Thursday, April 30, 2015

Head In the Sand

We shove our heads in the sand, again and again, by not understanding that "how the bough is bent so grows the tree". Count how many hours this past week you've watched mayhem and murder on TV and where children also watching these shows ? Maybe, you're addicted to sports on the tele. Sports are portrayed to the World as the harbinger of goodness, a builder of adulthood. Sports are sold to spectators similar to the way over the years religion was pressed upon the masses, something no responsible person should do without. 

I'm afraid the idea of sports being indispensable has sunk in too deeply to be unwound from reality. It's not sports, per se, but what sports is becoming that is troubling for me. Once it embraced the epitome of an art form, but now, physical actions seem to emulate the thuggery seen in the involvement of the mob as the events in Baltimore depicts. These are harsh lessons the youth of any nation has to absorb. 

Professional football today is at the pinnacle of sports interest but it is incurring enormous introspection not just for on field infractions but for varied domestic disturbances by players off the field. The idea of imposing one's overwhelming strength and speed over another player becomes a weapon for some to flaunt. Dominance spills over from the field to the home and public places and turning it off is sometimes nearly impossible. The young, seeking to be adults, sees what interests the mature and tries to emulate them by adopting their interests. Football will win out.

 Many more sports are questionable when they are analyzed as to their affect on the emotional growth of our young ; for instance, cage fighting. Televised incessantly to gain popularity they illustrate to viewers the worst there is man. Everything goes, mayhem on steroids, even to permitted choking which is perfected to a supposed art form. And $300 million to be raised from spectators, live and TV, to watch two old men of lower weights fight each other in Los Vegas becomes an emotional lore for children. Bench clearing professional games now are commonplace in college, high school, even in little league,( T ball ?). Think about it and you'll expand this list. 

Man becomes his own worst enemy. The fall out from this is the bending of the bough which forces the tree to be misshapen at maturity. Any wonder, when you couple an enormous disparity in income with a decay in social graces that Baltimore's occur when a trigger fires off. As far back as recorded history exists civilizations have killed and maimed their way into these records. Their children have known nothing but horror and, when adults, horror was all they knew and they dealt it out until horror caught up with them. Are there answers ? Best we get our heads out of the sand, and best we don't let our head slip up our ... .

Ronald C. Downiei
Head In the Sand

We shove our heads in the sand, again and again, by not understanding that "how the bough is bent so grows the tree". Count how many hours this past week you've watched mayhem and murder on TV and where children also watching these shows ? Maybe, you're addicted to sports on the tele. Sports are portrayed to the World as the harbinger of goodness, a builder of adulthood. Sports are sold to spectators similar to the way over the years religion was pressed upon the masses, something no responsible person should do without.

I'm afraid the idea of sports being indispensable has sunk in too deeply to be unwound from reality. It's not sports, per se, but what sports is becoming that is troubling for me. Once it embraced the epitome of an art form, but now, physical actions seem to emulate the thuggery seen in the involvement of the mob as the events in Baltimore depicts. These are harsh lessons the youth of any nation has to absorb.

Professional football today is at the pinnacle of sports interest but it is incurring enormous introspection not just for on field infractions but for varied domestic disturbances by players off the field. The idea of imposing one's overwhelming strength and speed over another player becomes a weapon for some to flaunt. Dominance spills over from the field to the home and public places and turning it off is sometimes nearly impossible. The young, seeking to be adults, sees what interests the mature and tries to emulate them by adopting their interests. Football will win out.

Many more sports are questionable when they are analyzed as to their affect on the emotional growth of our young ; for instance, cage fighting. Televised incessantly to gain popularity they illustrate to viewers the worst there is man. Everything goes, mayhem on steroids, even to permitted choking which is perfected to a supposed art form. And $300 million to be raised from spectators, live and TV, to watch two old men of lower weights fight each other in Los Vegas becomes an emotional lore for children. Bench clearing professional games now are commonplace in college, high school, even in little league,( T ball ?). Think about it and you'll expand this list.

Man becomes his own worst enemy. The fall out from this is the bending of the bough which forces the tree to be misshapen at maturity. Any wonder, when you couple an enormous disparity in income with a decay in social graces that Baltimore's occur when a trigger fires off. As far back as recorded history exists civilizations have killed and maimed their way into these records. Their children have known nothing but horror and, when adults, horror was all they knew and they dealt it out until horror caught up with them. Are there answers ? Best we get our heads out of the sand, and best we don't let our head slip up our ... .

