King Herod Recycles

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

King Herod Recycles

How many dead Canadian babies does it take to make a pot of coffee?

In Oregon the question is not a crude two-in-the-morning bar joke. A CBS affiliate in Oregon, Breitbart News, the Associated Press, and other sources report that a county-owned incinerator in Oregon, in partnership with several private companies, including Covanta and Stericycle, accepts all sorts of waste for generating electricity. This waste includes medical waste from Canada, and this medical waste from Canada includes diseased human tissue, human body parts, and dead babies.

Live humans cannot cross the border between Canada and the United States without passports; cargos containing dead bodies as a feature of international trade are waved on through.

In Oregon, then, the faithful praying in remembrance of the Holy Innocents murdered by King Herod may well be reading the appointed scripture for that day’s liturgy by light provided by the incineration of more holy innocents.

Do joggers, hikers, bicyclists, and children playing outdoors in Marion County, Oregon occasionally sniff the air and wonder about the unusual smell?

When Allied soldiers liberated the hundreds of concentration camps in 1945 and among other Dante-esque scenes found fragments of human flesh and bones in the incinerators, those hellish visions haunted them for the rest of their lives. Now it’s called recycling.

Marion County commissioners were rightly appalled when they learned of this horror, and immediately told their suppliers to stop sending them dead babies as fuel. No blame can attach to the commissioners for not knowing earlier: when a county buys paving materials, paper, cleaning supplies, photocopiers, patrol cars, food for prisoners, and any of the thousands of other needful goods that make a local government entity function, it does not occur to the purchasing agent or commissioners to stipulate in the purchase orders that dead humans are not to be part of the supply chain.

Not until now, that is.

In the twisted world of environmentalism as an absolute imperative, burning oil or coal for energy is bad, but burning dead babies for energy is good. Apparently the smoke from burning bodies – a renewable resource – is harmless to the bunny rabbits and butterflies.

Well, that’s Oregon. What about us? Where does our electricity come from? What – or who - goes into our cosmetics, our perfumes, our food?

Impossible? Consider Marion County, Oregon.

There’s nothing good that can be said of King Herod, but not even he referred to his victims as fetal tissue and medical waste.


http://www.cbs12.com/news/top-stories/stories/vid_15269.shtml

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/04/24/Oregon-County-Orders-Incinerator-To-Stop-Using-Aborted-Babies-To-Generate-Power

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/fetal-tissue-used-power-oregon-homes



-30-

Hitler's Teacup

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Hitler’s Teacup

According to Canada’s National Post, a furniture outlet in Germany has been selling Chinese-made teacups decorated with roses, leaves, romantic sentiments, and a portrait of Adolf Hitler.

The seller protests that he didn’t know the cup was loaded, and that the Chinese manufacturer must have sneaked Hitler in. Oh, those wacky Chinese, anything for a gag, eh?

The cups are rather attractive as far as the roses and vegetation and florid writing go, but when one looks beyond the hearts and flowers, yes, there in the background, slightly fuzzed out, is old Toothbrush-Moustache himself on a reproduction of a postage stamp.

Hitler. You will remember, was a teasipper, a tee-totaler, a non-smoker, a wannabe artist, and a druggie who sported funny-looking facial hair and who checked his horoscope daily – in short, very much a hipster for our time.

One wonders what the Mussolini cup will look like. But why not go for the complete set of 20th-century mass-murderers? Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Mousey Dung, Stalin, Mussolini, Ayatollah Khomeini, Tito, Che Guevara, The Castro Brothers, the other boys in the band – how is it that some of our “rarer monsters” (Macbeth) are scorned, while others rate their own made-in-China tee-shirts, tote bags, and coffee mugs, huh?

Pity (or not) poor King Leopold of Belgium, for instance – a century ago he and his merry Belgians (now the rulers of Europe) perpetrated the deaths of millions of Africans. Even the other colonial powers were disgusted by genocidal Belgium. Yet the wannabe cool kids don’t sport King Leopold tees but rather the image of Che Guevara, whose death count is only about 30,000 prisoners and miscellaneous civilians. Even Ho Chi Minh tops Che, with some 200,000 of his fellow Vietnamese, including much of his home town, taken out in the early 1950s. Does Ho have his own tee-shirt or coffee mug? Nooooo. And, hey, he was a poet. He said so. Who can argue with a poet whose rhyme and meter are backed up by his death squads?

For those with a more Hegelian sense of tyrants, tailoring, and trends as a fusion of the inane and the irrelevant, The Daily Mail reports that the Topman Horace Coat that sells in England for 205 pounds (over $300) features a purported symbol of a Croatian SS division. Others point out that the squiggly thing is an ancient Odal rune, whatever that is. Somebody else said that the thingie purported to be an Odal rune is so obscure, and the patch on the jacket so misshapen, that no one could have connected the jacket with the SS except by a bizarre stretch of the eyeballs.

What is very clear to any observer of any political bent is that the Topman Horace Coat is chupacabra-ugly, looking for all the world – the fashion world - as if some Nibelung had gathered up all the scraps of cloth, leather, and rubber from a sweat shop floor after a hard day of oppressing third-world workers, mashed them (the sweepings, not the workers) all together with liberal glops of glue, and called it a trend.

And the people all yipped “Iconic!” while saluting with their Barclay Cards.

In sum, the really happenin’ people, cooler than you’ll ever be, can shoal up against the latte counter in the morning, all wearing their Croatian SS coats, and order a cup of herbal tea with a picture of a tyrant on it.

Well, maybe the tea will help them with their cultural amnesia.

