Deep in thought, Zerelda talked to herself all the way to the gun store to buy bullet belts for shotgun shells. The Bugaboo was already getting her down. Zerelda simply wanted peace and good government. She didn’t want to kill anybody anymore.

Nobody’s fooling me, she said, especially nobody walking around wearing a penis.

None of them listen to what I have to say. Earl lied. Nobody listened to me except that old Mabel woman I met at the bus stop. She helped me calm down. Last time I saw her I told her about meeting Earl.

You’re smarter than he is, honey, Mabel said. He doesn’t respect you for your mind, Mabel said.  Excuse me for saying so, but he sounds like one big, dumb Pennsylvania Dutchman, Mabel said.

Zerelda thought back to her only friend.

I wonder where Miss Mabel is?

Back at the makeshift church, Earl stood before the three men squeezed around a dinette-sized table.

OK, boys, I’m recruiting you to join the Bugaboo. Each Christian soldier gets a big share of the Eternal Pot of Gold when we take over America. We call our heaven on earth Old Glory. This Planetary Plan sounds crazy but I know these things because I’m God, the Master Blaster of the Universe. Timmy, you’re U, our earthly mortal leader, anointed by me to be the real Joe Biden.

Timmy Kelly beamed.

So I can act like Joe Biden all the time?

You are Joe Biden all the time, Earl said.

Timmy Kelly put on his best smug look.

My dad always said “Champ, the measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down, but how quickly he gets up,” Timmy Kelly said.

Attaboy, Earl said.

Next Earl focused on Harry Davies.

Harry, I christen you the White Knight of the Realm, a Caucasian hero, a bleached battler who leads our people to forever Bugaboo Bliss.

Gino waited for what seemed forever.

What about me?

You’re one of the three wise guys, Earl said. See, you’re not colored or we wouldn’t let you join. You’re full-blooded Guinea. My Google research shows Mafia in your bloodlines. We might need mob connections for political hits when we ignite the Bugaboo. We’re making you an offer you can’t confuse.

Frustrated, Gino quickly got distracted.

What about Zerelda?

Busy with cooking, cleaning, laundry, making babies, that sort of thing, Earl said.

Men rule, Harry Davies said.

White men rule, Earl said.

Where we all go we all go, Harry Davies said.

Gino hadn’t heard a peep out of the Biden camp since he sent his letter asking for ghost government contracts. He knew he was shit-out-of -luck with the Corn Pop scam so he might as well go along with this Bugaboo business. At least here he belonged.

Bugaboo forever, he said.

Earl clapped his hands.

I got a surprise for you boys, he said. We got ourselves a prisoner.

The new far-right militia members looked at each other.

I kidnapped a good citizen for us to hold for ransom, Earl said.

We can make a hostage video, said Harry Davies.

Restore the soul of America, Timmy Kelly said.

Oh, God, Gino said.

A voice snarled from the deepest reaches of the locked hall closet.

This is no way to treat an old lady, Mabel said.

Voted the Class of ’87’s most likely to succeed, best dancer and biggest bull-shitter respectively, Harry Davies, Gino Maraschino and Timmy Kelly loved high school where they pretty much did as they pleased.

Easy living followed them into adulthood.

Welsh, Italian, Irish and other Caucasian ethnic, working-class Scranton guys always knew somebody in a position to help. So jobs on the police force, the fire department or hanging off the back of a city garbage truck easily came their way. Overtime appealed to them more than wearing a business suit to Wall Street. Prestige often meant free beer, free tickets to ball games or the fights, and a free ride when city cops stopped them for driving under the influence.

Gino used his uncle’s connections to put on a guard’s uniform for the feds at the prison, Harry won a City Council spot at 30 and then election as mayor, and Timmy knocked around from one dead-end sales, security or school custodian job to the next, always landing on his feet.

Now here they were together again.

Let me do the talking, Harry Davies said.

I’m not saying shit, Gino said.

Don’t mention anything about me and Shannon being an item, Harry Davies said.

