Dear God: The Trump Years i

23 December 2016

Prairie Chapel Ranch
Crawford
Texas
U.S.A.

G,

How long has it been since we chewed the fat? Too long, I reckoning. But this is how it is God—I have been busy. You know how it is, it is one thing to find God but sometimes you have to go away, count the stock and not let Him find you. So I let things settle for a while. Let you do your thing and kept my suggestions and advice to myself. Not that I think you did much wrong in that time. In fact in the beginning Laura and I reckoned you did real well in fact. Bit too much rope there for President Obama maybe but hey look at the shoes he had to fill!!! So you kept him on a loose lasso. Nothing wrong with that. But you kinda came unstuck there at the end didn’t you? Now I am not telling you how to do your job God, but you have to understand what politics is about in the United States and clearly you don’t have a fat buffalos turd of an idea of what goes on in our neck of the woods. You see, I don’t know how you run things up there, but this is how it is done down here. Think of it as a ranch. We only profit if we got good breeding stock. Big peckers. That’s what we look for in a President. You could look no further than Daddy and me for examples. We had the peckers. We had the breeding. Prime stock. And if you hadn’t got it wrong we would have had another Bush, Brother Jeb, in the White House. But, no you had to somehow persuade Donald Trump to throw his Stetson into the ring. What was you thinking? The man has got no class. He is rattier than gopher on heat. He ain't fit to walk in the footsteps of great Presidents like myself. And it is not me that is saying that, it is all my friends. They both agree that the world had gone downhill since my presidency and now we have reached the bottom of the gulch. You know that story you wrote up in the old testament about the burning of the bush? Well, that just the sure as heck is what you just done. You have burnt up my legacy. All the good things I did for the greatest country in the world, you are about to turn to bbq fodder. The Father, the Son and the Holy Toast! Now, I am not bitching at ya here. Laura reminds me of the old saying That God Moves in Mysterious Ways. And I can understand that you have your reasons for some of the things you done, tho you haven’t yet explained to me the Kardashians. But Donald Trump????? There was a time when you would have run that past me first. I guess we are not talking much these days. Maybe I will write to you again. I don’t know. All I can say is that right now, at this point of time, God, I am disappointed in you.

One day at a time,
GWB (President).
 

Dancing in the Shadows

Like most people of my generation, I spent my early teen years loving The Beatles. Like many, I also embraced the grittier Rolling Stones. Like some, I discovered and identified with Bob Dylan, but that was later in my teens and only after Dylan was electrified and backed by a remarkable band called—well—The Band.
The Band comprised a group of five highly accomplished musicians, four of them Canadian and one from Arkansas. They are mostly known these days for the songs of their lead writer and guitarist, Robbie Robertson—among them: The Weight, The Night They Drove of Dixie Down and Up on Cripple Creek. Theirs was a fusion of rock ‘n roll and roots. Nobody did it better then or have been eclipsed since. Sadly, all but two of the group—Robertson and keyboardist Garth Hudson—are dead now. Dylan lives on—kind of.
Hudson toured New Zealand recently, along with The Band’s producer John Simon. I attended the Auckland concert, promoted as the 40th celebration of The Band’s legendary last concert (with Robertson) The Last Waltz. The Aotea Centre wasn’t full, a last minute change from the original and smaller Civic saw to that. But, there were enough Band devotees there to provide the atmosphere and they were articulate, wise, and expectant.
You see, none of us were there for the music. We had heard it all, many times. All of us had watched The Last Waltz so often we knew every nuance (yes, Clapton did break his guitar strap and, yes, that is cocaine up Neil Young’s nose) and every lyric line. No matter how accomplished the (mainly) New Zealand musicians were, and they were, we were not there for the music. We were there for the man. We were there to see Hudson. To be simply in the same room.
Hudson did perform, beautifully and brilliantly. But in the end that was a bonus. If Hudson had simply shuffled onto the stage, it would likely have been enough. It was enough for him—for us—to be there. It would not happen again. Soon, sadly, there will be of the original Band only Robertson.  And that is little more than a sad sour, slightly bitter, aftertaste.
Bill English is not that. Bill English will do well. I doubt he will be great. He has greatness thrust upon him, but it is not a mantle that fits and will soon be consigned to a plastic dry-cleaning bag in a back wardrobe. Instead, Bill English will do his best in his quiet, mannered manner. He knows he will live in the perpetual shadow of his predecessor, and he knows there is little he can do about that. It is enough, I think he thinks, to be given a second chance, and this time against a comparatively weak opposition. He will take that chance.
English will never be another John Key. He accepts that. We should too. There will also never be another Band. We Band fans know that too.  John Key left us with Bill English. The Band left us with Ronnie Robertson. We now dance among the shadows where there was once so much light…so much light.