Night Journey by Theodore Roethke

Now as the train bears west,
Its rhythm rocks the earth,
And from my Pullman berth
I stare into the night
While others take their rest.
Bridges of iron lace,
A suddenness of trees,
A lap of mountain mist
All cross my line of sight,
Then a bleak wasted place,
And a lake below my knees.
Full on my neck I feel
The straining at a curve;
My muscles move with steel,
I wake in every nerve.
I watch a beacon swing
From dark to blazing bright;
We thunder through ravines
And gullies washed with light.
Beyond the mountain pass
Mist deepens on the pane;
We rush into a rain
That rattles double glass.
Wheels shake the roadbed stone,
The pistons jerk and shove,
I stay up half the night.
To see the land I love.

Happy summer trials, Martin

Neal’s Protest March

A small blond girl named Sandy was in one of Neal’s classes at State. He dug her. She barely even looked at him. One night at the end of the semester, Neal hatched a plan: invite Sandy out. The details were not very clear to him, that is, what he would say after “Hi,” but it was a good plan nonetheless.

As the teacher was explaining the format of the final exam, Neal leaned toward Sandy. It wasn’t the right moment perhaps, but his courage (or lack of) did not allow him to choose—now or never.

“Uh, Sandy?”

“Shhh.”
“You wanna, like, um, you know …”
“Quiet!”

Oh no, he’d blown it, his one big chance at happiness. Neal was a disaster, he’d picked the wrong moment, the wrong girl, the wrong strategy. Everything he did was a mess. His life was ruined.

As he sat slumped in his seat, rejected and dejected, the bell rang. Rush off to your next class everyone. That was it. He’d missed the bus.

But then Sandy came up to Neal with a surprise. She handed him a pamphlet with a smile, a knowing, winning, sexy smile like she wanted to eat him. He just said, “thanks.” And she was gone like a zephyr.

The pamphlet said: March for Indian Rights! and had a date and place. Neal got there early because Sandy had given him a date at last. As the march started and colorful people chanted and drums and musical instruments played and megaphones shouted, angry people around him loudly protested, Neal was searching everywhere for Sandy. He pushed to the front of the long crowd, he wove his way against the flow to the back, he cut down the side to get ahead again. The whole day Neal spent in a demonstration of thousands of passionate folks looking for his lost love, never to find her.

When he went home and lay in bed that night, Neal wondered. Had Sandy stood him up? Had she been unable to attend because of an accident, a death in the family, or was she in bed with some guy on the football team? Would he ever get what he deserved? And one final question especially perturbed Neal’s sleep:

Was that a march for Asian Indians or American Indians?

Happy trials, Martin

Mutt: "Doctor, doctor! Birds keep building nests in my horses' manes! What should I do?" "Sprinkle yeast on them and call me in the morning." "But why?" "Yeast is yeast and nest is nest and never the mane shall tweet!"

Jeff: You’ve got to be kidding.
Mutt: "Doctor, doctor! Some days I think I'm a teepee, others I think I'm a wigwam! What do I do?" "Relax, you're two tents."
Jeff: Rerun.
Mutt: Have you got bills to pay?
Jeff: Yep.
Mutt: If you do, please give it back. He looks silly bald. Ha, ha.
Jeff: P.U.
Mutt: A male snake charmer married a female undertaker. Their bath towels read "Hiss" and "Hearse".
Jeff: I’m warning you …
Mutt: A man hit another on the head with a pop bottle, killing him. In court, he claimed he was influenced by the song "Let's Get Fizzy-Kill".
Jeff: That does it. I’m calling the cops.

Who's On First?

From memory:

Orlando Cepeda is on first
Chuck Hiller at second
José Pagàn shortstop
Jim Davenport at third
Felipe Alou in right
Willie Mays in center
Harvey Kuenn in left
Willie McCovey, Matty Alou, Manny Mota, Ernie Bowman reserves
Tom Haller catching
Juan Marichal pitching
or Gaylord Perry
or Mike McCormick
or Don Larsen
Alvin Dark in the dugout managing.

I left some out or got some wrong, but remembering the 1962 Giants lineup (when I can't remember last night's film) is very self-impressive. This is when my love of baseball started. These were my guys. And baseball must be good for you because many of them are still alive. Alvin Dark's around 90. So I post this in memory, from memory, to the memory of my favorite shortstop, José Pagàn, who died yesterday.

Happy trials, Martin

Happy What?

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.  (from “Desiderata,” Max Ehrmann)

My first hero, along with Captain Kangaroo, before Willie Mays, was Roy Rogers. He would shoot the guns out of the badguys’ hands, then do some trick-riding on his best friend Trigger, then sing a duet with his perfect wife, Dale. Roy Rogers always knew the right thing, did it, and won. We need a role model like that, don’t we?

When, in high school, I became a letter-writer (guess I liked my friends (especially female) at postal delivery arm’s length, less threatening, you know). And I ended all my witty epistles with Roy’s salute (and ‘60’s hippie expression): Happy Trails! I even learned the song on my ukulele.

Then I turned world-traveler, hiker and hitchhiker, and it meant all the more to me. Happy Trails. Then I aged. Several of my friends died (car wreck, cancer, drink, cancer, car wreck, AIDS), my first marriage died, my career died, my professional music experiment died … some of my dreams, a bit of my health, a lot of innocent people in the world, enlightened principles, the good earth – it seemed like all humanity slid downhill … AVALANCHE!!!!!

