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BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


Thanks to Mr. Google I discovered the meaning of "Liber scriptus proferetur,in quo totum continetur, unde mundus judicetur." Mozart's, Requiem.

Liber scriptus proferetur,
In quo totum continetur,
Unde mundus judicetur.

The written book shall be brought
In which all is contained
Whereby the world shall be judged.

If we write the book ourselves,
one would expect a lot of spinning of our story, and a heap of rationalization.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

email exchange:

Dear St Eve my amazing friend,

I do not, and never have, consider your positions against capitalism to be "rants" or "bizarre." I have always taken them seriously. I realized long ago that you understood, much more than I, capitalism's harmful ramifications that are so easily overlooked by we. the selfish, who enjoy its benefits.

I do not think that I have a "life."

I understand and enjoy your buffoonery.

I am never certain of anything. I live in uncertainty and am comfortable here.

It am intrigued that MG seems to have become more certain of his views even as they change. I sense that you, on the other hand, have backed off the torque a little.

But I am not sure about my statements about either of you.

Truth is often found in cliches.

Is it still a cliche to say that violence leads to violence? Is it a cliche to say that those who will themselves to power are the most likely to engage in and justify violence?

If Gandhi and MLK were Palestinians how would they organize the situation?

mek


We all do have lives so there is no need to get one the question at this stage is how we spend the remainder. I prefer to entertain, play the buffoon and work on my little projects, rail against the tyrants and miscreants and laugh at the happening that my bizarre objections to capitalism and its deformed relative imperialism have all come to pass.
Note our brave Yiddish brothers are now bombing gaza. There is
a striking parallel to the Warsaw ghetto. We starved and strangled this tiny enclave they struck back and the Israelis bomb it and plan to level it. Shame shame on the nasty jewish hypocrites. With a small diminished j. With the Madoffs we join the biggest of the
of the wall street crooks and the Israelis we link arms with the
worst of the world oppressors. A schande on the jews as the NY Times points out. The christs are filled with glee and schadenfreude. Maybe we should all bust out israeli lapel pins
and strut around in yarmulkes with our pants unzipped and
our circumcised weddlers exposed chanting hurray for the jews.
ss

ss

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

The birds fly away
When the weather turns to autumn
In spring they return.

They fly, fly, fly,
Their wings carry them;

Suddenly you notice
That they already
Drink of the distant blue sky.

They fly so swiftly that one takes
Them as disappearing dreams.

What flies more swiftly
Than the birds? Life!

But, unlike the birds,
It never comes back.

…………………………………………..Adapted From “Satantango,” a Hungarian Film

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Far away, a man on the beach
With a flashlight.
What does he think about?

'Whatever death is
Life is worth more.'

You who are tied to me by friendship's chain,
And with whom together we kept
Wide awake so many nights;
You may want to
Mourn over my corpse.

But I say to my friends
Do not mourn me;
You know that with us
It was mostly laughs;

And mourning would strike
Against our normal selves.

But, for sure, come out to me,
And as you stand over my grave,
Cheerfully tell the jokes
We told ourselves.


And laugh some more
And mention all the old names
And know that your blood ran in mine;



---------------------------
Inspired by Satantango, a Hungarian Film.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

On this earth there is one thing that is dreadful: Everyone has his reasons. Eugene Jarecki

Why We Fight - A Film By Eugene Jarecki

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. Kirkegaard

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

If all this dying doesn't end soon everything will turn to shit. mek

Like most good Americans he was fervently materialistic and oblivious to the incongruity of wealth and poverty around him. (mek?)

"Music of Chance," Paul Auster: "Something was finished and something was about to begin. Each citizen carries the entire world within himself. "

"In the Country of Last Things," Paul Auster
"Make plans. Consider the possibilities. Act. Unless you learn to accept what has given to you , you will never be at peace with yourself. "

"The Book of Memory," Paul Auster
"It was. It will never be again. Remember. "

"Leviathan," Paul Auster
"Every man is a prisoner of his pecker."
"Once you turn against yourself, it is hard to believe that everyone is not against you too. "

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

I count it as a mistake of our mistaken democracy, that every man who can read is allowed to believe that he can understand all that is printed.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Many years ago I was standing at the urinal of a VFW in Skowhegan, Maine, when the man pissing next to me allowed that it was too bad that you had to pay for a drink and then piss it all away.

+++++++++++++

He bears the heaviest chain -- that of maturity.

