His wife suggested that he ask his wife’s brother
about the death of Roger, the announcement of which
had come unexpectedly as there had been no hint

of illness and, besides, he wasn’t that old by today’s
standards. The brother-in-law knew the family well
and surely he would know. Roger had been on a tall

ladder changing a light bulb. No, this isn’t a joke
about how many Rogers it takes to change a light
bulb. It’s a sad story. He fell. Didn’t show for coffee

with the boys; they found him two hours later;
he lingered five days in intensive care before dying.
Roger was a gentle man. Sensitive to the plight of

others. He had been an ordained minister but was
so sensitive to the heart aches of his parishioners
that he spent too much time tending his own resultant

heart ache. He became a janitor in the public school
system. He was really good at staying around after
the kids left to wax the floor, clean the windows,

dust the shelves. In his spare time he loved to take
apart and put together computers. The parts had no
hearts to ache and it gave him great joy to see the

finished product and get it just right. He also read
at the public library — the daily paper, magazines on
technical things and theological musings. He loved

having coffee with a buddy or two discussing with
pride his wife, kids and grandkids, events of the day
and things about his church where he was an elder.

He had a dry wit without barbs. He caught the joke;
he saw the funny thing about existence. He would
pause, with his hands on the top of the broom, his chin

on his hands and he would watch the kids head up and
down the halls from one class to another and he would
say a silent prayer for them, his heart aching for them.

He was a gentle man.

The man read what was a stream of consciousness
Critique of society going back forever and how
Humanity has evolved by natural selection into
Something far less than it could be and that if
Humanity could only reach back and see all the
Wonderful avenues of evolution, humanity would
Truly be able to see and so those who have ears
To hear and eyes to see could see how rejecting the
Values of a shallow culture can humanity truly be
And then the man saw the pontificator’s website
With a most flattering photo of the man who
Rejected all those shallow values of a humanity,
Which chose wrongly and falsely and vainly.

A short poem
A little scene
Something like hung over
Suicide.

A short poem
An even smaller scene
Something like drugs
Suicide

A short poem
A tiny scene
Something like booze
Suicide

A short poem
The tiniest scene
Something like jazz
Suicide

A medium poem
A medium size scene
Something like needles
Suicide

A long poem
A huge scene
Something like everything
Suicide

And in the chronological
Middle
In a
Midwest city a
Middle-age
Middle-class, prosaic
Man’s heart
Stopped
Suicide

The man sat in his car after a trail
jog listening to the four-minute speech
Robert Kennedy gave in Indianapolis

announcing the assassination of
Martin Luther King, Jr. and hearing
the shrieks of shock and horror

of the crowd at the announcement. He
sat and cried. It was an involuntary
response. It was anamnesis. But it was

also something else. Tears at the messi-
ness of democracy, the intolerance of
goodness by evil, fear of fascism always

lurking, always lurking. Kennedy spoke
movingly, poignantly, beautifully on peace,
justice, equality quoting poet Aeschylus

and then two months later Robert Kennedy
lie dead of another assassin’s bullet.
The man started the engine and slowly

drove the back roads home humming a folk
song by Pete Seeger while choking back
tears for then, for now.

the neighbors are proud
of postage stamp perfect yards
that pollute the dunes.

kentucky bluegrass
versus nature’s very own dune grass —
blades sway. grass goes away.

mowed to the bare nub
by blowing fumes and spinning knives —
ah, there is the rub.

folks view their fescue,
smugly calling dune grass weeds —
live without a clue.

living with nature
gives a sense of joyfulness —
seeing dune grass sway.

I can’t even remember how I got the black and white photo;
perhaps he gave it to me;
maybe his widow did as a gift for speaking at his memorial service;
in redecorating, it got taken down and placed in the closet;
I’ve been thinking about that photo and how it belonged in the study
with all the other black and white artistic photos —
in a place where I could see it;
he’s in a suit, his left hand up to his chin just below his lower lip;
there is a shy smile on the mouth that at one time couldn’t
get a word out without stuttering;
he isn’t teaching as I knew him;
he is performing a one-person show in the summer theater he loved
so much and to which he dedicated so much of his time;
he’s wearing a diamond ring on that left hand —
the ring he willed to me, his student;
it’s the ring that was stolen when our house was vandalized;
the ring is back in its proper place — on the finger of the professor
who helped me secure the course of my life;
it’s almost as if he is blowing a kiss to a deeply appreciative audience;
I feel so happy for him,
and for me.

A note to a friend:

Thanks for the book Hillbilly Elegy. I really wanted to read it. I thought I was going to like it. I hoped it offered a rich perspective on an area by a person from the area.

I struggled to get through it, disliking it all along the way but not knowing exactly why and then I realized it was a one-person, one-dimensional, simplistic, flat-line, broad-brush condemnation of an incredibly diverse area from an ideologically conservative perspective. The author does a disservice to both Ohio and Kentucky.

I think the author is too young to write a memoir. I think he is too enamored with his new-found upper-class status, his “celebrity,” his wealth, etc. He is smart, but not yet wise.

He offers scant solutions aside from the standard conservative drivel: work hard, go to church, don’t be a deadbeat, don’t be a welfare queen, “the answer is not more government but a loving home.”

Okay, he lived it and I didn’t, but I lived next to Appalachia for seventeen years (central Kentucky’s culture being different to a degree from the mountain culture) and I know fine people from the mountains who don’t fit the author’s stereotype.

It is a culture rich in history, music, art, storytelling, writing. One of my favorite poets and wise commentator on culture and environmentalist is Wendell Berry who works a small farm along the Kentucky River just outside of the mountains. The late, great short story writer Jesse Stuart lived deep in the mountains, just to name two.

