The Tea Party's Gift

America owes a great debt to the Tea Party, conservatives, and the Right in general. They have given us the greatest gift of all— i.e., laughter.

Let us confess it…let us say it loud…they are greatest comedians of the century. Slapstick, low comic, pratfall, Three-Stooges-style, pie-in-the-face buffoons admittedly…. but comedians all the same.

Consider, just this week we had Joe Miller, that clown prince of Alaska, the man who's got a million of 'em, hold a public forum which he then announced was private and so his security detail jumped a local reporter and held him against his will, even though that was about as illegal as peddling methamphetamine lollipops and hash brownies down at your local PTA bake sale.

Then we get full-color pix and vids on youtube of the whole skit. And, by golly, there's Miller's goon-squad looking like a bunch of stubble-headed Matrix dwellers from Planet Zork. I mean, the costuming alone was brilliant!

But that wasn't all. Next we learn that the Death Star Storm-troopers are from a private security firm, Drop Zone Security Services, which…it turns out…doesn't have a license.

Ah, but hold on, that's not the punch line. 'Cause then we discover Drop Zone is owned by William F. Fulton, who also happens to be a local commander of the Alaska Citizens Militia, an ultra-right strong arm group. And, oh, by the way, the Alaska Citizens Militia's founder is Norm Olson, who previously founded the Michigan Militia…which, in turn, hosted a meeting which happened to be attended by Terry Nichols, the guy who helped the late Timothy McVeigh kill all those people in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Amazing! You'd need half a dozen sit-coms plus several years' worth of soap operas to come up with a plot this convoluted. Yet the Right invents it all without even breaking a sweat. I stand in awe.

But, mind you, we're not talking any one hit wonder. These people manage this kind of comedy consistently. Every day! Why, think about Christine O'Donnell, Delaware's Tea Party/Republican/Nutcase candidate for Senate. Consider how she proclaimed in the middle of a debate, "Where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?" And, oh! The way she said it! With that utterly adorable little look of absolute bewilderment! You could almost think she really meant it. Not even the great female comedians of the twentieth century, like Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot, did it any better.

And there are so many others—Sharon Angle and her "Dearborn's Dominated By Muslims" shtick (which I think is every bit as good as Jeff Foxworthy's "You May Be A Redneck"), and Jan Brewer with her sure-fire "Illegal Aliens Are Going To Get Your Mama."

So, all in all, I adore these people. They just keep getting funnier every time. But, I do have a small critique. I think their acts could use just a little tuning.

So, here's my message to 'em: Guys and Gals on the Right…you know I love your work…but pull back, just a little, from complete craziness. Because, if you don't, well, you come off as a total maniac. And that's not funny.

In fact, it's damn close to terrifying.

What Isn't Being Said

Hello, Everyone,

I'm shopping a shorter version of the material below to op-ed pages at various newspapers. So far, no one has taken the bait. But, you never can tell…

In the meantime, here it is, submitted for your approval.



[head] What isn't being said

By Michael Jay Tucker





It is what they don't say that freaks me out.

I mean the debate in Washington (and everywhere else) on the current Recession. Like you, and probably like everyone else in America, I've been watching while Right, Left, and Center battle about it. It's rather awe-inspiring, really. Economists and scholars and pundits and people who look really, really good on Fox TV are slugging it out big time, and all of knows exactly What Is To Be Done.

But, have you noticed? They all disagree with one another, very loudly. Some of them invoke Ayn Rand, others Baron Keynes, but no matter what their ideological orientation, they are united on a single premise. To wit, they hold the Recession is (for lack of a better word) a managerial issue. Their underlying assumption is that the crisis was brought about by unwise policies on the part of someone in office—the Republicans under George W. Bush by failing to properly police Wall Street, or the Democrats under Barack Obama through deficit spending (which seems somewhat improbable, given that Recession began before Obama's election, but that's beside the point).

But, this is followed by an equally fascinating corollary—i.e., that having been created by one set of policies, the Recession can be made to go away again by the imposition of another, wiser set. Once we reduce taxes or increase them, introduce more regulation or less of it, things will "get back to normal."

In other words, everyone in the debate—everyone!—seems to hold that our current crisis is subject to bureaucratic pressure, and that the proper group of experts could end it by changing the regulatory environment of the economy.

