Once a Shipyard

Orange, Texas

Kirbyville Elementary, 2nd Grade, 1955

Fort George

Kate

Sarah and Kate

Niagara Falls, September 2013

Texas French New Wave Voting

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Texas French New Wave Voting

To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.

- Louis L'Amour (www.lifequoteslib.com/authors/louis_l_amour)

Voting in Texas remains a lonely experience.

The new state requirement for an identification card with a photograph in order to vote was regarded by many as a solution to illegal voting by wild hordes of Those People. Others opposed the requirement as an attempt by meanies to suppress poor but honest Tom Joad just struggling day-to-day to scratch a living out of his new wide-screen television.

In the event, neither Tom Joad nor many other folks voted on state constitutional amendments last week. Perhaps Tom was too busy listening to the fat boys on A.M. radio to drive his Model A Ford to the polls (why do we call them polls?) while carrying his Texas driving license with his photograph on it.

Texas citizens who wish to withdraw from the noise and busy-ness and demands of job, family, and society for a day of solitude need not resort to a monastic retreat; they can volunteer to serve as election judges or poll watchers. As a polling official one can meditate upon the mysteries of the Rosary, read Keats’ Endymion, knit sweaters for the grandchildren, or write another chapter of that still unfinished book, all in perfect peace and quiet. The only sounds will be the air-conditioning cycling on and off and perhaps a fellow official making a fresh pot of coffee. Even the Desert Fathers would envy voting officials in Texas their solitude.

Similarly, a Texan who wants only a few minutes alone can do so by voting.

Imagine voting in Texas as a scene from an art-house movie – sorry, film; “movie” is so plebeian – in grainy black-and-white: the wind sighs across a desolate landscape as the camera pans slowly from empty prairie to an apparently abandoned town. Cue the tumbleweeds. Close-up of an unpainted, sun-weathered wooden front. Offscreen, footsteps are heard on the gravel. Since the auteur is influenced by French New Wave, this goes on for a long, long time. This is, like, y’know, art, and, like, stuff. Film, not movie. Finally, the unseen steps pause, and a hand reaches for the doorknob. After a long pause the hand pushes the door open. The rusty hinges squeak, and old spider webs, long still, are disturbed by the moving air. The camera, assuming the point-of-view of the still-unseen owner of the hand, moves into a room whose darkness is intermittently broken by shafts of light from the windows. This could be symbolic of the protagonist’s internal conflict between good and evil, or it could reflect the fact that the filmmaker has seen High Noon too many times. To the viewer’s right, shadows resolve themselves into people sitting silently in chairs. Do they symbolize Death (think Ingmar Bergman)? Do they symbolize Redemption-with-a-capital-R? Do they symbolize the bourgeoisie? Do they symbolize bureaucratic / hierarchic obscurantism as in Franz Kafka’s Das Schloss? Does their silence symbolize existential despair? No, they’re the election officials, and their brief silence reflects only their surprise that a Texan showed up to vote.

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Dostoyevsky at the Garage Sale

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Dostoyevsky at the Garage Sale

Commerce in used goods has lost its aura of shame and has become acceptable in our culture, and possibly constitutes a significant part of our declining economy. We are told by the propagandists that American manufacturing is on the rise, but the displays of shoddy foreign manufactures suggests to the consumer that this might not be so. Can an economy really be based on selling insurance, snakefingers, drugs, and questionable information to each other?

After World War II this nation was the world’s greatest manufacturer, and in the late 1950s one only with difficulty found a product made anywhere else. In our time, though, if one wants an American-made hammer, shirt, camera, dinner service, pocket knife, or toy train, he no longer shops downtown (which no longer exists) or from the Montgomery Ward catalogue (which no longer exists), but probably at that modern American custom, the Saturday morning garage sale (which seldom features a garage).

In the past year y’r ‘umble scrivener has found: two wagon wrenches (aka monkey wrenches), a Kodak 33mm Pony camera, a made-in-Chicago metal pencil sharpener, several pocket knives, a cast-iron rope pulley for a water well, a handsaw, and any number of hand tools and power tools, all American made, not as investments but mostly for their immediate utility (the camera is on a shelf and the handsaw is Miz Bee-ish fence art).

