Growing Up Southern: August 31, 2017

Folks from different places see life differently. Take storms. Inland, they are like redneck sex, over in seconds and “Let’s eat!” That’s assuming the kitchen is still standing. On or near the sea, they are like being forced to ride the entire length of Interstate 40 with Donald Trump talking all the way. It seems the agony will never end.

I’ve been in a few fair blows, nothing labeled a hurricane. One reached the status of “tropical storm,” and if it wasn’t a hurricane, I never want to be in one. And we sailed through a storm at sea in the old USS Hunley, out in what they call “The Bermuda Triangle.” I thought that was kind of neat, for Jimmy Huddleston, Sidney Bussey, Carl Ferguson and I pretty much had the fantail to ourselves before it got too bad. Everyone else was inside hugging a “head” if they could find one vacant. We were eating kipper snacks and channeling old John Paul himself.

The old girl was seaworthy, but she had a pronounced fondness for rolling. Men who had bounced across the Pacific in seagoing tugs or LSTs grew ashen at times when it seemed like she wouldn’t stop on a particularly bad roll. But, she always did. She’d shudder like a drunk with the DTs and start back the other way. Port to starboard. After decks up. Starboard to port. After decks down. Port to starboard. After decks up. Starboard to port. After decks down. Get the picture? Oh, go ahead. I don’t mind waiting.

They finally chased us inboard and closed the decks. It went on like that for two days. Imagine trying to sleep in conditions like that.

Out in the heartland, we deal with tornadoes. They are swift, deadly, and totally capricious. When one hit our community in the 1940s, it obliterated the houses on either side of our store/home. Our only damage, and it was minor, resulted from a large oak tree blown over in the back yard.

A religious person might assign some spiritual hand to all this. From our undamaged grocery store, my father gave away goods to whomever needed it and never asked for payment. Oddly, he didn’t wait for the city to tell him he needed to. He just did it, and bankrupted himself in the process. A headline praising his actions carried the subheading, “George [von Tungeln] said, ‘If you need it come and get it.’” I guess those were different times, sort of the “prosperity gospel” in reverse.

Later, I recall a man relating his story to a group gathered around the old pot-bellied stove my dad had in the store. The man had gotten his family to safety, and returned alone after the storm had passed. His home, barn, and other buildings had completely disappeared. He described walking around where they had once stood and finding the only undamaged thing still standing. It was a large board resting on brick supports, a make-believe cookstove his daughters had set up to “play kitchen.”

The storm had not even disturbed the inverted jar lids the kids had used to make mud pies.

Yes, storms can be capricious. For 32 people in our community, that particular one was also deadly.

Carl Ferguson and and the author.
Shipmates tried and true.

Growing Up Southern: August 30, 2017

Ya’ll know I can bore you to death with my “connect the dots” babblings, but here goes: the Houston Flood, James Joyce, and my naval career. I’ll try to explain.

See, I was happy as a clam living in San Francisco and working a job in the Mission District. I was there one day, not bothering a soul as Sainted Mother used to say. A few days later I was on my way to Navy Boot Camp, the military draft having caught up with me and I having opted for sea life rather than Vietnam life. Months later I was in that very war zone. Don’t ask. The point is, our lives can change very quickly and we’d best, as I learned back then, not allow our happiness to be determined solely where we live and what we are doing.

No one on Earth, as far as I know, lives a life of guaranteed continuity. I know I had to learn to adjust, or perish from misery. From a life of fun, and so-called “friends,” I suddenly transitioned to a place where my friends were ashamed of me and the only ones who truly cared about me were thousands of miles away, soon to be halfway around the world, from me. I can’t begin to tell you how lonesome a person in such a state feels when he hears Taps played over a Navy base shutting down for the day. That's when a totally dark silence descends upon his world. I was so low then that I could have walked under a snake’s belly wearing a stovepipe hat.

I was in Monterey, California waiting to transfer to a naval security detachment in Da Nang. One night, I had 25 cents, a quarter, to my name. I could go to a base movie for the quarter, or buy a package of cigarettes with it. I opted for the cigarettes and then went to a little library they had on base. Oddly, they had a copy of Ulysses, by James Joyce. Over a number of evenings, I read about the wanderings of Leopold Bloom as described by Joyce, and it gave me an idea.

Given a day off, I rose early and went wandering. I walked to Fisherman’s Wharf, then to Alvarado Street, through Cannery Row, past the shipyard and around to the Great Tide Pool. There, I sat on a rock where I contemplated my situation and my choices. I had made a mistake, I thought, and I still had more than three years left to live with it. That didn’t shape up as a happy future.

I had choices. I could to something truly dishonorable and live with the consequences. I could spend the next three-an-a-half years wallowing in abject pity and anger. I could accommodate fate and seek the best it had to offer, however meager the offerings.

I chose the last option, sitting there where, as Gary Toler once said, “… the wide old Pacific comes a’pounding on the shore.” The waves forming my life were pounding now, but there was a wide sea beyond them, and I chose to wander it with acceptance in my heart.

 Know what? Life didn’t turn out as badly as I had imagined. I learned what I consider to be one of life’s great lessons: be happy as possible, no matter where you are. Always seek to find happiness in “the now” instead of in some distant dream. As Victor Frankl observed in his classic Man’s Search for Meaning, even in Nazi death camps, those with the best chance for survival were the ones who could, in some of the most inhumane conditions ever devised by humankind, enjoy, for a brief moment, the beauty of a sunset.

Here’s hoping that our brothers and sisters in Texas may someday, once again, enjoy the beauty of a sunset. I’ve enjoyed many since my day of Bloom-like wandering, including last evening’s.

For a short story inspired by my wanderings that day, click here. It's the one called Of Times and Tides. Thanks.

"Fearsome Four-Eyes"
ready for whatever.

Sailing To Oblivium: August 29, 2017

With apologies to Richard Dawkins and Joe E. Lewis, there seems to be a “Better Angel Gene” in homo sapiens. That’s good.

No, that’s bad It is usually only activated by disasters of some sort.

No, that’s good. That’s when we need it the most.

No, that’s bad. If it were activated at all times, there wouldn’t be as many disasters.

No, that’s good. At least we have the fear of disasters to bind us together.

No, that’s bad. Some evil forces thrive and flourish on fear.

No, that’s good. Evil opens our eyes to the noble in us.

No, that’s bad. It forces evil to form coalitions.

No, that’s good. It makes it more important to recognize evil.

No, that’s bad. We seem to have lost our skills of recognition.

