Thursday, December 31, 2015
What's a year anyway?
What's in a year anyway?
a revolution to some better day?
A year by any other name would smell as sweet
as any minute on this NewYear street.
Earth zips 'round the sun one more time;
every minute some fool commits a crime.
This planet never gets to the center of things;
it's all bound up in orbital strings.
Mother earth spins, burning
as Father sky is yearning.
Buds come, flowers grow,
blooms die, seeds go
to the ground: 0
World goes round.
What else is new?
And what will we do
when east meets west
and worst trumps best?
So what's in a year anyway?
A week, a month, a moment, a day?
A year by any other name would smell as sweet
as any minute on this NewYear street.
Alas! What light from yonder window breaks?
It is the east; the world awaits.
Another year, another fear!
An older man sheds a younger tear.
Cry, thou beloved world!
Fly, here's another year unfurled;
mayhem runs rampant in the streets:
while terror o'ertakes, reason retreats!
Is there any hope for all this mess?
Could be, would be my guess.
But we might as well,
you know--what the hell--
try and catch the wind,
lest the best gets crucified again.
Rise, rise above it all!
Glass half-Full
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Bon Voyage to Joey and Maria
Joey was really in love with Maria, so it didn't matter so much to him that she was carrying someone else's baby. He intended to marry her anyway and raise the child as his own. Blinded by love, he was ready to do anything to protect her. Her face was always in his mind, in his dreams. Whenever they were together, he felt himself to be a true man. Whenever they were apart, he felt himself even more, a man. That meant something--something very precious, very strong, and very. . . ancient, as if they had been together since the dawn of time. In spite of all the trouble and displacement of their immediate circumstances, he felt more a man now than ever before in his life.
What is a man anyway? Someone who takes responsibilities for his own action.
But to take responsibility for someone else's carelessness? That's crazy, especially if it requires a lifelong commitment to some other man's kid.
It wasn't like he could explain why he was willing to do anything for her. She had told him the whole terrible truth about what had happened--how she had gotten pregnant unexpectedly after making some poor choices. He had known her far longer than the guy who had inflicted this condition on her.
But it was more than a condition that had taken hold of Maria. It was a child.
Nothing about that loser mattered now anyway. It was all water under the bridge.
They had left Izmir two days ago. Now, Joey and Maria were stepping onto an overcrowded boat to depart Lesbos. Two sketchy-looking characters were up on the deck, acting like they owned the place, rudely waving their herd of misfits through while checking each one's ticket to make sure they had paid. No freeloaders. The two goons had already turned several off the boat, provoking loud protests from those rejected travelers--protests that were shouted loudly to no avail.
Joey felt secure in one thing; he had paid dearly for their two tickets. It had cost him more than half of everything he had managed to bring with them.
As the goon waved him and Maria through, he felt great relief.
He looked at Maria's face. She was still smiling. It had been days since he had seen her smile. Suddenly, everything was worth the trouble and the pain of whatever the hell they were getting into now, whatever new phase. As they stumbled, then walked, around the stern, and to the other side of the boat. There was an open space at the side. He gently placed his had on her back, just above her perfect derriere, and urged her with a tender guidance to rest for a moment at the railing. This was, after all, a very special moment--one they had talked about for weeks. Now they were here at last, on the boat, bound for Athens.
He looked out seaward, across the bright-on-dark horizon, at the deep blue sea. Soon they would be skimming o'er the waves. Some time tomorrow, they would arrive in Athens and find the place that Gabe had told him about. If they could get there, surely their troubles would be over, at least for awhile.
After surveying that long-expected horizon for a few moments, he looked again at Maria's face. The smile had morphed into what seemed a painful expression. But there was still a smile, somehow, beneath the pain. That's what he loved about her. Now he couldn't resist the urge, and there was no need to anyway. He bent down and laid a a long, wet kiss on her lips; she responded in a way that made him long for a place of their own. But this intimacy could only go on for so long here in this place, on this boat amongst all these straggly people, and then. . .
Then he looked out to the Aegean again, and his mind began to, in spite of itself, jump to the next phase--whatever that might be. He was hoping there would be room for them at the inn.
Smoke
Sunday, December 20, 2015
The Ambiguous Shirking Syndrome (ASS)
It started with like.
In the above example, we see that the incredible versatility of the the like filler-phoneme phenomenon has rendered that little word weary and wornout from overuse, and so a linguatic trainer was sent in to give, like, a break; they sent in two second-stringers to replace him. Like was, like, the only filler word ever, who it took two other words to replace him--he was that famous--and so the trainer sent in you know. . .
Now the meteoric rise of another Celebrity utteral excloratory filler has, within our lifetime, added yet another star-quality persona to the filler-phoneme phenom:
This slangified stripped-down contraction of the classic "kind of" adjectivo-preppisitionative filler has really taken over. I mean, it went viral a couple years ago, gettin' a thousand hits a minute because its like, you know, well who wants to go to all that trouble and say "kind of" when you can just blurt out kinda whatever you're feeling at the time or whatever floats your boat, or maybe you can't think of the right word because, well, you know. . .
whatever. That's another one: whatever. Absolute epitome of the ambiguous shirking syndrome. Perfect example of an ASS.
But I digress. . . You can call it whatever you want. Fuhgedaboudit. I mean, it's all over the map with this stuff. But it IS, you know, a class thing. I mean . . . you won't hear the elite saying it. No way Hozay. Their philler-phoneme of choice is:
sort of
This euphemistic philler-phoneme is a highly favored linguatic device among journalists and talking heads who don't have all their ducks in row, which is to say, they, sort of don't have all their facts. Or else maybe they just don't want to appear to, sort of make value judgements that aren't politically correct or something like that. An example from a recent talking heads discussion could be:
They might even be worse than them fundamentalist right-to-lifers who are so OCD about preventing infanticide. Or maybe they're like them wild-eyed IRA guys in Belfast back to their old tricks, or the new IRA guys who want to value of their IRAs and 401-Ks.
Actually, history is full of this kind of thing. It's called the depravity of Man. The difference just now is that this video-promoted beheading practice--in all it's full-blown barbarism--has gone viral online. And this development is . . . sort of, a bad sign of what may be coming. There could be, like, trouble or something.
Some of the talking heads were recently talking about this viral video beheading phenomenon, and the fatal terrorist shootups in Paris and San Bernadino, and wherever else this type of jihadic atrocity is about to happen. The journalists were trying to decide among themselves what the correct nomenclature would be, whether the shooters and head-choppers should be called terrorists, or political extremists or jihdists or. . .and these people all claim to be . . . sort of, Islamic, but that doesn't, of course, make them Islamic terrorists. So you can see what the problem is here.
What to call them. And our dedicated, professional infomatic journalistic commentators are addressing the problem. For more about this, tune into News at 11.
In signing off from this edition of the Linguatic Report, I'll leave you with our Definition of the Week. This week's word is:
um
Um is a filler-phoneme word that sharpens and clarifies the classically hesitant, filler adverb, uh, which has for many decades been in common use. Found most frequently among academics and well-informed opinionators such as Noam Chomsky or Barak Obama, this very concise, procrastinative filler excloratory is solidly packed with a well-understood but unspoken message, the content of which is:
Be that as it may, and that said. . . that's the history of the world for you. Never should have been what is has become. Nevertheless there it is . . . whatever you call it. If it was a snake, the damn would have bit you already. Ask Churchill or Eisenhower about it.
But they're not answering the phone.
Smoke
"I was like, watching this show, and this guy was trying to, like, jump on a trampoline, but it wasn't a trampoline; it was, like, a stack of foam rubber cushions with whipped cream all over it and there were these other people standing around trying to, like, keeping him from falling, to keep him from. . ."
In the above example, we see that the incredible versatility of the the like filler-phoneme phenomenon has rendered that little word weary and wornout from overuse, and so a linguatic trainer was sent in to give, like, a break; they sent in two second-stringers to replace him. Like was, like, the only filler word ever, who it took two other words to replace him--he was that famous--and so the trainer sent in you know. . .
"and these other people standing around are trying to, you know, trying to keep him from falling off the stack of foam rubber pads. They were supposed to keep his feet from touching the ground because if his feet touched the ground then he would be, you know, eliminated and they would vote him off the show or, you know, something like that. It was so funny--how he was trying to keep his feet up on the pads so his feet wouldn't touch the ground. But some of the people that were supposed to help him started licking the whipped cream off of him just for, you know, a joke or something and so finally while this one weird guy was like getting into the whipped cream thing and he wasn't paying attention and so the guy's feet touched the ground and the facilitator blew the whistle and everything stopped and all the people were laughing except for him because he was, you know, out of the game and he could never come back. It was sad in a way but it was, you know. . ."
Now the meteoric rise of another Celebrity utteral excloratory filler has, within our lifetime, added yet another star-quality persona to the filler-phoneme phenom:
". . .kinda funny. It was sad in a way, but it was kinda funny."
This slangified stripped-down contraction of the classic "kind of" adjectivo-preppisitionative filler has really taken over. I mean, it went viral a couple years ago, gettin' a thousand hits a minute because its like, you know, well who wants to go to all that trouble and say "kind of" when you can just blurt out kinda whatever you're feeling at the time or whatever floats your boat, or maybe you can't think of the right word because, well, you know. . .
whatever. That's another one: whatever. Absolute epitome of the ambiguous shirking syndrome. Perfect example of an ASS.
But I digress. . . You can call it whatever you want. Fuhgedaboudit. I mean, it's all over the map with this stuff. But it IS, you know, a class thing. I mean . . . you won't hear the elite saying it. No way Hozay. Their philler-phoneme of choice is:
sort of
This euphemistic philler-phoneme is a highly favored linguatic device among journalists and talking heads who don't have all their ducks in row, which is to say, they, sort of don't have all their facts. Or else maybe they just don't want to appear to, sort of make value judgements that aren't politically correct or something like that. An example from a recent talking heads discussion could be:
"These extremists were posting their gruesome executions online and the videos would immediately go viral, and people didn't know what to make of it because it was, like, unprecedented. I mean, nothing like this has ever happened before. People in the West were getting sort of freaked about it."
They might even be worse than them fundamentalist right-to-lifers who are so OCD about preventing infanticide. Or maybe they're like them wild-eyed IRA guys in Belfast back to their old tricks, or the new IRA guys who want to value of their IRAs and 401-Ks.
Actually, history is full of this kind of thing. It's called the depravity of Man. The difference just now is that this video-promoted beheading practice--in all it's full-blown barbarism--has gone viral online. And this development is . . . sort of, a bad sign of what may be coming. There could be, like, trouble or something.
Some of the talking heads were recently talking about this viral video beheading phenomenon, and the fatal terrorist shootups in Paris and San Bernadino, and wherever else this type of jihadic atrocity is about to happen. The journalists were trying to decide among themselves what the correct nomenclature would be, whether the shooters and head-choppers should be called terrorists, or political extremists or jihdists or. . .and these people all claim to be . . . sort of, Islamic, but that doesn't, of course, make them Islamic terrorists. So you can see what the problem is here.
What to call them. And our dedicated, professional infomatic journalistic commentators are addressing the problem. For more about this, tune into News at 11.
In signing off from this edition of the Linguatic Report, I'll leave you with our Definition of the Week. This week's word is:
um
Um is a filler-phoneme word that sharpens and clarifies the classically hesitant, filler adverb, uh, which has for many decades been in common use. Found most frequently among academics and well-informed opinionators such as Noam Chomsky or Barak Obama, this very concise, procrastinative filler excloratory is solidly packed with a well-understood but unspoken message, the content of which is:
I'm not finished with my very weighty proclamation yet, so you other members of the panel and you students and so forth who are hanging on my every word please don't interrupt me until I'm done speaking this important next word, which is, um. . . this never should have been what is has become.
Be that as it may, and that said. . . that's the history of the world for you. Never should have been what is has become. Nevertheless there it is . . . whatever you call it. If it was a snake, the damn would have bit you already. Ask Churchill or Eisenhower about it.
But they're not answering the phone.
