Homeless Man Found Murdered - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Homeless Man Found Murdered

 

He had nothing

And even that nothing

Was stolen from him

Armistice Day / Remembrance Day / Veterans' Day 2023

Several years ago my old school honored me by asking me to address the students at the annual Veterans' Day program. I thought it a pretty good speech and so reprint it:

Judge Folk

Veterans

Students of Kirbyville High School

Honored Guests

Mrs. Gore

Mrs. McClatchy

Faculty and staff

 

Thank you allowing me to speak today.

 

There are many men and women from Kirbyville and Jasper County whose service and devotion to duty makes them far more fitted for the honor. But today I guess you’re stuck with me.

 

Master Chief Petty Officer Leo Stanley, who died last month, is one of those whose voice would be better today. I wish he could be here again to share this special day with you. He was a Navy Hospital Corpsman for forty years, earning promotion to the highest enlisted rank there is. In his retirement one of the ways in which he continued serving his country was by serving you, his beloved students, in your elementary school’s reading program. Many of you remember him with great joy, for he and Miss Mary loved helping you learn to read each Friday for many years.

 

If he were here – and perhaps he is - the Chief would talk about you and your service to God and country, and he would expect me to do so too. And I will

 

I will begin with thirteen fine young folks of your generation who were killed last summer while serving humanity in helping refugees escape from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

 

You have all seen the photograph of Marine Corps Sergeant Nicole Gee cradling an infant amid the chaos at the airport in Kabul when everything fell apart.  The picture is not a government propaganda photograph; if it were it would be of better quality. This is just a snapshot one of her fellow Marines forwarded to her.  She sent it by email to her parents with the words, “I love my job!”

 

“I love my job.”

 

Those may have been the last words this United States Marine - with her hair tied back in a ponytail - said to her mom and dad.

 

On the 26^th of August Sergeant Gee and the others who were killed with her almost surely did not think of themselves as great Americans;  they were too busy BEING great Americans.

 

They would have thought of themselves – 11 Marines, one soldier, and one Navy Hospital Corpsmen, just like your mentor Chief Stanley - as only doing their jobs in the heat and dust and violence of Afghanistan, helping civilians escape being murdered by the Taliban.

 

That’s what YOU would do. Don’t let anyone dismiss your generation with cheap and shabby stereotypes. YOU would carry a baby amid the screams and terror and dust and heat to a waiting airplane and then return to the perimeter for another child or young mother or old man or anyone who needed your help.

 

That’s what these thirteen young people did, and they were young, like you.

 

You could have even been on the same school bus run:

 

The oldest by far was Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin T. Hoover, 31, of Salt Lake City, Utah.  31 might seem old, but he was young.

 

Marine Corps Sgt. Johanny Rosariopichardo, another woman Marine, 25, of Lawrence, Massachusetts

 

Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, 23, of Sacramento, California

 

Marine Corps Cpl. Hunter Lopez, 22, of Indio, California

 

Marine Corps Cpl. Daegan W. Page, 23, of Omaha, Nebraska

 

Marine Corps Cpl. Humberto A. Sanchez, 22, of Logansport, Indiana

 

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. David L. Espinoza, 20, of Rio Bravo, Texas

 

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz, 20, of St. Charles, Missouri

 

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum, 20, of Jackson, Wyoming

 

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, 20, of Rancho Cucamonga, California

 

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Kareem M. Nikoui, 20, of Norco, California

 

Navy Hospitalman Maxton W. Soviak, 22, of Berlin Heights, Ohio

 

Army Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss, 23, of Corryton, Tennessee.

 

They are your generation. They were killed in a scene of horror by a mad bomber who chose hate instead of love. His hate killed those 13 young Americans and wounded some 30 others who were saving lives, and killed and wounded possibly 200 or more Afghans.

 

One unhappy young man chose hate. He doesn’t represent anything.

 

But your generation has chosen love, the love Jesus spoke of when he said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

 

And these young Americans gave up their lives for people they didn’t even know.

 

No greater love indeed.

 

We have spoken of these 13, but let us remember this: every young American in Kabul that day was saving lives – they were helping terrified people get to the airplanes, helping them to safety.

 

That is also the story of just about every American soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, or Coast Guard.

 

If you look at us sometimes absurd old people, I hope you remember that we were once young like you – maybe when dinosaurs roamed the earth – and that every veteran you see before you gave up some of his or her own poor rations to help feed children, gave up some of his time and sleep and effort in helping those who were hungry or displaced.

