Technology Blues

Technology Blues

In heaven there's a thousand tiny cell phones
In heaven there's a thousand tiny cell phones
They ring all the time so you're never alone
In heaven there's a thousand tiny cell phones

In heaven there's a thousand cpu's
In heaven there's a thousand cpu's
They've each got a mouse and a keyboard too
In heaven there's a thousand cpu's

When I get up there and see all that
When I get up there and see all that
I'm askin' St. Peter for a baseball bat
When I get up there and see all that

Equal Rights

Equal Rights

With politicians now for sale
and corporations spending
there'll be no end to larceny
or all the rules they're bending.

Could growing corporations
someday get the vote
or even hold an office
with all that loot they tote?

So vote for Goldman Sachs
and bar the courthouse gates
when Enron is the preisdent
of these United States.

Corporations now are people
and they have equal rights
the Supreme Court said its so
resolving all the fights.

Kennedy wrote the opinion
that surely sealed our doom,
turned the voting booth into
a high priced auction room.

Justice Roberts and Alito
went along for the ride.
Clarence Thomas cast his vote
upon the rising tide.

Justice John Paul Stevens
is a true American hero
but his dissenting opinion,
it just counts for zero.

That old man Ronald Reagan
is smiling from the grave,
says bury freedom beside me.
Her virtues you won't save.

Senator Mitch McConnell
is a coal company whore.
When King Coal pays him off,
he just asks for more.

McConnell liked the ruling
and so did all his cronies.
When it comes to saving freedom,
They're just a bunch of phonies.

Alexander Hamilton created
corporations with his pen
but Franklin didn't like it
don't go there said old Ben.

Vice President Aaron Burr,
he wasn't all that bad.
In a famous duel he killed
the corporation's dad.

The Gospel of Nature

The Gospel of Nature
Is a short booklet by John Burroughs, an early American Naturalist. This is an excerpt from Chapter 3.

I do not know that the bird has taught me any valuable lesson. Indeed, I don not go to nature to be taught. I go for enjoyment and companionship. I go to bathe in her as in a sea; I go to give my eyes and ears senses a free, clean field and to tome up my spirits by her “primal sanities.”

Three Degrees

From my Cape Cod Days chapbook.

Three Degrees at Race Point

Its was three degrees, but
they were three good ones
when I coaxed my car to start.

I drove the frozen wasteland
empty and desolate as only
a tourist town in winter can be.

We walked half a mile
across the frozen breakwater,
cold water on either side.

Falling in could mean hypothermia;
perhaps death before rescue
from the cold Atlantic water.

Perhaps the tide would come in
stranding us at the Race Point Light.
We might not come home.

The adventure took us onward,
the point of the whole thing
being a snowy owl seen out there.

It was at Race Point,
the far end of the Cape,
beyond the breakwaters and roads.

The bird had sense enough to fly
further South than usual,
sense enough to keep warm.

It was the coldest winter in years.
Having more sense than me,
The owl got the point.

We arrived at Race Point
and missed the point,
the snowy owl that is.

The owl abandoned Cape Cod to us
and to a short earned owl
an unusual sighting in its own right.

The short eared owl was not
a lifetime achievement for me,
or for my friend.

My friend’s wife had warned us
not to go and wrung her hands at
our impending death and doom.

She said “I always thought
you bird watchers were crazy,
and now I know for sure.”

Christmas Day

Christmas Day

So the sun has run its course,
turned to northward once again.
Winter chill is in the air.
Southbound cranes give rattling call.

Solstice gone and Christmas here,
I greet the winter chill with cheer,
feel reborn as icy winds
massage my skin restore my strength.

When the stars break through the clouds,
aimless ships set loose by wind,
horizon reddened by the moon,
Bracing winds restore the soul.

Earth National Park

Earth National Park
Poems by Dennis Fritzinger
Poetry Vortex Publishing
Crescent City, California

if I knew how to do it
I’d arm all the bears
so there’d be bear militias
in the mountains somewheres

So begins the poem “Support Your Right,” a personal favorite from Earth National Park. In this short volume of poetry, Dennis Fritzinger introduces numerous nonhuman protagonists such as “Mother Vulture,” “Angry Red Squirrel,” and “Ambassador Frog.”
Most common of all are the bears. A Black Bear with a pilfered radio listens to the traffic, spying on the humans. A human in a restaurant eats blackberry jam and turns into a bear. The bears in “Support Your Right” tote guns and protect the wilderness from humans.
Several of the poems are polemics on direct environmental action, while others are statements of the author’s earth centered philosophy. These two threads are interwoven with the poems written from the animals’ various points of view. Each of the three threads compliments and amplifies the other to make a unique whole.
Earth National Park is a delightful collection of poems by Dennis Fritzinger, moderator of the Warrior Poets Society list serve on Yahoo Groups and editor of the Warrior Poets Society page in the Earth First! Journal. From the introduction, “A New Pledge,” to the final poem “The Yellowstone Fire,” Dennis emphasizes his philosophy of nature knows best.

