Blackout – Montauk # 37 - 202

Late November
Two hours past sunset
Ditch Plains
Montauk
Walking from a Joel’s house party
A black out
Power down
All lights out
Cold
No man light at all___
The stars above illuminate the Shagmoor bluff
30 degrees cold
A slight wind through the trees
THe rustle of bare branches
To the south below the bluff
Waves crash on the beach___
Overhead the Orion Nebula
1344 light years distance
From Earth___
My boots crunch on the path
Eyes adjust to starlight
Deers sneak through the undergrowth
Silent
Orion rising over the eastern horizon
Once I knew the names of the stars
I’ve been lost in too many cities
I've spent too many years in cities of bright lights

Blinded by the lights at night
I have lost my way
Through the stars
I am not a spaceman
But once I came close___
Summer 1962
A suburb south of Boston
A ten year-old boy
Behind a split-level ranch house
Painted pink
Past midnight
My family deep asleep
Every house in the neighborhood asleep
Dead quiet___
Out onto the back lawn
Naked
I lay on cut grass
Eyes straight up to the eternal night sky
Staring Bbeyond the bats
Hunting not orbiting Soviet satellites
But UFOs
Waiting for Aliens to abduct a naked boy
Ready
Willing
Able
To escape Earth and roam to the stars
With aliens from Space
To leave behind my shitty suburb
Forever
To wander the galaxy
With Aliens
As an Alien to all of them__
They never came that night or any night
And I cursed the stars and the suburbs and ET
Why didn’t you take me?
I want leave home____
To voyage to Orion and Betelgeuse and Rigel
The Brightest stars amongst countless stars overhead
Ah, the Cosmos___
Tonight in Montauk andlike then
I am alone
No UFOs
Only jets from JFK Europe Bound
West of Montauk
No extraterrestrials in the sky
Only millions of stars in a blackout
Boots crunch on the dirt
Waves crash on the beach
And___
Orion rules the stars
Partnered with Gemini and Taurus
In the winter sky
I’m happy to be here
Ditch Plains
On a path lit by starlight
Stuck on Earth
Ablue bright orb
In the quiet of Space
And south of me
The waves crash on the beach___

Troll Wall, Norway

Trolls originated from Norse mythology as solitary awesome creatures with a foul disposition to Christian and narrow-minded humans venturing into the mountains beyond civilization to avoid and be seen avoiding. Modern day internet trolls such as those fascists and racists spewing their hatred of the Jews with a generational foundation. Nothing will change their minds, but I appreciate your earnest kochleffeling. A solitary self mischling infuriating 'thems' unitrack thinking. That's you, but be careful. Florida has plenty of them as does Montauk. They have guns. You will never convert them to love. The hatred is real. I recall in 1982 seeing old Nazis on the streets of Hamburg. Their pride revolting.

Foto - Troll Wall, Norway - a gneiss vertical cliff 1000 meters tall.

Cinco De Mayo

Sixteen years ago my brother-in-law and I left the cabin on Watchic Pond. My sister remained in the kitchen prepping for lunch. The bright spring sun had heated the morning and the thermometer nailed to a tall pine read 72F. Our task putting in the dock in the lake in early May. The water temperature hovered around 62 and the sunny air was warm for Southern Maine. David and I waddled into the water with trepidation, but it wasn't so bad once we passed our waists.

Coming out both of us shook from the long immersion in the cold water. My sister ordered us to take hot showers and we obeyed her command. When we returned to the kitchen two margaritas waited on the table.

"Happy Cinco de Mayo." My sister was a big believer in national and international holidays.

"Viva Juarez." I raised my salt-rimmed glass to clink a toast.

"Why Juarez?" My brother-in-law smacked his lips. The rims of margaritas were tangy with lemon.

"Juarez led a revolt against the Catholic conservatives and after their victory in 1861 he declared a moratorium on debt payments to Britain, Spain, and France, which had supposedly loaned the previous government over $52 million, but actually only had issued $1.2 million in actual money. Juarez protested that firstly the loan was made to a deposed government and secondly that the amount had been inflated by usurious interest. The family of the French Emperor owned the paper on this debt and Napoleon III convinced England and Spain to defend its claims."

"How do you know this?" David was always suspect of my stories.

"I was a history minor in college." Those courses had been my only As and after a trip to Mexico in 1975 I read volumes on the travails of our southern neighbor.

"Sounds like that could happen to America now." My sister taught finance at a college in Boston. Sovereign debt was crushing countries across Europe and her students were buried under credit card bills and college loans.

