“If we live good lives, the times are also good. As we are, such are the times.”
– Saint Augustine
“The Drifter” wishes to complain this week.
Out of respect for potential hyper-sensitive readers, he shall limit himself to three brief topics.
His two kids and his three dogs can fairly attest to the fact that complaining is one of his fave hobbies.
Some folks call it “letting off steam,” so a gasket doesn’t blow.
They say Henry Miller was still complaining about his mother on his death bed, when he was 89, even though she had died 75 years earlier, when he was 14.
And yet, Miller always called himself the happiest man alive.
…
The other day on NPR I heard some clown (a well-known, well-paid clown) say that the “tech bros” are the “cool kids on the block,” and I almost chucked up the lunch I hadn’t eaten.
(The seven cups of coffee that were in my stomach began to swirl around. It’s usually half-caf since I had a stroke a year and seven months ago. FYI, zero side effects from the stroke and I’ve also given up any and all smoking of anything. But I still enjoy second-hand smoke whenever I can find it, like walking through the halls of my Chicagoland apartment building any time of day or night.)
The term “tech bros” is itself an absurd and ridiculous thing (even though, or especially because, “everybody” seems to be saying it now).
And yet, to say that these folks are “cool” is even more ridiculous, when one thinks of where the term was born.
MILES DAVIS was, and is, cool.
His album, Birth of the Cool, came out in 1957, the same year as On the Road.
Miles Davis was so cool that even Bob Dylan said he was the coolest.
Jack Kerouac was cool.
Charlie Parker was cool.
Shirley Jackson was cool.
N. Scott Momaday was cool.
I saw him live one time in Chicago, reading some of his things and giving a talk. I met him for two minutes afterward and it was more than enough for me to assuredly confirm that N. Scott’s coolness was at Miles Davis levels.
The “tech bros” are highfalutin, ruthless industrial capitalists (to the extreme in a world (seemingly) without accountability for the rich).
But they are not cool.
The NPR guy himself is “slick,” but not cool, as in: a bullshit artist. (Which is why Hemmie said the most important thing an artist of the real needs is a good BS-Detector.)
…
In the nineteenth century, the German philosopher Fred Nietzsche wrote, “The public permission to choose between five main political opinions insinuates itself into the favor of the numerous class who would fain appear independent and individual, and who like to fight for their one-sided opinions. After all, however, it is a matter of indifference whether one opinion is imposed upon the herd, or five opinions are permitted to it. He or she who diverges from the five public opinions and goes apart, has always the whole herd against him.”
In the USA, we ain’t even got five. We have two. And one side is controlled by the generic corporate capitalists. And the other side is also controlled by the generic corporate capitalists, which is why they failed to enforce accountability when they had power, i.e. 2021 to early 2025, which is why we’re in the situation we’re in now, at the end of 2025. How in the hell can this be called “freedom” any longer?
Dr. Cornel West, if you’re reading this, PLEASE keep doing what you’re doing. Your admin skills may be lacking like some of them say, but you’ve got more soul than the entire US Congress put together. And SOUL is what is needed now.
(After Nietzsche lost his mind, he sent a letter to someone saying that he was traveling around Germany executing all the antisemites. He saw IT coming even then, and even though he was (according to “them”) insane.)
…
The last thing the Drifter wishes to complain about today is all the people who are in a hurry to get nowhere. They will run over innocent children or old ladies on the street without looking backward just so they can get home faster to sit on their fat asses doing nothing (fat asses are fine if you’re doing something). If you have done this or are doing this, please slow down and give it another thought, if you ever have thoughts. Also, Henry David Thoreau said, “When in doubt, slow down.” I can also recommend Leonard Cohen’s song “Slow” to all the folks who are in a hurry to marry themselves off to someone else. Living alone ain’t a sin. It makes you an outlier in our society, but some of the best people have been outliers.
Jesus, Buddha, Shams of Tabriz and Joan of Arc would be four examples.
…
THE DRIFTER’S SONG RECOMMENDATION FOR THIS WEEK (December something ’25):
The Drifter recommends the song “Still Think About You” by A Boogie wit da Hoodie, from his 2016 mix tape titled ARTIST (his real first name is Artist).
