Sunrise With Schubert: January 31, 2018

I knew it would be painful to watch. I knew it would break the heart of anyone who loves America. But I knew I would learn something.

So, last evening, I walked across the street from the condo to the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History to watch the monthly documentary, this one entitled VA: The Human Cost of War.

It was as sad and terrifying as the title suggests. The way America treats those who have agreed to risk life and limb for their country can amount to a horror story at times. Since politicians never admit fault for any problem, the blame often falls on the VA system. The documentary began by pointing out the recent failures of the VA and its bureaucracy. There was much more, however, the story.

The modern VA system, by the way, evolved from the vision of General Omar Bradley after World War Two. He proposed a system that would not only provide veteran care, but would coordinate with medical schools, train, and provide research.

The advances in medical care resulting from such research is astounding, from the advancements in the treatment of amputees to the discovery of the benefits of daily aspirin usage in preventing heart disease.

Ever wonder why Little Rock’s VA hospital is located next to the U of A Medical Center? That was part of General Bradley’s vision as well. As the film pointed out,

“The VA is the second-largest government agency and the second-largest part of the federal budget. It trains 70 percent of the doctors and the overwhelming majority of nurses in the U.S.; has nine million veterans and counting in its system; and has spearheaded the development of some of the most innovative medical treatments in the country, “yet few know what it is and how it works.”

The most illuminating fact, for some of us, in the documentary, dealt with the relationship between the Veterans Administration and the Department of Defense.

There is none.

Unlike many foreign governments, the two are not wed, or even distantly related. In America, once a veteran leaves the military and is handed a DD 214, the official record and proof of service, the Department of Defense is finished with him or her. Goodbye. Good luck. Nice to have seen you. Piss off. Next!

How do politicians respond to this? Just as you might imagine. It’s a hell of a lot more fun to bluster and threaten to invade (make America great again) than it is to face the realities of planning how we would deal with, as Eric Bogle puts it, “the legless, the armless, the blind, the insane”.

Combine this with the lag time between the end of a war (yes children, wars used to end, long ago in an America far away) and the peak demand for the damaged veterans of that war. It’s decades and decades later. By the time it arrives, there are other, more politically palatable things (border walls and such nonsense) to address, and “no-tax” pledges made to private citizens such as Grover Norquist. These get more votes than allocating revenue to honor our commitments to those who have paid their part in a contract with America.

Some of the best quotes in the documentary were from Max Cleland (a triple amputee from the Vietnam War and the one who a Republican opponent once compared to Osama Bin Laden).

“The best way to lower the costs of veterans’ care is to prevent wars,” he said. That’s not likely, as long as wars make good press, affect less than one percent of Americans along with their families and friends, and can be carried out “on credit.”

Addressing the current practice of not including the cost of care for damaged veterans in planning for the cost of a war, he offered the following slogan. I quote from memory here but the meaning stands.

“No leader should be allowed to outline plans for the first step (of a war) until he has announced plans for the last step.”

In the meantime, twenty of our veterans are committing suicide each day, many because our leaders and politicians don’t do that.

We should be ashamed of ourselves.

A must see.

Sunrise With Schubert: January 30, 2018

Fifty years ago today, I wrote my Sainted Mother a quick letter. She had called me a liar in her gentle way, and I felt the need to respond.

“I know you are not telling me the truth,” she had written. “I know you want me to think you are safe when you really ain’t.”

Late in the day, after returning from a patrol around the perimeter of our base, I answered. As best as I remember, I said, “You wanted to know the truth, well here is the truth. All hell has broken loose.”

And it had. The general chaos that came to be known as “The Tet Offensive,” had started. There is an enduring myth that our military had been totally surprised. Not true. We received warnings for days that the “gooks” might try something on this day. Even the villagers across the makeshift military roads from our base had been acting strangely. Normally, the young ones came out just after daybreak, took a crap, and then stood across from our towers or bunkers. They would “give us the finger,” beg for cigarettes, or both. They formed part of a society with an accommodating mindset, forever flexible.

That day they didn’t appear. Neither did the four or five barbers that worked for the Americans on our base. In fact, they never came back, their bodies perhaps ending up in the piles of Viet Cong corpses stacked like woodpiles and left at major intersections as a warning.

Yes, all hell had broken loose. Turns out that it wasn't that we weren't warned, but that the "Brass" had just ignored the warnings. Now, there was no information available and no order to the chaos. A mortar barrage might start walking towards our base from out toward Marble Mountain, cease, and then be picked up from far away in the opposite directions, bouncing codas back and forth like instruments battling for the theme of an orchestral work.

A short 80 km (50 miles) away, a small and immortal band of Marines and an ARVN unit were catching the Devil’s own fury at Hue. More about that in a future posting.

Between duty assignments that day, we met a group of shipmates that had just returned to base. They were scheduled to go home, having cut the last links from their “short-timer chains” and processed out with their two new medals that would gain them everlasting enmity from the general population and a fair share of their own fellow servicemen. Again, that’s material for a future piece.

Anyhow, these lads had been seated in an aircraft that had taxied the runway, pivoted, and was gunning its engines when the Viet Cong began shelling the runway at the massive air base outside Da Nang.

Yeah, the one General Westmoreland had been assuring the folks back home was secure.

They left country some 27 days later, those lads. During that time, they re-joined us. We still had no idea what was going on. We stood watch for six hours on and six hours off on the towers and bunkers. During the six hours off we slept, went on patrols, strengthened the base security, cleaned our weapons, and cursed those who had gotten us into this mess.

We had it luckier than most. Our area was protected by a mountain to the east, a bay and deep-water harbor to the north, a river to the west, and who knew how many bases and compounds to the south? There was still the threat, taken quite seriously, that some band of zealots might decide to test things at any given second. It was a country of people who had been seeking freedom for over 300 years, so there were many bands of zealots.

We stood guard, watched, rested when we could, and waited.

Sainted Mother knew I carried a weapon, that sailors weren’t supposed to, that the news on TV and in the papers was ghastly, and that it was quite like me to spare her details of what was happening where I was. They say that she would flinch every time the phone rang during that time.

Want to know how that felt? Just keep electing people who think war is cool and profitable.

"Join the Navy," they said.
Ride the waves.

Sunrise with Schubert: January 29, 2018

The sun’s coming up again this morning, though judging by last evening's posts on social media, many of my friends didn’t expect it to.