 

And finally, that’s your story too. You are going to serve humanity

in some way,

in some place,

in some time – as a soldier, a police officer, a volunteer firefighter, a paramedic, or as a good American civilian who stands tall when needed and helps the community in some way. You may not be called to carry a child to safety from Kabul Airport or from a wrecked car or from a burning building, but you will surely be called to help feed children or teach children in Sunday School or, like Chief Stanley, help out with the reading program.

 

There’s an old Army National Guard recruiting slogan that says:

 

It wasn’t always easy

It wasn’t always fair

But when freedom called we answered

We were there

 

We and your parents know that you will be there too.

 

Thank you.

Wolf-Dog-Coyote Things, Dachshunds, and a 'Possum - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Wolf-Dog-Coyote Things, Dachshunds, and a ‘Possum

 

“Luna! Stop it! Let go of that ‘possum! Astrid! Get out of it! You’ll get bitten! Luna! Do you hear me!? Stop it! Let go! Astrid! Get out of the way! Luna!”

 

Snarls, hisses, and the crashing of garden tools for effect

 

The wolf-dog-coyote things sang in the fields

The dogs fought with a ‘possum in the shed

Which wasn’t organized very well before

But after the fight one can’t even step inside

 

The ‘possum has at last safely escaped

The little dogs are quite proud of themselves

They and I are all panting for breath

And the wolf-dog-coyote things have gone quiet

 

The rural life does not often admit

Time for meditation, reflection, and peace

Curbside Voting - Or Maybe Not - Photograph

 Voting in Texas is often an adventure, especially in the game of precinct tag - the citizen who has to negotiate the highest number of locations in order to vote wins. Texas voters are assigned a voting precinct, which is not the same as a county precinct, based on where he or she lives. In different elections (school board, county elections, state elections, federal elections, early voting, and so on, just where one is permitted to vote often changes. 

Another adventure is curbside voting (although once upon a time my precinct was a trailer off in some weeds and there was no curb). The illogic of this sign is wonderful - if someone who is handicapped cannot make it inside to the polling place then he or she almost surely cannot manage to reach the door where the doorbell is located.

But one of the many good things about Texas is that there is always someone around to help with wheelchairs and doors.

Thank You, Poll Workers!

  This morning I added a blazer to my ensemble because this is election day. The res publica - Latin for "the public matter" - is so important that I always dress up just a little to honor freedom.

The many nice folks who volunteer to serve America at the polls deserve our gratitude. Thank you, everyone!

All the Cool Kids are Genocidal This Year - essay

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

All the Cool Kids are Genocidal this Year

 

In 1925 some 30,000 KKK marched in our nation’s capital to bully the government and the people by demonstrating their increasing power. We read the newspaper accounts of the time and view the film footage and wonder why such an un-American display of hostility to humanity and to the Constitution was permitted by the local, state, and federal authorities who were expected to protect the people.

 

From 1936 to 1948 the German-American Bund perpetrated the same racist and anti-American racket. In 1939 they filled Radio City Music Hall with some 20,000 village idiots yelping and sieg-heiling in obedient, unthinking unison. Nazis appealed to a twisted concept of the First Amendment to cover their demands for tyranny and genocide.

 

Those uniformed and booted thugs who pretended to love this country were, as was known even then, funded, organized, and backed with propaganda through pamphlets and scripts from Nazi Germany’s Abwehr. The American Nazis were so influential that some Hollywood studios allowed themselves to be censored by a foreign power that meant to conquer the world. Again we ask ourselves how this could have happened.

 

More recently we have seen the streets of our capital and other cities infested by yet more racists openly flying the flags of foreign powers determined to destroy the free nations and conquer the world while our weakling Merovingian government entities do little but yap at each other as if they were on The Five and collect their generous salaries and perks. Our streets have been blocked, citizens menaced, historical monuments vandalized, and attempts made to breach the perimeters of the White House for malign purposes. And, like their predecessors, they expect that their demands for genocide will be permitted “peaceably” under the First Amendment.

 

On Monday the contemporary racists blocked access to the Statue of Liberty (how’s that for freedom of speech), and more have closed seaports along the West Coast. Hamas, an organization specializing in the mass murder of innocents and enslaving any survivors, appears at the moment to be in charge of America.

 

Violence, racist threats, vandalism of public and private property, denial of freedom of movement, and hostility to real Americans are sometimes defended as free speech recognized by the First Amendment to our Constitution.

 

This defense is invalid.

 

The First Amendment clearly connects freedom of speech with “…the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The constitutional convention understood this and for over two centuries thoughtful and well-intentioned people of all nations have understood this too, and honored America for it. It is only in our time that wicked beings have twisted and perverted noble words for the destruction of free people who are sheltered by those words.

