It's in the Wing Span, Stupid!
Reason can take you only so far--
A stone, even a stone,
isn't certain to stay uncut.
Birds like us, with shallow breastbones,
and rapidly beating hearts,
must learn,
even if it takes forever,
and it probably will,
to just go with the flow.
America, here's the [art of] the deal [with the devil]--
"I offer power. If you want harlotry in fancy dress, power will get it for you. Admiration?--a whole world aches to kiss its backside with slobbering lips. A crown? Power and a little knife will put it on your head. Change? With power you can try on cities like hats, or smash them if you tire of them. Power attracts loyalty and requires none. The will to power keeps a baby suckling grimly long after he is fed, counsels a brother to take his brother's toy, reaps a gaggling harvest of concupiscent girls. What drives a knight through tortures to his prize or death? The power of fame. Why does a man heap up property he cannot use? Why does a conqueror take countries he will never see? What makes a hermit grovel in the black filth of a cell but the promise of power? What crime is there that does not become a virtue in the hands of power?
"It is the one possession that does not flag or become tedious, for there is never enough of it and an old man in whom the juices of all other desires are dried up will crawl on his tortured knees toward his grave still grabbing with frantic hands for power."
--The right legendary, Morgan le Fey
Now here in the shade of the Coven Tree--
Just Bilbo, and Thorin, and Gandalf and me.
Bound for trouble--sic transit gloria--
Our quest simple--a taste of euphoria.
We welcome all bravehearts to journey along--
Just bring an old dirk, your pack, and a song.
These crooked paths--so lonely, dark, and deep--
Trolls, goblins, and dragons, shall make you weep.
We shall seize the day and worthier rise--
Bilbo, Thorin, Gandalf, and I, surmise.
It turned out to be an excerpt from a forthcoming memoir into which I was drawn. I learned that Pacino and I went to the same Junior High School, Hermann Ridder*, in the South Bronx, and we even had the same English teacher, Blanche Rothstein. She had the same lifelong influence on him that she had on me. We both became avid readers and lovers of English literature. We studied, Scott, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and others in depth. She even required us to memorize the entire "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and would call on us to recite it to the class by rote memory. Do not try this at home: It's more than 600 lines long!
Although Pacino and I were a couple of years apart we went to the same neighborhood movie theater and playhouse, The Dover on Boston Road, and The Elsmere on Crotona Parkway. We both took trains into Manhattan to attend special High Schools, he went to the School for Performing Arts and a few blocks away I attended the New York School of Printing. We each followed those trades throughout our lifetime.
We both swam, well I swam, and he fell through the ice while skating and into the Bronx River. Both activities were risky in that truly turdy waterway.
We both had childhood friends that came to early senseless deaths, his buddies by drug use, mine had died in a stolen car crash during a police chase. Our pals were Italian, Irish, Jewish, and Puerto Rican. Juvenile Delinquency was rampant in those early days after WWII.
There are even more ties that bind Al and me, but those will have to wait for my memoir. My wife tells me that I've got plenty of time left.
Meanwhile, we have Blanche Rothstein to thank for setting us both onto paths where the possibilities were, and are, endless.
Today's the 5th anniversary of my son's death from a stroke.
He was 49 years old.
His mother had just turned 50 when she died of heart failure.
I'm a survivor--
haunted by multiple lifetimes of dissolving memories.
As long as my heart beats,
Conscious or unconscious--
In dreams awake or in dreams asleep--
Aware of all that they have lost and I--
For where there's life there's
It's been two scorched, flooded, twisted, bat-shit crazy months since I last web-logged, and I'm not talking about the weather--I'm talking about our chaotic political landscape. The Republicans had their 10 minutes of euphoria when they sensed an easy victory looming against a doddering incumbent who seemed bent on humiliating himself by staying, foolishly, in a tight race--which he hadn't a snowball's chance in Hell of winning--against a demented, albeit non-decrepit opponent. Then something quite unbelievable happened in the world of modern political action--the people spoke truth to power--and they were heard and obeyed!
We the People should try this more often. Want liberties sustained? Want tighter gun laws? Want justice served? Want fairness in hiring, housing, healthcare? Want the right to choose what's right?
Vote Democratic. That's the ticket!
It's been more than six years since I resurrected 10 B-Words that I had once looked up.
They reminded me of how many words are out there.
Unlike someplace else, in the dictionaries you can find a there there--
and further--there you can lose yourself.
Now--C's The Day!
coprolalia-involuntary obscene talking as a symptom of mental illness or brain-damage
contumely-insolent or reproachful language or treatment; disgrace
confabulate-to converse formally
coffle-a line of tethered animals or slaves
chirography-handwriting; calligraphy
cayuse-a feral horse or pony
cathartidae-vultures; birds of prey
cacogen-white trash
currier-a groomer of horses; a tanner of leather hides
crustie-an anti-work, dumpster-diving, anti-authority, anti-civilization, anti-religion type of person
They undulate themselves as
the Corinthians remain unfazed
by all that commotion,
all that intense bantering
upon the dusty proscenium.
