The Trouble With Modern Absurdity

Is that those who embrace it,
to make themselves well known
and become exemplars of it,
are the last, and least willing,
to recognise how others see them,  
for what they have become.

Royalty Ancient And Modern

In medievil times, and long after,
absolute rulers and their favourites
used to rule through incurring debts
they would delay paying off, until close
to their death-tying their successors
to limits the departing leader has set.

Nowadays absolute rulers rule through
breaking as many rules as the nations
they lead have ever set up. For an encore
-and to prove their popularity-they refuse
to observe any ruling from even the highest courts
that the land have set, believing themselves
and their followers to be so exceptional
as to be above law. They see it as their duty
to defile regulations they make their enemies follow.

Common Sense Disbelief

That gives nonsense short shrift
with affirmative humour
is an understanding of life
that is in sorely short supply.

Who Was August West?

 As made famous in the 1971 Grateful Dead song 'Wharf Rat'?

Augustus West (1814 - 1887) was a real life runaway slave who in 1837 arrived in the area of Greenfield are of Fayette, County Ohio. With local farmer Alexander Beatty, West co-authored a story that has become a part of local history, and later part of the history of the underground railway, which undermined slavery from inside the USA. The story they co-authered was that to raise money for West to purchase his own land, West and Beatty devised a scheme to take West back south, sell West back into slavery, and then Beatty would help West escape. The pair would split the profits. The laws that regulated the slave markets were lax enough for them to run this scam on Southern slave owners a minimum of three recorded times before deciding not to repeat the scam any further. Their story became the foundation for a 1971 alternaive Hollywood cowboy film, 'The Skin Game', starring James Gardner and Louis Gossett, Jr.

West used his share of the profits to purchase land near the intersection of Bonner and Barrett Roads, in Fayette County, in the state of Ohio. Some distance from the road West built a big house, The dirt road leading up to his front door became known as Abolition Lane.

In the years that followed, at least twelve cabins were constructed on West's land. They became temporary residences for other runaway slaves who needed a place to live and work as they stole their way further north, to a sustainable freedom away from them and their decendents being the property of slave owners.

But in the Garcia/Hunter song 'Wharf Rat' what Augustus West could do for others, be a staging post for their route away from slavery into liberty, August West could not do for himself. He became dependent on the drink. Enter real life Methodist minister Purley Baker who was the head of the Anti-Saloon League, a temperance organization based in the U.S.A. until shortly before his death in 1924, aged 65. Illegal bars were sometimes named 'Purley Baker's', to give alcohol consumption a double false identity.

Who knew that in the 1971 song lyic that Purley Baker's was both the underground name for a bar, and name of the dry house where drinkers could feel they were a safe distance from the temptations of the alcohol, that they needed to avoid?

In the lyric August West expresses this confusion so neatly most listeners would not notice how well their ambivalence towards the lyriccould be made part of the scene that the song describes. From the underground railways that helped slaves escape to double identity of a Purley Baker's, the double identity of seeking to do good unseen, and unintentionally being exposed to disguised temptation has never been bettered.

Amongst followers of The Grateful Dead, Deadheads, a fanbase who were perhaps more in danger of falling victim of their addictions than fans of more mainstream music, there is a 12 step support group called 'Wharf Rats', who exist to be ready to help whoever needs the assistance and the time to clean up/dry out, and restart life 'clean from addiction', though temptation will remain.

The Less Attractive Face Of Traddition

could not look less welcoming than in recent updates
by The Taliban in  Afghan marriage laws, that in the process
give men, and the groom's family, even more power
over who they can choose to marry than they had before.
And give women even less choice when they are chosen
 in arranged marraiges than they have had in all previous
Taliban-legislated marriage rules, designed to make women
invisible in an already severly imbabanced male-led society.
 

 

The Restless Reader

When did you last buy a newspaper? 
Yes, buy, rather than read, a newspaper?

Newsprint, and it's corollary advertising,
are now much more consumed online,
than they are in physical print. On the screen
the proprietors of print can make what they own
sing and dance in front of readers, making it harder
for readers to focus on what is being said.
Harder to remember what was written after,

particularly the screen automatically scrolls
to the next item, all too soon immediately after. 

If you are going to be a restless reader
give your eyes the breaks they need
and take a rest from all the media filler
the better to remember what you have read after.

The Old Quandary

is what to think and say
when cynicism wins the day,
and reality outruns you
as people you once admired 
show the way forward
in ways that you could not imagine .......