Mish Mash: The Last Imperial Funeral

I will always remember this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87Xkr8z3lEo

My father kept me home from school that day. Knowing my passion for history, he thought it far more important to witness the passing of the leader who, at one of the most critical moments in modern history, led the defiance of the psychopathic shit heel who wanted to create a world where I would have ended up wearing jackboots, speaking some Anglo-Germanic dialect, and living a short life filled with ignorance and fear of the Others.
   Note the unique tribute paid by the London stevedores and longshoremen. It was conceived and carried out by them on their own initiative.

Mish Mash: The Wave and the Rider

The extraordinary and terrifying ride by Laird Hamilton at Teahupoo. If you turn the sound up, the power of this wave becomes even more apparent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcaZarxilJQ

Source: Riding Giants, a documentary by Stacey Peralta.

Speechless

What does one say when confronted by this image, this fact, of a shattered boy?

Found in rubble in a Syrian city, family missing, mute, what can you say to him that will give him hope and take away his pain and fear?

God sees him, and all like him, and weeps. 

Sound Familiar?

I was reading a history of the First World War by the late John Keegan the other day, and among the many acute observations made by him in the book was this remark concerning its horrifying consequences where the affected societies were concerned:

…

"Totalitarianism was the political continuation of war by other means. It uniformed and militarised its mass electoral following, while depriving voters generally of their electoral rights, exciting their lowest political instincts and marginalising and menacing all internal opposition."

…

Sounds all too familiar these days, doesn't it?

Hearts Aloft • The Aubrey-Maturin Narrative

(First published in the 30th Anniversary issue of the Bookshop Santa Cruz Newsletter, December, 1996.)

When I was a boy and wanted to read a book that I suspected would become one of my favorites (joining The Bounty Trilogy, Wind In the Willows, Treasure Island, and Call of the Wild, among many others), I would lift a hatch cover in a planked deck near a big steering wheel, and drop into a small compartment called the lazaret. For I lived aboard a two-masted schooner, a true windjammer, built in the shipyards of south 'Frisco in 1893, and now, at this time in both our lives, being readied to make a long voyage toward the South Seas.
   The lazaret held bundles of spare sailcloth and balls of rope yarn and thread and beeswax, linseed oil and tarred hemp twine, sheets of oilskin, coils of the best Manila rope, and much else: all critically necessary to the life of a ship and her crew. It was also my special hideout: a kind of harbor within, where I went to disappear into worlds not yet known, or not known well enough. Surrounded by the hull, water faintly lapping below (the sound still closer to my heart than any music yet heard), my imagination cast free and made passages unfettered by routine.
   And I have wondered at times if my reading since (the schooner gone long ago, wrecked on a coral atoll some thirty-five years past; the boy's gait now mostly that of a landsman, no longer rolling in unconscious time to the dance of a deck under sail) has been a kind of attempt to find those writers, those stories, that will help me return to that life and the lazaret.

*

Patrick O'Brian, a reclusive eighty-one year-old Anglo-Irish gentle- man living in the mountains of southern France, has spent a quarter-century composing a novel that, with the publication of its latest segment, The Yellow Admiral, will consist of eighteen volumes and some 6,000 pages. Begun in 1969, following the publication of a handsome number of novels and short-story collections, a biography of Picasso, and translations of Lacouture and de Beauvoir, the work in its entirety - often referred to as the Aubrey-Maturin Narrative - is set in the very early nineteenth century. Jack Aubrey, a brave and bluff man of great presence and far-flung reputation, serves in England's navy during its long and relentless war against the fleets of Napoleon Bonaparte and his allies. Through a rather charming turn of events, Aubrey's life becomes intertwined with that of Stephen Maturin, a small saturnine Irish physician, whose medical skills are matched only by his hidden abilities as a freelance intelligence agent, and it is the remarkable range of events large and small, and the most intense emotions, that holds the Narrative together. Battle - long deepwater voyages - marriage and family - spying - drug addiction - wealth and poverty: all appear, vanish, and reappear over the course of two decades.

   O'Brian's precise observation and use of historical detail is unex- celled by any other novelist I've encountered; his characters are fully-realized individuals, and his reflections on life are acute and humane (and, often, wickedly funny). The cumulative effect immerses the reader in a world both familiar and mysterious, a world so compelling that they will return to it again and again.

   The first open and unqualified expression of friendship between Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin occurs in the first volume of the Narrative, Master and Commander, when Stephen learns that Jack has received a promotion, one of a number critically needed that the young officer might make the long and perilous ascent (as dangerous, in its way, as going aloft in a full gale) through the levels of command in his chosen profession. "I wish you joy of it with all my heart, sure," Stephen says.

   For those fortunate readers about to begin their acquaintance with Patrick O'Brian,, and with the wonderful story he has given us: I wish you joy of the extraordinary passage ahead.

