Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Monday, August 6, 2007
Poet's Hometown
Hollidaysburg
Like a river so many faces have flown beneath the branches.
The fruit of the labor of birth and the travail
Meets the passing of time in my hometown.
To think of the proud glory
Draws a tear,
Not only for the illustrious,
McKibben, Holliday, Brua and Gromiller,
Schmidhammers, Gildeas, and Rileys.
But for the little days of my youth:
Dysart Park, Corney’s and Highland Hall.
Like a dream now
A motley parade of anonymity
Along epitaph street,
Clumsy stone windows
With dusted, plastic flower bunch,
A wind wakens to muffled cadences of drums
At the Senior High;
September afternoons with cheerleading squads.
I remember Principal Collins at Hollidaysburg High
And Uncle Donkel but most of all, geography
With Mr. Hooper.
Here’s to Hooper’s Troopers and teachers like that!
Must every day succumb to the kaleidoscope of the setting sun
Flickering through the oaks
Then rise up again
With the mist that lifts from the sculpted fairways at Blairmont Club?
All of the early days give rise to newer structures
As Altoona looms,
Clattering down Logan Valley Boulevard
To Lakemont like a green jewel
From which the murky creek issues
Like a crushed finger.
We swam in that water (no one would believe it sanitary today)
And caught rainbow trout---
Yes, rainbow trout!
And tied a turtle to a tree when the creek flooded the turtle drown.
Summer acquiesces to Autumn,
The cicadas restless chatter soothes me
And the passion of the green leave recoils into the fragile dusty earth.
I see them now on my dreamstreets.
Corney awake to the day
With his little coffee can of ice,
toiling to proffer a Cherry Coke™
Hammering and picking as if this little drink
Were prepared with such care as Harry’s Martinis in Manhattan.
“I’ll take the latest issue of Mad Magazine and some bottle top candy and bubble yum,”
counting out the two dollars thirty eight cents in change from chores.
Dr. Keagy taps on my 8 year old chest,
Listening with his cold stethoscope,
And Mr. Rubbe, and Mr. Treese.
Can you see them now?
Mrs. McCauley with her April shrines.
I can hear her now:
“Go out ‘n pick some daffodils
for Mother Mary.”
And ‘Hey you’ and ‘Come Here’ that’s how she called
her fat tabbycats.
The parade streams along Allegheny Street
Past the Courthouse, past Pete the Greek’s.
Do you remember Central School?
I do.
Staring from St. Michael’s across the street
To the fenced in play
I see Walter Brenner playing kickball during recess.
Pool hops at Blairmont,
All of the furniture in the pool.
Early morning chilled water
Swim practice with Dean Patterson
And Eileen Smithe, The Sheedy’s, Dave Book,
And Alan Kleiner’s immortal lunging butterfly stroke.
I can see this clearly now, and smell the chlorine in the aquamarine lapping water
As well as the subterranean locker room painted in pale blue.
Can you smell the pool too?
Others say that we have come so far as to be of memory devoid
So self-sufficient that we no longer need
To dream this dream.
What ever became of Burkey the bum?
(Father Vago once gave him $5 and furtively followed him into the
The Pipe Room Tavern, where he demanded it back!)
Does anyone really know what happens to bums?
Do they receive funerals? Does anyone care?
The parades down Allegheny Street
blaring the fire engines shrill horns
make me cry.
The time The Jolly Green Giant came to the A&P and the kids
Rammed a cart into his legs to see if he walked on stilts.
Tossing pumpkins on the street and tossing eggs at Halloween.
Officer O’Leary (Blinky) and the other officer----the entire Hollidaysburg police squad.
8 Track cassettes, “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “American Pie”, Big John Riley on WFBG radio from the big city. “Garibaldi” and his spaghetti eating contest, I wanted so badly to win, never got a chance to participate---the runner-up ate too much and had to get sick right there in front of the radio audience.
