"Long Distance"

I have an idea for two little stories. In one I buy an old rotary phone at a flea market. I take it home plug it in, and dial my childhood phone number.

My Mom answers.

Time has twisted on itself somehow via the mixture of old, and new phone technologies, and patched me through to 1960. So there I am with my Mommy on the line. Our phone lines stretching 55 years to connect us.

I haven't taken this plot further. I think I'm afraid to.

In another story I'm on the train to Hollis Queens. I get off at the Hollis stop, and notice that winter has turned to spring.

The platform has shed forty seven years.

Men wear brimmed hats, and all the ladies are in dresses. The streets are fresh, the buildings seem newer, and the cars have fins. According to the newsstands Kennedy is President, and Elvis is still King.

The MTA has delivered me to 1962.

My dear, and long departed Aunt Sybil lives here. We always called her "Mum". No one remembers why. Just as we don't know how my sister became "Cookie".

Anyway back then this part of Queens was still sweet. I'd forgotten how lovely it was before the city swallowed it up. It's so long ago that it's cycled back to "Sweet". I walk to Auntie's house. I ring her bell, she opens the door.

"Hi Mum" I quietly say.

She knows who I am at once, and invites me in. I pour my heart out to her just as I did as a lad. She cooks as she listens.

I'm "almost an old man" I tell her. I'm "tired, sad, and confused". "The 21st century is a cruel, and bitter place". I can't find the strength to keep faith with all she, and my Mother had taught me. She listens, and comforts, and instructs as only she could.

I mention our going to the Moon then stopping. Never it seems to return. She smiles as I describe our little robots driving around on Mars, crashing into rocks, and flipping over into ditches. I tell her about our Negro President. She nods thoughtfully.

I spend an afternoon in 1962 with Auntie. Back there when our biggest problems were merely nuclear wars, and racial integration.

Such an innocent time it was.

After a wonderful meal, and helpful words I leave my version of Heaven. Mum keeps our trans temporal meeting her secret.

53 years to the day later my cousin, Mum's only surviving son, hands me a sealed note.
Yes, It's from my dear Auntie. She set it aside to be delivered to me years after her death.

What does it say?

I don't know.

I haven't opened it yet.

( "Mum" is the Aunt at the top of the photo.)


Stay Tuned.

"Radio Daze"

Tho' retired now this old post sums up my decades in that pointless thankless unkind business. I should have joined the fucking Navy.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

It's hard to do a radio show. It's even harder to do a good one. So what's it like to do "Live Radio?" That's a disappearing form of broadcast where it's just you, and your guts in front of the mic, and nothing else.

 Well like someone said once, 

"...any damned fool can get himself in front of a camera or mic, and make a damned fool of himself.

Ain't that the truth.

So here it is. 

Imagine you're all alone on a stage with the population of a town watching, and listening. You're juggling 20 or 30 heavy sharp object to off key out of tune music.

Btw the stage you're on is on hydraulic lifts so is rocking like a boat in rough seas. That, and while juggling you're singing the funnier  songs from various "Gilbert, and Sullivan" comic operettas.

Btw you're nauseous have a killer headache tunnel vision, and your throat is shredded from the flu.

From time to time during your performance you give heartfelt commentaries hilarious satires, and intimate stories from your life concerning love sex life death betrayal, and that pain in your side that just won't go away.

In the middle of all this you take calls from extremely stupid, and hostile people who may or may not have been paying attention to anything you've been doing.

All the while the stage manager,..who hates you has sabotaged the lighting, and all the mics.

You make very little money, and the management thinks you don't deserve even that...as does some of the audience. 

The stage manager distrusts all the live performers because he can't control everything they do...bad for business that. He wants to replace them all with Dog Acts...more dependable.

Anyway after the tattered curtain goes down you get harassed  by your political enemies among the staff, and union, your pay check is short, some bastard has stolen stuff out'a your locker.

