Veterans Day week's celebrations

                Only poetry sufficed for me as we celebrated Veteran’s Day again. I pulled down an anthology of poems for men, The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, that my son had given me for Christmas sixteen years ago. Section three was titled “War.”

                I read through all those poems and decided on “Naming of Parts” from LESSONS OF THE WAR by Henry Reed. The poem seems to be saying, “Look, fellows, even though it’s spring and we’d rather be anyplace else but here, we have our instructions. We have our duties. We are preparing for war.”

NAMING OF PARTS – Henry Reed             

“Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday, / We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning, / We shall have what to do after firing. But today, / Today we have naming of parts. Japonica/ Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens, / And today we have naming of parts. //

                “This is the lower sling swivel. And this/ Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see, / When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel, / Which in your case you have not got. The branches/ Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures, / Which in our case we have not got. //

                “This is the safety-catch, which is always released/ With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me/ See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy/ If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms/ Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see/ Any of them using their finger. //

                “And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this/ Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it/ Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this/ Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards/ The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers: They call it easing the Spring. //

                “They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly Way/ If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt, / And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of/ balance. / Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom/ Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and/ forwards/ For today we have naming of parts. ///

                Henry Reed was born in February 1914 and died December 1986. He was a British poet, translator, radio dramatist and journalist. He was called up to the Army in 1941, spending most of the war as a Japanese translator. Although he had studied French and Italian at university and taught himself Greek at school, Reed did not take to Japanese, perhaps because he had learned an almost entirely military vocabulary.            

Reed's most famous poetry is Lessons of the War, a collection of poems that are witty parodies of British army basic training during World War II, which suffered from a lack of equipment at that time.

Chided by the gas company

by Pat Laster

Here’s yet another heavy metal story.
In Centerton AR, scrap iron thieves made off with 55 manhole covers @110 pounds each, and 70 water-meter lids @ 50 pounds each.
With the going price for scrap metal at eleven cents per pound, officials estimated a potential $13,000 worth of goods. Wouldn’t you hate to be the salvage-yard operator when these came in to the business? Stay tuned.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY today (November 10) to my older daughter, Jennifer Lynn (nee Paulus), who was the first girl to be born in either family for many years. She is one of my four––five counting Kid Billy—“prides-and-joys.”
She is an occupational therapist in the public schools, mother of fifth-grader Jake, wife of Brian, and part caregiver to three dogs. She “does” house and yard plants, too, (like her mother, ahem) and collects Kurt Vonnegut novels. She was a foreign exchange student to Germany during the mid-1980s.
Plants in bloom as I drove around the house after two weeks away, were wild asters—both blue and white—abelia, several large bushes of mums, oxalis, a bright pink gerbera daisy, the yellow zinnias, Encore azaleas, purple jew, one lamb’s ear, several Wave petunias revived after I cut them back, and occasional dianthus rounds. Inside, begonia, African violets, Mandevilla bloom, and there are four buds on the Thanksgiving cactus. Blessed am I with living things—in addition to cats.
SOAP BOX: If this doesn’t beat all, as my sainted mother would say. I arrive home to two weeks of “held” mail only to find this piece from CenterPoint Energy: “Last winter, you used 53 percent more natural gas than your neighbors.” Which I took (again, like my mother), as a chide, a shaming technique, a “naughty, naughty!” First of all, my parents taught us that we didn’t have to be like the neighbors. “Keeping up with the Jones” was an anathema at our house.
“Who are your neighbors?” the document asked. Answer: “Approximately 100 occupied nearby homes that are similar in size to yours (avg.2497 sq ft) and have gas heat.” My questions: how does the gas company know how large my house is, and how did they decide which homes were that size? Mine was built in the 1930s, and all homes around here that size were built after that. Waaaaay after that.
On the back side of the page was a comparison chart—mine was in a solid blue line; theirs were muted, dotted lines very far below mine. A second shame technique! And their suggestions to “help me” were:
1. Program your thermostat. I use space heaters, ergo, no thermostat.
2. Weatherstrip windows and doors. I do that.
3. Install efficient showerheads. They told me they knew that about 40% of my hot water usage is because of showering. Well, I’ll let them know, ‘t’ain’t so!! With KB in college and my occasional shower (in favor of sit-down baths), there’s no way.
A way to “outperform your neighbors this winter” is to (ahem) purchase (aha!) and install (aha!-doubled) a qualifying high-efficiency natural gas heating system.” And on and on. They are going to hear from me!!
I mustn’t rant to the exclusion of Veteran’s Day tomorrow: Here is a thought or three. “military parade/ so many of them marching/ behind the flag” and “the little girl/ and her doll/ among the veterans” and “crisp autumn winds~/ praise all veterans who fought (fight)/ for our liberty”.
Amen and amen.