Political Cartoons 12-7-2025

 

We Only Live Once...

 

The Dynamics are Different - Yet The Same

Road Trip

What if you could step into a time machine and revisit 60 years ago? 

What would it be like seeing your college roommate after almost 60 years? I am about to find out. We were roommates throughout my engineering school term and got along well; like the brother I never had. He was from Pennsylvania and I from a smalltown about an hour-and-a-half from campus. Our campus was never a hot bed of activity on the weekends, so on many weekends he tagged along for home cooking. My grandmother was a great cook and loved having us. The summer of '67 we did a road trip and attended The Worlds Fair Expo in Montreal.   

Worlds Fair Expo 67 in Montreal
A Night View

We had fun together and had a group of fellow engineering students to do stuff with on campus during the week. Kind of a work hard / study hard / let's get a beer group.  

After graduation, careers and family seem to get in the way. However, we did stay close, checking in always with the promise to get together.  

This weekend we are!

My Roommate looking back
as we started home from Montreal
after three days at Expo '67

I will be attending his church X'mas holiday music event Sunday and staying over with he and his wife for the weekend. The plan now is to drive back Monday or Tuesday. I did the big “Rhonda reveal" by e-mail / blog and he stated no-problem. This is an area we had never explored or discussed.

Although, while in college I did participate in a fashion/beauty contest done up beautifully by my then girlfriend, to become wife. My first time dressed in public. WOW! Many years passed before I was ever out again.     

This should be an interesting weekend. We are not getting younger. If one waits putting off reminiscing, the conversation could become one-sided. 

This weekend - The dynamics are so different yet so the same. 

PS: OMG - What to wear?

____________________________

After driving back from Montreal
we attended a fellow classmate's
wedding in South Richmond Va. 

Breaking The Spell...

 

My least favorite part of any "Escape" evening is changing back. I call it "Breaking the spell". Either it is late or I had appointments to make as male. I hated that return to reality and the moment the illusion ends. All goes well including kicking the shoes off at the door to unzipping the dress and  letting it fall in a puddle. Looking at my self in bra and panties, I always hated the next step to come.  

Back then I wore a wig and taking that one item off would break the feminine spell. The image staring back at me in the mirror was not the same any longer.  

Disappointingly everything gets delicately folded for next escape. My feminine mystique was now relegated to the "Rhonda" travel box.   

Even today with no wig to take off, my moment is cleaning my face. I do love it when there are traces of eyeline or tined lips remaining. She is still there! Do you think anyone will notice?  Liberation - Today, "I don't care".  

So, how about you?  What was / is your "Break The Spell" moment?  We all have one...   

Blog Intimidation...

Yesterday something troubling occurred with “Ronda’s Escape”.  It was shut down for what I think may have been four hours or so. At first, I was thinking hacked. However, a notice stated that the "Blog had been removed due to content", seemed be from Google, my platform. I had no clue what the issue was and the message intimated that the Blog had been removed totally with no recourse.  

First, let me state I am very conscientious about content. I do not pretend to be a counselor, doctor, or anyone other than someone encouraging life's fulfillment. As for a underage stuff (grooming), I do not go there and never will! I have always been careful, even in the support groups I organized. No one under 18 without parent. My blog content is for those over 18 and I sense most of my readers are well past that. I do not have a content advisory warning on my blog.  

Finally yesterday, I was able to get into my blog content manager and starting looking for anything that may have been objectionable. My only find was the “Mother / Daughter” high heel shoe play from a few weeks ago. It was a takeoff on an Etsy Mother’s Day card. Cartoon cute and I framed it as something I had done growing up, “playing with my mother’s shoes”. 

If this offended someone, I wish it had been addressed directly, and I would have been happy to remove it; please. If a google AI bot flagged it, that is more troubling. Bots or someone is watching Transgender Blogs. As Hallie stated on T-Central, “One Hears Rumors”:

Let's start by stating there is no way to tell what the future will bring. There has never been a time when the freedom to have a place like this, to share all of the interesting facets of the T world, has been more under threat. 

Yesterday, I removed the “How It Begins” post and all seemed to return to the new normal. I am troubled. I feel intimated. However, I will continue for now. Our freedoms are under attack, one-by-one. Now is the time to be visible, speak up and let the world know, "we will not be erased!"

Feminine Image 3

Stay tuned tomorrow - I have something to write and ask tomorrow.  Troubling...

Go For A Walk...

Not go for a walk. However, drove to a 7-11 and got newspaper. Went to a grocery store and did more walking than shopping. Just drove around a few blocks. Went to a late movie.  

Any of this sound familiar?  

 

War Crimes

Commander Ordered Strike On Alleged Drug Boat Survivors To Comply With Hegseth Demand

My Note:  When will enough be enough?  Is not congress also guilty of abdicating its authority to Trump?  I have friends that think that Trump's actions are acceptable. In what political world are actions like this OK? 

In early September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a U.S. strike force command to kill everyone on board a suspected drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean, The Washington Post reported, leading to a second strike on a pair of incapacitated survivors that appears to constitute a war crime.

“The order was to kill everybody,” one source with knowledge of the operation told the Post [Washington].

The Sept. 2 attack represented the first of many strikes on alleged drug traffickers in the region, even though fentanyl — a prime contributor to overdose deaths — does not tend to come from Central and South America.

U.S. military commanders were apparently shocked to see two survivors clinging to the flaming boat once smoke from the first strike cleared. The second strike, apparently to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, reportedly killed the two survivors.

To date, the Trump administration’s hotly controversial strikes on supposed drug boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean have left some 80 people dead, although little is known about their identities or whether they were, in fact, trafficking drugs.

BBC: A former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has told the BBC that US air strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats would be treated under international law as crimes against humanity.