Timmy will kill you if he finds out you were dating his sister.

Shannon said Timmy doesn’t know anything about her fling with Dombroski, either, Harry Davies said.

Timmy really believes she’s saving herself for marriage.

Shannon’s 47 years old, Gino.

Zerelda answered the door.

Good afternoon, Miss, I’m Mayor Davies and this is my business associate, Gino. We’re looking for Timmy Kelly.

You must have the wrong address.

No, his sister, Shannon, told me he was coming here to talk to the pastor.

Then she must have the wrong address.

Zerelda adjusted the crown of shining armor-piercing bullets she wore snug on her head. Only she knew what really happened to Shannon. But Zerelda wasn’t talking, especially to anybody walking around wearing a penis.

Shannon passed the other day, Harry Davies said.

Zerelda smirked.

Passed what, a breathalyzer test?

Earl Schmidt’s voice boomed from behind a multi-colored plastic beaded curtain hanging between the living room and the kitchen.

Who’s at the door?

A government agent and some spook, Zerelda said.

Gino closed his eyes and bit his lip.

Tell them to come in.

Zerelda stood aside as Harry Davies and Gino stepped into the foyer leading to the chapel. Earl appeared from behind the curtain and shook hands with both men.

What can I do for you boys?

Our buddy Timmy Kelly went missing and his sister said he’s here.

Mr. Kelly is in the back getting ready for the revolution.

Gino perked up.

What revolution?

The Bugaboo.

You mean like that siege at the Capitol?

I wasn’t even there, Earl said.

Gino started to sweat.

You mean like the crazies that wanted to hang Mike Pence?

Bugaboo is different.

Harry Davies seemed skeptical.

How so?

We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore, Earl said.

That sounds familiar, Gino said.

Earl patiently explained.

The Washington rioters are at war with Nancy Pelosi porn, fake vaccines made from baby blood and Jews bearing laser beams. They follow a mysterious leader named Q. Not us. Bugaboos like us follow U, Earl said.

Gino raised the thick black eyebrow that grew uninterrupted across the center of his forehead.

Me?

No, U.

U who?

Don’t be a smart ass, Zerelda said.

Harry Davies finally had enough.

Knock it off, goddammit. Who’s U?

With that, Timmy Kelly walked in wearing aviator shades and a big Joe Biden grin.

Here’s the deal, man, he said.

Bright, dark or psychedelic, the enso Zen circle in Japanese art contains everything and nothing.

With gray hair growing down my back and a scraggly goatee touching my chest when I lower my chin, I envision myself painting enso as a laughing bent old man sitting seiza in the frigid attic of my home until my last frail breath.

For now, though, a snow shovel is my brush.

My cold art exists in the Zen garden behind our Scranton PA home, nature’s gift in the midst of a winter storm, an empty white space upon which I carve out a zone to mindfully walk kinhin meditation around the circle I call ensnow.  

Ensnow disappears when the snow melts. Another ensnow awaits when frosty fine flakes fall once again.

World peace guardian Kazuaki (Kaz) Tanahashi, one of my teachers, paints beautiful enso.

See for yourself

https://www.brushmind.net/

As a teenager in Japan, Kaz practiced a new dynamic art with O’Sensei, the founder of aikido, the way of peace and harmony. When the pandemic attacked our planet last year, after decades of practice I stepped off-line, left my aikido/aikijujutsu training partners in the dojo and adapted. Since the vital life energy called ki is where you make it, to protect myself and others I searched for a new path.

When winter arrived, I found refuge in a frozen circle.

Like Kaz, now ensnow is my teacher.

How many intrepid travelers over time have walked a similar path on a wondrous icy day? Who else might have made an ensnow? What future seeker might one day discover its enlightened stillness and dance within its form?

One breath.

One stroke.

Meeting in the moment.

Men who mistreat women must suffer legitimate consequences. Yet, white hot sexism shapes the molten core of Pennsylvania’s most powerful public service. Discrimination adds fuel to the misogynistic fire U.S. Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. and U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright light each time they discriminate against women.

