Dec 16, 2025
Andy Burg is a comedian and truth to tell I’d never heard of the guy, until someone on my social media feed shared this, from Mr. Burg and yes, more of this, all of this, please!!:
Trump attacking a female reporter for the sixth time in a month is more than just “political theater” — it speaks to a culture of power that has stopped seeing accountability as part of leadership. As an Irish observer, it’s baffling to watch a democratic nation normalize behavior that would be career-ending anywhere else. In many European countries, public respect toward the press — especially women in journalism — isn’t just expected, it’s demanded. A leader mocking or belittling female reporters wouldn’t simply spark criticism; it would trigger resignations, party pressure, parliamentary uproar, and national outcry by morning.
The press is supposed to ask uncomfortable questions. That’s their job — not to flatter politicians, but to challenge them. When a leader repeatedly insults, dismisses, or targets women journalists for doing that job, it creates a dangerous message: that women who speak, who question, who hold power to account are fair game for public humiliation. And when there are no consequences — no censure, no loss of support, no collective rejection of this behavior — it doesn’t just reflect the leader. It reflects the culture tolerating it.
The presidency is supposed to model integrity, not insecurity. A leader secure in their decisions doesn’t need to attack the people asking questions. Respect for the press shouldn’t depend on the gender of the reporter — and democracy should never be comfortable watching hostility replace accountability with applause.
If we’ve learned anything over the past decade plus, it’s that there is no low to which You-Know-Who will stoop, and no accountability from his many enablers either elected, appointed, or lodged within the conservative media meat-grinding machine. Who is going to check that bloviating, bloated, mess of a human? We are. We are. Blue wins in red and purple places this year indicate a growing dissatisfaction with the ongoing reality TV show that is this first very long year in Round 2 of Orange Mess.
Why? Because pulling families apart, sending longtime community members and teenagers to countries they left as small children, ignoring or hiding economic data while screaming the affordability crisis is a ‘Democrat Hoax’, tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build a ballroom during an affordability crisis that includes the Big Beautiful Bill hiking up health insurance prices on an estimated 20 million Americans, bombing what look like fishing boats in the Caribbean miles from the US mainland while pardoning an actual convicted narco-terrorist, former Honduran POTUS Hernandez, pardoning the Tate brothers whose crimes against women are certainly in line with the ethos of this drunk raccoon of an administration, doing dirty deals with domestic and foreign oligarchs, abandoning Ukraine, placing, removing, placing, debating, bullying other countries including allies or what most of us thought of as allies re: TARIFFS – I could go on and on, but I won’t.
It’s up to us. It’s time to clean house, and fix this. Voters got us into this mess and voters will get us out of it. Can’t happen soon enough.
Dec 15, 2025
*The first in a series of – oh – little essays about my mother, a complicated woman I loved very much and hated in almost equal measure. A daily task is forgiving her, and myself for not being able to help her, change her, make it better for her and for myself, while she was alive. A daily task is allowing myself to feel and think what I feel and think while acknowledging the pain of her existence, so much of which she dumped on me, making me the conduit for all her darkness. A daily task is letting go.
Dorothy Jean Byrnes was her name; in early childhood, her nickname was ‘Beauty’ but then, twice or three times, she was hit in the face on the playground, the metal bar earlier generations swung upside down on smashing her perfect and perfectly straight nose, breaking it, squashing it down, shaping it more like a boxer’s than a little girl’s. That repeated misfortune lost her the title of family beauty. That repeated misfortune made her ashamed, and angry. She would suffer with spontaneous nose bleeds for the rest of her life.
In college, where she nannied to help pay her bills, to have a room in which to sleep and study, she became known as ‘D.J.’, which suited her. She had three skirts and two sweaters, a pair of rubber boots for winter or rainy weather, and another pair of loafers. That was it. One winter coat, one wool scarf. One pair of mittens and such care not to lose anything, ever, as it costs to replace; money was always tight. Books, pens and pencils, paper, notebooks, study materials and the like are expensive, are a priority, a way up and out.
