The Apostrophe Blog
We joined the No Kings 2 march/parade on Saturday afternoon in downtown Portland. The chickens and the turkeys, the SpongeBob and Pokemon characters, the giraffes and cows and unicorns, the T-rexes and, of course, the armies of frogs! All 40 or 50,000 of us with our homemade signs, with our bubble machines, drums, cowbells, were streaming for miles, a crowd so dense that we were able to fill two bridges across the Willamette River crossing from downtown and returning back at the same time.
Even if the front page of the New York Times continues to downplay these mass protest events, I am here to tell you that they are, indeed, filled with joy and camaraderie and fun, all the while we all share our creative contempt-via-cardboard for Felon 47, his hillbilly VP, and the supine Republican members of Congress in these currently dysfunctional United States. I really think it is true, as this article in Mother Jones, argues, that the many inflatable costumes now popping up nationwide do deflate the regime’s wannabe narrative that places like Portland and Chicago and Los Angeles are dangerous hell-holes: “It’s much more difficult, in fact, well nigh impossible, to call Portland, Oregon, a war zone when ICE agents are forced to stare down an inflatable bunny rabbit. Portlanders have deployed a new tactic to address the Trump administration’s attempted takeover and its false and inflammatory claims about their city: don’t fight, but mock, and dress up in ridiculous, adorable, instantly recognizable inflatable costumes.”
Kudos to Seth Todd, the original Inflatable Frog at the ICE protests on the south waterfront here in Portland, for showing the rest of the world exactly how to stand up and show how absurd and ultimately pitiful these shows of so-called power from the thugs-in-charge really and truly are. Hooray for the Frog Brigade! Below, the sign I carried as we marched in solidarity with people of all ages and persuasions here in “war-ravaged” PDX.
Interests: Reading, writing, not arithmetic. The art and craft of poetry. Photography. Vegetable and flower gardening especially heirloom bulbs and dahlias. Movies in real theatres. Theatre on real stages. Art in real galleries. Crossword puzzles and, of course, Wordle. Singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann and Patti Griffin. All kinds of music especially 1930s jazz. Venice, Italy! The Dude abides.
- Publication News: Burn It Down! - October 20, 2025
- We Are All Frog… - October 19, 2025
- Greetings from War-Ravaged Portland! - October 5, 2025
