Exposing the toxicity of our times;
Why is Dallas Green So Blue? ;
The “Ask Not” Speech Remembered

What’s Happened to Civility?
Exposing the toxicity of our times

The landscape of our politics
is littered with (it makes me sick)
all kinds of garbage thrown about
that’s toxic and untrue.

The air’s polluted by our hate.
It’s everywhere in every state.
The donkeys act like jackasses.
The elephants like beasts.

Campaigns are viewed as holy wars
where words (like weapons) aim to score
a victory at any price
while peace is left to die.

What’s happened to civility?
Without it our democracy
is window dressing (nothing more)
and likely doomed to fail.

Why is Dallas Green So Blue?
Reflections on a 9 year-old’s tragic murder

So why is Dallas Green so blue?
I’m thinking that you would be too
if your granddaughter was gunned down.
You might be red with rage.

A yellow sun up in the sky
that watched that little princess die
observed a blacktop stained with blood
and turned white-hot with scorn.

But in the brownish Tucson sand
the footprints of one guilty man
remind us all of our gray hearts
most vulnerable to sin.

A highly-prized World Series ring
is not worth much. It’s only bling!
When it’s compared to human life,
there’s not much to compare.

* Dallas Green, who played for the Philadelphia Phillies in the Sixties, went on to manage the team two decades later. In 1980 he led the Phillies to their very first World Series title. Sadly, the nine year-old girl who was one of the six killed in Tucson last week was his granddaughter.

The “Ask Not” Speech Remembered
What a remarkable speech it was!

Fifty years ago this week
I heard my childhood hero speak.
He asked me not to seek to get
but rather seek to serve.

A boy of eight (that’s all I was)
inspired by this leader’s cause
and captured by a Boston brogue
I’d never heard before.

Although I later came to learn
what JFK should well have spurned,
his “don’t ask” message was Christ-like.
“Don’t seek to be served!” “Serve!”

“For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:45