sprtcs

see above as below

sprtcs@ameritech.net (sprtcs) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:54:00 GMT

2009-10-30 5:35 AM
Keeping a Spirit Alive

My mother's spirit would be a quiet one. One which watches carefully and comments only to a few. All comments would be brief, conciliatory, friendly and humorous. More understanding than one might ever expect, patient to a fault, frightening when brought to an anger born of long tolerance of that which might be intolerable to a lesser being.

A lot like my most recent painful loss, Mr Sneeze the Black Lab who was hands down probably the single most sweetly devoted dog I might ever know. Except for Rosie, maybe. Rosie was a lovely long-skirted mixed breed Malamute, her coat pale with muted strawberry blonde fringes.

Gone: Mom, Sneeze, Rosie. All who loved me singularly. I am left feeling totally alone and unloved.

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Amendment to Keeping a Spirit Alive from October 30th of 2009.

Except, today I heard from a wonderful friend who answered my rhetorical question in a Journalscape post to wit (or is it to whit?)'Now I ask you.' Which rhetorical question followed the statement: Trust is the baseline of reality. I had intimated that trust was the most important thing in the world but she answered me in the affirmative with regard to love. Love and Trust...she is right ____they____ are the the most important things.

Baseline of Reality I (one): Trust

sprtcs@ameritech.net (sprtcs) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:07:00 GMT

At one point in my life when I was badly in need of help I called the local crisis intervention agency where I was an original member, one of the first training groups, I think I was in the third one. That was back "in the sixties" which happened... here... in the 70s.

In that protracted conversation I came to the point of making the statement:

Trust is the baseline of reality.

There is much to be said of this thought.

For now let me only say that I am even more convinced of this thought, what can possibly be more important in this world or on this planet, than trust? I ask you.

Goodbye

sprtcs@ameritech.net (sprtcs) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 19:49:00 GMT

A Asus A Asus E D E A Asus A

A Asus A E Esus E
I remember holdin' on to you
F#m D A Asus A
All them long and lonely nights I put you through
A Asus A E Esus E
Somewhere in there I'm sure I made you cry
D E Esus A Asus A A Asus A
But I can't remember if we said goodbye
D A Asus A
But I recall all of them nights down in Mexico
E A Asus A E
One place I may never go in my life again
A E Esus E E Esus E
Was I just off somewhere or just too high
D E Esus A Asus A A Asus A
But I can't remember if we said goodbye

SOLO

A Asus A E
I only miss you every now and then
F#m D A Asus A
Like the soft breeze blowin up from the Carribean
A Asus A E Esus E
Most Novembers I break down and cry
D E Esus A Asus A A Asus A
Cause I can't remember if we said goodbye
D A Asus A
But I recall all of them nights down in Mexico
E A Asus A E
One place I will never go in my life again
A Asus A E Esus E E Esus E
Was I just off somewhere or just too high
D E A Asus A A Asus A
But I can't remember if we said goodbye
D E F#m
No I can't remember if we said goodbye
D A Asus A A Asus A
Goodbye goodbye

From Emmylou Harris "Wrecking Ball" CD
written by Steve Earle

About Them Drugs:

sprtcs@ameritech.net (sprtcs) — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 08:24:00 GMT

2007-05-26 8:24 PM
About Them Drugs; Slippery System Stuff

O.K. You're not going to believe this anyway but here are the facts:

It was June 15, 1969 and I had just graduated college in March of that year.

Some weeks or months previously I had applied for a Social Work Trainee 07 position with the State of Michigan Social Services Department. My scores were high enough to get me a job in Jackson, about 45 minutes south of home.

The first week was busy with introductions to the staff and the new hires which numbered about 8 or ten. Then, during a break, Bill, the General Assistance guy who was the one who disbursed emergency funds for those in sudden need asked us over coffee if any of the bunch of us trainees had ever tried LSD.
A few volunteered that they had tripped on acid and I said no, and that I wasn't interested in trying it, ever.

He next asked us if any of us had any collections. I volunteered that my husband collected comic books and toy cars but that I didn't collect anything at all.