This song is rap as ART, and the piano in it will break your heart, as will the lyrics and the content of the song. The word on the street is that his girlfriend got preggo with another man, and left him, inspiring this beautiful, intense tune.
Boogie also worked as a pizza delivery person at one point. The Drifter sympathizes; he did the same thing (in the 1990s).
THANKS to Tressa and Elena and their friends for the knowledge of this song.
(Note–Not everything this month before we go public is a rerun; and today we bring you a fresh one by our friend, Michael Bloor–LA)
Andy and Davie were on their usual walk, along the banks of the Allanwater as far as the wooden footbridge, and then back again. They were discussing Scotland’s nail-biting victory last week over the Danes, sending the Scots to the World Cup Finals for the first time since 1998. Andy was English and had little interest in football, but he’d been deeply impressed by the tremendous, spontaneous upwelling of joy across the entire Scottish nation that the game had caused. Davie was trying to explain that it wasn’t just about the result, but the circumstances – the manner of the win. Three of the four goals were truly things of beauty. The match took place at Glasgow’s Hampden Park in front of a delirious home crowd, screened live and free-to-view in every home and every pub. It followed years and years of failure to qualify – some of the present team being unborn at the time Scotland had last qualified.
Andy nodded good-humouredly, but Davie could tell that he hadn’t yet got his point across. He tried again:
‘I was ten when I first started going to the football. In ‘The Boys Enclosure’ (admission: 9 pence – 5p. in new money). It was always packed solid, but you were always among friends, you roared, you booed, you sang, and when they scored you all swept forward like a mighty wave. Like I said, I was ten, and for the first time I felt a part of a whole. That was what Scotland felt when that lovely fourth goal hit the net in the last minute of extra time: it felt that we were part of a whole. It was a feeling of solidarity.’
‘OK, yeah, I’ve got it now, Davie. Solidarity: maybe I didn’t recognise it ’til you said it. Solidarity eh? I thought that had disappeared back in 1985.’
‘1985?? Ah, you mean Polmaise?’
[Polmaise Colliery, or the remains of it, lay just nine miles away. All through the year-long miners’ strike in 1984-85, the Polmaise miners never posted pickets at the mine gates to try to deter fellow miners from returning to work: they didn’t need to. They knew that Polmaise miners were all, to a man, solidly behind the strike. Polmaise was famous: they’d previously struck for 10 whole months back in 1938; they’d already been out on strike for a fortnight in 1984, before the national miners’ strike was declared. When the national strike was broken, a whole year later, and the union voted for a return to work, Polmaise, alone, stayed out for a further week.]
‘Yeah, I mean Polmaise. That was solidarity, Davie. I was there, you know, with the whole village at the gates to applaud the lads coming off the last shift, when the Thatcher government closed the pit two years later.’
‘Good for you, Andy. I understand: that was solidarity. So, instead, what would you call our nation of leaping hearts when the ref blew the final whistle at Hampden Park the other night?’
‘Maybe Communion? A transcendent thing, shared and remembered. ‘
‘Ah, like Archie Gemmill’s solo goal against the Dutch in the World Cup Finals in Argentina in 1978?’
‘Ha, if you like.’
‘OK, I’ll settle for communion over solidarity. By the way, do you know what William McIlvanney, your favourite Scots author, did when he got the publisher’s advance for his first novel?’
‘Beats me, Davie.’
‘He jacked in his teaching job in Kilmarnock and headed off to watch Scotland and Archie Gemmill in the 1978 World Cup Finals in Argentina.’
Andy smiled, but he was absorbed in watching a Dipper fossicking in the Allanwater shallows over at the opposite bank. Part of the attraction of Dippers is that, like Puffins, they are both comical in appearance and surprisingly successful in their daily tasks. Dippers are about the same size as a thrush, but black and definitely portly in appearance, with a big white bib under their chin. They are called ‘Dippers’ because they constantly bow and nod their heads up and down, like manic Victorian butlers. Yet these clown-like birds are surprisingly swift underwater swimmers and efficient finders of caddisfly larvae on the bottoms of rivers, lochs and burns.
Davie followed Andy’s gaze. ‘That Dipper looks perfectly happy on his own over there. Maybe we don’t really need communion with others?’
