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“The True Meaning of Christmas” by Brian Walters

The True Meaning of Christmas ~ A Poem by Brian Walters

In today’s day and time,
it’s easy to lose sight
of the true meaning of Christmas
and one special night.

Amidst the tinsel and glitter
of ribbons of gold,
we forget about the child
born on a night so cold.

When we go shopping
we ask “How much will it cost?”
Then the true meaning of Christmas
somehow becomes lost.

The children look for Santa
and his big red sleigh
and forget about the child
whose bed was made of hay.

In reality, when we look
into the night sky
we don’t see a sleigh
but a star burning bright and high.

A faithful reminder
of that night so long ago
and the child called Jesus
whose love the world would know.

December 25, 2013December 25, 2013 by allen0997

“A Christmas Carol” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A Christmas Carol ~ A Poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

The shepherds went their hasty way,
And found the lowly stable-shed
Where the Virgin-Mother lay:
And now they checked their eager tread,
For to the Babe, that at her bosom clung,
A Mother’s song the Virgin-Mother sung.

They told her how a glorious light,
Streaming from a heavenly throng.
Around them shone, suspending night!
While sweeter than a mother’s song,
Blest Angels heralded the Savior’s birth,
Glory to God on high! and Peace on Earth.

III

She listened to the tale divine,
And closer still the Babe she pressed:
And while she cried, the Babe is mine!
The milk rushed faster to her breast:
Joy rose within her, like a summer’s morn;
Peace, Peace on Earth! the Prince of Peace is born.

Thou Mother of the Prince of Peace,
Poor, simple, and of low estate!
That strife should vanish, battle cease,
O why should this thy soul elate?
Sweet Music’s loudest note, the Poet’s story,
Didst thou ne’er love to hear of fame and glory?

And is not War a youthful king,
A stately Hero clad in mail?
Beneath his footsteps laurels spring;
Him Earth’s majestic monarchs hail
Their friends, their playmate! and his bold bright eye
Compels the maiden’s love-confessing sigh.

Tell this in some more courtly scene,
To maids and youths in robes of state!
I am a woman poor and mean,
And wherefore is my soul elate.
War is a ruffian, all with guilt defiled,
That from the aged father’s tears his child!

VII

A murderous fiend, by fiends adored,
He kills the sire and starves the son;
The husband kills, and from her board
Steals all his widow’s toil had won;
Plunders God’s world of beauty; rends away
All safety from the night, all comfort from the day.

VIII

Then wisely is my soul elate,
That strife should vanish, battle cease:
I’m poor and of low estate,
The Mother of the Prince of Peace.
Joy rises in me, like a summer’s morn:
Peace, Peace on Earth! The Prince of Peace is born!

December 24, 2013December 24, 2013 by allen0997

“Christmas Bells” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Christmas Bells ~ A Classic American Poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

Till, ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The Carols drowned
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, goodwill to men!”

December 23, 2013December 24, 2013 by allen0997

American Hustle ~ A Capsule Movie Review

American Hustle ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

American Hustle lays bare all the tackiness of the 1970s. Irving Rosenfeld (played by Christian Bale) has the ugliest men’s hairdo of the year (it must be seen to be believed). He owns a chain of drycleaning stores, but his real enterprises are loan sharking and art forgery. He promises desperate people that he will try to get loans for them (these are people who can’t get loans anyplace else), but he doesn’t even try—he only takes his “non-refundable” fee of five thousand dollars and lies to them. His motto is that desperate people will believe what they want to believe.

When Irving meets Lady Edith Greenleaf (Amy Adams), an English woman with “London banking connections,” he has more than met his match. (She’s not English and her name is not Edith Greenleaf, but we don’t know that until later.) Edith is smart and just as conniving as Irving is. As a team, they can fleece millions from unsuspecting suckers. The two of them fall in love, but Irving has a problem: a volatile wife, Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), who says she will never divorce him because there has never been a divorce in her family. She has a son, Danny, whom Irving has adopted as his own. She uses Danny as leverage in her battles between herself and Irving. Appearances to the contrary, Rosalyn is smart and, although very odd, she has a streak of decency. She is, in a way, Irving’s conscience. It’s ironic that the two women in Irving’s life are both smarter than he is.

