Sunrise With Schubert: March 3, 2018

Ever notice how your perspective on things changes as the years go by? Well trust me, it will, unless you are Keith Richardson. Age provides us different sets of eyes.

Take stage plays for example. When I was a teenager and read, then saw performed for the first time, Romeo and Juliet, I went along with the conventional wisdom that it was a love-based tragedy of almost cosmic proportions, a real weeper.

Decades later, after multiple readings and viewings, including a film version with some steamy sex scenes, my perspective has changed. I now go along with the opinion I once read that Shakespeare, himself unlucky in love, had something else in mind when he wrote the play. He apparently, to me at least, intended it as a dark, dark, comedy featuring the two stupidest teenagers ever to prance and bumble their way through the annals of dramatic history.

Read it again for yourself.

“Perspective paradigm,” as I call this phenomenon, is also true in the reading of novels, but more so in films. As I viewed The Big Chill over the years, I identified first with one, then another, of the former college roommates depicted. Now, though, I’m beginning to find more empathy with the husband who tagged along and was intended to portray a despicable character. Go figure, but he now seems to me to be the only admirable character in the film.

And of course, on first viewing The Graduate, I, like many of my generation, viewed the Dustin Hoffman character as cool beyond words, a sophisticated and cinematic version of Holden Caufield (with whom I once felt a strong affinity but now view as the character in American literature most likely to open fire on a crowd using an assault rifle).

On my last viewing of The Graduate, as I watched the iconic final scene, my thought was “That gal just ran off with the sorriest summbitch in California. She’s gonna rue this day like Custer rued chasing Crazy Horse.”

Lately though, I’ve had a film on my mind by a man who, although now fallen into disgrace for his personal habits, still produced some interesting work. I’m thinking of the film Bananas, by Woody, “I like ‘em young” Allen.

If you remember, the film features a neurotic spurned lover named Fielding Mellish who leaves Manhattan and involves himself in a revolution in a fictional Latin American country. When the revolution is successful, the Castro-style leader goes mad. Oh, I actually wouldn’t call it mad, more like bat-shit crazy. For example, one of his first orders is, “All citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now 16.”

Sound familiar? I’m not talking about the underwear, I’m talking about a national leader wielding almost unlimited power who, by any standard that might be applied, now gone "to live among the Little People.” And such a premise is getting un-funnier with every day that passes, at least from my perspective.

Even the children
are starting to notice.

Morning Thoughts: March 2, 2018

Believe it or not, I was once interviewed by the FBI. I had only peripheral knowledge of the matter, but it scared me sh …, pretty bad. So naturally I sought the advice of my dear friend and legal consultant Argumento de Minimus, the Harvard-Bred Lawyer. We often jogged together and had time available to jabber.

I love attorneys ‘cause they pay you well if you testify as an “expert” for them and they see that you get paid. They’ve also kept me from saying a lot of stupid things over the years—not all, but a lot.  If you haven’t noticed, though, attorneys aren’t exactly generous about giving away secrets of their profession. My friend’s advice, therefore was limited.

“Don’t lie,” he said. “It’s five years in prison if you lie to them.”

He elaborated a bit more on lies in general and the Feds’ lack of gradation, moderation, or humor concerning them. The thing I remember is that the only time he used the word “white” was when he assured me they would prosecute men of my race as quickly as they would those of others. "Don't fib, ad lib, or mess in your crib," he said, using one of the bedrock legal principles he had learned at Cambridge.

Of course I followed his advice. Argumento wasn’t only an attorney, he was a reserve Major in Military Intelligence. He even drew summer duty at the Pentagon. If he said “Don’t lie,” as numb as it may have made my tongue to comply, I told the truth.

Turned out, the agent was a super-nice chap. I told the truth. He thanked me and confirmed that I only reinforced what they already knew. We gossiped a bit, and he was about to leave without learning much.

Except for one little thing, and he perked up when I “dropped a dime” with that tidbit. Oh dear, was he happy. And, I found that Pierre Choderlos de Laclos was correct when he wrote, "La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froide." In fact, I served mine with a frigid glass of Chardonnay and some chilled wedges of “Bite-me Brie.” I still smile at the memory.

But that was a long time ago, in a paradigm far away.

I have to assume that Argumento was correct, and the five-year standard still applies.

If it does, the term “March Madness,” is going to take on a whole new meaning. My fellow Americans, what say, let’s put the wine in the fridge?