There's a waiting phone call from your landlord, and oh yeah then you get handed a note from the stage manager that sez your next two performances are cancelled. 

Seems he's found a dog, and, and a flea circus to replace you.

Ah, but you never give up because the gawd-damned fucking show must frigging go the fuck on!

Hope this explains the Biz for ya. Peace.

Stay tuned.

"I Always Wanted to be a Geisha"

As I've mentioned on various of my pages current, and nuked. My Grandma used to dress me up in girlie stuff. She especially liked stuffing her old bonnet from the 1920's on my head.

Well back in her day boys, and girls dressed the same so she didn't think it weird to do me up. My Dad was a tad freaked out, and eventually put a stop to it, but for a few years my Granny, and I explored junior cross dressing.

Basically yeah Grandma was trying to turn me into a transvestite. Today she'd be arrested, and shot. What with everything being illegal now. Back then however people had Freedom to do weird stuff...imagine that.

Anyway I guess among other things this is why as a kid I wanted to be a Nun, Nurse, Cowgirl, Ballerina, and yeah a Geisha.

The only drag I'm into these days is my eventual intention to get a re-enactors Civil War Calvary uniform.  The 9th U.S. Colored Regiment. I'm really specific in my fantasies.

Still if I was a kid, and still had my girlish figure I imagine I would do the Geisha thing. My Dad would'a had kittens, but Grandma would have loved it.

Ain't life interesting.

"Everybody..."

"Them"

CONSPIRACY theorists have finally been convinced there is no secret society running the country because no-one could possibly believe any of this was orchestrated.

Since the dawn of the internet, bedroom-based conspiracy theorists have thought society was controlled by a shadowy ‘Illuminati’ who somehow have the manpower to run everything.
Tom Logan, from Stevenage, said: “If they are running it then someone needs to be sacked.

“Or sacrificed, if that’s what they do.”

Racist, Norman Steele added, “I used to think the Jews were running everything. But they seem pretty organized, so I can’t imagine they’d be behind this mess.”

Professor Henry Brubaker, from the Institute for Studies, added: “When you look at the current state of affairs, it’s pretty clear who is running it.

“The French.”

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The above describes my feelings exactly. No self respecting Mad Rulers of the World, and Cosmos would be running a demented disaster like what we've got.

I mean if there really 'were' a bunch of guys wearing funny hats weird robes chanting shit, and ruling the world from a bunker somewhere. Things might actually be a lot better.

Taken from or if you will brazenly stolen from:

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk


Stay Tuned.

"More Bad News"

We're killer Apes that pay income tax, and wear hats. However yes we have a spark...a tiny spark of something better, and brighter. Time we need time. Evolution is so slow. The gene that some few have that dampens aggression, and opens new channels of intelligence needs time.

My lay person's estimate is 20 to 50 thousands years before it's a given common trait. The problem is that such few that have it are so often either killed outright in childhood for being different or pushed aside in mating competition.

This is why the kind gentle ones are so rare.

As for those many thousands of years needed...we don't have it. That ecological "Tipping Point" is not in the future, but the past. Perhaps 50 to 100 years past. Maybe slightly longer. Some in the field are beginning to realize this. Right now it's being dismissed. But then back in the 1990's they said what's happening now these disasters wouldn't occur till mid-century or later.

Get the drift? ...we're fucked.

Mind you Earth 'will' abide. Heck in it's early history it survived a hit by an object the size of Mars. So we're no threat. Earth will just right itself without us. In 30 million years or so you'd never know we were ever here.

As for them 30 Million years. The scars humans will leave behind on the earth, quarries tunnels city traces landfills will be gone mostly by then.

Oh sure if you knew what you were looking for you might find a ceramic doodad or two.  Maybe a tunnel or urban trace here, and there.

Also though the half-life of most of the radio-active materials we fooled around with will have cooled off. There are some artificial exotic radiated materials we made with half-lives that border the hundred million mark.