Smoke
Saturday, December 19, 2015
A Question of Forsythia
The Question?
(by inspiration of William Blake's poem Tyger Tyger, Joyce Kilmer's poem Trees, and also
by instigation: Tom Ashbrook's On Point radio show December 17 2015)
Flower, oh flower, blooming bright
right now, in December-- can this be right?
What dreadful global warming scenario
bringeth forth thy blooming forsythia show?
Seeing thou art burst forth in such unseasonable way,
does this portend some looming climate change fray?
Tell me, as thou doest spring forth in this untimely glee,
did we who spew the carbon sprout thee?
Forsythia's answer:
I think that I shall never see
a human so clueless and careless as thee.
The world is fouled by fools like you,
but only God can explain what the hell you do.
Glass Chimera
Sunday, December 13, 2015
Incentives for Development instead of Dependency
I've been working for the last six years as a maintenance man in an apartment complex that houses 92 households.
You know as well as I do that it is not easy to get up and go to a job five days out of every week that goes by, and to do this week after week, month after month, year after year.
Now for an old guy like me, age 64, while approaching that precipice called "retirement" and considering how/when such an arrangement may take shape, it has been difficult lately.
I've been struggling with a few issues, both public and private, pertaining to this job that has occupied 40 hours of my time every week for the last six years.
The apartment complex in which I maintain all this stuff--toilets, faucets, sinks, drains, light fixtures, electrical outlets, water heaters, doors, windows, cabinets, floors, stairways, interiors, exteriors, dumpsters, trash, smoke-filled rooms. . .this apartment community is a public housing arrangement in which rents are subsidized, according to need and income, through funds that have been provided through taxpayer money.
I confess that one problem I have had lately comes from wondering why I have to do all this work, when many tenants don't seem to have much to occupy their time. I mean, everybody has a TV and that's okay.
I don't really want to elude my responsibilities as an employed person. But I do believe that if there is, among the hundred+ residents here, a good person who is willing to take on some responsibility to do some necessary work. . .that person should be allowed to contribute some of their time and effort toward making the community facilities cleaner and more operative.
But I cannot expect this type of help from tenants.
I am, you know, the employee, while they are the tenants. I am the worker; they are the recipients of my services.
And I have, during previous periods of my life, benefited from some college-level training in education. Accordingly, I would like to take opportunities now and then to teach others, especially children, to do for themselves instead of me the Maintenance guy doing all of it.
A year or two ago, a good thing happened in this complex where I work. A helpful tenant who lives here took it upon himself to help me in cleaning one of our two laundry rooms. I was pleased to have his participation, especially since I have a steady stream of vacancies to deal with--vacancies that require painting, cleaning and repairs. There should be more people in the world who are like this good citizen who has volunteered to help make the community in which he lives, in which I work, a better place.
Nevertheless, I was informed that it was not his place to do so. Because he is, after all, the tenant, while I am the employee.
In other instances during my six years, tenants have been compelled to uproot plants--decorative and vegetable-- that they had planted in the mulched sterile areas around the buildings. Because it was against the rules. Management is supposed to do all that, and make those decisions, etc. And this place is subsidized by the USDA. The A stands for Agriculture. Fed-approved agriculture of course, not tenant-planted agriculture.
I told a friend of mine recently that if I had a million bucks I'd buy the whole dam place and then let the tenants have their own community garden instead of these useless ornamental shrubs and mulch, and I'd turn my maintenance job over to a tenant committee where they could divvy out the work as it arises, and be compensated accordingly with rent credit or benefits or cash.
Well, my struggle with these issues was punctuated this Sunday morning with some other inputs about this type of situation.
I was listening in on Listening In, which is an online audio program that is provided weekly by World Magazine, of which I am a subscriber.
http://www.worldmag.com/player.php?podcast/7467
In this recorded discussion, I heard host Warren Smith interviewing guest Jennifer Marshall, who represents the Institute for Family, Community and Opportunity of the Heritage Foundation. They were conducting a fresh discussion about a tired old topic, welfare reform.
Jennifer was explaining the outcome of a recent forum at Heritage, the purpose of which was to help people escape poverty.
She mentioned that the major welfare reform of 1996 had been successful in reducing welfare loads and reducing child poverty. But only one program was dealt with. She further stated what needs to happen is reform of--not just cash welfare program-- but food stamps, public housing and other programs. And then she made this statement:
And I thought, she may have a good point there. But I don't know what I could do about it.
Life goes on.
In other news, its a beautiful, sunny day here in the Blue Ridge.
Have a nice day, and a satisfyingly productive week.
Glass half-Full
You know as well as I do that it is not easy to get up and go to a job five days out of every week that goes by, and to do this week after week, month after month, year after year.
Now for an old guy like me, age 64, while approaching that precipice called "retirement" and considering how/when such an arrangement may take shape, it has been difficult lately.
I've been struggling with a few issues, both public and private, pertaining to this job that has occupied 40 hours of my time every week for the last six years.
The apartment complex in which I maintain all this stuff--toilets, faucets, sinks, drains, light fixtures, electrical outlets, water heaters, doors, windows, cabinets, floors, stairways, interiors, exteriors, dumpsters, trash, smoke-filled rooms. . .this apartment community is a public housing arrangement in which rents are subsidized, according to need and income, through funds that have been provided through taxpayer money.
I confess that one problem I have had lately comes from wondering why I have to do all this work, when many tenants don't seem to have much to occupy their time. I mean, everybody has a TV and that's okay.
I don't really want to elude my responsibilities as an employed person. But I do believe that if there is, among the hundred+ residents here, a good person who is willing to take on some responsibility to do some necessary work. . .that person should be allowed to contribute some of their time and effort toward making the community facilities cleaner and more operative.
But I cannot expect this type of help from tenants.
I am, you know, the employee, while they are the tenants. I am the worker; they are the recipients of my services.
And I have, during previous periods of my life, benefited from some college-level training in education. Accordingly, I would like to take opportunities now and then to teach others, especially children, to do for themselves instead of me the Maintenance guy doing all of it.
A year or two ago, a good thing happened in this complex where I work. A helpful tenant who lives here took it upon himself to help me in cleaning one of our two laundry rooms. I was pleased to have his participation, especially since I have a steady stream of vacancies to deal with--vacancies that require painting, cleaning and repairs. There should be more people in the world who are like this good citizen who has volunteered to help make the community in which he lives, in which I work, a better place.
Nevertheless, I was informed that it was not his place to do so. Because he is, after all, the tenant, while I am the employee.
In other instances during my six years, tenants have been compelled to uproot plants--decorative and vegetable-- that they had planted in the mulched sterile areas around the buildings. Because it was against the rules. Management is supposed to do all that, and make those decisions, etc. And this place is subsidized by the USDA. The A stands for Agriculture. Fed-approved agriculture of course, not tenant-planted agriculture.
I told a friend of mine recently that if I had a million bucks I'd buy the whole dam place and then let the tenants have their own community garden instead of these useless ornamental shrubs and mulch, and I'd turn my maintenance job over to a tenant committee where they could divvy out the work as it arises, and be compensated accordingly with rent credit or benefits or cash.
Well, my struggle with these issues was punctuated this Sunday morning with some other inputs about this type of situation.
I was listening in on Listening In, which is an online audio program that is provided weekly by World Magazine, of which I am a subscriber.
http://www.worldmag.com/player.php?podcast/7467
In this recorded discussion, I heard host Warren Smith interviewing guest Jennifer Marshall, who represents the Institute for Family, Community and Opportunity of the Heritage Foundation. They were conducting a fresh discussion about a tired old topic, welfare reform.
Jennifer was explaining the outcome of a recent forum at Heritage, the purpose of which was to help people escape poverty.
She mentioned that the major welfare reform of 1996 had been successful in reducing welfare loads and reducing child poverty. But only one program was dealt with. She further stated what needs to happen is reform of--not just cash welfare program-- but food stamps, public housing and other programs. And then she made this statement:
"The incentives right now are structured toward dependence; let's get them structured toward moving people back to independence, back to flourishing in their communities."
And I thought, she may have a good point there. But I don't know what I could do about it.
Life goes on.
In other news, its a beautiful, sunny day here in the Blue Ridge.
Have a nice day, and a satisfyingly productive week.
Glass half-Full
Saturday, December 12, 2015
We Boomers will have a Choice to make.
Well, the boys came marching home from Germany and France,
and the bomb had made a blast in Hiroshima,
We were driving brand new cars;
we were waving stars and bars,
and everywhere was another factory.
Back in in 1953, cruising with Dwight E,
Elvis sang the white-boy blues,
McCarthy looking under every bush.
In the home of the brave and the free, rolling on prosperity
and all the kids were going off to school.
Ten years down the road. . .
another dream had come and gone
and the power of one gun had made itself known. Then,
back in 1964, big Lyndon opened the door
for civil rights, and a bloody Asian war:
Young men on pork chop hill; young women on the pill;
at home they said don't kill, get a psychedelic
thrill.
But the dreams of a Woodstock nation
were just an imagination
when the boys came trudging home in '73.
And it's hey hey! ho--is there anybody home?
and it's hi hi hey!, seeking light in the night of day,
but the dreams of a Woodstock nation
were just an imagination
when the boys came trudging home in '73.
Well, it just don't pay to sob.
Guess I'll get myself a job
selling leisure suits or maybe real estate.
I'm not moving very fast,
just waiting in line for gas
and Johnny Carson gives me all my news.
Back in 1976, overcoming dirty tricks,
some were moving back to the sticks.
Some were looking for a fix.
Ayatollahs on the rise,
sulfur dioxide in the skies,
and the System makes the man that's got his own.
They say an elephant don't forget.
Let's play another set.
There's always another ghost on PacMan's trail.
Don't let this boom go stale.
Let's find an airline for sale!
or pop another tape in the VCR.
Back in 1989, we're living on borrowed time,
getting lost in subtle sin
eating oat bran at the gym.
But there's an empty place inside,
and I was wondering why
thèse vanities don't suit.
I'm going back to the Gospel truth.
And its hey hey! ho--is there anybody home?
and its hi hi hey, seeking light in the night of day.
Yeah, there's an empty place inside
and I was wondering why
thèse vanities don't suit.
I'm going back to the Gospel truth.
Put on your Sarajevo, Mogadishu, Kalashnikov and Columbine
shoes,
for the way is treacherous with ruts and rocks.
Yeah, we figured our digits out
before that Y2K could spoil our rout,
but that 9/11 call was in the cards.
Did you consider the question of heaven
before the wreck of '97?
Will you hear the trumpet call from the Ancient
of Days?
Our way is littered with freaks and fads,
from Baghdad through our mouse pads
as the reaper swings his steely scythe across
our wicked ways.
And its hey hey! ho--is there anybody home?
and its hi hi hey, seeking light in the night of day.
Its a dangerous world outside
and I was wondering why;
this world don't give a hoot.
I'm going back to the Gospel truth.
Listen to it:
Boomer's Choice © ℗ Carey Rowland 2004
Music and Books
Friday, December 11, 2015
A King's prayer
Oh God, how my adversaries have increased!
Many are rising up against me.
Many are saying of my soul, "there is no deliverance for him in God."
I'm just thinking about this, and praying.
But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the One who lifts my head.
I was crying to the Lord with my voice, and He answered me from his holy mountain.
I'm just thinking about this, and praying.
I lay down and slept; I awoke, for the Lord sustains me.
I will not be afraid, even if ten thousands of people have set themselves all around me.
Arise, O Lord; save me, O my God!
For you have slapped all my enemies in the face. You strike the wicked people.
I know this: salvation comes from you, Lord.
Your blessing be upon your people!.
Saturday, December 5, 2015
Man isn't fixing this.
Man isn't fixing this either.
The notion that human beings can fix everything is the oldest fallacy in the world.
Now somebody please tell Uncle Bernie and and aunt Hillary, along with all the other thousands of dhimmi Demo talking heads with their hot air gun-control prescriptions.
And don't knock me for praying about it.
