Obscured from local memory,
The chain of recollection broken
By the passage of years unknowable
In magnitude,
Songs once sung by singers
Of feats of greatness
And grace and
Triumph and tears
Shed under a younger sun
In a different time, now
Lay silent, forgotten
By men too busy
Scripting their own
Stories to hear
The murmurs of those
Old Ones
Who now whisper their wisdom
To the wind.
Tim Konrad
December 23, 2020
Piecing things together
Has always been something of an interest of mine.
Sussing out a piece here, a portion there
Trying to figure how the different bits
Fit into the whole,
How they all combine,
Finding out what it will look like
Once all the parts are joined together,
The big picture,
The one that can only be seen clearly
From afar,
From the outside.
The parts have their stories, too.
But they reveal their secrets
Only to those who observe closely enough
To make acquaintance, gain familiarity.
And oh, the stories they can tell!
But what they cannot tell you
Is what resides in the heart’s
Of those other pieces lying outside
Their orbits, or their stories,
Their contributions to the puzzle.
They have their tales to tell also
And they all differ,
One from the next,
Like all things.
And yet
They all combine—
These disjointed pieces–
Like notes in a chord,
Consonant, concordant,
And setting aside, for the moment
Their own concerns
To make meanings beyond the ken
Of any one of them alone,
They join as a chorus of one
To sing their truths freely
For anyone with an ear, and the mind
To hear them.
Tim Konrad
December 8, 2020
Those who advocate anti-masking, in word or deed, are engaged in an essentially selfish and decidedly anti-social endeavor that says to the world, plain and simple, “my concerns are so important that the concerns of others do not matter to me.”
The same can be said, for the same reason, about people who subscribe to the anti-vaxxing agenda. Vaccination campaigns are most effective the more people participate in them. Anyone who doubts this need only look to the success of the mass application of the polio vaccine to school children in the middle of the 20th century, credited for the almost total elimination of that disease.
Vaccines are designed for the common good; those who eschew them are saying, once again, that their concerns supersede the concerns of their friends and neighbors—a decidedly un-neighborly position to take, and one that, if held by a sufficient number of people, can only work to subvert the effectiveness of vaccines in stopping the spread of Covid-19.
If and when we reach that point, the real question will likely be “when do the needs of the many override the needs of the few?”
With regard to masking, we really should be asking that question now. Perhaps a re-examination of the idea behind the law of “eminent domain” is in order.
Tim Konrad
December 7, 2020
We must never forget Pearl Harbor!
What those Republican Senator and congressmen—who will not, even now, denounce the president’s efforts to overturn the results of the election—are showing us by refusing to acknowledge that Joe Biden was the winner is that they are prioritizing their personal needs, like that of job security, over duty to country.
In reality, their actions amount to nothing short of a betrayal of their oath of office, as well as a severing of the bonds of trust that previously existed between them and those they were elected to serve.
Furthermore, the failure of these public officials to defend the constitution from assault means that they are complicit in that very assault and yet, their refusal to acknowledge the truth of their leader’s calumny only serves to encourage those in thrall to this man—arguably the gravest threat to the democracy he purports to protect—to drift even further from reality in their hopes, dreams and expectations.
The ironies abound!
As does the tragedy!
Tim Konrad
December 6; 2020
It’s not at all funny
The way 2020
With all of its strife
Has scrambled my life
And those of my brothers
And sisters and others
Who’ve all felt the weight
Of this season’s dark fate.
Amidst all of this grief
We could use some relief!
The troubles, compounding,
Have all been astounding;
We soon may be rounding
A curve. Oh, the nerve
Of that bastard from Queens!
Would that I had the means
To make him account,
In total amount,
For the lies that he’s spun
And the damage he’s done
To our country! I pray
They’ll soon send him away
On judicial assignment
To a place of confinement
to remain there, forsaken,
his privileges taken,
his schemes all upended
His twitter suspended
His impulses throttled
His awfulness bottled
To set an example
For those who would trample
And trash, while profaning
And otherwise staining
All law, rule and precedent;
The only just settlement!
Let’s dispel the illusion
And end this confusion
Surrounding the notion
That the bilious potion
This man has been pushing
We shouldn’t be shushing.
When thousands are dying
We ought be decrying
The facts of his lying.
We should not be shying
From pointing out boldly
The ways that he coldly
Encourages acts
In the absence of facts
That lead to defiance
In place of compliance
While confirming suspicions
Of people whose mission’s
To alter reality;
Never mind the lethality
Or the certain finality
Of those who fall victim
To such a dark dictum!
