The Mystery of Mastery

Are you angry? Why? , , , and why is your attitude down?

If you do well, won’t your attitude be lifted?  But if you don’t do well, despair is crouching at your door.

But you must master it.

Choose discouragement, or improvement. Which will it be?

You have freedom to choose, you know.

Learn how to use that freedom. Master it.

Life brings good things to us, but life also throws some bad stuff at us along the way.

When life is a walk in the park . . . well, that’s great. Enjoy it. Make the best of it. From that favorable circumstance, move forward by taking measures to strengthen the stability that comes from that advantage.

But when the bad stuff again plops itself down in your garden path, what then? What you gonna do about it?

Don’t let it get you down. Although failure is lurking in your path, overcome it. Defeat defeat. Take mastery over discouragement.

Understand and accept that Life is going to drum up a certain amount of setbacks. Trouble comes with the territory in this life.

But you must master it.

Choose to master life; it will take awhile, maybe a whole lifetime.

We do have this choice, you know.

The ability to choose our own attitude, and thus set our own course—this is what we call freedom.

Freedom—you must master it.

We are free to choose where we go from here.

You are free to choose which way you will turn when that inevitable obstacle suddenly blocks your road to wherever it is you are going.

When the big one hits and throws you into a tailspin, will you wallow in your own discouragement?

Or will you master it?

Life itself was created for you, with this choice built into it.

But there is a good purpose for that challenge.

Having that choice is called freedom. Make use of the freedom. Master it.

Sometimes freedom is a pain in the ass, but Life would be a drag without it.

While you’re out there discovering life, you will surely run into some counter-productive influences . . . for instance, the idea of determinism.

Determinism is when some person or group wants to convince you that the obstacles in your path will surely defeat you, because the System is stacked against you.

The current strategy of the Determinism crowd says, for instance, Capitalism is against you . . . it cannot work for you.

But hey! . . . not if you master it. Take hold of any good opportunity to move forward.

Capitalism is what you—or perhaps your great great grandparents— entered into when they stepped off the boat, into America. Capitalism, with all its perils and pitfalls, is part of the territory here.

Master it.

You  can put capitalism to work for you, instead of against you.

The Determinism idea says that capitalism is nothing more than all those rich people and corporation manipulators who are perpetually stacking the deck against you.

But hey, that’s only a part of what capitalism is. Along with those unfavorable elements, capitalism includes also your freedom to choose something different, if what you presently are doing is not working for you and yours.

You must master it. That's your end of the deal.

In America, you would do well to master capitalism. Make it work for you. Work?

Work—yes, that’s important. Capitalism doesn’t properly function without it: work.

Can’t find work?

Make your own work. Find something to do. Find something that needs to be done and do it. Present your bill to whomever is benefitted by your work. Even if you’re collecting unemployment or disability benefits or whatever, find something helpful to do. You'll find yourself feeling better.

While the System is, yes Virginia, in some ways stacked against you, do not accept the negative assessment that there is no way around the obstacles.

Obstacles are standing outside your door. You must master them.

Obstructions are just around the bend. Master them.

If you don’t master them, who will?

Big Brother? The Fairy Queen?

Capitalism includes  your freedom to adjust your own attitude, and strategy, to get around, over or under whatever the System throws at you.

Master it. Learn when to work with it and, when to work against it.

It is true that working with the System is not always the best thing to do.

So this is also true: sometimes you will indeed have to work against the System, running against the wind, swimming against the tide.

That does not mean you allow the mob to convince you that the system is hopeless and the only way around it is to stir up trouble and destroy the System. There has, in the history of the world, always been them Powers that Be working against them that need to carve a new way out of the wilderness.

Knowing at any given time whether to work with the system or against it—this is called Wisdom.

You must master it. You must learn to use wisdom; cultivate it.

Wisdom is key to mastery in this life, but it doesn’t come easy.

Wisdom only comes through encountering both adversity and success.

So understand that adversity is part of the program for your obtaining mastery.

When you are at the crossroads of adversity and success, don’t cultivate discouragement; don’t malinger in bad attitude.

And don’t be hoodooed by  that Determinism that's out there and wants to incite the rabble to riot. Don't go there.

Determinism is when some person or group convinces you that the obstacles in your path will surely defeat you, because the System is stacked against you.

Determinism says the outcome of your life has already been determined by an exploitive Capitalist System. 

Determinism wants to convince you that you cannot muster the power to master your own destiny.

Determinism says, for instance,  you’re not making enough money to make a living, and you never will.

It is true, yes,  that  making more money could improve your situation.

But that’s not the whole enchilada.

Master the money thing: when you get some, make it work for you; don’t fritter it away. Put your money to work. Don’t let the Determinism crowd convince you that it’s all about money. Life is not all about money.

Life is all about what you do with life.

Determinism also  says you cannot improve yourself through discipline and study, and work.

Determinism says the only way you can outwit the system is to yield to the trending decadence and anarchy that perpetually wants to destabilize you and everybody else.

But don’t let it take control of you. Take control of it.

Master it.

Master life, and you will do well.

Don’t raise cain. Instead, make yourself able.

Learn to make some sacrifices.

And thank God.

Glass half-Full

Baby Boomers' Labor Lament

Here’s a little ditty of a rhyme to be sung to the tune of . . .

Oh Home on the Range,

a song from back in the days of Davy Crockett, Howdy Doody, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans . . .

Oh give me a loan

so I can buy a home

where our kids and their friends can play,

where seldom is heard

a contentious word

and the mortgage is paid before my dying day.

Oh give me a job

so I won’t have to rob

from  Pete to pay Paul,

and so I’ll pay no interest on the cards;

and never shall we fall

on  bad times at all,

And I won’t have to work too damn hard.

Oh give me job security

by the time I reach maturity

so our competence is not made obsolete,

and the skills we were taught

don’t get replaced by a bot;

and my dignity doesn’t just lapse in defeat.

Oh give me a timely upgrade

so my life’s work doesn't fade

on the trash heap of obsolescence.

Oh please let me try

to outsmart the AI,

so my time's not spent out in the dread convalescence.

King of Soul

Good ole boy coconut mining

You can't just bust into a coconut.

Maybe you've seen one at the grocery store. But what you have laid eyes on there is not a coconut; it is the inside of a coconut. Notice that the tasty white stuff cannot be seen; its still hidden inside.

