Better, stronger, faster...

When I was just old enough to read the DC and MARVEL Comics of the 60s and 70s I knew that I was only days away from discovering my own super powers.

In the Comics, the onset of puberty always heralded the arrival of the "super power" and pimples, body hair, wet dreams, locker room hardons...but I digress. I was 11 going on The Human Torch. The kind of comic geek that wrote letters to the editor when ridiculous plot devices saved the day.

Day by day I prayed for the arrival of my power(s). Flight? Super Speed? Telekenesis? Most of all I wanted a Death Ray to shoot out of my eyes.

Instead, I got a "Bore You To Death Ray" that I shoot from my mouth. Effective, but probably not super.

Daily They Starve In Darfur

MADWORLD - Tears For Fears


These Are Human Beings! Children! Deserving NO LESS than our most technicaly advanced and outrageous attempts at healing.

The G8 PROMISED to end Poverty and AIDS in AFRICA while they took their photo ops with BONO in 2005. They have only managed to trickle out a pittance of the Billions pledged.

The dying have no time for world wide Legislators to drag their feet making laws that make the promised funds available. The Dying don't care if "beta testing" has to be absorbed into Human Trials - the dying want whatever chances are available NOW.

In this life I've learned that PAIN is Inevitable. SUFFERING is Optional. We can't end WORLD PAIN, but we in the West are wealthy and advanced enough to mitigate SUFFERING. As Americans we owe the Third World our First World Medical Knowledge. Charity on behalf of Individuals, philanthropists and all of the fearless health care workers working in the dirt and heat saving one life at a time. Those are the heroes.

I am not a believer in JUDGMENT DAY for Individuals but someday I believe our Nation's willingness to render aide will be judged when the final tally's are derived.

Our great wealth in the First World cannot exist simply to grow itself or to be spent in prolonged military conflicts. We are fighting two wars currently at a cost of $10,000,000 (ten Billion) a week. Our Iraq tab is well over $500Billion. Just a shaving of numbers that large could fund the World's fight against poverty, HIV/AIDS, malaria...Instead we spend hundreds of Billions killing those who forgot to welcome us as liberators and shower us with rose petals.

Hey, Mr. Vice President! You want roses? Invest $500Billion to find a cure for the Worldwide HIV/AIDS epedimic. The women will weep at your feet and the air will be filled with flowers and joy.

Amazing Grace

It is with some great sorrow that I lament the passing of former first lady, and fellow Texan - Lady Bird Johnson. How sad that we live in a time when no one would dare be saddled with as quaint a nickname as "Lady Bird." Sad that we live in a time when wild flowers fall foolish in the glare of Global Climate Change.

This Lady knew a Texas scorched by sun and dust, beautiful with bluebonnet, sipping at the slow poison of segregation. In a time of hats and white gloves, soft voices and charm she stood solid behind her President as he signed the death nell of institutional racism. Campaigning by train through eight southern states to reelect her husband, the Secret Service had to sweep the tracks the bomb threats were relentless. "BLACK-BIRD GO HOME!" The signs read, their naked rage aimed at her. She stared them down and promised that all segregation could give the South was the swift delivery of its death in this latest birth of freedom.

May she lie in peace, daffodils, bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes.

The Curse of VERSE (for better...worse) III

I rode the bus with Don King's hair.
White cotton candy, blue vinyl chair.
Took all my will just not to stare,
Afraid my rudeness would buy his glare.
But on we rode, him sitting there,
Amazing 'do blowing in the air.

Some Blasts From My Past

A Long, Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Far, Far Away - Named Houston - A younger, leaner Timothy performed in a dozen or more Musicals at Theatre Under the Stars...
A CHORUS LINE (cast photo). I'm down front.

MAME with Juliette Prowse THAT'S HOW YOUNG I FEEL. I'm in the lower right corner.

THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS, WHOMP AND STOMP (the Aggie Football Team). Yup, that's me.

THE BEST OF the epistle #5. SOL, Miss Sun If You're Nasty Original Post Tuesday, April 24, 2007

NOW WITH MUSIC! THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS "WHY DOES THE SUN SHINE?"

