Western Civ fill-in-blank

 From floor

to Ceiling

Western Civilization rose up from the exploits of ancient Greece, 

the institutions of ancient Rome,

the rituals of Roman religion.

Then Western Civilization sank down into the muddy trenches of  worldwar destruction, when the assassination of one man set off a chain reaction of State-sponsored death and destruction on a level never before seen in history.

Then, having crawled out from the rubble of World War I, Europe rebuilt itself from the ash-heaps of Western Civilization, only to return, two decades later, to yet another abomination of desolation . . . all because of the depraved manipulations of one power-worshipping beast-man, whose demonic presence in history is represented by a disgusting arrogance, a tiny  friggin' moustache and a crooked cross upon which he hung his millions of innocent victims.

But that was eighty or ninety years ago.

Now, Western Civilization:

to be continued . . .

Glass half-Full

Performance of Messiah

 About 2700 years ago, a fellow stood up and  delivered a message to his people. The message has been repeated thousands of time through our ages of time:

 

Comfort, O comfort ye, 

my people, saith your God.

Speak kindly to Jerusalem;

and call out to her, that 

her warfare has ended,

that her iniquity has been removed,

that she has received of the Lord’s hand

double for all her sins.

A voice is calling,

Clear the way for the Lord

in the wilderness;

make smooth in the desert

a highway for our God.

Let every valley be lifted up,

and every mountain and hill made low;

and let the rough ground become a plain

and the rugged terrain a broad valley . . .

One notable repeat of Isaiah’s ancient deliverance message was accomplished when, in 1741, George Frederic Handel transformed Isaiah’s ancient message into a magnificent musical oratorio, entitled Messiah.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_(Handel)

Over my 70 years of life in this world, I have seen Handel’s Messiah performed four times. This musical/scriptural  compilation is truly a magnificent  expression of our Creator’s intents and  purposes for us, his people who choose to have ourselves identified by the legacy of his gospel message, the salvatory news-story to a desperate world.

My favorite online performance of this musical masterpiece (although many consider it quite dated in its baroque style) was presented  by Vaclav Luks and the Collegium 1704 in Prague, Czech Republic, in 2011: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtrIpTUbtc8

Glass half-Full

New Planet Discovered

It has been 529 years since a new continent was discovered, but now the unexpected has happened.

While exploring the outer regions of our galaxy, the space probe Skip2mLoo has beamed images back to Earth, indicating the presence of a heretofore unknown planet, which has been named Arubor.

The Skip2mLoo space craft has transmitted the first images of Arubor, indicating an attractive arrangement of what appear to be mineral-like structures, possibly inhabited, by the looks of it.

The Skip2mLoo probe, financed and developed by the infamous Testapplum  Consortium, was launched on April 1st, 2022. Since that groundbreaking launch, Skip2mLoo has traversed the entire Universe and having reached the limits of all things great and small has now transmitted these images, Note the mysterious abode, or whatever it is, atop this skyscraping Aruborean structure:

The great hope is that the inhabitants thereof will be respected and treated better than the indigenous inhabitants of the last continent that was discovered.

AI engineers have determined that in this politically correct woken 21st-century exploratory encounter, the indigenous inhabitants will not be scammed with a $24 incentive of beads and trinkets, as happened last time,  but will be generously compensated for their inconvenience and benevolent cooperation with a 24-million cryptoid endowment as compensation for their cooperation  in exploring and exploiting the resource-laden outbacks of Arubor.

The Skip2maLoo has identified an unidentified object which may be an inhabited structure, perhaps an indicator of life as we know it, or life as we do not know it or somewhere in between.

For updates on the groundbreaking exploration of the Skip2mLoo on Arubor, tune into News at 11, or visit www.AruborPlunder.bs.

Glass Chimera 

Somewhere Over

 For Wizard of Oz in ’39,

Yip/Harold wrote their Rainbow tune;

Now their melody comes to mind 

as seagulls prance on sandy dune. 

 

,

Somewhere

here o’er the sand dunes

sea birds fly;

here’s a

beach that I dream on

hearing their screechy cry.

 

Out here

here on the sea strand

sea birds play

here now

here on an ocean

I hear in my true dream way. 

 

Someday I’ll soar above the sky

ascend up through those clouds so high  

below me

where troubles drop in skyward hops

away above all earthen stops;

that’s where you’ll find me.

 

Somewhere

way past the real world

I shall fly;

Christ rose up past the rainbow

So then… yeah, so shall I.

You believe that?

I could think of worse things to happen.

Selah.

Glass half-Full

New Relevance Old Words

A worthless man digs up evil, while his words are like scorching fire.

A perverse man spreads strife, and a slanderer separates intimate friends.

A man of violence entices his neighbor, and leads him in a way that is not good.

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

A wise person is cautious and turns away from evil; but a fool is arrogant and careless.

Abundant food is in the fallow ground of the poor; but it is swept away by injustice.

Wise people store up knowledge; but with the mouth of foolish persons ruin is immanent.

There are six things which the Creator hates; yes, even seven that are an abomination to the Creator: 

~haughty eyes

~a lying tongue

~hands that shed innocent blood

~a heart that devises wicked plans

~feet that run rapidly to evil

~a false witness who utter lies

~a person who incites strife among citizens.

Put away your deceitful mouth; put devious speech far from you.

Do not envy a man of violence; do not choose any of his ways.

For I know that the Creator will maintain the cause of oppressed people and justice for the poor.

Bad people have slung their weapons to cast down the poor and the needy citizens, to kill those who are moral.

The person who oppresses the poor taunts the Creator, but whoever is gracious to the needy honors the Creator.

Let the Creator uphold oppressed people and protect their children. 

For the Creator will deliver needy persons when they cry for help; the Creator will have compassion on poor and needy people.

The Creator will rescue them from oppression and violence.

Who emulates the Creator?

Whoever is humble, whoever raises the poor from the dust and 

lifts needy people from the dregs, to make them sit with those 

who are running the show.

Selah.

Smoke 

Fatal Mistake

As a 70-year-old author of four historical fiction novels, and writer of a thousand blogs, I probably read a little more contemporary news and commentary than most folks, just to stay in touch with what’s going on out there in evereverland.

While most citizens satisfy their connectiveness cravings with twit, fb, instahoot, point n shoot, netfluck, etceteretcetera, I hideaway, as the Beach Boys sang long ago, in my room, tapping out a sand-grain-on-the-beaches-of-time scoop full of old-fashioned text blather in an attempt to overcome my existential crisis and solve the problems of the world.

In partial agreement with the cassandra cryers on Medium, where I like to hang out, I often find myself strangely comforted by the frantic alarms of all those writers who are slowly coming to agree that the world as we know it is falling apart.

I suppose that strange comfort seeps up from my existential crisis because I have convinced myself to believe that, while I cannot change the world or save it, I can at least take comfort in the discovery that I am attentive enough to accurately discern just how it will happen that our world will fall apart.

Many years ago, 1970, while pledging a fraternity at LSU, I was shocked when I heard the older brothers swearing, “Jeez” this and “jeez!” that.

Later on in life, I got a little insight on these matters when I turned to the Bible for a little wisdom and historical backstory.

Nowadays, I prefer the full exclamation, ”Jesus”, and I choose to hope that in that faithful, rather than cursory, upward invocation there is ultimately some deliverance from the dystopian world into which we presently are hurtling with the speed of a discharged hollow point ballistic lethal weapon AR nightmare on a dark Wisconsin or Georgia night, or any other day or night for that matter.

