Bill LaCroix: Creative Writing

Showing posts with label Creative Writing. Show all posts

Thursday, January 5, 2017

Politics

A Definition

Politics is a poorly-understood human condition whereby, if you put two people in the same room you may or may not have it, but if you put the same two people in a bathroom, you will.

Friday, September 26, 2014

How does one deal with the 21^st Century?! I’m not talking about such rabid declines into corporate fascism as peaceful anti-war activists getting put on Hilary Clinton’s thuggish “Be On The Look-out” list (BOLO)[i] while serious Clinton-haters like Bundy’s Army[ii] not only don't get arrested and roughed up but are allowed to continue causing their homegrown brand of armed, terrorist mischief [iii] Maybe I should.

But not today. Today, I’m upset about my own deficiencies, more specifically about my not being able to figure out these *&^%#$!#! websites and cyber-gizmos and such.

To point: Several people have commented on my blog without “my” blog informing me. I’ve tried to fix it and, so far, I can’t. To be fair to myself, when I ask for advice from a tech-savvy person, their directions sound something like this to me: “Why it’s simple! Just go to New York City and turn right on 4^th Street!”

But never mind, I'm admitting that this is my problem, and that I’ve let it go on long enough. Therefore, to all of you who are wondering if I exist somewhere other than in the vacuum of cyberspace, here’s my own, personal, unencryptioned email address: blacroix@cybernet1.com .

I know, I know I shouldn’t do this. I’ve just publicly called Hilary Clinton a thug and a hypocrite (and maybe misspelled her name which I refuse to look up!), and look what happened to Ray McGovern for doing less than that. I'll probably get hamfisted now at some airport by one of those people who took advantage of that wonderful T.S.A. government jobs program. For the record, please check out the links below and see if you don’t agree that things are truly whacky, but for God’s sake don’t say it out loud unless you’re a teabaggin’ terrorist who fancies snakey flags while riding a horse and pointing loaded assault weapons at real federal agents! They, apparently, can get away with it. You, if you're the peaceful sort, apparently can't.
I think we're far past the point of fearing our government...our government or of blithely saying "Oh, all that stuff doesn't effect me. I'm not doing anything wrong." I hate to point out the obvious, but by now rationales like that have allowed us to degenerate to the point where you're probably doing something "wrong" enough to get put on some thuggish list just by reading this.

Once again, to point, all I'm saying' is:

To the N.S.A., Screw you.
To my friends and readers, please call.

Chorus:

Whatever you say say nothin'

When you talk about you know what

For if you know who should hear you

You know what you'll get

They'll take you off to you-know where

For you wouldn't know how long

So for you-know-who's sake

Don't let anyone hear you singing' this song.

You all know what I'm talking' about

When I talk about you-know-what

And I fear it's very dangerous

To even mention that

For the other ones are always near

Although you may not see

But if anyone asks who told you that

Please don't mention me.

Chorus:

You all know who I'm talking' about

When I talk about you-know-who

And you know who could hear me

You know what she'd do

So if you don't see me again

You'll know I've gone away

But if anyone asks you where I've gone

Here's what you must say.

Chorus:

That's enough about so-and-so

After mentioning such-and-such

And I better end my song right now

I've already said too much

For the less you say and the less you hear

The less you'll go astray

And the less you think and the less you do

The more you'll hear them say.

Whatever you say say nothin'

When you talk about you know what

For if you know who should hear you

You know what you'll get

They'll take you off to you-know where

For you wouldn't know how long

So for you-know-who's sake

Don't let anyone hear you singing' this song.

Words and music by Colum Sands, Elm Grove Music

[i] http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/09/26/ray-mcgovern-triumphs-over-state-department

[ii] http://www.politicususa.com/2014/09/24/wheel-justice-catching-cliven-bundy-supporters.html

[iii] http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/publications/War-in-the-West-The-Bundy-Ranch-Standoff-and-the-American-Radical-Right

Friday, August 15, 2014

An Antidote

Funk and Wagnalls Logo

Bigotry

Bigotry has not the capacity.
Superstition the knowledge or discipline.
Fanatics have not the patience.
Intolerance the disposition.

Spin

“To draw out and twist…

To extrude…

To whirl or cause to whirl rapidly…

A downward spiral motion.”

Paraphrased definitions from a 1946 Funk and Wagnalls’ Dictionary

When definitions get out of hand --as they surely have these days--when public information becomes less and less so and you have a yearning to recall the sound of reality—as you should—I recommend you find yourself an old dictionary. They are so valuable at countering today’s corporate spin that if the spinmeisters were doing their jobs correctly—which, despite what they constantly tell you, they’re not—we would be bombarded with idiotic messages that old dictionaries are the seditious documents that they are. In fact, by merely taking a rough sampling of our cumulative public discourse and observing its general trajectory, I have no choice but to conclude that things will get so out of hand that our plutocrats and their hirelings will soon find it necessary to locate all remaining “hard copies” of this damning evidence and burn them. That's why I'm posting some of my favorite definitions ahead of time. You can't burn cyberspace...can you?

I found my old Funk and Wagnalls set in the early eighties at the Missoula dump (as “sanitary landfills” were known in those far-off times). The old guy who leased his land to the city was still allowed to be there in those days, his portable shack stationed at the entrance of whatever fill site was currently being used. Everyone entering the dump was required to pass his inspection before they entered so that he could high-grade their pile of obsolete or broken consumer crap and pull out the still-useable nuggets, which he’d display on the dirt around the shack in the tradition of an open-air flea market, a moveable feast, now extinct.

I forget what I brought up that day—probably a small pile of unredeemable consumer crap--but I remember it was drizzling, and after the old guy gave my pile the nod I parked my van and perused the goodies like I always did when I visited the dump, and there, in the rain and dirt, I found my two-volume set of Funk and Wagnalls’ NEW PRACTICAL STANDARD DICTIONARY. They were still in pretty good condition and, after over thirty years of nearly constant use, they’re still in good enough shape for an old guy to pull out of someone’s unwanted pile of refuse and set aside for a another pass at Being Useful.

America’s Depression-era generation, which this Gatekeeper of Knowledge was a member of, was just emerging from World War Two in 1946 when the volumes were published, and the word “hubris” wasn’t in common use then, because it isn’t in my old Funk and Wagnalls. But it was hubris that put the volumes in the dirt and drizzle there for me to find, and subsequently to endlessly peruse and to cherish as I chased down an old-time thread of a word as though I were reading my grandparents’ minds--which I am. Isn’t it funny?

I sleuth Depression-era insights out of my volumes, along with their antonyms and synonyms which, if you give them enough time, put any e-thesaurus to shame. The lack of definitions for words like hubris only serves to speak volume about that over-serious word and about our over-serious selves. It’s no exaggeration to say that I have loved and used this two-volume set of old books more than any other hundred books in my personal library. They’ve helped shaped my thought. Why not? You gotta start somewhere, and I, for lack of a better imagination, am starting in 1946.

Think about melting ice caps and the rare-earth minerals now available for exploitation below what by worldly rights should have remained the stomping grounds for polar bears and penguins. Think about Newspeak and the language-o-cide of our tweety techno-spin world we have created for ourselves and have forced our youth to come to terms with. Think about how they’re messing with words these days, horribly so. Isn't it important to draw a baseline in the sand before the whole English language, perhaps our only recourse to counter the P.R. gibberish emitting from a billion cyber-gizmos, gets washed out to sea with the rising shorelines?

An old dictionary is the antidote to the ballyhooing bastards. I rank an old dictionary on the top-tier among our most valuable, ubiquitous and readily-obtainable historical records of what our society used to think, rather than what some seabed-mining monster who bears a striking resemblance to Godzilla or a Koch brother wants you to believe they thought. An old dictionary is usually heavy enough to serve as an anchor, if nothing else. Try anchoring yourself to an “app”.

