Poetic Consciousness Marked by the Use of Persona
by Richard J. Hilber
Is the use of persona in poetry an essential marker of the development of a poetic consciousness? No, but only because the evolution of a writer as a poet may lead to a different answer. For the sake of naivete in us all, lets consider the possibility that it is an essential marker. I have and here is what I would share with you on my personal determination that it is so.
Poetry just is. One likes to think that one knows it when we he hear it (or read it). As noted by others before me, most appraisals of what makes mere verse transcend itself are themselves poetic expressions (again as noted already by almost everyone who cares to define the transition to poetry). Emily Dickinson for one in her attempt at definition of the challenge provided her own reader’s requirement of the experience of a poem:
"If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way?"
Our hopes for self discipline in composing free verse and traditional metrics have this in common: a poem ideally discloses its own argument that its form and language are elevated from the plane of prose to the plateau of poetry (or maybe the mountaintop or the bottom of the sea, if we catch the drift of Dickinson’s measure of a successful poem).
I intend here to speak of two aspects of the measure of success of language as poetry. The first is the perception by the schooled listener or reader that the writer of the verse may have obtained a level of consciousness that can be termed poetic consciousness (not a variation of punch drunk). The second would be a means, possibly thee means, to succeed in creating this perception which concerns us directly as writers of poetry or would be writers of poetry. Please do not deluge me with protests that the general audience for poetry has the slightest idea of what I just said. You’d probably be right.
But you would be wrong in terms of the perception. Poetry stirs. Audiences do not have to understand the poetic consciousness concept to know they are hearing poetry. It is those who would be writers of poetry who are evolving into poets who should care and care deeply. Raise your hand if you want the poems you write to stir your audience. We all want our poems like Lincoln's Gettyburg Address at a minimum to stir as it stirred the one person present who could hear every word the President spoke, Edward Everett who proceeded Lincoln as the main orator of the commemoration: "I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes."
However, if we are to provide for our evolution or process of becoming poets, we have to deal with the writers, who having created poetry, can be be said to have developed a poetic consciousness.
We are never shocked to find poetry in prose genres such as the essay, novel or the short story, or even history and biography. Which is not to say writers maintained the poetic consciousness of artifice and language when all that was required was direct communication of meaning. We know that a John Steinbeck or a Herman Melville can write hundreds of lines necessary to the narrative without stirring us to the degree a single passage does.
Those of us who care deeply about our artifice of course consider such lapses into prosaic language as undesired in our genre. Poetry that lapses into verse on occasion however is typical of long poems in the English language. The shorter the poem the more likely it is that the poet sustains the artifice, the thing itself as complete unto itself. The cynosure or gold standard in poetry is verse after verse that exemplifies the heightened use of language which is poetry.
Poets are human, some disgustingly human. When we speak of the poetic consciousness, lets not confuse it with transcending the human condition. That’s a different discussion, one I give the title “Poet's Journey from the Beautiful to the Ethical” (published to this blog on March 16, 2010). What we must expect of ourselves though is the distinction of devotion to our art, to the craft or artifice of poetry. We need to be passionate about our craft or the product, the poetry, is just more flotsam and jetsum on the oceans of ink churned out by publication.
Speaking of passion, I care not for a person’s politics or religion when I speak of our art. I wholly expect a person’s politics or religion will have a profound effect on his writing. On the other hand, I care for a writer’s poetic consciousness almost as much as I care for poetry itself. Afterall, the source of the poetry, the fertile ground for the flower, is the poet’s mind, his or her imagination. I may wish for the sake of a poet’s family and loved ones that she or he was more successful as a human being, but I will not descry the poetry for the irascibility of the poet who composed it.
I am more enamored with the trait of being inscrutable in a poet. Do we not wholly expect a poet when asked to comment on his poetry to be inscrutable? Afterall, the poem has to speak for itself. Those would be interviewers of poetry take note: you’d do a whole lot better to interrogate the poet on his or her art, process of composition, and artistic consciousness, than to ask a poet what the poem means. Just do not be surprised if the poet is just as inscrutable about his or her poetic consciousness as about what the poem means.
I personally may not like poems to be inscrutable but there are some highly successful poems and thinkers who are inscrutable for the reader or listener. By this I mean what is meant when the plane of a poem suggests depth beneath it, or maybe even much greater depth. The power here is in things not said, but poignantly present, supported by externalities, but not the thing or idea itself. This is the vague idea of metaphor that the poet while speaking of something is actually in indirection forcing the reader or listener to deal with the object of the comparison (which may be hinted at but better left unsaid - the poet trusting on the reader/listener's intuitive leaps of the imagination). This emphasis on indirection in this presentation will crescendo a bit later when I treat directly of the poet's voice which ideally is only heard behind the facade of the poem itself.
So I proceed to lay out for you than my view of what provides for the evolution of the poetic consciousness beyond the mechanics of metaphorical language.
First, separate process from goals, efforts from results, and be watchful of when you have succeeded in merging the goal with the result. Some writers just do not know when to quit. As a carpenters helper, I was told time and again by the foreman to stop pounding the nail when it became flush with the surface of the wood. He did not believe in packing wood, a result he called elephant prints.
Second, if you bother to think about goals as a writer, consider including a basic protestant, utilitarian goal, consider being of service to others. If one more poem is to be unleashed on the world, make sure it provides value, that it does what poetry potentially can do, stir people out of lethargy and conformity and into life. I for one do not expect or think or believe that all poets have such a missionary's passion for the effect of our poems on our readers. But I hold that all language that aspires to the heightened use of language can be characterized as enervating and inspiring and insightful (therefore useful spiritually and holistically to a reader or listener).
Third, write what is true to and for yourself. I have to believe that Edgar Allan Poe was never more himself than when he was writing the poems he had in him to write. It should never be about writing for publication. I am reminded of the Writer’s Digest articles that recommend we study the poems accepted for publication. Geez! I hope we remember that advice had to do with where we send our poems to be published, not that we would write the kind of poem that would be accepted for a particular publication (although that's perhaps an important activity for breaking into the realm of published poets).
A really good editor once told me that if its published don’t take it personal; if it’s not published, don’t take it personal. Write to suit yourself and you will be on your way to a poetic consciousness. Write what you know and out of your experience and you will not be wide of the mark.
Fourth, let your point of view be known to you alone, let it inform the decisions that go into writing, the style choices and the word choices, but do not tell us directly what that point of view is in any language meant to be poetic. Some say write down what your point of view is and then throw it in the waste paper basket. If you are enamored of such compositions, then write letters to the editor.
Fifth, take control. Do not confuse inspiration with perspiration. Make conscious decisions about what you are creating. Word choice, rhyme, rhythm, humorous, serious, et cetera. Some of you in the audience are saying that “poetry just happens.” I argue that that is so only because the work is done and the transcription is what seemed like no work at all. Some poems really do just write themselves, but let the first critic then be the person who lays claim to having authored the poem. Try using the pen name “Anonymous” if you are failing to take responsibility for the inherent decisions which go into automatic writing.
Lastly, any or all of the above rules are made to be broken, our craft demands it of us sooner or later. In this, I know my view today of my topic is unlikely my view of my art as I should evolve and I doubt very much I care a fig about "the hobgloblin of consistency" to give Emerson his due. I do suspect that one day you as my audience if not already would take issue with any or all of my five points.
Well then, with all that advice, we’re set. Let’s take a breather.When we come back, we will put you on the couch and see if we can parse your psyche.
Let’s say that you took all five pieces of advice. You are set, right? Well hardly. The piece that is missing is not really advice. It’s more about knowing you are sitting in the right room of the palace instead of some closet. If you have a poetic consciousness, then it helps to know you have it.
