Tuesday, July 28, 2020
Monday, July 27, 2020
A World Lit Only by Double-A Batteries - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A fashionable square plastic tick-tock clock
A pocket flashlight, a little radio
Hurricane lanterns positioned against the storms
The innards of bleep-bleeping smoke alarms
A police-scanner, toys, remote controls
Clever little sphygmomanometers
Bedtime book lights, magnifying glasses
Bubba-cap headlamps, tiny little fans
How many uses! Let us count the ways 2 -
Against the darkness flinging our double-A’s
1 Cf. A World Lit Only by Fire, William Manchester
2 Cf. Sonnet 43, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A World Lit Only by Double-A Batteries 1
A fashionable square plastic tick-tock clock
A pocket flashlight, a little radio
Hurricane lanterns positioned against the storms
The innards of bleep-bleeping smoke alarms
A police-scanner, toys, remote controls
Clever little sphygmomanometers
Bedtime book lights, magnifying glasses
Bubba-cap headlamps, tiny little fans
How many uses! Let us count the ways 2 -
Against the darkness flinging our double-A’s
1 Cf. A World Lit Only by Fire, William Manchester
2 Cf. Sonnet 43, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sunday, July 26, 2020
Book Shops Offer Us Civilizations - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Book shops offer us civilizations
Democracies of the living and the dead -
Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Langston Hughes,
and you
Over cups of coffee wrangle meter and rhyme
Book shops offer us civilizations
James Weldon Johnson, Keats, and Claude McKay
Are questioning Auden along Aisle 3
Yevtushenko scoffs at bureaucracy
Ahkmatova Stray Dogs the lot of us
Book shops offer us civilizations
And only an unhappy man who has lost his way
Obsesses on the bookseller’s DNA
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Book Shops Offer Us Civilizations
Book shops offer us civilizations
Democracies of the living and the dead -
Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Langston Hughes,
and you
Over cups of coffee wrangle meter and rhyme
Book shops offer us civilizations
James Weldon Johnson, Keats, and Claude McKay
Are questioning Auden along Aisle 3
Yevtushenko scoffs at bureaucracy
Ahkmatova Stray Dogs the lot of us
Book shops offer us civilizations
And only an unhappy man who has lost his way
Obsesses on the bookseller’s DNA
Saturday, July 25, 2020
Old Pete, a Mighty Hunter Before the Lord - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A cigar box of childhood photographs
And there he is, that mighty courser – Old Pete
Thunder-Tail-Thumper, pal of barefoot boys
Chaser of rabbits and tasty table scraps
Always up for a ramble to the pond
In the day-dreamy midsummer heat
Where I pole-fished for perch, and good old Pete
Drowsed in the shade, and looked at me with love
I buried him under his favorite oak
Where, with eternity, he waits for me
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Old Pete, a Mighty Hunter Before the Lord
A cigar box of childhood photographs
And there he is, that mighty courser – Old Pete
Thunder-Tail-Thumper, pal of barefoot boys
Chaser of rabbits and tasty table scraps
Always up for a ramble to the pond
In the day-dreamy midsummer heat
Where I pole-fished for perch, and good old Pete
Drowsed in the shade, and looked at me with love
I buried him under his favorite oak
Where, with eternity, he waits for me
Friday, July 24, 2020
A Celebration of Water-Hose Clamps - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Poets have been mysteriously silent 2
On the subject of water-hose clamps
Small cylinders or rings, threaded for compression
In mending or nozzling a garden hose
Thus if you have a clamp, you have a hose
In need of mending, and if you have a hose
You have a garden in need of watering
And if you have a garden, you are much blest
And in your garden you can drowse over a book
While meditating upon water-hose clamps
1 http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=PerseusLatinTexts&getid=1&query=Cic.%20Fam.%209.4
2 https://www.quora.com/What-did-G-K-Chesterton-mean-by-poets-have-been-mysteriously-silent-on-the-subject-of-cheese?share=1
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Celebration of Water-Hose Clamps
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
― Cicero 1
Poets have been mysteriously silent 2
On the subject of water-hose clamps
Small cylinders or rings, threaded for compression
In mending or nozzling a garden hose
Thus if you have a clamp, you have a hose
In need of mending, and if you have a hose
You have a garden in need of watering
And if you have a garden, you are much blest
And in your garden you can drowse over a book
While meditating upon water-hose clamps
1 http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=PerseusLatinTexts&getid=1&query=Cic.%20Fam.%209.4
2 https://www.quora.com/What-did-G-K-Chesterton-mean-by-poets-have-been-mysteriously-silent-on-the-subject-of-cheese?share=1
Thursday, July 23, 2020
When I was on the Faculty at Notre Dame... - weekly column
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Tom Morris is a modern American philosopher of such influence that he once persuaded a board or committee of august personages at Notre Dame that I should be on the faculty.