Anyone who makes their money selling souls by bastardizing language should fear an old dictionary. Think what you want but, please, think.

Note: It appears this website has deemed it proper or proprietary to make it difficult to post photos anymore, even ones I have taken myself. I suppose I'll have to figure it out, and maybe there's an innocent-enough techno-explanation. But don't you think this copyright mania has been carried to culture-killing extremes? The bastards...

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Libertarianism Definitively Defined

I was in a Target store the other day and overheard a conversation between two twenty-something guys, loudly identifying as "Libertarians" and trying to agree on what that actually means. I left before they came to consensus, which is common with "libertarians", but it got me thinking. "Libertarianism", IMHO, is a squishy word that is in the process of being weaponized by the Whacky Right but has never been properly-defined. Given our options in these Interesting Times, maybe a little history would help.

The result is this hopefully-helpful, fact-checkable definition that merely connects the 18th-and-19th-Century observations of Jonathan Swift and Lewis Carrol with the doings of 21st Century billionaires who would convince 20-something (mostly) guys that it's in their own, best interest to allow said-21st-Century billionaires to destroy a whole planet in order to accumulate enough wealth to: A. launch themselves from said Wrecked Planet into Outer space or B. build prepper fortresses staffed with 20-something "libertarians" guarding the gates to keep all other 20-something "libertarians" out.

Sound fair? Here goes:

Libertarianism

1. A political philosophy invented by and tailored to those who love to hear themselves talk.

2. A cunundrum: a state of being so impossible to cogently and rationally explain that for one identifying as such attempting to do so feels obliged to chase their tail until they talk themselves into a knot just returning to the back end of their original question.

3. A 21st Century, fantasy-besotted billionaire who invests millions of dollars convincing twenty-somethings who are not billionaires to enlist in their cause.

4. A snake eating itself.

You're welcome.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Pete Seeger, May 3rd 1919 to January 27th 2014

"I make my living as a banjo-picker. Sort of damning, in some peoples' opinion."

Pete Seeger before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC), 1955

Being hauled before Senator McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee and then defying it should have long ago been elevated to a badge of honor in this country. If anyone should have a day named after him, or a Nobel Peace Prize given to him, it’s Pete Seeger.

And yet Pete and his ideals were vilified by the false patriots, the powerful and the ignorant right up to his death yesterday, while at the same time being deeply loved by literally everyone else, which is practically everyone in this land, which is you and me.

It’s far past time for us to decide whose land this is. Not for them to decide. For us, and you know what I mean. You also know the answer, just as I know it, and we all know that if we live morally and ethically by that answer we will be shunned and vilified by the powerful, the false patriots and the ignorant for being the thoughtful Americans that we know we are. Pete was our shining example for the right way to live, to speak out, to sing out. During these current times of hi-tech snooping and moralistic Teabaggery, we need to remind ourselves that there’s nothing new under the sun, and that, along with grieving Pete’s passing, that Pete is and will always remain the answer we seek.

How do we answer those hate-driven reactionaries who would drive us over the edge of the world while daring to vilify us as “traitors” for the sake of enriching those who are already too rich? Ask Pete. How do we answer the techno-crazed N.S.A. and their apologists when they flush our most basic tenets of Privacy and Democracy down the toilet for the sake of “security”? Again, ask Pete

There’s so much I could say about what Pete Seeger meant to me. A lot of it, I suppose, I’ve already said or could go without saying for now. What I need now, during this time of Pete’s passing, is a good laugh along with a good cry, and so I’ll steer you to Pete’s testimony before the HUAC on August 18^th, 1955 http://www.peteseeger.net/HUAC.htm . I can’t do justice to the whole thing, because it’s a masterpiece, much like Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, and it should be similarly enshrined as one of our touchstone democratic documents, the definitive Truth spoken to the immoral, self-righteous misuse of Power we will be fighting against for the rest of our lives.

