Upon Reading Doctor Zhivago

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Upon Reading Doctor Zhivago

 

Love lost along abandoned railway lines,

Grave-cold, grave-still, grave-dark beneath dead snow,

A thousand miles of ashes, corpses, ghosts -

Sacrarium of a martyred civilization.

 

A silent wolf pads west across the ice,

The rotting remnant of a young man’s arm,

Slung casually between its pale pink jaws -

A cufflink clings to a bit of ragged cloth.

 

Above the wolf, the ice, the arm, the link

A dead star hangs, dead in a moonless sky,

It gives no light, there is no life; a mist

Arises from the clotted, haunted earth.

 

For generations the seasons are lies,

Since neither love nor life is free to sing

The eternal hymns of long-forbidden spring -

And yet beneath the lies the old world gasps

 

The old world gasps in sudden ecstasy

A whispered resurrection of the truth

As tender stems ascend and push the stones

Aside, away into irrelevance.

 

And now the sunflowers laugh with the sun

Like merry young lads in their happy youth

Coaxing an ox-team into the fields,

Showing off their muscles to merry young girls.

 

The men of steel are only stains of rust,

Discoloring the seams of broken drains,

As useless as the rotted bits of brass

Turned up sometimes by Uncle Sasha’s plow.

 

For this is Holy Russia, eternally young;

Over those wide lands her church domes bless the sky,

While Ruslan and Ludmilla bless the earth

With the songs of lovers in God’s ever-spring.

You and the Government Shutdown

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

You and the Government Shutdown

In our nation’s capital, a number of veterans have torn down barricades that were blocking several war memorials, and taken them (the barricades, not the war memorials) away to dump in front of Tsarkoe Seloe…um, the White House.  That’s the stuff!  Our little rural county is not important enough to have any federal memorials to barricade, hence no protests, but maybe someone could go tip over a traffic cone in front of a convenience store.

The government shutdown is so bad that young military recruits aim their weapons at the targets and shout “Bang!”  When range drill is over they must collect, count, and turn in all vowels and consonants discharged in the exercise.

As a cost-saving measure, flags over government buildings will feature only four stripes and fifteen stars.

The Lincoln Memorial is closed, but visitors to Washington may stand reverently before a cardboard cutout of President Millard Fillmore.

Navy tankers are unable to fuel warships at sea, and are sending them song sheets for “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

For the duration of the crisis Canada has offered to lend their good neighbor to the south their four submarines, just as soon as any of them can be made to float.

In sympathy with our government’s funding crisis, Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to laugh at our President and Congress only three times a week instead of five.

Recently I referred to Speaker Boehner and the House of Representatives as a lot of harmless Merovingians.  The other night the ghost of King Childeric III appeared to me in a dream and demanded that I stop insulting harmless Merovingians.

The Veterans’ Administration, in the spirit of shared sacrifice, has agreed to ignore veterans at a slower rate.

In large cities, minimum-wage private sector workers are setting up soup kitchens for IRS employees, who are asked not to double-park their government-issued SUVs out front.

Until the budget crisis is resolved, the five full-time White House chefs will be reduced to seven.

In the last presidential election only about half of all Republicans bothered to vote; the other half stayed home to listen to Rush Limbaugh, war hero and family counselor.  Republicans are now so outraged at the shutdown that in the next election they will avoid voting in even greater numbers.

Transportation Security Agents at the nation’s airports have warned our government that if their pay is delayed they are going to start being nice to travelers. 

But keep calm, America, the chaos can’t last much longer – the Speaker of the House has threatened to wear his flowered golfing shorts and cry if the President doesn’t accept the Speaker’s abject surrender.

-30-

Fabrique au Canada

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Fabrique au Canada

Those of a certain age – born when giant hamsters roamed primeval swamps – will remember when Niagara Falls was a cliché’ honeymoon spot.  If in a newfangled talkie film anyone mentioned Niagara Falls, that was code for a wedding, and at the end of the movie, all conflicts resolved, Jimmy Stewart and Myrna Loy drove Pa’s sputtering 1935 Ford roadster north to Canada.