From the tower of Babel to the hanging gardens of Babyl, all the way through this present haranguing buzz-babble of ubiquitous blusterers, and even going back through multi-generational empires piled upon historical detritus as high as the sky on Ozymandian hubris, and even up to our present era, etcetera etcetera, including but not limited to the decline of Ozzy & Harriet, the historical significance of which is accentuated by the onslaught of Ozzy Ozburn biting heads off bats out of hell, up to and including the misdeeds of previous generations, such as the rebellious Nazi rabble who tried to take over in 1923--with their beer hall putsch-- all the way through the rubble of post-Hitler Berlin, then the uncovered abuses of Birkenau, Dresden overkill, and as earlier reprobates would demonstrate-- Antiochus, Nero, Torqamada, Ted Bundy, Richard Speck, Jeffrey Dahmer, Diem, Lee Oswald, Jack Ruby, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Moham Atta, including previous perpetrators who administered the long archipelago of Stalinist gulags-- all this malingering madness strung out upon the ages of Man like a profusion of Abu Ghraib grab bags, or an indictment in a Chicago murder trial-- you can count em on both hands in a New York minute, while even now more roundtheclok news erupts from San Bernadino, reporting on those unforeseen blind-sided developmental shortfalls that could not--in fact never could have--anticipated the true motives, intent, and depraved behavior of an American-born homo jihadicus and his wife gone ballistic.
This bloody business will cease when Birnam Wood doth move against Dunsinane, and Democrats take control of Guns in the game.
Them that want to fix this game--they know not how to aim.
Ask Maximilien Robespierre about how to fix the human problem. Or if you can't get a hold him, find the Das Kapital guy and get his take on it.
After Monsieur Marx thought people could fix the capitalist world by inciting revolution, through which the workers of the world could violently take control of agriculture, industry, government and pretty much every other damned thing--after that, things did not work out as planned. Stalin's manipulations of the emerging Soviet system degenerated by purge and dirge irretrievably and almost undetectably into the imprisoned depravity of human gaggery and thus gulagery.
And if that was not bad enough, the hole damn slippery slope desecration was exacerbated--yea, I say unto thee even enabled-- by the ascendancy of say-it-aint-so Joe's dachau-developing doppelganger aka the little Austrian corporal with the ratty moustache who was running around giving orders like he owns the place.
Whatever became of all those great German and Russian minds--those baton-wielding maestros, beautiful ballerinas--Goethe, Schiller, Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky et al?
Thrown under the bus, trampled under the tank.
Along came the Communists and the Nazis, marching around giving orders like they own the place.
Such is the arc of history.
Now it's the Jihadis and the Climate-bangers. Both of them wanting to take control of everything that happens. Micromanage the world.
The arc of history--21st century version.
And they make fun of us religious for wanting to build an Ark?
The Climate-bangers said, in Kyoto and Copenhagen, in Lima and Paris, there'll be melting icecaps, rising tides, floods in low places, in a Global Warming apocalypse.
An Ark to float over the arc of history--that's what I'm looking for. Or if not an Ark, a train.
In spite of all our peoples' best intentions, things fall apart, and rarely work out as planned. Then before you know what's coming down, unforeseen demagogix he come along, summoning up the latent will to power so he can trump all the incompetence and failures and fallacies of the inconstant human heart-soul-mind with his bullishitting hype, convincing everybody that under his direction they can fix everything that's going wrong. By deceitful demagoguery he takes control, a la Mussolini, Mao, or Mengele, or even that misguided misfit Joe McCarthy, for that matter.
And that includes you Bernie. You're just as deluded as the Donald, but coming from the other extreme.
Bernie the yin, Donald the yang.
Man will not be fixing this, nor woman. You got that Hillary?
Checks and balances--if we can keep them-- of a tri-part government might help a little.
Don't knock me for praying about this. There's a star in the night sky and I'm setting my sights on it.
Glass half-Full
The notion that human beings can fix everything is the oldest fallacy in the world.
Now somebody please tell Uncle Bernie and and aunt Hillary, along with all the other thousands of dhimmi Demo talking heads with their hot air gun-control prescriptions.
And don't knock me for praying about it.
From the tower of Babel to the hanging gardens of Babyl, all the way through this present haranguing buzz-babble of ubiquitous blusterers, and even going back through multi-generational empires piled upon historical detritus as high as the sky on Ozymandian hubris, and even up to our present era, etcetera etcetera, including but not limited to the decline of Ozzy & Harriet, the historical significance of which is accentuated by the onslaught of Ozzy Ozburn biting heads off bats out of hell, up to and including the misdeeds of previous generations, such as the rebellious Nazi rabble who tried to take over in 1923--with their beer hall putsch-- all the way through the rubble of post-Hitler Berlin, then the uncovered abuses of Birkenau, Dresden overkill, and as earlier reprobates would demonstrate-- Antiochus, Nero, Torqamada, Ted Bundy, Richard Speck, Jeffrey Dahmer, Diem, Lee Oswald, Jack Ruby, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Moham Atta, including previous perpetrators who administered the long archipelago of Stalinist gulags-- all this malingering madness strung out upon the ages of Man like a profusion of Abu Ghraib grab bags, or an indictment in a Chicago murder trial-- you can count em on both hands in a New York minute, while even now more roundtheclok news erupts from San Bernadino, reporting on those unforeseen blind-sided developmental shortfalls that could not--in fact never could have--anticipated the true motives, intent, and depraved behavior of an American-born homo jihadicus and his wife gone ballistic.
This bloody business will cease when Birnam Wood doth move against Dunsinane, and Democrats take control of Guns in the game.
Them that want to fix this game--they know not how to aim.
Ask Maximilien Robespierre about how to fix the human problem. Or if you can't get a hold him, find the Das Kapital guy and get his take on it.
After Monsieur Marx thought people could fix the capitalist world by inciting revolution, through which the workers of the world could violently take control of agriculture, industry, government and pretty much every other damned thing--after that, things did not work out as planned. Stalin's manipulations of the emerging Soviet system degenerated by purge and dirge irretrievably and almost undetectably into the imprisoned depravity of human gaggery and thus gulagery.
And if that was not bad enough, the hole damn slippery slope desecration was exacerbated--yea, I say unto thee even enabled-- by the ascendancy of say-it-aint-so Joe's dachau-developing doppelganger aka the little Austrian corporal with the ratty moustache who was running around giving orders like he owns the place.
Whatever became of all those great German and Russian minds--those baton-wielding maestros, beautiful ballerinas--Goethe, Schiller, Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky et al?
Thrown under the bus, trampled under the tank.
Along came the Communists and the Nazis, marching around giving orders like they own the place.
Such is the arc of history.
Now it's the Jihadis and the Climate-bangers. Both of them wanting to take control of everything that happens. Micromanage the world.
The arc of history--21st century version.
And they make fun of us religious for wanting to build an Ark?
The Climate-bangers said, in Kyoto and Copenhagen, in Lima and Paris, there'll be melting icecaps, rising tides, floods in low places, in a Global Warming apocalypse.
An Ark to float over the arc of history--that's what I'm looking for. Or if not an Ark, a train.
In spite of all our peoples' best intentions, things fall apart, and rarely work out as planned. Then before you know what's coming down, unforeseen demagogix he come along, summoning up the latent will to power so he can trump all the incompetence and failures and fallacies of the inconstant human heart-soul-mind with his bullishitting hype, convincing everybody that under his direction they can fix everything that's going wrong. By deceitful demagoguery he takes control, a la Mussolini, Mao, or Mengele, or even that misguided misfit Joe McCarthy, for that matter.
And that includes you Bernie. You're just as deluded as the Donald, but coming from the other extreme.
Bernie the yin, Donald the yang.
Man will not be fixing this, nor woman. You got that Hillary?
Checks and balances--if we can keep them-- of a tri-part government might help a little.
Don't knock me for praying about this. There's a star in the night sky and I'm setting my sights on it.
Glass half-Full
Saturday, November 28, 2015
From Black Friday to Derivatives Saturday
Back in the crash of '08, clueless underlings such as myself suddenly were made aware of a mysterious component of our financial system called "derivatives."
What is a derivative? you may ask. Funny you should ask. I didn't know either, and I still don't. Although I have been trying to figure it out for seven years now, every time I think I know what a derivative is, I encounter acronymic terminology such as MBS, CDO, CDS or SEC.
These slimmed-down nomenclatures should simplify things, but they do, in fact simplify nothing. Although everybody knows SEC stands for Southeastern Conference, which is the football conference where the best American football is played, and where my alma mater LSU exercises its right to excel in athletics, except when teams like Alabama or Florida are on the field.
But I digress. I was explaining to you what a derivative is and I mentioned some of the simplifying terminology.
For instance, as alluded to above: MBS.
Well some well-positioned bloggists of the worldwideweb identify an MBS as a Masters of Bullsh*t, which is attained through much blood sweat and tears and dedicated gamesmanship acquired at a venerable institution, such as Barnwell University or Cayman College. The MBS is attained through years and years of shoveling potentially useful data into HFT, which produces a yield from which its index is derived, and lucrative assets which are then deposited into accounts on behalf of the bullish denizens of WallStreet. These rich deposits build up the notional value of our economy as a hole, thus enriching all of us, not only those who are forever horsing around on Wall Street, but also you and me and all the folks on Main Street, Easy Street and Ventnor Avenue.
Somebody has to do it. I don't mind doing my part, working with a shovel. Keeps me in shape.
Anyway, that's not the MBS of which I spake. I'm talking about Mortgage Backed Securities. I think Uncle Freddie Mac and Aunt Fannie Mae gave these instruments as gifts back during the holidays of 2007, when life was oh simple then, before time had rewritten every line.
My understanding of a Mortgage Backed Security is that they're something like an Arkansas RazorBack, which is probably why they didn't work out so well for investors, although Arkansas is ranked third in the SEC west, behind Florida and--excuse my language--Ole Miss.
After that is my LSU Tigers, presently in fourth place of SEC west, but as always and forever will be, bound for greatness.
It's quite complex to describe just how LSU could be in fourth place, because its position in the rankings is derived from the ratio of victories to losses, divided by the number of footballs passed beneath the legs of a center when he hikes the ball to the quarterback during any given play of the game.
Nevertheless, as I was saying before, a derivative is derived from the outcome, that is to say the, rear-end of a complex financial instrument.
Now I'm sure you're wondering, as any serious investor is wondering, about the real question here, which is: how much is it worth?
One thing that my research has revealed, and one thing I can tell you with surety is this: The value of any particular derivative is derived from fluctuations in the value of the underlying asset.
Here's an example: how much is my ticket to this season's Sugar Bowl worth? Well, at this point it's an open question, but let's just say this: I'll give you my ticket to the Sugar Bowl for your two tickets to the Orange Bowl.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch (Texas Aggies be forewarned), the guys who are shoveling out in the barn are asking what's the real value of these derivatives. And as I explained before, you remember that the value of any particular derivative is derived from fluctuations in the value of the underlying ass-set. That should come out plain enough.
As for the collective value of all the derivatives, this figure is derived from its notional value, which is calculated based on the notion, as defined by the US Treasury, the Fed, the NYSE, and the AP sportswriters, that whatever goes around comes around, so therefore if the value of the aforesaid derivatives passes through enough piles of assets then when it comes out the other end nobody really knows what its worth, so that it can be revalued at the going rate.
This is unpredictable, of course, as the LTCM affair had indicated back in the Glass-Steagall days, but it is bound to be worth, somehow somewhere when you least expect it, more than it was in January of 2009. So that's progress, although the Progressives may not agree with me. I don't pay much attention to all those freaks on the fringe anyway.
And you understand, of course, that all this has taken place after Cronkite passed from the scene. Before that, it was pretty much everybody working together in America toward the same values and goals. But that was then and this is now. Derivatives happens.
I'm glad I could clear this up for you. As for the Sugar Bowl and the Orange Bowl, may the best team win, as it frequently does, but sometimes not.
Glass Chimera
What is a derivative? you may ask. Funny you should ask. I didn't know either, and I still don't. Although I have been trying to figure it out for seven years now, every time I think I know what a derivative is, I encounter acronymic terminology such as MBS, CDO, CDS or SEC.