If you were an Exo-Geologist from another star system say 60,000,000 years from now. That, and your dig was in the neighborhood of a former Laurence Livermore site. You'd be surprised, and intrigued at the radiation readings you were getting.

The source is clearly artificial, and has been in this deposit for tens of millions of years. Like the Voyager probes sailing out to the stars this find would say there was an ancient intelligent species that once lived on this world.

'That' at long last would be our "First Contact".


Stay Tuned.

"Our Better Angels"

Well in 2010 more non-white babies were born in this Republic than white ones. This shouldn't matter I mean we're all just folks. However we know it does which is why some whites are going nuts. Trump, and wanting their country back, and all.

Well I'll say this.

In the life-time of people living today whites in America will be an ethnic minority. That is just a mathematical fact. However don't worry. Really don't. Because we'll be more just, and kinder to you than you 'ever' were to us.

That's the truth...so chill.


Stay Tuned.

"Dancing in my Dreams"

"Seasons"

A brief though hard rain blew through town late this afternoon. Winds tossed the trees back, and forth. Leaves filled the air. All that Wizard of OZ stuff on steroids.

Later that evening I went out for a walk on the Parkway. Eastern Parkway in fact. This street began as a deer trail. Then in colonial times a horse track for 200 years or so.

When they put in the subway lines in the late 19th early 20th centuries it became a four lane highway. With parkland on either side. Here is where I played as a child.

Time, and circumstance have brought me back to where I began.

So many changes. I recall all the Whites fleeing to their 'Burbs when Coloreds, and Hispanics started to come in. Now their grandchildren are here. Back from their strange exile in the land of Bar-B-Q pits, and segregated pools.

They're welcome as all are here.

Walking tonight along the Parkway I heard the symphony of languages that so marks this Emerald City. Haitian creole French Russian varieties of Spanish Romanian Mandarin various sorts of English,...I think I even heard a few bars of Standard English in the Symphony's  adagio.

I couldn't live anywhere else.

I sensed autumn. Just a very slight aroma. The fall scent was in the air after the storm. It was warm, and humid yes, but the breeze had an edge of coolness about. In the same way you sense spring in very late winter...a cold breeze yet with a faint warm edge.

The Sun, and Moon have chased each other through the seasons. We have lived another summer, and now prepare for short days cold nights, and the turning of the leaves.

A Wonder.


Stay tuned.

"Time Goes By"

This very well may be me in one of my brief earlier lives. I say "brief" because I don't think I lived into old age in any of the others. This may be the first time for that.

Which is why everything now is such a surprise.

Well here I am at the very start of this time around. I recall so well how so much seemed familiar. I was so sure I'd seen certain things before. This I suppose because in the early 1950's so much of 19th century even traces of 18th century New York was still apparent.

Life after life.

This can't be proven scientifically. It's all so subjective. I hope it stays that way. We need the mysterious. Things that are not quite there yet there.

Like touching an Angel's wings.

It's said that they are just this side of solid. Like running your hands through warm air. There, but not quite.

As it should be.

Stay Tuned.

"I'm All Packed, and Waiting!",...Love Sidney

It is my most sincere Hope that Peter Pan will get this message via sub-space in 1959. That he'll get to my prison...aka "Home" in that time period, and rescue me from the next near 60 years of hell, and assorted annoying bullshit called "Life". (There's 1959 me below.)

"Yes I know all about the World of Men with their Greed Wars Cruelty, and Madness. You exterminate whole peoples you murder babies children you poison the land the seas the skies. Yes I know your world well. Which is why I rescue as many of your little ones as I can"


Stay Tuned.

"A Dream"

I had another surreal dream last night. These times seem to engender them.

The seas had risen. Then froze. Polar bears swam, and played in the ice bound city streets. The stars were bright the moon was close so close.

I swam with Polar Bears.

I swam with these bears, and their cubs. This beneath the drowned streets. I saw cars parked where they were left,...buses. All under a new frozen sea.

I sat on an ice flow, and watched as a giant moon rose above skyscrapers that jutted above this new Arctic sea.

