The Wisdom of St. Frances

The western Saints tell us, what matters most is what we “Do” in the world.






To the eastern mystics, what’s most important is to mindfully “Be” in the world.

Frank Sinatra sang, “Do, Be, Do, Be, Do”, Very Wise.

Pop, Rock & Soul On PBS

I like watching the PBS music specials, especially when the artists are from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Last night the special was called “’60s Pop, Rock and Soul (My Music)”. When PBS puts these concerts on, it’s always during a pledge drive so we have to suffer through the very long segments when they beg, plead and cajole us for money. Usually they have one or more of the musicians being interviewed by the regular PBS folks, so that keeps me watching. The two musicians hosting the show were two Brits, Davey Jones and Peter Noon. Both looked amazingly good for their age, which has to be around 60. Both were young looking even back in the day, so they had un unfair advantage. Davey didn’t bring the other Monkeys with him and Peter was devoid of the Hermits. There were almost 20 different acts on the show and all of the groups had at least some of the original members. That’s probably a rule. The most noticeable absentees were, Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders, Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane/Starship and Smokey Robinson of the Miracles. I have to say the stand-ins were quite good at imitating the originals. The young blond woman who sang “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit” was quite a babe and even had Grace’s fast vibrato down. I recognized Paul Kantner and Marty Balin from the original Jefferson Airplane. I was hoping Marty would do a song, but he didn’t. The worst of the 3 stand-ins was the blond guy who sang lead for the Raiders. He was a good singer, but no Mark Lindsay. Other lead singers sans their groups were Mitch Ryder without the Detroit Wheels and Roger McGuine without The Byrds. I think Mitch sounds better today as an older man than when he was young. Eddy Floyd who sang “Knock on Wood” and Percy Sledge with “When a Man Loves a Woman” were amazingly good. Poor Percy had this huge hit,  most of it  sung in a high register. He’s doomed for the rest of his life to hit those high notes, but he did a good job. The strangest group was ? and the Mysterians. They sang their biggest hit “96 Tears”. A Mexican American garage band from Detroit and Flint, Michigan, today they are thought of as Proto-punk, a precursor to Punk Rock. I never liked the song, but it was obvious that they were still having fun playing music. The most notable one hit wonder band was the Kingsmen. They sang “Louie, Louie” just like it was recorded, the lead singer slurring his words so they were barely understandable. He even copied the mistake on the record where he comes in with the verse too early, stops and then starts again. The audience loved it. Most of us boomers know what the real lyrics are by now, but at the time it was popular, there was an FBI investigation of what the FBI thought were graphically explicit sexual lyrics. The song was originally written by Richard Berry in 1955 about a Jamaican sailor returning to his girl on the Island. It became a popular cover song around the Northwest. Paul Revere and the Raiders, another Northwest band, also came out with a version about the same time, but it wasn’t a hit.  There was a movement in Washington at one time to make “Louie, Louie” the official state song.  I ‘m not sure if it was all the original Kingsmen on the PBS special or not, but they must be damn tired of doing this song. For me the highlight was Chad and Jeremy singing “A Summer Song”. In a pledge break interview one of them said it’s been 40 years since they’d played together, but these aging Englishmen, each playing an acoustic guitar, sang the song  sweetly and with tight harmony. As a kid watching the Ink Spots, Rosemary Clooney and others of that era, I thought their music was old-fashioned and corny. Well now it’s our turn to be old and corny. I didn’t realize back then that rarely are the most popular artists on these kinds of shows. But I enjoyed seeing  them all and there are always enough of the ones I Used to like to keep me watching.