These slimmed-down nomenclatures should simplify things, but they do, in fact simplify nothing. Although everybody knows SEC stands for Southeastern Conference, which is the football conference where the best American football is played, and where my alma mater LSU exercises its right to excel in athletics, except when teams like Alabama or Florida are on the field.
But I digress. I was explaining to you what a derivative is and I mentioned some of the simplifying terminology.
For instance, as alluded to above: MBS.
Well some well-positioned bloggists of the worldwideweb identify an MBS as a Masters of Bullsh*t, which is attained through much blood sweat and tears and dedicated gamesmanship acquired at a venerable institution, such as Barnwell University or Cayman College. The MBS is attained through years and years of shoveling potentially useful data into HFT, which produces a yield from which its index is derived, and lucrative assets which are then deposited into accounts on behalf of the bullish denizens of WallStreet. These rich deposits build up the notional value of our economy as a hole, thus enriching all of us, not only those who are forever horsing around on Wall Street, but also you and me and all the folks on Main Street, Easy Street and Ventnor Avenue.
Somebody has to do it. I don't mind doing my part, working with a shovel. Keeps me in shape.
Anyway, that's not the MBS of which I spake. I'm talking about Mortgage Backed Securities. I think Uncle Freddie Mac and Aunt Fannie Mae gave these instruments as gifts back during the holidays of 2007, when life was oh simple then, before time had rewritten every line.
My understanding of a Mortgage Backed Security is that they're something like an Arkansas RazorBack, which is probably why they didn't work out so well for investors, although Arkansas is ranked third in the SEC west, behind Florida and--excuse my language--Ole Miss.
After that is my LSU Tigers, presently in fourth place of SEC west, but as always and forever will be, bound for greatness.
It's quite complex to describe just how LSU could be in fourth place, because its position in the rankings is derived from the ratio of victories to losses, divided by the number of footballs passed beneath the legs of a center when he hikes the ball to the quarterback during any given play of the game.
Nevertheless, as I was saying before, a derivative is derived from the outcome, that is to say the, rear-end of a complex financial instrument.
Now I'm sure you're wondering, as any serious investor is wondering, about the real question here, which is: how much is it worth?
One thing that my research has revealed, and one thing I can tell you with surety is this: The value of any particular derivative is derived from fluctuations in the value of the underlying asset.
Here's an example: how much is my ticket to this season's Sugar Bowl worth? Well, at this point it's an open question, but let's just say this: I'll give you my ticket to the Sugar Bowl for your two tickets to the Orange Bowl.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch (Texas Aggies be forewarned), the guys who are shoveling out in the barn are asking what's the real value of these derivatives. And as I explained before, you remember that the value of any particular derivative is derived from fluctuations in the value of the underlying ass-set. That should come out plain enough.
As for the collective value of all the derivatives, this figure is derived from its notional value, which is calculated based on the notion, as defined by the US Treasury, the Fed, the NYSE, and the AP sportswriters, that whatever goes around comes around, so therefore if the value of the aforesaid derivatives passes through enough piles of assets then when it comes out the other end nobody really knows what its worth, so that it can be revalued at the going rate.
This is unpredictable, of course, as the LTCM affair had indicated back in the Glass-Steagall days, but it is bound to be worth, somehow somewhere when you least expect it, more than it was in January of 2009. So that's progress, although the Progressives may not agree with me. I don't pay much attention to all those freaks on the fringe anyway.
And you understand, of course, that all this has taken place after Cronkite passed from the scene. Before that, it was pretty much everybody working together in America toward the same values and goals. But that was then and this is now. Derivatives happens.
I'm glad I could clear this up for you. As for the Sugar Bowl and the Orange Bowl, may the best team win, as it frequently does, but sometimes not.
Glass Chimera
Thursday, November 26, 2015
What Friday sloucheth toward us?
Wide open spaces
sprawling out on suburban places
with auto-power its enabling basis:
that's the fossil fuel game
that climate-bangers insist we blame
for dragging earth into carbon-cluded shame.
The dead, recycled dinosaur
now pumped up from some ancient shore
soon supplies yon stripmall store
with miles of aisles of essential stuff--
piles of styles that are more than enough
to transform this world to soft, from what was rough.
So far we've come from them rugged days
when grampa's calloused hands found ways
to plow the prairies, while cattle graze.
And yet, somewhere in the world today
a farmer still drives the beast; he plows all day.
But here, strewn-out drivers glide away
from the greening world as once we knew it.
This fair and fertile land--we now eschew it;
now we transform it, as in olden days we grew it.
Yea, our trend-setting, charged-up superstore
that drives consumption from shore to shore--
so soon replays the dinosaur.
Glass Chimera
Sunday, November 22, 2015
Through the kindling glass: Uncle Ben in '08
History is fascinating when you get into it.
Today I'm remembering the fall of 2008--that perilous time when the financial crash was pummeling down all around us. The reason I'm remembering this is: I'm reading on kindle Ben Bernanke's book Courage to Act:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Courage-Act-Memoir-Aftermath-ebook/dp/B00TIZFP0I
So I'm remembering.
My day job during that time was working with students at a local elementary school. The workday began every morning at 8 a.m. I have vivid memories of sitting in my old Subaru wagon in the school parking lot each morning, catching the latest financial news before going inside to punch in. I'd be sitting in the car during the last ten minutes of the 7 o'clock hour while listening to Marketplace Morning on NPR.
Not that I had any real money or assets to work with, mind you, just a little nest-egg house that wife and I had just about paid for, and a little spare change we had after the three young'uns had finished college, etc. just like most folks our age.
But here's why the memory of those news reports clings to my unfettered mind so tenaciously. Those fateful September days of seven years ago released megalithic destructive financial forces of mayhem and immense complexity that changed forever the economic world as we kno(e)w it. Perilous WallStreet cluster-fuds suddenly opened a flood of financial and fiscal confusion unprecedented in the history of the world. The only thing that compares to it would be the crash of '29, but of course that was then and this was now.
In Uncle Ben's book, Courage to Act, through which he strives to shine a light of transparency into the workings of the Fed and its relationship to the financial powers that be, he explains, in chapter 12, the demise of one particular entity (the AIG insurance conglomerate) that fell during that month's frantic rearrangement of dominoes. He describes the problem this way:
This universal fragility about value (or sudden loss of value) of toxic assets would be something akin to a global computer-virus, but in the financial world. Nobody knew how, when, or where, the infection of overnight falling asinine asset prices could obliterate the richness of previously fat portfolios. It was like Ebola on WallStreet.
During that third week of September of 2008, the bankruptcy of investment bank Lehman Bros, and then the unraveling of worldwide cluster-fudded AIG, damn near brought the whole house of WallStreet et al etc cards of down.
I guess US Treasurer Hank Paulson and a few other arm-twisting high-flyers later put the fear of dog into Congress and into whomever else was in charge of this country at the time, so that the gov-softened crash landing of worldwide money tranches wasn't nearly as bad as when something like that happened in '29 and the whole dam American economy fell apart.
As I told you before, I was just a detached observer at the time, September 15 2008, a regular guy with no skin in the game trying to figure out what the hell was going as I heard about events on the car radio.
Now reading Uncle Ben's memoir, I see a little more clearly what was going on behind the scenes. I guess his transparency mission is being realized; at least it is on me.
I see the light. I think I understand. Fear, as Joni Mitchell once sang, is like a wilderland.
Fear is a big part of this whole things fall apart deal that we see in life sometimes.
In the case of the investment banks and Wall Street and all that derivative-induced shenanigans that came unwounded in fall of '08, it was fear of losing value on a massive scale, fear of diminishing assets on a global scale, and hence fear of metastasizing money-loss on a megadential scale.
But hey, there are worse fears in life. . .fear of dying?
Speaking of death, we could say that old folks are generally closer to it than young ones. But the fear of death can be, I feel, softened somewhat by the sense that one has lived a fulfilling life, or maybe an adventurous life, or perhaps a prosperous life, whatever attribute of the good life floats your boat.
Here's something Uncle Ben wrote in his memoir about the old-timers on Wall Street during that fateful fall of '08:
Unknowable consequences. That's what you get when a bunch of old (or young) wise guys play fast and loose with a world-class pile of other people's money.
But hey, that was then and this is now; it could never happen again.
At least not the same way.
Glass Chimera
Today I'm remembering the fall of 2008--that perilous time when the financial crash was pummeling down all around us. The reason I'm remembering this is: I'm reading on kindle Ben Bernanke's book Courage to Act:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Courage-Act-Memoir-Aftermath-ebook/dp/B00TIZFP0I
So I'm remembering.
My day job during that time was working with students at a local elementary school. The workday began every morning at 8 a.m. I have vivid memories of sitting in my old Subaru wagon in the school parking lot each morning, catching the latest financial news before going inside to punch in. I'd be sitting in the car during the last ten minutes of the 7 o'clock hour while listening to Marketplace Morning on NPR.
Not that I had any real money or assets to work with, mind you, just a little nest-egg house that wife and I had just about paid for, and a little spare change we had after the three young'uns had finished college, etc. just like most folks our age.
But here's why the memory of those news reports clings to my unfettered mind so tenaciously. Those fateful September days of seven years ago released megalithic destructive financial forces of mayhem and immense complexity that changed forever the economic world as we kno(e)w it. Perilous WallStreet cluster-fuds suddenly opened a flood of financial and fiscal confusion unprecedented in the history of the world. The only thing that compares to it would be the crash of '29, but of course that was then and this was now.
In Uncle Ben's book, Courage to Act, through which he strives to shine a light of transparency into the workings of the Fed and its relationship to the financial powers that be, he explains, in chapter 12, the demise of one particular entity (the AIG insurance conglomerate) that fell during that month's frantic rearrangement of dominoes. He describes the problem this way:
"AIG FP's risk was compounded by the difficulty in valuing its highly complex position, in part because the securities that the company was insuring were so complex and hard to value."
This universal fragility about value (or sudden loss of value) of toxic assets would be something akin to a global computer-virus, but in the financial world. Nobody knew how, when, or where, the infection of overnight falling asinine asset prices could obliterate the richness of previously fat portfolios. It was like Ebola on WallStreet.
During that third week of September of 2008, the bankruptcy of investment bank Lehman Bros, and then the unraveling of worldwide cluster-fudded AIG, damn near brought the whole house of WallStreet et al etc cards of down.
I guess US Treasurer Hank Paulson and a few other arm-twisting high-flyers later put the fear of dog into Congress and into whomever else was in charge of this country at the time, so that the gov-softened crash landing of worldwide money tranches wasn't nearly as bad as when something like that happened in '29 and the whole dam American economy fell apart.
As I told you before, I was just a detached observer at the time, September 15 2008, a regular guy with no skin in the game trying to figure out what the hell was going as I heard about events on the car radio.
Now reading Uncle Ben's memoir, I see a little more clearly what was going on behind the scenes. I guess his transparency mission is being realized; at least it is on me.
I see the light. I think I understand. Fear, as Joni Mitchell once sang, is like a wilderland.
Fear is a big part of this whole things fall apart deal that we see in life sometimes.
In the case of the investment banks and Wall Street and all that derivative-induced shenanigans that came unwounded in fall of '08, it was fear of losing value on a massive scale, fear of diminishing assets on a global scale, and hence fear of metastasizing money-loss on a megadential scale.
But hey, there are worse fears in life. . .fear of dying?
Speaking of death, we could say that old folks are generally closer to it than young ones. But the fear of death can be, I feel, softened somewhat by the sense that one has lived a fulfilling life, or maybe an adventurous life, or perhaps a prosperous life, whatever attribute of the good life floats your boat.
Here's something Uncle Ben wrote in his memoir about the old-timers on Wall Street during that fateful fall of '08:
"For Wall Street old-timers, the events of the (Lehman weekend) weekend would evoke some nostalgia. Two iconic Wall Street firms that had survived world wars and depressions, Lehman (Bros.) and Merrill (Lynch), had disappeared in a weekend. I felt no nostalgia at all. I knew that the risks the two firms had taken had endangered not only the companies but the global economy with unknowable consequences."