Over there in Britain they have a sacred saying: God save the Queen.

Here, Stateside, I would adapt that slogan for yank usage in our present potentially lethal clusterf*k: God save the Constitution.

But I digress. As I was saying up above, at the beginning of this ramble, I do read a lot, which is why it surprised when I just read, an hour ago, in Unherd, a Brit-based writers’ hangout, this statement by Jacob Siegel.

“Rittenhouse could be seen on video, shortly before the shooting, offering medical aid to Black Lives Matter protesters.”

In all the reading I have done to try and understand this Rittenhouse controversy, why did it take me so long to lay eyes on the above sentence, which I consider is a game-changer in our national pursuit to understand this kid Kyle and what he was up to.

That statement sheds new light on who the young man was and what he was up to and where this present maelstrom of reporting on his fatal mistake will take him. . . and where it will take us as a nation that is trying to do the right thing.

Let’s not get too excited about this. 

Let’s remember what the original gun-wielding Sheriff of the wild west sometimes had to shoutout to his deputized helpers as they were chomping at the bit to arrest outlaws:

“Hold your horses, boys!”

Those horses could be the four harbingers of the apocalypse. Stop and think, boys, what you're getting us into when you set out to become a self-deputized gunslinger. You may find yourself in deep courtroom sh*t for about two years of your life.

Smoke 

The Elusive Carrot

 During these troubled times, Concoda's ongoing synopses of contemporary economic matters makes more sense to me than most others.

https://concoda.substack.com/p/is-this-ever-going-to-end

Concoda's most recent blog included a few profound analyses that prompted my responses. A little while later, I got the wild idea to transform my comments into a blog entry of my own, which is herein submitted to you, the reader, to consider and to ponder. 

In other important matters . . . happy holidays. Don't forget get to go out and spend as much money as you can because we now live and breathe and have our working in a Consumption economy. That means the more $$$$ we turn loose, the more #### float around to keep everybody fat and happy. 

This economy is different from the old 18th/19th/20th century version, which was an arrangement of agricultural/industrial Production-based progress that geometrically generated self-perpetuating wealth creation.

Whereas, nowadays we only have, mostly, people consuming and consuming and presuming that what goes around comes around . . . like, as Paul sang it many years ago, the fool on the hill.

Meanwhile, this fool, yours truly, was found to have posted these comments on the world wide whoopdee-doo web:

1. Re: “Until, among other things, we revive America’s once-mighty manufacturing arm . . .”

Good luck with that.

2. Re: “The Fed’s commitment to “stable prices” has become a euphemism for a rising S&P500, turning investors into donkeys eager to reach the next carrot on a stick. . .”

The good news there is: donkeys and elephants are working together on this project, unlike their other agenda items.

3. Re: the detachment of empathy, and “. . . our financial futures rely on one stock market index mimicking an Evel Knievel stunt-jump.”

Recall that Evel was jumping over the Snake River, named after Evil’s great great great great snake grandfather, who originated the idea that empathy is the mother of contention, if you happen to be capitalist instead of progressive, which gets back to the conundrum of those elephants and donkeys chasing the same carrot while the plebes catch buzz on junkfood tictoc twitter netflix metastasized gaming the system leisure instead of working together to make the world safe for bureaucracy, while the barons of wal-world and walstreet issue official statements to the the effect of let ‘em eat cake.

Glass half-Full

The Kyle Takeaway

You play with AR; you will get burned!

Every photo I saw of Kyle Rittenhouse during his trial—every photo— revealed a kid who was in over his head, a kid who was clueless about the dangerous fray he was walking into when he sauntered out, that fateful night in Wisconsin, looking for a fight.

That assault weapon in Kyle’s hand was no child’s toy. Kyle learned that lethal truth the hard way. He came damned near to a prison sentence. You could see it on his face—just how close he was to a prison sentence, or worse.

Deer in the headlights.

But then a jury delivered him. The look on Kyle’s face revealed: a kid in over his head.

You play with AR: you will get burned.

Kyle was in over his head when he left his home on that fateful night with a lethal assault weapon. 

Kyle was in over his head when his first victim’s death provoked a  a mad reaction from people who were nearby.

Kyle was in over his head when his second victim’s death provoked more mad reaction from people who were nearby.

Kyle was in over his head when his third victim’s injury provoked more mad reaction from people who were nearby.

Kyle Rittenhouse was in over his head when he found himself to be a national spectacle as defendant in a court of law. 

Kyle Rittenhouse was in over his head when he was acquitted of killing three human beings, even though he knew he had killed them.

And gotten away with it.

Kyle Rittenhouse will still be in over his head when he becomes a tool of the rising fascists who are presently conspiring to take over the republican party and ultimately to take over this country. 

Reminds me of a verse from the prophet Daniel (11:38): "(they) will honor, instead, the god of forces.  

By Force . . . the force of bullies, bullets, thugs, clueless pawns with lethal weapons in their hands . . . our republic will be shaken to its core until the foundations of this republic crumble. . .unless we can turn the trend of treachery around.

Kyle’s victims in Kenosha were as deer in the headlights.

Now he is the deer in headlights—but not the headlights of hunters spotlighting wild game. 

The lights on Kyle now are the lights of a hyped-up media frenzy, which amps up, even more intensely, demanding an explanation of what the hell is happening in this country, this country where two activists who thought they would be heroically stopping an “active shooter”— Rosenbaum and Huber became, instead, the fatal victims of a clueless kid who wandered into a firestorm of political warfare with an assault weapon, the lethality of which he had no comprehension. He probably saw himself a vigilante in a Kenosha video game. But Kyle had to learn the hard way:

You play with fire; you will get burned!

Kyle Rittenhouse may grow up soon. He may mature beyond his deer-in-the-headlights cluelessness.

 Maybe Kyle will find deliverance, having been through the fire. Maybe he will rise above the depths of depravity that conspire to entrap him in their fascist fanaticism.

Maybe he will no longer be in over his head; maybe Kyle will see the light of confession and repentance.

Maybe Kyle will see the light, take the middle ground, seeing both sides of this tragic divide that tears our nation apart.

That’s what I saw in ( the photo of) Kyle’s face at the moment of the verdict— a kid who knew that he had received mercy when he knew he should have gotten severe judgement.

May he grow in peace.

Glass half-Full 

Jim Crow Religion 1963

 In the year 1963. From chapter 4, King of Soul:

 This Sunday morning, Aerlie and her friends visited the other church, the big one with the tall steeple and rich brick exterior in the middle of downtown Jackson.

        People can maybe change their minds about a thing or two but there is a certain impediment amongst the monumental edifices of history; it gets built up as an obstruction to justice and mercy and thereby renders the processes of righteous change quite difficult.

        Institutions crop up in society like trees, and once they get rooted in the wild and they grow up to be immovable trunks, these botanous growths can be quite a stupendous presence that hinders the seedlings down on the forest floor. Men cut them down in order to make best use, but in some cases institutions can be pruned instead of cut down and thereby by n by suit the purposes of men like for instance the ornamental trees in the town square, the magnolias, the azaleas, camellias. You can prune them and they’ll do better, produce more loverly flowers and generally garnish the surroundings with myriads of beauty and provide nesting opportunities for the bluebirds of happiness.

         In the South, one institution that needed to be dealt with—and it was, so to speak, at the town square—was  the Church, because down here in Dixie, it’s a big deal.

