7.7.2020 – indifference in

indifference in
this, our democracy,
is abdication

I was thinking about Harold Ross today.

Mr. Ross was the founder-editor of the New Yorker Magazine.

The magazine gave a home to so many American writers and was the focus of so many American dreams.

Neither here nor there but I remember a conversation with Gerald Elliott, then the retired Editor of the Grand Rapids Press and he told me that he missed the Sunday Magazine, Wonderland.

When I asked why, he replied that it was the one place where local authors had a chance to get published.

I didn’t tell him how many short stories I had submitted to Wonderland but I batted 1,000 on rejections.

Anyway, Mr. Ross started up the New Yorker with the announcement that the magazine would, “Not be edited for the little old lady from Peoria.”

Much much ink has been spilled try to explain just what Mr. Ross meant by that and I will not add to it.

I will mention that one of the funniest comments EVER about the New Yorker was an aside by James Thurber in a vignette about his mother. Mr. Thurber wrote that once his Mother told him that one of her friends in Columbus, OH, “took the New Yorker to help Jamie,” but never read it.

What stuck in my head was the thought, “what are the people in Peoria thinking right now?”

Through the magic of the World Wide Web I was soon reading the Peoria Journal Star.

The headline, “Commentary: Law enforcement: Thoughts of a sanctified believer in America” caught my eye.

I am glad it did.

It is what I would call an OP-ED piece.

It was written for the Peoria Journal Star (fabulous name by the way) by Judge Joe Billy McDade (another fabulous name by the way) a senior U.S. District Judge in the Central District of Illinois for the 4th of July.

Judge Joe Billy McDade at a naturalization ceremony, Nov 15 2019 – JOURNAL STAR

Judge McDade led off with the words, “The promise of America”

And went from there.

The Judge went on, “While the promise of America has flickered and faded in dark times, it has never been extinguished. That promise is the bedrock of American values and it should be the touchstone as we confront the challenges, new and old, that plague us.“

He concluded with:

We the People are sovereign;

We the People must safeguard our rights against encroachment.

It is upon all of us to do what we can to make the promise of America a reality. Doing nothing emboldens the wrongdoer, whatever the intent; indifference in a democracy is abdication.

These thoughts are only a starting point — I do not have all the answers.

But in the difficult conversations which are occurring and ought to continue, what I can offer is this: ever in the foreground, always in view, must be the fundamental idea of America, a nation where all and the rights of all are equal under the law.

By chance today I got a point of view from Peoria.

I have been feeling mostly rotten lately about our Country.

Knowing that Judge Joe Billy McDade is out there made me feel better.

One little light.

Maybe there are more.

There must be!

But even if Judge Joe Billy McDade is the ONLY one out there, I will not abdicate from my responsibilities as a citizen of the United States.

I will not walk away.

I will not go quietly into the night.

Indifference be damned.

It’s going to be a pub fight.

7.4.2020 – created equal

created equal
this truth self-evident, rights
unalienable

I hope I do not need to identify the source of these words.

But I will.

They are from the 2nd sentence of the Declaration of Independence.

The sentence reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

For the few words in this sentence, I have always been amazed at how much it says.

The point I want to make is the author’s use of the terms SELF EVIDENT and UNALIENABLE.

For such a short sentence, there is not much wiggle room.

Yet somehow, someway some people don’t get it.

I guess for some people some things are more self evident than others.

And somehow, less unalienable.

I don’t understand it myself.

But there we are.

7.3.2020 – red winged blackbird sings

red winged blackbird sings
inflections? innuendoes?
now and just after

Sitting on my back porch in North Georgia, I heard the sharp trilling of the song of a red winged blackbird.

Once I heard, the memories of so many other place I had heard this bird song came to mind.

It is the most numerous bird in the world after all.

Sitting there thinking about the bird song after the end of the bird song, the poetry of Wallace Stevens came to mind.

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

Does anyone read Stevens any more?

Always listed in the top tier of American poets.

He is the only one to ever having broke their hand punching Hemingway in the face.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
BY WALLACE STEVENS
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

6.26.2020 – No love? Am only

No love? Am only
sounding brass or clanging cymbals
mankind or Angel

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal – 1 Corinthians 13:1 (NIV)

Much is made in the history books of the fact that the United States of America twice held national elections in the middle of a war.

In 1864, with the country engaged in Civil War, Abraham Lincoln ran for reelection.

Re election alone had not been tried since Andrew Jackson.

An election in the middle of a Civil War?

World couldn’t quite figure that one out.

In 1944, with World War 2 winding down, Franklin Roosevelt ran for the 4th time.

That’s not so much you would think but consider that Mr. Churchill called an election about 8 months later and got tossed out of office.

Stalin never did understand how Mr. Churchill allowed that to happen.

In less than 4 months, we are going to try and have a national election.

I put it to you that if you took the national mood at its worst in 1864 and combined it with the national mood at its worst in 1944 and then mixed it real good, the result would not come close the the national mood right now.

It is ugly out there.

And it is going to get worse.

Not much love.

Lots of sounding brass and cymbals.

If not with us, then against us and take no prisoners.

We are better than this.

At least we were.

Faith?

Hope?

Love?

All seem to have been thrown out the window for baseball bats and bricks.

I have to ask myself that old WWJD.

What would Jesus do?

WHAT would Jesus do!

Once he stopped throwing up I think Jesud would do one of two things.

It wouldn’t surprise me if he went through the United States like he went through the Temple saying, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of robbers!”

That or he would turn and shake the dust of his sandals on the United States and walk away.

That 2nd option is by far the worse.

6.23.2020 – music heard with you

music heard with you
more than music, without you
all is desolate

Adapted from the Conrad Aiken’s Music I Heard.

I like his work though I had never heard until Savannah attached itself to myself late in life.

Yet the words, Music I heard with you was more than music, And bread I broke with you was more than bread, describe life with my wife that it seems like I have known his work for years.

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread.
Now that I am without you, all is desolate,
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved:
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes.
And in my heart they will remember always:
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise!

Like Johnny Mercer, the poet Conrad Aiken was known as Savannah’s own.

Mr. Aiken, according to his entry in Wikipedia, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, taught briefly at Harvard, and served as consultant in poetry for the Library of Congress.

Somehow, he was also largely responsible for establishing Emily Dickinson’s reputation as a major American poet.

Yet, in Savannah, he might be best know for recognizing a word combination in the daily newspaper where one day under SHIPS – ARRIVALS – DEPARTURES, he saw the notice;

Cosmos Mariner—Destination Unknown.

Mr. Aiken took notice of the notice.

Mr. Aiken recognized the pure accidental poetry of the words.

He like the arrangement.

He like the rythym.

He liked it so much you that can read to this day as he had it carved into a marble bench.

A marble bench that sits next to his grave in a Savannah.

A bench where anyone can sit and watch the ships come and go from the port of Savannah.

Maybe one of them might be the Cosmos Mariner.

And its destination might be unknown.

Maybe I am the Cosmos Mariner.

Going out through the Cosmos.

Destination unknown.