The Greatest Gal in The Galaxy

Who is she?  Well, I thought I knew her.  "But" more importantly, in the words of the old Don Williams song: "she never knew me, no she never knew me….she never knew me at all." Simply, she wasn't The G.G. in the G.

But she is still out there.  The Safaris' "Image of A Girl" tells the timeless tale. This more than half century old recording of the rock'n roll ballad of inchoate longing for young love is really but a greener shoot of an older, wandering vine yet seeking to enclasp its tendrills with those of another living, twining and perhaps pining essence. Corny? Yeah, well life is corny, even cornier than Kansas in August. To belabor a metaphor, seems all my kernels have popped and even some generals have been busted.  A "butt" private was explained to me once as such a lowly soldier that his chief duty was to clean up a barracks by picking up and discarding cigarette butts.  Humility can be a good thing.  There is dignity in all work.  If clock watching becomes irresistible, whether for the sake of learning how imminent a soldier's hour of "off duty" may be or 2013's birth has become, or even as the rhythmic reminder (like the Safaris' very sad, insistent metronome) of a perhaps now forlorn hope of meeting The Gal, then do not flinch from your inclination.  The future is coming; it's neither friend nor foe, but our fate: that of one and all. Remember, her smile never fails: fear not that, at the very least.  It is by definition, beaming and bright like the stars who call her mistress. Whether I find her or not, she is waiting.  Her kindness and beauty, irrespective of my destiny, are worth all the travails and all the misunderstandings of this pilgrimage. She is bejeweled in a diaphanous gown, zephyrs coaxing persistently, causing ripples of the fabric to begin their dance and unseen choruses to chant lovely melodies in loving salute to The Gal.  Love the Gal: relinquish all your goals, those quests and grails you imagined as holy. She knows you, in time or out of time.  Do not presume, yet do not despair.  It is a gentle universe after all (or so I have convinced myself).  Why would such a locality as our Galaxy be not also a soother of the injured and have for its queen a healer par excellence?

Taking It "Light"

The strain of life in the last few months has had some effect on the preparations for the Christmas season for this blogger as well as for more than a few of his relatives and friends. The imminent approach last week of the evening before the anniversary of "our dear Saviour's birth" did however, spur activity that surprised and delighted with the expenditure of some energy and the accomplishment of some simple but gladdening tasks and activities: holiday decorations placed in and about the house and ancient family traditions observed.  The decision to join new acquaintances for Christmas caroling in the neighborhood was fun and very heartening: singing for the sake of the season and His glory, while seeking to impress no one (couldn't have if we tried).   Sharing good fellowship and creating new memories were joyous bonuses.

The jolliness includes a silliness to the season, a way of being that children love and that one can happily share with anyone: the young at heart as well as sprouts of varying stages of development and precocity.  A seven year old, for example, is old enough to delight to an ancient send-up of an even more ancient carol.  It's "We Three Kings of Orient Are" written at about the time of the Civil War.  The waggish version is as follows:


"We three kings of Orient are
  Tried to light a rubber cigar.
  It was loaded and exploded. (pause)

"We two kings of Orient are
  Tried to light a rubber cigar.
  It was loaded and exploded. (longer pause)

"I, a king of Orient am
  One more time lit that stogie and 'blam'!
  'course, 'twas loaded and exploded! (no pause)

"God rest ye merry gentlemen!"


A slight brain teaser for one and all: why are there only twenty five letters in the Christmas alphabet?  Because there's NOEL.

And don't forget the yuletide riddle: where does Santa Claus stay when he travels for his well earned post-Christmas vacation? Why, in a HO-HO-hotel, of course!

For rather bigger "tiny tots with their eyes all aglow" there's the tale of the passionate, and not necessarily winter melons.  Seems a young female melon, her fear getting the better of her ardor for her beloved and his impulsive scheme exclaimed: "Cantaloupe!"  Crestfallen and then more determined than ever, her handsome beau/gourd cried: "Oh, honeydew!!" They were reportedly last seen in a sylvan setting hands enclasped and with a certain Rev. Crenshaw extending his arm over them in a prayerful blessing.  Rumor has it that they will be honeymooning (or honeydewing) before long in beautiful, exotic Casaba.

Epiphany is celebrated on January 6th in the Roman rite of the Catholic Church.  "Little Christmas" is another name for this special day marking the visit of the Magi bearing their gifts for baby Jesus. In the Eastern or Byzantine rite (Orthodox), January 7th marks the baptism of Jesus and is generally the more significant day for the peoples of this branch of Christianity (the occasion is commonly referred to in the U.S. as Russian or Greek Christmas). With this slender segue, there is the whimsical tale of the tailor in ancient Greece and his customer who converse at the former's shop on a routine business matter. Inspecting rather badly torn trousers presented to him, Nicholas, the tailor, exclaims: "Euripides?"  Rather sheepishly Gus, the patron, confesses that "yes, I was playing ball, hit a Homer and fell while rounding the bases. I sure hope Eumenides."  "Don't you worry young fellow.  I'll fix 'em right now with my sewing machine and I'll then have those wrinkles smoothed out in a jiffy with this Electra iron.  That'll be XII drachmas." "Hey, you've got some Minerva!" cried Gus. Resigned but still annoyed he urged "Okay, but hurry up or I'll need a dime for Demeter. Old Nick reassuringly replied "Priam on, pal. You see, Medusa good job! Now you're a fashion Plato." Gus started to leave and Nick protested "Euclid at least give me a tip."

With groans aplenty ringing in this blogger's ears, he must confess "Odysseus ridiculous." But Santa, ever kind, said "Nutty's not naughty SO JUST TAKE IT LIGHT and 'A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOODNIGHT!'"

(Greek mischief courtesy of Miss Quotidian 7, my own "Mrs. Calabash")

Sons and Daughters of The Old Line (Part 2)

How to proceed: with our heroines and heroes, though covered in glory, still covered by shrouds, our hearts eviscerated, theirs perhaps literally so, our hopes seemingly smashed, our babies stolen by serpents from hell?  First, there are basic truths to never lose sight of. One, there are certain weapons we NEVER have reason, yes REASON, to EVER relinquish.                                                                      

We never fight the forces of darkness with darkness.  We use God's own Light. This is not a call for pacifism.  Oh no, secondly, we proceed armed, not only with His "terrible swift sword" but with all the technological hardware we can amass against the bad guys, including yes, assault weapons and any other firearm our law enforcement organizations require.  We arm ourselves with these objects but especially, we arm ourselves with Truth. Another reminder: guns do not kill people.  People kill people. That's not a slogan on a bumper sticker.  It's a simple truth and such a simple one, but those obsessed with the mechanics and physics of mass murder and not the spiritual cancer behind such abominations have great difficulty processing the crystal clear and manifest reality of this fact.  Without understanding these simple verities no progress shall be forthcoming.                                                                  

Mental illness as well as moral clarity are primary issues that we must deal with: the former's challenge and our task to courageously effect treatment of those suffering from it, is primary in our advancement towards a solution.  The latter is equally important and is to be valued unequivocally as our chief tool/weapon against cursed forces of darkness.  This means no parsing of truth, no enabling, no politically correct euphemisms for bad behavior and weird silences when red flags of improper acts and "acting out" appear and/or are excused, rationalized in the name of "civil rights", diversity, art or so-called self-expression.  "Advancement" yes, we must seek it, but arriving at an earthly, final victory? It'll never happen. Evil will always be with us and the constant drama and exquisite tension between Goodness and its antithesis must be understood as a given.  Liberalism, Progressivism, Marxism, Socialism, Obamaism, all these systems are thoroughly worthless and some even consciously ally themselves with Satanic forces.  Want to scoff at such an assertion? Go ahead, pretend that relativism works and that man is a perfectible being if only controlled by "wiser" men.  Forget the lessons of history: nationalism early in the 20th century, Fascism in the '30s, the monsters of mid century and up to the present (Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Jihadists, etc.) and continue this willful amnesia. And do so at your great peril. But do not include good people and those who will have no truck with evil in your sociological agenda.  Get the hell out of our churches, synagogues, our legislatures and executive seats of power and especially, out of our courts.  We know how to bind up our own wounds and we don't need bloated government and its irresistible inclination to diminish our liberties whenever we become irrationally fearful of the diabolical scum that imagines itself for brief moments masters of our civilization.  The terrorists, cockroaches, beaureaucrats and all other sub species of the Family of Man are those who need to be fearful, kept cowering in the dark and crushed as the serpent under the Virgin Mary's feet. Prideful?  No, we know we cannot wage this war alone.  We need Mary, her Son, Michael The Archangel and God the Father as well in order to route the maggots from hell.  And we need each other to continue to love each other while ever struggling (our fate as mortals) to thusly solve the problem of human existence. END

Sons and Daughters of The Old Line

Is there something more precious than the life of a child? Nascent little ones are living prayers and  hopes for tomorrow.  Renewal and  reviviscence of our own lives, scarred or broken though they may be and grizzled and weary though perhaps we may be, are the glad results of the joyous milestone that is a human birth, even for individuals who seemingly only vicariously bask in the sunshine of another's newly minted motherhood. Fathers too, distributing cigars while beaming radiantly, are in turn showered with our love and good wishes on the occasion of the great "yes" to life that the arrival of a brand new member of our human family expresses.

An abiding hope is the only human way to embrace the future, hand in hand with our best efforts through work, wariness and love. We may on occasion be convinced that the sought after end of our journey is somehow promised to us, but we all must know better.  We don't merely wish for an outcome. We prepare every day in a sense for the worst by striving to do our best through our diligence, our forethought and our mature judgment of probabilities, the consideration of and predictability of our friends, family and of course, of our enemies. And we still hope for the best: it is perhaps the only way to "put out into the deep" as a local clergyman advises. Life is, come to think of it, not unlike a deep sea fishing trip; this one being an arduous journey that we do not return to port from until our time on this earth is over.