Early Summer strawberry picking at Baronner’s and walking home with a sore back, a couple of dollars, a chance to buy a teaberry ice cream cone at The Meadow’s.
Then in late August when St. Mary’s is hot and steamy, and Father Mabon leaves the doors open, his cat walks straight up the aisle to the altar before communion, nobody makes a move because it is father’s beloved ‘Milky’ you should’ve seen the look on Fr. Vago’s face! He said more than once that “Father Mabon loves that damn cat more than he does people.” Maybe that is true.
Hollidaysburg is no better today. All of it is flown away like a tattered kite and life’s banner hides death’s slow march, the present tense has an unfair advantage, since it is alive and kicking, whereas each day has been thrown down like a bandage to decay, thousands of days deep.
In the face of all this today is a pale dream,
And I would dive blind into the dark murk of memory
If I could lay hold of that red rubber kickball
Playing with Gary Hamilton
And trapping the creek with Paul Murray,
The spear and the knife, the raccoon pelt,
Salting the squirrel skins…
Steaks, whiskey and pictures of women
And to all of the present day Hollidaysburgers
I ask simply are you alive or dead?
As for me it is difficult to say,
The dead hold more life than the living,
The living deal death in forgetting,
And in new styles, betrayals of the world I recall.
Like a river so many faces have flown beneath the branches.
The fruit of the labor of birth and the travail
Meets the passing of time in my hometown.
To think of the proud glory
Draws a tear,
Not only for the illustrious,
McKibben, Holliday, Brua and Gromiller,
Schmidhammers, Gildeas, and Rileys.
But for the little days of my youth:
Dysart Park, Corney’s and Highland Hall.
Like a dream now
A motley parade of anonymity
Along epitaph street,
Clumsy stone windows
With dusted, plastic flower bunch,
A wind wakens to muffled cadences of drums
At the Senior High;
September afternoons with cheerleading squads.
I remember Principal Collins at Hollidaysburg High
And Uncle Donkel but most of all, geography
With Mr. Hooper.
Here’s to Hooper’s Troopers and teachers like that!
Must every day succumb to the kaleidoscope of the setting sun
Flickering through the oaks
Then rise up again
With the mist that lifts from the sculpted fairways at Blairmont Club?
All of the early days give rise to newer structures
As Altoona looms,
Clattering down Logan Valley Boulevard
To Lakemont like a green jewel
From which the murky creek issues
Like a crushed finger.
We swam in that water (no one would believe it sanitary today)
And caught rainbow trout---
Yes, rainbow trout!
And tied a turtle to a tree when the creek flooded the turtle drown.
Summer acquiesces to Autumn,
The cicadas restless chatter soothes me
And the passion of the green leave recoils into the fragile dusty earth.
I see them now on my dreamstreets.
Corney awake to the day
With his little coffee can of ice,
toiling to proffer a Cherry Coke™
Hammering and picking as if this little drink
Were prepared with such care as Harry’s Martinis in Manhattan.
“I’ll take the latest issue of Mad Magazine and some bottle top candy and bubble yum,”
counting out the two dollars thirty eight cents in change from chores.
Dr. Keagy taps on my 8 year old chest,
Listening with his cold stethoscope,
And Mr. Rubbe, and Mr. Treese.
Can you see them now?
Mrs. McCauley with her April shrines.
I can hear her now:
“Go out ‘n pick some daffodils
for Mother Mary.”
And ‘Hey you’ and ‘Come Here’ that’s how she called
her fat tabbycats.
The parade streams along Allegheny Street
Past the Courthouse, past Pete the Greek’s.
Do you remember Central School?
I do.
Staring from St. Michael’s across the street
To the fenced in play
I see Walter Brenner playing kickball during recess.
Pool hops at Blairmont,
All of the furniture in the pool.
Early morning chilled water
Swim practice with Dean Patterson
And Eileen Smithe, The Sheedy’s, Dave Book,
And Alan Kleiner’s immortal lunging butterfly stroke.
