Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
What We Can Learn from Danger Man
Although the names and numbers change, as is only right in a good spy yarn, we can infer that Patrick McGoohan’s flinty character in Danger Man (Secret Agent in the USA), Ice Station Zebra, and The Prisoner is the same man: John Drake. From these films a young person can learn that in the 1960s:
1. A fake travel agency can function in the center of London for years as a front for the British secret service without Communists, smugglers, crooked millionaires, corrupt members of parliament, or drug cartels figuring that out.
2. The same supporting actor, usually Aubrey Morris, can play a Chinese, an Italian, a Spaniard, and a Haitian, and no one is offended by that.
3. A secret agent travels with one small canvas bag which holds a business suit for the city, a tweed suit for the country, a dinner jacket, a trench coat, a turtleneck sweater, a pair of slacks, a change of shirts, a shaving kit, a large tape recorder, a large two-way radio, binoculars, a hat or two, sneakers for doing the cat burglar thing, and a pair of hiking boots.
4. A distinguished middle-aged man wearing a smoking jacket and holding a brandy snifter is a villain.
5. If there is an elderly colonel, and there usually is, and if he has a sweet, pretty daughter, and he usually does, she is always a traitor.
6. Scientists always wear white laboratory coats and eyeglasses rimmed in black plastic.
7. A computer is the size of a Ford Galaxie 500, clatters like a teletype, and features lots of dials and flashing lights.
8. Sometimes a character must get off the train or stop the car in order to call someone on a pay telephone. The pay telephone is convenient and always in working order, and the character always has the correct change.
9. Any airport terminal is about the size of a kitchen. When it is not an airport terminal it is a hotel lobby or a railway station.
10. A forest in Scotland, a copse in Kent, and jungles in central Africa, Haiti, and South America look exactly alike and feature identical plant life.
11. Almost all women wear dresses or skirts, except for Patricia Driscoll (nee’ Maid Marian) who rather daringly wears slacks.
12. Anyone can walk into any airport and immediately buy a ticket for any destination in the world on a plane that leaves within the hour.
13. Smoking is cool.
14. Coats and ties are required. A man sitting at the breakfast table will put on his sports jacket or suit coat before answering the door. When the police or military intelligence arrest someone they always give him a moment to tie his tie and find his coat before they take him away. Every man (except for Communists and other such low-lifes) removes his hat when entering someone’s home or office, and when dining.
15. In those funny little foreign countries airport staff are invariably surly and suspicious, wear moustaches, search luggage, ask nosy questions, and carry firearms. This would never happen in English, French, German, or American airports, where the staff are polite and helpful, and never snoop through travelers’ things.
16. Pan American is the preferred airline, though sometimes one must make do with BOAC.
17. All cars are English, French, or Italian.
18. The United Nations is a beneficent organization staffed by men (never women) of all nations and cultures. These men are good, wise, and honest.
19. London’s clubland rules the world.
20. Anyone stepping out of a hotel will immediately find a taxi available.
21. Typewriters. Newspapers. Telegrams. Rotary telephones.
22. Danger Man set the standard for complex gadgets hidden in pieces in shavers and pens, and which must be assembled over a period of minutes with much clicking and clacking.
23. When any woman enters a room, all the men present stand up. When greeting a woman a man (except for a Communist) removes his hat or at least touches the brim respectfully.
24. John Drake never carries a firearm. He can disable four or five armed villains with his bare hands, not unlike Walker, Texas Ranger. While one baddie is being subdued all the others jump around harmlessly in the background while waiting their turn to be bashed.
25. Most elderly women are dear, sweet things who serve tea with milk, lemon, sugar, and knockout drops.
This bit of fun shouldn’t suggest that Danger Man / Secret Agent is cartoonish. The series features well-developed plots, characterizations, and settings, and is always predicated on an ethical sense wholly lacking in the James Bond cartoons.
When in one episode Drake realizes that an evil man he has captured has been murdered by his own agency, he angrily confronts his boss. Drake sternly reminds The Colonel that if the English government is going to act like the Soviet government, then there is no moral ground for the country’s existence. This scene may be the impetus for the ongoing theme of The Prisoner: “Why did you resign?”
Danger Man / Secret Agent presents intelligent, ethical, and artistically staged stories that, unlike most twaddle from the Ministry of Truth, respect the viewer. And, in addition to the many other excellent qualities of Danger Man, there are lava lamps.
-30-
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Chess - the Most Dangerous Game
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Just Pass Some More Laws
Last week, two players died during a world championship chess match in Norway.
Given the documented dangers of chess, how much longer will we continue to sacrifice human lives to this mediaeval sport?
Where is the world’s outrage? Why hasn’t the President spoken up? Where is Westboro Not-Really-Baptist? Where is Al Sharpton – still on the line with his FBI controllers?
Chess is clearly a killer. If two lives are lost during only one chess competition in one day, how many precious humans die in a year, sacrificed on the pagan altar of checkmate?
Not only is this game physically dangerous, it is both sexist and anti-democratic.
Those lost souls addicted to this degenerate pastime assure us that there is no sexism in chess because the queen most powerful piece. But, aha! Notice that they refer to her as a piece. Is that not objectification? Further, the queen clearly has no power of her own. She is pushed about on the board by men, most of ‘em foreigners, who dominate the sport. Peer past the fog of sexist obfuscation and one can see that chess is just code for men continuing to dominate and use women.
Further, no American worthy of the name should ever play a game which glamourizes hereditary nobility. Did General Washington and the lads suffer through the winter at Valley Forge for kings and queens and knights? I think not.
As Benjamin Franklin said, here, sir, the people rule. And we the people rule through voting and through standing for public office. Not that we often do so. The polls are six miles away. And we need to watch that pretty girl with a new dress every day turning those letters. But, hey, we listen to the emo-boys on midday radio, and surely that counts as a vote.
And then some of the chessmen (never chesswomen, you will notice) are bishops. We just don’t need Christianity being smuggled into our board games. Children need to grow up playing good old fashioned games on their little Orwellian telescreens: Sullen Buzzards, Blandy Smash, Morbid Wombat, and Wannabes of Nerdcraft.
The American people, in order to be truly free, must be required to turn in their chessmen / chesswomen / chesspersons. For the first year under the proposed new laws citizens will be compensated for their chessmen if they report to police stations and turn them in voluntarily. After that, pursuivants will search out hidden chessmen from recusants, and special courts will be instituted to ensure that never again will anyone be permitted to roam the streets with unregistered chessboards.
Once this is accomplished, all problems will be solved, and all evil will be swept like chessmen from the board of life forever.
-30-
Catholic Pig-Wrestling
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Pig-Rasslin’ in Wisconsin
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
- Lewis Carroll, “The Walrus and the Carpenter
Pig-wrestling in Stephensville, Wisconsin, is an endangered activity.
The parishioners of St. Patrick’s Church, for reasons best known to themselves and to their porcine brothers and sisters, have for years hosted an annual pig-wrestle – or rassle – as a fund raiser.
And why? As with so many matters in Christianity, this is a great mystery.
One often sees statues of Saint Francis (in the garden department, next to the concrete gnomes and the rather satanic-looking frogs) blessing animals but never a statue of Saint Francis wrestling with a pig.
Presumably the pig-rassle is not staged in the church narthex next to the CYO bake sale.
Maybe wrestling pigs is the best Wisconsin can do for a rodeo.
The event is messy but harmless, and after the day’s merriment the pigs are returned to the farm to meditate upon their Four Last Things: bacon, sausage, pork chops, and footballs.
The Society of Prissy People Who Are Against Things are not happy with non-lethal pig-rasslin’, though, and some 42,000 people of the sort who believe that Disney’s Bambi is true have signed a petition demanding that St. Patrick’s cease and desist and de-oink.
The SPPWAAT have apparently clogged the telephone line and emails of St. Patrick’s, and the local deputies will be keeping an eye out in case innocent, old-fashioned merriment must be saved from the Miz Grundies.
Saint Patrick of Ireland made the snakes go away; too bad that doesn’t work with the sort of people who make idols out of critters.
You know, if the parishioners of St. Patrick’s Church in Stephensville want a real rasslin’ challenge, they ought to try prying a teenager’s fingers off a MePhone.
Taking down a porcupine with bare hands could be interesting too.
Judge Joe Folk tells of a pig and a chicken who were the best of friends. One morning while walking along the street they saw a little café that advertised a bargain ham-and-egg breakfast.
The chicken said “Hey, let’s go there for breakfast.”
The pig replied “I think I’ll pass. When it comes to ham and eggs, the chicken has made a contribution but the pig has made a commitment.”
Badabing!
No animals were harmed in the making of this joke.
And no pigs are being harmed at St. Patrick’s
-30-
Monday, August 4, 2014
Absolutely the Very Last End of the World
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Absolutely the Very Last End of the World
“The situation is hopeless, hopeless! But it’s not serious.”
- Finian in Finian’s Rainbow
Several weeks have passed since the previous End of the World warning, so we are a little overdue on this latest one: solar flares are going to destroy the planet at any moment. Thought you’d like to know.
Universal doom from the exploding sun can be avoided, however, if we all repent and ride bicycles, eat gluten-free pine needles, and give our paychecks to Al Gore, Gaia’s Holy Profit…um…Prophet.
If the Solar Flares of the Zombies crisp most of humanity and end civilization we can take comfort in this eternal truth: no matter how much destruction, suffering, starvation, or loss of life we endure in a world plunged into darkness, no matter if we’re all killed, we know that our internet service providers will continue to bill us.
We have suffered so many Ends-of-the-World in the past few years that perhaps we should giving them themes.
After all, weddings are no longer about the sacrament of matrimony, but about themes – hippie wedding (the bride and groom together set a unity match to his draft card) or Aggie wedding (with The Aggie War Hymn as the recessional) or one of those swampy weddings with the bouquet being tossed to the girl with the prettiest tooth.