The atrocities last week in Newtown, Connecticut were nothing less than the war cries of the Father of All Lies, screaming while wickedly smiling his "I told you so's" for any of us (in truth, all of us) who for a second did not calculate into our daily strategies the guardianship required to put the malevolent wolf that is the Evil Intelligence of this universe howling in retreat from our doors.  Of course, as humans we will inevitably fail at some point to stay at our posts as unsleeping sentries, vigilance unending. But we are not alone in the struggle. A changing of the guard is normal and a helping hand from angels, saints and the mortals who love us and even from those strangers who stand ready and willing to love and be loved, given the chance, are all part of the invisible and visible army of God, the realization of whose presence crushes despair every time.

Like the deeds of Maryland's "Old Line" (see blog entry of January 2011), love and sacrifice has been repeated  through the centuries of our republic's history. The supreme sacrifice of these very young men of our Continental army in the Battle of Brooklyn in August 1776, at the very birth of our nation was not only gloriously reprised by military heroes of our subsequent wars, but also by men and women from all walks of life in unsung sagas forgotten by all yet remembered by God. Their heroism made even the angels cry as well as St. Michael and his meta-stalwart allies of the Heavenly Host. Now add to this long and luminous honor roll, the women of Sandy Hook Elementary School. "Greater love hath no man or woman than to lay down his/her life for his friends." Protection of the innocents with their bodies (these were not merely instinctual protective acts): at least one fallen teacher was found still caressing the murdered child in her care, and unceasing love and unselfishness in many other noble ways were the rule when these marvelous women of Light and unswerving rocks of the decency of our civilization fought, however seemingly futilely, against Evil and its cowardly assault. The humanity, compassion and empathy displayed by an elderly man who was approached at the entrance to his home by a small traumatized band of some of the children who escaped the carnage at the school was truly heroic as well. He had no weapon to fight any other black hearted foe who might have appeared on this blackest of days in Connecticut history, but his understanding of the anguish of a human heart and especially of that of a child's was more than worthy of the eternal embrace of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. "Love is the answer to the problem of human existence" wrote Erich Fromm. There is little doubt that other paths may attract those enraptured by their senses and the physical delights and riches that the worldly realm offers. But time and the longing within each of us are both relentless. We want a place of refreshment, a home where we may rest and yet never become bored (the strangely true condition of the so called "exciting" life of worldly pleasures, narcissism and of the self-hating authors of our wounded land's recent and too frequent mass annihilations).  END OF PART 1.     

The Storm That Was and The Storm That Is

Thirty two days ago a tremendous cyclone churned up the east coast of the U.S. and hung a sharp left. i.e. westwardly toward and into the coast of central New Jersey.  It collided with a powerful cold front from the west and horrifically peaked just as high tides did the same making for hideous storm surges.  In my neighborhood of n.w. Queens, N.Y.C., the damage was moderate to severe, but in no way devastatingly destructive as was suffered by hundreds of thousands on the south shore of Long Island, Queens' Rockaway peninsula, Brooklyn's Sea Gate, Coney Island, Manhattan Beach, as well as Staten Island, lower Manhattan and nearly the entire (New) Jersey shore.                                                                                                                    

My story was one of nuisances and inconvenience, nothing more, except for the initial anxiety during the waning hours of the storm's power on its night of mayhem, Monday, October 29th.  The unnerving events began with telephone wires in front of our house that have been suspended from wooden poles longer than our home has stood (before 1949). The wind and rain, relentless in their pummeling, caused short circuits in the wiring that caused incandescent bursts of sparkler-like events.  The chief and traditional fear for the little attached brick house that my parents purchased in 1951 and that I have lived in largely continuously since then, is that of flooding.  Not a particularly low lying area, still, the minimally adequate drainage capacities of the sewer pipes, leaders and gutters situated in or near our elevated backyard, has made for, through the years, a problematic situation whenever a sustained cloudburst passes over our flat roof.  Fact is, it's infrequent that a year passes without water entering our little kitchenette/dining room at least once after a torrential drenching.  Thus, the big concern for "Sandy's" power was focused on keeping this room dry.  Yes, we heard about the forecast for demonically high winds and consequently, lawn furniture and other potential projectiles were carefully secured.  When it did begin to blow mightily we were hardly aware of its puissance as we cautiously savored instead, the very modest rainfall that the northeast side of the hybrid hurricane/nor'easter's rotation produced.  No trees or heavy large objects were within our ken or field of vision and we prepared to breathe a sigh of relief.  Then nature and the laws of physics began to teach us that we needed to pay undivided attention to them immediately.  The imitation of a fireworks display by the aforementioned telephone wires, intermittent and infrequent, began to increase in brightness and repetitiveness. Soft popping sounds grew louder and after several minutes started to become continuous. The black insulation material of these wires commenced melting and dripping down upon the ground as well as upon my semi-new car parked in our driveway. The "sparklers" started to wane and small fires replaced them at various intervals along the length of our block.

I dialed 911 but it rang interminably. Tried it again and again.  More flames began lapping sections of the overhead wires and I wondered whether or not my phone was actually functioning.  I didn't want to frighten my mother even more (she had already seen some of the "sparklers", the bursts contrasting with the night sky so spectacularly that even with her condition of macular degeneration she could see them) so I feigned a casual air while I called the local police precinct.  No answer again: all personnel no doubt were swamped with requests for help.  Decided to call a neighboring precinct.  A voice answered and I again tried to sound calm. "I'm unable to get through to 911 and I need a fire truck now, please!" A seemingly endless explanation boiled down to "we're too busy" but the policeman at the other end was reluctant to state the obvious.  When I abandoned any politeness and made my own interpretation of the situation as accusatory as my dramatic skills could muster, I proclaimed sarcastically:  "So, in other words, nobody's coming to stop these fires, right?" Some admixture of professional pride and maybe a minute sliver of conscience caused the officer to reply: "No, no, we'll try our best to get a hold of the firemen, pal.  Don't worry."  My confidence was not great.  Just then, my telephone began to ring and my mind raced to "Hey, somebody cares and they're calling to confirm the exact location of the fires."  As I went to pick up the receiver, the ring tone strangely continued.  There was no intermittence. One long continuous "Riiiiinggggg" was telling me, I was very quickly to learn: the telephone system was in its death throes.

Still trying to convey a quiet mastery of the situation, but probably not fooling Mom, I went to the garden hose in our backyard and carried it to the front with a poorly conceived notion of dousing the flames once hooked up to our spigot near the front garden.  I was Barney Fife fumbling with the single bullet in his shirt pocket as the bad guys fast approached Mayberry. That is, I strained to thread the end of my hose onto the end of the spigot, but they just wouldn't couple.  Just then, two fire trucks turned the corner into our block and relief seemed assured.  The trucks stopped some distance away from the fires and a solitary fireman approached our houses and shouted: "get back inside your houses and stay there!"  We all obeyed (several other neighbors were also eager to see the boys with the red trucks "do their stuff") but we needed reminding of the dangers of live wires, telephone or otherwise.  Still, I couldn't resist, while standing between my front and screen doors, a plaintive: "Well, do something!"  They stayed for about twenty minutes and seemed to just be monitoring the situation.  Foam, whether they had it or not, was the weapon of choice for an electrical fire, but then the fires died down considerably and the explosions decreased too along with the "fireworks."  Minutes after they left, tongues of flames began lapping again against the already charred wires and other metal parts of the system of wires and poles.  Anxiety waxed and waned, but the storm had clearly passed and very undramatically, one knew, like a battered boxer, that the match was at least over, and the cessation of abuse had at last arrived.

When I awakened the next morning, our cable "box" was still sending a perfectly good signal to our set and except for the phone, all seemed in good working order.  Over the next several days I strolled through the neighborhood to see how others had fared and learned surprisingly, what such a "storm of the century" had wrought.  Trees had been uprooted in nearby blocks, some incredibly ancient and huge, their roots obscenely exposed with the adjacent slabs of sidewalk squares upraised like a stuck drawbridge.  One tree had taken telephone and power wires with it as it mightily fell, the resulting fire having burned up several cars that were just rusted and charred hulks by the time I espied them.  That wind that I never even heard ominously whistling, displayed its handiwork when I ambled down towards Northern boulevard where commercial properties were more numerous.  Two establishments: one a used car lot with a big metal sign above the sidewalk proclaiming the business's name and phone number and the other with a similar but longer lintel also of sheet metal, were stunned and halted from doing business with the twisting and mangling of these objects crashed down onto the sidewalk.  Shingles were ripped off the sides of houses directly in the line of fire of Sandy's fury and fires continued to menacingly flare up here and there along isolated portions of the battered strands of telephone wires.  The morning of Novemeber 1st, All Saints Day, found me walking to mass at our close-by parish church and encountering yet another small fire in wires just yards from one of the house of worship's entrance.  Somehow, it was an appropriate reminder of how this force of nature, evil in its indifference to the safety of humankind and its comforts of civilization, snickered with its hellish little blaze: a cocky rebuke and warning to God's seemingly inviolate turf.

