Fencing with Words

From Foil Fence Sketches, by Luis  Lázaro Tijerina

A friend recently showed me some sketches which form part of a sketch series intended to honor the Soviet fencer Vladimir Smirnov and Hungarian fencers Aldár Garevich and Katalin Izsò.

I  was struck by how many of the terms used in this sport describe strategies one might intentionally or inadvertently use in conversational wordings.  In fencing,  "conversation" is 'the back-and-forth play of the blades, composed of phrases (phrases d'armes) punctuated by gaps of 'no blade action'.  In real-life exchanges, of the verbal variety, words or  phrases are sometimes inserted into conversations, that alarm or emotionally maim.  ("Rattling one's sabre" comes to mind.)   The recipient is sometimes caught by surprise, and responds as if cornered, unable to effectively "foil".   They thought they were having a simple conversation.  At what point did it become necessary to mount some sort of defense?

Fencers learn specific actions to block, confuse, delay, deceive or elicit a predicted response from the opponent. Not every conversant is aware that they're the 'opponent' or that it's sometimes a game where one party does not intend to lose.  Word battles and staged battles, the goal is to win.

Fencing is a kind of graceful battle dance sans music where one is given a special type sword to pit his/her fighting skills against an opponent . The words "dance around the issue" dances to mind, where one strategically or creatively waffles, eludes, dodges or sidesteps, to avoid, rather than confront the 'Other.'  The object of a fencing match is to defend oneself and emerge the victor.  Verbal matches often end in compromise.  It was not so much the final outcome but each respective situation's relation to strategizing that tweaked  my interest.

Verbal parrying, while it can be somewhat likened to a fencing tactic, differs in that it is often carried out solely to exhibit one's expressionistic largesse, such as a bloviating speechifier holding restive, reluctant listeners captive, not by his imagined vocal eloquence but the inability of his listeners to effect a significant riposte.  (That last sentence may well qualify as an example of bloviatism.)  What I meant to say was, we all 'fence' in a way, with or without training, with or without rules, with or without expecting to win..

Poetic challenge of the day:  Write a warning poem about those incorrigible, indefatigable,  thoroughly unrepentant lippyversifiers, pontificators, scribbleholics, or talkerhighnesses, whose web you may have inadvertently found yourself being sucked into, using terms from the Fencing Glossary.    Here goes:

En garde

Worders invite us to engage -

which for some is just a "warming up"
fencing us in for what is yet to come.
Parrying at high octave, they resist all

attempts to counter this relentless  wordpoking, jabbing, piercing
at each's defensive mask,  to
capsize/mesmerize/ . . . effectuize
displacement, one
     balestric
              utterance
                        at a time   . . .  until
even the most determined leaver
abandons any thought of fleching,
astounded at the worder's sheer,
     unremitting
surge.


_________________

*No apologies for including made-up words (such as the nonexistent adjective "balestric",
derived from the noun balestra, which in the Fencing Glossary means "a forward hop or jump"--or for making a verb of the noun fleche (in fencing, "an attack in which the aggressor leaps and attempts to make a hit, then passes the opponent at a run").  And yes, there is no such word as "effectuize", but "effectuate" got rejected by Caps and Mesmer for not having an "ize" ending.   The majority ruled in that line, what can I say.

Goodbye to an old friend

Dr. Kimbwandende kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau 

(Apr. 9, 1939 - Nov.  29, 2013)

Not everyone gets to visit an old friend again to say goodbye before they pass.
I thank the universe  for the opportunity,  some days ago, to have been able

to say my respects, one last time.

Rest in peace, Fu Kiau.

Poets that Dance

I visited the Milk and Honey House in Meligalas today.  Virtually, via YouTube.   I suspect Greece is a tad warmer now than here in Quebec.  I felt like going to Greece this morning for some reason, but not as a tourist.  So I looked up a poet who lives there because we share something in common.  We both love poetry, we both blog, and I remembered this little living room dance video he once posted way back when.  Vassilis was one of my first blogger friends when I'd just discovered 'blogging'.