Since The End of the World falls upon us so often, we must be imaginative in thinking up fresh new themes for the complete destruction of everyone and everything we have every loved:
Hippie End of the World – for this End of the World everyone dresses up in bell-bottoms, tie-dyed tees, and head bands while groovin’ to Peter, Paul, and Mary. If the wait for Captain Kirk to karate-chop The Continuum is futile and the planet succumbs to a Wagnerian demise, all the old hippies will be so toked out they won’t notice.
Aggie End of the World – On the Eve of Doom all true Aggies will dress in maroon and take turns making up brand-new-really-old Aggie traditions. They will name global destruction The Twelfth Man of the Reveillecalypse and build a bonfire.
Swampy End of the World – my distant cousins (and may they remain distant) will beat an alligator to death with a J. C. Higgins shotgun (because Cousin Cletus forgot the shells), skin it, gut it, and hang it out in pieces to dry in the coming Fires of the End of Time. “Yum, yum!” exclaims Cousin Clyde-een, “Tastes just like human!”
Westboro Not-Really-Baptist – At midnight the entire congregation will be commanded to climb up on the roof in unison to blame cosmic collapse on gay people. Substitute “USA” for “gay people” and you have the European response.
Newfoundland – Everyone along George Street in St. John’s will gather in the dozens of faux-Irish pubs, drink beer, and chant “I’s d’ b’ys” over and over until the Meteors of Vengeance begin falling, at which point Sean and Rory will end their vigil and bid farewell to life with the Newfoundland version of the Nunc Dimittis, “Eh.”
But wait…I think I hear a great roaring sound from the stratosphere. This could be it, everyone, so get your tinfoil helmets on and tune your Buck Rogers superheterodyne secret space receivers to the Glen Beck signal.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Absolutely the Very Last End of the World
“The situation is hopeless, hopeless! But it’s not serious.”
- Finian in Finian’s Rainbow
Several weeks have passed since the previous End of the World warning, so we are a little overdue on this latest one: solar flares are going to destroy the planet at any moment. Thought you’d like to know.
Universal doom from the exploding sun can be avoided, however, if we all repent and ride bicycles, eat gluten-free pine needles, and give our paychecks to Al Gore, Gaia’s Holy Profit…um…Prophet.
If the Solar Flares of the Zombies crisp most of humanity and end civilization we can take comfort in this eternal truth: no matter how much destruction, suffering, starvation, or loss of life we endure in a world plunged into darkness, no matter if we’re all killed, we know that our internet service providers will continue to bill us.
We have suffered so many Ends-of-the-World in the past few years that perhaps we should giving them themes.
After all, weddings are no longer about the sacrament of matrimony, but about themes – hippie wedding (the bride and groom together set a unity match to his draft card) or Aggie wedding (with The Aggie War Hymn as the recessional) or one of those swampy weddings with the bouquet being tossed to the girl with the prettiest tooth.
Since The End of the World falls upon us so often, we must be imaginative in thinking up fresh new themes for the complete destruction of everyone and everything we have every loved:
Hippie End of the World – for this End of the World everyone dresses up in bell-bottoms, tie-dyed tees, and head bands while groovin’ to Peter, Paul, and Mary. If the wait for Captain Kirk to karate-chop The Continuum is futile and the planet succumbs to a Wagnerian demise, all the old hippies will be so toked out they won’t notice.
Aggie End of the World – On the Eve of Doom all true Aggies will dress in maroon and take turns making up brand-new-really-old Aggie traditions. They will name global destruction The Twelfth Man of the Reveillecalypse and build a bonfire.
Swampy End of the World – my distant cousins (and may they remain distant) will beat an alligator to death with a J. C. Higgins shotgun (because Cousin Cletus forgot the shells), skin it, gut it, and hang it out in pieces to dry in the coming Fires of the End of Time. “Yum, yum!” exclaims Cousin Clyde-een, “Tastes just like human!”
Westboro Not-Really-Baptist – At midnight the entire congregation will be commanded to climb up on the roof in unison to blame cosmic collapse on gay people. Substitute “USA” for “gay people” and you have the European response.
Newfoundland – Everyone along George Street in St. John’s will gather in the dozens of faux-Irish pubs, drink beer, and chant “I’s d’ b’ys” over and over until the Meteors of Vengeance begin falling, at which point Sean and Rory will end their vigil and bid farewell to life with the Newfoundland version of the Nunc Dimittis, “Eh.”
But wait…I think I hear a great roaring sound from the stratosphere. This could be it, everyone, so get your tinfoil helmets on and tune your Buck Rogers superheterodyne secret space receivers to the Glen Beck signal.
-30-
Some Other Planet
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Some Other Planet
A youth in his curiosity wants
To fling himself in a swift silver ship
To wander strange worlds in the far away
Where he may marvel at the wild unknown
An old man wakes from his Van Winkle nap
Which he didn’t even know he had taken
To discover at last this strange old fact:
He has always lived in the wild unknown
Mhall46184@aol.com
Some Other Planet
A youth in his curiosity wants
To fling himself in a swift silver ship
To wander strange worlds in the far away
Where he may marvel at the wild unknown
An old man wakes from his Van Winkle nap
Which he didn’t even know he had taken
To discover at last this strange old fact:
He has always lived in the wild unknown
Mad Dogs and Whippoorwills
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Mad Dogs and Whippoorwills
In the gasping, colorless noon
A whippoorwill, with a poor will,
Opens his heat-exhausted bill
To sing. What is he, then – a loon?
mhall46184@aol.com
Mad Dogs and Whippoorwills
In the gasping, colorless noon
A whippoorwill, with a poor will,
Opens his heat-exhausted bill
To sing. What is he, then – a loon?
The Importunate Deceits of August
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Importunate Deceits of August
Grim August is the month of unbelief
When all the happy optimisms of May
Are but thin vapors writhing up as dust
And swirling formlessly into the sun
Thoughts flail about like headache-haunted dreams
Then fall apart in shifting fragment-light
To form again beyond reality
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Importunate Deceits of August
Grim August is the month of unbelief
When all the happy optimisms of May
Are but thin vapors writhing up as dust
And swirling formlessly into the sun
Thoughts flail about like headache-haunted dreams
Then fall apart in shifting fragment-light
To form again beyond reality
Deep Dusk
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Deep Dusk
The crescent moon presides in dignity
Over the twilight lawn, attended by
Tonight’s appointed wishing star who thus
Is deputed to catalogue the hopes
Of all who might petition for a gift.
Young lovers must enjoy priority
In hopeful messages from happy stars
In these few minutes safe from old folks’ eyes
When a hesitant hand might coyly seek
Another hand, waiting in shyness there
Mhall46184@aol.com
Deep Dusk
The crescent moon presides in dignity
Over the twilight lawn, attended by
Tonight’s appointed wishing star who thus
Is deputed to catalogue the hopes
Of all who might petition for a gift.
Young lovers must enjoy priority
In hopeful messages from happy stars
In these few minutes safe from old folks’ eyes
When a hesitant hand might coyly seek
Another hand, waiting in shyness there
Saint Augustine of Africa
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Saint Augustine of Africa
Between the desert and the sea
Along an ancient Roman way
A man writes for eternity
Living words against a dying day
Mhall46184@aol.com
Saint Augustine of Africa
Between the desert and the sea
Along an ancient Roman way
A man writes for eternity
Living words against a dying day
North of the Interstate
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
North of the Interstate
First Nations lived here when the world was young,
And something of them still remains as shards,
Slight shards, of works and walks and DNA,
Slim arrow points from hunts in the long ago,
Strange ways in those who know more than they say,
And spirits of the wind and water and air
Like fireflies flit among the ancient oaks
Through an August evening’s deepening dusk.
Their cities and their graves are little marked,
Forgotten mostly, shadows in the forests, but here,
Beneath mysterious sighings in the pine tops.
mhall46184@aol.com
North of the Interstate
First Nations lived here when the world was young,
And something of them still remains as shards,
Slight shards, of works and walks and DNA,
Slim arrow points from hunts in the long ago,
Strange ways in those who know more than they say,
And spirits of the wind and water and air
Like fireflies flit among the ancient oaks
Through an August evening’s deepening dusk.
Their cities and their graves are little marked,
Forgotten mostly, shadows in the forests, but here,
Beneath mysterious sighings in the pine tops.
Monday, July 28, 2014
Hummingbirds at Breakfast and War
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Hummingbirds at Breakfast and War
At breakfast hummingbirds are very rude
They bully each other out of the way
As if there won’t be enough hummer food
For the most important meal of the day
They’re sweet little birds, their defenders say,
But even at meals they’re an avian disgrace
They will not pause their beak-to-beak melee’
Since each one thinks it’s born a combat ace
So give those tiny tough guys lots of space
For they are ever a quarrelsome brood
And drink your coffee in some other place:
At breakfast hummingbirds are very rude
Mhall46184@aol.com
Hummingbirds at Breakfast and War
At breakfast hummingbirds are very rude
They bully each other out of the way
As if there won’t be enough hummer food
For the most important meal of the day
They’re sweet little birds, their defenders say,
But even at meals they’re an avian disgrace
They will not pause their beak-to-beak melee’
Since each one thinks it’s born a combat ace
So give those tiny tough guys lots of space
For they are ever a quarrelsome brood
And drink your coffee in some other place:
At breakfast hummingbirds are very rude
July is Not a Thinking Month
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
July is Not a Thinking Month
July is not a thinking month
The heat and the humidity
Fatigue the world into stillness
And the mind into apathy
A sort of headache of the soul
Cicadas in the midday sun
Mosquitoes in the midnight moon
Reduce even idle dreams to dust;
To read, to think: impossible
Mhall46184@aol.com
July is Not a Thinking Month
July is not a thinking month
The heat and the humidity
Fatigue the world into stillness
And the mind into apathy
A sort of headache of the soul
Cicadas in the midday sun
Mosquitoes in the midnight moon
Reduce even idle dreams to dust;
To read, to think: impossible
Dragonfly on Patrol
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dragonfly on Patrol
While droning through the midday heat
On wings which wildly, swiftly beat
A dragonfly on lawn patrol
Then executes a perfect roll
And makes a challenge face to face:
Who violated his air space?
