for #BigIdeas2015 about reworking college

This morning I responded to Jeff Selingo's education reform forum on LinkedIn, #BigIdeas2015.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-idea-2015-lets-rethink-jeff-selingo

Here's what I wrote:

I have been underemployed all my adult life, but that's okay. The best things in life may be related, in some ways, to education, but satisfaction with life accomplishments are not absolutely dependent on education.

Now approaching the golden years of life, I have gathered a lifetime of useful knowledge, which I would like to pass on to the next generations. Here's why:

My somewhat unpredictable forty+ years of employment and raising children with my wife have convinced me that a broadly diversified foundation of education is absolutely worth more that its weight in gold. In modern life, especially now in our age of digital communications, there is no substitute for developing three essential educational components, which collectively constitute an advantageous preparation for successful life. Here are the three components:

~ knowing how to read, and read thoroughly with comprehension and critical analysis

~ knowing how to write, and express yourself and what you have learned

~ knowing how to communicate verbally, and accurately (for instance, without constant mentions of "like" and "um.")

In 1973, I was a confused, but fairly well-read, senior at LSU. With a concentration in general humanities, mostly political science and English, I managed to escape four and a half years of trying to figure this "education" thing out. Fortunately, that prolonged effort yielded for me a baccalaureate, which I held in my hand while launching a "career" in life insurance sales.

The life insurance phase was short-lived. But that did not, as it later turned out, matter so much.

After moving to Florida, spending the better part of a year selling policies to low-income people, I moved into newspaper advertising sales for a season, then into printing sales for about five years.

Then I decided to become a carpenter. Ha! Who'd have thunk it?

So I was, making a long story short, in construction for twenty-five+ years. I built houses, working for contractors in North Carolina where we had settled with our young family. Thus we managed to make a living, feed the kids and all that. My wife moved out of her stained glass business and into nursing shortly after our third child entered middle school.

All along the way, I was a reader, and that is the key to education--learning how to be a lifelong reader, and thereby cultivating a lifelong proficiency for self-education.

About ten years ago, I decided to enter the field of education. After taking courses part time for a couple of years at our local state university, I acquired several teaching certifications. After Praxis, student teaching and acquiring certifications in four subjects, I worked in a school for about two years in a supportive role.

Then the crash of '08 came, followed by the budget-cutting of '09. One thing led to another, and our own household budgetary requirements required that I move back into construction-related work, which is to say, maintenance. Now I fix things in 92 apartments; its a full time job, and works well with my wife's nursing career.

Eight years ago, I started writing and publishing novels; I'm working on the fourth one now, which is named King of Soul. You can find more about those writing projects and the blogs that complement them at http://www.careyrowland.com.

Also, the improvised resumé includes forty+ years of writing songs and recording them in various studios.

Here's hoping that before all this is over, I will be able to fulfill the educator role in some way. There is a lot to be said for a life that is spent in continuous reading and seeking knowledge. Knowledge of both kinds: the artistic, and the practical. I do hope to pass it on; a classroom setting could be helpful.

So, if you are considering a rework of the "college" experience, shoot me a digital note and we will talk about #BigIdeas2015. Thanks.

carey.rowland.glasshalffull@gmail.com

Glass half-Full

The Nutcracker is not correct!

During all six+ decades of my time here I've been appreciating Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker ballet suite. Every now and then, woven throughout this life I'd hear snippets of the musical adventure--dance of the mirlitons, the sugar plum fairy, snow queen, the Nutcracker Prince . . . whether spinning across the airwaves from WDAV, or sacheting through some mall soundtrack, or whirling around in my childhood recollections, maybe gliding through a Christmas scenario from some ancient yuletide celebration in days of old. Whether it be a shimmering tinsel of exotic melody that hangs upon my personal memory, or some almost-seen glimmering remnant from a collective archive of European culture, I haven't a clue.

Then last night we saw the actual ballet performed at Charlotte.

http://charlotteballet.org/tickets/nutcracker/

Whoa! What an experience.

As the dancers initiated their rite of midwinter reverie, my first thought was about the stage setting in their background. How much the world has changed! since Petr Ilyich first cast this musical extravaganza into the world's imagination. The immensity of the Christmas tree, the lavish grandiosity of what is obviously a mansion setting, and the quaintly sumptuous finery of the characters' costumes--these elements of the story are quaintly outmoded, and did not portend a ballet that would reflect sensitivity to contemporary political correctness.

The family depicted in the story do not seem to represent regular folks--certainly not Democrats, anyway.

I mean, they look like old-fashioned rich people, like we used to see in old British movies, all dressed in frills and formality. Maybe they're actually . . . the dreaded 1%! Or maybe even (Tchaikovsky being a Russian) they are those heartless Russian nobility types whose vast domains were enriched by the toil and sweat of peasants.

I thought: This is going to be a ballet about upper crust Ruskies whose prosperity was directly dependent on the Czar's authoritarian feudalism, before the Bolsheviks began redistributing the Old World's old money into new Leninist revolutionary paths of proletarian appropriation. This stageplay is not going to be an egalitarian holiday presentation. No Little Match Girl or Dickensian Tiny Tim tearjerker here.

I wasn't really thinking that. I'm a Republican after all.

But the ballet is, as it turns out, one colorful yuletide episode in a little rich girl's life. How politically incorrect is that? And if that wasn't bourgeois enough, the setting then morphs into the little rich girl's dream-- the whole second half of the show is a little rich girl's fantasy! Don't tell anyone.

Now I can understand the palace-like marbled grandiosity of the Bank of America Center interiors, which I was forced to walk through while ambling from the parking garage to the theatre. (Even though Wells Fargo sponsored the Event. Go figure.) This ballet is part of a vast capitalist plot to make every middle and lower class family just like the well-endowed family whose holiday fantasy is dramatized in the Nutcracker!

I can't believe the Democrats met here, right outside those doors in downtown Charlotte, only two years ago!

Is it a Russian plot?

That dancing Prince looks pretty nutty if you ask me. I wonder if he's somehow connected to Putin's power-grabbing aspirations!

Nevertheless, in spite of all that hog-wild rumination trying to drag my sugar plum appreciations into politically correct judgements, we had a great musical experience with the Charlotte Ballet, accompanied by Charlotte Symphony! I was thoroughly enthralled as the dancers whirled around Petr Ilyich's construct of an Old World 1%er child's fantasy, while the stage-setters did their magic under the influence of Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux's imaginative dancing mastery.

Somewhere between the pageantry of high-hatted toy soldiers and the mysteriously dissonant celesta, which accompanies Sugar Plum Fairy's confectionary grace, I found myself amazed at the "diversity" represented in Tchaikovsky's 19th-century rendering of an old Hoffman tale.

My amazement started in the first scene, with the post-modernly mechanical movements of the the Toy Doll and the Nutcracker Doll. These motions were incredibly like mime, or even hiphop. I didn't know if I was flashing on Charlie Chaplin, Marcel Marceau, or Michael Jackson.

To further complicate my prior expectations about ballet, I had to ask: Who would have thought an outlier Russian symphonist would include Spanish chocolate, Arabian coffee, and Chinese tea in his fantastic array of pirouetting spices? And then he blends them into a Czarist celebration of one family's opulent holiday festivities?

But old Petr managed to do it. Quite an amazing guy, that Russian.

From listening to his music over the years, I've gotten the impression that the composer spent his whole symphonic life trying, time after time, to perfect the delicate art of orchestral crescendo. The Nutcracker represents, it seems to me, an exotic side-trip in that lifelong dynamic project. While 1812 Overture and the Swan Lake were brilliant expressions of that quest for the perfectly constructed crescendo, The Nutcracker is a different character entirely--a wildly musical collection of divers cultural adventures, 19th-century style. Maybe that's why its seasonal popularity has launched Petr Ilyich's masterpiece of sweetness of into one of the world's most enduring classics.

Glass Chimera

Oh, Elizabeth!

Oh, Elizabeth!
Every straight-suit conservative cultivates this fantasy
of her,
this indomitable lady whose brazen eloquence bankers yearn to
conquer,
so they can
render
her wild-eyed policy pronouncements impotent to
usher
in breaking-news neo-new deal doses of rolling socialist
thunder 
and boundless bureaucratic, sycophantic, stultatory regulatory
blunder.
But with unbridled, yeah I say unto thee unfathomable,
bluster
she sails forth as some queenly masthead of Democratic
wonder,
flinging seaspray aside, sluicing salty flashes of populist
thunder.
She reigns as Regulator extraordinaire, tossing all semblances of mediocre laissez-faire
asunder
while, with squeaky clean midwestern vesture she thrusts bankerly reserves
under 
the bus, for us huddled masses of underemployed, chronically annoyed, lean and
hunger-
burdened occupiers yearning to be free, so we can be
a tower
of turbulent ferment that even now doth foment in yon seething streets, with fleeting beats,  this very
hour.  
You hear
it? This eloquent Liz hath spoke! and now she doth poke her legatory finger in the
air, 
being now a
senator.
While wily regulators and owlish pundulators still yet yearn to 
shower her
with love, yet she doth sally forth with that sensational senatorial
paramour
of old. She doth provoke us from her lofty tower
of power. Yeah, she doth it at this very
hour.

