Found a most excellent read

  Fascism: A Very Short Introduction by Kevin Passmore (Oxford University Press, 2002).

  Right away fascinating starting out in France and Italy and Romania--in lands carved from the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires.

"Not a grudge,"

  a man called out as several entered the administrative building, he quickly handcuffed a neighbor but let the neighbor's coat sleeves fall over the cuffs, and said, also loud but not threateningly, "But we voted and we'll be damned if we're going to let your fat pensioned asses clog up the legal system from working anymore." Several Church ladies who'd been paid the cost of bread and milk so could skip the errand to get there earlier bowed their heads as their own teenagers were brought into the building with each a hand handcuffed to a clothesline connecting them all.

 The tables had turned.

Newspapering and that stuff

 Typically editors decide what to print of crimebusting.  Most grown up people I know want social media not to be used as a weapon.  It's more than pot shots wirh a beebee gun at people when operatives use technology to interfere.

Like other times

 at the moment.  People who live poor working class are holding off on eating frozen Easter and Thanksgiving food even as the realities of another Democratic administration show in health as lacking nutrition and moods of just getting through the winter.

  Lackluster.

  Not great.

  We grind on surviving, the nation.  There are a lot of people nursing what's been wounded.  I'm sure we'll pull it off as just another day, again and again.  Even if we do have a world war, there's enough humanity that wants humanity to survive and the indecent, inhumane are really only a small percent of everyone.

Learning is a curious thing.

  It's the conclusion that always comes up even when "the best in the world" put their minds and hearts to something.

  Way back people finding out about fire felt the same.

  When our team USA came up against a wall of impossibility hypothetically in the middle of the country as the coasts cleaned up and re-ordered people and place because of warring there were relatively few people with full faith and confidence in the notion of In God We Trust.

  The phrase on the dollar bill--as a first in a shoebox to help veterans--stood in stark contrast to the barely breathing, soiled uniform'd, extremely skinny men who'd been found near a clothing donation center.  Some young people propped them up leaning against each other and as the mist started to lift and the day's traffic sounded like a regular workday, a woman borrowed a camera from a nightstand.  The whole camera had to be brought to D.C. said a Peace Officer from a Recruitment Room in an otherwise unoccupied office building.

  Some college students smoking and shivering nearby looked at each other and sized up the challenge.

  As young adults in the late 1980's and early 1990's we had inklings of who we wanted to learn from.  The what-to-learns kept expanding lists and honing ambition.  Whether it was well-known or not, almost every person who was professional had "mentors" and traditions to contend with.  And there were often group monitors who could be definitive when they needed to be.  

  One day we were sitting in the diner and in came a stocky person with a large pair of scissors.  A few people held up paper aprons and the apron-strings were cut off.  Kind of an unrecorded ceremony they agreed to, was explained.  The person with the scissors left but in came another person with scissors.  He looked all around the room.  Hardly no one noticed a person point someone out.  The person with the second pair of scissors asked a person who looked like a punk to stand.  The person with the scissors cut a string on the sporty winter coat over his leather jacket.  The punk's hand went to his heart and tears burst out of eyes, all over face.  "Why?" A person with the punk asked.  The person with the scissors put those in a back pants pocket and told, " The person you were tethered with is in a truck outside with no pants on and feet are freezing."

  We approached the vehicle carefully.  The person was eating a can of tuna wipung the darker bits onto a cocktail napkin with the table knife utensil.  "Are you okay madamoīselle?"

  Clearly a lot of things could've been said.  The woman closed her eyes for a long few seconds then opened them towards the sun and said, "I will need something to wear on my bottom." Someone nearby whispered to an older lady being seated in a car.  Then brought over a shawl which was pitched onto the dashboard of the truck.

  Outside in a two-hour sun is warm window the parking lot filled with working poor.  "Come to greet the Alpspeople have you?"  Smiles broke across wizened faces.  "But where is the cat?  Some people have new allergies?"

  A couple people made an effort to look high and low.  A dramatic man spoke in Italian to a sweater-and-suspenders assistant, then said loudly, "I dun't beweave, there"s aways a cat with that one."

  A tall man bent head nearly into the truck cab, didn't seize the small travel alarm clock, and ignored the wiggling kitten in the woman's dress shirt.  Before he finished checking, she sent for the damaged winter coat.  Me pissing myself shouldn't count as him not minding an elder.  

  Racey four wheel drives and sedans started to leave the parking lot with perfectly paced movements and a car and a half's space between them.

  Back over at Cosby in where it's backpack in only a couple friends had been scavaging.

  "Listen Muscle," she sighed and spoke to the outside of a tent, "I find that dance move flattering and all, but you might want to come out now and see what kind of equipment has you doing that on TV." There was a swishy-sounding rustle of sleeping bag and sheets inside the tent and the Muscle unzipped the door and knelt crooked-hatted half in and half out of the tent.  "What did you girls find this time, my love?"

  She showed him a smushed screen in a white plastic frame.  "And I was making the moves on there?"

  No one said anything.  Then he pulled down his hat even above his eyebrows.  "Well, I do have some moves, so I'm sure I didn't disappoint." The other girl blushed and sort of giggle-muffled, "Not anyone."

  "Lemme see it again."

  "It didn't record it."

  "Lemme see it anyway."

  "No."

  "Yes."

  "Nah uh."

  "Please."

  "THERE HE IS," the woman's voice was a loud bark to the nursery of love.  One of the girls slunk backwards and some sort of soldiers each put an arm under the Muscle's armpits.  They lifted him still kneeling.  "Should I beat on somebody's chest?" The girl with the worst crush on him asked.

  The captainesque woman who'd commanded the lift plucked the medical device from her hands.

  I was just pretending the girl with the crush said to no one in particular as everyone moved in silence in the direction of the parking lot.  The tent in tow.  "Me too!" The Muscle winced and added, "Is that what the troubles is?"

  "No talking."

  Some people in hunting gear crossed the footpath before us.  The soldier-types set the Muscle down and swung guns hanging on their belts up but did not point them.  Women in wool capes and sandals and boots crossed behind the hunters.  Then a tall red-headed lady in a shirt, sweater, and dress slacks with a scarf bunned near her throat saw us and stepped towards us.  "Is anyone of you hurt?"

  The soldier-types looked at the captain woman.  "We don't need your help," she said.

  "I might," the Muscle braved.

  The woman put her hands behind her back like a contemplating person then asked, "whaHow so?"

  "Is my fly down?"

  She looked sort of over the soldier-types and down at the man's pants.  "Who is in charge here?" She asked.  The captainesque woman answered, "My husband who is

  "And did you

  "Who is helping reload the Field Hospital Ma'am."

  "And did you find this man in his parachute?"

  "Do you mean this?"  She fell "out of line" and walked backwards putting a foot on the tent.

  "Let's call and find out." The tall St. Marie motioned for a radioman to kneel in front of her.

  It was a few days later certain people found themselves at a different campground.  "Just for processing," the Muscle kept reminding his grandmother.  "Nothing dishonorable," she'd stroke his ego.  "You heard that right?!" He demanded of everyone sitting at a picnic table when she said it one time.  He made the motions of shoving away from a table and smacking both hands on his chest. 

  "What's his problem?" An out-of-work actor asked out loud.

  The grandmother spooned more not pasta pasta onto a kid's plate.  "Young men sitting with women and children," she shook her head softly, her inside-eyes sifting through years and years of memories, and said, "It's      petaine."

  "I wish I knew what half these people were talking about," an older man said into a handheld recorder.  

  At a crowding up train depot train after train pulled in and didn't totally stop as all manner of characters disembarked.  Very neat uniformed ticket-takers asked questions like, And how was your vacation?  To which people replied stuff like, no comment and got a lot of sun about the bundled up people in their company.

  "Your shoe madame," white gloves held up the broken heel.

  "Gimme that," a London punk woman snatched the shoe and wagged it heel-floppy in front of the man's face.  "Don't call me that or I'll bop yoo."

  "Anyways," another woman with her picked up the story she'd been telling.

  A unicyclist juggled bowling pins.  

  "I see that performer everywhere," the punk said.

  "Cha."

  People flocked to a row of phone booths lining a wall.

  "Come on," the punk woman pulled on the shoulder of the other woman"s white winter coat.  "Let's see what's outside.  I could stand some fresh air." She took a wad of chewing gum out of her mouth and stuck it behind her ear.

T'aint even da nort

   That's what one of them said, "T'ain't even da nort."

  "So?" The older girl was forever flexing and squirming her leg muscles to be a showgirl someday.  She took two ladle-fulls of popcorn and squirm flexed over to the sofa.

  "So." A glance at mama.

  "Yeah, go ahead.  Catch us up."

  As the world turns.

  "So where the assholes put weights in that guy's boots so he'd land that way

  "Tell the story but don't swear

  "Okay but ALL the grownups swear and cuss.

  "You're father and I do not."

  "Okay.  That guy had a heart attack on account of freezing you know.  That's why he didn't move that time."

  "Who said?"

  "I can't tell names."

  "Then how am I supposed to check for fact?"

  "Maybe you're not duppised to since we're in a different phase now.". Some popcorn missed her mouth and stuck to her inside out sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off where there'd been a worn-hole.

  "I'll check with Ed about that."

  "Pain in the arse.". Everyone stood up and workers-for-free-but-not-slaves started to gaggle into the kitchen area.

  Our spot commander came out of the stove area in a frilly mama apron and bellowed, Welcome in Auckie-men, but before anyone could accept the invitation a closet door opened and a blur bull's eyed.  Body slammed a foreigner into the loveseat where I'd resat.  The loveseat moved to the middle of the room and me and the foreigner had had our teeth knocked together.  He'd put his arms above his head as the sofa came to rest and our spit hung between our mouths in a spider web string. Someone hollered, SNAP THE PITCHER.

  "I'd say you people need to settle down," the Commander said, " But until I know what the hell just happened here...." His voice trailed off as he hung his head and asked for God's help.  "I'll say it for you Reverend," Sherry put her arm on his forearm, pulled the hairbrush out of his shirt pocket, wagged it at everyone, and asked, "What the hell is going on around here?"

  People sat people around on the furniture and straightened up each others' hats and socks tucking work pants into wrecks of boots and sneakers.  Straighten up and fly right? Someone asked in a badly disguised Spanish accent.  "And you're all wanna be actors?" The Commander was asking a really short fresh-faced boyman.  Mama tossed the hairbrush onto the loveseat.  "Do your littlest sister in pigtails please."

  The landline phone finally rang.  Nobody got up.  The spot commander said, "Speaking of wearing many different hats.  Excuse me." He blushed deeply because Sherry had explained about accepting talents as from God and showed him right where it says that about gifts and discernment in the Bible.

  People were sort of dozing sitting up and a few were holding hot hands and twisting each others' clothing.  The girlwoman who'd been eating the popcorn was reading the one paperback we'd found in the place.  Mama gave me the stern eye, don't forget.  I was to tell Daddy she couldn't help that one.  And when I did Daddy lifted my chin and looked deep onto my tablet eyes and made sure I wouldn't forget to tell her, mama, that she'd never, ever, ever?ever, have to feel jealous or worry about him.

  Must've been a half hour later after a lot of aha's and yessirs on the phone some cars pulled into a sandy part of the "yard".  "Get your shoes on everybody," mama ordered.  Come hell or highwater us creatives were going to work again.

  Before daybreak we were deposited into the next safespaces in broad daylight.  Tending To Do lists mostly.  And staying alive.

  In those days greedy bad guys were stealing each others' treasure hunts, "family" was seeing where they might plant their asses on properties, and a few brave and decent citizens more referee'd than got killed by taking everyone to Court.  It really was a mad, mad, mad world.

  And then world events would cause changes in situation and conditions.  We'd all be dreaming up movie scenes and scores until airports couldn't land planes and more travelers would joun the ranks of people playing with surplus.

  Course, airpirts don't just turn away take offs and landings without it indicating disaster and crime, so the people on leave and not with a service day job were often put on the spot....get the convoy through; meet up with the eastern flank.  Flank?

