The Bronze Serpent - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Bronze Serpent

 

Moses established a serpent within the camp

A fiery brazen serpent upon a pole

And all who looked upon it were thereby cured

Cured of their judgments slithering through the dust

Phillis Wheatley: A Sweet, Strong Voice - weekly column 13 August 2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Phillis Wheatley: A Sweet, Strong Voice

 

A friend mentioned that he had graduated from Phillis Wheatley High School in Houston, which prompted me to re-read some of Wheatley’s poetry.

 

Wheatley is an interesting writer of much historical significance: she was an African, a British subject in bondage, an American revolutionary activist in bondage, and then an American, granted manumission at last not by the laws of any nation but of the later good will of those who had presumed to own fellow humans. She is possibly the first American woman poet whose work was published, though in England.

 

Because of her frail health and to seek publication for her book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, the Wheatleys sent her to England where, indeed, her book was published and she became a celebrity.

 

She corresponded with and visited George Washington, Thomas Paine, the Lord Mayor of London, the Countess of Huntingdon, British and revolutionary army and navy officers, and other notables both in the colonies and in England. Wheatley wrote to the King and was to have been presented to him, but for reasons unknown returned or was returned to the colonies before this could happen. She learned to read in English, Greek, and Latin, was thoroughly versed in the Bible and in Greek and Roman mythology, and was often discreetly subversive in her poetry and in her letters in appealing for the end of slavery:

 

May George belov’d of all the nations round

Live and by earths and heavens blessings crownd

May heaven protect and Guard him from on high

And at his presence every evil fly

Thus every clime with equal gladness See

When kings to Smile it sets their subjects Free

 

-from “To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty on his Repealing the American   Stamp Act,” 1768

 

Wheatley’s poetry is much influenced by Alexander Pope and other Augustan / Georgian poets, and her highly skilled and carefully structured verse, common to the 18^th century, can be something of a challenge for those us raised in a time when careless, unstructured, self-pitying, I, I, I, me, me, me free verse passes for poetry.

 

After the revolution her English support languished and although she assembled work for her second book these poems were not published in her short lifetime. Because she wrote so many poems and letters to her many friends and correspondents, fresh discoveries of her works continue.

 

The rest of Phillis Wheatley’s short life was tragic. She made a bad marriage to an idler, her three children died young, she was reduced to serving as a kitchen maid in a boarding house to support her family, and died in poverty around the age of 31 in 1784.

 

Was Phillis Wheatley an African poet? English? American?

 

She was all three, reconciling multiple cultures in her sweet but strong voice.

 

-30-

 

One Judge, Two Sheriff's Deputies, and Five Police Officers Take on a 98-Year-Old Woman - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

One Judge, Two Sheriff’s Deputies, and Five Police Officers

Take on a 98-Year-Old Woman

 

“Try that in a small town”

 

The 11^th of August was neither the beginning nor the end

Of sheltering the Constitution from thugs

Some in judicial robes, some in dark uniforms

When Joan Meyer stood

between them and us

 

A newsroom pillaged by judicial fiat

Private homes looted by armed bully-boys

Ordered by a heartless magistrate

When Joan Meyer stood

between them and us

 

When Joan Meyer died

between them and us

 

Raid on Kansas newspaper is an intolerable overreach by police | Editorial (yahoo.com)

What Did Jesus Look Like? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

What Did Jesus Look Like?

 

What did Jesus look like when He was on earth?

He looks just like the boy or man you’ll meet next

 

What did Mary look like when she was on earth?

She looks just like the girl or woman you’ll meet next

Wordle for Klingons - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Wordle for Klingons

 

Let the captain win now; he is one of your betters -

Revenge is a dish best served with five letters

The Fuel Pump Screen Queen - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Fuel Pump Screen Queen

 

She’s fresh and lovely on the television screen

Promoting a recipe for a sugar-free treat

And fashion tips for being In The Scene -

Her face on the fuel pump is ever so sweet

 

She looks so summery in her fashion tee

As gasoline vapors waft through the air

She whispers a makeup hint only to me

And the best techniques for brushing my hair

 

She speaks to me so charming and nicely

That I forget the fuel dials spinning so pricely

Gearing Up for School Which is Just Around the Corner - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Gearing Up for School Which is Just Around the Corner

 

School is forever gearing up or winding down

And if school is not around the corner

Then summer takes that very same turn instead

With back-to-school sales beginning in June

 

Children wheedle their moms for the coolest sneaks

And shopping carts are heavy with pens in packs

Yellow pencils, notebooks, scissors, and glue

Construction paper, adhesive tape, tissues

 

