I can’t stop thinking of those pictures of a slumping, sleeping Donald Trump at the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial ceremony. I remarked to friends at the time how he looked so woefully out of place at this important national occasion.

His demeanor and body language were more fitting for a patient in a nursing home.

Suddenly I remembered an old pen and ink drawing I did when I was about eleven depicting an “Old Age Home” filled with an assortment of aging tropes of oldsters. Sorting through my flat files I found it among the hundreds of childhood drawings I had saved.

Original drawing by Sally Edelstein 1967 with a modern day twist. Re-purposed art.

I decided to update it to include a doddering Donnie nodding off. He seems to fit right in, snoozing in the common room of the Old Folks Home and not at a solemn ceremony as our commander in chief.

Capt. Though Donnie was drawn with a felt tip pen, the original was drawn with a nib and India ink Donlad would be drawn with a Tombow Mono drawing pen, no ink bottle involved

Cartooning The Head & Figure by Jack Hamm 1967

As a child in the 1960s, I spent hours and hours hunched over on my bed drawing story after story, with visions of becoming a cartoonist when I grew up. Though I may have learned to draw bowls of fruit with Jon Neghy, I learned cartooning from a variety of cartoon instructional sources. Along with sampling the styles of legends like Mort Drucker or Jack Davis in Mad Magazine, Mort Walker from the funnies, and the folks from Harvey comic books, I devoured cartooning How-To books

My favorite was entitled “Cartooning the Head and Figure.” It was an instructional book from 1967 that provided tried and proven methods that explain step-by-step procedures in the art of cartooning.”

I carefully studied the art techniques from this soft-bound book.

No modern Flair pens for me- I used a nib and India ink to draw.  The wildly popular felt-tip pen with its vibrant, quick-drying ink had debuted in 1966 and changed writing forever.

But never for drawing for me. The ritual was part of the skill. Selecting the proper size metal nib, you inserted it using the small metal notches in the center of the nib holder, dipping it in the bottle of Higgins India Ink, always so careful not to spill any ink on my chenille bedspread.

Cartooning The Head & Figure by Jack Hamm 1967

I knew I still had the book stashed at home in my bookcase, so I pulled out the familiar, well-worn copy. Flipping through the different chapters, I was particularly interested in their section on drawing old folks

Not surprisingly, it was chock full of typical yet disturbing old age stereotypes.

Cartooning The Head & Figure by Jack Hamm 1967

Older women were skewered. Next to ditzy female drivers and meddling battle-axe mothers-in-law, the older woman was a favorite of cartoonists and comics. The instruction page was filled with wrinkled, hunched-over men and women sporting canes.

“Whereas it’s true that just a beard will put years on a cartoon figure, there are other characteristics which will help in the process. There are curvature of the spine tottering stance use of a cane, slumped sitting. Oldsters may be sprightly generally, pooped or palsied and shaky,” was the advice the cartooning book offered.

Seems like Trump fit the stereotype to a T.

Like everyone, September 11 is burned into my mind a quarter of a century later.

We all have our stories of that day. This is mine.

I still have my husband’s Long Island Rail Road ticket from September 11, 2001.

It was never punched.

Three days earlier, we had moved into a newly built house in Huntington, Long Island, from my beloved New York City.

 September 10, 2001. It was 25 years ago … the day before the world changed forever, and one in which my own world underwent a life-altering change of its own.

Moving had been a decision fraught with doubt, as I was an urban creature through and through. That day, still shell-shocked from the new reality of living in the suburbs, I comforted myself knowing that I would return to the city the next day, the 11th, to finish cleaning out my apartment on the Upper West Side.

September 11th would be my husband Hersh’s first day of commuting to his office in downtown New York. My plan that morning was to take a late morning train and meet at his office at the end of the day. Stumbling around a collection of floor-to-ceiling boxes, my normal morning routine of listening to The Today Show was decidedly off-kilter. Without cable set up yet, my TV reception was limited. But I had no inkling how very off-kilter it would truly be.

When I heard Katie Couric announce the first report of the North Tower of the World Trade Center being hit by a plane, my initial assumption was that it was likely a small private plane and was an accident.

I could not contemplate the unthinkable.

Still, I wondered if the city subways might experience delays because of this incident and maybe not the ideal time for me to go into the city.

