That's a line from Michael Smith's beautiful song "We Become Birds." The whole of the line is "When you're put here, it's for a reason/...." Not Michael W. Smith, the mega-selling Christian popster, but Michael Peter Smith, the criminally underknown/hence underappreciated Catholic folk singer known best, if at all, for "The Dutchman," which Steve Goodman had something of a hit ( a folk hit, which means he might have sold as many as twenty copies) with. When I first heard that line I thought that like many of Smith's "Catholic school years" songs, it was knowingly dumbly ironic, poking gentle fun at the sorts of believers he obviously was familiar with from his Catholic schooling.
Then came Rick Santorum.
On March 29 of last year, Candidate Santorum uttered these immortal thoughts: "The reason Social Security is in big trouble is we don't have enough workers to support the retirees. A third of all the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion, because one in three pregnancies end (sic) in abortion." Holy Mother-of-Pearl (Hester, right?): Where does one even begin, with that?
Leaving aside politics (which I expect I'll be addressing in future), religion (ditto), and abortion, ( hopefully not, except to say that it's less than a quarter, not a third, of pregnancies which are aborted, and that number seems very high to me) and just dealing with Logic and Reason vis-a-vis that quote is daunting enough. I mean, ( I mean) it's really hard for me to get my head around that statement enough to address its sheer idiocy, but I feel I have to try, somehow. Like I owe it, to someone....
More than 30 years ago, I sat in Prof. Mahlon Barnes's Logic class at the University of Hartford as he gleefully, in exposing some logical fallacy or another, said "Show me that set, the one that contains 'no people.'" BTW (hey, c'mon, I'm hep), you should Google "logical fallacies" sometime. It's pretty amazing how routinely they're used unchallenged in daily political discourse. Anyway, how do you talk about the grouping "no people," or "people who haven't been born" in a concrete way, as if you knew or could say something about them? It's like arguing about whether unicorns had spots or were just solid colors. If you're gonna raise that "issue," wouldn't taxes have been higher, to pay for their schooling? And unemployment rolls would have swelled even more during The Great Recession if they'd all (who, again?) been here. Not to mention "welfare queens"(St. Ronnie's memorable term) and drug use and teen pregnancy (no contraception or Sex Ed in a Santorum Administration, of course) increases with all those extra people. Shouldn't we in fact be grateful to all the people who haven't gotten here yet? Sheesh, it's already hard enough to find a parking spot.
With all due respect to Dr. Barnes (who I believe has joined the set of "Those Who Were Here Once, But Are No Longer"--and shouldn't we be pretty pissed at them, too, for not helping us now? It's Obama's fault, you know.), I can't remember which fallacy he was illustrating at the time. I should be wicked mad at the brain cells which never came to me, but what the hell. It does put me in mind of a similar sort of quandary, though: When I was working in Maine years ago, I had a co-worker who once, angry at having scraped against a nail that hadn't been fully driven, asked "Who didn't drive that nail?" Well, didn't we have fun answering that one: "Uh, Mother Theresa, Mao, Eisenhower, , my paperboy, that bird flying by...." And now we could add "All those people who haven't been born yet!"
So the show this week (Tuesday, noon til two pm, eastern, 100.1 fm, wool.fm): In honor of Rick "Theocracy and Ideology Trump Logic and Reasoning Every Time" Santorum, I'm playing "logic" (of which there are few) and "reason" (enough, I think) songs. And, more than likely, "We Become Birds."
Hope you're not among the millions and millions who won't be there....
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
"What Chew Want...", or: "What Foods These Morsels Be"
When I was a lad--was too, once--and would go to visit my sister and her family in Connecticut, we'd listen to WTIC AM in the AM; there was a dj there named Bob Steele (CT's answer to Dave Maynard, my favorite dj on WBZ radio when AM was king, before it became hate-speech radio) who, each day, would announce his weight on-air as he fought the battle of Midwaist. I'm not doing exactly that here, but something similar. Hey, I said these posts won't always be political, although I could argue, if I were an arguin' sort, that everything is political. F'rinstance, who grows our food? What chemicals are in it? Has it been genetically modified? Should we import out-of-season fruits and veggies from South America, or even Cali or FLA? How do we cope with the health-care costs of our horrible diet? And on and on....
Anyway, I'm currently in week two of an Elimination/Cleanse regimen (I hate the word "diet," for its many silly connotations) of caloric consumption, for my gastric betterment. Both of my grandfathers died from internal explosions: my father's father from a burst appendix before my father was born, my mother's from a bleeding ulcer. I had my first ulcer at age 7. How long does it take for a person to come to his senses and change what he ingests in order to overcome a lifetime of Twinkies, Ring Dings, TV dinners, heavily processed fruit and vegetable servings and the like (my family loved all that stuff; maybe it was a way to assimilate and to get out of the shadow of the Depression and WWII deprivation) and, maybe, feel better? In my case, nearly 52 years. Hey, no one has yet accused me of being smart--or mature (pull my finger).