Signals are given and received
The password’s good; no one’s deceived;
He lifts again with an expert jerk;
An old man, too, returns to work.
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dragonfly on Patrol
While droning through the midday heat
On wings which wildly, swiftly beat
A dragonfly on lawn patrol
Then executes a perfect roll
And makes a challenge face to face:
Who violated his air space?
Signals are given and received
The password’s good; no one’s deceived;
He lifts again with an expert jerk;
An old man, too, returns to work.
La Conquistadora
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
La Conquistadora
In the long ago La Conquistadora
Conquered us, without conquering at all;
She sits in state among the roses of spring,
Our Gentle Lady liege, Queen of our hearts.
Mhall46184@aol.com
La Conquistadora
In the long ago La Conquistadora
Conquered us, without conquering at all;
She sits in state among the roses of spring,
Our Gentle Lady liege, Queen of our hearts.
Llano Estacado
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Llano Estacado
Escarpments and grasses forever and ever
Alive beneath the grey forever-sky,
Creation tumbling ancient elements
Into horizons upon more horizons,
Deep silences, from when there were no worlds,
Seldom interrupted, even by the nations.
The dawn wind sings a circle of low stones
A palace long before Coyote came,
The evening wind sighs through a picture rock
A language that was old when the moon was new.
A little crucifix bought in a shop
Near a wharf in Spain, and blessed by a priest
In haste for breakfast after early Mass
Lies near a fragment of a horseman’s boot
Above an arrowhead knapped from traded flint
Below a broken blade from a pocket knife
And a doll’s head torn by a very bad boy
Along a railway that follows buffalo
Not far from the historical marker
Where a pizza box leans against a fence.
But here on the Llano Estacado
Escarpments and grasses forever and ever
Mhall46184@aol.com
Llano Estacado
Escarpments and grasses forever and ever
Alive beneath the grey forever-sky,
Creation tumbling ancient elements
Into horizons upon more horizons,
Deep silences, from when there were no worlds,
Seldom interrupted, even by the nations.
The dawn wind sings a circle of low stones
A palace long before Coyote came,
The evening wind sighs through a picture rock
A language that was old when the moon was new.
A little crucifix bought in a shop
Near a wharf in Spain, and blessed by a priest
In haste for breakfast after early Mass
Lies near a fragment of a horseman’s boot
Above an arrowhead knapped from traded flint
Below a broken blade from a pocket knife
And a doll’s head torn by a very bad boy
Along a railway that follows buffalo
Not far from the historical marker
Where a pizza box leans against a fence.
But here on the Llano Estacado
Escarpments and grasses forever and ever
A Full Moon over New Mexico
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
A Full Moon over New Mexico
Part of the fascination with the San Antonio chain of missions (Nuestra Senora de la Purisma Concepcion de Acuna, San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, San Juan Capistrano, San Francisco de la Espada, and the very little that remains of San Antonio de Valero) is that they are old. Very few buildings or utilities in Texas are old or ever will be – our interstate highways are under constant repair, and the cinder-block and plywood construction now popular for public and private buildings is only slightly more durable than canvas. Texas is a land of campers who after seven changes of national governments (the United States twice) within only two centuries still marvel at anything that suggests permanence.
New Mexico features many more structures (I didn’t count ‘em) from the three-hundred-year Spanish era, but New Mexicans shouldn’t be smug about them since Texas was all the land east of the Rio Grande, all the way into Colorado. Some say that most of New Mexico and Colorado are still part of Texas. Most of New Mexico and Colorado say not. And that’s okay; Canada still can’t sort out the border between Quebec and Labrador.
An interesting feature of a city in New Mexico, a city which is Spanish in origin, is the plaza, an open area bounded by the parish church, shops, private houses, and whatever it is that Spain calls government house. This openness is important – you can see from one side of the plaza to the other. The space is open for social events, informal gatherings, elections, horse-trading, community meetings, liturgical processions, and mustering the local militia.
In the English part of the Americas there is the courthouse square, but the space is not open because the courthouse is in the middle of it, and you cannot see across. It is as if a courthouse square is not a place for people to meet as part of the social and political life of a city, but rather a place to be ruled from.
History, as Hilaire Belloc writes, is predicated on geography, and that would include architectural geography. On the east side of the Neches, an English town (let us call it Percivalville) places its church, businesses, and houses outside the square, and plops the courthouse in the middle. Across the river, a Spanish town (let us call it San Whatever) also features a church, government house, private houses, and businesses, but none of them is planted in the center of the plaza.
Why?
The plaza in Taos is still pretty much hometown, with a mix of dime stores, fine art galleries, junk art galleries, an elegant hotel, and a good chance of a parking spot except on weekends. There are a few shade trees and a bandstand, benches, a beautiful war memorial, and an big, ugly statue of a stunningly evil man, and why that is there eludes me. Often there are street vendors and bands, and the plaza is great fun.
The plaza in Santa Fe has been to finishing school and gives itself airs. The art galleries are Art-With-a-Capital-A, and the area is a little over-produced, close to Disney-fication. If Taos is where poor old hippies go to desiccate, Santa Fe is where rich old hippies go to desiccate. There is even a Santa Fe old-lady look, grey hair done up in a bun beneath Sergeant Garcia’s (cf Disney’s Zorro) flat-brimmed sombrero.
One of the really good things about Santa Fe’s Plaza is the art, especially the First Nations folks who sell jewelry, pottery, and fabrics from the porch of the Governor’s Palace. I don’t know if there is a city ordinance or if old Anglo dudes trying to peddle their derivative bling of suspect origins would be subject to some very old-fashioned rough justice, but you can’t go wrong in buying at the Governor’s Palace.
The new (1870) cathedral is up the street a block past many nice shops and neat little cafes, and the elegant French architecture and the newer but equally restrained Spanish reredos and Stations of the Cross work well together. The integrity of the small area before the beautiful bronze doors has recently been compromised by a lumpish statue of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, who deserves much better. The artist has portrayed (undoubtedly “from the heart”) The Lily of the Mohawks as a Sumo wrestler daubed with automobile paint in primary colors. You might expect this sort of amateur mashup in Taos, but not in Santa Fe.
But simply being in the center of at least 600 years of history is its own joy, and there is much genuine art in the area, including an excellent bronze of Saint Francis with a wolf. Not a bunny, but a wolf. Now that’s the stuff, artistically and theologically!
Another difference between the plaza in Taos and the plaza in Santa Fe is the nature of parking a car. When a driver parks near the plaza in Santa Fe, everyone exits the car, opens a door or the boot, and bends over, as if they were having a prayer meeting with heads inside the car while presenting a display of full moons to the street and sidewalk. Upon returning to the car, the driver and passengers repeat this curious liturgy.
Perhaps they are Moonies.
But one should not make fun; this may be a quaint local custom. In 1941 Ansel Adams took a famous photograph of a full moon over Hernandez, and so perhaps people in Santa Fe try in some way to replicate this artistic experience through creative parking.
New Mexico is an ancient land of rare beauty, more cultural diversity than the United Nations, and a deep history of the comings and goings of peoples and their works and arts from perhaps the beginning of humankind. To visit New Mexico is not only a joy, it is an honor.
-30
Mhall46184@aol.com
A Full Moon over New Mexico
Part of the fascination with the San Antonio chain of missions (Nuestra Senora de la Purisma Concepcion de Acuna, San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, San Juan Capistrano, San Francisco de la Espada, and the very little that remains of San Antonio de Valero) is that they are old. Very few buildings or utilities in Texas are old or ever will be – our interstate highways are under constant repair, and the cinder-block and plywood construction now popular for public and private buildings is only slightly more durable than canvas. Texas is a land of campers who after seven changes of national governments (the United States twice) within only two centuries still marvel at anything that suggests permanence.
New Mexico features many more structures (I didn’t count ‘em) from the three-hundred-year Spanish era, but New Mexicans shouldn’t be smug about them since Texas was all the land east of the Rio Grande, all the way into Colorado. Some say that most of New Mexico and Colorado are still part of Texas. Most of New Mexico and Colorado say not. And that’s okay; Canada still can’t sort out the border between Quebec and Labrador.
An interesting feature of a city in New Mexico, a city which is Spanish in origin, is the plaza, an open area bounded by the parish church, shops, private houses, and whatever it is that Spain calls government house. This openness is important – you can see from one side of the plaza to the other. The space is open for social events, informal gatherings, elections, horse-trading, community meetings, liturgical processions, and mustering the local militia.
In the English part of the Americas there is the courthouse square, but the space is not open because the courthouse is in the middle of it, and you cannot see across. It is as if a courthouse square is not a place for people to meet as part of the social and political life of a city, but rather a place to be ruled from.
History, as Hilaire Belloc writes, is predicated on geography, and that would include architectural geography. On the east side of the Neches, an English town (let us call it Percivalville) places its church, businesses, and houses outside the square, and plops the courthouse in the middle. Across the river, a Spanish town (let us call it San Whatever) also features a church, government house, private houses, and businesses, but none of them is planted in the center of the plaza.
Why?
The plaza in Taos is still pretty much hometown, with a mix of dime stores, fine art galleries, junk art galleries, an elegant hotel, and a good chance of a parking spot except on weekends. There are a few shade trees and a bandstand, benches, a beautiful war memorial, and an big, ugly statue of a stunningly evil man, and why that is there eludes me. Often there are street vendors and bands, and the plaza is great fun.
The plaza in Santa Fe has been to finishing school and gives itself airs. The art galleries are Art-With-a-Capital-A, and the area is a little over-produced, close to Disney-fication. If Taos is where poor old hippies go to desiccate, Santa Fe is where rich old hippies go to desiccate. There is even a Santa Fe old-lady look, grey hair done up in a bun beneath Sergeant Garcia’s (cf Disney’s Zorro) flat-brimmed sombrero.
