Category Archives: Life

Chocolate Chips

Posted on by
Reply

Although I eat a small handful
right from the bowl (poured there because
there is no crinkly sound tell-tale),
just like Grandpa D did – cookies
need just half as much as are called
for on the yellow package (they,
of course, each year want more chips sold
than were the year before), so I
achieve the perfect dough-chip mix
by not following directions –
just like the old man when he’d fix
them (he taught me sales resistance…)
but then he’d put the Nestle chips
he’d saved into the Cream of Wheat
(you can’t eat too much chocolate.)

– Verse “Chocolate Chips”
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, October 29, 2013

Boogie-Man Politics

Posted on by
1

Senator Ted Cruz

Senator Ted Cruz

Comparing Obamacare to the Nazis, Senator Ted Cruz (TX) said: “Look, we saw in Britain, Neville Chamberlain, who told the British people, ‘Accept the Nazis. Yes, they’ll dominate the continent of Europe but that’s not our problem. Let’s appease them. Why? Because it can’t be done. We can’t possibly stand against them.’”

So which is it? Sometimes you paint the President as a Communist. Sometimes you paint him as a Fascist. You can’t have it both ways, Senator. Hitler was a Fascist. Stalin was a Communist. Obama is neither. Somehow the three have been mixed together into a political Molotov Cocktail. It’s reported this morning that a huge crowd in Iowa gave Senator Cruz an enthusiastic 36-second standing ovation.

Is it a coincidence that the President he loves to smear is black? Boogie-Man politics has a sordid history in this country.

Those whose memories are longer see the sneer of former Senator Joseph McCarthy on the faces of those who, like him, use innuendo and character assassination to destroy public figures and elected officials who do not agree that a Right Wing agenda is the definition of “American.” The arrogant sneer always looks the same. Because it is the same.

Paul Robeson testifying, SOURCE: AP/Bill Achatz

Paul Robeson testifying,
SOURCE: AP/Bill Achatz

Paul Robeson, under investigation by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, doing battle with the Chair while testifying, spoke the words then that still echo in my ears. They still pertain to Boogie-Man politics:

“You are the Un-Americans, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

Ennui

Posted on by
8

“I hate feelings. I hate them!” said the person who feels them so intensely.

The feelings we hate are the ones that drive us into the dark corners and the basements of the psyche. The only thing worse than being in the grip of sorrow or grief is to feel nothing, or fool oneself into believing that the feelings aren’t there.

Ennui – a listless weariness and boredom – describes this hell.

Like the writer of Ecclesiastes, I listen to all the shouting of our time and feel that I’ve been there before. I prefer not to feel the loss of belief in history as the inevitable upward bend of progress. Listening to the sounds of ignorant armies clashing by night is not good for my sanity. I prefer ennui to constant turmoil, and, in the midst of ennui, I have nothing to say of any worth. No great word of hope.

“All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
or the ear its fill of hearing.
What has been will be again;
there is nothing new under the sun.”
-Ecclesiastes, 1:8-9.

In times like these I go through periods of great sadness and move into the protective shell of ennui. Then something like Odetta’s version of “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child” breaks through again to the feelings I hate. Is it sometimes good to hate?

Joshua fit the battle of Jericho

Posted on by
1

Music like this gives me hope. The music director’s introduction and the piece itself speak of the non-violent battle of resistance against the forces that disenfranchise in our own time, as well as in the time the song was first sung. I need this.

Thanks to the Chaska Herald for additional publicity for this Saturday’s celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the ongoing spirit of emancipation. Click HERE for the story. Emancipation Day Celebration, this Saturday, Oct. 26, with guest artists, Dennis Spears, Momoh Freeman, Jerry Steele, and the Chaska High School Choir.

Let my people go – Paul Robeson

Posted on by
6

Click HERE to read Paul Robeson’s testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956. With courage, he shamed the Congressional committee that sought to shame him. “You are the Un-Americans, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

Not to be further shamed, the Chairman adjourned the Committee.

O Let My People Go

Posted on by
2

For ten or twenty, thirty years or more
the song was sung before the Civil War

by southern slaves in secret. First a call,
and then a sung response that came from all

around, “O let my people go!” And then
another voice, another poet, sang

out still another call, “Tell King Pharaoh!”
And then, “This world’s a wilderness of woe…”

“O let my people go!” Old Lincoln heard
the sad song sung and gave the legal word:

Abolish evil slavery first here,
and finally across the land. For where

no freedom is for some, at risk we all
will be. Each one must listen for the call:

to set each prisoner free.

– Verse “O Let My People Go” by Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, October 23, 2013

Spirituals! (The first one published in 1861, “O Let My People Go,” was transcribed by a YMCA missionary sent to help escaped slaves at Fort Monroe. –Dena J. Epstein, “Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War,” Univ of Illinois Press, 1977, 2003.)

Editor’s Note: Harriet Tubman was the Moses of the Underground Railroad.

Football Trumps Emancipation Proclamation

Posted on by
7

After eight months of planning for Emancipation Day celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation at Chaska High School this Saturday (expected attendance: 600), this email arrived from one of the planners, the Chaska Chief of Police:

FYI. The Chaska football team has a “home” game, on Saturday. It’s a big one. It starts at 3 PM. Be prepared to encounter a lot of traffic, activity and parking may be a challenge.

Turns out the game is a Section 2AAAAA Semifinal with the Northfield Raiders. The Chaska Hawks are unbowed and unbeaten. Excitement is high.

We may not get into the parking lot.

The best (or worst?) laid plans of mice and men…. How did we miss this? “Lord, emancipate emancipation this Saturday.” Excedrin and Jack Daniels will be gratefully received.

Our hearts can also fly

Posted on by
2

Verse – “The Kite Flew All Night”

If the wind is steady–
on these plains it often
is– and if the dacron
line has not been eaten
by those grey and tiny
field mice that slip into
my small storage shed, and
if the stake is driven
firmly in the ground, and
if the rip-stop nylon
like a parachute can
hold, and if the fiber-
glass rods bend but do not
break, the sky has color
added and our hearts can
also fly.

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, October 20, 2013

The First Signs of Dementia

Posted on by
5

EDITOR’S NOTE: The author of this verse has always had a mental picture of “the grid” of the City of Chicago streets, avenues, and interstates.

The First Signs of Dementia

I cannot see myself on the grid
anymore–the web of avenues,
streets, lanes, and turnpikes. I know the road
I am driving on, but the views
from the height of buzzards are now lost
to my mind’s dim cataractic eye.

Well, at least it happens sometimes. I
hate not knowing when the very last
clear and cogent thought will cross my mind
(double-cross, most likely…) Can there be
exercises for brains? Surgery?
Memory replacement would be kind.

Will I soon not even know my name?
Hell is when all highways are the same.

(Composed while driving on I-57, Urbana to Chicago–but not transcribed while in Work Zones…}

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, October 16, on his way to McCormick Days, the annual three-day Alumni/ae event at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. Steve first mentioned losing his grip on the grid last spring on the drive from Midway Airport to the seminary for the annual gathering of old friends.

Treasure in Earthen Vessels

Posted on by
Reply