Lunchboxes, paper sacks, term calendars -

While in a lonely room

A pathetic little man polishes his Glock

Unidentified Flying Obfuscations - poem

 

Unidentified Flying Obfuscations

 

Our Texas government plans to censor our books

(But look at the bright shiny UFOs)

Our newspapers are falling like autumn leaves

(But look at the bright shiny UFOs)

 

Our border is guarded by barbed wire and floaties

(But look at the bright shiny UFOs)

Our TV channels tell us what to think

(But look at the bright shiny UFOs)

 

Our senators are beyond their sell-by dates

(But look at the bright shiny UFOs)

Our representatives are puerile potty-mouths

(But look at the bright shiny UFOs)

 

Our children are shot dead in our schools and streets

          (But Congress holds hearings on UFOs)

Our Congress - Lost in Space: weekly column 30 July 2023

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Our Congress – Lost in Space

 

Our United States Congress, apparently having little to do, has been holding hearings (or hearing holdings) on UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena), which used to be known as UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects). Although they’re not the same thing they are they same thing [What Is a UAP? Explaining the UFO Hearings in Congress. (businessinsider.com)].

 

Former Air Force major David Grusch is now a whistleblower (with a real Sergeant Preston of the Yukon whistle?) who has whistleblown to Congress that the U. S. government has for decades been collecting and reverse-engineering data from crashed spacecraft but covering it all up. He also alleges that the Vatican in collusion with Mussolini and the United States government has been hiding evidence of spaceships and the body parts of spacemen for some ninety years [Ex-Intel Officer Who Says US Has Proof of Aliens Made Wild Claims Before (businessinsider.com)].

 

The major has no proof of any of this, but he says he has talked with people who have seen the “non-human biologics” (dead spacemen) and parts salvaged from spaceships.

 

The galloping major did not mention any Lizard People.

 

Possibly Congress will next form a committee to investigate the rumor that if you read Little House on the Prairie backward you will hear a satanic message from The Mamas and the Papas. And then there’s the pizza parlor in D.C. that receives secret shortwave messages from the Mole People in their tunnels beneath Oak Island. The pepperoni are then positioned in a code that only the Illuminaughty can understand. I’m risking my life in telling you this, but watch the pepperoni. The fate of Western Civilization depends upon it! Watch the pepperoni!

 

This nation boasts both The United States Space Command [the united states space command - Search (bing.com)] and The United States Space Force [the united states space force - Search (bing.com)], both with uniforms and marching songs and anthems and badges, but probably the spaciest of all are some of the far, far out honorable ladies and honorable gentlemen of Congress.

 

-30-

 

 

Two Sovereign Remedies for Depression - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Two Sovereign Remedies for Depression

 

Reading a few pages of Wodehouse at bedtime

Is like walking behind a dachshund at any time

 

Happiness

In Nature We are Only a Menu Item - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

In Nature We are Only a Menu Item

 

Purporting to love nature is a commonplace

This does not mean that nature loves us back

We often look for nature’s smiling face

But nature looks for us as a tasty snack

 

The alligator is defended for being here first

The gentle boar is a creature of God

Anopheles wants only to quench its thirst

The innocent shark hungers only for cod

 

Communing with nature cannot be beaten –

Up until the moment when you are eaten!

 

A Japanese Army Cap - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

A Japanese Army Cap

 "A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East"

-Kipling

Long, long ago in a land far away

I met some children playing on a river bank

One little boy wore a Japanese Army cap

Faded and old – I wondered who wore it first?

 

I tried to buy it from him - an MPC dollar?

No.

Five dollars?

No.

Ten dollars?

Laughter and another no.

Twenty good American MPC dollars?

No.

 

We continued our patrol up to Cambodia

And back again

I did not leave my bones in Viet-Nam

Nor even my cap  

                              (I was a fool all the same)

Jane Birkin's Smile - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Jane Birkin’s Smile

 

Her eyes were everything when she looked at us

Teasingly, from beneath a wide-brimmed hat

In that long-ago summer world when we

Assumed for ourselves eternal youth

 

Her lips were everything when she smiled at us

Mischievously, from among the surprised decades

Of this cold winter world that crept upon us

Her insouciance defying the pains of age

 

If we misplaced our youth, our hopes, our dreams

That was all right

We found them again in her saucy grin

Goofus and Gallant Revisited - doggerel 10 July 2023

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

Goofus and Gallant Revisited

 

Thanks to The Atlantic Monthly

 

I never paid attention to Goofus and Gallant

Because I sensed that I was being preached at

Only later in life do I appreciate their talent

Much better than the cat who sat on a mat

A Japanese Army Cap - weekly column 9 July 2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Japanese Army Cap

 

“A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.”

