Secret History of da World. Part 82

Apparently, Faeries are real. ...and not a moment too soon!

The U.N. has known since their founding these folks were hanging around. However, they were given pots of gold, and Dark Matter technologies by the Wee folks to keep their traps shut.

Btw they ain’t exactly “Wee” being on average seven feet tall.

Also, yeah them guys are the ones doing that UFO stuff...figures. Turns out these fruits are the oldest branch of Humanity. I mean they been using pencil sharpeners for a million years.

They only ask that we stop having wars and torturing each other. If we don’t, they say they’ll stop all that for us. A few years ago, #45 declared war on them. Army wouldn't budge. Generals said: "...these folks is too cute to shoot."

First thing they did was to get out the vote for Biden. Nah they didn't tamper. Just suggested such in dreams. Nudged folks towards they're better selves. They also invented a bunch of new ice cream flavors. So we gots a quiet New World Order on our hands. Me I welcome our cute Overlords. They might help me start that doll hospital, and bike repair shop.

 "...pissed"

Artemis returns from the moon. The three dummies on board Helga Campos and Zohar sez they’re more or less fine. Tho’ pissed the rover they dropped on da damned Moon don’t work. Campos thought it was the bathroom. ...jerk. These stuffed jokers should be back around the 2nd of December if they don’t burn up on da way. Worth every Bitcoin we spent on them.

Loss is the greatest gift. 

From it we learn from it we give. 

Dreams whisper. Hope persists. The Earth Abides. 

 "...leavings"

These holiday times bring family memories both good and sad ones. Years ago, my sister and I were with my ma when she passed when death came to her. We sat with her. After a while her hands which we held began to cool. Her soul had left. It was the same with other loved ones. It takes a short while for us to leave.

 "...pole star"

The Holiday season the Yule is our pole star. One that the whole year revolves around. Today in our country is Thanksgiving Eve. On this day and night families no matter their circumstance do as best they can to prepare. The cooking and makings for the start of the Yule season. I remember back when cars had fins milk was delivered in bottles children could wander safely, and you could have TV in any color as long as it was black, and white.

In that faraway time before we crammed space with debris jammed flags on da Moon and Mars. When online meant waiting to get into a movie. I remember Aunts, and Uncles tons of cousins' friends pouring into each other’s houses. These for the grand slams of Thanksgiving Christmas and the New Year.

I remember our house.

All dolled up our traditional six-foot tree the aroma of cooking. Decorations some going back to the early 1900's mixed with flashy electrics of the then 50’s. Dad, and the uncles all gathered in the daddy spots yacking guy stuff. Work sports the army…WW2 recently over. That and what routes they took to get out here. Most came on Eisenhower's new Interstates. I remember the railing paint was still fresh!

My Ma, and the aunts in the mommy space…the kitchen. Going on about how them uncles drove them totally crazy who was graduating college and who was having a baby. Babies. I remember babies showing up all the time. Endless new cousins even a new sister.

Meanwhile our dog Brownie was under the table listening. That’s what dogs do for kids. They listen to what’s really going on. Then tell all good girls, and boys what’s coming their way. Good Dog!

Presents.

Besides tearing the house and yard apart my siblings' cousins and I dreamed. We wondered at the neat stuff coming our way. Santa never let us down. …mostly. Still waiting for that dammed bike from 1959! Com'on Santa, you owe me. Despite gaffs we was seriously into that guy.

The Sears Roebuck Christmas catalogue that the mailman would slip us was an instruction manual for Yule heaven. We thought Santa ran Sears. At least at Christmas. ...made sense at the time.

Before the age of fast-food gluttony folks only pigged out once or twice a year. This was da deal for over a thousand years. Enter the Christmas Turkey aka Thanksgiving part two. It was swell. In this rant all the holidays morph together into one long meal...because it was.

My ma made this magical veggie stuffing. She was always ahead of the curve. Magic is da word. Yeah, there was static every kind of family has plenty but bleep it. It was the Yule. We was all gleefully stuck together in the weird but loving amber of family and friends.  We had each other. …and it mattered.

