Ramblin' with Roger

Sometimes I weep

measles, ICE detention

When I read stories about preventable chaos in the US, I sometimes feel enraged. But sometimes I weep.

As I read that the regime has, per the LA Times [paywall likely], “reversed the U.S. government’s longstanding scientific conclusion that planet-heating pollution seriously threatens Americans, erasing a foundational piece of the country’s efforts to address climate change,” I fret, What kind of country are we leaving my daughter? I cry a bit.

“The repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding — a conclusion based on decades of science that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare — represents one of the biggest environmental rollbacks in U.S. history…” One of? Then I get ticked off again.

ICE detention

Democracy Now highlights “The Children of Dilley.” “That’s the title of a new ProPublica investigation into the South Texas Family Residential Center, a sprawling ICE detention complex in the town of Dilley, a few dozen miles from the southern border with Mexico. It’s run by the private prison company CoreCivic. Dilley was first opened by the Obama administration in 2014.”

It’s a place “where families describe horrific conditions inside, such as being served contaminated food, with children and parents at times finding worms in their meals. Lights are reportedly left on for 24 hours a day. [It] detains an estimated 3,500 people, more than half of them children.

“There are also mounting reports of psychological abuse by guards, some of whom have allegedly threatened families with separation. ‘Many of the children who are now being sent there are being arrested by ICE around the country, and some of them, like Ariana, have been living [in the U.S.] for years,’ says Mica Rosenberg, investigative reporter at ProPublica.”

Sadism makes me weep.

Measles

What REALLY did me in, though, was a story in The Atlantic. I don’t currently have a subscription, but there is a feature called “One Story to Read Today” that “highlights a single newly published—or newly relevant—Atlantic story that’s worth your time.”

The title was This Is How A Child Dies Of Measles by Elizabeth Bruenig. From the excerpt: “You don’t want to worry your daughter, so you try to sound calm when you call the pediatrician and describe her symptoms at a rapid clip. The receptionist responds gently, types swiftly, and then pauses. Are your children vaccinated? she asks. Her tone is flat and inscrutable, but you detect an undercurrent of judgment. You wince and tell her the truth. No, you say, no vaccines. She puts you on hold.

“While you wait, you take your son out of his high chair and wipe his runny nose with his bib. The receptionist is back. She asks if you can be at the office within the hour. In an even, professional voice, she gives you a number to call as soon as you arrive, but tells you to stay in your car. The doctor, she says, will come to you.”

And then

“You’re there in 30 minutes, unshowered and wearing sweatpants, with your daughter bundled up and shivering in her pajamas and your son fussing in his car seat. You call the office. From the car, you cannot see the sign on the pediatrician’s office door instructing patients with a list of symptoms, like your daughter’s, not to come inside. Flashes of the pandemic play back as you see the pediatrician and two nurses approaching in the rearview mirror wearing N95 masks. It hits you: This is not the flu. This is not chicken pox. This is serious.”

If that isn’t gutting enough to make me weep, there’s a twist.

This is exhausting, enervating stuff.

Cruelty Is The Point: Mr. Brunelle

Robert Waldo Brunelle Jr re FOTUS

When my daughter helped me clean my office, she found an unused $25 Amazon gift card. Rather than let it go to waste, I bought Cruelty Is The Point, a Collection of “Mr. Brunelle Explains It All” cartoons. (This is not to be confused with The Cruelty Is the Point: Why Trump’s America Endures by Adam Serwer (2022).)

Robert Waldo Brunelle JR is “a painter, book illustrator, kinetic sculptor, retired art teacher, and political cartoonist.” Specifically, “I am a 7th-Generation Vermonter, born in Rutland in 1958. I am a descendant of William Brewster of the Mayflower and count among my ancestors a Great-Grandfather, Great-Great Grandfather, and Great-Grandmother who were all artists.

“My strip, Mr. Brunelle Explains It All, appears weekly in Seven Days VT, and monthly in Funny Times and on this site.” The strip began in 1997. When Mr. Brunelle posts his comics on Facebook, I repost north of 95% of them. It explains the current situation we find ourselves in quite cogently across four panels.