All this on a now slowly healing Earth.

Stay Tuned.

"Psalm of the Hungry Child" #2

The "City Dept. of Old Farts" thinks I'm nuts so sent me to a Shrink. This while deciding which Geriatric Gulag to deport me to. The doc' is a thirty-something with turquoise hair, and 1980's jewelry.

She asks how I feel.

"Swell" sez I.

" I haven't foamed at the mouth or shit my self in weeks now."

"Although I just had a dream where I was being chased down the street by my bed springs."

She takes notes nodding calmly.

Ms. Turquoise wanted to know what sort of meds I'm on, and if they're effective.

"A bunch, and more or less." 

"I mean it stops me from jumping out of windows or slashing my wrists,...again."

She lifts an eyebrow,..."Again?"

"Yeah."

I show junior my scars from various boyhood attempts. What a mess. I never got it right. Sure I learned how later, but won't tell you as a public service. 

It was about this time them floating Naked Angel Boys clutching teddy bears showed up again. They came through the wall above the shrink.

I decided not to mention them.

I'm asked if I've ever had "urges of violence?"

The Angels start jerking off over me.

"Violence..sure. I mostly dream of kicking the bloody crap out'a bullies Tea Party hacks the IRS homophobes, and them butt-holes that make that disgusting sound with their teeth, and tongue."

I warm to the subject by going into medieval detail. Vats of acid piano wire wood chippers heavy objects dropped from great height. That whole "Wile-e-Coyote" routine. 

It starts raining Angel jizz. 

I think I scared her with all this because her eyes began darting to the door which them Angels were departing through.

...if she saw them she didn't let on.

Anyway I asks if she could do me a solid, and slip me some medical dope or a few hits of morphine.

Love's that Morphine!

She changes the subject wanting to know if I was abused as a kid. Gimme a break what kind'a question is that.

"You kidding who wasn't?"

"It was like the worse parts of the Bible. You want details watch "Jerry Springer."

I mentions how I could use a pastrami hero about now. She looks up from her notes, and sez, "...you associate your memories of abuse with food?"

I tell her I was hungry all the time as a kid, and not just for food. It was a childhood Apocalypse. I mean what with getting beat up terrorized robbed, and humiliated everywhere all the time. 

I decided to turn the tables,...I do this to shrinks.

"What's the worse thing that's ever happened to 'you'?"

A pause then she sez,...

"I was raped"


Silence.......


Christ on a blind pony. 

'This' is the worse thing that can happen to a human being. I mean other than waking up an Orthodox Jew in Dachau in the winter of 1943. 

I got "done" too. Gang raped. Three big kids at day camp held me down, and took turns fucking me up my 10 year old ass. 

I screamed. 

They said I could "scream all I liked". "Nobody" would come. Nobody did. Nobody ever came. 

Just like prison.

Like them floating Angels I kept this to myself.

After a bit my doctor tells me I'm not crazy.

She says, "...I can't get you any dope, but I'll up your med dosage, and throw in some Valium."

"Thanks" I say.

She closes her note book.

"I think we're through for today."

We shake hands, and part,...till next week.

Stay Tuned. 

"Sewing Box, Medicine Pouch"

This was my Grandma's sewing box. She kept various needles, and small sewing tools in it. I remember first seeing this when I was perhaps three or four.

I also remember the shooting star that streaked over my Aunt Josey's house out in the country. The memory of this box, and that star are commingled. At this time in my life. I'm pushing 60. I'm fascinated with family stories. Both mine, and others.

As every writer knows family is a rich source of material. Long time fans will have read the many stories I've written about my life, and family here, and other blogs.

Well 'this' is my grandma's little sewing box. She bought it in the early 1920's just before my mom was born. In 1972 when Granny passed away the box was passed on to me.

For most of the years between then, and now I've used it as a medicine pouch.