(Image provided by CJA: Sparky and Josephus, Turkey Vultures of Middle America)
Christopher J Ananias returns as today’s rerun. Bedpan made a huge mark the first time it was seen and let us hope that it does not point toward any of our futures…
Our rerun week continues with a certain Mr. Mirthless who is locked away in one of the Sunset City Camps that have popped up like mushrooms over the land. Still, M.M. has something to say and a way to say it.
(Introduced by Puck the Squirrel, in the image, a resident of Evergreen Park, Bremerton, WA, USA)
This week it is our pleasure to rerun stories by contributors to our site this past year.
We are going public in January, and, yes, this rerun thing is a naked attempt to fill the days until the new business begins, without first creating new work.
We are all about the TRUTH in the Springs.
But that does not mean a lack of quality. This is a fine work by Mick, and since many more eyes are trained toward the site than before, it, and the items that follow deserve a second go.
This also allows me to break in the link feature, which we hope you will hit now…
The worst punishment I ever received at that place was being locked in a broom closet, in the dark, for three hours.
The school was Our Shepherd Lutheran Elementary located in a suburb of Detroit. The time was the mid-1970s.
I was in third grade when she locked me in the broom closet.
I say “she” because it was her who did it – my third grade teacher, Ms. Caul, who actually wasn’t that bad most of the time and who I even thought of as a friend some of the time.
But this time we knocked heads.
She wanted me to go up to the front of the class and join the other five kids who were serenading the rest of the class who were sitting at their desks.
She requested that I join the singing, that I head up front and begin to bust out in passionate song, singing hymns to the rest of the class as if I were some sort of transported hymn-singer, which I wasn’t. And far from it.
I was the kind of kid who wasn’t too good at joining, or singing (except when I was alone).
I had been sitting there at my desk looking at the happy hymn singers and thinking how pathetic and sad they were when she requested that I leave the security of my desk, head up front, and join them.
When I said no, she told me again to get out of my desk and march to the front of the room, pronto, buster.
When I said no again, she started walking down the aisle toward me, and she was here (which was there) before I even knew what hit me.
She was hovering over me, helicoptering above me, pointing at the front of the room and demanding that I take my place with the singing group.
I crossed my arms, turned my head away, and said no again.
Now she grabbed me by the arm, yanked me out of the chair, and dragged me to the front of the room.
Then she swung me around and slammed me (accidentally) into the kid at the end of the hymn-singing line.
Next she informed me that I would now be singing, not with the group, but as a soloist.
I had refused to sing in the group and it astonished me that she believed I would now consent to busting out in a solo for these fools.
I set my jaw shut tight, crossed my arms, and stared out at my classmates in their desks, all of whom seemed more horrified than I felt.
She began yelling, telling me to sing.
The truth was, I could not have sung at that point even if it had meant my life.
That was when she yanked me out of the room by the arm and marched me straight down the hall to the broom closet. For some reason, the light switch for the broom closet was on the outside of the little room, in the hall.
She threw the door open and with a great shove she fairly hurled me into the tiny room filled with brooms, mops, buckets, and cleaning supplies.
Then she slammed the door shut tight, locked it from outside, and turned the light off from outside.
I was alone in the broom closet, locked in, in the dark.
Like I said, I was in third grade, so that means I was either 8 or 9 years old.
I state my age as a reason for why I spent my time silently weeping in there, in rage and terror.
I felt like I’d been locked in a dungeon and, indeed, to this day I almost feel like I know what it’s like to be locked in a dungeon because of my refusal to join the singing fools.
Some people enjoy being cheerleaders for the system.
Some people see absolutely nothing wrong with groupthink, following the herd, living the life of a passive approver of the ways things get done around here, no matter how they get done, as long as the group gets what it wants and the majority rule, in a societal system that wants slaves for its great devouring jaws, and not even IT knows why, except that’s the way it goes.
“Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson, and, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
The three hours might only have been thirty minutes.
When she let me out, she said, “I’m sorry Dale, but you had it coming to you and I hope you’ve learned your lesson this time.”
Not everything is a rerun this month–oh no, no. And today we are pleased to present another stunning collection of photographs taken by Christopher J Ananias. “CJA”–as I like to refer to him, has a keen eye for words and the world–Leila
Saragun Springs 