Tuesday, November 29, 2022

Anti-Semites

 The last time—the one and only time—that a rabid anti-semite took control of the government of a civilized nation. . . Germany, 1933, adolf hitler dragged the whole continent of Europe into war in which millions of people were killed and hundreds of public buildings were destroyed. 

After ten years of failure, the little odd-mustachioed German corporal worked his legion of thugs into a frenzy of anti-Jew rage. By hatred and violence, the nazis managed to manipulate German discontent and rage into a nazi takeover of the German nation. Hitler arrayed his goons into fancy third-reich uniforms and used them to kidnap a bankrupt Weimar German state away from legitimate leaders.  Then they smelted the Weimar republic into a fascist “reich” and converted manufacturing plants into a national wehrmacht war machine that terrorized the entire European continent for a half-dozen years until Churchill, Roosevelt, the Russian dictator and several million soldiers put an end to the whole holocaustal curse.

That national-socialist anti-semitic nazi death machine had imprisoned, executed and incinerated six million Jews before it was all over with. This is not a tale that Jews made up.

Until a few years ago, an old American veteran lived down the street from us. My wife, the nurse, cared for him in ICU. During that time, he showed us an old book that memorialized—with photos, soldiers’ names and their remembrance— their liberation of Dachau concentration camp in Germany. The Rainbow brigade documented their rescue of Jews who had been imprisoned along with the stinking corpses of their dead compatriots.

It happened, y'all! in this world. Our guys liberated those who survived--those Jewish survivors who had the nazi numbers tattooed on their arms.

Ultimately, by 1945, the bloody last-full-measure-of devotion sacrifice of millions of  our brave soldiers was required to liberate from the anti-semites.

You do not want to allow the anti-semites to terrorized the world again just because the hate a certain ethnic group. 

Don’t let them use trump or any other American honcho to turn our United States into a fascist hate-state!

Anti-Semite

Never Again!

Watch out for these people and resist them at all costs!

I mean, the Jews wrote the Bible! I read it every morning. Here's one excerpt from the last book of it:

“. . . and the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child . . . Then the woman fled into the wilderness . . . and when the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the child . . . But the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman, so that she could fly into the wilderness. . .”

Glass half-Full

Saturday, November 26, 2022

Solar Discovery

 Every town or county ought to have one: a Discovery Place, for educating the kids about this wondrous, energy-rich world in which we live.

Acton, Mass. has one—it’s a very special, educational place . . .very special because the entire facility is electrically powered by roof collectors on site. 

SolarDisC

The Discovery Museum in Acton, as I discovered today,  goes beyond merely educating kids about science and the physical world in a way that is playful and fun. The community education organization is  providing, all the time, every day,  proof that our sun in the sky up there. . . really does cast energy upon our world every day . . . and that that solar energy can actually be collected on a couple of long parking lot roofs and then stored on site, in batteries. . . and used to run the building that houses the Museum. 

SolarDiscov

Those linked-up roof collectors that shelter the parking lot have a dual purpose; in addition to providing energy to run the building, they minimize snow accumulation or rain discomfort in the parking spots.

So. . . any time, visitors can . . . say, in winter, park on a clear spot, tromp over to the building, walk inside. The kids can have a good time learning in a hyper-educational play environment that is lit up, warmed and made comfortably useful by energy that has been collected, stored and  re-activated on site

Now, today— a lovely New England autumn day— we had a grand ole time touring the museum's displays and play-stations while granddaughter skipped from station to educational play station, thoroughly enjoying herself in play while interacting with the other kids and learning a little bit of science--especially the kinetic kind-- all along the way. 

Papa&child

If you're ever in Massachusetts looking for something special to do, head on up to Acton, an hour's drive north of Boston, and check it out.

On the other hand, you could get together in your own town or city and drum up some funds to do a similarly carbon-neutral play station for all the local young'uns. I highly recommend it. . . might be a good idea to keep children educationally and playfully occupied on a December day. . . or  a  hot July day, what'ya say?

Glass half-Full

Thursday, November 24, 2022

History by the People

On this day in 1989, November 24, in Prague, the entire top leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia resigned.

