"The Press"

Our world was forever changed when, about 577 years ago, Johann Gutenberg devised an effective way to reproduce printed documents. His invention enabled the printer man to apply controlled mechanical pressure to an inked image in a manner that facilitated efficient multiple printings.

When the printer man repeatedy applied "the press" (more about this later) to those blank pages, the world was changed forever.

Gutenberg's innovation enabled printers to print multiple editions of documents and books. Our Library of Congress recently displayed a centuries-old Bible that was printed by means of the Gutenberg innovation.

The printing industry progressed rapidly. It wasn't very long before books and other documents were being churned out all over the world in great numbers.

Books have changed the world.

Our fascination with the stories, literature and information we find in books has revolutionized the way we live. In the late 1800s, the American artist John Frederick Peto painted this image of a pile of books. His picture, recently displayed in our National Gallery of Art, captures the fascination that I find within those printed pages.

The spread of printing throughout the globe induced an information revolution that has affected the way we think about, and do, just about everything. As people became more and more literate, news of the times we live in became a larger and larger factor in the ways people think about the world. People in the modern world use news and contemporary information to inform their decisions, and modify their strategies for living life successfully.

News became such an obsessive element in our modern life that large institutions were built for the purpose of informing people about what's happening in our world.

Those massive news-spouting institutions now find themselves being cornered into a different role. The big picture of 21st-century information dispersal is being turned on its ear by an unruly multiplicity of online mini-sources. This development is along the lines of what George Orwell called the "brave new world."

Actually, it's the wild, wild West out there. What we have now is like a million Okies hightailing it across the internet prairie, every one of us hell-bound to claim our little stake of the cyber-dirt that's now being divvied up for the media of the masses.

Or "dictatorship of the proletariat", if that's what rings your chimes.

It used to be that "The Press" was all those journalists and editors who gathered and published the news on a daily basis.

But not any more. Our meaning of "the press" is now something else entirely, and I'm not sure how to define or describe it.

But I do surmise that our new understanding of "the press" has something to with that collective pressure applied by reporters on public spokespersons.

Here's an example. Sean Spicer, the new White House Press Secretary, argues with The Press about how many people showed up for the inauguration.

That's The Press now, and this disconnect between "us" and "them" is the new "news."

Lastly, as Uncle Walter might have said:

And that's the way it is, Tuesday, January 24, 2017.



Glass half-Full

Home home on the Strange

Oh, give me a home where Americans roam

where the donkeys and elephants still play,

where seldom is heard, a fake newsy word

and talking heads are nice to each other all day.



How often at night when the talking heads fight

in the light of a flat TV screen

have I sat here so sad, and yes, even mad!

at the downfall of American dreams.



Yes, my Home, home's way out here;

here in flyover country so dear,

where manipulated stats, and alternative facts

don't mean diddly-squat all the year.



Oh give me a home, where civility's not gone

where we still have a song and a prayer

where seldom is heard, a vindictive word

and for alternative facts we have not a care.



Glass half-Full

MLK

Martin Luther King Jr, like any other man or woman ever born under the sun, had his faults. But he was a great American leader. His example and sacrificial life inspires us all to act in love, non-violence, and good works.

Dr. King's love and caring for his fellow-man was carved out of his faithful dedication to the message of peace and atonement as laid out by Jesus Christ. His vision for the freedom of all men and women was clarified and communicated in the revelatory legacy of Moses.

Glass half-Full

A Woman from the War

I think it was several thousand years ago that we heard about a war between the Greeks and the Trojans. And this collective memory in our mankind memory bank is evidence that this war thing that we hear about-- and sometimes catch a glimpse of while others of us jump bravely into the fray--this war thing has been with us for a long time.

Now it is not very often you meet a woman who has spent 28 years in the US Army, but this is what happened to me yesterday.