There's a reason why the tasty white stuff cannot be seen; it is impossible to get to if you're a regular person. You have to be a special person to get to it--a coconut farmer, or some kind of a specialized food-processing robot, or a Hawaiian with a machete.

Or a good ole boy with a sharp saw. In the grocery store, you understand, what you see of the coconut appears to be an outer shell; but in the wild, that shell is actually an inner liner.

Like life itself, it's a hard nut to crack. But with a little work, some persistence, and an appropriate tool, the obstacles can be dismantled.

Glass half-Full

A Boomer Looks Back

Now that I've been growing up for 65 years, I am at last approaching some semblance of adulthood.

During the course of my baby'boomer lifetime, I have seen some changes; some of them I am actually starting to comprehend.

Now I look back on it all and find myself wondering about some things, but quite sure about some other things.

Several years ago, my wife and I spent some vacation time on the island of Maui, in the great state of Hawaii. While driving one afternoon down the western slope of Hale'akala volcano, we happened upon a memorial to a great man named Sun Yat-sen.

In his lifetime, during the early 20th century--1911, Sun lead many of his countrymen in a revolution that deposed the old monarchy of their country--the Chinese Qing dynasty. But before that happened, he had spent some time in Hawaii; that's why there's as statue of him there.

At the base of Sun Yat-sen's memorial a quote from him is carved in the stone, and this is what is said:

LOOK INTO THE NATURE OF THINGS

Ever since I saw that, I have been working that pearl of wisdom into my way of living as much as I can. And this principle of living and learning has been not only a motivation for me toward acquiring useful knowledge, but also a source of great joy and satisfaction.

This principle is expanded in the Proverbs of the Bible: Understanding is a fountain of life to one who has it. Proverbs 16:22.

Now this may seem like a philosophical idea, but it is really very productive in the living of real life. Here's a nuts n' bolts example:

In 1992, when I was still a young man of 41, working as a carpenter to provide for our three children, and for my wife who had not yet become a nurse, and for our household, I took a job with a construction company remodeling (a refurb job) an old K-Mart. My job was to tear old stuff out from around the inside perimeter of the store and replace it with a newer style of retail display.

I had been visiting K-Marts ever since I was a teenager in the 1960's. So I had been seeing those retail structures for most of my life. But to look behind the facade, into the structure, and then to reconstruct the structure based on newer, more modern components--this work experience held a strange satisfaction for me, as well as a source of income for a season of our life.

Working on that K-Mart was more than a paycheck; it was a joy to behold as the various phases of reconstruction unfolded beneath my hands and before my eyes.

Look into the nature (or structure) of things!

Many years have passed; now I'm looking back on it all. Part of the outcome from this reflection will be a novel that I am now researching and writing. It is a story that takes place during the time of my youth; it has become a cathartic process for reconciling the difference between what I thought I knew then and what I now know about that turbulent period of my g-generation's growing up.

Ours was the generation whose maturing was said to be delayed because Dr. Spock wrote a book about child care that--as some have judged it--convinced our mothers to spoil us.

While there may be an element of truth to that judgement, I have noticed in my conversations with some people lately that there is category of folks in our boomer generation who were definitely not spoiled:

Those guys and gals who fulfilled their duty to our country by going to fight the war in Vietnam--they found themselves in a situation where they had to grow up in one hell of a hurry.

What I am seeing now is, in my g-generation, there was a great divide between: Them that went, and them that didn't.

While I was college freshman in 1969, trying to figure out what life was all about, and marching against the war, those guys who who went to 'Nam were required--and yeah I say unto thee--forced to figure out how to keep life pumping through their bodies and the bodies of their buddies who fought with them.

Those soldiers who went over there had to grow up a lot quicker than I did.

I did not go to Vietnam. My lottery number in 1970 was 349, so I literally "lucked out" of it.

During that time, a time when I was stepping lightly through ivory-tower lala land, our soldiers on the other side of the world were trudging through jungles, heavy-laden with weapons and survival gear. While I was privileged to be extending my literacy skills, they were committed to learning how to kill the enemy before he kills "us."

Now it turns out my research about the '60's is swirling around two undeniable maelstroms of socio-political showdown: civil rights and the Vietnam war.

So, in my project of looking into the nature of things in the 1960's, I am learning about that war and how it came to be a major American (undeclared) war instead of just a civil war between Vietnamese.

One thing I have found is that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara undertook a similar project in 1965. When he was in the thick of it all--as one of the best and brightest industrial leaders of that age, having been recruited as an insider in the White House, then calling the shots on major events, wielding incredible military power on the other side of the planet, in the heat of the moment and in the fog of war, he found himself wanting to know. . .

how the hell did this happen? how the hell did we get here?

McNamara's question lead to a .gov-commissioned research project, paid for on our taxpayer dime, and ultimately made public by the primary researcher of that undertaking, a former Marine Lt. Col. named Daniel Ellsberg.

Look deep into it. In Ellsberg's case he looked deep into 7000 pages of military documentation, starting in the 1940's and going all the way through Tonkin Gulf in 1964.

Look into the nature of things.

I'll let you know in another year or two--when the book is done-- what my search dredges up from the streets and battlefields of our g-generation's search to find meaning and fulfillment, and maybe even a little justice and mercy thrown in.

But one thing I want to say, now, to THEM THAT WENT:

Although things did not turn out the way we had intended, there isn't much in this life that actually does end up like we thought it would.

You went and did what the USA asked, or compelled you, to do, while many of us were trying to pull you back to stateside.

Thank you for your service. We'll need many more of your stripe before its all over with.

Glass half-Full

Listen: Boomer's Choice

The American Deal

Way back in time, hundred year ago, we was movin' out across the broad prairie of mid-America, slappin' them horse teams so' they would pull them wagon out across the grasslands and the badlands, and then blastin' our way 'cross the Rockies and Sierras all the way to Pacific and the promised land of California.

And it was a helluva time gettin' through all that but we managed to do it, with more than a few tragedies and atrocities along the way, but what can you say, history is full of 'em: travesties.

Troubles, wherever men go-- travesties, trials and tribulations. That's just the way it is in this world. If there's a way around it, we haven't found it yet.

But there has been progress too, if you wanna call it that. Mankind on the upswing, everybody get'n more of whatever there is to get in this life, collectin' more stuff, more goods, services, and sure 'nuff more money.

Movin' along toward the greatest flea market in history, is kinda what we were doing.

Taming the land, transforming the planet into our own usages, improving, or so we thought, on God's original versions.

