Sunrise With Schubert

Off to earn money today and time just fugited away, Here's a harmless little literary fancy designed to annoy a Dame Daphne du Maurier fan I know.

Last night I dreamed I went to see Ernest Hemingway again. We had drinks. He had a chilled Vermouth. I had a Four Roses. It came ice cold, with three large ice cubes bobbing in the amber liquid. We talked. Our conversation originated in an animation born of enthusiasm but calmed as the night grew silent. I nodded as I filled his glass. Next I freshened mine, placing the warm glass of the bottle against the still-chilled top of the glass and listening to the clink of two disparate elements like two minds meeting for the first time. I raised it and gave thanks for the time spent together.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools,” he said.

“And,” I said.  “for your wisdom.”

“What wisdom?”

“The wisdom to sit with a stranger and talk.”

“I never had to choose a subject,” he said. “My subjects chose me.”

“It must involve trust.”

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”

“Have you, from where you dwell now, heard of the strange state of our country?”

“America is no moveable feast.”

“It seems we trusted the wrong person, or people. There was no intent to destroy. Many people simply believed.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.”

“What do you think of courage?”

He raised a hand and examined it. He turned a finger so that he saw the nail first and then the print. He moved it to and fro, as if to concentrate his being on the most singular of places. “Courage is grace under pressure.”

“To move without talking about the movement?”

“Never mistake movement for action,” he said.

“No, of course not.”

He thought and added another to his first. “Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.”

I thought, then said, “The man so many worship now claims courage.”

“Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?”

This stopped me and I stared at my glass as if were a cauldron of wisdom. “He says now, and his followers believe him, that he would brave if the chance arose, that he would, as an old warrior once said, ride to the sounds  of the cannons.”

“Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Eeew.

Sunrise With Schubert: February 27, 2018

I read once where William James said, “I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.” Do feelings follow actions? I don’t know. James is called “the father of modern psychology,” so there may be some truth in it.

Victor Frankl, a survivor of the Holocaust noted how finding beauty in a sunset, while in a German concentration camp, helped some Jewish prisoners survive while others succumbed.

I do remember, personally, that as America drifted into a national state of nihilism that culminated in the Vietnam War, folk-music enjoyed a brief but emotionally charged revival in an attempt to prolong our descent into madness.

And let us not forget that Steve Martin once reminded us that one simply cannot frown and play the banjo simultaneously. I know that's true.

What does this all have to do with the price of Scotch? Well, I’m old enough to remember seeing, on television, the culmination of one of America’s other darkest periods. Actually, at the time I just thought it was just a bunch of old white men, half in uniforms, sitting around talking and disrupting the morning television programs.

It was, of course, the so-called “Army-McCarthy Hearings.” They would lead us out of one of America’s most awful national disgraces.

Known now simply as the “McCarthy Era,” that was a time that the American Spirit was hijacked by a man born absent of any normal sense of goodness or righteousness. It was if a malfunctioning gene had destroyed in him any modicum of empathy or morality. Many Americans revered him for reasons of their own, although he destroyed lives as casually as we might swat a gnat. It was a dark time.

It was a time when this man captured the support of enough Americans, through lies innuendos, braggadocio, threats, and manipulation of the press to chip away at the very foundations of our experiment in democracy.

It was a time when otherwise patriotic Americans allowed a charlatan to disparage the most cherished individuals and institutions of America, calling General George Marshall a traitor and claiming that the United States Army was riddled with Communist spies.

It was a time when a heartless demon redefined what was proper and fitting behavior on the part of elected officials.

It was a time when bad was called good and a malignant political parasite was called a patriot.

It was a time when our country watched with bemused silence, until one great man said to this Joseph McCarthy, “You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? Senator.”

That’s all it took. One brave man among millions of Americans. A man named Joseph N. Welch slew the seemingly unstoppable demon, by singing the truth. In doing so, he saved hundreds of lives from being destroyed. Hundreds of others had already been, in sham hearings. Those hearings, in fact, were held in committee rooms in the very capitol of our nation. It was to our everlasting shame, indeed a time of dark days.

Men who had stormed the beaches at Normandy and Iwo Jima, along with the families who had sacrificed to support them, had stood outside those committee room doors and refused to enter.

Why bring this up now? After all, I had not, at the time, reached the political version of what my up-bringers called “The Age of Accountability.” (That’s a religious term invented to help dampen a child’s primal fear of facing eternity in a fiery pit of unimaginable agony for rejecting the belief of its elders).

I have always known, however, that if I had been of age while those dreadful, spirit-killing hearings were happening, even if I didn’t have a singing voice, I would have rushed in, at the top of my voice, to save our country.

Planning how to cut food stamps?
I don't think so.

Morning Thoughts: February 26, 2018

Some decisions in life are easy. I decided to marry my wife the instant I saw her sashaying toward me, her long red hair “just a’swinging.” That was the very first time I ever saw her. When she gave me that, by now well-known, “what the hell are you looking at?” look, I knew I had made the right decision.

Some decisions are simple but complicated. I had just as soon not have entered the military when the time came. I thought I was doing just fine. It got complicated when the United States Department of Defense inserted itself into the equation via the Draft Board in my hometown. Since my father was no physician, attorney, banker, or fourth generation patriarch, there was no arguing with the members of that dreadful board.

It was simple, though, to decide what branch would receive the honor. I had long revered the United States Navy. When I was fourteen, an older cousin came home from four years of service telling of what sounded to me like the rip-roaringest, goddamdest, gut-bustingest, fun-filldest time a person could have and not get arrested for it. It spell-bounded me for sure.

I could, at that age, imagine the seas swelling beneath me and the salt air putting hairs on my chest with each breath. I imagined walking the streets of ports of call, the local girls “getting the vapors” just looking at me in that dazzling white uniform. I longed to reach the age at which my folks would allow me to quit school and enlist. I was in a state, so to speak.

I grew out of it, gradually discarding all the recruitment material I had collected. I set my mind on more civilian goals. But when the aforementioned draft board intervened, I retained enough of my boyhood enthusiasm to seek out a nice young man in one of those white uniforms. He assured me that I was just the sort of person they—the Navy—and he, were looking for. He painted such romantic visions of romantic seaports, bravely weathering rough seas, and sharing sunrises with flying fish that I was sold.