And I was.
For a few weeks one summer.
Along with a dozen or so other recipients of a summer National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship in the long ago.
Be impressed.
The maître d’ / headwaiter / manager of the faculty dining room was definitely not impressed, but that’s a story for another paragraph.
In illo tempore Dr. Morris (“Call me Tom”) was a professor of philosophy at Notre Dame, entrusted by President Reagan and William Bennett, then chairman – no human is a chair – of the National Endowment for the Humanities, to divert some of that endowment to a few mere high school teachers. Now Tom writes books, books of such great wisdom and clarity that you and I can understand them, and speaks to groups of the wise and the powerful (and possibly sometimes to the merely silly) all over the world.
And so it came to pass that I filled out forms and wrote essays and was chosen to participate in an NEH Summer Seminar to study philosophy with brilliant and funny Professor Morris at the University of Notre Dame.
A year or so later Tom asked several of us to read a draft of his work in progress, Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life.
My contribution is a comma on page 34. I’m very proud of that comma, so if you find that book please do look up my comma. You can then say that you know someone who made a significant contribution to a brilliant contemporary work of philosophy easily understood by all (even by me).
All this babbling is a too-long preface to a marvelous recent book by Tom, The Oasis Within. The book is a series of little lessons and thinking exercises framed in the story of a boy and his uncle on a camel caravan through Egypt in 1934.
The story can be read solely as a story, and it would be both diverting and useful, but the thinking reader will also consider the many questions about the meanings in one’s life and the nature of the good, the true, and the beautiful. In an unhappy time when discourse is pretty much limited to people screaming ill-considered absolutes at each other, we listen to young Walid and his Uncle Ali reflect on the events of each day progress in their journey, and their friends Hamid, Masoon (warrior and cook), Hakeem, Bancom, an unnamed lady of great wisdom, other travelers and business people, and treacherous (Boooo! Hissss!) Faisul.
In the end, Walid learns that he is a royal prince, but that adventure is developed further in the next book in the series, The Golden Palace and The Stone of Giza.
Every event in the story is of course itself and each chapter is centered on daily happenings along the way, but each is also representative of the challenges everyone faces in life and the need for careful observation followed by ethical and rational choices. Each chapter, then, can be considered as a leisurely daily lesson in perceiving, thinking, feeling, and developing logical solutions in pursuit of an ethical purpose.
The Oasis Within is not a religious book, nor is it antithetical to any religious faith, except perhaps to those who believe in The Lizard People and albino monks lurking in secret caves beneath the Pentagon.
A common misapprehension is that philosophy is an alternative to faith, which is simply not so. “Philosophy” is Greek for the love of wisdom, and wisdom is but careful observation and wise application. On pages 123 and 138, for instance, the consideration of a duality at first struck me through my filter of Christianity as sailing close to Manichaeism, and I quibble with the use of the terms “fate” and “destiny” on page 145, but then this book is not a religious text, and, after all, a happy and challenging debate on any topic is an essential of civilization.
When we install a new battery in the lawn mower or a car, there are but two choices about electrical polarity – we connect the cables and battery positive to positive and negative to negative. There is no trinitarian doctrine of the battery, and “positive” and “negative” in the context of a vehicle’s electrical system are not value judgments.
Thus it is with books of philosophy and conversations with Uncle Ali. We listen to each other and we learn from each other. If we scream at each other then nothing worthy is accomplished.
The Oasis Within is available from amazon.com as an inexpensive paperback.
And now, let us harken back to those golden days of yesteryear, when we
One day we chose to exercise a faculty privilege and enjoy lunch at the faculty club. We dressed up (in those Ye Olden Days, nice dresses for most of the women and blazers and ties for most of the men), and with our faculty cards in hand presented ourselves.