Anyway, as I expect you know at least slightly, these sorts of programs require that one eliminate (meaning "stop eating or drinking;" clearly, all eating and drinking ultimately leads to elimination) virtually everything that a normal American (ooh, now there's a subject for discussion, huh?) would regularly consume. One breaks the fast with a shake of some sort, protein-and-fiber-based, with some kind of allowed fruit for taste; midday is solid food time: chicken or fish, rice or quinoa, some sort of vegetable (and that list is surprisingly short); the evening "meal" is liquid again: a pureed soup of some sort, no solids. The idea is to eat easily-digested stuff and let the whole tract rest. For 3 weeks. Then, ideally, one adds back one banned substance (wheat, sugar, dairy, red meat, eggs, alcohol, oh my god--sorry) at a time for 3 days each to see how the body reacts to each, so one knows what one should eat or drink, and what to avoid.
As I said, I'm a third of the way through, mostly past the cranky snappish misery, the acute stuff, and settled in to the dank, gray, teeth-clenched-forced-march, just-keep-doing-it-until-it's-over section. It's fuckin' great, really. And while I genuinely can see the benefits of this regimen, and my guts can certainly use all of the rest and soothing they can get, I do think of the forbidden foods occasionally (hah!). Saturday, for the first time since starting, I went into a grocery store (Alice, bless her, who is also doing this thing, has done virtually all of the shopping and preparation). Jesus. It was like being in Amsterdam: Everything I walked past winked at me, whispered my name, beckoned to me suggestively, promised me wondrous pleasures if only I would succumb to their entreaties. I bought some haddock and fled. It was like being a, a, uh, well, a mildly hungry and self-deprived middle-class white person in a grocery store.
I occasionally have a firm grasp of the obvious, and try to let that brilliance shine through in my prose.
Since food has been so prominent in my thinking lately, what better way to assuage my pangs than to play two hours worth of songs about food (no buildings this time, Talking Heads fans) on the radio this week as I sit alone in the studio, stomach growling? I'll try to hit all of the food groups: I'm sure there'll be some meat, some potatoes, some bread, veggies, pie of various sorts (Honey, American), Savoy Truffle, some Tupelo honey, ice cream and likely some candy. Probably even some Spam(TM), for you Hawaiian fans (Hawaii has the highest per-capita consumption of any state in the US of that fabulous Hormel product. You could look it up, as Casey Stengel used to say.). As always, my show runs from noon til 2 pm Eastern on 100.1 FM, at wool.fm on the interwebs. Hey--have any of you become members of WOOL, or checked out the aforementioned website? You soitenly should, and discover how many cool shows we have to offer. Hope to see you on the radio this Chewsday.
Yours in digestive peace....
Anyway, I'm currently in week two of an Elimination/Cleanse regimen (I hate the word "diet," for its many silly connotations) of caloric consumption, for my gastric betterment. Both of my grandfathers died from internal explosions: my father's father from a burst appendix before my father was born, my mother's from a bleeding ulcer. I had my first ulcer at age 7. How long does it take for a person to come to his senses and change what he ingests in order to overcome a lifetime of Twinkies, Ring Dings, TV dinners, heavily processed fruit and vegetable servings and the like (my family loved all that stuff; maybe it was a way to assimilate and to get out of the shadow of the Depression and WWII deprivation) and, maybe, feel better? In my case, nearly 52 years. Hey, no one has yet accused me of being smart--or mature (pull my finger).
Anyway, as I expect you know at least slightly, these sorts of programs require that one eliminate (meaning "stop eating or drinking;" clearly, all eating and drinking ultimately leads to elimination) virtually everything that a normal American (ooh, now there's a subject for discussion, huh?) would regularly consume. One breaks the fast with a shake of some sort, protein-and-fiber-based, with some kind of allowed fruit for taste; midday is solid food time: chicken or fish, rice or quinoa, some sort of vegetable (and that list is surprisingly short); the evening "meal" is liquid again: a pureed soup of some sort, no solids. The idea is to eat easily-digested stuff and let the whole tract rest. For 3 weeks. Then, ideally, one adds back one banned substance (wheat, sugar, dairy, red meat, eggs, alcohol, oh my god--sorry) at a time for 3 days each to see how the body reacts to each, so one knows what one should eat or drink, and what to avoid.
As I said, I'm a third of the way through, mostly past the cranky snappish misery, the acute stuff, and settled in to the dank, gray, teeth-clenched-forced-march, just-keep-doing-it-until-it's-over section. It's fuckin' great, really. And while I genuinely can see the benefits of this regimen, and my guts can certainly use all of the rest and soothing they can get, I do think of the forbidden foods occasionally (hah!). Saturday, for the first time since starting, I went into a grocery store (Alice, bless her, who is also doing this thing, has done virtually all of the shopping and preparation). Jesus. It was like being in Amsterdam: Everything I walked past winked at me, whispered my name, beckoned to me suggestively, promised me wondrous pleasures if only I would succumb to their entreaties. I bought some haddock and fled. It was like being a, a, uh, well, a mildly hungry and self-deprived middle-class white person in a grocery store.
