Sunrise With Schubert: March 31, 2018

Upon leaving the United States Navy, I landed a provisional job in Little Rock, Arkansas. Problem was, provisional jobs pay very little. Almost nothing. Someone was kind enough to inform me that I was receiving a bit less than secretarial pay.

No problem. I found a cheap, but spacious apartment within walking distance of both the job and the city library. It was much larger than the library on the ship on which I had served, so it allowed me to expand a favorite pastime, reading.

What to read? The writings of T.S. Eliot interested me, so why not? I checked out a copy of his poems and started with The Wasteland. Ouch! It is a troublesome piece, used by generations of professors and mentors to discombobulate arrogant young minds, one belonging to me.

Now Eliot was kind enough to include substantial footnotes as part of the poem, so I checked out some works cited and tackled them.

What on earth, you might say, does that all have to do with the present time?

Well, you see, it’s Easter weekend. That has a lot to do with the topic of so-called “vegetation rituals” so densely treated in wasteland imagery.

It turns out that our ancient ancestors had a few strong beliefs. One was that the Earth exhibited some strange behaviors at times. Another was that it was somehow up to humankind to control such behaviors through various types of magic. And, as alchemy gave birth to scientific investigation, magical attempts at understanding and controlling Earth’s behavior helped give birth to religion.

A prevailing belief was that the Earth died each winter, and it was up to puny humans to revive it. This required great efforts aimed at the rebirth of vegetation. Unfortunately, some of these efforts were quite cruel by today’s standards. The sacrificing of humans as a trade for the rebirth was not uncommon. The giving of a single life for the safety of all became a ubiquitous motif in modern literature.

Hence the beginning of Eliot’s afore-cited work, “April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land …”

Interesting as well is the claim that Eliot’s working title for the poem was a line, borrowed from Dickens, attributed to a reader of newspapers who was extolling a certain writer, “He do the police in different voices.” There’s hardly a better example of that talent than T.S. Eliot.

Now ain’t that something? Education is such a dear and entertaining friend. One must wonder why such powerful forces seek to destroy it in America. I learned to appreciate it many years ago in a cheap apartment, filled with shabby furniture, in Little Rock, Arkansas. It made me happy then.

It has led me down many a path since. It doesn’t take much to satisfy the yearnings of a young man of limited means with the promise of a full life ahead. Way back then, I learned that joy can be found wherever you are, if you’ll only look for it.

Sunrise With Schubert

For years, I’ve used the simple four-way traffic stop as an amateur “game-play” example of rulemaking in public administrations. No, now stay with me here.

Think about it. It is a perfectly fair, non-discriminatory, self-policing phenomenon that requires little, if any regulatory framework. We don’t need an entire bureaucratic apparatus writing volumes about how to maneuver through a four-way stop.

Ever who gets there first, goes next. Gee, that’s simple.

Oh, there are other considerations maybe. There are oddly designed intersections that can cause confusion. And there is the tendency of “control freaks” to motion for you go ahead, not realizing that their deeply tinted windshields prevent your processing their generosity.

And police departments do demand their overuse on streets that should move traffic. Sadly. In the age of so-called “helicopter parents,” police in suburban cities had rather hold up the traffic flow for everyone than face a two-hour cursing from a parent whose “precious innocent” had been ticketed for speeding.

All in all, though, four-ways have served us well.

Yes, I had often used the four-way stop as a lesson in self-regulation. I also used the example of Ebay and others in maintaining honesty through a voluntary rating system. Then, there is the notion, so hated by regulatory purists, called “nudging.” That is a process of governing that rewards and makes life simpler for those doing the things considered proper.

But back to four-way stops as an ethical and moral lesson. I would, in the past, proclaim, to whomever, that in all my years of driving, I had only seen two flagrant examples of perfidy at intersections governed by four-way stops. One was nearly fifty years ago when they were first introduced in my home town. An elderly matron in the “high-rent” district, totally unused to restrictive rules, sailed through one as she had sailed through most events of her life.

The second was ten years or so by a teenager driving a pickup truck on a street near a school in one of our state’s “white-flight” cities. The driver embellished that action with a hand gesture and the facts speak for themselves.

As long as it can affect them personally, though, Americans love fairness, and will abide fair restrictions.

That all may have changed now. In the last week, I’ve witnessed two additional and flagrant violations of the “first come, first through” behavioral contract.

I fear that this signals a new social paradigm, and, if I’m right, I will blame politics. We are drifting off into a lawless world in which educated people are increasingly skeptical of rules of social interaction. We even have a small, but scary, political party dedicated to the sophomoric concept of libertarianism (the style of non-government that works so well in Somalia).

Whether it be denying a sitting United States president the right to nominate someone to fill a Supreme Court vacancy or developing laws to restrict citizens' right to vote, we daily witness a departure from civilized behavior.

The best example I can give is a society in which any behavior is allowed as long as the referee doesn’t see it. Concomitantly, aberrant behavior is allowed even if the ref sees it but is powerless to do anything about it. The increasing acceptance of that as an allowable form of government simply scares the hell out of me.

The problem is, as I see it, that an abandonment of social norms—at least those properly dedicated to the health, safety, and welfare of us all—may not lead to less social restrictions, it may lead to greater and more tragic social restrictions. At least that’s how I think the victims of the French, German, and Russian revolutions would see it.

I increasingly fail to understand how we would make America great “again” by abandoning any cultural foundation-block that ever served to make America great. I’ll keep trying, although I’ll have to disregard slavery, Jim Crow, the Great Depression, Vietnam, and Iraq. Yes, that narrows the window.

In the meantime, be wary of four-way stops. They may not be safe in this era of “government as professional wrestling.”

The Libertarian Dream

Growing Up Southern: March 29, 2018

I was in that state being half awake and remembered that it may be Easter weekend coming up. That made me think of something, then something else, then something else, and then today’s topic.

See, I first remembered a program in the little auditorium at Lakeside Elementary school in Pine Bluff during which the fifth-grade boys had to sing In Your Easter Bonnet. We pulled it off and it was okay. Singing off-key in front of folks doesn’t scar a person for life. Ask anyone who has ever performed the National Anthem at a baseball game.

But then I thought of another incident that originated when my Cub Scout den mother got a new neighbor. This neighbor was the wife of a former Navy man, and she was Hawaiian. I mean she was a real Hawaiian. She and my den mother became close friends. That’s what got it all started.