No, that’s good. It means that it takes a Better Angel Gene.

No, that’s bad. It means that it takes a village full of better angels.

Saiing To Oblivium: August 28, 2017

It almost seems unfeeling to be planning a normal day when our brothers and sisters in Texas are experiencing such horror. But, we beat on, as F. Scott said, “boats against the current.”

What we might learn from these dreadful days is that Nature plays a catastrophic game when she chooses, and we are powerless.

A bully can’t shake his hand in her face and stop the gales.

A billionaire can’t show her his bank statement and escaper her wrath.

A general can’t order his battalions to counterattack and send her fleeing in fear.

A politician can’t “whip” his party into formation and outvote her intentions.

A person blessed with uncommon beauty can’t charm Nature out of destruction.

A thief can't steal her power.

No, at the moment Nature unleashes her fury, we all equal, one of the few moments during which that is true.

What can we do? Perhaps catastrophes such as this will help convince us that neither ignoring nor challenging Nature is the answer. Perhaps the answer lies in a new reverence and a more accommodating posture. Perhaps it is time to let wisdom, education, and decency lead us away from defiance and toward harmony. Perhaps it is time to spend more of our resources working with Nature and less warring with one another. Perhaps it is time to sweep the halls of government clean of climate-change deniers, greed-mongers, and divisive charlatans. We can replace them with women of thought and prudence. (I leave men out of the equation as we’ve had our chance and it’s gone with the wind).

Heck, we might even start electing leaders on the basis of thought and hope instead of fear and hatred.

After all, the only real thing we can do it the face of a furious and unforgiving Nature is to dream of better days and better ways.

Just thinking …

Sailing To Oblivium: August 27, 2017

Contemplating the epochal tragedy in Texas, we are blessed that a highly functioning public agency provided a detailed warning. Further, the existence of an agency standing by to help the victims of the tragedy provides an additional blessing. It bolsters my belief that good government can be a force for good in our country.

Imagine a “libertarian dream” in which there is no National Weather Service (NWS) nor its parent agency National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Also imagine there is no Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) waiting to provide help during and after such terrible weather events.

I’ve always wondered how Ronald Reagan would have been able to sleep at night watching the aftermath of a 9-11, or scenes of a storm such as the one in Texas. Among other things, he immortalized the phrase, so popular with the greedy and uneducated, “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help.”

Hogwash. Someday we might discuss the perceived injustice of regulations that discourage or prevent people from making catastrophic settlement decisions. For now, though, let us praise the women and men of the agencies standing by to provide some measure of help to our brothers and sisters in the Lone Star State.

The workers in these agencies are highly skilled in areas such as science, mathematics, physics, computer technology, meteorology, statistics, public administration, and planning. They stand among us as some of the best and brightest. Their service to us, as I say, provides a blessing. Their skill and education form a solid first defense against natural disasters. Their agencies, along with an educational system that creates the expertise, remain national treasures.

Pity future generations when these same agencies are managed and operated solely by individuals who believe the Earth is 6,000 years old, climate science is a hoax, and that it could rain for 40 days straight across the entire planet, but a man and his sons could build a boat that would preserve two members of every species on earth, even, according to some, a pair of the species Tyrannosaurus rex.

That’s why, in my opinion and mine alone, I think we need to, for future generations, elect better people to run our government, including people who believe in education and facts.

As for our national ship of state, again I recommend the immortal call, at end of day, from my beloved United States Navy: “Sweepers, Sweepers, man your brooms. Give the ship a good clean sweep down both fore and aft! Sweep down all decks, ladders and passageways! Dump all garbage clear of the fantail!”

Indeed.

Sailing To Oblivium: August 26, 2017

In over 40 years, I’ve received very few requests to perform acts associated with my profession that “didn’t meet the smell test.” None reached the level of high crimes or unconstitutional acts, but I declined each. Thank goodness, I declined each.

One induced me to leave a high-paying job and drift at the periphery of my profession for a while. I returned with my reputation intact and never looked back. I started my own firm where I could set the standards of conduct.

With another, I left a good contractual situation in an act of solidarity with a falsely maligned colleague. They hadn’t come for me at the time, but I knew they would. I could have enjoyed the making of money in the interim, but what price shall we place upon our reputation and self-respect?

 The lessons of life are apparent, there is the (modified) warning of “First they came for people of color, but I wasn’t a person of color … .” I also remember the advice of a friend, and attorney, “First they ask to just to do something that doesn’t smell right, but it’s not illegal. Then ….”

Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm far from perfect. My faults are legion. I think, though, we can make it as an individual, or as a nation, as long as the center holds.

In short, honor, duty, and allegiance to the United States Constitution are heavy burdens to carry through life, but worth every effort. Avoiding that effort will surely help pry open the door to the abyss.

Sailing to Oblivium: August 25,

Bosun's Mates in the U. S. Navy share a sentiment with our brothers and sisters in the U.S. Marines. There are no “ex’s” only “formers.” So, when, even years after our active service, one of us is hurt (even a non-Bosun’s Mate), we all bleed. When something is wrong, we want it righted.

Something is wrong now, seemingly at the highest levels. Our collective rigging is fouled. Our national anchor is dragging. Our shipmates are dying as a result of collisions at sea that would have been unthinkable in the past.

I don’t know why. It has been so long since I served, that I can’t imagine what modern duty at sea is like. I only know what it was like in my day.

After returning from land-based duties overseas, I spent the final two years of my enlistment aboard the USS Hunley out of Charleston, South Carolina. We spent a lot of time moored and servicing the submarine fleet. But, like any Navy warship, we went to sea when the time came.

There is a difference between being berthed, and being at sea. The Navy would communicate that difference quite clearly by the command, when the last mooring line was cast off, to “Hoist the Battle Flag.” At that moment, the flag was moved from astern to the mainmast. Everything changed. We rigged for war. Even though we might be moored five miles up the Cooper River, as we were, the ship was ready to go “in harm’s way.” Lookouts were posted fore and aft, port and starboard, and places in between.

If the Navy took those precautions while being led by tugboats down a river within our own country, one can only imagine how tightly we made things shipshape when we reached international waters.

Something is wrong. Our military people sign a contract with the 99.5 percent of Americans—the ones who do not serve—that they, the few, including sailors, will go into life-threatening situations to protect the many. It is their job. But no less a person than Carl von Clausewitz, in his classic work On War, cautions leaders to avoid what he called unnecessary “friction,” or avoidable acts that impede the mission in war. In short, war is a messy, complex business, so don’t knowingly make it more so by inserting such friction.