Six days later I awakened to essentially the same landscape.  The grayness of everything and now the fact that we were becoming inured to the absence of telephone service, the internet and cable television as well (this outage began on the 30th), all dovetailed all too well with the realization of the obliteration in many cases of the landscape along the coast, folks' ensuing homelessness and the very discouraging news of the presidential election results of the night before.  The distinct flavor and odor of a Third World country with our crippled or flattened homes, places of commerce and utilities, was now intensified, knowing that the nation had selected a failure and a fraudster to return to power and to pillage our wealth by enticing more than 50% of us into believing there is such a thing as a "free lunch" (by bribing us with our own money).  I was now not only disheartened but for the first time in my life afraid for the land of my birth and sadly, becoming bitterly estranged from a majority of my fellow citizens.  I had always been convinced that there was a bedrock of common sense, fundamental intelligence and fairness that would always choose what is in the best interests of our beloved America (or at least not make the same mistake twice).  Now, again for the first time, I sensed that hatred and envy, vengefulness and disruptiveness (not ardent, righteous revolutionary fervor, like our forefathers expressed) were at the root of this re-election.  Not since Andrew Jackson's populism had been blunted at the start of his second term, had a president been reinstalled with a smaller percentage of the electorate choosing him than the first time around. But that fact was small comfort: a smaller majority of fools can license more damage especially if the poisonous policies of profligate spending are encouraged to become more entrenched. With the state of our economy, as sluggish as it is and further hobbled by decisions that, whether deliberately or not, are punishing to businesses and the private sector, it was incomprehensible that puerile lies, character assassination, and utterly trivial matters such as "binders", grade school taunts about "Big Bird", Gov. Romney's supposed amnesia and the complete smokescreen of the abomination in Benghazi: were all deemed acceptable points and issues of supposed substance in choosing the leader of the Free World.  The intellectual bankruptcy, the flippancy, the routine dissembling and the cynicism of the Democrats are stomach turning and may, more importantly, mark a turning point.  If the state of utter mediocrity in which we of these United States found ourselves on November 5th is what we aspire to, then, we shall get what we deserve.  Pain, unlike any this nation has ever known, will reach new levels that may not awaken slumbering fools until even higher degrees of the misery, whether by design or not, are brought upon us by the diabolical, craven and power craving current administration. Things were not settled by the election.  It was but a lull in the continuing storm that describes our divided nation. Depression anyone? Meteorological, psychic or economic: they're all conceivably available in the waning days of 2012.

The Wearying Drama

What does it mean to no longer be a true baseball fan?  It means that you no longer, even if you fantastically could, eagerly snatch the morning "Daily News" from your local newsstand and cup your hand over the line score of your favorite team under the headline "SCOREBOARD" at the back of the tabloid. And you no longer slowly expose each inning, removing by degrees the heel of your hand and revealing every goose egg or run scored. You no longer wonder about the condition of this pitcher or that outfielder. You no longer care if your favorite team's centerfielder is better than another team's. In short, you don't care because the love is gone.  Enthusing about athletic men forty years my junior, many of whom are compensated, rightly or wrongly, with more "cabbage" in one month than many of us will ever earn in a lifetime seems pointless.  Our darlings, our champions, our heroes, our proxy warriors who shower glory vicariously upon us: we who imagine a tribal allegiance to a professional sports team that supposedly compares to a blood bond equal to that of one for one's nation, race or family….do we need to embrace them to the point of idolatry? It's preposterous.

When dullards, the quietly intelligent, bumpkins and a variety of jocks were the majority, were circumspect, rarely made headlines by getting blotto at a tavern frequented by sports reporters or punched out their wives in public and knew basic social skills like politely answering questions about a recent performance, the prospects of a team or the health of a fellow player or himself, one could concentrate on his heroic deeds on the field and project many other kinds of halos or laurels onto his noggin that made being a fan an uncomplicated, enjoyable membership in a simpler society of other afficionados and also that made baseball truly a national pastime, not some desperate escape. Today, we've a bunch of half-educated, many well educated and even more over-educated players (relative to their "rights" and the advantages of sociopathic habits) than ever before. The ambivalence of fans about steroids, other drugs and the seductive life of fabulous wealth and fame (infamy seems less and less an attainable status as moral standards decay, but not for lack of striving) that a talented major league ball player can achieve, adds to the malaise that the game reeks of, in this blogger's estimation. The ennui is palpable and the conflicts of all these conflicted actors on baseball's stage or in its audience do not translate any longer into worthwhile drama or entertainment, nor did it really ever, once the game itself became secondary to celebrity that one could not celebrate.

Timmy, Jennifer and The Gang

Children are the aptest of pupils.  Not merely like sponges, they see and hear all at a phenomenal pace of learning and then with super saturation, comes the unstoppable flood of vivacious imitation. We in turn, must stay alert and check our behavior as least as much as theirs in order to optimize the success of this growth spurt courtesy of Mother Nature.  By 1958, the earliest manifestations of social education had developed in me, an eight year old, to the point that I had adopted, along with my brother, our own nuclear family of "children" comprising stuffed animals and  inanimate objects (blankets and two-dimensional images of golden fleeced teddy bears clutching formula milk bottles) all of which we named, animated as puppets in numerous improvisations, and assigned dates of birth, histories as well as unique personalities and lives of their own. There was Timmy, my second born (like myself), a teddy with dark brown pelt, limbs that rotated quite easily, beady plastic eyes of dark amber and slightly torn at the crook of one of his elbows with just the hint of gray stuffing beginning to emerge.  Timmy was a taciturn sort who would occasionally reveal the need to attend to an itch using the same described injured arm when interrupting himself during brief conversations and announcing "Wait, just gotta scratch my nose."  He was born on October 14, 1952 and he had a cousin in Circle Springs, Alaska named Renta.  Timmy's "father" had discovered the Atlas of our 1953 Encyclopedia Britannica (with its inscribed dedication to us, by our real life father) and his eyes came upon this town in the Land of The Midnight Sun near the Arctic Circle.  Renta? Am not sure.  Maybe the word "renter" had been picked up by the child that was me. Don't remember though whether or not Renta owned his own domicile way up north.  Perhaps the name means something in Inuit that my fertile young unconscious mind perceived.

My brother's "kids" were not first cousins of my brood; they all seemed to be siblings to each other, but their "dads" were distinct. My progeny were, besides Timmy, my yellowish white flannel blanket with blue satin edging and first born.  He (she? the gender was not clear) was named Luva (an individualistic spelling of Lover, no doubt, but communicating my great fondness for this holdover of an infant's earliest tangible objects of comfort and security, not of course, with any libidinal connectedness).  Blanky was the name of my brother's blanket and the intimacy between him and this fabric and bed covering pre-dated my birth I was told.  Mom has always told the story through the years of her oldest son discovering one day that Blanky was missing.  She had simply given it a badly needed washing and it was seen hanging and dripping from a clothesline in our backyard.  The persistence and insistence of a child is often truly amazing.  Importuning Mom with painful abandon, she at last relented and my brother snatched the offered, still nearly soaking blanket.  In nearly the same instant he was hugging Blanky for dear life oblivious to the condition.                                                                                  

Judy was my two dimensional daughter, identical twin to my brother's girl, Dolly.  Why we decided to elevate these paper dolls to the status of our beloved offspring is a mystery to me now.  They were from the remnants of birthday gift wrapping paper for a toddler and what gift they formerly covered is lost in the mists of time. Jennifer was my brother's daughter and was a lady Teddy about the size of Timmy but shorter and stouter.  Her eyes were flatter and larger round plastic disks, black and white and enclosing small eyeballs that danced about depending on the laws of gravity. During a visit to our aunt's house near Thanksgiving day in 1957, my brother was gifted a large teddy (compared to Timmy and Jennifer) and it was determined to be a girl and was named Jean (this curiously, was the name of another aunt who had died a decade before we were born). Probably during Easter week of 1958, we were visited by bachelor brothers and good friends of my father. They presented us with two stuffed bunnies even larger than Jean and we promptly proclaimed our respective fatherhoods.  The bright yellow and white furred one was dubbed Peppy and claimed as my outgoing and enthusiastic daughter whose brother was my brother's lavender and white son George, a reserved and rather sensitive relative of the hare family who preferred reading a book to the more adventurous habits of Peppy.

Our extended group included friends of the family who were ever present fixtures and equally trusted and loved, if not cuddled or nurtured quite like the others.  There was an admirable and dignified dachshund with delicate dark fawn "skin", a lovely felt and handmade figure crafted by our mother's oldest friend's daughter (who went on to a successful career in toy making and other handicrafts).  There was another two-dimensional character, a silly clown made of tin and a refugee from the previous year's Christmas tree: an ornament dubbed "Curlicue."  He may have been a forerunner of the abused "Mr. Bill" of 1970's television comedy: a gingerbread man mercilessly tortured in an infinite variety of ways: his undeserving punishments and obvious innocence appealing to our darker natures.  Curlicue was chiefly tossed in the air to amuse ourselves and his supposed fate was determined each time by the chance landing that his tiny figure made. He himself was his own Nero at some maniacal Colosseum event:  the emperor's thumb's up (or down) being the coin flip-like result of Curlicue's landing.  His ventral side enameled with cheerful blue and white paint forming his harlequin suit and pom-pom hat ensured his survival, if this side of him landed upright.  His dorsal and unpainted side of exposed tin, if revealed as his "up" side, meant death.

At the dawn of the 1960s, we sought more sophisticated expressions of our evolving interests.  Hand puppets permitted more complicated interactions and we reveled in the Disney  and other cartoon characters that we knew and loved.  Captain Hook, Tinkerbell, Popeye and Olive Oyl were some of these characters that we manipulated in Punch and Judy-like productions.  Amazingly, beyond puberty by the mid-'60s, we did not disdain gifts from an aunt from overseas who perhaps envisioned us frozen in time. We were presented with rather small toy animals no more than 7 or 8 inches in height.  A red and white puppy, stuffed and eminently huggable was quickly "christened" Baby Bow-wow.  His partner in crime was a beautiful gray and white tiger striped Steiffel hand puppet of velour-like fur.  He was a small tiger and unsurprisingly dubbed Tiny Tiger.  Conversations between them and with us could be sustained discussions on a wide variety of topics, but their ways revealed the juvenescence in our hearts that a more worrisome analysis might have termed regressive.  It was certainly therapeutic and we shamelessly remained puppeteers into our late teens.