Some poems "After Vassilis Zambaras's "Traces, inspired by this video:

[meaning, I ingested some of his original poems but re-poemed them here into an imagined scene where I'm sitting with friends at some public venue, I hear Greek music in the background, and just feel like getting up and dancing. . . but don't.  Not all situations welcome such unabashed gleeful spontaneity. So it's saved for alone times, in one's own living room or kitchen, with nobody but the cats to witness.  Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I tried but am not on the same level as Vassilis. But I love the way he so carefully chooses each and every word in his poems, weighing their precise placement, which sometimes elicits multiple meanings that make you go back and re-see them.  I learn from this. So with apologies in advance, for re-"aftering" some of your formerly blogged  poems, Vassilis, here're some dance-scene-inspired interpretations, or "word re-choreographing" of some Trace poem excerpts.

No Stage Directions

Sitting in place

all stay.
Enter the muse.

None go, listening
but only his limbs
leap to.

One's enough -
group participation

unnecessary.

Reel life
being
real.

Take Two

No director here

just two legs starting to move
to a sudden rhythm.

The scene calls for

a dance.

Song

looking over

across the room

disconnected,

     reconnecting.

Each dances alone,
all together

Unstoppable

the dance was always there when

I needed it

until I forgot the steps.

Some things are just so in you -

you automatically
improvise.

_____________

Σας ευχαριστώ για τα ποιήματά σας, Βασσίλης

Value and the 'Firsts' of . . .

A copy of the first book to be printed in America, sold for $14.2 million on Tuesday.

It was printed in 1640 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Boston's Old South Church sold the Bay Psalm Book from its collection to cover the cost of building repairs and to fund its ministry.

Its value lies not in who its author was, or its content, but the fact that it was "the first" of something, and that it still exists.

Anybody remember the first mobile phone? 

Motorola was the first company to produce a handheld mobile phone, tested in 1973.  The prototype weighed 1.1 kg and measured 23 cm long, 13 cm deep and 4.45 cm wide, offering a  talk time of just 30 minutes and took 10 hours to re-charge.[1]  
 
How about an original Vought Berger Company wall phone from 1903-1906, complete with insides and original key, that may still work, for sale recently on EBay as "a museum piece"?  Only $1,200 as a Buy Now item.

Historical objects we preserve as valued mementos, or toss out or donate to Goodwill, depending.  Value assigned for being "the first" depends on the what.   Ever notice that firstborns are generally  more prolifically  photographed  during the first months than say, the fifth born?   It's not that non-firsts are any less  loved  but there's something about documenting that 'first' one, because you've never experienced this  before.  It's all new and unfamiliar and you're overattentive,  no burp or drool from this new little creature goes unnoticed; whereas with succeeding births, while you delight in all the same infant milestones reached, you don't feel the need to register Every, Single, Little. Thing. or  photograph every gesture, facial expression or outfit worn.  Eventually, quantity gets trumped by quality--you continue to highlight the special moments, and while the experiences differ raising each child, you know a bit more than when you did when the first one came.  (Mothers also tend to compare all subsequent pregnancies with the first.  It may get easier or be harder but you never forget what it was like the first time.
Just like . . .

you never forget your first love.  Your child's first word.  Your first car, your first job, your first poem, even if you now cringe in embarrassment at the latter.  So, 'firsts' are special. 

Books signed by the author are more valuable than unsigned ones.  Used anythings are usually less valuable than new anythings, unless it's an antique, original, or 'first of".


Been thinking about 'value' lately, vis-a-vis books as objects.  Some we tend to  keep, no matter what the age or condition, even though replacements are easy to find and their content now available digitally.   So it's not just the words, it's the type of container that houses them, and our relation to that type container, born of habit or preference, that determines its perceived value.  For many, a newer, more 'advanced', more accessible, more convenient something will always be 'better'.  A decades' old paperback with crumbling, yellowed pages and broken spine, with favorite passages highlighted in the gentlest of faint pencil markings,  coffee ring stain or turned-down page corners--well, yes you can replace the book with a crisp new copy, but you'll still consider that first copy the more 'valued' one.  No one, of course, will pay you anything like a million dollars for it, no matter what the contents--unless it happens to be the first ever of something.. Which it likely isn't.  But . . .

