Saturday, September 10, 2005
TERROR LOANS Thus far, it appears that only eleven per cent of loans granted to business firms located in Washington, D.C and New York City areas designed to help them to recover from losses incurred during Terrorist Activities on September 11, 2001 got there. It appears obvious that most of such funds so allocated by our Congress have gone awry into other hands. It is of special importance and urgency that we think about these facts while we are in the process of preparing loans for those who have suffered losses in the Katrina floods. Federal funds already total over six hundred million dollars and we all think we know where it is supposed to be used. To permit the commercial banks to profit from such an emergency program constitutes, to me, "a wrongful act." It crippled the previous program designed to help during the Terrorist scare, and the Flood package now being started is a potential bonanza for the same people who are especially aware of how to work loopholes in the legislation. This might well prove to be another example of the use of the old system of putting the foxes in charge of poultry house security. It doesn't work. I am not aware of any investigation of such obvious mis-application of funds,but your daily paper is featuring them them one-by-one. Thus far, I have read of a Pet Shop located in a Rocky Mountain state which is alleged to have have contended that pet owners in New York City and around the Pentagon building in D.C. and the surrounding area of Northern Virginia could no longer, because of the Terrorist attacks could not afford to bring their pets in for regular shots, clips, curries and cures. A Perfume Salon located in one of the Caribbean Isles is reported to have applied for and received such a loan. The owner once again can again walk tall with assurance among fellow West Indies perfume people confident of his abilities to deal with future problems of a like nature. The was another one in our own local paper yesterday but I forget what sort of gadget they make, I have been led to wonder why it appears that none of these loan applicants seem to have been informed of the origination of the loan funds. What is the explanation? Or, need there be one? A.L.M. Sept 10, 2005 [c416wds]
Thursday, September 08, 2005
DUET One of these bickering days the political factions constantly engaging in narrow criticism are going to be forced to realize that no young people will be interested in even aspiring to - some day - become president of our nations. It was an inspiring thing to see former Presidents George Bush and William Jefferson Clinton working together as a team meeting with survivors of the Tusami disasters. You have, no doubt, seen them at work again as a team. I watched them along the groups and shaking hands with some, hugging oldsters, accepting pats on their shoulders from some "touchers" and even high-fiveing some kids standing on folding chairs in the background. Those two former heads of our nation really know how to "work a crowd", don't they I wondered, at the time, how they could do so with such earnestness and sincerity when each of them - Bill Clinton, in particular, must have each been painfully aware of the fact that - at that moment - the opposition party in our nation's capital was eagerly seeking for anything and everything that might be used - or misused to make George Bush look bad in the New Orleans area. New Orleans ..."The Crescent City",and, more recently, "The Big Easy" -has long been for most of us a place for the enjoyment of living. It was a fun spot of the nation in many ways. It was the capital of the music world as far as "jazz" music was concerned. The "French Village" - unchanged even as it changed nightly striving always to hold its title as national center of night clubs, jazz music and sex sensationally. In he smoothness of the name itself - when said by natives - N.O. has a certain old-fashioned charm, elegance about it which never got transported to Vegas and other fun spot We are not so mindful of the importance of the commercial port at lower end of the Mississipi system. That's where most of the mid-western harvest of grains find its way to markets all over the world; that's where my coffee and yours enters these United States. It will be a great port again. During the next few weeks the political clique still in charge in New Orleans will mount a campaign outlined in a speech this morning in Washington. It will accuse George W. Bush of having repeatedly diverted federal funds allocated to repair and maintain levees to other projects.. A paper trail is available which sow what was requested for what project. The levees which broke a week or so ago are not mentioned. If diversions were made in funds, they were made in New Orleans by local political talent. And, you thought waters of the flood had a bad smell about them! A.L.M. September 8, 2005 [c471wds]