Native Americans or as most of you call them Red Indians use these pouches as protective talismans. One puts personal scared items in a skin or cloth bag. It's then "blessed" or in some way consecrated by your shaman.

You then wear it or keep it very near for life. It will protect you,...or so tradition sez.

Unlike Grandma I can't pass the box/pouch on. One doesn't. You take your pouch with you to the next life. So in my case It'll be cremated with me.


Stay Tuned.

"Our Lives"

I'm certain that in other lives I was a warrior. That, and a mother many times. Many lives with great broods of loud wild wonderful children. I think this is my first life in a big city. I have this feeling about wilderness, and sometimes farms. 

My family had a dairy farm down south long ago. If things were just slightly different I'd have been down there running the place with my brother. Though my brother is gone now. So I suppose I'd be about ready to hand it over to either his or my sons. 

We are so many people so many realities so many lives that are faintly remembered...like dreams on waking. We wake, and a whole life is on the tip of our souls,...then gone.

Stay Tuned.

"Dreams, and Whispers"

“The Mass—and I mean every single Mass—is heaven on earth.” – Scott Hahn (The Lamb's Supper)

Here's my problem. So many religions have a similar "Chart" as above. What their rituals look like, and what it really is beyond human senses. Basically spiritual feudalism. Which is no surprise this was the political system in which the "Chart" at least for western Christians was envisioned during.

My whole argument with religion is that it's a man-made institution. 

Eastern Western all of them. There's a reason the spiritual realms...if real, are called "...The Unknown Country". We just don't know. Mystics may have had glimpses, but even those are suspect. The only things we have are cryptic words or phrases that may or may not have been uttered by prophets saints or the Divine. 

Well that or our subjective experiences. 

Mine tell me that something 'is' going on...I just don't know really what. Other than as I've said, "We seem to be part of something Vast, and Wonderful." 

In this I in no way mean to demean the faith of others in their religion. Though man-made I will go as far to say that these institutions may well have been touched by realms beyond ours. The Eucharist the Kabbalah the Four Winds etc. 

It's just that these organizations are as frail fallible, and questionable as we as individuals are. Yes I infer that just as institutions made by humans can have a Divine touch so of course can we as individual persons. 

This all this of course is heresy in all the Abrahamic faiths, and most of the eastern ones...I think I get a break from a few of the Buddhist ones. However if it turns out to be just as the dear Nuns taught us. Well I'm sure that Upper management will have a broad sense of humor about all this. 

...so endeth the Sermon.


Stay Tuned.

"THE FACTS OF LIFE"

Back during the Ice Age when me, and Fred Flintstone were little kids. I used to think that all the granite skyscrapers on the New York City Skyline were made of Graham crackers. This before the our sky was blotted out by hundreds of glass, and steel disasters waiting to happen.

Glass Box construction methods plus 9/11 anyone?

Right. Anyway I really thought buildings were made of various forms of candy, and crackers...made sense. Well if you were 5 or 6 it did. I thought those big doors on the walls of the Holland tunnel were made from dark Chocolate as well.
The cables holding up all the bridges were a kind of taffy, and the tops the roofs of the old subway trains were made from coal. I mean they sure looked like it.


Well of course it turned out that them doors in the Holland Tunnel are made of liquorice. That, and the old skyscrapers are made of pasta as are the bridge cables.

The roofs of old subways were in fact made from coal, and all the big bridges made from giant Chinese erector sets. Makes perfect sense.

Btw I should have committed all this to paper years ago. I got beat out by some jerk that turned it into a children's book, and made a zillion bucks.

Dammit!

Oh one more thing...the seats on the buses, and subways are as many have suspected made from meat. This explains the smell in summer.

"Red October"

While I was otherwise engaged it seems some history happened. The President of the United States of America visited Cuba.

For a boomer like me this is a big bleeping deal...like the fall of the Berlin Wall where innocents trying to escape the grey heartlessness of failed revolutions were shot down like dogs.

