A Return to Perceived Eccentric Meanderings

Posted on July 21, 2010 | Leave a comment

I spent a large number of posts discussing the BP Oil leak and its consequences. That included a couple saying that the leak streak was going to end. I then have spent three posts discussing the passing, life and memory of my uncle Will. That brings  me to now and to today. I am ready to start blogging about other things. The truth is that the other things I blog about or not as likely to be seen as essential, necessary and compelling as the blogging I have been doing on the last two topics. In the eyes of many I am back to blogging about odd things that few think seriously about and which they don’t approve of when they do think about them. That is a particularly negative and jaundiced view that does not represent everyone reading. Some will say I discuss interesting things but from an odd and eccentric perspective. A last and probably much smaller group will say that I have offer a welcome glimpse at a sane perspective in a world gone mad. Some readers will not relate to any of these three  points of view.

I think some writing and writing venues consist of exploratory agitation. Some consist of a kind of journeyman’s daily craft. Yet another kind of writing is a victory lap that sets off a long period of success and accomplishment.  I think this blog is none of those things it is kind of like a defeat lap. The Marathoner who finishes eighth in a field with only three prizes taking a lap around the home stadium holding his country’s flag. One may ask why the hell he does it but also finds it difficult to dispute his right to run it if he wants to run it.

I comment here on many topics from the point of view of someone whose life has been for a long time a relatively unmitigated disaster. Economic, political and social disaster of a rather extreme kind or only mitigated by a few personal victories and satisfactions. Those include mostly relationships with people who are precious to me.

Since I finished my recent online novel, have stopped covering the oil leak closely and have buried my uncle I can return to blogging. I welcome almost all possible readers. The readership is almost certain to remain small compared to the largest readership I have ever written for in my past. It is as much expression as communication I suppose.  So before returning to these political, social and religious notations I am taking this post to discuss the blog itself in terms that seem real today.

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Posted in BP - British Petroleum, Culkathadreil, Frank W. Summers, Frank W. Summers III's family, media, novels by Frank Summers, William Charles Summers

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Remembering the Near Despair and New Hope in 2 Weary Souls

Posted on July 20, 2010 | 1 comment

 I am feeling a bit weary today. I feel a bit weary most days. Honestly, I require a certain infrastructure of life which I do not have here and now to ever live free of weariness. In addition I am aging and at 46 I think there is some sense of having hit the top of the hill of human energy and heading back down again. Yesterday I served as a pallbearer and as a lector at the funeral of my uncle William Charles Summers. For me weariness was part of the whole experience of Will’s last years. I felt some sadness and unease mentioning this because his marriage to his widow Brenda and his relationship with the stepdaughters he cherished — Jennifer and Kayler occurred during these weary years mostly. I do not want to make it seem like the man who worked their farm, hunted alligators, saddle broke horses, coached basketball, drove them on vacations and lived as their husband and father was some old weary guy. But honestly I never saw him since the year 20oo for any length of time when he did not communicate his weariness to me in some way.   That was ten years ago and he only married Brenda eleven years or so ago. But for all he did in those years his energy was a small and frail thing compared to the vast fountains of energy I knew in his youth. Will was almost 55 when he died and I am almost 46 now and I can relate to his sense of weariness.   That weariness inspires me to write this blog post.

Will found a new life with Brenda and her children. he had a working farm and was a friend of the husband Brenda had just buried before he took a different interest over coming years in the widow he was helping. But in a quiet way he was near despair. He already had several physical ailments and an active life had left him burdened with varied old injuries. His religious journey and relationships with women including one named Jackie and another named Lisa and a few others I choose not to name at all had all come to a place that had left him for short of satisfied. He had helped his sister who was raising a child alone to help rear her daughter in different ways for several years.  That had gone the way such sibling volunteer fathering often goes in our society. He had kept close bonds with sister and niece but new walls and borders had grown up between them as the years passed.

