Can You Stop Being A Poet?

Can you be a poet and suddenly just stop?
Can you be a poet for a while, maybe a long

while, and then become something else entirely?

I only ask because lately I've been feeling all

expository. For example, this morning

I was going to write a poem about the

rising sun and it started off like this:

The rising sun was beautiful

for the following three reasons:

Do I really intend to express myself

• with bullet phrases

• and numbered paragraphs?

Once my lines flowed across the page
like spilled cappuccino leaving an un-
mistakable trail impossible not to follow.

I could scatter similes and metaphors

around like they were cracked

corn and each line was a chicken.

Now, when I make a new stanza I think:
Stanza originally meant stopping place
and its origins are connected, somehow,

to a farmer plowing a field.

Now when I hear the word onomatopoeia

I immediately think of an Italian going

to the bathroom.

Now when I seek verisimilitude

it feels like I've just been hit

in the face with a wet rabbit.

One Million Words

. . . on April 29th, 2009 the number of words in
the English language will pass 1 million.

The Economist “The World in 2009”

Someone is counting
something all the time,
you can count on that,
And while I can’t prove it, I’m
relatively sure I am right.
Today, for example, I heard
that within the English language
98 new words
are created every minute of
every single day, so a million
new words seem low.
I’m surprised it’s not a billion.

But how and which, and what gets
counted might make a difference.
The devil is in details, or at least
that has been my experience.
Take the words write,
writing, written, and wrote.
Are these just forms of one word,
or four words? Should we vote?
Or consider words like be and am,
are and is, was and were.
Do these letter differences
matter? Does it occur
to anyone that the answer
depends on the desired outcome?
Do you want the number of words
to be a high or a low sum?
And what about all the foreign
words we adapt and use
when counting all the English words
do you also have to choose
the foreign words – forcing us to
include: jihad, tsunami, bungalow
hors d'oeuvre, béarnaise sauce,
entrepreneur and macho?
Next add to all these words the
job specific jargon words and I go
loco. A million words is a cacographical
nightmare. I mean, hell,
there are already 876,312 words
I currently and constantly misspell,
and in a few months we are going
to have over one million words
most of which can only be spelled
by orthographers and nerds.

Giving Bush The Ole Iraqi Shoe Shoo

It wasn't the last image the Bush folk wanted to see on TV with this, his last trip to Iraq, but what I have seen on the news, 72 times in the last 15 hours, is an angry journalist throwing his shoes at President Bush. I wouldn't want to be in that guy's shoes right now. I understand he has been beaten and faces up to 8 years in prison, but, well, if the shoe fits. . . Still, the incident has nudged my Muse awake.

Giving Bush The Ole Iraqi Shoe Shoo

On TV I watched an Iraqi journalist as he threw
not one shoe, but two
shoes at President Bush, who, with dumb luck,
managed (as a former cheerleader) to effectively duck.
I'm not positive of that shoe thrower's goal
but the people of Iraq thought the man had sole
and they admired him. Why do they approve?
Well, let's see, perhaps, maybe you've
failed to remember a war we started,
not over WMDs, but because Saddam farted.
Their neighbors, friends, kids, husbands, and wives
have been bombed, or shot, and lost their lives,
and while I don't condone a shoe assault, I still feel
it was more of an insult than an attempt to kill.

As I understand it, in Iraq
they don't follow dogs with a plastic sack
to clean the Baghdad streets of puppy poop,
so it is not exactly a big news scoop
to say that among the rubble of Baghdad
a lot of dogpiles wait like land mines, yes, it's sad,
and a lot of the people of Iraq commonly step in poo
which explains why it's so insulting to throw the shoe.
I think that what that Iraqi journalist was trying to do
is give George W Bush the ole Iraqi shoe shoo.
.
.

Writing in 21 syllables

I write every day. If you are serious about something and want to reach your potential, you have to work at it every day. You write when you don't feel like writing. That may be the hardest time to write, when you are uninspired, discouraged even, sick, in pain, when you just don't feel like writing. I'm one of those kind of people. I often don't feel like writing. Writing for me is like jogging is for those gerbil-like people who just have to get up, and go out, and trot around the lake -- rain or snow, hot or cold, every day, even if it harelips every cow in Oklahoma.

One of the things I do is, when I feel like it, I write up little prompts that I can use on the days when I don't feel like it. Here is one: I decided ahead of time that I would write little poems made up of 21 syllables. They don't have to rhyme, and they are too short to tell much of a story, they are just little snap shots of life.

21ers

1 Moonlight

I watch it float in on a bed of stars,
the moon, snuggles close,
as only the moon can.

2 Sunlight

The sun rises silently.
Yellow threads weave through the blinds,
awakening me to light.

3 Ryan Age 4

He'd dash from room to
room,
his naked heels pound on
the floor like rubber mallets.

4 Words

I dropped words, like little stones,
down an old well
and listened for a splash
that never came.

5 Questions

I ask myself this question:
Would I prefer
to taste the sugar,
or be the sugar?

6 Kathie

She leaned in
close,
her breath is moist
and warm.
Stray strands
of her hair
reach out
and touch
my face.

.

