followed by a gnat-waisted lint processor

on a moped.

I'll go quietly, but with a great deal of noise.

Will I be crucified just to satisfy someone's knitting?

My parole officer makes me eat raw kale.

Afterwards I make a living editing graffiti

inside brick kilns.

Most states protect senior ctizens in debt from losing their possessions. Why doesn't Utah?

Most states have a law that helps to protect elderly debtors from losing their most cherished possessions. Utah doesn't. A BYU grad who helps seniors deal with debt collectors wants to know why.

Deseret News

There was an old man from Lehi

who got into debt by and by.

The sheriff's tight net

took his TV set;

he's left with a wall, high and dry.

The 27 Turkeys

Dawdling along with the online New York Times today, I ran across this nifty Q & A snippet:

Q. It’s hot out. I plan to avoid turning on my oven for the rest of the summer. Yet you and your team are roasting turkeys. Why?

Thanksgiving is coming, and fast. We’ve got stories to investigate, recipes to develop, tables to set before people start coming to us to ask about what to cook this year and how.

A golden memory suddenly clattered into my consciousness with a sound like billiard balls being racked up. Thirty-some years ago, while attempting to raise a pack of wild savages with only the help of a single mate (polygamy having by then been restricted to the steaming interior of Borneo and the wave bruised shores of Patagonia), I had suddenly come into possession of 27 frozen turkeys. It was both a bonanza and a burden that challenged me as nothing ever has outside of the time I stuffed a dozen sticks of Bonomo's Turkish Taffy into my mouth on a dare from Wayne Matsuura when we were in fifth grade.

But unlike the taffy episode, I did not choke when it came to those 27 frozen Butterballs. Here's how the whole caper went down . . .

I was at the time employed by Fingerhut Telemarketing, supervising approximately one hundred distinctly louche phone hustlers in an office on Larpenteur Avenue. Amidst the din of raffish voices growling and hissing about bargains on pillow protectors ("Only nine-ninety-nine plus shipping and handling!") I was pummeling my brains one day, trying to come up with a way to feed my ever-growing brood while maintaining a parasitic mortgage on a crumbling hovel and springing for winter tires on the family chariot -- the current set of wheels had less traction than a jellied eel.

As I pondered my looming financial doom that December afternoon, the manager's door opened and an arm snaked out to beckon me inside with a curling index finger. I obeyed on the instant. The boss was seated at his desk and did not bother to invite me to sit down. Glancing up at me through a pair of glasses as thick as welding goggles, he brusquely informed me that a truck would be down at the loading bay in one hour. It was filled with frozen Butterball turkeys supplied by the generous chairman of Fingerhut, Ted Deikel, to distribute to all employees after their shift was ended at 9 p.m. My job was to inform the crew of their good fortune, then to lead them down to the loading dock and supervise the handout. Any surplus turkeys, said the boss, I could dispose of as I pleased -- since the truck driver had instructions to return the truck empty to the warehouse. 

I immediately sensed a potential windfall for me and mine. If there were a few extra turkeys left over, I would have Amy nip over in our van so we could nab them for our freezer. After kissing the ground in front of my boss and backing out of his office I snuck into the break room, where I phoned Amy. Game as always, she agreed to be the getaway driver if indeed I could 'boost' a few extra birds for our anemic pantry. 

Telemarketers, as a rule, are desperate characters with attenuated social skills and a conscience impervious to remorse. (I should know -- I used to be one.) That evening, after a few snarled "Thanks" and even a few sniveling "Bet these are grade B birds," I quickly counted the remaining turkeys -- there were exactly 27 of 'em. I told the driver to hold on just a few minutes, ran up to the break room to phone Amy, and as soon as she arrived, with the kids along in their pajamas, we piled the frozen loot in the back of the van. I ran back upstairs to turn off the lights and lock the door, then we headed home, gloating over our haul. 

Once home Amy and I carried the kids back to their beds; they were deep asleep (or pretended to be for the free ride.) Our backs already aflame with incipient sciatica, we then hustled the birds out of the van and onto several rickety shelves in the cold unheated garage. Each one weighed more than a bowling ball. 

"They'll stay froze in here, all right!" I chuckled as I swung the last turkey into place. But Amy had been watching the WCCO news that afternoon, and she delivered a body blow to my smug hopes.

"It's supposed to warm up starting this weekend -- temperatures in the forties and all the snow's gonna melt" she said.

 Drat! Those turkeys would keep us stuffed to the gills through a good part of the winter if they didn't spoil. I figured each one was good for at least three meals -- roasted and served on a platter; leftovers with dumplings; and then the remaining carcass simmered for a hearty noodle soup.

"Don't worry; you'll come up with some . . . kind of idea" Amy tried to comfort me -- but I had noted that pause, where she undoubtedly meant to add an adjective such as 'idiotic' but then thought better of it.

The next day, feeling refreshed and optimistic, I DID come up with an excellent idea. I would contact everyone we knew within a five mile radius who had a freezer, asking them for space to park a bird or two until we could use them. I got on the rotary phone and began to dial. Turns out that most of our so-called friends didn't have that kind of space in their freezers, or else boorishly demanded a turkey for themselves in return for storing two. Outraged at such effrontery, I turned them down flat. Nobody was getting a hold of any of MY precious Butterballs, not after Amy and I had slaved so hard to swipe them in the first place.

I won't say that Amy smirked at my idea's assured demise, but she certainly seemed more chipper than usual that morning as she went about preparing one of the turkeys for roasting and then mixing up a big batch of cornbread dressing. I wonder if Edison had to deal with that kind of thing when he was inventing the light bulb? 

But I had one final phone call to make, an ace in the hole. The bishop of our ward, out in Roseville, I knew, had a capacious chest freezer in his basement. But would he consent to having it hijacked by our gobblers -- and even then, would there be enough room for over twenty large Butterballs? Well, nothing ventured nothing gained -- I called him up, and lo and behold he consented to the proposal, without asking for a single turkey in return. He said he'd just emptied out the chest freezer the week before and didn't know what to fill it with now. Informing Amy of my triumph, I hastily reloaded all but four of the turkeys back into the van, my vertebrae audibly giving way as I labored, and had them safely tucked into the bishop's basement freezer in less time than it takes to polish a porcupine. 

And all that winter (a viciously interminable one, as I recall) the Torkildsons feasted on dark meat and white meat; we divvied up the 'Pope's nose' with great hilarity; and built a collection of wishbones rarely if ever seen before in the Western hemisphere. 

In fact we at last grew so weary of turkey that I never bothered to collect the last two or three from the bishop's freezer. For all I know they're still in there -- part of the permafrost, no doubt. Maybe I should call him up -- I still have his number -- and tell him if he doesn't want them to donate them to a local food pantry. 

Postcard to the President