Spiritual Wanderings

I’m not sure where this comes from, but I am certain that beyond this life, this physical and mortal existence that we live in, there is another awareness far exceeding what we think is there. In fact “there” is the real and here is the illusion. I have seen the Divine alabaster cities and the heavenly expanses in my mind’s eye and it vibrates with an internal and eternal truth.

I have been a student of death and dying for many years, even long before my son passed with brain cancer, but constant study, meditation and research has convinced me that what is next is magnificent and accessible by all, no matter the dogma or lack of it.

It is probably time for all of to let go of the inbred belief systems we’ve nurtured and harbored as a fearful and controlled species for eons and finally realize that the Divine is not a personality needing worship, craving vengeance, or blind followers, but a loving presence, a light of unconditional love that sees us as the individuation of the its indivisible nature.

Yesterday a friend sent me the following and it was the catalyst for today’s post.

 “You're now wiser than you've ever been, younger than you'll ever be, and less likely to wish without taking action, to pray without having faith, or to hope without remembering the magic.”

Ah, magic. The highest compliment I ever received of my poetic writings came from a precocious 12 year old. She said, “Your poetry looks like it was written with magic.”

May your day today and always be filled with “magic”.

Even Worse!

Thinking about my blog post from yesterday and my castigation to the low-life leadership who kidnapped the young girls in Nigeria and threatened to sell them on the open market.

Actually I was trying to think of what could be worse.

I know what is worse!

The scum that would buy these girls for whatever purpose.

Kidnapping Children

I don’t often like to call low life, a piece of proverbial residue, but I am offended as a human being by even the existence of  Boko Haram Leader Abubakar Shekau.

He is the illiterate piece of crap that thinks he listens to Allah.

He abducted two-hundred Nigerian girls from a school and has offered to sell them in the market. He and his al Qaeda trained organization think woman should get married and not be educated.

What an idiot. What a dolt! And militant Muslims question why so much of the world perceive them as barbaric.

Not that Abubakar Shekau can read, but somebody who can should read the Koran to him for it contains and acknowledges the beauty and grace of life as inspired by Allah to The Prophet Mohammad.

It does not contain the distortions of a megalomaniac and his sycophants who kidnap children and offer to sell them on the open market. 

The Nature of Spring

I am thinking this morning of the simple spiritual things I experience in nature.

The lower meadow needs mowing for the first time. The grasses have grown to several inches. It has been wet so it will have to wait. It seems that everything is late this year.

I did trim some Wisteria vines and pulled some ambient seedlings from the various house gardens but it’s been too cold to plant new flower seedlings.

I again thought of man’s proximity and connection to nature’s spring birth and how we attempt to manipulate the natural beauty of spontaneous chaos into the patterned form of our symmetry and color. I remember one year planting spring seedlings in late April only to have them covered with twenty inches of snow in early May.

I watched and listened to the bubbling warble of the House Wrens building their nests in a tiny birdhouse hanging in a Hackberry Tree. Their little brown bodies belie their feisty demeanor and territorial defense.

A Turtle Dove pair has returned to a weeping cherry tree just off the kitchen window. They build such shallow and flimsy nests. I’m surprised their young survive. Last year there was an old Robin’s nest in the same spot and the Doves used that instead of constructing a new one. They may be cooing cute and slow, but not dumb.

I am reminded again, as I am so often, of Shakespeare’s line. “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” I hope your spring days are just as profound.

Youthful Anchors

A few weeks ago a writer friend of mine Jerry Barmash said he was preparing an article on television anchors getting younger and the use of  social media on newscasts. He asked me if I had any thoughts on the subject.

I did, and sent part of the following to him for his use and consideration and I have amplified it for this post.

I do think the news anchors are getting younger and in some cases too young. Many are inexperienced for the positions they hold and are not students of history. By definition youth lacks the experience of history, but many young anchors lack the knowledge of contemporary history or the interest to learn it and are sometimes faulty in their reporting that requires context to understand an event.

Local television news was in its infancy back in the 1960’s and even color television was new. Most of us young reporters back than were covering news events with black and white silent film and Polaroid pictures. It was rare to do a remote report unless you pushed the big cameras out the studio back door to do a story on the weather. We didn’t have the technology to go anywhere and everywhere live. In the bigger markets reporters went out with a camera and a crew and filmed their story and brought it back to the station to be developed, written, edited and aired. Lighter videotape cameras for field use were a few years in the future.

I was 28 when I was hired by WCBS-TV from WNEW-TV. There were some older colleagues, but many of us hard news street reporters were age contemporaries; some were not, like Gabe Pressman, Ralph Penza, and J.J. Gonzales and others whose names I can't remember. The anchors then were older. Jim Jensen was 15 years my senior.  The specialists like science reporter Earl Ubell and the weather and sports guys were also older. When I first joined Channel two Frank Gifford, Pat Summerall and Jack Whittaker were all doing local sports. They were older and they eventually moved over to the network side of programming.

Three things are predominantly different in today’s news presentations: the number of woman who are anchors and reporters, the age of the anchors and the use of social media in covering and presenting the news. In 1969 Channel Two had two women street reporters, Gloria Rojas and Pia Lindstrum, more came later, but no women anchors that I can recall. Social media, at that time, was a  note on a colleague’s desk or a phone call.

I watch with disdain the constant reference on the air by local anchors all over the country to “follow me” on Twitter or Facebook. I was trained not to waste the precious seconds of a 30-minute broadcast that could be used for additional information on an important story. Why waste collective minutes on frivolous chatter that does nothing to advance a story or inform the viewer? An old friend and global journalist Tarzie Vittachi once said to me, “if the information doesn’t transform, then maybe it’s gossip.” His statement has its truth.

The so-called citizen journalists of today are not trained to be responsible tellers of a story. A journalistic ethic is to be learned and cultured over time and when it’s seasoned with hard and fair reporting it's called trust. Walter Cronkite didn't get to be America’s most trusted person by promoting himself on twitter or Facebook. It came from hard work, solid reporting, checking facts and doing it daily.

Sending a cell phone picture or selfie or a hash tag sentence is enough to get notoriety these days and in some case celebrity status for the proverbial fifteen minutes of fame, but it’s not journalism. 

And while I’m on this rant, there is too much personal opinion masquerading as news and analysis. I am in favor of commentary, but only when it is labeled as such, and not tossed in as an aside in a newscast and delivered as fact. My other pet-peeve is asking a question and then interrupting the answer. Listening is a journalistic skill.

I think twitter and the other social media outlets have their place and are useful in our modern society and in the gathering of information and even as a tool to facilitate news coverage, but using them on newscasts to self-promote, gain followers, encourage comment, or raise ratings, is detrimental to the journalistic profession.

Dispassion prevails!

Now that poetry month is over, I will return to the foils of human thought and action.

I wrote about the idiot governor of Georgia the other day who signed into law a statue allowing guns in churches, bars, nightclubs and libraries.

Now I read that a bill is moving its way through the Louisiana legislature that would criminalize solicitation making it punishable by a fine and up to six months in jail.

If you are poor in Louisiana and ask for money you could go to jail.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO US? WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE GRACE OF THE FOLKS IN THE SOUTH? HAVE WE FORGOTTEN WE ARE ALL ONE? HAS DISPASSION REPLACED COMPASSION?

Good grief…look within