[Peace] "AWARE on the Air" tonight (yes!)

[C. G. Estabrook]

"AWARE on the Air" tonight at 10 on ch. 6 is presented by members and friends
of the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort.

Prevented by ice and snow from convening last week, they whoop it up this week
-- despite ice and snow -- like the boys in the Malamute saloon (see below).
Linda Weber talks about "Afghanistan" -- to general agreement and dismay; Ron
Szoke, who recently discussed "Crisis & Confusion," considers "Dishonesty &
Deception" (his style maven being Kinsey Millhone); and Wayne Johnson, as a
result, calls for "A R3VOJution in Values."

Vostro schiavo*, with the aid of the redoubtable Uri Avnery, offers remarks on
the upcoming Israeli election, which bears some remarkable similarity to what
passed for an election recently in these states.

There are few more important topics to get right -- and few that are more often
got wrong -- than the role of Israel in the US assault on the Middle East.

--CGE
____________________________
* Venetian (not Italian) for "your obedient servant"


  The Shooting of Dan McGrew, by Robert Service (1907)

  A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
  The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
  Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
  And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.

  When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.
  He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a 
louse,
  Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.
  There was none could place the stranger's face, though we searched ourselves
for a clue;
  But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.

  There's men that somehow just grip your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell;
  And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in hell;
  With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done,
  As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one.
  Then I got to figgering who he was, and wondering what he'd do,
  And I turned my head--and there watching him was the lady that's known as Lou.

  His eyes went rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of daze,
  Till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering gaze.
  The rag-time kid was having a drink; there was no one else on the stool,
  So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a fool.
  In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway,
  Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands--my God! but that man could play.

  Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
  And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;
  With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
  A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
  While high overhead, green, yellow, and red, the North Lights swept in bars?--
  Then you've a hunch what the music meant...hunger and might and the stars.

  And hunger not of the belly kind, that's banished with bacon and beans,
  But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it means;
  For a fireside far from the cares that are, four walls and a roof above;
  But oh! so cramful of cosy joy, and crowded with a woman's love--
  A woman dearer than all the world, and true as Heaven is true--
  (God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge,--the lady that's known as Lou.)

  Then on a sudden the music changed, so soft that you scarce could hear;
  But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that it once held dear;
  That someone had stolen the woman you loved; that her love was a devil's lie;
  That your guts were gone, and the best for you was to crawl away and die.
  'Twas the crowning cry of a heart's despair, and it thrilled you through and
through--
  "I guess I'll make it a spread misere," said Dangerous Dan McGrew.

  The music almost dies away...then it burst like a pent-up flood;
  And it seemed to say, "Repay, repay," and my eyes were blind with blood.
  The thought came back of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash,
  And the lust awoke to kill, to kill...then the music stopped with a crash,
  And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way;

  In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
  Then his lips went in in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm,
  And "Boys," says he, "you don't know me, and none of you care a damn;
  But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I'll bet my poke they're so,
  That one of you is a hound of hell...and that one is BHO"...

[For the conclusion -- and the full authentic version -- see
<http://www.geocities.com/heartland/bluffs/8336/robertservice/shooting.html>.]