Homage?

Sixteen centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ

Before Moses, The Buddha, The Prophet Mohammed

The first great Poet Philosopher Priest was born in Persia

He was the first to teach the Doctrine of Individual Judgment

The first to eulogize The One Universal Lord God - There were no others

The first to sing of Heaven and to sing of Hell

The first to offer the recitative of the Resurrection of the Body

The first to hymnal the funereal of the Last Judgment

The first to offer the doxology of Baptism, Wedding and Death

The first to “siren the strains of Life Everlasting for Body and Soul?"
The first "Creationist"

These “sacred” doctrines became the basis of the articles of faith

For Christians and Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and all other Faiths

"May your mind be the master of its promise

 May your soul be the master of its oath

 May you live in the joy of your soul

 All the very nights of your life"*

Thus sang Zarathushstra

*Avesta Gatha 18:27

Letter To Yourself

You wanted to know something of “The Agnostos” –  Greek  for “The Unknown”

If or when you achieve that total and absolute cessation of the thought process, (it will be very brief)… you might become extremely frightened with the sensation of being completely and totally alone within this entire panoply you think you see played out above... that celestial firmament overwhelming your senses… you, the only living entity …  this pinprick of brilliant light centered on your forehead just above your eyes… and your “alter-ego” god-light… up there beside you in this parallel universe of quintrillion light-points flowing beyond infinity…. Every one of your sensibilities will cease to function for the briefest of moments… If you make it, you will be terrified with the magnitude of what you will have achieved… Your ‘absolute nothingness’ will scare the hell out of you… This is what you wanted to experience… to “feel”… absolute and total fear… (not “think afraid” but “feel afraid”)… there is a difference… You will have discarded every thought, every truth, every falsehood, every desire…every “why this” and “why that”… every reason for living… for being “alive”…  Sylvia Plath couldn’t handle it and she killed herself…  but like many others, she used the crutch of drugs to get there and that doesn’t count… It must be pure ”you” and only “you”… with no fake hypocritical or supernatural help … And when you come back, all your senses will have been re-tuned (like a bad piano suddenly sounding Steinway)… You will ”know” your children when you hold them…”know” your wife when you make love to her… “know“ the agony of your mother as she birthed you… “sense” every human, animal and inanimate contact so much more intimately… and on those mundane occasions throughout the rest of your long life… hopefully you will find another quiet moment to revisit that brief encounter with “the Agnostos” when you are “down”… and hopefully, there will be a few more of those moments… but you will remember that incredible first contact with your “trueness”… your ”real unself"… and flow unafraid with the inevitable tides of the boredom of life...

As for the other “you”… the one that studied with Vithaldas who taught the physicaI form of Yoga called Hatha… These are poses the body assumes and holds for long periods and are named after animals and other objects… Lion pose… Snake… Bird… Bridge… Half-Moon, etc…  But they are simply exercises… in preparation for the meditative process of the Lotus pose which he taught you but for some reason never practiced himself because spiritually, he was still a child… but you, you have realized those brief moments of “nothingness” a very few times in your 83 years… mostly on your island on a moonless night when you really “felt, sensed, understood” the enormity of space and how insignificant you were relative to it… and it did terrify… When you were twenty and had your first “encounter”… you became so frightened that you lost it for a few weeks and was hospitalized… Some of it had to do with army experiences that a lot of kids now suffer in Iraq and afterwards… But it was cathartic and now when you are “down”… especially now that the time you have left is meager, you still manage to float up there occasionally and are “re-tuned” for a few brief seconds… That’s all that matters… those few brief seconds when your mind stops its incessant questioning and you become really “YOU” … out there among the enormity of it all… all those countless myriads of universal pin-pricks of light which, with a few close-by exceptions… you and every human being who has ever lived on this planet…ever since that first "near human"..."(Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds)” was unearthed buried in the Abyssinian savanna… Carbon-dating indicated she was about 3 million years old... But in the last ten-thousand years...no functioning modern human, living or dead, has NEVER EVER SEEN that magnificent “fire which severs day from night”… Shakespeare’s vision of the celestial skyfire hasn’t reached us yet... and probably will NEVER reach our dying planet...

This is the “Agnostos”… The Dread of the Unknown…

He is beyond the narrow valley - he has clawed his way into the dreamery

But this deliberate and medicated journey is now flawed

By the smoky drabness of this last fall day

Before the silencing of snow overtakes and muffles his languor

Wild things seem to fly at him from this bitter-leaden patch of sky

Try as he might to sweep them away - still they come 

Hounding him into a sort of middle conciousness

Not fully aware - not yet swollen with the rudeness of sleep

He sees island spruce bending slightly waiting for inevitable ice

Even though the scrubs of alders he struggles through

Are burnished bright with death of leaf

Their lovely tangled leaves on fire - their sugars spent

He stumbles and is jabbed by lost branches of stiff birch

He is in pain - he is bloodied by their vicious sharpness - he is hurt

He must get help - but who on this massacred island is there for him?