I’ve read where American warships such as the USS John S. McCain are designed to be difficult to detect at night. Let’s file that tactic in the same drawer with "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."

Something is wrong when our brothers and sisters are dying without being fired upon in battle. As for my own experience, I didn’t have to go to sea, or stand watch aboard ship. I coxswained our Admiral’s “Barge” and could stayed ashore with it and watched the Hunley led down river. But if the “old man” was away somewhere, I volunteered to sail and stand my watch with the other sailors.

We learned, in the Navy, to identify the direction in which a distant vessel was steaming by the visual appearance of their “running lights,” i.e. white lights fore and aft, red to port, and green to starboard. If numerous vessels were near, it could be confusing, But one thing was abundantly clear: if you saw a symmetrical combination bearing toward your post, displaying a white light amidships, a green light to your starboard, and a red light to your port, it was “gunnel awash,” (or “holy shit’ in landlubber’s terms).

Something is wrong. Shipmates from the USS Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain are dead or missing from disasters only a few days apart and in the same waters. The latter, by the way, is named after Senator John McCain’s father, a crusty old admiral who once attacked an entire Japanese battle fleet with an undersized carrier force and was present when the armistice ending the war in Japan was signed aboard the USS Missouri. His memory deserves our respect, as his son’s service does not deserve our disrespect.

Our lost sailors themselves deserve better treatment, said treatment to include recognition of their sacrifice, not tweets but real recognition.

Something is wrong, terribly wrong. America is dragging her anchor and we need to trim our sails. Maybe better still, we could, as progressive Americans, borrow the United States Naval command that still rings in the ears of those who have served our country with only a thin sheet of steel (or wood) between them and eternity:         

“Sweepers, sweepers, man your brooms. Give the ship a clean sweep down both fore and aft.”

Sounds like a good tactical plan to me.

Anchors aweigh, old girl.

Growing Up Southern: August 24, 2017

 It seems to me that a grown man, say one reaching voting age, is a miracle. I know I escaped “death by stupidity” many times. For my more adventurous friends, it was even worse.

Maybe it isn’t such a bad thing that kids sit around these days staring into a hand-held device or talking into it. At least, the boys are not drag-racing, daring one another to climb to the highest branch of the tallest oak tree around, or wading into bayous looking for snakes. And the girls are not accepting rides from a stranger who looks like the loser in a Charles Manson look-alike contest.

Oh, I know grown men aren’t immune to the “hold my beer and watch this” type of challenging the Grim Reaper. And women still marry boyfriends who have beaten them senseless in the past. Choosing poorly is the Great American Pastime. Just look around.

But for the total abandonment of any sense of mortality, you have to hand it to young boys of past generations. They’ve even been known to tie themselves to young bulls to prove their manhood.

Yes, I said, “tie themselves to young bulls.” It’s not a “tale told by an idiot.” No, if fact it was told to me by my late father-in-law. It’s a tale told about ordinary young boys afflicted with the common masculine syndrome of temporary idiocy. In other words, typical young boys of the Arkansas Delta.

Seems Julius—that was my father-in-law’s name—and some young friends grew bored, sometime maybe in the 1930s. It was during the Great Depression after all and paid entertainment was practically unheard of in the rural farmlands of our state. The Internet says that less than one percent of children could afford cell phones back then, so that must be true. Boredom ruled.

I suppose it was after crops were “laid by” or the miscreants would have been busy chopping cotton. I don’t think there was an “app” that located free farm labor back then.

What to do? The declaration, “I’m bored,” spoken by a young boy is probably second in destructive force only to “I dare you.” These boys were fairly eaten up with boredom, as they say. So, they attacked the delima with their deepest level of concentration, a depth only measurable by electron microscope. We can almost hear the collective "Hmmm." Well, most families had a few cows. This led to calves. That led to young bulls, and that led to the image of cowboys riding grown ones. Now wasn’t that something?

One must understand the workings of an adolescent male mind to comprehend what follows. For that mind, there is no concept extant that involves linear thinking. There is simply a lightening-like flash in the brain that says “do.” A better angel called “reason” is shunted aside like a Gideon Bible at a beer-bust. The mental journey from cowboys riding bulls to let’s ride a calf was shorter than a reach across a small table.

Turns out, though, that riding a young bull wasn’t that easy. Each lad tried. Each lad failed. Each lad’s mind began to ease away from the effort to a less demanding way to entertain one’s self. Of course, one lad didn’t see it that way.

You know him, he’s the kid when we were growing up who would make a stink bomb out of  a ballpoint pen and a match and set it off in Study Hall.

Yeah, he’s the very one.

“I’ll ride the son-of-a-bitch. Find me some rope.” That’s all it took. Danger is no problem for a young boy if he is not the one about to face it. Within minutes, they had the largest of the young bulls fastened in a pen, the daredevil astride him with legs tied beneath the creature’s belly.

I can’t do justice to the telling of what happened next, and my father-in-law is no longer with us to do the job. Let’s just say the episode ended with a calf pen nearly destroyed, a young daredevil covered in cuts and bruises, a defiant young bull, and a band of accomplices, having finally removed the ropes and set their friend upright, lighting out for their respective territories.

Don’t worry. History had not finished with them. They’re the generation that crossed the Rhine River into Nazi Germany in March 1945. Maybe it takes a little idiocy to create heroism.

The Great Story-Teller
Front row center

Growing Up Southern: August 22, 2017

There once was this lonely tombstone in the middle of a cotton field not far from where Brenda’s parents lived. It’s gone now, physically gone. The memory of it disappears as well, nibbled away by the relentless and uncaring apathy of time. Too bad, it makes an interesting story.

It seems there was a stranger that came to the vicinity of Lonoke, Arkansas sometime after the Civil War. People knew very little about him, except for the fact that he evidently “got into a scrape” with someone in town.

They fought a duel with knives, supposedly, at a place still called the “Doc Eagle Bridge,” although the original bridge disappeared years ago. The local man killed the stranger. I don’t know what happened after that except that they buried him a few miles away and erected a tombstone. I’m not even sure it had a name on it.

Over the years, they began raising cotton around the site of the grave, but left a small area around the gravesite unplowed.

When we were first married, Brenda and I, cheap dates were the only ones that fit our budget. A favorite, cheap date that is, involved walking plowed fields looking for Indian artifacts that would rise to the surface after a spring rain. Our first dog, a mutt named Jeremiah would help us look if we promised to buy him an ice-cream cone later. They only cost a dime back then and he was a big help.