Poetic Observations • 9

Our children are our legends.
You are mine. You have our name.
My hair was once like yours.

And the world
is less bitter to me
because you will retell the story.

From Legends
Eavan Boland

Dedication

Many years ago (over a half-century now) in the town of Papeete on the island of Tahiti, there lived a man who managed to survive by constantly scavenging garbage cans and piles of refuse and street gutters. His features were asian, but no one seemed to know where he had been born, where he had come from. No one knew his true name. He rarely spoke, and then only to himself. He concentrated entirely on his work, his face locked in a grimace.

   One day four young boys, began following him, keeping their distance, but never letting him out of their sight. Soon they began making fun of him and what he did, joking that he probably ate the garbage and all kinds of other horrible tasting stuff, and how stupid he was for doing that. They said these things often, not caring if he heard them because they knew he couldn’t understand them. They named him Chik Chak, yelling it at him as if he were a dog to be trained to recognize it. Sometimes they chanted it as they followed him, and once in awhile he stared back over a shoulder at them and anger distorted his face. Off and on for months they shadowed him.

   Then one day they left the island, never to return. They rarely spoke of the man and what they had done to him, and when they did it was only another memory from their childhoods, nothing special.

I was one of those boys.

I will continue to ask his forgiveness for the rest of my life. The Legions In the Mud posts are dedicated to him, to all those held in slums and pits and dumps, ridiculed and forgotten.

Indispensable

Anyone who uses a bicycle as their primary transportation quickly understands that constant and unflagging awareness of their surroundings on whatever kind of road they're using is key to       their survival. And while the need for protection in the form of helmets is pretty much indisputable, I will maintain that another       item – especially a particular variant of it – is just as valuable.

This bit of genius is the Take-a-Look Mirror from Bike Peddler. It can be fastened to a helmet or glasses. If using the latter, flat-sided stems provide the easiest fit, but round work as well. I've used one of these for years (literally one – I've never had to repair or replace it), and I cannot overemphasize how valuable it's been. It can be adjusted to give you precisely the angle you need to keep an eye on the traffic behind you. While it does take some trial-and-error to get that angle right, it doesn't take long, and re-setting it (not something you have to do often) is easy, since vibration from riding doesn't jiggle the mirror out of its setting. The acrylic mirror allows you to see details clearly at well more than a hundred yards distant. Best of all, this mirror allows you to dart your gaze at it for only an instant to see what you need to before turning back to the road ahead.

   Available in many bike shops as well as online, it sells for fifteen to twenty dollars. 

Poetic Observations • 8

.         .         .

The cottage had lost its roof long since and it was filled tight with lilac, not yet in bloom, while nettle and elder had overwhelmed the outbuilding behind; but there was still a stone bench by the door, and Stephen sat upon it, leaning against the wall. Down here in the hollow the night had not yet yielded, and there was still a green twilight. An ancient wood:  the slope was too great and the ground too broken for it ever to have been cut or tended and the trees were still part of the primaeval forest; vast shapeless oaks, often hollow and useless for timber, held out their arms and their young fresh green leaves almost to the middle of the clearing, held them out with never a tremor,       for down here the air was so still that gossamer floated with no perceptible movement at all. Still and silent: although far-off blackbirds could be heard away on the edge of the wood and although the stream at the bottom murmured perpetually the combe was filled with a living silence.

.         .         .

From The Reverse of the Medal
Patrick O'Brian

'Hold the harvest!'

Land. A piece of land, even one so small as to be regarded with contempt by rulers and their lackeys, remains something desperately hoped for by millions of people. Beaten down for trying to acquire and hold it, tricked out of their possession of it, they will ever persist in their struggles, no matter where they live or who they are called. This has gone on for thousands of years.
   In the late 1800s, the Irish formed the Land League, and fought for their right to control and own the ground upon which they were born and lived and died. The poem excerpted below, appeared around the world, and inspired many others in like efforts.

.         .         .

Oh by the God who made us all, the seigneur and the serf,
Rise up and swear this day to hold your own green Irish turf.
Rise up and plant your feet as men where now you crawl as slaves,
And make your harvest fields your camp, or make of them your graves.

.         .         .

From Hold the Harvest!
Fanny Parnell

Places From the Past • 1957

The Mechanics' Institute Library. Founded in 1854, and still a working library. My father showed it to me when I was nine. I got a card there and when we went into the city he dropped me off there while he did errands. Inside were spiral staircases leading to the stacks - thousands of hardcover books on subjects that would provide an excellent education for those left in the wake of the Gold Rush, for all the sons and daughters of the working class. Chess has been played there since it opened, and I was fascinated by the mysteries of the game, and the classic typography and illustrations and design of so many books that were no longer being published. It was like finding a trove of buried treasure that reinforced my desire to read everything possible.
   I urge you to visit it, both for it's historical and cultural significance, and in recognition of the fine work done by its staff.