Since these two Democrats no longer respond to my questions I can only wonder if Casey and Cartwright continue their segregationist practice of attending and enabling bigotry at the all-male and overwhelmingly white ethnic dinner founded by President Joe Biden’s great-grandfather. As featured speaker, Biden has attended the Lackawanna County Friendly Sons of St. Patrick dinner three times.

I’ve written about the dinner’s unequal opportunity for about 25 years. But for the past few years my congressman and senator ignore all my written questions about the power imbalance, blackballing me even though we’ve conducted amicable interviews in the past.

I supported Cartwright’s initial bid for Congress when other Democrats treated him like the political party outlier he was at the time.

During the decade I hosted a daily local radio talk show I even met with Casey in his Scranton office to talk about his embarrassing bias. At the end of our meeting he agreed he and other powerful men would likely one day change their ways, extending equal political and business opportunity to women.

When Casey failed to denounce the group’s male chauvinism, I publicly protested, walking back and forth outside his downtown office carrying a large, green-painted wooden shamrock on a picket sign.

My professional exchanges with Casey and Cartwright stopped when I ramped up my attack on their shameful gender discrimination.

Sexism alone is reason enough to expel Cartwright from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a crucial legislative body that requires members to uphold the goal of “advancing justice, dignity and peace for all.”

Casey is no progressive but hopefully believes in his own Democratic Party platform that stands “committed to ensuring full equality for women. Democrats will fight to end gender discrimination in the areas of education, employment, health care, or any other sphere. We will combat biases across economic, political, and social life that hold women back and limit their opportunities.”

OK, so anti-abortion zealot Casey wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, the law that offers the safe and legal constitutional right for a woman to end a pregnancy. But when it comes to reproductive rights, Democrats always give a Casey a pass.

Women in Northeastern Pennsylvania largely ignore the discrimination their husbands, fathers, brothers, judges, lawmakers, political opponents, business associates and other alpha/beta/zeta males launch against them.

The Irish Women’s Society even started their own dinner in Scranton that allows men to attend. Men running for public office often show up at both events. But women political candidates and their female supporters can only campaign at their own green gala. Campaign contributions there easily pale in comparison to the money male candidates raise at the no-girls-allowed gathering.

Back in September 2019, Cartwright wrote on Facebook that he “Had a wonderful conversation today with Dr. Mary Frances Berry on the best ways we can drive change in our country and strive for progress. Thank you for your wise words, Dr. Berry!”

Before Berry’s appearance with Cartwright at the Milford Readers & Writers Festival to discuss how “History Teaches Us to Resist,” the professor, human rights advocate and former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and I communicated about Cartwright’s pattern of gender discrimination. Berry said she would ask Cartwright about my concerns.

After her discussion with Cartwright, Berry got back to me and said, “I discussed this with his staff and him before the open session. Apparently, Wilkes Barre hasn’t enforced policy since elected officer or honoree bought female relative. Sounds like the tradition won’t be changed official but perhaps someone could bring a female relative for starters. Just a thought.”

Did Cartwright purposefully mislead Berry by referencing a different dinner in another city and not the one Biden’s great-grandfather founded that Cartwright had faithfully attended and endorsed?

True to form, Cartwright’s not saying.

So what about this year? The 2021 dinner is virtual. No easier way exists to host the more-than-a-century-old dinner’s first woman guest than on a computer screen. Will Friendly Sons organizers invite Democrat Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, Scranton’s first female mayor? Vice President Kamala Harris? First Lady Jill Biden? Will Casey, Cartwright and Joe Biden advocate this historic change? Or will these privileged Democratic white men once again turn their backs on the somber promise tied to the credibility of their own party platform?

Like Hillary Clinton said, “Women’s rights are human rights.”

Jumping up from his table in the Polka Palace restaurant, the soft worn fringe on Casey Weatherhogg’s brown suede jacket fluttered like waves in a Ripple wine spill on a windy coastal California day.