Like having the architects of the Vietnam war coming forward. Those like Robert McNamara.... Him, and others admitting their lies. Acknowledging it was a failure from the beginning. A million+ Vietnamese, and 50,000+ Americans slaughtered in that war.  All that Death, and our nation brutally divided for nothing...Nothing.

All the assassinations of that era.

All of it.

Now this. The perhaps final correction to all those arrogant blood splattered mistakes. This mistake, the Cuban Missile Crisis, that nearly killed the Northern Hemisphere in Nuclear Fire sleeps at last.

When Air Force One touched down in Havana. Touched down at Jose Marti International Airport one of the last pieces of the Cold War was laid to rest. Those in my age cohort lived to see it.

An end of an era of power aggression, and blind arrogance by two World Superpowers holding the whole world hostage to their extreme obsessions.

...and so another age begins.

( An observation.)

I've given thought to what would have happened to me, and mine had the bombs had fallen during that long ago October. My parents would have never grown old my brother myself, and sisters would have never grown up. We all for the past 54 years would have been blast shadows on a wall in Brooklyn.

Stay Tuned.

"The Horse"

Here's a story. My dad grew up on a farm down South. One day he saw a man beating a horse he was making to haul a load too big for the animal.

Well dad took the whip out of the guys hand...yeah he was using a whip. ...

Well then guy took a swing at dad...missed, and my dad then beat the crap out of him,...'and' warned him he'd get more if he saw him doing that sort of thing again. My father hated cruelty of all kinds. He passed that on to all us kids.

Amen.

Stay Tuned.

"The Oath of a Knight"

"The Oath of a Knight"

Be without fear in the face of your enemies.

Be brave honest generous, and kind.

Oppose evil in all of it's forms.

Shun what is easy. Embrace what is right.

Respect women.

Safeguard the helpless.

Respect the many Faiths.

Beware of Pride the source of all error.

Now in the name of G-d the founder of Dreams.

She who filled the "Well of Forever" with Souls, and put smiles on the lips of the unborn.

In the name of She who painted the Void with Fire, and Hope.

In that Name!

'And the names of Saint Michael, and Saint George the slayers of Dragons.

You are Consecrated,...now rise a Knight, and assume your Responsibilities.

(This is from a story I wrote some years ago. It's the final section, and stands alone fine. Feel free to use it when the opportunity arises to Knight a worthy Soul.)


Stay Tuned.

"AUNT JOSEY"

"Once upon a time", long ago when milk was delivered in bottles, and cars had fins. I used to spend my summers with my Aunt Josey. My "Aunt" or I should say my Grand Aunt Josey, 'cause she was my Grandma's sister, had a little house far out in the country.

She was a sweet Soul made of equal parts of kindness, and patients..

 My Aunt was the one that taught me that there's good in everyone no matter how they may seem on the outside. She also said that all the animals have souls, and go to heaven. No matter what they say in church.

I loved my Aunt Josey.

I remember one time we were up late. After reading my palm we sat listening to old 1930's records on her Victrola. I loved the old time music, and I loved being with Aunt Josey.

About that palm reading she read mine a lot. She gently held my hand closely examining my various "life lines." It would be as if she were reading some strange book that told of all my life had in store.
She'd look at my palm, then look at me, look at my palm again, and take a breath. All as if to say, ..."You have a serious life on the way!"

Fortunately I was a child innocent, and full of grace.

My nasty cynical side still slept. So all I did was giggle as Aunties fingers traced the lines of my life to come. She could read tea leaves too.

She came from an era where the acknowledgement of other realities, other realms of being were taken for granted. This decades before Oprah.

But to the story. As I said it was very late.

After we'd put the records away my Aunt took me by the hand, and led me through the kitchen, and out to the backyard. The night was warm, and sweet smelling. There was a gentle breeze , and a sky full of stars! Fireflies bobbed, and blinked above the grass.

There was a stillness, a quiet that covered everything that night. Like snow,..summer snow. Aunt Josey, and I sat on the back porch, and enjoyed that magical night,..so many years ago.