-30-

Passover, a Blood Moon, and a Debt

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Passover, a Blood Moon, and a Debt

On Passover, we will see a (gasp) Blood Moon in the sky, and so the world is coming to an end again. On the ‘net there’s a picture of a real big Blood Moon behind the Moscow Kremlin, so it must be so.

Yes, the End Times are back, according to Reverend 1-800-501C3 on the Orwellian telescreen, so send him money. The End Times are always hanging around, leeching onto you like that fellow who approaches you in the parking lot and tells you he ran out of gas on his way to his mother’s funeral in Waco. The next time you see him he’s taking his child (cue the sad child who knows darned well to keep his mouth shut or else) to the hospital in Houston and the car’s transmission went out, and brother, can you spare a twenty God bless you sir?

The year 1999 was an especially profitable season for End Times, what with mysterious glowing chupacabras in the sky spelling out 999 (which is even worse than 666) in Babylonian hieroglyphics, coded signals from Fred Phelps’ basement, and crudely-illustrated Jack Chick pamphlets telling you that you’re going to (Newark) anyway, so don’t even bother trying.

Hey, why read the Bible when you’ve got Jack Chick, eh?

When the sun rose on 1 January 2000, some folks climbed down from their roofs, consulted The Voices, whapped themselves on the forehead (“Wow, I could have had a Julian calendar!”), and said, “Oh, wait – we miscalculated. 2000 is the end of the millennium, so, like, the end of the world is coming next year. Really!”

Anyway, on the ‘net this week somebody said that somebody said that somebody else said that we’ve got a tetrad coming. Whatever a tetrad is. And so with the tetrad comes the End Times, and this time – or end time - they really mean it, okay?

And yet – and yet Easter will come again this year. The Altar will be set right after the grim Triduum, and on Sunday morning spring flowers and morning sunlight will supplant the darkness of Good Friday. Local ministers and priests (Chaucer’s “parsouns”) will tell again a 2,000-year-old story because they look to God, not to Hi-Def images of Reverend 1-800-501C3, for the truth.

After the liturgy there will be merriment, dinner on the grounds (which really isn’t on the grounds, but in the hall), and an easter-egg hunt (which really is on the grounds, unless there is rain, in which case it will be in the hall).


The nice man who mows the church lawns will mutter for months (for this now is effectively a part of the liturgical calendar) about the lawnmower blades finding undiscovered plastic eggs and, worse, real eggs in an advanced state of malodorous decay.

But it’s all told much better in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture (except for the undiscovered eggs ripening through Ordinary Time), the sequence from Good Friday through Holy Saturday to Easter morning, followed by a happy feast.

In the evening we can again watch Charlton Heston lead the children of Israel out of the brickpits and into the desert, still fascinated even though we know how it ends. Great stories are like that.

Easter – or Pascha, if you prefer - beats superstition, including the laughable blood moon, all hollow. And you don’t have to send money to anyone – in every way, the debt has been paid.

-30-

The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Knife Collection

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Knife Collection

The first exhibit at the new George W. Bush Presidential Library on the campus of Southern Methodist University is a new metal detector celebrating American freedom. The visitor freely surrenders any metal objects and places them in a little plastic basket to be scrutinized electronically while he or she freely passes through the electronic confessional for the revelation of any hidden secrets.

The library staff are pleasant and somewhat apologetic about the procedure; the polyester polizei less so. After all, no American lad dreams of growing up to wear a cheap uniform and proctology gloves while living out his dream of handing out plastic baskets and looking at people’s metal objects on a little Orwellian telescreen.

The website (http://www.georgewbushlibrary.smu.edu/en/Visit/Plan-Your-Museum-Visit.aspx) is clear that all visitors will subject themselves to electronic search, and that “any weapons will be confiscated by security staff and not returned.” Said “weapons” include, by name, Swiss Army®, Gerber®, and Leatherman® shiny things.

One wonders why Swiss Army, Gerber, and Leatherman are singled out as special menaces to the Republic.

The buildings are handsome and functional, much influenced by Bauhaus and to a lesser extent by Art Deco. The main hall features a high clerestory which provides most of the illumination.

In this area the exhibits, unimaginatively displayed, are gifts to President and Mrs. Bush by many nations. Russia gave a huge silver samovar breasted with the double-eagle of the Romanovs, whom the current government’s predecessors had shot, including the children and their pet dog.

The observer also, well, observes among the presidential gifts (while shaking off the half-life of any lingering mysterious rays from the security scans) the presidential swords, daggers, and knives. Swiss Army®, Gerber®, and Leatherman® are not among them.

The reproduction of the Oval Office is very well done, and since everything in it is a reproduction, touching is permitted. You can even sit in the reproduction presidential chair behind the reproduction Resolute desk (feet down, please), and play with the reproduction presidential telephone, which is not red.

And where is the reproduction bust of Winston Churchill?

Not on exhibit is even one of the many White House computers vandalized by the classy Clinton staff on their last day in office in January of 2001.

The exhibits are well accomplished, though one must explore the usual Minoan labyrinths – is this a dead end, or can I go forward, or must I go back? - and interesting, especially to the lover of American history but also for those with only a casual interest. The George H. W. Bush Library in the Holy City of College Station offers much more, but the George W. Bush Library at SMOO (for SMU, Southern Methodist University) is new and somewhat raw, and will expand.

The gift shop is small, poorly stocked, and expensive. For eight dollars you can buy a little wooden stick purported to be a bookmark. A little wooden stick that reads “The George W. Bush Presidential Library” is still, in the end, only a little wooden stick. For eight dollars.

