Discouragement abounds,
angst, depression, fears;
my pate completely addled,
my brains ooze out my ears.
I feel as though I’m squeezed
by vise of pointless tripe;
innuendo and conspiracy
spring up in endless hype.
And isolation never helped
the cause of sanity;
it gives the upper hand
to crazed inanity.
I look for logic, reason,
a sense of what should be;
I find it in the bakery
in sweet geometry.
I do not make light, dear reader, of those who have little food. Or none at all. I know how fortunate I am to think about desserts.
Many thanks to photographer S.W. Berg
and to the artist-bakers at la Madeleine.
Oddments 
August 16, 2020 at 1:26 pm
First off, couldn’t hit like because it tells me it’s loading. 😦 Either your brain turns to mush listening to them talk over each other on whatever news source you choose or you go for the dessert. I’ll go for the dessert every time. Great photo and love the header too. I only watch news in the morning, one hour maximum and half that time it is on mute or closed captioning. My head feels like it is going to explode from all the rhetoric. I have a whoopie pie just waiting for afternoon coffee and no news except what I scan quickly until tomorrow morning. 🙂
August 16, 2020 at 2:35 pm
“Loading” is the same message I get on my blog where Likes used to be. We do not need this — as we both know!
I too am trying to limit my intake of news. But then I worry about not knowing. How can I defend myself against what I don’t know when I am not sure I can defend myself against what I do know? I get all tangled up in such questions and so I know I need dessert to help me think it all out.
Afternoon coffee would just keep me awake at night, but there’s a slight chance I could reach for an afternoon oatmeal cookie and I will think of you; the whoopie pie and the oatmeal cookie to lift our spirits — and to salute our blogger friends who might also need their spirits lifted. I saw your kind note to The Gardener In The City yesterday. Certainly thinking of him and his family.
August 17, 2020 at 11:06 am
I’m not posting today. My heart is heavy with life right now, his journey ahead, and you’ve probably read ‘Murphy’s Law’ comments. She is fighting a medical battle of her own.
August 17, 2020 at 12:09 pm
I do read Murphy’s Law comments, but I hadn’t seen anything about her own medical problems. This is more sadness. I’m sorry you are feeling it so deeply, but how can you not? We are floundering for hope, it seems.
August 16, 2020 at 1:39 pm
I have to confess that the conjunction of ‘Coping’ and this picture seemed incongruous! You’re so right that ‘isolation never helped/the cause of sanity’. I’m turning to jacket potatoes with Wensleydale cheese to help come to terms with our political fall-out.
This week, our news is dominated by the anguish caused by awarding grades to students for exams they were unable to sit. If I understand correctly, their teachers collectively awarded grades that would have been around 35% higher than usual. The moderators have downgraded students to get the grades back down to just a tiny bit better than normal, based on the grades their schools have ‘normally’ achieved. In the process they seem to have downgraded less well-off students most, so that some expecting a high mark have been given Unclassified (the worst). It seems logical to me that the teachers who collectively set grades so much higher ought to have been told beforehand that they could not do that, but there is no mention of that in the news outlets, which are virtually encouraging the students to protest. I suppose it is a bad situation and logic will not make it better.
August 16, 2020 at 2:22 pm
My heavens! I think I’d be looking for the logic in grading exams that were never taken! Every time I think we’ve hit the epitome of loony, I learn we aren’t there yet. Grades for exams that weren’t taken? My poor brain stalls out right there. The whole of it sounds very unfair to all students, and perhaps also to the teachers, but I am not sure we ever get the whole of anything. The anguish, however, remains. The human toll over and over.
Of course I had to look up Wensleydale. I’m assuming that jacket potatoes are those with skin on — my favorite kind. The combination of cheese and potatoes sounds delicious — does the cheese get gooey with the hot potatoes? That would be every bit as therapeutic as one of these desserts, I think. I could be persuaded to have both the dessert AND the cheesy potato! That would definitely help me cope!
August 19, 2020 at 2:24 pm
They’ve made a few changes since, but it’s still all in disarray. I can imagine it would be difficult for the teachers to say to their students that they haven’t done well enough to pass.
I’ve heard jacket potatoes being called twice baked in the US. Wensleydale is perfect because it is a little more – well, I am not sure there is a word for it, but curdy. It isn’t crumbly exactly, but it isn’t solid either and it melts in rather than melts over, especially if you swirl it all around after the second baking. I think you would like it.
August 19, 2020 at 3:22 pm
I like it already!