 

-Kipling

 

Long, long ago in a land far, far away I met a little boy who was wearing a Japanese army cap. Our boats were upriver along the Cambodian border on routine patrol and to land Sgt. Thuey and me in a little village for an hour or two of propaganda and medical care.

 

Among the children I saw that little boy proudly wearing an old army cap left from the Japanese occupation of French Indo-China. It was a practical cap made of cotton, with a neck flap as further protection from the sun and mosquitoes.

 

I offered the kid an American dollar for that little bit of history, but he grinned and shook his head.

 

I offered him five dollars, but again he grinned and shook his head.

 

Finally I offered him twenty dollars for the cap, and it was still no deal. The cap was important to the little fellow, and I imagine there was a family story about it worth more than money from yet another transient foreign power.

 

Numerous small states were absorbed into the French empire in the 19^th century and ruled as French Indo-China until 1954 [What Was French Indochina? (thoughtco.com)]. Japan occupied the area during the Second World War II and, like France, exploited the land and its people for its natural resources, food production, and manufacturing capacity.

 

The situation during the war was always complicated, and grew worse at the end, with some Japanese soldiers joining the Viet-Minh and others working with the British Army (mostly Indian) in Saigon, numerous nationalist groups, Free French, Vichy French, die-hard imperial Japanese, Chinese, Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, and some Americans, most everyone fighting everyone else. On one occasion American planes shot down three British bombers, claiming to have mistaken them for Japanese. Every power group made bad decisions, and thousands, mostly Vietnamese civilians, died in the fighting, from massacres and mass executions by Japanese, French, and Communist authorities, and from starvation.

 

Communist China invaded Viet-Nam in 1979 and was quickly defeated with great loss of men and weapons. I imagine that somewhere around Cao Bang in the north a little kid is wearing a Chinese army cap and telling stories about how his grandfather took it from a dead or captured soldier.

 

Which leads us back to the kid wearing a Japanese army cap in 1970, and the question of whatever happened to the young Japanese soldier, probably little more than a kid himself, who was issued that cap as part of his tropical service kit for duty in Indo-China. Was he killed in the war, or did he finally get home to his mom and dad?

 

I don’t think I lost a cap, but maybe I did, and some little kid even now is wearing it while playing with the other kids, telling them how his grandfather snatched it from a running dog imperialist lackey.

 

-30-

Keyboard Combatants - poem, 7 July 2023

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Keyboard Combatants

 

“H*** hath no fury like a non-combatant”

 

-anonymous; dates as early as the American Civil War

 

Pitching war metaphors toward a people

Who don’t understand metaphors or war

Does not promote prudent self-government

Or peace

                 Only bullhorns and misspelt signs

Leaving the Party - poem 4 July 2023

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Leaving the Party

“You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting

With much admired disorder.”

 

-Lady Macbeth in III.iv.109-110

 

The party we leave is not the party that was,

Beginning in optimism and good will

In rooms well-lit with generosity and thought -

Ideas thoughtfully spoken and thoughtfully heard

 

We have all left a party for fresh air

To escape from hollow laughter and cliches

From shouted arguments and whispered schemes

Half-empty glasses and sour cigarette smoke

 

Screamed taunts that sting, a hive-like waspish buzz -

The party we leave is not the party that was

 

Physics Always Follows the Rules - weekly column 25 June 2023

 

 

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

 

Physics Always Follows the Rules

 

RMS Titanic has fascinated people for well over a century now, its construction, technology, launch, passengers, and sinking the subject of thousands of books, movies, and television specials churning up the same old factoids over and over. The reality is that there is probably nothing about Titanic that we don’t know despite tabloid-ish advertisements promoting solved and unsolved mysteries, purported riddles, discoveries that aren’t really discoveries, and even ghosts and curses.

 

As a tee-shirt said during all the giddiness about the Jack and Rose film, “The Ship Sank; Get Over It.”

 

But the continuing fascination is understandable. In a time when most people did not have electricity or running water the Titanic might have seemed as high-tech to them as the science-fiction Enterprise does now. The famous and wealthy passengers, the jewels, servants, and strictly observed class divisions are the sorts of things we decry while watching Upstairs, Downstairs, Downton Abbey, and Sanditon. In this manifestation of the “ship of fools” theme Titanic features the best and worst of technology, human nature, and Edwardian décor.

 

There is no evidence that Captain Smith or anyone else said, “Madam, God Himself couldn’t sink this ship,” but as demonstrated in the tabloids, television, and now the InterGossip humans seldom allow reality to interfere with fantasy.