One of the books for sale is The Brothers Karamazov., and it is listed on a photocopied leaflet as one of “Mrs. Laura Bush’s Family Favorites.”

One does not imagine any family sitting by the fire on a winter night and taking turns reading The Brothers Karamazov to each other, but Mrs. Bush is of a literary bent, and so is President Bush, though he takes Texas pains to hide it. Mrs. Bush says this is her favorite book, as does Mrs. Clinton, which could lead to an interesting debate topic in the next election cycle.

Moderator: “Senator, if you are elected president, which translation of The Brothers Karamazov will you promote as more accurately reflecting Dostoyevsky’s original Russian, the older Constance Garnett or the modern Peaver-Volokhonsky?”

Finally, the true center of the George W. Bush Library is a memorial to the thousands who were murdered on 9/11/01. And this is where all the museum jokes slink away, for here are suspended fragments of huge steel beams, perhaps twenty feet high, burnt and twisted. And this is why you’ve come. This is where you remember. This is where you put the camera away. This is where the goofs who wear their hats indoors remove them. This is where you stop talking. Not because you are told to do so, but because over 2,753 people from 60 nations deserve this of all of us.

“Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord…”

-30-

The Pegwinders

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Pegwinders

There are music lovers who would almost rather gnaw off an arm than endure yet another photocopied, overmixed, overproduced discount-store sound. And one can understand – country-and-western music is at present sodden with derivative hat-acts and three-chord commandos whose music is as lacking in creativity as their publicity stills.

And yet there are always a few rebels who don’t simply follow and imitate, but who with talent, discipline, and respect for their audience take an artistic tradition and make some seriously new noise with it. One group making a wonderful new contribution to folk culture is The Pegwinders.

Sure, they continue a musical tradition, but it’s a good old tradition born of pine trees, river bottoms, sawmills, farms, oil wells, machine shops, dirt roads, bare feet, some dogs in the front yard, church on Sunday, and knowing where you came from.

The fusion of blues, folk, rock, and hillbilly did not begin with Nashville in the 1950s; it originated much earlier in Kirbyville, Texas with Ivory Joe Hunter, who needs no adjectives. Nor is this an ossified tradition; East Texas is rich with young musicians whose hands are as skilled with wrench, saw, and plow as they are with fretboard, capo, and pick, with truck scales as well as musical scales. Blessed with formal instruction in church, school, or in private lessons, and informal pickup sessions at home and, yes, in that famous garage, fresh voices celebrate the culture given to them by mastering it and then pushing it forward in bold new ways.

Thus it is with The Pegwinders.

Sarah Rose Fusell is the brains, the beauty, and the voice – or The Voice – of The Pegwinders. When you hear that sweet, powerful, disciplined delivery, well, sure, the guys are great, but Sarah is the heart of the set.

Steve Fussell, the concussionist, can make the drums and cymbals sing as smoothly as a V-8 engine, for this master mechanic knows his way around all of them.

Cory Horton is the bass man, as in, yeah, that’s a BASS, man!

Colby Tharp is a triple threat with voice, guitar, and the harmonica, an underrated little instrument often relegated to a cliché background noise in prison movies. In the hands of this master, the harmonica sings like the winds through the pine tops on an autumn day.

Brady Barnett is a keyboardist who can gentle from the keys the softness of a spring morning and then make them stand up and howl like nobody’s Nashville business.

Sarah, Steve, Cory, Colby, and Brady are hardworking artists who as The Pegwinders make music, make happiness, and make history.

Yeah, they’re that good.

You can hear The Pegwinders at the Jasper Lions’ Club Rodeo on Thursday night, May 8th. Someday you can say with pride “I knew them when….”

http://www.reverbnation.com/thepegwinders

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/jasper/news/article/The-Pegwinders-will-perform-May-8th-at-the-Jasper-5438938.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF7ckZczvK0

http://kreenewsdaily.tumblr.com/post/84244427954

http://www.jasperlionsrodeo.com/

-30-

The First Hummingbird of Spring

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The First Hummingbird of Spring

O wing’ed messenger of innocence,
Aloft among the pollinating flowers,
At last you have returned from Mexico
And warm months there among soft latitudes
Where little birds can make a holiday
Far, far away from withering Arctic winds.

O tiny traveler, what souvenirs
Did you declare to customs at the Rio Grande?
South winds to tell the flowers to wake up
And Rosaries of morning fogs to bless
The yawning grasses with a morning drink,
And fresh new sunlight for the industrious bees.

O buzzing and impatient little friend!
Just wait a minute, your breakfast is coming -
The old glass feeder washed and packed away
In harvest-rich October’s golden light
Must be recovered and refreshed for you,
And
How good it is to see you home again.

Hey, Nice Little Suitcase You Got Here. Hate to See Anything Happen to It.

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Hey, Nice Little Suitcase You Got Here. 

Hate to See Anything Happen to It.

 

“This is disinfectant.  Use it.”

 

-Train Guard in Doctor Zhivago

 

When George Custer and I left Viet-Nam (poor George got into some fracas in the Dakotas later on), every departing passenger was required to go to confession before being subject to a pat-down.

 

The confessional was a little walk-through closet curtained on both ends.  The sign advised the passenger that if he was carrying home instruments of destruction for later use to repent of any such idea and in the privacy of the closet leave the things-that-go-boom in a little box provided for them.

 

My seatmate, a fellow named Wellington (he later visited Belgium and designed boots or something), was much amused when I told him that out of curiosity I had peeked into the box and had seen pistols, .50-cal machine-gun rounds, bayonets, knuckle-dusters, and a couple of hand grenades.

