Author: admin

For My Baby Sister, Andrea C. Rock-Logan January 9, 1976 – August 21, 2023

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This is how I remember you.

My Sister’s Tune

by Bert Rock

“Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is…”

– William Butler Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium

Short and bright is the morning of youth,

when our bodies and minds are pliable

to life’s tumbles and bruises.

We sail, soar, and stride through our early years,

ignorant of the earth to which we are tethered.

No one gets out of life untouched,

by the madness of being human.

Long is the twilight of age,

once our debt of innocence has been paid.

My little sister is gone.

Of us, only she brought the music of a heartbeat to the world.

Three heartbeats, each so beautiful,

Orion, Alexandra, and Christopher.

I remember my sister’s tune,

So light, and playful, a flute on the breeze.

Her sound will echo in our hearts,

until our own sunsets are upon us.  

Fuck Your Second Amendment. Children Are Dying

~ admin
“School Colors” original artwork by author (2009)

Spoiler alert: this will be a didactic rant, but I don’t care.

“When did murdering kids in their classrooms become a political issue?” – Steve Kerr

Children are dying. That sentence should be the end of it, but it isn’t.

Republican congressman and senators should have to walk a gauntlet of all the grieving parents of children shot to death in classrooms.

I remember in 1984 there was the San Ysidro Massacre in a McDonald’s restaurant killing twenty-one. I was thirteen at the time. I recall hearing it on the news and the newscaster saying they’d found a child wrapped around their bicycle after being shot. I never got that image out of my head whenever someone mentioned McDonald’s.

As of May 25, 2022 NPR reports that there have been twenty-seven school shootings this year.

Columbine, Parkland, Sandy Hook, Uvalde, how many children in their classrooms have to be slaughtered before a republican congressman feels something? How many parents have to lose everything before republican fathers do something? I suppose it’s okay with them since this doesn’t happen at their kids’ schools.

The best way to protect school children is to label them fetuses, then republicans would give a shit. If protecting the children meant power over their mothers, republicans would do something.

Republicans will again do nothing. They dare not stand up to the NRA. You can argue about whatever legislation was passed if any and it won’t matter because it’s still happening. It is clear that no number of children or people dying will move a republican senator or congressman to agree to sensible gun laws. They are cowards.

Disagree? Prove me wrong.

Democrats keep trying to enact laws that could save lives and republicans shoot them down, every time. It’s the same song and dance we’ve seen year after year. Thoughts and prayers mean shit. You can tell me all you want about law abiding citizens being infringed upon, then I say infringe on them. Infringe on me if you can save a child from having their brains blown out in a first-grade classroom.

Fuck your rights, children are dying.

For Ukraine – People of The Sunflower

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by Bert Rock

Original photograph by author

Once again history rolls out the red road of war.

A tyrant sends forth his tanks and his guns

and the lives of his people to sate his bloody thirst.

Putin is an evil coward.

He poisons his own people when they vie for truth,

he infects citizens everywhere with lies and vile ideology.

He is a toxin on this earth, a radioactive sludge.

Ukraine is not my country, but they are my people.

They’re our people because they are people.

Once again, history gives us heroes, like the woman who faced a Russian soldier,

And offered him sunflower seeds to carry in his pocket,

So that the invader would have flowers for his body when he died.

To the bravest comedian in the world, Ukraine’s President,

If I could turn my words into bullets, I would give them all.

His is a noble fight.

Defiance is universal, a language all its own,

It is love for the sovereignty of one’s own soul.

It can be deciphered in the squaring of the chin,

or standing tall in the face of your oppressor, no matter their size.

I do know that much, if little else.

Look them in the eye and let them know that you stand before them.

Win or lose, you stand.

The sunflower is one of nature’s strongest creations.

It absorbs radioactive isotopes from the ground, making it safer, cleaner.

Perhaps that is what they were created for.

When the war is over,

the people of Ukraine will turn their faces toward the sun again.

They make the earth a better place for being here.

Click the link below by Kristen M. Stanton to read more about sunflowers and their amazing capabilities.

