enjoy this writing from CEE in the free 2013 PDF file chapbook: Book 15 * Thailand to Volcanoes (click on the front cover image or the title text to download the free PDF file)				You can also order this as a 2013 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the cover spread for the book *Book 15 Thailand to Volcanoes**

Frontispiece

CEE

    As I’ve already related, I began school attendance, in the Fall of 1967. As with every aspect of Life, I rode the last wave upward, on Toynbee’s Spiral. My 1st grade teacher, in a public school, mind, inspected our fingernails each morning. I was one of the last, to be taught from the “Dick and Jane” books (which I read from flawlessly, as classmates hung jaws). We stood for the Pledge of Allegiance, as ritual. Corporal punishment was allowed, without question.
    Our texts, were standard texts of Old, papyri of Ike and Harry and FDR, and of times before even theirs. These papyri held truths not then questioned, except perhaps by insane young people at college level—we managed not to think too much, about the long-haired teens. Everyone knew they did drugs.
    The things, items, facts and figures which we were taught, were our given understanding. Many of them, were traditional, handed down by rote. Occasionally, the legendary. Now and then, the mythological. It was called, “Reading, Writing and ‘Rithmetic”. This translated to some of us as, “written with the finger of God Himself.” We were taught in—usually—a kind of solemnity. We absorbed the Truths—usually—with reverence, and with respect. What battles we fought with one another, what hurts we took or gave, had no bearing on what passed when we manned our desks. We simply took in, receiving from Teacher. Now and then, we got a bad one, or knew of a bad one down the hall.
    Those who impart our truths, are human, but as with the rest of my Reality, even this altered. Just as the elderly folk who lived in Victorian mansions near my Father’s house, were one day no longer there, the mansions no longer “houses”, but cut-up apartments, so generations of those Un-Nuanced, quietly slipped away, their desks taken over by the Heavily Nuanced. These new teachers, closer and closer to my own age, did not, in main, shout or beat down rebellion; in a networking world increasingly taking a village, this was no longer permitted. Instead, the classroom became a Chinese prison camp: 24/7/365 group therapy, indoctrination, a winning of hearts and minds. I leave it to demagogic others, to quibble with the “what” of such recruitment. My sole concern, the overriding reason I reject the snake oil of Today as any legitimate rewriting of my known Truths, is the “why”...and, frankly, nonstudent, I’ll tell you why:
    Someone hurt them. And now, Murdock, they’re comin’ to get You.
    I write to you, today, as the lone adherent to tablets written in fire at Iwo Jima, who is not either clad in survivalist fatigues or nearly 100 years old. I adhere to these truths so hoary and gone, because Truth is not merely Truth in an era. I am estian, nonfriend. “What is, is.” My Is, timehonored, heroic, unclinical, has vision, even Vistavision. It has heritage and it has Hope. It is minus vitriol imposed from without, minus the hatred and red sores of those I saw harmed on playgrounds, so long ago. It is minus any smearing of shit. Argumentum ad hominem, is the only legit social criticism, no matter what you’ve heard. If the messenger, scarred and flawed, bearing chip as epaulet, displays agenda of redefinition, then, I wouldn’t believe them if they said, “good morning”. Truth is how it is and that’s how it is, Popeye. It can be expunged by those who feel shortchanged, certainly...but Truth of any Was or Is, yours or mine, is only ever expunged, ala Macbeth. Trust me, milady, or good sir. Keep on washing. Rub-a-dub-dub. You’re never gonna get it off your hands.
CEE    walking to class at Kent State University, May 4^{th

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