On The Question of Soul?

(I have often thought about where some things that I experience come from. This is a speculation on what might be considered my soul.)

It started, I was sitting out on the deck.
One of our new 95 planet hot days.
Pavarotti singing O Sole Mio.
Then my friends the Finch family
Not to be outdone. Gathered from near and far.
As Pavarotti hit high C finches went one higher.
Thrilled to the point of tears. An epiphany!
This was the source of our music.

We imitated them, now they were trying to take it back.
My very first encounter at age seven was Gluck
A 78 Orfeo and Euridice, Locked in the room.
Nobody could see the tears from an old 78.

So started my souls gift of music.
Through life's darkest hours.
It was the balm, that kept me.

Thanks many good friends.
Brahms, your lullaby, Beethoven your fifth.
Hank Williams Lonesome Blues Russ Colombo Ramona
“When day is done you’ll hear me call”
Merle Haggard “Send Me Back Home”
Death row prisoners last request

Or Hank Williams “The moon just went behind a cloud,
To hide its face and cry."
Schubert Der Earl Konig. The cries of a dyeing child.
The terror, hid my head under the pillow.
Never screened out that very last gasp.
"I’m so lonesome I could cry.”

I sang alone out loud and in a crowd quietly to me.
In my 93rd year I believe the music spoke to my soul.
No I still don’t know what that is.

Pavorrotti sings of Pagliacci tearing out his broken heart,
Assures me it’s there. I’m sure there are others.
In the meantime, thanks, music makers for my soul.

The Spy Business

The recent arrests and deportation of the 10 family style spies reminded me of my own attempt to venture into the spy business. It sort of started way back when my son Fred was in the plastic model making age. His primary interest was airplanes but periodically he would venture into ships, tanks, and other military hardware. Keep in mind now that I used to be a machinist who worked in the defense industries during world war 2. What startled me about Fred’s models was there absolute detailed scale to the real thing. When I looked at a model of the Bradley Tank I thought, Ahaa, I could just sell that to the Russians and they could start building a full scale model of the same thing. That went for fighter planes, battleships, destroyers the whole panoply of military hardware.

The Spy Business model got a big jolt in one of my travels. During the fifties or sixties, I ventured into the Nuclear Museum at Los Alamos New Mexico. In the handout section there was various booklets, pamphlets, and documents describing in fine detail how the Atom Bomb worked. Soon after I came upon a copy of “Jane’s Fighting Ships.” Therein was a detailed description of the most advanced naval hardware. The more I looked around for military information the more stuff on Tanks, Planes Radars, and Ships seemed to be available in museums, bookstores and libraries. Present day, if you add the Internet you got it all right there at your desk.

Okay, so here is the Business Plan. Together with a coworker friend we would designate specific areas of research. ie, Naval, Air, Gunnery, Electronics, Land, Submarine’s, Etc. Etc. We would then hire graduate students with interests in these areas to comb the literature for material that would be useful to anybody who was willing to pay for it. And pay you would because this was going to be a bargain compared to what it would cost to set up spies to collect the same information. Our plan would be completely legal as we would not be selling any secret security material. We thought we would set up shop in either Washington DC or Zurich Switzerland.

Yes, we had financial sponsors who thought it was a great idea as it would promote peace through equalization of armaments. Like the nuclear standoff between the US and Soviet Union. So what happened?

It was on one of my regular trips to the Nations Capital that I ran the idea passed a good friend who worked as a statistical analyst for the Congressional Budget Office. He let out a loud laugh said, “Schrank it already exists. Just take a walk over to K. Street” and-----(don’t recall the cross street) “but right there you’ll find a bookstore selling everything you ever wanted to know about the military in every corner of the Globe.”

Yupp, there it was two floors of books pamphlets, print outs, on every subject that might be of interest to intelligence agencies or anyone interested in how to build a better bomb. Oh, well another great business idea gone with the wind.

It brought me thinking about the latest cracking of the ten family Russian Spy Ring. These folks should have just defected to Brighton Beach that Russian émigré community right next to Coney island. Heck they could have then reported on the rebuilding of the Parachute Jump that was surely a way to spot ships at sea. What In Gods name were the Russians thinking that a nice family living in Montclair New Jersey raising beautiful Hydrangeas were going to steal secrets of what?

It is probably just another example of “old organizations never die they just roll over and continue doing what they know even though it is absolutely irrelevant.” Like “The March of Dimes” setup to fight polio. With the advent of the Salk Vaccine they just shifted over to fighting lung disease. I might add, “old organizations never die as long as they find a way to pay the executives.”

This is what I assume is going on in Moscow. The KGB successor need to continue having spies in the US. Where else could they go? I’m pretty certain they have them in London maybe even Paris. Now I'm sure you noticed that Somalia or Outer Mongolia are not on the list. I still don’t understand why the Russian Ten didn’t defect? Maybe they forgot what winter is like in Moscow? While we’re singing “I’m Dreaming of a White Xmas” I can hear them singing, “I’m dreaming of Montclair New Jersey. What am I doing here with no beach to spy on what the folks are doing about sun screen.” Oh well it will be good for the CIA as they can now say, “See we need more than the 28 billion we get to keep track of all this new “Family Style Spying.” Its like Family Style eating in Italian Restaurants. Goodbye and good luck.

