America’s Crosshairs: What’s Right or What’s Best for All.

Posted on July 12, 2012 Updated on October 16, 2013

Dark Friday 20 July 2012 was no day for politics, but a day for pulling campaign ads off Colorado airways and cancelled engagements by office seekers, for once again one of us armed without logic or humanity, wreaked havoc, tragedy, death and destruction on innocent victims. Presidential candidates paused for prayer and reflection, First Lady cancelled Virginia visits and media salivated.

Twelve killed……fifty-eight forever wounded in crowded Colorado movie theatre…..national and personal families devastated and POTUS flies in (not over) to try to ease our pain. American inhumanity against fellow Americans seems only time “United We Stand.”

However, again the know-it-alls prevent our reflective pause to meditate on how far we’ve come to encore bloody returns, with aftermath rerun: opportunistic gun control pleas, hypocritically timed just behind those grieving, left behind.

Deadly truth blurred in blend of blinding tears, heroic sacrifice, blood curdling screams and drooling myopic news with dramatized theme music punctuated by reverberated deep voices, sparing no detail except new ones. Droning repetition of crime in words that bleed so it leads, further transforming “Fourth Estate” into corporate owned branch of gunrunners.

I’m no friend of gun totting NRA marketed practitioners, but if this was about guns, we wouldn’t need mass murder to excuse conversation, and God forbid, taking action against wild-west throw backs on our 21st century streets.

This is about the mindset of ever present urinating contests in Wall Street Board Rooms, voter suppressing states and political PACs.

It’s loving the adrenalin of power through violence, whether in an oil rigged Iraq war, American profits from illegal drugs Afghanistan provided, street ganged urban territories, pimps over prostitutes, corporate takeover conspiracies or deranged lone assassins.

It is decency, civility and “Justice for All” balancing act vs. electing hate, ‘me me me’ abandonment of fellow human beings, and destruction of Middle Class hope.

Nonetheless, like “Johnny One Note” media, we must go on and on, but unlike media, our direction is forward, no matter how wounded by bullets, lies, bought & paid for government or those who sold their souls offshore many tax returns ago.

Again we “Rise Up and Walk” blessing our children with an American Dream: debt-free college education, Worker’s Compensation, Unemployment Insurance, Federal Housing Authority and our earned & paid for Social Security and Medicare.

Despite Romney/Ryan’s easily brainwashing their extreme ultra Right targets into collective amnesia, ten year accumulation of economic problems won’t be swept away in three.

Though top 1% gamesters enjoyed gigantic income increases, due in large part to increased productivity by the 99%, household incomes have not seen a raise since 1999, proving Trickle down never worked, customers, not corporations are job creators and you can’t trust government to those who hate ‘of, by and for the people.’

What dare we believe amidst lost jobs, underwater mortgages, wiped out 401K, and part-time income?  This: bet you $10,000 Romney will leave all 99% of us out in the cold, on our own.

America’s choices: vote for a country where working people earn enough to raise a family, buy a home, educate their children and save enough to retire comfortably OR vote with extreme Right Tea to be working poor for Romney’s 1%.

As Medicaid’s protection for nursing home seniors and disabled children proves, we are meant to be our brother’s keeper, but not their masters. Neither shall we be victims of the violence from unfettered and unregulated corporate billionaire bankrolled capitalism bullets.

It is the 99% who built this country and given time (before Right makes it all go wrong) and education, it will be a united 99% meeting in the middle, who rebuild it.

Missing You and Us Too

Posted on July 12, 2012 Updated on October 16, 2013

There was little reason for my Grandmamma to leave her huge farm, to go into the town a few miles away, for groceries, gas, farm equipment overalls and newspapers.

Now I only go back for the funerals and to hear on the breeze, what I’ve missed.

I’m not into romanticizing the past, believing things, for the most part are always improving, until GW of course, as long as what’s new doesn’t obliterate what’s been with what’s coming round the bend.

I don’t miss Mayberry or my slumlord friends on Shelter Island, but I do miss NYC neighborhoods, walking city blocks and being constantly in rehearsals for something.

I miss Gypsy and Heinrich best and worst watch dogs respectively. Don’t miss Dad and Mom so much, as it still feels like they’re here, but I do miss people who trim their trees back from power lines, so when the winds come we keep our AC.

I miss hailing a yellow cab for Carol Channing, strolling mid-town with Colleen Dewhurst and chatting with James Whitmore, about “The Next Voice You Hear.” He said I was too young to have seen it, but while other boys my age were outside playing ball, I was watching old movies on TV. Mr. Whitmore was so proud that he had made the movie with Nancy Reagan before she met “Ronnie,” but I told him I would never forget what it felt like when God spoke to him on his radio. I miss that.

I miss taking time to tune up with morning prayers and reel-to-reel Gregorian chant.

I don’t miss fast cars and curvy back roads, for that’s still how I relax, when not doing 40 on the back roads with God.

I miss Jimmy Stewart & Harvey, Yul Brenner & the American original six, Gregory Peck whom Mom told, “my son is an actor too.”

I never miss Florida except when I think of hurricanes 250 miles off shore, pinning me against the life guard chair streaking back my hair with beach sand, my lips rimmed like a Margarita glass and the ocean some distance away, lapping occasionally at my toes, as a seagull above makes no headway because of head winds.

I miss the silence that can only speak without the din, and I miss people who understand the wisdom in that. I miss Marvene’s white boots as much as our drama classes. I miss voice lessons with Wayne & Ernie and both the Peabody & Baltimore Opera in the days of George Woodhead and Bill Yannuzzi, the only man who smoked more cigarettes than my 61 year old brother, just diagnosed with the lungs of an 80 year old. I miss him already.

For me missing is more happy memories than sad longing, but I do miss not seeing my best friend Lance Thomas Vining anymore. However, I don’t miss the Silver Diner, his favorite dining choice. I do miss my annual trips to Europe, but it was a wonderful career that suspended them, so we make choices.

I miss dates on letters, easy to find telephone numbers on bills and sleeping more than five hours, but most of all I miss who we were in the sixties. I miss, “Abraham, Martin and John” and Bobby too.