The Troubled Waters

Paul Simon presents a grim solemnity as he croons his old tune, Bridge Over Troubled Waters, for the convened Democrats yesterday in Philadelphia. In sharing with them this classic, well-loved anthem that the wrote, Paul imparts a sense of profound desperation. But the weary, hopeless person whose dire circumstance is so poetically described in the song receives, in the end, a deliverance. Hope shines through when a caring friend intervenes.

Paul's tender message of friendship is well-received by the Democrats. They take the inspiration to heart by joining in, and swaying to the music's gentle rhythm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v12fPV6QmeU

While viewing this scene on YouTube yesterday, I noticed Paul's grave countenance, and I was a little surprised by the obvious aging that has reshaped his face. Many years ago, I was greatly moved--as many of my boomer generation were-- by his poetic, prophetic songs. Here is one from back in the day, for which he is perhaps most well-known:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDIjj7CQYZw

That was Paul Simon then, in 1965; but this is now, 2016. The world seems to be a very different place.

Yesterday in Philadelphia, the assembled Democrats responded empathetically to Paul's solemn presentation of Bridge over Troubled Waters.

But We Americans are a diverse collection of people. Those communitarian Democrats represent a certain segment of our population. There is, however, another strain of us Americana whose emphasis is not so much on community and everybody getting together to solve society's problem. I'm talking about the rugged individualists.

About the same time--mid 1960's--that Paul Simon was so profoundly poeticizing our youthful alienation, there was-- on the golden horizon of seasoned celebrity-- another very popular singer. He was a smooth crooner whose older, mellowing generational zeitgeist had arisen from a very different historical time and circumstance.

Here's a clip of Frank Sinatra, the original crooner a la 1940's, as he belts out the song that became a theme for many, many Americans of his generation. It is a tune that expresses the determination and perseverance of his generation--the same generation that ran the Nazis and the Fascists back into their holes over there in old Europe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnXIPV6Jh4Y

Ole Blue Eyes Frank made it big during his given time. Back in his day it was all about celebrating the good times that settled in after the War, getting all dressed up, having a few drinks, and laughing.

A couple of decades later, the sensitive poet Simon, like Dylan and others, came along, touching the troubled nerve of a booming generation that couldn't seem to find its place in that old way of viewing the world.

So, seeing yesterday, ole Paul as he lead the communitarians in wailing that tender tune--this had an meaningful impact on me. Finding myself now in a never-never land between two obese political parties, I am alienated, wandering, looking for the party, but unable to find one that celebrates what I know to be true.

Stranger in a strange country, I wonder as I wander. . . out under the darkening sky.

But every now and then I encounter something or someone that partly expresses what I dimly discern in this land of troubled waters-- a stubborn, though fragile, life that is draped in mystery, yet with occasional glimpses of our sure mortality, and a hopeful longing for immortality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuXb4She_sU

Glass half-Full

Conscience and Constitution

My fellow Republicans, excuse me please.

I see nothing wrong with addressing a national convention with the message that Ted Cruz presented last week. The Senator's exhortation to let conscience be our guide is totally appropriate. And his emphasis on the Constitution is supportive of our steadfast heritage as free Americans whose human rights are assured by that amazing covenant.

The covenantal power of our 235-year-old Constitution goes far, far beyond the power of any one man to guarantee our liberty.

So let the conventioneers leap frantically on their bandwagon of TrumpPower.

Let them boo Ted to their heart's content. I don't care; obviously, Ted doesn't care either. He did what he had to do.

Those rude conventioneers were deriding a man who is brave, and smart enough to stand on principle instead of bending to politics, a man who has petitioned the United States Supreme Court nine times. He is no spring chicken when it comes to Constitutional rights.

So, for him to admonish his own party and the nation to retain Constitutional perspective instead of playing fast and loose with politics-- this is no offense to Republicans, nor to any of us as Americans.

If I could add a contemporary person to the annals of President Kennedy's Profiles in Courage, it would be Cruz.

Trust Ted.

And I'm not talking about "Ted in 2020". I'm talking about what he said the other night.

Which is to say. . .

Preserve the true guarantor of our liberties, the Constitution of the United States, and

Follow your conscience.

As for me and my vote--I'll decide that when it is time to make a decision, in November.

And if you think I'm a RINO instead of an elephant, that's no big deal to me. Maybe I'd rather have "more of the same" than take a chance on a high-roller who thinks he can trump every hand that dares to contend with him.


Because this ain't Atlantic City; this is America.

We've got from now until election to decide between Hillary and Donald; we will examine their characters and their motives as they contend for the highest office in our land.