She didn’t date; she was shy. Many of the men she attended classes with were already married, war veterans utilizing the G.I Bill to make themselves into something more, fully aware of the chance they’d been given, one denied to other, less fortunate men who hadn’t made it back to their girlfriends, wives or young families. She admired them; they added gravitas to the academic atmosphere; this suited her. Silliness, pranksters and jokers put her off, and flirting with even the single men in her classes was unthinkable, not her style, at all. Still, she envied the more popular girls, the pretty ones with straight noses, the ones who could easily afford a new silk scarf, new shoes, the newer styles regularly; these girls didn’t have to work to afford college classes.
D.J. did her best to keep her head down, focusing on her areas of concentration: secondary education, Latin and French. She knew envy was a sin, and prayed at mass every Sunday for relief from its sting. What spare time she had away from studying was taken up by her charges (the children of a professor and his wife), and by time spent in the college library referencing books she could not afford to buy.
Her summers were much the same, sans the studying; she traveled to live with one or another of her brothers and their children, again playing mother’s helper. She was an observer of women, smart women, her sister’s-in-law, running around, cooking, feeding, making do while doing endless loads of laundry, changing diapers – envisioning for herself a life spent supporting her siblings families in this way over many summer vacations going forward.
She believed to her core that she was born to live her life in solitude, alone, unmarried. She loved children, or at least was fond of them (she had to be, given the limitation of her choices), but didn’t want any. She was not a physical person, never exercised, loved anything and everything sugary, lived for classical music and conversations about literature and art, and truly believed her sister-in-law Eleanor had the perfect life: married to a college professor, able to attend lectures, concerts, games, while affording the best things in life, 1940s version. And, a good Catholic, the thought of any sexual contact outside marriage was not possible. She would not, ever, admit it, but D.J. hated her body.
She had witnessed the difficulties of her mother’s life up close, and paid for them: left behind to work as a nanny at fourteen years old when her mother moved back in with her parents after her husband’s death, taking her two youngest children with her. D.J. was old enough, it was felt, to both help out (she would send her wages to her mother) as well as to make it on her own. It was also believed to be important for her to finish high school where she started. A dutiful child, wanting only to please, Dorothy didn’t fight it, but it crushed her.
Her adored mother died five years later at the age of sixty-three. This event was shattering. Was this her future? Pregnancy after pregnancy, high blood pressure, hypertension, early death? Even Eleanor, the most perfect wife and woman, had her struggles, was often frustrated and even resentful, left alone with seven kids while D.J.s brother Bob was traveling for work, away for months at a time. Important work, no doubt, helping to found and expand the CIA, but – was this how her future would unfold? Was it fair? Was it good? Was it worth it? Yes, Eleanor and Bob could afford a cleaner, and child-care, including giving D.J. a small wage during the summer, but was it enough?
There were, it seemed, many ways to be alone, and lonely. Which would she choose? Which life would present itself to her, and what road would she take?
Dec 14, 2025
I went from one to the other holding my
sorrow – no, not my sorrow but the
incomprehensible nature of this our life –
for their inspection. Some people go
to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends,
I to my own heart, I to seek among
phrases and fragments something unbroken
I to whom there is no beauty
enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch
of one person with another is all,
yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so
imperfect, so weak, so
unspeakably lonely.
– Virginia Woolf, 1931
*no comment on perfection…
Dec 13, 2025
From the Idiot-In-Chief’s social media this week, and if this is any indication of his mental state, we’re all in for a rough ride, – all of us – because as insulated as he and his billionaire class of creeps like to think they are, we outnumber them, and what causes pain in the workers of this country causes pain (and motivated voters) everywhere. It’s the economy stupid. It’s always the economy. And his – his, not Sleepy’ Joe’s – is hurtling toward a hard series of bumps, and – potentially – a crash. I could not read this when it came out, and I don’t follow Orange Jeebus, but – what? What?!
Measles outbreaks in Arizona, Utah and South Carolina. Pull ups and pull up bars in airports?! Dress better for flights because that’ll make flying and fellow passengers more civil? Let a sex addict’s hand-picked vaccine deniers change recommendations for infant vaccines when we’ve all but stamped out Hepatitis B in small children? Texas Governor Abbott wants Turning Points USA clubs in all Texas high schools? The nutty AF My Pillow guy is running for Governor of Minnesota?! No extension of ACA subsidies unless we make abortion universally illegal? Pardoning the former President of Honduras when he’s been convicted of trafficking tons of cocaine into this country as we continue to bomb tiny boats that may or may not be carrying small amounts of drugs – not to the US, because they’re way too far from the coast of our country to make it but… but… but…
Help! Please, Make America Sane Again. But for now, here’s Donny!