I occasionally have a firm grasp of the obvious, and try to let that brilliance shine through in my prose.
Since food has been so prominent in my thinking lately, what better way to assuage my pangs than to play two hours worth of songs about food (no buildings this time, Talking Heads fans) on the radio this week as I sit alone in the studio, stomach growling? I'll try to hit all of the food groups: I'm sure there'll be some meat, some potatoes, some bread, veggies, pie of various sorts (Honey, American), Savoy Truffle, some Tupelo honey, ice cream and likely some candy. Probably even some Spam(TM), for you Hawaiian fans (Hawaii has the highest per-capita consumption of any state in the US of that fabulous Hormel product. You could look it up, as Casey Stengel used to say.). As always, my show runs from noon til 2 pm Eastern on 100.1 FM, at wool.fm on the interwebs. Hey--have any of you become members of WOOL, or checked out the aforementioned website? You soitenly should, and discover how many cool shows we have to offer. Hope to see you on the radio this Chewsday.
Yours in digestive peace....
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Love is god
On this, the eve of St. Valentine's Day, I want to talk about love. Not Hallmark Card, sappy movie, romantic-dinner-out, flowers and chocolates love, but Real Love: basic human, for all people equally, unconditional, life-giving, nurturing, whole-making, restorative Love.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a little piece and did a show about the military, about what seems an innate human warlike component to our natures, and on the toll that takes on each of us, realize it or not, and on the nature of life in general. I got a few responses that were really interesting and thought-provoking. Surprisingly, or maybe not, they were mostly from men, who were wrestling with the whole male, testosterone-inflected and -infected, brute-force-is-the-answer reflexive response to so many situations. This was weighed against the question of whether there are just wars, situations which have gotten to a point at which there is really no other answer, no way to deal with the brutality of one side, except for the use of force by another. The big touchstone in recent(ish) history is, of course, WWII; given the madness and carnage being wreaked on the Jews, Gypsies, and really the whole of the rest of Europe by Hitler, what else could we do but respond with force?
History, even more recent history (Pol Pot, Gaddaffi or however the hell we're spelling his name today, Milosevich, Idi Amin, the Afrikaaner regime in South Africa, Lester Maddux and George Corley Wallace in the American south of the 60s Saddam, right up to Bashar al-Assad in Syria right now) is rife with examples of brutal despots who will stop at nothing to maintain or extend their power and influence. The US has hardly been blameless in such endeavors, from our treatment of Native Americans to African Americans to gays to--well, you get the idea--and we also frequently back the bad guys overseas because it furthers our short-term economic interests, and we seem incapable of thinking beyond the short term. Gore Vidal once said that we have no public memory before last Tuesday, and I think we have no public vision beyond next Monday.
One common feature of all the evil leaders I've listed above is gender: all are obviously men. A couple of you suggested that perhaps it was time to let women step up to leadership roles even more than they have done in recent years, and I've often thought that myself. It seemed to me that women, who carried and bore and raised us would be less likely then to send us off to die for lack of a better way to resolve conflicts. But I'm not sure that Maggie Thatcher, or Golda Meir, or Angela Merkel, or Michele Bachman, or Phyllis Schlafley ("Nuclear weapons are a wonderful gift from a wise and loving God"), or, especially, one of the sickest and most evil people walking the planet today, Ann Coulter, would really be any kind of a step forward, or up. Scientists worry about the effects of all of the increased incidence of estrogen in the environment, but somehow testosterone levels seem to be rising in women....
If it's not as clear-cut and simple as a gender issue, that women are inherently more likely than men to be nurturing and to seek alternatives to violence as a means of conflict resolution, then what? Here is where I enter dangerous territory for me, because what I'm going to say seems contradictory to things I've said and acted for much of my life, and because, because of the previous clause, I don't really know much about the religious or spiritual aspects of the stuff I'm going to espouse (when has that ever stopped me?): but the answer really has to be Love.
As in so many areas, I have lagged behind my wise and wonderful wife in understanding human needs and the essences of life. When our kids were little and I was learning the enormous responsibilities and efforts required to make these beings who were here through my own actions into good and caring people, as they would behave in ways that, let's say, needed adjustment, I would instinctively go to punitive mode. Alice's direction, though, was toward making sure that they were getting enough love, that they knew that they were loved, unconditionally. When we'd see or read about or watch on TV examples of nominal adults evincing evil behavior or just being assholes to someone, Alice would say that person "didn't get enough love."
That thinking made me cringe at least a little. I saw it as weak, as forgiving, reinforcing, and maybe even enabling behaviors that needed changing. Maybe it's a result of my own diminished testosterone as I age (have you seen the back of my head? I haven't, but apparently there's not much hair left there. Do you know that--well, let's just leave it at hair loss, shan't we?), but I have really come to see that, while it may not be true that "All You Need is Love," the need for love and acceptance (which are really the same thing) is paramount: it has the single biggest impact on all of our other needs and desires and ways we interact with the world.
