Democrats Vs. Republicans: the Biggest Difference

The biggest difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that Democrats believe that western culture is bad and all other cultures are good.

This is why Obama bowed to the emperor of Japan.

One finds this in all Democrats from Howard Zinn to Allen Ginsberg to Ward Churchill, and it's what they have wanted taught to all children from gradeschool through college. In the 1960s when the "Hey hey ho ho western civ has got to go!" chant first began I was astonished at the lack of history even though I was still a schoolboy. Aztec gods were respun, and the Mayans revived, and human sacrifice was back. In th poetry of Charles Olson, he actually goes to Mayan civilization to revive these gods, and their thought. Matriarchy: back. Now desire was the name of the game, and love (which really meant sexual kicks), and principles of any kind were out. Charles Olson was not the worst. Did he not know that Cortez put an end to human sacrifice? Did he not know that the Spanish were alarmed when they found the Aztecs eating human babies for breakfast?

White American history was condemned by the new left as being solely the province of the KKK. Ginsberg condemned western culture as the province of Moloch. Meanwhile, he went to Morocco to indulge in molesting boys and bragged about it in his most famous poem, HOWL, a paradigm-defining poem that celebrates madness and a return to the animal state. Now Democrats kill babies without blinking. The left love animals, because they consider us to be nothing but animals.

Republicans on the other hand tend to place Protestant western culture above all others. Catholics themselves were suspect (especially after the allegations of molesters in their sepulchers) -- (the Kennedys the only Catholic clan to reach high office --) -- but Protestantism is making a comeback, and is proving to be a sturdier ideology than thought -- and is growing worldwide.

Scott Brown's rise in Massachusetts has something to do with a return to the Protestant work ethic. While Coakley lazed about, sunning herself in the adulation of her anointed rise in the appointed hierarchy, Scott Brown drove a pick-up truck, and asked for votes. Obama found the pickup truck ridiculous. Here is a guy who can't replace a light bulb, but who can talk circles around everyone including himself, going like a balloon let loose, circulating through the stratosphere, and his party is beaten by a white guy in a pick-up truck.

The left runs after strange gods. Ginsberg turned to human gurus who claimed "enlightenment" for themselves (Choygam Trungpa was a severe alcoholic). In the universities western literature such as Shakespeare is slighted in favor of "global literature" which supposedly has superior wisdom in it. Shakespeare is just too Christian. John of Gaunt is superior to Falstaff. Republicans want people to slim down and to be lean. Democrats celebrate the fat of the matriarchies.

Nietzsche is the new standard bearer for much of the left. Nietzsche condemns Christianity as a religion based on resentment, and calls himself the return of Dionysos. Charles Manson celebrates Dionysian rituals near Hollywood, with the participation of the Beach Boys. Fun is now everything. Kicks, fun, and enjoyment. Hollywood Babylon goes wildly for the Democrats.

It's a rout.

How is it then that the Republicans still garner votes? How is it that Scott Brown has won, and Obama is staggered by this, and will not be able to kill babies with public funding? How is it that people still read Shakespeare, and consider his writing superior to Toni Morrison's, or the gory folk tales of the Aztecs? Why is Christianity still 80% of American culture, and why are Catholics and Protestants bonding with faithful Jews as they create a deep pocket of resistance?

How is it that young people still want the divine sanction of marriage, instead of the fun of the anonymous orgy? Why is it that most of us still don't take drugs, and look down on those who do?

Why is it that we still look to Lincoln as our greatest president? Lincoln, who uttered the Emancipation Proclamation, and insisted on the principle of equality for all? Lincoln, who derived his principles from his encounters with Baptists, saw that there should be one law for all. Some think he would be a Democrat today. Would he really be hell-bent on abortion, and would he hate America, as the Democrats do? Would Lincoln have bowed to the emperor of Japan, or to the gods of the Tibetan plateau, or those to whom the young were sacrificed in ancient Mexico?

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT

I got Ex-Friends by Norman Podhoretz after a friend suggested it. Podhoretz was a leftist who went to the right, much as I have done. Unlike Podhoretz, I am still friendly with many leftists. I can't think of a single one who won't talk with me. At least there's no one who I actually would miss who has stopped talking to me. Yet I share many of Podhoretz' concerns.

