QuadTalk
April 18, 2019

On April 18, 1986, I broke my neck in a single car accident.
Today is my 33rd anniversary.
It really is a groovy day!

A capriciously disseminated newsletter written by a hemp-inspired quadriplegic jester who, like King Lear, impotently screams ineffective vitriol at the raging antediluvian squalls of societal indifference that violently smash the planet and callously destroy the things I love. I cry, defeated by a redoubtable sea of troubles as my siblings, whose pursuits of happiness do not coincide with the status quo, are mowed down by ignorant privilege while comfortably content indifference ignores the anguished cries of people's suffering simply because they don't look the same.
— SSTJazzVocalist

#Wheelchairistocracy #GroovicusMaximus @frangeladuo
Preamble

Welcome to QuadTalk. I am Rusty Taylor, a complete, level C-4 spinal cord injury who, for thirty-two years (and counting), has been unable to perform even the most rudimentary acts of daily living, and, as such, I am a victim of the nefarious for-profit healthcare system we, the citizens of the U.S.A., have callously ignored for too long. This will not be a media blitz of superfluity; I am a vitriolic antagonist against the status quo, so if you are naively looking for a feelgood story about a “poor li’l ol’ cripple boy” who done good against the odds, then I suggest you go find the Hallmark Channel and infuse your brain with enough endorphins to make you forget that separating children from their families is simply morally unconscionable or that a casual rapist majestically sits as Supreme Court judge. Otherwise, welcome...

CAVEAT

This newsletter is inspired by my capricious Muse. Unfortunately, I alone am responsible for its content and dissemination. I have no proof-reader or editor nor do I have corporate sponsors to moderate my tone and style, so...

I alone am responsible for all the typos contained herein, and all I can do is promise to try not to make additional grievous errors. Please excuse an occasional rhetorical mistake. They are unintentional.
—SSTJazzVocalist

An Aborted Theme of Plangent Indifference

I knew that it would ultimately happen. I was, eventually, going broach the subject of abortion sooner or later, but before I start... and it’s very sad that I feel that I must, but... I will admit that I am not a fan of abortion. It doesn’t seem natural, but that is exactly why it is irrefutably ridiculous that I should even be commenting on this subject... I am unable to imagine what it is like to be so desperate that killing an unborn child could, in any way, be my best option, that destroying a life that is developing within my womb, regardless of the details of impregnation, is a viable option for my future happiness.

I know what it’s like to wake up and suddenly realize that I will never again have a physical terrestrial existence in a world that idolizes physical beauty and athleticism; I know what it’s like to feel the actual tearing of my heart muscle when a lover told me that she’s found someone else who makes her happier, a minuscule nick in my still-beating cardiac muscle that is the fiercest pain I have ever experienced, a fulgurous penetration of overwhelming emotional angst piercing deeply through and beyond my soul; but these were sudden changes.

I seriously cannot imagine the insidious process that takes a girl just a few scant years from being a carefree youngster playing with a doll in pigtails to all of a sudden be wondering why and how she got pregnant. Actually, there are numerous scenarios about the how we systemically disregard poverty that neither directly nor negatively affects our lives... just like Jesus taught. The point is... or was supposed to be... that I really have no right to comment about abortion.

I am a fairly creative dude, but I am unable to effectively imagine what possesses anyone to claim moral superiority, to say outwardly and proudly that a women about whom I know nothing must carry a child to full term and bear that child even if the mother professes to not want that child, and to do this while supporting the only party dedicated to taking away any affordable health care possibilities that may help the under-served to a more comfortable and stable lifestyle.

Notice that I didn’t mention any sob stories of wealthy women who want an abortion, but you know where this is going.

I also can’t figure out why a woman who is so active in eradicating abortion with no exit strategy can support a man who, very possibly, has paid for more abortions than the number of quacks who will have failed out of medical school but who will be willing to exploit desperate females when abortion becomes illegal, but to justify the outrageous plan by proudly proclaiming with the hubris of Leona Helmsley that poverty is the enemy and that the poor deserve their lot, well... that goes beyond my ability to create an effective rhetorical response...