Unknowable consequences. That's what you get when a bunch of old (or young) wise guys play fast and loose with a world-class pile of other people's money.
But hey, that was then and this is now; it could never happen again.
At least not the same way.
Glass Chimera
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Here come da sword to separate
When our rebellious 20th-century soul
slit its wrist with a broken existentialist bowl,
our severed spirit was cast out to wander
in a rational world cut a-sunder.
Then while the brotherhood of man
was striving to put us together again
along came the jihadi with sharpened sword
moving swift, like a terrorist horde,
calling for righteousness, the Muslimic version,
and it brought forth a jihadi incursion.
Now Western decadence and license is no defense,
even if our license permits us to sit on the fence,
against the marauding jihadi whose scimitar is red
with so much collateral blood being shed.
The Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword,
and while battalions of man-made righteousness move toward
a world that's torn up with terror and strife,
I'm still staking my claim on eternal life,
Christian version,
with a Spirit incursion.
That's my story and I'm stickin' to it;
'cause Jesus' resurrection is more convincing than anyone else can do it.
My faith will outlive any worldly disgrace
that could possibly o'ertake us as we run this race.
Glass half-Full
Sunday, November 15, 2015
52 Pickup
Strange things happen in this world, but you never know what's pre-planned and what's the luck of the draw.
52 years ago, the government of Vietnam was overthrown when President Ngo Dinh Diem was deposed in a coup led by his own military leaders. The next day, November 2, Diem was shot dead.
Three weeks later, American President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22. Two days after that, the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald was shot dead while in official custody.
I was twelve years old at the time.
Strange string of events, it seemed to us. Mystery still surrounds. Some things we'll never know.
After Kennedy was gone, Lyndon Johnson became President. Johnson was a good man; among many other notable accomplishments, he shepherded the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress, as he knew it had been an important component of his slain predecessor's would-have-been legacy. Lyndon was very good at getting things done, and so he came through, as Chief Executive instead of President of the Senate, to get that historic legislation manifested as the law of the land.
LBJ was a Texan. He walked tall like a Texan because he was a Texan. Lyndon's leadership style had originated within his humble beginnings; he was a man who knew the nuts and bolts of what makes America work. He knew how to get things done; was a wheeler dealer politician who pulled himself up by the bootstraps. As fate and his own fortitude would have it, he was in the right place at the right time in 1960 when the Democrats selected him to take the VP slot on Kennedy's ticket.
And so, three years later on that fateful night of November 22, 1963, while the nation was in shock, he was in the right place at a bad time, to receive, in the whirlwind of a tragedy, the awesome mantle of national--yeah I say unto thee-- even world, leadership.
But good ole Lyndon was in a very difficult place at that right time. While we were weeping, reeling from the thought of Jackie dressed in pink climbing on the back of that convertible to get away, or to assist the Secret Service guy while she reached over what was left of her husbands head…
while all that was fresh in our minds, this big man Lyndon Baines Johnson took an oath while winging through the atmosphere at 35,000 feet, and the nation heard of it, and he landed a few hours later in Washington. Even before he stepped off that plane Lyndon was in charge.
Like it or not, there he was.
There we were.
And while we loved Lyndon, prayed for him, looked askance at him, we hated, absolutely hated the circumstances that had slammed him into that perilous Office, and had thrusted him into the fragile pinnacle of leading--not just the Senate or the Congress--but the whole damn United States of America in the days to come.
In the days that followed, he proved to be a strong President. I mean, after all, he was a strong man with a forceful, arm-twisting leadership style.
A couple of years passed. In some ways, our nation settled down a bit after the trauma of Kennedy's assassination; in other ways, we didn't settle down at all, because a lot of circumstances were raveling at the time. One of them was the war in Vietnam. By 1965, after consulting, as Kennedy had done before him, multiple voices of military and diplomatic leadership, LBJ decided to escalate the war.
It was no simple situation over there. The South Vietnamese could not stop the onslaught of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese insurgents, and it's questionable whether they really had the gumption to do it.
The tall Texan was not about to allow to the USA to withdraw from such a thing as that. Many of his advisors, even McNamara, indicated that maybe the whole damn thing was, as Cronkite said, a stalemate. But LBJ plunged us in deeper.
Then in 1968 LBJ, strongman that he was, decided not to run for re-election. He could have, perhaps, devised a plan, before retiring, for this nation to extricate from Vietnam, but he chose not to do so. Not on his watch.
When Nixon got in the White House in 1969, he could have saved us a lot of grief and death if he had wound the war down at that time. Instead, he escalated it with intention of obtaining peace with honor. Another Not on my watch scenario.
He should have just gotten us out of there. A few years later, Nixon was history too; by '73 we were officially out of there, and by '75 we were really out of Vietnam.
Strange string of events, it seemed to us. Mystery still surrounds. Some things we'll never know.
52 pickup; here's another card I chanced to pick up today:
64 years ago, the King of Jordan, Abdullah I ibn al-Hussein was assassinated while attending prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
Not that it means anything here, but this writer was one week old at the time.
King Abdullah had sought to be a peacemaker. He was one of the few Arab leaders who had been willing to negotiate with the Israelis in 1947-48 when Israel was establishing its independence and identity as a nation.
July 20, 1951, a Palestinian named Mustafa Ashi shot Abdullah dead after Friday prayers. Ten alleged conspirators were later prosecuted in Jordan. According to Wikipedia, the prosecutor alleged that one conspirator, Colonel Abdullah el-Tell, ex-Military Governor of Jerusalem, had given instructions "that the killer, made to act alone, be slain at once thereafter to shield the instigators of the crime."
Strange string of events, it seemed to us. Mystery still surrounds. Some things we'll never know. Strange things happen in this world, but you never know what's pre-planned and what's the (bad) luck of the draw. Makes you wonder what woulda, coulda, shoulda happen.
No point in that, really. Life goes on. It is what it is.
Boomer's Choice
52 years ago, the government of Vietnam was overthrown when President Ngo Dinh Diem was deposed in a coup led by his own military leaders. The next day, November 2, Diem was shot dead.
Three weeks later, American President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22. Two days after that, the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald was shot dead while in official custody.
I was twelve years old at the time.
Strange string of events, it seemed to us. Mystery still surrounds. Some things we'll never know.
After Kennedy was gone, Lyndon Johnson became President. Johnson was a good man; among many other notable accomplishments, he shepherded the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress, as he knew it had been an important component of his slain predecessor's would-have-been legacy. Lyndon was very good at getting things done, and so he came through, as Chief Executive instead of President of the Senate, to get that historic legislation manifested as the law of the land.
LBJ was a Texan. He walked tall like a Texan because he was a Texan. Lyndon's leadership style had originated within his humble beginnings; he was a man who knew the nuts and bolts of what makes America work. He knew how to get things done; was a wheeler dealer politician who pulled himself up by the bootstraps. As fate and his own fortitude would have it, he was in the right place at the right time in 1960 when the Democrats selected him to take the VP slot on Kennedy's ticket.
And so, three years later on that fateful night of November 22, 1963, while the nation was in shock, he was in the right place at a bad time, to receive, in the whirlwind of a tragedy, the awesome mantle of national--yeah I say unto thee-- even world, leadership.
But good ole Lyndon was in a very difficult place at that right time. While we were weeping, reeling from the thought of Jackie dressed in pink climbing on the back of that convertible to get away, or to assist the Secret Service guy while she reached over what was left of her husbands head…
while all that was fresh in our minds, this big man Lyndon Baines Johnson took an oath while winging through the atmosphere at 35,000 feet, and the nation heard of it, and he landed a few hours later in Washington. Even before he stepped off that plane Lyndon was in charge.
Like it or not, there he was.
There we were.
And while we loved Lyndon, prayed for him, looked askance at him, we hated, absolutely hated the circumstances that had slammed him into that perilous Office, and had thrusted him into the fragile pinnacle of leading--not just the Senate or the Congress--but the whole damn United States of America in the days to come.
In the days that followed, he proved to be a strong President. I mean, after all, he was a strong man with a forceful, arm-twisting leadership style.
A couple of years passed. In some ways, our nation settled down a bit after the trauma of Kennedy's assassination; in other ways, we didn't settle down at all, because a lot of circumstances were raveling at the time. One of them was the war in Vietnam. By 1965, after consulting, as Kennedy had done before him, multiple voices of military and diplomatic leadership, LBJ decided to escalate the war.
It was no simple situation over there. The South Vietnamese could not stop the onslaught of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese insurgents, and it's questionable whether they really had the gumption to do it.
The tall Texan was not about to allow to the USA to withdraw from such a thing as that. Many of his advisors, even McNamara, indicated that maybe the whole damn thing was, as Cronkite said, a stalemate. But LBJ plunged us in deeper.
Then in 1968 LBJ, strongman that he was, decided not to run for re-election. He could have, perhaps, devised a plan, before retiring, for this nation to extricate from Vietnam, but he chose not to do so. Not on his watch.
When Nixon got in the White House in 1969, he could have saved us a lot of grief and death if he had wound the war down at that time. Instead, he escalated it with intention of obtaining peace with honor. Another Not on my watch scenario.
He should have just gotten us out of there. A few years later, Nixon was history too; by '73 we were officially out of there, and by '75 we were really out of Vietnam.
Strange string of events, it seemed to us. Mystery still surrounds. Some things we'll never know.
52 pickup; here's another card I chanced to pick up today:
64 years ago, the King of Jordan, Abdullah I ibn al-Hussein was assassinated while attending prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
Not that it means anything here, but this writer was one week old at the time.
King Abdullah had sought to be a peacemaker. He was one of the few Arab leaders who had been willing to negotiate with the Israelis in 1947-48 when Israel was establishing its independence and identity as a nation.
July 20, 1951, a Palestinian named Mustafa Ashi shot Abdullah dead after Friday prayers. Ten alleged conspirators were later prosecuted in Jordan. According to Wikipedia, the prosecutor alleged that one conspirator, Colonel Abdullah el-Tell, ex-Military Governor of Jerusalem, had given instructions "that the killer, made to act alone, be slain at once thereafter to shield the instigators of the crime."
Strange string of events, it seemed to us. Mystery still surrounds. Some things we'll never know. Strange things happen in this world, but you never know what's pre-planned and what's the (bad) luck of the draw. Makes you wonder what woulda, coulda, shoulda happen.
No point in that, really. Life goes on. It is what it is.
Boomer's Choice
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Bare Bach, Vivid Vivaldi
branches bare, and death's begun
to take its toll on the living one
whose active hands are not yet done.
Sound, summoned from somewhere deep inside,
strikes from string an imaginary ride
upon vibrations far and wide.
Here is life, and death must hide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bVRTtcWmXI
While bare branches inspire a sparse domain
'twixt Bach and Perlman's music without name,
some strenuous feat is being strewn upon a stringy frame
as spider spins his precious game.
Bare-branched strains give way to woven strands
so, through ages, some vivid virtuoso stands
to spin a web of Stradivarius demands;
Vivaldi's winter surrounds Samuelsen's hands.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KxzuY0fJ-s
Smoke
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Bankers, Banksters, Bernanke, Black and Beethoven
How's a fellow to make sense of it all? Who you gonna call? Who you gonna believe? What's the world coming to? What's it to ya? and Who's in charge here?
I've been trying to figure out a few things about our financial system.
About a week ago I loaded Ben Bernanke's book, Courage to Act, and have been reading what the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve has to say about those events of 2007-8 that brought this country to its money-grubbing knees.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Courage-Act-Memoir-Aftermath-ebook/dp/B00TIZFP0I
Now about a quarter of the way through Bernanke's explanation of things, I must say I like the guy. He has a personal mission to bring more transparency to that enigmatic institution known to us as the Federal Reserve. I think he really wants regular folks to understand our financial system and the function of the central bank which, having been founded by Congress in 1913, tries to keep a rein on the nation's banking system so it doesn't become a runaway horse.
