Monday Music: Across the Great Divide (Nanci Griffith)

Emmylou Harris, Nina Gerber and Pete Kennedy join Nanci Griffith on Kate Wolf's, "Across the Great Divide." From Other Voices, Other Rooms filmed at The Paramount Theatre, Austin Texas (1993).

 

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Saturday Haiku: Seasons

quiet Zen temple

water reflects the seasons 

heart reflects the times

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Image: Golden Pavilion (Kyoto, Japan)
Hand drawn lithograph by Tony Bennett*

(This haiku was first posted on October 29, 2016)

~    ~    ~

*The legendary Tony Bennett recently announced his retirement from performing at the age of 95. Famous for his singing career, he has also had a passion for painting. In celebration of his career that has spanned eight decades, I am doing a series of haiku inspired by Mr. Bennett's artwork (when he paints, he uses his given name, Antony Benedetto).

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Monday Music: Offenbach's Barcarolle (Anna Netrebko & Elīna Garanča)

Anna Netrebko & Elīna Garanča – Offenbach: Les Contes d'Hoffmann: Barcarolle

(libretto written by Jules Barbier)

A YouTube post from Deutsche Grammophon:
Souvenirs is a collection of short and sparkling pieces that allow Anna to display her amazing voice and temperament - See her sing "Barcarolle" from Offenbach's "Les Contes d'Hoffmann", which is part of her album "Souvenirs".

  

 

Jaques Offenbach (composer) 

Emmanuel Villaume (conductor) 

Barcarolle 

Anna Netrebko 

Elina Garanca 

Orchestra Prague Philharmonia 

Rudolfinum, Dvorák Hall, Prague, Czech Republic   

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Saturday Haiku: Trees

 

when nature beckons
any wise urban planning
will honor the trees

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Image: Central Park

Artist: Tony Bennett (Antony Benedetto) *

*The legendary Tony Bennett recently announced his retirement from performing at the age of 95. His career has spanned eight decades. Famous for his singing career, he has also had a passion for painting. In celebration of his career that has spanned eight decades, I am doing a series of haiku inspired by Mr. Bennett's artwork (when he paints, he uses his given name, Antony Benedetto).

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War Is (Still) Not the Answer

                                           An honor guard carries the casket of Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum
                                                       (Photo by Bradley J. Boner, Jackson Hole Daily)

I stand with our Quaker Friends on matters of war. I have often written on the topic, as in one 2015 essay, "Rumors of War" in which I took the Obama Administration to task for its continuation of war in Iraq when our military efforts had failed to bring any stability to the region. With the U.S. now ending its longest war, we have an opportunity to reflect upon what we have achieved with our strategies of war.

In late August as U.S. troops were leaving Afghanistan, there were reports lamenting the death of 20-year-old Lance Corporal Rylee McCollum who was on his first tour of duty and whose wife is pregnant with their first child.  He was nine months old on 9/11 and one of the last soldiers to die in Afghanistan. Like most of us, I am saddened by this event, but I was even more saddened by what Anderson Cooper on CNN recounted about the soldier. He said that McCollum’s older sister told of how McCollum wanted to be a soldier all his life, and even as a toddler in diapers he loved to carry around a toy rifle. Cooper told it as though it were such an endearing thing, but it highlighted for me how we needlessly groom our young to be fodder for the war machine. There are so many other ways we could guide our young people to serve their country and their society. 

“We perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifice” 

I am reminded of a scene from the 1964 movie, The Americanization of Emily, starring James Garner and Julie Andrews. I recounted it on my blog ten years ago*. In the film, Charlie Madison, James Garner’s character, appears to be a quite cynical participant in WWII. The movie is set in London in the days preceding D-Day. Charlie Madison is a “dog-robber,” an assistant to the admiral of the Navy. A dog-robber’s job was to “keep his general or admiral well-clothed, well-fed, and well-loved during battle,” and Charlie Madison was apparently the best at what he did. Emily Barham, played by Julie Andrews, is offended by Charlie’s cavalier attitude and the American military officers’ opulent acquisitions of the finest clothes, food, liquor, and perfume when her countrymen are doing without basic necessities in the midst of war. But then they fall in love and everything changes for them. 