One of the really good things about Santa Fe’s Plaza is the art, especially the First Nations folks who sell jewelry, pottery, and fabrics from the porch of the Governor’s Palace. I don’t know if there is a city ordinance or if old Anglo dudes trying to peddle their derivative bling of suspect origins would be subject to some very old-fashioned rough justice, but you can’t go wrong in buying at the Governor’s Palace.
The new (1870) cathedral is up the street a block past many nice shops and neat little cafes, and the elegant French architecture and the newer but equally restrained Spanish reredos and Stations of the Cross work well together. The integrity of the small area before the beautiful bronze doors has recently been compromised by a lumpish statue of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, who deserves much better. The artist has portrayed (undoubtedly “from the heart”) The Lily of the Mohawks as a Sumo wrestler daubed with automobile paint in primary colors. You might expect this sort of amateur mashup in Taos, but not in Santa Fe.
But simply being in the center of at least 600 years of history is its own joy, and there is much genuine art in the area, including an excellent bronze of Saint Francis with a wolf. Not a bunny, but a wolf. Now that’s the stuff, artistically and theologically!
Another difference between the plaza in Taos and the plaza in Santa Fe is the nature of parking a car. When a driver parks near the plaza in Santa Fe, everyone exits the car, opens a door or the boot, and bends over, as if they were having a prayer meeting with heads inside the car while presenting a display of full moons to the street and sidewalk. Upon returning to the car, the driver and passengers repeat this curious liturgy.
Perhaps they are Moonies.
But one should not make fun; this may be a quaint local custom. In 1941 Ansel Adams took a famous photograph of a full moon over Hernandez, and so perhaps people in Santa Fe try in some way to replicate this artistic experience through creative parking.
New Mexico is an ancient land of rare beauty, more cultural diversity than the United Nations, and a deep history of the comings and goings of peoples and their works and arts from perhaps the beginning of humankind. To visit New Mexico is not only a joy, it is an honor.
-30
The Lonesome Dove Cooking Show
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Cooking with Gus and the Captain
Popular novels and Orwellian telescreen programs such as Downton Abbey and even The Hobbit have inspired recipe collections. Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove has not yet led someone to write a goin’-to-Montana cookbook despite the popularity of the novel, the series, and then the spinoffs, including Return to Lonesome Dove, Andy Hardy Finds Love in Lonesome Dove, and Attack of the Zombies from Lonesome Dove.
And the reason is obvious: even the most indiscriminant gourmand might have trouble coughing up (as it were) a recipe for grasshopper or dog.
Much of the diet mentioned in Lonesome Dove sounds pretty good, especially Gus’ famous Dutch oven biscuits.
The book is strangely silent on why there is no Belgian oven, though.
Other comestibles enjoyed by Gus, the Captain, Indians, cowpokes, gamblers, Mexicans, Texicans, fur traders, mountain men, boatmen, bartenders, and, oh, entertainers include numerous dishes made from:
Beef
Pork
Buffalo
Chicken
Prairie chicken
Beans
Corn
Cornbread
Potatoes
Eggs
Onions
Plums
Catfish
Antelope
Molasses
Peppers
The favorite beverages, in order, appear to be:
Coffee
Whiskey
Beer
Water
Buttermilk
Pretty good eats, huh?
But when the individuals lost on the Great Plains on the trail from Texas to Montana are doing without, they dine on:
Badger
Crickets
Grasshoppers
Goat
Dog
Frogs
Possum
Rattlesnake
Horse
Mule
Squirrel
Crane
Pardon me, waiter, but could we please see the children’s menu?
With Blue Duck and his pals, the concept of children’s menu might mean something entirely different.
As Bull (Arthur Hunnicutt) says to Cole Thornton (John Wayne) in El Dorado, “This place’ll never be Delmonico’s.” Nope, not with grasshoppers and dog on the bill of fare.
No mention of eating a dove, though, either a gregarious dove or a lonesome dove.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Cooking with Gus and the Captain
Popular novels and Orwellian telescreen programs such as Downton Abbey and even The Hobbit have inspired recipe collections. Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove has not yet led someone to write a goin’-to-Montana cookbook despite the popularity of the novel, the series, and then the spinoffs, including Return to Lonesome Dove, Andy Hardy Finds Love in Lonesome Dove, and Attack of the Zombies from Lonesome Dove.
And the reason is obvious: even the most indiscriminant gourmand might have trouble coughing up (as it were) a recipe for grasshopper or dog.
Much of the diet mentioned in Lonesome Dove sounds pretty good, especially Gus’ famous Dutch oven biscuits.
The book is strangely silent on why there is no Belgian oven, though.
Other comestibles enjoyed by Gus, the Captain, Indians, cowpokes, gamblers, Mexicans, Texicans, fur traders, mountain men, boatmen, bartenders, and, oh, entertainers include numerous dishes made from:
Beef
Pork
Buffalo
Chicken
Prairie chicken
Beans
Corn
Cornbread
Potatoes
Eggs
Onions
Plums
Catfish
Antelope
Molasses
Peppers
The favorite beverages, in order, appear to be:
Coffee
Whiskey
Beer
Water
Buttermilk
Pretty good eats, huh?
But when the individuals lost on the Great Plains on the trail from Texas to Montana are doing without, they dine on:
Badger
Crickets
Grasshoppers
Goat
Dog
Frogs
Possum
Rattlesnake
Horse
Mule
Squirrel
Crane
Pardon me, waiter, but could we please see the children’s menu?
With Blue Duck and his pals, the concept of children’s menu might mean something entirely different.
As Bull (Arthur Hunnicutt) says to Cole Thornton (John Wayne) in El Dorado, “This place’ll never be Delmonico’s.” Nope, not with grasshoppers and dog on the bill of fare.
No mention of eating a dove, though, either a gregarious dove or a lonesome dove.
-30-
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Votive Candles
Lawrence
Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Votive Candles
For Abbie and
‘Zander
They
haven’t been penny candles for ever so long
Because
there aren’t any pennies anymore
Everyone
simply calls them votives now
Those
old-church, wax-stained banks of little flames
In
silence flickering in the shadows grey
There
launching, limning prayers into the world
Small
acts of firm defiance against the night -
And
you are votives too, small gifts of light
Incarnate
prayers aglow within the hearts
Of
those forever blessed in knowing you.
Stopping by Commas on a Snowy Evening
Mack Hall, HSG
6 July 2014
Stopping by Commas
on a Snowy Evening
An acquaintance, disagreeing with some fashionable and
muddy deconstruction in a newspaper article, defended the obvious in Robert
Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
She was exactly right to do so.
Mr. Frost wrote this perfect little poem in 1922, and for
the rest of his long life people told him what he really meant by it. His insistence that the poem was about stopping
by woods on a snowy evening and nothing more was taken as a wink-wink,
nudge-nudge prevarication, as if it were unthinkable that anyone should ever
speak plainly about anything.
One very common – and very wrong - interpretation is that
the poem is about suicide. This
allegation is based on a line in the last stanza: “The woods are lovely, dark
and deep.” The woods are said to be
symbolic of death, and the last line (“But I have promises to keep…”) are the
speaker’s repudiation of the temptation to suicide.
This spurious argument is built on the flimsiest of
foundations, a comma that doesn’t even exist.
The claim is that because there is no Oxford comma – the comma preceding
“and” – in “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” then it follows that the
woods are lovely because they are
dark and deep, reflecting a desire for death.
Blaming something on a comma that isn’t there is too, too
thin, but it sells articles to journals and newspapers, rather like the
recycled twaddle that Shakespeare wasn’t really Shakespeare.
Commas can indicate a separation of thoughts, a pause for
breath, or a pause in speaking. Fowler’s
Modern English Usage (Oxford, 1952)
gives four columns of small print to the comma, and after reading all that the
reader still isn’t sure what a comma is for.
But let us narrow our search to the topic at hand, a line
of Frost, and consider the comma as used in series. We say that the colors of our flag are red,
white, and blue. The commas separate
each item in order to give them equal weight:
Red.
White.
Blue.
However, Mr. Frost says that his friend’s woods are
“lovely, dark and deep,” a series of three items with only one comma. Thus the argument that these are not three
discrete (spelled “discrete,” meaning separate, not “discreet,” meaning subtle)
things, but rather one thing (“lovely”) as proven by “dark and deep.”
The problem is the absence of the Oxford comma (I don’t
know how a comma or a shoe can be Oxonian), which as a fashion comes and
goes. One generation holds as an article
of faith that the colors of our flag should be written as “red, white, and
blue,” and the next generation is ready to take to the barricades in defense of
“red, white and blue” sans Oxford comma.
Robert Frost wrote “The woods are lovely, dark and deep” with
only one comma because omitting the Oxford comma was the usual punctuation of
his time. There is no hidden meaning in
this.
The defense of this questionable usage is that when items
are listed in a series the reader already knows that there are items, that they
are different items, and that they are in a series.
This argument fails, in Mr. Frost’s time or in ours,
because if any comma is unnecessary in a series because of an omniscient
reader, then why should the series be cluttered with commas at all? Thus, according to the No Oxford Comma crowd,
if we make a list of children who are, for instance, taking a Sunday school
trip, we can safely and accurately list them as “Mandy Taylor Brooke Kelly John
Conrad McKenzie Sebastian Madison,” and so on.
The confusion is obvious: Are Mandy and Taylor two
different children, or is Mandy Taylor one child and Brooke Kelly another?
If we write of our flag that the colors are red, white
and blue, do we then say that there are only two categories, one of them red
and the other a portmanteau of white and blue?
The Oxford comma is useful for clarifying items in
series. Mr. Frost, however, did not
employ it. The lapse is hardly a fault,
but it does give the sort of people who are always telling others what they
really mean an excuse for deconstructing (that is, botching it) a given line
that, even with a comma missing, is perfectly clear.