“Give me a fast ship,” I said, “for I intend to go in fun’s way.”

When my beloved Navy handed me orders for Vietnam instead, I had to another decision to make.

I was stationed in Monterey at the time, but on a weekend jaunt to LA, I met some people who offered a way to get me to Canada, undetected. Our northern neighbors didn't indulge in such things as unprovoked wars. I pondered that decision for days. Then one morning, sitting on the edge of The Great Tide Pool in Monterrey, I made the decision to play the hand life had dealt me, for better or for death. See an only slightly fictionalized account of it here.

Now, each time I see our current president’s face on television, I realize that, if a certain party hadn’t sashayed by me once, I would still be regretting that decision I made long ago with the wide Pacific Ocean beckoning me toward the unknown.

Decisions force us to learn that we must, in life, take the dismal along with the sublime. Our strength to face the future, in fact, is tempered by the fires of previous trials. We press on.

These mental meanderings result from the fact that the subject of my greatest decision and I face a trying and major task today. It will test us, but we will prevail. We are well-tempered, after all, and will face it together.

Someday, maybe I’ll have the strength and eloquence to talk about it. In the meantime, if you think you hate this Monday, you have no idea.

Advice: Never include a military
recruiter in your decision-making.

Morning Thoughts: February 25, 2018

It’s always something. The monsoons lifted, but the “mudsoon" lingers. Outside, there is a two-inch thick coating of claymore mud. More on the kitchen floor. The spiders have tracked it up the walls creating limericks along the way. Here’s one:

There was a Black-Widow named Lexis,

Who hooked up with a Recluse from Texas,

She showed him some fun,

But when they were done,

She feasted on his solar plexus.

Around the world:

On Facebook, there’s muddy reasoning.

In Washington, there’s muddy talk.

From Hollywood, there are only muddy films.

The top brass in the military is bragging about their doctrine, developed in the 1970s, of only invading dry countries. “Mud is for fools and farmers,” they say.

I heard a TV evangelist say that “there is no mud in Heaven,” but how in the hell would he ever know?

Even the TV commercials are muddy now. I don’t even know what they are promoting.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, It’s a mud-prone world.

 We have to change the HVAC mud-filter daily.

I tried to go for a walk but found that, when I took a breath, I exhaled a fine mist of mud.

They had to close the barber and beauty shops in town. Hair was so muddy it ruined the scissors.

Birds can’t fly for the caked-on mud. They are disguising themselves as dog-turds to fool the cats.

The catfish have made the pond bank into a mud-slide. They are the only ones having fun.

If it will only dry up a bit, I have to search for our vehicles. They all slid away to parts unknown.

When they fired up the church organ this morning, only wads of mud shaped like notes came out.

And speaking of churches in the community, the favorite hymn of the day seems to be, "When the Mud is Dry up Yonder, I'll Be There."

Church sign down the road reads, “Don’t build your house on shifting mud.”

The missionaries are using Skype.

Elsewhere:

Walmart is running a special on mud-pie shells.

This morning, I saw a group of nightcrawlers building a mud-raft out of bamboo shoots.

Later, I saw a periscope moving through the mud. It was the postman.

A peddler just came by selling mud-filters for baby bottles.

  

The mud-mist is so thick that the 18-wheelers on I-40 are slowed to 93-miles per hour.

And I’m working on an essay entitled, “Mud As A Metaphor – How Life’s Most Worthless Things Stick To Your Shoes the Longest.”

Joggers beware!

Morning Thoughts: February 24, 2018

Haven’t taught at my second Alma Mater in over a year. A PhD. Teaches the course now. That’s probably a good idea. I miss it though. Being around young minds offers much satisfaction, both from the gaining of wisdom and the delight of torture.

I taught Introduction To Public Administration, and this would be an interesting time to participate. There’s an air of insanity about the topic that has even caught the attention of young folks.

Quite frankly, they showed limited interest in Marbury v. Madison, a case settled 215 years ago today by a Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John Marshall, (no relation, as far as we know, to Thurgood). It established judicial review, or the principle that the Judicial Branch decides the constitutionality of a law passed by the Legislative Branch or greatly valued by the Executive Branch. It has saved the country from shame on occasion, (see Brown v. Board of Education). Despite assertions in the past, these days it shows definite signs of constituting a suicide pact. (See Citizens United).

Anyway. I woke up this morning thinking of a great assignment. Background: In a terrifically bizarre mood, even at a particularly bizarre moment in our nation’s history, by perhaps the most bizarre person to ever hold the office of President of the United States of America, our president actually proposed effecting an end to violence in our schools by arming teachers so they could be prepared to shoot terrorists before they could act. Further, we would pay said teachers a bonus for the extra service to the country.

Don’t go to Snopes. He really said that. No, not The Onion either. See the Washington Post. After all, it did save us from Richard Nixon and Tom Hanks played its editor in a recent movie. It deserves our trust for that, if nothing more.

Unsubstantiated at this point are reports that "gun bonuses" will be based on body counts, mirroring our highly successful strategy in Vietnam.  

Anyway, wouldn’t it be a neat assignment to have the kids write papers summarizing the public administration aspects of such a proposal?

One would hope they would cover the need to rewrite thousands of union contracts, probably resulting in extended and heated negotiations with, oh, say 99.67 percent of them. Now that would be fun to watch. If there is anything some unions know about, it’s guns.

One would hope for each paper to discuss budgeting aspects of the deal. Astute students would realize that, not only would the feds not allocate any money, the present administration would likely cut school funding more than it has already proposed, said cuts to be based on the avowed probability of reduced costs of emergency services and law enforcement participation once the teachers assumed responsibility. Teachers probably form the most capable group of individuals in our country. It’s best not to provoke them

Some misguided students might opt for including any costs in the Department of Defense budget. Trouble with that is … well there are many troubles with it, the main being that the DOD doesn’t favor sharing its bounty with anyone, save defense contractors. It doesn’t even include veteran’s care in its budgeting frolics.

