June 4, 2026

The worst of the jet lag has beaten back, the work backlogs have been cleared, and now I can turn my attention to various pieces of life that were placed on hold three weeks ago so that I could cavort through various cultural capitals. The rearrangement and decluttering project here at home remains somewhat stalled and there are boxes and bins overflowing, but I at least have them confined to two rooms. Once I get some stuff out of the storage space that is leaving for new homes, there can be a general shift and I can make some progress there. I have broken out my notes on The Tempest. I have about two weeks to find a cast. I have commitments from about 2/3 of the people I need but I have no one on the radar screen for a few key roles. If you’ve ever wanted to dip your toe into Shakespeare in a safe environment, now’s your chance. Drop me a line and let me know you are interested. The third big issue I have to work on is my legal case side business. There’s a couple of attorneys breathing down my neck looking for some record review. That may be this weekend’s major project. I’m trying to decide if I’m going to keep that particular sideline going in retirement or if I’m going to hang up a ‘Gone Fishing’ sign on that as well.

Of course, being back in the good ol’ USA means I’m back in the middle of our broken political system. Here, in Alabama, we’re in the middle of the Supreme Court’s distressing Callais decision where the redistricting maps they demanded in 2023 under the Voting Rights Act were scuttled three years later. Now I know Ralph Waldo Emerson stated that foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds but I’ve always taken the operative word in that sentence to be foolish and that certainly seems to be the case with the current Supremes. To my Black friends who have been fighting these battles for generations: please tell me what you need me to do to help you the most. My soapbox isn’t particularly large but it is at your disposal if there’s something that would be useful.

In terms of my community, recent polls show a significant eroding of attitudes toward LGBTQ rights over the last year or so with us backsliding to where we were a decade ago. It’s not equally distributed. It’s essentially all concentrated among registered Republicans and it’s such a major decline there that it is affecting the national numbers. Those of you who continue to support and finance the Republican party in its current form are taking actions that lead to policies that can cause me direct harm. I am taking notice and I have a very good and a very long memory. It is pride month this month. I usually turn up at at least some of the local celebrations as its important for the young folk to see those of us who have survived and have the battle scars to prove it. My generation endured a hell of a lot to allow younger generations to flourish and I am not going to sit quietly and watch it all get taken away. Every week, the rhetoric edges closer and closer to something along the lines of those with LGBTQ identities should not be allowed to exist in the new MAGA envisioned America. This rhetoric of depersonalization is extremely dangerous and just another step on the road to genocide. Don’t think it can’t happen here. It very much can.

The President’s attempts to remake the capital over in his image (gilded and tasteless) is finally hitting a few snags in the court system. Anything built can be torn down. Anything torn down can be rebuilt. Anything uprooted can be replanted. It takes time and resources, but it can be done. The ridiculous arena on the South Lawn which is due to be used next weekend is hopefully a temporary structure, but even if that’s left up for awhile by Presidential fiat, it can come down again. I read somewhere that GWMs (Gays with Money) are busy buying up all the tickets and are planning on turning the audience into a big old glitter bomb drag enhanced pride party. I hope it’s true.

Then we have the issue of more and more positions of importance being turned over to sycophants and idealogues. Our new attorney general continues to make the DOJ a weapon against the President’s personal enemies list. The new head of Homeland Security is a Dominionist of the worst stripe who seems to think shutting down air travel and cargo in a move of political gamesmanship is a really neat idea. (If that were implemented, the very wealthy who really run things would likely bounce him back to Oklahoma post haste but these days, who knows?) The announced nominee for Director of National Intelligence has no intelligence experience.

Then there’s the reclassification of most senior government positions which have carefully been insulated from partisan politics over generations to allow for continued governmental function no matter who winds the election to at will so that the administration can pretty much fire anyone who is not a sycophant or an idealogue and replace them with people that are. This goes along with the decimation of science, research, environmental regulation, and various attempts to rewrite history so that it fits the ideology that White America never did anything wrong. The Julio-Claudians tried to rewrite Roman history. The Tudors tried to rewrite English history. Stalin tried to rewrite Russian history. It never works. Truth will out.

Having to process all of this is playing havoc with the endorphins engendered by my recent travels. I think I need to make myself a Limoncello spritz and sit on the terrace and watch the sun set.