Songs of Grief and Sadness may Bespeak Hope and Sublime Joy

    Can they speak to me? You?

    Can they, now?

    Sure. I am convinced of it.

    You take the medicine in doses.

    As do I.

    It snowed a bit yesterday.

    Thanks for shoveling.

 Black History Month: Provo, Utah

    I lived in Provo-Orem, Utah for five years in the 1990s. A formative part of my life. I studied a lot of Spanish, a good deal of Arabic; I traveled to more of Chile, Israel, Palestine, and Egypt. These places, none of the above, do not have a lot to do with African-American history. However, there are tie ins to me, personally, to Black History for me while I was in those places.

    There were people of African-American origin in those places, just not what many think of as places of ethnic diversity.

    In Provo alone I got to know and become friends with a few. Franklin from Fresno, California. A very nice, enthusiastic young man from Sandusky, Ohio, who I have not thought of in a long time. (His name...)

    I am glad I wrote this!

    BREAK: Shout out and condolences to Rondell Moore, who just died at age 25. Did he not have millions? Money does not solve all things.

    Oh, a Purdue guy who put fear into me like few I have ever seen on the football field.

    We still have a week of African-American history.

    Where does it fit with you?

    Watching the Bulls with Waleed, later Jenni, and others.

    Remembering the best: Michael Jordan. Penny and Shaq were not bad, either.

    Air Jordan, and was it... Spike Lee? Or Chris Rock. Tyra Banks' tooth brush...

    Haha. Ha.

    

 Black History in Bloomington, Indiana

    It's 2026, and it's February. I like Black History month, because learning history is important; learning and scrutinizing our common knowledge of the present and the past helps us know better.

    We should know better.

    My hometown has a history of African-Americans, probably tracing back to the time when IU was founded around 1820, a few years after statehood for us Hoosiers. 

    I grew up in B-town; I am a long time basketball sufferer. I write this as Purdue is killing the men and giving the Hoosiers, at time hopeful this season, their 10th loss of the season. March Madness worthy? Not unless they change up their execution and toughness. I do not see it.

    The football team, a dream squad, was another matter this past year altogether. Wow.

    Lots of African-American help on that team, which we will forever cherish.

    Sports bring us together, which Bloomington celebrates.

    Bob Knight brought greatness through diversity there, with many Black players among some great white ones. 

    There is more to life and success than sports, obviously, but some things are more visible than others.

    I grew up near the IU campus, attended Elm Heights where we had some Black students, but I did not know that we had a historical Black part of town. It was past downtown, I guess between the hospital on second street (or third?) and Pigeon Hill, closer to former Dyer Middle School, which would become Tri-North. Which, not surprisingly, has had a higher concentration of African-American students and athletes.

    Much of Bloomington and the surrounding county, Monroe, is very white, over the last decades more diversity has come. This possibly represents more advancement and success among people of color, along with the growth of jobs and the university.

    

    ASIDE: Jesse Jackson died this week. More on him later, hopefully.

    Who did I know who was Black, in Bloomington?

    A good little list, I think. Some of them were adopted by white families, yes, but it all comes together, which is my greater point.

    In the country and the world, we all interact and make history together.

    Long live Black history month, and the significance of who and where and why we are.

    Blog it.

 Wallowing in My Juices

    There is suffering and pain;

    we know this.

    There is grief and anguish;

    What more can I admit.

    

    Things dark and gloomy, sad and tragic.

    Gut wrenching, blue, all of the forlorn colors.

    Woe is me! Woe is you! 

    Woe unto all of us...

    We wallow and meander, morosely...

    Little light, little hope.

    And yet:

    There is warmth out there waiting.

    Where, do you say?

    You must tell me. You have to explain.

    Please, do tell me.

    Tell me your "why". Tell me your "what".

    You know what these are.

    I can let you explain and expound.

    We have so many juices and liquids within our beings...

    Water-dependent, in our blood, our brains, in our loins and innards,

    Flowing everywhere, the cells of our animal lives,

    Meshed with the fluids of plants and trees and rivers and oceans.

    The juices bequeathed by the photosynthetic leaves derived from the sunlight.

    And the bones, dried and liquified, of billions of us, lie ossifying across the globe.

    

    High and low, the dead and alive.

    We celebrate life and all those who have lived in their juices before.

    Let us not wallow, and bemoan too long, use up our time in the lows, and come out the 

    other side

    To the heights and climbs,

    Higher echoes and climes.

    Reach for the waters of life and sing.