The love of family and the recognition of how essential, relationships and social networks were for us, spurred us instinctively to breathe life into Timmy, Jennifer and The Gang as we recreated the world that our parents and their parents constructed to nurture and to teach about love and its insuperable majesty and power.  The make-believe world of dolls, puppets and teddy bears is no trivial realm that we may be tempted to lump into an entity that, in our small-minded grownup mindsets we might label dismissively as "child's play." No, small ones at play are in fact, seriously working, creating and solving psychic conflicts in ways wonderful and mysterious.  We need theatre in our lives and the fledgling members of our human family are perhaps the greatest performers of them all whose openness and spontaneity are qualities we often spend all of our adult lives trying to rekindle.  It's a most worthy quest.

A Prayer For America

I touched the rose and the thorn was jealous.  He made his presence known in short order. The light and the dark: jockeying for power 'til time's end. This we must learn.  The good and strong man gets tired.  The jackal has somnolent days but revives and too often so when the just man's guard is wearily lowered.  Riot and mayhem with certain clever allies can rule over unwise men and women, i.e. those who love a pleasing shape, a seemingly well turned phrase and he who can give voice to their innermost beastliness.

There comes the nightmare: ancient its vintage as it struck in the tenderest years of one now grown grizzled. Then had father caressed and reassured with old yellow incandescent light nearby while dispelling the tentacled monster's image when it did grapple and entwine 'round mother earth. Now it returns and Dad's love within is ready to do battle against it. The misdirection, hollow encouragement, the projection of all the Deceiver's failures onto those offering a dawn of correction: these are some of the errors masquerading as vision. Mockery and viciousness, cynicism and indifference: these bestride the land that wants to awaken, but a paralytic tick is embedded near her spine.

We see a chance.  An uncool man, his ways perhaps quaint, his virtues causing discomfort and dislike, but we are drawn to him.  Slyness grows wearisome and straining attempts to demolish and degrade leave an emptiness that inspires not.  Hope?  Yes, we want it.  And this anchor in the form of the handsome, "square" man, is given to steady our drifting barks, not tossed as a necklace to submerge them and us.  Self-loathing remains a peculiarly American habit.  Rather, it is a western pathology that comes from too much circumspection and overheating of our race's fine intellects turning in on themselves: critiquing critiques and perpetual ponderings of relativistic ping ponging that amounts to nothing while it brings impotence and death.  The shy, self-effacing man continues to persuade and overcomes his chary ways for a greater purpose.

The goodness, the kindness, the generosity, the forgiving hearts that are largely ours: these have not been crushed. "You can fool some of the people some of the time" said Lincoln. "Some all of the time" he continued, followed by "all some of the time" and reminded us concludingly: "you can't fool all of the people all of the time."  Change?  Yes, we want it. But we want to get it right.  Hard work, American know-how, no empty sloganeering, no time and energy wasted hating our neighbor because of the car he drives or the size of his bank account.  Free to succeed, free to fail….our liberty is all and we will survive, but the recovery will be speedier and more healthful with a grown-up back in the Oval Office and a uniter, not a divider at the helm.  

"Next Year" Approaches in Brooklyn While Eternity Beckons to James Dean

September 30, 1955 fell on a Friday. Major league baseball then was a sixteen team affair, eight teams in each league and each team played 154 games.  The season usually ended before September did and this year was no exception. This particular day marked the third contest in post-season play, known as The World Series. Derisive remarks directed my way by a man pontificating atop a wooden box in London's Hyde Park while I was vacationing there in the late '70s, was a reminder that most of the world was not impressed with our self-centered misnomer about the most important final games each year of our beloved National Pastime. Who really cared?  We were and still are (wait, let me check my watch) the greatest country in the world and therefore, there was nothing to be ashamed about regarding what we treasured and would always lovingly call The World Series.                                                                                                    

On this day the Brooklyn Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees for the first time in the '55 Series after losing the first two games.  Brooklyn in the modern era (starting in 1903) had never won a World Series: never, ever. This afternoon in Brooklyn in the friendly "bandbox" that was Ebbets Field and home to the Dodgers since 1913, Roy Campanella, the beloved mulatto and genial catcher for the "Brooks" led the way with a three run homer as the home team prevailed, 8-3.  Every game of this series except one was won by the home team: Yankees winning the first two at the iconic Yankee Stadium, Brooklyn the next three at Ebbets in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and the Yanks triumphing in the sixth game in The Bronx. The seventh and final game saw the Dodgers in their road "grays" capture the elusive crown of Champions of The World with an unforgettable pitcher's duel that gladdened the previously heavy hearts of several generations of fans of the county of Kings.  For sixty five years Brooklyn teams had struggled and striven mightily, winning eleven pennants since 1890 with nicknames (sometimes alternating through the years) such as the Atlantics, Grays, Superbas, Bridegrooms, Grooms, Robins and of course, Dodgers (named thusly for the first time in 1911 to affectionately honor the citizens of the borough who routinely dodged trolley cars while going about their daily business). Still, the final triumph over a team from the other league, of rough parity in excellence, had always been denied to Brooklyn.  The crushing defeat dealt to them in 1951 by their hated crosstown rivals the New York Giants in the final playoff game (just prior to a World Series) in which "The Shot Heard 'Round The World" occurred (Bobby Thomson's game winning home run), was the culmination of 53 days of a miraculous chase by the Giants to catch the first place Dodgers. The boys from Brooklyn led the Manhattan team by 13 1/2 games on August 11th, but ended their season tied (hence, necessitating the best-of-three playoff games) because of the Giants' torrid pace of winning an amazing 37 of their last 44 games of the season. It was the psychic trauma of this pennant race's conclusion of four years earlier that made the cry "Wait 'til Next Year!" so paradisaically at last, an obsolete prayer. Dodger defeats in the '52 and '53 Series, both against the Yanks, made deliverance from such victory-starved suffering (nearly impossibly painful to endure) and the related, yet again dashed dreams exquisitely punishing in their denial. Now the long agony for Dodger fans was beginning its death throes on this Friday afternoon and a pregnant joy, or certainly a hungering hope that could envision glorious sustenance through a cozy winter, spring and summer of nourishing delights as "World Champions of Baseball", was in the heart of every fanatical partisan of Brooklyn when the game ended a little before 4 o'clock.  

Five hours later on a dusty highway in the gloaming near Paso Robles, Calif., the newly minted Hollywood film star James Dean would die in the crash of his new Porsche Spyder, his persona's immortality assured in the minds of temporally attuned men and those dedicated to the "dream factory" that was (and is) America's movie industry. But his further contributions to art or to a personal future with a beloved, progeny and of course, a more substantial body of work (in his twenty four years, he starred in but three films, the last one released posthumously), were all never to be as was his impact as a truly iconic actor with stature and a legend based on a life fully lived. Instead, he remains frozen in time along with his boyish good looks, and having bequeathed us an endlessly lingering yearning for what was as well as for what might have been.  The love affair in American society with ruination and waste ("The Great Gatsby", "An American Tragedy" and "From Here To Eternity" are some examples of this strain in our film and literature) caused many to rapaciously lap up Dean's story much like the mother of the Sicilian Robin Hood of mid-century, Salvatore Giuliano, lapped up the blood alongside his corpse following her son's betrayal and assassination.

For the Dodgers and their legion of fans smitten, nay, perhaps consumed by a love affair with their team, exceeding any of their personal ones or even of their God, the nirvana at the summit of the baseball world was in many ways indescribably heavenly unless one knew firsthand the gut feeling of tribalism's triumph over the strangers and tormentors of nearly all of one's remembered past and of the memories of one's forefathers as well. Strangely, this ardor was arguably proved unrequited when a mere two years later, the team announced its departure for Los Angeles, the nearest metropolis to, curiously, the scene of Mr. Dean's departure from this world and arrival at both the afore mentioned one of immortality and perhaps the eschatalogical one of our Christian traditions.  And what of the imperishability of the Brooklyn Dodgers and their fans?  Those of living memory must have reached the age of reason (of years not much more tender than those of a seven year old) in 1955 or earlier to have imbibed the love potion of Dodger baseball in Brooklyn. Thus, only those on the cusp of old age or of course, older, can recount tales of this joyous period without the assistance of history books or hand--me-down accounts. Preserved film and other broadcasting artifacts do help.  And the timeless nature of the Dodgers' story, as well as Dean's, if told truthfully and lovingly, will help immeasurably to keep death and forgetfulness at bay.  Jimmy Dean was us and we were him, experienced through his rebelliousness "without a cause" and his aching search for love and the American Dream. The perennial underdogs from Brooklyn were too, like a younger cousin, maybe at first annoying, but with an unquenchable spirit along with a limp or other malady he determinedly ignored or contrastingly, with a youthful exuberance and salubrious physicality unbridled by prudent judgment while crashing into outfield walls like the famed Pete Rieser of post-war Brooklyn teams. These characters had just that: character, and we fell in love. They, all the other Brooklyn Dodgers, their fans and James Dean: all showed us the fragility of life and the gloriousness of its ever so finite arc with their greatest triumphs being but a few heartbeats away from their sparks turning to glowing embers that our love and memory can blow upon to give wan but special light and hope to our descendant seekers of truth, beauty and the precious vivacity gifted to us all.