  "Take the train through it." A general type ordered.  A man held his tongue in talking back.  It was almost an afterthought, the order to also haul the dynomite.  The man started to tick off inventory on a slipshod list.  Just staring at the clipboard for a couple minutes before he said to himself, I draw the line at dynomite.  He looked at the back of the general-type walking back to a jeep of others dressed like him.  "I draw the line at dynamite," he said allowed but not too loud.  Then he tucked the pen and chain into the clipboard and the whole clipboard into his waist behind his belt.

  "Whadya say chief?" A curly-haired man asked as he came up from under an engine.  "I draw the line at dynamite, but," he put his hand on the mechanic's forearm, "I don't need to tell them that." The curly-hair man's eyebrows went up and he removed the hand from his arm.

  So as not to bother anyone with the light when they were trying to sleep, Sherry would sit in a boxcar and sew on the parachute.

  Jealousy had been the death of more than one civilization we'd decided after a bizarre chain of events had ensued for the American team getting ready for the Olympics at that time.  Like some "new age" couples' therapy having mom and dad in their bathing suits duct taped to a water pump on a train deck.  Which the rumor of sent people from "village" and "camp" to see.

  By the time Dad was missing children from the station wagon leg of the road trip he didn't think much of it.  Some of the kids he did have with him weren't even his.  Yet, he got everybody over the age of six Kentucky Fried Chicken and walked over to some Golden Arches to get a couple hamburgers.

  Inside the stewardess front counter workers were asking if any of the names on telegrams were yours.

  In response to a dangerous world being a threat to the Republic, great threads and chains of citizens were helping the effort.  "It's not just about being numero uno Sister," a parent had explained to a Catholic school teacher about missing an awful lot of school.  "Plus, Father Patrick misses every one of them when they go on these trips." It was the Monsignor who prepared and blessed rolls of Communion which mama stashed in a Ritz cracker box.  It seemed like we were inch by inching our way in the station wagon towards some giant rainbow in the middle of the country somewhere.  Even Daddy let himself what better days were going to look like.

  I imagined a Scottish-accented handsome boy saying of our family, "Off on an adventure." And the class taking good notes so I could get caught up if we had a home to come back too.  There were and weren't real invaders.  Sometimes we'd catch a glimpse of their feet under curtains at airports and in curtained cubicles at hospital or plasticed off zones in office buildings.  Sherry would catch us noticing and ask a detective to confirm the criminal is captured.  The barrier between normal day and different would part and handcuffed wrists would be observed.

  It wasn't about looking for trouble or staying out of "it" but more like decency reaching a saturation point of an area of the country where the criminals just bubbled to the top of the barrel like corks.  Duty just came along with being involved with American society.

  "What was it like?" Our mother asked a brother through the little metal speaker reaching through thick plate glass.

  "Gross."

  Sherry scribbled a note forbidding her children to be returned to the field trip area.

  A suited woman shuffle-clicked her heels and stood before the window.  "They'll need all our clothing."

  Sherry shook her head no, super modest, "Not unless they give me a bathrobe or," she looked at some men walking by in athletic association jackets, "Or one of those." The other woman asked the gentlemen if they could borrow the jackets.

  A very studious bunch got back from the field.  Even the older man explained, He'd seen some things in his time, but his words got lost in a slow shaking of his head and tears welling in his soft eyes.

  Tendons as strapping to tap out false morse code from behind a little wall...the lists of "evidence" were macabre, dark moods hovered around the people charged with taking some guesses.  Big war crime words like torture and could be the connection were bean bagged on top of a blank legal pad on the side that wasn't serial killer.  Late, late at night someone asked, "What if it's both?" Around the table people had fallen asleep.  A man had white rice stuck to his cheek.

  It had to be west of the Cumberland Gap.  The train did not have to be stolen.

  A Marshall had unzipped a golf club duffel bag and seen for himself --inside was a very tiny woman.  His head sort of slumped toward her but his shoulders didn't waiver.  "Is she alive?" A white-haired man asked not loud as men stretched their legs and let numb feet ride up and down with the rumble over track.  The man with the sandy-colored mustache asked in return, "Is this train stolen?" He had a wild in his eyes.  The darker moustached man in a safari shirt and dark olive pants uncaught a gold bracelet from his arm hair.  "Did he show you the petrified one or a dolly?" He asked quickly on a lurch.

  "This one's still breathing," and the moustached men led and followed each others' eyes in the direction of a train car filled with people in instrument cases and trophy animals.

  Mama's lips were actually snoring as her head rested on an elbow holding down the crossword puzzle.  A "mini-maid" approached and my father's eyes droopily opened.  "Wake her up and I will shoot you," he said.  And smiled lazily like his tan arms.  He lifted the rifle with stuffed animals ribbon'd to it.  The bicycle horn end produced a goose honk when he squeezed the trigger.  Our mother had arranged him.  Yet, the mini-maid was a personal friend and used a butter knife to pry up Sherry's saggy-skin elbow and put the note there.

  Dad reached out of his trenchcoat, so it was obvious he had three arms and gently play handcuffed the dolly on the forearm.  "I'll take an OJ and she'll have toast with apple butter when she wakes up on her own." The mini-maid slid the handcuffs up and up under Swiss Miss cottony short sleeves before turning head to go.  Dad pushed his glasses up on the ridge of his nose and asked, "What does it say?" The mini-maid looked split-second scared under her thick mascara.  Dad said, "It's okay.  I'm sure you had to read it." Her one nod affirmative was pert.  "It's poetry from her Mister," was all she said and started to go before she stopped and said, "We've only pineapple left.  That okay?"

  "Actually, that gives me canker sores.  I'll take a Sprite if you can find one of those."

  The motley gang of people that had turned up on the highway had been rejected for work on both coasts and could not seem to outrun their petty crimes.  Even the stunts department of a non-Hollywood film crew had weeded them from the ranks of indies and as yet totally authenticated passports.  That's a shame, two muscle-builders were paid to say as people spit and pissed on one side of an open-air train car.  It had been screechily put in place at a non-fenced area of the area.  The place only had a few abandoned buildings that were cinderblock on the inside, painted a yellow-tinted ivory color.  Outside the bricks and green-tinted glass blended together as shadow even in the full sun.