In his introduction to Cruelty, he writes correctly that the content is “‘ripped from the headlines,’ for your amusement.” Well, it’s not always amusing; sometimes it’s maddening. But it always has a heaping helping of truthfulness.

Relevant

He notes a particular felon, I mean fellow, “has kept all of us political cartoonists rather busy lately, and I churned hundreds of ’em in 2025. For this book, I selected 50 that I thought would remain relevant for a while (unlike other types of cartoons, political cartoons have a very short “shelf life,” alas.”

While this is generally true, the primary subject and his clown car of supporting characters – Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, and Jeffrey Epstein’s ghost, among them – are such cartoons that, months after their original appearance, their narratives are, unfortunately, not dated.

In case I haven’t sufficiently conveyed Mr. Brunelle’s political leanings, he writes: “We must laugh to keep from crying during these trying times, so hopefully this book will help you cope with the dystopian hellscape that is Trump’s America. Enjoy!”

Unfortunately, he indicates that the book is only available on Amazon, as are his previous works, including There Will Be Pain (2024) and Perpetual Panic Attack (2023). This may be stronger because the target is so much a cartoon. (Someone should update his Wikipedia page.)

Condolences

I was very sad to read that Mr. Brunelle’s beloved wife, Grace, who occasionally shared his cartoon pages with him, died on February 6. Here is her obituary and a link to the Facial Pain Association. “Facial pain can be a debilitating experience for many people, and there are numerous types of facial pain with a variety of possible causes. Precise diagnosis is crucial in determining an effective treatment. The journey to diagnosis and pain relief can be a long and winding road.”

If the Church Were Christian

‘The scriptures say thus and so, but I say…’

**This quote has been attributed to several other people.**

One of the Bible Guys at my church, a group that I haven’t attended much since the end of the COVID pandemic, posted this in late January. “These sentences are the chapter titles from Philip Gulley’s book, ‘If the church were Christian.’

Jesus would be a model for living rather than an object of worship. Affirming our potential would be more important than condemning our brokenness. Reconciliation would be valued over judgment. Gracious behavior would be more important than right belief. Inviting questions would be more valued than supplying answers. Encouraging personal exploration would be more important than communal uniformity. Meeting needs would be more important than maintaining institutions. Peace would be more immortal than power. We would care more about love than about sex. This life would be more important than the afterlife.

As I shared a decade ago, “Every time Jesus mentioned the equivalent of a church tradition, the Torah, he qualified it with something like this: ‘The scriptures say thus and so, but I say…'”

In response, someone wrote this concerning Lent-

The Call to Fasting

Fast from bitterness – feast on forgiveness.

Fast from self-concern – feast on compassion for others.

Fast from personal anxiety – feast on eternal truth.

Fast from anger – feast on patience.

Fast from words that destroy – feast on words that build.

Fast from discontent – feast on gratitude.

Fast from discouragement – feast on hope.

Fretting

I must admit that not yielding to anger and discouragement is particularly difficult for me. For instance, I fret most about how Christianity has been co-opted. Last year, I wrote: “Christian nationalism makes an idol of the nation.”

So I am somewhat comforted by this December 2025 piece from NPR, “Since January [2025], religious leaders from local pastors to Pope Leo have rallied against the [regime’s] detention and deportation of thousands of immigrants. Clergy are filing lawsuits, accompanying migrants to court hearings, and leading protests at ICE facilities across the country. Altogether, this activity adds up to one of the largest surges of faith-based organizing in recent history, and it’s growing.” Amen!

Today, Ash Wednesday, is the first day of Lent. Here’s the origin of the word Lent.

Pauli Murray wanted to go to college

co-founded CORE and NOW

Last month, a story from a year earlier about Pauli Murray crossed my path. From Mississippi Today re: Jan 5, 1939:

“News broke that Pauli Murray had applied to a Ph.D. program at the University of North Carolina, sparking white outrage across the state.

“‘Members of your race are not admitted to the university,’ her rejection letter read.

