Labor Day, and another summer passed into history. To some that means back to school although, barbarically and, I'm sure, unconstitutionally many if not most schools start before Labor Day, apparently without protest. To others, it's time to take the boats out of the water, to close up camps, to go for one last swim or picnic. Still others--and you know who you are--lament the fact that, following sartorial etiquette, they must put away the white belts, white shoes, and probably the whale pants until Memorial Day. That may be the best feature of the holiday, come to think of it.
For me, though, this time of year means my days of walking barefoot are numbered, and I am saddened by that. As Job said, "Naked-footed I came from my mother's womb, and naked-footed I will depart." I may be paraphrasing slightly there, but you get the gist. Being in the condition of barefootedness is natural; being shod is not. Yes, I know, in certain latitudes that's easier to follow than in others, but still: why aren't we all naked-footed as much as possible? I would submit that wriggling bare toes in the sand or in the grass is both soul-freeing and soul-soothing, and that we could substitute soul's homonym and understand the benefits more directly.
Which is why I think it a shame that bare feet are banned in so many places. When I'm at Chautauqua, amid all of the white-belt-and-shoe crowd, I go barefoot everywhere I can: the library, the cafes, the bookstore, throughout the grounds. Basically, everywhere but the Amphitheater, which seems weird to me. It's just a roofed shed, and so basically outdoors, and yet bare feet are prohibited there. And, in truth, near the end of my stay this year I went into the bookstore to buy The Times, and a very officious woman came up to me and told me, in no uncertain terms, that the Chautauqua Bookstore simply couldn't abide bare feet sullying their hallowed floors (again, perhaps a slight paraphrase); I replied that I'd be glad to comply, but they really should have a sign on the door informing prospective patrons that they would not be welcome sans les chaussures, (to make this seem like a learned and thus worthwhile piece).
And yet frequently, as I wandered the grounds, I'd pass people--wearing shoes, of course--who would smile fondly at me and say "Isn't that just the Chautauqua way," or "It's great to see someone barefoot here." I'd just shake my head, bemused. "C'mon along," I'd think, or maybe even say. But it was clear that they wanted a surrogate, someone to be bohemian for them so they could feel that they belonged to a boho community but could still keep their standing in the straight world. So, gang, what say: join me this weekend--and as long as the weather allows--in being rebellious, iconoclastic, barefoot. Your feet'll thank you.
"Barefoot," "feet" and "foot" songs this week, then, among them
Barefoot Days Jackie Leven
Barefoot On The Beach Michael Franks
Barefoot-Dirt Road Mose Allison
Barefootin' Robert Parker
Take A Load Off Your Feet The Beach Boys
Feet Fall On The Road Bruce Cockburn
God Shuffled His Feet Crash Test Dummies
Fall At Your Feet Crowded House
Falling At Your Feet Daniel Lanois
Bad Feet Geoff Muldaur
Two Little Feet Greg Brown
Your Feet's Too Big Hank Jones, Ray Brown
As Soon As I Get On My Feet Jesse Winchester
Even His Feet Look Sad Leo Kottke
Back On My Feet Paul McCartney
Back On My Feet Again Randy Newman
Knocks Me Off My Feet Stevie Wonder
Barefootin' Johnny Winter
Foot Of Pride Dylan
No Footprints Bruce Cockburn
Foot Pattin' Coleman Hawkins
Stink Foot Frank Zappa
Blues For Big Foot Gene Harris
Get On The Good Foot James Brown
Footstompin' Music Grand Funk Railroad
Footloose Kenny Loggins
Footprints Squeeze
Tenderfootin' The Waterboys
All this on Tuesday, noon till two on WOOL FM, 91.5, and wool.fm. See you then. Oh yeah--thanks to Sam R. for suggesting this topic.
The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe.
Sunday, September 6, 2015
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Totally Into This Mystic
Sir George Ivan Morrison--perhaps better known to you as "Van"--turns 70 tomorrow, and by damn I'm going to acknowledge that and celebrate it. I've been a Van Fan since "Brown-Eyed Girl," in 1967, a song I'd be happy never to hear again.
The great Irish tenor John McCormack was once asked what was needed to become a great singer. "The 'yaargh,'" he replied. That is, the ability to convey thoughts and emotions in a way which moves an audience emotionally. It's imagination, passion, intelligence, integrity mixed with a little madness. Van Morrison could sing the phone book and make it interesting and moving. Of course no one under the age of 30 has any idea what a phone book is, but still.
I could say much more about Van's artistry and my fandom, about the fact that he has a well-deserved reputation at one of music's most curmudgeonly curmudgeons, and the fact that he's written more than 350 songs, but I frankly just don't feel like it. What I've decided to do this week is to play the title song from each of his 34 studio albums, an undertaking that will put my show nearer to 4 hours than 2. I was surprised that there were only 2 albums that didn't have a title track or at least the title in a line from the song; in those cases I chose something representative of the album and title, I thought. Here's the exhaustive track listing, in chronological order:
T.B. Sheets
Astral Weeks
Moondance
Street Choir
Tupelo Honey
Saint Dominic's Preview
Hard Nose The Highway
You Don't Pull No Punches, But You Don't Push The River
You Gotta Make It Through The World
Wavelength
And The Healing Has Begun
Summertime In England
Beautiful Vision
Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart 1
A Sense Of Wonder
In The Garden
Queen Of The Slipstream
Irish Heartbeat
Avalon Of The Heart
Enlightenment
Hymns To The Silence
Too Long In Exile
Days Like This
How Long Has This Been Going On?
Tell Me Something
The Healing Game
Philosophers Stone
Back On Top
Down The Road
What's Wrong With This Picture?
Magic Time
Pay The Devil
Keep It Simple
Born To Sing
See you Tuesday from noon til whenever on WOOL FM, 91.5, or wool.fm.
The great Irish tenor John McCormack was once asked what was needed to become a great singer. "The 'yaargh,'" he replied. That is, the ability to convey thoughts and emotions in a way which moves an audience emotionally. It's imagination, passion, intelligence, integrity mixed with a little madness. Van Morrison could sing the phone book and make it interesting and moving. Of course no one under the age of 30 has any idea what a phone book is, but still.
I could say much more about Van's artistry and my fandom, about the fact that he has a well-deserved reputation at one of music's most curmudgeonly curmudgeons, and the fact that he's written more than 350 songs, but I frankly just don't feel like it. What I've decided to do this week is to play the title song from each of his 34 studio albums, an undertaking that will put my show nearer to 4 hours than 2. I was surprised that there were only 2 albums that didn't have a title track or at least the title in a line from the song; in those cases I chose something representative of the album and title, I thought. Here's the exhaustive track listing, in chronological order:
T.B. Sheets
Astral Weeks
Moondance
Street Choir
Tupelo Honey
Saint Dominic's Preview
Hard Nose The Highway
You Don't Pull No Punches, But You Don't Push The River
You Gotta Make It Through The World
Wavelength
And The Healing Has Begun
Summertime In England
Beautiful Vision
Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart 1
A Sense Of Wonder
In The Garden
Queen Of The Slipstream
Irish Heartbeat
Avalon Of The Heart
Enlightenment
Hymns To The Silence
Too Long In Exile
Days Like This
How Long Has This Been Going On?
Tell Me Something
The Healing Game
Philosophers Stone
Back On Top
Down The Road
What's Wrong With This Picture?
Magic Time
Pay The Devil
Keep It Simple
Born To Sing
See you Tuesday from noon til whenever on WOOL FM, 91.5, or wool.fm.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Time Fades Away
Had an interesting experience yesterday. I was sitting on the bed which belonged to my late mother-in-law, in the room in which she died. All of the photos, paintings, hangings and other works of art collected over a lifetime and carefully hung on her bedroom walls for 30 years had been removed. What lay beneath spoke something to me of the effects of time and light and, yes, chemistry, on human lives and relationships.
