Generals and admirals and marshals in a row

Others want to slash the number of generals from the 1,800 who are currently serving—a fantastically high number given Thailand's population of 69 million. The number of active generals, admirals and air chief marshals in the U.S. military, in contrast, is capped by law at 653.

WSJ

Generals and admirals and marshals in a row;

they march around with medals and their numbers only grow.

Their uniforms are crispy as they issue their commands

to fire on protesters and to round up firebrands.

*

Generals and admirals and marshals never flinch

from spending money on medallions, making their eyes squinch.

They never miss a meal and promenade for all to see

their dedication to the fruits of stern hyperbole.

*

Generals and admirals and marshals congregate

without permission or remorse to strut and bloviate.

Like vultures seeking carrion to pick apart and eat

they think the smell of faction and decay is very sweet.

*

Postcard to the President

Murmurs

Therefore go, my son, and thou shalt be favored of the Lord, because thou hast not murmured.
First Nephi. Chapter Three. Verse 6.

Like a mule hitched to the plow,

I will not move -- not anyhow.

The work ahead is too darn hard;

so I murmur and discard

opportunities to serve

and from blessings blithely swerve.

If thy favor I would gain

I must plow through grief and pain;

try and fail, then try again --

such is how God deals with men.

Men, who like the dogged mule,

decidedly will act the fool.

Give me strength, O Holy One,

that doubts and murmurs I may shun!

Daily Diary: 03/20/2019

Wednesday

I’m introducing oatmeal back into my diet, after an absence of nearly 30 years. I use it for fruit cobblers and today I’m making a meatloaf with some oatmeal in it. I have been hesitant to use oatmeal because of the bad memories associated with it. I have to write them out here so maybe they’ll be expunged once and for all from my mind. I don’t want this past episode to stir me up to melancholy madness ever again.

I made a meatloaf years ago using oatmeal and no bread crumbs, which gave me the runs. Back then a lot of things gave me the runs -- especially Amy’s whole wheat pancakes. I had to stop eating them for breakfast, otherwise I would be late for work at the Utah State Tax Commission. Amy took offense at my body’s reaction to her cooking, cuz we ate a lot of whole wheat back then and the food budget, with 8 kids, was very tight. Amy probably thought I was just get snooty or picky or something unspiritual.

After the breakup, but before she filed for divorce, Amy and the kids went to live up in . . . geez, I can’t remember now! Was it Park City or Heber? Someplace up that way. One Sunday I drove up to see them at their church. It was Fast & Testimony Meeting. I bore my testimony -- stuck strictly to the gospel truths and made no mention of my troubles. After Sacrament I went into the Nursery to play with Ed. I had tried to say hello to Amy and her mother, but they both gave me the cold shoulder. So I went to visit Ed. I hadn’t seen any of the kids in weeks. My heart was being flayed. The bishop of the ward called me out of Nursery to talk to me. He was very serious. I still remember exactly one surreal snippet of our conversation:

Bishop: “Amy tells me you refused to eat her cooking anymore.”

Me: “Well, I can’t eat whole wheat bread or pancakes; they give me the runs.”

Bishop:  “Amy feels very uncomfortable with you here, so I’m asking you to please leave.”

I didn’t put up an argument. I got up and left, driving away in the 1969 VW bus I had just bought for five hundred dollars. My hometeacher at the time, Scott Bernhisel, had sold it to me so I could get around, since Amy had taken the family van when she left with the kids. I started to cry on the way back down to Salt Lake. My eyes are starting to ache and moisten as the wound reopens.

Kicked out of church when all I wanted to do was see my kids. That was unfair and uncalled for. And petty and mean. And so very very sad. It’s the sadness that still haunts me today -- the anger and resentment have evaporated over the years.

But today I don’t want to be sad. And nobody WANTS me to be sad, do they? So I hereby banish this episode to Siberia, never to be mentioned or thought about again. So let it be written, so let it be done.

****************************

Don’t be afraid to be indignant. Don’t be afraid to be indignant. Don’t be afraid to be indignant. When I write a poem. When I talk to superiors. When I am served bad food.

a clown as funny as Mel Brooks/never listened to the schnooks/when they said you can't do that/he squashed 'em like a tiny gnat/any clown as old as he/is cause for constant jubilee

An old friend sent me $4.20 by G Pay so I can buy more stamps for the month. That’s enough for postcard stamps, but my postcards to the president are too big and need regular stamps. Still, it was very thoughtful.

