christopherbollinger
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Inter(less than)stellar
Interstellar A film by Christopher Nolan I was going to write something very detailed and profound about Interstellar immediately after seeing it. I loved the movie. I loved Matthew McConaughey and his motley crew’s mission to save the human race. I just feel that what I saw wasn’t what I wanted to see. Years of…
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Again?
The alarm went off again a brand new morning welcomed by NPR. On the news, another shooting somewhere nearby perhaps a baby is dead, or a lunchroom full of bright-faced teenagers; does the carnage belong to an elementary school or a military base? Is it a black man shot without cause in the face? Will…
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the Salk Vaccine
Suspended ruefully in its own shine an object of vast proportion, it heaves forth light in all spectrums gamma, ultraviolet, radio spinning off photons to travel 4 or 5 or 6 million million miles across infinity settling on satellites and gas giants on our own blue-green world. Its hydrogen fusing in a core unseen the…
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1989 (Birthday)
This poem was written for my step-son Josh for his 25th birthday: Hirohito, Emperor Showa goes and dies, some Eastern gods fail no matter where the sun rise sizes up the island chains, and cold January rains. To see in time a new reign too from the USA, with a Vice President shallowing in the…
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A Poetry Reading…
These are my poems, “Higher, Orville, Higher!” and “I Hadn’t Cried in 20 Years” recorded by new as the duet they were intended to be:
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“I Hadn’t Cried in Twenty Years”
Walking through the science museum in Kensington, you stop once more in front of the stack of wrought iron and intricately machined cogs and gears of Mr. Babbage’s computing engine and wonder what he would think of this modern world of vacuum tubes and television. Often, as you’d wander down the marble halls, you’d look…
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“Higher, Orville, Higher!”
The aluminum cooled engine sputtered to life and amid the twangs of warping wings and pings of sweating muslin the airplane took off into the sky. Below, the cow pasture with it’s animal reek and tufts of overgrown grass longing for the same said cows, shrank into a bland smudge from 350 feet above. In…
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U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men
As always, Three Laws Safe®
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Armistice Day
The sky is a wonderful blue and the air is just the right touch of cool for November. Southern California days in the lateness of the year are a pleasure – which makes this parade exhilarating instead of tiring. Armistice Day, 1924! We came back from France changed, my old self, dead. I hardly remember…
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I Remember Venice…
I remember Venice and the stucco homes along the canals. I remember coastlines of soft sand and people arrayed along them as far as could be seen; a warm summer day was a beach day. The weather could be comfortable even in August, and when I was a child water, drinking water, flowed freely over…
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Brian Wilson
I remember California sand soft, moist, under my bare feet. That tugging pull of the ocean, Pacific green and cold on my ankles, eroding the foundations on which I stood. Out there, under bright sun and royal blue skies, is the mythology of the surfer and the beach bum and the casual swimmer. I collected…
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Tacoma Trip Photo Essay
My wife and I recently had the pleasure of visiting the second city to Seattle, Tacoma. All of the years we have lived in the Pacific Northwest and we had never been! My impressions of the city were extremely positive. Every person we came into contact with was extremely nice, from helpful locals with directions,…
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The 20th Century Never Ended
A petty crime committed in the street echoed loudly in this oppressive heat. Here outside the big city, boys in their teens are targeted without pity for the crime of being out and brown, the empowered police of this town are tasked to dispense justice true and swift, without suspense. Mercy…
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Dredgings From the Sketchbooks
Sharing some of the things I have in my sketchbooks:
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What Really Happened…
Eve looked slightly suspicious, “You’re telling me that eating something as simple as this fruit would give me, and by extension, all of my decedents-the knowledge of good and evil; notions which at this point I certainly have no conception of?” Lucifer looked her over from the crown of her wavy brown hair, looked into…
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Justice
Let’s not talk about retribution or what justice means, it is an ill-defined word. Let’s not talk about victims and the horror of what they experienced. Because, what in place of revenge can fill the empty, or be a measure of hope when nothing is repairable and all broken finality? So we punish with cages and the…
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IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
Its hot and muggy in this brick oven the gray painted walls tacky from the heat around the various small tables sit sweating men in Southern cotton and Northern wool. They haggle and argue and face off about the injustices that roil all English blood and come to the point, that independence from the Crown…
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What is and Should Never Be
This is a short “worst-case scenario” vision of America’s possible future. For an even more compelling and plausible take, please read Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right…
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Charles-Henri Sanson
(Place de la Révolution, 1793) 3000 people under him float on a sea of blood and sin; of them that went, all are left ahead. In his two fists grappling greasy hair and plunging neck lines crimson, this man Sanson executes the law of the land. In his red uniform designed to hide the…
The Numinous Cosmos 