 

The nature of hubris and the minutiae of ignored lifeboat drills and careless seamanship have been discussed to the point of obsessiveness, but the disaster occurred because of one inexplicable error in judgement: the captain was driving too fast at night without headlights.

 

Recently, forced comparisons between Titanic and the recent loss of what appears to be an imaginatively but maybe inadequately designed submersible occupied our Orwellian telescreens for a week, and I confess that I followed events closely.

 

I was aware that those whose pockets are loaded with the green stuff could take tourist visits to the wreckage of Titanic but paid little attention to it. Like most people I generally assumed that planes, trains, ferryboats, ships, underground railways, trolleys, busses, and other forms of public transportation are regulated by the appropriate government agencies and thus safe for the general public.

 

However, in following the frequent and almost breathless bulletins we learned that the Titan (clever name, eh?) appears not to have been inspected by or registered with any responsible board or agency. 

 

“I think it was General MacArthur who said you’re remembered for the rules…And I’ve broken some rules to make this. I think I’ve broken them with logic and good engineering behind me.”

 

Stockton Rush: What we know about the Titan submersible's pilot | CNN Business

 

The many reported flaw designs of Titan have been discussed at length, but ultimately there is this: except for the 19-year-old, the four other crew / passengers / “mission specialists” / tourists were middle-aged men of great accomplishments in science and business, and thus brilliant in solving problems. Why did they not see a problem in crowding themselves and a teenager into a large pipe, bolted and sealed from the outside, from which there was no possible escape?

 

In most of the possible failure scenarios escape was a null concept anyway – you can’t escape a vessel at however-many-thousands of feet down. But even if the Titan had remained intact and surfaced the only way out was for the technicians on the mother ship to locate the submersible, board it or retrieve it, and then free the many bolts. But what if the mother ship weren’t there? What if it caught fire and sank? What if a Gilligan dropped into the ocean the one specialty wrench needed?

 

Physics is an absolute judge, and will not accept any special pleadings from those who don’t follow its rules.

 

-30-

What's the Name of my Bank this Week? weekly column 18 June 2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

 

What’s the Name of my Bank this Week?

 

The elected board of trustees of Big City School District is considering re-naming (for a price – cha-ching!) their football stadium. It’s for the children.

 

Names of businesses, streets, schools, statues, and other private and public entities change often according to political fashions and financial influences. One generation’s heroes are the next generation’s ratfinks, which keeps artists, sculptors, and crane operators busy shifting statues around and making new ones to replace the old ones.

 

As for banks, a friend once suggested they might as well put up their signs with Velcro® since they buy and sell and trade and devour each other almost with the changes of seasons.

 

Two or three name changes ago I stopped in the drive-through to cash a small check and the televised teller asked me if I had an account with their famously family friendly bank. I looked at the new sign and replied, “I’m not sure. I had an account with a different bank that used to be in this building.” Yeah, I had to show lots of I.D. for that smart remark.

 

The selling of naming right for sports venues has become so common that the practice might be extended to other areas of human endeavor.

 

Your street might be renamed Acme Computers Avenue on a yearly lease.

 

You could sell naming rights applied to your children: Mme. Sniffly Perfume Collection Tiffany, Smith Lumber Company Kyle, and Gigantic Consolidated Industries Juan.

 

Your hunting dogs could be Mega Electrics Pete, Ponsonby Shopping Mall Molly, and Slick Tire Company Red.

 

As for the elected board of Big City ISD, one wonders if they have ever considered naming their stadium after those who paid more for its construction and still more for its upkeep more than any sody water company or car dealership, maybe something like The Hardworking Taxpayer Stadium.

 

-30-

 

The Desperadoes of Silicon Gulch - weekly column 11 June 2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Desperadoes of Silicon Gulch

 

One of the many advantages of reading a physical book is that when you open it to continue the narrative the typeface and layout have not been upgraded (snort) against your will into near illegibility, with the table of contents all messed up and the chapter headings hidden in a corner.

 

When in Chapter 3 you’re following noble Sheriff Rocky Manly as he sneaks up on the hideout of Butch Jawbone and his gang of unshaven desperadoes the action is not suddenly interrupted by an advertisement blocking the page.

 

When reading a book-on-dead-tree the story is not paused with three dots and a note to the effect that if you want to continue you’ll have to upgrade (that dirty word again) to “paid.”

 

On weekends and holidays the conflict between Sheriff Manly and treacherous outlaw Jawbone doesn’t freeze in place – it’s a book; it doesn’t require a signal from the expensive but fragile InterGossip service provider.