The courtesies and kindnesses extended to us by Professor Morris and, indeed, every academic we were privileged to meet at Notre Dame did not extend to the faculty club. The maître d’ / headwaiter / manager regarded us with the icy disdain of Bertie Wooster’s Aunt Agatha finding a caterpillar in her vichyssoise, and only after some persuasion and presentations of proofs of our specialness and a bit of standing our ground and refusing to go away were we hoi polloi (that’s like, you know, Greek, and, like, stuff) (the only Greek I know) grudgingly permitted to enter the dining room. The poor man did not tell us to wipe our feet or refrain from blowing our noses on the linen napkins, but we could tell that he was not anticipating appropriate demeanor from us.
In the event we enjoyed a perfectly nice lunch, lifted a glass in honor of our wise professor, discussed Blaise Pascal’s Pensees, (I had seen a working reproduction of his calculating machine, ca 1642, at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, but no one was impressed), and refrained from putting our feet on the table or throw bread rolls at anyone.
I think Uncle Ali would concur that not putting one’s feet on the table or throwing bread rolls at lunch comes under topic #6 of the Seven Secrets, about developing good character.
The headwaiter would probably agree.
http://www.tomvmorris.com/
http://ami19.org/Pascaline/IndexPascaline-English.html
Mhall46184@aol.com
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
When I was on the Faculty at Notre Dame…
Tom Morris is a modern American philosopher of such influence that he once persuaded a board or committee of august personages at Notre Dame that I should be on the faculty.
And I was.
For a few weeks one summer.
Along with a dozen or so other recipients of a summer National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship in the long ago.
Be impressed.
The maître d’ / headwaiter / manager of the faculty dining room was definitely not impressed, but that’s a story for another paragraph.
In illo tempore Dr. Morris (“Call me Tom”) was a professor of philosophy at Notre Dame, entrusted by President Reagan and William Bennett, then chairman – no human is a chair – of the National Endowment for the Humanities, to divert some of that endowment to a few mere high school teachers. Now Tom writes books, books of such great wisdom and clarity that you and I can understand them, and speaks to groups of the wise and the powerful (and possibly sometimes to the merely silly) all over the world.
And so it came to pass that I filled out forms and wrote essays and was chosen to participate in an NEH Summer Seminar to study philosophy with brilliant and funny Professor Morris at the University of Notre Dame.
A year or so later Tom asked several of us to read a draft of his work in progress, Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life.
My contribution is a comma on page 34. I’m very proud of that comma, so if you find that book please do look up my comma. You can then say that you know someone who made a significant contribution to a brilliant contemporary work of philosophy easily understood by all (even by me).
All this babbling is a too-long preface to a marvelous recent book by Tom, The Oasis Within. The book is a series of little lessons and thinking exercises framed in the story of a boy and his uncle on a camel caravan through Egypt in 1934.
The story can be read solely as a story, and it would be both diverting and useful, but the thinking reader will also consider the many questions about the meanings in one’s life and the nature of the good, the true, and the beautiful. In an unhappy time when discourse is pretty much limited to people screaming ill-considered absolutes at each other, we listen to young Walid and his Uncle Ali reflect on the events of each day progress in their journey, and their friends Hamid, Masoon (warrior and cook), Hakeem, Bancom, an unnamed lady of great wisdom, other travelers and business people, and treacherous (Boooo! Hissss!) Faisul.
In the end, Walid learns that he is a royal prince, but that adventure is developed further in the next book in the series, The Golden Palace and The Stone of Giza.
Every event in the story is of course itself and each chapter is centered on daily happenings along the way, but each is also representative of the challenges everyone faces in life and the need for careful observation followed by ethical and rational choices. Each chapter, then, can be considered as a leisurely daily lesson in perceiving, thinking, feeling, and developing logical solutions in pursuit of an ethical purpose.
The Oasis Within is not a religious book, nor is it antithetical to any religious faith, except perhaps to those who believe in The Lizard People and albino monks lurking in secret caves beneath the Pentagon.
A common misapprehension is that philosophy is an alternative to faith, which is simply not so. “Philosophy” is Greek for the love of wisdom, and wisdom is but careful observation and wise application. On pages 123 and 138, for instance, the consideration of a duality at first struck me through my filter of Christianity as sailing close to Manichaeism, and I quibble with the use of the terms “fate” and “destiny” on page 145, but then this book is not a religious text, and, after all, a happy and challenging debate on any topic is an essential of civilization.