In the opening chapter, he spends 50 pages on his friendship with Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg and he had gone to Columbia together, and Podhoretz could tell that Ginsberg was a good poet, whereas he himself was not. Podhoretz drifted into journalism, and into political journalism. But he disdained the slovenliness of Beat style (he didn't like Kerouac's superlatives), and Beat mores. This incensed Ginsberg. I think Ginsberg had a part of his mind that was still healthy, and Podhoretz became his unofficial conscience.

Podhoretz was a family man. When he saw poems like Ginsberg's, he took exception:

...he fucked me in the ass
till I smelled brown excrement
staining his cock
& tried to get up from bed to go to the toilet a minute
but he held me down & kept pumping at me, serious & said
"No, I don't want to stop I like it dirty like this."

(quoted on p. 54)

Ginsberg's "active sponsorship" of NAMBLA, was another issue.

Wordsworth went to the right after witnessing the horrors of the French Revolution. In the 20s and 30s, there was of course Marianne Moore. Moore was especially shocked by the giddy quality of much of the sexual experimentation.

In the tract of poem above, could it be said that there was even a "relationship" between the autobiographical Ginsberg, and the perpetrator? One of Ginsberg's recommendations to me as his writing student was to write "great big dirty sex poems." Ginsberg for some reason thought the scene he described above should be generally experienced.

Podhoretz closed the Ginsberg chapter with a quote from George Orwell, who also witnessed the sexual experimentalism of the left, and their cheerful comraderie toward criminals. "The fact to which we have got to cling, as to a lifebelt, is that it is possible to be a normal decent person and yet to be fully alive." (p. 56).

Podhoretz cites Ginsberg's fist-fucking poem "Violent Collaborations," and poems like "Please Master" and "Sphincter" --, which are especially difficult to read, but Ginsberg's poetry, even poems like Howl, are replete with references to his NAMBLA-esque lifestyle and ambition.

The abortions, illnesses (mental and physical), and other spiritual crises that Ginsberg's generation brought about through their championing of sexual and drug experimentation, leaves me wondering why so many are so enamored of it.

Should extracurricular activities such as those described above be covered by the universal healthcare system the Democrats propose?

LS PROPOSES NEW LAW

A law should be made that disallows any country from selling its goods in this country unless the conditions for their workers are the same as ours. This means that not only should we continue the economic embargo against Cuba, but we should do the same against communist China.

If the basic standards for our workers arise from the Lockean four: life, liberty, health and property, then any country that doesn't protect the private property of its citizens should not be allowed to sell its products in this country. To do business with such countries undermines the rights of our own workers. Any country that does not allow freedom of speech should not be a trading partner.

It has come to the attention of LS that most chocolate sold in America is harvested by slave children in Africa. We therefore do not eat chocolate. The sole exception is organic chocolate.

We don't eat that, either, because we do not like chocolate, but we would permit ourselves to eat it if we could tolerate chocolate.

When garments are made in Haiti under almost intolerable conditions in which workers have no protections and the salary is a dollar or so per day, and then when we rush to malls and buy these garments, we undermine the rights of our own workers as well as participate in the crushing of Haitian workers. This is the reason we have a ten percent unemployment rate in this country. Too many people permit themselves to wear Haitian garments.

Haitian people who are employed are employed in increasingly bad conditions, where they do not dare to complain. Any conditions in which employees cannot complain, worsens conditions worldwide.

We should not do business with countries that do not have duly elected leaders in which women and the poor have an equal say in the vote.

China therefore should be disallowed, the same as Cuba. There are no Asian countries with acceptable working conditions (with the possible exceptions of South Korea and India).

We must not buy products from Communist countries, nor should they be allowed to import their goods into our country. To allow this threatens our own workers with communist dictatorship, and underwrites communist regimes worldwide.

Capitalistical fascism operates in yet other countries, such as Haiti, in which inadequate laws provide a murky cover for clandestine businesses who pay little or no taxes to their host countries, essentially acting as parasites within those countries, stealing their labor, and bribing local officials with the equivalent of protection money.

LS finds this collusion unacceptable. Lutheran Surrealists: please check the label on your shirts and sneakers and do research on the countries of origin. If those countries are unacceptable, you must burn this clothing immediately, and replace it with clothing from decent countries.

While both parties squabble over inessentials, LS believes that universal principles found in Locke and Smith and Wesson need to be applied to governments worldwide such that certain conditions are met before we can accept their goods. This would not only help our own workers, but it would help workers everywhere. Workers of the world should unite around Lutheran Surrealism, which offers the only comprehensive legal thinking on the planet.

