Author Archives: Missy Comley Beattie

If compassion were contagious, they’d mandate a vaccine to prevent transmission. Continue reading →

We sit around the coffee table and as much as we’d like, there is no avoiding the topic: Trump. Sometimes, it’s his tweets. Then there was his attempt to explain Helsinki, snowballing as it did into Helsinkigate with foam-at-the-mouth rage by corporate media actors who screamed treason that Trump was Mr. Congeniality when he met face-to-face with that existential menace, Putin. Even some who consider themselves liberal/progressives appear to prefer war with Russia than rapprochement. And when we mash on that befuddlement, it’s with a near-certainty that Putin must have the goods on Trump, something more threatening than information about a golden shower or liaisons with prostitutes. Would be reassuring if we could conceive of something positive about Trump, but so far, no. He’s just too untrustworthy and, well, unstable. Continue reading →

Ten years ago, my sister Laura and I were in Greenwich Village at a restaurant near Washington Square Park. We stood all afternoon, hopped up at New York City’s Gay Pride Parade. Continue reading →

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article, one I didn’t submit. I’d given it to my son to read. His response was: “You need to see a psychiatrist.” Continue reading →

Barbara Bush, mother of war criminal George W. Bush, died on April 17, 2018. Geraldine Comley, my mother, died April 17, 2011. Bush was called the matriarch of a Republican political dynasty. For years, my mother was chairwoman of the local Republican Party in Nicholasville, Kentucky, however she eventually rejected the Party, leaving it when George Bush was elected president. She’d watched the news, his campaign, and pronounced him stupid. Continue reading →

I’ve started pieces, several, abandoning each, feeling whiplashed. Continue reading →

A picture is worth a thousand tears. “Not my child. Please, not my child.” Continue reading →

We drove through Dotard country before anyone called him a dotard. Saw signs in yards: “PROUD DEPLORABLE.” Now, weeks after the Christmas decorations, the life-sized crèches and the flashing red and green lights dancing around windows, have been dismantled and entrusted to the basement or attic ‘til next year, those homages to Trump still stand, like monuments to a Confederate hero. Continue reading →

“I hope they see my humanity.” They. Don’t. See. It. Don’t because in order to see humanity, one must be empathetic, feel the suffering of others, bear witness to it. I look at Ady Barkan and I see my sons. Not only do I see my sons, I think, “Ady Barkan could be my son.” Continue reading →

To say we’re approaching the brink is a yawner. Especially when Nobel Prize recipients are warning that we’re poised at a tantrum. They’ve called on Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un to “tone down the rhetoric” to prevent nuclear disaster, that we’re a “tantrum away” from catastrophe. Isn’t it enough we have an epic urgency—that Mother Earth is marinating in pollutants, one of which is pesticides that are neurotoxic and carcinogenic? Big Pharma to the rescue though with an answer that’s unrelated to prevention: drugs, drugs whose side effects often are as bad or worse than the diseases they’re designed to treat. We’re at a death-rattle moment in human history. See this link for the world’s worst air quality locations. Continue reading →

Years ago, when I watched Hotel Rwanda, I was intrigued by Sophie Okonedo, her unique beauty. She can appear plain, almost strange looking, yet when that huge smile dances across her face, she dazzles. She is radiantly gorgeous. Continue reading →

My mother used to say, “She needs to have her head examined.” Or, “He needs to have his head examined.” I thought of her, of this, when I read that Stephen Paddock’s brain is in route for examination at Stanford University where Dr. Hannes Vogel will analyze the tissue for any number of neurological disorders that might shed light on motive for the mass shooting in Las Vegas. Continue reading →

Saturday, Oct 14th, I opened snail mail to read this typed letter that arrived in a typed envelope with a Purple Heart stamp. Continue reading →

My dear friend E. emailed that she was carjacked at gunpoint and would phone when she was less shaken. A few days later, we talked. Continue reading →

