Groveton, Texas, 3 October 2023

 

A Carrier of Bodies - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

A Carrier of Bodies

My stretcher is one scarlet stain 

-Robert W. Service, “The Stretcher Bearer”

In illo tempore:

I don’t know that anyone shouted, “Corpsman up!”

Like in the movies; I was already up

There, where smoking metal scraps stopped in some kid’s flesh

Red fragments of flesh screaming in the sun

Later:

 

Carrying bodies of literature was impossible

But I tried; Wordsworth and Keats during the day

Holes in the patient and in sterile drapes

Red fragments of flesh in the E. R. at night

 

Now:

 

In the evenings I carry Wordsworth outside

And my older self, to a chair at dusk

Southern Belle Antiques 'N' Stuff - poem, a little East Texas Gothic

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Southern Belle Antiques ‘N’ Stuff

 

(Slow sibilant bathroom-slipper-shuffle)

 

“Oh, don’t close the door, honey, oh no

If the door is closed no one will know I’m open

English Romantics? Here’s an Edgar Allan Poe

I read lots of books myself; do you like westerns?”

 

(Dark narrow paths tunnel through dark moldy heaps)

 

“I paid fifty dollars for that bolt cutter

It’s almost new; I bought it for my daddy

My brother locked him out of his own house

You can have it for twenty; I live upstairs”

 

(The shambling slippers follow me to the door)

 

“It’s a shame that girls don’t play with dolls anymore

Come back anytime; I’m mostly open”

Nazi Canada? weekly column 10.1.2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Nazi Canada?

 

Nazi Canada? Of course not.

 

Canadian P.M. Justin Trudeau is not a Nazi. He presents himself as a vulgar, privileged jerk but he is not a Nazi.

 

His groveling apology last week for the purported Nazi insensitivity of other Canadians thus seems inexplicable.

 

Recently the Speaker (now former Speaker) of Parliament, Anthony Rota, had occasion to welcome Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. The Speaker got it into his head that he would add to the occasion by inviting for one of those now tiresome shout-outs a Canadian citizen, 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, who was born in Ukraine and fought against the Russian Communists in the Second World War.

 

A problem is that when Stalin, Hitler’s ally against the Western democracies, was betrayed by his old comrade he turned to the Western nations for help. Thus, the perverse Stalin was a Nazi ally when that was useful for him and a Western ally when that was useful for him. In 1945 he turned back again against the Western nations who had saved the Soviet Union. But the unhappy fact remains that Communist Russia was our (admittedly treacherous) ally for a time. Further, Mr. Hunka fought against Communists but with a Nazi unit.

 

The Speaker of the Canadian Parliament presumably has a well-paid staff to assist him in learning about such matters, but in the event Mr. Rota naively invited a poor old man with a dodgy background to be presented in Parliament without doing a routine background check.

 

This is embarrassing and should never have happened. However, it reflects a moment of carelessness, not Nazi sympathies in Canada.  One might find a few village-idiot “stormtroopers” waddling around and shouting in the streets, but they reflect only stupid choices by stupid individuals. They are not Canada. Canadians sing that they are “the true north strong and free.” They mean it.

 

This reality means nothing to those unhappy people always finding in others guilt that does not obtain except perhaps in the accusers themselves. Note Susanna in the Book of Daniel and later in the Gospel of St. John the woman purportedly caught in adultery.

 

An apology is appropriate, but only for carelessness in background checks.

 

The accusation given is that Canada is sodden with a poor history of accommodating Nazism.

 

Apparently few if any have chosen to defend Canada with the facts:

 

When Nazi Germany invaded Poland, Canada was one of the first nations to declare war. At that time Canada had a standing army of 4,500 men and some 50,000 reservists, no modern equipment, only 20 combat aircraft, and a navy of 6 destroyers. [http://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/exhibitions/chrono/1931goes_to_e.html].

 

From 1939 – 1945 approximately 1.1 million Canadian men and women, out of a total of 10 million citizens, joined the services and fought Nazism and Japanese imperialism. This does not include the Canadians who served with the United Kingdom, other Commonwealth nations, and the United States.

 

According to Library and Archives Canada [Service Files of the Second World War - War Dead, 1939-1947 - Library and Archives Canada (bac-lac.gc.ca)], 24,525 Canadian soldiers, 17,397 RCAF airman, and 2,168 RCN sailors were killed in action. These numbers do not include civilians and Canada’s Merchant Marine, nor do they include those wounded in body and soul.

 

Newfoundland, not then part of Canada, lost approximately 1,000 men and women in the several services, including those of Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United State [Newfoundland in World War II | World War II Database (ww2db.com)].

 

Over 50,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders died fighting Nazism - and yet Mr. Trudeau ignores them while apologizing for Canada’s purported Nazi sympathies.

 

One 98-year-old former Nazi was erroneously given a shout-out in Parliament, and now the Canadian government is collectively calling for smelling salts.  In all of this self-abasement and drama no one seems to remember all the Canadian and Newfoundland soldiers, sailors, airmen, coast guardsmen, Marines, and merchant seamen who were killed in action against young, tough Nazis Newark-bent on global domination.

 

In 1914 Lawrence Binyon, a British poet, wrote a poem, “For the Fallen,” some of whose lines are to be found on British, Canadian, Newfoundland, and even American memorials, and quoted every Armistice Day / Remembrance Day / Veterans’ Day as a tribute to those who died fighting tyranny:

 

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

 

But in the last few weeks Mr. Trudeau and the Canadian Parliament seem to have forgotten them after all.

 

-30-

Are You an Old Soul? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Are You an Old Soul?

 

                                                                                           “…but lay thy sword aside

And lean upon a peasant’s staff”

 

-Wordsworth

 

We have it on the highest Authority

That we are souls on lengthy pilgrimage

But I don’t know if we are old or not

And did you bring along something to read?

 

Sometimes we march in step along the route

At other times we seem to fly in pairs

Or sometimes trudge a lonely path in the night

And hear the music of a thousand spheres

 

Sometimes I’m old, but then you smile just so

And I am young – there’s magic in your soul

30 September 2023 - poem

 Lawrence Hall

mhall46184@aol.com

30 September 2023

 

“Make it so, Number One”

 

-Star Trek: The New Generation (often)

 

Up at 0630 with coffee and Tuxedo-Cat

In the west-fading light of the still-full moon

To watch and hear and feel and touch and taste

The waning of night, the beginning of day

 

The air was cool, the grass was damp, the birds –

The birds were LOUD, fussing from tree to tree

An old lawn chair, layers of paint over rust

Was our captaincy over possibilities

 

“Is all well, Number One?” I asked the cat

He blinked his eyes that the world was ready to sail

Stay Close to the Telephone - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Stay Close to the Telephone

 

“Stay close to the telephone,” they used to say

Stay close to that Western Electric on the desk or wall

Since news of great importance might come your way

A message from the shop or some emergency call

 

“Stay close to the telephone” – you couldn’t go out

Without breaking contact in an hour of need

You could only wait in place in fear and doubt

For an order at last to move with speed

 

“Stay close to the telephone?” It had no reach

But a modern ‘phone drains you like a bloody leech

A Little Green Lizard and Her Leap of Faith - poem

 

82. 27 September 2023, Wednesday in Ordinary Time

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Little Green Lizard and Her Leap of Faith

 

She was the tiniest lizard you ever saw

Less than a feather on the back of my hand

Less than an inch but perfect, without a flaw

Perfect in function and form, as God had planned

 

I held my hand still to keep her safe

From accident or fall, or misjudged leap

But she knew her strengths, this reptilian waif

And launched to the leaves in a dramatic sweep

 

I wanted to warn her if she’d stayed for a chat:

“O mind where you leap – watch out for the cat!”

UNITED TATES POST OFFICE K RBYVILLE. TEXAS - photograph

Rain and Gasoline - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Rain and Gasoline

 

Do you like the rain? Or do you think about it much?

 

-Rod McKuen

 

Shoppers rattle their trolleys to their cars

An unexpected September thunderstorm

Splashes rain on the six-months-hot parking lot

Raising steam and hopes – will autumn ever come?

