The street lights are on now

It’s a cool summer night
The sun’s on it way
to be swallowed by the horizon.
The street lights come on

Time to stop playing
Time to stop playing
You mother is calling
It’s time to go home

But the fort in the
Blackberry bush is a special place
No chores to be done
No angry father to face

The street lights seem smaller
The more the sun sets
Momma stands at the back door
And keeps calling your name

Your old black dog finds you
Brothers search too
You know you’re in trouble
What are you to do?

Time to stop playing.
No time to roam.
Mother is calling
it’s time to go home

The branches of the blackberry bush
have changed into wires and tubes
they offer not shelter
they can not hide you

The streetlights seem dimmer
It’s so dark and so cool
Time to go inside now
It’s time to go home

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30

The street lights are on now, copyright June 25, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Flying down to Buenos Aires Part 2

One of my dreams is to dance the Tango in a milonga (dance hall) in Buenos Aires. Now why do I want to do this? I became fascinated with the Tango when I watched Carlos Saura's Tango. The movie starts with a view of the sunrise over the harbor of Buenos Aires. After watching that movie I was hooked. The trailer is here http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1033175321/. Other Tango movies also enchanted me. Sally Potter's The Tango Lesson was beautiful and romantic movie. (Yeah, I can be a sucker for romantic movies provided they are not "chick films"). Robert Duvall's Assassination Tango was also interesting because as Roger Ebert said in his review "The tango is a fragment to shore against his ruin."

Is the tango a "fragment to shore against my ruin? I don't know. It'has been one of my dreams to travel to Buenos Aires and dance in a milonga. I realize that it may be a colossal mistake. But as my recent trip to Santaigo de Compostela in Spain shows, failing spectacularly is not only expensive, it's can be a lot of fun.

On the train ride from Santiago to Madrid, the movie on the train was a the Spanish language version of Richard Gere's Shall We Dance. The trailer for Gere's movie is here http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi619053337/. Now if I were superstitious, I considered watching the film on that train as some sort of sign. But I am not that superstitious. But it was an interesting way to take my mind of the fact that I had to leave a $900 bike at the train station in Santiago de Compostela.

Now two years after that glorius fiasco, a new journey starts with a single step, or my case an hour's worth of dance steps. Logic dictates that if one wants to dance the Tango in Buenos Aires, one should learn to Tango in Bakersfield. So my first tango lesson is tonight. I signed up for lessons with Barbara Bates, the Iron Lady of the Bakersfield ballroom dance scene. Since I currently have problems with arthritic knees, it will be interesting to see if I can last for the lesson.

If my knees won't allow me to take lessons, that is no loss, I am going to Buenos Aires anyway. If I can't dance, I'll just sit in the milonga and watch the dancers. When I was making a fool of myself in Spain, I learned that the Spanish word for "Folly" is "Tonteria" So Tango in Buenos Aires. Esto es mi neuva tonteria.

Or as Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges says

"The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration. " “El Tango es la directa expresión de lo que comúnmente los poetas han tratado de definir en palabras como: la creencia de que la lucha puede ser un festejo” Jorge Luis Borges.
source: http://www.nytutoring.com/libertango/tangology/quotes.html



Wish me luck.



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30

Flying down to Buenos Aires Part 2, copyright June 24, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Flying to down to Buenos Aires part 1

First of all, congratulations to South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford for giving up his chances to be humiliated to by Barrack Obama in 2012 to spend a week in Buenos Aires with his current mistress, whoever she may be. Gov. Sanford's failing is human, so he, his wife, and family have my sympathy.


I would have done the same thing, except, I don't have a wife, a family, a mistress or a chance of ever holding any kind of public office. Still Gov. Sanford has been a decent and principled public servant for most of his career. Life catches us in strange and mysterious ways.


