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A hood covered his bowed and bearded face. If he were to stand erect, he would have been more than six feet tall, but he could not stand erect. The remains of his long and difficult life appeared to be contained in the torn and tattered knapsack strapped to his hunched back, and the two overstuffed WalMart bags held in his swollen, weathered hands.

Leaning on one crutch, he stood, precariously, in the center of the train station. I watched as he inhaled deeply, an effort, or so it seemed, to gather what little strength he could and then, one half-step at a time, he made his way to the man behind the plexiglass window. 

I couldn’t hear a word that passed between them, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of him and, as I watched, a movie began to play in my head – an old movie of a ten-year-old boy playing baseball on a golden summer day, many, many summers ago. I saw him swing his bat, connecting with a blistering fast ball and sending it deep into center field.  His teammates cheered as he rounded the bases with ease, smiling from ear-to-ear. As he crossed home plate, he looked up into the bleachers, searching for that one special face that would shine will paternal pride.  Before he found it (did he ever find it?), the conversation at the plexiglass window ended and the broken man who had once been a ten-year-old, baseball-loving boy, began a slow, half-step at a time trek across the train station waiting room.

The man behind the plexiglass held up three fingers as I approached him. “That’s the third time today that he’s been here” he said. “What does he want?” I asked. “Each time it was the same thing – did I know of a restaurant where he could get something to eat. Some woman found him wandering around WalMart and brought him here. She said she thought I could do something for him. I don’t know what she thought I could do, I mean, I’m just the Amtrak ticket guy. I’m here all alone so what did she think I could do?” He didn’t know, but I think he wished that he did.

I bought my train ticket, and, as I turned toward the middle of the room, I saw another man standing beside the first.  Younger and slightly less broken, though obviously on the same painful path as the first, and there they stood, side-by-side, silent in their brokenness. Without conscious thought or premeditation, I opened my wallet, and when I did, I was overwhelmed by an energy that seemed to be coming from the cash within. It pulsed – it felt alive – and I swear I heard it say “I don’t belong here”.  I’m not sure that was what those bills were actually saying, but I do know that the minute I saw them I knew I wasn’t meant to keep them.

I pulled out three twenty-dollar bills and approached the two men.  Holding the money at waist-height in front of the knapsacked man, I interrupted his staring contest with the floor, but he didn’t seem to notice.  The second man gently touched his shoulder and said “She’s trying to give you some money, man!”. Slowly, one inch at a time, a hand more swollen and bruised than any I had ever seen – the skin and nails blackened with the accumulated filth of countless dumpster dives – reached up and cautiously, tenuously, accepted what was being offered. “Get something to eat and a room to sleep in, please” I said, softly. In a voice broken by time and tragedy he asked “How much is it?”, as he folded the three bills once, twice, three times, then stuffed the perfectly folded square of cash into a pocket of his worn-out pants.

“It’s three twenty-dollar bills – sixty dollars” I answered. His head seemed to bob once, or twice, (a response to my answer, or an affliction? I haven’t a clue), and with his eyes never leaving the floor, he hobbled, one half-step at a time, toward the door. “What’s your name?” the second man asked. “That doesn’t matter” I said.

As I stood, rooted to the floor of that train station, watching those two broken men make their painful way out of the building, I felt something I cannot name. I may never know its name, but that too doesn’t matter.  The only thing of which I was certain, in that ironic moment, in that train station, was that I hadn’t given that man something that belonged to me – I had given him something that probably would have been his some yesterday ago, before his life went so tragically off the…tracks.

—Y.Not?! (aka Brooke Jones)

WrittenByBrookeJones.com

Before you can legally drive a motorized vehicle on America’s highways and byways, the law requires you to demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the fundamental “Rules Of The Road”. Only a knucklehead (or a Libertarian) would dispute the appropriateness of that particular regulation.