         So this Sunday morning, just a few days after the killing of Medgar Evers, Aerlie Mufroe and her NAACP friends timidly traipsed  up  high stone steps and entered into the high holy place of the white folks’ worship.

          What they found out was: Bad idea.

          But wait a minute. As there’s a silver lining around a cloud every now and then, they discovered something special about the institution of Church in southern society, and as even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then, so they were able to find one good nut amongst the hard-shelled congregants of First Baptist Church, and it happened this way:

         This little old lady spoke to the usher. She said, “Please let them in, Mr. Calloway. We’ll sit with them.”

         To which Mr. Calloway replied, “Mrs. Dixon, the church has decided what is to be done. A resolution has been passed, and we are to abide by it.”

         The impediment was, as we were saying before, the institution thing. Sometimes they have to be pruned in order to thrive better. Toward that end, Mrs. Dixon replied to Mr. Calloway, “Who are we to decide such a thing? This is a house of God, and God is to make all of the decisions. He is the judge of us all.”

        In other words, this wasn’t about what men think they have to do. This wasn’t about the committee’s resolution. This wasn’t about President Kennedy trying to convince Gov. Wallace of anything, or about Congress legislating some heavyhanded proclamations upon Ross Barnett, the Governor of Mississippi. It wasn’t about all that Federal Guvmint intrusion and contusion.

         This is about God and men, and women too. Here were two intrepid Christian women whispering in the back of the church, one white and one black, and they were trying to convince poor Mr. Galloway to just let the tide of history come gushing through the main entrance of First Baptist, but he wasn’t going to do it because he was just, as Cousin Bob had sung, just a pawn in the game.

          So Aerlie, even as determined as she was to make a dent in the way things were, surveyed the scene. She took stock of the situation, sized everything up, made a quick assessment of the situation, the plusses and the minuses, the risks and the benefits, and so she decided that this thing wasn’t going to happen without a big counter-productive  blowup because Mr. Calloway and the other ushers threatened to call the police if Aerlie and her friends didn’t leave.

          Even though they were Christians. On both sides they were.

         “We appreciate very much what you’ve done,” said Aerlie to Mrs. Dixon, and the black folks walked away from the white church.

          Not to be outdone, someone suggested they try another church. So they did. A few blocks away, they visited the Episcopalians.

         Two ushers were standing in the back of the church when Aerlie and her friends entered. Uh-oh, here we go.

         But lo and behold and I say unto thee, the usher looked at Aerlie and he asked, “May we help you?”

         “Yes,” said the young college student. “We would like to worship with you today.”

        ““Will you sign the guest list, please, and we will show you to your seats.”

         So they sat down; the church service went without a hitch. When it was over, the minister invited them to visit again.

        That’s one small step for woman, one giant leap for man’s religion.

Glass half-Full

Jews Pass the Mantle of Praise

 In July 1944, Allied troops discovered a Nazi extermination camp at Maidanek, Poland, where thousands of Jewish people had been gassed to death with zyklon-B gas.

Years later, Alexander Werth reported on the Nazi atrocities that were uncovered there. His description of the gruesome scene was  published in John Carey’s Eyewitness to History (Harvard University Press, Cambridge University, 1988)

Werth’s eyewitness account included this description of the nazis' systematic looting of the Jewish people:

“. . . the victims’ luggage and the women’s clothes were sorted out, before they were sent to the central Lublin warehouse, and then on to Germany.

    “ At the other end of the camp, there were enormous mounds of white ashes; but as you looked closer, you found that they were not perfect ashes: for they had among them masses of small human bones: collar bones, finger bones, and bits of skulls, and even a small femur, which can only have been that of a child.”

Years later, after the establishment of Eretz Israel, the descendants of surviving Jews erected a memorial to these—and all—Holocaust victims. At the entrance to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem stands this memorial:

The words carved therein are from the biblical book, Ezekiel, chapter 37:

“ I will put my breath within you and you will come to life . . .”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch , about an hour’s drive from the Maidanek bones site in Poland, a large congregation of celebratory Polish Christians are motivated by the Yahweh-inspired contribution of the Jewish people, so they borrow the ancient, divinely-inspired  118th psalm, to praise and celebrate El Shaddai, who anoints their born again spirit of biblical praise with Holy Spirit joy,  resurrected in joyous declaration : 

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

Glass half-Full

A Very Special Veteran

On this Veterans's Day 2021, I am recalling a very special man who performed a very special military duty in Europe, 1944, before returning to his home in Jackson, Mississippi:

Medgar Evers.

Here's a scene from 1960's Mississippi, from chapter 5 of my 2014 novel, King of Soul:

  If ghosts could speak, they would probably confirm what Uncle Cannon was saying. As he sat on the lowered gate of his black Ford pickup truck, with one leg on the ground and the other swinging beneath the tailgate, the old Mississippian spoke some of his thoughts about the state of affairs in the state of Mississippi. His friend, Geehaw Kent stood listening.

      “The murder of Medgar Evers was a tragedy: he was a young man,” Cannon said. “He had slogged his way across Europe, along with thousands of other Allied soldiers, to arrive triumphantly in Germany and then knock the hell out of the Nazi war machine. So he contributed to that great collective effort through which we won the big war. But then he came back to Mississippi and was told—what the hell—to  go to the back of the bus.”

       “So, at the end of his homeward journey, Medgar entered, almost involuntarily, into another great war, but it was a war of a different kind. It was an old war that had been started by old men. That is to say: men who we think of as old because they had lived and died in the prior era, and yet some of them were still living—men who, in days past, had retained, even cultivated, the prejudices and the limitations of their ancestors. . .” Uncle Cannon blinked both his eyes at the same time—it was a tic he had.

       A flock of crows were making a ruckus in the nearby hickory, but he paid them no mind. An old meat bone that had, somewhere along the line, found its way into the bed of his pickup—he picked it up and tossed it away. His dappled hound dog promptly sprang to retrieve it. “Bandit!” he called to his dog, for no particular reason except to spur him on. Bandit was obsessive about the bone, as if his life depended on it. At the dog’s sudden bolt, a few of the crows lit out from their tree.

       Uncle Cannon continued, “. . . men who had inflicted—mostly from ignorance, but not entirely—those cultural cruelties of the institutions they were born into, They were men and women whose cultural prejudices propelled them into condoning atrocities that they themselves had not even bothered to analyze, or reconsider in any way. Restrooms and water fountains for coloreds, separate schools, restaurants—all that societal baggage they just took for granted, as if that’s the way it had always been in this world. Their great-great grandfathers had brought the Negras to America in slave ships. It was a helluva  evil thing to do, but that’s what was happening at that time; there were atrocities just as bad, among the Africans themselves, going on over in Africa, that enabled the slavetraders to do what they did. That’s what started all this trouble we got now.  It goes way back; and so, consequently it will take a long time to rectify. You don’t undo centuries of sin in a year or two, or a federal judge’s court order or two. ”

P.S. I was a child growing up in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1950's, when Medgar Evers returned to his home after serving the citizens of our nation.

In 1963, he was shot dead in his own front yard by a white supremacist who was hiding behind a bush across the street.

On this Veterans Day, let us remember that millions of our men and women have fought, and many have died for this nation, and for our principle of liberty, that all men and women can be, quoting Dr. MLKing, "free at last, free at last; thank God Almighty we are free at last!"

