Backyard and Beyond

Some of the Water Snakes (Nerodia sipedon) seen recently soaking up the sun at Great Swamp NWR. Relax, it’s harmless — it’s just yawning.My title is a reference is to Ben Franklin’s 1754 cartoon of the colonies in the shape of a dismembered snake, for today is primary day here in New York. Normally, the socially liberal and socially lunatic wings of our corporate oligarchy have wrapped things by now, and a piddly number of New York voters turn out to anoint such depressing choices in advance of the TV show conventions. This year is quite different. The Democratic choice is unusually stark: dynastic corporate tool or a New Deal-style reformist (how far right the Democrats under Clintonism have traveled!). Meanwhile, the Republican choices are even more unspeakable than usual. Anybody who votes for that party’s pathological standard bearers, can, as the Daily News said of the extraordinarily vile Ted Cruz, take the FU Train.