Early Morning Street Sence In Alamos, Sonora — HDR Image by kenne
Alamos, Sonora 7 a.m caught the eye of a lone dog standing at the door patient Mexican dog not one to chase bikes laying against the sidewalk.
only a few high clouds add contrast against the blue sky behind me a truck rattles by carts pushed toward the plaza no one sleeping on benches like in America.
some Mexicans sitting on the church steps born destined to work in the cathedral of toil looking old at 21 a woman leaves morning mess still believing in the Guadalupe lady painted on velvet — I shell paint a velvet Elvis.
50 Years Ago June 5, 1968 BULLETIN (AP)
(LOS ANGELES) – AN ASSAILANT – APPARENTLY STANDING AT POINT-BLANK RANGE GUNNED DOWN NEW YORK SENATOR ROBERT KENNEDY AND FOUR OR FIVE OTHER PERSONS EARLY TODAY IN LOS ANGELES. KENNEDY HAD JUST CLAIMED VICTORY IN THE CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL RACE OVER SENATOR EUGENE MCCARTHY. HE WAS STANDING IN AN ANTI-ROOM OF THE AMBASSADOR HOTEL WHEN THE GUNMAN CUT LOOSE WITH A VOLLEY OF SHOTS. KENNEDY WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD – ALTHOUGH FIRST REPORTS SAID HE WAS SHOT IN THE HIP.
This is the actual copy from an AP Teletype machine just to the right of the one I was working in the STRACOM tech control room, Sukiran, Okinawa, 4:35 PM J.S.T., June 5, 1968. Like many, I had been following the primary closer and was shocked by what I was reading. A few hours later, the following came over the AP Teletype:
AP38
BULLETIN
LOS ANGELES – SENATOR KENNEDY DEAD. . .
AP38
MORE BULLETIN
AN AIDE OF THE NEW YORK SENATOR ANNOUNCED AT 5 A-M (EDT)
THAT KENNEDY DIED AT 1:40 A-M (PACIFIC TIME).
HE WAS 42 YEARS OLD.
WITH KENNEDY AT THE TIME OF HIS DEATH WAS HIS WIFE, ETHEL AND OTHER MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY
AP40
-CORRECTION–
KENNEDY DEATH AP38 MAKE TIME OF DEATH 1:44 (NOT 1:40).
R.F.K. “Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others. Or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.”
“Whatever people may say and whatever history may write about Bobby, and whatever history may write about Bobby, he had a genuine compassion, a real love of people, humble people, poor people – I think the word now, is underprivileged people – not in a pompous or pedantic way, but genuine.” The words of former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (74 at the time) have appeared on television
History shows that Richard Nixon went on to be elected president and we only speculate what the last forty years would have given us if Bobby Kennedy had been elected. Would we have chosen faith in people over fear? Would we have required sluggish bureaucracies to respond more rapidly to social needs? The following is shared from June 14, 1968, Time Essay:
“John W. Gardner put it best at Cornell’s commencement earlier this month when he imagined himself as a 23rd-century thinker. He had discovered, he said, that ‘20th-century institutions were caught in a savage crossfire between uncritical lovers and unloving critics. On the one side, those who loved their institutions tended to smother them in an embrace of death, loving their rigidities more than their promise, shielding them from life-giving criticism. On the other side, there arose a breed of critics without love, skilled in demolition but untutored in the arts by which human institutions ate nurtured and strengthened and made to flourish. Between the two, the institutions perished.”
Content in this posting first appeared on the 40th anniversary of his death. At that time I ended the posting with this:
“Now, forty years later Joy and I are getting ready to travel to Austin to attend the Texas Democratic Party Convention at another historical time in American political history. Hopefully, this will in time be looked back upon as a time in our nation’s history when emotion conquered reason.”
(The items contained in this posting are from scrapbooks I kept during 1967-68.)
In August 2010 I took over 83 photos a young woman and two men climbing the rock spire at Windy Point Vista along Catalina Highway. It ended up being a fun unplanned project. I put a video together using the photos and also uploaded them to my Flickr account.
We are hairy men who may be thought of a “Twit,” but I dare say, are not. Why you might ask? If you look closely, you will not see tasty morsels in our beards, while Twits upon close review will have tiny little specks of dried-up scrambled eggs.
So says Roald Dahl, and he should know of all the disgusting things found in the beard of a twit, but, no need to hold your noses.
So, what is it these hairy men are trying to hide? Is it an ugly face, you ask? No, not really, for we are two guys possessing good thoughts, which shone out of our faces like sunbeams, so we will always look lovely.
Again, Roald Dahl, should know: ‘If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it.’
Even so, on this sand grain day in the bent bay’s grave I celebrate and spurn my driftwood seventy-sixth wind turned age.
Yet, I remain steadfast in Shakespeare’s fifth stage in The Seven Stages of Man, still acquiring wisdom, enjoying the finer things in life and remain very attentive of my appearance, trying to live life to its fullest, preparing for the final stages of life. Shall seventy-six bells sing struck.
kenne
The above illustration is by Quentin Blake in Roald Dahl’s book, The Twits. Part of this posting contains copy from The Twits and Dylan Thomas’ Poem On His Birthday.