I guess, even though it’s Monday, the day is ours to do with what we wish. I’ve already decided to skip the news and spend the morning with music in the background. That always helps me get off to a better start. Already, some random thoughts have filtered through the haze that passes as a brain in my case.

Saw where a woman got herself quoted in the state newspaper as saying she would like to write a book called Depression is a Choice. I’m not sure of the context or details about her life. She probably just meant to be quippy and quotable. It still offended me.

I’ve lost two family members and at least one business associate to depression, and I’ll damn assure you that none of them chose it. That doesn’t include my brother veterans.

In two days, we begin the commemoration of the beginning of the 1968 Tet Offensive in that dark and dreary point in history, in a land far from the society balls of America. Those of us who survived, to a person, can tell stories about depression and, at the same time tell you where you can put the word “choice.”

Anyway, it’s a new day. I spent the afternoon yesterday attending the visitation for a cousin who died last week. He had led a full life, but I hadn’t seen much of him in our adult lives and didn’t know his family well. Still, the experience touched me, as the death of any family member will. Additionally, visiting the place where I was born and raised always innervates nodes of memories in me, like the smell of the inside of an old church.

Passing through one neighborhood, I recalled a young man from my school days, a gifted athlete and straight-A student—handsome, personable, popular, envied, and without blemish nor impediment to ultimate glory, until the day he, unaware of the danger, decided to treat sore muscles from football practice with an electric massager while taking a bath. It could have been any of us. We had never been adequately warned about the dangers of an otherwise benevolent technology. Progress always comes with a price, a price he paid to save the rest of us.

I drove other old streets of a city that had once been grand and prosperous … for half its inhabitants. Its grandeur has fled in modern times, along with its glory, to find more tranquil lives in places with homogeneous populations of the proper type. That’s just a sign of our times. Lists published on the “net” tell us what cities are winners and which are losers in this redistribution, at least as society defines such things. Sometimes I feel that the Galilean might come up with different lists of places where we should go.

One never knows, does one?

On the way back, I drove through a town, population 84, that had once been a thriving community that even boasted its own bank. The empty concrete slabs tell us how many businesses flourished there back in the day when an agricultural economy supported such places. I counted, simply driving through, maybe a dozen such bleak reminders.

Life is short, shorter for some than others. Grandeur flees. Glory seeks solace. Someday, if we are lucky, a group of folks will gather in a room and share anecdotes about us.

What to do on a new Monday?

I think I’ll go and create some anecdote material of the grand and glorious kind.

Morning Thoughts: January 28, 2018

I have no authority whatsoever to do it, but I’m claiming this as National Curmudgeon Week, in honor of myself. Today is Brown Shoe Day.

For the young, who have missed out on many funny things in life and are now experiencing an era of ordained non-levity, this refers to the old admission that “I feel like a pair of brown shoes in a world full of tuxedos.”

See, that used to be funny. Time was, one didn’t wear brown shoes with tuxedos. That’s when the saying meant something. Now we live in a world in which it would either be acceptable, considered “awesome,” met with indifference, or unnoticed if it weren’t on a cell phone screen.

At any rate, here are some things, new and old, about which I feel out of step with the rest of humanity. Please feel free to add your own under “comments” or on Facebook. They won’t hurt my feelings. I’m a brown shoe, remember? In the meantime, here is my Top Ten List of unfathomable “Things I Don’t Understand.”

10. Katherine Hepburn. She had a voice like a prostitute’s fingernails being hooked up to a large Marshall amplifier and dragged down a slate chalkboard. She had a figure that would make a popsicle stick look sexy. She had a file of acting moves that wouldn’t have taken more than a kilobyte, and an air of haughty arrogance that would have made her the primary subject of any girl’s locker room of my generation. I’d rather be forced to stare at Steve Bannon’s face or Kim Kardashian’s ass than watch Hepburn in a movie.

9. Food Trucks. I know. I know. Unload your weapons. It’s my take and my take only. You’re welcome to eat at the nasty things for three meals a day with my blessings. As for me, I worked my way through two college degrees so I wouldn’t have to, and to think, they helped cause Dixie Café to close.

8. Men and boys wearing hats or caps indoors. It’s stupid, unseemly, unsocial, and indicative of a lack of breeding that would make Donald Trump look sophisticated. I know I can’t change history, but could we at least remove them at funerals?

7. Calling anything other than a drink composed of Gin and Vermouth a “Martini.” At long last, have we no sense of decency?

6. Watching movies on cell phones. Has anyone’s life become that meaningless? Hell, we’ll be watching football games on them next.

5. A commercial TV series. Watching five minutes of storyline and fifteen minutes of fast food commercials is no way to change the Universe.

4. Cirque du Soleil. Entertainment, I’ve always thought, was supposed to be, well, entertaining, not weird and scary except in Stephen King movies. It’s only a short, tragic, step from this to watching hordes of mentally impaired Irish-folk tap dancing in unison.

3. Fox “news.” If my only desire in life is to destroy brain cells, having mass quantities of Jack Daniels sipping whiskey and playing the banjo with friends is a lot more fun and educational.

2. Giving the slightest damn about the British royal family. Didn’t we fight a war or two over this?

And…

1. Cars equipped with GIS. Please, please, please … if you can’t read a map, street names, or road signs, don’t drive. Get drunk and go walking along busy streets instead.

Extra Blog Bonus: If by now, you are not pissed off, let me know. You are eligible for a drawing coming up soon.

Morning Thoughts: January 27, 2018

Some people think I attended college shortly after the Chicxulub disaster. If so, I have witnessed much of the evolution of Homo sapiens.

Just think … we are the only extant human species. Fascinating. We owe both the Planet Earth and the Universe a high degree of thanks for that privilege, with homage to the dinosaurs for stepping aside, albeit unwillingly.

Anyway, we had learned to read by the time I sought higher education. I wasn’t an English major but the girls who were didn’t catch the eyes of fraternity men in some cases, so it gave me a chance at chasing after female companionship. Consequently, I sort of minored in it … English that is.

What might be termed “End of Civilization” literature was hot in those days. At the top of the list stood 1984, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, and much of the work of T.S. Eliot. Oh, and there were the comic observations of Catcher in the Rye.

