Early in the Apple ... a Memory

In the early 1970s I had the good fortune to live on one of the most beautiful blocks in Manhattan. West 76th Street just off Central Park.

At that time there was a old man who also lived there. He could be seen regularly walking his old grizzled dog. And, surreptitiously dropping Corn kernels for the Pigeons. Now, if you live in New York City you either love the sight of those birds, or you detest them. They seem to be there just to soil every windowsill in town.

There was also a young man who lived in my row house building who did not like the man feeding those Pigeons. One day the old man saw him and went into an apoplectic rage; screaming and yelling. Very upset.

I asked the young man what was that all about. Well, he took it upon himself to stop the old guy from feeding the birds. One day when the fellow was walking his dog, dropping feed on the sidewalk, our young friend ran out of the house and sprinkled sugar on top of the corn.

And then, in a dramatic voice, he said to the old man, "And ... now, the Pigeons DIE!"

Many years later ...

What are the odds of this happening?

I was walking east on the block just off Riverside Drive on 86th Street. Mid-block I saw a Pigeon on the sidewalk maybe twenty feet away, directly in my path. When I spotted it, the Pigeon somehow seemed to spot me too. Immediately it flew toward me. Going upward at some precisely calibrated moment and angle, it let loose a dropping ... and it landed directly on my forehead, between my eyebrows. On my so-called "third eye" spot. It was warm and soothing to feel. True story. I swear. Kismet? 

Uncle Därnholdt-Zigismunt von Braunswieger und Stroopwafeln Wronski. 

In some parts just ... That Darn Wronski! Or, the more familiar, "Darnski".

As you might expect from the writings of this one Wronski, for the most part we Wronski's have a way with words. Darnski, too; perhaps one of the top tier penmeisters of the clan. 

He lived in Germany since immigrating there from Piekło as an infant. Why they left is anyone's guess; could be that the name of the town, Piekło, is the exact same word that is used to describe ‘hell’ in Polish. Apparently, it was ... well named.

Darnski is the one who coined the German idiomatic expression, "Ich kann mit setztzen". Literally, it's what one says when you see something particularly scrumptiliceous ... "I could sit in it". 

He also did the whole Bavarian thing to the hilt. Trademark lederhosen. Pewter capped tankard. That impossible smoking pipe. 

And, then, there's that overly appropriated name. If you delved into its true origins you'd find yourself in a little food store in Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen. That's the German language for you. They aren't too much for invention of specific, pithy coinages. Just kept adding another name upon name for variations on any particular thing. And, another. Good for the sciences, however. 

He was quite the talker too. Smoking...drinking...and, yackin'.  Quite the party animal. Here he is in Fasching mode [that bacchanal time in Germany celebrating in exuberant manner before the Lenten observances].

There's more. But, with the Wronski's there always is. 

For now ... Tschüß!

And, if you want to really know from Wronski, here's the full compendium of those folks.

Jewish Buddhism:

*Take only what is given. Own nothing but your robes and an alms bowl. Unless, of course, you have the closet space.

*Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as the wooded glen. And sit up straight. You'll never meet the Buddha with posture like that!

*There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?

*Wherever you go, there you are. Your luggage is another story.

*To practice Zen and the art of Jewish motorcycle maintenance, do the following: Get rid of the motorcycle. What were you thinking?

*Learn of the pine from the pine. Learn of the bamboo from the bamboo. Learn of the kugel from the kugel.

*Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.

*If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?

*Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.

*The Tao has no expectations.
The Tao demands nothing of others.
The Tao does not speak.
The Tao does not blame.
The Tao does not take sides.
The Tao is not Jewish.

*Drink tea and nourish life. With the first sip, joy.
With the second, satisfaction. With the third, Danish.

*The Buddha taught that one should practice loving-kindness to all sentient beings. Still, would it kill you to find a nice sentient being who happens to be Jewish?

*Be patient and achieve all things. Be impatient and achieve all things faster.

*In nature, there is no good or bad, better or worse. The wind may blow or not. The flowering branch grows long or short. Do not judge or prefer. Ask only, "Is it good for the Jews?"

