Read Within Your Academic Discipline - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Read Within Your Academic Discipline

 

 

The Child is father of the Man

 

-Wordsworth

 

 

When I was a child I read without discipline:

Robert A. Heinlein, Robin Hood, cowboy yarns

Pirates raiding across the Spanish Main

Penrod and Sam, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn

 

In college they said, “Read within your discipline”

The Russians are good, Romantics if you must

Though the English are overstudied and overdone

(Some say electronics are the coming thing)

 

I minded the words of my college tutor

‘Til Robin Hood stole the Sheriff’s computer

Twenty Three But Not Me - doggerel re 23andMe

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Twenty Three But Not Me

 

I am told I have 26 new kin

How sad that I will never get to meet them

23andMe has tossed me into the bin

Access has been blocked through someone’s whim:

 

My information is open for hackers to see

But it’s certainly not open for me!

 (Apparently 23andMe has lost information to hackers; the company’s solution is to punish the customer.)

The 23andMe Data Breach Keeps Spiraling | WIRED

Top 201 23andMe Reviews (consumeraffairs.com)

23andMe, Inc. | Complaints | Better Business Bureau® Profile (bbb.org)

23andMe Moves to Thwart Class-Action Lawsuits by Quietly Updating Terms | PCMag

23andMe frantically changed its terms of service to prevent hacked customers from suing (engadget.com)

23andMe Is Terrifying, but Not for the Reasons the FDA Thinks | Scientific American

A Fragment of Machinery in the Road - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Fragment of Machinery in the Road

 

Part of a specialty clamp in asphalt trapped

Like a primeval animal, jaws apart

A mechanical protest locked in place

When steaming pitch was rolled upon the road

 

The seasons pass and footsteps pass, leaves fall

But nothing changes for those frozen in place

By the decrees of stasis and stagnancy

Progress blocked by torpidity and time

 

The seasons pass, my daily footsteps pass

A fragment of machinery in the road

Two Verses in the Eternal Hymn - a poem for two young musicians at Christmas

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Two Verses in the Eternal Hymn

 

For Cate and Jack

Christmas 2023

 

From the foot of the Throne

 

A river flows out into all that is

And with it your music across the universe

To sing the happy beginnings of all things

To celebrate the holiness of being

 

Past

 

Dragons and dreams, the Mysteries of Joy

Galaxies of stars, the Mysteries of Light

An abyss of pain, the Mysteries of Sorrow

Eternal dawn, the Mysteries of Glory

 

Your music spirals and spins among the spheres

Among the orbits and spheres and great mysteries

Great mysteries of beings and things never seen

Your voices join with the songs of Creation

 

Your music slips into our atmosphere

To sing and ring among the rocks and rills

Voices of love singing joy and truth

Your gifts of beauty to humanity

 

You and your sweet voices, rare gifts of love

From the Throne of God to us on earth

And back again, music as light as dreams

And deeper than thunder from Olympus

 

Old Vainamoinen sings at dawn with you

Euterpe, Terpsichore, and Erato are your kin

Apollo tunes his lyre to you, and Pan his pipes

And Cecelia blesses all your works:

 

Hymns, descants, and carols, merry marches for the road

Bubble-gum tunes for the car radio

Sea shanties for work, and nonsense rhymes for fun

You pray them, play them, craft them all into place

 

Your music is a sacred offering to God

You sing it out into the universe

Where every note is an ornament forever

And you are two verses in the eternal Hymn

How to Review a War Movie Without Saying Anything - poem (of a sort)

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

How to Review a War Movie Without Saying Anything

 

First, copy out the same old filler words

You’ve read in almost every film review:

 

 

Glued to your seat edge of your seat action-packed

All-star cast powerful and moving iconic

Must-see intense cult classic gripping scenes

Gritty realism classic cinema

 

Haunting intense unforgettable thrilling

Sweeping raw emotion (as opposed to

Cooked emotion) unflinching essential

Stark visuals overwhelming odds intense

 

Stunning cinematography powerful

Unflinching acclaimed devastating action-adventure

Action-thriller infiltrate timeless story

Treacherous powerful performances

 

 

Then stir the words into a metaphorical soup

And let them crawl weakly across the screen

And die

Something That Will Stick to Your Ribs - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Something That Will Stick to Your Ribs

 

When I was a boy I was told to eat balanced meals

“Something that’ll stick to your ribs,” they said

But I didn’t want anything sticking to my ribs

I still don’t

An Envelope is its Own Story - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

An Envelope is its Own Story

 

An envelope in the post office parking lot

A woman parks next to it, looks down, and sneers

And puffs and heaves her ponderousness inside

To dock at the counter and make demands

 

