Today’s earworm isn’t specifically a Thanksgiving piece, but it is about being grateful for things around us.
Yes, I know—for millions and millions of people around the
globe, this is not, in fact, a wonderful world. Millions of Americans, in fact,
are struggling to survive, particularly in this political and economic climate.
All the more reason to seek out the good, the beautiful,
the kind, the generous.
And who better than Louis Armstrong to show us?
©2025 Bas Bleu
Welp, it’s the big one for gratitude here in the United States. A day set aside for the purpose of counting blessings and acting en famille. (It’s also the official demarcation for The Christmas Season, although Christmas merch has been in Costco since August, and Hallmark seems to run its Christmas rom-coms pretty much all year round now.)
In our current political and economic situation, I can see
that it might be difficult for many people to feel gratitude—or to crawl out
from under anxiety, fear or even just crushing unease that can pervade our
lives. Never in my own lifetime have I felt the disparity between the haves and
the have-lesses and have-nots. Billionaires who nonetheless never have enough
squeezing ever more out of the middle and working classes, aided and abetted by
politicians and politicized courts. There are hundreds of thousands of my neighbors across the country who are living with food insecurity. It’s real, it’s unamerican and it’s disgusting.
So what I have to pull myself out of is continually being
pissed off at the perversion of the idea of America; anger can be good, but not
when it’s carried around like an extra 20 pounds on the butt. That’s why I make
gratitude a discipline, to remind myself that we can refuse to let the world be
unremitting horror, and that one way to start that process is to acknowledge
the good in it whenever and wherever we find it.
So—today I’m grateful for the friends who include me in
their Thanksgiving celebrations every year. I never take their invitation for
granted, but when it comes, I’m delighted. I get to make pie! I get to make cranberry
relish! I get to spend an evening with friends, eating turkey (which I would
never make for myself) and engaging in wide-ranging discussions.
I’m grateful for every protestor at every ICE facility and
activity in every city across the country. As wealthy individuals, institutions
and corporations kowtow to the Kleptocrat like bobble-head dogs on the back
decks of low-riders, it’s the soccer moms, the priests and pastors, the
neighbors of all economic stripes and the students who are peacefully locking
arms and filming our very own masked Gestapo thugs committing crimes right out
in daylight. They have been tear gassed, beaten and arrested, and they still
return to bear witness.
I’m absolutely verklempt for the protest that scores of
people pulled at a Home Depot in Monrovia, Calif.—buying $.79 ice scrapers and
immediately returning them, to tie up the store’s self-service check-out
registers for hours. They did the needful for a business that toadies to the
thugs.
While I’m talking capitalism—kudos to the millions of
people boycotting Target for caving to the anti-Woke nonsense. (Notice: I’m one
of the boycotters, but it’s not as though my $50 annual spend there is going to
be missed. Still—a lot of littles make a lot.) Target’s hurting and had to
replace its CEO after only six or seven months of the boycott.
And—more capitalism: without the workers in the fields (in-country and around the world), the ones in meat packing plants, the people who get food from its starting point to our tables, we'd be SOL. For any and every meal. Thank you to all!
Big, deep, joyous thanks to all the No Kings and other demonstrations
of force. Because that’s precisely what they are: demonstrations of the power
of what the founders called We the People. You don’t see millions of people
turning out around the country (and indeed the world) to laud the Kleptocrat
and his authoritarian machinations, but you do see the protestors. Repeatedly. And
so do those in power.
Humble gratitude to people who show everyday kindness in a
time when I cannot imagine anyone is without angst. The smiles, the nods;
patience—oh, my, what a grace that is when I encounter it. “Please” and “thank
you.” Just wow!
I give thanks for the people who looked after my sister in
her final days. She had progressed to the really ugly stage of Alzheimer’s, but
both friends and professionals cared for her with respect and love. I cannot be
more grateful for that than I am, even a year later.
The dogs I meet on my morning walks fill me with delight,
and I’m thankful I can share even a few moments with them. There’s one who
positively dances down the sidewalk; she stops me dead every time in admiration.
Dogs are an unexpected and unlooked for grace.
I’m grateful for my friends—the ones down the street and
the ones across an ocean. They make me a better person, they talk me down from
the ledge, they spark laughter when I need it the most, they give me comfort.
Nature—large and small—fills me with both awe and delight.
When I’m having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day, a quick walk
outside mitigates even the worst things. Thank God for that.
