Lawrence Hall, HSG
What Did Jesus Look Like?
What did Jesus look like when
He was on earth?
He looks just like the boy or
man you’ll meet next
What did Mary look like when
she was on earth?
She looks just like the girl
or woman you’ll meet next
Tuesday, August 8, 2023
What Did Jesus Look Like? - poem
Sunday, August 6, 2023
Wordle for Klingons - doggerel
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Wordle for Klingons
Let the captain win now; he
is one of your betters -
Revenge is a dish best served
with five letters
Saturday, August 5, 2023
The Fuel Pump Screen Queen - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
The Fuel Pump Screen Queen
She’s fresh and lovely on the television screen
Promoting a recipe for a sugar-free treat
And fashion tips for being In The Scene -
Her face on the fuel pump is ever so sweet
She looks so summery in her fashion tee
As gasoline vapors waft through the air
She whispers a makeup hint only to me
And the best techniques for brushing my hair
She speaks to me so charming and nicely
That I forget the fuel dials spinning so pricely
Wednesday, August 2, 2023
Gearing Up for School Which is Just Around the Corner - poem
Lawrence Hall
Gearing Up for School
Which is Just Around the Corner
School is forever gearing up or winding down
And if school is not around the corner
Then summer takes that very same turn instead
With back-to-school sales beginning in June
Children wheedle their moms for the coolest sneaks
And shopping carts are heavy with pens in packs
Yellow pencils, notebooks, scissors, and glue
Construction paper, adhesive tape, tissues
Lunchboxes, paper sacks, term calendars -
While in a lonely room
A pathetic little man polishes his Glock
Tuesday, August 1, 2023
Unidentified Flying Obfuscations - poem
Unidentified Flying
Obfuscations
Our Texas government plans to censor our books
(But look
at the bright shiny UFOs)
Our newspapers are falling like autumn leaves
(But look at the bright shiny UFOs)
Our border is guarded by barbed wire and floaties
(But look at the bright shiny UFOs)
Our TV channels tell us what to think
(But look at the bright shiny UFOs)
Our senators are beyond their sell-by dates
(But look at the bright shiny UFOs)
Our representatives are puerile potty-mouths
(But look at the bright shiny UFOs)
Our children are shot dead in our schools and streets
(But Congress
holds hearings on UFOs)
Sunday, July 30, 2023
Our Congress - Lost in Space: weekly column 30 July 2023
Lawrence Hall
Our Congress –
Lost in Space
Our United States Congress, apparently having little to
do, has been holding hearings (or hearing holdings) on UAPs (unidentified
anomalous phenomena), which used to be known as UFOs (Unidentified Flying
Objects). Although they’re not the same thing they are they same thing [What Is a UAP? Explaining the UFO Hearings in Congress.
(businessinsider.com)].
Former Air Force major David Grusch is now a
whistleblower (with a real Sergeant Preston of the Yukon whistle?) who has whistleblown
to Congress that the U. S. government has for decades been collecting and
reverse-engineering data from crashed spacecraft but covering it all up. He
also alleges that the Vatican in collusion with Mussolini and the United States
government has been hiding evidence of spaceships and the body parts of spacemen
for some ninety years [Ex-Intel Officer Who Says US Has Proof of Aliens Made Wild
Claims Before (businessinsider.com)].
The major has no proof of any of this, but he says he has
talked with people who have seen the “non-human biologics” (dead spacemen) and parts
salvaged from spaceships.
The galloping major did not mention any Lizard People.
Possibly Congress will next form a committee to investigate
the rumor that if you read Little House on the Prairie backward you will
hear a satanic message from The Mamas and the Papas. And then there’s the pizza
parlor in D.C. that receives secret shortwave messages from the Mole People in
their tunnels beneath Oak Island. The pepperoni are then positioned in a code
that only the Illuminaughty can understand. I’m risking my life in telling you
this, but watch the pepperoni. The fate of Western Civilization depends upon it!
Watch the pepperoni!
This nation boasts both The United States Space Command [the united states space command - Search (bing.com)]
and The United States Space Force [the united states space force - Search (bing.com)],
both with uniforms and marching songs and anthems and badges, but probably the
spaciest of all are some of the far, far out honorable ladies and honorable gentlemen
of Congress.
