Tuesday, February 04, 2025
POEM - FAVORITES
My favorite books,
All especially revered
Friends and family,
Have pages turned so often,
They are soft, smooth-cornered,
Marked with my touches,
If not seen, remembered,
Upon pages heavy with underlines,
Notes in the margins,
Never far from
Hand or head or heart.
Closer still,
Remembered, recalled,
More deeply, more often,
Marked more tenderly,
By underlines and notes
Made by my heart,
Are you,
Oh, my Love.
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Labels: books, donovan baldwin, love, poem, poetry
Monday, February 03, 2025
COMMENT - NEWS
To a "genuine" news organization, "news" is a piece of information that catches the eye or ear of the customer or potential customer. Their continued existence depends on keeping and expanding this group.
Therefore the news that sparks interest is the news that is presented. Being "professional journalists", these reporters of news present it in a manner to provoke the most interest and response....usually in the form of outrage.
Just like "news photos" which have been set up or cropped so that a few people in one spot appear to be a mob taking over a city, written and spoken news is presented to give the appearance of something big happening when the actual event or utterance would normally mean little to most people in the ebb and flow of daily life.
To get people to read or listen to their news, professional news outlets create headlines that ignite interest and leave the customer wanting to know just what in the hell happened.
Most people don't make it past the headlines. They assume the headline to be the news, when it is often incomplete, misleading, and inflammatory.
Unfortunately, we cannot be everywhere observing every event ourselves, and have to trust professional news organizations to provide us with the information we need to make intelligent decisions.
Sadly, sometimes it seems they are too busy trying to stay in business and ahead of the competition to give rational representations of facts in an understandable manner so that we, the citizens, can make our own decisions based on reason and belief.
Don't even get me started on the untold number of "citizen journalists" expounding on the "news" without training or knowledge, but with tons of opinion and hubris, pick words and sentences out of "real news", and present it as fact in order to prove the validity of their position or belief.
In the land of the Internet, once a "fact", real or otherwise, hits the screen, it assumes a virtual life which can never be extinguished. Every day I see "news" that is either patently false or which has been massaged and manipulated to look worse than it is.
Every day, I get emails, and read comments on social media, from reasonable, reasonably intelligent, and well-meaning friends and relatives who have fallen for the headline and hype without bothering to research the facts.
I guess that in my way, I contribute to the problem by the fact that I have, in the past, "liked" or "shared" information which may or may not have been correct because I agreed with the intent, if not the facts. Recently, I have backed off from even that, which may be why I don't have so much to say...except when I type up long diatribes such as this.
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Labels: commentary, current events, donovan baldwin, journalism, news, opinion
Sunday, February 02, 2025
POEM - OLD HEIDELBERG CASTLE
BY DONOVAN BALDWIN
 |
| Heidelberg Castle |
Up on the hill stands the old broken fortress of Heidelberg.
In her dust-powdered wig from yesterday,
Still standing watch over her city,
Though bare, broken bricks show through, and
Sagging breastworks prove her youth's long past.
Far down, flows the cold, blue-gray water
Of the Neckar,
With the old, arched bridge,
Perhaps seen in postcards,
Showing it in sunlight,
But,
In my mind it is last seen
On a rainy April day.
As I turned to view the bridge,
Behind me,
The vine-entangled castle brooded,
About all the sad history she's endured.
She's been burned, you know, and
Damn near destroyed so many times.
Even so, she still watches over the city.
They say there's a curse on
The old Heidelberg castle,
But, he who laid the curse is long since dead...
Still, the old lady stands there,
Rain, sun, snow...
Watching over her city.
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Labels: castle, donovan baldwin, Heidelberg, poem, poetry
