December 21, 2021

Sunrise — 7:10.

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Talk about anything you want in the comments.

17 comments:

farmgirl said...

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/12/americas-frontline-doctors-vows-open-clinics-invites-medical-staff-pharmacists-join/

Please, oh please- oh please!!!

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Here in Ga if you want to get tested by CVS you have to wait weeks. But if you want the vaccine you can get it almost the same day.

Call me conspiratorial. But there’s something peculiar about that.

sharecropper said...

Talk about anything you want? Well...on the Little Red River, in Heber Springs, AR, trout are now hitting midges. The cold weather has limited the hatches that would draw the trout higher in the water column, and midges, egg patterns, and of course wooly buggers are the best producing flies.

My problem is that the holiday schedule has me so busy, that even though I am spending 2 or 3 days a week in Heber Springs, I cannot seem to make time to fish.

There is light at the end of my tunnel, because after my post-Christmas pheasant hunt in Kansas I will travel to New Orleans, fish for redfish with my flyrod, then return to the Little Red River to fish for trout. They should come out with their hand up, I'm coming in after them. Thanks for allowing me to talk about anything at all.

Mid-Life Lawyer said...

That looks more like the summer I was 15 than the winter I'm 62.

gadfly said...

farmgirl said...

[Reference to American Frontline Doctors opening clinics in biased Gateway Pundit]

Please, oh please- oh please!!!

Dr. Simone Gold, a Beverly Hills physician has been indicted in the January 6 coup attempt at our Capitol. She leads American Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) in the spreading of misinformation about SARs-CoV-2 vaccine and falsely sells fake cures for the virus that has killed over 800,000 US citizens.

Hundreds of thousands of records from two companies, CadenceHealth.us and Ravkoo, revealing just how the lucrative AFLDS misinformation becomes profit for these ripoff artists. AFLDS has been spreading highly politicized misinformation about Covid-19 since the summer of 2020 and refers its many followers to its telemedicine partner SpeakWithAnMD.com, which uses Cadence Health as a platform. People who sign up then pay $90 for a phone consultation with “AFLDS-trained physicians” who prescribe expensive and ineffective treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin to prevent and treat Covid-19. The drugs are delivered by Ravkoo, a service that works with local pharmacies to ship drugs to patients’ doors. Of course, that’s if patients ever get the consultation first; many customers said they never received the drugs after paying.

gilbar said...

sharecropper said...
on the Little Red River, in Heber Springs, AR, trout are now hitting midges. The cold weather has limited the hatches that would draw the trout higher in the water column, and midges, egg patterns, and of course wooly buggers are the best producing flies.

what about red rock worms? seems like the way to go

My problem is that the holiday schedule has me so busy, that even though I am spending 2 or 3 days a week in Heber Springs, I cannot seem to make time to fish.


you hit on THE KEY; you Have To make time to fish
fishing won't happen just because you think about it
fishing happens because you MAKE IT HAPPEN

get your priorities Straight. family and kids and jobs HAVE TO WAIT
GET OUT THERE AND FISH! Those trouts are NOT going to catch themselves!!!

DLH said...

Sharecropper,
Good luck with the redfish, 8 weight should be perfect. And like Gilbar said, make time! I made time Wednesday and took off work and was rewarded with 30 gorgeous Striped Bass from the Chesapeake bay and Potomac river.

gilbar said...

the holiday schedule has me so busy, that even though ...

When your time comes; and your life passes before your eyes, before you pass over...
Are You going to think; "Wow! i'm Glad i spent time with my job"? Or with your loved ones?

Or, are You going to think: "JESUS F*CKING CHRIST! I COULD HAVE BEEN FISHING!!!"
???

Narr said...

I can get a Covid test on campus, if I complain of a symptom.

I'm pretty sure that any complaint about a possible symptom will, through Science, somehow be counted as a case of Covid.