After that great westward expansion transference/transgression, had been goin' on for a good while, and a bad while now that you mention it, we Americans found ourselves high up on a bluff overlooking history itself. At Just about that time, them Europeans had a heap of trouble that they'd been brewin' over there and they dragged us into it on account of we had become by that time quite vigorous, grasping the reins of manifest destiny and ridin' along, as so it seemed, on the cusp of history, seein' as how we had been raised up on our daddy's Britannic colonizing, mercantiling knee.

Then long about 1914, them Europeans dragged us into their big fatally entreched mess over there and we went and fought the first Big War, fought them high and mighty Germans that first time and when we got done with it and got back over here the world was a different place.

I mean the world was a different place, no doubt about it.

For one thing, everybody in the civilized world was so glad to have a little peace in 1920, we just went hog wild.

Everybody got out there a-workin', roarin' '20s zeitgeist, scrapin' crops out o' the ground, building great machines, skyscrapers. Edison had electrified us; Bell had sounded the bells of modern communication; Ford had tinkered us into a vast new world of mass production with a horseless carriage in every garage and a chicken in every pot and and we were skippin' right along like a cricket in the embers.

'Til '29, when the big crash came along.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39RKRelTMWk

Some folks said that Mr. Hoover, great man that he was, was nevertheless clueless, and so the nation turned to Mr. Roosevelt for new answers. FDR, young cousin of Teddy Roosevelt who had been the father, so to speak, of American progressivism-- cousin Franklin D., Governor of New York, took the bull by the horns and somehow managed to breed it into a donkey.

So from Teddy's bullmoose progressivism there arose, through 1930's-style unemployed populist cluelessness, Americanized Democratic Socialism; with a little help from FDR's genteel patriarchal largesse, the New Deal saved Capitalism, or so it is said among the theoreticians and the ivory tower legions who followed, and are still following, in Roosevelt's wake.

Well, by 'n by, between Lyndon Johnson's grand Texas-size vision for a Great Society, Clinton's good-ole-boy nod to residual crony capitalism, and then the 21st-century-metamorphosing, rose-colored proletarian worldview as seen through Obama's rainbow glasses, and now the upswell of Bernie's refurbished wealth redistribution wizardry-- we've turned this corner into a rising tide of flat-out Democratic Socialism.

It will be, quite likely, soon inundating the tidal basin inside the beltway as in 2017 we slog into the mucky backwaters of full-blown Americanized Socialism, dammed up on the other side of the slough by that other guy whose oversimplified version of the nation and the world seems to want to land us in a brave new world of American National Socialism.

And who knows which way this thing will go; only time and the slowly softening sedentary, dependent American electorate can tell.

Looking back on it all, today, my 65th birthday, having lived through Nov22'63, April4'68, 9/11, yesterday's disruptions wherever they may be, and everything in between, I find myself identifying with all the old folks whose weary outmoded facial expressions bespoke disdain, while I traipsed errantly along life's way. Here's to all them ole folks who I thought were a little out of it, one brick shy of a load, peculiar, decrepit and clueless. Now, I can relate.

How I wish America could be back at real work again, like we were back in the day.

We've pushed through vastly extracted frontiers that yielded to massive infrastructure networks punctuated with skyscraping towers of steel and concrete. Now we're lapsing into solid-state, navel-gazing nano-fantasies, living vicariously through celebrities in our pharma cubicles.

Maybe there's a new frontier in there somewhere but I'm having a hard time seeing it.

But hey! let me conclude this rant with a hat-tip to the man--he happens to be a Canadian--who best eulogized the essence of that once-and-future great North American work zeitgeist, which seems to be disappearing into the dustbowl of history, because it looks like there's nowhere left to go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjoU1Qkeizs

Well, maybe there is, somewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38bHXC8drHc

Glass half-Full

The Crossroads

The legend lives on from the blues men on down of the big choice they call the ole crossroads.

The crossroads, it is told, is where a man's mortal soul can be sold for a life of good fortune.

Somewhere out there in the delta, in the sweltering heat of Mississippi where the cotton grew high and the ancient blues twangers sang their mournful 12-bar tunes about how hard life is and how much much harder it could be when the love of a woman is tasted but then gets lost somewhere between trouble and tragedy, and the tragedy is turned into song. . . out there where Miss'ippi mud is blacker than New'Awlins coffee, and the blues pangs clangin' off them ole guitar strings is thicker and stronger than bad whisky. . .

that ole crossroads where they say the devil would hang around waitin' for the blues man to come walkin' along, desperate for some kind of simple twist of fate that would set his heartstrings and his sixstrings into a new direction, where he could catch a ride to Memphis or NewYawk and sing them blues into the big microphone and get satisfaction for his pain, get some monetary compensation for sharing his pain with the world, to the tune of . . .Crossroads

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd60nI4sa9A

As I was a-growin' up down there in Miss'ippi, snotty-nosed clueless white kid in the suburbs of Jackson, late 1950's, my daddy might have driven right over them very crossroads, out there in the piney woods backwoods near where Robert Johnson and Pop Staples had cranked out their doleful blues tunes. My daddy might have clunked over them crossroads in the old Ford station wagon as he was driving the backroads doing forestry work, but if he did I never knew it.

Wasn't 'til later that I found out about them blues, encountered them blues for myself while tasting for my own young self the sorts of pain that this life can deal out.

Years later, when I was wandering in the college scene in the late '60s, I got a little turned around and confused and encountered the blues, found myself romanticizing some pain that was in my head and a little too caught up in the mary jane and the avoidance of the pain, but still managed somehow to gain a degree, for what its worth, in political science or English or some useless crossroads thereof.

I say useless, but not really.

It's good to learn to read and write, and to research etc blahblahblah. Now I'm working on a fourth novel, like a thousand and one other boomer fools.

But As I was sayin', One thing led to another and then after college I was in Florida for awhile, selling insurance and then advertising with many a night misspent in topless bars and what not, followed by a few nights in Pasco county jail and the night I got out of jail I saw a movie that had been made in the mountains of North Carolina and so I, still running from my troubles, went up there, landed in Asheville, been there ever since, not in Asheville but in the great green state of North Carolina.

North Carolina Is My Home

After a few more false starts and dead ends I finally found, by the grace of God, salvation and the love of my life, from whose womb birth was given that brought forth our three children and this wonderful life, which is, as it turned out, so richly lived, even without all the money that I coulda shoulda woulda made had I made better choices.