King of Soul 

Don't Ever Give Up

1938. A Brit politician tosses a hunk of Bohemian meat at the nazi Beast in a vain attempt to satisfy the beast’s blood craving.

The sacrifice doesn’t work.

1939. The Beast and his thug minions make their move on Czechoslovakia. World War II begins. 

People in central Europe get sucked in, nation by nation, to the Hell of War. 

Even so, in the midst of extreme pain and tribulation, life goes on for most folks in the affected area, insofar as it is possible and necessary. People work; they trudge on, raise children, try to make it all work from day to day, even though shit happens and the world implodes around us and the bombs explode around them, death takes over in some places, while . . .

Life goes on. People live, people love, people strive to live from day to day, while the world falls apart around them.

1939. A two-year-old girl toddles around in her parents’ apartment in Prague, Czechoslovakia, while Europe enters its period of third reich destruction and extreme sacrilege.

1989. In the long-standing history of Czech demands for liberty, Vaclav Havel and other dissidents assembled in Wenceslaus Square to demand liberation from oppressive Soviet domination.

 2012. The 2-year-old girl who had been toddling on her parents’ floor in Prague while the Czech way of life was being blown to smithereens in 1939—that child, having grown up, served her adopted country, USA, as Secretary of State and Ambassador to the United Nations . . .

That girl, now a mature woman, published a book about her life, a life that included memories of her home in Prague, a great city in the Czech nation that had, in days past, defeated—with a little help from me friends— the damn nazis in ’45 and then later, also, the ejection of the soviet communists during the Velvet Revolution of ’89 when nary a shot was fired. . . when Vaclav Havel and a million other brave Czechs shook off the bondage of totalitarian regimes with a bloodless, “Velvet” revolution. 

So you see, the Czechs, along with the Slovaks, the Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, even the Ukrainians and Byelorussians, the Moldovans, Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians, Macedonians,  Albanians, Yugoslavians, Bosnians, Croatians, Serbians, Hungarians, Slovenians, Italians, Swiss, the Spanish, not to mention the French and British, the Belgians and Dutch,. . .and of course the very Germans themselves and the Austrians, with a little help from me friends the Stars & Stripes . . .

they kicked the nazis back into their holes and the soviets back into Russia. 

And after all that, when Madeline Albright—the previously-mentioned 2-year-old of 1939 Prague— published her 2012 memoir, Prague Winter, which gives an account of all those world-shaking events, . . .

  Madeline concluded her book with these words of encouragement: 

“I believe we can recognize truth when we see it, just not at first . . . and not without ever relenting in our efforts to learn more. This is because . . . the good we seek, and the good that we hope for, comes not as some final reward but as the hidden companion to our quest. It is not what we find, but the reason we cannot stop looking and striving, that tells us why we are here.”

Amen, sister!

Glass half-Full 

Time for SpotiTuny

'T’was many and many ole moons ago

in Nashville and Asheville studio

the Lord inspired a song or few

that we now want to turn you on to: 

There’s my anthem of the Underground,

a Railroad tune of locomoting sound;

and an ode to our fragile Deep Green earth,

revealing some concern but not much mirth.

Then comes a ringing strings Sunshine fling

with as much brilliance as I could busily wring.

But then my message wails with tragic demise

as seen through Sitting Bull’s Eyes.

Then there’s a hike to that ole Mountaintop Pisgah peak

with Moses, Dr. MLKing on an inspiration streak.

Lastly comes a jangly guitar rendition

as we strive to Follow the Way expedition. 

You can hear these tunes now, or listen if you dare to;

just click the Spotify or iTunes link if you care to.

 

     https://music.apple.com/gb/album/1593898714?app=itunes

       https://open.spotify.com/album/3LUD5LhKEYaGyoiInHzVo1

Glass half-Full

Fox and Rabbit Tales

In this snippet from historical fiction, we find Uncle Cannon and his buddies conducting their gab session in the Friday night card game. The story is found in King of Soul, chapter 7. The year is 1967.

Listen in:

 “I wonder how many American soldiers it will take to make it happen?” asked Willie.

       “Time will tell,” Uncle Cannon agreed.  But this whole dilemma reminds me of the story that Uncle Remus told about the B’rer Rabbit and the Tar-baby.  B’rer Fox was trying to catch B’rer Rabbit, so he fixed up a contraption called a Tar-baby, and he put it out on the road where he knew B’rer Rabbit would soon be passing by.

        “By n’ by, B’rer Rabbit come a-prancin’, just like B’rer Fox knew he would be.  When B’rer Rabbit saw Tar-baby, he greeted the critter. But Tar-baby didn’t say nothin’.”

       B’rer Fox, he lay low.

       “B’rer Rabbit, after several efforts to engage Tar-baby but without any success, got mad. He thought he’d teach Tar-baby a thing or two, so he reared back and punched him bad. But of course, Tar-baby persisted in his mutativity, and B’re Rabbit just got madder and madder. And the madder he got, the more he got stuck on Tar-baby, hopelessly unable to free himself.

       “Did the fox eat the rabbit?” asked Geehaw Kent.

       “That’s as far as the story goes,” replied Uncle Cannon.

Smoke 

Big Bang Talk

Listen in:

“What can I get you guys?”

Shapur: “I’ll have apple pie and decaf.”

Lambert: “Carrot cake for me, and some more water.”

Shapur continued: “…so the molecules are repelling each other…their electron clouds preventing them from forming a bond.”

Lambert: “Yeah, they need a third party, if you will, to overcome their repulsion to each other. They’re both in relatively stable states.” 

Shapur: “ …activation energy, usually some kind of heat.”

Lambert:”Yes, and in the Big Bang expansion, there seem to have been some mysterious ‘potential energy wells’ that protected the newly-forming matter particles instead of destroying them. In a sense, these forces were working against entropy. They were analogous to that activation energy in molecular bonding, And this constructive principle (whatever it was) somehow enabled the stabilizing of fundamental matter components--protons, neutrons, etc. As a result, matter could become a stable, real entity, even in the presence of enormous Big Bang force.

Shapur: “Energy separated itself into matter.”

Kaneesha, who was accustomed to their dialogues, overhead this, set desserts on the table, and inserted: “Or, maybe it was more like: energy was separated from matter…like, somebody did it.”

Lambert: “Thank you, Kaneesha. Yes, you could say that.”

Kaneesha smiled broadly, put her hand on her hip and looked at Lambert, teasing him. She quipped: “Maybe it was like: ‘God separated the light from darkness, matter or whatever you want to call it, and said ‘yeah, it was, like, pretty good.’”

Shapur busted out laughing.

 And Kaneesha chuckled. She raised her eyebrows and started to walk away, tending to her duties. Shapur laughed quite a lot about it, while Lambert’s eyes registered genuine amusement and a sense of well-being.

Shapur lassoed their levity back to discussion: “Well, then…back to the Second Law…the effects of it are really more general than some folks suppose: the original concentrated energy of the universe expanded, diffusing, and slowing down, and thereby sort of ‘condensing’ into matter as it went.”

Glass half-Full  , chapter 8, is my 2007 novel from which this dinnertime discussion of the universe expansion/creation is activated in your mind if you read it. It is never too late to learn something about the Almighty's creation of the Universe.

 

Functionalized Specificity

 In the beginnings of human experience, art and literature had a special importance for us who strive to understand who we are and where we came from.

In prehistoric days, (that is to say) days before we began writing our history, some of our primitive ancestors drew pictures on cave walls, which were later discovered by curious explorers.