Visiting Mama in Covenant Hospital

When the call came that my mother was in the hospital, again, and it was serious, I just did not know how to assess the situation. How sick is she? Is she so sick that I need to be rush down for a bedside vigil, or is this one of those calls that means, “mom’s sick, and if you can, come by and let her know you care” sort of situations? Something in my brother’s voice hinted that this time was serious, but, knowing what a pain in the ass brother I am, he did not want to push me to come for a visit. The entire family walks on egg shells around me (odd cliché don’t you think?) knowing that I can get mad, or hurt, or whatever-the-hell-it-is I do, and they won’t hear from me again for years.

I feel like I should go see her, but it is the worse possible time for me. I just started this new job. The job kicks off with a 5 week training course, and if I miss one day, I have to start over, and it is up to your county supervisor if they want to keep paying you while you wait for another chance to go back through training.

In my mind I’m thinking, “Well jerk, this is your mother. Are you putting a job, and some pre-training above going to see your own (maybe dying) mother?” The answer in my head was: “Well, duh, . . . yeah. I have to pay my bills don’t I? I have a wife to support, and the Master Card and Visa industry.

My wife and I talk about it, and I figure if I leave by 5 am, drive down Saturday morning, I could spend the day and come back Sunday afternoon.

Watching the weather on TV caused me to shift my plans. Another blast of Arctic air and probably ice storms are suppose to come in on Sunday. So now my plan is to drive down early Saturday, spend 4 or 5 hours with my mother, and then drive back. This way I make my visit and I don’t miss any of the training. This sounds like a WIN/WIN to me.

The Map Quest map tells me that my drive will be 5 hours and 45 minutes long. I figure, stopping for coffee, and driving slow (my tendency) that this is a 6-hour plus drive for me.

I got up yesterday, at 4 am, walked my dog, Peaches, got a travel mug and started. The drive started bad. Usually, on long tips, I like to listen to an audio book, and I’d checked out the newest Jodi Picoult's newest book. She is one of my favorite novelists by the way. My CD player in the truck will not work. I had the radio and the voice in my head.. The drive from Oklahoma City to Lubbock is a long one. It is more than just 500 miles; it is 50o hundred barren miles. The land looked dead and tortured. There were long stretches where the crust of the earth looked like a crumpled rumpled blanket with sudden steep rolling hills, and abrupt drops.

At one point, in the distance I saw animals I could not identify, fluffy round bodies with stiff stippled fur, about the size of Jack Rabbits, not Cottontails, but those big ass bunnies that propagate the prairie, only these were not Jack Rabbits. There were no ears. I saw three or four of these beasts rush across the road and then they seemed frantic to get over the barbed wire fence running along the side of the road. Why couldn’t animals smaller than my dog Peaches get through a barred wire fence? The space between the wires had to be nearly a foot. The design of the barbed wire fence is to keep cows in let everything else go in or out as it wills. It turned out that these huddled beasts were actually tumbleweeds blowing across the road and piling up against the fence row.

After passing Wichita Falls my radio just faded out. I punched the scan button and watched the station numbers zip past one after another each flashing on the radio monitor for less than a second or so, and then when it had exhausted the list it started the scan again. Repeatedly my radio scanned for a signal. I watched, and waited and drove on. I drove 67 more miles before it picked up a station.

When I got to Lubbock, well, I was lost. Map Quest had done a fair job getting me from Oklahoma City to the Welcome to Lubbock sign, but the directions got murky after that. I understood why Moses wandered in the Wilderness for 40 years. It just seems wrong to have a penis and ask for directions. I wandered around for about 45 minutes, hoping to find the hospital, but knowing my time was short and I was driving around when I could be with my mother, I finally broke down and called my brother Tim, got some hints, and found the hospital.

When I got to the hospital and finally got to her room, I saw the sign on the door: FAMILY MEMBERS ONLY. Visits were restricted because she has pneumonia and strep, she has something wrong with her back, and she has been fighting cancer for 5 years. My mother’s battle with the Big C has been touch and go, and leaning toward the GO.

I had not seen my mother for perhaps 5 years, maybe 8 years. I’d been living in Florida, sometimes unemployed, sometimes just starting a new job, and always broke. Texas is a long way from Florida when you are broke. Not having seen my mother for so long, I was unprepared for seeing her. I looked down into the bed and what I was a very old person. I’d thought she was aged the last time I’d seen her, but now she was ancient, puffy, fragile, and clearly miserable.

I knew she was sick, but I’d imagined her dozing in and out, and being able to wait on her some, and visit. It was not like that, not even a little bit. She was in constant pain. Her hands were so swollen they resembled oven mitts. The hospital had cut her rings off because they were cutting off circulation. My mother clutched on her belly a plastic tub she kept there in case she vomited. She never threw up while I was there, but she would periodically gag and retch and I would bring the lip of the plastic tub close to her mouth in case she regurgitate, but each time it was a close call, but not nothing happened.

We didn’t visit. I sat in the room and gave her sips of water and she would moan, and cry and send me to the nursing station to ask for Delauden, or anti- nausea medication. I looked on the white eraser board in the room: My brother and sister living in Lubbock. They would be the first people to call if something bad happened. On the board the staff had listed their home numbers, work numbers and cell numbers. Her Treatment Goal was listed as Pain Management. That tells me something. Their first goal was not a cure, it was control of pain. The white board also listed her doctors by last name. There were 5 of them.