  "How long?" An eager boy scout type law enorcement guy asked of suits and shade-hatted officers.

  One finally said, "Maybe a couple hours."

  "And we just guard that train car?" 

  "YOU guard the train car.  These Federal Reserve guys have to save their patience for the load of plates the Marshal's team had to reroute." 

  "Plates Sir?"

  "Go."

  People crowded the back door window of the train car to see "the contraption".  It wasn't really all that much to see, but there on the platform car was a catapult riveted to the old train deck and a biker riding stationary in front of it.  A brother called it "the flinger".  And there was Sherry in white baker's outfit pedaling and pedaling.  About every seven minutes the flinger flung little hobo bags of chalky powder to different sides of the tracks.  Whap, another brother ran to a window and confirmed we were leaving a trail.  A hand below the glass-windowed car but not totally on the platform car pitched another bag of color onto the catapult.  Sherry's shoulders and hair were getting sprinkled colorful but she would look up and smile, give the okay sign, and keep pedaling.

  Inside the third and only other car attached to the small engine, the good guys poured over old-timey maps looking for the connector tracks we'd been deposited on days and nights before.

  It was all done in the sense of preserving the American spirit, a different political transition.  Even as those who'd taken oaths of office, but lost the votes, and who were experiencing "the office" changing all around them, heard us young people out.  Many still smelled of D.C. as they returned to hometowns and gathering places of non-office holding Americans.

  People overall were fighting that feeling of devastation to spirit.  An older young man with ice patches on his wool city long coat looked around the diner from somewhere very far in himself.  His face had grown older looking as if he were an oil lantern at a train depot where many changes had taken place in the decades' milestones.  "New trains, same tracks," his mouth relayed observations.  Some people just hugged him as he stood almost like a wax figure, still representing.

  He got a thumb's up from another wool coat.  "Good thing you went up." The other man's eyes looked out the parking lot.  There were about seven moving trucks.  "What are those?" A staying-on assistant asked him.  "Work." Was the short answer but as breakfast unfolded into brunch and lunch and other moving-on group and organization people called in touching base, the enormity of what was being taken care of (short of records) became clearer.  As did exhaustion.

  The afternoon brought well-wishers, and no shortage of advice like Get rest.  And assurances of We get you now.

  People were almost routinely breaking down into those last moments of letting go because it's okay now.

  Like a still-standing pinwheel when the sun comes after a hurricane WNC put even the smallest seeds of hope onto pieces of shared sponge.  Writers flitted from person to person jotting down important and maybe relevant information to nursing story line.  The smells of toast and pasta mixed into the steams of breath and engines that will work again.

  Experts held sway in the guts of churning transition.  Looking at maps, directories, mission statements, and uncrumpling "speeches" they made a point of not winking and/or sending doubt in messaging.  Periodically, someone would approach that booth and swap sheets of paper.

  "Interested?" The overlap topics touched medical community in particular since the concepts of "spectrum" and "palette" had turned from buzz concepts into keynotes.  A newspaper editor was loud but not rude in commenting on our progression of ideas.  His eyes welled with tears though at the word--coalitions.

  "What's his problem?" A gruff man wagged his head at him.

  A person walked over.  "Okay?" 

  He summoned to people willing to be pointed at.

  "What is it?"

  "I'd prefer that no one use words that are confusing to working people."

  "What word is troubling you?"

  "Coalitions sort of hintimates communism somehow."

  "Okay."

  A soft-talking conversation at another booth.  Someone got up and stretched a cyclist's back and walked around accumulating sticky notes on his arms.  He said out loud things.  Chief among concerns in a transition of power is not to be perceived as a challenger, especially as citizens.

  It was an in-between shifts time and several people gathered their things and made for the exit.  No one opinionated in phrases like lousy tipper or have a nice day.  A foodserver remarked I've seldom seen a more quiet and respectful crowd.

  A potential national censor-person and an airport worker approached the newspaper editor.  "Got your note about the word coalition.  We'll do some legal-reading and be in touch.  Okay?"

  "Thank you," he said as he kept reading in the piling stack of newsprint being donated to his table.

  There were people who sat in place at the diner all day reminding such essentially critical stuff like, it is not the military person's fault that an administration was/is a political party.  Some had come from all over the world where they'd been posted to observe and learn.  Religious people, too, drifted in and out, extending vigils and noting observances.

  All over our nation a flurry of calls, faxes, and telegrams were questioning and confirming resumè data points.  And people were being informed to prepare prospectus.  Academia was a mix of hesitant to register and pool of equally-weighted talent.  Many were relieved in preparing for interviews to be asked to think of a few things that make you unique.

  Tradespeople sighed.  "Bridge-workers" helping people "frame" themselves tweaked the unique feature into interview questions that allowed for personal story to ground technical skills in real life.  And all the while road crews came in for meals and warming breaks.  Sparsed foremen went through proper channels to talk about stress points and aftermaths.  One smiled at me resting reading eyes.  "Did you know that Explosives has its own vocabulary?" I glanced at my writing mentor to see if I could respond.  A nod.  "All over the world?" He looked at his.  A headshake no.

  When information travels through the universe it never "dies", sometimes "rests", and always has "hidden potential".  That is part of why censure is absolutely necessary in times when "confidential" is inevitably compromised by change and transition.

  The kitchen needed two people to strain a cooking pot of spahetti.  Getting ready for dinner.

The man landed

   on his feet.  Plain as day he'd come out of one of our training planes.  Framed by a radiation-strong sun, funhouse mirror fuels in the air, and an overpass.  The rest of us were in look-normal positions and the girlfriend made moves to join the man with scarved bucket 'neath a mess of doily'd handkerchief frill. 

  The rest of us resumed faux filmmaker places everyone everyone apprentices especially, if you can't hear the snap, do this, the assistant made an umpire sign.  Heads glanced and eyes rolled, eyes to eyes, we waited to find out if we'd moved the chronometer a micrometer here, an inch there.  "After scale are you?" A director spoke into a tiny interference "wind" created by a fire stoker and a piece of graded tin roof patch.

