True Things 9 - Karma

You're familiar with this response to a bizarre occurrence:  "You can't make this stuff up."  In some cases, you can't make it up because if you did, it wouldn't be realistic enough for anyone to 1) believe it or 2) enjoy it as entertainment.  Even fiction needs to comply with the unwritten rules of connection to the real world:  it needs to fit, somehow, with our notion of how the world works.  If it's just randomly bizarre, or extreme, or improbably coincidental, it's not worthy of our attention.

With that in mind, today's True Thing, and the coincidental fallout:

• President Trump today cut off tariff negotiations with Canada over a TV ad, produced and aired by the Province of Ontario, that showed Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about tariffs.  (This is a whole other thing in itself).
• The first game of the World Series will be played in Toronto tonight,* watched by millions all around the world.**
• The 'Star Spangled Banner' will be played before the game.

What happens during that rendition of our national anthem - in a huge stadium populated mostly by Canadians - is anybody's guess.  My guess is it will include the word "Boo!!" and it won't be referring to Halloween.

* -  The Toronto Blue Jays are the only reason why the term "World" Series has any legitimacy at all, as flimsy as that is.

** - 15.2 million last year.

Priorities

 “Since you can no longer afford insurance that covers X-rays, I can instead show you the plans for the White House ballroom.”

                                                                                                                            The New Yorker, today

No Poetry Inside

 Can I just repeat a post I did in April?  I listen to a community radio station, where all the DJs are volunteers and they play whatever they want.  One has started his three-hour show each week, at least since April, with "Broken Truth" by Tim Grimm.  Each week, and we still hear it, reliably, at 9:30 AM on Monday.  I just finished listening to it.  Again.

Here are the lyrics that I posted in April.  Nothing's changed.    

Last verse:

 Nine years we’ve lived with sorrow, nine years we shook our heads

The Times they are a Changin’, and Honey in the Lion’s head

It’s time we lift the hammer and ring them bells instead.

It’s time we stamp these fires out and let the Peace be spread...

Chorus: 

    Don't it break your heart ? Cause it breaks my heart

    Damn that man who tears this country apart

    He's got no shame, got no soul

    Got no poetry inside to make him whole...

That's what we've been doing, isn't it?  Lifting the hammers - not to break or damage anything or anyone, but to ring them bells.  Not to set fires, but to stamp the fire out.  It's hard, though, to stay positive, constructive, hopeful.  Most revolutions were, in part, at least, violent.*

It still breaks my heart.

* - The Velvet Revolution in what was then Czechoslovakia is a notable exception.  Vaclav Havel and the Czech people created a peaceful transition from post-WWII Communist rule to a parliamentary democracy with free and fair elections.  Havel is a particular hero** of this half-Czech American.

** - No just because he was friends with Mick Jagger.