If you do a situation analysis of the present milieu there’s a definite sense of existential  crisis on the world stage, driven by factors relating to geopolitical conflicts, some  experts call it “identity politics,” and also factors such as climate and other change  conditions including advancing antidemocratic movements, growth of xenophobia, and  related societal change fostering the challenges of so-called “alternative truth” enabled  by social media, what Stephen Colbert way back when started referring to as  “truthiness.” It even made Merriam Webster. 

This all leans in the direction of a technology-induced alienation as identified by such respected minds as Sherry Turkle (Alone Together) who has been preaching about this for years. 

In his article in The Atlantic, “I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is: What’s Happening in America Today is Something Darker than a Misinformation Crisis,” Charlie Warzel writes “What is clear is that a new framework is  needed to describe this [reality] fracturing.” 

Whether you identify it as nihilism, pessimism, cynicism, apathy, ennui or otherwise,  we’re in a pickle.  

As a poet, I tend to translate trauma into words, and just maybe we need to turn to  poetry as a helpmate “to describe this fracturing” as per Warzel’s suggestion.

What is clear is that a new framework is needed to describe this  [reality] fracturing. 

My work was first published later in life, at age 70, to be exact; I had won a poetry prize  at the tender age of 19, which should have been encouraging, but I had other fish to  fry…Then the muse started gnawing at me, I started writing again. Graves said “There’s  no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either” …A recurring theme in  my work is that enunciated in the thought of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954):  “At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.” My interest in  this theme in general is sparked by the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926 – 2004).  She had this to say on the subject: “The most beautiful people we have known are  those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have  found their way out of the depths” (this paragraph extracted from my book Gallery). 

The first of November I’ll be 81. I concur with Einstein who said: “I have reached an age  when, if someone tells me to wear socks, I don’t have to” and anyway as a Scorpio the  words I choose are supposed to carry the ring—and sting—of truth. So how about we  consider mac n’ cheese? What does comfort food have to do with the troubles of our  times? Let’s back up. 

Theodor Adorno (1903 – 1969) the German philosopher and social theorist posited that  “industrialism turns souls into things.” Industrialism can stand for technology more  generally. There’s usually a good side, but almost always a downside. Adorno knew a  few things personally about trauma. His mother was a Catholic, his father an  assimilated Jew who converted to Protestantism. Among other travails he endured  during the Nazi era as a non-Aryan his freedom was restricted more and more over time  and he was forced (luckily in retrospect) to leave Germany and he did not return until  well after Hitler’s defeat. Needless to say Adorno was a staunch critic of Fascism and  published influential studies on authoritarianism, propaganda and the like including the  seminal work The Authoritarian Personality (1950) which outlines a set of traits and  characteristics based on an “F scale” (for fascist). 

industrialism turns souls into things. 

In his Philosophy Now essay, “Socrates, Memory & The Internet” Matt Bluemink seeks  to alert us as to what we risk from advancing technology, particularly our smartphones  and the Internet which we have so willingly delegated to take over for our brain. He  emphasizes the importance of being “thoughtful” in the face of the distractions inherent  in our device-laden lives. He writes that “without paying attention…one loses the ability  to empathise, and thus the ability to ‘take care’ of one another, and of the society in  which we live.” Importantly, he perceives of literature, of thoughtful reading, as a critical  antidote as the literary arts specifically “stretch” the mind and enhance the thought  process and poetry is the sine qua non for this type of exercise. 

How does mac n’ cheese enter the picture?. On one of my all too frequent visits to my  inboxes (I am not immune from the habit), two items in my news feed caught my eye. 

One from Ad Age which I follow, headlined “Mac and Cheese Marketing Battle—How  Kraft’s Dominance is Being Challenged” and the other “Armed Militia ‘Hunting FEMA’ Causes Hurricane  Responders to Evacuate” from Newsweek. The nexus struck me like a lightning bolt  in a tropical storm. I thought, “It’s no coincidence, it’s metaphor plain and simple!” 