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
ONE GOOD REASON Would someone, please, explain to me why those authorities who are, apparently, still in charge of whatever they seem to think might be done to ease the plight of the people of the New Orleans, insist that the major portion of the toxic water in which the city has been rotting is being pumped "back" into Lake Pontchartrain rather than downstream in to the Gulf the way of the already polluted Mississippi River? Why change Lake Pontchartrain into a cesspool by pumping flood water back where it came? We have heard praise and approval for the present plan: "Send the water back where it came from - the Lake!" These same people will refer to the levees along the lake shore which broke and allowed the flood waters to seek and find lower levels in the city. They will say those levees have been "restored", "Rebuilt" or "repaired". In truth those breaks have been been temporarily "plugged" best. You don't "rebuild" by tossing tons of sandbags until flows become trickles. Even bull-dozing dirt over the broken area by thinning the walls of the levees upstream site of the break. The bad places have been "patched" one might say or the catch-all "fixed" can be applied - hoping any future local rain will not help the lake find new outlets. There can be little doubt the health situation in New Orleans is serious. The toxic content is excessive. Most of the illnesses usually caused by such contamination of weeks or months to strike. That is one reason why what is happening today in New Orleans is important to you; to me - to all of us. Does it bother to know that the contaminated wastes of the Katrina flood are being "saved" for potential in Lake Pontchartrain and in the blood of some who have been in close contact with the waters for a week or more? Think about it. Take it seriously. A.L.M. Sept.7, 2005 [c335wds]
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
HAIR DON'TS Artists have disagreed rather widely in depicting the hair styles worn by early inhabitants of the Garden of Eden. The male often had a rather short covering on his head and neatly curled in trim ringlets. That was the preferred "Adam" look." The "Eve" - a feminine style in Garden couturier's shop talk - featured length or every other quality in most versions. Long hair was very much in demand due to it marked shortage of first quality, sizable fig leaves. Long hair styles were "in" and "out" for both men and women for centuries, and now that I ,personally, am in a counting stage which allows me to look at pretty much the whole of the past century, I would say I came along at a time when long hair was on its way out. Woman began to "bob" their hair and during the celebrated "Flapper Era"of the 1920's is filled with memories of pert young girls with short hair, short skirts, short patience with all males unable to wiggle to such dance tunes as "The Charleston", Five-Foot-Two" and "Black Bottom." en trimmed back some, waxed and oiled down to the scalp. They strummed dance tunes on shortened tenor guitar called a ukulele - which we shortened to "uke". When the 1920's got to "29" we ran out of money. Hair care became a matter of just hanging to what we had. Our "Barber Shops" weer all segregated and sex-regated, as well. There were no signs saying: "Men Only!" but it was understood that men when to barber shops; women to beauty "salons" or "parlors. In the summer time you might see a domineer mother in a man's barber shop overseeing her kid's annual sheering. Now and then a nervous, distraught Mama used to have to stand by while Junior got his first hair cut. Today we have a wide variety of services in barber shops including a price schedule which knocks your hat off so your hair - standing on end at that moment, is easier to cut. Zip! Spang! Buzz Snip! It all over! There now, ante up. There is, of course, a wide variety these days in styles You can stay old-fashioned ,or sedate if you, like and stay with the same old mold or you can add a little adventuresome novelty to you home life - even engender possible grounds for divorce by getting one of those "spike" hairdos that are so popular right now. Get your barber to sop you hair down with a heavy oil or a mild wax - three-inch length, more or less and wait eagerly while he expertly fingers sections of hair into upright peaks, Indian tepees, Egyptian pyramids, or pointed machine cogs all over your skull casing! Then step out of that barber's chair and stand tall in full confidence as a new man! Never before will you ever realized what it means to be on your own. I've gone back to "skee-ball" custom cuts myself called "flat tops",""crew cuts" if you need to sound more formal. My hairbrush is a bath towel. My "barber" is one of my daughters who has a hirsute husband and who has raised two well-shorn boys. .L.M. September 6, 2005 [c549wds]