Kids too scared to go outside to play, people afraid to talk to Arabs, fear of food, phones, travel, ill health, being alone, fear of losing a house, a job, a family, a love. Fear of bad stuff that hasn't even happened yet. As they say, the worst thirst is when your well’s NOT dry.

My slogan became “Happy Trials.” Okay, trials, tough luck, bitterness, got it, but why happy? Because in these hard times (in any times) it’s way too easy to be a pessimist! I want a challenge, something difficult– not to have a mindless smiley face, but a conscious, conscientious attitude of hope, a balance to achieve.

If I believe this is it, we get one go-round, then I don’t want to spend my 70-year allotment with a scowling heart.

Natalie Merchant said, in her masterpiece, “Life is Sweet”:

It's a pity
It's a crying shame
Who pulled you down again?
How painful it must be
To bruise so easily inside

It's a pity
It's a downright crime
But it happens all the time
You wanna stay little daddy's girl
Wanna hide from the vicious world outside

But don't cry
Know the tears'll do no good
So dry your eyes

They told you life is hard
It's misery from the start
It's dull and slow and painful

I tell you life is sweet
In spite of the misery
There's so much more
Be grateful

They told you life is long
Be thankful when it's done
Don't ask for more
You should be grateful

But I tell you life is short
Be thankful because before you know
It will be over

Cause life is sweet
And life is also very short
Your life is sweet.

Can I do it? Can I look on the sunny side? Will I live it like Roy Rogers?

No, I’m not succeeding yet in seeing the silver lining (rather than the dark cloud) in this world surely full of love, joy and beauty but teetering on the brink of disaster, immeasurable pain and violent despair, HOWEVER (as McMurphy said) at least I’m trying.

Happy trials, Martin

Mutt: Get it? The man said, “happy trials.”

Jeff: Happy isles, happy crocodiles.
Mutt: Happy smiles, happy argyles.
Jeff: Happy juveniles, happy exiles.
Mutt: Happy miles, happy gentiles.
Jeff: Boy, that was fun.
Mutt: Really?
Jeff: Two cows are standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to Dolly, "I was artificially inseminated this morning." "I don't believe you," says Dolly. "It's true, no bull!" exclaims Daisy.
Mutt: If lawyers are disbarred and priests defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and dry cleaners depressed? (Teachers, of course, would be declassified!)
Jeff: English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn't a race at all). That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this joke, I end it.
Mutt: Thank you.

Nobel Prize for Bob Dylan

I’ve thought about this. Only one living American deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature: Bob Dylan. If you think of the protest singer cliché proposed by superficial media (the 20-year-old Times are a-Changin’ guy) you miss the point: Bob Dylan is an exceptional writer. His production is mammoth in quantity and consistent quality. Don’t get sucked into dividing his work in periods (Folk, Electric, Gospel, etc.), and don’t, of course, react either way to his other skills: guitar, harmonica and keyboard playing, singing, music writer, producer, his rock star personality and general mystique—forget all that. Lastly, don’t be influenced by the songs that are famous hits because they got more radio play. Read the lyrics.

Read the songs as songs. Songs are songs with their own rules. Dylan has respected and violated them all. Songs are cousins to poems but are not poems. Bob Dylan is not a poet. Sharon Olds is a poet. Dylan is a writer, a song writer. [Actually the texts can't be divorced from the music and performance, but I'm making a point here.] He creates literature more enduring and significant than most. He’s affected the lives of millions. I dare say no American writer ever has had the raw impact of Bob Dylan. Who? Twain, Whitman, Dickinson, James, Hemingway, Who? Dr. Suess? Matt Groening? Who? Hundreds of thousands of boys, for example, are named Dylan in honor of this literary/musical giant. Lives changed. The whole world changed. And his imitative effect on other song-writers …

In high school, Dylan dreamed of being Elvis. They both made musical history (and beautiful music, if you like it), but Dylan also made literary history. From Freewheelin’ to Together Through Life, Bob Dylan has consistently written fine literary lyrics. “Like a Rolling Stone,” “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “Just Like a Woman,” “Love Sick,” “All Along the Watchtower,” “Shelter from the Storm,” “Not Dark Yet,” “Forever Young,” “Hurricane,” “Blind Willie McTell,” “Gotta Serve Somebody,” “Working Man Blues,” etcetera. Hundreds of ‘em.

Get all the forty-some records of original material and listen to them all (you masochists). Instead of the highs and lows that everyone talks about, I hear a master at work throughout (which doesn't make every work a masterpiece). I hear writing so hard it seems easy. I hear a child making nonsense rhymes in the playpen combined with Grandpa giving precious advice on living. Contemporary rock 'n roll (teenage fans filling stadiums for a 70-year-old?) combined with ageless tradition, rich oral-musical-literary tradition. Bob Dylan knows his stuff (music and lit.): listen to his fantastic radio show (Theme Time Radio Hour on XM Satellite Radio), you’ll see.

So to celebrate Dylan’s seventieth birthday, May 24, 2011, I officially propose he be given the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature. Sweden, are you listening?

Plus, a student of mine told me today that her favorite song is “Bowling in the Wind.”

My three favorite Dylan records (you tell me yours):

1. Oh Mercy

2. Modern Times

3. Time Out of Mind

Happy trials, Martin

Mutt: How nice to see you again, my friend.

Jeff: How nice to be seen at all.

Mutt: Got a story.

Jeff: Can I stop you?