My Personal Profile

On the left hand side of this Blogspot  page there’s an “About Me” section. Under it is my picture and along side the picture a link that says “View my complete profile”. I need to let everyone know that this actually is not my complete profile. As I think over my 64 years of life, it’s apparent to me that I’ve left a few things out. This is the “facebook” section of the blog. I’ve never been comfortable with Facebook. I’ve been invited by “friends” to join , but always decline.
Social networking is a huge phenomenon. Mark Zuckerberg was an intelligent college guy, but awkward around girls. He discovered how to enhance the college dating atmosphere, creating a way for fellow students to put their profiles out there for other students to see. The blog profile feels to me like an extension of this mentality.
Right next to my picture is the category “gender”. I dutifully put “male” in there, but I suspect the mustache gives it away. If you need both a picture and label to help people identify your gender perhaps you should choose another medium for social interaction. The next most important thing it tells you about me is that I’m a Libra. Nobody ever asks me my astrological sign anymore. It happened a lot in the ‘60s and ‘70s. I take that back. When we’re vacationing in California sometimes someone will want to know. I’ve never put my sign on a resume though.
The other most important info about me according to the profile section are my favorite movies, music and books. There are no categories for politics or religion or for that matter my favorite car, my favorite food or psychologist. Katie has a favorite kind of garlic press. I think the “my interests” category is meant to cover all these other areas.
I suspect people put down only what they want others to know. Social networking then becomes an extension of our egos, or more specifically, our personas. The whole truth about ourselves is yet to be discovered. Few people are going to put down that they suffer from anxiety, have a bad temper, are addicted to prescription drugs, have hemorrhoids or hate their bodies. Those things are to be discovered later on in the relationship.
I like thinking and talking with others about favorite books, movies and music. I mostly choose favorites from the past, when things tended to have a greater impact on me. Having a favorite anything is an interesting concept. What I like changes over time. At one time in my life, my favorite book was Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine. It was a great book about a boy who invented a machine that did all his homework for him. I rarely have current favorites of anything. Actually I don’t think much in terms of favorites anymore, but I used to. I often have trouble choosing one thing over another. My favorite food tends to be whatever I’m eating at the time.
I’d like to add another category to my profile, “religion”. For my favorite, I choose Hinduism because it has something for everyone. It has plenty of Gods and Goddesses, and many different paths to God. In a sub-category of favorite Hindu Deity, it’s a tie between Krishna, the young good looking dude who played the flute and had groups of adoring young Gopis following him everywhere (not unlike my favorite rock ‘n’ roll star which would be in another category) and Hanuman, the monkey warrior, who was the devotee and protector of Rama. He was one fierce and devoted dude.
Under the sub-category of favorite style of Zen Buddhism, I would have to go with Soto Zen. Practitioners can just sit and mind their own business, whereas in Rinzai Zen the master silently creeps around in the background and then whacks you with a bamboo stick when you least expect it. I hate that.
Under the sub-category of favorite New Thought writer I would go with Joel Goldsmith. This New York Jew and renegade Christian Scientist created The Infinite Way. His teachings cut to the chase and can be summed up: Every moment of your life, practice the presence of the Christ within.
Under the sub-category of favorite  saying by a Guru that could be put on a bumper sticker I choose Meher Baba: Don’t worry, be Happy.

Briefly Marching With OWS

 
Katie and I were in Tucson a few weeks ago for the Tucson Meet Yourself Folk Life Festival. After I performed with the Chinese Martial Arts Club, we walked around to take in the rest of the Festival. We ran across the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters who were marching through the streets of Tucson, so we joined them. I didn’t know much about the movement at the time. We thought it had something to do with the rich getting too rich and too powerful in this country and influencing our politicians too much. We agreed with that so we entered the slow moving stream of people.
I don’t like being part of any large movement or organization. There is always something I don’t agree with. I’m sure it’s related to my experience in the Army and more specifically in Vietnam. We wreaked havoc on that beautiful country and its people and I was part of that effort. When I got back and decided to join the protest against the war, I found out that to the protesters I symbolized what they were against. I didn’t feel welcomed by them and didn’t like many of the things they were saying.
I recently allowed my membership in the American Legion to lapse for that very reason. For example, I didn’t agree with their efforts to amend the constitution giving Congress the power to prohibit the desecration of the American flag. The Legion is very hung up on the flag. I don’t want to burn a flag, but I believe in my right to do so. If I can buy one and own one, then I can burn it. Strangely I supported the right of that wacko preacher who wanted to burn the Koran. I also have a right to burn a Bible, which I don’t especially want to do either, but I don’t think the preacher would have agreed with that. The issue is individual freedom of expression. The flag is a symbol of that freedom, not the freedom itself.
When Katie and I fell into step with the marchers, I felt slightly uncomfortable. There was a young man directly behind us yelling about the greed of the fascist capitalists etc. and he kept stepping on my heel, causing my shoe to come off. He did that twice. Finally I turned around and gave him a dirty look. He looked back at me, but didn’t seem to care. He was too busy yelling nasty remarks for the cause. I feel these demonstrations should be peaceful and not have any destructive behavior or aggressive words, at all. But my wanting to turn around and knock that asshole down on the ground and give him a memorable experience with my shoe, didn’t seem in harmony with my message. So instead we dropped out of the procession.
The Occupy Wall Street movement was started by a group out of Vancouver, BC called Adbusters. I’m not sure how it made the transition from Canada to the US, but on Jul 13, 2011 they put out a call to those who read their website and publications to: Occupy Wall Street!, and the following statement:
In Solidarity, and as a response to this call, a planning group was formed [occupywallst.org], and an info sharing site established. The participation of every person, and every organization, that has an interest in returning the US back into the hands of its individual citizens is required.
Our nation, our species and our world are in crisis. The US has an important role to play in the solution, but we can no longer afford to let corporate greed and corrupt politics set the policies of our nation.
We, the people of the United States of America, considering the crisis at hand, now reassert our sovereign control of our land.
Solidarity Forever!
The first OWS protest was on September 17, 2011. Wikipedia says that within one month there were similar demonstrations in 70 major cities and 600 communities around the country. World wide protests similar to these have happened in over 900 cities.
This movement has obviously struck a chord with people and during the first month it grew very fast. The protestors call themselves the 99%ers. This alludes to the fact that 1% of the population has a disproportionate amount of the wealth. The 99%ers believe that because of the way our politicians are elected, they become beholden to those with the most money. This highly influences how these politicians govern and the laws they pass. We can’t trust the government to change this because they are the very ones perpetuating it.
Only time will tell whether this movement will continue to grow and affect some kind of change. Much of the third world is rapidly trying to become more capitalistic while the OWS movement is saying we all need to be less capitalistic. The western world has lived this wasteful consumer lifestyle for a long time now. We are in no place to tell the billions of people in the third world they can’t have it too. It seems pretty clear that if the billions of people in the third world do become affluent in the same way that we are, the earth will not be able to sustain all the waste and pollution and the energy demands will be astronomical. It’s apparent that we are heading for a big change.
With all these huge problems facing the world, do we want big business calling the shots? Capitalists are most concerned with making a profit and less concerned about the welfare of the people and the environment. So even though I support much of what the OWS movement stands for, I don’t think I’ll be marching with them again any time soon. Well maybe I will if they get rid of those angry, nasty, shoe destroying assholes.