Emily is a young British driver in the military motor pool. We learn that she has lost many of the people close to her in wartime. Her father, her brother, and her husband – all soldiers, all killed in the line of duty. Charlie is a self-proclaimed coward and will go to any length to stay out of the heat of battle. In a conversation with Emily and her mother, Charlie tells what he really thinks about war: 

 

“I’m not sentimental about war. I see nothing noble in widows,” he tells Emily’s mother. “Wars are always fought for the best of reasons: for liberation or manifest destiny. Always against tyranny and in the interest of humanity. So far in this war, we’ve managed to butcher some ten million humans in the interest of humanity.” Charlie explains that we make things worse by making heroes of the war dead. His own brother died in battle, “an everyday soldier’s death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud. .. Now my other brother can’t wait to reach enlistment age.”

 

“We perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifice,” Charlie Madison says. “It may be the ministers and generals who blunder us into war, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution.”

 Moving from cinema back to reality, we continue to send our youth to be maimed, and scarred, or killed as in this latest 20-year exercise in which we pour lives and treasure into efforts that have only disrupted and destabilized the region. And it is not just American lives that pay the cost. Think of the entire generation of children in the Middle East who have grown up knowing nothing but war. 

In the Interest of Empire 

I think the truest thing our president said when he announced the U.S. military exit was that it is no longer in our best interest to stay in Afghanistan. The truth is, it was never about establishing democracy, it was all about U.S. interest. We must realize that The U.S. is an empire and our actions more reflect empire and its preservation than any so-called democratic values. We weren't thinking democracy when we funded Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan to pester the Russians. 

When we planted our empire boots squarely in their country, we said we were hunting down our enemy, the same Osama Bin Laden whom we befriended in our late Cold War strategy against Russia. We also called our invasion of Afghanistan an attempt to let the people form their own government through democratic elections in the interest of freedom. That was just the answer that sounded good. We were actually there for our own interest which was to demonstrate the power of our empire, thereby securing our station in the world and telling ourselves we were safer for it. Ironically, according to an article from the Brookings Institution, our 20-year war in Afghanistan may have contributed to our national decline.  

Now that Afghanistan is more of a drain than a promotion of empire, it is no longer in our interest to be there. We can move on and leave the rubble of our bootprints behind for the pawns in our game to deal with. 

Make no mistake, though. We are still vitally interested in demonstrating our military power. We will move to another location with our guns and our empire-boasting at the next opportunity. It's what empires do.

It is the way of Empire, but the way of  Empire is not the way of life. A young rabbi from Nazareth tried to tell us that over 2,000 years ago.

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*My commentary on The Americanization of Emily is taken from a blog post in 2010, "Charlie Madison's War."

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Monday Music: Reflections of My Life (Dean Ford)

Dean Ford, Scottish singer/songwriter had an international hit in 1970 as lead singer for Marmalade with "Reflections of My Life." In 2014, he recorded a new version of the song. It is a remarkable song for a young man to write, and even more remarkable to be able to record it again as an old man.

 

 Ford died in 2019 at the age of 72 (see his obit in the NYT).

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9/11: 20 Years Later

[Note: this was first posted on 9/11/2010. I am repeating it here as we look back 20 years later]

Living Through the Grief and the Loss and the Terror

I will never forget that morning on September 11, 2001. My wife called me from work to tell me to turn on CNN. All of us across the country felt the shock and the numbness. All of us felt the uncertainty of what lay ahead.

I heard comments about this tragic event being the first time that terrorism had impacted our own land here at home. Like everyone else in the country, I watched the news each day and hoped for some resolution, some return to normalcy. Even as I was feeling the shock and the sorrow, I knew that this was not the first experience of terrorism on our shores.

On the first anniversary of 9/11, I wrote the following poem as a way to bring my thoughts and feelings together to commemorate the day. The poem is written in two voices. I have italicized every other stanza to help keep the two voices separate while at the same time blending those voices together in a search for where to go from here.

Looking back 20 years later, I'm not sure we've come to a healthy reckoning with our grief or of our place as a people on our one and only planet. More on that later in the week. 

When Towers Collapse

by Charles Kinnaird

It was an invasion
Of stealth, arrogance and deceit
That brought the two towers down
And inflicted a wound that would not heal.

                                                                                       When the steel and concrete gave way
                                                                                       Something inside gave way
                                                                                       As if the soul could drop to Sheol
                                                                                       While the body still finds its breath.

“From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever,”
Chief Joseph told us.
There is the urge to fight back,
But fighting will not rebuild the towers.
Killing will not heal our wounds.
Our songs may remember the two towers
But the towers will never be replaced.

