Slow Train Babblin'

 Yesterday while gliding along on an ole slow train,

I caught this profound phrase that Brotha Bob had tossed up as he was a-singin’:

 “. . . fools glorify themselves, tryin’ to  manipulate satan.”

This is so true. Recent events in the slow train of our history have confirmed the truth of this sad dynamic. 

Why, just a coupla years ago, January 6, 2021, the Chief-Fool-in-Charge was trying, through a series of nefarious events, to convince us that he was still the Chief when. . . when in fact, the baton had passed— democratically and legally— to another man who was biden his time, waiting for the defeated fool to get the hell outa the way so the new Chief could step into the oval and do the job that we had elected him to do.

Meanwhile, back at the MarLardo ranch, the Chief-Fool was roundin’ up a big slew of scalawags and proud buoys and oath-knippers and 3-peckers and nearby rabble to  manipulate the ChiefFool  back into the oval instead of steppin’ down.

Well as push came to shove, ‘ventually the whole fiasco kinda settled down and the troublemakers were rounded up, kinda slow-like— slow train of Justice comin’ , ya know.

You see,  after the dust settled, the Loser Chief-fool wouldn’t take his ball and go home. Meanwhile, back at the GOP, a herd of Chief-fool-wannabees started crankin up their engines, a-hopin’ to pick up enough steam to roll them right into that big white house. 

There was one fella in particular who had actually played a pivotal role in the big turnaround brouhaha that happened on Capitol hill on Jan6, 2021. I mean, this fella actually turned the whole dam mess around and put a stop to the insurrection. And he did it very simply—simply by doing the RIGHT THing, at the right time, when it mattered most. 

Good ole Mike, God bless him, turned that whole damn runaway train around and saved the country. 

But when the dust settled, and we started sorting the whole mess out, Mike couldn’t bring himself to, again, do the right thing. He just kept playin’ the politics game, trying to manipulate satan.

I mean, he coulda just called out his former boss and condemned that vain, insurrectionary attempt to steal the election in the name of, of all things, “stop the steal.”

Very confusing, I know, but I been extremely disappointed in Mike since he refused to just do the right thing but instead chose to join the ranks of the other GOPpy fools who think they can manipulate satan. 

It’s almost enough to force a fella into becomin’ a democrat. Oh, wait a dam minute. Here comes Chris from Jersey. Great! Countin’ the cars on the New Jersey train-pike. Give us the scoop, Chris, about all these GOPpers chief-wannabees runnin’ around the country like they think they can manipulate satan.

It's really very simple just to do the right thing.

Glass half-Full

The Hammer of Justice

 Somebody please tell Kevin McCarthy and all the other magas that this present array of trump prosecutions are not “weaponization.”

What has been happening in plain sight is this:

The Hammer of Justice is coming down hard on the chief insurrectionist  and his rebel gang. 

Our Justice Department—the one that acts on behalf of Us the People—is initiating Lawful prosecutions to bring donald’s crew of rebels to a court of Law to answer for their crimes against US and our Constitutional .gov.

 The hammer is not a weapon. The hammer is a symbol of an implement that is used  for repairing the damage that was inflicted upon our Capitol, our Congress and our Constitutional government on January 6, 2021. 

The magas have been in a fairyland of delusion. They’ve drummed up this idea that the Rule of Law which governs our people, our government and our peaceful transition is some kind of weapon.

While y’all been lollygaggin’ in maga land, We the People have been taking Lawful steps toward clearing out the criminal elements who were, and still are, attempting to take our Republic away from us.

Justice is not a weapon. And the use of it is not weaponization.

 It is a tool; we compare it to a hammer because it seems to come down hard on those who resist it. 

In elections past, Presidential candidates who were lawfully defeated in a narrow election—they proved to be law-abiding leaders. John Adams and Al Gore are two who come to mind. They stepped aside in a demonstrated defeat, in the wake of very close elections—much closer than the 2020 election— rather than attempting an insurrection for extending their own power and vanity at the expense of our Rule of Law.

In stepping aside, John Adams and Al Gore retained their personal integrity while preserving the collective dignity of the American people

donald trump is the only president who has refused to honor our Constitution—our Rule of Law—by choosing to whip up a widespread treason instead of doing the noble thing, stepping aside.

Therefore, the hammer of Justice now falls heavily upon his delusions of grandeur—his wishful thinking and devious lieing, claiming that his authority and power is more legitimate than our Constitutional Hammer of Justice compels him the courts where Justice is adminstered.