Pointing to the front window, he squawked.

Look, look, he said, it’s a Polish falcon.

The sparse lunch crowd looked out the window, giving Casey the few seconds he needed to sprinkle three drops of fresh LSD on the plate of pierogies that sat piled in front of Lackawanna County President Judge Stanley “Stash” Dombroski.

Stickler for control and accuracy that he was, Dombroski corrected Casey.

You mean a Polish eagle, he said.

Yeah, yeah, that’s what I mean, Casey said.

I don’t see no bird, the judge said.

Must have flew the coop, Casey said.

Digging into his pierogies, the judge scowled. Casey dipped his last hunk of crusty bread into his last spoonful of red beet soup and split. Ten minutes later so did the judge, without leaving a tip or paying the bill.

Back at the courthouse, a bewitched, befuddled and bewildered Dombroski read a few emails. Seeing a flash of red, he pushed back his chair, stood from his desk and walked to the window. The Polish eagle sat wearing a Biden/Harris t-shirt and flapping his wings in a tree outside the bell tower.

Dombroski froze.

That’s when the music started in his head, peppy polka music that filled his cranium with the sounds of an army of oom-pah-pah tubas and dulcet accordions, making him want to dance. The judge could hear and feel musical notes dripping and dropping from his ears, pouring from inside his brain and falling on the floor where they bounced, grew little legs and danced the polka led by escaped G and F clefs barking words to the tune with some notes even singing in Polish.

New, rare and wonderful, the lively number boomed around the room, an instant polka hit called Let’s Name the Baby Kielbasy. The judge began to sing, warbling shrill lyrics that came at his brain like intergalactic comets streaking through space as he sang at the top of his voice as free as a born-again sinner speaking in tongues.

Let’s name the baby Kielbasy

This kid burps fun and good cheer

Let’s name the baby Kielbasy

We’ll never run out of cold beer

Let’s name the baby Kielbasy

Break out the good times this year

Let’s name the baby Kielbasy

We don’t got nothing to fear.

Now the judge began to dance, twirling and swirling around his chambers. Sweating like an iced beer barrel on a sweltering summer day, fat beads of perspiration dripped down his forehead. Pulling at the Windsor knot in his tie, he undid his neckwear and tossed the red and white striped cravat over his shoulder. Next went the white dress shirt, then the pin-striped pants. Before he ran from his office, down the stairs and out the emergency exit into Courthouse Square, he opened the second-story window and threw his paisley-patterned briefs into the breeze where they fluttered like a deflated campaign balloon to the ground. For whatever unknown reason, the judge kept on his knee-high black dress socks and oxblood-colored wingtips.

A bored local TV crew doing a story on young professionals living in overpriced downtown lofts spotted him first when Judge Dombroski ran singing his way across the wide expanse of lawn. A skinny veteran reporter chased him down by the Civil War memorial, yelling her question in his flushed face as she stuck her mic under his nose.

Do you have a comment? Do you have a comment?

The judge stopped.

He panted.

He spoke.

Kielbasy, he said, kielbasy.

The cameraman focused on the judge’s private part.

Kielbasy, the judge said.

Kielbasy.

The reporter backed up. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out the pink plastic throw-away razor she used to shave her legs in the satellite truck. The judge leered a dirty old man leer that would have put the late hustler Larry Flint to shame.

Kielbasy, my dear, he said.

Wave that spicy sausage at me one more time, you pervert, and I’ll cut it into pieces you male chauvinist pig in a blanket, you, the reporter said.

Of course he waved it.

And the chase was on.

Film at 11 showed the reporter bearing down on the pro-Trump registered Democrat as he danced the almost naked polka while yelling words that sounded like hoopa and yashimash. Before a SWAT team threw a net over his head, the judge screamed out one last phrase, a motto with which newspapers and websites won journalism awards nationwide.

Polka people are happy people, Judge Dombroski said.