The House.

All gewgawed out. Collaged for Thanksgiving Christmas New Years missed birthdays and efforts at peace offerings. Life is complicated. Lights bright decorations cards on every surface. The aroma of cooking filled every room. Near every house. While playing outside we could smell the turkeys' pies cakes sauces everywhere every street. Homelessness happened during the Depression and was over. It's cruel return was still decades away.

Later we sat said grace meant it then the passing of food. All manner of wonders. Laughing the telling of stories, fights almost starting then fizzing out over cider. The damned electric trains chasing itself around the tree. The tree btw bright blinking it’s soul to heaven.  We were family we were friends we were together.

Remember these were Depression, and WW2 folks. Those that could made sure their kids had at least a taste of security. As my ma told me years later. She dad, and our aunts, and uncles. They gave us our cousins everyone good memories on purpose. They knew what desperation was, and what it did. They deliberately created a sense of harmony despite everything. They so loved us.

There was music. My family all sides played instruments. Before the digital era it was common for folks to play their own music. In them days This when ash trays were all over the place and integration was slowly becoming a good idea. Folks made their own music. Having instruments, and sheet music around da house was normal...as were manners.

We sang carols. My dad played the piano assorted uncles aunts accompanied on violin and viola. Everyone sang. Even me shy as I was. We really believed in things. Each other our country…even G-d.

Yule gatherings have been with us for 1000's years, and more. Beginning as wilderness Solstice rituals. It’s been observed by many peoples around the world forever. It was nearly the first thing our species figured out...just after beer. Family friends gather at certain points in the year for a reason. A kindly one. In times like now with divisions war plague it's even more important. Keep Love in your hearts. Bless you all. Be brave be safe be wise be kind.

If you remember the s/f TV series "Fringe". They shot many scenes at Brooklyn College which played as stunt double for Harvard. Brooklyn College at Flatbush Avenue has no remote resemblance to Harvard. However, most of the world don't know that. Or even that we have a college. Allen Ginsberg was head of our English Dept. I snapped the bell tower of Brooklyn College/Harvard while wandering over to see friends. There's no bell anymore. Like so many old towers it now has a recorded chime.

No one wants to remember as they didn’t in the 1918 Pandemic. It’s complicated. This time social division. Still, I have a particular memory: “A lone abandoned Central Park carriage horse wandering down West 28th Street.” This is what I will pass down.

November 23, 2019.

Australia is burning now right now as you read this. Just as California burned last summer and will again next. The world is changing. For real air sea land flesh, and bone changing. We change what we do change who we are or perish. The world will be fine in any case. It will easily survive us. In 20 millions of years, you'll hardly know we were ever here. 'But the world will be here. The changing is for us. Our lives our species, and those on the world with us.

 "Shadows" ...Once upon a time.

I’m a child of the Cold War. In my young life nuclear annihilation was an everyday possibility.

The current fears are not new to me. I now remember an unscheduled air raid drill. It was spring 1958. In that era the winter soil in New York was frozen solid from January to March. Not so for decades. The earth abides.

One of the first warm days. Was playing in the backyard. The ground soft. Left to their own boys dig holes. Perhaps a species memory of our time as prey to large animals. ‘Hide…cover your tracks keep quiet!’ Species boy digs. I was hiding from Leopards 20,000 years gone.

Safe from Leopards but not Bears.

The Tupolev Tu-95, NATO code name ‘BEAR’. Both sides in that strange time relied on such to deliver A-Bombs. On that day it seemed to my mother, that the Bears had finally come hunting. What happened was a frightful blur…had forgotten but now recall it. An unscheduled drill.

Air Raid Alert sirens shrieked across peaceful Brooklyn. I was later told that drivers stopped their cars in the middle of the street and ran for shelter. Others went past stop lights trying to get home. Target: the Brooklyn Navy Yard where we built our aircraft carriers.