See, our den had to put on a program at our school. Women being the devious and mischievous creatures that they are, our den mother and her friend got up an idea for which its levity was only exceed by its cruelty. It’s true. Oh, did I mention that the neighbor, who was Hawaiian, was an expert at native dancing?

What then, could be more damaging to the collective psyches of a bunch of young boys than to make them stand in front of a room of peers and adults and “perform” a Hula, in imitation costumes?

Oh yes, we did. There was a popular song out, from the old Arthur Godfrey show, called The Hukilau. Nothing would suit these two women but that they would teach us this song and its accompanying dance moves. Further, our mothers would make the costumes from crepe paper, to heighten the air of authenticity, and to torture us more adroitly.

Picture it if you will. The costumes included a single strip of crepe paper across our bosoms. I’m sure there was a Hawaiian word for it but Sainted Mother forever referred to it as my “little brassier.” For the bottom part of the outfit, strips were cut to resemble the grass skirts worn on the islands.

Want an idea of what we did, my pals and I? Click here and let your imagination do the rest.

We pulled it off. We were able to hold ridicule on the playground to a minimum as there were a couple of guy on the football team, and one alumnus of Reform School who had suffered right alongside the rest of us. Long-term effects were more insidious. I think the ordeal thwarted my intention to become a fireman, and I began to consider a backup plan as a brain surgeon. Even then, I feared being interrupted during a delicate operation with, “Hey, aren’t you one of the ones who did the hula dance at Lakeside Elementary that time?”

It didn't even help to imagine my tossing a lobe into a pan and saying "Hula means 'dance,' so when you say 'hula dance' you're saying, 'dance, dance' smarty pants."

I finally opted for different careers, first as a naval Bosun’s Mate and then as an urban planner, both being professions in which an aberrant past is not only accepted but considered formative.

Others of the group were reduced, from their embedded shame, to practicing such things as law or chiropractory. One even became a TV evangelist. To say that the event scarred us is like saying a military-school education makes a child want to “get back” at the world.

I could name names of the still living survivors, some of whom matured into respected senior citizens. I might even land a spot on Sixty Minutes to discuss my information.

Ah, but I’m not into blackmail.

On the other hand, there is this new guitar I’ve been wanting. Further, there may be a photograph or two. Just saying.

Yeah well …
You may think it's funny.

Tough week. I'll get back to posting things maybe tomorrow. Going out to earn a bit today. It's nice to keep my mind involved in my old profession and to have a little spending money that keeps me out of retirement funds.

In the meantime, peace.

Morning Thoughts: March 26, 2018

Sometimes your heart just gets too full to speak. I watched a bit of a documentary on the Civil Rights Movement last evening. I don't remember the context, but somewhere in it, the film cut to a speech by former President of the United States Barack Obama.

I watched this good, graceful, calm, erudite man speak and I just started crying. I couldn't stop for thinking about what America might have become. I'm sorry.

I know I quote this passage much too often, but I think of it almost every day now.

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion."
- Psalm 137:1

Peace and have a nice day.

Sunrise With Schubert: March 25, 2018

Yesterday, I went to my hometown of Pine Bluff to see a cousin whom I hadn't seen in maybe 65 years. He is a von Tungeln, from my father's side. His name is Donald and we had a nice talk.

My father's side of the family was never as close as my mother's. Though my father's parents never divorced, they had two estrangements, the last growing more bitter over the years. They are buried side by side because my parents had extra plots and there was no other place to bury them. It is a dark-comedy type of amusement among my relatives that the two lie so (apparently) lovingly together.

I've neglected this side of the family over the years and now, much too late, am re-establishing contact. That makes me feel good.

It is a noble family, as the name suggests. My father's line migrated from Bremen, through Ireland in the late 1800s. This line settled around Golconda, Illinois. Another line settled in Kansas, migrating to Oklahoma and Texas. I have "cousins" in Oklahoma that I've become close to via FB and personal visits.

I also have "cousins" in the Bremen area, include Dierk and Rolf with whom I maintain contact. I still hope to visit them some day.

After witnessing two world wars with Germany, my father didn't make a big production of our heritage. Too bad. Maybe had I encouraged him, he would have. Having been taunted as a "dirty Hun" as a child during World War One, his reticence is understandable.

Personally, I am beginning to work on more understanding of the family. Dierk  provided us with a family tree that goes back to the 1600s, so much work remains.

Unlike many socially deranged Southerners, I try to let the story of the two wars with Germany rest in the annals of the past, for study instead of revenge. My job is to understand history, not to rewrite it. I do find it sehr interessant that the WWII veterans I've known who spent time in Germany after the war ended, without exception, came to like the German people much more than they did either the French or English. That's just the ones I knew personally of course. I'm sure it wasn't universal but it is odd.

I simply cannot forbear mentioning, again as my personal opinion, that today's America is beginning to make me understand 1930s Germany more and more. I hope we come to our senses soon. The kids I saw on TV yesterday may be our best hope.

As I say, my father didn't talk much about the family after two wars and two tragic estrangements, he chose to live the present. He did mention one piece of family history that he wished he owned: his grandfather's wooden shoes. I've often wondered whatever happened to them.

Granddaddy John von Tungeln

I took the Lady Hazel for a walk around the park yesterday. It’s the first time she had been outdoors for any length of time in a while. I think she enjoyed it even though, anymore, she can’t express such feelings easily.

We now have a “quiet home” in the city of Lonoke, Arkansas, a particularly pretty town on the edge of the Arkansas Delta. It offers a much different view of life than does our downtown condo in Little Rock. Back there they call me “hey.” Small town folks call me “Mr. Jim.” Like the character in my favorite film, I hardly know where I am until I hear someone call me.

There is a park in the center of Lonoke, and that’s where we took our stroll. I gave her my veteran’s cap to wear so her hair wouldn’t blow. She has her own, as does Brenda. I’ll bring it for her to wear next time. Theirs represent the 313^th Regiment of the 79^th Infantry Division, given the descriptor of “a fighting unit” in WWII, and in which the late husband/father, Julius Cole, served. One of the few things Hazel can still communicate his how much she misses him.

It was a beautiful day, yesterday, in our postage-stamp corner of small town America. It was one of those days, perhaps a tad chilly to her, when it was much better to be outdoors in the sunshine than indoors watching the news. Much better.

