Friday, January 31, 2025
COMMENTARY - THE MOZART EFFECT
BY DONOVAN BALDWIN
 |
| Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart |
A little deeper look showed that this is still unproven, although temporary improvement on some intelligence tests HAS been experienced...about 15 minutes, in what I have read.
My point, however, is not to push this, OR pick this apart.
I feel good when I listen to Mozart, and other types of music, including Country Western, classical, big band era, and the occasional rock and roll pieces. But then, I was raised in the 1950s in the South of the U.S. where such music was common and popular, so, perhaps it's not the music as much as the connection to happy days, places, people, and times.
Many people tell me they enjoy "music", but, they mention R&B, Reggae, Techno, Heavy Metal, and genres which would make ME leave the room (he said politely).
We like what we like.
Our "like" is not always the only one, or the "best" one, but the best for us, and good things make us feel better, enjoy life more, and, in a way, I guess, pay more attention..
However, what we find joyful and beautiful, may be torturer tools to someone else. I try to respect that.
I knew a woman who told me, "I get sad and want to kill myself" when she heard Country Western.
I couldn't stand the music she liked.
We were friends.
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Labels: country, donovan baldwin, music, R&B, techno, the Mozart effect, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Thursday, January 30, 2025
POEM - A DRESS ONLY I CAN SEE
a beautiful dress for you
only i can see
you my model stand
erect and proudly naked...
i measure and cut
setting loving words
against your most precious skin
smoothing them in place
Art: Madame X by John Singer Sargent
Labels: donovan baldwin, dress, poem, poetry
POEM - WE ONLY WORK WITH WORDS
We poets do,
To sing,
To draw,
To paint,
To point,
To link,
To loosen that which must be free.
We only work with words,
We poets do,
As best we can,
As they come
As they go,
Or stay,
Emblazoned on our souls.
We only work with words,
We poets do,
So variable,
So insensible,
So certain,
So unsure,
So real,
So lying and yet, because...
We only work with words,
We poets do,
We love,
We laugh,
We cry,
We sing,
We praise,
We demand,
We defend,
And sometimes...
We fail.
For...
We only work with words,
We poets do,
And words are clay, which,
Though molded properly,
And sure and glistening at first,
May slump or turn drab,
In the heat of day and sight of men.
We only work with words,
We poets do,
And ask the reader to read,
What was in minds and hearts,
When set upon the page,
With eyes like ours,
Who saw the sun and sky,
And tried to sing its praises,
But missed the mark.
So too, with love, honor, and courage...
Read our tales with piety and pity,
For round-shouldered scribes,
Trying to make beauty out of letters,
For...
We only work with words,
We poets do,
And must leave the living,
And understanding of our work
Up to you...the reader.
Donovan Baldwin
30 Jan 2018
Labels: donovan baldwin, poem, poetry, words
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
ESSAY - COFFEE HERE, COFFEE THERE, COFFEE EVERYWHERE
Coffee's a big deal to me, as you might have guessed if you read what I write... non-poetry, that is.
I'm not a connoisseur of coffee. (Confession, I had to look up how to spell that.)I've gratefully quaffed (a favorite word of mine) many a cup of "what the hell is that?"
In fact, in the army, we used to get packets of "sort of" instant coffee (see picture). I would hoard them, and, on freezing cold (or burning hot) mornings, when starting the day exhausted, and no other source of coffee, I would pour the packet into my metal canteen cup, add just enough water to make a sludge, or coffee slurry, then add enough water from my canteen, swirling it to stir it, to have some cold, brown caffeinated water to drink.
Desperate stuff...
As Staff Duty NCO, at 2 AM, I have passed wearily through army mess halls, grabbing a cup of whatever was still kind of warm, willing to drink it "as is", rather than wait for sleepy cooks to brew a new pot. (A drink which tastes suspiciously like what they charge big bucks for at Starbucks.)
On other, more civilized mornings, I've dragged myself out of bed at 3 AM for duties and obligations, done my morning exercises (which I have done somewhat religiously for the last 50 years), and rewarded myself with a better brew... instant, perked, now Keurig, but, whatever was available.
Visiting non coffee drinkers (or like my sister, decaf drinkers), I have run to the nearest store to buy my own bottle of coffee, and sometimes wine (another confession).
Coffee to me IS more than just a hot drink. It's memories of overcoming obstacles. Yes, a magic potion of beans and water, turning nightmares into fairy tales.
Labels: army, coffee, donovan baldwin, essay, humor, writing
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
POEM - A PASSION COLD
Labels: burning passions, donovan baldwin, m-16, passion, passions, poem, poetry
Monday, January 27, 2025
ESSAY - WHAIKU HAIKU?