I’m sure that even college students would recognize major problems with the Americans With Disabilities Act. There would be legal challenges flying from both directions: “Don’t tell me I must participate,” and “Don’t tell me I can’t participate.”

Oh, what about African-American teachers? Hell, they get shot down by both actual and self-proclaimed protectors of citizens, even when they don’t have guns in their hands. Would there be waivers? That should cause some heavy thinking, for we teach them that the granting of waivers is a slippery path that could lead to, oh, say, unqualified people receiving security clearances.

I’ve taught them that a degree in public administration offers job opportunities in the field of consulting work. Some students from conservative families would, no doubt, mention opportunities in writing performance standards or as serving as product representatives for arms manufacturers. It would stand as a big disappointment when I had to tell them that those jobs were probably filled before the proposal was made public. Blood is thicker than water, they say, as long as it’s not someone else’s blood.

Other than ADA issues, I would caution students to tread lightly on the legal implications. First, they aren’t attorneys. Second, a supreme court with Clarence Thomas et al in the majority cannot be analyzed by any normal academic standards.

It would be fun to think about it some more, if the whole affair wasn’t so cosmically terrifying.

President Trump explains that
not all teachers must be armed.

Morning Thoughts: February 23, 2018

Strange, I just compiled a mental list of people I know whom I would classify as a bit nutty about guns. Only two served in the military, out of a good many.

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t include honest and sincere hunters. I didn’t even include people who keep a firearm, or maybe more, in their home for safety. I certainly didn’t include the ones who collect, restore, or view firearms as a hobby. I may not share their interests, but “to each his own,” as the farmer said, patting the head of his favorite sheep.

I only included those whom I consider, and this is just my personal opinion, irrational on the topic. Those who would put semi-automatic military rifles in the hands of the mentally deranged and tell them to walk our streets.

I included those who would have the government arrest anyone who spoke out against the unlimited worship of guns in our society, claiming protection of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

I included those who would force our government to establish a national religion that, among other things, would sanctify that same Second Amendment or deprive those who didn’t agree of the ability to vote.

I included anyone who would strap an assault rifle across his or her back and wander into Walmart.

I included anyone who would refuse even to sit and have a discussion as to how we might establish a more reasonable national attitude about the bearing of personal firearms in such a complicated social environment.

And so it went. Out of the many, came two I can think of that actually served in the military. I can’t understand why there weren’t more. People who worship music join bands. People who claim to love their god join churches. People who worship food join Weightwatchers, People who worship hatred join the KKK.

Why do so few people I know who live and breathe a love of deadly weapons not join the military?

I’m not actually a psychologist, but I dated a woman in college who became one. Maybe the same lack of discipline in their thinking about guns, guns, more guns, bigger guns, faster guns, and more deadly guns also obviates a lack of discipline that makes military service undesirable to them. Based on my experience with it, the military wants women and men capable and willing to engage in violence when necessary, but never for fun, entertainment, or sexual compensation, only as a highly disciplined team action of last resort.

Or maybe it’s because the military giveth, but the military taketh away. They gave me an M-14 rifle and said, “use it to kill if we say so.” Then they took it away. They gave me an M-16 rifle but they took it away. They gave me a 45-calibler semi-automatic pistol, but took it away. They gave me (because I was six-feet tall and looked like I could carry it) an M-60 machine gun, but took it away. They even loaned me an M-79 grenade launcher for a day but took it away after I almost used it on a band of monkeys.

Their reasoning for the shifting attitudes by the military? The weapons were for war and not suitable for carrying around in civilized society. At least that’s the way they saw it, and regulated it. People who come to worship something to absurdity don’t want its use regulated in any manner.

We aren’t going to repeal that Second Amendment to the United States of America. The First and Thirteenth are in great danger and will likely disappear in my lifetime, but not the Second. I think the worship of the Second by some is due to two things. The first is a mutant gene in our DNA that gained efficacy during the days in which we engaged in slavery. The second reason the Second stands is that there has always been a lot of money in it.

Note to Remington: If you can’t survive, financially, in our blood-drenched world, don’t go into the casino business in New Jersey.

So we beat on, Those on each side of the argument becoming more entrenched and intractable each day. Those in the middle are afraid to send their kids to school, go to church, attend a concert, or buy a little pot without fear of having their bullet-riddled bodies, or those of their children, on the six-o’clock news.

We do need to talk, without the NRA, its legislators, those who really would confiscate all firearms, those who want to repeal the Second Amendment, those who view all firearms owners as fiends, gang members, or those with AR-15s strapped on, included in the talks.

Oh, it’s okay if we bring the kids. After all, they seem to be the only ones making sense these days.

 

Will we ever?

Growing Up Southern: February 22, 2018

Once, in a fit of anger, I made an obscene gesture to my sister in public. I had just entered my teens and she was nearly grown, seventeen or so—by Southern standards rapidly reaching “Old Maid” status. In all likelihood, she may have deserved my disrespectful action. She did know how to “pull my chain,” so to speak.

So up went the finger to the delight of my buddies. Not one to suffer affront easily, she reported the incident to our Sainted Mother.

Fearing for my life, I stayed outdoors that evening until darkness and hunger combined in a most insidious way and forced me to answer the call to supper. We ate in dread-fueled silence. Nearing completion of the meal, she asked me to remain after the others left.

She wanted to talk to me.

There it was, either a beating or reform school, or both. Reform school rose in preference as they had a swimming pool, they weren't too choosy about who they let on the football team, and Benny Colclasure was already there. He owed me money. I surmised that would entail some degree of protection against the bigger boys.

There was no protection from the wrath of Sainted Mother. Even my father feared her, in a manner much as I imagined that the Dark One feared the Holy Trinity.

As I mentally computed the most likely sentence for an affront to one’s sister, the others left the table. There was no doubt in my mind that my sister bore a smirk, but I wouldn't look her way. I simply braced for the onslaught.

Instead, Sainted Mother raised an empty hand and stroked her chin. Ah. A short sermon and pack your clothes. Not too bad. I might even make a “B” in math in prison school. There hadn’t been a ciphering whiz sent there from our school since the legendary Willie Lee Bohanon got sent up years before. He was a sergeant on the police force by this time.