 

We the people may and should peaceably assemble at school board meetings, on the courthouse steps, in the streets, and in the assemblies to point out to the authorities whom we have elected our grievances at what we purport to be their failures and requesting that they stop fooling around and get on task.

 

We can stand outside the White House (although the incumbent is usually absent on perpetual vacation) and hold up a sign that notes the fact that the President is usually to be found not in the Oval Office but napping on a beach.

 

These rights are given by God; they are recognized by the Constitution.

 

But when the bullhorns, the spray paint, the rocks, the bottles, the obscenities, the threats, the flags of hostile foreign powers, the violence, and the racist taunts contaminate the free air, then the perpetrators have broken the peace.

 

In a direct line of succession from the Ku Klux Klan and National Socialism is Hamas. Hamas is a racist, genocidal, sexist organization oppressive to women, oppressive to Palestinians and murderous to anyone who disobeys.  Hamas employs hostage-taking, rape, and the murders of children as weapons, and punishes even a hint of same-sex relationships with immediate death.

 

Naturally all the cool kids wear the keffiyeh (for sale on Amazon.com) and hate America. They are blithely unaware of the slavery the Hamas doctrine, which they will never read, has planned for them.

 

Notes:

 

Ku Klux Klan in Washington, 1921-1925 - HistoryLink.org

 

American Nazis in the 1930s—The German American Bund - The Atlantic

 

Pro-Palestinian marchers push against White House fence, vandalize national monuments during protest - Washington Times

 

Doctrine of Hamas | Wilson Center

 

-30-

Journalists Seem to Wreak Havoc Daily - or do They Havoc Wreak? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Havoc

 

What is havoc, and how does one wreak it?

 

Havoc is a condition or state of being

That apparently exists only to be wrought

(There is no such word in English as “wreaked”)

A wreak does not now obtain without a havoc

And there is no havoc without a wreak

"I Called to the Lord from my Narrow Prison" - as a poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

“I Called to the Lord from my Narrow Prison”

 

“I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and he answered me in the freedom of space.”

 

-Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl

 

Dark prisons of the mind are narrow too

A lack of light to fall upon a page

A page where hopes are written in words of hope

And spoken in hope through layers of shame and guilt

 

Dark prisons of the heart are narrow too

So reach into your mind, your heart, your soul

And even in the darkness of a narrow cell

Call softly to the Lord through the fetid air

 

Dark prisons of the soul are narrow too –

Perhaps you are the one who locked the door?

 

Open it.

 

Try.

"I Called to the Lord from my Narrow Prison" - column

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

“I Called to the Lord from my Narrow Prison”

 

“I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and he answered me in the freedom of space.”

 

-Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl

 

When Viktor Frankl was liberated from Dachau in 1945 after three years in several death camps he walked into a meadow, knelt down, and said, over and over, “I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and he answered me in the freedom of space.”

 

We have all been in a “narrow prison” of some sort, even if only a metaphorical prison, a prison of the mind in which we confined ourselves through false ideologies, a failure to think things through, or plain old fence-row self-centeredness.

 

St. Thomas More is said to have said (it’s in the movie, anyway) that he had no window with which to look into another man’s soul, but the mass murder in Maine last week leads to all of us to wonder about why the killer destroyed others and himself. And we just don’t know what was churning in his soul.

 

The murderer was a career soldier in the Army Reserve who wore a number of gedunk ribbons (he was never in combat) and was a marksman-instructor. He was a citizen-soldier who also worked in civilian life, drove a car, paid bills, and shopped at the local grocery store, indicating an ability to cope with the usual tasks of adult life.

 

Recently the murderer lost his job and was said to have heard voices that no one else heard. He was committed for emotional / mental evaluation for two weeks.  

 

He also owned a legal firearm, a semi-automatic rifle.

 

In that lies part of the problem, and chanting slogans through a bullhorn doesn’t change the reality of that problem.

 

No citizen needs a magazine-fed semi-automatic. Someone who can’t bag his deer with two or three rounds just isn’t going to have venison for supper. Continuing to spray the area from a 10-, 20-, or 30-round magazine is dangerous, wasteful, stupid, and unsportsmanlike, and demonstrates either malevolence or a lack of adult self control.

 

Such calibres and detachable magazines belong only in the capable, trustworthy hands of soldiers and law enforcement, and not as personal weapons but as issued and tracked government issue.

 

And yet here was a situation in which a well-trained soldier who was a career sergeant and instructor in that “well-regulated militia” decided he could tame his personal demons by massacring his unarmed countrymen, including women and children, who were enjoying community games at a bowling alley or a well-deserved after-work beer at the local Cheers.