-30-
Thursday, July 27, 2023
Two Sovereign Remedies for Depression - poem
Lawrence Hall,
HSG
Two Sovereign Remedies for Depression
Reading a
few pages of Wodehouse at bedtime
Is like
walking behind a dachshund at any time
Happiness
Saturday, July 22, 2023
In Nature We are Only a Menu Item - poem
Lawrence Hall
In Nature We are Only a Menu Item
Purporting to love nature
is a commonplace
This does not mean that
nature loves us back
We often look for nature’s smiling face
But nature looks for us as a tasty snack
The alligator is defended for being here first
The gentle boar is a creature of God
Anopheles wants only to quench its thirst
The innocent shark hungers only for cod
Communing with nature cannot be beaten –
Up until the moment when you are eaten!
Friday, July 21, 2023
A Japanese Army Cap - poem
Lawrence Hall
A Japanese Army
Cap
Long, long ago in a land far away
I met some children playing on a river bank
One little boy wore a Japanese Army cap
Faded and old – I wondered who wore it first?
I tried to buy it from him - an MPC dollar?
No.
Five dollars?
No.
Ten dollars?
Laughter and another no.
Twenty good American MPC dollars?
No.
We continued our patrol up to Cambodia
And back again
I did not leave my bones in Viet-Nam
Nor even my cap
(I was a fool all
the same)
Thursday, July 20, 2023
Jane Birkin's Smile - poem
Lawrence Hall
Jane Birkin’s
Smile
Her eyes were everything when she looked at us
Teasingly, from beneath a wide-brimmed hat
In that long-ago summer world when we
Assumed for ourselves eternal youth
Her lips were everything when she smiled at us
Mischievously, from among the surprised decades
Of this cold winter world that crept upon us
Her insouciance defying the pains of age
If we misplaced our youth, our hopes, our dreams
That was all right
We found them again in her saucy grin
Monday, July 10, 2023
Goofus and Gallant Revisited - doggerel 10 July 2023
Lawrence Hall
Goofus and Gallant
Revisited
Thanks to The Atlantic Monthly
I never paid attention to Goofus and Gallant
Because I sensed that I was being preached at
Only later in life do I appreciate their talent
Much better than the cat who sat on a mat
Sunday, July 9, 2023
A Japanese Army Cap - weekly column 9 July 2023
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
A Japanese Army
Cap
“A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.”
-Kipling
Long, long ago in a land far, far away I met a little boy
who was wearing a Japanese army cap. Our boats were upriver along the Cambodian
border on routine patrol and to land Sgt. Thuey and me in a little village for an
hour or two of propaganda and medical care.
Among the children I saw that little boy proudly wearing
an old army cap left from the Japanese occupation of French Indo-China. It was
a practical cap made of cotton, with a neck flap as further protection from the
sun and mosquitoes.
I offered the kid an American dollar for that little bit
of history, but he grinned and shook his head.
I offered him five dollars, but again he grinned and
shook his head.
Finally I offered him twenty dollars for the cap, and it
was still no deal. The cap was important to the little fellow, and I imagine
there was a family story about it worth more than money from yet another transient
foreign power.
Numerous small states were absorbed into the French
empire in the 19th century and ruled as French Indo-China until 1954
[What Was French Indochina? (thoughtco.com)]. Japan
occupied the area during the Second World War II and, like France, exploited
the land and its people for its natural resources, food production, and manufacturing
capacity.
The situation during the war was always complicated, and
grew worse at the end, with some Japanese soldiers joining the Viet-Minh and
others working with the British Army (mostly Indian) in Saigon, numerous
nationalist groups, Free French, Vichy French, die-hard imperial Japanese,
Chinese, Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, and some Americans, most everyone fighting everyone
else. On one occasion American planes shot down three British bombers, claiming
to have mistaken them for Japanese. Every power group made bad decisions, and
thousands, mostly Vietnamese civilians, died in the fighting, from massacres
and mass executions by Japanese, French, and Communist authorities, and from
starvation.
Communist China invaded Viet-Nam in 1979 and was quickly
defeated with great loss of men and weapons. I imagine that somewhere around
Cao Bang in the north a little kid is wearing a Chinese army cap and telling
stories about how his grandfather took it from a dead or captured soldier.
Which leads us back to the kid wearing a Japanese army
cap in 1970, and the question of whatever happened to the young Japanese soldier,
probably little more than a kid himself, who was issued that cap as part of his
tropical service kit for duty in Indo-China. Was he killed in the war, or did
he finally get home to his mom and dad?
I don’t think I lost a cap, but maybe I did, and some
little kid even now is wearing it while playing with the other kids, telling
them how his grandfather snatched it from a running dog imperialist lackey.