At Heber Springs, about 1974 or so, I stepped barefoot on a smooth stone that had been sitting next to a roaring fire for several hours. The arch of my right foot was burned pretty badly but I toughed it out and after a few months limping around it felt OK. The skin took decades to heal and smooth out and I can barely tell now. (Substance abuse may have been involved.)

Mmmm. Trout.

Lewis said...

Martina.

I – that am rudely stamp'd, and want loves majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph -
I – that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That Dogs bark at me as I halt by them -
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity.

W. Shakespeare Richard III, vs 16-27.


1

Something strange. The chipped value of buildings
That are always odd because they're historical.
A vague memory of my grandmother saying ' Hello'
And her 'permanent' counsel house being taken away
As soon as she died. Or my mother,
Seeing faces In the stonework of an obscure yard

And me having to rescue her and no gratitude
And I didn't expect it. Madness is it's own reward.
For once bowing to the inevitable and bleedingly obvious.

Just like buildings that bow at your command:
Are somewhat obvious, chipped and broken.


2

Happiness is like a very good morning.
Waking up in laundered sheets, knowing the birds
Sing in those pretty trees you saw yesterday,
Knowing a cooked breakfast is on the table
And, no matter what you've done (within reason!)
They'll still smile and say "Hi" and what a fool.
After breakfast and if it's not raining,
You'll walk into the garden and laugh at the sky.


3

The sun shines on even the terribly ugly.
The violence perfectly real. The shabby Inns
I have collected. Walking the other side of a sea wall
I am protected from a bay that is tame and beautiful.


4

Broken, the if smile and tomorrow you will know
Who loves you – no one. Everyone smiles in Morecambe.
To die a kind of 'get-in'. Like smiling at the bottom
Of our world. You cannot smile upwards, can you?



4

Eyeless in Gaza, I squint and grasp blindly
For this mornings coffee. The noise and rumble.
A newspaper boy running past. My French friend
Comes in to tell me his office is packing up and going back
To Paris. How cowardly. And I’ve been here before.
In Alexandria, for instance.

Lewis said...

5

I broke my smile waiting for yesterday.
Martina, you think it easy, making this sun shine?
Were as thunder and clouds come every day.
Everything I can do except hold your hand.


6

It was easy to be at the edge of the world,
See the sun slide in with the blue and gold tip of a wing
Like the Angels that must have visited me in my prison
Of heretofore – a former Morecambe whose Streets were called
Clarendon, Westminster, Balmoral and this was the "West End"
A different exile. All exiles are equal. But that one bullied forward
And this, self imposed. The cries are equally as barren and threatening.
The hope equally as meaningless. I got out last time by a kind of
Alacrity, a jumping into the barrel which others began to roll.
This time, there are no others. The same barren hope, though.


7

London was so vast you could meander
Through it's soul and it wouldn't know:
Going up to the Contemporary Poets Library
And coming down with a big red book and no-one knowing
What you had – until, you were so drunk, you talked
To the girl in the peep show, studying law, and
She quoted you Pound. So, ashamed and knowing
No drink would help you, your feet twisted and turned
Back to the ugliness of Catford and Lewisham.
This was the way, the Tao which you disrupted, my love.
For a moment, for a couple of months, but not for ever.


8

The nights are coming in and close, like a black storm:
To stand high and old and curl up and fall – like paper burning:
The words that had meant so much, the honesty – and the lies.
Guilt shredded through the afternoon and, in the evening, just rest,
Exhaustion, overwhelmed by everything that is wrong.

Lewis said...


8

The nights are coming in and close, like a black storm:
To stand high and old and curl up and fall – like paper burning:
The words that had meant so much, the honesty – and the lies.
Guilt shredded through the afternoon and, in the evening, just rest,
Exhaustion, overwhelmed by everything that is wrong.


9

The violence outside is always a beating postponed:
The gimp mask just falls away from your face
And you wear the usual garb and just walk out into the sunlight:
Blinding and bleaching and a judgment you can't take
You have begun to smile at the alleged children
That other people have. Tomorrow, but today,
You will gather those judgments and cans and bottles and yourself,
As if you were trash. How to live? The kind of joke I began with.
Asking questions. Who are you?





