"To Live in Keezletown"

A recent bike trip convinced me I'd give anything "To Live in Keezletown".

All along the way were houses I could see myself living in.

Just when I thought the going was too tough to continue the road would ramp me down at great speed.

Sure beats "Hiding Out in Weyer's Cave".

There When It Happened

So I guess I oughta know?

Saturday, July 22 at Our Community Place in Harrisonburg, Virginia we were witness to an historic event.

Robert St. Ours, his brother Phillip, Dave Sickmen--all original members of The Hackensaw Boys--joined together with "Critter" Fuqua, currently of Old Crow Medicine Show to bring back a bit of the good ol' days.

Surrounding them were other former Hackensaw.

Brought me all the way back to when I used to catch their rough and ready act at the Blue Moon Diner in Charlottesville well over 150 years ago.

The best show was always when the two bands got together.

Hackensaw hasn't been the same since it lost its original members.

Saturday night sure proved the old French saying: "The more things change . ."

Can't Get No Verse

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco vetoed legislation declaring this poem by James Ellis Richardson to be the official state poem after the state's poet laureate said it lacked sufficient literary merit:


I Love My Louisiana

I love my Louisiana
She's so colorful in her history
so majestic in her pride
with beauty unsurpassed
like any other of its kind.
She seems to be like a soulful mate
that stands here by my side.
This brings me special confidence
to know that she is mine.

I love my Louisiana
with all her charms and queenly ways,
yet she blushes when in bloom.
God's sunshine surely kissed her
for He blessed her cup so full.
You can even feel her radiance
on her rainy gloomy days
for you know that on the morrow
the sun will clear the haze.

I love my Louisiana.
I propose this toast toward her
with my meager pen in hand.
I somehow feel so primitive
to her majesty so grand.


Does Louisiana really care about or need literary merit? Any help would seem to do down there right now.

"Pull the Plug"

If we don't "Pull the Plug" on Israel soon we're going to end up in "The End of Times".

Israelis in Lebanon

"The Man Who Saved History"

What can I say about my first poem?

It started out as a song lyric crafted after Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". Never having written anything but parodies of songs already written, I went to his lyrics to see how to structure an epic song.

I took this and another "pre-song" to an open mic at The Prism Coffeehouse in Charlottesville, Virginia where Aer Stevens was the M.C. He had the supreme audacity to call me a "poet"--the last thing I ever wanted to be.

After the reading he suggested that "The Man Who Saved History" was more like a poem than a song.

Based on the life of Caius Marius in Plutarch's Lives, I wrote it mostly because I saw the glaring modern-day similarities between the Germans and the Italians. And because of the shocking scene of German women slashing their defeated men--husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons--to death as they left the battlefield in ignominy.

All would have been different for us today if these hyper-martial Teutons had won. We owe history as we know it to Caius Marius.

"With the Passing of the Storm"

With all the music and musicians New Orleans has been known for down through the years, not to mention writers, one wonders if Katrina might have the effect of initiating a new era of creativity.

The crisis Nature brings being as much opportunity as catastrophe.

Something like what I write about in "With the Passing of the Storm".

"The Homerun Ball"

All this talk about Barry Bonds and his possible (likely?) steroids use has me wondering what effect it all might have on the "The Homerun Ball".





What would America be without homeruns?