57 Post Street
San Francisco
California

Fool's Hope

For Marcus Wynne


It was the doors that constantly reminded him. The windows, they were so few and never to be opened anyway, and what was there to see? Walls of rock all the way ’round and nothing growing on them and so high that the sun struggled to show itself above them. Nothing else, and be ever so grateful the Ultimate Fire had left that much.       But doors, everywhere. All sizes, and every size too large. Some smooth-sided and others with panels carved enough to keep a blind man’s fingers dancing for a week; some left unpainted or even unvarnished and others heavy with the weight of jewels up and down and across, but all – every single one – with knob too high for him to ever reach. Thus he was reminded of his place compared to those around him, and of the singular fact that told all who he was: Barley the Fool, Court Jester to House Scalpa and Lord Ahdose ruling it, may He remain in favor with the gods.                                                             It was not the way he, Barley, thought of himself of course.  No, he was Barley Oakfist, whose father in spite of many things claimed and denied was Kedge Oakfist, Sea Lord of the Western Deep, Captain-General of the Last Fleet and of the great harbor Portmadoc. There were landholds for farming; thick forests of trees still green standing in serried ranks up the sides of fjords to the north; lakes turned white with the thrashing of fish … all this his and his father’s.                                But he worked no land, did not harvest crops, never stood in the shade of trees, had no hope of taking fish on his hook – none of this, never being able to say: I hold this, as father before and son after, I hold this, I.                                                                                                   What noble would say him equal? Whose high-born daughter would gladly take him to bed and dream not of another joining her body to what little there was of his?                                                                             Father vanished and Fleet scattered as gulls before the white squalls, and Portmadoc enjoyed only by those who refused light to fall upon their pleasures. So Barley Oakfist he was only in his thoughts, and if anyone was waiting for him to behave otherwise, they would wait no longer than he, and if that was unfair, at least it made a kind of sense.                                                                                           Barley the Fool the Court Jester turned his attention to the work due that night, the clothes to be worn and the words to be said, and where to look and not to look, what to hear and not hear … all the matters that could earn him favor, the only kind of armor he was allowed to wear.                                                                                                                    Lord Ahdose would insist on a story, one with a lesson that could be employed to instruct his men in matters of loyalty and devotion to one’s master. Lady Ahdose would feign interest in her husband’s choice and then ask – in a tone of voice resembling that of a captain giving orders to a shield-wall – for something lighter: a comedic fable of the sort told by the wandering balladeers of Meda, or, perhaps, a parody of the members of the court.                                                               Barley shuddered. Performing for the Lady Ahdose was not unlike walking the plank across a bear-pit: one slip, one small misstep and your found yourself in the embrace of something dark, terrifying and extremely unpleasant. If Lord Ahdose did not immediately grasp the point of a story, at least he made some effort to reach forth and find it. The Lady would look as if she had been asked to submit her slender, perfect fingers to Yagdeef tattoo-picks, and then, if the offender was lucky, order banishment to the Nukaisa Moor. Usually though … assignment to the scrub-gang in the execution yard, rice husks and water only, and altogether much too soon burial in the vast shitpit outside the castle.                                                                           It is the beginning of winter, Barley reminded himself. Wear the yellow— no the red, the red wool jerkin – wearing the yellow might invite Lady Ahdose to inquire into such delicate matters as the level of one’s personal courage, for instance. Striped trousers tucking into sheepskin boots, and a hat of … gold velvet? No, that had been given to him last spring by the Dalmatesse princeling who had loved the pirate stories. Lady Ahdose did not love, did not like, did not wish to even acknowledge pirate stories – so much for the gold velvet hat. Instead, the traditional fool’s cap, the idiot creation with the tinny tin bells dangling from the brim. Humiliating, but safe.                                        Barley dressed slowly, carefully attending to every detail. He tried to think only of the coming performance. Windows did not matter, nor doors – not even the message received in the morning that his son, his tall, long-limbed handsome son who could barely bring himself to acknowledge his misshapen  father, would be in the troop of Scalpa cavalry arriving at the castle on the morrow. Gossip from grooms and breakers at the stables had it that the cavalry was returning from the Headland Cliffs, three years service and most of their comrades left burnt  on burial racks high above the ground. Peersun the Master of Horse had taught his son to write before the lad had actually volunteered for service, and had somehow received letters from his heir. Vivid accounting of brilliant sword-strokes and pistol-shots and timely dispatch of enemies by the young man, and only perfunctory mention that some had fallen. Sometimes the dead and maimed had been named, and as time passed and the butcher’s bill grew ever longer, Peersun no longer encountered volunteers, and respect for the King had turned sullen and reluctant.                                    In his mind’s eye Barley saw his son ride onto the grounds of the castle, safe and whole. Oh gods let him smile at me with pride just once—                                                                                                                            The clang! of the Royal Secretary’s staff striking the polished bellstones in the Great Hall rolled and echoed through rooms and along corridors,and although the sound was muffled by the time it reached Barley’s ears, it made him twitch as if he had been struck by bolts from a Barrier eel. Time to go. Time to make his bows and smile and laugh and dance - and never ever a hint that his soul knew anger and grief.                                                                                                                        Barley the Fool the Court Jester walked to the door of his room and dropped to his hands and knees and crawled through the dog-door in the panel of un-sanded wood. By the time he reached the Hall his flesh would be scraped and stinging, but that the dog-doors were there at all - that he was there at all - was considered accomodation enough, and reminded him that when he reached, he could be sure only of grasping his memories and dreams …