I don't know what that meant.

Before She Sleeps...

As she dozed on the crowded city bus, draped on the bench atop her plastic bags, mismatched luggage - everything she owned carried with her - I snapped her picture with my cell phone. Trying not to stare her awake, I looked away. Her imprint in my mind was indellable - a Pieta. The Bag-lady crucified, Christ of my commute that day. The blue vinyl bus seat seemed to be holding her like the Blessed Mother. Something about her made me think of peace.

She must have been a regular on the route, for when the driver braked, he indicated it was her stop and asked that her fellow passengers wake her. No one moved, though everyone heard, and since I knew their paralysis was unique to Minnesota and incurable, I stood up. Shaking her shoulder and saying, "Excuse me, Ma'am?" in a clear gentle voice, I tried to rouse her. Her face was paper thin and paper white. Complicated lines of weather and time flashed a sweet smile as her dream ended and her moist eyes blinked open. I explained we had arrived at her stop and helped her gather her life's luggage and disembark.

Though years ago she haunts me still. Did I do a good thing by helping her get where she was going? Or was my action an assault? A rude interruption of the temporary peace her passing dream-time had provided? Just a moment's reverie in a life I doubt she'd ever dreamed would be hers. Sleep sweetly, sister. May you be cradled in dreams without trouble, want or pain.

THE BEST OF the epistle #1. Fear - Original Post April 10 2006

NOW WITH MUSIC. PLAY IT LOUD.
COLLIN HAY "MAN@WORK" OVERKILL

In 1818 Mary Shelley unleashed FRANKENSTEIN, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS on the literary world. This Gothic cautionary tale warned of an Industrial Revolution spinning out of control. Man, mad with arrogance, dared to enter the realm of God - the creation of human life! Victor von Frankenstein cobbled together pieces and parts (now pieces is pieces, but parts is parts) of discarded human remains to construct his monster. I've always thought he was particularly lucky to have found body parts of similarly sized men. Had he used Shaquille O'Neal's left leg and my right the poor monster would have just spun counter-clockwise when it tried to move forward.

But I digress, my point was that Ms. Shelley warned of the horror of patchwork living creatures at a time when harvesting the DEAD to save the LIVING was a dread thought. Today, we can participate in a process thought noble and compassionate by simply indicating our willingness to be "harvested" on the back of our Drivers' License. In the last 60 years, medicine has saved countless lives by attaching pieces and parts from the dead (soooo pig! sometimes even from the dead of other species) to the sick and dying. Medical ethicists, philosophers and theologians struggled with early transplants - thinking them "a step too far" and evidence of Man's arrogant attempt to usurp God's power. Luckily, those arguments abated and settled themselves as the lives saved bore evidence of God's will for Medicine.

They have resurfaced, however, as we have begun to master the Human Genome and all of the potential industries that might flow from the application of our new Knowledge. Stem cells and genes are just smaller pieces and parts, really. We are only just glimpsing the "blueprint" of human life - yet already the ethicists, philosophers and theologians have begun their emotional moral hand-wringing. Have we, at last, gone "too far?" Will God smite us for our prideful folly? Is there no end to Man's Curiosity and the lengths to which he will go to apply cutting-edge Knowledge to improve all of our lives?

I hope not.

Many Good Days Go By - Let The Water Hold Me Down

Same As It Ever Was...

Since beginning to reconnect with High School friends I haven't seen for 20 odd (very odd, trust me) years it continues to surprise me how other people's lives make me feel a lot older than mine does all by itself. Maybe that's why I've stayed hidden away in the frozen North for 14 years - on ice (like Elizabeth Taylor or Nancy Reagan) fighting the passing of years. If only I'd fought the intake of calories with equal ferocity.

Oh well, two month's until the Reunion - plenty of time to get skinny? Yikes! Jinkies! And Zoinks!

A SHAMELESS PLUG!

I have loved Maggie, Terre and Suzzie Roche for 30 years. Their latest album - the first collaberation of all three sisters in ten years - is everything a Roche fan could dream of. Read my review (as caesersghost) on iTunes.

Buy this CD.