 

Lo these fifty years later no such courtesy or privacy is extended to airline passengers: unhappy people of the sort our mothers warned us against touch us in ways once regarded as inappropriate outside the bonds of wedlock. 

 

As for your toothbrush and spare socks, at Los Angeles International Airport, familiarly known as LAX(ative), there is no need to leave things in a little box for others to take away; the baggage smashers will go into your old Samsonite and decided for themselves which of your earthly goods they will endow themselves with.

 

Passengers, by order of Higher Authority, must not / may not / will not secure their bags except with a TSA-approved lock to which everyone in Christendom, Cathay, and Cucamonga has a key. 

 

Last week the Los Angeles police and the airport police (everyone has a police force these days; thinking of getting one myself) arrested a number of workers for liberating the people’s goods from the Belly of the Beast.  Apparently this criminal gang / activist group is an ongoing problem for LAX(ative), and like Captain Reynaud’s Casablanca Police Department the local authorities make a few arrests every now and then, claim to be shocked, shocked that there is pilfering  going on, and then steal Sam’s piano.

 

In Casablanca the response to a crime is “Round up the usual suspects.”  In an American airport the response is “Certain measures have been implemented…” broadcast over and over from Big Brother’s overhead speakers. 

 

When the unhappy people (maybe it’s the polyester uniforms) hired to paw through your stuff paw through your stuff, they ask “Did anyone else help pack your suitcase?”

 

And then lower down in one of the circles of (Newark) others who are not hired to paw through your stuff paw through your stuff, they help you unpack your suitcase before you even board the plane.

 

This is why the airline charges you to check your bag.

 

The cleaners, loaders, and security at American airports, unlike the paying passengers, are not inspected, not checked, not watched, and not regulated. What is to prevent some resentful son of toil from accepting a nice gift in a fat envelope in exchange for placing another fat envelope in your luggage?

 

When the Agency for Something Or Other reconstructs the accident and analyzes fragments of your suitcase, they can then tell your survivors that “Hey, your old daddy took a bomb on board.  What did you know about this?  We’re going to seize – um, sequester – all your property, and, hey, have you visited Guantanamo this time of year?  They say it’s lovely.”

 

While the Los Angeles police are investigating the LAX(ative) Chapter of the Comradely Brotherhood of This and That Oppressed Workers International, perhaps Captain Reynaud could ask them if they know where your lost youth is.  They may have pinched that too.

 

-30-

Ode to a Dead Coral Snake in the Road

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Ode to a Dead Coral Snake in the Road

(Where do the Neurotoxins Go?)

Red and yellow kill a fellow

But

Thanks to the tread, you’re now real dead.

High Noon at the Bird Feeder

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

High Noon at the Bird Feeder

A little dog, a streak of dachshund red,
Across the grass speeds to a squirrel’s doom
She wants its blood, she wants its flesh, she wants it dead;
Ripped, shredded, and torn, it will need no tomb.

The fat old squirrel, a fluff of forest grey,
Is unimpressed by doggie dementia;
To Liesl’s grief he leaps and climbs away -
Never underestimate the Order Rodentia!

Liesl’s squirrel clings to a low-hanging limb
And chatters abuse at the angry pup
Who spins and barks and spins and barks at him
Laughing among the leaves, and climbing higher up.

So Liesl snorts and sneers, and marks the ground;
She accepts not defeat, nor lingers in sorrow;
For Liesl and squirrel it’s their daily round;
They’ll go it again, same time tomorrow.

Bipolar Vortex

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Bipolar Vortex

Global warming? The concept’s tired and old,
For one only knows that today is cold.

The Frogs of January

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Frogs of January

Have the frogs of January lost their minds?
This is the season of reptilian sleep,
To leave the winter’s frozen world behind
And keep their dormant lives in storage deep

This balmy dusk is not a time for song;
This temporary warmth is but a cruel tease;
Frogs won’t sing through this winter dusk for long:
The soft winds whisper of a coming freeze.

What Do the Trees Talk About

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

What do the Trees Talk About?

A damp wind blustering from the east
Says nothing for itself but sets
The trees to talking among themselves
Of matters high indeed, high up
Where branches wave their limbs about
While fussing about the weather.

Seven Silent Buzzards

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Seven Silent Buzzards

Some seven or so so-silent buzzards
Lurk in the pine-tops in the last of the sun
Wondering if humans walking for their health
Measuring their paces with little machines
Taste good when fresh (it’s all about the flesh).

Longbows and Rosary Beads

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Longbows and Rosary Beads

For Pearl of Tyburn

Our happy England is Our Lady’s dowry
An island of longbows and rosary beads,
Where we are proud to work, to pray, to fight,
To love the land and sea and misty skies

Our happy England is a thoughtful land
An island of writers, scholars, and rogues
Whose stories, sonnets, songs create new worlds,
A commonwealth of art for the ages

Our happy England is not bound by coasts,
By distances or time. Our island is
An empire of the mind, as Churchill said,
The blessed Avalon of our hearts’ desires.

Published in Longbows and Rosary Beads (http://longbowsandrosarybeads.blogspot.com/ ),
5 January 2014

Deep Dusk

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Deep Dusk

A skeleton of dead black branches frame
The falling sliver of January moon
While an owl’s threats echo in the darkening woods
And cold stars measure out the universe.