Sunflower Meaning, Symbolism, and Mythology

What I Learned in This Year of Madness

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2020

In years to come those four digits will become a slur, a curse, an excuse, an utterance of camaraderie or a begrudged toast. It will be a call back to a time like no other.

2020 was a year of madness the world over. It was a year of fire.

No life was untouched. Some got burned more than others, but we all felt the flame. Race riots, militias, quarantines, and lockdowns for a plague killing hundreds of thousands of people and a country set on fire by the man elected to protect it. What a fucking year.

When one looks back at this time they can add, “In a pandemic,” to everything they say.

“I went to work…in a pandemic,

I went to school…in a pandemic,

I cared for family, I wrote a book, I traveled, I parented, I taught, I loved, I lost, I dealt with pain, extreme back pain and heart pain and the pain of past-trauma-while-living-through-a-fresh-new-national trauma, a worldwide trauma where the numbers of dead kept climbing and climbing.

I grew in a pandemic.”

I survived.

We did it all while our country was at war with itself and our president told us to drink bleach.

Take that ‘Greatest Generation.’

“2020.” Drop the mic.

What will we say years from now?

2020 is perfect vision, 2020 is hindsight, knowing now what you did not know then.

What did we learn?

I’d say we learned that human beings are weaker than we thought, but that we’re also stronger.

We found out a lot about ourselves. We learned about our frailties, our strengths, and we learned a lot about our vices.

Maybe the most important thing we learned, was who our true friends were.

Despite all the rage, fear, sorrow, and hate that inundated our daily lives, I learned that 2020 is the year when I loved more than I have ever loved before…

I told stories to a 5-year-old, every single day.

I have never made up so much on the spot in my life as I did for him. In the summer, at the pool while cities were on fire we floated and looked at the shapes clouds could make. Or we were fighting sea monsters in the deep sea, or we were the sea monsters. We were superheroes, and supervillains, we were pirates searching for sunken treasure. We went on walks and searched for the perfect stick to be a sword, or rocks that could be valuable gems. Every day was a quest, every walk an adventure.

There really is magic in the world. It’s in the expression on that 5-year-old boy’s face when he says, “You gave me an idea!”

I do not know what he will recall years from now when he looks back on this time, the time he knows as, “The Sickness.” Perhaps those stories helped to keep the wolves of fear at bay, for all that was going on in the world around us.

I thought the stories I told would help protect him from the world and all that was happening,

But it was he who saved me.

The Other Soldiers

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“There’s nothing wrong with a little agitation for what’s right or what’s fair.”

–   John Lewis

I dedicate this post to the distinguished Congressman John Lewis, may he rest in peace.

●

In 1967, the late U.S. Representative, John Lewis had his skull fractured because he was marching for the right to vote. He endured much more violence as one of the original Freedom Riders, being beaten at times with baseball bats, lead pipes, and chains – all for the right to be treated equally. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, was arrested/jailed or beaten 29 times before he was assassinated because he was asking for black Americans to be treated with the same respect as white Americans. How many people have died to satisfy the frail egos of white men?

These are just two prominent examples. These are two of the greatest of American men. They did more for this country than I could ever do. I would need several lifetimes to scratch the surface of their contribution to this democracy.

So many people have sacrificed their lives, their livelihoods, and their bodies to attain that famed American dream, and to make it possible for others. To make life easier for those after you, or those around you, is the most beautiful thing.

Right now, that dream is a nightmare for the men, women, and children locked up in cages at the U.S. Border. All they wanted was a chance at the dream–to live your life on your own accord. This is really all anyone wants.  

How many people have had to march, petition, protest or demand equal treatment to white men? Racism is not dead, it’s paved in our roads, and sidewalks of our streets. It requires constant vigilance by those who would truly make this country great, men like John Lewis and Dr. King, women like Maya Angelou and Angela Davis to name a few among so many others.

●●

American history in the last century and a half has seen a lot of change. So many freedoms that were hard fought and won by soldiers who fought in the name of democracy. We have cemeteries full of men who died on actual battlefields to serve this country, but I am not going to talk about them right now. This is about the other soldiers.