++++++++

His smile was kept locked away in some small drawer somewhere in a cellar.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

There is a time of life when preferences and antipathies are easily implanted and grow to be ineradicable moral sentiments of maturer years.
Lord Salisbury 1865

Apparently after having been molded by friend Dr. Horowitz, few of us have been able to move our heads from side to side so that we could see the rest of the world.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

It seems to me that much of what we call Truth is tentative, subject to change.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Mike

This is beauifully written and a rare tribute to a friend. However, I disagree when you say Hal was surrounded by creative people but he wasn't one of them ..In my occasional get-togethers with Hal over the years we often talked about business, first his advertising work and later his role as producer/director of TV commercials. It was his job to be creative, and I think he did his job well.

John

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

When I think about Hal I try to bring together each of the facets that made up his personality. He wanted to be outsize and memorable but he banged up against his limitations and couldn't bring himself to accept them. He was in a business surrounded by creative types but he wasn't one of them. He wasn't 'talent' but he wasn't a 'suit' either.

He kept his insecurities to himself, he was very closed, very private, so it is doubly hard to put him together in a written sketch. He hid so much of himself from us, and only occasionally, when he was bleeding, did we glimpse a little of what lived under his skin.

His self-protective shield was anger, not a blistering anger, but rather a blustering anger. I loved him for it. It was clear to me that he used his anger to keep himself separate from his life's accumulation of ticks and harrumphs, experience and memory.

When Hal dressed for his role -- the role he played before us, his audience -- when he prepared the fiction that became his self, his character, he dropped deep into his unconscious and the role he played actualized into himself, without deliberate intention, and therefore, paradoxically, into a genuine self. The man we saw on on stage was real.

He never told us that he was dying. We are not sure whether he knew it or whether he was in denial. By not telling us, he deprived himself (and us) of a farewell; we never got to tell him directly how much he meant to each of us, how important to us he was, and, most important, how much we loved him.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Lifeboat an Alfred Hitchcock film with Walter Slezick ,William Bendix Tallula Bankhead directed by Hitchcock.Walter is the german uboat captain;Tallula ,the starlet. Slezack was committed to survive and secreted food while the others starved. I think Bendix who was wounded was weaked and unfit was killed by Slezak so they could conserve water. Lets all as survivors, the remaining beings in our lifeboat, commit to share the remaining supplies and nobody pushes anybody overboard.
ss

At the moment of death life stops -- and we will not know that our existence is over.

ss



What has HAl's death meant to us, personally and as a group. What did it feel like when realizing that the number of empty chairs for Greenberg, Aronsohn, Spencer and
Alas, as Hal's parting shot reminds us, we can not, like those in the movie, be saved from death. None of us can survive. Now what the fuck can we do about that? Make believe?

g

The emails before our meeting were thought provoking, the conversation outdoors at Henry's helped to add definition and clarity to the summation of our view of Hal but the ass kicker, the
post script to the story was Craig's revelations and additions to Hal's life and death story.
And then the renewed discussion after Craig's departure . Now there was brand new information which shed light on all the principle players and their motives. What a spectacular evening. Unrivaled in the annals of "Boys Of HM regular evenings out and about". A rare peek in to the clotted heart of a man who was overcome by disease and twisted disappointment in life and love.
Whether we understand it or not we have witnessed a very sad waste of human potential and it ain't over yet.
ss

When Gross pointed to the places, "over here," for Aronsohn, and "that place" for Spencer, and "this place for Danny, and Hal, by me; for a moment, I felt as though each were present. Something broke the spell, someone said something too soon--maybe it was Hal....

All worlds change and vanish. It looks as though our's is vanishing now. I have had enough of change. Lets think of another way our only experience is life. We will not experience our death. We may be bailing as fast as we can; but there's no one who can repair the leak in the lifeboat. The odd, strange thing is that we will each carry on, mostly ignoring the dead end in our future, until we arrive it --and then we won't know it.

mek

Lets think of another way our only experience is life. We will not experience our death. Death is
this then when there is no more life. Only the survivors will experience our absence of life.
If you want an afterlife ,a second installment then there are alot of good stories out there. Learning everyday how to live fully in the present. That is it a finite number of present moments
till the last one. The biggest economy to prolong the number of present moments in which to live is sleeping less. That gives me more real added time not hopeful fairy tales.
ss

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

My life-long friend Hal died on September 26. So I looked up "friend" in a few books of quotations. Some fit, some don't.

"Friend: a single soul dwelling in two bodies." Aristotle -- not Hal and me, no we were certainly not a single soul.

"A friend is, as it were, a second self." Cicero -- could be. Hal had some attributes that I would have liked to have had. His quick wit. His ebullient self-confidence. (Well, he really wasn't self-confident, but rather, he knew how to act with confidence.