Mutt: A frog enters a bank looking for a loan. He approaches the loan officer, Patty Black, and makes his request known. Taken somewhat aback, she tells him the bank doesn't normally make loans to frogs.

"But please," says the frog, "I really need this loan."

"Do you have any collateral?" asks Ms. Black.

"Only this," he says. And with that, the frog pulls from his pocket an object and hands it to Ms. Black. Not knowing what it is, but being too embarrassed to say so, she takes the object to the bank manager and explains about the frog and his request for a loan.

"Sir, I don't even know what this is, but it's all he has for collateral," she tells him.

The manager takes the objects, looks at it for a moment, hands it back and tells her, "Why, it's a nick-knack, Patty Black, give the frog a loan!"

Jeff: A musical funny?

Mutt: Yeah, in honor of His Bob-ness. This old man is rolling home.

Jeff: Whatever.

Baseball Canto by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (posted in celebration of Willie Mays' 80th Birthday)

Baseball Canto

Watching baseball

sitting in the sun

eating popcorn

reading Ezra Pound

and wishing Juan Marichal

would hit a hole right through

the Anglo-Saxon tradition

in the First Canto

and demolish the barbarian invaders

When the San Francisco Giants take the field

and everybody stands up to the National Anthem

with some Irish tenor’s voice

piped over the loudspeakers

with all the players struck dead in their places

and the white umpires like Irish cops

in their black suits and little black caps

pressed over their hearts

standing straight and still

like at some funeral of a blarney bartender

and all facing East

as if expecting some Great White Hope

or the Founding Fathers

to appear on the horizon

like 1066 or 1776 or all that

But Willie Mays appears instead

in the bottom of the first

and a roar goes up

as he clouts the first one into the sun

          and takes off

like a footrunner from Thebes

The ball is lost in the sun

                           and maidens wail after him

but he keeps running

    through the Anglo-Saxon epic

And Tito Fuentes comes up

looking like a bullfighter

in his tight pants and small pointed shoes

And the rightfield bleachers go mad

with chicanos & blacks & Brooklyn beerdrinkers

         “Sweet Tito! Sock it to heem, Sweet Tito!”

And Sweet Tito puts his foot in the bucket

and smacks one that don’t come back at all

and flees around the bases

like he’s escaping from the United Fruit Company

    as the gringo dollar beats out the Pound

and Sweet Tito beats it out

like he’s beating out usury

not to mention fascism and anti-semitism

And Juan Marichal comes up

   and the chicano bleachers go loco again

as Juan belts the first fast ball

out of sight

and rounds first and keeps going

and rounds second and rounds third

and keeps going

and hits pay-dirt

to the roars of the grungy populace

As some nut presses the backstage panic button

for the tape-recorded National Anthem again

to save the situation

but it don’t stop nobody this time

in their revolution round the loaded white bases

in this last of the great Anglo-Saxon epics

in the Territorio Libre of baseball

Lawrence Ferlinghetti  (age 92)

Mother Earth’s Say Hey Day

“Hey Old Man, do you really remember the first Earth Day?”

“‘Course, I was in high school. Most people thought it was stupid, we didn’t have ‘days’ for just about everything back then—mother’s day, father’s day and groundhog’s day, that’s about it. And when the whackos who proposed it said it was to help the ecology, we had no clue what that was. Our biology teacher said that  meant nature. Okay, you mean like farms? Like not using pesticides. I read Rachel Carson. And John Muir and Aldo Leopold and Thoreau and Heyerdahl. I joined the WWF. Later I read Edward Abbey and E.F. Schumacher, Whole Earth Catalog and Ralph Nader. I joined Greenpeace. Then I fought the nukes and the nukes won (but I’ve already told that one).”

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Hole in the Ozone Layer (which, they say, is coming back). Global Warming, Ice-cap Melting. Fossil fuels, Greenhouse gases, Endangered species and extinction, Biodiversity, Renewable energy, Habitat destruction, Overfishing, Deforestation, Air & Water quality, Genetic pollution, Desertification, Overpopulation, Urban sprawl, Soil loss and contamination, Noise pollution, Light pollution, Nuclear waste management, Water and food shortages, Acid rain, Oil spills, Dead fish & birds, Smog, Over-consumption, Mining, Nuclear accidents, Human-provoked natural disasters, Toxins, Garbage management, and now, in Japan, traces of iodine in mother's milk. HAVEN’T WE DONE ENOUGH DAMAGE ALREADY???

But if our brilliant technology is responsible for this mess, it can also get us out of it, right? Green living in a green world (isn’t that a Tepco slogan?). Well, whatever faith I had in the science of solutions went up in radioactive clouds from Fukushima Dai-ichi. Plus, we’re never going to solve the above problems (think decades or centuries of global effort to reverse negative trends) if we’re busy auto-eroticizing with our hand-held devises. Heads in the sand, wake me when it’s over, overwhelmed by our own self-destruction, "is Dancing with the Stars on yet?"

“So Ma, got any suggestions?”

“Yeah, I desperately need a break. Remember the lemmings? If you all made that small step for a man (off the cliff), I could make a giant leap back to natural balance. I know it’s a final solution, but what’s hurting me is you, my child. Either quit right now or get lost!”

We humans are the new kids on the block. Gotta show some r.e.s.p.e.c.t. for everyone and thing that was here before us. Instead, we’re just wrecking, plundering, raping. We’re killing our mother (and feeling surprisingly little guilt). And we have the gall to celebrate Earth Day one day a year. She spits on our rock concerts and pamphleting.

