Thursday, November 30, 2023

The Romance of the Boeing 707 - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Romance of the Boeing 707

 

Out on Runway Number 9

Big 707 set to go

 

-Gordon Lightfoot

 

Old Ginsberg wrote that the typewriter was holy

An airport of words for coming and going

On a runway of ribbon, platen, and keys

McKuen might have said it’s a safe place to land

 

But then came the Boeing 707

Dear Gordon Lightfoot’s silver wings on high

It flew our words and us all over the world

And became for us holy in its own way

 

The 707 – there was nothing finer

But the last one I saw was a roadside diner

Sunday, November 26, 2023

HAMAS Appears to Have Taken Control of Our Nation

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

HAMAS Appears to Have Taken Control of Our Nation

 

Video showed a Palestinian flag raised on the statue of the Marquis de Lafayette near the White House, with "Free Palestine" spray painted on his pedestal. A Palestinian keffiyeh, popularized by the Palestinian Liberation Organization, was put on the head of one of the figures at the foot of the pedestal.

 

-Brady Knox, Washington Examiner

 

Columbia University Closes Campus Ahead of Israel-Hamas War Protests - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

 

Pro-Palestinian protesters shut down main entrance to Union Station in Washington, D.C. | Watch (msn.com)

 

The people say: ‘Shut it down for Palestine’ – International Action Center (iacenter.org)

 

NYPD beefing up patrols as Jewish schools worry over ‘day of Jihad’ (nypost.com)

 

Hamas’ Terror Also Holds a Warning for the US - The Washington Post

 

California Democratic convention in Sacramento shut down by cease-fire protest disruptions (msn.com)

 

Bad Medicine - Tablet Magazine

 

A Snapshot of Support for Palestinians Across America - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

 

Pro-Palestine protesters shut down Bay Bridge (ktvu.com)

 

Protest blocks Israeli cargo ship at Port of Oakland in support for Palestinians amid violence in Gaza - ABC7 San Francisco (abc7news.com)

 

Pro-Palestine protesters shut down OSU trustees meeting, demand divestment from Israel (msn.com)

 

SHUT IT DOWN Nov 9th Day of Rage: Terror-Tied Islamic and Leftist Destroyers Terrorize Communities, Target Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics - Geller Report

 

Pro-Palestinian group posts NYC map with locations, sparks fears of attacks (msn.com)

 

Chants ‘calling for the murder of Jews’ were shouted at me during Cooper Union protest, student recalls (foxnews.com)

 

Full List of Democrats Who Refused To Condemn Hamas Supporters (newsweek.com)

 

Pro-Palestinian protesters drag burning Israeli flag down NYC street as they warn supporters days are 'numbered' (nypost.com)

 

Jewish NYC high schoolers verbally attacked by woman on DC train after National Mall rally: ‘F–k all you guys’ (msn.com)

 

Jewish teacher hides in Queens high school as students riot (nypost.com)

 

Cornell student accused of threatening to kill Jewish students will remain behind bars | CNN

 

Israeli business owner in Florida speaks after several Jewish establishments tagged with antisemitic graffiti (fox35orlando.com)

 

Antisemitic incidents on college campuses spur federal investigation (usatoday.com)

 

Jewish communities threatened by acts of antisemitic vandalism across the US. | CNN

 

Campus Reform the #1 Source for College News

 

Pro-Palestinian Protesters Occupy New York Times Lobby In Demonstration – Deadline

 

Grand Central Terminal shut down due to pro-Palestinian protests (nydailynews.com)

 

7K pro-Palestinian protesters take over Brooklyn Bridge, call for elimination of Jewish state: 'By any means' (nypost.com)

 

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade arrests: 34 people arrested after pro-Palestinian demonstrators interrupted parade, NYPD says | CNN

 

