LIVE LONG AND PROSPER IOWA by Peter Nolan Smith

Wilbur Harrison had a hit with KANSAS CITY. My schoolmate, Joe Fielder, traveled to the Paris of the Plains in 1965. The police caught him in St. Louis. He escaped through the bathroom window and my 14 year-old friend reached KC the next day, where he ordered a steak and then rode a Greyhound back to Boston. His parents were relieved by his return and asked why he had runaway to Kansas City.

"Because they got some crazy little women there and I'm going to get me some." Joe quoted from the song. His parents grounded him for the summer. Later at school Joe told me that KC had no crazy little women, but he couldn't think of anything else to tell his mother and father.

"They were no pretty women."

"It was all a lie." Joe shrugged like he knew all the answers to every question about girls.

Three years ago I drove through Kansas City with Brock Dundee. The Scot was filming a movie about a sculptor close to death. We drove through the Power and Light District at dusk.

"I don't see any pretty women." Brock was a fan of the song KANSAS CITY.

"Some things don't change." The song was as much a lie in 2009 as in 1965.

Most of the cities of the Midwest are hollow shells, but not so Iowa City. This small town on the Iowa River hosted the campus of Iowa U. My old friend James Rockford lived on a farm twenty miles to the west, on which he grew marijuana instead of corn. Brock Dundee and I rendezvoused with the elder statesman of the hippie era at the Deadwood Tavern, which was the city's premiere dive. We drank beer, rum, smoked a joint, talked with coeds, and at the 2am closing James suggested that we go to Riverside.

"Riverside?" My Scottish friend thought it was another bar. He liked his drink.

"It's not a bar. It's the future birthplace of James T Kirk." Rockford broke out a vial of 1978 Bolivian cocaine. He was a true gourmand.

"You're shitting me." I've been a devout Trekkie since episode one and poured a pile of powder on my hand. No one at the Deadwood noticed my huffing the mound.

"Nope, it's waiting for his birth." James smiled with the knowledge that nothing could stop me from where no one I knew had gone before. We bought two six-packs of Tecate and flagged down a taxi.

"No sense in getting DWI'ed on a mission of such importance." James wasn't called 'the colonel' for nothing. The taxi driver thought that we were crazy, but said it wasn't the first time drunks had given Riverside Iowa as a late night destination.

"Nobody in the world would know about Riverside if it wasn't for James T Kirk. The town holds less than thousand souls. They don't even celebrate March 22. I'm a Trekkie too." The driver lifted his hand in the Vulcan greeting. I

The taxi traced the English River to the small town park. The greeting plaque welcomed us to the future home of James T Kirk. The driver stopped by a statue. Another marker proclaimed his future birth. I breathed in the night air thinking this town made James T Kirk, the captain of the USS Enterprise, was he was. I was that drunk.

"How you feel?" James asked, as my Scottish friend drank a beer with Rockford.

"Like I went to Jerusalem." In fact this was even more holy than Jerusalem. Jesus was a myth and James t Kirk was a myth in the making.

"I thought you would, now how about going back to your hotel for some serious drinking."

"You got it." James lived out here most of the year. He didn't speak to outsiders much. His wife would hate him tomorrow, but none of that mattered because he had brought a Trekkie to the Holy Grail.

Live long and prosper.

Going Up Country - Thai Style

Back in the 60s Canned Heat had a small hit GOING UP COUNTRY.

"Going up country, baby, do you want to come along?"

After Altamont longhairs abandoned the rip-offs, bummers, and downers of the big cities to establish Aquarian communes in the hinterland offering free love, organic food, and reefer to establish a democracy on the foundations of the new age agrarian revolution, unfortunately few of these utopias lasted past the past the winter of the Moral Majority after the Summer of Love.

Why was well-portrayed in T. C. Boyle's novel DROP CITY about the collapse of a Northern Californian commune and the surviving members' exodus to Alaska, but that didn't keep hippies from coming together for another try.

Like Alan Lage in Encinitas. 1974.

