The Wild Reed

Tuesday, June 02, 2026

When the “Blue Wave” Is a “Blue Crackdown”

California, brace yourselves and head to higher ground. There is a Blue Wave coming that conceals a Blue Crackdown.

In New Jersey [right], all the liberals, progressives, and labor “officials” lined up behind a new Democrat governor to stop MAGA; instead, Mikie Sherrill stood with MAGA’s most notorious shock troops: private prisons, ICE, and cops against striking prison workers and their supporters rebelling against the new slavery.

In Virginia, new governor “CIA” Abigail Spanberger did the same, vetoing laws that might have placed small obstacles in Red MAGA’s path.

The California crackdown was already foretold when the Democrats kicked the Green Party’s Butch Ware off the ballot, and the progressives, labor “leaders,” radicals, and so-called socialists had nothing to say about it (except the DSA, which piled on).

Behind every Red MAGA chanting “America First,” stands a Blue MAGA repeating “lesser evil” as if a wedding vow. Instead of marriage to the machine, let’s all strive to tear it asunder.

– Richard Moser
via social media
June 2, 2026

Monday, June 01, 2026

Quote of the Day

Tomorrow, California will vote for governor in its jungle primary. One candidate I would love to see triumph has been kicked off the ballot: Butch Ware. The Green Party nominee has resorted to a write-in campaign. Sadly, even with this campaign, there will be ways to cheat Ware.

Many election officials are sticklers when it comes to write-in candidates. If you spell part of the name wrong, if you check the wrong box to signal a write-in, your vote will be thrown out.

If it looks like Ware could advance, I believe the Democratic Party machine will find a way to cheat him out of victory. They rigged it against Cheri Honkala, another Green Party nominee for vice president, when she ran for a state seat in Pennsylvania. You can read about it in my Substack article.

Does this mean you shouldn’t vote or stay home if you live in California? No. Write-in Ware. We just need to be aware of the hurdles anti-oligarchic parties face.

– Dorothy Lennon
via social media
June 1, 2026

Sunday, May 10, 2026

Butch Ware on the Democrats’ “Lawfare” to Keep Greens Off the Ballot

Earlier today Butch Ware, Green Party candidate for California Governor, was a guest on the Due Dissidence podcast.

In this 15-minute interview, Butch talks about his removal from the ballot in March by the Democratic establishment in California, and this establishment’s ongoing campaign to keep him off the ballot for the November election.

“[Democrats] spend more in [suing] to keep Greens off of the ballot than Greens usually spend to run,” Butch says. He calls such efforts on the part of the Democratic establishment, “lawfare.”

Related Off-site Links:
The Green Party’s Butch Ware: “I Love a Good Fight” – Nathan J. Robinson (Current Affairs, April 22, 2026).
Butch Ware: The Green Candidate – The Latino Newsletter (April 6, 2026).
Democrats Panic Over Green Party Candidate: An Interview with Dr. Butch Ware – Bad Faith (March 30, 2026).
Judge Rejects Green Party Candidate Butch Ware’s Bid to Appear on California Governor Ballots – Yue Stella Yu (CalMatters.org, March 26, 2026).
Green Party Candidate for California Governor Butch Ware Kicked Off the Ballot – The Spiritual and Political Podcast (March 27, 2026).
Inside Butch Ware’s Vision for California: Healthcare, Housing, and a Political Shake-Up – Matthew Levitt (Fathom, March 2026).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:

BUTCH WARE
• Introducing California’s Gubernatorial Candidate Butch Ware
• Butch Ware on Efforts by the Democratic Party to Block His Green Party Run for California Governor
• Hey, Liberals! We Need to Talk
• Butch Ware: “I’m Trying to Take Care of People”
• “People Really Want New Options in Politics”
• Butch Ware on “Red & Blue vs Green Politics”
• “We Have the Power to Stop the Flow of Money and the False Legitimacy Upon Which Empire Depends”
• Butch Ware on the Hard Knock Radio Show
• Butch Ware and the Gatekeepers Within the Democratic Party
• Photo of the Day – March 3, 2026
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – November 26, 2025
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – June 5, 2025
• Butch Ware on His Run for California Governor and the Wider Goal of Disrupting the Duopoly
• “The Moment Is Ripe”: Butch Ware on Building a “True Oppositional Alternative” to the Duopoly
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – January 30, 2025
• The Green Party’s Jill Stein and Butch Ware Give Their First Post-Election Interview
• “This Is a Tragic, Heartbreaking Moment in the History of Humanity”: Butch Ware on the Gaza Genocide
• Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Butch Ware in Minneapolis (2024)
• Butch Ware: “You Can Actually Vote Your Conscience”