 

But the techno-tyrants don’t see it that way. The other day I opened my Antarctica  Off-Line mail server to find a blur of unfamiliar and less legible type shoved onto the Orwellian Telescreen as a jumble. It’s as if the knee-pants at corporate felt the need to justify their existence by taking a familiar, practical, and comfortable layout and messing it all up. This is what they call an “upgrade.”

 

The concept of “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it” does not obtain in Silicon Gulch.

 

There’s a space for comments on the purported upgrade, and you can write a (polite) suggestion and request a return to the previous dashboard, but you will be a voice crying in an electronic wilderness.

 

Not only will you never learn if Nellie from the Long Branch Sushi Saloon finally chose between Sheriff Manly and outlaw Jawbone, you might be a long time finding your electrical mail on the upgraded program.

 

-30-

 

Is Peter Rabbit a Democrat or a Republican? weekly column 4 June 2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Is Peter Rabbit a Democrat or a Republican?

 

“You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.”

 

-Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

 

Davis School District in Utah has pulled the Bible from its elementary and middle schools due to a parental complaint [https://tucson.com/news/utah-district-bans-bible-in-elementary-and-middle-schools-due-to-vulgarity-or-violence/article_38d3a71b-1c97-5f79-8651-f2fa895d2a3a.html].

 

This is part of the latest spasm of book banning in this country. Once upon a time people regarded public and school libraries as repositories of thousands of years of civilization, open to all, with John Milton shelved uneasily close to Geoffrey Chaucer and with Phyllis Wheatley a few aisles away from Margaret Mitchell.  An old saying is that if a library doesn’t contain books with which you vehemently disagree, it’s not a good library.

 

Book banning was an expression of Nazism and Communism and other tyrannies. Molly Guptill Manning makes an excellent study of books and freedom during the Second World War in her excellent When Books Went to War.

 

Unhappily, in the last decade or so banning and censoring books has become quite a fashion in the United States, with citizens all along the political spectrum demanding control of what others and others’ children may or may not read.

 

The irony is that this nation is one of the poorest in the world in reading [Can You Guess Where in the World People Read the Most? (mic.com)]. One does not imagine a father fussing at his son with, “Junior, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you to put down Macbeth and go watch television or play video games!”, or perhaps a mother advising her daughter that, “The Brothers Karamazov is okay, I guess, but I wish you’d spend more time at the nail salon or on Thick-Tok.”

 

When Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was first released, audiences, mostly young people, enjoyed chasing down the references to Shakespeare, including the title. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is enriched and informed by references to Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, and Shakespeare’s King Lear (there is something of Lear in both Kirk and Khan). The eponymous villain quotes from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, misusing this Christian epic about the Fall as an instruction manual rather than as a cautionary tale. Khan also quotes several times from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, using some of Captain Ahab’s lines for his own dramatic self-destruction: "From hell's heart, I stab at thee!"

 

The producers don’t simply take bits of Shakespeare and others for isolated quotes, they mine The Great Tradition of literature to explore the transcendental themes of the good, the true, and the beautiful in new ways through the cinema.

 

Those who made the first cycles of Star Trek television shows and films understood that the teenagers and young professionals of the 80s and 90s, the maligned millennials, appreciated The Great Tradition and appreciated being approached with respect instead of the patronizing self-referential cartoonery that infects popular culture just now.

 

In sum, in a nation where a family home might have more screens than books, citizens angrily wave their little made-in-Communist China Orwellian telescreens while banning the books that no one ever reads anyway.

 

Oh, and the bit about Shakespeare in the original Klingon is a joke. The Klingons know very well that Shakespeare was a human. The reference is to the Cold War, when Soviets claimed to have invented everything from baseball to antibiotics, and blamed the West for appropriating their work. In the original series Ensign Chekhov, a Russian, often claims proudly that a certain book or song or bit of technology was invented in Russia.  Further, the original Chekhov was a popular Russian writer from the Czarist times who is considered the master of the short story.

 

Everything connects.

 

-30-

In Search of Lost Timepieces - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Hellopoetry.com

 

In Search of Lost Timepieces

 

(as Marcel Proust did not say)

 

When clocks were electric and mechanical

They almost never agreed with each other

The glowing G.E. beside the bed read 2:00

While Mother’s kitchen pastel hummed 2:03

 

Dad’s Hamilton ticked 1358

(And you never argued with him about it)

Grandfather Clock chimed whenever he wanted, by cracky

And the Timex took a licking at 2:04

 

But now all clocks obey an electronic command –

As the old joke goes, “We have ways of making you tock.”

You Meet the Nicest People in Hospitals - weekly column 2 July 2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

You Meet the Nicest People in Hospitals

 

I have spent much of this year so far in and out of the hospital for surgeries, E.R. visits, therapy, and recovery, and repeats of all of the above, which have been not merely individual lessons but a densely structured curriculum in humility and gratitude.