Niagara Falls, Canada, is great fun, much like Disneyland, only without Disney's understated elegance.  The center of jollification is Clifton Hill, or, in French, Rue de la Moulson’s et la barfe-on-les-sidewalks. 

Okay, that’s not really French; I just made that up, but I’ll bet you couldn’t tell.

The views of the Falls are better from the Canadian side, but very expensive.  The free parking lots of only a few years ago are gone, and now the amateur hydrologist must slosh $20 into the wet kitty (or la chat) in order to park his Ford and spend some quality time with the water.  Lots of water.  Beautiful water.

The views from the American side are also quite good, and parking that ’35 Ford is much cheaper, but you also get the idea that you probably don’t need to be there after dark.

One New Yorker faulted the Canadian side for being too commercial; his idea of the natural and free was reflected in the broken glass of abandoned buildings on the American side.

Niagara Falls is a romantic fashion again, but now folks want to be married when they get there, not before.  A young couple of my acquaintance made the pilgrimage to the Holy Land of Ontario, and their families and friends dusted off their passports and their Christmas accounts in order to join them for the happy occasion.

The couple were wedded one beautiful autumn morning on a wet Maid-of-the-Mist boat wetly sloshing around at the wet foot of the wet American Falls, the wet Horseshoe Falls, and wetly back to the wet American Falls, thus adding to the occasion lots of hydrogen and oxygen molecules in proper portions just in case not everyone aboard had been baptized.

One thought perhaps the boat captain would perform the rites, but he was busy enough avoiding a low-budget Titanic finale to the wedding, and so a wet rent-a-reverend-doctor (he also teaches t’a chi and is a motivational speaker and a singer/songwriter) in a Roman collar and sporting a big, shiny Celtic cross wetly said some things to the wet couple on the wet fantail. 

The Very Impressive Clergyman must have spoken the right things though mostly unheard among all the racket of engines and water, for the happy (and wet) couple kissed, surrounded by several hundred wet friends, most of whom were Japanese and Korean (and wet), along with Kate and Lily, those adorable (and wet) little scene-stealers.  Even now, in Seoul and Tokyo, folks are happily passing around hundreds of photographs of the young American couple who made their vacations in Canada, God’s second-favorite nation, even more enjoyable.

After docking, the wet couple and the wet VIC sat at a (dry) table in a café’ and spent a half-hour signing and witnessing lots of papers, and, finally, by the rules and regulations and august majesty, and, like, stuff of the Province of Ontario and the Dominion of Canada, not to mention the Maid of the Mist company, Frankie and Sarah were well and truly united in the wet institution of marriage.  When last seen they were catching a modern Canadian train, not a 1935 Ford, to Montreal, where no one can speak Spanish where no one will speak English.

But they’ll be fine.  In Montreal and in other destinations, geographic and spiritual, in the young couple’s lives, “all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well” (St. Julian of Norwich), for Frankie and Sarah will make them so.

Eh.

-30-

Honor the Dead - Buy Alamo Chewing Gum

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Honor the Dead – Buy Alamo Chewing Gum

Al, Harold, and Jim on KLVI Radio built an interesting conversation one morning last week on the selling of history.  The immediate topic was a legal dispute over some notes Martin Luther King made for a speech, and which were saved by his late secretary.  The question before a court is this – who owns those notes?

Who owns history?

And who owns the Alamo?

San Antonio de Valero was one of five Catholic missions along the San Antonio River, and what is left of it is best known for the 1836 battle which was a disaster for all concerned.  General-President Santa Anna betrayed the honor and bravery of the Mexican Army by ordering the murder of prisoners his soldiers risked their lives to save.  

The State of Texas, the General Land Office, and the Daughters of the Republic of Texas honor the dead of that terrible night by featuring a gift shop (http://store.thealamo.org/) at the Alamo, which is as tasteless as a gift shop at Bergen-Belsen or among the graves at Normandy. 

Pictures of the Alamo are used to sell motorcars and hamburgers so that a real Texan can drive his as-advertised-in-front-of-the-Alamo pickup truck to the as-advertised-in-front-of-the-Alamo cinder-block fast-foodery for an as-advertised-in-front-of-the-Alamo hamburger and french fries (which aren’t really from France or the Alamo).