 As humble as those first etchings were, they were the beginning our Art history. Ultimately those primitive figures paved the way for the likes of Michelangelo, El Greco, Rembrandt, Matisse, Van Gogh, Whistler and Wyeth, to name only a representative few. . . even, I suppose . . . Warhol, though his renderings seem to represent a return to the primitive side of our expressive powers. 

Design is important. Remember that.

Well, that’s my nutshell explanation about art in human history. There is another long indicator of what we humans have been up to since our beginning. That is writing. 

For my purposes here, I replace the nickel word, “writing”, with a dime word: literature. 

We’ve had a lot of it turn up, and this stuff goes way back in time.   From Bhagavad Gita to Bible to bibliography and beyond, information that is written—literature—has been an expressive and constructive driver of human progress and wisdom since the dawn of human history. 

In the particular culture in which I was raised—the American version—I had an early exposure to the Bible. It is an ancient book that, across multiple millennia of time, has been used as a credible and significant source of history, faith and inspiration.

Way back in Time, Moses began writing it.

 As the years and centuries rolled along, his literary torch was passed along . . . through the trials and tribulations of immigrating patriarchs and matriarchs, through the liberating of slaves, through the manipulations of multiple monarchs, the exploits of expanding empires, persecuted prophets, crucified Christ and beyond.

The impact of a risen Messiah has been a major factor in Western history. Jesus’ disciples, Peter and Paul and many others spread the good news of his victory over death.

By ’n by, that gospel message got ramped up into a major religion.

From bare bones first century faith to catholic control to renaissance renewal to reformation revival to whatever it is we have now, this Jesus phenom has had a major impact on life in this world.

About seventeen or eighteen centuries after the Christian faith expansion had begun, along came a major rearrangement of our skull-based neurons and we began to view things through a different lens.

The microscope and the telescope gave us a miniscule and a new macro view of this amazing world and  universe in which we live and breathe and have our being. 

Long story short, we became so smart that most of us tossed all that ole time religion out with the bath water.

Since we’ve discovered natural selection guiding evolutionary human progress, the polls indicate that most folks have indeed thrown the baby out with the bath water. 

But hey, what goes around comes around. All that scientific inquiry has brought us to the discovery of DNA, which turns out to be a divinely encrypted code of ancient software—with functionalized specificity beyond mere mathematics— by which our human development, progress and destiny is, to some extent, determined.

But not entirely determined. The rest is up to you. 

(Thanks to Stephen Meyer↑)

What you do with your coded life plan and with your life choices is up to you. Ain’t nobody gonna do it for you. So get on it. Do what you gotta do so you won’t have to look back with regret. 

Whatever you do, pause to consider the possibility of living on the other side of death, instead of, you know, becoming a pile of dust. This whole deal started with a big bang but, for you, it doesn't have to end that way.

And if it turns out that there’s someone there to take your hand and lead you to the other side of that dark door . . . well maybe you oughter ponder that.

Thanks for stoppin by.

Glass Chimera

Elohim Design Inc

 Using these four letters, design something meaningful: D-R-W-O.

DROW? DORW? ORDW? ROWD? RODW? WODR? WORD?

Make any sense to you . . . ?

Well, the arrangement at the end does: WORD.

Yeah, that works. An arrangement that has meaning. That’s what we’re looking for.

So we find:  At the end of our search for meaning . . . WORD

In the beginning, the letters were wordless and void of meaning, and meaninglessness was over the surface of the screen.

And then . . . Let there be WORD, and there it was . . .  a WORD.

And it was good, an improvement beyond what we had before WORD popped up; we separated the WORD from sound and gibberish signifying nothing. When I saw it, it was a little bit like a light going on in my head.

But I’m an amateur at this sort of thing. For a more informed view, check out Stephen Meyer’s explanation: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW6egHV6jAw

 

Glass Chimera

Severed Spinal

 In the year 2000, Microbiologist Dr. William Theseus' is on the phone explaining to a colleague his  research assistant's life-threatening spinal cord injury . . .

“What happened?”

“It’s a long story.  I won’t trouble you with it, but he was stabbed.”

“And the spinal cord was severed?”

“We think it’s only partially severed.”

“That’ would be, ah, Brown-Sequard’s syndrome, then?”

“Yes.  That’s what the surgeon called it.”

“William, I can’t imagine what he must be going through right now, or what you must be thinking and feeling.  Your phone call seems a little desperate.“

“I guess I’m grasping at straws.  I probably knew what your response would be.”

“Whatever it is that our research has to offer, I can tell you, is years away.  There’s some earthshaking work going on  at Yale, and a few other places.  They’re closer than we are to clinical experiments.  But we’ve got a long way to go. What’s his name?”

“Uh, Robby.  Robby Davis.”

“I’ll be praying for Robby Davis,

“Really?”

“William. It sounds like a cliché, I know, But you know me. We started out together on this biological quest. I’ve been watching cells and  molecules for almost thirty years now, Let me tell you something, William.  I’m convinced that deep inside the neurons and the axons, wrapped around  the cords and the capillaries of flesh and blood,  a divine design governs all that happens there, and everywhere else, for that matter.  I’ve stood back, at times, in awesome wonder at the intricacy, the elaborate complexity—sometimes even the miraculous simplicity  of this mystery  we call life—all of it spiraling within two helices that surround  virtually infinite permutations of four—only four—nucleotides.”

William had nothing that he could say.

“So when I say, William, that I will pray for your Robby friend, I am not speaking lightly, or tritely.  If I could, I’d go into the lab right now and whip up a biological cocktail to coax those axons into regenerating.  But I can’t.  Right now, no scientist or doctor on this earth can do that. One day, we will.  But I can do this, William.  I can appeal to the great physician—the one who wrote the code and signed the book.   That is all I can offer you.”

“That’s a lot,” said William, through tears. 

(excerpt from my  novel) Glass Chimera

Glass half-Full

Trouble in America

Signs of the trouble have been evident for a while. People need to be aware of the dangers, and learn from the warning signs  that we find in 20th-century history.

In the interest of making people aware of 20th-century dangers, here's an excerpt from my 2007 novel, Glass half-Full. 

In chapter 22, detectives detectives Derek Trent and Lee Nguyen are questioning a suspect, Barney Bluntell, about a slue of recent crimes in the D.C. metro area:

Trent’s eyes narrowed. Again, he stuck his face right into the other man’s. “Tell me something, Barney. Why were you out trying to knock up a nice Jewish girl instead being at home with your wife? Why? Was it personal? Or is there something going on with this list between you and Moa Grindell? Let me tell you something. We’ve been to Mo’s place. We know about the Fascist bullshit that he’s feeding on and propagating. We know about the porno, the methamphetamines, the snuff films.”

Then Barney spoke seriously, looking right at the intimidator. “You’ve got the wrong man. I’ve stayed away from the IEDs. I’ve got nothing to do with them.”

Derrick Trent sat down, poured himself half a glass of water. He looked at the prisoner, but didn’t say anything.

Nguyen spoke calmly to the prisoner. “If you’ve got no direct connection to the bombings, you can prove it now by revealing the identities of the bombers.”

“I didn’t say I know who it is.”

“Okay. Put it this way. What do you know about the bombings?”

“You make this out to be like some kind of crime syndicate or something,” said the prisoner, defensively. “It’s not. We’re trying to bring this country back to its roots.”