I offer and conclude then with the prose poem springing from this revelation, leaving you  to think about it. 

Mac n’ Cheese Wars Amid Crumbling Reality, a Recipe for Disaster 

Take and make a thynne foyle of dowh, and kerue it on pieces, and cast hym on  boiling water & seeþ it wele. Take chese and grate it, and butter imelte, cast  bynethen and abouven as losyns; and serue forth.* 

—Curye on Inglysch: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth-Century 

It’s hard to understand. Middle English I mean. We don’t speak it now so it seems  unreal. Like some folks eat mac n’ cheese any way it comes, however it’s made makes  no difference, it’s how it tastes that matters. Taste is a matter of taste of course. And  now they have a cheeseless mac n’ cheese which can’t be really mac n’ cheese can it?  How can it? This is a serious matter. It goes to the heart of what America stands for.  Where is Tom Jefferson when you need him to adjudicate? He loved the stuff. He had  his slave chef whip up batches upon batches at Monticello, state dinners included, he  often used his noodles as the diplomacy du jour. Now Kraft is battling the interlopers  trying to convince the public with smoke and mirrors that something made from plants  can be cheesy as you please. It’s a hoax how else can you explain it? Doubtless real  cheese can rot, invite maggots, then there’s processed cheese, less vulnerable like  Velveeta and powdered versions too you never knew, it looked like cheese, if you’re raised on it, it’s cheese to you though impregnated with artificial colors, preservatives  you name it. Do we really care as long as it tastes good? Black people think White  people stole mac n’ cheese from them, like rock n’ roll, we’re so divided these days in so  many ways mac n’ cheese is something different depending who you talk to and rumors  of an armed militia “hunting” FEMA caused hurricane responders to evacuate! Really? 

*Modern English version: Take a piece of thin pastry dough and cut it in pieces, place in  boiling water and cook. Take grated cheese, melted butter, and arrange in layers like  lasagna; serve. [source: Makerouns (godecookery.com)]

For other related work by the author see “Walmart Was the Largest Retailer in  America.”  For further  reading: NASA website, “The Causes of Climate Change”  and The Atlantic—”I’m Running Out  of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is: What’s Happening in America Today is Something  Darker than a Misinformation Crisis.” 

There are two ways to be fooled.
One is to believe what isn’t true;
the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
—Soren Kierkegaard

I’ve been there.
Stood at the pinnacle.
That was before
the apocalypse.

water completely took out another
bridge across the Broad River,
this one to Chimney Rock State Park.
The park was closed.*

Took in the vista.
Seemingly timeless.
Looking through the
lens of my old Pentax
the Smoky Mountains
aptly named spreading
across the sky. the Great
Smoky Mountain Railroad
stop In Dillsboro.
I’ve been there.
A quaint town.
Shops galore, the
Smokehouse Bar-b-que.
The engine’s
belching stack
matching the
train’s name
pulling into
the station.

“The Train,” as the Great Smoky
Mountain Railroad is known in town,
pay a lot of salaries in Dillsboro.
Its immediate return has not been established.**

The Biltmore in Asheville.
The flood’s signature
drape its portal walls.
Its exquisite gardens?
Spared per reports.
In the past, Asheville
held a nightly summer
country fest of harmony
and hoedown they named
“Shindig on the Green.”
Does the green still stand?

the flag at Chimney Rock [was raised]
… as a symbol of hope and
strength for all of Western North Carolina.***

I’ve been there—
global warming
was still struggling
to earn a name.
.
Epigraph sources:
Kierkegaard-popular translation of quote from Works of Love (1847).
*Helene damages North Carolina Tourist Destinations 
** Dillsboro pulling together after a lashing from Helene | thesylvaherald
***North Carolina State Parks Facebook Post