Where the various works had hung was revealed the walls' original color, almost azure; the rest of the walls, those portions which had been uncovered all those years, exposed to the passage of time and thus affected by the play of light upon them, were still blue, of course, but a washed-out, faded blue tinged with white, almost, like the horizon on a winter day when snow's on its way. And of course my metaphorical mind leapt into action and started to think about how that so mirrored life and human relations.
The world is changing every moment, even to the very cells that make up our bodies, and yet we usually don't, maybe even can't, notice. Change happens so slowly that it's imperceptible yet undeniable. I look very different from the way I did 20 years ago, and yet the guy I see in the mirror looks just like me. It's only when the veil is lifted, when I see photos of myself from the past that I realize fully the extent of the change time and light and life have wrought upon me.
No one noticed the gradual effect of the change in wall color on Natalee Fogel's bedroom walls, I'm sure, any more than we see day-to-day changes in ourselves or even others around us. But when we see ourselves or others in a different light those effects become impossible to ignore. William Maxwell, the late and noted editor at The New Yorker wrote a novel called Time Will Darken It, in which, really, nothing much happened except the quotidian (love that word, don't get to use it often), mundane events of a daily life. And sometimes time does darken it; I'm sure you've all had the experience of moving a rug or a piece of furniture on a wooden floor and being shocked by how much darker the surrounding, exposed flooring is than that which has been covered. The point is that time and light and events and elements change everything: lives, loves, all experience. Whether for darker or lighter may vary but, of course, the only constant in life is change.
"Fading" or "Faded" songs this week, then, on the radio. Among them:
Daylight Fading Counting Crows
Fading Away James Taylor
Fading Memory Eilen Jewell
Don't Fade Away Dead Can Dance
Don't Fade Away Milla
Don't Fade Away Willie Nelson
Don't Fade On Me Tom Petty
Fade Away Ernest Ranglin
Fade Into Light Boz Scaggs
Fade To Black Dire Straits
Fadeaway The Bodeans
Not Fade Away Rolling Stones
Not Fade Away James Taylor
Book Faded Brown The Band
Faded Ben Harper
Faded Love Delaney & Bonnie
Not Fade Away/Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad Grateful Dead
On Records, The Sound Just Fades Away Greg Brown
Faded From The Winter Iron & Wine
Sweet Dream Fade Laura Nyro
Fade Away Oasis
Fade Away Steve Tibbetts
Fading Love Amos Garrett
Summer Is Fading Jim Capaldi
Tuesday, noon til two on WOOL 91.5 FM, wool.fm on the webs. Hope to see you there.
And remember: rust never sleeps.
Where the various works had hung was revealed the walls' original color, almost azure; the rest of the walls, those portions which had been uncovered all those years, exposed to the passage of time and thus affected by the play of light upon them, were still blue, of course, but a washed-out, faded blue tinged with white, almost, like the horizon on a winter day when snow's on its way. And of course my metaphorical mind leapt into action and started to think about how that so mirrored life and human relations.
The world is changing every moment, even to the very cells that make up our bodies, and yet we usually don't, maybe even can't, notice. Change happens so slowly that it's imperceptible yet undeniable. I look very different from the way I did 20 years ago, and yet the guy I see in the mirror looks just like me. It's only when the veil is lifted, when I see photos of myself from the past that I realize fully the extent of the change time and light and life have wrought upon me.
No one noticed the gradual effect of the change in wall color on Natalee Fogel's bedroom walls, I'm sure, any more than we see day-to-day changes in ourselves or even others around us. But when we see ourselves or others in a different light those effects become impossible to ignore. William Maxwell, the late and noted editor at The New Yorker wrote a novel called Time Will Darken It, in which, really, nothing much happened except the quotidian (love that word, don't get to use it often), mundane events of a daily life. And sometimes time does darken it; I'm sure you've all had the experience of moving a rug or a piece of furniture on a wooden floor and being shocked by how much darker the surrounding, exposed flooring is than that which has been covered. The point is that time and light and events and elements change everything: lives, loves, all experience. Whether for darker or lighter may vary but, of course, the only constant in life is change.
"Fading" or "Faded" songs this week, then, on the radio. Among them:
Daylight Fading Counting Crows
Fading Away James Taylor
Fading Memory Eilen Jewell
Don't Fade Away Dead Can Dance
Don't Fade Away Milla
Don't Fade Away Willie Nelson
Don't Fade On Me Tom Petty
Fade Away Ernest Ranglin
Fade Into Light Boz Scaggs
Fade To Black Dire Straits
Fadeaway The Bodeans
Not Fade Away Rolling Stones
Not Fade Away James Taylor
Book Faded Brown The Band
Faded Ben Harper
Faded Love Delaney & Bonnie
Not Fade Away/Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad Grateful Dead
On Records, The Sound Just Fades Away Greg Brown
Faded From The Winter Iron & Wine
Sweet Dream Fade Laura Nyro
Fade Away Oasis
Fade Away Steve Tibbetts
Fading Love Amos Garrett
Summer Is Fading Jim Capaldi
Tuesday, noon til two on WOOL 91.5 FM, wool.fm on the webs. Hope to see you there.
And remember: rust never sleeps.
Sunday, August 16, 2015
"It's The Donald: Duck!"
Don't you just love Donald Trump right now, or at least what he's doing to the presidential race--or in his case, racist? He's a breath of fresh, petulant adolescent, monumentally egotistic air and hair, don't you think? There's no wetting of index finger to be held up to see where public opinion leads. Nope, since he owns most of the air, he can just take some from his private stash and bloviate at will. Throw some raw meat to the Repugnicant base? Let's call Mexicans rapists, murderers and drug dealers. Stand up for the downtrodden, oppressed white male constituency? Throw some hints and allegations that the reason that Megyn Kelly is being so mean and bitchy toward poor innocent him is because she's on the rag, and we all know how they get then, right, fellas?
I'd call him a buffoon, but that's too charitable, too benign, too clownish; it misses the cynical expediency of his "campaign," which is of course about nothing but Donald Trump (registered trade mark symbol here). Trump clearly ascribes to the "philosophy" attributed to the famed charlatan and self-promoter Phineas T. Barnum, to whom the axiom "There's no such thing as bad publicity" is frequently attributed. Keeping his name, his "brand," is basically the only plank in Trump's platform, a platform, of course, made of 24k gold. Better to call him a self-promoting racist misogynist, I guess, but it's not all that catchy.
On the other hand, if he does stay in the race I'm sure he'll provide us all with more entertaining scenes and opportunities for epithets, all the while dragging the GOP down with him. Sure seems like a win-win to me. In the meantime, some songs that arise from or call to mind The Donald's scintillating public utterances:
The Mexican Connection Billy Joel
Mexican Moon Concrete Blonde
Mexican Home John prine
Colder Than Mexican Snow Dirk Hamilton
Mexican Shuffle Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass
Mexican Divorce Ry Cooder
Mexico James taylor
Mexico Cake
Go To Mexico Cassandra Wilson
Going To Mexico Steve Miller Band
Mexico Jefferson Airplane
Mountains Of Mexico Jerry Jeff Walker
Gringo En Mexico Maria Muldaur
Road To Mexico Rory Block
Deportees Arlo Guthrie
Only Women Bleed Alice Cooper
Let It Bleed, Genevieve John Phillips
It's Alright Ma(I'm Only Bleeding) Dylan
Let It Bleed Rolling Stones
Romeo Is Bleeding Tom Waits
Bleed To Love Her Fleetwood Mac
Bleeding Heart Jimi Hendrix
Real Live Bleeding Fingers & Broken Glass Lucinda Williams
The Bleeding Heart Show The New Pornographers
I Bleed Pixies
Bleeders The Wallflowers
Blood In My Eyes Daddy Dylan
I'm Rich Geoff & Maria Muldaur
So get your comb-overs and petulant pouts ready for Tuesday, noon til two, on WOOL FM 91.5 and wool.fm on the webs. And if you don't listen, you're fired!
