Palm Sunday History 2024

Palm Sunday traditionally celebrates the Passover donkey ride of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. The Holy Day is so named, because the Messiah was greeted by followers with palms, signaling a triumph of the soul. There is no account from the Roman or Pharisee scribes of this event, although the literacy rate of Roman Palestine hs been estimated at 3%. Few people at that time never how to read or write. Stories were passed from people by word of mouth. The Gospel according to Mark written in Koine Greek originated in Roman Syria in 60 CE, although believers claim that the New Testament came from God himself. The celebration of Palm Sunday first occured in the 4th Century CE at the Church of Jerusalem. The donkey symbolized peace as opposed to war by a horse and covering the path of someone was considered to the hgihest honor in the Eastern world.

It was a good day for the Messiah, who mythiclly wept upon seeing Jerusalem, knowing his ultimate fate.

This Palm Sunday 2025 was a very rainy day.

I went nowhere near a church.

I sat with the venerable Professor Bertell Ollman.

We ate lunch. Dessert was ice cream. Afterwards we watched a nature show about the Evolution of earth. There was no mention on God in the time of the dinosaurs. The Great Reptiles perished in the Great Extinction. Jesus atop a donkey overlooking Jerusalmen understood that fate awaits us all. Persons unknown passed that incident through a thousand mouths until reaching St. Mark, who wrote the earliest Gospel.

The Word of God.

Hearsay.

Standing as the truth through the millenia.

When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

The Quiet of the Equinox - 2025

This afternoon I will travel up to the Cloisters to visit Professor Ollman at his rest home. to the hospital for my monthly blood work. Afterwards I take the M4 bus to the Explorers Club and while away the afternoon in the members lounge. Quiet, dark, and warm. Reading the Zen poems of Ryokan.

When asked to live at the temple of a nobleman, Ryokan sat before his humble Hermitage and wrote for the lord. "The wind gives me enough leaves to make a fire."

Hopefully before the cool climes cease a blaze burns bright at the club___a spring equinox haiku

Twelve hours of sunlight.

Twelve hours of night.

Conversation With Palm Beach # 1

Yeah good morning Allison how are you feeling?

I had the last 3 days off and I basically just wrote. I didn't I didn't bother going into the city but I am heading in there today to pick up some Brooklyn. I just basically stayed around this neighborhood other than going to the Upper East Side to pick up some watches to repair and then sell a piece of gold. I don't't have to do that until tomorrow and I'll go see this book publisher about getting a small photo book published. I'm just going to stop in and see him and that's about it. As for the watches I'll show them to the 47th Street dealers and they offer a price, then I'll call up a private who mught want them.

Rolexes get good money, but most anything else are basically just 20 cents on the dollar. I'll do it, because I just want to get out of the house.

Professor Ollman's library has been sold to some person, who will make a fortune on them. No university wanted them. Raoul saw no value in them. His son sees no value in them. 10,000 books on Marxism and philosophy. Some intact. Others yellowed by age. Pages crumbling to the touch. I read a few, gleaming knowledge in paragraphs buried by words. hoping to understad the rest by osmosis. Maybe when I was younger I might have been able to read a few hundred in the two years I spent elder caring for the professor.

I can't blame him. Wanting to rid of it all. No one reads anymore. He might have gotten $50,000. He wanted them out.His father is up in Yonkers. A resting home. 91 years old. The professor can't remember anything from those books and only wants to go visit his parents in Milwaukee. THey are long gone. The same as so many people. Same for me.

My father in his late 80s always said, "I'm the only one left."

His generation was gone.

At 73 I get that feeling. No one calls. I speak with few old friends. Even fewer family. Thankfully I speak with people on the street. Just sometimes saying hello to feel part of this time.

The books.

Knowledge for scholars.

Most people in this modern society only reead emojiglyphs or badly written texts. Anytime to tell them a fact, the ask, "Really?

As if everything know is bullshit.

Another barrier to reading are the ambient lightbulbs. Yellow light. Candle light is better than them.

I'll talk to you later. I'm heading up to 79th Street.