The causes and events leading to that resignation are many; but  among them are an extremely large peaceful, popular uprising.

Four days earlier, on November 20, a crowd of of 200,000 protesting Czechs had swelled to 500,000. In that high-energy environment, a bold, freedom-loving playwright, soon-to-become President, Vaclav Havel, addressed the crowd, while standing on this balcony:

BalcPrag

I snapped the pic a few years ago when we were visiting Prague. Our tour guide pointed out that (in my opinion) historic balcony.

Please note that that 1989 crowd of a half-million Czechs did not attack their government; nor did they trash the place; nor did they attack the leaders of the ruling party, or threaten any one them with a scaffold. But with the peacefully constructive leadership of Vaclav Havel, Alexander Dubcek and others, they were able to initiate a peaceful revolution, now called the Velvet Revolution, and thereby join the ranks of freedom-loving nations.

These last few days, November 2022, I have been pondering the idea of Liberty. We are visiting Boston, just now. If you walk around this historic city for any length of time, you cannot miss the atmosphere of Liberty that pervades the place. 

From the Old North Church where Robert Newman signaled to Paul Revere, as he was waiting across the Charles River, came Newman’s lantern signal that the British were coming! . . .

 . . . to the Civil War Soldiers monument on Boston Common, or the Wendell Phillips monument: 

WendellPhil

. . . Along these lines of Liberty musing, this baby boomer cannot fail to remember. . . nor fail to mention, in this year of ’22, that liberty-loving Massachusetts Senator who, while assuming our Presidency in 1961, offered this counsel to us all:

“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

JFK's message of constructive liberty was not confined only to us Americans. Later in his Presidency, while visiting the fiercely divided city of Berlin Germany, he challenged the citizens of that embattled city: 

“My fellow citizens of the world: Ask not what America will do for you, but what, together, we can do for the freedom of man.”

His counsel of peaceful, constructive doing—rather than destructive rioting— is timely and appropriate for us . . .  We the People of these United States of America in 2022. 

Think about that this Thanksgiving. Do you really want to start another civil war just because one man refuses to play by the rules?

Glass half-Full 

Saturday, November 19, 2022

The Bled Badge of Duty

 January 6, 2021. Michael Falone on duty at the US Capitol:

Fanone1

A half-year later, July 27, 2021:

Veteran US Capitol Police Officer/ Metro Washington DC police officer Michael Falone testifies about defending our Capitol and our Congress from the January 6 MAGA insurrectionists. Still recovering from seeveral life-threatening injuries He testified:

  “What makes the struggle harder, and more painful,  is to know so many of my fellow citizens, including so many of the people I put my life at risk to defend. . .  are downplaying, or outright denying what happened. I feel like I went to hell and back to protect them and the people in this room. But too many are now telling me that hell doesn’t exist, or that hell actually wasn’t that bad.”

But  Adam Kinzinger,  US Air Force Pilot and US House Representative, responded tearfully, with encouragement to Michael andto the other two testifying officers who were present: 

 “ But you guys won! You guys held. You know, democracies are not defined by our bad days. We’re defined by how we come back from bad days.”

Furthermore, our nation is not  defined by our bad days.

We are defined by how we recover, and how we move progressively forward, beyond those bad days. . . overcoming those infamous bad days of that treasonous assault of our Congress, our Capitol, our very Nation.

We shall overcome! Deep in my heart, I know, we shall overcome!

. . . with some serious help from our appointed defenders!"

Fanone2

Thank you, Michael. . . and all of our brave officers who defended our Congress, our Capitol on that day!

Sing it! You know the tune:

Oh say can you see, in the 2021 light

What we so proudly maintained 

after a riotous fight.

That broad dome and wide steps

through the perilous fight

O’er the barricades we watched

were so gallantly retained!

As our Congress did dare, with teargas in the air,

giving proof through the fight

that our Congress was still there;

O say does that Capitol Congress  remain

with our Presidency,

o’er the land of the free,  Democracy!

