Real service

At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the guns of the War to End All Wars fell silent. The survivors crawled out of their trenches, scraped caked mud off their uniforms and tried to understand how to live normal lives again.

Well—that was a pipe dream; societies always try to return to normal after cataclysms, but the fact is, “normal” is one of the first casualties of wartime service. Along with truth.

I thought a lot about that as I visited the military cemeteries of the Western Front—French, British, German, American. More than other graveyards, military cemeteries display the true democracy of death: the uniformity of the headstones; regular rows; whatever the rank, no one more elaborate than any other. But that’s the dead: the living (more or less) returned to their homes to find that their governments wanted them to resume their pre-war stations on pre-war terms, and their families wanted them to pretend they hadn’t been through what they had.

We still do that—send men and women out to do the worst things imaginable and then ignore the human consequences, pretending that being a sapper or a tanker is just like being a plumber or a marketer. The fact that our longest-war-ever was not even a national effort, the way the World Wars were, keeps the blood-and-treasure costs out of mind for most Americans. If you’re not serving or know someone who is, it’s easy to ignore the price of policy.

Perhaps even easier when you have an administration that lies on the regular about what’s happening in its latest war of self-aggrandizement. The latest—at time of writing—is that “it’s not a war because no American has died in six months.”

Well, it’s Veterans Day here in the US, one of two days that we pay lip service to the sacrifices made by those who serve in our defense. Who take their oaths to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and often pay a steep price for it. As Congress squares off to impeach the Secretary of Defense, who also ought to face war crimes charges, I try to focus on the meaning of this day.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

The big question

I recently started seeing a new medical practice. When you’re a new patient, you have to give them your medical history, sometimes two or three times because their systems are crap.

This time around I got asked a question I’ve never seen before:

I mean—it wasn’t hard to answer. But it stopped me in my tracks, because holy crap: I haven’t had four or more drinks in a day since I was in my mid-30s.

Also—who actually answers that in the affirmative?

 

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: Light fills the darkness

Last Monday I was cautiously optimistically grateful at the prospect of voters mandating the return of Democratic control of the House.

Well—as you know—the universe blessed our endeavors and the voters gave us the House and Senate. At time of writing, the Mississippi and Alaska senate races are still being determined, but we have a Fetterman-proof upper house in any case.

With this in mind, I filled my space with candles yesterday for the beginning of Diwali, one of my favorite holiday commemorations because it’s all about the victory of light over darkness. Not only do I like the soft light that groups of candles give off, the very act of lighting them one at a time and nursing along some of the ones at the end of their life slows me down. It calms me down.

Filling a room with candle light takes time; you can’t flip a switch and move on to the next task on your to-do list. And if you’re lighting those floating jobbers, you have to be very focused on not disturbing the water, because then it dowses the flames and you have to wipe them off and start over again.

It’s like the count-breaths-to-21 methodology of meditation: if you lose count because your monkey mind is distracted, you have to begin again from one.

There are some days I never make it into double digits.

But there’s something about knowing how happy the moving lights will make me that enables me to persevere with candles. I light them, sit back and watch; and for at least a few minutes the world around me is peaceful and full of hope. Light prevails over darkness, love conquers fear, and good triumphs over evil.

It’s something to hold onto in these dark, dark times.

Well, that and all the Blue streams washing through governments throughout the country. Truly reason to spark gratitude.

 

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Fill us with the light

Well, I am still absorbing the tectonic shift in the American body politic that the electorate delivered on Tuesday.

I mean—Susan Collins taking her much-clutched pearls back to Maine. A Black woman Democrat the governor of Georgia. Kansas sending its first Democratic senator to Washington since 1932. A Native American Senator from Minnesota and a Muslim one from Michigan. (Mike Rogers can keep his house in Florida.) Greg Abbott replaced as governor of Texas by a Latina, who toasted her victory on Tuesday with the first Democratic senator that state has elected since 1988. Jon Husted sitting his much-praised (by the Kleptocrat) ass down in Ohio, and a John Fetterman-proof Senate count. Virginia Foxx bitch-slapped in North Carolina and Lauren Boebert ditto in Colorado.

And Elon Musk setting half a million dollars on fire to support a whole string of losers. (Also—he moved from California to Texas to flee the Democrats and now they'll be running the state.)

