An Abandoned Classroom

Lawrence Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

An Abandoned Classroom

Young dreams, now scattered fragments on the floor:
A little handle into a corner flung
The disc of sizes never again to fit
A number two pencil into place for a trim
Nor will the made-in-Chicago hopper
Ever again save for the classroom prankster
Sweet-smelling slitherings of cedar shavings
To fling about while Teacher’s at the board.

A new Ticonderoga thrust into
The spinning Scylla and Charybdis blades
Was tested by steel, the dross savaged away,
By turning the handle and grinding away,
And from this grim ordeal emerged The Point,
The perfect point, the adventurous lead…
“It’s not really lead, stupid, it’s graphite;
That’s what Teacher said. Don’t you know anything?”

Girls are stupid. They play with dolls and stuff.
I’ve got a real cap pistol. I’ll draw it.
You want to see? Look! No, wait, that’s not right;
It’s better this way…Ma’am? Uh…integers?
Arithmetic is stupid. Science is fun.
I’ve got most of the Audubon bird stamps
And I liked it when we cut up the frogs
Old people are so mean. I’ll never be old.

A leaking pipe drips the minutes away
Outside a broken window summer sings
Its songs of freedom as it always has
The desks are gone, the electricity is off
The air smells of education and decay
The classroom now is littered with the past:
A broken crayon, a construction-paper heart,
A silence longing for children’s voices.

One Happy Raindrop

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

One Happy Raindrop

You’re working in the heat of a summer day
A little raindrop falling from far away
Ker-plinks you on the nose and laughs “Let’s play!”

At the Convenience Store

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

At the Convenience Store

“Hi, sexy!” croaks a woman, her bourbon voice
Clinging desperately to a cigarette and the past,
Flirting from behind gas station sunshades
Speaking of adventures that we once shared
And of old friends in jail, in debt, in graves
And of her children – she calls them by name
And by divorce, marriage, and forlorn hopes
She catalogues her many illnesses
And says the doctor’s given her six months
But she’s going to lick this; what does he know.
She urges into gear her wheezing Ford
We should talk again soon about old times
And clatters away, seven cylinders to the wind.

Socially Engaged Poetry

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Socially Engaged Poetry

As an effective tool for advocacy
Creating partnerships and sharing skills
A voice to the voiceless, Split this Cliché
Empowerment to the empowermentless
Through bleats of provocation and witness
Copyrighted and stereotyped
In a World That is Forever 1968
Exploring and celebrating the many ways
We can score yet another guilt-grant
Asserting the centrality of the 501C3
Through bearing witness to diversity
As long as it behaves itself and thinks like us
Accessible and yet authentic
A n d l I k e d o s t u f f w I t h s p a c e l I k e u n o

cause spaces

are authentic, and,
like


stuff

Poetry as a living, breathing art form
If you listen, you can hear its respirations
Gasping in the long, dark night of group-think
Obedient to a mission statement
And the careful construction of resumes
Committee integrate complexity
Formula dampens the authentic voice
Perform this vital work imagining
Personal and social responsibility
Revolutionary transformation
Write and perform this vital work support
Of human social justice experience
Grounded in holistic spirituality
Flouting the patriarchal something-ness
An act that requires community
If you love freedom, you dare not disobey
And let all the people say “Cogent!”

Titanic was Sunk by a Bilderberg

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Shhhhh - Titanic was Sunk by a Bilderberg

Albino rabbis, the Illuminati,
Protocols of the Elders of Zion -
The evidence seemed a little spotty
‘Til a radio guy had us wonderin’ and sighin’

Fluoridation by the New World Order
Backed by the Trilateral Commission
A scheme to open our southern border
To crop circles – that’s his suspicion

Area 51, the Templar Knights
FEMA lurking in the Bohemian Grove
Perfidious Rothschilds through menace and fright
Guarding a Jewish-Viking treasure trove

Poor Newfoundland is Occupied by Commie rats
Who scheme in secret tunnels beneath St. John’s
Brewing magic potions in Macbethian vats
In Rodentian rituals from the Age of Bronze

The Priory of Sion, runes, swastikas, the Vril
Roswell and the Thule Society
No wonder the air is darkly chill:
We all live within a conspiracy!

Air Canada

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Air Canada

To the tune of “O Canada!”