I rescue the envelope and note the name and address

Oh, yes. I remember. That was all so sad

At least the daughter’s in the Army and safe enough

It’s a Christmas card. The man must have dropped it

 

I leave it at the counter, explaining the circs

The postal clerk accepts it back, and sneers

A Burning Bush That Wasn't - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Burning Bush That Wasn’t

 

“Vadam, et videbo visionem hanc magnum, quare non comburatur rubus”

 

-Exodus III

 

I was not herding Jethro’s flocks on Horeb

But merely walking for pleasure along the road

And like Moses I saw a burning light

And turned aside to see what it might be

 

There with my stick I pushed aside a bush

And beheld, sparkling in the morning sun

Flung into place by some man’s mighty arm

And not decayed or dimmed by weather or time

 

A beer can

Decolonize This Place - a perhaps intemperate screed

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Decolonize This Place

 

“Colony” is a value-neutral expression but this useful denotation has been force-fitted with a negative connotation which serves no purpose except the shallowest sort of propaganda.

 

Hong Kong, for instance, was until this century a British Crown Colony in which freedom of speech, movement, and economic activity were guaranteed. Now it is part of Communist China in which the only thing guaranteed is brutal oppression.

 

The label is not important; the reality of freedom is. We are a republic, but then so are North Korea, Haiti, and Viet-Nam. Canada, God’s second-favorite nation, is a dominion within the British Commonwealth, and they seem to get on just fine.

 

Still, facts are not allowed to influence the lemmings who chant slogans that begin with that intellectual thesis statement, “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho!”

 

A ‘way cool thing now is to claim that everything and every concept is colonized and now must be decolonized in order to be restored to some sort of pre-lapsarian golden age that never was. “Decolonize this place” is now extended to art, music, literature, and for all we know beagles and flashlight batteries.

 

Well, I propose a decolonization of this nation. We have a national flag. The red, white, green, and black of the mythological state of Palestine isn’t it.

 

Decolonize this place.

 

When we see thousands of idle, uninformed, and apparently unemployable oafs marching and menacing in this country’s streets under a polluted sea of Palestinian flags we are reminded of the Ku Klux Klanner-bananers and the Nazi-nasties who in the 1920s and 1930s strutted and bellowed in our streets waving their hateful rags, shouting their hateful ideologies, and demanding our submission. A lot of Americans bought into that doo-doo too.

 

Why do we now see more Palestinian – which is in effect a camouflage for Hamas – flags in our streets than our own?

 

How is it that so many people now regard our republic as a colony of Hamas, and demand that we colonials obey the dictates of a foreign power that hates all of us?

 

Decolonize this place. Not with violence or those stupid bullhorns, but with a quiet, stern refusal to indulge Hamas. Don’t accept any arguments about a false equivalence. There is no equivalence between an ideology of genocide,, murder, hostage-taking, lying as an art form, torture, and a one-world empire [Hamas’s Genocidal Intentions Were Never a Secret - The Atlantic], and our concepts of dignity and equality (though we could be better at living those concepts).

 

Decolonize this place.

 

-30-

In Violation of Community Standards - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

In Violation of Community Standards

 

For Writing a Positive Review

 

 

“Unmutual!”

 

-Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner, “A Change of Mind”

 

 

Amazon.god judged me, and found me wanting

For violating Community Standards

I don’t know what amazon.sin I committed

In praising my new Sperry Topsiders

 

Let us make such violations worthy of praise

We will not be communed against our will

Or judged by amazon.inquisition

Or any other corporate dotheads

 

I will never take an amazon.loyaltyoath

But new shoes are nice

Puppies Share Christmas in Their Own Special Way - rhyming DOGgerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Puppies Share Christmas in Their Own Special Way

 

Nothing says Christmas like sparkly glitter

Frosting the ornaments and, oh! So much more

Tiny stars shared from an incontinent critter -

In diarrheal doggy poop on the bedroom floor!

Henry Kissinger Has Left His Multi-Million-Dollar Apartment - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Henry Kissinger Has Left His Multi-Million-Dollar Apartment

 I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.

 

-C. S. Lewis, Preface to The Screwtape Letters

The bodyguards, the security details

The long black cars, the cooing movie stars

The expensive dinner jackets tailored just so

The best cigars, the rarest of champagnes

The jeweled watches and those golden cufflinks

The many underlings awaiting his call

The fawning bishops at the Al Smith dinners

The publishers eager to print his latest screeds

The voice that commanded armies and fleets

And left presidents quivering in fear

 

The millions of corpses rotting in the sun

A Connoisseur of Clinic Waiting Rooms - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Connoisseur of Clinic Waiting Rooms

 

I could regale you with tales of puppy dogs

Painted with matching little argyll vests

And Kodachrome sunsets snapped long ago

Darkness and dust settling on a fading lake

 

I could detail for you leatherette chairs

In rows beneath the television on the wall

Facing old women shrieking in HD

And years-old magazines that no one reads

 

A door opens to a whiff of germicide

My name is called – and there’s no place to hide!

