It's never mattered what others thought of me.
As I now look back on my life, this was true
when I was growing up--in grade school, for
example. I had some friends;  I even had my
first girlfriend, Virginia Bright, whom I met
in the fourth grade. I had a dream about her
and the next day I chose her to read after I
had. She invited me to her church on Sunday
evenings to learn how to square dance. As I
continued to grow up, I got elected co-captains
and presidents, but I didn't seek them out--
they just seemed to come to me. I remember
I used to say hello to--befriend--classmates
who were not popular, most likely because
they were of a different race than most of us;
I didn't even think about our superficial
differences--I just liked them. That's the way
it's been my whole life. Perhaps over the
decades I grew to understand that bigots,
racists, were the way they were because
as they were growing up, they never were
loved enough, if at all, and as a result, suffered
great emotional pain, pain so great they un-
consciously tried to repress it, but could not,
so they unconsciously compensated for their
lack of being loved by accruing megawealth,
achieving power, not to empower others,
but to oppress them, and/or by gaining
fleeting fame. I feel sorry for these people.
Everyone needs to be loved.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

To use a statistic to describe poverty
is to turn a human being into a number,
the antithesis of compassion.

Yet The World Bank, The International
Monetary Fund, The United Nations--
all use statistics when talking and writing
about poverty.

Nazis turned human beings into numbers
by using indelible ink when they wrote them
on the arms of those they soon were to ****.

One human being in poverty on Earth is
one too many.

My nouns are different:
starvation, hopelessness, illnesses,
slums, violence, death.

There are over 3,000 billionaires in the
world right now.

How much has each given to end world
poverty?

How many of them have held
in his or her arms the body of a child
dying of poverty?

Not enough, not nearly enough.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

We fight wars then write novels
and make movies about them.
Mentally ill people **** 19 children
with their military-grade AR-15s
then show horrendous videos on
the evening TV news. Murders,
rapes, tortures, and other atrocities
are reported on, and the corporations
that own them profit grossly from
the aforementioned grotesque.
I have better ideas. Let's stop war-
ring and start loving all others.
Let us rid ourselves of all weapons
from handguns to hydrogen bombs.
Stop profiteering from poisoning our
only home, Earth. Let us follow
true leaders rather than corrupt
politicians. Let us go to our hearts
that tells us what are the right
decisions to make, the right things
to do.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Garfunkel was two years ahead of me at Columbia,
but I never met him, let alone got to know him. But
I just watched and listened to Simon and Garfunkel's
1981 CONCERT IN THE PARK on YouTube for almost
the one-hundredth time. Both had to be geniuses. You
can't be as good as both of them were without being
geniuses. I think Simon was the greatest lyricist of the
20th Century. I think Garfunkel's rendition of BRIDGE
OVER TROUBLED WATER will go down as the SONG
OF THE 20th CENTURY. Garfunkel's voice was
unmatched, as were Simon's extraordinary lyrics.
The tragedy was that Simon and Garfunkel, as SIMON
AND GARFUNKEL, performed professionally only
three years. Think of that. Only three years....
What if Brando and Streep had acted only three years...?

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

I think I may be the only man
who enjoyed lying in bed re-reading
THE COLLEGE GUIDE TO GRAMMAR
that every Andover student had to buy
while my girlfriend and her nine-year-old
son were in the living room memorizing
lines from OVER THE RAINBOW on TV.
I also enjoyed reading Webster's entire
3rd Edition Dictionary. It was Dr. Gillingham,
an Andover English teacher who had gotten
his PhD from Oxford, who introduced me
to the HARBRACE VOCABULARY WORKSHOP,
an incredible tool with which to study etymology,
a lifelong hobby of mine. Essentially, one learned
the prefixes, roots, and suffixes of the Anglo-Saxon,
Latin, and Greek languages and thereby was often
able to take an English word, it's meaning as yet un-
known, break it into its parts, and begin to understand
the meaning of the English word. I found this exciting.
The goal was not to become pedantic, but as a poet,
to be able to choose the "precise" word needed to convey
as well as possible the meaning of the entire poem.

What fun!

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

I have listened to hundreds
of beautiful female voices,
but the best I've ever heard
is that of Karen Carpenter.
Karen's voice is simply celes-
tial. Never having had vocal
lessons, loving to play the
drums from the start, how
could this be? It happened
when she opened her mouth
once and sang a few lines.
What followed was a decade
of worldwide stardom, only
to die at the premature age
of 32 from anorexia. This
tragedy will remain with all
of us as we shall never stop
listening to her glorious gift
to mankind.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Do not cross me,
because if you do,
I'm out of here.
I'm not perfect,
but I always try
to do what's right.
Treat all others
with respect. Prejudice
is the ugliest disrespect.
If you think and act that
you're better than any
other, forget me. If you're
racist, you're morally blind,
and I'm out of here forever.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS