...Those 2019 Astros World Champions Shirts - weekly column 10.31.19

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

What Will Happen to all Those 2019 Astros World Champions Shirts?

Last week y’r ‘umble scrivener happened to be visiting the local elementary school on Book Parade Day. The little children were all dressed up as their favorite characters from their favorite books, and then while holding their books processed joyfully through the halls.

One of the extra joys was seeing the great number of old friends from our own books of the long-ago: Hank the Cow Dog, Robin Hood, Little Bo Peep, Minnie Mouse, Three Blind Mice (they were teachers, and I’m sure there’s no symbolism…), Alice in Wonderland, Bob the Builder, the Little Mermaid, butterflies, firefighters, elves, cowboys, fairies, cops, princesses, bears, football players, baseball players (no Washington Gnationals among our well-brought-up children, of course) one shark with gynormous flippers, somewhat fewer than 101 dalmatians, the Cat in the Hat, Princess Ella, astronauts, ballerinas, a giraffe, honeybees, dinosaurs (one of them a great big green one), some witches (not the math teachers), rabbits, farmers, and, oh, all sorts of childhood pals.

One of the principals was got up splendidly as Raggedy Andy. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen your principal costumed as Raggedy Andy.

C.S. Lewis wrote that a good children’s book is one that is again a joy when re-read in adulthood. So when was the last time you saddled up with Roy and Gene, sailed with Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver, or fell down that rabbit hole?

Well done, librarians and teachers and office gnomes and aides and parents and scary principals!

Y’r ‘umble fellow citizen also had an occasion to indulge in volunteer fire department takeaway barbecue on Sunday after meetin’.

There is nothing more truly American than our local volunteer fire departments. Firefighters have jobs and families and other community commitments, and then after work they spend hours and hours in training programs (and polishing up the big red fire trucks). And all this so that, for no pay at all, they can be ready to roll night and day, in all sorts of weather, to serve humanity in fires, floods, car crashes, medical emergencies, and the heartbreak of an Astros loss. And they hold fund-raisers to help fund the the gas and the gear.

Volunteer firefighters - they’re the best.

Finally, what indeed will happen to all the Houston Astros World champion shirts that were (sniff) never sold?

I don’t know what the sporting goods stores and suppliers will do this year with all those shirts they had manufactured with high hopes. In the past, such shirts have often been written off and shipped to religious and secular charities to be given away in poorer countries.

Thus, if you take a nice vacation this next year and see a little kid wearing a shirt boasting that the Houston Astros are the 2019 world champions, enjoy the moment. A kid who didn’t have a shirt will now have a shirt, and that’s good. And the shirt will read “HOUSTON ASTROS, 2019 WORLD CHAMPIONS.” And that’s good too. You might even say that the occasion is its own championship moment.

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Halloween Seems Illogical - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel@blogspot.com

Halloween Seems Illogical

Well, after all, we costume ourselves each day
Cloaking the little hurts and little pains
Those disabling vulnerabilities of
The casual abrasiveness of life

Playing dress-up in courtesy and smiles
Just as we should, in disciplining ourselves
To selfless service to humanity
Hoping somehow to make the costume real

For after all, we make ourselves each day
Less obvious pilgrims along the sacred way

Edgar Allan Poe's E-Reader - poem (of sorts)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Edgar Allan Poe’s E-Reader

Once upon a night shift dreary, while I pondered bleak and beery,
Over many a quaint and curious download of forgotten lore,
While I zoned out, nearly winking, suddenly there came a blinking,
As of something gently clinking, clinking at my website door.
'Tis some skimmer," I muttered, "hacking through my coded door -
Only this, and nothing more."

Quote the Raven: “Thank you for your recent payment of $171.12 to your Viasat Internet account. To set up automatic payments, please log into your account, click on the Billing & Payments tab, then the Payment Method sub-tab, and update your payment method accordingly. As part of the Viasat customer agreement, we require a valid payment method on file for monthly payments. If you haven’t logged into your account yet, you will need your account number: (666). If you have any questions or need help, try utilizing one of our self-service tools.”

Our Little Town has no Statues to Destroy - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel@blogspot.com

Our Little Town has no Statues to Destroy

Our little town has no statues at all
No Confederate leaning on his gun
Or Washington drawing his sword against
The Hessians of perfidious King George

Our little town has no statues to condemn
No doughboy scrambling over the top
Or sailor posing with a cannon round
While disapproving of a German sub

Our little town has no statues to destroy
But we’ve got a red light and a pizza place

An Artist of Great Vision, and, Like, S*** - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

An Artist of Great Vision, and, Like, S***

An artist daring, different, authentic
Vibrant and strong, a daring, unique voice
A breaker of glass ceilings, transgenic
Because she writes "f***" and "s***"
                                      - just like the boys

A Promise Made in the Name of the Saints - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

A Promise Made in the Name of the Saints

For Brother Columba and Brother Joseph, O.S.B.

