Dreams

A couple of cat dreams last night.

First, I am out front, and one of the cats is with me. (I'm not really sure whether it's Ash or Sammy). There's a tree nearby, and it is heavily laden with snakes, about a dozen of them, hanging on the branches. My cat cannot resist a tree, though. Despite going up to the trunk of the tree, the cat is able to rush back out, as a couple of snakes snap at him missing their target. I rush up to the cat and pick him up in my arms and rush back toward the house, witih the snakes slithering after us. Things get odd here. There is a distinct borderline, like a tape or string, and once I have crossed it with the cat, I know we are safe, as the snakes turn back toward the tree. Mother is nearby, and I ask here, "What is it about that line that keeps the snakes back?" She comes to us and is glad to see that we are okay, but she only shakes her head at the question and turns away.

Coco is in the second dream. I have let the two gray cats out. When I see Coco, I hurriedly let her out, so that she can catch up to them, and she rushes out of the yard. I step out back myself, and I see that Ash and Sammy are actually still in the back yard. They were out of sight in the cat-bin. I try to rush them along, so that they can catch up with Coco. When I turn, I see that Coco has come back into the yard, and all the cats are together - perhaps more than the three! Coco is at the front standing tall and stretching upward. She is happy, and that makes me happy. That's what I wanted so badly. You want your loved ones to be happy.

I cannot help thinking that I gave the best of my life to a couple of dogs and a few cats. I don't see how I can be proud of that. I suppose I must be satisfied that at least I loved in some way. Nobody was really interested in anything I had to offer.

Sunday

George Washington Plunkitt: “When I go among [the people], I don’t try to show off my grammar, or talk about the Constitution, or how many volts there is in electricity or make it appear in any way that I am better educated than they are. They wouldn’t stand for that sort of thing. No; I drop all monkeyshines.” ... Plunkitt was a political boss in the infamous days of Tammany Hall. This is an article inspired by the promise of new levels of corruption in the upcoming Trump administration. Plunkitt apparently had the same easygoing philosophy on the relationship between business and government that Trump is suggesting. Plunkitt called it "honest graft": there's nothing wrong in enriching yourself so long as you are minding the people's affairs well enough. [The Atlantic] ... ... Arthur Schopenhauer, "The World as Will and Representation": "The purpose of this highest poetical achievement [that is, tragedy] is the description of the terrible side of life. The unspeakable pain, the wretchedness and misery of mankind, the triumph of wickedness, the scornful mastery of chance, and the irretrievable fall of the just and the innocent are all here presented to us; and here is to be found a significant hint as to the nature of the world and of existence." ... ... Coming out of my afternoon nap with a little Internet browsing, I was having an especially hard time shaking off the grogginess. It felt a lot like the after-dinner sort of grogginess that tells me my day is ended. Then I realized that maybe what I need is a little physical activity, if one can imagine my trying such a drastic remedy. I stepped out into the overcast outdoors for a few minutes, walking about the font yard, stretching and doing a couple of isometric exercises. A miracle was not wrought by this little effort, but it helped me enough - cleared my head considerably and got the blood flowing more freely. I began wondering whether I should try to resume my old walks to the duck pond. However, I still don't think I can wear regular shoes, and I am doubtful of the wisdom of taking a good walk in loose crocs. Maybe a little fresh air and some stretching is enough.

Steve Bannon

An interesting article on Steve Bannon, the alt-right bad boy that ran Breitbart and is now Trump's right-hand man in the Oval Office. Apparently he was a real heavy-duty overachiever in his youth, wowing everyone with his intellect and wit. It is suggested that he did not then show any of this right-wing fire back then. Oh, he was a conservative, respected wealth and business, but there was no anti-Semitism or racism. There is perhaps some difference of opinion about his possibly being a bit overbearing with women. This excerpt speaks of his old classmates' reactions at a recent class reunion.

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Several of his fellow students are shocked at the comments they now see attributed to Bannon, and those that come out on Breitbart, the conservative website that he runs. A May 2016 article called Bill Kristol, a longtime Republican and Weekly Standard editor, a “renegade Jew.” In July, an article said that if women did not want to be harassed online, they should log off.

Women, the article said, are “screwing up the Internet for men by invading every space we have online and ruining it with attention-seeking and a needy, demanding, touchy-feely form of modern feminism.”

“We call ourselves ‘the Fight Club.’ You don’t come to us for warm and fuzzy,” Bannon told The Washington Post in January. “We think of ourselves as virulently antiestablishment, particularly ‘anti’ the permanent political class. We say Paul Ryan was grown in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation.”

-- Matt Viser at The Boston Globe

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