Snarl for the Camera - weekly column for 17 October 2019

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Snarl for the Camera

Once upon a Kodak time when the children were shoo-shooed into the yard for a family picture, the artistic command was “SMILE FOR THE CAMERA!”

Given the perception that camera film was very slow and wouldn’t work in the shade (in fact, ASA400 was common by the 1950s, and works very well in cloudy light), everyone one was made to grin into the fiercest sun and try to look happy about it through tears.

The artistic command for portraiture today appears to be “SNARL FOR THE CAMERA!”

For reasons best known to The Little People I receive occasional electrical ads from Canada Goose, the manufacturer of very reputable and very, very expensive coats and accessories for snow people.

The most recent Canada Goose ad featured a number of handsome / beautiful young adults sporting very nice coats and looking as if the photographer had just said some rude things about their mothers.

I just gotta say that if I were permitted to wear a Canada Goose coat (useful about once every two years here in East Texas – must be climate change) I’d be awfully happy about it.

A brief look around the InterGossip reveals that most pictures of adults, especially clothing ads, are all cranky and snarly these days. Apparently, happiness indicates a lack of artistry or coolness or something. If you don’t make a face like you have to go to the euphemism RIGHT NOW you just aren’t getting art and fashion right.

However, kid pix seem more joyful, whether a toddler at play or a high school athletic or academic team proudly showing their medals after a win.

And, no, grumpy-coots, I have never seen a participation medal. Those appear to exist only in the minds of the a.m. radio boys.

I once got a ribbon for second place in a junior high spelling bee. No one took my picture, though.

People still take pictures of their subjects lined up against a wall as if there’s going to be an execution. Try to have the subjects in the open with a field or woods off in the distance, and without a telephone pole appearing to grow from someone’s head. Give the auto-focus time to work, and take lots of shots from different angles. Something will come out right

Also, a cloudy day is much kinder to skin tones and all the colors of creation; bright sun washes all that out.

Finally, there’s already too much snarling in the world; a smile for the camera is sometimes just right.

-30-

Error 502 - The Machine Speaks of the Future of Poetry - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Error 502 – The Machine Speaks of the Future of Poetry

What would Elizabeth Bishop say?

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On the Nature of Real Things - Weekly Column 10 October 2019

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

On the Nature of Things

In the first century the Roman philosopher Lucretius wrote Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), which I have not read and probably never will read.

Nevertheless, the title is useful in itself for considering reality.

Last week y’r ‘umble scrivener read in an automotive magazine a review of a specialty electric vehicle. The reviewer noted, among the car’s other purported virtues, that an electric car does not pollute.

One would assume that a writer for an auto magazine would know better. One would assume in error.

Electric cars pollute. A lot.

A rechargeable vehicle requires multiple heavy-duty batteries, and the mining of the raw materials for batteries, the manufacturing of the batteries, and the safe disposal of the batteries at the end of their usefulness require much expenditure of those mean ol’ fossil fuels in generating energy for those processes.

More than that, the electricity necessary for charging and recharging the batteries that make the car go for a few miles ultimately come from, yes, those beastly coal-fired, nuclear-powered, or oil-powered generating plants.

My father once said that there are people who think that milk comes from the grocery store.

Similarly, there are people – one of them a writer in a technical magazine – who think that electricity comes from that little rectangle on the wall.

Fossil fuels are wonderful. Extracting them is labor-intensive, but they are so efficient in providing us energy and building our economy that they pay for that many times over.

Oil and coal are not only about powering our machines; they also are the bases for medicines, chemicals, eyeglass frames, computer cases, fans, windmills, solar panels, window frames and window panes, toothbrushes, notebooks, pens and the inks for them, telephones, safety devices, dyes, paints, flashlights, tools, watches, hoses, toys, scientific instruments, health care (Imagine the doctor saying, “I’ll just use my bare hands; those plastic gloves pollute.”), clothing, fishing rods, fishing lines, boat structures, camera…the list, as has been said, goes on and on. The perceptive reader of this excellent news can put the page down and look around to see all the wonderful things in his or her life whose structural origins are in the nifty atoms of oil and coal.

And, besides, the dinosaurs don’t need them anymore.

The sort of people who make an argument only through yelling at us often make an appeal to “science,” as if that Latin word for knowledge is some sort of magic incantation. When some shrill look-at-me-ista screams “Obey the science!” what she or he is really saying is, “I read it on some site on the GossipNet so it must be true! Obey me!”

If we want to know about cows, we ask farmers, not a little box made in China. You could take a turn milking Old Bessie (I’ve done it, thank you; Bessie and I parted company without a tear shed by either of us.). If we want to know about the efficiency of fuels we seek out the engineer and the chemist, not a little box made in China. If we want to know about cars, we ask the mechanic, not a little box made in China. If we want to be healed of a sickness or injury we ask the doctor or nurse practitioner, not Dr. Box from China.

Seeking knowledge from a little plastic box (made in China) that lights up and makes noises is futile. We learn only by studying, with our brains and our five senses, the nature of things as they are, not as they are programmed as images.

