Bread and Circuses

 We are living in sinister times where a minority of extremely rich and powerful people are removing rights, privileges, and advantages from the rest of us, and a vast number of those affected---not even aware they are at risk--- are allowing them and in many instances blindly cheering the situation on... falling for the old bread and circuses.

I Surrender

Antony's Trump Speech

Antony’s Speech Adapted for Modern Times

Friends, Romans, countrymen, listen (sniff). I, Mark Antony, have actually come here to bury Caesar, not praise him. The bad men do is remembered after their deaths, but the good everybody buries. It is going to be the same with Caesar. Brutus—he’s a loser I’m just saying… told you Caesar was mean. If that’s true, it’s bad, really, really bad and Caesar has paid for it in spades. (sniff, sniff) Now this Brutus and the others—they’re bad, really, really bad; I hear they are rapists, drug guys and such and I think they’re letting the barbarians take your jobs—I’m here to talk at Caesar’s funeral. He was my friend, he was good to me most of the time, Antony. But Brutus says he was bad, really really bad, but then he’s a loser so there you go. Look at him. Does he look like a Senator? When I’m emperor I’ll have him in jail—even if you remember he brought incredible, amazing billions to the city.

Is this the work of an amazing guy? When the deadbeats cried, Caesar was amazing. Really incredible. Get-up-and-go shouldn’t be so soft. Yet Brutus says he was bad, but Brutus is a loser (sniff), really bad, a billion times worse. You all saw that on feast day I offered him a king’s crown three times, and he refused it the 3rd times. Three times, I’m saying. Amazing. Tremendous. Hell, you wouldn’t probably have cared if he’d speared someone on the Senate floor, am I right? I, (sniff) Antony, ask. Was this right? Yet Brutus says he was not okay, that he was bad. But, no question, Brutus is a loser—probably, certainly a devil. I am telling you, Brutus lies; he lies a lot. You all loved him once, remember? Incredible. Amazing. Then what is going to stop you from being sad now? Men have become liars, and probably rapists and bad, just really bad! Listen to me, Mark Antony. My heart is actually in the coffin there with Caesar, and I must stop until I get it back. (he sniffles)

Sniff, only yesterday the word of Caesar might have been bad, probably bad. Now he lays there worth nothing, a loser. Oh, sirs, if I pissed you off, I probably piss off Brutus and Cassius, but, you all know, they’re creeps. They’ve done far badder stuff than Caesar. I will form a special prosecutor to deal with those crooks. Crooked Brutus, crooked Cassius. Hell, attack them. I’ll pay your fines for it. I Mark Antony will win. But here’s a paper with Caesar’s seal on it. I found it in his room—it’s his will. Listen, I’ll read this. I’ll follow it. I’ll make Rome great again using the great Caesar’s economic plan in this will. Caesar loved you losers. He loved you a lot. Really, incredibly a lot. You won’t believe how much he loved you. You aren’t Arabs, you aren’t barbarians—you’re men. And, being men, the crap in Caesar’s will is going to make you mad, really, incredibly mad. It’s better that you don’t know. Shut up, will you? Put a sock in it. Don’t be pu*&#@s. The men who stabbed Caesar are stupid. I was totally against stabbing Caesar from day one. You’re going to get rich and taxes are going to be lowered, just imagine that! And no barbarians are going to be taking your jobs.  I’ll read the damn will. Circle around incredibly dead Caesar, and let me show you his will. Well? Move aside, losers!

Don’t press up against me. Security! Let’s get security in here. Rough those laggards up a little on the way out. Throw them out.

If you have tears, cry you big babies. Really big. Too big. I, Antony, am saying…

Bumble Bee Hive

          Bumble Bee Hive

Our adobe house in Lemitar

with its two foot thick walls

—a child could stand comfortably

in the deep set windows—

was home to a hive of bumble

bees with their thick, velvety

bodies and their slow

motion

calisthenics; I remember an old

weathered saddle frame lay splayed

in the attic—squat in the dust that was

the insulation for the tin-roofed abode.