What an odd pair of questions to ask us. I couldn't figure out what he was up to at all. So I asked why he wanted to know if and what we might be collecting. He answered that when people collected stuff it was a mark of a certain kind of sophistication. Maybe he was just trying to stimulate conversation, I don't know.

In the middle of the second week Bill and another senior case worker, who called each other close friends, invited me to go to his home and have lunch. She was the person to whom I had been assigned for orientation to their agency. Her job was to give me an overview of the work loads available, to show me the different areas from which I was to get my case assignments.

She introduced me to the range of needful cases. We visited the elderly, non-support mothers, institutionalized individuals and there was some discussion of there being a great need for people who could work with abused children Many of these were being taken from their homes and placed in foster care.

We did go to his place for lunch that Friday. They showed me his computer set up which was located in his basement. The year was 1969, mind you. Not just everyone on the block had a computer in those days, it was a kind of specialization that was indeed quite rare among the general population.

I didn't mention, did I, that Bill was a short, very black, Afro-American man. His friend and my temporary supervisor, Lois, were an odd pair of ducks, and to this day it gives me the creeps to bring them to mind.

Lois was very soft-spoken with a breathlessness to her speech patterns that was very marked in intensity. She always sounded as if she had just run a mile, or that she had just hurried up a couple of flights of stairs. Her hair was very curly and red, which, of coarse, was paired with a billion freckles that covered her face and limbs.

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Steppin' In It (Steamboat Queen/ Wren's Lullabye)

sprtcs@ameritech.net (sprtcs) — Fri, 3 Sep 2010 12:04:00 GMT

The Steamboat Queen
Old time barbershop quartet singing on the banks of the Mississippi
Miss Moline lights another cigarette, shakes her head
And she says,

One last slow ride through the night
One last slow ride in the moonlight
All right, steamboat queen, sing me a simple tune for these troubled times
Hold tight, steamboat queen, you must have been something in your prime

Sing another round of Hometown Sweetheart
The sunâs down and itâs tearing me to pieces
Hurry up children donât be late
The paddle wheelâs spinning like a 78

Everybody come out and see
The last ride of the steamboat queen
She ainât nothing but a novelty now
Easy times have slipped away somehow

*********

Wren's Lullaby
Donât you cry, sweet little songbird, donât you know
That every withered branch you light upon is born anew
Just because of you

Tell me please, little songbird, for I believe you know
Far better than we do
Of that world we come from and which we fall back to

All the leaves once green will turn to gold and red
All living things once young grow old and shed their skin

Let me in, little songbird, sing to me a simple tune
So I might play along
Let it ring until the world is wrapped in song

a john prine song so I can print it out (no WordPerfect on here Yet

sprtcs@ameritech.net (sprtcs) — Fri, 9 Jul 2010 20:18:00 GMT

says John Prine:

Don't Bury Me

Woke up this morning
Put on my slippers
Walked in the kitchen and died
And oh what a feeling!
When my soul
Went thru the ceiling
And on up into heaven I did ride
When I got there they did say
John, it happened this way
You slipped upon the floor
And hit your head
And all the angels say
Just before you passed away
These were the very last words
That you said:

Chorus:
Please don't bury me
Down in that cold cold ground
No, I'd druther have "em" cut me up
And pass me all around
Throw my brain in a hurricane
And the blind can have my eyes
And the deaf can take both of my ears
If they don't mind the size
Give my stomach to Milwaukee
If they run out of beer
Put my socks in a cedar box
Just get "em" out of here
Venus deMilo can have my arms
Look out! I've got your nose
Sell my heart to the junk man
And give my love to Rose

Repeat Chorus

Give my feet to the footloose
Careless, fancy free
Give my knees to the needy
Don't pull that stuff on me
Hand me down my walking cane
It's a sin to tell a lie
Send my mouth way down south
And kiss my ass goodbye

Repeat Chorus

If I Won the Lottery: I Know! Indoor Pool!

sprtcs@ameritech.net (sprtcs) — Wed, 7 Jul 2010 04:26:00 GMT

Say I won a big lottery...I have never been able to make a list of what I would do with the money. Not beyond the usual: 1. Pay off all my bills.
2. Put the rest in the bank, or

as one friend of mine plans: Say it is well over a million, take the ticket and put it in a safe deposit box for a few months and borrow against it at the bank...think it over...make a plan...look for a few good money handlers at several different banks, investment houses...interview them, get a bunch of opinions and then decide,

but now, after all these years of having a pair of truly rotten neighbors next door the plan hit me that I would engage a realtor to offer them more than the place is worth to move. That's first. Next, once I acquired the place, I'd have it torn down or moved, to be sold on some other bit of land, and have an indoor pool built.

