The Beggar at Canterbury Gate

Mack Hall, HSG

mhall46184@aol.com

The Beggar at Canterbury Gate

The beggar sits at Canterbury Gate,

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

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

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

False Spring

Mack Hall, HSGmhall46184@aol.com

False Spring

No spring is false when warm, sweet sunlight falls

Upon the weathered field and woods and walls
And frogs shake off the mud and much to sing
While lizards leap and little bees take wing

No spring is false when gentle roses bloom

And windows are opened on airless rooms
After the time of ice, soft, gentle air
Comforts the cold world like a whispered prayer

This January thaw cannot be wrong;

It sings for us a little of spring’s song

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

 The Infant Samuel lay in the Sanctuary

And in the night-watch heard the voice of God
He rose and responded.

                                     What do we hear?

The mechanical hiss of central air
The vaporous clangings of the plumbing
A car passing by on some late errand
A yawn, a sigh, a turn, a pillow foofed
The silent accusations of the night

Prepositions in 35 Millimeter

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Prepositions in 35millimetre

Hyphen-Hyphen Corporation Presents

A Snort-Ponsonby Presentation of

A Trans-Serbian Films Production of

A Banco-Gigantico Picture of

A Startled Oysters Inc. Performance of

A Mixed-Metaphor Starshine Version of

A Death Meadows Company film of

Director Corpuscle Smith’s rendering of

Alphonse Snortberger’s Immortal Story of

DEAD SNAILS

IN THE SUNSET

A Candidate Channels Jesus

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

A Candidate Channels Jesus

My Jesus blessed me in a dream last night

My Jesus said you are to vote for me
You dare not argue with my Jesus, right?
And henceforth I is past, since We are We

We are the candidate, the chosen One

God has a plan for Us; vote as We say
We’ll run the good race; like Us there is none
Our pastor says We’re the American way

We’ll rally for Jesus, and, yes, for Us

Wave Our hands about with a merry shout
And drive Our land in a long Jesus bus --
A love offering, please, Our hand’s ‘way out

Obey Us in freedom; you know it’s true --

We are so much more Jesus-y than you.

Searching for Sight

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Searching for Sight

 No one assures you that lenses are green

That spectacles are recycled from waste
That the optometrist’s glow-in-the-dark
Boxes, little lights in white, green, and red,
Are cultivated by fair-trade farmers
Along the Neckar River in Hungary
Where no one needs glasses to speak Magyar.
Eyes, like cans of squash, have expiration dates
And must be renewed and refreshed each year
With little boxed lights in white, green, and red
And a thirty-something voice assuring you
That your eyes are good – for someone your age.
Words spilling out like a soft cataract
Of diffuse, bubbling comfort for a year
With eyes recycled once again the seer
Seeks for the book store and the coffee shop

New books, fresh cups, old dreams held at odd angles

Registering Humans

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Registration

Sad refugees, petitioners, lining the walls

Of grim, poorly-lit cinder-block hallways
With babies and luggage and desperate hope
For a better world than the one they’ve fled.
With papers and permits clutched in their hands
Each in turn approaches tired officials
Seated behind cheap desks beneath pale lights
Approving, disapproving, signing forms,
Pointing out other lines now to be joined.
The formless, faceless crowds shuffle along.
Some huddle in dark corners on the floor
Eating slyly from sad bundles of food
Others huddle conspiratorially
Outside, furtively smoking cigarettes
Their eyes darting about suspiciously
In this place where time is unmeasured, void.
Some stare at old notices on the walls
Unclear about the meanings of the words.
Waiting, waiting, always waiting. For what?
For the scrawled signatures, the seals, the stamps,
Permission to enter the strange new land:

So slowly do the desperate make their way

For this is college registration day.

Epiphany, Transferred

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Epiphany, Transferred

How, then, does one transfer a holy day?

