Lawrence Hall, HSG
Years on the Night
Shift
Today’s student loans need not be met
How privileged of me – I paid my debt
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Years on the Night Shift - couplet
Friday, March 15, 2024
Gardening with Happy Bees - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Gardening with Happy
Bees
…for so work the honey-bees,
Creatures
that by a rule in nature teach
The
act of order to a peopled kingdom
-Henry V, I.ii.87-89
A bumblebee hovers in front of my face
No hostility; it’s simply greeting me
As I putter from pot to place to pot again
Messing contentedly with seedlings and soil
But honeybees race around me in formation
No hostility; they’re ignoring me
They speed from water to flower to hive and back –
After all, every flower needs a little love (wink)
Blessed spring hovers softly everywhere
As bee-sy bees sing their sweetest airs
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
The InterGossip is a Content Cop - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The InterGossip is
a Content Cop
Number
Six: I have a choice?
Number
Two: Of course. You can do as you want.
Number
Six: As long as it's what you want.
Number
Two: As long as it is what the majority wants.
-The Prisoner
The
InterGossip is a content cop holding up her hand
Half in my face, half-way to a
Fascist salute
Forbidding me to read or study
any further
Without pledging loyalty to a
community
The InterGossip is a content
cop holding up her hand
If I want to keep reading, I
must subscribe
The cost is access to my
information…information…information
“You have read five of five
free stories this month”
Which is their way of saying, “Your
papers, comrade”
The InterGossip is a content
cop holding up her hand
And if sometimes my words
violate the standards
Of communities I never joined –
white space
The InterGossip is a content
cop holding up her hand
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
There's Nothing Old to Write About the Moon - quatrain
Lawrence Hall, HSG
There’s Nothing
Old to Write About the Moon
The newest moon – it blessed us tonight
A sharp bright crescent within a rim-glowing orb
Following the sun’s afterglow deep into the west
Ornamented with a frosting of stars
Monday, March 11, 2024
Ethan Crumbley's "Help Me" - column, 11 March 2024
Lawrence Hall, HSG
11 March 2024
“Help Me”
Murderer Ethan Crumbley scribbled “Help Me” on a geometry paper [Counselor who allowed school shooter Ethan Crumbley to stay in class despite drawing guns and threats says he thought it would be 'better' for him to be around students than alone after his parents refused to take him home | Daily Mail Online]. Many have inferred that this was that now ubiquitous “cry for help” employed as an excuse for all sorts of violent behavior, and that those who allegedly ignored this one of all the many cries for help are thus guilty of murder themselves and should be imprisoned or even executed.
There are three flaws in this conclusion:
1. That every complaint, whine, resistance, tantrum, protest, or scribble issuing forth from the mouth or pen of an unhappy person is an absolute moral, ethical, and legal imperative for every other human on this planet to shut down all economic, legal, cultural, artistic, and domestic activities until the complainant’s perceived needs are addressed.
2. That every man and woman who fails to read the minds of others or notice any of those famous “red flags” in the behaviors of others should be imprisoned or executed.
3. That Ethan Crumbley was not given help.
I wish to address item 3.
Ethan Crumbley wrote “My life is useless” (and it was; he chose to make it so), “The world is dead,” and “Blood everywhere,” along with foolish adolescent drawings, on a geometry handout on congruent triangles given to him and every other young person in his class as a review in preparation for a coming exam. A look at the exercises and at the vocabulary in the reason bank at the top right of the paper indicates that the instruction offered Ethan Crumbley was of a high level.
Ethan Crumbley was given help through, among other things, a high-expectation mathematics class to help him prepare for a useful, productive, and happy life not only through the immediate mastery of the needful science of mathematics but in extending those challenging lessons in problem-solving and logical thinking into all other fields of human endeavor. A Uyghur teenager would envy him that.
Ethan Crumbley was given help through the provision of a warm, well-ventilated, well-lit place to learn. A Ukrainian teenager would envy him that.
Ethan Crumbley was given help through the offer of a hot meal at school every day. A Haitian teenager would envy him that.
Ethan Crumbley was given help, through his school, church, and community, with opportunities for cultural and charitable activities in music, dance, informal prayer meetings, fellowship, athletics, art programs, Boy Scouts, theatre programs, science clubs, roadside litter pickups, food drives for the poor for Thanksgiving, Christmas toy drives for the poor, nursing home visits for shut-ins, and other programs. A Communist Chinese teenager working long hours and with bleeding fingers to make junk for the amusement of Americans and the enrichment of Beijing oligarchs would envy him that.
Ethan Crumbley was given help through association with hundreds of other young people from diverse backgrounds and with all sorts of wonderful goals. The young, like adults, are not always likeable. Welcome to reality, kid. Deal with it. A Venezuelan teenager in the streets with no school and no hope and no supportive peers would envy him all those happy possibilities.
Ethan Crumbley was given help through a world of books, music, dance, cinema, parks, after-school jobs, healthy recreation, youth clubs, and volunteer service to people young and old who could have used his help and kindness. But in the end Ethan Crumbley found nothing more interesting in life than his own sulky self-pity.
Ethan Crumbley’s parents, like the leaders of a drug
cartel, didn’t help at all; they gave him a semi-automatic 9mm pistol.
-30-
The Door of my Subaru Popped Out at 10,000 Feet! - photograph
THE DOOR OF MY SUBARU POPPED OUT AT 10,000 FEET!
(well, no, not really)
This is not an altered photograph...
...but, yes, it is deceptive. I was photographing spring bluebonnets in my yard and my MePhone accidentally took this shot ("I didn't pull the trigger, your honor!") as I was getting back into the car. My Subaru Forester is a great ride in every way, but it can't fly.
For a Texas Ranger Upon His Retirement - poem
Lawrence
Hall, HSG
For Brandon Bess, Texas Ranger
Upon His Retirement
Strong of Heart, Lover
of Truth, Teller of Tales, Stoutest of Friends
“Rangers! The best in
Texas!”
-Monsieur Paul Regret
in The Comancheros
A Ranger
Tracking a
man among the obscurities
Of a weedy
field lit by refinery flares
Beer cans,
shadows and mud, cigarette butts -
A suspect is
out there somewhere, out in the dark
A Ranger
Tracking a
man among the obscurities
Of Texas
plains known to Nocona and Coronado
Bleak ridges where
the Comanche danced for the sun -
A suspect is up
there somewhere, hiding from himself
A Ranger
Tracking a
man among the obscurities
Of decaying
DNA in a coat worn years ago
A few rotting
fibers under a microscope -
A suspect is
in there somewhere, under a light
A Ranger
Finding a man
in the darkness of lost souls
And bringing
him out of it, into the Light
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