Would ya like a refillable Anne Frank coffee mug with your order?

Many of us have known a beautiful image, in a hospital named for her, of kind and gentle Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, also known as Saint Elizabeth of Thuringen, to be blocked by display tables and exhibits.  Who has the authority to say yes or no to that?

Who owns history?

Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, a Marine and by repute a good man and a stand-tall Texan, spoke quite reasonably at a gun-rights rally within the Alamo last Saturday.

Commissioner Patterson, a sturdy advocate of freedom, also has a problem – should he have been there at all?  As Texas’ current defender of the Alamo, what will he do to maintain the integrity of a historical site whose ground is blessed with the blood of heroes?  The Alamo itself, although sometimes used for tellyvision commercials, has always been free from political demonstrations

A worse problem for Commissioner Patterson is that Alex Jones, haunted by Masonic-Jewish-Illuminati-NWO-Bildergerg-Weather Weapons conspiracies, also spoke – or, rather, emitted words at the same event.  If the Commissioner was ambushed (metaphorically, of course) in the matter, no blame can attach to him.  If, however, he knew he would be sharing the occasion with a man who embarrasses even Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, then he needs to withdraw his tinfoil hat from the political ring and himself to his Bunker of Solitude.

Lee Spencer White, president of the Alamo Defenders’ Descendants’ Association didn’t want this parody there.  She is against politics on site, maintaining, quite properly, that her group regards the Alamo as a family cemetery.

And, you know, there’s nothing that says family cemetery like a gift shop. 

Victoria Montgomery, spokeswoman for Open Carry Texas, argues that the history of the Alamo is predicated on politics, and that makes it a perfect place for a rally advocating personal freedom.

Both Ms. White and Ms. Montgomery make excellent points, but perhaps now the people of Texas should draw that line in the sand just like the one Colonel Travis may or may not have drawn:

The Alamo is sacred to the First Nations, to Spain, to Mexico, and to Texas.  The Alamo should be swept clean of made-in-China coonskin caps and of demonstrators; let the commerce and the look-at-me moments and filming for hamburger advertisements take place across the street, next to the Ghosts of the Alamo movin’ picture shows and fruit juice bars.

The Alamo began as a Christian church under the spiritual patronage of St. Anthony of Padua.  Unlike the other four San Antonio missions it will probably never be consecrated again as a church, but the theme remains – sacrifice and redemption.  As St. Thomas More might or might not have said, we have no windows to look into men’s souls, and so we must not presume to judge anyone who died on the walls of the Alamo; instead, we must remember our Christian obligation to respect them, “the dead with charity enclosed in clay,” as King Henry V might or might not have said. 

San Antonio is now a very large city, and for miles and miles in every direction people may buy, sell, and argue; what remains of the Alamo is such a tiny space that setting it aside as sacred ground where people will remove their made-in-China ball caps and be silent for a few minutes in the presence of a shared memory will do no harm to the State of Texas, the First Amendment to the American Constitution, or to cash registers.

Who owns history?  You do.  And so do the dead.

-30-

 

Paleo-Hippies

Lawrence Hall

P. O. Box 856

1286 County Road 400

Kirbyville, Texas 75956

Mhall46184@aol.com

Paleo-Hippies

 

Having withdrawn from the existential struggle,

Surrendering their arms and protest signs,

They muster in Denny’s for the Senior Special

Uniformed in knee-pants and baseball caps

And Chinese tees that read “World’s Greatest Grandpa,”

Hearing aids and trifocs at parade rest,

And quadrupedal aluminum sticks

Raging against the oxygen machine.

Not trusting anyone over ninety,

They rattle their coffee cups and dentures

Instead of suspicious Nixonians,

And demand pensions, not revolution.

They mourn classmates dead, not The Grateful Dead.

They do not burn their Medicare cards

Tho’ once they illuminated the world

With their flaming conscription notices.

They no longer read McKuen or Tolkien

Or groove to the Mamas and the Papas;

Their beads and flowers are forever filed

In books of antique curiosities

Beside a butterfly collection shelved

In an adjunct of the Smithsonian

Where manifestos go to be eaten

By busy mice and slow-pulsing fungi.