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is what its author
said it is, and it is a snowflake-brilliant poem of great artistry crafted in
iambic tetrameter, clear monosyllables, and a connect-everything rhyme scheme
of AABA-BBCB-CCDC-DDDD.
Read it, and
live.
-30-
Sitting on the Porch with Zombies and Robert Duvall
Mack Hall, HSG
10 July 2014
Sitting on the
Porch with Zombies and Robert Duvall
Thoughts on a summer day, short thoughts, because
sometimes it’s just too hot to think much:
Taking a water pill with water – ironic, eh?
Every evening someone on the local television news says
“Next, the weather, but first...” This
means that the weather report comes after a series of commercials and some
fluffy bit of filler that is neither useful nor amusing. The weather is not next at all, so why does
someone say it is? If the speaker is
unreliable in that small matter, perhaps he is also unreliable in his news
reports.
And speaking of television weather reports – all of you
who remember “weather girls,” wave your Medicare cards (if your arthritis
permits).
Does Really Big Oil Company know who holds the franchises
on their gas stations in the American west?
When you walk into one there’s a Star Wars Creature Cantina©® moment and
a sudden silence as you find yourself being glared at suspiciously by some
fellows who appear to know where the bodies are buried. Even so, they seem merry and hospitable when
compared to an Air Canada cabin crew.
Benjamin Franklin is said to have said that beer is proof
that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
I’d say iced tea. And dachshund
puppies.
Kirbyville’s Dick Martin, of happy memory, said that beer
should be poured back into the horse it came out of.
Why don’t state and federal governments hassle Big
Internet for their obscure, sticky contracts?
Perhaps it’s because government functionaries have unlimited ‘net access
on the job and sometimes as a take-home perk, paid for by the taxpayers, and so
don’t care. “Let the people eat data.”
“Epic fail” is by now an epic fail. So are “Keep Calm and______” and “Got ______?” Stop it.
Stop it now.
Yep, that manly man on the Orwellian telescreen is still
peddling gold while riding his horse and flying his airplane and hangin’ out in
his manly study. His argument is that you
should give him your worthless dollars in exchange for his valuable gold. But if his gold is so valuable and your
dollars so worthless, why does he propose an exchange?
“Actually” is actually the most overused adverb at
present, and, actually, one of the most pointless, actually. Actually, can anything be unactually said or unactually
experienced? We say “actually” so often
now that actually we risk becoming English, actually. Then we’d follow soccer / futbol. Shudder.
Actually.
Cats are useful because they keep mice and rats from
eating the environmentally-correct but tasty wiring in new cars. Beyond that, they are sort of like decorative
sofa pillows that bite.
Whatever happened to Technicolor©®? Modern movies are filmed in grim, dull halftones
that portray even a forest scene with all the joy of an abandoned Soviet cement
factory on an overcast day in February.
Real, silvery, old-film-school black-and-white is great, as is real
color, but this current fashion in dulled images will date as badly as
hand-held shots and quick-zooms from the 1960s.
Robert Duvall makes any movie a good movie, despite the
mischief of producers, directors, and writers.
He has made himself the best cowboy star of the last thirty years, and
while the future of any work of art is difficult to predict, I’ll bet a round
of drinks down at the Long Branch Saloon that his films, like those of John
Wayne, will be watched, studied, and enjoyed for generations to come. So there, computerized zombie planet of the hamsters
scum.
Okay, that’s enough thinking for one day. Time for sitting on the porch with a glass of tea.
-30-
Sunday, June 29, 2014
"I am Haunted by Humans" - Yet Another Review of THE BOOK THIEF
Mack Hall, HSG
“I am Haunted by
Humans”
The Book Thief,
by Markus Zusak, is quite a good book, but reading it is not a road to Damascus
experience.
The clumsy attempts by the publisher to metastasize The Book Thief into a sort of eternally
profitable Harry Potter-ish cultus with
study guides, study groups, let’s-hug-each-other websites, and nihil obstats and imprimaturs by Very Famous People are more than a little
annoying. Such aggressive proselytizing will
alienate the thoughtful people who are presumably the intended audience.
The Book Thief
is good enough to deserve your thoughtful consideration, but it will not change
your life, drop your jaw, shake your earth, make you cry for a week, reverberate
your soul, crawl under your skin, steal your breath, blow your mind, bust your
block, pop your eye, stop your heart, fly off your shelf, knock off your socks,
jerk your tears, or shift your tectonic plates.
The book is good. There is
nothing wrong with good. Reviewers seem
no longer capable of approving of something or someone without drawing from a
catalogue of hyperventilating, hyperbolic cliches’.
Besides, you might not like The Book Thief. If you don’t
like the book, and say so, you are an interesting and brave person, since all
the reviews command you to like it, nay, love it, and sleep with it under your
pillow, and make it your life-coach.
And really, The
Book Thief shouldn’t work. The
spunky-girl-vs-the-Nazis has been done over and over, and rightly so, but
civilization also needs a book about the-spunky-girl-vs-the-Soviets or
the-spunky-girl-vs-the mullahs or the-spunky-girl-vs-MS13. A girl can walk alone down a street in Munich
wearing jeans and a tee while reading any book she wants, and no will much
notice. A girl who attempts any of those
things in Teheran or Bagdad – and maybe New York or Calcutta - will quickly be reduced
to a violated corpse in a ditch.
Mr. Zusak has accomplished something marvelous in
manipulating the convention of spunkiness – his protagonist, Liesel, is
sometimes neither spunky nor likeable, which makes her more interesting, and
the people in her life are similarly developed as flawed but well-meaning, as
are real humans. The fictional humans along
Liesel’s street are seldom true believers but rather confused and bullied
people who are surprised to have the government for which they voted.
Liesel’s existence pushes the plot, and so she is not a
detached observer, but Mr. Zusak develops Himmel Street, Liesel’s world, by
surrounding her with people who each could have been the center of the story:
Liesel’s foster parents Hans and Rosa, her friends Rudy and Max, teachers,
shopkeepers, the mayor’s mysterious wife, schoolmates, a Hitler Youth leader
who is a sort of satanic boy scout, and the requisite cloddish teacher. The shortages of everything, including books
but also clothing, safety, purpose, hope, and, especially, food, are made real
to the reader on almost every page.
The hinge of The
Book Thief is the community book burning.
This obscenity is also the setting for several encounters which awaken
Liesel and Rudy to the adult horrors of their milieu: ethnocentrism, regimentation,
conscription, betrayal of trust, a denial of any authority save that of the
state, and a denial of history and culture.
The books ordered burned are not technical manuals or
math books but rather those which encourage any thought for self or others:
religion, poetry, fiction, and philosophy.
A technical manual will teach a young person how to fabricate machine
parts for an armed pilotless aircraft as well as for a factory that makes
needful things; works of fiction, faith, poetry, or philosophy might lead the
young person to consider on what occasions one may or may not, before God and
secular law, contribute to the destruction of a fellow human being.
The very existence of books threatens tyrants, and his is
why Liesel steals books, to keep civilization alive within herself and for
others.
The narrative voice is Death, and one at first imagines
one of those tiresome, grainy Swedish films with Death as a boring man wearing
a dark suit. Mr. Zusak’s Death, a sort of
Shakespearean Chorus, is far more interesting as he comments help us understand
people and events in the story. But in
the end, not even Death understands humanity’s violence to itself. After carrying away a great many souls of individuals
we have come to know, Death’s final words, the final words of the book, are “I
am haunted by humans.”
-30-
Animal Sanctuary
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
An island of peace in a suburban sea
Blessed by Saint Francis of the Garden Shop
This Eden where all creatures play free of care,
Well-tended, mown, and free of prickly weeds
Know that the yard around our little house
Is a happy haven, safe for them all
mhall46184@aol.com
Animal
Sanctuary
An
ordinary lawn, an old oak tree
Beneath
it at dusk baby bunnies hopAn island of peace in a suburban sea
Blessed by Saint Francis of the Garden Shop
Sweet
little birds pause at the feeder there
To
gossip loudly over their breakfast seedsThis Eden where all creatures play free of care,
Well-tended, mown, and free of prickly weeds
A
delicate deer has been known to browse
The
grass at dawn, and creatures great and smallKnow that the yard around our little house
Is a happy haven, safe for them all
But
today we saw, in this pretty world,
Buzzards
devouring the corpse of a squirrelSaturday, June 28, 2014
Cricket Choir Practice
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Cricket Choir Practice
V:
Ratchet…ratchet…ratchettttttttttt.
Ratchet…ratchet…ratchettttttttttt.
Ratchet…ratchet…ratchettttttttttt.
Ratchet…ratchet…ratchettttttttttt.
R:
Ratchet…ratchet…ratchettttttttttt.
Ratchet…ratchet…ratchettttttttttt.
Ratchet…ratchet…ratchettttttttttt.
Ratchet…ratchet…ratchettttttttttttttttttttttt
V:
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrratchet…ratchet…ratchettttttttttt.
Ratchet…ratchet…ratchettttttttttt.
Ratchet…ratchet…ratchettttttttttt.
Ratchet…ratchet…ratchettttttttttt.
R:
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrratchet…ratchet…ratchettttttttttt.
Ratchet…ratchet…ratchettttttttttt.
Ratchet…ratchet…ratchettttttttttt.
Ratchet…ratchet…ratchetttttttttttttttt…ratch.
Director: “Stop, stop, we’ve lost the pacing. Let’s take it again from, oh, ‘ratchet.’”
