The Aging Iconoclast on the Late Show

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

The Aging Iconoclast on the Late Show

His long career enriched with icons smashed,

An existential poet, heavy with age,
Was preening in the green room of fashion
Awaiting his at-last adoration
Upon the glowing boxes of the world.

“I smashed the vain icon of privilege,”

He trilled to all, while a thin girl in tats
Powdered his nose. “With just my vengeful pen,
“I broke the icon of capitalism!”
A singer-stripper sipped her soda, and sighed.

“I then exposed the icon of the news,

And held it up for the people to scorn.”
He did not see the makeup artist roll
Her eyes.  A desperate young comedienne
Pretended to be busy with her skull.

“And I alone broke all the icons of

Hypocrisy in Wall Street.  Death to debt!
My icon-smashing verses smashed the world
Of formulaic poetry forever!”
A sex-change surgeon sharpened his pink tongue.

“In my day we smashed icons in the war
Against shopworn bourgeois complacency!”
The arbiters of this week’s taste and thought
Waited, in sequence obedient, their turns.
And then a voice, uncertain, asked at last:

“What’s an icon?”

Of Biblical Proportions

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Of Biblical Proportions

 “This contest is the game of the century!!!”

The announcer gasped almost breathlessly,
“A slug-fest of biblical proportions!!!”
He yelped in haste, his excitement inspired
(perhaps)
By the team mothers sharpening their claws
Upon the tattered reputation of
The umpire (who, in his innocent hours,
Filled prescriptions down at his pharmacy.
Please know, before you leave: his name was Steve).
And every pitch and hit and bounce and catch
Was then remarked with apocalyptic praise
Employing multiples and multiples
Of exclamation marks (though one would do)
To set the sports fans’ faithful hearts ablaze
With love transcendent for Our Team so true,
And Dante-esque hatred for The Other,
Words well-worn in canonical cliches’
Calling down thundering Truth from Horeb
Parting the seas, purifying the Temple
(or at least the plywood concession stand)

All this hyperbole was merely to frame

A middle-school girls’ scrimmage softball game

The Campaigning Season

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

The Campaigning Season

Beowulf dripped with his enemies’ blood

Montgomery learned of war in Flanders’ mud

Young Davy Crockett grinned down a big bear

Orville and Wilbur conquered the air

Horatius defied Lars Porsena, thus saving Rome

Kit Carson called the wild prairies his home

Wolfe and Montcalm died ‘neath the walls of Quebec

Lewis and Clark made their continental trek

At Monmouth Molly Pitcher crewed a cannon

Goliad echoes the death of Fannin

Brave men and women we well remember,

And from cold March until hot September

On fields of struggle (like Abraham’s plain)

New leaders conquer despite fear and pain

While facing Mad Momma and her (reproach) --

God have mercy on a Little League coach!

Washington-on-the-Brazos, March 2012

Panna Maria, Texas

Mission Espiritu Santo, La Bahia (Goliad)

Does the End of the World Feature its Own Tee-Shirt?

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Does the End of the World Feature its Own Tee-Shirt?

When we were young our parents taught us that we are all fallen beings, frail, suffering, endeavoring to do our best for God and for others on this weary planet, and again and again falling short.  We should always, then, be kind to each other, because we are all on the same pilgrimage.

Surely, though, we can make an exception for the people waiting for spaceships to come and rescue them. 

Yes, fellow Muggles, the world is coming to an end yet again.

This go-‘round the world is coming to an end in France, in December, so there’s plenty of time to secure a passport (“Sir…sir, you’ll need to take off the Phrygian helmet for your photograph.”) and beg for spare change for a one-way ticket to eternal vegan bliss on another planet or parallel realm of existential being-ness or something.

The free-to-be-you-and-me lot are termite-swarming to the little town of Bugarach in the French Pyrenees.  They are persuaded by The Voices that on the 21^st of December a secret alien spaceship hidden within a nearby mountain is going to appear (that must be one heck of a garage-door opener), take all the soap-free granola-eaters aboard, and transport them to a world safe from any form of work or thought.

