Or So It Seems

Church Declares Life Begins With ‘First Tingle’

2012-02-03T06:31:00.000-08:00

Vatican City—The Catholic Church gave a whole new meaning to the expression, “It’s the thought that counts”, by announcing today its newest doctrine on the sanctity of human life. Declaring that human life no long begins at the moment of conception, as has been promulgated for decades, but rather at the moment of ‘inspiration’ or 'the first tingle', the church declared war on a long litany of activities, books, cocktails and popular entertainers it considered unduly stimulating to humankind’s baser instincts.

“We’ve taken the act of creation—truly an act of God—to its primal stage, the exact moment the idea of fornication first rises in the mind of a man or a woman,” said, Bernard Cardinal Law, the church’s newly appointed Cardinal of Rectitude and Moral Sincerity, as the Vatican released a three-mile-long list of films, books and popular songs it considered “life-creating trash”. Under threat of excommunication, those prurient materials have been decreed officially off bounds for millions of Roman Catholic devotees around the globe because, as Cardinal Law explained, “they invariably lead to genital stimulation, which is a clear sign that an individual has been divinely inspired to create life.”

Some of the more surprising entries on the church’s list include Anne of Green Gables, Lassie Come Home, I Love Lucy and The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. When asked specifically why Anne of Green Gables was banned and Portnoy’s Complaint wasn’t, Cardinal Law reminded his interviewer that redheaded women were often regarded as objects of desire for their hair color alone, while masturbation or self-abuse was considered by the fathers of the church to be the last acceptable “spilling of the Lord’s seed.”

When asked how the church could possibly enforce such a wide-ranging ban on what were previously thought to be acceptable forms of interaction and mental stimulation, Cardinal Law promised there would be a priest in every bar, every rave, every singles dance, every whorehouse and every bedroom in the Christian world.

Within minutes of the church’s announcement, three of the four politicians vying for the Republican presidential nomination hailed the church’s newest doctrine for its potential to create thousands of new jobs for priests and censors.

Mitt Romney, avowed front runner in the Republican primary race, questioned, “Why can’t President Obama come up with a jobs bill even half as creative as this.” Adding with an impish smile, “Or should I say pro-creative!”

HOW I MADE MY FORTUNE

2012-01-30T16:46:00.001-08:00

At the time I first went to work for Mr. Byron my family was in a sorrowful state. My dad, much as I can recall, was one of those roving kinds, called himself a carpenter or contractor, depending on the kind of job he was aspiring to, and was subject to fits of disappearance, sometimes for months on end.

“Ain’t your Dad’s fault,” Mom would tell us. “It’s the saddening fate of a contractor to make himself scarce once he’s signed for a job.”

To our pitiful cries of “when’s he coming back?” Mom would only say, “Lord knows, my dears. I suppose when the weather turns and he can’t be expected to do the job—certainly not before.”

Mr. Byron was second cousin to my dad and far and away the most successful member of our extended family. He’d already been through 14 bankrupt mortgage finance companies, and I was being apprenticed to work in his 15th.

“It’s this way, my boy,” he told me at the start. “You get three years to bankrupt your business. In the first year, you do a praiseworthy job and make a fair living. For the next two years, you do execrable work, providing financing to impoverished homebuyers, ignoring complaints, messing up their paperwork, picking up virtually every penny that falls to the floor, and you make a god-awful fortune! By which time there are so many lawsuits pending, so many angry customers ready to shoot you, that only a fool would stay in business. True, there are those mortgage companies that swim against the current, but nobody in the industry thinks much of them or appreciates the damage they do to the general reputation.”

Now to look at Mr. Byron you wouldn’t have thought he’d be old enough to have outlasted 14 bankrupt businesses, working with the customary three-year life cycle.

“Well, you’re a smart lad, all right,” he beamed in answer to my query. “No, I long ago reasoned that since time worked in a linear fashion I could only overtake it by multiplying my efforts. Generally speaking, I’m partial to moving two or three businesses through the bankruptcy cycle at the same time. Fact is, my biggest moneymaker in the current cycle, aside from the mortgage business, is what I call my ‘Honest Response’ Answering System, which takes phone calls from irate customers of banks, mortgage companies and private contractors like your dad, and assures the caller in the most humble fashion that their problems will be resolved within a day, or that their missing contractor will absolutely, without question, be out to do the job first thing in the morning.”

Well, I put myself into apprenticeship to Mr. Byron and within three years had worked in five separate businesses that no sooner made a fortune than they went belly-up, with Mr. Byron and his overworked attorneys left much the richer if not also the wiser. If I had any difficulty with this arrangement it was not with the constant change in my employment positions but with the lack of change in my outlook. In all that time I had earned barely enough to sustain myself, much less my hungry brothers and sisters back in our tenement apartment.

I steeled myself to the fact that I must discuss my privation with my employer, and did so one evening after work. Mr. Byron, instead of feeling put upon, broke out in a wide grin and clasped me in brotherly fashion around the shoulders. It was then that he gave me the advice that would truly lead me on towards making my own fortune.

It’s a valuable lesson you’ve learned, my son,” he said, “namely that fools serve the needs of the wise while wise men serve the desires of fools. Fact is, you’ll never make your fortune in service to the greed of others. Knowing that as you now do, you should be ready to begin amassing your own fortune by joining the Republican party and turning your agile mind to the weaknesses of the witless and the weak. All you lack, I should say, is what we in the business world term a ‘Specialty’.”

It was barely two weeks later that I opened for public accommodation my first auto dealership. And my first decision as a budding entrepreneur was to hire my father to manage the service department.

Mitt Romney Jumps Parties, Says “I was always a Democrat at heart”

2012-01-21T10:36:00.000-08:00

Columbia, S.C.—After weeks of being pummeled and ridiculed in Republican primary contests for being a closet moderate, Mitt Romney stepped out of the closet today and declared himself a “full-blooded and full-throated Democrat”, pulling his hat out of the ring in the remainder of the Republican Presidential Primaries and signing up instead to challenge President Barack Obama for the nomination of his newly-adopted political party.

“I’ve always been more progressive and more of a Democrat than President Obama,” Romney declared. “Remember, first came RomneyCare, second came ObamaCare. As Democrats, we take care of the poor and the middle class. Nobody will fall between the cracks on my watch. Hell, the first thing I’ll propose once I win the nomination is an increase in taxes for the wealthy. Who knows better than me, how much more the 1% can afford to pay in taxes. President Obama doesn’t have enough money to get invited to our 1% secret society meetings. If he did, he’d most likely get mistaken for one of the help.”

When asked how he could justify walking away from the conservative posture he’s been avowing and defending for months on end, he smiled and answered, “Fooled you, didn’t I? All that time I was pretending to hate poor people, and attempting to demolish the middle class, I was really chafing at the bit to declare my love for my fellow man. Now I can’t wait to get down to Florida and debate President Obama. After allowing Tea Party madmen and millionaire shills to push him around like a 97 pound weakling, the President has a lot to answer for. How dare he take four years to turn around an economy that was gang-banged, sacked and left for dead by the Bush administration? How dare he allow the Republicans to front for billionaires and pretend to care about the working class in our country? How dare he rescue the American automobile industry and leave Lehman Brothers to twist in the wind? Hell, if you thought I was heartless strapping old Seamus to the top of our family wagon, how does that compare to Obama walking away from Health Care Reform without a public option in place? Everyone knows the insurance industry will make hash of any real financial reforms without the presence of a public option.

Speaking about the danger of being called a flip-flopper for jumping parties, Romney declared, “What if I tell the voters this is it, my final stand? Today—and forever—I believe women have a right to make decisions about their bodies. I believe life begins somewhere between 3-6 months after conception. I believe America lost its way when we attacked Iraq without clear reason, or when we tortured our prisoners and called it ‘enhanced interrogation.’ And now I truly believe that corporations are, well, corporations. Definitely not people. That sounded so lame when I said it not even conservative commentators could repeat it without smiling."

“So in summation,” Romney concluded, “I hope Democratic primary voters will forgive my previous lies and obfuscation. I may have dated the conservatives and Tea Partiers, but I can honestly say I never slept with any of them.”

BATMAN’S ARCH FOES DEBATE IN SOUTH CAROLINA

2012-01-17T06:08:00.000-08:00

There they were for all to see, the saddest bunch of comic book characters to come down the pike in many an election season: Two-Face, The Joker, Mr. Freeze, The Riddler and the Mad Hatter. Otherwise known as Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul.

After giving the old heave-ho to Poison Ivy (Michelle Bachman), and Clayman, (John Huntsman), the five survivors find themselves locked in a death struggle to determine who alone is crazy enough, strong enough, and rich enough, to battle Batman for supremacy in Gotham City (also known as America).

Though they employ many falsehoods to disguise their evil intent, all five super-villains are fighting for the right to dismantle America’s social safety net, turn back the advance of voting rights, protect the rights of millionaires to suck up ever larger percentages of the country’s wealth, and to further restrict the rights of adults and teenagers when it comes to control of their bodies. Though no one would stand up for the now obsolete idea of American Morality and Fair Play, the Mad Hatter stood apart from his peers in that he alone disparaged America’s senseless killing sprees, also known as Wars, though he appeared less concerned about America abandoning its principles to torture its non-Christian prisoners.

The question remains why would any sane American Voter put an X next to any of their names? Rather than stand for anything that would raise our standing in the world, or amongst ourselves, they content themselves to make idle threats against Batman, like wary combatants stepping backward into the restraining arms of friends, shouting “Let me at him!”, accusing Batman of any crime or intention that might resonate with America’s voters. Cries of “Socialist!” and “Incompetent” are meant to combat the Masked Avenger’s agenda to support the impoverished, needy and disadvantaged. Amazingly, Two-Face, perhaps a billionaire himself, decries Batman’s assaults on Free Enterprise and Unfeeling Republican Philosophy, eschewing Batman’s attempts to secure money for the middle class and America’s long-standing social programs by raising taxes on those who would never feel the pinch of an increase.

It would all be totally unbelievable if we read it in a comic book. But to see it on our TV screens, each of these madcap villains playing to the lowest instincts of an unseen audience of crazies and maladjusteds, is to make one realize that, like Dorothy, we’ve been transported to a strange new world.

And I don’t mean South Carolina.

Pretty White Gloves

2012-01-15T05:51:00.000-08:00

He sits on a folded-over cardboard box, slightly off-balance and without any visible sign of support other than the granite wall of the bank behind him and the few coins in the paper cup he shakes at each passerby.

Does he realize it is 4 degrees above zero, or minus 25 degrees if you factor in the wind that blows through the city and into his bones with little concern for statistics? Does he notice the thick cumulous lifeforms that escape from his mouth in shapes that shift and evanesce like the opportunities that once populated his life?

Can he even distinguish the usual numbing effect of the cheap alcohol from the cruel and indifferent carress of this biting alien chill?

Too many questions, he would tell you, if he cared to say anything. But his tongue sits in silence behind crusted chapped lips and chattering teeth while half-shut eyes follow pedestrians fleeing from the bitter cold and his outstretched cup.

His gaze falls upon the hand holding the cup as if it were some foreign element in his personal inventory. Surprised at first to find it uncovered and exposed, especially in weather this frigid, he now recalls that someone at the shelter had stolen his gloves and left in their place the only option he still has in much abundance.

Acquiescence.

Examining the hand, and the exposed fingers encircling the Seven-Eleven coffee cup, he smiles in amused perplexity, murmuring to himself, "White gloves."

Lifting his hand for closer inspection, he adds, "Pretty white gloves."

An image of his daughter . . . Elissa, he thinks her name was . Yes, Elissa!, he recalls. An image of Elissa rises up in his mind, from a photograph taken when she was ten and beautifully adorned in a new Easter outfit: black shoes, frilly lavender dress and hat and, yes, pretty white gloves. The photo once sat on a table in his living room, but he couldn't tell you what happened to it, nor to the table or the living room, for that matter. They were just gone. Swept away in the same tide that pulled out all the moorings from his life, and everything else that had been tethered to them.

The last time he'd seen Elissa she was crying, though he no longer remembers why. Must have been something he'd done or said; that much he knows.

"Pretty white gloves," he repeats, staring at his hand.

He recalls the white gloves from his Marine dress uniform. At most he wore them five times: at his graduation from officer's training school, at an armed services ball in Trenton, New Jersey, and for three military funerals. There was never a need for dress gloves in Viet Nam. They would have never stayed white anyway; not with all the blood that stained his hands.

Out of the corner of his eye he can see a policeman walking towards him and instinctively hides his cup, some vestige of half-remembered pride causing him to avert his gaze from the man's eyes at the same time.

"We need to get you inside, buddy," the officer says. "You'll die of cold, you stay out here."

Moments later, a second police officer, this one a woman, steps up to join them.

"That's the Major," she tells her colleague. To the seated figure she offers a smile.

"You coming with us, Major?"

"Go away," he answers, looking up as he leans further against the cold granite wall. "Don't need you. Don't need no one."

"Can't leave you out here," the first officer says. "We've got orders to bring you and everyone else in."

"Leave me alone!" the seated man shouts, gesturing with his hands as if he could push them both away.

"Oh shit," the female officer says under her billowing breath. To her partner she whispers, "His hands. Look at his hands."

Quickly recognizing the waxy whiteness for what it is, the officer shrugs, "Guess we're a little late."

To the man on the sidewalk, he offers, "That's frost bite, buddy."

"No," the seated man protests. He holds up both hands, numb and strange as they now feel and offers a knowing smile of explanation.

Just like the marine officer he once was, just like the sweet innocent daughter he once knew, just llike the young man grown suddenly old on a frozen sidewalk, his hands are beautiful and special in a way these strangers will never understand.

"White gloves,"he insists proudly.

"Pretty white gloves."

******

It was 10 degreees out this morning and once again winter's cruelty brought images to mind of homeless people freezing to death. I offer "Pretty White Gloves" as a reminder to all of us that we are never that far away from the slide and harsh realities that informed the Major's life in the above story. My apologies to all those who follow this blog and question why I would repeat a story that has appeared more than once on these pages. Blessings to you all!

PINK SLIP FOR MITT’s MUTT

2012-01-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

(Recently unearthed from a “Lost Luggage” travel trunk abandoned in a train station in Salt Lake City, Utah)

Dear Seamus:

Boy, we sure did enjoy having you as a member of our family all those years. I would have to say you handsomely returned on our initial $150 investment. I think I speak for the entire family when I say, “Thank you” from the bottom of our hearts.

Now, dear Seamus, we come to the most difficult task of all, firing you—for disloyalty and for, most especially, leading the press off-message on my campaign. This firing is effective as of noon yesterday, when you were sold, at an acceptable profit, to Pastor Malcolm Thomas.

Why did you do it, Seamus? Did I deserve to be made a laughing stock? Just because I tied you to the top of the family wagon, where after a few hundred miles you irresponsibly soiled yourself and most of the car’s rear window? I can forgive a little incontinence, Seamus, but not when it stains my national persona.

And so we come to the parting of the ways. You for Pastor Thomas, me for Washington, D.C. I trust you will find your new position to your liking. And that you’ll always think fondly of the Romneys when you think of us.

In your honor, and to celebrate all the great years with you in our family, Ann and I plan to sing “God Bless America” tonight. Or “America The Beautiful”, if the mood strikes us.

Sincerely,

MITT

Willard Mitt Romney
Master/Former Master

AH MITTY, WE HARDLY KNEW YOU!

2012-01-09T09:48:00.000-08:00

Dear Mitty:

I hope you don’t mind my calling you Mitty? ‘Mitt’ sounds so stiff, so formal, just like the blood-sucking billionaire we used to read about. The venture capitalist vampire who sucked dry the lifeblood of a hundred soon-to-die companies.

So, allow me to call you Mitty. If only because we slept together all those years.

Hey, It’s not easy to woo and screw an entire state, but you made it look like child’s play. Swooping down on us. Climbing in our window. A lover who came in the dark and left before dawn. We can still feel the lingering kisses, Mitty, and recall the eager, sophomoric foreplay of your 1994 senatorial campaign, not to mention the SLAM-BAM-THANK YOU M’AM screw job you gave us before you left. Many of us recall that fourth year of your ONE-AND-ONLY term as governor, when you couldn’t find the interest to spend even half your days in the state. It was tough living with someone who was never around, Mitty. Clearly your love—if love it was—had fled somewhere else.

Though your marriage was consummated in Massachusetts your heart was now committed to Washington, D.C.

And what about when you testified about Massachusetts' liberals down in Washington, Mitty? These days, you castigate Obama for apologizing for America. You were still our governor and you were dissing us to a panel of senators as if Massachusetts and its citizens were some objectionable lab-bred culture.

Hey Mitty, it's not easy shifting your shape from a moderate's to a conservative! The things you have to do, right?

And so you left us; leaving your job as our top officeholder unfinished. How many people can govern a state for three years and finish their mission, Mitty? There was so much you still could have done. You had already developed strong relationships with the legislature, knew how to get things done. But you heard another voice calling. Once again, desire was rising. Here within reach was another object of affection to woo and screw. A new siren's call to chase after.

I guess we should feel proud you left us for a bigger state. But not just any state, Mitty, or one state, but the entire United States of America! And if you don’t win them through election, whose to say you can’t buy them later?

Well, anyway, let me end this before I start to sound bitter. Don’t want you thinking your abrupt rejection has left us sad or bitter. Other states might feel exploited or cheapened by your quick, loveless encounter, like a prostitute who feels undeserving of a goodbye kiss. But we always secretly knew you would love us and leave us.

No hard feelings, Mitty, we were only looking for a cheap thrill ourselves.

Your landscapers asked to be remembered.

Affectionately,

Deval

For The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
(signed by)
Deval Patrick
Governor (in his SECOND TERM)

IOWA’S SPECIAL REPUBLICANS RUNNING A CLOSE RACE

2012-01-02T17:28:00.000-08:00

Des Moines, IA—You can almost hear the crowd roar as half a dozen Special Republicans appear to be approaching the finish line in Iowa’s Mad Dog Caucus competition. This once-every-four-year event has never seen such a riotous conclusion as its field of Special Republicans goes beyond all limits to prove to the Iowan judges that each one is more unhinged, unfeeling and venomous than the others. At the front of the pack is, of course, Mitt Romney, Special Republican from Massachusetts—or is it Utah, or maybe New Hampshire(?)—who seems to be running out front of the pack because of his limitless war chest and his unchallenged ability to shapeshift into virtually any appearance the contest requires. Romney, who has sucked dry and gleefully fenestrated countless profitable businesses as a venture capitalist has nevertheless won the Big Bullshitting Event, convincing deception-starved Iowans that he’s the man to save the economy and create new jobs. Yes, it’s a little like Jerry Sandusky running on a “Save The Children” ticket, but that’s why this race is worthy of the country’s top Special Republicans.

Then there are the Three Wise Men of Wacko Christian Ideology: Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and Michelle Bachman, who fought to be included in the “Wise Men” grouping by declaring she has the balls Obama left behind on his Hawaiian vacation. Special Republican Champions everyone, if only for their ability to convince sensible Iowans to buy into mind-boggling, bible-thumping beliefs…that Darwin was not only nuts, but was clearly sent to Hell where he’s getting shtupped twice daily by members of the Aryan Nation…that God created man and woman on the sixth day, then accidentally created gays on his day off. That Muslims can’t be Americans because nowhere does it say “In Allah we Trust” on our nation’s currency.

But the two Special Republicans providing the most pure entertainment and muscular effort are Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul. Gingrich, who never met a moral position he couldn’t both violate and profess undying love for, had a brief sprint to the front of the pack, but was brought down by a volley of bricks, rocks and arrows thrown by totally independent, non-aligned political action committees. And Paul who would cut government programs and expenditures to a size similar to when John Smith first proposed marriage to Pocahontas, is finding great support from students and others who appreciate that one Special Republican actually gave some thought to what he would do as president. Weird thought perhaps, but thought nevertheless.

And so we come down to the final hours of Iowa’s Special Republicans Competition. Each entrant bent on proving how tough, how uncaring and how whiter than white they can be. Health care reform? Repeal it. Taxing the wealthy? Not a penny more. Teaching evolution in our schools? God forbid. Allowing gay marriage? Over their dead bodies. Crippling Social Security and Medicare? It’s about time. Torturing prisoners? Absolutely, especially if they aren’t Christian.

Watch these pages to see who makes it first across the finish line.

Most likely running backward.

Where Have All The Victors Gone?

2011-12-24T04:58:00.000-08:00

Bang the drum slowly, America. The war in Iraq is finished. Finished for us, at least. For the Iraqis…well, in keeping with the previous nine years of American policy the Iraqis who haven’t been killed off will be left holding the proverbial bag. The tornado George W. Bush and Dick Cheney sowed with all the bluster of an administration with God on its side has been left behind in a far distant desert land, its unspent winds no longer a killing force for American men and women.

Too many of our leaders have spoken up this last week to declare that the sacrifice made by our soldiers hasn’t been wasted. That lives given were not given in vain. That fortunes spent haven’t been billions poured down the pisshole of history. That this very special and totally unnecessary war launched under false premises by an American president was not the military, financial and moral debacle that it was.

And now the lies continue. We lied our way into war so of course we need to lie ourselves out of it. Unlike Viet Nam we no longer lie about casualties. We prefer to lie about war’s causes. Its raison d’etre. No two voices can agree on why we went to war, why we rained killing waves of bombs down on Baghdad. Or why, given our expressed concern about weapons of mass destruction, we forced out the UN inspectors who could have unearthed such evil devices without taking a single human life?

Was it all for nothing? Was it because Saddam Hussein tried to kill George W. Bush’s father after the first Iraq war? Or was it for the oil? We not only have the right to know, we have an obligation to find out the truth. How else can we prevent another unmitigated disaster? How else can we face the wives, children and family of those who died and honestly tell them their sacrifice had some value, some reason, some purpose behind it other than the lies perpetrated by a band of American adventurers who had captured the reins of our government?

The human costs have been enormous —4,500 American dead, 32,000 American wounded, more than 122,000 Iraqi civilians who died violently from insurgent attacks, suicide bombings, and our own made-in-America bombs. This was an expensive, brutal war that should have never been launched. It was a war we never could win. Like Viet Nam, whatever victory we claimed came from our solemn departure.

President Obama and Leon Panetta have told our returning soldiers that the lives, treasure and national honor we left behind in that scarred desert wasteland haven’t been sacrificed in vain.

But nobody will say what they were sacrificed for?

WHY I JOINED THE REPUBLICAN PARTY (A Love Song)

2011-12-05T07:00:00.000-08:00

(F-BOMB ALERT: The following satiric essay contains multiple F-Bombs. Read at your own discretion!)

After much deliberation, I am making two historic announcements. First off, I proudly announce I am officially, as of today, renouncing my pie-in-the-sky, do-gooder liberal bias, and applying for membership in the fabled ranks of Republican Americanus. Yes, I am joining the Republican Party. I admit to being a Scrooge-like tightwad. I admit to hating everyone under 45, and everyone with less than a million dollars in their bankbooks, and of course toto el mundo who weren’t born in the good old United States of America.

America is for Americans, we Republicans always say, and you’re not really an American if you’re not smart enough to have earned a small fortune. Doesn’t matter how you earned it, but if you made it by swindling old ladies out of their pensions, so much the better! And if you’re looking for a political party that will help you hold onto every penny of that fortune, even if it means having to dismantle social security and medicare to do so, then look no further. You are a born Republican, as I am, and you’re tired of all those lazy and ignorant sons of bitches who won’t get a job and who multiply like sex-starved rabbits living off our wealth and largesse.

Yes, I, Paul Steven Stone, after years of haranguing the Republicans for starting unnecessary wars, torturing enemy prisoners, representing elite and wealthy interests, stifling our liberties, protecting polluters and bugging our phones, I’ve stopped pretending I think more of others than I do of myself. I now proudly admit that I am #1! It’s all about me. My money, my family, my friends, my …(Did I mention my money?) And nobody takes care of ME and MINE like the Republican Party. Which leads to my second announcement…

Today I hereby announce my intention of running for Representative from the 10th Congressional District of Massachusetts. Running, of course, as a Republican. That means, I will take any and all contributions from anyone trying to buy influence with me. It means I will immediately tie my hands as a future lawmaker by signing a pledge that will force me to vote against any measure that might raise tax revenues.

Just know that I will never disappoint you. I will be your voice, your conscience, and your balls…all in one! As your Republican representative, I will say “Fuck you!” to old people, poor people, immigrants and minorities with every vote I take. I will say “Fuck you!” to any government program that aids or assists those less fortunate than myself. Or cleans up the environment. I will say “Fuck You!” to anyone who thinks our government exists to serve the people over corporate interests. Just listen for the echo of every vote I take as your Republican representative, “Fuck You! Fuck You! Fuck You!”