The number one way to know is your humility. Inspite of all the sweat and perseverance, you ultimately either have, or must, let go of your poem. Afterall, for the artificer, it is the success of the product (that is the thing itself we have undertaken). A poet can be no damn good to herself by taking the truth - the objective reality of her verse’s success as poetry - personally. Celebrate the success, but do not let it go to your head. You found your way out of a closet, but you may still be in the ante-room. You know there is even a greater room in the palace. And the personal honesty thing too. You have to know when a poem fails. That’s opportunity knocking. That’s why they say to spend time reading even mediocre poets as reminders of what we do not like in our own poetry.
Now, I see we have time to turn to my second point for the evening. The second would be the means to succeed in creating this perception that our poem stirs the audience, which concerns us directly as writers of poetry or would be writers of poetry. Let’s say that the very advice for developing a poetic consciousness (where and when in fact the advice is taken) will result in creating the perception by the audience that our poetry is stirring. Well I’m sorry. If you want a formula for success, that lecture is next door, in a course called “How to write poetry.” No, no, no! We are going to stick to our topic. We are going to talk about the mature versus the immature poetic consciousness. We are going to talk about persona, the use of personae in poetry.
On the elemental level, the use of persona in poetry is a bridge to fictionalizing our verse. Whose afraid of that? Good, no one. After all, we have all grown quite accustomed to truth stranger than fiction and more truth in the fiction than in the cold hard facts.
The principal is that verse can never succeed as poetry if it is not in fact separate from its creator, the writer. That invites, or leaves the door open, to the advantage or short cut in using various voices or persona as the speaker of the words of poetry. It creates opportunities, not the least of which are dramatic and situational irony. What we do not want as poets is to give fodder for a critical assessment that the only person in the audience who doesn't get the irony of the poem is the poet who crafted it! So the mere sophistication of poetry occurs when the writer adopts a persona deliberately. The use of a mask always reminds us that art is the approximation of reality and a metaphor for it, but not real, really experienced, but still not the same as reality itself.
So let say that you as a writer or would be writer of poetry made a command decision: you insisted on using one voice and one voice only, to the exclusion of all other voices. You did this to be true to yourself. You took my advice didn’t you? God bless you for that. You risk putting yourself on view for your audience. You held yourself up to potential ridicule. You risked boring the audience. The audience was stirred. Stirred to get up and leave! The one sin is to to take yourself seriously when in the public eye. Now Emily Dickinson for the most part just stayed out of the public eye. However, each of her poems eventually (like any poem which sees the light of day) had to succeed on its own merits. Hopefully, some exegete has determined how many separate personae Emily used.
Obviously, I have left a very upset poet twisting in the wind here. Such a poet who insists on one persona, himself or herself, may conclude that so much self revelation was not worth the ridicule. So a false self that will succeed with the audience becomes the object of our daydreams. Well, that’s a step in the right direction. It becomes thee step in the right direction when the persona selected is the right persona for a particular poem. It simply becomes another decision, like word choice.
So if you want to demonstrate maturity in your poetic consciousness, do intentionally choose the voices, the personae, in your poems. Give stream of consciousness, thought, dream, and speech to your personae who by the miracle of language come to stand for a particular point of view (not necessarily your own). You will have more fun writing poetry and it will be easier for you to stand back from your poetry as the poem’s first audience. It if doesn’t’ stir you, what makes you think it will stir an audience in a public reading of your poetry. Emily was right, you know. You are your first, most important, audience. She was long dead and gone when her poems proved up to her readers what she already knew!
Richard J. Hilber. Saturday, March 17, 2012.
Note. Poet Michael Ryan in an article entitled “My Favorite Poet: Emily Dickinson” among other commentators have already identified Dickinson’s critical statement and its source: “There is no information in Emily Dickinson's poems that separates her from us. She works the seams of language through her mastery of rhetoric and poetic form. She extracts from words "amazing sense." Instead of merely referring to the experience of the writer, the poem is made to be an experience for the reader, which is precisely how she says she knows poetry in her famous remark to [Thomas Wentworth] Higginson: ‘If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way…’" Ryan quote was originally published in the Emily Dickinson Journal. Available as used here on line at http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19269.
Thank you, and good night.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Say what you mean; mean what you say.
So when a character walks up to a lady friend and he calls her a tramp, she slaps him, real hard, which is exactly to the point.
Oh, I forgot to mention, the guy is gangsta and the lady is a moll. He meant what he said, and she believed him. Clarity but no drama. Sometimes we just needs a little context for us to get it right. The rest of the story is the guy has learned prior to this slap that she is not a tramp, but a real lady and not one he wants to be in a relationship with, not just yet. He needs to finish a few scores before he goes legit!
First, don’t mince words, be concise. Use as few words as possible to say exactly what you mean, just as Professor Strunk advises every would be stylist. Second, mean what you say. Now, we have to entertain the problematical ambiguity of these words.
I believe it is for the reader/listener to determine if the speaker is actually credible, means what he says. For example, I tell my sweetheart that “I love her.” She of course can say, “Do you mean that?” Or she could say, “What do you mean by love?” The one thing she is not going to say is, “I love you, too,” unless of course she means it, or maybe she was just trying to get past an embarrassing moment, in which case she didn’t mean it. Now if I really want to be heard, well then I have to ante up. “Will you marry me?” Now she can play dumb and ask if I think she is some kinda fortune teller, or she will answer the direct question. Either way, I am way ahead of telling her that I love her. Or am I?
One is reminded of the Mad Hatter and Alice and the riddle of the raven and the writing desk, “Why is the raven like a writing-desk?” Lewis Carroll said he never had an answer in mind for the riddle when he wrote his fantasy. Pundits eventually came up with the answer. "Edgar Allan Poe, because he his poem 'The Raven' was his favorite poem and one which he had written on his favorite writing-desk."
Now, back to the Mad Hatter. For purposes of a criticism of Alice, the Hatter pursues her glee at having a riddle to solve. For when Alice said she’d "guess," he said, "Do you mean “answer” the riddle?" She says yes. He would have everyone say what they mean then (in this case answer the riddle, not guess at the riddle). Alice retorts that she believes she means what she said. I for one see splitting hairs, but let’s digress.
I think a writer says what the writer means to say and not something else unless she is putting words into the mouth of a narrator or a character, which invites a second level of assessment by reader/audience: do we or should we believe the words of the narrator/character. The relationship between the writer and the audience is essentially in play and verbal irony is introduced into the situational irony that provides us with entertainment. By the way, if in your relationship one or more of the the ladies, and you like verbal irony, you are not necessarily going to be spared, ya smart alek.
Richard J. Hilber. Saturday, March 17, 2012.
An excerpt from Chapter VII. A Mad Tea Party from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is available online. See Millennium Fulcrum Edition 2.7a. © 1991 Duncan Research with this link https://www.cs.indiana.edu/metastuff/wonder/ch1.html.
Oh, I forgot to mention, the guy is gangsta and the lady is a moll. He meant what he said, and she believed him. Clarity but no drama. Sometimes we just needs a little context for us to get it right. The rest of the story is the guy has learned prior to this slap that she is not a tramp, but a real lady and not one he wants to be in a relationship with, not just yet. He needs to finish a few scores before he goes legit!
First, don’t mince words, be concise. Use as few words as possible to say exactly what you mean, just as Professor Strunk advises every would be stylist. Second, mean what you say. Now, we have to entertain the problematical ambiguity of these words.
I believe it is for the reader/listener to determine if the speaker is actually credible, means what he says. For example, I tell my sweetheart that “I love her.” She of course can say, “Do you mean that?” Or she could say, “What do you mean by love?” The one thing she is not going to say is, “I love you, too,” unless of course she means it, or maybe she was just trying to get past an embarrassing moment, in which case she didn’t mean it. Now if I really want to be heard, well then I have to ante up. “Will you marry me?” Now she can play dumb and ask if I think she is some kinda fortune teller, or she will answer the direct question. Either way, I am way ahead of telling her that I love her. Or am I?
One is reminded of the Mad Hatter and Alice and the riddle of the raven and the writing desk, “Why is the raven like a writing-desk?” Lewis Carroll said he never had an answer in mind for the riddle when he wrote his fantasy. Pundits eventually came up with the answer. "Edgar Allan Poe, because he his poem 'The Raven' was his favorite poem and one which he had written on his favorite writing-desk."