Wanting To Be Born

This blank page does not ask me to fill its emptiness. It can contribute little to art or literature except with its utilitarian purpose, and that, only if given "life" by a human hand. But the potential to place the symbols of one's thoughts with ink upon this medium and with a modicum of reasoned intelligence to send a message, is still a gift that I may in turn give fancifully, to this lonely and obedient white "sheet" and cyberspace cousin to the wood pulp bi-product of yesteryear.  The unborn child contrastingly, is instinctively cooperating with the natural changes that bring it closer and closer to its destiny or its normal potentiality: birth. Everything we do volitionally or otherwise is made possible by a series of very complex events, all of them descended from the miracle of conception, the irresistible forces of the universe and the willing nurturing of mature humans and/or prospective parents.

There is the "smart" remark that many an adolescent suffering the angst and/or revolutionary fervor of his age group proclaims: "I never asked to be born!"  The one dimensional truthfulness of this statement impresses, but only within the confines of the resentment of an immature world view that snickers at a Supreme Intelligence.  Of course, there are millions of things that are beyond our control, chief among them: our births and our deaths. No doubt, abortion and suicide may seem to give the lie to such an assertion. But who deems control a virtue (and why?) regarding these profoundly important subjects? And how does the destruction of human life (or certainly, in the case of abortion, at the very least: its annihilation of obvious, flowering potentiality) bring forth blessings or promote the affirmation of life and lessen human suffering? The usual assertions about the need for population control and the fight against indigence, always struck me as coldly clinical and disturbingly dismissive of the power of human love.  When friends would unexpectedly visit our house when I was a child, I remember my mother's natural temperament of anxiety and doubt: "Is there enough food, do we have enough chairs, what shall we do?" My Dad, contrastingly, though no more or less decent a person than his wife, always extended a greeting for the visitors that was unmistakably inviting to the degree that any diffidence or tentative shyness on their part evaporated like a raindrop on an August afternoon. "We are very happy to see you and glad that you are here!" was what he expressed unfailingly in his manner and in his body language. Mom forgot her worries too and the spirit of joy and a salute to L'chaim was what characterized each and every one of these gatherings.

So too, with the approach of a new member to the Family of Man, there seems no good reason for such similar welcoming ways not to be embraced as the only acceptable manner in which to relate to a "blessed event." There is room for one more always... room for one to be loved and in turn, to learn of and to practice its majesty and to repeat the wonder again and again and yet again. Love is not constricted by occupancy laws or tote sheets. But we know that the miracle of life is far from an inevitable reality. Since 1973, 54.6 million lives have been aborted. That's more than nine times the number of persons slaughtered in the Holocaust of 1942-45.  The banality of the reactions to these facts and the enervation of feelings for or against these staggering statistics are infinitely more horrific than the rantings and spasmodic, homicidal acts of the showy mass murderers of recent decades and tabloid tales of infamy. Like zombies, few ponder the consequences of this Culture of Death or seem capable of doing so.  Our current political climate apparently mirrors this sleepwalking, as the charlatan in The White House seems to defy gravity with his ponderous chains of failure and incompetence unable to significantly weigh down his popularity with, yes, 47% of the electorate and fearfully, perhaps more. But not to digress: the "vote" for Life is cast less and less as the century advances and the soul sickness of these abominations, these pro-"choice" posturings that enshroud hatred and possessiveness in an emperor's clothes of imagined dignity and "reproductive rights" continue their retreat from The Light and toward the vileness of demonic realms. As long as one terms something a right, its legitimacy is somehow deemed guaranteed by these losers.

Roe v. Wade may not be overturned anytime soon.  More lives will be snuffed out.  But evil will be rebuked and more.  Obama may return to sully the Oval Office further (to the delight of bribe takers everywhere), Iran may get the Bomb, Israel may finally be "solved" to the delight of Schicklgruber's shade and Islamo-fascism may flourish again. Still, the "lightning of His terrible swift sword" is coming and all the cynicism and derisive cackling will not stop it and then the fear and loathing of babies being allowed into the world will be mightily dwarfed by the blinding "birth"of a religious reawakening and immeasurably more so by The Second Coming.  He will not be mocked.

Death In The Family

There was a dream that I once dreamt when in my middle teens. In it, Mom came into my room in the dead of the night to draw our old Venetian blinds. She announced quietly, as if giving a weather report, that the world was coming to an end and that a mushroom cloud was about to form beyond my darkened window looking toward Manhattan.  I did not awaken with a scream and my heart was not pounding, but the blackness was not dispelled when daylight came. The only thing that was unreal and thus, relieving, was the impossible scenario of reporting an imminent event less than three miles away, the destructive force of which, together with its blinding light, would have obliterated, nay, vaporized my bedroom, our house, and us before any such horrific vision could have materialized or been, mercifully, comprehended. Living through the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 only several years earlier contributed, no doubt, to the creation of such an imagining of my unconscious mind.

It was about thirty five years later and exactly eleven years ago yesterday that my dream arguably came true. Yes, yesterday was the anniversary of the assault on the twin towers of The World Trade Center with commercial airliners, brimming with jet fuel, passengers and crews, by hijackers who were religious zealots burning with a collective wounded pride, beyond burdensome sexual repression and with utter contempt for human life, including their own. My personal account in response to the oft posed query "where were you on that day?" is not a very interesting one (I was, for the record, about a dozen miles away in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn working in an office and learning of the holocaust like everyone else via radio and then television). But how the day's events and their aftermath affected me and those I love are what I would like to relate here. Our world as we knew it, did indeed come to an end on that clear crisp late summer's day and the sky beyond my little room's window looking westward was stained for weeks with the discolored streaks from the billions of particles of airborne debris and smoke from the destroyed buildings. Lingering in the air, especially when journeying into "the city" (as all residents of Queens, Brooklyn, The Bronx and Staten Island routinely refer to Manhattan) were various stenches, most of them strange and unpleasant. But it was the silence or rather, the unusual or more easily noticed intervals of quiet in the days and weeks following the atrocities that impressed me especially as the beautiful weather continued and the little garden that I had curiously tended to lovingly for the first time the past spring and now waning summer, became the object of intense attention and love.

It felt, each day, like a wake, without the ability to retreat to a wood paneled smoking area in the basement or restroom of the typical funeral home. The appearance of police, firemen, state troopers, National Guardsmen and others felt both reassuring and saddening while the explosion of blooming, waving and displayed American flags was akin to the simultaneous comfort and pain (each and every time a specimen of The Stars and Stripes fluttered before your eyes) of kissing, also each and every time, a newly arrived friend or relative to the funeral parlor where one's beloved is laid out. I must have lost a dozen or more Old Glories as the plastic flag "poles" broke, typically when I forgot to reposition or remove the flag when lowering or raising the power window on my car to which it was attached. Often I would "rescue" a flag that some motorist had also lost, if I were a pedestrian or if the traffic was so heavy that I could leave my car to retrieve it. The stress and grief that we carried around with us could be relieved quite spontaneously sometimes. One afternoon I was driving the stretch limousine that my employer required that I use to chauffeur him to or from business luncheons in "the city." Enroute to a restaurant in Murray Hill, I was quite near the United Nations complex while waiting for a red light to change. Alongside me was a gaudily shiny new tow truck with a huge American flag displayed near its rear hook. At that moment, an impeccably dressed man in an obviously bespoke suit but with a tremendously wide and brightly colored (aquamarine and gold) turban on his head began crossing in front of us. The tow truck driver leaned his head out from his window and proclaimed: "There you are! Now we've got you Osama. The jig is up!" The pedestrian understood that he was the object of this derisive and ethnically wholly inaccurate, bad joke. Still, under the circumstances, he managed to admirably continue on his way, neither confronting nor shrinking from the taunt that seemed devoid of any real menace. Maintaining his dignity, I offered, rather unnecessarily, a meek apology for the boorish remark as the foreign gent walked past my hood.  The tension of the last several days then immediately evaporated and I began to uncontrollably giggle like a junior high school student in the enclosed limo.  The outsized headgear, quite like that of Johnny Carson's character The Great Carnac and simply the need to let go of all the recent hurt, culminated in a laughing jag that didn't subside until my boss entered the vehicle twenty minutes later.

One final recollection, chilling, I'm afraid, was yet another facet of the complex and unending learning lesson and grandaddy of all cautionary tales that was and is the darkest day in American history.  Two nights following the attacks, Thursday evening, the mild weather continued and our screened windows all remained opened. An unknown neighbor in a three story house diagonally beyond our backyard was apparently throwing a party.  It was not particularly loud or raucous, but a certain steadiness in the strange music's beat, followed by what seemed to be a kind of chanting was a very curious event on this weekday evening and during this somber time. The participants were completely within the premises and were largely unseen, but the chanting began to increase in volume with shorter and shorter intervals of silence.  Clearly heard was now the word "Allah!" repeated over and over until one's sorrow and weariness was finally roused from its lethargically well set position. One vaguely knew that salt was being poured into one's wounds, but it was not until several days later and after news reports advised of the need to communicate with law enforcement authorities about strange or inappropriate behavior that I called to report what transpired.  I later imagined that had battle hardened Londoners during The Blitz come upon a secret rathskeller somewhere near, let's say, Buckingham Palace, in which sodden Teutonics clinked tall beer steins and drank to the good health of Der Fuhrer, there would have been one huge and bloody row with no German speaking reveler alive to tell the tale. So too, did I belatedly fantasize a grizzly fate for those celebrating enemies of my country, my state, my city, my borough, my neighborhood and my family.  If revenge is a dish best served cold, then the near decade it took to liquidate the mastermind of that accursed day should have marked the day of Bin Laden's demise as a delicious repast. But it was not. The war continues and the blackness in men's hearts seems immutable and unheeding of advances in science or any other human strivings without reliance on a Greater Intelligence than ourselves. Yet certainly, a perverted monotheism serves us not and yet we must pray and try to do better….much better. And yes, as scrawled in chalk on a cargo truck's tailgate the day the fight against the Taliban began that October: "Let Us (continue to) Prey."