Glass Chimera

You gotta respect yourself

I was in Greensboro yesterday, and visited Scuppernong Books on South Elm Street downtown, where I picked up a copy of Greg Kot's excellent historical book about Mavis Staples and the Staples Singers.
After reading 40 pages about Pop Staples and his singing family, I was very impressed with these people, and what they did with their lives. I really identify with old Pop Staples, who got his young'uns started in music back in the 1950s, when I was a clueless white kid growing up in Jackson Mississippi.
Now everybody knows that Miss'ippi mud gave birth to the delta blues.

There ain't nothin' really wrong with the blues. I've spent many an hour myself singing the blues, crying the blues, being blue, and feelin' that ole E7 12-bar a-wailin' blues. Ev'body have the blues now and then, and some folks are born into the blues, spend their lives in the blues, and make powerful emotive music in the blues. But the blues is hard, and there are lifestyle choices connected to singin' them blues that can render a life that is just damned hard, too hard.

Ole Pop Staples learned his blues down in the delta where he was raised, and he played along with them wailin' boys, but when it came to Sunday morning, Pop took his wife and young'uns to church, cuz there come a time when you gotta rouse yoself outa that funky blues and do somethin' right.

So Pop Staples got his younguns started out right in the musical life, singing in church, praising God.

Few years later, when they moved up to South side of Chicago , and them Staples saw deeply into all what was going on there in that big hub city of America's stockyard-smellin' heartland, and they heard Mahalia and sang with her and all that, Pop's commitment to gospel music got stronger and stronger.

So he made sure his singing kids stayed on the gospel track, even though what they were doing sounded real bluesy, like his delta roots.

That man from the delta had a unique combination of blues and gospel runnin' through his veins, and he brought his children on board that train. There wasn't no one who would sing like Pop with his children; they were good at it. As we say in the Christian heartland, they had "the anointing."

In his book, Greg Kot mentions on page 34 that, nevertheless, their first record release was a flop. After that, a certain record company was

". . . looking for hits and encouraged the Staples to move in a rock'n'roll direction, according to Pops, but he would have none of it."

And Pops said:

". . .He wanted us to sing blues. He said Mavis could make a lot of money singing blues. I didn't want her singing blues."

Prodigy singing daughter Mavis agreed:

"I just enjoy singing spirituals."

Some time passed. Then the singing had to go on the back burner for awhile. Kot reports:

"When the Staples' contract expired in 1955, Pop returned to his job at the steel mill, in no hurry to jump back into the music business."

But that little disagreement with the music professionals turned out to be just a bump in the road for Pop and his soulful singing kids. Long story short, here's what happened later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oab4ZCfTbOI



Glass half-Full

Surely, He has borne our griefs

Every now and then in world news, it is reported that Muslims have taken offense because the Prophet Mohammed was insulted by some disrespectful kaffir journalist, speaker, or movie. In such cases, followers of Islam have been known to demonstrate their ire publicly.

This does not generally happen--it should not--among Christians, because our Savior has already suffered just about every insult, torture, or disgrace known to man-- when he was nailed to a cross. There is nothing a person can say or do to humiliate Jesus that hasn't already been spoken or done.

People who do not believe in Christ sometimes say that ours is a weak religion--even pathetic--because we put all our hope and faith in a Messiah who was judged to be a criminal and blasphemer and then publicly humiliated by torture and death on a cross.

The Muslim religion, by contrast, is founded on belief in the spoken word and action of a different person, Mohammed, who was a very successful man. Although he was opposed by many religious people of his day--as Christ also was--Mohammed surmounted the opposition of his enemies. In spite of his contentions against the stubborn Arab old-religionists of Mecca, he became, during his lifetime, a highly respected religious leader, revelator, military leader, judge, and founder of a world religion. Along the way he who took multiple wives, fathered many children and grandchildren, and died a natural death.

Jesus Christ, however, died on a cross after being publicly humiliated and tortured.

People who criticize Christians for following a suffering, crucified Savior think we have been misled or duped to put our faith in such a loser.

Whatever. It doesn't matter what they think. Whatever abuse, verbal or physical, was heaped upon Jesus, is to be expected in the Christian life, and we must bear that humiliation with the same dignity that Christ bore his.

And that is a major point of Christianity--learning to bear the humiliation and suffering that this life generates, even as he did.

The real frustrations and failings of our life, after all, usually center around our defeats, not our victories.

So, by going to the cross, which facilitated his later resurrection on the third day afterward, Jesus showed us how to accomplish the greatest--the most necessary--victory in life. This overcoming is obtained through facing, bearing, and overcoming whatever-the-hell trouble life throws at us, including the worst adversity of all--death itself.

The Jewish prophet Isaiah foreshadowed this exemplary, salvatory role of Messiah when Isaiah presciently spoke:

"Surely, He has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows!"

Several millenia later, the composer Georg Friedrich Handel included these prophetic words from Isaiah in his great musical oratorio, Messiah:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT8tR1azaIw

This motivates us to proclaim, as Paul did:

"Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation--giving no cause for offense in anything. . ."

Life is sad, and difficult, but our God has shown us how to get through it victoriously; this does not require taking offense at every little errant word or insult. He was our example in this forebearance. Furthermore, we have better things to do.



Glass half-Full

Air upon a strung string

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxZbVwrGOrc

Somewhere in the world virtuoso

fingers

dance upon stretched

string,

string strung upon neck of

wood.

Would you listen to it.

Somewhere in the world craftsman

fingers

carve upon some shapening piece so

peace

reigns upon a great grand old hall,

if only for a moment,

all

ears and eyes are trained upon

artisan

person pulling passion out of

string strung on

wood.

Would you hear it if you

could

not that you should

of course.

Coarse

wood sawn from spruce still

produce

sublime sound to

astound our attentive eyes and ears;

fears

fade as rapt attention in

suspension of all stress while all the

rest

is strung upon the tender breast of

humankind.

Behind

the finery and excellence you see rugged old

tree

whose seed was slung upon an earthen floor

for

Creator God to raise a tree, as

He

will yet raise you and me

and stretch us upon his neck of time,

fine

as gutty string doth

bring

music to our heart and mind.

Surely we all will someday shine

fine

in God's good time.

Glass half-Full

This just doesn't add up

Yeah, sure, Michael Brown broke a law.

Yeah, sure, he was resisting arrest;

yeah, sure, the officer of the law was doing his duty.

But in the end, a young man, unarmed, is dead
because he stole a pack of cigarillos and then walked impudently down the middle of the street.


Yeah, sure, Eric Garner broke a law.

Yeah, sure, he was resisting arrest;

yeah, sure, the officer of the law was doing his duty.

But in the end, a young man, unarmed, is dead

because he was selling cigarettes.


This just doesn't add up.

There is something wrong here.

And it appears to be, as we say in newspeak, systemic.

That is to say, there is something wrong with the system.


Yeah, sure, the Missouri grand jury that did not indict the officer

was a legally appointed body the purpose of which was to decide

whether there was a possibility that the arresting officer had violated the law

while attempting to protect himself and the public.


Yeah, sure, the New York grand jury that did not indict the officer

was a legally appointed body the purpose of which was to decide

whether there was a possibility that the arresting officer had violated the law

while attempting to protect himself and the public.


But we have two dead bodies because of damned minuscule cigarette violations. The deathful end doesn't justify the means. There's something wrong with this picture, and the public can smell it.


Why is the deadly outcome of these two cases so much bigger, and final, than the sum of their legal parts?

A young man commits a misdemeanor or two; then he's walking along and suddenly there's a cop in his face. That's to be expected; illegal actions have legal consequences. So the cop is doing his job. But hey, a few minutes later the petty criminal is dead.


Who issued the guilty verdict and death sentence? A court of law? A trial by jury? No. It doesn't add up.

There is something going on here, something being exposed, that needs to be dealt with.

Is it racism? True dat. Like sin, it is always there in us, sometimes under the surface, sometimes in full-blown atrocity. Wherever men go upon the earth, there is, was, will be tribe-against-tribe racism.

But racism is only part of this picture; the other part is a justice system with its priorities out of whack. That's what we the people are feeling now.

Why are so many people--black and white, conservative and liberal--disturbed about the fatal outcome of these incidents?

We have a serious disconnect between the street-imposed sentence (death) and the seriousness of the crime.

That "it doesn't add up" disconnect is wired into our media-driven minds. Although we do not know nearly as much as we think we do about news events, neither does a grand jury operating without cross-examination of witnesses.

In this fortnight's perceived events, it's almost as if the vast public outcry, as jerky and fickle and circumstantial as it is, produces a more appropriate assessment of the outcome than the traditional, evidence-based system for passing judgement.


Oh surely we do not know the facts of the case as well as the grand jury. But we do know this: two young, unarmed men who had not been sentenced to death are now dead. That's the bottom line.

It doesn't add up. The system, with or without grand jury, needs somehow to be fixed, so that the punitive sentence accurately reflects the seriousness of crime.

As if that could happen.

I don't know though. . . maybe it's always been this way. Maybe there is, in truth, no justice in this world.

And so folks yearn for something better. . . the Last Judgement of a Righteous God?

I'm not excusing injustice.

Just sayin'. That Last Judgement may be the only justice some of us will ever see.