 

Thunderings rattle the ground and the air

From the service station up the concrete slope

Gasoline and diesel join the rivulets

In making iridescent the sloshing streams

 

Sale papers and cigarette ends float free

But only to the drains, not to the sea

 

Southeast Texas Alerting Network Adventures in Registration - weekly column 25 September 2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Southeast Texas Alerting Network Adventures in Registration

 

Last week KJAS Radio published a notice that those of us already signed up for STAN, the acronym for Southeast Texas Alerting Network, will have to register again for continued service, and that those without this needful program can sign up now  [Jasper County Residents must re-register for STAN | Local News | kjas.com].

 

STAN’s mission, per Amanda Gates, is to send out emergency alerts (fires, weather, and other crises), and notifications regarding street closures, water outages, traffic issues, and other useful information.

 

This summer I was certainly grateful for the wildfire alerts, and given our area’s dangerous weather, including tornadoes and hurricanes, this is a useful service.

 

Signing up for STAN is said to take only a few minutes. This was true last year; it is not now. Not for me, anyway. STAN is operated by a body styling itself Everbridge (and what is that supposed to mean?), and Everbridge has made registering a (insert expletive of choice here).

 

First of all, Everbridge insisted that my email address, which I have used for years, is not my email address, and blocked my re-registration without any means of appeal.

 

Given that re-registration is not a possibility according to Everbridge, I decided to register as if I were a new user. This was tedious but do-able; however, Everbridge insisted that my username was already in use. I tried a different name. This time Everbridge simply said that the username was not acceptable. I then went through some 20-30 usernames without success. Name after name, dreary imaginings and re-entries worthy of Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The username that finally worked was an allusion to Saylor’s Creek, where my great-grandfather was made a prisoner-of-war (you know, one of those people a certain former president who never made the first day of recruit training doesn’t like) in 1865.

 

After an hour or so of fiddle-faddling with Everbridge’s obscure system, I am registered. I think. We’ll see.

 

I then read some of the heavy-handed warnings: “You must comply with Everbridge’s Acceptable Use Policy,” “You will be responsible…,” and a whole catalogue of such verbiage apparently generated by someone who wanted to be a prison camp guard and couldn’t meet the standards:

 

You will not…

You may not…

You must not…

You must…

You agree immediately…

You will be responsible…

You must comply…you must comply…you must comply…

You acknowledge and agree…

You agree to…

 

There are also cautions against transmitting secret federal information. I don’t have any secret federal information and if I did I couldn’t send it via STAN; this is a passive reception scheme that does not accept messages.

 

Everbridge is also known as:

 

Critical Event Management

Safety Connection

Community Engagement

Visual Command Center

Crisis Commander (isn’t this a video game?)

CareConverge

ManageBridge

EngageBridge

HipaaBridge

SecureBridge

Interactive Visibility

Nixle

 

No wonder Everbridge can’t keep email addresses straight; they appear not to know who they are.

 

Despite the vague sound of unmarked stealth UN helicopters, participating in STAN is one of our county government’s better ideas for promoting safety, and I encourage the reader to sign up for it.

 

Besides, maybe next year someone will have some high school students design an easier-to-use interface. I’ll bet they can do it.

 

For now, begin with Everbridge.com.

 

-30-

Everyone is Now a Two-Dimensional Religious Image - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Everyone is Now a Two-Dimensional Religious Image

 

News writers are dull, almost catatonic

Dispensing metaphors soporifically phonic

For in their world of the cliched and ironic

Every topic, every person is invariably

Iconic

A Little Kitten and a Little Girl - a sappy sentimental poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Little Kitten and a Little Girl

 

A little girl sits with her mug of milk

Happy and peaceful with her breakfast toast

Her little kitten lays beside her and purrs

And takes a delicate sip for itself

 