After a time she looked down at me, and said, "Sidney,..everyone in the world is asleep except for you, and me."

I looked up at her, she smiled. "Yes", she said, "Their all asleep."

"We're the only ones in the whole wide world looking at the stars, feeling the wind or talking to each other." "All of the animals, all the birds, all the fish underneath the sea, and all the people even your Mommy, and Daddy are asleep, and dreaming now.

Holding me close, and looking up at the stars Aunt Josey said, "We're the last ones, the last ones in the whole wide world,..that are still awake."

The Moon, the bright orange summer Moon was large in the sky.

"You see" ..."See." "The Moon has come close to kiss the world good night."
"The whole sleeping world." "It's come to kiss us good night too."

The Moon, the smiling "Man in the moon" filled our sky, and told us it was time to rest, time to sleep.
Aunt Josey picked me up, and took me to my room. She tucked me into bed, and helped me say my prayers. She kissed me good night, and went off to here own room.

In a little while, in a very little while both she, and I joined the Sleeping, Dreaming World.

(A story I wrote about my Grand Aunt "Josey".)


Stay Tuned.

"Matris of Deus plenus of Venia"

"Matris of Deus plenus of Venia"

"Fortunes of War"

"Fortunes of War"

Old Ozzie, and his dear gal Harriet were simple decent sweet folks. Complete air heads, but sweet.  

I'll bet they even felt sorry for them Colored folks that was getting the crap beat out'a them by them mean cracker cops down south. Fire hoses police dogs all that.

Ya has to remember this was the mid-1950's.

Why I wouldn't be surprised if the let their kids bring their Negro friends home from school. Being such swell folks I can see Harriet making up something special so them Coloreds will feel right at home.

Maybe cupcakes or black eye peas with fatback, and corn bread. She  thought about watermelon, but that might be a bit much so she got grapes instead.

Ol' Ozzie would probably start going on about what a great ball player Jackie Robinson is, and what a gentleman Nat king Cole seems.

Yep they'd be doing all that. Embarrassing the hell out'a their kids, and making the Coloreds wishing they was having root canal instead.

'But me I'm different I liked all the nice liberal stuff from back in the day. I went through a lot of this steamy liberal guilt jazz from my pal's parents.

I thought it was touching.

They really were trying to be nice,...and that's nice. Sure as shit beats all the evil neurotic double talk we crap on each other today.

I mean I dug all the dripping nice nice they were laying on me. Sure it was nuts as hell, but like I say they were sincere.  Unfortunately things went south for all them nice White folks like Ozzie, and his family.

First the Black racists radicals kicked all the nice White folks out of the Civil Rights movement. That, and grew their hair into giant popcorn poppers...I did. 

Btw sleeping in them Afro things was like drowning in a mattress.

Most of us hated it. 

It was impossible to keep neat, and in the humidity, and heat it was like having a Turkish bath on your head. We're not supposed to say this shit, but hey we're pals.

'But I digress.

Well the 1970's hit our hero's Ozzie, and Harriet like an 18 wheeler slamming into the back of a Pinto. The whole mess combusting into a giant ball'a flame!. First Ozzie lost his good job when the plant went to Pango Pango.

Harriet was forced to go to work, and was mugged at the bus stop. Didn't help that the perp was a kid of Color.

Then Ozzie's block began to change. Yeah 'they' started moving in. This meant of course that City services began to get spotty. Hey it's the American way. 

Less sanitation fewer cops the schools gone to hell...the usual.

Ozzie couldn't find work. There were break-ins around the 'hood for the first time. Their friends began to move out, and Ozzie became a Republican.

Liberals do that when the ethnic shit hits the fan.

Today in 2016 some of Ozzie's grand kids are Neo-Nazis. One of them went to prison for murdering an inter-racial couple. This as an initiation for joining the "Christian Army of the True White Jesus".

