Woody Norman Blog

Monday, August 5, 2024

Axioms of Irrationality

Axioms of Irrationality

Irrational enthusiasm

Possibly a conundrum

But an iconoclasm

Directed to the numb ones

Impervious to truth,

Believing in a fading happiness

Through the lies of a sleuth

In all its craftiness.

The Irrational claims a future,

Simultaneously preparing a tomb

For those deprived of a life-giving nurture,

But murdered in the womb.

And Irrationality had a goal,

A deadline though previously foreseen.

But political haste took its toll

On thirteen butchered Marines.

What do we make of it?

What do we believe?

Shall we endure or quit?

Or simply bereave?

Irrational enthusiasm,

(Perhaps circumscription)

Albeit a conundrum,

Is contradiction.

Better not our hopes and words misuse.

Living in our Creator is the Rational enthuse.

Friday, April 5, 2024

Hank, Ben, and Ray and Other Memories

Hank, Ben, and Ray

And Other Memories

Five Points in Norview (a section of Norfolk, Virginia) was a meeting place back in the 1950s and 1960s. There Sewells Point Road, Chesapeake Boulevard, and Norview Avenue converged.

The men, fathers, and uncles, met at their watering hole, Vann’s. It was a beer joint, and it was located next to the Be-Lo Grocery Store. Those businesses faced Sewells Point Road.

Most of the employment in Norview, the entire area, was the United States Navy. My father worked at the Naval Supply Center (NSC) on the Navy Operating Base (NOB).

When I advanced from elementary school, the newer junior high school experience was a jolt. It seems that there was less control of students by teachers in the classroom and in the halls of the school. Junior high brought on the change of classes every fifty-five minutes, and a change of teachers. Wow. That was great. That began in 1958.

Norview Junior High School was the old Norview High School campus. As I recall there were three different buildings: the main building with two or three stories; the old elementary school building (my first through sixth grades were there); and another building, probably where the shops were, and the band. I was in the band – a trumpeter-convert to French Horn.

Downhill from the “band” building (yes, a gradual decline going off campus) was Twine’s Grocery Story. Before school and after school, Twine’s was at those moments not a grocery store. It was a hangout for junior high kids. It had no soda fountain.

Twine’s faced Sewells Point Road bordering the junior high campus, and about one quarter to a half-mile from Five Points proper. The side of Twine’s facing the school was the area for smokers. Unofficial, of course.

My home was on the other side of the school from Twine’s. That meant that when I walked to school in the mornings – there were only five houses between my house and the school – I never passed by Twine’s where the morning smokers gathered. No telling how my clothes would have smelled had I joined in with them. My luck, however, was that I was surrounded on four sides by fourteen-year-old smokers in the classroom.

Eventually I discovered Hank’s. This was not my discovery. One of my friends, probably an older friend, suggested that we walk to Hank’s one afternoon after school. The walk was beyond Twine’s near the center of Five Points, and further away from my home.

Hank’s had a soda fountain. It had six bar stools, a juke box, and a pin-ball machine. It was really a hobby shop. But I am sure that Hank made a lot of money from serving up fountain cokes: vanilla and cherry. I had never heard of either.

Hank’s owner was Hank Bachman. To me at that time, Hank was just a friendly man with red hair and a strong voice, which means he had a strong, dominant personality. He needed to be that way because most of his customers, I suspect, were junior high and high school students. During the working day Hank probably had his hobby clientele to take care of. But after school Hank’s the store was inundated with students.

I learned only years later that Hank Bachman and Ben Buckner (the owner of the barber shop next door) were World War II veterans. I suspect the same of Mr. Twine.

Woody Norman: written on April 8, 2020

Monday, July 3, 2023

The Distraction

The Distraction

It was on a Sunday,

The Fourth after Trinity,

When liturgy renewing its One way

Mocked Divinity.

Whether intentional,

(Perhaps egotistical),

Or a knowledge sophistical,

It nonetheless smacked of the atheistical.