The direful modality,
The casual brutality
Of the unsound opinions
He beams to his minions
Will escape their inspection
And enhance their rejection
Of anything factual
Until there’s an actual
Injection of reason
To address all his treason.
To pierce the defenses
And lower the fences
That promote disagreeing
And prevent us from seeing
The path we must travel
If we’re to unravel
The mass contradictions
And overgrown fictions
That have clouded our vision
Will require a decision
To look beyond grievance
And foster perceivance
By those disaffected
Of how we’re connected
And learn to be sighted
In the ways we’re united.
Only then will we see
All of what we can be
When we’ve made the decision
To join in a vision
Free of the grieving
That comes from believing
In the words of the clown . .
That ups become down
And wrong is now right,
Despite what is laying about in plain sight.
Showcasing the dissonance
Of his desperate insouciance
May remind us at last
That his time is near past.
Tim Konrad
December 1, 2020
When the former NY mayor tried to make the president’s case alleging voter fraud in a Pennsylvania courtroom the other day, the ineptitude of his performance equaled the head-scratching ridiculousness of his client’s arguments.
As reported in the Evening Standard, Giuliani not only “mistook the judge for a federal judge in a separate Pennsylvania district who rejected a separate Trump campaign case.” He also “tripped himself up over the meaning of ‘opacity.’”
“In the plaintiffs’ counties, they were denied the opportunity to have an unobstructed observation and ensure opacity,” Mr Giuliani said. “I’m not quite sure I know what opacity means. It probably means you can see, right?
‘It means you can’t,’ said U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann.
‘Big words, your honour,’ Mr Giuliani said.”
It is easy to see that the president exercised his well-known visual acuity in his choice of legal counsel to press his opaquely reasoned case for ballot abnegation. An entirely fitting coda, hopefully, for a shoddy symphony that’s droned on for far too long.
Tim Konrad
November 20, 2021
We have a president who eschews his daily presidential briefings in favor of Fox news and right-leaning websites trafficking in conspiracy theories. Is it any wonder, then, that he tweets such false and misleading messages that, in addition to undermining our democratic principles and encouraging many Americans to disregard the advice of health professionals regarding the coronavirus, are now endangering our national security?
What is even more disturbing is the continuing question of why most of those in his supposed party—he has as much in common with the ideals of the Republican Party, after all, as Hitler has to Disneyland, and more in common, come to think of it, with Disneyland than with actual, responsible governance—still refuse to publicly acknowledge that Mr. Biden won the election.
But, in a deeper sense, what does this say about the Republican Party?
What does it say about a national political party when its members publicly admit that their future political survival no longer depends on the usefulness and relevance of its ideas, its positions and guiding principles, or what is left of them, but rather on a relentless campaign of lies, misinformation and voter suppression to maintain its grip on power? The Republican Party has now become, in the words of one political observer, the Criminal Party! That its members can maintain some semblance of business-as-usual in the face of such disgrace, that they can still project the illusion of respectability, is not only a reflection of the depths of their depravity; it is an equally disturbing indication of just how far we have fallen, collectively, as a nation, from the position of respect we once held in the eyes of the world.
That once “shining beacon on a hill,” described by outgoing President Ronald Reagan, as “a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home,” now tarnished by the taint of trumpism, no longer shines brightly, its light dulled, its ability to inspire diminished, its signification of the ideals of freedom and self-governance that have defined our country since its founding twisted and perverted beyond recognition.
For this, the Republican supporters of trump, which is to say at this point, the entire Republican Party, deserves special recognition in the annals of infamy! Its members, far from being patriots, now represent the antithesis of what it is to be a true patriot, someone who places duty to country above personal interest, someone who upholds the principles upon which the country was founded. They have lost their way. They have utterly failed their duty when the country needed them most! They should resign in disgrace! They deserve nothing better than to be entirely forgotten!
Tim Konrad
November 20, 2020
I am frankly dumbfounded by how so many of our friends are going about their lives as if we weren’t in the upswing of a deadly pandemic—planning lunches with friends and other types of social encounters, taking trips involving air flight and its attendant risk-laden delays in airport terminals, meeting for lunch, and even, in some cases, going to bars. None of these folks, to my knowledge, are under the spell of trump’s anti-masking propaganda, and all appear to be free of its associated dogma, yet they might as well be so afflicted, based on their reality-avoiding attitudes and behaviors.
