Gary Presley

In Memoriam

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Mon, 28 May 2012 13:37:00 +0000

V. B. Presley, US Army 1936-1958, Philippines, Okinawa

My father came home, as did my uncle, James Pope, who was drafted in the middle of his senior year of high school and sent to fly the "Hump."

Others did not. My childhood friend, William Wood, Jr., a graduate of the Citadel, died in a crash of his F-4 Phantom in Vietnam. Marine Sgt. Richard Cutbirth, my sister-in-law's cousin, charged a Viet Cong machine gun, earned a Silver Star, and came home in a casket.

Where have all the young men gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young men gone?
Gone for soldiers every one

The View from Down Here

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:11:00 +0000

Order here for 99 cents

I've been writing for publication for about fifteen years. I don't know why I began. Ego, perhaps, or self-satisfaction, or a sense of accomplishment. In fact, I sold the first article I ever wrote, a historical article about the little community of Aurora, Missouri which had the good luck, or misfortune, of being platted out on top of significant reserves of lead and related minerals.

I've not become a household name since then, but I have published in some national venues, with most of my success coming from the personal essay, or creative nonfiction essays.

Many of the essays included in The View from Down Here have been published in other venues, but many of those published appear here in their original form, mostly meaning longer than the edited/published versions.

So why now? Why Kindle? Ego, again, but also because I think that electronic publishing—digital books—will become more prominent as a medium for transmitting information. If that's the case, I want my essays in that form together rather than having them scattered throughout independent and unrelated archives.

We have a Kindle Fire, one my wife bought without talking about the decision with me. She bought it to assemble a portable collection of children's books for the little person who lives with us. I have used it a bit, and it is easy to use, and it's especially colorful and realistic when reading a soon-to-be three-year-old a book like Pigtastic! The illustrations in books we've downloaded so far are static, but I suppose given the capacity of the device, we will soon see a merger of film and text.

The View from Down Here has nothing so fancy. It has ten essays about life.

Cooking for Dogs
Triptych
Ruby-throat Fusion
The Part that Kept Me from Screaming
In the Wake of the Wind
You Are What You Eat
A Pot to Pee in
Prejudice
No One Was Coming
Peter, Paul, and Mary

If you buy it, I hope you'll go to the Amazon page and write a short review.

What You Want, What You Need

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Tue, 22 May 2012 19:42:00 +0000

You can't always get what you want

But if you try sometimes
well you might find

You get what you need

Mick and Keith wrote that, and it makes for a decent zen-life approach, all things considered.

What I've wanted for years—hey, I've been wearing prescription glasses since the seventh grade—is a pair of rimless glasses. For years I've settled for the John Denver-like round, wire-frame specs because that design was the closest to the rimless glasses, which were quite expensive until recently.

We have Sarah Palin to thank, I think, for that trickle-down effect. She was a big hit when she danced around McCain in her Kazuo Kawasaki Eyeglasses-704, which still retail for around $400-$500.

Mine weren't that much, but they cost enough. The thing is, now that I have them, I don't like them. Their sturdy enough, despite the fact they're held together by a single-bar nose piece and the two ear pieces. But they are exceptionally hard to keep clean. I can't understand why. Yes, the glasses have the Transition lenses that darken in sunlight, but I have had that type of lens previously. I have even gone so far as to use the lint-less cloth and cleaning solution the industry recommends, but I still end up with smears.

Recently, I scrubbed them with the cleaning solution, rinsed them thoroughly in water, and left them in the sun on the deck. I don't know if that did the trick, however. Daisy the Boxer grabbed them while I was in the house and bit a dime-size hole in one lens.

No, the new lens isn't any easier to clean.

I wonder how many things I have always wanted—we're talking denial here because of financial constraints instead of free choice—would turn out to be less than expected. I suppose the first question is "Why should I want certain things?" A Mont Blanc cannot communicate any better than a Bic. A Timex is as accurate as a Rolex. Luckily, I want neither of those items, but I know there is something out there that I do want—a home theater system, a van that squats rather than one with a wheelchair lift, a house with an ocean view—that might disappoint me after acquisition.

That's odd to think. I am generally an optimist, or at least I am an optimistic realist. To believe that I will be disappointed seems as if I am creating an energy vacuum that will draw disappointment to me.

Granted, unless I win the lottery, I am in no danger of of buying all those high-ticket items I think I want. I'd probably die in the bathroom, drug-addled and bloated by fried peanut butter, bacon, and banana sandwiches.

And it is a matter of want, isn't it? We need only food and shelter, although most of us live better with the support of friends and a few other material amenities.

The thing is, too much want can kill. When every whim can be fulfilled, appetite often overwhelms will.

A wise man once said something like, "Never own more than you can pack in a car."

Good enough advice, unless you desert Jagger and Richards and rely on Janis Joplin, "Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz."

The Accent Affect of Whining

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Sun, 20 May 2012 21:02:00 +0000

wikipedia.org

Long ago and far away, I argued myself down from a B to a C grade in an English class by disputing the teacher's criticism of my use of the word oblivion. I'd read a story about the Beat Generation and noticed a photograph picturing one Kerouac-wannabe with "Blessed, Blessed Oblivion" tattooed on his bicep.

"One day we will have the blessed oblivion of peace," I wrote in an essay on US-USSR relations.

"No, no," the teacher said. "This is wrong. Our nation must always be prepared to defend itself against godless Communist aggression." She worried about Sputnik.

Words were playthings to me then, and I often tripped over my toys. I'd hop-scotched from Dick and Jane readers to Superman comic books and then jumped headfirst into the Hemingway and Faulkner on our family's bookshelf.

In my rush, I neglected the dictionary, which meant there would be big trouble when I wanted to convince people with my words. Like oblivion. You might say I was oblivious to grammar and syntax even though my vocabulary was expanding rapidly. But it was by sight rather than sound.