The Magi reschedule their appointments
The camels are re-booked with a penalty
King Herod’s social secretary sighs
And jots a note for the distribution list
(Holy Innocents will die some other time)
Per diem expenses and meal vouchers
“We have seen His star in the east,” yes, but
Gold, myrrh, and frankincense must clear customs,
And will your trip continue to Egypt,
Or is this your final destination?

Foxy John's Beer Wine Good Food Low Prices

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Foxy John’s

Beer Wine Good Food Low Prices

 Between class and the night shift, Foxy John’s:

Books and ideas, an old Sheaffer pen
Scribbled notes on a yellow pad, a pipe
Of Holland House, coffee, another cup
The old MG stood loyally outside
The San Diego night smelled of the sea
Damp and cool out beyond the fluorescents
And at dawn, between the night shift and class
More coffee, more tobacco, weary eyes
Ill-focused on Henry at Canossa
And the ocean tides and the morning fogs
Turning the seasons marked shifts and studies.

How curious never to have met John

And so to learn whether he was foxy

The Girl with the Septic Tattoo -- Twenty Years Later

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Girl with the Septic Tattoo – Twenty Years Later

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Did just what she was told to do
Her culture betrayed her
And so she obeyed, sir:
The Crone with the Draggin’ T_att_oo

Get More Smart

Get More Smart

Secret agent stories entered popular culture with Ian Fleming’s James Bond in the 1950s.  Although there were only two serious video versions – the first two Bond films and the superior Danger Man / Secret Agent / The Prisoner television series with Patrick McGoohan – this transient fashion of the early 1960s has enjoyed a long half-life.  Spoofs, all of them good-natured, began almost immediately and continue today.  Even James Bond is no longer the patriotic functionary of a collapsing empire; he quickly became a self-parody in the dizzy Roger Moore era, and has lately fallen into to the sensitive slough of cultural despond by lesser writers and directors, failing to use the great acting talents of Young Blue Eyes.

The earliest and best takeoff of spy thrillers is Get Smart, which aired on television from 1965 to 1969.  All the spy conventions are there – the secret spy organizations (CONTROL and its evil opposite, KAOS), the stern but fatherly director, two-seater drop-tops, glamorous clothes, beautiful women, unnecessarily complicated gadgets, the mad villains, and lots and lots of firearms.  Secret Agent Maxwell Smart and the gang at CONTROL take these usages and twist them into delightful illogic: CONTROL’s government budget is so low that in one episode The Chief takes a part-time job as a cleaner.  Agent Smart is brave and tough but not very smart, and is often rescued by gorgeous Agent 99 dressed in her Carney Street best.  The various mad geniuses are Bond villains who have had too much coffee, and the gunfire, explosions, visual gags, falls, tumbles, and car wrecks are straight out of The Three Stooges.

And it is all wonderful, harmless fun. 

In cable-channel retrospectives the cliches’ “cutting edge” and “ahead of its time” are employed with illogic and abandon.  Get Smart, happily, was definitely of its time: Agent 99 dresses in swinging London style, and Max and the Chief are dapper in suits with narrow ties.  The Cold War, hippies, Russians, Germans, desert sheiks, Chinese Communists, motorcycle gangs, the threat of nuclear war, cooing seductresses, and South American dictators all come in for a comic treatment that is no edgier than Leave it to Beaver.  Cigarettes and cocktails abound in their prelapsarian innocence, and Max and Agent 99 never, never, never overnight with each other.

Repeated lines from Get Smart were omnipresent in the 1960s, and many continue.  Max’s nasal “Would you believe…?” survives, though few know of its origins.  A typical “Would you believe…?” occurs when Max is in the hands of the villains, and would go (my quote, from memory, is not precise) something like this:

Siegfried: “You are in the hands of KAOS. Put down your weapons.”

Max: “Would you believe that this island is surrounded by the 6^th Fleet?”

Siegfried: “I find that hard to believe.”

Max: “Would you believe the 1^st Fleet?”

Siegfried: “No.”

Max: “Would you believe two Boy Scouts in a canoe?”