Having been sympathetic for a moment, don't forget that Gov. Sanford had no qualms about depriving of the people of South Carolina $750 million in federal stimulous money. He also voted to impeach Pres. Bill Clinton for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, so he still has to spend some time in the penalty box.



He had the good taste not ask his wife to appear at his press conference, like former New York Governor Elliott Spitzer. Spitzer paid $4300 to spend the night with a prostitute. To his credit, Gov. Sanford didn't pay some kid $5400 to sleep with his mother like Nev. Senator John Ensign. Sanford's fugue still cost a pretty penny, first class round trip from Atlanta to Buenos Aires is about $6800, according to the search I did on Expedia. That doesn't include staying in a four-star hotel ($2200) and renting a car (no estimate) for those long drives along the Argentinian coast.


Are you a powerful politician with presidential aspirations? Well for just a few thousand dollars I can help free you from your delusions of presidential glory. Prices begin at $4300 to $6800 OAC. Democrats, Republicans and Italian Prime Ministers are welcome. Cheaper than the Betty Ford or some rehab in Malibu. (Note to self: business opportunity here).


We should all thank Gov. Sandford for taking the spotlight of media attention from the divorce of Jon and Kate Gosselin. I mean with all this crap about a revolution in Iraq, the bickering over President Obama's health care reform plan by Republicans and weak-kneed Democrats it's hard to focus on the real important stuff like Kate's posing in a bikini or Jon's search for a new apartment. All I know about this situation is what I read in the headlines, which in the case of Jon and Kate is way too much.


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30

Sanford photo courtesy of the SC Governor's Office
Source
http://www.scgovernor.com/news/photos/

Simon Schama, The American Future on BookTV

Yesterday, I got to watch a thought-provoking lecture by Historian Simon Schama on Book TV. I watched it twice. Below is my take on the speech. Quotations are from my notes and may not be totally accurate. The interpretation is totally my own.

On May 19^th 2009, Simon Schama gave a speech at the Philadelphia Free Library on his book The American Future: A History. Schama, a professor at Columbia University and the author of numerous books on history. I found him to be an engaging speaker. He was invited to the Free Library to talk about his book The American Future and for most of the hour he talked about anything but his book.

Then, in last part of his 30-minute lecture and in the questions afterwards, Schama spoke about the themes that inspired his book The American Future. That is there are now two competing American stories. The first story is the story that we as Americans all know. That we came into possession of a great continent full of abundant natural resources. That any person who came to America could by dint of hard work and perseverance could become whoever we want to be.

That story, myth, or ethos is now being challenged by events. America is entering into an age of limits. We are no longer a nation of limitless natural resources, abundant land, and water. We no longer are the world’s leader in oil production, manufacturing and finance. What is to become of us? What is new story we must tell about ourselves?

According to Simon Schama, the election of 2008, was the first chapter of this new story. This was an election where one candidate, Barrack Obama articulated a new vision of America’s future. According to Schama, Obama took the risk of offering a new story about America’s future. Obama's gamble paid off, in part because the majority of the American peoplehad a desire for a new story. One which described the steps necessary to restore “America’s sense of mutual obligation to each other.”

It is a parable that demands we no longer exploit this continent’s and the world’s resources, but become stewards of the earth, use it wisely and productively. Schama believes this is not a strange or unnatural idea. Environmental stewardship has always been a part of American history.

After hearing Schama’s lecture, I was both encouraged and challenged by this idea of a new story, a new paradigm for America’s future. Schama stated that we are “beginning a new story, our economic future depends on transitioning to a greener future for all us." Schama also stated that in the short term the change from a resource consuming society to resource conserving society will be uncomfortable and require some short-term sacrifice.

Schama says that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, that many Americans in even the conservative heartland realized, “we want our government to be decent and we want it to work.” After years of being fed the idea that government and government bureaucrats are the problem, there is also an understanding that “there is something honorable and necessary about public service. There is no need to apologize for decent government.”