The Iowan had survived cancer as a teen and was living with an LSD professor on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I dropped acid with him and his blonde girlfriend on Black's Beach. Leslie looked like Pattie Hearst, the kidnapped heiress turned bank robber. The cops raided us as SLA revolutionaries. The acid was on paper. They touched it. Within twenty minutes the officers were getting a rush. We left town that night not wanting to witness the cops' wrath in the morning. I said good-bye to Alan and his girl on the PCH.

"We're going to Marin live off the country."

I almost joined them, but knew the cops up north would be after Pattie Hurst too.

A year later he showed up in Woodstock New York. Leslie had been replaced by Nona, half-New Jersey/half-Filipino. Skinny as Olive Oyl and smelling of cinnamon. They had a commune of two in a chicken farm. Grass, organic food, and John Lennon. Nona danced to Alan's guitar. Her sinuous body weaved a trance invading my dreams. She was Alan's chick and while I might covet my friend's chick I wasn't going to steal her, because I only break one commandment at a time and this night I went home with a fat girl I met at the Joyous Lake Bar. Babs had big breasts. We had sex in her bathtub next to a babbling creek. Later in her bed we committed sodomy. I should have stayed, but had the ambition to become a writer in ?New York.

And I thought writers need to live in the city.

Not the country.

Almost 35 years in Boston, New York, LA, Paris, Hamburg, Bangkok, Pattaya.

My first Thai wife doesn't like Pattaya.

She preferred living in Ban Nam Phu west of Chai-nat.

2 hours by bus to Morchit. Another 3 hours to Chai-nat, then a 50 kilometer car ride.

Over our years together she has bought 20 rai of land and ten cows. The land was being prepared for a teakwood forest, so we can sell carbon rights to polluting factories and harvest the timber in 15 years. I went up once a month to visit my wife and daughter.

Crossing the river at Wat Sing we entered a land without farangs.

Rice paddies, egrets, buffalos, butterflies, pigs, trees, mountains, dirt roads, and early evenings drinking beer with rice farmers under a billion stars in the sky.

"Going up-country, baby, do you want to come along?"

Sometimes I think it'd be nice.

Smoke a little weed, drink a lot of beer, but what would I do for work?

Grow rice?

Only to brew lao-khao whiskey.

Teach English.

The headmaster of my daughter's school would like that.

10,000 baht/month.

Nature. Quiet. Wife. Daughter. Farm. Beer. Reefer.

But then I ask myself what would happen if civilization collapsed under the weight of global warming. No electricity. No cars. No airplanes. No way to get back to the West.

The sea would flood Pattaya and Bangkok. People would flee inland. I would head up to my wife's farm. It was on higher ground. 110 feet above sea level. My daughter would be happy to see me. My wife would view me as another mouth to feed.

"What can he do?"

Back in 1996 I was in Tibet with my friend Tim Challon. The road to Nepal had been smothered by a mudslide. We were sort of stranded in Lhasa. He asked, "If the world fell apart, what would be do to live here?"

The choices were simple in Tibet.

Become a monk or a clown.

A clown like Sean Connery and Michael Caine in A MAN WHO WOULD BE KING.

Tim liked the idea and this weekend I had everyone laughing at a family dinner telling them about getting a penis transplant from a horse and charging everyone 10 baht to see the farang with the ham ma yoow or long horse cock.

20 baht to touch it.

A hippie freak show clown.

That would be my calling after the Armageddon.

"Going up-country, baby, you want to come along?"

A MAN OF PEACE - ALAN LAGE

Last January my good friend Alan Lage passed into eternity after a long life on planet Earth.

I was listening to the Youngbloods' GET TOGETHER and thought back to meeting 'Jim Rockford' on Moonlight Beach in the summer of 1974. We remained friends all that time and beyond and I had the luck to see the old hippie weed-grower in his native state back in 2009. My travel companion, Brock Dundee, loved meeting "Jim' and his son.

"He is a real American."

And so much more.

One of his last request was that we don't eat meat.

Today is for you and hopefully tomorrow.

Rockford, wherever you are my thoughts are with you.

To hear The Youngbloods' GET TOGETHER please go to the following url:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ9xUE4TvRA

Thai National Anthem or Phleng Chat Thai

I haven’t been to a Thai movie theater in ages, but like a baseball game in the States the cinemas play the Thai National Anthem before any feature film.

Here are the words.