I'd call him a buffoon, but that's too charitable, too benign, too clownish; it misses the cynical expediency of his "campaign," which is of course about nothing but Donald Trump (registered trade mark symbol here). Trump clearly ascribes to the "philosophy" attributed to the famed charlatan and self-promoter Phineas T. Barnum, to whom the axiom "There's no such thing as bad publicity" is frequently attributed. Keeping his name, his "brand," is basically the only plank in Trump's platform, a platform, of course, made of 24k gold. Better to call him a self-promoting racist misogynist, I guess, but it's not all that catchy.
On the other hand, if he does stay in the race I'm sure he'll provide us all with more entertaining scenes and opportunities for epithets, all the while dragging the GOP down with him. Sure seems like a win-win to me. In the meantime, some songs that arise from or call to mind The Donald's scintillating public utterances:
The Mexican Connection Billy Joel
Mexican Moon Concrete Blonde
Mexican Home John prine
Colder Than Mexican Snow Dirk Hamilton
Mexican Shuffle Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass
Mexican Divorce Ry Cooder
Mexico James taylor
Mexico Cake
Go To Mexico Cassandra Wilson
Going To Mexico Steve Miller Band
Mexico Jefferson Airplane
Mountains Of Mexico Jerry Jeff Walker
Gringo En Mexico Maria Muldaur
Road To Mexico Rory Block
Deportees Arlo Guthrie
Only Women Bleed Alice Cooper
Let It Bleed, Genevieve John Phillips
It's Alright Ma(I'm Only Bleeding) Dylan
Let It Bleed Rolling Stones
Romeo Is Bleeding Tom Waits
Bleed To Love Her Fleetwood Mac
Bleeding Heart Jimi Hendrix
Real Live Bleeding Fingers & Broken Glass Lucinda Williams
The Bleeding Heart Show The New Pornographers
I Bleed Pixies
Bleeders The Wallflowers
Blood In My Eyes Daddy Dylan
I'm Rich Geoff & Maria Muldaur
So get your comb-overs and petulant pouts ready for Tuesday, noon til two, on WOOL FM 91.5 and wool.fm on the webs. And if you don't listen, you're fired!
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Hangin' One More Year On The Line
On Wednesday the Earth will complete its 62nd revolution around the sun in my lifetime. While it seems impossible to believe, it doesn't necessarily feel bad, just a little weird. Like most people, I think, I feel a disconnect from how I feel and in my case the fact that my age starts with a "6," and doesn't end there. Eventually, I suppose, it will again, at least mentally.
I was gonna write a long piece about depression, the depression I've been in for years, how to deal with people with depression, how I had the date and method of my suicide worked out, how I then found the absolutely correct blend of meds that saved my life, but it all started to feel like my favorite Gary Larson cartoon "What Dogs Hear:" "Blah blah blah, blah blah blah," repeat ad infinitum and fade. Suffice it to say that I have seen the light through the blackness, that I am once again the person I used to like, and it's a miracle. Let's just listen to some music, then, like this:
Caravan Van Morrison
It's Johnny's Birthday George Harrison
The Happy Birthday Song Andrew Bird
The Birthday Present Loudon Wainwright III
Birthday The Fabs
Birthday Boy Ween
Happy, Happy Birthday Baby The Tune Weavers
Boo Boo's Birthday (Take 11) Thelonius Monk
Sweet And Shiny Eyes Bonnie Raitt
Have A Good Time Paul Simon
Long As I Can See The Light Marc Cohn
Spirit In The Light John Stewart
Shine A Light The Band
What Is The Light? The Flaming Lips
White Light Gene Clark
Different Light Steve Winwood
I Saw The Light Todd Rundgren
Sunlight The Youngbloods
Surrounded By The Light Terry Garthwaite
Arrows Of Light Bruce Cockburn
Light Shine Jesse Colin Young
Gypsy Lights Quicksilver
Heading For Light Traveling Wilburys
I Am The Light Of The World Jorma Kaukonen
The Inner Light The Fabs
Light Michael Nesmith
Light Come Shine John Stewart
The Light That as Lighted The World George Harrison
Shine A Light Rolling Stones
What Light Wilco
So c'mon along and celebrate my birthday a day early and my return to the light years late. Noon til twoish on WOOL FM, 91.5, or streaming around the whole goddam world at wool.fm. See you there.
I was gonna write a long piece about depression, the depression I've been in for years, how to deal with people with depression, how I had the date and method of my suicide worked out, how I then found the absolutely correct blend of meds that saved my life, but it all started to feel like my favorite Gary Larson cartoon "What Dogs Hear:" "Blah blah blah, blah blah blah," repeat ad infinitum and fade. Suffice it to say that I have seen the light through the blackness, that I am once again the person I used to like, and it's a miracle. Let's just listen to some music, then, like this:
Caravan Van Morrison
It's Johnny's Birthday George Harrison
The Happy Birthday Song Andrew Bird
The Birthday Present Loudon Wainwright III
Birthday The Fabs
Birthday Boy Ween
Happy, Happy Birthday Baby The Tune Weavers
Boo Boo's Birthday (Take 11) Thelonius Monk
Sweet And Shiny Eyes Bonnie Raitt
Have A Good Time Paul Simon
Long As I Can See The Light Marc Cohn
Spirit In The Light John Stewart
Shine A Light The Band
What Is The Light? The Flaming Lips
White Light Gene Clark
Different Light Steve Winwood
I Saw The Light Todd Rundgren
Sunlight The Youngbloods
Surrounded By The Light Terry Garthwaite
Arrows Of Light Bruce Cockburn
Light Shine Jesse Colin Young
Gypsy Lights Quicksilver
Heading For Light Traveling Wilburys
I Am The Light Of The World Jorma Kaukonen
The Inner Light The Fabs
Light Michael Nesmith
Light Come Shine John Stewart
The Light That as Lighted The World George Harrison
Shine A Light Rolling Stones
What Light Wilco
So c'mon along and celebrate my birthday a day early and my return to the light years late. Noon til twoish on WOOL FM, 91.5, or streaming around the whole goddam world at wool.fm. See you there.
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Bruised Gender: Going Through "The Change" Ain't What It Used To Be
I don't know about you, or at least I'm not willing to divulge how much I know, but when I was a lad, before written language had been invented, when people talked about menopause they euphemized it as "The Change," and yes, you could tell it was s'posed to be Capitalized. "Your mother's going through The Change," they'd tell me in whispers when the hot flashes or shortened temper hit. I didn't have a clue what that meant, but fortunately I was able to find out on the street, whence springs all knowledge and truth.
I opened the paper of record, The New York Times, this morning and was greeted by a photo of Caitlyn nee Bruce in a lacy dress, in profile enough that what stand out most (yes, I did) are a breast and a butt cheek. They're not Kim Kwality or Kwantity, but clearly C/B learned something in all those years as a Kardashian. And granted, the photo was in the "Arts and Leisure" (not sure which of those the pic depicted) section, but still: don't we get enough of this crap from the rest of the media? Does "The Gray Lady" really need to join the cockoffany? Or perhaps She, too, desires "The Change" and wants to become a man--or a Shih Tzu. I'm thinking she'd have to be The Daily News or maybe The Daily Racing Form in order to be macho enough.
So now when we say "The Change" we don't necessarily mean menopause, we may mean "men oh stop; let me be my true self." And, like me, you must have given some thought to the logistics of this Brave New Change; probably, like me, more thought than you want to, which may be "any." But the whole process, as I imagine it, has a certain grisly fascination, particularly the disposal of artifacts. I've also thought of that in terms of breast reduction surgery: What do they do with what's left? I don't know, but here's a proposal:
People of a certain age will remember the movie version of Joseph Heller's wonderful novel Catch-22. In it there's one scene where two nurses, gabbing all the while, attend to a patient wrapped head-to-toe in bandages, only holes for the eyes, and all four limbs in traction. This poor guy has an IV running to his arm, a catheter to another bag hanging on a stand. The IV solution bag is empty, the catheter bag full. You see where this goes, right? Yep: again, without any interruption in their chatter, the nurses swap the bags, pull the curtain to, and continue on to serve the next patient.