The first clue that something could be very, very wrong might come when the in-flight movie is The Hunger Games and the airline magazine is entitled To Serve Man.

The sort of people who think that milk comes from a store and that gasoline is created by polar bear fairies waving magic wands are repeatedly preparing for the end of the world.  They are the ear-budded non-readers who can manipulate the dials on little plastic boxes made in China but who cannot split kindling, tie a knot, cook a simple meal, wash clothes, set a table, change the oil, scan a line of iambic pentameter, plow a furrow, get a job, or test an idea according to the Hegelian dialectic.

They are like, y’know, spiritual, and, like stuff, and they know, like, stuff about vibrant, esoteric, Meso-american magnetic waves, like, alignment of energies that are like, y’know, totally eschatological, and, like, stuff.

Worse, they play guitars.

The Neo-Hale-Boppians are said to climb their holy mountain naked, which wouldn’t be particularly pleasant for the fellow in the, um, rear, toking on his reality-denying drug of choice and wondering about all the full moons in the sky above him.

Jean-Pierre Delord, the mayor of Bugarach, has communicated to Paris his fears of a mass suicide, which is the sort of thing that can happen when geriatric hippies who spent their formative years learning conversational Klingon come to realize that Captain Kirk is a Canadian.

Those who are prone to conspiracy theories might suspect M. Delord and his fellow townsfolk of dreaming up the space-ship-hidden-in-a-mountain thing for the sake of balancing the budget and re-paving the streets.  For the next few months all those visiting, um, mystics will want to beam up tons of fair trade coffee, hemp sandals, vegetarian meals, and of course the official event tee-shirt: “Some Old People Who Might or Might Not be my Parents Went to the End of the World and all They Got me was this Lousy, Made-in-Indonesia Tee.”

There might be a booth with folks offering to sell visitors gold because the dollar is about to collapse, and then a booth next door offering to buy gold with dollars so that the purchaser can be rich enough to buy a Mooncluck’s cup of coffee, and next to that a booth selling Rich Radio Guy’s latest book about how The World as We Know It is about to end, and help him build his big estate in Florida in which he plans to live for a long, long time.

Whew.

On the 22^nd of December the faithful, disappointed at being alive, will climb down from their rocks and their roofs, and beg the government of France ("Pardon-moi, senor, moi c'est est stupido, ja.") for a plane ticket back to their earthly homes.

Before a month has passed, another discount-store mystic leader will recalculate and re-conjure on his weewee board or something, and propose a new date for the end of the world, your credit card welcome, and the lemmings will again line up obediently.

The nonreader in our culture…wants to believe…The world is so vastly confusing and baffling to him that he feels there has to be some simple answer to everything that troubles him.  And so, our of pure emptiness, he will eagerly embrace spiritualism, yoga, a banana diet, or some…strange amalgam…masquerading under invented semiscientific terms, and sold to the beginner at a nice profit.

-      John D. MacDonald, Reading for Survival

-30-

Presidio La Bahia

Mack Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

The Soldiers’ Chapel

You could spend a day at Presidio La Bahia outside Goliad and never come across the fine old Irish name of O’Conner, and that’s pretty much how the O’Conner family wants it.  And yet if not for Kathryn O’Connor there wouldn’t be much to see.

Presidio La Bahia was established by Spain along the Gulf Coast in 1721, and after two removes was permanently located in 1749 on a hill along the Rio San Antonio near present-day Goliad.

The Presidio was a royal fortress and administrative center.  Its chapel, Nuestra Senora de Loreto de la Bahia, served the soldiers and administration, their families, and the town.  The Franciscan mission to the First Nations peoples, Espiritu Sancto, was situated down the road and across the river because, although church parade was mandatory, soldiers were still considered a bad influence.

The chapel was the first structure built, and except for five years in the early Republic has served the faithful as a church since 1749. 

The fortress, although miles from the Gulf, was the center of coastal defense against the French.  Later, when Spain was one of the first friends of the USA, soldiers from La Bahia went into action against the British.

