The Senator from Minnesota

Just a few days ago,  we were walking around in Haifa, Israel. That port city is really thriving with energy and productivity.

As we strolled near the Mediterranean shore, we came upon a cable-lift, which we rode upwards to a point about halfway up Mt. Carmel, passing in the air over a cave that is traditionally called “Elijah’s cave.”
Whether in that cave, or some other, the prophet Elijah heard a “still, small voice” of divine encouragement, while he happened to be at that moment in an hour of great need of some help from above. . . or whether Elijah’s word from the Lord happened in some other cave, I don’t really know. But I do believe, like Elijah of old, in God who is watching over us daily, and encouraging us if we listen in the Spirit for that still, small voice.

Moving right along . . .
Before we hopped on that cable-lift, I noticed this sign:



Of course I was reminded of the Senator from Minnesota. He was Vice President under Lyndon Johnson, back in the day.
You know, Humphrey got a bad deal. He might have been President. While the Democrats were trying to have a convention in 1968, their public persona was severely damaged because the heavy-handed Mayor Daley of Chicago was sending his police out in great numbers to whack the protesting kids who were trying to end the Vietnam War.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes in the other political party in ’68, the Republican nominee Nixon was tampering inappropriately with the peace talks that our diplomats were trying to conduct with the North Vietnamese in Paris.
In Chicago, Hubert was trying to establish his own peace-cultivating identity at the donkey convention. He was laboring under the duress of heavy-handed Lyndon’s invisible hand manipulating the convention to his own ends.
Long story short, Hubert got a bad deal and Nixon ended up getting the Presidency, only to be run off during his second term for sending some crooks to break into Democratic offices.
Humphrey, had he won, might have been a better President than Nixon. But some things we’ll never know, like who was behind the murder of JFK and so forth  and so on . . .

Well now we have another Senator from Minnesota who rises into the national limelight after New Hampshire, and I’m taking a close look at her candidacy. Maybe Amy will pull a Jimmy Carter on us and somehow take the White House.

Anyway, when Pat and I arrived back in USA a few days ago, having spent two weeks in the amazing country of Israel, lo and behold if we didn’t return to a situation where all hell was breaking loose and some folks are even talking about civil war between the elephants and the donkeys.
This is not good.
Now I am proud to be a political moderate, altough I have for a long time been registered as a Republican.
There are some things I like about Mr. Trump’s take-charge attitude, but generally I don’t think his Presidency is good for our country. He is too divisive, and destructive, like a bull in a china shop. And I don’t give a hoot about his damn wall. I say let ‘em in.

“Send me your tired and weary, your huddled masses yearning to be free.”

So this morning I wake up and Bernie has won the New Hampshire primary.
Well good for him and all those young people—like we were in ’68—who propelled him into this victory. But New Hampshire is his home state and this victory is a flash-in-the-pan because he is too far left, and propagating socialistic programs, to win the electorate across these here entire confederation of states that we call USA.
Therefore, in the interests of our already-great nation, I think I’ll vote for a moderate Democrat rather than take a chance on another divisitory four years with the Donald.
I’ll have to switch my party affiliation to Democrat, of course, to vote for Amy Klobucher, but it seems to me to be the best thing we can do to keep this still-great nation from falling apart at the seams.
I’ll go with the Senator from Minnesota.



Think about it, although we still have a long way to go before November, and a lot of bad and good things could happen along the way. Amy's moderate history indicates, it seems to me, that hers is a better direction that what is now tearing us apart at the seams.

Glass half-Full

A day in the Life

There we were, all in one place,

a generation lost in space.

Now here we are a half-century after

a life with all our pain and and laughter—

almost exactly fifty years to the day

since Sargent Pipper taught the band to play,

and though they been goin’ in and outa style

we are  gathered here to crack a smile.

So may I introduce to you?

--the one and only googled shears,

by which the great gargantuan engine hath snipped

every profound idle idol idyll mobile-friendly byte ever quipped:

I heard the news today, oh boy:

four trillion holes in tiny shiny mobile screens;

and though the holes were rather small

they had to rank them all.

Now they know how many holes it takes to fill

the mobile-friendly Mall

I’d love to turn your phone on . . . .

 

   King of Soul

The Wisdom of Eldridge Cleaver

I am reading the book that Eldridge Cleaver published in 1978, Soul on Fire.

As I am currently writing a novel about the year 1969, my research has followed many paths of discovery about that period of time in which I was a teenager; One of the most influential dissent groups of that period was the Black Panthers. I'm not talking about the Carolina Panthers who lost this year's super bowl to the team from Denver.