Of course, I read all of them diligently. And of course, I re-read them in no less than five-year intervals. Then, for relaxation on a simpler, but equally terrifying note, I speed through Apocalypse Now, On the Beach, and the work of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Anyway, it’s fashionable these days to regard 1984 as the most prescient of the works. Certainly, our descent into a non-reality paradigm bears witness to Orwell’s predictive powers. Our president’s creation of a private police force bears witness as well to a “Big Brother” future. As for “Hate Week” or the daily “Two Minutes of Hate,” welcome to Orwell’s world, now called “tweeting.”

Yesterday, however, I had an epiphany. Its seed sprouted when I read where the so-called “Doomsday Clock” was now set at two minutes. (That means we should start storing our favorite unhealthy food and drink, or get started on that book we’ve always planned to read).

After the seed had germinated for a full day, I happened upon the 1963 film adaptation of Lord of the Flies by Peter Brook, the best adaptation so far.

Oh dear.

Watching that film and thinking about the book, while powerful forces are actively disassembling the foundations of our society, scared the crap out of me. The worst part is that our brave band of Homo sapiens now (according to a recent study) goes back only some 180,000 years. By geological clockwork, that’s far less time than it took the boys in “Flies,” abandoned on a deserted island, to revert from normalcy to a primal and violent tribalism.

During our time, our society advanced from primitivism upwards to Mozart, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, and Isaac Newton, then downward to Donald Trump. Only now, it’s not “kill the pig,” but “kill the truth.” It seems only a matter of time before real, not verbal, spears will be sharpened for the members of a free press, next its advocates.

What can we do? Watching the sun trying to peek through a rainy sky, and listening to a Hayden symphony, I’m thinking that today will consist of whatever I make it.

I don’t intend to start fashioning spears. Think I'll read The Sermon on the Mount instead

Our next president?

Morning Thoughts With Schubert and Wolfgang:: January 26, 2018

I’ve known my share of military veterans. For years I’ve watched how we treat them. Sadly, we tend to stereotype them. We shouldn’t.

Veterans aren’t all heroes. Some, many, maybe even most, may be. Some aren’t, in my experience. In my life, I’ve met some of the finest individuals on the planet who have worn, or are now wearing, the uniform of our country. I’ve also met some of the sorriest sons of bitches you would never want to associate with in your life, not hordes of them, but more than a few.

What veterans do have in common is that they, assuming they completed their service honorably, have done something that most other Americans haven’t done, or won’t do. They have paid a price in time, danger, injury, or psychological demands that less than one-percent of Americans are now willing to pay, Other than that, they are simply a group of Americans that are as diverse and immune to labeling as any.

We try though, to label them that is. In my lifetime, World War Two veterans were typecast as ordinary people who rose to do extraordinary things and were granted hero status for their sacrifice. That luster has never faded.

Korean War veterans were simply the leftover heroes or their younger brothers. We didn’t want to think about them after the Great Challenge.

Along came Vietnam. That was where the stereotyping became cruel and senseless. They were crazy, drug-obsessed, wastrels not fit to marry your daughters. Even as recently as last month, I read a newly released novel that had, you guessed it, the obligatory Vietnam veteran character who was mentally deranged and simply walked the streets of the city talking to himself. I immediately thought of a friend and fellow veteran of that sad and senseless war who recently retired from an illustrious career with one of the most prestigious law firms in Arkansas. His type has never appeared in book or film.

Let’s return to the deranged Vietnam Vet wandering the city and scaring the hell out of decent folks. Along the way, he would see, no doubt, many veterans of wars waged since Vietnam. Those veterans are, to a man or woman, we are led to believe, all homeless dependents. The insults and cruelty continue to this day.

The point herein is this: Serving America is both an honor and a badge of merit. It is not a singular characteristic for electing leaders. Ulysses S. Grant was a great general but mediocre (although perhaps not, according to Ron Chernow, to the extent that history has chosen to typecast him) president.

Joseph McCarthy was a veteran of World War Two and tried his best to do great harm to many Americans after he was elected to the Senate. Is there a cautionary tale therein or what?

Lee Harvey Oswald was a veteran who murdered an innocent man, casting the entire planet into turmoil, because that man was president of our country.

Charles Whitman was a veteran who shot and killed college students from a tower on the University of Texas campus.

General Curtis LeMay was an honored veteran who later ran for office as George Wallace’s potential vice-president.

And the list goes on. While pondering it, we might consider that John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, among others, never wore the uniform. Abraham Lincoln only served briefly in a militia unit and never, in all my readings, claimed that experience as forming military expertise or a prerequisite for leadership.

My opinion, and mine only, is that we may afford veteran status whatever degree of importance we wish, but should use our blessed cognitive abilities to decide to what degree that status would make one a great leader for all Americans.

Motives are motives, after all. Did serving in our military make one suitable for leadership, or was it simply a calculated gesture to “have one’s ticket punched” for later political aggrandizement?

Monument to the 442nd Regiment.
Japanese American Internment Camp
Rower, Arkansas. - Real Heroes.

Morning Thoughts: January 25, 2018

Spent a wonderful evening last with a young friend of Mexican heritage. Largely abandoned here at age 12, he persevered and survived. Brenda and I were blessed to help him get an education, and Green Card. Then, on what was one of the most wonderful days of our life, we watched him raise his hand and become an American citizen.

 If you’ve never done that, watched people become citizens of our country, you ought to do it sometime. It will put some pride in your heart.

We talked of so many things. I was struck by his love of people and of his two countries. His work ethic is beyond reproach and a great future stretches before him. I always feel a little closer to the Galilean my after my friend and I get a chance to sit and talk.

 He told me one very interesting thing about Mexico and other countries south of our borders. I had always halfway believed in what I call “The Ernest Hemmingway-Jimmy Buffett” mythology. It posits that natives of other countries hate all Americans save the two of them. Everyone else belongs to a group called “The Ugly Americans.” Except for their money, those in this group are despised and ridiculed.

Not so, says my friend. His opinion is that people in those countries respect Americans who come to their country and treat them as equals, even those who move there to live.

That’s comforting to know.

 

 

 

 

Morning Confessions: January 24, 2018

It was a morning for painful recollections, and contemplation of shortcomings. It was not a good morning for reading the news. It was all bad.

I, with a few moments to spare ere heading out to earn a bit for the old guitar fund, spent some time flipping around the web, hoping to find a secret message, one that I could decode, announcing that an alien race was taking over America as part of an emergency intervention ordered by the rulers of our Galaxy.