Behold your future--
Doctors of Bellys and Heads!?
Aren't they Ionic, though?!
Fascism Versus Democracy
The current experience of the United States will show, I suspect, that Fascism is not the inevitable form which a non-Bolshevist society must take, but rather that it is abnormal and pathological. Philosophically, Fascism is a movement whose leaders are civilians in riding boots. Politically, it is an entirely new type of tyranny, both personal and demagogic--a tyranny which for the first time in history exploits the mob spirit in an era of universal suffrage and gives to the supreme leaders irresponsible power as limitless as that of the modern state. In contrast to this picture, we now see in America a leader who has never played for the role of hero or savior and whose greatest ambition appears to be to look like a common human being, a member of the middle class by voluntary affiliation. Without frowning or putting on a mask of ferocity, he has taken on his shoulders the heaviest burden that any President ever assumed; he does not shirk the responsibility, and he stands ready to give an account of his stewardship when the time comes . . . perhaps the most appropriate term for this new American way of grappling with social and economic unrest is still the good old word "democracy."
--"Fascism in the Making" by Max Ascoli, November 1933
I too, am an elderly man with a poor memory. I too, am 81 years old. There, though, the things I have in common with Joe Biden end.
For one thing, I know that actions have consequences, whether those consequences are or aren’t intended. I didn’t need Ruth Bader Ginsberg to show the truth of that—I’ve known it since I was a young man with a good memory.
Another thing that clearly separates me from Joe Biden is that, like Dirty Harry, I believe “that a man has to know his limitations.” Joe, apparently, doesn’t. His running for a second term proves his adamantine asininity. I have never even sought a first term, frankly because I didn’t give a damn.
Until now.
I’m tossing my hat in the ring, because America deserves better than what it’s going to get come November.
That’d be me: (The poor man’s Joe Biden)!
To state the obvious, I have put off writing a blog for January 2024 until the penultimate day. There are a myriad of reasons for this delay, all invalid, ranging from intellectual lethargy to physical disgust. I have a strong suspicion that many people will understand my self-diagnosed state of being, given the circumstances in which we all have been plummeting downward to our current weird-worldly situation.
Throughout all of my Bidenesque 81 years abiding in this particular portion of the planet I have never felt less comfortable with the odds against maintaining the necessary conditions for the continued "success" of the so-called "Democratic Experiment."
"So-called," because its "success" was always a grand delusion if you'd dare or care to examine its roots. The land-grabbiness of the gold-greedy conquistadors and the colonizing, genocidal, God-fearing folks whose battle cries of "Live Free or Die!" had many applications, the least of them being the application of "Freedom" for "Others."
Well, this year, perhaps the penultimate, or worse.
If we keep heading down this narrow path straight to hell there will be nothing else to say.
Just "air-quotes" hanging in a purple sky.
Today marks 4 score and a year that I've been circling the Sun. So like that guy from State Farm, "I've seen a few things!" Not all of them good. Forinstance, out of curiosity I once Googled the events of my birthday, December 17, 1942: "Revealed: 6 Million Jews Exterminated," screamed the banner headlines.
There were to be many more atrocities and naughty behaviors unfolding during my hiatus here on Earth: Genocides, Wars, Massacres, Natural Disasters, and Man-made Catastrophes: Assassinations, Homicides, Fratricides, Matricides, Infanticides with a side of Revolutions, Lynchings, Arsons, Rapes, Robberies, Burglaries, Corruptions, Injustices, Bamboozlings--etc., all too numerous to remember, let alone mention--you get the picture.
So what's a body politic to do? Well, we've resurrected a grand old idea: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. This seems to ring a bell--a Liberty Bell--for wasn't this the idea(l) embedded in the Declaration of Independence? Well, it happens that what was good for the goose in 1776 is too saucy for the American Eagle in 2023.
For a myriad of reasons, chief among them pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, sloth--pick your deadly combination of cardinal sins--we have tossed ourselves overboard--and are now furiously treading water, floundering in a rising tide of ignorance, despair, purposelessness, and dare I say, "DEI deprivation." In other words, nothing's really changed in 81 years. Or has it been 8,100?
"Fundamental to the moral law of Holiness are the two principles which lie at the basis of man's creative cooperation with God -- Justice and Righteousness, Justice being the negative aspect of Holiness; Righteousness, its positive aspect. Justice means the recognition of six fundamental rights. These are the right to live, the right of possession, the right to work, the right to clothing, the right to shelter, and finally the right of the person, which includes the right to leisure and the right to liberty, as well as prohibitions to hate, avenge, or bear a grudge."
