What Goes Around...

—Poetry by Michael Ceraolo, South Euclid, OH
—Public Domain Photos by Joseph Nolan, Stockton, CA

Six Poems from the Sequence Entitled,  

Some Afternoons and Evenings

January 22, 1807

Today the President sent a message to Congress,
telling, in far from his usual felicitous prose,
of an alleged treasonous plot
that had fortunately been thwarted
He refused to divulge any names
"except that of the principal actor,"
Aaron Burr,
"whose guilt is placed beyond question"
He vowed the prosecution would
"receive here its proper direction"
(by him),
              and
                     he lived up to that vow
Though he was unsuccessful with the prosecutions,
he was successful in finishing off Burr
as a rival to the continuation of the Virginia Dynasty

 

 

 

 

July 4, 1855

About seven weeks before today
an author registered his book's title with a court clerk to receive copyright,
though the title wouldn't appear as such in the book published today,
a book of ninety-six pages consisting of twelve poems and a prose introduction
more poetic that any patriotic address given this day:
"The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem",
one that "awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it"
And he would write in the first poem of the book,
perhaps speaking of the United States as well as of himself,
answering the scoffers who pointed out contradictions,
that he (and they) did indeed contradict themselves
because they were large and contained multitudes

 

 

 

Everyone wearing a mask while attending a football

game, flu epidemic of 1918

 

September 17, 1920

The promoters of the Ohio League
wanted to expand the league's reach,
                                                       so
they sent invitations to attend a meeting on this date
to promoters in several other states
Fifteen men representing eleven different cities
(one of the eleven, Massillon, Ohio,
would not field a team)
accepted the invitation,
                                   too many
to fit comfortably in an office,
                                            so
the meeting was moved to the showroom
of Ralph Hay's Hupmobile dealership
in Canton, Ohio,
                          and at the meeting
they formed the American Professional Football Association
Four other teams would join later that year,
and two years later the Association
would change its name to the National Football League
The entry fee was one hundred dollars
Only two of the teams in that first season
are still here a hundred years later to see
what a colossus was birthed that day

 

 

 

Waiting at Al Capone's Food Line, 1939

(Today the waiting is done in cars...)

 

 

March 9, 1937

"I want—
as all Americans want—
an independent judiciary"
                                      and thus the charge that
"I am seeking to 'pack the Supreme Court'
                                                                is baseless:
"This plan of mine is no attack on the Court"
It is to "take action to save
the Constitution from the Court
and the Court from itself"
"It seeks to maintain the federal bench in full vigor"
by appointing an additional judge
for every judge seventy or older
who decides not to retire

                                       And
thus an unhealthy cripple in his mid-50s
deemed himself the sole judge of others' vigor;
he was not ceded this authority,
wouldn't become a dictator just yet

 

 

 

Rum Runners

 

 

November 28, 1942

The number-one-ranked college football team,
the Boston College Eagles,
was a twenty-eight-point favorite over their archrival,
the Holy Cross Crusaders
But in the biggest upset ever
the Crusaders won, 55-12,
causing the Eagles to cancel the victory party
scheduled that evening at a local supper club,
leaving them, the seniors especially,
time to wonder how soon they'd be fighting in the war
The sting that competitors feel when they lose
was lessened by reading in the next day's papers
of the hundred killed in the fire
at the Cocoanut Grove,
                                   where
the victory party was to have taken place

 

 

 

 
 

November 12, 1999

"the Glass-Steagall law
is no longer appropriate
for the economy in which we live"
                                                  and
"tearing down these antiquated laws"
"is a day we can celebrate
as an American day":  we are
"making a fundamental and historic change
in the way we operate our financial institutions"

The new law "will guarantee that our financial system
will continue to meet the needs of underserved communities"
For far too long, many in those communities
have been denied the same chance to be cheated
as those in better-served communities
No longer

And so it came to pass that many
(thousands?  millions?)
finally got the chance to be cheated

______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.

—Aldous Huxley

______________________

—Medusa, with our thanks to Michael Ceraolo for some contributions from the collection he’s currently working on, with its reverberations from the past into the present, and vice versa!

 

 

Comics Section, 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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