I need to record that when Bruce Young picked me up this morning for swimming I was in a black mood, because I couldn’t shake that early morning memory. But his cheery face and militant good humor, cracking ‘Joe Millers’ by the bushel, decided me, once again, that while memory is a pleasant companion it is a terrible master. Perhaps heaven is no more than eternal amnesia . . .

The maintenance crew came by late this afternoon to change the furnace/air conditioning filter.

It’s 545 and I’ve got a meatloaf in the oven and potatoes and cabbage stewing in V-8 juice on the stove. It’s going to be a lovely meal, and so I’ll end my daily diary right here and now. After all . . . what could possibly go wrong with the rest of this particular day? (I know that sounds like a set up line but really & truly I’m sure that nothing at all, good or bad, is fated to happen to me this evening while I continue to watch Deep Space Nine on Netflix.) I do wish the dermatologist office would call to schedule an appointment, though.

Dang, where's the Nang?

URUMQI, China—In this old Silk Road city in western China, a state security campaign involving the detention of vast numbers of people has moved to its next stage: demolishing their neighborhoods and purging their culture . . . Food stalls that sold fresh nang, the circular flatbread that is to Uighur society what baguettes are to the French, are gone . . . Supplanting the Turkic culture that long defined large parts of Urumqi is a sanitized version catering to Chinese tourists. On a recent morning in the Erdaoqiao neighborhood, the once-bustling heart of Uighur Urumqi, nang ovens were nowhere to be seen—but souvenir shops sold nang-shaped pocket mirrors, nang bottle openers and circular throw pillows with covers printed to look like nang.
WSJ

Step right up folks, see the Nang --

the last one left; you'll get a bang!

We found it hiding in a mosque

and now display it in kiosk.

Just pay a dollar for the chance

to sample old Uighur romance.

It's what they ate; it's what they liked.

Without it they cannot get psyched.

A part of ev'ry dollar goes

to Uighar schools and shops and clothes.

(We nurture them so very deft

that soon there won't be any left.)

And for you swine who want some pearls

we also feature dancing girls!

In costumes with a Turkic flare --

look past their veils, if you so dare.

The Old Silk Road was not like this;

we treat our tourists like the Swiss.

So step right up, don't be afeard --

we'll let you pull the Mullah's beard!

to stir them up in the ways of remembrance.

. . . to stir them up in the ways of remembrance.

First Nephi. Chapter Two. Verse 24.

Complacent have I been too long,

my memory relaxed.

Refusing to confess that God

my life has made untaxed.

Stir me up with spirit sweet

and not malign remorse;

lead me with thy love sublime,

and not by savage force!

In Memoriam: W.S. Merwin

W. S. Merwin, a formidable American poet who for more than 60 years labored under a formidable poetic yoke: the imperative of using language — an inescapably concrete presence on the printed page — to conjure absence, silence and nothingness, died on Friday at his home near Haiku-Pauwela, Hawaii. He was 91.

NYT

the setting of a poet like the moon

rising above scrappy mounds of life

finds lumps to take to heaven

or hell

but never leaves them unturned

unexamined

or untainted

when the blood of a poet turns grey

and cold as moon worms

the work is only beginning

and will not end 

until the last ember

of the sun goes out --

and even then

even then

an echo may float up

from the buried deeps

Daily Diary 03/19/2019

Tuesday

Slept fairly well. My rash wasn’t so insistent this morning, for which I give thanks. I’ve only got 3 stamps left, and I have to decide if I want to buy another book of stamps to keep sending postcards to the president for the rest of this month, or if I want to buy a breakfast bagel for 79 cents each morning for the rest of the month. I can’t afford to do both.

I’m leaning towards the bagel. Trump can wait until April for more postcards.

On the other hand, I intend on buying a ramekin this morning so I can start making shirred eggs for breakfast, and then I won’t need a bagel each morning. It would save money, in the long run. I guess I’ll wait and see just how good shirred eggs, with cream, are. Sarah and Brooke might come over this morning; if they do I’ll try the shirred eggs out on Sarah to see what she thinks.

The word that kept running through my head this morning as I got ready to pray was ‘sing.’ Today I don’t care if I make people laugh with my writing if I can just make my words sing -- so that’s what I prayed for. W.S. Merwin, what are you doing to me?

And since I only have $44.63 left in my checking account for the rest of the month I’ve begun praying that Adam will get some more rewrite work he can assign me -- I should NOT have bought that $5.99 ramekin or $4.99 malted milk powder this morning!  

Just thought of a new joke for my imaginary stand up comedian routine:

“I prayed that the Lord would soften my heart, but he moved things up and softened my head instead.”

So here’s my first poem of the day; does it sing?