Here's what I'm thinkin', then, and I'm sure by now that you can see where this is going, too. Line 'em up side-by-side for the operations, and do a direct exchange, one to the other: out--or off--with the old and in--or on--with the new. The doctors would stand between the two tables and simply pivot, left to right, right to left. Efficiency greatly increased, no muss, no fuss, no waste. If we're trying to cut healthcare costs, here's one small step for a (wo)man, or whichever.
Oh, lighten up. Jonathan Swift once suggested, in apparent seriousness, that the English eat Irish babies. He still wins.
I just hope that Cait is prepared to earn seventy seven cents for every dollar Bruce used to make....
I opened the paper of record, The New York Times, this morning and was greeted by a photo of Caitlyn nee Bruce in a lacy dress, in profile enough that what stand out most (yes, I did) are a breast and a butt cheek. They're not Kim Kwality or Kwantity, but clearly C/B learned something in all those years as a Kardashian. And granted, the photo was in the "Arts and Leisure" (not sure which of those the pic depicted) section, but still: don't we get enough of this crap from the rest of the media? Does "The Gray Lady" really need to join the cockoffany? Or perhaps She, too, desires "The Change" and wants to become a man--or a Shih Tzu. I'm thinking she'd have to be The Daily News or maybe The Daily Racing Form in order to be macho enough.
So now when we say "The Change" we don't necessarily mean menopause, we may mean "men oh stop; let me be my true self." And, like me, you must have given some thought to the logistics of this Brave New Change; probably, like me, more thought than you want to, which may be "any." But the whole process, as I imagine it, has a certain grisly fascination, particularly the disposal of artifacts. I've also thought of that in terms of breast reduction surgery: What do they do with what's left? I don't know, but here's a proposal:
People of a certain age will remember the movie version of Joseph Heller's wonderful novel Catch-22. In it there's one scene where two nurses, gabbing all the while, attend to a patient wrapped head-to-toe in bandages, only holes for the eyes, and all four limbs in traction. This poor guy has an IV running to his arm, a catheter to another bag hanging on a stand. The IV solution bag is empty, the catheter bag full. You see where this goes, right? Yep: again, without any interruption in their chatter, the nurses swap the bags, pull the curtain to, and continue on to serve the next patient.
Here's what I'm thinkin', then, and I'm sure by now that you can see where this is going, too. Line 'em up side-by-side for the operations, and do a direct exchange, one to the other: out--or off--with the old and in--or on--with the new. The doctors would stand between the two tables and simply pivot, left to right, right to left. Efficiency greatly increased, no muss, no fuss, no waste. If we're trying to cut healthcare costs, here's one small step for a (wo)man, or whichever.
Oh, lighten up. Jonathan Swift once suggested, in apparent seriousness, that the English eat Irish babies. He still wins.
I just hope that Cait is prepared to earn seventy seven cents for every dollar Bruce used to make....
Friday, July 24, 2015
Livin' in the "U's" and "A's" (Apologies To Steve Miller)
Greetings, again, from Chautauqua Institution, USA, (mostly) Liberal Gated Community, you oxymoron fans. Chautauqua is located, for you GPS users, at the corner of Indolence and Lassitude, just off Languor Squared, across from Torpor Aerie, where live the sleepy hedges trimmed to the shapes of eagles' nests.
Life is slow here, but maybe not quite slow enough for me to stay out of trouble. Lemme tell you about it, but first some background. Sometime during the aughts, during the rain (not a misprint) of GWB as "president," the Smothers Brothers appeared here, with their wit and political satire intact. At some point Tommy was riffing on Republican'ts and received a smattering of boos. He stopped and said, with some surprise, "Are there some Republicans here tonight?" This time, a smattering of applause, to which he replied "Don't you read the papers?"
When we pulled into our rental on Saturday, one of the first things I noticed was what was obviously a Republican't flag hanging from the porch of the house next door. You know, the classic elephant symbol in red, white and blue. Never saw one, hope to never see another, 'though I expect they'll be a thing. I mean, even if just the Republican't presidential candidates displayed them they'd darken the skies like passenger pigeons used to. Be nice if they, too, became extinct.
Aaanyway, Saturday evening I was listening to music on the porch at a not excessive level when the owner of the flag set out to walk his dog, a yappy little terrier of some sort. He stopped to tell me that what I was doing was not in the Chautauqua spirit, that folks here like it quiet and go to sleep early. I guess so: it was about 8:30. At 62 I'm still getting yelled at for playing my music too loud: "Aw, jeez, c'mon Dad, pleeease?"
As I said, the guy's dog is a yapper. Yesterday she started at about 7:15, as I was lying in bed attempting to read. And the thing is, Mr. Law and Order is an old softy when it comes to his precious: no one attempts to shush it until it goes on for 10 mins. or so. And this behavior went on at intervals throughout the day. So in the evening, as the superhero duo Yapper and Enabler returned from their evening constitutional, or at least the part that elite activist judges haven't overthrown yet, as I was again sitting on the porch listening to music, I stopped him and said "You didn't have any qualms about complaining about my music the other night. I've been coming here for 16 years, and have walked all around the campus this week, and the only dog I've heard barking is yours." His reply as he began to drag the dog toward his house--and I'm not making this up--was "Okay, fine then, I'll just kill her." Perfectly reasonable adult exchange of ideas, eh? For Fox Noise, anyway.
Every once in a while the right rejoinder comes at the right time, not hours later when you're lying in bed. So just before he slammed through the door I said "No, I see that you're a Rebublican: just build a fence around the country and keep her out." It'll be interesting to see what today brings....
Enjoy my vacation, everyone.
Life is slow here, but maybe not quite slow enough for me to stay out of trouble. Lemme tell you about it, but first some background. Sometime during the aughts, during the rain (not a misprint) of GWB as "president," the Smothers Brothers appeared here, with their wit and political satire intact. At some point Tommy was riffing on Republican'ts and received a smattering of boos. He stopped and said, with some surprise, "Are there some Republicans here tonight?" This time, a smattering of applause, to which he replied "Don't you read the papers?"
When we pulled into our rental on Saturday, one of the first things I noticed was what was obviously a Republican't flag hanging from the porch of the house next door. You know, the classic elephant symbol in red, white and blue. Never saw one, hope to never see another, 'though I expect they'll be a thing. I mean, even if just the Republican't presidential candidates displayed them they'd darken the skies like passenger pigeons used to. Be nice if they, too, became extinct.
Aaanyway, Saturday evening I was listening to music on the porch at a not excessive level when the owner of the flag set out to walk his dog, a yappy little terrier of some sort. He stopped to tell me that what I was doing was not in the Chautauqua spirit, that folks here like it quiet and go to sleep early. I guess so: it was about 8:30. At 62 I'm still getting yelled at for playing my music too loud: "Aw, jeez, c'mon Dad, pleeease?"
As I said, the guy's dog is a yapper. Yesterday she started at about 7:15, as I was lying in bed attempting to read. And the thing is, Mr. Law and Order is an old softy when it comes to his precious: no one attempts to shush it until it goes on for 10 mins. or so. And this behavior went on at intervals throughout the day. So in the evening, as the superhero duo Yapper and Enabler returned from their evening constitutional, or at least the part that elite activist judges haven't overthrown yet, as I was again sitting on the porch listening to music, I stopped him and said "You didn't have any qualms about complaining about my music the other night. I've been coming here for 16 years, and have walked all around the campus this week, and the only dog I've heard barking is yours." His reply as he began to drag the dog toward his house--and I'm not making this up--was "Okay, fine then, I'll just kill her." Perfectly reasonable adult exchange of ideas, eh? For Fox Noise, anyway.