“You mean we have to radically change our lives and our entire world? Rebuild our societies and minds? Isn’t changing light bulbs enough? I don’t wanna go back to the Stone Age. Mommy! Help me!”

“No kid, I’m tired. You help me for a change.”

That photo above is the Pedersen Glacier near Seward Alaska, named after my great-grandfather Louis. He took the picture on the bottom in 1920. When my namesake is gone, what will I lose?

Happy trials, Martin

Mutt: The usual loose-screw extremist.

Jeff: Is he dangerous?

Mutt: Nah, nobody ever listens to him anyway.

Jeff: Oh good. I was worried.

Mutt: Did you hear about Tom Finn, the scientist?

Jeff: No. Enlighten me.

Mutt: Well, Mr. Finn, a noted biologist, was stumped. He had spent months studying the little green frogs in the Keefo swamp. Despite all efforts at predator control, the population was declining at an alarming rate. Finn finally went to the chemistry department at his college to see if anyone there might be able to help. They looked into the problem and came up with a solution. The little frogs had succumbed to a chemical change in the swamp's water and simply couldn't stay coupled long enough to reproduce. The chemists brewed up a new adhesive, made from a dash of this, a zoss of that and, most critically, one part sodium.

Jeff: You mean...?

Mutt: Yes. The frogs needed a mono-sodium glue to mate!

Neal’s Orange Juice Splash

Neal sat in economy class, in the very last row, on the left aisle, flying to South Africa. It was a long tiring trip with several connections and hours of waiting around. The extremely friendly African stewardesses made Neal fall in love over and over. He asked them unnecessary questions, grinned a lot, and probably made them roll their eyes. Eventually, he collapsed over Tanzania.

Neal snores very loudly, which normally is not a problem since he lives alone. But on board the SAA jet his snoring could be heard by all 157 passengers, the crew and the pilots. Each time he sputtered or whistled or roared through the nose, someone cracked up. It was a source of constant delight for all. People would walk to the back of the plane just to marvel at the hi-fi snoring machine. Neal, of course, knew nothing of his fame.

The small black man next to Neal practiced Zen patience; the little old lady sitting in front of him focused on her novel. When the stewardess decided it was time to serve a drink, Neal’s fellow passengers were thankful that Neal would be awakened and quieted down.

The airlines in Africa are very elegant. They serve drinks in nice wine glasses, real glass. They give you real silverware with your food (well, not real silver). Excellent fresh food, I might add. The women and men are dressed more fashionably than in Europe or North America. They seem much more pleased with their jobs too. You’d almost want to spend your life flying over the Motherland.

Neal was dreaming. In his dream, he was thirsty. He dreamed of a lovely woman offering him a drink. Ahhh.

So when the cutest stewardess on the flight, Amara, came to Neal and said, “Sir, excuse me, sir, would you like a drink, would you like to wake up? We have orange juice.” Neal confused his blissful reverie with what was happening in the eyes-open world. The passengers only knew they were grateful the noise machine was turned off.

“Would you like some orange juice, sir?”

“Huh?”

“Sir, would you like some fresh orange juice?”

“Oh, uh, yeah, sure. Uh, what? Oh, orange juice. Yeah, my favorite.”

Amara leaned the clear glass tray with the nice tall glasses of orange juice over Neal’s lap about chest high. She was leaning forward and smiling. Neal was still half-asleep but also smiling. His brain was cob-webby, not quite connecting yet. You know, when you’re in a deep overdue traveling sleep and someone wakes you and offers you something, it’s weird, you know?

So Neal looked at the twenty tall glasses full of orange juice near his nose on the clear-glass tray, and looked at Amara, grinned, and reached up from his lap … and tried to grab a glass from under the tray! This was a violation of all the laws of physics.

Neal’s hand pushed the entire tray up and up and higher into the air over his head as he jerked his arm upwards, and the whole array of glasses and juice went flying. Flying, splashing all over Amara, all over the little old lady and her book in the seat in front, all over the guy in the seat in front of her, all over Neal and his seatmate, in the aisle, on everyone’s shoes. Glasses broke, people screamed, Neal jumped a couple feet and cried out like a girl. It was a mess; it took to Johannesburg just to clean it all up.

Neal’s mouth started saying: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to do it!”

Amara would not let Neal help to clean up or wash off the little old lady whose hair was ruined by orange juice shampoo, and she was visibly angry with him, as were all the other passengers and crew. One big African steward came back as if to beat someone up, but Neal just repeated: “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”

Of course, in reality, it was all the stewardess’s fault for holding a glass-bottomed tray of thin-stemmed top-heavy glasses in front of the nose of a sleeping man, waking him with a jolt (from or to a sweet dream), and challenging him to grab a glass without spilling a drop, much less sending all twenty glasses flying several rows forward. Her fault. I could testify to that in court.

Happy trials, Martin

Mutt: You know, Jeffery, my first job was working in an orange juice factory, but I got canned because I couldn't concentrate.
Jeff: Oowah. You don’t say. My first job was in a gym. I tried to make the plump ladies see the error of their weighs.

Mutt: Later, I thought of becoming a candle maker, but I wasn't sure wick end was up.
Jeff: I’m sorry to hear that. You know, doctors tell us there are over seven million people who are overweight. These, of course, are only round figures.
Mutt: You’re a mint of information, my friend. Like a boiled egg in the morning.

