The Muse and Whirled Retort 2021

Chris Chandler's Muse and Whirled Retort November, 2021

Wednesday, November 3, 2021

Click on the image to Help me get back on track and bring you quality broadcasts!

Hey everybody!

It is that time again!

I know, it has been a minute! I wanted to atleast find a positive day to send this out on, and last night my hometown team won the world series. So let me say Bravo Bravos! It is only Atlnata’s second championship in her pro sports history. Congratulations!

Below will be a little love note to Atlanta’s greatest sports hero, and why he he was an inspiration to me growing up. So again, I say, “Bravo Bravos!”

I wanted to send this out on a positive day because, honestly, things have not been going well for me.

I hate to say it but it is true. 2021 has been a rough year. The pandemic has taken its toll, and the latest casualty for me, is the end of my relationship in New Jersey. The end result has left me penniless, unemployed, living in a van, in the middle of a pandemic. All of my possessions, including the tools of my trade, are in storage and inaccesable in New Jeresy. I need them!

The great news is: I am now sober for over two months,

which is longer than I have been in my entire life! I intend to stay that way!

Mock up of the Album Cover so far! Click on the image to support the New Album!

The turbulant sea of love in the lockdown has washed me ashore in Texas, where I have - due in large part to thirty plus years of the Kerrville Folk Festival - more friends than an itinerant storyteller deserves to have. THANK YOU! Because of that, I am now staying at the friend of a friend’s house. I have found a little work and am scratching my way out of this hole, but it will take a minute, and I could use your help!

I know, this is the second breakup in as many years, but this time I used all of my savings over the two years of quarantine and I literally have nothing. I want to return to delivering for you, my regular broadcasts, newsletters and eventually live performances.

I want to (have to) finish this album and when we get the “All clear” sign return to doing what I was meant to do: Driving absurd distances to deliver poems stories and songs to your front door baked with the freshest perspectives I can muster and crafting them into the unique thing that is “The Chris Chandler Show.”

Please help me keep it on the road, or at least in a tenable parking place until we can all gather safely again.

I have started a "Go-Fund-Me" campaign for our new record, and to help me get back on my feet.

You can help by clicking here:

I WANT TO HELP CHANDLER GET A NEW ALBUM OUT!

or pasting: Https://gofund.me/983b275c

Chandler in the Studio working on the vocals, before the break up.. Click on the Image to support the New Album!

I also have paypal, click here:

Let me just give chandler a direct contribution through PayPal!

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Let me just give chandler a direct contribution through Venmo!

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OK OK, I am sure you are tired of my sob story. Now for something (I hope to be) inspirational! The reason you subscribed to this humble newsletter in the first place!

Thank you for helping me to do this each month! It is time for your:

M.U.S.E. .A.N.D. .W.H.I.R.L.E.D. .R.E.T.O.R.T.

Nov 02, 2021

Austin, TX

He Had a Hammer

It was a long winter between 1973 and 74. Professional sports had not long been in the deep south, and believe me having a professional sports team was big, even if they weren't all that good. Even if they did have trouble giving the tickets away. But we had one gleaming gemstone... Henry Aaron.

The Henry Aaron of my Youth

When I was a young kid the only crack of the bat you heard in a ball field in Atlanta, was the Atlanta Crackers, the all white independent franchise, named for the sound a whip makes and what's worse is they were good, The Yankees of the minors. Atlanta was proud of its team.

But another part of Atlanta liked to call itself "The City too busy to hate," which was really a slogan her largest cooperation dreamed up. Coca Cola did not want to tar her international reputation with racism, and wanted a team to boost Atlanta's image in the eyes of the world.

The deep south was still segregated and no pro league would offer a team under those circumstances. The city of Atlanta was ahead of the curve ball on that front and managed desegregate just enough to bring the Milwaukee Braves down, but the face of that franchise, was a black man. He had been voted MVP when the Braves beat the Yankees in the world series, and he was coming to the south.

Sure Jackie Robinson, desegregate Major League base ball, and I ain't taking nothing away from that, but Hank Aaron desegregated the south.

Born in the heart of the depression, but in the colon of the USA: Mobile Alabama - no electricity, no running water, and don't you dare let the sun set on your head.