I am too physically misaligned to have children. I don’t have any children that I know of, and even if I did, they would, by now, be ready for Medicare soon... and there ain’t no way that I will procreate ever again... my coupling with anyone... or any thing ... in the near future is as likely as Trumpty D’s possessing even two brain cells to rub together to give a correct answer to a binary question when it involves a moral issue between two dichotomous possibilities.

The beauty of that last joke is that Trumpty D will never understand it... ever... even if his uncle, the MIT professor, tries to explain it to him using the vocabulary of a three-year-old. Trumpty D would, instead, be thinking about putting french fries inside his Big Mac.

I am quite sure that Trumpty D has manipulated his way through the academic process; it is quite obvious that he only made any effort to get a degree as a necessary inconvenience of time towards his ultimate nefarious goal...whatever it is. And don’t get me wrong; college for Trump was merely an inconvenience of Time... like a teenager’s waiting to be treated as an adult. If my father had given me hundreds of thousands of dollars every month or so, good god! I can imagine what I would have done, and it is truly shameful, but I admit it. Had I similar opportunities when I was virile... Wow! My orgies would have been a total rejection of any and all moral codes of conduct. And that’s just it.

When we are young, our decision-making mechanism is bombarded constantly by our respective ids. You know, the myriad importunate psychological urges to immediately satisfy every itch regardless of intensity or whether the resources it takes to scratch the itch is unconscionable... you know, like when you give yourself a trillion dollar tax refund and smugly tell your neighbor that she should be grateful for the minimum wage because if it didn’t exist her wages would be lower-er... you know, it’s like when...

When we are young and relatively healthy, we crave sex. Our bodies strongly encourage it at nearly any cost. Our urges become that desperate, and it ain’t a gender thing. News flash: Sex is fun. And all genders like it. This pisses off some people. I mean, exploration and curiosity can only go so far, but how far is too far? How can we control this? Oh yeah...

Religion is used to discourage sexual curiosity. When it comes down to it, the main difference in religions is their sermons about sex. The peace and love stuff is pretty much the same. We all would like to get along, until one of them takes interest in my sister... or aunt... or...

Men want to control sex and historically, we have. We tightened our formidable grips [no pun intended] on controlling sexual conduct when we enforced it through religion, which, oddly enough, we control as well... for thousands of years throughout which we’ve written, rewritten, revised, interpreted, reinterpreted, and chosen appropriate ancient texts we keep stored in a papal vault to which few have access. Information available to only a scant few men who insist on being called daddy... uh, I mean father .

How convenient. [1]

This has been the males’ most effective idea. It is the reason why now, during the current revolution against patriarchal authority, some women and men support certain political positions... religion has become linked to a cult of political ambiguity, so that many believers come down hard on the taboo subject of abortion and nearly disregard practically every other restrictive instruction of their spiritual influences. Adultery is as rampant in humans as it is in rabbits; it is on the Top-10 list of the Greatest Sins of Moses, yet it is ignored probably because of its ubiquity. That’s cool. These people have a right to feel this way. It is democracy. That’s the way it is supposed to be; the majority rules, but there is an ominous storm brewing in the offing.

Not only are women and young people getting more involved in politics, and they are opening more opportunities for people of disparate cultures, but there is a noticeable increase in our population’s skepticism about the role of religion in our society. This scares some people... a lot. Religion is now being challenged, but conservative Christians have bet their post-terrestrial manifestations on an undying faith in religious dogma, that just because they publicly declare fealty to the idea that Jesus is a god... or demigod... or some kind of triumvirate with a cat called God (or metaphorical equivalent) and the Holy Spirit (or metaphorical equivalent), then they are guaranteed an eternity of bliss, and they do not want to give this up. Whether or not they’re willing to die for these beliefs, which would guarantee an even loftier mansion in Heaven, remains to be seen.