Now after 35 years of building houses and other structures I suddenly found myself turning a corner toward the big 65 when I found myself not yet ready to throw in the towel and just settle into the social security dole which supposedly I have contributed to all these years and therefore earned, so I went and got myself a job at Lowe's home center, which is at the crossroads between two great industries of this country--retail and construction--not a bad place to be in America.

Now at this late stage, looking back on it all, it seems I've been, like many boomers, and like many so-called millennials will be by the time they get to be my age, underemployed. Hey, I've been underemployed all my life, but that has turned out to be no big deal.

It's been a good ride, thanks be to God.

And the big 65, which I'll turn here in about three weeks, is really nothing special--no magic number, so I'll keep paying my dues--which is to say, working-- for a few more years because this life is, as the Beatles said on Abbey Road. . . the bread you make is equal to the bread . . . you take.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVYjQScC1DY

Or something like that.

And so my advice to all you millennials and gen-Xers out there who are over-educated, underpaid and underemployed is this:

Find a job, any job, and just stay busy working, learning, progressing toward your destiny. Don't wait for .gov or Bernie or anybody else to bail you out because this world really does not work that way.

Get busy, stay busy, work every day you can, and your destiny will find you by the time you're my age and you will find that . . .

Life is good. Make the best of it. Don't wait for a handout and don't blame anyone else for your troubles.

But you can sing the blues if it helps you to deal with the pain. And you may find yourselves, along the way, at a crossroads or two, but don't sell your soul.



Glass half-Full

Oh, Give Them

Oh give them some land to work with

and some water to make stuff grow.

Give them some tools to turn the earth over

and push all that dirt around,

productively.

Teach them to Plow it and disc it and

tend it and harvest it

and ship the Fruits of it out so folks can

Eat.

And give them some Water; we need

water.

Oh yeah let 'em eat drink and be merry.

Yeah, let 'em do all that

in this our promised land.

Let 'em slice it and dice it and

multiply, divide it.

Let 'em add this that and the other

and subtract what they think they don't need,

let 'em Seed and Feed.

Let the wise lead,

and hope they've chosen wisely.

Let the simple be fulfilled,

and not by their leaders be killed.

At the Wonder of it all, let us be thrilled.

Let us carve the earth and marvel at it all--

what we've done and what

we've made.

But hey, please don't let it go to our heads.

Instead, help us

Try to keep it in perspective with

some eyes on the big picture,

eyes on the prize

not obsessing with the size

of all this stuff.

Give us some Air to breath

and help us put on some wings and fly

Oh yeah

but help them limit our negative effects; let them

temper their intrusions, boost our inclusion.

We need to regulate it and yet we need

to deregulate it help us

figure all that part out that

delicate balance

sensitive valence.

We gotta prioritize it and sensibly control it.

Let 'em have a firm hand, a steady hand,

but, yeah, a gentle hand.

Let them take care in what they do with the earth

and the air.

Let them share;

and yes, be fair.

Yeah, let us be fair to one another,

and make sure there's enough to go around

for everybody. I'm not making this up.

Let them prosper and proceed

with their plans

but let them pray

today.

Yea, Let us pray.

Hey God. . .



Glass half-Full

The Lady is at Work

She heard America singing;

through two centuries' labors they came a-ringing--

the song and the opus of bringing

a newborn project in a newfound world

'neath a loud stripey flag 't'was unfurled.



From ship to wagon to cart to railroads,

sending out them precious mother-lode payloads

over seas and lands and bridges and field rows--

he hauled 'em in, she bailed 'em out

through highways and byways they sent forth the shout.



Up with the work! and down with the grit

she dug and he hammered; she welded; he shipped it.

Turn up the earth, mine and weld and wield it 'til it fit--

a new land, a new time, new way of doin'

rolling on wheels where used to be horsehoin'.



They rolled up on the far edge of our vast continent,

on the heels of a gold rush at the shore of containment.

Along came the Okies, then Hollywood raiment--

not bein' done yet, we slid into Silicon valley,

so much bigger and brighter than the old yankee alley.



Now what's up with that and where do we go from here--

let bruthas and sistahs step to the music we hear

enduring the pain, dodging the rain, overcoming the fear,

we gotta discover what to do to pick up the slack

so we do not regress, do not turn back.



Maybe we will and maybe we will not--

forge a way past our lethargy, this entitlement and rot

what it is we got to do I know not what,

might have to grab that destiny from some ogre or grinch.

Let's get this ship turnin'--hand me that wrench!



Glass half-Full

The life song of J Alfred Bourgeois

We've worked hard for what we've got;

maybe we're smart and maybe we're not.

Thanks to the courage of long-dead soldiers,

we can grow and prosper and manage to get older.



We've read about .gov by the people, republics, and democracy;

we try to stay decent, clean, and free from hypocrisy.

And yes, we've heard of that Marx guy, and Lenin and whatnot.

but I'm here to say we aint no proletariat.



We don't wanna change the world;

we like stars and stripes in the breeze unfurled.

Dinner on Sundays, work on Mondays, weekends for fun days;

this is what we like, and cultivate in predictable ways.



Jefferson said let's do .gov by the peoples.

We say along with that came letting folks raise their steeples.

Marx, on the other hand said we need dictatorship of the proletariat,

but this home-making bourgeois boy giveth not a plug nickel for all that.



We're happy to be plain ole boojwazee,

with a washer, dryer, car, and a home someday mortgage-free.

There are plenty out their who wanna die for the Cause;

we just like living in freedom under reasonable laws.

Glass half-Full

Tale of Two Bridges

That new bridge in the East is sleek and lowly-slung;

she shimmers ghostly against blue sky,

while Ole West, high-tense, from rock to rock is hung;

they had to sling them cables high.



Out where flat marshes meet Atlantic's swellin' swale

they've stretched a spindly span, ascending high with whitish wispy grace.

But over on California crags where Pacific currents hail

they had strung an iron span of steel-tensed strength in perilous golden space.



Here's one bridge, laid-back and sleek, steeped in simple Southern style;

t'was formed up in 21st-century streamlined gray concrete;

the other was stretched in cabled steel--in blood-red iron by bloodied rank and file,

strung out in 1930's grit as some gargantuan steel-nerv'd feat.

When America swoons in futures past and some souls live to tell the tale,

we'll speak stories of bridges, of metallic spans that tested men's mortal fate.

Perhaps they'll mention Charleston's pride--that span in whitish shade of pale,

but the king of steel-strung cabled bridgedom is that big red one at Golden Gate.