We caught June bugs in those days

haven’t seen one in years…

and tied a crochet string

to their back leg, so their bumbling,

awkward escape-attempt-flights  

entertained us…..kids played outside

in those days. Cokes were just nine cents

and the only fat kid was Porky

  on the Timmy and Lassie show.

Excerpt from Oil Field Stories & Stories of the SW

Boredom

Lincoln

Writing

"I feel as though I could not write again. Words seem to break in my mind like sticks when I put them down on paper. I cannot see how to spell some of them. Sentences are covered with leaves, and I really cannot see the line of the branch that carries the green meanings...."

                                                              Stephen Spender

Words, words, words.

Monolith

The Dictionary

    

        

The Dictionary

In Tularosa school, first or second
grade. I was in the bathroom and
got called to the principal’s office
where I was worried I would
be punished for some infraction.
Instead, the principal presented
me with a dictionary. He had seen
me carrying an old battered one
around the school—my early love
of knowledge and words—and gave
me the signed dictionary. It became
a prized possession. Later, my parents
purchased us a set of Encyclopedia Britannica
which must have set them back a fortune
and which I enjoyed reading “for fun” in my
                      thirst for knowledge. 

Graveyard Chicken

    Graveyard Chicken

In Lemitar, New Mexico we boys played one
game to test one another’s bravery
in the dilapidated graveyard next
door to the school with its chipped,
hard to decipher tombstones and
leaning, wooden crosses.
A boy had to stick his arm down
into one of the gopher holes
inundating the graveyard’s mesquite
and tumble weed-adorned surface
because he had been “dared”
and of course one had to respond
to being dared or one faced the horrible
nomenclature of: chicken.

We played that game along with
marbles, jacks and horses—where
the girls were horses and the boys
were cowboys and had to capture
them—at the risk of being kicked in the chins.
We stuck our arms down into those graveyard
Holes until a boy, I can’t remember who
Said that something inside the hole:
gopher, ghost, a child’s wild imagination?
touched his hand. This led us to search
for other games that did not delve as deeply
into the mortal fears of a grade school child.

Thoughts on becoming a Father

I became a father during one of the coldest winters on record in the Permian Basin. I was working for Dowell as a Service Supervisor and we were cementing several wells between Midland and Andrews. They were deep wells and so the cement jobs were in stages. Barbara had had a tough pregnancy suffering from toxemia, I believe it's called without looking it up again. You think one would remember that but I've never been good with the names of diseases or the medications that fight them.

Around Thanksgiving, Barbara was hospitalized and unbeknownst to us the hospital was doing the worst thing they could for her: giving her a saline drip when it turns out she had too much salt in her system as it was. She was fighting to keep from having our son way early. She held out, but then later, the last few days of that year of 1983 the doctor said that would have to induce or possibly lose Barbara and the baby.

So, it was back in the hospital. This time in Midland/Odessa instead of Monahans. Cold. So cold. Barbara's parents were both there and my sister and mother. My mom was on crutches. She was always having trouble with her knees and I believe that was before she had them both replaced.

There was another young woman in the emergency pediatrics at the same time as Barbara and she had her twins too early and they did not survive. But I remember hearing them crying.

I did not stay in delivery with Barbara. It wasn't as common in those days. Barbara's mom did. Then, she was a registered nurse and there wasn't much she hadn't seen.

We were on a different floor waiting around like you always see in the movies and when word came that labor was over and I was a father, I raced down to the room where they have the babies to see my son. Jim, Barbara's father, in the confusion, thought that I was making a run for it from the hospital and that became a family joke.

The oilfield waited for no man, so as soon as I knew all was stabilized, I had to return to the cement job. There were several wells we were servicing and I would supervise running the first stage of the cement job and then run visit my new family at the hospital. Then back to the rig, drop the plug, and perform the second stage of the cement job.

