The Old Stations

My ancient vinyl Jazz collection is stacked on a bookshelf, waiting to be translated to the new format. Tapes replaced the LPs for a time, but they're gone now as well.

Movies morphed out of theaters into the den, but now those tapes are gone, also the DVDs which replaced them are rotating into the past in favor of streaming on wires, which will themselves be no more when the wireless universe comes to town.

All the old stations, as Waylon sings to us, are being torn down, and the high-flying trains no longer roll.

I write this, in fact, on a tiny gadget that fits in my pocket and also contains a vast library of literature and music which it will quickly and easily display and play for me. I can visit the Web and handle my email and search Wiki and be directed to any destination out on the road - and I can even talk to family and friends over it. What I want to know is, isn't there a time coming soon to a library near you when the allocation of large chunks of public funds for the purchase of items and storing and staffing of facilities for last millennium's text technology will be considered misappropriation?


Sent from my iPhone

Charity Stampede

Our NGO was a private/public operation in support of military veterans and was supported by taxes. We were very creative one year. We allowed certain unemployed vets to drive our entire fleet of vans used regularly to transport the ailing to the vets hospital. They were commissioned to carry the aged and the infirm to Thanksgiving meals, or wherever else they needed to go. It was very well received, this idea, and we smiled for the photographer from the local paper. That's us, doing good, was the expression.

First, we lost track of the drivers and their vehicles. Nobody was keeping strict accounts of their travels, and now we had no account of any of them. Also, we became aware the credit cards issued to the drivers were not tracked. We did not know how to monitor them. Perhaps we would have to wait until the bills at the end of the month. We really were not a top-notch organization.

The reports in the news informed us the vet drivers had wandered off the reservation considerably. Apparently they were moving bodies to where they needed to be. One story featured a move for an impoverished family back to the old homestead over two states. Another news item featured a nest of runaways in San Francisco who were escorted back to their native habitats. (Running away is thrilling at first until the cold and the ragged hunger and fear set in.) Any number of children were saved this way.

All of the news was positive, only we were expecting that coming from the bank at the end of the month not to be. We fretted, but who wants to rain on a victory parade? Everywhere was smiling on us. We done good. We just could never expect to pay for it. But we didn't let on.

None of our superior authorities cared to mess in our business. What they wanted to do was empower and enable the lost and lonesome and hope trouble never came home to roost. Minorities and the disabled and veterans were all granted roles in the organizations set up for their welfare, for not to do so would imply some sort of ism. So we weren't bothered - like the kid drunk for the first time at a Worlds Fair who jumped from a tall building such as he had never seen before. Folks on the second floor heard him muttering as he dropped by outside, "So far, so good."

We were not, after all, so very different than Wall Street. We were investing heavily with somebody else's treasure and when it all crashed down, well, the public would pick up the pieces. We encouraged one another with that rationale. It was the only one we had.

Meanwhile, nothing was heard from the drivers nor their vehicles except for the various news repoorts. Regular rides to the VA Hospital were suspended. The reports were coming in from farther and farther afield.

The Lower Branches

It's another one of those B-movie sets, obscure background in nondescript buildings. A series of rooms. We go into one. We occupy it. We are hired, our team, and we're taking over, but from whom is not part of our indoctrination.

It's a room like the others. We enter, my mentor and I. She is older, sadder, and she says, "You should cut the lower branches on the bushes along the walk." I don't know what we are doing here. I'm the newest member of the team.

I walk. She walks away. I look at the bushes along the walk. It seems such a senseless job. And what will all these others do? Nobody tells. We all just walk into rooms and without even looking around at desks and chairs we walk out again. Is this it?

And then one of the rooms I walk into has her in it. My old mentor. She is sitting now. Looks up, ever so sad. "We're fired," she says. Just like that.

Cop Stop

Across the street, cruisers stop at what looks like an ordinary suburban domicile. It isn't.

An officer of the law approaches the front porch, steps up, turns right, and engages with an odd configuration on the door. It looks like he's undergoing a chest x-ray. He isn't.

"Recharging his batteries," says my guide. I wanted to see this, and he knows about it.

Suddenly the cop leaves off. Another one approaches. She must have priority, because she takes his place and he retreats to another machine in the shadows of oaks to the right rear.

"She's a lieutenant, on a mission," says the guide.

"Androids," I say.

