So here I am. A stereotypical leftist, liberal (Dare I say woke?) Democrat, pushing 80 years old. And I've just came home from my first ever political rally. Where the hell was I during the 60s, when that was cool? I was complacent then. I had ultimate faith in the structure of our government and laws, and that the system would eventually prevail, and throw the bastards out. Also, if truth be known, I am more than a little bit of a coward. I was not comfortable presenting myself as a potential target for retaliation, either official, or otherwise.

But these are different times. Never before in my entire life have I actually feared that the United States was in real danger of losing its status as a democracy, and slipping into dictatorship. The very foundation of my existence is being pulled out from beneath my feet. I imagine that's how Americans, both Northern and Southern, must have felt when the Southern States seceded in 1860, or how Germans felt when Hitler seized control of their government in 1934. I have been supporting Democratic candidates for office monetarily for several years now, figuring I was doing my part. But coward or no, I reluctantly decided it was time to put boots on the ground.

Saturday, June 14 was National Flag Day. It was also Donald Trump's birthday, and he had decreed a military parade to take place in Washington on that day, conjuring images of similar demonstrations of power in Moscow, Beijing, and 1930's Berlin. To counter this, Act Blue and several other liberal organizations got together and proposed staging "No Kings Day" rallies on that day all over the country. In almost no time, almost 2,000 such demonstrations had been conceived and organized all around the country, in which over 5 million people participated. With more than a little trepidation, I decided to attend one of these events to be held in Morristown, my county seat. I called up old friends Ken and Pat Rolston, who live only a few miles from me, and asked if they wanted to join me. They said they had planned on taking part on their own, so at least I had some backup, and wouldn't be alone.

That was one factor that helped persuade me to take part. Another was that I knew I had the perfect design for a sign to carry. Back in 2016, when Trump was campaigning for his first term, and I was still on Facebook, (Haven't been for years, now.) I came up an idea for a meme to post. I knew it would take more graphic skills than I could muster, so I asked my friend Liz Pagan, a freelance graphic artist, to take my concept, and render it for me. The result was the image on the sign in the photo above, but without the red international "No" glyph. I still had the image file, and I did have sufficient graphic skills to superimpose that glyph. (I later realized that I had put the diagonal slash in the wrong direction, but it would have to suffice.) Fortunately, the image was of resolution high enough to blow up to poster size. I went down to Staples, and had them print it on foam-board. It was pretty pricey, but I figured, what the hell. In for a penny, in for 60 bucks. As it turned out, it was among the best and most professional looking signs I saw.

During the week before the rally, I was having second thoughts. Rain was predicted. Nearby parking would be nigh impossible. I was experiencing some odd pain in my right leg that would make walking difficult. Would I be allowed to wear a backpack where I could keep water and a rain poncho? Did I want images of myself carrying that sign posted on social media available for Trump's Gestapo to identify me via facial recognition software? Would there be violent counter-protesters to escalate the situation?

It was only late Friday afternoon when I made the decision to go. I would meet the Rolstons at their house, and we'd take the train together to Morristown, solving the parking issue. (It later turned out that there were numerous on-street parking spots we could have used on the walk from the station to the demonstration location at Morristown Town Hall.) As the morning wore on, I was feeling more and more comfortable. There were other demonstrators on the train with us. More joined us on the walk to Town Hall. (Only about half a mile, and the pain in my leg had faded.) Everything was non-violent, with no sign of counter-demonstrators. Even the rain turned out not to be an issue. It was a constant drizzle, which left my hat and flannel shirt damp, but did not soak me, and allowed the dampness to warm to body temperature, and cause me no discomfort.