Bring them with you to sing in English, although you probably will get arrested for lese majeste.

Thailand is the unity of Thai blood and body,
The whole country belongs to the Thai people,
Maintaining thus far for the Thai,
All Thais intend to unite together,
Thais love peace, but do not fear to fight,
They will never let anyone threaten their independence,
They will sacrifice every drop of their blood to contribute to the nation,
Will serve their country with pride and prestige-full of victory.
Chai Yo (Cheers)
I like the sacrifice every drop of their blood part

Dictator Somoza of Nicaragua had his people donate blood every year and sold it to the USA.

Needless to say he pocketed the profit.

One other comment of national anthems.

Very few people know that Zimbabwe’s national anthem is BIG BAD LEROY BROWN or that THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER comes from an old English drinking song.

The ANACREONTIC SONG

1
To ANACREON in Heav’n, where he sat in full Glee,
A few Sons of Harmony sent a Petition,
That He their Inspirer and Patron wou’d be;
When this Answer arriv’d from the JOLLY OLD GRECIAN
“Voice, Fiddle, and Flute,
“No longer be mute,
“I’ll lend you my Name and inspire you to boot,
“And, besides, I’ll instruct you like me, to intwine
“The Myrtle of VENUS with BACCHUS’s Vine.

2
The news through OLYMPUS immediately flew;
When OLD THUNDER pretended to give himself Airs_
If these Mortals are suffer’d their Scheme to pursue,
The Devil a Goddess will stay above Stairs.
“Hark! already they cry,
“In Transports of Joy
“Away to the Sons of ANACREON we’ll fly,
“And there, with good Fellows, we’ll learn to intwine
“The Myrtle of VENUS with BACCHUS’S Vine.

3
“The YELLOW-HAIR’D GOD and his nine fusty Maids
“From HELICON’S Banks will incontinent flee,
“IDALIA will boast but of tenantless Shades,
“And the bi-forked Hill a mere Desart will be
“My Thunder, no fear on’t,
“Shall soon do it’s Errand,
“And, dam’me! I’ll swinge the Ringleaders I warrant,
“I’ll trim the young Dogs, for thus daring to twine
“The Myrtle of VENUS with BACCHUS’S Vine.

4
APOLLO rose up; and said, “Pr’ythee ne’er quarrel,
“Good King of the Gods with my Vot’ries below:
“Your Thunder is useless_then, shewing his Laurel,
Cry’d. “Sic evitabile fulmen, you know!
“Then over each Head
“My Laurels I’ll spread
“So my Sons from your Crackers no Mischief shall dread,
“Whilst snug in their Club-Room, they Jovially twine
“The Myrtle of VENUS with BACCHUS’S Vine.

5
Next MOMUS got up, with his risible Phiz,
And swore with APOLLO he’d cheerfull join_
“The full Tide of Harmony still shall be his,
“But the Song, and the Catch, & the Laugh shall bemine
“Then, JOVE, be not jealous
Of these honest Fellows,
Cry’d JOVE, “We relent, since the Truth you now tell us;
“And swear, by OLD STYX, that they long shall entwine
“The Myrtle of VENUS with BACCHUS’S Vine.

6
Ye Sons of ANACREON, then, join Hand in Hand;
Preserve Unanimity, Friendship, and Love!
‘Tis your’s to support what’s so happily plann’d;
You’ve the Sanction of Gods, and the FIAT of JOVE.
While thus we agree
Our Toast let it be.
May our Club flourish happy, united and free!
And long may the Sons of ANACREON intwine
The Myrtle of VENUS with BACCHUS’S Vine.
——————————————————————————–
sic evitabile fulmen roughly translates to “this repels thunderbolts” (It was a common
Roman belief that laurel provided protection from lightning.)
fusty = close or stuffy, old-fashioned, of stale wine
phiz = facial expression
risible = pertaining to laughter
swinge = beat, flog, or chastise

I tried to sing it, but it’s even harder than THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER, which is why I only sing LOUIE LOUIE at bars.

The Thai Etiquette Of Hands

When greeting a Thai male or female, a westerner will stick out his hand. The smiling Thai will offer a wilted bundle of fingers. The farang grasping this imitation of a dead octopus will mistake the weakness of the grip as an exhibition of effeminate behavior.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

Thai men are vicious fighters.