I can see this clearly now, and smell the chlorine in the aquamarine lapping water
As well as the subterranean locker room painted in pale blue.
Can you smell the pool too?
Others say that we have come so far as to be of memory devoid
So self-sufficient that we no longer need
To dream this dream.
What ever became of Burkey the bum?
(Father Vago once gave him $5 and furtively followed him into the
The Pipe Room Tavern, where he demanded it back!)
Does anyone really know what happens to bums?
Do they receive funerals? Does anyone care?
The parades down Allegheny Street
blaring the fire engines shrill horns
make me cry.
The time The Jolly Green Giant came to the A&P and the kids
Rammed a cart into his legs to see if he walked on stilts.
Tossing pumpkins on the street and tossing eggs at Halloween.
Officer O’Leary (Blinky) and the other officer----the entire Hollidaysburg police squad.
8 Track cassettes, “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “American Pie”, Big John Riley on WFBG radio from the big city. “Garibaldi” and his spaghetti eating contest, I wanted so badly to win, never got a chance to participate---the runner-up ate too much and had to get sick right there in front of the radio audience.
Early Summer strawberry picking at Baronner’s and walking home with a sore back, a couple of dollars, a chance to buy a teaberry ice cream cone at The Meadow’s.
Then in late August when St. Mary’s is hot and steamy, and Father Mabon leaves the doors open, his cat walks straight up the aisle to the altar before communion, nobody makes a move because it is father’s beloved ‘Milky’ you should’ve seen the look on Fr. Vago’s face! He said more than once that “Father Mabon loves that damn cat more than he does people.” Maybe that is true.
Hollidaysburg is no better today. All of it is flown away like a tattered kite and life’s banner hides death’s slow march, the present tense has an unfair advantage, since it is alive and kicking, whereas each day has been thrown down like a bandage to decay, thousands of days deep.
In the face of all this today is a pale dream,
And I would dive blind into the dark murk of memory
If I could lay hold of that red rubber kickball
Playing with Gary Hamilton
And trapping the creek with Paul Murray,
The spear and the knife, the raccoon pelt,
Salting the squirrel skins…
Steaks, whiskey and pictures of women
And to all of the present day Hollidaysburgers
I ask simply are you alive or dead?
As for me it is difficult to say,
The dead hold more life than the living,
The living deal death in forgetting,
And in new styles, betrayals of the world I recall.
This is How I am Born as Poetry
A line is drawn but leaves no mark.
There is fire, but no ash
There is silence rebuking speech
And a knife carving chips.
This hero is not a hero I think.
All kinds of words are thrown
into the imperturbable façade
Constant as the sea’s breaking fury.
Light varnish and confetti vanish
under faltering footsteps.
As the jury flees.
Under the dim light the theatre shines
For me, for me!
There is fire, but no ash
There is silence rebuking speech
And a knife carving chips.
This hero is not a hero I think.
All kinds of words are thrown
into the imperturbable façade
Constant as the sea’s breaking fury.
Light varnish and confetti vanish
under faltering footsteps.
As the jury flees.
Under the dim light the theatre shines
For me, for me!
July Fourth, 2003
The widespread apathy concerning the passionate struggle for liberty is painted on America’s festive faces 227 years down the road. The initial concentration of revolutionary energy has become dilute having been spread so far and wide for such a long time. There is simply no way to perpetuate the ideal and ensure that education may promote the values of individual transcendence and innate distrust of government.
Just as the toys and materialistic consumerism have replaced the essential meaning of Christ’s birth in December, and the easter bunny has replaced the mystery of resurrection, so too has the waving of flags and the explosion of fireworks substituted for the thick concentrate which stand at the core of the American Revolution’s radical ideal liberty, individualism, religious freedom, absence of tyranny, as well as egalitarianism (there can be no egalitarianism where certain “executive” workers are compensated ten times and more than laborers).