While I was there the infection doctor showed up. I listened to him talking with my mother.

“Mrs. Norman, our tests show that we have made good progress fighting the infection. The infection is almost gone.”

“Then why do I feel so bad?” said my mother.

“We can kill the infection, Mrs. Norman, but once that infection is all gone, you are not going to feel any better, because what is making you feel so bad is not the infection.”

“What am I suppose to do? I feel so bad. I can hardly stand it.”

“I’m an infection doctor,” said the doctor. “All I do is fight the infection. You need to talk to your other doctors about what is going on with your back.”

“My head hurts so bad,” said my mother, “My back is killing me. I’m nauseated. If I have to live like this, I just want to die.”

I kept remembering the mother that raised me. She was 17 when I was born. I remember her as being pretty. Not just, she’s my mama so she is pretty, but that she was actually pretty. She would have been pretty in the eyes of other people who had no connection to her.

I remembered all the harsh times. Both my parents were too young to be married with a children, and the stresses in their lives came out with harshness toward their children. My mother was the most creative person I ever knew, other than, perhaps, DJ Lafon, and I only knew Mr. Lafon slightly. My mother could do anything. She could paint, and draw, she was a fabulous seamstress, she was a great doll maker, she reupholster furniture, and she just figured out how to do stuff. I could never figure out how she knew how to do all the stuff she did. When her brother, my Uncle Charles, found out he had terminal cancer he built his own coffin, and my mother upholstered the inside with a beautiful padded lining. Had she had a different life, she might have done things recognized and lauded by the world. That wasn’t the life she had.

It was a long trip home.

Made in the USA -- the Hamilton Way

Alexander Hamilton was the first Secretary of the Treasury. Let that fact sink in a moment. There had never been a US Secretary of the Treasury prior to President George Washington appointing Alexander Hamilton. Often, the first person to do anything is just lucky if they do not screw up so horribly that they also be come the last person to do the job. We often admire the first folk to do stuff because they have no pattern to follow; they are pathfinders, leaders, hacking out a path for the rest of us to follow. Later, the path may become a super highway and while the later results are far superior to the first effort at least most of us realize there could be no current success without those first crude brave efforts by those that went first, those who dared to be Founding Fathers.

While this crude first brave leader pattern may often be true, it was most decidedly NOT true in the case of Alexander Hamilton. Mr. Hamilton set in place a plan for the United States that remained in effect for nearly 200 years. What Mr. Hamilton did was look at this fledgling United States, he looked at the world super power of the 1700s, England, and he figured out how England became a world power and what the United States MUST do if we were to become a world leader.

Alexander Hamilton wrote a document that outlined a plan for turning the United States into the premium manufacturing superpower in the entire world. What Mr. Hamilton wrote was entitled: The Report on the Subject of Manufactures (1791). The Report on Manufacturing is the main document to reveal Hamilton's plan for industrializing the United States. Mr. Hamilton argued that this new Republic, the USA, should concentrate on developing industry. Hamilton saw that England was the richest and most powerful nation on earth (at that time) because it had the strongest and most effective manufacturing base in the world, far surpassing every other nation.

If the US was going to develop a better, more effective, more powerful, more pervasive manufacturing base Mr. Hamilton felt that the US had to take the following steps:

The government of the United States must nurture American industry in its formative years. Mr. Hamilton could clearly see that you do not go from zero percent to 100 percent over night, that if America was going to have a strong powerful industry then it was going to have to be grown, protected, nurtured, nourished. How is this done?

1. Mr. Hamilton proposed the government impose protective tariffs. Tariffs would prohibit imported manufactured goods from flooding America supplanting OUR efforts to develop our own domestic products.
2. Mr. Hamilton also suggested that OUR government prohibit the exportation of raw materials in order to give our manufacturing base an advantage by having plenty of our own raw materials readily available.
3. Mr. Hamilton proposed that the US set up an effective method for inspecting manufactured goods to ensure that Made In the USA products meet the high standards of quality.
4. Mr. Hamilton urged the government of the United States take serious steps to encouraging our citizens to create more inventions.
5. Mr. Hamilton recommended the support the building of roads and canals to encourage internal trade.
6. Mr. Hamilton felt it was important that the US become independent of any and all control by foreign powers through reliance on our own goods for domestic needs and especially our own defense supplies.

These six standards were key to the United States becoming the richest nation on earth, with the strongest manufacturing base on the planet. However, Mr. Hamilton had more in mind than just protecting US industry, he also sought not only to alteration America's economic base, but also he hoped to change the very nature of our people. Mr. Hamilton believed that American success was not just dependent on our raw materials, and effectively run companies, but it was even more important that we infuse the people of the United States with a new spirit of industriousness, energy, and innovation. What was to make America great was our imagination, our commitment, our positive can-do attitude; it is pride in ourselves that matters most.
The problem is that we the People have become Myopic People. We are shortsighted, and not farsighted. You see, in the short run, it is cheaper to let people in other countries make our steel, because the people "over there" will work under dangerous, crappy conditions for less money, making the steel cheap. Of course, by allowing our steel industry to die, we are now at the mercy of these countries. Now that we can no longer provide for our own steel needs, we are vulnerable, and can be forced to pay higher prices because, well, what other choice do we have? It is not as if we can make the stuff ourselves.