-30-

The President, Our Secular Lords, a Bishop, an Electronic Rosary, and a Drowning Bee

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The President, Our Secular Lords, a Bishop,

an Electronic Rosary, and a Drowning Bee

 

A Meditation While Walking on a Chilly Autumn Day

The President – he flails his mouth about
And like a 16-year-old in pigtails screams
His daily hatreds on the GossipNet
While his madcappers pump their plumpish fists

Our secular lords investigate each other
Enthroned like pale Inquisitors of old
Arrayed in outrage and well-tailored suits
And not averse (perhaps) to Ukrainian gold

His Grace the Bishop likes to buy nice things
The evangelium of the nicer shops
Each with a most discreet and helpful staff
While we confess environmental sins

The Vatican touts an electric Rosary 1
While with my stick I save a drowning bee


1 https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/vatican-promotes-smart-rosary-selling-for-109-72180

“The bluetooth and water-resistant digital rosary is currently available for pre-order sale on Amazon.it for 99 euros, roughly $109. It is sold by “Click to Pray” -- an initiative of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network.”

Even Chaucer’s Pardoner might find this a bit much.

A Not Especially Original Poem About October Rain

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Not Especially Original Poem About October Rain

This morning I had planned to clear and burn
More of that summer-fallen live-oak tree
That giver of firewood against the winter cold
(I have more warmth than I will need - want some?)

But the afternoon’s rain arrived at dawn
I am inside with coffee, books, and thoughts
And meditations upon the rhythms
Of raindrops as they dance upon the panes

This morning I had planned to clear and burn

But I have my books

And so will give this day a thoughtful turn

Welcome to the U.S.A. - rhyming doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Welcome to the U.S.A.!

Visit the U.S.A.! We are the best!
(But don’t forget your bulletproof vest)

The Icon on Your Desk - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Icon on Your Desk

We kiss the frame of an icon because
We pray for a Breath of the Eternal

We gaze upon an icon because
We pray for a Vision of the Eternal

We set a light before an icon because
We were given a Light to set

"For English, Press 1..." - rhyming doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“For English, press 1; for Spanish, press 2…”

But every caller speaks in an English tone –
Personne ne parle Français sur mon Anglophone!

Curating a Much-Need Curative for Curating - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Curating a Much-Needed Curative for Curating

To a Curator who Curates Everything

Today one reads that you curated tea
Before curating a bus into town
To curate your job at the coffee shop
And in the afternoon curating friends

Before curating to the artists’ loft
To continue curating the novel
You’ve been curating on for several months
While curating your classes and career

Your life is not a museum, you know
So DROP the CURATING; just let it GO

Existential Ankle Monitors - couplet

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Existential Ankle Monitors

We pay for our restraints, strap them to ourselves
And then we wonder why there is no joy

"...A Pool Where a Kelpie Lived" - a poem for children

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“…A Pool Where a Kelpie Lived”

“A little below the bridge was a pool where a kelpie lived.”

-Sigrid Unset, Kristin Lavransdatter, p. 8

If you are blessed with a little back yard
The smallest of gardens, a bit of grass
Then you have pixies and fairies and sprites
They like you, but they’re awfully shy, you know

If in your garden there is a little pool
Even a dish of water for the cat
Then you have a tiny kelpie or two
(And they are much nicer than you’ve been told)

In flower and leaf and water and soft night air -
Oh, yes, there is sweet magic everywhere

I Hate Bicyles - not exactly a poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

I Hate Bicycles

I hate bicycles.

I hate repairing bicycles.

I hate replacing bicycle tires.

I hate dismounting bicycle tires.

I hate mounting bicycle tires.

I hate inflating bicycle tires.

I hate barking my knuckles when the wrench slips.

I hate scraping my knuckles when the wrench doesn’t slip.

I hate the fire ants on whose mound I inadvertently sat while repairing the bicycle.

I hate fire ant bites.

I hate bicycles.

Listening to the radio while repairing, replacing dismounting, mounting, inflating, barking, and scraping is fun, though.

Dignity in a Genuflection - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Dignity in a Genuflection

Sunflowers do not bend toward the Sun; they genuflect
Which is exactly right for morning prayers
They have waited in place throughout the night
For His morning, and true enough, He comes

And through the day His liturgies of Light
Illuminating the letters and margins of life
With all the ornaments of Creation
Delight each flower in its work and play

Ordering all endeavors to great effect -
Sunflowers do not bend toward the Sun; they genuflect

Are You Going to the Parish Picnic? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Are You Going to the Parish Picnic?

Benedíc nos Dómine et haec Túa dóna quae de Túa largitáte súmus sumptúri.

Per Chrístum Dóminum nóstrum. Ámen.