Monday, September 05, 2005
SARAH GRAHAM - POET
Sarah Estes Graham is a poet. Past experience tells I had best refer to her merit among us as being a "poetess". I've never cared for the term. Such subtle terms shift and rearrange a person's origins to diminish, I think, many fine talents in subtle, but deeply important, ways. Enough, I 'd say, that you know the name "Sarah" to be feminine and that I speak of "her" works and the abilities "she" exemplifies. As a poet I find Sarah Estes Graham sets me free to enter with her into a word -world fraught with images which would never have been had she been "a poetess" seeing things as being always delicately inactive, full of charm but lacking in vigor and substance for endurance. Her brief poem titled "Nagasaki" was, for a long time, the only one of her poems I had ever read. Each of us has our own pre-set ideas of how a poet or a poetess might write about this Japanese city which has a special niche in history. She turns thing around for me by abruptly speaking of radical change. The line of first impression reads: "The potato peels fall to the floor in a country of rice." To me that line meant, "we are in Japan - a room within a larger area, where the prevailing culture of centuries has been supplanted by a starchy, heavy potato-headed one. It was not that there was anything amiss with that only the novelty of peels plopping on the floor seemed out of context.. .hard to accept. where rice alone had fallen so long. I also had a picture of Bismark, having wagon loads of potatoes hauled in to feed starving mid-Europeans. The peasants fed the spuds to their hogs because everyone knew that potatoes caused leprosy ! We have time for another line the poem "Nagasaki" - the second: "The tatami needs replacing, We must participate in something." How did I know "tatami" referred to floor coverings in Japan? I don't know, but it helps to be aware of that fact. They were ritually sized and always made of straw with cloth sewed to the side. They were fitted together - again ritually - on the smoothed surface of the dirt floor. Size was rigidly controlled and they were never to placed in a manner which allowed any three or four corners to meet. Misfortune would follow in tiles were thus strew about. Foreigns would not know the floor needed attention and natives need things to do. The rest of the poem contains other such ideas: should they believe the new light which has come? what about truth and value in the old? ""Hope comes lean and sculpted" she feels ."I thought happiness was fat." She seeks "Antarctic peace" "unpopulated and and spacious. She feels empty:"I feel some closer bone"; "Wisdom guts us. An empty seat on a near full train." Remember the name: Sarah Estes Graham. Right now she is a student at the University of Virginia. Soon she will be among our nation's leading poets. A.L.M. Sept. 5, 2005 [c521wds]
Sunday, September 04, 2005
SOLE SUBJECT One subject dominates just about every conversation you have this week. Regardless of where you may have started you will end up discussing some phase of news about the floods along our Gulf coast. If you try to escape from flood reports and more of the same by turn away from the five or six news channels on your TV set to other cable and stations which clutter the air in a constant old reruns, low budget cooking, gardening or home improvement demonstrations,you have strange sensation of being a quitter, of running away from, or avoiding the harsh reality of the day's events. This "what else is happening?" feeling drives you the long string of cable and some random stations each pushing their own cause. That ,too, can be extremely dull and, often, that sameness chases us back to the news stations. There is a marked danger we may try to take on too much news in a constant stream of re-hashed details.. When you start see the same film clips being show all over again, its time to take a break from "watching". The very people who are this week's prime watchers of new events will, next week, avoid watching news. Their entire awareness of the situation will be depend almost entirely on the spoken word of a favorite TV "talking head" who spouts the news each evening. Each of us abrogates a portion of our civic duty when we fail to keep up with the news events of the day. It can so easily be overdone with our modern communication advantages - radio, TV, FAX or our computers. If we go through spells of "over-listening" or "over-watching" we are asking for trouble we do not need. The decisions we are going to be called upon to make in the near future may determine what, why and how something strange happened to us - as a nation - in the Fall of the year of 2005. We must make certain such decisions are founded on intelligent awareness of what has taken place. A.L.M. September 4, 2005 [c356wds]
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