Texas singer-songwriter Townes van Zandt once told Emmy Lou Harris that there were only two kinds of music: the blues and zippity do da. To my knowledge he never posited a causal relationship running from too much of the latter to the former. But, as Billy Joe Shaver puts it so well, we're leaning toward the blues these days. Popular culture seems to buy the causal relationship since they apparently believe high pay and high living among some groups are responsible for it all and are determined to bring down the Temple. I'm not so sure.

I've always preferred to wallow in country music when I was blue…

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A Week-End Special

What do you do when your well runs dry, your muse gets an unlisted telephone number, and your hits fall like a stone?

I dig up bones. Now, strictly speaking, Digging Up Bones, as defined by country music legend, Randy Travis, involves rummaging through the old home place and finding tangible memories of a lost and long gone love, which activity is not necessarily confined to country. City folks can also get those "Gone, but not Forgotten Blues."

Of course, everything, it seems, has its generic version. I seek the elusive muse while standing in front of my book cases staring at the titles hoping to rekindle a lost thought or two. It's almost as productive as panning for gold, which is to say not very, but at least you can keep your socks dry.

[You will find a treat at the end, so hang in there.]

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Back when they called me The Lonesome Dove and some of my best friends were inflation hawks, I wrote a couple of poems to clarify the situation. If interested, you might want to check out some other Rhymes with No Reason on my web site, http://www.bobmcteer.com/.

A Dove with Attitude
Presented at a meeting of the Rotary Club of Dallas, July 21, 2004

Lately, I've had second thoughts
About doves and hawks.

I wonder what justifies the magnitude
Of the typical hawkish attitude.

Are hawks the magnificent seven
With the keys to central banker heaven?

Can't doves put their wing tips
on their hips
And also shoot from the lip?

And give hawks the evil eye
As they fly high in the sky?

I don't want hawkish platitudes;
I greatly prefer a dove with attitude.

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Buddy Holly's Plane Crash Stopped the Music 50 Years Ago Today

I paid tribute to Buddy Holly last year; so I'll be brief today. Last year I mentioned my PBS interview with Bob Edwards when he asked me if it was true that I had visited Buddy Holly's grave. I admitted it; so, he then asked me what Buddy Holly ever contributed to the economy. I said Buddy's Rave On would have made a great anthem for the new economy of the late 1990s.

A reader emailed me to suggest another Buddy Holly song for today's economy: Crying, Waiting, Hoping. Yes, precisely. But hopefully, we can Rave On again soon.

"There ain't no money in poetry.  That's what sets the poet free.
I've had all the freedom I can stand."
Guy Clark, Cold Dog Soup

In the beginning, there was the stretch for yield that led to subprime, best described in a Japanese Haiku:

If regular loans
Don't earn enough to suit us
Maybe bad loans will.

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Finding my way
To the NCPA

Thinking part time
For part-time pay

But my little plan has one big flaw
It fails to account for Parkinson's Law

It's sometimes hard to pay your dues
When you spend your time waiting for the muse

But one big advantage is important to me
A location outside of Washington, D. C.

Its traditions are richest outside my field
But that just gives me more room to build

Medicine, social security and other pensions
Have received John's main attentions

Aligning incentives for health care users
Removing incentives for potential abusers

Helping the customers of the health care industry
Avoid Hillary's health care ministry

Creating Health Savings Accounts
In increasing amounts

It's alledged

Making payers of users
Avoiding a third-party wedge

Making the patient and payor one and the same
Removing moral hazard from the health-care game

Sounding the alarm on social security
Offering solutions closer to purity

Promoting personal accounts with a higher gain
Giving their owners some skin in the game

Designing and promoting Roth IRAs
Following up with Roth 401Ks

Helping employers give their workers more clout
By changing opt in provisions to opt out

Working for taxes, lower and flatter
Making the supply side really matter

Lowering tax rates with no revenue crunch
Is as close as it gets to the proverbial free lunch

Keeping the capital in capitalism, we have a hunch
Means taxing it less and only once.

Nearly 25 years of private sector solutions
Now is no time to permit dilutions

So, come to our aide, help us contend
We depend entirely on the help of our friends