Ah... heaven on earth, my own indoor pool...how big is an olympic sized pool?

Internal combustion engine / Kenny Rogers

sprtcs@ameritech.net (sprtcs) — Tue, 11 May 2010 10:32:00 GMT

IT WAS AN OVERCAST ERSTWHILE SUNDAY MORNING, ON THE HUNG OVER WEEK END OF THE MICHIGAN/MICHIGAN STATE FOOTBALL GAME, THE ANNUAL RIVALRY THIS YEAR HAD GONE BADLY IN FAVOR OF THE MICHIGAN TEAM BY A WHIPPING 32 TO 28, AND THE STATE

When she walked into the huge cavernous bar there

WAS ONE TABLE OF HARD SCRABBLE MEN IN A CLUTCH AROUND THE POOL TABLE, LOOKING LIKE A MOTLEY ASSORTMENT OF FRATERNITY BROTHERS, A FEW ALUMS AND THE USUAL ARRAY OF COLLEGE KIDS WITH A FEW FRIENDS SOAKING UP SOME SUDS

were only the owner, the bartender, and a couple of their buddies/cronies slouching at the bar.

The tv was on AN OLD FIGHT WITH TWO SLUGGERS PUNISHING ONE ANOTHER and just barely standing up through the ringing of the bell signaling the end of the fight before an 8th round decision was about to be rendered....

She had parked out back of the bar, her steed an elderly robin's egg blue 1969 volkswagen with a hot engine having Empi cams and an exhaust system in need of work...sounded like an angry lion cub complaining about an empty stomach when she turned the key off and locked it shut on a car full of empty paper cups, McTrash and taco boxes and plastic food containers...

THIS PLACE WAS THE LATEST INCARNATION of A BAR THAT ONCE HAD OCCUPIED THIS VERY SPOT IN YEARS GONE BY, CALLED grandmothers, known in legend as the place with the roof that had fallen in due to noise stress from cheap repairs and all the loud rock and roll NOISE OF YOUNG UP AND COMING ROCK AND ROLL BANDS...IT WAS NOT LONG AFTER THE FIFTH EDITION HAD ROLLED INTO TOWN AND RockED some balladry THERE, Kenny Rogers heading up the bill...

She had awoken that noontime wondering what had ever happened to Kenny Rogers...Kenny Rogers who had not known when to hold them, or to fold them but had had his face lifted right off him...leaving him unrecognizable...ugly times 38 the only part of his original look still identifiable was his center part the one dividing his grey scalp now turned completely white...

she had THOUGHTS OF WRITING A SONG FOR HIM

SOMETHING SUNDAY MORNING COMING DOWNISH LIKE

a bluesy sort a thing:
" ...the big game of life doesn't look so big...
...in the hung over gaze of a one-time college kid...
...of a mid-thirties peter pan or tinkerbelle
...in search of a job in job market helle

you know what I mean
a sprightly dirge of a tune about... former college boys who still bugged the bathroom sinks of the first floor girls room in what once was the FIJI House on Grand River Ave...but now is a flat in New York or Hollywood shared by a group of erstwhile "Entourage" wannabes...

But later for that, back in the cool dark of The Silver Dollar where ...

...She walked up to the bar and was about to order a beer and a ham sandwich when the owner asked if she had brought in her social security card so she could complete her application...someone had already filled out the employment history part of an ap... but her w-2 and ID proofs needed finishing ... random parts of the application were stuck under the bar...and the owner yanked them out and placed them before her so she could finish the empty sheets that remained to be done....

the name of the applicant was very nearly like her own... maiden name...Annica Jennifer who preferred "Jennie"sirname of Campbell, residence in the 600 block of Spartan Avenue ...a somewhat broken down section of the party street, where weekends were too loud and one might call it an awesomely boisterous place (if one was a mind to lift wholesale that way too much overly used word and crown it an adverbial cliche pretending to the status of postmodern description) where a gal of her age was considered all used up...of course there were men who knew how to wring out the very last extra juice from a bar rag in that particular college neighborhood and she was considered (if she was considered at all) to be another form of bar rag to such as they....

