Is this the face of evil or what? Anybody know who this guy is? It's former ousted congressman and wingnut radio talk show host J. D. Hayworth. and if you want to see a picture of what has often been called The Ugly American, just study this sucker's face and look carefully into his blackened soul. Hate oozes from every superenlarged, evidence-of-a- bad-diet (as if his girth weren't a dead giveaway) pore. What was that character's name in Animal Farm? The head honcho piggie? Just springs to mind without effort , doesn't it?

And here's why we care : he is John McCain's opponent in the Arizona Senate race and may well win on a platform of stinginess, hate, and bigotry. As if McCain weren't scary enough with his flip flopping George III variety madness and bloodless mutant wife, now we have a whole new variety of wannabe politicians comin at us screamin Who's your daddy?

Shades of Gleichschaltung and the declining Weimar, people. Like my Nanny used to say: Dontchoo fool yo'self!

Be afraid, be very afraid. Any minute they may decide they don't like the color of your eyes either.

ON a lighter note...

You know I have a thing for old motels... as you may have noticed from the last several months of blogging here. The one above left (just west of Atlantic City on route 30) is only one of the many I've seen all over the country over the last several months. Their intense poetry to me just demands a photoessay book: Abandoned America. Such despair on their faces. Like forlorn children, something betrayed. You just sense (and do NOT slam me for a moment of sentimentality here please) that someone, whoever actually built the place, had an enormous urge to hospitality. An impulse to offer friendly respite to travelers, and maybe to find a smidgen of comradery thereby, contact with the world beyond the motel, stories from afar, the human mystery of wanderlust. They were looking for friends, and were of a kindly nature these motel owners. For how could you be a success in that business if you weren't built that way?

When I left Maine my principle complaint, aside from lack of cultural stimulation in the area I inhabited (good for writing, bad for stimulation) was that in the over 15 years I'd lived there I hadn't made any real friends. I once talked to a shrink in Camden town and she said all her patients complained about that too. In fact, it was their most common complaint about living in midcoast Maine. It's pretty suburban really, and once I moved off the island to the mainland, it felt not unlike the Philly suburb I left in order to move north, only the scenery was whoa better. Still a small town was a good thing in some ways for kids and pets. And I accomplished a lot there, but still, when I left I felt that given the years there, true friendships, the kind of folks who always get what you mean, especially your jokes, accept you unconditionally, and are loyal to a fault, were thin on the ground.

And now I"m homeless, more or less. And I have so many friends, people I feel really "get" me, I can't keep up with the emails! Go figure.

Whatever it is, I love it. And thanks for everyone who emails me with encouragement and rah rahs and love.

So I am working on a couple things:

My mind, I've come to recognize, is like some cable telly spin doctor, constantly interpreting my thoughts and experiences to myself. I'd like to stop spinning my own life to suit my preconceptions and just live it. Stop feeling the need to interpret everything, and just be. This is hard to do, simple, but hard.

For only that day dawns to which we are awake, said Mr. Thoreau.

And I'd like to unlock whatever part of my heart decided many, many years ago, to keep that little wall of fear around it full enough to function as a moat.

My new mantra, and it's an imperative sentence, is this:

Unlock, my Heart.

Unlock, my Heart.

Open wide

and let life in.

Breathe deep.

Now deeper.

And breathe again...