And think of all the fun I’ll have! I’ll get to obfuscate my totally biased and elitist voting record. I’ll get to pretend that privatizing or dismantling social security will be an improvement to the system as it is now. Get to argue till I’m blue in the face that increasing taxes on ridiculously wealthy people will discourage the creation of jobs. I love that one. Like a billionaire is going to cut back on making more billions because his government asked him to pay his fair share of taxes! Right! What the hell does taxing wealthy people have to do with creating jobs? Are they holding back on creating new jobs out of spite? If they are, that’s pretty pissy!

Enough of this stupidity. Forget all logic, put your own vested interests aside, ignore that I will only represent the interests of 1% of our population, and vote for Paul Steven Stone (Republican) as your next Congressman. It’s time to bring back amoral, conscienceless, selfish, right-wing sense to the Massachusetts political landscape. Remember, it’s not what your country can do for its people that counts, it’s what your country can do for YOU.

Thank you and God Bless The United States of America!

Lets kill health insurance before it kills us.

2011-12-02T09:11:00.000-08:00

Health care insurance is the new heroin…without the high! It destroys our lives but we can’t live without it. We would do anything to get it—even abase ourselves—work long hours in low paying jobs, put up with sadistic bosses, lousy work conditions and limited opportunities. Kiss whomever’s ass we have to kiss to keep our jobs. All because we’re scared to death of losing our health insurance. And forget about mandated health insurance making a difference! That’s become another way to funnel more of America’s dwindling take home pay and taxpayer dollars into the coffers of an industry that benefits immensely from our inflamed fears and addicted behavior.

When I see one of those convenience store robberies caught on closed-circuit TV, I often wonder if the thief went out that day to steal money or fund his monthly insurance premium?

Face it folks, we have to kill health insurance before it kills us. Before it becomes the only criteria for choosing a job, the only reason for staying with a job you hate, and the one thing that keeps poor and middle class families from getting decent affordable health care.

If we can’t afford health care, that’s because health insurance has made medical care too damn expensive. For decades it has stood between us and the medical care we need, shielding the actual cost of medical services and care: the cost of machines purchased or hospital beds utilized or CEO’s over-compensated. Would any of us choose a medical provider that spent like a drunken sailor on everything—executive salaries, equipment, buildings, personnel? In a free market economy we’d seek out the smarter, more efficient, better-run provider. But with the insurance company giving cover to even the most poorly run providers, we’re all forced to pay high set-fees for our care, no matter who provides it or how bad a business they run. Could hospitals afford excessively expensive equipment, bloated executive salaries, inefficient staff or poorly run facilities if it weren’t for the willingness of insurance companies to pass the cost on to its customers?

Ask yourself this:
Aside from their facility for managing paperwork, what skill or service offered by insurance companies would we miss if they were to magically disappear from the health care landscape?

Consider that my mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s was recently sent home from the hospital in an ambulance. The cost of her ambulance ride was $800. Think about that: $800 to take her from Wellesley to Needham, a distance no further than 15 miles—14.6 miles to be exact! For $800 they should have at least included an in-flight meal, cocktails and a massage.

How could an ambulance service stay in business charging individuals $800 a whack to go 15 miles? Truth is, they couldn’t. But when they charge $800 to the insurance company, consumers delude themselves into believing they're riding “for free”, never realizing “we”, all of us, every fool in the bleaches, will pay for every $800 trip that ambulance makes. We’re all complicit in the system. Hey, we’d have to be. It’s the only system we’ve ever known. We’re so close to it we never noticed how it slowly, incrementally transformed itself from helpful, friendly service provider to an angry tiger whose tail we are all tenaciously clinging to—afraid to let go, terrified of holding on.

Well, it’s time to let go!

The insurance company is like a vestigal organ that has grown corrupt and dangerous as the body aged. The only sound medical solution is to cut it out!

Once upon a time, the insurance industry was a benevolent partner in its mission to make health care accessible and affordable.Today, unfortunately it has become an obstacle, blocking us off from that very same accessible and affordable health care. As employee benefits shrink, and unemployment rises, we—the masses—will get increasingly shut off or priced out from the medical care we need. Unless we direct the government to do its job and ensure quality health care as the right of every citizen. Just the way it does with elders through Medicare, or Congressional politicians through their special VIP health care program.

Think what we could do if we freed up all the money that now goes to insurance companies. How many more jobs we could create! How many lives we would improve! How many unhappy employees we would empower to leave their crummy jobs!

If we want to reform health care, we must first reform or kill off health care insurance. Till we do we'll be trapped in the vicelike grip of the insurance companies, continuing to pay $800 for a very short ride to the poor house.

MAN ON THE RUN

2011-11-30T03:53:00.000-08:00

Move it, he said, there isn't much time.

So you stepped on the gas or walked a bit faster or hurried your phone conversation, and still arrived late for your next activity.

Faster, he said, only losers slow down.

So you worked late at the office or left the party early or rushed out of the house without kissing the kids goodbye, and still never made up for the time you lost.

Hurry up, he said, you'll miss your big opportunity.

So you took a second job working weekends or cheated in business or cancelled the family vacation, and still never found the opportunity you were looking for.

Skip the formalities, he said, you'll have time for that later.

So you forgot your anniversary or never showed up for parents night at school or stepped over a friend to better your position, and still found yourself dreaming about all the things you didn't have.

Don't slow down, he said, time grows shorter every minute.

So you pretended to stay young or cheated on your marriage or forgot to watch your children growing up, and still never found someone who could understand you.

Pick up your speed, he said, time's almost up.

So you grew bitter and resentful or left your family or started a list with everything the world owed you, and still grew older every day.

Final seconds, he said, last chance to make good.

So you looked around and wondered where all the time had gone or searched out those you had wronged or started making friends with priests, and still couldn't get his voice out of your head.

Move it, he said, you're running out of time.

And finally he was right.

You ran out of time.

Forgive me if this brief story has appeared before, but a friend of mine recently received bad medical news and this piece immediately came to mind. I run it as a reminder and gift to everyone, but especially for myself.

This story appears in “How To Train A Rock” by Paul Steven Stone
Copyright © 2009 Paul Steven Stone

The Church of Sacred Vampires Wants Your Vote

2011-11-23T08:56:00.000-08:00

Heaven protect us!

It wasn’t enough that they abandoned thousands (literally thousands!) of young children to the sexual appetites of predatory priests, but now America’s Catholic Bishops feel they have the moral and spiritual obligation to tell the rest of us how we should behave—and vote!—to validate their right to dictate public morality and individual behavior.

Defending what they describe as their “Religious Liberty” they are campaigning and essentially joining forces with the largely Protestant right, aligning themselves with Republican presidential candidates, in order to combat federal regulations that support the equality of homosexuals, the distribution of contraceptives and the right of women to have abortions.

You don’t have to read between the lines to see the Bishops care more about the welfare of unborn children than the protection of real children in their care. Their protection was reserved for pedophile priests who feasted off the young and innocent like hungry vampires.

It’s a sorry state of affairs that the Bishops today are more interested in defending a discriminatory definition of marriage than the quickly crumbling social safety net that was once so critical to their mission of service. Where is the voice of moral indignation that once clamored for the rights of workers and justice for the poor? Why are these very same Bishops not standing alongside the victimized, non-violent warriors of the Occupy Movement? That’s where Jesus would be. Certainly, he would not be standing with those attempting to shut out “undesirable” segments of society from their rights and privileges. Nor would he have allowed deviant priests to move among children with impunity, quenching their sexual thirsts while destroying lives.

How strange that this enabler of pedophile priests, this destroyer of childhoods, this institution too-tightly-controlled by the corrupters themselves to ever really change, should tell others how to live their lives, how to vote, or what to think. What hypocrisy, what sham morality!

If the Bishops ever learn to see beyond the walls of their enclosed insular world, they would see humanity thirsting for an honest, moral voice to lead us out of the wilderness. And they would silence their cruelly divisive attacks for fear of drowning it out.

FOR ALL THE LOVELY PEOPLE

2011-11-16T03:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I looked around and realized there was only beauty and happiness in the world. Everybody had a home, two Mercedes and a signed Christmas card from George W. Bush.

Yesterday I looked around and realized I didn’t have to wait to go to heaven.

This is for all the lovely people,
This is for those with the Midas Touch,
This is for all the ones
Who never leave
Till they have too much,
I love all the lovely people.

Yesterday I looked around and realized there was no hunger in the world, and that poverty only existed in old newsreels and fiction. Everybody had quiche for breakfast and an American Express card for emergencies.

Yesterday I looked around and realized I was no longer just a man. I was a member of a club, and membership had its privileges.

This is for all the lovely people,
This is for summers at the shore,
This is for Donald Trump
Who never stops
Working at the pump,
God bless all the lovely people.

Yesterday I looked around and realized there was nobody in the world that needed my help. Everybody had more than enough love and every child knew just what they wanted for Christmas.

Yesterday I looked around and realized there was no reason to wait for the second coming. It couldn’t get any better than this.

This is for all the lovely people,
This is for People Magazine,
This is for all the ones
Whose private jets
Are always kept clean,
God loves all the lovely people.

Yesterday I looked around and realized there was nothing I had to do for anybody. Everybody had gotten exactly what they deserved from life and only deserved to get more.

Yesterday I looked around and realized I was the center of the universe.

Yesterday was a day like any other.

Anti-Bullying Video Wins Contest

2011-11-06T08:30:00.000-08:00

Pardon me for blushing, but I'm proud to announce that "To You Who Are Different" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IJA-uxretY) was recently announced the winner of the Challenge Video Contest by the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center. If you haven't yet seen this powerful video, please check it out. It runs for less than 5 minutes but it packs a hell of a punch. The featured students from Randolph High School did an amazing job taking ownership of the video's message of tolerance and support for those who are different. "To You Who Are Different" was a joint enterprise of Mona Rosen, Sheara Seigal and yours truly. If you wish to download "To You Who Are Different" for showings by your school or group, go to: http://www.4shared.com/video/ktKDqdqP/To_You_Who_Are_Different.html

The American Dream: An Update

2011-10-26T09:40:00.000-07:00

Last time I saw the American Dream was Tuesday, down at the Unemployment Office. He was looking pretty worn out, as if being unemployed for over a year was finally getting to him.

“How’s it going?” I asked cautiously, not wanting to step on any sensitive toes.

“It's finally getting to me,” he answered. “It’s been over a year since I worked. And now my youngest, who I just finished paying for her college, lost her job and can’t find anything. She says there are no jobs.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I offered, starting to move off. But the American Dream grabbed my sleeve, arresting my departure.

“My son moved in with me,” he continued, the story beginning to gush out like a cataract. “Guess how much he owes from his college loans...”

“I don’t...”

“Guess,” he pushed, almost desperately. “I hear this figure in my head when I lie down to sleep at night. Guess—oh, hell, I’ll tell you—$240,000! Almost a quarter million dollars in college loan debt! ‘Who are you borrowing from, the mafia?’ I asked him. But he just kept saying, ‘Sorry, Dad.’

“A quarter of a million dollars; that’s a lot of money.” I opined.

“And it was compounding daily!”

“What did you do?”

“What could I do? I paid the debt down to $200K. Now my ex-wife and I pay off the interest each month, keeping it at $200K. But once my unemployment runs out, she and my son will be on their own.”

He ran his hands through his disheveled hair, causing me to comment, “You don’t look so good, you know?” And it was true. Ordinarily, the American Dream is a very buttoned down, upbeat guy; but this morning it looked as though he’d been up all night wrestling with a feverish lover or an unsolvable problem.

“The well’s almost empty,” he said through a dry mouth. “Unemployment’s running out, my savings are gone, my stock holdings, including my 401(k), are next to worthless, and my son, as I mentioned earlier, has moved back in with me and taken over my family room.”

“Well I have some good news,” I said happily. “I got a job! This is the last time you’ll see me hanging around these gloomy environs,” I added, giving a meaningful look around at the roomful of unemployed misfits and shirkers. “I’m back to a real paycheck starting next week.”

Doing what?” he asked, clearly trying to hide his envy.

“I’m a lobbyist,” I answered, feeling somewhat out of my comfort zone. Normally I don’t speak about my livelihood with someone who has the weakness of character to be out of work. No matter that we were friends or acquaintances. Not able to resist bragging, I added, “I’m a great lobbyist really! I only lost my previous job because of jealousy and my boss hated me. I used to lobby for “financial interests” such as banks, brokerage houses and lenders of all stripes. Hey, I was the one who lobbied to make it impossible for student debtors to declare bankruptcy on their student loans.”

“But my son...” the American Dream said, realizing the import of what I had just said.

“Yes, I lobbied for the bill that will ensure your son is in debt for most of his natural life. You and he are lucky. Had I had my way entirely—or my client’s way, really—the interest rates on his loans would rise automatically every fifth year. Republicans liked it, but they were worried; they’d just guaranteed the drug companies that the US government wouldn’t use its bargaining power to lower the price of drugs for the elderly. Didn’t want to be seen as giving away the store.

“Then there was my work against Wall Street Reform,” I continued, uncertain that the American Dream wished to hear about my dismantling any real financial reforms proposed by congress or the president.

“If it wasn’t for me,” I crowed, “People like you who by no fault of your own find yourselves broke, in debt and about to lose your homes, could have previously sued the banks, investment houses and hedge fund managers who turned your family’s home into a worthless investment vehicle. Now, you have to sue Bernie Madoff because he’s the only one taking any responsibility for screwing up our financial system.

“Too bad Bernie didn’t hire my lobbying firm before the pyramid collapsed. We could have gotten him an exemption in the ‘too big to fail’ category. Or something.”

Obviously uncomfortable with me talking about my past triumphs, the American Dream asked me about my new job and its responsibilities. “Is there anything you’re doing that you can be proud of?” he asked pointedly.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I answered huffily. “I’m proud of everything I’ve done. Our system is set up so that everyone has freedom to participate. If the rich have more money to buy a larger slice, well that helps all of us; puts more money into the economy. At least into my economy!”

“You’re not answering the question,” he reminded me.

“My job is to help congress rewrite regulations,” I answered proudly. “All the new regulations and restrictions congress recently enacted are preventing jobs, business growth and other opportunities.” I explained. “As are all those environmental restrictions.”

“Wait a minute,” the American Dream said, seeming to suddenly awaken, as if from a dream. “Are you telling me that the Financial Sector, which caused our Economic Emergency because no one was watching them, now wants to use the Economic Emergency itself as an excuse to eliminate any rules or regulations they don’t like!”

“Exactly,” I said. “And I can be proud of playing a small role in that effort. I can also be proud of the small fortune I’ll get paid to do it.”

As the American Dream started to walk away, seemingly agitated, I called to him, "Where are you going?”

“For psychotherapy,” he answered sullenly. “All this crushing debt and relentless uncertainty is driving me crazy.”

“Word of advice,” I told him. “Sign up quickly. I’m working on a bill right now to drop that coverage from your health plan.”

KEEP ON SHAKIN' UP THE FREE WORLD!

2011-10-05T06:46:00.000-07:00

Forgive me for sharing a rant I sent out yesterday to the Bagel Bards, but I’m very excited by the OCCUPY WALL STREET protests. What an appropriate response to a government that won’t investigate or indict ANYONE for the economic crash that destroyed so many lives and livelihoods, not to mention for two coup d’etats committed by the Republican party, one of which was abetted by the Supreme Court, or for an illegal war that killed thousands of innocent, non-aggressive citizens of foreign lands, or for the unbridled corruption, fraud and gross incompetence by vendors given billions in no-bid contracts to provide essentials for that illegal war or, and MOST CRIMINAL OF ALL, for committing acts of torture in the name of the people of the United States.

I voted for Obama and have been sorely disappointed. By choosing to selectively turn a blind eye to the crimes of the past 10 years, his administration has become a party to those crimes. The only one to get tried and imprisoned for his crimes was Bernie Madoff, who made the biggest mistake of all in this America of ours—he stole from the wealthy. Of course they gave him a 150 year sentence!

Keep those protests coming.

CONFESSIONS OF A POLITICIAN

2011-08-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

Forgive me father for I have sinned.”

“Tell me how you have sinned, my son?”

Lies, father. I have told lie after lie in pursuit of my personal gain. I have lied to my family, my friends, to thousands of people who desired nothing from me but the truth.”

“And when did you first enter politics, my son?”

“Many years ago, father, I was a mere child, an innocent. I believed in heroes. Believed in the power of being right and doing good works. I believed I could change things, could make a difference in the lives of the people I represented. I believed politics was much more than a bunch of self-important, privileged men dividing up the spoils of life-in-the-public-arena. I thought the system embraced everyone who had a stake in the outcome of every law considered and every vote taken. We had not yet been blessed by the work of the finest Supreme Court money could by, where every decision had been paid for and lobbied by billionaires and millionaires, who understandably believe they’re entitled to more representation than the single vote everyone else gets.”

“And when did you learn the truth, my son? When did you find out what a shmuck you’ve been?”

“In that first year, father. And how swift an education that was! No sooner was I sitting in a seat of elected power than I discovered how week and ineffective I was. I saw that power was most effective when it furthered its own ends rather than the needs of the voters. To get along in the world of politics one quickly learns to go along. To sleep with the ugly as well as the beautiful…Ha!

“Forgive the coarse example, father, but that’s what politics does to you…either you’re kissing a thousand asses and spreading your legs a thousand times a day for short dollars, or sleeping with an occasional millionaire now and again. What would you do, right? So, you start ‘Shtupping for Millionaires’ and you get your life back, and you stop feeling like a 24 hour fundraising prostitute.”

But I was speaking about…power. Do you know the secret of power, father? I’ll tell you. To become powerful, one simply hangs on to power longer than the next guy. To hang on longer than the next guys means forging strategic alliances with those who hold the power, even if it goes against the vested interests of your constituents, from whom you won’t hear anything for another two years, anyway. But like I said, power is most effective when it’s furthering its own ends. That was a simple lesson taught to all of us when we entered public office.

“But that seems so self-serving, my son. Surely there are those in public life who set their course with greater integrity and resolve?”

“Yes, father. They’re called one-term politicians.”

“This is all so very curious, my son.”

“Strange, father, it’s all so very strange. I’m constantly trying to understand how things could get so bad. When I first entered office, it was understood you weren’t to get caught breaking the law or stealing from the cookie jar. Everything was fair game, but you weren’t allowed to get caught. That was the cardinal rule. Steal from the poor, the blind, the crippled, but don't get caught.

“Nowadays, it seems that our government is in charge of payoffs for criminal deeds of catastrophic dimensions. The greedy son-of-bitches who brought down the financial system and triggered a worldwide recession are saved, kept in their jobs, and even allowed to collect bonuses, while the taxpayers pick up the tab.

“Just think, father, Halliburton and its subsidiaries are allowed to fraudulently overbill the US Army for shoddy work in IRAQ (How many soldiers were electrocuted in their poorly constructed showers?) and we just pay the bills.

“And, today, every one of those Grand Old Pigs whose political party ran us into an endless war in Iraq for no good reason, voted in tax cuts for yacht-owners, billionaires and oil company executives, and fathered a prescription drug benefit where the USA wasn’t allowed to use its buying power to lower prices (and, thus, decrease the deficit). If they’re so worried about deficits how could they have voted for renewing Bush’s Tax cuts for millionaires, father. How could they, I ask you that?”

“It is all a mystery to me, my son.”

“Yeah, me too, father. Me too. Like how could I have become a cynical and jaded politician so quickly? Without even noticing.! Oh, there was much truth in the promises I made, father. I intended to do as much as was humanly possible for my constituents; meant to deliver as many jobs, as many laws and, especially, as many government contracts for my constituents as I could.”

“So where are the lies you feel you must confess, my son?”

“It was all lies, father. There wasn’t one job, or law or one government contract I promised to deliver which I wouldn’t have sacrificed to help further my own position as an elected official. When everything you promise is secondary to feathering your own nest, you’re making promises to no one but yourself.

“I am impressed by your contrition, my son, is there not time for you to make things right?”

“How do you mean, father. By reciting sacred names or saying my rosary?”

“No, by following your conscience instead of your weaknesses. By pursuing a course of action dictated by what you have promised, and by what you believe.”

“A novel idea, father, but it would never work. You see, in the interest of getting elected, I have endeavored to be all things to all people. That, of course, meant taking stands on issues that offended the least number of eligible voters. We call that taking a ‘prudent’ approach to electioneering, so that hopefully you end up looking good to supporters on both sides of an issue. A good example is my stated position on welfare reform, father.

“Do you support it or oppose it, my son?”

“The question is, father, how can I both support and oppose it at the same time. That’s ‘prudent’ electioneering. The way it works, you develop simple answers to complex issues. Ask me my position on welfare reform, I’ll tell you I plan to seek reform without seeking retribution.

That answer, simple as it appears, will be interpreted by each side as providing a measure of my support, while ultimately requiring nothing from me except an occasional newspaper quote. The net result, of course, is a non-binding promise to do nothing.”

“I am beginning to see the problem, my son.”

“I have become a master of maintaining a ‘prudent’ approach to most issues, father. When it comes to conservation and land-use issues, I am for “responsible development” and “controlled growth.” Ask me my view on capital punishment and I’ll declare myself “morally opposed to the death penalty except under certain conditions.” Question my position on gun control and I’ll tell you the problem isn’t with criminals being too well armed, but with people like you and me being too poorly armed.”

“You are being unfair to yourself, my son.”

“You think so? Go ahead, ask me my stand on any issue!”

“Aid to Afghanistan?”

“I’ll support it, but only after the Afghanni’s put their house in order.”

“Continuing price supports for U.S. farmers?”

“I’ll vote to eliminate price supports as soon as we figure out a better way to level the playing field in the international market.”

“American corporations’ usage of child laborers in third world nations?”

“It’s outrageous, immoral and barbarous; but what gives us the right to dictate morality to the rest of the world?”

And tax cuts for the wealthy?”

Ah, yes. That’s the Million Dollar Queston, father, because the right answer will open the door to millions of dollars in campaign donations! Ask me my position on taxing the rich, so their obligations are commensurate with the privileges they enjoy as millionaires and billionaires., and I’ll agree that, “Yes, everyone should pay their fair share” but that “raising taxes now could jeopardize the entire economic recovery.“ I’ll say whatever I have to say to keep the public’s eye off the ball so they don’t figure out for themselves that these millionaires are getting away with murder.”

“Surely, you must have taken a firm stand on some issues, my son?”

“Absolutely, father. Those are the issues we politicians call “no brainers”, meaning you don’t need a brain to vote for tougher laws against child molesters, or for American independence from foreign-produced energy, or for a couple of hundred other issues that have nothing to do with the goals of your fellow politicians or the lives of your constituents back home.

“Well, my son, there doesn’t seem to be much that I can do for you, other than grant forgiveness for your sins.”

“That may be true or not, father. But tell me—only because I’m curious—are you a registered voter…?

Uncle Bernie's Commencement Speech

2011-05-18T07:12:00.000-07:00

To The Graduates Of The Class Of 2011:

You are here today at a critical crossroads of your life. For most of your 21 or more years you’ve been taught to work hard, obey the rules, listen with respect to your elders and to trust that every effort you make will receive an ample and just reward.

You recognize that sound, don’t you? A few of your parents and teachers couldn’t keep their opinions to themselves…but let's examine the reasons behind their laughter.

Yes, I am afraid that for most of your life you’ve been handed a script from “Leave It To Beaver” and that all those wonderful principles I enumerated earlier—work hard, obey the rules, etc.—won’t take you very far down the Road of Life in today’s America. In fact, if you insist on playing by the rules and trusting in the fairness of others you’ll very quickly get run over and flattened like so much road kill on that very same Road of Life.

All across America speakers like me are admonishing new graduates like you to live up to principles that are no longer relevant or practical. Hollywood Hero Principles no longer acknowledged in today’s business world. Principles which, like fragile Louisiana marshlands, cannot survive today’s overwhelming inflow of dark, viscous wealth-making ideas and ventures.

Go ahead, take a deep breath and smell the oil vapors. That’s America! That’s your future! It ain’t roses but it's sure sweet!

Yes, other commencement speakers would tell you to work hard, play fair and be nice as you emerge from college to make your way in the world. I’m here to advise you to look both ways before crossing the street and to pick the other guy’s pocket before he picks yours.

Those other commencement speakers are frozen in time, spouting axioms and adages that long ago ran out of gas on the American Road of Life. Like scenes from an old black and white Hollywood movie they make us smile but they don’t prepare us for a world more reminiscent of “Jaws” than it is of “Flipper.”

“Be nice,” they say.

I say “Be nice when it helps, cruel when necessary, vicious when it counts.” People will tell you Bernie Madoff was a nice guy, but I never forgot to take all the money off the table before I went home.

“Don’t forget the Golden Rule” they say, most of them unable to keep a straight face while saying it.

“I also say “Don’t forget the Golden Rule”, only my Golden Rule is a little different from theirs. My Golden Rule says “Go for the gold and screw the rule!”

They would also tell you to, “Follow your bliss” in choosing a career.

Whereas I would advise you to follow the money.