July 4th 2010

Newspapers, supposed to fade to the Internet.
Then, a brilliant piece of reporting.
Renews my faith in journalism.

Brendan Marrocco, front page full color, July Fourth.
He looks down where his legs used to be.
Propped on his shoulders, where arms used to be.
Damm, just can’t get that picture out of my sight

I think, “The Times” is beating the obit.
Can it explain to Brendan
What he lost it all for? They could say,
It was, funny war against WMD. Oh, Weapons of Mass Destruction.
No,” it was for Middle East, Democracy.” Maybe even oil?
“The war to end all wars” Damm, that was World War One.
‘All Quiet on the Western Front.” Great movie.

Maybe it started in 1194 BC Trojans against Greeks
The Iliad masterpiece of literature. Great read.
Ulysses, Achilles, Agamemnon, Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon Helen Paris
Gods, soldiers, mothers, fathers, fighting it out. Where have the Gods gone?
Just a good story? No color photos to scream the horrors.
Like you Brendan, showing off the wonders of war.

Don’t forget the glorification. Richard The Lion heart,
Alexander, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Hannibal
Right on down to Patton. Slapped a shell shocked soldier
“Not going to tolerate malingerers.” There’s tough war talk.
Is that the attraction? Tough manly macho talk?

We used to sing soldiers off to war. We’re Tenting Tonight,
Long Way from Tipperary, Over There and we wont come -----
I thought when we stopped singing you off to----

Brendan you know what I mean?
It, meant it was over, Men were going to quit that game.
Brendan did you think of it as a game?
I know you are trying to be optimistic.
Then please, don’t ever ask yourself why?

Immigrant father & July 4th

It was on a hot July 4th 1908. The ship was tied up at a pier in Brooklyn. Papa and his friend Bruno were working the ship as a way to get out of Germany. They were in their late teens and subject to draft into the Kaisers army. As anarchists, there was noway that was going to happen. To get into the US legally they would have to go through Ellis Island. That wouldn’t work as they had no “papers.” As they sat on the deck surveying the Brooklyn landscape they made a decision. One of the sailors had told them of a German community in Ridgewood Brooklyn where they might find work. That was it. They would wait until dark then shimmy down the rope to the dock and off to Ridgewood. The July 4th fireworks turned out to be their cover. With everybody's attention on the booming in the sky they grabbed the opportunity to make it to the dock.

They started to walk away from the water. With the help of strangers the two illegal immigrants made it to the German speaking community of Ridgewwod. Within a few days they would connect up with “Landsman,”people from the same home towns in Germany. My papa managed to get a job as a porter in the German Hospital. (During WW1 its name was changed to Wykoff Heights Hospital.)

Soon enough they would find in America the same kind of anarchist, socialist organizations that they had associated with in Germany, As papa told me this story he would repeatedly emphasize the importance of “learning the language of this new land he now lived in.’ That very first summer in the US, with the help of his new found radical friends, he would discover Coney Island. To hear papa tell it you would think he had died and went to heaven. “In Europe,” he said, “only the very rich or the aristocracy had access to beaches. Here in Coney Island are the masses of working men and women.” That first summer was just a love affair between my papa and Coney Island that was just a short subway ride away. “Besides” he would proudly proclaim, “they’re frankfurter worst is as good as you can get in Mannheim,” Coming from a German there was a real concession.

Which of course brings me to the present and Obama’s proposal to do something about the “Illegal immigrant problem.” My father and Bruno would eventually become citizens with the help of some Socialists on the New York City Board of Alderman. (That was a precursor to the City Council.) Of course as I think about it with the exception of the Native Americans we are all immigrants, legal and illegal.

We are now living through a period of looking for scapegoats to blame for our societies economic woes. Oh it is so much easier out there in Arizona to blame the foreclosures, the bank failures, drug problems, the 100 plus heat, the drought all of it is the illegals fault. “It’s those damm Mexicans who are messing up our very existence.” When it comes to the drug problem we seem to be incapable of acknowledging that it is the DEMAND in the US that is the culprit.

The Arizona Governor is in the “blame it on the illegals” routine. Just another example of how the lack of any organized left permits this fascist like campaigns against the illegals. What gets lost in this “Illegal immigrant shuffle” is the simple fact that those same illegals have been the source of cheap agricultural labor. That makes it possible for me to buy a beautiful box of strawberries at the Supermarket that a few days ago were growing in California.

It is far easier to demonize some minority group for societies failures than to understand that in fact it is a failing system that is to blame. That of course reminds me to say that the Bank Legislation making its way to the White House is a perfect example of removing the blame from the real culprits. That legislation will turn over to the same old regulators the job that they precisely failed to do that got us into this economic nightmare in the first place. We are putting the Weasels, that got us into this mess, back in charge of the hen house. Goodbye to us chickens.

Papa never gave up his love affair with Coney Island. He also never gave up his belief that a society based on equality for all became his guiding philosophy of life. That made him into an early union organizer. In whose footsteps his son so fondly traveled. Happy 4th of July.

PS. If this Administration was serious about getting control of the economic monster all they needed to do was put the Glass Sreagal Act back on the books. That law passed in response to the Great Depression said, “A bank cannot be in both the banking and the investment business.” One or the other. Never both. The bonus boys would go berserk if that happened because they could say goodbye to those Ferrari, Lanborginni, Masserati size bonuses.