Symphony I Half my life is past Without a memory Planting carrots in a garden Drawing pictures of houses Making holes in the dirt and my knees Swinging in swings and climbing on ladders Singing simple melodies under an ice cream sky Hour after hour watching the clock in classroom Make one step backward before striking the time Flying on my bike past the chain link fences Until that moment when sun went down and I awakened naked II And then went so slowly towards the unrelenting goal Reading steinbeck and stanlee, singing in anger Notes chained by convention and sent to perdition empty handed Half...

I have to confess that I took a certain amount of pleasure in watching the downfall of the evangelical preacher Ted Haggard. I have serious problems with people who try to tell other people how to live from the beginning, but the fact that he has been such an outspoken opponent of gay rights, and the fact that he was nailed for engaging in gay sex with a male prostitute just makes everything so much better. There was a reason that Jesus told us not to judge one another. It always comes back to bite you in the ass. Jesus was always after the priests and scribes of his days for being hypocrites....

I will be signing copies of my book, Natural Selection, at the Maritime Research Center and Nautical Shop in San Pedro on Saturday, November 7th, from 2.00 PM to 4.00 PM.  I will read some selections from the book, maybe sing a song or two, perhaps read a poem, so come and see.  It should be an interesting afternoon for you if you live in the South Bay area of Los Angeles.  Come and get your copy of the book signed.  What?  You don’t have a copy?  Then go to the link on the lower right hand side and order one from Amazon.com!  There will also be copies available for sale at the signing...

Faith is a fine invention For gentlemen who see; But Microscopes are prudent In an emergency.—Emily Dickinson This is how most of us see faith.  We want to believe, but we want to have proof.  I guess that’s why so many of us can relate to the story of Doubting Thomas, the disciple who refused to believe in the risen Christ until he could feel the crucifixion wounds on Christ’s body.  It’s hard to believe when everything you know and everything you see tells you otherwise.  It must be very hard for blind people to believe in anything, don’t you think? I mean, assuming that I am blind,...

People complain when they see folks playing God.  Some folks just don’t like it when others practice birth control, or consider euthanasia, or even take medicine for that matter, depending on the religion.  They don’t want us to mess with stem cells.  They say we shouldn’t play God. At the same time, those same people have no problem playing God when it comes to sitting in judgement over others.  Playing God  never comes up when they talk about capital punishment, or blowing up abortion clinics.  But in fact, we play God all the time. Doctors and nurses play God every day.  Certainly,...

After people got a chance to see Bruce Lee way back in the 70s, everybody wanted to learn kung fu.  Kung fu schools started to sprout up everywhere.  That’s when our kung fu school started.  Back then, we were located in a large space in Venice, California.  Every class had more than twenty students.   The place was packed.  Today, we’re lucky to have five or six people there.  There are two reasons for this. For one thing, martial arts seem to go in fads.  In the 60s, it was all karate, thanks to Ed Parker and the Green Hornet (well, actually Kato, played by Bruce Lee, on the Hornet). ...

There is this really wonderful story about a mother teaching her daughter how to cook a roast beef.  The mother patiently shows the daughter how to tenderize the meat and how to prepare it for roasting.  She shows her to take the roast and cut off the two ends before putting it in the roasting pan.  The daughter asked her mother why the two ends of the roast should be cut off.  Mother answered that she didn’t know, but that was how HER mother had taught her to do it. Sometime later, at a family gathering, the daughter, still curious, asked her grandmother, “Grandma, why do you cut off the...

Let me tell you something about music.  There are rules to music.  At least, there are rules to the kind of music we play in our culture.  There are no real rules to music; play anything you want.  But, if you want the notes to sound like Western Euro-centric music, you have to follow certain rules, such as using that eight note octave scale.  Start using a different scale, and your music sounds like it came from somewhere else, from some other culture. We grew up with our music, whether it was Bach or the Beatles, we got used to it.  It has become a part of us.  And it has an effect on...

My first novel, Natural Selection, has just become available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.  Natural Selection is a murder mystery set in the Los Angeles Harbor area.  It takes place in the fictional community of Harbor Park.  It is the story of a detective on the trail of a serial killer who has targeted gang families for execution.  Follow the links below to get your copy.  I hope you like it. Barnes and Noble: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Natural-Selection/Stephen-Wilson/e/9781432746100/?itm=1&usri=1 Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Selection-Stephen-Wilson/dp/1432746103/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253576135&sr=8-1 Or...

It’s been very interesting to hear some people complaining about the idea of paying for the health care costs of illegal aliens, and even of legal aliens, for that matter.  I guess it doesn’t occur to those folks that it might not be a good idea to have millions of sick people walking around passing their illnesses onto us.  Or that we’ll still end up paying for them when they end of up having to go to the emergency room for treatment, which bogs down the trauma centers and makes health care more expensive for all of us.  You can only judge a society by how it treats its weakest members. ...