I find it interesting that the decision to sell that valuable first-book-ever-published-in-America was   ... the need for money.    A  church in my neighborhood here can no longer afford its heating bills and was forced to close down, ready to be scooped up by developers to tear down and replace it with new condos.  One could salvage a brick or hunk of stone or piece of wood as a memento but all its parishioners have left is a remembered experience of that particular building, and while they can read its history, or retain photos of it, for them it's just not the same.  The object they remember will soon no longer exist.

Bobo

I've  kept an old rag doll my son played with as a child, heaven knows why.  His name was Bobo and he was a clown.  My son took him everywhere. Somewhere along the years we lost his clown costume; Bobo got tossed into the washing machine with something dark red and came out orange.  He once had a beautiful, full head of hair.  An arm has disappeared, chewed off by Harry the dog, perhaps.  The poor thing's literally in tatters now  And yet I can't bring myself to throw him out.
 

So he perches on the wall above a stack of books next to a piece of driftwood from Lake Champlain in Vermont.  Sea stones from a beach in Greece, lake driftwood, my child's first 'friend'--valued objects of no value to anyone but me.  None of them exactly 'firsts', but by museuming them in my book room, they've become singularly cherished archived 'things'.

As for that first poem, all I remember now is that it was an ode to a bicycle spoke, and that I'd probably die of embarrasment to read its words again.  So some firsts can be let go of, and probably also should.

Bobo the Hobo/Book Guy

He sold half his books
so he could pay the rent
then sold the other half
to heat his rooms
but unable to stand the emptiness
he bartered an old, too-large pair of slippers
for the well-loved book of poems he'd sold to a friend,
bought back  because
selling that one had been a
Big Mistake.

Fast forward thirty years, his house
houses two other houses
you're going to ask about that book now
aren't you?
Well . . .

A poem even worse than the Ode to a Bicycle Spoke, open ending into question marks, ha ha.    But it might make a good short story someday.  Things that mean something, and things that .... don't anymore.  Stay tuned, smiles Bobo from the wall.

Handpainted wordcard for Moogie the cat

He's actually a lot heavier than depicted here.  I slimmed him down a bit.

eye-itudes

sometimes you have to go away
just so that when you come back you
can finish the things you couldn't
because you needed to get
away

Stand Up

Be spoofin'

 Thoughts after stumbling on a chakra energy consultant's advice on 'How to Program Your Crystal':

We're told  to "Create your own reality".

That  repetition of verbal affirmations will manifest the reality I desire.  

What if my reality clashes with your reality?  

Get real.  All is illusion.  Listen up:

-You are what you Eat.
        -Be careful what you wish for.
             -As a man thinketh, so he goeth.
                   -What you fear comes to you.
                          -Do what you love and the money will follow.
                                -Money is an illusion.
                                       -Think Success.  Think Thin.  Think Rich.  Think SNOW!
                                              -So you think you can dance.
                                                   -Don't think.  FEEL!!
                                                             -You are one in a million.
                                                                     -We are ALL ONE.
                                                                              -The answer lies out there, in service to others.
                                                                                        -The answer is WITHIN you.
                                                                                                -You do not need to know the answer.
                                                                                                        -Just BE.


_______________________________________________________________________


My favorite quote from Hesse's Steppenwolf --

(Mozart to Harry Haller, in the Magic Theater ("For Madmen Only - Price of Admission: Your Mind")

"You are to listen to the cursed radio music of life and to reverence the spirit behind it and to laugh at its distortions."

Day of Remembrance

awynart

I was young and childless at the time and had decided to "adopt" a little 7-year-old Vietnamese girl.  Not a real adoption but the kind where you send money every month to a charitable agency and about once a year they send you  a little note from the child thanking you for your support.

On the news:  War planes!, Evacuation!, photoed bodies of screaming civilians Agent Oranged, Chaos, Crisis.

I get a letter from the charitable agency telling me they have lost track of "my child".  So do you want to adopt another in another country, they ask.  Here are the forms.  Pick one.  But all I could think was, "What happened to 'my' child?"    As if these kids were interchangeable, like when your pet dies and people tell you to go out right away and get another one. Never mind a substitute, I wanted to know what happened to that child.  That one with the shy, thin, unsmiling face, the one who wrote that squiggly note the agency forwarded, my first and only personal communication with her.   The one I wasn't allowed to send packages to, or get to know except through generic, periodic agency reports.

