the Chopped-up Tale of Nebutrumpnezzar

 Back in the day, not too long ago and not too far away, king Nebutrumpnezzar had a dream, after which he approached one of his Yid advisors for some explanation. King Nebu had had a dream which really bothered him. So he went to his trustiest aide, Fixiel to ask for an explanation.

Describing the dream, King Nebu explained that he had seen himself in a maganificent arrangement with a flourishing empire of towers and casinos and blahblah and riprap and there was in the midst of the dream a large tree—a super-big tree. It was so big that its branches reached to the upper reaches of the financial world; it was even visible in other parts of the world, with towering branches in russian capitals surrounded by beauty queens, and the beasts prospered in its shade and the birdbrains of the sky dwelt in its branches. It was all maganificent, like a walk on 5th ave and shooting some low-life birdbrain and nobody mentioning the demise. 

But hey, what the heck;? Suddenly a watcher pops up, calling out instructions to the the powers that be, commanding them to cut the tree down!

Whoa! What the hell is going on here? thought Neb. Little munchkins out in the hinterlands chopping the maga tree down with millions of little hatchets that they dropped into ballot boxes everywhere from atlantic to pacific, with friggin' mail-in ballots, no less, but mostly in the blue-shade spots where donkeys liked to relax in the shade, which didn’t make any sense. 

Still yet, now here’s Fixiel, droning on. . . with his explanation of the miserable dream. . . outlining the instructions that had been promulgated from on High.

“ But leave the trumpstump with its roots in the maga ground, but with a band of litigation and journalism around it in the new grass of the hinterlands, and let him be drenched with the dew of democracy, and let him find humility among the good’ole’boys. Let his mind be changed from that of a mogul and let a defendant’s experience be given to him, and let seven periods of time pass over him and we’ll see how well he how handles his being chopped down to size as he watches the rise of whoever shows up in Milwaukee to talk sense into the birds who gather to decide whether to plant a new tree or to hack around to try to cut  the old one down to size.  

So we see that the Most High in whom we trust is ruler over the realm of Amerilon and He sets over it, as the Good Book say, "the lowliest of men."  Don't ask me why.

But then We the People have to deal with the slings and arrows of outrageous magamania. So deal with it, all you magamaniacs and democrats.  I never thought I'd see the day, but hey . . . sh*t happens. Deal with it.

Glass half-Full

Sands of Time

 Back in the day. . .Way, way past the Beginning, when G*d was bigbanging the heavens and the earth and the waters and the Sky was over the surface of the Deep and the Spirit of G*d was churning up the waters, raising up the tides whereupon waves would roll across the sands of time and travellers would traipse barefooted collecting shells and whatnot. . .

. . . a traveler happened upon a sandbag, filled with sand, whereupon he rested himself down and laid his head upon the sandbag and contemplated the sands of time and the waves of fate and, and, as Lincoln had said and Barack had said,  the better angels of our nature. . .
 and the winds of faith and lo and behold as he gazed into the blue sky he beheld a stairway.

 

 And it was good. And he climbed the stairway in his mind whereunto he saw in the distance a tall pole with a small pole crossing it with angels upon the head of a pin  and he knew that what he was seeing  would transmit a signal of hope throughout the ages,

beyond the sands of time, leaping over the waves of adversity and even o’er death itself. You believe that? even over death itself? You believe it? If you believe that I've got some real estate I'll sell you in heaven . . .  but the price is already paid.

Anyway , meanwhile back at the branch. . . And it was good, and he knew it was.   And so he released the signals into grand Net where it may or may not catch the attention of men, women or even angels, if you can believe it,  who are giving attention to the waves of faith and the sands of time and stairways ascending upward into . . . into whatever's out there, whatever's up there. Just grok it for awhile the next time you lay your head down on the sandbags of Time.

Glass half-Full

Soft Stone Face

The way that all things, future and past, are now being swept into a timeless cyberspace present, I figure that my next novel, #5, might as well be posted online, as it develops . . . as it morphs up from the past, leaps out of my mind onto the keyboard into electronic eternity. 

Here is  beginning of first chapter:

“Over here, by the pathway, please, George, let’s see what it looks like, right here” she commanded. Leona pointed earthward and stepped away. 

Carrying the angel between their outstretched arms, her two dutiful gardeners performed the deed, easily.

“Hmm. . .” she intoned, considering its position in her front yard. She gazed at the statue for a moment. “Have a seat on the porch. Take a break. I need to think about this for a moment.”