Glass half-Full

After reading Thirteen Days

In September of 1978, President Jimmy Carter invited Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to the presidential retreat at Camp David. Mr. Carter's objective was to forge a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. Following a 13-day ordeal of tense negotiations that involved the three primary leaders and their accompanying staffs, the summit did ultimately produce a signed agreement.

In 2014, peace still exists between Egypt and Israel.

Lawrence Wright has written a book reporting what took place during that thirteen day period at Camp David in 1978. The book was published in September this year, 2014 by Alfred A. Knopf/Random House.


Here a few things I learned while reading Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin and Sadat at Camp David.

http://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Days-September-Carter-Begin/dp/0385352034


Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan accompanied Prime Minister Begin at the summit. Dayan, born in 1915 in the first Israeli kibbutz, had been Defense Minister during the 6-day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

~ Very soon after the war of 1967, in which Israel had gained control of much territory, including the Sinai and Jerusalem, Moshe Dayan met with Muslim leaders in Jerusalem. Although the Muslims had feared that Dayan might allow the Israelis to destroy the mosques on top of the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif), Dayan did otherwise. He told the Muslim leaders, including the Mufti, to "resume their Friday sermons" at the Al Aqsa mosque. He also eliminated barricades and checkpoints that had formerly separated Arab neighborhoods from Jewish areas.


~ In 1972, President Sadat sent Soviet military experts out of Egypt, back to USSR. By "pulling Egypt out of the Soviet embrace" Sadat was able to steer the Egyptian economy away from the socialist model.


~ The 1978 American-sponsored peace summit at Camp David got off to a very slow start. After nine days of awkward, getting-to-know-you sessions between two delegations whose nations had formerly met only on battlefields of war, the "first concrete agreement of the Camp David summit became a reality." This little breakthrough occurred when an Egyptian lawyer, Osama el-Baz, met with an Israeli lawyer, Aharon Barak, to hash out some legal hurtles. The proverbial sunbeam broke through dark clouds of gloom when the attorneys agreed to delete a phrase. Ironically, the phrase was this sentence: "They have both also stated that there shall be be no more war between them." In other words, the negotiators were starting to get realistic about the limitations of their proposed peace agreement.


~ Also on Day 9 of the summit, the issue of Israeli settlements in the Sinai emerged as the main point of contention obstructing an agreement. This became evident after President Carter became furious with the Egyptian attorney Baz and berated him for misrepresenting his boss' (Sadat's) position on another issue.


~ On Day 10, Anwar el-Sadat and Moshe Dayan, two men under whose command their two armies had clashed on the Sinai battlegrounds five years prior, met in Sadat's apartment at Camp David. Lawrence Wright wrote: "Sadat received Dayan with a polite smile." Despite Carter's request to Dayan that the battle-horses "not discuss the issues" lest they descend into entrenched positions, the two peace-seeking soldiers fell into an exchange about the Israelis' refusal to give up their settlements in the Sinai. But the silver lining behind the cloud was that now the issue of settlements could come full-force to the front lines of their waging peace. Progress, believe it or not, was at last on their dark horizon as the two sides faced each other face-to-face, but not on a desert battlefield. (. . ."settlements" dispute sound familiar to our 2014 ears?)


~ The Yom Kippur War of 1973 exposed Israel's vulnerability in a way that compelled their electorate to turn toward Begin's hardline defense strategies and the Likud party, in 1977.


~ Menachem Begin, born in Russian Belarus in 1913, survived both the Nazi Holocaust and the Soviet gulag before being sent to Palestine as a soldier in the Polish army in December 1942. When Begin got to Palestine, one might say he never looked back. He had found that home that all Jews await. His persecuted, embattled life-story explains, in my opinion, the extremity of his Irgun military strategies and terrorist insurrections in British Palestine after World War II. His 1978 presence at Jimmy Carter's peace-seeking marathon for thirteen days, and his consent to its final agreement, was unlikely, to say the least.


But I will not "say the least." Begin's concession of the Sinai to Egypt was nothing short of miraculous. There are conditions in this world that can turn a heart of stone into a human heart. A wise peacemaking Christian man who happened to be President of the strongest nation in the world had a hand in this amazing turnaround.


Speaking of which, I'll skip a Sinai-sized bulk of my notes about this peace-seeking ordeal, to mention a turning point (one of many) that came on the last day, Day 13:


~ As a final signing ceremony was being prepared at the White House, Begin ordered his delegation to withdraw from the Camp David meetings. The thorny issue of Jerusalem was the prickling crown that was about to draw fatal blood from an almost-compete agreement. That old death-struggle between Jew and Muslim had raised its ugly head when Begin's life-defining resolve was threatened by a letter from President Carter. It was a side letter, a mere addendum, and not a legal part of the agreement, that came to the forefront of their last-minute contentions. Carter had written the letter as a point of clarification at Sadat's request. Lawrence Wright wrote:

"If Carter retracted the letter, he would lose Sadat. If he did not, he would lose Begin. There was no way out."

Meanwhile, back at the ranch. . .er, at the White House, Rosalynn and the staff were making preparations for a signing ceremony to take place in a few hours.

"The true loneliness of leadership is found in such moments, when great gains and great losses await a decision and there is no way of tallying in advance the final cost."

I will not disclose how this last-minute obstacle was overcome, but I will say this: When Jimmy Carter delivered a photographic gift to Menachem Begin as he was sitting on the porch, the old soldier's heart of stone took a back seat, at least for a few minutes, to a heart of flesh. Those photographs were addressed, individually, to Begin's grandchildren.

Now once again, I will pass over copious notes to offer one final thing I learned while reading Lawrence Wright's book.

~ In 1981, after all this laborious peacemaking had passed, and after Israel had formally withdrawn from the Sinai peninsula, President Sadat was participating in a ceremonial event to honor Egypt, and to commemorate the war of 1973. Sadat stood on a decorated platform with many other dignitaries, clothed in a field marshal's uniform, arrayed in his finest honorary regalia. A band played; fireworks were on display. Military jets passed overhead with acrobatics; a military parade passed in front of the platform for their review. But one troop truck halted. Egyptian soldiers leaped to the ground, brandishing automatic rifles and grenades. One of them raced toward the platform.

"Sadat abruptly stood up and saluted."

~ And that was the last time Anwar el-Sadat stood on this earth. He was a leader who paid the dearest price of all for his willingness to break ranks with Arab intransigence and make peace with Jacob. He recovered lands for the Egyptians that they could not reclaim through war. That final stand on the platform--that final salute on October 6, 1981--demonstrated his last full measure of devotion to his country, Egypt. It was also courageous expression of his late-in-life enlistment with a fragile project called peace-- a process that sometimes breaks through, like a sunbeam from a dark cloud, into our war-torn world.



Smoke

One fine sparkl'n morn

I suggest listening to this tune from Jay Ungar while reading my poem below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaCazf36D3k

This sparkl'n morn
my mind got shorn
of modern stuff when
snowy fluff
flew in my head
instead:
I know I know
what memories these are I think I know
Pull out me ole buckboard wagon
while routine tasks be laggin'
n sun-bright winter morn
of crisp cold sparkles leapin'
beneath them high-steppin' hooves
it sho' behooves
me here somehow in long gone valleys' Appalachian
long lost memories a-hatchin'
buckboard dreams n
bak'n beans o'er the fire
n some long gone shire
I know I know
what flashes these be I think I see
me n thee trav'lin time and time agin
don' know how don' know when
but I know this I somehow know
Pull out me ole fiddle n
fiddle awhile sling out me ole singsong
n singalong tagalong we go
behind horse drawn in the snow
then sway'n 'cross the kitchen flo'
while the ole fiddles wail
n horse's whishin' tail
where it come from I don' know
yet I do know I know
I think I hear I hear it in the wind
same ole tune from long ago
maybe waltz
from mem'ries toss'd
them gran'pas have send
or gran'mas somehow do lend
to tune our imaginary ears
n sway away our twenty-first fears
how it was in that day n time
front porch boards whistlin' in
winter wind while kickin'
snowy shoes at the door
before all this other stuff
come along I see
me an thee
when pony heals kick up fluff
cold n white n spark'n fine
n snowy valleys froze in time
in someone's mind
I know it mine.
It sho' do shine.

Glass half-Full

Opportunity Lost in Ferguson

Officer Wilson will have no opportunity to be publicly exonerated.

I have been thinking about him, and the man he shot. Like many Americans, I have been wondering what exactly did happen on that fateful August night when Officer Wilson, in the line of dangerous duty, killed Mike Brown with a gun.

Based on media-driven hearsay, it sounds to me like the young policeman would have had a pretty solid defense of his actions while attempting to enforce the law. I think, as most other white folk probably do, he would have been found not guilty in a court of law.

But who am I to say? Nobody. I'm a thousand miles away, a merely curious news-seeker with no access to the facts.

Since there will be no trial, and hence no public discovery of what actually happened between Officer Wilson and Mike Brown, we will never know.

Now this tragic death becomes an open wound in our national conscience; it will not heal.

There will be no sworn testimony from Officer Wilson, nor from any witness, no questioning from a defense attorney, no cross-examination from a prosecutor.

As citizens in a nation of laws, we will never know what evidence and testimony might have been called forth in our Officer's defense in a court of law.

But we need to know. As a nation at black and white crossroads, we do need to know what happened.