Bitcoin is in the longest slump of its 10-year history. That is forcing even its most ardent supporters to shelve dreams of global disruption and focus on simply tightening their belts long enough to outlast the downturn.

WSJ

the loss of wealth I never had

is too tragic to talk about

so I'll instead mention

the fact that God

throws money out the window

as my mother used to say

I had a friend

still have him I guess

who gifted me one Satoshi

last year

but I never knew how

to access it or

trade it in

for a book of postage stamps

which I could really use

(WSJ reporter Paul Vigna, who I tweeted this poem to, has retweeted it. That helps to validate my decision to upgrade my literary aspirations.)

************************************

Poets should take a vow of poverty, and then work like hell to break it.

The only vice I’ve never embraced is becoming a workaholic.

There’s a NYT editorial about vaquitas, homely little porpoises down in Mexico, that I want to write about. They are nearly extinct:

In recent decades, the sleek, wide-eyed vaquita porpoise has been pushed to the brink of extinction by poachers pursuing another critically endangered sea creature, the totoaba, a fish whose swim bladder sells on the Chinese black market for thousands of dollars. The porpoises end up caught in nets intended for the totoaba and killed as collateral damage.

it's been decided

in the Sea of Cortez

that the bladders of

white Caucasian males

(Homo sapiens)

make ideal aphrodisiacs

for black market Chinese

and

the lips of telemarketers

(west coast only)

will be the main ingredient

of all nutritional supplements

marketed by Amway, doTerra,

And Nu-skin

Until further notice

But wait - there’s more -

The dried earlobes of any

North American on the paleo diet

Can now be added to soups

Stews and ragouts

For an amazing and calorie free burst

Of umami

Put that in your gillnet

And smoke it

************************

Sarah and all the kids came over around 1130, straight from the dentist. And they were all eating donuts! I made shirred eggs for Sarah in my brand new ramekin -- she said she liked them, although they didn’t look like the shirred eggs on the websites I looked at for the recipe. I also made a peach cobbler, which Sarah had a big piece of. It makes me happy to see her eat a good meal.

I asked her to drop me off at the Rec Center when she left at one. Soaked in the hot tub and did a few laps, thinking all the while: Could I live like this anywhere else? Probably not. Who needs money when everything is pretty much the way I want it already?

I picked up a cardboard box on the way home to pack some canned goods in my pantry, like pears and corn, that I hardly ever use -- to put in my storage closet.

Someone is playing a trumpet outside and laughing hysterically, like the setup to a movie scene. I’m waiting for the camera to pan to see who it is. There is also what sounds like a congested saxophone. New Orleans come to Provo?

***************

I forgot to mention yesterday that I got a letter from Daisy’s mission president out in Irvine California. Looks to be a form letter, but still it’s thoughtful of him to send it out. He writes, in part, “I am happy to inform you that your daughter has been called by the Lord to serve as a Trainer of a new missionary . . . a trainer is the most important calling in the mission . . . you may be rightly pleased with her progress and contributions as a missionary.

Pres. Samuel W. Clark Jr.”

I had a few more ill-tempered and petty complaints to make about things that happened today, but after reviewing the above letter I’ve decided that posterity will not suffer if I forego my kvetching. It’s only 432 but I am done with the day. I’ve taken Tylenol for my persistent backache and had an open faced sandwich for dinner and said my prayers and washed up the dishes. There were four voicemails on my Tracfone when I got back from the Rec Center; I ignored them and turned off the phone. If I get bored watching Deep Space Nine I have a good book on Kindle to read -- all about Suleiman the Magnificent.

I wish I could sleep like a mountain and wake up like an avalanche

God throws money out the window

Bitcoin is in the longest slump of its 10-year history. That is forcing even its most ardent supporters to shelve dreams of global disruption and focus on simply tightening their belts long enough to outlast the downturn.

WSJ

the loss of wealth I never had

is too tragic to talk about

so I'll instead mention 

the fact that God 

throws money out the window

as my mother used to say

I had a friend

still have him I guess

who gifted me one Satoshi

last year

but I never knew how

to access it or

trade it in

for a book of postage stamps

which I could really use

A soft heart and a firm resolve

. . .  I did cry unto the Lord; and behold he did visit me, and did soften my heart that I did believe all the words which had been spoken by my father . . . 
First Nephi. Chapter Two. Verse 16.

A soft heart and a firm resolve

are what I need today

and so I ask the Lord to make

me pliable as clay.

Clay that can be molded

and then sets in fixed design

to celebrate the Potter

that does make the clay to shine.

And if I crack a little bit

with handling that's rude,

I'll bow my head again and pray

that I can be reglued.