When we install a new battery in the lawn mower or a car, there are but two choices about electrical polarity – we connect the cables and battery positive to positive and negative to negative. There is no trinitarian doctrine of the battery, and “positive” and “negative” in the context of a vehicle’s electrical system are not value judgments.
Thus it is with books of philosophy and conversations with Uncle Ali. We listen to each other and we learn from each other. If we scream at each other then nothing worthy is accomplished.
The Oasis Within is available from amazon.com as an inexpensive paperback.
And now, let us harken back to those golden days of yesteryear, when we
One day we chose to exercise a faculty privilege and enjoy lunch at the faculty club. We dressed up (in those Ye Olden Days, nice dresses for most of the women and blazers and ties for most of the men), and with our faculty cards in hand presented ourselves.
The courtesies and kindnesses extended to us by Professor Morris and, indeed, every academic we were privileged to meet at Notre Dame did not extend to the faculty club. The maître d’ / headwaiter / manager regarded us with the icy disdain of Bertie Wooster’s Aunt Agatha finding a caterpillar in her vichyssoise, and only after some persuasion and presentations of proofs of our specialness and a bit of standing our ground and refusing to go away were we hoi polloi (that’s like, you know, Greek, and, like, stuff) (the only Greek I know) grudgingly permitted to enter the dining room. The poor man did not tell us to wipe our feet or refrain from blowing our noses on the linen napkins, but we could tell that he was not anticipating appropriate demeanor from us.
In the event we enjoyed a perfectly nice lunch, lifted a glass in honor of our wise professor, discussed Blaise Pascal’s Pensees, (I had seen a working reproduction of his calculating machine, ca 1642, at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, but no one was impressed), and refrained from putting our feet on the table or throw bread rolls at anyone.
I think Uncle Ali would concur that not putting one’s feet on the table or throwing bread rolls at lunch comes under topic #6 of the Seven Secrets, about developing good character.
The headwaiter would probably agree.
http://www.tomvmorris.com/
http://ami19.org/Pascaline/IndexPascaline-English.html
-30-
What Are We Anti Today? - short poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Being against a man because he is
Against another man will not thus lead
A man to be a man for any man
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
What Are We Anti Today?
“’Cause we’re the people, and we just keep on a’dragging each other down.”
-as Ma Joad does not say in The Grapes of Wrath
Being against a man because he is
Against another man will not thus lead
A man to be a man for any man
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Frog Eggs in the Bees' Pool - MePhone Photograph 22 July 2020
Frogs are marvelous - they devour mosquitoes and other pests, and are biological markers: frogs are susceptible to pollution, so if you have frogs you have a clean environment.
Bees also are marvelous - without their pollination activity we would starve. They need fresh water, but since they can't take off from the water be sure to provide them with debris from which they can launch after they have refreshed themselves.
Silence Gives only Itself - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Those happy gifts of meditation given
Unify self in wise tranquility
Pondering transcendent reality
Considerations of eternal verities
Outside the fallenness of space and time
About that, and about false fate itself
Doubts sometimes must determinations
precede
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Silence
Gives only Itself
“What does it betoken, this silence?”
