Is it not time for the hearts and souls of humankind, not the aggrandizement of nations and their wanton wars, to determine how the world turns?

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

10 January 2021

Most are familiar with the epigram "Ties that bind."

**** Trump's favorite is "Lies that blind."

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

He was born somewhere in the western half of the United States. He had a mother and father, but they soon divorced. He grew up. He got married and had a family. He went to college. He got a job as a manager of a division of a company. He joined the Elks Club. He told a ribald joke at a meeting and everyone laughed. He had a 9 handicap, but when he looked in the mirror, he could see nothing. When he died, he was buried, but his tombstone was blank.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Most are familiar with the epigram "Ties that bind."

**** Trump's favorite is "Lies that blind."

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Would that all we were Antigones! King Creon forbade the burial of Polynycises, Antingone's brother, but she buiried him anyway, incurring the wrath of Creon who ordered Antigone to be buried alive. But before Creon changed his mind, Antigone had hung herself. And what of Prometheus? He stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mankind. Enraged, Zeus had Prometheus chained to a mountain and sent an eagle every day to eat Prometheus's liver, which grew back every day. This torture lasted years until Hercules killed the eagle with one of his arrows. Courage to do right was met with torture and death. How many human beings over millennia have emulated Antigone and Prometheus? Not enough. Mythology is one thing, reality, sadly, another.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Milton was blind,
Beethoven deaf.
Yet from the first,
we have an epic poem,
and from the latter,
we have oceans of pulchritude and passion.
But for Van Gogh's madness,
we would not have "Starry Night"
and "Sunflowers" and hundreds
of other masterpieces that hang
in museums and in our minds.
Afflictions do not always debillitate.
Sometimes they create.
Our world would be much the less
without their magnificent, myriad works--
the poems and paintings,
the symphonies and songs--
that bring beauty into our lives endlessly.
Say a prayer and give thanks
to those who endured pain
long enough to transmute
theirs into what we
will always find joy.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

War no more. It kills millions and millions and millions. It negates the best in us:  kindness;  compassion:  and most of all, universal love. All those who ****, whether consciously or unwittingly, are mercenaries. Those who never pull a trigger, never drop a bomb, never bayonet a brother profit from atrocities. They make machine guns and sell them. They build bombers and sell shares of stock on Wall Street. Christ turned water into wine. CEOs of killing machines turn blood into fortunes, then build mansions made of murders. They would rather take a life than save one.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS