Tuesday, March 31, 2009

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

I have always been rasped by the banal. But how can that be? I am one of the bourgeois manque, defective, never having achieved what I might have, certainly never having met my own expectations. I spend too much of my time repining after the lost and gone. It's a fugitive pain, now here, now not, but always that stab of longing and regret.

Thomas Mann mentions the bliss of the commonplace. The seductive beauty of innocent bliss, even the seduction of the banal. I feel sorrow for my loss of naivete-- but that seems so commonplace too--nostalgic, if you will.

I know my writings are deeply felt--by me--but they are, sadly, inept.

Monday, March 30, 2009

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

From Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart:

"As a man dances the drums beat for him."

There were outsiders who wept louder than the bereaved."

"On Sundays he always imagined that the sermons were preached for the benefit of his enemies."

Sunday, March 29, 2009

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

The Mirror In The Front Hall

The luxurious house had a huge mirror
in the front hall, a very old mirror,
bought at least eighty years ago.

A good-looking boy, a tailor's assistant
(on Sundays an amateur athlete),
stood there with a package. He gave it to one of the household
who took it in to get the receipt.
The tailor's assistant,
left alone as he waited,
went up to the mirror, looked at himself,
and adjusted his tie. Five minutes later
they brought him the receipt. He took it and went away.

But the old mirror that had seen so much
in its long life-
thousands of objects, faces-
the old mirror was full of joy now,
proud to have embraced
total beauty for a few moments.

Constantine P. Cavafy

Walls

With no consideration, no pity, no shame,
they have built walls around me, thick and high.
And now I sit here feeling hopeless.
I can't think of anything else: this fate gnaws my mind -
because I had so much to do outside.
When they were building the walls, how could I not have noticed!
But I never heard the builders, not a sound.
Imperceptibly they have closed me off from the outside world.

Constantine P. Cavafy

Comment: We'll have to find a better translation of Walls, a poem with much meaning for me; "who built these walls? -- me," for starters.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

El Gaviero says:
-
"Even though obviously I am going to die someday, as long as I live I am immortal."
-
"They're old friends, so old that everything's already been said."
-
And one more, El Gaviero quotes Sancho Panzo:
-
"Each man is how God made him. Some even worse."
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Gommorah:

The Mafia without Hollywood Glamor.

This is a picture of the Mafia that we don't get from Hollywood. Uneducated men who live dirty, crude and sweaty, without Mafia "honor." Huge profits going to unseen men while the underlings scramble for euros and cheat each other. Mafia widows nickle & dimed out of their promised Mafia pensions...A land (Sicily) destroyed by illegal pollution and deliberate use of the land for cheap illegal toxic waste disposal...it goes on and on.
This is more a documentary than a fiction.
I don't know whether to recommend it--maybe you already know its subject matter. But you never saw the type of camera work used here. It matches the story exactly. Cheap, crude, dusty. And every actor seems to have been taken straight from prison...
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry makes all things easy. unknown

What we have often starts to own us. Goenka Chanting

Translations (like wives) are seldom strictly faithful if they are in the least attractive. unknown

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

One thing about a diet: there are a lot fewer dishes to wash. mek

Monday, March 23, 2009

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Wall Street, often ahead of the rest of us, seems to disagree with your evaluation of the first weeks of President Obama's administration.
And your evaluation of the man who brought us to the point of national bankruptcy on financial as well as on political ground is very interesting, though skewed somewhat to the right.

I am always amazed at the blindness of conservatives. Tell me how many recruits to terror has the war on terror garnered since Bush has been in office. Tell me how much Blood and Treasure has been wasted on an unnecessary war.
Under President Bush financial regulations were ignored or tossed, and we find ourselves broke. Our country has the 27th best record for medical care in the industrialized world. There aren't many industrialized countries behind us. We have over 47 million folks without any insurance and our auto industry is collapsing. We exported millions of jobs overseas and now we are losing millions more jobs even without exporting the jobs. People are hanging out on corners.

I live on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale. Recently people have started sleeping on the beach.

I find it notable and just plain stupid that the auto industry never called for Single Payer Universal Health Care even though they knew that employer based insurance was costing them more than steel, and was costing them market share, and finally, was driving them out of business. Why not? They were stifled, blinded by rusty ideological beliefs that were imposed on them by the libertarian-conservative brain-washing in the medea.You know who I mean, Ayn Rand was only a writer. Milton Friedman is dead but this debacle is burying his coffin even deeper. This is the second or maybe third death for poor Milton.

In February of 2003 you wrote,
'Almost all of them have a strong ideological bias against making individuals primarily responsible for their own retirement income and a sharp distaste for programs that benefit “the rich." ' Imagine if you had gotten your way and everyone had their retirement money invested in the market. Now, social security seems a lot more secure for the average man. Can you imagine the average citizen choosing his own investments? Crazy?

I see that you are an expert on pension and benefit plans. I am an amateur and only know about the one in which my employees participated. Employers contributed around 6% of payroll, the fund (multi-employer Taft Hartley) grew to almost $10 Billion. During the last 28 months the fund shrunk to $8.75 Billion.From what I hear the employees are okay and the fund will continue to pay pensions.
But what about the Benefit plan? Well, that costs a lot more. Close to 21% of payroll. the workers, on average, are at the low end of hourly workers. The fund takes in about a billion dollars a year and pays it all out. It's a generous plan that up now had no co-pays and paid for almost everything, excepting dental, and covers prescriptions in full when Medicare pays for other expenses.

Pretty good for the employees, right? Tough on us employers. But what is the per-capita cost? 2006 cost per covered life was $3800.
There are about 400,000 beneficiaries and 150,000 active workers.
The plan covers from pre-natal, through age 65 and continues to pay for rxs until death. No co-pays. (I think that is going to change)

The cost per active employee is around $7800. The one factor which I cannot calculate is the effect of COBs(Coordination of Benefits) which occurs when each spouse has benefits from two different benefit plans. I think that this is a significant number which, if known, would increase the true cost per covered life.
I understand that Medicare's administrative cost is less than 3%, our administrative cost is less than 7% -- and insurance companies administrative costs plus profits range as high as 22%.

If the USA had a Single Payer Universal Health Care plan in place it would cost less than the $3800 that our plan costs. But let's say it costs $3800 per capita. 300,000,000 citizens times $3800 is 1.14 Trillion dollars.

But wait! Subtract from that 1.14 trillion dollars the 1.4 Trillion dollars that we are currently spending on health care for a 353,000,000, people, leaving out 47 million people, and you can see that we would save money and cover more lives with a well run Single Payer (yes, that means the government) Universal Health Care program.
Most docs and hospital administrators agree with me.

Worried about government bureaucrats? What about Insurance company administrators who decide what meds you may take and what docs you may see?

I
t's very important to think for the other side and to converse with knowledgeable people on the other side too. I am sure that you know some professionals with brains equal to yours. Call them.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

A friend gave my son four tickets to a Ranger game.

Decent seats, but not the best in the house--$165 each! He took my granddaughter and two of her friends--10 year old girls, but sports nuts.
Then he spent $40 for hot dogs and sodas!. Just think:

$660 for tickets
$30 for food
$20 ? for taxi.

$710. Now my son's friend apparently has these tickets as a season ticket.I guess when he goes it's all adults-- How much do they spend on food and beer?

Who goes to these things?

Friday, March 13, 2009

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Several Favorite American Novels Not Read Since High School:
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis
U.S.A., John Dos Passos
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Studs Lonigan, James T. Farrell
Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
Appointment in Samarra, John O'Hara
The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Absalom, Absalom, William Faulkner

____________________________
Some remembered Important Books read in High School

The Education of Henry Adams
An American Doctor's Odyssey ( ? )
Microbes & Men (?) was this in High School?

__________________________________________
A Mindsetting Book of Essays read at Horace Mann

A Preface to Our Day
. --essays by :
Geo. Bernard Shaw, On Literature
Fredrich Hayek, Free Market Economist (before Ayn Rand) economist
G.D.H. Cole, a Fabian, Historian, Novelist, Intellectual Labor Party Activist
S.I. Hayawaka, Linguist, Congressman, War Hero.
Aldous Huxley, On the future. __I must find this and see what he predicted___
J.B. Priestly, On Science
Herbert Hoover, on Economics
Chas. Darwin, Of course, on Evolution
Sidney & Beatrice Webb, American Socialists, NYU Economists
and many others

___________________________________

Some other literature read at Horace Mann

Hamlet
Macbeth
Richard the Third
Ivanhoe
Paradise Lost (Liked it. saw Satin as the hero)
Brothers Karamozov
War & Peace (Too long, didn't finish until my thirties)
Pride & Prejudice (hated it)
Crime and Punishment
Several John Marquand novels that I liked (summer stuff)

Thursday, March 12, 2009

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

For my Aunt Anne and my mother, who called her Annie Laurie

The earliest known version by Lady John was published by James Lindsay of Glasgow and is:

Maxwelton's braes are bonnie,
Where early fa's the dew,
'Twas there that Annie Laurie
Gi'ed me her promise true.
Gi'ed me her promise true -
Which ne'er forgot will be,
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'd lay me down and dee.

Her brow is like the snaw-drift,
Her neck is like the swan,
Her face it is the fairest,
That 'er the sun shone on.
That 'er the sun shone on -
And dark blue is her e'e,
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'd lay me down and dee.

Like dew on gowans lying,
Is the fa' o' her fairy feet,
And like winds, in simmer sighing,
Her voice is low and sweet.
Her voice is low and sweet -
And she's a' the world to me;
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'd lay me down and dee.

Sunday, March 08, 2009

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

I'm bruised inside
from the
punches I've pulled.

Keven Whelan

Sunday, March 01, 2009

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

As an overly loved child in a home in wartime Forest Hills, K. had only one consolation: the belief that one day he would become a great poet. Aside from his parents, the indifference and contempt of most of the children around him only reinforced his sense of destiny, for in Forest Hills poets were more likely to be scorned than to be revered. Over the ensuing years, Michael came to lead the paradigmatic poet’s life of wasteful time spent behind a drugstore counter, loneliness, ruinous love affairs and constant sexual scandal.

But he will never attain anything like greatness.

As recalled by K. in his magnificently humane factional autobiography, what might be cruel farce achieves pathos and genuine exaltation. After a several years in a special school for promising children Katz ventured into the verge of the real world; but fearing that he would become lost, stayed too close to home.

A collection of friendships saves K's life from complete failure and barrenness. The novel brilliantly portrays the essence of friendship which early on K decides is his life's talent.

Later K’s self-thwarted ambition drives him onward–and into the orbits of an unstable spiritualist, Madam Lulu, a voodoo priestess recommended by his friend Father H; a shady entrepreneur selling worm farms, Clive Cliveson; and several susceptible, but interesting women.

His autobiographical faction demonstrates how the creative spirit can survive as an ember in even the most crushing environment and even the most unpromising human vessel.

At the end he looks back and sees that his peculiar sexual obsessions prevented him from attaining his childhood dreams; and were nothing more than a diversion from the work required by reality.

Comment by mg

Poet's look forward. K's vision of the future is clouded by his persistent view of the gloomy past. K was educated in the Romantic poets. Despondency dispels poetic vision. mg