It just says, "From H."
Quick, before it gets warm.

Growing Up Southern: March 1, 2018

This ain’t exactly my area of expertise, but when has that ever stopped me? There’s been a lot of talk lately about top secret security clearances. No wonder. Some guy who didn’t rate one had access to all kinds of sensitive, potentially world-changing, info. It was a case of nepotism run amok. Oh well. Putin and “Nutty-Yahoo” both had bad days this week because of it. Tough noogies.

Anyway, here’s what I know, and it goes back a few years. Seems back when I actually knew people in military security, it worked this way: the easiest people to clear for a top-secret rating were young, straight, middle-class kids from “Andy Hardy America.”

They had likely never been in more trouble than getting caught sneaking cigarettes.

They didn’t allow kids to disrupt school classes back in those days, so classroom violence in one's past.

BB guns and single-shot 22s didn’t exactly invite mass shootings.

Temptations were limited, for boys, to girls like Beatrice Lundsford who wore her blouses a little low and showed too much of “Bouncin’ Betty” and “Jigglin’ Jenny.”

Temptations were limited, for girls, to “Elvis the Pelvis,” shakin’ that thang like ringing a bell.

Kids had no money, so there were no financial under-dealings to uncover.

You had to work if you weren’t in school, so truancy was unheard of, plus … there was always Beatrice Lundsford.

Imaginations were limited to mundane dreams like being able to whip Milton Walker or take a girl away from the captain of the football team.

There were no homosexuals—at least that’s what Franklin Graham says (because of all the thoughts and prayers being offered up in school)—so no likelihood of blackmail.

Aspirations were limited to a good job with the Highway Department.

“Bogartin’ a joint” meant being able to hold an unfiltered Lucky in your mouth with no hands and not slobber all over it.

“Hookin’ up” meant getting ready to go fishing.

“Coppin’ a joint,” was when the police officers drove through the “Wagon-Wheel” to make sure the kids were okay and not gathering around outside their cars planning mischief of some sort.

“Tonight’s the night” meant that there was a revival in town and Lennie Anne Colclasure was going to get “saved” again, a free show that was worth much more than a 50-cent movie. As they say these days, “If it gets the kids in church, nothing is off-limits.” There is a longstanding rumor that her “Faint and Fall” was nominated for an Academy Award once, but I don’t think that is true. It was true that every traveling evangelist in America knew her mailing address and sent her personal invitations to their services. It may also be true about that being the origination of “the backstage pass.” I don’t know.

Anyway. “Gimme your lunch money,” meant that it wasn’t your day to walk to “The Little Chef” to get the hamburgers.

“Drive-by shooting was what you and your buddies did back of O.T. Bennett’s daddy’s place with your BB-guns and bicycles.

It was a less tempting place. So those kids made the “top-secret” cut while their more sophisticated cousins, who benefitted from many more opportunities for nefarious behavior, didn’t.

It was said that Great Britain often suffered from internal espionage because of primogenitor. That’s where the eldest son inherited everything in the family. Second sons, and beyond, faced the military or civil service. Since the Brits naturally assume that the higher classes inherently possess a higher-level moral structure, they don’t bother the rich or elite with any sort of thorough examination for security clearances, or anything else.

We all know, now, how well that works out.

Back when juvenile crime was
tormenting the farmer's piglets.

Sunrise With Schubert

Off to earn money today and time just fugited away, Here's a harmless little literary fancy designed to annoy a Dame Daphne du Maurier fan I know.

Last night I dreamed I went to see Ernest Hemingway again. We had drinks. He had a chilled Vermouth. I had a Four Roses. It came ice cold, with three large ice cubes bobbing in the amber liquid. We talked. Our conversation originated in an animation born of enthusiasm but calmed as the night grew silent. I nodded as I filled his glass. Next I freshened mine, placing the warm glass of the bottle against the still-chilled top of the glass and listening to the clink of two disparate elements like two minds meeting for the first time. I raised it and gave thanks for the time spent together.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools,” he said.

“And,” I said.  “for your wisdom.”

“What wisdom?”

“The wisdom to sit with a stranger and talk.”

“I never had to choose a subject,” he said. “My subjects chose me.”

“It must involve trust.”

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”

“Have you, from where you dwell now, heard of the strange state of our country?”

“America is no moveable feast.”