Thursday, June 26, 2014
The Theory and Practice of Summer
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Theory and Practice of Summer
In theory, Summer is capitalized
As a sovereign kingdom of happiness
An unfallen world of sunlight and bare feet
Both dancing lightly across a new-mown lawn
In practice, summer is when the mower won’t start
While weeds grow high in a season so dry
That heat and allergens veto all joy
The damp crushes deodorants and hopes
In theory, summer is idle hours
Saved in a magic piggie from long ago:
Comic books and plastic water blasters
And lying in the night-grass, counting the stars
In practice, summer means driving to work
In a wheezy old car that runs on notes
And gasoline more precious than rubies
While the boss sets an ambush at the time clock
But see:
In theory and practice, a little boy
Slow-pedals his bicycle to the creek
His fishing rod in hand, his dog behind,
And he will live for us our summers past
Monday, June 23, 2014
War Correspondent
Lawrence
Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
War
Correspondent
A
helicopter skeetered bravely in
And
pitched and yawed against the enemy fireThat wasn’t there. The manliest of men
Descended unto us in flawless attire
His
tailored khaki suit was starched and pressed
Its
creases as sharp as a Ka-bar knifeNever was a reporter more perfectly dressed
For getting the news while risking his life
The
C.O. sped him past our positions
And
hustled him into the T.O.C.1To ensure each noun and preposition
Would be written for the greater good, you see
Much
ink and Scotch were undoubtedly spilled
In
air-conditioned comfort, no heat or mud;With scripted heroics his notebook was filled
No need to stain his suit with his precious blood
After
an hour he was hustled back
To
Saigon for an evening receptionAfter he wrote of a great attack
And wired New York his immaculate deception
A
helicopter skeetered bravely out
And
yawed and pitched against a sniper’s shotThat wasn’t there. A great Communist rout?
There’s more than one kind of jungle rot
1Tactical
Operations Center - command bunker, often air-conditioned.
Saint Anthony of Padua
Lawrence
Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Saint Anthony
of Padua
People
are always losing things:
Their
keys, their books, their socks, their souls;But through the mist a soft bell rings:
“Home is this way,” it softly, sweetly tolls.
See Quebec by Helicopter
Mack Hall, HSG
See Quebec by
Helicopter
Clever folks, those Quebecois – twice this spring
prisoners in the province have escaped by helicopter.
In March, Benjamin Hudon-Barbeau (hyphenated names are
like, y’know, so sophisticated, and, like, stuff) and Danny Provencal, left off
serving time in St. Jerome Prison near Montreal and took a helicopter
tour. They were quickly recaptured. They said they were ready to die, but
apparently they really weren’t.
When the police officer cried “I arrest you in the name
of the Queen!” the prisoners replied “Oui, Monsieur Le Fascist Pig; I’m cool
with that.”
No, really, they didn’t; I just made that up.
In early June, Yves Denis, Denis Lefebvre, and Serge
Pomerleau also skipped recess by whirlybird, this time at Orsainville Detention
Center. According to the Daily Mail a judge permitted them extra
time together in the yard together in order to help plan their trial defense on
drug and murder charges.
The police are curious as to who might have helped the
lads go up, up, and away.
Hey, Dudley Do-Right, you might want to
talk to that judge, okay?
But Yves, Denis, and Serge too are back
in the nick planning the future. They shouldn’t think of booking Air Canada for
their next adventure, though; the service is awful and the cabin crew feature
all the charm and helpfulness of “Knuckles” McGurk, “Stan the Shiv” Deadenov,
and Barbie “I-Know-Where-the-Bodies-are-Buried” Kowalsky in the exercise yard.
So how big are prison yards in Quebec? Do they often land aircraft like that? Imagine being a prison guard, and a big ol’
helicopter lands on the prison grounds in front of you. Wouldn’t you, like, y’know, notice it?
Sergeant Preston of the Yukon and his dog King never
permitted their prisoners (who always seemed to be named Lucky Pierre or some
such) to escape at all, either by helicopter or by dogsled.
One supposes that now King would be a bionic transgender
superhero rabbit or something. King
would take down the renegade helicopter with subhyperubersonic beams from his
glowing green eyes.
And speaking of criminals in helicopters, do you wonder
if anyone in D.C. knows where the Internal Revenue Service email messages
are? Did Lucky Pierre spirit them away
to the Yukon and bury them under a rock in an abandoned gold mine near Dawson
in a plan to betray Canada by selling them for filthy lucre to Vladimir
“Snidely Whiplash” Putin?
King the wonder dog could leap and grab Grubstake Charlie
by his arm to keep him from shooting Sergeant Preston, who discovered the
secret map to the gold mine on the dead body (the map, not the gold mine, was
on the body) of Lucky Pierre who had been shot by Grubstake Charlie in a fight
over cards at the Malamute Saloon (now a Tim Horton’s) while Robert W. Service
took careful notes.
“Grubstake Charlie, I arrest you in the name of the
Crown! And I’ll see to it that these
unlawfully purloined records are returned to their rightful owners, the
freedom-loving people and the democratically-elected government of the United
States, that glorious and ever-vigilant republic south of the 49th
parallel and Canada’s greatest friend in the tireless and ongoing fight against
evil. Right, King?”
“Ruff!”
“Well, King, this case is closed.”
“Ruff!”
“On, King! On, you
huskies!”
-30-
When Taliban Need a Feel-Good Moment
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
When Taliban Need a Feel-Good Moment
In Qatar (pronounced “Gutter”) last week, a brash young reporter, Josh Rogin, went looking for the five Taliban given their freedom in exchange for an American sergeant (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/15/my-search-for-the-taliban-five.html). Luckily for him, he didn’t find them.
Qatar is a small emirate on the Arabian coast of the Persian Gulf. Its economy is all about the oil, manipulating other nations, and slavery…um, sorry, shouldn’t have said that…guest labor (http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/series/modern-day-slavery-in-focus+world/qatar). Qataris, the richest people in the world, don’t pay their taxes because you pay their taxes for them, at the gas pump. You also pay for a nifty little Anglo-Australian-American military establishment to protect them (http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/coalition/deployment/air.force/al.udeid.html). In gratitude to English, Australian, and American protection, the Qatari government buys much of its military hardware from France (http://www.defencetalk.com/qatar-to-buy-french-nh90-military-helicopters-59159/).
What Mr. Rogin did find in Qatar was a lot of tittle-tattle, including a bit of gossip about the Fab Five calling in masseurs.
Well, you know how it is, a busy day of planning mass murder and trying to find designer suicide vests for the kids can be trying, and a few minutes of having the muscles kneaded out is just the thing for a little relaxation before going home to the family.
So does Sergeant Bergdahl in San Antonio rate a masseur to help him work out his tensions? After all, he already receives much better medical care than other soldiers, and, unlike veterans, no waiting list for him. Might as well add a masseur to his health care plan. Nothing’s too good for our young men and women just back from the desert wars, right?
Mr. Rogin also discovered the Afghan Brothers Restaurant in the capital city, Doha, but The Five had not booked a table. Their telephone numbers are 974 481 7505 and 974 481 7478. You could ring them up and make a reservation. However, apparently no one who works there is Afghan, so it might not be the fully authentic Afghan dining experience which the more discerning gourmet has come to expect.
Qatar – trafficking in humans and oil under a corrupt ruling family in cahoots (I’m not sure what cahoots are, but people are often in them) with our military-industrial complex (don’t ask, don’t tell). Doesn’t that pretty much sound like the colonial period we’ve been told no longer exists?
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
When Taliban Need a Feel-Good Moment
In Qatar (pronounced “Gutter”) last week, a brash young reporter, Josh Rogin, went looking for the five Taliban given their freedom in exchange for an American sergeant (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/15/my-search-for-the-taliban-five.html). Luckily for him, he didn’t find them.
Qatar is a small emirate on the Arabian coast of the Persian Gulf. Its economy is all about the oil, manipulating other nations, and slavery…um, sorry, shouldn’t have said that…guest labor (http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/series/modern-day-slavery-in-focus+world/qatar). Qataris, the richest people in the world, don’t pay their taxes because you pay their taxes for them, at the gas pump. You also pay for a nifty little Anglo-Australian-American military establishment to protect them (http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/coalition/deployment/air.force/al.udeid.html). In gratitude to English, Australian, and American protection, the Qatari government buys much of its military hardware from France (http://www.defencetalk.com/qatar-to-buy-french-nh90-military-helicopters-59159/).
What Mr. Rogin did find in Qatar was a lot of tittle-tattle, including a bit of gossip about the Fab Five calling in masseurs.
Well, you know how it is, a busy day of planning mass murder and trying to find designer suicide vests for the kids can be trying, and a few minutes of having the muscles kneaded out is just the thing for a little relaxation before going home to the family.
So does Sergeant Bergdahl in San Antonio rate a masseur to help him work out his tensions? After all, he already receives much better medical care than other soldiers, and, unlike veterans, no waiting list for him. Might as well add a masseur to his health care plan. Nothing’s too good for our young men and women just back from the desert wars, right?
Mr. Rogin also discovered the Afghan Brothers Restaurant in the capital city, Doha, but The Five had not booked a table. Their telephone numbers are 974 481 7505 and 974 481 7478. You could ring them up and make a reservation. However, apparently no one who works there is Afghan, so it might not be the fully authentic Afghan dining experience which the more discerning gourmet has come to expect.
Qatar – trafficking in humans and oil under a corrupt ruling family in cahoots (I’m not sure what cahoots are, but people are often in them) with our military-industrial complex (don’t ask, don’t tell). Doesn’t that pretty much sound like the colonial period we’ve been told no longer exists?
-30-
Monday, June 16, 2014
An Unkind Review of W. H. Auden's FOR THE TIME BEING: A CHRISTMAS ORATORIO
(And one wants to like anything by W. H. Auden)
Yesterday I finished W. H. Auden’s For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio, which, if intended for the ordinary (in a positive, Catholic sense) faithful, fails not because of its worthy intent – connecting the present (1942) with the time of the Birth – but in its T. S. Eliot-ish confusions.
When we read Chaucer, for example, the obscurity is not intentional; he writes the plain Thames Valley English of his time, and we need notes only because we are separated from his language by 500 years.
When we read a modern poet, though, there should be no obscurity or a need for more than a very few notes. Such turbidity as “Love knows of no somatic tyranny; / For homes are built for Love’s accommodation / By bodies from the void they occupy” (p. 45) annoys the reader instead of enlightening or delighting him.