We strolled along, and by, streets that she once knew like the back of her hand. We weren’t far from the former office of the local doctor where she had worked for over thirty years. At one time, there was hardly a soul in the city, maybe the whole county, who didn’t know “Miss Hazel.” When we could still take her to gatherings, folks would line up in front of her to hug and say hello. She was as close to royalty as the town has ever known, in my opinion.

A few blocks north of the park still stands the building where she, barely out of her teens and laden with an unborn, had climbed the stairs to the then-doctor’s office to give birth to her only child. Her husband was late for having stopped to watch a truck burning in a field somewhere along the way. You won’t be able to understand such things if you aren’t from the rural South.

Yesterday, Hazel couldn’t have climbed those stairs at all, but she could still wave at folks in the park as I pushed her wheelchair around the encircling track. She complained a bit about bumps, but otherwise took it in stride. I’m sure she once knew the occupants of every house in view, their names, occupations, and family trees. Not many of the old acquaintances remain. They left, along with her memories of them. But the park was filled with young children, many of whom waved back at her. Life goes on.

It was just a short walk, but I enjoyed it and will go to my grave hoping she did.

A precious lady on a precious day.

Sailing to Oblivium: March 23, 2018

It seems I spend a good part of my time irritating my friends, a good part trying not to irritate my friends, and much time saying “What the hell?”

I guess that causes one to ask the primal question, who am I?

Well here goes.

A lifelong Democrat, I certainly don’t agree with all that the party has historically represented. For example, I believe that Orval Faubus, governor of my state during my formative years, was an evil man by the standards of his time. He nearly destroyed my state, but would be a highly respected conservative senator these days, probably considered a moderate Republican.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t grow up hating people who supported the opposition party. I still don’t. I respect any rational reasonable person, no matter what their politics. I’m wondering, though, how some may feel about a party led my Donald Trump.

In my lifetime, I think Dwight Eisenhower was a fine leader and a not harmful president. I was bemused to learn that Lyndon Johnson, as Senate Majority Leader, often helped Ike more than Ike’s own party in achieving some of his goals.

That’s how political life in America used to be.

I think, in my state, Winthrop Rockefeller was the most inspiring governor of my times, and we’ve had some good ones since. I stopped in Arkansas, when the Navy had paid my way all the way back to San Francisco because I had read about the things Rockefeller was trying to do. Am I glad I stayed? Well, I met my future wife here and have no particular penchant for computers, so yes. Arkansas isn’t as poor and ignorant as much as it thinks poor and ignorant.

I voted once for a member of the opposition party. It was a time when a crossover vote in the primaries enabled Arkansans to rid the state of a particularly icky politician. I have no regrets over that vote.

The rest of the time, though, I’ve remained a “Blue Dog.” The candidates haven’t been perfect—both parties must share blame for Vietnam—but they’ve been successful and, other than a case of an overactive libido, haven’t been a national embarrassment. We’ve even produced a statesman or two. And, although a firm believer in the First Amendment, I do use the Sermon on the Mount in making political decisions. Therefore, I think Jimmy Carter was the finest person we’ve had as president in my time, though he made many mistakes while having “a hard row to hoe.”

I think the push and pull of opposing parties creates a sound government. I would never wish for one-party rule.

Although I still weep at times over the fact that a Supreme Court that included Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia elected George W. Bush president, I’m not sure he was a bad man. I am sure that his primary handlers, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were. The stain of their bloody hands will mar America forever.

And speaking of such, look now at the man whose bloody hands will point young Americans into a land war, if past performance is any indicator of future behavior. If there is now a deranged and dangerous man in American politics, it is John Bolton. Ask the spirits of the perhaps more than a million dead from the Iraq War he helped orchestrate, creating in the process an unstable Middle East. His coming sins will only be surpassed by our shame.

As for the current state of America, the sounds of the Old Testament, in Samuel One Chapter 19, ring in my ears: "Your glory, O Israel, lies slain on your heights. How the mighty have fallen!”

It is my personal opinion that America’s greatness is being slain upon the heights of greed and avarice.

It further appears to me that insidious forces are at work in my beloved country. I fear that the cable TV show “Fox News” is destroying the cognitive ability of a vast segment of American society, for a reason that is as inexplicable as it is alarming. The fact that its major owners are an Australian and a Saudi Arabian may suggest a lust for global power, accompanied by a lack of concern, account for the reason more than any organized game plan.

As America witnessed the “Doomsday Clock” bound forward a notch yesterday, and as parents and grandparents ponder how they might keep loved ones out of a ground war such as the one that mauled those of my generation, the days ahead look dark to me.

This is my opinion. I’ll never support a government that would punish anyone for having a different one.

Unlike many though, I’ll be the happiest person in America if future events prove me wrong.

Marching To Oblivium: March 22, 2018

It’s like finding out that your favorite malt shop is really making its money by selling heroin to teenagers outside the back door.

It’s like finding out the quaint bookstore on the town square is connected to a large building where the same owners who would sell you the works of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. also offer teenaged prostitutes to wealthy old men.

It’s like finding that a charming small-venue music hall puts on dog-fights out back for selected customers.

I’m talking of course about what we’re finding out about Facebook. Sad and scary don’t begin to describe the feelings. How can something that has offered so many wonderful opportunities to make contact with, and maintain contact with, old friends and forgotten acquaintances be actively engaged in offering help and succor to those who hate and would destroy our country?

It’s like finding out that Mr. Rogers was buying opium from Afghanistan and reselling it in the neighborhood.

In a sense, America just struck the tip of the terrible iceberg called “Citizens United.” President Barack Obama tried to warn us. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito mocked him on national TV for his warning. “Corporations are people,” he said. “Get used to it, boy!”

Now we see one of the world’s richest computer nerds evading the issue of how Facebook enabled foreign governments and domestic terrorists to poison an American presidential election. He says maybe we will do something about it. Maybe we won’t. Maybe after the next election. Maybe not.

Get used to it, he implies, strutting around like El Duce. Corporations, he suggests, cannot make decisions, they are too complex and multifaceted. Besides, we haven’t the technology yet to create a fully operational soul within a corporation.

But they are supposed to be human, we say. The Supreme Court of the United States of American said so. Where is their soul?

Unrestrained greed is their soul.

What to do? I seriously don’t know. Should we give up something that has given us so much pleasure?

It’s like finding out that having sex can make you die.

Oh wait, never mind.