Nevertheless, the System did morph into a kind of bucking bronco back in the fall of 2008. The crash and crisis of that time may have seemed quite sudden to many of us, but in fact the collapse of Wall Street et al during September-October of that year was the culmination of a bunch of misadventures and misdeeds that had begun a year or two or more before it all came crashing down.
I vividly remember, during that time seven years ago, sitting in my car in a parking lot, a few minutes before 8 am when I would enter my day-job, and hearing on the car-radio with dread or fascination about the demise of such formerly venerable institutions as Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, Bank of America, Wachovia, Countrywide, Golden West, AIG, Fannie, Freddie, even General Motors, and then about how Hank Paulson and Wall Street and the Fed, Bernanke and the President and Congress would deal with the degenerating situation by instituting TARP which was rejected by our Representatives and Senators before it was passed and implemented a week later after Hank and Larry and Tim put the fear of god in the legislators' minds or whatever it was they told them to convince them that they should loan the distressed banks $767 billion so the whole dam bailiwick wouldn't fall apart and drag us into another Depression, or so they said.
The world was changing. Have you ever watched the world changing? It is an awesome thing, to see history being made.
What a time a time oh what a time it was. . . a time of innocence (lost), a time of confidences (lost forever), as Paul Simon once sang. Oh what a time it was. Eventually the dust settled and the country lapsed back into normalcy or something like it but not really.
Things were different after that. You know what I'm talking about. . . the Great Recession, everybody and their brother deleveraging, budgets tightening, layoffs and downsizing, fading into perpetual "jobless recovery" with wage deflation, rising unemployment, then descending unemployment but with more part-timing and less money. . . stock-crunchers and media fixated on monthly numbers from the Fed, the gov, BLS, etc, a languid economy generating fewer jobs, then a few more jobs, then leveling out and stabilizing and lapsing into destagulation and blah blah blah. . .
And it was about that time, or actually a year of three later by n' by, that the Occupy Wall Street crowd came along.
My wife and I visited our son in Seattle during fall or early winter of 2011. I woke up one morning and strolled down Pike Street. I stopped at the Westlake Center and entered a Starbucks where I settled in for a while. I was observing through the large glass storefront, the Occupiers who had gathered across the street in Westlake Park.
After a while I noticed among all those protesters, many of whom were carrying signs (mostly say hooray for our side) . .here comes an especially noticeable fellow with a sign. He was tall, scruffy, with a long beard. He looked like the classic cartoon image of the street-corner doomsday prophet, and his sign said:
"Jail for Banksters"
Well that's interesting.
Now, yesterday, November 7 2015, I recalled having seen that fellow and his sign, and I was thinking about what his sign said.
I had been reading Uncle Ben's very informative book--his plainly-written, quite "transparent" explanation of what had happened back in '08, when the low quality of vast numbers of subprime mortgage loans catapulted those same home-loans into default, and subsequently cast a ubiquitous monkey wrench into the vastly complex financial machinery of sliced/diced tranches of mortgage-backed-securities and collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps, etc etc and then wall street came crashing down and all the Fed's horses and all the Treasury's men couldn't put humpty dumpty together again (not for a while anyway) and the world changed forever, or so it seemed at the time and for quite a long time after that, even until now.
Yesterday, I had made note of this sentence from Ben Bernanke's book:
"As the chain from borrower to broker to originator to securitizer to investor grew longer , accountability for the quality of the underlying mortgages became more and more diffused."
And I was wondering, if the accountability had become more and more diffused, then who was responsible for this mess?
My own personal answer to that question is: Human nature, collectively. Shit happens.
Not everyone sees it that way, though. Some folks feel the need to investigate, litigate, prosecute, execute, and. . . as the protester's sign said, send the "banksters" to jail.
So here I was yesterday, having taken a break from reading Uncle Ben's book, and I was fiddling around online when I landed upon an interview that Chris Martenson did with Bill Black.
http://www.peakprosperity.com/podcast/95125/bill-black-why-banksters-winning
Now Bill is well-informed fellow; he's an academic like Ben Bernanke, but from a totally different perspective than Ben's. Bill is a regulator, investigator, earth-shaker, litigator who is crowing that Eric Holder, former Attorney General and head of the U.S. Department of Justice, should have prosecuted the banksters for their corruptive abuse of the system. In his interview with Chris that I listened to yesterday, Bill Black said:
"Every dollar by which you inflate an asset inflates capital by a dollar and creates an additional dollar you can steal. . . they lied and they lied to the extent of trillions of dollars. They lied and made stuff that was really in the trade, right. So the bankers are actually calling these things toxic in their internal memorandum. And they are simultaneously rated Triple A, which is supposed to mean that they are equivalent to United States Treasury and are “risk free” by which they mean credit risk."
Furthermore, whistle-blowing Bill Black says that culpability for the crash also includes the Fed's complicity, when Bill says:
"You say Bank of America has got 50 billion of these things. They sell them to Fannie/Freddie.
Next thing we know, Black Rock is in there with the Federal Reserve helping the Federal Reserve decide which tranches of MBS to go out and buy. And the Federal Reserve vacuums up 1.25 trillion or thereabouts of these mortgage backed security pieces of paper. Here is the question. What is the chance that the Fed preferentially or accidentally (but I am going to think preferentially) went out and vacuumed up some of the worst of these things so that they could die quietly on its balance sheet rather than do damage to bank balance sheets?"
So Black is implying that Bernanke shares some of the blame for the Crash of '08.
But in my reading of Uncle Ben's version, I see a very smart man, an honest man, who was trying to do his job--that job to which he had been appointed by the President and approved by the Congress of the United States. He was striving, as best he could, trying to stop the nation's calamitous slide into financial oblivion. Ben writes:
"Just as the bank runs of the panic of 1907 amplified losses suffered by a handful of stock speculators into a national credit crisis and recession, the panic in the short-term funding markets that began in August 2007 would ultimately transform a 'correction' in the sublime mortgage market into a much greater crisis in the global financial system and global economy."
From Chairman Ben Bernanke's perspective, he was doing his job-- using every tool in his Reserve tool-chest to arrest to the "panic" that would eventually impose a "much greater crisis" in the global financial system and global economy.
You can't blame a fellow for trying to do his job. And that's how I make sense of it all. I try to do my job, while I see everyone else doing theirs, and that's what makes the productive world go around.
Although, every now and then shit does happen. Then, as Schumpeter said. . . it is creative destruction, and somebody's got to clean up the mess. Jobs for everybody, cleaning up the mess from places high and low. And then reconstructing it all, a vicious (or inevitable) cycle. It's been going on for 10,000 years. But now with hi-tech, everything goes faster and faster, until it grinds again to a screeching halt and. . . can you hear it? The music of the ages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEbyBINYBfo
Glass half-Full
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Saturday, October 31, 2015
GhostLeaf
The Ghost Leaf flutters with every word the spider utters, while the Leaf ghost mutters and the man stutters, "Wh-what the heck?"
Glass Chimera
Glass Chimera
The Bookends of Experience
As far as East is from the West,
and near to worst as to the best,
I have wandered lonely as a cloud
as we travel from some swaddle to the shroud.
Once we drove a stake in the ground and called it home;
now this morning wakes me here as sun is shone.
Situated now on continental sunrise heights
while recalling vivid island sunset sights,
and noticing here our stark and spindly leaves, these trees,
I recollect the wide and warm of ocean breeze.
Experience goes as far as mountains are from sand,
then circles back around to water, air and land.
Sometimes life is hard, you know;
at other times it's soft as autumn leaves make show.
As days turn dark,
so light doth continually toss out some spark
of hope or happiness or flexibility
that is yet assailed by despair or dearth or rigidity.
Experience comes as vividly as rising sun;
then memory renders it precious when day is done.
Doors of perception
open into windows of reflection
as present slips into the past
and future finds a fleeting foothold fast.
We amble here and there and everywhere;
we ramble now and then without care.
When reality and reflection mingle in the sands of time
imagination splurges into rhythm, sometimes in rhyme
when myself is beached upon the rock of time,
and our family finds itself with God and universe in line.
Glass half-Full
and near to worst as to the best,
I have wandered lonely as a cloud
as we travel from some swaddle to the shroud.
Once we drove a stake in the ground and called it home;
now this morning wakes me here as sun is shone.
Situated now on continental sunrise heights
while recalling vivid island sunset sights,
and noticing here our stark and spindly leaves, these trees,
I recollect the wide and warm of ocean breeze.
Experience goes as far as mountains are from sand,
then circles back around to water, air and land.
Sometimes life is hard, you know;
at other times it's soft as autumn leaves make show.
As days turn dark,
so light doth continually toss out some spark
of hope or happiness or flexibility
that is yet assailed by despair or dearth or rigidity.
Experience comes as vividly as rising sun;
then memory renders it precious when day is done.
Doors of perception
open into windows of reflection
as present slips into the past
and future finds a fleeting foothold fast.
We amble here and there and everywhere;
we ramble now and then without care.
When reality and reflection mingle in the sands of time
imagination splurges into rhythm, sometimes in rhyme
when myself is beached upon the rock of time,
and our family finds itself with God and universe in line.
Glass half-Full
Sunday, October 25, 2015
River runs through US
Sun fire heat radiation flings slings planets orbits
Earth magma rock stone rubble gravel sand silicon chip
Sky air cloud mist snow sleet rain drops
Water current stream brook creek spring gurgle trickle drips
Drips trickle gurgle spring creek brook stream River
River
Life breath move hear see smell feel think do
Eat drink sleep pee shit sleep wake walk work
Work hunt gather slaughter harvest winnow store
Store winnow harvest slaughter gather hunt work
Work buy sell prosper town street city ride sail travel drive fly
Fly
It all happens, by n' by.
Glass Chimera
Sunday, October 18, 2015
Aftermath of a Musical Dream
While catching up on some tasks around the homeplace yesterday, a mid-afternoon weariness came upon me, and so I decided to take a little siesta.
Having finished the outdoor chores, I was inside the house. WDAV was tuned in on the radio. My favorite deejay, Mike McKay, was introducing the station's 3 pm airing of a performance by the Charlotte Symphony.
I lost track of what Mike was saying as I stretched me weary ole bones upon the floor to partake of a wee bit of personalized yoga recovery, otherwise known as dozing off while stretching.
The next thing I know, my mind was stirred in wakefulness that attended a hearing of some incredibly beautiful music.
The experience was ethereal, as if I were dreaming, and yet there I was, my conscious attention approaching some orchestral destination that was being played out in my mind, or in the airwaves, or in the room, or somewhere I've never been.
I listened.
A little while later, I checked the WDAV website to find out what that music was that had stirred my awareness up from a necessary mid-afternoon slumber.
http://www.wdav.org/1_33_38.cfm
Now, the next day, a little Google search brings me to some comprehension about the source of yesterday's dreamy revery: Ralph Vaughn Williams' Fantasia on a theme by theme by Thomas Tallis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasia_on_a_Theme_by_Thomas_Tallis
This symphonic piece was composed in 1910, and later revised in 1913 and 1919.
When I read the Wikipedia info about the dates of this music's conception and revision, I immediately thought of the First Big War, which had happened from 1914-1918. That war has been a subject of my research for the last few years, as its aftermath pertains to the novel, Smoke, that I published last year.
The composer, a Brit, Ralfph (pronounced Rafe) Von Williams wrote the music in 1910, four years before the cataclysmic conflagration of early 20th-century European history, World War I. He later revised that music in 1913, just before the war started, and then again after the war had ended.
And I am wondering, this bright autumn Sunday afternoon, if that traumatic experience of world war might have had some effect on Mr. Williams that compelled him to revise his 9-year old masterpiece.
I think that First Big War did had an impact on this incredibly voluptuous statement of orchestral pathos, or tragedy, or whatever it is this haunting Phrygian melody imposes on my soul.
The music is similar to, and a compositional precedent to, a famous piece written two decades later by Samuel Barber, Adagio for Strings (1936).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adagio_for_Strings
That's another great, prescient pre-war piece of musical angst created four years before a Big War (the Second one).