I walked into a room where some folks in my hometown were gathered for a certain purpose, and at the end of the meeting I met Lieutenant Colonel Lory Whitehead. What she had to say seemed important to me, so I gave her some money and she handed me a book of poems she had written. This is what happens in America. She had something to sell, and I bought it. And when I read the little book of poems it knocked my sox off. May we always be so free to exchange information without censorship and without meddling from whomever is surveilling at any particular place and time.

I've never been in the military, but I know people who have served us in that way. I have no understanding of what these brave souls go through; but because I read Lory's collection of letters, memoirs and poems that she collected over almost fifty years, I at least have some feeling about what these people go through to defend our freedom.

I was born in 1951. But about ten years before I came into this world, there was one hell of a big war that happened on this planet. While growing up, I learned about it in school, and every now and then I'd meet someone who fought in it, but it wasn't until much later in life--like about a year ago when I began seriously researching a different war, the war that dominated the politics of my youth. (You know the one I'm talking about.)

Twenty years before we got into Vietnam, when the Big War was going on-- the one where we drove the Nazis back into their holes-- most of us Americans who were alive at that time, early 1940's, banded together for the purpose of winning the damned thing.

At that time, women played a large part in our collective effort to defeat the Axis powers (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Emperor-worshipping Japan), but what the women were doing then was not much connected to combat. You've probably heard that old song from the period about Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B. That song, always sung by a female vocal group, is closely associated with the role of our women during World War II--to mostly act in supportive roles, Stateside.

All that changed (like everything else) in the 1960's when women became more and more directly involved in our military endeavors. By the time of Desert Storm, women were taking some combat roles.

Lt. Col. Lory Whitehead's poems include profound reflections of her experience in war, most notably in Kosovo.

What I would like to bring to your attention today is a poem that whe wrote and published in her 2014 book, reluctant warriors. The poem I have selected is: mama's two hands. I never in my life thought I would read anything like this, but as it turns out, I have read it, and perhaps you should too. Read 'em and weep.

mama was a soldier, her right hand

knew how to hold a salute



and had learned to fire

handguns and automatic weapons,

even grenade launchers



that strong hand waved men

forward as she led them

into harm's way.



and covered her eyes in pain

at memorial services

for fallen comrades.



mama was mama, her left hand

held a nursing baby to her breast



and was always available

to erase the tears of toddlers

frightened by loud noises.



that was the gentle hand, it pulled

errant children out of danger



and toasted the living

at weddings and christenings.



poor mama, it was often difficult

to keep each separate hand

in its proper place



and always the right hand

would be envying what

the left hand was doing.



(Copyright © 2014 by Lory Whitehead)

Reading a poem like this made me realize just how much the world has changed, even in the time-range of my lifetime. And this world is still changing, probably getting faster and faster. Because: while humans have always been changing, modern technology has enabled us to step up the pace of change, exponentially. I'm just hoping it does not spins out of control beyond repair.

Nevertheless, if our world does ever spin out of control, my ultimate hope is in Christ, which is to say, God. Not any man, nor woman.



Smoke

How Future becomes Present

I was born and raised as a child in the 1950's. During that unique period of history, the USA was growing in many ways. Our military infrastructure, which had been necessarily pumped up during the big war in the early 1940's, was morphing into an expansive peacetime economy. While we had needed tanks, guns, airplanes, aircraft carriers, etc in 1943, by 1953 our nascent prosperity demanded automobiles, interstate highways, refrigerators, washing machines and all the features of what was fast becoming modern life in America.

In the midst of all that economic expansion and life-changing technology, television entered the picture in a big way.

My g-generation was the first to grow up with TV, and this made a big difference in the way we thought and felt about everything. Now no one really knew what to expect of us baby boomers, because there never had been before, in the history of the world, a generation of kids who grew up with that lit-up screen projecting the world into everybody's living room.

So the old folks, most notably Lyndon Johnson, were taken by surprise when, in the 1960's, half the kids had no interest in carrying on with the capitalistic crusades of previous generations. We had not lived through that earlier time--the 1940's--in which the USA's "greatest generation" had shed blood and sweated blood and shed tears for the purpose of defeating national socialism and fascism in the world.