Our son couldn't wait to see the world, but Barbara held in there so that he was only six weeks early. He was so tiny. Looking back now, I don't know how we thought we could be responsible for something so little and helpless. Two kids in their early 20's without enough sense to worry too much.

Microwaves were fairly new. They were huge also. We bought a refurbished one (they were expensive also) to heat formula in. And heavy. It was all I could do to carry it into the house by myself.

Cabbage Patch kids were the craze that holiday, so it was almost impossible for us to find preemie diapers for our real kid.

And there was more excitement to follow. Changing his diaper one day, I noticed something unusual. Didn't want to acknowledge it, but something was wrong. Back to the doctor: double hernias. Our tiny preemie would have to endure his first surgery that winter: double hernia repair.

So....that's what I remember about first becoming a father. I always thought that being a parent made one a better teacher. I saw it when several teachers I knew had their own children, because being a parent wises one up.... or should. It changes you, when a person becomes a parent one realizes that you are not IN CONTROL of life. Parenting humbles or should humble one. It introduces you to someone who, for a few years, you are totally responsible for. After that, well, my grandfather said one never gets rid of that responsibility. It's a lifetime commitment. That's what being a father is. A lifetime commitment.... but worth the price.  

Voyages

Voyages

Doubtless, a hundred years have passed since this ship sailed the seas off the coast of India. Its voyages, probably few ever recorded, ethereal now. Like that old saying that one cannot step into the same river twice, its wakes have long dissipated into the myriad past waves. This ship merely a ghost which left its image on this ancient traveler's film several generations ago. Who knows if it disappeared in a tropical storm, rotted away in a dock somewhere when it decayed to the point that it could no longer perform its function, or was dry docked and its timbers and canvas distributed to other uses. Its captain and crew existing only as faint memories in the minds of kith and kin. To us, mere imaginings we might weave gazing upon this old photograph. None on the ship probably even knew they were captured in that moment, on that day, at that particular place in the ever changing sea.

We all take our voyage on the blue marble. Some have trips where they make more of an impression on Time's passage than this ship and crew. Others, may leave even less of a trace.

Shhhhh.... I might have an idea....

My toughest critic (Barbara) is doing a final read on Fort Davis. A different style than my previously released novel A Second Dawn. Just a rip roaring western with lots of action: blood and guts. So far, she likes the way it gets underway in the first scene. Indian attack with the Buffalo Soldiers responding.

I want to perform some PR and sales promotion for the literary novel A Second Dawn. And then, there's the anticipated work on the next  novel, mentioned above, and a book of short stories on the oil patch and the southwest.

This blog continues to amass hits, which I find encouraging. Knocking more and more catch up chores out of the way, so pretty soon, there will remain only this fairly unimpeded highway ahead leading to the next "new" project.

Shhhhh..... I might have an idea...

Sharpen the Pencils

Anyone who's ever written knows most have to "sharpen those pencils". I told myself I needed to get after the writing...so.... in conjunction with that I've delved deeply into the above metaphor: organized rooms in the house, fixed things that needed fixin, filled in the appropriate boxes on paperwork that needed sent of for various projects, hauled tree limbs to the dump, put a new battery and two new tires on the Blazer, printed a copy of Fort Davis for Barbara to critique, and a multitude of other chores and ends to projects...

Because, as every writer knows, once those areas of procrastination have served their purpose, it will be time to sit, court the Muse, and make that blinking cursor work across that blank page.

Do you have a Ritual you perform before you get down to: writing (in my case), exercising, working, gardening, running, etc.

Getting organized

Well, Memorial Day is almost over with. Just a few more hours. Spent most of the day cleaning, organizing, puttering around the property. Over the weekend, tried to get the last organization done on my retirement papers, so I can get those signed, notarized and mailed to Santa Fe.