Adult voices yelling in tones I’d never heard before…fear. Our neighbor Mrs. Holder screaming…yes screaming. This for Mr. Holder who was in their garage to come into the house! Adults with fear in their voices. I had never imagined never heard never dreamed such was possible.

We’d normalized terror into something we could live with. Took it for granted. Till that day. A quiet Saturday morning. Reality broke through the dream. We were moments from being carbonized shadows seared onto walls.

Blur…I’m playing with the toy truck, and crane I’d got for Christmas. At last able to use them in real dirt. My mother was busy doing Mommy things in the house. There’s a kind of music we make as we go about our routines. She was making comforting Mommie music. It drifted out to the yard where I played. All was safe. All was well.

The storm door window shatters as my mother kicks it open flying down the steps of the porch which my carpenter uncle Lee had built. I looked up heard Mrs. Holder screamed for her husband. Then other adult voices with that new thing in them…fear. My Mommie had an expression I’d never seen. One of a mother whose only point only reason for living was to protect her baby. Her cub.

Daddy was at work my sister, and bother were at my aunt’s house. We were alone. Alone at the end of the world. I’m scooped up held tightly so tightly. I remember trying to say, “…I can’t breathe”. We’re up the steps through the house down the cellar into the little storeroom. The door is slammed I’m stuffed into the corner my mother’s body atop me. She’s protecting me with her own life. Protecting me from the gale of fires about to descend on the City. I remember confusion crying. My mother was speaking. …maybe praying.

After a time …All Clear.

The language of adults is strange to children. They don’t get all the words but get the emotions. In the aftermath of ‘the day’ mommies on the block spoke in low tones. …daddies silent. Like all children I just went on. Children do. They can adjust to anything. Wars concentration camps poverty murder they can witness and take it. I even forgot about that day. For a lifetime it slept at the bottom of my memory. Till now.

It took three billion years for Earth to create the Rose.

She is patient and knows exactly what She's doing.

 

 A short "Star Trek" tale.

It concerns the fate of the Federation vessel USS Pequod. The back story of the ship, and crew I leave to your imaginations. We join them as they enter the Augustine System on the Federation/Breen border. There the Pequod was caught in a temporal slip.

They stayed for 400,000 years. ...give or take.

Outside the Slip the ages raised, and lowered seas, and rearraigned the stars. Through all this the crew unknowingly lived the same three minutes. The same, and the same, and the same.

'Till they didn't.

Like Angels time slips are mercurial. Coming, and going as they please. The Augustine Event lifted leaving the Pequod facing, "...New worlds, and new civilizations".

Ages later their descendants met a species that knew them. Knew them well, and had plans for them. For these were the authors of the Augustinian Event. These people called themselves,...

"The Q".

Many years ago, I declared that WBAI might learn something from Count Basie. I don't think it was noticed at the time, so herewith a somewhat expanded version.

Habte Selassie is our Harry Carney, baritone sax for the Ellington band, Carney's sound was magnificent (as is Habte's) rich & full.

Chris Whent is our Earl Warren, "master" of the Basie reeds. We'd be nowhere without him and his steady presence.

Sidney Smith = Johnny Hodges. Lyrical, but swinging, our beloved Jeep!

James Irsay well now who else but Art Tatum? Is there nothing Irsay cannot do?

Max Schmid the rhythm of the station, and so Jo Jones. The finest drummer ever!

Delphine Blue (though technically no longer a part of BAI will always be part of BAI.) Who other than Billie???

(Program Directors could learn a little from Freddie Green.)

M G Haskins: choose your bassist! But Walter Page is not a bad place to start.

These links are not final. But a suggestion.

And where do I fit in? Probably not. Just a member of the band.

This missive from my dear friend and radio co-artist Simon Loekle in about 2008.

He left us a few years later. We miss him everyday.

This is a note from a friend of a friend. I'll use no names to respect the privacy of all concerned. I just thought it important to record and save this personal missive from one about to leave us. And yes, it is cruel to keep person here against their will. They use all the tech they can to keep you alive. However not a thought to the quality of that life.