 

Among the nicest people one meets in hospitals are those professionals who don’t have the good roles in the medical movies or television shows: the cleaners, food service workers, the young men and women who wheel you out to the car after your adventures, and other folks who are essential to the ministry of healing.

 

I don’t think I met a one who wasn’t in school or putting someone else through school.

 

One wheelchair pusher was a young man putting himself through university for a degree in engineering.

 

Another young man was putting in all the hours he could so his wife could attend nursing school. The plan was that after she passed her state boards he would then attend nursing school himself.

 

Yet another young man was burning that metaphorical candle at both ends at the hospital and in school to be a pipefitter.

 

One nice lady was retired, her children grown and gone, and though she didn’t need the job she enjoyed visiting with people. She was also thinking of applying for an LVN program.

 

One of the young food-service workers delivered trays with unfailing good cheer and merry banter. I asked him if he had considered studying to be a dietitian but he wasn’t sure if that was his calling. He certainly shares the gift of happiness, though, which might be a vocation in itself along long corridors where happiness can be in short supply.

 

By the way, if you ask nicely you might score another Jell-O.

 

During an otherwise grim visit to the E.R. I watched a young orderly or attendant who, along with his many other duties, entertained little children and carried in his pockets a Santa Claus-ish trove of little Barbies and race cars and other toys to share with them.

 

Just think – he might be a pediatric nurse or physician someday.

 

Yes, you meet the nicest people in hospitals.

 

-30-

 

 

AM Radio is the Best, weekly column 21 May 2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

21 May 2023

 

AM Radio is the Best

 

Some car manufacturers are making a short-sighted and even dangerous decision to stop including AM radios in new cars. Besides being a dependable source of entertainment, AM radio is an essential part of all local, state, and federal emergency systems [Electric cars are ditching AM radio — a critical safety tool (axios.com)].

 

Those of us of a certain age (cough) remember when cars and trucks usually didn’t have a radio, and those that did featured a rudimentary tube setup that offered only AM tuning. The on/off/volume switch was on the left of a dial lit only by a dim grain-of-wheat incandescent bulb and the tuner was on the right.

 

Because of the radio tubes the set took some time to warm up and the gadget required so much electrical energy that playing it with the car switched off was not a good idea.

 

If the rig were especially fancy there were five square plastic buttons connected to a complex assemblage of little wires and pulleys for setting five stations. To set a station you turned the dial to it and then pulled a button and pushed it back in.  When you later pushed the button, which required some force, the complicated system moved the dial at least close to the station setting, which was good enough.

 

This sounds awkward but a positive was that you didn’t have to take your eyes off the road at all to fine-tune the station. In a modern car there is a manual on how to program the “entertainment system,” so unless you’re Sheldon Cooper almost anything you need to do to the radio should take place while parked in the driveway.

 

Soon enough car radios were fitted with both AM and FM stations, and a simple switch allowed you instant access to either mode. I never understood the difference between AM (Amplitude Modulation) and FM (Frequency Modulation). My big brother, who was so cool that his record player at home was a HiFi (High Fidelity) explained the difference while cruisin’ along and checking his ducktail in the mirror, but the lesson didn’t stick.

 

Neither did the ducktail; my father ordered it shorn. What a square, eh?

 

This Ford Galaxie 500 cruise down Amnesia Lane has been fun, but is AM radio, a century-old technology, still useful in our day of complex sound systems?

 

Oh, yes. The relative simplicity of AM technology means that it is more likely to work in marginal conditions. If one tower fails the listener can tune to another station on another tower for weather reports and emergency news. The frailties of systems that require satellite access are well-known to us all, and although the sound is great when it works, you have to pay a fee. AM remains free.

 

AM radio provides a free alternative to the expensive subscription systems and is an essential part of this nation’s emergency services. Auto manufacturers who fail to install AM radios in their new cars are not putting the safety of their customers first.

 

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Meteorologists of Existential Doom - weekly column

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Meteorologists of Existential Doom

 

Is that mysterious rustling in the bushes outside your window at night a meteorologist gone rogue and lusting for human blood?

 

Meteorologists are now said to be part of the Illuminati Globalist Banker Lizard People Masonic Vatican Planet X plot to depress, suppress, and oppress us (Meteorologists are the new targets in global social media misinformation - ABC News).

 

Do meteorologists indulge in weird rituals in secret tunnels beneath Hobby Lobby?