From where Casey Weatherhogg stood hiding behind the Christopher Columbus statue, he felt enlightened knowing no matter what happened to this crooked, immoral bench-sitter, no matter which psychiatric hospital admitted him for a 30-day evaluation, the judge was right.

Undoubtedly the man was happy.

Happiness is the root of upheaval.

Power to the pierogi.

You lied to me, Zerelda said.

The second-in-command of the bugaboo revolutionary movement held a hockey stick.

I found this in your closet, she said.

I was thinking about trying out for the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, Earl said.

I found this, too.

The photograph showed Earl standing among shards of glass with his back to a broken Capitol dome window. He stood stooped over, pulling down both sides of his pants, looking over his left shoulder and grinning. Earl’s bare buttocks looked like a giant pimpled honeydew melon stacked in a supermarket fruit display.

Zerelda spoke through clenched teeth.

What do you call this?

Moon over Scranton, my personal message to Joe Biden, Earl said.

You were there.

The president invited me, Earl said.

To the riot at the Capitol?

Only for a little while.

You told me you were in seclusion, praying all day Jan. 6 in the basement and couldn’t be disturbed for 24 hours.

I was on a secret mission for Jesus.

Jesus who?

Aw, Zerelda, don’t be like that. We’re troops for the Lord. Digital soldiers for Trump.

She fingered the point of a sharpened Chinese throwing star.

Earl started a war dance, leaping in small circles, whooping and hollering the way he did that fateful day in the nation’s capital.

Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!

I was stuck here all day polishing ammo for your crown of bullets, Zerelda said.

A woman’s work is never done, Earl said.

The metal star caught Earl above the nose, cleanly splitting the skin on his forehead and bouncing off his thick skull. Amazed he didn’t pass out, Earl shook his head to clear the silver points of light that flashed before his eyes.

Don’t be mad at 1776, Zerelda. .

Sitting on the floor in the corner of the living room, Timmy Kelly grunted through the gray duct tape across his mouth.

You shut up, too, Zerelda said.

UMMMMUMMMM, Timmy said.

I’ve had it with men, Zerelda said.

Turning to Timmy, she sneered.

By the way, that loud-mouthed tramp sister of yours had an accident and won’t be voting for Biden no more.

Timmy repeatedly grunted so hard he fainted.

Earl passed out, too.

Meanwhile in the Hill Section of Scranton, worried unduly about the planet’s health, Casey Weatherhogg painted blocky green and purple letters on a protest sign and nailed the poster board to a 2-inch-by-2-inch-by-7-foot tomato patch stake.

The sign said: BEWARE OF PUDDING PEOPLE.

Throwing the picket sign over his shoulder, he headed downtown to U.S. Sen. Bob Casey’s office on Lackawanna Avenue where the lifeless lawmaker reigned as King of the Pudding People with his mushy bureaucratic advocacy, custardy leadership, and tepid tapioca courage.

If Berkeley during the 60s taught Casey anything, his radical college education molded his unswerving regard for the First Amendment. The sacred legacy of free speech is why last year he stopped writing letters to the editor of his local fish wrapper where anxious news executives, complacent corporate company men of the lowest order, regularly censored his missives until enough was enough. Casey picketed the paper for a week, walking up and down in front of the building each afternoon with a handmade sign that said “Fuck the Times Tribune.”

Cops told his mother on him but she said he had every right to free speech and that they should stop badgering two upstanding senior citizens.

A week later Casey urged a boycott of a city seafood restaurant’s Friday tuna steak specials, claiming the casual eating establishment bought fish from an outfit in New York that bought Atlantic bluefin trapped by nets that kill dolphins. Casey used an ice pick to puncture the two-story tall red inflatable crab hanging outside the restaurant entrance. Then he called the TV stations. Cops released him to the custody of his mother.

But he knew he wasn’t getting through. Casey needed a bigger, better revolt. Scranton wasn’t San Francisco but you make do with what you’ve got. All he usually got in return was aggravation from The Man, from The Establishment and even from younger generation pseudo-hipster millennials who considered themselves artists and foodies and worth more than they would ever be worth, convinced how they already knew all they needed to know without paying their dues.