Glass half-Full

Doing the Limbo at 64

I remember back in the 1950s when I was growing up and attending Catholic school. They taught us that there's a place called Limbo, where you go after death if you had never received baptism while living in the world. Although I am a mere Christian now, having been baptized in 1978 by own choice choice at the age of 27, it has been revealed to this protestant that there is indeed a place called Limbo.

But it is not actually a place; rather, it is a time, a time of life.

How do I know this?

I am in Limbo now. I am learning that it is a stage of life through which you pass, before--not after-- death, a kind of a nether time through which the maturing American sojourns, somewhere between ages 64 and 66.

When you turn 64, there are multiple signs that indicate you have arrived in Limbo. The first is, of course, remembering back to 1968 when the Beatles raised the profound question "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?"

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x158z5_beatles-when-i-m-sixty-four_music

On one level, the song is profound for the aging adult, insofar as it raises the question of one's life-status or love-condition in relation to one's spouse, or, as they say nowadays, one's "significant other" or lack thereof.

On another level, the question itself--about being needed and fed--is critical for the aging adult, insofar as it raises the question of one's life-status in relation to "the System."

You know the System I'm talking about, the one that--as we thought back in the day--would relegate us all to little ticky-tacky houses where we'd all look just the same.

And once you start seeing the signs that you are approaching--or perhaps have already arrived in-- Limbo, suddenly the omens are all over the place, and very plain to see.

For example, as I happened to tune in, a couple of days ago, to Diane Rehm's show, in which the Grand mistress of inside-the-beltway grapevine NPR confab discussed the big "R" word with Teresa Ghilarducci,

http://thedianerehmshow.org/audio/#/shows/2016-01-07/teresa-ghilarducci-how-to-retire-with-enough-money/111702/@00:00

I learned that the assets so far accumulated by myself and my wife (six years younger than me) are, of course, not nearly enough to "make it through" the Retirement years, which is a special golden or rose-colored-glasses period sometimes called the "rest of our life."

Theoretically, our assets are not enough, especially with, you know, zero interest rates etcetera etcetera.

On the other hand, who the hell knows how much is enough?

Furthermore, this unstable scenario has been further destabilized by myself, yours truly, who recently, and oh-so-irresponsibly, decided to quit my job seven months before reaching the big SIX-FIVE road marker, because it was--as my body was daily communicating to me--wearing me out, after the past 45 years of uninterrupted work, the lion's share of which was spent in construction and maintenance jobs.

There's a reason (as I am discovering) that 65 is the big mile marker, the fork in the road where two paths diverge, as Robert Frost might have called it many and many a year ago.

In my case, I just didn't quite make it that far, stopped short of the finish line with only seven months to go.

In one moment of time I morphed from one Bureau of Labor Statistical category to another. Whereas, I formerly was perhaps categorized as employed but underemployed (being a college grad in a maintenance job), this statistical territory I now inhabit is a never-neverland somewhere between "unemployed" and "dropped-out of the labor force altogether--having given up on looking for another job! "

Limbo!

The real hell of it is I'm still looking for a job, still striving to redeem myself from the stigma of being a labor-force dropout, still busting gut to add another few thousand bucks into that magic pot of IRA and/or 401K gold at the end of the Social Security rainbow.

Did I mention "gold"? Don't even think about it, except all the online doomsayers are saying I need to buy it. But I wouldn't know where to start. I mean, I've lived in the System all my life.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, where I'm filling blanks and checking boxes in online applications, the question becomes: who is going to hire a 64-year-old who just may be one of those off-the-chart non-entitities who has "given up" on gainful employment, when there are multitudes of unemployed or underemployed 22-year-olds out there pounding the keyboard and the pavement looking for work?

Who? I ask you who?

Don't think too hard. That's been my problem all my life--thinking too much, and maybe writing too much too. (And if you believe that, I've got three novels, poised in cyberspace on the website linked below; they're hanging there, suspended in electrons waiting to enhance your historical reading experience.)

So here I leave you with a closing anecdote. It is a dilemma wrapped in an enigma.

6:30 this morning, still dark. I just delivered my wife to her nursing job. I'm at the gas pump of a convenience store. I'm thinking. . .maybe I should go in there and ask for a job. Then I'm looking blankly at the gas pump as the digitals flash, and my eye wanders up to a sign on the gas pump. It says:

"Polar pop any size 69 cents"

And above that message is another little sign, with pictures of "Crown" cigarette packs, and an offer that smokers cannot refuse:

"$3.18 if you buy two."

Do I really want to spend the last six months of my working life. . .

Fuhgedaboudit.



Smoke

Incentives for Development instead of Dependency

I've been working for the last six years as a maintenance man in an apartment complex that houses 92 households.

You know as well as I do that it is not easy to get up and go to a job five days out of every week that goes by, and to do this week after week, month after month, year after year.

Now for an old guy like me, age 64, while approaching that precipice called "retirement" and considering how/when such an arrangement may take shape, it has been difficult lately.

I've been struggling with a few issues, both public and private, pertaining to this job that has occupied 40 hours of my time every week for the last six years.

The apartment complex in which I maintain all this stuff--toilets, faucets, sinks, drains, light fixtures, electrical outlets, water heaters, doors, windows, cabinets, floors, stairways, interiors, exteriors, dumpsters, trash, smoke-filled rooms. . .this apartment community is a public housing arrangement in which rents are subsidized, according to need and income, through funds that have been provided through taxpayer money.

I confess that one problem I have had lately comes from wondering why I have to do all this work, when many tenants don't seem to have much to occupy their time. I mean, everybody has a TV and that's okay.

I don't really want to elude my responsibilities as an employed person. But I do believe that if there is, among the hundred+ residents here, a good person who is willing to take on some responsibility to do some necessary work. . .that person should be allowed to contribute some of their time and effort toward making the community facilities cleaner and more operative.

But I cannot expect this type of help from tenants.

I am, you know, the employee, while they are the tenants. I am the worker; they are the recipients of my services.

And I have, during previous periods of my life, benefited from some college-level training in education. Accordingly, I would like to take opportunities now and then to teach others, especially children, to do for themselves instead of me the Maintenance guy doing all of it.

A year or two ago, a good thing happened in this complex where I work. A helpful tenant who lives here took it upon himself to help me in cleaning one of our two laundry rooms. I was pleased to have his participation, especially since I have a steady stream of vacancies to deal with--vacancies that require painting, cleaning and repairs. There should be more people in the world who are like this good citizen who has volunteered to help make the community in which he lives, in which I work, a better place.