Finished the weekend tonight by trying to get my writing projects updated. Printed a copy of my next planned novel publication: Fort Davis. Had my early readers check it out last summer and fall. Yes, that's how far behind I am and, now, with no excuse of having the distraction of a job, I need to get after it. Took me several hours to get the office reorganized to print a reading copy of the novel for Barbara to read and "give me the go".

A Work In Progress...

I started working at around the age of fifteen cleaning two hotel swimming pools, sweeping their sidewalks, painting dingy rooms back into shape, and clerking. From there, I moved on to college, over a decade in the media and well over a decade in the oil patch. For the sake of expediency, I'll leave out several other brief episodes of yet other digressions in my work experience. Now, as of today, I've finished up the career I've practiced for almost a quarter century: teaching.

Now. Retirement. My last day at school. I was reminiscing with a colleague today about those years in that last career. What I related to her, was that all those years weren't spent in the same area and I felt lucky for that. The first part spent teaching communications at a school that had a lot of at-risk youth. Young people going through puberty and their middle school years not always under the greatest of conditions. From there, moving to the high school level teaching literature to both regular and pre-ap students. Then.... on to working as a reading specialist with students who just needed a little extra guidance to master the difficulties some have with knitting together diction, syntax and overall comprehension of the written word.

And, finally, spending the past six years working with the gifted and talented. I appreciate my educational time being like a buffet: sampling a bit of this and a bit of that. And, it's cliché: learning as much from the students as they learned from me. Learning from other colleagues along the way from my first cooperating teacher who told me, "Never leave your drink unattended." Yet, somewhere back there a cliché was a novel truth. That's how they get started before we warn fledgling writers not to use them because they are old and dusty. And, as I stated to a neophyte teacher today who has only been at it two years, one learns from their own mistakes, probably learns the most, in fact, from those.

So, now it's retirement. Probably lots to learn there also, because as I began this reminisce, diatribe, introspection..... I am just a work in progress. Like all the rest of you.

A Cup of Espresso and a Good Book

Old friends I've come to trust:

a cup of espresso and a good book.

In the last few weeks as friends
and colleagues discovered my retirement
plans, they would inquire as to what I would
do. Will you travel? What will hold
your interest? Occupy your time?

A cup of espresso and a good book

and maybe occasionally,

that book will be mine.  

Another puzzle clue...

I guess no one solved the May 16th puzzle. Here's another clue.

Mars Swings By for a Visit

(CNN) It's a great time to get a close-up look at Mars, even if you don't have a telescope.

The red planet will soon be closer to Earth than it has been in 11 years: On May 30, Mars will be about 46.8 million miles (75.3 million kilometers) from Earth. Yes, that's still a long way off, but sometimes Mars is 249 million miles (400 million kilometers) from Earth.

The red planet. I didn't realize until tonight that Mars is the second smallest planet in our solar system after Mercury. It has long held the denizens of our own in awe, leading us to speculation, invention, and wonder. In awe enough that we named it Mars after the Roman god of War. We've speculated to its history. What were the canals? Was it once similar to earth? Is or was there ever life there? Long before we explored it to current standards we debated: did it have water? an atmosphere? could we survive there?

And wonder. 

What is that stone face on Mars?

We've made it home to our first invaders. Orson Welles frightened people with his dramatization of The War of the Worlds from H.G. Wells with its terrifying monster machines stomping over our cities. Some of those visitors could be humorous like Ray Walston as Uncle Martin with his antenna that sprouted from the top of his head (closely resembling rabbit ears) the kind once used to pull in network TV on our black and white sets and his amazing powers. There was the Martian raised, Michael Valentine Smith, from Robert Heinlein's Sci Fi masterpiece,  who like Tarzan of the Apes and Mowgli from Jungle Book, faced their original society with the alternated perspective of their unique upbringings with Martians, apes, and animals.

Now, a company is seeking volunteers to make the one-way journey to be settlers there, because as one can see from the vast distances at the beginning of the essay, it takes lots of time and the conquering of vast distances to get there.

