I hear a sermon. I think of change and courage.

Just watched my favorite Methodist minister deliver a tough sermon. It dealt with change, not how merely to accept it, but to meet it with courage and conviction based on both on the ideals of one’s faith and the words of the Galilean.

I secularized it, as I am prone to do, based on my chosen profession. I thought of two public entities. One, a state, faced the stench of the bitter poverty and hopelessness of much of its people. It stands last or near last by every standard of decency that can generated by good government. Fortune has abandoned a large swath of its area. Accordingly, and following a long history, its leadership decided to embrace cowardice once again, announcing a commitment to its faith by cutting taxes for the super-rich, damning the poor, and raising “thinking poor” to a religious dogma of the highest esteem.

Now a smell of sulfur, generated by fiery greed, joins the stench of poverty and hopelessness.

The other, a city, facing the Great Depression and a huge in-migration of those fleeing its impact, voted to borrow money, to be repaid by its people, and build a massive structure across one of the most treacherous bodies of water in the country. The decision led to avoiding the worst ravages of the Depression. It also helped create economic development that would increase with time. It provided jobs, not resentment, for the hopeless immigrants.

Fate often simply depends upon thinking of a higher or lower order.

At the end of time, the first entity will still be poor and last among peers. The other will still be a national icon and, among the hearts of many, the most beloved city in the United States.

The minister quoted Thomas Carlyle on change. It was effective. I might add, though, from my view, the words of The Bard from Hamlet, “… there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Enough said.

My Redacted Life

We had been married about six months or so, my redhead and I. Did I ever mention that she had fulfilled the major dreams of my life? That is to say a knockout girl with long hair, a sports car, a good job, and the opportunities abounding in civilian life. I was set.

Well, almost. As the ink had begun to dry on our marriage certificate, she, this knockout redhead, informed me of the immediate cessation of driving around with “the top down.” Seems that it caused tangles in her long hair. No problem. I immediately surrendered that small aspect of my dream-structure. I suppose I was, early on, developing an understanding of the requirements for a long marriage.

It did come as a surprise, however, when I received a call one day at work. “You should see,” a lovely feminine voice said, “my new haircut.”

“A trim?”

“A little more. You’ll like it.”

The afternoon proved as agonizing as the wait for a jury verdict. Later, I drove my Green Angel, with the top down of course, to the home we had recently purchase. Visions swam unimpeded through my head of “beehive hairdos” so popular in my formative years. My heart beat a slow tempo of anticipation guided by fear.

She wasn’t there when I arrived home. There was only one way to prepare for the tragic unveiling. I popped the top on a beer and put on an Otis Redding album. I waited. Maybe the scriptures would help. The only one I knew by heart was John 11:35.

“Jesus wept.”

A car pulled up. I finished the beer and waited.

What do you know? The most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life walked through the door. Of course I had figured by now that my new wife wasn’t a true redhead, but I was totally unprepared for what I saw. Outside the birds began to sing. My heart raced and my mouth went dry. I guess that throughout a long marriage, a person will fall in love numerous times. It’s best if is the same person. Worked for me as one might expect.

Decide for yourself.

We don't need no
stinkin' long red hair.

Get up on that mountain.

Last night I realized how I came to be on The Mountain. Been watching “The Vietnam War” for the third time after accidentally hitting on it while channel-surfacing. I always wondered how a “swabbie” ended up half way up a mountain, in the jungle, with a Filipino Bosun’s Mate Chief who knew no more  about combat than I, looking for Viet Cong to kill.

It happened this way.

Peter Cayote, the narrator of the Burns/Novick documentary explained it. When “Westmorland the Unsuspecting” send the second detachment of Marines to storm ashore at Danang … well, actually they, like the first detachment, walked ashore and were welcomed by lovely young women in white ao dais, things were different. The marines would no longer serve sentry duty. They were to head directly into combat.

So, with no marines for sentry and perimeter duty, who would fill the void?

That’s where I came in. I was busy minding my own business, having “jerned” the Navy to avoid going to Vietnam where I heard they loved to kill handsome young white men like me. I longed, rather, to storm ashore at Waikiki, Cannes, and other neat places.

But I made the mistake of pissing off that beloved United States Navy, so … they formed what was derisively called “The First Naval Infantry,” for, I still believe, the sole purpose of getting back at me. They picked a bunch of us, gave us a week’s training in weapons, starved and beat us for a week so we would know what to expect if we were captured, and sent us to that misbegotten war to replace underutilized Marines.

My first day there, they gave us rifles. They told the senior man among us newcomers (known irreverently as those still s******g stateside chow) to take a patrol up Monkey Mountain, a 3,000 foot-high feature forming the east boundary of our base and the southern boundary of Danang Harbor. His name was Chief David, a real decent guy. In those days, I'm not sure how it is now, men from the Philippines could join the United States Navy but had to serve the first four years as servants to the officers. If they survived that, they could strike for a more respected rating, like Bosun's Mate, the most respected. So, Chief David, one day in-country, let us out the gate and up the mountain. 

It was a rough affair. The temp was probably 115 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity maybe 150 percent. And we had been assured that there were booby-traps every square foot or so. I hadn’t ever fired my weapon. Chief David was understandably perplexed.