"A friend is a present you give yourself." Robert Louis Stevenson...could fit. He was someone whom I always enjoyed being with. Lots of laughs.

Well, none of those ideas about friends exactly fit my relationship with Hal. Ever since I knew him when we were 13 or 14 he was angry and had a hostile wit...I never figured out his source of anger but it was deep and inbred. I knew both his parents--is mother was warm and very beautiful brunette, and been a B-Movie actress in the thirties; his father was a very wealthy man, but a little distant.

Hal had been adopted by his father. Hal was actually the son of what used to be called a "butter and egg man," who is buried in Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn, off Ocean Parkway. I never learned his name. Something in me remembers Hal referring to Breakstone Cottage Cheese, but I don't know whether that's my faulty memory or Hal's imagination. Who knows? It might even be my own imagination's eagerness to build a story.

As a boy Hal valiantly went out for football and warmed the bench with me, rarely, if ever getting into a game. He was afflicted with the flattest feet his doctor had ever seen; but that did not dissuade him from going out. Coach Quinn kept him on the team mainly because Hal was an inspiration to us all, running laps with his guts falling out, but persevering when others quit, and always finishing the required number of laps, even as night fell on the track.

He told us that he went out for football at Michigan. Of course, he never expected to make the team, at least I think he never expected to make the team, but with Hal one never knew what his expectations of himself actually were. He didn't make the team, but he went out.

After college his father offered him the family business. Hal turned it down. He wanted to be in show business and so he took an usher's job at the Ed Sullivan Show on CBS. Imagine, turning down a fifty-thousand dollar job that was guaranteed to lead to the ownership of a huge company--but Hal was true to his heart. Show business it would be and he took an ushers job.

Somehow, that lead to advertising where Hal eventually was responsible for directing and producing many of the Procter & Gamble and Timex television ads for Grey.

Later he opened his own production company, Randelman Productions, and Grey continued to use him because of his extraordinary abilities. He was proud of being a "producer," and being able to pull thnigs together when other people couldn't. He won a Cleo or two, but never bragged about it.

Hal was proud of knowing the "right places." Whether it was travel or dining, I could count on Hal to tell me where to go...

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

This is what I wrote on June 15, 2003. That is what I am doing today.




Sunday, June 15, 2003
My job today is to re-file or toss all of my files. At present I have laid them all out on my dining room table in an effort to sort them. Looking at the mass of materials is making me very anxious. Bloggerbasic still hasn't answered me about sprellschek.
# posted by Buster Stronghart @ 1:22 PM

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

What I don't know of a subject I fill in with an imagined rainbow of facts, distant from the subject at hand, somewhat hazy, and yet fulfilling a general need for knowledge--whether accurate or not.

---

I am one of those men who keep a running ledger of losses.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

I want an attorney who is prudent and wise, and provides me with deliberative counsel.

Here's to us
Who's like us?
Damned few.
And they're all dead!

I want to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.

I know a man who clings steadfastly to an ever changing set of principles.

If your mother says she loves you demand a second source.

He gazes back with nostalgia to a world that never was.

I have read so many books that promised to change my life. -- But none have.

My adolescent dreams follw crooked paths. Empty prayers dwindle.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Personal liberation is finding the courage to live your own life.

But she made me feel that I existed only in her. -- and I did.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Great truths are often contained in small absurdities.

Elements of continuity outweigh the elements of change.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

"Be sure to read no mean books. Shun the spawn of the press of the gossip of the hour. Do not read what you shall learn, without asking, in the street and in the train."

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Was it you?

You think I forgot

The iron bed

and those yellow sheets

The whiskey bottle on the night table

The quiet music coming from

The next room. Your clothing

on the floor, A fragrance of

only you.

Whispers coming from the leaves

Of the oak tree at the window

And your whispers, too, in my ear,

Did I bite or was it you?

That, at last, I have forgot.

MEK

Aug 2008

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Dear Scott:

Thanks for giving me all these examples of what a billion is. And also thanks for reminding me about all the taxes I might pay if I had any money , liked to go fishing, or were in certain businesses.

But when you tell me that that things were better 100 years ago, and that mothers stayed home and watched the children, I ask you--was that in a beach front apartment at Southpoint or the Hermitage? Are you saying that our grandparents and parents had an easier life than we have?

Did they live on the beach and go out for dinner 4 or 5 times a week? Did your grandparents even have a telephone on which to press 1 for English? Did they take vacations, go to Europe, go on cruises? Did they collect social security checks and did they have medical insurance or Medicare?

