There is an amazing amount of talent out there in the world. Much of it is never heard or seen beyond the living rooms or local communities. This is particularly obvious when we see the almost endless resources that the various “reality television shows” are able to draw upon.

I confess to have a certain fascination with watching the broad cross-section of singers that appear on shows like American Idol and The Voice. Many of these appearances are available on You Tube and so it is possible to watch performances not just from the United States but from Europe, Australia and all around the world.

The odds of winning one of these contests are small, but the winners are not always the best in talent. Much has to do with presentation, song selection and the preferences of judges, whether they be spectators or an actual small group of experts.

I particularly enjoy the “battle” type rounds where two singers participate in a duet. It seems often to bring out the very best in each of them. It is the modern equivalent of the fights to the death in the coliseums of ancient Rome. Each singer knows that they must put on a great show and work together even though it may mean the end for one of them.

There is a very fine line between success and failure in all of these performances, and in the duets we often see the competition rise to a new level. We are watching these young people walk out on a tightrope over a vast abyss.

Voices (copyright 2015, Glenn K. Currie) is a poem I wrote after watching one of these duets. The energy of their performance was wonderful and I wondered if either would ever again achieve the kind of level they reached as they walked that tightrope together, or had they traveled along that fine line to the middle without a way to return, without looking down.

Glenn K. Currie

Voices

It was a duel by duet.

Pitch perfect notes fired

Like shots of lightning,

Splitting the stage,

Then melding together.

This incandescent merger,

Created by purist chance,

Will soon be ripped asunder

By raging spectators,

Or jaundiced judges.

But for the moment,

This battle,

This symbolic dance of death,

Has joined their souls,

As they feast

On each other’s talents,

And inhale

Each other’s last breaths.

On both the smaller stages of local politics and the larger stage of world relations we seem to have lost the ability to work in harmony with each other. Everything is about deception and the game within the game. We join together to explore space and turn it into an arms race. Our religions promise love and deliver hatred. We ban together to defeat disease and then work to find even deadlier germs. We will create something by the accidental, the fortuitous interaction of people and events and then fight until we have destroyed it. We are like children playing with blocks or building sand castles. The joy seems to be not in the creation but in the destruction.

We are a world ruled by impulse decisions. Society is buried in the ashes of actions fueled by emotion and then we bring in the analysts to dig through the rubble and try to find a reason to explain the mess.

It is an endless cycle delivered by leaders unable to rise above the latent anger that fuels the fires, and citizens without the courage to stand up and demand something different. I wrote the poem “Am I a Man”  (Daydreams, Snap Screen Press, 2004) to ask the question whether we as individuals still have the courage to stand up and do the “right” thing when everyone seems to be moving against us. Lately everyone seems to pick a side and ride it to the bitter end regardless of the   damage it may do to our society or broader civilization.

And of course defining “right” is the big issue. To me it falls into the “you know it when you see it” category. See how comfortable you feel when you are carrying the pitchfork and you will probably have your answer.

At any rate, I hope in this coming election, we will hold our leaders to a higher standard than we have in the past. I hope we will all have the courage to raise our hand and take our country to a better place.

                        Am I a Man

I am a man, I am a man,

A man I am, if only I can,

If only I can, take a stand,

If I can stand, and raise my hand.

When honor calls, calls me to stay,

While others called, are fading away,

I hope that day, I can display,

The strength within, to find my way.

When I see crowds, in panic fly,

And in that panic, the truth deny,

Trampling in hate, those who defy,

The panicked flight to invented lie.

Then I’ll find if I am a man,

If against that crowd I can then stand,

Can I stand and raise my hand, Stop

From saying, “I’m only a man”.

We vacationed in Hawaii the last two weeks, attending my niece’s wedding in Kauai and then returning to the Kona Coast for the first time in 43 years.

The drive along Kona on the south side of the big island of Hawaii is a lesson in how much in life we really don’t control.