“It seems we trusted the wrong person, or people. There was no intent to destroy. Many people simply believed.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.”

“What do you think of courage?”

He raised a hand and examined it. He turned a finger so that he saw the nail first and then the print. He moved it to and fro, as if to concentrate his being on the most singular of places. “Courage is grace under pressure.”

“To move without talking about the movement?”

“Never mistake movement for action,” he said.

“No, of course not.”

He thought and added another to his first. “Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.”

I thought, then said, “The man so many worship now claims courage.”

“Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?”

This stopped me and I stared at my glass as if were a cauldron of wisdom. “He says now, and his followers believe him, that he would brave if the chance arose, that he would, as an old warrior once said, ride to the sounds  of the cannons.”

“Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Eeew.

Sunrise With Schubert: February 27, 2018

I read once where William James said, “I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.” Do feelings follow actions? I don’t know. James is called “the father of modern psychology,” so there may be some truth in it.

Victor Frankl, a survivor of the Holocaust noted how finding beauty in a sunset, while in a German concentration camp, helped some Jewish prisoners survive while others succumbed.

I do remember, personally, that as America drifted into a national state of nihilism that culminated in the Vietnam War, folk-music enjoyed a brief but emotionally charged revival in an attempt to prolong our descent into madness.

And let us not forget that Steve Martin once reminded us that one simply cannot frown and play the banjo simultaneously. I know that's true.

What does this all have to do with the price of Scotch? Well, I’m old enough to remember seeing, on television, the culmination of one of America’s other darkest periods. Actually, at the time I just thought it was just a bunch of old white men, half in uniforms, sitting around talking and disrupting the morning television programs.

It was, of course, the so-called “Army-McCarthy Hearings.” They would lead us out of one of America’s most awful national disgraces.

Known now simply as the “McCarthy Era,” that was a time that the American Spirit was hijacked by a man born absent of any normal sense of goodness or righteousness. It was if a malfunctioning gene had destroyed in him any modicum of empathy or morality. Many Americans revered him for reasons of their own, although he destroyed lives as casually as we might swat a gnat. It was a dark time.

It was a time when this man captured the support of enough Americans, through lies innuendos, braggadocio, threats, and manipulation of the press to chip away at the very foundations of our experiment in democracy.

It was a time when otherwise patriotic Americans allowed a charlatan to disparage the most cherished individuals and institutions of America, calling General George Marshall a traitor and claiming that the United States Army was riddled with Communist spies.

It was a time when a heartless demon redefined what was proper and fitting behavior on the part of elected officials.

It was a time when bad was called good and a malignant political parasite was called a patriot.

It was a time when our country watched with bemused silence, until one great man said to this Joseph McCarthy, “You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? Senator.”

That’s all it took. One brave man among millions of Americans. A man named Joseph N. Welch slew the seemingly unstoppable demon, by singing the truth. In doing so, he saved hundreds of lives from being destroyed. Hundreds of others had already been, in sham hearings. Those hearings, in fact, were held in committee rooms in the very capitol of our nation. It was to our everlasting shame, indeed a time of dark days.

Men who had stormed the beaches at Normandy and Iwo Jima, along with the families who had sacrificed to support them, had stood outside those committee room doors and refused to enter.

Why bring this up now? After all, I had not, at the time, reached the political version of what my up-bringers called “The Age of Accountability.” (That’s a religious term invented to help dampen a child’s primal fear of facing eternity in a fiery pit of unimaginable agony for rejecting the belief of its elders).

I have always known, however, that if I had been of age while those dreadful, spirit-killing hearings were happening, even if I didn’t have a singing voice, I would have rushed in, at the top of my voice, to save our country.

Planning how to cut food stamps?
I don't think so.

Morning Thoughts: February 26, 2018

Some decisions in life are easy. I decided to marry my wife the instant I saw her sashaying toward me, her long red hair “just a’swinging.” That was the very first time I ever saw her. When she gave me that, by now well-known, “what the hell are you looking at?” look, I knew I had made the right decision.

Some decisions are simple but complicated. I had just as soon not have entered the military when the time came. I thought I was doing just fine. It got complicated when the United States Department of Defense inserted itself into the equation via the Draft Board in my hometown. Since my father was no physician, attorney, banker, or fourth generation patriarch, there was no arguing with the members of that dreadful board.