I kept her picture for the longest time, on my desk, afterwards.  I don't remember what happened to the photo, nor even now, her first name, except that it started with an "L".   She disappeared from my life, without ever having really been in it, a casualty of war, an adoption that  wasn't a real adoption, where I got to play Pretend Mother while I dreamt of someday being a real one.  Maybe she got a bit more to eat because of my little monthly donations.  Where did that old photograph go?  Why can't I remember her name?  Whatever happened to her?

Veteran's Day, where you remember the men and women who "served" -- who fought and got sent home physically and mentally damaged, or lifeless,  flag-draped in a box.  War Memorials should also honor the victims of war, whose lives were also forever shattered, or ended entirely.

Did you survive? I want to ask her. For one brief year I thought of you as my child--"my" child--and I hate that they lost track of you.  That I will never know what happened to you.

I sympathize with the families who remain in the dark.  It's the Not-Knowing that's hardest, for those who've  'lost' someone in a war. The ones that never come back, the ones whose whereabouts you don't ever learn.  Your brother, your husband, your son.  Your pseudo-adopted foreign stranger child.  You honor their memory.

Today,  I was reminded by the calendar, Oh, it's November 11th -- Veteran's Day--and though I know some who've fought in several different wars, still suffering the consequences, they are not just in my thoughts only on  Veteran's Day.

But this little girl, for some reason,  today she revisited, leaping into my memory, now so faded as to have 'lost track of' certain important details.  Like her first name. My little perpetually aged 7-year old,  missing 'adopted'  child, who are you now?  Where did you go?  Did you survive?

Why can't I see your face anymore?

The Dubious Meatball, and the prison that you know

I hesitated posting today because, what started out as a single topic has suddenly morphed into a vast melange of whatever, and I fear it may prove of little interest to anyone popping by just looking for a quick read, on the way to other else's.  If this sounds a bit strange, it's because I'm under the weather, so to speak, not fully functioning, even minor habitudes needing to be readjusted.

I seem to have come down with an inner ear infection, causing extreme vertigo, nausea and imbalance.  I've only ever felt this horrible before once, years ago at sea on a freighter bound for France where I and a few others were rendered incapacitated by waves of seasickness and twice, after coming out of surgery as a reaction to the anesthesia.  So the feeling was familiar but initially not knowing the cause, I headed for the clinic.

I went prepared for the long wait, equipped with a book,  pencil, sketchpad, bottle of water and a granola bar.  When I arrived at 8:30 a.m. there were already around 40 people in Waiting Room "A" and an equal number in Waiting Room "B".  Several others had brought books, lunch bags, crossword puzzles, things to occupy their time, but most just sat there, patients patiently waiting their turn.  We all know the drill.

Much is made, sometimes, of the shortage of doctors here in Quebec, of whole days spent waiting in the waiting room, of the long waits for appointments for certain medical procedures for elective surgery, etc., and while there are definitely problems, my experience here has been, on the whole, positive.  The staff at our clinic is competent, professional and caring,  and of course, it's all free.  I got prescribed some medicine and was given a number of exercises to get things back to normal, though one of the side effects of the medicine mimics the condition it's supposed to alleviate and the exercises cause you, at first,  to re-experience the vertigo and  nausea in strong bouts until things get regulated again.  In short, it's gonna take time, getting back to what for me is 'normal'..

What has all this got to do with dubious meatballs or prisons, known and otherwise?

Well, it came from  the book I took with me to the clinic--an old paperback from the '70s that I'd grabbed from the bookcase as I left the house.  I love Graham Greene's writing   Later, sitting on the black plastic chair in Waiting Room A, along with now only 37 other fellow 'waiters', I settled into the story of Maurice Castle, and the dubious meatball reference made me smile, took my mind off, completely,  the scene at hand, the dizziness and nausea.

Greene's protagonist, a 62-year-old government employee (er, spy), in conversation with a bachelor colleague, is commenting on the benefits of marriage, one being the halving of the cost of living.

"Ah, but those awful leftovers," his friend replies, "the joint remade into shepherd's pie, the dubious meatball.  Is it worth it?"


