Miscellany

Soooo... that has been the earliest and nicest Spring I can remember....EVER! Of course my memory is not really that it good, it has never been good, it seems in fact to be getting worse but I digress. What a Spring. Everything is just busting out and it is April. I love it. We sat on the back porch last night and worked in the yard yesterday and there is a fine sheen of green pollen on everything each morning like a light dusting of snow. Lets enjoy this run as much as we can because if it were like this all year long here all our houses would be worth a million bucks. In celebration of it a favorite of mine.

Spring and All by Greg Brown:

Spring and what's left of the hippies return from old rooming houses and
Mexico.
More letters, more journals, more poems to burn; Real heat at last.
At last my words glow.

My friend Jim just broke up his band, the guys all have jobs and the nights
got too long.
He's selling the amps, one guitar, and the van.
I'm sure you could have it all for a song.

Snow on the north side, trash in the yard, love like a newspaper tattered
and stained.
A two bourbon twilight, fog from God's cigar.
the neighbor's retarded dog chasing the train.

Don't see any good in just hanging around, take a tip from the birds and
change the scene.
Find some long river and follow it down to where our old sins have washed
up in New Orleans.

Spring and what's left of the songbirds return, to fight about loving and
nesting and such.
Thanks for the letters you sent back to burn.
Their smoke is as light, and as dark, as your touch.

***

END OF THE WORLD UPDATE! It has been about 19 days since health care (OBAMA CARE!) passed and was signed. The sun still cam up this morning. Additionally all those companies that took those HUGE write downs for their increased costs. Still in business. I am not saying that this will not further bankrupt our country but keep in mind we have been funding a several hundred billion dollar war off the books for 10 years now, eight of it under the fiscal conservatism of the republican Party. I think they are going to win the mid term elections pretty big and you what? The sun is going to come up the day after that too.

***

Tiger is back. I had no idea that they had been playing golf for the last several months. Imagine my surprise. I watched all this without comment. What is there really to say and other for the prurient interests all of the life lessons that this story entails are trite cliche's and they are also true which is what makes them so hard to pay attention to. here are couple:
1. People are sinners
2. Absolute power corrupts pretty absolutely
3. Once you set yourself on a pedestal in the information age you are well and truly screwed.
4. Even when you have it all it is never enough.
So lets forget about Tiger. Feet of clay and all that. he is an extraordinary athlete and person and is proving in the Masters that he is going to be back providing excitement and inspiration for the golfing public, but lets remember and have a serious pause before we hold these athletes out as role models for ourselves...or our kids. And that includes the already sainted child Tim Tebow and maybe even...gasp...Kurt Warner (though in both cases I hope they hold up). I am not cheering against these guys, I just do not understand why we as a society never recognize that although extremely talented in their niche, these guys are just people. That should make them even more interesting for us, but with the media, we want icons and Gods. Silliness. I hope he makes a run today. Golf is more interesting when everyone is there not just to win the contest but to beat him. And i like watching him win, even now.

***

Michael Steele. Seriously?

***

Mine disasters. They happen. We need the coal. it is really dangerous. People do dangerous things to make money and we cannot protect everyone all the time. Are we done wringing our hands over this? I sympathize with the families but deaths in coal mines are an example about how our news sources warp our common sense. Are we going to stop coal mining? No. Should we? No. Is it tragic that there are whole regions of people where this is their only employment option? Yes. Is THAT something we should be wringing our national hands about? Absolutely.

***

While I am being an insensitive lout I am sick and tired of New Orleans angst. HBO has a new series that finally does the disaster justice. Seriously, why do we as a country feel this tremendous need to allow our entertainers to feed us these tragic human interest stories over and over again to fuel our national shame and angst and even worse our national need to blame. Was it a tragedy? Absolutely. Did the Bush administration woefully under respond? Without a question. The "great Job Brownie" quote from W. was one of the great examples of Presidential detatchment and tone deafness but really it was a natural disaster.

Also, I guess no one there knew that the town resided below sea level. Fortunately a lot of it is now being built below sea level. Brilliant. It reminds me of all that development in Chesterfield Valley in reliance on the the new levees put out there. I remember what it all looked like under water. It reminds me also of the late (great) Sam Kinnison when talking about one of the frequent famines in the deserts of Africa suggesting we should not send them food, we should send them luggage.

"You live in a desert!
You know what it's going to a be
a hundred years from now?
It's going to be a ------- desert!
We have deserts in America
we just don't live in them!"

The same can be said for living on the gulf coast below sea level.

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Upcoming events...."The Daddy's" House Concert Review, "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" book and movie review and wait for it...Becker goes to Istanbul, will he be able to come back?