Afterword: Three things: 1). A number of years ago, in the Michigan Quarterly Review a group of literary luminaries joined the fray in a series of seven articles about writing Holocaust poetry. Alicia Ostriker had this to say, “Writing is what poets do about trauma. We try to come to grips with what threatens to make us crazy, by surrounding it with language.” 2). When my older daughter, now a middle school special education coordinator started her undergraduate career at Florida State in Tallahassee, the parents were treated to a lecture to show the kind of thing the students would be experiencing. The history professor involved propounded a theory which is both profound and difficult involving a meta-analysis approach asserting that all events, devastating hurricanes included, have positive outcomes if viewed in a larger context. The point of view is hard to reconcile. 3). Climate change is an existential threat, yet, as with Dorian Gray, collectively we have given away our future in exchange for the enjoyments of the moment. For other related work by the author see “Walmart Was the Largest Retailer in America.” For further reading: NASA website, “The Causes of Climate Change.”

This poem first appeared in Dissident Voice.

Afterword: Humans want to keep things straight, everything as advertised so to speak. But things aren’t always cut-and-dried, the whole is often greater than the sum of its parts—like idioms. Starting with pop culture issues related to the Grammys and recipients thereof (early on they were called Gramophone Awards), recent news has been chock-full of examples. King Charles’ cancer announcement, politics and law-making colliding regarding U.S. immigration, the latest in the conflagrations in the Middle East and Ukraine, an appeals court decision on an unprecedented matter pertaining to presidential criminal immunity and the special counsel report regarding presidential past handling of classified documents to name a few. Though we may try to keep things in order, it’s really all a gamble, life that is.

We arrived at the Court Deli Restaurant early that morning for coffee

and breakfast

 and to get a sense of the people’s feelings on the subject. 

After all we were in a diner occupying its location in the Bronx since 1936 as their website states, “Since 1936, the Court Deli has proudly served New York residents, court house employees, Yankee fans, police, firemen and tourists. We are conveniently located between the Supreme Court House, and Yankee Stadium in Bronx, NY at the corner of E 161st and Walton Ave. The Court Deli is open seven days a week, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

Let’s establish right off the bat this is as much an American institution—a true diner that is—as the judicial establishment down the street from it! The signage self-proclaims its pedigree. “Trust, but verify” Reagan used to say. Early on diners, prefabricated structures no less, were properly called “lunch wagons”—offering a wide array of mostly American cuisine, served in a casual atmosphere, providing counter service, and late operating hours. Real food. Real people. Real life. The Court Deli Restaurant checks all the boxes.

So what’s the buzz? Last night, Tuesday October 18 the Yankees won the 2022 ALDS 3-2. The final game was originally set for Monday, but mother nature intervened with miserably rainy conditions postponing the do-or-die finale by twenty-four hours. 

In the moment of victory jubilation reigned at Yankee Stadium. The morning after, cooler heads prevailed perhaps recognizing the out of the frying pan into the fire aspect of it. We wanted to get a sense of the mood on the street and so we paid our bill, left a good tip for the good service and headed towards the Bronx Bombers’ home base.

Before going any further, let’s get one thing straight. Yankee Stadium as it was is no more. That edifice was demolished in 2010. 

The “Cathedral of Baseball” one of several monikers bestowed on the original stadium which opened in 1923, in a way fittingly built on property previously purposed as a lumber yard, the walls constructed of a concrete developed for durability by Thomas Alva Edison no less. It stood the test of time and then succumbed to obsolescence. For 85 years “The House That Ruth Built” hosted World Series games, no-hitters and perfect games; the stadium back in the day was unique and became famous as a venue in its own right. John Philip Sousa, America’s March King and the “Silk-Stocking” Regiment Band knocked it out of the park with a rousing version of The Star-Spangled Banner on opening day. Asked for his opinion of the stadium, Babe Ruth at the time remarked, “Some ball yard.”