  A thumb up appeared from behind a devil's wind rock.

  He usually smokes right away "in this scene," his voice grew louder as he kept eyes on the lander, two fingers on a leap frogger in front of him, and he came uncrouched.  "Let me see." He spoke loud enough to satisfy the ring of censors, also placed as it were like traffic cones along the smooth edges of an at-rest megaphone.

  Opinion?

  I don't like it for him.

  And the dance move makes the decision between choices.  A throat cleared on an open air speaker system.  "Gentlemen."

  No one answered Yes Sir or Ma'am right out loud.  "How should I phrase it?" could be heard.  "Ask how many more 'takes' or something Sir" came the suggestion.

  It had been less than twenty-four hours, a meet-up, young people and some mentors.  Whereas we'd been girls and boys divided, then age-funneled, and mix-n-match we'd had to renormalize.  That put the professions in a sore spot in terms of supplies enough.  And let Republicans the world over know:  It's a slow crawl from here on out.  "No hurry"s at an airman's campout that sold BBQ and beer only that final night together confirmed eyes only now.

  "Am I in possession of State secrets or anything like that?" Everyone's favorite pick (not vote) tapped the bill of the boy's cap down over his forehead.  "What kind of question is that for a bouncer?"

  "Oh!  Is he called that in you peoples' generation?"

  He kissed a cheek and reminded her to be kind to Boy Scouts and said in his best Crooning voice, "Don't bring up stuff like weights."

  "With boys too?!"

  He put his forehead in one hand and tried to suppress the laughable memories.  The day's activities had included boys and girls, men and women hanging on crane hooks--counterbalancing.

  Then he sighed tired.  "Only one beer for me tonight."

  "Okay."

  "Unless I'm sitting like this," and he crossed one leg over t'other, said Tolliver, then he ran through all the 'ceptions while she just kept saying, "one".  It had been a few nights since the younger crowd had had to turn in the weapons, in the form of pills and powders and flasks and daggers.  It had meant in or out.  And even the kind-hearted leaders who coulda booted fuck ups to the moon and left them there had spent two days of their time and resources explaining it as not surrender but, "it shows you care about yourself now.  And caring about yourself, is caring about us."

  "All of us?" A young kid asked.  "Even dreamers?"

  "Yes Sir Capt'n."

  Just then about half the people in the restaurant hit the deck because there was a beep, beep, beeping.  "Is it going to explode?"

  "Or sail off like a cloudboat?"

  Hello.  Yes, yes, hold on I'll see if he's available.  No one moved a muscle except for a stifled sneezing into someone else's sleeve by a gothic woman.  The cellphone was relayed to a young person up front who held it up and towards our commander.  "Are you available?"

  "Oh Lord.  Honey no.  I'm never an available man." He took the device and asked, WHO IS THIS? at it.

  Still holding it like a stinky dog toy and away from his head he tried to look into it.  He held it up, and put it down, and passed it to some knees under a table.  The knees made room and he sat down.  His face was part orange and part skin-damaged pink, almost crew cut smashed flat on one side and all of his halfa haircut head smushed under a fish net stocking cap.  He looked awed for a second then asked one of the "lugs", "Is it really her?"

  He nodded excitedly.  "Really my wife?" He didn't take the phone but looked out over the restaurant and said real slow, "Really?!  My wife seems able to find me anywhere.". Then he reached for the cellphone but the lug pulled it away and covered the mouthpiece part.  "You really want to take this call right now?"

  "I'll entertain my wife's notions." The man motioned gimme, gimme.  The lug did not.  "Gimme that," he sounded like Dick Van Dyke in the office on TV.  "Whaddoo you want?" 

  "Honey, I can't come home like this." And he closed the phone.  Apparently people couldn't help themselves and started giggling.  The man shook his head for a split-second.  Another man in the booth covered his mouth and whispered something.  He put his hands up to his head and said, "Oh, okay, I get why you precious people are laughing at me."

  Laughing near you Sir, someone called out and toasted with a glass of orange juice.

  "Hear hear," soneone else said.

  After a root beer or two a waitress dressed as a butler approached our spot commander's table.  He got up and offered her a seat which she declined in a heavy accent short word way.  "Any news?" was almost drowned out by the next Act starting up..."Ladies and Gentleman I bring you," the M.C. tried to read the writing in the lighting, "Olivia Neepon John and the Venus Fly Traps."

  "THOSE ARE JUS chillun."

  "Thank you, m'am.  It is m'am right?  Correct?"

  "At home Sir, yes.  But that's," she looked around at all of us in campfire mode, " Far from here." 

  "Well, welcome to here M'am." 

  She hesitated then asked, "Do you know where we are Sir," voice fading as she looked for a surname tag or badge.

  "Not exactly.  But we are safer here, if we stick together, at this point."

  "Sir?"

  "We.  You too."

  "Sir?"

  "M'am?"

  "A woman outside gave my this to give to you." A lugger got up as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a large index card, hand-scrawled note said, "I thought the pancake winds had brought us closer together."

  He blushed.  "I guess my wife must really want me."

  "I would too Sir," and her hand shot up to cover her mouth.  Before it reached her face area (where someone might have a piece of party balloon and use it to produce a razor blade, or blow poison on someone, or make an awful noise) another lugger stood and grabbed her wrist saying, "Just didn't want you to cover up your beautiful teeth.". A knee smacked the bottom of the table so hard it jumped off the floor.  A scarlet-faced pudgy boy said, "He meant SMILE.  Your beautiful smile."

  "Do I have a beautiful smile?"

  Both older and younger guys nodded and the younger said, "You sure do."

  "Bright as the moon."

  For lack of communications and a lapse in information available, civilians and a spate of ruffians fell into a bit of routine.  Never really knowing when Our God might call Armeggedon had people all over the place when it came to describing "now".  Some of the kids took to saying "'pends on the treaty" and kept on clamoring around on adventure and kicking up dust.  "What treaty?" became the group response to quiet too much wondering.