Will had sailed some rough seas and backed away from a lifelong love affair with sailboats. The hard-drinking, sharpshooting, world-traveling, mysterious side of Will that existed on the fringes (at best) of the legal world in several countries and could help play music in a bar of questionable reputation or move packages of obscure origin or help women get around whose movements some might want to limit could be a dangerous and angry man. He had mellowed. Maybe more than I have mellowed at a similar age now that he had reached then. Will and I always had things in common and also were very different. We also had lots of things in common. Partly, we found some grace in people we cared about to temper other aspects of our personalities.

There is a cycle in all lives but perhaps in ours more than most. I will no longer be able to look over a few miles away to see my uncle’s struggle between despair and hope and compare it to my own.  I will not have the chance to compare notes on the spiritual struggles we shared in common. I hope, yes I feel some hope that he both rests in peace and is well-remembered.

To see Will and not violate copyright laws: http://www.meaningfulfunerals.net/fh/obituaries/vt_view.cfm?o_id=666635&fh_id=11197&s_id=7DC1F0D026E57519378C8C9000056A1B&vt_type=1

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Posted in Acadians, Anglo-Acadians, Christianity, Environment, family, Frank W. Summers, Frank W. Summers III's family, Jesus Christ, Louisiana, Wetlands, William Charles Summers

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William Charles Summers Dies: An Acrostic Verse

Posted on July 17, 2010 | Leave a comment

Will, I am stringing rhyming lines together to spell your name on the left side.

I feel a loss I just cannot pretend is gone and yet I have not shed a tear yet.

Let’s just say I will miss the crawfish boils and the days I matched your stride.

Loping across that farm and disagreeing about things most folks would not “get”.

I am thinking of that old guitar, the harmonica and the banjo too.

All the way back to a military school and Sousaphone you played with pride.

Music stitched through lands and colors was part of much you used to do.

***

Could it be I miss the Bible sharing that we had? I an 8-year-old lapsed Catholic,

Hearing your Jehovah’s Witness testimony to God as real for you,

And next I set Catholic tones to your hippie search in topics  exegetic.

Rather later, you and I and John read texts in a farmhouse too.

Latest of all, talking about your Roman Catholic ending road.

Every phase was marked by that Bible’s mental load.

Some same Bible problems we both too well knew.

***

So, I am making you a pious memory now Will.

Until, I remember all you knew about Marijuana,

Meaningful quarrels over laws that outlive you still.

Much agreed on: prostitution and pot in Louisiana

Each favoring regulation but angry words air did fill.

Remember wild child you surfed when we went to Malibu?

Summer before you ran to a Shenandoah hill. 

***

Do I mention Taurus and Cajun Blue in a line for you?

It seems seeing sailing sets  tests my simple poem can’t do.

Each day from now on I will know what we did not get.

Suddenly, the passing is clearer in a kind of regret.

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Posted in Acadians, Anglo-Acadians, family, Frank W. Summers, Frank W. Summers III's family, Jesus Christ, Louisiana, Louisiana Musicians and Music, William Charles Summers

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William Charles Summers Death Announcement

Posted on July 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

“My uncle William Charles Summers has died. Survived by his mother, 3 brothers, 2 sisters and my generation as well as by his wife Brenda his 2 stepdaughters and their husbands and children. Will was a musician, farmer, surfer, sailor, skipper, Bible reader, hunter, fisherman, horseman, outlaw and coach. His journey began and ended in the Catholic faith with deep spiritual searching elsewhere. May he rest in peace.” Such are the character limits on the status line in Facebook. However, shorter is possibly better here. I hope to do a longer post of both eulogy and complete obituary.

Will was the youngest of my father’s brothers. One of his sisters was also older and only one sister was younger. Will died the day they got the oil flow stopped in the gulf disaster for the first time since it started. I know that was something he cared about. Life was complicated for Will and Will could complicate it for others. He was a tall dark man with blue eyes and a whole lot of fight in him almost all his life. I will write some more about him later. I hope his passing is marked well in the meanwhile. I believe that Vincent’s Funeral Home in Abbeville, Louisiana will be handling the arrangements.

