…it reads something like this…(First off, by way of explanation let me tell you that looking like I do I get profiled every day and have for the last 40 years) – that disclaimer laid, this is the breakdown, in my humble estimation, of what an NFTD reader consists of/looks like:
…in the main you are neither male nor female but rather somewhat androgynous, a trait I see as very acceptable; your age varies from…hmm…I know I have had readers as young as teens and a couple octogenarians, somewhere in there is the median age, my guess is you are 35-50, with lots of twentysomethings; you are pretty well homogenized as I have 1,659 readers who come in a variety of colors, live in 28 states and 24 countries, many of you are multilingual…some of you are liberal some of you are not…many of you (us) are intelligent but uneducated, i. e. we got out of high school okay but it was touch and go after that, few are the sheepskins among the small cadre of NFTD devotees…I/you/we/they are hip, speak the language of the street…we have collectively traversed the earth and beyond…know everything worth knowing and always open to new things worth knowing…plus, our resume is impressive, unimpeachable credentials for we have worked from the underground up to the heavens in a myriad of earthly endeavors…from the mines to the moon…from the bottom of the ocean to the Sea of Tranquility…
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
MORE OF NFTD NAME-DROPPING...
& PATTING ITSELF ON THE BACK…
(From Mike Gunderloy’s ‘Whole Earth Review’ review)
Acworth is a little town in southern New Hampshire, about fifteen miles due north of Keene. As far as I know, it had no claim to fame until around 1986, when Terry Ward began publishing Notes From The Dump. Terry's approach epitomizes the no-frills end of the publishing spectrum. Every couple of weeks he puts together six pages of memories, ruminations on world affairs, notes on his love life, firewood ads and other drifting thoughts. Then he runs copies off on his computer printer, folds and stamps them, and tosses them in the mailbox -- whence they spread across the world, bringing little bits of New Hampshire to the rest of us…a sample below:
Roseanne was on her way to cop some crank when she flipped her little Sportster on the Cross Island Expressway, tumbled headlong into a concrete road divider and died on the spot probably so high on methedrine she's still high and never knew what hit her. Roseanne was absolutely the ultimate example of life in the breakdown lane.
Like a lap dog I followed her around. We drove taxi together in New York for three years and I would schedule my work day around hers in order to just be able to see her and talk to her -- o that dear sweet voice and that wonderful smile which would light up a room -- and she was gifted, endowed with this uncanny ability to play the piano from the blues of Elmore James to the lilting melodies of Brahms, o I tell you piano was her forte.
(Hey there Terry, - I'm glad I've made it onto your list of newsletter recipients, always great hearing your take on things - keep it coming. If you didn't recognize the name, Dylan here (Lauri's son).I live in Greenfield most of the time these days, but I was wondering if you might be up for another visit, and maybe make a portrait of you in your place. If this is something you'd be interested in let me know, if not I'd still enjoy stopping by again at some point. Hope alls well, take care, Dylan Richardson)
(From Mike Gunderloy’s ‘Whole Earth Review’ review)
Acworth is a little town in southern New Hampshire, about fifteen miles due north of Keene. As far as I know, it had no claim to fame until around 1986, when Terry Ward began publishing Notes From The Dump. Terry's approach epitomizes the no-frills end of the publishing spectrum. Every couple of weeks he puts together six pages of memories, ruminations on world affairs, notes on his love life, firewood ads and other drifting thoughts. Then he runs copies off on his computer printer, folds and stamps them, and tosses them in the mailbox -- whence they spread across the world, bringing little bits of New Hampshire to the rest of us…a sample below:
Roseanne was on her way to cop some crank when she flipped her little Sportster on the Cross Island Expressway, tumbled headlong into a concrete road divider and died on the spot probably so high on methedrine she's still high and never knew what hit her. Roseanne was absolutely the ultimate example of life in the breakdown lane.
Like a lap dog I followed her around. We drove taxi together in New York for three years and I would schedule my work day around hers in order to just be able to see her and talk to her -- o that dear sweet voice and that wonderful smile which would light up a room -- and she was gifted, endowed with this uncanny ability to play the piano from the blues of Elmore James to the lilting melodies of Brahms, o I tell you piano was her forte.