For example, even though I was still too young to drink and had no reason to complain, I said wine as "whine."

Even now, I still have an intermittent short-circuit between eye and brain. I see ancient. My mental ear hears accent. I chalk it up to gaps in my education. I've never met an archaeologist, and I'm the guy who mixed up blessed oblivion and atheist Commies.

My tin ear for homonyms—not that there's anything wrong with that—regularly got me into trouble. I once hurried into the school office with a letter to a scholastic organization. "Could you mail this for me?" I asked. Luckily the principal asked if I was sure I wanted to "except" the prize.

Obviously, my language universe was expanding but chaotic. Ask me to explain the situation, and I would've said it was "chow-autic," even if there hadn't been a big crowd at lunch.

I'm old enough now that I seldom embarrass myself. That's because I've worked hard on grammar and syntax as I've grown more accent. And I never order whine.

But I still have one bugaboo when I write. I stumble over affect and effect. Yes, I know there's a simple rule. Affect is influence, a verb. Effect is result, a noun.

Good enough, until I met my ration of crazy people. I began to read psychology in self-defense. I learned "affect" is a noun designating mood, which is generally good once you've got that PhD.

And I've never understood how affect became affection, a state of love. After all, there is no effection. Winning the affection of a woman would appear to be a perfect effection. It isn't. It's an effectuation.

To be accurate, it's actually an infatuation, and often something that'll give you a lot to wine about.

My confusion between the two words has reached the point that it was affecting, or effecting, my writing. I don't know which.

I tried searching word roots, looking for the elementary difference between the two, something to grasp so that the aftereffect would be effective use of both words. What I did learn is the two words are so slippery that even smart people have trouble with them.

I asked my wife, who is one of those people, how she decided which one was appropriate. "Oh," she said, "I just play it by nose."

Long after the teacher retired, Sputnik fell and broke up the USSR, I grew smart enough to approach the point in a sentence where I would be forced to choose between "affect" and "effect," stop, take a deep breath, and look up a synonym.

Words like accomplish, move, involve, consequence, cause, or symptom work fine.

I decided that was the smartest thing to do. Oh, I could have begun to lobby politicians to eliminate the words from the English language.

But I came to my senses. How's a little guy like me going to effect the government? Or is it affect?

The only thing I know for certain is that is "influence," and I don't have enough money to buy it.

Besides, I remember what happened to George Bernard Shaw, the English writer who obsessed about the oddities of English spelling. He proved fish could be spelled ghoti. I don't know if he was under the influence, but the effect—affect?—illustrated he had evolved into some sort of a linguistic lunatic.

He ended up leaving part of his estate to a project to revamp the English alphabet. The effort failed. You could look it up. It's accent history.

Wasted money. Now that's something to wine about.

I wrote this about five years ago, and it was published in The Writer's E-zine. I remembered the essay a few days ago when a discussion about confusing words came up on a list server where I participate.

Atheists, Gay Marriage, Politics, and Anger

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:46:00 +0000

img from interbent.com

If you're an evangelical atheist and want to call me deluded and ignorant for finding comfort in Genesis 1:3 and Mark 22:36-40, I don't care.

If you support same-sex marriage and you believe I repress your rights by differentiating legal marriage from marriage based on religious tenets, I can only say everyone is equal under the law. But since everyone has different beliefs, let's stay out of one another's business.

If you're conservative who supports Romney, thinks George W. Bush did not squander lives and treasure on a fool's errand, and believes Obama is a socialist, I think you're wrong, but I probably can keep from calling you ignorant or stupid.

Why is everyone so angry? Why is everyone so intent upon forcing their viewpoint upon other people? Why do discussions descend into name-calling?

We can still be friends. I have no need to convert you to my point of view. You are responsible for your own soul. You will enjoy the consequences of your own beliefs and actions.

I am bored with anger and recrimination and accusation. Even when anger is justified–when the leader of a publicly owned corporation loses $2 billion dollars and then rationalizes his $23 million contract—I find my anger evolving into cynical realism: people nearly always act in the best interests of self.

It is only when a thoughtful and empathetic human being does not choose self that we get a glimpse of what it means to be fully human. Luckily, there are many such souls in my life. And so I have stopped investing emotional energy in those who are angry, those who are selfish, those who lie and dissemble, the devious and the malcontented, the rigid and the overly passionate.

If you need me, I'm over here, enjoying a cup of green tea and a nourishing Quest protein bar.

Gay Marriage and Economic Injustice

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:02:00 +0000

image from wikipedia.org

Truth be told, I am far more worried about the negative influence of economic injustice than I am about the idea that same-gender marriage seems to heading toward acceptance and legalization.

Perhaps that's because, as the country saying goes, "I ain't got a dog in that fight." Yes, I do know people who are gay. Yes, I have long believed and now intellectually understand that homosexuality isn't a choice. And yes, I understand there are negative economic issues forced upon homosexual couples—in the tax code, for example, or the inability to acquire group health coverage as do married couples.

Nevertheless, I think the negative economic influence of same-gender marriage prohibitions, which effects a minority, pales in comparison to the accumulation and mismanagement of wealth on Wall Street, which cost every citizen income and capital, crippled the USA economy, and damaged the world economy.

Obama could have done more good for more people by, for example, proposing laws to limit executive compensation and bonuses; to prosecute the nefarious Wall Streeters who provoked the economic meltdown; force the SEC and other regulatory agencies to tighten standards; and then fire every person in his administration linked to the major players in the debacle.

But as I say, "I ain't got a dog in the fight." I doubtless would feel differently if someone I loved and respected was part of a long-term same-gender couple and wanted to marry.

Since Biden (a Catholic, I think) spoke from the heart and Obama was persuaded to agree, I've come to believe that society in general (citizens always being more progressive than politicians) has evolved toward the idea that marriage is nothing more than a government-sanctioned practical, legal, and rights-based union of two people.