Apparently, often without a net, as they tend to flash through the air of my mind and disappear.
Part of that's attributable to my ADHD brain, I'm sure. Always looking for the next exciting act and immediately relegating the previous one(s) to some mysterious hell hole from which only a few emerge from time to time, emaciated and staggering under the weight of chains of meaning, which, like those of Marley's ghost, only I can see.
We tend to see only the "finished" works of poets, but, if we could travel through time to their cottages and hovels, for poets ARE poor, aren't they, we would see scraps covered with words, phrases, sentences, and, possibly like some comedy sketches I've seen, piles of crumpled paper, each representing an "act" that didn't make the cut.
I have notebooks, scraps of paper, even, yes, cocktail napkins, and, more than once, a piece of toilet paper, with poems, ideas, words.
That's why I write so many haiku. That's how I save my words. Many of these short little snippets grow up to be real poems, the others serve to keep my disappearing thoughts alive.
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Labels: adult ADHD, donovan baldwin, essay, poems, poetry, poets, writing haiku
Sunday, January 26, 2025
ESSAY - BREAKFAST, MR. BASCLE, AND DON QUIXOTE
For a while, in high school, I rode to school with a friend, Mike B his dad, "Frenchie" driving us in his T-Bird.
I would walk to their house on Bayshore Drive, in Warrington, and wait in what I always thought of as "the library", while they finished breakfast and got ready.
One morning I pulled down Don Quixote, by Cervantes, and started reading. Only a few pages a day, but, over several days, I finished it, and was hooked, on Don Quixote.
One morning, Frenchie, "Mr. B" to me in those days, asked if I wanted some French toast. I had never even heard of French toast, and asked him how it was made. Once he described it, I really didn't want it, but, to be polite, I said I'd try some.
Wow! I'm still a bacon and eggs, grits and toast for breakfast guy, but, once in a while, I order French toast, and remember being a teenage boy in Mr. Bascle's house, on sleepy Bayshore Drive, eating French toast and reading Don Quixote.
By the way, Frenchie, wherever you are, I've never had better French Toast than yours.
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Labels: breakfast., Don Quixote, donovan baldwin, essay, french toast
Saturday, January 25, 2025
ESSAY - WATER IN THE BLOOD
I even imagined the water vapor being drawn into the sky, gathering as clouds, and returning as rain. The nuns told us that our blood was like seawater, and I, a boy, marveled at my, our, connections...to the ends of the Earth, and to each other.
I'm human...mostly. I understand anger and disagreement on issues processes and procedures. I even understand fighting for self-defense, or self-protection. Even though I spent years as a soldier ready to defend my family, my country, my beliefs, I don't understand how, we, as connected and interlinked as we are, can hate and fight just because we don't agree on something.
I guess that's "in the blood"...maybe...but, I prefer to think that brotherhood and kinship is there, and, as they say, blood, and kinship, is thicker than water.
Labels: donovan baldwin, Pensacola Bay, poem, poetry, water
Friday, January 24, 2025
POEM - THE FACETS OF LOVE
We call "life".
Life is never a clear gem.
Its color and its shape,
And the polishing of each face
Allows us to see some more,
Some less,
Of the other faces.
Love is a highly polished
Facet of this jewel.
Through it we see a great deal,
But, all is colored
With the color of our love.
Too often we are blinded by
The polished surface of
The shiny facet called "love',
As, looking through it,
We try to view reality.
Love can be wonderful,
But, also can be deceptive,
And, there is no way to foretell,
How all will appear when,
This facet is finally ground and polished.
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Labels: donovan baldwin, life, love, poem, poetry
Thursday, January 23, 2025
POEM - BUREAUCRACY
Yet, I refuse to give in,
To self-aggrandizing bureaucrats.
The ones who seem to thrive on
Plots and plans that they connive on,
Sneaking through the dark like alley cats.
I would give up on wealth and treasure
To achieve my health and pleasure
Yet, my life is draped with black crepe sadness.
They use their forms to order more,
Their cabinets more full than before,
Proliferating tangled red tape madness.
Labels: bureaucracy, donovan baldwin, poem, poetry
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
POEM - OCEAN ADVENTURE ABOARD THE OLD BONNIE G
Chugged down the bayou,
Me on my first and only
Seagoing adventure.
Down to Joe Patti's
Drydock, scraped the hull,
Helped paint, and
Back again skirting
The coast of
Pensacola bay,
Under the bridge
Over the Bayou Chico,
Back to its slip,
Long John Silver's voice
Fading with the
Cessation of her engine.