Fall, 1983                                                                                                                   Revised 2015                                                                                                      

TrampTerran Freighter

In the neverending night that is both night and day, the ship makes another voyage. Her passage goes unnoticed. Logs are not consulted. No former masters reminisce about times aboard so long ago. Keel pitted and scarred, hull slashed in a thousand places from as many accidents not worthy of mention. No wounds - rust her spilled blood. Her holds are bent from the weight of vanished cargoes, flaked with pieces of manifests signed five owners back. Controls a jumble of cryptic switches links synapses to captains no longer interested in changing course, to pilots unable to read the charts - numb swallowers of pills passed as food passed as sleep passed as knowledge. She slides through the dust of countless stars, never crossing another wake. Slow. Tired. Waiting for death on rocks never there, on reefs only photographs in a museum forgotten before she had been launched...

GPO

Dublin
1916

Letters being dropped
in postal slots
alongside Pearse proclaiming
the strength of the dead.

Plunkett's bangles clink
counterpoint to the patter
of anxious feet heading
for the street
and a bewildered cry of
Bejaysus, what have the
bastards done now?

Connolly baits and
De Valera calculates and
far away Yeats
begins a dream...

The Night Before • Tom Clarke

The fires of rebellion burn within his comrades; with him it is a white-hot furnace. Earlier in his life he returns from exile in the United States and joins an attempt to destroy London Bridge. Failing, he is sentenced by an Imperial court to imprisonment in England for as long as it pleases the representatives of the King. For most of the next fifteen years he is held in solitary confinement, subjected to extended periods of vile psychological and physical torture. When he is released, and returns to his homeland, he is determined to bring about a revolt that will settle matters once and for all. He loves his family beyond measure, but if he dies, so be it – he only fears failure and being returned to a cage.

The Night Before • James Connolly

He has devoted his life to the wage slaves: working stiffs, dirt dogs, navvies – all those without power serving the ones who hold it. It is not enough for him to force the Empire to leave; after they are gone he intends to bring down the indigenous ruling class and the economic system through which they have helped control the island before the Rising. He is as much a patriot as Pearse, but he is animated not nearly as much by God as by the inevitable triumph of socialism. He has lived in the United States, worked as an organiser there and knows how passionately many of its citizens have wished for a free Ireland. He hopes this will translate into material support, but he counts on nothing other than knowing there will be no more genteel arrangements with the Empire; the time to fight has come – the most dangerous battle in a life filled with them.

Poetic Observations • 7

Witness

I want to tell what the forests
were like

I will have to speak
in a forgotten language


From The Rain in the Trees, 1988
W. S. Merwin

The Night Before • Padraic Pearse

He is much more fortunate than most. Born into a family that cherishes education and moral development, he graduates from university, a rarity for men of his generation on the island, and is called to the bar. A life of prosperity and comfort await him. Instead, the faith and compassion that guide him lead him to become an exceptional teacher and schoolmaster. Complete conviction and belief in the sacrifice of his life tell him he has been called by God to help free his country from the most powerful empire on Earth. He will be ruthless in helping trigger the Rising. When it apparently fails he has a vision of the triumph that will come from it and feels himself blessed beyond measure to nurture it with his blood.

A Passage to Freedom

"Self-government is our right, a thing born in us at birth; a thing no more to be doled out to us or withheld from us by another people than the right to life itself."

Roger Casement
   Freedom fighter, revolutionary, abolitionist, poet

Knighted for his services to the colonial peoples within the British Empire.

Stripped of that knighthood and executed for High Treason by the British government for his participation in the Easter Rebellion, 1916.

