The Story

The story goes way back.

For many, it started here. . .

and ended here . . .

Many believe it began again here . . .

The story was retold here. . .

. . . and will arrive again by supernatural inspiration.

The Story goes on and on . . .

To get a credible viewpoint , you may want to see the

Glass half-Full .

The Second Thummin

. . . with acknowledgements to WB Yeats and Biblical canon . . .

Yearning and burning in a maddening ire

the westbank will not heed the politic;

Deals fall apart; the treaties cannot hold.

Teargas mask is worn into the streets,

the rage-dimmed riot is loosed, here and there

the ceremony of negotiation is torched;

the dealers have no persuasion, while the rebels

are full of fired-up intensity.

Some new negotiation is perpetually at hand;

surely the second drumming is at hand

as dissenters thrust their ire upon the streets

while our imagined urim of mideast peace

crumbles every now and then, again, again,

And signed intent once again is bent

to pathetic riot in westbank streets,

‘cuz discontent, predictable as levantic sun

moves its riotous claws to dismantle what's been done,

as skirmishes between these ancient tribes

cast shadows o’er our peacenik vibes.

Oh! That forty-one centuries of tribal strife

could be laid to rest in a rocking cradle!

When prince of peace, his Bethlehem phase  done at last

descends to Olivet, with peace that  lasts!

You may say that I'm a dreamer,

but I'm not the only one!

Glass half-Full

Dome and Temple? Why Not?

Whilst strolling on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem this afternoon, I remembered an imaginary scene. I had written it into the first novel, Glass half-Full, back in 2007:

Beneath a cold, clear, azure sky the city of Jerusalem lay stretched upon the mountains and valleys like a fuzzy glove upon God’s hand. People from all over the world had gathered here to unearth evidence of God at work among the people of the earth. Some sought a temple that no longer exists. Some sought a mosque where a prophet entered heaven. Some trod upon the cobblestones of ancient, holy real estate, pleading for reconciliation, seeking atonement for the human condition. 

A man wandered beyond the dome, past the blocked-up eastern gate; curving around northward, he noticed a large open area beside the mosque. Was this where the former temple had stood? What a beautiful mosque.

Could not the owners of this hill sell the adjoining, vacant acre or two to those pilgrims who, standing daily at the wall below, were wailing for their wonderful temple? Why not make a deal? Such a deal. Cousin to Cousin. Temple and Mosque, Mosque and Temple…Mosque Shsmosque, Temple Shmemple. Such a deal. Everybody happy. You pray your way; I pray mine.

Glass half-Full

The Commons: Sacred and Secular

Here’s a view into a commons area at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv . . . one of the first noteworthy scenes I noticed after stepping off the plane.

Of all the airport scenes I have ever seen in travels across this world, this view seems to be more accommodating than most. The sight imparted to me a feeling of community, rather than a random passing of jet-travelers.

The late afternoon sun may have lent some bright ambience from above to color my perception in a favorable way.

The next morning, today,  I notice this building on the street where we are staying in Jerusalem.

Today I woke up recalling some words from an ancient poet who lived near here.

“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness
and who seek the Lord:
Look to the rock from which you were cut
and to the quarry from which you were hewn;

look to Abraham, your father,
and to Sarah, who gave you birth.
When I called him he was only one man,
and I blessed him and made him many.

The Lord will surely comfort Zion
and will look with compassion on all her ruins;
he will make her deserts like Eden,
her wastelands like the garden of the Lord.
Joy and gladness will be found in her,
thanksgiving and the sound of singing.

“Listen to me, my people;
hear me, my nation:
Instruction will go out from me;
my justice will become a light to the nations.

My righteousness draws near speedily,
my salvation is on the way,
and my arm will bring justice to the nations.
The islands will look to me
and wait in hope for my arm.

Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
look at the earth beneath;
the heavens will vanish like smoke,
the earth will wear out like a garment
and its inhabitants die like flies.
But my salvation will last forever,
my righteousness will never fail.

“Hear me, you who know what is right,
you people who have taken my instruction to heart:
Do not fear the reproach of mere mortals
or be terrified by their insults.

For the moth will eat them up like a garment;
the worm will devour them like wool.
But my righteousness will last forever,
my salvation through all generations.”

