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During the Republican primary race last year I was always of the persuasion that our Ohio governor John Kasich was the best of the bunch by far.  But amidst all the gas-bagging that went down during that primary, especially by the loudest and foulest gas-bagger of them all,  ...John Kasich's voice was, unfortunately, never really heard. Still Candidate John Kasich managed to succeed, where all the other Republican primary candidates failed, to compete with Donald Trump without once selling his soul or having his soul sucked out of him, without sacrificing his dignity or integrity or having his reputation splattered with the mud that stains virtually everyone who comes anywhere near Donald Trump's orbit. And though he may have lost his chance at the Presidency, John Kasich has found his voice since, speaking out freely and fearlessly against the injustices and wrong-headed policies promoted by the man who is not only the most powerful man in Kasich's own party, but, in truth, the most powerful man in the world. This John Kasich did several days ago when he spoke out strongly and passionately against Donald Trump's plan to end DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama Administration's policy allowing certain illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children - "Dreamers," as these children are called - to receive a deferment from deportation and eligibility for a work permit. "Think about this, " said Kasich Tuesday on CBS This Morning, "this is the United States of America and we're putting kids, young people, who are contributors, in jeopardy. This is not the America that we all love!" Calling it "a simple moral issue" Kasich took the part of the 800,00 young people who are now in danger of being uprooted from the only life they've ever known to be deported to a country foreign to them. "They ought to have permanent resident status, they ought to be able to stay here," Kasich said of these young people, who've grown up here, work here, pay taxes here and are American in every sense of the word,  ...adding that Congress should be able to settle this issue for the Dreamers now, in six hours, not six months from now. Kasich then invited all Dreamers to come to Ohio where, he says, they will be welcomed. "We want all the immigrants to come to Ohio 'cause we know how much they contribute to America!" Here's the link. Watch it for yourself. See you're not moved: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kasich-calls-on-reasonable-republicans-and-democrats-to-solve-daca/ I'll admit there have been times when I haven't loved our Governor. But today I do. References http://www.dispatch.com/news/20170906/kasich-says-dreamers-are-welcome-in-ohio https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kasich-calls-on-reasonable-republicans-and-democrats-to-solve-daca/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_Action_for_Childhood_Arrivals I will be hosting the Authors & Wiɇnṋers Open Mic/Book Signing at Dirty Frank's, 2836 W. Broad St, Columbus, OH, on September 24, 2017 from 11am - 1pm.
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 The day before yesterday while scrolling down my Facebook page I came across the above photograph, haunting and beautiful, taken by Alisa Looney, a Portland, Oregon, artist,  ...who is a good friend of my sister, Romaine.  I was captivated by the picture and, thinking the script written above it was a little commentary on the provenance of the photo (which it was), I read only the first sentence, "Orange moon in Portland," without reading the rest. I likewise didn't read any of the comments but just left a comment of my own: "Pretty." A little while later I checked my phone to see that I had a voice message from Romaine asking me if I knew what was going on in Portland. I didn't, so I immediately called her to find out. She told me that at that moment outside her window the skies were dark and ash was falling from the skies like black snow flakes. Inside her house the air was hazy from the ash that had seeped in and was settling onto everything. Outside the temperature was 90 degrees, though the sunshine couldn't break through the layer of ash overlaying the sky. A photo of the mid-day sun behind the Portland Convention Center.  Portland was suffering, and continues to suffer, the effects of the Eagle Creek Wildfire, which sparked to life last Saturday in the Columbia River Gorge 30 miles east of Portland and has turned a scenic natural wonder,  ...into an inferno,  ...into an inferno that has destroyed forests, homes and structures along the Gorge,   ...and has forced the evacuations of hundreds of homes, the flames even jumping the Columbia River into Washington.  It is believed that a 15-year-old visiting the area with a group of friends last Saturday threw a firecracker into the Gorge, which set off flames on the dry wood of the drought-stricken trees. He and his friends posted the prank online. The fire has been creeping west towards Portland and has caused the closure of Interstate 84 between the Columbia River Gorge and the city. It is believed that, though beneficial wind conditions and a good rain could come along to help contain the fire's reach, The Eagle Creek Wildfire will continue to burn at least until the end of the month with little firefighters can do to contain it in its immensity.
 ....while I think of my sister and pray for a miracle that could blow a hurricane 3,500 miles northwest. References: http://www.oregonlive.com/wildfires/index.ssf/2017/09/eagle_creek_fire_rages_in_colu.html https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/09/06/eagle-creek-oregon-fire/636282001/ http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/06/us/oregon-fire-teenager/index.html If you loved it, share it!