Yeah, well, it passed for fun in those days: pre-social media, cell phones, internet and all.

A favorite spot to look was along a wetland called “Baker’s Bayou.” It had apparently provided a popular camping area for the original inhabitants of our country. Later, a state archeologist would point out on a map for us several known encampment sites. Thereafter, we would classify the artifacts we found by the various locations.

One lay near the grave of the unknown duelist. I can still recall the quiet, peaceful spot standing out among the small stalks of cotton like the remnant of some ancient vegetation ritual. But, as each year passed, the unplowed spot marking the gravesite grew smaller. I’m sure it was troubling to have to plow around the grave.

Then one late spring it disappeared completely. The entire site was plowed and the tombstone was gone. I’ve often wondered what happened to it. I like to think that it sits in a corner of some dusty old barn somewhere, and new generations of grandchildren still hear the story about the stranger who came to the area to lose his life, a story perhaps accompanied by a warning concerning the non-efficacy of violence.

I don’t know. It just seems interesting that beneath a stretch of lonely farmland lies a rich history of the earliest inhabitants of the land, and those who came along later. It’s just something to think about.

The Happy Artifact Hunters Three

Monday Blues

Taking Monday off. I've scheduled an appointment for physical therapy on my knee exactly as the much publicized eclipse is to occur, another case of bad timing duing my life. In addition to arriving "in-country" only a few weeks before the so-called "Tet Offensive" kicked off, I finished my tour with the United States Navy 24 hours after the last draft-dodger got the last good job in the country. Later I retired, or sort of retired, a few days before interest rates on CDs hit 0.025 percent, or one percent less than the cost of the gas it took to go to the bank and renew.

And, of course, the sexual revolution began during my wedding reception.

Growing Up Southern: August 20, 2017

There are stories in the Arkansas Delta that would make a person cry to think about. Here is one. My late father-in-law related it to me, as he did so many others.

It concerns what is known as a “shotgun shack.” Most folks agree they called them that because they consisted of three rooms, one leading to the next, with no hallways. A shot fired through the front door would go straight through and out the back door. Some scholars assign the source of the name to an African word. That seem a bit of a stretch to me.

It really doesn’t matter. The truth is that they housed the poorest segments of the rural South, sharecroppers and others who couldn’t afford better. They dotted the cotton fields when I was a young boy. With no shade about them and with uninsulated tine roofs, one can only imagine their discomfort. Only a few remain today.

A solitary man occupied the one in question. My father-in-law, Julius Cole never furnished much information about him. He was, as so many occupants of this type housing were, an African-American who worked picking and chopping cotton in season, and doing odd jobs at other times. Seems to have minded his own business and interacted with others as little as possible.

He died, and the shotgun shack that had been his home, sat unoccupied. Eventually, so it seems, some folks entered it and were amazed at what they saw, utterly amazed and astounded. Word spread, and soon everyone in the neighborhood had come to see.

Drawing covered the walls, elaborate and detailed drawings of churches and other buildings. A veteran of the 79^th Infantry Division in the European Theater in World War Two, Julius always described the drawings as “like the building we saw in France and Italy.” The man in question had obviously produced them.

What an amazing story. There is a concept in economics called “location quotient” that postulates a given geographic area will account for a quotient of goods produced. Some social scholars have expanded that to include individuals of specific talent or genius.

It doesn’t account for those whose talent and genius were lost to poverty, prejudice, or deprivation of opportunity.

Who can imagine what must have passed through the mind of this remarkable man on lonely nights filled with the sounds of Delta insects just beyond the thin walls of his home? What motivates a man to produce beauty he thinks will never be seen, by the light of a kerosene lamp in the middle of nowhere? Did he ever wonder what might have been, or curse his fate for denying what should have been?

We read about people born to wealth and who build upon that wealth and, somehow, we assign them great talents and abilities. What name could we assign to smothered talent and deprived ability? All we can do is wonder what about the insensitivity of fate. Oh, and in weaker moments we might find ourselves abhorring the smirking faces of those born into unlimited opportunity, who blame the poor for their failures.

A made up a short story once using this legend as a source of inspiration. I called it, The Last Cotton Boll and one may click here to open a copy of it. I dedicate it to all those whose talents lie buried with them in their graves.

  

High living, Arkansas syle.
 One of the few remaining to remind.

Growing Up Southern: August 19, 2017

Two women in my life represent the main reasons I hate to see powerful forces setting about to destroy our public school systems.

One was named Mildred Trulock. She taught me English and other wonderful things in the 7^th grade. She died early from cancer at age 59.

The other was named Doris Morgan. She taught me English in the 11^th grade and journalism in the 12^th. She lived into old age before succumbing to Alzheimer’s.

Both put up with my foolishness. Somewhere along the line they instilled in me a need to read and learn. I’m sure they found me far from a good student, but they minimized my nonsense, often using a word that I have rarely, if ever, heard anyone other than a teacher use: “provoke,” as in, “don’t provoke me further.”

And I’m sure I did. For some reason, Mrs. Trulock ignored it and turned me toward reading Charles Dickens. When she caught me reading someone else, say Hemingway, she would observe, “Well there are some elements of his writing that you’re not emotionally prepared for yet, but I suppose it’s okay.”

Mrs. Morgan set a high standard, expecting my fellow students and me to read and discuss such classics as Moby Dick and Heart of Darkness. Later, she taught me not to use sarcasm in serious reporting. She singlehandedly got Overton Anderson and me into the National Honor Society. I can imagine that, at least on my part, that, took some high-level filibustering.

I never told Mrs. Trulock how much she mattered in my life, but I expect she knew. I’m proud to say that, before Mrs. Morgan took sick, I began writing short stories. Sometime in the early 1990s, I packed up several and mailed them to her with a note saying her efforts hadn’t gone completely in vain.

Gosh almighty! A week later, she tracked me down by phone and complimented the daylights out of me. That meant more to me than a Pulitzer might have. Well, almost.

She had even passed the stories around to the other women in the retirement home with all the pride of a mother whose son had just made the honor role for the first time.

Of all things, she laughed and said, “I had to explain to some of them what a ‘stump-broke cow’ is.” See, she grew up on a ranch in Montana and was quite the cowgirl when she was young. She knew things some of her peers didn’t, probably some things I’ve never known.

I say this all in support of public school teachers. I have friends and acquaintances who received superb educations at private or religious schools, but I only have the experience of public ones. I think they, and their teachers, are national treasures. I only wish that the billionaires trying to privatize them would redirect their vast fortunes toward bolstering our existing schools instead.