Dang.

I can’t stop smiling; I am engulfed in joy.

So my earworm for today is the version of “Joyful, Joyful” performed in Sister Act II: Back in the Habit. Turn up the volume and dance.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Not a factory original

Okay, while I’m taking a minute to savor the victory America achieved on Tuesday, I’ll leave you with a car I saw a couple of weeks ago.

Unique decoration for sure.

 

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

 

Why we fight

At the time of writing, we still don’t know the outcome of yesterday’s elections. Truth be told, it’s possible that some of the election results won’t be finalized for some time. But so much is hanging on them.

Viz:

These had me in tears:

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Yeah, we know

As a matter of principle, whenever I see a Cybertruck, I must audibly murmur “asshole”, because the universe demands it.

And the one I saw in Herndon on Saturday was kind of double asshole, because it had a (heretofore unseen by me) variant of the ridiculous Tea Party license plate. You know—the one with the curled snake that mostly looks like the poop emoji. (Virginia will do anything to make a buck.)

But I did like the seasonal decoration, even though if he’d gone more than 35 MPH, that webbing would be gone.

I still invoked the universe’s mantra.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: Calm before

It’s appropriate this year that Election Day is at the earlier end of the cycle (first Tuesday after the first Monday in November—the earliest an election could be held would be on 2 November), because we’re still in that liminal time when the living take notice of the dead (and possibly vice versa).

We just celebrated Halloween on Saturday, which is rooted in the Celtic holiday of Samhain—marking the bringing in of the harvest to sustain people through the shorter days and colder temperatures of winter. Samhain also honors those who have preceded us into death, keeping their memory alive through the generations.

Yesterday and today, Christians marked All Saints Day and All Souls Day, essentially carrying on the Celtic tradition. The wall between this world and the next is more frangible around now, and it’s a time for lighting protective and cleansing bonfires.

Our Latino neighbors (within this country and up and down the Americas) are also celebrating El Día de Muertos, honoring those who’ve passed and taking account of the living.

So it’s a truly appropriate time for considering how we want the next two years to go in our country, and voting accordingly. It is not hyperbolic to say this is a life-or-death decision; a choice between good and evil, light and darkness. Everything is riding on the outcome of tomorrow’s elections. No vote is inconsequential.

Today I’m grateful for the millions of Americans who have already cast their ballots, by mail, drop-off box or in-person. Also for the poll workers who show up throughout the voting season to make the whole thing work. And for those who manage the process of counting the votes and certifying their accuracy. (A decade ago I wouldn’t even have thought about them, but after the experience of 2020, I recognize them as true heroes of democracy.)

I’m also grateful for the (Republican-run) state of Alaska, whose lawyers just told the Kleptocrat’s DOJ to get stuffed with its lawsuit demanding that the vote not be certified unless the incumbent senator wins. (As of writing, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled in favor of the DOJ getting stuffed, and it's currently before the Nineth Circuit on appeal.)

There is a real threat that the Kleptocrat will try to invalidate or ignore any results that do not please him; we are truly in a dangerous time. So the ordinary people who do their civic duty are more important than ever.

I am holding my breath.

©2026 Bas Bleu

Ooooooer

Obviously, with general elections always set for the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, they’re going to come soon after Halloween. This year, given the grotesque and terrifying state of the Republican-controlled government, it seems particularly appropriate that voters are officially going to the polls three days after the ghouls and goblins have their night.

In honor of that, today I’m giving you Modest Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain”. Specifically the cut from Disney’s 1941 animated masterpiece, Fantasia. Disney mucked up the ending, but it's still a fantastic watch.

(Fun Fact: I lent a VHS tape of Fantasia to a, uh, younger colleague in North Carolina several decades ago. He came back all in awe: “Hey—it had the Scrubbing Bubbles music!”)

Stay safe and vote! 

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

Spooks in the hood

Time for some pix of Halloween decorations.

I’ve noticed that every year this house really gets into it:

And a couple of entries from the same cluster:

Including this:

This year I noticed that residents of a nearby apartment complex are making a statement:

Another townhouse cluster got into the act:

And regulars from my own: 

 

 

©2026 Bas Bleu