So in short, members of the graduating class of 2011, I advise you to live richly as well as wisely, to always give to yourself first, to always take the largest slice of the pie, to choose financial gain over spiritual growth, and to steadily amass more and more physical possessions which, even though they rust and corrupt (as Jesus pointed out), they also clean up pretty easily these days.

So yes, graduates, feel free to live lives of unbridled hunger, unquenchable thirst and unfettered avarice, happily unburdened by a commencement speaker this morning who urges you on to seek out greater challenges while doggedly building strength of character.

For those of you who would like greater instruction on how to achieve your own wealth-based lifestyle filled with houses, boats and servants, see me at Webster Hall immediately after you receive your diplomas. Here in prison I've written a little advice book, only $35.95, on how to live the life you've always wanted when nobody's watching.

The rest of you, I wish good luck and happy trails. I recommend you wear heavy boots.

This is a more fanciful version of a commencement speech that appeared a year ago on these pages. Again, I should credit a Ken Read-Brown sermon (in the form of a commencement speech) that served as inspiration for the original blog posting.

LIFE AS A MULTIPLE CHOICE QUIZ

2011-03-29T07:35:00.000-07:00

Good news!

While the rich can always get richer, it appears the poor have run out of room to fall any further.

How's that for putting an end to torture!

According to the most recent census, the income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to the widest disparity ever recorded.

A new record! And they couldn't have done it without us!

So congratulations to all the Wall Street Billionaires, Oil-soaked Mega-Billionaires and Amoral G.O.P. Minionaires who could not have set a new record for greed, avarice and galloping narcissism without the aid and gullibility of a majority of the voting public. Of course, kudos also to the Supreme Court, which bent over backwards to discard established law and allow unfettered purchase of all America's elections by those who could afford them.

So congratulations to all of us for this record achievement. We truly earned it and, if we don't wake up to what's happening while we still have a pair of pants left to wear, we will truly deserve it going forward.

And remember, if we're one day forced to forego some of those things we've come to expect from a civilized society—a comfortable retirement, a scrupulous financial system, help when we need it, an equitable share of the nation's wealth, an affordable education, decent medical care or salaries that keep up with inflation—just keep in mind the rich are making their fair share of compromises, too.

I just can't think of any at the moment.

I'm thinking of printing up a bunch of the bumper stickers like the one shown above. If you would have any interest in sporting your very own "TAX THE RICH OR KILL THE POOR" bumper sticker, contact me at PaulStevenStone@gmail.com, and I'll see about making them up.

TAX THE RICH OR KILL THE POOR

2011-02-22T13:02:00.000-08:00

Wealth is finite. There’s only so much to go around.

When a nation’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, the rest of its citizens are left with little more than long days of struggle, painful progress and unattainable dreams. We see it in the Middle East, in Africa and Asia, and in Third World countries where rulers and their cliques soak up all the wealth like so much gravy.

And we are seeing it today in America.

It won’t be long before we reach the tipping point, when students won’t have money for college, cities won’t have money for schools and libraries, governments won’t have money for basic services, and the poor won’t have anywhere to turn.

It seems as if we’re living in a Charles Dickens novel where the same Dickensian actors—greed, hard-heartedness, self-righteousness and moral vacuity—have once again stepped center stage to suggest, by their actions if not their words, that it might be better for the poor to die and decrease the surplus population.

No matter that those actions are thinly disguised behind Big Lies repeated over and over by agents and tools of the wealthy—by newspapers and TV stations owned by the rich, by a political process controlled by the rich, by sound bites and legislation pushed by rich politicians—that taxes are unfair, that the wealthiest among us have no obligation to assist the poorest, that government exists to protect wealth rather than its citizens, and that the surest way to help the poor is to advance the purpose and cause of the wealthy.

How can we still be talking about trickle down economics when so little wealth ever actually trickles down?

If you accept one basic premise—that wealth is finite—then all the financial, economic and social upheaval in our country starts to make sense. There isn’t enough to go around when one sector gets a lock-tight grip on the purse and the purse strings. Once that happens, with so little left on the table, those of us who aren’t rich find ourselves battling each other for an ever-dwindling share of the pie. Programs compete against programs. The needy compete with the needy. Infants battle the elderly and the poor for nutrition allocations. Recovering alcoholics challenge the homeless and the disabled for shelter dollars. Sesame Street scraps and claws for funds also needed to regulate Wall Street. All the while, the public sector continues to implode.

What’s happening in Wisconsin today is merely the edge of the scythe as it begins to mow down the social contract we grew up with and came to expect from a civilized society. Collective bankruptcy is the problem, not collective bargaining!

The recent extension of tax breaks for the wealthy was beyond obscene, as are the bone-deep cuts to government programs now being proposed. By protecting their excessive assets, the wealthy among us are endangering the lives and livelihoods of so many others. Children will go hungry; students will forego college; retirees will see their pensions cut; people will lose their jobs and homes; many will go without winter heating fuel; cities will lay off police, teachers and firemen; while the health of our poorest citizens will dramatically decline—all so that a small group of wealthy individuals can amass and accumulate ever more and more money.

Tax the rich or kill the poor? What would Charles Dickens have done?

How about Jesus?

PAUL STEVEN STONE GOES TOPLESS

2011-02-16T09:58:00.000-08:00

Breaking News: Noted local writer and very minor celebrity Paul Steven Stone joined a growing list of talentless wannabes to bare skin and a hint of nipple in a shameless attempt to draw attention to his current blog posting. When asked how far he would go in his efforts to attract unwarranted attention, Stone remarked, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

In other news, President Obama released his newly proposed budget earlier this week and sent a shock of alarm reverberating across the country. Reporters from The New York Post went out among the population to gauge the impact of Obama’s draconian cuts to many of the country's most basic safety net services.

First to respond was Madonna who assured her worried fan base there was nothing to fear from the elimination of the government’s infant nutrition food program. Just back from adopting one or two new infants in Malawi, which is somewhere in Africa or Asia, the Material Girl expressed confidence, after consulting her Kabala soothsayer, that she and her brood of adopted children could comfortably get by on her income and assets, barring “a flood or a nuclear holocaust.”

When asked about her concern for the loss of all Public Broadcasting System funding, Nicole ‘Snooki’ Polizzi, star of Jersey Shore and author of an eponymous tell-all memoir in which she never explains how she could pack 55 years of stupid behavior into a 23-year lifespan, also hastened to assure her worried fans. “Yes, there was talk of my hosting Masterpiece on PBS, but I don’t think it was a ‘shore’ thing, if you get my meaning.”

For those concerned about the drastic cuts in home heating assistance and community health programs, Fox News commentator and Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachman suggested “We could kill two birds with one stone if all the poor people in northern America would just move south. C’mon guys!” she added, in an attempt to spur immediate action.

Lastly, when asked if he had any concern about possible cuts to student tuition grants, community policing funds and worker retraining programs, Donald Trump, who recently teased about a possible 2012 run for the Presidency, said, “I know it’s tough, but I don’t see any other way to assure a second round of tax cuts next year. Much as I hate to say it, we probably can’t afford food stamps either.”

Tune in next week to see how far President Obama, the Republicans and Paul Steven Stone will go to shamelessly pursue their funhouse mirror vision of the American dream.

C’mon guys, keep your pants on!

I don't know about you, but I can't take seriously an administration and a political party that scream for budget cuts after giving away the store in tax breaks to America's wealthiest and greediest citizens. Wealth is finite, so it is only fair to point out that children will go hungry, students will forego college, people will freeze in their homes and the health of our poorest citizens will dramatically decline so that a small group of wealthy individuals can amass even more money. It's unfair, it's outrageous, it's egregiously cruel and uncaring, and it's roaring down the track so fast we hardly have time to wonder how we ever came to be so selfish. If this is the American Dream, please someone wake me up!

Glimpses Of The Heart

2011-02-10T18:21:00.000-08:00

Somewhere long ago, he hid his heart on the moon.

And afterwards through the years he watched it come and go in phases. Sometimes full, more often on the rise or fall. But always more distant than he could understand.

Those who weren’t close to him could never see the true image of his emotions. To them he offered the idea instead of the reality. They were given snapshots to study, to hand around and discuss. To them the moon was always full even if clouds sometimes passed overhead to filter the light.

But to those he loved, for whom pretense was too heavy a cloak to wear, he let the waning and the waxing of his feelings serve as a true source of illumination. They could never understand—as he couldn’t himself—this painful rising and falling of light and love, why sometimes the moon was full and other times it was only a sliver in the night sky.

If he had the wisdom to see through space he’d know that he’d hidden his heart on the moon as a legacy to his father. And that within the crater where his strongbox was hidden lay another heart that had once so significantly lightened and darkened his world. He’d know that he’d been taught the mechanics of love as if an automatic switch regularly flipped love on and off to keep it from overheating. And that the heart learns its lessons from pain, passing them intact from one generation to the next. So that one day if the cycle isn’t broken the moon will grow dark and heavy, overpopulated with hidden hearts.

Somewhere long ago, he hid his heart on the moon. Near where his father and his father’s father had once hidden theirs.

And one day if he doesn’t make the journey to retrieve his hidden self, his children will go off to hide their own treasures where darkness falls in a consistent ritual.

On a cold barren planet.

A million miles away.

Pretty White Gloves II (A Real Story)

2011-01-25T06:59:00.000-08:00

A friend wrote me in response to "Pretty White Gloves" with a story of her own. I offer it here to hopefully provide my readers with the same inspiration it offered Amy and me. I've changed the names of my friends to Susan and Marshall since, not surprisingly, my friends were too modest to allow their real names to be used.

Dear Paul,

A very moving story. It especially touched me as Marshall and I had an experience just this morning arriving home from D.C. on the all-night Amtrak train. A fellow passenger, a very obese woman with a 9 month old baby in a carrier with a handle, struggled to gather herself, a suitcase, numerous bulging bags and her baby as the train pulled out of the Back Bay station. She began to cry...she had missed her stop. Then they announced that it was 7 degrees in Boston. We sat watching for a long painful moment. Then, no longer able to just watch, we offered to help her, wondering—as I am sure she was—what was she going to do. She said the baby was all wet, she had peed on her blanket. So she threw another blanket over the baby, actually covering the baby's head as well. The baby cried and she shouted at the unhappy infant. I noticed that the mother didn't have any gloves. I offered her mine which she refused. So I just put them in one of her bags and said she might need these. Anyway, to make a long story short, we eventually called the conducter who joined us in helping her get off at South Station, and he hailed a red cap telling him to get her a cab to North Station so she could get to Back Bay. Marshall stuck some money in her pocket.

We wondered if she ever made it and also worried about the baby, and wondered about its future and the condition of the mother. I cried as she slowly trudged her way along the platform following some distance behind the red cap. Your story certainly brought back the memory of this heart-wringing morning so vividly and with such sadness.

Your writing was powerful, and compassionate.

Thanks, Paul, and for giving me the chance to tell you about our experience.

Susan

Thank you Susan for sharing your wonderful story! And for reminding us how possible it is to be true to a vision of our best selves.

Pretty White Gloves

2011-01-23T06:14:00.000-08:00

He sits on a folded-over cardboard box, slightly off-balance and without any visible sign of support other than the granite wall of the bank behind him and the few coins in the paper cup he shakes at each passerby.

Does he realize it is 4 degrees above zero, or minus 25 degrees if you factor in the wind that blows through the city and his bones with little concern for statistics? Does he notice the thick cumulous lifeforms that escape from his mouth in shapes that shift and evanesce like the opportunities that once populated his life?

Can he even distinguish the usual numbing effect of the cheap alcohol from the cruel and indifferent carress of this biting alien chill?

Too many questions, he would tell you, if he cared to say anything. But his tongue sits in silence behind crusted chapped lips and chattering teeth while half-shut eyes follow pedestrians fleeing from the bitter cold and his outstretched cup.

His gaze falls upon the hand holding the cup as if it were some foreign element in his personal inventory. Surprised at first to find it uncovered and exposed, especially in weather this frigid, he now recalls that someone at the shelter had stolen his gloves and left in their place the only option he still has in much abundance.

Acquiescence.

Examining the hand, and the exposed fingers encircling the Seven-Eleven coffee cup, he smiles in amused perplexity, murmuring to himself, "White gloves."

Lifting his hand for closer inspection, he adds, "Pretty white gloves."

An image of his daughter . . . Elissa, he thinks her name was . Yes, Elissa!, he recalls. An image of Elissa rises up in his mind, from a photograph taken when she was ten and beautifully adorned in a new Easter outfit: black shoes, frilly lavender dress and hat and, yes, pretty white gloves. The photo once sat on a table in his living room, but he couldn't tell you what happened to it, nor to the table or the living room, for that matter. They were just gone. Swept away in the same tide that pulled out all the moorings from his life, and everything else that had been tethered to them.

The last time he'd seen Elissa she was crying, though he no longer remembers why. Must have been something he'd done or said; that much he knows.

"Pretty white gloves," he repeats, staring at his hand.

He recalls the white gloves from his Marine dress uniform. At most he wore them five times: at his graduation from officer's training school, at an armed services ball in Trenton, New Jersey, and for three military funerals. There was never a need for dress gloves in Viet Nam. They would have never stayed white anyway; not with all the blood that stained his hands.

Out of the corner of his eye he can see a policeman walking towards him and instinctively hides his cup, some vestige of half-remembered pride causing him to avert his gaze from the man's eyes at the same time.

"We need to get you inside, buddy," the officer says. "You'll die of cold, you stay out here."

Moments later, a second police officer, this one a woman, steps up to join them.

"That's the Major," she tells her colleague. To the seated figure she offers a smile.

"You coming with us, Major?"

"Go away," he answers, looking up as he leans further against the cold granite wall. "Don't need you. Don't need no one."

"Can't leave you out here," the first officer says. "We've got orders to bring you and everyone else in."

"Leave me alone!" the seated man shouts, gesturing with his hands as if he could push them both away.

"Oh shit," the female officer says under her billowing breath. To her partner she whispers, "His hands. Look at his hands."

Quickly recognizing the waxy whiteness for what it is, the officer shrugs, "Guess we're a little late."

To the man on the sidewalk, he offers, "That's frost bite, buddy."

"No," the seated man protests. He holds up both hands, numb and strange as they now feel and offers a knowing smile of explanation.

Just like the marine officer he once was, just like the sweet innocent daughter he once knew, just llike the young man grown suddenly old on a frozen sidewalk, his hands are beautiful and special in a way these strangers will never understand.

"White gloves,"he insists proudly.

"Pretty white gloves."

With the temperature outside falling below zero, my thoughts turn to those who somehow live, and hopefully stay alive, on the streets of our cities. And I think about one man, not yet homeless, about whom I wrote the above story. Many years before writing the story, I had a proofreading job that started at 5 am. One dark cold morning I had a flat tire on the way to work in the rougher part of town. That was when I met the man who would become the model for my protagonist in "Pretty White Gloves." He was a former marine officer just starting his slide into the abyss of alcoholism. He kept me company while I changed the flat and gave me much needed support. In return I bought him breakfast and offered platitudes about the dangers of drink. He took the meal and thanked me for my naive sentiments. Many years later, now homeless and beyond salvation (in my mind), he returned to me in this story which also appears in my collection, "How To Train A Rock.

"The Game Is Rigged" (A Letter From Uncle Bernie)

2011-01-11T11:04:00.000-08:00

January, 2011
FCI 336
Butner, NC

Dear Nephew:

How the mighty have fallen. And how far they have yet to fall…

For now I reap the bitterest harvest of all!

No worse punishment can be imagined than for a father to see his son die. But I who have never taken small steps where leaps would carry me forward, nor stolen small things when the world’s riches were laid bare and unprotected—no, I can now testify to one fate even more cruel for a father…to be the cause of an adored son’s untimely and self-inflicted death.

I only pray that my fragile and beloved son—the cousinly playmate of your youth—may now know the peace he could never find here on earth.

Please know that your expressions of sympathy have comforted me in my darkest hours, and I now turn to your inquiries in the hope that some meager measure of service to you might serve as balm to my troubled soul.

You ask me to recommend investment vehicles that will offer a reasonable return for a novice investor such as yourself. Should you look to one industry versus another, stocks versus bonds, domestic properties versus international, mutual funds versus securities…well, the list goes on and on, doesn’t it?

As I indicated in my last letter, wealth is finite, which means that all investors—you as well as the millionaire brokers of Goldman Sachs—are competing for the same spoils of war. And I purposely put you in battle with such behemoths, in my example, to show you exactly how little chance you have of taking anything but crumbs from the table in your efforts to pursue what has long been mislabeled the American Dream.

Put simply, my boy, the game is rigged. Once there was a stock market where a boy with pluck and wit like yourself could search out diamonds in the rough and make a fortune for himself. Yes, he could nurture his assets and grow his future, confident that the United States government would protect his holdings and maintain a level playing field.

Well, does that sound like today’s world of finance? Like hell it does! Unless of course you’re in elementary school listening to an impoverished third grade teacher explain the workings of our capitalist system. Out in the real world, the money boys (and it is mostly men) have taken control of things. Up until recently, your poor uncle was one of them—one of the ones whose shadow fell upon billions of dollars and thousands of innocent investors. And these selfsame money boys have made a science of separating money from the system and assets from innocents such as yourself.

We used to have a saying: steal an old lady’s pocketbook and you’ll go to jail, steal her pension and you’ll go to the Ritz.

How many ordinary individuals do you know who have made more than pocket money in the stock market in the last 20 years? While I can show you hundreds and hundreds of millionaires who have made millions and millions of dollars.

Dear boy, why would anyone in their right mind invest in an American company when it is practically guaranteed its CEO, board of directors and top echelon executives will suck all the cream off the top in the form of excessive salaries, incomprehensible bonuses and golden parachutes? Before any ordinary investor receives a single penny in corporate dividends, millions will have been siphoned off by the parasites who are now recognized as a normal part of the system’s operation.

And speaking of parasites, when there actually is money to be made on investments, it is made by PWM’s (People With Money) and PWM’s alone. Companies like Goldman Sachs structure IPO’s and other deals that are open only to their own PWM’s. And rather than police these deals, government regulators limit themselves to whistling as they walk by the graveyard, knowing that one day—if they’re well behaved little regulators—they may find gainful employment with these very same financial behemoths and perhaps become PWM’s themselves.

No, my boy, the only investment that makes any sense these days is real estate which, because of the limited nature of its inventory, will always offer a good return on your investment. Even if at times the PWM’s manipulation of the real estate market creates valleys and peaks and nearly destroys the American financial system.

But enough for now. I must end this letter and return to my singular life in confinement. How ironic to recall my earlier beliefs that punishment was something externally administered. A pain visited upon me by others. The truth is, no prison cell holds the terrors I now find welling up from my broken heart. And no amount of wealth and power could possibly fill the void that now lingers in the darkest reaches of my being.

I trust you will not forget to write and say a prayer for a tired old man, who sends his love and remains,

Sincerely,

Uncle Bernie

P.S. And please, though I suspect you have already done so, remember to say a prayer for your unfortunate cousin, may he now rest in peace.

One Day We Will Fly

2011-01-05T04:58:00.000-08:00

"Every one of us is born a caterpillar, seemingly sentenced to crawl and inch our way across the long expanse of our lives. But one day we will fly. And when we take flight we will see a world far richer and more beautiful than we ever knew existed when we lived as caterpillars."

From "To You Who Are Different", an earlier post on this blog (go back three or four postings). "Different..." has now been made into a one-page poster/handout that I would love to distribute to adolescents in high schools, youth groups, or wherever. If you would like a copy of the file—especially if you can help distribute it—just send me an email at paulstevenstone@gmail.com and I'll quickly send it your way. Every one of us, I believe, has had to suffer and live through the silent pain or fear of feeling estranged or isolated as teenagers, even those of us who were outwardly members of the "in" crowd.

The Injustice Of The Justice Department

2010-12-16T07:02:00.000-08:00

I’m appalled but not surprised that the Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder is working assiduously to put Julian Assange and WikiLeaks “in the frame”. As a recent article in the Boston Globe states, “Justice Department officials have been struggling to come up with a way to charge Assange with a crime.”

This, of course, is the same Justice Department that has successfully struggled to come up with a way to ignore the crimes committed by members of the Bush administration against our Constitution, our laws and a non-aggressive sovereign nation. If ever there was a rogue government that violated our nation’s laws and core beliefs it was this bush-league bunch of troublemakers, and if we ourselves won’t shine the cleansing light of truth on their dirty deeds, then thank heavens there’s a WikiLeaks to do it for us.

At the end of the day, it will be deeds done in the dark that cripple our moral authority and make a mockery of our Constitution. Attorney General Holder will do us all a favor if he points his dogs in a different direction, pursuing those who, operating under a cloak of secrecy, used their positions of power to validate and legalize wide-ranging acts of criminal behavior.

A Letter From Uncle Bernie

2010-12-03T06:27:00.000-08:00

December, 2010
FCI 336
Butner, NC

Dear Nephew:

It was with bittersweet emotion I received your letter of last week. Admittedly, it was sad to recall the plans you and I once shared for you to join my firm and begin your career “on the street”, as the world of American finance is often termed. But, joy of joys, you still call me “uncle” and declare that your love and concern is no less rigorous or faithful for all my public failings and criminal convictions.

How the mighty have fallen, it sadly seems, but not so low that you would abandon me or sever our familial bond; nor that I would abandon the mentorship I promised to provide. True, I may no longer have the freedom to walk beside you on the streets of Manhattan but I still hope to guide your steps and help chart your future all the same.

Please send my love to your mother. I would ask for her forgiveness but, alas, hers is not a forgiving nature. Perhaps her fall from pampered affluence can serve as a caution for you not to place your trust too heavily on any one individual, no matter how intimate or well-meaning he might be.

Not even your jailbird uncle.

In your letter you ask for a few simple precepts that might guide you as you venture out into the world of finance. In this first of what will hopefully prove a voluminous correspondence I shall confine myself to speaking about one simple precept concerning the economic landscape. Simple as it may sound, believe me when I say this first axiom is the underpinning for everything else you may encounter on your journey, though scarcely anyone but me seems aware of its existence or credits its value.

Simply put, dear nephew, “Wealth is finite.” There is no bottomless well from which wealth is drawn, no magical horn of plenty to replenish its stocks. Nor is it so vast that, like the ocean, one can never hope to determine its limits. That is not to say there isn’t a natural rise and fall of wealth, much like a breath rises and falls, but at any given time the boundaries containing and defining the available wealth in a country such as ours can only be stretched so far.

I have to laugh. Here am I, once as wealthy as Croesus and now imprisoned by the spent force of my unquenchable greed, and I have the nerve to lecture you on wealth’s outer limits! How foolish this must sound to your young ears.

Nevertheless, the significance of a country’s wealth being finite looms large when you realize that America’s entire capitalist system is based on the increase and accumulation of wealth. Which means that for individuals or corporations to amass vast assets, other individuals and corporations must suffer a balancing loss. That is why fortunes ebb and flow, why companies rise and fall, and why, living in an age where those at the pinnacle of our socio-economic pyramid enjoy immense personal wealth, there is increasingly less abundance left on the table for the others.

Sad but true. Have you never stopped to ask yourself why there is no longer enough money available to care for and feed the poor, to maintain our bridges and roads, to send our children to college, to keep the elderly from falling into poverty, to adequately police our cities, or to perform a million other tasks that were once affordable and seemingly a normal part of life in America?

Where has the once prosperous middle class disappeared to? Why have their salaries frozen? Why are their cars, houses, rents, vacations, lifestyles no longer within their financial comfort zone? Why can they no longer look into the future and see bright horizons where now instead they see the darkness of uncertainty?

Truth is, it’s because of fabulously wealthy men and women like myself who long ago sucked all the cream out of the bottle, and now we’re coming back for whatever milk remains.

Now don’t worry, neither public infamy nor the rigors of prison life have changed your Uncle Bernie all that much. I still value the caressing feel of silk shirts, the admiring lift in people’s voices when they address me, the comfort and security of being surrounded by servants, the billion and one things staggering wealth can bring to your life. In fact, I value them more in their absence than I ever did when I was free to enjoy them. But I never allowed wealth to cloud my understanding of what I had to do—who I had to become—to amass as much of it as I did.

Take a good look at the fellow standing next to you in line at Starbucks and know that he would step over your broken back to achieve an advantage for himself, and he would probably jump on that same broken back with cleated army boots if the advantage would fall even quicker his way.

And that’s what you have to do, my dear sweet innocent nephew—that's what you have to become—if you are intent, as you say, on building your own sizable fortune. Understand that now and you will save yourself much regret and self-flagellation later on.

So, yes, I’ll say it again, “Wealth is finite.” For all the abundance of money and assets you see around you, for all the power and influence the wealthy accrue and use to increase their own holdings, the truth is their wealth comes at the expense of many others who are forced to make do with less. A lot less. Some with nothing at all. If you have trouble with that reality, then let us stop right here at the beginning of your career path and look to other callings for your life’s happiness.