Found none.

Back to the morning's business: I take a glass of medicinal wine in the evening and some vitamins in the morning, along with a pill that should be "taken with milk." The first thing I found in the fridge was a quart of buttermilk my wife, "La Jefa" uses to make corn bread.

Seemed close enough.

The next thing I saw was one of the fancy wine glasses I had recently purchased with which to upgrade my nightly (self-imposed) ration of medicinal wine.

Seemed as good as anything.

I stood for a moment staring at an elegant wine glass filled with buttermilk. It seemed to wink at me and I felt a tickling in one of the evaluative nodes of my brain.

It was then I realized that I will never be asked to join a country club.

Drats.

Where, oh where, did I first go wrong?

Morning Thoughts: January 23, 2018

Politics is like in-line skating. We watch someone else do it and we say, That’s easy. Even I could do that.” Of course it’s not, easy that is.

It strikes me lately how much politics has become personal to so many. By personal, I mean that, for many individuals, it has become all about them. This seems so much more prevalent on the “left-side” of the political spectrum. On the right, they seem to take the position that, if one simply accepts the platform, all will eventually end to one’s satisfaction.

Many on the left, though, seem to want to be right more than they want to win. This is a normal feeling during normal times. The problem is that these aren’t normal times. While one is busy being “right,” the ones determined to do what we consider “wrong” are staying unified, amassing power, and winning elections. People who win elections tend to govern us.

What seems to be lost in this situation is a basic misunderstanding of politics, and the complexity therein. Perhaps this is symptomatic of a society that is losing its grip on the basic belief in a rigorous and demanding education. Further, it results from a growing segment of society that would rather watch an old TV show on a cell phone than read Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Getting our news from those with whom we agree on Facebook compounds the problem.

My contention manifests itself in the current flap over keeping open our United States government, the government, by the way, of those who stormed ashore at Normandy or were beaten and lynched for demanding to vote, wanting a decent, safe, and sanitary job, or seeking a good education.

Much of the anger over the current situation derives from the fact that an interim legislative solution didn’t offer what some individuals wanted. It wasn’t at all about the millions of fine people who were without paychecks while inferior people squabbled. It wasn’t about America’s standing (once at the pinnacle, now near the bottom) in the World at Large. It wasn’t about stability, honor, or responsibility. It was only about “winning” and not “caving.”

I’m not a political expert, but most people who post on social media make me feel like one. Let me therefore, offer an insight.

Winning elections isn’t about your ego. Winning elections isn’t about how bad the other side may be. Winning elections isn’t about whether your candidate was the nominee or not. Winning elections isn’t about “making a statement.” Winning elections isn’t about your feelings. Winning elections is not about being right. Winning elections isn’t even about being good. And winning elections is not about the fact that someone in government pissed you off once and you want to "show them a thing or two." Winning elections is certainly not about rioting or stopping traffic on an interstate highway.

Winning elections is about votes.

Votes flow from solidarity of purpose, and support for a body of principles that will benefit the health, safety, and welfare of us all, even if we don’t agree with every single principle involved. Votes flow from the tacit support of those who haven’t joined us but are watching our every move. Yes, votes are about money, and yes, bad people are pouring vast amounts of money into influencing our elections for greed and power.

Sitting elections out is not the best way to address that disadvantage. Winning elections is about voting. Why do you think one side is working so hard to keep people from doing it?

Morning Thoughts: January 22, 2018

America awakes this morning, shaking and cold from a national case of the DTs. What will happen is anybody’s guess.

As history would gleefully point out, this should be no surprise. We can be mean-spirited as a society or sub-society. Consider

- Our treatment of those who had settled this land before Europeans arrived,

- The American South before and after the Civil War,

- The era of Herbert Hoover and Joseph McCarthy,

- The horrible period of HUAC activity, and

- The rotting actions of governors like Orville Faubus, Ross Barnett, George Wallace, and Lester Maddox.

One of the textbooks used in teaching Public Administration to college students now is entitled Politics of the Administrative Process (Donald F. Kettl: Sage Publishing). It posits how managing government is an administrative process but one influenced heavily by politics.

Okay, but what happens when the balance of politics and administration gets out of balance? One instance, one which both interrupted and influenced my life, occurred during the mid-1960s. The decision to enter a civil war between two countries that posed minimal influence on America became a political one, one bereft of thoughtful administrative analysis. A president became politically trapped into participating in what is now widely considered to be a period of national insanity.

Some of us survived it. There resulted, however, a mournful wall of granite in Washington D.C. with over 58,000 names etched into it of Americans who didn’t. The black stones reflect only a fraction of the total deaths, not to mention the destruction, resulting from the use of human lives as political footballs.

That event mirrored another, earlier, when political decisions resulted in our carpet-bombing the country of North Korea, an act that still contains the seeds of the end of our planet as we know it.

It would be tempting to say that America is, once again, experiencing an imbalance between administrative and political decisions, only that isn’t true. There is no administration visible at the national level now, and little at some state levels. Our destiny is being determined largely by politics, some of which is setting new standards for greed and cruelty. Our cities, lonely entities in a sea of madness, plow on, but their inherent lack of power and dependence upon state and national sources for statutory enablement makes them frail crafts to tie to in the current storm.

It may help to calm our sense of despair if we remember that America can be a warm and nurturing place when it chooses. Consider

- The enactment of the 40-hour week for our workers,

- The establishment of Social Security to help our workers accommodate their senior years,

- The provision of unemployment insurance to protect workers from the whims of employers,

- The enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act, and

- The regulation of child labor and enactment of the minimum wage, and
- For a brief shining moment, the promise of health care for all.

No matter what one may have been made to think of these advancements, the millions of people who have benefited from them will stand witness to their goodness if there should ever be a day of judgement for nations.

How does this affect us? Our only hope, it seems to me, will be for us to start electing better people to office.

Morning Thoughts: January 21, 2018

Lot of posts these days talk about how some immigrants have “broken the law,” and should be punished. There’s something odd about it.

In my opinion, and this is just one person’s, these posts would carry more weight if they weren’t posted, in almost every instance, by the same folks who would totally exonerate the woman in Kentucky, who refused to obey a lawful requirement because of her (a woman with multiple marriages) so-called “religious beliefs.”

