rjnello

[rjnello]

Vacation Time

No, by that title I don’t mean me and from here. I’m not planning on any extended breaks from annoying you. (LOL!) I mean this: The U.S. is the only major country on Earth that does not guarantee workers a paid vacation.When a husband, wife & kids are unable to spend any time together on vacation, that is not a family value. It's an attack on everything a family is supposed to stand…

[rjnello]

The "Masculinity" Con

I’m deep into my 50s. My whole life, I had been a Democrat, briefly Republican in the early 2000s, and I am now a Democrat again. None of my reasoning for supporting EITHER party has had anything to do with so-called “masculinity”: There is an asinine conventional wisdom forming that Democrats have abandoned blue-collar men and need to restore traditional jobs like farming and manufacturing to…

[rjnello]

“We are ‘free’ as Americans to…”

We are “free” as Americans to shrug at the taking of a “chainsaw” to Social Security, the Department of Education, the Smithsonian, the Voice of America (founded in 1942 to combat fascist propaganda), food inspection, and medicine approval, etc., are great ideas.  We can certainly feel it is okay to “disappear” off any U.S. street any foreign college student on a valid visa who dares to share an…

[rjnello]

So We Should Leave It To The Airlines Again Like In The "Good Ol' Days"?

While I was yesterday generally following Senator Cory Booker’s courageous “Long Speech” (eventually lasting slightly more than, I believe, 25 hours) in which he held the U.S. Senate floor and detailed and assailed the garbage and the horrors of the Trump “administration,” and shared with the world how U.S. governance is SUPPOSED to be, I found myself sidelined briefly in an unrelated exchange on…

[rjnello]

The Debased State Of (The) State

The United States Department of State’s first secretary was Thomas Jefferson. He was at that time the new United States’s most experienced foreign policy expert. He was also a man who believed strongly in international friendships and in welcoming those who sought refuge in and freedom from foreign oppression in the new U.S. Appointed to the new department as its first head in 1790 by newly…

[rjnello]

"Detective" Fun

Given the “unsettled” weather, I was pleased I had two paper books on holiday in Portugal last week. I mentioned previously I re-read (for the first time in years) Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. The second was this: Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography, published in 2010 by Susan Cheever: [Cover of Susan Cheever, Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography (2010). Photo by me.] I am now about…

[rjnello]

"Unsettled" Portugal

We are back in England now. As I mentioned in my previous post, we flew down to Faro, on the south coast – the Algarve – of Portugal a week and some ago, with another couple. We aimed to get away from the cloudy late Devon winter. Our destination was Olhão, about 20 minutes’ drive from Faro Airport… [Artwork. Olhão harbor. Photo by me.] Well, it was not exactly unbroken sunshine. Continue…

[rjnello]

A Present “Sun”

We are on holiday this week in southern Portugal with another couple. It has rained a bit more than usual. Still, it is southern Portugal… [Tavira, Portugal. Photo by me, March 16, 2025.] We try to cut down on device browsing, and watch almost no TV, when on holidays. I brought along a couple of paper books. One is the rather ironically titled, given the unseasonably unsettled Algarve weather…

[rjnello]

“Oh, Canada”

I want to say this more fully than I have previously because it is clear felon U.S. President Donald J Trump just will not stop. If you are in the U.S. and do not see this explained anywhere (I am hearing U.S. domestic media is not really covering this very well), let me explain it as clearly as I can. Trump’s incredibly dangerous ongoing yammering about “annexing” Canada is no joke. In…

[rjnello]

My Titles, For My Reason(s)

You may know I have been here on this site, posting regularly, since late 2013. Indeed, I have been here “blogging” all through the era “blogging” had been declared “dead” – rendered “old-fashioned” by Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok, etc. I suppose I kept at it because, like me, lots of other people did not get the “official” memo either: [From Bluesky.] Continue reading My Titles, For…

[rjnello]

The “Problematic” Author?

If you are a “fantasy” reader (and, it seems, especially a young woman), you have probably heard of Sarah J. Maas. Her best known works are Throne of Glass and A Court of Thorns and Roses. She is often referred to online, I have learned, by her initials, “SJM.” I stumbled the other day on Bluesky posts attacking her – and especially assailing her characters. In noting that, I mean those posters…

[rjnello]

A Post For The U.S.A.'s (Possibly Still Remaining) Friends

You may not know that what felon President Donald J. Trump offered to the U.S. Congress on Tuesday evening was not an official “State of the Union” address. Those are not given in a presidential inaugural year. In an inaugural speech year, a “Message to Congress” replaces a “State of the Union.” Here, for instance, is President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1935 “message’s” opening: Mr. President, Mr.…

[rjnello]

“Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”

U.S. relation: “So I watch Fox. Where do you get your news? The BBC?” Me: “I don’t need anyone to tell me what he says. I listen to what comes from his mouth! Do you?” Above is from part of an ugly exchange I had back during Trump’s first term with a U.S. relative. We still talk. The only reason we do, to be honest, is probably because politics is off limits as a subject between us. Recalling…

[rjnello]

On The "Fully English"

We see the Vice President has been going on about immigrants again: [From Bluesky.] For this post, my emphasis in that piece (because Vance says so much creepy stuff it can be tough to keep up with it all) is its author, Will Saletan, notes this about Vance’s marriage (the article uses capitals as this is the opening to a new section): Continue reading On The “Fully English”

[rjnello]

The Price Of "Beta Reading"

Say what? I almost fell out of my chair when I saw this recently. My current, nearly finished, manuscript is about 82,000 words… Do the math(s). That would mean that person would want $560 to “beta read“/”proofread” (not even physically EDIT, just read) my manuscript. Put another way, “5,000” words in my current manuscript is about “11 pages.” Through my Bluesky, I stumbled recently on that…

[rjnello]

To New Horizons

In the 1990s, my (now late) uncle was once at a gathering with then President Bill Clinton. Afterward, he told me that everyone there KNEW immediately why Clinton was president. He said he dominated a room just by his mere presence and had obviously done so his entire life. Right now, we have one Donald J. Trump as president and the only room he should be “dominating” is a cell in a federal…

[rjnello]

"Yes, they are the baddies"

Names such as Marlene Dietrich, Conrad Veidt, Albert Einstein, Otto Frank and his family, including a young daughter named Anne, may be familiar to you. The first two were actors, the other a Nobel Prize winning scientist, and the last a relatively ordinary family. What did they all have in common? They fled Hitler’s Nazi Germany in the early to middle 1930s. They were hardly alone.1 View this…