 Chinese, Russian, American Leaders Kill or Let Helpless Die

    Xi Jinping heads a government that puts minorities (and protestors?) in concentration camps and forced labor prisons. True? Where is the Muslim outrage for their fellow Muslims, like the Uighur? Apparently, not that big a deal for the extremists like ISIS or Al-Qaeda. Hypocrites, really. You are not Godly people at all. Mohammed himself would cry to God in utter shame.

    What about the rest of us? Humanitarians? Humanists? We are bereft of conscience. I think.

    Russia, you kill thousands of innocents in Ukraine, you suppress Chechnya and others.

    Killers, murderers, you put Raskolnikov to shame. He only killed an old lady for his silver. You? Putin and your thugs? Rocket a cancer hospital for children. Wow.

    The U.S. and Donald Trump? Cut medicine and aid to thousands of destitute, sick, Africans. Much inspired by South African born Elon Musk, who I guess learned from the history of apartheid and sick thinking of his home country how to let poor, black people stay sick, and let them die worse than dogs.

    I know about dogs dying in Africa. My dad told me this winter, for the time I wanted a story of puppies at Christmas, instead his pet is left to languish , starve, suffer, and die.

    You rich, powerful, nations let people die, or worse, torture and kill them.

    Xi, Putin, and Trump.

    As Solo told Vader, "I'll see you in hell."

    Is that a correct quote from fiction reflecting reality in 2026?

    I think so. 

 My Dad has Published Almost as many Novels as J.D. Salinger

    Unless there have been posthumous novels published since his death in 2010. Need to check.

    Jerome, or Jerry, Salinger, author extraordinaire. Born in 1924, 1919, later to publish the Catcher in the Rye. The youth's misinterpretation of a Robert Burns poem, from maybe 1860.

    J.D. wished to harken to a time of more innocence, before "phony" (and terrible adulthood) would catch him and toss him over the cliff. Perhaps he died many times inside, so much that he was broken into many parts that people have a hard time understanding, putting together. His son, Matthew, loved and cherished him. His daughter Margaret, not so much.

    Salinger lived to be 91. My dad is now 88. Given up on his novels, we are assured, like the thought or beginning of two men trying to extricate themselves from southern Algeria, or somewhere deep down in the Sahara. Paul Bowles managed this book, or at least the Algerian vast landscape, decades ago, likely unbeknownst to my father, but a bit bewitching to me. I will not read it, yet, having seen a film version, reading some summaries and critiques. Disturbing and sad, is what we learn. Books in Algeria! Perhaps for me yet? We never know.

    Should fiction be terrifying and sad, like that created by Cormac McCarthy or Richard Mathison?

    Enough of that fiction, there is plenty of real pathos and tragedy for that!

    My dad published two novels with the august octogenarian Mary Campbell in the 2000 teens. Around 2012 or 2013? Perhaps before. We will check.

    Letters to Lucretia and Forgotten Memory. At least one got looks at or consideration by Morgan Freeman, or his folks, possibly adapted to him. That was cool. His books may not move much. Nothing like Salinger.

    Not to be compared to Salinger, who seems to have altered human history with his literature. And his life. My dad?  Much smaller circles of influence. But my father was not a determined writer since his teenage years in the 1950s. Salinger was very intent on writing since he was 17, in the early 1940s.

    I wanted to be a writer since the 1980s, in my teenage years.

    No novels from me, or at least none published.

    My father helped write and publish a non-fiction book in the 1970s. About genealogy, or family history. He has written a number of letters, or mini-memoirs, and other small stories or remembrances.

    A little like me. I have written or composes some poems. A bit like my daughter. The oldest.

    She may trump us men. Who knows?

    May any of us compare to the late, great J.D. Salinger. We are not traumatized by battles and death, burnt flesh and awful carnage and violence.

    But we may have some important things to share, write, and impart.

 U.S. Combat Veterans

    I spoke to a Marine combat veteran who fought in Vietnam today. He fought fifty plus years ago; I spoke with him this afternoon. It is an honor and a privilege. He was hurt in Vietnam back around 1968, where things were hard. He knew guys who were killed. He himself was fortunate to only be injured, not maimed for life.

    He is a real guy; I have known him since either 2007 or 2008. He has some hard memories and feelings from those times. He went to the cemeteries of our guys at Normandy...

    Salinger fought and suffered with his colleagues at Utah Beach, but before that, I think notably, in the sands of that replica place in England. Too many young and battered and buried bodies, on both sides of the Channel. Thanks a lot, Adolph, and the twisters of social Darwinism!

    Terrible, the Third Reich.

    Any, Happy U.S. Presidents' Day.

    Chester Arthur lives forever. For what, we cannot remember.