A Vision

It is late January, 1958, and I’m standing on the top rung of the companionway ladder inside a hatch that opens into the cockpit of the schooner that is my home. She had been built fifty-five years before I was born, and is one of the very last 19th-century boats still capable of surviving the deepwater of the world. We are hundreds of miles from San Francisco and the west coast, headed toward the Marquesas Islands, having just endured a whole gale with winds approaching hurricane force. My father has been on deck for the better part of thirty-six hours, taking catnaps in a wooden chair lashed to ringbolts next to the cockpit, ever on the watch for the slightest mistake by whoever’s at the wheel and for any change in wind and water. I know he won’t make any mistakes. This perfect faith and the wonder of what I am seeing disallow the fear I might have had were I a bit older and capable of cynicism. My eyes tear a bit from the cold wind, still strong enough to keep the sheets taut even with the fores’l and mains’l reefed. My first brother stands next to me; unusually, we are not allowed on deck, so we make ourselves as comfortable as possible and look around us. It is morning. The sun is bright in a pale blue sky. High clouds driven by the wind scud across my vision. The horizon is clear and so distant no measure occurs to me. Surrounding us is an ocean without the boundary of land or even islands – nothing impedes its power as we ride swells towering over us one moment and the next lifting us high in the water and cold salty air, over and over until the motion is almost hypnotic – my brother and I raise and lower our heads in time to it, bringing a smile to the old man’s face. Once we noticed a albatross gliding across twenty-foot waves, their tops blown into spindrift. For hours I watch all this, my kid mind in a meditative state that I had learned when only a couple of years old by staring at bodies of water. And I was...moved...   emotionally in a manner that I could not articulate to anyone, not even to myself.

...

The memory remained, unfaded and unaltered by time or me. It didn't come to mind that often, and when it did it never occurred         to me to try and figure out what that elusive feeling was.                       Until a month ago, forty-eight years after the fact. I was riding my bicycle through my neighborhood, the streets safe enough that I could indulge in a bit of contemplation without worrying about being mown down by an SUV or delivery truck, when for no apparent reason the memory came to me, and I immediately understood what my ten year-old self had sensed. It was this:                                                                                

During that instant in my mortal life I had not only seen the primeval world, the world as it was before the coming of humans – I had been there.  

Politics as Disease

.         .         .
"The order of politics, as we have known it in the world, is an order imposed on society, neither desired by most people, nor directed to their needs. It is therefore chaotic and destructive. Politics grates       on our sensibilities. It violates the elementary requirement of aesthetics––– it is devoid of beauty. It is coercive, as if sound were forced into our ears at a decibel level such as to make us scream, and those responsible called this music. The 'order' of modern life is a cacophony which has made us almost deaf to the gentler sounds of the universe."
.         .         .

From The Art of Revolution
Howard Zinn

The Trench Dog

France
Somme
1916

Seventeenth birthday and he celebrated by eating two pieces of stale hard candy instead of one hidden in an oilskin pocket of his rucksack. Thank you God for letting me see this day even though you must be busy as f----. § In the infantry supposedly formed by one of the Royals for almost two years now. Beat the odds so far. Don’t bear to think about how the dice are being rolled. Rolled them himself way back when he run off the farm, nothing but dumb sheep and dumber chickens along with someone calling herself his mother who had whipped him like she did the plough horse – poor old Steady – and see what the tumble got you: stupid officers and stupider orders and no better off than you had been before. § But he obeyed the orders, managed not to run when he received the terrible fire, sent some back – who knows where just pull the godd--- trigger – and hurled only twice when he saw the first dead body, torn into quarters and the lowest piece hanging from branch stubs  of a ruined tree alongside a few rotting peaches. None of that fruit for him ever after. Lots of tin food: beans and peas, stews that would make a starving mule flinch, beans and soups, beans. Dried salt beef (maybe the mule) and hardtack. The rare pudding – where the hell had that come from? Lime juice to keep the remaining teeth in his head and tea, always tea, enough tea to put bees in his ears and make his hands shake. § In between, taught only what the officers want him to know. Nothing complicated, nothing smart – soon enough he would be dead, and education was useless to a corpse. What he learned was to march and salute, just so; instant obedience to orders and never mind why or what; no talking; how to clean and shoot and shoot and shoot the rifle issued, and how to dig holes for sleeping and for his scat and piss and for the dead. § He had been punished for mistakes, sometimes his, more often, not. He had been beaten because it pleased the man beating him. He never heard a word of praise. He bent his back and bowed his head, and stayed ever on the watch for the enemy. That meant the ones from the other country. But as the fighting continued he took to thinking it was anyone who threatened him and never mind which uniform which flag, it was whoever said the words called ‘orders’ and wouldn’t explain why, it was whoever kept treating him like a dog to be used any which way. Dogs bite, he thought as he worked the bolt and fired again and again, dogs bite and go for the throat—

Poetic Observations • 6

.         .         .
Further than fame
are fleas and visions,
the hermit's cave
under the mountain
.         .         .