There are moments when the narrative works, as in this Roman proclamation which surely echoes early war notices from the English government:
CITIZENS OF THE EMPIRE, GREETING. ALL MALE PERSONS
WHO SHALL HAVE ATTAINED THE AGE OF TWENTY-ONE
YEARS OR OVER MUST PROCEED IMMEDIATELY TO THE
VILLAGE, TOWNSHIP, CITY, PRECINCT OR OTHER LOCAL
ADMINISTRATIVE AREA IN WHICH THEY WERE BORN AND
THERE REGISTER THEMSELVES AND THEIR DEPENDENTS IF
ANY WITH THE POLICE. WILFUL FAILURE TO CMPLY WITH
THIS ORDER IS PUNISHABLE BY CONFISCATION OF GOODS
AND LOSS OF CIVIL RIGHTS. (P. 29)
But this excellent mockery of governmentspeak is rare in its clarity. Consider this prose by Simeon, which begins well and then quickly lapses into fashionable 1930s cleverness: “Because in Him the Word is united to the Flesh without loss of perfection, Reason is redeemed from incestuous fixation on her own Logic, for the One and the Many are simultaneously revealed as real” (P. 52).
One imagines this being broadcast via the BBC Home Service at Christmas: “Mum, what’s ‘incestuous?’”
Every time the reader thinks Auden is about to pull himself together and speak sense to the audience, he traipses off to get lost in Four Quartets Lane.
The editing and the preface is by Baylor professor Alan Jacobs, who himself is the very model of clarity in explaining what Auden was trying to do, and gives Auden’s work more respect than perhaps it deserves.
Yesterday I finished W. H. Auden’s For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio, which, if intended for the ordinary (in a positive, Catholic sense) faithful, fails not because of its worthy intent – connecting the present (1942) with the time of the Birth – but in its T. S. Eliot-ish confusions.
When we read Chaucer, for example, the obscurity is not intentional; he writes the plain Thames Valley English of his time, and we need notes only because we are separated from his language by 500 years.
When we read a modern poet, though, there should be no obscurity or a need for more than a very few notes. Such turbidity as “Love knows of no somatic tyranny; / For homes are built for Love’s accommodation / By bodies from the void they occupy” (p. 45) annoys the reader instead of enlightening or delighting him.
There are moments when the narrative works, as in this Roman proclamation which surely echoes early war notices from the English government:
CITIZENS OF THE EMPIRE, GREETING. ALL MALE PERSONS
WHO SHALL HAVE ATTAINED THE AGE OF TWENTY-ONE
YEARS OR OVER MUST PROCEED IMMEDIATELY TO THE
VILLAGE, TOWNSHIP, CITY, PRECINCT OR OTHER LOCAL
ADMINISTRATIVE AREA IN WHICH THEY WERE BORN AND
THERE REGISTER THEMSELVES AND THEIR DEPENDENTS IF
ANY WITH THE POLICE. WILFUL FAILURE TO CMPLY WITH
THIS ORDER IS PUNISHABLE BY CONFISCATION OF GOODS
AND LOSS OF CIVIL RIGHTS. (P. 29)
But this excellent mockery of governmentspeak is rare in its clarity. Consider this prose by Simeon, which begins well and then quickly lapses into fashionable 1930s cleverness: “Because in Him the Word is united to the Flesh without loss of perfection, Reason is redeemed from incestuous fixation on her own Logic, for the One and the Many are simultaneously revealed as real” (P. 52).
One imagines this being broadcast via the BBC Home Service at Christmas: “Mum, what’s ‘incestuous?’”
Every time the reader thinks Auden is about to pull himself together and speak sense to the audience, he traipses off to get lost in Four Quartets Lane.
The editing and the preface is by Baylor professor Alan Jacobs, who himself is the very model of clarity in explaining what Auden was trying to do, and gives Auden’s work more respect than perhaps it deserves.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
An Abandoned Classroom
Lawrence Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
An Abandoned Classroom
Young dreams, now scattered fragments on the floor:
A little handle into a corner flung
The disc of sizes never again to fit
A number two pencil into place for a trim
Nor will the made-in-Chicago hopper
Ever again save for the classroom prankster
Sweet-smelling slitherings of cedar shavings
To fling about while Teacher’s at the board.
A new Ticonderoga thrust into
The spinning Scylla and Charybdis blades
Was tested by steel, the dross savaged away,
By turning the handle and grinding away,
And from this grim ordeal emerged The Point,
The perfect point, the adventurous lead…
“It’s not really lead, stupid, it’s graphite;
That’s what Teacher said. Don’t you know anything?”
Girls are stupid. They play with dolls and stuff.
I’ve got a real cap pistol. I’ll draw it.
You want to see? Look! No, wait, that’s not right;
It’s better this way…Ma’am? Uh…integers?
Arithmetic is stupid. Science is fun.
I’ve got most of the Audubon bird stamps
And I liked it when we cut up the frogs
Old people are so mean. I’ll never be old.
A leaking pipe drips the minutes away
Outside a broken window summer sings
Its songs of freedom as it always has
The desks are gone, the electricity is off
The air smells of education and decay
The classroom now is littered with the past:
A broken crayon, a construction-paper heart,
A silence longing for children’s voices.
One Happy Raindrop
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
One Happy Raindrop
You’re working in the heat of a summer day
A little raindrop falling from far away
Ker-plinks you on the nose and laughs “Let’s play!”
At the Convenience Store
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
At the Convenience Store
“Hi, sexy!” croaks a woman, her bourbon voice
Clinging desperately to a cigarette and the past,
Flirting from behind gas station sunshades
Speaking of adventures that we once shared
And of old friends in jail, in debt, in graves
And of her children – she calls them by name
And by divorce, marriage, and forlorn hopes
She catalogues her many illnesses
And says the doctor’s given her six months
But she’s going to lick this; what does he know.
She urges into gear her wheezing Ford
We should talk again soon about old times
And clatters away, seven cylinders to the wind.
Socially Engaged Poetry
Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
Socially Engaged Poetry
As an effective tool for advocacy
Creating partnerships and sharing skills
A voice to the voiceless, Split this Cliché
Empowerment to the empowermentless
Through bleats of provocation and witness
Copyrighted and stereotyped
In a World That is Forever 1968
Exploring and celebrating the many ways
We can score yet another guilt-grant
Asserting the centrality of the 501C3
Through bearing witness to diversity
As long as it behaves itself and thinks like us
Accessible and yet authentic
A n d l I k e d o s t u f f w I t h s p a c e l I k e u n o
cause spaces
are authentic, and,
like
stuff
Poetry as a living, breathing art form
If you listen, you can hear its respirations
Gasping in the long, dark night of group-think
Obedient to a mission statement
And the careful construction of resumes
Committee integrate complexity
Formula dampens the authentic voice
Perform this vital work imagining
Personal and social responsibility
Revolutionary transformation
Write and perform this vital work support
Of human social justice experience
Grounded in holistic spirituality
Flouting the patriarchal something-ness
An act that requires community
If you love freedom, you dare not disobey
And let all the people say “Cogent!”
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Titanic was Sunk by a Bilderberg
Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
Shhhhh - Titanic was Sunk by a Bilderberg
Albino rabbis, the Illuminati,
Protocols of the Elders of Zion -
The evidence seemed a little spotty
‘Til a radio guy had us wonderin’ and sighin’
Fluoridation by the New World Order
Backed by the Trilateral Commission
A scheme to open our southern border
To crop circles – that’s his suspicion
Area 51, the Templar Knights
FEMA lurking in the Bohemian Grove
Perfidious Rothschilds through menace and fright
Guarding a Jewish-Viking treasure trove
Poor Newfoundland is Occupied by Commie rats
Who scheme in secret tunnels beneath St. John’s
Brewing magic potions in Macbethian vats
In Rodentian rituals from the Age of Bronze
The Priory of Sion, runes, swastikas, the Vril
Roswell and the Thule Society
No wonder the air is darkly chill:
We all live within a conspiracy!
mhall46184@aol.com
Shhhhh - Titanic was Sunk by a Bilderberg
Albino rabbis, the Illuminati,
Protocols of the Elders of Zion -
The evidence seemed a little spotty
‘Til a radio guy had us wonderin’ and sighin’
Fluoridation by the New World Order
Backed by the Trilateral Commission
A scheme to open our southern border
To crop circles – that’s his suspicion
Area 51, the Templar Knights
FEMA lurking in the Bohemian Grove
Perfidious Rothschilds through menace and fright
Guarding a Jewish-Viking treasure trove
Poor Newfoundland is Occupied by Commie rats
Who scheme in secret tunnels beneath St. John’s
Brewing magic potions in Macbethian vats
In Rodentian rituals from the Age of Bronze
The Priory of Sion, runes, swastikas, the Vril
Roswell and the Thule Society
No wonder the air is darkly chill:
We all live within a conspiracy!
Air Canada
Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
Air Canada
To the tune of “O Canada!”
Air Canada!
Your planes do not have cans!
Bladder control in all thy sons command.
With stressed-out sphincters we fly on thee,
True Northern continence, ooooh-eeeee!
From business class
Air Canada, we squirm in pain for thee
God keep our cans open and free!
Air Canada we squirm in pain for thee.
Air Canada we squirm in pain for thee!
mhall46184@aol.com
Air Canada
To the tune of “O Canada!”
Air Canada!
Your planes do not have cans!
Bladder control in all thy sons command.
With stressed-out sphincters we fly on thee,
True Northern continence, ooooh-eeeee!
From business class
Air Canada, we squirm in pain for thee
God keep our cans open and free!
Air Canada we squirm in pain for thee.
Air Canada we squirm in pain for thee!
A Summer Cold
Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
A Summer Cold
How tiresome is a summer cold:
A nose that drips like ill-kept drains
A catalogue of creaks and pains
That tell the sufferer “YOU are old!”
mhall46184@aol.com
A Summer Cold
How tiresome is a summer cold:
A nose that drips like ill-kept drains
A catalogue of creaks and pains
That tell the sufferer “YOU are old!”