In contemporary America, at least, I think the concept of unconditional love has become twisted, bastardized, turned on its head. Where the hell did all of the "helicopter parents" my generation has engendered come from? Why have we become so desperate to be friends with our kids at the expense of being their parents and guides? Partly because we don't want to be adults ourselves, I think. But doing for, unwillingness to confront, to help change, does nothing positive. Nobody wants to be a jerk; they behave counter to their best selves because of a perceived lack on their part of something crucial to their lives, to their selfness. I would certainly argue that that lack, if they could articulate it, is sufficient love. We ALL need to be able to say to those people "I see that you're hurting. What is it that you're missing, what is it that you need?" The answer, I'm convinced, is gonna be "love."
Yes, this is easily dismissed as rose-glassed, starry-eyed, Hippie-peace-and-love claptrap. It doesn't take into account chemical dysfunctions and mental illness, but if the rest of us are set up differently, even those pathological/physiological issues can be surrounded and dealt with in other than violent ways. People who assault, who rob, who kill, who perpetrate heinous behaviors on the rest of us, might have led entirely different lives if they'd been loved enough. Thinkers down through the ages have promulgated these ideas, from the Greeks to Jesus (setting aside the whole "Son o' God {TM}" discussion, spreading the gospel of love is a pretty powerful and cool idea), Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Dr. King, to, bringing it all back home to music and pop culture now, John Lennon.
Now, John Lennon was a controversial figure, and really not a nice person in many, many ways, especially as a younger man. He was violent, he treated women badly, he was caustic and cutting in his wit and his lyrics. He was also abandoned by his parents at an early age, raised by his auntie, who did her best but couldn't fill the void in his soul, that lack of love at crucial ages and stages. Say what you will about Yoko, but his relationship with her effected a huge change in his outlook and behaviors. He was killed before he could complete the journey, killed by someone who didn't get enough of the same things that Lennon himself had lacked. As Mind Games says "Love is the answer and you know that for sure/Love is the flower, you got to let it, you got to let it grow."
Say to a pure Marxist that Communism has been shown to be a total failure, and that person will reply, "How do you know? Pure Communism has never been tried." Say the same to a Capitalist about Capitalism and you'll get the same response: "In its pure form, it's never been tried." I'm pretty sure we can say the same about pure, pervasive, unconditional Love. How do we finally start it? Dunno. But what have we got to lose?
Hope you can join me for lots of "Love" songs (but not really of the "moon, June, spoon" sort) on Tuesday, VD, from noon til two on 100.1 FM or wool.fm. I also hope some of you will be moved to jump in here with some comments to further a discussion....
What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?
A few weeks ago, I wrote a little piece and did a show about the military, about what seems an innate human warlike component to our natures, and on the toll that takes on each of us, realize it or not, and on the nature of life in general. I got a few responses that were really interesting and thought-provoking. Surprisingly, or maybe not, they were mostly from men, who were wrestling with the whole male, testosterone-inflected and -infected, brute-force-is-the-answer reflexive response to so many situations. This was weighed against the question of whether there are just wars, situations which have gotten to a point at which there is really no other answer, no way to deal with the brutality of one side, except for the use of force by another. The big touchstone in recent(ish) history is, of course, WWII; given the madness and carnage being wreaked on the Jews, Gypsies, and really the whole of the rest of Europe by Hitler, what else could we do but respond with force?
History, even more recent history (Pol Pot, Gaddaffi or however the hell we're spelling his name today, Milosevich, Idi Amin, the Afrikaaner regime in South Africa, Lester Maddux and George Corley Wallace in the American south of the 60s Saddam, right up to Bashar al-Assad in Syria right now) is rife with examples of brutal despots who will stop at nothing to maintain or extend their power and influence. The US has hardly been blameless in such endeavors, from our treatment of Native Americans to African Americans to gays to--well, you get the idea--and we also frequently back the bad guys overseas because it furthers our short-term economic interests, and we seem incapable of thinking beyond the short term. Gore Vidal once said that we have no public memory before last Tuesday, and I think we have no public vision beyond next Monday.
One common feature of all the evil leaders I've listed above is gender: all are obviously men. A couple of you suggested that perhaps it was time to let women step up to leadership roles even more than they have done in recent years, and I've often thought that myself. It seemed to me that women, who carried and bore and raised us would be less likely then to send us off to die for lack of a better way to resolve conflicts. But I'm not sure that Maggie Thatcher, or Golda Meir, or Angela Merkel, or Michele Bachman, or Phyllis Schlafley ("Nuclear weapons are a wonderful gift from a wise and loving God"), or, especially, one of the sickest and most evil people walking the planet today, Ann Coulter, would really be any kind of a step forward, or up. Scientists worry about the effects of all of the increased incidence of estrogen in the environment, but somehow testosterone levels seem to be rising in women....