Pro-Palestinian protestors block Port of Tacoma military ship | Crosscut

 

https://www.bing.com/search?q=palestinian+disruptions+of+america&qs=n&sp=-1&lq=0&pq=palestinian+disruptions+of+amer&sc=11-31&sk=&cvid=A41FE5C2F4374955B9BA0D1649506991&ghsh=0&ghacc=0&ghpl=&FPIG=24A5D720EB0C48F18D38923D216D8256&first=11&FORM=PERE

 

Pro-Palestinian Protesters Shut Down 3rd & Fairfax, March Through The Grove – Deadline

 

Hamas terror organization charter targets Christians and US service organizations (msn.com)

 

Hamas Ally CAIR Has Been Operating With Impunity Inside America for 30 Years | | news-journal.com

 

Pro-Palestinian protesters rally on Mag Mile to draw attention to Israel-Hamas war - Chicago Sun-Times (suntimes.com)

 

‘Bombs are dropping, why are you shopping?’ Black Friday traditions interrupted by anti-Israel protests (bizpacreview.com)

 

Hamas’s Genocidal Intentions Were Never a Secret - The Atlantic

 

-30-

 

 

Saturday, November 25, 2023

The November Update Made a Mess of my Apple Watch

On the morning of 25 November I downloaded the latest Apple security update. I don't know about security, but the update made a mess of my settings without asking me if I wanted anything changed. Further, despite all the directions from Apple and other sources, I cannot change the settings back and I cannot delete the update. 

When this, my first and last Apple Watch, fades away I'm going to crush it into its components and retrieve my decades-old $10 Wal-Mart Timex from a desk drawer where it still ticks.

Sunday, November 19, 2023

First, Catch Your Cookbook

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 


First, Catch Your Cookbook

 

Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness…

 

-Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

 

Having never seen a copy of Mrs. Beeton’s famous cookery book I don’t know if her recipe for rabbit begins with “First, catch your rabbit.” If it isn’t true it ought to be, for it is fine example of both English logic (rare) and English whimsy (a defining trait). The expression is often used as a cautionary warning, similar to our American “Don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched.”

 

The arc from Thanksgiving to Christmas is when the thoughtful cook will seek out MeeMaw’s cookbook to verify seasonal specialties: Waldorf salad, corn casserole, turkey fried or baked or broiled, ham fried or baked or boiled, and those old traditional dishes special to each family.

 

Cookbooks are otherwise seldom consulted in our electrical times, for the cook can quickly seek out a recipe on the Orwellian telescreen / Tolkien Palantir. However, opening an old family cookbook in anticipation of the holidays is a way of inviting all the ancestors back home for a moment in time. The crumbling pages are the ones that the cook’s mother and grandmother and great-grandmother read, maybe by the light of a coal-oil lamp on a dark winter day long ago.

 

On the margins are many penciled notes and corrections. You can almost hear some ancestor muttering, “Harrumph! What does that editor in New York know about real cornbread!”

 

A slip of paper falls out – in Mama’s elegant penmanship is a recipe she copied out from her own mother’s telling. Another piece of paper might be a yellowing clipping from a newspaper, a rationing recipe with a scrap of war news on the other side.

 

Older cookbooks might be bound in leather, like a Bible, and the connections are real, for both allude to bread and life and stories. The pages of both books are pages of the histories of families. In them you can, for a moment, be a little child again, barely as high as the stove stop, helping (not very well!) your grandmother with baking your favorite cookies. Do you remember? Do you see and smell the joys of her warm kitchen again? Is Grandpa still sitting at the table rustling the pages of The Houston Post and muttering about the prices of cattle feed?

 

Some of the best memories are in that old family cookbook. With Thanksgiving and Christmas coming soon, it’s time to refresh them. This is a season when memories of a drive-through just won’t do.

 

-30-

 

Friday, November 17, 2023

A Good Enough Leaf-Time - photograph and poem

 


We can make a little order where we are, and then the big sweep of history on which we can have no effect doesn't overwhelm us.  We do it with colors, with a garden, with the furnishings of a room, or with sounds and words.  We can make a little form, and we gain composure.