Missing My Furry Friend

We had to have the Vet euthanize our cat, Felis, recently. He was with us for almost 17 years. It’s been several weeks now and I still look for him when I come home and then that sharp pain somewhere between my chest and throat reminds me, he’s gone. He wasn’t sick very long, but I suppose the cancerous tumor had been growing on his kidney for a long time. We just didn’t know it. It was only in the last few weeks of his life that we realized something was wrong.
My son, Ben, and I picked him out of the litter along with his long gone sister, Flower. It was at Christmastime in 1994. Flower was cute, white and black hair with a shy demeanor. Katie picked her out as the one, right away. We planned on taking just one kitten from the litter, but Felis had so much spunk and personality that Ben and I agreed we had to take him too.
We lived at the time in a two story Victorian home and the two kittens had the run of the place. Flower was a natural athlete and that seemed to bother Felis. He was too aggressive for her and their fights always ended with Flower squealing for mercy as Felis pinned her to the floor, biting her neck. There was a big wooden ball on the bannister at the bottom of our hall stairs. In self defense, Flower learned to jump from the bottom stair onto this varnished ball.  Felis couldn’t get to her. He tried many times to jump onto that ball, but always slid off, crash landing on the floor in a undignified manner.

Later we moved to a condo across town. The kittens got out one evening and I found Flower dead by the side of the road. She’d been hit by a car and the driver must have placed her up on the grass. I think I know what happened. Felis probably dashed across the street in front of the car with Flower following him. She always followed him. We buried Flower across the street in a field and Felis became our only pet. I was irrationally mad at him for a while for not taking care of his little sister.

He started doing string art shortly after that. Katie is a knitter and would make a small ball of yarn for him to bat around. He discovered that if he knocked it under the kitchen table, the yarn made interesting patterns, or perhaps he just enjoyed watching me untangle the mess when he was through. He sat patiently as I wound the yarn back up into a ball and then threw it for him so he could start the process all over again. Sometimes when he was finished, he put the string ball in one of my shoes, so I’d find it later and throw it out to him.
When we moved from Washington to New York, he got used to being on a harness and leash. On the trip across country we feared he might jump out of the truck when we opened the door. He became accustomed to my taking him over to the grassy areas at rest stops to sniff around. He became an old hand at traveling, because we moved from New York to Arizona, back to Washington and then back to Arizona. I can’t say that he enjoyed traveling, but as long as we were all together, he was content.
The best place we lived, from Felis’s perspective, was our friend Sally’s add-on apartment in Sequim, Wa. We stayed there for 4 or 5 months after we sold our house and just before moving back to Arizona. Her house is in the country and has an acre of lawn rimmed by thick trees. Sally had 3 cats at the time and we had adopted a stray named Farley. The cats ruled this acre of land. Felis loved to wander and explore the acreage. Sometimes the cats would sit around close to each other just watching and listening to the world around them.
Felis’s training on the harness came in handy when we moved to Green Valley. I didn’t dare let him out because of the many wild animals that roam the area. Maybe I was over protective, but we’ve seen bobcats, coyotes, huge owls, rattle snakes and herds of javelina on the grounds. So I started walking him on the leash. He loved it. “Walking him” is not the right term though, rolling on the sidewalk, sniffing bushes and chewing grass with a little bit of walking in between would be more accurate. We usually went out in the evening, when the light was starting to fade. The birds are very active at this time, but their chirping was engulfed by an expansive stillness as twilight approached. Felis and I spent many a sunset together on the sidewalks around the Villas. In the evenings now I feel sad that he’s not with me to enjoy it. Or maybe he is, who knows?