Air Canada!
Your planes do not have cans!
Bladder control in all thy sons command.
With stressed-out sphincters we fly on thee,
True Northern continence, ooooh-eeeee!
From business class
Air Canada, we squirm in pain for thee
God keep our cans open and free!
Air Canada we squirm in pain for thee.
Air Canada we squirm in pain for thee!

A Summer Cold

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

A Summer Cold

How tiresome is a summer cold:
A nose that drips like ill-kept drains
A catalogue of creaks and pains
That tell the sufferer “YOU are old!”

Anna Apples

Mack Hall, HSG

Anna Apples

Sweet Anna apples fall from trees in June
Like childhood summer days gliding to earth
From silvery-grey clouds through cobalt skies
Into the hands of youth in a golden time

Doctor Lazenby and His Errant DeSoto

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Doctor Lazenby and His Errant DeSoto

The first famous DeSoto, a fellow by the name of Hernando, got lost leading the boys through the swamps of the New World in the 16th Century and died of a fever somewhere along the Mississippi River in 1542.

Because DeSoto was in the past considered a hero (the cultural milieu skated around that genocidal maniac thing), Chrysler produced a series of cars under that name until 1960.

Doctor Lazenby, the ancient dentist who could have been a character in Andy Griffith’s fictional Mayberry, drove a turquoise-and-white DeSoto which was not unlike its namesake in blundering around the streets of my small town in the 1960s. His DeSoto was one of the last of that mark, a sort of land-bound HMS Ark Royal with high-sailing tailfins that menaced the town’s one blinking caution light.

Dr. Lazenby was known as a great dentist and a poor steersman – he lumbered his DeSoto along Main Street on whichever side seemed convenient.

The town raconteur more than once told of the events one high noon when Dr. Lazenby was driving on US96 slowly but erratically. The young chief of police – in those days the only police – turned on his bubble-gum machine and followed Dr. Lazenby for a long, long time. After a few musical bars from the siren, the officer finally coaxed Dr. Lazenby into docking his DeSoto along the shoulder.

“What do you want?” Dr. Lazenby is said to have asked, somewhat annoyed.

“Right now I want your driver’s license,” the officer replied.

Dr. Lazenby gave his license to the officer, who then walked back to the Shamu to radio a license check to the dispatcher at the county seat.

Dr. Lazenby decided that he would continue on home to lunch as planned.

Another lengthy, slow-speed pursuit ensued, and again Dr. Lazenby stopped the DeSoto at a time convenient for him.

When the officer, with the license (driving, not dental) still in hand approached the DeSoto again, Dr. Lazenby is said to have demanded, angrily, “Now what in the (Newark, New Jersey) do you want!?”

Let us all pause and savor the moment.

I never knew Dr. Lazenby very well; my parents took me to one of those young whipper-snapper dentists educated after the Spanish-American War. Thus, for me Dr. Lazenby was a sort of background character, a cheerful old codge, one of the many wonderful people whose genial eccentricity gives a small town a certain quiet joy.

Whether the story about old Dr. Lazenby and the young police officer is true, well, I don’t know, but if not, it ought to be.

-30-

This is the Army, Princess Jones

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

This is the Army, Princess Jones

This is the Army, Princess Jones
No private rooms or telephones
You had your breakfast in bed before
But you won’t have it there anymore!

-Not Exactly as Written by Irving Berlin

A famous actress – and, in truth, a very good actress - who twits on the ‘Net and is hurt that other people on the ‘Net twit back very bad, horrible, no-good things about her, compared her hurt feelings to being in a war.

The implied directive is this: when an actress twits her Me-Me-Me-ness on the Twooter, the people who read her Twots are required to validate her feelings. If they don’t like her, the actress suffers just like a soldier wounded in battle.

Maybe someone should honor her with a costume medal from the wardrobe department. Then she can take a bus to a VA hospital and be ignored by the unionized staff and the latest high-dollar CEO.

The misuse of war metaphors by Americans who never made the first day of recruit training is ironic in itself. A strong America needs more boot camp metaphors by actors:

“The director asked me to read my lines over. That’s like being yelled at by a sergeant, right?”