As darkness falls they make the Wheel, not peace -

They did not change the world, not at all, but

The world changed anyway, and without them,

And in the end they love neither Jesus

Nor Siddhartha, but only cable t.v.

Paleo-Yuppies

Lawrence Hall

P. O. Box 856

1286 County Road 400

Kirbyville, Texas 75956

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Paleo-Yuppies

 

Fading slowly from the existential struggle,

Waving their MePhones about in protest,

They swarm to Starbuck’s for adjective coffees,

Uniformed in knee-pants and bulbous sneaks

And Chinese soccer tops with little checkmarks,

Their graduate degrees at parade rest,

And in confusion, suddenly-stalled careers

Raging against the thirty-something machine.

Not trusting anyone under forty,

They rustle their foam cups and resumes’

Instead of suspicious Democrats,

And demand promotions and Perrier.

They mourn pinstripes and leather briefcases,

And the old floppy disc of yesteryear,

And fumble their PowerPoint Presentations

Tho’ once they illuminated the world

With colored markers on glossy whiteboard.

They no longer play games on a Commodore

Or rock to neo-Carib fusion jazz;

Their Rush is Right baseball caps are now filed

In trays of antique curiosities

Beside the moldering hippie stuff shelved

In an adjunct of the Smithsonian

Where curricula vitae go to be eaten

By a computer virus named Vlad.

Now, as the sun sets on Ferris Bueller’s day

They count and verify their MeBook friends -

They did not change the world, not at all, but

The world changed anyway, and without them,

And in the end they love neither Jesus

Nor The Force; like Eve, they bow to an Apple.

 

Truck Stop Restroom Cologne

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
September, 2013

Truck Stop Restroom Cologne

Denny’s / Flying J, Orange, Texas

 

Check out the boom-chick in the parking lot -

Love and diesel fumes are in the air.
Tattoos and cigarettes, oh, man, she’s hot!
Industrial peroxide tints her hair

Like rainbows in a toxic fuel-oil spill.

Her waist is a rockin’ forty-four,
A pavement Venus posed before the grill
Of a Peterbilt outside the truckers’ store.

How can the lovestruck swain lure her to his cab?

Persuade her to give him her innocent all?
A ripped-shirt display of a manly ab?
Wait - what’s that machine on the restroom wall?

Cool dude, you’ll never have to truck alone

If you scent yourself with restroom cologne.

Vir Parvus in Sede Magna (A Small Man in a Big Chair)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
September, 2013

Vir Parvus in Sede Magna

 

Magister, to his chair:

 

“O Chair, O wonderful, manly, leather Chair,

The throne behind my bold, impressive desk,

Proud plane adorned with my sports trophies there,

Altar to my masque, my fond burlesque.”

 

Magister, from his chair:

 

          “Do you think you can sit in this chair?  Say!

          No, and I’ll tell you why – this chair is mine,

          Hard-earned by trafficking my resume’ -

          Pause, then, and kneel; I feel almost divine!”

 

Vox populi:

 

          “O Magister, no, we’d never presume

          Ever to mime your magnificentia -

          Your throne is honored in this consular room

          (For we would not share in your dementia).”

 

Exeunt omnes, pursued by a bore.

         

A Small Man Orders a War

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
September, 2013

 

A Small Man Orders a War

Proud carrier fleets roam the murmuring world

As Hannibal’s elephants trod Italy –
Grey monsters in search of an enemy
Not yet declared, but with hubris unfurled

In decadence, ruled by smooth ganymedes,     

Courtier-generals in their airy cars
Wage resumes’ high above their wars –
So strong in single-malt, so weak in deeds

In his softly-lit bunker the war-god smiles;

His bony hand upon a plastic screen
Commands strange engines, obscure and obscene,
To make a peace through smoking, ashy piles

But empires in the end must die, atone

Their sins, perhaps as trunkless legs of stone.

