Monday, October 22, 2012

Halley's Comet, Mark Twain & Elmira all related?


When you talk about landing on a comet or the Orionid Meteor Shower ...I think about Halley's Comet ...and I am reminded of one of my favorite people...Mark Twain...Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens came in at birth with Halley’s Comet and left in death on its return trip…a man of high ideals, wit, and a man who has made history in our own backyard in Elmira, not Missouri!!

As many times as I visit Elmira, I always pay a visit to its cemetery and follow its well-marked trail to Mark Twain's grave. I found it by chance many years ago and since then it has become more landscaped and more signs enable the visitor to find it. I guess it is called "cemetery tourism".

Other signs take you to "Twain Country" and maneuver you to 1 Park Place, which is in the middle of Elmira College Campus in downtown Elmira. There in a park like setting is the steamboat captain shaped - gazebo like structure - built for him by his sister-in-law as a summer retreat. The structure once stood on a high hill above Elmira on her property called Quarry Hill Farm. Today it has been moved to the campus and inside is the desk that Twain used for 20 years to write many of his classic American stories like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

His wife Livy Jervis Langdon was from Elmira and in truth the Clemens family are all burred on her fathers cemetery plot! So it really it is "Twain Country" down there.

Twain considered himself "The American" and he truly was a part of the fabric of what makes us...us! His quips were so American humor and as funny and pertinent today as ever....Here are two I like....

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeat myself.”

Another favorite of mine is, “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress!”

Not as well remembered however, were his continual efforts to promote equality and dignity for all of human kind. Twain was a member for almost 10 years of the American Anti-Imperialism League – he was the Vice President until his death.

This group opposed imperialism by America for any reason. They believed that by joining the rest of the world (at that time) in its conquests for commercialism or religious means, America would be abandoning the ideals of self-government and non-interventionism ideals expressed in the United States Declaration of Independence or in Lincoln’s precepts in the Gettysburg Address.


Twain was an interesting man...the quintessential "American"!









Wednesday, October 10, 2012

The Dalai Lama - What a great week for CNY

Well the Dalai Lama was in CNY this week and the 77 year old Holy Man managed to capture the hearts of all.  His message was especially interesting to me....for years since I was a child I dreamt of meeting the High Lama of Tibet and climbing to the city in the mountains where he lived.  I had all sorts of dreams then and to this day I often paint pictures of high peaks.  I laugh because my mother who slaughtered words sometime called him the "Deli Lama"...and I tend to do the same thing out of humor.

I would have loved to have been at one of his panel discussions or at the concert at the Carrier Dome..but unfortunately I could not...

In these weeks of debates and news stories on Iran, Syria and Afghanistan... talk of war was cheap and my feelings are that we like to talk about war in terms of helping people out... At a dinner recently when I mentioned the death toll of soldiers in Afghanistan one person said.."Well they are paid soldiers"....mercenaries..

Well we all too often forget the other deaths.."Collateral Damage" they are called.  So I went on line to find a figure of those civilian deaths in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars ....go ahead type it into Google and be shocked!  Some estimates vary but one thing does not, the number of soldiers killed is minimal in comparison to the thousands of citizens killed by and trapped by war.  This does not mention the horror of these scenes to the children living in it..those children who will no doubt hate the invaders.....and not understand what it was about..Religion???Hate??? Or was it OIL???

So to me the Lama's message is like prayer sent out to the ether above....understanding and education and learning about one another, and excepting one an-others faith, institutions, culture and need - are the only ways to make peace in the world.... Hatred, bullying, rattling sabers and talking war only brings out the worst in people and in countries who also feel patriotic to their country, customs and beliefs.

I came from that crazy group of people called the "Love Generation".."Make Love not War"....  Where have we gone?  Have we forgotten Viet Nam.. Is it because soldiers join and are not drafted?  War is War!  But for War there must be better reasons than a boost to the economy or threats like.."Weapons of Mass destructions"- or OIL!

Let's all look at each other in this world that is growing smaller every day..in a different light... Let us teach our children to do it...let us reach out to others in a more peaceable way daily... Maybe in something simple like toning down the rhetoric on line on the different candidates for a start!



Thursday, October 4, 2012

The Poor and Carl Sandburg: a man for all seasons..especially Presidential Debates


PresidentiaThe Presidential debates go on and the comments on them go on 
and on and yet what have we learned?

The only theme that has really bothered me lately is the theme of 
entitlement…social security…Medicare…unemployment…   
Humorously these are not really entitlement programs that come 
from the government, they are programs paid for by the people 
weekly and monthly as they work…and yes the people are the 
government.

Today we seem to think that people do not like to work, but many 
are working harder than ever before….working two part time jobs 
or three in some cases….jobs that have no retirement or health 
insurance.

As a People we have allowed factories and better paying city jobs 
to lure us into driving miles to work.  Cars and gas now humble a 
person who has to commute to keep a job, especially if the job 
does not have health-care or retirement benefits.

And what of the elderly who worked all their life at jobs and still 
have benefits that are not enough to live on because of the inflation 
in the cost of our daily lives.

I wonder?  Could we be headed to the second Great Depression…. 
That idea becomes more of a thought and reality as the dust bowl 
lingers in places out west fraught with drought, and as factories 
shut down to move overseas.  Have these companies moved 
because they can get better workers or merely because they can get 
cheaper labor and less regulation?

Companies have taken to hiring temporary part-time workers to 
allow them to side step requirements to keep good workers and to 
actually keep these workers from entitlement programs that the 
company contributes to.  So... we are now complaining about 
giving extra money and food stamps to people to replace corporate 
or business contributions.

And Rural America…now insurance and hiring labor is being by-
passed by the use of huge machines that do the work of 10 men.  
Family farms that keep 30 or 40 cows forced out by large corporate 
farms.

Ironically the debate made me think of Carl Sandburg.  With Obama 
from the Chicago area, a man  doing the thing Carl believed could 
happen…a self-made man who rose from a poor beginning to 
becoming President of the United States.  And there opposite him 
in the debate a wealthy man’s child and a big businessman.

I thought of this poem written in Chicago by Sandburg when he 
started out....simply titled 

                                 “The Poor”


AMONG the mountains I wandered and saw blue haze and red crag 
and was amazed;
On the beach where the long push under the endless tide 
maneuvers, I stood silent;
Under the stars on the prairie watching the Dipper slant over the 
horizon’s grass, I was full of thoughts.

Great men, pageants of war and labor, soldiers and workers, 
mothers lifting their children—
these all I touched, and felt the solemn thrill of them.

And then one day I got a true look at the Poor, millions of the 
Poor, patient and toiling; more patient than crags, tides, and stars; 
innumerable, patient as the darkness of night—
and all broken, humble ruins of nations.