NEW POETRY CONTEST: SAINTS

New poetry contest begins today, and ends on Abraham Lincoln's birthday, February 12th. Topic: sainthood. (Original idea was Valentine's Day contest, but it turned out St. Valentine was a martyr, perhaps, and thus a saint. Secondly, it was close to Lincoln's birthday [is he not a saint?], and I thought this would create tension between northern and southern participants on the blog.) Poems should be less than 30 lines. Anyone can enter as many poems as they like, but you can only vote for one poem (it must be one other than your own, and all votes tallied by midnight of the 12th of February and contest winner will be announced on February 13th). Winner is a Lutheran surrealist saint for four score and seven years. Here is my own first entry to kick off the contest:


THE BLOOD OF MARTYRS

Pray the hours loosen
in somersaults the fascination
of combat,

pray gladiators versus
zebras & giraffes
versus gladiators,
Christians fighting
what?

werewolves . . .

pray the doves
over stadiums.

QUESTION FOR READERS

How did you arrive at your basic political position?

What concrete moments crystalized your thinking?

I was raised as a Lutheran. Luther always made sense to me. I loved the Ten Commandments. I thought: these are good ideas. Don't lie about people. Don't kill anybody. Stay off the neighbor's wife. Don't steal stuff. It seemed like a whole package. It was like being given a rainbow with endless rainbows inside.

For me, I had no interest in politics until I went to undergraduate school at a hippy college in Olympia, Washington. There, I met a great number of granola junkies who liked to drink kefir (it has something to do with yogurt). They sat around and called it meditation, and drank their kefir. It got in their beards and on their woolen sleeves.

I liked yogurt and kefir, although I did wish the woolen-shirted longhairs and their granny-dressed opposite-gender pals would wash, and that legs and faces were shaved once in a blue moon. I ended up spending a lot of time alone, since other people at the college smelled like mould.

I graduated and lived ten years in Seattle. Everyone I knew was a fierce Democrat. I didn't care. One Democrat did make sense to me: Paul Simon. I actually went to a meeting at his headquarters, but he didn't make it to the caucus. Seattle went for Jesse Jackson. Paul Simon was a Lutheran, but I didn't know it at the time.

In graduate school, most of the people I knew were angry Marxists. One friend of mine said, "I'd like to take a broken broom stick and run it through Bill Gates' forehead."

"Oh," I said.

As long as he wasn't going to actually do it, but just FELT LIKE doing it, it didn't matter to me. The commandment against killing says that if someone is going to kill somebody else, I have to tell on them. Otherwise, if they just feel like it, I don't.

Ten years went by, and I went to Finland for five years. I was now forty. I missed America. I thought, why did everybody I know hate America so much? It's big, and at least on the east coast, people wash up pretty well. There's lots of space, and I missed oat bars and peanut butter, although I haven't seen kefir since I left The Evergreen State College's campus store (in the CAD building). Also, on the East coast, at least, there is a pretty good sense of humor.

I came back, and loved America! My Finnish wife is Lutheran, so I started going to church, and I liked that too. I thought: church is really great. People sing. They don't hate each other or America. And they know about the ten commandments, which is pretty much the sum and substance of all philosophy.

Actually, come to think of it, I don't know how I arrived at my political position.

I think I always thought Locke was the Key: life, liberty, health, and PROPERTY (the last the most important, and also a corollary of thou shall not steal).

I always thought Luther's version of the Ten Commandments was the underpinning for sanity. Everything I learned I learned in Sunday School. But it's taking me a lifetime to understand the ten commendments. They're extremely tricky.

Because the Republicans talk in a way that sounds like the Ten Commandments to me (I can translate their thoughts into the ten commandments), and the Democrats talk in a way that sounds like angry Marxism, I am with the Republicans.

THE COUNTY DUMP

I snapped this pic at the County Dump. I was dropping off Christmas packaging, and was impressed by the sheer amount of data that ended up in the picture (click on pic for closer view). I think the job of the yellow machine (what is the name of the yellow thing?) is to consolidate the trash that Santa leaves behind.