Every once in a while the right rejoinder comes at the right time, not hours later when you're lying in bed. So just before he slammed through the door I said "No, I see that you're a Rebublican: just build a fence around the country and keep her out." It'll be interesting to see what today brings....
Enjoy my vacation, everyone.
Monday, May 25, 2015
The Earth Wants You, And It Gets What It Wants
Do not go gentle into that goodnight, a poet once said.
Another said Hope I die before I get old.
Another, It's better to burn out/Than to fade away....
And yet another, dying is what the living do,/...dying is what the loving do....
To (too) many people, those poets are, of course, to only varying degrees worthy of the term: Dylan Thomas, Peter Townshend, Neil Young, Alastair Reid. Some are accepted into the canon, some not (or at least the canon shifts criteria and aim).
I've been watching people and relationships die and dying these last few months--one dead, three others knockin' on heaven's door, as another poet said--and surprisingly, given my basic human obtuseness--that's made an impression on me. Dylan Thomas's well known admonition to "not go gentle..," for instance, with some perspective, strikes me as the bravado/directive of the young: "We're in the world, alive, open to all sensory experience; we should fight "the dying of the light." It's become a rallying cry, a directive, a way to see and fear and avoid death: at least go down fighting.
Dylan Thomas was 39 years old when he died. Of course he should have resisted, of course he should have fought: no one should die at 39; even The Bible, that great work of fiction, hagiography and, for some, inspiration, gives us 70 years ("Three score and ten"). Yet Thomas's end, for all of his exhortations and protestations, was self-induced. He drank himself to death. Why, then, should we listen to his directive to resist death, except as an understanding of his conflict with self-immolation and self-destruction? For most "normal" folk, then, his words are rubbish (to use a UK-ism).
Then there are the self-imagined, self-promoted nihilists who urge us to go for it, to "live fast, die young, stay pretty"; those are lyrics, somewhat bastardized, from Blondie, that 80's band fronted by the eternally youthful former Playboy Bunny Debbie Harry (seen her lately?). That's not far from Pete Townshend's or Neil Young's views expressed above. The great irony, of course, is that those who wished to die before they got old, who wanted to live fast and leave a pretty corpse, are now in their seventies, and far, far from their pretty youth. Praps they should have, instead, resisted aging, died young, and been remembered in the bloom of youth. Hey, it worked for Jim Morrison; remember the Rolling Stone Cover from years ago that featured his photo on the cover with the tag line "He's hot, he's sexy, and he's dead."?
Finally, from my opening, there're Alastair Reid's lines, the best-considered, the ones with the most to offer. They are from his poem called Curiosity, which uses cats and their attributed curiosity--which of course, we say, kills 'em-- and their mythical nine lives as its governing metaphor. Reid says that the "cat price" of their curiosity "is to die/ and die again and again,/each time with no less pain." But for each loss there is a gain, to paraphrase another poet: "And what he has to tell/on each return from hell/is this: that dying is what the living do,/that dying is what the loving do,/ and...that hell is where, to live, they have to go."
Duh, he said, smacking himself in the forehead at an obvious truth he had never stopped to consider (is it a sign of a problem that I write about myself in third person?). Like hello and goodbye, about which I wrote some years ago, they are simply two sides of the same coin: We are dying from the moment we're born, and dying can only be done by the living. It's as natural as same-sex marriage in Ireland, for goodness sake. And that may be why, as I have witnessed, the old and the terminally ill not only don't rage against death, they welcome it. They've seen enough, had enough, have nothing in front of them but empty days and so are ready for the next phase. It is only the young who are ignorant or foolish enough to either rage against death, or to hope to die before they get old. Although it may not make it any easier for the ones left behind (as it's always easier to be the leaver than the left), LifeDeath is simply a process, to be taken on its own terms in its own time. There is much wisdom in acceptance.
Living and dying songs this week, then, which seems appropriate as I write this on Memorial Day.
Among the songs I'll choose from, or from which I'll choose:
Living The Blues Dylan
Change My Way Of Living Allman Bros.
Living In Fame The Clash
Living In The Material World George Harrison
I'm Living Good Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham
Living Without You Manfred Mann's Earth Band
Long As You're Living Karrin Allyson
The Only Living Boy In New York Marc Cohn
Living On The Inside Michael Franks
The Living Natalie Merchant
The Only Living Boy In New York Simon & Garfunkel
Living Is Good Wendy Waldman
Ain't Life For The Living Sonia Dada
Viva La Vida Santana
Living It Up Rickie Lee Jones
I Got A Mind To Give Up Living Butterfield Blues Band
In My Time Of Dying The Be Good Tanyas
...(Dying In The Forest) Dr. John
I Wouldn't Mind Dying The Carter Family
When Love Is Dying Elton John & Leon Russell
Art Of Dying George Harrison
The Golden Day Is Dying Hem
Dying On The Vine The Jayhawks
A Dying Man's Plea Mavis Staples
Prayer For The Dying Seal
The Earth Wants You Mose Allison
In My Hour Of Darkness Gram Parsons
I'll be on the air Tuesday from noon till two at WOOL FM 91.5, and wool.fm streaming worldwide. Hope you can join me.
Two addenda: Went to a Japanese restaurant in Ossining, NY a month or so ago and was surprised that they were apparently catering to people on the Paleo diet, as one of their menu items was "Filet Magnon...." Hey, at least it wasn't "Crow Magnon."
Much more seriously: Last week I blithely wrote about public stoning as means of execution in the Tsarnaev case, never stopping to think that that sort of thing still goes on in parts of the world. A good friend of mine, who served tours of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan wrote to say that it was not that uncommon for soldiers to come upon public stonings, women buried up to their necks and being stoned for the crime of disgracing their families by being raped by a relative. Yes, you read that right. I need to just keep my fucking First-World mouth shut.
Another said Hope I die before I get old.
Another, It's better to burn out/Than to fade away....
And yet another, dying is what the living do,/...dying is what the loving do....
To (too) many people, those poets are, of course, to only varying degrees worthy of the term: Dylan Thomas, Peter Townshend, Neil Young, Alastair Reid. Some are accepted into the canon, some not (or at least the canon shifts criteria and aim).
I've been watching people and relationships die and dying these last few months--one dead, three others knockin' on heaven's door, as another poet said--and surprisingly, given my basic human obtuseness--that's made an impression on me. Dylan Thomas's well known admonition to "not go gentle..," for instance, with some perspective, strikes me as the bravado/directive of the young: "We're in the world, alive, open to all sensory experience; we should fight "the dying of the light." It's become a rallying cry, a directive, a way to see and fear and avoid death: at least go down fighting.
Dylan Thomas was 39 years old when he died. Of course he should have resisted, of course he should have fought: no one should die at 39; even The Bible, that great work of fiction, hagiography and, for some, inspiration, gives us 70 years ("Three score and ten"). Yet Thomas's end, for all of his exhortations and protestations, was self-induced. He drank himself to death. Why, then, should we listen to his directive to resist death, except as an understanding of his conflict with self-immolation and self-destruction? For most "normal" folk, then, his words are rubbish (to use a UK-ism).
Then there are the self-imagined, self-promoted nihilists who urge us to go for it, to "live fast, die young, stay pretty"; those are lyrics, somewhat bastardized, from Blondie, that 80's band fronted by the eternally youthful former Playboy Bunny Debbie Harry (seen her lately?). That's not far from Pete Townshend's or Neil Young's views expressed above. The great irony, of course, is that those who wished to die before they got old, who wanted to live fast and leave a pretty corpse, are now in their seventies, and far, far from their pretty youth. Praps they should have, instead, resisted aging, died young, and been remembered in the bloom of youth. Hey, it worked for Jim Morrison; remember the Rolling Stone Cover from years ago that featured his photo on the cover with the tag line "He's hot, he's sexy, and he's dead."?