Casey had it with these young bastards. One young shitster in the supermarket recently called him “Pops.”

Excuse me, said Casey, skinny as he was trying to keep social distance while squeezing past the zucchini display.

No problem, Pops.

Then the kid stood so close behind him in the check-out aisle with his mask hanging from under his chin, Casey turned and politely asked for some space.

The kid said it again. Cool, Pops.

After a lifetime fighting racism, sexism, and every other kind of bigotry, now Casey squared off against ageism.

Getting old made seeing, hearing, peeing and simply being a drag. People needed to get hippy. Casey figured his first batch of happy homemade acid should be ready to go by the weekend. Nobody would make a better guinea pig than that bloated plutocrat of a county president judge Dombroski who fined him for his seafood protest.

Community service?

Casey would give him all the community service he could swallow.

Each Wednesday for lunch Dombroski inhaled a plate piled with pierogis at the Polka Palace restaurant where Casey sometimes ate borsht. How hard would it be to punch up the judge’s pierogis with not one but two drops of handcrafted LSD?

Get ready to turn on, tune in and drop out, your honor.

Time to let your freak flag fly.

A city police officer cutting through the courthouse parking lot for a smoke found Shannon Kelly on her back buried in a snow drift with her arms and legs stiff and extended like a bug caught in an icy slate sidewalk crack.

Frantic, he called in the corpse over the radio.

Deceased white female, dressed in a faux-fur coat, wearing red stiletto heels and a blue pageboy wig, the officer said.

She looks like Cher without the Cher, he said.

The supervisor sergeant who arrived on the scene immediately showed his investigative skill.

Wonder if she’s local?

I know her, sir. She’s Timmy Kelly’s sister, the patrolman said.

That goof from Minooka who’s running for mayor as a Joe Biden look-a-like?

One and the same.

We got a missing person report on him just the other day, the sergeant said.

Yeah, I heard from the chief’s secretary that Judge Dombroski called and demanded we work harder to find Kelly. The bigger news is that this gal is the judge’s girlfriend, the cop said.

Go on, Judge Dombroski is a Catholic.

So was JFK.

The judge is married, too, the sergeant said.

That didn’t stop Donald Trump.

I heard the judge and the president play golf together, the sergeant said.

My sister works in the courthouse and says Dombroski’s supposed to be at Mar-a-Lago now.

Looks like the judge got himself a nice fat alibi, the sergeant said.

Don’t they always?

Yeah, this crime scene looks like a Super Bowl party accident, anyway, the sergeant said.  Drunken party girl, passed out on the crawl to the next bar and that’s all she wrote.

Who’s that across the street waving?

Harry Davies.

The ex-con former mayor who got the pardon from Trump?

The sergeant walked across the street to the federal building steps.

Nice to see you out and about, Harry.

What do you have over there?

Judge Dombroski’s girlfriend stiffer than frozen custard, the sergeant said.

You tell Dombroski yet?

The judge is in Florida, the sergeant said.

I hear the judge’s lady friend was a Biden supporter, Harry Davies said.

Go on, Dombroski’s with Trump all the way.

Knowing full well he got the police sergeant’s attention, Harry struggled to keep a straight face, Now the sergeant was asking questions.

You think this has something to do with the election?

Look at all the people the Clintons killed. Socialists are capable of anything. They even want to defund the police.

Dirty bastards, the sergeant said.

At that very moment, Judge Dombroski pulled back the venetian blind in his courthouse office and peeked out at the action unfolding on the Square. Recognizing the faux Persian curly lamb coat he bought Shannon last Valentine’s Day, he gasped. Then he breathed a sigh of relief. At least this year he didn’t have to worry about what to buy her for Valentine’s Day.

Staring hard at Harry Davies, the judge pointed his forefinger and raised his thumb in the shape of a make-believe pistol.

You’re next, he said.