Lutheranism ought to think not only about the poetics of the sublime and the beautiful, but also about the ugly. This picture is about ugliness, but for some reason I also find it picturesque. The scene confuses me, and makes me think sorrowfully of all the things that get thrown away and lost. When I go there, there is always someone who has been unable to throw a cup or a radio, and leaves it on the ledge from which you can throw things in. As if to give the thing one last chance. I had a book of poems by Rimbaud in very good condition. I thought abuot leaving it on the ledge, but I threw it in.

I don't think I could throw a Bible in, even if it was beat up and tattered.

What is it that you want to throw over the edge? A baby? A philosophy? An old TV? A couch? Wrappings for food or toys?

SCOTT BROWN

I can't believe that Scott Brown won. It's the first time in 60 years?

Politics has become as bizarre as the weather.

Blue-red, hot-cold.

Everything seems up in the air.

I think he won partially because he really knew what he thought, and he said it. And also, I think that Obama's secrecy in the stealth care, and secrecy about the stimulus bill, has created tremendous distrust in the voters toward the Democratic party.

He needs to come out and speak to people, and build a coalition of the willing.

Obama is some kind of night creature, even if he's not a vampire bat. He needs to let a little daylight in.

He needs to be honest with the American people about who he is and what he wants. He's all stealth. And we don't know who he is.

I suspect that he's Frank Marshall Davis' spiritual child.

Whoever or whatever he is, I think this election signals that there is growing distrust about him.

WASH YOUR ELDERLY DVDs

A year ago my wife bought a DVD called Jillian's 30-Day Shred, an exercise burst of about 25 minute's length, for my Christmas present. I've used it every other day for the last year, and have lost 16 pounds, and tightened up a bit. About three days ago it stopped working. I told this to my fifth grade daughter, who said I should wash the DVD in warm water, and that it will return to working condition.

I did this, and to my amazement, after thirty frustrating attempts to get the thing to load, the washing did the trick. First time it loaded. Let this serve as a tip to my readers. Never say this blog is superfluous. We provide handy tips, too, from fifth graders, who are the future of America. Wash your DVDs in warm water (not hot, not cold), and dry them carefully.

A DVD is a kind of halo, and it needs to be re-baptized now and then.

By the way, the tattoo on Jillian Michaels' ankle is of her guardian angel.

HAITI, MORE

Haiti was once described as the "powder-keg of the Caribbean." Who described it thus I can't recall. My interest in Haiti probably began with a book of folk-tales by Paule Barton, translated by Howard Norman, published by Graywolf Press in 1982. The book is called The Woe Shirt.

In the title story a man goes to the market and buys a Woe Shirt. This shirt depicts the sorrowful beauty in his heart.

"But Belem did buy a shirt then, he bought his favorite shirt with Mari sewn on it sitting on a dock braiding garlic, practicing for her daughter's hair, braiding. All this was sewn on the shirt and Belem remembered it well. He bought this one. "That's a memory rich memory," he said, then went begging in the market" (62).

Barton was a poor Haitian poet who got into trouble with the Duvalier government. He spent time in prison and then went to Costa Rica where he died in 1974.

One wonders about Haiti. Too many people scooped out of African jungles and transported to the island to be worked to death. Last night a special on public TV called Toussaint L'Ouverture depicted the world's only successful slave uprising. L'Ouverture hoped that Napoleon would listen to him, but Napoleon let him die in prison after capturing him. L'Ouverture had killed 50,000 French soldiers who had come to retake Haiti. After L'Ouverture, a Haitian general named Dessalines finished off any chance Napoleon had of recapturing the island. The Haitian people fought for their lives, and won.

An incredible feat. L'Ouverture played the Spanish and British against the French, and then used his rag-tag army to defeat Napoleon.

But Haiti was never prosperous. It was never in fact a democracy. L'Ouverture declared himself emperor for life, much as Napoleon himself had done. The current government under Rene Preval is a mystery. Some say it's better than most but that's not saying much.

Bill O'Reilly on Fox said that no matter how much money we pump into Haiti it will be stolen. Billions have disappeared there since 1994, he said. The head of Medecins San Frontieres agreed. The place is a mystery.

If the problem of Haiti is overcrowding then people need to leave. But where are they to go? Perhaps if global warming continues they can populate Greenland. If the problem is the governmental structure, then perhaps that could be changed. The country's problems began with the sin of slavery. The command to not kill was overridden and the slaves worked to death for profit. When they freed themselves the French imposed an economic embargo until an enormous fine was paid (50 million dollars, with interest). It was Lincoln in 1863 who was the first American president to recognize Haiti, but even he insisted the debt be paid to France. Why? Did America pay King George for its freedom won at the cost of so much hardship?