Ozzie's daughter married a Black lawyer, and their kid Ozzie's Black grandson  got life in Attica for murdering an inter-racial couple as an initiation for joining the "Islamic Army of the True Black Allah".

Oh my good intended criminally insane sleepless America.

Angels truly weep.

Stay Tuned.

"White Rose"

"White Rose"

Today we remember Sophie Scholl -- one of Germany’s most famous anti-Nazi heroes -- who would have celebrated her 95th birthday on this day. As a university student in Munich, Scholl, along with her brother, Hans, and several friends, formed a non-violent, anti-Nazi resistance group called the White Rose.
The group ran a leaflet and graffiti campaign calling on their fellow Germans to resist Hitler's regime.

Born in 1921, Scholl became involved in resistance organizing after learning of the mass killings of Jews and reading an anti-Nazi sermon by Clemens August Graf von Galen, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Münster. She was deeply moved by the "theology of conscience" and declared, "Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. 

They just don't dare express themselves as we did."

In 1943, Scholl and the other members of the White Rose were arrested by the Gestapo for distributing leaflets at the University of Munich and taken to Stadelheim Prison. After a short trial on February 22, 1943, Scholl, her brother Hans and their friend Christop Probst, all pictured here, were found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. 

At her execution only a few hours later, Scholl made this final statement: "How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?"

Following the deaths of the White Rose's leaders, their final leaflet was smuggled to England. In mid-1943, Allied Forces dropped millions of copies of the "Manifesto of the Students of Munich" over Germany. 

Sophie Scholl is now honored as one of the great German heroes who actively opposed the Nazi regime.

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"HEIRLOOMS"

"HEIRLOOMS"

My birthday is coming up. I'm getting well into my 60's now. Given all this I've been thinking things over. I've been wondering, where is everybody? Where is my family, my old friends, my school, my dog, my bike?

Where is that world that seemed so big, and complicated, and important. That lost world of dinners, homework, chores, math tests. That time, and place where I got in, and out of all sorts of trouble.

All those birthdays, trips to aunts, and uncles houses. The Christmas's, Thanksgiving's, July 4th bar-b-ques. Was all that a dream? Can whole worlds vanish without trace? The Universe blunders on as if we never were. That world I knew, and lived in has become as smoke in the wind. Curling, drifting, vanishing.

Maybe that's why heirlooms are so important to people. Those little scraps from a family's past. Old snap shots, a battered doll, a music box that doesn't work. These simple tattered things that speak for our past. Speak for all those now gone.

They say to Eternity, these little gems, they say,..."We lived, we were here! We loved, worked, suffered, laughed, learned, and died."

I've recently passed on to my oldest niece my Great Grandmothers music box. It's a simple pewter bowl. The top is a powder puff box, and the bottom is a music box. It's cover was the best part. It's beautifully engraved in the "art nouveau" style with a painted cameo of a lovely young girl in the center.

I used to play it all the time when I was little. Till I broke it, and my Mom had to send it to a jewelers to be fixed. You see before air conditioning people used to powder themselves lightly to stay cool, and prevent rash. I recall being powdered by my grandma, and ma in all my seen, and unseen places from that box.

I felt the time had come to pass this particular gem on. So when Kimberly came out east for a visit I gave it to her. I told her that it had been in our family for a hundred years. My Great Grandmother, her Great Great Grandmother got it as a birthday present from her father in 1915.

Great Grandmother whom we remember as "Grannie" gave it to my Grandmother, Violet, in the 1930's. Grandma Violet gave it to my mother Carmen when she was married in 1948. My Mom gave it to me shortly before she passed away in 1988. In time I gave it to my dear niece Kimberly, and told her to keep it in the family for another hundred years.

Btw, I suggested she only pass it down to the female line of the family as they are generally more sensible, and are less likely to sell it on "eBay" or it's successor business.

"Another hundred years", that's what I told her, and that's what's going to happen. I gave her the music box, and all the stories that surround it for her to pass on into this not so new century.

Amen.