As far as writing is concerned, I’m back in the saddle again
Hey, there. I’m Brooke Ramey Nelson, a native Texan, former journalist, politico, PR person and high school teacher, who joined Medium in December 2020 to get back to what I’ve always loved to do — wrassling words.
I thought about starting this essay with the traditional greeting of my forebears: “Howdy!”. But I decided, for the better part of valor or something, that I didn’t have to be quite so obvious about my origins. Isn’t the pic above enough?
My lovely partner, Moker, and I have been married going on 42 years and have been together for 45. Obviously, we…
FOOD FIGHT
If you leave out an ingredient, your zucchini bread won’t rise to the occasion
Sometimes things don’t go the way you want them to.
What happens when you’re entirely in the wrong — no ifs, ands or buts about it? Well, for life’s little peccadilloes, there’s always someone to mete out the proper punishment. And it won’t taste so good.
Another lifetime ago, a colleague and I were in charge of designing the Food Section of a metro daily.
The newspaper’s Food Editor selected the recipes and did the test cooking and baking, and wrote stories about the bounty she’d discovered. Someone else took enticing photos. …
CAPITOL RIOT
The price of admission was too high, but here’s hoping the villain doesn’t win
We witnessed the sadness, the anger, the patriotism and poetry in our nation’s law enforcement ranks Tuesday.
As they testified before the select committee investigating the plundering of the U.S. Capitol at the behest of a desperate and deranged Orange Menace, four police officers explained on Tuesday, July 27, what they faced at the center of American legislative power they are commissioned to defend. They captured a vivid picture of the heroes, the drama and the villain as January 6 unfolded.
Police, vastly outnumbered by insurrectionists “foaming at the mouth”, according to D.C. Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone, fought for our freedom, from the tunnels underneath the U.S. Capitol to the House and Senate chambers.
POLITICS
The GQP, of late, prefers to yell instead of getting things done
I blame Rush Limbaugh.
The GQP has gone nuts. Certifiable. Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs crazy. And they’re not interested in playing the game by the rules anymore — they just want to see who can make the most noise.
I’ll bet ol’ Rush, screwy shit-stirrer that he was, never took part in organized sports.
Besides the overripe girth, incessant stogie smoking, opioid addiction and general belligerent attitude — he wasn’t really interested in the team, but more in a winning friends and influencing folks with a destructive solo performance — Limbaugh was too preoccupied with being mad as a March hare to care about…
VACCINE PASSPORT
Network HQ introduces a requirement that will confound even Tucker Carlson and his anti-vax spin
If one wishes to travel back to work at Fox News in New York — when it eventually opens — one must secure a special passport.
The network recently made such a reckoning mandatory. And some of the popular prime-time vaccine-deniers will certainly have trouble trying to spin that.
Yes, a vaccine passport. This at the home of the evening hosts who spend most of their airtime at odds with the idea of getting inoculated against the pandemic virus that has killed millions worldwide and more than 610,000 Americans.
The hypocrisy of the network that sponsors preppy wannabe tool Tucker Carlson, sad and sloppy Sean Hannity, and the shrewish imbecile Laura Ingraham is obvious. Not one of these imprudent prima donnas has flat-out admitted that they’ve…
FAMILY
All these years later, I no longer have to threaten to pull the car over
I call him Burrito Boy.
He’s fast asleep — knocked out, really — on the deck of a house near the Atlantic Ocean. While his wife — my daughter — is likely to take in the sand and surf most of the day, he’ll be fine just sacking out underneath the T-shirt quilt sewn together a few years ago, a salute to my retirement and memory of all those years teaching in Room 215.
Welcome to my life, where the kids don’t whine so much anymore — and the adults don’t get all that irritated — these days.
GUN VIOLENCE
…but only if it’s safe enough to go
D.C. baseball fans heard an unmistakable sound Saturday night.
Several really loud bangs. The kind that erupt from a gun battle on a city street.
Players on both teams ran out on the field to grab their friends and family members from nearby seats and usher them to safety. More than 30,000 terrified Nationals and San Diego Padre backers scrambled every which-a-way in a predictable fashion that Americans have become so accustomed to.
Even though the public address announcer reported that the shots were outside the stadium, and everyone should stay in where they were, bedlam reportedly ensued.
Those who could get there ran across the field and ducked…
NEWS
They’re not all serious, but it seriously looks like the world’s gone crazy
Wildfires burn with abandon out west, and it looks like the Luminous Orange Ogre completely believes he is closer than ever to regaining the Oval.
Meanwhile, search-and-recovery officials who meticulously combed the site of a South Florida condo collapse for a solid month have declared a final death toll at 97, barring any new developments; plus, the Delta Variant, kissin’ cousin to COVID-19, is wrapping the unvaccinated hoards in its threatening tendrils.
Oh, and my Bestie, Jeff Bezos, appears to have flown a giant dildo into “space” Tuesday morning.
These United States of America are ablaze for all the wrong reasons. And from sea to shining sea, we don’t look all that united anymore.
Drought and climate change have set close to 2,000 square miles of the West ablaze.
The Beckwourth Complex Fire in California, the Bootleg Fire in Oregon…
POETRY/PHOTOGRAPHY
A Poem
Really, I don’t give a Damn —
cept maybe Getting on my tan.
I came out Here upon this deck —
never even thought that I’d get Wrecked
with silly Rhymes and all these dashes —
odd Capitals, could give one Rashes
of Dickinson vibe, I am quite sure —
her Poetry was not demure.
We thought, I think, she stayed Shut up —
in Dad’s House, though, she had a pup.
She named him Carlo, he grew quite big —
and took her running, out of the Brig.
A tiny mite, our little Em—
large Carlo was to her…
CAPITOL RIOT
Judge sends insurrection leader to home detention after he can’t tell the difference between the U.S. Capitol and the White House
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck, surely it’s…
- The White House?
- The U.S. Capitol?
- An idiot from Iowa who invaded the seat of American power on January 6, with thousands of his closest friends and favorite insurrectionists.
“This is me, touching the f — — — White House,” said 41-year-old Douglas Austin Jensen of Des Moines as he shot selfie videos on the Capitol grounds. “This is why we’re here.”
According to media accounts, Jensen chased a police officer in January while leading a pack of rioters up the steps near the U.S. Senate chamber. …
Brooke Ramey Nelson
A Native Texan and Mizzou Journalism grad, Nelson has worked in newspapers, politics, PR and as a high school publications adviser and AP English teacher.
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