"England tried to force Iceland to pay the debt of its banks and the Icelanders kicked out the government. The banks punished Iceland by closing all the McDonalds. In 1862 France sent over an invading army, which pursued Juarez forces toward Mexico City. On May 5th the Mexicans stopped running at Puebla and fought French forces twice their force under the command of their thirty-three year-old Mexican Commander General, Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin. They achieved a great victory and thereafter have celebrated Cinco de Mayo."

"Let me guess." David was enjoying his margarita. "The French sought revenge for this defeat."

"How well you know the French. They had installed a Habsburg emperor protected by an imperial army."

"Second guess. It ended badly."

"After the battle, the French troops departed from Mexico. Maximilian I was offered exile, but he wanted to be emperor and loved Meixoc. He executed by the Mexicans. End of the foreign intervention and Cinco de Mayo was important to the USA, since the Mexicans stopped the French from supplying the Confederates with arms."

"Cinco de Mayo." We clinked glasses again and my sister began to fix another batch of drinks.

I liked mine with salt.

We weren't going anywhere.

"E me gusto en ninguna parte."

Seagulls Adrift - Staten Island Ferry

Sea gulls drafting behind the Staten Island Out of St. George Manhattan bound The Samuel L Newhouse An old ferry from 1982 Big enough for over 5000 passengers Paint flaking from overhead Top speed 16 knots Churning up the harbor Sea gulls Diving into the wake To feast on the propellers' chum Not the Atlantic Ah, the harbor The inner harbor of the great city of New York___ >Nothing like the Staten Island Ferry connecting St. George to Battery Park. Free still despite the billionaires__

The Cliffs of Moher - 2012

Last Tuesday I boarded a plane at JFK for Orlando, Florida. My two travel companions, AP and his financier Jerry Mumbels, were attending a builders' convention. I was just along for the ride. My seat had been reserved as an after-thought and I was seated by the window in the rear of the plane. The man next to me was about my age. We nodded a weary hello. This flight had been held for a half-hour for late UK arrivals.

"Where you coming from?"

"Ireland," he explained how it was cheaper to fly from Dublin to London to JFK than Shannon-JFK direct. "If my wife had been with me, then I would have taken the Shannon flight. Women don't like connections."

"I flew from Luxembourg via Paris to JFK. The Heathrow-JFK leg of the flight was $300 more than my roundtrip ticket." I had been planning on flying one-way from Dusseldorf, until Jerry Mumbels offered to purchase my ticket. Sometimes the wealthy have good hearts.

"Are you retired in Ireland?" I'm one of the few men my age and class needing to work.

"No, I'm working at a help center in Cork." He shook his head. "I thought it was going to be an easy job, but we've been dealing with a nasty spate of suicides."

"I read the same in the Guardian." The collapse of the Irish economy had driven a nail of despair into the heart of the nation. "Mostly young men."

"Between 16 and 40. We get about twenty calls a day and at least ten suicides a week in Cork and the government refuses to publish the real figures. They are predicting a thousand for this year. A 50% increase over the previous year, but the figures from my office and those around the country paint a much more dire picture."

"Because they have no hope." Ireland had been on a credit binge. The national debt had led the government to cut aid to all sectors of society, except the banks.

"None at all. Many of the boys I speak with haven't ever had a job and there is no light on the horizon. Russia, Greece, and Spain are suffering similar spikes in suicide and all I hear from the government is more cuts and more cuts."

"Damn." I had been living in the West of Ireland. The oldest son inherits the farm and the rest of the boys hit the road to Galway or other cities in Ireland or beyond. That safety valve is gone. "I wish you luck over there."

"We need luck and not the luck of the Irish."

We bade good-bye at the airport in Orlando. The fat Americans seemed untouched by the economic crisis strangling the world economy. Maybe they were better at putting on a brave face. I didn't mention my conversation to AP and Jerry Mumbels. They had their own problems, but once I got to the hotel I went on line to check on the facts as presented by the Irish press.

irishcentral.com reported that a suicide prevention group had 'received over 33,000 pleas for help in the past 12 months as the suicide rate rises dramatically.' and that 'police are watching known suicide spots like the quays in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford.'

'Corkman Pat Buckley, founder of the charity Let’s Get Together, told the Independent, "The problem with the suicide statistics is that they take about two years to compile and even then they are relatively inaccurate and under-report the true scale of the problem. The problem is now so serious it is terrifying. We’ve battled to raise $7,000 in funds and it was spent on counselling in just a few weeks over November and December.”