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Posted in Acadians, Anglo-Acadians, family, Frank W. Summers III's family, William Charles Summers

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One Reason I Do Not Take Vows Often…

Posted on July 12, 2010 | Leave a comment

BP and their many witnesses claim that they have set a cap with valves on top of the cut-off riser and that they hope to close off valves and contain the entire leak. They may be telling the truth, if not the relief valves may be set  to deal with the outflow an other issues very soon.  It is hard to take them seriously. It is hard because they have at times given the impression of lying their asses off as we say around here. We are stuck with dealing with the future in all its complexity. We know that all of these people sometimes tell the truth. If they did not tell the truth then thousands of people would not show up to work for them and do business with them on a regular basis.  But still, real and apparent breach of promise undermines the whole complex of interactions with and between all the parties in this situation. 

The BP Oil spill has actually been good to this blog. It has provided a focus for a variety of insights and analytical pieces that involved new issues and also a variety of lifelong and also long-term concerns. It has been good in that it has been a catalyst to the increase of readership of this blog. I have discussed this topic in each blog post for quite some time. There is still a lot to blog about in this spill. However, I never made a promise to keep blogging about it untill the crisis was over.  There is a great reticence in me to making promises. Much as incident commander Thad Allen recently said seemed right to him in dealing with this crisis “it is better to under promise and over deliver” .  I am a divorced man. Whatever else that means it means it does mean that I stood up in front of a large group of the friends and relatives of a young woman I loved and my own friends and relatives and promised to spend the rest of my life with her. That did not work out too well in terms of being a long-term kept promise. However, I do not regret the seven and a half years we spent together thereafter.

But this is really beside the point. The point itself is that I do not make a lot promises. I am glad I did not promise to keep blogging about this leak. I have so much more to discuss that I may return to it soon enough but I am going to allow myself to discuss some other things as well.   This post is sort of a farewell to my single-minded commitment to making this oil disaster the central theme of my writing. I am going to take some time to write about other things quite soon.

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Posted in BP - British Petroleum, BP Chairman Svanberg, Frank W. Summers, Ken Feinberg, Louisiana, Oil & Gas Industry, Sweden

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Taking a Break From the Wind-Down of Coverage of the BP Leak

Posted on July 8, 2010 | Leave a comment

I watched the 2010 Louisiana Legends Gala on LPB tonight after going to my nephew’s birthday party.  The Louisiana Legend honorees were  a musician of great accomplishment named Burton and a man of many accomplishments in politics, music and the life of his family and community named Michot. They also included a woman who had reared children as a politician’s wife and been on the one hand a patron and organizer of the arts and an actual artist and designer named Morrison as well as a man who at the college, professional and other levels had distinguished himself as basketball player, coach  and mentor in the world of hoops and hardwood.  It also included former Governor Buddy Roemer.

My sister had just put on a big birthday party for her son and then she had to head off to Mexico. It was also garbage night.  I was looking at all the achievement of these people and thinking about all the fullness of family life. That and other thing sort of pushed the oil leak out of my mind, except that Buddy Roemer was a governor who cut pollution. There was also the fact that Louis Michot alluded to the man-made setbacks. It also played on my mind as I thought about my nephew growing up.

But overall, I am just plain tired, distracted and willing to forget about this leak for a day or so. No real BP oil gusher story for today….

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Posted in 2010 Roemer. Burton, Acadians, Audobon Society, Bobby Jindal, BP - British Petroleum, BP Chairman Svanberg, Frank W. Summers, Geopolitics, Gulf of Mexico, Ken Feinberg, Louisiana, Louisiana Legends Honors, Michot, Morrison, Reed, United States of America, Western civilization, Wetlands

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The BP Oil Leak: I Would Have a Nervous Breakdown but…

Posted on July 6, 2010 | Leave a comment

I no longer have very many concerns about “freaking out” or “having a nervous breakdown” or “losing it”. That is mostly because in many ways my life is already as bad as it can get. In the ways that it is not a total hell others would have to do most of the things they are not doing for me to lose all those I care about, go to prison, be maimed or whatever. At various times in my life I have run many risks and exposed myself to a great deal of danger. However, I have never believed anyone could function like that all the time and so I am both quiet and cautious to an outrageous degree rather than outrageous.