He is ravished by fear - no one will find him - there is no one to help

He has lost his way - where is the middle path? - the one he must take

To return to "life among the living" - so much of this tangled mass of moss

Falling from above is stuffing up his mouth - he cannot breathe

The wild things are crawling into him and biting his insides - he hurts

He is on a gravel beach - he picks up a stone with a starfish frozen into it

A billion years ago - and there are bloated bodies floating now

Carved up by cruiser fire in the pacific straits - eyes eaten by crabs

A totem washed out of an african grave glides on a wavelet toward him

A huge cranberry wave roars up beyond the sea-moss laden ledges

Seas fairy-colored by buoys - brilliant hues of yellow-greens and reds and oranges

Detonate below him and carry him flying above the blood of bodies

Seeping from smashed ships lining the bottom of seething Leyte Gulf

He is in the forest again - its blackness blinds him - he cannot breathe

On this rocky outcrop the ghosts of Sarah Bradford and her eight children

Smother him with hugs and tender kisses - has he come to save them

From the axes of rampaging savages? - They cling to him like sucker-fish

The wilderness suddenly explodes - a great copper-beech crushes down on him

Mud seeps into all his openings - he struggles to free himself from the mush

Cormorants light on the copper's branches and peck at him - why are they here?

So far from their implacable sea - a harbor seal slithers toward him barking softly

It smiles a toothy smile and sucks the smothering mud from out of him

What is this animal doing in the middle of this violent tree-fall?

Eyes open dully - comforted by blindingly brilliant sun filling his room

Breath slows - he has survived yet again - to return to "life among the living"*

(In the early 1600's, Abenaki Indians harrassed by white settlers. killed a white woman and her

eight children who had fled to an island in Muscongus Bay, Maine)                *Marsden Hartley

Marilyn

I knew Marilyn Monroe…well sort of

I once bought her a bottle of very expensive champagne…

She was married to the playwright Arthur Miller at the time

They lived in Arthur’s eccentric house in Roxbury Connecticut

Marilyn would have her driver bring her across the bridge at Lake Zoar into Newtown

To visit her friend Nino at his restaurant “La Ronde” just off Route 25

She was always accompanied by her housekeeper who looked a lot like her

They were dressed in old jeans and bulky sweaters and both wore dark glasses

This big Caddie would drop them off a little before noon and she would settle in a booth

In a dark corner of the pub area while the maid would go off to the Grand Union

With the driver to do the shopping…

Nino would come in with two glasses and a bottle of champagne

He would sit and drink and talk with her for a while

And then go back to the kitchen to cook for his other customers

He was a great chef and people who used to dine at his place in New York

Would come up on the new Interstate for his special dishes and great wine cellar

“La Ronde” was the creation of Enric Madriguera and his wife Pat Gilmore

Enric had a great NYC latin band in the 30’s through the late 40’s and Pat was his vocalist

They got fed up with New York and bought an old farmstead in Newtown

They spent a bit to turn it into a country inn and Nino Carlucci came along to cook

Because he was sweet on Pat although she never went for him at all

The bistro didn’t work out so they sold the place to Nino and went back to the city

My business was located only a few minutes from “La Ronde”

And I would take my clients there for lunch because it was convenient

And the food and service impressed them… It was very expensive

But it could be written off as the cost of doing business…  

One fellow I used to deal with was a real character

He was the advertising manager of a substantial company in Bridgeport

And one afternoon when our waitress whispered to us the seedy-looking woman

In that dark corner booth drinking champagne was really Marilyn Monroe

He ordered another bottle of her favorite and when the girl brought it to her

He lifted his glass to her and she smiled and nodded and signed her linen napkin

And sent it over with “that was very sweet of you… Marilyn”…

Marilyn got a Mexican divorce from Arthur Miller the following year…

And that bottle of ’53 Dom Perignon… Marilyn’s favorite… cost me $89 dollars in 1960

I looked it up on Google the other day… $721 in today’s dollars!...

But there’s none around… Poor Marilyn probably drank it all...