Obama has promised 100 million dollars in aid. Obama let it be said is fairly cavalier with money and America is already trillions of dollars in debt thanks to him. (Let's just hope he doesn't use ACORN as a delivery system.) And if the money does get to Haiti where will our 100 million dollars go? Probably into the pockets of Haitian kleptocrats who soon enough will have their swimming pools up and running, their Rolls Royces in tiptop condition, and their homes in spectacular shape. Meanwhile, the grinding poverty of the hoi polloi shall continue.

It's interesting to see the people of Haiti on CNN, and other stations. This situation is quite different from what took place in Myanmar, where the government wouldn't let anyone in. Icelandic, Taiwanese, Venezuelan, and other teams are landing in Port-au-Prince day and night. The Haitian president is glad for whatever help can be had from anyone, and let it be said, he has actually cried for his people. Quite a different story from Myanmar.

Edwige Danticat and others have been on television. Danticat is a young Haitian novelist. It's a dignified people, with a remarkable history, and one that in some way really does tell the story of the capitalist west, and is a story that everyone needs to tune into and try to understand. One wonders whether out of all this rubble something decent, one might even say JUDEO-CHRISTIAN, might emerge. The worst of the shocks is now over, according to an earthquake expert.

We should all wear the Woe Shirt of Haiti, as we ponder its miserable fate.

HAITI

Yesterday, I opened the news and watched part of the footage of the disastrous earthquake on Haiti.

I have an interest in Haitian literature. I like some of the novels, some of the poets, and have done some research on Haitian history. It was considered the Jewel of the Caribbean in its heyday. The soil was rich, and the plantations of Haiti were productive in the 17th and 18th centuries. Slave-owners however didn't care at all about their slaves. The life of a slave on Haiti was about four years in length. They were worked to death, and cheaply replaced.

Still, at night, they hit voodoo drums. And shortly after the French Revolution while chaos reigned in Paris, the Haitians revolted. Since then they've had something like 60 violent coups. Almost all of their presidents have been assassinated or forced into exile. The latest exile was President Aristide. Shortly after his ouster, I couldn't bear to pay attention to Haiti any longer. It was too much.

Are there still UN Peacekeepers in Haiti?

What's Aristide up to these days?

A kleptocracy like Haiti would have put nothing into things like public safety. I don't know what American companies are still there. Baseball manufacture has moved to Costa Rica. Rawlings, the company that makes professional baseballs, has a plant in a small town in Costa Rica. The workers make all the professional baseballs. Their entire payroll for 600 workers at the plant doesn't equal the salary of a single professional in-fielder. But in Costa Rica they are considered middle-class. In Haiti, the average Haitian lives on less than a dollar a day. The removal of Rawlings from Haiti must have been a major blow.

When we invaded in 1930 we rewrote the Haitian Constitution so that foreigners could own Haitian land so most of the arable land is owned by international coffee growers. There's nothing much to eat for the Haitians. Coffee makes money but you can't eat it, so there is very little food grown on the island. Most food is imported, which makes food pricey. The large foreign companies that own the arable land do not, for the most part, pay taxes. Instead they pay bribes directly to political figures to retain their tax-free status.

What a pitiable country.

Under the French the average life-span of a slave was four years from the time they stepped off a boat until they were buried.

The last big earthquake 200 years ago happened when Napoleon's brother was trying to reconquer the island after the world's only successful slave revolt. Napoleon's brother's attempt at recapture failed. Most of his soldiers died from yellow fever.

In the early part of the last century the Haitians had a brief window of opportunity in which the US offered them the chance to become a state.

They voted to remain "free" even if their crazy laws (it takes 20 years worth of legal paper work to buy property, and most Haitians are illiterate) make the country a guaranteed mess. Oy vey.

Ironically, this earthquake at least draws attention to their situation. And it's a wake-up call to the kleptocracy -- a kleptocracy even worse than that of Myanmar's.

It's hard to understand why Haiti is so badly off, but surely some of it has to do with voodoo as the basic belief system. You kill someone and you get power. What a nasty thing to believe. You get an inkling of this system in Zora Neale Hurston's anthropological book Tell My Horse, which ends with a human sacrifice. Most of the Haitian slaves came from a place called The Gambia in Africa. Gambia is one of the poorest countries in Africa, even today. The average life-span is 34 years in the Gambia. There are 500,000 people and four doctors huddled on both sides of a malaria-infested river that gives the country its name. It's the heart of the heart of darkness.

