Rocking My Boat With Marciano: 50 Years Ago: 1956-2006

[Andre]

I don't understand a single thing that is going on in this threat. I feel like Brick form Anchorman.

Yeah you are probably on the ball with threat.

[brocktonblockbust]

After 2 years, it's time to say "thanks Andre" for your historical point. Yes, 1880 say the record books.-Ron

"Marciano"? Really? He rocked your boat, Ron, wow, what a metaphor. Where did you come up with it, Ron? It's so unique and poignant.

He came out here to Australia once, my mate Roy went to meet him off the plane just cause he was a boxer back then too, he recons Marciano came over as a great bloke and very modest and humble to talk to.

RON Casey and RON Price, I get it. Hmmmmmm..............

[RonPrice]

Since this Marciano thread seems alive and well, I'll post another piece on Marciano to keep this thread going:
----------------------------------------
ROUND AFTER ROUND

Part 1:

On September 23rd 1952 Rocky Marciano climbed into the ring to challenge the heavyweight boxing champion, Jersey Joe Walcott. What followed was what many have called the greatest heavyweight championship fight of all time. In the first round, Walcott caught Marciano with a perfect left hook that dropped him for the first time in 43 fights! But The Rock was up at the count of 3. From then on it was a brutal fight, with Walcott using all his ring skills, hitting Marciano with shot after shot.

Walcott’s punches would have knocked out most other fighters. But Rocky was relentless, taking tremendous punishment as he bulled his way into close range to land his own hard blows. By the 12th round Walcott was ahead on all scorecards. Rocky's corner told him he needed a knockout to win. In the fateful 13th round Jersey Joe stepped back from Marciano with his back to the ropes and Rocky delivered a right hand punch that would probably have felled any fighter who ever lived.

Walcott slumped to the floor, one arm hanging on the lower rope and was counted out. It took several minutes to revive him. Rocky Marciano was the new Heavyweight Champion of the World! Two weeks later, on October 8th 1952, the Baha’is commemorated the start of a Holy Year. It was the commemoration of the centenary of the rise of the orb of Baha’u’llah’s most sublime Revelation.

Part 2:

The launching of a world-embracing spiritual crusade in 1953 was also proclaimed on that same date. I was only eight at the time. I can neither remember this launching nor that famous fight of Marciano’s. The fight was not televised, nor was it on radio, and so my dad and I were not able to enjoy the fight together. We had to wait until 1953 or 1954. I can’t remember now after all this time what was the first fight we watched together. My father was a boxing enthusiast, although not obsessively so. In 1965 my dad died at the age of 75; now that I am in my 70s, I have finally come to appreciate my old-man. So many things in life take many years to come to understand.

In 1953 my mother had just made her first contact with the Baha’i Faith after seeing an ad in the local paper, the Burlington Gazette. I have often felt, looking back to 1953/4, that these Rocky Marciano fights I saw with my father at the start of the Ten Year Crusade were symbolic of the long fight ahead for my father, my mother, and for me, as well as for my society and the world. Little did I know then, living at the time as our new global society was sitting on the brink of self-destruction in a new atomic age, as a grade four primary school student, as a person who would spend the rest of his life associated with this new world Faith, the nature of the real fight, the real battle, ahead.

Part 3:

Marciano became a top contender in the heavyweight boxing world following his sixth-round knockout of Rex Layne at Madison Square Garden on 12 July 1951. The year 1951 was the same year that saw the rise of the Baha’i Administrative Centre in Haifa Israel. This rise, this development, this process, taking place at the Baha’i World Centre in Haifa Israel, just north as the crow flies from the Gaza Strip, had been kept in abeyance for thirty years(1921-1951) while the machinery of the national and local Baha’i institutions of this nascent Order was being erected.