“DID YOU LET THAT CAT DRINK FROM YOUR CUP THAT CAT HAS GERMS GO WASH YOUR HANDS GIVE ME THAT CUP I NEED TO WASH IT I DON’T KNOW WHY THAT CAT IS IN THE HOUSE CATS HAVE GERMS DIRTY CAT SNEAKY CAT THEY’RE ALWAYS UP TO SOMETHING DON’T YOU EVER LET AN ANIMAL DRINK FROM YOUR CUP THEY’RE NASTY WE DON’T LIVE LIKE THIS WITH ANIMALS IN THE HOUSE THAT’S A DISGUSTING HABIT PEOPLE WILL THINK WE’RE LOW CLASS WE WERE RAISED BETTER THAN THAT DID YOU LET THAT CAT DRINK FROM YOUR CUP THAT CAT HAS GERMS GO WASH YOUR HANDS GIVE ME THAT CUP I NEED TO WASH IT I DON’T KNOW WHY THAT CAT IS IN THE HOUSE CATS HAVE GERMS DIRTY CAT SNEAKY CAT THEY’RE ALWAYS UP TO SOMETHING DON’T YOU EVER LET AN ANIMAL DRINK FROM YOUR CUP THEY’RE NASTY WE DON’T LIVE LIKE THIS WITH ANIMALS IN THE HOUSE THAT’S A DISGUSTING HABIT PEOPLE WILL THINK WE’RE LOW CLASS WE WERE RAISED BETTER THAN THAT!!!!!!!!!”

 

A little girl sits in her backyard swing

Happy and peaceful with her little cat

Two conspirators winking at each other

Far away from their disapproving mother

A Station Stop for the Hummingbird Express - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Station Stop for the Hummingbird Express

 

Hummingbirds buzz the sugar water buffet

At this junction for the connection to Mexico

I feel I should be wearing a white apron and cap

Refills for everyone – and will that be to go?

 

No ideological baggage, no bumper stickers

Their maps all drawn for them by an invisible Hand

Their simple duties a transcendent joy

An ancient mission through divine command

 

Hummingbirds buzz the sugar water buffet

Then with a goodbye to summer they wing away

What This Country Needs is a Better Class of Criminals - weekly column, 17 September 2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

What This Country Needs is a Better Class of Criminals

 

 

I don’t mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one.

 

-Rick in Casablanca

 

 

I was frustrated when my lawnmower wouldn’t start. I had bought a new battery and was annoyed that it wasn’t holding a charge. I dismounted, dragged up my rolling stool, and sat down to examine the battery that to my surprise wasn’t there.

 

A thief in the night had yanked the battery, leaving only the stripped ends of the leads. That was unprofessional; a good thief would have brought the proper wrench or used the one I left within an arm’s reach of the mower. Tools were available, the porch light was more than adequate – how much of the work does a homeowner have to do for the contemporary petty criminal?

 

The bungling burglar didn’t get far with the battery, however; I found it about twelve feet away from the mower. The poor sap had somehow tripped, bringing some stacked firewood down upon him, and dropping the battery while in flight. A few feet away he managed to trip again over some more firewood, which is just plain embarrassing.  As a taxpaying citizen I expect a higher class of thief. No, I don’t necessarily mean a Raffles or a John “The Cat” Robie, but maybe just a good quality journeyman crook looking to build a better career.

 

The not-a-cat burglar does get some credit for focus, though. Close by the lawnmower was a Stihl leaf blower worth far more than the lawnmower battery, as well as an old but high-quality battery charger and a small air compressor. But, no sir, the lad wanted a lawnmower battery and he avoided all distractions in going for that. We must admire his sense of mission.

 

The follow-through was inept, though, leaving the battery, the object of his endeavors, behind like that.

 

And a real professional would not have left messes – electric leads torn loose, firewood all over the porch – it’s unseemly.

 

Frankly, I’m disappointed in the overall quality of burglars and looters today. Is this the best America can do? Texans used to make off with herds of cattle and now they can’t even pinch a lawnmower battery without botching the job.

 

I blame the teachers, fluoride, George Bush, vaccines, and Jewish space lasers for the poor quality of contemporary criminals. C’mon, America; we can do better!