 

An increasingly fashionable conspiracy theory (it’s on the InterGossip so it must be true) maintains that meteorologists manipulate weather data for nefarious purposes and can even change the weather at the command of their mysterious masters.

 

No one seems to have a reason as to why a scientist would destroy his or her own credibility and career to do such a silly thing as lie about a thermometer reading.

 

And as for changing the weather, is there an app for that? Apple or Microsoft? Could the local weather guy give us some cool weekends this summer?

 

There are narratives of the sort of people whose screens are super-glued to their wrists threatening weather people for their good work in reporting the weather.

 

This is as, well, stupid as blaming a journalist for the bank robbery he merely reports.

 

Journalists have always been threatened by private and public interests. President Lincoln had a few editors jailed and that jumped-up little corporal Napoleon had at least one shot, but it takes the uber-progress of the 21^st century to threaten someone with violence for examining raw weather data from all over the world and then concluding the strong possibility of rain tomorrow.

 

Summer air is dank with humidity, and the times seem dank with hateful conspiracy theories based on nothing more than gossip so fatuous that it would embarrass a 17^th century Wallachian peasant to repeat it. We should do better.

 

In the meantime, beware of meteorologists, especially during a full moon.

 

If you stay late at work walk with a friend to the parking lot and remember that there might be a meteorologist lurking in your car’s back seat.

 

And have you heard about the new cop show? Live: Cops on Patrol Against Organized Meteorologists.

 

And watch the skies. Watch the skies!

 

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If a Bee Stings Me - rhyming couplet

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Hellopoetry.com

 

If a Bee Stings Me

 

If a bee stings me, pity the poor bee

If a wasp stings me, then pity me!

"A World of Light and Love" - weekly column 7 May 2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

 

“A World of Light and Love”

 

This past weekend was laden with possibilities for joy and exercise and merriment with friends: Cinco de Mayo (okay, probably not a big occasion in France), watching the first coronation of a British king since 1937 and of any British monarch since 1953, attending softball games, baseball games, picnics, high school proms and after-parties, digging in the garden, and ordinary family gatherings.

 

And why do old folks slam dominoes down so loudly?

 

These happy occasions are celebrated by us when we think of others instead of ourselves. We don’t want to be the King of Great Britain but we do want him to be “happy and glorious.” We want our kids to win their games and, more than that, build themselves physically and ethically. We host a picnic and hope that we have served something everyone wants. We take snapshots of our graduating seniors and share in their hopes and dreams. We sit in lawn chairs and talk about old times while the little children chase lightnin’ bugs in the gathering dusk. Yes, we enjoy these celebrations of innocence but most of our delight is in giving moments of joy to others.

 

Some, however, find this difficult. Problems obtain in everyone’s life: disappointments in relationships or career, jealousies, resentments, waking up at 0200 replaying in one’s mind the things that appear to have gone wrong during the day.

 

There’s an old saying that when things are bad the most courageous thing you do each morning is to get up out of bed and face the day. Most people in the worst of times manage to do so.

 

Tragically, some don’t. The false images of success beamed at us through advertisements and popular entertainment, the cycles of hate blaring from talk shows, the politicization even of weather and health care – all these external drag-downs are difficult to resist.

 

And we are left wondering why a trip to the mall for a new swimsuit and maybe a set of beach towels arouses murderous hatred in some twisted soul. We wonder why an after-prom party involves a casualty list instead of a guest list. We wonder why folks waiting for a city bus are targeted for death. We wonder why a male – one could hardly refer to him as a man – shoots a small child.

 

C. S. Lewis, in his A Preface to Paradise Lost, reminds us of the pointlessness of Satan’s rebellion against God, and of our own potential for rebelling against God by focusing on ourselves:

 

No one had in fact done anything to Satan…In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, he could find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige. (P. 96)

 

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A Dream About Birdcage Walk - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Hellopoetry.com

 

A Dream About Birdcage Walk

 

In the perfection of an impossibility

I was tagging along behind Margaret Thatcher

And Saint Thomas More; they were speaking

Of great and transcendent ideas

 

I asked them if we could go to Victoria Station

And look at the trains

President Grant's Speeding Ticket - Weekly column 4.2.2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

But First There was President Grant’s Speeding Ticket

 

I’ve never been arrested, but, hey, I’m still young; there’s a chance.  Some of the nicest people I know have spent the occasional weekend at the county sheriff’s resort and spa, some opting for longer stays, so I wonder if I’ve been missing something.

 

If someday I receive a stainless steel invitation to jail I can’t imagine that a private jet and a motorcade will be part of the intake process, or that extra police and the Secret Service will escort me, or that barriers and blocked-off streets will ease my way inside to the receptionist, concierge, complimentary cocktails, a fingerprint manicure, souvenir photographs, and all the other amenities I’ve been reading about with regard to the anticipated indictment of a former president this week.