I know those were different times during which these wonderful women touched my lives. School populations were more homogenous. Life was slower. A good part of education was devoted to building character as opposed to certifying kids for jobs or post-secondary endeavors. Children didn’t have to make the terrible choices they must make today, including whether to join a gang or try drugs. I’ll be the first to admit, though, that sneaking away down to the ravine to smoke a Camel was a perennial temptation.

We took tests in those days to see if we were learning anything, not to determine our future roles in life. A Mildred Trulock or Doris Morgan would have time to apply a little molding to young minds. Life was calmer. Students provoked their teachers back in the day. They didn’t beat or stab them.

Were times that much better? I don’t know. Old-age gilds and glitterizes the past. Times certainly weren’t better for my African-American brothers and sisters. They weren’t allowed to attend school with us.

All I know is that attending a public school did me no personal harm. Hell, that’s where I met Penny Perdue, who, I’m proud to say, still calls me her friend. As the ladies Trulock and Morgan would want me to say, “Be still my beating heart.”

Just remembering.

Sailing To Oblivium: August 18, 2017

A boy I knew years ago and I gave wrong directions once to a black family asking the way to Memphis. We sent them in the opposite direction. I still worry about it.

There were three of us waiting in a parking lot on the main highway through our town for a fourth rider. The owner of our car, I’ll call him Joe, was giving us all a ride back to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville after a weekend visit home.

Joe was one of the biggest jerks I’ve ever known, but he had a car and would give us rides home and back if we paid for the gas. As we stood there, a car stopped with an African-American family inside. The man politely asked for directions to Memphis, Tennessee.

He was headed in the wrong direction, headed, in fact, for Dallas, Texas.

Before anyone could speak, Joe blurted out, “You’re headed right, just keep going for 150 miles or so and you’ll be right there." Then man thanked him and drove off toward Texas.

I say “we” gave them wrong directions, for I stood silent, making me just as guilty as Joe. I have thought of that incident maybe hundreds of times over the years, including on lonely nights sitting in a tower, or on a bunker guarding a Navy base against attack by a known enemy.

The ghastly sin of bigotry and racism is also a known enemy, and I have, on occasion, failed my country and my fellow human beings by falling under its spell through silence or apathy. Maybe there are others that feel that way too.

Oh, I have rationalized about the incident. Had I interfered, I would have been left on the side of the road without a ride back to resume classes the next day.

Interference may have led to a physical confrontation.

There was a third person who would have sided, no doubt, with Joe and it would have been a question of whom to believe.

The highway was clearly marked and I’m sure the family realized the deception before long.

It’s all bull of course. I was a coward and a bigot. My only hope is that the incident may have helped form my later belief system. Maybe Joe himself changed. On the other hand, maybe Joe was among the Neo-Nazis, KKK members, white supremacists, and hatemongers that the President of the United States of America has seen fit recently to defend. Who knows?

Maybe the incident served some distant purpose. I’ve thought about it while driving home late at night through the Arkansas Delta through swarms of insects as thick as fog. Often, I had just been the only white face at a meeting held in a small rural church building for the purpose of planning how to get a water system funded for one of the poorest communities in our state. Maybe the Galilean would give me a little credit for that, and for speaking out from time to time against hate. Who knows? By doing so, I've alienated some folks I had regarded as friends. Who cares?

As I say, maybe Joe changed. Sometimes education and responsibility lead us to change our hateful ways for the better. I’m not optimistic, though, after this past week, about the healing effects of education and responsibility. They sure haven’t had that effect on our president. We can only weep as we remember Zion. 

A holocaust survivor and target

of the Charlottesville marchers.

      

Sailing To Oblivium: August 17, 2017

As with many things, Sainted Mother said it best. She told me, “Son, a man is known by the company he keeps.” She was also known to remark, from time to time, that “Sorry is as sorry does.”

That was far, far better than some recent remarks I’ve heard lately such as, “There were some fine people in that crowd” (in Charlottesville, Virginia). Mother certainly wouldn’t have had it that way. She had no time for Nazis, and she would have had no time for anyone marching alongside one.

The KKK she found more interesting than anything. There weren’t any Jewish folk or African-Americans living in the rural, South Arkansas area in which she lived as a child. With no jews or people of color to terrorize or lynch, the local Klan pretty much confined itself to bullying white teenaged boys who became unruly.

Anyway, I’ve never forgotten her advice. I always ran with a decent crowd and still limit my associations to folks who are higher on the educational scale than I. And if I happen to go somewhere “fine,” I make sure it deserves that sobriquet.

Let’s say I attended a church. What could be considered finer in the eyes of many Americans? Then, suppose instead of passing around love and grace, let’s say the folks there began passing around rattlesnakes? Would I symbolically march alongside them?

Not no, but hell no!

It happened to me, metaphorically at least, when I was in high school. I was trying to impress this girl, see, so I attended church with her on Sunday. It wasn’t any rural snake-handling place either. It happened to be the largest and most sophisticated Baptist church in the city.

Imagine my surprise, when, instead of pointing out the grandeur of the Galilean’s Sermon on the Mount, the pastor began to demonize, in the most explicit manner, people of the Catholic faith. Yes, it was the year John F. Kennedy ran for president. I learned, from that pastor—in the most tragically ironic way imaginable—that, up until then, every person who had ever assassinated a U.S. president had been a Catholic.

I’m not sure that was true, but when the basis for a sermon is hatred and bigotry, a little mendacity is a minor side-note.

Our city was in the migratory path of literally thousands of Italian immigrants. Shysters had lured them to the United States with the promise of fortunes to be made farming in the State of Mississippi. When, upon arriving, they learned that the intent was simply to replace African-American sharecroppers with Italian-American sharecroppers, those immigrants left. More than a few settled in my home town. I had many Catholic acquaintances and some Catholic friends. They all seemed like nice folks to me, and they were.

I started searching for a new girlfriend the next week after seeing the kind of crowd with which my “ex” associated. It was a tough decision, for she was smart, popular, and mighty cute.

Now, I watch the news and hear, over and over again, the shouts of “The Jews will not replace us,” “you will not replace us,” "the KKK," and “blood and soil,” (a Nazi rallying cry).

There may have been some “fine” people who started the march in Charlottesville, but there were no decent people in the crowd the moment after those shouts began.

For you see: sorry is as sorry does.

Sailing To Oblivium: August 16, 2017

It’s one of those days when a person ought to try to get his mind off current events. Unhinged minds are swarming about like hornets. Their buzzing dominates the news and clogs the very air we breathe. It’s like trying to respire nuggets of pure filth.

