Stags Shagging In Season

Written Oct 24, 2011

Putney was not exactly the center of London, but I chose to stay with Sara. We were the best of friends. Dawn came early at her house. Every morning the record executive walked her sweet little dog, Maysie, in Richmond Park. I was a stranger to the Royal Park, the largest in London, and was pleasantly surprised by its wild expanse of bracken meadows and even more so by the spectacle of rutting stags. Autumn was the time of the year, when the male red deer contest for hinds by a display of their antlers, bellowing, and plain old knock-down fighting.

The stags roared at each other, as we walked past the harems. We were no threat, but barking dogs bring out the protective instinct in the big males. They don't want anything fucking around with their mates and I stay well out of their way. Antlers have points and Sara told me that several walkers had been charged by the big bucks.

While I am covered by National Health in the EEU thanks to my Irish passport, I have little interest in getting gored by an irate stag. Sara guided me to safety. Maysie was not a barker. She knew her place on the feeding chain and I gave her a little treat as a reward for not irking the deer.

She was a good little dog.

Palestine Peace Train

Back in the late 19th century European Jews sought a homeland to call their own. The obvious choice was Palestine with their historical ties to the Levant dating back the End of the Exodus and an existing community of 10,000 in Jerusalem and three other cities. By 1918 the Jewish population in Palestine had expanded to 70,000 versus 320000 Muslims. Arab ownership amounted to 94% of Land.

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire allowed Britain and France to redraw the Middle East without regard to previous provincial boundaries. Straight lines defined the borders of the new nations. Not so Palestine which the British ruled under a mandate as the French oversaw Syria, whose frontier with Iraq ran as straight as a crow's flight.

Seeking to end the Diaspora Jews from Europe emigrated to their ancient kingdom in hopes of creating a homeland far from the eternal programs and antisemitism of Christians.

Jews migrated everywhere. Mostly to the Americas, but for better or worse many stayed where they were. It was home for a landless tribe.

The Holocaust visited on the Ashkenazi by the Third Reich reinforced that reality that the Jewish people were not safe in foreign countries and in 1948 the United Nations voted to create Israel, giving the Jews 60% of the land.

Over the next seventy-five years Israel practiced apartheid tactics to evict the original inhabitants from their traditional homes citing the millenia old Bible as their lease to a kingdom extinct for nearly two thousand years.

Last week Hamas said enough and struck Israel without warning from their highly vaulted Mossad and multi-million dollar security systems. Hamas launched thousands of missiles at settlements and cities across the Jewish state and over 15,000 fighters easily breached the border wall to spread death to settlers and soldiers across the desert as if this was their Tet Offensive. More like the Mongol Horde. No one was spared. Not soldiers. Not civilians nor men, women or children. The dead number over 1400 with thousands wounded, and hundreds taken hostages. The IDF was nowhere, Shin Bet having trained conscripts to be an army of occupation instead of soldiers.

The assault was finally stemmed three days later. The attackers fought to the last bullet. There were no prisoners. Hamas had nothing to lose.

Stunned Neyhayahu promised retaliation and Israel has ruthlessly adopted the Nazi tactic of leveling the Warsaw Ghetto or the push them into the sea strategy.

The world awaits worse. Young Israeli soldiers are amassing outside of Gaza. War seems to be the only course between two people who no longer believe in peace. The West Bank is also under assault by the IDF. The Two-State Plan is dead. It always has been an illusion.

There is only one sane course.

It is not war.

It is peace.

Peace between two people who don't speak.

Who believe extermination as the only answer, but the next step to peace will be a peace convoy from Jerusalem and Gaza to act as a human shield from Armageddon, but like Hamas the vast majority of Jews see red and I can't blame them, but fighting in Gaza could become Israel's Stalingrad. I hope for peace.

As Winston Churchill said, "It's better to jaw jaw than war war."