One hundred years ago was 1908. The 16th Amendment authorizing the income tax was passed in 1913. Before that we had an income tax during the Civil War and during the Spanish American War.

One hundred years ago we still had the 60 or even 72 hour week, there was no Workmans' Compensation, Child Labor Laws were far in the future, people lived in tenements without plumbing. Many of our grandparents and great-grandparents worked in sweatshops six days a week and seven days during the season--that meant both mother and father. Piece work was taken home where all the family worked on it including five year olds. None of them had tax problems.

If you worked on the railroad and in most other industries, and had an accident you were merely dropped from the payroll. There was no sick pay and no paid holidays. No one even heard of vacations. Children died from bad milk, tuberculosis was rampant, the streets reeked with garbage, and most people were crammed four, five and six in two rooms. The toilets (outhouses) were still in the backyards of the Lower East Side. But there were no tax problems.

It's hard to believe but many Jewish women turned to prostitution. Yes, don't say no. They didn't pay taxes either.

Newspapers were published in dozens of immigrant languages because most immigrants didn't speak English. Not only didn't they speak English, but also they paid no taxes.

Do you really think that things were better when all the taxes that were enumerated didn't exist?

Here's what my grandfather had to say about taxes when I complained to him about all the deductions on my paycheck:

"Michael, in Russia there were no taxes. We paid nothing. But every spring the mud was up to our knees--and that was INSIDE the house. ...Here there's no mud--so pay your taxes and stop your whining."


Mike

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Do you have the courage to live your own life?

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Joe G: Don't piss in my face and tell me it's raining.

Joe G: I don't mind when you shove an umbrella up my ass--but when you open it and twirl it around--

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


Change yourself--not the world.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Worry is a substitute for action.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


Dear X,

Because I value your judgement so much I read the libertarian piece more carefully a little while ago. As I am a strict opponent of argument ad hominum I shall not dig too deeply into the rightist hatred of Roosevelt and isolationist hatred of Churchill and the Brits. Just remember who Ludwig Mises and Ayn Rand were.

As I said in my first note some good arguments were made. I have been moved. I see that the arguments against dropping the bomb should have been taken more seriously than I thought. Especially when the statements of military men who were on the scene at the time are taken into account.

Their statements, however, were all based on their sense of the dubious morality of roasting women and children rather than on military necessity. In fact, a careful reading elicits, in me, a suspicion that the writer of the review, was not only anti-Truman-Roosevelt, but also was against our entry into the war.

Apparently some philosophers or theologians believed that our insistence on unconditional surrender was at fault. It was felt that the Japanese did not want to lose their Emperor to a war criminal trial and so they were reluctant to give up a war already lost. The morality balance, therefore shifted from their shoulders to ours, because our terms were unclear to the Japanese.

When Raico, the author, writes "the Japanese," he appears to mean the Japanese public. But the only Japanese in a position to make a surrender decision were Tojo and the very war criminals who would have been tried. Their influence on the Emperor, who might have been tried as well, was overwhelming.

Although it has nothing to do with the Bomb, Raico also drags into his piece our entry into the war against the Germans, complaining that it was 'said that "had we not gotten in then the Hitler would have conquered the world." (a sad undervaluation of the Red Army.)'

Odd, when one remembers that it was American munitions and American food delivered on the Murmansk Run that kept that Red Army on its feet. Raico also attacks Churchill, and quotes JFC Fuller, a British military historian, who if memory serves, was cashiered from His Majesty's Army over a dispute regarding tank warfare after WWI.

Libertarian Raico can't help but quote the laudable conservatives who opposed the bombings. (Usually after the Missouri Battleship Peace was signed.)

He quotes Felix Morley, a founder of Human Events (please don't tell me that you are reading that too.) Father James Gillis of Catholic World and David Lawrence another pre WW 2 conservative are also quoted for their attacks on American atrocities. (If they protested then, on the spot so to speak, why wouldn't we protest in retrospect?)

Coincidently, last night on Air America, I heard the same arguments from Thom Hartmann. A man who deals in half-truths and is very close to Rush Limbo when it comes to lies and deception. Why can't we have Truth coming from the left-progressive instead of propaganda imitative of the right? Goebbels is too much with us, right and left.

Anyway, why is Hiroshima coming up now? It's not an anniversary, as far as I know. What's the tie in?

The Atomic Bomb, as it was quaintly known during the race with Germany to build it, was not thought to be an immoral weapon during its conception and development. We firebombed Germany and caused massive causalities with little demur from the public at the time. We wanted a bomb that would destroy the enemy (originally Germany) and would end the war.