I can’t let this pass without again sharing Dylan Thomas’Poem On His Birthday.
I make my nests among the desert cactus.
Several I will build.
One for my lady to lay her eggs in.
Others to confuse our predators.
I’m not shy, like others of my family.
My lady and I will both sing songs.
Though my Lady is the one who sits upon the eggs.
I will help feed the young just like any daddy should.
I am seven to eights inches long.
My head is brown, and I sport a white eye stripe.
My bill is slightly curved for digging for those bugs.
I’ll flash my spotted tail feathers and flap barred wings.
I hardly ever drink water, even when it there.
I get what I need from the things I eat.
I really love those ants, beetles and grasshoppers.
I will occasionally eat some seeds and fruits.
So if you travel to the deserts
down in the southwestern USA
Look among the cactus for a football nest.
There you might see us flying or at rest.
— wildfiredreamer
Cactus Wrens and Cactus Wren Nests Images by kenne (Click on any image to see slideshow.)
View of Tucson from the Box Camp Trail on Mt. Lemmon (Click here to see more hiking the Box Camp Trail photos.) — Images by kenne
The ground we walk on,
the plants and creatures,
the clouds above
constantly dissolving
into new formations –
each gift of nature
possessing its own
radiant energy,
bound together by
cosmic harmony.
Variations On Autumn, Red . . ., and Green: We Are Born Like This — Image by kenne
Yes, we are born like this on such a dulling day — I think, don’t you?
Autumn Variations
I. When the red flares of morning clouds Turn to silver in the rising sunlight The vaulting poplars and firs and pines
Along the traffic choked avenues Turn an Autumnal red and gold Light teaches liquidity to the arboreal
Autumnal red tail on a huge gum tree Still point in the traffic of the day Red tail gold eyes of the seasonal
The color of October maple leaves Red tail with a perne in a gyre Teach beauty to the sun blind trafficking
As I stagnate at the nexus of the day Destiny teaches me to sit and see
II. In the early October afternoon Silver clouds streak pale turquoise Gold light drenches the tall girl Her lithe back and the dimples Above her round denimed bun Igniting a halo of blonde hair Tumbling round her angelic face
The regulars are hauling chairs From inside the Mad Café Onto the broad sidewalk to sit And luxuriate in afternoon sun Each is caught in a sunset halo Ringed in brightening yellow light Around a deepening silhouette
III. Pigeons wheel over the Park Moved by the gyre of a raptor A Girl wearing a tight black skirt Sits and crosses her long pale legs Willow, supple, saucy and soft Sunset plays in wild brown curls Tumbling around her Da Vinci smile
Gray utility poles and tarred pines Bearing wires of the new reality Gleam as their silhouettes deepen Edged by light like embers brighten A sun orange disc glances off The polished rear of a passing car Stabs the eye of the word blind poet
IV. Lithe, the cat girl, in alligator pumps With bright silver buckles, curls into The long black chair as a soft breeze Ruffles the gaudy feather in her hair And the curves of her gold silk blouse.
It is early afternoon, Indian Summer, Mazed in downtown San Francisco Where we are caught in the sere: Green leaves baked in noon turn ashy And the grey tiled sidewalk white.
Eyeing the clouds of Summer cotton, Young flesh shining through gossamer dresses, I am storm tossed by the gales of ecstasies I love early October in San Francisco.
V. How high hangs the plate of cloud How thickly does it sit upon the air Pressing upon the atmosphere
So thickens air into syrup in the lung And bending the light into the eye So color is twisted into gray
A pigeon stands on a rooftop Like a jewel of gold Roman glass Iridescent slivers of feathers
Flashing through the grayness Even in drear fog with tiger-eye fire Color in the Garden of the Dead
But then the fog blows so thorough Even the neck of a pigeon is subdued
VI. Pigeons wheel over the meadow Stirred by the gyring red tails hunting And mating among the giant red gums
The wind twirls falling leaves of red gums Through the bright blue Autumnal air As the huge trees dance with the wind
Autumnal brown leaves litter Park paths Crunch and crackle beneath the heal Autumn in the City, music in the air
On the sidewalk outside the Mad Café The Rasta boys and the Gucci girls Dance under Apollo’s Tree of Prophecy
Unaware of the destiny of Daphne They revel in the face of catastrophe
VII. The sidewalk outside the Mad Café Roils with Rasta boys and Gucci girls Doc Martens and Free Tibet tees And hand knitted panda caps
They’re drinking morning beers And dancing unaware that The puny laurel down the block Planted in a pit in the sidewalk Is Apollo’s Tree of Prophesy
And so it is the world burns on Underneath the rolling sea clouds Porous as any El Greco sky Revealing great turquoise moments Wounds of a Passion marking the firmament
VIII. Ten thousand blank faces Blink from the vast gray mask Of the wind whistled sea The dark secrets of a moment
So quickly are they gone To be replaced by the others By the sisters and brothers Upon the acrimonious ocean
I’m drowning in a sea of thought But what can I fathom From the tongues of sea faces
To teach me a philosophy of lees or is it all a poetry of seas Meant to teach me liquidity
IX. The sun ignites the colors of custom, Red silks, blue nylon and yellow cotton: At high noon on a clear October day Every thing the sun enlivens it pales:
The falling leaves are burnt and gray, But the pigeon burns with an opal fire: I smell fresh ground coffee, sizzling flesh Upon a mechanical rumbling of the air:
Staring at diaphane of summer dresses Floating on shoulders like water on stone, And the scurrying legs of the pretty girls Dancing beneath searing sun like gazelles:
I question the Veritas of all as invention: Am I not just another dreaming Endymion?
