The Donald Trump Club Song

"Franklin Carpenter Gregg" (not her real name) wrote this parody.

Who can post the best solo or small group performance of it? For a printable arrangement: Click here.

I wear a mask to protect YOU

A poem by my maternal grandmother, Cobie Muyskens deLespinasse

Another  treasure from the closet I am trying to clean out while under "house arrest."  My grandmother wrote three published novels, but also dabbled in poetry.  No wonder she and my mother got along so well!  (The "Frank" mentioned is my father.)

NO TITLE----it was apparently the beginning of a letter to someone.

"Twas the day before Christmas
and all through the house
nobody is moving but Frank and his spouse
as the boys are still sleeping.

It's a good time for dreams
as the rain is descending in rivers and streams.
It's the first rain we've had since clear back in September
and then 'twas darned little---not enough to remember! 

Our gaily wrapped gifts are piled under our tree
where I see there is something from you and to me!
I thought I could write you a poetic letter
but the muse has departed---so prose will be better!

But let me exclaim e'er I run out of rhyme
Merry Christmas to all---have a wonderful time.

Another poem by my mother, Helen Childs deLespinasse

This was published in the "P.E.O. Record" December 1966 issue.  I don't know when she actually wrote it, but by 1966 my brother Hank and I had not been "small boys" for a long time!  

GROWING PAINS

The stockings by the fireplace grow longer every year,
and as I watch those stockings grow my heart is filled with fear.
For soon the time will come,  I know . . .
when boys and stockings cease to grow.

Basketballs, footballs, kites and trains, wagons, and story books
are soon outgrown and in their place are rods and reels and hooks.
When toys no more adorn the tree . . . 
Christmas will rather dreary be.

The day will lose its gaiety when sox and razor blades and ties
replace the guns and horns and drums and things that small boys prize.
It will be very quiet then . . . 
on Christmas when our boys are men.

I'll print a picture in my heart of laden tree and fireplace,
of stockings hung  before the fire and smiles on boyish face.
And in my heart I'll hoard the laughter . . .
for quiet years that follow after.

Two poems by my mother, Helen Childs deLespinasse

Thanks to being under virtual house arrest during the Coronavirus crisis,  this afternoon I started trying to clean out my Fibber McGee's closet in my study.  I have found some surprising things, including a metal file box filled with historical family papers, including a Bible my mother gave my father on December 25, 1934.  (They were married in 1936.)

In the Bible were two poems that my mother wrote, while they lived in Honolulu,  I imagine.  They are worth preserving and sharing.

Blessings For A Granddaughter   (uncertain which one,  perhaps all of them!)

Let her live peaceably each day, oh Lord

A true example of thy living word.

Let her be radiant, by day,  by night

Let her be happiness, let her be light

                 (OR)

Let her be radiant, a beacon bright

Let her, in happiness,  reflect thy light.

No title given

While my free soul explores the universe

seal not my body in an earthy bed,

but give my ashes to the breaking wave

off Diamond Head.

Smile at each passing cloud.
Look up with rapture at the sapphire sky

and be convinced that life goes on and on

We do not die.

Rejoice in sunshine

Revel in the rain that makes the sun more dear,

and never doubt that immortality

is Now and Here.  

Another bit of autobiography: How Willamette U. influenced my life

I wrote this for a New York Times essay contest,  but they didn't use it.

Willamette University, not highly selective in 1957, had an immense impact on my life. Most importantly, through a classmate I met my wife---who attended a different college--- of more than 50 years (and counting). A faculty member's suggestion that I consider graduate school and a college teaching career diverted me from an original intent to join the Foreign Service. National panic over the launching of Sputnik during my freshman year prompted Willamette to add the opportunity to study Russian, which I used extensively during my 36 years teaching political science at Adrian College. The honors program required a major senior research project which was excellent preparation for writing my doctoral dissertation.

The curriculum prepared me well for acceptance by graduate programs at five major universities including Johns Hopkins (which I attended), MIT, and Harvard, and to win NDEA and Woodrow Wilson fellowships. But I also had time to play clarinet in the band, to take four years of pipe organ lessons, and to make some long-lasting friends.

But the biggest impact Willamette U. had on me was my very existence. My parents had met there. The college was therefore my alma mater in more ways than one!

A little bit more autobiography: a book that changed my life

I wrote this for an essay content at the New York Times, but they didn't use it.

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On November 10, 1955 our Vallejo High School honor society made a field trip to San Francisco. After the formal program they turned us loose on Market Street for a few hours.

In the Bonanza Inn Book Shop I paid 10 cents for a used copy of Norman Cousins' Modern Man Is Obsolete. A charming handwritten letter taped inside indicated it had been a Stanford professor's wedding present to a former student 10 years earlier. I always wonder what happened to that marriage to put this book in that store that very day.

The book expanded an editorial Cousins wrote for the Saturday Review Of Literature immediately after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It argued powerfully that continued world anarchy would produce atomic catastrophe and that we urgently needed a world government.

Overwhelmed, I changed my intended college major from physics to political science so I could work for peace in a diplomatic career. I didn't want to contribute to potentially dangerous technological progress when world political systems couldn't cope with the "progress" we had already made.

Thanks to another change in plans, I ended up teaching political science at Adrian College for 36 years.