When it became apparent that the war with Germany would soon end the target shifted to Japan. It seemed impossible to negotiate with them-although Roosevelt had some doubts about the use of the bomb against actual people, they were not expressed forcefully, and he did suggest a demonstration with Japanese observers, it seems that his idea was slight and was overlooked. By September 1944 an Air Force group was already being trained to drop the bomb.

A problem that FDR did not have to deal with was the political effect of a two billion dollar secret project that diverted money from other, possibly more effective war projects. Had FDR been alive and strong he might have been willing to deal with the politics--but poor HST, knew nothing of the project except what Stimpson and Marshall told him. He was at their mercy. The Bomb would have to be set off -- on people.

The problem for us, as citizens sixty years after the Bomb, is that we cannot share the hatred and fear that the Japanese Army engendered in us then. We do not know how we would have felt then--except to compare our thoughts today on the Iraqi citizens.

We know that the US is divided into a camp that thinks as little of them as most of American felt about the "yellow, squinty-eyed Japs" in 1945. There was little or no division then. Japanese atrocities against the Chinese in Naking and against our captured troops were well known. Today the gap between the two is very wide, and I would guess that only 10-15% of Americans bear any hatred at all towards the Iraqi civilian. This wasn't the case in 1945.

In any event--I have been moved, and I recognize the argument on the other side.

To bed!

NY tomorrow. I expect difficult days. I'll let you know.

mike

I got most, but not all, of my information from one if the articles quoted by Raices. "Foreign Affairs, Barton J. Bernstein, July/Aug 2000.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


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BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

To know the meaning of enough.

It is important to know the meaning of enough.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

REGARDING THE FILM, "EVENING"

I think it was last year--maybe a few months ago, that you told me to see "Shadows." As I try to take most of your advice, although not as in a timely a manner as you might expect, I did see it.

I saw it tonight with great appreciation for its painterly quality and for its final wrap-up-scene-and-summing up-theme which was that there are really no mistakes, that we each do what we must, that all is for the good, and that what seems to matter doesn't really matter.

As you will remember it takes place in the home on the Newport shore in which we all should have been brought up and in which we all should have lived out our lives, but the writer of the film points out that it wouldn't have made any difference; that the noble thing was to marry the wrong person for that was the right thing to do, and have children who are brought into the world to make the same mistakes (which don't matter in the end) that we did.

When you are very young and hotly in love it is better to choose a star for your lover than to write a note in philosophy class asking. "what's for lunch" --anticipating a coming lesson on Nietzsche (or was it my Grandfather? well, it was one of them) who said, "Food first, then Philosophy." -- No, it was my Grandfather, and he said it every year during the endless Passover productions that my Aunt Sylvia would put on. He also liked to shout out, while banging his fist on the table, "Too much food, not enough Vodka!" Poor Aunt Sylvia.

It was this Grandfather who taught me the only dictim I know, "Hate the bosses, love the Workers" and who had Patti, and my cousins hold onto our belt buckles while pledging to "Never cross a picket line,"

Another lesson from the movie: If you have two children then one can live the wrong life, the one you would have liked to have led, while the other can live the right life, the one you chose, but which was really the wrong life for you.

Whoops, was it "Shadows" or was it "Evening" that you recommended? But then did it matter?

mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

"These are illusions of popular history which a successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumphs; a good deed is its own reward; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness"*.

"If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true of false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced"*.


* quotes from Frank Herbert's Dune series.

buster stronghart

Create your own visitor map!

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Existentialism

Someone died, said Camus' grandmother, "Well, he'll fart no more."

But that was it. It was not a matter of ignorance. She had seen many die around her, two of her children, her husband, all her nephews in the war. But that was just it: she was as familiar with Death as she was of work or poverty. She did not think about it as much as she lived it.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

There's nothing so bad that years down the road you won't be able to laugh at it.


mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Where am I now?

O, the money I didn't make,
The girls I didn't take,
The land I didn't buy,
The women I failed to try...

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

"Memory is the place where things happen for the second time."
.........................Paul Auster

The Testosterone Years

The Whiskey Times

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Other important matters: recently a book on boxing was written in England. Joyce Carol Oates reviewed it in the New York Review and she mentioned something similar. You may not be aware of this but Oates is an expert on boxing and a fan. I heard her several years ago, with supralapsarian Mike Tyson (also an authority on the history of boxing) and the Amazin' Mazur, a sports announcer with an encyclopedic memory. She fit right in. And Tyson was pretty good too!