Nevertheless, I was informed that it was not his place to do so. Because he is, after all, the tenant, while I am the employee.

In other instances during my six years, tenants have been compelled to uproot plants--decorative and vegetable-- that they had planted in the mulched sterile areas around the buildings. Because it was against the rules. Management is supposed to do all that, and make those decisions, etc. And this place is subsidized by the USDA. The A stands for Agriculture. Fed-approved agriculture of course, not tenant-planted agriculture.

I told a friend of mine recently that if I had a million bucks I'd buy the whole dam place and then let the tenants have their own community garden instead of these useless ornamental shrubs and mulch, and I'd turn my maintenance job over to a tenant committee where they could divvy out the work as it arises, and be compensated accordingly with rent credit or benefits or cash.

Well, my struggle with these issues was punctuated this Sunday morning with some other inputs about this type of situation.

I was listening in on Listening In, which is an online audio program that is provided weekly by World Magazine, of which I am a subscriber.

http://www.worldmag.com/player.php?podcast/7467

In this recorded discussion, I heard host Warren Smith interviewing guest Jennifer Marshall, who represents the Institute for Family, Community and Opportunity of the Heritage Foundation. They were conducting a fresh discussion about a tired old topic, welfare reform.

Jennifer was explaining the outcome of a recent forum at Heritage, the purpose of which was to help people escape poverty.

She mentioned that the major welfare reform of 1996 had been successful in reducing welfare loads and reducing child poverty. But only one program was dealt with. She further stated what needs to happen is reform of--not just cash welfare program-- but food stamps, public housing and other programs. And then she made this statement:

"The incentives right now are structured toward dependence; let's get them structured toward moving people back to independence, back to flourishing in their communities."

And I thought, she may have a good point there. But I don't know what I could do about it.

Life goes on.

In other news, its a beautiful, sunny day here in the Blue Ridge.

Have a nice day, and a satisfyingly productive week.



Glass half-Full

Them Immigrants

She said Send me

your huddled masses yearning to be free.

He said Lend me

your immigrant asses yearning to work for me.

She calls out for all mankind

have a little compassion willya cuz they need some time

to get their act together, find some opportunity--

to make it on their own, juz like you and me.



He insists they play by the rules

cuz our ancestors were no fools--

they broke the ground, forged their own tools!

She said yeah but that was then and this is now

they just got off the boat--they don't know how--

not yet.

Just get

me some productivity he said,

while masses toiled and earnings fed.



But then the Great Recession changed all that;

by n bye entitlements got fat;

while jobs went stale, wages flat.

All that pie in the sky we be been dreaming of

went splat in the face when push came to shove.

So now them huddled masses yearning to be free

dun scooped them jobs from you an me,

or so they say.



But hey,

it's all good in the 'burbs, it's hunky-dory in the 'hood,

them doin' what them could, we doin' what we should,

raisin' upward mobilitators, squeezin' out them couch potatoes,

'til black swans fly o'er white doves' gains,

and burnin' wood doth move against more-of-the-same.



Smoke

Chicago

I say

America moved, I say, back in the day.

She just came bustin' out from the East.

She came rolling in on wheels, gliding through ship-tossed spray.

She was blowing past some old dearth, yearning some new feast.

We heard her skimming' o'er Erie, Michigan, and along the deep blue sky,

plucking plunder low, grabbing gusto high.

And when the dust had settled,

after Illinois mud had dried,

when ore'd been changed to metal,

while papa sweated and mama cried,

the new was born; the old had died.

Where dreamers come and workers go,

't'was there arose:

Chicago.


Born of rivers and the Lake,

she was cast in iron, forged in steel,

bolted fast as rails n' timbers quake,

careening then on some big steely Wheel

making here a whippersnappin' deal,

and there a factory, a pump, a field,

o'er swamp and stump and prairie

tending farm and flock and dairy

in blood and sweat and rust

through boom and blust and bust.

They carved out block, laid brick and stone;

our groundwork for America Midwest they honed

with blade and trowel and and pick and shovel.

They swung hammers through dust as thick as trouble.

They dug a canal there that changed

the whole dam world; they arranged

to have goods shipped in, and products go.

Reminds me of Sandburg, and Michelangelo.

Many a man put meat on the table;

many a woman toiled, skillful and able.

Thousands of sites got developed, selected,

while many a factory got planned and erected.

Many a Chicagoan had a good run,

caught lots of ball games, had a whole lotta fun,

while working, playing, praying and such

with friends and families, keeping in touch.

In all that we do, the plans we make,

there's forever more going down than we think is at stake.

When people wear out, they sit around and play cards.

When widgets wear out, we pile them in scrap yards.

If we're lucky, or resourceful, or blessed,

we'll end up with a little something at the end of our test,

a hole in the wall, or a piece of the pie,

maybe a nice little place, by n' by.

While Democrats convened in Chicago in '68,

antiwar protesters got stopped at the gate.

Mayor Daley sent his men out to poke 'em in the slammer.

'T'was Chicago style justice: no sickle, just hammer.

Today in downtown, Chicago Mayor Daley's name is all over the place,

though about those radical protesters you'll find not a trace.

So what does that tell ya about Chicago, or America, today?

We're like the Cubs' in the Series; that's all that I'll say.

Glass half-Full

The Work

I have worked all my adult life, beginning with that first job, at a Burger Chef, while I was in high school. After flippin' the burgers for awhile, I did the bag boy thing at an A&P, where I moved into the big time of running a cash register.

One high school summer I did an internship in an office at the Louisiana State Capitol.

Then moving on to LSU, I did part-time gigs: selling ladies shoes, dippin' ice cream at a little off-campus storefront from which I got fired for leaving the doors open one night; also, servicing vending machines at the Student Union building in between classes and chairing a committee of the student Union.

As chairman of the student National Speakers committee (a freebie job, but great experience), I introduced Dr. Benjamin Spock and comedian-activist Dick Gregory to our assembled student/faculty audiences. After that, the Young Republicans complained about the lefty speakers with no conservative balance. They wanted somebody to represent their side. I told them that was understandable, but we had, alas, blown the budget on Spock and Gregory. I told them we could go halfsies on paying William Buckley, if they could get him for us, which they did. I always thought that was mighty civil of them; maybe that's why I'm a Republican today.