Lenin's Dream

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Lenin’s Dream

Imagine slaves buying their chains
Proudly bragging about their chains
Prettily decorating their chains
Gloriously celebrating their chains
And accessorizing their chains

Waiting patiently in long queues
All lined up by ones and by twos
Uniform in their chemical shoes
Beast-marked with their camp tattoos
Obedient to the latest news

Desperate for the latest ‘phone
Desperate never to be alone
Desperate for approval shown
Desperate for a cool ring tone
Desperate not to be unknown

Canary in a Coal Mine

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Canary in a Coal Mine

If a canary dies, who notices?
One little bird, of no significance -
Except for a specific circumstance -
Sacrifices its life to tell a tale.

If two canaries die, who notices?
Two little birds, of slight significance -
Except for a specific circumstance -
Sacrifice their lives to caution us.

If all canaries die, who then is left
To grasp, to gasp the truth learned far too late -
Civilization dies one canary at a time
Tiny corpses littering the mine.

Semester Exam

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Semester Exam

Fluorescents flicker and fall upon bowed heads
And printed letter-paper, organized
By title, paragraph, number, and line,
Interrogations set in Bookman Old Style

And then words fall, flung bravely to each sheet
As desperate, inky thoughts flailing for breath
While to battered be by split infinitives
Demanding an A, praying for a prom date.

Janus Laughs

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Janus Laughs

Old Janus surely laughs at our mistakes
In thinking that the world begins again,
That pages turned in calendars and books
Reduce mysteries into measurements

Quebec's Separation Anxiety

Mack Hall, HSG
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Separation Anxiety

Second only to the matter of the missing Malaysian aircraft and Miley Khardassian’s missing clothing, the world is seriously concerned about what small province should be attached to what country.

We refer, of course, to Quebec, whose elected provincial government on occasion reminds one of the 18-year-old cheerleader who sued her parents for not understanding her preciousness enough to give her lots and lots of money.

Once upon a time France was the gros chien of European colonizers in North America east of the Rio Grande. The English, Dutch, and Spanish possessions were relatively small beachheads surrounded by the huge territories that were Nouvelle-France.

Three hundred years later all that is left of France in North America is St. Pierre et Miquelon (http://www.st-pierre-et-miquelon.com/en/), a few small islands off the coast of Newfoundland. As an aside, while all history is fascinating, the brilliant 1941 Christmas eve raid by the Free French on what Secretary of State Cordell Hull dismissed as “two rocks” is a wonderful story (http://www.amazon.com/Free-French-Invasion-Miquelon-Affaire/dp/096842290X).

With the defeat of the French at Quebec in 1759, and then nasty little Napoleon’s sale of the rest of Nouvelle-France, about one-third of the present USA, in 1803, France was pretty much through in North America. But was all that land Napoleon’s to sell? Besides the reality that Napoleon was a usurper and a tyrant with no legal claim to anything, Spain too said all that territory was theirs.

None of them asked the First Nations who owned it, of course.

Which leads the reader back to Quebec, Canada’s largest province, though it is smaller than Nunavit, which is a territory and not a province, and Canada is confusing.

A look at the map reminds the reader that Quebec, all by itself, is a great big ol’ chunk (grand vieux marceau) of Canada. In the 1960s and 1970s a Francophone separatist movement, through murder and intimidation, generated a civil war in the province which was resolved through mass arrests, tanks in the streets of Montreal, and curious and confusing compromises with the federal government and internally.

Quebec has since voted on independence from the rest of Canada several times, so far choosing to remain, but once again the Parti Quebecois is pushing the matter.

No one seems to have asked the other Canadian provinces and territories if they wish Quebec to go away. Quebec suffers the highest taxes and the greatest debt (http://www.vigile.net/Quebec-debt-highest-in-Canada-and) of any state or province in North America. Only a few provinces are net providers of revenue to Canada as a whole, which means they must pay higher taxes to support the net takers. A visitor to Canada notes that the prices of goods there are quite reasonable until the tax is added – and there is the economic chienne-gifle.

What does all this have to do with the USA? A great deal. Canada is this nation’s biggest trading partner (http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/top/top1401yr.html). Not only that, Canada is the USA’s best friend; given the politics of our time, Canada may be our only friend. The border between Canada and the USA is artificial; the North American economy transcends that mapped but otherwise unreal line across the continent, and we really are one economy.

Instability and lack of leadership in the USA (the Keystone pipeline comes to mind) affect everyone from Nunavit to Mexico City. Similarly, instability and lack of leadership in Quebec affect everyone from Mexico City to Nunavit.

The Crimean peninsula is relatively important to us -- it is certainly important to the Crimeans – but the decisions the people of Quebec make in the next year or so are of immediate urgency to them and to us.

One wonders if a lonely little USA destroyer will appear in a “training exercise” among someone’s fishing nets along the St. Lawrence.

-30-

Music Download on the Roof - A New Silent Musical

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Music Download on the Roof – A New Silent Musical

“Rabbi, is there a blessing for the Czar?”
“A blessing for the Czar – yes, on my ‘blog:
PAGE NOT AVAILABLE. CHECK CONNECTION.

A Catholic Funeral

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Catholic Funeral

Oh, our sister is dead; what is to be?
Shall we bury her with a Rosary?

No, those pre-Vatican II days are gone:
We’ll fold into her hands her new Iphone!

A Boy and His Dinosaur

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Boy and His Dinosaur

In another world, a silent world within,
The dominant species are dinosaurs.
Never having fallen, no evil obtains,
And beneficent reptiles live there as -
As innocently as butterflies.
In his quiet world of gentle reptilians
A little boy is never without a friend,
A Saurian with an unpronounceable name,
To share a cave, a thought, a book, a toy,
And so that world with a best-friend dinosaur
Is the child’s real world, the only one
Where he knows love.