A very few of the other repeated gags:

Siegfried: “Zis iss KAOS; ve don’t ‘shush’ here!”

Max: “Missed it by that much.”

Long-suffering 99: “Oh, Max.”

Max: “The old ____ in the _____ trick.”

Max (when his schemes go disastrously wrong): “Sorry about that, Chief.”

Get Smart would be funny as a stand-alone comedy without cultural references other than the fictional creations of Ian Fleming and Patrick McGoohan.  However, Get Smart engineered takeoffs on dozens of cultural markers, both transient and transcendent.  The following is a partial list of books, movies, television shows, and poems (and how many gags based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge or obscure Czech films have you heard lately?) celebrated by the brilliant writers and actors of a show only the superficial would dismiss as, well, superficial:

One of Our Aircraft is Missing

Bye, Bye Birdie

The Reluctant Debutante

The Wild Ones

Peyton Place

Our Man in Havana

Murder on the Orient Express

Ship of Fools

Charlie Chan

Casablanca

The Prisoner of Zenda

Doctor No

Island of the Da(r)ned

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.

The Mummy

How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying

Appointment in Samarra

A Man Called Horse

The Greatest Show on Earth

Cinderella

Snow White

Gilligan’s Island

Goldfinger

Somebody up There Likes Me

Witness for the Prosecution

The Fugitive

Zorba the Greek

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Treasure of the Sierra Madre

National Velvet

Spartacus

Alfie

Goodbye, Columbus

Bonnie and Clyde

To Sir With Love

Ironside

Rear Window

The Great Escape

The Secret of Santa Vittoria

Closely Watched Trains

A Tale of Two Cities

The Fugitive

House of Wax

The Avengers

“Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

King Kong

The Grapes of Wrath

Ice Station Zebra

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

The List of Adrian Messenger

Max: “Would you believe that Get Smart is the best television show ever?”

Siegfried: “I find that hard to believe.”

Max: “Would you believe that Get Smart is the most popular television show in Khazakstan?”

Siegfried: “No.”

Max: “Would you believe that Get Smart is funnier than Republicans?”

-30-

New Hampshire Primaries - Channeling Floyd Turbo

Mack Hall, HSG

Channeling Floyd Turbo

A bed-and-breakfast in New Hampshire has posted a hand-lettered sign banning all politicians.  For a nickel’s worth of cardboard and colored ink the B & B has accomplished the American dream, a transient Kardassian moment of look-at-me-me-me-ness which no one with a vocabulary larger than 300 words takes seriously.

For a few months every four years New Hampshire awakens from its somnolence (Listen – you can hear the chorus sighing “Brigadoon!  Brigadoo-oon!”), sloshes on its makeup, and, like New Orleans, parodies itself.

Presidential candidates prove themselves worthy of the power of nuclear winter by channeling Johnny Carson’s Floyd Turbo and yukking it up with The Just Plain Folks down at Ma and Pa’s Cafe.  They costume themselves in ye olde New Hampshire quaint and colorful ethnic folk dress – baseball caps and plaid hunting shirts made in China – and pretend to be Your Neighbor.  Of course Your Neighbors in New Hampshire are only playing at being Your Neighbor, too, so it is all wonderfully confusing. 

Perhaps it will help if we think of the New Hampshire primary as one of those historical re-enactment events, only instead of everyone dressing up as Civil War soldiers, they pose as Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys with mobile ‘phones locked and loaded.

One can understand any restaurant banning presidential candidates, if only because the candidates don’t know how many people they are.  When a candidate completes the forms for standing for election, he or she immediately becomes a “we,” as in “We are going win this state” and “We will not indulge in negative ads, unlike our lying, depraved opponent who sacrifices hamsters to the moon goddess.”  If the café’ has available a table for four and the visiting candidate presents himself as “we,” the staff don’t know if four seats are adequate or if they need to push some tables together.

Perhaps the “we” connects with the candidate’s assertion of God’s backing; a number of candidates and their spouses have claimed that they have received personal revelations from God telling them that God wants them to be Mr. and Mrs. President.

