he read a book!

THE DAY I READ A BOOK

(click Jimmy's photo to hear him sing this song!) ...... Jimmy Durante

When I look back through life I find,
Lots of memories remain,
Certain days stay in my mind
And keep running through my brain,
I remember the day that Ederle swam the channel, what a splash.
I remember the Wall St. Crash
Or when Winchell first shouted, “Flash!”
But there’s one day that I recall though it was years ago.
All my life I will remember it, I know.

I'll never forget the day I read a book.
It was contagious, seventy pages.
There were pictures here and there,
So it wasn't hard to bear,
The day I read a book.
It's a shame I don't recall the name of the book.
It wasn't a history, I know, because it had no plot.
It wasn't a mystery, because nobody there got shot.
The day I read a book. I can't remember when,
But one o' these days, I'm gonna do it again.

Ah, lit'rature!
There's nothin' like sittin' home next to the fireplace, with a pipe, a dog, and a good book at your feet.
But if you walk into my house, you’ll see loads of books.
And believe they are not there just for appearance.
I press an awful lot of butterflies.
My literary appetite is “stupendious.”
They don’t write them quick enough for me.
The book of the month didn’t come out fast enough,

So I read the book of the week!
The book of the week didn’t come out fast enough,
So I read the book of the day!
The book of the hour!
The book of the minute!
But that wasn’t even fast enough.
So far this week I’ve read six books that haven’t been written yet!
But I’m not confined to home reading.
I once spent two weeks in library.
I would have been outta there sooner,
But I had buried my nose in a book and forgot which book I buried it in!
A “dilemmia.”

Why on the first page of this book they printed the author’s name,
And right underneath it was a private phone number.
Copyright-1-9-3-9.
But I’m gonna send it back.
I’ve been dialing that number for four months
and nobody has answered.
Nevertheless, while perusing through the library,
I found the tract that I was looking for.
It wasn’t the Encyclopedia “Britannia”!
It wasn’t Ferverum Briago.
It was a book that was 3,857 pages thick.
And I’m glad I took it!
It fit perfectly under the short leg of my pool table!

It was not a history, I know because it had no plot.
It wasn't a mystery, because nobody there got shot.
The day I read a book.
I can't remember when,
But one o' these days,




I'm gonna do it again.
Yes, and one of these days,
I’m gonna do it again!

dances to spring: 11:11 1.11.11

purple iris

white magnolia

blue primroses

forget-me-nots

violets

these are here now...

the rest will surely follow....

it was the best of times....

it certainly isn't news that new technologies make the world smaller; songs celebrate that like it's a good thing. what are the actual dynamics of a "smaller world"? we become aware of ways of being: thinking, dressing, eating, talking, believing, that we'd never imagined. and some are thrilled, and some are made afraid, leading to fear's eternal partner -- hatred.

i'm sure no generation since the beginning of generations has escaped this duality. thing is, somehow i figured that some day, like now, my lifetime, "we" would "wise up." we haven't. we have the greatest power humans have ever had to be a literal part of lives anywhere on the globe; why fear invasions from space? we've got your mosque burners right here.

but let's dig even deeper, because, as you know, some of those unwanted mosques weren't mosques at all. this brings us to another feature of a smaller world, the tremendous ease of fear-mongering. when an "other" becomes apparent, someone will also appear who can gain something from demonizing them.

the catalysts for these thoughts are several. watching adults convince other adults that health care would include death panels. watching adults convince other adults that mexicans, or muslims, are here to hurt you. they came for the mexicans and i said nothing....

watching jon stewart equate truth-tellers and lie- tellers since they both raise their voices, then watching keith olbermann and rachel maddow try discussing/debating that with him. (though "can't i see you (and you me) as you (or me) and not as truth-teller or lie-teller, not as blue or red, but just as us?" is a valid question.)

then ted koppel piles on, lamenting a newstime past that never existed, even in his own newstime past. then olbermann responds, with great insight. and then the rest of the world piles on. and i have to tell you that i'm watching the truth being thrown out with the bathwater.

part of the facilitation of this roil are... (drumroll) ... the new technologies. and while i am saying that the new tech- nologies have allowed a fuller blossoming of propaganda than humans on earth have ever seen, [propaganda by definition being the convincing of the many by the few things that are not, when un-spun, true], they have opened my door too.

there have always been liars, and there has always been a moneyed class. and since the moneyed have always controlled the media, the moneyed have always had the ability to spread whatever it wants, wherever it wants. and if you disagree, well, we have ways....

remember when pocket calculators cost more than iphone4s do now? one no longer needs to be of any certain class to get one. at our fingertips we have: all of history, much, from the most recent century or so, with actual tape, film, and video. there no longer has to be any debate as to who said what to who. koppel is wrong: until now there has been no uncorrupt news. but there is now.

what we have now, with msnbc, with progressive radio, and with "the record," is the ability for the unmoneyed to reach the entire planet with the truth. and with the proof to back it up. with twitter and youtube and blogs, we can keep up with each other in an instant.

who is telling the truth and who is lying is no longer up to the observer; when anyone says, 'i was never there,' within an instant the video proving the lie is up online.

so no. the equivalencies have it completely backwards. fox is proven to be lying night after night after night.

if they're the same, it's like the teacher saying to the bully who was beating up the skinny kid (captured on iphone), "now i don't know who started it, but you both go to your desks and i don't want to hear from you again."


simple: that teacher is ignorant. even simpler: i am not.

why?

WHY DO YOU PAINT?

(a google-found poem)

Why do you paint on stained glass?

Why do You Paint Your Car?

Why do you paint the bottom of a boat?

Why do you paint fantasy?

Why do you paint the bottom part of trees white?

Why do you paint your dead with red ochre?

Why do you paint wood?

Why do you paint contemporary/abstract art?

Why do you paint a canoe black?

Why do you paint naked people?

Why do you paint the barrels?

Why do You Paint Your Car?

Why do you paint?

For exactly the same reason I breathe.

That’s not an answer.

There isn’t any answer.

How long hasn’t there been any answer?

As long as I can remember.

And how long have you written?

As long as I can remember.

I mean poetry.

So do I.

E. E. Cummings