“He will make his promise in the name of the saints

whose relics lie there, and to the abbot.”

-Rule of Saint Benedict, Chapter 59

Some men could swim across the Hellespont
Or walk poor Keats’ dark forest thoughtlessly
Drink deeply from the Castalian font
And through dear Shelley’s moonbeams kiss the sea

Some men could dream across Creation’s arc
With Tennyson beyond the sunset sail
Soar past the solar fields and then embark
To guard with virtue stern the Temple veil

But other men…

But, peace – all Grace in whole, and not in part
Upon the Altar, and within each heart

A Wild Duck on the Thames - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

A Wild Duck on the Thames

That singular duck died along that shore
And yet its shadow sails across the screen
Deep black against yellow, a sunset scene
A quacking intro to Saint Thomas More

Ducks die, and martyrs too, but still the Thames
Flows languidly to London and the sea
This water-song of our Island history
Our scurrilous ballads and sacred hymns

Sung merrily past monuments in stone
In praise of our Island’s Altars and Throne

(And there are waterfowl)



Cf. the opening credits of A Man for All Seasons, 1966

Is That Potato Loaded? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Is That Potato Loaded?

Flashbacks from Perusing the Over-55 Menu at Denny’s

“Loaded potato soup,” the waitress said
In reply.
                   Ah, yes, I thought to myself
Loaded potato soup. That’s how we downed
That commie spy plane back in ’67.

(Nothing about it in the papers, of course)

You never aimed loaded potato soup
At anything you didn’t mean to kill
The C.I.A. swore by their barley-and-lamb
But, pffft! Barley. Fine for a lady’s purse.

Yanks, eh. (That’s not for the papers, of course)

I was concealed-carry-potato cleared
MI 6.2 saw the paperwork through
All hush-hush, though the Reds were in on it
When it comes to potatoes, Commies know

(You won’t read about it in the papers, of course)

Oh, yes, those were the happy times, m’lad
A dry potato soup, shaken, not stirred
By a Eurasian seductress named Ethel
In our safe house in Tottenham Court Road

(Nothing about her in the papers, of course)

A quiet telephone call, a messenger
With tickets to some far-off capital
And a discreet flask of potato soup
Hidden deep within a hollowed-out Bible

(Not reported in the papers, of course)

And then there was the curious incident
Of nuclear loaded potato soup
And the dread falafel of lingering death
In Constantinople in ‘78

(It was hushed up in the papers, of course)

The few of us who survived were taken discreetly
To Buckingham Palace, where Her Majesty
Awarded us The Order of the Tuber
And then she served us all potato soup

(You won’t read about it in the papers, of course)

Oh, little did that merry waitress know
Of her customers’ sinister histories
Only a couple of elderly gents, but
Still sworn to The Official Secrets Act

(For they were never in the papers, of course)

Real Americans Vote - weekly column 10.24.19

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Real Americans Vote

In my rural county the ballot is still paper but the gadget nerds in Austin have electrified the rest of the process – one’s driving license (“or other approved form of i.d.”) is scanned by a robotic eye, which issues a paper permission slip to the nice lady behind the table who then hands the paper permission slip to the voter. The voter carries the paper permission slip maybe three feet along the same table to another nice who takes the paper permission slip. The voter then signs a telescreen with a magic stylus. After this, the voter chooses from among three ballots, is issued a special blue plastic pen (“Be sure to return it”), and withdraws into a large space to sit at any of dozens of little desks to hide behind a folding cardboard screen (printed in patriotic colors).

After marking his ballot the voter carries it (“Be sure not to fold your ballot”) to a zippered plastic fiber box which looks like it might have begun life as a beer cooler and slides it in. Everyone thanks everyone else and the exercise in democracy is over.

Still, the creeping computerization of elections is frightening. Remember the onboard computers that brought down airplanes and killed hundreds of people this summer, sacrificed to the demon idol Progress.

Paper ballots are scanned by electro-mechanical machines, and that’s fine. Doubtful ballots are evaluated by committees and a decision is made. Corrupting a paper ballot can be done (as the ghost of Lyndon Johnson could tell you), but it requires a conspiracy of traitors who must fudge one ballot at a time.

But millions of electronic ballots can be corrupted at one time by one sullen, resentful little mansie who can’t get a date but has Learned. To. Code. That’s how we see it written, this magic incantation that will feed the poor and make the lame walk again: Learn. To. Code.

Learn. To. Code. worked so well for the airplanes and the people who went down with them.

Let’s keep the paper ballots. If bad people are going to change our votes, make them work at it. As the ghost of Lyndon Johnson could tell you.