“What?” she asked after thinking on the matter at hand for a moment like a lawyer questioning a witness, “would you do if someone called your sister a bad name in front of a bunch of other boys?”

Here’s where my superior intellect came into play. On the one hand, I knew what I would do—laugh my ass off. On the other, I knew the appropriate answer. “I would teach whoever said it some manners,” I said with an air of resolution that both surprised and intrigued me.

“I know you would,” Sainted Mother said, "I know you would, son." That made me feel like a pile of horse manure. My mind swung immediately to a diametrically opposite point of consideration that made me imagine how, Red Ryder-like, I would lay waste not only to the miscreant, but to his buddies as well. A mamma can exert that kind of change of perspective in a Southern boy.

She let it sink in for a moment and then said, “So you think your sister deserves respect?”

By now I did, for sure.

“Other boys should treat her like the lady she is?

Hell yes! I nodded.

“Then how could you expect them to show respect for her if you don’t?”

The feeling I now bore was worse than anything reform school had to offer.

I’ve thought about that lesson quite a bit, lately. I’d like to tell the story to our current politicians. After all, American citizens, even if they might be as opposed to your way of life as my sister was to mine, deserve respect. If we don’t give it, how will we expect other nations to?

Thank goodness for Sainted mothers. Perhaps we could bottle their wisdom and give it to the less fortunate.

Odd thing is ... my sister and I
are best friend now. You just never know.

Sunrise With Schubert: February 21, 2018

Ever have a tough week? I have. When it happens, I go back and watch videos of Kristallnacht, or 9-11, then to St. Jude’s website where I normally make a contribution.

This may be one of those weeks. It’s shaping up to be a dandy, so I may extend my Plädoyer für Stärke (plea for strength for which our Jewish brothers and sisters must have wished) generosity to the Southern Poverty Law Center as well. I might even extend the salve of serenity to the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund. Bestowments can sanctify, as I have always found.

Like I say, it’s not looking good, though. This week. I’m in line for an adult dose it seems.

First, our country is still reeling from a national tragedy. Instead of comforting one another, we have divided into camps and the “insults of blame” grow more furious and frivolous with each passing hour. Whereas we once had leaders who offered healing words in times like this, this “new batch of railroad bums” seems to revel in our discord. Few people look to religion for common healing anymore because, it seems to me, that so few people seem to worship grace and love in these bewildering times. I’m sure that both the Galilean and the Apostle would weep to hear Franklin Graham speak for them.

And, our part of the country is facing a deluge that may evoke a minor Katrina or Harvey. The first day of the rain event has already flooded ground that was already soaked and we have four more days to go. The weather, in recent years, has become a monster of extremes and shows no signs whatsoever of forgiving us for our sins against its planet.

On a personal level, our familial responsibilities have entered a new and more despairing phase. The fact that it was inevitable and expected doesn’t lessen the pain.

My body aches of a morning. The spirit of T.S. Eliot just walked by, mocking me with:

“I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

Pardon me. I need to take a break.

Back now. Just walked into the bedroom to get a robe when a rain-darkened sky allowed just enough light to illuminate the face of my dear companion, still sleeping. She must have been dreaming of pleasant times. We have, after all, had our share. She smiled in sleep, and the glow of it slapped me in the face like a blast of warming heat on a frozen field.

Suddenly, I was beautiful again.

Now, where’s my ZZ Top CD and that dad-blasted checkbook?

"Suck it up Jocko.
We'll always have Wattensaw."
That always helps.

Sunrise With Schubert: February 20, 2018

Nothing happens in moderation anymore. Even the slightest holiday evokes orgiastic waves of guilt-inducing commercials. Spend, they command. Spend or you aren’t a good person. Spend on whomever we honor this week. Spend before it’s too late and you’re considered a bad person. That won't make America great again.

Soon, there may be a “Neighbor’s Day,” on which we are urged to buy a Rolex watch for the man whose dog craps in your yard and a string of pearls for his gossipy wife.

Now it’s the weather. Anyone by now who doesn’t believe the weather patterns are changing has been spending too much time on social media, twittering about hell knows what.

As I write this, we await another monsoon season. I thought I had seen the last of those years ago. But noooo. The experts tell us it’s going to rain each day for the foreseeable future and the ground here is still engorged from the last of Mother Nature’s frivolous binges.

Our farm, where we spend a lot of time caring for a loved one, rests on sixty feet or more of pure clay soil. In fact, the owners of bygone days used to have a brickyard here, operated by slaves, of course. Legend has it that the Federals burned said brickyard and took the slaves and other livestock because the owners were suspected of sheltering the infamous Confederate, guerrilla, spy, and cross-dresser,  “Doc” Rayburn.

But I digress, probably from an unconscious urge to get my mind off the coming deluge. The point I had started circling my tattered wagon-train of a mind around concerned the clay soil. Left to its on predilections, clay makes a suitable, if strong-willed surface upon which to drive vehicles. It’s not much for row-crops, a feature that accounts for the past preference for dairy farming in these parts. Clay soil is just clay soil. It harbors no desire for greater grandeur.

Now, however, when such clay soil is subjected to freezing, and, if you remember, we had a “cold-weather monsoon” back in January, its mindset changes and it wills itself into a gelatinous substance of undisguised ill-will. Add a little, or lot in some cases, of rain and it’s like driving on a field of Jell-O.

That’s what we have to look forward to, and why I’m not overflowing with the “milk of human kindness" this morning. In fact, I think I’ll find me a dog (I won’t have far to look) and just kick the hell out of it.

Goodbye, and bite me.

Oh, and have a blessed day.

Yeah. You'll be in my thoughts and prayers all right.

Morning Thoughts: February 18, 2018

President’s Day. Lots of things on which to dwell. I’ve been around since FDR but only aware since Truman. Even as a child, I wondered why some people hated him so.

For example, there was the time our family attended a rodeo in my hometown. Remember those “fill-in” jokes where the clown and the announcer bounce lines back and forth? Try this one:

Mary had a little lamb.