Now, back to the Mad Hatter. For purposes of a criticism of Alice, the Hatter pursues her glee at having a riddle to solve. For when Alice said she’d "guess," he said, "Do you mean “answer” the riddle?" She says yes. He would have everyone say what they mean then (in this case answer the riddle, not guess at the riddle). Alice retorts that she believes she means what she said. I for one see splitting hairs, but let’s digress.
I think a writer says what the writer means to say and not something else unless she is putting words into the mouth of a narrator or a character, which invites a second level of assessment by reader/audience: do we or should we believe the words of the narrator/character. The relationship between the writer and the audience is essentially in play and verbal irony is introduced into the situational irony that provides us with entertainment. By the way, if in your relationship one or more of the the ladies, and you like verbal irony, you are not necessarily going to be spared, ya smart alek.
Richard J. Hilber. Saturday, March 17, 2012.
An excerpt from Chapter VII. A Mad Tea Party from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is available online. See Millennium Fulcrum Edition 2.7a. © 1991 Duncan Research with this link https://www.cs.indiana.edu/metastuff/wonder/ch1.html.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Glebewise: Baby Boomers are not so bad, or are they?
.Happy New Year to my Fellow Baby Boomers.
The Worst Generation we have been deemed but let's not jump to that conclusion just yet! I will not excuse our excesses as a generation which thought that it knew better or that it was better, but proved all too human.
We were a product of pent up demand. Our parents who were coming of age in their 20s and 30s delayed having babies first because of the Great Depression and then WWII. All that waiting around for a job and then invasion and kiss the army goodbye peacetime, created the boom. The troops came home and boom: babies, babies, babies. I suspect I'm not the only boomer who remembers an elementary classroom with 50 children wall to wall with one good nun for a teacher.
Oh, the real boom (when the detritus hit the fan) was in 1968 and the Tet Offensive by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. President Johnson who trumped up a reason for bombing North Viet Nam was faced with the consequences of his ineffective strategic bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. His option (at least the one he has been criticized for not taking by the men who would bring us the Iraq War called Neo-Cons) was drafting every eligibile able body male and female baby and shipping them off to WWIII. He was estopped by the specter of nuclear armageddon.
You know that I'm right, my fellow Boomer, unless you were just not all that aware in those days. I was! I was naive, but I was well read at the time. The military industrial complex would have chopped up we the baby boomers as cannon fodder were it not for the specter of ICBMs criss-crossing the arctic and bringing on nuclear winter.
So what did we Boomers do with our economic balloon of wealth and plenty which was our parents gift to us. Did we ever have to return the favor? Well, I believe we did. The baby boomers paid the retirement social security and medicare of the Greatest Generation and paid and continues to pay for the Cold War and competed with one another for piss ant jobs and then watch those piss ant jobs go overseas for the sake of the growth of international corporations that today have about as much patriotism as a dead cock roach. And we got conservative and lost our liberal swagger and or maybe we got real down and dirty libertarian, which was not a help with the commonwealth of our country. And some of us really wallowed in our story in being self-made millionaires who had done it the hard way. Well, we had help, didn't we!
As you worry about taxes, why not worry about all the evaded taxes by these corporations and off shore accounts of CEO types who do not want to pay the fare on world peace. But it's too late to worry about those Republicans and Democrats who did not raise taxes to pay for the Gulf War, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War and all those little Reaganesque wars by a real tough guy President who said he wouldn't raise taxes either? Why would a Presidential candidate say that he wouldn't raise taxes?
Because raising taxes requires the consent of the governed to pay for those [deletion] damn wars.
Do your sons and daughters a favor, my Fellow Baby Boomer, and start sticking up for we Baby Boomers. You risk being called an "Old codger," but then you are getting there. True, we were too damn much jelly for the jelly jar and vaseline just didn't make a very good contraceptive. Thanks, I feel better now.
So we thought we knew better. Used contraceptives or had our gal do it for us and with a vengeance had fewer chidlren, I guess hoping for a higher standard of living, only to learn that we were overpaid and therefore were to be overworked and bad mouthed for expecting more out of life than a fancy house and a wife that wanted what had been handed us as a male birthright.
Yes, in our generation the labor market was even more crowded than it is now. Yah, and then to make the pressure even greater women's lib was a wonderful thing (though it was a long time coming). On average our female citizens today are still cheaper labor than we males.
We are today all cave men and women. We neglected. we are told. to have maintained our bomb shelters (IRAs and 401ks) for the economic hard times brought on by Wall Street and corporate America which have held us upside down since Reagan and shaken every damn coins out of our blue jeans. So sing western duets cheek to cheek and share your weed (hopefully medicare funded weed) and enjoy your final days in bliss. Amen, brother.
And for you libertarian Baby Boomers: go Ron Paul, rugged individualist and self-made baby boomer. You can finish the job of running our democracy into the ground better than any other man alive. The reality is though once you are in office, you will look more and more look like Obama or Bush and then we will remember that Obama looked more like Bush or Clinton too, once he took office. So move to New Hampshire and vote and vote often my fellow Boomer.
Corporate America is calling upon our sons and daughters. Yah, I mean you younger generations. Yes, you there, go help yourself by using up the social security "fund" as a way to fund Wall Street's next set of schemes to screw you, our sons and daughters who might listen with interest to the siren song of capitalism which will dash your brains out upon the rocks of economic opportunity preserved for the greedy, the well fixed, the advantaged, and the tax evaders. The ones who once screwed up the graduated income tax so bad that it is considered an abomination today and crafted the campaign to recharacterize estate taxes on millionaire estates as a "death tax" instead of a separation tax on extreme wealth before it passes into the hands of takers. Which takers? The ones who did not accumulate the wealth by their own labor or wit. The history of fair taxation in this country is the history of screw my neighbor but do not screw me because I invest in the private economy, my own. (Go, Ayn Rand!).
Trust me, Wall Street hires the cream of the crop for the next go round of screw jobs of the little guy and gal. Capitalism is never understood by the average Joe and Sally. Capitalism pools wealth and buys politicians. It pollutes the sky, the waters, and now the ground water with fracting the hell out of Mother Earth. Good God, the largest ocean has a dead zone of garbage so vast that it would fill the Gulf of Mexico. So you say, "Well that's okay isn't it, the Gulf is our American oil basin, not Arabia's?". Geez, I was making a comparison of area, not suggesting the garbage be barged into the Gulf of Mexico. Pot head! Or as Archie Bunker would say, "Meathead."
So you may well ask why I'm still a Democrat after Johnson's War and sell out of my generation to capitalism and rugged individualism (Go Ayn Rand!). Because I believe in the future, in our children, and in our immigrants, and because I want free public education for all children regardless of citizenship. Why? Because tomorrow, if our way of life gets a tomorrow, needs an educated citizenry.
Because I believe that Roe v. Wade was the result of the simple fact that criminalization of women who have an abortion has to have a limitation, a point at which state power can not be exercised to criminalize a woman or her actual medical doctor, one who is not a quack. That doesn't mean I believe abortion is ever a moral thing to do, I just know it is immoral for me to support zealots who would brutalize the woman who exercises dominion over her own body. Yah, I want her to know the error of her ways, but only when she knows the natural consequences of her conduct (if in fact her conduct had anything in the slightest to do with conception or with her economic plight or her immaturity).
The only way to legalize criminalization of abortion is to shoot one male and one female every case we send a woman to jail or fine her for having had an abortion. The one male and one female must be virgins and will be allowed to sleep together but then they have to be immediately shot before conception can be said to have occurred. Their names will be drawn out of a hat, yes a government lottery like we had for the military draft (a la Shirley Jackson and the Salem Witchcraft Trials).
This last tirade above is dedicated to those who bad mouth civil liberties which had to be forced down the throat of small government, and I mean small government (like the post-Reconstruction South and its closet felons of the KKK). Small government has its sins too. So stop the idiocy about big government.
The real issue in a democracy (even a representative republic such as ours) is the consent of the governed to policies of the duly elected leaders (or Supreme Court determined electee which I wouldn't object to if they had elected a Democrat instead of that yahoo son of privilege who ran this country like a fat ass cadilac right into the ground).
The really crass irresponsible thing that we baby boomers did is that we did not elect George Bush once; no, we had to turn around and elect him to a second term, when we could have elected a real change agent for government the first time and a real Viet Nam vet the second time (when we the Boomers really needed to honor our Nam Vets by electing one of their own to the Presidency) instead of the guy we did elect who went awol while he did stateside duty during the Viet Nam War and has never acknowledged the cover up of his conduct by friends of his father, G.H.W. Bush, also a former President, a real war hero. To think that the U.S. military actually let this particular yahoo pilot a fighter jet.
There is still time on the clock, Boomers. So what if you did sell out and the corporations you sold out to have screwed you or will screw you at the earliest convenience! You can set the record straight. You can believe in being a responsible citizen who believes in the graduated income tax without loop holes, in civil liberties for all including the gays, and in free public education of the finest quality for all children. You can provide for an educated next generation of truly American citizens. You can remember that the community needs you to be a senior citizen now, one who acts respectable, even if we took a lifetime getting there.
God bless you one and all.
The Worst Generation we have been deemed but let's not jump to that conclusion just yet! I will not excuse our excesses as a generation which thought that it knew better or that it was better, but proved all too human.
We were a product of pent up demand. Our parents who were coming of age in their 20s and 30s delayed having babies first because of the Great Depression and then WWII. All that waiting around for a job and then invasion and kiss the army goodbye peacetime, created the boom. The troops came home and boom: babies, babies, babies. I suspect I'm not the only boomer who remembers an elementary classroom with 50 children wall to wall with one good nun for a teacher.
Oh, the real boom (when the detritus hit the fan) was in 1968 and the Tet Offensive by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. President Johnson who trumped up a reason for bombing North Viet Nam was faced with the consequences of his ineffective strategic bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. His option (at least the one he has been criticized for not taking by the men who would bring us the Iraq War called Neo-Cons) was drafting every eligibile able body male and female baby and shipping them off to WWIII. He was estopped by the specter of nuclear armageddon.
You know that I'm right, my fellow Boomer, unless you were just not all that aware in those days. I was! I was naive, but I was well read at the time. The military industrial complex would have chopped up we the baby boomers as cannon fodder were it not for the specter of ICBMs criss-crossing the arctic and bringing on nuclear winter.
So what did we Boomers do with our economic balloon of wealth and plenty which was our parents gift to us. Did we ever have to return the favor? Well, I believe we did. The baby boomers paid the retirement social security and medicare of the Greatest Generation and paid and continues to pay for the Cold War and competed with one another for piss ant jobs and then watch those piss ant jobs go overseas for the sake of the growth of international corporations that today have about as much patriotism as a dead cock roach. And we got conservative and lost our liberal swagger and or maybe we got real down and dirty libertarian, which was not a help with the commonwealth of our country. And some of us really wallowed in our story in being self-made millionaires who had done it the hard way. Well, we had help, didn't we!
As you worry about taxes, why not worry about all the evaded taxes by these corporations and off shore accounts of CEO types who do not want to pay the fare on world peace. But it's too late to worry about those Republicans and Democrats who did not raise taxes to pay for the Gulf War, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War and all those little Reaganesque wars by a real tough guy President who said he wouldn't raise taxes either? Why would a Presidential candidate say that he wouldn't raise taxes?
Because raising taxes requires the consent of the governed to pay for those [deletion] damn wars.
Do your sons and daughters a favor, my Fellow Baby Boomer, and start sticking up for we Baby Boomers. You risk being called an "Old codger," but then you are getting there. True, we were too damn much jelly for the jelly jar and vaseline just didn't make a very good contraceptive. Thanks, I feel better now.
So we thought we knew better. Used contraceptives or had our gal do it for us and with a vengeance had fewer chidlren, I guess hoping for a higher standard of living, only to learn that we were overpaid and therefore were to be overworked and bad mouthed for expecting more out of life than a fancy house and a wife that wanted what had been handed us as a male birthright.
Yes, in our generation the labor market was even more crowded than it is now. Yah, and then to make the pressure even greater women's lib was a wonderful thing (though it was a long time coming). On average our female citizens today are still cheaper labor than we males.
We are today all cave men and women. We neglected. we are told. to have maintained our bomb shelters (IRAs and 401ks) for the economic hard times brought on by Wall Street and corporate America which have held us upside down since Reagan and shaken every damn coins out of our blue jeans. So sing western duets cheek to cheek and share your weed (hopefully medicare funded weed) and enjoy your final days in bliss. Amen, brother.
And for you libertarian Baby Boomers: go Ron Paul, rugged individualist and self-made baby boomer. You can finish the job of running our democracy into the ground better than any other man alive. The reality is though once you are in office, you will look more and more look like Obama or Bush and then we will remember that Obama looked more like Bush or Clinton too, once he took office. So move to New Hampshire and vote and vote often my fellow Boomer.
Corporate America is calling upon our sons and daughters. Yah, I mean you younger generations. Yes, you there, go help yourself by using up the social security "fund" as a way to fund Wall Street's next set of schemes to screw you, our sons and daughters who might listen with interest to the siren song of capitalism which will dash your brains out upon the rocks of economic opportunity preserved for the greedy, the well fixed, the advantaged, and the tax evaders. The ones who once screwed up the graduated income tax so bad that it is considered an abomination today and crafted the campaign to recharacterize estate taxes on millionaire estates as a "death tax" instead of a separation tax on extreme wealth before it passes into the hands of takers. Which takers? The ones who did not accumulate the wealth by their own labor or wit. The history of fair taxation in this country is the history of screw my neighbor but do not screw me because I invest in the private economy, my own. (Go, Ayn Rand!).
Trust me, Wall Street hires the cream of the crop for the next go round of screw jobs of the little guy and gal. Capitalism is never understood by the average Joe and Sally. Capitalism pools wealth and buys politicians. It pollutes the sky, the waters, and now the ground water with fracting the hell out of Mother Earth. Good God, the largest ocean has a dead zone of garbage so vast that it would fill the Gulf of Mexico. So you say, "Well that's okay isn't it, the Gulf is our American oil basin, not Arabia's?". Geez, I was making a comparison of area, not suggesting the garbage be barged into the Gulf of Mexico. Pot head! Or as Archie Bunker would say, "Meathead."
So you may well ask why I'm still a Democrat after Johnson's War and sell out of my generation to capitalism and rugged individualism (Go Ayn Rand!). Because I believe in the future, in our children, and in our immigrants, and because I want free public education for all children regardless of citizenship. Why? Because tomorrow, if our way of life gets a tomorrow, needs an educated citizenry.
Because I believe that Roe v. Wade was the result of the simple fact that criminalization of women who have an abortion has to have a limitation, a point at which state power can not be exercised to criminalize a woman or her actual medical doctor, one who is not a quack. That doesn't mean I believe abortion is ever a moral thing to do, I just know it is immoral for me to support zealots who would brutalize the woman who exercises dominion over her own body. Yah, I want her to know the error of her ways, but only when she knows the natural consequences of her conduct (if in fact her conduct had anything in the slightest to do with conception or with her economic plight or her immaturity).
The only way to legalize criminalization of abortion is to shoot one male and one female every case we send a woman to jail or fine her for having had an abortion. The one male and one female must be virgins and will be allowed to sleep together but then they have to be immediately shot before conception can be said to have occurred. Their names will be drawn out of a hat, yes a government lottery like we had for the military draft (a la Shirley Jackson and the Salem Witchcraft Trials).
This last tirade above is dedicated to those who bad mouth civil liberties which had to be forced down the throat of small government, and I mean small government (like the post-Reconstruction South and its closet felons of the KKK). Small government has its sins too. So stop the idiocy about big government.
The real issue in a democracy (even a representative republic such as ours) is the consent of the governed to policies of the duly elected leaders (or Supreme Court determined electee which I wouldn't object to if they had elected a Democrat instead of that yahoo son of privilege who ran this country like a fat ass cadilac right into the ground).
The really crass irresponsible thing that we baby boomers did is that we did not elect George Bush once; no, we had to turn around and elect him to a second term, when we could have elected a real change agent for government the first time and a real Viet Nam vet the second time (when we the Boomers really needed to honor our Nam Vets by electing one of their own to the Presidency) instead of the guy we did elect who went awol while he did stateside duty during the Viet Nam War and has never acknowledged the cover up of his conduct by friends of his father, G.H.W. Bush, also a former President, a real war hero. To think that the U.S. military actually let this particular yahoo pilot a fighter jet.
There is still time on the clock, Boomers. So what if you did sell out and the corporations you sold out to have screwed you or will screw you at the earliest convenience! You can set the record straight. You can believe in being a responsible citizen who believes in the graduated income tax without loop holes, in civil liberties for all including the gays, and in free public education of the finest quality for all children. You can provide for an educated next generation of truly American citizens. You can remember that the community needs you to be a senior citizen now, one who acts respectable, even if we took a lifetime getting there.
God bless you one and all.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
This Obama Supporter has his own list of concerns.
Letter to Obama campaign solicitor sent via email on Friday, December 30, 2011 (edited here in part to make the blog entry read well).
Dear Sir:
Rufus. Assuming you are not a computer generated solicitor, perhaps you can forward my email to a real live regurgitator of public comment.
Who am I? I supported Barack Obama by taking on more credit card debt as I had no other way to assure for my part the end of eight years of Bush-Cheney conduct. Let Wall Street and the Finance Industry know I will do it again. What do I want in return? Well, I have a list (see below).
I want someone in the campaign to see and react to my list (not a machine but a machine politician). I do not expect my list will become the platform of the Democratic Convention in 2012. I just want the world to know that Obama supporters are united solely and principally because the Republican party has no moderate wing and is the lackey of the wealthy and powerful who have the most to lose from government regulation (i.e. Wall Street and Big Business) and federal taxation to pay as we go.
President Obama deserves my vote not because of his right of center and open mindedness to include the minority Republican legislators, but because he actually does care to make government work while the naysayers in Congress glee fully cheer each other on with the power of "NO."
So here's the list:
I want someone to really reinvent government, not just talk about it.
(1) I want the return of the U.S. Postal Service by the nationalization of the internet for use by the public at limited expense. Benjamin Franklin was not just a founding father, he was thee founding father. He would not have let the entire playing field be subverted to private ownership at the expense of the public good. The Constitution does not prohibit public takings by eminent domain, so this time let it be a public taking of the really fat cats who want to control the playing field including Google. Let these private vendors have the use of the public highway but pay the fare.
(2) I want the war debt financed by sale of bonds to Red China to be retired expressly by a surtax without exception on all the wealth of this country. Slowly and over time so as not to hobble the economy. Why? Because the effect of not raising taxes to pay for two foreign wars was to create a flat tax on everyone, but the revenue did not go to the U.S. Government, it went to privately held corporations which had the no bid contracts for war munitions and related expenses of war, including private contractors for black opps and prisons and internment camps and violence to prisoners (denominated torture). I believe that a trillion dollars appeared in our government debt during the Bush/Cheney years due to the transfer of wealth to the military/industrial complex and that the transfer had nothing to do with prosecuting the criminals that wrecked havoc on September 11, 2001. In hindsight, the money was used to alienate the Moslem world and rid this country of a government surplus that was actually money that was owed the Social Security System when past revenues of the payroll income tax were used in fighting the Cold War and the Gulf War.
(3) I want the draft reinstituted again without exception with those medically unfit having to do alternative public service. Why? Because our Gulf War Vets and our Iraq War Vets and our Afghanistan Vets and their families know that their lives nobly supplied by them provided the war mongers with the fodder for senseless wars that left this country morally and financially bankrupt. The little guy war criminals were prosecuted but the bigwigs in the Administration that wanted war and wanted the munitions industry and private contractor industry to prosper needed it to assuage those who had seen to the election of the Bush Administration. The "tax" on our noble soldiers and their families should mean a pox on the rich and powerful that made up a pretext for the Iraq War (there were no weapons of mass destruction except the gas which the U.S. government gave to Saddam Hussein to use on the Iranians during the Iraq-Iran War and which Saddam, the dastardly rogue, used on his own Kurdish citizens). The Pentagon has adapted to the all volunteer army all too well. There is no push back from Congress because the volunteer army is premised on the paycheck, not on the draft. There are no Vietnam era protest movements because there is no draft. In a democracy that is a failure of will of the governed to control their own government.
(4) I want the hobling of young people who pursue educational advancement post secondary to stop, and to stop now. The education industry like the medical industry (especially the medical insurance industry) needs to suffer a little along with the rest of us in this economy. The money is being spent by the wealthy and well fixed in this country while huge numbers of people are being left behind, but no more sadly than the generation in their 20s and early 30s educationed and then reduced to economic shambles by their government, their schools, and Wall Street. Gosh, the fig leaf was to allow these young people to stay on their parents health insurance policies certain conditions being met. The dirty little secret is that private industry still takes the best of other country's young educated with special visas to work in this country while our young educated go begging, and that includes the children of immigrants born in this country (see number 6 below). Good for innovative progress in America, yes; but impoverishing of a third world country that needs medical doctors and innovators to compete in a world economy.
(5) I want the federal government to stop the support of cookie cutter public education. Why? Not every child is a math/science end product for the war, industry, and finance industries. The Pentagon and Wall Street will always have the cream of the math/science crop because of the nature of human greed. Public education was always about educating the child, the future citizen of a democracy, who has the tools to exploit their natural gifts whatever they may be, including music and the arts.
(6) Immigrants are the future of this country and having them adapt to American democracy is the most important preparation for a truly American future. We can not preserve our way of life, our freedom, and our standard of living, without exploiting the immigrant and the chidren of immigrants. The world is at our footsteps but in no way is that metaphor more graphic than when you see the boot that is placed upon the throat of children of immigrants as if they were foreign to our system of laws and government. We want them and need them. I say that as a soon to be 62 year old who has to live for the most part on my social security income. We spend enormous resources trouncing the little immigrant for fear he may take a fellow citizen's job. Yah, right? Garbage hauling or shingling or child care. So to the rich of this country hire the citizen and make sure the payroll taxes are made by you. The hiring of illegal immigrants is the crime and the consequence should be a really harsh fine. The illegal immigrant is not a criminal. He or she is a person who like all Americans wants an economic future.
(7) I do not understand how the President and Democratic Congress can support the curtailing of payroll tax to pay for future payments for medicare and social security recipients. I get it that in providing more dollars in the pockets of little people the economy is more likely to recover sooner. The reality is that the money siphoned off from the "social security trust fund" to pay for foreign wars has to be returned by a tax on the wealthy. Why? Capitalism is most effective when government is its servant. Government speeds the pooling of capital for the rich which it has done consistently over my lifetime. I have paid for the Korean War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War plus dozens of little Reaganesque adventures in foreign policy (the kid stuff). All of these wars impoverished our economy and the planet when better wiser governance would have avoided them all. It's a dirty rotten shame that the war monger's attack the patriotism of those who question their motives whom they shouted down and whom they beat up with jingoism, rant, and cant with their chanting to start a war. The little people always pay for war, while the rich get richer. The wealthy have the means to protect their income stream (i.e. ask me why I detest "Obama Care" sometime and I will tell you that the compromises were about providing a continuing stream of revenue into the medical and medical insurance industries).
(8) Tax sanity is needed. The graduated income tax is the fairest tax when it is regulated to provide the stream of income to pay as we go (and prevent deficits). The Republicans and Democrats too have undermined this tax for myriads of reasons (which is way of politicians). The hypocrisy of the Republic Party today is that it attacks this tax as if it were the cause of retardation of investment and job growth. Congress should spend more time being sure the funds are honestly, accurately, and effectively well spent then designing loop holes and curtailments of the revenues of the graduation income tax. Also, the estate tax (called the "death tax") is a separation tax on the wealth of the decedent before the heirs and assigns take the remainder (here one is not talking about surviving spouses who have their own protections in the law) and we are not talking about family businesses in which the owner did not fail to provide for a handoff to his children in his lifetime due to control issues and timely relinquishment of power. If you do not want to pay the estate tax, then divest yourself in your lifetime. Try a family trust, or for God's sake why not a charitable trust. I say to the extremely wealthy of this country whose estates are subject to this tax upon their death: "You have the means to provide a different outcome and so do it!" To those whose inheritance or bequest is reduced by the tax, I will say the solution is to have all wealth over a certain dollar amount revert to the state. Period. End of story. Too bad. You will have to go to work now, like the rest of us poor blokes!
(9) Lastly, but certainly foremost in this list, is let's watch out for the future. By this I mean our children and grandchildren who will look back and say of us gluttons of natural resources, "Why did you not do the effective thing to save the planet when there was yet time on the clock?" And now the federal government is allowing the hydralic fracturing of the oil basins putting at risk the contamination of artesian wells and polluting the aquifers of the American West. We permitted the damaging of the Gulf of Mexico and now we are going to do the same to our precious watersupply and aquatic wildlife of our rivers and streams all over again.
Richard Hilber
This list originally appeared in a slighter version in an email to
Dear Sir:
Rufus. Assuming you are not a computer generated solicitor, perhaps you can forward my email to a real live regurgitator of public comment.
Who am I? I supported Barack Obama by taking on more credit card debt as I had no other way to assure for my part the end of eight years of Bush-Cheney conduct. Let Wall Street and the Finance Industry know I will do it again. What do I want in return? Well, I have a list (see below).
I want someone in the campaign to see and react to my list (not a machine but a machine politician). I do not expect my list will become the platform of the Democratic Convention in 2012. I just want the world to know that Obama supporters are united solely and principally because the Republican party has no moderate wing and is the lackey of the wealthy and powerful who have the most to lose from government regulation (i.e. Wall Street and Big Business) and federal taxation to pay as we go.
President Obama deserves my vote not because of his right of center and open mindedness to include the minority Republican legislators, but because he actually does care to make government work while the naysayers in Congress glee fully cheer each other on with the power of "NO."
So here's the list:
I want someone to really reinvent government, not just talk about it.
(1) I want the return of the U.S. Postal Service by the nationalization of the internet for use by the public at limited expense. Benjamin Franklin was not just a founding father, he was thee founding father. He would not have let the entire playing field be subverted to private ownership at the expense of the public good. The Constitution does not prohibit public takings by eminent domain, so this time let it be a public taking of the really fat cats who want to control the playing field including Google. Let these private vendors have the use of the public highway but pay the fare.
(2) I want the war debt financed by sale of bonds to Red China to be retired expressly by a surtax without exception on all the wealth of this country. Slowly and over time so as not to hobble the economy. Why? Because the effect of not raising taxes to pay for two foreign wars was to create a flat tax on everyone, but the revenue did not go to the U.S. Government, it went to privately held corporations which had the no bid contracts for war munitions and related expenses of war, including private contractors for black opps and prisons and internment camps and violence to prisoners (denominated torture). I believe that a trillion dollars appeared in our government debt during the Bush/Cheney years due to the transfer of wealth to the military/industrial complex and that the transfer had nothing to do with prosecuting the criminals that wrecked havoc on September 11, 2001. In hindsight, the money was used to alienate the Moslem world and rid this country of a government surplus that was actually money that was owed the Social Security System when past revenues of the payroll income tax were used in fighting the Cold War and the Gulf War.
(3) I want the draft reinstituted again without exception with those medically unfit having to do alternative public service. Why? Because our Gulf War Vets and our Iraq War Vets and our Afghanistan Vets and their families know that their lives nobly supplied by them provided the war mongers with the fodder for senseless wars that left this country morally and financially bankrupt. The little guy war criminals were prosecuted but the bigwigs in the Administration that wanted war and wanted the munitions industry and private contractor industry to prosper needed it to assuage those who had seen to the election of the Bush Administration. The "tax" on our noble soldiers and their families should mean a pox on the rich and powerful that made up a pretext for the Iraq War (there were no weapons of mass destruction except the gas which the U.S. government gave to Saddam Hussein to use on the Iranians during the Iraq-Iran War and which Saddam, the dastardly rogue, used on his own Kurdish citizens). The Pentagon has adapted to the all volunteer army all too well. There is no push back from Congress because the volunteer army is premised on the paycheck, not on the draft. There are no Vietnam era protest movements because there is no draft. In a democracy that is a failure of will of the governed to control their own government.
(4) I want the hobling of young people who pursue educational advancement post secondary to stop, and to stop now. The education industry like the medical industry (especially the medical insurance industry) needs to suffer a little along with the rest of us in this economy. The money is being spent by the wealthy and well fixed in this country while huge numbers of people are being left behind, but no more sadly than the generation in their 20s and early 30s educationed and then reduced to economic shambles by their government, their schools, and Wall Street. Gosh, the fig leaf was to allow these young people to stay on their parents health insurance policies certain conditions being met. The dirty little secret is that private industry still takes the best of other country's young educated with special visas to work in this country while our young educated go begging, and that includes the children of immigrants born in this country (see number 6 below). Good for innovative progress in America, yes; but impoverishing of a third world country that needs medical doctors and innovators to compete in a world economy.
(5) I want the federal government to stop the support of cookie cutter public education. Why? Not every child is a math/science end product for the war, industry, and finance industries. The Pentagon and Wall Street will always have the cream of the math/science crop because of the nature of human greed. Public education was always about educating the child, the future citizen of a democracy, who has the tools to exploit their natural gifts whatever they may be, including music and the arts.
(6) Immigrants are the future of this country and having them adapt to American democracy is the most important preparation for a truly American future. We can not preserve our way of life, our freedom, and our standard of living, without exploiting the immigrant and the chidren of immigrants. The world is at our footsteps but in no way is that metaphor more graphic than when you see the boot that is placed upon the throat of children of immigrants as if they were foreign to our system of laws and government. We want them and need them. I say that as a soon to be 62 year old who has to live for the most part on my social security income. We spend enormous resources trouncing the little immigrant for fear he may take a fellow citizen's job. Yah, right? Garbage hauling or shingling or child care. So to the rich of this country hire the citizen and make sure the payroll taxes are made by you. The hiring of illegal immigrants is the crime and the consequence should be a really harsh fine. The illegal immigrant is not a criminal. He or she is a person who like all Americans wants an economic future.
(7) I do not understand how the President and Democratic Congress can support the curtailing of payroll tax to pay for future payments for medicare and social security recipients. I get it that in providing more dollars in the pockets of little people the economy is more likely to recover sooner. The reality is that the money siphoned off from the "social security trust fund" to pay for foreign wars has to be returned by a tax on the wealthy. Why? Capitalism is most effective when government is its servant. Government speeds the pooling of capital for the rich which it has done consistently over my lifetime. I have paid for the Korean War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War plus dozens of little Reaganesque adventures in foreign policy (the kid stuff). All of these wars impoverished our economy and the planet when better wiser governance would have avoided them all. It's a dirty rotten shame that the war monger's attack the patriotism of those who question their motives whom they shouted down and whom they beat up with jingoism, rant, and cant with their chanting to start a war. The little people always pay for war, while the rich get richer. The wealthy have the means to protect their income stream (i.e. ask me why I detest "Obama Care" sometime and I will tell you that the compromises were about providing a continuing stream of revenue into the medical and medical insurance industries).
