Ben Douglass Digest

When Abigail the cat first came into Jerry's life from the no-kill shelter, she was a troubled child who had been brought back to the shelter from folks who didn't want to deal with her. Her past was marked by abandonment and rejection, leaving her wary of human affection and trust. Jerry picked her for this reason. Jerry and Abigail bonded over time. Despite her troubled beginnings, Jerry saw in her a spark of potential, a glimmer of hope that could transform her life The early days with Abigail were not easy. She was a biter and scratcher in her youth, expressing her fear and confusion through aggression. Jerry had the marks to prove it, but he never gave up on her. He understood that her behavior was a cry for help, a manifestation of her unresolved trauma. With patience and persistence, Jerry worked to gain her trust, a process that required not only physical healing but emotional growth as well. Jerry's approach was one of unconditional love and unwavering commitment. ...

 Go ahead: Shop until you drop! Sit in Starbucks slurping coffee! Turn off the news! Don't get involved! Pray without any follow up action! Accept the inevitable! Be silent! Sleepwalk into The ABYSS that is coming For us all...

 Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany. Vintage Books: NY. Copyright 1974. Unabridged Edition. 801 Pages. From the back cover: Perhaps one of the most profound and bestselling science fiction novels of all time, the author has produced a story to stand with the best American fiction. Bellona is a city at the dead center of the United States. Something has happened there... The population has fled. Madmen and criminals wander the streets. Strange portents appear in the cloud-covered sky. Into this disaster zone comes a young man - poet, lover, and adventurer - known only as the Kid. Tackling questions of race, gender, and se4xuality, Dhalgren is a literary marvel and groundbreaking work of American magical realism. From the Libertarian Review: "A Joycean tour de force of a novel, Dhalgren...stakes a better claim than anything else published in this country in the last quarter-century (excepting only Gass's Omensetter's Luck and Nabokov's Pale Fire ) to a permanent place as one...

 A special guest speaks about language and authoritarianism (Ruth-Ben-Ghiat): SEE ARTICLE HERE

"And none of Trump's actions since January 20th have surprised me. He is the most "honest" President we've had in our lifetime. He has announced over and over what he was going to do should the American people let him back into the White House. He is transparency on steroids." Michael Moore Filmmaker There were two kinds of people that put Trump back in power: 1. Those who said, "I can't wait for him to shut down the FBI, CIA, exit NATO, exit WHO, defund the UN, the Deep State, the Dept. of Education, ban transgender people from power, make Christianity the national religion, get rid of all black & brown immigrate people at all costs, prohibit all Muslims from entering the country, dump DEI, go after the liberal elite, abolish liberal medias, abolish public schools, etc., etc., etc., etc." 2. Those apologists who proclaimed loudly, "Everybody just calm down, he's just blowing smoke out of his ass. It's all rhetoric. There's...

  "Remember, most poets live very ordinary lives. Yes, now and again you write a poem, and perhaps six, eight, or ten, or twelve times in your life if you're lucky, you collect them into a book and then there'll be worries about acceptance and rejection - what an editor will think - galleys to go over for errors, and finally presentation copies to give your friends - even some reviews, and maybe some readings, or a guest appearance, such as this one. But for every one of those, there are hundreds - there are thousands - of nights when you go to bed and lie there, once more, thinking about things you'll never remember in the morning, and hundreds - thousands - of mornings when you'll get up, still tired, and put up a pot of coffee and wait for it to drip through and decide it was silly not to have washed those dishes last night because you have to do it now. That's what poets do. That's what their lives are like..." Page 34 Dark Reflections by Samuel R....