A few Protestant missions exist in Haiti, but not enough to convert the population. What Haiti needs is a total overhaul. They need to junk their evil religion, and become Protestants.

Pray for the people of Haiti, and for the foreign aid workers who are willing to travel to that country and help a beknighted people fallen prey to a strange old set of demonic gods. The Haitians are a people badly in need of conversion at every level of society. The government is not just bad, it's plain wicked. Even the Buddhist countries such as Myanmar or the communist countries such as North Korea would be a better place to live. Haiti may well be the worst place on earth, and yesterday's earthquake made it that much worse. The collapse of government buildings and the remaining infrastructure sound apocalyptic. I hope that Jesus in the form of Protestant missionaries will find His way to Haiti. Jesus is the leaven of the lumpenproletariat. If He could take a toilet like the Roman Empire and slowly build it into modern Europe, then surely He could remake Haiti, too.

When Jesus was asked which of the ten commandments is the most crucial he said, "Love God and love your neighbor" (Mark 12:28). Without this as the background of a community or a nation, you are just going to have a wicked stew. In Haiti's case, commandment seven against theft, seems especially pertinent. But the commandments against killing, against lust (a tremendous number of Haitians suffer from AIDS), would be nice to have as an underpinning. Wealth begins from the bottom up, and the substrata of a good nation is the ten commandments. Without that, you are building a house of cards, and with the slightest tremor from below, you will always have disaster. I hope that in America, too, the ten commandments can again be understood as having underwritten our prosperity and peace relative to that of a country like Haiti.

Celebrations in Lyric Fall into 2 Camps

communist/capitalist

swingers/family-oriented

irreligious/religious

urban/small-town

language-oriented/reality-oriented

matriarchal/patriarchal

relativist/universalist

hipster/square

if it feels good, do it/ ten commandments

look toward the orient (Japan, India)/look toward the Occident (Rome, Wittenberg)

non-judgmental/judgmental

criminal/law-abiding

Democrat/Republican

MSNBC/Fox News

west coast/east coast

night (poems take place at night)/day - (poems take place during the day)

exploits children/protects children

romantic-Dionysiac-Gnostic/classical-Apollonian-Lutheran

unprincipled/principled

immoral/moral

sybaritic/work ethos

Luddites/believers in industrialization and personal industry

always open to voluptuous emotion/ always open to thinking

always blame the other/always blame themselves


That breakdown seems to summarize the two different kinds of poetry.

Naturally, there are some discrepancies. Someone making a CONFESSION OF SYBARITIC ways and who is attempting to mend those ways and make a full apology to God and the Community, is not necessarily a sybarite.

An urban person might have an epiphany, and probably some urban-dwellers are not swingers in spite of the story of Sodom.

Meanwhile, the square and judgmental, moral and principled, might suddenly fall down a rabbit hole into sybaritic behavior.

It is possibly true as well that all poetic writings fall into the realm of the anti-Christ. Exodus 20:4 bans the representation of any thing above or under the ground. This certainly takes out representation and puts it in the county dump. And drama is especially bad. Certainly Plato thought so, and Augustine denounced the theatre. Poetry for Plato and Augustine meant plays. The plays of ancient Rome were put on for the honoring of the gods, and often showed men and women in lascivious couplings representing Mars and Venus going at it behind the back of Haephestus, for instance. Jupiter's rapes were frequently depicted, as he went at Leda and others to the delight of the demented denizens of Rome.

"Any man in his senses could see that men who were in the sway of malignant demons -- a domination from which only the grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, could free them -- were constrained by force to offer to such gods exhibitions which to a right judgment could only appear disgusting ... In those shows the actors portrayed Jupiter, the corrupter of innocence, in song and action; and thus they appeased him! If this was mere fiction, Jupiter would have been angry, surely? Or if Jupiter took delight in those scandals, even though fictitious, then his worship was nothing but the service of a devil" (City of God, 168).