Romance of the Boeing 707 - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Romance of the Boeing 707

 

Out on Runway Number 9

Big 707 set to go

 

-Gordon Lightfoot

 

Old Ginsberg wrote that the typewriter was holy

An airport of words for coming and going

On a runway of ribbon, platen, and keys

McKuen might have said it’s a safe place to land

 

But then came the Boeing 707

Dear Gordon Lightfoot’s silver wings on high

It flew our words and us all over the world

And became for us holy in its own way

 

The 707 – there was nothing finer

But the last one I saw was a roadside diner

HAMAS Appears to Have Taken Control of Our Nation

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

HAMAS Appears to Have Taken Control of Our Nation

 

Video showed a Palestinian flag raised on the statue of the Marquis de Lafayette near the White House, with "Free Palestine" spray painted on his pedestal. A Palestinian keffiyeh, popularized by the Palestinian Liberation Organization, was put on the head of one of the figures at the foot of the pedestal.

 

-Brady Knox, Washington Examiner

 

Columbia University Closes Campus Ahead of Israel-Hamas War Protests - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

 

Pro-Palestinian protesters shut down main entrance to Union Station in Washington, D.C. | Watch (msn.com)

 

The people say: ‘Shut it down for Palestine’ – International Action Center (iacenter.org)

 

NYPD beefing up patrols as Jewish schools worry over ‘day of Jihad’ (nypost.com)

 

Hamas’ Terror Also Holds a Warning for the US - The Washington Post

 

California Democratic convention in Sacramento shut down by cease-fire protest disruptions (msn.com)

 

Bad Medicine - Tablet Magazine

 

A Snapshot of Support for Palestinians Across America - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

 

Pro-Palestine protesters shut down Bay Bridge (ktvu.com)

 

Protest blocks Israeli cargo ship at Port of Oakland in support for Palestinians amid violence in Gaza - ABC7 San Francisco (abc7news.com)

 

Pro-Palestine protesters shut down OSU trustees meeting, demand divestment from Israel (msn.com)

 

SHUT IT DOWN Nov 9th Day of Rage: Terror-Tied Islamic and Leftist Destroyers Terrorize Communities, Target Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics - Geller Report

 

Pro-Palestinian group posts NYC map with locations, sparks fears of attacks (msn.com)

 

Chants ‘calling for the murder of Jews’ were shouted at me during Cooper Union protest, student recalls (foxnews.com)

 

Full List of Democrats Who Refused To Condemn Hamas Supporters (newsweek.com)

 

Pro-Palestinian protesters drag burning Israeli flag down NYC street as they warn supporters days are 'numbered' (nypost.com)

 

Jewish NYC high schoolers verbally attacked by woman on DC train after National Mall rally: ‘F–k all you guys’ (msn.com)

 

Jewish teacher hides in Queens high school as students riot (nypost.com)

 

Cornell student accused of threatening to kill Jewish students will remain behind bars | CNN

 

Israeli business owner in Florida speaks after several Jewish establishments tagged with antisemitic graffiti (fox35orlando.com)

 

Antisemitic incidents on college campuses spur federal investigation (usatoday.com)

 

Jewish communities threatened by acts of antisemitic vandalism across the US. | CNN

 

Campus Reform the #1 Source for College News

 

Pro-Palestinian Protesters Occupy New York Times Lobby In Demonstration – Deadline

 

Grand Central Terminal shut down due to pro-Palestinian protests (nydailynews.com)

 

7K pro-Palestinian protesters take over Brooklyn Bridge, call for elimination of Jewish state: 'By any means' (nypost.com)

 

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade arrests: 34 people arrested after pro-Palestinian demonstrators interrupted parade, NYPD says | CNN

 

Pro-Palestinian protestors block Port of Tacoma military ship | Crosscut

 

https://www.bing.com/search?q=palestinian+disruptions+of+america&qs=n&sp=-1&lq=0&pq=palestinian+disruptions+of+amer&sc=11-31&sk=&cvid=A41FE5C2F4374955B9BA0D1649506991&ghsh=0&ghacc=0&ghpl=&FPIG=24A5D720EB0C48F18D38923D216D8256&first=11&FORM=PERE

 

Pro-Palestinian Protesters Shut Down 3rd & Fairfax, March Through The Grove – Deadline