So, take a few moments away from your job, TV, your iPhone, or speculating who the next president will be to step outside in the night and view our neighbor Mars as it swings by to what in space is a mere shout across the valley...

                                                  .....and ponder one's own miniscule part in the Music of the Spheres.

My Thumb

I stole a writing exercise from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where you have your students write about their thumb as an idea instigator and diving board to jump off into the pool of your creativity. They're told to keep writing for an allotted time and if they can't think of anything else to fill the allotted time to repeat the starter.


.........my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, mi thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb,my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thum, m thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb,  my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb nail, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thmb, my thumb, my thumb, y thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumbb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb...It's all turtles, top to bottom. my thumb, myy thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb.......

The Rite of Passage

A Rite of passage is a celebration which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another. It involves a significant change of status in society. (Wikipedia)

In our society, we have graduation ceremonies for the young and retirement ceremonies for the elders.

We march our young ones up with the songs written in the early 1900's by Sir Edward William Edgar. They march in robes modeled on the ancient toga---with vestments to signify their academic achievements as the Native Americans of the Plains once wore scalp locks on their lances to signify their battle triumphs. A mortar board signifying the "hawk" that bricklayers use to hold mortar before it is applied to bricks in construction. After the ceremony, a flipping of the mortar tassel signifies their exit from that level of academia and an entry into "life".

( http://www.hattales.com/discover/hatstorians/mortarboard-the-graduation-cap/)

Retirement ceremonies highlight the older employees' exit from that particular field of work. There is the cliché of the unnecessary gold watch given to the worker who has fulfilled his time (when he actually needed a watch) and supposedly leaves for the ease of twilight years NOT watching the clock.

Between lie the rites of:  birthdays?, baptism, quinceanera, at one time the first cotillion, arriving at the age to vote and drink, and probably some others that slip my mind.

Afterward, the one I'll avoid in tonight's post to avoid the maudlin. It varies from culture to culture just as most of these others do and is changing dramatically even in our own.

We, as members of a culture, crave this pomp and circumstance... these rite's of passage as an automobile driver rests easier seeing some directional signs along the HI way: 10 Miles to the next town, Eats, Gas, Motels, historic road signs. Our ceremonies place markers on that road either traveled or less traveled.  


  

Past 1,000 hits....

1000 or one thousand is the natural number following 999 and preceding 1001. In most English-speaking countries, it is often written with a comma separating the thousands unit: 1,000.

It may also be described as the short thousand in historical discussion of medieval contexts where it might be confused with the Germanicconcept of the "long thousand" (1200).

• 1000 is the smallest number that generates three primes in the fastest way possible by concatenation of decremented numbers (1000999, 1000999998997, and 1000999998997996995994993 are prime). The criterion excludes counting the number itself.  Wikipedia

The blog has been an interesting exercise so far. As I first said, I mainly began it to force myself to journal daily. Someone, can't remember whom, said a writer is someone who writes every day. A truism for certain.

It is heartening to see that some find it "read-worthy".

As retirement from education opens its yaw enticingly, but also menacingly, before me I must continue to perform acts that define me. In our society, we are known mostly by what we do. When we first meet someone, it's "what do you do for a living?" which usually issues as our initial question, how we size someone up, get to "know" them.

So, here's to a thousand...I guess I'll keep going. Open a few doors and see where they lead.

Clearing Out the Dust

A gentle rain patters on the roof of my writing hut. Something so soothing to the human breast, the sound of gentle rain, the whispering sleep-sounds of my two canine companions, some quiet New Age music on Pandora.

The blog posts, like the piano exercises I used to practice, hopefully, limbering up the fingers on the keyboard and clearing the dust away between the synapsis of this almost-retired teacher brain. Some of you may remember those old yellow Hanon piano exercise books with the ever more difficult finger exercises to practice left and right hand dexterity?

