You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
After all of the delusional accusations about Obama’s citizenship and religion, hearing charges that Ted Cruz is not a “natural born” American and thus Constitutionally barred from the presidency comes as an ironic twist. This one might actually have legs, factually speaking.
We don’t expect him to quit that easily, of course. So this could get interesting, especially if the natives get restless.
Noticing the first few lawn signs for a particular presidential hopeful the other day demanded a second look.
Yes, they were brand new. Sparkling. So who was endorsing him?
Nobody, apparently. Only his staff.
Years ago I learned to pay attention to just where the roadside signs were being planted. If they’re popping up on people’s lawns, you can assume some support for the candidate. But placed on public right of way or at intersections or uninhabited stretches of roadway, it’s only somebody doing a job. (In this case, the signs were in front of the parking lot of an abandoned church. So much for separation of church and state?)
Some of us have learned not to be fooled. And some of us have learned to seriously consider a candidate, based on the lawns where their names are appearing.
Those of us on the peacemaking side of armaments debates have usually resisted calls that would require a balanced budget, usually because of our concerns about what would happen to the poor and oppressed during economic downturns. It’s not that we’re against a balanced budget, mind you – many of us would favor a budget surplus and reserves.
Curiously, however, those who have been most vocal in their demands for a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget have also proclaimed strong support for large military outlays.
Here’s their unintentional bind: Some historians and economists have noted that without the ability to borrow money, America would never have been able to enter into armed conflict. Perhaps that’s universally true among nations, not just mine.
If that’s the case, perhaps we have our lines tangled. Would a balanced-budget requirement have prevented the U.S. buildup in Vietnam as well as both wars in Iraq?
Remember, too, we were on track to eliminate the federal deficit before 9/11 overturned everything.
The war costs were, in effect, put on a national credit card the hawks were never willing to pay off.
Is this a game we’re willing to play – a kind of chicken? (No pun intended.)
The concept certainly thickens the plot, even before we get to name-calling.
Think of these poems as an almanac for the year, a monthly calendar of not just rows of days and weeks but also the centuries of New England.
Where the past peers into the present and future.
And you peer back.
~*~
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Think of passenger rails and unless you’re a rare daily commuter, you’re likely to envision earlier eras. Steam powered locomotives, for starters.
And then great journeys across the landscape.
Now keep going. Deeper into history. Trips onto the frontiers of knowledge. The edge of the known world.
You might run into genius in the most unanticipated haven.
Like this.
~*~
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My title is drawn from a line in John Greenleaf Whittier’s “The Last Walk in Autumn, XXV,” which echoes “blow the trumpet” in Ezekiel 33:3 “and the watchman cried” of 2 Samuel 18:25, followed by “I saw a great tumult, but I knew not what it was” in verse 29.
There were thunders and lightnings,
and a thick cloud upon the mount,
and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud;
so that all the people that was in the camp trembled.
– Exodus 19:17
We, too, live in a tumultuous time, but in the crush of news and entertainment, the trumpets are muted. Prophets are neglected, and analysts and vapid pundits hold forth in their stead. Perhaps the rappers are too angry or too monotonous to cut through. The wheels spin and spin without a destination.
For my part, acknowledging Whittier fits my own turns in this writing. While serious American poetry typically turns away from anything touching on religious faith or political awareness (the exceptions are telling), both have been central to my life. Like Whittier – and Whitman, a step removed – Quaker practice has shaped my vision and voice. Nor is true faith distanced from social conditions. Closer to home, Whittier was a frequent visitor to the room where I worship weekly, and his parents married from the bench where I sit. To read Whittier with any appreciation in today’s literary perspective, though, I find I must break the cloying monotony of his simple rhyme schemes – recasting the lines will usually do the trick. What I then find is a surprising freshness within each line, a much more vigorous reach than is typical for the period. We forget that Whittier is the springboard for Robert Frost and all who follow in that vein. We also forget that Whittier was essentially a topical poet, immersed in the political and economic struggles of his time. Even Snowbound, for all of its seeming nostalgia, is an acknowledgment of technological advance and its impact.
Here, then, begins my cry.
Here in the midst of presidential primary season, I’m especially grateful to have caller ID on our phone. Yes, the voice part can be amusing, “Call from Chick-O, Chee Eh,” for instance. That’s Chico, California. Nobody we know.
We don’t pick up on the Unknown Caller, either. If they won’t leave a voicemail, we won’t deal with them. Period. Same for Wireless or Cell Phone, which has become another way for candidates’ campaigns and polling services to try to get through to us again.
Having a registered number adds to the problem. As more and more people switch to cell phones, the phone book gets slimmer – even before the printer switched to the tiniest type in existence for the White Pages. So the pollsters are sampling a shrinking pool of the public, which means, well, the same folks again and again.
Hey, usually the folks we want to hear from are shooting us emails anyway. So when are you using the telephone these days? Or how? And then? Does texting count, too?
So there on page 41 of Jeffrey Eugenides’ third novel, The Marriage Plot, I find he’s cribbed one of my fundamental arguments, the one about how the older you get, the faster time goes. Or, as he puts it, seems to go. And he didn’t even give me a footnote. Alas. (Where, oh where, by the way, has the year gone?)
At first I was going to say nothing new really happened this time around, but that’s not quite accurate. A stranger in one store did approach me to ask, “Has anyone told you how you look just like the drummer in Fleetwood Mac?” Could it be my ponytail? The one that would finally tie in the back?