This man is a husband, the father of two children, Latino, and a US citizen. For 18 years he taught high school, most recently in a rural area of a southern state—where he also resides among farmers, many of whom reject the notion of a generous earth that nourishes all people. Instead they stand their ground, soil fertile with roots that grow deep into the past. They wave Confederate flags, display the oppressive symbol on their vehicle’s bumper, long for a time when black men and women slaved in the fields. They believe Donald Trump will make America great again for many reasons. They want that wall built, migrants deported. They support Blue Lives Matter, the right to carry a gun, any gun, including assault rifles, would subjugate not only people of color but also anyone who is outside their definition of acceptable. Continue reading →

I don’t know about you but I’m pretty fucking calm right now. Maybe even slightly giddy. You see, I was raised in the Baptist Church. Sunday school. Bible school in summer. I memorized so much scripture I was rewarded. Honored to carry the American flag from point A to point B in the auditorium. March, march, marching in obedience. Church. Sermons that scared the Hell right out of me. I attended more than a few tent revivals in Kentucky. Got dunked when I was 12 or so, I think, because my sister made that faithful decision to turn her life over to Christ and I wanted in on the act. As Dr. Phil would ask, “How’s that working for you?” Until this moment not so great. But I digress. Continue reading →

Charlie Gard died July 28, 2017, a week before his first birthday. Continue reading →

For those of us who see the dead, the children’s bodies washed ashore, charred skin, how are we supposed to feel? What are we to think? Continue reading →

The vehicles are in the driveway, parked in front of a two-car garage. Both the SUV and the hybrid sedan boast statements of identity, an OBAMA BIDEN bumper sticker and a HILLARY FOR PRESIDENT bumper sticker. Continue reading →

Six terrorist attacks in Manhattan in one month changed everything. Continue reading →

Somebody’s contradicting the contradiction of someone else. WTF’s going on here? The more I know, the less I know or the more I think I know the more I realize I’m powerless to understand. Continue reading →

I fold the dinner napkins and place them on the dining table. This life, my life, is just as it was yesterday and the day before. Continue reading →

As I approached the grocery’s checkout lane, a magazine cover’s words greeted, “51 REASONS FOR HOPE.” Hmm, hope. The pessimism I feel, not only about the present but also the future, shaped my reaction, “I can think of at least 52 reasons for despair.” Continue reading →

In the interest of research, I watched Matt Lauer’s interview with war criminal George W. Bush online. When the former tool of Empire told Lauer, another tool of Empire, that a free press is indispensable to democracy, I recalled journalist Helen Thomas who was moved from her front-row seat at White House press conferences to the back because the Bush administration didn’t like her confrontational questions. Digging around, I found that Thomas called out the Obama administration’s press handling: “ . . . we have had some control but not this control. I mean I’m amazed, I’m amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency . . .” She continued by adding that not even Nixon tried to control the press as much as Obama did. Continue reading →

In 2003, I was living in NYC. The George W. Bush administration was manipulating intelligence, stating a case for the invasion of Iraq—a war in which 4500 U.S. troops died, including my nephew who was killed in 2005. No one knows the number of Iraqi casualties, but it’s estimated that this could be as high as one million. Continue reading →

During the days leading up to choosing HER, HIM, someone else, or nobody, I’d have serious this-can’t-be-real thoughts. They persist. Friends and family are experiencing the same. Continue reading →

During a flight, I usually read a mystery, for time zooming. My sister Laura, a crime/drama addict, provides recommendations. She says, “If someone isn’t murdered on page one, I’m not interested.” She’s kidding (maybe), but the books she praises have multiple plot developments, and just when you’re certain you know who did what, there’s a whiplashing twist. Continue reading →

I love peanut butter—peanut butter on a banana or with blueberries. I may have invented the combo of prunes and peanut butter, although I don’t have a patent, and speaking of peanut butter, inventions, and patents, I was consuming creamy peanut butter when I read that Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican, asked what nonwhites have done for civilization during a panel discussion led by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Monday, the first day of the Republican National Shit Show (RNSS). Continue reading →