This desperate clutching of dogma aggressively stimulates plangent, vitriolic, and emotionally discursive responses that defend their faith by degrading outside sources even if the result of this amity with absurdity is antithetical to the most significant moral codes espoused by their spiritual guides; although... this conflict cannot be resolved by me. Besides, this conflict’s flame is nearly extinguished.

Trump is a septuagenarian acting like a spoiled teenager. He’s gonna die soon; I am no doctor, but just look at Trump now and compare his physiognomy to that from just two years ago when he so smugly rode down the gilded escalator to announce his run for presidency. The stress and his ridiculous diet are fatal. Period. Full stop. Hell, I have limited time myself; the dude and many of his edentulous comrades will be victims of their respective biological entropy. Soon.

Most of today’s leaders are living what I call twitter lives: a bunch of wonderful photos camouflaging desperation. If you think that a coital relationship with Mitch McConnell is a beautiful expression of love for each participant, well.... The point is that it is way past time for these elder politicians to give it up. And this is coming from a guy who has lived far too long... past all expectations.

Younger generations (yes, generations ... plural) are taking over. The midterm elections, collectively, was a shot across the bow. This is why the GOP (the Gran’pappies of Politics) are nervous. The 2020 election will bring down this gaudy-gilded castle of cards (erected by illegal laborers of Trump Construction). A more progressive agenda will be initiated (hopefully with bipartisan support), the bowdlerization of sex will dissipate as quickly as Manaforte’s fortunes, and this will help lessen the sexual tensions of men who have been expecting a certain protocol but now must realize that these expectations are no longer viable.

I started this essay admitting that I am unqualified to have an opinion about abortion. I can, however, question human involvement and wonder aloud how certain hypocrisies can be resolved... or not.

Peace Through Music
_____________________
[1] I imagine that a crowd of a certain age is now thinking of Dana Carvey, but I digress...

Traveling With Gran'ma
From my autobiographical manuscript I began in 1996


...so we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies.

King Lear V.iii.12-14


If I ever achieve any modicum of success in any aspect of my life, it will be only because family and friends have been so supportive and have allowed me to make mistakes on the road to becoming a more responsible quadriplegic. Let’s face it, very little can prepare one for total paralysis, but I am blessed with incessant, uncompromising support by those who love me regardless of my physical condition. It would be a very nasty sin against their encouragements as well as the pursuit of Truth if I were to do nothing after receiving such infinite support. I may learn nothing, but at least I’m on a specific journey, and I’m taking notes.

I was very fortunate to have known my father’s maternal grandparents. They were, of course, my great-grandparents—the only set of great-grandparents that I am to have known, and they celebrated more than sixty years of matrimony... to each other!

It was just before my accident, when I was still only twenty-one, when my great-grandmother passed away. I’m not at all certain of the facts, but as far as we know on this side of the curtain of death, my great-grandmother, Emma Faux Jackson, died peacefully in her own home. It’s not surprising that my great-grandfather, Arthur Jackson, didn’t last much longer. He died within the year, and about nine months after I had broken my neck.

My great-grandmother had ten children in strict compliance with the Catholic doctrine that commands its followers to be fruitful and to multiply regardless of any detrimental consequence to our tiny planet. My father’s mother, my grandmother, was the first female born into this family, and it was in this environment she learned her love for raising children, and she maintained this maternal nourishing nature throughout her life... well, at least until she was seventy-nine, which was her age at the time of this writing.

My grandmother was raised during the time in our society when practically all women were subordinate to men. Not only was this propagated by the zeitgeist of their time, but it was also preached from the pulpit of the Catholic church of my grandmother’s youth and in letters written by Saint Paul, who was, to me, an anti-Semitic misogynist who callously murdered Jewish people until he was dumbstruck by fulgurous bolt of formidable energy that must of scrambled his brains.


(Isn’t it a bit ironic that the word catholic means “universal”? Am I to assume that the Universal nature of Catholicism excludes strong females? Homosexuals? Jews who don’t acknowledge the deification of Jesus? I sincerely hope not.)