Muay Thai or Thai boxing was originally fought with gloves sprinkled with broken glass. Even lady boys are tough. And heavens forbid you get on the wrong side of a bar girl’s high heels. One hit of a stiletto would have TKOed Ali onto the ropes.

The reason for the soft touch is that touching is considered by most Siamese as a very intimate act, which doesn’t keep farangs from pressing the flesh whenever they get a chance or the Thais from showing their smile for boch-see-dah or dirty farangs, a contemplative grin to defuse this invasion of their space.

The use of hands also pertains to which you use during eating.

The right hand should be used to pick up food.

Never the left, since Thais use that hand to scrap your bum in the WC or Hong-Nam.

Of course most Thais don’t know that farangs use their right hand to wipe their butt, unless the westerner happens to be left-handed, which brings up the question why do we shake hands at all, considering that over 99% of men at baseball games and bars don’t wash their hands after going for a pee.

For a related story go to this URL

http://www.mangozeen.com/teaching-kids-manners.htm” target=”_blank”>Text Display

Paving Over Paradise

My first visit to Bangkok was in 1990. I stayed at the Malaysia Hotel on Soi Duplei, once the 60s haunt of the infamous backpacker murderer Charles Sobhraj. Lush trees bordered the basketball courts of the military school next to the Lumpini Muay-Thai stadium. I shoot hoops in the morning and evening. The sun allowed no exertion during the midday. Patpong was a twenty-minute walk away through the small sois. The city retained the charm of its past, although nothing like the Bangkok of the 1950s.

Back then prominent farangs and Thais drove 1958 Ford Fairlanes and Chevy Impalas. The other vehicles on the roads were tuk-tuk and trolley. The Hotel Royalle had an unobstructed view of the river. A beer on the veranda was 10 baht. The waitress wai-ed with a smile.

Many people traveled by the klong ferries. Kids swam off the docks and the water was drinkable. Klong Toey was the after-night destination for Thais and ex-pats. The infamous Mosquito Bar featured dim-lighting and girls. First and foremost among the Klong Toey bars was the notorious 2nd floor Mosquito Bar on Kasemrat Road.

According to old-timers this dive's seedy decor was camouflaged by a stygian darkness dispelled by the occasional flicker of a match. The gloom suited the female dok-thongs, since their age in the gloom was indecipherable to the drunken patrons. The beers were reputably cold and no one ever got killed in the frequent chair-throwing fights.

Equally disreputable was The Venus Bar, which the late David Musserie had claimed was Thailand's seminal go-go bar serviced by Klong Toey slum girls.

When asked about bar fines, he laughed with his ample belly jiggling like Jello under electro-shock.

"I think it was 10 baht. The Venus was paradise, because it was only for locals. We knew each other. Sort of CHEERS for the wicked and the little angels, until they got mad and then it was every man for himself running for the door."

Now hundreds of bars line Soi Nana. I can't say I like drinking in any of them.

If only I had a way-back machine.

Wouldn't it be nice?

For further information on these bars please go the following URL

http://snesejler.dk/bill77.htm

The Revenge of LBFMs

Men come to Pattaya for one reason.

It is not golf or the beach.

They come for the girls.

The Thai girls offer 'companionship'. Farang men are obliged to exchange money for this friendship, even if it's for as little as an hour. Almost everyone understand the dynamics of the exchange, however newcomers to the scene boast, "I never pay for it."

Saying it and doing it are two different things, for nothing gets Thai bar girls angrier than being stiffed by a drunk westerner. Their normal response is to sulk from the hotel room and wait to see the pride-filled short-timer drunk on walking street or soi 8. She will point out the 'Cheap Charlie' out to her friends and they will pummel his head with high heels.

Blood splatters everywhere, because 'Cheap Charlie' didn't understand the simple rules of economics in Pattaya.

A man always pays for it.

One way or another.

169 Bar Free

The filth from the 7th Precinct attempted to close the 169 Bar for underage drinking. Their case fell apart, since the investigating officers had faked IDs to get into the bar. The judge threw them out of court and Charles Hanson and his staff are ready to serve their clientele seven days and nights a week

Let the Happy Hour roll into midnight.

I would give the address, but anyone knowing the place knows the address.

Except when you go shot-glass bowling with 'gansett beer chasers.

I was only chucking strikes.

Or gutter balls.

I wasn't taking score, because everyone is a winner and a loser at shot-glass bowling.

Andre's Posse

Andre the Giant is a legend. His presence in the WWF gave the wrestling federation credibility. This man was big. He entered Studio 54 when I was working there. I opened the ropes and said, "Right this way, Andre."

He smiled and ushered in his three guests.

No much of an entourage and I was surprised to hear that a graffiti artist from Providence RI had tagged numerous cities with the words ANDRE THE GIANT HAS A POSSE. Supposedly this phrase was everywhere in the world where there were graffiti artists and skateboarders. Neither were my crew nor Andre, although I'm sure that he approved this expansion of identity.

This story from wikpedia is why Andre might have traveled light, but he did have a posse.

'Another feud involved a man who considered himself to be "the true giant" of wrestling: Big John Studd. Throughout the early to mid-1980s, André and Studd fought all over the world, battling to try and determine who the real giant of wrestling was. In December 1984, Studd took the feud to a new level, when he and partner Ken Patera knocked out André during a televised tag team match and proceeded to cut off André's hair. André had the last laugh at the first WrestleMania on 31 March 1985 at Madison Square Garden. André conquered Studd in a $15,000 Body Slam Challenge. After slamming Studd, he attempted to give the $15,000 prize to the fans, before having the bag stolen from him by his future manager Bobby "The Brain" Heenan.'

We are Andre's Posse.

The King of Beer

Joe the guard at the diamond exchange used to drink on the job.

Beer.

Budweiser.

The ex-cop drank off the job too.

His first beer was a Bud for breakfast.

According to his calculation Joe consumed 15-16 beers during the course of a day. His doctor advised his patient to cut down. Joe ignored the warning and his belly bloated to an enormous size, as gas from all the carbonation seeped from his stomach. The only remedy was a complete cessation of beer and soda.

"It isn't fair."

Joe has been bemoaning his fall from grace.

"Even after the four-week abstinence I won't be able to drink beer. Not like a man is supposed to drink beer."

I commiserated with my friend, because I'm a lightweight in my old age.

No more 20-beer nights.

5 is a lot now, but neither Joe nor I world-class drinkers like Andre the Giant who drank enough for 30 men according to this piece from Wikpedia.

"He has been unofficially crowned "The Greatest Drunk on Earth" for once consuming 119 12-ounce beers in 6 hours. On an episode of WWE's Legends of Wrestling, Mike Graham claimed that André once drank 197 16-ounce beers in one sitting, which was confirmed by Dusty Rhodes. In her autobiography, The Fabulous Moolah alleged that André drank 327 beers and passed out in a hotel bar in Reading, Pennsylvania, and because the staff could not move him, they had to leave him there until he regained consciousness."

327 beers.

I'd died after drinking a 10th of that, however Andre the Giant rose from the ashes of his hangover and drink as if there had been no yesterday.

My next beer will be to him.

The King of Beer.

For a related article click on this URL

http://www.mangozeen.com/2010/02/22/drinking/black-at-last.htm

Waiting For Andre

Whenever the question arises at a bar about who was the greatest athlete, I allow everyone to offer their opinions.

"Jim Thorpe."

He was a multi-talented competitor.

"Ali."

Ali was a great fighter.

Once the debate has lost steam I say, "Andre the Giant."

They argue that the Frenchman was only a wrestler, but Andre the Giant was a living legend.

I was lucky enough to shake Ali's hand on 5th Avenue back in 1978 and entered Studio 54 with Andre the Giant.

Both were memorable encounters, however I recently read on www.geekosystem.com that Andre the Giant was driven to school by Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett in the early 50s. The future wrestling legend was a huge twelve year-old. The author of WAITING FOR GODOT had a truck. It was the only vehicle in the village that could accommodate Andre, whose father had constructed Beckett's cottage in France.

Andre recalled that they spoke about Cricket.

In my eyes cricket is boring, but I've changed my mind, because Andre the Giant was never boring.

The Greatest Ever

Muhammad Ali has been long considered the Greatest.

"I am the Greatest," the heavyweight fighter shouted at many bouts.

My choice for the Greatest has always been Andre the Giant.

He was able to pick up the Boston Bruins Bobby Orr and Carol Vadnais without breaking a sweat.

No one even close to the Greatest.

Andre the Giant.

Forever.

MISSILE AWAY by Peter Nolan Smith

MISSILE AWAY by Peter Nolan Smith During his youth my older brother was a a good student. He was the top of his class, but he was also a pyromaniac. On several occasions Frunk came close to burning down our house in Maine. After our family moved to a suburb south of Boston in 1960, my brother exemplied our nation’s fascination with rockets by devising missiles from our mother’s discarded hair spray cans, for the USA was not only seeking to win the race to Space. Its other goal was the nuclear domination of the godless Soviet Union and my brother conducted his experiments in a sandpit not far from our suburban development on the South Shore of Boston. Chuckie, my next-door neighbor, Frunk, and I taped the cans together and positioned the ersatz V-2 of Aquanet hair in a bonfire. Sometimes our rocket would explode in fiery, yet separate bursts of colored flames, but occasionally the strapped cans would arced into the sky at low altitudes spitting toxic fumes. None of us suffered injuries from these experiments, however we came close to setting the woods on fire and the town police warned our parents that we were a danger to the community. My father forbade any further msichief and we abandoned our emulation of NASA’s failed rocket launches. Even at my parochial high school I resisted the draw of the rocket club. They were interested in achieved height and not destruction, so I ran freshmand cross country in the fall of 1966. The five-mile course directed runners past an abandoned mansion. Our competitors were never forewarned that their runners had to leap a stone wall to cross through the estate, giving our team an edge and my school won two consecutive state championships in 1967 and 1968, however our dominance was challenged by a mysterious government agency’s purchase of the mansion in 1969. The men occupying the estate wore white shirts and black ties. They never left the building. We thought they might be aliens. Chuckie Manzi said that they were CIA scientists experimenting on apes for the War in Vietnam. That first practice the cross-country team passed the big house, listening for the shrieks of chimps. We nothing other than our panting lungs. Upon our return to the gym, our coach informed us that the grounds were off-limits to the cross-country team. “What about the wall?” “No more wall,” said Brother Jude. Two weeks later we lost our first race in years. “We want the wall.” We protested to Brother Jude. He was on our side as was the principal, who asked for special access from the men in black suits. The men in the white shirts refused their request. Every time we passed the mansion calling them ‘assholes’, then trained harder to regain our edge. Few of our fellow students cared about the track team. Our school’s football team was state champs. The cheerleaders came from the nearest Catholic girls school. They wore short skirts. Our only fans were the rocket club and their presidnet said that this matter was not over. No one from the cross-country team paid them much mind. They were nerds and the cross-country team worried that nerdiness might be contagious. We won our next race, although I barely beat out our rival’s 5th runner to score a victory. Afterward the rocket club glared at the distant mansion and the cross-country team exchanged a conspiratorial glance with them. Whatever they had planned was more than all right by us. The next day the school’s rocket club announced an exhibition of their missiles. The 60s was the time of going to the moon and the brothers proudly assembled the students in the field behind the high school. The principal instructed the collective classes to stand a good distance from the launch area, fro these rockets were not small. One of them was at least ten-feet long. After running a series of tests, the rocket club signaled that they were ready and soon missiles were soaring into the sky. Even the football team thought the rocket club was cool and the brothers beamed with satisfaction, thinking maybe one of these boys might end up at NASA. Off in the distance a few of the men in the white shirts were standing outside the mansion. The rocket club lined up this final missile, the ten-footer, with the mansion. The men at the mansion started shouting and then the president of the rocket club lit the fuse. The men in the white shirts ran for cover. The missile to cover the half-mile between the field and mansion in less than a second. The explosion was muffled by out applause. Afterwards the men in the white shirts complained to the brothers. The town police ignored the complaint, since some of their kids were on the track team and we regained permission to run through the field a week later and won the state championship for the third time in a row. No one ever said anything bad about nerds in our school. They were heroes, because they were dangerous. At least to anyone not on our side and that’s the way it should be when you’re young. ps my older brother was really pissed that he hadn’t been there.