From Song: Further than Hoy
George Mackay Brown

St Patrick's Day

By all means, on this day lift a favorite beverage in a toast, dance and sing to the extraordinary place called Ireland and the remarkable people who inhabit it.                                                                                                But please, remember that it is, above all, the day celebrating the man called Patrick - taken from his home at the age of sixteen and made a slave, surviving years of base servitude by holding fast to his faith in the most trying circumstances. He risked his mortal life by escaping, walking hundreds of miles across the country until he reaches a harbor and talks his way aboard a boat, eventually reaching Britain, and home.
   The trial seems to strengthen his faith and encourages him to return - return, of all things - to the land of his captivity, bringing forgiveness and God’s love. The rest you know.
   The day given to Patrick, freeborn, then a slave, then free again to help others walk into the light.
   Bless him.                            

In the Lion's Mouth • 1

There was no real warning of what was about to happen. The occupation was hated and there was an undercurrent of tension and restlessness no less bearable for being longstanding. Recruiting agents for the Imperial armed forces, under pressure from their superiors to fill perpetual levies for the war that would eventually devour millions, roamed the city using every method short of outright kidnapping to meet the need. The native language was still forbidden; a school teaching it was closed, to speak it at work meant instant dismissal and no hope of finding another job. Informers were everywhere, some paid, others eager to ingratiate themselves with the ones holding power.  Families  divided even as they struggled       to feed and clothe themselves and keep the landlord at bay. Once, people claimed they could actually hear an artillery barrage from the front on the continent, and might‘nt that mean that the enemy was on the verge, at last, of defeat? Some dared to state that the enemy of the occupiers was not their enemy. They looked around carefully before saying so. The faithful continued to fill the churches, praying they would be delivered from their illnesses, their torments and their doubts. A few prayed that what they had planned would succeed,   and forever change. What they knew was about to take place was a secret held by them. Revealing it too soon could lead to their deaths. Acting upon it probably would. 

The Rebellion

This April marks the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rebellion in Ireland, 1916.

This revolt against British occupation and rule in Eire first took hold of my imagination when I was in my late 'teens. It immediately became part of a private collection of large and small moments in history that I find instructive and intensely moving; for example, the American Civil War, the Paris Commune, the U.S.S. Constitution against what seemed like the entire Royal Navy, and many many more. It accompanies my passion for traditional gaelic music and fueled a need for a greater understanding of the long and complex relationship between two countries that have always fascinated me. Then, too, a fair number of my ancestors have come from the countries involved, and emigrated "across the pond" because their lives were in danger from both rulers and others being ruled.

During the next few months there will be a number of posts about different aspects of this. I know that for many it might as well be ancient history. But consider this: I am by no means an ancient, and one month before the Rebellion ignited my father was born. 

The Star Fraction

A most thought-provoking novel by Ken Macleod - the first volume in the Fall Revolution series. An England perpetually on the edge of collapse (along with pretty much everywhere else on Earth and in near-space) as a patchwork quilt of communities and forces tussle with one another - sometimes cooperating, at other times not at all - in the name of just about every social and political belief that you can bring to mind, along with a few you will not unless you're demented or intoxicated beyond measure. Engagingly complex, featuring, for example, a smart-gun whose sentience evolves in unexpected ways;   a Trotskyite mercenary with scrupulous morals; and at times a delib- erately bewildering sequence of events that lend the story an immediacy that may surprise you.

Sicario

A brilliant and brutal portrayal of Mexican drug cartels and the extremes to which Northamerican forces go to destroy and control them. There is no single main character; rather, a number of them orbiting within systemic forces that can both save and punish with equal measure and without compassion. Emily Blunt, James Brolin, and Benicio Del Toro give powerhouse performances. The cine- matography by Roger Deakins delivers images - particularly of landscapes and movement - that are somehow familiar and other- worldly at the same moment. And the music...Johann Johannson, the Icelandic composer, delivers a score that a times will make you curl into a ball to protect yourself from what is coming. The intelligence of this movie makes it bearable to watch, but it isn't easy. Don't say I didn't warn you. Rated 'R'.

Advertising

For the foreseeable future advertisements will appear on this blog. The process of finding and getting appropriate ads is going to take some time because the blogger can only partially control it, and it's largely a question of controlling sometimes very aggressive attempts by marketing firms to place inappropriate or irrelevant material on the site. I ask for your forbearance while this is worked out.

A Rule

Now in my 68th year, I have a rule that I recite to myself every morning:
   Live every day as though it might be your last; live it as though you are immortal.
   Doesn't make sense, does it? Ah well, such is life.

Poetic Observations • 5

...
When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the Southern Cross, burning luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches the Southern Cross begins to bend, and the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of Time upon the dial of the universe; and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the look-out knows that the midnight is passing - that relief and rest are close at hand.
Let the people take heart and hope everywhere, for the cross is bending, midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning.