I have fond memories of that time, which include hearing Dr. Spock talking about two Maoist girls who heckled him on some other campus somewhere, and Dick Gregory requesting a bowl of fruit be delivered to his hotel room and then making people laugh at his speech later but then impressing upon them the urgency of our racial problems. Then there was meeting Bill Buckley at the airport, escorting him to his hotel room and watching him tie his skinny tie as he smiled and talked to me like I was one of his New Yawk buddies. Bill had a very winning smile.

After a couple years of English and Political Science and intermittent cannabis distractions, I managed somehow to graduate, in December '73, I hit the trail with my "General Studies" sheepskin from LSU University College. Now this southern boy gravitated over to the epitome of southern exotica, a place called "Florida," where I sold debit life insurance for awhile in a black neighborhood, then moved on over to selling classified advertising for Mr Poynter at the St. Pete Times. But then I lost my license on points, but continued to drive and got nabbed by a highway patrolmen. When I went to court on the infraction, a judge named Rasmussen told me that if people disregarded the law in the way I had done, there would "anarchy in this country, so therefore I sentence you to five days in the county detention center."

"Detention center? What's that?" I asked the judge.

"That's the jail son," he replied.

"When does it start?" I queried.

"Right now," he said.

When I got to the jail, it was an alien environment for this university boy with wing tips, and so I decided to take control of my situation by getting involved in a poker game with these hardened criminals, but then I made the mistake of winning. I say "mistake," because my little stack of quarters or whatnot motivated one of the incarcerated fellows to ask me a for a dollar to get in the game, but I told him No.

So later that night, since he was in the same bunk with me, he punched me out.

I did, however, survive it.

Four days later, I'm out of the Pasco County jail, and I didn't get run over by a train or get drunk or nothin excitin' but I did happen to go to a movie filmed in the Blue Ridge Mountains; it was Where the Lilies Bloom.

The setting in that movie seemed so absolutely beautiful to me that I thought I'd like to just get the hell out of Florida and go to that place depicted in the movie, and so I did, and I've been liven' in these mountains ever since. That was about forty year ago.

After settling in Asheville, a place far more mountainous and wintry than this Louisiana boy had ever known, I got a job selling printing for a printshop. That turned into about five years of good work, but it came in two stints that were punctuated by a detour to Waco Texas in 1978. 'T'was there I got saved.

After meeting Jesus I returned to North Carolina and the print shop for awhile.

Then I drifted into the building trade and spent the lion's share of my working life as a carpenter building houses and a few other structures, including a bridge at Grandfather Mountain that completed the missing link of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which them WPA boys had left hangin' back in the '30s, either cuz they ran out of money, or the War came on, or the jagged mountain was just too craggy for a man to build a bridge on it at that time.

I married Pat; we had three young'uns, now grown. Which brings me now to the main point of this here blog: work. When a man gets a family, he manages somehow to motivated to go out in the wide jungle world and make a livin', by hook or by crook. And this is, I think, a very important part of what makes work for folks and what makes the world go 'round: Family. A greater motivator than ideology or guv'mint.

Last weekend, this mountain boy and my wife, Pat, were in San Francisco, at the upper end of Silicon valley where our son works amongst the high-flyin' v.c.-fueled startups of our day. I spent a lot of time walking through that amazing city, and on the last morning there I found this interesting sight in the Mission district where our son resides.

So I snapped it for you:

I found this really interesting. It's a great work of art, painted lovingly and precisely on the face of a small business, which appears to be a hairstylist's shop, probably a family business, but not run by Papa because it's more likely run by Mama, with Papa working over on Mission Street with his grocery or some such enterprise.

You will notice, on the painting, some great people--true heroes of working people. The heavy hitters among them include: Gandhi, Dr. King, Cesar Chavez. Also identifiable are a few whose legacy and life's work was questionable, tainted with revolutionary violence: Che, Sandino. Sitting Bull is in the very middle. I wrote this song, Sitting Bull's Eyes, about him a long time ago.

The other persons in this mural are worthy of historical consideration. I checked out all those names, which are written beside each face. I cannot remember them all, but perhaps you will visit the Mission in San Francisco someday and see this great work of art for yourself. Or you may recognize them from the photo.

Worth noting in the artwork is an omission: amongst this collection of lefty heavyweights, the two theoreticians Marx and Lenin are not included; nor are the bloody tyrants, Mao and Stalin.

Some of those leaders pictured are not totally honorable in my Christian world-view, but they are obviously heroic in the eyes of the artist, and that says something significant about the perpetual struggle between, in this world, them that have, and them that have not. As for me, I respect them that are willing to work hard for what they do get, such as I, by God's grace, have done.

Smoke

An American poem

Punchbowl herds on de game Preserve

sippin up liquidity from de FedReserve,

dey spec and dey sling

dem dummy dollars, an' sing:

Oh give me a home where the FedFunds do roam

and de sheep and de bulls graze on Loan,

where seldom is heard a deflative word

and Govment reports steer de herd.



Now down in de City

workfolk stay gritty:

burgerflippers on strike

suburbers take hike

while Fed pumps liquidity

jackin up mediocrity

de system reward passivity

instead of generatin' activity.



While corpos say downsize

lefties get organize

obsesies say supersize

an' children go unsupervise;

Den Anonymous grab de tail

of dat lowlivin' beasty grail,

scarin' up rabble hell

against highrollin' game Preserve shell.



Somewhere out here in mudville today

de prophets dey cry while de profits may play;

but dere's no more renewal to tout,

cuz mighty America has struck out.

On de udder hand maybe not:

Have I understated our potential a lot?



O give me a land where innovators roam,

and de Feds on de Preserve get sent home,

where thee brave make a move and thee bold take a chance

at renewing our anthem, and reviving our dance.



Glass half-Full

Hey you.

During the dark middle years of our Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln went to a battlefield in Pennsylvania where thousands of soldiers had died in defense of our nation, while fighting to preserve what we Americans stand for.

Mr. Lincoln spoke very briefly that day, November 19, 1863. He spoke gravely, as a leader who deeply understood, and grieved at, the terrible, bloody price being paid for our freedom. What he said has filled and inspired the consciousness of us who have, over these last 150 years, benefited from the sacrifice of those brave men at Gettysburg. Here is a small shrapnel of what he said:

"But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot hallow-- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."