Every “-ism” is a dilution of a human reality, purer and more profound. A mysterious phenomenon is a substantified with a general concept and a word, eg. “freedom,” “patriot” and so on, which stand for the original phenomenon and eventually take its place. This explains how children today celebrate the 4th of July not knowing, or comprehending the significance of the original mysterious events and phenomena which gave rise to the these traditions and concepts. Waving a flag comes to fulfill an original commitment to risking one’s own life and property in order to promote a reality which is embedded in the expression ‘liberty’.
At root, the fact of liberty has never been proven or demonstrated to exist, and requires an authentic act of faith in order to be a participant. To be ‘american’ means to participate in a type of civic religion with faith in these ideals as its proof.
St. Paul has written: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the grasp of things as yet unseen.” Democracy (there is no such thing as a “national” democracy---it is the common legacy of free humanity, the sole possessors of the truths of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness---solely given by a transcendent God) is the object of a specific type of faith. Democracy does not exist outside of such faith. ‘America’ exists in two aspects: one, as an object of faith, the authentic individual participation in democracy, and the other aspect is material, it is the land, the states, the government. It is only in the former sense that America can claim to be ‘democratic’, and in the latter sense is no better than any other government, great or small, plunged in greed, public confessional rituals, conformity and enormous, overwhelming pride.
A great man once said: “Democracy cannot be handed down from father to son like property---it must be earned by each succeeding generation.” The plastic waving flags on the 4th of July, the misuse of words like patriot stripped bare of original significance in The Patriot Act, or even worse, Patriot Missile, such nihilistic metaphor use hides the original meaning of blood spilled for a transcendent ideal. The word ‘education’ likewise has been emptied of its original significance, whose buildings and rituals distill the spirit of slavery, surveillance and suspicion upon youth whose ideals are not formed, while depriving them of the clean milk of democratic ideals such as Plato, Emerson, Franklin, Jefferson, Whitman and Bob Dylan and others all set against government tyranny and Statism, in which the faith in democracy in The United States is presently immured and inundated.
Just as the toys and materialistic consumerism have replaced the essential meaning of Christ’s birth in December, and the easter bunny has replaced the mystery of resurrection, so too has the waving of flags and the explosion of fireworks substituted for the thick concentrate which stand at the core of the American Revolution’s radical ideal liberty, individualism, religious freedom, absence of tyranny, as well as egalitarianism (there can be no egalitarianism where certain “executive” workers are compensated ten times and more than laborers).
Every “-ism” is a dilution of a human reality, purer and more profound. A mysterious phenomenon is a substantified with a general concept and a word, eg. “freedom,” “patriot” and so on, which stand for the original phenomenon and eventually take its place. This explains how children today celebrate the 4th of July not knowing, or comprehending the significance of the original mysterious events and phenomena which gave rise to the these traditions and concepts. Waving a flag comes to fulfill an original commitment to risking one’s own life and property in order to promote a reality which is embedded in the expression ‘liberty’.
At root, the fact of liberty has never been proven or demonstrated to exist, and requires an authentic act of faith in order to be a participant. To be ‘american’ means to participate in a type of civic religion with faith in these ideals as its proof.
St. Paul has written: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the grasp of things as yet unseen.” Democracy (there is no such thing as a “national” democracy---it is the common legacy of free humanity, the sole possessors of the truths of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness---solely given by a transcendent God) is the object of a specific type of faith. Democracy does not exist outside of such faith. ‘America’ exists in two aspects: one, as an object of faith, the authentic individual participation in democracy, and the other aspect is material, it is the land, the states, the government. It is only in the former sense that America can claim to be ‘democratic’, and in the latter sense is no better than any other government, great or small, plunged in greed, public confessional rituals, conformity and enormous, overwhelming pride.