If we did not always go for the fast buck, and instead took the time to allow our manufacturing then we would become richer through investment in ourselves. It is the ole give us a fish and we eat for a day, teach us to fish and we eat for life.

While other countries protect and infuse money into their industries, in recent years we the Myopic People have fallen in love with deregulated free enterprise. We do not protect our manufacturing, other countries do, and we are now surprised to discover that we have failed to compete effectively. Why are we surprised? We are not playing on a level playing field. We do not protect, or nurture our industry, other countries do, and so their manufacturing is healthier than ours is.

At one time, the US manufactured more stuff, the stuff we made was of the highest quality, and we were the richest nation on earth. Today, what we manufacture a tiny fraction of what once was made here, much of what we make is of poor quality, and we are no longer the richest nation on earth, we are the nation with the highest level of debt on this entire planet.

I would suggest that perhaps we should dust off Mr. Hamilton's Report on the Subject of Manufactures (1791) tweak it just a bit to make it fit with the technology of today, and do now what was done then.

1. impose protective tariffs,
2. prohibit or closely regulate the exportation of raw
3. set up an effective method for inspecting manufactured goods in order to ensure that our manufactured products meet the high standards of quality, and
4. take serious steps to encouraging our citizens to create more inventions.
5. to build roads and canals to encourage internal trade.
6. to become independent of any and all control by foreign powers through reliance on our own goods for domestic needs and especially our own defense supplies

The protection and encouragement of infant industries, Mr. Hamilton argued, would produce a better balance between agriculture and manufacturing, promote national self-sufficiency, and enhance the nation's wealth and power. This sounds like something we would enjoy having today.

.

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The Newest Republican Gamble and the 2009 Humongous Depression

When John McCain picked Sara Palin it was a gamble, and it failed to achieve what the old soldier wanted. I think we all knew John McCain was a gambler, a risk taker, a maverick, but with all those Christian Right folk in their party, I just did not realize how willing to gamble so many Republican were, or what risk takers they have turned out to be. If the Republicans deny a loan to the carmakers and even one of those companies goes under, then their gamble will have failed, but this time it will not be one politician losing his race for power, it will be the economy of this country and, to some degree, the entire world.

I am pissed off for the following reasons:

There is an easily recognized prejudice on the part of the Republicans. They are willing to screw blue-collar workers, but allowed white-collar bankers to take billions with relatively NO strings.

I agree that the carmakers have made BIG mistakes. They carmakers made the cars that millions of Americans wanted. They should have forced us to pick from a short list of fuel-efficient vehicles. We the people must share some of the blame for the carmaker error, because Americans wanted to big ass Hummers, SUVs, and Big machismo trucks. But remember, car makers never gave out loans for cars to people who had such bad credit they couldn’t repay the loans, but our Financial industry did exactly that with sub-prim mortgages with impunity.

No one asked the Bankers how they got to their Congressional hearing.

No one asked the big wigs in the financial industry if they were going to cut bonuses and lower their salaries.

The rejection of a Auto Maker loan to save the industry is a reaction against the flaws and errors that came out of the bail out of the banking industry.

The history of loans to the auto industry is that when our government made loans to the automakers, the industry paid back the taxpayers WITH interest, and the government actually turned a profit off those loans.

We only have one President at a time, and the one we have right now has checked out, and given up. President Bush is showing shallow, reckless disregard to the urgent pressing problems facing Americans right now. The 2008 Economic fiasco may soon be the 2009 Humongous Depression problems that may not be able to coast along until Obama can be sworn in, and this is further hurts the Bush legacy that is already about as bad as any Presidential legacy in the entire history of this Nation.

I am pissed because our government focuses on money and not on people. The Credit industry needs to exist and able to function, but if the people are unemployed, if they can’t pay their home loans, and if our economy is top heavy with consumerism, and not manufacturing, then who cares if the banks have money to loan? Who will they loan it to, when the masses have no way to qualify or repay those loans?

HOPE?

It would probably be good for a couple of car companies to merge. It would probably be good if companies like GM would offer fewer products. Too many models require excessive labor and excessive advertising, and too many models fail to instill brand loyalty. Why be loyal when you have too many choices. We tend to want to try out all our choices, and when you have dozens and dozens of choices, the company never gets a generous following for a particular model.

There has been a lot of talk about how Chapter 11 bankruptcy would keep people from buying cars from the reorganizing company. Is reorganization bankruptcy any worse that what is going on now? Who wants to buy a car today if you fear the entire industry may be going under within a week or two? Chapter 11 would be better than what is going on right now. Bankruptcy is bad, but it should be looked at like a guy going to AA. If you go to AA it means you have a problem with alcohol. It also means you are doing something to address your problem. If the carmakers go Chapter 11 at least they will be using the courts to help them reorganize and restructure and that is better than what is happening right now.