"Well, yes," agrees the guide.

The lieutenant leaves and the first cop comes around the house. He is grinning, as if there has been a faux pas somewhere. At least, that's my reading. But what do I know about androids?

He pulls a long dark object from his partrol wagon. It looks like a surfboard, but isn't. He mounts the head of it, turns it sideways, and through a pedal device he begins to mount in the very air.

"Will you look at that?" I say.

My guide has stepped away for a time. The android up high, about a thousand feet by now, drops something. I see it's in the form of a bomb, a small one, like those dropped by hand in WWI film clips. I'm not afraid, because I figure, he's one of ours, after all.

The "bomb" plops against the ground. I pick it up after it stops bouncing. It's just a small finned device. I somehow understand it can be taken apart if you twist the fins. I try and do that. It's stuck, though.

Inside is water. I wonder why that is. But there is never really any explanation in dreams.

DID YOUR CHILD DO THIS?

Stu and Val are upstanding members of their community, Sereno Knolls, which is situated along a golf course spotted with townhouses and behind heavy metal gates. There has been but one incident in the recent collective memory of this most pastoral playground for plutocrats - an inexplicable sabotage in the clubhouse. After a children's festival, there was found a large slice in one of the theatre seats. The cushion was hung out in front of the theatre with the sign in bold letters inscribed over it: "DID YOUR CHILD DO THIS?" It was thought guilt and embarrassment might bring a confession like in Perry Mason, but it didn't, and so eventually the sign and cushion were removed and the culprit remained uncaught and the grim business of golf was taken up once more.

An even more troubling event began when Stu and Val were featured in one month's community newspaper, Fairway Foldderol. They aren't particularly happy about it.

The story was rather innocuous, as all of the rest have been; something about crabgrass encroachment on the greens. But two commentors on the problem were gifted with hedcuts, like those in the WSJ they all calculate to leave in their carts after a round. It seems Stu's portrait was not, in his mind, particularly flattering.

The happy couple would not voice discontent, of course, for they would not want it thought they were engaged in such petty concerns. However, in a week or two, they sought discreetly to determine who had written the crabgass article, and, specifically, who had created the hedshots.

They were not successful. The publisher and editor, one individual, claimed these stories come over the transom after every Homeowners Association meeting and he does not credit them. All bylines and photos in Fairway Folderol are unattributed, for, after all, it's only a neighborhood gossip sheet.

Not being successful does not jibe with the bearing of Stu nor Val, so they stepped up their subtle campaign. Oh, really, we must know, they claimed in a letter to the editor (not for print); we want to thank the artist, as it's such a close likeness, and we feel we simply must know how we were chosen for the honor among all other humans on the planet.

The publisher/editor, being a man who recognized no irony and wasted no words, replied simply that he did not know the answer to their question.

Next came the letter from an attorney, who had not been engaged officially, but she has known Val and Stu for ever so many years and is often able to offer off-the-record advice and bring some satisfaction without any trouble to any party. She asked the original question.

And drew the identical reply - if possible, even more tersely worded.

The demand letter from the attorney came in two weeks. No answer from the Folderol.

A suit was filed in Superior Court, and the Publisher/Editor was duly served.

The news became general then. Did you hear? Val and Stu are suing about their picture in our dinky little Folderol! Have you ever heard such madness?

Val and Stu stopped playing golf, visiting or being visited by their neighbors. After all, the satarist was obviously among them, and they knew not which. Best to take no chances. They drove their limo out the gates and returned as the occasion demanded, both sitting up straight and looking neither right nor left.

Various attorneys who lived at Sereno Knolls volunteered their services to the tribe, pro bono. The case went forward. During the Interrogatory and deposition of the publisher/editor, not one further word did he offer to the demand for the identity of the artist who so cruelly caricatured Val and Stu than: "I don't know."

The case was dismissed with prejudice as a silly waste of time and resources, and Val and Stu were sanctioned to the tune of the court cost and attorney fees for causing the trouble. But even that wasn't the last straw.

While they had been able to dodge all the lampoons around the clubhouse - the faux-Folderols with ever-more-grotesque caricatures - they could not ignore the one strung a hundred feet up all around the water tower. It featured one of the more cartoonish of the modified hedshots, with the question lettered above it:

DID YOUR CHILD DO THIS?

The townhouse of Val and Stu was on the market within three weeks.