Rejection

You are not welcome. You know this and you respect this. There is no remedy. Heroism as redemption is but a fantasy. No kudos are bestowed for your suffering. You will die alone, forgotten. The headstone of your grave will have deeply incised lettering. But what of it? The occasional human may see it further into the future than we may gaze upon a colonial one today with its oxymoronically cheery death's head.  But likely, this will occur while the future visitor is enroute to a viewing of his or her loved one's marker. There will be an infinitesimal moment of conscious recognition that you once lived, but no imaginings or interest in who you were will probably happen. To avoid this you might consider a funny epitaph; it may cause a pause, a chuckle…but nothing more.

Self pity will grow tiresome, especially for you while mouldering in your casket. If hell be your destination, maybe an old friend's imagined tale will be an eschatological reality as you squat on those hot coals: relief in the form of a single drop of Coca Cola placed upon your tongue once every millennium by an angelic and saved former friend. Buried alive and unable to die: this is your end unending. Maybe love can find a way. Maybe this is all a bad dream. The boulders, collapsed timbers and rubble are yours to move and dig you must. "Despair is the only true sin" you heard remarked somewhere. Again, is this real or just the shadows of a cautionary tale? Would that an extended hand, yours or another's, could be seen and heard accompanied by an "I'm sorry." Peace, oh lovely peace….may it enter your world and cradle you with Gandhian compassion or the understanding of Old Abe.

Irma Johnson

Sue Ane Langdon, where are you now? The almond shaped eyes, somewhat like those of a Chinese woman, the turned up nose, the cheery intensity that complemented her squeaky voice of feminine innocence and yet of seductive ways: irresistible to the quick and maybe even the dead of the opposite sex. These were some of the assets of the actress Miss Langdon. When the sexual revolution raised its banner happily in 1967 with the film "A Guide For The Married Man", who led the charge with her dimpled smile and swaying derriere as Walter Matthau's character began his libidinal meltdown in the brave new world of infidelity as comedy?  It was Sue, of course. When several years earlier Andy Griffith was casting about for a steady girlfriend for his character, the widower  Sheriff Andy Taylor in his self-titled iconic show, Sue Ane was the perfect choice, or so it seemed for several episodes. Sincere, friendly, blonde, young, good and kind: she was of a genre of ideal American womanhood that nestled in that precarious ledge between prudery and a straining-at-the-leash lasciviousness that a changing America recognized as the complicated new locale for those whom the male populace riveted its attention on and craved.  A good woman did not leap into bed in 1962 and it wasn't even implied as part of a character's life. Still, her vivacity trumped any guarantee of virginity. The term, a "family show" was almost a redundant phrase back then and Griffith's show especially did not countenance any sort of promiscuity. Still, beauty was not to be subverted like orthodox Muslim women in their disguises/tents or the extreme sartorial bashfulness of our grandmothers of the Victorian age.

When did dancing the horizontal rhumba become a blase event or at least a common one in the lives of unmarried men and women, as characters on television increasingly divulge? Filmgoers have long since become accustomed to the sophisticated and daring levels of scenes expressing violence and less and less implicit stories of sex. But now the last citadel of modesty, television is being besieged to drop any pretense of it.  Nudity in fact, common on European channels for a long time, is coming to America's airwaves and not just on cable t.v.

But what was Sue Ane's true gift to us?  She was an artist who would have thrived in any age, but her transitional role of Irma Johnson was a kind of final hand holding by Langdon's character for the shy and those a bit frightened about cheating as a lighthearted adventure. How could it be so bad when Irma's earnestness and friendly, guileless ways signaled neither danger nor damnation? If it felt good, so the mantra of the '60s assured us, it was good. Half a century later, a click of the computer mouse brings a near instantaneous roar of a lion of lust in the forms of any imaginable (or unimaginable) image of carnality, bestiality or in short, imagination-starving visions of deadliness: prideful displays offering no joy but mind altering and addicting excitement. Hefner and his disciples (four generations since the '54 "maiden"cover of "Playboy" with Marilyn Monroe gracing it)  still chase the dream of adolescent consequence-free fornication. Pornography stuffs many a pocketbook and we let it seep further and further into our mainstream culture with each passing decade. The match was struck long before Sue Ane's gyrations and to rail against adultery or promiscuity is perhaps akin to scolding hungry men who rob a bakery. Still, self-control is invariably left with no champions in mass culture and advertising. Is the legalization of abortion unrelated to these sea changes in mores in the period described? I think not. Demanding certain things, certain outcomes, like the satiety of all our animal needs when and where we desire and on our terms, well this may appeal irresistibly to the normal human inclination to control one's environment, but it does nothing to address another human longing: to nurture and to preserve the race. Marriage, commitment and children: these entities have been devalued as the afore mentioned ones have been raised up and embraced by an increasingly troubled and restless nation. Few consciously shout out militantly for libertine causes, but the constant cynical and glib denigration of traditional values and religious convictions in the media is a huge concern for this blogger. A renaissance of decency awaits combative strides by younger and stronger cultural warriors for whom these verities are like wondrous discoveries that their natural idealism can empower. I'll cheer them on.   

Afghanistan

Crashing bores bring throbbing pain

Some sleeping boors dig noise inane.

You look for spring but fall is all: both calendar and decline's gall.

Ask a friend of days of yore

And know reprising's seen a chore.

Folks have moved on and you are stuck

Unspoken words: "schmuck, outta luck."

You fondle shreds of rotting lace

And hold your buddy's guts in place.

Medic solemn nods the lie

So all of you will not die.

While love you knew you can't erase

As graceful end's a chance embrace.

Pray for hearts you'd see again

And shut the door on wicked men

Who feign devotion to the "real"

While loving your soul's upturned keel.

Could they sink your link to Him

With black guffaws while cursing vim?

The choice is ours, to walk or kneel

And haters lose when lovers heal.  

Vinnie K.

He was a very quiet man.  His mildness fooled the impatient and less than observant into not noticing him or at least into discounting his significance in even a small gathering. He looked, listened and seemed to pass no judgment.  Either greeting you or bidding farewell, he shook your hand firmly and wished you and yours well and wasted no energy on charm, flattery or niceties that distracted from a certain unvarnished truthfulness that somehow did not hurt.

Beginning with, during and after a major illness, Vinnie sent me get well cards. His handwriting was atrocious, but the thoughts, expressed through these deeds, now made the aphorism incontrovertible: that these (thoughts, i.e. actions) indeed are what count. Came a birthday or a relapse, and Mr. K. remembered and sometimes included a baseball card or some other small two dimensional memento of sports or of the war years…always a small but powerful token of his caring. He was not my friend, but my father's.  So often did I directly benefit from the love that reflected back on Dad (and then on me).  Once my abominable behavior while a car service driver, directed toward a less than angelic customer, was brought to the attention of the lessors of my vehicle.  Technically not my employers, these "bosses" nonetheless, held the power to deny me a leased automobile based on the apparently reported complaint. As luck would have it, one dispatcher on duty at the time was an old friend of Dad. Yes, he intervened with the powers that were, and my stream of income was uninterrupted thanks to him and especially thanks to Dad's more than cordial relationship with him as well as with nearly everyone he met.

Vinnie died more than fourteen years ago. I remember being surprised and frankly annoyed that his wake was arranged far from his friends and neighbors in our shared hometown. Some of his children had long since moved away to New Jersey and the services were held there. The last evening of the wake found me about seventy miles away with barely enough time to arrive before the final hour. In the gathering dusk with imperfect directions, I raced to pay my final respects. Several wrong turns and other impediments resulted in an arrival several minutes after the chapel's visiting hours had officially ended. The empty room, except for myself and Vinnie's body surrounded by gently glowing lights and candles gave me some comfort. Perhaps I had secretly wanted to be alone with him and this was an unconsciously achieved "success" to be able to say goodbye to him without the formalities and obstacles to genuine grieving that a room full of strangers would have meant (I never knew his family).  The funeral directors inevitably strolled into the room to gently abort my visit and then one of his son's appeared.  He introduced himself thusly and I identified myself, but did not attempt to explain who his father was, rather, what he meant to me.  The imagined beauty of joining hearts with such candid stories seem to always fall flat in my experience. For Mr. K., Jr., I was but a late visitor who regardless of who I was, was now an inconvenience and not a part of his memories.  That was okay.  I had my moment with Vinnie and I thanked him, perhaps too late, but perhaps he heard me.

It's Ryan: Dems Dyin'!

Well, Romney searched long and carefully and the result was a bold move: Paul Ryan. Intelligent, wonky, handsome, feisty Hibernian spirit and the perfect nemesis to the faux intellect of the current Occupier-in-Chief: the 42 year old congressman from Wisconsin is as fresh and welcome as a zephyr along an Alpine hiking trail.  The road will be long and arduous though.  Obama is a cunning demagogue with the social skills needed in a dying culture filled with too many half-educated dullards, malcontents and self-loathing, self-entitled boors, antagonistic Third Worlders and the over educated chattering Liberal elite and not so elite, both with no religion save the unshakable belief in sticking their noses up everyone's rectum to eradicate all kinds of "ills",  real and mostly imagined. These forces, lasciviously licking Obama's rump without a clue about what are this country's finest values and what are the foundations of its true greatness: hard work, individualism, respect for the property, privacy and rights of others, fair play and the abhorrence of class warfare.  Striving for wealth: well earned and saluted as a worthy aspiration as well as an admired accomplishment and not cursing those who have attained it...these facts are crucial to understanding the American character and the reaction to this poison of the current administration in less and less subtly attacking these roots of our society. The assault is horrifically, only dimly understood by a public more and more encouraged to suck on the government's tit with even less understanding of the shriveled and decaying nature of this particular dug.                                                                                                                  

The knives need to come out and they need to stay out.  Barrack Hussein needs to be challenged every time he opens his mouth and no lie should be left unexposed or unanswered.  The mendacity of the organization, with obvious ties to the Prez, that ran an ad in which the death of the wife of a former employee of the corporation run by Romney is clearly (and demonstrably falsely) attributed to Mitt's policies is only one example of the corrupt and thuggish modus operandi of the Obama-Biden campaign.  Romney and Ryan can and must stay the course, i.e. on and along the high road, but every calumny must be addressed and every incompetent, wasteful and injudicious move of the Democrat party needs the light of day, like shining a spotlight on a nest of roaches.  Get out the vote and search tirelessly for fraud in all precincts throughout the land.  It is more than plausible that the present crisis with the hated Obamacare legislation may have not metastasized were it not for the highly suspect election of the piggish jester, Al Franken in Minnesota.  Many of the votes "discovered" in the recount process were cast illegally by convicts.  An informal polling of them revealed a 9 to 1 margin in favor of Franken.  His subsequent vote in the U.S. senate delivered the filibuster proof margin of victory.

Americans may be waking up.  One devoutly prays that this is so.  On so many levels Barrack Hussein has revealed his animus toward the America that grew and prospered very well without him and his father's anti-western ethos.  The communist associations and memberships of his mother and grandparents are simple facts, simply and religiously ignored by the news organizations of this country.  The fact that he was even elected is a grievous wound to our nation, but the outlook for a complete recovery is not at all implausible.  However, we must remember the severity of the mistake we made.  Voting with your crotch, your hope or wish for change, and various other motivations that subvert reason with emotional and willful ignorance (why wasn't this guy vetted?) are habits to disabuse ourselves of, once and for all.  Does anyone except the looniest of the Left's disciples really believe that Obama presented himself as he has performed (or failed to perform)?  A well educated electorate, literate and engaged with attention spans significantly greater than those of hamsters: these are the citizens we dearly cherish, need and in the words of Leigh Hunt's poem "Abou Ben Adhem" about the spiritually wealthy title character: "May his (their) tribe increase."  

In The Driver's Seat

Did you ever try to explain how you feel to a person who doesn't care or cannot understand? One imagines this is a daily occurrence that is experienced by some adolescents and certain of the elderly in numbers disproportionately greater than those of other groups relative to the population as a whole. The alienation of youth and the isolation of the old and infirm: it would seem that a natural alliance of the two might ameliorate some of these travails.  No doubt this occurs in limited and unorganized ways. The sharing of a problem between a grandparent and grandchild is hardly unheard of. The special bond between each begins almost immediately with the "gut" understanding by the senior of life's finiteness, passionately and dramatically revealed by the birth of the granchild just as the start of the sunset of the grandparent's days are perceived.  Cat Stevens' "B" side of his 1967 hit "Matthew and Son" was entitled "Granny" and it told the tale of a shared confidence of these members of "skipped" generations.  All of us it seems, have an unquenchable need to marshall events and our environment in such a way that we understand ourselves to be in control, even if only in some limited way. To "drive the car" or to be in charge is as necessary to one's well being as food and drink; this empowerment or even just an empathetic sharing of its frustration by disaffected parties such as the young and old, can soothe if not heal.

Financial and various decision making powers: these are among the chief tools and/or weaponry of the heads of households.  And these folks, often those between 25 and 65, generally hold sway with the prerogative to say "nay" and more importantly, with the imagined luxury of not needing to ponder with any depth, the humanity and/or the angst of the disempowered older juveniles or of the ancients under their care who cannot or will not articulate swiftly, what are their needs and rights as persons, as they quietly strive to maintain their dignity.  Of course, this is arguably only a problem in the abstract.  A grandmother, a grandfather, an aging uncle, aunt, a great grandparent, a confused teen with an absent parent (or the scion of a prematurely deceased one): all of these are likely to have at least one relative in their lives who is concerned and who endeavors to help. Yet, there is evidence of dysfunctional aspects of these relationships that abound anecdotally, and because the foci of one in his/her prime years are often aimed at one's career, the smallest of one's children or other social networks that are viewed with particular interest because of business and social advancement considerations, opportunities to fail with these two groups, teens and the elderly, are many.  Of course, the extreme situation of having no family at all is no longer a rarity in the America of the 21st century, but let's assume that the "dramatis personae" are present, however meager their resources and numbers may be.

One unfortunate aspect of modern American life is a deemphasis on the past and of the importance of our history, both as a nation and relative to the nuclear family unit.  This impacts senior citizens in obvious ways.  "Old" too often becomes a term associated with "used up" and with places and people of little or no interest or excitement to youthful pursuits.  Ignorance and the lack of understanding about wisdom and experience, the chief and incalculably valuable virtues that those of advanced years possess, are problems that education and a revival of respect for one's elders can, not surprisingly, begin to solve.

The growth, both physically and intellectually of persons in their teens is sometimes viewed, even if only unconsciously, as a threat to certain mature adults in their prime. Their creative endeavors can be discouraged with subversive remarks or a more subtle chiding that seeks to keep the newly blossoming, soon to be grownup in his or her place out of fear or a perverse habit of domination.  These conflicts are as old as man's time on this planet and they are certainly not insurmountable, but the intra-familial struggle is a reflection of the geopolitical problems that have kept nations in varying states of turmoil and they can best be settled with hard work and the understanding that independence and mutually beneficial dependence are the right roads to travel.  Perhaps the surest approach is to assume that all of us are or were once, helpless and unclothed, both literally and in terms of psychic vulnerability.  Treating the stranger, the unattractive, the inarticulate, the deaf, the blind, the infirm or even just the less than pleasant, as thoughtfully as one ought to a struggling adolescent or a depressed oldster, without of course, patronizing or obviously referencing the pain of any of these persons (but determining that listening to what they have to say, is of paramount importance) is arguably one of the best choices to maximize tranquility and help to provide one of the answers to the problem of human existence.  Compassion, love, just spending time with someone, whatever the right word or phrase may be: the ability to truly care is a gift that can start to enable any soul to get into "the driver's seat."  My father taught me these things, largely by example and not pedagogically or in any pontificating way.  It was his greatest gift to me and as Earl Grant reassured us, though while referencing a great romantic relationship, it is "a treasure our hearts can always spend."

Audace In Aurora

My uncle Audace (pronounced, accent on the second syllable, "Ow-dah-chay" in Italian) was born in Manhattan and celebrated his twenty fifth birthday while in the Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Aurora, Colorado, ninety five years ago yesterday and seventy years ago yesterday, respectively.  My grandfather named him for his courage or rather for his "audacity" in daring to live after coming into the world on what was one of the hottest days in New York city up until that time (1917). Placed outside on the fire escape of the tenement building where the family lived, the infant was apparently stillborn and attempts to revive him were initially not successful.  No doubt, Grandpa's temper, hotter than the thermometer, persuaded the midwife in attendance to further bend every effort to get little Audace to breathe. Breathe he did eventually and the little baby was deemed to have provided the greater part of the moxie needed to fight and win the battle for life.

Fast forward twenty five years, beyond a happy childhood, the early acquisition of a lifelong nickname, "Chris" as in Christopher Columbus (dubbed by his impatient playmates who had learned quickly of their companion's Sicilian parentage), college, a first "adult" job and then a war in Europe that had had a certain inevitability about it, and that by 1941 had spread its dark clouds closer and closer towards North America.  Audace made the decision to enlist in the fall of that year and his choice of the army's cavalry was an interesting one.  His training in and near Ft. Reilly, Kansas in the fall and the winter of '41-'42 occurred during the fateful attack on Pear Harbor, H.T.  The future was now dramatically more exciting as well as uncertain, until the cold rains and the ubiquitous mud of one of the series of maneuvers he was involved in brought forth even more questions about events and their consequences in these perilous times. Chris had contracted pleurisy while laying too long in the aforementioned mud. That brought him to Aurora for treatment and recovery.

By the early summer of '42 he had already languished in the hospital for several months and his family clamored for the latest news.  Letter writing was not a dead art in the America of seven decades ago.  Chris was an obliging son and brother and his most recent missive even included a photograph in his army issued pajamas with a pleasant grin on his face that he was confident would allay any fears of his aging parents in New York.  Upon viewing his pallid complexion, sunken eyes and rail thin frame underneath the p.j.s, my grandmother commenced to cry fiercely and it was quickly decided that Audace's sister, my mother, would journey to Colorado to check on him and to cheer him on his birthday. She made the two and a half day trip on a Greyhound bus and it was long, arduous, dusty and an education of the first order.  Besides prairie dogs that were often the only signs of life as the omnibus crossed the Great Plains, there were the myriad of characters among her fellow passengers (these included an old evening school professor of hers who got on in Pittsburgh) who added a bit of color to the generally tedious trek of waiting, watching, reading, eating, and fitfully sleeping (while seated, of course).  America was a beehive of activity and the movement of troops, i.e. men and materiel crisscrossing the continent, as well as the numerous civilian travelers like my Mom (many if not most heading to or from vital "home front" war work), made for a momentous and pulsating atmosphere perhaps not matched since, especially if considering what was the unity of purpose and the quality of our nation's energy level then, like what Confucius (via the late Stanley Link's cartoon character Ching Chow) reminded his disciples of: "Remember to be thankful for our enemies; they have the power to bring out the greatest efforts in ourselves."