Now, I’m not a biblical scholar, but unlike most evangelicals, I’ve read the whole Bible, not just the parts that support my embedded beliefs. It’s tough going and takes you through so many nooks and crannies that forming a consisted belief system from it is tough without severe selectivity.

My readings have convinced me, though, that there are more requirements therein for us to love one another, to show mercy on one another, to comfort the afflicted, to treat aliens well, and to care for the weak and helpless than there are to keep two men or two women who love one another from engaging in a lawful wedding.

By lawful, I mean one that has been amended in modern times from the original biblical allowance for men to have as many wives as they chose, or for the woman to hold only a supporting and grossly unequal role in the matter. Geez, if we truly believe that, we wouldn’t even allow our sisters to preach the Gospel.

Yes, our definitions have changed over the years. By the time the Galilean came along, there were two people involved in marriage and he was more vocal about divorce than he was about who the two people were.

He didn’t like it, divorce that is. I haven’t found, though, where he suggested deportation for the offense.

But back to the law. Yes, certain things are illegal, sexual harassment being one of those. So far, there hasn’t been a national outcry for deporting the guilty, quite the contrary in at least one case.

Hiring illegal aliens itself is, well, illegal. I’m trying to get a count on how many employers have been departed so far for the offense, but no luck so far.

Hiring contractors and not paying them is, I think, under certain conditions, illegal. If the one doing the hiring and shafting has enough legal resources, though, deportation doesn’t follow. Filing bankruptcy seems to be a cheaper way out for the contractors involved than bringing lawsuits against billionaires.

Lynching and other forms of murdering African-Americans should have been illegal at least since shortly after the end of the Civil War. Not only did our country not make it illegal, we didn’t even deport a single guilty party. One can probably still smell the cloud of guilt on a hot summer night at Ninth and Broadway in my city of Little Rock, Arkansas where whites once burned a black man. A white man in the crowd then publicly directed traffic with a charred and severed arm. Deported? No. Arrested? No. A local hero? Yes, among many. Do any of his descendants now post offensive things on Facebook about minorities? In all likelihood. Acorns don’t fall far from the tree.

A woman recently admitted that she lied when she made comments that initiated one of our country’s most infamous lynchings, that of a black child. Has she been deported? Not to my knowledge. Would our country be better off if she never had lived within its borders? You decide.

I’m not trying to foment divisiveness. I’ll leave that to our president and his minions. I just choose to follow the path of one who said, “let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

I think, if I remember correctly, that same person, it is written, said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” I don’t recall a word therein about our deporting one another.

Further, I believe that if we have national problems, and we do, they can be solved better with love than with hatred. I also believe that if we do have laws, and we must enforce them, we can do so in the least restrictive, damaging, hurtful, and vengeful way possible. If a person’s church or political party doesn’t believe that, I have suggestions for that person. I, for one, think the Galilean would agree.

Morning Thoughts: January 20, 2107

On mornings like this, expressing one’s feelings is difficult. Finding solace takes some digging unless you’re a libertarian. They’re happy. No government in our country is, after all, their lifelong dream. Talk about “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” We’ll re-visit them when our rivers start burning again.

I guess some members of our president’s political party are happy. I’m not sure all of them are, but they could have prevented his train wreck at any time. I suspect the party’s radical fringe has the more thoughtful members locked into behavior-prisons from which they would just soon escape. Perhaps, several “Thomas Becket Moments,” “Saul of Tarsus Transformations,” or “John Newton Transfigurations” might have saved us.

Too late now, though.

Me? I’m just happy I don’t have to explain our country to my cousins in Germany. I’m sure that some of their ancestors felt the same way in 1936.

And,

I’m happy that the sun will rise in a few moments and the intemperate weather has subsided to the point where I can walk outside and enjoy the rebirth of “… my own little postage stamp of native soil,” as William Faulkner described his own world years ago.

I’m happy that YouTube still has posts of David Oistrakh playing Sibelius.

I’m happy that Joseph Conrad was born.

I’m happy that a person of African-American descent in our country can dine in restaurants, attend movies, pursue an education, and become President.

I’m happy Jonas Salk discovered a way to prevent polio and chose not to, in the ways “Big Pharma,” file a patent, so it would be available to the “least of those among us.”

I’m happy that it only took our planet 3.5 billion years to produce a Vincent van Gough from single-celled prokaryotic cells.

I’m happy that our American political system was blessed by the (much too brief) participation of a Barbara Jordan.

I’m happy that John Lewis survived Pettus Bridge.

I’m happy that Bob Dylan has lived a long life.

I’m happy that my best friend is sleeping in the next room and hasn’t grown tired of me.

I’m happy that I can still breath, think, and walk.

I’m happy that my cadre of close friends are, to a person, some of the finest people our country has ever produced, and that I will never have to apologize for the actions of any of them.

I’m happy that I served my country, albeit that I didn’t particularly want to at the time. Now, though, it scares some, pisses off some, and impresses a few, not a bad tally.

Finally, I guess that I’m happy in a way that I probably won’t be around to see our planet take its last gasp, that is to say unless those younger than I decide to take control. That doesn’t appear likely this morning, but I’m happy that the great pendulum of history swings fore and aft, that there hasn’t been a ship of state drop anchor for an extended length of time since the Egyptians, and that, as Lewis Mumford said, “trend is not destiny.”

Morning Thoughts: January 19, 2018

There’s something we need in America. Forget statues of Confederate soldiers. They fought for slavery. The Abandoned Woman: she deserves a monument. That’s who deserves honor and glory.

Who do I mean? Let me give you a composite from my personal experiences over the years. The following is no single person. She is, though, as real as the computer on which I type. Everything I’m going to describe is true. It all just happened to different people I’ve known. Consider a woman’s story.

She didn’t attend college. Instead, she worked so her husband could. Or, perhaps she married straight out of high school to a promising young man and began raising the child they conceived together and she birthed. (Notice I didn’t say “his child.” That term makes me nauseated).

Things went well until after that first child. Then she changed. The change showed on a face beleaguered by the strains put on her by colic, colds, bad tempers, diarrhea, teething, accidents, or the many other trials of nurture that go unseen by husbands and friends.

Perhaps the change manifested itself by a weight gain. Maybe the “ten” her husband described her as, to his friends, while the two had courted slipped to an “eight.” Maybe she wasn’t as “hot to trot” as she had once been. Maybe she just got older.