                                                               -Robert Frost


Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Good Enough Leaf-Time

 

No more the withered summer-browns of death

Crumbling and sere upon the dry and crackling ground

Beneath a Rime of the Ancient Mariner sky -

Leaves in autumn colours are falling now

 

Pale greens, poor yellows, weak reds, but good enough

To decorate this time of early frosts

With appropriate merriment, good enough

To rake into playtime heaps for children and dogs

 

These modest scenes will attract no peepers this year

But I will send you a snap – it’s good enough!


Sunday, November 12, 2023

An Old Man in the Hardware Store Considers Autumn - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

An Old Man in the Hardware Store Considers Autumn

 

“And He has poured down for you the rain”

 

-Joel 2:23

 

“When I’m through here,” he laughed, “I’m going home

I’m going to sit and listen to the rain

My hayfield’s all burnt up, my yard is dead

So I’m gonna to let the rain sing me to sleep”

 

We said our good-byes to the driest summer ever

And a thank you, Jesus for sweet rain at last

Next to the paper sacks of deer-bait corn

And a display of made-in-China tools

 

The wind blew open the heavy double doors

And the rain blew with it, and we were glad

Forty Guns to Apache Pass - movie review

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Forty Guns to Apache Pass

 

If you’ve never seen Forty Guns to Apache Pass, you’ve still seen Forty Guns to Apache Pass.

 

Audie Murphy’s 1967 low-budget cavalry vs Indians film employs every trope of matinee shoot-‘em-ups: a brave, brash young army officer who breaks the rules, a patient and fatherly commanding general, a platoon of ill-trained, ill-equipped, and ill-tempered troopers, the usual casting-office injuns (none of them genuine Apaches), the blonde love-interest and her cranky old Pa, the love-interest’s errant little brothers, civilians who need rescuing, horses, wagons, villains, desperate sorties against a powerful enemy, a sub-plot of redemption, and lots of shootin’.

 

The film is centered on an element of the mediaeval quest; in this story the object that will save the kingdom / Arizona is not the Grail or a magic sword, but forty modern repeating rifles. The faraway government will send only those forty and only as far as Apache Pass. Our hero and his comrades must make their way through lots and lots of Apaches to reach them.

 

After a long journey, many battles against a fierce enemy, and complications in loyalties and plot twists, the hero and his surviving companions come through, true love is rewarded, and Arizona is made safe for truth, justice, and the American way (Superman).

 

We’ve seen the same plot, setting, and characterizations over and over in hundreds of assembly-line boots-and-saddles yarns made from the 1920s until the 1960s on budgets of hundreds of dollars, and yet the same old stories are still fun. Children enjoyed them as Saturday afternoon matinees at The Palace or The Bijou for generations, and now we can popcorn-out on the couch at home, still on Saturday afternoons, for thrilling tales of yesteryear (The Lone Ranger).

 

Sometimes we want cinema (pronounce “cinema” as a snooty anapest): a soupcon of French existentialism, a serious study of post-war Italian cinema, or a new adaptation of Shakespeare, and then sometimes we want movin’ pictures with cowboys and Indians and saloon fights. And though the plots are familiar, that’s okay; Shakespeare’s plots were old when he borrowed them for his plays.

 

Audie Murphy was a fine actor – as The American in Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, filmed in newly independent Viet-Nam in 1958, he is brilliant. But the westerns put more fans in the seats and paid the bills, and Mr. Murphy was a great cowboy.

 

One of the best things about Forty Guns to Apache Pass is the title. The viewer needs no exposition, no advance reviews. He or she (not “they”; one person cannot be “they”) knows what’s going to be on the screen and knows it’s going to be great fun.

 

God bless the American cowboy film, and God bless Audie Murphy, a hero in the movies and a greater hero in life.

 

-30-

“Now, Therefore, Write for Yourselves This Song” - poem

  Lawrence Hall Mhall46184@aol.com Dispatches for the Colonial Office   “Now, Therefore, Write for Yourselves This Song”      - Deuteronomy ...