Tag Archives: Joy

The Harms of Alcohol Advertising

15 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by in Alcohol, Blog, Health, Poetic Blog

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Alcohol1

-by Bill Watkins, alcoholic

I am writing as a plea to lawmakers and media outlets to urgently consider a ban on alcohol advertising for the good of our country.  The FTC allows alcohol’s self-regulating industry to pitch flammable liquid as drink to 28.4 percent under-21 viewership, making OUR CHILDREN collateral damage in this fight.  Alcohol as “drink” is more vice than product, responsible for the death of over 88,000 people a year in this country, third on the list of prevalent preventable killers in the U.S., after smoking and lifestyle.

Alcohol is a killer.  It almost killed me, and has killed many friends of mine.  I started drinking the toxin on my dad’s lap at age five, his last sip of bourbon.  Alcohol has been slapped together as a buddy to sports, sports watching and being a sports fan, gambling a neighbor to those.  But of those various activities only alcohol directly kills.  And yet we allow these ads to continue, pitching children; pitching alcoholics like me!  I worked hard to overcome this disease, checked out of the hospitals, went to Alcoholics Anonymous and got sober, ONLY TO COME HOME AND GET PITCHED ALCOHOL WHILE I WATCH MY FAVORITE SPORTS TEAMS AND ATHLETES COMPETE ON TELEVISION.

What kind of world allows this?  Richard Nixon had a mountain of faults and committed crimes in office, but even he saw the value in curbing killer cigarettes in 1970, banning their TV and radio ads by signing a congressional ban.  It seems that since the insanity of Prohibition, alcohol is getting a free pass to self-regulate and kill at will, even green-lit to pitch to an under-21 audience.  Disgusting.  Wrong.  When will we stand up against alcohol as the extremely flawed President Nixon was able to do with cigarettes?  Please stand with me to renounce alcohol ads and to remove them from our children’s viewing Today.

NO CHILD OR ALCOHOLIC SHOULD EVER SEE A SINGLE ALCOHOL AD.  Refute that statement and you should be stripped of your position as legislator or media programmer.  And the NCAA?  Shame is the muck in which you conspire with TV networks to make money off our often under-21 year old athletes, students and fans by SELLING A VOLATILE, FLAMMABLE, TOXIC LIQUID.  The shame could end today with an immediate study of alcohol injuries, deaths, which will surely lead to a rational choice to ban their ads immediately from our televisions.

A few years after my first alcoholic missteps with Dad, I began drinking the poison at age twelve with friends, started blacking out on the substance at age thirteen, all the while dreaming of being a professional athlete, alcohol ads on my television assuring me that this was all okay.  Alcohol has no part in sports, is a dream-killer, says the sports dropout and two-time overdose loser writing this letter today.  Yes, my experiments in the liquid intoxicant turned into depression eventually, a suicidal one that had me whining at doctors until they gave me (irresponsibly) drugs on which I could and did overdose twice.

Barely alive with injuries from the OD’s and 100 percent regret for ever having a single sip of fermentation’s perverse result, I ask us all to rethink our own drink and take alcohol off our airways immediately for the good and health of this country.  Our kids deserve better.  And you, sirs and ladies, should know better.  I love you.  Love and its free expression has come to me in sobriety; may the Higher Power unto which you pray and believe take you to the realization I have had that alcohol ads should be now and forever banned.  Alcohol itself and its sales should not be banned.  Who wants another crazy Prohibition?

But alcohol ads must and should be banned immediately, if we want a proper world and safe TV room in which our children can play and watch their favorite athletes play in peace and safety.

Love and Peace
William “Bill” Watkins
Alcoholic, Poet, Humorist
3920 Hawley Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90032
http://www.travelingpoet.net
323-573-0460
billwatkinsword@yahoo.com

Alcohol Ads Should Be Banned

02 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by in Alcohol, Alcoholism, Poetic Blog, Politics

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Alcohol1

by Bill Watkins, 10/2/2019

Richard Nixon banned Cigarette ads in 1970.  He was aware through common sense and a 1964 Surgeon General study that cigarette use killed a lot of people, and he signed their advertising out of American existence…

Not so with alcohol, C2H5OH, the colorless, volatile, flammable, toxic liquid resulting from fermentation some like to buy and drink.  As with cigarettes, alcohol is a mass killer of human beings, a mass destroyer of public property and very hard to control.  And yet our televisions pitch it to us daily, ramping up during sporting events—whether in prime time or at six in the morning during British football broadcasts on NBC.

The scariest numbers in this are 88,000 and 28.4%.  That first number is how many people in this country die every year of alcohol-related causes, third most of all preventable causes of death, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).  Alcohol only behind cigarettes and poor diet/exercise habits, according to the Institute.