The rally was well-planned. The whole event was not overlong; only 90 minutes, which was not tiring. Speeches were short, effective, and to the point. I didn't learn from them anything I did not know, but they were well-expressed, and uplifting. Although I couldn't see the podium from where I was standing, the sound system was good, and I could hear well, even with my diminished hearing. Any chants elicited from the speakers to the crowd were mercifully short. (Chanting the same three words over and over again bores me to tears.) According to an announcement from the podium, there were about 4,500 people in attendance. That seemed to me a touch over-optimistic, but not excessively so. In any event, it was not so crowded that one couldn't walk anywhere in the crowd without too much difficulty, or discommoding of others. There were about a dozen uniformed police on site, who, other than directing traffic around the closed-off street, just observed the event, which was enthusiastic, and completely non-violent.

During the rally, I left Ken and Pat a number of times to wander the crowd, both to see, and be seen. A lot of people asked me to stop so they could take a picture of me and my sign. (Facial recognition software be damned!) I took a lot of photos of signs I thought were well-conceived. I encountered a number of people I knew. I stopped by a number of policemen and thanked them for doing their job the way they were supposed to. Those remarks were greeted with smiles and thanks in return.

Among the speakers was Mikie Sherrill, my Congresswoman, whom I like very much, and who just this week won the primary election for Democratic candidate for Governor. A surprise speaker was Christie Todd Whitman, a Republican ex-governor of New Jersey. Another was Tom Malinowski, a Polish-born naturalized citizen, who later became a holder of several positions in the Obama administration, and a congressman from New Jersey. He led the crowd in the Oath of Citizenship that he took when he became a citizen, which he said was very similar to the Oath of Office he took as Congressman. (An obvious dig at the current President who has repeatedly and flagrantly violated his own Oath of Office.) The last speaker was a big, and very pleasant surprise. Miles Gorman, a senior in Morristown High School, deilvered a speech that was intelligent, literate, extremely moving, and well beyond his years, both in its text and delivery. He ended by asking any young people in the crowd to come up to the podium, and be recognized as model citizens. If that kid ever goes into politics, he will go far.

All in all, it was a very positive experience for me. I'm glad I did it, and may do so again. If you've been hanging out on the sidelines, watching these events on the news, I would recommend you get off your duff and do it yourselves if the opportunity presents itself. It may seem only a drop in the bucket, but many drops will fill the bucket.

Below, in no particular order, are some photos I took at the rally. Click on any photo for a full-screen blow-up to read the signs. (More effective on a computer monitor than on a phone.) Some of those signs are clever. Some are powerful. Some are both.

This morning, I got an email from a friend, saying, "Hey Mike, you made the big time!" and pointed me to an article about Saturday's rally in Morristown Green, a local online news blog for the Morris County area. Sure enough, there was a photo of me with my sign. I asked the publisher, Kevin Coughlin if he would give me permission to use that photo in my Blog, as well as a photo of Miles Gorman, the closing speaker of the event. (I wasn't close enough to the podium to take a photo of Mr. Gorman during his speech). He graciously agreed. Many thanks to Morristown Green.

I went to visit my sweetie, Jenny in Vermont over the Memorial Day holiday. It was a lovely long weekend. On Saturday we went to see a performance by the New England College of Circus Arts. (Trapeze, ropes, tumbling, clowning, etc.) Sunday, we saw a series of six original 1-act plays by a local theater group, three of which were surprisingly good. (And three others, not so good.) And Monday we went to a pub sing in New Hampshire, where I gave a performance set preceding the group singing that followed. And then we capped off the evening at a contra dance.

Sunday evening, Jenny made dinner for the two of us and we had an uninvited guest at the table. See photo above.

Dear Senator / Congressman / Congresswoman XXXX
You and I are witnessing the end of 250 years of American democracy and rule of law.  And you, in your support of Donald Trump, are complicit in this disgrace.  The world saw it in Germany in 1933.  And we all know how it turned out for Germany, and for the rest of the world from 1941 to 1945.  Do you want your name to be recorded in the history books as one of the perpetrators of this catastrophe?  You, as a Republican Senator / Congressperson of the United States, have it within your power to put a stop to this.  In your heart, you know it.

