"I HEARD THE DRONES ON CHRISTMAS DAY. . . ."

     Even a drone should be insulted by the use of its name by the Americans for their random-killing device.  Nature's drones are not exactly workers, but they are life-givers.  Drone bees don't work--except in impregnating female bees.  So life depends on drones, among the bees.

     We call the dull, monotonous under-sounds of  bagpipes and pipe-organs "drones," too--which insults those drone bees.  At least the bag-pipe's drone has a real purpose, though its noise is not necessary to its function.  But there is no excuse for drone of the pipe-organ.  The pipe-organ's drone pretends to be music--like all the grotesque noises sounds the pipe-organ makes.

      And then there are Obama's drones, which are blind murderers.  American GIs don't get killed when Obama uses drones to kill other people.  And those GIs don't have to do the killing.  Obama does it.  And anybody he kills with his drones is--after death--automatically an enemy.

      For Christmas Obama played golf in Hawaii.  His drones, meanwhile, were killing "at least seven" human beings in Pakistan.  Because they are dead, they can be identified as "militants"--by the Militant-in-Chief  and Commander-of-Drones.

     What does Obama have in common with a bee?  I don't know.  And bag-pipes?  I don't know.  But I know what he has in common with pipe-organs:  drones.

     The pipe organ was introduced in Europe in the seventeenth century.  It was a part of the egocentric movement known in history as the Enlightenment.  A pipe-organ enabled one person--one puny little man, in those days--to play all the instruments in an orchestra, and to play so loudly that the noise would fill even the largest building in the world.  That was power.  Never mind the quality of the sound.  A pipe-organ has a number of loud noises in addition to its drones' noise that it can make:  and they aren't very musical.  They are loud, however.

     One organist did--and does--it all.  Made--and makes--all the noise.  Was--and is--responsible for all of it.  And when Obama sends out his drones, he is the organist.

     Maybe his drones on Christmas day were playing "Joy to the World" in Pakistan.  Or "O Little Town of Bethlehem."  Or "Silent Night."

     Of course, in wars leaders, countries, and people kill not just their enemies but anybody--and frequently everybody.  Hitler's buzz-bombs besieged London.  American and British bombers destroyed whole cities in Germany.  America destroyed everybody in Hiroshima, and then just for fun destroyed everybody in Nagasaki.  An American GI burned that little Vietnamese girl alive with his napalm--and some inhuman photographer took her picture while she burned.  Richard Nixon fire-bombed all of Cambodia for a month--at Christmas.  Independent terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center in New York.

     So Obama's drones aren't new, either as an idea or as a weapon.  It's just that nobody before has been so crass and cowardly as to call everybody he killed an "enemy."

     "God rest ye, merry gentlemen! Let nothing you dismay. . . ."

   

EATING GOOD GREEK IN GERMANY

     If you plan to go to Nüremberg--or (to real Germans) Nürnberg--the very best thing to do is to have dinner at Restaurant Delphi, Theresien Gasse 22, a fifteen-minute walk from the Rathaus.  It is a very modern-looking place, but don't let that put you off.  The service is good, and the food wonderful.  Close your eyes and ears, and your mouth could imagine you all the way to Taverna Bacchus in Delphi, looking down off the side of Parnassos, or a little restaurant on the edge of the Mediterranean in Pylos.
     We had a gloriously good and truly Greek dinner.  Fried kalamari, a wonderful taramasalada, and two lamb dishes that were better than any lamb we have ever eaten, except for platters full of olive-wood-grilled spring lamb chops at a little village in the mountains above Nikolaika in Achaia.
     I have said for years that Amsterdam's De Twee Grieken is the best Greek restaurant I know anywhere.  But Delphi in Nürnberg may be as good.  I will go back to Nürnberg someday, just to eat there.

GO (TO HELL) BLUE!

The University of Michigan, a once-great state university that touted itself as "the Harvard of the Midwest," hasn't been a great university in many years.  It long ago gave up on excellence in education, and chose excellence in football.

And now the University of Michigan is ready to pay Jim Harbaugh $8,000,000.00 a year to coach football.  Michigan taxpayers must be cheering loudly!  Hoorah!  Go Blue!

And in Detroit, all the poor people are cheering even more loudly.  They don't have schools or hospitals or adequate police or fire protection, they have no public transport, they have inadequate housing, they have no jobs--but Jim Harbaugh is worth $8,000,000.00 a year at the state-supported university 35 miles away.   You betcha!

