The Greatest Thing

At first it was just an irritant, buzzing around my mind, dodging my attempts to bring it to life... A tantalizing, hide-and-seek thought.

We  had been hell-bent on finding a proper expression for an immodest 95-year-old to make that might placate some of the critics who just wish we would fold our tent and slink away.

I kept hearing Nat "King" Cole and Sarah Vaughn in my head  and the Divine One was crooning a capella...No accompaniment. 

Sarah DID THAT when she allowed her self to showcase the best voice around to its best advantage !

And then, just as if I had found the old shellac 78 that I  bought back in 1948 when I was working for United Press and planning a trip to Manhattan's 52nd St. to SEE Sarah Vaughn, Art Tatum, Roy Eldridge and the  Duke Ellington orchestra.

I started humming, and the words would get in the right place, but that last sentence was what I was looking for and it still amazes me that such a mammoth gut-punch could've ever gone wobbly in my memory.


Both the words and music are credited to what we used to call "the first Hippie"-- a young man of Lebanese descent who spelled his name always in lowercase letters (eden ahbez) and affected white robes, long hair and a beard who lived under the Hollywood sign when he wasn't banging away at a piano for change.

In 1947, eden put this song together and took it to Nat Cole who was leaving his post as premier jazz pianist in search of pop stardom.

Cole recorded this song with the Frank de Vol house-orchestra at Capitol.  It was in the number one Billboard spotlight for two months.  Sarah recorded her a capella version for the purist  audience-- and a legend was completed.

Our composer,  ahbez, never to my knowledge published anymore sheet music. But he hacked away at it for the rest of his life.  He had to divvy royalties  with a conservative (Hassid ?) musician who accused him of plagiarism.

Most have forgotten the melody and a few may, like us, have the words rattling around in our baggage.

But it is still remarkable that something as banal...as simple... as a pop song should have such a priceless nugget of truth within it--- as it's peroration, actually.

"There was a Boy...A very strange, enchanted Boy
"Who traveled very far away... And when he came my way one  day ... 
"We  talked of many things-- fools and Kings-- before he said to me:

"The greatest thing you will ever learn is just too love and be loved in return !!"

Your Feast For The Fourth

We present An Independence Day TREAT! One of the Greatest American Poems.

Shine, Perishing Republic By Robinson Jeffers

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity,       heavily thickening to empire, And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops       and sighs out, and the mass hardens, I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make       fruit, the fruit rots to make earth. Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances,       ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother. You making  haste on decay: not blameworthy; life       is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than       mountains; shine, perishing republic. But for my children, I would have them keep their       distance from the thickening center; Corruption Never has been compulsory, and when the cities lie at the       monster’s feet there are left the mountains. And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man,       a clever servant, insufferable master. There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught       —they say—God, when he walked on earth.

Shared Surprise

It seems we have left it a bit late, but I wish I could impart to all the tolerant readers of the blog how much it means to a crusty old "Hanger- on" to have you stick with me a bit longer than any of us could expect...OR predict.

I plead "No Mas"  when challenged about WHY  we still believe we are still relevant.

It IS relevant and important for everyone of us to wish one another "Merry Christmas" because when we do so in a thoughtful way, however subtly, we're joined in allegiance to the concepts of forgiveness and welcome and an ideal of a life that is valuable when we remember as often as we can to treat other people the way we would want to be treated.
There is no great vanity in a quest to offer a thought that may the new, an experience remembered from much travel and precious wisdom from many others.

Most of the joy of self-expression is not based on Ego or material reward but, rather in the unending  shared "Surprise by Joy" --- one of C.S.. Lewis' ecstatic mysteries.

Having one's life saved, enriched, and given meaning by so many noble people for so many years entitles us to acknowledge of  unearned blessings characteristic  of every pilgrim of Wonder  who still knows whereof we speak when we murmur... Or shout:

"MERRY CHRISTMAS" !!!

The Big Definition

Standing here on the brink of the Great Mole Hunt one foot on a banana peel, we decided to reopen Cato's Depot for a limited time for some (hopefully) succinct commentary, spasmodically !

With a devout wink at  Rudyard Kipling's "When Earth's last picture is painted", the thought will be in the style of "When Earth's last Scrivening is scribbled !"  Just comment or email if you want  OFF!

<------->

Our 21st century's lazy, sloppy "journalists" and talking heads seem to have thrown researchers, innovators, inventors AND "Scientists" into the same shaky category on which to "hang"  their latest "gotcha" ledes  about some improbable and and lucrative scam.

Any high-level Femme du Nuit  could survive for a month on what these corrupt scum grift in one day.

Just to set the record straight, an Innovator  is the enthusiastic daredevil who tries something that "catches on".  They are very rare. The longest lasting and most significant innovations in my lifetime are Country and Western Music and the Forward Pass.

Inventors lose fingers and toes; hearing and eyesight cobbling up something new that proves to be useful and profitable after "friends" have raided the patent and others pushed him out of his original organization

Researchers are usually high rent hucksters who love to do paperwork and make tricky mathematical tables that faithfully validate the old saw: "prove anything with statistics" --- for BIG money. Researchers also manufacture "polls" in-house to buttress and embellish a pre-paid pipeline for opinion or concept--- usually involving political criminality.

Lo, the poor SCIENTIST !  If he or she really  IS a Scientist, today's  "journalists", talking heads and commentators will SHUN them like a virulent STD. Just like a bloodsucking vampire melts in a puddle or catches fire in the presence of a crucifix.