Glass half-Full

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Uncle Tom v. Fred Douglass

 Them Georgia crackers have sho’nuf got themselves in a hot spot now, if you catch my meanin’. Them Maga politicians from Wash’ton they be hoppin like mexcan jumpin beans, zippin’ on down to Georgia lookin’ for a mess a voters to steal. Start the steal, y’all: they be sayin again. . . Them  Maga mavens up on de Hill.

Now dey be sendin’ Uncle Tom to blast through that donkey-ass line, wid it bein fourth down now and 5 in overtime on the 6th a December in the Senate Bowl and the score dam-near tied at 50-49.

Yazzah, them GOPpers on the sideline— lindsey and mitchey—dey be playin’ catchup ball . . . an even the big cheese his own dam self . . . likely be poppin’ from maraloogoo hot to trot on up to Atlanta to make special speech for Unc’Tom since now he be runnin  like hell. . . yeah he shonuf gots dat ball, y’all, an he be runnin’ like hell wid it jez like da old days, cuz his teammates up on de Hill be sweatin bullets since ‘lection day. Y’all listen on up now!

Meanwhile, in other Georgia news, US Senator Raphael Warnock is running for re-election. The Reverend Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church answered a call to public service two years ago. He was blessed with victory in being elected to the US Senate to represent the great state of Georgia, home of former President Jimmy Carter and God only knows how many other great Americans such as Margaret Mitchell who wrote Gone With the Wind.

And we all know, ya’ll, that good governance in the US Senate will be gone with the wind if the Reverend Warnock is not re-elected and the Maga Republicans be tearing down the goal posts while Uncle Tom takes his seat in the US Senate.

I’m serious y’all!

For more information on this very important electoral choice, listen to Roland Martin’s recent report: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3Ty1s8PPE

Roland

 Glass half-Full

Thursday, November 10, 2022

Where's the Civics Class?

Where’s the Civics Class?

Now that it has been plainly shown that our nation is being torn apart by political infighting, maybe we should get back to teaching Civics in schools again.

We had civics in high school— or was it junior high?— back in the day. . . 1960’s, that decade when a President challenged us to 

“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can your country.”

“Back in the day”. . . ha! Now I’m sounding like our parents’ generation—you know the one—the generation who drove the nazis and fascists back into their holes. 

Ah, but now, those fascist bullies have surfaced on our side of the pond. Now they’re crawling out of their holes, trying to convince us that .gov by strongman bullies is the way to go.

Go back in your holes, ye bully Rebumlicans. We have a free nation to run here. Let’s see some real Republicans come out of the trumpian wreckage.

Nowadays the Dems are calling them authoritarians, meaning leaders who think it more effective to just take charge of things instead of following the Rule of Law. 

Yes, the Dems, the so-called “educated elite,” or the “coast dwellers” who make their living with their brains instead of brawn. And I’m one of them because I have a baccalaurete degree and I have nothing better to do than sit around and write blogs and novels after reading the Post and the Times even though I spent 25 years banging nails as a carpenter and plunging toilets as a maintenance man because I couldn’t break into the teaching profession.

Yes, I know this sounds like a rant, (because it is) but, hey, what else do expect from a 71-year-old baby boomer? A joint? No. I left that behind a long time ago.

But I digress.

The point is: why do our schools not get back to teaching Civics?

So that this next generation—X,Y,Z. . .whatever the hell they are—can be properly taught about our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, our history, our damn civil war and the sacrifices that previous generations have made so that the young’uns of today don’t end up driving our Ship of State right into the shoals of destruction.

Civics

Glass half-Full 

Tuesday, November 8, 2022

The Soul of Liberty

 Liberty and Justice for All is not something that just happens.

        As compatriots with liberation and deliverance, liberty and justice emerge triumphant from the very embattlements of human history. Where their zealous advocates manage to grab some foothold in the landscape of human struggle, freedom is fleeting not far behind. Noble aspirations are all summoned up when the careless slayings of men demand value more sacred, more holy, than the mere clashing of weapons and the expiration of breathing bodies.

Forgiven

        In our present American epoch, the bad news is: there is an inevitable outflow—the shedding of blood—which bleeds out when rebellion escalates to ever higher levels of violence and death.