-30-
Friday, July 7, 2023
Keyboard Combatants - poem, 7 July 2023
Lawrence Hall
Keyboard Combatants
“H*** hath no fury like a non-combatant”
-anonymous; dates as early as the American Civil War
Pitching war metaphors toward a people
Who don’t understand metaphors or war
Does not promote prudent self-government
Or peace
Only
bullhorns and misspelt signs
Tuesday, July 4, 2023
Leaving the Party - poem 4 July 2023
Lawrence Hall
Leaving the Party
“You
have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting
With much admired
disorder.”
-Lady Macbeth in
III.iv.109-110
The party we leave is not the party that was,
Beginning in optimism and good will
In rooms well-lit with generosity and thought -
Ideas thoughtfully spoken
and thoughtfully heard
We have all left a party for fresh air
To escape from hollow laughter and cliches
From shouted arguments and whispered schemes
Half-empty glasses and sour cigarette smoke
Screamed taunts that sting,
a hive-like waspish buzz -
The party we leave is not the party that was
Monday, July 3, 2023
Physics Always Follows the Rules - weekly column 25 June 2023
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Physics Always
Follows the Rules
RMS Titanic has fascinated people for well over a
century now, its construction, technology, launch, passengers, and sinking the
subject of thousands of books, movies, and television specials churning up the
same old factoids over and over. The reality is that there is probably nothing
about Titanic that we don’t know despite tabloid-ish advertisements
promoting solved and unsolved mysteries, purported riddles, discoveries that
aren’t really discoveries, and even ghosts and curses.
As a tee-shirt said during all the giddiness about the
Jack and Rose film, “The Ship Sank; Get Over It.”
But the continuing fascination is understandable. In a
time when most people did not have electricity or running water the Titanic
might have seemed as high-tech to them as the science-fiction Enterprise
does now. The famous and wealthy passengers, the jewels, servants, and strictly
observed class divisions are the sorts of things we decry while watching Upstairs,
Downstairs, Downton Abbey, and Sanditon. In this manifestation
of the “ship of fools” theme Titanic features the best and worst of
technology, human nature, and Edwardian décor.
There is no evidence that Captain Smith or anyone else
said, “Madam, God Himself couldn’t sink this ship,” but as demonstrated in the
tabloids, television, and now the InterGossip humans seldom allow reality to
interfere with fantasy.
The nature of hubris and the minutiae of ignored lifeboat
drills and careless seamanship have been discussed to the point of obsessiveness,
but the disaster occurred because of one inexplicable error in judgement: the
captain was driving too fast at night without headlights.
Recently, forced comparisons between Titanic and the
recent loss of what appears to be an imaginatively but maybe inadequately
designed submersible occupied our Orwellian telescreens for a week, and I
confess that I followed events closely.
I was aware that those whose pockets are loaded with the
green stuff could take tourist visits to the wreckage of Titanic but
paid little attention to it. Like most people I generally assumed that planes,
trains, ferryboats, ships, underground railways, trolleys, busses, and other
forms of public transportation are regulated by the appropriate government
agencies and thus safe for the general public.
However, in following the frequent and almost breathless
bulletins we learned that the Titan (clever name, eh?) appears not to
have been inspected by or registered with any responsible board or agency.
“I
think it was General MacArthur who said you’re remembered for the rules…And
I’ve broken some rules to make this. I think I’ve broken them with logic and
good engineering behind me.”
Stockton Rush: What we know about the Titan
submersible's pilot | CNN Business
The many reported flaw designs of Titan have been
discussed at length, but ultimately there is this: except for the 19-year-old, the
four other crew / passengers / “mission specialists” / tourists were
middle-aged men of great accomplishments in science and business, and thus
brilliant in solving problems. Why did they not see a problem in crowding
themselves and a teenager into a large pipe, bolted and sealed from the
outside, from which there was no possible escape?
In most of the possible failure scenarios escape was a
null concept anyway – you can’t escape a vessel at however-many-thousands of
feet down. But even if the Titan had remained intact and surfaced the
only way out was for the technicians on the mother ship to locate the
submersible, board it or retrieve it, and then free the many bolts. But what if
the mother ship weren’t there? What if it caught fire and sank? What if a Gilligan
dropped into the ocean the one specialty wrench needed?
Physics is an absolute judge, and will not accept any
special pleadings from those who don’t follow its rules.
-30-
What's the Name of my Bank this Week? weekly column 18 June 2023
Lawrence Hall, HSG
What’s the Name of
my Bank this Week?