She writes ...I don’t know if I will keep posting. It is becoming increasingly difficult. If I do, it will likely be just a brief thought without a picture as todays post is. I spend more of my days napping. In anticipating my death, I had not imagined a long time of diminished capabilities during which my interests and books are not companions because of an inability to read much or communicate. I’ve learned that it is not possible for someone who has never been seriously dependent on others for help even with something like opening a bottle or package to imagine what the decline to death is like.

But I remember this is all just what it is—objective. My opinion is that it is unfortunate. My mood is accepting, but I wish death not to linger as I am ready. I regret that euthanasia is not possible for it is needed not just for pain (which I am not plagued by--yet anyway) but severe, growing disability.

This post is clearly for those who wanted the truth of my journey. The truth is that it is harder than I imagined as I did not imagine the loss of even basic capabilities like reading and doing simple tasks without help. And when there is no help available there are things that wait until help is available. When they shouldn't wait, they will still have to and there are limits to what friends can do or can be asked to do. They are not caretakers.

 

Dream. 

Voices. Weeping shadows. The sea. 

Slept on a roof. Eternal noon wings above.

Eternal Father, strong to save,

Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,

Who bid's the mighty ocean deep,

It's own appointed limits keep.

Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,

For those in peril on the Sea.

I walk, my hands clasped in remote peacefulness.

Close my eyes to dreams in progress.

Open them to blurs. Comings. Leavings. Even these are faint notions.

 

 "...pole star"

The Holiday season is a pole star to be looked to. I remember back when cars had fins milk was delivered in bottles children could wander safely, and you could have TV in any color as long as it was black, and white.

In that faraway time before we crammed near space with debris, and online meant waiting to get into a movie. I remember Uncles, and Aunts tons of cousins' friends pouring into each other’s houses.

I remember our house.

All dolled up as best we could. Our traditional six-foot tree. Decorations some going back to the late 1800’s mixed with flashy electrics of the 50’s. Dad, and the uncles all gathered in the daddy spots yacking guy stuff. Work the Army…WW2 recently over. What routes they took to get here. Most came on Eisenhower's new Interstates.

My Ma, and the aunts in the mommy space…the kitchen. Going on about how them uncles drove them crazy who was graduating college who was having a baby. Babies. I remember babies showing up all the time. Endless new cousins even a new sister.

Meanwhile our dog Brownie was under the table listening. That’s what dogs do for kids. They listen to what’s really going on. Then tell all good girls, and boys what’s coming their way. Good Dog!

Presents. Besides tearing the house apart my siblings' cousins and I dreamed. We wondered at the neat stuff coming our way. Santa never let us down. …mostly. We was seriously into that guy. 

The Sears Roebuck Christmas catalogue that the mailman would slip us was an instruction manual for yule heaven. We thought Santa ran Sears. At least at Christmas. ...made sense at the time.

Before the age of fast-food gluttony folks only pigged out once or twice a year. This was da deal for over a thousand years. Enter the Christmas Turkey aka Thanksgiving turkey part two. Hopefully a different one. It was bleeping swell. We was all gleefully stuck together in the loving amber of family and friends.  We had each other. …and it mattered. 

The house. All gewgawed out. Lights bright decorations cards on every surface. The aroma of cooking filled every room. Near every house. While playing outside we could smell the turkeys' pies cakes sauces everywhere every street. We sat said grace then the passing of food. All manner of wonders. Laughing the telling of stories, the tree bright blinking it’s soul to heaven.  We were family we were friends we were together.

Remember these were Depression, and WW2 folks. Those that could made sure the kids had at least a taste of security. As my ma told me years later. She dad, and our aunts, and uncles. They gave us our cousins everyone good memories on purpose. They knew what desperation was, and what it did.

They deliberately created a sense of harmony despite everything. I was told years later we nearly lost our house…more than once. I found out in my thirties. They so loved us.

There was music. My family both sides played instruments. This was a common thing before mass entertainment. In the days before and when radio was cutting edge. Folks made their own music. Having instruments, and sheet music was common. In the 50's it still was.