The other soldiers I am talking about have also died for the freedoms of their fellow Americans. They did not carry guns, though they’ve been shot at. They did not storm beaches, hills, or bunkers, but they fought hard to gain ground. They are the men and women who have taken to our streets to march for what’s right. They are the ones who have conquered the American hearts, defeated unjust laws, and helped to move our country closer to that dream for which it was intended. They are still fighting today.

We should honor these warriors who stood up and who stand up when they see something wrong. Where would we be now if they did not say or do something about it? They have fought the good fight with their words, their arts, their movements, and this land is better for it. The fight is not over.

We should have a parade for these soldiers of justice,  like Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in United States history. He was assassinated. Then there’s soldiers like Matthew Shepherd, a 21 year old who was savagely beaten and tied to a barbed wire fence and left to die with a fractured skull – because he was gay. Rebecca Wight, a lesbian shot to death on the Appalachian trail, then there’s Brandon Teena, a transgender man raped and murdered in Nebraska, or Amanda Milan, a 25 year old transgender woman stabbed in the neck in New York City. These are only a tiny fraction of the names of people who have been murdered for having the courage to live their lives in the face of so much adversity.

I have never had to worry about living my life by anyone else’s leave. I have never had to apologize for being me. Those who have had to fight stigma day in and day out for who they are attracted to, who they love, the color of their skin or who they pray to are far braver than me. I salute you.

●●●

I take no pride in the color of my skin. Being white is not an achievement. I did not study hard, or put in the hours working and making sacrifices in my life to get to the goal of having a lighter pigment. Nothing in our lives as white men came harder because of the way our society views white men. Too often, we allow the oppression, or are dismissive of it. White noise is the white silence in the background, the sound of our indifference.   

Now, I am not ashamed of being white, because I can’t be ashamed of something I had nothing to do with creating. I had no more choice in being white than I did in being born on earth. But the skin I was born in has benefits, and those benefits have come at the cost of others’ rights. I acknowledge this fact.   

You don’t need to hide behind robes and ridiculous pointy hoods to be a white supremacist. You can wear a uniform with a badge. You can wear business suits, ties too long, and an orange vanity mask. You can wear the title of congressman, senator, businessman, or president.

White supremacy isn’t just about keeping people of color down, it’s also about keeping down, or away, those who don’t fit into the very narrow mold set by those who hold the power. As if America were a theme park and the Democracy Mountain ride had a sign that said: “You must be this tall, this white, and this heterosexual to ride.”

Most corporations, businesses, and establishments in America are white owned, white operated and white managed. Of the 500 corporations that make up the Fortune 500, there are only four black CEOs.  

If I were black, yes, I would be proud. What black people have had to endure in this country is an unimaginable burden to bear. If I were gay, I would be proud, for anyone in the LGBTQ community has had to endure a vastly tougher road than I have. If I was Native American, or Jewish, or Asian American or any other person historically marginalized, I would be proud.

People are dying all over America from COVID 19, and we have people who would rather fight for the flags and statues of dead traitors who thought it was their right to own other people. Honoring the confederacy is just the racist’s wet dream to keep alive the hate it stood for. I say tear them all down.

Let’s make new statues to those other soldiers who fought and those who continue to fight today to make this country truly great. Honor those who still march. Protesting, or as the late John Lewis might say, making “good trouble,” is what America is all about. Standing up when you see something wrong, and saying something about it. It’s about letting your voice be heard, no matter what your voice sounds like or where it comes from.

I hope that one day we won’t need these other soldiers. I hope the time comes when we don’t need to have marches for rights, because they will already be had by all. America is only great because of the people in it, and it’s up to us to make sure that is true for everyone.

Regarding the Idiotic Mask Argument

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“Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored!” – Aldous Huxley

I’m not a doctor, and neither are you, if you don’t believe wearing a mask will help against COVID 19. That being said, I get that people don’t want to wear masks. Nobody wants to wear these things. They are annoying. I can’t wait for the day that I don’t have to mask up, glove up and sanitize every single thing I’ve come in contact with at the grocery store. The amount of OCD diagnoses that are going to come out of all this will be interesting to see.