Jeff: Come again?

Mutt: Hard to beat.

Jeff: Can I tell you a musical story?

Mutt: For the love of Mike, YES!

Jeff: Many years ago there was a small town that had several bakeries. One of these was run by the aunts of a man named Penn. He and his aunts baked the best pies in the state. Not only that, but they were also the least expensive. Now the other bakers could make equally delicious pies, but Penn always sold more, for no one could beat ... the 'pie rates of Penn's aunts'.

Mutt: Y'know, Sullivan, that may be the worst story I’ve ever heard. No, I take that back. I’ve heard worse.

Jeff: You’ve told worse, Gilbert.

Mutt: G’night, David.

Jeff: G’night, Chet.

Point of Deja View

This post is about the current Italian political situation.

In the summer of 1973, I applied for a job at Yosemite National Park, where my mother had worked many years as a young woman, but they didn’t take me. Too late to find another job, I stayed home with my little brothers and started my first novel (since burned).

I also watched television obsessively, like most of the rest of the country. The Watergate hearings were broadcast every day. My mother and I discussed them at supper. My grandfather (a Nixon supporter) and I discussed them every Sunday. History was being made, and we knew it.

Nixon was the enemy when I was young. He represented the Establishment, the War, repressive conservatism of adults against youth, the cops busting heads at peace demonstrations, Evil. When four students were killed at Kent State, Richard Nixon pulled the trigger. And lots of other bad stuff. He didn’t like our rock music; we didn’t like his greasy short hair.

When Nixon abused his power to halt the investigations, lied about everything, fired anyone who tried to get in his way, thought he was invincible, above the law, then he was finished. The wounded beast is the most dangerous, however; it’ll hurt you as it lies dying, if you get too close. Nixon was soundly re-elected while the Watergate break-in investigations were beginning. The beginning of the end.

Everyone knew Tricky Dick was rotten, and we were merely curious to see when and how he’d fall from grace. There’d always been something sleazy about him; from back in the Eisenhower days he had trouble seeming honest. You wouldn’t buy a used car from that man. When my grandfather heard Nixon’s bitter cussing on the tapes, he turned on him too. “I never expected him to be like that.” We saw behind the mask. And it was all over.

But we had the process to respect. The steps to follow included daily special news broadcasts all summer long. The independent counsel investigations and Senate questioning of witnesses with the threat of perjury charges, the Washington Post articles of Woodward and Bernstein. Deep Throat, Expletive Deleted, and the Smoking Gun.

After Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment, I was infuriated by the next development. Ford’s first act was to pardon Nixon so that he would never do prison time. That didn’t apply to his associates, his co-conspirators, his thugs (see famous poster), most of whom spent months or years in the joint. Strange perhaps, given that they all worked for the man who gave the orders. In the following years, people have said that what Nixon did was not so bad, but he was guilty of 1) obstruction of justice, 2) abuse of power, 3) contempt of Congress. That sounds pretty serious to me. Plus so much more that was never proven because he never went to trial.

There’s a saying written on the wall of every courtroom in Italy: The Law Applies Equally to All. Period.

When Richard Nixon was running for president in 1968, he made a pathetic cameo on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, by saying the famous catch phrase: “Sock it to me!” Six years later, we did.

Here’s a popular expression in the United States: The bigger they come, the harder they fall.

And here’s a quote from Abraham Lincoln: You can fool some of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.

Or a newer one: Regime change starts at home.

See? Told you this was a post about Berlusconi.

Happy trials, Martin

Mutt: What do you get when you drop boiling water down a rabbit hole? Hot cross bunnies.

Jeff: Oh we’re doing the fast ones today?

Mutt: Right. What do you get when you pour cement on a burglar? A hardened criminal.

Jeff: What do you get when you put the pictures of the Kings of Russia on a flag? The Tsar-Spangled Banner.

Mutt: What do you call a cow with no legs? Ground beef.

Jeff: What do you call a man who drinks and falls off his horse? The wine-stoned cowboy.

Mutt: What do you call a rabbit with fleas? Bugs Bunny.

Jeff: What do you call a veterinarian with laryngitis? A hoarse doctor.

Mutt: What do you call it when a walrus eats 1000 clams? A calamity.

Jeff: What do you give a person with water on the brain? A tap on the head.

Mutt: What does a spy do when he gets cold? He goes undercover.

Jeff: What goes "Ha, ha, ha, plop"? A man laughing his head off.

Mutt: What grows up while growing down? A goose.

Jeff: What happened to the lawyer who was thrown out of a saloon? He was disbarred.

Mutt: What happens to deposed kings? They get throne away.

Jeff: What happens to illegally parked frogs? They get toad away.

Mutt: We got a million of ‘em.

Jeff: And not a single one funny.

Mutt: You groan today and tell ‘em tomorrow.

Jeff: Sock it to me!

We Said It Before Chernobyl

by Dario and Jacopo Fo*

Tell me how many human lives you’re willing to risk, and I’ll tell you what kind of person you are.

Since the first atomic power plant in the world was constructed, we have continued to protest, fearful of the colossal risks that this technology involves. For decades the supporters of nuclear energy have continued to repeat that we are panic-stricken, emotional, non-scientific retrogrades. They say that we worry for nothing: “Our scientists are the best in the world, we have used every system possible to guarantee the safety of this plant! Stop being extremist and thick-headed ecological maniacs. Read my lips: there is no nuclear danger!!!” Then the technology regularly jams. In recent decades, there have been more than 150 accidents in nuclear power plants with emissions of dangerous radiation. In some areas surrounding the plants, a rise in the number of tumors and malformations in newborns has been found.