Nguyen and Trent were stunned by the improbability of this statement. Trent started to speak. Nguyen quickly set his hand on Trent’s arm, motioning for silence. The two of them looked with askance at the strange man who sat at the table in front of them. But Barney Bluntell looked lost, as if he were a deer in headlights. His deep-set eyes, encircled with flaps of dark skin, betrayed a flash of eccentricity, or even schizophrenia. He was tottering on a decision to speak or clam up.

Nguyen decided to risk tipping the balance with a serious question. “Barney, what roots are you trying to bring this country back to?”

“This country has a history of decent people, white people, who can make it run right without interference from the communists and Jews who’ve taken it over.”

Trent gave a low whistle and shook his head. He was trying to respond to the statement with a reasonable rebuttal, but could think of nothing right away.

But Nguyen spoke, calmly. “And did these decent, white people keep a list of young women and then rape them?”

“Women have to know their place. If men don’t keep them in their place, then other men have to rise up and set things right.”

“By raping them?” Trent was incredulous, getting irate. Nguyen touched his arm again, signaling restraint. He wanted to ask another question, prime the pump, get to the source of this perversity. He probed further:

“So, are you going to put these women in their place?”

“You’re damned right.” Barney was on the soap box now, showing his true colors, almost unaware of his prisoner status, lecturing the cops on what would have to be done to get society straightened out.

“And how did you know who these women are…the ones that need to be put in their place?”

“It’s the Jewish women. They started the whole thing. Now its infecting everybody. The men don’t know how to handle their women. They’ve fucked everything up. The Jews started communism. Marx and Lenin were Jews. You know that, don’t you?”

Now Nguyen thought he’d take a chance. “Is that why you bombed the Holocaust Memorial?”"

Glass half-Full 

GenSeeS

 In the beginning was Word, and Word brought forth hydrogen on the one side and helium on the other.

And it was grand. 

And in the grand space between Hm and He, Word brought forth the elements, and at first they were formless and void, and voidness was over the surface of the Inbetween but the Spirit was moving over the expanding Inbetween and so Word shook out Light from interface of In and Btween and  Light shone forth. 

And it was good.

So Word continued,  separating Light from In and Btween, rendering Light active while In and Btween go passive, at least for a While, as they awaited their assigned roles.

And all that so far was was as different as Night and Day, and it was pretty dam good, holding great Potential.

And Word generated an Expanse in the midst of the In/Btween and before anySapiens knew what was going down (or going up) there was Carbon for building blocks and Nitrogen for mortar and Oxygen for Life, and  Boron got tossed  in there too so the Universe would not  be Boring, but instead, would bore into the Cosmos with Osmosis and all the other processes of Life.

It was a pretty doggone Big bang!

And it was good.

And the rest is History.

Glass Chimera

True Religion

 Feed widows and orphans.

Bless poor people. 

Be gentle. Strive for righteousness.

Be merciful. Try to keep your motives pure.

Make peace. 

Don’t get riled when people insult you and persecute. 

Don’t even get bent out of shape when they lie about you.

Don’t be afraid to let your light shine.

Don’t kill people; don’t threaten them either. Try not to get angry at them; don’t call them good-for-nothing; don’t even call anybody a fool. To call somebody a fool is foolish.

Before getting all religious about who is right and who is wrong, go and seek reconciliation with those who oppose you.

Try to work out your grievances with people without dragging disputes into the Court.

And for God’s sakes, don’t screw around with other people. Remain faithful with your spouse. I mean, what’s best is to not even look at others with desire. Stay faithful to your mate in all intents and purposes. Just sayin'

Don’t go around cursing and swearing. Just try to do what you’ve said what you would do.

If some whacko or self-appointed wiseguy starts pushing you around, don’t get sucked into a fight or even an argument.

And if someone is bugging you for a little donation, give them something. If it’s cold and they need a coat, give them a coat; it won’t break your bank account.

If someone is bugging you for a little attention, or to walk with them for a little way, just do it. You’re not so important that you can’t take time to offer some counsel or solace to a person who needs a little help or attention. After a while, you can wind it down, knowing you’ve shown some mercy to someone who needed a little help.

Heck, you oughta even try to show some love and care for your enemies. Maybe you’ll win them over.

Don’t make a big deal of giving help to poor people. Just do it. Let it be between you, them, and God.

Pray that God’s will be done on earth, even as it is in heaven. There is a God, you know. Why else would I call this piece "True Religion." 

And btw, as far as this religion thing goes, just accept it that God does exist; if you can't bring yourself to believe that, at least allow a little space in your head and in your heart to respect  those who do promote "God", including yours truly.

Forgive people when they do you wrong, and don’t forget that you also need a little mercy and forgiveness every now and then.

Hey, all earthly stuff is vanity. Don’t rack up bunches of impressive treasures, but cultivate spiritual favor with God and with other people.

Don’t be giving people the evil eye. Use your eyes to communicate honesty and, compassion and care.

And don't go destroying Capitols. Have a little respect for the institutions that we the people have erected for the sake of keeping the peace and administering justice.

Don’t get all hot and bothered about eating precious food and drink, or showing off  your fancy threads.

Try not to worry so much. Don’t fret about the future; the future will take care of itself.

Strive to be right and to do the right thing wherever you go.

Try not to judge other people for what they are doing, unless they're hurting others. 

Even so, it is good to defend the weak, the orphans, and anyone who appears to have no defense or provision of their own, if they are being harassed or taken advantage of.

Don’t go around pointing out other people’s faults. You’ve surely got enough of your own that need to be dealt with. 

Give to people in need. Have a little faith that what you truly need shall be given providentially to you, so you have abundance to supply others.

Even so, don’t give precious things to inconsiderate people who have no comprehension about what is truly precious. Some people out there would just as soon toss your precious contribution in the gutter without even acknowledging your good will.

And of course, while seeking (God) for help, strive to treat people the same way you want them to treat you.

King of Soul

Evolution of American Protest

 (also known as Don’t do this; don’t do that.)

1774:

“Don’t Tread on Me!”   

 Patriot Christopher Gadsden designs a serpentine symbol to depict--and protest--the tyranny of the British king, George III.

1863:

Don’t Destroy our Union!

President Abraham Lincoln commemorates the brave sacrifice of soldiers at Gettysburg who gave their lives in the cause of keeping our United States united.

“. . . we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”  

       President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg battlefield dedication.

1881: 

Don’t fling me in dat briar patch! 

Southern author Uncle Remus documents the struggle--the desperate plea of B'rer Rabbit as he pleads with B'rer Fox not to inflict a most dreadful fate. 

  "Do anything you want with me – roas' me, hang me, skin me, drown me – but please, Br'er Fox, don't fling me in dat brier-patch"

    B’rer Rabbit, as reported by Uncle Remus, later consecrated as classic myth by Walt Disney's crew of cartoonists.

1920-1930:

Don’t take away our booze!  George Cassiday 

1953:

Don’t mess with my blue jeans!  Marlon Brando

1955:

Don’t mess with my blue jeans.   James Dean

1956:

“Don’t Step on My Blue Suede Shoes” 

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uke1B0FpIZ8    Elvis Presley

1969:

“Don’t you know its gonna be all right.”   John Lennon

“You say you want a revolution; well you know, we all wanta change the world. You tell me that it’s evolution; well you know, we’d all love to change the world; but when you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out. Don’t you know it’s gonna be allright!