Well, Mom arrived in mid-July and Chris was overjoyed to have company, from home no less!  Both their spirits were buoyed and two weeks, like many a vacation of novelty, new sounds and rhythms as well as sightseeing shared with a loved one, made the time not "fly", but enriching while making it denser and hence actually lengthening the perception of it without it seeming to "drag." Chris was in a festive mood the whole time, not surprisingly. One imagines however, his desire to ride a horse in the pastoral Rockies, unlike his dutiful, brief and no doubt often unpleasant "saddle ups" under Uncle Sam's auspices, was a bit of an aching frustration given his condition and the relative abundance of equine opportunities as well as hitching posts (see my blog entry of July 22nd, inst.) of the Aurora and Denver area of mid century.  The U.S. cavalry was on the verge of disbanding in the summer of 1942 and Chris must have had mixed feelings about that military decision at this particular point in his life.  It was a harbinger of so many other changes that life after the war would usher in.  Curiously, a last "hurrah" for mounted soldiers in combat would occur only a few weeks later on the plains of western Russia.  Italian horsemen would initiate a cavalry charge against unsuspecting Soviet forces that would win the day (though certainly not the war).  Chris's future lay with a mechanized unit (in the Tanks Corps) and he would end the war, finding his natural niche, like his brother and my father, in Military Intelligence.

But what of Audace's partying ways during that tiny portion of the calendar of that long ago summer?  He understood well the brief life span of Mom's visit and that certainly heightened the gaiety and intensity of their time spent together.  There were no A.T.M.s in 1942. Chris's meager paycheck, like all G.I.'s was a typical source of humor during the war and Mom had neither credit card nor checkbook to supplement the resources in the little pocketbook that she clutched more than halfway across a continent.  They dined out nearly every day and bus trips to National Parks outside of the Denver area were not without some cost and even room rates at the Y.W.C.A. can add up after a fortnight.  When Mom set out on her return trip home, she had to carefully husband her funds, eating hamburgers for most of the way and arriving back in Woodside with less than a dollar in change to her name.

Finally, what can one say about the Aurora of then compared to the mightily shocked town after the events of two weeks ago?  There are no profound pronouncements or distinctions that I can rightfully offer.  Human nature is essentially unchanging.  However, a solitary monster is, intriguingly, arguably comprehended with greater fright than an entire globe consumed by a maelstrom organized on a grand scale by men of means and determination to destroy or maim entire societies.  Somehow, faith in the civilized world of one's family and friends and then fairly easily extended to larger units of church, local, state and finally, federal government entities, neutralized and even trumped the horror of a Tojo, a Hitler or a Mussolini.  A lower threshold of pain for the infliction of harm today, given all that we have gained, materially as a people (and conversely, all that we may or can lose because of acts of evil on any level) may be part of the cause of our malaise that seems to haunt this new century of incredible technological superhighways of communication contrasted with a psychic traffic jam that literacy and old fashioned disciplines of logic, clear thinking, because of their tremendous decline along with Faith, are seemingly incapable of breaking.

Kicking Down The Cobblestones (Again)

I was recently asked by someone (on a website dedicated to nostalgia that encourages discussions of childhood memories as they relate to my old neighborhood) about a schoolmate who I hadn't thought about in nearly forty years.  There was nothing spectacularly wonderful and certainly nothing tragic or obviously poignant about this person or of my memories of him. And yet, I now think about him often and of the brevity and the pleasure of our simple but very genuine friendship. I believe this relationship, in microcosm, may be the essence of what nostalgia is, or at least what it means to me.  As one may very well remember an unpleasant person or experience, decades after the psychic poison has long stopped intruding on one's sunnier worldview, so also a memory of kindnesses and congenialities, especially somehow, small and short lived ones, can also linger or be rekindled (in this case) in one's  musings of tender bygone times precisely because of their beauty, fragility, and in essence, an awareness of their finiteness. Exchanging good deeds, fun and simple fellowship (what befriending this person meant): expressed through the unabashed desire to like and to be liked, these remain safely in the archives of some of the secret treasures of my heart.                                                                                                  

This guy was not a senior like myself, when we met. In those high school days of intense studies mixed with carefree and youthful fun, the inevitable human inclination to rank, categorize and to not fraternize with "other" persons not within one's tribe, grade, clique, etc., much like the military or any class- conscious society (which society is not?), was a habit that I became aware of the need to break as an increased relaxation and a sense of freedom in my senior year began to take hold.  The open mindedness of that period perhaps enabled me to strike up a conversation with a lower classman and for me to allow that I could learn from, not only my peers, elders (parents and teachers), but from a younger student.  My then new buddy Herman, a junior, was smart, funny, sensitive and endured all the same travails of most adolescents searching and striving to get their adult "sea legs" in that special time of ugly (or in many cases, imagined ugly) duckling status, balancing on a tightrope and praying for acceptance and a loving place in the sun. Hermie, as we called him, was short statured, like myself, and suffered perhaps a tad more than most others with his appearance, in that acne was a particularly implacable foe that his infectious smirk and jocular manner nonetheless, erased from the consciousness of anyone who bothered to get to know him.  His impression of a comedic character (especially funny and ironic being portrayed by this Jewish adolescent friend of mine): the Wehrmacht soldier created by Arte Johnson of the then smash television show "Laugh-In", revealed a certain innocence of both him, our youthful world, and also even of our time, despite the mushrooming calamities of international strife like Vietnam's conflict, the other aspects of the ongoing Cold War, assassinations and the then nascent cultural wars, growing substance abuses and general social unrest.                                                                        

Our mutual interests, the simple but powerful comfort of an understanding pal and the relief from societal pressures that pure amiability provided, cause me to remember Hermie anew and fondly, with the years melting away while the irrepressible waves of his goodness crash up against the ramparts of forgetfulness and death. Can these walls be breached so that the forlorn and lonely might be bathed in such cleansing waters?  The battle rages and the less sentimental part of me soberly reminds the dreamer in me that no exceptions for the irretrievability of the past are possible: whether they be for the decency of a Hermie (or even the most heroic deed of a general or the martyrdom of a saint): at least not in the sense that we may relive perfectly the cheery smile of a boy-man not yet in his prime or enjoy his humor and sweetness in a precisely experienced kind of video replay or Lazarushian miracle of rebirth.  But why does memory persist and what is it teaching about the ghost of Hermie and the ghost that was me? I do not know what this very special longing for what was, may bring.  That is, is there a future for the past?  I believe that remembrance, as I have stated before, has some unbreakable connection to holiness, but am not sure what exactly that may be…only that the longing is indescribably and profoundly aching and beyond beauty in its potency to sadden and to stir feelings akin to rapture almost simultaneously.

Aurora: Boring Malice

The news from Colorado is sickening.  It is really news from the new America, this sliver of which happens to be part of the urban sprawl of Denver, a place as far removed from its once vestigial hitching posts (and other considerably less obscure signs of its frontier and Christian roots of a mere half century ago) as is New York, Chicago or any other 21st century American gotham.                      

On a certain level, one does become numb to such abominations after the likes of September 11, 2001, or most of the other perpetrations that were domestically grown: such as the then retch inducing events of Waco, Columbine, Oklahoma City, Binghamton, Virginia Tech. and many more.  These holocausts, expressions of demonic delight, all produce over time, a certain ennui, despite their authors' self-proclamations of spectacular and imaginarily majestically performed evil.  Much like pornographic images (and a constant stream of new ones) that the libidinally inflamed voyeur believes bring him joy and reliable promises of ecstatic paroxysyms of greater and greater lustful bliss, the mass murderer discovers (as does the observant member of the public) one way or another, that hell, as described in certain biblical passages, offers exquisitely delectable repasts that never satisfy.  These "diners" in fact, begin to rot away while they become the meal: the apple of the eye of the gluttonous sinner contains the "worm that dieth not" as maggots and all other kinds of spiritual vermin win the day over these gourmands who imagine their stomachs full and their bodies well nourished, when starvation is their true destiny, much like the bottle that  begins to suck from the alcoholic's gullet. Still, aside from the banality of these monstrous blowhards and homicidal dullards, another kind of boredom follows on the outgoing tide of their heinous deeds.  It comes from the armies of modern day hand wringers who sweep down upon the populace after these atrocities and with the help of mass media, manage to trivialize the sufferings of the victims and their families with regurgitations (ad nauseum, of course) of the events, the speculated upon motives of the killers, the so-called human interest interviews of the "near miss" survivors and most offensively, from the ritualistic attempts by our age's secularists to "heal" and find "closure" via hordes of psychologists, social workers and Grief Counsellors (an actual job title). Endless talking heads on radio and television working their jaws overtime with few new insights and often just using the occasion to push political or social agendas like gun control, community programs and to contrive more laws that imagine men at last taming other men with no transcendent parties involved or ancient verities of right and wrong given any weight or value: these are the greater terrorists in our midst.  Non-judgmental "dialogue", the endless chatter of relativism and suppositions that one can reach an accord with, and satisfactory understanding of, satanic and irrational forces: these predictable, uninteresting and  most importantly, false ideas about the problem of human existence and sin (or the refusal to recognize the latter's reality), remain outrageous and at the same time frightfully tedious elements that hold sway in much if not most of American society today.  A strange alliance, consciously or not, among the dastardly, soul-deadened sociopaths and inhuman automatons in our land together with the modern enablers who do not subscribe to the ancient caution: "have no truck with evil" is a more frightening reality than any carnage yet inflicted on our conflicted citizens.  For to think and act as if a reason for or the cause of the monstrous acts can be determined, its full meaning processed and thoroughly dissected and thereby mastered in such a way as to prevent any repetition, is as foolhardy as to think we can control the movements of the sun, moon and stars.  Sometimes there are no answers and the bogeyman must be accepted much like our forefathers on the frontier understood the reality of the literal wolf at their door or the threat of Indians, disease or famine.  "Hope for the best and prepare for the worst" remains as good a guiding precept as any for those who love civilization and are not burdened with the delusional creed of the perfectibility of men.