As I write this my employer, the state of California is on the verge of financial meltdown. As far I’m concerned the time has come both for citizens of California and the United States to demand and work for decent government--a government that takes care of all its people, a government that works.

I understand that the few who read this essay may not agree with my views, but perhaps we can discuss and come up with what we do agree on. Many of America's problems transcend the ideologies of the political left or right. Perhaps we can find a common ground? I hope we can at least try to find some common ground.

Capitano Tedeschi

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Because of the invincibility thing

Because of the invincibility thing
I never thought I’d see disaster
in my corner of the sky.
Then the tragic came upon me
with a paradoxical dynamism
attacking then retreating
taking away, then remitting
then taking away
creating a condition
where my days were fraught
with acts of regression.
At that moment I understood
the riddle of the Sphinx.

My body was once
a multi-faceted, balanced jewel.
Now it is a queer thing
a decaying clockwork.
My muscles are
like springs no longer elastic
The lenses of my eyes are
cracked and unable to focus.
My once sensitive fingers
are mere blocks of wood.

I wanted to stay original,
a man who is the proud possessor
of a strong will.
But my streams of opportunity dry up
I stagger across the border
of a strange land.
Constantly asking
where I am going?
where I am going?

Swear words are well-suited
to such moments.
My prayers strings of profanities.
Life is no longer a journey,
but a journey to a destination.
Like one who is trapped in the desert
I slowly discard possessions
that now have no value and that
I no longer have the strength to carry.

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30

For Lenny and Dorothy and all who have MS

Because of the invincibility thing copyright June 19, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Zombie Haiku Reunion RSVP

Zombie Haiku

Just came across some fun stuff, Zombie Haiku, 17-syllable poems about zombies. #zombiehaiku on twitter has some great ones.

My Favorite is

living_deadgirl: His nose fell right off / into the waiting zombies / they did not eat it #michaeljacksonhaiku #zombiehaiku.

Which is a two-fer because its a zombie haiku and a Michael Jackson haiku as well. Sublime.

Below are my efforts

Five Zombie Haikus

undead stranger is
Tearing through my wall
Fresh brains eat!

I was relaxing
In my grave suddenly--
Brains au gratin

Obama zombies
Want my money to buy
more fresh brains

Dinner of sushi
not enough! Now you want
To eat my brain?

My fish is dead
Bloodstained cat toy
Bad zombie cat!

I have a sorta high school reunion coming up. Below is my RSVP (as yet unsent)

Reunion RSVP

You wonder if I
will return to fields
where flowers blossomed
thirty years ago.

Why?
bees harvest nectar
from the rose blossoms
in my garden here.


Capitano Tedeschi

30

Reunion RSVP and Five Zombie Haikus copyright June 18, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Celebration of the life

"Bill" , 54, Kansas City, MO, passed away May 28, 2009. Memorial visitation 6-8 p.m. Mon., June 15 at Amos Family Chapel of Shawnee. Contributions to American Heart Assoc., 6800 W. 93rd St., Olathe, KS 66212 or reStart, Inc., 918 E. 9th St., Kansas City, MO 64106. (47 words)


I could not come and
be a witness on that day
they fed you into the
maw of the earth monster

The invention of death
was long ago but every family
reinvents it as well
tonight your mother wishes
it was she and not her son
that was lying in the cheap coffin.

Your children, grown now
perhaps relieved or still filled
with sorrow and a rage, the kind
that tears arms off Barbie Dolls
and pulls the button eyes out of Teddie Bears

Once again they talk of you
as if you were not there
their questions as impotent now as
they were that first day
when storm clouds embraced you
the tornado of grief carried you away
you journeyed ever-deeper into a darkness
the memory of it is buried deep
as if in a cancerous womb
an embryo that will never be born
but will only continue to fester
it is something no one in the family
will ever speak about

Now no one remembers the tenacious
pulling guard for the football team
of Milburn Jr. High School
Nancy the sweetheart from your sophomore year
didn’t come she’s a grandmother in Boulder now
No one reminisced about that
fumble in the State Championship game
even though at the time it was funny.