28.4% is the percentage of under-21 viewership of alcohol ads allowed by law, according to the FTC.  As there are about 100 million Americans under twenty one, by current FTC guidelines and alcohol’s self-regulation, it’s acceptable to advertise the buying and drinking of a dangerous liquid to about twenty-eight million young people under twenty-one years of age.

The FTC has no record of how many alcoholics the alcohol industry pitches in advertising every year.  NIAAA claims fifteen million Americans over-18 suffer from alcoholism, over six percent of that age group’s population.  Is it fair that someone struggling with alcoholism, or a sober alcoholic, can tune into their favorite sporting event on TV, only to be hammered with ads that pitch him or her to engage in an activity that could or almost killed them?

Like guns, alcohol is a mainstay in this “great democracy” set up on usurped Native American land.  Europeans brought alcohol, guns, disease, and a bible—used them to control this land.  At what point will we decide to stop, analyze what is truly good, maybe listen and follow what that book taught on God, not killing and heaven?  If Nixon can hit back on a killing substance in 1970, take away some of its power, why not Trump with alcohol?  Just kidding.  But maybe a lawmaker like Amy Klobuchar, who has seen the harm of alcohol up close?

Maybe we can all find our inner common sense, reverse rudders on this crude, usurped land management, ask Native America back, kick out killers like guns and alcohol.  At the least, we can kick out the ads—a precedented step not easy against a Washington alcohol machine, but a needed one to protect America’s greatest resource: our children.

Love Multiplier

02 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by in LAPD, Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Police

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Yoda1

You want to spotlight the gangs
from your loud chopper above;
you want to wage a war to feel…

to feel… Something.  To feel safe,
to get paid; to find your situation,
your three square meals and a cot,

your off the boat and into uniform
guarantee of work.  The wide path
to destruction is so easy to acquire…

So, maybe say “No.”  Maybe flip
the gospels upside down, imagine
that which comforts you most—

Died and was not there.  Perhaps
we could benefit from the naked
walk in nature, trust higher powers

the natives in “America” call Great
Spirit, mother earth, peace of effort
exuding graves under white decoration

and advance.  We built churches and
cities on sacred grounds because we
did not do what the bible said to do.

We talk the big game, but then when
put to the test, we often fall through
the water Jesus walked, fish to net—

Because our faith is as strong as a
guppy against a hungry racoon,
abstinence to the drunk who forgot

to pray…

We could send love out to our
communities and get the peace
war officers claim to protect.

Or we can keep throwing up those
choppers, wage war with cops
and uniforms allowing fear to

fuel anger to fuel hatred so we
can continue to suffer.  Yoda
shakes his head.

Turn around, if the wrong path
you are on, young Luke or Leia…
Spread love not fear, ground

your horrible first instincts, wait,
listen, and only act if moved
by something truly good.

I Got My…

01 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry

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Headshot -- Bill Watkins

I got my eyes from my mom,
she got hers from Scandinavian
Winters and endless days unseen
between songs, Viking memories
and Celtic dreams.

I got my soul from pain, rap music
and jazz from Dad and the strange
winds in life that turn Welsh into
“American,” stolen land and the
sin of slavery to work it.

A black nanny raised me, as one
raised Dad, his dad I’m sure
the same, in the deep south
still awaiting freedom and the
return of Native people—

whose gold was wisdom and love for
the land.  Unfortunately the
British and Spanish crowns, among
others sought metal and cash only,
skipped that which could

have been truly brought back
to save them more than even
great bible messages!

I got my humor from God
as I understand God, at the time
I prayed for one it was the
Judeo-Christian kind, biblical
certainly, then add to it some
Alcoholics Anonymous truth
and flavor, Al-Anon for the
family members or friends
of drunks.

I got poetry from the same
source a year before in 1995,
started to tell the truth,
has led me to more and more
until I now demand it from myself
and others.

I got some wisdom, as I spoke
of before—from the Native
American chiefs, who lived close
to and with the land.  They were
one with the Earth, listened and
knew how to live here.

Harmony and song, between us
and our lives;

the poetry of birth, landing, leaving—
dreaming and living those dreams.

The vision, inspiration—being
true to our callings;

Yell the truth with me, “We
Stole Land.”

***

I got my injuries from mistakes,
what hurts me most teaches
and challenges, the game so
fair it seems unfair!

I got to go, soon to remove
myself from Native American
land, I got my plan from the
conscience I got, when I
got sober and started to work
the twelve steps.