“Dancercise was sooooooooooooooooooooo demanding today – it was worse than four hours of close-order drill in August at Fort Polk after ten hours of cleanup, inspection, classes, and PT!”

“My agent telephoned and woke me up at nine in the morning. What does he think this is, the Army?”

“My personal aide was out sick today, so I had to pack my makeup bag all by myself. Now I know what sixteen hours of KP duty are like.”

“When the studio sent the car and driver around they also picked up someone else – that’s just like riding in an Army truck with twenty other people.”

“The commissary is two blocks away? What is this, a twenty-mile night march at Camp Pendleton?”

“Don’t tell me about full pack and equipment – sometimes I have to carry my own smart phone.”

“Only two hours for lunch? Now I know what it’s like in the Navy.”

“The champagne in first-class was not chilled to my specifications. It was like the Air Force.”

“My yacht features only a small kitchen, one chef, and two dining room staff – just like the Coast Guard.”

“I telephoned room service to clean my bathroom – I felt like a private in the Army.”

“After spending all morning at the jewellers’ selecting a new Swiss watch, trying on watch after watch, I was sooooooooo exhausted. I now know what Marine boot camp is like. One of the staff was not obsequious enough, so I demanded that she be fired. That part was fun.”

“What? Pay my household staff a living wage? What do military recruits pay their staffs?”

“Make my own bed? I don’t care what an admiral said in a graduation address; I have to draw the line somewhere.”

And, really, here we can agree with Princess Jones – whoever heard of an admiral making his own bed? That would be a sea story.

-30-

Outlaw Operatics

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Outlaw Operatics

A recent music review assures the reader that a genre known as outlaw country is alive. Presumably someone else thought it was dead.

Outlaw music is an interesting concept – does the guitarist pull out a Colt Navy revolver and rob the audience in E-Flat?

The reviewer at one point mentions that the singer wore blue jeans. Now that’s a surprise, a country-and-western singer in blue jeans. Do you suppose it’ll catch on? That’s rather like observing that James Levine wears full evening dress (a dinner jacket would be so declasse’) while conducting Aida.

Now if James Levine were to conduct Aida in blue jeans and Lucinda Williams were to sing about country lovin’ while wearing white tie and tails, there would be something worth reporting. Since her specialty is outlaw, maybe she could steal the ensemble from James Levine: “Hands up! Gimme them dudey duds, ya varmint!”

Outlaw country – does that mean that the musicians don’t mind if the impresario robs them of their percentage?

Occasionally you see on a pickup a bumper sticker that reads “OUTLAW.” And then you notice that the tags and inspection sticker are up-to-date.

And squeaking of outlaw music, last Saturday night a man in Portland, Oregon sat down in front of the police station and played the violin. Naked. No, the violin wasn’t naked, the man was.

Maybe he lost his G-string.

The genre of the violin music scraped out wasn’t specified – perhaps the creative soul was channeling Charlie Daniels.

The police, trampling on this performance artist’s special need to express his authentic voice through the empowerment of his, like, y’know, specialness by privileging (“Privileging” as a verb – ya like that? I heard it on NPR the other day. Now I feel smart.) his authentic self through nudity, told him to put on his britches and stop acting the fool…um…existentialist.

The man refused, and the police carried him away. Perhaps to a penile colony.

Imagine the thoughts of the lucky officers detailed to cuff and stuff a naked gentleman. The pat-down would have been most interesting. Were there concealed-carry issues?

These officers can tell you what life is really like on the street then there’s a full moon out.

“There are eight million stories in the naked city…”

Sometimes, in a less savory wish-fulfillment moment, one imagines a touch – a mere soupcon - of inappropriate harshness. If Mr. Music doesn’t want to man up and trouser up, Officer Thibodeaux could make a point of reading to the naked perp both his rights and the instruction sheet that comes with an electric cattle prod. And then, one at a time, perhaps even counting them down, Officer Thibodeaux loads a series of batteries – “Three…two…one.…”

And if the free spirit still refuses, then spectators would be treated to the sound of a new invention, the electric violin.

“I dunno, maestro; that sounded a little high-pitched to me.”

Eek.

“Y’know, officer, I’ve seen - and felt - the error of my ways. Would you be so kind as to hand me my dressing gown?”