This is Oates writing:

"The symbolism of boxing does not allow for ambiguity: it is as middleweight Albert Camus put it, 'utterly Manichean.' The rites of boxing 'simplify' everything. Good and evil, the winner and the loser. "

Later she writes,: Here's "a quote attributed to Sonny Liston: ' It's always the same story--the good guy verses the bad guy.' "

What strikes me here is not so much that Camus and Liston arrive at the same conclusion, but rather that Liston's expression is so perfect, so succinct. The simple use of the five cent word instead of the two dollar word.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 - 1894), The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1858

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

What's more important, Quality or Quantity? Answer: Quality -- but only if you have enough of it.

..........Soviet - Russian military dictum.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Some friends have lost their childhoods, like a bottle in the sea. Mine is with me always.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Where do I go when I need to think?

To the old oak tree half way into the woods, on the trail that's hard to find. I sit under it, in the almost dark, its branches are huge and weighted down with leaves, only a little sunlight finds its way down there, below the spreading branches, and it is cool, and the air filed with a mossy, earthy smell.

0

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Without you I would have been somebody else.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

We tend to think that our real lives begin tomorrow. We disregard today. We save ourselves up for something.

This is only a way of letting life pass us by.

mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Love has a bitter taste. Oscar Wilde, Salome

Some people rock the boat, others row the boat. Unknown

The public business must be carried on by someone; if wise men decline it then others will take it. John Adams

No distinction can be made between the erotic and the esthetic. Picasso

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Pictures must not be too expressive. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Three things needed for success in painting: To see beauty when young and accustom ones self to it, to work hard, and to obtain good advice. Gialorenzo Bernini

Have no fear of perfection. You'll never reach it. Salvatore Dali

The rule in the art world is that you cater to the masses or you kowtow to the elite. You can;t do both. Ben Hecht
.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Life is not a vending machine where one puts in virtue and takes out happiness. auth. unknown

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. Picasso

I go to work as other men rush to see their mistresses. Eugene Delacroix

Who am I beyond the skin I'm in? Kara Walker

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal instead of the victim. Bertrand Russell.

My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, and soft music. Vladimir Nabokov

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

You may already know these things, but you may not have thought about them
recently.

I knew Spencer's mother; Gross' mother and father, I have a fading memory of his
grandfather ; Randelman's mother and father; and even the couple , Sally &
Irwin, who worked for his parents; Malkin's mother, father and sister, I did not
ever meet Danny's parents; I knew Manny and Grace Schultz better than most;-even
Patti knew them; I knew both of Schupf's parents, although I never met his
sisters; I never met Aaronson's parents. 

I think that one of the reasons that we have stuck together is that we are a
little smarter than most--though, I understand that doesn't apply as much to SS,
Bob, and Gross because you are in professions to which intelligent people
occasionally gravitate,.

I knew each of Gross' wives, I met Bob's first wife, I don't remember Nancy
Cypress but I am sure that I met her; of course I know Mary, I know Kathy, but
don't remember either of SS's other wives but I do recall meeting one their husbands, a librarian with a cane named Ben Ch--and I liked him very much. Who was
the redhead?

You have all met Maria in both of her incarnations,  I think you have all met my
sons;  I have met all of Gross' children, and grandchildren--that's four 
generations!-- but none of Bob's; nor his grandchildren; I might have met or
seen Craig and Nicole, Hal's son & daughter, but only at a funeral; I met Max
once but I am not really clear on him. Anthony is a total mystery to me, as he
is a pataphysicist.

I think that if each of us made a graph or chart showing these amazing
connections we could

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

A, for unknown, unexpressed reasons, has an irrational and violent disdain for B. When I discovered that B lived in the same building and on the very floor that A lived, he, A, insisted that we not invite him (B) to any of our dinners, nor even for the cocktails, shrimp and vegetable pate we often shared at the A apartment, separated only by a thin partition from poor, lonely B's room. Not even a glass of water!

In addition, B knows a piece of goods when he sees it and wears sport jackets in the mode of the ones George Saunders wore when he played Arthur in Rebecca.

I do not begrudge A his personal likes or dislikes, and as you know B occupies the highest shelf in my mental storeroom of friendship, regard and respect. A's hostmanship is well-known, and appreciated by all who have come into his wide and spreading umbra. But, his attitude towards B bewilders me.

I inform you of these facts only because I know of your deep sense of discretion.