A great man once said: “Democracy cannot be handed down from father to son like property---it must be earned by each succeeding generation.” The plastic waving flags on the 4th of July, the misuse of words like patriot stripped bare of original significance in The Patriot Act, or even worse, Patriot Missile, such nihilistic metaphor use hides the original meaning of blood spilled for a transcendent ideal. The word ‘education’ likewise has been emptied of its original significance, whose buildings and rituals distill the spirit of slavery, surveillance and suspicion upon youth whose ideals are not formed, while depriving them of the clean milk of democratic ideals such as Plato, Emerson, Franklin, Jefferson, Whitman and Bob Dylan and others all set against government tyranny and Statism, in which the faith in democracy in The United States is presently immured and inundated.
Rebuttal to Postmodernism
I am beginning to realize and hence become able to communicate what I see as the major pitfall of "postmodernism" which is why I do not wish to be labelled as "postmodern" or in any way included in this way of looking at things.
It is Pontius Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar who says to Christ:
"But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths--are mine the same as yours?"
Pontius Pilate is the voice of 'postmodernism' whose question 'what is truth?' reveals the skepticism at its heart. The lover of truth, the philosopher does not demand cynically the question 'What is truth?' but seeking it actually a priori posits its being as real and searchable. This is faith.
But to ask 'What is truth?' in the manner that Pontius does betrays a nihilistic ground to the question. He is being cynical, not asking to be enlightened or saved by Christ (who could very well have done so!). Hence Christ is silent and does not respond to this pseudo question... To question means to seek, to yearn for, desire...it is not a cynical jeer or a heartless skepticism. You will discover in your study of Christ's responses to questions in the Gospels that when the "questions" aimed at him are Pharasaical attempts to catch him up in a legal snare, or are inauthentic efforts at making the questioner look bright, or reveal cynicism that he never answers directly but responds with a question, or remains silent.
The second part of Pontius Pilate's speech is a postmodern interpolation of Tim Rice: "We both have truths---are mine the same is yours?" This kind of question is not found in ancient texts, it is Nietzschean in its roots, "everything is interpretation". This is the kind of thing Paul Ricoeur refers to as 'masters of suspicion' (Nietzsche, Marx, Freud). The hermeneutics of suspicion is betrayed at the core of each one of these "philosophies" in its theory of truth. Each master of suspicion "displaces" truth: Marx with class struggle, Freud with unconscious conflict and conscious 'rationalization' and Nietzsche the "resentment" of the Jewish moralist. Underlying each is a skepticism concerning truth in itself. This is not philoophy in the sense that Socrates undertook...(or St. Thomas, Kant, or even Descartes!).
The multitude or plurality of worldviews does not presuppose that truth is "relative" or open to endless interpretation but rather begs the question 'what is truth?' Now if the question is asked wholeheartedly, authentically and honestly, the answer is revealed in that search. But if the asker of the question hides a conviction that truth is relative, or open to endless permutation, etc... then he or she repeats the sophistic argumentation which Socrates founded philosophy upon as the 'logos' against the prevalence of a)doxa (opinion---could mean culturally held views) and b)muthos-uncritically accepted traditional religious beliefs unchecked by rational critique. In both cases, philosophy functions as a 'critique' seeking for 'episteme' or well justified knowledge.
But even 'episteme' does not count for Socrates as truth. Wisdom (sophia) consists in accepting the limitation of human reason as part of 'logos'. Hence Socrates poverty of dogma, and lack of published writings!
It is the grandeur of St. Augustine to realize that truth is given via faith, and that the function of philoophy is 'faith seeking understanding' (fides quaerens intellectum) or 'credo ut intelligam' "I believe so that I might understand!"
This then is the foundation of Catholic philosophy and the one that coheres with the apostolic mision of the Church. Truth quite simply is God's domain, and man has been invited, thank God, to participate in this enlightenment, this is Grace... Truth is revealed at the periphery where proud man surrenders acknowledging his intellectual limitations, and is answered by a loving God precisely at this point of humility and poverty.