As for me, in my heart, I have always believed that a true marriage comes as a religious rite sanctifying a spiritual union of souls. The corollary thought becomes that theology defines marriage.

Is the right to marriage a moral (ethical, spiritual) issue or is a civil rights issue? Slate (discussing Obama's shifting of position ) offers the opinion that morality is fluid and is adjusted according to outer influences.

In other words, Biden was right about Will and Grace. Liberals who cheer that insight should recognize that that position allies him with Tipper Gore regarding violence and explicit sex in song lyrics, the people who believe violent video games are detrimental to children, and those who want to regulate advertising on television.

I believe in moral behavior. I believe there is a moral order. I believe in the greatest commandment, which compels me, some might say, to "love" (meaning "allow the same freedom to") a homosexual person as I allow myself—marriage, in this particular case.

I actually think America is evolving toward a dual-marriage environment. A "legal" marriage will require a ceremony or signing a registry for the government. A religious marriage will require a sanctified ceremony. Everyone who marries must be joined through a "legal" marriage; those of us who believe will subsequently take part in a religious marriage. Some churches may choose to marry same-sex couples; some churches may not.

As noted, "Ain't got no dog in this fight," and by that I mean the idea that a same-sex couple can marry does not influence my personal life. There is no doubt, however, that it has significant social impact. I suspect those changes are far less apt to have an adverse influence on human progress when compared, as random examples, to the growing manipulation of the human genome, to the concept that euthanasia is a proper end of a human life, to selective gender abortion, or to the integration of artificial and human intelligence.

Do I support gay marriage? Liberal friends will say, "You should, if you are older and wiser." Traditionalist friends will say, "When you do, it is a retreat into the swamp of moral relativism."

I say, "I wish Paul Krugman would be elected the next president of the United States."

For more on the religious aspect of same-sex marriages, there is an interesting read, the link to which is circulating on Facebook. While it seems to address the Orthodox church, I found "When Same-Sex Marriage Was a Christian Rite" a fascinating read, one that pushes my slippery (and personal) conception of marriage out onto muddy ground.

Sex, Food, and Survival

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Sun, 06 May 2012 18:33:00 +0000

image from Quest Protein Bar

I don't care to discuss my sex life, present or past.

Food? I'll talk about food. In fact, last night I dreamed about a "Bowling Special." In this case, Bowling is a surname rather than a sport.

Odis Bowling was an interesting man. Rumor spread that he was illiterate, but he was a prosperous fellow all the same. He had a hobby of smoking meat. Tall, thin, most of his teeth intact, but still a hillbilly, he carried a surname that traced to the early days of the Ozarks. His hobby turned into a business, mostly catering to trail rides, rodeos, and similar events, and then later he opened restaurants. Rumor spread that he would build a restaurant (barbecue shack is a better description), turn it into a prosperous business, and sell it. The new owner wouldn't be able to make a go of it, and Odis would buy it back at a discount or foreclose, and start making money again. Maybe he never told the buyers the exact nature of the wood, or how it was aged. Maybe he withheld a key ingredient from the rub. Most likely, he knew the business and how to operate it successfully, or at least until he got bored with a particular location.

A "Bowling Special" began with slices of smoked turkey, pork, and beef layered on an 8-inch (that's dinner plate dimensions) bun. Over the meat went barbecue sauce, then sauerkraut, then Swiss cheese. I could eat one, although I did skip ordering side dishes (baked beans, home fries, cole slaw, potato salad) that made the meal complete for the local gourmand.

That was thirty years ago. Odis works at the Great Barbecue Shack in the Sky, and I'm surviving on yogurt, V-8 juice, homemade tomato juice, nuts, frozen fruit, and an occasional can of sardines. Yesterday, in fact, I ate a cup of yogurt and a cup of blue berries for breakfast; 19 Brazil nuts during the course of the day (yes, I count them); a Quest power bar (my wife's discovery and a 2-ounce meal loaded with protein and fiber); another cup of yogurt; and four low-salt soda crackers.

It turns out a person (at least a sedentary person age seventy) doesn't need 2000-3000 calories a day to survive. In fact, I am beginning to realize it's remarkable how little a person needs to eat in order to flourish. True, granted, only if you embrace the Eat to Live ethos rather than the Live to Eat lifestyle.

Ask me now -- I just drank a glass of homemade tomato juice and ate 12-Brazil nuts -- and I'll tell you I don't believe I'm missing anything, a situation remarkable enough in that I have been addicted over my lifetime to Fritos, Pringles, Baby Ruth candy bars, Coors beer, Spanish rice, Dairy Queen blizzards, lemon meringue pie, hot dogs with sauerkraut, hamburgers with cole slaw topping, barbecue ribs, baked potatoes with multiple toppings, guacamole, Coca-Cola, spinach pizza, omelets, buckwheat pancakes, maple syrup, shrimp cocktail, spaghetti, lasagna, garlic bread, Swiss cheese, bleu cheese, and other things ranging from tea to peppermint candy to dogs (as companions rather than food).

The menu for today ...

a cup of yogurt, a cup of blueberries
a half cup of yogurt
twelve Brazil nuts (number determined by calorie count)
a Quest chocolate-peanut bar
a 3-ounce can of sardines in water
9 saltine crackers (number determined by calorie count)
a cup of yogurt
three cups of green tea
a cup of homemade tomato juice (tomato paste, frozen peas, kosher salt)
5-ounce can of low-sodium V-8 juice

Fishing at Wal-Mart

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Wed, 02 May 2012 16:36:00 +0000

wdfw.wa.gov

Like nearly all mid-westerners, we shop at Wal-Mart. It's convenient. That's the main reason. We can get-everything-from-soup-to-shellac in one stop.