I’ll curtail my FB use while I think about it. Meanwhile, I sure as hell won’t buy anything advertised on it. I'm becoming a celibate capitalist and, I’m changing my metaphor.

Meet the new me, a 21-year old home-schooled libertarian who believes that a no-government model of administration, similar to that in effect in Somalia, is the ideal form as envisioned by my Guiding Goddess Ayn Rand.

I’m deeply religious and I tithe to my church, the NRA.

My greatest dream in life is to shoot to death the last surviving member of a vanishing species.

I want our country to have the world’s largest military machine and the world’s most elaborate transportation system (for the delivery of internet sales only). I will never support a politician who believes in exacting taxes for the support of government. I’m with the “no taxes, no time, nowhere, for no purpose” crowd. If we need money, borrow it from the Chinese until we get ready to “nuke” them.

I think the Galilean was a little squishy and don’t care much for him, but I like what Paul (of Paul and Timothy) said about queers. And I worry about killing them babies before they are old enough to join the military.

I don’t like anyone who isn’t a white Christian. Kill them all, I say, maybe keep all the young girls.

I don’t read, and my entire knowledge base derives from Fox News, can’t you tell?

Now, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, sell that information to Vladimir Putin with my blessings and enjoy your profits.

It’ll be like finding out your favorite target has just voted to get rid of your best pals’ sorry asses.

I'm this rich.
I'll sell stuff to
anyone I wish.

Morning Thoughts: March 21,

I have some pet peeves about films that drive anyone me around crazy. Take handguns. No, don’t “take” them. Just consider an example.

Make notes from this, by the way. It’s important. When a semi-automatic pistol fires its last round, it doesn’t keep going “click click” when you pull the trigger. After the last round, the slide stays back and it looks pretty silly, which is probably why they don’t portray it accurately in movies.

As an inside, and you won’t be charged an extra cent for this, an Army-Issue 45-caliber semi-automatic pistol has three safety devices: the regular kind, a pressure-sensitive bar on the handle, and a disabling feature on the barrel if you press it into someone.

When I was a star-garnished member of the United States Navy (that’s a LOL for those who don’t know me) the Army-Issue 45-caliber semi-automatic pistol was responsible for more accidental deaths than any weapon in history. A drunk discharged one while going through a checkpoint once that sent a slug whistling by a foot from my leg and embedding itself into a pile of sandbags. I was left to ponder the question forever whether, had the round nipped my leg, would I have earned the Purple Heart and the CIB?

Later, there was a Marine on our ship who killed his relief while showing him his “fast-draw” technique. It was a sad and tragic affair that should remind us that weapons of war are not playthings. I can still see the face of each Marine, both very nice guys.

Now how did I get off track? Oh, I remember. Pet peeves in movies. My most despised involves music. Incidentally, I have found no examples of accidental, or intentional, deaths from a musical instrument, even a banjo or accordion. I think Bing Crosby threw a sweet-potato whistle at Bob Hope once, but he missed.

No, my peeve involves bio-pics of the lives of musicians. Let me ask you. In all the films you’ve ever seen about the lives of great musicians, have you ever witnessed a scene in which they were practicing?

I doubt it. The scenarios generally run like this.

- A child witnesses someone playing beautiful music on some instrument

- The child is intrigued

- The child is too poor to obtain an instrument, but obtains one somewhere

- The child immediately plays music on a street corner but makes no money

- The child has to pawn the instrument

- The child works a series of meaningless jobs and, along the way, falls in love

- Love gets the instrument back somehow

- Love produces scene after scene of amorous adventure and disharmony

- Love triumphs and the couple spends a year abroad doing God knows what

- In the penultimate scene, the hero or heroine is playing a Paganini violin concerto in a packed concert hall

Scenes of passionate love: dozens. Scenes of bitter poverty and despair: dozens. Scenes of a musical performance: dozens. Scenes of practice: none.

It’s like a child can get a guitar for Christmas, open a tab book, and play the guitar break from Hotel California (both parts simultaneously) that evening for his family. We don’t need no stinkin’ knowledge or practice. Everything in life is simple and easy. Just ask a Libertarian.

Is it any wonder that we have elected such a bunch of clueless clowns to run our country?

I don't think he learned his craft
by running a reality TV show.

Morning Thoughts

There are so many of life’s lessons to be learned from music that it’s hard to start. Maybe this: you have to work at it, music and life.

Now that may sound simple but consider a conversation I once had with a young man who wanted to learn to play guitar. I advised taking lessons from a pro. He said, “I don’t want to take no lessons, waste of time.”

Undeterred, I recommended learning chords and how to strum them in rhythm.

“I done tried that,” he said. “Chords is too hard.”

“Maybe scales?”

“I don’t need no scales or chords,” he said. “Just help me find the tabs to Stairway to Heaven.”

Rule One: You can’t be successful in your chosen endeavor by reading tabs. It takes a lot of getting dirty, getting tired, getting beaten up, getting persecuted, getting knocked down, and getting up.

Music teaches us that being best is only an illusion that the sports world has foisted on us. There may be a most lucky or proficient at a given moment, but we can only determine where a person's life stands on a scale of worst to best upon their last dying breath, long after the strength of youth has left them. Oh, did you hear that Stephen Hawking died last week?

Anyway, there’s a story that is most likely apocryphal—but as John Steinbeck once observed: “Just because something didn't happen doesn't mean it isn't true.” It’s about guitar legend Merle Travis, considered by many to be “the best” at what he did. Seems he had made up this song on the guitar but, to make it sound like he wanted it to, there was a lick he just couldn’t master. Then, along came multi-track recording.

“Aha.”

He had them overdub the stubborn lick and sent the song out for distribution. Years later, as the story goes, he attended a recital where a 13-year old boy announced he would play this particular Merle Travis song. Travis assumed he would simplify the passage, but was astounded when the kid played through it flawlessly, without the benefit of any mechanical help.

Rule Two: There’s always someone better at what you do. Cockiness can make the gods mischievous.

Music teaches us, or should, that life is hard, complicated, confusing, and demanding. This is especially true, for example, in governance, a fact totally lost on those who call themselves “Libertarians.” Oh, that life could be as simple as simple minds would have it. Just read the tabs Ayn Rand published and all is well.

A fine musician (and better entertainer) once told me that there was a definite, but unalterable sequence to be followed before performing a musical piece before an audience.