Boxing experts have considered September 29th 1952 to be Marciano's defining moment. Marciano fought a rematch with Walcott on 15 May 1953 in Chicago Stadium. This time Marciano scored a knockout after just 145 seconds. This was right at the start of the Ten Year Crusade, in the first month of that Crusade. Marciano had trained extraordinarily hard. The Baha’i community had trained hard and would train hard in the years ahead. Rocky Marciano stood as a symbol right at the start of the first international teaching Plan.

On 17 June 1954 Marciano successfully defended his title against the aged former champion Ezzard Charles at Yankee Stadium. Marciano's final defense came on 20 September 1955. He retired in 1956 and was killed in a plane crash in August 1969. I was just about to teach grade six in Prince Edward County Ontario in a little town called Cherry Valley.-Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 1/7/'06 to 12/6/'14.

You were a model in so many ways,
Rocky, little did I know back then
sitting in that little lounge-room at
the start of a Crusade that would take
this Cause to the earth’s far corners.

You were like a rose amongst thorns,
so said Jimmy Cannon in his summary
of your life. I knew so little of your life,
Rocky, until just the other day, occupied
as I have been with a rose in yet another
garden, a rose-garden of the spirit whose
charm captured my heart these many years
while I carried the fight and walked the walk
in such a different way to you old Rocky M!!!

I tried to plant the rose of love in the garden
of my heart surrounded as I was by a different
set of thorns than the one you battled with.

My battle was so different than yours, Rocky,
spread out over more than 50 years in a ring,
often on the ropes, round after round, waiting
for the bell to toll, in my corner and many other
corners, never taking the title, wanting to retire.

Ron Price
1/7/'06 to 12/6/'14.

[brocktonblockbust]

Since this Marciano thread seems alive and well, I'll post another piece on Marciano to keep this thread going:
----------------------------------------
ROUND AFTER ROUND

Part 1:

On September 23rd 1952 Rocky Marciano climbed into the ring to challenge the heavyweight boxing champion, Jersey Joe Walcott. What followed was what many have called the greatest heavyweight championship fight of all time. In the first round, Walcott caught Marciano with a perfect left hook that dropped him for the first time in 43 fights! But The Rock was up at the count of 3. From then on it was a brutal fight, with Walcott using all his ring skills, hitting Marciano with shot after shot.

Walcott’s punches would have knocked out most other fighters. But Rocky was relentless, taking tremendous punishment as he bulled his way into close range to land his own hard blows. By the 12th round Walcott was ahead on all scorecards. Rocky's corner told him he needed a knockout to win. In the fateful 13th round Jersey Joe stepped back from Marciano with his back to the ropes and Rocky delivered a right hand punch that would probably have felled any fighter who ever lived.

Walcott slumped to the floor, one arm hanging on the lower rope and was counted out. It took several minutes to revive him. Rocky Marciano was the new Heavyweight Champion of the World! Two weeks later, on October 8th 1952, the Baha’is commemorated the start of a Holy Year. It was the commemoration of the centenary of the rise of the orb of Baha’u’llah’s most sublime Revelation.

Part 2:

The launching of a world-embracing spiritual crusade in 1953 was also proclaimed on that same date. I was only eight at the time. I can neither remember this launching nor that famous fight of Marciano’s. The fight was not televised, nor was it on radio, and so my dad and I were not able to enjoy the fight together. We had to wait until 1953 or 1954. I can’t remember now after all this time what was the first fight we watched together. My father was a boxing enthusiast, although not obsessively so. In 1965 my dad died at the age of 75; now that I am in my 70s, I have finally come to appreciate my old-man. So many things in life take many years to come to understand.

In 1953 my mother had just made her first contact with the Baha’i Faith after seeing an ad in the local paper, the Burlington Gazette. I have often felt, looking back to 1953/4, that these Rocky Marciano fights I saw with my father at the start of the Ten Year Crusade were symbolic of the long fight ahead for my father, my mother, and for me, as well as for my society and the world. Little did I know then, living at the time as our new global society was sitting on the brink of self-destruction in a new atomic age, as a grade four primary school student, as a person who would spend the rest of his life associated with this new world Faith, the nature of the real fight, the real battle, ahead.

Part 3:

Marciano became a top contender in the heavyweight boxing world following his sixth-round knockout of Rex Layne at Madison Square Garden on 12 July 1951. The year 1951 was the same year that saw the rise of the Baha’i Administrative Centre in Haifa Israel. This rise, this development, this process, taking place at the Baha’i World Centre in Haifa Israel, just north as the crow flies from the Gaza Strip, had been kept in abeyance for thirty years(1921-1951) while the machinery of the national and local Baha’i institutions of this nascent Order was being erected.

Boxing experts have considered September 29th 1952 to be Marciano's defining moment. Marciano fought a rematch with Walcott on 15 May 1953 in Chicago Stadium. This time Marciano scored a knockout after just 145 seconds. This was right at the start of the Ten Year Crusade, in the first month of that Crusade. Marciano had trained extraordinarily hard. The Baha’i community had trained hard and would train hard in the years ahead. Rocky Marciano stood as a symbol right at the start of the first international teaching Plan.

On 17 June 1954 Marciano successfully defended his title against the aged former champion Ezzard Charles at Yankee Stadium. Marciano's final defense came on 20 September 1955. He retired in 1956 and was killed in a plane crash in August 1969. I was just about to teach grade six in Prince Edward County Ontario in a little town called Cherry Valley.-Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 1/7/'06 to 12/6/'14.

You were a model in so many ways,
Rocky, little did I know back then
sitting in that little lounge-room at
the start of a Crusade that would take
this Cause to the earth’s far corners.

You were like a rose amongst thorns,
so said Jimmy Cannon in his summary
of your life. I knew so little of your life,
Rocky, until just the other day, occupied
as I have been with a rose in yet another
garden, a rose-garden of the spirit whose
charm captured my heart these many years
while I carried the fight and walked the walk
in such a different way to you old Rocky M!!!

I tried to plant the rose of love in the garden
of my heart surrounded as I was by a different
set of thorns than the one you battled with.

My battle was so different than yours, Rocky,
spread out over more than 50 years in a ring,
often on the ropes, round after round, waiting
for the bell to toll, in my corner and many other
corners, never taking the title, wanting to retire.

Ron Price
1/7/'06 to 12/6/'14.

@ron pRICE

@Andre
@Master @RonPrice

Ron, I think you left out something between lines 49 and 50--
seeing as Rocky was so nifty
and the devils of Tasmania
are incarnations of the Bahai'lu'llah

here is what you left out:
"On a summer's morn in Ontario
I ate an Oreo
and the two cookies of Iran
made a Barkley of Duran."

spread the word, Ron, the bahai faith is the answer to all the world's problems.

[Master]

I have given up on Ron.

[Andre]

For the first time ever I've looked it up to see what its all about. These dudes who began this were persecuted and executed by the Muslims of the time in Persia for preaching one world in unity and peace!


Its not a bad 'religion' at all, they want unity amongst all races and for governments to put down their arms and their history and for us all to work as one.
The original bloke Bab was executed by the Muslim rulers of the time in Persia for bringing the message that there would be a time where unity is possible between all races and that another messenger was coming after him.

Then came Bahá'u'lláh who was a member of one of the great patrician families of Persia. The family could trace its lineage to the ruling dynasties of Persia's imperial past, and was endowed with wealth and vast estates. Turning His back on the position at court which these advantages offered Him, Bahá'u'lláh became known for His generosity and kindliness which made Him deeply loved among His countrymen.
This privileged position did not long survive Bahá'u'lláh's announcement of support for the message of the Báb . Engulfed in the waves of violence unleashed upon the Bábis after the Báb's execution Bahá'u'lláh suffered not only the loss of all His worldly endowments but was subjected to imprisonment, torture, and a series of banishments. The first was to Baghdad where, in 1863, He announced Himself as the One promised by the Báb. From Baghdad, Bahá'u'lláh was sent to Constantinople, to Adrianople, and finally to Acre, in the Holy Land, where He arrived as a prisoner in 1868