(Hey there Terry, - I'm glad I've made it onto your list of newsletter recipients, always great hearing your take on things - keep it coming. If you didn't recognize the name, Dylan here (Lauri's son).I live in Greenfield most of the time these days, but I was wondering if you might be up for another visit, and maybe make a portrait of you in your place. If this is something you'd be interested in let me know, if not I'd still enjoy stopping by again at some point. Hope alls well, take care, Dylan Richardson)
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Speaking in the vernacular...
…is second nature to me even though I know how to speak correctly; it is impossible for me to just carry on and not get exercised in the matter of the Iraq War; the New York Times, ABC News, Yahoo News et cetera, all the major media, are afraid to talk it up, to get it out in the open in a way the hoi-polloi can relate to and never mind couching the obvious horrors in enigmatic semantics.
…their diatribes got no meat on the bones, they are rants without rage and they rarely have the gall nor the balls to say George Bush brought this evil war on us without rhyme nor reason…that first and foremost - he lied from the start and contrived the whole murderous operation which was/is sleight-of-hand, smoke & mirrors, bald-faced lies, wildly miscalculated, has killed 4003 of our finest young men & women, upended the economy to the point where even the filthy rich are worried and has left our poor, beleaguered country twisting in the wind while the rest of the world rains opprobrium down on us…all predicated on a pack of lies…
…I don’t mean to be seditious in the literal sense (incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority) - but The People, Yes are being taxed in any number of ways - fiscally, physically & mentally and the world-round are in mortal and constant peril…
…because a pompous ass without a clue is calling the shots, aided and abetted by that most charlatan of fakirs, Dick Cheney who makes Tricky Dick Nixon look like a monument to restraint…the violence these two head cases have perpetrated on the world will last a generation…that baby Payton I mentioned on Page One stands a good chance of getting gunned down in Baghdad 20 years from now because of what George Bush and Dick Cheney are doing today…with all due and considerable respect to John McCain, he may be a great American but I’m not too keen on anyone who thinks he’d have us stay in Baghdad a 100 years if that’s what it takes…what what takes? Until we win? There’ll be no such day. Everything that’s going haywire in this world today is a spinoff of the War In Iraq. There’s not one person who can go it alone, he or she will need all the help he/she can get and a stiff backbone to lead us back to where we can lead by good example rather than rule by might.
…I’m more or less ready to throw in with Barack Obama even though I like and admire Hillary; Obama I’ve liked from the start but until recently leaned to Hillary…then to Obama, back to Hillary, back to Barack, but Hillary, coupled with her philandering Significant Other in the White House, would be just more of the same only from the other side of the aisle, whereas I believe Obama will actually change things for the better…so I’m going to bat for him - but he better produce and quickly because we don’t have much time…we’ll have to hold his big feet to the fire…today things don’t look too good for the future no matter who you are or where you live…or this could just be another NFTD Skewed View…
…their diatribes got no meat on the bones, they are rants without rage and they rarely have the gall nor the balls to say George Bush brought this evil war on us without rhyme nor reason…that first and foremost - he lied from the start and contrived the whole murderous operation which was/is sleight-of-hand, smoke & mirrors, bald-faced lies, wildly miscalculated, has killed 4003 of our finest young men & women, upended the economy to the point where even the filthy rich are worried and has left our poor, beleaguered country twisting in the wind while the rest of the world rains opprobrium down on us…all predicated on a pack of lies…
…I don’t mean to be seditious in the literal sense (incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority) - but The People, Yes are being taxed in any number of ways - fiscally, physically & mentally and the world-round are in mortal and constant peril…
…because a pompous ass without a clue is calling the shots, aided and abetted by that most charlatan of fakirs, Dick Cheney who makes Tricky Dick Nixon look like a monument to restraint…the violence these two head cases have perpetrated on the world will last a generation…that baby Payton I mentioned on Page One stands a good chance of getting gunned down in Baghdad 20 years from now because of what George Bush and Dick Cheney are doing today…with all due and considerable respect to John McCain, he may be a great American but I’m not too keen on anyone who thinks he’d have us stay in Baghdad a 100 years if that’s what it takes…what what takes? Until we win? There’ll be no such day. Everything that’s going haywire in this world today is a spinoff of the War In Iraq. There’s not one person who can go it alone, he or she will need all the help he/she can get and a stiff backbone to lead us back to where we can lead by good example rather than rule by might.