- First, learn your instrument,

- Next, learn the song,

- Next, learn to play the song flawlessly,

- Next, learn to play it in rhythm with others, and finally

- Work at it until you can make it look easy.

Rule Three: Don’t attempt difficult or demanding things until you are ready.

And we are out of time after only three lessons. Oh well, I’ll close and to see what messes our national leaders have gotten us into today. You know, Americans are pretty well decided by now that only females should govern our country. When that finally happens, I hope that a lot of them are musicians as well.

Well now, there does happen to be
a best tractor driver, after all.

Growing up Southern: March 24, 2018

Sometimes I see how smug some people are with their positions in life, and it makes me wonder. Things can and do change, after all.

Growing up in a small country grocery store, I heard and saw a lot. Some made a great impression on me. For example, I’ve mentioned the tornado that struck our rural community in 1947. People talked about it for years. One man in particular has stayed on my mind off and on for years. He taught me a good lesson in how not to take life for granted.

He told us all a story, while we sat around an old pot-bellied stove, of how his family had hidden in a storm shelter during the storm. When he thought it had passed, he came out alone. In his words:

“Everything was gone. The house, the barn, the sheds, the truck, One tree still stood. I walked over to it and looked. There, stretched across two stacks of bricks, was a wide plank my girls had been using for play as a ‘kitchen stove.’ Everything was still there, even some mason jar lids they were using to make mud pies. The storm had left it untouched.

“I looked around at the place. Everything I had was gone, wiped clean. But there under that tree was that little play spot made of a board and some bricks. I walked over to it and flicked one of the jar lids with my finger. It tumbled off with no more pressure than that. The spot was all that had survived the storm.”

Thinking about it, we have some stormy days ahead in America. One can only wonder how many empires will fall and how many seemingly insignificant things will survive. Things can and do change.

Dinosaurs first appeared on earth about 200 million years ago. They became the dominant life-forms, until their sudden extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period about 65 million years ago. That is when a meteor struck the earth near the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and created the so-called "Fifth Extinction." The only land creatures to survive were the small animals that could hide from the dinosaurs in caves and crevices.

Life’s a bitch, ain’t it? At least that’s what the privileged dinosaurs probably thought. After all, 135 million years is a pretty good run. In the end though, all their size, genetic good fortune, and power couldn’t save them. I can almost hear them tweeting, with a last breath, “Fake news, fake news.”

Sunrise Memories: March 16, 2018

It only takes a small step of kindness to make an impact on a person’s life. I thought about that yesterday for some reason. Maybe it was Elvis.

We visited our loved one at the respite home, and guess what? Elvis came there to sing for the residents, and they loved him. Some even danced, as best they could. One was good at it, a man they call “The Colonel.” Actually, he is a retired sergeant from the United States Air Force. He says he once played saxophone in a band, and he still has the steps.

“Elvis” was a Little Rock firefighter who sings for fun at such gatherings. He was good singer and a good man who does small acts of kindness for others.

But it wasn’t Elvis I was thinking about. How’s that for a “buried lead” Dixie Land and Sonny Rhodes? (They are actual dear journalist friends of mine).

Anyway, I was thinking of Linda Vines. The wife of the late Jim Vines, one of the two bosses at my first professional job in Little Rock. He died some years ago after suffering for over 30 years with a slow but progressive case of MS.

It happened this way. Day before yesterday I attended a conference of the Arkansas Chapter of the American Planning Association. It was the first one I had attended in a few years as I am more than a bit retired from active duty. I saw, and visited with, some dear old friends, and met a few new ones. They all greeted me kindly.

What happened was that it made me think of the first one I attended, those many years ago. I was just out of the Navy and knew only the two guys I worked for and their spouses. The professionals were all old friends, many having attended grad school together in the recent past. The Chapter had rented an excursion boat for an evening trip up the Arkansas River. I felt like a newly released convict at a Sunday School picnic and there was no escape.

No one paid me the least bit of attention. Even had they, I didn’t know enough to talk sensibly about the profession and it didn’t appear to be a crowd that would have been interested in sea stories. It was worse than standing watch alone in some godforsaken place. Here, I was alone but had to watch others having fun.

I was standing alone on the deck, watching my new home city roll by when someone walked up and asked me something or other about where I was from or what I had been doing lately. It was Linda Vines. Before long we were identifying people whom we both knew and she was entertaining me with stories about their graduate school days. The evening passed smoothly and I have rarely, in my entire life, been more thankful to another human being.

Several years ago, a few before Jim died, I sat one day and wrote Linda a letter reminding her of that evening and how thankful I was for her willingness to make a stranger feel less alone. I then told her how the incident helped form a lifetime commitment on my part always to try and make newcomers to a gathering feel welcome, and how small acts of kindness can grow.

Jim called me a week or so later. Without any small talk, he informed me, “You made my wife cry.”

I waited.

“Thank you,” he said. “That was a great act of kindness.”

Yep.

Morning Thoughts: March 16, 2018

More on the March 29 ceremony by the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs (ADVA) and why I won’t be there. It will feature the formal pinning of the Vietnam Veteran Lapel Pin on several hundred veterans. My initial reaction was, “they can stick mine where the sun doesn’t shine.”

I’ve explained in full why I feel this way. Click here ifyou missed it.

After I posted that, a very nice man, whom I respect greatly, gave a short talk promoting the ceremony. For the length of time that it takes a rifle round to whistle by, I thought maybe I was being hard-headed.

Then, next evening, I sat with nothing to do while my wife set up a new computer. I flipped on the TV and clicked the remote. As if by fate, I saw the beginning of the film about then Lt. Colonel Hal Moore and his men at the battle of Ia Drang Valley.

You remember the story. A crack unit of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry, comprising a total of 450 men, choppered into a spot in the central highlands of Vietnam on November 14, 1965.

Army intelligence, true to form, had little advance information other than they expected the Americans might encounter 2,500 “enemy.” Instead, they had landed almost atop three regiments of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN)—the regular army of North Vietnam. And they were looking for trouble.

After three days and nights of fighting, the Vietnamese withdrew with 2,000 casualties, including 6oo dead on the battlefield as counted by the Americans. American losses were 79 killed in action and 121 men wounded, many severely.

Losses included those of helicopter crewmen who miraculously brought in the troops under fire, supplied the troops on the ground, and removed the wounded and dead. One pilot received the Medal of Honor for his work.