(8) Tax sanity is needed. The graduated income tax is the fairest tax when it is regulated to provide the stream of income to pay as we go (and prevent deficits). The Republicans and Democrats too have undermined this tax for myriads of reasons (which is way of politicians). The hypocrisy of the Republic Party today is that it attacks this tax as if it were the cause of retardation of investment and job growth. Congress should spend more time being sure the funds are honestly, accurately, and effectively well spent then designing loop holes and curtailments of the revenues of the graduation income tax. Also, the estate tax (called the "death tax") is a separation tax on the wealth of the decedent before the heirs and assigns take the remainder (here one is not talking about surviving spouses who have their own protections in the law) and we are not talking about family businesses in which the owner did not fail to provide for a handoff to his children in his lifetime due to control issues and timely relinquishment of power. If you do not want to pay the estate tax, then divest yourself in your lifetime. Try a family trust, or for God's sake why not a charitable trust. I say to the extremely wealthy of this country whose estates are subject to this tax upon their death: "You have the means to provide a different outcome and so do it!" To those whose inheritance or bequest is reduced by the tax, I will say the solution is to have all wealth over a certain dollar amount revert to the state. Period. End of story. Too bad. You will have to go to work now, like the rest of us poor blokes!
(9) Lastly, but certainly foremost in this list, is let's watch out for the future. By this I mean our children and grandchildren who will look back and say of us gluttons of natural resources, "Why did you not do the effective thing to save the planet when there was yet time on the clock?" And now the federal government is allowing the hydralic fracturing of the oil basins putting at risk the contamination of artesian wells and polluting the aquifers of the American West. We permitted the damaging of the Gulf of Mexico and now we are going to do the same to our precious watersupply and aquatic wildlife of our rivers and streams all over again.
Richard Hilber
This list originally appeared in a slighter version in an email to
Rufus Gifford, BarackObama.com
after Mr. Gifford solicited for campaign funds.
The email I sent was dated Friday, December 30, 2011.
Critical Obsession Requires of Critic a Higher Standard
"Judging a person does not define who they are; it does define who you are."
Quote/paraphrase provided by Sobriety is Sexy.
Not sure who said it originally. The comment below is tangential but inspired by the quote.
I see this quote is part of Sober is Sexy, but sobriety for a critic (as opposed to the alcoholic or chemical abuser) is looking the other way. I would say that the axiom is true enough. Pointing the finger at another means four fingers are pointing back at you the critic.
Objectivity though is required. Why? Because beauty is in the eye of the beholder but then so is evil, especially if we look away. As observers do we look away or do we report the cold hard facts of human failures of ourselves and our fellow citizens of this planet.
I thank those who disclosed wrong doing and did so at great personal expense. I am thinking of Wikileaks and its sources. The critic though is required to have judgment, not just courage and to hold oneself to a higher standard (being of sound mind and good judgment).
Sad thing is that we are so numb from looking in the other direction as we strive to pay our bills and keep afloat, that we all become part of the system. Hope? Yes, but only by looking at the cold hard facts and seeing what is our part in moving past our wrongs and making things right in this country and the world. This works on the micro and macro level.
Those who will prosecute the sources of disclosures of government wrong doing are answerable to we the people. I hope they remember that as they go about the dirty work of protecting government secrets, secrets which are actually cover ups of international crime and malfeasance by those in power in the world.
I know this comment is a tangential one for those who honor their sobriety. As citizens in a democracy though we have no place to hide on being critical of those with wealth and power who abuse the privileges of rank and wealth.
In closing then a reminder to we of the critical mind:
The end of courage and good judgment is to die with hope that we have left the world a better place than we found it!
Comment originally appeared on my facebook page entitled:
Quote/paraphrase provided by Sobriety is Sexy.
Not sure who said it originally. The comment below is tangential but inspired by the quote.
I see this quote is part of Sober is Sexy, but sobriety for a critic (as opposed to the alcoholic or chemical abuser) is looking the other way. I would say that the axiom is true enough. Pointing the finger at another means four fingers are pointing back at you the critic.
Objectivity though is required. Why? Because beauty is in the eye of the beholder but then so is evil, especially if we look away. As observers do we look away or do we report the cold hard facts of human failures of ourselves and our fellow citizens of this planet.
I thank those who disclosed wrong doing and did so at great personal expense. I am thinking of Wikileaks and its sources. The critic though is required to have judgment, not just courage and to hold oneself to a higher standard (being of sound mind and good judgment).
Sad thing is that we are so numb from looking in the other direction as we strive to pay our bills and keep afloat, that we all become part of the system. Hope? Yes, but only by looking at the cold hard facts and seeing what is our part in moving past our wrongs and making things right in this country and the world. This works on the micro and macro level.
Those who will prosecute the sources of disclosures of government wrong doing are answerable to we the people. I hope they remember that as they go about the dirty work of protecting government secrets, secrets which are actually cover ups of international crime and malfeasance by those in power in the world.
I know this comment is a tangential one for those who honor their sobriety. As citizens in a democracy though we have no place to hide on being critical of those with wealth and power who abuse the privileges of rank and wealth.
In closing then a reminder to we of the critical mind:
The end of courage and good judgment is to die with hope that we have left the world a better place than we found it!
Comment originally appeared on my facebook page entitled:
Holding oneself to a higher standard as a critic of the conduct of others.
by Rick Hilber on Friday, December 30, 2011 at 8:51pm
Monday, December 12, 2011
Christmas Came Early This Year and Stayed Late
Recently, I submitted a poem for inclusion in my home church's advent meditation reader. The reader is entitled Deeper Joy and was published by Fairmount Avenue United Methodist Church and edited by our pastor, Rev. Michelle M. Hargrave. Intended to be an advent devotional, I wrote the poem specifically for the group effort by our congregation. When my poem was selected and published as the devotion for December 1, 2011, I felt deeper joy than maybe I am entitled to feel. As I reread the poem I realized the persona in the poem was for me my mother who was grandmother to over fifty grandchildren and godmother and patron of many more. The poem starts out in my voice but by the end of the poem my mom is talking. Way cool! I will channel that woman any time. As my brother Tony commented on facebook: "That lady knew the pathway to heaven." Reproduced below is my gift to all my readers this advent season here on my blog. Merry Christmas.
What Child Is This One I Cradle Tonight
by Rick Hilber
What do you say about God's being?
Is it restricted to existence
An existence such that science can analyze God
Like a fly under the microscope?
If God is in being, is he also not in being?
Does the phrase "Supreme Being"
Denote God's existence only?
What if God is also, not in being,
But Creator of being?
What if God chose and choses to enter into being?
Would he come as an infant?
Would he be born into a loving home?
Would he go hungry?
Would he be put to death for his ethnicity,
Or his gender?
Where would this child find comfort
When he was wet, hungry, or cold,
Or wanted simply to be held?
It is no small wonder,
A human child cradled into this life,
An everyday event,
Which is Christmas.
What Child Is This One I Cradle Tonight
by Rick Hilber
What do you say about God's being?
Is it restricted to existence
An existence such that science can analyze God
Like a fly under the microscope?
If God is in being, is he also not in being?
Does the phrase "Supreme Being"
Denote God's existence only?
What if God is also, not in being,
But Creator of being?
What if God chose and choses to enter into being?
Would he come as an infant?
Would he be born into a loving home?
Would he go hungry?
Would he be put to death for his ethnicity,
Or his gender?
Where would this child find comfort
When he was wet, hungry, or cold,
Or wanted simply to be held?
It is no small wonder,
A human child cradled into this life,
An everyday event,
Which is Christmas.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Angels Make Due With Emissary Role and No Sizable IRA or 401K
To my delight I had a brush with death today. I'd had a rough night and ended up at 2:30 PM on my knees saying my prayers. The bad thoughts dispersed and I was able to fall into a deep sleep, only awakened by my cellphone alarm at 5 AM.