Tough As Porter Rockwell

My father claimed that Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormons, had been a distant relative on his father's side of the family. My aunt has backed up this assertion, saying that our line had remained in Maine, while the prophet's clan had drifted from the mountains in Vermont to the religiously burned-over lands of Western New York. After announcing his discovery of the golden tablets of the Moroni, Joseph Smith had formed the Latter Day Saints. Their belief in polygamy had angered more conservative religionists and the Mormons had been driven by angry mobs, but they hadn't gone without a fight and the most infamous of their protector had been Orrin Porter Rockwell.

The young convert had served as bodyguard to the Prophet, who had said to Porter at a Christmas party. "I prophesy, in the name of the Lord, that you — Orrin Porter Rockwell — so long as ye shall remain loyal and true to thy faith, need fear no enemy. Cut not thy hair and no bullet or blade can harm thee."

According to Wikipedia the Mormon Samson had earned a bloodthirsty reputation with an attempted assassination of Lilburn Boggs, the former governor of Missouri, who had signed Executive Order 44 on October 27, 1838 known as the "Extermination Order" evicting Mormons from Missouri by violent and deadly means. Old Port had defended his murdering ways by saying, "I never shot at anybody, if I shoot they get shot!... He's still alive, ain't he?" His former home was the site of the Utah State Prison. He was no Taggard Romney.

Singapore Ready to Green Light Kidney Trade

Written July 22, 2012

While I was up in Boston, my sister found a medical survey at a hospital needed guinea pigs for a sleep-deprivation study. The doctor in charge considered me a good candidate and request that I submit to a physical at Beth Israel. The results confirmed my health was stellar, except for heightened kidney readings.

"You should have it checked out with your doctor." The Beth Israel physician suggest and I never heard from them again.

I visited my doctor in Staten Island and we went out to lunch at a harborside bar. After hearing about my kidney readings, he asked several questions. "Are you experiencing any lethargy, weakness, shortness of breath, or generalized swelling?"

"No."

The bartender came up to take our order. Neil signaled him to come back in a minute.

"How's your heart?"

"68 resting. 75 after a three-minute stress test."

Neil asked several more health related questions abour my drinking and eating habits. Being a hypochondriac each answer seemed like the wrong one and at the end of his interrogations, I asked, "Am I going to die?"

"Everyone is going to die, but your reading was probably from your drinking habits. I wouldn't worry about them other than to chill out on binge drinking." Neil indicated we were quaffing Stella Artois drafts. "Remember moderate your excess."

"Thanks." His counsel eased my mind, so when I read in the newspaper that Singapore was easing restrictions of the sale of kidneys, I contemplated selling one and phoned Neil about the commercialization of my body parts.

"It's not a good idea." His voice sounded serious.

"But you said I was healthy." I figured I could get at least $10,000 for my right kidney.

"When I said you wouldn't die, I meant as long as you had both kidneys. Not one."

"But I could live with only one?" I could use the money.

"Yes, but you couldn't drink. Your choice."

"Yes, but you couldn't drink."

"Oh." That stipulation settled the debate. My body shall remain whole, unless the USA has need of my kidney for a Space Shuttle tile. Just because I'm an outlaw doesn't mean that I'm unpatriotic, but until then I'll drink with moderation. I don't have the funds to do it any other way.

Myrtle Avenue Autumn Evening

The sunset autumn early
Peach orange
Topped by a soft lavender
Then gray clouds
Losing the light.

Inside Duncan's Fish
Two grown men
The counterman
A faithful customer
Argue as friends
Like we do on Myrtle Avenue
A shared laugh
A see you soon.

Young Chef ambushes me with a middle finger.
A friendly salute
And a grin.
He got me first
The way us is
On Myrtle Avenue
At sunset.

Chili Chili Bang Bang

Several years ago the City of London was thrown into a panic by a eye-searing cloud. Police swept the streets for the potential terrorist only to discover a Thai chef preparing his monthly supply of chilly sauce “nam prik pao”.>

Firefighters in bio-hazard suits removed the cooking pot to the protests of the chef.