*To Find the Buddha, look within.
Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers.
Each flower blossoms ten thousand times.
Each blossom has ten thousand petals.
You might want to see a specialist.

*Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?

*The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single oy.

*If you wish to know The Way, don't ask for directions. Argue.

*Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have?Bopkis.

The Career of George H. W. Bush

By Arun Gupta on Facebook December 3, 2018

Having read new material on and re-familiarized myself with the career of George Herbert Walker Bush, I am floored.

The amount of criminality, corruption, dictators, death squads, and drug dealing he enabled during his shadowy intrigues in office up to the presidency far outstrips anything Donald Trump has done.

This is no exaggeration. Bush set up a secret government with CIA chief William Casey. Bush subverted FBI investigations and independent counsel Lawrence Walsh. He lied to, stonewalled, and withheld evidence from Walsh who concluded the conspiracy went up to and included Reagan and Bush. Right before leaving office in December 1992, Bush pardoned six Iran-Contra figures, sparing himself from being called as a witness and possibly criminal prosecution.

George Bush Sr. trashed the Constitution and rule of law. He was an architect of the state terror, corruption, and lawlessness that gave rise to Trump. But Bush actually conspired and committed virtually all the types of crimes and misdeeds Trump may or may not have committed.

Bush did even worse. His legacy includes the horror show in Central America that remains as refugees flee violence and poverty. He used veterans of the Phoenix Program, the CIA death squad in Vietnam, to organize torture and murder in El Salvador while running the illegal scheme to arm the Contras.

Bush was tied to the BCCI and BNL banking scandals where billions of dollars were funneled to Saddam Hussein so he could buy weapons during the time when he gassed 5,000 Kurds to death in Halabja. The bank scandals involved laundering Saudi funds for the Contras. That illegal war saw Bush's office and the CIA enable and ignore a drug-smuggling network by the Medellin Cartel, cartels, the Contras, Panama's Manuel Noriega, and notorious freelancers like Barry Seal who shipped in many tens of thousands of pounds of cocaine, feeding the crack wars that decimated cities devastated by Reagan's neoliberal policies.

Bush oversaw the destructive invasions of Panama and Iraq. His death squad network and senior officials like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Powell, Abrams, and Negroponte returned with a vengeance after 9/11 creating the killing fields of Iraq, the global war on terror, the worldwide torture and black site gulags, and a destabilized Middle East.

Mind you, I'm not even mentioning his criminal sons, choosing Clarence Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall, Willie Horton ads, the hostility to the AIDS crisis, indifference to the Rodney King riots, the war on unions, the poor, and cities, the staggering concentration of wealth.

Just to be clear, I think Trump is a grave danger. But he is very different than Bush. He is the danger of the cultish dictator, the ethnonationalist autocrat. As he is incompetent, he only can rule by tantrum and tweet, however. Bush was far smarter. His destruction involved knowing how to use the levers of power.

Here is some reading material. Start with this excellent Rolling Stone report on the secret government, death squads, Israelis, and drug smuggling. It covers the period before Oliver North comes along, who was used as a fall-guy. This era is when the alternative press shined. The Progressive, The Nation, Mother Jones, Village Voice, and other lefty outlets broke many important stories.

These reports show the media, Congress, and the courts all failed to do their job and hold the Reagan-Bush White House accountable. Trump's lawlessness is nothing new. He is just the latest and most extreme iteration of a system that's been broken and bankrupt for more than 30 years.

Read the executive summary in Lawrence Walsh's final report on Iran-Contra.

This article by Parry details how Reagan used Argentinian dirty war veterans to train the Contras, as well as how U.S.-backed right-wing coup in Bolivia encouraged cocaine production and smuggling to fund anti-Communist dirty wars.


For books, read:

Family of Secrets by Russ Baker
American Dynasty, Kevin Philipps

Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Cocaine Explosion, Gary Webb

The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in Reagan Era, Jonathan Marshall and Peter Dale Scott

Lost History, Robert Parry

Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-up, Lawrence Walsh

Crimes of a President: New Revelations on the Conspiracy and Cover Up in the Bush and Reagan Administration, Joel Bainerman

The Dirty Secrets of George Bush Rolling Stone