The hours pass, the granola bar long finished, the water bottle empty, I'd now already read through a hundred pages.  I no longer noticed the time.  Words or phrases jumped out at me, peaking my interest, because they always lead to reflections, where I want to suddenly jot something down as a reminder but actually don't, then later wish I'd had.  Greene's novels are full of such little verbal attention grabbers. 

The days of the guerrilla had returned, daydreams had become realities.  Living thus with the long familiar, he felt the security that an old lag feels when he goes back to the prison he knows.

Re: a mother, rearranging her sick child who's sprawled out on the bed ,so as not to wake him:  She handled his body with the carelessness of an expert.

". . . blue, serene, unshockable eyes."

"Flippancy was like a secret code, of which he didn't possess the book."

"He felt like a man who was departing into a long exile, and who looks back from the deck of a ship at the faint coastline of his country as it sinks below the horizon."

"Scruples of cleanliness grew with loneliness like the hairs on a corpse."

And random bits of information, like the fact that aflatoxin, a mold produced when peanuts go bad, is a highly toxic substance that can kill liver cells.  A discussion ensues where one fictional character describes the reactions in animals and humans, hinting of its potential use for eliminating a suspected mole, ending with the less determined of the two voicing an uncomfortable:   "Sometimes, Emmanuel, you give me the creeps."

I'm thoroughly enjoying a re-read of an old, barely-held-together paperback from a stack of former reads I can't seem to part with.  So different from that other, recently published action-packed, overdialogued, predictably formulaic novel I devoured a few weeks ago trying to make long hours on several buses pass more quickly.

An aside (and example of the morphed 'whatever' melange)--I was noticing on EBay this morning  that within the same price range, original artworks that were especially accomplished, technically proficient and aesthetically appealing, often had no bidders (none!), while some silly comical avatar or hasty squiggle that could have been done by a four year old, of say, a purple fish with a gigantic mis-shaped eyeball, had 7 people bidding for it.  Go figure.  No accounting for taste, in art or reading, what's popular and what's "real" this or that, everything an individualized  'Perceived'.'  Which grammatically you're not supposed to do--make verbs into nouns.  But if you can say "That's a given" or "That's a go", why can't one say, "That's a Perceived?"

"I'm more of a cod," one character says in The Human Factor.     "Don't talk to me about cod," says his conversation partner, who prefers trout.  I tried to imagine what characteristics one must possess (or not possess) in order to view oneself as a cod.  Anyway, I will end with another little passage that chased the sickness away while in the clinic's waiting room, in the seventh hour before they finally called my name: 

The protagonist is at the bookseller's, to whom he turns to have books recommended for reading.

"Recommend me something to read that isn't about war," he says.

"There's always Trollope," says the bookseller.   (Another small smile escapes.  I was soooooooooo into the story at this point, ha ha.)

According to Wiki, this novel focuses 'on the psychological burdens of the pawns in the game, doubt and paranoia bred by a culture of secrecy, the sophisticated amorality of the men at the top, and above all, loyalties'.

Pawns in the game.  Doubt.  He was being played, this aging bureaucrat.  As perhaps we all are, questioning being the first sign of awakening.

Glass, Wall and Road

Recent trip pics. 

Downtown Toronto, from the upper-deck window of the Megabus.

 It took us 45 minutes just to get out of the city, due to traffic.

It takes approximately 1 hr 42 min by car from Toronto to Buffalo,
but due to traffic and long wait at the border,
(processing over 100 people, one by one,

in line behind two buses waiting ahead of us),

we got in four hours later than expected.

Mural on Main Street (theatre district),

Buffalo, New York

Into the Pennsylvania mountains
no more glass city
no more brick walls
only road

geese going

Source

                                    That time of year again.

                                          They honk goodbye.

                                                 Another leaf dislodges itself

                                                            from the yellow birch tree,

                                                                    sails past on its way to 

                                                                             the ground.

                                               Ah, Autumn.

                                                        Awe . . .  again.

 "To Life"

 late turners, these

green leaves are stronger,

leave later,

 last longer  -

not unlike

late bloomers, who

 need more time to ponder,

get there slower,

hang on, to hang onto
Wonder.