..."hmm"...she thought. She signaled the guy once called "...barman...?", but probably now more commonly called "dude"... thinking on her feet she just pushed the ap aside and ignored it...
She had never found, landed, or agreed to work a job before after going the filling out the application route.

His hair, bundled back in a rubber band and long enough to go past his man bra if he wore one under the old blue cotton work shirt that showed the top of a black Grateful Dead tee shirt with a few petals of a printed red rose was obscured by the thick curls of hair that attempted to cascade off his chest and reach out to the world. . It was the colors of salt and lemon, having once been a natural blond who probably once didn't look like he could wear a training man bra...(some say that male weed smokers grow breasts and this guy might be living proof) his eyes were the color of an unripe lime. Just green enough to not be called hazel.

He didn't appear to know what a "...Barman...?" was so she
raised her voice a half octave and said: "...ahem..." and softened it again to a quieter, "...excuse me...?" This, as
she raised one hand a bit and pulled out a twenty and placed it on the bar.

Then the twenty caught his eye and he came over to her with a clean white bar cloth and polished the place before her that occupied approximately the area bounded by both of her elbows and not including the two ovoids that her breasts might occupy if she were to rise from the bar stool and stand close to the brass foot rail so to lean forward near to the leather bar edge that they might rest there relieving her shoulders a bit with the weight taken off them through the ingenious fabric architecture devised by Maidenform Corporation.

"Listen," she said, looking into his unripe limes and decided on a particular beverage because of their color, "...gimme a half a ham sandwich and a Corona. Ok?" and a few lime quarters, please."

He saw the ap on the bar before the chair next to her and he moved it back in front of her. "Sure, you want the beer now? or with your food?"

She smiled and said, "Yes, one now and another with my sandwich, you got any

All Those Private Blog Entries

sprtcs@ameritech.net (sprtcs) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 03:41:00 GMT

Really, I find it hard to believe that anyone reads these few public statements that I make so rarely and with such trepidation.

When first I began to make notations on the web way back when...

1998 seems about when.

I entered the word fray in chat rooms on AOL after my younger son insisted that I would find something interesting about the internet and what forms of communication AOL made available.

Well, yes, it was interesting until I bumped into the flaming trolls who's main apparent plan was to inflict pain with the wielding of punctuational and typographical barbs, gibes, taunts, insults, exclusionary {{{{{{{hugs}}}}}}}} and the liberal use of the ignore button which in groups, that is, as exercised by pals who would gang up on individuals, would toss one out of a chat unceremoniously. That was AOL, this is now.

pit bull blues ( John shipe)

sprtcs@ameritech.net (sprtcs) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:14:00 GMT

Pit Bull Blues Chords & Lyrics

I get e-mails from all over the world asking for the lyrics and/or chords to âPit Bull Blues.â So, I thought Iâd post them here. (First the lyrics, then the chords.)

Pit Bull Blues (by John Shipe)

People see me walking down the street, they all run and hide.
I used to take it personally, now I take it in stride.
I got nothing against no one, I wouldnât hurt a fly.
But people seem to think Iâm mean, and hereâs why:

Chorus

Iâm a Pit Bull
A big brown, red-nosed pit bull.
A tooth-bearing, muscle-bound Pit Bull.
I look like I could tear the steel off a locomotive freight train.

People park three spaces when Iâm waitinâ in the car.
All the kids in the neighborhood, they never walk through my yard.
Thereâs a rumor floating âround the county that I ate three cats.
But I swear from the bottom of my canine heart that I didnât do that, no I didnât do that.

But Iâm a Pit Bull,
A tooth-bearing, muscle-bound Pit Bull.
A big brown red-nosed Pit Bull.
I looks like I could dig a hole through a concrete wall.