Its face was almost human.

And every time she raised his tail,

She’d look at Harry Truman.

I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, but I remember that joke. There were others, like the postcard that pictured a man just knocked to the floor by a cowboy, the man saying “I said Truman was raising taxes. I didn’t say Truman was raised in Texas.”

Years later, I learned the source of much, if not most, of the hatred: fair housing and the integration of the military.

I don’t remember much about Eisenhower. He didn’t get to be a good president until sometime in the 1980s.

We viewed John Kennedy as a great president from the day he was elected. His star has dimmed a bit over the years but, hell, he just looked like a president.

It was easy for me to hate Lyndon Johnson. I blamed him for my having been sent to Vietnam. With more reading, (I’ve read all of Caro’s work so far, along with Dalleck, Doris Kearns Goodman, Arkansas’s own Richard Wood, plus others). I probably know more about him that I do any other president. He gets more complicated with each paragraph. He’s what I call an “Ansel Adams” figure. Like Adams’ photographs, Johnson’s image in history goes from pure white to pure black, with all tones in between. The result is a masterpiece of contrasting elements.

Richard Nixon would have been a good man had he not been such a despicable person. He left many legacies for us to untangle. We’ve accepted the bad ones and we are now dismantling the good ones.

Poor Gerald Ford got the “double-whammy” of history. The first was being typecast as dense and clumsy by Saturday Night Live, and the second was for pardoning “Tricky Dick.” I, for one, thought then, and still do, that he did the right thing. We had, as a nation, been through enough.

Jimmy Carter was, without a doubt, among the best human beings we’ve had in the White House. He walked into a partisan ambush, the first of many to come and he was an unlucky president, in my opinion. He didn’t handle it all well, particularly when his upcoming opponent seems to have been working behind the scenes to bring him down. I suspect JC, like U.S. Grant, had a hard time believing in the baseness of some people.

His opponent, Ronald Reagan was … what can you say? He may have been not only what the country wanted, but what it needed at the time. He was the crazy old uncle that tells funny stories at family reunions and then goes behind the barn and teaches the kids bawdy sea songs. Of all the conspiracies this country is supposed to have endured, his administration actually had one, called “Iran-Contra.” It unfolded in short order, and still stains our national conscious. He further proved, to our current dismay, that Americans don’t mind deficits and a huge national debt as long as they get what they want. He left his next-in-line an economy in tatters.

Thus, the Elder George Bush had to raise taxes to clean up the mess. America has never forgiven him.

Then there was Bill Clinton, the man from Arkansas. If he had only “kept it in his pants,” they might be carving his image on Mount Rushmore by now. He had the opposition party warning us of a coming economic catastrophe if the deficit and debt got too low. This I remember: if you couldn’t make money during the Clinton Administration, you’ll never make money. I’m financially comfortable today because of the peace and prosperity of those years.

What next? When the Supreme Court of the United States elects your president, you have to take what you get. I still imagine that a look of complete surprise comes across his face when the Junior George Bush learns that he was President of the United States for eight years. He was the first to establish what I call a “Salvation Date.” That’s when you have had a checkered past, but find the date of your last arrest and claim to have found salvation next day. Then the press can’t ask any questions about your life before that date. Its value in politics is that it allows religious fundamentalists to vote for scoundrels and say their god told them to.

Then America elected a man referred to around here as “our n****r president.” Among other things, he inherited a “credit card” balance that had paid for the cost of two wars off-budget. For eight years, members of his opposition party used political ads showing a photo of their opponent on one side and a photoshopped-darkened photo of Barrack Obama on the other with a few code words translating as “they are coming for your daughters.” His election shook the foundations of our country with such fury that entrapped racial rage spewed to the surface like a volcanic gas, soiling and staining the very heavens. Its noxious fumes are still settling upon us.

Those fumes helped get us where we are today.

Just my take on things. Ignore it if you don’t agree.

From this to "I'm the
Greatest" in one lifetime.
Remarkable.

Sunrise With Schubert: February 18, 2018

Perhaps we ought not to let the murder of 17 young Americans divide us further. We’re divided enough already, don’t you think?

I keep reading where we ought to talk to one another. That sounds like a good idea to me. I’m not quite sure how it would work, though. I’m not sure how to talk to someone who doesn't believe the scientists who say the Earth wasn't created 6,000 years ago. And I’m sure there are those who don’t know how to talk to someone who doesn’t believe scientists when they say that genetically modified foods are safe.

What are we to do? There are those in either direction who would change their beliefs on neither Torquemada’s grandest torture mechanism, nor from the soundest logic of Socrates. How can sincere dialogue take place in the middle of such chaos?

Maybe it could if we lop a couple of standard deviations off each side of the political spectrum and try again. I could start by saying that I know a few of things with which I think my philosophical opposites would agree, or at least agree to discuss without resorting to ad hominem attacks. To wit:

America, with all its warts and blemishes, is still the envy of most other countries. They wouldn’t criticize us so if it weren’t.

It’s not the number of activists who make change happen. It’s the type of activists who can work for change while attracting enough tacit support to allow victory and not pissing off enough people to ensure failure.

Science and technology are both wonderful things, but, as the late Stephen Jay Gould opined, the two of them can outrace, at times, our moral and ethical growth.

When regulators believe that their job is to write regulations instead of protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the polis, we become an over-regulated society and many lose faith in government.

Without a system of governmental oversight, our rivers may catch fire, daily life may become a nightmare of anarchy, and dangers that we may not even imagine now may destroy us.

We don’t really want our planet destroyed.

We may not agree with Mattie Ross of the immortal True Grit, that “enough is as good as a feast,” but we should agree that those who have everything should not want to obtain more on the backs of their fellow countrymen. At least I hope we think so.

Few people or groups of people are either perfect or without some redeeming points.

A lack of education does not obviate a lack of goodness.

Education is not evil.

Southerners are not all racists idiots, Easterners are not all hypocritical elites who preach brotherhood from their limousines, Northerners are not all gangsters and union thugs, and Westerners are not all drugstore cowboys or nuts who have all rolled to the edge of the known world.

We’re all in this together.

Feel free to add your own. I'm ready to talk.

Talking is good.

Sunrise With Schubert: February 17, 2018

There was a song back when my generation was peaking that began, “Something’s happing here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” It set the tone for an entire period of our country’s history, for better or for worse. One can choose for herself or himself.

I don’t know what song might fit our country right now. I don’t keep up with popular music anymore. Asked to write one, I might start out with, “I ain’t your parents’ president, so never mind that sulfur scent.”

Okay, I jest. I can’t get over, though, what I learned yesterday. It seems that it has finally happened. After my country put 58,318 names on a lonely granite wall in Washington, bombed sleeping families in Baghdad, and set us on the path of a never-to-end war in Afghanistan, always assuring us that it was to prevent foreign enemies from invading our country, it finally happened.

Our country was invaded, that is. What’s worse, a huge number of us don’t seem to care. It got them what they wanted. What if our beloved America, safe for these so many years, was breached in the process? We needed what we got.

Or, maybe we deserved what we got. Decide for yourself.

It wasn’t a new enemy that invaded us. It was one of the oldest in the modern age. It is the same enemy that forced our country to teach my generation to seek safety in a nuclear attack by ducking under a school desk and covering our faces.

It is the same enemy that duped us into the war that put those names on the aforementioned wall.

It is the enemy that murdered, by some estimates, 25 Million of its own people under the leadership of a man who talked tough, took care of things his way, and didn’t care what others thought.

It is the same enemy that provided us the very definition of “evil” for so many years.

Yes, yesterday we learned for certain that Russia invaded us. There should be no surprise here.

Of course, we have to redefine the word “invasion,” as we have had to redefined evil. For years, experts told us that invasion required ground troops entering another country. No more. Now we can do it with air strikes. Soon we’ll only use drones and robots. In the interim, we’ll use the internet, specifically what we call “social-media.” After all, that is the sole source of news for so many of us, especially those who are too busy even to be misinformed by malicious cable channels posing as news sources and quite willing to spread gossip and innuendo.

As for me, I should have expected it. After all, Arkansans sat and watched a decent, capable, socially conscious, and dedicated woman besmirched and defiled day after day and we did nothing. Oh, I asked many friends to be specific about what lies she told, who she had murdered, and the source of news about her child-pornography dens in the basement of pizza shops.

They couldn’t cite specifics. Everyone “just knew,” they said. She was just “crooked,” and they all knew it.

Now we know how they knew.

In a strange sort of way, some who may suffer most over America’s “gun thing,” may be the harmless hobbyists, hunters, and enthusiasts.

Although I am not one, I have no great bone to pick with these folks. Some probably don’t collect banjos. To each his own I say, as I down my morning glass of buttermilk and listen to Schubert.

I view it this way. There will come a time when mothers get fed up with seeing the cold corpses of their children spread across the schoolyard. Then they will act. It won’t be because of the killing that happened this week. It won’t be the one after, nor the next one, perhaps not even the one after. The NRA won’t allow it as long as its coffers overflow and some politicians have deep hands.

But it will happen someday. Just wait and see. There will come a day when the “butcher’s bill” gets too great. And those who read history, in states where it is still revered and taught, will remember what happens when mothers get mad enough against something.

Then what will happen? There won’t be a discussion then. It will be too late for one, not too soon as the “auto-response” button puts it. Grab a history book and look up the Volstead Act of 1919, then tell me Americans won’t go to extremes when it suits them.

When that happens, as the scriptures tell us, the rain will fall on the just and the unjust. Good, decent people, of whom I am blessed to know many, will suffer along with the thugs who run the National Rifle Association, the manufacturers who own them, and the once-majority of politicians. It won’t be pretty.

What happened? How did we get into this mess? I believe good people were sold a bad bill of goods. Moreover, they failed to sense the betrayal from what once was a benign organization that taught young kids—I was one—the value of safe and sane firearms usage. Too many stayed in its ranks until it has become the tool of the purveyors of death.  Good people make bad decisions. Why?

Things change, sometimes so gradually that we don’t notice. Who can pinpoint the exact date when that benign organization became the evil, blood-soaked empire that it is today? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that innocent owners of firearms, who simply wanted to collect, hunt, compete, or protect their homes, stayed latched onto the NRA like it was the Pied Piper. And, as in that cautionary tale, blind followers may ultimately face the same end.

It will be a shame, for many going over that cliff will be, as I say, kind, generous, good-hearted people, but last seen holding hands with the imbeciles that carry loaded assault rifles into Walmart, our schools, churches, or other gatherings of the innocent.

I have said it before, and I’ll say it again. I don’t want your firearms. I already have some that I have inherited and don’t know what to do with. I don’t want to take any away from you, and I don’t recall right off hearing anyone else with half a brain proposing to. I simply don’t care what you do inside your home, the deep woods, or in a spot designated for discharging weapons of destruction.

If you simply can’t abide the thought, yeah there may be some, of not using your firearm to kill another human, be aware that the military is scraping the bottom of the barrel in its recruitment efforts. Your enlistment might postpone the ultimate return of the draft one more day. (Full disclosure: the animals hunted by the military do shoot back).

I just want to talk to you about not elevating your gun to the status of a religious icon. Religious icons have wreaked havoc on our planet for eons, from the fate of the Midianites to the destruction of the Twin Towers. It’s time we put those aside.

I just want reasonable people with different points of view to sit and discuss ways to prevent the carnage, and don’t say it won’t work. It works in other countries. Don’t say our “founding fathers” were infallible when they wrote the Constitution. If they were, many of my friends would still be counted as three-fifths of a human and my wife couldn’t vote at all. And let us all bear in mind that if it had been the “founding mothers” we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Imagine reasonable people sitting down to discuss a solution to a festering sore that is slaughtering our innocents. I think it could happen. Call me a dreamer if you wish, but “I’m not the only one.”

And it’s not to soon. Just a few more slaughterings, however, and it will be too late.

Grandmothers get mad too.
Best not risk it.

