My words are easy to understand and easy to perform,

Yet no man under heaven knows them or practices them.

My words have ancient beginnings.

My actions are disciplined.

Because men do not understand, they have no knowledge of me.

Those who know me are few;

Those who abuse me are honored.

Therefore the sage wears rough clothing and holds the jewel in his heart.

Tao Te Ching (Ch-70)

Johnny's in the basement, mixin' up the medicine

I'm on the pavement, thinkin' bout the government

The man in the trench coat,

Badge all laid out,

Says he's got a bad cough

Want's to get it paid off

Look out kid!

B Dylan

Tsar Peter of Russia would don a peasant's cloak and wander among his people. I had a history professor who related to me that this performance was all silly really. Peter was about six foot four and would tower among his subjects. He would stick out like a Laker at a high school basketball championship game. It was said that the peasantry was forewarned of his presence among them and he traveled with an entourage. But the tsar's intentions were good and holy. He wished to see what his subjects were really doing; what they were really saying; how they were faring.  All without the filter that monarchs are normally subject to.

One of my favorite films of all time is Shoes of the Fisherman. Anthony Quinn plays a Russian priest thrown into the gulag for interminable time suffering the ignomies of the political prisoners described so eloquently by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Lawrence Olivier plays the Russian 'Commie Tsar' who releases Quinn for political reasons. And the Russian priest ends up honored in Rome and made a cardinal.

Then by sheer serendipity he is elected pope.

One day Pope Quinn dons his old collar and sneaks out of the Vatican to walk among his people. He comes upon a dying man in the Jewish Quarter of Rome and with no Rabbi's available performs the last rites under Jewish Law.

This movie is so stunning and became much more prescient when not so many years late, Pope John Paul II became El Papa. A holy man who survived in Communist Poland after surviving in Nazi Poland.

Before taking part in a concert with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp, he decided to take a stroll through the town's Latin quarter.

'Residents called to complain there was an old scruffy man acting suspiciously,' said officer Spencer. 'It was an odd request because it was mid-afternoon. But it's an ethnic Latin area and the residents felt he didn't fit in.'

Like a complete unknown," indeed. On the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, Bob Dylan just wanted to go for a stroll in Long Branch, New Jersey's Latin quarter when someone called the cops about a "scruffy old man acting suspiciously." Unfortunately, the wrong cop arrived at the scene; a 22-year-old who had no idea who the legendary singer-songwriter was (The Associated Press says the officer is 24, not 22). Apparently, Dylan was unable to allay the cop's suspicions, and she drove him back to his hotel to confirm his identity. Upon examining his documents, the cop reported back to headquarters with one question: "Who is Bob Dylan?" "'I'm afraid we all fell about laughing," another Long Branch cop told the Daily Mail, adding "The poor woman has taken rather a lot of abuse from us...I offered to bring in some of my Dylan albums, but unfortunately she doesn't know what vinyl is either." How can anyone not have any who Bob Dylan is? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.  http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheat-sheet/item/dylan-picked-up-by-cops/how-does-it-feel/?cid=hp:mainpromo1

Then she radioed her older colleagues at the police station to ask if anyone knew who Bob Dylan was.

'I'm afraid we all fell about laughing,' said Craig Spencer, a senior officer in Long Branch, New Jersey. 'If it was me, I'd have been demanding his autograph, not his ID.

'The poor woman has taken rather a lot of abuse from us. I offered to bring in some of my Dylan albums. Unfortunately, she doesn't know what vinyl is either.'