I got some peace listening to
the Tao Te Ching; Bibles and gospels
of nature, trying the impossible
task of capturing truth in words,
paper and ink, computer screens
and social media posts…

I’ll be saying this with a sigh,
as Frost said, somewhere ages and
ages—you know…

I got my song for the day, and
it’s been good, a day is life, karma
play, working no longer alone but
for the Great Spirit, the inkless god.

I’d rather be a poor original than
a fancy, loud, flying fraud

Let’s Stop the War

01 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in History, Poetic Blog, Politics, USA

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Native Map of America

by Bill Watkins, Land Thief, 9/1/2019

We’ve been waging war on this land ever since Columbus first “discovered and conquered” the West Indies for Catholic Spain.  First the Spanish, then the English in a land called Wingandacoa—which they changed to “Virginia” after Elizabeth I, the virgin queen, who King James loosely quotes in his first Virginia Charter of 1606:

…our licence to make habitacion, plantacion and to deduce a colonie of sondrie of our people into that parte of America commonly called Virginia, and other parts and territories in America either appartaining unto us or which are not nowe actuallie possessed by anie Christian prince or people…

“If they’re not Christian—take it,” was the attitude.  By force.  Build a fort, plantations, seek gold, bring most back to the Crown, take some for yourself, call yourself an admiral and own the land you find.  Never mind the native people and their way of life; that there was more to heaven and earth than was dreamt of in European philosophy!  Some could dismiss this all as history, if we lived in the United States of Native American Nations.  But we do not.

We live on stolen land, most of us, while its original caretakers have been pushed nearly off the map into tiny reservations.  The native people loved the land, used it wisely, moderately and with great care.  They were grateful for it, the seasons, lived in and amongst nature in a cycle of life that didn’t need books or written law codes to direct. Their art was composed by the Great Spirit; the waterfalls, valleys and rivers along with wildlife provided their entertainment and joy.

There’s the Gold, Britain!  There, the precious resource, the eternal commodities of Gratitude, Wisdom and love for the Land!

But no.  We have our bibles, our guns—they, these savages, must leave while we erect Europe Part II in this glorious land.  We’ll run our concrete and asphalt over it, build our buildings, drive our vehicles—burn the earth the natives cherished in order to go faster, higher and farther…  If there was a flame, we’d be a moth bound for it, and so there was and that flame was war.  And we are still waging that war in the city of Los Angeles, formerly Otsungna—the native place of roses.  From military to paramilitary police, we equate might with right still, pat ourselves on the back as we kill silence with our helicopters and sirens,

then we train to kill and kill our fellow human beings, if the mood strikes us, call it self-defense, say the Constitution allows us to have guns and shoot people.  Good guys and bad guys, calling ourselves Christian, while Jesus’ words echo unheard: “Only God is good,” he said, but what is he next to our own will to steal and destroy land the native people used to love and revere?  The USA is a sad ruse of stealing land, breaking from England, and playing house.

The native Great Spirit is still king here.  Get ready, if you’ve never felt it, for its proud light is soon returning, as this land thief soon removes himself.  And some day I plan to bring “gold” back to my queen or king, teach them the native ways of loving our land.

Cop Choppers Violate Our Rights

28 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by in LAPD, Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry

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LAPD Helicopter1

by Bill Watkins, Land Thief, 8/28/2019

***

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated… 

My home and neighborhood was just assaulted by a reckless LAPD chopper, circling and zig-zagging low, loud and fast over our homes.  With a spotlight searching.  It was after nine o’clock at night, and the lack of direction of the metal war machine tells that this was some misguided patrol or stunt, without a particular point of search.  Disgusting.

We’ve allowed ourselves to go pretty low by our uninhibited attempts at flight.  The vanity of man.  Of European man and descendants, to come to this land, kick off native people committed to a natural, peaceful life that respected the earth… to burn the earth, fly over citizens shining lights into our properties with or without cause, calling it public safety!  It’s tempting to be mad at all of this, but I resist, love and forgive our confused brothers and sisters of the “law,” who I imagine have very hard lives to end up in such a lonely, loud metal box running war ops for a “living.”

Sometimes I think folks of our militaries and para-military police forces have trouble with peace.  Wouldn’t know what to do, if peace came around; their jobs, in fact, dependent on bad things happening and response.  Are there incentives for them to do nothing?  Are we ready for peace?  Is a Gang Unit prepared to disband, when we stop warring against gang communities—start loving and securing them properly?

The mandate from England and Spain to explore, discover and conquer lands “not actually possessed of any Christian Prince” continues to pollute this land.  Guns, bibles, and conquering is perfectly embodied in that loud police chopper disturbing the peace and violating privacy rights above me tonight.  To snatch it down from the sky and encourage that pilot and his or her bosses to walk down a good trail is why I write—

My pen now engaged for the rights of native peoples whose lands my descendants stole.  I plan to remove myself soon, to head eventually back to England, inform the Crown of the mass amounts of gold I found.  It was not a shiny rock we needed, dear England, but the wisdom of the Native Americans and their love for the land!