My paternal grandfather died when I was thirteen months old, so I never knew him except as the dashing young man in his late-thirties/early forties, posing confidently in a dingy post-WWII photo that hung on my grandmother’s living room wall, his military uniform pressed flawlessly as he sits in a cushioned, high back chair with his legs crossed and his hands clasped about his elevated knee. Subsequently, I never knew his family; however, in the Fall of 1992, at the same time that the Atlanta Braves went to the World Series against the Minnesota Twins, my father decided to take his mother to see her sister-in-law Iva, who lived in Corpus Christi and who was eighty-years-old at the time. My father had recently purchased a conversion van, and he had a wheelchair lift installed, so we headed south until we hit the Gulf of Mexico then took a right.

The scenery in Alabama and Mississippi is similar to Georgia’s: slender pines reaching for and waving at flocculent clouds as they gently sway against the painted homogenous baby blue sky; thrashing silver streams aggressively washing myriad roots that artistically weave through the weft and warp of illimitable acres of fertile ground, twisted roots’ unintentionally disrupting secret slumbers that will, invariably, explode into Life after Spring’s maternal instincts finally awaken… again; a jolted and explosive yin-yang paradox of seasonal wakeful somnolence directed to embrace the once buried seed, the now resurrected sapling.

It’s mid-autumn, and this section of earth is assiduously preparing for its seasonal slumber, perchance to dream of a seminal renaissance as seeds that have recently slipped from boughs softly glide to the fecund soil, some of which provide sustenance for some quivering animals while others prepare for their respective floral manifestations, the direct descendants of the sun... beautiful energy reborn from whence it came.

Meandering gray asphalt highways, with brilliant bursts of linear yellow-flash dashes, quicken with sunlight and dance through lands once held sacrosanct by aboriginal thaumaturgy, an energetic silver-haired Cherokee’s worshiping of the eternal spirit that gives life to dazzling flora and fauna.

Enchanting azure waters have sacredly danced through the Edenic paradise to fill the Gulf of Mexico centuries before golden thieves from the Iberian peninsula mired the landscape with aboriginal blood. This is some of the forgotten history by which we are surrounded as we drive through state-maintained highways until we hit Interstate 10. We take this interstate highway to Houston, which is an imbroglio of asphalt and steel in reckless abandon. Thankfully, the drive through Houston is but an instantaneous, brightly luminous, chaotically frenetic anxiety, a blistering affront to my emotional salubrity, a nanosecond-blip on the chronometer gauging my terrestrial life’s journey.

After we survive Houston, we head south towards Corpus Christi, and the closer we get, the more peaceful our surroundings and our collective mental spirit.

Corpus Christi really surprises me. I suppose I’ve always known that it is a coastal city, but I guess the fraudulent boasts of the self-proclaimed best state in the U.S. planted visions into my susceptible mind that every city in the state is a deserted, dusty, tumbleweed-filled, rat-infested, deprecated timber-laden ghosttown where the community’s population meets nocturnally at the dilapidated saloon to discuss their business over shots of rot-gut.

I’ve seen pictures of Houston’s and Dallas’ skylines, so I realize that they are bustling cities, but Georgia also has the very cosmopolitan city of Atlanta, yet many believe various public media in their incessant parodies of Southern men as guffawing yokels bent on misguided chivalry for women in pink flannel housecoats and pink curlers under a clear plastic cap, holding a cup of coffee in her right hand, scratching her ass with her left hand, and a cigarette that’s mostly ashes hanging from her lower lip as she yawns, “Tonight’s BINGO night, hunny! If’n I get lucky an’ win, I’ve got sum special lovin’ fer ya.”

So we cross a huge bridge that spans an estuary, and I notice almost immediately that Houston is a port city much larger than Brunswick, Georgia, and the docks are bustling with activity that I have only seen on television. From this distance, it looks agreeable. I would think less of the milieu if I were closer and could use more of my senses to create a better understanding of the drama that I view from atop the bridge, but distance makes the vision more appealing. Once we cross the bridge, a beautiful resort city opens before us, looking much like the cities that align Florida’s panhandle, and this surprises me.