Minister of State for Health Kathleen Lynch revealed in the Dáil, “The increase is mainly in men in the middle-age group, however, we are also seeing a rise in the number of women dying by suicide, although the numbers are still significantly lower than in men."

The State recognizes the seriousness of the problem.

The IMF and banks do not care about these people.

They think that they are weak links in the mesh of society.

Until they too find themselves on the Cliffs of Mohar.

The drop tells the truth.

Connemara Whispers

My mother's last wish on a bed at Mass General was to go to Ireland.

"You've roamed the workd and never gone to your native land. I want you to go out there after im done and meet a woman like your sisters, cousins, or aunts."

And like that I was obliged to heed my mother's wish, even though its incestuous nature scared the bejus from my marrow. After her passing in 1997 an English arranged an autumn rental of a cottage west of Galway from Lord Robert Guinness. A night in Dublin with my landlord at the Shelburne. In the morning a train ride to Galway. A night of drink. Next dawn a bus the Cliften and a taxi to a cow town between the Seven Pins of tge the Atlantic Ocean. A small town. Not a woman in Ballyconeeley. Just cows and sheep roaming the boglands, so I drank Guinness at Keough's with a handful of sad cow farmers and my good friend Ty Spaulding. In the haunted schoolhouse wandering the bogs accompanied by the whispers of Europe washed into the Atlantic by a westerly wind. Aah, true Ireland, that.

May Day Freedom From Chains 2011

May Day 2011 and I was sitting in a Tokyo Airport bound for Bangkok. A two week unpaid holiday, since Manny decided to stiff my vacation pay. The eighty- three year-old diamond dealer said, “I gave one week off in January.”

“You gave me butkis then.” I had been a math major in college and still had a very good head for numbers.

“I remember one week.”

“Because you want to remember one week. You’re wrong, but then bosses are never wrong these days.” Manny was an old curmudgeon, but I had counted on him for a job since 1989.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That you fire two employees and had me work harder without giving me a raise.”

"You're lucky you have a job."

He was right in some ways, only because everyone around the world was a wage slave grinding out a subsistent living.

Years ago unions protected the workers. The bosses fought the forty-hour week, the end to child labor, and other workers’s rights as was to expected from the filthy rich, since they represent the haves, who don’t want to spit to the have-nots. I hung up saying to Manny, "See you when you get back." then muttered,

"Fuck the rich."

I have belonged to three unions; IBEW for the telephone company, IBT driving taxi in Boston, and the union of drifters. I believe in the power of labor and every May 1 workers of the world march in many countries.

Originally the day was a pagan holiday for the first day of spring, although in a different month than the present Julian calendar. Peasants adherents to the old religions danced around the Maypole. The Catholic Church suppressed the practice by naming May the month of Mary, the Blessed Virgin.

As a child at parochial school the nuns paraded us around the church with the girls wearing white dresses and flowers in their hair. The boys had white jackets and slacks. Parents would take snapshots of their angelic children.

Years later we abandoned this pious procession to march in the May Day protests against the Cambodian Bombings.

1969-1970.

Washington, Kent State, Kissinger, Nixon talking to the protesters.

May Day for the Left honors seven Haymarket anarchists executed for participation in Chicago’s Haymarket Riot of 1886 in Chicago.

May 1 1886 was the start date for the 8-hour day. Big business wasn’t happy with this new law and workers staged a series of protests. Anarchists met in Haymarket Square. The gathering was peaceful until someone threw a bomb into the police ranks, killing one officer. In the ensuing violence more died on both sides.

Hence ‘bombing-throwing anarchist’ entered the American lexicon.

The subsequent trial of eight anarchists based the accusations on hearsay. Evidence revealing the involvement of the Pinkerton Detective Agency in the bombing didn’t prevent the death sentence for seven of the accused.

Public pressure for leniency forced the governor of Illinois to commute the capital charges against two ‘conspirators’.

On the eve of the execution Louis Lingg offed himself by exploding a dynamite cap in his mouth.

The remaining four, Spies, Parsons, Fischer, and Engel were publicly hung, but not before they sang the Marseillaise, the anthem of the international revolutionary movement.

All eight were exonerated in 1893 and May 1 became a rally day for labor throughout the world, although in the USA it is called Loyalty Day.

Thailand gives the day off to workers, 70% who have decent jobs say they are happy with their present situation. Others are less so.

In honor of the Haymarket martyrs I’m taking the day off too.

Power to the people.

One more thing.

Fuck the rich.