We sang carols. My dad played the piano assorted uncles aunts accompanied on violin and viola. Everyone sang. Even me shy as I was. We sang and meant it because we really believed in things. Each other…even G-d.

Yule gatherings have been with us for 1000's years, and more. Beginning as wilderness Solstice rituals. It’s been passed on to many peoples each adding their touch to it.  Family friends gather at certain points in the year for a reason. A kindly one. In times like now with divisions war plague it's even more important. Keep Love your hearts. Bless you all. Be brave be safe be wise be kind.  

  "...Yule"

I folded space-time. One becomes as a feather on the breath of Angels. I appeared in the shadow of the elm that once stood by my home. December 23rd, 8:42pm 1957. 

It was snowing. Winters were colder then. A car with tail fins drove by. There was movement in the windows. Our Tree was going up. A woman on a ladder. My mother, an aunt? The front door opened. A child! I shimmered...gone.

"...UFO in da family"

There was that stuff my brother John ran into the week he got back from Vietnam. He was driving up the N.Y. State Thruway in the middle of the bleeping night going to our summer cabin to chill out. Having been in combat a week before this was sort of understandable.

( Btw note that working class folks could afford summer cabins back in the day,...a lost world indeed.)

Well just like in them grade "Z" movies some blob of rainbow lights buzzes the car then the battery goes dead. So there's my dear brother fresh from war with a fucking UFO circling him. That, and dad's new 1970 Buick dead as a door nail. ...Swell huh.

Eventually Gort, and Kang get tired of fucking with him, and split straight up at a zillion mph. The Buick comes back to life so like any sensible G.I. John gets the fuck out of there. He makes an illegal U-turn over the divide, and heads back to Brooklyn...where it's safe. Eh,...relative to Planet X.

"... Golden Records"

They came a several colors, but Boomers mostly remember the gold/or yellow ones. I sure do. I remember constantly playing "The March of the Wooden Soldiers" Till my Ma took it away.

That damned record was driving her crazy.

Being an engineer in the making I screwed open my Mickey Mouse record player to see how it worked.

I put it back together before anyone saw.

It was wild in there with 19th/20th century hybrid tech.

This was 1956 so the 19th century was as close to us then

as the 1960s are to us today. My life, and times such as they were. Yours too.

“…faerie dust”

It’s likely that “Faerie Tales” are based on events, and stories 5000+ years old. As “Ring Around the Rosy” is traced to near 800 years ago during the Black Death. Some remote version of Superman, and the mix of industrial era popular heroes may survive into the 40th century.

How could they not.

Invincible saviors are a theme through the ages. We are generally taught about the rise, and fall of cultures. We learned of them as separate civilizations with little or no connections. But there’s a more wholistic view of the human story.

Starting during the last Ice Age there began one continuous human culture. Different varieties within it rose evolved faded. Adding their stories to the ongoing enterprise. The current space faring post industrial digital information era is directly connected to them folks figuring what flint could do. One teaching one remembering from the Ice to now.

20,000+ years, and still in business.

“...405 B.C.E.”

I had a dream which took place in a library. I was reading works about Fifth Century B.C.E. cultures. Well Jimmy Carter comes by, and sits next to me, and we get into a chat about the subject.

The former President…and btw he’s the first head of State in or out of office to ever visit my dreams. Anyway, we hit’s it off, and compare our contemporary world to theirs. We also seem to be having dinner…dreams are like that. The President sez how other than the tech we’re pretty much the same as them folks so long ago. The center of our lives he told me, “…are family, and tribe”.

True enough.

We spoke further about raising kids. I helped raise my nieces, and nephews. Carter of course has a daughter, and grand kids. “…the center of our lives.”

Well, this reading room has a nice nap area…btw libraries really should. A pal, and I often discuss plans for a live in Library, and Theater for Ladies, and Gentlemen with Artistic Proclivities. I think I’d rather enjoy living in such. I believe in ancient times this did happen.

After chatting, and dining President Carter goes over to take a snooze. Me I continue reading and enjoying the dumplings…such are dreams.