As with all elections, this is an important one, with ten proposed constitutional amendments (our constitution dates from just after Reconstruction and is a clumsy mess) that must be addressed. Locally there are no other issues, but in a few other counties and precincts there are also special races to fill empty offices and resolve certain county and precinct issues.

The Texas Tribune (https://www.texastribune.org/2019/10/15/texas-2019-constitutional-amendments-what-voters-need-know/) offers the best discourse on those ten proposed amendment, including the complete wording and a reasoned discussion which attempts objectivity and which does not tell the citizen how to vote. A certain area daily newspaper, on the other paw, features only truncated wording, and offers questionable recommendations, including a suggestion that a state income tax might be a good idea and should not be left to the voters to decide.

Pitching hissy-fits on the Intergossip is irrelevant. We must think and vote.

Self-government is not a spectator sport.

-30-

Hanzi - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Hanzi

A bronze-age Emperor, home from the wars
Master of a thousand chariots
Gives all his children the miracle of words
Like spring wildflowers, summer grass, autumn leaves

So that all our perceptions and imaginings
Can fly up to the heavens and around the earth
As prayers, whispers, letters, books, and songs
And poetry, the quiet voice of God

A scholar-poet inks the Hanzi for us -
In them we see true pictures of our lives

When the Missionaries, the Soldiers, and the Journalists Came to the Fields That Were Not Theirs - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

When the Missionaries, the Soldiers, and the Journalists

Came to the Fields That Were Not Theirs

The missionaries came

And said that they were out in the far fields
Spreading the Gospel in exotic fields
Preaching and suffering out in their fields
Our homes

The soldiers came

And said that they were on the battlefields
Killing each other in their far-off fields
Cornering corpses in some foreign fields
Our homes

The journalists came

Talking, talking, talking out in their fields
Safari-costumed in their quaintish fields
And writing us as objects in their fields
Our homes

A Synod for the Thames on the Occasion of the Amazon Synod - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

A Synod for the Thames

On the Occasion of the Amazon Synod

Five merry English friars
Gathered along the Thames
Near where the Isis joins up higher
And there they sang four hymns:

One for the ale, one for the beer
One for the burgundy pinched from the hall
One for the whisky that costs so dear
And one for sweet Joan, who served them all

And after they prayed an Ave and a Pater
They pitched a Roundhead into the water!


(All true Christians know impish Joan, who in the Robin Hood stories serves ale “of good October brewing” at the Blue Boar Inn.)

Whatever Happened to the Tank Commander Who Disobeyed Orders? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Whatever Happened to the Tank Commander Who Disobeyed Orders?

A brave little man with a shopping bag
Defiantly stood before an army tank
A foul machine designed to grind free men
Into bloody scraps to be hosed away

Two unknown men - it was not the tank that stopped
It was the tank commander who stopped the tank
All that is left is old videotape:
Two bullets made all problems disappear

A brave little man with a shopping bag
Another brave man with a battle tank:

They stopped -
And, yes, someday China will be free

Notre Dame de Grange en Etain - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Notre Dame de Grange en Etain

“…a small red flame – a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design…”

-Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

All greatness is complex and flawed, all truth
Can well be twisted like a dream deferred
Or like a sweat-stained bandaging of shame
In desolation grasped in desperate prayer

All smallness is complex and flawed, all men
Can well be twisted like justice denied
Or like a blood-stained pallium of death
In desolation grasped in desperate prayer

But in shabby buildings and in shabby men
A small red flame still shines among debris




("Notre Dame de Grange en Etain" alludes to contemporary church architecture having the effect of a big tin barn hardware store or lumber supply)

Dropping Some Accidie - rhyming couplet

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Dropping Some Accidie

Since I can’t fight it
I’d better write it

Noiring the Essentialing of Decolonization - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Noiring the Essentialing of Decolonization

Decolonization the packing trope
And privilege it into a spiteful verb
That dialogues passive obedience
From rotted patriarchy triumphant

Hegemonic the marginalized
And queer the stale unqueer into a yawn
Narrativing our oppressivism
And ecocrime all those who aren’t us

Perceptive me, the special way I see -
So why aren’t you listening to ME ME ME!?

Thank you for writing!

Dear Several People,

Yes, thank you for writing. I have mostly used poeticdrivel.blogspot.com as a backup and for sharing without taking comments, but with the failure of someone's purportedly professional site I will be open to comments here - IF I can figure out how to make that work! I am not a professional techno-whiz, but my momma raised me to respond to letters and I do try to live up to her expectations.

If you do not hear from me it's because I haven't yet figured out how to make a site work; I respond to everyone except gloomsters, doomsters, and all-purpose jerks.

Cheers,

Lawrence

Snarl for the Camera - weekly column for 17 October 2019

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Snarl for the Camera

Once upon a Kodak time when the children were shoo-shooed into the yard for a family picture, the artistic command was “SMILE FOR THE CAMERA!”