The only real surprise here is that the exclusive-of-ornamentation street artist was a violinist. Generally, that’s the sort of thing you’d expect from trombonists and trumpeters, putting their brasses all out there.

-30-

How to Write a Book or Movie Review

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

How to Write a Book or Movie Review

Filler language is that collection of words and phrases which clutter our lives through constant repetition and subtle shifts in meaning, a collection which eventually comes to mean nothing. I mean, like, you know, that’s what I’m talking about.

The reviewers of books and films employ filler language in order praise a book without saying anything. Consider the thicket of words printed on the back of a new book or a DVD, and observe that they do not tell you anything about the book or movie itself, but only about the filters and limited vocabulary of the reviewer. Formal reviews are seldom much better.

Ten common examples of reviewer language as background noise include:

1. Blockbuster – what block is being busted? Is the block a literal block, or is it a metaphorical block? Who breaks the block? Why?

2. A must-read – who says you must read the book? What if you don’t want to read it? What are the punishments for not reading it?

3. This book will change your life forever – no, it won’t.

4. Gripping – well, yes, one is always happy to meet a book with a firm grip.

5. From the heart – this weak excuse indicates a poorly-written book – often me, me, me free-verse prosetry - with few positive qualities. But, hey, this emo-drivel is from the heart, so you have to like it.

6. Page-turner – well, yes, when we read books we turn the pages from time to time.

7. In the tradition of J. R. R. Tolkien – this means there are elves and magic swords, and, like, stuff, and the totally awesome video game is coming out next month. Dude.

8. Voice of a generation – translation: this book is as outdated as polyester bell-bottoms.

9. A story of redemption – the problem here is that most good stories are about redemption: The Brothers Karamazov, Huckleberry Finn, Crime and Punishment, the Narnia stories, The Book Thief, and just about any episode of Little House on the Prairie. What would be useful is for a reviewer to point out the rare story that is not predicated on redemption.

10. Laugh-out-loud – anyone who in a public place laughs out loud while reading a book is as weird that that lonely little man who talks back to the metal cricket clamped to his ear.

In sum, all these words and phrases say nothing about the book or movie and are the same old filler language we have heard so many times. When a film is advertised on the Orwellian telescreen you can often predict exactly what the deep-breathing narrator is going to say next because we have heard the same gush before. We have come to expect filler language and are comforted by it because its failure to saying anything useful or aesthetically pleasing is non-threatening.

Comfortable noises do not constitute communication.

-30-

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Las Vegas Strip?

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Las Vegas Strip?

Citizens in Las Vegas are as mad as wet settin’ hens to find, well, settin’ hens in their streets. Dead settin’ hens. Someone has been chopping off the heads of hens, roosters, and other species of birds and leaving the dead bodies, sometimes in piles, in the streets.

In Las Vegas a headless chicken is pretty much the ultimate topless experience.

Decapitated birds in the streets of Las Vegas might explain why old timers say The Flamingo isn’t what it used to be.

Naturally one wonders what happens to the heads. Do they appear as a featured dish in a famous casino buffet? For lunch the careful diner had better avoid the chicken soup and go with Viva Las Veggies.

Only a few months ago the piles of rotting, headless chickens in the streets would have been George Bush’s fault, but now folks are pretty sure that Vladimir Putin is lurking in wait for careless chickens walking back to their hotels after an evening of gambling at The Chicken Nugget.

Or maybe it’s a question on a Dartmouth College math test: “If Susie has five dead chickens and Bobby has seven dead chickens, why is the privileged male always empowered to have more dead chickens?”

Some have speculated that the piles of foul fowls decaying around the potholes are the result of certain religious rituals.

Duane Reece, who bills himself as a priest, told the local CBS station that animal sacrifices are simply the way a believer cleanses the body. He said nothing about why the streets should not also be clean. But he must be a real priest because he said he is, and his photograph shows a man with the requisite dress-code chin-fuzz and a pair of happening gas-station sunglasses.

The Las Vegas police have a crack squad of chicken inspectors on the job. They lurk in fashionable coffee shops and keep their ears open for any suspicious character who orders a cup of decap. Decap, get it? Decap?

The police have positioned brave and experienced officer Foghorn Leghorn as a decoy near a Kentucky Fried Chicken frequented by known Elvis impersonators, while Clara Cluck is in the witness protection program.