You are concerned that Trump will raise a primary against you in your next election. You have more to worry about than a primary. You will have the election itself to worry about when your constituents reject what the Republican party has become.  Do you have the courage to put our country ahead of your own political gain (ephemeral though that may be) and stand up to this would-be despot?  Life is short.  Infamy is long.  Which side are you on?

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I'm hearing a lot in the news these days about the rise of Antisemitism in the United States, as well as in the rest of the Western world.  Of course, the very concept of Antisemitism is abhorrent to me, as are all other forms of racial or ethnic hate.  But we must be very careful to differentiate between speech, thoughts, and actions against Judaism, and those in opposition to the State of Israel.  What the State of Israel in general, and Prime Minister Netanyahu in particular has been doing in Gaza and the Palestinian territories over the past several years has nothing whatsoever to do with Judaism, and is enough to make me ashamed of my own Jewish heritage.

I was born to non-practicing Jewish parents, and grew up in Inwood, an upper Manhattan neighborhood that was at the time equally inhabited by Jews and Catholics.  (I must have been well into my early teens before I realized that “Catholic” was not synonymous with “Christian”.)  My father was an immigrant from the Ural Mountain region of Russia, who got out in his late teens along with his family. to avoid antisemitic persecution by the Soviets. And my mother was in a long line of several generations of Brooklyn Jews.  I, myself, am a devout atheist, and have been as long as I can remember.  I remember even as early as elementary school, declining to stay home on the Jewish holidays, reasoning that we were excused from school (NYC Public School system) in order that we might attend services, so that didn't apply to me.  I remember having a wonderful time playing games, and socializing with all my Catholic friends in half-empty classrooms, where no real teaching was done, the teachers knowing that they’d have to make it all up anyway the next day when the Jewish kids came back.

But what is being done by Israel to the Palestinian people is appalling.  Have we lost our memory?  Have we forgotten Hitler’s "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Problem"?  Israel is perpetrating its very own Holocaust in Gaza.  The refugee camps there are its very own versions of Auschwitz and Dachau.  Tthe Jewish “Settlements” are Israel’s very own Lebensraum.  None of this has anything to do with Judaism, and everything to do with colonialism, ethnic cleansing and genocide.  Where in the Scriptures does it say we should deny food, water, and medicine to a starving, thirsty, and injured people?  What verse of the Torah might suggest it’s OK to rain artillery shells upon 100 innocent people in order to kill the half dozen terrorists hiding amongst them? 

And what appalls me even more is that my own country is complicit in this shame.  It is our artillery shells and our rockets, and bombs and drones that Israel is inflicting on these poor people.  If we want to give Israel any weapons, I’m fine with Patriot anti-missile systems or other defensive weaponry.  But not a single bomb or airplane or tank or bullet for offensive action.  Hamas is indeed a terrorist organization, and Israel has a right to defend itself.  But as things stand now, Israel's terrorism is ten times that of Hamas, and so is that of the United States in its support of Israel.  And that assertion is not Antisemitism.  It is anti-terrorism.

Back in the '90s, Jenny had introduced me to Virgin Gorda, a tiny island in the British Virgin Islands I have very fond memories of it. We had stayed in a resort called Guavaberry Spring Bay, where we had a one-room bungalow of our own, a 5-minute walk from the resort's private beach. It was also a 15-minute walk from town where we would do our food shopping and occasional restaurant meal. If we wanted to explore the island, there was a rental car outfit called Mahogany Car Rentals that would either serve as a taxi or drop a car off at our door for a daily rental.

I loved the place. We paid it another visit in 2006, and I thought it was time we went back. Jenny agreed, and so we made our plans. The resultant trip was just as lovely, but with a couple of disasters thrown in at the very beginning and the very end of the trip just to keep things from being too perfect. Click the photo above for the story, the photos, and the videos.