The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    A Still Wintery Friday Afternoon at the Haikulodeon

    By MrSmith1 on Fri, 02/07/2014 - 3:24pm |

     

     

    Here's this week's heap of haikus:


     


    A snowy landscape
    seen through a dirty window ...
    Impressionism!


    (Photos taken Monday morning from my doctor's office overlooking Stuyvesant Park.)



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    A city of dreams,
    adventure hides underground
    the space between trains.

     


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    No enlightenment

    is reached without questions asked.

    Teach and you shall learn.
     

     

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    Through the train's windows,
    I see, on the platform bench,
    my g*d-d*mned briefcase.





    ---
     


    Don't feel discouraged
    when your back's against the wall ...
    you've found some support.


    ---




    Time flies, ( Yes it does),
    'Here and now' will soon be 'Was'...
    Why you ask? ... Because.



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    In 1902,
    Snowstorms hit, folks slipped on ice.
    Some things never change.

    ( Thomas Edison film of NYC after a blizzard in 1902)
     

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    Doctors conspire
    to keep from treating the sick?
    Health care's still broken.

    All of my doctors are opting out of all of the state run insurance exchanges ... the policies that all the people with chronic health problems were forced to take when the insurance companies canceled their policies.  Sure, I understand the docs are protesting against the amount of money they are paid under such plans, but the net result is that the sickest people are getting lumped together and then are being forced to scramble to find a doctor willing to treat them ... In the meantime, they can't get the ongoing treatments they need unless the go to an ER, because the doctors will take any insurance at the hospital, but don't have to take the insurance when they see patients in their offices ... that ain't right.  I mean, isn't forcing people to go to Emergency Rooms for treatment exactly the problem we were trying to fix? 


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    Double haiku:

     I dream, I wish, I
    want, hope and wait ... then give up
    and go back to sleep.

    I dream, I wish, I
    want, hope and wait ... then give up
    and go back to sleep.
     



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    On a shady lane,
    there lives a lonely girl that
    dreams of love fulfilled.



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    At the sky’s edges,
    mountaintops still pierce the clouds,
    to peek at heaven.


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    Martini’s shaken
    and not stirred, makes olives bounce ...
    and Bond, James Bond, drunk    .



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    Words had no effect,
    so, reluctantly, he tried
    throwing sticks and stones.



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    Slouched in a corner,
    of a dingy juke joint, a
    young man learns the blues.



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    Both Summer colds and
    crazy ex-girlfriends remain
    unpredictable.
     
     

    --



    Comfy and cozy
    and wrapped in a patchwork quilt,
    she sipped hot cocoa.


    ---


    bad theatre-ku:

     

    "Haberdasher's Hopes!"
    "Picnics in Cluttered Canoes"
    (Out-of-town closures.)


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    As the dusk draws nigh
    chickens roost and dogs bark at 
    approaching shadows.
     

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    When feeling lonely,
    don't sit in your room and sigh ...
    Go join a parade!

     

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    Like a garden rose,
    the nurse showed up in the Spring ...
    then pricked my finger.




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    He has a smart phone,
    but a stupid housekeeper.
    So things evened out.

     

    (Alternate 2nd line:  but a dumb toaster-oven.  That's for those that don't want to cast aspersions on housekeepers.)

     


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    Driving down the road,
    looking for the right exit.
    Billboards distract me.
     
     

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    A Winter's kindness.
    Kindling gathered, I light
    small fires of hope.


    --
     
     

    Sitting quietly,
    pondering vicissitudes,
    sure works up a thirst!
     
     

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    Imbued with romance,
    and lightly pastel of hue;
    delicate roses.
     
     

    ---
     
     

     An old man's lament-ku:
     

    A willowy blonde,
    winks at me on the bus, then ...
    offers me her seat.
     
     

    --
     


     Scribbled reminders
    that I can not decipher ...
    I just have to laugh.

     

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    The smell of incense,
    beaded curtains, black-light art;
    Hippies in dorm rooms!


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    1950's-ku: Being grown-up meant
    a clean, folded handkerchief
    in your breast pocket.



