On Distrust

A neighbor cuts wood in the rain

Dragging branches and prodding artlessly

With a cross-cut saw. Rain

Has fallen all summer

& the encyclopedia

Lying open on the table

Has folded its pages like a moth.

Why don’t you do something?

Why don’t you carry painted jars

Under the clouds?

S.K.

Fortune's Talker

Fortune’s Talker

–in memory of "Roscoe" our black Labrador

Some are born to talk and that’s a story,

And some know what to do with the gift

And that’s a different story, "Roscoe"

Born at the guide dog school,

But too sensitive for traffic,

Roscoe was a sweet talker.

(All dogs "talk" but few have nuance)

Roscoe knew. Oh he knew

When you felt rich inside

So he had a word or two for that;

And even yesterday, lame and tired in wet grass

He had encouraging things to say

To our neighbor’s dog who is young and fast.

We should all have things to share

In praise of animal faith

And with some of Roscoe’s luck

May we be wise enough

To find our better calling:

Joy.

S.K.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

Every now and then we receive interesting electronic bulletins from groups and organizations around the planet and this one, from the Orange County Deaf Advocacy Center in California struck us as being quite timely. The goal of the legislation mentioned below is to make it possible for people with disabilities who are currently being institutionalized to return to their communities. Apparently Sen. John McCain doesn’t approve; Sen. Obama is a supporter of the plan.

From the Orange County Deaf Advocacy Center Newsletter – July 17, 2008

THE TOP STORY OF THE WEEK

Denver ADAPT met with the Republican presumptive presidential
candidate John McCain at a Town Hall Meeting today. Six members of
ADAPT, including teenagers from the Summer Youth Program, sat in the
front of the auditorium to listen to McCain’s policies for his
administration. When he took comments from the audience he handed the
microphone to Dawn Russell. She explained the legislation called the
Community Choice Act and asked him why he was not signed on. Mr.
McCain stated he would not support the legislation. He then offered
several poor reasons for his decision and ended by saying we would
have to let the voters decide that one. Having recaptured the
microphone he did state he supported the ADA, but had no interest in
hearing that the ADA was entirely different from the CCA.

ADAPT encourages you to attend McCain’s campaign events and continue
to challenge him to support the CCA! Show him disability rights
supporters across the USA believe in real choice, believe in CCA and
believe he needs to do the same. CCA supports family values, it
supports putting control in the hands of the individual instead of
Government, it supports states’ ability to use limited Medicaid funds
for community services which people prefer and which are more cost
effective. These are all consistent with Republican values, as well
as consistent with American values.

Presumptive Presidential Candidate Barak Obama has signed on as a
co-sponsor to the bill already.

Brought to you by the Orange County Deaf Advocacy Center

Http://www.deafadvocacy.org

S.K.

Contemporary Valhalla

You are a good person who lives among good people and therefore when you are no longer here you will go to Valhalla.

Once you arrive you discover the folks in Valhalla weren’t really all that good before they got there.

"Oh well," you think, "they have fine cutlery and a seemingly endless supply of beef."

They tell marvelous, heroic sagas that make you forget all about time.

No one seems to care much about the sad affairs of humankind. Why, they’ve even forgotten their former existences altogether—imagining they were always in Valhalla.

The whole operation is pre-Christian so ideas like "forgiveness" or "lovingkindness" are nowhere in evidence.

When the long dinner is over and the sybaritic poets have declaimed satisfactorily, everyone stands and in the custom of honorific eternity, they retain their personalized forks.

Etc.

S.K.

Why It Isn't Funny

The New Yorker’s cover depicting Michelle and Barack Obama as militant haters of the United States is a joke. Like all jokes it is likely going to offend someone. And like all offensive humor the people it offends may not be the people who most ought to be offended. I call this principle "Joke Displacement" and you may call it something else, but here’s the point: Baby Boomers have mastered the surgically displaced joke because, well, they haven’t mastered much else.

I first knew my generation was in trouble when Arlo Guthrie got on stage at Woodstock and said with evident satisfaction that the throngs of hippies trying to make their way to the music festival had "shut down the Thruway" and everyone applauded wildly. People were cheering because they’d created a vast traffic jam which meant, in the collective mind set of that moment that something of great significance had happened.

This was like the toddler who was proud of his deposit in the potty. Alas, those are your Boomers, then and now.

"Look what I did!"

The people who should be offended by the New Yorker are instead quite happy with the whole business.

"Look what I made!"

Joke displacement is a form of conceptual art and the great master of the idea was Marcel Duchamp who created art from the commodified junk of the Industrial Revolution—a bicycle wheel protruding from a bar stool, a urinal tipped on its side with a sign declaring "water Fountain" etc.

The idea was that such displays would offend someone and in turn those offended people might have a Zen flash of insight about their existences.

But the problem is that the leisure classes who might have enough disposable income to be edified in this way are not interested in the joke. Only those who are uncomfortable with being middle class will be bothered by the humor and the fact is that Baby Boomers are not sufficiently uncomfortable with their accumulated wealth to feel much of anything.

So the Boomers laugh at the working classes and the working classes know it.

And so Joke Displacement becomes easy decadence and you can take this to the bank.

S.K.

I'm Not an Economist

Well that’s what President Bush said just now during his press conference when asked what he believes may lie ahead for the U.S. economy.

One wonders just what President Bush thinks he might be? Is he secretly an opera singer or a cobbler of cute little patent leather shoes?

I am really a reindeer in Lapland but of course by day I make a sincere effort to look like other people.

I like to rub my back against trees and sometimes while talking to another human being I’ll risk detection and rub my back against a street sign.

You can’t always keep your hidden self locked away.

I’m glad President Bush is making an effort to "come out" about his inner life. I’m certain his popularity would go up if he told the American people he was actually a lawn ornament salesman or an amateur cloud watcher.

I’m not an economist is a start.

S.K.

I Wanted to Write a Poem

I Wanted to Write a Poem

1.

Think of the poem as a museum of loneliness—don’t imagine it’s a glass room built near the house—a charming place where the old Italians grew lemons in winter. Poems are stricter than that; darker; always more isolated…

2.

The Book of Common Prayer lay beside a window. (This was the customary volume at the Royal Hospital for Incurables.) The book lay open at Psalm 23. No one has ever lived without poetry. Why keep it from the exhibit? Now it’s just as it was.

3.

They used to hang the bread from rafters. They had lullabies you wouldn’t sing to children nowadays.

& their offspring thought nothing of carrying a broken angel across the fields…

4.

Guardian moon: Lutheran Sun—Pentecost and ice breaking in the harbor. Words conspire with and without us. Let’s take a long voyage.

S.K.