The elected board of trustees of Big City School District
is considering re-naming (for a price – cha-ching!) their football stadium. It’s
for the children.
Names of businesses, streets, schools, statues, and other
private and public entities change often according to political fashions and
financial influences. One generation’s heroes are the next generation’s
ratfinks, which keeps artists, sculptors, and crane operators busy shifting
statues around and making new ones to replace the old ones.
As for banks, a friend once suggested they might as well
put up their signs with Velcro® since they buy and sell and trade and devour
each other almost with the changes of seasons.
Two or three name changes ago I stopped in the
drive-through to cash a small check and the televised teller asked me if I had
an account with their famously family friendly bank. I looked at the new sign
and replied, “I’m not sure. I had an account with a different bank that used to
be in this building.” Yeah, I had to show lots of I.D. for that smart remark.
The selling of naming right for sports venues has become so
common that the practice might be extended to other areas of human endeavor.
Your street might be renamed Acme Computers Avenue on a
yearly lease.
You could sell naming rights applied to your children: Mme.
Sniffly Perfume Collection Tiffany, Smith Lumber Company Kyle, and Gigantic
Consolidated Industries Juan.
Your hunting dogs could be Mega Electrics Pete, Ponsonby
Shopping Mall Molly, and Slick Tire Company Red.
As for the elected board of Big City ISD, one wonders if
they have ever considered naming their stadium after those who paid more for its
construction and still more for its upkeep more than any sody water company or
car dealership, maybe something like The Hardworking Taxpayer Stadium.
-30-
The Desperadoes of Silicon Gulch - weekly column 11 June 2023
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Desperadoes of
Silicon Gulch
One of the many advantages of reading a physical book is
that when you open it to continue the narrative the typeface and layout have
not been upgraded (snort) against your will into near illegibility, with the
table of contents all messed up and the chapter headings hidden in a corner.
When in Chapter 3 you’re following noble Sheriff Rocky Manly
as he sneaks up on the hideout of Butch Jawbone and his gang of unshaven desperadoes
the action is not suddenly interrupted by an advertisement blocking the page.
When reading a book-on-dead-tree the story is not paused
with three dots and a note to the effect that if you want to continue you’ll
have to upgrade (that dirty word again) to “paid.”
On weekends and holidays the conflict between Sheriff Manly
and treacherous outlaw Jawbone doesn’t freeze in place – it’s a book; it
doesn’t require a signal from the expensive but fragile InterGossip service
provider.
But the techno-tyrants don’t see it that way. The other day
I opened my Antarctica Off-Line mail server
to find a blur of unfamiliar and less legible type shoved onto the Orwellian
Telescreen as a jumble. It’s as if the knee-pants at corporate felt the need to
justify their existence by taking a familiar, practical, and comfortable layout
and messing it all up. This is what they call an “upgrade.”
The concept of “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it” does not
obtain in Silicon Gulch.
There’s a space for comments on the purported upgrade, and
you can write a (polite) suggestion and request a return to the previous
dashboard, but you will be a voice crying in an electronic wilderness.
Not only will you never learn if Nellie from the Long Branch
Sushi Saloon finally chose between Sheriff Manly and outlaw Jawbone, you might
be a long time finding your electrical mail on the upgraded program.
-30-
Is Peter Rabbit a Democrat or a Republican? weekly column 4 June 2023
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Is Peter Rabbit a Democrat or a Republican?
“You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him
in the original Klingon.”
-Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered
Country
Davis School District in
Utah has pulled the Bible from its elementary and middle schools due to a
parental complaint [https://tucson.com/news/utah-district-bans-bible-in-elementary-and-middle-schools-due-to-vulgarity-or-violence/article_38d3a71b-1c97-5f79-8651-f2fa895d2a3a.html].
This is part of the latest
spasm of book banning in this country. Once upon a time people regarded public and
school libraries as repositories of thousands of years of civilization, open to
all, with John Milton shelved uneasily close to Geoffrey Chaucer and with Phyllis
Wheatley a few aisles away from Margaret Mitchell. An old saying is that if a library doesn’t
contain books with which you vehemently disagree, it’s not a good library.
Book banning was an
expression of Nazism and Communism and other tyrannies. Molly Guptill Manning
makes an excellent study of books and freedom during the Second World War in
her excellent When Books Went to War.
Unhappily, in the last
decade or so banning and censoring books has become quite a fashion in the
United States, with citizens all along the political spectrum demanding control
of what others and others’ children may or may not read.