BECAUSE.... a real, honest to goodness Scientist MUST faithfully publish every errant or anomaly found that weakens his or her conclusions and theory. The authentic Scientist seeks argument and conflict with the same alacrity he scroungers for every bit of success one can prove by repeating the same results with every experiment, always challenginf :"the experts !  (INCLUDING  HIMSELF !)

Those academics beloved of the media, who will "find" any fright  or invent any catastrophic calamity (San Andreas BIG ONE)  in exchange for fame and "grant money" riches are ubiquitous.

Their number is distressingly huge, growing disgustingly and they are no less criminal than rapists and armed robbers. Their evil casts a shadow over all our descendants' lives.


Consukting wit fellow Fossils, one mere pixel  makes us tremble sometimes.

Rudyard's "Other" Masterpiece

This is my 500th BLOG---and probably my last one. Therefore it is fitting that I leave Prophesy to my favorite poet, who "won" an initial Nobel Prize for literature, Rudyard Kipling.

It is rare, in  history, for One so gifted to be so Prescient.--B.A.

<<==========>> The Gods of the Copybook Headings

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place. Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all. We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn: But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind, So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind. We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace, Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place, But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome. With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch, They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch; They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings; So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things. When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace. They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease. But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know." On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life (Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife) Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death." In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."  Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more. As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man There are only four things certain since Social Progress began. That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire; And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

"LEAKED "Impeach" Articles

Would youall believe that a nonagenarian blogger would just happen to get possession of a leaked congressional memo outlining the forthcoming articles of impeachment against President Trump ?

Stranger things have happened. To emphasize the strangeness of it all, let me quote at length from the grimy, greasy, stomped-om notes from the Democrat hierarchy:

"Our first few articles are rather obvious. Trump is white. He is heterosexual.  And he is a male. Those first three articles condemn him as being unsuitable for the presidency on the basis of our party's dynamic and ever-changing principles !

"Fourth, he was elected by minority of the citizens of the United States, albeit he was chosen by a majority of the states' electoral votes under an outmoded constitutional system scribbled on a piece of paper 232 years ago by --(GET THIS)-- a bunch of old white heterosexual men !

"First thing he did, in a chaotic White House, is make peace and settle down all of the nuclear war fears on the Korean Peninsula in particular and the Far East in general. This is not just an embarrassment to our sainted Obama--- it was… Well… REVOLUTIONARY !  As Democrats we would never stoop so low as to talk to a chubby little dictator. It was probably illegal, but it was surely embarrassing.

"THEN, he made the whole of  ISLAM  (A billion Peaceful Muslims) mad at us by moving our Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv  to Jerusalem !!! Several insignificant countries followed suit...

"Next we have this dastardly and dangerous withdrawal from the Paris extortionate / blackmail agreement to buy "carbon footprint insurance"with an international slush fund. This action was shockingly impertinent, and influenced many other nations to do the same, endangering the very heart of GLOBALONEY !

"Then in the heated chaos of the White House, the president lifted restrictions on construction and investment activity and deregulated hundreds of rules that guaranteed employment for thousands of Democrat bureaucrats. Trump's action allowed small business owners and entrepreneurs to hire people so that in one month the United States added more than 400,000 jobs!! --- Shocking overreach !

"Still later, in that same chaotic White House, this president dreamed up a plan to actually remove all the troops we had stationed in Syria, mitigating security measures put in place by President Obama. As a matter of fact one of our strongest articles of impeachment concerns the disrespect shown by this president toward Obamacare and other  vague and unaccomplished efforts of the former Democrat administration.

"This chaotic White House gains its reputation for chaos from the fact that this president fires people who disagree with him and hires people who largely support his decisions.  We view this to be untoward and unacceptable executive excess.

"We are still tabulating the misdeeds of this president and we expect to add many more articles to this impeachment call. However, the chaotic nature of this White House makes it almost impossible to gather information. One of the more stringent accusations we make is that this White House spends a great deal of time and effort pointing out what it calls "fake news"where they document every misspoken word and untruthful exaggeration by reporters and commentators and spreading the embarrassing truths across social media.

"This intolerable practice could never have happened in the days before Twitter, when only the media panjandrums were allowed to holler "LIE !!
                          
These articles of impeachment are certain to end this insufferable impasse."

                          <----->

(Thus ends the first "leak" of the forthcoming articles.  Stay tuned.

Boetcker's Doctrine

"We cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. 

"We cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. 

"We cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. 

"We cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. 

"We cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. 

"We cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence.

"We cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves."
                                                      -William J. H. Boetcker

These words, often referred to as Boetcker's Decaloge, are offered here to those who have come up empty and frustrated at a search for New Years resolutions.

They have been attributed to Abraham Lincoln, as have many wise gems.

But they come from a very brilliant, deeply religious lecturer who bridged  the gap between the 19th and 20th centuries, between 1870 and 1924 .

Boetcker was an American of German extraction, deeply religious and gifted with a faceted moral and economic insight honed  on the thrust of the late Industrial Revolution and the Roaring Twenties.

There is nothing any sane person could add to this irrefutable warning.

We languish nowadays in debris and paralysis--- consequences of not heeding Boetcker's vision.


We might thrive if we devoured this every morning--- but not on an empty stomach !