As a result of our failure to follow through with due process, the severe wound that has been opened up on our national corpus will not heal; it will fester until it boils up with infections of chronic misinformation, severe political manipulation, unresolved grief and destructive rage.

We have lost an opportunity. The United States of America will have no close-up examination of what routinely happens between a black shoplifter and a white cop on a dark night in a city that keeps no secrets.

The sad consequence of no indictment in Missouri is that police work in our cities will become more difficult, more dangerous, not less.

And Officer Wilson will have no opportunity for public exoneration from his hastily fatal decision on that dark Missouri night.

Show me some due process, and this could turn out differently for our people.



Smoke

Them Immigrants

She said Send me

your huddled masses yearning to be free.

He said Lend me

your immigrant asses yearning to work for me.

She calls out for all mankind

have a little compassion willya cuz they need some time

to get their act together, find some opportunity--

to make it on their own, juz like you and me.



He insists they play by the rules

cuz our ancestors were no fools--

they broke the ground, forged their own tools!

She said yeah but that was then and this is now

they just got off the boat--they don't know how--

not yet.

Just get

me some productivity he said,

while masses toiled and earnings fed.



But then the Great Recession changed all that;

by n bye entitlements got fat;

while jobs went stale, wages flat.

All that pie in the sky we be been dreaming of

went splat in the face when push came to shove.

So now them huddled masses yearning to be free

dun scooped them jobs from you an me,

or so they say.



But hey,

it's all good in the 'burbs, it's hunky-dory in the 'hood,

them doin' what them could, we doin' what we should,

raisin' upward mobilitators, squeezin' out them couch potatoes,

'til black swans fly o'er white doves' gains,

and burnin' wood doth move against more-of-the-same.



Smoke

"Death of a King", Tavis' book

If ever a man lived who actually wrestled the demons of his era, Dr. Martin Luther King was that man.

Tavis Smiley makes that point absolutely clear in his new book Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Final Year.

Dr. King's steadfast espousal of non-violence, having been firmly founded in his biblical faith, was a burden he bore with dignity his entire working life. What Dietrich Bonhoeffer had earlier called "the cost of discipleship" is a very high price for any Christian disciple to pay, especially one who accepts a mission on the front lines of a never-ending battle. The battle that Dr. King chose to fight--for dignity and wellness among his people, and indeed, among all people--was but one 1950's-'60's phase of very long war struggle against injustice and poverty. It is a righteous war that has extended back into the times of Old Testament prophets such as Amos, Moses and Isaiah.

While reading Tavis' account of Dr. King's last 365 days, I am convinced that the man stood forthrightly in the line of prophetic anointing that stretched back to those prophets of long ago, especially Amos, and including the Messiah himself, Jesus.

There are some among my Christian brethren who question Dr. King's authenticity in the high calling of the Christian gospel. Their objections gather around accusations that he was a troublemaker, an upstart, an adulterous sinner, all of which is probably true.

But this Christian agrees with Dr. King, and with our greatest Book, which teaches that we are all sinners.

We are all sinners on this bus, whether it's a bus to Montgomery, Birmingham, Atlanta, Washington, wherever. A bus to hell itself can be turned around by the power of a man's faith.

In the unique case of Dr. King--that one man's exemplary faith,even sin-tainted as it was-- was a rock upon which millions have clung for stability since those heady, raucous days of the 1960's.

Including the honky who writes this review.

In fact (and Tavis' book makes this absolutely clear) Dr. King's unyielding stand on Christian non-violence is the main attribute of that leader's fortitude that set him apart from most of his comrades during those cataclysmic days of 1967-68.

The preacher's insistence on non-violent civil disobedience instead of violent confrontation compelled him along a lonely course of isolation, with periods of self-doubt and blatant rejection on all fronts friend and foe.

Those other luminaries who labored with Dr. King during that time--Stokely, Rap, Adam Clayton, and many others, including men in his own SCLC camp, Jesse, Ralph, Stanley--those other movers and shakers, who marked Martin as an Uncle Tom whose relevance was being eclipsed by bloodier strategies-- wanted to leave the preacher in the dust.

Which he ultimately was, as we all will be, in the dust.

I haven't even finished reading Tavis' book yet. But I just had to let you know. . . there was a man--he lived during my lifetime-- whose

"radical love ethos at the heart of Christianity--is not to change with the times but, through the force of his constant conviction, to change the times."

Thank you, Dr. King. Your life has been, always will be, an inspiration to me. I look forward to hearing directly from you when we are all together as God's children, black and white, in that place he has prepared for us.

And also, from this white boy to you, Tavis Smiley: thank you for this timely illumination of Dr. King's work among us. In spite of all the turbid waters that have passed beneath the bridges of our times, we are still a divided nation. We could stand to revisit the vision of peace that was manifested, not so long ago, in the life and work of this one man's faithful legacy.

my song about him: Mountaintop

Glass half-Full

Denying Climate Change

The critical question about climate change is not whether it is happening or not. The point is: what should be done about it, and perhaps more importantly--what can be done about it?

The earth and its biospheres have always been changing. There is no doubt about that. Scientific research and exploration have provided ample evidence of that truth, geologically and biologically. Miles and miles of extruded, eroded, sedimented, metamorphated, conglomerated rocks and minerals have convinced most of us who are paying attention that the world was, is, and will always be in flux.

In our present age, are emissions from human activity inflicting destructive effects on the earth and its inhabitants?

Yes.

Undoubtedly, aye, but here's the rub: As far as general mankind is concerned, "climate change" will never be anything but a perpetually unproven scientific hypothesis, which is apparently morphing, as the earth itself is, into a political movement that is misunderstood by the masses.

The political movement, which claims to be acting on behalf of mother Earth herself and her inhabitants--that political movement-- is founded upon unquantifiable theoretical snapshots of a gigantic moving target, and hypothetical random samplings of constantly shifting sands.

The resulting politics and ideology of the climate change believers will become increasingly restrictive, and ultimately repressive. These believers are starting to get zealously mad and revolutionary, similar to the Marxists/Bolsheviks about a hundred years ago.

And look what happened with that. Marx had figured out a few things about human commerce and wealth accumulation, but his proposals yielded a new eschatological layer of ideas for humans to argue, fight about, and wage wars over.

Like Marxism, the political/economic outcome of climate change agitprop will become as oppressive as the big bad wolf himself--carbon-spewing Capitalism. And in the long run, the end-game is the same: who is going to take control of the means of production?

To XL-pipeline, or not--that is the question. But it's only the next point of many contentions yet to come.

However all this homosapiens tragicomedy plays out, some people will come out on top of the imposed carbon-squelching or carbon-permitting policies; others will be ground down beneath the weight of it all. Some will lose; some will win.

Speaking of win, think of it this way: WIN. WIN was the acronym touted by President Gerald Ford, long about 1975. It stands for: Whip Inflation Now.

The Climate Change idea is like that. Everybody knows, or will know because they've been taught about it, that human-caused climate change is destructive. And everybody knows that something should be done about it. But most people don't really understand it. It's like trying to understand inflation.

And now, by the way, in Keynsian-speak, inflation has morphed into a thing that is not so bad after all. Because, when properly bridled, it protects us from being gobbled by the new big bad wolf of economic tectonics--deflation. We have now a theoretical target of 2% inflation, just as we probably have somewhere in a Kyoto or Copenhagen consensus, a target of ----kg/day carbon emissions.

My theory is that the general body of mankind will never truly understand the dynamics of climate change, just as we heartland flyover dweebs will never fully comprehend the economic forces that push our meager assets and never-ending liabilities around like toys. We never will grok it.

The concept of climate change itself will probably always be misunderstood, mis-applied, miscommunicated, and probably--dare I say it--mistaken, just like the rapaciously exploitive practices of capitalism have been, and just as the revolutionary, anarchic thrusts of Maxism have been.

But if people ever do comprehend the immense implications of climate change and its proposed remedies, they will achieve that understanding through education, not political deprivations and repression.

So all ye climate change believers out there--get busy educating us deniers out here, because that's the only way we'll ever understand it. Teach on.

Don't try to choke us with regulations and treaties.

Forty years ago, when I was graduating from LSU, I was an environmentalist of sorts, and antiwar also (my draft number was #349). And I really did believe, as I still do, that we humans should not pollute the earth.

Now there's a good idea: do not pollute. Which reminds me of an old slogan, similar to the WIN thing:

Give a hoot; don't pollute!

I think some fella named Woodsy Owl came up with that one. He came along after Smoky the Bear had set the tone for environmental awareness.

I believe the Environmental movement should have stuck with that motto, instead of complicating the issues with all this "climate change" and "global warming" effluence. Effluence is, when you get right down to it, worse than affluence.

Affluence is kind of nice to have, and not as outdated as the climate change zealots would have us believe. The result of reasonable affluence is that folks will settle down somewhat instead of rampaging through the streets and looting the system.

While progressing through youth and middle age, my environmental zeal has toned down a bit; it took a back seat to establishing a homestead, a household and (dare I say it) a coital family. No ZPG for me and my fruitful wife.