Anna Apples
Mack Hall, HSG
Anna Apples
Sweet Anna apples fall from trees in June
Like childhood summer days gliding to earth
From silvery-grey clouds through cobalt skies
Into the hands of youth in a golden time
Anna Apples
Sweet Anna apples fall from trees in June
Like childhood summer days gliding to earth
From silvery-grey clouds through cobalt skies
Into the hands of youth in a golden time
Doctor Lazenby and His Errant DeSoto
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Doctor Lazenby and His Errant DeSoto
The first famous DeSoto, a fellow by the name of Hernando, got lost leading the boys through the swamps of the New World in the 16th Century and died of a fever somewhere along the Mississippi River in 1542.
Because DeSoto was in the past considered a hero (the cultural milieu skated around that genocidal maniac thing), Chrysler produced a series of cars under that name until 1960.
Doctor Lazenby, the ancient dentist who could have been a character in Andy Griffith’s fictional Mayberry, drove a turquoise-and-white DeSoto which was not unlike its namesake in blundering around the streets of my small town in the 1960s. His DeSoto was one of the last of that mark, a sort of land-bound HMS Ark Royal with high-sailing tailfins that menaced the town’s one blinking caution light.
Dr. Lazenby was known as a great dentist and a poor steersman – he lumbered his DeSoto along Main Street on whichever side seemed convenient.
The town raconteur more than once told of the events one high noon when Dr. Lazenby was driving on US96 slowly but erratically. The young chief of police – in those days the only police – turned on his bubble-gum machine and followed Dr. Lazenby for a long, long time. After a few musical bars from the siren, the officer finally coaxed Dr. Lazenby into docking his DeSoto along the shoulder.
“What do you want?” Dr. Lazenby is said to have asked, somewhat annoyed.
“Right now I want your driver’s license,” the officer replied.
Dr. Lazenby gave his license to the officer, who then walked back to the Shamu to radio a license check to the dispatcher at the county seat.
Dr. Lazenby decided that he would continue on home to lunch as planned.
Another lengthy, slow-speed pursuit ensued, and again Dr. Lazenby stopped the DeSoto at a time convenient for him.
When the officer, with the license (driving, not dental) still in hand approached the DeSoto again, Dr. Lazenby is said to have demanded, angrily, “Now what in the (Newark, New Jersey) do you want!?”
Let us all pause and savor the moment.
I never knew Dr. Lazenby very well; my parents took me to one of those young whipper-snapper dentists educated after the Spanish-American War. Thus, for me Dr. Lazenby was a sort of background character, a cheerful old codge, one of the many wonderful people whose genial eccentricity gives a small town a certain quiet joy.
Whether the story about old Dr. Lazenby and the young police officer is true, well, I don’t know, but if not, it ought to be.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Doctor Lazenby and His Errant DeSoto
The first famous DeSoto, a fellow by the name of Hernando, got lost leading the boys through the swamps of the New World in the 16th Century and died of a fever somewhere along the Mississippi River in 1542.
Because DeSoto was in the past considered a hero (the cultural milieu skated around that genocidal maniac thing), Chrysler produced a series of cars under that name until 1960.
Doctor Lazenby, the ancient dentist who could have been a character in Andy Griffith’s fictional Mayberry, drove a turquoise-and-white DeSoto which was not unlike its namesake in blundering around the streets of my small town in the 1960s. His DeSoto was one of the last of that mark, a sort of land-bound HMS Ark Royal with high-sailing tailfins that menaced the town’s one blinking caution light.
Dr. Lazenby was known as a great dentist and a poor steersman – he lumbered his DeSoto along Main Street on whichever side seemed convenient.
The town raconteur more than once told of the events one high noon when Dr. Lazenby was driving on US96 slowly but erratically. The young chief of police – in those days the only police – turned on his bubble-gum machine and followed Dr. Lazenby for a long, long time. After a few musical bars from the siren, the officer finally coaxed Dr. Lazenby into docking his DeSoto along the shoulder.
“What do you want?” Dr. Lazenby is said to have asked, somewhat annoyed.
“Right now I want your driver’s license,” the officer replied.
Dr. Lazenby gave his license to the officer, who then walked back to the Shamu to radio a license check to the dispatcher at the county seat.
Dr. Lazenby decided that he would continue on home to lunch as planned.
Another lengthy, slow-speed pursuit ensued, and again Dr. Lazenby stopped the DeSoto at a time convenient for him.
When the officer, with the license (driving, not dental) still in hand approached the DeSoto again, Dr. Lazenby is said to have demanded, angrily, “Now what in the (Newark, New Jersey) do you want!?”
Let us all pause and savor the moment.
I never knew Dr. Lazenby very well; my parents took me to one of those young whipper-snapper dentists educated after the Spanish-American War. Thus, for me Dr. Lazenby was a sort of background character, a cheerful old codge, one of the many wonderful people whose genial eccentricity gives a small town a certain quiet joy.
Whether the story about old Dr. Lazenby and the young police officer is true, well, I don’t know, but if not, it ought to be.
-30-
This is the Army, Princess Jones
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
This is the Army, Princess Jones
This is the Army, Princess Jones
No private rooms or telephones
You had your breakfast in bed before
But you won’t have it there anymore!
-Not Exactly as Written by Irving Berlin
A famous actress – and, in truth, a very good actress - who twits on the ‘Net and is hurt that other people on the ‘Net twit back very bad, horrible, no-good things about her, compared her hurt feelings to being in a war.
The implied directive is this: when an actress twits her Me-Me-Me-ness on the Twooter, the people who read her Twots are required to validate her feelings. If they don’t like her, the actress suffers just like a soldier wounded in battle.
Maybe someone should honor her with a costume medal from the wardrobe department. Then she can take a bus to a VA hospital and be ignored by the unionized staff and the latest high-dollar CEO.
The misuse of war metaphors by Americans who never made the first day of recruit training is ironic in itself. A strong America needs more boot camp metaphors by actors:
“The director asked me to read my lines over. That’s like being yelled at by a sergeant, right?”
“Dancercise was sooooooooooooooooooooo demanding today – it was worse than four hours of close-order drill in August at Fort Polk after ten hours of cleanup, inspection, classes, and PT!”
“My agent telephoned and woke me up at nine in the morning. What does he think this is, the Army?”
“My personal aide was out sick today, so I had to pack my makeup bag all by myself. Now I know what sixteen hours of KP duty are like.”
“When the studio sent the car and driver around they also picked up someone else – that’s just like riding in an Army truck with twenty other people.”
“The commissary is two blocks away? What is this, a twenty-mile night march at Camp Pendleton?”
“Don’t tell me about full pack and equipment – sometimes I have to carry my own smart phone.”
“Only two hours for lunch? Now I know what it’s like in the Navy.”
“The champagne in first-class was not chilled to my specifications. It was like the Air Force.”
“My yacht features only a small kitchen, one chef, and two dining room staff – just like the Coast Guard.”
“I telephoned room service to clean my bathroom – I felt like a private in the Army.”
“After spending all morning at the jewellers’ selecting a new Swiss watch, trying on watch after watch, I was sooooooooo exhausted. I now know what Marine boot camp is like. One of the staff was not obsequious enough, so I demanded that she be fired. That part was fun.”
“What? Pay my household staff a living wage? What do military recruits pay their staffs?”
“Make my own bed? I don’t care what an admiral said in a graduation address; I have to draw the line somewhere.”
And, really, here we can agree with Princess Jones – whoever heard of an admiral making his own bed? That would be a sea story.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
This is the Army, Princess Jones
This is the Army, Princess Jones
No private rooms or telephones
You had your breakfast in bed before
But you won’t have it there anymore!
-Not Exactly as Written by Irving Berlin
A famous actress – and, in truth, a very good actress - who twits on the ‘Net and is hurt that other people on the ‘Net twit back very bad, horrible, no-good things about her, compared her hurt feelings to being in a war.
The implied directive is this: when an actress twits her Me-Me-Me-ness on the Twooter, the people who read her Twots are required to validate her feelings. If they don’t like her, the actress suffers just like a soldier wounded in battle.
Maybe someone should honor her with a costume medal from the wardrobe department. Then she can take a bus to a VA hospital and be ignored by the unionized staff and the latest high-dollar CEO.
The misuse of war metaphors by Americans who never made the first day of recruit training is ironic in itself. A strong America needs more boot camp metaphors by actors:
“The director asked me to read my lines over. That’s like being yelled at by a sergeant, right?”
“Dancercise was sooooooooooooooooooooo demanding today – it was worse than four hours of close-order drill in August at Fort Polk after ten hours of cleanup, inspection, classes, and PT!”
“My agent telephoned and woke me up at nine in the morning. What does he think this is, the Army?”
“My personal aide was out sick today, so I had to pack my makeup bag all by myself. Now I know what sixteen hours of KP duty are like.”
“When the studio sent the car and driver around they also picked up someone else – that’s just like riding in an Army truck with twenty other people.”
“The commissary is two blocks away? What is this, a twenty-mile night march at Camp Pendleton?”
“Don’t tell me about full pack and equipment – sometimes I have to carry my own smart phone.”
“Only two hours for lunch? Now I know what it’s like in the Navy.”
“The champagne in first-class was not chilled to my specifications. It was like the Air Force.”
“My yacht features only a small kitchen, one chef, and two dining room staff – just like the Coast Guard.”
“I telephoned room service to clean my bathroom – I felt like a private in the Army.”
“After spending all morning at the jewellers’ selecting a new Swiss watch, trying on watch after watch, I was sooooooooo exhausted. I now know what Marine boot camp is like. One of the staff was not obsequious enough, so I demanded that she be fired. That part was fun.”
“What? Pay my household staff a living wage? What do military recruits pay their staffs?”
“Make my own bed? I don’t care what an admiral said in a graduation address; I have to draw the line somewhere.”
And, really, here we can agree with Princess Jones – whoever heard of an admiral making his own bed? That would be a sea story.
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