  Above people, on mountain ridges, officials did official things and the Regulars between us all tried to quell feelings of being trapped.  Someone found an old travel club case of maps, so some people started naming different troubles by old-timey names of places like Creeper's Hollow and Sugar Cube Caves.  Days of relative quiet would ensue between jet fight exercises.  And it was a lazy day when a voice crackled on the speakers and we were surrounded by the questions, "What'n the hell?"

  "Is that what I think it is?"

  Nobody could believe it.  An arctic air mass was shoving northbound stuff up there back down cloud streets.

  "That's not ours," a military person told a Canadian Mountie.  The man on the horse looked out in front of him and nodded just once.  The horse lifted knee real high and turned almost perpendicular to the improvised reign holder.

  A shot fired somewhere.

  Within days word came that the Chinese were taking pictures.

  Peoples' hands went to chests and mouths gaped.  "Oh MY

  "GOSH," a mama finished a kids'sentence.  "Now go pack your busy bags up."

  "But I want to see IT."

  "NOW." And she stomped a foot like she might be a charging rhinoceros.

  As the Roman Empire was getting over (it took scores of years) there was knightly help in keeping mercenaries separate from soldiering.  Teams would sweep questionables from hill and vale onto plateaus and plains for the sorting by crime.  By crime was at the basis of a fair and equal justice.  There was also clear and firm penalty among Westerners.

  Jousters began to make changes to their sport in the Middle Ages.  There was necessary distinction between sport and soldiering.  The Olympics caught a tradition of democracy up to law and order.  

  There continued to be arenas, cults, clusters of people within Western homelands which carried on with unique lifestyle and traditions of their own, often amalgamations of regional culture and/or purist factions.

  As the United States of America's judiciary changed from Colonial into Early American, the state of Maryland held out on putting people in stocks.  Other states like New York were digging up old Dutch rules (more for navigating and shipping and holding prisoners at sea) to try and justify the guillotine-methods of "punishment".  Lawyering as a way to world travel and go in and out of worldly Courts and inner chambers was a highly competitive bloodsport and a way to capture and destroy enemies in the form of persons.

  Sir Walter Raleigh's The History of the World is not a summation because the arguments continue on the nature of man (humanity) and there's no automatic winner.  Indeed some battling has proven that humanity alone cannot win an argument regarding good and evil.  What Raleigh's work does provide is linkage between times in human history when people chiseled constructions into sculpted forms which we in the West comprehend as politics and religion.

  In his work we find some coaching on understanding ourselves in "an age".  As a historian he fills us in on intellectual thinking that has underpinned and imbued the constructs of the West.  As a commander amongst commanders he draws upon not only his perspective but the canons of a world to date in a classic formulation of the West versus/as different than the world of other worlds.

  He cites Saints' of the Holy Apostolic Church days and those touched by the Holy Roman Empire sphere of influence in recalling major milestones.  For example, he draws upon the age of St. Gregory's lifetime period (328-390 A.D.), only that long after Jesus' lifetime to frame a potent and critical work of the West, authored in part by Jesus himself and all of humanity around at that time and since.

  The Creed convenings of the Church formed philosophy and sacraments, influenced religion's rituals, and sought to be/made effort to be a voice of authority on many issues.  Sir Raleigh calls attention to the distinctions between such complexities as "metaphysics" and "supernatural" through indicating the story of Paul traveling through Mars Hill in the Apostles' age.  It's critical linkage in the greater story, still unfolding, of the Father sending His only Son Jesus to take away the sins of the world.  Through Jesus as the Lamb of God there was sea-change around "forgiveness" in the world.  Also, in individual souls with one lifetime each having choice/using free will to "sin" or not.  By evoking the standards of what Jesus and his Company were up against we are also privvy to the broader concerns of humans since the Garden of Eden.  Those big worries about good and evil and what is beyond our "control" and why.

  The Church had to acknowledge Jesus' miracles and almost singular power to remove even the foulest sin/evil in the form of demons/possession.  And in doing so, the Church allowed for "the mysteries" of the Holy Trinity.  That helped define some happenings as "metaphysical" and others as "supernatural" which in turn clarified world events into politique, etc.

  It was through the West's grip on God-based comporting of self and nation that the West became different than other cultures.

  "England, to whom we owe what we be and have...." --John Dunne

  Here, Dunne picks up the quill in a Canterbury Tales way.  Bridges have more than one side but serve the purpose of connecting.  England, Anglican, Protestant variation of Christianity.  Knights and Royalty ever the through thread even as the Isle itself was in transitions involving other cultural influence.

  We read in a book like Passing The Time In Ballymenone of the enduring warrior spirit that is preserved in family pride and a more national than tribal unity.  In Britain especially Cromwell's era to age shaking root and branch had many generations of Westerners being grown up in less orthodox Church ways, and in more common civilian ways.

  So what then of this?  A peaceful transfer of power complicated only by loyalties, passions, and all things "shipping".  Innovation in military terms can be weaponry, or something else like navies paying wages instead of conscripting.  To traditionalists who'd fought fair and square the battles between religions this third option (bolstered by innovation in travel) a "new world"?  What to make of it?  And, what this?  And, merchanting sustains?

By Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder

The Lover Showeth How He Is Forsaken of Such as He Sometime Enjoyed 

     [They Flee from Me]

                    {Prob the man of cloth}

  "They flee from me, that sometime did me seek

With naked foot stalking within my chamber.

Once have I seen tem gentle, tame, and meek

That now are wild, and do not once remember

That sometime they have put themselves in danger

To take bread at my hand, and now they range,

Busily seeking in continual change" (Stanza 1, Verses 1-7)

    When we were read this poem sitting Indian-style on a hard wooden floor, the just an old fisherman in Shetland wool sweater had said, "We can take it slow," a Parks guard hands warming in trenchcoat pockets, white wooden musket perfectly aligned, stopped him as a Crossing Guard would.  One of thé children had asked her to find out if'n it'd be okay to ask questions.

  "Are you amenable kind sir?"

  "And accommodated miss"

  2025, my textbook tells me of Sir Thomas Wyatt The Elder (1503-1542).  Back in that treehouse our questions were sorted out by copies of the reading and us using a piece of paper folded into a triangle to virtually underline any word that caught our personal interests.