Travels

Travels with Charley:
as well as Jack, Allen, Edwin, Charles, Peter, and nearly everyone else.

America is a nation of ramblers. From the literary approach of Travels with Charley, (John Steinbeck) to the scientific exactitude of Autumn Across America, (Edwin Way Teale) to the endless meanderings and parties of On the Road and Dharma Bums (Jack Kerouac), the people of our nation love to travel.
Our wander lust has spawned a market for popular magazines such as Endless Vacation, at least one television journalism series, On the Road with Charles Kuralt, and the pop film Easy Rider, known as the story of a search for an America that was never found. Travel Writing is an important category of journalism, but I believe it is also a largely unrecognized and unexplored aspect of literary writing.
Early in the book, Travels with Charley: in search of America, Steinbeck whimsically names his camper truck after the sturdy mount of Don Quixote, Rocinante. The truck is the star of the earliest part of the narrative, with several admirers indicating that they would love to go. In some cases, they don’t even know where Steinbeck is going, and have no idea where they want to go. A visit to his son at Deerfield Academy results in several teen aged boys attempting to stow away in the camper. The going seems to be the point, not the destination.
By contrast, Edwin Way Teale set out with very specific objectives when he embarked on the travels that resulted in the four book series, The American Seasons, and a Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. He began with a quick trip south and then drove North, observing the seasonal changes, the migrations of wildlife and the work of naturalists and environmental scientists he met along the way. He then traveled widely and recorded his further observations in Journey into Summer, Autumn Across America, and Wandering Through Winter. The series is an introduction to the natural marvels of our great nation.
This approach is less exactly followed by Peter Matthiessen in his conservation epic, The Snow Leopard. Matthiessen traveled with the taciturn George Shaller, referred to as G.S. in the book, in search of the blue Dahl Sheep and the Snow Leopard of the Tibetan plain. As a Zen Buddhist, Matthiessen was much more interested in the Buddhist shrines, the Lamas, and the porters. He left the science to G.S., appropriately known as an iron man of field biology.
Matthiessen and Shaller completed their journey with substantial observations of the Dahl Sheep but no sighting of the Snow Leopard. Matthiessen gave an appropriately Zen conclusion to his narrative. He celebrated the journey.
The Zen influence also appeared in Dharma Bums, in the enigmatic Jaffy Rider, an avatar of the prize winning poet Gary Snyder. Although the beat generation is primarily identified with the book’s author, Jack Kerouac and with Allen Ginsberg, the model for its other main character, Snyder also performed in the famous reading at Gallery Six that brought them to the world’s attention. He became a translator of oriental languages, traveled to Japan to study Zen, and is still actively writing, publishing and giving public readings today. While Kerouac’s works celebrated travels here in America, Snyder’s destination was in Asia.
Some authorities consider Ken Kesey and the “Merry Pranksters” of the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test the descendents of the beat generation. This is amplified by the presence of Kerouac’s friend and fellow traveler from On the Road, Neal Cassidy as driver of the bus that took the Merry Pranksters across the country. Their travels included a psychedelic dimension.
As the beat generation waned, traveling did not. Peter Jenkins took his own approach in A Walk Across America and its sequel. He walked from Connecticut to New Orleans stayed a while, got married, and continued the walk to the west coast. His new wife accompanied him on the second half of the journey and several friends traveled out to walk the last mile with them.
As Jenkins walked, William Least Heat-Moon drove the back roads in Blue Highways and later crossed the nation by boat in The River Horse. Much like Steinbeck, he sought to discover the land and the people.
Steinbeck certainly did not originate the narrative of restlessness recorded in these books. That honor might possibly be given to Henry David Thoreau for the records of his own travels in Cape Cod and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, and even older records of exploration and discovery that are part of our nation’s early history. Perhaps these narratives grew out of our own history of westward movement and settling.
Whatever source we attribute for this genre of writing it exemplifies our history as a nation of ramblers. We want to go somewhere, out there, and discover the land and the people.