“Where did you lose your Faith?”

I’m thinking, “Hell,
if I knew that, well,
it wouldn’t be lost, now would it?”
I think and almost say out loud, “I might
not have had it in the first place, in which case
you cannot lose what you never had.”
Instead, I check the pockets of my pants,
the breast pocket of the shirt I wore
yesterday. Next I check that little foyer
table we keep near the front door. where
I’ve been known to dump stuff off there
as I return from a work weary day. “Could
be,” you suggest, “that you have a hole in
your pocket. If it fell through a hole
it wouldn’t be your fault, still,
finding it again, well, hell,
it could have fallen out anywhere.”

I checked between the cushions
of the couch and the bedside table
next to my light, among my stack of books,
but nothing. I could’ve sworn I’d had it
in my hand, just the other day.

I’m tired of looking for it,
but look for it out of habit.
I wonder, if it is missed
like ice cream is missed by a dieter,
or is it missed like the ache
after the tooth has been pulled?

The Line Between Prose and Poetry

I am 58 years old and still doing what I started at 15 years of age, writing poetry. My few friends, after years of seeming me so obsessed with verse will sometimes get a yen to write some of their own verse. I encourage that activity and feel that mankind is just a little better when our membership does creative stuff, especially when we write, and perhaps even more so when we write verse. To do my small part in spreading awareness of poetry, and hopefully appreciation of poetry I send out a poem every day to my email list.

Recently, one of my few friends emailed me a question about these poems. He said, "They just seem like thoughts to me. They don't rhyme. I thought poetry had to rhyme. That is exactly the subject of a wonderful poem by Howard Nemerov.

Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry

by Howard Nemerov

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle

That while you watched turned to pieces of snow

Riding a gradient invisible

From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn't tell.

And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

From Sentences by Howard Nemerov, published by the University of Chicago Press . Copyright 1980 by Howard Nemerov. Reprinted with the permission of Margaret Nemerov. All rights reserved. www.amazon.com/Collected-Poems-Howard-Nemerov/dp/0226572595

You will notice that the title does not seem to fit with the text of the poem. The titled intent of the poem is to explain the difference between prose and poetry, but the content of the poem is about some birds that get covered with a dusting of snow as they feed on seeds and crumbs.

The birds apparently are intended to stand in, symbolically, for the written work. As they are covered their identity becomes obscuredL are they birds, or are they just part of the snow covered earth?

At first, the speaker in the poem does not know what he is looking at, but suddenly the sparrows take flight and there is no longer any question as to what the speaker was looking at, the speaker was looking at birds.

In a similar way, a writing my, at first, be difficult to identify. Are you looking at prose, or are you looking at poetry. If you look long enough, you may, eventually, be rewarded as the words take flight, and all questions are pushed away by the wind coming from their graceful flight. Poetry, if it is real, if it is not dead, will, for the patient reader, always reveal itself. Maybe it will rhyme and maybe it won't, but the power of poetry always can reveal itself, if the reader will only wait, watch, and read the signs carefully.

* * *

The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Bollingen Prize. Howard Nemerov (B. Feb. 29, 1920 D. July 5, 1991) was US Poet Laureate twice, once from 1963 to 1964, and from 1988 to 1990.

Howard Nemerov is certainly a well known poet among people who read a lot of poetry, but for the man on the street, few would be able to identify him by name or picture. I, being a daily poetry reader, have great respect for Mr. Nemerov and I wanted to focus on one particular poem of his, because it attempts to address a very common question among people who have not read much poetry since high school.

The Great Depression and the 2008 Economies Fiasco

What I keep hearing are comparisons between our economic woes now, and the Great Depression.

First, let me point out that if your economic life is going down the toilet then what is happening to you IS equal to or worse than the Great Depression. It is common for us to think, "What happens to you is a problem, but if it happens to me it is a tragedy." People are suffering. People are losing their jobs, homes, and what is worse is this: people are losing their confidence and self respect. Once you stop feeling competent and start hating yourself, you are in a very poor position for coping with trouble.

Secondly, let me say clearly that what we are going through is not the Great Depression. That does not mean that what we are going through is not bad. In fact, it doesn't mean that what we are going through might turn out to be historically worse than the Great Depression.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. - Mark Twain

Nothing that has happened happens again, not exactly, not perfectly. There are similarities between now and then, but now is always now and then is always then. This focus on the Great Depression might be helpful, but to consider it a template for today is little more than distracting nonsense. If we attempt to solve our problems today by reaching for what worked in the 1930s we are going to suffer and every wound will be unanticipated an unique. This does not mean that some of what worked for Roosevelt might not also work for Obama, but if it does, it is not because then and now are identical problems.

In the Year of Our Lord 2008, we are experiencing a credit tsunami, a credit debacle and yes there were aspects of credit foolishness that also lead up to the Great Depression. The year of 2008 and 1929 may have similar origins because money mismanagement was involved with both then as now led to a sharp reduction in consumer demand. (Well, the demand is still in our spend happy hearts, but having no money to pay the minimum debt repayment does take the man out of demand.)