The Westminster Chinese Chimes

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Westminster Chinese Chimes

An elegant clock ticks on the mantelpiece
Proclaiming the hours with an electric chime
Sarah thinks this violates household peace
And the cat, well, he can’t even tell time.

The Homeowners' Association

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Homeowners’ Association

For Robin

“Your attitude’s been noticed, comrade.”

- Block Warden to Yuri in Doctor Zhivago
-
When in chill autumn a golden leaf falls
The Homeowners’ Ass. sends an indictment
And if after five one vacuums the halls
The Homeowners’ Ass. yelps “Too much excitement!”

Then when in a rainstorm you park your car
The Homeowners’ Ass. alerts snooping eyes
And fines you because you’re an inch too far -
“Your attitude’s been noticed,” hiss the spies

Comes the spring, and the world turns to green
The Homeowners’ Ass. disapproves of your grass
Somehow it’s ragged, you know what we mean…
“Oh, go blow it out your Homeowners’ Ass.!”

Breakfast With a Granddaughter

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Breakfast with a Granddaughter

for Valentine

A four-year-old does not pencil you in
Or plan her day around a power lunch
Carefully scheduled in a little box;
Her calendar is filled with a pancake,
A slice of bacon crisp, a glass of milk,
The latter drawn way up, up, up the straw
And down again, puff, puff, a fountain of bubbles
Accented with the most glorious giggles
Ever to sail across the universe
And back again. Let’s have a refill of ‘em:
Giggles, please, already sweetened with joy.

The Greatest Gift of the Enlightenment

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Greatest Gift of the Enlightenment

A merciful machine is the guillotine
Empowering a compassionate society
To actuate therapy efficiently
Imagined by a diverse team of dreamers
Who saw what was why, and asked themselves why not
This greatest gift of the Enlightenment
Built using the latest technology
Sustainable wood from certified rainforests
And recycled metals crafted by artisans
Places the consumer at the center
Enhances higher order thinking skills
And promotes community values
Authentic ecosystem solutions
Embrace the needful progressive experience
A solution addressing social needs
And building teamwork across the spectrum
With voices for the voiceless voiced with love
And it all began with an idea, a dream
In someone’s kitchen, dorm room, or garage

The Enlightenment

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Enlightenment

A dimly-lit and dripping corridor
Echoing with the screams of broken souls
As they are liberated for a new age:
The executioner adjusts his hood,
Wipes his hands free of blood and fragments of bone,
And checks his incoming text-messages.

Vesting for the Office of the New Day

Vesting for the Office of the New Day

In the darkness of night Matins was sung
By the watchful few who rise for that Hour
And now at Prime most everyone is up
At dawning yawning for that courage-cup
With which to challenge back the challenges
Of this fallen world

Take thou a well-worn cross, of wood perhaps
Or maybe pewter stained with well-worn sweat
Or maybe silver plate or jewelers’ gold
Upon it place a kiss, and cross yourself
And slowly don the vestment of eternity
And turn to the sun

Peter, Paul, and Mary Reconsidered

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Peter, Paul, and Mary Reconsidered

In a re-sale shop in Jasper, Texas y’r ‘umble scrivener found a CD (a format now as dated as vinyl and electromagnetic tape) for a dollar, and crunched it into the player in his heritage (translation: old) car (because the machine makes a crunching sound when it eats music).

Magic!

Peter, Paul, and Mary, the group’s eponymous 1962 album, and their first, was issued on LP vinyl, which, like pay telephones, passenger trains, typewriters, and Kodak cameras, will require some exposition for those who aren’t card-carrying Medicare-istas.

The oeuvre might perhaps be labeled as folk, but while that style quickly deteriorated into hootenanny-ness, PP&M were never follow-the-fashions derivative. Neither are their songs self-indulgent therapies about themselves and their feelings; their songs are about work, play, justice, childhood, and beauty.

The songs of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey, and Mary Travers were only part of the background top-forty a.m. music of your scrivener’s youth, but to his now mature ear they are perfection. The months of rehearsals are evident in the professionalism and cleanness of the performances. PP&M need no gimmicks, echo chambers, or layers of tracking; as true musicians they respect their audience and never lapse into curious noises.

The guitar has become a cliche' of folkabilly, casually slung over the shoulder of yet another 30-something hat-act posing mournfully on railroad tracks for a black-and-white publicity photograph, but the reality is that the legions of three-chord-commandos twanging wires are more annoying than musical. And, really, does anyone really stand on railroad tracks except for high school graduation pictures? Peter and Paul, though, respect the guitar, know the guitar, and rehearse the guitar. In a time when one often suspects that guitar is only a French word for kindling, PP&M remind us that there really are people who know that it is a musical instrument of great sophistication and potential, not an accessory.

And Mary - that voice! Crystalline! The notes to the album describe her, in language that would now be censored for its isms, “a bright, young blonde-and-a-half.” Oh, yeah. Mary never performed in her skivvies or mated with an amplifier; she didn’t have to.

The convention at this point in a narrative is to lapse into filler-language about how people could really sing and play music Back in the Day, but that is nonsense, of course. There are always professional artists who play music worthy of their audiences. There are not always audiences worthy of the artists.

Some criticism of the trio is valid – they allowed themselves to be used for propaganda, and Paul Stookey could be convicted of cultural manslaughter for the powder-blue-tux oozings of “The Wedding Song.” But when the organizers no longer needed Peter, Paul, and Mary, they were discarded as irrelevant and uncool. Their cosmic payback was “I Dig Rock and Roll Music,” which subtly mocked the pretensions of acts which had little to offer but junior-high locker-room language and look-at-me-me-me-ness.