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Labels: Bayou Chico, boat, Pensacola, Pensacola Bay, poem, poetry
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
POEM - JUST AN OLD BUM
 |
| Famous clown Emmet Kelly as Weary Willie. |
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Labels: donovan baldwin, expectations, old bum, poem, poetry
Monday, January 20, 2025
ESSAY - EPIPHANY, OR THE AHA MOMENT!
One of the more common attitudes that I encountered was, "I never realized this was so complicated..."
Or, "So THAT'S why you do that!"
Of course as a truck driving instructor, another common attitude was, "Those people in the little cars are crazy, and I used to drive like that..."
I guess the key point is "ignorance". Now, ignorance, unless intentional, is not a sin. It just means that, for some reason, you just don't "know".
Maybe you haven't had a chance to learn, maybe there was no reason to learn, or opportunity.
And yet, up until the epiphany of enlightenment of my instruction, they were certain they were "right"... even though "wrong".
Well, maybe not even "wrong", just the information perhaps did not apply to their life's needs, decisions, or purposes.
You usually don't know you're lacking something until you've had it and THEN lose it. So, if you didn't know the knowledge existed, or that it might do you some good to have it, why should you feel any lack in your life for not having it?
I guess my point is, I've stepped into many situations in my 75 years, and still do from time to time, where I suddenly realize that I have just learned something that I've lived three-quarters of a century without knowing... and suddenly something made sense, and I realized that something had been missing.
Epiphany.
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Labels: donovan baldwin, enlightenment, epiphany, essay
Sunday, January 19, 2025
POEM IN HONOR OF EDGAR ALLAN POE'S BIRTHDAY, WRITER'S BLOCK - A PARODY OF THE RAVEN
I await a visitation
By a guest named, "Inspiration".
Sequestered in my smoke-filled den
Prepared to quickly let him in,
If he should visit me again.
As minutes crawl and hours fly,
Without his having yet stopped by,
I remind myself that I...
On many a long and barren night
Swore I'd give in without a fight
And "Nevermore!" attempt to write.
Yet, here I sit, awake once more,
As so many nights before,
Mind a blank, eyes red and sore.
Perhaps he needs this indication
Of my unceasing dedication,
To this, my chosen avocation.
In truth, I think it's in his head
To come when most of night has fled,
And I've given up and gone to bed.
8/28/83
**Published in The Advocate, 1993**
Labels: donovan baldwin, Edgar Allan Poe, poem, poetry, The Raven
Saturday, January 18, 2025
POEM - WE CANNOT FIND THE SINGER
We've searched and all agree.
He's gone, his cloak on river bank
His lyre beside a tree."
One by one they nodded, said,
"His recent songs were sad,
But once they kept us dancing,
Full of life, so warm and glad."
They never knew the sorrow,
That the singer bore within,
The sad dreams that beset him,
Not betrayed by happy grin.
Year by year the darkness grew
His Muse dimmed and went away,
Light and color faded slowly
'Til he only saw in gray.
Still he sang for other's gladness,
As his happiness grew dim,
Hastened by the knowledge,
That no one sang for him.
Then came the day the singer
No longer could be found,
Just his lyre beside a tree,
His coat upon the ground.
If you enjoy a singer's song,
Accept it and be glad.
Just remember that the singer's heart,
Might within be dark and sad.
One thing that may give happiness,
To a soul that's growing dim,
Is knowing that somewhere someone,
May sing a song for him.
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Labels: donovan baldwin, poem, poetry, sadness, singer
Friday, January 17, 2025
POEM - WHERE HAVE YOU BURIED THE POET?
 |
| Painting: All Souls’ Day: Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller and Franz Skarbina |
Asked the lady solemn and grave.
"Madam, we're sad to tell you,
There wasn't that much to save.
"
"Where have you buried the poet,
Where does his headstone stand?"
"Madam, we're sorry to tell you,
He's not buried in holy land"
"Where have you buried the poet,
Serene valley or pleasant hill?"
"Madam, we don't remember him,
Since his pen's been so cold and still."
"Where have you buried the poet,
His bones, where are they interred?"
"Madam, all that remained was a box
Of his papers with every word."
"Where have you buried the poet?
I've come far to honor his name."
"Madam, we've all forgotten,
And there's only ourselves to blame."
= = = = = = =
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Thursday, January 16, 2025
ESSAY - ARE YOU A WRITER? DO YOU FEEL THIS WAY?
If I keep typing, something of value will come out.
Seriously, baseball players are considered great hitters if they get hits about 30% of their times at bat.
Writers take heed.
Also, I don't "expect" to get rich from writing. I do it because I have to.
I have never been paid a penny for anything I have written, although I HAVE been "paid" in copies of publications in which my poems appeared, I don't count manuals and reports written as part of a (ick) job for which I received a paycheck.