She was the ultimate Hollywood victim…

“La Ronde” had one more brief glimpse of fame the following year…

Floyd Patterson used the place as his training camp in 1961 in his defense of his title

As the heavyweight boxing champion of the world against Ingemar Johanssen…

The Pleasure Domes

The nuns waver in the shimmer an hour before the afternoon rain

Devils dance in the streets

Bunker oil has not been laid as yet to still them

Across the strait - The skies above the mountains of Samaar

Slowly blacken with jungle moisture on its way to join our own

In the shallows - The masts of sunken ships lance skyward to mark their graves

Blown pillboxes rubbled on the beach

Mix with the pristine sand to mark more graves

Occasionally a bloated corpse floats in to be degassed with a forty-five

If it is one of ours - or just left to be exploded by the sun

Sweat soaks us as we line up yet again in the merciless heat

Palm-shade not helping much as we await our turns

Outside the rounded metal hut

It was thrown up less than a week after the town had been secured

Tagalog notices distributed and the hiring of eager applicants begun

Its been four months since the supreme generalissimo returned as promised

Splashing ashore more than once for army moviecams to get it right

One of his first decrees - To build the pleasure domes

Staffed with his docs and medics who now short-arm us all

And also make sure the girls are clean

No blacks are seen in our protracted line

(It would be years before equality's affirmed)

Their own much smaller quonset near the strip is hidden in the bush

On the other side of town - It trembles slightly adding to the thrill

As the Billies and the 38's roar off on useless runs

The nuns? - They come and go oblivious of our long queue

(Embarrassed men and boys)

For there's a nunnery across the way and the nuns of Santa Cruz

Silently they come and go in darkness and in light

To minister to their debilitated flock at their hastily-rebuilt hospital down on Red Beach

After the hills are stabilized and danger's past - Junketing congressmen

The U.S.O and press appear - and the pleasure domes are closed

Infections soar - Rum is poisoned and the economy caves in

The huts are then given to the nuns who have them torn apart

To roof both hospital and nunnery with corrugated sheets

The Wilderness of Derivatives

(by the numbers)

1. In 1968-70, Congress in its infinite wisdom and with a lot of help from Wall Street lobbyists created

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as GSE’s (Government Sponsored Enterprises) EXEMPT FROM ALL TAXES*…

Fannie had been part of the government since 1938… But it was privatized along with Freddie to create a

Secondary market for mortgages… The “Implicit Full Faith and Credit” of the US Treasury backed their

Operations… The bonds they issued made up of millions of mortgages were lumped into huge pools and

Traded like commodities… sugar, wheat, pork bellies, etc --

2. Banks and Non-Banks no longer had to hold mortgages in-house. They were sold to Freddie and sister

Fannie and this freed up their deposits to make many more mortgages… Their trading symbols FNM and

FRE were listed and traded on the New York Stock Exchange and their prices skyrocketed… In year 2002

FNM was selling at $120 a share and her brother hit a high of $75 in year 2004 --

3. I was for many years a member of the board of a little Waldoboro Maine Savings & Loan suddenly and

Magically  transformed into an FSB (Federal Savings Bank) and I started to worry… So did the Chairman,

The CEO and the rest of the board… Holy smoke!... Uncle Sam was now one of our competitors! --

4. For the next 20 years Fannie and Freddie made enormous TAX-FREE profits!…Their “No Risk” bonds 

Yielded  35 points more than US Treasuries and 70 points above triple A corporate debt…The whole

Investment world, foreign and domestic, clamored for them --

6. Enter the Wall Street Bankers again, who created these two voracious entities… They started getting

Jealous…they wanted in on this profit bonanza… so around year 2000 they started making a market tied

To short-term ARM’s (1-Year Adjustable Rate Mortgages) and thanks to Allan Greenspan…“Sub-Prime

Mortgage Derivatives” were born… They came up with fancy names for these “Paper Promises” like  

CMT’s, CDO’s, LIBOR’s, MTA’s, COFI’s etc… They chopped each one up into 20 or 30 pieces and sold them

To hedge funds and pension funds, foreign governments, insurance companies, etc. –

7. Not one of the many government regulators responsible, bothered to check all this questionable

Leveraging activity…Some of it was illegal because a few of these guys were selling their OWN stocks short…

Not to worry… After all, everyone knew that home owners with lots of equity just don’t walk away from

Their mortgages… But when the bubble burst, lots of them did… and  taxpayers now are forced to bail out 

Those “too big to fail” crooks --

8. A few years ago, that little S&L in Waldoboro Maine was gobbled up by a big bank that got themselves

In trouble… and that big bank was gobbled up by an even bigger bank… And Fannie and Freddie closed

Yesterday at 42 cents and 35 cents respectively –

9. And so it goes…

*The Emergency Home Finance Act of 1970         

The Perfect Game

Fifty-three years ago…

On a glorious fall day in early October – Monday the eighth of October 1956 to be exact                               

One of the greatest feats in the game of baseball came to pass

A New York Yankee named Don Larsen pitched “The Perfect Game”

It was against his team’s arch rivals from across the East River – the Brooklyn Dodgers
One of the greatest teams of Major Leaguers ever assembled

It happened to be the fifth game of the 1956 World Series

The papers called it the “Subway Series”

Twenty-seven Dodger batters came up to bat that day and not one of them reached first base!