Finally, from my opening, there're Alastair Reid's lines, the best-considered, the ones with the most to offer. They are from his poem called Curiosity, which uses cats and their attributed curiosity--which of course, we say, kills 'em-- and their mythical nine lives as its governing metaphor. Reid says that the "cat price" of their curiosity "is to die/ and die again and again,/each time with no less pain." But for each loss there is a gain, to paraphrase another poet: "And what he has to tell/on each return from hell/is this: that dying is what the living do,/that dying is what the loving do,/ and...that hell is where, to live, they have to go."
Duh, he said, smacking himself in the forehead at an obvious truth he had never stopped to consider (is it a sign of a problem that I write about myself in third person?). Like hello and goodbye, about which I wrote some years ago, they are simply two sides of the same coin: We are dying from the moment we're born, and dying can only be done by the living. It's as natural as same-sex marriage in Ireland, for goodness sake. And that may be why, as I have witnessed, the old and the terminally ill not only don't rage against death, they welcome it. They've seen enough, had enough, have nothing in front of them but empty days and so are ready for the next phase. It is only the young who are ignorant or foolish enough to either rage against death, or to hope to die before they get old. Although it may not make it any easier for the ones left behind (as it's always easier to be the leaver than the left), LifeDeath is simply a process, to be taken on its own terms in its own time. There is much wisdom in acceptance.
Living and dying songs this week, then, which seems appropriate as I write this on Memorial Day.
Among the songs I'll choose from, or from which I'll choose:
Living The Blues Dylan
Change My Way Of Living Allman Bros.
Living In Fame The Clash
Living In The Material World George Harrison
I'm Living Good Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham
Living Without You Manfred Mann's Earth Band
Long As You're Living Karrin Allyson
The Only Living Boy In New York Marc Cohn
Living On The Inside Michael Franks
The Living Natalie Merchant
The Only Living Boy In New York Simon & Garfunkel
Living Is Good Wendy Waldman
Ain't Life For The Living Sonia Dada
Viva La Vida Santana
Living It Up Rickie Lee Jones
I Got A Mind To Give Up Living Butterfield Blues Band
In My Time Of Dying The Be Good Tanyas
...(Dying In The Forest) Dr. John
I Wouldn't Mind Dying The Carter Family
When Love Is Dying Elton John & Leon Russell
Art Of Dying George Harrison
The Golden Day Is Dying Hem
Dying On The Vine The Jayhawks
A Dying Man's Plea Mavis Staples
Prayer For The Dying Seal
The Earth Wants You Mose Allison
In My Hour Of Darkness Gram Parsons
I'll be on the air Tuesday from noon till two at WOOL FM 91.5, and wool.fm streaming worldwide. Hope you can join me.
Two addenda: Went to a Japanese restaurant in Ossining, NY a month or so ago and was surprised that they were apparently catering to people on the Paleo diet, as one of their menu items was "Filet Magnon...." Hey, at least it wasn't "Crow Magnon."
Much more seriously: Last week I blithely wrote about public stoning as means of execution in the Tsarnaev case, never stopping to think that that sort of thing still goes on in parts of the world. A good friend of mine, who served tours of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan wrote to say that it was not that uncommon for soldiers to come upon public stonings, women buried up to their necks and being stoned for the crime of disgracing their families by being raped by a relative. Yes, you read that right. I need to just keep my fucking First-World mouth shut.
Saturday, May 16, 2015
I'm A Dzokhar, I'm A Tzmokhar*.... If I Get The Chair, That Is
Hi. I've been away awhile. It's personal. Today an event happened about which I must write; I figure it'll make the final few people who read this drivel turn away in disgust. I think it's important to say something about it, about us.
Today, Friday, May 15, 2015 in the year of something, a jury in Boston once again asserted that we are not bound by Christian tenets or beliefs in this self-described Christian Nation. It showed that we have not evolved since Old Testament times, that the Christian tenets we think of in calling ourselves that actually predate Christ by a thousand years or so. It showed, once again, that the veneer of "civilization" is paper--certainly not wafer, all you Communionists--thin.
Today a jury in Boston decided that Dzokhar Tsarnaev, 21, should be murdered by the State, by The United States. Tcertainly, Mr. Tsarnaev, led by his brother, Tamerlane, committed a heinous, egregious and, to all of our understandings of the term, morally indefensible act: they killed, wounded, maimed and irreversibly changed the course of hundreds of lives. If there is a hell somewhere other than on earth and in our minds, the Tsarnaev Bros. would go there on The Charon Express. The question in my mind is who should put them there, who should pass judgment on them, who would cast the stones?
We--or at least many of our "leaders," especially among the Christian Right (both terms of which, I maintain, are false in that appellation), call the US a Christian nation. I'm personally mystified by what that might mean. We certainly haven't followed the assertion that we are created in God's image, that we are therefore all equal; we have not hewn to the edict to "turn the other cheek;" we have not shown any adherence--as witness this decision--that "vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord." No, we'll cherry-pick those attributes we find most comely and self-servingly assertive to base that appellation on. But where does that put us, in the grand scheme of things?
Humans are brutal beings, there's no getting around that, even after all these years of religiously influenced leadership. We kill, we rape, we torture, we pillage, we degrade, all without, it seems, a second thought. Or if there is a second thought, it's in the service of justification of those behaviors to which we are prone anyway--like splitting the infinitive, which I originally did there, then dutifully went back and changed. But we have, as a culture, as a species, moved not one iota into understanding, into compassion, into forgiveness as a book written, not by a god, but by a variety of human authors over hundreds of years, would purport to have us do.
I've always understood the basis of our penal system to be rehabilitation; we were trying, I thought, to fix the ills that family or society or simply trying to live in this vale of tears has wreaked upon some among us, like us except for the grace of Something. Clearly, that's not very often true. So what are we about, what is our penal system about? Seems pretty clear that it's about revenge, about vengeance, about doing god's job 'cause he ain't doing it well enough.
Martin Richard, that adorable little boy with the mile-wide smile who was killed by the Tsarnaevs' horrible action, for instance; there's an iconic photo showing him holding up a hand-drawn poster saying "No more hurting people," which also features peace symbols ("Tracks of the American chicken," as Vietnam-era posters had it) and the word "peace" written at the bottom. Do you suppose that that poster said, on the flip side, "except for some troubled people who do bad stuff"? Maybe, one could say, had he survived he'd have realized how misguided his idealism was, and that people are basically evil and out to get you. Or maybe he wouldn't. His family, in fact, came out against the death penalty for Tsarnaev. They, and the dozen or so anti-death-penalty protestors (many of them veterans) who stood outside the courthouse holding signs opposing the death penalty, are the true heroes, the truly moral representatives of civilized behavior.
Listen: I have three kids, all of whom went through that same phase of growing up--hell, all phases-- till now. Of course I'd have been devastated if one of them had suffered Martin Richard's fate. I'd like to think, though, that I'd realize that the death of another human being would not bring back my child. I understand that "An eye for an eye" is another well-known phrase from the Bible, and that it's obviously at odds with "vengeance is mine...;" The Bible is, of course, rife with such contradictory statements, largely due to its variety of authors and the changing times in which it was written. Moses got lots of info and direction from god, but then ol' god sent his son here to throw an enormous spanner into the works, contradicting much of what was said, written and believed previously. Guess we're s'posed to figure it out for ourselves, but if one believes in the teachings of Christ, the way to interpret is pretty clear.
So yeah, if the way things worked was that by killing the perp all those killed by his actions would come back to life, arms and legs would suddenly reappear on the bodies of those who had lost them, and the psyches of all of those affected would be restored to better health, then I'd say "Hell yeah, fry 'im." There'd be a tangible and fair trade and benefit. Given that that's pretty likely not the way things work then the only rationale for killing Dzokhar Tsarnaev is vengeance. Even though our Holy texts enjoin us from such things, even though we profess to base our societies on their word, on their law. At the very least we should put him to death by public stoning as they used to do in the good old days. It'd be interesting to see all of the non-sinners flocking to City Hall Plaza, pockets laden with rocks, ready to mete out justice, and maybe burn the odd witch at the stake into the bargain.