Postmodernism like Pontius Pilate mocks 'truth' and no more humbly and honestly seeks to be enlightened or saved as it does to promulgate the irrational, unproveable opinion that "we both have truths". It is a very subtle and malingering form of deceit. What so innocently harbors 'multiculturalism', 'pluralism' is at root a profound act of sophistry which is in essence anti-philosophical!
It is Pontius Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar who says to Christ:
"But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths--are mine the same as yours?"
Pontius Pilate is the voice of 'postmodernism' whose question 'what is truth?' reveals the skepticism at its heart. The lover of truth, the philosopher does not demand cynically the question 'What is truth?' but seeking it actually a priori posits its being as real and searchable. This is faith.
But to ask 'What is truth?' in the manner that Pontius does betrays a nihilistic ground to the question. He is being cynical, not asking to be enlightened or saved by Christ (who could very well have done so!). Hence Christ is silent and does not respond to this pseudo question... To question means to seek, to yearn for, desire...it is not a cynical jeer or a heartless skepticism. You will discover in your study of Christ's responses to questions in the Gospels that when the "questions" aimed at him are Pharasaical attempts to catch him up in a legal snare, or are inauthentic efforts at making the questioner look bright, or reveal cynicism that he never answers directly but responds with a question, or remains silent.
The second part of Pontius Pilate's speech is a postmodern interpolation of Tim Rice: "We both have truths---are mine the same is yours?" This kind of question is not found in ancient texts, it is Nietzschean in its roots, "everything is interpretation". This is the kind of thing Paul Ricoeur refers to as 'masters of suspicion' (Nietzsche, Marx, Freud). The hermeneutics of suspicion is betrayed at the core of each one of these "philosophies" in its theory of truth. Each master of suspicion "displaces" truth: Marx with class struggle, Freud with unconscious conflict and conscious 'rationalization' and Nietzsche the "resentment" of the Jewish moralist. Underlying each is a skepticism concerning truth in itself. This is not philoophy in the sense that Socrates undertook...(or St. Thomas, Kant, or even Descartes!).
The multitude or plurality of worldviews does not presuppose that truth is "relative" or open to endless interpretation but rather begs the question 'what is truth?' Now if the question is asked wholeheartedly, authentically and honestly, the answer is revealed in that search. But if the asker of the question hides a conviction that truth is relative, or open to endless permutation, etc... then he or she repeats the sophistic argumentation which Socrates founded philosophy upon as the 'logos' against the prevalence of a)doxa (opinion---could mean culturally held views) and b)muthos-uncritically accepted traditional religious beliefs unchecked by rational critique. In both cases, philosophy functions as a 'critique' seeking for 'episteme' or well justified knowledge.
But even 'episteme' does not count for Socrates as truth. Wisdom (sophia) consists in accepting the limitation of human reason as part of 'logos'. Hence Socrates poverty of dogma, and lack of published writings!
It is the grandeur of St. Augustine to realize that truth is given via faith, and that the function of philoophy is 'faith seeking understanding' (fides quaerens intellectum) or 'credo ut intelligam' "I believe so that I might understand!"
This then is the foundation of Catholic philosophy and the one that coheres with the apostolic mision of the Church. Truth quite simply is God's domain, and man has been invited, thank God, to participate in this enlightenment, this is Grace... Truth is revealed at the periphery where proud man surrenders acknowledging his intellectual limitations, and is answered by a loving God precisely at this point of humility and poverty.
Postmodernism like Pontius Pilate mocks 'truth' and no more humbly and honestly seeks to be enlightened or saved as it does to promulgate the irrational, unproveable opinion that "we both have truths". It is a very subtle and malingering form of deceit. What so innocently harbors 'multiculturalism', 'pluralism' is at root a profound act of sophistry which is in essence anti-philosophical!
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