And, hey, who are the rest of us to go against the will of God as revealed to a player in a chambray shirt that will never be splattered with oil stains or sweat, eh?

Did George Washington trade in his tricorn for a ball cap when he stood for President?

Did FDR switch his cigarette holder for a chaw of terbaccy and hang out in New Hampshire playing checkers with Larry, Daryl, and Daryl on the evening of the 7^th of December, 1941?

Did John Kennedy sport a faux work shirt while checking out the farmer’s daughter…um…mingling with The People in 1960?

Once upon a time presidential candidates were chosen in smoke-filled rooms.  The air in the rooms is more aromatic than ever, but the scent is not that of smoke.

But let us remember that very few nations switch administrations without firing squads, and we are one of the happy few.   We can be thankful that the worst we have to suffer is watching members of the Harvard Club pretend, like Marie Antoinette, to be rustics.

-30-

2012 Already?

Mack Hall, HSG

2012 Already?

Another new year has noisily pushed its way into our lives, just as we were getting comfortable with the old one, and in a shrill voice demands inordinate attention, rather like a presidential candidate’s wife. 

The new year means that now we should all make lists of new year’s resolutions to ignore, which is of course all of them.  Why is a resolution made on the first of January somehow more significant than one made on the 12^th of October?

Lose weight? Not gonna happen.  Here, have some more chocolate and enjoy life.

Here are some resolutions that our political and cultural leaders might attempt, though they won’t:

Presidential candidates should resolve to drop the royal “we.”  Even in local elections a candidate begins referring to himself as “we” as soon as he has filed the papers.  When a candidate refers to himself as “we,” someone should ask him about his multiple-personality disorder issues.

Presidential candidates and their spouses should resolve to use a Christmas bookstore gift card to buy a copy of the Constitution, wherein, they will note, there is no delegation of power to a presidential spouse and no budget for a presidential spouse.

Any presidential candidate who resolves to have the Hohenzollern-ish (cue “Imperial March” from Star Wars) fleet of presidential jumbo jets and helicopters converted to medical evacuation aircraft for our wounded soldiers would probably win the election.  Let’s hear it from all the candidates, boys and girls alike: “I solemnly resolve never to arrogate military aircraft for myself, my spouse and kids, my spouse’s lengthy catalogue of relatives, my dog, my butterfly collection, my anything.  I swear that if I have a constitutionally-mandated duty to fly somewhere as president, I will buy space on a civilian airliner, just like the Pope, the British royal family, and almost every other world leader.  I further assure you that golf clubs will not be part of my baggage.”

Election commissions everywhere should resolve that on every ballot there will be a “none-of-the-above” option.

The makers of films should make solemn vows, not mere resolutions, to return to holding the cameras still.  The concept of deliberately shaking the camera around is not artistic; it is merely a precious, look-at-me gimmick.

Another matter of artistic integrity would be to list computer graphics as a percentage of content in a movie.  The adaptations of C. S. Lewis’ Narnia stories, for example, are excessively clotted with computer graphics, with the resultant minimizing of the plot and of the characters of the children. 

And yet another resolution for filmmakers: turn on the lights when setting a scene.  So many films now are shown in such a dim monotone that one wonders why projectors even bother with light bulbs. 

All UAW members should resolve to drive Chevy Volts.

Every company that sells cable, satellite, and wireless access should resolve to stop lying to their customers.  With that, though, the world as we know it would end.

May your new year be blessed with kittens, puppies, happy children, chocolate, good wireless signals, and evenings under the trees talking with friends, and may it be wholly devoid of resolutions, nasty surprises in the cable bill, and candidates’ wives.

-30-

ICU Waiting Room

Mack Hall, HSG

ICU Waiting Room at Christmas

Artistic gilded deer repose in peace

Among the store-room-dusty plastic leaves
Of decorator-decorated wreaths;
From thence they gaze serenely down upon
Sneeze-spotted pics in People magazine
And empty coffee cups recyled from
Recycled natural fibers recycled
From green fair trade recycled soy inks.