  "Wyatt was born at Allington Castle in Kent, and educated at St. John's College, Cambridge.  He spent most of his life as a courtier and diplomat, serving King Henry VIII [that means eighth, 8th, Henry the 8th and it's written in Roman numerals] as Clerk of the King's Jewels and as ambassador to Spain and to Emperor Charles V" ( ).  "He was also a member of various missions to France and Italy.  He spent much of his adult life abroad; his interest in foreign literature, especially Italian, is evident from his translations and imitations of poems by the Italian sonneteers Petrarch, Sannazaro, Alamanni, and others.  The life of a courtier under Henry VIII was not a calm life: Wyatt was twice arrested and imprisoned, once in 1536, after a quarrel with the duke of Suffolk, and again in 1541, when he was charged with treason, lodged in the Tower of London, and stripped of all his property.  On both occasions he was fortunate enough to regain the king's favor and receive a pardon.  His praise of quiet retired life in the country and the cynical comments about foreign courts in his verse epistle to John Poins derive from his own experience" (461).

  I am reminded of our whole town of Huntington being mustered in the 1970's.  We were in a carefully arranged parade with sports and cultural clubs and asked to serve as long as we could.

  And also recall stories about Saratoga and other parts of upstate New York where so much had happened in history.  Garrisons and ballchains, colonials with ilks and loyalties far and not far from forts and surveyors.

  Turning back to the poem then...

Thankèd be fortune, it hath been otherwise, 

Twenty times better; but once especial,

In thin array, after a pleasant guise, 

When her loose gown did from her shoulders fall,

And she me caught in her arms long and small,

And therewithal, so sweetly did me kiss

And softly said, "Dear heart, how like you this?" (14)

It was no dream, for I lay broad awaking.

But all is turned now, through my gentleness, (verse 16)

Into a bitter fashion of forsaking. 

And I have leave to go, of her goodness, 

And she also to use newfangleness. 

But since that I unkindly so am servèd,

How like you this, what hath she now deserved? (21, p. 468) 

                                  Tottel, 1557

  I'm sure you can imagine a mix of day activities and all different persons trying to comprehend, What does it mean?

  A decree, an order, a rank and file resting amongst the wilderness.

  Somes killed before sir, whispered to a searching quartermaster.  Him not knowing how to take that exactly.  A voice squelchy from the changing weather and dry spaces, "Men or hogs?"

  'Neath a field canvas nurses awaiting immediate orders and silently cussing the undone tasks of others.  Plain clothed walkabouts reeking of temptations giving unrecorded word of train and bird.

  In Milton's Paradise Lost there is similar situation to how Boston underwent changes after Lexington happened.  For some it was a scramble into action, LOOK BUSY, Satan is entering our Garden of Eden.  And tell YOUR kinfolk....

  The Creature to Be Found

  Hath light All Around

  Of course, each message would be mostly plundered through for accent and meaning.  A young Nathaniel might have to wait until a neighbor's tea time to find his father working on side-to-job-hobbies.  Putting a twist on squared railing.  Checking on the womenfolk with men and boys in stocks.

  As in Dante's Inferno and New Orleans' Battelles we are given impressions (not imitations) and senses of, waiting places.  Allegories and metaphors, simile and image in word amount to dried food.  As we join human history in bloodlines and tradition we discover what has changed and what not about where we are going.

  "Now to th' ascent of that steep savage hill

  Satan had journeyed on, pensive and slow;

  But further way found none; so thick entwined, 

  As one continued brake; the undergrowth

  Of shrubs and tangling bushes had perplexed

  All path of man or beast that passed that way.

  One gate there only was, and that looked east

  On th' other side; which when th' arch-felon saw, 

  Due entrance he disdained, and in contempt

  At one slight bound high overleaped all bound

  Of hill or highest wall, and sheer within

  Lights on his feet.  As when a prowling wolf, 

  Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey, 

  Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve

  In hurdled cotes amid the field secure.... (Verses 172-186)

Where we're at realistically

   on a lot of matters is having identified a lot of issues and potential problems with everything American.  The good news is that we are not lost.  Not lost.  We are steeped in both political party's directives but we are also in a transition. We are.  All of us from Congresspeople and military to businesspeople and children.

  One example is issue: vaccines

  There's been lots of studying about health of individuals and groups of us.  So at first in a transition we see what we know and what we don't know.  And our nation itself has to hold the space safe--the space where we're deciding if something should be allowed, even if not mandatory.

 Life's like that....cantilevering one McKuen poetry moment into feet beside a hearth.  We try to reason with atmosopheric forces churning icy word slush.  As ski boots thaw out we're thinking about Black Diamonds and seeing feet before the fire, ankles dripping rain drops of what was just snow.

  Newspapers never had road closure information as up to date as digitalia.  We'd smell the barn--unafraid reindeer--hang up skies on a special nail thingie outside the main haus, go inside and read our colonials.  When our friends stopped for hot beverage they stayed on skis (maybe an invite to sauna sometime) and stretched calves and arms, debating changing poles or pole baskets.  Inside if sunlight not dismal, we'd get to read of far away colonials such as Dante and other masters.  A kinfolk neat in pants perfectly dried might quip on why the Dutch didn't write as much.  "Why father?" A son might want to know.  A sister might intellectually look up from darning and say, "Yes, father, why?"

  Grabbing a smaller child for knee thaw and sitting at a tableclothed meal round, he might sigh the day into rest, be present and let the cupboards of memories explain before New Worlds.  Or he might straighten scarves like ties and bows and suggest going back to school for the elder ones.  Tea cups on flat nails (none ever wasted from shoeing horses) would never shake but when the draughts beckoned family to wake up, turn the damper so we don't blow away, and, by the way, those Dutch were too busy doing.  A teenage girl might rustle under her quilt and sit up Indian-style, ankles catching moonlight not as ivory as her nightgown, "They were?"

  "Oh yes, the boys, busy making and crafting and not just thinking about all that like those Reni-I-talianos.  I'll tell you in the morning dearie.". A simple latch would not click into place, safe.