But here are reasons why I am not having a nervous breakdown over the BP Oil Leak yet.

So,

I would have a nervous breakdown over the oil leak but…

1. I am too tired from following this story to get the energy up for a breakdown.

2. I am afraid friends from New York will say “Why didn’t you have a breakdown after 9-11 then?”

3. I am afraid that I will need my nervous breakdown for responding to the way this crisis is handled a few years from now.

4. I am reminded of all the suffering animals, birds, fish and other living things and it seems selfish to have a nervous breakdown if they can’t. 

5. I tried to find the nervous breakdown form online but I could not.

6. I think I should try to be sane in case one of my many friends who are fishermen, shrimpers, oystermen, seafood pickers, processors, icehouse owners, fishmongers, guides, brokers and hoteliers should call — I want to be strong for them.

7. I am not sure if  having a break-down  is going to improve my tough South Louisiana image.

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Posted in Acadians, BP - British Petroleum, BP Chairman Svanberg, Frank W. Summers, Louisiana, media, Oil & Gas Industry, Sweden, United States of America, Wetlands

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Happy Independence Day, USA!

Posted on July 4, 2010 | 1 comment

Just a few patriotic links from my own posts:

1. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/05/31/the-british-petroleum-oil-spill-and-memorial-day/

2. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/the-mental-ferment-for-men-and-women-who-might-foment-an-american-revolution-part-one/

I am not posting much today so I can have more time to relax, celebrate and reflect on the occasion.

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Posted in United States of America

The BP Oil Leak & “Culkathadreil”

Posted on July 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

Yesterday I finished a draft of a novel on a Facebook account I call “Summers Progress” it is a draft but it is not unreadable or incoherent as it is and there is not likely to be a more complete draft later on. I have written about a dozen novels like this and another half a dozen plays that I have not submitted to anyone for publication. I have submitted a couple of short stories and had them rejected but not recently. However I have had my writing published in real paper publications of the type that pay people and undergo large distribution costs. I have also had my writing published in newsletters, paid compendiums in book form for private release and in various vehicles of my own like this blog. The novel I completed yesterday is called “Culkathadreil” .  I watch television. I buy movie tickets for myself and others. I buy several newspapers and    I surf the web like a madman. In addition I listen to the radio and watch music videos from varied purveyors. The point of my next paragraph is not that I do not like anything in the world and that it is all crap — that is not my opinion.

Nonetheless, it is true that despite Louis Armstrong, Sydney Bechet, Kate Chopin, Ernest Gaines, Stephen Ambrose, Lyle Saxon, Lauren Post, Carl Brasseaux, Zachary Richard, Fats Domino, Michael Doucet and Beausoleil, the Degas paintings of the Cotton Exchange, James Lee Burke, the politics of James Carville, the monuments to Jean Lafitte, the Jazz Festival, the Cajun Music Festival, the Festival Acadiens and the guest list of the last Weeks to rule the Shadows on the Teche –despite all those things  and the Williams with cousin Tennessee and their endowment of the Royal New Orleans Collection I live in a State which is a land of sunken things and deep shadows. I do not publish my novels for many reasons and you and I might not agree on all of them. However, the oil leak is a great symbol of the world I and so many from my state live in. The reckless madness and damaging folly of big oil, big government and even big environmentalism interfere with plans people here had and hopes they would have liked to see made real. I have no doubt that most of these plans are better and could be part of something much better than the status quo.

So after each novel is finished I take a day to feel sorry for myself. I do not usually share those thoughts. However as I sink into the shadows this time I take you with me because it is crowded with sunken people and dreams around here. Despite the New Orleans Saints winning a world championship with many local boys turned men on board and with a neighbor from Texas at the lead on the field, and despite Brittney Spears and Tim McGraw being as big in popular culture as one can really measure people to be — this is a place where much more is washed a way by storms and erosions of the natural and cultural kind thean can be easily measured either. Miles of land are damaged and vulnerable because of bad federal planning and coroporate greed American Indian Tribes have to watch till another kind of Indian from around the world is governor while they struggle for culture, natire and a future in many ways. America if it is anything (and sometimes it is not anything) as an idea has become an “English only” democracy. When it was young here it was sincerely hoped by many here and in other states that it would never be either of those two things. Many thought such a pair of calamities was prohibited by the Constitution.     We have a Preservation Hall but a hundred institutions that created jazz have not been preserved. So things are undertaken but less than is lost so as I sink into the shadows this time I take you with me because it is crowded with sunken people and dreams around here. If you look carefully and think hard about this oil leak you can see why.