When I get back this evening, I'll lie in bed lsitening to scinece. Investigating the cosmos with my eyes closed and my mind open to the universe.I have old school sixty watt tungsten bulbs, but they are still dim. Especially for reading philosophy. LATER

A May Bee - Bleecker Street Balcony with a Vu

Bleecker Street afternoon
The 9th floor balcony
Balmy end of May
My birthday
I banished the noises
The traffic
The voices of pedestrians
On the street
The hum of ACs
But not the breeze
Not the Buzz of a scout bee
Seeking sweetness
We have met before
He bigger than the end of April
A brief landing on the railing
Nothing of interest
And he is off
Leaving only the wind
And moi
Un homme tres vieux.

The Professor's Bedroom

The professors bedroom partially denuded of books
I sleep on his pillows.
Where he once rested his head
A half-century__
His mind awash with revolution
Marxism
Social theory
In many languages
A hero of the Struggle
'gainst Capitalism___
The pillows harbor none of these thoughts
They are just pillows
Professor Berthell Ollman rests in Yonkers
With his wife
He rests his head there
Now
A smile on his face
To me
A complete stranger
We all are, But a bigger smile I tell him My head filled by his pillows The revolution is now Siempre___

The Marxist Monster from Milwaukee

The Marxist Monster from Milwaukee

Professor Bertell Ollman

In 2005, as a protest against Israel, Ollman wrote and published a Letter of Resignation from the Jewish People, stating: "Socialist and ex-Jew that I am, I guess I still have too much respect and love for the Jewish tradition I left behind to want the world to view it in the same way as they rightly view and condemn what the ex-Jews who call themselves Zionists are doing in its name. And if changing my status from ex-Jew (current) to non-Jew (projected) stirs even ten good people (God's minyan) into action against the Zionist hijacking of the Jewish label, then this is a sacrifice I am ready to make."

This letter earned the professor the scorn of his Tribe, but he retained his position at NYU as he does till this day.

Last winter I was employed by the professor's loving son to elder care for the Professor at the NYU Bleecker Street professorial dorms. Our days together consist of lunch cooked by Raoul, watching TV, a bowl of ice cream and listen to poetry. We converse about the revolution and the overthrow of the capitalist system surrounded by thousands of books on Marxism, communism, socialism, histories and various fields of thought pertaining to the Struggle, and his hitting the bedroom for his afternoon nap.

Sadly the professor has lost much of his knowledge, but not his humor.

In December I decided to read his 2005 brilliant Letter of Resignation from the Jewish People. One hour at the end of which he nodded his head several times in sublime understanding. I was honored by his attention, but at the end he commented, "I don't agree with everything you read."

"But you wrote this, not me."

"I know that, " he smiled. "But my thoughts on some of it have changed."

"So you want to become a Jew again?"

"What? And give up Moo Shu Pork." We both have a good laugh and I was heartened to aid his quest for the overthrow of Capitalism.

"Workers of the World unite. You have nothing to lose, but your debt."

To read Professor Bertell Ollman's Letter of Resignation, please go to this URL

https://facpub.stjohns.edu/~ganterg/sjureview/vol3-1/07Resignation-Ollman.htm

He begins the letter with this quote;

To this I would only add, “Noam Chomsky, Mordechai Vanunu and Edward Said are Jewish. Elie Wiesel is goyish. So, too, all ‘Jewish’ neo-cons. Socialism and communism are Jewish. Sharon and Zionism are very goyish”. And, who knows, if this reading of Judaism were to take hold, I may one day apply for readmission to the Jewish people.

“Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe”. ---Elie Wiesel, acceptance speech, Nobel Prize for Peace, December 10, 1986.

The Professor ends the letter with this paragraph.

As far as I’m concerned, the comedian, Lenny Bruce, provided the only good answer to this question when he said, "Dig, I'm Jewish. Count Bassie’s Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish. Eddie Cantor is goyish… Marine Corps – heavy goyish… If you live in New York or any other big city, you’re Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you’re going to be goyish even if you’re Jewish… Kool-Aid is goyish. Evaporated milk is goyish even if Jews invented it… Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish.… Negroes are all Jews… Irishmen who have rejected their religion are Jewish… Baton twirling is very goyish."

Like his son I love this man.