While offering the Great Thanksgiving

The Prayers of the People were read

For those passed and for the living.

But so revised it was something dread.

The reader not a layman

But the ordinary leader,

Voicing like a shaman

To his own glory a feeder.

Indeed, a disastrous distraction

By one who knows better.

His free-form liturgical infraction

Chose himself and to God locked in fetter.

The local congregation

Astonished and not amused,

And knowing its place and station

To the ordinary reader should they accuse

And bring him before

The Body of Christ?

Perhaps this distraction they would ignore

And to the bins of history dice.

But this distraction should be addressed,

Observing repentance and forgiveness,

And not without acknowledging those distressed

Disciples observing the abuse of God’s liturgical business.

Tuesday, June 29, 2021

AWAITING THE COMING

After the anarchy the turning continued

But the falconer was replaced

By a single spinner through some grace.

Anarchy’s reordering moved in painful pace

But killed in the old falconer a developing sinew.

There, innocence never was.

The adversary emerged again in strength.

The meek, mild, and the tolerant sat.

The Revelation was always at hand.

The Second Coming is still at hand,

But the second cataclysm could not hold

And western social fabric began to tear.

The Spiritual Mundi or Zeitgeist of fear

Rendered the single spinner its strength.

The Orient and the Bear now intrude

On freedom the spinner spun.

It is now a darkness, no light, no shadow.

A darkness crushing Revelation,

The falcons turn upon themselves

Devouring, denying their own future.

Awaiting the Coming, the light on the hill dims.

June 29, 2021

Monday, February 1, 2021

My Bucket List

Given that I will turn 77-years old next month, I think that now is the time to work on my bucket list.

My assumptions are:

1. I have three years remaining in this life.

2. My cognitive faculties will remain steady or even improve.

3. That I break none of my extremities.

4. That the COVID shutdown no longer exists.

MY BUCKET LIST

1. Drum Major the Marine Corps Band, also known as The President’s Own, on the field at Marine Corps Barracks, 8^th & I SE in Washington, D.C.

a. Caveat: my legs are not strong, therefore an alternative is

b. Conducting TPO in concert

i. National Emblem March

ii. Semper Fidelis (Six Bits [17]75)

iii. Marine Corps Hymn

c. This No. #1 item will require some “politickin’.”

2. 2. Compose an original march for band.

3. 3. Write a history of the political and cultural transitions of the Commonwealth of Virginia from colonial times to present day.

a. A subtitle might be “From Aristocracy to Social and Political Elitism.”

4. 4. Give a recital on a musical instrument in which I have not been trained.

a. The music will be a technically difficult piece.

Sunday, January 17, 2021

Ode to a Fractured Fibula

The event described in this limerick occurred on the Monday following Christmas Day 2020

Ode to a Fractured Fibula

I took a brief journey one day.

Not a long trip, I would say.

Carrying the day’s trash

Down the staircase I dashed

And missed the last three steps on the way.

My fall made a very loud noise

From a tumble of amateur poise.

When I fell on my back,

Unlike a skilled acrobat,

I yelled for the neighborhood boys.

No boys were near or around,

And for a moment I uttered little sound.

Then she made her descent

Seeing the floor of cement

With this old man permanently down.

“What happened to you? Are you hurt?

“No, I’m having dessert.”

She offered some help

Then I screamed with a yelp

And expressed an expletive blurt.

What broke, in particular?

Was my right leg’s fibula.

No surgery required

No steel to be wired.

I am glad it was the stairs and not vehicular.

Thursday, January 14, 2021

A Litany for the United States of America

A Litany for the United States of America

Pray and fast between January 16 – 20, 2021

O God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth,

Have mercy upon us.

O God the Son, Redeemer of the world,

Have mercy upon us.

O God the Holy Spirit, Sanctifier of the faithful,

Have mercy upon us.

O holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, one God,

Have mercy upon us.

We, the people of the United States of America invoke your holy presence on this land, particularly during this time of transition from one national administration to another.