GREEN PARTY
• “Green Wave 2026 is Global”
• Meet Some of the “People-Powered” Green Party Candidates for 2026
• An Opportunity for Organizing Against Duopoly
• “It Is Our Responsibility to Make a Third Party Viable”
• Something to Think About – December 8, 2024
• The Green Party’s Jill Stein and Butch Ware Give Their First Post-Election Interview
• “We Give Reasons for People to Come Out and Vote”
• We’re Witnessing a Liberal Meltdown Over Jill Stein
• The “Green Smoothie” Option
• Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Butch Ware in Minneapolis
• Butch Ware: “I’m Not Here as a Spoiler”
• Jill Stein: “Americans Deserve Choices”
• Elise Labott on How Third Parties Can Revitalize Democracy
• Third Parties and the Historical Record
• Something to Think About – August 15, 2024
• Howie Hawkins: “The Democrats Are Not the Answer to the Trump/Fascism Problem”
• Demolishing the False Narrative About Jill Stein and the 2016 Election
• Cornel West: “The Next Step Is a Green Step, a Progressive Step”
• Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein: Is a “Historic Collaboration” in the Making? (2016)
• Voting Green: Hope Over Fear

THE FAILURES OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
• Authoritarianism With a Blue Sticker
• The Time for Illusions Is Over: Henry Giroux on the Democratic Party
• David Norton: “The Democratic Party Serves Capital, Not You”
• Mike Figueredo: “Elected Democrats Have No Real Interest in Doing What the Base Wants”
• Tony Pentimalli on the Fallacy of the “Safe Political Center”
• Genny Harrison on Brian Tyler Cohen’s Interview with Obama
• Progressives and Obama
• Jeff Cohen on How Obama’s “Corporate Liberalism” Led to the Rise of Trump
• Progressive Perspectives on Kamala Harris’s Book, 107 Days
• Adam Bates on the Team Blue / Kamala “I Told Ya So” Smugness Tour
• The Lamentable Legacy of the Biden/Harris Administration
• Progressive Perspectives on Where Democrats Went Wrong in 2024
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• David Sirota: Quote of the Day – January 26, 2021
• Progressive Perspectives On an American Coronation
• Marianne Williamson: “‘Vote Blue No Matter Who’ Is Not Enough to Win”
• Nick Cruse: “‘Vote Blue No Matter Who’ Is the Privileged Position”
• Centrist/Corporatist Democrats Have Just Launched “Left Punching” Season

Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Australian Sojourn – April-May 2026

Part 6: Gulmarrad, Maclean, and Brooms Head

I’ve spent the last three days in Gulmarrad with my dear friends Mike and Bernie. Two of their adult children – Iggy and Mim – traveled from the Gold Coast and Sydney respectively to see me. How wonderful was that!?

Following are images of my time in Gulmarrad and two nearby places – Maclean and Brooms Head.

The hoodie I’m wearing in a number of these images is in support of Butch Ware’s Green Party candidacy for California Governor. (For more on this, click here, here, and here).

Above: With Bernie, Iggy, and, Mike – Saturday, April 25, 2026.

Above and below: ANZAC Day in Maclean – Saturday, April 25, 2026.

Above and below: Maclean vignettes – April 2026.

Above and below: With Bernie and Iggy at Brooms Head – Sunday, April 26, 2026.

Above: With Mim, Mike, and Bernie – Monday, April 27, 2026.

Right: Wearing the colourful necklace that Mim bought for me in a Maclean op-shop. I just love it! . . . And the backdrop perfectly compliments it!

NEXT: Brisbane, Montville,
and the Sunshine Coast

For the previous posts in the Australian Sojourn – April-May 2026 series, see:
• Sydney and Newcastle
• Gulmarrad
• Guruk
• Gunnedah
• Armidale

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Journey to Gulmarrad (2025)
• Happy Birthday, Bernie! (2024)
• Mooloolaba (2023)
• In Northern Rivers Country (2019)
• Townsville (2016)
• A Journey to Northern Rivers Country (2015)
• A Bushland Wedding (2011)
• The Australian Floods of 2011
• Rising Waters
• “Flooded-In But Loving Life”
• In Maclean, an End to the “Siege”

Images: Michael J. Bayly and friends.

Saturday, April 25, 2026

The Mellow Glow

By Steve Taylor

Why fight against the fading glow of youth?
Why try to freeze a process that can’t be stopped?
You're clinging too hard, that’s why you're weary;
your face is lined with tension, not with age.

And even if your form has altered a little
even if the surface is a little worn and chafed, your being is rich and deep, nourished by experience and understanding; and another kind of light is shining from you now – a full, mellow glow, like autumn sunshine, that spreads further and touches deeper than the flashing, dazzling glow of youth.

