Ward on Words

First, a Trip Down Memory Lane When I was in college, back in the 1980s, I spent a week in the former Soviet Union. I was doing a semester abroad in London and my roommate got us onto a Russian tour – you could not go to the USSR from the USA due to diplomatic restrictions on traveling to enemy states but Americans could book tours from London to the USSR. This particular tour included mostly Jewish Americans interested in exploring a country their ancestors had fled. I was Irish Catholic (my mother was an Irish immigrant and my father was "South Side Irish" from Chicago whose mother claimed to be a Chicagoan of German Catholic ancestry.*)  Here is a souvenir of my trip - which I still have stored in one of my cabinets:                              Small bottle of some kind of Soviet-era booze purchased in the USSR in the 1980s. Back in those days, the USSR was our biggest enemy, the reason we need...

At a rally last night in Grand Island, Nebraska, Trump claimed that if Iran should take out Los Angeles and San Diego, that would be a "very small price to pay" for his war on Iran.  Here is the quote, as reported by a New York Times reporter at the event in Grand Island, Nebraska:                                    Bluesky post from NY Times reporter Bayliss Wagner on Trump's statement “They could take out a city,” he said. “Let them take—Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. That’s—this is a very small price to pay." This is a deranged, dangerous statement but if you look at the front page of today's New York Times, there is no hint of it anywhere.                                                   Top ...

My father-in-law died recently in an assisted living center in Westfield, Indiana. We held the memorial service last Thursday at a Mangiano's in Indianapolis. He would have been 90 years old at the end of this month. Alzheimer's stole his brain and his memories some years ago; his death was a release from a bodily prison.  Since his death, my husband has been gifted with some family documents, including a letter with the memories of a distant family member about the history of my husband's family in the US. My own side of the family is pretty new to America - my mother herself was an immigrant from Ireland - intending to stay in America temporarily but met my father in a bar in Chicago. She is now buried in a Catholic cemetery in the suburbs of Chicago. Of my four grandparents, three were born in other countries – my maternal grandparents were obviously born in Ireland and my paternal grandmother was born in a shtetl in Tsarist Russia. Her family came to America in 1907 fle...

It is Sunday, June 7, 2026. Donald Trump appeared on Meet the Press, where he was interviewed by Kristin Welker in a barn in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Seems an odd location, but hey - not much is normal these days.                                                     Donald Trump appears on Meet the Press on June 7, 2026    Elected officials may not like facing reporters on TV and Trump clearly is no exception. Unfortunately, Trump has mastered the art of attacking the reporter instead of answering valid questions. Today's performance from the elderly president was no different.   Apparently the weather was stormy and the storms interrupted the interview multiple times. In the interview, Trump bragged about "building the military" in his first term; now he's using the U.S. military in a "military excursion" (not a...

In 2024, Americans voted for a corrupt, venal, sexually amoral felon for president and we are paying the price for elevating a felon to the highest office in the land. His party bows only to Trump. The Constitution, if it gets in the way of Trump's corruption, is essentially to be ignored by the party.  Since assuming office, he's ripped apart the apparatus of the federal government. Though no one could ever confirm that Elon Musk, a South African immigrant who has multiple billion dollar contracts with the federal government, was the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (AKA DOGE, named for a crypto coin favored by Elon Musk), Musk served as the de facto face of the "temporary" government entity , which previous to DOGE was formerly known as the United States Digital Service (this was done to get around the need for congressional approval for a new department.)  Musk and his lackeys took a sledgehammer to budgets, congressional contracts, approved grants,...

On April 10, Trump took to his personal social media platform, Truth Social, to make a promise to the Hungarian people:    Trump Truth Social Post from April 10, 2026, promising to use "the full Economic Might of the United States" to sway the  election in favor of Viktor Orban     On April 12 and within three hours of the polls closing, Orban conceded he had lost to center-right candidate  Péter Magyar. It was an overwhelming defeat for the man who'd been at the helm of Hungary for 16 years.    It was also an embarrassing defeat for the current president of the United States, who has openly campaigned for the Hungarian authoritarian.     Perhaps one day Americans will celebrate the end to authoritarianism. But right now, we have to endure it. 

Apparently Donald Trump, for whatever reason, has been gifting members of his cabinet with Florsheim shoes, and instead of asking for the sizes of everyone's feet, he's guessing. He likes to trust his gut, apparently, in times of war and in times of shoe shopping.  Anyway, though the war with Iran is in full swing, Trump still has time to look at the footwear of his lackeys and decide they need new shoes. Some, according to the Guardian , "snipe about having to wear middling footwear instead of their upmarket favorites."  Sadly for the lackeys, Trump's gut seems to be wrong when guessing the size of the shoes for his men beside him. He seems to prefer buying them larger than needed, perhaps to go with his larger-than-life personality. Here is an image of Marco Rubio in the gifted shoes - you'll see a lot of space between his heel and the heel of the shoe: Image from The Guardian  The gifting of the shoes has been covered in multiple media outlets: Vogue, Wall...

The rapid collapse of American constitutional order has been shocking to witness. Trump's authoritarian dreams have been nearly realized. His goals are aided and abetted by a corrupt SCOTUS, led by the spin-meister Roberts, a man whose legacy will be the destruction of the Constitution he swore to uphold. No one in his party seems to want to defend the Constitution and instead will do and say anything to get on TV to defend Trump.  With DOGE, he sent a wrecking ball through multiple government agencies. He unconstitutionally slashed funds allocated by Congress for cancer research, medical breakthroughs, historical accounts, the National Parks. Elon Musk, a foreign citizen from South Africa with billions in US contracts propping up his failing businesses, made off like a bandit with our private data and additional federal contacts. It was a massive conflict of interest to have a federal contractor determine which other federal contracts to void (unconstitutionally) but the party see...