George and Willie were only too happy to accept her gentle command.  And so they did. Leona walked out to the front edge of the yard, to get a street view. The angel—pudgy little darling that it was—she had encountered in an antique shop in Charleston. After a moment, she walked southward on the sidewalk, toward town square. A block away, she turned back to have a look from the block-away perspective. But Leona knew immediately that that distance was not to be the determining factor. Her little angel was just too insignificant, too miniscule, from that distance. It would have to occupy, by its placement, a more commanding position in her cultivated arrangements.

Arriving again at her front yard, Leona spoke across the scape to her twice-blessed handyman-gardener. “George,” put it there, in the middle.”

George set his cup aside, lifted himself from the front-porch rocker. With Willie, they traipsed down the four steps, along the sidewalk. Lifting again the angel, they carried it the sixteen-or-so feet to the yard middle. Arriving there at the appointed midpoint target, the two ole codgers paused. George set his eyes on his employer again. 

“Yes, that’s it. Perfect. Thank you.”

Lowering the angel to earthward brought down upon the ages an ancient legacy. But who knew?

A hundred years went by.

***  Walking past that familiar old white clapboard mansion, Noal paused for a moment to ponder, for the umpteenth time, the soft stone face of an angel. 

Back in the day, a hundred or so year ago, Leona Baresford—enterprising lady that she was— had been supervising the arrangement of her life-project, Mountain Aire Homestead. She had instructed  gardeners to place her angel in the front yard, in the middle of the front yard. 

Whenever Noal would amble by the angel, he could not help but retrieve in his mind some age-old memory. Whether the flicker was his own imagination, or some ancestral snippet, retrieved from some person, place or thing of long ago, maybe even far away , he had not yet determined. But hey, who knows about such things? Maybe someone, somewhere, Moses? understood. Noal was still trying to figure it all out. 

Maybe the angel, or the idea of an angel, had drifted down from heaven. God forbid that it might have trummeled up from the nether regions.

But hey, it doesn’t really matter now. That must have been in a time so long ago, and originating so far away, that he could assign, in his mind, no time nor place for it. 

Noal had never seen a real angel anyway, so how could he know? He was not even certain that such a thing as an angel exists. I mean, he had been taught, from an early age, that there was such a thing as an angel. It was known to be the celestial being that had stood, with its angel-twin, just outside the gates of Eden after Adam and Even had been banished because they had screwed up when they heeded the counsel of that frickin’ ole serpent who had been hanging around trying to stir up trouble before he finally managed to bust through the Elohim omnipotence with his apple trick.  

Now the guard angels had been assigned from on high. Their duty was to prevent Adam and Eve from getting back into the special venue, wherein they had been birthed into the physical world, but then later ejected,  in a time so long ago and oh so far away. 

Yes, so long ago, and so far away, in a garden far, far away from this place that— were Moses himself inclined to give an account of it— he would be perplexed re the manner in which he would—or even could—document the official, historical account of what is happening here and now in America, as if it were even relevant to what was happening way back when, back in the day, in the mists of antiquity. . . (to be continued.

Glass Chimera 

Peace and Safety Falling Apart

 Ole Will Yates thought the world was falling apart

back in ’21, it was . . . twentieth century version

after the Big War erupted with an Archduke start:

a royal assassination provoking Kaiser incursion.

But even before that, poet Arnold had feared 

denizens of 19th-century struggle and fight

as industrial might was violently gear’d

for restive armies  clashing by night.

Yet we all know a poet’s just the fool on the hill

crying useless tears for our human condition

And yet we see and we lament them still

as we homo sapiens go cranking our 21st edition.

Back in the day, hitler tried to kill all the Jews

But our guys dismantled his high-tech murders

So the children of Abraham could surely refuse

to be driven like sheep by swastika’d herders.  

Then Rachel, weeping for her children,

came fleeing, eluding that holocaust;

but along came hamas with hisbollah kilndren

to renew ancient grudges of battles long lost.

So what beast that had blown out in a Berlin bunker

while Allies liberated the Brandenburg plaza

could fire up fresh holocaust through a hisbollah junker,

slouching through tunnel trickery to Gaza

And what beast? that had blown out from a D-day bunkered,

could now be slouching toward our Capitol dome

while the chief maga magus of magaworld  hunkered 

in the Offal with dinner while insurrectionists roam?

It has happened before. 1939.

Smoke

Those Times for Rhapsodies

For such a time as that . . .  a time of recovery, a time for digging out of  Flanders trenches, a time to recover innocence and confidence, a time to relocate peace and hope, a time between two world wars. . . ’t’was a time for jazz,  a time of Rhapsody. 