That's comforting, because it seems to give us the power over our situation. We just keep trying to various solutions on offer—Republic, Democratic, Tea Party, Socialist Workers, whoever—until one of them works. And surely, they can't ALL be wrong. Can they?

But…what if they are? All wrong, that is.

What if the Recession has nothing to do with policy? What if it in fact reflects material, structural problems in the nation as whole? And nothing we can do—no matter who's Chairman of the Fed, no matter how much we fiddle with capital gains or impose new regulations on Wall Street—is going to change things? What if, in short, we're screwed?

For instance, let's talk about energy costs. There are other problems as well (like de-industrialization) but, for the moment, let's just stick with energy.

It doesn't take a genius to notice that energy costs have been going up consistently for the last half century.

Which is a problem, because our society is based on fuel. Consider food. Any time you eat, you eat fossil fuels. You were able to ease your hunger because our society has the oil, gas, coal, or whatever to power the pumps that irrigate our fields, the tractors that harvest our crops, the trucks and trains that carry that food to our cities, and the freezers and stoves that we use to preserve and cook it. Oh, and by the way, once we've eaten it, we need still more pumps, and still more energy, to carry it all away again…or else we drown in our own sewage.

Which means, in turn, that each time energy costs go gone up, so too does the cost of everything we use that energy to produce, refine, transport, or prepare. Which is pretty much everything. And, so, every time energy costs go up, we get a little poorer.

And, it has only just begun. You can argue about whether we've reached "peak oil production," but what is undeniably true is that we've pumped out all the oil that was easy, safe, and convenient to get. From now on, we're going to get our fuels from places that are hard to reach, politically unstable, or just flat out dangerous. Oil is going to go get more expensive, and everything else is too.

And there's absolutely nothing we can do about it.

Not…that is… until we can push energy prices back down.

I'm not sure how we're going to do that. Maybe we'll invent a 100% efficient solar cell. Maybe we'll get clean nukes. Maybe we'll finally get fusion power up and running. But, until we do, things are going to be hard. We will only know the sort of prosperity we knew in the 1950s and the 1960s when the cost of energy is, again, measured in fractions of cents, rather than multiples of dollars.

Which is what scares me. Nothing I've said here is a secret. We all know this.

But, have you heard anyone say it? I mean, among the People Who Know Best? Our Leaders? Our elites? Have you heard any of them say, "Here's the grim reality: if we are to survive, we must invest in alternatives to fossil fuels. It is going to take time and money. We will have to develop basic technologies and build considerable infrastructure. We will solve the problem eventually, but it may be twenty years before we even start to see results, and over that period there were be far fewer resources to do other things. It isn't going to be pleasant, but that's the choice we've got."

No. We haven't heard them because they haven't said it.

I certainly haven't heard them say this. And that scares me to death. Because someone…some man or woman among them…needs to say these things to us, and needs to say them soon.

The alternative, and I fear it is all too likely, is that we awaken one morning to discover that the sun, in fact, has not arisen. And we are condemned, forever, to that famous darkling plain, wondering only which ignorant army will claim us next.







Copyright © Michael Jay Tucker 2010

Out Of My League

You may have noticed that I've not commented on Christine O'Donnell, the Republican –qua-Tea Party– qua anti-masturbation-qua-witchcraft candidate for Senate from Delaware.

Perhaps you've wondered why I've been so silent.

Well, because…blush, stammer…I'm outclassed. She's already so weird that, um, well, there's no way I can make fun of her. She's already delivered, and exceeded, any punch line I could invent.

Sigh.

Guess she's just WAY outta my league.


*

But I am kinda mad at her. I mean, she's just soooo easy.

I wanna snarl at her something like, "For Christ's sake, woman. Stop handing it out for free. At least make Jon Steward work a little bit for his money."

*

Darker thoughts.

I also haven't commented on her, and a lot of other stuff, partly because everyone else already had. She'd been all over the blogsphere, and more important, she'd been all over the mass media.

Which meant that by the time I could get something written and posted, the rest of the world would have moved on to some other concern. Anything I said would already be old news.

But, increasingly, that's true for all of us. In the age of the Internet and cable TV, ordinary people (that would be me) can no longer really comment on major events or issues. By the time we become aware of them, the video pundits, the sponsored bloggers, the Think Tank Op-Eders, and Others Who Know Best have already swarmed over it, stripped it to the bone, digested it, and excreted their so opinions thoroughly that we don't have a ghost of a chance.