“‘The days immediately following the first press stories were anxious ones for me,’ she recalled. ‘I had touched the raw nerve of white supremacy in the South.’

“A year later, she was jailed twice in Virginia for refusing to give up her seat on a Greyhound bus. She graduated first in her class at Howard University School of Law, but Harvard University wouldn’t accept her because of her gender. (Harvard didn’t admit women until 1950.) Instead, she became the first Black student to receive Yale Law School’s most advanced degree.”

The story goes on, noting that she co-founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942.

She had an evolution about race. In the 1950s, “she researched her ancestry. ‘If you call me Black, it’s ridiculous physiologically, isn’t it? I’m probably 5/8 white, 2/8 Negro — repeat American Negro — and 1/8 American Indian,’ she said. ‘I began years before Alex Haley did. I’m always ahead of my time.'”

But “during her time as a professor in Ghana in the early 1960s, she began to accept that ancestry, she said. ‘The difficulty is coming to terms with a mixed ancestry in a racist culture,’ she said.

NOW

In 1977, she helped found the National Organization of Women. From the NOW.org site. “Here’s an archived page from the Obama White House celebrating NOW Founding Day as a ‘This Day In History!’

“Pauli Murray and Betty Friedan made more history with NOW’s first Statement of Purpose. It’s one of the first declarations of intersectionality as a social justice goal.”

That same year, “she became the first Black woman to serve as an Episcopal priest.

“‘Being a priest is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,’ she said. ‘The first 48 hours were the most difficult of my life. I found myself on the receiving end of tremendous human problems I didn’t know how to handle.’

She died in 1985. In 2012, the Episcopal church named her a saint. “

Her memoir, published posthumously in 1987, was Song in a Weary Throat, a well-received book that was republished in 2018.

Also: see here: Finding Pauli Murray: The Black Queer Feminist Civil Rights Lawyer Priest who co-founded NOW, but that History Nearly Forgot. In 2024, the U.S. Mint Released a Quarter Honoring Murray’s Achievements.

Presidents Day: White House alligator

THAT’S CONSTITUTIONAL

When an alligator lived in the White House—and nine more presidential pets

Check out Every U.S. President as a Puppet? Funny History Through Muppet-Like Images! Some are more on-point than others.

An online quiz: How many U.S. presidents, if any, had a double “o” (“oo”) in either their first or last name?

Here are some JEOPARDY clues from 20251106 to 20260102

PRESIDENT CLEVELAND WITH YOUR OLD PAL GROVER $200: (Grover presents the clue.) You can say I am cute & very fuzzy, just like this rival who both beat Cleveland & lost to him; he was the last president to sport a full beard

… $400: (Grover presents the clue.) The star of Grover Cleveland’s 1892 campaign, the first successful one by an ex-president, was not the candidate or even his wife, but their cute & adorable one-year-old daughter, called “Baby” this name

… $600: (Grover presents the clue.) Aw, imagine being there on October 28, 1896, when President Cleveland spoke to dedicate the Statue of Liberty; first, the president had to wait until this, in red, white & blue, was pulled from Lady Liberty’s face

…$800: (Grover presents the clue.) Grover Cleveland is the only president born in the great state of New Jersey; his birthplace used to be a manse, which means that his father had this job in the lovely town of Caldwell

… $1000: (Grover presents the clue.) Grover Cleveland did not enter politics in Cleveland, but in this other Lake Erie city, and in one of his most quoted letters, he longs for a plate of herring & Swiss cheese from a favorite restaurant there

GO FOR “GOLD” $800: He’s the Phoenix native who ran for president against LBJ in 1964

I FEEL GOOD $1600: Era of Good Feelings, when this president sought to eliminate political parties

Former POTUS

THE EX-PRESIDENTS $200: In 1875, he became the 1st ex-prez to serve in the Senate, but unlike another pres. of the same name, didn’t become “master of” it

… $400: He served as a guest announcer for the first inning of the 1989 Major League Baseball All-Star Game

… $600: He wrote the opinion for Myers v. U.S., saying a president could fire executive officers with or without Congress’ OK