It was simple, though, to decide what branch would receive the honor. I had long revered the United States Navy. When I was fourteen, an older cousin came home from four years of service telling of what sounded to me like the rip-roaringest, goddamdest, gut-bustingest, fun-filldest time a person could have and not get arrested for it. It spell-bounded me for sure.

I could, at that age, imagine the seas swelling beneath me and the salt air putting hairs on my chest with each breath. I imagined walking the streets of ports of call, the local girls “getting the vapors” just looking at me in that dazzling white uniform. I longed to reach the age at which my folks would allow me to quit school and enlist. I was in a state, so to speak.

I grew out of it, gradually discarding all the recruitment material I had collected. I set my mind on more civilian goals. But when the aforementioned draft board intervened, I retained enough of my boyhood enthusiasm to seek out a nice young man in one of those white uniforms. He assured me that I was just the sort of person they—the Navy—and he, were looking for. He painted such romantic visions of romantic seaports, bravely weathering rough seas, and sharing sunrises with flying fish that I was sold.

“Give me a fast ship,” I said, “for I intend to go in fun’s way.”

When my beloved Navy handed me orders for Vietnam instead, I had to another decision to make.

I was stationed in Monterey at the time, but on a weekend jaunt to LA, I met some people who offered a way to get me to Canada, undetected. Our northern neighbors didn't indulge in such things as unprovoked wars. I pondered that decision for days. Then one morning, sitting on the edge of The Great Tide Pool in Monterrey, I made the decision to play the hand life had dealt me, for better or for death. See an only slightly fictionalized account of it here.

Now, each time I see our current president’s face on television, I realize that, if a certain party hadn’t sashayed by me once, I would still be regretting that decision I made long ago with the wide Pacific Ocean beckoning me toward the unknown.

Decisions force us to learn that we must, in life, take the dismal along with the sublime. Our strength to face the future, in fact, is tempered by the fires of previous trials. We press on.

These mental meanderings result from the fact that the subject of my greatest decision and I face a trying and major task today. It will test us, but we will prevail. We are well-tempered, after all, and will face it together.

Someday, maybe I’ll have the strength and eloquence to talk about it. In the meantime, if you think you hate this Monday, you have no idea.

Advice: Never include a military
recruiter in your decision-making.

Morning Thoughts: February 25, 2018

It’s always something. The monsoons lifted, but the “mudsoon" lingers. Outside, there is a two-inch thick coating of claymore mud. More on the kitchen floor. The spiders have tracked it up the walls creating limericks along the way. Here’s one:

There was a Black-Widow named Lexis,

Who hooked up with a Recluse from Texas,

She showed him some fun,

But when they were done,

She feasted on his solar plexus.

Around the world:

On Facebook, there’s muddy reasoning.

In Washington, there’s muddy talk.

From Hollywood, there are only muddy films.

The top brass in the military is bragging about their doctrine, developed in the 1970s, of only invading dry countries. “Mud is for fools and farmers,” they say.

I heard a TV evangelist say that “there is no mud in Heaven,” but how in the hell would he ever know?

Even the TV commercials are muddy now. I don’t even know what they are promoting.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, It’s a mud-prone world.

 We have to change the HVAC mud-filter daily.

I tried to go for a walk but found that, when I took a breath, I exhaled a fine mist of mud.

They had to close the barber and beauty shops in town. Hair was so muddy it ruined the scissors.

Birds can’t fly for the caked-on mud. They are disguising themselves as dog-turds to fool the cats.

The catfish have made the pond bank into a mud-slide. They are the only ones having fun.

If it will only dry up a bit, I have to search for our vehicles. They all slid away to parts unknown.

When they fired up the church organ this morning, only wads of mud shaped like notes came out.

And speaking of churches in the community, the favorite hymn of the day seems to be, "When the Mud is Dry up Yonder, I'll Be There."

Church sign down the road reads, “Don’t build your house on shifting mud.”

The missionaries are using Skype.

Elsewhere:

Walmart is running a special on mud-pie shells.

This morning, I saw a group of nightcrawlers building a mud-raft out of bamboo shoots.

Later, I saw a periscope moving through the mud. It was the postman.

A peddler just came by selling mud-filters for baby bottles.

  

The mud-mist is so thick that the 18-wheelers on I-40 are slowed to 93-miles per hour.

And I’m working on an essay entitled, “Mud As A Metaphor – How Life’s Most Worthless Things Stick To Your Shoes the Longest.”

Joggers beware!