Lava fields flow for miles down from Mauna Loa and on into the Pacific. They are a series of huge black and brown streams of rock that continue to build an island already created by eruptions from 10,000 plus feet below sea level and rising another 13000 feet into the sky.

The power that rests below the surface of this island chain is demonstrated pretty conclusively in a twenty mile drive from the airport along route 19. It makes you realize how small a factor man is in this world.

The beautiful people come here to resorts that take your breath away. Some, I am sure, think they are the “rulers of the universe”.

The “big island” with its beauty, clear view of the universe above, and stark exposure of the world beneath should provide a wake-up call to even the largest of egos.

I wrote “Hawaii Musings” while I sat on the beach at the Mauna Kea  resort. The stars come down to visit after midnight, and you can almost feel the rumble of the earth below. If you listen closely you can hear the gods stirring.

Glenn K. Currie

Hawaii Musings

                                                    (Copyright 2015 Glenn K. Currie)

There is plentiful beauty here,

Bikinis that match the thin skin

Of girls and women with polished nails.

Beaches so perfect, the ocean

Kisses them with gentle tongue.

Black and white lava rocks,

Cool slowly in the hot sun.

 Ground and polished to sand,

They are spread as a welcome carpet,

Jewels ‘neath the feet of the new gods.

What a wondrous thing this place,

Born from the spit of volcanoes.

Watched over by Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa,

 Hovering like moo mooed matrons,

Their girth rising gracefully into the clouds.

The island, decorated with Bougainvillea,

Bird of Paradise, and offerings beyond compare,

Spreads out at their feet in supplication,

Hoping that when these old gods next awaken,

They will spare these imposters.

I just returned from a vacation in Hawaii. More on that in another blog.

But I had a lot of time to think about the terrible event that took place in Charleston a few weeks ago.

Charleston is a city I know fairly well, having lived there for a couple of years and visited it as recently as last April.

It is a city trapped between old and new. Its physical beauty makes it a wonderful place to visit and much has changed for the better in its race relations since the sixties when I lived there. But it has been a slow, gradual change that is of a kind with the pace of life for many. It is, in many respects, an island built between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, and it lives in a different time zone.

It was brought abruptly awake by the actions of a racist murderer who betrayed the very core of what should be man’s humanity to man. People who offered love and support were paid in terror and death, in a location that should be a sacred place of peace and love.

There is no way to understand this crushing of the shared bond that is so integral to civilization. We can mourn the loss but it seems we each lose a piece of ourselves when these incidents occur.

The families of those so directly affected have asked for forgiveness and love to replace the anger. It is a hard, wonderful, thing for them to do. And something that is hard for many of us to understand. I know there is a lot of anger out there. I witnessed some of it myself when I was criticized on facebook for not wanting the police to tear this heinous individual apart when he was arrested. It seemed to me, however, that we would be asking the police to do exactly what we have previously criticized them for doing.

We all react differently to these issues and our world seems to grow more violent by the day. I am not sure if it is possible to ratchet it down, but these families have certainly tried to set a good example. I hope that the civil and societal leadership in Charleston gets the message and works to bring the city together in a lasting and meaningful way.

I have been working on a new poem about these events and I include it with this posting.

Here’s hoping for better things in the future.

Glenn K. Currie

Charleston Musings

                                                    (copyright 2015 Glenn K. Currie)

The scent of jasmine and magnolia

Still remind the visitor

That this is a city of the old south.

Words are spoken slowly,

Rolling off the tongue

Like sweet cocktails,

Buried in ice and umbrellas.

It was the city of churches,

Once dominated by its steeples.

But the skyline is changing and

There are holes in the pews

Of this Holy City.

The violence, so often hidden,

Beneath the hoop skirts,

Has exploded in the very place

Where this world sought peace.

The call, unimaginable in its grace,

Is for forgiveness and hope.

But the anger still rises,

Like the heat off the Battery.

Tempers are thin.

 The Ashleys and the Coopers

Need to encompass this “Holy City”

With rivers that merge all the souls.

Am in Hawaii (Kauai) for my nieces wedding. Spent last week mostly at 50th reunion at Dartmouth or delivering 200 autographed copies of Granite Grumblings which I was honored to have them choose for the welcome bags. It was great fun but after that and twenty hours to travel from Boston to Hawaii I am wrestling with time changes and writing this at 3 o'clock am from my iPhone. Best to all.
Glenn

This is a busy time in New Hampshire. Winter finally appears to be over and the state is happily preparing for the onslaught of tourists that will soon invade our beautiful world.

It is lush green here now, especially after three days of heavy rain. Our colleges are graduating students who think the rest of the country is just as idyllic as our campuses and where professors fill their minds with irrelevant clichés and pretend they have the answers to everyone’s problems. These ex-students are headed out hoping to find places where evil businesses will offer to distribute another kind of green in large quantities. If not, some may move back in with their parents and advise them on how to live and what they learned at college. Others will go on to additional explorations of the mind in hopes of prolonging these golden years forever.

But as they depart to their fates we have many others arriving. Many visitors will flock here for vacations, ready to endure anything we throw at them, as long as it is a significant change of pace from what they do the other 48-50 weeks of the year.

And in June we have large numbers of alumni(ae) returning for various reunions. My college is Dartmouth. It is a picturesque place, well known for its beautiful campus and the quality of its education. I must admit that I love going back and walking the grounds. This year I am celebrating my 50^th reunion which I guess is pretty special because most of us aren’t going to be around for the next large round number.

I am honored that the College is going to include a copy of my book Granite Grumblings: Life in the “Live Free or Die State” in the welcome bags. This will be a very useful book for those who have not returned to New Hampshire for the last fifty years. Many of them are leaders of the world and have seen many changes in the last half century. They will not be prepared to deal with our state. It will take much adjustment to settle back into our environment and realize that nothing has really changed. Oh yeah, we have traffic lights in Hanover and more forested acreage than when we left. And too many escapees from Massachusetts have moved here without realizing what they did to screw up that state. But basically we have survived the onrush of technology and are living just as deep in the metaphorical woods as ever. As they read my book they will be able to readjust to the true “real” world of life in our fair state and will once again become whole with the universe.

I am including a piece from that book on our tourist population. I hope you have some fun with it.

Glenn K. Currie

Tourists

It’s tourist season again in New Hampshire. Or as we like to think of it, the chance to get people from somewhere else to help us pay all the bills that we can never figure out how to pay ourselves. Tourists are God’s great gift to New Hampshire. They come here for our beautiful scenery, picturesque towns and quaint ways, and we find picturesque and quaint ways to take their money.

Many of these visitors say they come here because we’re different. They want to experience life like it used to be, before the world was corrupted by things like reality television, concrete jungles and traffic jams. There is a certain disconnect in this of course. Many of them then check in to motels with satellite TV and swimming pools and video game rooms. And they all seem to flock to the same traffic-clogged, “scenic” highways and seek out places like Santa’s Village.

Fortunately, we do still provide some opportunities for the hardier souls to return to the days when things were different. We have a fairly wide assortment of those cute little roadside cabins where people can see what it was like to live in a closet, and maybe meet some of our famous New Hampshire wildlife. (Ever wonder why many of those cabins are up on blocks?) We also have all sorts of colorful old antique shops where, if our visitors are tough enough to survive the dust and 1930’s elevator music, they can buy back all the stuff they threw away twenty years ago. And for the truly adventuresome, we have attractions like the 139-year-old cog railway that climbs Mount Washington. In many ways this has not changed much since the 1800’s. It provides tourists with a ride powered by authentic, coal-fired, smoke-spouting, steam engines (and one wimpy bio-diesel engine), that will take them to perhaps the only place in New England where they can freeze their tail off in the middle of the summer.

Many of these tourists will also visit the wide variety of souvenir shops that are placed almost everywhere for their enjoyment. We are truly appreciative of their support, because without their amazing lack of taste, we would be stuck with all this stuff forever.