Miz Busy with her homemade apple pies
Uncle Alfie lapsing into a snore
Young lads and lassies making goo-goo eyes
Miss Billie’s cookies (shhh…they’re from the store)

Children frolicking only with their ‘phones
Jolly old Ed basting burnt barbecue
An altar boy gorging until he groans
The teenagers’ gross game of choke and chew

Young marrieds getting into a squabble
Politics roaring like a thunderstorm
Bubba came drunk; he’s beginning to wobble
Tox ‘tater salad that’s gotten warm

Unidentifiable glop upon a stick –
No, I’m not going to the parish picnic

Telephone Service on Top of Mount Everest - rhyming doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Telephone Service on Top of Mount Everest

Thousands of meters high, and hardly a breath
A sales call there among the frozen scree
And if you fall there, screaming to your death
Are you charged an early termination fee?

Reclining Nude with Pet Frog - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Reclining Nude with Pet Frog

For a scribbler in that art magazine

           “…bodiless heads, green horses and violet grass, seaweed,
shells and funguses...conventionally arranged
 in the manner of Dali.”

-Evelyn Waugh, Put Out More Flags, pp. 31-32

Making messes is but poor huswifery
Tie-dyeing creativity into
A finger-painting school of assemblage
Asymbol’d: “Reclining Nude with Pet Frog”

In praise of working people and, like, stuff -
Your comrade cleaners whom you claim to love
Could tell you what a simp you are. They won’t
Because they need their jobs, dear precious poof

So, disappear your selfies into your ‘phone -
The 1960’s are over and gone

In Search of Lost Time and a Watch Battery - weekly column 10.4.19

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

In Search of Lost Time and a Watch Battery

Being among the last bearers of wristwatches, I occasionally need a watch battery, and these are difficult to find now.

Time is a curious concept. In one sense it can be said to be abstract, measurable only in observing the rotations and tilts of this shaky planet as it wobbles its elliptical orbit around the sun.

Christians perceive time as linear – it began with Creation and will end with Creation as God decides.

Other faith tradition say that time is a sort of cosmic sea, Samsara, and that life in its cycles of repetition is beyond time, sort of like waiting for an arrival or departure at Newark International Airport.

Before some clever German invented the clock, the measurement of time was dependent on where the sun was, and this varies greatly with the seasons. The monastic hours of lauds, prime, terce, sex, nones, vespers, compline, and matins regulated the day for monasteries and thus universities, businesses, and royal courts. However, monastic hours vary with the seasons, and, anyway, how can anyone determine compline and lauds on a rainy night?

When we speak of time we usually think of small and immediate measurements predicated on the solar day and broken up into hours, minutes, and seconds. Thus, while the concept of first light was (and remains) an appointed time for the beginning of a day on the farm, business appointments require more detailed measurements.

The Middle Ages (they are dark only to those who will not learn history) gave us all sorts of mechanical clocks thanks to the concept of fitting an escapement to geared wheels. The pocket watch, at first as bulky as a turnip, came later. And, really, who wants to carry a turnip around, even if it is an especially clever root crop specimen that can tell time?

Wrist watches enjoyed only a brief popularity. They were considered a sissy thing until the First World War, when manly men busy with rifles and bombs and geometrical tables for cannons needed quick access to a timepiece for properly scheduling the deaths of other men.

A hundred years later, and the wristwatch is mostly a historical curiosity, rather like London’s Big Ben. Most everyone checks the time by pulling from their pockets an electric telescreen which is bulkier and more to difficult to access than a pocket watch, but, hey, progress, right?

Still, time is fascinating, both in its measurement and in the abstract. We read that if we travel in space time alters, and that the accurate watches and clocks on a spaceship will, upon returning to earth, show a different time.

Whether or not space-time is fluid, it appears as a plot device in episodes of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek, and of course in Charlton Heston’s classic movie Planet of the Congressional Subcommittees: “Darn you! Darn you to Newark International Airport!”

My personal quest for a watch battery ended in despair, but a nice man manipulated a large brown delivery truck through one-dimensional space and with a fresh battery brought time back to my old eight-dollar Timex.

It’s about time.

-30-

How Dare You!? How Dare You!? How Dare You See What You Have Seen!? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

How Dare You See What You Have seen?

The dribbling Head in That Hideous Strength
A man behind a curtain, pulling cords
How many fingers, Winston, six or five?
Mrs. Wilson holding the president’s pen

Doctor Wakefield will see your children now
Sender Gleiwitz is very clear tonight
Reporting North Vietnamese attack boats
Sailing in crop circles to Area 51

A child abused upon The People’s throne

Go to the rostrum

We will tell you what to say

Bring Your Bible to School Day - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Bring Your Bible to School Day

Saint Matthew chapter 6, verses 1 through 4 -
They’re in the Bible too, and so much more

In Search of Lost Time and a Watch Battery - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

In Search of Lost Time and a Watch Battery

Time stops. The sweep hand seconds that no-motion
It fluttered in warning for several days
You were warned, and now you are out of time
That thing on your wrist is now but a weight

Oh, what is the nature of time? one asks
Oh, where is there a fresh 370?
The watch-opener reposes patiently
The tiny screwdrivers wait silently

Because without a 370 battery

(Which you can’t find in this town)

A watch is only useless tattery