After the minister stops his mumbling
you linger now only in dreams
visiting your loved ones in their deep sleep
they meet you at the Mission Shopping Mall
In an abandoned art galley which displays
a photographic restrospective of your life
you, at five dressed as cowboy with
a black hat and two chrome-plated cap pistols
or in the team photo of your senior year
you wore your sideburns longer then
or the snapshot of you at your wedding
or that brief videotape of you smiling
when the first of your four children was born

You speak to them but no sound comes forth
only waves of dream speak
subconsciously they know
you only want to explain
but they shake their heads
their faces filled with fatigue, not pity
they don’t even have to you tell go
you realize you can stay here no longer

(353 words)

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30

Celebration of the life copyright June 16, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Iranian Elections

It was sad to read the news that the recent Iranian election may have been stolen by supporters of President Amahdinejad. In these difficult times, it is hard to know what to do.

My initial reaction is that the United States should not recognize the results of this election. I don't know what conditions should be required to allow the United States to recognize the current regime.

The nice thing about the internet is that it allows me to email the President, my senators and my congressman and urge them to move carefully in this matter. If you feel strongly about this matter, I encourage to do the same.

Capitano Tedeschi

Bakersfield California

30

Still Over There w/ Stephen Colbert

I has been a real pleasure of watch Steven Colbert's, the Colbert Report this week. Colbert had the courage to broadcast his show from Iraq this week. But his USO show was not his only bully pulpit.

It is important to remember that three years ago, Colbert was the guest comedian at the White House Correspondents dinner where he satirically assualted George W. Bush and Washington Press corps. To me it was a powerful "the emperor had no clothes moment," which exposed not only the Bush Administration incompetence, it crude manipulation of the American press, and the press' acquiesance to that manipulation.

Over the last five years you people were so good, over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

Now Colbert is in Iraq, and he is again taking the media and also the American people to task for forgetting the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Not only did he take his show to Iraq, he also guest-edited the current edition of Newsweek, which devoted the entire issue to the all-to-easily forgotten wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan. According to Jon Meacham, Newsweek's editor the magazine and its guest editor both got what they wanted

In one conversation, Colbert asked an interesting question. I know what is in this for me, he said: I get an issue of NEWSWEEK about something I care about and attention for a project—the broadcasts from Iraq—that I care about. But, he asked, what is in it for you? A fresh voice, I replied, and access to his audience—an audience of politically and culturally engaged people

James Rainey, in an article in the Los Angeles Times noted that Americans seem to quickly forget that we are still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to Rainey,


Colbert's satire clearly, and correctly, skewers the media for losing focus, despite the presence of 130,000 troops in the still-dangerous nation. Statistics from the Tyndall Report tracking service show that all three network evening news programs broadcast a total of just 99 minutes of news on Iraq in the first five months of this year.

The media's attention deficit had Colbert telling Gen. Odierno he had assumed the Iraq war had ended and we "had moved on to the new war between a wise Latino woman and old white men."

I watched three of Colbert's shows from Iraq and read some of his guest edited Newsweek. I was impressed by his efforts to try to bring America's attention back to the most important problems facing America. The problem that Barack Obama promised he would solve after his election, ending the war and Iraq and bringing the troops home.

I am sure that with all the problems confronting us we may lose focus again, but Colbert's achievement is remarkable. As Rainey wrote in the Los Angeles Times that Colbert's fictional character had the power, "to bring everyone's attention back to reality."



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30

Just showin’ up

I won’t do no Jedi mind trip .
I ain’t Obi Wan Kenobi
I won’t start babblin’ about “the Force.”
His life happened;
his death has happened .

Upon receipt of that grim news,
I realized
that my world had
just gotten harsher.