If it's not as clear-cut and simple as a gender issue, that women are inherently more likely than men to be nurturing and to seek alternatives to violence as a means of conflict resolution, then what? Here is where I enter dangerous territory for me, because what I'm going to say seems contradictory to things I've said and acted for much of my life, and because, because of the previous clause, I don't really know much about the religious or spiritual aspects of the stuff I'm going to espouse (when has that ever stopped me?): but the answer really has to be Love.
As in so many areas, I have lagged behind my wise and wonderful wife in understanding human needs and the essences of life. When our kids were little and I was learning the enormous responsibilities and efforts required to make these beings who were here through my own actions into good and caring people, as they would behave in ways that, let's say, needed adjustment, I would instinctively go to punitive mode. Alice's direction, though, was toward making sure that they were getting enough love, that they knew that they were loved, unconditionally. When we'd see or read about or watch on TV examples of nominal adults evincing evil behavior or just being assholes to someone, Alice would say that person "didn't get enough love."
That thinking made me cringe at least a little. I saw it as weak, as forgiving, reinforcing, and maybe even enabling behaviors that needed changing. Maybe it's a result of my own diminished testosterone as I age (have you seen the back of my head? I haven't, but apparently there's not much hair left there. Do you know that--well, let's just leave it at hair loss, shan't we?), but I have really come to see that, while it may not be true that "All You Need is Love," the need for love and acceptance (which are really the same thing) is paramount: it has the single biggest impact on all of our other needs and desires and ways we interact with the world.
In contemporary America, at least, I think the concept of unconditional love has become twisted, bastardized, turned on its head. Where the hell did all of the "helicopter parents" my generation has engendered come from? Why have we become so desperate to be friends with our kids at the expense of being their parents and guides? Partly because we don't want to be adults ourselves, I think. But doing for, unwillingness to confront, to help change, does nothing positive. Nobody wants to be a jerk; they behave counter to their best selves because of a perceived lack on their part of something crucial to their lives, to their selfness. I would certainly argue that that lack, if they could articulate it, is sufficient love. We ALL need to be able to say to those people "I see that you're hurting. What is it that you're missing, what is it that you need?" The answer, I'm convinced, is gonna be "love."
Yes, this is easily dismissed as rose-glassed, starry-eyed, Hippie-peace-and-love claptrap. It doesn't take into account chemical dysfunctions and mental illness, but if the rest of us are set up differently, even those pathological/physiological issues can be surrounded and dealt with in other than violent ways. People who assault, who rob, who kill, who perpetrate heinous behaviors on the rest of us, might have led entirely different lives if they'd been loved enough. Thinkers down through the ages have promulgated these ideas, from the Greeks to Jesus (setting aside the whole "Son o' God {TM}" discussion, spreading the gospel of love is a pretty powerful and cool idea), Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Dr. King, to, bringing it all back home to music and pop culture now, John Lennon.
Now, John Lennon was a controversial figure, and really not a nice person in many, many ways, especially as a younger man. He was violent, he treated women badly, he was caustic and cutting in his wit and his lyrics. He was also abandoned by his parents at an early age, raised by his auntie, who did her best but couldn't fill the void in his soul, that lack of love at crucial ages and stages. Say what you will about Yoko, but his relationship with her effected a huge change in his outlook and behaviors. He was killed before he could complete the journey, killed by someone who didn't get enough of the same things that Lennon himself had lacked. As Mind Games says "Love is the answer and you know that for sure/Love is the flower, you got to let it, you got to let it grow."
Say to a pure Marxist that Communism has been shown to be a total failure, and that person will reply, "How do you know? Pure Communism has never been tried." Say the same to a Capitalist about Capitalism and you'll get the same response: "In its pure form, it's never been tried." I'm pretty sure we can say the same about pure, pervasive, unconditional Love. How do we finally start it? Dunno. But what have we got to lose?
Hope you can join me for lots of "Love" songs (but not really of the "moon, June, spoon" sort) on Tuesday, VD, from noon til two on 100.1 FM or wool.fm. I also hope some of you will be moved to jump in here with some comments to further a discussion....
What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?
Friday, February 10, 2012
Plus ca change....
In light of today's sad and tragic (no matter the ultimate outcome for that poor boy and his family) episode at Walpole Middle School), this note I sent out pre-blog seems apropos as a post now:
If it's Tuesday between noon and 2 pm, it must be time for another episode of I Don't Sing: The Broadly Eclectic, or Themes, Like "Old Times", or Subverting the Dominant Paradigm, or whatever other weird, punny, or self-consciously precious title I can come up with; let's add Comforting The Afflicted, Afflicting The Comfortable, shan't we? Okay.
This week's theme: Let's try this again. A few weeks ago I sent you all the email you'll now find below, detailing the show I was gonna do about guns, shooting, bullets, etc. Forces larger than all of us (black choppers and SUVs, Tommy Lee Jones, Tom Cruise and tommyguns) conspired to prevent that show from happening at the time I intended. I'm gonna give it another shot, though (yeah, I saw that coming), with some addenda.