Any ideas we might had have on our own…well…sorry. Individual opinion is obsolete.

*

This shouldn't be news to any of us.

When the net first came out, it took the media by surprise, and a number of writers, bloggers, filmmakers, etc. could slip into the gap. But, now, the networks have gotten their Internet act together and moved in. For any ordinary blogger, like thee and me, there are a hundred others with high profile sites supported by established media outlets and content producers.

Thus the reality of American discourse. Our elites happily give us free speech…because, of course, they know no one will listen.

finished draft of three chapter

Just finished the next-last-draft (probably) of the New Mexico section. It is now three chapters and about 90 pages long.

Argh.

I'll try to post some of it later for comments.

A moment of silence

I didn't post about 9-11. I won't post now about it.

I won't because I feel sometimes that the whole, horrible thing has been lost from public view. We no longer discuss the event itself, if we ever did. Instead, we use it. The Right uses it to demonize Muslims (and thus, in the process, strike at their real target, American Liberals). The Left uses it to object to America's Middle East policy (and thus, in the process, strike at their real target, American Conservatives).

Only the Middle makes no sound.

Which is very much to the credit of the Moderates (and increasingly, I admire them). After all, someone must remember the dead…and observe a minute of silence…when, it seems, no one else will bother.

First they came

I have recently become aware of the movement led by some hard right Republicans and others to make being a Muslim a crime in America. I had not heard of this one until I caught it on TV.

I was stunned—it is, after all, a direct assault on freedom of religion in America. But, what I found fascinating was that some of the people behind the movement are Jewish.

That seems odd. Oh, I can understand it, what with the threat to Israel and all, and the more or less open incorporation of crude, Nazi-style anti-Semitism in Jihadist ideology. Yet, even so, to make a religion illegal in America…? Do we really want to set that precedent? And who would be next?

First they came for the Muslims…

*



Another thing that fascinates me is how many of the most energetic leaders of the current anti-Muslim movement are, in fact, young, conservative women. By that I don't mean the old faithfuls…Palin, Ann Coulter…but rather a harder edged bunch, people like blogger Pam Geller, who combines Ayn Rand with anti-Islamic activism, and Laurie Cardozza-Moore, who led the opposition to that mosque in Tennessee. (Carodozza-Moore later got her fifteen minutes of fame, and more, by appearing in the Daily Show's coverage of the story.)

Note to feminists.

You've worked for decades to get women into politics…to "feminize power."

Well…

Was this really what you had in mind?


*

BTW, you can see more on Carodozza-Moore's time on the Daily Show here:

huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/26/the-daily-show-mosque_n_695329.html

*

I suppose I'll take some heat for my comment on the move to make Islam a crime in America. It is, after all, fairly unlikely. It is the kind of thing that a few fringe figures suggest to get a few headlines…and then gets promptly and properly forgotten.

Yet, I do worry. You see, at least some reports seem to suggest that similar ideas are reasonably common in the theoretically mainstream Tea Party Movement (see, for example, here: www. huffingtonpost.com/ahmed-rehab/tea-party-official-corres_b_693579.html).

Which, as I say, makes me worry. Fringes are not fixed. They tend to move about at the gentlest puff of wind. I feel some real terror that I may some morning awaken to find this baring down on me, like the Flying Dutchman, or the ghost ship in The Ancient Mariner…

Cursed, inexplicable, crewed by wraiths and furies…and impossible to escape.

teaching

I start teaching again this week.

Argh.

Note to students: you dread the end of summer. I've news for you. We're just as blue about it.

Least it gives us an interest in common.

New Mexico Chapter...again

Have decided to break up the New Mexico chapter into two or more chapters, and to do something similar with the other sections of the book (not one chapter on New York but two, etc.)

Now all I have to do is rewrite the proposal and the outline to reflect that. And sell the agent on the idea.

Argh. Argh. Argh.

New Mexico Chapter...

Still fighting the New Mexico Chapter. It is now 35 pages long and not half finished. I have to figure out some way of shortening it without losing it in the process. Again, wish me luck.

Professors and Hell: III

A confession….