The University of Michigan is a state-supported institution.  If the State of Michigan doesn't subtract $8,000,000.00 a year from its contribution to the University of Michigan, the people of the state should be excused from paying state taxes, and students should be excused from paying tuition or fees.

And since the University obviously has an extra $8,000,000.00 a year that it doesn't need for educational purposes, it can use that sum to do away with--or at least radically reduce--student fees and tution.

By the time I left the University of Michigan in 1992--after 26 years as a professor there--the University of Michigan was already a sham.  Now it is a shame.

Why don't all Michigan alumni write to the president of the university--and to the governor of the state?

HOW COULD THEY NOT?

How could they not?

Shame.

When people fail the system fails.  And when the system fails, we can only fall back and rely on the people.  More people.  All of us, not just twelve.  We must stand together, for justice and against violence.

Only in that way can we overcome.  And we must overcome.  Against violence, and for justice.  Not for retribution, but for something larger and more inclusive, and more lasting:  for justice.

                                                                                      Bert Hornback

McCLELLAN

McCLELLAN

His name was McClellan. Bowling Green still only had about five police officers then—in addition to the chief. When my uncle Bob Murphy had been chief he had only one officer at first. And on weekends—from Friday afternoon till Sunday night—Uncle Bob was “unavailable.” But by 1950, when I was fifteen, there were more policemen. And McClellan had a three-wheel motorcycle that he rode around on, enforcing the law.

We kids used to tease him all the time. A couple of my friends were already sixteen, and when a white boy turned sixteen in Bowling Green he was likely to have saved up fifty or sixty dollars to buy himself an old beat-up car. I knew two such boys, with such cars. And if the rest of us chipped in a dime apiece for gas, we could ride around the square with one of them for several hours, being “seen” by girls and other important people. And if we saw McClellan, on his three-wheeler, we would pull up beside him and order popsicles as loudly as we could. If we saw his bike parked somewhere, we would let the air out a tire, or maybe tie it to a tree or a telephone pole, or squeeze out a tube of glue on the handgrips or the seat.

Various itinerant preachers—tent-preachers, they were called—came through Bowling Green in those days. They would put up posters on the telephone poles leading into and out of town, announcing a revival meeting for a Thursday night on some good Christian's farm just outside of town. None of us had ever been to one of those meetings, but we had heard about them. And one night that summer—I think it was a sort of famous preacher named Jessup who was in town—we decided to go, and see what it was all about. I think it was him: Walter Jessup. He was sort of famous in Southern Kentucky. Or maybe it was his son. There were a lot of preaching Jessups, and one of them had even been born in Bowling Green, I think.

It cost a dime, or maybe it was a quarter, to get in to hear this Jessup preach, but we didn't pay. We just stood around watching the country folks going in, and then, once the meeting got started good with singing and praying, we snuck off and crawled under the canvas around on one side. And stood there, sort of singing or maybe saying “Amen” with everybody else, but mostly watching.

There were three men standing up in front, just below the little wooden stage, who held big baskets in their arms. The baskets were for people to put their money in. When you put your money in, you could ask Jessup to pray for whatever it was you wanted. You didn't have to tell him what it was; you just told god, quietly, what you wanted. And when Jessup finished his praying he would say, in a big voice,

“Prrrrraise God, your prayer is being answered!”

We would all sing another hymn, then, and Jessup would go back to preaching till the next sucker came up and put his or her money in one of the baskets.

Eventually, when the tide of suckers with wishes had ebbed away, Jessup held up both of his hands to hush us good. And two men carried a table out onto that little stage, with something on it, under a sheet.

We all got quiet, dutifully, and waited. Jessup walked over to the table, looked down, then turned and looked at all of us.

“This girl,” he said, “was as pretty as could be, and as happy as could be—till yesterday afternoon. And then she took sick. The doctors was called, but they couldn't do anything. She got sicker and sicker, then. And this morning she was sicker still. And this afternoon, she died. God have mercy.”

He liften up the sheet, then, and we could see her, dressed all in white, but looking pretty pale, and not moving.

He covered her back up, put his ear over and listened for her heart. When he straightened up he shook his head. We were all staring at that sheet. And it didn't move a bit over her chest and stomach.

“She died,” Jessup said, “But with your help and mine, God is going to raise her up and give her back to us.”

“I will pray over her, and in your name I will ask God to give her back to us. All you have to do is come forward, and put your donations to this holy cause in those baskets, and God will give her back to us!”

He stopped, and stood there.

“God is waiting, good people. And so is she.”

People started to rustle about a bit in their seats. A couple of men in the back started walking forward, one down each aisle.