I’ll just present a few of Pete’s gems, spoken before this whacked-out committee, so we can laugh with him as he answers the chairman and the lawyers trying to trick him into incriminating his friends who would have the audacity to believe that they could make Democracy work.

Did I say "whacked-out"? For context, let’s remind ourselves who the committee’s chairman was, the guy asking Pete the self-righteous questions. Francis Walter was a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania. He had a reputation as a “staunch anti-communist” which in those days translated into virulent anti-immigration policies. He once presented President Roosevelt with a letter opener made of an arm bone of a fallen Japanese soldier. Additionally, he served a stint as director of the Pioneer Fund, a racist “foundation” that funded “studies” to prove that whites were superior to other races. He had a dam named after him.

There's nothing new under the sun.

House UnAmerican Activities Committee, August 18^th, 1955

The committee had been directing Pete, under threat of contempt charges, to answer numerous questions, the answers to which would have, in the committee members’ minds, implicated Pete’s friends and associates with a supposed “plan” by the Communist Party to “subvert” America. The following is his response:

PETE: “I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this….I feel that in my whole life I have never done anything of any conspiratorial nature and I resent very much and very deeply the implication of being called before this Committee that in some way because my opinions may be different from yours, or yours, Mr. Willis, or yours, Mr. Scherer, that I am any less of an American than anybody else. I love my country very deeply, sir.”

CHAIRMAN WALTER: “Why don't you make a little contribution toward preserving its institutions?”

PETE: “I feel that my whole life is a contribution. That is why I would like to tell you about it.”

CHAIRMAN WALTER: “I don't want to hear about it.”

The questioning continues. Pete politely and consistently refuses to participate. At one point, Frank Tavenner, chief counsel for HUAC, asks him if he performed a certain song at a Fourth of July summer camp in New York the committee has labeled a “communist front” organization.

PETE: “Again, I say I will be glad to tell what songs I have ever sung, because singing is my business. But I decline to say who has ever listened to them, who has written them, or other people who have sung them.”

MR. TAVENNER: “Did you sing this song, to which we have referred, "Now Is the Time," at Wingdale Lodge on the weekend of July Fourth?”

PETE: “I don't know any song by that name, and I know a song with a similar name. It is called "Wasn't That a Time." Is that the song?”

CHAIRMAN WALTER: “Did you sing that song?”

PETE: “I can sing it. I don't know how well I can do it without my banjo.”

The questioning continues. Pete politely and consistently refuses to participate. Finally Tavenner hands Pete a photograph of himself in a military uniform with a placard titled “censored”. He asks Pete to identify himself.

PETE: “It is like Jesus Christ when asked by Pontius Pilate, "Are you king of the Jews?"

CHAIRMAN WALTER: “Stop that.”

And on and on....

Pete was finally sentenced to a year in jail for contempt of Congress. He appealed his case, and was exhonerated after a seven year legal battle. In the meantime, and even after he was exonerated, he was blacklisted, which meant that he was not asked to perform at any venue run by anyone with less courage than Pete who felt they had something to lose by associating with him. For example, although Pete was central to the folk revival in the 50s and 60s, including the revival of the concept of the “Hootenany”, when network television aired a series called “Hootenanny” in the early sixties, Pete was not asked to appear. A few artists, such as Joan Baez, boycotted the show, but many, including some of Pete’s friends, did not.

That’s how you fight it, this ugliness we struggle with now. It’s always the same. If you’re serious about it, you do the right thing.

"I still believe," Pete said in 1979, "the only chance for the human race to survive is to give up such pleasures as war, racism and private profit."

Pete is not at peace now. Pete is Peace. Be strong. Be kind. Be unapologetic.

Long live Pete Seeger!

Bring Them Home by Pete Seeger

If you love your Uncle Sam,