As with everything, it all comes back to love, of which there is never enough. Love is all we need, but we can't seem to realize that or act on it. Love thy neighbor, love thine enemy, and maybe we wouldn't need incessant incursions and drone strikes which kill millions of innocents and lead to the retaliatory killing and maiming of thousands. If we are to truly lead (there's the split infinitive!) and be respected in the world, we need a new map. Or a very old one.
Here are some songs I'll play, then, if I can get it together to do a show on Tuesday:
Hannibal's Revenge Andy Narell
My Personal Revenge Jackson Browne
Revenge Of Memory Sir Vincent Lone (Jackie Leven)
Revenge Will Come David Lindley
Sweet Revenge John Prine
Yankee's Revenge David Bromberg
Avenging Annie Andy Pratt
Can I Forgive Him Paul Simon
Forgiven Alanis Morissette
Forgiven Ben Harper
Kiss Of Forgiveness Nick Robertson
Moment Of Forgiveness Indigo Girls
Ol' Forgiver Poco
Sweet Forgiveness Bonnie Raitt
Unforgiven Beck
Unforgiven Joe Cocker
The Unforgiven Ones Crash Test Dummies
The Christian Life The Byrds
Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Tell You The Bee Gees
The Joker Steve Miller
Jokerman Dylan
Jokers To A Shaky Hand Dirk Hamilton
Jokers Are Wild Gene Clark and Carla Olsen
Judge Not Bob Marley
Murder In My Heart (For The Judge) Lee Michaels
The Judgment Solomon Burke
All You Need Is Love The Fabs
My show, if in fact I do it, will be from noon till two on Tuesday on WOOL FM 91.5 and WOOL.fm on the 'net. Hope we see each other there.
*Apologies to Steve Miller, and I don't mean to be flip; it seemed like a humorous thing, to cut the tension, to me.
Today, Friday, May 15, 2015 in the year of something, a jury in Boston once again asserted that we are not bound by Christian tenets or beliefs in this self-described Christian Nation. It showed that we have not evolved since Old Testament times, that the Christian tenets we think of in calling ourselves that actually predate Christ by a thousand years or so. It showed, once again, that the veneer of "civilization" is paper--certainly not wafer, all you Communionists--thin.
Today a jury in Boston decided that Dzokhar Tsarnaev, 21, should be murdered by the State, by The United States. Tcertainly, Mr. Tsarnaev, led by his brother, Tamerlane, committed a heinous, egregious and, to all of our understandings of the term, morally indefensible act: they killed, wounded, maimed and irreversibly changed the course of hundreds of lives. If there is a hell somewhere other than on earth and in our minds, the Tsarnaev Bros. would go there on The Charon Express. The question in my mind is who should put them there, who should pass judgment on them, who would cast the stones?
We--or at least many of our "leaders," especially among the Christian Right (both terms of which, I maintain, are false in that appellation), call the US a Christian nation. I'm personally mystified by what that might mean. We certainly haven't followed the assertion that we are created in God's image, that we are therefore all equal; we have not hewn to the edict to "turn the other cheek;" we have not shown any adherence--as witness this decision--that "vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord." No, we'll cherry-pick those attributes we find most comely and self-servingly assertive to base that appellation on. But where does that put us, in the grand scheme of things?
Humans are brutal beings, there's no getting around that, even after all these years of religiously influenced leadership. We kill, we rape, we torture, we pillage, we degrade, all without, it seems, a second thought. Or if there is a second thought, it's in the service of justification of those behaviors to which we are prone anyway--like splitting the infinitive, which I originally did there, then dutifully went back and changed. But we have, as a culture, as a species, moved not one iota into understanding, into compassion, into forgiveness as a book written, not by a god, but by a variety of human authors over hundreds of years, would purport to have us do.
I've always understood the basis of our penal system to be rehabilitation; we were trying, I thought, to fix the ills that family or society or simply trying to live in this vale of tears has wreaked upon some among us, like us except for the grace of Something. Clearly, that's not very often true. So what are we about, what is our penal system about? Seems pretty clear that it's about revenge, about vengeance, about doing god's job 'cause he ain't doing it well enough.
Martin Richard, that adorable little boy with the mile-wide smile who was killed by the Tsarnaevs' horrible action, for instance; there's an iconic photo showing him holding up a hand-drawn poster saying "No more hurting people," which also features peace symbols ("Tracks of the American chicken," as Vietnam-era posters had it) and the word "peace" written at the bottom. Do you suppose that that poster said, on the flip side, "except for some troubled people who do bad stuff"? Maybe, one could say, had he survived he'd have realized how misguided his idealism was, and that people are basically evil and out to get you. Or maybe he wouldn't. His family, in fact, came out against the death penalty for Tsarnaev. They, and the dozen or so anti-death-penalty protestors (many of them veterans) who stood outside the courthouse holding signs opposing the death penalty, are the true heroes, the truly moral representatives of civilized behavior.
Listen: I have three kids, all of whom went through that same phase of growing up--hell, all phases-- till now. Of course I'd have been devastated if one of them had suffered Martin Richard's fate. I'd like to think, though, that I'd realize that the death of another human being would not bring back my child. I understand that "An eye for an eye" is another well-known phrase from the Bible, and that it's obviously at odds with "vengeance is mine...;" The Bible is, of course, rife with such contradictory statements, largely due to its variety of authors and the changing times in which it was written. Moses got lots of info and direction from god, but then ol' god sent his son here to throw an enormous spanner into the works, contradicting much of what was said, written and believed previously. Guess we're s'posed to figure it out for ourselves, but if one believes in the teachings of Christ, the way to interpret is pretty clear.
So yeah, if the way things worked was that by killing the perp all those killed by his actions would come back to life, arms and legs would suddenly reappear on the bodies of those who had lost them, and the psyches of all of those affected would be restored to better health, then I'd say "Hell yeah, fry 'im." There'd be a tangible and fair trade and benefit. Given that that's pretty likely not the way things work then the only rationale for killing Dzokhar Tsarnaev is vengeance. Even though our Holy texts enjoin us from such things, even though we profess to base our societies on their word, on their law. At the very least we should put him to death by public stoning as they used to do in the good old days. It'd be interesting to see all of the non-sinners flocking to City Hall Plaza, pockets laden with rocks, ready to mete out justice, and maybe burn the odd witch at the stake into the bargain.
As with everything, it all comes back to love, of which there is never enough. Love is all we need, but we can't seem to realize that or act on it. Love thy neighbor, love thine enemy, and maybe we wouldn't need incessant incursions and drone strikes which kill millions of innocents and lead to the retaliatory killing and maiming of thousands. If we are to truly lead (there's the split infinitive!) and be respected in the world, we need a new map. Or a very old one.
Here are some songs I'll play, then, if I can get it together to do a show on Tuesday:
Hannibal's Revenge Andy Narell
My Personal Revenge Jackson Browne
Revenge Of Memory Sir Vincent Lone (Jackie Leven)
Revenge Will Come David Lindley
Sweet Revenge John Prine
Yankee's Revenge David Bromberg
Avenging Annie Andy Pratt
Can I Forgive Him Paul Simon
Forgiven Alanis Morissette
Forgiven Ben Harper
Kiss Of Forgiveness Nick Robertson
Moment Of Forgiveness Indigo Girls
Ol' Forgiver Poco
Sweet Forgiveness Bonnie Raitt
Unforgiven Beck
Unforgiven Joe Cocker
The Unforgiven Ones Crash Test Dummies
The Christian Life The Byrds
Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Tell You The Bee Gees
The Joker Steve Miller
Jokerman Dylan
Jokers To A Shaky Hand Dirk Hamilton
Jokers Are Wild Gene Clark and Carla Olsen
Judge Not Bob Marley
Murder In My Heart (For The Judge) Lee Michaels
The Judgment Solomon Burke
All You Need Is Love The Fabs
My show, if in fact I do it, will be from noon till two on Tuesday on WOOL FM 91.5 and WOOL.fm on the 'net. Hope we see each other there.