 

I don’t recall any stories about law officers or attorneys general sending courtesy notes to wanted men to turn themselves in, pretty please, but then I am behind the times in so many ways. Perhaps soon all arrests will be prefaced by formal courtesies:

 

 

5 April 2023

 

Dear Mr. Percival “Snake Eyes” Thorpe-Ponsonby,

 

You are cordially invited to a reception hosted by

The Sheriff and the District Attorney

At the County Courthouse on

 

17 April 2023

2:00 P.M.

 

Valet Parking

Dress: Afternoon Business Casual

 

RSVP

 

In 1872 William H. West, a D.C. city police officer, did not send then-President Ulysses Grant an invitation or a ticket-by-mail; he collared him in the streets of the Capitol for speeding in his one-horse buggy. Officer West, who was a Civil War veteran and black, is reported to have said to the President:

 

 

"I cautioned you yesterday, Mr. President, about fast driving, and you said, sir, that it would not occur again…I am very sorry, Mr. President, to have to do it, for you are the chief of the nation, and I am nothing but a policeman, but duty is duty, sir, and I will have to place you under arrest."

 

-Ulysses S. Grant Was Arrested 151 Years Before Trump's Indictment (businessinsider.com)

 

The President did not pull the vulgar “Don’t you know who I am!?” thing, paid his $20 fine, and was apparently a more careful driver thereafter.

 

And that, dear readers, is a wonderful remembrance of one of those moments when this nation got things just right.

 

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But His Airplane Features Gold Seatbelt Buckles - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Hellopoetry.com

 

 

But His Airplane Features Gold Seatbelt Buckles

 

Trump calls for removal of every top official investigating him

-The Hill

 

Article II, Section 2

 

Before he enter the Execution of his office

 

“District Attorney Bragg is a danger to our Country,

 

He shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:-

 

and should be removed immediately,

 

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will

 

along with Radical Lunatic Bombthrower Jack Smith,

 

Faithfully execute the Office of President

 

who is harassing and intimidating innocent people

 

Of the United States, and will to the best

 

at levels not seen before, ‘Get Trump’ Letitia James,

 

Of my Ability preserve, protect, and defend

 

the worst Attorney General in the United States,

 

The Constitution of the United States.

 

and Atlanta D.A. Fani Willis, who is trying to make PERFECT phone calls

into a plot to destroy America, but reigns over the most violent Crime

Scene in America, and does nothing about it!

Censoring the Books No One Reads Anyway - weekly column 3.26.2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Censoring the Books No One Reads Anyway

 

The not-so-grand inquisitors are now coming for Agatha Christie – Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple are decreed insensitive and the narratives of their adventures, which began during the First World War, are to be recalled and rewritten for the delicate sensitivities of a population that mostly doesn’t read at all.

 

Maybe even the titles will be Orwelled:  Lord Edgeware Retires, Unpleasantness on the Nile, The Absence of Roger Ackroyd, Unhappiness on the Links, Awkwardness on the Orient Express, Mrs. McGinty’s Moved Away, and Inclusive Values Under the Sun.

 

Roughly 80% of Americans are literate. This skews higher for those born in the U.S.A.  [48+ US Literacy Statistics 2023 - Percentage by State (thinkimpact.com)]. The problem is not that Americans can’t read; the problem is that often they no longer do so because they no longer perceive a need for it. Once upon most households subscribed to a daily newspaper and several news or general interest magazines, but that is rare now. The news comes mostly by noise on screens, and even when there are words they are usually displayed in very short sentences and seldom with any paragraphing.

 

Much newswriting is so simplistic that one might think it was carefully limned on a Big Chief tablet, which is something else that has been made to disappear.

 

The dumbing-down of language and timorous self-censorship affects the national discourse. It is embarrassing to view an elected national leader calling out one word at a time from a prompting device. It is also embarrassing to see a television newsie stumble over simple vocabulary while employing the same old filler language we’ve heard for years. And what  has led news writers to refer to one person as “they?”

 

And now almost anything one chooses to read can be a matter of fear. In an unhappy era  when even the weather has become politicized, a village cozy crime yarn like Murder in the Vicarage can hardly escape censorship by the sort of Miz Grundys who seek only for outrage, not for enlightenment.

 

In an Agatha Christie yarn the murder is the crime; now the police inspector might arrest Dame Agatha for a failure to refer to the suspect by their (cough) preferred pronouns.

 

Imagine what the busybodies are going to do with Louis L’Amour and your favorite authors.

 

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