Brian Schatz On How Democrats Can ‘Start Kicking Ass Again’

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/brian-schatz-trump-musk-us-aid.html

 

The Week ‘Democrats Must Work With Trump’ Died

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/democrats-must-work-with-trump-dead.html

 huh?

 

Trump is willing to wreck the world economy. The global fightback must start now. (in ‘The Guardian’)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/03/donald-trump-world-economy-britain-us-tariffs

 

NEW EXHIBITION on Anne Frank’s experiences opened at the Center for Jewish History in New York

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/new-exhibition-on-anne-franks-experiences-opened-at-the-center-for-jewish-history-in-new-york/

 

Bill Gates and the New Trumpian Tech Oligarchs

The Microsoft founder discusses vaccine skepticism, his fellow-billionaires’ political pivots, and his own dinner with the President at Mar-a-Lago.

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/bill-gates-on-his-new-memoir-and-dining-with-donald-trump-at-mar-a-lago

 

THE BRAIN DOCTORS: 5 simple habits to prevent dementia

https://youtu.be/thSfISWB3ok?si=C630VGRmfXRgbQ5z:

 

The Truth About Democrats, According to Amy Klobuchar 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/opinion/amy-klobuchar-interview-democrats-trump.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

 MARIANNE FAITHFULL. R.I.P.

 

MARYLAND’S GOVERNOR WES MOORE in a video, an interview. Seems like he’s got it.

https://youtu.be/8wc2KbARHWQ?si=urDbSmHHklgXbzn2

IT’S WORTH WATCHING THE VIDEO BELOW OF MERRICK GARLAND’S LAST DAY; the people clapping for him. Compare that with what Trump is bringing in. He convinced his followers that the people clapping were bad people. 

https://youtu.be/qT2-ANsg7GY?si=vlgDFkNDI7UbUx7C

MY FIRST EXERCISE WALK of the day is for 30 minutes and I usually listen to the ‘THE DAILY’ an NYT weekday podcast about some big current issue. Everyone should get the Times online. The TV news is too dramatic. And repetitious. 

 BISHOP BUDDE, an interview in ‘The New Yorker’

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/why-bishop-mariann-budde-wanted-to-speak-to-donald-trump

DAVID LYNCH-a video-on TM. Transcendental Meditation. I’ve been practicing it about as long as David did, 40-some years. If I could give you one thing. 

https://youtu.be/OyRFpeliBVk?si=alxmRrzY1meChQqz

 

HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2025/jan/27/holocaust-remembrance-day-2025-in-pictures

IT WAS COLD THIS MORNING but not bitter cold like last week. Not windy either. I went downtown with the sign. First time in over a week. My hands are still buzzing a little from being in the cold. I’m glad I went. The oatmeal tastes better.

 RUBY BRIDGES. New Orleans. 1960. (Norman Rockwell painting)

 

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/full-interview-rachel-maddow-talks-with-the-bishop-who-asked-trump-directly-to-show-mercy-230028869613

 LUNCH TODAY at Old Town Bar on East 18th Street. With a friend. To me, a perfect place.

WITH NO SIGN TO HOLD in the biting cold this week, I find myself restless in the early morning and I find myself at my breakfast place by 8:00. Alone, though I’m meeting a guy there on Friday morning. What I notice, and the picture shows as have all the pictures I’ve posted from the city, no one looks or dresses like a hot shot. These four guys meeting before work could be anywhere.

 WATCH THIS: 

https://youtu.be/KluZw9x3gas?si=68DLJGm0u7vu-pt-

 

MY ENTHUSIASM FOR DAVID LYNCH has a lot to do with his unending belief in TM (transcendental meditation). He had done it for over 40 years, twice a day. So have I. I’d recommend it to all of you. No matter your age. I did it first thing this morning. 

IT WAS WAY TOO COLD to go out with the sign this morning. That gave me two extra hours in my apartment. I didn’t watch a second of yesterday’s Trump inauguration, and I didn’t watch the news about it either. I’m going to try to avoid him. With the extra time inside I turned on the Ken Burns’ three part documentary about the Holocaust. I’d watched it before, but for some reason I watched the first two of three parts so far today. There’s something in it, that’s troubling for today about Trump. Something.

 

“The world doesn’t work the way the schoolbooks said it did and we are different from what our parents and teachers expected us to be.”

—David Lynch

EASILY MORE THAN A DECADE AGO I was on my corner waiting for the light to change early in the morning before rush hour. It was just me on the corner. I don’t remember why I was up. Suddenly up to the corner from back by my apartment building came a very beautiful tall woman. She stood next to me for a minute. I knew she was somebody, but I didn’t know her name. She looked busy already. Intent on making something of the day. 

R.I.P. Cecile Richards.

 M.L.K. 

RESTLESS I WOKE UP EARLY AGAIN AND WENT OUT TO BREAKFAST at the usual place. I got blueberry pancakes. Eggs on a separate plate. Scrambled. I went home and soon still restless because of the Inauguration tomorrow and the big college football game tomorrow night and because my oldest daughter is flying to India this afternoon for work, I decided I’d go buy a book at close-by big Barnes & Noble which has a staggering amount of trade paperbacks on all sorts of tables. I usually walk to my favorite bookstore but it was too far for me to go today. I looked at many tables. No book jumped out to me though. Finally on an upper floor this one did. I’m 77. It’s my era. I’ve likely read most of the entries before. But I bought it. In a kind of a fuck you to Trump and Musk and Jon Voight. 

AT THE BIG (four floors) BARNES & NOBLE NEAR ME just now. 

 SHE’S NOT GOING TO THE INAUGURATION. You don’t have to watch.  

