Most pictures of Donald Trump are less than flattering, I guess depending on the political leanings of the news source covering him.

Still, a lot of pictures show an angry mug, mouth opened, yelling, teeth bared, red faced, just an ugly rendition of a human being, but probably accurate and indicative of the man’s rotten core.

He might be taken aback by the reception he got at a Libertarian gathering over the weekend, getting booed, getting a snootful of changing political winds. He’s such a caricature, though, such a blatantly immature, shallow know-nothing who has never had anything of import or value to say.

He has always been a mouthpiece, the poster child for calculation, for political expediency and incompetence, and it looks like people are growing tired of him. Finally. Maybe.

Another morning where I’m savoring the quiet, savoring the functioning utilities and infrastructure not blown to bits, and the tasty cold brew and the morning stillness and the singing birds and an extended family living their lives without the added burden, thus far, of worrying about war and misguided efforts of megalomaniacs to take it all away.

Maybe I check the newsfeeds too often, maybe I worry too much, but we all have a lot on our plates anymore, even as we go about our relatively peaceful lives here in America. There is no burying one’s head in the sand, unless we’re already living in a bunker in the hills.

The wearied people of Ukraine are fighting for their lives, victims of Putin’s evil, myopic, and moldy vision of putting the Soviet Union back together. Gazans are being pummeled into submission by an unrelenting army spurred on by a guy trying to save his own ass.

Smoke-filled skies, angry weather, unrelenting heat—already!—and the prospect of a savage hurricane season. And, of course, a presidential campaign moving toward what the pundits are telling us will be the most important decision we’ll make, well, since the last election.

Anyway, I’m savoring another quiet morning. The dehumidifier is humming and the lights are still on.

Nikki Haley will vote for Trump, trying to redeem her capitulation with a hope that he will appeal to the bloc who have kept voting for her in the primaries. Yikes. What a bunch of smarmy characters— doesn’t do much for one’s faith in leaders doing the right thing.

Maybe she’s angling for Veep?

Haley’s return to earth was predictable, I guess, but it still stings because she said so many derogatory things about Trump along the campaign trail that might have led one to believe she was charting her own course. Then she ends up saying she’ll vote for the guy anyway. Many will never understand the appeal, or the lack of backbone.

And then there’s Trump’s sudden wooing of a voting bloc that’s been voting for some other candidate. It’s cheap on the face of it. Any appeal will be transactional, an act of desperation, a conciliatory effort to get votes—not because he is genuinely selling anything that he believes, or that these voters will want to buy.

He’d just be saying stuff, trying to say the right things long enough to change minds and wear people down, not necessarily because he has any intention of following through. It’s a dirty, disgusting game of shallowness and deceit. Yeah, I had to use one of Trump’s favorite words. Seemed to fit here.

I had a dream, after I turned the alarm off this morning, that has me pretty much convinced I’m still dealing with a pesky, unresolved issue in my life.

I was involved in a worship service somewhere, dressed in jeans and a polo shirt while the pastor was decked out in full alb, chasuble, and stole, in a large room packed to the gills with people. I was given the nod to start the service by leading the congregation in some piece of liturgy, moving to the middle of the room, and realizing as I walked that I couldn’t find—and had actually forgotten—the piece I was supposed to be leading. It was in another notebook somewhere else.

So I just kept walking around, flipping pages, hoping I’d find it, trying to make light of my predicament and talking to people as I went.

The pastor, having sensed that I was stalling and something wasn’t right, had the entire congregation stand and greet one another while I fumbled and searched. I never found what I needed– knowing I wouldn’t but hoping I would– and then I woke up, relieved.

The dreams have never lasted long enough for me to experience the consequences of my lack of preparation– there’s never resolution one way or another. But I got to thinking maybe this is all a commentary on my struggles with faith itself, with commitment, with making a decision and charting a course once and for all. Or maybe the same dynamic still exists in retirement—no sense of purpose, no clear path, just lackadaisical, aimless wandering.

I don’t know, but I wasn’t expecting to still be haunted by this. It makes me wonder what needs to happen, what needs to change.

Sometimes I feel like an impostor in my own life.

The Weather Channel is over-the-top. I know it’s a channel dedicated to weather, but… it’s weather. Don’t need the dramatic, scary music when the Local on the 8s comes on, don’t need the polished production or the gravitas.