1972:

"Don’t mess around with Slim."  Jim Croce

“You don’t Tug on Superman's cape
 You don’t spit into the wind
 You don’t pull the mask off that ole Lone Ranger, and
 You don’t mess around with Slim”

2000:

Don’t mess with my jeans! 

2021:

Don’t mess with my genes!  

Glass Chimera

That is the Question

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

to be a law-abiding citizen of our USA,

or a rebel at the Capitol insurrection?

to be constructively active in our American way,

or to wreck our Capitol on a trumped-up suggestion?

 

To do, by riot, what ought not to be done?

No! let them do the right thing and repair our Union!

To assault our Capitol in another riotous run?

No! but by orderly governance cast out the confusion!

So on August 18 the trumpers didn’t come

for another riotous Capitol run.

Selah.

Glass half-Full 

The Nucleotides of Life

 The story I wrote about genetic engineering and buried treasure in New Orleans is found in Glass Chimera, which I published in 2008.

In the novel, Robby Davis is student of microbiology at Theseus University in the year 2000, four years after Dolly the sheep had been cloned in Scotland. Under the tutelage of Dr. William Theseus, Robby is studying DNA, and the nucleotides of which its double-helix strand is composed.

Robby has also recently developed a fascination with a certain young lady, Rosa. On one particular evening, Robby and Rosa are strolling along on the levee in New Orleans. Here's the scene in chapter 12 of Glass Chimera: 

            “Life is incredibly complicated,” said Rosa as she watched, across the river, the West Bank shimmering from daytime browns and grays into nightly jeweled darkness. Then she turned, looked at her new friend.  Reflections from the cityscape were like sparks in her eyes. A breeze whispered.

            Ever the dork, Robby downshifted his own musings into a credible follow-up: “You know how complex a computer is?” It was half question, half answer.

            “Yes.” 

            “As incredible as it all is—what people can do with computers—its all based on memory systems of only two characters: zero and one.”

            “Uh-huh. They make up bits and bytes.” She pulled the band off her pony-tailed hair, and it cascaded gloriously upon her shoulders.

            “As seemingly infinite as all those combinations are, based on only two characters—the composition of the biological world is based on four characters.”

            “Oh yeah?”

            “Yeah.  G, A, T, and C.”

            “The T is thymine.  I remember that one.”

            “Thymine, cytosine, guanine, and adenine: building blocks of DNA. So, while artificial intelligence is constructed upon a base of two, original  intelligence of the natural world is built upon a base of four.”

            “As if the possibilities of a two-based system were not great enough to do everything that needed doing.”

            “Yeah. Whatever multiplicity of permutations can be assembled, or even conceived, with the two-base system is then squared and cubed exponentially by the expansion into a system built upon four.  It’s mind-blowing, isn’t it?”

            “Like I said, life is complicated, . .”

Glass half-Full

The Mournful Sound

An Attack of Volcanic proportions Erupted through New York City skyline 

The two-jet Assault inflicted a Crash of Earthquake proportions, which collapsed the World Trade Center into a heap of smoking rubble: the deadliest 911 emergency in American history, on the morning of September 11, 2001, a day that lives in infamy.

9/11

More than 3000 dead.

But our dreadfully mournful sound goes back much further in time.

We had more than 2400 dead at the Pearl Harbor attack 60 years earlier, December 7, 1941, a remembered date that has persisted in infamy. The mournful sound on that day arrived as  whining engines of Japanese dive bombers. 

One appropriate way to ponder the tragedy of such immense death-events is to listen to the  sound of tragedy, as it has been rendered to music. On this 20th 9/11, I recommend Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, as performed by the Detroit Symphony:

Barber Adagio

Another military attack comes to my mind when considering the panorama of tragedy in this country’s history.

On June 25, 1879, our 7th Cavalry, commanded by General George Custer, attacked Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho people in the battle of Little Big Horn, which was fought in Montana, June 25-26, 1879.  700 American soldiers died. The death toll among the victimized natives is not known.

In that tragic battle, we white-privileged attackers were the aggressors.

44 years ago, this was the  mournful sound that I composed while pondering that tragedy:   

Sitting Bull’s Eyes     ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u71LxQ4YDb0)

Smoke 

The Manipulation of Dissent

 Stalinist Russia’s oppressive control of eastern Europe lasted for about forty-five years. The Czech and Slavak dissent that ultimately succeeded in driving the Soviets out of their region was a long, clandestine groundswell of popular discontent.

After the peaceful Velvet Revolution of 1989, a prime motivator and spokesman in that freedom movement, Vaclav Havel, was elected President of the first post-communist Republic of Czechoslavakia, A few years later, the new nation split into two separate republics.

 

From 1975 to 1986, Czech writer Karel Hviždala conducted an ongoing clandestine autobiographical interview with Vaclav Havel, who was already an internationally recognized playwright. 

Their interview was later published in a book, Disturbing the Peace,  by Alfred A. Knopf in 1990.

 

The contents of that periodic exchange between two dissident Czechs provides  profound insight into the interaction—sometimes constructive, sometimes confrontational— of conservative and activist resistance factions under the weight of a repressive regime.

 

But strangely, the internal strategic disagreements between those Czech groups reminded me of recent disagreements in our American cultural and political scenario.

 

Vaclav Havel describes the conditions that would be required, as stated by a certain bureaucrat, to allow a compromise between dissidents and the Party bureaucracy. This dispute was regarding a confrontation that came up in 1965. 

 

Havel explains the situation this way:

 “ . . . we (dissidents)  (would be required) to come out and say exactly what we were. But such a thing can only be suggested by someone who subscribes to an ideology and believes that anyone who doesn’t subscribe to it must therefore subscribe to another ideology, because he can’t imagine anyone not subscribing to an ideology.”

 

So the bureaucrat's proposal was more about identity politics  than about the actual issues that the discontented Czechs were trying raise.

 

This description of communist politics in 1965 seemed, to me, eerily similar to our present American political and cultural skirmishes. Nowadays in the land of the free and home of the brave, you have to declare yourself one identity or the other. There is no more in-between.

No more middle in America. According to our 2021 way of practicing politics, you’re either a socialist democrat or a trump republican. 

 

 

I don’t like it one bit.

 

Glass Chimera

Up on Cloud Nine

Somewhere back there in time . . . I think it was long about ’67 or so, I went to The Who? concert in my hometown. Right in the middle of the event, as they were singing raucously about the existential crisis of growing up in my g-generation, suddenly Pete Townshend’s up there swinging his guitar around like an axe, tearing up amplifiers and microphones and actually wrecking the whole stage.

It felt like a wild dream. Maybe the ’60’s were a dream; I don’t know. As to whether they were a good dream or a bad one, I guess it would depend on whether you had to go to Vietnam, or not.

This Who memory returned to me yesterday, along with a host of other old episodes, drug up from the vaults of time. 

A few days ago, my friend Fred loaned me a book, Richard Perry’s autobiography, Cloud Nine, about his life and his many years producing records with famous and and infamous rock stars.

There was no mention, so far, in his book of the Who’s infamous in-concert destruction, but the trail of memories that Richard retrieves from those halcyon days is quite a trip, if you catch my drift.

After putting the book down for a few minutes, with my mind full of those old rock memories, I felt like Guy Noire, pondering life’s persistent questions. 

Questions like . . . who the heck was Billy Shears?

Well gollee, y’all. Richard Perry answers that question in his book! 