 Dear Future Cyberarchivist who, while sifting through ancient internet postings from bygone centuries in search of history, has come across this blog chronicling the events and observations of a typical day-to-day life in the first quarter of the 21st Century AD: On August 25, 2017, about a week and a half ago from when I write this, a terrible natural disaster hit our planet in the form a monster hurricane that we named Hurricane Harvey. Though Hurricane Harvey was born days earlier as a tropical storm that had been sweeping its way northward through the smaller seas of the Atlantic Ocean, it swelled into the destructive behemoth it was to become only after it hit land on the the eastern coast of Texas, a state on the southwestern coast of the country where I live, a country known at this time as the United States of America. Unlike typical hurricanes that ferociously blow their way across land areas, weakening in energy and force as they travel until they finally dissipate into the atmosphere, Harvey rather blustered along the eastern Texas seaboard until it arrived above the city of Houston where it stalled and sluggishly churned for several days, in a short time dumping almost 50 inches of rain over the city. Houston, a city of almost 2 1/2 million people but with over 5 1/2/ million living in its metropolitan area, is at this time the 4th largest city in the United States. The devastation inflicted upon Houston and its environs, as well as upon the cities that it hit hard before and after Houston,  ...has been un-speakable.         
      But the hearts of our nation went out to the victims of Hurricane Harvey, and there was a compassionate outpouring from all over the country of aid, money and countless volunteers into the afflicted areas,        ...people opened their homes to strangers in distress, ...and small boat owners from all over the area contiguous seacoast states, who became known as the Cajun Navy, arrived with their boats to rescue stranded victims of the hurricane's flood.    It was a moment in time when we joined together as a nation in our care, concern, prayers and help for the victims of Hurricane Harvey, 
 And yet alongside the suffering and rush of efforts to bring its alleviation, arose some grand ironies. Five years earlier a devastating hurricane called Hurricane Sandy had hit the coastline of the state of New Jersey, and at that time a self-important senator from Texas named Ted Cruz voted to deny government aid to the people of New Jersey whose lives had been devastated by Hurricane Sandy. Now it is he who must turn his fellow senators, including those from New Jersey whose pleas he denied, for aid for the people of his state.  The current elected leader of our country - though many say not fairly elected, as our country's election law contains a strange twist which does not necessarily hand election victory to the candidate who wins the most votes, as this man did not, his opponent having actually received 3 million more votes than he did - is a vile, inept billionaire named Donald Trump, and I wish it to go down in history that I was among those who stood against this man from the start.  A bigot who has given succor to those low-lifes who embrace a hateful ethos of white supremacy that is currently infecting our nation, Donald Trump's platform has been to insult Mexico, the neighboring country to the south of our Texas border, to call Mexicans bad people, and to rid our country without exception of all undocumented Mexican immigrants, even those who were brought to this country as babies. Donald Trump has promised to build a massive, 2,000-mile, 15 billion dollar wall between the United States and Mexico. And yet in response to Hurricane Harvey's devastation the Mexican government has been sending food, boats, vehicles and other aid to help the people of Texas, and has offered continued aid, which the Governor of Texas has gratefully accepted. No thank you from Donald Trump has yet been extended to Mexico. Other ironies will play out as this cataclysmic event goes down in history, among them one irony having to do with Texans' historical hostility towards the Federal government whose aid they now desperately need , another rising from former animosity towards undocumented immigrants, every one of whom will now be needed to help rebuild this devastated state. It is hypothesized that the destruction wreaked upon one of this country's largest population centers, including the residual damage to infrastructure, diminished production of Texas's oil, which the whole nation depends upon, and the region's need for probably 150 billion dollars in government aid, could change the whole political landscape of the United States. And even as I write this another new hurricane called Hurricane Irma is threatening another round of devastation, this time to Florida, a state along our country's southeastern seaboard. Whether these natural disasters our country is now suffering change us for the better, worse, or not at all is something that we here in the United States in 2017 cannot know. Only you, unknown archivist of the future, do. References:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/24/us/hurricane-harvey-texas.html?mcubz=1 https://news.vice.com/story/mexico-is-sending-aid-to-texas-even-as-trump-insults-them https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/us/texas-storm-federal-aid-abbott-cruz.html?mcubz=1&_r=0 ...Continued fro yesterday: Here are some things that I didn't know about Florida before my visit: 1. There's water, water, everywhere, not just along the island-ringed seacoast, but inland, as well. 2. Florida is a big sponge with water seeping out of the sponge-holes. 3. Any body, large or small, of fresh water in Florida is fair game for alligators. 4. Alligators are not aggressive and will not bother you if you don't bother them. But this I did not believe. Hence everywhere we walked around the island of Lido Key I thought I saw an alligator.