 

 

-30-

What This Country Needs is a Better Class of Criminals - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

What This Country Needs is a Better Class of Criminals

 

I was frustrated that the lawn mower wouldn’t start

And checked the battery - that wasn’t there

A dull thief in darkness practicing his art

Had spirited it away – that wasn’t fair!

 

But the poor stupid burglar had no profit that night

He stumbled on the porch and dropped his loot

Cracking the battery, so he fled in fright:

It’s just too bad he didn’t fall on his snoot

 

(Sigh)

 

Aspiring young criminals, roll up your sleeves -

What this country needs are intelligent thieves

These are not the Leaves of Autumn - poem in a summer of drought

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

These are not the Leaves of Autumn

 

These are not the leaves of autumn, these husks;

They died so young, fallen from the summer-burnt oaks

Leaving the lingering limbs barren of green

A struggle of woody cells against the drought

 

They wear no celebratory colors

Nothing of red or gold to catch the sun

For they died of thirst in their lost-green youth

Never reaching the October they had earned

 

These are not the leaves of autumn, oh, no

But only shells dry-rattling in the wind

The Existential Despair in Replacing a Lawnmower Battery - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Existential Despair in Replacing a Lawnmower Battery

 

My language is blue and my knuckles bleed -

I can never find the wrench I need!

A Tin of Lipton's Tea from Hong Kong in 1970 - photograph

 I bought this tin - which really is made of tin - while in R & R in Hong Kong in 1970. I still make a cuppa from these leaves every few years.

Tea for Texas - weekly column, 10 September 2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Tea for Texas

Major General Urquhart: "Hancock, I've got lunatics laughing at me from the woods. My original plan has been scuppered now that the jeeps haven't arrived. My communications are completely broken down. Do you really believe any of that can be helped by a cup of tea?”

Corporal Hancock: “Couldn't hurt, sir.”

-A Bridge Too Far

 

Bubba Ebarb, of happy memory, required certain specific performances for his several successful restaurants.  One of his rules was that the iced tea would never reach the old age of one hour before it was tossed and replaced with a fresh brewing of the refreshing leaf.

This is the sort of value that made him a great success. Unfortunately, such reasonable expectations appear to be rarer now.

Iced tea has been a staple since around the time of the St. Louis Exposition in 1904 (Meet Me in St. Louis) when mechanical ice-making, the existing popularity of tea, an especially hot summer, and thirsty fairgoers together made a historical shift in refreshment.

Once upon a time in Texas a glass of good, fresh iced tea was easily available at any café’ in the Lone Star Republic, but now it’s a little more difficult to find at all and is often a vintage sludge.

Last week I stopped at a Famous Name Fat Foodery in Buffalo, Texas for a refreshing mid-morning cup of the good stuff, and the muffly voice crackling through the grill said that they didn’t have any tea-tea but that their mango tea was really good.

Mango tea. 

In Buffalo, Texas.

As Macduff does not say in Macbeth, “Oh, Texas, when wilt thou find thy wholesome ways again!”

Has Texas become a colony of West Hollywood? Is Mission Espiritu Santo at Goliad now a fusion cuisine restaurant specializing in avocado toast? When Cabeza de Vaca and his companions made their epic, years-long trek across Texas did they consider the majesty of the land and its vast spaces and exclaim, “Here we will establish our fruit bars, our incense shops, our therapy spas, our vegetarian Thai takeouts, our tea shops of infused bamboo shoots!”

On down the road I found a big Famous Name Brand truck stop which featured several tanks of iced tea.  The first tank oozed out something like an oil change.  The second tank dribbled out something even darker and more viscous.

I bought a bottle of water from the cooler.

Look, I’m not a tea snob; I’m even cool with teabags (gasp!). In the winter I like a good cuppa char; just a good black tea / schwarztee, and at all times I’m up for a glass of iced tea, Texas’ national beverage. The essential factor is that the tea is fresh.

Real Texans / Texians / Tejanos / Texicans drink real tea and drink it real fresh. Bubba would expect no less. God bless fresh tea, God bless Bubba Ebarb, and God bless Texas.

-30-