B, too, asked for the recipe.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Frenzies, possessions, mania, melancholy, nerves, tics, passionate loves and hates, melancholy, nerves, delusions, aberrant acts, dramatic tics, visual and auditory hallucinations, fears, phobias, and fantasies, disturbances of sleep, disassociations, communion with spirits and imaginary friends, addictions, self-harm, self-starvation an depression.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

“Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe

The American people have a capacity for great things. We must once again set ourselves on a course to achieve them—based on those values that have sustained America throughout the centuries:

• Justice. In a just America, money should not determine the limits of any American’s future, or deny any American the medical advancements that can save and sustain life. Health insurance, prescription drugs and higher education can be accessible and affordable for everyone.
  
• Fairness. Our tax burden today falls most heavily on hard work, while wealth is taxed less. We subsidize corporations that are polluting our environment or sending jobs overseas. But we can restore fairness to our tax code—rewarding hard work, ensuring that wealth pays its fair share, and penalizing waste.
  
  Fairness also demands that we address the disparity between the incomes of women and the incomes of men. Closing the wage gap will benefit all Americans.
  
• Progress. Today, technologies exist that can form the foundation of our economy for the next century. We should invest aggressively in them, just as when our nation invested in railroads, rural electrification, and in public highways.
  
  We can create a new energy economy, relying on sources that will never run out, including solar power, wind power, ethanol and biomass. Doing so will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and create new jobs for decades to come.
  
• Moral Leadership in the World. Harry S. Truman said, “The only expansion we are interested in is the expansion of human freedom and the wider enjoyment of the good things of the earth in all countries. The only prize we covet is the respect and good will of our fellow members of the family of nations. The only realm in which we aspire to eminence exists in the minds of men, where authority is exercised through the qualities of sincerity, compassion and right conduct.” That is the American role in the world that we can restore.
  
• Self-Government. We can reform our republic—restoring a democracy in which every person has a voice and our government works for the benefit of all the people.
  
• Community. We have an obligation to one another as Americans and as human beings. America will be stronger when we recognize that we are dependent on each other, responsible for each other, and connected to each other.

Howard Dean 2003

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Goethe wrote:

"Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least."

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

We all face ethical choices and pressures daily: give the money back to the cashier who gave too much change or keep it? Cheat on an exam or take it honestly? Fudge an expense report or tax return or file it truthfully? Keep our word or break a promise? "Every time you make a choice," wrote C.S. Lewis, "you are turning the central part of you, the part that chooses, into something a little different than it was before."

The foundation of our character is laid brick by brick, decision by decision, in how we choose to live our lives.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

The longer I live the more I realize the impact of attitude on life...Attitude, to me, is more important, than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people say or think or do. I it is more important than appearance, gifted-ness or skill. It will make or break a person, a marriage, a company, a church, or a home. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude...I am now convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.

Charles Swindoll

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.

Reinhold Niebuhr

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


From a poet named Harold Norse: a few lines out of a longer poem:

The Photograph.

"...Herein the fantoccini stare, the waxen childlooks out forever
at the man who looks back
knowing he never will outlast the child..." and

"This little square of time, this rectanglewhose right angles measure not space but time..."

and here is part of another, very appropriate today considering our governors gone wild:

"Let the dogs hump in the streets
I'd do the same if they'd let me
those guardians of public morals
who fear the horrors of pleasure
more than the horrors of war."

He wrote that in 1971.

Oh, yes, "Fantoccini" , mechanically worked puppets, a marionette show. (Oxford Shorter)

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


From a poet named Harold Norse: a few lines out of a longer poem:

The Photograph.

"...Herein the fantoccini stare, the waxen childlooks out forever at the man who looks backknowing he never will outlast the child..." and

"This little square of time, this rectanglewhose right angles measure not space but time..."

and here is part of another, very appropriate today considering our governors gone wild:

"Let the dogs hump in the streets
I'd do the same if they'd let me
those guardians of public morals
who fear the horrors of pleasure
more than the horrors of war."

He wrote that in 1971.

Oh, yes, "Fantoccini" let's look it up: mechanically worked puppets, a marionette show. (Oxford Shorter)

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Never Underestimate the Tyranny of Sex!

Client10

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

I believe in apology and almost always accept one when it is offered.

In my book, anything from slights, intentional or not, even theft and battery or infidelity is subject to apology and forgiveness.

Mankind is only human and we would be less so if we could not forgive others for being ordinary members of the human race.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Harlem? When?