Morning thoughts: February 15, 2018

Yesterday we sacrificed a few more children and their caretakers to the ravenous monster we call “Gun-Love.” He is uniquely American. Over the still warm bodies, we scattered “thoughts and prayers” like they were fragrant blossoms that would cover the smell of the dead.

The usual suspects immediately appeared. One group called for some control over how we accommodate the Second Amendment to the Constitution. That will not happen. Everyone with a fifth-grade education knows it won’t. The NRA and their fellow Gun-Love handlers will not allow it.

More moderate respondents simply asked for a discussion. That will not happen. It a corporatocracy such as ours, we only discuss what the corporations allow us to discuss.

The United States Senator whom the parents and friends of the dead elected to serve them said it was too soon to discuss the tragedy.

A father of one of the students who had to wait for 45 agonizing minutes before he learned his daughter had survived responded with, “It’s always too soon, until it’s too late.”

So, we sit and wait until the next sacrifice, playing a grisly game called "whose kids next?" Must we? I'm afraid so.  Tragedies once united Americans. Nowadays, politicians only see them as a catalyst to secure their base and divide us further. It seems only a matter of time until we reach the point where, as Bob Dylan once said, "We're afraid to bring children into the world."

I used to think we could reach harmony, that honest, sincere hunters and gun enthusiasts could reach a point where adult conversation might allow them to join hands with parents of school children and seek a peaceful and safe America with a minimum of sacrifice.

I don’t think so anymore. There are strong and evil forces that seek the end to our experiment in a democratic government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." All I can say now is “So long, it’s been good to know you.

Forgive me if I have made you mad. You're not as mad as I am.

Sunrise With Schubert

For years, I’ve been paid for answering questions from municipal officials in our state about urban planning. They vary, those questions. Some are easy to answer. Some will break your heart.

In either case, the people who ask them are some of the finest people who walk our planet. They represent the main contact that the average person has with that nebulous entity called “government.” They are underpaid, underfinanced, under appreciated and, as a former president put it, misunderestimated. They still get up and go to work for us each day, in whatever city they call home.

Some of their homes are in vibrantly developing areas. Others resemble the photograph of bombed out Berlin at the end of World War Two. In either case, the condition rests more in providence than in planning.

As the “Good Book” says, “Rain falls on the just and the unjust.” In like manner, good fortune falls on the deserving and the undeserving. A less adored source, one Karl Marx, opined that capitalism carries its own seeds of destruction. If so. the vibrant communities of today could be the traffic-clogged slums of tomorrow, bereft of money to pay upkeep on the streets and utility systems that their growth required.

As the song goes, “it’s a lesson too late for the learning.”

If a genie could offer me one wish with which to empower my scarce remaining professional time, it would be to have the imagination to think of how the once healthy farming communities in our state could be revitalized. No one has even come close yet, but they try. For a million gazillion dollars, a dandy consultant will fly in tell us, “You need to ‘empower’ those folks in the Delta.”

What does that mean? Roughly? Diddly squat.

Or, we could bus down a load of design students from our major university and, during the rare instances that their faces left their cell phones, those kids will draw pictures of kids riding bikes and waving. Then they will state the answer, “You need to create a ‘sense of place’ and ‘they’ will come.”

What does that mean? Not a goldarned thing, maybe even less. It’s one of those phrases that can mean whatever the speaker wishes.

Then we could fly down an “eco-devo” consultant from near Walmart headquarters and she or he would tell elected officials how to make quality businesses locate in their town. After all, she or he made it work up there. Single handedly.

Oh, don’t forget, chambers of commerce are big on “public-private partnerships.”

What does that mean?

Well, it’s when the taxpayers drop a lot of money in making an “iffy” business work and then stand weeping, like the Jewish psalmist, by the “Rivers of Babylon” when the developer skips town leaving the city with its debt and no business.

So, Smarty Pants, you might ask. Do you know the answer?

No. No I don’t. But I do know that the answer, whatever it might be, has not been stated, or even imagined, yet. If it were, however, it would be so daring and politically impossible that it would never reach the discussion phase under our current national mood. That would be even more true if its citizens included descendants of American slaves.

Maybe we start with the words of one of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”

What? Urban planning as love? Who ever heard of such a thing, even on St. Valentine’s Day?

Just thinking.

Sunrise With Schubert: February 13 , 2018

“When our ship reached the Golden Gate, they had made a sign with painted rocks on the Marin County side. It said, ‘Welcome Home Boys.’”

“There will be crowds of protesters at the gate of the airport. Do not engage them. People have been hurt there.”

The first was a story told me by a man who had been a Seabee during World War Two. It tells of what greeted those men when they returned home.

The second followed behind, “Make sure your seat belts are securely fashion …” It’s how my brothers, my sisters, and I came home from our wartime service. It was just the beginning.

For the next fifty years, we were, at best ignored, at worst suffered the ubiquitous description as drug-crazed sociopaths in the press, books, movies, conversations, and the national consciousness. We were all bums wandering the streets muttering to ourselves and scaring the bejesus out of good decent people everywhere.

This always troubled me and some good friends—all fellow Vietnam vets. One was an attorney with one of the top law firms in the state, another a successful architect, one the head of a major state office, one a retired police officer, another a manager of the racetrack in West Virginia where they train government agents in evasive driving. (He once had the opportunity to drive Paul Newman around the facility).

I could go on and on. Point is, there’s not a drug-crazed sociopath amongst them.

It didn’t matter. As I’ve said, myth will shred reality on any given day.

But wait. On March 29, the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs (ADVA) will host a large ceremony in Little Rock. It will feature the formal pinning of the Commemoration’s Vietnam Veteran Lapel Pin on several hundred veterans.

“At last,” you say, “our country will honor those who served our country in Vietnam. That’s nice.”

But wait, it’s fifty years too late.

“No problem. Better late than never.”

But wait. About that lapel pin … you didn’t have actually to serve in Vietnam to receive one.

“You’re kidding.”

No, if you served anywhere, anytime during that time, you’ll get yours, right alongside the guy in the wheelchair with no legs. Even a former president who avoided Vietnam by joining the National Guard and failed even to attend his drills can get one.

“Too bad. Are you going to sign up?”

No.

“What about the people who worked so hard to put it on?”

As we used to say, “F” ‘em and feed 'em fish heads.

“But shouldn’t all those who served be honored?"

Absolutely. They served their country when so many refused to or even chose to dishonor those who did. I hold most in high esteem.

“But?”

But Vietnam Vet means one who served in Vietnam, not one who served during Vietnam. Would you call the person who spent his enlistment for the last four years at an air base in Florida an “Afghanistan Veteran? If you would, you’ve never had the experience of having someone walking mortar rounds toward where you were posted.

“So what will you do during the ceremony?”

I dunno. Maybe I’ll join a protest. Or maybe I’ll put on my vet’s cap and wander around some neighborhood scaring the hell out of people. It's fun. I do it at Walmart all the time.

Honor or Insult?

Sunrise With Schubert: February 11, 2018

Sometimes, if I try hard, I can remember when I used to hate Mondays. I was lucky in my professional life for having interesting jobs. Some jobs I held before then didn’t particularly differentiate one day of the week from another. I never, as an adult, experienced the dread that some folks have of starting back to work after the weekend.

I hated Mondays when I was in grade school. I do remember that. Weekends were a glorious time then. We only had our little “postage-stamp” corner of the world to play in, but to us it was a vast place of unexplored wilderness, infinite opportunities, and constant joy.

We never, absent rain, storms, or catastrophes, considered spending the weekend indoors. There were hideouts to build, squirrels to hunt, chances to show we were good at sports, and all sorts of mischievous pranks to plan on an unsuspecting adult world.

I don’t know how we would have behaved had we owned operative cell phones. More than likely, we would have turned our attention away from the wondrous world of adventure and toward the tiny screen offering the opportunity for instant and effortless communication. I don’t know.

We had much more freedom to wander around in our seemingly vast world. Kids these days are brought into a seemingly hostile and dangerous world. I have read that it really isn’t more dangerous than in past for middle-class white kids. I have read the opposite. The truth is probably somewhere in between and available if we were to spend the effort in searching for it. But, we learn more each day how the truth is not a trusted ally for many of those among us.

We, back in the day, learned truth the hard way. If you run too fast, you will fall down. If you taunt a bully, he will whip your ass. If you cut down a tree that’s too big, you won’t be able to drag it home and make a basketball goal with it. If you take your bicycle apart, you may not be able to reassemble it. If you climb too high, you may be incapacitated by fear and find it hard to get down. Some kids have more natural talent at specific endeavors than you. Some have your abilities for that same endeavor, but work harder at it. If you compete with either, you will lose. You won’t get a trophy. You will, however, never discover either your own limitations or talents unless you try.

It also teaches one that working at things you aren’t particularly good at can be useful, if working at them makes you smile.

I like to think that when the indispensable understanding of cause and effect is learned from play, it stays with a person longer and is much more efficacious than when learned from a computer game or a talking head on the television. I further think that when play is unregulated and adult-free, it better teaches one to deal with the unfair, random, and unpredictable forces that shape our lives.

Just my opinions, and I’m sticking to them. Feel free to share your own. Doing so in a civilized matter leads to a more harmonious society, don’t you think?

Yay. Yay. Another day!

Sunrise With Schubert: February 11, 2018

When I was a kid, there was this mentally disturbed man who would walk by our store on Saturdays. He was a rough customer. We would be confined to the porch until he passed. I think his name was Ross and he was one scary dude.

He carried a bullwhip and his dog always followed him. Every hundred steps or so, he would spin around, curse the dog, tell it to go home and lash at it with his whip. The dog knew, to the centimeter, how far to stay back in order to avoid being struck. He would shake his head, wait until Ross had recoiled the whip, and then continue following him.

That made me think that maybe the most loyal friend in the world might be a dog.

Another characteristic that dogs have mastered is persistence. No matter how many times you tell one you don’t feed animals from the supper table, the pleading is as sincere and pleasant the hundredth time as it was the first. Any human I know would have at least growled by then, some even giving way to a warning snap. Anyway, most humans give in after 20 or so implorings. Which is the weaker species?

Dogs are extremely bright, but use that intelligence for purposes of utility only, never for showing off or for self-aggrandizement. There is a persistent rumor (I first heard it on The Tonight Show) that, back in the early 1700s, a man taught a dog to talk. After a few long conversations, he came to the conclusion that there was no physical impediment to a dog’s talking. Their silence, the man opined, was due more to a low aspiration level. Dogs seem at peace with their current position in the evolutionary chain.

There was some thought given, I am also led to believe, that the recitation of a short essay would be introduced as a step at the Westminster Dog Show. The International Brotherhood of Show Dogs put a stop to such talk. They said it would lower the standards of the show to that of a spectacle such as the Miss America competition.

It’s hard to argue with that.

Dogs can, and do, prevaricate, but only for self-preservation, never for sport or mendaciousness. The most common fib, dogdom’s most prevalent in fact, is denial. They just aren’t into admission of guilt that much. Thus, a broken glass or the results of incontinence are equally disowned with a lowered head and sad eyes, a communication possessing the sincerity of an undertaker turned insurance agent.

Oh, and the optimism shown by our canine friends. “We’ll have better weather soon if you just won’t make me go out in this.” Add to this the eternal hope that, someday, chopped steak will constitute their fare, replacing dry dog food. “It’s just a matter of time,” they maintain with an eternal smile, “before humans come to their senses.”

That’s not to say that dogs can’t be both realistic and vocal at the proper time. Just ask one how the country is doing under the Trump administration.

“Ruff!” he’ll tell you, exhibiting a mental capacity far above that of a third of America’s homo sapiens. Though the president recently told Americans where they could put their solar panels, a dog, even one with a slight speech impediment, will suggest a much more beneficial spot.

“Woof,” he’ll suggest, and well we should follow his advice, ignoring the fact that a dog cares more for the health of the planet than some elected officials.

So, let us take heart from our canine friends, many whom are attending services this morning where they will, with joy in their heart, welcome a new day with the wonderful and happy singing of Canine’s Happy Land, or Just As I Am Without One Flea.”

Yep.