Once upon a time, but definitely not in The Land of Honalee, a pal propped his dinky little transistor radio on some sandbags. The machine’s brave little 9-volt battery and its two-inch speaker, punching below its weight, were pushing out "500 Miles from Home" as broadcast from AFVN Saigon. The Chief didn’t like it, but then we didn’t like him. And, anyway, being 12,000 miles from home will get to you, too.

The gratitude is a little late, but thanks for that moment, Peter, Paul, and Mary.

-30-

The Carter, the Convicts, and the Railway

The Carter, the Convicts, and the Railway

 

“See all those workers digging through that hill?”

The carter asked, there pointing with his whip

While two mismatched old horses lumbered on

Jerking carter and prisoners along the ruts.

 

An empty church, its now skeletal dome

Open to the dusk, lay somewhat in the way

Of where the rails would lay, just there among

Stray stalks of wheat, from lost and windblown seeds.

 

One prisoner yawning through his sorrows said

“I wonder why the Czar didn’t send me there

To carve with pick and shovel and barrow and hod

His new technology across the steppes.”

 

“Too close to Petersburg, and Moscow too,

My lad.  The Czar wants you to labor far,

Far off.  No mischief from you and your books,

Your poems, your nasty little magazines.”

 

“Oh, carter, is Pushkin unknown to you?

Turgenev, Gogol, Dostoyevsky too?

What stories do you tell your children, then?

Do you teach them to love their Russian letters?”

 

The carter laughed; he lit his pipe and said

“You intellectuals!  Living in the past!

Education for the 19^th century -

That’s what our children need, not your old books.”

 

“Someday,” the carter mused, “railways everywhere,

And steel will take you where you will be sent.

Electric light will make midday of night

And Russia’s soul will be great big machines!”

 

“Machines, and better guns, and better clocks -

All these will make for better men, you’ll see.

You young fellows will live to see it; I won’t,

But what a happy land your Russia will be!”

 

And the cart rattled on, the horses tired,

Longing for the day’s end, and hay, and rest;

The prisoners made old jokes in laughing rhymes,

Begged ‘baccy from the carter, and wondered.

Some Observations on the Habits of the American Cardinal

Lawrence Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Some Observations on the Habits

 of the American Cardinal

 

The Cardinal knows that he is a pretty bird

Splendidly attired in feathers bright and gay

He publishes loudly; he will be heard

Among the squawks of mockingbird and jay

 

He gobbles and scatters husks, rusks, and seeds

In self-indulgent abandonment

He ignores all others in his wants and needs

They’re secular birds; they can take a hint

 

The Cardinal certainly loves to be seen

At the public feeder in all his pride

Attentive to fashions, and always keen

For the Best Birds to be seen at his side

 

And then one day

 

A few remnant feathers, a ripped cardinal’s hat -

He seems to have forgotten the watchful cat.

 

The Plains of San Agustin

Lawrence Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
From The Road to Magdalena, 2012

The Plains of San Agustin

“And lean upon a peasant’s staff”

-Wordsworth

But rather lean upon a pilgrim’s staff,

And trudge the road to Magdalena, yes,
With Rosary in hand, wearing old boots
From some lost war, some long-lost time ago;
A canvas vade mecum for his gear,
A worn-out boonie hat against the sun,
The high-plains sun against the stars, upon
The track to Magdalena in the fall,
To listen to the spirits converse with clouds
Upon the Plains of San Agustin where
A Very Large Array of idols listens for
A voice from space, from far beyond the skies;
For there, if anywhere, He can be heard,
But not from painted idols, no, but from
The haunted earth, and from the stars and back
Again.  And then – and then shuffle away,
Stick tapping on the rocks, boots treading dust;
For if some stranger finds that stick, those boots
Abandoned in the brush some desert noon
And bones upon the sands like scattered words,
He’ll know a pilgrim made a happy end.

"Thank You for being Such a Valued Customer"

“Thank You for being Such a Valued Customer”

 

And, oh! Have we got a deal for you!

We looted a channel, we’ve raised your rates

We know you paid, but you’re still overdue

We teased you with some weekend movie baits

Which ought to be included anyway

We’re the worst service in history’s annals

We fu(dge) your contract almost every day

And

We want you to buy even more channels!

Major Pettigrew's Last Duck Hunt

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Major Pettigrew’s Last Duck Hunt

 

The annual shoot at the local estate is by itself worth the price of a copy of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, by Helen Simonson. 

 

Lord Dagenham, a worthy variation on P. G. Wodehouse’s eh-wot-oh-rather-don’cha-know Lord Emsworth, is a somewhat down-at-the-Rolls Royce noble who rents out much of his ancestral home to a private school and who is selling some of his lands to an American real estate developer.

 

The last annual duck hunt in the doomed countryside ends as a menace to the humans more than to the ducks.  The hunters, mostly English and American bankers playing at being squires for a day, are on the firing line when suddenly the field of fire is occupied by: (1) ducks, lots of ducks, (2) the schoolchildren, who raised the ducks as a science project and who rush in to defend them, (3) the gamekeeper and the farm hands, trying to round up both the children and the ducks, (4) environmentalists, and (5) the local Save Our Village protestors.  And, yes, someone gets bashed with a sign proclaiming “Peace.”  The reader sees that coming, and is delighted when it does.

 

A safe modern writer would have fitted all this into a scripted screed against guns and hunting, all kitted out with global-warming environmentalism and cuddly Disney children and animals.  Miss Simonson will have none of that; she makes fun of everyone involved, sparing not even the children: “’They killed our duckies,’ came a wail from a child holding up a bloody carcass.” 