This Justice process has been developing for 247 years. We are not going to dispose of it now for the sake of one stubborn lawbreaker. You magas are now shocked shitless because you haven’t been paying attention to the events in our Courts of Law. Instead, you’ve been lollygaggin’ in trumpian lala land ever since the fox snuck into the henhouse and our Capitol got trashed.

Bottom line: it’s not weaponization; its the hammer of Justice coming down on donald's treason.

Hate to break it to ya. 

I don’t care what the friggin polls say. There is only one poll that matters; that is the one that is conducted by our public officials in official elections. The next one that counts will be conducted by lawful authorities —not pollsters nor political hackers—in November of 2024.

By that time, I fully expect that donald trump will be in prison for his crimes. His treasonous acts in December 2019 and January 6 2021  will be laid out bare, in a DC courtroom and an Atlanta courtroom. 

The legal proceedings in both of those courts will make the MarALardo documents case look like a walk in a prison park. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD-pyWALro4

Glass half-Full

Isaiah's Call for Justice

 Reverend Senator Raphael Warnock speaks biblical message at Washington cathedral:

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X87bI9Blv2Q

“ 'Comfort, O Comfort ye, my people', says my 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 from 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 be made low; and let the rough ground become a plain, and the ragged terrain a broad valley. Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed  and all flesh will see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.' "

 

For a musical statement of Isaiah’s “Comfort Ye” message  in  Handel’s Messiah, as performed in Prague, find . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH3T6YwwU9s

King of Soul

Art or Life? Wisdom

 After 71 years of hanging out in the 20th and 21st centuries, this boomer has seen and heard a lot about what life is what are we supposed to do with it. 

Growing up in the age of television was strange enough; we saw Walter Cronkite take off his glasses before telling us that President Kennedy had just been killed in Dallas.

Then a half-dozen years later, Kennedy’s vision for a man on the moon was actualized. 

Go figure. He had the vision to get the thing started, but was not here to appreciate the success of it.

But here’s the thing: The television age was strange enough as it was, but then along came the tech revolution, and suddenly we’re  totally (or so it seems) immersed in all kinds of unprecedented media vibes. 

So I was reflecting on some of these changes while doing a nostalgic music listening session, online; it was a good selection of great songs from back in the day: 

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br1RW30L-WM&t=585s

Somewhere in there, early on, I heard CrosbyStillsNash&Young singing: “Teach your children well that parents’ hell will slowly go by.”

Maybe that’s what I'm attempting to do here. Here are a few gleanings from the music:

~ From Cat Stevens, “Father & Son,” referring to the future, “You may still be, but your dreams may not.”

~ From Simon & Garfunkel, “Sounds of Silence,” Silence like a cancer grows” . . . and "and the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made.” (My thought: now they  ‘bow and pray,’ so to speak, to the wwWeb they've spun.) 

~ From Don McLean, addressing, in his , song “Vincent” the artist Vincent Van Gogh, “They would not listen; they’re not listening, still; perhaps they never will.”

~ And we sha’nt forget to mention the observation of our boomer-age poet laureate, Broth’a Bob: “The Times They Are Changin’.”

~. . . as demonstrated by this line from Gordon Lightfoot, delivered through the the harmonic perfection of Peter, Paul and Mary, singing “Early Morning Rain”, to whit: "You can’t hop a jet plane like you can a freight train.” 

~ But my main point here is delivered by Crosby, Stills and Nash in their “See the Changes”: . . .It gets harder as you get older, farther away as you get closer.” 

What is “it”? that gets harder and farther away? 

Brotha Steve Stills clarifies the dilemma, somewhat with his brief sharing of life experience:

“Ten years singing, right out loud. . . never knew was anybody list’nin’.

“Then I fell out of a cloud; I hit the ground and noticed something missing.”

What “cloud?” . . .,why, the cloud of fame and fortune, success in showbiz --all that whoopfizz woobee shoobee hipflip city stuff. But everything changes when the fabled, much-sought-after thing called “love” really happens. A lover, a potential mate, life partner, changes everything. . .

Steve continues his explanation: “Now I had someone; she had seen me changin’. And it gets harder as you get older, father away, as you get closer.”

What “it” gets farther away? while some other “it" gets closer?

I’ll leave it to you to figure out. As for me and my house, I put the the music/poetic striving and any potential success therein—left it on the back burner—when true love, and three young ‘uns  and a family home changed everything.