I was leaving early from rural Osceola, Wisconsin, so as to make it home to St. Paul and Sunday morning services at Fairmount Avenue United Methodist Church with adult education at the 9 o'clock hour. The topic was going to be angels with angels in art collection to follow.
But before that class, I had to travel down 35E into St. Paul. I was about to veer right onto the St. Clair Avenue exit when all of a sudden a police car was bearing down on me at high speed lights flashing and siren wailing. I hoped it was headed south down the freeway, but I was wrong. My thought was illogical as the police sedan was right behind me. I do not remember veering further right on the exit lane but the squad car screamed by on a single lane exit with me nudged right. It occurred to me that I had not time to steer right to make room for him, but there was room for him to race by my vehicle.
At the top and on St. Clair I had to pull to the right and let other squad cars speed by to stop just two blocks past the city park and recreation center. I turned north on Victoria to avoid the blockade I could see ahead of me on St. Clair.
Later at adult education when the program had finished I had a friend approach me to say she had not really figured out angels yet. I told her there was nothing to figure out. You only had to accept the presence of angels and there was no other way of experiencing the angel beings.
I had told another friend already about the nudge that sent me to the side of the single lane exit to save my life. I feel like I knew of what I spoke when it came to angels, especially guardian angels.
I was especially glad of the art show that followed the Bible lesson about angels because it reminded me of the horned moon which shows up in Christian art in three modes: first as the wings of angels, second as the horns of the fallen angel Satan with the horns protruding from his head, and finally with the Mary, Mother of the Messiah, as she stands atop the horned moon with her slippered foot atop the slithering snake. For example, I think of the image of our Our Lady of Guadaloupe (which is central to the Mexican celebration of the Immaculate Conception). In the cape of Juan who saw the apparition the image of Our Lady stands atop the horned moon.
The symbolism of the horned moon can be understood by the position of the horns to being depicted. With Satan who placed himself equal of God the horns protrude from his head for his thinking so. The other angels the wings set them apart as immortals and spiritual essences. No human has wings. The human can be like the angels through salvation. The prime example of this is Our Lady who by her humble acceptance of her role is raised higher than the angels as indicated by her standing on the horned moon.
Angels of course bespeak of the glory of a God who interacts in our lives and in our history through his intermediaries who not being mortal are not to worry but be like the birds of the air who fret not over their lot or next meal, or God forbid 401ks or IRAs.
I know too that the moon is quite a screen for apparitions. I recall December 1995 traveling down from Fargo to Pelican Rapids to visit with my typically oppositional father who was dealing yet with the loneliness of life without his now deceased wife (my mother had died that Autumn). A full moon glistened above the eastern horizon across the snow and the clouds draped over it as it moved in and out of the broken cloudscape. Ground fog and vapors above the horizon also help distort the moon into an image that to me was Our Lady of Guadaloupe. It happened to be the feast of Our Lady of Guadaloupe, a fact I would have occasion to dwell on later that evening. I thereafter dwelt on how my mother and I now shared something that prior to this only she of the two of us had personally experienced. She had grown wary and weary of my father's oppositional conduct before she had left him the last month of her life to die in peace in Fargo, that after fifty-five years of marriage plus.
In Pelican Rapids, I went to Saturday evening mass which turned out to be for the Spanish congregants. The congregants invited me down to the parish hall and an evening supper. I do not speak Spanish but the children spoke some English so I did okay. I helped with wiping tables and helped washing dishes. It was a special evening what with the apparition and all.
The following day, my father and I had a pleasant Sunday and attended St. Leonard's together. He told me he was ready to give up his car. He'd had a scare traveling on the highway and had taken the ditch. I had expected him to be especially oppositional about giving up his car and his independence, but he really did it on his own. He had me follow him in my car as he drove over to Vergas, Minnesota, and a used car lot where the owner he knew took the car on consignment.
Someone was moving my father behind the scenes as he himself was not capable of this grace and lucidity, at least not prospectively, just ask any of my siblings. I should mention my mother never lived with any doubt of the wherewithall of the angels and Our Lady in doing the will of our Father in heaven.
I was leaving early from rural Osceola, Wisconsin, so as to make it home to St. Paul and Sunday morning services at Fairmount Avenue United Methodist Church with adult education at the 9 o'clock hour. The topic was going to be angels with angels in art collection to follow.
But before that class, I had to travel down 35E into St. Paul. I was about to veer right onto the St. Clair Avenue exit when all of a sudden a police car was bearing down on me at high speed lights flashing and siren wailing. I hoped it was headed south down the freeway, but I was wrong. My thought was illogical as the police sedan was right behind me. I do not remember veering further right on the exit lane but the squad car screamed by on a single lane exit with me nudged right. It occurred to me that I had not time to steer right to make room for him, but there was room for him to race by my vehicle.
At the top and on St. Clair I had to pull to the right and let other squad cars speed by to stop just two blocks past the city park and recreation center. I turned north on Victoria to avoid the blockade I could see ahead of me on St. Clair.
Later at adult education when the program had finished I had a friend approach me to say she had not really figured out angels yet. I told her there was nothing to figure out. You only had to accept the presence of angels and there was no other way of experiencing the angel beings.
I had told another friend already about the nudge that sent me to the side of the single lane exit to save my life. I feel like I knew of what I spoke when it came to angels, especially guardian angels.
I was especially glad of the art show that followed the Bible lesson about angels because it reminded me of the horned moon which shows up in Christian art in three modes: first as the wings of angels, second as the horns of the fallen angel Satan with the horns protruding from his head, and finally with the Mary, Mother of the Messiah, as she stands atop the horned moon with her slippered foot atop the slithering snake. For example, I think of the image of our Our Lady of Guadaloupe (which is central to the Mexican celebration of the Immaculate Conception). In the cape of Juan who saw the apparition the image of Our Lady stands atop the horned moon.
The symbolism of the horned moon can be understood by the position of the horns to being depicted. With Satan who placed himself equal of God the horns protrude from his head for his thinking so. The other angels the wings set them apart as immortals and spiritual essences. No human has wings. The human can be like the angels through salvation. The prime example of this is Our Lady who by her humble acceptance of her role is raised higher than the angels as indicated by her standing on the horned moon.
Angels of course bespeak of the glory of a God who interacts in our lives and in our history through his intermediaries who not being mortal are not to worry but be like the birds of the air who fret not over their lot or next meal, or God forbid 401ks or IRAs.
I know too that the moon is quite a screen for apparitions. I recall December 1995 traveling down from Fargo to Pelican Rapids to visit with my typically oppositional father who was dealing yet with the loneliness of life without his now deceased wife (my mother had died that Autumn). A full moon glistened above the eastern horizon across the snow and the clouds draped over it as it moved in and out of the broken cloudscape. Ground fog and vapors above the horizon also help distort the moon into an image that to me was Our Lady of Guadaloupe. It happened to be the feast of Our Lady of Guadaloupe, a fact I would have occasion to dwell on later that evening. I thereafter dwelt on how my mother and I now shared something that prior to this only she of the two of us had personally experienced. She had grown wary and weary of my father's oppositional conduct before she had left him the last month of her life to die in peace in Fargo, that after fifty-five years of marriage plus.
In Pelican Rapids, I went to Saturday evening mass which turned out to be for the Spanish congregants. The congregants invited me down to the parish hall and an evening supper. I do not speak Spanish but the children spoke some English so I did okay. I helped with wiping tables and helped washing dishes. It was a special evening what with the apparition and all.
The following day, my father and I had a pleasant Sunday and attended St. Leonard's together. He told me he was ready to give up his car. He'd had a scare traveling on the highway and had taken the ditch. I had expected him to be especially oppositional about giving up his car and his independence, but he really did it on his own. He had me follow him in my car as he drove over to Vergas, Minnesota, and a used car lot where the owner he knew took the car on consignment.
Someone was moving my father behind the scenes as he himself was not capable of this grace and lucidity, at least not prospectively, just ask any of my siblings. I should mention my mother never lived with any doubt of the wherewithall of the angels and Our Lady in doing the will of our Father in heaven.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)