And then, thanks to one inspired Christmas present last year (and wondrously repeated a few days ago), I’m swimming a half-mile daily in the city’s indoor pool. I wouldn’t say I enjoy it – laps are strenuous, after all – but the effort’s somehow refreshing and invigorating. Maybe it will also give my pun-prone physician a smile at my next physical. Could it be the giver’s in cahoots with him?
We did enjoy some all-too-short getaways through the year. Camden, Maine, in deep winter, instilled in me a fondness for tulips, thanks to a devotee’s store; Cape Cod in early summer included a panorama from the lantern room atop a lighthouse; Vermont in late summer, before the foliage turned, felt perfect.
Quaker activities have me hopping around New England, and with the Revels Singers, I performed in five concerts this fall, on top of weekly rehearsals. Add to that the release of four of my (experimental) novels and a brace of collected poetry as ebooks, which comes as a relief, and several public readings.
In addition, the Red Barn frequently draws readers from five continents, even if we’re still waiting for Antarctica. I even made my YouTube debut as the subject of an hour-long interview, as you may recall. As for the weeds in the garden or the snow in the driveway, well, can we get philosophical?
The one thing that’s been going all too slow is renovating the bathroom, which finally began before the bathtub could fall through the ceiling to the dining room. We’ll spare you the details. Could it be because everyone’s being paid by the hour? Or just the realities of trying to cope with a century-plus house? (The latter, mostly.)
So here we are, with the new year bringing us another presidential primary, the payoff on our mortgage by midyear, and my 50th high school reunion. If we survived a Social Security payment snafu at the beginning of last year, well, here we go again. Wishing you and yours all the best.
I dream of a kind of writing that approaches, well, dreaming. A narrative of free-floating, widely associative surrealism that’s richly informed by fomenting emotions.
So the other morning I was somewhere in the vicinity of what I report in my novella, With a Passing Freight Train of 119 Cars and Twin Cabooses, and having coffee with an ex-boss, maybe even at the same cafe frequented by John Wycliffe and Hieronymus Bosch in my book. We were too far from the ocean to be considering his sailboat, so we must have been discussing a story in the works. Or maybe politics or updating him on office gossip, now that he’s moved on.
Next thing I knew, we were joined by Jerry Seinfeld – as he was on the show, who knows what he looks like now – and an invisible stranger. Jerry started telling me that’s not how he would have constructed the scene under consideration in my new story.
“When it comes to going to the dentist,” he said, “I would make it as awful as I could. Everything has to go wrong.”
But that’s not how it happened, I want to reply. It’s not true – not true to the facts.
“So?” I can hear from his end. “Wouldn’t it be true to the dream? And much funnier?”
He’d have a point. I’m still thinking about it.
For the record, let me say – there are no scenes with dentists in my novels. And maybe just two or three poems with the hygienist.
~*~
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Just as the first snowstorm of the season has finally hit New Hampshire, the state’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary is beginning to show some flickering flames. The kind that produce both heat and light. Up till now, it’s been only smoke, mostly on the Republican side. (The Democrats have been politely, though passionately, lined up behind Hillary or Bernie, recognizing the battle they’ll share together after the national convention.) The Granite State’s winnowing function has worked best when some unanticipated turn reveals a candidate’s true character for the public to see, either with devastating consequences for the campaign or its big breakthrough moment.
To be candid, I’m surprised we got through the autumn without seeing one or two of these. Yes, Trump came close when he attacked a St. Anselm college student as a “Bush plant” after she asked him a question, but the story never gained traction. The rest of the pack of candidates never picked up on the theme or any other, for that matter. The race to date has been pretty bland, all too predictable, little to set one apart from the other. Where’s the genuine courage or bold intelligence been? Talk all you want about the Trump-Carson-Fiorina outsider role, the pros in the lineup have been notable mostly in their failure to connect as seasoned campaigners rather than slick packaging alone. We’ll probably see some fascinating postmortems when it’s all over, but for now the scene’s been pretty befuddling.
We did awaken to an unexpected surprise November 28 when Joseph W. McQuaid, publisher of the state’s largest newspaper, endorsed Chris Christie. While the Union Leader and its New Hampshire Sunday News hold staunchly conservative editorial pages, there are Republicans in the state who insist these are liberal media. Ahem. True, McQuaid has often marched out of step with many of the state’s right-wing voters – anyone remember Malcom Forbes, for instance? – but you can assume Joe’s never, ever voted for a Democrat.
Yesterday morning, though, came the startling headline across the top of the front page: “Trump campaign insults NH voters’ intelligence,” an editorial by McQuaid noting Trump’s resemblance to bully “Biff” in the “Back to the Future” series. As McQuaid wrote, “Trump has shown himself to be a crude blowhard with no clear philosophy and no deeper understanding of the important and serious role of President of the United States than one of the goons he lets rough up protesters in his crowds.”
You get the idea.
And Trump’s response?
As this morning’s top of the front page headline announces, “Trump calls McQuaid ‘lowlife.'”
Of the many things you might accuse the publisher, “lowlife” is not one that springs to my mind, especially when coming from the lips of someone like Trump. The inaccurate retort carries the air of desperation – and flailing.
We’re still six weeks away from the voting booths, and Trump’s starting to show his central weakness. Am I wrong in seeing him as thin-skinned, someone who can’t take criticism or a well-aimed insult? Who can’t take what he routinely dishes out? Is this a wakeup call to his rivals to get their punches in, too, now that they see he’s not invincible? For that matter, what will their responses reveal about them?
Sure looks like it’s about to get interesting. Maybe even exciting. But first, I need to shovel some snow.
Jnana's Red Barn 