Paul Haeder, Author

…only 355 million of us, AmeriKKKans, but it always seems as if the world revolves around Un-United $nakes of AmeriKKKa

Humanity. Bathing that loved one. Even the one who showed less than love.

From my memoir writing class, and we have our last session of the eight week gig this Friday. Nothing earth shattering, but you know what? Yep, each intersection we have with people can indeed give us a sense of the place, of life, of the dynamics of what it is to be a real human in a world of hell. Think Isra-Hell.

The piece one student just sent me, from a memoir writing class I have run:

Vibrant to Cradle by BD

     Forty-two years ago, we came into each other’s lives;, you didn’t care for me, you didn’t think I was the one for your first-born son. You were hesitant to accept my two daughters from my first marriage. I was from California, land of drugs and free sex. “I am not divorced yet, but I am dating your son. Your son is only twenty-five years old, and I am twenty-nine.”

      Our first family gathering was in 1981. This was my introduction to the family at “The Camp”, in S**, Louisianna, with so many friends and family, including K’s high school and college friends, aunts, uncles and cousins, brothers and sister, grandmothers and any other friend that came out to meet us.

My girls were five and seven, the most outgoing and adorable girls, loved this new place, the second home or as they call it a camp. K’s dad with his hunting gun out and on the hunt for water snakes, gators and wild boar, the ATVs were all out and in use, the boats for water skiing awere docked and ready. K and his siblings were all champion water skiers.

Me, I was from the beaches of sunny California, home to surfing and itty-bitty bikinis. I was all of all of one hundred pounds, with waist length hair and wearing what I would normally wear: a bikini.  I was very confident as his girlfriend, and after the stares and whispers, and  judging how I looked, I was accepted by all but C***, K’s mother.

     This non-acceptance went on for many almost 40 years;  sure she was cordial, and guarded, but she was the queen matriarch that one dare not challenge. Well, I was strong, opinionated and politely held my own. K’s dad, siblings and relatives loved me. We were married on a beautiful yacht at Sunset in Channel Islands, California. C*** was proud, but it was hard to express her feelings toward me.

     In 1984 K and I presented our tiny baby girl to the family. Their first grandchild, C*** was included in their life, but C*** was standoffish to our baby, C*** as well.

      Why am I writing this? C***, the white-haired elegant woman is staying with us, here, in Oregon, on the coast; she is nearing ninety years old. She is frail, so much different than just like last year. She eats just a few bites of food each day. She continues to go to church, but today, this woman came to me and asked me to bathe her. This strong proud southern belle asked me to assist her for the most personal and intimate of requests.

 I ran the water making sure the temperature was warm enough for her frail body. She sat on the shower stool as I gently used the water wand to wet her body. I soaked the washcloth with soap and water and gently washed her back. In my head, I was crying and angry and touched all at the same time. Afterwards, she hugged me and thanked me and said, “I love you”, all those years were just washed away.

The end++++

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Teacher’s comments: “Nice. All those years washed away. Amazing you have this moment to share with yourself, your family and me, or your class. I think diving deeply into emotions, into the now, and even this could be part of your memoir, since she’s mother in law, and how did C***react to your entire ordeal as a 15 year old unmarried pregnant girl and the years of secrecy? There you have it, then, more practice pulling out those pearls of emotion and wisdom, even this late in the twilight of your life, B***. Good work. Sorry for the red-lining. Old English teacher habits die hard! *PKH

You know, B . . ., et al, the quick writing response you did to work with some writing prompt or tagging an emotion swirling around, or that hair up your proverbial you-know-what is really powerful is how you said it, wrote it, and the purity of the written words raw and fresh and unedited. So, honestly, all those redlines and technical comments I made are not going to improve the impetus and poignant nature of what you wrote.

I read it aloud — your version — to several women just hours ago  — 52 and 75 years respectively. They were moved, and told me they can really relate to what you wote. Both had their bathing days with some bad folk, father here, brother there, and that act for so many to foregive and to give mercy where undeserved. So I read it aloud with my crazy poet’s and radio voice. Used your style to brush over the written comma splices and run-ons. Your words. They loved it. It moved them. One had tears in their eyes. They stayed with it and did not run away from my booming fucking voice.

Thanks for sharing. Paul

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Old stuff here:

 — David Suzuki

 Or, (  https://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/the-nature-of-things )

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. — Jeremy Scahill

( https://theintercept.com/staff/jeremy-scahill/  )

Or,  

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 — Sonia Shah

( https://www.democracynow.org/2020/2/27/climate_crisis_coronavirus_infections_disease_outbreaks )

Or,

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Jesus, someone captured me here in Newport: A sort of poetry slam. Shit, I never gave permission to have my sorry ass up on You-CIA-Tube!

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Interview here with an ex-friend:

 ( https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/11/on-the-streets-in-union-halls-on-the-frontlines-have-guitar-will-travel/ )

Later. Listen to Sonia on TED and get a sense of her biography, memoir, and her work on malaria.

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Bonus — Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia – a Film by Nicholas Wrathall

Watch this film, MAN. REALLY.

Try this one: Eugene McCarthy.

There are no answers
in this park, said the captain
of the guard.
Then give us our questions
say the boys and girls.
– Eugene McCarthy, “Grant Park, Chicago”

There are things I do that no one will be left to understand.

– Charles Péguy, Le Mystère des saints Innocents

Gene McCarthy: Alone in the Land of the Aardvarks is a full-length documentary film about Minnesota Senator Eugene J. McCarthy, an American poet and politician who in 1968 ignited a new force in American politics. Here, 11 minutes!

Another McCarthy (look at the Trump mentor, below, Roy Cohn) but not the same family, McCarthy:

BACK TO a real hero in this fucked up political landscape, sold out by the DEMON-Craps.

Watch this one —- Gene McCarthy: Alone In The Land of the Aardvarks is a feature-length documentary film about Minnesota Senator Eugene J. McCarthy, a poet and politician who in 1968 changed the landscape of American politics.

As we mark the 50th (55th year) anniversary of the most tempestuous year in our country’s recent history, the man who stood at the epicenter of that year’s upheaval remains an enigmatic figure. Senator McCarthy’s 1968 Presidential campaign was an audacious challenge to the incumbent president of his own party over the issue of the American war in Vietnam, providing a voice to grassroots movements and inspiring a new generation of citizens – especially college students – to political action and civic engagement. Yet the hope stirred by his campaign’s early electrifying success was soon beset by conflict, despair and violence, as 1968 would suffer the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy, the Chicago Police Riots of the Democratic Convention, and the election of Richard Nixon as President with the escalation of the war for another six years.

But Gene McCarthy was more than a player in that pivotal year of American history, and his story extends far beyond 1968. His intellect and philosophy of social justice were grounded in his small town roots on the Minnesota prairie, and refined by Benedictine traditions in the rural collegiate atmosphere of Saint John’s University. Over decades of public service – both within the establishment and as an exiled critic – he produced a wealth of political literature, delivering his provocative ideas with signature wit and style, and he accumulated a remarkable body of work as an accomplished poet. Yet even many of today’s politically-active citizens remain unaware of the significance of Gene McCarthy and his embodiment of values that are glaringly absent from contemporary political discourse, more often than not mistaking him for the notorious symbol of the 1950s anticommunist witch hunts, Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy.

Today, against an ever-rising tide of public cynicism and frustration with American politics, Gene McCarthy’s legacy of commitment to participatory democracy and Constitutional principles is carried on by a new generation of students fostered by The Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement at Saint John’s University. His lifelong pursuit of a politics of reason and hope was as imperfectly realized as any human endeavor, sometimes due to the very attributes that shaped his idealism. As one supporter remarks, “He may have disappointed us, but he never betrayed us.” With a nuanced perspective and a complex poetic tone, this film is a story told “in the key of Gene” and set against the backdrop of the Midwestern landscapes that produced this remarkable American. (source)

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More, later!

But, that Hanford, that Oppen-Monster-Heimer:

Click to access SpokaneCDA98pg40_441.pdf

The Bomb and the End of Sanity

Einstein’s Voice

“Bamboo poles for sale!
Bamboo poles for sale!”

While I am reading the newspaper, reclining
in the afternoon on a summer’s day,
I hear the sing-song cry of a man selling laundry poles.*

The atomic bomb, Little Boy, was dropped on Hiroshima
at 15 minutes and 17 seconds past 9:00 a.m.
August 6, Tinian Time.
It is said
when the news reached Einstein,
who had contributed to the Manhattan Project,
he just uttered a groan:

Oy vey!

And
in similar words in a will
he wrote five months before his death:
If I had my life to live over again,
I would like to be a tinsmith or a traveling salesman,
not a scientist or a teacher.

Bamboo poles for sale!
Bamboo poles for sale!
Bamboo poles for sale!

No one seems to be buying any bamboo poles.
Outside the windows
the sky is clear, like in Hiroshima.

Oy vey!

Did he turn at the street corner?
The voice of the traveling salesman, Einstein,
is fading further away.

— Hiroyoshi Komatsu