Like nearly all shoppers, we find it sometimes find it convenient to go to Wal-Mart "A" instead of Wal-Mart "B."

Like nearly no one, I prefer to eat the same thing for long stretches of time. Currently, seeking maximum protein in minimum bulk, I am eating sardines and crackers for supper. Desert is yogurt.

So, here's the question: why are the same brand (Beach Cliff) sardines eighteen cents more per can in Wal-Mart "B" than they are in Wal-Mart "A?"

Is it because Wal-Mart "B" is in a prosperous neighborhood of a city while Wal-Mart "A" is in a rural community 25-miles from the city?

Of course, questioning Wal-Mart would be parallel to questioning Exxon about the price of gasoline at the pump, or as the ol' country saying goes, "Figures lie, and liars figure."

I have read that Wal-Mart was one of the first retail enterprises to use minimum inventory tactics. As I understand it, the bar-coded purchase goes from register to computer to satellite uplink to Wal-Mart's secret underground bunker. Shipments of replacement goods are matched to sales figures. That I can understand: technology reduces operating costs.

What I can't understand is discriminatory pricing. Yes, I know it isn't as economically unjust as the growing discrepancy between executive and worker wages, but it is discriminatory.

One thing that can be said is that Wal-Mart is at least seeking the most money (discriminating against) from the more prosperous. Over the years, I have read that one subversive piece of economic discrimination is over-pricing of necessities in depressed areas. Who knows if Wal-Mart prices can of sardines in, say, a prosperous neighborhood of Chicago higher than it does, as an example, on the south side?

Bleeding Faith

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 20:52:00 +0000

Daily Mail.com

Atheist, agnostic, or believer—why not accept Christian practices? Jesus Christ preached love, forgiveness, and nonviolence. Not a bad way to live a life, all in all.

I know that doesn't speak to the metaphysical aspect of Christianity–that Jesus, born of woman, was the Son of God in human form who came to this outpost of creation to preach the aforementioned love, forgiveness, and nonviolence—and eternal life for the soul—and thereafter was rejected but accepted the divine duty to sacrifice Himself by taking on all human sinfulness.

Even for believers, that is a tough concept to wrap one's head around. Why would God bother about this tiny portion of creation?

If you question or simply don't believe the divinity of Jesus, I understand. Moving into this virtual world, I moved away from small town, face-to-face cohesiveness, a place where people might ask Do you have a church home? to meet (and respect) many atheists and agnostics. One thing I've come to think, and there's no way to know for certain, is that the Atheist and Agnostics faiths have increased in membership parallel to the Enlightenment and to the imposition of the scientific method on everyday life. Even The Atlantic speaks to that issue.

I am a Christian believer, believing that the spirit of creation appeared as Jesus, but I also think I am more analytical than emotional. God doesn't speak to me. I search for God.

And I am analytical enough to admit that it is my self-centered ego that blanches at the idea that we are mere temporary organizations of self-awareness in material form, and that self-awareness (consciousness) will disappear forever when the body incorporating it ceases to function.

I can understand that many people will say my belief in the Creator and the permanence of the individual human spirit is but a myth, that it resonates from our genetic make-up, one leftover from the campfires of primitive ancestors, a plea to a Great Power that the wolves roaming the night will be kept at bay. Others might say it is rooted in Freudian fear, a trembling Ego raging against annihilation.

In the light of day, I can hold onto faith, an instinctive thing, a thing that has been with me as long as I have been aware intellectually that there is life, and there is death, that my spirit resides in a universe so vast as to be incomprehensible to the human mind (whether we discover the Higg's boson or not).

But I am weak in my faith. I slip away into doubt when the delicate balance holding this mortal container begins to wobble like a gyroscope winding down past its sustaining momentum.

A month ago I began to bleed, losing blood over a period of hours at a rate that left my fingers blanched white, losing the strength to hold my head erect, blood pressure dropping, dropping, pulse rate soaring, soaring as my body struggled—losing enough blood that the hospital's supply of my specific type was exhausted.

In the midst of that descent into the darkness, there were dreams. There were visions. There were the lizard-brain decisions that sparked a No and a head-shake when the emergency room physician asked if I wanted to sign a Do Not Resuscitate order.

But I don't remember praying, unless the instinct to live is a prayer. Nor did I see a tunnel, and a light, so often mentioned by those who have approached the final gate. Nor did I see people waiting for me. Nor did I hear a voice saying my work wasn't done on earth.

There was only confusion, a dry mouth, the inability to say more than one or two words. The niggling pain of needle-pricks for blood samples and IV, and the bumps and knocks as I was being transferred from stretcher to bed. There was only the present, the moment, the struggle, the fear, the physical evidence that I remained on this earth.

No faith. Optimism, perhaps. Ignorance, certainly. Darkness, red-tinged darkness. But no faith.

I have thought about those hours for weeks now. I have thought about my failure to defeat fear with faith. I have thought about the idea that a person losing faith, temporarily or permanently, in confusion or in panic or in analytical reasoning, doesn't matter a tick to God the Creator, the great I Am.

Saint Augustine wrote, "Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe."

That works for all of us, doesn't it, atheist, agnostic, faithful, madman and martyr?

Bleeding to Death

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 21:12:00 +0000

wikipedia.org

There's something about nearly bleeding to death within a few weeks of a 70th birthday that ... well, is frightening, of course, but also frustrating. And angering. Stupid body. I don't want to do this!

It gets no better when you consult a gastro-intestinal specialist, and she says "Well, you've lived a long life, all things considered." A little more enthusiasm for celebrating birthday 71, 72, and more, ma'm, if you please ...

"All things considered" reckons with the idea that I have motored through life since age eighteen on wheels. I'm a quad, more or less. I now use a ventilator a good deal of the time.

So fracking what!

I'm in no mood to die. I'm productive. My brain seems untouched, or if anything, stronger and more focused and less rigid in its perceptions and too-quick judgments than it was when I passed 40, 50, or 60.