Economically, La Bahia was the beginning of the Texas cattle industry.   Mission herds and private herds were rounded up here for cattle drives to other settlements, guarded by soldiers of the local command.

According to the pamphlet, La Bahia was involved in six revolutions and many raids, and has been a fortress for the armies of Spain, Mexico, and Texas.

La Bahia is, unfortunately, most famous for the mass murder of Colonel James Fannin and some 350 of his men on Palm Sunday, 1836 on the orders of a particularly nasty little man.  What is less known is that many of the Mexican soldiers and their wives, including Francisca Alvarez, a true mother of Texas, managed to conceal some of the Texians, and saved others by listing them, apparently some falsely, as doctors and medical attendants so that they would be spared take care of the many Mexican wounded from both the Alamo and Coleto Creek battles.

With independence, La Bahia was no longer an economic and administrative center, and although the chapel was still in use the little fortress became a source of building materials, and by the 1960s little was left.

Then came Mrs. Kathryn O’Connor, who inspired and funded a historically accurate restoration of the fort through the research and work of San Augustine architect Raiford Stripling and using mostly local labor and artists. 

A correspondent who once worked for the family remarks on their generosity and industry.  Each generation of young O’Connors begins in the family businesses with a broom and a mop, not an attitude, and while their contributions to numerous causes and charities are great, of modesty they do not put their name on things.

La Bahia and the area around it include the fortress and its chapel, the excellent state reconstruction of Mission Espiritu Sancto, the site of the Battle of Coleto Creek, the mass grave and memorial to the murdered soldiers, the birthplace of General Ignacio Zaragoza, who defeated the French at the Battle of Puebla on 5 May (hence Cinco de Mayo)1862, and the eminently shoppable town of Goliad centered on its beautiful courthouse.  The three murder sites are all on private property, and perhaps that peaceful isolation is best.

The docents on site are very welcoming, and one of them, Jeremy, allowed an old man to help raise the Goliad Flag one morning.

At the State of Texas Parks sites the staffs are equally helpful, and the springtime beauty of the woods and fields around the mission are a naturalist’s happiest dream.

Useful sites:

www.presidiolabahia.org

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/gkgfk

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/spdest/findadest/parks/goliad_and_mission_espiritu_santo/

The wars and raids have passed, and governments come and go, but on every Sunday a priest of the Diocese of Victoria still offers Mass under the same roof raised for the purpose in 1749.

A small red flame…relit before the…doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again…It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.

-Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

-30-

Austin, Texas: The Capital of Preciousness

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Austin, the Capital of Preciousness

The democratically-elected city council of Austin, Texas has inhaled the pixie dust.  Effective in March of 2013, retailers who provide customers with a sack for their purchases will be in violation of the awful majesty of the law and the dilated pupils of the Eyes of Texas.

And not a moment too soon, I say, for who, while visiting Austin, has not feared being stalked by a drug-crazed grocery sack in the parking garage late at night?

Grocery sacks are increasingly notorious for their home invasions, and don’t even get me started about the drunken grocery sacks staggering around 6^th Street.

Grocery sacks gang up at intersections and at the entrances to stores holding out buckets and demanding money “for the missions.”

You can see grocery sacks lurking in dark alleys making drug deals, and more grocery sacks luring children into lives of crime.

Grocery sacks hang out in the parks playing loud music and smoking cigarettes and stomping the flowers with their carbon feet-prints. 

There are some who presume to defend the capitalist grocery sack.  The humble grocery sack, they say, can be used over and over (in AustinSpeak, “post-consumer recycling”).  A grocery sack can cover the hot-dish for the church luncheon.  A grocery sack makes a pretty good Halloween mask.  The more Occupy-ish among us can use a grocery sack for a facial disguise when holding up a stop-and-rob in order to liberate The People’s goods from the belly of the capitalist beast.  A smaller sack can be popped loudly in order to annoy big sister – maybe the Big Sisters on the Austin City Roost.  Paper bags carry groceries, used dishes from a garage sale, good used clothes to Goodwill, ‘jammies and a toothbrush for a sleepover, and magazines and books for the nursing home. 