The problem with going in on March 29, 2018 and receiving a pin labeled “Vietnam War Veteran,” is the fact that the pin goes to anyone who served in the U.S. Military while America was engaged in Vietnam. Those who didn’t serve in-country deserve thanks and honor, to be sure, but a pin that says “Vietnam War Veteran?”

I’ll leave to you. Does the man or woman who spent their tour drinking beer in Germany deserve the same pin as the brave troops and pilots who survived the Ia Drang Valley?

Yes. These men deserve medals.

Morning Thoughts March 15, 2018

Off to spend the day with some old friends this morning. Old ones are good, although I still try to make new ones.

More later.

Sunrise With Schubert March 14, 2018

It’s hard to respond to a world in which Stephen Hawking is dead and Betsy DeVos is in charge of America’s educational system. Our better angels must weep.

It’s not for Hawking’s contribution to science for which I mourn. He didn’t cure polio, unveil the secrets of nuclear fission, or solve the problem of how we moved from blue algae to a mind like his.. In fact, I hardly begin to understand the things he wrote about. But he will be remembered by history as long as we have a communal history. History will remember him for a life of thinking, imagining, striving to know, and trying make us better through knowledge.

History will remember DeVos as a nobody who spent a millionth of a nanosecond cavorting around on its wrong side with her group of “merry pranksters.”

What saddens me is that Hawking had, in addition to one of history’s great minds, such a sense of humor and charming personality that he made intelligence and education popular.

We will miss that in an age where an entire political party sees its future as flourishing in a sea of dark illiteracy. Where this will lead us is anyone’s guess. A simple extrapolation from the known data would suggest an H. G. Wells world in which hordes of ignorant masses exist only as sustenance for a handful of bloated and careless rulers.

As we mourn the life of Stephen Hawking, will we continue to allow mega-rich families to drag us into a future where the value of a Master’s Degree will be a job as assistant grocery-stacker at Walmart?

We can only hope, as Lewis Mumford said, that “trend is not destiny.”

The death of Stephen Hawking caused me to think, on this sad morning, of a myth I heard once. It involved two travelers crossing the desert with a load a goods. They had bedded their camels for the night when a spirit appeared before them commanding that they empty their cargo and fill the containers with sand.

“If you do this,” the Spirit said, “in the morrow you will both glad and sad.”

Being both fearful of spirits and burdened by greed, the travelers only unloaded a small portion of their goods and replaced them with sand.

In the morning, they found that the sand had turned to precious diamonds and they were indeed glad for them, but sad that they hadn’t loaded more.

That’s how I feel today as I contemplated the life of a Stephen Hawking. I’m glad we had him, but sad that we couldn’t have had more.

If the current leaders of our country prevail, will History look at the shining jewels within America’s story and say, “I’m glad we had her, but I wish we had gathered more?”

A life well spent is a diamond
 in History's crown. - Me

Growing Up Southern: March 13, 2018

On June 1, 1947, a tornado tore through our community south of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. It resulted in the death of 34 people, including 21 children.

Our family had gone to Hot Springs that day and missed the actual event. Returning, we found that the home just north of ours was gone—not demolished, but gone—as was the home to the south of us. The storm destroyed 50 homes and damaged 500 others. A prominent farmer, his wife, and two children died when the funnel lifted their home and turned it upside down in Bayou Imbeau a couple of miles from us.

We would find that six teenagers died when the storm demolished a house less than a city block from ours. The news reports graciously called it “a rural youth center.” Actually, it was a vacant home where teenagers gathered of a Sunday afternoon for a friendly craps game.

Our home, attached to our country grocery, suffered only from a large oak tree blown over on the western end of the structure. That night, National Guard troops stood guard in our neighborhood to prevent looting. I’ve told before how my father gave away the contents of our grocery to the victims, ultimately going bankrupt as a result of his goodness.

Today though, I’m thinking of another subject: embedded terror. Although our family didn’t witness the storm, nor was our home destroyed, terror invaded the area like a dreadful germ left by a malicious wanderer. My best childhood friend would tremble and cry whenever a thunderstorm threatened, as would our family dog, Bob. Both had seen the storm and bore witness to its power. The fear of storms proved contagious to us all.

We feared the reoccurrence of another storm like the children of Europe must have feared another war. It was a silent, insidious terror that never left, lurking below the surface of our awareness. So it was, sometime later, when a warning was issued for a storm headed directly at our grade school.

I was in the third grade, in Miss Roundtree’s class. She was hardly past 21 years of age and the heart-throb of every boy in school. We would have faced a tribe of wild Apaches for her, even charged into a Nazi machine gun nest, had she but given the fateful order.

A tornado though? That was something different. Few students remained at the school at that moment. Only the children, of whom I was one, who waited each afternoon, under the guidance of a teacher, for the arrival of the school bus that transported “the country kids” home.

We had been shuffled into the northeast portion of the school building, our elders assuming that any storm would arrive from the southwest, from Texas. We knew how to “duck and cover” in preparation for physical emergences, and were quite ready and willing to do so.

Then Miss Roundtree announced a new plan. There was no use going to the trouble of diving under our desks unless the storm was actually upon us. We needed a lookout. A dozen sets of eyes bore into the floor, hoping to burn a hole wide enough to allow an escape from the honor.

It seemed, of a sudden, that everyone, save me, disappeared. “You,” our dream-goddess said, pointing a finger at a spot between my eyes, “Come with me.”

Off we went to the most southwestern classroom in the building. I lacked the height to see through the window, so Miss Roundtree pulled up a chair on which I could stand to watch for the terror, should it appear. My instructions were simple. “When you see a funnel cloud coming, jump down, run fast, and warn us.

Then she left. Before her footsteps faded, I heard it thunder.

I felt an electric charge on the back of my tongue, a sensation with which I would become familiar as I passed through life. Awaiting the unmanageable terror, I think I may have experienced, to some small degree, the fear that must accompany any child heading off today to what should be the most joyous and exciting period of their lives, the carefree wonder of school days. I wonder how many instead, should they hear a sharp and unknown sound, will feel that surge of electricity at the back of their tongues.

Unless you have felt it, in the singular and unwarranted way a seven-year old might feel it, you have no idea what an evil organization the National Rifle Association has become.

Terror requires eternal vigilance. 

Southern Musings: March 12, 2018

One of the most revered religious voices in the history of our planet advised us not to judge others. We do, though. We can’t help it.