Right now, watching America’s legislative bodies debate the extension of tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, you can see how wealth uses its steamrolling power to remove ever more money from the communal pot. Those legislators who advocate tax breaks for the rich are wealthy themselves—many have made their wealth, as I did, by serving the conceits and appetites of millionaires. The fact that they will vote $700 billion in tax savings for their wealthiest friends while denying $12 billion in extended unemployment benefits for the rabble and hoi poloi shows how indifferent to suffering and fairness you must become when you accrue great wealth yourself.

Sorry nephew, I don’t understand why I seem to go on this way. Perhaps prison life has changed me after all, though for the life of me I can’t see what Jesus and Buddha found so rewarding in a life of poverty and suffering. But maybe they didn’t have an Uncle Bernie to teach them better.

Anyway, that will have to do for now, dear boy. In fifteen minutes I’m scheduled to meet with the warden to discuss a prison endowment fund he’s thinking of setting up. Hell, it beats working in the laundry!

Write soon. And know that I will always remain,

Your loving Uncle,

Bernie

P.S. Can you tell my youngest son those Havana cigars he sent were somewhat dry. I’m scheduled to move to a larger cell next week, at which time I could easily accommodate a small SubZero humidor.

"Unchastened" A Vision Of Beauty And Courage

2010-11-23T14:21:00.000-08:00

Unchastened from brynmore on Vimeo.

As someone who spends most of his time on Facebook explaining why I made some mistake in some communication to some friend or stranger, I don't hold much admiration for the forum. Having said that, I must share this video I viewed on Facebook with anyone who has had breast cancer, or knows a breast cancer survivor. I don't know Brynmore Williams or Catherine Musinsky, but I do know them much better than I did before I viewed this wonderful 3 minute video. Enjoy!

To You Who Are Different

2010-11-15T16:15:00.000-08:00

Every one of us is different.

Every one of us has a unique personality and a calling to become something special. We may not hear that calling, may not see our uniqueness as a blessing and, especially, may not understand that it’s the nature of the herd to trample wildflowers.

You have a right to fear the herd because they fear you. They will crush you if they can or, worse still, bend and twist you until you no longer appear different. They fear your difference because it threatens the comfort and security of their sameness. They can’t abide someone who travels in a different direction or questions their sovereignty.

But the herd is not capable of changing reality, they can only trample innocent flowers in their blind ramblings. Don’t let them trample you.

Every one of us is born a caterpillar, seemingly sentenced to crawl and inch our way across the long expanse of our lives. But one day we will fly. And when we take flight we will see a world far richer and more beautiful than we ever knew existed when we lived as caterpillars.

Don’t be fooled by the way you feel now. In the vulnerability of your youth you long to fit in, to go unnoticed for your eccentricities, to be accepted by everyone else. It’s only natural. How frightening to discover you’re different from others at the same time you’re being taught in school to conform and smooth out your rougher edges.

It isn’t just you who finds yourself swimming against the current. It isn’t just you who fears being discovered, challenged, taunted, crushed and rejected. We live in a society that values conformity over deviation, team sports over individual pursuits, extroverts over introverts, flash over substance, athletes over intellects, and normalcy above all else.

You may be too young to appreciate that Nature celebrates diversity in all that it creates. But years from now, if you persevere in holding onto yourself, you will discover your uniqueness was a gift that, because you did not reject it or let it be trampled by the herd, brings much depth and richness to your life. Robert Frost wrote of taking the ‘road less traveled’ without ever mentioning the bullies, hecklers and self-righteous moralists who inevitably try to block your way.

Don’t let them stop you or make you doubt yourself.

You are not only different, you are perfect the way you are.

This is dedicated to every school child, young adult (or even an old one) who finds him or herself questioning their personal worth because they are gay, disabled, impoverished, bullied, not socially adept, not perceived as cool, or ostracized for any reason whatsoever. Please pass this on to any youth whom you think might gain some insight or support from reading this. Thank you!

The Ballad of the Republicans

2010-10-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

For those who've been watching with wide-eyed shock as the Fox News/Sarah Palin/Glen Beck juggernaut convinces normally sane voting Americans that the Democrats are responsible for all their struggles, pains, fears and unhappiness, I offer a brief stroll down memory lane. See how many Bush-era scandals, blunders and constitutional crimes you can recall. Then marvel at how many additional screw-ups were left out. I'm not saying the Democrats or Obama deserve your vote, but I am arguing (through the lens of history) that the Republicans deserve nothing more than disgrace, censure and ridicule. Please forgive me if my droll foolery offends you.

Quit Complaining, Willya!

2010-08-09T17:59:00.000-07:00

"Enough already!" I shouted. "You've done nothing but complain since you sat down."

"But, but . . . !" she stammered, "but I thought . . ."

I generally try to show tolerance for another person's distress, but it's not always easy.

"Doesn't matter what you thought," I replied. "You think life is supposed to be easy? Whoever told you that? My life is anything but easy; still you don't hear me whining all over the place. And, trust me, I could teach you a thing or two about suffering.

"Just for example . . . you wouldn't know it, of course, but my wife ran off and left me two weeks ago. That's right, emptied the bank account, took the car, leaving me with two kids and a box of unpaid bills. All she left behind was her dirty laundry and a note that read, 'Don't forget Elliott's dental appointment on Tuesday. I'm leaving.' How's that for rough luck? And you think you've got it bad!"

"Wow," she said, "that must have been hard to take."

"Hard to take? Hell, the guy she ran off with was my lover!"

"Oh, that's horrible," she cried, her eyes widening to the size of serving platters.

"Wait, I'm not done yet. This so-called lover of mine was renting an apartment from my sister, and I just this morning discovered he skipped out owing her six month's back rent. Which is why we don't have the money we need to repair our Mother's broken dental bridge. Poor lady, she broke it in a car accident. Now, when she smiles you think you're looking at a checker board, which is less than ideal for someone who works as a greeter at Wal-mart's."

"Car accident . . . ?" she asked, clearly afraid to open up another chapter of my family’s sad history for discussion.

"Yeah, it was pretty bad; put my dad in the hospital. We won’t know how badly he's hurt until he wakes from the coma."

I could see something was bothering her, so I asked outright, "What's on your mind?"

"I was wondering how your sister could let your lover fall six months behind in his rent?"

"Same old story," I sighed, "she was sleeping with him, of course. She thought he was going to marry her; now she does little else but spend her days and nights crying . . . "

"Because he left her?"

"Ehh, not really . . . "

"Because of the money?"

"Don't think so."

"Your mom's dental bridge; your dad's coma . . . ?"

"Well, more than anything I think it was the test results."

"Test results . . . ?"

"Yeah, she found it in his room after he skipped out. Seems my sister's boyfriend, who was also my lover and my wife's current traveling companion, has what is politely referred to as a 'social disease.' Boy, that got my attention, if you know what I mean."

She started to rise from her chair.

"Where are you going?" I asked in surprise.

"I'm leaving," she tersely replied.

"You can't do that," I pointed out. "We've only barely started your therapy. You have at least another forty minutes to go."

The Ballad Of The Republicans

2010-06-11T04:28:00.000-07:00

Hear the bombs bursting all through the night
Bush is bombing Baghdad, says he has the right
Thousands will die like many thousands before
Only problem is they’ll never know what for…!
Here comes the ballad of the Republicans
Where men like Lincoln once took a stand
But now they took all that they could
Pretending it was for our good
In eight long years they nearly brought this country down!

The stealing starts on election night
Bush flies to victory on a Florida flight
Though exit polls say in fact he lost to Gore
Supremes give him the crown and so much more…!
Here comes the ballad of the Republicans
Eight years of plunder down in Washington
And now they hope that you’ll forget
All the blunders, crimes and debt…
That for eight long years nearly brought this country down!

The CIA says Bin Laden will strike
But Bush is out that day riding his bike
Not till 9/11 does he figure out the score
Sees thousands lying dead, Twin Towers no more…!
Here comes the ballad of the Republicans
Rumsfeld, Rice and Cheney take a stand
Take us to Iraq thru Afghanistan
Can’t take our asses back out again
In eight long years they nearly brought this country down!

Did you see the scowl on Dick Cheney’s face
When someone said torture is a human disgrace
That’s no longer torture, he tells Fox news
Those Amnesty wimps are just singing the blues…!
Here comes the ballad of the Republicans
They read our mail and tapped our phones
Said they could send anyone to jail
Then erased all White House email…
That showed eight long years of bringing this country down!

They never find any W.M.D.’s
They even search Abu Ghraib detainees
Turns out Saddam had run out of gas
And we’re just bullies kicking his sorry ass…!
Here comes the ballad of the Republicans
Acting like the ugliest Americans
Paul Wolfowitz lusting at The Bank
Larry Craig tapping at toilet tanks
In eight long years they nearly brought this country down!

By now the middle class is feeling poor
Can’t afford college or doctors anymore
Wages shrink but the rich keep getting fat
They even try to take social security back…!
Here comes the ballad of the Republicans
They told us lies, rewarded their friends
Like Halliburton, Goldman Sachs and more
Then sent ill-equipped soldiers off to war
In eight long years they nearly brought this country down!

Back in New Orleans the wind starts to howl,
Water is a-rising, Brownie’s on the prowl,
Bush is on a plane heading west for the coast
Flies over the waters just to see if blacks can float…!
Here comes the ballad of the Republicans
They ran our country like a Christian scam
Tried to keep Terry Schiavo undead
Pulled the plug on stem cell research instead
For eight long years they nearly brought this country down!

Where are you when Wall Street gets the bends?
They’re in the vault handing billions to their friends
Some of those billions simply disappear
The rest go to bonuses for needy millionaires
Here comes the ballad of the Republicans
The ones who told us not to lie or sin
And then were caught with pants askew
Ensign, Foley, Vitter to name a few who…
In eight long years nearly brought this country down!

Then there’s forgetful Alberto Gonzales
In all of Bush’s gang none needs more solace
‘Cept Harriet Miers in her Supreme Court mess
Or Scooter Libby lying for his V.P.-ness
Here comes the ballad of the Republicans
Said global warming would improve our tans
Their senior drug plan was so nice
‘Cept they made the U.S. pay list price
In eight long years they nearly brought this country down!

Their biggest crime isn’t Katrina or Iraq
Or turning U.S. Attorneys into G.O.P. hacks
Or leaving Afghanistan with the enemy still intact
It’s torturing the truth till they break its damn back…!
Here comes the ballad of the Republicans
Eight years of plunder down in Washington
They turned our surplus into debts
Gave shoddy care to wounded vets…
In eight long years they nearly brought this country down!

Now look at this mess the Bush gang leaves behind
Two wars in limbo, Wall Street flying blind
An economy gasping, the states in default
Obama tries to clean up and they claim it’s all his fault…!
Here comes the ballad of the Republicans
They pray that you can just forgive their sins
And vote them back in power again
Forgetting all the lies, the graft and pain…
That for eight long years…
eight god-forsaken years…
nearly brought this country down!

The above lyrics pretty much speak for themselves. I wrote them to be sung to the tune of Bob Dylan's "Hurricane". With any luck, I'll soon make a video featuring photos and footage of the events and people mentioned in the song. I am sorry if my brash lyrics disturb your peace of mind. I do not claim they represent the Truth as much as they do MY Truth. All these events happened just a few short years ago, yet so many appear to have conveniently forgotten them. Hence the need for someone to write "The Ballad of The Republicans". I'm pleased it was me.

My Commencement Speech

2010-06-08T05:12:00.000-07:00

To The Graduates Of The Class Of 2010:

You are here today at a critical crossroads of your life. For most of your 22 years you’ve been taught to work hard, obey the rules, listen with respect to your elders and to trust that every effort you make will receive an ample and just reward.

You recognize that sound, don’t you? A few of your parents and teachers couldn’t keep their opinions to themselves it seems…but let us examine the cause of their laughter.

Yes, I am afraid that for most of your life you’ve been handed a script from “Leave It To Beaver” and that all those wonderful principles I enumerated earlier won’t take you very far down the Road of Life in today’s America. In fact, if you insist on playing by the rules and trusting in the fairness of others you’ll very quickly get run over and flattened like so much road kill on that very same Road of Life.

All across America speakers like me are admonishing new graduates like you to live up to principles that are no longer relevant or practical. Principles that are no longer even acknowledged in today’s business world. Principles which, like fragile Louisiana marshlands, cannot survive today’s overwhelming inflow of dark, viscous wealth-making ideas and ventures.

Go ahead, take a deep breath and smell the oil vapors. That’s America! That’s your future! It ain’t roses but it sure smells sweet.

Yes, other commencement speakers would tell you to work hard, play fair and be nice as you emerge from college to make your way in the world; I’m here to advise you to look both ways before crossing the street and to pick the other guy’s pocket before he picks yours.

Those other commencement speakers are frozen in time, spouting axioms and adages that long ago ran out of gas on the American Road of Life. Like scenes from an old black and white Hollywood movie they make us smile but they don’t prepare us for a world that’s more reminiscent of “Jaws” than it is of “Flipper.”

“Be nice,” they say.

I say “Be nice when it helps, cruel when necessary, vicious when it counts.” Bernie Madoff was a nice guy, I am told, but he never forgot to take all the money off the table before he went home.

“Don’t forget the Golden Rule” they say, most of them unable to keep a straight face while saying it.

“I say “Don’t forget the Golden Rule”, only my Golden Rule is a little different from theirs. My Golden Rule says “Go for all the gold, and screw the rules!”

They would tell you to, “Follow your bliss” in choosing a career.

I would advise you to follow the money.

So in short, members of the graduating class of 2010, I advise you to live richly as well as wisely, to always give to yourself first (and maybe keep it all anyway), to always take the largest slice of the pie, to choose financial gain over spiritual growth, and to always want more physical possessions which, even though they rust and corrupt (as Jesus pointed out), they also clean up pretty easily these days. You can’t complain about that.

So yes, graduates, feel free to live lives of unbridled hunger, unquenchable thirst and unfettered avarice, happily unburdened by a commencement speech that urges you to seek out greater challenges while building strength of character.

For those of you who would like greater instruction on how to achieve your own wealth-based lifestyle filled with houses, boats and servants, see me at Webster Hall immediately after Dean Whiting hands out your diplomas. And don’t forget to bring your checkbooks.

Inspired by my minister Ken Read-Brown's sermon last Sunday, "The Commencement Speech I Would Give", which happily offered more sane and soul-enriching advice than I offer in my speech. I was also inspired by the fact I'm giving a reading in NYC tomorrow night and wanted to create something new for the occasion.

Tales Of The Book Part Fifteen

2010-05-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

SOMETHING THERE IS

Something there is that loves balance and righteous redress. That tips the scales to measure out justice and knows no judgments other than the ones we declare for ourselves. Something there is that equates giving with the gifts we receive, and arrows sent into the darkness with barbs that come back and wound us without warning.

Something there is that deals out measure for measure as though they were cards placed thoughtfully in a solemn pack of Tarot. For each Fate dealt to another there is one that comes back to the dealer. For each smile offered to a stranger there is another that comes back as an unexpected offering.

Something there is that won't allow me to denigrate another without denigrating myself. Or to devalue my efforts when I have given my all to the enterprise. Something there is that knows when laying down bricks of kindness and devotion to others I am building a home for my spirit that casts shadows on palaces and mansions.

Something there is that knows true wealth accumulates in the heart and is the only capital I can give away yet never exhaust. Were I to gather all the riches of Rockefellers and Kings and Oil Barons and hold them locked with a miser's love in the deepest vault, I would be the most impoverished of spirits walking the planet.

Something there is that won't allow me to take away the rights of others without losing the ones I hold most dear. With each wall I erect to keep out those I fear, I carve out deeper levels to the prison within which I am held captive. How far from the sun I fall when I build a world to exclude those on whom the sun shines freely.

Something there is that lifts up and honors the gifts of life and love. That breaks through the darkness of a wounded spirit like tendrils of grass breaking through the deepest asphalt. Something there is that will ever rise above fear and the pitiful acts of frightened people and self-serving governments.

Something there is that knows the measure of a man or a woman and the gifts which, by their offering, they have chosen to receive. Something there is that tips the scales to measure out justice and knows no judgments other than the ones we declare for ourselves.

Something there is that lets us build a world for ourselves as we would build a world for others.

Something there is that is writing this now.

Something there is that is reading this now, as well.

From "How To Train A Rock" by Paul Steven Stone, ©2009 Paul Steven Stone

COPS AND ROBBERS

2010-05-09T18:59:00.000-07:00

When I grow up I’m going to become a cop in Massachusetts. I’m going to carry a gun, stand around construction sites all day, scarf up all the overtime I can get, earn a quarter of a million dollars a year and intimidate anyone who tries to institute changes that could affect my wealthy lifestyle.

When the Commonwealth tries to use civilian flaggers at one of my construction sites I’ll come down on them so hard they’ll think twice about doing it again. I’ll scare the living daylights out of the flagger, even threaten to arrest her, start a protest at the site, get my fellow officers to shout threats and obscenities, get my union to file lawsuits and all the time point out what a threat to public safety the state is creating.

I don’t care that all 49 other states use civilian flaggers. This is Massachusetts. We use police officers at our sites, and pay them for four hour shifts even if they work only 15 minutes, because we care about safety. And because the police union is so magical it can make 1000 politicians dance on the head of a pin.

And if I can’t become a cop in Massachusetts when I grow up, I guess I’ll become a fireman.

Jesus In Arizona

2010-05-05T07:11:00.000-07:00

And Jesus went to the desert, looked amidst the angry crowds and spoke of truths both ancient and new.

Raising his arms, he declared, "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'  But I say to you, first know who your enemies are. Hate is too sharp a sword to be swung indiscriminately.

“Your enemies are those whose skin color is different than yours. Your Father in Heaven would not have made them different from you if He hadn’t meant for them to be easily identified, even from a distance.

“Then, too, your enemies are those who speak in different tongues from yours. Again, your Father in Heaven was making sure you could effortlessly identify your enemies, even in total darkness.

“You have heard that it was said “It is better to love your enemies than to hate them, to bless those who curse you, and to do good to those who persecute you.” Those words of mine were misquoted in a leftist newspaper. What I actually said was, “It is better to deport your enemies than to have them living nearby, better to lock them up than allow them to hold jobs, and much better to let their families starve or go homeless than to tie up welfare funds meant entirely for the poor, the weak and the deserving.

“You have heard it said that your Father in heaven makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and unjust alike. That is true, my children, but He never meant for the sun to shine down on illegal aliens on Our side of the border. And if it seems especially dry on Their side of the border, such is the love He shares for those who so easily forget their rightful place.

“For if you love those who don’t belong in your country, what reward will you have left once they’ve eaten your food, taken your jobs, slept with your children, robbed you in your sleep and sent for the rest of their family from Mexico City? Stick to greeting and loving only your brethren and business contacts. Therefore you shall be rich and comfortable, just as your Father in Heaven meant you to be.”

Then Jesus called for questions.

When Mary Wed Abby

2010-04-29T13:12:00.000-07:00

THE WATER IS WIDE
(Celebrating Six Years Of Romantic Justice)

The water is wide, I can't cross over
And neither have I wings to fly
Build me a boat that can carry two
And both shall row, my love and I

Once, long ago, they charted different courses and followed different stars as they sailed toward their destiny and ever closer to each other. Neither knew the other would appear along the way like a treasured companion once lost and now found, nor that all of us—a church filled with friends, relatives and well-wishers—would gather to celebrate and honor this love they had shared for seventeen years.

There is a ship and she sails the sea
She's loaded deep as deep can be
But not as deep as the love I'm in
I know not how I sink or swim

Theirs was a voyage and a love affair not embarked upon lightly. Two women whose intentions of the heart broke society's rules of acceptable behavior with each smile and tender thought that passed between them. Now, no longer guilty of some unnameable crime, no longer forced to hide their love as if it were shameful, no longer barred from rites and privileges held high and unreachable by a world so myopic it could only recognize the most ordinary of love's many guises, they came to our church to sanctify and solemnize their bond.

Oh, love is handsome and love is fine
The sweetest flower when first it's new
But love grows old and waxes cold
And fades away like summer dew

How the heart overflowed to see their faces lit with joy and, yes, the nervous uncertainty of brides. How like brass horns welcoming home a host of angels did the words of the brief ceremony cut through the darkness of our separate lives to feed our hungry spirits. We were there to celebrate life and love, and to bear witness to two lives joining as one. There was no place in this centuries-old sanctuary for fears or concerns about hateful people, peevish politicians or homophobic religious groups. Such negativity could not be kept at bay indefinitely, but it would not find itself a welcome guest at this particular wedding.

The water is wide, I can't cross over,
And neither have I wings to fly
Build me a boat that can carry two
And both shall row, my love and I

Now they are wed. The two are joined as one. And the voyages they chart, the waters they navigate, will from this day forward be mapped out on a single axis. A few short years ago, no one could have predicted we'd gather today to celebrate their marriage, in a church that has seen marriage vows exchanged hundreds of times in its 329 years. And though something profoundly different happened this morning, something also remained profoundly unchanged. So that one day, perhaps, with the sharp vision hindsight often brings, it may seem less significant that two women were married this day than that love, once again, overcame all obstacles.

Build me a boat that can carry two
And both shall row, my love and I
And both shall row, my love and I

Copyright ©2004 Paul Steven Stone
"Water is Wide," traditional lyrics

Next month we celebrate the sixth anniversary of legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. I wrote this commentary at that time to celebrate the wedding of two women who, after years of sharing their love on the fringes of society's acceptance, were now allowed to step openly into the center where all God's children belong. I am proud to live in Massachusetts where even in our imperfection we sometimes get it right. This was one of those times.

The Church of Sacred Vampires

2010-04-14T12:43:00.000-07:00

“Father Porter is coming!” a terrorized child would shout. Within seconds the hallways of St. Mary’s Grammar School would empty, its children fleeing in abject terror, knowing there was no one to protect them, no one to stand between them and a serial rapist and pedophile priest. A pedophile priest who loved to feast off their youth and innocence like a hungry vampire. A vampire who had been placed in their midst by a church seemingly, amazingly, shockingly unconcerned with their welfare.

A church that would move Father Porter from one parish to the next, from one hunting preserve to the next, for the next 14 years, putting hundreds of unsuspecting children within his sights and suddenly at risk.

Father Porter’s sexual crimes against children began before his ordination in 1959, but stepped up to epidemic levels in April 1960 when he was assigned to St. Mary’s Church and its parochial grammar school in North Attleboro, Massachusetts. By March 1964 he had been removed from his pastoral duties after molesting anywhere from 30 to 100 children—depending on whose estimates you believe—many of them repeatedly, some on a weekly basis.

After a year of treatment that included electro-shock therapy, Father Porter's cure was accepted as a matter of faith, his transgressions were forgiven, and he was reassigned to Sacred Heart Church in New Bedford, Massachusetts where he would molest another 28 children before being removed to a different parish in just a year’s time.

And on and on it sadly went…

These days, stories of the Catholic Church shielding and enabling pedophile priests are so common it is easy for the mind to focus on statistics—the tally of children violated, names of parishes afflicted, millions of dollars paid to victims—that we often lose sight of the nightmare the victims endured or the young lives that were destroyed one after another by one rapacious priest after another.

Imagine what it must have been like for 11-year-old Paul Merry to be fondled by Father Porter on a weekly basis for three years. Or to be viciously sodomized, as happened to an 11-year-old girl who tried to intervene in Father Porter’s rape of a six-year-old child. And think what a living hell life was for two hundred boys who were repeatedly molested in a Wisconsin school for the deaf. The priest this time was Father Lawrence Murphy, and he regularly violated defenseless deaf boys in his office, his car, on class excursions, at his mother’s country house, in the confessional and in their dormitory beds at night. There was no safe haven from Father Murphy, no “Get Out Of Hell Free” card for these deaf and vulnerable children of God.

Father Murphy, who was never charged with a crime or defrocked for his sins, had been promoted to run the school in 1963 even though students had complained about his predatory behavior back in the late 1950s. Documents show that three successive archbishops in Wisconsin were told of Father Murphy’s crimes against children but never reported it to criminal or civil authorities. Instead, the not-so-good Father was eventually transferred to the Diocese of Superior in northern Wisconsin where he spent his last 24 years working unhindered with children in parishes, schools and even a juvenile detention center.

Anyone who reads a newspaper knows these events aren’t isolated, nor are they anomalies. Given the large number of children molested, the many years those crimes were kept hidden, the long list of bishops and cardinals involved in the cover-ups, the number of dioceses and countries affected, it’s shockingly clear the leadership culture of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church is corrupt. So corrupt it could foster the commission and concealment of unspeakable acts against two generations of children. So completely corrupt it would take outsiders and lawsuits and a rising sea of outrage to force the church to finally start valuing the safety of children over the privileges of priests.

When you read how blithely and indifferently the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church responded to the savaging of children by priests, when you watch with disbelief as archdiocese after archdiocese, country after country, joins the list of the vampire priests’ feeding grounds, you realize those who stand guard over the Vatican long ago abandoned Jesus’ precepts in order to protect and perpetuate their own power and privilege. Even when local church officials took action, as did Archbishop Weakland of Milwaukee who asked his superiors to defrock Father Murphy, requests were almost uniformly met with an indifference that resonated all the way from the inner walls of the Vatican.

How strange then that this enabler of pedophile priests, this destroyer of childhoods and lifetimes, this institution too-tightly-held by the corrupters themselves to ever really change, should tell others how to live their lives, how to vote, who to like, what to think.

That these men who kept sacred the freedom and hunting privileges of priests who feasted on children could lecture the world on the inviolate rights of the unborn! What hypocrisy, what sham morality!

When will someone tell them they have lost their moral authority?

When will someone tell them they gave it up long ago on an altar of sacred vampires and broken childhoods?

And when will they ever change?

My apologies to any Roman Catholics who take offense at what I've said. My anger and disgust is not with them, nor with their religion, but with an institution that could so grievously abandon its responsibility to its flock. Jesus said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me." I can't imagine what he would have said about predator priests who cruelly suck the lifeblood and innocence from little children.

A Candle For Those Who Never Give Up

2010-04-06T10:35:00.000-07:00

AN EASTER PRAYER

On this Easter Sunday I light our chalice for all the resurrectionists in the world. The ones who always get back up after a fall…those who lose at love but stay in the game…those who lose their job and let that loss be the gateway to a new career…those who come back to their sport after a devastating injury. I especially light this chalice for those who experience losses of unimaginable impact—the death of loved ones, the loss of their retirement savings, the destruction of their homes, the taking of their freedom—yet who refuse to succumb to cynicism and despair.

I light this chalice to honor and recognize the unconquerable resilience of the human spirit.

The above words were spoken as I lit the chalice last Sunday at my Unitarian-Universalist church in Hingham, MA.

Tales Of The Book Part Fourteen

2010-04-04T05:49:00.000-07:00

THE RESURRECTION OF 11-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN

Somewhere long ago he was once a child.

His world was a child’s world where adults towered over the landscape in a wondrous sort of mute majesty and rarely slowed down to listen to children.

Somewhere long ago he was a blueprint of the man he might one day become. A youthful creature brimming with untested strengths and unexplored depths. But he was also small, needful and, most of all, vulnerable. He had to trust that the giants in his world would provide for his needs. That they would nourish and care for him, and keep him safe from harm.

Somewhere long ago he was once a child. And as a child he saw the world through an innocent’s eyes. So, when an adult in that world, a parish priest, rose up like a menacing shadow to darken his life, he could only fall back on his limited experience to understand what was happening.

And there was no understanding.

There was only a child lost in confusion and fear. A child deeply hurt and frightened. A child surrounded by people but engulfed by a sense of isolation. A child who felt guilty rather than victimized, as if by questioning the actions of a priest—a man as close to God as any mortal could come—he himself had done something wrong.

Somewhere long ago he was once a child and used a child's logic to order his world. Thus, when he learned he could no longer trust adults to keep him safe, he did what he must to survive. He created boxes in his mind. Boxes to hold those things that frightened or angered or confused him. Boxes he could keep hidden. Hidden from the world, hidden from the priests, even hidden from himself.

In one box he placed his anger at his parents for not protecting him. In another he placed the memory of the innocence that had been taken from him. In another he placed his fear of intimacy, having seen what happens when you allow someone to come too close.

And in the largest box of all he placed himself, an eleven year old boy frozen in time. It was the only safe harbor that child would know.

Many years later the boy had grown into a man, and the boxes which had been buried in the darkness of his memory began to fall apart like broken dresser drawers. They would spill out their hazardous contents at the oddest moments. When he found himself standing outside a church. When he noticed how vulnerable his children seemed while asleep. When people who thought they knew him, told him how lucky he was to have the gifts he’d been given. Or whenever he felt threatened or frightened, like a little child hiding in a grownup’s body.

For many years those leaking boxes and their toxic seepage dominated the man’s life. They undermined his most intimate relationships, they kept him running from job to job, they sent him searching for relief in alcohol, drugs and an endless succession of mindless distractions. Worst of all, they unleashed on those he loved the pent-up fury of a rage that had been burning for most of his life.

Sitting there on the TV screen, somewhere on the other side of the continent, he talks to a reporter about his painful past and why, after all these years, he is finally confronting his demons and opening up his boxes. He is one of a number of men who are forcing the Catholic Church to face up to a pattern of almost bestial behavior by some of its priests. Forcing the church to acknowledge it had condoned crimes any civilized society would condemn as savage and depraved.

He is one of many such men who, like the lost boys of Neverland, never lived out their boyhoods but instead placed themselves, frozen in time, in their own inner boxes. And now the boxes are being open. The victims are telling their stories.

The healing has begun.

And the church, perhaps, is being dragged from its own peculiar set of closed and darkly hidden boxes.

But as he sits there at his kitchen table holding his five year old daughter in an unconscious protective embrace, I see more on the TV screen than the angry victim, the outraged reformer and the loving father.

I see the man whose blueprint—once tragically unrealized—was now coming to life. Resurrected after all those lost years. Hopefully to blossom, even with all the discovery and pain that still lay ahead.

For that blueprint, too, had been hidden inside a box.

Waiting for years in darkness.

Waiting to be uncovered and brought back to life.

Waiting for an eleven year old boy to whisper it was now safe to come out and play.

From "How To Train A Rock" by Paul Steven Stone, ©2009 Paul Steven Stone. It's somewhat sad and amazing to realize I had first written this essay in 2002 and yet today so much still remains to be uncovered, so many wait to be healed, and, most sadly of all, those responsible for enabling, condoning and ignoring these bestial acts remain protected and unpunished. Later in the week I hope to speak further about the culture of complicity and elitism that allowed hundreds of priests to prey like vampires upon thousands of helpless children across the vast expanse of decades and continents.

Sidekicks Of The Canyon

2010-03-13T18:26:00.000-08:00

A remembrance of a great spirit and friend.

Dear David:

There’s a photo I’ll forever cherish. It shows the two of us standing together, posing like two campfire buddies for the camera. We were starting a five-day rafting trip down the Colorado River. And there we were—poised to raft through canyons carved out millennia ago—two old friends, both a little overweight. Maybe you a little more overweight than me. Anyone could look at that photo and tell we were buddies, David, clearly comfortable with sharing each other’s space…two sidekicks of the canyon poised to begin yet another adventure.

That photograph came to mind several times over the course of the last seven months. The seven months it took for Cancer to write a triumphant final chapter to the last days of your life, the life of David Sumner Cutler. And it was a triumphant ending, David. Glorious in many ways. How wonderful for you to be surrounded by the love of family and friends. What a gift to have Josh, Ben or Carolyn read you the daily postings on your Caringbridge.org web site. And what a marvelous idea—a web site where all of us could go to celebrate and share memories of your life!

And so many people did. Over 4,500 visits.

You heard from old friends, aging marine buddies, former and current employees, minor acquaintances, children of friends, business partners, ex-wives, all manner of passersby on your journey through life. And many of them had a story to share. A story about you—about how you helped shape their lives, or mentored them, or made their lives richer, or taught them to be good journalists or helped nurture their communities. What a difference you made in their lives, Mr. Cutler, and we were privileged to witness you hearing it for yourself, taking it in, learning what an impact your life had on so many others.

But there’s a third sidekick who’s missing from the ‘Sidekicks of the Canyon’ photo, David, and she was definitely there—from start to finish—at your side all the way, a loving guide and navigator (and sometimes pizza-orderer), dear Catherine. She created a space around you that was large enough to contain all our pained spirits. I cannot say enough about your wisdom, Catherine, your generosity or your strength of purpose and insight. So many of us owe you a debt for your graceful, faithful management of David’s final days. Your strength gave us strength. You were the rock so many of us held onto as the tide steadily rose.

Catherine, I speak for all who hold David in their hearts when I say with sincere love and appreciation, “Thank you!”

The rest of your family was there, too, David, surrounding you with love and support. Foot massages from your sister Gail and twin sister Meg were little things that meant so much. Meg’s husband Jim taking night duty, as did Catherine’s brother Jay. Mindy and Patti lending their nursing expertise. And, of course there were your children, helping you, loving you, searching for their place in a world where one of their pillars of strength would no longer be standing.

I can hear you barking out their names in your best patrician voice: Josh, Ben, Jonathan; Mandy, Carolyn, Becky. And their spouses, your other children: Leslie, Nancy, Heidi and Mike. How you enjoyed those July 4th family gatherings, those outings in the boat with Mike and Jonathan, taking Becky to play softball or ride her horse, dressing up as Santa for all the little ones at Christmas. Nothing filled your spirit and brightened your skies better than family. Take a look at any photo with you holding a grandchild, David, and you’ll see the biggest, sloppiest, unabashedly happy grin splashed across your face.

Now, I would not be a true friend if I passed up this opportunity to remind local residents that your son Josh is running for public office, and you would appreciate their votes.

How proud you were of Josh’s efforts to enter public service, even when he lost in an earlier bid to become state rep. I remember you outside the polls pumping arms as if they were attached to water pumps, telling anyone who would listen “I’m Josh Cutler’s dad!” as if that obviously explained your excess of pride and enthusiasm.

Oh, what a delight you were when the wind filled your sails! How many lives did you enrich with that wide open, ready-to-engage spirit? With that ever-ready laugh, that eager expectant smile, those rich, patrician articulations you used both for scolding and pontification, none of which was meant to be taken seriously? You could sound like the severest Scrooge yet never lose that Peter Pan twinkle in your eye. A scold from you was nectar to a neophyte journalist or a struggling sales rep. You were the boss people complain about but really love—because you trusted them enough—cared about them enough—to push them outside their comfort zone, to test their courage and plumb their depths.

“Give it a try,” you would encourage them. “Go for it.” Always pushing them, opening doors, standing behind them. I know because, almost 30 years ago, I was a young inexperienced writer and you phoned out of the blue to offer me a weekly newspaper column. And thus, “A Stone’s Throw” was born, a column that would see hundreds of stories, essays and insights published in print and online across a span of 25 years.

What a gift to my life! What a candy store for a writer to be given! You changed my life, dear friend, even before you became my friend. You took a chance on someone who had no experience. You opened a door for me as a writer and gave me a forum in which to develop my talent.

Ah, the curious workings of fate that put two lives such as ours on intersecting courses? We were not always sidekicks of the canyon, nor would we have seemed likely candidates. You were a child of privilege, at least on your mother’s side, the Sumner side of your family tree. I was a struggling writer, born in the Bronx but capable of speaking fluent English. From such meager ingredients a great enduring friendship would arise.

You were never one to dwell on emotions, were you, David? Discussing emotions went counter to your natural reticence. How hard for you to say the words “I love you.” Remember that time in Norwell when I told you, as a friend, that I loved you? You responded like a burdened nobleman, declaring in a fit of noblesse oblige, “Well I guess these things must be said”, adding, “I love you, too” in a hasty conclusion. Watching you exchange “I love you’s” with all of us these last few months…well you came a long way, baby, that’s all I can say.

And when Fate (with a capital ‘f’) touched your shoulder and tested your mettle last summer, your overriding concern was not for yourself but for the impact your illness would have on your children, especially those who were youngest and most vulnerable. There was never a hint of complaint about life’s injustices, or the cruelties of fate, just a resigned Marine-like commitment to see things through as best you could. And so you did, Old Friend. With your customary grace and silent strength.

You were always destined to be a hero, David. It was in your DNA. Not just in Viet Nam where, by braving enemy fire to retrieve a fallen comrade, you received bullet wounds to both your legs. In some ways it’s easier to be a hero in war than in peace, in Khe Sanh rather than Duxbury, easier to take up the mantle of leadership in Viet Nam than in New England. But you were a hero for all seasons. The letters to your web site repeatedly speak of you as a personal hero to those who knew and worked under you. Hero, mentor, counselor, role model, inspiration and, always, friend. Raw testimony to your leadership skills in the trenches of the real world, in everyday life. You were huge in their lives, David, but you never saw it till the end. Just four weeks ago, before the Caringbridge web site was launched, you described your life as unremarkable—as if it had never been touched by greatness.

Most of us here today know the greatness contained in your life, David. But you never knew how good you were. Your huge heart, generous spirit and tolerant nature were so intrinsic to how you lived your life you couldn’t see how special they were. Nor could you see how many lives were influenced by yours. You and I shared each other’s secrets, but you never told me about the single mother you helped with a job, or the photo journalist whose career you launched with a camera, or the reporter you told not to worry about the $25,000 his story cost the paper, or the sick couple you kept on the payroll for six months, or the dozens of others who wrote to testify what a difference you made in their lives.

I always thought Viet Nam was the anvil on which your character was beaten, shaped and polished. But if Nam was the anvil then the United States Marines Corps had to be the hammer. The corps gave you a palpable sense of yourself, and of your capacity to overcome enormous odds, a guiding star that stayed with you your entire life.

How else would you have had the nerve to turn your back on a weekly paycheck from the Patriot Ledger to make the biggest decision of your professional life—to start publishing a community newspaper. You were all of 29 when you, your wife Suzie and Michael Sterns started the Marshfield Mariner with your saved-up vacation pay. You were destined to be a publisher, David. You knew instinctively which elements made for a good local newspaper, which stories to feature. When it came to the business side, however, your business model rivaled the bumblebee for its ability to fly when the laws of physics say it should never have gotten off the ground. By all rights, the Mariner papers should have gone out of business any number of times.

My writing a weekly column for the Mariner was the bedrock of our friendship. A friendship that over the years saw both of us neck-deep in one adventure after another. Running out of gas on the North River. Living as Odd Couple roomies when my marriage failed. Retracing the Colorado River expedition your Grandmother braved 65 years earlier. Discovering Iceland. Escaping from Iceland. Almost getting stuck on a sandbar next to Nantucket. Braving open seas in a boat too small for such nonsense. And learning to tell jokes about cancer and death, especially when cancer and death were staring you in the face.

“We joke about death and dying,” you proudly informed a visitor one day, as if we no longer followed silly outmoded social conventions. What better place for laughter than a sick room? Who better to laugh than the man whose remaining laughs could now be counted in single or double digits? And we had a lot of laughs during those last crowded months. Best of all, you got to hear from many folks who loved you, whose lives would have been different without you. Like George Bailey, the James Stewart character in “It’s A Wonderful Life”, you were given a glimpse of your life’s real value. And just like George Bailey, you discovered you were the richest man in town.

It was an honor being with you these last seven months, sharing the adventure with you and Catherine. Just as its been an honor sharing my road with you for almost 30 years. I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive you for going away so soon, leaving me to carry on without my dear friend and fellow adventurer at my side. I had planned for us to grow old sitting in boats, talking about grandchildren.

But, as John Lennon said, life is what happens while you’re busy making plans. It was by the side of the pond at my Plymouth cottage that you first told me you were sick. Remember what I said? I said I wasn’t going to lose you. And I’m not. I’ll always have you in my heart, dear friend, in my memories, and in my prayers.

You and I will meet up again, someday, somewhere, eager for our next adventure, just as one might expect from two old and trusty sidekicks of the canyon.

Goodbye, David. I love you.

David Sumner Cutler passed away February 28, 2010. He was a wonderful fellow to have in your life whether he was your friend, father, partner, boss or neighbor. In giving the above eulogy I was fulfilling an ironic arc in which David, by discovering me as a writer, had chosen me almost 30 years earlier to chronicle and honor his life. As you can tell, I loved David, greatly enjoyed our shared time together, and looked forward to our growing old and serene together, secure in our friendship. Life is what happens when you're busy making plans! Goodbye, old friend. Thanks for the laughs, the hugs and for just being you. Which was pretty special.

Tales Of The Book Part Thirteen

2010-02-25T18:48:00.000-08:00

"OR SO IT SEEMS"
By Paul Steven Stone

Reviewed by Manson Solomon

If the title of Paul Steven Stone’s novel doesn’t tell us that we are about to enter a world in which we are not quite sure what is real, the blind elephant tapping his way across the cover confirms it: something different is about to happen in these pages. The old Hindu legend of the blind men each feeling a different part of the elephant and coming to different conclusions as to what they are confronting is well known, but when it is the elephant itself which is portrayed as blind and groping its way through the world, what’s up with that?

Stone’s view of the world as it might appear through the eyes of a blind elephant will not surprise those already familiar with his wry sense of humor portrayed in his collection of pieces assembled in How to Train A Rock. Serious stuff masquerading as burlesque, Mark Twain meets Philip Roth meets Saul Bellow meets Paul Steven Stone. The hilarity begins very early on with the protagonist being dragged towards a ratty couch by his determined would-be seducer, who, we later discover, turns out to be his nine-year old son’s schoolteacher. Whom he discovered at a bizarre singles dance which he finds himself attending after his disorienting divorce. And then there is the hilarious encounter with the gold-digging single mother whom he picks up at the scouts’ pinewood derby -- where his creative effort to fashion a car from a wooden block – painted pink! -- results in embarrassment for him and his son. Yes, it’s funny, but it’s also serious, since behind the humor the protagonist’s escapades constitute an existential exploration, a quest to find solid reality – what is -- behind the illusion of appearances -- what seems -- and to restore dignity to his life after a debilitating divorce.

Sound like Bellow’s Moses Herzog with a sense of humor, Roth’s Alexander Portnoy without the hysteria? Well, perhaps so, since where Bellow tried to restore his hero’s emotional equilibrium via intellectual scribblings, and Roth paraded his overwrought Freudian ejaculations for help, Stone gives us an ongoing dialog conducted with The Bapucharya, a giggling videotape Hindu guru. Ah, the elephant, the Hindu god Ganesh seeking reality beyond the facade of illusion! But, being Stone, the dialog is laced with wry humor, parody, irony, is never didactic, always offbeat, amusing. How is this possible? Well, you’ll have to read it yourself to find out and to have your sight restored. And if you don’t make it all the way to Enlightenment, at the very least you will be wholeheartedly entertained while engaged in the quest.

Manson's review struck me as particularly perceptive, especially as it places the book into direct comparisons between the works of Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. Very interesting, I thought, and well worth sharing. So here we are. Sharing.

THE OPEN PERCH

2010-02-14T10:42:00.000-08:00

(Written For Amy Before She Came Into My Life)

I imagine her as a bird. All silver in her feathered finery as she flies over landscapes reduced in size like a topographical map.

Where she is coming from I cannot say. But where she is bound, the far distant perch that calls to her like a guiding star . . . ah, there's a thought that brings up a smile!

For hers is a journey that could take her across continents, lifetimes, even the universe for all I know. While here I wait in the crow's nest of my solitary life, watching for a woman whose features I won't recognize but whose heart I will know intimately with the certainty of a lover.

And in truth I am not waiting, but also flying in my soul to meet her, a journey that has taken me across the span of my own lifetime and the gulf of that same mysteriously mapped universe.

I cannot say when she and I last met--in what former life, in what manner of relationship. We could have been brother and sister, parent and child, even lovers in a doomed marriage. But in this lifetime we have passed through each other's night skies without taking notice, living our lives apart while slowly and inevitably being drawn together like planets falling into each other's orbits.

Now, it is time for us to meet and I know it. Just as she must know the same truth within her own heart. What a beautiful illusion this is. What pride the Master Magician must feel to see us flying towards each other while the watching world believes us stuck in our lives, trudging across the same mundane existences we trudged across yesterday, and all the yesterdays before.

But no measure of time or distance truly separates two kindred spirits. What matters most is the rightness of the moment not the limitations of physics. What matters most is the urgency of two hearts to once again be joined.

And so I feel her presence. I sense the shadow of her wings as it glides across my soul's landscape as certainly as I sense fragrance from flowers and moisture in a mist. We are flying towards each other through a sky free of cloud or obstruction, both of us unable to resist the accelerating pull of love's gravity.

In a world where the laws of physics have been superceded by the inevitability of attraction, time no longer holds sway over possibilities; yet ironically it has somehow become the right time for this cosmic connection to be made. The right moment for her to find me and for me to find her.

I imagine her as a bird. Flying with a certainty known only by an arrow truly shot or a soul mate heading for the open perch in her lover's heart.

She is flying to me. And I am flying to her.

Two souls who, in the perfection of some unwritten Grand Plan, will once again become one.

Love, I am waiting.

A LITTLE SHORT-TERM MEMORY LOSS

2010-01-29T09:24:00.000-08:00

He was one of my more sober and saner friends. So it was surprising to see him so worked up, so inexpressively frustrated by his inability to remember most of what happened during the last ten years.

“I get flashes,” he admitted, “sometimes full blown images that bring back those events. But mostly they’re gone.”

“For instance…” I prodded.

“Like this budget mess,” he explained. “I get so worked up by Obama spending so much money. But then I get one of these flashes and I remember, oh yeah, Republicans were in charge for the last ten years. It’s like I totally forgot they spent incredible sums on a small war that was totally unnecessary! Shelled out billions to Halliburton, Blackwater and other Republican-supporting friends, with no accounting, no auditing, no…”

“Okay,” I said, trying to calm him down. “Anybody could forget a trillion-dollar mistake like the Iraq War.”

“Yes, but I forget it all. You hear me screaming about the cost of healthcare reform, but then…sort of hazily…it comes back to me that Republicans voted in prescription drug coverage for seniors that forbade the government from using its buying power to negotiate lower prices with the drug companies.

“How could I forget something so egregiously wasteful as forcing the government to pay list price!”

“Do you remember Terry Schiavo…?” I asked tentatively.

“Only when I find myself arguing against ‘death panels’ or some other leftist intrusion into people’s lives.”

“How about the fact we Americans tortured our prisoners?”

“I still don’t believe Americans in the employ of their government would commit acts of torture. Of course that depends on how you define torture…”

“Meaning…?”

“One man’s torture is another man’s enhanced interrogation!”

“You do remember a number of people died from those enhanced interrogation sessions?”

“Not really. At most, I remember some Fox TV commentator offering to get waterboarded to show what pussies the liberals were.”

“Well this is pretty bad,” I sadly acknowledged. “If what you say is true, you probably have no memory of the Great Financial Collapse that occurred the last year of Bush’s term?”

“Is that why we’re suffering 10% unemployment? And here I was thinking Obama had ruined our economy in merely a year’s time.”

“Do you recall Dick Cheney outing a CIA spy to get back at her husband for writing a New York Times Op Ed piece?”

“I vaguely recall something.”

“Or that we had advance information about Al Quaeda’s plans to attack us, and that the CIA titled its August 6, 2001 Presidential Briefing: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”?

“No, I don’t.”

“How about tax cuts?" I pursued. "Do you recall Bush and his Republican majority cutting taxes twice at the same time he was borrowing money from the Chinese to pay for two wars?”

“Is that where we got the money?”

“Or that President Bush violated our constitution any number of ways—by reading our emails, intercepting our phone calls, telling lies to lead us into war, using the Justice Department to go after political enemies, using the levers of government to create a permanent Republican majority…?

"You protest about Obama bankrupting the country," I concluded, "and yet you forget that Republicans practically picked clean the Treasury's pockets."

“Wait, before you go on, just tell me," he shouted, almost in despair. "Was there anything that George W. Bush and his Republican majority in Congress did right during the last ten years?”

“Do you remember Hurricane Katrina?”

“Sure," he said, almost smiling. "Wasn’t she an exotic dancer…?”

A SHEEP IN WOLF'S CLOTHING

2010-01-20T08:31:00.000-08:00

For any democrats, progressives or dumbstruck Obama supporters wondering “What the hell happened?” in Massachusetts yesterday, let me offer a few thoughts.

As Pogo once said in a famous cartoon strip, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

After eight years of Bush-Cheney malign neglect, the American presidency was turned over to a man who promised to change the way Washington worked. To take back power for the people. To curtail the power of the lobbyists and their entrenched special interests. To fight Wall Street for Main Street. To bridge partisan divide. And to restore America’s pride, not just as a powerful nation but a moral one as well.

And where do we find ourselves a year later?

Stuck.

With a president who appears to value comity over fighting for what he believes in. With a president who promised to fight for real health care reform but appeared to quickly abandon the very drug cost containment and public option elements that real reform requires.

We voted for a president who would fight drug companies for the right to import drugs from Canada and who would use America’s colossal bargaining power like a club to lower drug prices. Instead we ended up with a president who negotiated away his power in exchange for the pharmaceutical industry’s collusion in a program that would never threaten either their American monopoly or their colossal greed.

We voted for a president who would fight Wall Street but who quickly brought in the usual suspects to run things, some of them clearly tarnished by their inside involvement in the financial crisis or their initial efforts to make whole the bankers and CEOs whose greed and system manipulation caused the crisis.

This last year we have hungered for a President who would worry less about upsetting the apple cart and more about removing the bad apples and cleaning up the mess. It may have been politically expedient to give Bush and Cheney a ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card, but America’s constitution has been bloodied by their cowboy-up approach to starting wars, torturing prisoners, denying constitutional rights and subverting civil liberties.

To not shine a light on these illegal and destructive behaviors is to allow them to eat away in the dark at the cornerstone of rights that others have died to secure.