Deciding to Succeed

28 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by in Inspiration, Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Success

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Mother Teresa1

Enduring pain is the key,
Welcoming it as the rain
before the ‘bow,

This is life, a one day,
one time venture between
wake and sleep,

The god of our understanding
helping us when asked,
making a choice.

Decisions are a bigger thing,
Declaring victory for one thing
over another,

Deciding to win means we
make the call to put our
best effort out—

I have been inspired by
those Marines, standing tall
so stand up too.

I have been inspired by
Mother Teresa giving her
will to God—

So give mine to God too,
my days are free when I
am out of the way;

I think no longer of what
I can get, but of what I can
with care give.

Selflessness taught by
Saint Francis, generosity of
the Jesuit Ignatius,

Songs from Natasha, three
words in the chorus of Spring,
I love you,

I love you, I love you.
We can joke and will as humans
surely stray.

But if we want to succeed in
the John Wooden way for
Peace of mind—

We will write down our goals,
our dreams, check them against
gods and feasibility,

Then with courage and care
do them, if possible, through
the pain today.

Where’s the Peace?

25 Sunday Aug 2019

Posted by in LAPD, Poetic Blog, Police

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LAPD Helicopter1

by Bill Watkins, Land Thief, 8/25/2019

LAPD are the loudest entity on my block.  Consistently loud, abusive and rude.  They damage the peace routinely, which is at odds with the concept of Peace Officers.  LAPD’s supposed mission:

…to safeguard the lives and property of the people we serve, to reduce the incidence and fear of crime, and to enhance public safety while working with the diverse communities to improve their quality of life.  Our mandate is to do so with honor and integrity, while at all times conducting ourselves with the highest ethical standards to maintain public confidence.

Was “peace” and “keeping the peace” something that was considered in our mission statement?  Something impossible to do with the abusive use of loud, polluting helicopters!  What “quality of life” is increased with war machines killing the peace in a ten mile radius?  How is a bad situation made better by making it worse?

“There’s a suspect in this region, so add the crime of noise pollution, and send a chopper?”

I don’t want the LAPD’s war on our communities.  Do you?!?!

Otsungna

22 Thursday Aug 2019

Posted by in California History, History, Los Angeles, Native, Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry

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Wild Roses2

I am not where I thought I was, a
deeper look… a willingness to open;
change rains down valleys of doubt
to shine in the upside down rhythm
that is not fully mine!

El Sereno is a Spanish word.  Bairdstown
sort of English, but before that was
the indigenous Otsungna—the place of
roses, making white guests think of
names not fully mine!

I was here because I was born of woman
in nearby Pasadena, Chippewa for “Crown
of the Valley,” and before all the names—
the land was how it was, and it was as true,
forming, being in time!

The Jewish God created, the native Great
Spirit too; Jesus was a wonderful son
and teacher preaching poverty to the
masses, making pain a blessing?  Wide is
destruction’s path line!

Kanekuk said the land belongs to the Great
Spirit, be it man or woman, woman or man,
no matter the words—a rose by any other name
would smell as sweet, Borgesian fictions
dancing to beats and rhyme!

Honoring our father and our mother, we
can live a long while in the land given,
the Jewish God on the page, Niagara
and other feats of nature defining the
Eternal art that shines!

And yet we litter El Sereno, which litters
Bairdstown, which littered Otsungna—which
tried to live as one with nature, the Great
Spirit, Creation.  Sometimes when you win,
you lose, it’s a shame!

The hope is in staying awake, remembering
the beginning, planting and replanting
first plants, calling on the first names,
asking native nations to return here and
help us grow our lives!

Progress Colonized

11 Sunday Aug 2019

Posted by in Alcoholism, History, Poetic Blog, USA

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Bad Flag3

Euphemism is a funny thing,
a disguise like wind in sky,
a subtle turn in the “s” so
one can curses bless

in the face of death, finding
eternal life in lies that keep
you doing harm for material gain
the USA a ruse of gangs.

Peace was a rainbow too cheap
to truly love, the storm on storm
over the years clouding facts
like law schools in countries

founded in native blood, yelling
out “Freedom” while we lock
them up in reservations.
Claiming “ours” that which was

Stolen.

Euphemism comes to bat, over
and over again.  We brought
“Progress,” “Colonized” the land!
Brought farming and farmers

To new land?  It was taken, but
that didn’t matter to the earnest
ignorance that made hail out of snow.
Lie after lie covering a violent sky.

We can always turn around the ship,
Start telling the Truth before we die