A world where the sound of his voice
on his answering machine
could calm my panic and
soothe my troubles
better than heroin
is no more.

Oh, he used to vex me.
Like when I would ask him
“How ya doin’?”
“Just right,” he would say “Just right.”
I have no patience with that particular
piece of zen bullshit.
I’ve never been “just right.”

No matter.
He is gone, but
thanks to him
I am embued with
his view of this world.
He taught me that
“all you have to do
is just show up.”
Whether it’s your wedding day or
the day of your execution, it’s the same.
You get to show up.

To which I have added
and I know he would agree
that just showin’ up
is a privilege.

For Al H.

Capitanotedeschi

Just showin' up copyright June 9, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

30

Heart armored with righteousness

I am not a servant of that gentle Deity,
of whom Jesus preached.

I serve the Old Testament God

I am vengeance terrible vengeance
I am the vortex of the tornado
whirling across the drought-stricken prairie

I am that John Brown
On the mural in the state Capitol
In Topeka
that I saw with my 5^th grade class

As I walk across the fresh mown lawn
of the Baby Murderer’s Church
In my hands a gun and a bible
Old John Brown come to smite the wicked
come to send the spawn of Satan
to Hell and to his Master.

I am sword of the Lord
coming to chasten Pharaoh
in his Wichita temple.
More fool he
to think he is safe.

I come to deliver future innocents
from murder to belonging.
It is not with peace, forgiveness or love
that our wicked world will be cleansed
of its evil.
Forgiveness is a human strength.
As an avenging Angel
I no longer need feel human.

All my life,
I knew that I was damned.
I spent years enduring
my damnation
I every day I walked this earth
my heart became armored
with righteousness.

Now I am redeemed.
I am reborn again.
Innocent as a babe.
One with the Lord,
clean and eternally forgiven.

Capitano Tedeschi

Heart armored with righteousness copyright June 6, 2009 by Jamie Jacks Note, I would have loved to use John Steuart Curry's Tragic Prelude (1938-1940), a mural in the Kansas Statehouse illustrating John Brown and the clash of forces in Bleeding Kansas but did not due to copyright restrictions.

30

Job interview

I had my first job interview in at least a dozen years on May 21st. For my part the interview went well and I was pleased with my appearance and performance. But they did ask a question "give us an example where you used creative problem solving?" The Santa Claus story was used as part of my answer. It's true, more so than most of my poems, and happened in Christmas of 1978.


Authenticity

Never, I say never
volunteer to be a Santa Claus

I did once.
It was a fundraiser
for my theatre group.

We had a makeshift booth
at the intersection of Westport Road
and Broadway, in Midtown Kansas City.

Never, I say never
Volunteer to be a Santa Claus
With a hangover.

My body was screaming like
a dying dog as
my aching liver metabolized the alcohol
from last night.

But everybody loved Santa
on that cold December day.
The honked at Santa.
They waved to Santa.
One punk in a pickup honked and gave a finger to Santa
(Santa gave the finger right back)

A pretty young thing with long
red hair sat on my lap
hugged me real hard and said
“I want a gram of cocaine!”
There was no doubt she would find
her Santa.

But the hardest part was
dealing with the kids.
They’d sit on my lap
look into my eyes
not see the twinkle
not see the joy of Christmas
and their faces would contort
with shock and disgust
screaming for their mothers.

They knew that I wasn’t Santa Claus,
I was just a man in a Santa Claus suit.

Never, I say never
volunteer to be a Santa Claus
unless you are actually Santa Claus
and not just a guy
with a hangover, a fake beard and
funny red suit.

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30
Authenticity, copyright June 1, 2009 by Jamie Jacks

Kansas, Bleeding Kansas

Yesterday, I was shocked and saddened by the murder of Dr. George Tiller in his church in Wichita. When I learned about this terrible murder, my reaction was my God, this is something that shouldn't happen in Kansas. We're not like this. We don't go into a church on a Sunday and kill people. That's not done in Kansas, that's not done in America, that shouldn't be done anywherte.