The Unthinkable

The view from Franklin and West Broadway

When Hersh stepped out of the subway at Franklin and West Broadway on his way to his office, blocks from the World Trade Center he called me to discuss the feasibility of me coming into town due to the concerning incident at the WTC.

It was 9:01am.

We never had a chance to continue the conversation because, while on the phone, a second plane hit the South Tower, and Hersh watched in disbelief as a giant fireball exploded. I listened to the crackling, and then our call was abruptly ended.

My heart was in my stomach. I knew it was no accident and that America was under attack.

Suddenly my beloved city was under attack, and I was not there. It was unbearable.

Without social media to get second-by-second news updates and limited TV, I was really in the dark, in the dark of the suburbs. Stuck in the unfamiliar suburbs by myself, boxed in my hundreds of cartons, worried about city friends, and not knowing how Hersh could get home, let alone when, was nerve-wracking.

The city shut down, suspending all transportation in and out of the city.

Eventually, Hersh joined the throngs of confused and frightened souls slowly walking uptown. By evening, limited commuter train service returned. I was fortunate to welcome him back home that evening, his suit bearing the dust and ashes that permeated the skies of New York City.

A privilege far too many would not have.

We would lean a few days later, that the husband of the couple who were to buy our apartment had perished that day in the Towers.

He never wore that suit again, and we never had it cleaned. It remains hanging in a closet as a reminder. The dust of that tragedy remains embedded in the suit.

The unused ticket remains unpunched.

And my heart remains broken, a quarter of a century on.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2026. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

A peek into the President’s packed head. Sally Edelstein

Donald Trump is not well.

We are watching a mentally ill patient steeped in delusions as he goes on a posting blitz the last few nights.

Trump’s head is so crammed with insanity he can’t possibly act as Commander in Chief

We are witnessing his mind deteriorate in real time. He was on a Truth Social tear the last few nights,  a veritable blitzkrieg, bombing us with sinister AI images and videos, fueling feuds and inflating his ego.

11:54 AM – AI image of Robert De Niro holding a “Trump is my president” shirt

1:47 PM – AI image of him and George Washington riding horses

1:47 PM – AI image of him meeting with George Washington at the White House

1:47 PM – AI image of him renaming Lake Ontario

1:48 PM – Suggests renaming New Mexico to “New America”

1:49 PM – Posts image of him at McDonald’s

1:56 PM – Posts photo of the moon saying “The Moon Is Ours”

1:57 PM – AI image of his face on Iran (yes, actually)

1:57 PM – Brags about the White House helipad

2:40 PM – Image of him standing next to a TV with President Biden edited onto it

2:40 PM – AI image of the Titanic sinking labeled “Dumocratic Party”

2:40 PM – AI image of him as Hulk Hogan

2:41 PM – Claims he will be remembered as the “greatest president of all time” (LOL)

2:41 PM – Posts weird AI image of him walking with robots captioned “THEY WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN”

2:43 PM – Claims Democrats have changed the names of things, so it’s okay for him to rename Lake Ontario

2:47 PM – Claims other countries are cheating

2:48 PM – Says the Strait of Hormuz is open (it’s not)

2:56 PM – Posts AI image of the U.S. blowing up Kharg Island

3:04 PM – Another AI image of him with military robots

3:06 PM – Posts photo of him at the ballroom construction site

3:11 PM – Posts AI image of himself saying he made America great

3:17 PM – Posts AI image of him trading stocks

3:26 PM – Posts AI image of him as a Space Force member dropping bombs on countries

3:28 PM – Says Iran is a failing nation

3:43 PM – Posts photo of him in a trash truck

3:43 PM – Says Mar-a-Lago is the best club in the world

Trump appears nothing short of the classic mental patient in cartoons dressed as Napoleon, walking the halls of an insane asylum

A classic stereotype in cartoons and comics was the mentally ill patient suffering from grandiose delusions, with his right hand tucked into his shirt, wearing a bicorne hat possibly made of folded newspaper, believing he is Napoleon Bonaparte.

Except our patient sits in the Oval Office. His finger is close to the Nuclear button.

I feel as if I’m ready for the insane asylum.

It is hard to imagine a world without the glorious Gloria Steinem,

A woman like no other who had an enormous impact on countless lives, including a shy suburban girl in the early 1970s.