10

How does hope get us there?
No cars run on hope - is it carbon free? -
My boiler buggers on hope and if I ask my feet
Their twisted but somewhat sensible way is
"Out of the door!" and as quick as is legal.
Hope is a bully.


11

Happiness is what happiness does. It seems to appear
In other people. They smile a lot and have children.
A smile is a grimace like the grave. I wish to see
Certain smiles, I've hunted them out. I have an APB on smiles.
We should not appear in the same room, because my 'appearance'
Embarrasses you. Peering into the dark corners of my room
You assume this is me. Well it is. The coach is waiting for you
And our sadness, too. After you have gone, will I not follow?

Lewis said...

12

The assumptions we have followed are rather strange?
Just to assume you are good, a man, just and beautiful,
As you did assume, must make you pretty ridiculous,
A laughing stock, a freak. To assume anything means
To assume to much. To assume everything or nothing.


13

I walk down my street and my courage fails,
Has failed. It isn't that the key in my hand
Will no longer work – the police and the other
Officious guardians of our fate will have
'Permission' to slot in the key and turn the key
And open that garden of butterfly's and June days
But also muddy winters and alone London -
But I am now excluded and know that,
Whatever I do, as a human being, is suspicious.
So cowardly, I divert to the local pub and smoke
My death giving fag outside.


14

Everything said forgets it's bonne chance
Of an accident that broke my screen as I was
Driving through the dead skirts of Paris:
Where the car must turn but doesn't to the heart of
Those streets smiling and forgetting.

Broken
Beneath that bridge and our youth on its hands and knees
Or back there, the half green lawn, and where jokes
Where a plenty and didn't need to be remembered.

I thought, something strange, like hope might brew
As when – I bought a house, I sawed the wood,
And the place disappeared beneath me.
15

To go home is a good choice – to ignore
What is obvious: The woman you love distressed
And, obviously, needing your help. You smile
In the corners of your couch and cry sometimes
Very hot, sentimental tears. Hatred in your own room
Feels better than hatred in theirs. An illusion
Only oblivion will cover. 'Like snow, like ice.'

Lewis said...

15

To go home is a good choice – to ignore
What is obvious: The woman you love distressed
And, obviously, needing your help. You smile
In the corners of your couch and cry sometimes
Very hot, sentimental tears. Hatred in your own room
Feels better than hatred in theirs. An illusion
Only oblivion will cover. 'Like snow, like ice.'


16

The minimal that is required is to love.
But only one without love could make such a statement,
Be conscious of such a requirement. Innocent of heart
But dead. I am Lazarus come back to tell you all
Or Jonah, spewed upon a beach, refusing still
Those words that came from God. Or being
In the belly of the whale, drumming his indigestion,
With the oil cans, the plastic bags, the half eaten fish,
The etc detritus of being human, I, inhuman,
Wallow in this strange, submarine defeat.
I like it down here. Hows it up there?


17

Everything you thought was wrong was wrong.
Your awkward smile that misremembered me,
Your false laugh at remembering. Kicking the frost
From our feet and fearing to look at each other
We boiled with a kind of love. Soured in a bag
The homeless that asked us to look at them.
It's not pretty, poverty. It's not pretty, your smile.

john in east van, help! said...

Great poetry Lewis.
Thanks and Merry Christmas if you can (I hope that you can).
I’m lucky and you deserve some too.
Good luck,
John

h said...

There's a gov't internship program that is only available to "Latinx" students. Is this kind of discrimination legal?

https://manoproject.org/manodfp

madAsHell said...

I live north of the other U.W.

I patronize a smaller local Safeway, and the shelves are fucking empty!!

The local neighborhood blog is crying that chickens can't be found in any of the nearby grocery stores.

Is this a local phenom??.......or are we seeing this everywhere??