“There has never been a President that has worked as hard as me! My hours are the longest, and my results are among the best. I’ve stopped Eight Wars, saving many millions of lives in the process, created the Greatest Economy in the History of our Country, brought Business back into the United States at levels never seen before, rebuilt our Military, created the Largest Tax Cuts and Regulation Cuts, EVER, closed our open and very dangerous Southern Border, when previous Administrations were unable to do so, and created an ‘aura’ around the United States of America that has led every Country in the World to respect us more than ever before. In addition to all of that, I go out of my way to do long, thorough, and very boring Medical Examinations at the Great Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, seen and supervised by top doctors, all of whom have given me PERFECT Marks—Some have even said they have never seen such Strong Results. I do these Tests because I owe it to our Country. In addition to the Medical, I have done something that no other President has done, on three separate occasions, the last one being recently, by taking what is known as a Cognitive Examination, something which few people would be able to do very well, including those working at The New York Times, and I ACED all three of them in front of large numbers of doctors and experts, most of whom I do not know. I have been told that few people have been able to ‘ace’ this Examination and, in fact, most do very poorly, which is why many other Presidents have decided not to take it at all. Despite all of this, the time and work involved, The New York Times, and some others, like to pretend that I am ‘slowing up,’ am maybe not as sharp as I once was, or am in poor physical health, knowing that it is not true, and knowing that I work very hard, probably harder than I have ever worked before. I will know when I am ‘slowing up,’ but it’s not now! After all of the work I have done with Medical Exams, Cognitive Exams, and everything else, I actually believe it’s seditious, perhaps even treasonous, for The New York Times, and others, to consistently do FAKE reports in order to libel and demean ‘THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.’ They are true Enemies of the People, and we should do something about it. They have inaccurately reported on all of my Election Results and, in fact, were forced to apologize on much of what they wrote. The best thing that could happen to this Country would be if The New York Times would cease publication because they are a horrible, biased, and untruthful ‘source’ of information. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Dec 12, 2025
The story of my childhood is a complicated sentence that I am always trying to finish, to finish and put behind me. – Hilary Mantel
I have at least 6 (or possibly more) versions of the start of a memoir. A few of those are over 50 pages. A few I open and read for a few moments that – argh!! – no, no, no, no, no!! Remembering where I was when I wrote it, or horrified by the framing, the sentences, the way I begin. Argh. This is the challenge and gift of putting anything – anything – into words.
I write, I blog, I percolate sentences largely to empty out my head, which retains facts and stories and snippets from years ago and yesterday as if they were precious metal, gold. And, perhaps they are. I write to figure it out, or try to, what matters, what that moment meant, who was that, who am I? I write because the image of that day, that person, that seemingly small incident that wasn’t small in the end, is still colored in bold red and blue and green and white. I write because the stories I have lived and heard and witnessed are engraved on my broken heart.
Writing a personal story that is ongoing – and an ongoing challenge to understand – is hard. Women’s lives tend to be more complicated than men’s are, by and large. This makes for much more complex and tangled stories, much more difficult to tell. I could write a book just about my reproductive history, or another about my sexual assault and abuse history, two separate yet closely related histories. Argh. And where to start? A version I have starts with my mother, and hers. Their lives, their histories known and unknown, are inextricably connected to mine.
There are, for us, so many roads taken or not, so many tangential stories to tell or skip over, skip beyond, forget, bury – so many explanations for this and that moment, choice, behavior, outcome, speculation, assumption, fear, grace.
One of these days – perhaps during what looks likely to be a long, cold winter – I will sit in this chair, and decide whether or not to apply myself seriously to the project of writing a memoir. I know I am not alone in this endeavor; I also know how much I owe to those who have written about their lives, in fictional or non-fictional writings. Mary Karr, Charlotte Bronte, Melissa Febos, Elizabeth Gilbert, Rachel Cusk, Anne Lamott, Doris Lessing, Patricia Lockwood, Mary McCarthy, Dorothy Allison, and so many more.
I have Virginia Giuffre’s book, Nobody’s Girl, on the top of my to-be-read pile. Deep breaths.
Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship. – Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird
