Musing in Autumn

When the browns, reds and golds of autumn lie in the gutter, dead,

Remember then, sprouts of spring; they had come. . . to witness Spring’s new hope, born of leaves decaying.

“As new life will come with living, Love will come with the living, and giving, without measure, yields, in return, the wondrous yearn for peace, almost seen. . . Walk hand in hand, and together we’ll stand on the the threshold of a dream . . .”

and going even further back in our boomer earlier place and time, Martin Luther King had spoken the words of Hope:

“I have a dream. . .”I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

These memories of an aging baby boomer, gathered in the gutter of remembrance. Remember then, sprouts of spring; they had come. . . “to Witness Spring’s new hope, born of leaves decaying. As new life will come with living, Love will come with the living, and giving, without measure, yields, in return, the wondrous yearn for peace, almost seen. . . Walk hand in hand, and together we’ll stand. . . on the the threshold of a dream.”

Glass half-Full

The Greatest Scene Ever Seen

I remember hearing "Revolution 9" on the Beatles' White Album, back in the day. . . but this is more significant, and, in the long run historically, far more significant:

"I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a book written, inside and on the back, sealed up with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, "Who is worthy to open the book, and to break its seals?" And no one in heaven or on earth, or under the earth, was able to open the book or to look into it. Then I began to weep greatly, because no one was found worthy to open the book or to look into it. Then one of the elders said to me, "Stop weeping; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome, so as to open the book and its seven seals. And I saw at the throne with the tree living creatures, the Lamb of God,  (Christ Jesus) standing, as if slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth. And he came and he took the book out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne. When he had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each one holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of saints. And they sang a new song: "Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain. . . and you purchased for God, with your blood, men from every tribe and nation."

In the last two chapters of Revelation, indeed. . . the last two chapters of the entire Bible, we find a description of the new heaven and earth, the eternal kingdom of God. The eternal city has a great high wall, maybe something like this one in Cambridge, Massachusetts:

. . . which is across the street from Alaetheia Church where, today, we saw 24 people baptized into that eternal Kingdom. Listen: Revelation 5:9 King of Soul

Dialectics

Back in the day, nigh unto 200 years ago, along came a fella, a thinking man, a philosopher as it were . . . but he had a streak of common sense that stretches clear into the here and now. . . Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Common sense, yes, because his contemplations and theories focused on the real world, what is really going on in the affairs of men. His Dialectic ultimately became a standard for thinking people to analyze historical developments, the web and flow of ideas that slosh back and forth in the ideas and philosophies of men. In the 19th century, a famous (or infamous, depending on your politics) economist named Karl Marx applied some Hegelian principles to his analysis of history, economics and industry. Long story short, he came up with some new ideas pertaining to capitalism, which during his time was a juggernaut of developing modernity that was rearranging the ways that men work to make a living. During that era, mid-1800's, industrial progress was growing in leaps and bounds. There were conditions in industrial plants that were hard on the workers, even to the point of endangering them and/or even killing them. Karl Marx developed his theories about the workers' alienation and their tribulations in trying to make a living in the industrial establishment that was so dang profit-driven. Marx's theories later spread far and wide and were ultimately summed up in a modern idea call communism. You may have heard of it; it was quite a rabid topic back in the day, when I was a young man. At that time, in the 1950's, the Russians were hard at it, trying to work out their communist plan that had begun back in 1917 when the Bolsheviks kicked the Czar out of his centuries-long dynastic power over the Russian workers. But what I am thinking about now, is this word, Dialectics, which I have seen or heard as applied to history, industrialism and workers' rights. But this morning I encountered, while reading, the word Dialectics applied to Capital investment and making money in the stock market. While reading a random email this morning from some person, or entity, named Porter, who was offering profit possibilities through his investment advice, which happened to center on today's juggernaut of profit, progress and wonder, the mysterious Ai, whatever that is. Therein, I read this sentence: "Let's use dialectic thinking to look beyond the simple narratives." As for me, I didn't bother to click on his money-making link, but I did take note of his use of the infamous "dialectic" word. And I realized that we have come full circle in our thinking since the 1840's, when "dialectic" was appropriated by Hegel and Marx. Now the dialectic is, apparently, considered a useful rationale for making money in the stock market. I can only conclude that, in history, what goes around. . . comes around. But you never know exactly how. So my mind slips back into a memory of an old Dylan song, the one about when God gave names to all the animals, and the man saw an animal producing milk, but the man didn't know how, so he called it a "cow." Go figure.

How's that for some dialecting on a Saturday morn? Glass Chimera

Jack Strikes Back!

Jack Smith jumped over Supreme Immunity tricks After insurrectionists had been tossing Jan6 bricks When the high court cast their Immunity spell as if tossing our Constitution all to hell Jack threw in the prosecutor's towel delaying his conspiracy case re: deeds most foul. But now is the time for all good lawyers to come to the aid of their country that has become so dumb Because magas would rather follow a lying piper. They hang on trump's rear end like a diaper, as the Oval occupant illegally summons soldiers to beat up American citizens who act bolder

just as Paul Revere rode fearlessly After the signal:"One if by land, two if by sea!" Yes, now is the time for lawful citizens to back Jack! As Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago fight back. Just like salvation, laid in a grave for three days Jack's truth-finding prosecution rises out of the haze To cast light on the trump-led Jan6 conspiracy attack when proud boys no longer stood by and stood back Now proud Americans will learn of what really went down When the Jan6 insurrectionists came to Washington town.

As Navalny had warned before he was taken out Now is the time for Americans to make the truth to come out. Listen to Jack Smith's long delayed testimony! Remember the Patriot's "one if by immunity, but two by testimony!" Glass half-Full

The Mystery of History

Now I don't know but I been told this world is very old.

The old Book from which I have gathered most of my information depicts a world - and its inhabitants - that goes way, way back in time. The biblical account that is given in our foundational book has turned out to be, as Providence would have it, the basis for cultural development, knowledge procurement and a very long, foundational story for the entire western world. Middle Eastern, North African, European culture and histories are founded upon ancient glyphs and and manuscripts. We revere some of them as holy writ, canonical Scriptures. . . from Moses to the prophets and apostles and beyond . . . alongside the Greek poets and philosophers, who accompany Moses, Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Paul . . . to Constantine, Augustine, even Mohammed … to and through the long papyrus scrolls and papers that document the histories of emperores, kings and queens, philosophers, priests, preachers, scholars, teachers, scientists and politicians who systemized Indo-European governance, and educated literate people. . . calculated engineering that morphed progressively in the myriad forms of cultural development and property descriptions, leaving a cultural and societal legacy several millennia long.

For us in the Judeo/Christian world, that old Bible is the primary source, the heart and soul of it, the fountain of wisdom, literacy, morality and history. . . the source of all we know and believe about our ancestors since Abraham, and Moses, the prophets, the One who conquered our ancient foe, death itself, by His Resurrection. Yes, and Amen. . . especially the One, Yeshua ha Meschiach, whose amazing work, teaching and Conquest of death was reported in the New Testament, which became, or should have become, the greatest event in history.

 As a person who has lived on this planet for 74 years, I can testify that I have probably, statistically, traveled more years along this path that we call Life. . . than my years ahead, which I have yet to experience. That is why I am believing in the One who conquered death, to delivery me into that eternal realm, beyond this world, where He is, and has reigned since the beginning of Time. . . and even before that, all eterntiy!  Furthermore, in my humble opinion, this is why we call everything that preceded Jesus, and every moment since then. . .that greatest story ever told. . . that ancient legacy. . . "history" HIStory. Just sayin. Glass half-Full

Ethnic Dunking

While listening to Democracy Now on WETS, I heard a reporter refer to the trumpy-fascist strategy of immigrant deportations as ethnic cleansing. I understand what she was talking about, as we are currently witnessing an unprecedented attempt by the trumped-up magamaniacs to remove immigrants and dark people from these United States. But I object to the terminology "ethnic cleansing." There is no cleansing taking place in these nazi tactics. What we are witnessing, instead, is fascist smearing, a racist scheme to rub out the past progress of our nation's chosen destiny to become the first nation in world history to welcome the tired people of our world. . . the weary, the huddled masses yearning to be free. But what we get now, with this retrogressive trump regime, is a trumped-up, illegal program to remove people whose economic status, or whose racial and/or ethnic features do not meet all the requirements of the fascizing trump regime. The magamaniac obsession with opposing the "deep state" seems to be taking us down a crooked path to a a new deep sh** bog where people of limited means get stuck in the feces of a nation that once thrived on healthy provisions, but has now decided to sit on the throne of trumpish flushing. Actually, the American word for this is "discrimination"; but we have a tacked-on tactic that the trumpians have misappropriated because discrimination is a democratic word that attained legal ramifications during the 1950's when the American Civil Rights movement really got cranked up with Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr, the Little Rock students in 1954, Jesse Jackson and ultimately, President Barack Obama, who did a constructive job of restoring our nation's confidence and infrastructural stability after the financial disaster of 2008. But in 2016, the Make America Go Away, led by trump, wrangled their way into the halls of power. The historical detritus of zombie confederacy hit the fan. We the People didn't know it at the time, but the worst thing that President Obama ever did was to turn the helm of our ship of state over to donald trump. And now, nine years later - even with a four-year Biden intermezzo - we have a second trump occupation of our Oval office, in which his people are flushing the deep state away and wiping with the backside of America with with wads of fascist issues and trumpian flushing. Make America Go Away is the anthem of the magamaniacs. What happened? We survived a Jan6 storm, only to look around, four years later and there's the media Scarecrow: "We ain't in Kansas any more." Where's Bob Dole when you need him? Or Mitt Romney? But there is a way out of this maga-mess. Follow the Constitutional yellow brick road back to our roots, back to the principles that enabled US the People to become the greatest freedom-loving nation in the history of the world. People of the World, "send us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free."

This is the message that America should be sending to the world. This is the message that made us great to begin with. Magamaniac ethnic dunking must be opposed in every way possible. No more ethnic dunking! We need to resurrect Emma Lazarus challenge from the dead, even as Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead! Glass half-Full

Train Times Rhymes

This train's bound for glory This train carries a story Time, times, there was a time When travelin 'trains were fine This train don't carry no gamblers This train takes old folk ramblers If we miss the train you're on We'll know that this train's gone We sing disappearin' railroad blues We travel in fading, graying hues Going to Georgia on that midnight train Singing that ole train song refrain People get ready, there's a train a'coming You can hear that ole' number nine a' drumming

Distant moaning of the train seems to play a sad refrain Find me a place in a boxcar So I take my guitar. . .

But keep that long train running keep them big wheels turnin' Where's Casey Jones when you need him? Homeward bound, wish I could go home again Maybe take that Wabash Cannonball We don't need no aereoplane at all We need to stay on track and steady Oh, people. . .People get ready There's a train a'comin' I hear that smokestack drummin'. Where's John Henry, that steel-drivin' man? Must be buried under Hoover dam. Underground Railroad rides again Underground Railroad rides again. Ride me on that good news train Ride me again and again and again. Ole Uncle Tom finally caught that Underground Railroad Ole Jake left his coal mine for that Underground Railroad Ed Clark tossed his necktie off Underground Railroad Underground Railroad Rides Again

Both Clouds Now

Rows and flows of online flair and digital castles in the air and data canyons everywhere I've looked at the Cloud that way But now they distort my worldly view they come and go with everything new So many things we would have done But the Cloud drifts us away. I've seen the Web from both slides now Surfing in and surfing out It's the Cloud's illusions that thrill us now. The real world shifts, but we don't know how Moons and loons and special deals that busy, frizzy way you feel when every online tale seems real I surfed the web that way. But now surfing the net's old hat On phones and screens we may get fat But if we dare, we'll break the trance Maybe venture out and dance I've looked at life from in and out from up and down, from smile and pout It's Cloud illusions I notice now I really don't live life anyhow Virals and spirals now get spun

It's all been seen; it's all been done Illusions and delusions come and go But if you care, don't make a show. Cuz now the world is getting strange maybe even weird, deranged The spin gets spun and all is done at the end of every day. I've looked at life from in and out from up and down, from smile and pout It's Cloud illusions I notice now I don't think I believe it anyhow It's web delusions that show and tell I'll take a break and break the spell. Thanks to Joni who inspired this rhyme Now both sides of Life are wove online. King of Soul

Stop the Steal

Are you sitting comfortably are you watching numbly as fickle History rhymes in these faux-fascist times? 1933, hitler set stage for nazi tyranny: 2025, trump troops foment fascist hegemony to subvert our Constitution with military confusion and pervert our social media with magamaniac illusion US going crazy with panic, as donald trump goes manic rending Posse Comitatis to a passing coma status. For my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars: It started when VP Pence was challenged with insurrection horrors:

Fascists flinging maga filth on our Capitol and on our stripes and stars And yet, and yet. . . the chief insurrectionist regained his reign Re-smearing now our Constitutional Republic with a fascist stain. I keep thinking we will awaken from this nightmare dream and somehow, some way, we shall organize our anti-fascist team We shall overcome; we shall overcome someday. Deep in my heart, I do believe we shall overcome someday. We shall drive the fascists out from their oval office occupation

when We the People organize to restore our Constitution Declaration! Glass half-Full

Deja Vu for Me and You

Guard soldiers and trump-ICE coming We’re finally on our own. This autumn I hear the drumming Citizens dead in Chicago After ICE in Angeles/ Portland, soldiers are cutting US down Should’ve been left in their homes What if you knew the victims, shot by gestapo? How can you tweet with this going on? Americans watched numbly, dumbfounded by the horror, entranced by social media, dumbfounded by fascist forces, the shedding of blood, our Constitution shredded, citizens assaulted, their rights ripped to shreds. This has happened before, 55 years ago. . .

Meanwhile back at the ranch, American Rule of Law is dying, being replaced by zombie third reich fascist violence. Jefferson’s turning over in his grave at the report of what trumped-up magamania is doing to shred our Rule of Law and Constitutional rights. For the tragic preview Ohio deja vu , listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1PrUU2S_iw King of Soul

Drum Major for Justice

When I was a kid growing up in the 1950's, we watched a TV series about "Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier." Now at. age 74, in 2025, I am watching reports about a new Crockett, Jasmine Crockett,

 who emerges from Texas as the queen of our long American frontier. . . our search for fair and just voting rights for all Americans. In our present scenario, minorities' struggle to prevent the erosion of their voting rights is provoked by current racist and magamaniac attempts to confound accessibility of American voters to their polling places during elections. The code word for what the racists and the magas are currently attempting to impose on American voters is "gerrymandering" of geographical descriptions of local voting districts in various states. My strategy for comprehending the lawyerly tactics of Rep. Crockett's recent successful Supreme Court victory (July,2025) is this: Stream of Consciousness. This is because the entire legal presentation is too complex for general citizens' comprehension of the historical, legal contentions that Jasmine' case, unless you choose to research the course for yourself.  What that means is: I will drop here, for you, a stream of words and phrases that may suggest to you the importance of this recent Supreme Court decision, to whit: (Put on your mental seat belt; this will be a tour do force in American history, Law, jurisprudence and the long, long chain of struggles by formerly enslaved people to continue their march toward Justice.) Dr. Martin Luther King (1968) had been a "drum major for Justice". Jasmine Crockett has effectively taken up Dr. King's mantle, 21st-century style, as a drum major for justice, when she recently presented, in her arguments to the Supreme Court, a chain of historical references: Senator Charles Sumner,(c1870) re: "procedural mechanisms that accomplish indirectly what states are forbidden to do directly." Representative Thaddeus Stevens(c1870), re: revolting ""requirements that impose heavier burdens on free men. Jasmine Cronkite(2025), in response to Justice Barrett's question: "I'm suggesting that this historical evidence shows how the court's current approach has drifted from the 15th amendment original intent." In connecting her argument to original intent, Rep. Crockett put forth a master stroke in her legal argument, by directing this conservative Supreme Court to its pet strategy for interpreting our Constitution: original intent. This is a stroke of genius presented by a Texas congresswoman, for the sake of persisting in our long march toward Justice for all American people. Representative Crockett is a true drum major for Justice. With representatives in Congress persisting in their Constitutional duties to preserve Justice, We the People can be reassured that Justice and Mercy will not be arrested in the trumpian/magamania efforts to arrest us. The magas will not, shall not, deprive us of our voting rights, our representation in Congress, our Right to Vote in free and fair elections and our and ongoing Liberty. Glass half-Full

Threshold of a Life

Sitting comfortably in our Appalachian forest haven, I take an unexpected sip of memories from the time of long ago. . . gleaming in upon the mystical paths of cyberspace. . . uBloob. . . and now to suit, to recruit, from this 74-year-old brain, memories summoned up through the magic our great internet. . .

Oh, but, “it riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave". . . but going back even further in the American net. . . “Ai, ai,” said Ishmael to captain Ahab.. . yes, going back even further in American story-telling. . . but I digress. Meanwhile, back at the “ranch”, sitting in our edge-of-civilization American easy chair, surfing the web in these 74-year-old dreams, a moody memory floats in on the web, from back in the day. . .

“I think, therefore I am. . . I think!. . .Of course, you are my practical star. . .”

Now you know that you are real”. . . old. This stage of life that you’ve been vaguely aware of for so long, since the 1950’s, when you visited your parents’ parents on holidays and you were thinking that they’re old. . . and yet. . . now it is you. . . “of course, you are, my practical star” . . getting old. You have become the grey-haired one now, sitting across the table, across the Thanksgiving dining room from the young bucks who now run the show. . . and yes, it is a show. . .as Ed Sullivan used to say, a really big “shew”. . . the passing of time. . . the passing of one generation’s torch to the next. . .and the sudden intrusion of memory, via video, with that fab four from the mother country. . . “she was just seventeen; you know what I mean”. . . and the rest is history. . . I mean. . . not the real history, but the memory track that runs through this boomer mind. . . although we’ll leave it all behind, not many years from now, six feet under. . . Not to worry though! Eternal salvation beams through brightly in the gospel revelation of Jesus, and the testimony of brothers and sisters long ago. . . He did, yes, he did, rise up from the tomb on that third day. after the crucifixion. . . . . . but I had not realized that yet, back in those moody, blue days, but we have come a long way in the 74-year odyssey, the apex of which came, back in ‘77, when the light when on in my soul and we realized that it is true, the greatest story every told, Jesus’ conquest of death. and if you believe that, I’ve got real estate we’ll share with you on the other side. . . King of Soul

Declaration of Impeachment

When in the course of American events, it becomes necessary for the American people to dissolve the Constitutional and Electoral bonds which have connected them with a corrupt, incompetent president, and as if that were not enough, to assume among our Constitutional powers, the corrective and appropriate authority of the People and their representatives, senators, judges, poltical leaders and media voices to impeach and reject the abusive authority of a rogue president who attempts to govern by declaring his own covetous demands. . . The separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. . . and the declarations of good ole American common sense. . . these foundations of American governance demand that We the People should declare the causes which impel us to the impeach an abusive, lawless President: #1: He has attempted, in various American cities, to arbitrarily and illegally, summon the Armed Forces of our United States to attack American citizens who exercise their Constitutional rights of Freedom of Assembly and Freedom of Speech. #2: He summoned a violent mob, January 6, 2021, to attack our Congress for purposes of disrupting and destroying their performance of Congressional duties to count Electoral votes.

#3: (to be continued, or added to by the citizens of our United States, as they activate their resistance in public displays and statements that serve to expose the criminal and self-obsessed actions and declarations of an incompetent, lawless occupant of the Executive office) Glass half-Full

Genesis Engineering

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep." Now I don't know, but I been told . . . in school. . . it was somewhere, some time back in my school days, in a science class, that scientific discoveries have uncovered certain details about the ways and means by which the Creator God did all this creating. He set us a system of electrons, protons and neutrons. These would be the building blocks of His creation. He assigned an array of super-small particles - actually spinning arrangements of energy, that like to act like they've really got some weight to throw around. I mean, we might as well call a spade a spade: these little critters paraded around in an unprecedented way and they like to throw their weight around. We'll just call them "matter." I mean, it doesn't matter what we call them, but the point is, they act like matter - these miniscule components which would become the elements with which He would set up the Universe. So, yes, God created a Universe, which also included the earth and the heavens that we earthlings can see in he sky, built upon the building blocks of these "elements. Now then. . . God set up all this creation in an orderly, systematic way. He was creating a vast array of elements that would ultimately become a vast array of earthly material. He assigned names and values to these original building-block elements. The first element he put together with a proton in its center and an electron doing orbits around the proton. He called it 'Hydrogen.' Moving right along, he created a second element, 'Helium', which had two protons and two electrons. So God was on a roll; he wasn't about to stop there. I mean, he had some very big plans in His mind and He knew he was going to need a lot of stuff to work with. . . and stuff with variety, so that his Universe would ultimately become a fascinating creation and a cool place to live, and move, and have our being . . . for us humans who came along later. More about that later. The Lord of the Universe just kept on going. He put together a third element, which we call Lithium, and a fourth, which we call Beryllium. . . and then along came Carbon and Nitrogen and. . . when He got to number 8 he wanted to something special with it. So he got inspired and He named it Oxygen. He got a flash of inspiration and decided to pair the Oxygen with the first element, Hydrogen. So when he got them mated together. . . I mean it was a little like the Man and Women development that came later. . something very different from anything that had come before, water:

and there was water, which is why, later, back in the day, Moses wrote about it: . . . "and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters." As the Lord was on a roll he kept going. "Then God said, 'Let there be light', and there was light!" It was some pretty amazing stuff, don't you think? I mean, later, when Moses got inspired by God to report these developments to mankind, he wrote: "God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. . ."

I mean, it was all good, y'all. And God got inspired, all along the way, in His whirlwind of creative inspiration. When he got to #14 in his system, He put together what we call silicon, so that we could have transistors and digital circuits in that century that we call "the 20th" . . . and on into the 21st century, as we can see now, as I'm writing in the year 2025, using silicon circuits that make this laptop operate like a real Apple ought to, not like the one Adam and Eve bit into that got them into trouble. But that's another story. Meanwhile back at the heavenly ranch. . .when he got to #24, God created Chromium, so that, back in the day when I first got my driver's license, 1966, I could have shiny bumpers on my old Chevy. But I digress. After He had gotten far, far along in that inspired Elements project, God created Gold for #79, so I could have this ring on my finger, which has never been off of my finger since 1980 when Pat and I got married. Furthermore, just to demonstrate how creative He is, God arranged for us to bring three brand new human beings into the world. Hallelujah! Furthermore, we know from Moses' account in Genesis, when God created Light, He saw that the Light was good! And I agree. It's all good y'all! I mean, he was shedding some serious Light on all this stuff, . . .what we call the earth, and the world, and Life itself (But that's another story, for later.) And if you believe all this, I've got real estate in heaven that I'll tell you about later. Glass half-Full

Purloined Poetics

Inspired by Yeats Turning and turning in the world wide web The tweeter cannot believe the twitterer Things fall apart; the people cannot make sense of it Weird gobbledigook is woven into the web The virus-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of democracy is drowned The Dems get hung on transitude while GOPs are blown with MAGAtude What rough beast, its anger now from slumber torn Slouches toward Fort Sumpter to be reborn? Inspired by M. Arnold: Ah, Americans, let us be true to one another! For our nation, which is spread out historically in principles of Constitution and Rule of Law, so various, so tolerant, so true, abandons hope for huddled masses yearning to be free. Yeah, I say unto thee we are descending in a darkening spree swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight where Libs and MAGAs argue about what's wrong or right. inspired by J. Lennon: I watched the news that day, oh well. . . about a nation that had gone all to hell. They blew our mind out in a mob That crowd of people made me sob.

They'd seen trump's call: confound the count They wouldn't accept the legitimate amount Nobody was really sure what was going on. We need to turn our Constitution back on. I saw the news today oh yeah The Allied armies had just won the war. A crowd of people turned away But I just had to look, having read the book. I read the news today. . .I'll tell: Vlad the Mad was blasting Ukraine to hell inflicting Kiev pain with Russian drones driving Ukraine folk out of their homes The yankee president was playing chess with Vlad his queen arrayed in reichish dress I'd love to make it all get gone. I watched the news today oh well The NATO nations had just evaded hell. A crowd of people turned away. But I just had to look having read the book. I'd love to see Peace turned on, and Justice and Mercy go on and on and on. . . Glass half-Full

Beethoven's Ire

I heard there was an heroic symphony that Beethoven wrote, still heard around the world. It went like this: the third, the fourth, the fifth, as the music from his mind unfurled.

As 17th-century loyalties were transforming 17th-century royalties A new wind of Liberty blew o’er the Continent, a revolutionary discontent. It blew in on the French coast from its faraway American host Franklin caught a glimpse from Lafayette, his host; Napoleon lifted a French toast. Bur Ludwig’s restless angst turned aside, when he caught wind of Bonaparte’s pride. As the times they were a changing, Ludwig began his rearranging. Composing his third symphony to honor Bonaparte, Ludwig was off to a good start. But when he heard that Napoleon had claimed the “Emperor” title Ludwig was upset that the General would make himself an idle. So he rubbed out the “Bonaparte” dedication and left just the the “Eroica” name which is Latin for any person gains heroic fame. For a man who had mastered the military stuff, it was a name good enough.

For a victorious generale, the “Eroica” word was good enough. Cuz we have to be careful, in this world, to not assign too much glory to strong men who like to hype their own story. King of Soul

Divine Synchronicity

The Creator of our Universe is all-powerful, all-knowing, omniscient and eternal. The Lord YWHW Christ has been creating this Universe, this Earth, our Life individually and collectively. . . for a very long time. This morning I caught a glimpse of the synchronicity through which the Lord of the universe demonstrates is creative consistency, his omniscience and his Will for us to have access says to his higher ways. . . what he is up to and what was up to, back in the day, even long, long ago and far, far away. So. . . this morning I was reading the ancient book of Leviticus, whereby YWHW set out some procedures for the spiritual leaders among his people. Consider this. Leviticus 25:35: “Now in case a countryman of yours becomes poor, and his means with regard to you falter, then you are to sustain him, like a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live among you.” Compare that Old Testament Law to the New Covenant of grace that was initiated and fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Jesus attests to, and confirms the Lord YWHW’s will and instruction when he spoke Matthew 25:35: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger and you took me in.

Now then: In this day and time we find that the Lord of the Universe revealed, by these verses in His Word, his Will that people who have lots of stuff, which to say food, money, blah blah and so on and so on, are to release some of their wealth for folks who don’t have much. Furthermore, the poor folk are referred to as “strangers” and/or “sojourners.” . . . which is to say: folks who are not directly connected by ownership to property, or resources or assets. Now then. In this day and time, some prosperous religious folk have been misled into erroneous attitudes and practices. They have—many of them—have directed their trust and their reverence to rich folk who are running the show and have lots of assets to prove it. Consequently, they like to pretend that the strangers and sojourners among us are not those to whom the Lord referred in Matthew 25:35 and Leviticus 25:35. So these self-obsessed religious folk refuse to call a spade a spade, or a heart a heart. Instead they make their bids and bets on diamonds and clubs. The diamonds represent precious worldly stuff. The clubs represent clans wherein them who have congregate as hoi-ploi so they don’t have to dish out grace and mercy to the strangers and the sojourners, The wise king, Solomon said, long ago, that the little foxes spoil the vines. So we are to understand that the vines of fruition, the vines that yield grapes for eating, for drinking, even for fermentation so that wine makes glad the heart of man. . . those vines are spoiled, which is to say, raided and stripped of their fruit. Hence, when the poor, the weary, the huddled masses yearning to be free come along to gather fruit or sustenance from the corners of our fields, the edges of our bounty. . . or the highways and byways by which folks enter into the land of the free and the home of the brave. . .these poor folk are unable to gather any grapes at all. Instead they are turned away. Therefore if you are an American feeling well-fed and well-provided-for, be willing to share a little of the good stuff that goes around . . . like food, or even the means to buy food, money. And don’t be so vulnerable to the foxes and the fat cats who want you keep everything for yourselves and for spending on all the stuff that’s dished out to us in our great American land of plenty. Just sayin’: take a look at Matthew 25. Glass half-Full

Old Stuff

Sinatra sang it, back in the day: . . . “and I look at my life as fine vintage, that flows, sweet and clear, from the brim to the dregs.” I mean, he was before my time, of my parents’ generation, the greatest generation. . . who put a stop to hitler and mussolini and hirohito. . . and all of that happened about six years before i was born. Now I’m the old guy, and these young people nowadays, they. . . I see them sitting on the Boston subway with their phones, looking at their phones. It was different, back in the day, when we boomers came along, sitting in the living room, watching Roy Rogers, Howdy Doody, and . . . well, whatever. That’s neither here nor there. But along the way, there were other things that happened. . . Simon and Garfunkel singing about old friends, who “sit on their park bench like bookends” and “a newspaper blown through the grass falls on the round toes, of the high shoes, of the old friends” Newspaper? what’s that? Now I’m the old guy, pecking away on this laptop, casting my fate to the wind. . . or, actually, the web, where the spiders of time will spin our snippets of this, that and the other into a tapestry of remembrance. . . do you remember when?. . . where were you, November 22, 1963? Where were you September 11, 2001? It seems that a tornado has lifted us into. . . “you’re not in Kansas any more, Dorothy!” You’re in 2025. It’s not hitler telling lies about the Sudetanland to Neville Chamberlain. . . it’s putin making up excuses about the Donbas, and trump thought he was a nice guy, and the fox has confiscated the vines of virtual veracity from MSNBC and where’s NBC anyway? Where’s Johnny Carson? He’s in the sweet by ’n by with Milton Berle and Walter Cronkite.

with Spencer Tracy and Kirk Douglas and Dorothy and scarecrow and tinman and Cecil B. Demille and way, way back there. . .at Ford’s theater, President Abraham Lincoln, and even further back than that. . . Abraham, who left Ur of the Chaldees, and even further back than that. . . there’s Eve in the garden. She’s talking to that suspicious character. He’s talking to her on her phone. And the rest is history. One day, some day, I’ll be on the other side of that great divide between life and death.

But I’m not worried; I will have a guide as I enter that new territory. He’s the one, y’all, who survived death after three days. I’m not making this up. It’s a stream of consciousness. It’s just that, at some point, the consciousness morphs into eternity. You believe that? If you do, I’ve got some real estate in heaven we’ll share with you. King of Soul

The Ai Predicament

When the people of the 20th century had mastered the Computer, they expanded its utility, and the span of its reach, into the minds of men and women all around the world, and so, as time passed. . . in this sweet by ‘’n by, time slippin’ by moment by moment, inch by inch, while time keeps on slippin’ into the future . . . we had spun our networks into the world wide web. The trumpet blasts of human progress were strategically positioned to take control of online assets, thereby appropriating resources for optimum use of the world wide web, for the progress of the human project and for civilization itself. But in human history, there are always some shinannigan-shakers or top dogs who confound the algorithms, like back in ’08, concocting MBS’s and CDO’s that dragged us down the path of financial confusion and contusions.

But surveying the horizon now, the omens are that we’re headed for an Ai juggernaut that may—if we don’t keep an eye on it— sideswipe, or contort, our human dignity and freedom. . . unless we can get smart and take some precautions. As with the appropriation of any new frontier for human progress, there’s got to be rules of the game. As long as everyone plays by the rules, all is well and will stay that way and we’ll be happily ever after. But within the human tribes there are inevitably some covetous hooligans who are not playing by rules. The rules: Thou shalt not cover thy neighbors’ stuff, or his/her data. So back in time, way back, ages ago, there was this Achan guy, back in the ancient days of our literary development, who broke the rules. He took some stuff that didn’t belong to him. And his violation negated the good karma that could have been abundant for all parties who are involved in the grand project of human progress. If he had not crossed the lines of misappropriation and downright theft, causing all hell to break loose in the markets and in the world wide web, then everything would have been hunky/dory. But this Achan guy was way out of line. He was weaponizing the Ai, to take advantage of people and to gather their private information and their assets unlawfully, which is to say, taking data and stuff that didn’t belong to him. . . and as if that weren’t enough, spying on people so he could take advantage of them and purloin their assets for his own enrichment and empire-building. Clearly, the Achan case study demonstrates the necessity for homo intellligus to get a hold of ourselves; and in the wider sphere of the world wide web, it is plain to see that Man needs to get a handle on this Ai juggernaut cuz It threatens to, if not put on a human-managed leash, to launch us into the outer limits of techno-confusion, beyond freedom and dignity! I mean, we dare not have Ai telling us what to do, when we are supposed to be telling Ai what to do. We cannot have Ai algorithms running roughshod over our freedom and dignity. When we discern that AGi/Ai is getting too big for his britches, we need to delete him down to a manageable level. So Wake up, people! You ought not to be downloading your decisions to Ai. Get a life! And seek out the better angels of our web, and our world. Take a break from the wobbly web every now and then. Go take a walk in the park; smell the roses. Read a book. Get a Life! Don’t get too caught up in the web.

The web was woven for Man, not man for the web. Glass half-Full

Fire or Ice?

Some say fire; some say ice?

I say neither one would be nice. "Tho I know this world's EMPire will vanish into sand, allowing only for the EMPtitude's thunderin' command, still yet, still yet, the people come and go, remembering Michelangelo, or Warhol or Picasso, as art was dismembering So I recalled the ancient book, foreshadowing, or so they say, in the midst of the fray, the Hiroshima cloud and long before the Nagasaki, so damn loud! And there was the near miss, the Fukishima scare foreshadowing, it seems to me, the Chernobyl nukey affair, pouring out upon the earth their seven bowls of nukey wrath! the seven scolds of putin, perched upon his Russian throne? or the seven scolds of ayatollah, aiming from their mullahs' home? or the seven sons of Sceva: "I challenge you" by the demons' call Poe inquired, is there balm in Gilead? But seriously, y'all. . . Maybe a territory for the Pals on West bank? This is serious, y'all; it aint no maga prank! Now some are sayin' fire; some are sayin' ice. But hey y'all, a TangMing EMP would not be nice! We don't want no 'lectric shot ; we don't need no EMP But whatever happens; we'll just wait and see.

Maybe it's time to pray. Maybe it's time to say: God save the homo sapiens dream! Just root, root, root for the Jesus team. Now I can tell you this one thing: What we need's The Everlasting King. I nominate that one who turned water into wine; the One who's been up in heaven the whole time since his death at Calvary's cross; t'was but his three-day loss! Our eternal Life through his bloody sacrifice overcomes the conjectured fire or ice. Just sayin'. Ya'll keep praying'. King of Soul

Lemons to Lemonade

In my 74 years of life on this earth, I have learned a few things. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I learned this lesson in the school of hard knocks, because, in this life you never know what's going to happen, and if you do know what's going to happen, you can still make choices that do not deliver the conditions that you anticipated. In 1973, I left LSU with a diploma with this printed on it: BS, General Studies. But I was really just an English major. This means I can read well; I can even study and pass tests. Good to know. So I sold life insurance for about a year. Then I switched to selling newspaper advertising; then I switched to selling printing for a print shop. Then I switched to carpentry. It was in my family background, but so was selling insurance, so go figure. Long about 2005, I got the notion that my English background might be a leg-up to becoming a teacher. In my chosen hometown, Boone NC, Appalachian State University educates teachers for North Carolina. So I took nine education courses, then the Praxis tests for four subjects, obtaining certification to teach English, Language Arts, and Science to middle school and high school students in North Carolina. While taking the education courses, I got the bright idea to write a novel. So I did. In fact I wrote two, "Glass half-Full", and "Glass Chimera." Meanwhile, back in the wider world, It was 2008. Wall Street crashed. In summer of '08 I got a call from the school principal. She said that budget-cutting would prevent me from teaching next school year. Life had dealt me lemons. So I made lemonade. I walked across the street from the school, around a block, and found an apartment complex, with 92 apartments, that needed a maintenance man. I spent the next five years maintaing apartments. . . cleaning, painting, un-stopping toilets, fixing broken drywall, painting, mowing, listening to Diane Reem on NPR.  After a few years there, in a typical day, I entered an apartment that was being vacated. I was looking around on the floor when I saw this: I gave the tenant a few bucks for the old newspaper, an original edition of the Times of London, special Commemorative Issue for the coronation of King George VI of England, King Charles' grandfather. While perusing the tattered old tabloid, I found content in there that prompted my imagination to write a third novel, "Smoke."

Here's a snippet from Smoke: " For the love of a woman can change the course of the world. As Helen's face had launched a thousand Greek ships, so the affections of an American divorce'e had turned the tide of royal authority from one brother or another." . . . or, maybe it was King George's brother had secret nazi connections? But we'll never know. Anyway, he abdicated; George was crowned. His wife, Elizabeth, gave birth to the later queen, Elizabeth(1952), the longest sovereign in British history.  The point is: when Life gives you lemons, make lemonade, so to speak. I never got a teaching job. But I did discover a point of inspiration to write a third novel, my longest one, Smoke, at 300 pages. You should read it. You can find it on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. And if that's not enough lemonade to wet your whistle, maybe have a look at the fourth novel, King of Soul, which is what happened to America, from the 1950's to May 4, 1970. Smoke

Immigrant's Odyssey

In 1923, Nora's family immigrated from Russia to America. It was no small feat, but rather an odyssey of bewilderment, delays and close calls. Finding themselves, at last, at Ellis Island, the family still had a few hurdles to overcome. On the passage from Southampton, England, to New York, young Nora had caught a fever. When the ship arrived at Ellis Island, this infection would become the last hurdle that Nora had to overcome before discovering her new home with family in New York. Going through the stages at Ellis found them separated for a while. When Nora and her papa were together again, she whispered in his ear, "Oh Papa, they passed me in; they didn't send me back." Nora wrote in her book, Weather of the Heart, describing the crisis moment: "His thoughts raced. What to do? How to avoid the avoid the danger of discovery? He had to collect the luggage at the pier. . . locating them now and transporting would take precious time. . . (but, but, ed) "I had to be removed from the searching eyes of the immigration people as rapidly as possible." "Papa knew he had not choice. He scooped me up, wrapped me in a jacket, and carried me, his eyes darting nervously about to see who might be watching, out to the waiting ferry. There he placed himself to hide me as much as possible. Once ashore, he hurriedly commandeered a cab." Now, long story short: I met Nora years later, when we were both members of High Country Writers in Boone, NC.

Nora has passed now into the wild blue yonder. But for some reason, I found myself recalling this amazing testimony about her father, a man who, in the midst of immigration perils and unexpected decisions, bundled his child and carried her home, to their new home in the new world, our United States of America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. May the United States of America always be the land of the free and the home of brave. We have all of us, except fro those citizens of native american families, descended from immigrants. In my case it was the Scotch/Irish.  Excerpts, quoted above from the book:Weather of the Heart, by Nora Lourie Percival, copyright 2001, published by High Country Publishers, Ltd, Boone NC King of Soul

Glyphs to Glints

Glyphs: Gilgamesh, Hammurabi, Rameses Scripts: Moses Samuel Isaiah Jeremiah Daniel Ezra Zechariah et al Matthew Mark Luke John Peter and Paul Aristotle Socrates Sophocles Plato Aeschylus Euclid Pythagorus Homer Caesar Cicero Ovid Augustine Aquinas Beowolf Roland Lin Omar Abelard LancelotPrints: Gutenberg Dante Petrarch Weert Malvern Robin Hood Hafiz William Tell Chaucer Rabelais Arcadia Aldines Erasmus Everyman Machiavelli Nostradamus Cervantes Thomas More Marlowe JonsonDonne Holinshed Spencer Shakespeare Milton Bunyan Calderon Moliere Cleveland Dryden Defoe Swift Burke Voltaire Gray Coleridge Schiller Rousseau JohnsonGibbon Walpole Goldsmith Wordsworth Goethe Schiller Blake Washington Irving Burns Grimm Byron Keats Shelley Scott Andersen Tocqueville Browning Jane and Ann Taylor Longfellow Poe Tennyson Jane Austen Dickens Thoreau Pushkin Baudelaire Cooper Dostoevsky Flaubert ScottDisraeli Dumas Verne Noah Webster Hugo Balzac Dickinson Marx Hegel Alcott Lewis Carroll Mark Twain Bret Harte Hawthorne Melville Howells Roe Galt Zola Hardy Rowland Hill Lowell "Punch" Henry James JS Mill Hopkins Andersen Lear Thackeray Lowell Arnold Stevenson Harriet Beecher Stowe Charles Kingsley Bronte Flaubert Hugo Wilde Conrad Eliot Holmes Doyle Housman John Dewey Library of Congress Humboldt Chekhov Swinburne Turgenev Whitehead Spencer Wharton Tolstoi Huxley KiplingLewis Carroll Mark Twain Whitman Yeats Ibsen Romain Rolland HG Wells Verne Lewis Carroll Proust Zola Darwin Bagehot Jack London Hesse Ibsen Zola Jung Hardy Sandburg Forster Helen Keller Martin BuberStevenson James Joyce Shaw Kafka Nietzche Keynes Runyon DH Lawrence Ezra Pound Sinclair Lewis Carnegie Oxford dictionary TS Eliot Eugene O'neill Oscar WildeHuxley Conan Doyle Buck Dos Passos Rilke Chekhov Hemingway Theodore Herzl Nobel Noel Coward Crane Thomas Wolfe Freud Bert Russell John Dewey "School" Mann Steinbeck Beatrix Potter OHenry Weber Max Weber HG Wells Wharton Jules Verne GB Shaw Verne ForsterCohan Beckett O Henry Ibsen Upton Sinclair SantayanaAuden Conrad Gorki R Rolland: "Beethoven" Chesterton Cambridge History of English Literature Ian Fleming ForsterWilliam James Thomas Mann Ezra Pound Lenin Amy Lowell Oppenheimer Jung Proust Camus Frost Joyce BurroughsHusserl Bertrand Russell Conrad Lawrence Maugham Pound Arthur Miller Hesse Frost Jack London Sandburg Dreiser TS Eliot Sinclair Balfour Jung Joyce Huxley Lawrence Joyce Kilmer Mencken Keynes Barth Milne Wharton Twain Steinbeck CS Lewis Tolkien Frost Joyce Hemingway Thomas Wolfe CareyRowland

Glints in Glass: Shockley, Hewlett, Packard, Zuckerburg, Wozniak, Jobs, Gates, Page and Brin, Twitter trivialization. . . books going way of the buffalo? Whoa! Thank God for Jeff Bezos, KDP Glass half-Full

Postwar America

During World War II, our U.S, Army Chief of Staff was George S. Marshall. During his duty time, he appointed General Eisenhower and General Patton to lead our American troops into victory against the third reich of Germany and against the madman hitler who had taken control of Germany in 1933. What seems funny to me, as a baby boomer who entered this world in 1951, is that Ike appointed a "Marshall" to get the Europeans repositioned for democratic governance in postwar Europe. He hatched a plan, "the Marshall Plan", that worked very well toward getting the Europeans back on their civilized feet.

Our Allied nations had a sticky mess to clean up there. Someone, probably a journalist, came up with the phrase, "The Cold War." But this cold war thing was truly unprecedented. For the first time in history, two arch-rivals, the USA and the USSR, formerly allies, emerged from the holocaust with the biggest guns ever devised by Man: "atom bombs" we called them. Nowadays we call them nukes. Our nation, the United States of America, founded upon the bedrock of Freedom and individual Dignity, found ourselves in a worldwide rivalry withs the Russian communists. And with the unprecedented presence of nukes in the worldwide ballgame, the whole world was paranoid that one of the big nukes might be launched somewhere. I mean, we - the yanks of the USA - had demonstrated, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, what the damn thing could do.  When I was in grade school, we had practice drills where we'd stick our heads under the school desk so that we'd know what to do if the real thing happened. (God forbid!) In God we trust! I mean, we had the Cuban missile crisis; and the paranoid Ruskies built a wall in Berlin to keep their walled-in krauts from escaping the "Iron Curtain" (That's what Eisenhower called the line between Soviet eastern Europe and western Europe.) 

Eastern Euro countries were controlled by USSR as police states until later. . . . Gorbachev and Yeltsin eventually loosened the soviet grip; the wall came down. Thank God. And thank you, Mikail and Boris. Nuclear paranoia eventually subsided into low tide as the frosty commie countries thawed and joined the rest of the western world's celebration of freedom. Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Moldovans, Bulgarians, Romanians. . . . . all of them eventually joined the European Union. What a relief! And the whole nuke scare died down. We hardly hear anything about that stuff any more, except for an occasional, idle red-scare thought about what Vlad the Mad might do.  The glass half-Full perspective, looking back on it . . . is, in the Cold War period of the 20th century. . . that the use of nuclear fission is now a process by which citizens of our planet can have electricity. . . not atomic war. Let's keep it that way. Speaking of witch. . . I mean, thank God that the Chernobyl scare didn't go full blast disaster! Aren't you glad? But every now and then we should remind Vlad Putin of that favorable development, and that we, as citizens of the world, need to keep it that way. We need to keep our nukes generating power for civilized life, not the destruction of it. Glass half-Full

Life and Death

Sunshine peaks through forest story revealing rock in sunshine glory

Life and death in same location displaying earth’s unique vocation

Yet view yon wooden tower standing tall disclosing life/death after the fall.

Yet still below in shady depths life o’ertakes terrestrial death.