And in the end, the brave little grocery sack, its life of humble service at an end, is easily composted with full military honors.  If, for some reason, a beastly Republican disposes of it improperly, the remains of the grocery sack simply fly away into the country, there to biodegrade back into the natural world from whence it came, into the Samsara of life and death, to be reborn as a majestic oak tree or as a happy little petunia.

Well, comrade, that’s reactionary thinking.  Grocery sacks are evil; the Austin city council acting in concert with the will of The People and of the gods has decreed their banishment into the desert.  So let it be written; so let it be done.  Carry those carrots home in your pocket, you fascist.

Someone’s sister-in-law, and you know her, the unemployable thirty-something with the jet-pilot glasses and a master’s degree in fashion design or hospitality, is to be granted a $2 million dollar budget to persuade The People that nuisance and humiliation are somehow good for them.  Thus, subjects of Austin will not only be punished for possession of an illegal grocery sack, they will have to pay for the propaganda – um, teachable moment.

“Keep Austin Weird?”  But Austin no longer possesses a weird to be kept; Austin is now simply another dull, grey provincial town of fearful subjects trudging their grim, grocery-bagless streets with heads bowed in passive obedience to their heavy-handed soviet.

-30-

A Meditation -- and Clinique - for Lent

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol. om

A Meditation

– and Clinique –

for Lent

True, true, the world – it makes no sense at all
Clinique on a corpse, well, it’s still a corpse
The People (bless them) look for a Saviour ap
Glowing in stereo from a little box
Salvation by P.I.N. number and YouTube
Satan’s scheduler – holding on Line 2
While Moloch coos on the chat-chat-chat news
And the Apostles deserve martyrdom
Because they’re an exclusive all-men’s club
A bumper-sticker shrieks “Herod Was Right!”
Our Lady is, like, wow, she’s so not cool
Let’s say funny things about the Rosary
And abstinence from demented hamsters
On Fridays because that is so grandma
Beggars blocking the car: “It’s for the children”
Beggars at Wal-Mart: “It’s for the missions”
Liars, liars, sunglasses and green vests on fire
I’m-spiritual-but-not-religious, dig?

“Man, thou art dust, and…”

                                        And O, it is true.

So carry the Ring, up into Mount Doom

Or sling your rifle; march into the mist

Or kneel among the bloated corpses, pray

To die beneath the Cross on your last day
O Seeker, Soldier, Monk, now march away
To beg for ashes, ashes of decay
And wash them in the River Lethe’s pale grey
Of blessed nothingness, in dead dismay
Until…palms, palms, we all wake up – to say,
To cry beyond the sad embalmer’s way

To be awakened past all tattered time

To gaze upon Objective Reality

For the Convenience of Whomever is Compiling the List

"And Fly into Egypt"

Mack Hall, HSG Mhall46184@aol.com

“And Fly into Egypt”

Football in all its variants – rugby, association (soccer), American – originates in mediaeval England, when young men formed teams to compete in kicking a pig’s head, a pig’s bladder, a pig’s spleen, and perhaps even a whole pig from village to village.  Some writers have suggested that the early English lads kicked around the heads of invading Danes.

When the referee called for heads or tails, that had to make the Danish prisoners nervous.

And why would young men kick pigs or Danes or parts thereof about?  Well, because young men do dumb things.  Usually they get over it.  Not the Danes, though.

In the 19^th century English schools considered the many footer folk-traditions, established rules to make the play less lethal, and organized the competition into games that became fashionable.

Association football, soccer, is said to be the most popular game on the planet, which is pretty good proof of the Fall of Man.  Muscular young men in footer bags (shorts) run around a field kicking a ball and each other, and once every two or three years someone makes a score and then marries a tall blonde and gets knighted by the Queen and tells children to stay in school and read a lot.  

The best thing that can be said about soccer is that it isn’t as sleep-inducing as basketball.