 ...this was a little island of brush, 
 ...this a dolphin statue, 
 In truth, the only actual alligator I saw on the island was this one at the Mote Marine Aquarium (see yesterday's post),  ...whom I strongly sensed was trying to think of a way to get out of that pen and get me. 5. Above the beautiful Florida palms float the most magnificent clouds I've ever seen. So I developed a dual-Florida obsession, of which I couldn't stop snapping pictures:
    
       Too bad the place is crawling with alligators. 6. If you'd like to see some nice statues, some good statues that don't carry any more weight than the stone they're made of, come to St. Armands Circle, the island center within the island of Lido Key (See post from 8/29/2017). St. Armands is Statue Central.  
   
  
 ...which is maybe what all the statues we erect really are doing anyway.    ...Continued from yesterday: The rain started early Friday evening and continued to pour down in subtropical torrents all night long. I swore I heard ducks quacking in the middle of the night - presumably having a field day in the lake I imagined the yard of the Beau Lido must have turned into - but I think now maybe I was just hearing some noisy sea gulls. As the storm was predicted to continue straight through the night into the next day until 1 pm, Romaine and I feared on Friday night that by morning the streets would be flooded and that with the rain still pouring down we wouldn't be able to get out and get to some breakfast and would have to ration the meager remains of my emergency stash of juju fish and pretzels (see yesterday' post), one fish and pretzel at a time. But, miraculously, by 7 am on Saturday morning the rain had stopped and when I opened the door of our bungalow I saw wet sidewalks and grass, but no small rivers or lakes. In fact the sun was even beginning to make a pale showing, So, the weather now looking promising, we decided, this being our last day, to drive into downtown Sarasota and spend the day walking around and seeing what there was to see and do there. We discovered that there was a First Watch - one of my favorite breakfast eateries - I love the avocado toast - in downtown Sarasota, so, Romaine never having been to a First Watch, I declared that she must experience a First Watch breakfast. We arrived downtown,  
 ...and had no sooner sat down than the rain returned in buckets.    But we were indoors and dry and so we figured we'd just wait out the rain over breakfast. Romaine had the Eggs Benedict Florentine,  ...while I had my favorite, Avocado Toast.  We finished breakfast, then sat around as long as we thought it was acceptable to take up a restaurant table.  But when the place had filled to the point where people were waiting for a table we figured it was time to leave. So we made a dash for the car,  ...then recalibrated our plans for spending the day downtown, and decided rather to return to Lido Key,  
  The aquarium was filled with fascinating aquatic life,    
  ...who crowded excitedly around one of the tanks to see "Nemo" and "Dory."   By the time we left the aquarium the rain had stopped so we decided to return to St. Armands, the island-within-the island town circle of Lido Key,  ...where we found another great lunch spot, this one, we decided,, our favorite so far, another Caribbean-style restaurant called ChaCha Coconuts.   
 ...followed by the Ahi-Ahi Tuna Salad with Wasabi dressing, which Romaine declared awesome,  ...and for me the Ahi Ahi sandwich, also with Wasabi dressing on the side and also awesome (Note to self: if you ever return, order the exact same thing!).  Though the sun had come out while we were eating lunch, 
 So after lunch we again made a rain-run to the car and returned to the Beau Lido to spend the rest of the afternoon sitting around, packing, watching TV, and hanging with our little anole friends, as a Facebook friend informed me that these ubiquitous little Lido Key lizards are called.  By dinner time the rain had once again let up, so we decided, for a change of scenery, to check out a neighboring island, Siesta Key, a cute but touristy-looking spot,   ...where we found a really good Italian restaurant called Napoli's.  
 ...and Romaine had spaghetti with shrimp, also delicious.  Mine was so good that when I heard another customer asking a server what was good on the menu, I called over that mine was really good. The customer then ordered what I had, and was likewise pleased with her choice. Alas, during dinner the rain began to pour down again,  ...so once again we ended up making a soggy trek from restaurant to car then, back at the Beau Lido Lido from car to bungalow for our last night at the Beau Lido. But rain, sun, or moon, it was all so good.  
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"Tropical Depression"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTPN7NYY 
"Equal And Opposite Reactions"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa or from The Book Loft of German Village, Columbus, Ohio 
Or check it out at the Columbus Metropolitan Library
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