Whatever Happened To 'Being Book Learned'?

A phrase I was raised on was 'book learned',
a phrase that less educated, working class, families
used to distance themselves from, and describe
somebody who spent a significant length of time
with writng and reading whilst the working classes
had little time for people who sat on their asses
and looked like they could afford the time
the working classes could not, being lost in books
that had no obvious, direct, application of knowledge
that would return the book reader to being more engaged
with eraning enough to pay the bills and keep food on the table.

The working classes mistrusted those who were not as attached
to the treadmill of the hand to mouth existence as much they were.
Which was why they mistrusted the aim of collective redistribution
as written about as classical socialist theory, if not with The Gospels,.
They preferred the individual Darwinist struggle, man against nature,
and the covert imitation of the underhand, the powerful, and the mighty.   

The Belicose And The Technocratic

Governments vary in character
from the technocratic to the belicose
where the latter hides in the plain sight,
through the volume at which it declares itself,
that many governments have no vision
of the future beyond their enlightened
self interest in seeking to be the whole
of any future that there is for anyone.

This makes the task for the citizen
seeking to renew the idea of citizenship
a more uphill battle than you might think.
Because when the same old faces repeat
their claim as to being the only legitemacy
of choice peoplel can point toward, where
the eponymous Tina tells us There Is No Alternative,
like the one time M. Thatcher, who was always right.

Technocratic governements are happier
are being exchanged, one for another,
they know that politics is a roundabout
and we all get off to make room for others
before we are inevitably be let back on
the roundabout of government, again. 

Picture Of The Day : A Rough-crested Makoha

A Rough-crested Malkoha starts the day hunting for insects.

Tagaytay City, Philippines Photo: Robby Villabona

 

Unexpected Epiphany Of The Day

   It is a few months since I read a book from end to end. My latest read, 'Plain Truth' by Jodi Picoult has broken that particular drought for me. The prose is light and easy to read, given the complexity of the subject matter, a legal case involving a woung woman not becoming a mother for all the best of reasons she could muster, and with the aid of a lawyer having to explain to a court what happened to her and the child she did not keep. To compound matters the book is set in an Amish community. 

  What clinched the grip of the book for me was the following quote where the lawyer defending the young girl is dsecribed thus on pages 237 and 238.....

  'With her eyes closed , she believed him. She could imagine the music of the Grateful Dead crackling across the courtyard, wafting through the open window of her dorm room, where she and Coop lay tangled up in the narrow bed. She could still see the curtain of beads that hung in the doorway of the closet, a crystalline rainbow, and the beady eyes of the squirrel who perched on the windowsill watching them.'

  I have been a deadhead and a reader of books for just under fifty years. Never in popular literature have I read a scene in a book where the immersive music of The Grateful Dead became a synonym for carefree middle aged sex, as this particular scene turned out to be....    

None Of The Above

With the latest imitation of World War Three
being fought by Israel, Amaerica, and Iran,
and their allies and neighboutrs being drawn in
for support, to be bombed for 'supporting the wrong side',
or criticised for supporting the right side too slowly,
three different faiths are playing out identical versions
of being the true faith that justifies vast arsenels of weaponry
being fired on their enemies - hard line Shia Islam,
Judiasm, including Messianic Judaism (Jews for Jesus),
and American Born Again Christianity,

All three have visions of Heaven where their God
rules absolutely and sees the visions of other faiths
as purest heresy, apostacy, and being all round wrong.

But what if the fallen from these wars
ended up in some Heavenly Hereafter
that none of them had projected to find?
Where The Above they were alive in
was not the reward that they had killed,
and died for, and they could not account
for why they, or anyone else, was there
 - with their former earthly enemies?

The Market For Heartache In Empty Houses

Given the choice of living in a country
that leads the world in its presentation of  P.R.
where human rights are very low priority,
or living where every day civility, civil rights
and an open media matter more, I prefer the latter
over the gloss and glitz of P.R. projections,
ala Dubia, that keeps  reality out of the picture. 

A people that knows how well it lives,
because it can share it's imperfections
and manage how unhappiness is natural
to the human condition  has far more
going for it than all the heartache
glossed over in rich but empty houses.

Is Donald Trump Invading Your Dreams?

Other dictators are available,
and many more from times past
would be be ecstatic to relive their glory,
long since gone, through your nightly discomfort.

You decide how much they remain sane
when through you they explore
their faded delusions of grandeur,
with what you remember, first thing
in the morning when you first awake
with a pen and paper to hand.

Here and now seems to be an apt time
to explore the reseach of Charlotte Beradt
into the dreams of citizens living under
the rule of Third Reich between1933-39.

Thankfully the BBC have made a handy
thirty minute audio documentary about it.
Please find said radio progtramme here.

For those looking for the written start,
please go to Amazon to find out the more
written about this genuine research,
but having stopped by there feel free
to look elsewhere, to find the book,
when it is availabe in so many other places,