 

He did not call out to the Lord from his narrow prison; he reached down into the darkness of it and embraced resentment, jealousy, and death.

 

We can make the same old arguments until the cows come home about the Second Amendment, the pointless distinctions between automatic and semi-automatic, clip versus magazine, and what “AR” stands for (I think we all know by now), but what argument can be made to a child whose torso has been exploded by a .556 round?

 

Real men do not play at G.I. Joe.

 

Not even if they are G. I. Joe.

 

Real men do not call to a gun to resolve unhappiness.

 

If a real man is in a prison of the mind, he will be a man: he will call to the Lord.

 

-30-

 

Out Where the West Begins in the Drugstore Parking Lot - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

Out Where the West Begins

 

 In the Pharmacy Parking Lot

 

An old man creaks his body out of the pickup

With boots on the ground he’s got his swagger back

He taps a Marlboro out of a cardboard box

And lights it with a manly Zippo (clink)

 

He’s practiced his technique since ‘66

A ‘way-cool curl of silver-white cowboy smoke

Rising up above the pickup cab and into the West

Along with a phlegm-rich boots-and-saddles cough

 

His wife’s inside the store, a-getting’ his pills

He can’t quite manage that distance himself

 

‘Way back when he was so ////’ cool, you know?

 

Science Experiments and Pirate Ships - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Science Experiments and Pirate Ships

 

For Gordon, of Happy Memory

Whose death began in Viet-Nam

 

My boyhood pal’s home is now mostly gone

A concrete slab among some sunburnt weeds

The crumbling front-porch steps still stepped in place

But leading only to memories in the empty air

 

There where his bedroom laboratory used to be

We traded Heinlein stories and comic books

Experimented with chemicals and radio kits

And planned camping adventures that never were

 

His father was a widower who didn’t like either of us

But maybe that part of it doesn’t matter now

 

Short Shrift, Long Shrift, Everybody's Gotta Shrift - a little nonsense

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Shrifts, All Sizes

 

One hears of someone getting a short shrift, of course

But where does he get a shrift? At Amazon?

And are there any long shrifts available,

Fashioned in Sri Lanka or Honduras?

 

I have never felt the need for a shrift

Pajamas are just fine for me, thank you

But if I had one it would need to be

A long shrift, please, since I am rather tall

 

On the subject of shrifts

 

I don’t mean to be a bother or a bore

But can I buy one cheap at the local shrift store?

Being a 'Possum Must be Rough - Doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Being a ‘Possum Must be Rough

 

A Dachshund’s Night Patrol

 

Being a ‘possum can only be rough

Dragged all over the yard by a dachshund

A furious dachshund half its size

Until it collapses into a faint

 

And unconscious cannot see the absurdity

Of this old man chasing the dachshund all over the yard

Explaining that the ‘possum is a beneficent species

Demanding obedience, and receiving none

 

It’s not at all biblical, but even so

I command the dog to let my ‘possum go

 

(No ‘possums were harmed in the making of this minor marsupial motion picture)

The October Squirrel Festival - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The October Squirrel Festival

 

For Jerry Nobles, of Happy Memory

Our Town Pharmacist and a Joyful Friend

 

Squirrels!

 

They’re up the trees; they’re down the trees

They swarm each other just like bees

They’re up the oak; they’re down the pine

They really need a traffic fine

 

Dachshunds!

 

Our outraged pups – they yap and bark

While chasing squirrels all over the park

Dachshunds are usual merry and curious

But with squirrels they are fast and furious

 

But not fast enough

 

Cats!

 

Tuxedo-Cat, all proper and prim

Watches the others with a face all grim

Common Morning Glory

 

Taking a Stab at Cultural Appropriation - a brief essay

Lawrence Hall, HSG

mhall46184@aol.com

Taking a Stab at Cultural Appropriation

On the morning of 28 October I happened to watch Crystal Greenberg reporting the news via MSNBC. I noticed on a shelf behind her what appeared to be a Roman gladius, a short military sword.  The handle seemed in appropriate condition for its age but the blade may have been a wooden or plastic replacement to demonstrate the appearance of the original. I infer that Miss Greenberg has a fondness for studying history and was given or legally purchased this ancient Roman artifact. This speaks well of her varied interests.

However, given the political / cultural disagreements of the past few years the question must now be asked: is this an occasion of cultural appropriation? Can Miss Green document her Roman ancestry in order to possess this artifact legally or at least ethically? Is this gladius a looted artifact that should be returned to the descendants of the long-ago people who manufactured it?