I don't like either one of them. Nevertheless, may the better leader win.

But here's my admonition to you: no matter who the next President is, watch your wallet, and your constitutional rights.

Smoke

Maybe Leaning

To the left, leaning

to the right, tending

to the left, dreaming

to the right, pretending

Look around, look around

what do you see

watch this city, see that town

things not the same as used to be.



Leaning, leaning, out of balance

in the city, throughout the town

as electrons in atomic valance

sooner or later they shall go down



Ride on wheels

make some deals

move and move

but what does it prove



How can we know

what will happen next;

seems it's all just for show.

we gotta go, to and fro.



Perhaps keep it going;

maybe keep it steady,

whether knowing, or not knowing--

just be ready.

Whatever comes

standing strong or falling lame,

acting smart, feeling dumb,

change will always be our game.








Like it or not,

just the way it is

hold what you got

sometimes hit, sometimes miss.



Glass half-Full

The American Deal

Way back in time, hundred year ago, we was movin' out across the broad prairie of mid-America, slappin' them horse teams so' they would pull them wagon out across the grasslands and the badlands, and then blastin' our way 'cross the Rockies and Sierras all the way to Pacific and the promised land of California.

And it was a helluva time gettin' through all that but we managed to do it, with more than a few tragedies and atrocities along the way, but what can you say, history is full of 'em: travesties.

Troubles, wherever men go-- travesties, trials and tribulations. That's just the way it is in this world. If there's a way around it, we haven't found it yet.

But there has been progress too, if you wanna call it that. Mankind on the upswing, everybody get'n more of whatever there is to get in this life, collectin' more stuff, more goods, services, and sure 'nuff more money.

Movin' along toward the greatest flea market in history, is kinda what we were doing.

Taming the land, transforming the planet into our own usages, improving, or so we thought, on God's original versions.

After that great westward expansion transference/transgression, had been goin' on for a good while, and a bad while now that you mention it, we Americans found ourselves high up on a bluff overlooking history itself. At Just about that time, them Europeans had a heap of trouble that they'd been brewin' over there and they dragged us into it on account of we had become by that time quite vigorous, grasping the reins of manifest destiny and ridin' along, as so it seemed, on the cusp of history, seein' as how we had been raised up on our daddy's Britannic colonizing, mercantiling knee.

Then long about 1914, them Europeans dragged us into their big fatally entreched mess over there and we went and fought the first Big War, fought them high and mighty Germans that first time and when we got done with it and got back over here the world was a different place.

I mean the world was a different place, no doubt about it.

For one thing, everybody in the civilized world was so glad to have a little peace in 1920, we just went hog wild.

Everybody got out there a-workin', roarin' '20s zeitgeist, scrapin' crops out o' the ground, building great machines, skyscrapers. Edison had electrified us; Bell had sounded the bells of modern communication; Ford had tinkered us into a vast new world of mass production with a horseless carriage in every garage and a chicken in every pot and and we were skippin' right along like a cricket in the embers.

'Til '29, when the big crash came along.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39RKRelTMWk

Some folks said that Mr. Hoover, great man that he was, was nevertheless clueless, and so the nation turned to Mr. Roosevelt for new answers. FDR, young cousin of Teddy Roosevelt who had been the father, so to speak, of American progressivism-- cousin Franklin D., Governor of New York, took the bull by the horns and somehow managed to breed it into a donkey.

So from Teddy's bullmoose progressivism there arose, through 1930's-style unemployed populist cluelessness, Americanized Democratic Socialism; with a little help from FDR's genteel patriarchal largesse, the New Deal saved Capitalism, or so it is said among the theoreticians and the ivory tower legions who followed, and are still following, in Roosevelt's wake.

Well, by 'n by, between Lyndon Johnson's grand Texas-size vision for a Great Society, Clinton's good-ole-boy nod to residual crony capitalism, and then the 21st-century-metamorphosing, rose-colored proletarian worldview as seen through Obama's rainbow glasses, and now the upswell of Bernie's refurbished wealth redistribution wizardry-- we've turned this corner into a rising tide of flat-out Democratic Socialism.

It will be, quite likely, soon inundating the tidal basin inside the beltway as in 2017 we slog into the mucky backwaters of full-blown Americanized Socialism, dammed up on the other side of the slough by that other guy whose oversimplified version of the nation and the world seems to want to land us in a brave new world of American National Socialism.

And who knows which way this thing will go; only time and the slowly softening sedentary, dependent American electorate can tell.

