Alphabet City

Ms. Goldberg,

Today we will conclude with Lesson #2
on "Race: Thinking Out Of The Box."

Before we start, we are sorry to announce that 
this will be the final offering, and that we 
are cancelling next semester's
Master Class.

best regards,
MCS

P.S.  Consider: why not rebrand your show as
Views.  I believe you could pull it off.  Show the way.  
Show the ignorant yentas around the table how it's done.
Make a difference.

cc: Chagall 2022

The eternally irreplaceable,
parts of our lives that are gone forever,
churches, temples, our keepers of the faith,
hold the names of those who preceded us,
their births, their deaths, joyous life in between,
vulnerable to the flame and the bomb,
but never will they burn or be destroyed,
long may they live, Slava Ukraini!

cc: Chagall, World
2022

Inside a looped noose
The world is oh so simple
Just pull on the bow

cc: Chagall 2022

There in the air, if I listen intently,
the sounds of their cries
(or perhaps they're in my head?)
but wait, are they...quiet!
behind the walls...do you hear it?
the shrill squeal of ill-oiled machines

cc: Chagall 2022

I no longer go to sleep,
instead I await it to overcome me

cc: Chagall 2022

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1882

Sleep, comrades, sleep and rest
  On this Field of the Grounded Arms,
Where foes no more molest,
  Nor sentry's shot alarms! 

Ye have slept on the ground before,
  And started to your feet
At the cannon's sudden roar,
  Or the drum's redoubling beat. 

But in this camp of Death
  No sound your slumber breaks;
Here is no fevered breath,
  No wound that bleeds and aches. 

All is repose and peace,
  Untrampled lies the sod;
The shouts of battle cease,
  It is the Truce of God! 

Rest, comrades, rest and sleep!
  The thoughts of men shall be
As sentinels to keep
  Your rest from danger free. 

Your silent tents of green
  We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
  The memory shall be ours.

Dear Mr. Putin,

1917 and 1933 are calling.  They want their foreign policy back.

best regards,
MCS

cc: C. Chagall, B.H.Obama, M. Romney

Odd, when Putin, an obvious madman,
proclaims Nazis everywhere, we condemn him,
we clearly see the sociopathy

But when the best and the brightest here in the U.S. of A 
proclaim the same, Nazis behind anything, anyone,
with whom they disagree, their respective camps applaud them, 
give them nightly airtime

left and right and center, wake the fuck up

cc: Chagall 2022

When I was young, after she had passed,
I dreamed of her walking along a swinging rope-bridge, 
high above ground in the leafed canopy of larch and linden trees

the bridge twists and turns through the greenery, a system of
paths one hundred feet high, though I cannot see the ground

it goes on and on in sunlight and dappled shade around bends, 
she approaches, she nears, her face clearer with each step,
the clarity of her face grows sharper as the sounds around us, 
wind and birdsong, increase in volume, as does the intensity of 
the buildup of sunlight, until I realize who it is

Eva as a young woman in Bachory, or more precisely, 
an angel of sorts, lit-up as I would imagine 
a resurrected Christ to appear.

to punctuate the moment of recognition, all sound and light become one 
in a startling crescendo that consumes me, disorients me, moves me out of 
my normal frame of reference, where dream meets waking reality

Now it is fifty years later.

Overnite, a winter advisory, snow and ice accumulating 
on the roads, the roofs of the houses

Our skylights are buried in snow,
muffles the sound in the kitchen, disallowing sunlight in, so 
the rooms are much darker.

I make a cup of coffee and sit down to listen to news of the war in Ukraine, 
and continue to research her town on mindat.org, motivated to complete work 
on the family tree before the records are destroyed, gone forever.

I am happy to find her village, Bachory, on a wonderful interactive map of 
the area.  I zoom in to 2000 feet and see the neighboring towns and roads, 
and then, at 100 feet, I am there in the canopies, 
among the larch and linden trees.

At that moment, due to rapidly warming 
mid-morning temperatures, the ice on the skylight 
violently breaks free, creating an incredible noise as it scrapes its way 
down the glass and the roof shingles, moving as an iceberg, grating, 
rushing downward, exposing glaring sunlight where there was deep shadow 
just a moment before.  I am bathed in my senses, unsure of what is happening.

All sound and light become one in a startling crescendo
that consumes me, disorients me, moves me out of 
my normal frame of reference, where waking reality meets a dream

cc: Chagall 2022

Dear Reader,

I point things out simply to illustrate a cognitive dissonance that became
apparent to me watching various networks' news, these past days.

I offer no value judgement, simply my objective observation.

Certain media outlets are asserting correctly that Putin's bid to de-Nazify 
Ukraine is nonsense as its President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is himself Jewish.  
There are other reasons why this is nonsense, chief among those being that
Ukraine is simply not a Nazi country.  Full stop, end of sentence.

Yet that same media has no trouble asserting that people of color can be
White Supremacists.

cc: Chagall, Leon Festinger
1957, 2022