The Great Depression and the 2008 Economies Fiasco are substantially different events. You need to have grandfathers who were adults during the Great Depression to know that as a time, it was anything but great. What happened to America then was life threatening critical condition. What is happening to America now is more like serious but stable condition.

Again, remember, if you are one of the more unfortunate of our citizens, then what is happening to you is critical. Even taking the long, gestalt view of things, being in serious but stable condition doesn't mean that you won't eventually die from the condition. America is in trouble, but it is not to the same degree as it was in the early 1930s, at least not yet.

One reason then is not like now is because we have federally insured the bank deposits of our citizens. There is no need to have a run on the banks like there was during the Great Depression. History tells us that by the middle of March 1933, almost every bank in this country was closed, and over 4,000 banks had failed. The failure of banks totally wiped out the savings of vast numbers of our citizens. Remember, people actually saved money back then, and for tens of thousands of Americans this bank failure not only wiped out their life savings, but it also, in some ways, wiped out their lives as well.

The Great Depression (a sort of recession on methamphetamines) went on for a grueling 43 months, and caused the rate of unemployment to go as high as 25 percent, and the National Income of the United States was cut in half.

In this current and on-going recession of 2008 we have only had 19 bank failures, and unemployment is expected to go no higher than 7.6 percent. (Again, if you are among that 7.6 percent we do not wish to imply you are not suffering, because clearly you are. If you are part of the 7.8 percent then, for you, it is 100 percent.)

We do not, of course, know how long this economic mess is going to last, but some highly regarded economists believe this recession started in April 2008, it will probably be over by the summer of 2009.

CAUTIONARY NOTE:

Q: Why did God create economists?
A: In order to make weather forecasters look good.

Some of the differences between the Great Depression and the 2008 Economies Fiasco are comforting. It is good to think, well, things are really not as bad as they were then.

The world economy is not in depression. It probably won't fall into depression, despite the magnitude of the current crisis (although I wish I was completely sure about that). ~ Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate in economics

But all of those differences are not good. For one thing, when we had the Great Depression America was the leading manufacturing nation in the entire world. We made everything we needed to function as a nation. Today we are no longer a manufacturing leader of the world, we are instead the leading consumer in the entire world.

We still make cars here, of course, but even that industry is in question. Many of the worlds greatest products, many of the fastest selling products are invented here, improved here, and the method of manufacturing these products are designed here, but then we turn around and ship the knowledge off to other countries and they make the products we developed and made practical. There was a time when we made a lot of stuff: televisions, clothes, washing machines, radios, typewriters, shoes, telephones, and furniture. There was a time when America was the world leader in making the raw materials used to make other stuff: steel, aluminum, plastic, rubber, glass, and electrical components. While you might look long and hard and find some US companies making some of these products we are clearly not the leaders in manufacturing these products, not by a long shot. We buy tons of stuff made somewhere else, largely, usually, and mostly made overseas. We buy stuff manufactured in countries that once were our enemies, and some of these countries still cannot be described as our friends. Many USA hating countries are sending us their stuff and we are send them our money, money that we don't have and can only get buy either borrowing it from China, or by allowing the government to just printing it up and dump it into the economy.

When you look at our countries ability to manufacture the products we need to survive, you see that in some ways, America was better off during the Great Depression than we are now. The America of the 1930s could, and did, eventually manufacture our way out of a horrible economic crisis. Are we going to use our consumer-based society to get out of trouble now? Can we buy our way to a stable economy and prosperous times? Is allowing the auto-industry to join the shoe industry, and the textile industry, and the electronic industry and become the forte of our other countries, many of which would like nothing better than to see us suffer and fail, and become punished victims of our own foolish economic choices?

The Bhagavad Gita and Me

I was raised a Christian, and raised to believe that the Bible contained sacrid scriptures and it was the inspired enarrant word of God, but I knew, very young in my life, that there were other religions on the earth, and those other religions worshopped a different God, at least a god with a different name, and these "other religious people" had writings they honored as their sacrid scriptures. I really didn't give it much thought for years. After all, America was the riches most powerful nation on earth and that was clearly because God had blessed us for choosing the RIGHT Bible and worshiping the Right God.

I got interested in Mahatma Ghandi a little bit during the Civil Rights movement, and more so, after watching the movie about his life staring Ben Kingsley. I discovered that Ghandi read many of the world's sacrid texts, but the one he read most was the Bhagavad Gita. I was intreged enough to buy a copy of the Bhagavad Gita.

You might also remember that when the first atomic bomb exploded it's maker, Robert Oppenheimer, quoted the Bhagavad Gita:

I am become Death,The shatterer of Worlds.

The Bhagavad Gita is actually a part of the a larger text called the Mahabharata, and that work is comprised of some 700 verses. The teacher in the Bhagavad Gita is someone called Sri Krishna, and this guy is regarded by the Hindus as the supreme manifestation of the Lord Himself. To my ears saying someone is the manifaestation of God is similar to saying someone is the incarnation of God. Within the Bhagavad Gita Sir Krishna is referred to most often as "the divine one."

The book is actually a poetic account of a conversation betten Sri Krishna and Arjuna whose name means 'bright', 'shining', 'white' or 'silver' (cf. Latin argentum). The character Arjuna was suppose to be the best archer ever, and Arjuna is often referred to as Jishnu, which means the undefeatable.