Nowadays, we not only rush to judge others, we elect people to public office if they are better and meaner at it than we. Odd, isn’t it?

Not really, it seems to depend on point of view. I recall a conversation I had with a dear close friend once who lived in a city where I served for years as its urban planning consultant. There was a prominent citizen there who was the meanest bastard I’ve dealt with in my entire professional career. A weak heart, combined I'm sure with his malicious personality, allowed me to outlast him.

As with many small towns, he was a banker, real estate broker, insurance company owner, and local kingpin. He was as rich as he was mean.

And oh, was he mean. He made the character of Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life look like Mr. Rogers of TV fame.

He once used his position of chair of the city's sewer board to kill a huge development deal for his city because a rival broker had the listing on the land where the development was to go.

He called a mortgage on a man with a wife and two kids because the man spoke, at a planning commission meeting, against a horribly devastating project in the man’s neighborhood, but from which our Mr. Mean stood to gain.

He sold homes “on contract”to poor (meaning “African-American”) families who couldn’t get mortgaged loans.  This meant they made monthly payments but gained no equity unless they paid the loan in full. He was known for kicking families out on the street for missing a single payment after years of faithful compliance. People would point out properties to me that he had “sold” to dozens of families over the years. He was a jewel among men. Every five years or so the Chamber of Commerce named him "Citizen of the Year." Everyone called him "Mr."

I’m proud to say that he hated me and the feeling was "muchal.”

He would refer to me during planning commission meetings as “that dumb young man who comes down to our fine city to tell us how to run things.”

His “fine city” has the same, within a dozen people or so, population now as it did in the 1970 census. Men like him are largely to blame.

Once, I mentioned him to my friend and she said something interesting. “I don’t know much about his business life,” she said. “I just know him as the nice next-door neighbor to my mother who mows her yard for her sometimes, and brings her fresh tomatoes from his garden each summer.”

That, my friends, is small town urban life in the South in a nutshell.

Morning Thoughts: March 11, 2018

Had lunch yesterday with some good friends, most fellow vets of the same age. We don’t think much of the upcoming “Honor the Vets” bash. Too late, much too late for us, and we accept no responsibility for assuaging anyone’s guilt. We’re all fine. Stick you medal where … oh, never mind.

We had fun swapping tales, though. Dining with friends is one of the great leveling exercises of life. In addition to other shared interests, we all have a fondness for woodworking. They are all serious and accomplished, I’m a “wannabe.” They accept me though, and I learn much from them, some of it even useful.

In addition to bringing joy, woodworking helps hone many life-skills. For example, there are mandatory rules.

Rule One: Measure twice, cut once.

Rule Two: Measure twice again before cutting.

Optional but Recommended Rule Three: Measure again. It never hurts.

Other mandates include

Think before you act. Hmm. This might be useful for other endeavors.

Don’t do complicated maneuvers late in the afternoon or before sunrise.

Copious amounts of alcohol are forbidden before or during. Afterwards: it makes anyone’s work look better and major mistakes seem as if they occurred long ago in a woodshop far away.

More and better tools always help, but not always in productive ways. In the procurement process, it sometimes helps to tell a spouse that all your friends have (whatever). Be aware, though, that they teach the “Jump Off The Cliff Rule” at Wife’s School.

If your best and dearest friend tells you something will work, measure anyhow. If doing so appears to hurt their feelings, measure again.

If you create something really nice, send it to a professional for finishing.

Fast spinning pieces of steel will cut your goddam fingers off.

Woodworking is best at making you use language of which your Sainted Mother would not approve.

If you have the skills to be a concert violist, take up scrapbooking, not woodworking, as a hobby.

Always remember that the people who do this on TV can do “re-takes” and you won’t know it. Those smug looks are taught, not earned.

You can trim a piece of wood but you can’t stretch it. (They also teach this at Wife’s School, but in a different context).

Revel in goof-ups. There’s no better way to learn. Well, maybe there is, but woodworkers prefer the hard way.

And, finally, if like our group, you served in some miserable little “f-up” of a war thought up by arms manufacturers and politicians, you’ve been living on borrowed time for fifty years anyway, so screw it all and head for the shop. There’s only so much time left. Use it wisely.

Tell Senator Cotton to “make sawdust, not war.” You need to teach your grandchildren how to create things, not blow them up.

Sometimes, despite your best efforts,
things turn out okay … sort of.

Sunrise With Schubert March 10, 2018

I once read a short story about a man who wanted to find the place where jokes originated. He finally found it in a remote site somewhere in mid-America.

I don’t remember how it turned out. I think maybe he was executed as a spy, sort of a counter-humorous ending. He probably died laughing, though.

There are places I’ve always wanted to find, the exact source of “They say,” for example. This was my late father-in-law’s favorite source of everyday enlightenment. I picture it as somewhere between a large factory building straight out of Modern Times and the work spaces described in 1984.

One wonders if there is a quota system. Can’t you just picture the blank forms flowing by with some poor worker busy dashing off a “They Say” on each one?

“They say we’re in for some rough weather.”

“They say the market is going to crash.”

“They say kids these days don’t know how to sign their own names.”

“They say gas may hit five dollars a gallon before long.”

“They say that you won’t gain weight if you eat standing up.”

“They say that not knowing what you are doing makes you better at it.”

Get the picture? Do you reckon the workers ever get behind? Can’t you see a Lucy and Ethyl scene where the line speeds up and some poor soul starts poking blank sheets down her blouse in order to keep up?

Would such a job affect your speech outside the workplace?

“They say that some couples only have sex once a year.”

“They say that husbands who don’t talk a lot tend to live longer.”

They say that kids are even getting into the spirit of things at an earlier age now, so there must be a separate wing at the factory for youthful aphorisms.

“They say that the new I-Phone increases grade-point averages by an entire letter grade.”

“They say that letting a child stay out later builds trust in a family.”

“They say that there is more wisdom in a cell phone than in all the libraries combined.”

"They say that football players have character and can be trusted."

“They say it won’t happen if you do it standing up.”

I’ll keep looking for the source of such wisdom. After I find it, I may have the energy to tackle “Sources say.” They say the two factories are located near one another.

They say we create our own reality.

Growing Up Southern: March 9. 2018

It was going to be a good day for Jim Fletcher and me. We were going to be real cowboys at last. I would be Gene Larue. He hadn’t decided on a name yet. But we were ready.