Enter Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), a hip young man with gold chains and permed hair. (He puts his hair up at night in little curlers.) Irving and Edith take him into their confidence; they believe he is one of them. When Richie finds out enough about Irving and Edith’s crooked enterprises, he reveals himself as an agent of the FBI. He threatens to expose them unless they will help him bring down the nest of vipers that is the New Jersey political machine. His target is one Carmine Polito, the mayor of Camden. Mayor Polito is interested in revitalizing and restoring Atlantic City and he doesn’t much care how corrupt the enterprise is. At this point, organized crime enters the scene. There are payoffs and bribes to be paid, some involving members of Congress and the U.S. Senate.

American Hustle is about human failings, such as greed and incompetence, but also about people’s willingness to be “conned,” even when all the indications are there that things are not what they appear to be. (“People believe what they want to believe.”) Although a fictional story, American Hustle is based on the Abscam scandal of the late 1970s. If scandal involving high-ranking members of government makes good material for movies, future filmmakers will have a mother lode of material to draw from, what with current and ongoing government scandals. I don’t know about you, but I love seeing sleazy, self-serving politicians getting what they deserve.

December 21, 2013December 21, 2013 by allen0997

Dallas Buyers Club ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Dallas Buyers Club ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

Dallas Buyers Club is set the 1980s and is based on a true story. Hard-living Texas rodeo cowboy Ron Woodruff (played by Matthew McConaughey) finds himself very sick. When he is found to have AIDS as a result of his sexual promiscuity, he is given thirty days to live. He hears about a new drug called AZT that has been proven effective in tests with laboratory animals, but the problem with AZT is that it hasn’t been approved for use by humans. By the time it goes through all the government channels and is finally approved, it will be too late to help Ron and thousands of other AIDS patients who might benefit from it. Ron bribes a hospital employee to provide him with AZT, but after he has taken it for a while he finds it doesn’t do him any good.

From that point on, Ron is more resourceful than we might have given him credit for. He refuses to give up and die in a few weeks. He researches his disease (this is before the Internet) and discovers just what his limited options are. He travels to Mexico, where he might buy certain drugs that are not available in the U.S., and befriends an American doctor there who is willing to help him. He travels to Japan, Canada, Israel, and other countries, where he buys large quantities of the drugs, proteins, and vitamins that might help him and others. He is, of course, operating outside the law.

He establishes what becomes known as the Dallas Buyers Club. Instead of selling drugs to AID patients, he sells memberships that allow patients to draw from his stock of drugs whatever they need. The government is there to thwart him at every turn. If they can’t shut down his operation, they will get him for income tax evasion or any other trumped-up charge they can think of.

Other standout characters in Dallas Buyers Club include Raymond/Rayon (played by Jared Leto), a transsexual who dresses and acts like a woman (though still a man), with AIDS contracted through intravenous drug use. Ron is at first repelled by Rayon’s feminine behavior, but eventually they become friends and business partners of a sort. Eve Saks (played by Jennifer Garner) is a compassionate doctor who helps Ron and in doing so places her job and her standing in the medical community in jeopardy.

Dallas Buyers Club is grim, as stories about sick people who cannot get well always are, but it is a story that demonstrates the value of perseverance and of someone who is willing to operate outside the system. Whether Ron Woodruff is right or wrong in bucking the system, he is able to extend his own life, and the lives of others, far beyond what would have been possible through conventional methods.

December 19, 2013December 19, 2013 by allen0997

Three Christmas Poems of Langston Hughes

Three Christmas Poems by Langston Hughes

Shepherd’s Song at Christmas ~

Look there at the star!
I, among the least,
Will arise and take
A journey to the East.
But what shall I bring
As a present for the King?
What shall I bring to the Manger?
I will bring a song,
A song that I will sing,
In the Manger.
Watch out for my flocks,
Do not let them stray.
I am going on a journey
Far, far away.
But what shall I bring
As a present for the Child?
What shall I bring to the Manger?
I will bring a lamb,
Gentle, meek, and mild,
A lamb for the Child
In the Manger.
I’m just a shepherd boy,
Very poor I am—–
But I know there is
A King in Bethlehem.
What shall I bring
As a present just for Him?
What shall I bring to the Manger?
I will bring my heart
And give my heart to Him.
I will bring my heart
To the Manger.