We voted for a president who, if he didn’t have the heart or courage to pursue these miscreants, would at least have had the wisdom to convene a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. If only to uphold the honor of his office and his somber responsibility to our Constitution.

Over the last year we have watched President Obama repeatedly step back from using the full weight and power of his position to foster the policies and programs he was elected to pursue. His willingness to enter into compromise or meaningless negotiation with fanatical Republicans so invested in protecting the wealth and power of entrenched interests they would never meet him halfway on any field, over any issue, will prove to be his—and probably our—undoing.

Mr. President, we elected you to clean up Dodge City, but it appears you’ve settled in far too comfortably, and much more quickly than anyone could have expected.

If your advisors tell you that you are doing a good job, fire them. If you can’t find worthy advisors to replace them, perhaps you’ll need to look beyond the boundaries of Washington, D.C.

That would be change we could believe in.

Tales Of The Book Part Twelve

2010-01-04T17:54:00.000-08:00

MAN ON THE RUN

Move it, he said, there isn't much time.

So you stepped on the gas or walked a bit faster or hurried your phone conversation, and still arrived late for your next activity.

Faster, he said, only losers slow down.

So you worked late at the office or left the party early or rushed out of the house without kissing the kids goodbye, and still never made up for the time you lost.

Hurry up, he said, you'll miss your big opportunity.

So you took a second job working weekends or cheated in business or cancelled the family vacation, and still never found the opportunity you were looking for.

Skip the formalities, he said, you'll have time for that later.

So you forgot your anniversary or never showed up for parents night at school or stepped over a friend to better your position, and still found yourself dreaming about all the things you didn't have.

Don't slow down, he said, time grows shorter every minute.

So you pretended to stay young or cheated on your marriage or forgot to watch your children growing up, and still never found someone who could understand you.

Pick up your speed, he said, time's almost up.

So you grew bitter and resentful or left your family or started a list with everything the world owed you, and still grew older every day.

Final seconds, he said, last chance to make good.

So you looked around and wondered where all the time had gone or searched out those you had wronged or started making friends with priests, and still couldn't get his voice out of your head.

Move it, he said, you're running out of time.

And finally he was right.

You ran out of time.

The above is from the collection, "How To Train A Rock" by Paul Steven Stone, available on Amazon.com. For more information, go to HowToTrainARock.com, or the author's site at PaulStevenStone.com

In Remembrance Of The Ozone Layer

2009-12-15T06:08:00.000-08:00

TO MY CHILDREN WITH APOLOGIES

I'm writing this note to apologize for some of the things you'll be inheriting when I go to my final reward. It's unlikely your father will have time to make amends then, so I'm sending my apologies now.

First off, I'm sorry about all this war and destruction that's running riot on the planet. We older Americans tried to put an end to war, but not enough foreigners and strangers would listen to us or take our orders. After that, what choice did we have but to send in soldiers?

At least we tried.

My apologies also for those crowded roads you and your families have to drive on. My generation would have built more public transportation but, in all honesty, we just didn't give a damn. We never travel by train, so why the hell should anyone else? Try not to hate us too much when you spend half your days driving to and from your jobs.

Come on, guys, honk if you still love your father!

And speaking about cars, I sincerely apologize for the mega-tonnage of planetary resources I seem to have consumed during my brief stay on Earth. Quite frankly, when I think about the tons of materials used to satisfy my individual desires—all the buying, spending and consuming it took to keep me feeling whole and happy—I find myself surprisingly without shame or remorse.

I'm sorry, but there it is! Your father is a selfish hungry pig and knows it and, apparently, revels in the raw honesty of it. He also loves driving around in big cars and buying thousands of unnecessary plastic items.

Hey, somebody has to.

And speaking of raw honesty, children, I want to apologize for the way I desecrated the land. Lord knows your father, as a responsible businessman, couldn't let all that good, solid earth remain undeveloped and glorious in its natural state. Much as I hated to, if I hadn't sliced up the land, ate up the woods and fields, and built wall-to-wall malls and sprawls, think of all the money I wouldn't have made…!

And then how sorry would I be?

Lastly, I want to apologize for leaving you a world much filthier, cruder, harsher—and far less friendly—than the one my father left me. It seems a shame people treat each other so roughly these days, or that values have been so perverted by money, false gods and distorted self images. Of course, if that's the price of admission to the RICHEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, I want to see you kids first in line to buy tickets.

Just remember two things, children…First, I never promised you a perfect world. Second, I'm too selfish to help create one.

Oh, and did I apologize for that hole in the ozone layer…?

* * * * * * *

With all that's happening in Copenhagen these days, it seemed appropriate to share the above item from "How To Train A Rock" by Paul Steven Stone.

My Affair With Tiger

2009-12-07T06:33:00.000-08:00

Face it, girls, you want to claw my eyes out, don’t you? Or whack me across my 36 DD’s with a golf club, am I right? Well don’t blame me if I’m young, gorgeous, full-breasted and obviously the cat’s meow. And don’t expect me to go after my favorite Top Cat by giving the media any of the tittle-tattle behind our torrid love match. There’s no ‘best three out of four’ here, girls. I am and always will be the best. Just ask Tiger.

Oh that’s right, Tiger isn’t talking. Except for that little phone message someone leaked to the rag mags. The one where he asked me to re-record my phone greeting so it’s a little more anonymous and a little less…well, sexy. Just in case his wife calls.

What’s wrong with a message where I state my name, hair color and unadulterated preference for billionaire celebrities? “C’mon, lighten up,” I told Tiger. “Besides, as far as your wife knows, it could be Hugh Hefner calling me, or some other rich celebrity; maybe even Brad Pitt.” You girls must have read in Intruder Magazine how he and Angelina are occupying separate bedrooms these days, whatever slim solace that provides poor Jennifer Anniston.

I always liked Jen better anyway.

But as far as Tiger and I go, we are soul mates, no question about it. Otherwise, why would I be the first girlfriend he calls whenever he’s in Boston and has an open hour to spare? Yes, I know, girls. An hour may not seem like much to you, but with Tiger and me it’s always been quality rather than quantity. Or, if I can be crude, length of rope rather than length of time, if you know what I mean.

Doesn’t God always seem to give bigger portions to those who have everything! Or is the word ‘proportions’? I’ll have to ask Tiger next time he’s in town.

Anyway, unlike some of you kiss-and-tell queens, I’m not saying a word about my affair with Tiger. Except to say, in my neck of the jungle, once we learn to hunt tigers, we then learn to be good little pussies. Gr-r-r-rr!

With God On My Side

2009-11-24T03:40:00.000-08:00

“Now I lay me down to sleep . . .” I mumbled.

It was bedtime and here I was, another mildly fatigued, upwardly mobile, young professional praying against the side of his bed, fetchingly arrayed in wine-red pajamas and white deerskin slippers. “I pray the Lord my soul to keep. . .” etc., etc. etc.

It was the usual last-thing-before-I-sleep bedtime prayer and I was positioning myself to make a few minor requests.

“. . . I wanted to thank you for all the good stuff in my life,” I offered God, “...especially for last month’s 7.6 percent annualized return on my investments. I still can’t believe it, given how the economy is still struggling.”

Now came the subtle shift . . .

“But, you know . . . there’s one itsy-bitsy area where I could use a little more help: my career. More specifically, I could use a little boost in the acceleration, if you know what I mean . . . ”

Next thing that happened was quite noteworthy, because God Himself interrupted me to reply, “No I don’t know what you mean, Paul Steven! I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. Boost in the acceleration! Who prays to God for a boost in the acceleration? Please make your request again, but this time speak more plainly.”

Well, yes, that was strange. God doesn’t, as a rule, talk to me when I talk to Him. As far as I can remember, this was the first time and it made me uncomfortable. Put yourself in my place: I could accidentally say the wrong thing to God and whoof!, before I knew it, I’d be some lower-order slave scrubbing porta-potties in Purgatory.

God’s voice was thin, and whiny—sort of like Pee Wee Herman’s—rising disembodied from the black grilled heating register on my bedroom floor. Most times, warm air came up through the grill; but this night it was the Voice Of God.

I was a little embarrassed about being more explicit with my prayer, but I didn’t have much choice.

“To be blunt,” I said, whispering tightly into prayer-clasped hands, “you know how I’m competing with Cindy Washburn for the Creative Director’s job, and how she’s done such balls-out work on the Kritter Litter ad account . . . ?

“Yes . . . ?” God replied. “And so . . . ?”

Still whispering, I asked, through awkward pauses, “Well, I’d like you . . . you know . . . to do something . . . to Cindy . . . so she doesn’t win the CD gig. Something small, not too damaging. Nothing like a car accident or a Nancy Kerrigan, but maybe she could suddenly develop a horrible rash, or maybe sales of Kritter Litter could fall through the floor . . . something like that. (Listen to me telling you your job!) is that specific enough?”

“Perfectly!” God answered with brisk efficiency. “I’d be happy to cover Cindy in a really repulsive, red rash but unfortunately you have too many reality-altering prayers already in process. I’m not sure I can add another one to the list until we clean up some of the others.”

“What others?” I asked, surprised.

“What others!?!” God exclaimed. “Where do I start? How about with Angela Firehouse? Surely you haven’t forgotten Angela Firehouse with whom you fell in love, and at whom you prayed me direct the charms of cupid’s arrows on your behalf. You remember now?”

“Vaguely,” I softly replied.

“You no doubt recall she is currently the wife of Edgar Firehouse, and that both the Firehouses currently live in the house next door to yours.”

“I know where they live.”

“Good Heavens, Paul Steven,” God added gleefully, “she’s your neighbor’s wife!”

“I’m a happily married man,” I countered. “I wouldn’t have done anything wrong had you given me the chance, which you didn’t, thanks a lot!”

“Hey, I tried,” God snapped back. “The lady wasn’t interested. She must have been praying for the strength to resist your charms. Besides, it’s a Universal Law that everyone gets what they deserve. You, she, even those thousands of terrorists you prayed for me to slaughter, which I’m still working on (just so you know). It’s not easy destroying entire subsets of the population and, besides, I never pretended to be good with details . . .”

That’s interesting! God talking to me like some insurance salesman confronting the enormity of his ignorance.

God continued, almost petulantly, “Now I have to add in the body rash you want inflicted on Cindy Washburn . . .”

“Will you do it for me?” I asked eagerly.

“I told you, everybody gets what they deserve,” God said with a peevish snort. “If Cindy deserves a rash, she’ll get the rash she deserves. Get it?”

“You’re a strange kind of God,” I offer. “Not like the God they taught me about in Sunday School. Don’t take this personally, but you seem rather shallow and petty-minded. Whoever heard of God being so easily bored and so quick to get angry? Instead of helping me resist my weaker nature, You seem happy to pander to its weaknesses.

“Just think about it!” I exclaimed. “I prayed for you to kill off thousands of Islamist extremists and you never once mentioned a thing to me about loving my neighbor or about how wrong it would be to take a human life. And whenever I pray for personal gain at someone’s else expense, You jump right to it, and never point out my selfishness. You’re a strange God, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Hey, Paul Steven,” the Voice replied, coming up through the vent. “I thought you’d figure it out by now . . .”

“Yes . . . ?”

“Everybody gets the God they deserve.”

The Universe According To Paul Peterson

2009-11-04T09:00:00.000-08:00

In the following excerpt from "Or So It Seems", a novel that recognizes life as a damn funny spiritual adventure, Paul Peterson expounds on the mechanics of Karma as seen through the eyes of the Seekers For Truth and, most especially, their leader and guru, The Bapucharya.

IT'S ONLY A MOVIE

For some reason that seems to only make sense to Hindu holy men the universe was constructed with Automatic Universal Misunderstanding (AUM) as a core element in its composition. We are purposely led to believe that the physical world we see around us is the real world, the entire world, the only world in which we live and die. And if some entity called God exists He is probably hiding on another planet or at least in the clouds, only coming down for special occasions like the six days He spent creating the world.

We have been led to believe by our parents, teachers and scoutmasters, who have all been fooled before us, that what we see is what we can expect. Except perhaps for a late-inning visit to heaven for those fortunate enough to donate a lot of money to their churches.

But that is not how the universe works according to The Seekers For Truth. In their universe we are all witnesses to a gigantic shared illusion constructed out of vibrations and fancy dreams—and please do not ask me whose dreams.

In this universe, according to Seeker doctrine, we have each agreed to live in this illusory world and pretend it is real. Then to make the whole thing even more incredible we have agreed to forget that we ever agreed to play this game in the first place!

For The Seekers it is like we are all staring at the same movie screen believing it to be life in its entirety. As if we decided to disremember everything else in the world except for what we see up on the screen.

So having forgotten we are merely watching a movie we live out our lives paying off the obligations and debts we owe from previous lives which, by the rules of the game, we have also forgotten. At the same time other individuals are paying off debts and obligations to us from lives they do not remember either. While all of this is happening nobody seems to be consciously aware of any of it!

No wonder everyone looks at you as if you were crazy when you offer even the thinnest glimpse of the cosmos as seen through the eyes of The Seekers For Truth.

“Tell me that again? I have lived many lifetimes and you have lived many lifetimes but neither of us remembers any of them? And during some of those lifetimes I have done things to you that make you do things to me and neither of us remembers that either? And the main thing we are supposed to do while playing this game of pretend is to discover that we are playing the game?”

It is virtually impossible to comprehend the mechanics of the universe as seen through the eyes and spiritual teachings of The Seekers For Truth.

If you do not agree, then explain to me how an individual can have the freedom to respond to events whose outcomes are determined in advance? That is like being able to win a tennis match whose final score is already fixed against you.

“You must have faith,” The Bapucharya has said over and over. “There would be no reason to keep traveling up your Path of Seeking Truth if you already possessed the truth you are seeking. You are on the Path Of Seeking Truth specifically because this grand prize of all grand prizes has not yet been given to you.

“Stick your nose out, children, take a big whiff—ohmigoodness! Can you smell it? Of course you can. It is the scent of fresh cut grass, is it not! You do not need to see with your eyes or hold with your hands the fallen blades of grass to know they are all around you. Just the same you do not need to have this oh-so-elusive thing we call the truth in your hungry little grasp to know that it, too, is real.”

Tales Of The Book Part Eleven

2009-10-29T06:10:00.000-07:00

"HOW TO TRAIN A ROCK"

The first thing one notices about rocks is they are essentially quiet creatures. Adverse to long discourses or extended bouts of conversation, they nevertheless are quite engaged in life. Constantly pondering the deepest and densest of life’s mysteries, thereby distracted to an apparent state of inertia, they are thought to be dull companions and highly unsuited to racquet sports or most other forms of physical activity.

Here at the International Rock Training Institute we have discovered, and proven, I believe, that rocks are far more capable and sentient than we humans generally believe. In fact, it’s the rocks’ very ability to conceal their considerable capabilities from the general population that underscores the scope of their hidden powers.

So, what to expect when you bring home one of these seemingly inanimate creatures as a pet?

Expect love. Lots of love. Pound for pound, there isn’t a more loving, open-hearted creature than a rock, though they can be fickle at times. Until recently it was thought rocks heated up in the sun because of the sun’s rays. After much research, we now know their rising temperatures are psycho-romantic reactions. Rocks tenderly exhibiting warm feelings for their cousin, the Sun. Similar to the way their temperatures will flare-up when they’re with their masters. Unfortunately, such displays of affection often go unnoticed, leading to a deep-seated fear of rejection and humiliation in most mature rocks.

As unfortunate as that may sound, this fear of rejection will prove an important tool in helping you train a rock of your own. A simple example will prove the point.

Let us pretend we are training a rock to keep us company while watching TV in the evenings. Right off, most of us would make the mistake of placing the rock on a nearby chair or perhaps on the TV itself.

Ask yourself, could you watch TV if you were sitting on top of the TV? Of course you couldn’t. And neither could a rock.

As for the chair, it demoralizes the intimacy-starved rock to be placed so far away from you. It derails the very trust and intimacy you were seeking to instill. Far better to place your rock on a nearby coffee table at the beginning of the training cycle. The idea being, of course, to gradually inch the rock closer to you on successive evenings. By tantalizing the trainee rock with your increasing proximity, you enflame its desire for closeness, and will soon find not only a docile rock sitting on your lap, but a companionable one as well.

The majority of rocks that visit the International Rock Training Institute come here for our “Good Companions” curriculum, which trains rocks for companionable relationships with all types of masters except toddlers, who need to be first trained not to eat rocks or stick them in their playmates’ eyes. We also offer a curriculum focused on “Security” for rocks being channeled into careers as Watchrocks or, possibly, projectiles.

Training a rock requires, well, rocklike patience. Much like human beings, rocks form impressions and psychological patterns in their early years that help shape their entire lives going forward. These impressionable “teen” rocks should be treated with great care and with great tolerance for their periodic mood swings and narcissistic bingeing. Should you discover you’re in possession of a teen rock rather than a mature one, don’t expect to win its trust anytime soon.

Unfortunately, we won’t have time this week to discuss “strays”, the wild, untamable rocks you find scattered most everywhere. Suffice it to say, many of the wild stories one hears about these highly independent rocks are true. They are unstable creatures to say the least. Unfriendly, sharply cunning and not very trustworthy. I would not want a stray rock living in my home, not even with my children fully grown and out of the house.

More about strays later on. For now, I’ll close this week’s “A Rock’s Throw” by inviting you, as always, to send me your questions about rocks and their proper training. Again, I must sternly request you do NOT send me the rocks themselves. And whoever threw that rock through the Institute’s lab window yesterday, I should warn you your rock has already conveyed your vital information to the police who are now on their way.

I forgot to mention, rocks are notoriously disloyal.

The above is the eponymous story from the collection, "How To Train A Rock" by Paul Steven Stone, available on Amazon.com. For more information, go to HowToTrainARock. com, or the author's site at PaulStevenStone.com.

Tales Of The Book Part Ten

2009-10-04T16:46:00.000-07:00

DOUG HOLDER REVIEWS "HOW TO TRAIN A ROCK"

Doug Holder is a local (Somerville) poet and literary figure of great renown. Co-founder of The Bagel Bards, a literary community that meets (and eats) each Saturday morning at the Davis Square Au Bon Pain, Doug took a few minutes from his busy schedule to cast his reviewer's eye upon "How To Train A Rock". Note of full disclosure: Doug is a friend of the author.

PSS Interviews Novelist Rick Moody

2009-09-26T17:51:00.000-07:00

Rick Moody, successful novelist and chronicler of the American zeitgeist (“Garden State”, “The Ice Storm” and “Purple America”) took a few moments to speak with us. Rick is one of the featured notables at the Somerville News Writers Festival, Saturday, November 14th. Keep an eye out for his latest novel, a comedic work titled, “The Four Fingers of Death.”

PSS: Tell us a little something of your writing discipline…how do you approach starting a new book?

RM: It sort of approaches me, really. I am somewhat undisciplined. An idea kind of seizes me, usually without much preparation, and then I go into this long period of turning it over in my mind, sometimes for months. Thinking, rethinking. When I finally have time to address it, it has often been marinating for a long time. Six months, maybe, sometimes a year.

PSS: How much of the nascent book is already plotted out in your mind? How much do you rely on your ‘muse’ for guidance or inspiration as the story progresses?

RM: I never plot, at all. I let the story go where it wants to go. And then I assess l the damage during the editing phase.

PSS: I spent 12 years writing my novel, but there were many periods where I took a break—sometimes for months—other periods where I felt compelled to sit at the computer whenever I could get home. How long does it usually take you to complete a novel, or something like your memoir “The Black Veil”? And what is the writing experience like? Does it flow smoothly or are there starts and stops?

RM: Always starts and stops, always periods of despair and demoralization. But some periods of enjoyment and satisfaction too. They have each gone their own way, so there's no set length of time for composition. THE ICE STORM took 14 months. The new one, the just finished one, took four years.

PSS: I noticed in “The Diviners” that you begin the book with a prologue, titled “Opening Credits and Theme Music”, that runs 12 pages and is essentially a travelogue following the sun as it rushes to rise around the globe. First, do you think it was risky, in the sense of holding onto your readers’ interest, to delay telling your story? Or was the literary or storytelling reward worth taking the risk?

RM: Boy, have I done things more risky than that! People are free to read something else if they find that bit too demanding. They're probably not going to like the rest if they don't like the prologue, so it's a truth-in-advertising approach.

PSS: I must tell you I am in awe of your ability to construct sentences and imbue them with such emotion and cultural richness. Have you always had such facility with words? When did you first realize you had a calling as a writer? How did you learn?

RM: Thanks! I don't know that I have such facility, but it's nice of you to say so. And I never really thought of myself as a writer, but just as someone who read a lot and was passionate about books. The writing came out of my love of reading. And the craft of it came not only from the books I’ve read, but from the many, many great teachers I have had.

PSS: Which of your works is your favorite and why?

RM: They all disappoint me. But I have a tendency to like the most recent one, so I like this one I just finished pretty well. It's a comedy called THE FOUR FINGERS OF DEATH.

Tales Of The Book Part Nine

2009-08-22T04:50:00.000-07:00

John Bach Reviews "Death And Other Incidental Diversions"

"Death And Other Incidental Diversions" is the Third Rock Trick in "How to Train A Rock" by Paul Steven Stone, available on Amazon.com

Tales Of The Book Part Eight

2009-08-10T09:18:00.000-07:00

CAN A STORY COLLECTION
HEAL THE SICK,
CURE THE AFLLICTED?

Tenneshaw, WI—Thousands of journeyers crowd this town’s small village square every afternoon at 2:44 where a natural phenomenon has turned into a daily spiritual event.

Two weeks ago, it was first noticed that the sun, positioned at this point in its day’s passage, sent a beam shining through the window at the HiRiser Bookstore which coalesced through the rippled thickness of the glass and fell on a book cover in a form reminiscent of the Madonna and Child.

The book cover it fell upon was called “How To Train A Rock” by Paul Steven Stone, a collection of Short Insights and Fiction Flights. Up until then, a book that had succeeded in remaining anonymous, undiscovered and unknown.

The first day of the phenomenon the Madonna and Child sunburst was noticed by a few passers by and mentioned in the Tenneshaw News ‘Around Town’ section. On the second day, there was such a large, mostly out of control, crowd that three people were crushed to death. Fortunately, two of the dead were brought back to life by being held against the bookstore window facing “How to Train A Rock”, the first of many recorded miracle cures.

From then on there were numerous tales of miraculous healings—cancers shriveled to nothing, broken backs made whole and straight, cripples dancing in the street, lepers with skin so clear teenagers would be envious. And, one or two resurrections of political careers, it was also rumored.

But then, not surprisingly, time moved on. And, as any astronomy student could tell you, the sun’s passage changes slightly everyday. So there should be little surprise that the quasi-religious effect of the light breaking through the glass at the critically precise moment of 2:44 PM would eventually cycle itself out of existence. And so it did. So that yesterday, two weeks- two days after the Madonna and Child first appeared, they were gone.

Today, a smaller crowd, maybe 15-25 hopeful souls, showed up and hung around the bookstore window where “How To Train A Rock” sits patiently waiting for someone to pick it up and take it home. They stare down at the book and wonder whether any of the Madonna and Child’s healing properties might have melted into the pages of this undiscovered jewel of a book filled with humor, wisdom and unexpected points of view?

“Nah!” the elder of the group decides, eventually leading the rest of the assembly away. “And besides," he says, asking no one in particular, "how would Paul Steven Stone even know how to train a rock?”

Can Paul Steven Stone Speak Spanish?

2009-08-05T04:22:00.000-07:00

No Way, Jose! But for some strange reason I recently found myself on a Boston Hispanic cable TV show titled, "Fernando's Hideaway". Here the lovely Maricela Marrero acts as my guide and translator. Enjoy, amigos!

If you'd like to see the second half of the interview, check out 'Paul On "Fernando's Hideaway" Part 2' on YouTube.com.

Tales Of The Book Part Seven

2009-07-26T15:01:00.000-07:00

Cameron Mount Reviews "The Zen Of Whimsy"

"The Zen Of Whimsy" is the Seventh Rock Trick in "How to Train A Rock" by Paul Steven Stone, available on Amazon.com. To learn more about Cameron Mount, Boston area poet and author of the recently released "Evening Watch", available from Lulu.com, visit his blog at evening-watch.blogspot.com. (Watch for future video reviews from John Bach, free spirit and unbiased friend, and Doug Holder, renowned local poet, cable TV host and another unbiased buddy.)

Tales Of The Book Part Six

2009-07-20T06:55:00.000-07:00

Tales of the Book Part Six
File Under: Reviews And Recommendations...?

DID HEMINGWAY POSTHUMOUSLY
ENDORSE ‘HOW TO TRAIN A ROCK’?

Kethchum, Idaho—This tiny hamlet where Ernest Hemingway spent his final days was abuzz with talk about ghosts and the deathless essence of great literary figures. Three times in as many days a copy of a certain book seems to suddenly materialize (spread open to page 56) on the long marble slab that marks Hemingway’s final resting place.