…I’m more or less ready to throw in with Barack Obama even though I like and admire Hillary; Obama I’ve liked from the start but until recently leaned to Hillary…then to Obama, back to Hillary, back to Barack, but Hillary, coupled with her philandering Significant Other in the White House, would be just more of the same only from the other side of the aisle, whereas I believe Obama will actually change things for the better…so I’m going to bat for him - but he better produce and quickly because we don’t have much time…we’ll have to hold his big feet to the fire…today things don’t look too good for the future no matter who you are or where you live…or this could just be another NFTD Skewed View…
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The $500 BILLION SQUANDERED IN IRAQ...
…could have educated a lot of children, filled a lot of potholes, repaired a whole bunch of bridges, physical and psychological; could have been used to build homes, create jobs, clean up the environment, might’ve kept the price of oil down or been used in medical research seeking cures to any number of illnesses…hypotheses of what might have been are endless, everybody’s got one and really there is no proving a negative so we don’t know what might have been, there’s no telling, we’re stuck with what is and what is ain’t good.
…war in Iraq has taken a back seat to the economy, is below the fold of The Times, isn’t in the 1st words of the talking heads; the staggering economy which is about to come crashing down around us has ironically been driven to the forefront of our attention by the Iraq war we now largely ignore, a vicious circle game – our disposable income which would be so useful to us here at home, has been (and is being) thrown mindlessly into a bottomless pit.
…with tens of thousands dead, 4000 of them ours, 29,000 wounded – I can personally attest to a large number of wounded veterans as I often see them – limbless, brain-damaged, listless and lost & roaming the labyrinthine corridors of the VA…the 1,000-yard stare is back…no price can be put on this carnage yet President Bush has said that things are going along just fine, we’re winning the war, $12 billion a month is chump change in his skewed view (easy for him to say, not his money); the President continues to urge us to stay the course...he just doesn’t get it…hello…anybody home? He had better judgment when he was a drunk partying in Putney...
…now we are stuck with a loose cannon run amok in the White House – actually it should be plural, cannons, for the White House and the Bush Administration is full of nut cases and clueless airheads who have besmirched the reputation and lives of America, The Beautiful and smeared it with the blood of innocents.
…I saw one of the innocents yesterday, not yet noticeably touched by the war, a baby named Payton and I said to myself later remarking what a cute kid he was that he’ll be a man grown old before America recovers from this.
…war in Iraq has taken a back seat to the economy, is below the fold of The Times, isn’t in the 1st words of the talking heads; the staggering economy which is about to come crashing down around us has ironically been driven to the forefront of our attention by the Iraq war we now largely ignore, a vicious circle game – our disposable income which would be so useful to us here at home, has been (and is being) thrown mindlessly into a bottomless pit.
…with tens of thousands dead, 4000 of them ours, 29,000 wounded – I can personally attest to a large number of wounded veterans as I often see them – limbless, brain-damaged, listless and lost & roaming the labyrinthine corridors of the VA…the 1,000-yard stare is back…no price can be put on this carnage yet President Bush has said that things are going along just fine, we’re winning the war, $12 billion a month is chump change in his skewed view (easy for him to say, not his money); the President continues to urge us to stay the course...he just doesn’t get it…hello…anybody home? He had better judgment when he was a drunk partying in Putney...
…now we are stuck with a loose cannon run amok in the White House – actually it should be plural, cannons, for the White House and the Bush Administration is full of nut cases and clueless airheads who have besmirched the reputation and lives of America, The Beautiful and smeared it with the blood of innocents.
…I saw one of the innocents yesterday, not yet noticeably touched by the war, a baby named Payton and I said to myself later remarking what a cute kid he was that he’ll be a man grown old before America recovers from this.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The letters I could never seem to write...