In the fifties it was exciting, there were still plenty of jazz places--I remember Smalls Paradise, Jimmies, Diamonds, and I forgot the names of a dozen more. I was a white teen-ager lost in the music and found it very safe and very friendly. One of the bartenders at Smalls recognized me and I became a fixture...the only problem was my Mother & Dad who were jealous and wanted to go with me. I took them once--but they cramped my style. But music? Nothing like it since. There's nothing like live jazz in a small club or bar. Nothing! I heard Nat King Cole sit with a trio in a dingy bar on 118th st, I saw Louis Armstrong several times also sitting in (and he could play very mellow when he wanted to, Dinah Washington made even a teen-ager cry and I learned more about life from listening to her than I did in the next ten years. I saw Errol Garner at an outdoor concert one afternoon, Nina Simone visited a few places but she didn't ever sit in while I was there--she is one of my favorite singers anyway--The Hawk -Coleman Hawkins was always somewhere--wow, what days...

Besides jazz there was gospel--and once in a while a friend and I would put on our suits and go to church just to hear the music. Bring back those days.

But after the riots Harlem became a little touchy. I had to stay on 125th St and there was only the Apollo and I really never felt comfortable there- plus the seats were very tight.

Now, it's boring, gentrifying faster than you can say Jackie Robinson.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

From the Cavafy Notebook 1905

A young poet visited me," he wrote. "He was very poor, lived by his literary work, and it seemed to me that he was grieved to see the good house I was living in, my servant who brought him a nicely served tea, my clothes made by a good tailor. He said: what a horrible thing it is to have to struggle for a livelihood, to hunt subscribers your periodical, and purchasers for your book.
I didn't want to leave him in his delusion, so I said a few words, more or less as follows. His position is difficult and disagreeable-- but how much my little luxuries cost me. In order to obtain them I departed from my natural course and became a government servant (how absurd!) and I spend and lose all those precious hours a day-- to which must be added the hours of weariness and sluggishness that follow-- what a loss, and what a betrayal! While this poor fellow doesn't waste a single hour; he's always faithful to his duty as a child of Art.
How often during my work a fine idea comes to me, a rare image, and sudden ready-formed lines, and I'm obliged to leave them, because work can't be put off. Then when I go home and recover a bit, I try to remember them, but they're gone. And it's quite right. It's as if Art said to me: 'I'm not a servant, for you to turn me out when I come, and to come when you want. I'm the greatest lady in the world. And if you deny me-- miserable traitor-- for your wretched "nice house," and your wretched good clothes and your wretched social position, be content with that (but how can you?) and for the moments when I come and it happens that you're ready to receive me, come outside your door to wait for me, as you ought to every day.'
Cavafy....June 1905."

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


Well, thanks for looking at it. When it gets out of Beta I think it might good for us, because by that time we may be way past the Z in Alzheimer's and we might need the site as a daily reference marker to our being and proof that at one time we actually existed.

I would prefer, however, that time might work backward and that I could hold conversations with my great-grandfather and his son, my Grandpa, who died when I was a callow youth of sixteen and I didn't know the important questions that I would want answers to, some sixty years later.

I've been hoping for a meeting with my father at 50, and grandfather at 50, and great-grandfather at 50, and me at 50 ever since I was fifty but I don't think that is in the cards for me. I would have liked to be able to sit at the table with each of us the same age at the same time, knowing what we knew at that age and then being able to tell each other, although I would have been more interested in what they had to say about their lives and history and what it was like for them in Russia and then in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side and how my Great-grandfather felt when he realized that his son, my grandfather, was a rabble rousing non-believer socialist bum, and then that my father was a person with little interest in politics or religion but a guy who ran with rum-rummers and ran track in high school, and who later became a Beau Brummel in the nineteen-twenties, with a big car and drinking, and the horses, and somehow still running a drug store and recipes for making 'gin' and 'scotch', and 'rye', using as a base the alcohol that druggists could purchase "for medicinal purposes only," and then there were the gallons and gallons of Lydia Pinkams, a tonic for women's "ailments," also mostly alcohol, but then you probably know all about that too.

What must my grandfather and his father thought of Bernie then, who liked to say that in his high school class the kids either became gangsters or judges, there were few other choices.

And then there was my great-grandfather, Abraham, now buried in the Landsman Plot at Mt. Hebron, with twenty-five other Katz'. What must he have made of all these goings on? He was a religious man, who prayed at he eastern wall of the synagogue every day and who was one of the seven founders of the Hebrew Free Loan Society--how could he have an atheist, or, at best, an agnostic for a son, one who spoke at street corners, and went to meetings instead of schul.

O what went on in HIS head, poor Abraham, everything lost, everything going down hill, and Bernie marries a Shiksa, can you believe it? With a son no less. It was probably better in Svir, near Vilna where he could keep his family in their religion and there were no apostates, only the Polish Noble whose estate he managed while the nobleman drank, and raced horses, and screwed Jewish maidens, -- just like Bernie...

Life has stolen away youth.