In America, you can’t simply declare yourself to be a Brain Surgeon and then wield a scalpel on whatever brain you may encounter. We have laws about that sort of thing. Before you cut me open, you must do me the courtesy of proving that you know the difference between my Cerebellum and my Cervix. That’s the least you can do, no? Call me crazy but, honey, if you don’t know how my stove works, you’re not qualified to be my Chef!

The logic seems sound: before we hand you the keys to our government, you must demonstrate a working knowledge of the fundamentals of our government. Anyone who doesn’t know how an idea becomes a law should not have the authority to make laws. Is it too much to ask that elected officials have a working knowledge of the history of this country? Is it too much to expect our lawmakers to be familiar with the U.S. Constitution — the document that is, after all, the very foundation of this nation’s judicial system? The answer to both of those questions should be a resounding, unequivocal “NO”!

In order to be eligible to run for any elected office in these United States, a prospective “Servant Of The People” should be required to take, and pass, the same test that everyone who seeks to become an American citizen is required to take and pass. If that had been the law in 2016, Donald Rump would never have become the Occupier of the Oval Office. If that had been the law, Marjorie Gazpacho Green and LoRent Vomit (or whatever that nauseating excuse for a human’s name is) would not now be occupying seats in Congress.

This is not rocket science, folks! We The People are the custodians of a form of governance thousands have given their lives to establish and protect and we have a duty to every one of them. We have a duty to elect leaders who have the knowledge, the decency and the determination to safeguard this nation and see to it that American Democracy survives. Every time we elect candidates who know next to nothing about how Democracy works, and care only for people who look, sound and believe as they do, we dishonor those who came before us and we doom those who will come after we have gone.

America The Beautiful, this alleged Land of the Free, is teetering on the edge of a deep and dark abyss and her only hope for survival is if We The People recognize that the Ballot is all that stands between Freedom and Fascism.

–– Y. Not?! (aka Brooke Jones)

WrittenByBrookeJones.com

THOSE WHO PROFIT FROM THE PAIN OF THE INNOCENT MUST BE MADE TO SUFFER!
If I had the power to do so, I would gather up every elected U.S. lawmaker who refused to vote to outlaw the sale of assault rifles and/or has failed to vote for legislation that strictly limits and controls the purchase of all guns. I would gather them up and I would lock every one of them in a tiny, windowless room, alone. Once securely strapped into a chair, each of them would spend the next twelve hours being bombarded by images of the Uvalde victims, projected, floor-to-ceiling, on all four walls. For twelve hours, these alleged “Servants Of The People” would see nothing but pictures of the maimed and mutilated bodies of dying children, and they would hear nothing but the sound of every rifle shot and every horrifying SCREAM of the innocent victims, amplified to ear-drum shattering levels.

That is what should be done to every elected American lawmaker who has failed to vote to BAN the sale of the WMDs (Weapons of Mutilating Death) that are being used to maim and murder! That same punishment should be experienced by every policy-making official of the NRA as well as every CEO, Director or Owner of any company, organization or corporation that manufactures, distributes or sells those guns and accompanying ammunition.

When the subject is Guns In America, there are only two categories of people: those who cherish human life more than money or power, and those who cherish money or power more than human life. Which category do your elected officials belong in? Their voting history will provide you with that answer and, because votes cast by members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives are a matter of public record, how your elected officials voted is available for all to see. Go online and see for yourself, then, armed with that ammunition, each and every Election Day, vote — vote as if lives depend on the ballots we cast because… they do! Ballots can stop bullets!
Those who profit from the pain of the innocent must be made to suffer!

— Y. Not?! (aka Brooke Jones)

WrittenByBrookeJones.com

For years…and years…and YEARS … bloated, bloviating white men MANdated that only white men were smart enough, educated enough, wise enough, to determine what their country would permit its citizens to do, and not do. When a small semblance of sanity reared its conscious head and the law of the land granted the vote to men of color, the bloated bloviaters decided that, in order to maintain their control of all things American, they would have to implement laws that made the possession of “hangie-down parts” no longer sufficient criterion for the casting of ballots. With that dubious decision was born the “Literacy Test” — exclusively given to illiterate, uneducated men for the sole purpose of preventing them from voting.