So I was reading Cloud Nine while whizzing through a cloud at 30,000 ft. This musically trained kid in Brooklyn had, during the course of his lifetime, finagled his groove through Brooklyn and Detroit, Los Angeles and beyond, into a high-flying career, the recollection of which makes for some interesting reading.

The guy started his career before Elvis even  had a hound dog. Through his retelling of those long-gone days, I learned who was responsible for naming the new musical trend,  rock ’n roll. . . where the new vibes had originated (Cleveland) and the DJ guy who coined the phrase that Freed our g-generation to go hog wild with the twist and the frug, the watusi and the whatsittoya, instead of us being confined to the ancient foxtrot.

It pays to read books, y’all! You can learn stuff from them.

This world is about much more than what’s gleaming at you through online pixels and phony phone spells.

Remember my  prediction here, kids. There will come a day when you discover that ancient manuscript, the Book!

Richard’s book turned me on to the backstories of Dave Brubeck changing the world with 5/4 time, how Streisand got her groove back when she came to a stony end, how Fats Domino made a comeback, the struggle that Nilsson had with his quest for love, which is tragic but I guess that’s just the way the story goes.

And there are so many stories out there, y'all!

In the mists of Cloud Nine we catch backstory glimpses of a half-century of grooves and boob-tube whooswhos . . . we hop on an irregular  magical mystery tour, including the behind the scenes breakups, shakeups and wakes of that Act you’ve known for all these years and . . .  who the heck is Billy Shears?

But seriously, so much happened back in the 20th-century and you may remember a lot of it with a little help from your friends. 

We might even all get up and dance to a tune that was a hit before your mother was born, though she was born a long, long time ago.

If y’all catch some ole rock ’n roll memory trails,  you  can thank Alan Freed for rock ’n roll, and before him there was Bo and Satchmo, Fats, BB, Chuck, Sam Cooke   and Dave and  Barbra and even Ed Sullivan and the act you’ve known for all these years, along with the lovable Billy Shears!

So go read a book! Learn some stuff.

Any book.

King of Soul 

Vaclav Havel's Advice

 A world war began in 1939 when Adolf Hitler sent his nazi fascist war machine across the Czech/German border. That firestorm of destructive militarism flamed for six years before Allied armies drove the damn nazis out.

In 1945, the Russian Soviets occupied most of eastern Europe when Allied troops drove the nazis of Germany and the fascists of Italy back into their holes.

That Czech nation where World War II had first erupted was occupied during the wars’ conclusion by the Soviet army. The Russian Soviets established their oppressive communist regime in Czech lands and the adjoining land of Slavakia, as they did throughout the entirety of eastern Europe.

In 1968, the Soviets extinguished a nascent democratic liberation movement in the Czech lands when they sent military tanks into Prague to forcefully show the Czechs who was in charge. It was a bloody frickin’ mess when the Russian militarists squelched Czech rebellion at that time.

But in 1989, the 50-year military oppression of the Czech and Slavakia lands was concluded when a popular groundswell of peaceful protest persuaded the Soviet communist regime to withdraw back to Russia. With nary a shot fired, that so-called Velvet Revolution returned the Czech lands and Slavakia to their own people.

The success of that peaceful revolution became manifest largely through the peacefully effective leadership of one gifted man, Vaclav Havel.

In his 1997 book, The Art of the Impossible, Vaclav published a collection of speeches that he had delivered in the early ’90’s when he was serving as the President of  a free, democratic Czech nation.

Reading his speeches, you will find: In 1992, serving as President of the Czech Republic,  Havel delivered a message to the World Economic Forum in which he explained our changing world in this way:

“The fall of communism can be regarded as a sign that modern thought—based on the premise that the world is objectively knowable, and that the knowledge so obtained can be absolutely generalized—has come to a crisis. This era has created the first global, or planetary, technical civilization, but it has reached the limit of its potential, the point beyond which the abyss begins. I think the end of communism is a serious warning to all mankind. It is a signal that the era of arrogant, absolutist reason is drawing to a close, and that it is high time to draw conclusions from the fact.

“Communism was not defeated by military force, but by life, by the human spirit, by conscience, by the resistance of Being, and man, to manipulation. It was defeated by a revolt of color, authenticity, history in all its variety, and human individuality against imprisonment within a uniform ideology.”

 

And I would add . . . oppression is defeated by a rejection of any uniformed jihad.

And one more thing . . . oppression is  defeated with a peaceful conversion away from of our hyper-capitalistic  transformation of this planet into a trash heap. 

Glass half-Full

From Prague to Helsinki

About five years ago, Pat and I visited Prague, Czech Republic. Walking around in that historic Bohemian city was a fascinating experience. 

In Wenceslaus Square, a tour guide talked glowingly about Vaclav Havel, a pioneer for Czech freedom(1977-89) and later, their first post-Soviet President in 1990. Vaclav Havel had addressed a huge crowd of Czech citizens from a balcony there, in Wenceslaus Square. That crowd-gathering event culminated in the historically peaceful “Velvet Revolution,” which ultimately brought democratic liberation that drove out Soviet communist domination.

Here's an explanation of how the Czech people peacefully apprehended their nation away from the Soviets. This plaque was posted in a Prague museum display that depicted what life was like for Czechs and Slovaks in the pre-liberation communist eastern Europe.

This summer, I am reading a collection of speeches that Vaclav Havel--playwright/President had delivered, over the course of his latter-20th-century lifetime, to his fellow Czechs, and to other Europeans and to many gatherings of world leaders and avid listeners around the world. 

I was reading, In his speech-laden memoir, The Art of the Impossible,  a message he had delivered to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg in 1990. The speech was delivered less than a year after the Czechs and their like-minded eastern-European brethren had sent the Soviets packin’, back to their Soviet digs in Moscow.

As years had passed in post-Soviet eastern Europe, Vaclav Havel became a leader of international reknown, and rightfully so. Leading his Czech fellow-citizens as the first post-Soviet elected President of Czechoslovakia, Havel offered a unifying suggestion to his fellow-European heads-of-state.

At the Council of Europe, in Strasbourg, May 1990, the bold Czech President spoke highly of  The Helsinki Accords, a treaty which and been agreed upon in 1975. He told them it would be an appropriate unifying framework into which the Czechs, the Slovaks, Hungarians, Poles and other post-Soviet eastern European nations could enter into a security agreement with the other European nation-states.

President Havel emphasized the principles of unity and security that could be actuated and strengthened using the Helsinki Accords as a basis.

As I was reading his message a few nights ago, the mention of Helsinki in this collection of  Vaclav Havel’s liberating orations reminded me of a recent connection that I have made to that far-north capital city, Helsinki. 

Helsinki is the home base of Anssi Lihtonen, a podcaster with whom I recently communicated online, as I provided musical content and conversation for his musical survey radio show.

Anssi, domiciled way up north there on the south coast of Finland, listens to music  that has come to ears from different parts of the world. When he finds music that meets his high listening standards, he communicates with the musicians, interviews them, and features their music on his “radio” (whatever that means nowadays) show up there in the far north and throughout the world wide web.

So, a couple of nights ago, when I was reading Vaclav Havel’s high opinion of the Helsinki Accords, I thought of my one and only online Helsinki friend, Anssi. 

And I thought perhaps you might want to hear what he and I talked about during our "radio" show conversation on the wwweb Cosmic Turtle show.

Check it out: Cosmic Turtle

    https://idaidaida.net/episodes/cosmic-turtle-2021-07-05 

Glass Chimera