For many women of a certain age Ms. Magazine, that Grande dame of feminist publications started by that Grande dame of feminists Gloria Steinem, evokes a time of exciting challenges, disruptions to the norm, and honest-to-God truth-telling.

Ms Magazine first appeared as an insert in New York Magazine 1971

In 1971, I was sweet 16 when I first read Ms. magazine, an insert in New York Magazine,  and after that, the world would be less saccharine. I was accustomed to the sappy articles in Seventeen magazine offering advice like “How to invent a new you and make the scene with turned-on lips in put-out pink” and colorful dayglo ads for “outta sight” panty girdles because “a girl needs to be tamed.”

Miraculously, Ms. offered suggestions on how to raise my consciousness and not just my hemline.

To hell with being tamed.

Gloria Steinem changed my life, shifted the dialogue, and would be a major influence and shero for the entirety of my adulthood.

Domestic Disaster

The same week when I first read Ms. I was fresh off being completely humiliated by my home economics teacher.

The final project, which required me to sew an A-line skirt from a dreary Butterick pattern, ended in disaster as I ultimately stapled and glued the entire thing together rather than use a dreaded sewing machine.

The teacher rolled her watery eyes and reprimanded me. Shaking her head in disgust, I will never forget being told in front of the class by this plump woman with a sloppy beehive hairdo and a cardigan with a frayed sleeve: “I hope you can do something because you certainly can’t sew.”

First newsstand edition of Ms. July 1972

In “Ms.” there were never any articles on “How to Get Him to Notice You.” Instead, there were those that spoke about the advantages of non-parenthood, living alone by choice and a 16-page handbook on how to start your own business. It gave me my first feminist click that moment of recognition, and I had a name for what I long felt.

Feminism.

In time, I discovered I didn’t have to be someone I wasn’t in order to be who I was.

While my home economics teacher was hell-bent on trying to hem me in, “Ms.” helped me to weave my own unique life in whatever pattern I liked.

It turned out I really could do something else. I became a nationally exhibited artist. And to my delight, Ms. ran a piece on me at 66.

Gloria Steinem March 25,1934- September 2, 2026

The impact Gloria Steinem had on generations of women cannot be overstated. And for an insecure girl in the suburbs in 1971, she was a lifesaver.

Rest in power, Gloria. I am filled with gratitude for all you did.

Food insecurity has taken on a very different meaning lately.

Americans are in a state of high anxiety about putting food on the table.

But it’s not only about the soaring costs of basic sustenance.

Nothing feels safe to eat anymore—and that should make every one of us furious.

And salmonella is just the tip of the iceberg, lettuce

We are still reeling from the past few months of the deadly Cyclospora outbreak.

Walking down the aisles of my supermarket lately has felt like traipsing through a war zone, trying my best to avoid the landmines, never sure where or when one is about to explode.

As I quickly pass over the romaine lettuce, I cautiously eye the Driscoll strawberries, nervous that E.coli is hiding in plain sight along with “forever chemicals.” Diligently, I  check each egg carton, googling every brand to see if it has been recalled. And “mystery meat” is no longer what we once called the Salisbury steak served in the school lunch cafeteria. That chopped meat might come a trip around the globe.

A friend called it a crap shoot.

Actually, it’s more a game of Russian Roulette, and  a wrong choice proves just as deadly.

Danger Everywhere

Vintage Illustration from “Better Health For You” 1953

Every food group in the wholesome, familiar food groups of my childhood is under attack. Even today’s pyramid is demolished.

There’s just nothing safe to eat.

So far in 2026, there have been at least 165 food recalls. Popsicles. Lettuce. Granola. Blueberries. Milk, beef,  chicken, bread. The things people buy for their kids, pack in lunches, toss into smoothies, and put on the dinner table because we are told they’re making responsible choices.

Now we’re finding glass in fruit bars, metal in bread, potential salmonella in granola, E. coli-linked frozen blueberries, and lettuce tied to a massive Cyclospora outbreak. You cannot meal-prep your way around a food system where corporations treat safety like an optional expense.

Bobby Kennedy Jr. may claim he wants to “Make America Healthy Again,” but it’s hard to see what exactly he means by healthy.