Soccer has long been ill-famed for its unrestrained violence – a primeval pagan blood-lust of crazed howling, kicking, beating, and biting.  All that’s by the fans, of course; the players are much more restrained.

Thus there is no surprise that last week in Port Said, Egypt a soccer match between the hometown Al-Masry lads and Cairo’s Al-Ahly team ended with the reported deaths of over seventy men. 

And why were no women involved?  Because in Egypt women are not permitted to attend footer matches.  Egypt cannot possibly be recognized as a democracy until women there enjoy the equal right to beat and burn other people to death just like men do.

One wonders what their halftime show was like.

And are the footballs in Moslem countries made of pigskin?

The squabbling thugs who constitute the (cough) government (cough) of Egypt investigated the tragedy and concluded that the mess was the fault of the former chief thug, Hosni Mubarak, who has been in captivity for the past year.

Blaming a former leader for a present regime’s failings – man, that’s weak; no American government would ever do that.

Kicking pig-parts around from village to village sounds barbaric, and so does a soccer game which features a casualty list instead of a final score.  Happily, we live in a nation which values human dignity and human lives – well, except for the Department of Health and Human Services.  One is not sure – is the Herodian thing Senate Bill Matthew 2:16-18, or House Bill Matthew 2:16-18?  Or simply an edict?

Once upon a time even Egypt was good at protecting children.

-30-

War-Metaphor-Catholic-Keyboard-Commando-Guy

Mack Hall, HSG Mhall46184@aol.com

War-Metaphor-Guy

Does keyboard-war-guy truly mean that he

Will shoulder rifle, pack, and spares, and range
On blistered, bleeding feet into dead hell,
Obedient to an ill-considered oath
That calls upon his soul to deny itself?

How noble is his war upon the screen!

Does he intend to suffer sin-stained years

Of deprivation, lowest-bidder tins
Of surplus slime stored since some previous war,
Of murky water gassed with chemicals,
Of gasping, breathless, sodden, rotting heat?

How easy is his war upon the screen!

So does he really want a poor man’s soul

Ripped screaming, sh*tting, bleeding from his life,
Intestines flyblown in the devil’s sun?
Will he be satisfied with an eyeless corpse
Bloat-floating down another Vam Co Tay?

How glorious is his war upon the screen!

Now, keyboard-war-guy, march away, away

And how God wills, dispose the video games.

The whole world is laughing.

The whole world is laughing.
The whole world is laughing.

The Arms Bazaar

Mack Hall, HSG Mhall46184@aol.com

The Arms Bazaar

Visiting a traditional arms bazaar in a decaying village in a decaying civilization is something of a culture shock: the quaint old men in their tribal garb, the hundreds of rifles old and new of all sorts of provenance and caliber, the creaky tables stacked with boxes of ammunition, the dogs thumping their tails, the children enjoying a snack among the firearms, the mostly silent women. 

I refer, of course, to the East Texas gun show I attended last week as a quaint old man in my own tribal garb.

In very truth, people at gun shows appear to be very nice, and given the presence of all the ironmongery, that’s best.  Some brought their children and some brought their little dogs, and it really was a pleasant occasion.

At the show I noted especially:

A 1943 Czech-made Mauser K98.  Beautiful.

Civil war muskets.  History.

A Moss-Nagant, the military rifle of both the Czars and the Reds.  Cheap - as cheap as the lives of soldiers are to their leaders.

Lots of bumper stickers: “Don’t Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight,” “I (heart) My Blood-Crazed Dachshund,” “God Bless America” (this one would go well with the ChiCom assault rifle), and so on.  I didn’t ask about a “Re-Elect the President” sticker.

Rosary beads.  Whaaaaaaaaaa?  Unexpected, until you realized that they were being sold as a fashion item to those whose sense of style derives from the guys who skulk around bus station restrooms.  Rosary beads as ornamentation are barely north of wearing a copy of the Bible as a hat. 