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    Sometime in your Life,
    you've fascinated someone ...
    other than your mom.


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    A moonlit whisper,
    two lovers in silhouette;
    urgent affection.


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    When do hab a code
    dere isn't much do tan do
    'cept sniffle and sneeze.


    ----


    Live a life of love,
    look to better angels, carve
    your own walking stick.



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    Cold wind, freezing sleet,
    and an angry dog make me
    wish I had stayed home.



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    Do not expect an
    elephant to understand
    a hummingbird's fears.



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    tanka haiku: A runaway slave
    that settled in Elmira,
    John W. Jones

    helped others get to freedom
    and treated his foes with honor.


    John W. Jones was a man, whose story I came across while researching my family tree in the area around Elmira, NY.   Mr. Jones, born in 1817, was a runaway slave who escaped in 1844 and eventually found his way to Elmira, NY and became a sexton of a local Baptist church and helped run the local station on the Underground Railroad.
    Elmira was a major stop on the Underground Railroad, where runaway slaves would be put on a train for Canada and freedom.  
     
    During the Civil War, Elmira, NY was home to a POW camp for Confederate soldiers which came to be known by the nickname "Hell-mira" for it's harsh conditions. At the time, people didn't travel as much as we do now, so many Northerners had never seen a Southerner before, and, believe it or not, bleachers were set up just outside the camp so that curious local citizens could bring their lunches and sit and watch the prisoners.
     
    But I digress.
     
    Towards the end of the war, a cholera epidemic swept through the camp, and thousands of prisoners died.  Mr. Jones, who had been hired to tend to the camp's dead, did a remarkable job, showing compassion and treating each of the deceased Confederate prisoners with dignity ... which included two of the grandsons of the slave-owner from whom he had escaped some 20 years before.
     
    Of the 2,963 prisoners that Jones buried, only seven are listed as unknown. Jones kept such precise records that in 1877 the federal government declared the burial site a national cemetery.

    Ironically, the Federal government paid him the sum of $2.50 for every body that he cataloged and prepared for burial. Seeing as the epidemic had killed nearly 3000, the money he earned made him one of the richest black men in the area at the time. He used the money to buy a farm and continued to work as a sexton at the church. He died on the day after Christmas in 1900.

    Why am I telling this story? I don't know, I just like it.   His kindness to his enemies makes me smile and feel good.   It reminds me of Nelson Mandela forgiving the guards that imprisoned him.  I think it also goes to show that there are amazing people with fascinating stories everywhere. I am so glad I came across this story about this extraordinary man.  
     
    By the way, the barn he was discovered hiding in when he first got to Elmira was owned by a man named Smith, who gave Mr. Jones shelter and helped him.  So far, I haven't made the connection to any of my Smiths that lived in the area, but that would be a nice twist ending, wouldn't it?


    That's all for now.   More later.

     

     

    Comments

    It is black history month and it is a good story.  I found it interesting.  I also liked your little clip of the 1902 blizzard in New York City.  I was fascinated with all the people just jay walking everywhere.  It is a wonder that non of them got run over. And of coarse I enjoyed the rest of your post. 


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 02/07/2014 - 11:23pm

    Oops...I wasn't signed in.  


    by trkingmomoe on Fri, 02/07/2014 - 11:26pm

    Thanks trkingmomoe.   Yes, when I saw the video I noted the chaos too and started wondering when traffic lights were invented and then when NYC got them.  After Googling, it seems that electric traffic lights were still almost a decade away, debuting in Salt Lake City in 1912, after a patent was given to a Chicago inventor in 1910.  NYC did have the first three color traffic lights installed in 1918.

     

     


    by MrSmith1 on Fri, 02/07/2014 - 11:57pm

    Existential snow;

    I shovel, therefore, I am;

    Shape from subtraction.


    by moat on Sun, 02/09/2014 - 6:26pm

    Existential snow!  Wonderful, moat!

     

    Wish the snow would go
    from being to nothingness ...?
    Sartre should shovel.

     

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    Now, with cubism,

    Picasso bet you could tell

    shape from abstraction.



     

     


    by MrSmith1 on Sun, 02/09/2014 - 10:31pm