Other attractions that seem irresistible to tourists are the outlet malls that are scattered around the state. We provide a rustic ambience that induces people to buy clothes that went out of style five years ago in the rest of the country. They know they can get away with wearing it here because everyone gets away with wearing anything here. And when you throw in the special bonus of no sales tax on top of the discounts, we unload a lot of bargains.

Finally, for those tourists who are certifiable, and there seem to be a lot of them, we have our ocean beaches, where the water will turn their legs blue and their minds numb.

All things considered, we have good reason to love our tourists and welcome them back to our fine state. Just don’t get yourself caught between them and the portable toilets on the Kangamangus Highway.

One of my regular readers is heading back to El Salvador where he does God's work in an increasingly dangerous part of the world. Have a good flight Mike and stay safe.

It is finally spring in New Hampshire. Flowers are starting to peek warily from the earth, and trees are turning that soft green that fills the heart with hope.

It is also that time when presidential candidates are springing forth. Enthusiastic heads are popping up in meeting halls and coffee shops all over our fine state, followed quickly by associates with hands searching our pockets for the fertilizer that will make them grow.

It is true that we are blessed to have these visits. But, in truth, it doesn’t seem like we have done a very good job in recent years in weeding the garden to assure that we wind up with a functioning and effective leader of the free world.

I wonder if our citizens have lost some of our unique skills. Lately we seem to support anyone who can spin a good yarn and looks pretty when the sun is shining.

What happened to our traditional ability to cut through the bullshit and figure out who can actually run the farm and who just eats the produce?

A few years ago I wrote Leaders of the Free World (Granite Grumblings, Life in the “Live Free or Die” State,  2011). In the ensuing years, the need for some of my suggestions seems to have become even more compelling.

Our country and the world desperately need a leader with perspective and common sense.

We are an important part of the nominating process. Please do your homework folks, and make these candidates show they have the skills to handle the job.

Glenn K. Currie

Leaders of the Free World

Did you ever wonder how we got to be the “leader” of the free world? It is hard to believe that it is the result of the quality of our politicians.

Most of our leaders seem to be in Washington because their other careers went dead, or maybe they never had another career. And a lot of them aren’t able to apply themselves well at this job either, based on the results.

But once elected, they don’t appear to have much to worry about, because our voters don’t seem to care. Apparently our voters are so dumb they can’t even figure out a butterfly ballot, let alone determine if their representative or President is earning his or her paycheck.

No wonder the rest of the world is a little worried about us. Our election standards are even lower than our education standards.

Right now, any idiot who is a natural-born citizen and is at least thirty-five years of age, can run for President. And a lot of them have taken advantage of that opportunity. The election process isn’t doing a very good job of culling the herd. We, as voters, keep putting people into office and then complaining that they are in office. Then we nominate an even bigger idiot to try to replace him or her.

I think, as keepers of the first real primary, we have some responsibility to ourselves and the world, to establish a few minimum requirements to be eligible to be a leader of the free world. And maybe we should also impose a few demands on our voters as well.

For our would-be presidential candidates, I suggest the following eligibility standards:

1)      Live in an apartment without a doorman for at least a year.

2)      Serve at least one year in any combination of the following non-supervisory jobs:

Food service, manufacturing, sales, health care, transportation, construction, or education.

3)      Complete two years of service in the military, the Peace Corps or an equivalent (without a valet or PR person to assist).

4)      Ride a public bus across country, stay at least one night in a flop house, and spend at least two weeks in a place without indoor plumbing.

5)      Demonstrate the ability to successfully run an organization that is not inherited, funded by family trusts, or paid for by the government.

6)      Personally fill out and file a federal tax return.

7)      Demonstrate a sense of humor and the common sense to recognize BS when it is up to the ankles.

8)      Read at least one trashy novel and watch a week of daytime television.

9)      Demonstrate a working knowledge of baseball and football.