THE FLIGHT OF HISTORY by Peter Nolan Smith

At Xaverian High School outside of Boston Brother Phelan taught history without any deviation from the path of the textbook. I was Brother Phelan's # 1 student, since I had read the textbook from beginning to end in the first week. During class I stared out the window, thinking about my cheerleader girlfriend, Janet 'Big Tits' Stetson. Halfway though the semester the old boxer requested his students to write essays about the Magna Carta, Napoleon, and the Civil War. My classmates turned in papers of various lengths. "Smith, help me grade the papers." Brother Phelan waved for me to join him after class. "Yes, brother." He was no greasy chickenhawk. The robed teacher and I gathered up the reports and we walked down the corridor to the stairwell. I thought we were going to his office, but the broad-bellied brother stopped at the stairwell and commanded, "Toss the papers one by one up the stairs." I didn't understand the why, but like I stated earlier Brother Phelan had been a fighter. Heavyweight. They earned respect and I did as I had been told. After two minutes forty odd hand-written and typed papers were scattered up the steps. "Here." Brother Phelan handed me a small notebook and said with a Connemarra accent. "Record the name and the grade." He started at the bottom. "D-." He cleared the stairs and midway up he said, "C-." The papers were thicker. This went on until he reached the top, where he gave an A+ to a thick tome of thirty pages. "Aren't you going to read them?" "What for? I grade them by weight. The heavier ones go farther. The lighter one less so." "So everything they write is unimportant." "You could think of it that way. The Magna Carta was signed by King John and he killed all the nobles. "With the help of foreigners." "Correct." He tapped the papers into a neat pile and came back down the steps. "Napoleon lose at Waterloo." "Able I was ere I saw Elba," I repeated the fallen emperor's famous palindrome to his English doctor on the remote South Atlantic island. "You show great promise, but I didn't find your paper in the pile." "It wasn't there." "Any reason." "I didn't feel like rehashing history as we know it." I reached into my bag and pulled out a treatise on the 1848 Revolution titled UP AGAINST THE WALL. I hadn't wanted any of my classmates to see it. America was at war with the Viet Cong. My friends hated commies. I was an atheist. They hated us even worst. "Four pages?" He flicked the paper like a poker player waiting the last card on stud. "Succinct." "A C- according to my grading scale. "Better than failing." "I supposed you're right, boyo." He bid me well. I had a track meet that afternoon. I ran the 440 and relay along with doing the long jump. I finished 4th in the first, the team won the second, and I hit seventeen feet off the wood into a sawdust pit. Brother Phelan helped me to my feet. No one beat that distance. "Now that's history." "Yes, it is," I answered, because history was all about how long history flew through time. And time lasted forever for teenagers of the 1960s.

Unforgettable

Sometimes things you never forget and one of them is falling off a bicycle.

Another is a young woman's legs.

For time immemorial.

Cat Eats Dogfish

National Geographic photo.

This bobcat was seen pulling a shark out of the waves in Vero Beach, Florida, on April 6, 2015.

I understand the dogfish cruising the shallows, but a wild bobcat prowling the beach is a little unsettling, especially for the shark.

WAR WAR WAR

John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, has forged an agreement on nuclear development with his Iranian counterpart. President Obama is seeking congressional approval for a treaty with our longtime nemesis, however Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer has announced his opposition to an agreement by lending his support to a law designed to block the nuclear accord.

“This is a very serious issue that deserves careful consideration, and I expect to have a classified briefing in the near future. I strongly believe Congress should have the right to disapprove any agreement and I support the Corker bill which would allow that to occur,” wrote Schumer in an emailed statement to POLITICO, which came as no surprise since the New York senator is one of Israel's staunch backers.

Other Democratic senators have also wavered on backing the President's plan.

2016 will be a big election year.

Politicians need money.

Israeli special interest groups are pressing politicians to reject 'peace at any cost' with Iran.

Bibi Netanyahu has condemned the treaty as a death threat to the Israeli nation and members of his cabinet have suggested that the IDF will conduct air raids against the nuclear facilities in western Iran with or without US backing.