*Apologies to Steve Miller, and I don't mean to be flip; it seemed like a humorous thing, to cut the tension, to me.
Monday, March 30, 2015
What Is In A Name?
Rant. Diatribe. Polemic. Screed. Broadside. Those are among the nicer appellations given my innocent little posts, my darlings whom I seem unable to kill. I know that I basically play the one note, so occasionally I attempt to change things up a little. This is one of those times: just a little fluff, although it, too, will likely have an edge.
In the last week I've spent a month or so driving through much of New York State, a little of Pennsylvania, and into Ohio as far as Cleveland. On the trip from Rochester to Ossining, on NY Rte. 17, which is actually a nice trip except for the condition of the highway itself, one, especially one with time on his mind, can't help but notice and reflect on place names.
It's always a little surprising to be confronted by the homesickness/dearth of imagination inherent/implicit in the names of places. Pretty much every state, as "The Simpsons" used to its advantage, has a Springfield. NY, of course, has Syracuse, Ithaca, Damascus, Rome, Poland, Greece, and on and on: I Heart Stealing Names. Two names jumped out at me on Rte. 17, though: Fishs Eddy and Deposit.
The former is, as far as I can see, virtually unpronounceable. I'm sure it's said as though it were spelled or punctuated correctly, like "fishes." But in order to be said that way, it needs that "e," as in "loaves and...," or "he sleeps with the...." Of course it could also be made properly possessive, either singularly or plurally, as "Fish's" or "Fishes.'" I have capitalized that, as I went to high school with and sat in front of for four years in homeroom a girl named Cheryl Fish. But that's not how the sign read; it was simply "Fishs," which would have to sound like "fishsss," a word which I do not believe exists, except perhaps for Gollum.. Let's say you're a resident of that town; you grow up pronouncing it in a proper way, and shrug your shoulders at the anomaly of the spelling, if you're even aware of it. But if you're the State of New York, don't you want the highway sign to read in a correct and literate manner? Don't you? Buy a vowel, or an apostrophe, please.
"Deposit," while seemingly terribly prosaic and unimaginative can at least, perhaps, be explained as the locale of some sort of mineral find: a vein of ore or (yes, I did), as the town is located in a river valley, the site of an enormous amount of gravel. But one (me) is led to think of possibilities for surrounding communities: "Return," for instance, which could also appear on signs as you exit the town: "Leaving Deposit. Please return." There's also "Withdrawal," (whose population seems to be decreasing, for some reason) or the northern sections of both "Deposit" and "Return," which of course would be abbreviated as "No. Deposit" and "No. Return." And, as the town is on a river, you'd dock your boat in a "Deposit slip," or perhaps that's the name of the town's largest employer, a textile mill which makes ladies' undergarments.... I'll stop now. It's just harmless fun, and it's been a heavy week.
Lots of "Name" songs this week, then, such as
The Naming Of Things Andrew Bird
Naming Of Parts Henry Reed
Before I Knew Your Name Mark Erelli
Do You Remember The Name Walter Becker
Call Me Names Joan Armatrading
Give Me Back My Name Talking Heads
I Got A Name Jim Croce
I Call Your Name The Mamas & The Papas
I Took Your Name R.E.M.
Man Gave Names To All The Animals Dylan
Man Named Truth Monsters Of Folk
My Name Is Buddy Ry Cooder
My Name Is Jonas Weezer
What's Your Name Lynyrd Skynyrd
Where The Streets Have No Name U2
I've Been Everywhere Jackie Leven
Name Everything Steve Tibbetts
Name Of Love CSNY
Nameless Song Sweet Motha' Child
No Face, No Name, No Number Traffic
No Name Girl John Prine
No One Knows My Name Gillian Welch
Nobody Knows My Name Rickie Lee Jones
Not In Our Name Charlie Haden
River Knows Your Name John Hiatt
Strange Names Steve Forbert
The Street Only Knew Your Name Van Morrison
You Don't Know My Name The Kinks
You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) Fabs
I've Been Everywhere Johnny Cash
Tuesday, noon till two on WOOL 91.5, wool.fm.
Wherefore art thou, Fishs Eddy?
In the last week I've spent a month or so driving through much of New York State, a little of Pennsylvania, and into Ohio as far as Cleveland. On the trip from Rochester to Ossining, on NY Rte. 17, which is actually a nice trip except for the condition of the highway itself, one, especially one with time on his mind, can't help but notice and reflect on place names.
It's always a little surprising to be confronted by the homesickness/dearth of imagination inherent/implicit in the names of places. Pretty much every state, as "The Simpsons" used to its advantage, has a Springfield. NY, of course, has Syracuse, Ithaca, Damascus, Rome, Poland, Greece, and on and on: I Heart Stealing Names. Two names jumped out at me on Rte. 17, though: Fishs Eddy and Deposit.
The former is, as far as I can see, virtually unpronounceable. I'm sure it's said as though it were spelled or punctuated correctly, like "fishes." But in order to be said that way, it needs that "e," as in "loaves and...," or "he sleeps with the...." Of course it could also be made properly possessive, either singularly or plurally, as "Fish's" or "Fishes.'" I have capitalized that, as I went to high school with and sat in front of for four years in homeroom a girl named Cheryl Fish. But that's not how the sign read; it was simply "Fishs," which would have to sound like "fishsss," a word which I do not believe exists, except perhaps for Gollum.. Let's say you're a resident of that town; you grow up pronouncing it in a proper way, and shrug your shoulders at the anomaly of the spelling, if you're even aware of it. But if you're the State of New York, don't you want the highway sign to read in a correct and literate manner? Don't you? Buy a vowel, or an apostrophe, please.
"Deposit," while seemingly terribly prosaic and unimaginative can at least, perhaps, be explained as the locale of some sort of mineral find: a vein of ore or (yes, I did), as the town is located in a river valley, the site of an enormous amount of gravel. But one (me) is led to think of possibilities for surrounding communities: "Return," for instance, which could also appear on signs as you exit the town: "Leaving Deposit. Please return." There's also "Withdrawal," (whose population seems to be decreasing, for some reason) or the northern sections of both "Deposit" and "Return," which of course would be abbreviated as "No. Deposit" and "No. Return." And, as the town is on a river, you'd dock your boat in a "Deposit slip," or perhaps that's the name of the town's largest employer, a textile mill which makes ladies' undergarments.... I'll stop now. It's just harmless fun, and it's been a heavy week.
Lots of "Name" songs this week, then, such as
The Naming Of Things Andrew Bird
Naming Of Parts Henry Reed
Before I Knew Your Name Mark Erelli
Do You Remember The Name Walter Becker
Call Me Names Joan Armatrading
Give Me Back My Name Talking Heads
I Got A Name Jim Croce
I Call Your Name The Mamas & The Papas
I Took Your Name R.E.M.
Man Gave Names To All The Animals Dylan
Man Named Truth Monsters Of Folk
My Name Is Buddy Ry Cooder
My Name Is Jonas Weezer
What's Your Name Lynyrd Skynyrd
Where The Streets Have No Name U2
I've Been Everywhere Jackie Leven
Name Everything Steve Tibbetts
Name Of Love CSNY
Nameless Song Sweet Motha' Child
No Face, No Name, No Number Traffic
No Name Girl John Prine
No One Knows My Name Gillian Welch
Nobody Knows My Name Rickie Lee Jones
Not In Our Name Charlie Haden
River Knows Your Name John Hiatt
Strange Names Steve Forbert
The Street Only Knew Your Name Van Morrison
You Don't Know My Name The Kinks
You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) Fabs
I've Been Everywhere Johnny Cash
Tuesday, noon till two on WOOL 91.5, wool.fm.
Wherefore art thou, Fishs Eddy?
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