“I think it’s those darn teenagers,” Clinton Syrhousse declared indignantly, standing beside the Hemingway marker. Official Buffer of the Hemingway Stone, Syrrhousse has little patience with any suggestion that the great and long-dead storyteller would stoop to endorse a book of stories entitled ‘How To Train A Rock.’

“Maybe if it were called, ‘For Whom The Rock Rolls’ or ‘A Rock Also Rises’ or something with a little more guts like “The Rock Adams Stories…” Syrhousse left off with an ellipsis.

Paul Steven Stone, author of ‘How To Train A Rock’, wouldn’t give an opinion about the strange three-time appearance of his virtually unknown collection of funny, fantastical and heart-gripping stories. “I just hope I get credit for the three books on my Amazon sales,” Stone declared. “That’ll give me a good July.”

Doug Holder (Renowned Poet) Interviewed

2009-07-13T06:22:00.000-07:00

Paul Steven Stone turns the tables and interviews Doug Holder on Doug's Somerville, Mass. cable TV show "Poet to Poet, Writer-to-Writer"

Doug Sets The Stage:Paul Steven Stone makes a living by being creative. Stone, the Creative Director of W.B.Mason in Boston, and the author of the novel “Or So It Seems” and “How to Train a Rock” had an idea. He thought it might be interesting to interview me, Doug Holder, on my interview show on Somerville Community Access TV “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.” As you probably know I am the founder of the small literary press, “Ibbetson Street” and the author of a number of poetry collections including: “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel.” We figured a novelist interviewing a poet might bring some insights to the creative process.

Paul Steven Stone: When did you have the “calling” to be a poet?

Doug Holder: Well I am 54 years old now, but I didn’t start publishing till I was in my mid 30’s. But I was writing and formulating many of my writings into poems in my 20’s. I think I had ideas of being a writer in college, but I really didn’t start writing consistently until I started keeping journals in my 20’s after college. I recorded snippets of conversations in my journals, passages from novels, quotations, etc… and eventually this raw fodder became poetry.

PSS: Did you read poetry when you were younger?

DH: Oddly enough I read poetry, but much more fiction. I got a lot of material from that, literary history, newspapers, etc…

PSS: By the time you were in your 30’s did you call yourself a poet?

DH: By the time I was in my 30’s the dye- was- cast. I had a need to publish. I published my first poem when I was 35 or so in a Canadian journal Sub-Terrain. They are still around. It wasn’t until I was 40 or so that I graduated with my MA in English. I felt this was another step to become a serious writer. Through this education my writing improved a great deal and I was exposed to many other writers, ideas, and even theory.

PSS: So you feel you needed to get an advanced degree?

DH: I think so. When someone on the Harvard faculty says you are a good writer that gives you a lot of confidence. It’s one thing when your friend, mother or wife says you are a good writer, it’s another when Ruth Wisse, a scholar of Yiddish Literature, a woman who worked with Irving Howe tells you. She was my thesis advisor at Harvard.

The thesis is an intense process. It takes more than a year and a half to complete it, and your initial proposal is often rejected three times before you can call it a go. They don’t make it easy for you. For a thesis you have to read closely, and do an exegesis of the work. This was hard for me because my writing is more impressionistic and journalistic. I did these “exercises” for years, while I worked fulltime at McLean Hospital. It was marvelous discipline, and exposure.

PSS: You have a book of interviews out, the “From the Paris of New England: Interviews with Poets and Writers.”

DH: The book has many of the interviews I conducted on my Somerville Community Access TV show “ Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.” I have interviewed a helluva a lot of people in the six years that I have had the show. The best thing I ever did was to come to Somerville Community Access TV. It opened up a whole new world for me. People are really enthusiastic about coming on the show from the accomplished writer to the novice.

PSS: I found the book to be fascinating. Anybody who is interested about how the creative mind works, or what the creative process is like, will enjoy this book. It is very accessible. One of the things I liked about your poetry is that it’s accessible.

DH: Yeah. It is accessible. I hope it is layered with insight.

PSS: I immersed myself with Doug Holder poetry. (laugh) And your “mundane” characters (as they were described in a review in The Harvard Crimson) are always a little off balance, and they are caught in the moment. The “moment” seems to be what interests you. From the woman you wrote about who sat on the toilet for two years (From the collection “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel), and the other characters you write about, you capture something that visually speaks to you in the moment.

DH: Someone told me at a reading that my book “The Man in the Booth…” reminded her of the Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. “Spoon River…” was a portrait of townsfolk, just regular people. So I guess she was right. I am interested in the common man in the moment, maybe the uncommonly common man.

I always loved the old Twilight Zone on TV. You know Rod Serling would come out in a dark, tight-fitting suit, a cigarette in his hand, with that great enigmatic, narrator’s voice and say: “Have if you will. Mr. Henry Beamish, a bookish man, whose only passion is the written word.” These were marvelous character studies. I also loved Paddy Chayevsky, his movie “Marty” and “Requiem for a Heavyweight” these were great character study films I think.

I used to say to my father as we passed through the Midtown Tunnel to go to Manhattan, “Hey Dad, do you think the guy in the booth has a girlfriend, wife, family?” I was talking about a man in a plastic booth in the middle of fume-filled tunnel. He responded: “How the hell do I know?” Most people don’t think about these things. But I think to some extent we are all captured like that man by our own skins, our own baggage. The book was published by Gloria Mindock’s press Cervena Barva right here in Somerville, Mass.

PSS: Can you name some poets you like?

DH: I like Philip Larkin, love his dark sense of humor. I know it is not fashionable but I like Edward Arlington Robinson: “Richard Corey,” “Miniver Cheevey” and other poems. Some contemporary poets I admire are Mark Doty, Sam Cornish, Robert K. Johnson, Afaa Michael Weaver, Ed Galing, to name just a few.

PSS: Is there a poet out there who reminds you of you?
DH: T.S. Eliot ( Laugh). Sometimes Sam Cornish reminds me of me. If you read my stuff you know I am not a product of an MFA school. I have a signature style, whether you like it or not.

PSS: What is it like to write a poem?

DH: Well today I read a line: “Why speak to the monkey if the organ grinder is in the room?” I thought this might spur on a poem but I drew a blank. Right now I’m in a block, other times I’m in a streak. Paul, you are a Creative Director for W.B.Mason—how does it work for you?

PSS: When I am paid to do a job something always responds. If I have more time I can go more deeply. Something always comes back to me to work with.

DH: I was shopping at Market Basket and there was a bunch of elderly ladies sitting there. There were lined up on chairs— the hustle and bustle of the market was their daily drama to view. You never know when your inspiration is going to come, and when this is going to translate into a poem.

PSS: If I am writing commercials for W.B. Mason I know when the ideas are fully cooked and ready to serve, so to speak. Over the years I’ve come to understand how my creative mechanism works. I can sense ideas coming for my next novel—a sequel to “Or So It Seems.” An interesting idea comes into play and something inside me plays with it.

Doug, talk about poems you did complete.

DH: Samuel Beckett has always influenced me. Recently I revisited his play Krapp’s Last Tape. It concerns a 69 year old guy whose life is in shambles, lives in a gone-to-seed furnished room—the whole deal, you know the suicide suite. He keeps playing back this tape to a recording that concerns the one love affair he had at 39—at the end of his youth. He keeps going back and forth to that time. A constant replay, a constant rehash. I am a ruminator so I was very taken by this rumination, about age, love and lost chances.

PSS: Can you talk about some favorite poems you have written?

DH: The poems I wrote for my late father in the collection: “Wrestling With My Father” were sentimental favorites. One poem concerned the image of my father reciting an old ditty he picked up from the Vaudeville halls he attended as a kid in New York City. There was this line he used to recite to me while I was on his knee: “Ladies and gentleman take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice." I used to laugh—we had a great time. There were also the times we used to visit Benson’s Deli in my hometown of Rockville Centre, NY. Dad introduced me to Doctor Brown’s Celray soda, knishes; you know all the food he sampled from his seminal grounds of the Bronx. We lived on Long Island, so the Bronx to my brother Don and me was the exotic old world. Paul-you grew up in the Bronx so it was no mystery to you. But coming from the Island, going over the Whitestone Bridge to the Bronx, was a source of endless fascination. So these poems are steeped with sentiment. I wrote some poems I was quite pleased with in my collection: “Poems of Boston and Just Beyond: From the Back Bay to the Back Ward.” These were poems from the psychiatric ward. I have worked at McLean Hospital for the past 27 years, and many of the poems spoke to my experience there. It was a Pick of the Month in The Small Press Review, and is archived at the poetry collection at Harvard University.

PSS: I found these poems had an interesting energy. Especially when you saw people from that environment out in the world. You shared an experience that most of us have not witnessed.

DH: Yes. Working in a mental hospital you see a slice of life many don’t. I have seen highly accomplished men and women, professors, poets, entertainers, captains of industry in a raw, primal and psychotic state. I have also worked with the homeless, drug addicts, the whole gamut. One poem I wrote was about my first time I worked on the psychiatric ward as mental health worker in 1982. A very psychotic patient thought he was God, and he called me his “finest creation.” So he created me. And I created a poem. Another poem I wrote was about working the 11PM to7AM shift and this drop dead gorgeous girl came running out in the nude, and we had to restrain her. On one hand you are a professional, on the other hand you are a man, wrestling, well almost dancing with a woman in the dead of night. Romantic and horrific at the same time. Another poem was about a homeless guy I knew who was hospitalized on the unit. I lit his cigarette at one moment, a few minutes later he was dead. The drama on the psychiatric ward is certainly arcane, and most people want it that way.

When I was working on locked psychiatric wards, I ran poetry groups for patients for 10 years. I published patient poems in Little Magazines. There was a lead article in the Arts/Leisure section of The Boston Globe in Feb. of 2000 about the groups and my press Ibbetson Street.

PSS: Now you have run poetry workshops. How does the workshops help you as a poet?

DH: You learn from other people. They are commenting on your poems. When you constructively criticize you work you realize there are parallels in your own work. It’s like anything else—you can’t work in a vacuum

Tales Of The Book Part Five

2009-06-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

Lo Galluccio Reviews "Refractions of Love"

'Refractions of Love' is the Second Rock Trick in "How To Train A Rock" by Paul Steven Stone, available on Amazon.com. To learn more about Lo Galluccio, Boston area poet, writer, songstress and avant garde performer, go to www.logalluccio.weebly.com or logalluccio@blogspot.com

Doug's Story: Eating At Guild's

2009-06-20T09:39:00.000-07:00

Caught live at his favorite Saturday morning haunt, The Au Bon Pain in Davis Square (home of the Bagel Bards), Doug Holder reaches back into his cavernous memory vaults to a time in his younger days when he would feed his body and nurture his poet's soul eating breakfast at Guild's.

Tales Of The Book Part Four

2009-06-16T12:17:00.000-07:00

Timothy Gager Reviews 'Boys and Girls Together'

'Boys and Girls Together' is the Fifth Rock Trick in "How To Train A Rock" by Paul Steven Stone, available on Amazon.com.

Tales Of The Book Part Three

2009-06-01T17:36:00.000-07:00

ANOTHER WORD ABOUT LOVE

“So when something from the outside touches you and seems to bring happiness…?" you ask playfully. “Something like a songbird?”

“You must learn to let it sing, and be grateful for what you are given. As soon as you try to capture it, or own it, or demand more, it's like catching the songbird in your hand. How easily you can squeeze the life from a songbird when you try to capture its song.”

“How sad,” you say, your voice filling with regret. “To kill the very thing you love by holding it too tightly.”

“Yes, it is sad,” I agree. “Very sad. The moral of the story is to look to yourself for your happiness, not to others. Which means looking to yourself—and yourself alone—for whatever love you need. Learn that lesson or spend the rest of your days squeezing the life from each songbird that flies into your world.”

From "The Songbird And Me", one of many 'Short Insights and Fiction Flights' to be found in "How To Train A Rock" by Paul Steven Stone, available on Amazon.com. For more info, check out HowtoTrainARock.com or PaulStevenStone.com.

Tales Of The Book Part Two

2009-05-27T12:08:00.000-07:00

A WORD ABOUT LOVE

Love, like rain, is no less pure
because it falls upon one gender or another.
It's not same-sex marriages
that deny the essential nature of love,
but those who would tell the rain
where it can and cannot fall.

From "Love Is A Many Gendered Thing", one of fifty Short Insights and Fiction Flights to be found in "How To Train A Rock", by Paul Steven Stone. Available on Amazon.com.

A Thorn Among Two Roses

2009-05-24T02:38:00.000-07:00

PAUL STEVEN STONE JOINS KIM ADRIAN AND DIANE LOCKWARD FOR CAMBRIDGE LITERARY EVE, JUNE 5, 2OO9

Author Paul Steven Stone will be reading from his work on Friday, June 5th, at the Dire Reader Series, offered at the Out Of The Blue art gallery, 106 Prospect Ave., Cambridge, MA. Joined by fiction writer Kim Adrian and poet Diane Lockward, Stone will be reading from "Or So It Seems", his innovative, comic romp of a novel, as well as from “How To Train A Rock” (just released!), his collection of short insights and fiction flights. Both books are published by Blind Elephant Press and available for purchase on Amazon.com.

Tales Of The Book Part One

2009-05-19T11:45:00.000-07:00

NASA CALLS “HOW TO TRAIN A ROCK”
AN ESSENTIAL FOR ASTRONAUTS

Places Groundbreaking Book
In Astronaut’s Survival Kit

CAPE CANAVERAL—Officials at this NASA launch station recently declared “How To Train A Rock”, a collection of Short Insights and Fiction Flights written by Paul Steven Stone, an essential ingredient in the Astronaut’s Survival Kit. The kit, first developed by NASA in response to the fatiguing effects of ultra-boring space flights, is made up mostly of books and DVD’s.

“We added The Rock Training Book because it offered our astronauts something they could use to survive the long endless night of flying in space," explained Jeffrey Sloane, NASA public management director. “The book offers its readers fifty journeys into the world of creative expression. Fifty short ‘stories’ that shine a light on the essential madness of life’s enterprises. Light that illuminates laughter, insight and emotion in copious quantities.”

Argenon Fortnip, the space shuttle’s on-board chef, expressed a view that many at this major Florida tourist attraction share, “Hey kiss my a&%! It aint no none of your business nohow. If people on my flying f&*%ing ‘space diner’ want to read “How To Train A F&*%ing Rock” thats no none of your business neither.”

Lance Armstrong, NASA’s newest celebrity astronaut, was quoted as saying, “I don’t know what they’re talking about. Far as I can tell, this is just another sneaky way Paul Steven Stone is foisting his book “How To Train A Rock” onto a weary, unprotected population of habitual readers.

“I’ll prove it,” Armstrong went on to say. “Just watch. Somehow, before this news story ends, Paul Steven Stone will manage to mention that you can purchase “How To Train A Rock” on Amazon.com.”

"He might even suggest you can check it out at HowToTrainARock.com."

Buy My New Book And Help End Poverty

2009-05-13T17:21:00.000-07:00

Well, my poverty anyway.

Truth is, you probably won’t help anyone but yourself when you buy and read “How To Train A Rock”, assuming you like to laugh and be entertained. I didn’t mean to mislead you; something just came over me. That's what happens when you spend most of your adult life writing advertisements.

But don’t let my misguided sense of salesmanship stop you from buying the book, because somewhere inside you’ll find a mystery word that could win you a midnight balloon ride with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

There I go again! That’s not true. You will encounter Paris and Britney, but only in one of my humorous commentaries. The bald fact is you won’t make friends with celebrities, save money, win a prize, improve your social standing or enjoy the benefits of space-age technology when you buy "How To Train A Rock". What you will enjoy are 50 short-short stories, many hilarious, some profound, all uniquely creative.

So do yourself a favor and order “How To Train A Rock” today. You may not end poverty but I promise you’ll be delighted!

Plus, for a limited time, you could win a luxury vacation for two to Somalia.

You may recognize this variation on a theme if you've read my earlier postings. I like to play with 'truth in advertising', and yes that is an oxymoronic phrase. So hopefully you'll indulge me a few of these playful sales messages as I struggle to break into double digit sales of my new book, "How To Train A Rock". Which, if I haven't mentioned it yet, can be purchased on Amazon.com.

Battle Of The Bards

2009-05-12T13:05:00.000-07:00

On May 11, 2009 in Cambridge, MA, there was a battle between two veteran heavyweights of the poetry arena, Doug Holder and Marc D. Goldfinger. Legends will surely arise about what happened that night at The Out Of The Blue art gallery, but this poem written a few hours after the poetic slugfest captures the myth at a moment when it is still bite size and chewable. Enjoy.

The Battle Of The Bards
by Paul Steven Stone

It was billed as a ten round fight
Between two aging poets
Who could punch out the lights,
In one corner Doug Holder
Whose poems and bon mots
Grew hot as the night grew older,
In the other, with sheets of verse
Marc D. Goldfinger was ready
To scratch and claw for the purse,
It was billed as a ten round night
But in the end, only one poet
Would be standing aright.

It began as most slugfests do
With sharp tongues keeping time
In a strange pas de deux,
The man suspendered in red
Drew first blood with words
Some other poet had bred,
Then Holder raised a clenched fist
To read from pages of white
The first poem on his list,
And thus a mighty battle ensued
Between two gray-beard poets
In a gallery of blue.

Oh, to watch these wizened old men
Parry and feint and dance
As if they were young again,
Goldfinger under his hat
Takes a swing at Holder
With an ode to Kerouac,
Holder, still standing tall
Recalls his youth and
The Long Island sprawl,
There are poems of all stripes,
Tales of junkies, beggars and egos
Do battle through the night.

And I, perched on my hard seat
Finally realize just who
These warriors of words hoped to beat,
It was not each other they faced
But Father Time whose traces
No poem could erase,
And when the battle was done
So that all weary fans
Could trembling head home,
We would recall this poets’ fight
And with wistful gratitude
What they both had won tonight.

Love Is A Many Gendered Thing

2009-04-21T11:12:00.000-07:00

Dedicated To The Memory Of Matthew Shepard

As legislatures and church groups scramble to prevent same-sex marriages from becoming legal in states across our nation, I feel the need to offer a few relevant thoughts.

First off, politicians may be able to legislate marriage but they can never legislate love. As a popular song once said, love is a many splendored thing. No matter if it's the love of a man for a woman, a woman for a woman or a man for a man. Love, like rain, is no less pure because it falls upon one gender or another. It's not same-sex marriages that deny the essential nature of love, but those who would tell the rain where it can and cannot fall.

Who has the authority to sit in judgment of the human heart? Surely not a politician. Who among us stands so high they can look down and decide when love is right or when two lovers are wrong in their pursuit or expression of love? Certainly not a legislature or a church.

How solid is moral ground when it denies one group of consenting adults the rights so indifferently offered to the lowest life forms in our society? Are our political leaders concerned that convicted murderers, rapists and pedophiles have the right to marry? Or that foreigners can use marriage as a backdoor pass into our country? But in their rush to protect the sanctity of marriage they would lock out gays and lesbians as if an alternative sexual orientation were the ultimate threat to the fabric of society.

Of what are they so afraid they would rather protect the status quo than the rights of fellow citizens? Why do they isolate and negate those whose only crime is to ask that their love be sanctioned on an equal basis to everyone else's? A civil right so overdue and wrongly denied, its advent must ultimately prove unstoppable.

And now these politicians use the very state constitutions that protect their rights to squelch the rights of a minority to marry and live among us as equals. If only these deluded moralists could see their actions are driven by the same fears and impulses that led to the brutal and tragic murder of 21 year old Matthew Shepard. No doubt, it is far less extreme to withhold rights from a minority than it is to take the life of a young man, but they are both links in the same chain of ignorance and blind prejudice.

So enough of this foolish and hurtful attempt to hold back the tide. It is time our political leaders stopped resisting change and began guiding us through it. Time that all citizens were afforded the right to marry—as well as love—whomever they wish. For love is a many splendored thing, no matter the age, religion, race or gender of those lucky enough to find it.

As Shakespeare might well have said, let us not to the marriage of two hearts admit impediments.

Or politicians.

***********
From "How To Train A Rock", a collection of Short Insights And Fiction Flights by Paul Steven Stone. "How To Train A Rock" is scheduled for publication April, 2009. Watch for its availability on Createspace.com and Amazon.com.

Buy My New Book And Save Hundreds Of Dollars

2009-04-06T03:30:00.000-07:00

I lied.

You won't save a penny buying my new book "How To Train A Rock". Truth is it will actually cost you money when it goes on sale. But only about $5 if you take advantage of our first-time buyer's discount.

There I go again. That’s not true. You'll pay the same $15 that everyone else—except my mother—has to pay. And Mom's only saving a couple of bucks at that.

I didn't mean to lie, something just came over me.

The problem is, most of my professional life has been spent writing advertisements. So when I began to worry that intelligent readers like you might not purchase this incredible collection of my best "A Stone's Throw" columns—some of them hilarious, all of them shockingly inventive—I knew exactly what to do.

I lied.

But don't let that stop you from buying "How To Train A Rock" when it's finally available. Because somewhere inside the book you'll find our "mystery word" which could win you an incredible two-week stay at a fabulous oceanside condominium in Cancun, Mexico or . . .

Sorry.

I did it again, didn't I?

There's no mystery word hidden inside, no luxury vacation to win. It's just another cheap trick on my part and I'm not proud of myself for pulling it.

Let's be honest. You won't save any money when you purchase "How To Train A Rock". Nor will you win a prize, improve your social standing, lengthen your sexual organs or enjoy the benefits of space-age technology.

Truth is there's only one good reason why you or anyone else should purchase this book.

I just wish I could remember what it was.

* * * *
Just weeks away from introducing "How To Train A Rock" to the world, author Paul Steven Stone couldn't resist giving his new book of "Short Insights And Fiction Flights" one final—and hopefully humorous—plug. You may not win any prizes reading "How To Train A Rock" but I guarantee you'll enjoy and relish the experience. And that's no lie.

We'll Always Have Paris

2009-03-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

From the television:
“Tonight’s news begins with a Stone’s Throw exclusive. Intimate friends of hotel heiress Paris Hilton have confided that the talent-starved celebrity has agreed to marry Quaker Bob, longtime spokesperson and package icon for Quaker Oats cereal. The two met at a party at the Scientology Celebrity Center in Hollywood. Fans and celebrity watchers were taken by surprise since Ms. Hilton had vowed never to wed after her breakup with fiancé and Greek shipping magnate Paris Latsis…

“Yes, the two actually shared the same first name!

“Speaking of which, the irrepressible Ms. Hilton confided she broke off the engagement when she learned her fiancé expected her to change her name to his, which would have made her the second Paris Latsis on the celebrity register.

"’I come second to no one,' she declared, sparking smirks and titters from members of the press corps who had obviously seen Ms. Hilton’s pirated sex tape…”

From the living room:
“Did you say something, dear?” I ask my wife Sylvia.

“I said they’re not going to ask about the ring. The guy gave Paris a 24 carat diamond engagement ring and they never asked if she gave it back.”

Looking at Sylvia with her spiky, imitation Brittany Spears hairdo, I think of how much I preferred her Jennifer Aniston look. “Remind me why you changed your hair?” I ask.

“You know how long it’s been since they cancelled Friends?” she replies curtly. “Besides, if it wasn’t good enough for Brad Pitt…”

From the television:
“Celebrity watchers will recall that Quaker Bob was once engaged to Madison Avenue kitchen phenom, Betty Crocker. There was never an official announcement from General Foods or the Quaker Oats Company but insiders say the engagement was nixed after Quaker Bob was seen holding hands in Las Vegas with fabled femme fatale, Elizabeth Taylor.

“Paris and Quaker Bob expect to marry next spring in Massachusetts, the only state that currently recognizes mixed marriages between celebrities and advertising icons.”

From the living room:
Sylvia’s mentioning Brad Pitt makes me think about his friend George Clooney who was in a movie I recently rented on Netflix about some guy who used to be on TV, Edward R. Murrow.

“Ever hear of someone named Edward R. Murrow?” I ask Sylvia.

“Sure,” she answers easily. “He was the host of Jeopardy before Alex Trebek.”

“You’re good,” I reply, smiling. “Real good.”

From the television:
“In other news, nobody could have been more surprised than Bernie Madoff, the Monster of Manhattan, when he received an unexpected visit from the ABC Extreme Makeover team. In an episode featuring Martha Stewart and her all-prison team of decorators, the former Wall Street Wizard’s prison cell was reportedly transformed from a basic green penal motif to something Ms. Stewart calls ‘Rainbow XCell.’

“As Ms. Stewart explained, ’I was particularly concerned with Bernie’s gray facial coloring, which could easily create a solemn, almost burdensome, mood in this otherwise airy eight by seven foot cell. So my team and I literally splashed color everywhere, festooning rainbow hues across lace-trimmed curtains, bedclothes, pillow cushions, even a knitted tea cozy handed down from Bernie’s maternal aunt. And then, for the final touch, we painted the cell’s solid steel bars in the full spectrum of rainbow colors—very sexy and polychromatic! By the end of the show, I think you’ll agree, we managed to bring a fruity and sensuous air of allure to an otherwise pedestrian cell unit. According to a very pleased Bernie, it’s almost as welcoming as his penthouse. But you can read all about it in my next issue of Prison Decorating Monthly.'”