Funny thing, marking those decades bothered me little.

But 70 does. The average life expectancy is 77.6 years, if you can believe the geeks at Harvard. Of course, that didn't account for me driving around a blind curve on the wrong side of the road at night at age 16 with no car coming the other direction. Otherwise, considering my relative good habits—eating correctly, one sex partner, no diabetes, good blood pressure—statistics say that a guy like me could expect to live to 85, at least according to other university studies.

Except for that crappy wheelchair, respiratory insufficiency, ventilator thing ... about which there are no statistics only the casual "all things considered" from the medical professionals, which in turn is a quick window into why so many crips are antsy about the assisted suicide movement.

Back to the point nearly bleeding to death: such an enterprise will change your outlook. About time, in all its slippery relativity. About being a self-aware being in this world. And, right down to it: about metaphysical faith, about being engaged in perceived reality one instant, and being a ready-to-decay hunk of biology the next.

Of course, I know I'm mortal, never meant to live forever on this earth, a bit of energy from God's Universe organized into self-aware matter for a period of time that equals less than a blip when measured against the 13-or-14-billion year history of creation. Of course, like you, I was Here (somewhere in the stardust) at the moment of creation, and when what remains after I am cremated when the life spark flickers to nothing within Me will still be Here. Albeit in different form, a form I pray will be self-aware, and in a pleasant eternity.

Take it from Albert Einstein, at least everything up to the self-aware post-death.

Al was a smart guy, but being Here in the Einsteinian sense means that my energy will have been dispersed, and what remains of my mass will someday be a jar of ashes secreted in my wife's coffin.

None of that physics palaver works to quieten my neuroses, nor my anxieties. Ain't nothing hurtin' so badly, physically or emotionally or intellectually, that I don't want to be Here in my present form, to love my wife, to see the little one who lives with us grow into a young woman, to experience the warmth of a cup of green tea on a cold day, to sit in the spring sun and read, to ...

You get the picture: for the first time, what with the birthday and the ulcer and the ICU and the dreams from the border line between the Here and the There, comes the echo that I am far, far closer to the edge of existence, that I can see the impending fall into the abyss, that I will not Be—all that is sometimes more real than the anticipation of life.

So what to do? Keep calm, and carry on. I suppose I can survive with a measure of sanity if I can continue to wake up every day with the idea that something interesting or useful or intriguing will happen.

And quit taking aspirin.

LSD, Magic Mushrooms, and Hemoglobin Defiency

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 19:01:00 +0000

Wikipedia

I have never taken LSD. I have never eaten a hallucinogenic mushroom. But I once bled sufficiently that it required four units of whole blood to make me whole again.

Normal hemoglobin levels are 10-14 gm/dL. My hemoglobin at 6.0 gm/dL, and I began to dream—dreams which are generated by the great stew of biochemistry, genetics, and emotional experience, dreams which in turn generate fear, awe, confusion, panic; and understanding, comprehension of the nature of things, guides for the future, reinforcement of belief, and haunting shadows that hollow out faith.

Dream

Everything is female, feminine. Not by scent. Not by form or shape. Not identifiable in any material or immaterial sense, but feminine, female, all the same, in whole, entire. Perfectly female. Female beyond question. And this essence that is female has become Everything. There is no need for male. That which is female has both lost the need for male-link reproduction and become sufficient unto itself in a way that all that ever was male or female is now feminine and all that will be in future or past or present will be female without autogamy, asexual reproduction, or self-fertilization. There will be one gender. That gender will be female, without the need for male, and yet retaining all the qualities of femaleness, perfect without the masculine, perfect without me, but welcoming, perfect and indifferent, perfect, feminine.

A Strange Appreciation

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:16:00 +0000

I'm afraid to die. No question about it. I generally don't want to kill anyone either, although in darker moments I know I would kill given the right (or wrong) circumstances.

And yet I am strangely fascinated with the beauty of certan instruments of death—not electric chairs or cyanide capsules but rather swords, knives, and suchlike. And airplanes.

Granted, not all airplanes are weapons, but among military aircraft there is a certain artistic aesthetic, a form-follows-function construction, that generates an emotional appeal. For me, it might be the P-51 Mustang, or the Vietnam-era F-4 Phantom, or the Cold War-era B-58 Hustler.

I was reminded of this when my nephew sent me a snapshot he had taken at a nearby regional airport.

From a comparison with illustrations from an article about the 70th anniversary of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in the Daily Mail, it appears these World War II-era B-25 bombers were enroute to Ohio to participate in the ceremony.

Only five of the original eighty raiders are left, all over ninety years of age. We owe them thanks, of course. No doubt they were afraid to die too when they climbed aboard those fragile aircraft, took off from a ship, and headed for Japan knowing they did not have sufficient fuel to reach a safe landing zone.

As for me, I don't think the North American-manufactured B-25 is especially "pretty," at least not in the fashion of the Mustang or the Spitfire, aircraft from the same era, but it does carry as much history as the Kentucky rifle or the Winchester 73.

This One Deserved the Star

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 23:02:00 +0000

Kirkus

Flanery imagines himself into South Africa, beautifully:

In Flanery’s debut literary fiction, Sam Leroux has a publisher’s assignment to write the biography of a famous South African author, Clare Wald, imperious, reticent, evasive about her writing and disinclined to discuss her catastrophic personal life.

A native South African, Sam is a writer and scholar residing in the United States. Sam flies to meet the reluctant Clare, who resides in his native Cape Town, a fractious city where have-nots confront razor-wire–topped walls behind which the rich have imprisoned themselves. Told from alternating points of view, the novel shifts from unsettled present to bloody past, from today’s fractured economic and social environment to the historic struggle to end apartheid. That ugly fight for democracy consumed the lives of Clare’s sister and daughter, and Sam’s parents. Guilt, fear and regret keep Sam and Clare from confronting their mutual history of loss and love, deceit and despair.