-Cromwell in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons
Those happy gifts of meditation given
Unify self in wise tranquility
Pondering transcendent reality
Inside the narratives of the
pensive mind
Defining through an absence of endeavorsConsiderations of eternal verities
Outside the fallenness of space and time
Mankind can never be masters of
fate
Reason shows us that Cassius
was wrongAbout that, and about false fate itself
Doubts sometimes must determinations
precede
Every occasion for reason is
just and fair -
Soft silences are beautiful and
rareTuesday, July 21, 2020
Coy Litotes - Haiku
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
By coy Litotes
Who were not unworthy of
Their reputation
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
We Were Diffidently Addressed
By coy Litotes
Who were not unworthy of
Their reputation
Monday, July 20, 2020
After the Wedding - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The night outside was cold; the fire was warm
And so was she, all golden in the light
That gentle light, a glass of wine in hand
Her eyes, her lips sweet tributes to God’s grace
We spoke of love, of what was good and true
And beautiful, of promises freely given
Of trust anointed through those promises
And then she put her glass aside, and whispered:
“I love you so much; you need only ask
Since now for you only will I slip off
my mask”
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
After the Wedding
The night outside was cold; the fire was warm
And so was she, all golden in the light
That gentle light, a glass of wine in hand
Her eyes, her lips sweet tributes to God’s grace
We spoke of love, of what was good and true
And beautiful, of promises freely given
Of trust anointed through those promises
And then she put her glass aside, and whispered:
“I love you so much; you need only ask
Since now for you only will I slip off
my mask”
Sunday, July 19, 2020
A Tyburn Tree in Diebus Nostris - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
This summer seems to be a Tyburn Tree
Everything upright connects to crossing beams
Whose angles cancel every aspiration
In a suspension of time, of thought, of hope
This summer seems to be a Tyburn Tree
Everything horizontal paused in place
Resting upon the uprights locked in theirs
In a suspension of all purposes
This summer seems to be a Tyburn Tree
Where our uncertainties together hang
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Tyburn Tree in Diebus Nostris
This summer seems to be a Tyburn Tree
Everything upright connects to crossing beams
Whose angles cancel every aspiration
In a suspension of time, of thought, of hope
This summer seems to be a Tyburn Tree
Everything horizontal paused in place
Resting upon the uprights locked in theirs
In a suspension of all purposes
This summer seems to be a Tyburn Tree
Where our uncertainties together hang
Saturday, July 18, 2020
Your Browser is No Longer Supported - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poetricdrivel.blogspot.com
Thank you for visiting asymmetrical.
Business’n’homesolutions.plop
You are using a heritage legacy
Browser HELP CENTER that worked just fine and
met
All your home and business needs but which some
Shaven-headed twit in a cartoon tee
Ditched because he had nothing better to do
In Waycool California which may impact
Your reading experience for the best experience
We recommend you access the newer than new
XtreemShockWaveOneFormatToRuleThem
Golly Gosh Browser that we trust you will find
To be user hostile, difficult to load,
Confusing, HELP CENTER, oblique, and obtuse
Our most obvious feature is to make
It almost impossible to import
All your tabs and addresses and connections
Because we are in the 21st century
And we must come together all as one
Because you had nothing better to do
Today except PRIVACY CENTER HA
Spend hours rattling the computer keys
Only for us to say you were unsuccessful
And you must start all over HELP CENTER
mhall46184@aol.com
poetricdrivel.blogspot.com
Your Browser is No Longer Supported
Thank you for visiting asymmetrical.
Business’n’homesolutions.plop
You are using a heritage legacy
Browser HELP CENTER that worked just fine and
met
All your home and business needs but which some
Shaven-headed twit in a cartoon tee
Ditched because he had nothing better to do
In Waycool California which may impact
Your reading experience for the best experience
We recommend you access the newer than new
XtreemShockWaveOneFormatToRuleThem
Golly Gosh Browser that we trust you will find
To be user hostile, difficult to load,
Confusing, HELP CENTER, oblique, and obtuse
Our most obvious feature is to make
It almost impossible to import
All your tabs and addresses and connections
Because we are in the 21st century
And we must come together all as one
Because you had nothing better to do
Today except PRIVACY CENTER HA
Spend hours rattling the computer keys
Only for us to say you were unsuccessful
And you must start all over HELP CENTER
Friday, July 17, 2020
Leslie - Disappeared
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
That happy child we used to see at Mass
First communion, confirmation, nice kid
She played the trumpet in the high school band
Then off to the city in her springtime of life
No one seems to know where her body is
Not until after the mandated autopsy
She’s probably stacked with all the others
A refrigerator truck in some parking lot
The President enjoyed his golf game today
Cheerful, and optimistic about the elections
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Leslie - Disappeared
“…a nameless number on a list that was afterwards mislaid.”
Evgraf in Doctor Zhivago
That happy child we used to see at Mass
First communion, confirmation, nice kid
She played the trumpet in the high school band
Then off to the city in her springtime of life
No one seems to know where her body is
Not until after the mandated autopsy
She’s probably stacked with all the others
A refrigerator truck in some parking lot
The President enjoyed his golf game today
Cheerful, and optimistic about the elections
Thursday, July 16, 2020
Putting on a Bold Texas Face Against CV-19 - weekly column
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
My latest washable mask is from the skilled fingers of a local young woman artisan who crafted it with variations on our Lone Star Flag. When I drive into town on errands I’m not only doing my small part for the safety of others I’m also showing my loyalty to our Republic.