Perhaps there is some composer out there today writing such a piece, but entirely new and expressive of whatever the hell is going on in our world today.
I wanted to provide a link so you can hear the piece of music that has inspired all this. So I went back to the WDAV website, which represents a great media source for classical music enrichment and enjoyment. It was there I had learned the name of the music.
I treasure WDAV and support their work with an annual contribution. However, for purposes of this online presentation I . . . long story short, stumbled upon this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihx5LCF1yJY
from BBC Symphony Orchestra, which is captured for YouTube in a performance at a cathedral in England. If you watch the performance, you may agree that both the music and the setting represent the union of two elements of our profoundly great Western cultural heritage: music and church.
After composing, Vaughn Williams noted an association between this Fantasia and the message of Psalm 2:
Why are the nations in an uproar
and the peoples devising a vain thing?
The kings of the earth take their stand
and the rulers take counsel together
against the Lord and against his Anointed?
Smoke
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Afterglow
One man, one woman
become one.
Host of family and friends
from near and far
gather.
Joy, celebration, love;
heaven comes down
to us
while we witness,
in bright sunshine,
nature's original intent
for him and her. . .
sacramental coupling more
mysterious and sweet than
we could have anticipated, so that the
coital coupling to come will conceive pure
love.
A miracle of unity, this event transforms
all who are present and willing
to enter into their sacred intent toward each other,
in faithfulness, fidelity, finality.
Rare, but true.
John speaks of love and sacrifice, while
celestial grace streams from
blue sky.
Wisdom gets multiplied by two, and
Joy
far greater than we could have mustered,
erupts from the fearless conviction of their vows,
spoken boldly, with certainty, and yet lit up
around the edges, like this entire celebration itself,
with a slightly naughty mirth.
Such brave intent we see, in spite of the dissolution of all things holy that's
going on out there in, you know. . .
the world, and all that other crap we hear about from time to time.
But now. . .
Their vowful miracle becomes
a blessing to us who witness, even
as they speak the gift into existence, pronouncing to
each other.
And then they skip away.
And so amazed are we
while we wonder at the the scene. We
had wandered in; now we float
out, in sacramental awe.
We eat, drink, dance, celebrate into the night until. . .
as suddenly as they had entered in,
bride and groom are gone.
To discover the greatest mysteries of life.
This Afterglow
bequeaths us traces of infinite, unpredictable
fulfillment,
with glintings of eternal grace.
This moment, remembered, shall inspire us
to consecrate today's exchange, while
these two young ones are continually equipped,
in time,
to become one.
They'll discover, as days and nights ripen,
that pleasure which is, in all of life, the most precious of all:
to behold, as days slip into years, that smile on the face
of the one you love.
They'll come to savor it, like the finest wine, as Mom and Dad have,
and their Mom and Dad before them.
That unfathomable depth of joy will fortify
the life they share with invincible companionship.
While meanwhile, back at the ranch, parents bask in
afterglow.
Monday, October 5, 2015
Korea Wall
Tim was telling us
about Korea.
On the other side of the world,
these men were passing into eternity
while I was being born.
Here we listen while Tim tells
us about that cold war, which
exploded soon after
the hot war
ended.
They watched silently while
we listened to Time telling us
of life and death on the other
side of the world while
I was being born.
Smoke
Friday, October 2, 2015
The Brightness
I snapped this pic yesterday at sunset on Hapuna beach:
What fascinates me here is the brightness of the sun's reflection. Both the sun and its reflection on the ocean water are captured in the photo, making the sun's effect on the image doubly bright.
There's one source of light, the sun, the appearance of which is made twice as intense by its reflection on the surf.
It's funny what this made me think of--a scene in the rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar.
When I was in college at LSU, many and many a year ago, I went to a road-cast presentation of that incredibly expressive musical play. It blew me away.
Which is to say. . .I enjoyed it very much. The music therein is an incredible piece of work, composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. I think those guys wrought a new genre at that time--a thing called rock opera, which was as fresh and new in 1971 as, say, the original opera genre was for Italians back in the day when Verdi was composing great emotive arias with incredible cadenzas and powerful ensemble singing scenes.
Among the many amazing scenes in that play is one that endures in my memory even to this day. It's a dim recollection, in the sense that I can't recall exactly which scene it was; but I do remember there, in the scene, there was some kind of exquisitely choreographed crescendo of frantic motion and dissonant voices, disintegrating musically into librettic confusion and wild cacophony, when suddenly--a presence, a dramatic presence, accompanied by overpowering musical intervention, personified by the entrance of some powerful entity, maybe a king or a gifted leader. . .the entrance of the man, Jesus, eclipsed all the singers' disintegrating harmony as the superstar of the show arrived upon the scene.
A bright light overpowering darkness.
Here's a version of the scene that I found online:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG1JWJFGfOU
When I ponder what happened in that scene at the Temple in Jerusalem, I think of it this way, as the prophet Isaiah had foretold, in the 60th chapter of his prophetic writing:
The brightness of his presence eclipsed their depravity.
And that overpowering illumination is what I thought of when I viewed the sunset pic, which I inserted at the top of this here blogpost.
As for the rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, I consider it a musical work of absolute genius, but I do have one problem with the play. . .
no Resurrection scene.
About seven years after I was blown away by that awesome musical stage production, I arrived at a point in my life when I came to believe that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead, and he will come again, as Messiah for all the world, and on that day. . .
Nations will come to his light, and great men and women will be drawn to the brightness of his coming.
You believe that?
Whether you do or not, watch a video of Jesus Christ Superstar. Then decide for yourself whether there should be a Resurrection scene. I hope you can rise to the occasion.
Glass half-Full
What fascinates me here is the brightness of the sun's reflection. Both the sun and its reflection on the ocean water are captured in the photo, making the sun's effect on the image doubly bright.
There's one source of light, the sun, the appearance of which is made twice as intense by its reflection on the surf.
It's funny what this made me think of--a scene in the rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar.
When I was in college at LSU, many and many a year ago, I went to a road-cast presentation of that incredibly expressive musical play. It blew me away.
Which is to say. . .I enjoyed it very much. The music therein is an incredible piece of work, composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. I think those guys wrought a new genre at that time--a thing called rock opera, which was as fresh and new in 1971 as, say, the original opera genre was for Italians back in the day when Verdi was composing great emotive arias with incredible cadenzas and powerful ensemble singing scenes.
Among the many amazing scenes in that play is one that endures in my memory even to this day. It's a dim recollection, in the sense that I can't recall exactly which scene it was; but I do remember there, in the scene, there was some kind of exquisitely choreographed crescendo of frantic motion and dissonant voices, disintegrating musically into librettic confusion and wild cacophony, when suddenly--a presence, a dramatic presence, accompanied by overpowering musical intervention, personified by the entrance of some powerful entity, maybe a king or a gifted leader. . .the entrance of the man, Jesus, eclipsed all the singers' disintegrating harmony as the superstar of the show arrived upon the scene.
A bright light overpowering darkness.
Here's a version of the scene that I found online:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG1JWJFGfOU
When I ponder what happened in that scene at the Temple in Jerusalem, I think of it this way, as the prophet Isaiah had foretold, in the 60th chapter of his prophetic writing:
"Nations will come to your light, and kings
to the brightness of your rising. . ."
The brightness of his presence eclipsed their depravity.
And that overpowering illumination is what I thought of when I viewed the sunset pic, which I inserted at the top of this here blogpost.
As for the rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, I consider it a musical work of absolute genius, but I do have one problem with the play. . .
no Resurrection scene.
About seven years after I was blown away by that awesome musical stage production, I arrived at a point in my life when I came to believe that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead, and he will come again, as Messiah for all the world, and on that day. . .
Nations will come to his light, and great men and women will be drawn to the brightness of his coming.
You believe that?
Whether you do or not, watch a video of Jesus Christ Superstar. Then decide for yourself whether there should be a Resurrection scene. I hope you can rise to the occasion.
Glass half-Full
Thursday, October 1, 2015
BRICs in search of mortar
When Pat and I were raising our three kids we attended at least 12 graduations that I can remember.
The first round of matriculations came after each one completed kindergarten. Those first three ceremonies were joyous events for us young parents.
The next round was celebrated after each child finished 8th grade. With educational goals moving right along, we were again so very happy, as were the emerging adolescents.
The high school ceremonies were, of course, a biggie, in all three instances. Each young scholar's participation signified, within those symbolic processions, certifiable progress toward educational and life goals.
The crown jewels for our young adults and for us proud parents were the three college graduations, with one at Duke and two at University of North Carolina.
What a grand preparation for our offspring in their proficiencies to go forth in technified 21st-century world!
In every one of those symbolic processions through which our young ones paraded with their classmates up to a podium where they received diplomas, very graduate had a flat item mounted on their head. Hanging from that flat item was a tassel.
The mortar board.
Each young person sauntered forth into our world of work, information and progress, with a mortar board upon their head.
What is a mortar board?
In the oldest sense of this phrase, a mortar board is a flat, hand-held board; it is used to carry a small amount of mixed "mud" (mortar). The actual mortar board, in the real world of constructing walls and buildings, has, attached to it on its underside, a hand-sized vertical handle that enables the bricklayer to carry the board and its mortar payload easily. The worker can then move from one position to the next while carrying an amount of mortar suitable for efficient work in joining masonry blocks and/or bricks together as a constructed wall.
In the symbolic universe of education, however, a "mortar board" upon the graduate's head signifies that the person is equipped to build structures of a different kind.
With the competencies acquired through education, the graduate can, metaphorically, build progress, prosperity, businesses profitable or non-profit,, institutions, knowledge bases, etc.
I was thinking about the mortar board this morning. I was considering its meaning as a symbol, as I have just explained to you. . . but also as an actual implement of constructive work in the real world of building houses. My thirty+ years in construction provided many occasions in which I literally carried a mortar board for hours at a time, while constructing house foundations.
Then this morning, while reading about some new developments in the world of finance and investments, I thought about mortar boards of the metaphorical meaning, which is why I write to you now. There is something interesting going on in the world now, pertaining to mortar boards.
What I read that is so fascinating is an article that I came across in an online news source, Deutsche Welle, that I had never seen before today:
http://www.dw.com/en/brics-nations-launch-new-bank-currency-pool/a-18574402
I gather from reading it that the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) are gathering resources to fund an investment bank for purposes of financing infrastructure in their countries and also in the "emerging" countries.
If this banking alliance is successful, there will be in the future at least a certain amount--if not a huge amount--of divergence from those countries' heretofore dependence on the West's (USA, German, British, French) banking powerhouses, not to mention their central banks and international largesse like IMF and so forth.
I mean, there it is right there in the pic on the Deutsche Welle site: Putin of Russia, Modi of India, Xi of China, Rousseff of Brazil, gathered with many other national leaders in Ufa, Russia to lay foundations for the BRICs to get new "mortar" supplies for laying their necessary infrastructures in days to come.
Watch out, WallStreet!
Watch out, City!
Your days of hegemony in world finance and dollar dominance may be numbered.
These (formerly-called) Developing nations are now in the forefront of development and they need tools for constructing their infrastructure-deficient economies.
Wall Street's obsession with high-frequency trading and risk-averse bubbly speculation is becoming more and more irrelevant in a bold new world of expanding overseas financial needs-- Markets that are populated by young people--far more young people demographically than we have here in the good ole US of A.
Millions of young people with mortar boards in their hands and on their heads, applying for money mortar to construct sturdy infrastructural walls in which their own institutions will supply credit and new opportunities to initiate and develop new wealth.
Not old Western wealth recycled.
King Dollar, step aside! The handwriting for national developments across the world is on the wall. You are being challenged by the 4 R's: rubles, rupees, reáls, renminbi and probably eventually SDRs.
Better read what those hands are writing on their freshly-mortared walls!
Glass half-Full
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Man and God
it looks like somebody didn't know what to do.
Maybe there was some death, bankruptcy, or divorce
that set this place on a ruinous course.