I would love to go to the bar again, to watch football with my friends, or basketball or baseball. Heck, right now I would happily watch golf with my friends if it were safe. (We all know watching golf is not safe, it’s a gateway drug. First, you’re dabbling in the PGA tour and then before you know it you’re mainlining CSPAN and then it’s over.) I want to go back to normal, as we all do, but now is not that time. We will get there, or at least to some form of normalcy if we take the proper precautions.

Wishing this away or calling it a hoax is not only dangerous, it’s extremely disrespectful to the men and women who are working day and night to save our lives while the dead pile up all around them. Right now, Death is filling his coffers, getting rich off our ignorance, and the abominable failure of our president.

We Americans take great pride in our founding fathers’ words, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and rightfully so, but as it turns out, you need to be alive to have liberty and to pursue your happiness. Flouting the guidelines by the medical experts isn’t just irresponsible, it’s laziness. The anti-mask crowd likes to squawk about their rights and free speech, but this isn’t about that. They’re lazy. They don’t want to have to change a single thing in their lives. Imagine what that mindset would have been like during WWII. What if the great women of this country then had said, “Nah, I don’t want to build airplanes for the war effort. It’s my right to stay home and watch TV.”

The world would likely be vastly different if that had happened. It is going to be different this time, because people who are too lazy to put a mask on or observe the kindergarten level guidelines to help stop the spread of infection are killing others.

If you think wearing a mask infringes on your freedom, try thinking of the people your decision will affect. Chances are you or someone you know has diabetes, a heart condition, or some other medical condition that thanks to advances in medicine has become relatively livable. People can live with these conditions because of doctors and scientists.

Doctors, scientists, and nurses are the heroes now. All the rest of us have to do is get out of the way.

Think about all the years of school that someone who gets a medical degree has to go through. If you want to be fully licensed as a medical practitioner you have to go through 10-14 years of schooling. You have four years as an undergraduate, then four years in medical school and then three to seven in a residency program. That’s 10-14 years of your life spent in the toughest of schooling programs and all so you can get out and help others.

How about we help them now? We can by doing the following:

  1. Wear a mask. (If you get a black one you can look like a bandit and wouldn’t that be fun?)
  2. Observe social distancing, (It’s a great excuse to not hang out with people if you don’t want to. “Sorry man can’t come over, COVID.”)
  3. Wash your hands and sanitize frequently touched surfaces. (No not that frequently touched surface!)

These things are not difficult. Asking you to wear a mask is not asking you to storm a beach under machine gun fire. Social distancing is not being deployed in hostile territory. It’s not that hard.

I think of all the times I’ve ever heard someone talk about how veterans fought and died for our freedoms in America, and they did, well now it’s our turn. We can honor them by taking up this chance to fight for our own freedoms, and by that I mean, the freedom to be alive.

Wear a mask. For those who still don’t want to, I’m sure there’s a refrigerated trailer with a spot waiting for you…or your mom, or your dad, or your grandparents, maybe an uncle, or an aunt, or a cousin, a neighbor, or a friend.

The Names

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"I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change, 
I am changing the things I cannot accept." - Angela Davis

GEORGE FLOYD BREONNA TAYLOR AHMAUD ARBERY DION JOHNSON RAYSHARD BROOKS TAMIR RICE WALTER SCOTT PHILANDO CASTILLE MICHEAL BROWN ERIC GARNER TRAVON MARTIN TANISHA ANDERSON LAQUAN MCDONALD GEORGE MANN EZELL FORD ERIC HARRIS PHILLIP WHITE MYA HALL WILLIAM ANDERSON TYREE CRAWFORD ALONZO SMITH JANET WILSON TONY ROBINSON RANDY NELSON DAVID JOSEPH AARON BAILEY RONELL FOSTER DARRIUS STEWART BILLY RAY DAVIS ALTON STERLING MARY TRUXILLO RUMAIN BRISBON PAMELA TURNER CHRISTOPHER WHITFIELD ERIC REASON DOMINIQUE CLAYTON BRIAN KEITH DAY DYZHAWN PERKINS NATASHA MCKENNA KEVIN HICKS INDIA KAGER SANDRA BLAND WILLIE TILLMAN DEMARCUS SEMER SAMUEL DUBOSE TROY ROBINSON TERRENCE CRUTCHER ANTRONIE SCOTT BETTIE JONES KEVIN MATTHEWS FELIX KUMI JAMAR CLARK JUNIOR PROSPER LAMONTEZ JONES RICHARD PERKINS MICHAEL NOEL ALTERIA WOODS SYLVILLE SMITH FREDDIE BLUE JONATHAN SANDERS BRENDON GLENN DANTE PARKER TERRILL THOMAS JERAME REID LAVANTE BIGGS AKAI GURLEY CLARK MARTIN LUTHER KING JR EMMET TILL…THERE ARE SO MANY MORE BECAUSE THE NAMES KEEP ADDING UP KEEP PILING UP KEEP PAVING OUR AMERICAN ROAD WITH THE OLD STONES OF SLAVERY AND PAIN OF PEOPLE WHO WANT TO LIVE FREE BUT THE ROAD IS WRAPPED AROUND THE WORLD AND THEY ARE CHOKING.

On White Privilege

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“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am a white man and I have white privilege. I didn’t ask for it but I got it. All of us who are white have it. It is our inheritance bought by slavery. 

Racism is a monster, a hideous creature that thrives in darkness, and it has been hiding under all our beds our whole lives. To ignore racism or deny its existence is to feed it the way a child sneaks scraps under the table to the dog.

White privilege is not about being born wealthy, but then again, it is. It’s not about your money, your station, or your opportunity. It’s not about you.

It’s a different kind of wealth, one we all got whether we wanted it or not – the wealth of establishment.

The dictionary defines the word, establishment as such:

  1. a constituted order or system.
  2. the existing power structure in society; the dominant groups in society and their customs or institutions; institutional authority
  3. the dominant group in a field of endeavor, organization[1]

Establishment sets the table and the rules. Here in America, those rules were written by white men for white men.

I’ve heard people say they know underprivileged white people, so they take issue with the term, ‘white privilege.’ Yes, there are poor white people. Poverty is a terrible thing, a crushing force that presses people down. Historically, the poverty felt by people who are not white is disproportionately worse than those who are white. Poverty is like a dirt road in the rain. It is a hard slog that can stretch on for a lifetime. However, for anyone in America not born a heterosexual white male in the last several hundred years, that dirt road in the rain is set at a steeper incline.  

Yes, there are white people wrongfully killed by police–police brutality is a major issue, but white people don’t have to fear the police because of the fact that they are white.

Nobody chooses the color of their skin, but centuries of racial domination have left white people’s skin unfettered by the manacles of history. White people benefited from slavery then, and we benefit from it today.  

White heterosexual men don’t have to march for equal rights.

White heterosexual men don’t have to ask the Supreme Court for permission to marry, or to vote, or to attend a good school, or any school. Straight white men have never been excluded from joining the armed forces, the police force, or the court.

You’ve never heard someone introduced as, “The first white heterosexual male…” head coach, quarterback, NFL owner, commissioner, broadcaster, journalist, doctor, CEO, pilot, police chief, lawyer, judge, astronaut, dean, congressman, senator, mayor, governor, or president. No one has ever had to say those words.

When we are indifferent to inequality and the injustice caused by racism, we let that monster grow. It is up to us on our own whether we feed it. I say drag that monster out from under the bed and throw it into the light, watch it shrink under the sun and you’ll see that it’s really just a cockroach and that’s the best it could ever be.

White privilege is real. It is the byproduct of a terrible and evil thing. Just acknowledge it. None of us can ever understand the pain it has caused, but we can try. We can listen.

When we listen our hearts will stir and then we can do something about it. We can change the establishment. We can vote.

[1] Definition provided by Dictionary.com

Where It Hurts

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America – June 4, 2020

“A riot is the language of the unheard.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I generally write fantasy fiction, but right now, it is difficult to escape reality when reality is so desperately in need of escaping.