A feat never before or since accomplished and probably never will be

And my cousin, my best friend and best-man at my wedding just a couple of months before...

Pete Tryforos and I happened to be there!  – We saw it all!...

We sat in the left-field bleachers of that old triple-decker stadium 

Built in the Bronx in 1923 just three years before I was born...

A steel masterpiece... I think at the time it was the largest baseball field in the world...

As kids with PAL passes* the two of us would ride the 163^rd Street trolley free

And climb up to the third deck in right field along with thousands of other kids from all over New York

We always got in free except on Sunday… Always got there early to watch batting practice

Watched all the Great Yankees… Yogi, Joe D, Charlie K, little Frankie C and all the others... and we dreamed…

Yankee Stadium!... “The House that Ruth Built” after Babe, the greatest home-run hitter who ever lived

That magnificent structure could easily accommodate over seventy-five thousand fans

But sadly it was torn down and then rebuilt in 1975 with shorter fences for more home runs

And fancy skyboxes for Wall-Street bankers and other assorted hustlers

But it was never the same again… Never the same…

I drove down from Connecticut that day in my luxurious ‘49 Packard that I paid $600 for used

And Pete met me at his father’s flower shop with his sleeping bag slung over his shoulder

I had my own old army-surplus tucked into its canvas bag

After we ate, we took the IRT to the ballpark about seven that evening

Thousands of fans were already there waiting for the bleacher seats to go on sale for the next day’s game

They were lined up half-way around the enormous old stadium

We walked to the end of the line and rolled out our bags and Pete watched our gear

While I went over to 'Nathans Famous' for a dozen hot dogs and six cokes

We hoped the dogs would keep us from getting too hungry through the night…

Until they opened the gates and started selling tickets the next morning

We didn’t sleep at all that chilly night…We talked baseball with the other fans

We talked all kinds of statistics… and who the starting pitchers were going to be tomorrow

And was Casey Stengel a better manager than Walt Alston of the Dodgers

And was Mickey Mantle as good as Joe D playing center field…

And was Gil MacDougal as good a shortstop as PeeWee Reese…

Sometime after midnight the cops cut off the line of fans

They parked a police car at the end and told the latecomers that the bleachers were closed

And before we knew it the sun was up and they opened the gates and let us in

We paid five bucks for our two tickets… During the regular season those tickets cost 75 cents each

But hey… this was the World Series!

Like I said we sat in the left field bleachers… why ”bleachers”?... because on really hot summer days… well, you know...                

Near us, a section of about twenty seats were roped off for some old colored porters and their descendants

They once worked on Jake Ruppert’s private train that used to be parked in the NY Central yards a few blocks away

The city took them over when the Central went bust and built high-rise low-income housing on the land

Jake owned the Yankees for many years, all through the Great Depression and sold out in 1939

But part of the settlement stated that those seats would always be there for his “boys”

And Dell Webb and Dan Topping who were the present owners honored his wishes

Jake was called the ‘Kaiser King of NY’ and was known to hold his“Knickerbocker Beer” profits  close to his vest

He refused to raise Joe D’s salary an additional $10,000 which would have made Joe

The first major leaguer to earn $100,000 for a season**… The fans found out about it and went on strike!

Attendance dropped way off for a couple of weeks and old Jake caved in…

Pretty soon those “reserved” seats filled up with what was left of those black old- timers and their kids and grand-kids

And then Robert Merrill the great opera star came out and sang the national anthem

Jimmie Gilliam the Dodger lead-off second-baseman  came up to the plate and Don Larsen threw his first pitch

He threw just 96 more pitches in his “Perfect Game”

The Yankees made two great plays in those nine innings to save Don's no-hitter… The most spectacular was Mickey Mantle’s

Running back-handed catch of a Gil Hodges long drive to deep center field     

Another was a line drive by Jackie Robinson that bounced off Bill Cary's  glove at third base over to the shortstop

Who threw Jackie out by a step!...