Yes, I'm being snarky. Miss Green appears to be professional and ethical in her reporting, and I very much appreciate her obviously good care of an ancient artifact. Indeed, I am somewhat envious; I would like very much to have a gladius in any condition.

But as St. Thomas More says to the Duke of Norfolk in A Man For All Seasons, "I show you the times." Our country's museums were quite wrong in collecting the remains of First Nations peoples, and although perhaps originally well-intentioned in their displays of clothing, domestic appliances, horse trappings, blankets, and tools it is quite right that now all these things should be return to their proper custodians.

But everything that is manufactured is the product of a culture or series of cultures, a time, and a place. Many pocketknives have been excavated among other debris at the Little Bighorn, evidence of Custer’s soldiers desperately using them to extract the jammed soft-copper shells from their overheating rifles. The presence of these knives in an American museum is just right, but what of a pre-historic bone knife found in a dig in, say, Syria. Whose is it? Who decides? What about a rusty British army pocketknife plowed up in a field in Belgium? What is the cutoff date for determining rightful possession, and what are the borders and boundaries?

Should Turks return Constantinople (which they were pleased to rename Istanbul) to the Greeks?

Indignant accusations of cultural appropriation has become a self-destructive fashion reflecting jealousy and insecurity, and the illogic of the very concept eludes many people. Eyeglasses, for instance, can be argued as having been invented in China or one of the Italian states (Italy didn’t exist until the 19^th century) around 1300, and possibly by our busy Romans 2,000 years ago. It does not thus follow that no one but Chinese or Italians should be permitted to wear eyeglasses.

Cultures blend; the dialectic of thesis / antithesis / synthesis is what make civilization dynamic. Without the interplay of music, art, science, literature, engineering, medicine, and all the other practices of cultures enriching each other we would decline into a series of isolated museums of unimaginative peoples clinging to a closed loop of non-progress.

I am happy that Miss Greenberg owns an ancient Roman gladius (the length of whose blade might be illegal where she lives). It is because she is not a Roman that she is more empowered to share another culture around the metaphorical table at which we all may feast.

-30-

Alexander the Coppersmith - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

Alexander the Coppersmith

 

2 Timothy 4:14

 

We don’t know much about the coppersmith

(Indeed, we don’t know much about each other)

The works of an artist’s hands may serve the Lord

Or else they serve Ephesian vanities            

 

If a man is going to mold metals into idols

Diana of Ephesus might be pleasing aesthetically

But better to dismiss Diana and other trumperies

And joy in the gold of the Servant’s words

 

For power and jewels and golden toilet bowls

Are baubles that blind our eyes and darken our souls

 

(But still, I hope Alexander made things right)

The Stone, the Shell, and the Lance - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Stone, the Shell, and the Lance

 

-Wordsworth, Prelude, Book V, line 70 and following

 

Mathematics were always quarried stones to me

A chaos of integers, carries, and sums

Cascading down a dusty, crumbling slope

And piled up as a useless heap of rubble

 

But words, layered words, curving and dancing words

Are shimmering shells in stilly tidal pools

There waiting for my eyes, my thoughts, my speech

To play them, work them, hold them as chalices of truth

 

And the lance? The knight, he wields his wicked lance

Only to herd poor prisoners into algebra

Creation Sings Hatikvah - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Creation Sings Hatikvah

 

The Torah unrolls in a soft, whispered wind

The wanderer finds shade under its protection

The scholar refreshes himself with its words

The nations sit and attend to its truths

 

Creation sings Hatikvah, sings our Hope

 

The voice of God is in the whispered wind

His Words from before the first ever dawn

Flowing through the Beginning and even now

A blessing upon Jerusalem, upon the world

 

Creation sings Hatikvah, sings our Hope

 

Our voices too are in the whispered wind

The Torah unrolls for us in a whispered wind

 

Creation sings Hatikvah, sings our Hope

But Mom, All the Cool Kids are into Genocide! - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

But Mom, All the Cool Kids are into Genocide!

 

“Students! Be the Fuhrer’s Propagandists!”

 

Nazi poster ca. 1933, per Library of Congress: [Studenten seid Propagandisten des Führers Hoch-u. Fachschulen bekennen sich am 29. März zur Deutschen Freiheitsbewegung / (loc.gov)]

 

All the cool kids are into genocide

Slogans and posters and bullhorns and cries

Abandoning their studies to march outside

And scream the same 2,000-year-old lies

 

The InterGossip commands, and they obey

Blocking the streets and clenching each fist

Waving misspelt signs and yelling all day

Never pausing to ask if there’s something they’ve missed

 

Am I a hollow echo for some sycophant’s squall?

Will I fail to think for myself at all?