If the dead fowl are because of a gang war of chicken against chicken (it’s a chicken-ring-thing), processing any arrests could be a real problem for the police technician who takes the finger prints. He’s really going to have to be up to scratch.

Las Vegas could soon be known not as Sin City but as Hen City.

In Las Vegas the party never stops. The chickens do, of course.

Las Vegas – the city that never cheeps.

Las Vegas - where your dreams take wings, but the chickens don’t.

But, hey, we all know that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. And rots in the streets.

The terror might not be limited to Las Vegas. Please stay safe when you drive home tonight. You never know if there’s a Rhode Island Red out there with your name on it.

-30-

Decoration Day

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
26 May 2014

Decoration Day

Poor graves are decorated well enough:
Spring sunlight falls in halos on these stones
Which wear as battle-honors aged lichens,
And rusted bits of wire from long-dead wreaths

The unknown graves are laurelled best of all:
Forever lost beneath some parking lot
Or accidentally ploughed yet further still
Into the mists, and closest, now, to God

The Sea-Road to Constantinople

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

The Sea-Road to Constantinople

For Tod on his Birthday

A coastal lugger wallows in the waves
Almost adrift in its poor steerageway
Slow-yawing northeast from the blue Aegean
Into the soft-murmuring Marmara.
Athens is in the past, and soon, ahead,
Constantinople’s walls will catch the dawn.
Our sticks, our packs, a space upon the deck
A book of verse, a cup, a spoon, a bowl,
Some prayers the priest was pleased to copy out
For us poor pilgrims who with weary feet
Were pleased to board a northbound boat at last
And rest through sunlit days with pipes alight
And words and prayers afloat among the sails,
Among the gulls that circle ‘round the mast.
All travelers pray for their hearts’ desires
To wait for them ashore at journey’s end;
For us, ours is to serve the Emperor -
A little further, there beyond the stars.

King Herod Recycles

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

King Herod Recycles

How many dead Canadian babies does it take to make a pot of coffee?

In Oregon the question is not a crude two-in-the-morning bar joke. A CBS affiliate in Oregon, Breitbart News, the Associated Press, and other sources report that a county-owned incinerator in Oregon, in partnership with several private companies, including Covanta and Stericycle, accepts all sorts of waste for generating electricity. This waste includes medical waste from Canada, and this medical waste from Canada includes diseased human tissue, human body parts, and dead babies.

Live humans cannot cross the border between Canada and the United States without passports; cargos containing dead bodies as a feature of international trade are waved on through.

In Oregon, then, the faithful praying in remembrance of the Holy Innocents murdered by King Herod may well be reading the appointed scripture for that day’s liturgy by light provided by the incineration of more holy innocents.

Do joggers, hikers, bicyclists, and children playing outdoors in Marion County, Oregon occasionally sniff the air and wonder about the unusual smell?

When Allied soldiers liberated the hundreds of concentration camps in 1945 and among other Dante-esque scenes found fragments of human flesh and bones in the incinerators, those hellish visions haunted them for the rest of their lives. Now it’s called recycling.

Marion County commissioners were rightly appalled when they learned of this horror, and immediately told their suppliers to stop sending them dead babies as fuel. No blame can attach to the commissioners for not knowing earlier: when a county buys paving materials, paper, cleaning supplies, photocopiers, patrol cars, food for prisoners, and any of the thousands of other needful goods that make a local government entity function, it does not occur to the purchasing agent or commissioners to stipulate in the purchase orders that dead humans are not to be part of the supply chain.

Not until now, that is.

In the twisted world of environmentalism as an absolute imperative, burning oil or coal for energy is bad, but burning dead babies for energy is good. Apparently the smoke from burning bodies – a renewable resource – is harmless to the bunny rabbits and butterflies.

Well, that’s Oregon. What about us? Where does our electricity come from? What – or who - goes into our cosmetics, our perfumes, our food?

Impossible? Consider Marion County, Oregon.

There’s nothing good that can be said of King Herod, but not even he referred to his victims as fetal tissue and medical waste.


http://www.cbs12.com/news/top-stories/stories/vid_15269.shtml

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/04/24/Oregon-County-Orders-Incinerator-To-Stop-Using-Aborted-Babies-To-Generate-Power

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/fetal-tissue-used-power-oregon-homes



-30-

Hitler's Teacup

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Hitler’s Teacup

According to Canada’s National Post, a furniture outlet in Germany has been selling Chinese-made teacups decorated with roses, leaves, romantic sentiments, and a portrait of Adolf Hitler.