Does the area have its problems? Is the Pope Catholic? What area doesn’t?

The late Harry Caudill wrote an in-depth sociological study about the area Night Comes to the Cumberlands back in the 60’s. I don’t remember much about it except that I liked it because it got at the root of many of the problems, that being avarice and exploitation of the people and natural resources by outsiders.

I have a retired Presbyterian friend who would have some thoughts on all this as a minister who lived for several years in the hollers of West Virginia with the West Virginia Mountain Project: http://www.creeksidepress.com/biography.html.

For all of the pluses, Holland, MI (where I live) and southwest MI are still dominated by super-rich, right-wing lug-nuts religiously and politically who think they have all the answers but hide the skeletons in the closet and the bodies somewhere in the dunes along Lake Michigan.

Sure, in Jackson, KY there are families like the author’s; mother’s like the author’s, etc. They can be found anywhere. They can be found in nearby Pullman, MI which looks more like Kentucky back roads than Kentucky back roads. They can be found next door and sometimes, as all families are human, flawed and sinful, they can be found inside the door.

Domestic violence, alcoholism, drug abuse are found in every city, every town, every segment of society. The wealthy just have more ways to hide it.

I felt insulted for the people of the great Commonwealth.

Here is a link to a response to the book: https://theoutline.com/post/3147/elizabeth-catte-what-you-are-getting-wrong-about-appalachia-interview?zd=1&zi=rm7crra6.

Bob

The U.N. rapporteur
was told not to interfere
and to go to hell.
What did he tell?
Only that the president of the Philippines
is full of beans
for ousting the chief justice summarily
giving democracy a blow squarely
on the chin.
What does Trump think of him —
Duterte, the strong-arm president?
He admires him to a great extent,
just like Putin and other dictators
which should give us the jitters
because what is happening in the Philippines
could be happening here if given the means.
So, fellow citizens of our great democracy,
get out the vote in November
to save us from a burgeoning autocracy.

Sick and tired of all the celebrity blather.
There are many books to read I would rather.

Perhaps it’s time for a Mulligan
Going back to the days of Ed Sullivan.

Every nasty, hateful thing ever written or said
By a celebrity is hereby pronounced dead,

Never to rise from the grave
On the promise that they all behave.

No arguments ad hominem,
No statements to harm any her, him or them.

If you can’t write without a personal attack,
Better be ready to be stabbed in the back.

Tell the truth as best you know it.
Otherwise you better just stuff it.

Be careful of e-mail, Twitter and Facebook
And before hitting send, take a close look

At what you have written.
Better to delete than be future smitten

Like losing a sitcom gig
Or finding out that up is the jig.

So, celebrities, take the Mulligan
Or be prepared to be fired again.

The following is a note I sent to an acquaintance “on the way to being an e-mail friend.” Normally we send e-mails about books, authors, etc. My acquaintance is incredibly well read, especially in the era of “the beats” and has shared some stories about the likes of Kerouac, Kesey, et. al. and the poets of that era. The topic veered in the direction of sociology and economics. The below is a somewhat edited version:

I don’t have questions about welfare to individuals (whatever skimming and gaming the system goes on doesn’t amount to a hill of beans and people do what they need to do to survive); I have questions about lack of care into the plight (growing bigger everyday) of the poor and why they must resort to such behavior and remain stuck in it.

Studies have been done; solutions have been offered, but endemic and systemic greed (lobbyists, legislators and huge money to vote for legislation to keep money in the hands of the 1%) rules the day.

Studies have shown that there is little fraud and that the racist myth of the black “welfare queens,” is exactly that, a scapegoating myth conjured by a racist power structure.

The reality is that the poor in America are for the most part “rural and white,” and guess where drug abuse is helping to finish off what poverty doesn’t. Yup — the poor towns in rural America. And, of course, there is the perennial/perpetual Horatio Alger’s myth coined in a phrase attributed to Steinbeck but written by some Canadian academic: “The poor believe they are but one misfortune away from being millionaires.”

The deck is stacked and the poor still don’t get it — in despair, they put their hope on dope.

And desperate young blacks on the west and south side of Chicago die from bullets shot from guns brought in from nearby Indiana and the President points a race-bating finger at it and the scared, white, working class base cheers and whites and blacks are pitted against each other while the ever-wealthier citizens of the new Gilded Age laugh all the way to the bank.

I have questions about federal and state aid to the biggest (by far) welfare recipients: multi-national corporations who bleed taxes from anemic budgets where tax revenue is down because Republican legislatures keep voting that way under the illusion that citizens keep more money for themselves so they can buy the products of all the corporations relocating to the state — corporations who will be hiring people thus reducing unemployment and increasing income.

Michigan is now a giveaway state living under the leadership of Republicans who believe falsely that if they give away the farm in credits and tax subsidies, the corporations will flock to such fertile ground. Wrong. Sure corporations want tax breaks but studies have shown that employees of corporations want good schools and a well-maintained infrastructure so they can get around the state in their free time and the corporations want good roads for their eighteen-wheelers to move the products.

Guess what? Betsy DeVos has been doing her best for years to take down public education in Michigan and the state ranks dead last in infrastructure maintenance. A recent poll listed Michigan somewhere in the mid-twenties in quality of K-12 public education, which is better than I would have thought only because we hear so much about the destruction of public education in metro Detroit, a truly abominable example of targeting low-income minority districts with charter schools, school vouchers and school choice for residents who have no choice but to continue to send their children to rundown public schools.

Now, would you like me to tell you how I really feel about this? 🙂

Bob