Imperatives

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Imperatives

Put your hands together and grab some Buds
As you give it up obediently
To stand as one, laugh, live, love, and eat, pray, sing
Don’t wait, call now, just do it, call today
Have your credit card ready, and your soul
Join us, join now, book now, and download now
Step up to the plate, don’t miss out, shop now
Keep your eye on the ball, here, subscribe now
Be part of the solution and sign now
Find your true love on line; get a quote now
Donate, don’t miss breaking news – click here, now!
Personalize now – it’s free! Upgrade now
Make us your home page, change search engine, blink,
And you’ll miss it, connect, buy gold, join us
See your local dealer, become a site member
Be one of us; join the movement today
Download the latest apps, obey, obey.
Obey.

 

September, 2013

This is how Children Learn Now

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

This is how Children Learn Now

Television news: each student in a Catholic school

 will be issued an IPad

“This is how children learn now,” he enthused,
A young man only now in his first long pants,
And a clean shirt without advertisements,
His boyhood goatee newly shaved away,
His diploma fresh from a vending machine,
In knowledge omniscient at twenty-two,
Displaying to the television audience
A shiny plastic box, wampum for trade,
Little lights and noises squeaking from a screen
In exchange for the island of one’s soul.

His pupils will not want paper or pens

For coloring their happy fantasies
At the kitchen table on rainy days.
They will never listen for Robin Hood’s call
To run barefoot in green-roofed Sherwood Forest,
Or listen for sleigh bells on Christmas eve,
Or look for fairies on a frosty night,
In wild sweeps dancing on the moonlit lawn.
For them there will be no childhood campfires,
No laughing summer nights counting the stars.

Children must genuflect to their shiny boxes,

And never lift their eyes to the sweet sunrise,
Sing to the skies, marvel at a burning bush,
Weep with Mary at the foot of the Cross,
Learn their catechism, giggle in choir,
Or form their letters with a wooden pencil.
Their hands will never touch flowers, flutes, or frogs,
Their lips will never kiss puppies or moms,
Their noses will never wrinkle at lemons,
Because a shiny box will be their world.

Huddled among earphones and telescreens,

Subservient, silenced, subdued, suppressed,
Disappearing into a creeping mist -
“This is how children learn now,” the serpent hissed.

 

6 September 2013

A Dead Man's Hand

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
September, 2013

A Dead Man’s Hand

News – Senator plays video poker during hearings on Syria

An old man plays with video games and death,
Bored with a meeting called to fling the lives
Of youths onto the baize; he holds his breath -
And what appears? A knave, a king, some fives?

Two sable aces there, mournful and grim,

Begin to assemble in a crumbling nave
With two sable eights keening a funeral hymn,
A deuce of spades to dig a generation’s grave.

 

7 September 2013

Banned Books - Weak

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Banned Books – Weak

The problem with Banned Books Week is that books aren’t banned by this country.  You could look it up on page 313 of your niece’s much-marked copy of Fifty-One Grades of Nay.

Once upon a time, when prehistoric hamsters bellowed across primeval swamps, the United States Post Office (as it was then known) did not permit the mailing of pornography, and some local municipalities forbade hootchie-mama stuff in print.  For authors, though, being banned in Boston was much desired, as this guaranteed a rise in sales.

The reality is that in our progressive and enlightened era a cud-chewing TSA-ista at the airport will seize your grandpa’s Schrade-Walden Old Timer, but not a copy of Naughty Tales of a Runaway Teenaged Police Nurse with the jalapeno-hot illustrations of barely-legal stethoscopes.

Rest easy during Banned Books Week; your copy of Wordsworth’s Prelude is safe from confiscation by armed Ninjas in discount-store xtreem tactical commando camouflage rappelling down from unmarked Canadian helicopters, even though the Oxford de Selincourt edition features a really wild you-know-what scene in the 1850 variant, p. 417, line 392.

So what’s with the annual Banned Books Week?

Banned Books Week appears to be just another safe, fashionable (and profitable for some) cause, with posters and protests and posturing and computer downloads to forward to people who are already busy trying to liberate their in-boxes from the cascade of political cartoons people send them constantly.