This conversation between Krishna and Arjuna takes place just before a battle that starts the Kurukshetra War. As is true for most of us, about to begin a battle, we start to focus in on what is really important. People who face death, also consider all those things that give their life meaning, and place their own value on living. So the conversation between Krishna and Arjuna cover a lot of topics, and explore the confusion and moral dilemma common not just with Sri Krishna but with all human beings. Some scholars who have studied the text have said the Bhagavad Gita have described The Gita as "a lighthouse of eternal wisdom" and others have stated that The Gita has the ability to inspire any human being to reach their highest levels of accomplishment and enlightenment.

Quotes from the Bhagavad Gita

The power of God is with you at all times; through the activities of mind, senses, breathing, and emotions; and is constantly doing all the work using you as a mere instrument.

The wise sees knowledge and action as one; they see truly.

The mind acts like an enemy for those who do not control it.

Sever the ignorant doubt in your heart with the sword of self-knowledge. Observe your discipline. Arise.

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.

Fix your mind on Me, be devoted to Me, offer service to Me, bow down to Me, and you shall certainly reach Me. I promise you because you are very dear to Me.

Creation is only the projection into form of that which already exists.

The soul who meditates on the Self is content to serve the Self and rests satisfied within the Self, there remains nothing more for him to accomplish.

No one attains perfection by merely giving up work.

He who hates no single being, is friendly and compassionate, free from self-regard and vanity, the same in good and evil, patient; Contented, ever devout, subdued in soul, firm in purpose, fixed on Me in heart and mind, and who worships Me, is dear to Me.

A man's own self is his friend. A man's own self is his foe.

As person abandons worn-out clothes and acquires new ones, so when the body is worn out a new one is acquired by the Self, who lives within.

Fear not what is not real, never was and never will be. What is real, always was and cannot be destroyed.

If you want to see the brave, look at those who can forgive.

Out of compassion I destroy the darkness of their ignorance. From within them I light the lamp of wisdom and dispel all darkness from their lives.

There has never been a time when you and I have not existed, nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist. As the same person inhabits the body through childhood, youth, and old age, so too at the time of death he attains another body. The wise are not deluded by these changes.

To the illumined man or woman, a clod of dirt, a stone, and gold are the same.

My Week In the Nut Factory

Depression is nourished by a lifetime of ungrieved and unforgiven hurts. ~Penelope Sweet

I hated my job. I felt like my life was going no where. I was beating myself up constantly, which was easy for me, since I had spent my life learning where my weak spots were and I could jab myself with a sharp stick nearly any time I felt the need, and I felt the need constantly. I got so blue, that I wasn’t big bad blue, I was navy blue. I hated my life, and saw no signs that it was going to get better. I felt abandoned by God, so I’d gotten to the place where I no longer believed in heaven, so even after life offered me no respite.

Depression is the inability to construct a future ~Rollo May

I wasn’t suicidal. I just wasn’t that crazy about being alive. I remember thinking that I would not do anything to kill myself, but I didn’t care if I died.

My next thought was that in the old days people didn’t have all the medications they have now, and taking medications just artificially prolonged life, and why would I want to do stuff to force my body to live longer than it was going to live naturally (meaning med free)? I decided that I was not going to kill myself, but I was no longer going to take any medication.

There was another reason for this thought: even with insurance, and my drug co-pays, I was still spending over $250 per month just in co-pays for my drugs. I stopped my thyroid, my high blood pressure drugs, my Type II diabetic meds, my high cholesterol, my antidepressants, my anti-anxiety pills.

I remember watching this episode of Scrubs where the hospital attorney Ted played by Sam Lloyd, is standing on the top of the hospital contemplating a jump to his death, but he loses his nerve. Then someone startles or bumps Ted and he falls off the top of the building. As he is plummeting earthward and he starts shouting, “I did it! Sweet relief! I did it!”

Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from normal experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain . . . it is entirely natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion. ~ William Styron

The lawyer falls into a big pile of garbage and is saved. (It can only be funny if no one is really hurt). The scene stayed with me. I felt the same way. I wasn’t to the point where I would take overt steps to kill myself, but if I were to die, I saw it as sweet relief.

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm. ~Steven Wright

That is when I made my big mistake. I told my shrink about that scene from Scrubs, and then let it out that I had stopped my meds.

Later that night my shrink called me at home and told me she wanted me to go check myself in to the crisis stabilization unit at the local hospital, or she was going to call the police and have me involuntarily committed.

I had to make a decision: if I didn’t go voluntarily I would have a Baker Act on my record and that would follow me and could impact future employment. So I caved and went down and checked myself in. I was afraid to do all this. I was afraid this would affect my job. I was suppose to be at work the following morning, and now my wife was going to have to call up my boss and tell her that I was in the Nut House.