Her husband changed too. He was becoming successful, a change he felt entitled him to the same marriage benefits as always. Besides, the more successful he became, the more the younger women at work admired him. His wife should as well, even as she washed his dirty underwear.

Then he met “Bambi” and everything changed. He hated to do it, but, dammit, Bambi was still a “ten,” maybe even better. One night his desires and disappointments collided and his wife and child were banished to a friend’s house. She found a cheap apartment for the two of them. Divorce followed.

What’s an abandoned wife to do? First a job. She still had skills, though they were rusty. She found a job typing and sued for child support. The judge, an old friend of the ex-husband’s boss, awarded an amount that was 21 dollars a month less than the cheapest child care center she could find. It cost her “ex” so much that he had to forego membership in a more prestigious duck club. He was kind enough to remind her of that often.

Once a month he would pick up his son for the weekend. It turns out that Bambi’s family owned horses. The son would come home after the weekend spent with his father and talk incessantly about riding horses and how much he looked forward to the next visitation. Oh, and why couldn’t they have a horse?

The “father-son ecstasy” would not persist. Soon, Dad and Bambi had their own child. It drew the attention. Then, the same weak moral standards that caused Dad to abandon his first family finally cost him his job. Both the visits and the child-support payments became “iffy.” In those days, there was little recourse from an all-male judicial system.

The woman just worked harder. Sometimes there was a second job that still allowed her care for the son. Maybe she attended night classes. Maybe she found herself in a better job, training men to fill the position just above hers. She thought of dating, but men wanted an unencumbered “ten” for serious involvements. Even if she were still “hot to trot,” men weren’t interested in long journeys, just short sprints around the track.

Why a monument to her? Just this: she survived, and that survival should be an inspiration to us all. Despite the abandonment, the privation, and the fact that she worked for sixty cents on the dollar compared to a male counterpart, she survived. It was a feat accomplished by a work ethic and a monumental determination that might be compared in some aspects to the strength of African-Americans during the Jim Crow era.

Yeah, I think she deserves a monument. After all, she didn’t start out on her own with a gift of a college education and a million dollars. She’s worth, though, a lot more than that.

Why do I preach about it? Because I’m as guilty as the next person, and maybe self-awareness is the first step toward redemption and reparation. Oh yes, and maybe I respect success produced from a strength that was forged from the heat of adversity more than I respect success by inheritance.

To Moms

Morning Thoughts: January 17, 2018

One of the things that cause me despair these days has to do with my college education. I decided at first to study architecture. The only problem there was it took talent, and I had none. I ended up in urban planning, a more fitting, and surprisingly well-paid career. I flourished, but never regretted my efforts in architecture. They proved most fruitful in both my professional and public lives.

See, they taught me that problems exist to be solved, and that solving them is one of life’s noble callings. Further, it taught that difficult problems can be addressed with a combination of facts, analysis, education, study, application, and cooperation.

Does it always work? No. Is there a better way of solving problems? Not that I know of. Then what is causing me despair?

Simply this: at our higher levels of government, I see no effort to solve some of the most serious, dangerous, and emotionally-charged problems that our country faces. This unwillingness to collaborate on addressing problems appears is chipping away at the fundamental tenants of a democracy that once was a shining light for the world. That democracy is now becoming a world-wide laughing stock.

When solutions are proposed in Washington, or many state capitols, they are the most potentially disruptive, cruelest, polarizing and mean-spirited ones that can be devised. Is there an alternative? Maybe.

Some years ago, the federal legislature passed, and the president signed into law a bill very favorable to religious and other institutions but not so for public bodies, including cities. One of the provisions of the act stated that solutions proposed by those public entities had to be the “least restrictive possible.” That’s not a bad stricture for many issues—perhaps not for pandemics, but for most things. Current proposals by the federal government, however, tend to verge on the most restrictive and, as I say, disruptive solutions possible. One feels obligated to say, “physician, heal thyself.”

As for the poor, the disadvantaged, the forgotten, strangers from another land, or those whom nature didn’t produce as a Caucasian heterosexual, the attacks are particularly heinous and the neglect most heartbreaking. The most terrifying and confusing aspect of all this is that the very worst of the persecutors are the ones who most loudly claim direct guidance from The Galilean.

Is either political party blameless? No. But as the actual or cultural descendants of those who froze in the Ardennes, suffered for a woman’s right to vote, ended slavery, or hung from trees as “Strange Fruit” in our American South, we have the right to an elected president who seeks to unite, not divide us. If that individual refuses to do so, we have the right to demand that the political party represented take action for Americans and not for party.

It’s too important that it doesn’t. How can America be great when some of her children died of hunger last night? When war profiteers are using their power to convince us to invade again. When those who have everything demand more? When there are sick and dying in America, lying alone in forlorn places with no medical care. When there are those who love America, and would become a part of her heritage if only their plight could be viewed with human compassion instead of retribution. When there are those who are not allowed to live in peace as nature made them. When young boys are imprisoned in a ghetto hovel awaiting the day they are given their first gun and sent forth as a drug runner.

The list goes on, and we tweet our thoughts instead of proposing actions. As for me, I think I’ll go look in the mirror at the face of one of the guilty.

Morning Thoughts: January 16, 2018

Mornings I wander the net, landing on interesting places at times. Today I hit Dick Cavett’s interview of the writer Eudora Welty. One comment that Cavett allowed her to make stuck to me like a snowflake to a leaf. She was talking about being in Paris and he asked if she wrote while she was there (and not in Mississippi). “I didn’t mean to write there, because I was too busy looking,” she said. How illuminating.

Could something a Southerner saw in Paris contribute to Why I Live At The P.0.? (Read it before you do anything else). Maybe, just maybe.

The only thing I see so many people looking at these days is their cell phone. If we lose the eyes of a Eudora Welty, will we lose the voice of a potential William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Harper Lee, James Baldwin, Kazuo Ishiguroor, or other? Hard as one might look, there is no material, or inspiration, for Snow Falling On Cedars inside the soldered guts of a cell phone.

Perhaps that is why I, personally, find modern fiction so hard to plow through and so tiresome to read. Mostly, they are balls of angst wrapped tightly with the life-strands of weak and helpless characters who are being “borne ceaselessly” into their own Purgatory. Many read like a bad PBS mini-series (not the many excellent ones, but the ones that go from one case of human frailty to another). One will find neither a Barkis who “is willin,’” nor a Peggotty who is amused and amenable, therein.