And, hey, you can buy the really cool official Read a Banned Book tee-shirt at and other trendy accessories at http://www.alastore.ala.org/SearchResult.aspx?CategoryID=269!  Men’s and women’s sizes are $23, and the too, too precious tote bag is only $12.

Bracelets, buttons, pins, posters, tees, and totes all speak Truth to Power just like, y’now, totally, Che Guevera, who was all like, stuff, like, y’know, so raise high the green flag and a clenched fist, comrades.  Nothing says First Amendment like a tote bag that was probably made in a country without any freedoms at all.

Surely there’s the requisite made-in-China toxic-metal ribbon, too.

Costuming one’s self in the official underwear of The Cause and menacing a 4’11” librarian is a whole lot safer than telling the owners of the famous-name-brand gas station down the road that they shouldn’t be selling weird drugs under fake names to children.

Public libraries are part of the package of civilization: streets, parks, traffic lights, fire departments, and all the other services and features that remind us that we are more than economic units or random assemblages of DNA; we are humans.  We think, wash, work for our livings, eat with forks, teach our children, walk upright, play baseball and the fiddle, read and write books, watch and make movies, care for our sick, talk about church but seldom go, and bury our dead with dignity.

Without books, we fall victim to what C. S. Lewis called “the cascade of nonsense” shrieking (not always metaphorically) from the megaphones of our noisy age, and entrap ourselves in the false ideologies of what Flip Wilson wisely mocked as What’s Happening Now.

The free public library is an idea that originated in the USA, the idea that everyone should have access to all the ideas of civilization, to the democracy of the dead, not only to What’s Happening Now 1-800-Send-Me-Money demagogues, and so through a combination of taxes, endowments, and gifts almost every town is blessed with a free public library.

But even the most generously-funded library must work from a budget and from intellectual discretion.  No library can possibly shelve ever volume ever printed, and, contrary to the manufactured outrage (that, too, is profitable for some) of the fat boys on the radio, no librarian will shelve pornography except on the order of a judge, often a judge democratically elected by the people who then blame the librarian.

Adults choose the books they read and shelve in their own homes, and they know what books their children are reading (even while wholly unaware of what their children are accessing on the Orwellian Telescreens that seem to be stapled to their little hands).  That’s not banning books, that’s being a good father or mother.

When you visit the book store and buy, say, a volume of poems of Keats and the autumn number of Field and Stream (which goes well with Keats’ “Ode to Autumn”), you are not banning all the other books and magazines; you are making a free choice about what you want to buy with your money, just like a real American.

Banned Books Week is not about banned books because, while the majesty of the law is a bit harsh on little girls painting scripture posters in the school gym, the majesty does not at present ban books.  Thus, perhaps the name of the cause should be Books I Like That Other People Don’t Like and Won’t Buy Even Though I Command Them to do so Which Means They’re a Bunch of Fascists Week.

-30-

 

Confusion Among the Faithful

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Confusion Among the Faithful

Last week there was some confusion among the faithful after the publication of certain shocking statements attributed to their spiritual leader.  With mixed feelings of anxiety and anticipation, millions gathered in night-long vigils at their local places of worship.

In Houston, a number of the devout were robbed at gunpoint, adding fear and sorrow to an already tense situation and leading to further self-doubt regarding their sacred tradition.

But after every night comes the dawn, and all over the world acolytes in blue vestments opened the doors to true believers, who chanted the traditional Malum litany for the opening of the sacred doors:  “Decem…Novem…Octo… Septem…Sex…Quinque…Quattor…Tres…Duo…Unus…”

And, with tears in their eyes and hymns on their lips, the faithful beheld a new age of mankind: yet another little made-in-China plastic box that lights up and makes noises.

“Yes, the previous Apple was legalistic and narrow-minded, but this new Apple heralds a wonderful new world of freedom,” exulted a young pilgrim from a few streets over.

“Ya just can’t stay with the old ways,” agreed his friend, dressed in a traditional religious habit from Abercrombie.  “Vatican II said ‘Open the windows of the Apple store!’ or something like that. Ya gotta go with the flow, like, y’know, move with the times, like, you know, like a corpse floating downriver.  Like, y’know.”