 

As Lord Dagenham says, “I had no idea that fee-paying pupils would smell bad.”

 

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is framed as boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-back, only geriatric, but is saved from Famous Greeting Card Company sugar-free syrup by Miss Simonson’s lemony (seldom acidic) observations on socialists, yuppies, environmentalists, the upper classes, the lower classes, country clubs, the sort of people who resent country clubs, the Church of England, Moslems, Americans, Englishmen, artificial Christmas trees, hunters, anti-hunters, parties with themes, “the glass-squashed faces of small, angry children” on school busses, and flavored teas.

 

Through all this Miss Simonson develops a delightful love story.  The protagonist is Major Pettigrew, retired from the British Army, and his friend, Mrs. Ali, owner of the local shop.  Both are widowed, and they “meet cute,” as the film cliché goes, but their relationship must voyage from acquaintance through friendship and finally to love through 355 delightful pages of misunderstandings, cultural differences, disapproving relatives, disapproving neighbors, a retired banker “with an almost medical allergy to children,” organic turkeys, neighbor Alice’s organic vegetarian lasagna that smells like plankton, neighbor Marjory, whose sole topic of conversation is her gifted and talented grandson, a dotty vicar, the vicar’s even dottier wife, the aforementioned hunt, an annual club dance that deteriorates into a food-throwing, stage-collapsing, drink-sloshing brawl, a continuing sub-theme about a matched pair of Churchill shotguns, and a knightly rescue of an imprisoned lady.  And ducks.

 

The setting is a Wodehouse England that never really existed, flavored by Jane Austen, Kipling, Agatha Christie, the Romantic poets, Alexander McCall Smith, declasse’ climbers, and the occasional cup of real tea (no rose hips or other debris for our hero). 

 

Some of the social assumptions are a bit naïf, and in this the novel sails dangerously close to being approved of by famous television ladies, but this is a love story, after all, and one with a happy ending. 

 

Even so, with lines such as “The major wished young men wouldn’t think so much,” “a group of faded hippies, with ripped jeans and balding heads,” “Old Mr. Percy became so drunk that he threw away his cane and subsequently fell through a glass door while chasing a shrieking woman across the terrace,” and mention of an assistant imam named Rodney, this is a book that even manly men can read without fear of their boots magically dissolving into designer cross-trainers.

 

And there are ducks.

 

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, by Helen Simonson, is published by Random House.

 

-30-

Send Not to Ask for Whom the Clock Ticks

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Send Not to Ask for Whom the Clock Ticks

 

“Time is but the stream I go afishing in.”

 

•  Thoreau
   
  Several decades ago I bought a clock at Jerry’s Family Pharmacy on Main Street in Kirbyville.  When I bought the clock the mere fact of buying a clock would not have been worthy of mention.  Now it is, because clocks are uncommon.
   
  People seldom determine the time from clocks or watches.  In the mornings tiny little made-in-China Orwellian telescreens wake up their obedient humans, who then pass the rest of the day, heads humbly bowed, perusing, viewing, reading, or hearing their masters.  When a modern wishes to know the time, he (the pronoun is gender-neutral because calling one person “they” is barbaric) pulls from the recesses of his garmenting his Orwellian telescreen.  Then he reads his twits, twoots, and Me-mails, slides the news to see what some embalmed personality has done further to degrade himself, and goes back to the Me-mail as a validation of his existence.
   
  In 1914 no man would have worn a wristwatch because they were “sissy.”  That changed with trench warfare, and the suddenly manly wristwatch enjoyed a century of service and adornment.  In 2014, though, a modern young man would no more wear a wristwatch than he would stand up when his mother enters the room.
   
  As with watches, buying a clock is worthy of note as a curious activity from a bygone day, rather like not wearing camouflage at a funeral.
   
  This clock was made in the USA by a company that still exists as an office somewhere but which has long since farmed out the construction of clocks, for the few eccentrics who want one, to China.  The mechanism for ringing the alarm gave out years ago, but the clock continued its dependable tick-tick-tick (being a superior sort of clock, it refused ever to tock) until a sad day not long ago when its winding mechanism would not wind.  After its final day as an intact ticking clock its spring wound down for the last time.  It ticked no more.
   
  As would any good American, I took the clock apart to explore its innards.  The key had stripped its threads (dang, after only twenty or thirty years…).  I wound the clock with pliers, and once again it tick-tick-ticked nicely. 
   
  The clock machinery now resides on my desk, wound each day with a pair of pliers (made-in-China) kept handy for the purpose.  It is wonderfully inaccurate, gaining or losing about five minutes each day, but it is aesthetically pleasing as an objet d’art.  Three metal stampings bound together with slender bolts form a matrix for the springs, gears, and escapement wheel, all of which can now be seen in action.  The hour hand and minute hand, painted with some luminescent material that would probably give the EPA the Aunt Pittypat vapors, still glow briefly in the dark after lights out.
   
  The ticking is curiously comforting, reminding the tick-hearer of Jerry’s Family Pharmacy, a happy heartbeat for Main Street, now just another dark and empty storefront and an empty place in the hearts of those who remember good ol’ Jerry Nobles and his wheezy jokes.  The castoff 1950s chairs and table where old men made merry and told stories over coffee are all gone, as are most of the old men, as are the stories.
   
  But only for us, and only for a time, for in God’s omnipresence no happiness ever really goes away, not from Him. 
   
  Tick, tick, tick…
   
  -30-