The seller protests that he didn’t know the cup was loaded, and that the Chinese manufacturer must have sneaked Hitler in. Oh, those wacky Chinese, anything for a gag, eh?

The cups are rather attractive as far as the roses and vegetation and florid writing go, but when one looks beyond the hearts and flowers, yes, there in the background, slightly fuzzed out, is old Toothbrush-Moustache himself on a reproduction of a postage stamp.

Hitler. You will remember, was a teasipper, a tee-totaler, a non-smoker, a wannabe artist, and a druggie who sported funny-looking facial hair and who checked his horoscope daily – in short, very much a hipster for our time.

One wonders what the Mussolini cup will look like. But why not go for the complete set of 20th-century mass-murderers? Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Mousey Dung, Stalin, Mussolini, Ayatollah Khomeini, Tito, Che Guevara, The Castro Brothers, the other boys in the band – how is it that some of our “rarer monsters” (Macbeth) are scorned, while others rate their own made-in-China tee-shirts, tote bags, and coffee mugs, huh?

Pity (or not) poor King Leopold of Belgium, for instance – a century ago he and his merry Belgians (now the rulers of Europe) perpetrated the deaths of millions of Africans. Even the other colonial powers were disgusted by genocidal Belgium. Yet the wannabe cool kids don’t sport King Leopold tees but rather the image of Che Guevara, whose death count is only about 30,000 prisoners and miscellaneous civilians. Even Ho Chi Minh tops Che, with some 200,000 of his fellow Vietnamese, including much of his home town, taken out in the early 1950s. Does Ho have his own tee-shirt or coffee mug? Nooooo. And, hey, he was a poet. He said so. Who can argue with a poet whose rhyme and meter are backed up by his death squads?

For those with a more Hegelian sense of tyrants, tailoring, and trends as a fusion of the inane and the irrelevant, The Daily Mail reports that the Topman Horace Coat that sells in England for 205 pounds (over $300) features a purported symbol of a Croatian SS division. Others point out that the squiggly thing is an ancient Odal rune, whatever that is. Somebody else said that the thingie purported to be an Odal rune is so obscure, and the patch on the jacket so misshapen, that no one could have connected the jacket with the SS except by a bizarre stretch of the eyeballs.

What is very clear to any observer of any political bent is that the Topman Horace Coat is chupacabra-ugly, looking for all the world – the fashion world - as if some Nibelung had gathered up all the scraps of cloth, leather, and rubber from a sweat shop floor after a hard day of oppressing third-world workers, mashed them (the sweepings, not the workers) all together with liberal glops of glue, and called it a trend.

And the people all yipped “Iconic!” while saluting with their Barclay Cards.

In sum, the really happenin’ people, cooler than you’ll ever be, can shoal up against the latte counter in the morning, all wearing their Croatian SS coats, and order a cup of herbal tea with a picture of a tyrant on it.

Well, maybe the tea will help them with their cultural amnesia.

-30-

Passover, a Blood Moon, and a Debt

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Passover, a Blood Moon, and a Debt

On Passover, we will see a (gasp) Blood Moon in the sky, and so the world is coming to an end again. On the ‘net there’s a picture of a real big Blood Moon behind the Moscow Kremlin, so it must be so.

Yes, the End Times are back, according to Reverend 1-800-501C3 on the Orwellian telescreen, so send him money. The End Times are always hanging around, leeching onto you like that fellow who approaches you in the parking lot and tells you he ran out of gas on his way to his mother’s funeral in Waco. The next time you see him he’s taking his child (cue the sad child who knows darned well to keep his mouth shut or else) to the hospital in Houston and the car’s transmission went out, and brother, can you spare a twenty God bless you sir?

The year 1999 was an especially profitable season for End Times, what with mysterious glowing chupacabras in the sky spelling out 999 (which is even worse than 666) in Babylonian hieroglyphics, coded signals from Fred Phelps’ basement, and crudely-illustrated Jack Chick pamphlets telling you that you’re going to (Newark) anyway, so don’t even bother trying.