   Eugene V Debs
   Upon being sentenced for sedition, 1918

Nicknames

Casey

My first nickname, and chosen by me, initially because I was enthralled with a picture book called Casey the Fireman, about the captain of a fireboat in New York City harbor. He was tall and handsome, like I hoped to be, and blond, which I already was, and he put out fires from a kind of tugboat. What could be better than that? Going to school gave me an additional  reason to keep the name - I had outgrown the book - because boys in the 50s were almost never called Christian, and when teachers called roll for the first time they inevitably asked for ‘Christine’, putting me at near-mortal risk for merciless teasing on the playground.

Windy

My father sometimes called me this and, in fact, had wanted  to give me that name when I was born. My mom vetoed the notion. Neither one told me why the name was considered (I did know it wasn’t about weather) and it’s origin remains a mystery.

Chip

Of Chip and Dale fame. My first brother was Dale. These were private names used only by us, and was the earliest agreement between us that we represented the two essential parts of the perfect person: Brains (Chip) and brawn (Dale). My brother shortchanged himself; he’s extremely smart and insightful. But the characters in their cartoons are a riot and we strongly identified with them.

Moose or Moosenheimer

I began struggling with my weight when I was thirteen. I’d been thin as the proverbial rail until then, but a diabolical combination of growth spurts, puberty and its sidekick, hormones, and collapsing arches and chronically inflamed achilles tendons collaborated to turn me into, well, someone you’d nickname moose. This was used by my father. When he was exasperated with me, I got the short form. The long version was used when he wanted me to know that, in spite of the difficulties between us at the time, he cared very much about the problems I was having..

Cwissy-Poo

This is from one of my sisters. Totally affectionate, with  enough           of a bite to remind me that just because three of her brothers had inflicted an annoying nickname on her didn’t mean she was incapable of retaliation.

Chipmunk

A glorious Norwegian girlfriend (sigh) came up with this one in my early 20s. It’s inscribed in a copy of e. e. cummings’s  collected poems she gave me, along with a mention of my ‘bright eyes’. The unwritten half of the phrase - ‘and bushy tail’ - may come to mind, but dis- cretion, even at this late date, requires I refrain from speculation on any implications from the fact.

Yellow Cap

During the wars in Southeast Asia in the 60s and 70s, I was active in a group called The Resistance. I habitually wore a yellow knit cap, and someone – perhaps thinking I should have a nom de guerre (or nom de anti-guerre?) – took to calling me this, a habit that was picked up by others.

Captain Terror

Not a compliment. Early in my career as a bookseller I worked at the store on the campus of UCLA. Much responsibility, which I exercised with great attention to detail – something I demanded the crew I supervised share. But while the demand wasn’t unreasonable, my attitude was, and until the scales fell from my eyes a couple of months later, I had this nickname.

Irish

Years laters, working at another bookstore, I indulged my long obsession with Celtic traditional music by putting it on the store sound system whenever it was my turn to choose what should played. This continued for nine years. About a year into the run             I was given this name by a couple of co-workers.

Big Fellah

An extrapolation from Irish when I turned to reading every book on the Easter Rising, and Michael Collins and all matters related, and I was tagged with the famous nickname given Collins. At one point, in a moment of whimsey, the store owners got everyone bowling shirts to wear, and this was embroidered on mine.

Oracle

My last job as a bookseller was with Borders. The company’s upper management was stunningly inept. The store where I worked, by contrast, had a hard-working and professional crew that kept the place afloat far longer than expected. Some of them had 10 - 25 years of experience, which was unusual. I had just under 40, with the accumulation of knowledge that goes with that length of service. Whenever a customer asked for a book that seemed impossible to get, the problem was given to me, and my success at meeting their need was high enough that I was tagged with this name.

Note: Epithets have not been included. If they had been been, the list would have made up a slender book held at length by a thumb and index finger.

Poetic Observations • 4

love is the every only god

who spoke this earth so glad and big
even a thing all small and glad
man,may his mighty briefness dig

for love beginning means return
seas who could sing so deep and strong

one queerying wave will whitely yearn
from each last shore and home come young

so truly perfect the skies
by merciful love whispered were,
completes its brightness with your eyes

any illimitable star

65
By e. e. cummings

Epic Moments From My Life as a Veloist • 1951-1959

My very first memory of bicycles was when I couldn’t have been more than three or so. My father had, like most soldiers from the beginning of human history, brought home some ‘things I found’ - loot - from Europe, one being a bare-bones French touring bike.     And I remember him hoicking me up onto a small red cushion or pad fastened to the top of the handlebar stem, facing forward, knees and feet dangling in front of the bars, and holding me with one hand as we rode around in whatever neighborhood it was. I felt like I was flying. It was wonderful, and I'm so grateful I was able to experience it, because now of course he and my mom would have been arrested   on child endangerment charges and put in a home with padded walls and no candy and certainly no comic books or rock n' roll music.