I'm talking about the militant Black Panthers, revolutionary terrorists of the 1960's, who were infamously lead by a trio of intrepid militants: Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton.

During the course of Eldridge Cleaver's amazing sojourn through civil rights activism and the minefields of 1960's black extremism, he had renounced, along with Stokely Carmichael and other leaders, the non-violence that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had espoused.

Eldridge fled the United States as a fugitive in 1968. In the seven years that followed, he visited the primary communist countries: Cuba, USSR, Peoples' Republic of China, North Vietnam, North Korea. The young revolutionary, having been driven out of America, sought revolutionary guidance from communist leaders.

Because I've got to go to work in a few minutes, I'll just cut to the chase here. On page 109 of his book, Soul on Fire, Eldridge writes:

"While in overseas exile, I discovered the frequency with which I was lecturing the hard-rock mentality of Communist leaders, reminding them that the world revolution was deeply rooted in the American people. I had heard so much rhetoric in every Communist country about their glorious leaders and their incredible revolutionary spirit that--even to this very angry and disgruntled American--it was absurd and unreal."

And on page 97:

"I had lived defiantly so long and in such seething hatred of all governments, people in power, people in charge, that when I came under the shelter of Communist powers, I sadly discovered that their corruption was as violent and inhuman as the people they 'victoriously' displaced. 'Up against the wall' was a trendy slogan of the underground movements around the world--but I later learned that without inner control, a moral perspective, and a spiritual balance that flowed out of Christian love, justice and caring, the Communist promises were to become the largest fraud of all.

"Pig power in America was infuriating--but pig power in the Communist framework was awesome and unaccountable. No protection by outbursts in the press and electronic media--the Reds owned it. No shelter under the benevolent protection of a historic constitution--the Marxists held the book and they tore out the pages that sheltered you. No counterweight from religious and church organizations--they were invisible and silent.

"My adult education began in prison and was ruefully completed in the prison that is called Marxist liberation, 'power to the people': that was meant for the party in control, writing the script, and enforcing the rules. I did mean it deeply when I said seven years later that I would rather be in prison in America than free somewhere else."

And prison in America he did do, when Eldridge Cleaver returned from exile. He did his time, was released in 1976, and lived free, free indeed, until his death in 1998.



King of Soul

Through the Looking Glass Gate of 1968

It was many, many years ago today

Sergeant Pepper thought he taught the band to play.

We been goin' in n' outa style,

'though we've traveled now for many a mile.

Yes, 'T'was many and many a year ago,

and whose years these were I think I know,

'cause I was born and raised in the Way down south;

Oh, Sweet potato pie and shut my mouth!

Meanwhile, suddenly down in Memphis

the tenser had gone to tensest

when the Man who was a Mountain said,

as though he were already dead:

I may not get there with you;

I may not get there with you,

and then suddenly he's gone where

I know he found a stair

way to heaven.

Film at eleven,

they said.

But He was already dead.



So then we woke up from the dream

of marmalade pie and soured cream

'T'was in that summer I hear them sayin,

while America was frayin':

Hell no! We won't go.

Bring your Democratic ass up to Chicago!

But we were agonizin'

while some bad moon was a-risin'.

I can't go there, I say I say.

Me gots to work; me gots to stay,

so I'll meet you there in fourscore and seven.

Therefore, lest I catch that same stairway to heaven,

and I feel my engines revvin',

I think I'll just skip the part about film at eleven.

But then we said,

when even Bobby too was dead

Hell, just lock the door and throw away the key;

Jest let us go then, you and me.

Let us give up hope

'cause we can't any longer cope.

Let us lock the door and throw away the key,

me and thee, and them out there makes three.

But hey! I thought;

lest we all be sold and bought,

if we fall for that that old cynic's tune

just gag me with a spoon!

Back at the ranch, meanwhile,

and suddenly she's there at the turnstile.

We feel the women come and go;

we wonder why but we don't know.

They look for Michelangelo

but then the men don't show.

They went to where the flowers go

while Sergeant Pepper puts on his show.



Maybe I didn't know then what I don't know now,

so I thought I'd try to work it out somehow,

until I found myself caught up in a Fall,

and suddenly I caught it all.

So we wrote it all off as a loss,

when we hung it, later, on a damned old cross.

I'm sorry to burst you bubble;

but thanks for all our trouble.



Glass half-Full