Now I've written my way into a Saturday sunrise. Maybe it's time to hop on the Vespa and make a run to do some errands. On second thought, take the car, make a recycling run. If there's a way to avoid emitting carbon, I haven't figured it out yet, and I don't know if we ever will, especially with China and Kilauea doing their thing on the other side of the world.

my song about it: Deep Green

Glass half-Full

Kent State 1970

While doing research for the novel I now am writing, King of Soul, I read James A. Michener's non-fiction book entitled

Kent State: What happened and why. (Random House, 1971)

http://www.amazon.com/Kent-State-What-Happened-Why/dp/0449202739

Toward the end of it, here are some thoughts that came to me:



Oh, the insanity of those days,

shrouded in tear gas haze:

our dutiful young Guards, slogging in sweat-drenched gear,

moved against fellow-students erupting in fear.

They eyed each other across grassy knolls

while the crowd mocks and the clanging bell tolls.

Our ragged nation was ripping apart at the seams,

as confusion conspired to assassinate our dreams.

Sandy and Allison, Bill and Jeff didn't know;

they never looked back when the bullets laid them low.

The shock and the awe, the plan and its flaw

could offer no reason to explain which law

had judged them worthy of martyrdom, sentenced to death:

a sinnish twist of fate fired right, but hit on the left.

Things were never the same after that.

The movement waned thin; the bitter got fat;

America was laid low when those four lives got spent

on that deadly tragic Mayday at Kent.



Smoke

Ideal Academé

To stroll beneath this leafy green
beneath a sky so blue,
while contemplating beauty, truth, and the dream
of concepts that are true,
perpetually engaged in pristine pursuit
of knowledge--this is bliss,
until the real world plops its bitter fruit
upon your idyllic blissful tryst.
Oh, these perfect roses have inspired us
with such rare beauty, exquisite perfection;
and our winding paths of conceptual trust
lead to groves of virtual subjection.
But if ever we should stumble,
and forsake the pure ideal,
perhaps it's then we will be humble
and think the way we feel.

Glass Chimera

Happy to be a Radical Centrist

Thank God, the autumn years of my life have landed me in position of being a radical centrist.

The Democrats are fixated on entitlements, victimhood and income inequality; the Republicans are obsessed with guns, selfishness and romanticizing what this country used to be.

Here's news for you Democrats: Roosevelt (may peace be upon him) died, a long time ago.

And news for the Republicans: Reagan (God bless him) also died, a little while back.

Lately, the residues of these two legacies have polarized toward two extremes: wild-eyed progressives on one end, chubby conservatives on the other. But what the world needs now is, as Dionne Warwick sang, love, sweet love, whhich means, politically: people in the middle like me, lest the whole dam American experiment fall apart. Blessed are the peacemakers.

As a 63-year-old boomer, I identify with the protest that was raised by young whippersnappers in the streets of Chicago during the Democratic convention of 1968. I would love to have been there, but I was a student doing a summer job. Even so, I also appreciate the protest that Tea Party people have raised, in recent decades, against our debilitating welfare state. I probably shoulda been there too, at the tea party, but I had to work that day.

Both Movements have their legitimate, appreciable place in the history of this great free nation. And both have their respective bowel movements to dispose.

There's a lot of work that needs to be done, regardless of who pays or doesn't pay for it. We gotta keep the planet clean, while keeping things together on the home front.

It's time now for both sides to acknowledge that the other side has a right to be here too, because, you know, none of us are just going to "go away."

Although each of us will, in due time, go away from this life.

I find myself, as a maturing centrist, continuously fascinated with and appreciating the legitimate talking points of both extremes, left and right. So I offer some advice for you all you extremists out there, all ye SDSers and John Birchers, all ye libertines and libertarians:

To you Occupy activists, and all ye who are so progressively inclined: I feel your pain, but its probably best that you just find a job instead of hanging out in the street with a sign. If you can't find a job that suits you, get a part-time gig and then start creating, on the side, a job of your very own design. Maybe it's a garden on a vacant lot or in your back yard. Maybe it's just helping old folks and kids cross the street, or collecting sunshine. That would be better than waiting for the government or the dreaded corporatacracy to generate the right job for you. Your mission to improve the world begins with providing for, and managing, your own household.

To you Libertarian preppers, and all ye who are conservatively inclined: Don't be dogmatic. Dismantling the federal behemoth too abruptly would put thousands or millions of workers on the street who are probably not prepared to pull their own weight, and then we would have a real mess on our hands. I know that you yourself are self-sufficient, or wannabe. You think you can do it all on their own and you do understand that you didn't build that road and all that, but the days are coming when you will find it expedient to share a little of what you've got with others who are less fortunate. And it just may turn out that it's not the tyrannical feds, but rather God himself ,requiring this benevolence of thee.

Come ye, all Americans.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Focus. Find your center and say: Om ready to be the best that I can be today, and the world will be a better place as a result of it.

Glass half-Full

What Muhammad did

I have been reading about Muhammad in Karen Armstrong's biography, and I have concluded that he was a genius.

That prophet's spiritual presence was so compelling to his first followers that they accepted without question hundreds of utterings spoken through his mouth. They later assembled these verses as the suras of the Qu'ran.

This was no small feat. The lyrical content of Islam's holy scriptures is composed entirely of one man's revelatory pronouncements. (If I am wrong about this, you Muslims please correct me. I understand that the hadiths, written later by others, followed, but are not considered holy revelatory scripture.)

Compare this Mohammadan revelation to, say, the Bible, which was assembled as sixty-six books that were spoken or authored by a multiplicity of authors over thousands of years. What a legacy the Jewish people have given us. Muhammed benefited directly from the Judaic legacy, and considered himself a part of it--a most definitive and corrective part of it.

What Mohammed had to say about al-Lah to his fellow Arabs during the early seventh century c.e. was quite urgent and compelling. The essence of it is that al-Lah is one God, not some pagan collection of many gods and goddesses. This may sound like religious quibbling to modern secularists, but the monotheistic insistence was downright revolutionary to 7th-century Arabs, especially those of the Quraysh tribe in Mecca. Muhammad's impact upon the Arabic tribal life and religion was similar to Paul's upending message about Jesus Messiah to his fellow-Jews, which had happened about five hundred years earlier.

Muhammad's message of monotheism, consistent in some ways with the ancient Abrahamic covenant, has spread across the world for fourteen centuries now. It is quite amazing, even as Muhammed himself must have been a quite amazing man.

Not as amazing, however, as being resurrected.

In her biography of Muhammed, Karen Armstrong reports that in the year 621 c.e. Mohammed instructed the Muslims to pray facing Jerusalem. Because the prophet had been taken up in a night vision by an angel, Gabriel, and transported mystically to Jerusalem for certain revelations, the holy city of the Jews was shown to be "central to the Muslim faith too."

For more than two years, the Muslims adopted Jerusalem as their qibla, or direction of prayer. But in January of 624 c.e., about eighteen months after Muhammed's hijra (the prophet's history-shaking, exilic journey to Medina after being rejected by the powerful Quaraysh tribe of Mecca), something happened to re-orient forever the Muslim quibla. On page 162 of her book Karen Armstrong wrote:

". . . Mohammed was leading prayers in a mosque . . . Suddenly, inspired by a special revelation, Muhammad made the whole congregation turn round and pray facing Mecca instead of Jerusalem. God had given the Muslims a new focus and a new direction (qibla) for their prayer."

At that turning point in time, the Muslims redirected their salat devotions back toward Mecca, the place of their origin. I wish that they had, at that point, just left Jerusalem to the Jews. Our present-day situation in that city might have been less contentious.

Now the Jewish caretakers of the holy city would have to deal only with, instead of Ishmaelic Muslims, God and everybody else who claims to know Him.

According to the account of God's work among homo sapiens that I subscribe to, God's verdict on the matter is:

"My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations."

Mark 11:17

Here's a song about it

and another song about it

Smoke

Zeitgeists and the King of Soul

People talk about "the zeitgeist" of an historical period as if it were one spirit. But in reality, the events of any particular epoch reflect several spiritual compulsions or visions that hover amongst the human hearts and minds of that age.

With that in mind, I have begun writing a new novel, my fourth, which is named King of Soul. The story will examine the teen years and coming-of-age of a young man,Donnie, who is growing up in the South during the 1960s. The novel is only mildly autobiographical.

Donnie's personal development is of course shaped by the familial, political, philosophical, economic and spiritual condition of that era. Within these influences, I Identify four zeitgeists that are especially potent during the turbulent 1960s. They are what might be called "spirits of the age", or what Gordon Lightfoot called the "visions of their days." But I like to think of these historical forces, each one, as collective "Souls. " For the decade in which I was a teenager, they are:

~Soul of Bounty

~Soul of Discontent

~Soul of Escape

~Soul of Anarchy

So that you can better understand my "Souls" concept, here are some earlier "Souls" that were dominant in former ages of the American Experience:

Soul of Exploration, Soul of Liberty, Soul of Slavery, Soul of Industry, Soul of Reform, Soul of Progress, Soul of Labor, Soul of Consumption, Soul of Entertainment.

As the story develops in my novel, King of Soul, the reader will detect in Donnie's experience:

~The Soul of Bounty, which thrives on security and wellness. It favors the individual, rather than a collective, although its community aspect is based on abundance: plenty for everybody. The Soul of Bounty values Family, Faith, and Work for Gain. Religion is beneficial. Heaven is a good ending. Hierarchy and authority contribute to Law & Order, sometimes at the expense of equality. Self-discipline and smart work are admirable.