At a recent Friends of the Kirbyville Public Library book sale I found a copy of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, published in 1938 by The Heritage Press. The book is hardbound in boards and linen, measures about seven by ten inches, is translated by Constance Garnett, and features engravings by a refugee German, Fritz Eichenberg. The paper is not particularly heavy but it is well-made (after all, it’s into its eighth decade) and cream-colored, which, with the large text, is easy on the eyes.

This book was not manufactured as an objet d’art; it was meant to be read, and I’m reading it. Most good stories are about redemption, and thus civilization, and with Dostoyevsky the concept of redemption can be cubed and squared. After all, who among us has ever faced a firing squad? Happily, the Czar sent a just-in-time reprieve (which no Communist would ever do), and Dostoyevsky spent the following ten years in a penal colony (which, again, is not a common experience among us). The man definitely had something to say, unlike our modern I, I, I, me, me, me writers whose focus is upon their hurt feelings and their scripted outrage.

And George Macy had something to say too: in the middle of a terrible economic Depression (we’ll never know how many died in those grim times), with the ascendancy of Communism, National Socialism, and whatever ism one might apply to Japan (who once again has begun coveting Chinese land), Mr. Macy chose to say that civilization will go on, even under food rationing and air-raids. Mr. Macy commissioned the printing of books, farming out the acquisition of papers and boards and cloth, typesetting, printing, and binding to various small companies throughout the country, and selling them under the imprint of The Heritage Club. These books sold for a dollar or so, a fabulous sum at the time, and anyone who bought a book had to think, plan, and save for such a rare event. Mr. Macy said that civilization should go on, and whoever bought this particular volume in 1938 probably skipped some meals so that civilization would indeed continue.

The Easton Press (http://www.eastonpress.com/) is the successor to the several Macy companies and other publishers, and continues to publish books, some to be read and some apparently merely for display.

Their edition of Crime and Punishment is bound in leather, and is available for $64.90. In terms of purchasing power, that is much, much less than the dollar edition of 1938.

Even so, one is not sure that the sellers know what the book is. The advertisement reads: “Impoverished and desperate, a young man is driven to the murder of a loathsome pawnbroker - and finds himself trapped in a hell of paranoia and terror. Dostoevsky's enthralling novel is, at once, an extraordinary psychological study, a harrowing mystery and a brilliant detective thriller.” The first sentence is good, a brief synopsis, but while details in the second sentence are correct, overall, the point of the story is missed, and that is the theme of redemption. Dostoyevsky is a Christian writer, not Agatha Christie or a scriptwriter for the BBC, and he is always about salvation.
Curiously, the “Sandglass” insert of 1938 makes the same mistake, referring to Crime and Punishment as “one of the great psychological studies.”

Well, Dostoyevsky knew his own book was about salvation, not about psychology, and certainly not about sustainability and greenness.

I wonder if someone will come across Dostoyevsky’s pocket knife at a garage sale.

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Lessons, Week of 28 October - 1 November 2013

English 1301

Week of 28 October – 1 November 2013

Excellent work on the semester exam by almost everyone.  Congratulations!

This week is dedicated to research writing, so bring all your impedimenta, including your Orwellian telescreen.

We will read lots of old research papers (with the permission of the writers) of varying quality.  These are examples for you to consider, and some of the examples are not good. 

You, as an individual, must make a final decision on your topic this week, and have your instructor sign off on it.

You, as an individual, must write your thesis statement and have your instructor sign off on it.

You will have some time in class this week to research and write, either working from your personal Orwellian telescreen or in the library.  Staring at your MyFaceSpaceBookMeMeMe or email for repeated ego validation does not constitute work.  Next week we will enjoy a literary selection for its own delight and its relevance to your lives, and as the basis for an expository essay, so make use of your individual-choice class time now.

Everyone currently enrolled has a passing average; however, the research paper will be, for some, the cause of final failure due to repeated topic changes, lack of individual initiative, plagiarism, or shoddy workmanship.  Passivity is your enemy, and is defeated only by your own initiative every day.

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.