"Righteousness is to manifest itself in the acceptance of duties, especially in the concern for the poor, the weak, and the helpless, whether friend or foe. It is also to show itself in the conception of earthly goods, the possession of which is to be regarded not as a natural right but as a divine trust. When a neighbor is in difficulty, a loan is to be made to him for which no interest is to be charged. If he is obliged to surrender his ancestral property, it is to revert to him. The difficulties of a man's neighbor are not to be used to increase his own income. Economic life in the Torah is thus to mean essential services to one's fellow man; and behind this ethic stands the law of love as formulated by the golden rule 'Thou shalt love thy fellow as thyself', which is expressly stated to include the non-Israelite stranger."
from Judaism by Rabbi Isidore Epstein.
From the Britannica World Review of 1975.
"The escalation of Communist and third world "antiracist," "anti-imperialist" rhetoric reached a peak at the UN in October 1975, when the UN Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee passed (70 to 29, with 27 abstentions and 16 absent) an Arab resolution condemning Israel as the "racist regime in occupied Palestine," declaring that Zionism was "a form of racism and racial discrimination," and calling upon all nations to opposed Zionism as "a threat to world peace and security" and a racist and imperialist ideology."
" . . . In November the anti-Zionism resolution was adopted by the General Assembly."
The resolution was introduced by Pres. Idi Amin of Uganda.
Swatch Out!
Three Witches Watched Three Wristwatches
Which Witch Watched Which Wristwatch?
That's a tongue twister on which to whet your whistle. I have long been warm to witches--ever since seeing Veronica Lake (of Tudor City) playing it coy and cute in I Married a Witch when I was just an awedful kid loaded with hormonious mischief watching the Early Show in the days when TV dinners were stillunborn.
And then when I grew up, there was Arthur Miller (not my uncle, Arthur Miller, who drove a laundry truck and early succumbed for his pains) but Marilyn's other toy boy, the one who penned The Crucible.
And then there was Gabby and his long spell of witchery to enthrall me with his heavy-handed brand of magicianship.
And then along came John and Jack and The Witches of Eastwick.
And then Dame Atwood broomed in with a scary tale of a real live Succubus, Zenia, with The Robber Bride. She who has been named nastily disorders the lives and loves of three innocent women. After reading Atwood's deft portrayal of female betrayal I returned to unholy Mass to refresh my memory of the male take on the delicate sorcery close to his and Hathorne's heart with Updike's, The Widows of Eastwick.
I rest my piece. The jury's out.
As I begin to ruminate, or fulminate, or maybe better, percolate upon the development of this post post-haste I'll get straight to the point--whenever I hear someone say "the developing countries," I am puzzled, and quite frankly not a little bit annoyed. Aren't all countries always, like marriages, "developing," for better or for worse? Hemingway asked a guy who had once been rich and had become a panhandler living on the down-low what happened. The guy told him that "it happened to me in two ways, first gradually and then all of a sudden."
Like life itself, "developing" gradually until something sinister seems to happen suddenly. To be sure, inevitability sucks, but what's a body to do?
I'll keep ruminating, keep fulminating, keep percolating, and keep posting.
Maybe you'll learn to stop worrying while I apply the balm.
Here I am. It's the 4th of July, 2023, and as I have the following opinion: "Let me say this about that."
You know, I'm past playing with, observing, or sharing anything but my disdain for our annual national obsession with setting off fireworks.
I think that since the arm of the law has deemed it necessary to restrict the sale of wedding cakes and websites to undesirables (detestables?) then it certainly would be in the common interest of society to ban explosives from getting into the remaining fingers of those people demonstrably unfit to manage their safe use.
As well, pets have no say in the matter (free speech not applying, in particular, to those voiceless creatures, our best friends). O but I am sure that they would appreciate us putting an end to their personally traumatic experience that they are forced to endure every time that their loving masters celebrate their nation's birth by noticeably blowing things up.
I have nothing to say about the daily use of guns to cull our population, as it appears to me to be our duty to protect ourselves from one another.
Mustard or Ketchup that is the question!
Be happy in your continued Independence.
Well, here we go again. We are kicking off another spiraling, uninspiring episode of the potlatchian turmoil we allow to consume us every time our time-honored political system has decreed that it must cleanse itself of the failures of the current administration, or at least give a new administration a chance to exhibit their laundry list of hopey, unrealistic, promises to serve us better, stronger, smarter, and make us more satisfied over its guaranteed to be, happily, a short-lived period of continuing misrule.
I don't know about you,
but I'm totally enrapt,
and you should be, too!
Let the games begin!
Dearie,
Cheery beats bleary, dreary, weary,
and yet what if in fact we are
--in theory--
@ the .
where our good intentions have
eXXXceeded
our ^
to fulfill them?
--Amorphously,
Chet GPA
All of these 'yes-men' are as new to our national life as to our vocabulary.
Their appalling uniformity and timorousness of views threatens to sweep up whatever shards of our democracy yet remain.
At bottom, they value only the gravy-train they rode in on, and not the despoiled landscape upon which the tracks have long been spiked.
