Maybe Love Can End the Madness

watch Daulton Varsho

his stumbling somehow caught ball

we love turnarounds

Let’s lean back on the couch across from a piano player who tells us that we’re as “Beautiful” as we feel.  Carole King has been singing her song for several generations of believers: “If there’s any answer, maybe love can end the madness / Maybe not, oh, but we can only try.”  So.  We try. Every morning.  Smiles on our faces—love in our hearts.

Steady as we go.

Could it be that our sea-change nears?  In an excerpt from “The Cure at Troy,” poet Seamus Heaney listens for the “birth-cry” of beginning.  Can you hear it?  Might an enormous ocean wave of justice bathe us in hope?  “Believe in miracles / And cures and healing wells.”  Swimming for shore—breathing in new.   

Truthtellers so we know.   

“It’s time to fight everywhere and all at once,” Illinois Governor JB Pritzger invites in his forceful April 27th speech in Manchester, NH.  “Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption.  But I am now.”  Check out excerpts from the address in his MSNBC interview with Jen Psaki.  He understands the current white house occupant, laughing with Jimmy Kimmel at the blusterer mocking Pritzger’s weight, and gives himself a nickname.  Governor “JBeefy” rules out attempts at dialogue because you can’t reason with a madman and his enablers.  “They must understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have.  We must castigate them on the soapbox, and then punish them at the ballot box.  They must feel in their bones that when we survive this shameful episode of American history with our democracy intact – because we have no alternative but to do just that – that we will relegate their portraits to the museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors.”  Grabbing our MEGAphones—Making Empathy Grandest Attribute.    

Tune into CBS mainstay “60 Minutes” with correspondent Scott Pelley for two bold segments airing on consecutive Sundays.  Pelley closes the April 27th show in a mighty minute.  After 26 years overseeing “60 Minutes,” executive producer Bill Owens resigned when corporate owner Paramount Global no longer allowed him “to make independent decisions based on what is right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience.”  Why?  Seeking a merger requiring presidential approval, Paramount Global aims to restrict the broadcast which is being sued for $20 billion dollars by the white house dweller.  Why?  He accuses CBS of deceptive editing in its piece on Kamala Harris.  Lo!  This past week that very broadcast was nominated for an Emmy for “outstanding edited interview.”  Seven days pass.  Pelley’s May 4th segment, “The Rule of Law,” serves as a master class in contagious integrity.  He begins: “It was nearly impossible to get anyone on camera for this story because of the fear now running through our system of justice.”  Agreeing to the Pelley interview, “I promised myself I would not pull punches,” and founder of Democracy Docket Marc Elias kept his promise to himself and to the country.  Elias’s work while a partner at Perkins Coie fueled longstanding vengeance against the firm.  On May 2nd US District Judge Beryl Howell issued a permanent injunction barring an “executive” order against Perkins Coie, one of the first law firms to stand tall against current white house horseplay and refuse to make any deal.  Topping off his four-day whirlwind on May 5th, Elias’s legal team at Democracy Docket succeeded in securing North Carolina Supreme Court Associate Justice Allison Riggs’s victory, combating a six-month effort by her opponent to disenfranchise voters after the November election.      

Judges hold the line.  We the people come together.  Bullies slither.

At the start of the pandemic, Long Island brothers Ben, Brett, and Jordy Meiselas founded MeidasTouch Network and their independent and pro-democracy, probing and reader-supported news blows ever-farther past corporate news sources.  The brothers relentlessly investigate the status of the forever marginalized in the US and the illegally deported from the US.  “As Trump attacks us.  As Fox attacks.  After all the death threats and harassment…here we stand,” Ben writes.  MeidasTouch leads coverage of packed town halls and mass national protests while informing subscribers what’s next and mobilizing more resistors.  “We must ensure we are building a generational infrastructure to make sure the media doesn’t slip back into decay and rot.”  Organizers plan June 14th No Kings Day protests: “Get ready for democracy summer, folks.”

After MSNBC’s last Saturday broadcast of The Katie Phang Show on April 26th, the proud-to-be Asian American trial attorney immediately joined reporters at MeidasTouch and at The Contrarian: “My currency is facts and evidence.  I’m taking what I’ve learned as a trial lawyer and earning my stripes in the media to places where you’ll be able to get the unvarnished truth.” In her farewell message, Phang opens with a quote from Judy Garland and closes with one from her father, a beautiful blend of emotion and intelligence.  Unvarnished truth—democracy’s savior.       

Steady as we go.

“Let us nourish beginnings.”  Another poet with an excerpt from a larger work, Muriel Rukeyser twice offers the “love that gives us ourselves.”  We accept her gift in “Elegy in Joy.”  Behold grace in the leaves of greening trees.  “The blessing is in the seed.”  Plant.  Rub wounds with fresh healing salve.  “This moment, this seed, this wave of the sea, this look, this instant of love.”          

“When I said hello to you / I said goodbye to the blues.”  Befriending his guitar, bluesman Larry McCray pats his heart and waves “Bye Bye Blues.”  Some trouble surely lurks ahead, but lots of darkness lies permanently behind us.  A stroll by the river holding hands—a bounce in our steps gaining zing.  “We’ll get through.” 

Whoa!  We need this version of this song “more than ever.”  What a happy rush watching Leonid and Friends re-cover Chicago’s “Make Me Smile.”  Moscow’s Leonid Vorobyev sings and plays piano accompanied by tambourining vocalist Vasily Akimov.  Horns.  Drums.  “Cry sweet tears of joy / Touch the sky.”  Those last forty seconds….

love will end madness

touch blue skies with tears of joy

yes going steady