And you know what else? Thank God for the internet. That’s
where I got the recipe for pumpkin pie (thanks, Martha!), how I learn about
legal issues (thanks, Bluesky), join communities and get reporting from
publications around the world. (Take that, WaPo!) Yes, it’s a cesspool
of misinformation and malevolence, but—just like the world—it contains powerful
good and it’s up to you do decide which roads you’re going to follow.
I give thanks to those who stand watch for us—whether they’re
wearing cammies and tactical gear or scrubs and a stethoscope; for those who
serve us—whether in a government agency or a retail store; for those who keep
the neighborhood clean by picking up the trash; and for those who deliver
packages, groceries and mail. They’re like the air we breathe—necessary for a
good life, but often overlooked until it turns bad.
And, finally, I’m grateful for the 22nd
Amendment. I hope not even this SCOTUS will find a way to abrogate that.
Happy Thanksgiving, all.
©2025 Bas Bleu
All I’ve got to say today is glory be to God for Japanese maples.
This guy is in my back yard and every single year, when
things start turning to crap, he struts his stuff and fills me with joy.
Take some of that for yourself, too. He’s got plenty.
©2025 Bas Bleu
I was looking at autumn foliage a while ago and noticed this guy.
That’s it. That’s the post.
©2025 Bas Bleu
Last Sunday, I attended an event featuring the former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered” talking with Anthony S. Fauci, MD. It was a fascinating discussion, all the way from Fauci’s upbringing in an Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn to his leadership of the US scientific and medical efforts to identify, treat and prevent COVID-19 during the pandemic five years ago.
Fauci is a personable guy (as is Siegel) and I was taken by
the sense of curiosity and the commitment to service that have obviously shaped
his life. (He also spearheaded the American investigation into HIV and AIDS in
the 1980s and 1990s that eventually led to effective treatments, changing what
was at one time a death sentence to a chronic condition for sufferers.)
Since that interview, I’ve been thinking about how deeply
grateful for Fauci and men and women like him—the whole gamut, from pure researchers
who want to find out where a microorganism came from and how it interacts with
its environment; to the applied scientists who carry that further to develop
new therapies and ways to improve life; to the healthcare professionals and
public health officials who take it where the rubber meets the road.
I don’t often spend time on all of this—in the same way
that I don’t often consider how the engine in my Saab works…until it doesn’t.
But when things began to go south in January of 2020, every member of every bioscientific,
medical and public health organization did everything possible to contain,
mitigate and turn around the most devastating virus to strike the world since
1918. And in the United States, they did it despite active attempts by Republicans
at every level of government to deny, diminish and deter the efforts, while
maximizing the prospects of making both money and political hay out of it.
I’m thinking in particular the doctors, nurses and support
staff at hospitals all over the country who worked exhausting shifts, often
without proper protective gear, to treat thousands of patients at the stage
where no one really knew what was going to work. I also recall that they died
in their hundreds.
The thing is—this stuff goes on all the time: the research,
the scientific iterations (and sometimes breakthrough innovations), the medical
care. And we don’t notice it, really, until there are problems—a new drug is
too expensive to buy, surgery is unsuccessful or the insurance company denies
the claim. But today I am in grateful awe for everyone involved in these
things, because they all rely on humans who really care about making things
better.
We need all of them we can get.
©2025 Bas Bleu
Since we in the United States are rounding the corner on Thanksgiving, I’m giving you “Gratitude”, by Earth, Wind & Fire, as today’s earworm.
’Nuff said.
©2025 Bas Bleu
Eighty years ago today, the International Military Tribunal convened in the nearly destroyed city of Nuremberg. Its purpose was to hold accountable the (surviving) leaders of Germany for the World War II horrors that went well beyond the previously held norms of warfare. It was the first and most groundbreaking of many war crimes trials in Europe. (Which continued for decades; the last significant trial of a Nazi was held in 2015, when SS junior squad leader at Auschwitz Oskar Gröning was convicted of accessory to murder in 300,000 cases; he died before serving his sentence. In 2016, SS guard at Auschwitz Reinhold Hanning was convicted of accessory to murder; he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. As of 2024, there were still cases pending.) The thinking at Nuremberg, though, was that for crimes of such a scope as the Nazis perpetrated, it would not suffice to nail a few low-ranking perpetrators; those responsible for designing the criminal strategies and for giving the orders needed to be held accountable.