About forty-six years ago, when I was three or four years old, my mother tells that if I’d fallen, scraped my knee, or otherwise came to her crying she would ask me, “Where’d you get hurt?” Rather than show her whichever part of my body was in pain, I would take her by the hand and walk her to the exact location I was in when the injury occurred.

I grew up in Colorado Springs, when I was in second or third grade; I sat with a girl, A.B., at my homeroom desk. I still remember her eyes and her smile. She was beautiful. We were good friends, as good as two kids no older than six or seven can be. We drew each other hearts, giggled a lot, and shared sweet smiles. I was a little white boy with buckteeth and she was a little black girl with good penmanship. We were children who shared innocent affections, until one day the teacher separated us. Other white kids in the class had started talking. They called her names. They called me names too. 

I didn’t know what their words meant so that night, I asked my father. He was well into his bourbon, his eyes glassy with that liquid haze. When I asked him what the ugliest word in the English language meant he snapped to, and sat up straight. I was in trouble. My father said, “You ever say that word again and I’ll knock your fucking head off.”

Moments later, he asked me where I’d heard the word, and I told him about A.B. and what my classmates were saying. My father, a Vietnam vet who’d come from an affluent family back east told me that it didn’t matter what color someone’s skin was because, “We love who we love.”

As long as I live, I will never forget that moment. As long as I live, I wish I could forget this moment, the one we are all in now.

Compared to other countries the United States of America is a toddler. It is the child of a time in history, when people landed on these shores fleeing tyranny. Yet, in our quest to be free, we became tyrants ourselves when we wiped out the people and culture that was here before us. Then we became enslavers, and mortgaged our humanity for free labor. The unbelievable world of pain brought by that may never be healed entirely. The tyranny of that pain has endured through centuries, and it is not yet dead.  

We cannot continue to overlook or undervalue the fact that white Americans have benefited from hundreds of years of oppression.

As a white man in America today, I can interact with the police without fearing for my life. I can shop anywhere without fear of being seen as suspicious. I can vote without issue, and do so many things I have taken for granted because I am not suffocated by racism. I can simply live my life, so many cannot.

I had a collapsed lung once about twenty years ago. It was awful. It happened spontaneously and subtly at first. After a few minutes, I started to feel difficulty breathing and after a while, I drove to the ER because I could not breathe fully. I have no idea what it’s like to be a person of color of any kind, but I imagine it is something like having only one functioning lung. It’s hard to do things when you cannot get enough air. It is hard to live that way.

White privilege is the air we breathe.

Our forefathers destroyed the native peoples of this land and purchased their own luxury with the blood and sweat of black men, women, and children. That happened and we cannot erase it. In doing this, they created a caste system that has endured in the halls of academia, our government, our courts, and our minds. What is happening today in America is a part of that story. Regardless of whether or not we were alive when it began is irrelevant. We are alive now.

America is a beautiful country, but we have scars. We have open wounds, and they will not heal until we let them. We need compassion. Though we cannot change our past, we can grow beyond it. We have to acknowledge it, the damage it has done and continues to do. We have to stop hiding our scars, or pretending they are not there. Let them be known, understand them. We cannot change our skin, all we can do is live in it.

If America’s mother were to ask you, “Where’d you get hurt?” take her hand and walk her to the sidewalk Trayvon Martin died on, the spot in Charleston, where the grass felt Walter Scott’s body fall, take her to Cleveland, where Tamir Rice was gunned down, or the street in St. Anthony, Minnesota where Philando Castille was shot in front of his son and girlfriend, take her to the shoulder of the Loop 101 in Phoenix, where Dion Johnson was shot in his car, take her to the street in Minneapolis where George Floyd gasped for air, and begged for his life before he died.

Take her to all these places, and then take her to the many, many, many more. Show her where they all died and say, “That’s where I’m hurting.”

2020

~ admin

This is not a war, but it is a fight. Humanity is uniquely bonded through a single event as this. We are all affected. We are all at risk. So this is one time we truly are in it together. Everyone. So, love the people you love and maybe listen a little more to the people you don’t. We are going to get through this. Follow the scientists and the medical experts. This is what they do, this is their time. My best to everyone. Be safe, be smart, and be sane…as best as you can.