X. Impress of the morning Green turtles sunning On a big scummy rock In the middle of a lily pond
Lily sunbursts of yellow Venus jewels of white, Demur cloaks of purple Animated by the wind
Thought molten Gauguin And his golden goddess With buds on her breasts And blooms on her thighs
Thought back of a turtle Greater than the Moon Swimming in the eyes Of a maenad steeping
Like dreamy Endymion Inside many dream’s dreams How many awakenings Until a maenad can see
The agitations of atoms And so be unfastened from Just dreams of the world
XI. Steeping in the shadow of the canyon High rim sunlit ledges of chert succumb To the darkness of the granite mountains A red sign blinks through the window A folk song reedily licks the savory air As I kill time with the point of a pen And a delusion for nothing stops time The measure of the motion of atoms I feel like a vegetable but bleed like meat Is it anything but a bloody id dream heat Like Alpine grandeurs in Beethoven’s ear Or Shakespeare caught in light of Vermeer
XII. Autumn is seeking the Winter coma How quickly the years bud fades away Bug ratty or Autumn burnt, singed There are brown holes in Summer clothes No longer green, they’re gone ash gray A brumal vacuum inserts itself in the air And how much of a seer must one be To read Winter encroachment in all this I can flip a coin and I cannot predict Heads or tails with any accuracy but I do know that the rising coin will fall This much at least I can predict unerringly
XIII. I am in love with the October skies My lover’s a blue soul that licks at my eyes And yet she will flee and leave me with stars And the black icy dome and Venus and Mars So I sit in the room of the wild mocha seas Crashing on islands of chocolate and jade I sit in the room of the coffees and teas Dreaming of pleasures where poetry’s made Or is it the girl with the long copper braid With gardens tattooed on the backs of her knees She has a mouth made of indigo shade And a kiss that infects with the sweetest disease So I sit in the room the Concerto of Sighs Dreaming of how to make love with my eyes
XIV. Late afternoon buttery light of early Autumn Owl silhouette perched upon a peaked roof It is made of clay so the ravens just ignore it The yellow air is savory like flesh on a grill The setting sun bursts through a wine glass
Many suns sinking through the wine glass Now the sun is set. The twilight turns red Strings of cloud ignite then fail into night The sky deepens, from turquoise to indigo And the round moon rises, shiny white bone
I sit and watch the young at play upon Each other’s skins, tapestries of their passions A Maenad drunk upon the late god’s liquor A Maenad lusting after the late god’s Ichor So lunatic she dances with an old fool satyr
I sit and I watch the foolish old satyr try To dance with the girl for from her the honey Of generation drips into music drenched air Like dew from a passion flower this old satyr Has long been addicted to She snared him on The promise of a kiss then danced away Leaving him dangling upon her feral song The hook through pursed and leathery lips The young flay him like Apollo did Marsyas
XV. Constant beads of golden light Are strung across the white wall Behind the depth of the window Upon the third floor of the large Dingy building across the street Its peaked roof rakes the low fog How quick the sun disappeared Tonight it grew dark as if it was When it is, the back half of October Sun set brown hair a copper halo
O quiet night, be a quiet night But no it is filled with the thump The sounds of sunset sacrilege Old eyes glance upon young thighs Drenched in buttery golden light In the doorway of the Mad Café Twilight, deepening silver blue Bird wavers along an invisible umbilical To the thicket of its night nest
XVI. This was the weekend Yawning Autumn’s Nocturnal abyss Exhaled and shriveled All of the maples Brown leaves now litter Dull cement sidewalks On Friday the trees Were hung with green And today they’re empty Trembling skeins like So many bony hands
Yesterday clouds crept Scudding from the south And that can mean rain First storm of Autumn But this morning is clear Not a cloud in the sky Cold is now lurking In the shadowy air The cold of the chthonic Sucks light from the sun Winter is eating heat to Fire the season of oblivion
Early Morning Street Sence In Alamos, Sonora — HDR Image by kenne
Cityscape — Mixed Media — Image by kenne
East Texas Southern Magnolia — Image by kenne
Windy Point Vista — Images by kenne
Tom and Kenne Turner (October 2009)– Image by Joy
Douglas Spring Trail Panorama Image by kenne
“Sisters” Joy and Jody (June 2, 2003) — Image by kenne
Desert Spring II — Image by kenne
View of Tucson from the Box Camp Trail on Mt. Lemmon (
Sonoran Monsoon — Image by kenne