Apparently it means stripping away public safeguards while food companies shrug off contamination that can send people to the hospital—or worse.

Project 2025 was not a harmless policy.

It laid out an agenda to gut the agencies and rules that restrain corporate power, slash food and nutrition support, and make ordinary people absorb the consequences.

We were told we were “overreacting.”

Food safety regulations are not bureaucratic clutter. They are the line between a grocery store and a corporate roulette wheel.

No, we weren’t overreacting to Project 2025.

Some of us were reading it.

Now we are living it.

And when it comes to our safety, we should feel very insecure.

George Washington chopping down his father’s cherry tree may have been a myth, but it is all too tragically true that Trump just recklessly and likely illegally chopped down the oldest grove of cherry blossom trees in DC.

A national treasure,  these sixty trees, a gift from Japan in 1912, are now bulldozed over for a damn golf course. Yet another part of our collective memory destroyed by Trump.

Detail of Grant Woods’s 1939 painting “Parson Weems Fable”

The story that defined George Washington for generations is one of the greatest myths in American history.

It’s the story that Washington, when he was just six years old, took a hatchet to his father’s favorite cherry tree. And instead of lying about it, he told his father that he could not tell a lie; he was the culprit.

From the time I was a child, I was taught early on about the value of honesty through an oft-told story about our first president and a cherry tree.

“I cannot tell a lie,” the six-year-old George Washington is said to have told his father in confessing to damaging the tree with a hatchet. “I did cut it with my hatchet.”

It was a straightforward and useful story. It was also not true.

It turns out it was invented by an early Washington biographer, Mason Locke Weems, AKA Parson Weems, in 1806. In 1836, the tale was transformed into a children’s story that endured.

Since then, it evolved and took on new meanings and soared in popularity. By the late 19th century,  professional historians increasingly dismissed Weems and called the story apocryphal, a myth, a fabrication.

All Trump does is tell cherry tree stories.

The mendacity of  Donald Trump is legendary.

Lie after lie.

Fib after fib.

Fabrication after falsehood.

The Father of Our Country might not have been able to tell a lie, but that is all our cheating, lying, narcissistic president can do.

I cannot tell a lie. I despise Donald Trump.

No body of water is safe from that Sharpie-wielding maniac!

“All you need is a pen and intelligence,” boasts Donald Trump as he randomly changes Lake Ontario to Lake America purely on a juvenile, vindictive whim.

He may have the pen, but the level of stupidity is astounding.

And arrogance.

But completely on brand

Donald Trump takes what he wants.

Takes what he thinks is his. What he is entitled to.

Whether a woman’s body or a body of water, it makes no difference.

What is next on his rampage around the globe? Is the Atlantic Ocean vulnerable? The Pacific?

How soon before he unleashes his Sharpie in the Middle East as the Strait of Hormuz becomes the Strait of Trump?

Right now, the only strait we should be concerned with is getting this man in a strait-jacket.

I woke up with Moe on the mind.

My dog Moe, was not the first Moe in my life. The Three Stooges notwithstanding, the only other Moe I ever knew was my father’s law partner, who unknowingly was instrumental in my lifelong love affair with dogs, beginning when I was 6 years old.

I’m certain that if not for that Moe, there might not have been this Moe cuddling next to me.

In the fall of 1961, just as our country was embarking on an exciting new frontier with the election of our new president, John Kennedy, my own family stepped boldly into the unknown with the acquisition of our very first dog.

Or more aptly, we got wangled into taking home a little short-haired dachshund that leapt not only onto our furniture but right into our hearts.

Eventually.

Moe Foyer and my father shared an office in industrial Long Island City, not far from my grandfather’s Pawnshop. Long before this place got taken over by a thicket of glass condo towers, it was a mostly grimy industrial area.

Moe was a beefy Queens native, a local glad-handling, well-connected politician, who used his formidable political skills to convince my very reluctant father that our family needed a dog.

A dachshund, to be precise.

Hot Diggety Dog

This 9-month-old wiener dog with the noble name of Prince belonged to his adult daughter, Sherrie. A budding career gal who lived at home with Moe and his wife, she was taking the big step of moving into the city. With an English Lit degree from Barnard and excellent typing skills, she had scored a plumb job as secretary at Doubleday. Because the new apartment building on the Upper East Side had a strict no-pet policy, the dog had to go.