Awake, awake, arm of the Lord,
clothe yourself with strength!
Awake, as in days gone by,
as in generations of old.
Was it not you who cut Rahab to pieces,
who pierced that monster through?

Was it not you who dried up the sea,
the waters of the great deep,
who made a road in the depths of the sea
so that the redeemed might cross over?

Those the Lord has rescued will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

Down toward the bottom of this text selection, the poet asks:

Was it not you who dried up the sea,
the waters of the great deep,
who made a road in the depths of the sea
so that the redeemed might cross over?

While modern skeptics dismiss the possibility of such divine interventions to make the paths of faith-based emigrants . . . I was reminded, upon reading these words mentioned above, of a certain group of distressed 20th-century people of the book who, when being threatened with massive malicious extinction, took matters into their own hands and . . .

        “made a road in the depths of the sea”

. . . so that they could exodus from Nazi hell and move forward to carve out a place in the wilderness, on the other side of the Mediterranean: A new-old land in which to prosper, instead of being auschwitzed into oblivion.

Pretty amazing stuff on this first bright Sunday morning in the old country.

Glass half-Full

Pence for President!

Fasten your seatbelts.

My fellow Americans! We are in for a rough ride.

It seems much more likely now that the President is going down.

Listen to what Adam Schiff told the Senators at 1 pm today.

I had no favorable impressions about Schiff until this afternoon when I heard his message delivered to the Senate and to the America people.

What a difference one eloquent presentation makes, with appropriate references to our founders and our noble heritage.

The "manager" from California issued a timely reminder that integrity and honesty ought to be the chief calling card of our Chief Executive—not devious, self-serving political manipulation.

We now have an opportunity to rectify the ill-advised decision that we made in November three years ago.

Now is the time for all honest men and women to come to the aid of our country.

Our President ought to represent the (MAGA) United States of America—not his own selfish interests.

MAGA! Make America genuine again.

Mike Pence will be make a nobler President; he will better fulfill the greatness of our great country.

And btw . . . he will better represent the treasured values of the grand ole party of Abraham Lincoln.

The best thing that we Republicans can do now is make a new way: an opportune Constitutional path for our honorable Vice President to get a handle on the awesome responsibility of the Presidency, before November!

Furthermore, getting down to a grittier level . . . let’s do ourselves and the American people a favor, while at the same time reinforcing our conservative principles, by adopting a fortuitous change of strategy, and an honorable candidate!

If you Republicans want to see a Republican in the White House this time next year—allow a new path— a new campaign roadway— by which a dignified candidate will be enabled to take hold of the Presidential reins now, in the next few weeks, instead of waiting for a political mudfest in November.

Glass half-Full

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 As a person who grew up in the deep south in the 1950's-60's, I wrote a song about

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 1977, by the grace of God I was able to record the song in a studio in Nashville.

Hear now the message of the song, which is about two great, historical leaders

From careyrowland.com . . . Mountaintop

        

Glass half-Full

Be on the lookout.

T’was many and many a moon ago, in troth several millennia ago, Mo met Owi in the desert. It was quite a sight he saw. In a bush that burns but does not burn out, Owi Onewhois told Mo to take his shoes off.

Many moon later Owi stepped in again but he got in trouble with some of the higher ups and so they put an end to him, or so they thought. Actually he made a lively comeback in the most significant accomplishment in homo sapiens history.

After that Owi, or JC as we like to call him managed to find HS abode in the hearts and minds of many a man and woman of good will.

After a while a stupendous institution was built up in his wake and it was quite impressive for a long time. Millions of folks, rich and poor, managed to find a place of service and some satisfaction in the structured arrangement.

After about a millenium and a half some corrective measures had to be taken to get the institute back on tract. Be that as it may.

By ’n by some really smart fellers managed to extinguish the light of JCOwi, or so they thought, and they managed to drum up some new societal structures to take the place of his worldwide institute and that worked out ok for awhile, or so they thought, until they found themselves in one hell of a mess, after a dandy VIP  got himself shot in sarayavo.

Buy and buy, when all that mess had blown over, folks everywhere found themselves in one hell of a dilemma. Not to worry.