Why not let that glow shine through
instead of trying to rekindle a faded light?

Change brings decay if you resist it.
But if you accept it and flow with it,
it brings growth and renewal.

– Steve Taylor
From The Calm Center: Reflections and
Meditations for Spiritual Awakening
New World Library, 2015
p. 39

Friday, April 24, 2026

Australian Sojourn – April-May 2026

Part 5: Armidale

I share this evening a few images from my visit earlier today to the Northern Tablelands city of Armidale. I spent several hours in Armidale on my way from Gunnedah back to Gulmarrad.

As I previously mentioned here, here and here, I attended college in Armidale from 1984-1986 (left, looking very studious!). They were three very happy years. I studied for my Diploma of Teaching at the Armidale College of Advanced Education (ACAE), formerly the Armidale Teachers’ College (pictured below in 1985).

Notes Wikipedia:

The Armidale Teachers’ College is an impressive Classical Revival building that stands high on a hill overlooking the City of Armidale. . . . The College Building is surrounded by gardens that are representative of the 1930s period. Until mid-2016, the north-eastern (main) vehicular entry to the precinct from Mossman Street was along an avenue of “English” (European) elm trees (Ulmus procera) – many dating [back to the late 1800s]; and an "English" (European) oak (Quercus robur), past a hedge made of rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis). The elm trees were removed in July 2016 after being deemed too hazardous to remain, and were replaced with juvenile English elm trees. Formal rose gardens line the eastern and southern sides. Annual garden beds are dotted throughout the grounds.

. . . The building has a long hipped slate roof with colonnaded verandahs recessed under the roofline. The Armidale blue brick has rendered quoining around the windows and doorways. Wide steps lead to the verandah then into a central entrance hall with a staircase leading to the first floor and auditorium. This area features terrazzo, parquetry floor and a variety of local Australian timbers lining the walls. The central section of the building on its high verandah features massive, two storey, Ionic columns. The arches to the lower windows continue the effect of the verandah. No significant alterations have been completed to the front facade.

The garden retains significant elements of a 1930s formal garden. The rose gardens were first established in 1933. Situated on the eastern and western sides of the college, the species trace the history of roses. The rosemary hedge and memorial gates are dedicated to those who died during World War Two. A memorial pool is dedicated to the first gardener, Frederick T. Dye, head gardener 1930–1954. The gardens provide the opportunity for research on garden design and introduced botanical species.

The college building has retained a relatively high degree of intact original fabric in major and lesser spaces. The building still retains much original fabric including parquetry floor, slate roof, and terrazzo stairs.

Above and below: The building today. Now called the C. B. Newling Centre, it serves as the home of the New England Conservatorium which notes the following on its website.

New England Conservatorium of Music resides on the land of the Anaiwan People and works across a number of regional and remote nations in the New England and North West areas of New South Wates. We wish to acknowledge the traditional custodians, storytellers and musicians of the lands on which we work and perform, and pay respect to elders past, present and emerging.

Right: With my college friend Cherie.

Above: My class (or “group”) at ACAE in 1986.

Back row (from left): Ron Stevens (Academic Advisor), Carmel Boland, Cherie Chesworth, Traci Bromfield, Michael Ostler, Doug Garnett, Merry Houghton, Sharon Quinn, and Sharon Fernandes.

Third row: Cherie Ebert, Julieanne Campbell, Jenny Bissett, and Sue Page.

Second row: Jacquie Turner, Gail Miller, Sharyn Chisholm, Jane Blacker, and me.

Front row: Rowan Bullock and Paul Smart.

Absent: Anna Georgopoulos, Karen McGufficke and Jenny Hood.

Above: With Mum at my graduation from the Armidale College of Advanced Education (ACAE). I completed my Diploma of Teaching at Armidale in 1986, but this photo was taken at the graduation ceremony which took place in April 1987. Dad took the photo and he clearly wanted to include as much of the beautiful gardens of the college as possible!

While studying in Armidale I lived at St. Albert’s College, a residential college on the campus of the University of New England. I have such wonderful and happy memories from those days.

Indeed, as I wandered the halls and courtyards of both ACAE and St. Albert’s today, I found myself in a total state of reverie. Has it really been 40 years since my time in Armidale? Incredibly, yes. Although I felt at times a little melancholic, overall I felt that “mellow glow” that Steve Taylor writes about.

Above: I worked hard and partied hard, especially in ’85 and ’86. This photo was taken at my friend Donna’s 21st in Lismore in September 1985.

Pictured above is St. Albert’s (“Albies”) in 1985, while below is how it looks today.