Moe had a firm idea where the dog should end up.

With the tenacity of a terrier, Moe chewed off my father’s ear, convincing him that a pet dog was just what my nuclear family was missing, and invited us to take a look. To get Moe off his back, Dad reluctantly agreed to meet the dog.

My parents made it clear to my brother and me that no real decision had been made regarding this life-altering addition to our family.

This was strictly a look-see.

Queens Bound in Pursuit of a Prince

On a brisk November evening, we drove to their home in Jamaica Estates.  Though now the neighborhood is best known as the birthplace of Donald Trump, whose childhood Tudor Style home was less than a mile from Moes, I will always associate it with Prince.

“Just looking,” my mother cheerfully made clear. But with the skill of a seasoned litigator, before we knew it, Moe had handed us not only a yapping dog on a leash, but Prince’s metal feeding bowls, a stash of pedigree papers, and a rubber Snoopy chew toy.

Shell-shocked, we piled back into our large Plymouth and drove home with the rambunctious dog wriggling between my brother and me in the backseat.  I was equal parts overjoyed and frightened by this high-energy pup.

Once home, the short-legged dog maniacally raced laps around the house nonstop as though it was the Indy Five Hundred. Frightened, we all safely sequestered ourselves into our bedrooms. Behind closed doors, my mother was not shy about letting her feelings be known to my father. The not-so-muffled sound of my mother’s displeasure at the swiftness of this decision could be heard over the barking of the dog.

But for whatever reason, the dog was allowed to stay.

Keeping the dog was possibly the best decision ever made in my childhood. Prince became the center of our lives, as all my future dogs would become.

Thoroughly besotted, I learned early on from Prince the pure goodness of a dog, their unflinching, unconditional love. The companionship a furry friend provided to a shy, often scared little girl was lifesaving. In a house where there was often disruption and betrayal, the loyalty and steadiness of a dog were incalculable.

Prince became an emotional support dog long before that term became fashionable.

We may not have been initially prepared for Prince, but Prince prepared me for a lifelong love from God’s most amazing creatures.

Happy National Dog Day

I can’t imagine a world without Dolly Parton.

She was the best of us.

The best of America.

Dolly transcended all the divisiveness, politics, and cultural polarization that have deeply fractured us.

Red state or blue state, we were all drawn to her musical brilliance and her generosity that illuminated so brightly. Now a brilliant light has gone out.

We don’t mourn her as a Democrat, or a Progressive, Republican, or MAGA.

Today we are drawn together as Americans as we mourn this American Shero.

And that is her lasting gift to us.

(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

We are now at Def Con 1 in Donald Trump lunacy.

It must be Christmas in August, and the secret Santa is Donald Trump. He’s been busy handing out presents to Kim Jung Un and Xi Jinping.

But poor America, it seems, gets nothing.

Our President just handed China a gift wrapped with a big bow and, oh, incidentally,  making America weaker in the process.

Trump has ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” joint U.S. military exercises with South Korea, complaining that the drills are “hostile” to North Korea.

Hostile?

North Korea is a nuclear-armed dictatorship ruled by Kim Jong-un — the same despot Trump describes as “unthreatening and respectful.”

For all practical purposes, the U.S. is now siding with North Korea and Kim Jong Un instead of our democratic ally South Korea.

Who’s a Communist Now?

The party calling everyone who opposes them a Commie is now siding with a literal Communist dictator.

My head is simultaneously spinning and exploding.

But that’s not all that Comrade Donald’s order does.

The biggest winner from Trump’s latest piece of presidential lunacy isn’t Kim.

It’s China.

Big Winner

These military exercises are part of the American security presence that has helped restrain China’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific for decades.

Decades.

Reduce them, weaken America’s alliances, and sow doubts among our allies, and Beijing gains without firing a shot.

They just hit the jackpot.

China is rapidly expanding its military and industrial muscle, competing with America in artificial intelligence and steadily increasing its influence throughout Asia.

So what does our self-proclaimed master dealmaker do?

He weakens America’s position.

He undermines our longtime ally South Korea.

He pleases North Korea.

And he hands China exactly what it wants — a diminished American presence in its own backyard.

Tough on China?

The jokes on us.