But the lyric poem can be a kind of drama, too. And like the dramas of Rome, it can be putrid, and worship insane gods, or even the devil himself. There is ample evidence to support the idea that any representation tends to destroy God's reality, and substitute for it a devilish one. SpongeBob is wrong-headed, for instance. Many of us addicted to the internet could probably bear testimony to the idea that it is possibly a replacement for real life, which we devilishly avoid. Other evidence suggests that searching on the internet actually increases mental muscle, and creates coherent and civilized people, with profound connections to others around the globe that they would otherwise not have met. But did we ever really meet them?

These worries aside, if we are to write poetry, let us keep in mind some of these caveats. At any rate, in essence, there is a real drama of good and evil not only in society, but in each one of us. This is the focus of poetry. The antitheatrical prejudice would argue that poetry tends to replace life itself. But let's say it's a guide, and a communion, instead. Is it authorized? Perhaps it is, but is it to be considered lay preaching? Or is it something separate and other, something that is adiaphoric, like whistling, or listening to the tune of a bird and falling into a trance as we regard the nuanced arcs and curlicues of the avian "soul"? Luther did allow the humanities to exist in Lutheran colleges. But what exactly are they? Among other things, I think they are an exploration of good and evil: not from the viewpoint of race, gender, and class domination, but from the viewpoint of the ten commandments.

WINTER POETRY CONTEST!

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Contest will remain open for ten days, until January 18th.

Winner to be chosen by all entering poets, one vote per poet. Each poet can enter up to three poems.

Poems should be no more than twenty lines, and should be descriptive of winter.

Here's an example, which shall also constitute my first entry:

JANUARY

My door was frozen shut
In the parking lot, so
Kevin at Groundskeeping
Got a bucket & threw hot water
& the lock clicked open.

A Catskill Mountain Journal, Bob Steuding

In 1990, Purple Mountain Press over in Fleishmann's, NY (on the far eastern side of Delaware County), published this book, A Catskill Mountain Journal, by Bob Steuding.

I picked it up the other day in the Main St. Bookstore for 8 dollars, although it was originally published at $14.50. Steuding has written an important book on the poet Gary Snyder, and is himself a poet.

The book is 159 pages. The initial part has essays about Steuding's hiking activities in the Catskills. The first part has journal entries:

"WINTER

In some ways, I think I like the Catskills in the winter best. They seem, in their white, wind-swept desolation, to express the essential wildness and solitariness of these ancient mountains. In winter, there are few birds, and the sky is closer to the land. Lacking leaves, the trees make little sound, only their trunks creaking, like old men in rockers, when the raw winter wind blows. Brooks and streams are frozen and only the faintest gurgling sound can be detected, if one listens with attentive ear. Winter is a time for thought and for meditation. It seems that even we humans wish to hibernate, as do the black bear, snoring in some leaf-lined cave. December, 1978" (p. 25).

"GOLDEN EAGLE

Saw a golden eagle two days ago yesterday on the Ashokan Reservoir. The eagle, very large and black-brown, flew out into the upper basin. It saw a crow crossing the reservoir and scared the daylights out of the crow, just for the fun of it, the crow making an incredible racket, terrified. I laughed, no one else around. June, 1983" (pp. 22-23).

Steuding teaches over in Stone Ridge, NY at Ulster County Community College. He's published several books of local interest about the dams and local towns of the Catskill area, as well as the Snyder book, and poetry books.

The book is slow, and somewhat invested in the Gary Snyder think-local aesthetic. I don't mind that aesthetic, or even the politics that come with it. Steuding's book traces some of the Catskill history: the Indians, the 19th century Romantics, including the famous John Burroughs, who lived about twenty minutes away in Roxbury.

What I think will stick in my mind from this book is this poem:

HUNTER MOUNTAIN

balsam/spruce
mountain top

wind
snow
dwarf cornel wildflowers

(clean mind)


some hiker
left seven
cherry-size tomatoes
at the peak.

(p. 89)

There's no way I'd touch those tomatoes as they might be laced with LSD (Hunter Mountain is close to Woodstock), but I still like the poem.

Hipsters & LL Bean

Obama is the Bob Dylan of our time. Neither one has ever made any sense to me. Both have a kind of song & dance routine that refers vaguely to hope and change but is really in effect about how cool they are and how you are never going to be quite so cool. They are bohemians & people of spirit and you're a fat cat banker or an oily merchant or just a mindless slob but if you support their personification as the apotheosis of cool they will flash their charisma in your direction.

One could say that Bob Dylan actually is a parody of Barack Obama.