        The good news is: where there’s shedding of blood, Soul is not far beneath. We forgive and persevere, and our Soul will be rejuvenated; our American body politic will recover. We will rally and strengthen those appropriate things that remain.

    Our collective Soul of American Liberty is this:  the principle that we can live, work and thrive together without tearing each other apart, and that our Rule of Law, when put to proper use, will give us the wherewithal to resolve and to work out our differences.

        Here's the deal.  As long as life-blood flows through our inherited arteries of Law,  Democracy and Governance, our collective American Soul can thrive and survive. When, however, those arteries are traumatically severed by acts of aggression, violence and rebellion, we bleed.

    If we bleed out, we die. If we arrest the bleeding, we recover and move forward to live and prosper as a Nation and as individual Citizens.

    Today, election day 2020, let us collectively resolve to recover. . . to revive and replenish our blood as it circulates nutrients of Liberty and Justice through the body politic.

Voting

    And so. . . we shall  recover, and we shall overcome. We then repair and resume our 246 years of blood-borne Liberty and Justice for All. 

Selah.

King of Soul. (See chapter 5.)

Saturday, November 5, 2022

Deep South stuff

 I was born and raised in the Deep South, and have lived to tell about it.

And tell about it. . . I did, in my 2017 novel, King of Soul.

In 1963, Medgar Evers was shot dead in his own front yard by a white supremecist. 

My novelic story in King of Soul describes events that might have happened the next day.

Here is one scene in which a housemaid, Aleen, is sitting at a dining room table where she is usually the server; but on this particular day, the lady of the house has chosen to serve her: 

        Cora Jean . . . stood up. “Excuse me. I’ll be right back. Please keep your seat, Aleen.”

       Then it was Aleen and Donnie sitting at the dining table. Donnie felt a little funny about it; this had never happened before. In the evenings, the table was usually stocked with supper, most of which Aleen had cooked, before she went home to cook for her own family. Donnie’s sister, Nancy, walked in the room. She’s nine. 

       “Where’s mama?” she said. She was looking at Aleen with curiosity.

       “In the kitchen,” Donnie replied. “Go see her.”

       “No.”

       “Go ask her if we can have some sweet potato pie.”

       “No. It’s too close to dinner for pie,” objected Nancy.

       “No, it’s not. Go ask her.”

       “You go ask her.”

       “Aw, shucks, Nancy, go sit on the couch. Me and Aleen are talkin’.”

       “Talkin’ about what? I can talk too.”

       “Grown-up stuff.”

       “You’re not a grownup,” charged Nancy, sticking her lower lip out.

       Now that was true. Sally was a little smarter than Donnie thought. She had not always been, though.

       Nancy walked halfway around the table, next to Aleen. “Are you gonna cook some dinner for us, Aleen?” she asked, meekly. Her brown eyes were wide open with anticipation. 

       Aleen just smiled at her, and stroked the stray bangs from the girl’s forehead. 

       “Aw, Nancy, mama’s makin’ dinner,” Donnie declared. “ Today’s different. Can’t you see that?”

       “Oh yeah, smarty pants! What’s different about it?” she persisted.

       Now Donnie was stumped. Something was indeed different about today, but he didn’t know what, except he knew that some important colored man had been shot and Aleen’s daughter had been arrested. 

       His sister was involved now, and she liked it that way. She looked at Donnie, challenging him with her eyes. “Aleen’s sittin’ at the table. That’s what’s different!”

       Donnie could not argue with that. It’s a fact.  

Fast forward: Last night, I was watching a 1990 movie, The Long Walk Home, on Amazon.The story there depicts events surrounding the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56. There was a turning point moment in the video that echoed my novel scene above. So I snapped it: 

WhoopiSissy

King of Soul

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

Portrait of a Lady

 Back in 1977, I wrote a song about Autumn.

Autumn

The scene described therein is focused upon a woman who, while watching autumn leaves fall, is drawn into an old memory of love.

Soon thereafter, I was able to record the song in my

  Something for Everyone  vinyl LP album.

Perhaps you would enjoy listening to the wistful tune:

 Portrait of a Lady

King of Soul