The Chinese Performance Group

Saturday, I performed with the Tucson Sino Martial Arts Group. I only had two minutes of performance time, out of more than an hour. The performance was at the Tucson Meet Yourself Folklife Festival. This festival happens every year and brings together all the diverse cultural and ethnic groups of the Tucson area. Their website describes the festival as follows:
Tucson Meet Yourself is different from other large events: it is a “folklife” festival. This means that our focus is on presenting artists and communities that carry on living traditions rooted in a group’s own definition of identity, artistry and cultural significance. The festival has been held each year in Downtown Tucson, Arizona since 1974.
It’s a three day event and our performance took place on the morning of the second day. The weather has been hot recently in southern Arizona, and thankfully the performance was over before the heat reached its peak. I’ve been practicing and teaching Tai Chi for over 30 years and just recently joined this Martial Arts Club. My motivation for joining was to learn Chen style Tai Chi from a qualified teacher. As far as I can tell, all of the members of the club are Chinese except for me and another guy named Rob. We are referred to as the two “Americans” in the club. I assume that the Chinese members are Americans too, but they don’t refer to themselves that way. I’ve only been to one practice so far, but all of the members were very gracious and welcoming.

 I’ve belonged to numerous martial arts clubs over the years, but this one is unlike any of those. The focus of my previous clubs has always been the self-defense aspects of the Kung Fu and Tai Chi movements. This group’s orientation seems to be on performance. The forms I already know come out of southern China and Hong Kong, brought to the US by teachers who long ago left China. The forms that I’m being introduced to at TSMAG have been more recently standardized in China for performance purposes.

 In Chinese history, the years from 1912-1949 are known as the “Republican Period”. During this time the traditional Martial Arts were encouraged. They were taught and performed as a means to promote national pride.  All the various styles of Martial Arts flourished throughout China. At the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, a group of Chinese Martial artists demonstrated for the first time to an international audience. In 1949 the People’s Republic of China came to power and the Martial Arts were transformed. The PRC did not like the martial quality of the art and changed it to a regulated sport called Wushu. To quote an article in Wikipedia, “The new competition sport was disassociated from what was seen as the potentially subversive self-defense aspects and family lineages of the Chinese Martial Arts.” In 1958 the government established the All-China Wushu Association as the umbrella organization that regulates Martial Arts training. The traditional forms were standardized and regulated for performance and competition purposes.

My new Martial Arts club appears to be from this later period. I was the fifth act to perform at the Festival. During all the performances, music was played in the background. Some of the music sounded like revolutionary worker songs. Thankfully the music played  during my performance was more traditional stringed instrument Chinese music. I was asked by Shuping, the Sifu of the club, to perform a two minute version of Sun Tai Chi. Sun is the newest of the five main family styles of Tai Chi. It was created in the early 1900’s by Sun Lu Tang. He was a practitioner of all three internal styles of Chinese Martial Arts, Tai Chi, Bagua and Hsing Yi. The Sun form was patterned after the Tai Chi long form and contains elements of all three internal styles. I’ve been practicing this style for about 15 years. My main Tai Chi style is the Yang family style which the troupe already knows. The Sun style adds something new to this performance troupe, so that’s probably why I was asked to do it.

When I arrived at the festival Shuping handed me a white silk uniform she brought for me to wear for the performance. I had cleaned and pressed my more traditional black uniform the night before, and Shuping said I didn’t have to change if I didn’t want to. I tried it on and it felt very sheer and silky. So this is how Hugh Hefner must feel all the time. Most of the other men wore their black uniforms and looked quite macho. At least I didn’t have flowers on my jacket like the women. The others said I looked good in it and I felt pleased and honored to be accepted as part of this Martial Arts Troupe.
I think the performance went well. Shuping and a few of the other women performed the Yang 24 form behind me while I did my two minutes of Sun style. I am not a seasoned performer, but this new club will definitely force me to work to become a better practitioner of both Kung Fu and Tai Chi.