No ikons grace this dying-place, no cross,

No crucifix to focus farewell prayers;
Christ’s people gather lovingly around,
Their baseball caps thrall-ringed about their heads
In devout remembrance of passing souls.
Their cell-phone aps pass through their vague, weak eyes
As once the ancient biddings and prayer-worn beads
Slipped gently through the lips and hands of men.

The future is unknown, but at last report

‘Tis civilization on life-support.

The Begging Season

Begging by healthy people has become fashionable in East Texas, reflecting a decay in demeanor.  On Tuesday morning a couple of large men in orange vests were in and out of traffic along US96 in Buna, holding out large buckets with crosses.  What organization styling itself a church would promote this?  Whether or not this is illegal, this is undignified.  Get a job, fellows.

The intersection at Dowlen & 96 in Beaumont has been free of beggars for several years -- another purported church once had children begging in the streets; can't imagine Jesus being happy with child endangerment -- but the IHOP doorway and parking lot are increasingly infested with healthy looking individuals begging.  On one Saturday two young women driving a Mustang and smoking cigarettes drove around to ask for money. 

In the spring and summer more and more adults will set young people to begging along the highways for sports trips and, ironically, safe-graduation projects without even the metaphorical fig-leaf of a car wash.  What does this teach the next generation?

A Light Shines in Jasper

Mack Hall

A Light Shines in Jasper

Last week, nine new Jasper nursing graduates were capped and pinned before their families, friends, instructors, and God in a traditional ceremony that has graced this community each year for some four decades.

Over forty years ago a number of Jasper visionaries considered the needs and possibilities of health care in East Texas, and persuaded the people to vote the creation of a hospital district.

Among the first fruits of this dream were Jasper Memorial Hospital and, shortly after, JMH’s state-sanctioned LVN school taught by my aunt, Rhoda Holmes, RN and definitely old-school. 

Many people agree that the only thing Rhoda, of happy memory, got wrong was the design of the school’s first nursing cap, which looked like a misshaped cold-drink cup with some blue fringe. 

More recently, other far-seeing Jasper folks helped facilitate a satellite campus of Angelina College, to which the Jasper LVN program has since been transferred.  The hospital practicum is as intense as ever, but vocational nursing students now join students from other disciplines in college English, math, and science courses.   The success is demonstrable – Jasper LVN candidates are among Texas’ best in the state board exams.

Upon graduate, Jasper LVN candidates join for one last lesson, and that lesson is in faith and ethics in a traditional pinning and capping ceremony which originated with Florence Nightingale over 150 years ago.

For this dignified ceremony Jasper nursing graduates wear traditional white uniforms and traditional white caps.

And at this point your humble scrivener digresses: what is with the moldy-looking scrubsuits that now infect hospitals?  When, once upon a time, a suffering patient saw the white uniform of an RN or LVN approaching, he knew for a certainty that the (metaphorical) cavalry had arrived, and that all was going to be better.  Nowadays the patient cannot tell whether the slovenly-dressed individual walking the ward is one of the health care professionals -- the nice lady who tidies up, a surgeon, an imaging technician, the charge nurse -- or some Occupy thug who wandered in to relieve himself on the floor.

End of grouchy aside.

Dais dignitaries for the occasion were: Nadia Martindale, MSN, RN, ACNS-BC; Melvin Johnson, MA-English, MA-History; Whitney Craven-Larkin, LVN; Sharon Buffalo, MSN, RN; Charlet Blades, MSN, RN; Amber Murphy, BSN, RN; Elizabeth Powell, M.Ed, RN; Donald R. Samuel, M.D., M. Gilliland, M.D.; Lynn Pearson,M.D.; P. Bidwell, M.D.; Rodney Pearson, Jasper Chief of Police; and Honore Bailey, RN and some other letters after her name, Angelina College nursing instructor, role model, ministering angel, and, yes, of the old school.