Furthermore, we grew up with a TV in the living room, and that changed everything.

Now our children--the X-er's, the millenials, etc--are manifesting a similar sea-change, as they are growing up, and have grown up, in the age of the internet. So it seems to me that my generation, the boomers, are now carrying the burden of watching a bunch of kids come along who have a totally different worldview. While we were natives of the TV age, they are natives of the Online age.

Now the question in my mind is, how will they be different from us?

During the past year or so, I have been studying the historical time in which I grew up, while at the same living in the present, and seeking to understand the times in which our three children (now in their thirties) have grown up.

My research led me to consider the work of Marshall McLuhan.

If you don't know who he is, but you are wondering, google it.

For the sake of simplicity in this presentation, I will say that he accurately figured out, early on, a few things about the effects of TV and radio on my generation. He was prescient, which means he could see where things were headed, where history was taking us, into a wide world of information exploration. Here is an example of what I'm talking about.

On May 8, 1966, while being interviewed by Robert Fulford on Canadian Broadcasting, Marshall McLuhan described future communication* in this way:

"Instead of going out and buying a packaged book of which there have been five thousand copies printed, you will go to the telephone, describe your interests, your needs, your problems, and say you're working on a history of Egyptian arithmetic. You know a bit of Sanskrit, you're qualified in German, and you're a good mathematician, and they say it will be right over. And they at once xerox, with the help of computers from the libraries of the world, all the latest material just for you personally, not as something to be put on a bookshelf. They send you the package as a direct personal service. This is where we're heading under electronic information conditions. Products are increasingly becoming services."

*quoted from page 101 of : Understanding Me, lectures and interviews, Marshall McLuhan; ed. Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines, with foreword by Tom Wolfe

The above quote was spoken presciently by Marshall McLuhan in 1966.

Now, in 2017, here is my revision of his statement, according to how his prediction has actually played out:

Instead of opening the Encyclopedia, you will use your electronic device to key in a word or phrase for your search. You may refine the search including a keyword about, for instance, the history of rocket science. The online services know that: you have an interest in physics, you've got a BA level of information usage, and you can lean on your device for any calculations necessary. In the blinking of an eye, the search results pops up on your screen. You choose, let's say, the Wikipedia link for starters, because you know the site's sources are populated by researchers and their databases all over the world. Then you get to pick and choose which linked info you want to include in your own work. This is where we have evolved to under "electronic information conditions." Information has become both a product and a service.

If you compare McLuhan's prediction with my interpretation of how this has played out in the real world of 2017, the textual exercise could be instructive about how history actually develops, as compared to how we think it might unfold: close, perhaps, but not exact.

And here's something to ponder. About nineteen and a half centuries ago, Paul of Tarsus wrote:

"For now, we see through a glass, darkly."

Which to me means: we can formulate educated guesses about what the future holds, but the picture is not clear to us. So, what else is new? It's up to you to find out. My experience says this could take a lifetime of learning.

King of Soul

He be smooth

Boss man Barack he come striding in '09

like buffed up bees's knees on a slickery dime

he come glidin in on rhetoric and cool

he be together, ain't no fool.

He say Watch out! you tea party duds

he drives 'em crazy til dey stuck in the muds

Now time come he say see you later

He be cool. He be Smooth Operator.

Now the Donald he be smoothie of a different kind

though he look like bull in china shop some time

now he flaunts his assets like they going out of style

he be big cheez cuz he gots a big pile

Watch out! you lefty whiners he taunts

there's no end to his assets he flaunts

with flapping big mouth like wild alligator

yet he too be a Smooth Operator.



Now here's the thing:



Though Barack look like he from the hood

he got his ducks in a row real good.

Now here come the Donald like a bull from the stall;

he act like he know how to take charge of it all.

Look to me like Obama be crafty and cool,

while the Donald be pushy and cruel.

It look to me like age of Statesmanship be gone

as another Smooth Operator come struttin' along.

Glass Chimera