WK GGB

How one says it....

Sometimes, it seems, it is not so much the message, as how one says it?


Audience participation nite. So say it silently, or shout it out loud there in the privacy of your
domicile.....or step out somewhere and shout it to the heavens....mumble it under your breath
if it pleases you, or even whisper it to the side.

Insert what's on your mind: (                                                                              ).

Or submit it as an addition to the conversation as a comment. Communication is a two way street.

Spring Tiptoes in....

This has been a slow, staggered spring. This pic is actually from a previous one. As I write this, it has been a cooler than normal day for this far along in May. But Barbara and I have both been out puttering in the yard. I've done some pruning. She's been working on our small garden with tomato and squash plants still just a few inches off the ground. One of our little dogs, Emily, has decided this is the perfect time to mouse hunt in the garden, so often we have to fill in a freshly dug hole. And that quandary comes up that's similar to other ones like why does one lose one sock in the dryer? Usually find one shoe by the side of the road not two. Why the moon always looks larger when it's nearer the horizon. That just as perplexing one: why is there always less dirt to put back in the hole than came out of it?

From human activity, spring is more obvious. Students in college and high school are holding end of the year band and chorus concerts, awards banquets and graduation events. More people are outside and shopping at the garden supply section of stores. Soon schools will be out and it will be Memorial Day weekend which everyone takes as the starting pistol of the summer race. Pools will open and we'll all be complaining about how extraordinarily hot it is with utterings about why is it taking so long to really warm up long forgotten.

Old Singer

This is an old Singer sewing machine sitting in a grassy field between Tatum and Bledsoe. Evidenced still, a finely constructed work of art. It is taking years to decompose back into nature. Non-electric. I believe, one pumped a trundle at the bottom, ground level with a foot spinning that wheel to turn with the energy to set your needle in motion through your fabric. An old iron and some other unidentified article sit atop.

This machine probably put together, with the help of its industrious housewife, clothing other than the "store bought" items the family was probably lucky enough to purchase in those days. The drawers would be filled with needles, safety pins, straight pens, buttons in various sizes and colors and of different composition, thread of various strengths, thicknesses, color: cotton, linen, wool.

I took this picture because we humans often see beauty in entropy....wasabi! Glued mortise and tendon or dovetail joints split gradually apart by cold, heat and humidity, desert sun. Paint fading, cracking, chipping. Wood grain relaxing its grip, softening, melting ground ward. I also chose black and white film (yes this was taken back when people still used actual film). Black and white seems to more quickly establish a mood that might require additional technique in color.

It might be interesting to find this old workhorse now, years later and see how far it has fallen in its journey back into the soil.

Masks

MASKS

We all wear them---

different ones for disparate

occasions to avoid feeling truly naked.

We don one to show to loved ones

maybe it's a smiling mask

but not always.

We've another for the various people

we work with; some see one mask

others another. Some feel

they see beneath our mask; others may be completely fooled

and accept the outward shield.

We protect ourselves with a certain one

when danger is perceived.

Yet, maybe we let ours slip a little

when we feel willing to open up to a particular soul. Maybe

sensing we've glimpsed, momentarily

beneath theirs.

Our mind, divided into various compartments

even shows masks to the others. The ID,

the Ego, the Superego all ensconced

behind their comfortable, individual veneer.

Though, occasionally the mask may slide to one side

allowing one member of the triad to see another.

We even attempt to wear a particular mask

from our version of an outside spirit; our particular god, as if trusting

we may even hide from omniscience

by donning a leather mask of subservience or love

while beneath lurks something far from obsequiousness.

Maybe in sleep, for a few hours

we might relax the string tie of our particular mask of the moment

and travel through our dreams behind our true face,

or maybe even there we hide behind the protection of metaphor.

Maybe that's why the word naked holds so much power,

naked, our mask dropping from our face

to reveal our true countenance.

                                                                                                         The one we guard so protectively

behind all those various masks.