An AK-47.  Creepy.  Why did President Clinton sign the papers on these things?  And why hasn’t a subsequent government suppressed them?  We live under the erratic rule of a federal government that forbids us to choose our own light bulbs or toilet tanks, but winks at thousands of Chinese semi-automatic combat rifles in the possession of the sort of people who would buy Chinese semi-automatic combat rifles.

Oh, yeah, bring on the all-caps letters-to-the-editor.

Lots of pocket knives, most of them cheap, shiny, and Chinese.  A gentleman is not dressed without his pocket knife, but one wonders if the owner of the Shanghai factory that turns out all this junk carries a good, utilitarian, American-made Case, a Texas-made Moore, or a Canadian-made Grohmann.

J. C. Higgins shotguns, once the inexpensive and modest harvester of Sunday dinners for generations of poor rural folk, were among the most expensive firearms for sale at the show.  These were made by different companies under contract by Sears, neat but not gaudy, until 1961 or so.  They were not cool in their day; they only got the job done.  And now they are cool after all.

The food vendors at the gun show didn’t feature a vegetarian plate.  Why is that?

I saw a fellow wearing a Marine Corps / Viet-Nam baseball cap, hopping happily along on one leg and one crutch.  Was the leg untimely ripped from him in Viet-Nam, or in a motorcycle accident in Escondido in 1972?  But I think he was genuine because he wasn’t working the patented thousand-yard-stare thing so beloved of the phonies.

Many folks believe that at gun shows weapons can be bought and sold illegally, without reference to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.  Not so.  The United States Department of Justice under the little man with the little moustache may be pleased to donate thousands of military combat rifles to drug gangs along our borders so that they can murder you, but if you want to buy an old single-shot .22 just like the one you took rabbits with when you were a young’un you’re going to have to fill out the forms and wait for the computers to approve of you.

If only an American citizen could apply to the BATF for computerized permission to buy a toilet that works. 

-30-

A New Moleskine

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

A New Commonplace Book

Some say this book is blank, but ‘tis not so:

The pages speak unwritten, and in them
Are hidden the adventures of the mind,
And needing only there the gentle push
Of ink-charged nib to wand the words alight
Upon, across, within the rich leaves sewn,
Sewn each to each and to a spine for store;
The wanderings of one’s life, one’s soul, one’s art
Stored up on sorted pages in their leaves,
Embellished with, perhaps, depictions drawn,
Carved freely from the hand, or cuttings set
In neatness and in order regular
Or something thus of both, with letters clear
About, among, around the ideas here.

Confronted with Etouffe'

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Confronted with Etouffe’

No exoskeletons pollute my taste,
For my profoundly English digestion
Rejects such critters as foul, unclean waste:
The matter is not subject to question.

Assure me that a crawfish is nutritious?

I will offer you an earthworm instead.
My proposal is merely meretricious:
Suck thou the brains from a crustacean’s head

Wet shrimp and mud crawfish, O what are these?

Roaches with an aquatic attitude
Really little more than sad seaborne fleas
Not these did Jesus feed the multitude

Give me some fish, with slick scales on their sides

Or maybe a turkey (cut off its head)
Or good dead cows (Moo! Moo!), once clothed in hides:
Endoskeletons, yes! (with buttered bread).

The Wagnerian Glories of a Trash Fire

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Wagnerian Glories of a Trash Fire

An orange juice carton writhes in tinted death,

Avowals of recycling smoke and flame
And boldly from the waxy cardboard shield
The cartoon orange leaps to its funeral pyre
On burning lines of fine and legal ink
That once assured the green consumer that
The juice contained therein was pure of heart
And gladly sacrificed its life for us.

A Mild Cold Front

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Mild Cold Front

An errant frog’s the only voice to sing

The day to sleep in this warm, blustery dusk.
The whippoorwill of yesternight is still;
The deep-voiced owl is silent too.  The wind
And damp have silenced even the twilight dogs
(Do dogs make paw to the doghousey wood?).
The grasses sigh; the bare oak branches hum
The long-dead autumn leaves blow this way, that;
The clouds - they darken, lower, hover, grim
Upon the land, where winter ought to rest.