Mx had figured out that if all the prolies would take hold of the machine and run it real equal-like they could get the grand clusterfk worked out. Good luk with that.

Well that didn’t work out so well either. In fact many many millions of sapiens were squelched out in the gulags. Furthermore, that was during and after many millions had been squelched in the aushwitz desecration that hitler had hoisted on us in his notable but ultimately failed (thank g_d) blitzkreeg final solution to fk the world because we wouldn’t buy his paintings.

Meanwhile, some EMC2 afficiando had figured out the secret structure of the universe that held untold and untested amps of power in its sway from day to day and from age to age and it would take a real sage segment of humanity to keep the thing under wraps so it didn’t set off one grand worldwide clusterfk.

So far so good on that front, although we have had a few close calls, or so I am told.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, FS figured out that the great void that failed to fill men and womens souls would have to be filled, lest homo sapiens find themselves in existential debilitation and g_d forbid annihilation.

Along the same lines, JB figured out that the Mx crowd, now called postmods, had devised a diversion to distract prolish hearts and minds from Mx’s VladStalnMow bloodthirsty sacrilege disastrous attempt to make the human condition work. Blah blah blah is what the postmods later had to say, as through the crumpled ironcurtain trouble and post-wall rubble they shifted their emphasis from taking over the means of production to taking over the means of seduction.

The story is still being told, and history plays out. But watch out. This world is full of danger-lurks. We may need a little postg_d help before its all over with. Be on the lookout for OwiJC.

King of Soul

Bypassing GooFacAmzEtcetera

Have you ever ignored a very long “Terms and Conditions” contract,  by scrolling past all the fineprint so that you could sign at the bottom and move on?

Maybe you remember doing that a time or two—maybe ten or twenty times—just so you could gain access to some online service that you felt you needed to have right away.

I don’t know about you; but I have, many times.

Could it be that those unread contracts were the slippery slope where we began sliding into GooFacAmzEtcetera’s blank-check permissions to move us around like tokens around on an online monopoly board?

Could it be that that data-mining-manipulating-mindreading AI-bringing bundle all started with those fine-print contracts that we ignored back in the day?

Did we sign-off all our legal rights, for the sake of quick and easy internet surfing?

Maybe that’s the crossroads where we sold our data-souls to the devilitating database from hellbot.

Maybe that’s the bush bearing megabytes we’re better off not having bitten into?

Maybe that’s the open window where data analytics, data mining, data snooping and data mind-manipulation snuck in to abscond our online data-booty that we didn’t even know was booty because we were too occupied with bling or blather or boobs or blobs of blahblah.

Are you benefitted by googoo reading your mind? Do you feel the warm-fuzzies when faseboo gets you hooked up to a cyber-buddies. Do you buy into Amz  tossing up product images to instigate your next purchase?

In those ultra-long documents that we so hastily dismissed, there’s just no telling what details, legal rights, restrictions, disclaimers or general b.s. we may have thoughtlessly cast aside by declining an opportunity to reject the deal.

In recent times, we have seen reports about online snooping by GooFaceAmzEtcetera, invasion of privacy, predatory data-collection, even surveillance, which all together seems to add up to:   BigBrutha spying on us, to read our minds, manipulate our habits, and make bigbucks off of us, or politically manipulate our very predictable and manipulable online behavior.

Maybe you’re okay with BigBrutha bullying your life by baling into your blanks, bringing bling or blather or  boobs or blobs of blahblah.

Or maybe you would prefer to obliterate the cyber busybodies’ bullshit  by bringing in blockchain, blockstack, blockcoin, blockstock and/or Buterinian bypassing for buffering the buffoonery and bypassing the bullying beyond its ability to bind up your booty-blather and thereby bestow it in billowing clouds to the burgeoning BigBrutha database.

However you decide, now you know what the choices are! You have hereby been red-pilled, or blue-pilled, as your personalized database maybe.

And if you think this is all just bullshit blight, you may be bright.

Glass half-Full

A Story from LSU

I grew up with LSU. My daddy went there in the late '40's; my mama did too.
Growing up in Baton Rouge was all about LSU, and so I moved across town to enter the University as a freshman in 1969. My freshman dorm room was in North Stadium, which was--you guessed it--Tiger Stadium. And I don't mean Clemson Tiger.
From a south-facing window in Death Valley, I had an excellent view of Mike the Tiger's cage. At that time, our mascot was called Mike the Third, or Mike III.