What man has built but then failed to care
soon falls to ruin and disrepair,
while God's handiwork is faithfully maintained:
a rising, setting sun so constantly sustained.
Glass half-Full
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
My Solar Sadness
When I was a young man, back in the 1970's, I found a shoestring in Asheville. I appropriated it and then used it to try and tie all the problems of the world together so they could be disposed of. I took that shoestring and initiated a little newspaper, which, as it turned out, only published six issues before biting the dust.
It was a learning experience, trying to start a newspaper in 1977.
The first issue, as I recall, had a very hopeful article about solar energy development and the possibility of solving our energy woes with new applications of solar technology.
The newspaper-on-a-shoestring idea did not pan out. As for the solar technology featured in the first issue, let's just say: there is still great potential there.
Now. Fast-forward about 38 years. I'm on vacation in Hawaii, the Big Island. Cruising along the highway that runs northward from Kailua-Kona toward Waikoloa, I see a large, quite impressive solar photovoltaic collector arrangement that seems to embrace a whole building.
This is interesting, I thought. That's a pretty impressive framework of solar power-generating collection around and above that building. I wonder what it is.
Although I did not snap a picture of it, I later learned that the building is the Visitors' Center and Office for the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority. You can see it here:
http://friendsofnelha.org/
A few days later, that is to say yesterday, on Monday morning I attended a presentation there, hoping to find out what the place was all about. And I learned quite a lot about, among many other interesting things, renewable energy development and sustainable aquaculture and mariculture on the Big Island of Hawaii.
At 10 a.m., I watched and listened to an excellent presentation by Sarah Crawford, who is Executive Director of Friends of Natural Energy Laboratory in Hawaii (FON). Using a multimedia setup, Sarah delivered to me and eight other curious visitors the big-picture introduction to this forward-looking business park-enterprise incubator next to the Pacific on the sunny, leeward side of the Big Island.
The primary resource--you might say the heart and soul of this 870-acre site and its many infrastructure connections--is a constant,plentiful supply of very clean, cold ocean water that is pumped from 2000' or 3000' depths of the Ocean. The water is used prolifically by many companies, LLCs, and startups for aquaculture/mariculture research & development, as well as profitable commercial ventures.
One venture in particular--the Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) project--is the largest and most productive of its type in the world, "pioneering the design of systems that use deep cold seawater for air conditioning and electricity."
Among the many projects and enterprises being conducted here are: a large-scale commercial abalone aquaculture facility; algae-based biofuels extraction facility; nutritional supplements company; commercial desalination drinking-water production; kampachi-fish farm; shellfish hatchery nursery for shrimp, oysters, clams, mussels; Maine lobster holding-tank; farming operations for tropical fish, seahorses, edible sea vegetables, black cod; and even a public charter school.
I was impressed. Here in Kona-Kailua the Hawaiians are doing amazing things with that cold seawater that's being pumped up from way down deep.
As for actual heat collected for hot water or for heating some other medium. . .not so much. More about that in a moment.
Nevertheless, solar energy is taking off big time in Hawaii--for electrical generation by means of photovoltaic collectors. Hawaiians are leading the way. Part of Sarah's presentation included some impressive statistics about increasing widespread use of roof collectors among homeowners and businesses. She said that recently an aerial photo of the town of Kailua revealed that every major commercial building in the town sported solar collectors on the roof.
The one exception--Home Depot. No solar collectors on the Kailua HD.
Now here I'm finally getting around to the title of this here posting: Solar Sadness
Because you see, ever since that time back in the day when I tried to start a newspaper with its first issue featuring the potential of solar technology--ever since that time-- I have thought that the only way that solar tech could really take off in the good ole US of A would be this scenario:
Joe Blow has a few extra bucks in his paycheck this week, so on Saturday he goes to Home Depot or Lowe's (our North Carolina favorite since that company started only 30 miles from my North Carolina home), and Joe invests is an easy-to-install solar collector or two, hauls it home or has it delivered, then climbs up on the roof, like any energetic homeowner (or hires someone) and connects the new hardware with a few turns of the crescent wrench and a screwdriver or two, assembling the new hardware in series with other collectors that he has previously installed.
In this way Joe Blow or John Doe or Betty Freedan or whoever, socks away some serious energy savings for the next 30 years or so, and so that's the way solar tech would take off in America: chicken in every pot, car in every garage, collector on every roof kind of middle-class thing.
Well, that has not generally happened on a large scale in America, yet. And if Home Depot is not willing to make use of the emerging solar tech on its own roof on the sunny side of Hawaii, then what hope is there for the sun in middle-class yankee homeowner energy conservation?
Now all that is about power, you know, electrical power, kilowatts blah blah--generating your own so you don't to buy so much from the regional monopoly or co-op.
But my disappointment about solar actualities came about half-way through the presentation on energy developments at National Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority.
Near the Visitors' Center is a very impressive-looking mega-field of solar collectors, all of them hooked up together in series. The sight of this had been part of my original curiosity about the NELHA facility:
In Sarah's informative exposition of the on-site projects, her explanation of this installation revealed that it consists of rows and rows of long plastic pipes which had been cut lengthwise down the middle and painted with a special reflective coating. Sunlight striking the half-round concave curve of the 8" pipe would be focused on a smaller, suspended 3/4" pipe that contains a heat-carrying substance, water or some other medium. These half-pipes were mounted in such a way as to track the sun's rise and fall in the sky, thereby maximizing the solar energy gain.
http://keaholesolarpower.com/news/farming_the_sun/
Very impressive.
But here came my disappointment, the solar sadness: this incredible energy-gathering bank has been non-operative for about a year and half.
Why?
Something about running out of money or some such thing. I don't understand it. There's plenty of solar energy in Hawaii, and plenty of water. So what's the problem?
But I'm the clueless tourist here, whose mind starts to fill up with old 1970's-style conspiracy theories about mega-corporations getting in the way and so forth and so on. Although I don't believe all that; there must be a legitimate reason why this thing has not worked out.
As for the rest of what's going on at that NELHA --very impressive!
The cold seawater resource development that's happening at Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority is good, and also profitable for an array of startups for aquaculture, mariculture, and energy conversion enterprises This place is a a beneficial partnership between the State of Hawaii and all the businesses and LLCs who are working there.
Keep up the good work, NELHA! Keep them abalones and other critters coming.
Glass half-Full
It was a learning experience, trying to start a newspaper in 1977.
The first issue, as I recall, had a very hopeful article about solar energy development and the possibility of solving our energy woes with new applications of solar technology.
The newspaper-on-a-shoestring idea did not pan out. As for the solar technology featured in the first issue, let's just say: there is still great potential there.
Now. Fast-forward about 38 years. I'm on vacation in Hawaii, the Big Island. Cruising along the highway that runs northward from Kailua-Kona toward Waikoloa, I see a large, quite impressive solar photovoltaic collector arrangement that seems to embrace a whole building.
This is interesting, I thought. That's a pretty impressive framework of solar power-generating collection around and above that building. I wonder what it is.
Although I did not snap a picture of it, I later learned that the building is the Visitors' Center and Office for the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority. You can see it here:
http://friendsofnelha.org/
A few days later, that is to say yesterday, on Monday morning I attended a presentation there, hoping to find out what the place was all about. And I learned quite a lot about, among many other interesting things, renewable energy development and sustainable aquaculture and mariculture on the Big Island of Hawaii.
At 10 a.m., I watched and listened to an excellent presentation by Sarah Crawford, who is Executive Director of Friends of Natural Energy Laboratory in Hawaii (FON). Using a multimedia setup, Sarah delivered to me and eight other curious visitors the big-picture introduction to this forward-looking business park-enterprise incubator next to the Pacific on the sunny, leeward side of the Big Island.
The primary resource--you might say the heart and soul of this 870-acre site and its many infrastructure connections--is a constant,plentiful supply of very clean, cold ocean water that is pumped from 2000' or 3000' depths of the Ocean. The water is used prolifically by many companies, LLCs, and startups for aquaculture/mariculture research & development, as well as profitable commercial ventures.
One venture in particular--the Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) project--is the largest and most productive of its type in the world, "pioneering the design of systems that use deep cold seawater for air conditioning and electricity."
Among the many projects and enterprises being conducted here are: a large-scale commercial abalone aquaculture facility; algae-based biofuels extraction facility; nutritional supplements company; commercial desalination drinking-water production; kampachi-fish farm; shellfish hatchery nursery for shrimp, oysters, clams, mussels; Maine lobster holding-tank; farming operations for tropical fish, seahorses, edible sea vegetables, black cod; and even a public charter school.
I was impressed. Here in Kona-Kailua the Hawaiians are doing amazing things with that cold seawater that's being pumped up from way down deep.
As for actual heat collected for hot water or for heating some other medium. . .not so much. More about that in a moment.
Nevertheless, solar energy is taking off big time in Hawaii--for electrical generation by means of photovoltaic collectors. Hawaiians are leading the way. Part of Sarah's presentation included some impressive statistics about increasing widespread use of roof collectors among homeowners and businesses. She said that recently an aerial photo of the town of Kailua revealed that every major commercial building in the town sported solar collectors on the roof.
The one exception--Home Depot. No solar collectors on the Kailua HD.
Now here I'm finally getting around to the title of this here posting: Solar Sadness
Because you see, ever since that time back in the day when I tried to start a newspaper with its first issue featuring the potential of solar technology--ever since that time-- I have thought that the only way that solar tech could really take off in the good ole US of A would be this scenario:
Joe Blow has a few extra bucks in his paycheck this week, so on Saturday he goes to Home Depot or Lowe's (our North Carolina favorite since that company started only 30 miles from my North Carolina home), and Joe invests is an easy-to-install solar collector or two, hauls it home or has it delivered, then climbs up on the roof, like any energetic homeowner (or hires someone) and connects the new hardware with a few turns of the crescent wrench and a screwdriver or two, assembling the new hardware in series with other collectors that he has previously installed.
In this way Joe Blow or John Doe or Betty Freedan or whoever, socks away some serious energy savings for the next 30 years or so, and so that's the way solar tech would take off in America: chicken in every pot, car in every garage, collector on every roof kind of middle-class thing.
Well, that has not generally happened on a large scale in America, yet. And if Home Depot is not willing to make use of the emerging solar tech on its own roof on the sunny side of Hawaii, then what hope is there for the sun in middle-class yankee homeowner energy conservation?
Now all that is about power, you know, electrical power, kilowatts blah blah--generating your own so you don't to buy so much from the regional monopoly or co-op.
But my disappointment about solar actualities came about half-way through the presentation on energy developments at National Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority.
Near the Visitors' Center is a very impressive-looking mega-field of solar collectors, all of them hooked up together in series. The sight of this had been part of my original curiosity about the NELHA facility:
In Sarah's informative exposition of the on-site projects, her explanation of this installation revealed that it consists of rows and rows of long plastic pipes which had been cut lengthwise down the middle and painted with a special reflective coating. Sunlight striking the half-round concave curve of the 8" pipe would be focused on a smaller, suspended 3/4" pipe that contains a heat-carrying substance, water or some other medium. These half-pipes were mounted in such a way as to track the sun's rise and fall in the sky, thereby maximizing the solar energy gain.
http://keaholesolarpower.com/news/farming_the_sun/
Very impressive.
But here came my disappointment, the solar sadness: this incredible energy-gathering bank has been non-operative for about a year and half.
Why?
Something about running out of money or some such thing. I don't understand it. There's plenty of solar energy in Hawaii, and plenty of water. So what's the problem?
But I'm the clueless tourist here, whose mind starts to fill up with old 1970's-style conspiracy theories about mega-corporations getting in the way and so forth and so on. Although I don't believe all that; there must be a legitimate reason why this thing has not worked out.
As for the rest of what's going on at that NELHA --very impressive!
The cold seawater resource development that's happening at Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority is good, and also profitable for an array of startups for aquaculture, mariculture, and energy conversion enterprises This place is a a beneficial partnership between the State of Hawaii and all the businesses and LLCs who are working there.
Keep up the good work, NELHA! Keep them abalones and other critters coming.
Glass half-Full
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