You see, a funny thing had happened on the way to America. . . so much of our celebratory American rhapsodizing had been conceived, years earlier, in Russian angst and trouble. 

George Gershwin’s father and mother had gotten out of Russia by 1895. They had managed to elude Russian antisemites and make their way over to that classic destination where the tired and weary huddled masses of the world were still yearning to embark, New York.

Sergei Rachmaninoff had been born in Russia in 1873, but had managed to leave that tempest-torn nation in 1906. By 1918, the end of World War I , the composer/pianist had made his way to the land of the free, the home of  brave immigrants.

In such a place as this: the United States of America, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue came gushing out of New York potentialities in 1924.

Ten years later, 1934, in a Baltimore opera house, sounding forth from a Philadelphia orchestra, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini broke through  Depression era gloom to shine a fantastic theme, even in the midst of darkening shadows of Euro-fascism. 

Now, here in America, we can still hear those crescendoing hopes and dreams, which had been pounded out by the insistent keyboarding of musical masters Gershwin and Rachmaninoff back in the day. They had risen out of orchestral celebrations back in that old terrible time, almost a century ago.

Gershwin, pictured, recorded on piano with Northwest German Philharmonic, Rhapsody in Blue:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egsBu3B36KU

Rhapsody in Blue, New York Philharmonic, Bernstein:         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH2PH0auTUU 

Rhapsody on a Paganini theme: Sofia, Bulgaria Philharmonic, Georgii Cherkin pianist:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpg_RW6FNug

Smoke 

Shelter at Samos

EuroRelief operates refugee camps on the Greek islands, Samos and Lesvos, although they are quite near the coast of Turkey. Samos is near Ephesus, and also near the isle of Patmos, if you catch my drift. 

Several years ago, our daughter worked as a volunteer on Lesvos. Now she is doing a stint on Samos. Here’s a pic she sent of the library there, where she's been reading to the kids: 

. . . looks like the librarians there could use a little help. We're glad our daughter is there to read to the kids.

She reports that the camp on Samos was built a few years by the Greek government. That new camp replaces an older one that had proven too small to accommodate such a  steadily expansive flow of people. The refugees who are fortunate enough to get to the island are striving to find a place to stay for a while, or to settle into. 

This situation is, of course, no small problem. Facilities at the camp are sufficient for temporary support. But of course, this work tending a constant stream of refugees requires a constant stream of financial support, as well as a steady stream of volunteers. Our daughter reports:  

“A bunch of government agencies and NGOs got together and designed what they thought might be the idealized way to manage the crisis and provide humane housing while also just…keeping things organized and …contained. If the budgets had continued and the programs had not simply faded away, this would indeed be an idealized way to handle thousands of refugees.”

But alas, budgets, like you and I, do not last forever. People there who are able to get to the next level of forward progress typically find a way to get to Athens. . . or somewhere. So then what? The Greeks cannot employ them all.  Do they find a way to wander beyond borders. . . to other Euro countries? or even beyond?   If you can think of a way to help, perhaps you will . . .

https://www.eurorelief.net

This report reminds me of some words from Matthew’s gospel, chapter 25: “I was stranger and you took me in . . . hungry you fed me.”

Say what, Jesus?. . .     You heard me; read the Book … sermon on the mount. It's not rocket science. Oh, and while I'm thinking about it. . . Blessed are the peacemakers.

So nowadays we have these international relief agencies working mightily to assuage the world’s refugee problems, and we have governments and other agencies struggling to find a buck or two to lend their support.

We have another daughter who works with  Samaritan’s Purse, an international relief agency:

All that to say, there’s a lot going on in the world. We all need to do our part to lend a hand, or a buck or two, or whatever is necessary to keep people sheltered, clothed and fed and thereby. . . to keep our peace from falling apart, if such a thing is possible.

Glass half-Full 

Going Viral

 Going viral, going viral! 

send Viral right over  

Web viral, Web spiral

send Viral right over! 

So they tell us on the Net

This little thing’s the best thing yet!

There we are on  Pavlov lab of Web

Lemmings on the precipice being led

Going viral, going viral to the moon

Acting fast, don’t be last! spend it soon

Eyes and fingers dancing to the tune

Surfers drifting on the swells of rising moon

While sunbeams gleam in celestial array

To brighten children at playground play

Here we contend in the grand worldweb fray

What viral wave did we catch today? 

I don’t remember.

What did the online spark  render?

Well . . . I can tell you this.

This latest deal—I did not miss.

I caught the swirl just as it was going viral!

Just before it went down in the world wide spiral.

But now, upon reflection. . . maybe I been took.

Guess I’ll go read a book.

Read a Book?