From the living room:
“You know,” Sylvia says, pushing the mute button, “I’m starting to think the whole thing was a railroad job. A complete miscarriage of justice. Now that I’ve seen the real person on television a few times, I can tell Bernie Madoff is not as bad as everyone said. Probably just another victim of bad press and a lousy publicity agent. Like what’s his name, that governor from Illinois…?”

“You’re right,” I add, “and did you read in People Magazine about Bernie’s charity work, and him becoming a born-again Talmudist? Just shows you can’t believe everything you read in the papers.

“Could you turn up the sound, sweetheart.”

From the television:
“On a more serious note, U2 Rocker, Bono, back from a fact finding mission to Africa, met behind closed doors with Sting, Paul Simon, Donald Trump, Chelsea Clinton and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to begin developing a plan to halt the worldwide spread of AIDS. No word yet on the scope of the plan or whether it would roll out in conjunction with U2’s planned world tour next summer. When asked why Elizabeth Taylor, who heads her own private AIDS foundation, wasn’t invited to attend the conference, unnamed sources suggested her presence was vetoed by unforgiving friends of a still heartbroken Betty Crocker.

“For our final story, we turn to Stockholm, Sweden, where the winners of this year’s Nobel Prizes were just announced. We regret to report there wasn’t a single personality you would recognize among the prizewinners.”

From the living room:
“I’ll bet the Nobel Prize TV ratings really suck this year,” Sylvia says knowingly.

“You’re so right,” I agree. “If they were smart, they’d give at least one of those awards to someone famous.”

“Paris Hilton, maybe,” Sylvia suggests. “Or Brittany Spears, if she’s out of rehab.”

“You’re good,” I reply, smiling. “Real good.”

"We'll Always Have Paris" is from my soon-to-be-published "How To Train A Rock", a collection of short insights and fiction flights. Watch this blog for the publication announcement, probably next month.

Dear Lord, Can I Have A Raise?

2009-03-14T04:55:00.000-07:00

It’s been two years since the Archangel Gabriel came down from Heaven and announced on NPR that God was putting Humankind “on His payroll.” At the time, few of us understood that cryptic remark but fast-rushing events quickly overran our ignorance.

As you remember, it was called the ‘Universal Salary Adjustment’ or U.S.A. and it somehow managed to supercede all payroll functions on the planet, doling out weekly paychecks according to some new and remarkable productivity standards.

At the time I didn’t think much about it though it struck me strange that The Creator would bother Him- or Herself with such mundane busy-ness.

Why not take over the management of Coca Cola, or some industrialized nation, I wondered? Why not end hunger, outlaw war…or maybe cut back the work week to three or four days?

Why not do something that seemed a bit more, well…divine!

And then, of course, nothing was more surprising than the paychecks themselves.

The first sign that something was ‘different’ came when my Augusta, my Salvadoran housekeeper, ran up to me and lifted me in her arms.

“Thank you, thank you, Senor Paul Steven!” she cried, spinning me around in a way that clearly indicated the size of the raise The Divine Paymaster had given her.

When I received my own paycheck I realized I’d be getting scant Heavenly encouragement to continue my work in advertising. There was no point complaining to my colleagues since they were all out looking for jobs in social service or menial labor, two of the “growth industries” created by the U.S.A.

For the first few months I heard nothing but disaster stories. Friends who worked as stockbrokers, lawyers, car salesmen and real estate developers were devastated by the new salary scale. Many of them began frequenting bars and were only saved from a life of alcoholism by the sad fact they didn’t have enough money to pay for the liquor.

Yes, under the impetus of the fat weekly paychecks now being cashed by nurses, dairy farmers, teachers, social workers, secretaries and street cleaners, there was intense competition for these new “high roller” jobs.

I’m sure you remember the riots that took place when the New York City Board of Education announced teacher openings in the South Bronx? Or the shock of seeing professional athletes out on the street in tattered uniforms holding paper cups and begging for spare change? Or when Money Magazine reported that all Peace Corps volunteers were now officially listed as millionaires?

Yes, it was a brand new deal with a brand new twist. Diplomats, McDonald’s restaurant owners and heads of state all contemplated new careers as the U.S.A. brought them down to a social status previously reserved for migrant farm workers and newsstand operators.

And now finally, two years later, most people have grown accustomed to the change. Many of us have sold off our SUV’s, quit our country club memberships and stopped buying expensive Christmas presents, if we still actually give Christmas presents.

And speaking of Christmas, a few weeks ago I noticed with mild interest a Salvation Army Santa being picked up by his chauffered limousine at the completion of his shift.

Pausing in my work as a meter reader, I looked over at the sign above his kettle and saw that, in the spirit of the U.S.A., this good man had been collecting money for the children of stockbrokers, bankers and CEO’s.

I would have taken a few coins from the unguarded pot but I knew that YOU KNOW WHO would only deduct it from my next paycheck.

"Dear Lord…" is from my soon-to-be-published "How To Train A Rock", a collection of short insights and fiction flights. Written over a decade ago, the story is ironically prophetic, highlighting the unprecedented greed and screwed-up values that have brought us to our current economic crisis.

Paul and Doug's Excellent Adventure: The Excerpt

2009-03-06T03:53:00.000-08:00

Something There Is

2009-03-03T04:42:00.000-08:00

Something there is that loves balance and righteous redress. That tips the scales to measure out justice and knows no judgments other than the ones we declare for ourselves. Something there is that equates giving with the gifts we receive and arrows sent into the darkness with barbs that wound us without warning.

Something there is that deals out measure for measure as though they were cards placed thoughtfully in a solemn pack of Tarot. For each Fate dealt to another there is one that comes back to the dealer. For each smile offered to a stranger there is another that comes back as an unexpected offering.

Something there is that won't allow me to denigrate another without denigrating myself. Or to devalue my efforts when I have given my all to the enterprise. Something there is that knows when laying down bricks of kindness and devotion to others I am building a home for my spirit that casts shadows on palaces and mansions.

Something there is that knows true wealth accumulates in the heart and is the only capital I can give away and never exhaust. Were I to gather all the riches of Rockefellers and Kings and Oil Barons and hold them locked with a miser's love in the deepest vault, I would be the most impoverished of spirits walking the planet.

Something there is that won't allow me to take away the rights of others without losing the ones I hold most dear. With each wall I erect to keep out those I fear, I carve out deeper levels to the prison in which I am held captive. How far from the sun I fall when I build a world to exclude those on whom the sun shines freely.

Something there is that lifts up and honors the gifts of life and love. That breaks through the darkness of a wounded spirit like tendrils of grass breaking through the deepest asphalt. Something there is that will ever rise above fear and the pitiful acts of frightened people and self-serving governments.

Something there is that knows the measure of a man or a woman and the gifts which, by their offering, they have chosen to receive. Something there is that tips the scales to measure out justice and knows no judgments other than the ones we declare for ourselves.

Something there is that lets us build a world for ourselves as we would build a world for others.

Something there is that is writing this now.

Something there is that is reading this now, as well.

"Something There Is" will be featured in my new book "How To Train A Rock", a collection of Short Insights And Fiction Flights due to be published in April, '09. Published by Blind Elephant Press, "How To Train A Rock" will be available through Amazon.com.

Where's Henny Youngman When You Need Him?

2009-02-21T19:30:00.000-08:00

Listen To The Wind

2009-02-17T04:34:00.000-08:00

Listen to the wind,
the fleeting wind.
Listen to it letting go
the sadness stirring far below.
Listen to the wind
the fleeting wind.

Be like me, the wind said. Never linger over sorrow, never cling to sadness. When I was a child I would run up against walls and stop, just like you, boy. But now I know better and leap from one obstruction to the next as if they were stepping stones.

Be like me, the wind said, and pass quickly over the obstacles in your life.

Listen to the wind,
the rushing wind.
Listen to it hurrying by
like a brakeless train
across the nighttime sky.
Listen to the wind
the rushing wind.

Be like me, the wind said, and never slow down to doubt yourself. When I was a child, boy, I would question where I was going, just like you. But now I know better, and only slow down to rustle leaves and scatter seeds.

Be like me, the wind said, and never slow down to doubt yourself.

Listen to the wind,
the stoic wind.
Listen to it hide the moon
and whistle up a cloudless tune.
Listen to the wind
the stoic wind.

Be like me, the wind said. I never mind the darkness, never ache to see the sun shining in its sky. When I was a child I would fret over clouds, just like you, boy, and spend my energy trying to keep the sun shining through. But now I know that clouds have a rightful place in the sky.

Be like me, the wind said, and learn to live with clouds in your life.

Listen to the wind,
the playful wind.
Listen to it shake the trees
with laughter rustling in the breeze.
Listen to the wind
the playful wind.

Be like me, the wind said, and never take yourself too seriously. When I was a child, I would puff myself up with my own importance, just like you, boy. But now I know that every tree I bend down will only straighten itself once I’m gone.

Be like me, the wind said, and enjoy the game while you can.

Listen to the wind,
the fleeting wind.
Listen to it setting free
the shadows of your misery.
Listen to the wind
the fleeting wind.

The above work was written over 20 years ago, and will be included in a new collection of short works slated to be published in the spring. The collection is titled, "How To Train A Rock". Please watch for it.

On The Road To Writing My Novel

2009-02-13T07:21:00.000-08:00

For twelve years I was engaged in a solitary process that resulted in the publication of my first novel, “Or So It Seems”. Now, less than a year after its publication, I’m out in the world introducing this book to legions of total strangers.

Funny how the universe spins its web.

When I began writing the novel, I was lost and confused and not at all interested in writing a spiritually framed novel. My marriage had broken up, I was bitter and angry, and struggling to construct a life as a single parent of three wonderful but highly vulnerable children. And so, not surprisingly, the novel that took shape was bitter, angry and focused mainly on blame and payback.

But a funny thing happened on the road to payback.

As many of you know, we are each of us walking two paths on our life’s journey. On the first path we encounter our day-to-day struggles, our deeply held desires, our careers, our family lives, our likes, dislikes, quirks and ambitions. The second path, which you could call our spiritual journey, takes us on a much longer and far more obscure expedition. I’ll leave it to someone more knowledgeable than me to explain where that journey originates or where it is taking us, but its main characteristic is that it calls to and enlivens our deepest and truest selves.

Well, without over-stretching the comparison, this novel of mine, “Or So It Seems”, also traveled two roads in its journey to fullness, publication and, yes, self-discovery.

The point of divergence, where one road ended and another began, occurred after seven years. Truth is, I thought I had finished the novel, thought it was done. But after reviewing it, an agent suggested it needed more narrative tension. If I’m honest, it was a well-written, essentially dull tale of a man putting his life together again after divorce. I understood what the agent meant and sat down to create some suspense and tension by reordering a few elements in the plot.

A funny thing happened when I sat down at my computer, however.

The moment I started my rewrite, it was as if a voice sounded inside my head, telling me “Now you are going to write the novel you were supposed to write.” And then began another spiritual journey. Suddenly this kaleidoscope of new ideas, themes and characters started populating my simple storyline; as if by magic, my tale of one man’s divorce became a complex and humorous metaphor for everyman’s spiritual odyssey. Suddenly, my straightforward, linearly-told story became a rich, multilayered plot. And if you think I was excited or pleased, you’re not even close. I was scared to death. Had all that work, I worried—over seven years worth—been for nothing? It was frightening to think of revisiting my novel at that late date, but then again, some of those new ideas, characters and themes were so interesting, so playful, and so much more relevant to my life’s journey than anything I had written before…

Well, as it turned out, the new elements blended beautifully with the old and eventually, five years later, I found myself the author of a multi-leveled, humorous, surprisingly charming and intensely compelling novel. What one reviewer called, “A Rollicking Spiritual Page-Turner.” What I describe as ‘part odyssey, part oddball adventure and totally fantastic.’

If there’s a theme to “Or So It Seems” it clearly relates to perceptions of reality. How we’re so often distracted by what we see as the drama of our lives, that we rarely notice how that drama fits into our larger spiritual journey. Much the way I, in starting a novel about my divorce, failed to see that I had really begun a voyage of discovery, a journey that would lead towards something much larger and far more interesting than the tale of angst, bitterness and blame that had originally inspired me.

Or so it seems.

What Happens To Snow That Never Falls?

2009-01-26T11:31:00.000-08:00

The following chapter from "Or So It Seems", a novel by Paul Steven Stone, picks up at a point where the narrator and his son are coming off a disastrous Pinewood Derby, which if you don't know is an oftentimes hellish father/son cub scout competition.

ADDRESSING THE QUESTION OF WHAT HAPPENS

TO SNOW THAT NEVER FALLS

My little boy is sleeping.

Lying next to him in our shared bed I hear him rhythmically drawing air through his open mouth.

A week has passed and we have not yet spoken of the Pinewood Derby. Truly spoken about it. We have of course mentioned small inconsequential matters relating to the event but only in the peripheral way one talks about the condition of a sick person when he is close enough to overhear.

"Bad break," I said to him later that day when we were seeking distraction from our sorrows at the South Shore Plaza Food Court. "We almost went all the way."

"No big deal," he answered, choosing to focus on the Johnny Rocket cheeseburger in his hand rather than the unstated issues in the air.

The fact that neither of us was ready to bring up the real cause for our discomfort is a good indicator of how tender the wound still seemed.

And what could I say? "I am sorry Old Number Two (our terminally ugly model racecar) looked like such a fruit salad?"

I do not think so.

Which is why a week later I have still not made any effort to clarify and explore that traumatizing experience for my little boy.

Not that I would know what to say.

If the purpose of life is to reach some understanding about the meaning of life I will probably have to retake this Do-It-Yourself Workshop a few hundred times before I am ready to graduate from the program.

To me the meaning of life remains as unfathomable a mystery as it ever was. Perhaps even more so the closer I come to seeing how things work.

I may need to leave it to someone else—to a future Paul Peterson in a future embodiment—to figure things out. He will have to penetrate the false facade of Automatic Universal Misunderstanding (AUM) to discover why I was repeatedly forced to experience something as upsetting—and weirdly ironice, considering my history—as the public humiliation of my only son.

What could be the purpose of that?

And what meaning could it have?

Especially when I recall how often I was told that AUM, Automatic Universal Misunderstanding, is merely an illusion; an illusion shared by almost everyone on the planet. A very believable illusion for sure but an illusion nevertheless.

Maya, as the Hindus have termed it.

"The Great Pretender's greatest game of make-believe," The Bapucharya calls it, adding, "He has only to sound the precise vibration and—ohmigoodness!—the physical universe disappears and we are all becoming (pause for giggles) out-of-work actors!"

No I do not enjoy the flavor of my GUM—my particular view of this Great Unrevealed Mystery—and would rather chew on something else. Something less emotionally destructive.

Simply put, I have had enough of…

I feel a soft blow against my shoulder.

It is Mickey's arm flailing about as his body shifts under the covers, turning from one side to the other.

Without asking permission a smile spontaneously takes control of my facial muscles.

My little boy is facing me now!

Just look at him lying here next to me, his mouth half open, his eyes fully closed, his brow starting to crease in irritated response to the glare of the lamp. Look at the way the eyelid twitches as if a few errant light beams have already stolen their way in.

If the past provides any insight to the future he will soon grow irritated by the glare of my reading lamp and turn back onto his other side. But while he is facing in my direction I will take advantage of this fleeting opportunity to breathe in like a sweet breath of oxygen the spectacle of his unguarded innocence.

Have you ever seen anything more beautiful or with more power to pull at your heart? Lying here propped against my reading pillow, staring over bifocals that have once again dropped to the lower reaches of my nose, I realize how fortunate I am to be given moments like this. Moments where I can reach out and touch him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

He would of course shake off my hand even in the midst of his slumbers. But he would shake it off automatically the same way he would shake off an annoying fly. He would not question my right as a bothersome, affectionate father to touch him, to reach out in the night to assure myself he is real and alive.

Why a father would need to do such things is another story, one he would not easily understand. But he would never challenge my right to claim that intimacy just as he would never question the right of the fly to land wherever it chooses.

For twenty three years I lived in the same apartment as my father until he died of a heart attack at the age of 49 and we never shared a bed together, much less one of life's major disasters like a Pinewood Derby.

I had this thought; actually it is more like a fancy than a thought.

Yesterday here in Boston it was supposed to snow. The weather forecasters had predicted eight to ten inches with a foot more expected up north. What we actually experienced when everything was said and done was an unseasonably warm day in the upper fifties with the sun shining through high wispy clouds. A day as it turned out where thousands of snow shovels were sold in what was possibly the year's last frenzy of winter storm panic shopping.

Of course weather prediction is far from an exact science, especially in New England, but there is still something dramatic and momentous about a predicted snowstorm that never arrives.

When I was a child growing up in Brooklyn and would watch snow falling I can remember thinking that snow was some physical substance that collected in the clouds until there was so much accumulated it finally broke through. Almost like a mathematical formula describing the inevitable result of supply exceeding storage capacity.

One time when I was in elementary school we were told a major snowstorm was on the way but like yesterday's storm it never materialized. I recall wondering if someone might have made a mistake about the amount of snow that had accumulated in the clouds?

Maybe enough snow had not yet collected, I reasoned?

Or maybe they were right about the amount of snow piled up but wrong about how much the clouds could hold…?

Well whatever the reason, I was certain that the snow which had been predicted—the snow that did not fall—was still up there, high in the clouds…waiting. Waiting for more snow to collect. Waiting until the clouds were so full and sodden with snow they had no choice but to burst open.

Then of course all the snow would fall down and cover the asphalt streets of Brooklyn in a numbingly soft and pure whiteness.

As a child such simple ideas were the foundation of my understanding about the way things worked. No different, I would guess, from the assumptions and beliefs of most children.

Today when I wander through memories of my father, my mind approaches the subject with the same childlike innocence. And somehow I believe that the love I never received from my father was like the snow that never fell from the clouds. It did not vaporize or cease to exist but was merely held over. Waiting for enough love to collect. Waiting until so much love accumulated it would break through all restraints and finally—freed at last—fall like a gentle snow upon my life and the lives of my children.

As childish as it sounds something in me wants to believe that love builds up in the course of human experience so that if it fails to shower down in one life it will inevitably find release in another.

That same inner part of me knows that the love I share with my children has been made large and overwhelming by the love that never fell from my father's heart.

That hunger for a father's love must have colored Dad's childhood as well, since his father—my grandfather Izzy—was notorious for being a stern and distant parent. Is it any wonder then that Dad, being so unfamiliar with love and how to get it, searched for it so relentlessly outside the boundaries of his family?

Searching for it in his work, his friends, even in the company of strange women.

My father's tragedy was that he never saw the abundance lying nearby for the treasure that was always beyond his reach.

I believe we are all waiting for snow that never fell. Some of us, the lucky ones, learn to create that snow for ourselves while others only learn to imitate the loveless behavior of their parents.

"Dad," Mickey mutters, squirming under the covers, "would you turn out the light!"

"In a few moments," I promise softly. "Turn over now and close your eyes."

He makes an angry noise and turns over as instructed.

"Thank you, sweetie," I whisper, tapping him softly on the shoulder.

"Grrr!" he answers.

"I love you," I tell him softly, almost singing the words.

"I love you, too," he grunts back with a testy shake of his body.

In scarcely a moment my little boy will be sound asleep again.

Most likely he will never remember waking up.

Most certainly he will never even know it snowed.

*********

For more about "Or So It Seems", visit OrSoItSeems.info

"Or So It Seems", a novel by Paul Steven Stone, is published by Blind Elephant Press, $20. It is available on Amazon.com and in a limited number of bookstores in the metro Boston area.

A 10 Minute Discussion On Why Time Does Not Exist

2009-01-14T09:03:00.000-08:00

The following is an excerpt from "Or So It Seems", a comic breathtaking romp through time and space. Speaking of space, here is...

A Ten Minute Discussion On Why Time Does Not Exist

Though I never fully understood what they meant, The Seekeers For Truth often told us that time as we know it does not exist.

If there is such a thing as time, according to The Seekers, it does not occur in linear progression as we think it does but rather all at once, like an explosion caught in a video freeze frame. And if we are unable to experience it that way it is because of the deficiencies of our sensing mechanisms rather than the essential nature of time itself. It all goes back, they tell us, to AUM, to Automatic Universal Misunderstanding.

Think about that.

Time does not exist.

Everything in your life, every memory, every relationship, every assumption you make, every day you spend on this planet says just the opposite. That time not only exists but is a cruel and relentless taskmaster. That time not only serves as the backdrop and common medium for all our experiences but is the only way we can order our lives to make any sense of them.

If time does not exist could I really be 45 years old? Could I have been assaulted by moody teenagers on the streets of Brooklyn when I was eight years old, kissed by my first girlfriend when I was 10, had my first and most confusing sexual experience when I was 19, been married at 29 and divorced at 41?

I mean how can all of that be occurring at the same time? In the same moment?

How it happens I do not know.

That it does happen—is happening now!—of that I'm certain...

***

Am I capable of understanding any of this?

Are these answers waiting to be uncovered on my ILE (Individual Life Experience)? Or will I have to wait until my next embodiment or a dozen future embodiments to pull all the pieces of the puzzle together?

Perhaps just like time, those questions can only be understood and answered when viewed from deep within my being. From the CPU, the Center Point of the Universe.

Or within close proximity thereof.

Ironically it is only moving far into that deep inner space that one can find release from the full scale Broadway production of "Life As We Know It" produced by the Automatic Universal Misunderstanding. A show that you will no doubt recall runs 24 hours a day is enjoyed by the entire universe of God's sentient creatures who believe it to be real.

And since AUM is wholly responsible for creating the illusion of time as part of that show the only way to make some sense of the non-existence of time—to really experience it in the moment—is to step free from the powerful grip of Automatic Universal Misunderstanding.

But remember also that AUM creates more than time; it creates an entire universe of illusions. So when you step free from the power of AUM, you step free from a lot more than time.

You probably do not realize it, but I have only recently been gifted with this ability to move deep within myself, to sit extremely close to the CPU where time moves so slowly it does not appear to be moving at all. Remember, this is my first-ever Do-It-Yourself Workshop, as sudden and new to me as it probably is to you.

Because of this newly acquired inward mobility I can also move backwards and forwards in time with apparent ease, free to explore the language of my my ILE. Something else that is entirely new in my altered range of experiences.

Though in truth, as I have already stated, I have not moved anywhere except inside myself. All my connections with time have occurred in just one place—in the present moment.

The Sacred Present Moment!

The same present moment that runs through all moments in time like an old-fashioned record spindle runs through all the 45's stacked upon it—do you remember vinyl 45's? Anyway, for some reason I now seem able to move freely across that freeze frame image where time explodes all at once; not to some earlier or later moment in time but to a different place in the overall frozen tableau. Like an ant who can crawl across the surface of a photograph and into the depth of the image as well...

***

That is why the mountaintop analogy works so well to explain the expansion of your perception as you move within yourself. Because when you move toward the center of the mountain you also move toward the top. And the higher you climb the more you can see of the landscape below. So when you finally reach the Center Point of the Universe you are at the highest vantage point, from where you can see everything in all directions! All at the same time.

Most of us are only capable of living our lives at the base of the mountain so we move blindly on the lowest plane as if there were no higher, more integrated, point of view; as if life were nothing more than a series of images, experiences or moments that unfold in linear progression.

That linear presentation being all we see of the universe, it naturally becomes our reality.

But as I said at the beginning of this workshop, when we are standing on the mountaintop we can see the movie in its entirety; we can view the entire chain of events leading up to this moment in time and all those events that reach out from this moment as well...

To follow up on this brief discussion, turn to "Or So It Seems" by Paul Steven Stone,page 299: Lesson 31, "A Ten Minute Discussion On Why Time Does Not Exist"

"Or So It Seems" can be purchased at Amazon.com

For more information about Paul Steven Stone, log onto: PaulStevenStone.com

For more information about "Or So It Seems" log onto: OrSoITseems.info

Or So It Seems—The Novel

2008-12-23T08:30:00.000-08:00

Or So It Seems a novel by Paul Steven Stone

Part odyssey, part oddball adventure, "Or So It Seems" offers a breathtaking look at one man's spiritual journey.

A growing legion of fans are applauding "Or So It Seems", taking it to their hearts like earlier generations embraced "Catcher In The Rye" and "Catch-22". In Paul Peterson, the novel's narrator, we are given a comically tragic hero beset by divorce, single parenthood and the difficulties of living a simple life in a complex universe. It's Peterson's search for answers to the mysteries of his life that powers and accelerates this fantastic adventure.

Never before has a novel so effortlessly—and humorously—synthesized Eastern philosophy into a palatable feast for the Western mind.

To learn more about this unique novel, visit OrSoItSeems.info.