Given the perception that camera film was very slow and wouldn’t work in the shade (in fact, ASA400 was common by the 1950s, and works very well in cloudy light), everyone one was made to grin into the fiercest sun and try to look happy about it through tears.

The artistic command for portraiture today appears to be “SNARL FOR THE CAMERA!”

For reasons best known to The Little People I receive occasional electrical ads from Canada Goose, the manufacturer of very reputable and very, very expensive coats and accessories for snow people.

The most recent Canada Goose ad featured a number of handsome / beautiful young adults sporting very nice coats and looking as if the photographer had just said some rude things about their mothers.

I just gotta say that if I were permitted to wear a Canada Goose coat (useful about once every two years here in East Texas – must be climate change) I’d be awfully happy about it.

A brief look around the InterGossip reveals that most pictures of adults, especially clothing ads, are all cranky and snarly these days. Apparently, happiness indicates a lack of artistry or coolness or something. If you don’t make a face like you have to go to the euphemism RIGHT NOW you just aren’t getting art and fashion right.

However, kid pix seem more joyful, whether a toddler at play or a high school athletic or academic team proudly showing their medals after a win.

And, no, grumpy-coots, I have never seen a participation medal. Those appear to exist only in the minds of the a.m. radio boys.

I once got a ribbon for second place in a junior high spelling bee. No one took my picture, though.

People still take pictures of their subjects lined up against a wall as if there’s going to be an execution. Try to have the subjects in the open with a field or woods off in the distance, and without a telephone pole appearing to grow from someone’s head. Give the auto-focus time to work, and take lots of shots from different angles. Something will come out right

Also, a cloudy day is much kinder to skin tones and all the colors of creation; bright sun washes all that out.

Finally, there’s already too much snarling in the world; a smile for the camera is sometimes just right.

-30-

Error 502 - The Machine Speaks of the Future of Poetry - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Error 502 – The Machine Speaks of the Future of Poetry

What would Elizabeth Bishop say?

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On the Nature of Real Things - Weekly Column 10 October 2019

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

On the Nature of Things

In the first century the Roman philosopher Lucretius wrote Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), which I have not read and probably never will read.

Nevertheless, the title is useful in itself for considering reality.

Last week y’r ‘umble scrivener read in an automotive magazine a review of a specialty electric vehicle. The reviewer noted, among the car’s other purported virtues, that an electric car does not pollute.

One would assume that a writer for an auto magazine would know better. One would assume in error.

Electric cars pollute. A lot.

A rechargeable vehicle requires multiple heavy-duty batteries, and the mining of the raw materials for batteries, the manufacturing of the batteries, and the safe disposal of the batteries at the end of their usefulness require much expenditure of those mean ol’ fossil fuels in generating energy for those processes.

More than that, the electricity necessary for charging and recharging the batteries that make the car go for a few miles ultimately come from, yes, those beastly coal-fired, nuclear-powered, or oil-powered generating plants.

My father once said that there are people who think that milk comes from the grocery store.

Similarly, there are people – one of them a writer in a technical magazine – who think that electricity comes from that little rectangle on the wall.

Fossil fuels are wonderful. Extracting them is labor-intensive, but they are so efficient in providing us energy and building our economy that they pay for that many times over.

Oil and coal are not only about powering our machines; they also are the bases for medicines, chemicals, eyeglass frames, computer cases, fans, windmills, solar panels, window frames and window panes, toothbrushes, notebooks, pens and the inks for them, telephones, safety devices, dyes, paints, flashlights, tools, watches, hoses, toys, scientific instruments, health care (Imagine the doctor saying, “I’ll just use my bare hands; those plastic gloves pollute.”), clothing, fishing rods, fishing lines, boat structures, camera…the list, as has been said, goes on and on. The perceptive reader of this excellent news can put the page down and look around to see all the wonderful things in his or her life whose structural origins are in the nifty atoms of oil and coal.

And, besides, the dinosaurs don’t need them anymore.

The sort of people who make an argument only through yelling at us often make an appeal to “science,” as if that Latin word for knowledge is some sort of magic incantation. When some shrill look-at-me-ista screams “Obey the science!” what she or he is really saying is, “I read it on some site on the GossipNet so it must be true! Obey me!”

If we want to know about cows, we ask farmers, not a little box made in China. You could take a turn milking Old Bessie (I’ve done it, thank you; Bessie and I parted company without a tear shed by either of us.). If we want to know about the efficiency of fuels we seek out the engineer and the chemist, not a little box made in China. If we want to know about cars, we ask the mechanic, not a little box made in China. If we want to be healed of a sickness or injury we ask the doctor or nurse practitioner, not Dr. Box from China.

Seeking knowledge from a little plastic box (made in China) that lights up and makes noises is futile. We learn only by studying, with our brains and our five senses, the nature of things as they are, not as they are programmed as images.

-30-