Shakespeare on CD-ROM

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall 46184@aol.com
15 January 1996

Shakespeare on CD-ROM

In plastic laminate Ophelia sings

While Hamlet broods on moonless midnight walks
And Portia celebrates the truths of rings
As evil, humpbacked Richard plots and stalks.
Sweet Rosalind, as Ganymede, delights
Orlando’s ardent Arden fantasies;
Her words disturb his leafy bed at night
And set him carving love tokens on trees.
Within this disc King Henry tells his men
The bloody ground of Agincourt and they
Will be remembered aeons without end
While greybeards glory in Saint Crispin’s Day:
Warriors and dreamers and passionate suitors
Can all now fit in slots in computers.

The Descriptive Essay

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Descriptive Essay

“Describe your favorite space,” he innocently asked,

And dutifully, in double-space, they wrote:

“My family and I watch our new flatscreen.”

“But what of microscopes and basketballs,

Guitars and wrenches and sewing machines
And sometimes fishing from the old sea wall,
Or planting a garden with corn, peas, and beans?”

“My family and I watch our big flatscreen.”

“What do you like to read, what do you sing?

Do you rebuild old cars, old houses, old souls?
What do you write on the first day of spring?
Do you like your job?  And what are your goals?

“The family and I watch our wide flatscreen.”

“Do you sometimes throw a football around,

Refinish furniture, or feed the birds,
Volunteer an hour at the local pound
Chant with the choir those sacred, ancient words?”

“Me and the family watch our big flatscreen.”

“Do you jam to the radio, rock that beat,

New Orleans jazz or upriver blues?
What sounds pick up your heart, your hands, your feet?
Saint-Saens or Satchmo – so who’s your muse?”

“The family and I watch our old flatscreen.”

And thus anaesthesia displaces art

The sons and daughters of great kings and queens
From their ancient heritage now depart
And bow obediently before flatscreens.

Tornado Warning

Mack Hall, HSG Mhall46184@aol.com
25 January 2012

Tornado Warning

The scanner squawks in protest ‘gainst the sky,

Shrilling its delicate electronics
In irrelevant made-in-China fury
While dark, Wagnerian clouds fall upon
Our fragile lives, and Wotan’s magic fire,
In slashing shadow-blasts, encircles all.
The wavering weaving of the Norns has ripped;
Wyrd’s wilding winds now warp our weakening world,
Rain shrieks green agony upon the walls,
And even darkness shudders in the rage
Of obscene anvil-music and dragon’s blood.

Censorpaedia

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Censorpaedia

 Last week three related events occurred: the governments of New Zealand and the United States cooperated in the arrest of a German citizen accused of providing free (read: stolen) download access to copyrighted music and movies.  The purported perp pocketed his profits by peddling fast access modes and advertising.  Within the United States a law regarding downloads of copyright music, a law that no one appears to have read, was proposed and then ignored.  Finally, several ‘net providers of information – some say misinformation – shut themselves down for a day in protest of censorship.  Irony clearly eludes them.

All this is part of the continuing confusion of property rights regarding cultural endeavors.

The manufacturers of movies, for instance, enjoy repeated paydays under copyright laws.  After a film is constructed, the owners and actors receive payments every time the flickering bits of light are legally projected on a wall. 

In contrast, and in a clear denial of equal protection under the law, the builders of a house are paid only once.  An unbilled actor who appears for ten seconds in the background of one scene in Star Trek XXIV: The Girl Scout Zombie Cannibals of Mars will receive periodic residuals for the duration of the copyright, dependent on the marketability of the, um, art.  An equally unbilled bricklayer is paid only once; he will receive no residuals no matter how long the house he helped construct is inhabited or how many times it is sold.

The defense of residuals for actors is that someone makes money every time the film is (legally) displayed, so it’s only fair that the actors take a bit of that.  However, a house, too, generates profits each time it is sold, and perhaps daily if it becomes a commercial property, but our hypothetical bricklayer receives nothing.