Then the terrifying Chernobyl disaster occurred … the calculation of deaths caused by the emission of radioactivity is difficult and controversial … Some say 200,000 dead and 200,000 more at risk. After Chernobyl, they went back to telling us to be calm: “That plant exploded because it was the old type, outdated technology. Today our nuclear reactors are, on the other hand, brand new, super-high-technological, there is no risk!!! Stop being hysterical!” Even the day after the earthquake, Saturday March 12, the headline in the Messaggero was exemplary: “Safe nuclear power, here’s the proof!” an article by poor Oscar Giannino: “When we still had only the first reports of the tremendous quake that hit the northeast coast of Japan, the Italian websites and news agencies started spreading warnings about a nuclear alarm, yet, as of now the first thing to say is that the great intensity of the phenomenon that struck Japan confirms once again the fact that nuclear plants, as far as their safety goes, have made great strides forward in the last few decades, enough to stand up to the reality of the situation without creating dangers for the environment or the population, because the events that occurred were off-the-scale and beyond the scope of the standard regulations under which the nuclear power plants are built today .” Talk about famous last words…

These days, we are seeing how things really are, seeing past the reticence of the Japanese government and that, even worse, of the company that manages the plants. We are discovering that the information given in recent days was mostly false; we are discovering that there were explosions, contaminations and that the situation is extremely serious, enough to impose a 20-kilometer evacuation area and cause panic in Tokyo and an exodus from the city. This is a frightening situation, horrifying for this people who were devastated by the seaquake, devastated by the pain for the deaths of their loved ones, homeless, cold, out in the snow, with little food and a radioactive cloud over their heads, praying that at least the wind will be kind and take the radioactive plague away. Unimaginable pain.

Of course, the Japanese had done a great deal to contrast the earth’s follies, the earthquake per se caused few victims, even though it was enormously stronger than the one in L’Aquila. But there was no stopping the tsunami… And now the fusion of the radioactive rods risks provoking a carnage even more colossal. An immeasurable horror. But then, if nature can be so unpredictable and so destructive and devastate an entire people who are vigilant about safety measures, wouldn’t it be prudent not to risk ever again adding more risk to what we cannot in any way avoid? It’s already hard to accept our precariousness, accept that a meteorite can land on your head and no helmet will protect you… Not to mention volcanoes… But why build hundreds of cathedrals (nuclear and chemical) where a meteorite might land causing the end of the world? In the famous Kurosawa film Dreams a nuclear plant explodes and spreads radioactive gas which generates instant mutations in the few survivors in a land incredibly similar to the post-tsunami one. A man yells at the nuclear manager, accusing him of the devastation around them: “You didn’t think this could happen?”

But they didn’t. They didn’t think… Someone, like environmental minister Prestigiacomo, poor unhappy thing, still continues to repeat that this disaster will not stop nuclear power in Italy… They say that this Japanese plant exploded because it was the old type, not like the ultramodern French ones that we’re buying. The same old slogans? Again? Don’t they listen to themselves when they talk? Incredible. And they accuse those who have always fought to stop the nuclear madness of looting: “You should be ashamed to take advantage of the Japanese grief to promote your own far-out ideas…” We said it before Chernobyl, we said it after Chernobyl and we will continue to say it until the last nuclear plant is closed. Only then will we shut up. And facing this enormous atomic disaster we understand that there’s a great difference in the value that is given to human life. In our opinion, no risk is acceptable. For the nuclearists there is a level of acceptable risk. They always think it will apply to others.

Ps: In recent days the government has canceled all funding for renewable energy sources. They say they will replace them but they’ll be drastically cut and limited. It seems like the perfect time to crush all development of renewable energy sources in Italy.

Il Fatto Quotidiano, March 19, 2011

*playwright Dario Fo won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997. This translation is unauthorized.

Bad Moon Rising

There’s a big bad moon shining right into my study, right up to the legs of my chair, right now reaching like a ghost to infect my blood with dread, with the fear for what I’ll wake up to tomorrow and even the fear that I won’t wake up tomorrow, unreasonable but instinctive.

My grandfather, in our numerous discussions over the chessboard, shared his hope for a future world governed by world law and a world police force to enforce basic principles, agreed to by all countries—the dream of the League of Nations and the United Nations and whatever better, stronger organization might come later. A great dream.

Today we’re sitting around wondering what’s really happening down in Libya, what somebody might do about it, and suddenly it’s WAR. Madman Gheddafi says he’s gonna bomb the hell out of Sicily like he’s doing to his own cities, so everyone’s on edge. And the echoes of Iraq-Afghanistan-Vietnam-Korea are haunting. And ethics shouldn’t change with vicinity, yet it’s war on our door. We wait, impotent, to see how this risky adventure turns out. No one knows now. Obama doesn’t know. It could all fall apart and crash like the Towering Inferno of Babel. Or innocent lives saved. When the cops confront a suicidal psychopath they know that ‘kill or be killed’ is a likely outcome. But can we just turn away? (As a man who has slept in his car and volunteered at the soup kitchen to get a square meal himself, I do trust Obama not to engage in military action for personal gain, though there are oil wells involved. At least that's different from Iraq.)