Above: During my three years at Albies I lived on “Middle C,” the second floor of C-Block – Room C-34 from 1984-85 and Room C-24 (a much-coveted corner room) in 1986. “Bottom C” and “Top C” were occupied by female students.

Above: With friends Hugh and Sophie – October 23, 1985. I remember the date as it was my 20th birthday.

Wednesday, October 23, 1985 is famous in pop culture as it’s the date that Marty McFly travels to in the classic film Back to the Future.

Also, that crucifix behind me was made by a work colleague of my grandfather’s. It’s been with me all these years – in Armidale, Canberra, Goulburn, and in my various homes in the Twin Cities of St. Paul/Minneapolis.

Above: One of C-Block’s two “cleaning ladies,” Lyn, with four residents of Middle C. At left is my friend Greg, about whom I previously wrote the following.

I recently came across a faded snapshot of the first guy I ever found myself attracted to. When we first became friends in college in Armidale I was 18 and he was 21. It’s funny, but he seemed so much older than me, and, in many ways, he was. I wouldn’t say he was the first guy I ever feel in love with. (No, that wouldn’t happen until 1987 and with someone very different.) Yet, without doubt, our friendship and, moreover, my attraction to him physically, awakened within me the realization that, yes, I really was gay. I guess I have him to thank for helping me grow in self-awareness, for nudging me along on my coming out journey.

He himself was as straight as they come – a robust and athletic young man who, as far as I know, is still in good shape and works as a professional surf lifesaver in Australia. Good for him! I haven’t seen him since 1989, but I still sometimes think of him and wish him well.

Above: The C-Men of Albies in 1984. Our motto was "Through rain and hail and stormy weather, C-Men always stick together!"

Back row (from left): Tim Ryan, Anthony O’Regan, Greg Toman, John Bourke, Guy Hannan, and Sid Hewgill.

Middle row: Will Owen, Jack Fahey, me, Rowan Bullock, Rowan's brother who was visiting, another former C-man whose name I can’t recall, and Chris Gittoes.

Front row: Phil Vercoe, Grant Hando, Danny Speedy, Hugh Armstrong, and Brett Andrew.

Above: Armidale was a rural centre, and many of the guys at Albies were studying things like Ag Economics and Rural Science. It kinda shows in this photo, don’t you think?

Above: Along with my friend Rowan, three others at Albies were studying across town at the Armidale College of Advanced Education (ACAE) – Lindy, Jackie, and Michelle. I'd often give a lift to class to all four.

Above: At left with friends Sharon and Will in 1985.

Above: My friend Enid’s birthday. From left: Dom, Kurt, Mark, Sharon, Enid, Will, and Mickey. Of all my friends from Albies, I’ve stayed most in touch with Enid. (See, for example, here and here.)

Above: The C-Men of Albies in 1986. Some familiar faces, some new ones.

Above: Albies’ coat-of-arms has changed since 1986 as the college is no longer administered by its founders, the Dominican Order, but by the Diocese of Armidale. (For more on the history of St. Albert’s, click here.)

Above: Howzat!

Above: The Great Water Fight of 1986!

Above: I turned 21 in 1986 and celebrated with a party in Dangarsleigh Hall, a little country church hall a few miles outside of Armidale. At that time I was very much into Hal Foster’s adventure strip character Prince Valiant, and so had the hall decorated with huge colorful images of this hero who was both a Viking prince and a knight of King Arthur’s Round Table.

Left: Mum and Dad with one of the images that were part of my 21st birthday celebration. This image shows Prince Valiant and the love of his life, Queen Aleta of the Misty Isles.

My 21st was somewhat different in that it brought together my Albies friends and my ACAE friends (not to mention family and friends from Gunnedah). In some ways I really did live in two different worlds while in Armidale. It took a while, but members of both groups soon started mixing and enjoying themselves, as did all the Gunnedah folks.

Above: At the C-Block 1986 Christmas party we presented flowers to our two wonderful cleaning ladies, Diane and Lyn. I often wonder where these lovely women are now.

Above: Albies’ validictorians of 1986.

Above:The Armidale College of Advanced Education’s Class of 1986.

NEXT: Gulmarrad, Maclean, and Brooms Head

See also the previous Wild Reed post:
• Darren Hayes, Coming Out . . . Oh, and Time Travel

Images: Michael J. Bayly.

The Wild Reed

Tuesday, June 02, 2026

When the “Blue Wave” Is a “Blue Crackdown”

Monday, June 01, 2026

Quote of the Day

Sunday, May 10, 2026

Butch Ware on the Democrats’ “Lawfare” to Keep Greens Off the Ballot

Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Australian Sojourn – April-May 2026

Saturday, April 25, 2026

The Mellow Glow

Friday, April 24, 2026

Australian Sojourn – April-May 2026

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