May God bless Texas and may He confuse all her enemies.
An axion of country life in Texas is that a man isn’t fully dressed without his pocketknife. So it was, so it is, so it will be.
And, no, a pocketknife is not a weapon, although as with any other tool (possibly not a tape measure) it can be used as such. A pocketknife is a tool for work, which is possibly what confuses the keyboard commandos and the perpetually outraged who want to ban everything they don’t understand.
Another tool without which a man is not fully dressed for the present is his face mask. Masks can be used by packs of unmanly losers who hide their cowardly mugs while robbing an unarmed store clerk, but that is not what masks are for.
A mask is not about the wearer at all; a mask is about a man’s protectiveness of those whose health is vulnerable to the That Bug (or whatever it is the tubers are calling it this week). Protecting the vulnerable is what men do, the whole “women and children first” thing.
If you think you look silly with a mask, well, that’s pretty much irrelevant because when you wear a mask, a sick child or a recent transplant patient or your Meemaw or Pawpaw along the chain of being will NOT die.
I look pretty darned silly without a mask anyway, so that’s another reason for me, at least, to wear one.
Surgeons wear masks, as do nurses, technicians, and the EMTs who came out to the house in the middle of the night when your mama fell. The masks aren’t for the health-care providers, who are in the peak of health; the masks are to protect your mama. You love your mama, don’t you?
A surgeon or EMT doesn’t argue against wearing masks based on some specious claim about some amendment, nor does he or she have any problem breathing and working and saving lives while wearing them. It’s about duty.
Look, I don’t like masks. I don’t like wearing them. I don’t like going back to the truck for a mask because I forgot it. Masks make my glasses fog. Masks smell funny.
And, sure, those are sorrows right up there with mass murder or mass starvation or desert warfare in Whosedumbideawasthisistan.
Yep, you probably look pretty silly in a mask. So deal with it. Suck it up. Saddle up. Man up. Ride to the sound of the guns. Wear your mask.
A little history re masks:
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2020/07/photos-influenza-masks-1918/614272/?utm_source=&silverid-ref=NTQ1Mjk2NDIyMjYwS0
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Putting on a Bold Texas Face Against CV-19
My latest washable mask is from the skilled fingers of a local young woman artisan who crafted it with variations on our Lone Star Flag. When I drive into town on errands I’m not only doing my small part for the safety of others I’m also showing my loyalty to our Republic.
May God bless Texas and may He confuse all her enemies.
An axion of country life in Texas is that a man isn’t fully dressed without his pocketknife. So it was, so it is, so it will be.
And, no, a pocketknife is not a weapon, although as with any other tool (possibly not a tape measure) it can be used as such. A pocketknife is a tool for work, which is possibly what confuses the keyboard commandos and the perpetually outraged who want to ban everything they don’t understand.
Another tool without which a man is not fully dressed for the present is his face mask. Masks can be used by packs of unmanly losers who hide their cowardly mugs while robbing an unarmed store clerk, but that is not what masks are for.
A mask is not about the wearer at all; a mask is about a man’s protectiveness of those whose health is vulnerable to the That Bug (or whatever it is the tubers are calling it this week). Protecting the vulnerable is what men do, the whole “women and children first” thing.
If you think you look silly with a mask, well, that’s pretty much irrelevant because when you wear a mask, a sick child or a recent transplant patient or your Meemaw or Pawpaw along the chain of being will NOT die.
I look pretty darned silly without a mask anyway, so that’s another reason for me, at least, to wear one.
Surgeons wear masks, as do nurses, technicians, and the EMTs who came out to the house in the middle of the night when your mama fell. The masks aren’t for the health-care providers, who are in the peak of health; the masks are to protect your mama. You love your mama, don’t you?
A surgeon or EMT doesn’t argue against wearing masks based on some specious claim about some amendment, nor does he or she have any problem breathing and working and saving lives while wearing them. It’s about duty.
Look, I don’t like masks. I don’t like wearing them. I don’t like going back to the truck for a mask because I forgot it. Masks make my glasses fog. Masks smell funny.
And, sure, those are sorrows right up there with mass murder or mass starvation or desert warfare in Whosedumbideawasthisistan.