Nowadays, we may ask ourselves what were those men struggling for? What have all our soldiers, past and present, lived and died fighting for? Mr. Lincoln's final sentence that day reinforced it:

. . . that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

This Memorial Day, we should remind ourselves of this principle too--government by the people-- as we remember the men and women who have died on battlefields all around the world for us people, so that we can live free.

Are you actually making the best use of that freedom that these brave soldiers fought for? Or is your power to act favorably-- on behalf of yourself and those you love-- is that power, your personal initiative, your energy, buried in the ground somewhere on some lapsed battleground of your life? Is your impulse to serve others hiding in a bag of potato chips? or a carton of beer? Is it taking refuge behind the glass of a flat screen tv?

You, you who are reading this, ask yourself:

Am I a person? Am I one of those "people" whose responsibility is to govern?

Or have I abdicated? Have I ceded my personal responsibilities as an American to some other person or agency? Is my freedom to act and prosper locked in a harddrive, on a desktop, somewhere in Washington, DC? Or in my state's capital? Have I signed off on my freedom to act?

98 years after President Lincoln addressed, at Gettysburg, the heart issues of our nation's purpose--government by the people-- President John Kennedy said:

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

This, too, we need to remember, and act upon, instead of looking for handouts or unearned entitlements, instead of waiting for superman to bail us out of whatever couch-potato cushion we are stuck in. Are you doing your part to keep our United States of America a nation of free citizens, who are willing and capable to act on your own so that you and all the rest of us may benefit?

What have you done this week to make our country a better place? Did you do your job? Did you look for a job? Did you read something worthwhile? Did you break a sweat, hammer a nail, or cook a meal? Did you pick up your own trash, clean your plate after the meal, help load the dishwasher? Did you speak kindly to someone? Did you speak correction to yourself or your best friend? Did you plant a seed. I mean, it is spring. We can get out now and see what the real world looks like.

What's going on out there? And what does it mean that "the people," govern? Do I get a fancy desk and a legislative vote-on-the-bill button to push? Probably not. But you and I, as people, do have certain responsibilities thrust upon us, lest our great ship of state plunge to the depths of lethargy.

Although we cannot, as President Lincoln said, truly consecrate that hallowed ground at Gettysburg, there is something we can and should do.

Are you doing your part in governing this great nation? Many men and women have died so that you could exercise that privelege. Use it. Find something that needs to be done and do it, whether you're getting paid for it or not.

Glass half-Full

From Golden Gate to Golden Door

In 1903, we Americans erected the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. The great bronze sculpture had been presented to us as a gift by France. On the inside of Lady Liberty's pedestal, these words, composed by Emma Lazarus in 1883, are engraved:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

These words still ring true to the American spirit. I am greatly inspired by the poem, which Emma had named The Great Colossus. But times have changed in the 133 years that passed since she was inspired to write it; and our nation has changed greatly since the sonnet became an anthem that came to express so profoundly our exceptional American optimism and generosity.

With tender admiration for Emma Lazarus, and for the her verse, and with great respect for all that Lady Liberty represents to so many Americans, especially the millions who first glimpsed her freedom torch as new immigrants, I submit an update. I hope it may appropriately express a challenge that yet looms on our bright horizons.



It's not like a political hack with vengeful fights,

and regulative burdens to constrict our plans.

No. Here within our yawning, paved-o'er shores still stands

a beneficent nation with bright hope , whose lights

form the grid and net of a people free, and this our name:

America. From our electrified sands

glows bold goodwill; our vibrant enterprise, our busy hands

will in time restore this great worn infrastructure's frame.

"Lose, o ye couch-potato louts, our cultivated TV sloth!" we must say.

"Stand aside, but hey!" Give us, instead, your energetic poor,

your troubled masses yearning to work their poverty away,

along the rusted refuse of our landfill'd shore.

Send these working folks, recession-toss'd, our way,

We'll renew it all, from Golden Gate to Golden Door!



CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

O ye Chicken Inspector

O ye O ye

chicken inspector!

Ye better do ye job

cuz we be

dependin on u

to catch the contagion

to snatch the salmonella

before it do it bad thing.

Now be de time to

do ye job,

reverse dat ol strike mentality

dat ol labor union barricade whoopfiz biz

wi cryinz in d'street

an all dat anarchy bee-ez.

Jez do ye job

cuz we need u stay on task

no matte what sequesta cracka say.

Knock down dem salmonellas

today

and giardias and germs

ev' day

das what we say!

Hey! Keep it clean.

We be a clean machine. Les keep it

dat way. Do ye job no matta

what dey say no matta

what FDA say

no matta what OMB or Security or DemRepub say

Do yo job today

cuz we need u yeah!

TSA U 2!

even if dem frequent flyas glare at you.



O ye O ye

air traffic controller!

Ye better do ye job

cuz we be

dependin on u

to unsnarl dem can o worms

in our skies

so we don' dies

trying to fly 'round

get from town to town

get up get down

Don' pay no 'tension to dat background noise,

dem consumer device toys,

jez keep ye eye on d'blip

not on d'slipping dip

cuz we be depend on u.

Keep yo eye on de donut

not on de hole.

Dat sacred duty--it be soul,

of our nation, an

das what I'm talkin about:

Don't pout.

Times is hard y'all!

Heed the call.

Now all ye workin folk out dere

Now be d'time for all mens

an womens too

to come to d'aid of our country today

cuz we be

depend on u.

I aint shittn you.

Les keep dis ting goin

don let it fall

don let it stall.

It don depend on dat Wash'n beltway be-ez biz,

cuz is what it is and dat all dat it is.

It depend on me and you.

Dis be true: on me and you, an don stop prayn.

Das all I sayn.



CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

Advice for thieves

About 1900 years ago, a teacher named Paul of Tarsus sent this advice to the Christians who were in Ephesus, Turkey:

"He who steals must steal no longer; but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with one who has need."

To this I would add my two cents:

Don't wait for the labor to come to you; go out and find it. Find some work that needs to be done in your community or city, then go out and do it. Don't wait for some gov.agency to bail you out of your downhill slide. Rather, find some folks nearby that you can work with, hook up with them, and then go out and do what needs to be done to make your community or city, your/our world a better place.

Your effort will ultimately improve you as much as it benefits them.

Times are hard, but that's no excuse. Get busy before this thing goes down, and you with it. Your personal responsibility is the fertile raw material where "individuality" so disdained by liberals intersects effectively with "collectivism" that is dissed by the conservatives.

Try to be the middle ground where everybody else is missing it. Somebody needs to. Be the missing link.

Listen: Underground Railroad Rides Again