From Adrianople and later from Acre, Bahá'u'lláh addressed a series of letters to the rulers of His day that are among the most remarkable documents in religious history. They proclaimed the coming unification of humanity and the emergence of a world civilization.
The kings, emperors, and presidents of the nineteenth century were called upon to reconcile their differences, curtail their armaments, and devote their energies to the establishment of universal peace.
Bahá'u'lláh passed away at Bahji, just north of Acre, and is buried there. His teachings had already begun to spread beyond the confines of the Middle East, and His Shrine is today the focal point of the world community which these teachings have brought into being.


Then the son took over.



Abdu'l-Bahá (1844-1921)

Portrait of `Abdu'l-Bahá.

From earliest childhood, `Abbas Effendi, the eldest son of Bahá'u'lláh , shared His father's sufferings and banishments. He took as His title `Abdu'l-Bahá, the "servant of Baha." Bahá'u'lláh appointed Him the one authorized interpreter of the Bahá'í teachings and as Head of the Faith after His own passing. In `Abdu'l-Bahá was seen a perfect example of the Bahá'í way of life. While `Abdu'l-Bahá was still a prisoner of the Ottomans the first Bahá'í pilgrims from the western world arrived in Acre in 1898. After His release in 1908, `Abdu'l-Bahá set out on a series of journeys which, in 1911-1913, took Him to Europe and America. There He proclaimed Bahá'u'lláh's message of unity and social justice to church congregations, peace societies, the members of trade unions, university faculties, journalists, government officials, and many public audiences.
`Abdu'l-Bahá passed away in 1921, having consolidated the foundations of the Bahá'í Faith and greatly expanded its reach. The northern rooms of the Shrine of the Báb, where He is interred, are a place of pilgrimage for Bahá'ís visiting the World Centre of their Faith.


Good people.

[RonPrice]

This thread has been active since I was here more than two months ago. Readers with the interest are free to look-up on the internet what the Baha'i Faith is about, as Andre has done. I only mention this latest, this newest, of the Abrahamic religions in the context of my prose-poetry.-Ron
----------------------------
The following is one of my recent pieces:
--------------------------------------------------------
MORE MEMOIRES

Part 1:

Salmon Rushdie(1947- ) is back in the news. Death threats were made against him including a fatwā requiring his execution which was proclaimed on Radio Tehran. The fatwa was issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on 14 February 1989. I was just settling in to the first year of my final decade as a FT lecturer in a technical college in Western Australia; 1989 was also my first year as the secretary of a local Baha’i community in a suburb of Perth, Belmont, beside the Swan River.

I was immersed in the task of dealing with 100 students a week, and serving as a secretary of a Baha’i group of some 30 or more in a wider Perth Baha’i community at the time of some 1500 Baha’is. I was up-to-my-ears in a 60 to 80 hour week of wall-to-wall people. The news of Mr Rushdie in 1989 was just an on-air bit of information to add to the many other happenings reported that day by the electronic and print media such as: (i) heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson’s divorce in the Dominican Republic, (ii) Union Carbide’s agreement to pay $470 million damages for Bhopol disaster, and (iii) the placing of the world's 1st satellite, the first of 24 satellites, of a Global Positioning System into orbit.

The year 1989 was a very big one on the global agenda. In the midst of everything else happening that year, from Tiananmen Square to the fall of the Berlin Wall, I didn't dream that the forces underlying this remote anti-Rushdie event far-out on the periphery of my psyche and of western civilization would eventually come to define our era in so many ways. At the time, the Rushdie affair just seemed to me like some weird historical sideshow as I ploughed through the all-consuming tasks that made-up my week. I had a few hours left-over to give to: my wife and kids, a few friends, my daily-walk and other activity to keep body-and-soul together so that I might enjoy my 64 hours a week of rest and sleep---in order to get back to the 100 hours involved in getting through my weekly tasks.