Merry Christmas (Published in 1930) ~

Merry Christmas, China
From the gun-boats in the river,
Ten-inch shells for Christmas gifts,
And peace on earth forever.
Merry Christmas, India,
To Gandhi in his cell,
From righteous Christian England,
Ring out, bright Christmas bell!
Ring Merry Christmas, Africa,
From Cairo to the Cape!
Ring Hallehuiah! Praise the Lord!
(For murder and rape.)
Ring Merry Christmas, Haiti!
(And drown the voodoo drums –
We’ll rob you to the Christian hymns
Until the next Christ comes.)
Ring Merry Christmas, Cuba!
(While Yankee domination
Keeps a nice fat president
In a little half-starved nation.)
And to you down-and-outers,
(“Due to economic laws”)
Oh, eat, drink, and be merry
With a bread-line Santa Claus –
While all the world hails Christmas,
While all the church bells sway!
While, better still, the Christian guns
Proclaim this joyous day!
While holy steel that makes us strong
Spits forth a mighty Yuletide song:
SHOOT Merry Christmas everywhere!
Let Merry Christmas GAS the air!

Christmas Eve: Nearing Midnight In New York ~

The Christmas trees are almost all sold
And the ones that are left go cheap
The children almost all over town
Have almost gone to sleep.

The skyscraper lights on Christmas Eve
Have almost all gone out
There’s very little traffic
Almost no one about.

Our town’s almost as quiet
As Bethlehem must have been
Before a sudden angel chorus
Sang PEACE ON EARTH
GOOD WILL TO MEN!

Our old Statue of Liberty
Looks down almost with a smile
As the Island of Manhattan
Awaits the morning of the Child.

December 14, 2013December 15, 2013 by allen0997

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug ~ A Capsule Movie Review

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

The epic quest begun in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (released one year ago at this time) is continued in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which is part two in The Hobbit trilogy. The third part, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, will be released in December of next year.

As you recall (or maybe you don’t), twelve dwarves are on their way to reclaim their homeland and their gold from a very large, flying, fire-breathing dragon sleeping inside a mountain. They have enlisted the aid of Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, who is a burglar. Once they get to the mountain, they will need Bilbo to use his skills to get a large white stone, called the Arkanstone, from the extravagant piles of gold and riches the dragon stands guard over inside the mountain. (It seems they need the stone to carry out their plans.) The dragon is sleeping most of the time, but if anybody tries to mess with his riches, he is sure to wake up and be very unpleasant.

On their long journey to the mountain, the dwarves encounter Orcs, a warlike race of creatures who want to kill them. The elves don’t like dwarves, either, but they assist the dwarves because they dislike Orcs even more. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend.) In one standout scene, the dwarves are captured by giant spiders who wrap them in cocoons (presumably to keep them as a snack for a later time). The elves assist the dwarves to escape the spiders, as does Bilbo. Time and again, Bilbo displays unexpected bravery and resourcefulness. When the dwarves are trying to open the door into the mountain where the gold is, which, they are told, will open with a key by the last light of the day, Bilbo figures out that the door will open (after the dwarves have given up) by the light of the moon rather than the sun. Where would they be without Bilbo?

At the end of The Desolation of Smaug, Bilbo and the dwarves have inadvertently unleashed the death-dealing dragon on Middle Earth. As the dragon flies off to wreak all kinds of havoc, Bilbo says, “What have we done?” We’ll have to wait until December 2014 to find out.

The trilogy is based, of course, on books by J.R.R. Tolkien, the premier fantasy writer of the twentieth century. I’m not a big fan of this kind of fantasy, but these movies are beautifully made in 3D and well worth seeing. Even if you don’t care that much for the story and think you have had your fill of hobbits, dwarves, elves, and wizards, there’s no more beautiful place to visit than Middle Earth.

December 13, 2013December 14, 2013 by allen0997

It was not death, for I stood up ~ Emily Dickinson

It was not death, for I stood up ~ A classic American poem by Emily Dickinson (Born on this day, December 10, in 1830.)

It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down;
It was not night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues, for noon.