   When I was about five years old. The old man planted me on the seat of a miniature two-wheeler in the middle of a big front lawn       of thick grass, showed me how to grip the handlebars and put my sneakers on the pedals, and gently pushed me on my way. When I   fell almost immediately, I don’t recall that it was any big deal – the grass cushioned it and the ones that followed, and before much time had passed I was happily wobbling all over the place. (1)

   At twelve, while going down at a hill at too high a speed, I lost my balance and ended up on my stomach sliding across the asphalt, hands and arms stretched out before me like a swimmer, for about twenty feet. Long sleeves and jeans managed to protect me from everything except some vivid bruises, but my palms were badly scraped, and after they healed a tiny piece of stone remained embedded at the very base of my right hand. It remained there         for another forty years, a reminder to me that being a smart ass -     on a bike or otherwise - doesn't usually pay off. (2)


(1) A perfect example of life to come: While learning, you fail; failing, you pick yourself up off the deck and try again; repeat as needed until you succeed. Little did I realise what I was in for.

(2) This was before helmets, knee-pads, gloves. It was also   before whining to your parents and friends. I picked myself up and limped home and cleaned my wounds. Other than one of my brothers asking me what had happened - we had an almost ghoulish interest in each other’s misfortunes – it was not remarked upon.

Hydration on the Playground

News today that public schools in the US are bringing back water fountains to their playgrounds, so that kids might lay off the soft drinks. My immediate reaction was not puzzlement that the fountains had been removed or disabled in the first place, but rather, a vivid memory of standing more or less patiently in line to get a drink just before recess ended, watching classmates slurp the non -oxygenated and -electrolyte water as impatient warnings of "No cuts!" went up and down the line, and those taking too long to drink being barraged with the sarcastic reminder "Save some for the fishes!"

The Silver Veloist 2 • Catagories

Buying a bicycle or replacing one with another can be a daunting task. The variety and quality of machines is much better than it was only, say, twenty years ago, never mind the stone age when I was a kid. But that also means that targeted marketing can make the process of buying a bicycle far more confusing than it need be.
   To me, most bikes are general-purpose - that is, even though they may be advertised for use only in certain circumstances, they usually can meet a variety of needs. Thus many mountain bikes are also used on flat terrain for cruising; touring bikes are often used for daily shopping runs; and racing machines are employed for commuting.
   Some bike are made from expensive, high-tech materials and cost thousands and thousands of dollars. Others are made out of aluminum or steel with basic components, and are priced under 500 dollars. There are three-wheelers, or recumbents. Some models are mass-manufactured in factories, and others are hand-built in runs of several dozen.
   Faced with all this, I suggest is that you think about what role bicycling is going to play in your life. When you've made a decision, you might want to talk with other veloists about their choices.
   Visit bicycle shops in your area, and search the internet, to see what meets your criteria. But most importantly, choose the type of riding that meets your needs, and do your best to ignore the attitude that one kind of cycling is better than another. If you have any questions, please contact me through this blog. Have fun, and safe riding!

My Noble Horse

This is the bicycle I've had for over twelve years. One of the models designed by the Gary Fisher company, it has been thoroughly customized by me, the most drastic modification being the handle-bars and the addition of a cargo rack. These photos were taken in 2015.

Called a Nirvana, it's been my sole form of transportation for that entire time. In any given year I've used it for at least 340 days. A conservative estimate of how far I've ridden it stands at approxi-mately 12,500 miles. Not bad for an initial purchase price of $450. Add the cost of replacement parts and modifications and repairs - a bit over $1,000 - and the yearly outlay of $120 seems pretty reason-able, especially for the amount of sheer pleasure it's given me.

The Silver Veloist

I'm terribly keen on everyone using bicycles as much as possible, especially older folks (and for the record, I'm 67). We need the exercise, and we need a kind of exercise that runs the gamut from comfortable and easy on the body, to a bit more of a workout for losing the flab that seems as determined to accrete on us as barnacles do on the hull of a boat, to the mercifully rare moments when we are frightened into a heightened state of consciousness even as we ride our way out of a seat on the next celestial express. Too many of us who are capable of being excellent veloists (1), instead settle for being another four-limbed pudding-pop strapped into an elaborate machine that will soon become a kind of self-controlled floaty chair (2). I urge as many of you as possible to take up cycling, and to that end I'm going to post some information on the subject to help you get started.

1 A snazzy French synonym for bicyclists.
2 A kind of personal transportation in the brilliant movie Wall-E. Highly recommended.

Poetic Observations 3

From Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes:

Calvin: "Hobbes, what do you think happens to us when we die?"
(Hobbes contemplates the question for a moment.)
Hobbes:  "I think we play saxophone for an all-girl cabaret in New Orleans."
Calvin: "So you believe in heaven?"
Hobbes: "Call it what you like."