It brings me once again to the lines of Matthew Arnold:

“I, on men's impious uproar hurl'd,

Think often, as I hear them rave,

That peace has left the upper world

And now keeps only in the grave.”

Gosh I hope not. Arnold found peace and hope in Kensington Gardens. I’ve turned to watching and listening to Yeol Eum perform Mozart’sPiano Symphony Number 21. It gives me a few minutes peace. Moreover, it gives me hope.

If there are young people like Yeol Eum amongst us, and there is beautiful music waiting to be played and heard, can it drown out the insanity about us? Gosh, I hope so.

What was so startling about the last few days is the number of people whom I had considered normal, rational friends who have aligned themselves with, well, the scum of the earth: the KKK, the Aryan National, American Nazis, and assorted hatemongers. Where it will all end I don’t know. Those groups are quite adroit at passing their anger and hatred to others, and they now have a new friend who just happens to be the most powerful man on the face of the earth.

It’s more than a little unsettling.

What we are seeing may be what happens when people quit reading poetry and listening to Mozart. Perhaps we should all go to a public place of quiet reflection as Arnold did and seek hope as he expressed it:

Calm soul of all things! make it mine

To feel, amid the city's jar,

That there abides a peace of thine,

Man did not make, and cannot mar.

Meanwhile, send a bigot a link to Mozart.

It can’t hurt.

Sailing To Oblivium: August 15, 2017

The TV announcers seem surprised. What rocks have they been hiding under? Those chickens have been headed our way for a long time.

One wonders when a pundit, in earching for the origins of Charlottesville, VA, will remember SCOTUS Chief Justice Roberts’ famous cop-out in Shelby County v. Holder. As the Court gutted voting rights, he claimed “…while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.” (Emphasis mine) That is to say, “Hey, racism is over now. We don’t need no stinkin’ voting rights legislation anymore.”

Or, will a reporter finally remind us that Ronald Reagan first announced his presidential candidacy in Philadelphia, MS, the town where the three civil rights workers: Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney were slain by white supremacists in 1964.

The message was plain, “Hey y’all, I’m with you on this race thing. Let’s make America white again.”

 The chickens coming home now have been wandering around long before Donald Trump announced his campaign. One only had to be there when America elected Barack Obama president. The thought of a person of color in the white house shook the foundations of white society with enough strength to awaken Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. It did awaken Jim Crow like nuclear tests awakened the monsters of the 1950s’ Sci-Fi movies. Bigotry was fashionable again in the bars, coffee shops, hunting clubs, and hair salons of the South. Like all cancers, it soon spread over all of America’s body.

People you thought were reasonable and sane began joking and frolicking: photoshopping watermelon patches on the White House lawn, wearing blackface outfits to parties, calling the gracious First Lady of our country a gorilla, or resurrecting stale old racist jokes from the 1950s.

The chickens began to strut and peck. We ignored them, perhaps because we were busy, perhaps because we were verifiably Caucasian, or perhaps because we thought America was too strong to be lured into the cesspool of racism, bigotry, and prejudice again. Maybe, after all, we did think the jokes and jibes were a little bit funny. What’s the harm if it doesn’t affect us? Warum ärgern? Es ist nichts.

When situations arose that required complex analysis, we discarded the complexity and chose sides. Violence drew lines that won’t be erased for decades. It was righteous food for the flocks, and it drew them like moths to a flame.

Other chickens, like the fundamentalist religion crowd, joined in dragging new targets. The flocks grew. Fox “news” found an audience and prospered, throwing enough grain on the ground to entice even the previously sane into the mix. Old breeds infiltrated: the KKK, the Aryan Nation, even the Neo-Nazis. Nobody seemed to notice who their flock-mates were.

It was a happy group, pecking and strutting the day away until the Sean Hannity show came on so he could throw them their daily grain. The chickens were happy and content.

Now they are coming home to roost and some wonder why. I just wonder how come it took them so long.

But maybe, just maybe, Charlottesville will provide a Joseph Welch moment for America. Click here for the video of how he handled the Donald Trump of his day.

Mr., we could use a man like
Joseph N. Welch again.

Sailing To Oblivium: August 14, 2017

Because I’m from Arkansas, friends from other states have asked me about Hillary Clinton. I don’t know the woman personally. I shared a running track with her a few times when the old downtown YMCA in Little Rock still had a health club. I was with a friend at the airport one day when she came over and thanked that friend for the expert testimony he had provided for her in a trial a few years back. She introduced herself to me.

Those are the total times I have been in her presence, although the Governor’s Mansion was only a few blocks from where we lived back in the day.

Of mutual acquaintances who did know her well, I have never heard one say a bad, demeaning, unkind, or critical word about her.

The only disparaging remarks I have heard from Little Rock residents came from attorneys at the aforementioned health club talking about how she had destroyed one of their brethren in court and how they hoped they would never have to go against her.

The editorial staff of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette despises her. For an Arkansan, that is one of the highest endorsements of good character that one can achieve.

The consensus among some professionals was that she was smarter than her husband. Others disagreed, saying she was the better administrator and he was the better politician. All say they were good parents. None of my professional acquaintances ever accused Hillary Clinton of being warm and charming in public. That is an assessment that fits a majority of trial lawyers in our state. They, in their defense, are paid to win cases, not friends.

After Ken Starr and his band of zealots spent $70M dollars trying to find dirt on her and her husband, uncovering only an extra-marital affair between her husband and another woman, and nothing at all on her, Having damaged or destroyed countless innocent lives in the process, Starr and his merry evangelicals moved on. I thought the personal crusade against her was over.

No. Trey Gowdy spent another hundred million or so trying to convict her of something and failed. Failed completely. Had he found an unpaid parking ticket, he would have had her arrested. But no. He found nothing. I though the inquisition finished.

No. After a convoluted and confusing battle over the fact that she had erred in the use of her e-mail accounts, uncovering little more than sloppy methodology, I thought the harassment was over.

During all this, nobody ever found grounds for charging her for anything. Anything at all, despite the fact that her enemies controlled both houses of Congress, and enjoyed the full faith and credit of the Koch Brothers and other billionaires with which to finance digging for dirt. With the “null hypothesis” thus extant, surely the search was over.

No, Fox “news” took charge of the campaign. This time, facts were not a necessity. They fed the unsuspecting brains of their viewers with tons of rot and garbage that would have made The Galilean himself look like a child molester.