Playing in the Khoury League

It’s the end of the baseball season and I still feel excited about the upcoming playoffs and World Series, even though I don’t follow baseball very closely any more. I probably won’t watch many of the games. The Cardinals are still in it as of this writing. St. Louis has been a baseball town since the St. Louis Brown Stockings were formed in 1882. Being a Cardinals’ fan over the years pays off unlike being fans of other teams who are rarely contenders come October.
The 50s and 60s were good times to be a Cardinals fan. Like most boys back then I collected baseball cards. On the back of each card was a wealth of information about the player. My favorite Cardinal was “Stan the Man” Musial. He played for the Cardinals from 1941-1963, a 22-year career, with one year out to fight in WWII. He was a consistently good player and set many records that are still on the books. He loved his fans and treated them with respect. Stan had a career batting average of .331. He was the Cardinals yearly batting champion 7 times, the most of any Cardinal,  one more than Rogers Hornsby who played in the 20s. Stan had a very distinctive way of batting, keeping his feet close together while moving his body and his bat around in small circles.
One of the great missed opportunities of my life was the night some friends went downtown to Stan’s restaurant to meet him. I got sick and couldn’t go and felt extremely disappointed. My buddies did bring me back an autographed picture of Stan, which, of course, is long gone. I think my friend, Paul, still has his. In February of this year, Stan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama. It couldn’t have gone to a more deserving guy. Watch him receive it on the following link. (Cut & Paste)
www.ksdk.com/news/article/244071/3/Stan-Musial-receives-Presidential-Medal-of-Freedom
As a kid I played baseball every summer. Little league baseball in the St. Louis area was called the Khoury League. It was founded in 1934 by George M. Khoury. The motto was, “The Khoury League is interested in the child that nobody else wants.” It rapidly spread throughout the St. Louis area and included spoiled county suburbanites like me. Participation was not on a try-out basis, but Mr. Khoury wanted all kids of various skill levels to get a chance to play.
There were six divisions, Atom, Bantam, Midget, Juvenile and Senior. The baseball diamonds were smaller than regulation size and even the ball sizes were adjusted for the age of the players.  There was an all star game at the end of each season. This game was played at the major league ball park, Sportsman Field, which later became the first Busch Stadium.
I started out in the Bantam league on a very good team sponsored by Van Zant Realty. In the Atom division many of the players picked weeds in the outfield while fly balls dropped around them or ran the wrong way as their parents and fellow players screamed. But in the Bantam league the kids were more skilled and started to take the game seriously.  I was totally intimidated by the skills of the other players. The best pitcher on my team was a boy named Jimmy. He could throw a variety of pitches including a wicked curve ball. If the pitch was a little to the outside, Billy Bob, the catcher, would quickly move his glove back to the center of the strike zone, attempting to fool the umpire. It never worked, but I thought it was extremely sophisticated and crafty.
Our manager forgot about Mr. Khoury’s dictum that all kids get to play, because that first year, I spent most games sitting on the bench. My dad must have felt sorry for me, because he decided to manage his own team. The sponsor was Barbay's Market. Unlike most other managers, Dad stayed true to the Khoury League spirit and let all the kids have a chance to play.Consequently, we didn't win many games. His other rule was, whether we won or lost, we all went out for ice cream. For the other teams, ice cream was a reward for winning. We often ran into our old teammates at North Hills Dairy Creamery and I wondered if they thought we were winning as many games as they were, probably not. Even though my dad knew near to nothing about managing a baseball team, he did know something about kids and ice cream.
I got better as a ball player and one year I even got a chance to play in the All Star Game at Busch stadium. I was definitely outclassed by the other players. My goal was not to screw up too badly and I didn’t. I usually played 3rd base and fancied myself a junior Ken Boyer, the Cardinals fantastic 3rd baseman, but in that game I was placed in the outfield. I didn’t get a chance to catch a fly ball, but fielded a few successfully and I was up to bat two times. I walked once and hit a single.
I’ll try to catch some of the post season games this year, but I always liked playing baseball better than watching it. I’d take more interest in the sport if I knew more of the players. Each season it seems I have to learn a whole bunch of new players. Very few stay with the same team for very long, unlike “Stan the Man” who spent his entire career with the Cardinals. I am familiar with Albert Pujols and it will be worth it just watching him play. Go Cardinals!