It is a conservative attitude. Leave well-enough alone. Soul of Bounty manifestations for the 1960s may be: Republicans, the "Establishment", the "Powers that Be, Young Americans for Freedom. On its fringe are the John Birchers and the Ayn Rand group. Prominent movers in the Soul of Bounty during that time were: Nixon, Buckley, Reagan, Mayor Daley, Gov.Rhodes of Ohio, most suburbanites.

~The Soul of Discontent, which struggles toward justice and rightness. The collective will is higher than the individual; society is based on ideology, not religion. Activists within the Soul of Discontent are forever striving toward progress. Utopia is a real possibility.The Marxian version includes a dictatorship of the proletariat. Equality of all will be achieved at the expense of Order. These people are purposeful, existential in their motivation. Disruption of the established order is necessary for societal correction to be imposed. Organizations of the period include: Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Southern Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Students for Democratic Society (SDS), Free Speech Movement and the generally widespread Antiwar movement. Leaders of the 1960s manifestation include, among many others: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Malcom X, Mario Savio, Tom Hayden, Joan Baez, the Berrigans, Daniel Ellsberg, Betty Friedan. The Soul of Discontent was most clearly expressed in: Civil Rights movement, Feminism, Berkeley, Chicago protests at 1968 Democratic convention, lethal uprisings at Kent State and Jackson State, student movements at San Francisco State U, Yale, Columbia, and eventually the Democratic party and 4th estate of 1970s-200. . .s

~Soul of Escape, which craves pleasure, ecstasy and distraction. Expressions of this Soul are both collective and individual. Community is hoped for to afford leisure, pleasure, celebration, art and expression. Minimal work is tolerated for the sake of these fulfillments. Utopia is cool, and Love-in is even better Serendipity is prized, at the expense of structure. Enjoy. In the '60s, these people were known as hippies, who followed in footsteps of their 1950s predecessors, the Beats. You know who they are, even if you were not one of them for awhile, because you read about them in Time and Life: Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, most rock musicians, but most notably Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead. They sought a trippy kind of stoned-out degenerative sensuality that occasionally masqueraded as spirituality. Summer of Love in '67 and Woodstock in '69 were their high points.

~Soul of Anarchy, which struggles to tear down the old order so that a new something can arise. Destruction is not only necessary, but cool and glorified. These people were the epitome of Shiva Rage: Panthers. Weathermen, Yippies on a bad day. The catch-all was "Revolutionary." John Lennon sang about them but only skirted along their fringes. ". . .but if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow." (They didn't make it.) Their flash in the pan came late, in '69 and the '70s. Heroes were Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, Stokely Carmichael after he got tired of moderation, Rudd/Dohrn/Ayers. They were violent revolutionaries who might have done much more damage if the Establishment, personified by Richard Nixon, had not decided to wind the Vietnam War down and follow through with some serious programs to fulfill Johnson's Great Society before going down in a blaze of humiliating presidential glory.

In a turbid decade called "the '60s", my young protagonist Donnie attends middle school and high school, enters college in 1969, avoids the draft, checks out a few antiwar happenings and tries to make sense of it all, in a nation being torn apart by the interference patterns generated when these four (Bounty, Discontent, Escape, Anarchy) encountered each other. That's the scenario of King of Soul.

I should have it ready for you to read in a year or three.



Smoke

To Save the World

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing, end them. . .

This problem, described in archaic language by a Shakespearean prince, Hamlet, can be stated more simply this way:

Should we suffer, or should we fight?

Should we accept the world as it, or is it better to struggle against all the bad stuff?

Should we concede, or strive toward tikkun olam, the repairing of the world?

And even if we choose to oppose the (sea of) troubles in this life, can our resistance put an end to them? Can "opposing" those troubles actually defeat them?

If you or I can put an end to the injustice and or dysfunction of this world, then maybe we should get busy working toward that end. But if this quest--to resist the evil of this world-- is fruitless, a lost cause, then why bother? What difference does it make?

Maybe we just have to suffer through it.

That's what one religious founder, Jesus of Nazareth, did. He suffered through the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" that were flung upon him. He suffered all the way through torture and crucifixion until death itself overtook him.

For a few days.

But his boldly compassionate life included not only suffering and bearing the pain, it also included serious resistance against the powers that be. He was a man who took arms, spiritually, against a sea of troubles, by speaking publicly against the injustice that humans impose upon one another, and he used his hands proactively to heal people, and to release folks from suffering and oppression.

I think his life was quite unique in this respect: he actually, and very effectively, trod a middle path between these two choices--submission and resistance.

He was an example of bearing up under the burden of suffering, while simultaneously launching a campaign against what is wrong in this world of human striving that manifests as dogmatic religion and ineffective government.

Now we know from history that Jesus' struggle to live a meaningful life, a life that truly made a difference, was a failure.

Because, you know, he ended up dead and publicly humiliated and all that.

On the other hand, if you consider what all has been done in his name since he lived, it could be that the work of his life--the suffering and the active resistance--attests that his legacy is more perpetual than it may at first appear.

From the standpoint of world history, his story is everlasting. This persistent story of a savior who conquered death itself has transcended the world. He has won the world by overcoming the world's cynical resistance.

His was the greatest life ever lived. He opposed the slings and arrows by submitting to them. Thus he rendered them powerless against his sacred work. He overcame the world. Who else has done such a thing? and then lived to tell about it. You gotta believe.

This was accomplished, paradoxically, without actually "taking arms." He fired no gun, wielded no knife. Jesus' only sword was the one in his mouth. What an exceptional way to repair the hearts of men, as if that were possible!

While other religionists have resorted to the sword of conquest, here was a man whose only weapon for opposing the evils of mankind was the sword of the Spirit.

To be, or not to be (with Him). . . that is the question.

Glass half-Full

The Unfinished War

In one sense, all war is unfinished, because the political crimes that wage death between people groups inevitably come to the surface again. Like toxic waste, old atrocities bubble up from the depths of human strife to plague subsequent generations.

Now and then in history, a war will actually settle a divisive question. Our American Civil War established once and for all that American states of north and south would remain as one federation under a common flag, and that resolution has remained intact.

The First War was an unfinished war, because the issues that separated Germany from the rest of Europe resurfaced, zombie-like, about twenty years later as the the Second World War. Then the Second War resolved those divisive issues in a more effective way, and now Europe is reasonably, if not politically, united in peaceful coexistence.

Forty-nine years of my 63-year life have been spent in the twentieth century, which was a time period in which nations were generally at each others' throats over ideological differences. The basic conflict between freedom and slavery was continually re-inventing itself in various ideological costumes: libertarian vs. totalitarian, democracy vs. communism, communism vs. fascism, etc.

Now it seems the world reverts to religious identities to fortify the battlefields of the 21st century: Muslim vs. Jew, Muslim vs. Christian, etc. It's not really as simple as that, but you know what I'm talking about. The issue of whether the so-called Islamic State is actually representing Islam should be a serious point of debate among Muslims; but no matter how that identity pans out, the decapitative modus operandi of IS is undeniably a danger which is Islamic in its ethnic origin.

Furthermore, the ongoing contention between Israel and the Islamic states (with or without Caliphate) is, despite modern secularizing influences in both camps, a religious war the origin of which is shrouded in the dust of Levant history.

On a secondary level within nation-states, we see political divisions, which still revolve around ideological poles: left vs. right, progressive vs. conservative, statist vs. libertarian, etc.

Within my country, USA, the time-honored catch-all labels "left" and "right" have lately morphed from "liberal" vs. "conservative" to "progressive" vs. "conservative." A subset of this ideological polarity is the "Occupy" crowd vs. the "Tea-Party."

"Tea Party" derives its philosophical roots from an emphasis on individual liberty. Its tactical roots are found in the Boston Tea Party of 240 years ago, which turns upon economic and tax disputes and government get out of the way attitude.

"Occupy Wall Street" and its progeny (Occupy Oakland, Occupy Vancouver, whatever) derives its precedents from the Civil Rights and Anti-war activisms of the 1960s, and before that the socialist ideal as developed through the French Revolution, Marx, the Russian Revolution, Alinsky etc.

David Horowitz, a (rare) seasoned veteran of both left and right activisms, has identified, in his autobiography Radical Son, this truth:

". . . conservatism was (is) an attitude about the lessons of the actual past. By contrast, the attention of progressives was (is) directed toward an imagined future."

During the Vietnam war, a time when I was entering draftable age, the "left" was dragging our American sins of racism and napalmic militarism out into the streets for all the world to see. They imagined a more perfect United States that would successfully rid itself of the hegemonic abuses of capitalistic neo-colonialist empire-building.

Eventually the student-led antiwar movement was able to convince us to withdraw from Vietnam. But the more perfect United States they were dreaming of did not emerge. We are now still the same good n' bad nation we were then, manifesting a tri-part government of checks and balances that can, every generation or two, arrest our reprobate tendencies.

The activist left of the 1960s, of which I was (like many others) a curious, though non-involved part, also imagined an idealized Vietnam. But it did not materialize after we pulled out.