I am a rationalist. But, there is a deep, dark, infantile part of me that can't quite help believing in magic, and particularly curses. That part of me feels, wholly irrationally, that some people can, somehow, reach through the ether or whatever and harm others…their malevolence projecting across space-time like some toxic radiation.

And I must further confess that the same, childish part of me feels their malice. It feels, or pretends to feel, their hatred, projecting across a higher dimension.

To reassure that childish part of me, I envision a wall constructed there…in that higher dimension…made of some weightless but impenetrable material, not constraining or immobilizing me but psychically opaque to them …existing between them and me and shielding me from their enmity, or even reflecting it back in their direction.

It is, as I say, childish and irrational. But…the child … or the Id…is powerful. If its conception of the universe is not proved by evidence or logic, then at least it can be comforted in moments of distress. Better the Wall than drinking.



*

I wonder, now that you have read about my Wall, and perhaps envisioned it, will your energies add to its strength?

Whether it does or not, if you now wish to also envision my three professors having public diarrhea or otherwise being humiliated and discomforted while in full view of large numbers of people…

Well, feel free. And with my blessing.

Professors and Hell: II

Just re-read the entry from a while back about hell and professors. Should I have followed my own advice in dealing with the committee of that program from which I was forced to leave? Which, I suppose, is another way of asking to what degree did their personal animosity and not their professional concern direct their actions?

At first, I wasn't certain that it had at all. I thought that it had been entirely my fault. (And I am, admittedly, a difficult person at times.)

But then I remembered an interesting incident. The head of the program was a large and billowing man who was a noted authority in a particular field. I'll not identify him, just as I will not name the other two members of my committee, but suffice to say that he was well known and something of a star in the academic world.

I had admired him, at first. I thought he was quite remarkable…though I found his comments on my papers less than useful. He had a great dislike of anything smacking of informality, or indeed of popular culture. Once, when I compared a certain nineteenth century figure to a video game developer he just about took my head off.

But I thought we were on good terms…or at least, functioning professional terms, until my two other committee members sent me a letter telling me that they refused from hence forward to work with me on my Ph.D. Dissertation. On the advice of my mentor at another university, I then sent this man an email saying that I seemed to have inadvertently alienated these two committee members and asking him what was now possible.

He wrote back an angry note in which he said he could not believe that anyone on my committee was refusing to work with me for any personal reason. Rather, he said, I had failed to understand the nature of "genuine scholarship."

Much later, when I had left the program, I began to be a bit suspect of his disinterest. I remembered that in my email to him I had said that I had alienated my other committee members, but I hadn't accused them of any personal animosity. You can be alienated from someone, particularly in a professional setting, yet not hate them as an individual.

Why, then, had he been so quick to assume that was what I meant? Why had he been so eager to defend himself, and the other committee members, from an accusation which I had not actually made?

Maybe… maybe because…because it was true? Because personal animosity WAS part of the equation? Because their treatment of me WAS unfair and unjust, and very personal? And he knew it? And he attacked me before I could raise the possibility? Did he, in other words, protest too much?

The more I've thought about it over these past few years, the more I've wondered if that wasn't exactly the case. Of course I cannot say for certain, much less prove it, but I've begun to suspect my exit from that particular university was as much a product of their personal dislike as it ever was of my failure to practice "true scholarship."

And the source of that dislike? Why they hated me? Well, who can say? But, I'm guessing it was precisely the thing that I found offensive in my own students: that I was not sufficiently deferential. As I admitted before, I can be a difficult person, and I have the habit of saying openly (and with force) what it would be wiser not to say at all—that such-and-such a book is badly written, that so-and-so is a pompous and vapid idiot, that this-or-that idea is politically correct but utterly foolish.

In other words, I suspect I did not properly pucker before the proffered asses. And this, alas, spelled my demise.

Which means I'm confronted with a disturbing question. How do I tell my own students not to do what I do, but rather tell their professors what they want to hear?

Or, to put it another way, how do I explain that Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, with all its pettiness and cruelty, is actually terrifyingly understated?

accomplishments

Still working on the book. A while back, I even told my parents about it. I even sent them a couple of chapters to read. They liked them. Or at least said they did.

It was not easy for me to reveal my work to my mom and dad. It is very unlike me. I never show anyone my material, or talk about it, until after it is finished.