The murder of Dr. George Tiller was an act of domestic terrorism. Police have a suspect in custody. While the murder itself was sudden, the act of murder, which was done in the sanctuary of Tiller's Lutheran Church has had a long genesis. The more I thought about this murder, the more I realized that murder is not an isolated incident. Kansas has been through this before and all I have to do is think of the geography of my childhood to prove it.

I was born and raised in Kansas. I lived in the suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri, in that part of Kansas known as Bleeding Kansas. Bleeding Kansas earned it name for the years just prior to the start of the American Civil War. My house was on the Kansas side of State Line Road and was just a mile or so away from Loose Park in Kansas City, where the Battle of Westport was fought. The post office for our area was called Shawnee Mission after an Indian School by the same name. In 1865, Thomas Johnson, the director of that "school" was murdered by southern sympathizers for swearing an oath to the Union.

Every day I rode or drove to school along Johnson Dr. which was the start of Oregon and Santa Fe trails. Later, when I was in college, I lived a little town of Wamego Kansas which is not far from Wabaunsee, which is the site of the Beecher Bible church.

So Kansas has known the terrorism of John Brown, William Quantrill and Sen. David Atchison. In the last half of the 19th century, the divisive issue was slavery. Today is it fundamental Christian fanaticism and its many false dogmas, gun rights, anti-gay marriage, hatred of taxes, and abortion. Now it appears that idealogical descendents of Quantrill and Atchison are now attacking churches that disagree with their views regarding guns, god, taxes, and gays. Kansas has seen this trend as well.

In the early 1980s, my parents lived in Topeka Kansas. One day a neighborhood restaurant, called the Village Grill, was picketed by a group of religious fanatics who call themselves the Westboro Baptist Church, led by a self-ordained Baptist minister by the name of Fred Phelps. Phelps was picketing the restuarant because it either hired or served gays. Phelps' demonstrations escalated over the years and he later would picket any church that protested his tactics.

So in Kansas, religious fanatics learned that it was okay to use hate not just against minorities but also religious groups you didn't agree with. But the next atrocity came not in Kansas but in Tennessee. In July of 2008, an deranged loner by the name of James Adkisson stormed into Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church and killed two innocent people. Is there a connection between Fred Phelps picketing churches in Topeka that disagree with him, James Adkisson murdering Unitarian Universalists in Knoxville, and the man that killed Dr. George Tiller in Wichita? It's too early to tell, but I am not the only one who is worried by this trend.

Journalist Sara Robinson in her Blog Orcinus

The fact that this killing happened on the sixth anniversary of Eric Rudolph's capture bears this out. The date was chosen with a message in mind. It seems very likely that the venue was, too.

I've often said that fundamentalism begins the minute you decide you have the One True Right and Only Way -- and that you have a God-given duty to impose that way on the rest of the world. Because of this, fundamentalists have never been willing to recognize the legitimacy of other faiths. And certain factions on the far right have never had qualms about vandalizing mosques or synagogues in order to harass Muslims and Jews into political and social silence.

But they used to leave Christian churches pretty much alone. The fact that this shooting occurred in a church (again) suggests that this tactic is now being tried out on more closely related faith groups whose views don't comport with the fundamentalist party line. As Dave has often pointed out, bringing violence to houses of worship is usually an overtly eliminationist act. They are trying to terrify liberals by making us feel at risk and unsafe inside our own spiritual sanctuaries -- the very places we go to feel the most security and peace. This is terrorism, plain and simple -- Christian fundamentalist terrorism, committed by people Sam Smith has started referring to as "Jesus's Jihadis."

So Kansas is bleeding again. I'd like to think that as a Kansan "we're not like this." But as a short rummage through the landmarks of my youth have shown, we are. Will it grow into a wider conflict, I don't know.

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30