Hey, why read the Bible when you’ve got Jack Chick, eh?

When the sun rose on 1 January 2000, some folks climbed down from their roofs, consulted The Voices, whapped themselves on the forehead (“Wow, I could have had a Julian calendar!”), and said, “Oh, wait – we miscalculated. 2000 is the end of the millennium, so, like, the end of the world is coming next year. Really!”

Anyway, on the ‘net this week somebody said that somebody said that somebody else said that we’ve got a tetrad coming. Whatever a tetrad is. And so with the tetrad comes the End Times, and this time – or end time - they really mean it, okay?

And yet – and yet Easter will come again this year. The Altar will be set right after the grim Triduum, and on Sunday morning spring flowers and morning sunlight will supplant the darkness of Good Friday. Local ministers and priests (Chaucer’s “parsouns”) will tell again a 2,000-year-old story because they look to God, not to Hi-Def images of Reverend 1-800-501C3, for the truth.

After the liturgy there will be merriment, dinner on the grounds (which really isn’t on the grounds, but in the hall), and an easter-egg hunt (which really is on the grounds, unless there is rain, in which case it will be in the hall).


The nice man who mows the church lawns will mutter for months (for this now is effectively a part of the liturgical calendar) about the lawnmower blades finding undiscovered plastic eggs and, worse, real eggs in an advanced state of malodorous decay.

But it’s all told much better in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture (except for the undiscovered eggs ripening through Ordinary Time), the sequence from Good Friday through Holy Saturday to Easter morning, followed by a happy feast.

In the evening we can again watch Charlton Heston lead the children of Israel out of the brickpits and into the desert, still fascinated even though we know how it ends. Great stories are like that.

Easter – or Pascha, if you prefer - beats superstition, including the laughable blood moon, all hollow. And you don’t have to send money to anyone – in every way, the debt has been paid.

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The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Knife Collection

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Knife Collection

The first exhibit at the new George W. Bush Presidential Library on the campus of Southern Methodist University is a new metal detector celebrating American freedom. The visitor freely surrenders any metal objects and places them in a little plastic basket to be scrutinized electronically while he or she freely passes through the electronic confessional for the revelation of any hidden secrets.

The library staff are pleasant and somewhat apologetic about the procedure; the polyester polizei less so. After all, no American lad dreams of growing up to wear a cheap uniform and proctology gloves while living out his dream of handing out plastic baskets and looking at people’s metal objects on a little Orwellian telescreen.

The website (http://www.georgewbushlibrary.smu.edu/en/Visit/Plan-Your-Museum-Visit.aspx) is clear that all visitors will subject themselves to electronic search, and that “any weapons will be confiscated by security staff and not returned.” Said “weapons” include, by name, Swiss Army®, Gerber®, and Leatherman® shiny things.

One wonders why Swiss Army, Gerber, and Leatherman are singled out as special menaces to the Republic.

The buildings are handsome and functional, much influenced by Bauhaus and to a lesser extent by Art Deco. The main hall features a high clerestory which provides most of the illumination.

In this area the exhibits, unimaginatively displayed, are gifts to President and Mrs. Bush by many nations. Russia gave a huge silver samovar breasted with the double-eagle of the Romanovs, whom the current government’s predecessors had shot, including the children and their pet dog.

The observer also, well, observes among the presidential gifts (while shaking off the half-life of any lingering mysterious rays from the security scans) the presidential swords, daggers, and knives. Swiss Army®, Gerber®, and Leatherman® are not among them.

The reproduction of the Oval Office is very well done, and since everything in it is a reproduction, touching is permitted. You can even sit in the reproduction presidential chair behind the reproduction Resolute desk (feet down, please), and play with the reproduction presidential telephone, which is not red.

And where is the reproduction bust of Winston Churchill?

Not on exhibit is even one of the many White House computers vandalized by the classy Clinton staff on their last day in office in January of 2001.

The exhibits are well accomplished, though one must explore the usual Minoan labyrinths – is this a dead end, or can I go forward, or must I go back? - and interesting, especially to the lover of American history but also for those with only a casual interest. The George H. W. Bush Library in the Holy City of College Station offers much more, but the George W. Bush Library at SMOO (for SMU, Southern Methodist University) is new and somewhat raw, and will expand.