But, this time, I didn't do that. This time, I emailed it to them. I suppose it was because they are getting on in years, and a part of me desperately wants them to know that I'm not just fooling around…that I'm really writing something that might be important…that I might, finally, get published. And not just by technical magazines. But published by real publishers that someone other than a few engineers and public relations people might read.

I want to make them proud of me, at last, while they're still here.

There's something sick in that. They already ARE proud of me. Or, so they've told me, anyway.

But, I simply cannot believe them. I cannot believe I deserve their pride. Or anyone's. Least of all my own. My accomplishments seem too few. My failures too many.

As I say, it is sick. Neurotic. But, come, confess, you have felt the same way now and then. We all have.

It is what we feel the moment we realize that aspiration remains as boundless as ever, but life…our own or that of others…is finite.

Copyright © 2010 Michael Jay Tucker

starting work on New Mexico

Tomorrow I plan to start work on my chapter about New Mexico. I'm intimidated. Difficult subject for me in general and, in some ways, I'm still finding my way into this project. Worse, I find myself unmotivated after just finishing long weeks of teaching.

Wish me luck…or at least energy.

professors and hell

8:00 am -- Getting ready for work. A little worried. I have to confront two students on the quality of their work. It is a difficult problem because on one level there is work is just fine. On the other, it is impossible.

Let me explain. Most of my students this term are Chinese. They came to the US for a special three term program which, if they pass it, gets them into a certain American University as a freshman, no questions asked.

These two young women are good students, in their way. But, they come into class and zone out. They do homework for other classes, flirt with the boys, talk to each other…

When they turn in their work, it is usually pretty good. They do halfway decent essays on American history. But, there's the rub. The essays are based entirely on what they learned in high school in China. Everything they write is from a strictly Chinese perspective. In fact, even their exams sound as though they were carefully copied, word for word, from a very Marxist Chinese textbook. Thus, the U.S. Civil War was a clash between progressive elements from the American bourgeoisie and reactionary Southern feudalists. The Cold War was a conflict between Russia and America, in which China was simply a bystander, except when forced to protect itself from U.S. imperialism in the Korean War.

And there's nothing particularly wrong with writing in this way. But, there is nothing of me in it, either. There is no sign that they have heard my lectures, read my notes, or even looked at the assigned readings. It is as though they have somehow been wholly absent from my class.

So, I face the interesting problem of explaining to them that their work is good…but it is also good evidence that they have spent four months ignoring me.

1:00 pm—now back. The students were humble, even contrite, when I talked to them about the problem. I encouraged them to, in future, actually include material from their classes in their homework.

I wonder if they will follow my advice. Alas, they seem to me the sort of person more likely to smile and say yes, while continuing to do exactly what they had done before.

For their sake, I hope I'm wrong. They are about to begin their freshmen year, and, once in "real" college, they will encounter many professors who are far less tolerant than I am.

Simply put, academics are a lot like lovers. They can forgive an honest error. But, ignore them…?

Hell hath no fury.

grading

Summer term is coming to an end. I've graded all the book blue books for one class and about half of them for another. I still have just under 40 research papers to read, and 18 short reports from yet another class.

Students, of course, dread finals and papers and other assignments. But you have no idea how much we, your instructors, share your terror.

he has never heard of the Algonquin Round Table

My editor continues to intrigue me. I discovered that he has never heard of the Algonquin Round Table.

If you haven't heard of it, don't worry. There is no reason why you should. It was a group of writers, wits, critics, and editors who regularly met around a "round table" at the Algonquin hotel in New York in the 1920s. Their number included Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Franklin Pierce Adams, Heywood Broun, and so on. In their time, they were very famous. Though, today, they tend to be little known. Alas, they wrote and talked about their own times, and…like all those who address their present…sometimes fail to reach their future.

But that HE hadn't heard of them is astonishing. It means that he made it through English classes at several prestigious prep schools, as well as an important American college, and never once had his instructors refer to them. That's unnerving, because they were important. They helped establish the modernist style, and any time you read creative non-fiction today, you read something that was directly affected by the Round Tablers.

Yet, under the direction of his professors, my friend was ignorant of them. Moreover, he was clearly irritated when I mentioned them in my chapter on New York City, as though he suspected me of inventing them, or of wasting the reader's time with someone impossibly obscure.