Now I had been in the hospital for a knee replacement, a shoulder joint reconstruction, and a heart catheterization and all of those experiences had been great. I have never felt more cared for and treated nicer than when I was in the hospital. The nurses were fantastic, bringing me coffee, asking me about my pain level, helping me up or back into bed. I loved being in the hospital. It wasn’t like that in the Nut Factory wing of that hospital.. It was humiliating. The do a strip search, and check your anus for drugs or weapons. I was wearing sweat pants with a cord in the waist band and that is something you could hang yourself with, so I was forced to wear only a hospital gown, the kind that open in the back. When I go into the unit I’m the only one wearing this gown. I was a smoker, but there was no smoking allowed. I was given a patch to wear.

They had a bunch of rules there. I like to draw and write, but I was only allowed to use crayons and one of those stubby pencils that you get when you keep score at miniature golf courses

The people there were mostly alcoholics, but there were people there that were very unpleasant to be around. I sat by myself and tried not to draw any attention to myself. They had color sheets there in a big stack and I turned them over and drew and colored on the back. There was one TV mounted high where the inmates couldn’t reach it, and they let the patients vote on what to watch. The vote was reruns of Charmed a show about witches. I’m not sure how they found it, but they seem to have found a station that showed nothing but Charmed episodes one after another.

I was obviously depressed, and being in the Nut Factory only made me feel worse. I was so far gone they had to lock me up. I was a crazy loser and I now had indisputable proof of this fact.

They hospital put me back on all my medications, and changed my anti-depressant to the highest dose allowed of Pixel. My sugar was high and they not only gave me Metformin, but they boosted that with insulin injections to bring my blood sugar levels down. They had group sessions every afternoon and a Psychiatrist came to see me every morning. I spent most of my time sitting and feeling this feeling similar to being crushed. Even taking in air was an effort.

Was it my own fault? Yes.

Depression is a prison where you are both the suffering prisoner and the cruel jailer. ~ Dorothy Rowe

Of course we depressed folk do it to ourselves. Maybe we blame our childhood, or our bad breaks, but the truth is, we depression is a choice, and it is logical that if you have chosen to be depressed you should be able to chose to be (and to feel) something else.

You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it. ~ Albert Ellis

After a week, the Psychiatrist said I could stay longer if I wanted, but she thought I was stable enough to go home if I felt up to it. I was not to work for another two weeks. I resented my shrink and my wife for forcing me into that place. I didn’t feel it was fair. I still don’t think it was fair. I hadn’t taken steps to cause me to die; I just refused to accept meds. People do that all the time. Cancer patients sometimes choose to stop treatment, because they don’t want to prolong their life with their disease, and no one calls that suicide. I didn’t want to prolong my life with my disease, but I was not causing my death, I just wasn’t doing anything to make it go longer than it would naturally last.

Mike Wallace was on a bunch of the Public Service Ads where he says something like, “If you are depressed there is nothing to be ashamed of. Seek treatment and you can beat it, just as I have.”

I was pissed off at Mike Wallace. There was nothing to be ashamed of for him, because he was this big 60 minutes TV star. I was not a big star. My employer decided that I could not return to work unless my shrink would write me a release, and she wouldn’t. She thought I needed more time, and that my job was contributing to my depression.

Being out of work is not the best way to fight your depression.

Some good did follow. Being pissed at my shrink I got a new shrink. The new shrink asked me about sleep, had me take one of those sleep tests and found out I had sleep apnea. I had seven episodes where I stopped breathing completely and 13 miner interruptions to my sleep because I just couldn’t draw in air. When I got my CPAP machine I started sleeping longer, and dreaming. I couldn’t remember the last time I had dreamed anything.

I changed anti-depressants and started reading stuff I call Buddhist psychology books. I am better. I am still not wild about life. I still try to figure out why I bother to live. I am not cured, and I am not sure I will ever be cured. I did learn to keep some of my thoughts away from my shrink.

I’m still working on myself. I am still struggling. I still have set backs where I wonder why I bother, or why anyone bothers to keep living. I haven’t given up.

Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished; if you are alive...it isn't. ~ Richard Bach

Your Birthday

Too broke to buy my sentiments I’m left
with only words and say, “Happy birthday.”

I’ve been with you now for 36 of your birthdays
and we both are to an age where candles have lost
that novelty that brings a child delight. We are so
old that that short birthday song seems long, long,
long. Still, saying “happy birthday” doesn’t seem to
say enough. The words so absolutely fail to convey
the privilege I feel being in the same room and breathing
the same air that you breath, that the heat of both our
bodies mingle and protect us from a cold world as we
rest under the sheet and blankets of our bed, or that
the sharing of time and place with you is the blessing
of my life, or that where we sit to watch TV is known,
appropriately and perfectly as the Love Seat.

Canine Nasal Knowledge

She is tethered to me, on a spring expanding leash
and so she freely scans the grass, pushing her snout
down close to the life sustaining earth and pulling in
information denied and unperceivable to me. She sniffs,
moves, sniffs, moves, and s-s-sniffs and then, as if
she’d just heard something shocking, her head swivels
back, hones in, locks on to some surprising smell
as if the scent was steel, her nasals magnetized. Down
she goes, her nose on automatic, drawing in every detail
of this smelly coded message—her body language
seems to say, “Hey, geez, I didn’t see that coming,
no way, you’ve gotta be kiddin’, who’d’ve thought it!”