The gift shop is small, poorly stocked, and expensive. For eight dollars you can buy a little wooden stick purported to be a bookmark. A little wooden stick that reads “The George W. Bush Presidential Library” is still, in the end, only a little wooden stick. For eight dollars.

One of the books for sale is The Brothers Karamazov., and it is listed on a photocopied leaflet as one of “Mrs. Laura Bush’s Family Favorites.”

One does not imagine any family sitting by the fire on a winter night and taking turns reading The Brothers Karamazov to each other, but Mrs. Bush is of a literary bent, and so is President Bush, though he takes Texas pains to hide it. Mrs. Bush says this is her favorite book, as does Mrs. Clinton, which could lead to an interesting debate topic in the next election cycle.

Moderator: “Senator, if you are elected president, which translation of The Brothers Karamazov will you promote as more accurately reflecting Dostoyevsky’s original Russian, the older Constance Garnett or the modern Peaver-Volokhonsky?”

Finally, the true center of the George W. Bush Library is a memorial to the thousands who were murdered on 9/11/01. And this is where all the museum jokes slink away, for here are suspended fragments of huge steel beams, perhaps twenty feet high, burnt and twisted. And this is why you’ve come. This is where you remember. This is where you put the camera away. This is where the goofs who wear their hats indoors remove them. This is where you stop talking. Not because you are told to do so, but because over 2,753 people from 60 nations deserve this of all of us.

“Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord…”

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The Pegwinders

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Pegwinders

There are music lovers who would almost rather gnaw off an arm than endure yet another photocopied, overmixed, overproduced discount-store sound. And one can understand – country-and-western music is at present sodden with derivative hat-acts and three-chord commandos whose music is as lacking in creativity as their publicity stills.

And yet there are always a few rebels who don’t simply follow and imitate, but who with talent, discipline, and respect for their audience take an artistic tradition and make some seriously new noise with it. One group making a wonderful new contribution to folk culture is The Pegwinders.

Sure, they continue a musical tradition, but it’s a good old tradition born of pine trees, river bottoms, sawmills, farms, oil wells, machine shops, dirt roads, bare feet, some dogs in the front yard, church on Sunday, and knowing where you came from.

The fusion of blues, folk, rock, and hillbilly did not begin with Nashville in the 1950s; it originated much earlier in Kirbyville, Texas with Ivory Joe Hunter, who needs no adjectives. Nor is this an ossified tradition; East Texas is rich with young musicians whose hands are as skilled with wrench, saw, and plow as they are with fretboard, capo, and pick, with truck scales as well as musical scales. Blessed with formal instruction in church, school, or in private lessons, and informal pickup sessions at home and, yes, in that famous garage, fresh voices celebrate the culture given to them by mastering it and then pushing it forward in bold new ways.

Thus it is with The Pegwinders.

Sarah Rose Fusell is the brains, the beauty, and the voice – or The Voice – of The Pegwinders. When you hear that sweet, powerful, disciplined delivery, well, sure, the guys are great, but Sarah is the heart of the set.

Steve Fussell, the concussionist, can make the drums and cymbals sing as smoothly as a V-8 engine, for this master mechanic knows his way around all of them.

Cory Horton is the bass man, as in, yeah, that’s a BASS, man!

Colby Tharp is a triple threat with voice, guitar, and the harmonica, an underrated little instrument often relegated to a cliché background noise in prison movies. In the hands of this master, the harmonica sings like the winds through the pine tops on an autumn day.

Brady Barnett is a keyboardist who can gentle from the keys the softness of a spring morning and then make them stand up and howl like nobody’s Nashville business.

Sarah, Steve, Cory, Colby, and Brady are hardworking artists who as The Pegwinders make music, make happiness, and make history.

Yeah, they’re that good.

You can hear The Pegwinders at the Jasper Lions’ Club Rodeo on Thursday night, May 8th. Someday you can say with pride “I knew them when….”

http://www.reverbnation.com/thepegwinders

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/jasper/news/article/The-Pegwinders-will-perform-May-8th-at-the-Jasper-5438938.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF7ckZczvK0

http://kreenewsdaily.tumblr.com/post/84244427954

http://www.jasperlionsrodeo.com/

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