Read the entire review here.

About That Missing Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Amazon

I review books. I've read several that I've given the Kirkus "star" because of their literary quality. But I am not a critique. I am a reader.

Nevertheless, in reading in The Daily Beast about the committee decision to not award a Pulitzer for fiction this year, I was surprised to read this:

Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, said, “It’s unusual for the fiction award to be a problem, but it was a problem this year. It’s not unheard of, but it’s unusual.” Indeed, it’s happened 11 times, the last in 1977. Back then, the jury presented three finalists but recommended one winner. In 1977 it was A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean, but the board decided not to give the award.

No Pulitzer for A River Runs Through It?

I wish I had a formal education in literature so that I could explain the idiocy of that decision.

Accessible Transportation

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 20:21:00 +0000

from The Daily Mail

The gentleman apparently is riding on a three-wheel wheelchair, one powered by hand-cranks. According to the story, this is in South Africa. Read the complete story here.

My activist friends should overlook the Daily Mail's use of "wheelchair-bound.

Book Review: Kirkus

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 19:05:00 +0000

All through this book, I kept thinking of the reality program on television, such is the power of the tube.

When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man

Read the review here

Adult Cal tells the story, one peopled with multidimensional characters and featuring well-drawn settings. Dybek writes well about family, about relationships and loyalty, about responsibility and community, and about all that passes from father to son.

No Deadliest Catch, but rather literary fiction as morality play.

Would Spinoza Tell You to Kill Your Baby?

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 23:41:00 +0000

link to The Telegraph story

I recently had the opportunity to review The Spinoza Problem by Irvin D. Yalom, a novel in which the author gives rightful credit to the famous Dutch philosopher as catalyst for the Enlightenment.

Spinoza was a rationalist, a thinker excommunicated because of his rejection of religious tenets.

Rationalism: "A belief or theory that opinions and actions should be based on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response."

The idea of "reason," and how it can be manipulated to rationalize the repugnant, regularly comes to mind when I think about the philosophy of Peter Singer and his fellow travelers. The latest of those, perhaps even more strident in their rationalism, is Francesca Minerva, as reported here in a recent article in the British tabloid, Daily Mail.

Doctors should have the right to kill newborn babies because they are disabled, too expensive or simply unwanted by their mothers, an academic with links to Oxford University has claimed.

Francesca Minerva, a philosopher and medical ethicist, argues a young baby is not a real person and so killing it in the first days after birth is little different to aborting it in the womb. Even a healthy baby could have its life snuffed out if the mother decides she can’t afford to look after it, the article published by the British Medical Journal group states.

Rhetorical propaganda, that newspaper's language, no doubt, and meant to incite. All the same, the scholar's idea reeks of the very "utilitarianism" championed by the Singerests: convenience in the now seemingly without regard to its influence on the evolutionary process of societies.

Utilitarianism: "The doctrine that actions are right if they are useful or for the benefit of a majority ... that an action is right insofar as it promotes happiness, and that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the guiding principle of conduct."

The article is interesting in many ways, although it is a screed rather than reportage. There is an interesting sidebar about infanticide through history and the cultures where it is accepted de facto today.

Fundamentally, Minerva outlines a philosophical rationale for post-birth "abortion," for the lack of a better word.

To bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole…On these grounds, the fact that a foetus has the potential to become a person who will have an (at least) acceptable life is no reason for prohibiting abortion.

The position, as I understand it, finds no real difference between the idea that a woman who has the right to choose at the point when she is three months pregnant—setting aside any testing that might rule out disability or confirm gender and acknowledging only the the child is not desired—retains the "right to choose" past the birth of the child. For example, a woman might change her mind about the desirablity of motherhood when the child is, perhaps, two months old ("first days" being ambivalent) and opt for infanticide.

In fact, I was confused about the time period allowed, not being able to find it in any news report, other than the amorphous "first days." Dr. Minerva's paper is not accessible on-line, but this is the abstract published on the British Journal of Medical Ethics website:

Abstract
Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus' health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.

Note point three in the abstract—"adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people." The word "actual" is confusing in context, but no one can argue that many older children languish in limbo, considered not worthy of adoption because of reasons that might range from race to disability.

One of the more interesting thoughts on the subject came from The Telegraph in Britain, speaking of the philosophers.

However, they did not argue that some baby killings were more justifiable than others – their fundamental point was that, morally, there was no difference to abortion as already practised.

For those of us who navigate through this world guided by whimsy and an appreciation of irony, that observation reeks of both. Somewhere Jonathan Swift is smiling over the philosophers' modest proposal.

Professor Hawking Gets a Lap Dance

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:35:00 +0000

read story at Daily Mail

The story about the brilliant astrophysicist Stephen Hawking seeking pleasure in strip clubs has been circulating through disability rights discussion venues over the last few days.

Most of us are thinking, Nothing like the idea of a geek-on-wheels getting a lap dance to excite the masses. But hey, you should realize that geeks—and crips—need love too.

"Love," sure, but remember, your neighborhood crips possess all the foibles and bad habits normally issued to a human being. That means you may find a crip who enjoys an extramarital dip into the fleshy pleasures that are referred to as love making but might better be labeled sexercise.

Huffington Post catches up to the story here, whimsically in the science section, no doubt because it discusses fundamental biology.

Stephen Hawking may be confined to a wheelchair, but that doesn't seem to keep him from making the rounds. The celebrated astrophysicist is a regular at a sex club in California, according to media reports.

The 70-year-old, almost completely paralyzed by a neurological disorder known as motor neurone disease, frequents a San Bernadino "swinger's club" called Freedom Acres, a long-time member of the club told Radar Online.

A writing friend offered the opinion, "Well well...if this is to be believed, it certainly adds an interesting element to any sex therapy discussion."