For me, there came a time when I harkened to the voice of  the ancient prophet, the“one crying in the wilderness” placing all those possibilities on the altar, if you know what I mean. But I still do “strengthen the things that remain.” 

Y'all come back now.

King of Soul

Leonard, oh Dear Leonard

 We all have our struggles. And we all have our ways of dealing with those struggles. Some people don’t handle this life well, end up killing themselves or drugging themselves.

Other people adopt a more constructive approach to dealing with life’s challenges. 

Some people use their time building empires, building institutions and/or families. Some strive to understand this mystery of Life, delving into the realms of history, or science, or mathematics, or religion, or art. Some are content to just to raise a garden or a household.

Vincent van Gogh was infamous for making use of his life struggle to create art. His struggle was so intense that he--I'll never figure it out-- cut an ear off.

The creative life is indeed a struggle. 

Beethoven struggled with a music Establishment founded by Haydn and Mozart. But his life work, especially his last masterpiece, the 9th Symphony, was a masterpiece. In that end, he came around to an exhortation to praise God. 

In ancient times, Jacob wrestled with God. 

Several millennia later, many other Hebrews came along who made a life of wrestling with God. 

Leonard Cohen’s struggle brought forth a legacy of, like Beethoven,  music. Brotha Leonard’s tribute to Yahweh did not summon vast choirs, nor grandiose orchestration.

No, Leonard’s struggle was raw and rugged, very personal, and in that sense very modern. Leonard's was, some might even say, tragic. Not really tragic in the way he ended it, but tragic in the sense of . . . his melancholy demeanour.

Brother Leonard showed us that there is a place for sadness in this life, and that such melancholy can produce, when creatively directed, profound musical, poetical artistry.

In Leonard's popular “Hallelujah” lament, a  musing about his forebear, the ancient Jew King, David, the composer's song begins with his fascination in a “secret chord that David played, that pleased the Lord. . .” In his song, Leonard ponders the structure and the mysterious content of the chord.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrLk4vdY28Q

In the song, he ends the chord speculation with a question, no real answers, then moves on through the next phase of his (and ostensibly King David’s) identity crisis, which serves as a tribute to “the baffled king composing hallelujah.” 

Leonard speculates on the ancient king's unsettled search for fulfillment: “Your faith was strong, but you needed proof; you saw her bathing on the roof . . .”

Leonard moves carefully through his royal musical trauma, arriving at a “broken” hallelujah. . .then plodding onward through the emotional pain and the need to redeem it all, all the struggle, through the “cold” . . . with a “very lonely hallelujah.”

Here's my author's note about the woman David saw, " bathing on the roof": Her name was Bathsheba. David's taking advantage of her, as another man's wife, was a grievous, wicked sin in the eyes of the Lord, for which David necessarily repented. But the belated praise report in that forbidden entanglement is that the illegitimate child, Solomon, later ascended the throne of Israel as the king who would follow David (and not only that) but later build the Temple after David's death.

So go figure. All we can say is, with the Lord, there is our repentance from sin which leads to the Lord's forgiveness, which leads to mercy, which provokes our "Hallelujah!"

But I digress. Leonard continues his song:

Soaring toward a pensive conclusion, the “lonely dove” of divine inspiration inspires him, in the end, to flights of musical reverence. . .

“and even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand here before the Lord of Song, with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

Leonard’s final statement is thus . . . Praise to you, God! It's all I know to do.

In that respect, he is within the lineage of his ancient Cohen forebears, the Hebrew Priests.

  

My hope for Leonard is that I will meet up with him in the eternal tabernacle where the sacrificial Lamb Yeshua was welcomed as the eternally victorious Lion of the tribe of Judah.

    

Smoke

The dingle dangle dilemma

 Back in the day there was a man.

He had a dingle that would dangle.

But when he saw that woman again

His dingle took to an angle.

 

So they got together,

found some fair weather

and with a few tools in hand

they developed our planet land.

 

In years of smiles and tears  

times of tears and fears

the kids slid in

again and again and again.

 

Life was good,

maybe a little rough around the edges,

but things went as they should

between the tranches and their hedges.

 

Along came a spider and sat down beside him

said snip your dingle; let it dangle on her now.

So everything changed but we didn’t know how

until anyway and the next thing you know

all hell’s brakin’ loose.

Some whackos went and robbed Lady Liberty of her virtuosity

while Willie stood with his dingle slitted as JoAnne stared. . . dangling in dismay

Who’da thunk it? You can’t make this stuff up.

Glass half-Full