… $800: At a 1965 ceremony, Harry Truman became the first beneficiary of this new federal program & applied for Part B

… $1000: He suffered a stroke on the floor of the House of Reps., where he’d been serving, & passed away in the Capitol 2 days later

NONFICTION $1200: This classic by Woodward & Bernstein was published shortly before Richard Nixon resigned from office

ICONIC EYEWEAR $800: Wearing specs may have saved this ex-president’s life: in 1912, his metal eyeglass case slowed a would-be assassin’s bullet

AMERICANA $1600: Born more than 60 years after his grandfather’s death, the last grandchild of this 10th president passed away in 2025 at 96

The first

PRESIDENTIAL FIRSTS $200: Reaching the mark in 2024, he was the first president to live to be 100

… $400: James Madison was the first president to ask Congress for a declaration of war, for this conflict

… $600 (Daily Double): Calvin Coolidge was the first & so far only president born on this date; 3 have died on it

… $800: For helping end the Russo-Japanese War, he was the first president & the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize

… $1000: He was the first president who had never been elected president or vice president

FROM THEIR NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARY $1600: 1964: “Only one other president lived to be 90–John Adams, the second president”

I’M THINKING OF A JAMES… $800: Who was ranked as the worst president in U.S. history by U.S. News & World Report

WINNING IS DIFFICULT! $1200: …Even if you win the popular vote! But Samuel Tilden ended up 1 Electoral College vote short & this guy from Ohio became president

HISTORY “P”s & “Q”s $400: A boycott & strike in one, the 1894 strike of this company’s railroad workers got President Cleveland involved

CIVIL WAR ERA GEOGRAPHY $2000: Lincoln was nominated for president in 1860 in the Wigwam, a wooden structure at what’s now Lake & Wacker in this city

___ OF ____ $800: Whether prince or president, but often more permanent than prime minister, it’s a nation’s titular ruler

FIRESIDE CHATS $1600: After FDR, he was the only president to copy the informal chat approach of sitting by an actual fireplace–& in a cardigan, no less

THAT’S CONSTITUTIONAL $200: “The President… shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high” this duo

A SALUTE TO VETERANS DAY $400: Veterans Day was originally called Armistice Day until this president & veteran officially changed it in 1954

ANSWERS

QUIZ: four or five. Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin Roosevelt, all from the first half of the 20th century. HOWEVER, as some pedantic fellow noted, Wilson’s given first name was Thomas.

PRESIDENT CLEVELAND WITH YOUR OLD PAL GROVER: Benjamin Harrison; Ruth; the French flag; minister; Buffalo, NY

GO FOR “GOLD”: Barry Goldwater, a/k/a AuH20

I FEEL GOOD: James Monroe

AMERICANA: John Tyler

THE EX-PRESIDENTS: Andrew Johnson; Ronald Reagan; William Howard Taft; Medicare; John Quincy Adams

NONFICTION: All The President’s Men

ICONIC EYEWEAR: Theodore Roosevelt

PRESIDENTIAL FIRSTS: Jimmy Carter; The War of 1812; July 4; Theodore Roosevelt; Gerald Ford

FROM THEIR NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARY: Herbert Hoover

I’M THINKING OF A JAMES…: Buchanan

WINNING IS DIFFICULT!: Rutherford B. Hayes

HISTORY “P”s & “Q”s: Pullman

CIVIL WAR ERA GEOGRAPHY: Chicago

___ OF ____: Head of state

FIRESIDE CHATS: Jimmy Carter

THAT’S CONSTITUTIONAL: crimes and misdemeanors

A SALUTE TO VETERANS DAY: Dwight Eisenhower

JEC was the first President born in a hospital — an event that occurred on October 1, 1924. All five presidents born after Carter — Joe Biden (1942), FOTUS (1946), George W. Bush (1946), Bill Clinton (1946), and Barack Obama (1961) — were likewise born in hospitals. George H. W. Bush, who was born less than four months before Carter and assumed the presidency 12 years after Carter, was born at home in Milton, Massachusetts.