Let's set this aside:

Although I am no Santorumist about sexual activities, I do believe there is a spiritual element within sexual relations between two people, and so I cling to the belief that sex (good sex, real sex) cannot be divorced from love.
I realize many people regard sex, if the contact is between two (or more, I suppose, for those who enjoy team sports) consenting adults, as nothing more than a good work-out at the Y.

All that said, Hawking's escapades make more sense to me than sexual surrogacy. What's happening with the good professor, if the stories are close to true, is straightforward and simple—no strings (theory, or not), no emotional attachment, all good fun if that's the sort of good fun a person wants—and far better than the pretend intimacy which is the fundamental precept of sexual surrogacy.

Of course, there is this. I read in one report that the good professor enjoys a lap dance, a pleasure brought to him while he reclines on a couch. I urge proper training for lap dancers for crips, especially those of us with quadriplegia. Many of us have respiratory insufficiency. A vigorous lap dance might smother us. Imagine the loss of Hawking's intellectual contributions to misapplied augmented mammary glands.

And there are other issues:

Being a proud married male and thus an avid feminist, I worry over the lack of opportunity for the passion-restricted female Hawkings among us. Yes, I know there are Chippendale dancers and similar clothed-female/nude male enterprises, but I am not sure such places provide the access and services equal to the two-or-three thousand strip clubs in the USA.
Hawking is rich, evidently. Some of the reports suggest he was accompanied by an entourage of care-givers and nurses. That's an expense beyond drinks and folding money to tuck into G-strings.
A good number of crips are poor and unemployed. I am not sure if Medicaid or disability benefits will spring for sexual surrogacy services, but I'm certain no doctor will certify a visit to a strip club as "medically necessary."

Review: The Iguana Tree

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 20:01:00 +0000

Read the review

From the review ...

Each character resonates authentically, and the contrasts between idyllic but circumscribed life in Mexico, the bloody border and the welcome success hard work can bring to an appreciative immigrant is empathetically rendered. Stone has done exceptional work in making real the struggles and despair, the resolute discipline and hope, driving the desire to find a better life while also illuminating unexpected connections of near-familial love among people of different cultures who live and work together.

Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:31:00 +0000

Buy it on Amazon

Diane Diekman's Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins is now officially a publication of the University of Illinois Press.

It is her second biography of a famous country music performer. She has also penned the life story of Faron Young.

I met Diane through The Internet Writing Workshop, and I know how hard she has worked to bring Robbin's life story to the page. You can check her website for information about her activities to promote the book, two of which will be in Arizona, Robbin's birthplace, and in Nashville, the country music capital.

Obama Over Santorum, Of Course, But ...

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:11:00 +0000

silphium (Wikipedia)

... the former senator from Pennsylvania and sweater-vest wearing pursuer of Mitt Romney is more correct than his opponents suggest when he offers his remarks on the general results of pre-natal testing. Sadly, he hides a valid point behind inflammatory rhetoric, as reported here by MSNBC when he says:

Because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and, therefore, less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society. That too is part of ObamaCare ...

It may be part of ObamaCare, whatever that is, because pre-natal testing is authorized, but President Obama didn't originate the practice. The issue of "culling the disabled" is as old as some cultures employing infanticide and as new as our own society's sharply reduced number of children born with Down's Syndrome.

In the MSNBC article, there is this rationale:

"Early detection of a fetal condition gives parents the opportunity to terminate the pregnancy in an early stage or to make the preparations necessary to best care for an affected child," Clare O'Connor, Ph.D., of the Biology Department at Boston College, wrote in Nature Education.

The statement is true enough, but any person who reads the news comprehensively—or any person who wants to spend a few minutes on Google—will soon discover that there is evidence that up to 90% of those babies discovered in utero to have Down's Syndrome will be aborted.

The issue is complicated beyond measure, but that the abortion of those babies does alter the nature of society cannot be questioned. And if society can condone the elimination of life because of any one quality perceived as negative, society can ultimately designate other qualities as similarly negative and undesirable.

No one can doubt that sophisticated societies are now practicing de facto eugenics. No one can doubt that only few philosophers are contemplating the consequences, intended or not. It doesn't help that the person getting the most media attention is a radical utilitarian who advocates euthanasia, for infants with disabilities (as well as others), that person being Peter Singer. No doubt even that philosopher-manque is convinced of the rationale driving one of the latest trends among the I shall not be inconvenienced in this life set: selective abortion, a choice made when twins or other multiples are in womb.

I cannot interfere in another person's choice, but I find it surprising that the liberal-humanists (with whom I agree about many issues) do not worry about the socio-biological ramifications of the issue. To me, this sort of manipulation of what it means to be human has more haunting consequences, more immediate consequences, than climate change, depletion of the rain forest, pollution, destruction of fisheries, and many other negative influences on our world.

Sometimes A Person SImply Doesn't Know What to Say

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:49:00 +0000

read the article here

One of my vices is to read the British tabloid, Daily Mail, in its online version published for a USA audience. It's often factually shaky. It's always full of blood, gore, film stars' bad behavior, and assorted other things that generate the drive-by-the-car-wreck-and-look emotion.

That's one reason I don't know what to make of this story:

'I loved him too much to be selfish': The heartbreaking story of teacher, 24, who starved herself to death six years after she was paralysed... so he could move on

The facts, if true, would be these:

A young man and woman meet and fall in love.
Six months into the romance, the woman jumps into a swimming pool, injures her vertebrae, and ends up paralyzed to the point of quadriplegia.
The young woman feels guilt, not only about her boyfriend but also about her need for care from her family.
There are other issues she cannot reconcile in her mind.
The young woman seeks help to accomplished an assisted suicide, without success.
The young woman starves herself to death.