Yep, you probably look pretty silly in a mask. So deal with it. Suck it up. Saddle up. Man up. Ride to the sound of the guns. Wear your mask.
A little history re masks:
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2020/07/photos-influenza-masks-1918/614272/?utm_source=&silverid-ref=NTQ1Mjk2NDIyMjYwS0
-30-
Praying for Rain on Saint Swithin's Day - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Oh, yes, there are pale necromancers still
Like poor Macbeth’s witches summoning facts
That rise like bloated corpses to the surface
Of strange electromechanical cauldrons
But we consult the winds, the clouds, the stars
Whose songs and shapes and brilliant silences
Allow us to savor all mysteries
The hymns of Creation from long ago
Some look into little cauldrons for the rain
But we look up expectantly to God
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Praying for Rain on Saint Swithin’s Day
Oh, yes, there are pale necromancers still
Like poor Macbeth’s witches summoning facts
That rise like bloated corpses to the surface
Of strange electromechanical cauldrons
But we consult the winds, the clouds, the stars
Whose songs and shapes and brilliant silences
Allow us to savor all mysteries
The hymns of Creation from long ago
Some look into little cauldrons for the rain
But we look up expectantly to God
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
The Vain Hope of Ascending to Heaven Upon Clouds of Toilet Paper - Doggerel
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
We mourn the passing of poor Joe Draper
Crushed by falling cases of toilet paper
And though poor Joe had fever, ‘flu, and gout,
It was the toilet paper that wiped him out
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Vain Hope of Ascending to Heaven Upon Clouds of Toilet Paper
A Brief Discourse in Doggerel Verse Upon the False Hopes and Vanities of Hoarding
in Which it is Hoped that Young and Old Will Suffer Themselves to be Wisely Instructed
Upon Certain Errors and Perils. Amen.
We mourn the passing of poor Joe Draper
Crushed by falling cases of toilet paper
And though poor Joe had fever, ‘flu, and gout,
It was the toilet paper that wiped him out
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
A Pocket Notebook Found in an Old Coat - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
1. Memos to myself in the long ago:
McKuen asks me for my autograph
Cohen offers me one of his coolest hats
Or maybe that famous blue raincoat
Pushkin’s spirit challenges me to a duel
Book-signing in Harrod’s on Saturday
An invitation from the Bishop of Rome
For the same day as the Queen’s garden party
I need to find full-dress for the Nobel
2. Memo to myself now:
Well, maybe next year in Jerusalem -
I always keep my passport up to date
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Pocket Notebook Found in an Old Coat
1. Memos to myself in the long ago:
McKuen asks me for my autograph
Cohen offers me one of his coolest hats
Or maybe that famous blue raincoat
Pushkin’s spirit challenges me to a duel
Book-signing in Harrod’s on Saturday
An invitation from the Bishop of Rome
For the same day as the Queen’s garden party
I need to find full-dress for the Nobel
2. Memo to myself now:
Well, maybe next year in Jerusalem -
I always keep my passport up to date
Monday, July 13, 2020
Woods Spider at Dusk - MePhone Photograph
The larger spider is about the size of an adult human's hand. The next morning there were more small spiders, presumably the larger spider's offspring.
The Congress of Vienna Sausage - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
How strange to find that we are Metternichs
Among a scape of crumbling institutions
Of cracked and weedy streets, with last night’s screams
Souring in the searing, soulless midday sun
Our dreams deferred, our works falling apart
The processes of being that seemed resolved
Now knotted and tangled beyond all knowing
Our spiritual compasses pointing back at us
But we are here, with shovels, buckets, and brooms,
Lifting the CAUTION tapes, and cleaning up
Again
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/what-was-congress-vienna
https://www.britannica.com/event/Congress-of-Vienna
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/the-congress-of-vienna/
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Congress of Vienna Sausage
How strange to find that we are Metternichs
Among a scape of crumbling institutions
Of cracked and weedy streets, with last night’s screams
Souring in the searing, soulless midday sun
Our dreams deferred, our works falling apart
The processes of being that seemed resolved
Now knotted and tangled beyond all knowing
Our spiritual compasses pointing back at us
But we are here, with shovels, buckets, and brooms,
Lifting the CAUTION tapes, and cleaning up
Again
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/what-was-congress-vienna
https://www.britannica.com/event/Congress-of-Vienna
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/the-congress-of-vienna/
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