The city is wonderfully clean and practically deserted; it is late October and we are assured by locals that the College students who come down during Spring Break make the somnolent city dazzle with the excitement of Panama City, the Rednecks’ Riviera.

We bunk in a stylish motel that faces a full moon, which feverishly sparkles on the boundless gulf, linear indigo clouds hanging like adroit sentinels posting guard, reassuring us of a tranquil evening. Across the street from the front entrance of the motel is a small German restaurant. My parents spent parts of their respective childhoods in Germany; in fact, not long ago they were arguing over a grade-school class picture when it was discovered that they had both unknowingly attended the same third-grade class in Nuremberg. My parents were also stationed in Germany as adults, and I was born in Wurtzburg, so they share a special affinity for the cuisine, and this little pub was a wonderful find.

The following day, we visit my great aunt, who lives in a small white, wooden house on a quiet street with an old oak tree in her front yard that produces the largest acorns I have ever seen; they are primeval. Her house is not at all accessible, and after my father lugs me up the five steps into her wonderfully distaff abode, I am confronted by a most frightfully disconcerting, excessively effeminate, Great Depression surviving misinterpretation of opulence, an expensive bric-a-brac and antique-cluttered museum that possesses an abundance of Habersham-defined genteelness. The expensive collection of superfluity that is my Great-Aunt’s interior design is pompously presented to whomever she entertains. The items of her sadly impressive collection are fastidiously scattered throughout her quaint dwelling leaving me very little room to navigate; however, I make it to the back room without destroying any of her valuable merchandise, and I sit before a blank television screen for five hours, afraid to even shift my chair an inch, listening to the golden girls, my grandmother and her sister-in-law, discuss life as they have viewed it. (Albeit, their discourse is lucid and exceedingly interesting.)

At eight o’clock, my great aunt turns on the television to watch a made-for-television movie based on a novel by Danielle Steele. Of course, I am unable to go anywhere, so I resolve to accept my destiny and watch the kitsch romantic fable rich with aesthetically pleasing characters who live simple, pastoral lives wherein true love (an oxymoron) always wins. But the movie stars Lee Horsley and his romantic counterpart, whose name escapes me, is really pretty so that although my mind is being fed rubbish, my ocular senses are stimulated.

The next day, my parents and I travel to Laredo, and we cross the Mexican border while my grandmother stays and visits her sister-in-law. Laredo is about a zillion miles from Corpus Christi through the hinterland, and until that trip, I had thought the longest span of time measured in consecutive, aggravating minutes was spent traveling by car from Macon to Augusta, Georgia; however, the drive from Corpus Christi to Laredo is longer by two millennia. Talk about a level, treeless tract of land! It seems like there is nothing above eye level but birds and sky, and I could see infinity. A few signs name nearby towns, but unlike small towns in middle-Georgia, where the towns are spaced about every twenty miles or so, these towns are spaced apart by hundreds of miles.

Each side of the road has a macadamized lane to its right, and this lane is used by cars that are going faster. The vehicles with greater velocity pass safely on the right! Of course, we only encounter two other automobiles on the highway the entire drive, fourteen schpeillion hours of mesmerizing asphalt, and it is rather embarrassing when we are passed by a roadrunner. This occurs as we span Agua Dulce, a small dried-up creek with an optimistic yet belying name.

Incidentally, I always thought that roadrunners were much bigger with long, thin necks, purple plumage, and that they were constantly being pursued by coyotes using faulty ACME products.

I didn’t see a coyote.

The majority of the radio stations, when we could pick them up, were Spanish-speaking broadcasts. At the time, I was illiterate in Spanish, but the rhythmic music created a pleasant diversion, and by the time we entered the city, I could use three phrases: “Nuevo y mejorado,” “Solamente por un tiempo limitado,” and “Baterias no incluidas”: new and approved, for a limited time only, and batteries not included.

In my eyes, Laredo is a mysterious place, probably made more enigmatic because I realize that we are near an unseen, man-made boundary over which chosen few can cross because of a fear propagated by the leaders of our society who condemn those who are not direct descendants of the first people who aggressively took possession of the land from the aboriginal people, namely, the political and religious adventurers who survived the Mayflower and other myriad ocean journeys from Europe.

Our leaders have tightened control over whom they allow to enter the land of the free, but they’ve justified this paradox by proudly proclaiming that their actions result from the duty and responsibility of National Security, to protect citizens from potential danger.

Of course, the reality stems from the ridiculous fear that their ridiculous wealth would be aggressively, and sans remorse, taken by countless of unfortunate people who live day-to-day from hand-to-mouth. Every one of our country’s leaders is a millionaire, and there is no possible way she would ever sacrifice her current ludicrously opulent lifestyle for the betterment of an overwhelming majority. The beauty of her greed is that her Life’s journey has been corrupted by the pursuit of wealth, a possession unworthy of possession. There are few things more beautiful than a sunset or a hug from a child.

These same leaders feel it is in their best interest to control a migration into the land from outsiders they’ve given the equivocal name barbarian because the thusly labeled barbaric people may be as aggressive and destructive as our nations’ forefathers who callously and forcefully took the land away from autonomous native tribes that were decimated by European survivors of the Black Plague, the same land once roamed, but never possessed, by the same thwarted aboriginals.


[Keep in mind, please, that I began writing this manuscript in 1996, when Bill Clinton, of whom I am no big fan, was president. Although he’s ignorantly and callously exasperated the crisis, Trump did not create the border conflict.]


We park the van a few blocks from the bridge that spans the Rio Grande, and we park next to, what else? A catholic church. We then go through the border patrol station and onto the bridge. The river is surprisingly small, and I say this because, at this section of the river, I am thinking that it doesn’t seem much of a barrier to overcome if I were trying to unlawfully enter the land of riches... I mean, if I could walk and all.

There are many pedestrians on both sides of the bridge walking almost as slowly as the illimitable tractor-trailer rigs’ inching their prospective ways to their respective destinations on both sides of the border. We arrive on the other side of the bridge, but a set of stairs leads down to a tunnel over which the noisy traffic chaotically dances, then another set of steps leads back up to street level, and there was no elevator! After pondering a moment, my father gives hand signals to one of the truck drivers who allows me to be lowered from the sidewalk down to the street, about ten inches. I am now nuzzled between two semis, sucking their exhaust fumes, and I slowly make my way across the bridge into Mexico then back safely on the sidewalk.

We are in old Mexico, the original land of enchantment, and it seems like a carnival, so many colors and people, but the one thing that really stands out in my mind, other than the pageantry, is the poverty. Within the first few blocks of the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo, the shops, galleries, and restaurants all looked festive, but not four blocks away are dilapidated structures inside which entire large families live. It is really quite disturbing to realize that although my family and I are considered middle class in our society, these people probably look at us as if we are members of the aristocratic elite, an status they can never hope to obtain for themselves. Severe poverty and the ridiculously cheap price for tequila... yes, these things stick in my mind about the few hours we spent just inside the Mexican border.

At about three o’clock, we decide to head back to Corpus Christi. This will be the only time I will have seen my Aunt Iva, but while we are in Corpus Christi we visit the state’s aquarium; we visit a well-manicured ocean park, see many other interesting sights, and eat at magnificent restaurants. All in all, it is a very special trip. My grandmother spends quality time with her sister-in-law, and I get to travel west of the Mississippi.

On the way back to Columbus, Georgia, the Fountain City, we stop for a night in New Orleans, which I enjoy illimitably, but one evening in the Crescent City is nowhere near enough about which to write, so I’m looking forward to another trip there.