There is simply so much in this narrative that confuses a person like me—a person who has his own guilt because he needs personal care assistance, and a person who understands the point of suicide but opposes government-organized-and-sanctioned assisted suicide.

Much of the story seems to have come from the young woman's website, and there is one post in particular that reveals her motivation.

The single point not discussed is that this was, I suspect, an assisted suicide. A person paralyzed to the extent that she needs to be dressed, to be transferred from bed to wheelchair, to use the toilet or to bath would not be able to starve herself without the complicity of those who care for her.

And so, has her guilt become her family's guilt for acquiescing to her self-destruction?

I will never judge a suicide. My own motivations for intermittently considering that abyss have been petty and immature sometimes; other times they have been the product of guilt and anger, fatigue and hopelessness, self-pity and despair. Are those motivations very much different than most other suicides?

So why did I not choose death? The naïve would say a measure of courage, but that I would not claim. I know the coward who lives behind that badge of courage: he fears death, fears not being. It is a masquerade, this courage.

But fear of death can be overcome, no doubt. And so I will also say to live paralyzed and depended also requires a ridiculous bastard mating of acceptance and constant existentialist rationalization—and the quiet comprehension that ultimately we are left alone with God to find ourselves a reason to live another day.

Why Can't We All Just Meet at the Funeral Home?

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:37:00 +0000

read the story

From BioEdge, comes a story about mobile assisted euthanasia services coming to Holland. The article is straight-forward, written without any underlying propaganda, and it comes from an organization in Australia.

Six euthanasia flying squads of a doctor and a nurse will begin making house calls in the Netherlands on March 1. The teams will visit people who want to end their lives but whose wishes have been thwarted by another doctor who refuses to take their request seriously or who is simply unwilling to do it.

... the NVVE is currently welcoming people in the early stages of dementia and people who are suffering from chronic psychiatric problems. This is allowed under current legislation.

I've been thinking about this issue, especially as it relates to disabilities rather than end-of-life disease states, since I met the folks at Not Dead Yet a decade or more ago. I often wondered aloud Why not include the depressed? but I thought I was being sarcastic even though Kervorkian had already taken that step.

Now apparently assisting the suicide of the mentally ill is within the scope of how advocates see the issue of euthanasia. And why not? I don't doubt that many people with psychoses live with disabilities that negatively influence their lives, and if that's so, why not assist the suicide of a schizophrenic, or, say, someone with chronic depression.

Of course, we'd need to decide whether the person must be on or off medications before we punch his ticket on the train to oblivion.

We find ourselves back on the slippery slope, don't we? Who would have thought that the right (let's call it, "the right to service") would be extended to those with "chronic psychiatric problems."

I did, for one, in spite of my sarcastic public comments, and I did so because of Kervorkian's history.

While realizing the the slippery slope isn't a valid rhetorical or philosophical argument, its dynamic apparently applies in practice, something any intelligent person will realize by considering the social mores as they have evolved since the 1960s especially.

Holland already has de facto involuntary euthanasia. There have been cases, albeit in the USA adjudicated cases rather than the informal "Opa lijkt echt te lijden ..." mostly accomplished by starvation/dehydration at the behest of relatives "speaking" for a person in a non-responsive state.

Do I begrudge the person in constant, near-unbearable pain a safe and painless way off this mortal coil? No, I don't. It is available now for the persistent, and not only in assisted suicide states like Oregon. I simply believe the governments that brought us the misbegotten war on drugs and the financial collapse, as only two examples, are incapable of organizing an assisted suicide program that will not eventually become an involuntary euthanasia program.

Book Review: Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:54:00 +0000

Read the review

"It is the summer of 1963 on The Point, an isolated Maine fishing village. Florine will soon begin seventh grade. Leeman, her father, works his boat. Carlie, her adored mother, waits tables at the Lobster Shack. It's a summer like any other, until Carlie disappears while vacationing. Carlie loves her husband, but he prefers the sea to traveling, and so Carlie's annual getaway with her best friend, Patty, has become a tradition. Now, with Leeman able to climb out of the bottle only long enough to provide confused support, Florine rages against the mystery of her mother’s disappearance. Florine's troubles grow when Stella, a clerk in the local general store and her father's high school sweetheart, moves to comfort Leeman."

"The Only Person in the Whole Bloomin' World"

noreply@blogger.com (Gary Presley) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:12:00 +0000

Maybe a mathematician schooled in chaos theory could prove it, but I tend to believe that people have more in common than we might suspect: we sleep; we get up; we eat; we work; we amuse ourselves.

Narrow that down to the people in this world caught up in the web of technology, and the commonness probably grows more common.

But this post is about music, which come to think of it, is universal, and there's nothing more common than universal. Since I purchased a MacBook Pro, I've been indulging in iTunes a couple of times a month. I need to remember a song or hear one on the radio before I'm provoked to connect, but once there, that song often reminds me of this song.

Such was the case when I went to download Robert Earl Keen singing "Tom Ames Prayer" and Lyle Lovett's "If I Had a Boat." I suddenly remembered Kevin Welch's "Something about You" and downloaded it as well.

That's what had me wondering about being the only person in the whole bloomin' world doing something at a specific time. I'd bet Mitt Romney's $10,000 that I was at that moment the only soul on this small blue planet downloading "Something about You."

It's all part of chaos theory, I suspect.

Random thoughts post-download:

Beware if you choose to download "Tom Ames' Prayer" by Robert Earl Keen. There's been a mistake, and the song you get is "Gringo Honeymoon." I did find an excellent version of Steve Earle's "Tom Ames' Prayer" by John Mitchell and Sofia Jonnson
The Welch song is as good as I remember. How can you not like a line that says "I whiskeyed up my coffee cup."
Other than some modern stuff like Ana Nalick's "Breathe (2 AM)" and Adele's "Rolling in the Deep," I still seem to worship at the church of Americana music (Keen, Lovett, et al)