 Time cycles replaying - Look,
another year, and 
         you're still here,
    to see,

to Be.

blogartlaunch

J'ai lancé un autre site -
moments de plaisir dans l'expérimentations de l'art

Workshop in Progress

The Peat Fire

Photographer: Carl Purcell

The Peat Fire  (Considering Seamus Heaney)

I don't know what I expected--

a smell of old and strange earth

so unexpected, so strong

that my very eyes would tear up

uncontrollably,

my heart tumescent with

thunderstruck recognition

that here, now, I was reunited

with that from where I

through my ancestors sprang

those centuries ago,

here, now, in the land itself

hinted at in my mother's maiden name.

But none of that happened--

the fire whispered,

warming the room

indifferent to my disappointment,

its slight scent joining the others

in the warming air,

as I joined my cousins,

commonly descended from this,

here, now, our

words in flattened, modern accents

our thoughts recognizing only

that the only recognition

possible, desirable,

here, now,

was that of our humanity 

  

~ ~ Peter Fergus-Moore

Thunder Bay, Ontario

____________________________

I first discovered the poetry of retired literacy instructor/freelance writer Peter Fergus-Moore by following a link on Tom Montag's blog.  One of Peter's poems, as well as one of Tom's, will be featured in the upcoming September issue of Salamander Cove, around mid-month.

Wall Flower

Saw today, on a wall at the side of a private residence

on a street downtown where we were lucky enough to find a parking spot

on the way to the Festival of Fall Delights at the Parc Portuaire.

50 Years of Dreaming

                                                                    I have a dream the
                                                                    wars will end.

                                                                    pre-emptive wars
                                                                    retaliatory wars
                                                                   wars of occupation
                                                                   wars to topple regimes
                                                                   wars to mine others' natural resources
                                                                   civil wars
                                                                   racial wars
                                                                   religious wars
                                                                   the war on isms
                                                                   wars to depopulate and remap a place
                                                                   the coming water wars
                                                                   the latest war of Terror
                                                                   World War

                                                                   . . .   all of them.

                                                                 Asleep or awake,
                                                                 I have this dream.

colordabbing

testing the new waterbrush pen

Today I came across mention of a waterbrush called The Piston, which  resembles a fountain pen with the brush part made of synthetic fiber and rabbit hair, the barrel designed to air pump the water.  You can also fill it with ink for Chinese calligraphy.  Its advantage over the squeezable plastic-barrel of the waterbrush I already bought is that the amount of water dispensed by The Piston is precisely controllable.  

I want one of these!!  (Actually, two--one for water and one for ink).  I wish I had known about this before I went and bought the other one.  I also learned that the watercolor set I was given is considered "student grade".  When the paints get used up I can check out the better-quality "artist grade" sets, some of which are enormously expensive. But not all.  One step at a time.  I need to learn how to draw better first. 

Park walk

At the little park beside the river - Nine things you can't do here:

Drink alcohol, play golf, set a fire;

ride a quad, ski mobile, motorcycle or car on the path;

litter; or let your dog poop on the grass.
Okay to fish, or take your mutt for a romp down the hill, though.

[Click on photos to enlarge]
 

 

Reflections in the water of bushes and sky

Same photo, different perspective -

two sides to every story

 Water spirits

mirrors

______________

Photos taken yesterday with my Olympus SZ-14 digital pocket camera.  I played around with the color options on the last photo via Picasa.    Photo #14 is a cropped, lightened, upside-down version of Photo #4.  All other photos are as originally taken, except for rotating or re-sizing.

Not One

Saturday afternoon,

I’m sitting at the kitchen table having a cup of coffee,
looking out the window at my garden out back
when I’m suddenly made aware
of the Absence of something -

Bees.

Where you be, bees?!

I have not seen a single bee here all summer.

Not one.
From May to August.   All the time I spent in the garden,
I should have seen at least one.

Why we should worry --  see  here. If all the honey bees  worldwide disappeared,  no longer there to pollinate our fruit, nut and veggie crops, less food would be able to be produced.   To my fellow planet dwellers -- What's our Plan B for when the food begins to run out?

One Tough Cookie

 

  Helen Thomas (1920-2013)

The Washington Post called her the "feisty scourge of presidents".  She was considered "tough", "outspoken", "abrasive", asking questions others couldn't--or wouldn't.  Questions a bit too probing for some, perhaps.  During the Bush administration she was summarily moved from her usual place in the front row, all the way to the back. A demotion (de-motioned).  You can't really see hands raised way, way in the back, or maybe even hear the question.  An effective strategy to pretend not see or hear someone.  Mission accomplished.