10)  Spend a month as a teacher’s aide in an inner city public school.

As for the voters, my expectations must be much more limited. But even with that realization, it seems that there should be a few basic requirements, none of which are currently being enforced.

Voter standards should be as follows:

1)      Prove they are United States citizens.

2)      Only be allowed to vote once in each election.

3)      Be required to identify themselves at the polls. (If they don’t know who they are, they probably shouldn’t be voting.)

4)      Be declared ineligible if they are convicts or persons legally rendered incompetent.

5)      Be a human being. (No more dogs or parrots getting the vote).

6)      Have a pulse.

7)      Be able to state the last name of the person for whom Washington, D.C. was named.

None of the above requirements are particularly demanding for either the voters or the future leader of the free world. They might, however, go a long way towards ensuring the humanity of those involved in the election process.

                 

  

Our society seems to have a fixation recently on the “walking dead”, vampires, and Armageddon. With all that to worry about, ghosts have become almost passé.

But, as quickly as our society has been evolving in recent years, ghosts are all around us. We just haven’t noticed. The “tall grass” hides their arrivals and departures. And perhaps, as we become more dehumanized as a society, we find it more difficult to maintain sentiment and attachment for the people and things that were once important in our lives. They slip away unnoticed while we focus on the “business” of our days.

Then we wake up in the night and find ghosts all around us. They are the halos of things once beloved or constant in companionship that faded from our view.

Is it a better world with so many new ghosts stirring in the evening air and forgotten in the morning world? I wonder.

Ghosts is a new poem.

Glenn K. Currie

Ghosts

Tall grass muffled their departure

                                         So that I hardly knew they were gone.

Sometimes I think I see them

Running along the edge of ancient forests.

Their hooves pound the hollowed earth

That falls away even as I watch.

The ground shifts, the planet spins,

And they are swallowed whole.

Their graves are the caverns left

By the needs of their successors.

Their replacements rage across the land,

Arriving in spectacle, burning the air,

Eating the tall grass of their ancestors.

 Glenn K. Currie copyright 2015

The happiest people I know seem to have the good fortune to be able to use both halves of their brain. They see the world in colors and have a sense of humor (which means being able to laugh at themselves as well as others). They are not so smart that they are sure everyone else is wrong and yet they have the great gift of common sense which helps them avoid falling into the traps that screw up so many lives.

You can have a 160 IQ and never really be satisfied if it is all concentrated in one particular area. I know a lot of stupid, unhappy people who are genius IQ.

One of the problems I see in our modern approach to education is that we are raising our children with way too much emphasis on the technical and analytical sides of education. We are teaching them to be imperfect computers and then wonder why they live inside the little versions that surround them. If they never learn to utilize the other half of their brains they will lose their humanity. We are deemphasizing the “social sciences” in our educational institutions to a very dangerous degree. When we do this we lose the study of human learning (history), human nature (psychology), human interrelationships (all of the above plus geography), human motivations (all of the above plus philosophy), and human expressionism (all of the above plus art, literature, etc.). Without these we lose the understanding of what it is to be human.

All of these skills are necessary to develop the most essential part of learning if they are to be successful in life. You must have perspective.

The truly successful people that I have met in the art of living life have all understood the importance of balance, perspective and the art of understanding the “nuances” of life. And you don’t have to be particularly wealthy to make good judgments and good decisions at key points. It is important, however, to be equipped with an education that lets you see the world with both sides of your brain.

I worry for our future when I see so many elected officials without that balance: People who are smart but not necessarily in a balanced way. And I worry when I see so many followers who share those problems. If we lose our ability to bring “common sense” to the decisions that we make as a nation, we will fail as a nation. We will be faced with competing with robots, and lose our humanity. I fear this is already starting to happen. Our warring political parties need to put away the pettiness and gather together to teach our children to once again become human.

Glenn K. Currie

p.s.I am sorry that I have not been able to post here for a while but I have, and have had, pneumonia and my energy level is very low.