Concerns me. I wonder who else has been, or will be deleted from the public memory by the academic elite? By Those Who Know Best? Will my children's children be permitted to read Shakespeare, Jane Austin, George Sand, Charles Dickens, Edger Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Henry James, Edith Wharton, George Orwell, William Faulkner, Truman Capote…?

All these were, of course, writers of genius. But they did not address the concerns of full professors (with tenure). Ergo, they are not worthy of study, and shall be cast into the outer darkness, unlamented, and unremembered for all eternity.

just the two of us...

More on the young editor with whom I work…

As a person, I like him very much, and I think he is a talented writer in his own right.
But, in some ways he is the wrong man to work with me. For one thing, he is very young, and like a lot of young people who have recently graduated from the best of American schools, he has been taught to believe that the author has no right to appear in his own works. In other words, the letter "I," is forbidden. To write "I thought," or "I believe," or "I felt," or even "I experienced" is considered most offensive.

Yet, I am at my best when I am most self-referential. At heart, I am a diarist, a journalist (in the original meaning of the word, in the sense of one who keeps a personal journal), and, yes, a blogger.

Thus I am troubled. I fear that if the book gets published, it will actually be inferior to what I write about it…that what follows the title page will be less than what appears here, in Xcargo…to be know only to a few. By, in other words, I who write this, and you …you few and dear …who read it.


*

Actually, on looking at that last sentence, I feel an odd comfort. There are not many people who have read Xcargo from its beginnings as an ezine to its present status as an odd entry in the blogsphere.

There is something pleasant in that. In your presence, my readers, I feel that I am in a very select group…among friends… even something akin to family.

How rare a thing that is. I am grateful.

a million monkeys

You're recall I'm writing a book on American travel. One of the things which troubles me about the process is that my agent has put me to work with a young editor.

This is new for me. I have worked with editors before, but not one employed by an agent. It seems that in the new world of modern book publishing, the publishing company doesn't do much editing. In fact, I'm told that it does very little other than purchase the right to distribute a document that is largely already (as we used to say) "camera ready," that is, ready to go directly to the press.

The model now seems to be rather like that of the movie industry, where "movie companies" basically don't make movies. Rather, they obtain the rights to films that have been produced, created, and even financed by other firms.

I'm not sure this is a good thing. What does it say about us that the corporations that, in theory, determine our literature could (in theory) actually be staffed entirely by illiterates? Or the proverbial million monkeys, picking manuscripts at random?

tests

Just got back from teaching class. It went well enough, but I'm giving them their final blue book exam in the morning. I'm always on edge about that. Sometimes I think I care more about my students doing well on their tests than they do. I know that if they fail my test, then it is because I have failed them. Thus, their F is evidence of my inferiority.

Getting Back

So I'm back. I've been trying to get the time and the energy to post to Xcargo again for ages. But, well, I just haven't had either.

Here's the story: as you know, I am (among other things) a writer. Recently, I've managed to sign with an agent. That's a hard thing to do. It used to be said that it was easier to get a book published than it was to get an agent to represent it. I'm not sure it is still true (book publishing is a very strange business) but, still, I'm delighted that I have finally gotten—as they say—"representation."

I'm working on a book for the agent that is basically a travel essay combined with a popular history of several major regions in the United States. (I'll tell you more about it as time goes on.) She is very optimistic about it. I wish I were as confident.

Right at the moment, I'm doing my research on the American Southwest, one of the areas I'm going to be writing about. It isn't going to be easy for me. I grew up, of course, in Albuquerque, and that city (along with Santa Fe) will play a major role in the chapter. And, frankly, I have mixed feelings about the place. It was the town in which I experienced a very unhappy adolescence—and before that a not terribly much more pleasant childhood.

Oh, I love Albuquerque …in my way… and there are parts of the city that are beautiful and fine. Yet, I cannot escape the fact that it is also the place where I spent a lot of time being lonely, or bored, or afraid, or sick…or some combination of all those things at once.

I suppose, in a way, it is a little bit like being the child of some very lovely, very gentle mother…who, now and then, exploded into murderous fury. A woman not evil, but subject to a kind of unhappy madness…

One can never forget the loveliness and the gentility. But, neither, can one escape the memory of the madness.

Copyright © 2010 Michael Jay Tucker