This declaration sounded very bellicose under taking into consideration that the IDF's F-16 have a operational range of 2000 kilometers and the Iranian border is 1500 kilometers from Israel, meaning that any attack on Iran will be a suicide mission, unless the US provided refueling tankers for the raid across the air apace of Jordan, Iraq, and Iran. The first two countries would probably allow the overflights, but Iran has extensive Surface to air missile defenses as well as a large, but aging air force. Any offensive incursion would be risky, if not deadly for the attacker, so Schumer's hawkish position is strictly words in an attempt to brainwash the American public into supporting any and all attacks on Iran, as shown by this part of a speech before rightwing Jews, "The Palestinian people still don’t believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution. More do than before, but a majority still do not. Their fundamental view is, the Europeans treated the Jews badly and gave them our land — this is Palestinian thinking […] They don’t believe in the Torah, in David […] You have to force them to say Israel is here to stay. The boycott of Gaza to me has another purpose — obviously the first purpose is to prevent Hamas from getting weapons by which they will use to hurt Israel — but the second is actually to show the Palestinians that when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement. When there’s total war against Israel, which Hamas wages, they’re going to get nowhere. And to me, since the Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, while certainly there should be humanitarian aid and people not starving to death, to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go, makes sense."

Sorry, the rattling of sabers has nothing to do with Palestine.

That conflict is a sideshow this spring.

But I will never vote for Schumer again.

He has always been a warmonger only interested in preserving Israel's right to oppress the Palestinians.

Shame.

Fort Greene Park Of Snowdon

This morning dawn cast the spring sun on the plaza of the Prison Ship Dead in Brooklyn's Fort Greene Park. Early morning joggers and drowsy dog-walkers were greeted by a new edition to the Olmstead-designed park, for a bronze bust of Edward Snowden, the man to out the NSA's illegal spying on American soil, had been erected atop a stone plinth by a team of sculptors.

The story of the statue had been filmed by Animal.com

This part of Brooklyn is more progressive than that island of wealth across the East River and in reality no one anywhere in the USA cares about the NSA spying on them, because most Americans say nothing worth anything 7/24/365 and they also confess their sins everyday on facebook.com

And none of them know well enough to keep their mouths shut or their fingers tapping on their cellphones, which overwhelms any chance that the NSA has to decipher the Tower of Babble's trillions of syllables crisscrossing the atoms of existence until the white noise of incomprehension.

And the US government was outraged by Snowden's revelations of a multi-billion intrusive illegal program with nothing to show for a single cent other than to say it's important to surveil the War on Terror.

Last week a Kenyan university was attacked by Somali extremists.

A brutal attack.

Same at Novel Peace Laureate Menachim Begin's attack on the Hotel David leaving 99 dead and scores of wounded.

The USA wants to listen.

But to nothing and the ancillary agencies of the CIA and FBI are more than willing to pursue anyone saying that they are not supposed to say in the Land of the Free.

The NYPD thought the same.

Within a few hours the Park Department had covered the bust with a blue plastic tarp.

Unauthorized art in a park is against the law.

The NYPD seized the statue to find DNA from the artists.

They could arrest anyone.

And the NSA will help.

Nice work Snowden.

Some of us will speak free.

Especially these sculptors.

They risked chance.

To see the video of the erecting of the bust, please go to this URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7rAhEpft5g

Everyday Spam

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Sperm All Over Florida

Cyros International, the self-proclaimed world’s largest international sperm bank, has announced its plans to move its U.S. main office and inventory from New York to Orlando in order to attract more sperm donors from the male students of University of Central Florida.

Florida also offers the company lower taxes, but a company spokesperson said, “There’s a huge donor base here 18 to 29, because of the universities. Approved donors are screened for a variety of genetic diseases and can make up to $750 a month."

$750 a month is a decent part-time income and I'm certain that compulsive masturbators might be able to double that with a a little indecent inspiration.

Cyros is seeking to add a wide variety of donors to answer the needs of fertility clinics' customers' genetic demands, but have stated that they are not interested in redheaded sperm, due to an overstock of that donation.

Too many redheads?

Freckles must be next.