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A Day Late and A Dollar Short - Part II
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​~ Dr. P-J

A new poem by Dr. P-J:
I Am an Ocean
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Madge Moves On
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Missing the West Coast
by Shelley Pineo-Jensen, Ph.D.

The Coast of the Pacific Northwest is my home. I moved out to the Eastern Seaboard to be useful to my children, but the bulk of my days are spent just with my lovely husband, living in a climate I find uncomfortable with scenery that pales in comparison to that of my home.

I want to breath the air of that part of the West Coast that exists between the shoreline of the Pacific Ocean and the crestline of the coastal range, preferably in Oregon. I long for the place where a stiff ocean breeze blows through town, perhaps loaded with rain, where it’s a 15-minute drive to a beach where I can put my feet in the water and comb the beach for sand dollars. I want to smell coastal chaparral.

I want to watch ocean waves crashing on thick sandy beaches backed by giant rocks standing a ways off shore while sea birds scream and swoop. I want to struggle to walk through soft difficult sand and pad my way easily on cold hard sand. I want to smell the sea.

I want to linger in evergreen forests and smell the woods. I want to pause in beach dune chaparral and smell sage brush.

I want to come home and have to shake sand off my shoes and wash my filthy feet with a hose near the back door and then have hot tea with my true love while I sort beach treasure I have combed – rocks, shells, and pieces of wood shaped by the sea.
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I want to go home.

The GOP is culpable in the mass murder of school children, by their support of easy access to guns for anyone, terrorists, anyone, by their approval of automatic weapons, by their sleazy propaganda of white supremacy and neo-Christian domination of what should be equality for all, justice for all. There is no longer a "Good Republican"  - all the good people in the Republican Party have left.
There are more independent voters than there are Democrats, and more Democratic voters than there are Republicans. And yet the Republican Party continues to weld great power - not because they get the most votes but because they suppress the voting of people of color, poor people, anyone who would have a natural inclination to vote blue.
The GOP is actively pushing reducing women to chatel - forced to remain pregnant against their will, carrying to term a blastula or an embryo the size of a grain of race. Any fertilized egg will have more value than any woman, or any child forced to attend public school, for that matter.
So spare me the "there are good people in both parties." VOTE BLUE - get those fascists out of office.
P.S. Many of my dearly departed relatives (RIP Grandma Chandler) were Republicans and their party did not used to behave like this. The beginning of the end for the GOP was foreshadowed by Howard Baker III disrupting the presidential election in Florida, once upon a time.
Does this seem like partisan screed? It is 100% fact-based and I am well aware of the malignancy of neo-liberal Democrats.