One example: an individual assured me, without fail and with perfect certainty, of seeing a video of Hillary Clinton laughing because she had gotten a child molester off, as his attorney. Some facts:  (1) There was no video. (2) The lie developed from an unaired, but recorded, interview with a prominent Arkansas journalist when Hillary Clinton was a young attorney. (3) She was assigned the job as attorney for the accused, neither seeking nor wanting the assignment. (4) She was relating to the interviewer how the accused, no doubt guilty of something, had easily passed a polygraph exam. She laughed when she related how that had made her forever distrust polygraph exams, a youthful case of unartful conversation at worst. (5) Hillary Clinton didn't "get the man off." The victim’s parents dropped the case before it went to trial. There's a little more to this if one cares to dig a bit.

I offer this only as an example of how countless hours of work by Brietbart and others can distort reality. Oh, and she never ran a child pornography cell beneath a fast-food restaurant. Thank social media for that one.

After the assault by Fox, I thought the worst may have been over. Then, James Comey had to decide whether to alienate the political party in power or the political party out of power.

He chose poorly, and now we are in the mess that resulted.

I’m not posting this to defend Hillary Clinton or to change anyone’s mind. So please, I offer no ad hominem attacks on any of you, and would graciously ask the return favor. You are welcome to your opinions. I spent four years of my life defending you from being punished for having them. I’m just printing this as my honest assessment, and the reason as to why I voted for this capable woman for president and will die treasuring that as one of my proudest votes.

Just thinking.

Sailing To Oblivium: August 13, 2017

In the summer I was 19, I worked as lifeguard and had days off. I spent them reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer. The entire book made an impression. What I remember in particular, though is Shirer’s account of Kristallnacht and his constant interspersion of how ordinary Germans would simply go on about their lives as usual as the Brown Shirts became increasingly emboldened. After all, it was just Jews they beat up, and if you weren't one, life was good. The world was drenched in blood before decent people woke up.

In my youthful naivete, I remember thinking how lucky we were in America that things like Nazism could never.

Can you imagine my despondency when I saw Americans with swastikas marching in the street of one of our cities? Can you imagine my disgust as the president of our country appeared to equate the motivations of the Nazis, white supremacists,  and Neo-confederates with those of other Americans who came to protest the actions and appearance of the hatemongers?

Can you imagine the heartbreak I felt in thinking of people whom I once respected now siding with people sporting a KKK sign, waving a flag that endorsed slavery, and wearing a Nazi armband?

I don’t even have the energy left to question why. But I can recommend action. Contribute now to the Southern Poverty Law Center. This glorious organization fights hate groups and hits them where it hurts, in their pocketbooks. They have bankrupted a number KKK groups and maintain a close watch on domestic terrorists on our behalf.

A hundred dollars to them will do far more good than prayers or angry FB postings. Act now. America must not become like 1938 Germany.

Old and worn
but still relevant.
Read it. There's time.

The Navy and I: August 16, 2017

Nobody believes me. Even today, nobody believes me. This guy could hitchhike—would hitchhike when the mood struck him. I’ve seen him.

Just because he was a big black dog is why people won’t believe me. His name was Charlie and he made up part of a small communications compound about three-quarters of the way up Monkey Mountain east of Da Nang in 1968. He sorta looked like a big fuzzy Lab and we were very fond of him. He could do an impersonation of Maurice Chevalier that would just crack your ass up.

 It would have offended him greatly had anyone suggested he belonged to us. He berthed with us, that’s all.

I was part of security for the compound, which meant I was paid to sit for six hours at a stretch in one of two towers just outside the perimeter, or at the entry-gate shack. On the midwatch, (midnight to daylight,) there was an impressive view across the bay of the jets dropping napalm on and strafing the mountains to the south. In the opposite direction was the South China Sea, some 3,000 feet or so below. I once watched the battleship, USS New Jersey sail by below during a day watch.

But back to Charlie, the hitchhiking dog. People who believe, without apparent struggle of any sort, that a man and his family kept two Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs and other species on a homemade boat and fed them for 40 days and nights scoff at my contention that our pal Charlie was a hitchhiker without parallel.

But he was. There were two more compounds above us, one Marine and, if I remember correctly, one Air Force. Since we had to motor in all supplies and meals, there was a good deal of traffic during the day. Here is where it gets interesting, and this is not “old-age hyperbole” speaking. The regular drivers all knew Charlie and knew that he had friends at the large Air Force compound at the base of the mountain.

There were dark rumors of a tragic love affair with a French Poodle, an unverified one, but believable, as the French had occupied the area before the Americans. Charlie wouldn’t talk about it. But his first name, “Victor” sounds a little French, n'est-ce pas?

Anyway, when he decided to spend a day at sea-level, he would simply go across the narrow road going by our base, and wait. Soon, a driver would see him, apply his brakes and open the passenger-side door for the mutt. Off he would go. Some sailors claimed they could hear him whistling at times, but I never did.

When he got ready to come back, he just reversed the process. Many is the time I’ve seen a truck, barreling up the mountain, stop and let Charlie out. Oh, sometimes he would stagger a bit and hum "Anchors Aweigh" or "Barnacle Bill the Sailor," but mostly he seems to have behaved himself while down below.

Once, a driver was in a major state of confusion. “What the hell’s wrong with this dog?” he yelled from the window just as Charlie jumped through it. He had first passed our gate, but immediately backed down the road to where a couple of us were standing.

“I picked him up at the bottom of the mountain,” he continued. “Thought we could use another dog up yonder.” He pointed in the direction of the Marine compound. “We got here and he went crazy. Kept barking ‘numbah ten’ or something like that.”

“He belongs here,” I said. “Thanks for bringing him home. You’re the new guy, aren’t you?”

“Three sixty-two and a wakeup,” he said. “Still shittin’ stateside chow. How did you know?”

“Just guessed,” I said as I swatted Charlie to make him stop giggling .

This is all true. I offered it to The Veteran’s Project but they just laughed.

 You believe me, don’t you?

Me, Seaman Ed Swope, and EN1 Bill Webb

at Charlie's favorite debarkation site in 1968.

Sailing To Oblivium: August 11, 2017

I'm thinking of the Doomsday Clock. I think it was set to two and a half minutes until Midnight at the beginning of 2017. It is set once a year. It would certainly be moved closer to Doomsday should it be reset now.

Things aren't looking too good. What may or may not have been a cause for unreasonable alarm has been elevated to that status by a man who never should have been elected president, probably never wanted to be elected president, and who apparently doesn't care that he was elected president.