Bp did not cause all these evils but this crisis is deeply tied to many other trials.  Britain has the toughest real anti-libel laws in the  world (as opposed to laws never enforceable or murderous thugs or honorable duels combatting libel) and if I ever did make some bucks maybe BP could find a way to sue me for libel for some of the things written here. But the truth is that I and others here are swimming in a see of subtle libels that are harder to prove and still suck the air out of life here. BP is among the libellers and has been for a very long time along with most people their people know. That is no fiction.

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Posted in Acadians, BP - British Petroleum, BP Chairman Svanberg, Culkathadreil, Environment, Frank W. Summers, Geopolitics, Gulf of Mexico, Kate Chopin, Ken Feinberg, Louis Armstrong, Louisiana, Louisiana Musicians and Music, Louisiana writers & Literature, novels by Frank Summers, Oil & Gas Industry, Sweden, Western civilization, Wetlands

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The BP Oil Spill & The Anderson Cooper Response

Posted on July 1, 2010 | 7 comments

There have been a great number of competent and quite a few gifted journalists who have covered the leak and consequences of the leak that followed the sinking of the Deep Water Horizon at the Macondo underwater feature in the Gulf of Mexico just off the Coast of Louisiana. I will say that I have even seen more than one production that could be called a full-length documentary film.  I think many of these people deserve commendation and some deserve censure for their response to this crisis.Even BP itself has spent quite some significant amount of cash collecting and reporting information in various formats and through various people who have differing levels of expertise and candor as regards these events and their consequences. The BP response and other responses are not really so surprising when one considers that at least thirteen human deaths have been tied to these events, billions of dollars in trade and economic effects (including BP stock value fluctuations)  can be tied and related to these events. I have seen the disaster covered on ABC, NBC. CBS, Fox, MSNBC, PBS, the BBC, CNBC and many other venues in the electronic and broadcast media. The local and regional broadcast stations have had many significant exclusive stories. Also I have seen the print media from Gannett ( my former employer) as well as many other competitors cover the story. All these people have done work that deserves to be considered carefully by students, critics and practitioners of modern journalism. But none of those people and institutions are the subjects of this blog post.

I want to take an absurdly short amount of time and space to acknowledge the work of Anderson Cooper and his crew and staff on the CNN show AC360. Anderson Cooper has traveled the marshes, formed relationships with Governor Jindal, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nunguesser, Grand Isle Mayor Dave Camardelle and local observers James Carville and his Republican wife Mary. He has taken time to tie into the cultural background stories, the family histories, and the political history. He has kept up a stream of steady reportage of the facts and has spiced that up with interviews of people like Lenny Kravitz and other celebrities who really know the area. He has owned the story and in my opinion has been a significant force in driving better coverage elsewhere.

In a climate where CNN has lost ground to more adversarial and advocacy driven networks like Fox and MSNBC he has found and area where he can bend his lines and not break them in advocating the case of voiceless animals and plants as well as millions of American citizens threatened by this disaster. So I think he has probably helped CNN fight back while being CNN. He has shown how they can still cover a big and long story and that they can do it in the new media environment. So he is adding his own professional quest and knight errantry to that of the people he has chosen to stand beside.

So, before it is too late, I take this chance to salute Anderson Cooper. Good job,  Sir. You are one of those we need around more than ever.    I hope this leads to new but probably not more important opportunities.

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Posted in Acadians, Anderson Cooper, Audobon Society, Bobby Jindal, BP - British Petroleum, BP Chairman Svanberg, CNN, Environment, family, Frank W. Summers, Ken Feinberg, lly Nunguesser, Louisiana, media, Oil & Gas Industry, United States of America, Western civilization, Wetlands

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