A woman, her young face drawn in sadness, spoke from the shadows: “But I’ve always been a Windows person.  Can I be forgiven?  Will Apple CEO Tim Cook hold my past Window-ness against me?”

“Of course not,” said one of the acolytes joyfully.  “His Apple is forever!”

The woman sniffed softly.  “Sniff,” she sniffed softly, “Does this mean (sniff) (softly) that I am at last welcome in an Apple store?  I’ve never felt (sniff) (softly) that I was wanted there.”

“Tim Cook has always welcomed you, just as you are, in the name of Steve Jobs,” all the pilgrim faithful assured her.

“Just as I am?  I can enter into the Apple store (sniff) (softly) just as I am, and He will welcome me?”

“With open arms.  He has always been waiting for you,” said one of the acolytes, taking her by the hand.

“And (sniff) (softly) I can remain a Windows person?”

“WHAT!?  Remain a Windows heretic!? Get out!  We don’t want your kind in here!”

-30-

The NSA-FBI Bible

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

The NSA – FBI Bible

A survey by The American Bible Society suggests that 41% of Americans read the Bible on their Orwellian Telescreens.

Well, maybe.

Who says that a text beamed Scottie-like into that little plastic box in one’s hands is the / a Bible?

A telescreen Bible (maybe it’s a Bible) makes worse an existing problem: in a free nation, anyone can label any old book lying around The Bible and sell it as such.  If, say, five folks get together for an informal Bible study, they are likely to bring with them five different texts said to be the Bible – King James Version (with the English canon of 1611 or the smaller canon more common in this country?), New King James Version, NIV, RSV, or Douay-Rheims (and then Douay-Rheims or Douay-Rheims-Challoner?)?

If the five individuals bring to their group study printed Bibles, each one can be sure of this – the Bible he (which here is gender-neutral) owned when he went to bed was not changed overnight.

If the five individuals bring to their study their Orwellian Telescreens with the Bible as – may God forgive us – an app (or is that App or even Saint App?), they cannot be sure that the words have not been changed since last they accessed the text.

Of course it can happen.

When one of the first e-reader-thingies was available, the company and a literary agency inadvertently made a contract error over the purchase of a certain novel.  The X-Treem E-Game X-Beyond-E-Normal E-Reader E-Company (whatever) withdrew the novel from thousands of Orwellian Telescreens quicker than you can say “Harry Potter has cooties.”  The thousands of people who had bought the book were refunded their money, and life went on.

The point is that a service provider possesses the power to make any book, or all of them, disappear completely from your telescreen.  If the provider can do that, then modifying the text is even easier.

When you open a physical copy of a Bible you have owned for years, you can be sure of two things.  One is that everyone else at the table will tell you that you have the wrong Bible, that what you need is the New Intercontinental Revised Inter-Something Else Brotherhood Fellowship Bible, endorsed by Bob’s Publishing Company of Old Chowdertown, Massachusetts.  The second matter of which you can be sure is that nothing in that printed Bible has changed since you acquired it.

With an electronic Bible, you cannot be sure of that.

Another matter is that when you read a few verses in a printed Bible, the occasion is solely between you and God.  When you read a few verses of a Bible (maybe it’s a Bible) on your Orwellian Telescreen, then it’s a matter among you, God, and whoever else may choose to listen in on the World Wide Party Line: the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, or that strange individual down the road.

Not important, you say?  It could be.

A common piece of advice is to evaluate a problem according to the Bible: a cranky employer, an ethical issue in the workplace, your prodigal son, anything.  If you look up relevant sources on a moral issue on the Orwellian Telescreen, you make your query open to everyone on the planet at any time, for everything floating in the aether is stored in multiple computers.  Your search is not going to go away.

It may not be of use to anyone now, but it will be of use against you when someday you apply for a really high-up job, stand for state congressman, propose a business loan, or are accused of any affront listed in the increasingly large catalogue of thought-crimes (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324009304579040671355619380.html.).

The Orwellian Telescreen is not the Garden of Eden, but there are real serpents lurking behind the electronic leaves.

And besides, reading a printed Bible makes it easier for your friends to tell you that you’ve got the wrong Bible.

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