Your Sunday Poem

This one stopped me cold.  Never thought of that before.  And he's right. By Miller Williams from "Poetry 180, A Turning Back to Poetry," edited by Billy Collins.

Animals

I think the death of domestic animals
marks the sea changes in our lives.
Think how things were, when things were different.
There was an animal then, a dog or a cat,
not the one you have now, another one.
Think when things were different before that.
There was another one then.  You had almost forgotten.

Beantown Irregulars

Calhoun's Calhoun's for April 22, 2013

Sherlock Holmes would have been delighted. When in need of information fast, he would send word to his Baker Street irregulars, a gaggle of street urchins who, for a pittance, would quickly fan out and scour the hidden warrens of London and swiftly bring back bits of intel which Holmes would piece together into a case-solving clue.

In the case of the Boston Marathon bombing, police called for their irregulars: seventy bazillion bits of film/fotos from surveillance cameras, cell phones and video cameras in the hands of the public, all of which contained bits of intel shot before, during and after the event, all taken from every direction.  Specially trained law enforcement started the Herculean task of sifting images until two likely suspects came up.  Those photographs were then broadcast over social media, television and print and suddenly the game was afoot and everyone in the entire wired world became Sherlock Holmes in hot pursuit.

It was a loopy sci-fi moment:  "1984" in reverse, but this time WE were Big Brother.  And we were pissed off and empowered and in hunting mode.  It must have been a spooky moment for the two Chechen brothers, with their gentle Byzantine ikon eyes: One moment anonymous and the next --- WTF??!!  Nowhere to run, except to ground -- or hide in a boat -- and wait for the wrath that was about to descend.

Several years ago, when street surveillance cameras first appeared, various civil libertarians raised red flags.  Wicked Government was taking away our Freedom!  Big Brother was coming!  But before the arguments could be formulated, technology and culture bypassed the discussion itself.  Big Brother had already arrived and he was everywhere .  But this time he was the Citizens themselves. And their iPhones.

And I suspect, in their arrogance and ignorance, the Tsamaev brothers never gave a moment's thought about the one unique thing about our contemporary society: There IS no privacy anywhere anymore.  Too many hi-tech phones in the hands of a cohort that documents its existence every single moment of the day with snapshots -- pictures of what they're eating, shots of a sidewalk, a street, a car passing by -- cameras, cameras everywhere, all clicking away and posted to social media, and all filled with little bits of intel just waiting for Sherlock's call. If you live in America, you've probably already been "tagged" on Facebook, and FB images live forever, and facial recognition software is getting better and better each year. Truly, we are all in the databanks now.   

And suddenly, the Second Amendment starts looking a bit anachronistic.  Who needs armed vigilantes to protect a free peoples against predation by criminals and terrorists; all you need are cell phones, social media, a well trained police force, and a vigilant, cooperative citizenry that refuses to cower and be rendered helpless by fear. Screw Big Brother, said Boston. WE are Big Brother, we're our brother's keeper and nobody is going to get away with killing any of our own or screwing with our town.

Which is what happened in Beantown and surprised no one who knows that tough, scrappy, wonderful place.  

Sherlock would be pleased.  

Your Sunday Thought

From "Life Prayers," edited by Elizabeth Roberts  and Elias Amidon, on this beautiful April morning. 

Ten thousand flowers in spring,
the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer,
snow in winter.
If your mind isn't clouded by
unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

                              Wu-Men

Gunfight at the Do Nothing Corral

Calhoun's Cannons for April 15, 2013

O.K.  Now this is getting funny. The earnest, grieving parents of shot-to-pieces kids -- 20 of 'em at Sandy Hook.  The pontificating pols declaring that we must do something to stem this culture of violence.  The pro-gun Congressmen and Senators hiding under their desks when the grieving parents come to call to ask them to support legislation that would ban the type of guns that shot their children to pieces.  The media turning this all into some kind of horse race in order to goose their ratings. 

All for naught.  Whatever legislation that had been reasonably tough to begin with has already been gutted before it could even be debated -- no military style weapons ban, no high capacity magazine bans.  And what is now left -- increased registration requirements --- is being watered down even as I write.  And by the time the Senate finishes having it's debate -- if that even happens since several Republicans have vowed to filibuster it -- whatever bill survives being gummed to death, will arrive a weak, poor thing.

Which will be then turned over to the tender mercies of the Republican controlled House of Representatives, an august body wholly owned by the NRA, where it will be shot to pieces by amendments.

In short, Congress will do the least it can possibly do on the matter while quietly, behind the scenes, the NRA sits, like Penelope at her loom, weaving in legislative loopholes and booby-trapping whatever bill survives. Nothing will escape their tender ministrations.  After all, their job is to do everything they can to make sure that more guns get into more hands.  "Limit" or "restrict" are not in the NRA's vocabulary.  

Yet, nationwide, the furious debate rages on as if people actually think that this time -- surely, this time --something meaningful about gun control will be done. That 20 dead kids was finally some kind of tipping point.  Wasn't it?  Wouldn't twenty dead kids finally be enough?

Well, no.  Clearly, twenty wasn't the magic number.  And that's where it starts getting funny.  For some bizarre reason, Americans think of themselves as decent, law-abiding people who love their children and want to live in decent, safe communities where their kids don't get blown away while going to school. In addition, they also have this quaint notion that they live in a country governed by and for the people. And that their earnest, sincere, heart-felt efforts will result in their elected representative voting for some kind of sane, reasonable policy regarding guns.

Yet, at the same time, this national debate has brought into focus the undeniable fact that these same Americans truly, deeply, passionately love their guns. The bigger the better. The more lethal it is, the faster it sells.  The country is awash in guns, a gun for every day of the week and two on Sunday. Even people who've been shot in the head, like Congresswoman Gifford, will still go on TV to declare that having pieces of their skull blown away has not in any way diminished their love of guns.

And the sound of those two deeply felt passions colliding is the sound of a Whoopie cushion exploding.  Risible and ridiculous: An endless Monty Python "Dead Parrot" sketch played out with real dead kids and real bullets.  But this one will have no happy ending.  Except for the NRA and its master: The gun manufacturers of America. For them, happy days are always here again.    

Your Sunday Poem

This one is for anyone who says poetry is too difficult, too dour, too stuffy.  By Paul Violi, from "180 More, Extraordinary Poems for Every Day," edited by Billy Collins.

Appeal to the Grammarians

We, the naturally hopeful,
Need a simple sign
For the myriad ways we're capsized.
We, who love precise language,
Need a finer way to convey
Disappointment and perplexity.
For speechlessness and all its inflections,
For up-ended expectations,
For every time we're ambushed
By trivial or stupefying irony,
For pure incredulity, we need
The inverted exclamation point.
For the dropped smile, the limp handshake,
For whoever has just unwrapped a dumb gift,
Or taken the first sip of a flat beer,
Or felt love or pond ice
Give way underfoot, we deserve it.
We need it for the air pocket, the scratch shot,
The child whose ball doesn't bounce back,
The flat tire at journey's outset,
The odyssey that ends up in Weehauken.
But mainly because I need it -- here and now
As I sit outside the Caffe Reggio
Staring at my espresso and cannoli
After this middle-aged couple
Came strolling by and he suddenly
Veered and sneezed all over my table
And she said to him, "See, that's why
I don't like to eat outside."