There was a bit of “we have to learn from our mistakes in
1918” in the very notion of the proceedings. (That also contributed to the
decision three years before that nothing short of unconditional surrender by
Axis powers would end the fighting. No bargaining, no negotiating, no weaseling—all
or nothing.) There was also a good deal of, oh, differences of opinion on how
to handle the big Nazis. Stalin wanted them all shot out of hand (maybe a quick
run past a tribunal on the way to the scaffold), and Churchill was of a similar
mind. (For context, the Soviet Union suffered more than 20 million deaths—military
and civilian—between 1941 and 1945, and Britain would take nearly a decade to
crawl out from the destruction.) FDR and Truman held out for legitimate trials,
with defense attorneys and a judicial panel following legal standards. The French
nodded their heads.
One of the issues presenting itself in this very notion of
a tribunal was, in fact, what legal standards do you follow? There are
international rules of war (yes—there are!), but the Nazis blew past
them when they invaded the USSR and was fairly loose in following them in
Western Europe. The question arose: what constitutes a crime that stands out in
the mechanized destruction of that war, and what constitutes a crime for people
who kept their hands remarkably clean because of their distance and their
altitude in the organization?
Eventually the Allies settled on four charges for the head Nazis:
Conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes
against humanity
Crimes against peace (planning, initiating and executing a war of aggression)
War crimes (fairly established internationally: killing civilians, mistreating
POWs, deportation*)
Crimes against humanity (political, racial and religious persecution of
civilians; genocide)
*Oh—hey!
The conspiracy charge was where they got some of the
defendants who had been the farthest away from actual gunpowder and the slave
labor.
There was a lot of pushback in Germany—and other places—that
this would be a show trial, “victors’ justice”, sauce for the goose that the
ganders would never taste. (Basically—whataboutism writ large.) But the Allies
carried on. They laid out procedural rules, gave the defendants attorneys,
assigned prosecutors and empaneled a bench of judges from the four major
powers. They had to accommodate three systems of jurisprudence (Anglo-Saxon,
French, Russian), build out a courtroom, ensure simultaneous translation of all
activities, tend to the health of the 23 defendants present (Martin Bormann was
tried in absentia), keep the lights on and continuously negotiate the gigantic
egos of most of the participants, on both sides of the dock for nearly a year.
At the end of the trial, 19 Nazi leaders were found guilty
of one or more of the charges and 12 received death by hanging sentences. Wilhelm
Keitel demanded a firing squad as more befitting his military service, but it
was denied. Turns out if you’re sentenced for a criminal conviction, your crime
trumps any previous condition. Hermann Göring (who also demanded a firing
squad) cheated the hangman by swallowing cyanide the night before execution.
Of the defendants sentenced to prison terms, only Albert
Speer and Rudolf Hess served out their full terms (the former 20 years, the
latter life, until his suicide in 1987). Speer whined for the rest of his life.
The IMT of 1945-46 was the precursor of the International
Court of Justice at The Hague. I concede that the world’s attempts to hold the
worst criminals in the world accountable have fallen short. And I acknowledge
that one of the stumbling blocks arises from the United States being really
uneasy about applying the term “war criminal” to actions we take in our
interests. (Yes, we should have held a state funeral for irony long ago.) Dick
Cheney and George W. Bush should have been in the dock alongside Slobodan
Milošević and Radovan Karadžić, and the Kleptocrat’s ass should have been there
since his drone strikes in Yemen and Syria in his first term. Now he’s just
taking the piss, thanks to the Roberts SCOTUS’ immunity ruling.) But—like 10,000
lawyers at the bottom of the ocean—it’s a start, and we should build on it.
But here’s an interesting thing, when I searched on the
Nuremberg trial (using Duck Duck Go, because I’ve had it with Google), this was
at the top of the results.
So—we have a long, long way to go.
©2025 Bas Bleu
Okay, ordinarily I’d present this vanity plate in a cluster of them.
But this SUV had more than just the personalized license. (Which
is not immediately clear to me. Does JR have a JD, and is he the third Virginia
car owner to do so? Do JD and JR have three offspring? I do not know.) First
there was the tailgating warning.
But there was also this on one of the side windows:
Are they a coffee delivery service? Does the driver always have coffee on hand? Is the car fitted out to make coffee?
They’re telling me something, but I’ll be blowed if I know what it is.
©2025 Bas Bleu
Okay, one of my neighbor families is preparing to move, after living in the cluster since the 70s. So, as you might imagine, there are things to be cleared out.
All kinds of things, including:
I haven’t yet had an opportunity to ask about this one.
©2025 Bas Bleu
After a really slow start, I was gratified a few weeks ago to see that Nature was getting her Autumn on.
But it turns out, she was only just starting.
I’m so grateful for the brilliant golds
and scarlets of the past two weeks. I cannot look at any of it without joy
filling my being.
©2025 Bas Bleu