I TAKE WAY FEWER PHOTOS WITH MY PHONE since I quit posting things on Facebook. I used to feel a nudge to take a photo on the subway or on my walks so I could put the photo on Facebook. Nothing really wrong with that. But any phone or computer identity—this place too—is not real life. I’ve noticed that since I’m not online with Facebook which was the only place I went. No X or Instagram. I’m sure people who are on them, enjoy them. Younger people. My grandchildren. It’s not my world. I do miss the people I connected with on Facebook, if it’s really a connection. I liked seeing their names come up. I’ll say this though. Life is more real off the computer. I’m not a better person. Just freer somehow. Or more free. 

 DAVID LYNCH. R.I.P.

 

‘Deeply alarmed’: Washington Post staff request meeting with Jeff Bezos

Journalists say in letter ‘trust has been lost’ and seek in-person meeting with billionaire owner over paper’s future

https://apple.news/ATg_0S9XWTDG-eRPkt__kFQ

I KNEW IT WAS TOO COLD OUT. I knew before I went to bed it was going to be 24 degrees between 8:00-9:00 when I hold the sign downtown in front of the Dept. of Education building. But my alarm was set for 6:23 and I got up and went out with the sign. I like the faces I see every weekday there. They like to see me there, I can tell. I’m part of the landscape. Many, maybe most, of the people who work in the building have never not had me out front. So, I went. I only stayed 30 minutes though. It was cold out. 

JUST CAME IN THE MAIL.

 

I WISH I SLEPT BETTER. You’d think there’d be a harmless pill. 

YESTERDAY WAS SUNDAY and Saturday it was before that. And I had to decide then if I’d go out to breakfast or not or maybe just lie in bed listening to C-SPAN or get up and do whatever. This morning was different. The phone alarm went off at 6:23 and I couldn’t go back to sleep. I had to get up. Check the phone, have a big glass of hot water, do TM meditation which I always do—for 40-some years. Then get ready to go out with the sign. Breakfast when I get back. I like a reason to get moving in the morning. 

I WENT OUT TO BREAKFAST EARLY this morning. Small oatmeal, scrambled eggs, potatoes, buttered English muffin, black coffee. Five blocks away. The place I always go. Not busy early Sunday morning. I even wondered if I’d go, but I did and you see people. On the cold walk home I noticed one apartment building after another. Old and new. People from everywhere. The young woman at the check out at the grocery store I went in heading home is from West Africa. Good luck, LA. 

IF YOU’RE COMMITTED-like me-to watching way way less news/talk while Trump dominates TV, ‘The New Yorker’ is a good alternative way to spend your time. It’s a weekly. I woke up for whatever reason real early this morning and read a long piece about immigrants from Ecuador coming here. 100% interesting. 100%. I don’t read all the time. I don’t read as much as I used to. I don’t watch TV programs or movies either. And way less sports. Done with Facebook. I’m kind of addicted to YouTube. 

I DIDN’T WATCH THE DC SERVICE FOR JIMMY CARTER. Phony Trump was there with his look and I didn’t want to see it. I’m going to try to avoid him the rest of the way. Jimmy Carter had a special way about him. I’ll remember that. Funeral recollections are too much. I texted a friend last night that I’m pretty sure I voted for John Anderson in 1980. I was young and his message worked for me.

IT WAS 1967. I was 20, same age as Dustin Hoffman in the movie. I saw it with the woman, also 20, who I’d marry. We saw it in Chicago where she went to college. It wasn’t widely distributed yet. I told all my friends about the movie. I watched it again tonight. I’d seen enough California fires. I didn’t want to see Trump either. I never want to see him. 

 NEIGHBORHOOD LIBRARY, two blocks away. Yesterday afternoon. 

IT WAS COLD THIS MORNING and I almost didn’t go hold the sign. Below freezing my phone said. But I got ready and with a puffy orange coat over a sweater and a blue overcoat over that, I went. Not windy but everybody was bundled. The rest of the week, may be too cold. 

WHO NEEDS ANOTHER IMAGE OF JANUARY 6. But it was so terrible and the denial involved even worse, that I looked for an image online. Hard to pick an image. There are so many. 

GOING THROUGH SOME PHOTOS I RECENTLY TOOK: here’s one of some cookies my oldest NYC daughter and her daughter made. 

 

SOME CALLER on C-SPAN yesterday called Trump ‘fraudulent’ in all his dealings. Amen.

SOMETIMES, a pint or a half-pint of blueberries will be a buck or three. It fluctuates. The street vendors are always cheaper. When you figure in the packaging and the cost of getting them here from Peru or Chile by plane, and the truck that took them to the plane, think of how little the people who pick the berries in the vast fields make. 

THIS PHOTO. Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman with his mother and his wife. The mother part is what’s interesting. 

BACK WITH THE SIGN THIS MORNING. I’d been to Cleveland and then the big holidays. Two weeks. Long time away from it. Public schools are back in session today, so there were some familiar faces going by me. Sidewalk was only half busy though. Many people won’t come back till Monday. Friday will be dead probably. It’s become a slow day anyway. Good for me to be there though.

PHOTOS just texted from Wyoming. Oldest daughter from here and her twins have been staying with youngest daughter and family; three daughters she has. I’ll put the photos below, which may not interest you at all. I understand. But I felt like doing something with them. Top one is Wyoming daughter somewhere with her youngest daughter. Next are the NYC twins with the middle WY daughter on the right. Beneath them is WY daughter’s year-old store, just relocated to town. It sells furnishings. The NYC granddaughter loves it. That’s an in-town mountain; not the big Tetons. Bottom are the twins somewhere with the oldest WY kid, a senior in HS, in the foreground. Thanks for looking, if you did,