“It’s ok, they say, we’re wearing masks and social-distancing,” one person said today. “We’ll meet outside if the weather’s good,” said another. What, I wonder, might they do if the weather is bad? And have they considered that mask-wearing and social-distancing are most effective when one is outside, where there is more air movement to lessen the odds of transmissibility. And then there’s the latest news on masks themselves. It turns out simple cloth masks, even ones with double layers of cloth, are not as effective as we’ve been led to believe. Medical spokespeople now say the layers must be of different materials, for instance cotton/synthetic, in order to provide needed protection.
Folks are saying that, as long as they remain within their “bubbles,” no harm will come their way. But how large are those bubbles? Music gatherings with 6 to 8 or more people included are not the same thing as household “bubbles.” For everyone outside one’s immediate family grouping, inclusion demands a certain degree of trust—not just basic trust in the person, but the added faith that each additional person is exercising the same degree of discretion and good judgment you yourself are following. The situation can become wobbly pretty quickly if not everyone is on the same page concerning safe behavior and acceptable level of risk. It only takes one person to wreak havoc.
In the absence of an appreciable reimagining of my friends’ attitudes concerning acceptable level of risk, I shudder to think how those in our circle of acquaintance will fare through the holidays, when the temptation to temp fate will be greater than usual just when the weather’s too cold to permit gathering outside and the risk of transmission will be greatest. What rationales will they invent to persuade themselves they can successfully buck the odds and be ok, to, as it were, “have their cake and eat it too?” I fear for them.
So far, no one close to us has succumbed to Covid. I pray it remains so.
Tim Konrad
November 13, 2020
With Biden elected,
and donald rejected,
a problem’s corrected!
(That’s some curve that they rounded
with Meadows infected!)
The lad’s flight will be grounded.
But please don’t expect
mr trump to reflect
on his fragile position
without inquisition,
or to end the confusion
and drop the illusion
that he’s won the election.
No further inspection
of votes cast for Biden
could keep trump from hidin’,
notwithstanding the cost,
the fact that he’s lost;
his hopes are upended,
his tenure is ended.
The sickening feeling
that once had me reeling,
that daily calamity
of his endless profanity,
the lack of respect
we had come to expect
from this cretinous chump,
we can finally dump.
So, goodbye mr trump.
Come down off your stump!
It’s time you reflected
on who’s been elected.
Put an end to your ranting!
Stop the lies you’ve been planting!
In place of despairing
you should be preparing
your legal defenses
of your countless offenses
for your pending arraignment.
Time to come to your senses
And allow Ascertainment
Your current arrangement
Resembles derangement
As does Mr. Pence’s.
With both of you gone,
We can finally move on.
That trump contemplates serving
once more is unnerving;
his proper enshrinement
is a term of confinement
minus fanfare or clamor.
Four more years in the slammer
should await this old scammer.
Fading away with each passing day
your hopes of redemption
don’t warrant exemption.
The fruits of your labors have come to fruition
there’s no more escaping your pending condition.
So, man up and face it!
You cannot erase it.
The people have spoken!
Your grip has been broken.
Your cards have been played,
your bill must be paid.
If you can’t take the heat,
stay out of the kitchen!
It’s time for an end
to your unending bitchin’.
We are done with your schemin’.
So, Begone, Foul Demon!
Tim Konrad
November 12, 2020
How ridiculous that a major political party is wreaking damage to the sanctity of the institution of voting—the principal defining feature distinguishing our form of government from those of tinpot dictators and totalitarian regimes the world over—in order to . . .What, exactly? Protect the feelings of our pathetic little pile of hurt feelings disguised as a “leader?” How absurd! How monumentally misguided!
The news media’s coverage of the largely manufactured drama surrounding charges of a stolen election and the Republicans’ messaging purportedly designed to give the president “time to process his defeat” should instead be focused on the national security risks inherent in such actions, as well as the messaging it sends to leaders of other countries concerning what a dysfunctional excuse of a government we have acquiesced to, and how, in the midst of an unchecked pandemic, one branch of our government is considering the removal of health insurance coverage for millions of its citizens.
At a time like this, to waste even one iota of precious time coddling a crippled conscience-free con man is unconscionable.
To be frank, who cares about trump’s feelings! It’s no longer about him! It never was! What’s important now is the damage all this BS about stolen votes, the president’s bruised ego, ad nauseum, is doing to the publics’ faith in the electoral process and our governmental institutions.
Tim Konrad
November 10, 2020
sonora2sonoma 