The irony is that this nation
is one of the poorest in the world in reading [Can You Guess Where in the World People Read the Most?
(mic.com)]. One does not imagine a father fussing at his son with, “Junior,
I don’t know how many times I have to tell you to put down Macbeth and
go watch television or play video games!”, or perhaps a mother advising her
daughter that, “The Brothers Karamazov is okay, I guess, but I wish
you’d spend more time at the nail salon or on Thick-Tok.”
When Star Trek VI: The
Undiscovered Country was first released, audiences, mostly young people,
enjoyed chasing down the references to Shakespeare, including the title. Star
Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is enriched and informed by references to Charles
Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, and Shakespeare’s King Lear (there
is something of Lear in both Kirk and Khan). The eponymous villain quotes from John
Milton’s Paradise Lost, misusing this Christian epic about the Fall as
an instruction manual rather than as a cautionary tale. Khan also quotes several times from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick,
using some of Captain Ahab’s lines for his own dramatic self-destruction:
"From hell's heart, I stab at thee!"
The producers don’t simply
take bits of Shakespeare and others for isolated quotes, they mine The Great
Tradition of literature to explore the transcendental themes of the good, the
true, and the beautiful in new ways through the cinema.
Those who made the first
cycles of Star Trek television shows and films understood that the
teenagers and young professionals of the 80s and 90s, the maligned millennials,
appreciated The Great Tradition and appreciated being approached with respect
instead of the patronizing self-referential cartoonery that infects popular
culture just now.
In sum, in a nation where
a family home might have more screens than books, citizens angrily wave their
little made-in-Communist China Orwellian telescreens while banning the books
that no one ever reads anyway.
Oh, and the bit about
Shakespeare in the original Klingon is a joke. The Klingons know very well that
Shakespeare was a human. The reference is to the Cold War, when Soviets claimed
to have invented everything from baseball to antibiotics, and blamed the West
for appropriating their work. In the original series Ensign Chekhov, a Russian,
often claims proudly that a certain book or song or bit of technology was
invented in Russia. Further, the
original Chekhov was a popular Russian writer from the Czarist times who is
considered the master of the short story.
Everything connects.
-30-
In Search of Lost Timepieces - poem
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Hellopoetry.com
In Search of Lost Timepieces
(as Marcel Proust did not say)
When clocks were electric
and mechanical
They almost never agreed
with each other
The glowing G.E. beside the
bed read 2:00
While Mother’s kitchen
pastel hummed 2:03
Dad’s Hamilton ticked 1358
(And you never argued with
him about it)
Grandfather Clock chimed
whenever he wanted, by cracky
And the Timex took a
licking at 2:04
But now all clocks obey an
electronic command –
As the old joke goes, “We
have ways of making you tock.”
Sunday, July 2, 2023
You Meet the Nicest People in Hospitals - weekly column 2 July 2023
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
You Meet the
Nicest People in Hospitals
I have spent much of this year so far in and out of the
hospital for surgeries, E.R. visits, therapy, and recovery, and repeats of all
of the above, which have been not merely individual lessons but a densely
structured curriculum in humility and gratitude.
Among the nicest people one meets in hospitals are those professionals
who don’t have the good roles in the medical movies or television shows: the
cleaners, food service workers, the young men and women who wheel you out to
the car after your adventures, and other folks who are essential to the
ministry of healing.
I don’t think I met a one who wasn’t in school or putting
someone else through school.
One wheelchair pusher was a young man putting himself
through university for a degree in engineering.
Another young man was putting in all the hours he could so
his wife could attend nursing school. The plan was that after she passed her
state boards he would then attend nursing school himself.
Yet another young man was burning that metaphorical
candle at both ends at the hospital and in school to be a pipefitter.
One nice lady was retired, her children grown and gone,
and though she didn’t need the job she enjoyed visiting with people. She was
also thinking of applying for an LVN program.
One of the young food-service workers delivered trays with
unfailing good cheer and merry banter. I asked him if he had considered
studying to be a dietitian but he wasn’t sure if that was his calling. He
certainly shares the gift of happiness, though, which might be a vocation in
itself along long corridors where happiness can be in short supply.
By the way, if you ask nicely you might score another
Jell-O.
During an otherwise grim visit to the E.R. I watched a
young orderly or attendant who, along with his many other duties, entertained little
children and carried in his pockets a Santa Claus-ish trove of little Barbies
and race cars and other toys to share with them.
Just think – he might be a pediatric nurse or physician
someday.
Yes, you meet the nicest people in hospitals.
-30-
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