OK, it makes sense to be tuned into the emotions of reporting a devastating storm, but these folks go for the production value, like it’s the most interesting stuff in the world, like it needs to be reported the same way as 9/11 or walking on the moon. I guess that’s what geeks do, though. I guess we should be thankful that they’re into it, and they seem to love what they do.

By now, it’s probably a pretty nice gig for Cantore and Abrams and the rest.

Driving back from Maine on I-95, we had a close encounter with some hothead in a Jeep pick-up, or whatever those over-priced vehicles are supposed to be, who rode our bumper and laid on his horn.

We noticed, as he passed us and cut back in within a few inches of our front bumper, a sign that read, “I don’t give a fuck what you think,” and another with just an image of an assault rifle. For some reason, we pissed him off, I guess because we weren’t doing 85 or 90 in a 70 zone. There were others who were driving like maniacs, too—there usually are.

I was once again reminded that there are people barely controlling multi-ton missiles at excessive speed who should be sidelined until they have a better handle on their mental and emotional states.

They clearly don’t give a rat’s ass about anyone else on the road.

There’s something about Maine. I don’t know as I’d say it feels like coming home, but when we get up to Mid-coast and beyond, it feels like an invitation, like it would embrace us, like we could live here and enjoy it and thrive. It’s good to be back in the neck of the woods where I can wear my Red Sox hat proudly, not defiantly.

When we’re driving north on U.S. 1 and we catch the first glimpse of marine marshlands and evidence of tidal activity, I get excited. It means the ocean isn’t that far away, and neither are the ambience, the weathered cedar-sided homes and the genuine seafood platters and crabmeat rolls and picturesque harbors and our kin who live twenty minutes from the Big Pond’s edge.

There’s something about Maine that’s not exactly easy to describe. It just feels good being here. We always head back to reality and more southerly climes with a bit of an ache, and a desire to stay longer. Much longer.

Cat fights in the House, a steady parade of sycophants creating a side show at the Trump trial, and Executive Privilege ruffles feathers in the aftermath of Pres. Biden’s interview with Robert Hur.

I guess these are all threads in the same bolt of cloth, since we’re 6 months out from a big election and Republicans in particular are looking for any sort of distraction and advantage in their quest for relevance and power.

Forget about governance. For Republicans, it’s all about smear campaigns and loudness and misdirection— the usual playbook. No thought of working on legislation, unless it involves taking someone’s rights away or making it more difficult to immigrate or paving the way for the next Christian Nationalist to emerge and try to “take the country back.”

Does it bother anyone else? Are there millions of people out there who daily find themselves pondering the absurdity or maybe even shaking a fist at… somebody?

Here we are, nine years after Trump descended from on high, almost four years after he was soundly beaten in the last election (and the one before that, too), a few years removed from two impeachment trials, and almost daily evidence of incompetence and delusional thinking, not to mention 4 indictments and 91 felony counts. And he’s still standing, still in our faces being loud and pathetic.

And he still has supporters who love him.

In a way, it reminds me of our kids’ first experience playing soccer. Wherever the ball was was where the entire team went. There was no position play. The same thing has been happening with Trump—wherever he is, whatever he says, the media trip over themselves to cover it, unwittingly or maybe knowingly feeding the beast.

History may rhyme, but I bet in the annals of our 248-year existence, we haven’t seen anyone quite like this guy. He deserves to be thrown out on his ear, but instead people still worship the ground he walks on.

Same old story, I guess.

The debate scenario is already taking on the character of a WWF match.

Just stop it already.

We really are a country full of drama queens, aching for a no-holds-barred shouting match between old white men, which, on the face of it, sounds ridiculous, the poster child for irrelevance. Biden’s camp is trying to set boundaries. Trump, even though he shouldn’t be anywhere near a debate stage by now, most likely will take exception to these. So we’ll see what we end up witnessing.

Call me old fashioned, but a one-on-one without an audience, only a moderator, and the threat of turning mics off if things get too loud and off-topic—this all sounds good to me. See if Trump can handle 90 minutes, or whatever the time frame will be, of an honest back and forth, a helpful and hopefully clarifying debate of real issues that will demand preparation and knowledge and a certain amount of restraint.

Yes, that’ll happen about the same time as reports of porcine flight.

First one in June, I guess, and the second one in September. Imagine the media build-up, the pre-debates debate. November 5 can’t come fast enough.