…the conversations I have had only in my mind, the paintings I didn’t and won’t get around to painting, the stories that never got written, the songs I never sang and the things I wanted to be but aren’t, have all gathered together to haunt me late in life now that my faculties are failing and my mind is going frail…I’m not unhappy where I am in this world but it is not where I thought I’d be, which actually I don’t know that I gave it much thought at all, certainly there was no long-term planning – who in their right mind would plan to end up a sick derelict in an independent living facility? – hmmm, ’…in their right mind…’ – maybe I’m not in my right mind and have never been, well, what can I tell you, what you see/saw is what you get/got; nowadays, it’s helter-skelter planning, if it’s more than 24 hours from now Dude it’s out of my sphere of reference, cannot relate, I am presently only living in the present.
…ah yes, The Present…’Everything is here and now’ - it was ever thus but I only paid it lip service – maybe today, now! – I will write that letter, sing that song et cetera…ahhh me, if only I had, if only I hadn’t, I could’ve, I would’ve I should’ve…why, why, why didn’t I…why, why, why did I? I would love to trade some of what I have for some of what I missed.
…ah yes, The Present…’Everything is here and now’ - it was ever thus but I only paid it lip service – maybe today, now! – I will write that letter, sing that song et cetera…ahhh me, if only I had, if only I hadn’t, I could’ve, I would’ve I should’ve…why, why, why didn’t I…why, why, why did I? I would love to trade some of what I have for some of what I missed.
Random "...NOTES..." From Wrinkled Scraps...
FOR YEARS I’VE BEEN PRATING ON…
…about how sick I am and how I am at death’s door ready to check out, but still I linger on in this limbo between life and death; I’m sorry not to have croaked already Dear Reader, I’m sure by now you’re totally bored by the subject and in a ‘…come-on already…give it up…’ mode - so I apologize for being so gauche as to continue living…
…that said, I must tell you that relatively speaking my life is good, through no particular effort of mine since I’ve spent 6 & a ½ decades twirling in a lunatic’s sarabande and leading a life of more or less ruinous and debilitating behavior, trying to put asunder what until recently I had considered a life impervious to pain…o well, whatta ya gonna do…
AS A YOUNG MAN…
…I was in a business which had me riding in a lot of police cars, front and back seats; you’re a guest in the front, and of course in the back you’re usually a handcuffed perp…most recently (but years ago) I ran out of gas in the middle of a busy intersection, so there my little Daytona sat waiting to be t-boned @ noon and the nearest gas a mile away…a kindly state-truck driver stopped for me and took me to the gas station where I got gas and began the long trek back only to suddenly have a police car pull up beside me – and ask was I headed to such and such an intersection where they knew a car was stuck out of gas and I said yes so they said well get in the back and off we took, me who’d had a beer for breakfast, with a bag of dope in one pocket and a handful of percs in another, a can of gas on my lap, and two cops in front who, when we got half way there, put the blues on and stopped traffic while I, heart in throat, walked across the road, put the gas in, and left with a big smile thank you wave…too bad for them, they coulda had a bonus…
…about how sick I am and how I am at death’s door ready to check out, but still I linger on in this limbo between life and death; I’m sorry not to have croaked already Dear Reader, I’m sure by now you’re totally bored by the subject and in a ‘…come-on already…give it up…’ mode - so I apologize for being so gauche as to continue living…
…that said, I must tell you that relatively speaking my life is good, through no particular effort of mine since I’ve spent 6 & a ½ decades twirling in a lunatic’s sarabande and leading a life of more or less ruinous and debilitating behavior, trying to put asunder what until recently I had considered a life impervious to pain…o well, whatta ya gonna do…
AS A YOUNG MAN…
…I was in a business which had me riding in a lot of police cars, front and back seats; you’re a guest in the front, and of course in the back you’re usually a handcuffed perp…most recently (but years ago) I ran out of gas in the middle of a busy intersection, so there my little Daytona sat waiting to be t-boned @ noon and the nearest gas a mile away…a kindly state-truck driver stopped for me and took me to the gas station where I got gas and began the long trek back only to suddenly have a police car pull up beside me – and ask was I headed to such and such an intersection where they knew a car was stuck out of gas and I said yes so they said well get in the back and off we took, me who’d had a beer for breakfast, with a bag of dope in one pocket and a handful of percs in another, a can of gas on my lap, and two cops in front who, when we got half way there, put the blues on and stopped traffic while I, heart in throat, walked across the road, put the gas in, and left with a big smile thank you wave…too bad for them, they coulda had a bonus…
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