This year’s graduates were: Pamela Smith Davis, Rokeshia Nicole Elam, Jana Wise-Horton, Chelsea Nichol Livingston, Candace Cheri Locke, Amanda Michelle Lundquist, Kari Michelle Martin, Denise Lynn O’Neal, and Christie Crawford Williams.

The founders of Jasper’s growing medical community are mostly gone now, but they left a wonderful legacy.  Jasper Memorial Hospital serves more people than ever, health care providers find the area a positive place for establishing their professional practices, Angelina College continues the excellence of the Jasper LVN program, and the Mary Dickerson will perhaps soon enjoy a renaissance in providing medical service.

The Lady with the Lamp (who is just as likely to be the Gentleman) now carries a high-tech pocket flashlight and a palm computer on her night rounds, and the white uniform has been sacrificed temporarily for (gag) scrubs, but the professionalism, the skill, and the care remain forever.

Those squeaky shoes a wakeful patient might hear walking the quiet hospital corridors at 0-dark-thirty – those aren’t really shoes, those are the wings of an angel.

-30-

Christopher Hitchens -- Maybe Not So Bad

Any one who laughs at the Dalai Lama and Princess Diana must contain some divine spark.

War Does Not Feature a Soundtrack

Horse - It's what's for Dinner

Mack Hall, HSG Mhall46184@aol.com

Horse – It’s what’s for Dinner

It hath behooved – hooved, get it? -- our current government to auto-pen an edict permitting once again the sale of horse meat for human consumption.  For all of us who have been whinnying about Washington compromising the economy through oppressive regulations, let us at least be grateful that we will have more to eat this Christmas.

Horse – well, it’s probably tastier than a baked Alaskan.

Will menus soon offer palomino ‘n’ potatoes, or maybe chipped mare on toast?  Pinto beans and real pinto – yum! But the FDA will have to determine if horsemeat is a staple diet or a stable diet.

Whoever thought that Dale Evans’ mare Buttermilk would someday be served with buttermilk, or that Seabiscuit would appear on a plate next to a biscuit!   Trigger is now part of that famous complete, nutritious breakfast, and Gene Autry’s Champion is the breakfast of champions.

With our government’s decision that Tonka may be served as a main course – or mane course -- the remakes of classic horse movies and television shows may not be to our (ahem) taste:

Justin Morgan had a Horse for Lunch.

The Horse Cookerer

The Miracle Whip of the White Stallions

Blackened Beauty

Smoky the Smoked Cowhorse

Fury – the Story of an Horse D’oeuvre, and the Boy Who Ate Him

Hidalgo to Go

The Pony Expresso

My Meal Trigger

Lunchy of Chincoteague

My Food Flicka

The Blackened Stallion

National Velvet Cake

Mr. Ed a la Milanaise

They Died With Their Horseshoes On

The Appaloosa Appetizer

My Little Petit Fours Pony

Brighty of the Grand Cutlet

The Saddle Club Sandwich

The Flame-Broiled of Araby

The Horsemaster Chefs

Fried of Kentucky

No, it just won’t do.  We Americans bond as strongly with our horses we do with our dogs and cats, and we do not bake our beagles or cook our kitties. 

The horse is a noble animal, brave and strong and fiercely loyal, not unlike a dachshund, only much larger.  Since we eat cows and birds and sheep, balking at dining on Dobbin might appear to be somewhat illogical.  Even so, to kill and cook an animal who for thousands of years has served humanity in war and peace, in fields and streets, carrying us and our dreams, seems to be a degradation of civilization.  Our ideals are the Crusader knight and the American cowboy, brave and good, each on his great horse.  We do not admire cannibals, not even the ideological ones.

-30-

"One of the Only"

This unfortunate phrase is quite common now, but so are houseflies. "Only" means one; thus, to say "one of the only" is to say "one of the one" or "only of the only." Presumably the writer, in a hurry, was trying to say "one of the few."