Or is Obama a parody of Bob Dylan?

but neither one is joking, they are both quite serious.

I do get tired of hipsters, and prefer solitaries, but hipsters can mobilize the troops. They can get us to think that insulation is sexy, or that pumping up our tires is something to do for the country, or that everybody must get stoned.

I admit that I am a failed hipster. I just want to mobilize diffidence. I can't stand enthusiasm, and the hipsters tend to mobilize people based on enthusiasm.

*


*

This next part has nothing at all to do with the first part.

It's just an observation about quality. I have about 20 colored t-shirts. I like to buy black or deep blue or sometimes faded purple t-shirts, since they are simple to wear, and make it easy for me to become invisible. Most of these keep their shape for about a year or a little longer. But I have one t-shirt that seems to never lose its shape. It feels different, too, as if it's more solid. I decided that maybe it had something to do with the brand, and checked the slip at the back of the neck. Yes, the good one that never loses its shape is from LL Bean. A wealthy friend told me I could have it when I was visiting him at Ocean City. I kept it. I think he gave it away because it's lime green, and is such a hideous color.

What is it about this LL Bean t-shirt? Does it have more threads per inch, or is it better designed than the other t-shirts that are from Gap and Fruit n Loom? There's a qualitative difference between the LL Bean and my other t-shirts. I can sometimes put my finger on the qualitative difference between two poems, or two poets. But I can't quite sort out why the LL Bean is qualitatively superior to the Gap t-shirts, which are in turn qualitatively superior to the Fruit n Loom.

Maybe I like it because I like my friend.

LOSING WEIGHT THE LUTHERAN SURREALIST WAY

While I grant that getting a good exercise program under way is essential, and cutting down on sweets is smart, neither one is sufficient.

I have developed a diet plan that eclipses all others. I don't have a name for it yet, but it consists of a single question.

The question is, "Do I really NEED to eat that?"

If the answer is no, then I don't eat it.

The thing is you have to apply this question to absolutely everything you eat. It's hard to implement this diet when you are working, because there are so many other questions that can eclipse the single question.

And if another question eclipses your shiny question, then in comes all kinds of appetite unbidden and unwatched, and suddenly you've gained five pounds without even thinking.

So should I call it the thinking diet? The unemployed person's diet? It really works better when you have nothing to do but think about the question.

Meanwhile, it's ok to drink Diet Pepsi or tea or anything calorie free, but even better is to drink and eat nothing for long stretches. It's like you're a hockey goalie, and the idea is to keep pucks out of your own face. People are always trying to sling things into your face, and your game is to dodge those things. At parties if someone has gone to some fussy extra timetaking procedure to produce some greasy slimeball that they want to wing down your throat, take one or two, say thankyou, and see if you can slip it into the trashcan while other people are busy screeching about how good the food tastes.

Drive by a McDonald's and they will catapult burgers in your face, go to a party, and the host will try to sling macaroons down your hatch. Go down the hallway and someone will try to empty their popcorn bag in your piehole.

But your job is to play goalie, and dodge all these perks.

You can get so good at it that the pounds just roll off. It's possible to lose five or ten pounds in a week, easy.

The problem is that you shouldn't let yourself get weak or dizzy. You need to eat enough food to keep your blood pressure up. I suggest stuffing your fat face in the morning with a huge bowl of oat meal with yogurt on top. Then, try to sneak through lunch and eat a small dinner consisting of a light soup and some bread with margarine on it, and anything like Postum that you can find in a health food store (I'm drinking some garbage called Peso or something and it's very good, not at all like the cardboard drink of Postum that I shall never forget!, and I sure wish Postum would reappear on the market).

At any rate, good luck to all of you on diets. Remember that it's not about how much you can stuff in your face every day. That's the wrong question. The wrong question encourages you to cheat in little places, and dump in a few more peanuts, and also a cookie here and there, thinking, the diet won't notice. The diet might not, but the scale will find you out! The right question is to reverse that question and say to yourself instead, how little can I get by with eating today? It makes it into an active exercise, and it makes you aware that you are a goalie, dodging pucks of food that might otherwise lodge themselves on your love handles. How good a goalie you are will determine whether you are a fat and guilty little busybody at the end of the week, or whether you are a sleek and svelte little fussbudget, attracting envy and admiration even from yourself as you regard a person in the mirror that you barely recognize, with a bare plate over your head that resembles a halo.