I write because I have to.
If I miss a day, sometimes an hour, I begin to feel myself somehow a failure.
It's funny, the "quality" of what I write seldom affects how I feel about my "writing". I might look down on a given piece, or feel that I'm in a bit of a rut, or, missed the mark, but, when I look back over time, I'm happiest that I kept writing.
Are you a writer?
Here's a test.
Did you write something today?
Yesterday?
Going to write tomorrow?
Two out of three makes it an 80% chance, give or take an error factor of 20, that you are.
Write on!!!
Labels: donovan baldwin, poems, poetry, writer, writing
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
POEM - HISTORY AND FUTURE
Two different questions,
Yet, two sides of one coin,
Perhaps, for,
So much of existence,
Must,
For we humans,
Be explained...
In its origins and antecedents,
Which change with new knowledge.
And our never-ending
Predictions and expectations.
Labels: donovan baldwin, human psychology, poem, poetry
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
POEM - AS IF THE MOON WERE WINE
Watched bright hours passing by
The floating of the cotton clouds
Upon the bright blue sky.
Came the night my love appeared
And with silver she did shine,
I sipped love from her tender cup,
As if the moon were wine.
Labels: donovan baldwin, moon, poem, poetry, wine
ESSAY - EDWARD LYNCH MY ANCESTOR? I THINK NOT.
Here's ONE reason I don't get my news from social media...Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Signer Of The Declaration
Of Independence.
"John Thomas Edward Lynch, Jr, Capt signer of Declaration of Independence, Delegate to Continental Congress 1776 Capt in First South Carolina Regiment"
And, they have gone on to show him married to a lady named Margaret Allison and, with her, the father of several children.
Problem is, that Lynch, specifically, Thomas Lynch, Jr., who was the ONLY Lynch to sign the Declaration of Independence, died childless. He AND his wife, Elizabeth Shubrick, NOT Ms. Allison, were lost at sea... a couple of years BEFORE their supposed progeny could have been conceived... much less born.
Now, the historical data is there for ANYBODY to read. The logic and math is simple enough for ANYBODY to figure out... yet...
Many people are not only proudly proclaiming this patently incorrect data as proof of their esteemed ancestry, BUT, since they are on Ancestry.com, PAYING for the privilege, AND, in the meantime, failing to find out who their ancestors REALLY are.
My ancestor is named Edward Lynch (I think), and I don't know a whole lot about him yet, except that HE seems to have been married to Margaret Allison. But, something I DO know is that while he did NOT sign the Declaration of Independence, he, and his family DID help build America, and I'm good with that.
Labels: ancestry, donovan baldwin, edward lynch, genealogy, signer of the declaration of independence
Monday, January 13, 2025
ARTICLE - MIND BODY CONNECTION
Here's a breakdown:
-
How it works:
- Mind influences body:
- Stress response: When we experience stress, our minds perceive it as a threat. This triggers the "fight-or-flight" response, leading to physical changes like increased heart rate, rapid breathing, muscle tension, and the release of stress hormones like cortisol.
- Immune system: Chronic stress can weaken the immune system, making us more susceptible to illness.
- Digestive issues: Stress can disrupt digestion, leading to problems like irritable bowel syndrome.
- Sleep disturbances: Anxiety and worry can interfere with sleep patterns.
- Body influences mind:
- Physical sensations: Pain, fatigue, and other physical symptoms can significantly impact our mood and mental well-being.
- Exercise: Physical activity releases endorphins, which have mood-boosting effects.
- Sleep: Sufficient sleep is crucial for cognitive function, emotional regulation, and overall mental health.
- Mind influences body:
-
Strengthening the mind-body connection:
- Mindfulness and meditation: These practices help to calm the mind, reduce stress, and increase self-awareness.
- Yoga and tai chi: These mind-body exercises combine physical movement with deep breathing and mindfulness.
- Deep breathing exercises: Simple breathing techniques can help to reduce stress and promote relaxation.
- Spending time in nature: Connecting with nature has been shown to have numerous mental and physical health benefits.
- Prioritizing sleep: Aim for 7-9 hours of quality sleep per night.
- Regular exercise: Engage in regular physical activity, such as walking, running, or swimming.
- Healthy diet: Nourishing your body with whole foods can improve your overall health and well-being.
Key takeaway: Recognizing the mind-body connection is crucial for overall health and well-being. By cultivating practices that nurture both our mental and physical health, we can improve our quality of life and enhance our overall resilience.
Disclaimer: This information is for general knowledge and informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Consult with a healthcare professional for any health concerns.
Labels: digestion, exercise, fight-or-flight, meditation, mind-body connection, mindfulness, stress