[End of Part I of this chapter]

I'd really like for this newsletter to become more interactive

Peace and Love
Progressive Aphorisms
My brother Ricky finally went to see an Army doctor, who asked him why surgery hasn’t already been done, then smiled knowingly that his previous doctor was a civilian doctor in a for-profit industry where shareholders’ dividends are more important than the state of my brother’s ambulation... while he’s trying to build a house.
—SSTJazzVocalist

“They [the Tea Party faction of the Gop will] get followers of Jesus to vote against everything he discussed by talking about something he never discussed. Why is something Christ never talked about more important to you than everything he did talk about? Because if you go by what he talked about, you don’t really get to support Trump.”
—John Fugelsang

According to CBS News, the total amount of money raised by both parties during the 2016 presidential election came to $6.8 billion. When money gets out of politics, I wonder where that money is going to go?
—SSTJazzVocalist


Mike Pence and the multimillionaire televangelists who support him argue that to be a Christian one must discriminate against gay people, use the power of the state to prevent women from getting abortions or birth control, support tearing refugee children from their parents, and prevent the working poor from having access to healthcare.

Pete Buttigieg has opened a new and much-needed conversation about what it means to be a Christian. He takes his inspiration from Matthew 25, the place in the Bible where Jesus explicitly tells his disciples what they have to do to get into heaven, which says that we must feed the hungry, heal the sick, and welcome the stranger.

The simple reality is that Jesus would not recognize the kind of Christianity being preached by Pence, Falwell, Graham and others. But he would immediately recognize Pete Buttigieg as one of his own.
—Thom Hartmann


It dumbfounds me, which, admittedly, is not a very difficult challenge to grasp for anybody save DJ the International Dumb-ass, that the mainstream media blames the GOP for exploiting myopic citizens into voting for their agenda of corporate dominance that emphasizes the fossil fuel industry, but it is true. I’ve known it since 1983 when I learned about the “trickle down” economic fiasco that has catalyzed the widening chasm between opulence and penury; unfortunately, in ‘83 I was 19 years old; I was importunately stimulated, biologically, by my id; I was primarily interested in finding a coupling partner... the status of the relationship was irrelevant. However, after I was hired in ‘92, I was able to devote time to a relatively passive form of activism by writing 300-word op-eds in my local newspaper lauding and disparaging Bill Clinton, of whom I am not a big fan because, in my opinion, he was/is GOP-Lite... he was/is not eclectic enough for my admiration.

I went into overdrive when George W[ar Criminal] Bush, “Penis” Chaney, and their other lackeys usurped the presidency. Incidentally, I strongly believe that William Barr’s current questionable insertion as Attorney General is to hide the parts of the Mueller Report that will prove his malfeasance during the illegal conflict with Iraq, but that will be disclosed to the public... I hope that I am alive when it happens.

It is true that the GOP has nefarious intentions, but the fact is that we, the citizens of the United States, voted for Trumpty D. His unfortunate rise to power is because of the political indifference of the citizens of our nation. We voted him and his lackeys into office. It is our fault.
—SSTJazzVocalist


I witness and, more fain, I feel that the current division of morality between myopic individuality, and a more empathetic attitude that includes communal consideration, is coming to a climax; it will soon be over; although, soon is a relative outcome, but juxtaposed against the universal chronometer, the history of our nation’s current interpretation of democracy is but a dismal blip in time. The rule of law is being challenged by dilettantes. Will the rule of law be followed or will this conflict stir up emotions that will devolve into violent revolution?
—SSTJazzVocalist




I'd really like for this newsletter to become more interactive

Dr. David Banks is the current president of the Columbus Jazz Society that has been extant since 1977. If you'd like to receive an email containing area jazz events, send him an email, and get added to his distribution list by clicking here .

Shameless Solicitation

It’s time. I need money to pay for someone to help me because I’m wearing out my family. I’m hoping to solicit enough money to overpay someone to help me throughout the day and night for a weekend... or longer; my septuagenarian parents need a break. Please read my story, and if you can, donate a few bucks. If a bunch of folks give just a little, I can stay home; otherwise, I will consider going into a nursing home. I am tired of being a burden on my family. If you are unable to donate, your support will be just as appreciated. Thank you very much.

Read my story...
...or you can buy my CD of jazz Vocals

Abel 2's MISSION STATEMENT:

To enhance the Quality of Life of People with Disabilities and the Under-served by Creating Music and Arts opportunities for Employment and Enjoyment!