Today, criticism of your government's leader, policy, or behavior could get you blacklisted, or at the very least, "watched".  It depends on how you phrase it, in which venue, and the level of your probing or persistence.  Thinking a thing is one thing.  But blatently, passionately stating it or pursuing the truth of it (or worse, mediatizing your pursuit of an inquiry), can cost you your career as a journalist.

Press conferences don't seem the same without her.  Where are the gutsy, probing, really tough questions today?  The ones we all want answers to that just aren't being asked (or if asked, repeatedly go unanswered).  I watched a press conference recently where reporters stood or sat, pen and notepad ready, and to almost every question came the shrugfull response:  "We'll have to get back to you on that"; "I don't know the answer to that"; "I can't comment on that, it's classified"; "We don't know at this time", "I'm not authorized to divulge that information. ..... Next question?"

And not only at government press conferences.  Major traumatic events, such as mass shootings, or terrorist captures or attacks, or drone kills--why are the official reports so rife with inconsistencies, explanations that constantly change (inaccuracies never corrected), that strain common sense, the results of investigations kept secret, documents gone missing, inadvertently or deliberately shredded--or legislature quickly enacted to make them unavailable?

If you blow the whistle on corruption, you are not thanked; instead you yourself sometimes become a target.  If you question the lack of evidence, you are considered impertinent (or a conspiracy theorist). If you ask too many questions, you are first marginalized; then made an example of.  The result from the public is not, as one might expect, revolution, but apathy.

I imagine a future where at press conferences or daily briefings to reporters, official spokespersons will probably be dispensed with altogether.  Some underling will be designated to show up and hand out prepared printed statements, which reporters can then use to paraphrase and regurgitate into their respective 'reports'.  By that time maybe  no one will be reading newspapers or watching the news anymore, televised fictional happenings long having replaced the real news; besides, nobody could tell the difference, they've gone mad trying.  And so it goes, as Vonnegut would've said.



Journalists come
journalists go.

They go where others sometimes fear to tread
           and wind up dead
(or shunned or ridiculed,
sent politely      to the back row
so as not to be so       in your face.

'Now, now, behave yourself', is what is meant.
Know your place.)

But if questions don't get asked no more --
           does that mean we already   know the score?
       or that it no longer
 matters.


R.I.P. Helen Thomas


 

bird, watching

'Morn, on the 4th of July

My country, 'twas of thee,
land once of liberty,
for thee I weep.
Imprison, torture, kill;
Wage wars on every hill,
Then spy, and lie, and shill.
            (We are not sheep)

My country, ‘tis of thee
Please help me, help me see
Where we went wrong.
The Constitution’s dead
Our flag they want to shred
Instead of pride there's dread.
             We’ve lost our song.

My country, split by thee
No more Tranquility …
So far off track!
I want some pride to flaunt,
Not hear those hates that haunt
But most of all I want
               true freedom back.

 _________________________

*experimental improvised lyrics to the  patriotic song.  Today's supposed to be a day of celebration.  It is difficult to celebrate repeating slogans, wearing symbols, waving pieces of cloth that no longer symbolize the original intent of the forefathers.  Hot dogs and beer, ball games, parades, family picnics, fireworks--the tradition continues; our culture demands it.  But sentiments are divided.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless,
Tempest-tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

 [Inscription on the Statue of Liberty].

America can't even take care of its own tired poor, much less its homeless, and its borders no longer welcome huddled masses yearning to be free, never mind the wretched refuse of other teeming shores.  The giant statue of a stone lady lifting a lamp remains a treasured national icon.  But things have changed. The world has changed.  We still celebrate our traditions.  Because without them, what would hold us together?  

I'd rather celebrate today  those things that continue to hold us together--our shared humanness. That despite the madness and chaos and hardships, the stupidities, banality, latest political outrage, or national physical or constitutional catastrophe ... we still cherish freedom, justice, privacy, and the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  In absentia then, a toast -- to the America I wish it were, and perhaps some day might finally, eventually       become.