Bridge

I got these Pit Bull Blues,
All I wanna do is sniff your shoes,
I ainât no killer hound.
No, Iâm the friendliest dog in town.

The sheer sound of my barking could break through arctic ice.
But deep down, Iâm a pussy cat; Iâm just trying to be nice.
In case you didnât notice, Iâm wagging my tail at the speed of light.
But no matter what I do, Iâm accused of looking for a fight.

âCause Iâm a Pit Bull,
A tooth-bearing, muscle-bound Pit Bull.
A big brown red-nosed Pit Bull.
I look like I could crush a cannonball in my jaws.

But I couldnât do any of those things.

THE CHORDS:

Note: On the record, I didnât play the C on the second measure in the verses, but I do now, and it sounds better that way.

Verse: G-C-G-G (4x)
Chorus: C-D-C-D-C-D-Em-Cââ
Bridge: C-G-C-G-Am-D-Em-Cââ-

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'

More Process..The Endless Mess of My Life Reconsidered?

sprtcs@ameritech.net (sprtcs) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:50:00 GMT

What a relief not to go back to see the therapist I had been working with most recently.

She moved from the original office she had been using when I first met her to another one several more miles away from my home.

On top of that she has a colleague with a face having eyes that are empty of compassion, humor, or joy. This face brings me to a search for antonyms, this austere, severe, stark, stern hatchet-face that takes itself so seriously.

As I sat in the waiting room, having arrived late, due to record depths of snow that had made travel more than hazardous. This woman made a point of announcing, so we both could hear the pronouncement, to the receptionist that the fellow who was awaiting her, also having become late due to impossible weather conditions, would be allowed to be seen only until the next one arrived. Making the point that her schedule was of the utmost importance.

(As I remember she called the next one a Patient, I believe, while, I, feeling a kinship with the one waiting with me in the office, I might term the guy, as well as the next to arrive a Victim followed by yet another in a series of entrapped humans in need of understanding, comfort, reassurance, encouragement.)

Now, See... I like therapists who call their counterparts in the process Clients...it gives more credence to the person who agrees to be seen.

Ah, well, but: "Whatever!"
My last therapist, let's call her Gwynn. (Not only because that's near unto her real name in life as we know it but because it is rather a nice name.) And my last therapist is a fairly nice person. Maybe, as someone once told her, she seems so interested and so caring in the listening mode because her father-- by his own hand-- ended his life too early in Gwynne's life.

As I told her in one of the final sessions that we had, before I terminated, maybe his suicide was a very great gift, albeit, of course, a great tragedy for Gwynne, maybe his suicide was a huge gift to me.

Otherwise, you see, Gwynne might be the wearer, instead, of a hatchet face and an outlandishly stern demeanor. But, not she. No.

She had a kind look about her and a gentle smile that reminded me of my mother who couldn't have been gentler and continue to exist.

She no longer exists, my mother. Is this perhaps because she was too gentle? It was a thing that Alison (my dearest but too soon departed best-friend painter Alison McMaugh) used to tell me: "Ah, Barbara," she would say, "...you're too gentle...."

And again, Whatever. In our sessions I could almost always make Gwynne laugh. Probably why I kept coming back at all, I'm guessing, her breaking from her constant concern for others to laugh.

But the biggest laugh I elicited from her was the open-throat, head-back-tossing laughter she unleashed when I said I had the previous night considered what a fun thing it would be if she and I took a trip to up-state New York to see James Van Praagh, the guy who "sees dead people"...she found that idea nothing short of uproarious, which, I must say, gave me a good-sized pang of sadness, since I had truly thought it would be fun.
The very idea, her laughter said, I mean REEally!

That put one of the ultimate seals on the death of our relationship, and the other main one was that she didn't like "The Horse's Mouth" because she couldn't get the references, principally among which or a prime example of which is her lack of awareness of what is "...a Constable Sky...." For anyone who knows what it is, or rather was, If that particular anyone, moreover, is an artist, such as am I... that lack of awareness is perhaps an unforgiveable ignorance in one who purports to understand an artistic sensibility.

*** ***

"Well, Ok." she said, when I told her that day that I was going to terminate therapy, "But you've got to promise me that you will write about your life."