LSU always had a great football program, and it was a big deal in Baton Rouge. Back in my junior high days, my friend Johnny Lambert got me a job selling concessions at the Saturday night games in Tiger Stadium (known to our opponents as Death Valley.)
By December 1973, I had somehow managed to graduate, in spite of being a useless sometimes-PoliSci, sometimes-English major.  Very near Mike the Tiger's cage (mentioned above), the University had built a new indoor stadium for the basketball team. My graduating class was the first to walk the aisle in the Pete Maravich Center, better known as Pete's Palace.

Years went by. In 1975, I relocated to North Carolina, where I have lived ever since. Since that new beginning I have lived, married and raised three young'uns in the state where Press Maravich coached NCState basketball before he coached the Tiger basketball team, which included his son, incredible phenom  "Pistol" Pete.
For many, many years since leaving Louisiana, I have followed the Tigers. I have to say it has mostly been a frustrating experience.
Until now. Oh, there was a victorious flash-in-the-pan or two. We won a national championship in 2003, but had to share it with Southern Cal, because the AP writers couldn't make up their minds, or some such. In 2007, we had another NCAA title when we beat the Buckeyes.
Before that, the way-back-in-the-day championship was in 1958, when beat that other so-called tiger team-the one from somewhere in South Carolina--the same team that we will beat this coming Monday night.

To commemorate our immanent victory, I'll share a scene with you, from my recent novel, King of Soul, that takes place at LSU during 1969-70. This turn of events came as I was reflecting on my life, recalling those college years at LSU. The story revolves largely around what was happening to our nation during the Vietnam War.
As I mentioned above, I was an English major, which is why I spent most of my adult life banging nails, building houses in North Carolina. But I have managed to get four novels written and published out of the English major deal.

In  chapter 11 of the fourth novel, King of Soul, we find the main character, Donnie Evans conversing with Marcy Charters, while they are getting to know each other. In the scene, Donnie asks her:

           “You live in Savannah?”
         “I did. Now I’m living in Baton Rouge.”
         “Glad you’re here.”
         “Thank you. There I was, the middle of July and I still didn’t know where to go to school.”
         “Did your boyfriend want you to go to Georgia?”
         “He did.”
         “But you didn’t want to.”
         “That’s right. I wanted something different. Or. . .some place different, and it wasn’t going to be France, and there I was sitting on a park bench in Savannah, by the waterfront. . .not knowing what was going to happen but knowing that I had to do something. This is not me, you understand. I’m usually right on top of things—“
         “Sittin’ on a dock of the bay,” Donnie inserted, “watchin’ the tide roll away.”
          Marcy stopped in her tracks. They were beneath the crepe myrtles now, near the entrance to the Union building. “That’s it,” she said, eyeing him surprisedly as if to say who are you and how did you get here ? “It was just like that—like Otis sang it,” she exclaimed.
         “Otis Redding. I hear ya, babe.” Donnie snapped his fingers, started crooning the tune. . .”watchin’ the ships roll in, and I watch ‘em roll away again. . .” Yeah, Otis knew all about it; he was the King of Soul.”
         “King of Soul? I thought  James Brown was the King of Soul.” she said.
         Donnie laughed. “He might have been at one time.”
         Up the stone staircase, into the palatial student Union building, breezing through high, grand hallway, and then they turned into the cafeteria line where she got salad, he got a sandwich and of course the two coffees. Then they were out in the grand dining room, sunshine streaming in through the high glass, the buzz of multi-voiced cacophonic conversation rising into the high ceiling, contributing to the wisdom of the universe, or the serendipity of Friday afternoons with someone who just transported from a crunch time decision while sitting on a dock of the bay, in some place far, far, away. . .
          When they sat down, she sang:
      “I can’t do what ten people tell me, so I guess I’ll just stay the same.”       Then she spoke: “And the best way for me to do that was to come here.”
       “And they just let you in? Are you so special?”
       “Well, I had already been accepted, in April. But at that point, this whole LSU idea was just a kind of a lark thing.

Glass half-Full