                                                                                    How will thousands of bodies ever be found?
                                                                                    How will each soul be remembered?
                                                                                    How will the hole be filled?
                                                                                    Too many empty spaces
                                                                                    Where fathers, mothers, sisters and sons once sat.
                                                                                    So many empty places in too many beds,
                                                                                    All vacated with the passing of a single day.

Your twin towers collapsed.
We had our own towers, so to speak.
There was the Land
And there was our Culture –
Those were the strong towers
That held our lives
And nurtured our spirits.
Our land was taken
And our culture collapsed over time
After a systematic campaign of terror.
Where is the monument that could hold our grief?
Where is the house that can contain our sorrow?

                                                                                    There is the instinct to reciprocate,
                                                                                    To lash back at the enemy.
                                                                                    Let them taste their own bitter tears.
                                                                                    Visit hate with hate.

We lived with devastation and heartache
With a wound that would not heal.
Our names still echo throughout the land:
Tallapoosa, Wetumpka, Sylacauga,
Ohatchee.
Notasulga, Tuscaloosa, Weogufka,
Chatahootchee.
Why could our daughters and sons not grow
In the lands that bear our names?

                                                                                  May we never forget those whose lives were taken.
                                                                                  We must learn to walk with sorrow and wisdom,
                                                                                  Celebration and sadness.
                                                                                  We must learn to live with grief for what was,
                                                                                  Joy for what will be,
                                                                                  And gratitude for what remains.

Chippewa, Tallahassee,
Minnetonka.
Chattanooga, Ouachita,
Oneida.
Our names continue to call out
Like too many empty beds.
Like so many empty homes
Our names call out.
We must learn to live with the pain
From the wound that will not heal
While we reach for the balm
That comes from living
In the hoop of the world.

                                                                                Today we walk on bloodstained ground.
                                                                                Both the blood of our forebears
                                                                                And the stain of our own doing.
                                                                                We see times of collapse
                                                                                And times of building up.
                                                                                Some days, we will fight.
                                                                                One day, we will fight no more forever.

The hawk rises
But our wound will not heal.
We may know joy
But we cannot hide our grief.
We may live with wisdom,
But we cannot erase the sorrow.
We will not erase the sorrow.

Saturday Haiku: For Those that Remain

 

      Some grieved, some waged war

      when many lives were taken.

      Some souls still wander.

                                             ~ CK

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Photo: Twin Towers of Light
by Louis Jawitz
(Getty Images)

[Note: This post first appeared in 2013 as a Saturday Haiku feature on the anniversary of 9/11]



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Friday Funnies: About that Pumpkin Spice...

 

“In the opinion of this court, it is still too early for pumpkin-spice anything!”

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Cartoon by Anne Fizzard in The New Yorker

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The Blessing Road

 

          May you be given the same acceptance

                    you bestowed upon the loud-mouthed janitor

                    who made sure the restroom facilities were clean.

 

          May you know the same warmth

                    you showed to the waitress

                    who brought you tea.

 

          May you receive the same blessing

          you gave the elderly man who eased onto the highway

          as he drove his wife to the doctor

          when you had places you had to be.

 

          May you know understanding from others 

                    as you understand the store clerk who juggles ten duties

                    to earn his meager pay for the long hours at work.

 

          May you be remembered for your contributions the same way

                    you remember the migrant workers who harvested the fields

                    so your table could be full.

  

                                                                                                                   ~ CK

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Photo by Charles Kinnaird

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Monday Music: Louisiana, 1927 (Angel City Chorale)

The Angel City Chorale sings a beautiful rendition of Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927," and they make the song sound as big as the flood itself. In the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, we could say, "Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, 2021." The winds have surely changed.

 

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Saturday Haiku: The Gardener

 

a quiet moment
in the planter’s potting shed

brings nature closer

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Image: Untitled

Artist: Tony Bennett (Antony Benedetto)

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Friday Funnies: Malapropisms

 

A Word from Brian Hawkins

"Black in America" by Brian Voice Porter Hawkins was recorded on Feb 10, 2021. It is a fine example of his poetry, his work, and his voice. As we mourn his untimely death, though the funeral will be private, there will be a public viewing at Boutwell Auditorium in Birmingham, Friday, September 3, 2021, from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.  There will also be a tribute to Hawkins at the Birmingham Public Library on September 10, 2021.

Those who wish to offer support for Brian's family may make a contribution at Penny Foundation, Inc. 

 

Learn more about Brian Hawkins in this article at AL.com.

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