Y’r ‘umble scrivener doesn’t have even a residual of a solution for that legal inconsistency: the laborer is worthy of his hire; why are most laborers paid once, but a privileged few, by law, over and over?  No one can steal the bricklayer’s residual payments because he receives none.

Two other problems with the electronic storage of movies, pictures, poems, and other forms of art are these: (1) How do we know that a work of art has not been tampered with? and (2) How do we sustain the existence of a work given the fragility of electronics?

The first problem is wonderfully Orwellian; without a verifiable original we can’t know if anything stored or transmitted on the World Wide Wonk, the Internaif, or in some unknowable Fog is as originally built.  Decades ago a few words in the introductory song in the Disney film Aladdin were modified because of perceived insensitivity.  A first-run videotape contains the cruel words; all subsequent tapes and DVDs do not.  Hardly anyone noticed; fewer cared.  Those who follow the news are well aware of how a re-broadcast of part of a speech or debate can change the intent of a speaker or the significance of an event by cutting a few words or an audience response.

The conventional fear of control and censorship is of a government (it’s all George Bush’s fault, blah-blah-blah), but other than the more feral sorts of porn the feds pretty much leave the aether alone; the proven censors (and thieves), over and over, are the private-enterprise owners of the servers. 

A physical book is certainly vulnerable enough: paper burns and rots, and is consumable by rats, mice, insects, and habitués of New Jersey.  However, as long as a particular volume exists, one can be sure it has not been altered; with an electrical book beamed down from moonbeams or rainbows no such assurance obtains.

The second problem is the existence at all of a book, film, picture, or bit of music.  The oldest book y’r umble scrivener owns was printed in 1806, is in quite good shape, and is almost without value because of its commonality.  Books over 1,500 years old are not unknown.  Good paper, stable ink, a little reasonable care, and avoiding Goths, Vandals, Anglo-Saxons, Frisians, Danes, Turks, Huns, and the New York subway means that a book written by a fellow, almost surely a Benedictine, in the 5^th century is easily readable today (if one can work through schoolchild Latin).

Consider, though, the weakness of every little box that glows in the dark.  No one has been spared the annoyance of the loss of information from an expensive device that, like Aunt Pittypat, fainted from the vapours.

We are told that someone setting a metaphorical match to certain types of easily-constructed bombs can destroy all computer storage and functionality continent-wide.  Not only can one not read the blank screen on a now-useless chunk of dead weight, there would be no light by which to read, not for years.  All the books, music, pictures, and films entrusted to the good fairies would cease to exist forever, while physical books, music scores, and pictures would carry civilization successfully through a new dark age.

Electronic books and other works of art are convenient, but they’re all Aunt Pittypats (or is that Aunts Pittypat?).

-30-

The Beggar at Canterbury Gate

Mack Hall, HSG

mhall46184@aol.com

The Beggar at Canterbury Gate

The beggar sits at Canterbury Gate,

Thin, pale, unshaven, sad.  His little dog
Sits patiently as a Benedictine
At Vespers, pondering eternity.
Not that rat terriers are permitted
To make solemn vows.  Still, the pup appears
To take his own vocation seriously,
As so few humans do.  For after all,
Dogs demonstrate for us the duties of
Poverty, stability, obedience,
In choir, perhaps; among the garbage, yes,
So that perhaps we too might live aright.

The good dog’s human plays his tin whistle
Beneath usurper Henry’s¹ offering-arch
For Kings, as beggars do, must drag their sins
And lay them before the Altar of God:
The beggar drinks and drugs and smokes, and so
His penance is to sit and suffer shame;
The King’s foul murders stain his honorable soul;
His penance is a stone-carved famous name
Our beggar, then, is a happier man,
Begging for bread at Canterbury Gate;
Tho’ stones are scripted not with his poor name,
His little dog will plead his cause to God.

¹Henry VII, who built the Cathedral Gate in 1517, long after the time of Henry II and St. Thomas Becket