First, my nephew, who has read extensively about WWII and Red Mike reminded me that he (Red Mike, my great uncle) was once the president of the NRA.
Also, Jim Arness, who played Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke for over 20 years, died in 2011.
Now, there are 3 bills pending before the NH Legislature, which seem to acknowledge the NRA's influence and to cry out for a return to the Wild, Wild West, and Marshal (sic) law. One bill would prohibit colleges in NH from banning guns on campus; another would allow any to resident to carry a weapon, open or concealed, at any time, without a permit; the third would overturn a law which has been on the books for 60 or 70 years, and allow for loaded shotguns or rifles in any vehicle. All of these bills are opposed by all law-enforcement agencies, and Governor Lynch has vowed to veto any of them that might be passed. Still, legislators persist in writing and putting them forth, with no apparent need (voter ID, anyone?). To paraphrase Click and Clack "Doesn't anybody screen these guys?".
Finally, in the missive below, I called the NRA a "cult"; I was looking for incendiary language, but I chose wrong. They are, really, an extremist group. It would be interesting to find out where, on a continuum, they would think gun-owner rights ought to be curtailed. They've established that they think all citizens ought to be able to own assault weapons and armor-piercing ammo. How about rocket-propelled grenades? Tactical nukes (former NH Gov. Mel Thompson--R, Pluto--right after Kent State happened, advocated that the Nat'l Guard be armed with those, and I'm not making that up)? Where does the Second Amendment (or Coming) end?
Original message: Okay, bear with me; this may take a while. Like most people, I come from a family with a military background. Several of my uncles served in WWII; in fact, my great uncle Merritt "Red Mike" Edson was commander of US Marines on Guadalcanal, became a several-starred general, had a Destroyer (I think) named for him, etc, etc. My family (on my father's side, at least) were also always hunters. In fact, my father supported his extended family during the first Great Depression by cutting firewood and killing and selling deer (which was illegal). In short, guns are in my background. I have hunted, I have killed many creatures, I own guns and can use them. I hope that establishes my bona fides with all of the 2nd Amendment zealots in my audience.
Recently, a group of Free Staters (Google 'em if you're unfamiliar--it's a digression I'm unwilling to make) held a--what? Meeting? News Conference?--on the campus of Plymouth State University (nee College) here in New Hamster, during which time they put forth the proposition that college students should be allowed to carry firearms whenever and whereever, that the State had no right to prohibit that. Holy Shit!!!
In my lotht youse, I attended Plymouth State College, as it was known then. I also attended the University of Hartford, and UNH, where I also taught. I cannot IMAGINE arming any, let alone all, of those 18-21-yr-olds, on campus, at all times. So your roommate's girlfriend broke up with him, and now he's shitfaced and armed? Do you wanna be in that room, or anywhere on campus, with him?
I think that the rationale, if it can be called that, for such "thinking", put forward by the NRA and other cults, is that an armed citizen is a safe citizen. If, they figure, the right-wing nutjob (and yes, he was, certifiably) who held hostage a group of terrified kids in Norway last summer for an hour and a half and killed dozens, had instead been in, say, Texas, he'd have lasted 10 minutes or so, since any number of campers would have been packing themselves, and thus would have dispensed with him. To me, this is akin to someone, in 16th-century, Bubonic-Plague-infested-Europe, recommending that, as a precaution, everyone be issued an infected rat. Actuarially, it makes no sense (never mind logically). How often do mass killings take place, and how often are, oh, 30% of college students inebriated? PSC (Pot, Sex, Continual drinking) become PSU (Pistols, Semi-automatics, Uzis)?
On this past Black Friday, Americans bought at least 129,166 firearms--32% more than the previous one-day record, according to The Week, via USA Today. I'd say "Help", but I think it's too late, in too many ways.
If it's Tuesday between noon and 2 pm, it must be time for another episode of I Don't Sing: The Broadly Eclectic, or Themes, Like "Old Times", or Subverting the Dominant Paradigm, or whatever other weird, punny, or self-consciously precious title I can come up with; let's add Comforting The Afflicted, Afflicting The Comfortable, shan't we? Okay.
This week's theme: Let's try this again. A few weeks ago I sent you all the email you'll now find below, detailing the show I was gonna do about guns, shooting, bullets, etc. Forces larger than all of us (black choppers and SUVs, Tommy Lee Jones, Tom Cruise and tommyguns) conspired to prevent that show from happening at the time I intended. I'm gonna give it another shot, though (yeah, I saw that coming), with some addenda.
First, my nephew, who has read extensively about WWII and Red Mike reminded me that he (Red Mike, my great uncle) was once the president of the NRA.
Also, Jim Arness, who played Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke for over 20 years, died in 2011.