 

Hamas terror organization charter targets Christians and US service organizations (msn.com)

 

Hamas Ally CAIR Has Been Operating With Impunity Inside America for 30 Years | | news-journal.com

 

Pro-Palestinian protesters rally on Mag Mile to draw attention to Israel-Hamas war - Chicago Sun-Times (suntimes.com)

 

‘Bombs are dropping, why are you shopping?’ Black Friday traditions interrupted by anti-Israel protests (bizpacreview.com)

 

Hamas’s Genocidal Intentions Were Never a Secret - The Atlantic

 

-30-

 

 

November 2023 Update Made a Mess of my Apple Watch - Caution

 On the morning of 25 November I downloaded the latest Apple security update. I don't know about security, but the update made a mess of my settings without asking me if I wanted anything changed. Further, despite all the directions from Apple and other sources, I cannot change the settings back and I cannot delete the update. 

When this, my first and last Apple Watch, fades away I'm going to crush it into its components and retrieve my decades-old $10 Wal-Mart Timex from a desk drawer where it still ticks.

Like Children Dancing - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Like Children Dancing

 

Like children dancing, leaves form up in rows

Then skitter across each corner and street

As shoals in rolling ranks overflowing other ranks

Or little tornadoes laughing through circles and swirls

 

Like children celebrating their youth and strength

Leaves tumble and run before the shifting wind

‘Way up into the air and back to earth

In happy games of catch-me-if-you-can

 

Like children in the afternoon, just out of school

Autumn leaves joyfully mock every rule

The First Folio of...You! - mere rhyming doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The First Folio of You

 

On the 400^th anniversary of the First Folio

Of some playwright or other in England

 

I fear that there will never, ever be

A First Folio of the works of – Me!

Bound in leather most luxuriously

For sale at a wildly exorbitant fee

 

Scanned for pleasure over cups of tea

And studied by academics thoughtfully

Beloved by the climbing bourgeoise

As much as by the high nobility

 

I can’t adorn my poems with a PhD

So will kind readers accept a high school degree?

Thanksgiving as a Singleton - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Thanksgiving as a Singleton

 

Memories of a drive-through just won’t do

Set something on your table, if only for you

A turkey plate from the grocery store

Two side dishes from cans, or maybe more

And gravy even if it’s a store-bought broth

Silverware, real plates, and a tablecloth

Wash your hands, light a candle, say a prayer

And open your napkin with your special flair!

 

You are where you are meant to be, it’s true

And know that God is with you to see you through

First, Catch Your Cookbook

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

First, Catch Your Cookbook

 

Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness…

 

-Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

 

Having never seen a copy of Mrs. Beeton’s famous cookery book I don’t know if her recipe for rabbit begins with “First, catch your rabbit.” If it isn’t true it ought to be, for it is fine example of both English logic (rare) and English whimsy (a defining trait). The expression is often used as a cautionary warning, similar to our American “Don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched.”

 

The arc from Thanksgiving to Christmas is when the thoughtful cook will seek out MeeMaw’s cookbook to verify seasonal specialties: Waldorf salad, corn casserole, turkey fried or baked or broiled, ham fried or baked or boiled, and those old traditional dishes special to each family.

 

Cookbooks are otherwise seldom consulted in our electrical times, for the cook can quickly seek out a recipe on the Orwellian telescreen / Tolkien Palantir. However, opening an old family cookbook in anticipation of the holidays is a way of inviting all the ancestors back home for a moment in time. The crumbling pages are the ones that the cook’s mother and grandmother and great-grandmother read, maybe by the light of a coal-oil lamp on a dark winter day long ago.

 

On the margins are many penciled notes and corrections. You can almost hear some ancestor muttering, “Harrumph! What does that editor in New York know about real cornbread!”

 

A slip of paper falls out – in Mama’s elegant penmanship is a recipe she copied out from her own mother’s telling. Another piece of paper might be a yellowing clipping from a newspaper, a rationing recipe with a scrap of war news on the other side.

 

Older cookbooks might be bound in leather, like a Bible, and the connections are real, for both allude to bread and life and stories. The pages of both books are pages of the histories of families. In them you can, for a moment, be a little child again, barely as high as the stove stop, helping (not very well!) your grandmother with baking your favorite cookies. Do you remember? Do you see and smell the joys of her warm kitchen again? Is Grandpa still sitting at the table rustling the pages of The Houston Post and muttering about the prices of cattle feed?

 

Some of the best memories are in that old family cookbook. With Thanksgiving and Christmas coming soon, it’s time to refresh them. This is a season when memories of a drive-through just won’t do.

 

-30-