The Yankees won the game on Mickey’s fourth inning home run off Sal Maglie...

That was all they needed but they got another run in the sixth to win 2-0                                                                                                    

When Don Larsen struck out pinch-hitter Dale Mitchell for the third out to notch his “Perfect Game”…

Pete and I realized we were witness to a once-in-a-lifetime baseball masterpiece…

And then Don Larsen picked up his catcher Yogi Berra who had rushed out to the mound to hug him

And started carrying Yogi to the dug-out…

And then all the Yankees piled out and mobbed the two of them...

At that very moment - it seemed that for a couple of seconds... 

A stunned silence of absolute disbelief as to what just happened

Had permeated through those seventy-five thousand fans in the stands...

And then the whole stadium erupted with screams and yells and whistles that went on and on for at least fifteen minutes...

And then Pete and I started jumping up and down and hugged each other...

And then the black old-timers and their kids and grand-kids started hugging each other and laughing...

And then they came over to us and we hugged each other and everyone had tears in their eyes…

*PAL-'Police Athletic League'– Mayor Fiorello Laguardia’s idea to keep kids out of trouble and engaged in wholesome activities…  and it worked!

** Recently the Yankees Alex Rodriguez was signed to a $50 million dollar contract... He couldn't even tie DiMaggio's shoes...

Sadly, the "Great American Pastime" has degenerated mightily since that glorious October day... It has been co-opted by money-

hungry conglomerates, union reps and their lawyers, press agents, unscrupulous trainers dispensing 'performance-enhancing' 

drugs, league officials condoning flubber-cored balls and corked bats, shortened fences, lots of inadequate players,

too many teams and leagues, too many play-off games and that great innovation, the "Designated  Hitter"...

 No, it's not the same anymore...                                                                                              

The Wonderer

The wonderer takes the ultimate road at night

When most birds except for whippoorwills and owls are silent

When the thornbush blooms its crimson shoots

And blackened roots of fire-falls are moist with salted dews

Of moonless star-lit seas

He has come from his tunnel of woods

Onto night-fields replete with explosions of brilliant flowerings

There is no purpose for this voyage other than the wonderer has reasoned

He is finally alone in this confetti-strewn galactic smear

Spread above in its celestial glory

He must not linger long gazing at this "fire which severs day from night"

As the greatest poet Master Will proclaimed

Because his journey is drawing to a close and he is bent

As the saw-grass sparkling with droplets of sea-mist is bent

His bones and fibers lacerated and detrite

He spies two fireballs slicing through Alpha-Centauri

And lies down on a saturated ledge to wait out the cosmic shower

His eyes close till they are pulsing slits timed to his heart

Those empyrian slashes up there are his epitaph

Written when this field was a sea of gas

Unpoem

This is an “unpoem”

It is not my usual method of expression

But I hope it offers some insight on the catastrophic collapse

Of the world’s economies including our own

And some hope of recovery

I am 82 years old, a child of the Great Depression, a veteran of WW2  and the father of three girls

A grandfather and a great-grandfather

And except for some brief apprenticeships so many years ago

I have never been employed by anyone except myself

Early on I relied upon my instincts to project beyond the next paycheck

Not for just a couple of months

But for five, even ten years down my financial road

And my current hope of recovery for the world’s economic woes

Is simply this personal small but critical observation:

By way of explanation:

I became ill a few years back and my lovely wife and I were forced

To sell our home of 40 years in a small village on the Maine coast

And now live in a tiny old-age condo

Our property was listed and easily sold 

At 38% more than what I thought was its true value

The sales price and mortgage was arranged by the realtor through the Bank of America

Sound familiar?...

For a number of years I was also a director of a small S&L

And the other day I called one of our appraisers and asked him

To place a present value on the property we sold three years before

He came back with a valuation of 32% LESS than we received

To my mind, there are only 6 points more left in the"Greed Factor's"  housing bubble

Before our next "recovery" begins

For what it’s worth…

Even though we live in a relatively "free" democratic nation

Our system of “Capitalism” (boom then bust) can exist

Only through the constant threat of war, preparation for war,  or war itself

The cyclical nature of this ever-present systemic flaw was codified

Early in the past century by the Russian economist Nikolai Kondratieff

Who was subsequently imprisoned and executed by Josef Stalin

The greatest mass murderer in history who did not care for his conclusions

And it is also ironic that a military man (Dwight Eisenhower) thirty years later

Also warned of the danger of an all-too-powerful “military-industrial” marriage

Corrupting the desire for most of us to live without the overriding fear

Of constant conflicts periodically wiping out millions of innocent livelihoods

And lives…