I’ve been watching NHK Japanese TV in English for a week. We’re finally getting the news about the people, not just the science or the politics or the economics. They now show crying. They no longer say that everything will be okay. People are dying for lack of medicine, heat, clean water, etc. People are running scared with no destination in mind. I’m sick of constructed scenes of self-control, sick of forced calm, I’m sick of lies told to avoid panic. "Situation normalizing" my ass. Pain, immense crushing pain, unbearable suffering, shock, radiation notwithstanding, that’s all there is. Go ahead, cry. Cry for a year if you want. It shouldn’t be easy to live when everything but life is gone. Hiroshima/Nagasaki revisited. Break down, collapse in a heap, we would all do that. No one can expect the Japanese to care for themselves without help. “Stiff upper lip, look on the bright side, the show must go on” is bull.

Then there’s the embarrassing local squalor. Berlusconi and his prostitutes, his prostitute girls and his prostitute political cronies, his prostitute laws to abolish The Law, to abolish public schools, hospitals, social services, environmental controls, the parliament, the courts, the constitution and fair and free elections. It’s hard even to imagine his ideal world, his mondo porno, would we all be forced to do the striptease? Would anything work? Would trucks still come to haul away the trash? Would he allow us a bowl of gruel if we’re good worker ants in his factories? He said once that he doesn’t ever expect to die, but if he does, who does he think will carry on his folly? The answer is in a book by George Orwell called 1984. This is Italy 1984, now and always.

So, after a week of scirocco winds, we’re blinded by the sand storm of lies, false information, idiotic expert hypotheses, propaganda, conflicting scenarios, threats, insults, loud rumbling sounds, muffled cries for help, invisible death particles of unknown potency, and we stumble around lost when all we want is to find the eye of the storm. The ‘I’ of the storm. But it keeps moving, dodging us. Trickster never sleeps.

Happy trials, Martin

Bad Moon Rising – John Fogerty

I see the bad moon arising.
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightnin'.
I see bad times today.

Don't go around tonight,
Well, it's bound to take your life,
There's a bad moon on the rise.

I hear hurricanes ablowing.
I know the end is coming soon.
I fear rivers over flowing.
I hear the voice of rage and ruin.

Hope you got your things together.
Hope you are quite prepared to die.
Looks like we're in for nasty weather.
One eye is taken for an eye.

Is it better to be wrong?

In 1977 I was organizing and participating in the No Nukes movement. We believed that those power plants were bombs, and that bombs eventually explode, killing people. The experts said they were absolutely safe, and we called them liars.

At the under-construction Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant in San Luis Obispo, we young activists got into trouble. Busted, detained, tried, convicted, sentenced. We all got two year sentences for trespassing, reduced to 15 days plus probation and fines. Those who refused the fines did the whole two years, reduced to 6 months for good behavior. Hard prison time for a hypothetical.

I started my statement in court by saying: I’m a school teacher so I’m particularly concerned with the well-being of children and their future. Though built smack on top of the San Andreas Fault, you say the DC power plant is safe today, but I ask will it be safe decades from now? Would you put your children and grandchildren at risk? (They did.)

As far as I know, Diablo Canyon, notwithstanding our Abalone Alliance movement activities, is still running strong 34 years later. Am I glad that I was wrong? Am I still waiting for a disaster to prove me right?

After our protests, and after they were squelched by the County Court-Electric Company Alliance, the Three Mile Island accident occurred (79). Then Brown’s Ferry (84-5), then Pilgrim (86). And then Chernobyl (86), more later. THTR-300 (86), Peach Bottom (87), Niagara Mohawk (87), Calvert Cliff (89), Greifswald (95), Millstone (96), Crystal River (96), Tokaimura (99), Davis-Besse (02), Mihama (04), and now the name that will live forever FUKUSHIMA (11).

Let’s not forget the film The China Syndrome (79), Silkwood (83), the No Nukes album (79). New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone (87), Italy renounces nuclear power by referendum (87) [now the fools want to reinstate], Germany Nuclear Exit Law for permanent shutdown by 2020, and many states, regions, localities declaring their territories nuke-free. Millions of people joined protest movements worldwide.

Currently, 31 countries operate nuclear energy plants. Does that scare you? If they're far away they can't hurt you, right? Are you one of the faithful? Technology is flawless and officials always tell the truth, and you will bet your life on it. And all your offspring's lives for millenia. You will?

I need to go out this morning to get our recent blood test results. We had the usual battery plus thyroid. Why? Because many, many of our friends are discovering thyroid problems. Several have had operations, all take medicine. Sicily is thousands of miles from the Ukraine and 25 years from Chernobyl, yet they now tell us that the toxic cloud arrived here and this is the result. We’re all slowly getting sick when we shouldn’t. The long-term fallout from Fukushima can only be worse.

Nukes are fine, just so you don’t eat plants or animals, drink water or breathe.

Happy trials, Martin

Mutt: The invention of the coffee percolator gave us grounds for celebration.

Jeff: You said it pal, and the inventor of rubber gloves thought they came in very handy.

Mutt: The inventor of the auto muffler said it was exhausting work.
Jeff: The inventor of the recliner got a chair of the profits.
Mutt: The man who invented the football got a kick out of it.
Jeff: The inventor of the relief map got a raise.
Mutt: The inventor of the rocket went out to launch.
Jeff: Yeah with the inventor of the lighthouse, and they celebrated the occasion with beacon and eggs.

Mutt: I feel queasy.

Jeff: Likewise.

A Pleasant Sunday Drive

We awoke saying we wanted to go back to sleep. The Sunday expression: Let’s not get up all day. Then a phone call, a death in the family, the elderly aunt must go to say goodbye to her sister, who lived near Rome. She’s in her eighties, frail and confused, could she take the train? Could someone accompany her? No.

It was her sister. We got ready in a flash and jumped in the car for what could be an 8-hour drive … each way. We work Monday and can’t get out of it.

Off to Adventureland. We drove to the ferry dock, and they closed the gate as we drove up. A 40-minute wait for the next run before we even got going. It’s 10 am., no it’s 10:40. Bad luck seems appropriate when there’s a death in the family.

We got to Calabria driving in the rain. It rained hard or soft all the way. Violent scirocco winds. It seemed to take forever. We stopped for gas and snacks, coffee a couple times, and got to Lazio about 5 pm. But this little village in the hills was a challenge to find. We got stuck on a dirt road full of mudholes when the navigator took a shortcut. Turn back, turn here, turn up there. Finally arrival 6:30 pm.

Half an hour to share grief, leave auntie, back on country roads trying to get out of the village (in pitch dark), back on the trip. Jovanotti on the music player for energy. They had advised us a new route that, though longer, would get us back on the freeway easier. Probably lost an hour following that suggestion.

Can you make it? Too tired? I’m fine. (Lie.) Lazio, Campania, Basilicata, Calabria: curvy high mountains, rain and fog, plenty of roadwork with one lane open, behind a slow truck. Dark, cold and lonely, driving, driving. There had been an advisory on the ferry that between 10 pm and 4 am they would not leave from the usual Villa San Giovanni but from Reggio Calabria, half an hour further south.

We got there at long last ready for our crossing. Closed. Back to Villa too stunned to get angry. Ticket, ferry, wait in line, crossing on rough seas, heads and stomachs swaying worse than the boat. We land on Sicily, home up on the hill. In bed, still swaying, alarms set for two hours later. Can’t sleep.

There’s no punchline to this story. We drove almost twenty hours in one long stretch. That’s what we did on Sunday. It wasn’t fun, it was dangerous. But also, therefore, fun. I met a guy once at a party who’d just driven from Denver to San Jose, about 20 hours straight through. I thought he was heroic, and stupid.

But it had to be done. It was her sister.

Happy trials, Martin

Mutt: Did you hear about the pregnant bedbug?

Jeff: Yeah. She had her baby in the spring.

Mutt: Okay, what is the difference between a knight and Santa's reindeer?

Jeff: Go on.

Mutt: One slays the dragon and the other drags the sleigh.
Jeff: A man recently invented a knife that cuts four loaves of bread simultaneously. He calls his invention a four-loaf cleaver.

Mutt: My sister was engaged to a boy with a wooden leg, but broke it off.

Jeff: Aren’t you tired?

Mutt: Now that you mention it.

Morto per la libertà

Messina is closer to Tripoli than to Rome. We can almost hear the dying and crying. We can almost hear the yearning for a freer life.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And Gheddafi or Gadhafi or Qadhdhafi or Kadhafi was known as a stoned-out crazy man even back in the 70’s when I toured the region. Maybe his goal is to “live in infamy.” He’ll get that. Shooting on his own people praying at funerals, Good God! (i.e., Allah Akbar)

A recent piece by Italy’s funniest man, Roberto Benigni, about the origin of the national anthem (below), got me thinking about how people in the past fought for us and how we look back on them or don’t. We ignore their sacrifice at our own risk.

I mean, the Arab world seems to be experiencing their American Revolution, 235 years later. After their inevitable victory--despots fall by definition--how will the grandchildren of the current generation see their actions? And how do we consider our founding fathers (like my ancestor, John Strahl)? After all, they did put their lives at stake to make a better world for their descendants. Many died for us. 

War is often about money for the bigshots who decide to wage it, and the poor schmucks who volunteer to fight it, but it sometimes has other inspirations too. I recently re-watched Ken Burns series on the Civil War, our worst horror. A killing and dying butchery all for what? For what (right or wrong) the common soldiers believed in. For their families back home and those to come.

That’s us, folks. People have been sacrificing for centuries so that we can twitter and tofu and pilates and Oprah. They lived hard lives of work or died young so we could live this full, easy life and decide how to practice our freedom to make our own ideal world. Global warming, for instance, doesn’t come from outer space. Sex slavery wasn’t invented by Martians. If we live in a sickening, psychotic mess, it’s our decision. Our responsibility.

Would those boys (girls, men, women) whose dying thought was that they wanted us to have better lives than theirs be proud of how we turned out? Do we owe them something? Do we owe them for dying for us? How to repay … how?

Happy trials, Martin

Mutt: Howdy, Sir Jeff. Did you hear about the medical student who got in trouble for performing an operation? He removed the appendix from his medical textbook.

Jeff: How about Hans and Stein?, who were playing in their yard in Zurich when one of the boys accidentally swallowed a coin and started choking. Hans ran inside to get help, yelling "Mom! Dad! Come quick! There's a franc in Stein!"

Mutt: Quite amusing. Okay, two fish are in a tank. One says to the other, “Uhm … how do you drive this thing?”

Jeff: Good one. Two seagulls are sitting on a perch, one says to the other, “Something smells fishy.”

Mutt: Two guys were stranded on a desert island. The only way they could get food was to kill sea birds by throwing rocks at them. By the time they were rescued ... they had left no tern unstoned.

Jeff: Good grief.