When I asked her why I "must write" she said that it was imperative that I face the experiences that have made me such a very sad old woman (my self-description, it must be noted) so that I can place them behind me and go on, go beyond them.

Well, hell, and a whole lotta shit...fercryinoutloud, what else am I going to write about...in fictive form or otherwise, It is who I am, you know...so, ok. I am writing, but I have faced all those tragic experiences so many times in several varying therapeutic circumstances during the intervening years since they happened in my earlier life, why not, I ask you, why not just go on. Just go on beyond them. Take the exit ramp off Interminable Therapy Highway, and travel on Life As We Know It Avenue. Hmmm? Why not.

But, first, I think it worth my time to make further mention of that Freudian Quackess who works with Gwynn, that is, she shares the office with this woman.

I would no more pay to see that Freudian Female Fuckhead for her opinion than I would take seriously the word of a college freshman psych major as it relates to love, or life, its wonders to be lived, never mind the pursuit of happiness; whatever that might appear to be.

Her manner and demeanor puts me in mind of someone I remember from my days as a part-time proctor and profiler in the counseling center in my Freshman year of college. There were maybe a dozen therapists on staff available to students for consult during their college years.

I recall only seeing maybe half their number when they would appear at our counter picking up their Kuder or Strong or MMPI test results for use in assessing and or assisting their counselees.

Their different personalities came across in the work place most clearly. It was very easy to see who I would never consider disclosing personal concerns to in a professional relationship. Some were light, airy, even sunny, in disposition, others' auras came across the counter like the brooding aftermath of some dreadful tragedy.

By way of example of the latter was this: One morning a grad student who was seeing clients came in with some artwork to show us. The scene was a desolate landscape having ragged tree stumps, dead and dying plants, animal parts and human bits ranging across a horizontal field having no shadow, not much in the way of clear light source. What a mortally sad and dismal line drawing it was. So much so that it induced from the office manager a gasp of shock when first she laid eyes on it.

I asked to see it, after she was told by this therapist / grad student that he, himself had executed (as it were) the drawing, when she asked for his tentative diagnosis of the presumable counselee, who she initially thought had created the catastrophic thing on paper he had brought in so proudly for us to see.

When he left she looked at me and Pete (her co-managerial guy in the office who was working with Gwenn Norrell the head of the counseling center and testing office) in rather obvious chagrin, none of us had much to say about it, said picture being worth many more than a thousand thoroughly upsetting words. That after-effect and / or affect of the image pretty much covered the topic thoroughly enough for the three of us. It was clear that someone was having a maximal amount of psychic pain, and it left us with more than we would liked to remember about it, so we quickly changed the subject and went back to work.

Now, when I was a student it was my economic lot to have to work at least two part-time jobs at once in order to cover my rent and tuition and book expenses etc each term. It so happened that I also waited table in an Italian restaurant that had some great sandwiches.

The grad student(let's call him Cary Morbidly, whose middle name could well have been "On") frequented my table-waiting workplace with his girlfriend. A more simperingly sweet and excessively solicitous, ultra-pandering girlfriend would, in any era, probably never be found upon the planet than this grad-student's girl.

He never failed to find something abjectly wretched about the food that I might bring to him from the cook. How maximally abhorant a bit of tomato sauce might be that might accidentally appear on a corner of a slice of bread, onions that not only were NOT fresh, but TOO plentiful.... He would place his elbows on the table on each side of the plate, holding his forehead in seeming agony while she would call me over to rectify the horror that had given him his latest bout with excruciating pain; his present and perhaps the world's greatest culinary misfortune as might be at hand. Oh, the Woe!

Imagine going to see this guy in an office and request advice and encouragement regarding one's classes, parents, or room-mates.

What a sad state of affairs that might be. I cannot find one to surpass it but for the Hatchet-Faced Freudienne that rents the office next door to old Gwynnie, the therapist who thinks hilarious any shred of actual friendship that might exist between us, she and I.

An Indian Tale

sprtcs@ameritech.net (sprtcs) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:53:00 GMT

It was a dark and stormy night and thirty-two brave Indians of a tribe were sitting around the campfire with the Indian Chief of a tribe and his {(or her? perhaps its}) best-trusted First Assistant-Chief of a tribe.

