The Meaning of the Star Spangled Banner

Words take meanings. Songs take on lightning. Anthems speak for the dead. The Banner captures the flag at dawns light over Ft  Mchenry. It captures the fog and the darkness and Francis Scott Key on the rolling battleship. It captures the existence  of the land of the free and the home of the brave even after the shelling by the British. It captures the cold bloody footprints of Valley Forge and the crossing of the icy Potomac by Washington during the Revolution. Then it is the glare of the burning of Washington during the war of 1812 with the flag hidden and the government on the run.

It is the men who charged up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt and died before they took three steps. It is the men in the trenches of World War I rising up to fall inches from their trench and dying in a foreign land. It is the men who came home without legs and arms and the men who never came home in the Civil War. It is all the men and women black and white who died to abolish slavery.

And then it is the GI's hitting the beach at Normandy and dying in the surf. The men who had just come through a Great Depression and then died before they were twenty. It is the hundreds of thousands who perished in the morning light of D Day liberating Europe from the Nazis . It is the Vietnam vets who came back and kissed the tarmac after being prisoners of war for years. It is the graves at Arlington, the hollowed out eyes of Shiloh.

It is a willingness of the heart.
William Hazelgrove
Forging a President

Everything We Love and Hate About The Superbowl

What a game. I mean what a game. Doesn't matter what side you are on be you a Patriot or Seahawk fan that was a game for the books. And in that way the Superbowl was exactly what it was supposed to be. A game between the two very best teams. And it was. And of course we had to endure everything else that is the Superbowl. Take the commercials. Was it me but what happened to the funny commercials. Even GoDaddy went serious instead of bawdy.

I mean I know the NFL is remaking their image but did we have to sit through all those bad novels? What was the dad commercial all about. Or dad commercials. Be a good dad and drive a Nissan. Or the moody music commercials that went on and on and then ended up being about a truck or Budweiser. Or what about the girl commercials. Well I guess the NFL does have a domestic abuse problem. But I really felt like I was being given moral lessons between watching grown men try and destroy each other.

Katy Perry. Well she did ride around on a rocket swing. That was different. Poor Lenny Kravitz. One song that wasn't even his and you couldn't hear his guitar. But who were the rappers? They came out and took over the middle of the show. Maybe that was to give Katy time to get on her swing and sing about Fireworks. After the beach number with the singing sharks it had to get better.

And of course the fight at the end between the football players. That sure took it down a notch. You have to wonder what the rest of the world thinks about the Superbowl. Maybe they are like us. Awed. Amazed. Disgusted. Confused. Entertained. Sex and pickups and beer and commercials that strive to be art when they are very much commerce. I cant wait until next year.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

How Stupid Are We?

I really didn't  get it. I mean why would you really want some monster gun to hunt a deer. It's like minting a trillion dollar coin and putting it in the US mint. Makes no sense right? Why does the NRA really care if you can tear a fifty five gallon drum in two with your Uzi. But then you start to look at at in a different way. You don't  have to go far. Just put your ear to the ground and listen to the buzz. Wayne LaPierre and the boys want these guns to fight the government. Huh. So you mean that we should let them keep these guns so when the shit goes down they will have the necessary firepower? Exactly. Duh.

So that means  he NRA is a front much like the IRA. They are a front for all these shadowy organization who want to have as much firepower as possible? Which means they are really a seditious organization hiding under the Second Amendment. How conspiratorial. How bizarre. How Jesse Ventura. And yet we are left with this odd situation of a bunch of people who really want to keep military assault weapons. Lets look at our history.

Right to bear arms. Right to revolution. But of course we don't want to plant the seeds of our destruction. We sure didn't let the Japanese or the Germans have guns. Nope. That was against the law. But these "Patriots" are just fine. Sure. Give them as much ammo and guns as they need to you know fight the United States. Land of the free. Land of the extremists. Just watch a couple YouTube videos and you will see what is really going on.

So we are back to where we started. If the stated reason people want to have these assault weapons is to fight the government  then you cant blame the government for being a little nervous about giving them the weapons. I mean how stupid do some people think we are? Looking across the current landscape of three hundred million guns....

Pretty stupid.

www.billhazelgrove.com