One thing Welty did, and she did so many things well, is to set the tone for the colorful southern character. I’m not sure Southerners, if we can lump their vast diversity into one definition, are any more colorful than anyone else. But, like the image of the empty-spirited Vietnam Veteran with his broken wings, Southerners are forever stuck in society’s stereotype.

Yes, Eudora Welty helped to form the Southerner’s image. But she did it so well, and without apparent malice aforethought.

Widening our lens, Southerners, as I say, are like everyone else. I used to think they differed in that the white ones hated African-Americans more than their “other-world” counterparts. The presidency of Barrack Obama disabused me of that notion.

Next, I thought that maybe Southerners, who do tend to express themselves well, could articulate their hatred of other races more adroitly than big-city northerners. Then, Donald Trump came along.

I guess the lesson is that each of us mentally, or actually, visits our own personal Paris from time to time. Some look and see. Some don’t. Those who look may see things that, though never outwardly manifested, may inspire and help them gain immortality.

Oh yes, those who don’t look while in their particular Paris may also gain immortality. Too often, though, it results in placing them on the wrong side of history.

Miss Welty: Definitely on the right side of history 

Morning Thoughts: January 15, 2018

I’ve always appreciated the rewards that come from hard work, honesty, and dedication more than those from accidental benefits. Take American citizenship for example. I did nothing to deserve it. I did, though, appreciate it enough to serve the country when asked to. Four years of your life pays back a tiny bit for all the benefits from undeserved luck. Or so it seems to me.

It can rankle to watch those I call “members of the lucky sperm club” prance around in their $5,000 suits or designer outfits, many having never served their country at all, enjoying their privilege while raining insults on the least of those among us. Many of them have never worked a day or sacrificed a moment to gain their position in our world. Good fortune: it favors individuals as well as countries.

Let me tell you about a woman I know. She wasn’t born in America. She hails from a city on the Baja Peninsula of Mexico. She came to this country on a visitor’s visa. She met a man from Texas and married him. They became neighbors of ours at the farm we own in rural Arkansas. We are proud to call her and her husband our friends.

He grew up living with his family, and three others, on one-fourth of the enclosed rear of a flatbed truck, traveling from harvest to harvest across the heartland of America, far from the gilded towers of Manhattan.

We were honored by helping her prepare "Green Card" papers that had to be delivered to Memphis early one morning. It was our further privilege to sponsor her. At the time, her husband worked until midnight each day, so we set our alarm and met them at the remote house of a woman who put the finishing touches on the paperwork for us to sign. Then, off they went toward Tennessee, with neither sleep nor rest.

The next evening, they came to our house, all smiles, with a small gift of thanks. Later, I was lucky enough to attend the ceremony in which she became an American citizen.

They’ve had their ups and downs since, but they have survived and raised two wonderful children, one of which is now almost halfway through a college education. Along the way, for a few years, they cared for four abandoned children, keeping them out of the foster care system until their parents took them back.

On special occasions, she treats us to the best tamales this side of Mexico City. He helps me keep some of our antique farm equipment running. When she’s not cooking, tending house, or working, she knits head coverings to donate to kids undergoing cancer treatment at St. Jude’s hospital in Memphis. We exchange gifts at Christmas and smiles and waves much more often.

Don’t ask us, if you would, whether we would choose her and her family, or the Trumps, as friends and neighbors.

Morning Thoughts: January 14,

At the risk of belaboring the point, I think there is something else that bothers me about using intemperate language toward other countries.

My father’s family immigrated to the United States in the late 1800s. They came despite the fact that our country had recently suffered over 600,000 deaths in a fight over whether to allow the enslavement of one race of humans by another. Immigrants evidently saw promise in the new land instead of a tragic and incoherent history.

My father attended a one-room school in rural Arkansas. His grandfather barely spoke English and still owned a pair of wooden shoes he had brought over from Germany. His father had been subjected, as a youth, to indentured servitude. Ties to the old country were strong.

Daddy would have been five or six when America entered the First World War. His schoolmates echoed the opinions of many important members of our government toward the country of our ancestry. I’m not sure they whether they called it a “shithole” country or not. But the children called my father a “Dirty Hun,” despite the fact that one of his uncles wore our county’s uniform.

Later, as the second of the world wars initiated by our ancestral country and its allies raged, America was fairly certain of who our friends and enemies were. But history is fluid and its meanderings unpredictable. The enemies of today may be the friends of tomorrow. Hatred is a weak anchor with which to moor our ship of values. Americans should have realized that by now.

Some have. Some haven’t. Many of our mothers and fathers, coming out of America’s greatest economic depression, watched, in horror, the results of a nation’s people slowly allowing themselves to be led and governed by men who loathed and abominated minorities. The resulting millions of dead cry out to us from the pits of history, pleading for us not to repeat the mistake.

Will we? My reading of history tells me that the seeds of World War Two didn’t instantly produce full-grown plants from a once-dead land. They sprouted first as an identification of scapegoats on which to blame current problems. They flourished as minorities suffered demonization and good people watched in silence. They grew limbs and leaves as minorities lost the right to human decency and their friends and neighbors went about their business.

Then the orators took over. Intemperate language became acceptable, even lauded. Hatred became the norm. War became the solution of choice. Isolation of the educated and ghettoization of the powerless went unchecked. Eventually, the ovens appeared, next, the smoke columns.

Maybe the crops of that war all germinated the day a young boy called a classmate a “dirty Jew.”

Maybe the fruits of those crops blossomed the day the Fuhrer denounced an entire race as vermin.

Maybe those crops fed the troops who invaded country, after country, that the Fuhrer had denounced in intemperate terms.

Too often, our mouth is the gateway to our heart. Let us hope that one person’s mouth is not the gateway to our nation’s heart.

It is ironic that I was visiting some of the finest people on the planet when I heard about the obscene words uttered about countries less fortunate than ours. I was, in fact, with leaders of our state’s cities. They serve those from a great diversity of areas. All are doing monumental jobs of facing increasingly complex problems, jobs aggravated by members of society who no longer view racial harmony and love of humankind as a way to address those problems.

As with our cities, the founders of the countries of our planet were not all motivated by a desire to seek a new life and a willingness to oust native cultures that stood in their way. Some are peopled now by descendants of humans transported to their countries in chains, their bodies shackled together head to foot in spaces barely 18 inches high. Those lucky enough to survive the sea journey faced a life of misery and spirit-killing slave labor.