We had a hideout in a forested area a mile or so from where we lived, the perfect spot. It was a cedar tree that had grown so large that its drooping limbs formed a tent-like structure that was protected from all but the strongest rain. Over time, we had hacked out a small opening, undetectable by a stranger. It was our little “Hole In The Wall.”

From nearby dumping spot, we had collect odds and ends for crude furniture and storage containers for secret hordes, like a “naughty” magazine that I had found under an entry-porch at school and sneaked home. We weren’t sure if cowboys looked at such things, but we were certain of other habits.

They smoked “roll your owns,” so we had save our pennies and Jim at purchased a sack of Bull Durham at my daddy’s store, “for an uncle.”

Now we had the ultimate possession to make us real cowboys, a bottle with enough “Old Yellowstone” for two strong shots like the cowboys always enjoyed after coming to town. We had found a bottle in the dump with a smidgeon of the yellow liquid in it. Then I had gently pilfered small amounts from the stash my daddy stored in his barn. He kept a bottle there to ease his mind when he closed the store and fed his cows. My mother allowed it unless he got too jolly during his little “happy hour.”

The amount in our bottle had grown slowly over the months, but on this soft early-spring day, it was time to be real cowboys at last. The bottle with its inch and a half or so of inviting liquid was stored in a place of honor in our hideout, along with the Bull Durham, papers, and a rusted BB gun capable of dropping an “Indian” at a hundred yards.

We had explored along Bayou Bartholomew all morning, looking for “Aarheads” and, having found some nice specimens, carried them back to our spot on our stick horses named “Paint” and “Ranger.” We would use the artifacts to make real arrows later.

Jim had still not decided on a cowboy name. Try as we could, we couldn’t think of a single “colored cowboy” in all of movie history. He had about decided on “Whoozit” when we arrive home from the range on that fateful day.

We tied our horses outside and it was time for good shot of whiskey. We had some Garrett Snuff bottles for shot glasses and Jim watched as I carefully poured equal halves into two of them. We toasted our comrades, whom we had not included in this adventure because of the limited amount of product, and downed our drinks just like we had seen the cowboys do hundreds of times, or so we thought.

Oh, my god!

It was like someone had pointed blowtorches into our mouths and down our throats. We went into coughing spasms that seemed to shake the roots of our mighty cedar. Neither could speak.

When we could catch our breath, we both charged through the opening and out into what we thought might be a reviving atmosphere. Gagging gave way to a retching that gave way to a gasping that gave way to tears that gave way to eyes wide as the bottom of coke bottles.

Jim gained speech first. “That must not be the same kind they drink,” he said in a still raspy voice.

“Can’t be,” I said. “They enjoy it when they do it.”

“I ain’t takin’ no chances anyway,” he said.

“Me neither.”

He took a breath and made one of those decisions that can alter history. “I ain’t gonna be no goddam cowboy.”

“Me neither.” I took several deep breaths. “What you gonna be?”

“Maybe a baseball player.”

“A baseball player?”

“Yeah, they got colored baseball players now.”

That sounded reasonable. Jim had a revelation and said, “I got a cousin who’ll trade us a baseball for that magazine we got.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We can play in Daddy’s pasture. What else we gonna need?”

“Just some chewin’ tobacco, I reckon.”

“We can swap our smoking tobacco for some chewing tobacco,” I said. “It’s gotta taste better than whiskey.”

“Sure,” Jim said. “We’ll just be baseball players.”

The nice thing about stories about kids growing up in the South is that, no manner how good the story is, there’s always another one for another day.

Mammas, don't let your babies
grow up to be cowboys. Trust us.

Growing Up Southern: March 8, 2018

When Sainted Mother wanted to chide me gently about my appearance, she had a unique way of softening the act, one honed by a lifetime of rural restraint.

“You look,” she would say, “like somebody who was called for and couldn’t come, and when they got there they wasn’t needed.”

I’ve never heard anyone else use it. I don’t know if she had it copyrighted or not, maybe so. I tried it once early in my marriage. Only once.

As I say, I don’t use it myself. I’d love to know if anyone else (other than immediate family, Sis) has ever heard it used.

I do know, from hanging out mostly with English majors at Fayetteville, that folk music adapts, over time, to location. Thus, an English Ballad about a dying soldier (syphilis supposedly) became the ballad of a dying cowboy on The Streets of Laredo. Of course, he was kilt by a gunshot wound. Here in America, we die manly deaths from firearms—"womanly deaths,” I suppose they call them when young girls are the victims—or it’s just not proper.

Anyway, I know folk sayings also adapt to new locations. In L.A. (lower Arkansas) where Sainted Mother grew up, when someone really annoyed you, say a presidential candidate mocking a disabled person (although that would have never happened in her lifetime) the correct response was, “That man makes my ass crave applesauce.”

Move a generation forward and fifty miles north, the saying changes but the intent stays the same. Say a couple of rich idiots loved to kill elephants for fun and cut off their tails, folks in the Arkansas Delta might observe, “That makes my ass crave a dip of snuff.”

I kinda like that last one because of its inherent earthiness and the fact that there are so many opportunities to use it these days. I counted its use eight times in 30 minutes last evening by someone close to me watching the nightly news on television.

One other of Sainted Mother’s favorites, and one I’ve never heard used elsewhere, concerned what she must have viewed as unwarranted pride. When someone who should have been expressing a high degree of shame or repentance, say someone who constantly lied, not for humor or emphasis—both accepted purposes in the commons—but for spite, greed, or self-aggrandizement, she would observe and comment. Many times, this involved undue haughtiness in church. Or, a non-chastened soul might drive by our little grocery store without the customary, no, obligatory, wave, thus warranting censure.

“They was just a’sittin’ up there like Garrett on snuff,” she would say, “never even looked this way.” Pride knoweth no shame.

Maybe she just made that up. Southerners do. My late father-in-law, showed such class once, when a political candidate for office had been caught performing despicable acts prior to the election (I can’t give away too many details, but it involved female prisoners and unused jail cells). Not surprisingly (family trees are not bushy in these commons, but they are quite tall), he still received maybe a hundred votes.

Father-in-law called it an "educational election."

An educational election?

“Yes, it tells us just how many assholes there are in this county,” he said.

Some things never change. We’ve had a few of those elections lately, haven’t we?

The family store and home.
Neglect to wave at your own peril.