Part 2:

The following decade was an all-consuming one for Rushdie who was in the belly of some beast that I watched, heard or read about, but only on the rare occasion, safely from my observation tower half a world away occupied, as I say above, with my own life’s all-consuming agenda. Rushdie has just published a new book which takes us inside that whale-of-a-beast for that decade of the 1990s. The new book is his memoir, Joseph Anton, and it’s about his living-in-hiding for more than a decade. Filled with cameos by everyone from Bill Clinton to Christopher Hitchens to Warren Beatty, this literary page-turner, as one reviewer describes it, tells us in fascinating detail, says the same reviewer, what it means to have every aspect of your life overturned. Not all the reviews and reviewers thusfar have been fascinated and captivated. Check them out to get that balanced view the media is so concerned about---at least in some cases.

The ayatollah's death sentence meant that Rushdie had to choose a new, non-Asian identity. He did. He called himself Joseph Anton, a name which came from combining the first names of two famous writers: Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. He also had to adjust to live-in bodyguards and having to ask permission to do the simplest things, like meeting his son. More than Rushdie’s literary output, the death sentence against him turned the author into an international celebrity. In recent years, Rushdie himself has become a fixture on the New York social scene, with a reputation for keeping the company of glamorous women half his age.

Part 3:

Some readers, drawing parallels with the recent tabloidization of Rushdie’s own life, may cringe at how much his memoir peddles in publishing-world gossip, but like the author himself, Joseph Anton is an amalgam of high and low, salaciousness and profundity. As he has before, Rushdie proves himself a master at straddling the boundary between supermarket romance and philosophical treatise. The long rite of affairs and betrayals and divorces can’t obscure the fact that this is, ultimately, a wise book about some of the most important issues affecting the world today.

Foremost among those issues are the causes of free speech and free expression. Rushdie is an absolutist on these issues, arguing that free speech amounts to “life itself.” He suggests that the attempt by radical Islam to stifle The Satanic Verses was really the opening salvo in an ongoing conflict that has continued through the rise of al-Qaeda and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The seeds of intolerance sown in 1989, when Khomeini’s fatwa was passed, have sprouted into a far more general—and violent—conflict between militant Islam and Western culture. Rushdie quotes the German poet Heinrich Heine: “Where they burn books, they will in the end burn people too.”1

He insists on complexity and nuance where polemic and cliché so often reign. This is what writers do. And this, ultimately, is Rushdie’s triumph. In an age of rising intolerance and diminished literary confidence, Joseph Anton—like Rushdie’s own life—strikes a blow for the continued relevance of literature.–Ron Price with thanks to Akash Kapur, Book Review: 'Joseph Anton' by Salman Rushdie, in The Stack on October 04, 2012

We each have our own memoirs;
why I’ve got mine on 1000s of
pages and all over the internet, &
most people have them up in their
heads; others, still, are placing some
of their story on Facebook & twitter.

To each their own as we each tell our
story to others and to ourselves before
our final story goes before those pearly
gates, & we go into a hole for those who
tell no more story…….at least not here!

I won’t be reading your story, Salmon,
in its 600+ pages…..There are just too
many stories: cyberspace-&-real space.

There are stories in the humanities & social
sciences, the physical, biological, & applied
sciences and the result is an image-&-print
glut that keeps everyone busy working out
their own agenda. You’ve certainly had more
than your share, more than your 15 minutes of
fame, as old Andy once put it long ago back in
the 60s for all those hippies who were starting
to make their mark on civilization and who are
now heading into old-age. I wish you well, dear
Salmon, as you too head into old-age writing, as
you have been doing for decades: another hippy
who has made his mark on global civilization!!!

Ron Price
10/10/’12