Now, there are 3 bills pending before the NH Legislature, which seem to acknowledge the NRA's influence and to cry out for a return to the Wild, Wild West, and Marshal (sic) law. One bill would prohibit colleges in NH from banning guns on campus; another would allow any to resident to carry a weapon, open or concealed, at any time, without a permit; the third would overturn a law which has been on the books for 60 or 70 years, and allow for loaded shotguns or rifles in any vehicle. All of these bills are opposed by all law-enforcement agencies, and Governor Lynch has vowed to veto any of them that might be passed. Still, legislators persist in writing and putting them forth, with no apparent need (voter ID, anyone?). To paraphrase Click and Clack "Doesn't anybody screen these guys?".
Finally, in the missive below, I called the NRA a "cult"; I was looking for incendiary language, but I chose wrong. They are, really, an extremist group. It would be interesting to find out where, on a continuum, they would think gun-owner rights ought to be curtailed. They've established that they think all citizens ought to be able to own assault weapons and armor-piercing ammo. How about rocket-propelled grenades? Tactical nukes (former NH Gov. Mel Thompson--R, Pluto--right after Kent State happened, advocated that the Nat'l Guard be armed with those, and I'm not making that up)? Where does the Second Amendment (or Coming) end?
Original message: Okay, bear with me; this may take a while. Like most people, I come from a family with a military background. Several of my uncles served in WWII; in fact, my great uncle Merritt "Red Mike" Edson was commander of US Marines on Guadalcanal, became a several-starred general, had a Destroyer (I think) named for him, etc, etc. My family (on my father's side, at least) were also always hunters. In fact, my father supported his extended family during the first Great Depression by cutting firewood and killing and selling deer (which was illegal). In short, guns are in my background. I have hunted, I have killed many creatures, I own guns and can use them. I hope that establishes my bona fides with all of the 2nd Amendment zealots in my audience.
Recently, a group of Free Staters (Google 'em if you're unfamiliar--it's a digression I'm unwilling to make) held a--what? Meeting? News Conference?--on the campus of Plymouth State University (nee College) here in New Hamster, during which time they put forth the proposition that college students should be allowed to carry firearms whenever and whereever, that the State had no right to prohibit that. Holy Shit!!!
In my lotht youse, I attended Plymouth State College, as it was known then. I also attended the University of Hartford, and UNH, where I also taught. I cannot IMAGINE arming any, let alone all, of those 18-21-yr-olds, on campus, at all times. So your roommate's girlfriend broke up with him, and now he's shitfaced and armed? Do you wanna be in that room, or anywhere on campus, with him?
I think that the rationale, if it can be called that, for such "thinking", put forward by the NRA and other cults, is that an armed citizen is a safe citizen. If, they figure, the right-wing nutjob (and yes, he was, certifiably) who held hostage a group of terrified kids in Norway last summer for an hour and a half and killed dozens, had instead been in, say, Texas, he'd have lasted 10 minutes or so, since any number of campers would have been packing themselves, and thus would have dispensed with him. To me, this is akin to someone, in 16th-century, Bubonic-Plague-infested-Europe, recommending that, as a precaution, everyone be issued an infected rat. Actuarially, it makes no sense (never mind logically). How often do mass killings take place, and how often are, oh, 30% of college students inebriated? PSC (Pot, Sex, Continual drinking) become PSU (Pistols, Semi-automatics, Uzis)?
On this past Black Friday, Americans bought at least 129,166 firearms--32% more than the previous one-day record, according to The Week, via USA Today. I'd say "Help", but I think it's too late, in too many ways.
Enough, enough, enough.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
"G-O-P, A-B-M, M-O-U-S-E"
Anyone remember when Esso had to change its name in the US for some arcane legal reason, and became Exxon? (Their slogan was "Esso's changing its name to Exxon!") The dearly departed and sorely missed, by me at least, National Lampoon did a piece parodying that choice, brilliantly, as usual, with "America's changing its name to Nixxon!" And damned if the Committee to Re-Elect the President ( one of the all-time great acronyms-- "CReEP") didn't have something like that in mind, as Watergate pointed up.
Now, it looks like the Grand Old Party is becoming Anyone But Mitt. Bachman? Perry? Newt? And now Santorum, after he swept the 3 most recent caucuses? All serving as The Great WickedWhite Hope, at one time or another, each supplanting the previous when her or his clay feet crumbled even in their supporters' adoringly myopic eyes. It's amusing as hell to watch 'em blow up one by one, often as a result of the grenades lobbed by their fellow Repugs. It would be way funnier if there didn't exist the very real possibility that one of them could conceivably be elected President.
Andy Warhol had it almost right: In the future, everyone will be the Republican frontrunner for 15 minutes-- exceptin' Alice.
Oh yeah, and me.
Now, it looks like the Grand Old Party is becoming Anyone But Mitt. Bachman? Perry? Newt? And now Santorum, after he swept the 3 most recent caucuses? All serving as The Great WickedWhite Hope, at one time or another, each supplanting the previous when her or his clay feet crumbled even in their supporters' adoringly myopic eyes. It's amusing as hell to watch 'em blow up one by one, often as a result of the grenades lobbed by their fellow Repugs. It would be way funnier if there didn't exist the very real possibility that one of them could conceivably be elected President.