And then we saw McClellan, in his uniform, coming out through the back curtain onto the stage. He was in uniform, of course, though he wasn't on duty. And anyway, Jessup was set up safely outside the city limits.

McClellan stopped a couple of yards from Jessup, and a couple of yards from the table. And just stood there.

And then he said,

“I'm Constable McClellan, Mr. Jessup.”

Jessup sort of nodded at McClellan.

“You say she's dead, Mr. Jessup?”

Jessup nodded again.

“Well then,” said McClellan, folding his arms across his stomach. “You won't mind if I just shoot her once or twice. . .”

There was a sudden commotion of sheet, and that girl was off and running.

It took several seconds more before Jessup turned and ran, too. And then the men with the baskets—without the baskets, just running. And all hell broke loose.

After that, McClellan was our hero. We never teased him again. We went out of our way to say hello. George Henry, bolder than the rest of us, even asked for—and got—McClellan's autograph. We were so impressed we probably would have called him something other than McClellan, but we didn't know his first name. And it would have been too silly, too embarrassingly stupid, to call him “Mr. McClellan.” So when we saw him, mostly we just smiled respectfully, and nodded at him. I'm sure he understood.

GENERATING LIFE

GENERATING LIFE

This planet of ours, that we call “earth,” has what we call life. What we usually mean by that is that this planet contains living trees and plants and animals—like us. But the earth itself has life. We need to realise that, before it is too late.

In the plant and animal world, seeding provides for continuous life. Generation and regeneration keep what we call life going. We animals are still generating and regenerating, but the plant world with which we live and upon which we depend isn't doing very well. It seems, in fact, to be dying. And the earth itself?

In the last fifty years we have been exploring what we call “space,” to discover whether or not there is what we call “life” on those other lumps of matter wandering around out there. We call those wanderers “planets.”

What we are looking for is our version of life. We are looking for what we already know. And we are thinking of the possibilities of our colonizing somewhere out there. That's what animal scientists call the “fouled nest” syndrome. Humans and some other animals live that way: when they have made a big enough mess of where they live, they move somewhere else.

But science isn't just a housing office, or Noah's dove looking for someplace to land. Science should be much more than that—and smarter than that.

What we call life—plant life and animal life--grows from seeds. Have we asked if this earth itself has seed? This earth is dying; all things, it seems, must die. But in our experience, generation is the companion of dying, which lets life continue.

In exploring space, we look for life on other planets: but we are looking for what we call life. Ego interferes with learning, even with understanding. Other is hard for us to accept. Our exploration is limited by our self-centered definition of life.

And thus we think of colonizing other planets. “Will other planets support life?” we ask. Of course, what we mean is will those other planets support us, and what we call “life.” Once we have made this planet, earth, uninhabitable, we will need someplace to go.

With our determined assistance, this earth may be dying. So we want off. We want another planet to go to. But maybe what is needed, in the larger order of existence, is for earth itself to “seed” another planet, not with us but with its own seed.

Of course, we don't know what earth's seed is. And we haven't even tried, yet, to find out. Or imagine.

Human ego would send us to other planets. But maybe we aren't earth's seed. Maybe there is something beyond what we humans call life.

The world is—be definition—what we know. The universe is everything, or everything-once-around: an unmeasurable continuous ring. And everything is bigger than what we know, bigger by far than what we are.

BREAKING NEWS

FROM 

THE CENTER FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF PERIPHERAL THOUGHT

(Saarbrücken.  2 December 2014)  A statement today from the  Center for the Advancement of Peripheral Thought reports that scientists at its Contagious Disease Control Laboratories are on the verge of--or perhaps just around the corner from--creating a way to model proven medicaments, pharmacololgical remedies, and elixirs on contagious viral diseases, to make those cures themselves pandemic.  "It may not be long," says Professor Bert Hornback, founding director of the Center for the Advancement of Peripheral Thought, "before our scientists can cure one case of measles and with that cure create a pandemic of cures that will wipe out measles everywhere."

Medical scientists from around the globe have been responding to the news with awe and appreciation.  "This is the biggest medical breakthrough," said one, "since the discovery of health."
Atmospheric scientists are busy trying to adapt the idea to counter the spread of deadly air pollution.  At the headquarters of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, teams of adaptionists were at work within hours of the announcement.  And at the laboratories of the Organization of Ungodly Optimists, the changeover was quickly made from research on stopping the spread of the deadly contagious hate gene to figuring out how to make love itself contagious.

"The universe," said the Secretary-General of the Natural World, "has a new ambition."

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