We express wonder that some of their descendants don’t see hard work and enthusiasm as keys to happiness.

The volunteer immigrants sought land rich in resources and relatively free from Nature’s resistance. The flourished as much from natural conditions as they did from personal initiative.

We acknowledge their hard work.

At the same time, we should always bear in mind that “the rain falls on the just and the unjust.”

As with our sister countries, the cities of our state have faced a great variety of historical and natural forces. Some cities, once located in pockets of poverty, despair, and backwardness, have found the changes of times generous and bountiful. They flourish, not so much from the actions of former residents, but from the almost accidental turns of fortune.

Other cites watched as the socio-economic dynamics of the world rolled over them like a hurricane of destruction and ill-will. Again, because of nothing their former populations did or did not do, they struggle like “boats against the current,” most often being “borne back into the past.”

I thought about this all the way as I was driving home yesterday.

I thought about times I have been in the luckier parts of our state and have heard otherwise good and decent people describe, to my face, the area of our state from which I come. They use the same terms that the president, of this great and fortunate country of ours, uses to describe those countries occupied by the less-blessed of our brothers and sisters.

I thought of the summer nights I have spent sweating in the Arkansas Delta, meeting in a rural church, windows open and mosquitoes so thick we could scarcely see one another. I remembered how, many times, I was the only white face in a room full of folks in desperate need of potable drinking water for their families, or some other basic need of life.

I thought of cities in our state that once provided goods and services for a population thriving on an agricultural or manufacturing economy, but are now deserted wastelands since those employers mechanized or moved to enjoy near-slave labor in those countries we now call “shit holes.”

I thought of a friend from El Salvador, who fled a country of devastated by natural disasters as well as from gang warfare that results, in part, from the desires of people in our country to purchase illegal drugs. He performs a job once done by three people and is a model of what our country needs to face the future. He has never written a piece, or spoken to a crowd, urging Americans to hate or distrust one another. This, in my book, makes him a better citizen than Franklin Graham, the commentators on Fox “news,” or politicians who use hate and distrust as election vehicles.

The Galilean urged us to love one another and respect other cultures, even the Samaritans of his day. We could use people who would live by his counsel to run our country.

I thought about the young child on the porch of a shack in our state’s forgotten rural areas, a child siting cold and hungry waiting for his mother to finish “earning” enough for a hit of crystal meth. Yeah. He’s living in a “shit hole.” But he’s our son. What will we say, or think, when he's old enough to get his first gun?

I remembered a piece I had read earlier in the day. An opinion writer said our president simply said aloud what many Americans were inwardly thinking. I hoped it wasn’t true, but I started to tear up. For a moment, I felt the Galilean join me.

           

Morning Thoughts: January 11, 2018

When I was just a young boy, I grew up "out in the country." What I wanted then, was to grow up and have a place in a big city like Lucy and Ricky Ricardo had. Almost made it. The road to my dream got a little bumpy, though, when I married a farmer's daughter.

Now we have what we call "a farm," which is really just a 125-acre patch of pastures and forest. We do have a high-rise condo unit in Little Rock, a not-so-big city but a nice one. We recently bought another house in a small town: Lonoke, AR in which to care for my mother-in-law. That's another nice city. Now we, like the hero (heroine?) in our favorite movie says, "We don't know where we are until we hear someone call our name."

Let's face it. I like cities. I don't mind farms, grew up around them, but I love cities.

That's why I keep working some. See, I get to work for the cities of Arkansas and that is both a treat and an honor.

So, I'm in Fort Smith, Arkansas today, it's another nice city, the one from where Mattie and Rooster took off to find her daddy's murderer.

I'll get to spend time with exceptionally fine people, swap war stories, and learn things. Go ahead and envy me. I'll understand.

Morning Thoughts: January 10, 2018

I was lucky. I paid off what I thought was a massive student loan debt pretty quick after I graduated in 1966. It was $180.00. That would be, maybe, $1,400.00 today, but it seemed like a lot to me then. Despite being transferred to 1A Draft Status, I managed to land a job in San Francisco and paid the debt before I was called up to serve.

Lately, a lot of dots have been connected in my head. How are college debts, statistical “think-speech,” the words of the Galilean, and photos of immigrant parents being torn from the arms of their children related? In my aged mind, they are.

First, in my early career, I dealt a lot with cities that were seeking help through the community development block grant program issued to the state from the federal government. The funds existed to help cities with eligible programs, one of which was to provide aid, comfort, and relief to families who met a defined standard of living on low or moderate family incomes. Yes, the ones the Galilean called “the least of those among us.” Back in those distant times, there were those in government who wanted to see the country guided by Christian standards.

Yeah. It was a long time ago.

For those who worked within the program, our job was to care for the health, welfare, and safety of the American people, a disarmingly simple charge. It guides, or let me say should guide, every aspect of my profession. Right.

In a move that still burns my cheeks with shame, we developed jargon that allowed us to speak in terms less understandable by the very public we were supposed to serve. It also promoted the de-humanization of our efforts. The community development block grant program was no longer a source of relief and succor. It was “The CDBG Program,” a source of free money. The recipients were no longer those who suffered, longed for safety, and mourned for being poor in spirit, or more precisely, just poor. They were “LMI families (LMIFs),” who provided a statistical gateway to federal funds.

Some even vulgarized the term to "LMIs." I agree. I don't think the Galilean would have used that term.

My thesis today is that the very term “low and moderate-income families” (or individuals) is no longer operative in America. We have demonized the non-rich to the point where gradations of that richness must be simplified.

I propose that the term be simplified to “not wealthy families.” Now we can more accurately classify families who don’t meet income levels as “NWF.” The others could be called, oh, I don’t know, maybe “those in control.”

NWFs and TICs. Isn't that much simpler?

NWF children will encounter a monetary “fine” for seeking a college education. They already do. Now called “student loans,” in the future they will be placed under the NWF Monetary Education Reparation Demand Enforcement program. The same type assessment could apply to immigrant families who want to apply for citizenship by paying a fine for the crime of overstaying.

NWF members who fail to meet health standards would be assigned to a Diseased Adult and Children Health Assemblage Unit.

And so on. Sometimes I don’t think things are as complicated as we tend to make them.

Hmmm