Glass Chimera

Outback Beethoven

The arc of western world history was redirected in 1776 when when a gaggle of pioneering yankees severed their national ties with King George of England. Thirteen years later, revolutionaries in France, having caught wind of the American bravado, decided to act upon that fresh pan-Atlantic wind of Liberty. Filled with revolutionary urgency, they formed a National Assembly, composed a Constitution and initiated their own 18th-century style government by the people. A few decades later, the French revolutionaries had fallen into disarray. A strong military leader emerged: Napolean Bonaparte. He changed France, and ultimately all of Europe, forever, by casting the smoke of military might upon most of the Continent. The flying sparks of Liberty would, as years and decades rolled by, revise the entire European way of governance. In the course of the next two hundred years, kings, queens, emperors and their royal consorts lost their hold on political power. By the end of World War I, Monarchy had pretty much, as we Americans say, "gone the way of the buffalo." In the early years of the 1800's, the Austrian empire, ruled by the Hapsburg dynasty, held the reins of authority in a large chunk of central and eastern Europe. The Austrian imperial court had been established long ago in the charming, cultured city, Vienna. Serving as musical leaders, Franz Josef Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed orchestral music for the Imperial court of the Austrian empire. From their base in Vienna, they called the shots for symphonic sounds anywhere in Austria and beyond. Meanwhile, "back at the ranch", so to speak, in 1770, a musical genius was born in the German outback. More about Ludwig in a minute. In France, the new wave of republican and democratic fervor was rearranging the entire nation in a flood of liberation that would eventually engulf the entire continent. At the turn of the 19th-century,Ludwig van Beethoven left his home in Bonn and traveled to Austria to get in on the musical action that Haydn and Mozart had set in motion. In 1804, a rehearsal for Beethoven's 3rd Symphony, the Eroica (hero) was being conducted in the Lobkowitz palace, near Prague. In 1992, Simon Cellan Jones produced a movie, Eroica, about that rehearsal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtA7m3viB70  The story therein reveals the difference between imperial music, composed and performed for princes and emperors, and the revolutionary sounds that were originating in Beethoven's heart, mind and musical compositions. Long story short, Ludwig van Beethoven changed music forever.

Simon's 1992 movie, Eroica, provides a cinematic glimpse into that revolutionary angst expressed in Beethoven's third symphony, the Eroica, which means, in English, Hero. Long story short. Beethoven viewed Napolean as an innovative hero, whereas the royals of Europe, as represented by the genteel Austrian bluebloods. . .

saw Napolean as a nuisance and a serious threat to their imperial hold on power in the 19th century. Prince Lobkowitz' remark about what he hearing in the reherasal was: "needlessly violent. . .a tasteless intermarriage of the diatonic (music) with the climatic." We discern here a cinematic glimpse of the revolutionary 18th century as it was discomforting not only the powers that be in imperial Europe, but also the wider world of music that Beethoven would change forever, stretching all the way into the 20th century. . . when Chuck Berry, the Beatles and many other singers wailed out "Roll Over, Beethoven." In other words . . . we hear you, Ludwig, and we are passing the baton of revolutionary music! As Beatle John Lennon sang, back in the day:  "You say you want a revolution. Well, you know we all wanna change the world." Well, Ludwig van Beethoven certainly did, even as Joni Mitchell later expressed, in her version of the Beethoven's legend, as she sung it in 1972 in her "Ludwig's Tune". . . it's the judgement of the moon and stars, your solitary path." King of Soul

Boomer Radio Drift Riff

While ridin' into town with the radio cloud around me, punch-dialing the wave that's bound to amuse me. . . country station, a little bit corny.. . . talk-radio here, oldies station there, classic rock, NPR, gospel station here, little bit o' classic this that or the other there, classic country, classic rock. Classical orchestral (WDAV 89.9) Beethoven's 9th . . . then rock 'n roll ancestral, Elvis, deja vu: ed sullivan with "a really big shew"!. . :Chuck Berry, James Brown, Otis Redding. Then there was Motown, Temptations, Four Tops, standin' in the shadow of love, Bernadette, same ole song, but with a different beat since you been gone. . . Gladys and the Pips. . .goin' back to find. . . leavin on the midnight train to Georgia, and Ray Charles:Georgia on my mind. . . Brook Benton, "so I take my guitar. . . . rainy night in Georgia. Then there's the West Coast, on this flight tonight. . . goin' t'surf city California girls, Help me Rhonda. . . and down in L.A . . . somethin' happenin' here; what it is ain't exactly clear. Stop children watch that sound! But wait! Do you hear that?British invasion: "she was just seventeen; you know what I mean". . . and the next thing you know, Love me do. . . Beatle mania, lonely hearts club, barefoot on abbey road, somethin' in the way she moves. But hey! That's not all!  So, if you're goin' to san francisco, wear some flowers, say what? where have all the flowers gone? anyway. . . turn turn turn, turn on, tune in and dropout, eight miles high, but timothy leary's dead, y'all. No no no no he's outside looking in. . . wipe out, won't come back from dead man's curve, california dreamin' anyway, and san francisco ( i left my heart there). . . sinatra crooned it, old school style, in the midst of all this obtusion. Then slick dropped in, one pill larger, one pill small, flyin' high like the eagles: dark desert highway, heard the mission bell rang. . . then there she was in the doorway, could be heaven? could be hell: still hear those voices. . .

one pill larger, one pill small, and the ole glenn miller doesn't do anything all. . . they're all gone, gone, gone, But a continent away: almost heaven, west virginia, . . rocky mountain high, and Kenny just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in; you gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. . . count your money. . . when the dealins' done! But radio's gone the way of the buffalo. . . something happenin' here; what it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man with a phone over there, tellin' me I've got to be aware: time to watch, citizens, watch that sound, everybody look what's goin' down. . . could be a Jan6 rerun, on a top 40 scale. Deja Vu. "When the white eagle of the north is flying overhead, and the browns reds, and golds of autumn lie in the gutter dead". . . and the red, white and blues of Ole Glory, lie on the Capitol steps, shred. . . remember then, Constitution words with wings of fire; come to witness America's new hope, born of lawful Americans, awaiting. . .We have all been here before; we have all been here before. . .maybe on the threshold of a dream, hopefully not a bad dream. Somethin' happenin' here! What it is ain't exactly clear. . . King of Soul

The Fox and the Peacock

The fox told his foxy-woxy chums that he would make a deal with them, commandeering public vines so that the fox and chums could run the show.

The peacock said now wait a minute; 

you can't do that; that's not the way this nation is set up. We've got a Constitution and a Rule of Law legacy that specifies how things are to be done around here. Your job as chief is to make use of the lawful structures, including guidelines and administrative law that has been established by Congress and by legislatures so that this train doesn't run off the rails, or to put it another way, so that this ship doesn't get overloaded with baggage on the upper end and cause the ship of state to get top-heavy and topple over and sink into the titanic depths of turpitude and just plain ole rude fat cats who are being enabled by their foxy-woxy feuhrer to let the rich get rich and the poor get poorer while all hell breaks loose as the ship of state is upended by the the proud boys and the three-percenters and the oath-beepers and the trumpler youth getstoppedyou. So you better get your message straight now - that is - in line with the Constitution and the Rule of Law that has been established by Congress in ages past, going back to 1781. What you're doing is more like what the kraut furyer was doing back in 1933–45. So you better get yourself straightened out before you end up like he did. Yeah I say unto thee you better change your tune because if the donkeys don't get you the euros will, and if the euros can't do it the yuons will. Now I don't give a yen how this turns out but you better get your program straight now - in line with the Constitution and the Rule of Law before all hell breaks loose and it will reverse course and you'll end up like marie marionette and king looloo when big blade of fickle finger of fate comes down on you. And I told him that! Glass half-Full