As we head toward 1 East 161st Street—the new stadium built right across from the original so they could share the same address—stopping at a light, I ask a fellow pedestrian what he thought of the game last night. “Great, but it doesn’t get any easier from here” he basically muttered. That was pretty much the consensus, betting against the odds.

Let’s face it. Recent history did not bode well. If you run the stats, comparing then vs. now it’s pretty clear. A 13-year championship drought, early playoff exits. The fans who buy the tickets are perturbed at best. This is a team that has after all won 27 World Series. The American dream and the Field of Dreams have things in common, there is always hope.

Baseball was “America’s pastime” —no more. But baseball still represents something emblematic about America. John Rawls (1921-2002) American philosopher and devoted baseball fan thought it through. He noted that the rules are in balance, giving a fair shot to the players, the diamond’s just the right size, the pitcher’s mound just the right distance from home plate. The game does not particularly advantage the tall over the short, the lean over the stout, each can find a place for themselves on the field. Players use everything they’ve got, hitting, running, speed, accuracy, shrewdness, strategy. The game is all out in the open, transparency reigns supreme. The ball is only one aspect of scoring and time is not the final arbiter. There is always the possibility for a comeback, the at-bats in the ninth inning can matter.

What happened next? Astros ace pitcher Verlander, Yankee errors, coaching mistakes, resulting in a resounding sweep by Houston making them for the fourth time in the last six years American League champions. It will be Astros vs. Phillies for the Fall Classic beginning Friday October 28.

For the Yankees, does this play out as the rise and fall of the Roman Empire or will there be the likes of a ninth inning comeback?

The Yankee Diner

Poem from Gallery: A Collection of Pictures and Words

For further reading

“Yankees vs. Astros score, takeaways: Houston heads back to World Series

As New York’s season ends with sweep” 

“The Best of All Games: Philosopher John Rawls on the delights of baseball” 

“Yankee Stadium (1923)” 

“Court Deli Restaurant” 

“The Bronx” 

Photo and video content by the author

Author Note: I was in New York to present a preview event for the NewVoicesProject at the same time the Yankees won the 2022 ALDS. Things did not go well thereafter, for the Yankees that is. I wanted to use the situation in the baseball world as a form of metonymy for the state of things in America in general; where we go from here is a real question, yet there is still hope.

Afterword: Nancy Gertner, retired federal judge, now senior lecturer at Harvard Law School in an interview published in Harvard Law Today when asked if she was surprised by the verdict in the Rittenhouse case responded, “No.The judge had put his finger on the scale.” According to a recent news report, Kyle Rittenhouse, now 19, may enroll at Texas A&M University after leaving Arizona State following student protests demanding his removal from campus. A video recording shows the assault-style rifle that Rittenhouse used was shredded in a Wisconsin state crime lab on February 25, 2022.

The Rus’ people came from the Norse
settling and ruling the river routes,
trade routes, fortresses, market
places, portages between the
Baltic and Black Seas. They spoke
Old Norse, they comingled with the
Slavic and other tribes, began speaking
an Old East Slavic tongue. The runestones
of Scandinavia tell the tales of these Viking
adventures, one inscribed  “he fell in battle/
in the east in Kievan Rus/commander of
the retinue/the best of landholders.” Then
came the Golden Horde of Mongol stock,
the Cossacks too, the Lithuanians and
Polish, the tug and pull of east to west
that suggest a possible meaning of its
very name, Ukraine, “borderland.”

Now they are the young couple insisting
to be married while sirens sound the invasion
all around, then as soon as they are wed, their pledge
together taken to the Territorial Defense Force,
Kalashnikovs in hand; the great grandmother
in Mariupol, ready she defiantly states to defend
my home, my city, my children. The comedian
turned president turned heroic leader who
stands steadfastly in a street in Kyiv
amidst resplendent structures there
declaring in a video selfie “I am here”
“our weapon is truth”—so too, the multitudes
who will spend yet another night sheltering
in subway stations.