"I was making a spicy dip with extra-hot chillies that are deliberately burnt. To us, it smells like burnt chilli and it is slightly unusual. I can understand why people who weren't Thai would not know what it was. But it doesn't smell like chemicals. I'm a bit confused."

Anyone driving a motorcycle by a Thai foodstand on Pattaya's Soi Buakhao has been subjected to chili peppers' choking fumes, however Thais regard the acrid aroma with the same delight Westerners hold for burning BBQ flesh.

I'm partial to chilis having been initiated into their benefits through Mexican food in 1970. The Phoenix Room on Commonwealth Avenue was the only Mexican restaurant in Boston. The one-armed Mexican chef prided herself in her blinding chili sauce and rightfully so because Mexico was the source of the chili pepper.

Thais refuse to believe their signature spice was farang, for peppers have been discovered in 13th century graves in Europe and Christopher Columbus introduced the Mexican chili to the 'civilized' world, so that 'Capsicum frutescens' spread along the trading routes into Asia, as people recognized its nutritional values as well as its propensity to accelerated the heart rate and facilitate the release of the body's natural painkilling chemical, endorphin.

Thois Londoners in Soho were not so receptive and neither are most farangs in Thailand, who regard chilis as a poison, especially when they exit from the other end of the digestive system.

Me I eat them regularly and can handle most everything in Thailand, except those chicken feet in the Chinese soup.

Yech!

Run for your lives.

Ying Gai La-wang.

Viva Che Fifty-Three Years Later

Like every other human born on this planet, Che Guevera began his life as a child. His bloodline was partially Irish and his last name was Lynch. His father laster stated that the blood of Irish rebels ran in his son's veins.

His youth devoted to education and according to Wikipedia the CIA considered the Argentinean a deep intellectual for a Latino.

Three separate tours of Latin America in 1948, 1950, and 1951 radicalized the young medical student and he vowed to fight oppression. The 1954 CIA-led coup d'etat against the Arbenz government in Guatemala convinced Che that only armed resistance could combat the power of the dictators and the USA. He fled with his name of a death list.

Mexico was a safe haven for revolutionaries.

He married and traveled without fear.

Che also met up with his old Cuban comrades.

Fidel Castro led the anti-Batista 26th of July Movement.

Their 1956 invasion of Cuba was a disaster. Most of the rebels were captured after landing and either killed or executed. The rest escaped into the mountains.

The Revolution didn't die.

Che and Fidel were a good team.

Fidel was a pitcher.

Che was not a sportsman.

He was a gun-carrying revolutionary.

Same as Fidel.

Dedicated to freedom.

On January 1, 1959 the bearded ones triumphed over the Batista regime and the dictator fled the island with over $300,000,000 from his corruption scams.

Over the next decade Cuba became of beacon of Marxist resistance against the Yankee empire. Che wanted to spread the revolution to other shores. He failed miserably in Africa and set his sights on Bolivia, the poorest nation in South America.

La Paz the capitol was 12,000 feet above sea level.

Only the Quechans lived higher than inhabitants of sky-hgh city.

Life was hell for the workers and poor.

Life was hand to mouth.

Children rarely lived past 10.

In November of 1966 Che said good-bye to his second wife and children.

His first loves had always been the people and 'la luta'.

His eleven months in Bolivia were a bigger failure than the Congo. The peasants informed on their 'saviour' and on the morning of October 8 the world's leadng revolutionary was captured by the Bolivian Army in the Yuro Ravine close to Sucre.

Twice wounded in a gun battle against overwhelming forces, he threw down his shattered weapon and declared,"Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and I am worth more to you alive than dead."

The Bolivian Army had no respect for 'banditos'.

Che was taken to a small impoverished village, La Higuera, where Gary Prado, the Bolivian captain in command of the army company, ordered his execution.

When asked if he was thinking about his immortality, Che replied, ""No, I'm thinking about the immortality of the revolution."

In the late morning of October 9, 1967 a drunk sergeant shot the guerrilla leader three times.

Thus creating a legend.

And some think a saint.

October 9, 1967.

Fifty years ago.

La Revolucion siempre.