One of the Indians piped up and said:

"Chief! Tell us a story!"

The Chief turned to the most-trusted person he had in his world -- First Assistant-Chief --- and said:

"It was a dark and stormy night and thirty-two brave Indians of a tribe were sitting around the campfire with the Indian Chief of a tribe and his [(or her? perhaps its}) best-trusted First Assistant-Chief of a tribe.

One of the Indians piped up and said:

"Chief! Tell us a story!"

The Chief turned to the most-trusted person he had in his world -- First Assistant-Chief --- and said:

"It was a dark and stormy night and thirty-two brave Indians of a tribe were sitting around the campfire with the Indian-Chief of a tribe and his {(or her?)perhaps its} First Assistant-Chief of a tribe.

One of the Indians piped up and said:

"Chief! Tell us a story!"

The First-Assistant-Chief of a tribe turned to the 32 brave Indigenous people of a tribe and said:

"It was a dark and stormy night and 32 braves of a tribe were sitting around the campfire with the Indian Chief of a Tribe and his {(or her?}) perhaps its} ...1st Asst.-Chief of a tribe who turned to the 32 people most trusted in this world and said:

"Chief...! "

The Whore of Babylon or Martina Eisenstat Comes to Town

sprtcs@ameritech.net (sprtcs) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:17:00 GMT

Martina Eisenstat rode into town in the Springtime, just as the apple blossoms came forth and the pear blossoms had begun to bud. It is said that she rode a beast with 7 heads, but people simply must talk, mustn't they? Her mission? To storm the Brown Castle in order to plunder the archives of the old school called Free Mountain which is located in the sub-basement of the bulwark ensconced on the middle block of Mt Vernon Avenue in East Egg*-Dark Mews, Michigan.

Martina is a tall female, having earned the appellation Mighty Whore of Babylon by giving birth and then abandoning her seven offspring while totally devoid of personal virtue or ceremony leading to any legitimization of their arrival on this planet. (No man had ever chosen to take her to wife).

Of the Whore's young are numbered three sons and four daughters.

This is the first tale to be told of the Sons of the Whore of Babylon and a cautionary tale it shall be:

*Gary Snyder by way of Edward R Prophet

Caesar Was Killed July 22, 2009

sprtcs@ameritech.net (sprtcs) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:14:00 GMT

My beautiful Black Lab was run over by a Petoskey, MI man driving a pick-up truck entirely too fast for road conditions while towing a trailer on Hwy 2 near the Pictured Rocks / Seney Park northerly cut-off.

I might mention here that the state had to release a hundred state troopers into their own futures due to monetary issues. The travelers were not obeying the 55 mph traffic signs. Guess why.

My adopted Caesar (who I called "Sneezer"), lived a happy life with me for the past 4 years. My plan was to take him to the local jail to work with inmates through the county, also to take him and his best buddy KoBe ("Toes" or "KoBe Toes")south for search and rescue training. Both of them being of the age at which they were settled enough for such training and activities.

I am in a holding pattern now, holding KoBe as much as he and I seem to need. I also await lazer surgery on my right eye at the end of August.

It is all I can do to keep from coming totally unglued.

Michigan, My Michigan...

sprtcs@ameritech.net (sprtcs) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:39:00 GMT

Family business necessitated a visit to the northerly woodlands above the bridge and on our other peninsula, the Upper One.

People who do not live here think of Michigan as a prime example of the word peninsula, also, they consider us a single penninsula whereas we are a double thereof, the one above the Mackinac Bridge is...or was the more insular peninsula, one that appears to be untouched by our times, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Just yesterday I spoke to a pair of local folks along US Highway 2 that spans much of the shoreline along the most southerly border of the U P (you pee, it is called, usually) not so much in mind with the world as is/was Detroit, that part of our state known to be in utmost distress in these very difficult times.

I learned of the appalling and near total dismay among those who know of the strip logging that is taking place along the rivers ruining the trout environment (trout cannot live in the sunshine) and I am left alarmed and in a state of confusion. What is to be done?