Andy Warhol had it almost right: In the future, everyone will be the Republican frontrunner for 15 minutes-- exceptin' Alice.
Oh yeah, and me.
Monday, February 6, 2012
A smile is...just a grimace wearing a Hawaiian shirt...
Or, "A Apolitical Muse:" Another (the second) in a series of non-controversial and likely boring postings and show themes. My friend Abby, who is actually a high school friend of Alice's (and appeared front and center in the poster promoting the "Woodstock" movie which, as this was long before Photoshopping(TM), probably means she was actually there) but, since I've known her for 25 years, and she is a member of my first "family group" (of followers, of this blog) I figure I can call my friend, too, appends to all of her emails, below the signature, "Smile more" (You think it's hard to hack through the thickets that are my sentences? Try writing them!), which more or less led to this week's show theme. Whew.
The world continues its merry trip to Hell, unimpeded by any apparent rational human thought or action. Our "lifestyle" (which, along with "legendary", when used to describe actual people or events, needs to be excised from the language) choices are driving polar bears to extinction and yet we spend ungodly sums to use cartoon polar bears to sell a beverage which simultaneously rots out our insides and makes us more obese (it's a MIRACLE!) ad nauseum during our annual sports-cum-religious orgy (and get over it, Pats fans: it's just one group of semi-literate pre-, post-, or currently-concussive rich behemoths beating another, some of whom might be on our team next year, if we pay them enough); Israel is not preparing, with no help from the US, to bomb Iranian installations which are not enriching uranium which will not be used to make warheads which will not be used to wipe the Zionist infidel nation off the map; and SuperPacMan (TM), with the same rights as any other individual citizen to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to influence gullible voters, is turning our electoral process into the nastiest, most expensive and empty spectacle since Sunday's halftime show. Abby's right: we need to smile more, 'cause what the hell else can we do but help ourselves and our fellows cope with the absurdity of it all. The Mayans may have just been dickin' around, but we'll make 'em prophets yet.
And so, lots of "smile" songs on Tuesday (noon til two, Eastern, on 100.1 or wool.fm), including, of course, John Prine's "Illegal Smile" which, amazingly (a song about getting stoned!), was once the theme song to a network TV show, the short-lived "The Texas Wheelers" (1974), which I think was made by James Garner's production company, directed by Stuart Margolin ("Angel" in The Rockford Files), and starred Jack Elam (another Garner crony), a pre-Star Wars Mark Hamill, and a pre-cultural-laughingstock Gary Busey (who, in 1976, using the nom-de-drumkit "Teddy Jack Eddy" played drums on a Leon Russell album and tour). Whew, again.
And next week, I'll show or remind, once and for all, that I am an unrepentant, unregenerate, fuzzy-headed, starry-eyed Hippie--as though such proof were necessary, or in question.
Disclaimer: No drugs (except those naturally occurring in my "brain") were killed or injured in the making of this post.
Thanks to all for reading and playing along!
The world continues its merry trip to Hell, unimpeded by any apparent rational human thought or action. Our "lifestyle" (which, along with "legendary", when used to describe actual people or events, needs to be excised from the language) choices are driving polar bears to extinction and yet we spend ungodly sums to use cartoon polar bears to sell a beverage which simultaneously rots out our insides and makes us more obese (it's a MIRACLE!) ad nauseum during our annual sports-cum-religious orgy (and get over it, Pats fans: it's just one group of semi-literate pre-, post-, or currently-concussive rich behemoths beating another, some of whom might be on our team next year, if we pay them enough); Israel is not preparing, with no help from the US, to bomb Iranian installations which are not enriching uranium which will not be used to make warheads which will not be used to wipe the Zionist infidel nation off the map; and SuperPacMan (TM), with the same rights as any other individual citizen to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to influence gullible voters, is turning our electoral process into the nastiest, most expensive and empty spectacle since Sunday's halftime show. Abby's right: we need to smile more, 'cause what the hell else can we do but help ourselves and our fellows cope with the absurdity of it all. The Mayans may have just been dickin' around, but we'll make 'em prophets yet.
And so, lots of "smile" songs on Tuesday (noon til two, Eastern, on 100.1 or wool.fm), including, of course, John Prine's "Illegal Smile" which, amazingly (a song about getting stoned!), was once the theme song to a network TV show, the short-lived "The Texas Wheelers" (1974), which I think was made by James Garner's production company, directed by Stuart Margolin ("Angel" in The Rockford Files), and starred Jack Elam (another Garner crony), a pre-Star Wars Mark Hamill, and a pre-cultural-laughingstock Gary Busey (who, in 1976, using the nom-de-drumkit "Teddy Jack Eddy" played drums on a Leon Russell album and tour). Whew, again.
And next week, I'll show or remind, once and for all, that I am an unrepentant, unregenerate, fuzzy-headed, starry-eyed Hippie--as though such proof were necessary, or in question.
Disclaimer: No drugs (except those naturally occurring in my "brain") were killed or injured in the making of this post.
Thanks to all for reading and playing along!
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