  It was controversial then, when the mother and sister by marriage put cracked but glued/velcro'd saucers and even soup bowls on the ledge of the snow haus and the Mr. didn't ask at first.  "Why don't you ask Father?"  Lips would purse but teeth not search for tobacco pipe because decided.  "I suspect." All the while the reindeer only gently stamping-drag, stamping-drag THEY KNEW.  Up through the mountainous rock's crevices a rumbly steam growled, not like wolves, but tumbly warmer there, the girl reideer told the male who finally spat on it.

  "Like a camel?" A child on a lap in the New World of America asked.  Naptime, a nurse with the funniest hat would gentle-sternly sweep from lap to keep us all on regiment.

  A hand reaching to ottoman anything to read.  The Englishk Literature book, receptor of the good onion skin papel passed in the child's story.

  But in the mount that lies from Eden north, 

  Where he first lighted, soon discerned his looks

  Alien from Heaven, with passions foul obscured.

  Mine eye pursued him still, but under shade

  Lost sight of him.  One of the banished crew

  I fear hath ventured from the deep to raise

  New troubles; him thy care must be to find.   {570, 575}

  Hearth fire flashing taller, grate not glowing red, Sister's eyebrows raising and falling in unseen.  "You seem startled Sister." But she did not.

Over in TP

   It's an icy stiff thinned high cloud atmosphere that edges into human skin.  A tinker's bell might caution, cover the robbins' eggs.

  Sun slants shapes and Old Glory whips stars and stripes into nature's ways of saying.  Yesterdays have come and gone but something of us remains.

Some things we discovered

   had to do with individual life paths merging "into group".

  Some people were like fireflies in the discovery process.  And their lights bounced, flickering, glimmering a different-than-self engagement.  The interstice part of the intensity yet separate too.

  A necessary unifying as citizens of a Country had us at least visting the churning engines and deciding which path best.

  Persons and groups have paces.  Storms can quake and shake, roil, boil and freeze tempers and the proverbial harps.  Us feather gurls in our late teens and twenties were like jibs in the winds and torches on skates in some storms, but also lead foots in impact zones.  The experiences within the frameworks of disciplines and with guidance and counsel were imprinting and that's part of "training".

I can, I will, I do

   was the spirit of the Etowah Clauds and the Forestry Tweeds (pet names for our teams, us working dogs).  Under the surface of Rock and Roll with electric technology advances and television presenting a luxurious America to a world catching wind of us, generations of workers in trades, professions, and thin lines of new tradition were holding up the forts.  Whether we liked it or not certain "chores" had to be done, especially in the mountains.

  Standing on the shoulders of giants we were spread rather thinly on spiney ridges and the fins of dams--great works of design and function, if tended.  "In our neck of the woods..." someone would reveal a tool and say about its use in their discipline.  Old timers would scoff at the plastic parts and angle, I've fabricated better.  There were invites to workshop garages, teepees, and huts.  We warned each other not to wear out welcomes or use too much of their sugar and coffee.  Never pry, Ayup, friendlies of all generations would agree and disagree to plans for ceasing the day (carpe diem).

  Sudden red white faces hollered, Where in the hell, and Where's the fire boy/girl, not as questions so much as GET BACK, lemme see what's going on here.  

  They'd built that thing in two years would ring in my own head in a constant comparison to greatness and grand.  "And it only took us thirty years to let it go to shit," a middle ager mocked a Kellogg's Great.  The planet was on fire and falling down around us as we put toes into lifelong works and not a career really.

  Documenting everything was part admiration, some amount of casting for disappearing, and finding template to argue with and cajole, wit about and muse over, adopt or save: Never discard anything; rules of thumb.

  "Chemistry?  Math..." A coach blew a whistle and bound joints and wrapped firmly but not too tight blisters pounded away at tire-dancing, needlework, boxing-fenders, tying and re-tying knots and combinations, sequence and repeats.  "Just as important!  You'll see when you get there!"

  Mighty were the tiniest--asking questions, fitting selves into an awkward learning unity.  And as enemies of the West cloaked and swarmed, rushed away to re-form and Come Again our collective head adjusted to the times having changed once again.

  Ohah say Can't you see, that we're doing our best?  One would pitch a line to a tempest of can't quite remember and the I never knews and the others, our others, would banter and moan, decline, chant a beat, and otherwise willfully participate, or not.  Ballads of a generation now stuck in a hairpin turn, now being rushed to confront, to express need to be met, to:

  Finding fulcrum on balance beams adrift many times in an umbrage wash between public and private.  Such a deal, such a deal, we'd quip either way.  The ironies ever mounting on the scales and the be it resolveds ribbons to medals.

  I found some information regarding the USDA's efforts to extend opportunity for helping in the getting caught up with tending the forests online.  That url is:

https://lee-enterprises.com/usda-fy2024-timber-production/

  

Not everybody sees things the same way

   Of late it's turned into grant writing season and planning specifics for stuff like festivals and other seasonal fun.  Many years ago now in Tennessee we revitalized unity as a region by pooling talents and skills and choosing a universal theme that would benefit everyone.  A lot of us worked in the broad category of tourism.

  Even while some businesses were still in seed phase, others were sort of on backburners as potential projects for groups like historic markings, cultural remembrances, non-profit components to community, etc.  This was all done in conjunction with State and Federal processes.  We were all making progress happen.

  There were junctures where other broad categories of our nation like law enforcement, judiciary, labor, food services and tourism wouldn't meld easily or smoothly and we'd all hold place while possible contentions between us Americans were thoughtfully debated and almost pre-worked through so that each pressure point had us all acting more diplomatic than rude.  It was a conscious effort.

  That conscious effort or value became staple to programming in academic circles and other professional spheres as well.  It fit very well with not bulldozing over each others' ways and customs and means!  And it was critical to what people began to call networking.

  Networking, of course, was addressing the human side of rapidly developing technology.  

  In our part of the world environmental concerns are just as vital to surviving and thriving as economic interests and that is why I don't see competing agency programs as detrimental.  I think of it as our nation layering up on topics such as public lands and forestry.  In my opinion this can only help the cause of national security.