After the beginning of U.S. withdrawal in 1973, the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (in whom the American anti-war activists had placed their hope) was crushed by the North Vietnamese army. Oppressive reeducation camps were set up and filled with hundred of thousands of prisoners. Tens of thousands were executed without trials. The bloodbath spilled into Cambodia. Millions were killed by the Khmer Rouge.

The consequences of U.S. withdrawal were tragic. More people died in the first two years of communist peace than had been killed during the U.S. war effort.

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~sdenney/Vietnam-Reeducation-Camps-1982

So distressed were many Americans who had formerly worked to get us out of Vietnam, that a group of high-profile war-objectors published an ad in the Washington Post protesting the arrests of "thousands upon thousands of detainees", who suffered enforced reeducation with starvation, physical abuse and use of prisoners as mine-detectors.

http://keywiki.org/Joan_Baez#Open_Letter_to_the_Socialist_Republic_of_Vietnam

While some leftists were grief-stricken at the widespread abuses in postwar, communist Vietnam, many more activists were not appalled. They blamed the aftermath on us--the United States, who were fighting to protect the Vietnamese people from the oppression that followed when the North Vietnamese took over.

That was a long time ago. There's been a lot of water under the bridge in our river of time, since then.

Now it's Iraq.

We have an eerily parallel situation in Iraq, with the IS attacking from Syria to enforce an "Islamic" Caliphate, just as the North Viet Cong descended on the South in 1973-75 with cruel, murderous intent.

And once again, the leftists want to blame us because we sent our troops over there and knocked the dictator Saddam out of power and tried to help them establish a just government.

But history, and prudent policy, does not hinge upon what might have happened or not happened because of the military assistance that came from the people of the United States, provided to the people of Iraq.

To those who want to blame us for the IS insurgency now threatening Iraq, we must say: don't even think about it.

It's time to subdue the beast that videos decapitations. No one in their right mind wants that kind of vengeful retribution, masquerading as "justice", established in the world.



Smoke

SFMuni bus #48

Yesterday I took the #48 SFMuni bus ride from the Mission district over Diamond Heights to the West Portal.

I ambled around a bit, wandered lonely as a cloud through a corner of Golden Gate Park, then strolled straight up Haight, past Ashbury to Masonic, then northward through the Panhandle to Fulton and by n by took a long jaunt back to mid-town and the San Francisco Opera house.

This morning, Pat and I hopped on the #48 and rode out to West Portal. Now we are kickin' around, having taken a trolley(modern version) over to catch a view of the Pacific, which we had seen earlier this year, but that was down the coast a bit, in Costa Rica.

I like the #48 bus. I was surprised to see it depicted in this mural, which we were viewing yesterday afternoon on Balmy alley in the Mission:



At the present moment, early Monday afternoon Sept. 29, 2014, I am sitting at a Starbucks preparing to send you this little digital communicado. You may see the skullish fellow in the painting. He is is typing away on a laptop, as I am at this moment, and probably hoping to connect cyber-cytizens of the world to some idea or story that will lead them to hell or heaven or somewhere in between. I hope the artist did not have this old white guy (me) in mind in that detail.

That cannot be me in the pic anyway, because I am not wearing a black robe. I'm wearing a Carolina blue shirt.

As for the excellent painting jpg'd here, I recommend you study it closely. It is very well done. But somehow I feel not entirely empathetic to its angstish message. On the other hand I can tell you that the painting itself is evidence that not all is well in this present arrangement of things: this truth I acknowledge.

As for the worldy injustice that is alluded to herein, I could write a book (yet to come.) It would be a long book, the fourth I have written, a labor of love, an opus, although others have probably done it better than I.

Nevertheless, If I may offer one brief advisement with which to leave you, it would be: read Matthew 5, 6,7. The message there is, I believe, even more powerful than, say, Marx, Mao or Che. And even more revolutionary than this painting, but not as colorful.

Glass Chimera

the prim and the propr

Here we have the primitive and the proprietary:

Somebody's busy hands wove this low fence along the sidewalk bordering Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

I like it. The little fence is primitive; the massive building and campus looming in the background is UCSF Medical Center, which is definitely not primitive, but it is proprietary. That is to say, it is property which is owned by somebody, presumably the people of California.

The UCSF Med Center is a large institution; the little primitive fence is not.

You might think that a fence so near that major institutional presence would be be impressive, expensive and engineered to provide big work for a local contractor or landscaper.

Not so. I like this little primitive fence. Here are my thoughts about the person(s) who so skillfully wove it:

little fence, little fence, standing low

by the sidewalk just for show

what skillful hand or eye

hath woven thy primi asymet-try?



Glass Chimera

In the Park at sunset

Late afternoon Washington Square september

people on green grass lolling recline laughing

hold hands layback chill.

Here come Deep basso fellow dark and confident

singing with no inhibition he

serenade folk in the park

makin rounds group to little group.

We on park bench in late gold sun,

black basso man he come our way with singing

on his mind.

Meanwhile ole sourpuss geezer on bench he wear

no sunshine but he say:

"He juz want some goddam money. He come ev day,

every dam day!"

And yet here come deep basso man wit white shirt bow tie vest

lookn sharp and ready

so I say:

"You know Ole Man River?"

"I only know the Paul Robeson version."

"The one you know-- tha's the one I want."

And so the wise man sing and he fill the ev'n air wi strong

song and he modulate into Irving classic version Ole Man Riva,

and he finish by sliding into Louie's What a wonderful world

with great vocal fortitude n excellence.

And by the sound of it the world be a betta place than was before, so I

lay the five spot in his hat.

Then ole geezer on bench he don say nothin, no beta than he was before.

Now I know there be two kinds men in world: them that do

and them that won't.

An life go on in Washington Square an I guess sun when down

juz after we left.



Glass half-Full

Behind it all . . .

Each one of us is born into this world as an impressionable infant.

We are, each one of us waiting like a blank slate, to be written upon, each one crying to be filled with identity, each yearning to become a unique personality.

Who you and I become is shaped, in the early home environment, by parents, by families, genetics and, should you choose to believe it . . .God. Those influences combine as the nature and the nurture that make us who we are.

Beyond that immediate nurture, the wide world itself also forms who you and I become. We are formed by our inherited religion (or the absence of it), by our culture, nationality, institutions, the times we live in.

Now you and I are different from each other, but If you were, let's say, a kid who was raised, like me, in USA of the 1950s-60s, we would share some cultural influences that contribute not only to our personal memories (and hence influences), but also to our collective baby-boomer memories, such as:

Walter Cronkite, Chevy and Ford, Elvis, what happened in Dallas on November 22 1963, Civil Rights, Beatles, hippies, Dr. King, Vietnam, Coca-Cola, man on the moon. . .M&Ms . . . the Macy's Parade.

All of this blogstream started this morning when I had a Boomer moment in San Francisco.

Pat and I were enjoying a sidewalk brunch in the heart of that city when I looked up above a passing streetcar and noticed:

What seemed to me odd about this sight was the obscurity of the "Macy's" logo, which had been painted long ago on the top edge of their once-impressive brick n' mortar edifice.

For a kid who grew up watching the Macy's Parade on Thanksgiving Day, Macy's was, certainly, not some faded logo in the background, but rather an authentically commercial presence looming large in the foreground. Macy's was, on Thanksgiving morn, a grandly exotic parade with, among other larger-than-life characters: Snoopy swaying in the breeze, Cat in the Hat standing tall, or Popeye with his ego inflated.

And this morning I thought . . . you know what, Macy's was behind it all, at the root of our Great American Mercantile venture. Before Neiman-Marcus, before Nordstrom, before K-Mart and Walmart, there was . . . Macy's.

Before all this commercialism we see around us, before the wide, wide suburban boulevards stacked with (boring) big box stores, before retail chains that look the same from city to city, before Walgreens and CVS, before Mcdonald's and Shoney's, there was Macy's.

Before the present web of mega-retailers, before the clinking links that have us chained to consumer acquisitions, before all the noise and haste of this present corporate-driven culture, there was . . .

the family business that managed to, by hard work, perseverance, quality assurance and smart business, hit the big time!

And this morning on Powell Street in San Francisco I thought . . . can such a thing still happen?

I hope so. I hope authentic Main Street capitalism is still alive and well, capable of revitalizing our great American enterprise, not decomposing beneath a Walmart parking lot.

Glass half-Full

The Slithering Slitter

Fierce, I tell you, be the sacrilege of this evil,
and immense in its fear upheaval.
His murderous blade slits shock across our necked world,
under flitting black flag of blood unfurled,
on video violence broadcasting;
it proclaimeth fear everlasting.
Yea I say unto thee this be
raw sorcery if
ever there was one, you see.
So fair and foul a day we have not seen,
and it aint just no bad dream:
this hurly-burly that's been done--
it slitteth slicker than a gun.
But as that masked weirdo he judgment proclaim
upon our foul and decadent game,
he discerneth not the stink of his own slit,
he smelleth not his own foul shit!
You know,
amongst the high, beneath the low,
we all be sinners on this bus,
while innocent children wail amidst the fuss;
This bus trundles along our streets of rage,
while he slithers through the terror of our age.
but Jesus savin' Christ! stop the bus!
Is there no way out for us?

Glass half-Full

Them Russians are so misunderstood

I don't understand Russia. Churchill called the country a riddle inside a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Many of us Americans and Europeans who grew up during the Cold War agree with his assessment. Winston was, you know, right about a lot of things.