It was not frost, for on my flesh
I felt siroccos crawl,
Nor fire, for just my marble feet
Could keep a chancel cool.

And yet it tasted like them all;
The figures I have seen
Set orderly, for burial,
Reminded me of mine,

As if my life were shaven
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key;
And I was like midnight, some,

When everything that ticked has stopped,
And space stares, all around,
Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,
Repeal the beating ground.

But most like chaos,–stopless, cool,
Without a chance or spar,–
Or even a report of land
To justify despair.

December 10, 2013December 11, 2013 by allen0997

Boardwalk Empire, Season Four ~ A Capsule Review

Boardwalk Empire, Season Four ~ A Capsule Review by Allen Kopp

Boardwalk Empire on HBO is the best show on television. Of course, I might be a little prejudiced in that opinion because it’s the only show I watch. It just completed its fourth season, I’ve seen every episode, and I think it’s better than ever. It’s involving, beautifully written and beautifully played. The characters are well-rounded and believable. For the most part they are not “good” people, but human. We understand their jealousy, greed, hatred, desire, revenge, love, or whatever it is that motivates them. We don’t want to be like them (could any of us get away with it?), but we love watching them, including their killing without remorse. How bad can a person be? Apparently there’s no limit.

And then there’s the “look” of the show. Obviously a lot of research has gone into getting each detail historically accurate for the period. Each scene is beautifully appointed and you wonder how they can create those fabulous sets, some of which are just seen for a few seconds. (Is it all computer-generated illusion?) The music is all from the period and there’s lots of it and it always fits the scene. So, even if you don’t like the story, it’s a feast for the eyes and ears, especially if you, like me, find the 1920s fascinating.

There were some interesting developments in season four. Gillian Darmody, that youthful grandmother, is addicted to heroin. The new man in her life, Roy Phillips (who isn’t what he appears to be), helps her kick the habit. While she is fighting for custody of her grandson, Tommy, a very bad thing that she has done in one of the earlier seasons catches up with her. Nucky Thompson runs a nightclub, The Onyx Club, with his business partner Chalky White (whites only, black performers). Daughter Maitland, a singer at the club, is a protégé of the mysterious Dr. Narcisse, another man who isn’t what he appears to be. Dr. Narcisse and Chalky White are rivals (they both want the same things). When Chalky begins an adulterous affair with Daughter Maitland, it intensifies the dislike between the two men. Nucky has a new love interest, Sally Wheet, whom he meets in Florida when he is there on “business.” His wife, Margaret, has receded into the background with her two children and just plays a minimal part in season four. Nucky’s nephew, Will, accidentally kills a fellow student in college when a prank goes too far. When Will is caught, Nucky uses his considerable influence to get him off. Will doesn’t want to go to school but wants to be a gangster like his father and his uncle.

Among those who meet their ends in season four are Mr. Purnsley, Maybelle White, Agent Knox, Dean O’Banion, Frank Capone, and a host of minor characters. Eddie Kessler, Nucky’s faithful valet, commits suicide when he is bullied by two federal agents into giving an insignificant confession against Nucky. So long, Eddie!

And then there’s Richard Harrow. From the first time he appears in season one in what was supposed to be a minor role, he dominates every scene he’s in with his quiet dignity. After we see him a couple of times, we see beneath the tin mask he wears that hides his horribly disfigured face. He has lived through the horrors of war and returns to a world in which he has no place. For a while he is a hired killer but that isn’t really who he is. He wants nothing more than to have a family and to be normal. When he dies at the end of season four, it’s for love. Not for romantic love—that would be too silly—but for a more profound kind of love. As he’s dying, he sees himself with his handsome face intact, returning “home” to those who love him. A tragic hero in the end. Does TV get any better than this?

November 30, 2013December 3, 2013 by allen0997

Give Thanks

Giving Thanks on This Day ~

~~~

James 1:17 ~
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

~~~

Psalms 100:4 ~
Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise: be thankful unto Him, and bless His name.

~~~

Philippians 4:6 ~
Do not fret or have any anxiety about anything, but in every circumstance and in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, continue to make your wants known to God.

~~~

November 28, 2013 by allen0997

Literary Fictions

Author: allen0997