Ronald C. Downie

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Other Living Beings

Bumping up against each other the nearly 9 billion people inhabiting this sphere are very vulnerable to natural disasters. Napal, in the news today, is still counting their dead, 5,000 so far. Our Earth calls the shots : will the next disaster be from in the Earth, above or on it ? Plague, starvation, and dehydration are always hovering close to the surface of life. Over and above these catastrophes awaits the atrocities attributed to the largess of the ego in man. Man seems to have evolved over the graves of previous beings and, while evolving, his numbers continue  to expand reaching beyond 9 billion looking toward 10. 

It almost seems Man needs to kill and maim his fellow beings in order for him to believe, in his thinking, that he is a member of an anointed race. Genocide, it's called when it shows up randomly throughout civilizations and we define it, in modern day, as just another act of war. Frank Bidart, in his poem I just read, "The Forth Hour of the Night",  penned these two sentences : "He looked around him. Human beings live by killing other living beings." Words attributed to Timujin  son of a Khan, who was killed by the Tartars, years later Timujin at 39 became elected The Great Khan of all Mongolia. Killing, under Timujin's orders, became fast and furious as his armies swept throughout a quarter of the the planet's surface. He was Genghis Khan.

Has humanity improved or has just its weaponry ? Or do we , over and over, relive what is ingrained in Man's psyche ?

Ronald C. Downie

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Earth Day, A Message

Ironic, it is pleasantly ironic that today is Earth Day ( April 22, 2015 ) throughout the states, possibly throughout the World. My wife Connie is at work down at the Pughtown Garden Center preparing plants and flowers for the public to enjoy at home. Her's is a job close to the goodness of the Earth. There is another aspect to the significance of this day.

Back in 1964 on this date Connie and I were packed to go to the World's Fair in New York City, although we had something very important to do on this warm, sunny Wednesday evening in April, before we would leave.

We got married that Wednesday evening at Grace Lutheran Church on Charlotte St. at 7PM. Marriage, you see, is the ultimate manifestation of all that's human in the animal we call Man. Earth Day is man's way of enshrining our Earth in a reverence as close as marriage is to two people vowing to live their lives together. Of ultimate importance is : that all humans are married to this Earth until death does us part. We all have a responsibility to leave this sphere better than we found it : this should be a sacred oath even stronger than the ties of marriage. Blessed Be !

Ronald C. Downie

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

A Spring Message

I've had a Spring meltdown as I substituted admiring flowering bulbs and unfolding of cherry and magnolia blossoms for writing catchy phrases( catchy to me at least)and posting these utterances for the public to handle. The brisk wind whipping through the Star Magnolia out front makes the air seem filled with left over winter snow flakes though they really are just peddles from the abundant flowers adorning the Magnolia. Flowers win out at this stage of my life since they are to a garden as words are to a poem or a story; each has purpose, but flowers also have color and aroma to enhance their stature.

Ronald C. Downie

Monday, April 6, 2015

Highland Ardor :
To Stephen Trevor Upon His Birthday!

Plaid is : as a ladder to the Highlands
By a way of colored lateral stripe,
Its angles create the pattern right
Which though seen, also, is inward felt.

Highlands are made of thrust up hills, 
Creeks and rivulets cutting rocks deep,
Fit for red Scottish deer and agile sheep.
An Imperial Man finds his pleasures here.

Kilt clad Chieftains stir to sounds of pipes, 
To the reverence of drums and tap of toes,
Highlands claim their Bagpipe country woes. 
That eire shrill pulsates through hill and dale.

In you, your music transfixes time and place,
It can take you to the Scottish Highland or the 
City of your choice or to the open waters of the 
Seas. May rhythm entwine your living soul

And sprout new generations that list your way.
Running deeply within you is ancestral blood 
Colored red, blended greens, blues, river mud.
Highland plaids, similar of color, wrap your tunes.

Ronald C. Downie

Happy Birthday, young fellow, keep the tunes flowing !
Love, Nanny&PopPop




Sunday, April 5, 2015

Evan Brandt, Digital Notebook Response

Realizing you're not from Massachusetts, birthplace of America's most admired legislator- The Honorable Senator, Edward M. Kennedy- you certainly may not be amenable to governing by the art of compromise as he was noted to do. I imagine even dipping down deep and awakening the Devil to seal a deal was not outside Ted's ambition. I doubt that anyone of the Cuomo dynasty would dip so low. A New York pedigree is to be beyond the temptation of compromise, everything black or white, up and up, truth without consequences. It's a shame we're not all New Yorkers like me, born in Elmsford, NY., 1935. I came to Pottstown because I would grow an Achilles Heal making me more like Teddy than Andrew. But, Evan, keep on the sunny side of the road and the law will set you free.

Ronald C. Downie