Russia is a complicated place; it's probably as complex as it is big. One fact that is, however, very simple about Russia: it is very cold there, dangerously cold.

Recently, I read Helen Dunmore's excellent novel The Siege,

http://www.amazon.com/The-Siege-Novel-Helen-Dunmore/dp/0802139582, which is a story about the gruesome ordeal suffered by the the people of St. Petersburg (aka Leningrad, Petrograd) during the winter of 1941. Hitler had broken his pact with Stalin and then sent the army of the Third Reich to surround the city and starve its residents to death.

It was terrible time, tragically fatal for thousands of people. I would not want to wish such misery and hunger as Helen's story describes, on anyone. To have survived such a winter as that one in Russia is beyond my comprehension. I don't understand how the Russians who did survive did survive. I don't even understand why human beings would live so far up north.

As I was saying, I don't understand Russia.

In 1917, right in the middle of a damned world war (the first one), the Russian Bolsheviks deposed the czar, instituted a revolutionary communist government and began the long, torturous process of trying to restructure, from the ground up, the government and administration of the largest country in the world.

Although their program of godless communism was fundamentally flawed because it was too idealistic, they might have made a go of it if it hadn't been for one very cruel, heartless dictator, Josef Stalin.

Later on, in 1956, after both world wars, and after Stalin had died, Nikita Khrushchev initiated the process of thawing Russia out of its brutal gulag-ridden Stalinist icepack straightjacket. Khrushchev skittishly let it leak out in 1956 that yes, indeed, Stalin and his secret police and party goons had been inflicting terrible crimes against the people of Russia for the last twenty years or more. And Khrushchev seemed to be signaling that they should to do something to eliminate, or at least correct, the systemic horrible abuse that Russian leaders were inflicting on their own people, not to mention the Ukrainians, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Czechs, Hungarians, Romanians, Moldovans, Kamchatkans and God-knows-who else, and oh yeah, the East Germans.

Speaking of the East Germans, during that time, the 1950s and 1960s, the Russians, under their hyped-up mantle called Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, were throwing their newfound weight around there in the eastern (Soviet-occupied after WWII) part of Germny. The Soviets were trying to run the place after The Allies had divvied up the territories formerly terrorized by those contentious Third Reichers.

A few years went by and our President Kennedy visited Berlin and told the citizens there "Ich bin ein Berliner!" which meant, figuratively speaking, that all the world was watching you swarthy Ruskies since you went and built this obscene wall around Berlin (long story) and we did not like it (paraphrasing) one damned bit!

By n by, after another twenty or so years went by, US President Reagan came along, visited Berlin and updated the saga of the Berlin Wall by publicly demanding that "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Then after a few more years, in 1989, the wall did come down. Praise God! And also a thank you to Mr. Reagan, for his bold challenge, although we do understand it wasn't entirely his doing that the Russians decided to take his advice. It was a great line though: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." We could use some of that spunk these days, like Mr. ISIS, tear down your . . . caliphate!

After that, the Russians did undertake the sticky business of tearing down their "evil empire."

Now if we ever dismantle our own abusive reprobations maybe we can have some real peace and freedom. Good luck with that.

Now fast forward to 2014. We've got new mystery Russian, Vladimir Putin. Now there's an enigmatic guy. You betcha. What the hell is he up to?

I certainly don't know. (I do not understand Russia.) But I do seem to remember this: the Russians have had a naval base at Sevastopol since. . . forever? There's no way in hell that NATO should presume to abscond it. As far as this American is concerned, they can have the place, if that's what a majority of the Crimeans choose. As for the Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine, whadya say we just convince all parties concerned to have another referendum about the East Ukraine situation, this time internationally supervised.

Now I want to end this thing on a positive note. Although I do not understand Russia, I do understand music. I feel it.

To fully grok this, let's harken back to the year 1909; that's when the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff wrote his amazing Piano Concerto No. 3.

I do understand how a man could create such an intricately woven musical opus. Yes, I understand it about as well as I can understand Russia. This piece of music boggles my mind.

The pianist is Olga Kern, 2001 winner of the Van Cliburn prize (among her many triumphs.) Watch her lively treatment at the Steinway while conductor James Conlon propels his skilled musicians through Rachmaninoff's delicate blending of strings, horns, and of course piano, evoking lush orchestral harmonies that modulate back and forth between soft and strong on a colorful tapestry of raw, though exquisitely channeled, Russian passion.

Performed by an American orchestra! The Fort Worth orchestra. Who'd have thought a bunch of Texans could so tenderly interpret a Russian's music! Watch the musicians' faces. To witness their polished performance is to behold a work of visual art in progress. I think these people do understand Russia! Or at least that one particular Ruskie, Sergei Rachmaninoff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AapjpeqmviM

If you've got 43 minutes to listen or watch the Rach 3, you will be amazed as I was. When you see/hear Olga pounding out the last four minutes of the piece, you will understand what the Romantic movement in music was all about. (It's much more potent when viewed from the musicians' perspective than what you see in the movies.)



Smoke

This World

There's something wrong with this world. Can't you feel it?

Something a little out of whack.

We detect that something is a little out of kilter, maybe a little rotten in Denmark, and Detroit, in Darjeeling, something amiss in Mississippi, Malaysia and Malawi, out of sync in Singapore, Sevastopol, and Sao Paulo, and probably in our own back yard.

Everywhere we look in the world we notice folks, including me and you, who are playing the game without a full deck, making mistakes, screwing up; we see them building cities and societies using resources that are one brick shy of a load, with a screw loose somewhere and trying to put things on the straight and narrow with instruments that are about half a bubble off level.

What's up with that?

Many moons ago, when men were crawling out of the caves and bushes, when women were roasting critters over fire and worshipping the sun and stars and rocks and trees and bulls and bitches, back in the mists of antiquity when humans hung together in packs and tribes, then in camps, cities and even empires-- along came a fellow who marched to a different drummer.

He managed to do--not that he was trying to do so-- what a lot of celebs these days spend their whole lives attempting--he made a name for himself. You've probably heard of him:

Abraham.

Scads of people throughout history claim kinship or faith with him. Why? What was it he did that was so important? Well, how about this--history, oral and written, records that he believed God.

Abraham had noticed that, as I mentioned above, something was wrong in this world. So he asked God if there was something he could do about it. God urged him to leave the old world that he had been born into, and emigrate to a new place. So Abraham accepted God's counsel; he picked up stakes and moved.

Since that time, a lot of people of have, you know, done something like that.

Abraham was an immigrant. He was hoping, I suppose, that he would not be turned back at some border somewhere.

He did manage, thank God, to get settled into a new place, and a lot of things happened after that. His young'uns came along--Isaac, Ismail, and so forth and so on.

By n' by, a certain strain of his descendant family tree got themselves stuck in a slavery situation.

Then another fellow, Moses, came along and sought God's counsel. He got the people organized and led them out of slavery. While his people were wandering around in the middle east trying to get it together, Moses inquired further of God, and so God gave him a revelation of what was to be done about the situation.

That situation being this world, which is about half screwed up, and what could the people do about it. They needed some laws and principles to get themselves straightened out and going in the right direction, so God gave them some instructions. Nowadays some folks call it Torah, others call it Pentateuch, or Bible. Some call it myth. I call it part of the Bible.

The short-term outcome of all that was, in the ensuing centuries, Moses' people founded a kingdom and ran it for a few hundred years; it was supposed to be based on righteousness and justice. But, over time, things did not work as planned, and the kingdom was overcome by others and it all fell apart.

A few centuries after that, but in the same place, Jesus came along.

Now the main deal with Jesus is his Resurrection, and our resurrection, which accompanies his if we are willing to go with him. Either you believe it, or you don't. As for me and my house, I do believe that he was was raised from being dead after being crucified to atone for all the bad stuff that makes this world, including me, wrong.

But of course that's not the end of it all.

A few more centuries rolled by. Mohammed came along and noticed the same thing that I alluded to above--there's something wrong with the world. He claimed to have a revelation from God of what's to be done to get this crooked ole world straightened out.

Now the thing about Mohammed is: although he was a genius in religion, politics, and military strategy, he was a mere human like you and me. And so all the carefully-crafted constructs of his legacy later degenerated into more of the same-old same-old dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest manipulations of selfish lecherous ego-driven men , like everything else in this damned world.

There is no fixing this world. The Jews have been trying to fix life for thousands of years. Now the Muslims are taking their shot at it. Hindus, Buddhists, Confucians, Shintos, God bless 'em all for trying, but none of it works for getting this earth and its people corrected. The world just continues to get worse and worse, and the stakes higher and higher, like carbon emitted and rising to entrap the atmosphere, while human compulsions descend lower and lower, like carbon emitted and accumulating in the tombs of our ancestors and ultimately in our own graves.

But each one of us faces death alone; the wicked world that hath confounded me, stumbled you, for lo these many years-- it does not die with us. It just keeps going on and on and on in all its incendiary dysfunction.

When it gets right down to it, each man, each woman, must decide what is to be done about his/her own life, and what role he/she will attempt within the revolving restrictions of the great mandala. As for me--I'm going with the one Creator who, allowing himself to be crucified at the hands of this world's dysfunction, has already conquered and surpassed the death that awaits us all.

my song about it

Smoke