Thinking people whose minds haven't been polluted by Fox "news" and hate radio/TV care, though. As we stand on the precipice of annihilation, we should all care. We are sailing to Oblivium and, short of a miracle, we may all arrive shortly.

I've had an interesting and good life. Some regrets. Much gratitude. I feel mostly for my friends with children and grandchildren. I even feel for those who fell prey to the vicious hate generated upon the current president's opponent. We have all learned the lesson of despising someone so much we would hurt our country and its people. None of us should be surprised at the outcome.

Who knows what to think? I just know someone said make a daily journal of your reaction to this administration. I'll keep trying until the bombs start going off. Then, I'll eat pizza and cheesecake until the cloud reaches here.

Sailing To Oblivium: August 10, 2017

Delicacy forbids details, but I just spent a day and a half in prepping for, and undergoing, a medical procedure. Mostly I read, … mostly.

I spent a good deal of time with Huế 1968: A Turning Point in the American War in Vietnam” by Mark Bowden. While it may be disturbing, the book is certainly timely, as we increasingly place our country’s future in the hands of its generals, in increasingly dangerous conditions. We can only hope they, the generals, are good ones like my friend, Brig. Gen. Troy Galloway. He is one of the best that America can produce and American needs more like him.

They weren’t so good in 1968. I’m talking about my war. During the fall and early winter, North Vietnam had positioned some 10,000 troops, along with ample arms, for an assault on Huế. Made an imperial city in the early 1800s, it lay equidistant between the Northern and Southern borders of what was Vietnam at the time. With a population in 1968 of 140,000 or so, all of Vietnam knew the city and viewed it with reverence.

The city was lightly defended for what would become known as “The Tet Offensive.” An ARVN group held a position in the Northern part of the city and a small American force occupied a MACV compound to the South.

I was only 70 miles away, at Da Nang, when 10 battalions of NVA and VC attacked Huế, immediately occupying the city and surrounding the small groups of allied forces.

Away in Phu Bai and Saigon, generals Foster LaHue and William Westmoreland refused to believe that the North could bring that many troops to the city undetected. They believed strongly that  General Võ Nguyên Giáp was using Huế as a diversion for a major attack on an American emplacement at Khe Sahn, farther North.

Giáp fooled them so completely that, after his troops had occupied the city with a force of perhaps 10,000 men and women, our generals refused to recognize or admit the truth. Their report to the public was that a few bands of Viet Cong had entered the city and were being rounded up as they spoke. Privately, they accused the ARVN troops of incompetence and the Americans of a lack of battle experience and the "jitters" for any delay.

Then they began ordering company-level groups of Marines, less than 100-strong, to cross the Perfume River and retake Huế. The disastrous and inhumane results should have triggered a formal review and appropriate punishment. That, of course, never happened.

Meanwhile, there are reports that the Northern troops were massacring up to 3,000 civilians in the city, including some Americans.

Oh well, enough is enough. Here is a film of how the Marines began re-taking the city, building by building, with a level of heroism worthy of their ancestral comrades at Iwo Jima and Tarawa. Oh, and those were the same Marines of whom General Westmoreland once commented: “the military professionalism of the Marines falls far short of the standards that should be demanded by our armed forces.”

I laid the book aside for a while yesterday, and began thinking about generals who give suicidal commands to troops from safe positions faraway. Then I thought of how General Grant spent the night, after the first day’s battle at Shiloh, leaning against a tree less than a mile from the Confederate front lines. We need to know about our generals ere we trust our youth to them.

As I say, I hope we have good ones in place during these fearful times.

Highly recommended.

Sailing To Oblivium: August 8, 2017

The so-called “Beatitudes” attributed to the Galilean tantalize me. You’ll rarely encounter them in religious services anymore. A Methodist minister on local TV, Britt Skarda of Little Rock’s Pulaski Heights Methodist, preached a nice sermon on them recently. Other progressive pastors mention them on occasion. But I haven’t heard an evangelical use the term in years. And don’t hold your breath waiting for them to emanate from Washington.

They intrigue me to the point of obsession, though, the Beatitudes do.

The Greek word translated “blessed” means “happy, blissful” or, literally, “to be enlarged.” In the Sermon on the Mount, the Galilean uses the word to refer to more than a superficial happiness; in this context, blessed refers to a state of spiritual well-being and prosperity, so one source tells us.

That’s how some religious thinkers interpret them. Others disregard them as superficial meanderings taken totally out of context. They think blessing the “poor in spirit” might lead us to excuse, … well, any number of things.

 What intrigues me is that secular humanists seem to refer so often to the Beatitudes, and to value their message quite highly. They discuss them in terms of humankind’s responsibilities to one another. They often award their source, the Sermon On The Mount, as described in the Gospel of Matthew, as one of the most beautiful pieces of literature in Western civilization. I agree, but it is a bit odd that the Galilean’s most famous sayings are valued more highly by his doubters than his followers.

There are eight of them in Matthew. Luke presents four Beatitudes and four “woes.” The Luke version (6:20-26 NIV) deserves review:

20 Looking at his disciples, he said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,

    for yours is the kingdom of God.

21 Blessed are you who hunger now,

    for you will be satisfied.

Blessed are you who weep now,

    for you will laugh.

22 Blessed are you when people hate you,

    when they exclude you and insult you

    and reject your name as evil,

        because of the Son of Man.

23 “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

24 “But woe to you who are rich,

    for you have already received your comfort.

25 Woe to you who are well fed now,

    for you will go hungry.

Woe to you who laugh now,

    for you will mourn and weep.

26 Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,

    for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

Oh my. A lesson for many of us. They are a bit harsher. Notice also the replacement of “poor in spirit” (Matthew) with simply “poor.” Since the author of Luke is considered by some to be associated with the Apostle Paul, we can fly off into multiple lines of thought. And I know, I’m getting above my pay-grade here.

In closing, the translation of “blessed” as “happy” is, to me, a bit demanding. At least I’ve struggled with it, even after reading countless works of exposition. But, a religious assignment based on “reward in Heaven, would make sense. You’re happy in expectation of your coming reward. I’m just not sure how an abandoned mother with three starving children in the Arkansas Delta would respond to that.

I know. I know. The “Social Gospel” is far out of style these days, replaced by the “Prosperity Gospel. Too bad, in my opinion.

I can understand how some would conclude, after a study of the Beatitudes, that their purpose refers to Heavenly reward as a justification of present suffering or righteousness. I just wish we could apply them more often and more secularly here on Earth. I think the Galilean would like that.

Just thinking …