*opening of a poem written August 29, 2014 the day of the battle of Ilovaisk in the Donbass region, during which 366 Ukrainian soldiers were killed; translated and published in Literary Hub. 

We all have a stake in this. My ancestral home is Riga Latvia some 600 miles from Kyiv (my paternal grandfather arrived in America from Riga at the age of 3 in 1886, and my maternal grandmother is from Priluki Ukraine). Russia’s invasion of Ukraine signals an ensuing struggle of autocracy vs. democracy, pax Americana, as pax Romana which preceded, seemingly a thing of the past. What makes a country, a nation? While not an easy question, common culture, background, language all certainly play their part. The idea of the nation-state itself is relatively new on the stage of history. Regardless of the complexities of defining nationhood, all must consider the ramifications of what happens in Ukraine on the world order. For further reading: “A New Cold War Emerging…”

Afterword: I was taken aback by the article about a Chinese AI “prosecutor.” Historian Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny, in a recent interview in The Guardian makes it abundantly clear that democracy is in peril and that one of the reasons has to do with what is identified as a lack of historical literacy. “When people refuse to make comparisons with events that have happened before, what they are really saying is: ‘I don’t want to look at either the past or the present’” let alone the future. In concluding, the interviewer states, “It seems to me that the opposite of tyranny is not freedom, but something more active: creativity, engagement. Do you think artists and writers have lately stepped up to that challenge?” Snyder responds that he is not going to criticize artists and writers, that “the main problem is often the way that their work has trouble getting viewed” and he adds: “Art and literature enable us to flex those imaginative muscles.”

News source: https://nextshark.com/china-ai-prosecutor-97-percent-accuracy/

Image credit: photo with illustrations by H.R. Debs

Like Linctom, Grant and Douglas wuz,

Er ‘batin’ human ri’ts upon

De public square in Dixie, c’uz

Et kinder ‘pears dat way to me.

—from the poem “Nicknames” by Samuel Alfred Beadle (born,1857 – died,1932) American poet and attorney, born the son of a slave in Atlanta, Georgia, and died in Chicago, Illinois.

I’m Jewish White

maybe have no right

to write that way;

some others did

like when Harris

wrote down those words

“Brer Rabbit had a mighty

quick thinkin’ apple-ratus,

an’ mos’ inginner’lly,

all de time, de pranks he played

on de yuther creeturs pestered um

bofe ways a-comin’ an’ a-gwine.”

Or Twain putting on paper

Jim saying what’s on his mind

to Huck just before chapter IX

“Yes—en I’s rich now,

come to look at it. I owns mysef”

But anyways, a 14 year old

African American won the

2021 Scripps National

Spelling Bee making

history as the first

Black American champion

In all its 96 years. Her name’s

appropriate too,

Zaila Avant-garde.

News source: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/07/zaila-avant-garde-first-black-american-win-scripps-national-spelling-bee.html?fbclid=IwAR0ruTu8ZreH7E_2BwnKEZ39ENaH99VeuUwXef8WzgSiXl-szr2vwthI0fI

Afterword: “’Old Man Segregation is on his deathbed,’ Martin Luther King, Jr. said before a large audience at Holy Blossom [Jewish]Temple on a Thursday evening in March 1962. But he followed up with a warning…‘We must struggle for it. We must fight for it.’ Showing his usual eloquence over the course of his speech, King was optimistic that equality would be achieved: ‘The long arc of history bends towards justice.’” (From article in the Torontoist,  March 21, 2015. https://torontoist.com/2015/03/historicist-the-long-arc-of-history-bends-towards-justice/)

Afterword: My poem Ferguson-Rashomon published some six years ago in response to the incident in Missouri now becomes an antecedent to this latest poetic effort of mine to come to grips with yet another such tragedy for which bodycam video has now been released; this time it’s my hometown on the streets of Chicago, on the streets of America. Oh, what about the title? The boy is pronounced dead at the scene at 2:46 a.m.