Looking back on it all, today, my 65th birthday, having lived through Nov22'63, April4'68, 9/11, yesterday's disruptions wherever they may be, and everything in between, I find myself identifying with all the old folks whose weary outmoded facial expressions bespoke disdain, while I traipsed errantly along life's way. Here's to all them ole folks who I thought were a little out of it, one brick shy of a load, peculiar, decrepit and clueless. Now, I can relate.

How I wish America could be back at real work again, like we were back in the day.

We've pushed through vastly extracted frontiers that yielded to massive infrastructure networks punctuated with skyscraping towers of steel and concrete. Now we're lapsing into solid-state, navel-gazing nano-fantasies, living vicariously through celebrities in our pharma cubicles.

Maybe there's a new frontier in there somewhere but I'm having a hard time seeing it.

But hey! let me conclude this rant with a hat-tip to the man--he happens to be a Canadian--who best eulogized the essence of that once-and-future great North American work zeitgeist, which seems to be disappearing into the dustbowl of history, because it looks like there's nowhere left to go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjoU1Qkeizs

Well, maybe there is, somewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38bHXC8drHc

Glass half-Full

The Two Trees

It's no accident that the first human story in the Bible is about a man, a woman, and two trees. One tree is referred to as the tree of life and the other is called the knowledge of good and evil.

Here's a pic, so you'll a have visual to help you visualize the scene. Images are, as you know, so important these days on the internet, because it is generally thought that text is boring and doesn't really get the point across like images and icons do. So here's a pic of two trees; you can get an idea of what the man and woman might have been dealing with:

You'll notice that this image is a little faded, but that's okay. The photo itself is over 5000 years old, so I was quite lucky to obtain it for this presentation.

As you go through life you will come across many different people, places, things. Sometimes you know what to think about them; other times you don't quite know what to think. So knowledge itself can be a sketchy thing, especially when it comes to knowing the difference between something that is good and something that is not good. Occasionally you may come across something that is so "not good" that it can be classified as "evil."

Death that results from a car accident, for instance, is a bad thing, but not necessarily evil. On the other hand, if some jerk runs you down deliberately on the street and kills you, that would be evil--both the act itself and the person who did it.

If someone gives you an apple and you bite into it and it tastes good, then you know that it is good, so to speak. This is knowledge that comes from tasteful experience.

If someone gives you a mushroom, will you just bite into it like you would bite into an apple? I hope not, because some mushrooms are poisonous, while others are not. To be able to identify a poisonous one from a nutritional one would require knowledge. If a friend of yours grows a portobello mushroom and gives it to you for your dining pleasure, that is is good. The mushroom is good in your salad or some other prepared dish. You could even say the person is good because of their generosity to provide this tasty proteinous food for you.

If, on the other hand, a person knowingly gives you a poisonous mushroom, this is evil. The mushroom itself is not evil, because it has no evil intent; rather the person who knowingly gave it to you is evil. So to know the difference between good mushrooms and bad ones is knowledge; not only that-- it is useful knowledge.

Now, understand this: there is a difference between knowing something and believing something.

If you wake up at 5 a.m. and it's still dark outside, you still know that the sun will rise and and day will come. This is not a matter of faith; what you believe about the sun coming up has nothing to do with whether the sun actually does come up. The sun rises to a new day, every day, whether we believe it or not. We know this.

If, on the other hand, you believe that the day will be a good day-- that is a matter of faith. Because your believing that it will be a good will probably make a difference in whether you do have a good day or not. Furthermore, it you believe that there is a God who is good and can make any day good even if bad people are trying to screw it up for you, then that is a matter of faith.

And more furthermore, if you believe that a good God can give you good instruction about how to discern between good and evil, that is also a matter of faith. And you can believe it if you want to, no matter what anybody says. And if someone comes along and tells you there is no evidence to support the existence of God or the tree of Life or any other good thing that you believe, you tell them to go jump in the lake.

Because knowledge can only take you so far in life, in liberty, and in the pursuit of happiness, while a little faith fan take you a lot farther. In the days ahead, we should remember this. All the humble people of the world whose well-being is founded in faith should retain, no matter what happens, their right to believe.

And the people who think they need to make everybody conform to some proven facts and the big data--they don't know what they're talking about. To hell with them.

In this picture, see if you can guess which one is the tree of life and which one is the tree of knowledge.

I'll give you a hint. Both of them are growing on a planet that has survived very long ages of warming and epochs of cooling. As you ponder and choose among the trees of life and the many branches of knowledge, try to cultivate a warm heart with a little faith, while still keeping your cool and being wisely analytical. And it will go well with you.

Also, watch out for snakes.

Glass Chimera