I mention this… why? Well, because this girl has had e-flipping-nuff!  Raise your hand if you agree with the following suggestion:  From this day forward, (only because it can’t be done retroactively…more’s the pity), no American citizen should be permitted to hold any American elected office unless he or she has passed  the test that anyone who wishes to become a citizen of this country is required to pass. 

If the law of the land required that one who cannot pass the current American Citizenship Test, cannot hold any American elected office, this country would have been spared the likes of President George W. “Africa is a nation…” Bush; and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor “Gazpacho Police” Greene and, of course, (p)Resident Donald “the Moon is part of Mars” Trump. [and if that  sentence were any longer, it would be on Death Row]

I could go on. The list of idiotic statements uttered by elected American idiots is, after all, painfully long, (and getting longer by the day), but a girl can only take so much pain and, frankly, Greene’s Gazpacho Nazis have exceeded my daily limit.

Please, I beg of you America, let us ensure that our nation is ruled by sentient beings whose IQ is greater than their waistline, and whose education includes a working knowledge of history, geography, and the difference between right and wrong. Let us, at the very least, be governed by people who find ignorance abhorrent and education laudable.

To quote Captain Jean-Luc Picard, people, can we please just: “Make it so!”

— “Y.Not?!” (aka: Brooke Jones)

WrittenByBrookeJones.com

What with everybody running around with their hair on fire over the words that fell out of Karen Johnson’s face on “The View” the other day — Karen Johnson is Whoopi Goldberg’s birth name, by the way –this would be an excellent time for a brief History Lesson. Well, actually, this will be something of a HERstory Lesson. (Take notes. The way things are playing out in this sorry world, it is inevitable that there WILL be a test at some point in the not-too-distant future!)

I begin today’s Lesson with the following piece of Reality: Judaism IS a Race – a “Tribal Race”– and one is Jewish if, and only if, one’s Biological mother is Jewish. The “Religious” aspect has to do with the “Belief System” to which those of the Jewish Persuasion tend to adhere. However, unlike Christianity, or Catholicism, or Hinduism, (or dozens of other “Religions”), Judaism is quite literally “rooted” in GENEOLOGY, which is why, while one can adhere to or practice the basic tenents of the Jewish “Religion”, one cannot choose to become Jewish because in order to be Jewish, one must be born the biological off-spring of a Jewish woman, whose mother was the biological off-spring of a Jewish woman, whose mother was also the biological off-spring of…etc, etc, etc. (my condolences to the late, great Sammy Davis, Jr). Of course, this matriarchal lineage dogma rather crumbles if you go back 5,000-plus years, at which point you arrive at an interesting piece of work by the name of Abraham, who is known as “The FATHER of Judaism”…and please do not ask me to explain THAT!

If you are not already sufficiently confused, allow me to include another interesting “factoid“: Abraham is also known as “The Father of Islam“. Why? Well, because before Abe (who, at the time, was a randy 900-plus-years-old) fathered a son named Isaac (the original “good Jewish boy”), he (Abe), ably assisted by Hagar, his (euphemism alert) “maid“, fathered a son he named Ishmael (yes, we shall “call him Ishmael”, Mr. Melville) — a son he and his 900-plus-year-old wife, Sarah (who was the biological mother of Isaac, though NOT the biological mother of Ishmael — don’t get me started) — soon EVICTED (thus giving us the original “Real Housewives of Palestine”)…AND from Ishmael came… Muhammed, and from Muhammed came…”Islam“…making old Abe the father of the world’s two oldest Religions: Judaism and Islam, BOTH of which are rooted in… Genealogy. And thus ends today’s episode of “She said WHAT???”

Shalom and As-Salamu Alaykum.

— Y.Not?! (aka: Brooke Jones)

Want more? If you’re “twisted” enough to answer that question in the affirmative, please seek professional help AND visit: https://www.writtenbybrookejones.com