He played in the Negro League as a barn stormer where he was noticed by the Boston Braves, and sent to try out for their brand new farm team - in Jacksonville, FL. During spring training, the first in the segregated south, he could not stay in the same motels, or eat in restaurants, and he wanted to object, but he knew he was paving the way for those behind him, and an objection would only detour the path to inevitability. So instead, he simply knocked it out of the park. Broke a minor league record and made the team just as it moved from Boston to Milwaukee. Wisconsin, here we come. Aaron was glad to be out of the south, where he was born.

But then the team decided to blaze another trail to where professional sports had never been, by taking that midnight train down to Georgia. Major league Baseball was whistling Dixie as the Mighty M was replaced with the cursive A of the Atlanta Braves, the first professional sports team south of the Mason-Dixon.

Up in Milwaukee he became an overnight star becoming league MVP almost immediately.

Hank Aaron - the only black player and the face of the franchise - scheduled a meeting with Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy and Andrew Young to discuss how to handle what was about to happen. He was humble saying, "I am just a ball player." They said, "You are as important to this movement as anyone of us." and they meant it. They knew... Hank Aaron had a hammer.

Those words inspired him, taught him to play better than perhaps he would have otherwise.

As a young boy form Stone Mountain - he became my hero. A large part of the racial conflict was... Baseball mighta been the king of sports but the king of baseball was the Sultan of Swat. Ya gotta understand here - that until Hank Aaron, there was nobody, and I mean nobody that could touch The Babe. Babe Ruth was a white people's icon that none should dare to defile. He was Baseball's "Jesus Christ Super-Star Spangled Banner Headline Reads 'Babe Ruth is the Greatest.'"

However, in just just 8 short years of the deep south even having a team... they were daring to take down the great Bambino.

In 1973, Hank Aaron came just one swat of the bat away from obtaining the unobtainable - the all time homerun record. But the 73 season ended. The Braves as usual were in the cellar, with only one out standing ingredient. Unfortunately it was a feature that most white people - north or south - did not want to happen. Allow a black man to become the greatest.

In the off season, Henry Aaron began getting hate mail and death threats. Not just a few - literally tens of thousands. More than Jackie Robinson In fact, I give dollars to donuts that Henry Aaron holds the all time Major League record of death threats.

But not everyone hated Hank Aaron. No, quite the opposite. If you follow this stuff at all, you will remember when Hank Aaron did break that record, on the first swing of his first step to the plate, in his first home game of the season... two white kids jumped on the field from the stands and ran the bases along side him cheering him on... ...they could not contain them selves. How could they?

I was one of those two kids. Unable to contain my enthusiasm - leaping over the left field foul line sprinting on to the field feeling as much a part of the thrill of victory as if we had hit the ball ourselves. Running along side Hammering Hank - the greatest of all time.

Security later told us we were very lucky that we did not get shot. We were unaware of the death threats. Hank had not let on to the public.

You prolly figured out by now, I was not literally one of those kids -- but I was figuratively -- happy to be a part of a world that was changing before our eyes. A black man, on the only team in the south - passed the record that was considered to be unbreakable to help tear down the walls of racism also considered unbreakable.

I hope that one-day racism will be defeated.

Our society still lives, works, plays, eats, sleeps and dies largely in segregation. Perhaps this is why our society, like the Atlanta Braves of my youth, is in the cellar. But in that cellar, we do have one glimmering gemstone: The power of example.

Hank Aaron retired from baseball in 1976, but he remained the face of the Atlanta Braves for the remained of his days. But more importantly he remained one of the most outspoken advocates for civil rights, even stumping for The reverend Raphael Warnock of the Ebenezer Baptist Church for the Senate just three weeks before his death.

Henry Aaron is now indelibly chiseled on the Mt Rushmore of sports' trailblazers that changed a world in need of change, along side Jessie Owens, and Joe Louis, Mahmud Ali, Jim Brown, Jackie Robinson, Colin Kaepernick and Henry Aaron.

Congratulations! & Bravo Bravos!

******

There are no dates at present including live streams! We are curently relocating and trying to breath!