All we found was a little cleared spot a ways up the mountain from which a person could watch our base, with a clear shot at the towers and bunkers where I would stand duty for the next year. I would think about that little spot a lot in the future.

It ended well, albeit our new green fatigues were soaked in sweat. We all made the year. About three-quarters through, Chief David encountered marital problems. His wife, gorgeous from the photos he showed us, had found her another man right there in Manila. She was enamored. He countered by sending her sexy lingerie from Fredrick’s of Hollywood. News from a friend indicated that her man enjoyed her in it.

Life sucks more some days than others.

The most dangerous law

When teaching Intro to Public Administration, or training municipal officials, I always stress that one of the greatest threats to the enlightened administration of government is “The Law of Unintended Consequences.” While resting for a few minutes recently, I flicked the TV remote and it hit the Ken Burns/ Lynn Novick documentary “The Vietnam War.”

It hit me then. I understood why I think the law I mentioned, as nebulous as it is, is so important.

What better example of history veering off the intended path can we imagine? It may not be the greatest example in our history. Intelligent and intuitive people, including Lyndon Johnson, foresaw that our military involvement in Indochina was a rocky path to follow. Politics demanded otherwise. Our involvement would defeat Communism once and for all. America would be the hero of the world. Any resisting politician was a traitor like Harry Truman, who had lost China. (Yes, losing a nation with 541 million people was quite a trick).

We struck out joyously.

What followed was failure, global humiliation, a deeply divided country, millions killed or wounded, a national cynicism, antipathy toward veterans, and more than 58,000 of their names carved into a black-granite mourning wall in Washington D.C.

I could fill pages with examples of how “The Law” has defeated good intentions. In our state, HUD decided, one year, to reward cities that would pass a stringent fair housing ordinance. What could be more proper or fitting? African Americans would benefit from inspired insight. Let us press forward. It was a another brick of good intentions paving the road to Hell.

Problem was, cities with large minority populations would not even discuss passing something as politically explosive as a fair housing ordinance with teeth. Yes, it was political cowardice, racially tinged, and untoward. Many political decisions are, unfortunately.

Cities with no minorities said, “Why the hell not? It won’t bother us.”

What happened? As we might guess, HUD money intended to help the poor, heavily represented by minorities, one year went to “Sundown Cities.”

Now we have a political independent who chooses to run for President of the United States, not as an independent, but by attaching himself to one of the two national parties. It’s his second try. His first, and indications are he was helped by a foreign enemy, resulted in the exact opposite of what his followers sought, which was a more equitable government, voter fairness, a leveling of income disparities, and love and health care for all.

Abroad, there was a Southeast Asian country once that was being overrun by a reptile species labeled in taxological terms as Ophiophagus Hannah known as the “King Cobra.” According to the late Edward C. Morgan, PhD, it is one of the most dangerous snakes in the world. While not the most poisonous, it is smart and mean, the only poisonous snake that will stalk and attack people just for the pure hell of it.

The government decided to address the problem by offering a bounty, let’s say $50.00, for each dead snake delivered.

Fine. Seemed like a good idea. It was, until the supply ran low. Then inspired villagers began breeding the things. Poor planning and inadequate enclosures produced runaways. The country ended up with more King Cobras than ever by the time officials ended the program.

Politics evades the thinking ability of zealous cult members. Ronald Reagan once said, for example, that “Facts are stupid things.” It was a slogan that apparently stuck with, and formed a chief weapon of his party, one that has stuck with his followers to this date.   

Sadly, he had intended the famous quote by John Adams, “Facts are stubborn things.”

Let us hope that President Adams, not President Reagan was right.

A Need For Healing

What amazes me about the current state of our country is not the hatred. White Americans have hated Native Americans since the Vikings banged ashore. White Americans have hated black and brown Americans since they first found they couldn’t exist without them. White politicians have hated since they first found that hatred produces votes. Others just find hatred sexually arousing and a good substitute for performance.

No, what amazes me is deeper than that, much deeper. I know folks who normally appear as those whom the Galilean would call his “brothers and sisters in grace.” They are kind, generous, delightful to talk to, pleasant in all outward aspects and ready to help with the flash of an eye. They can even quote scriptures with ease, particularly the “letters” or the Old Testament. Unashamedly, they specialize in “thoughts and prayers.”

Then, they click on social media. The Galilean weeps.

They post the most hateful, vicious, hideously false, divisive messages that one can imagine. Stuff, much of which must emanate from the Russian Meme Factory, as hideous as one can imagine. Posts that aren’t intended to express a debatable idea, but only to guarantee their hatred bona fides, much of it directed at those whom the Galilean loved the most.

What is wrong here?

I don’t think they are bad people in general. Rather, I think it simply indicates that, somewhere, there is an abscess on their soul. Let us all hope (or pray if we choose) for a great healing. That would make the Galilean smile.

The Allegory of the Hogs

I had a dream last night that might have been allegorical. It took me back to my childhood and my long-departed father’s hog pen. As I say, it was allegorical, certainly not historically accurate. Sainted Father raised farm animals, a few, but was very kind to them. His reason for raising them? It was so he would have an excuse to go out, after 14 hours of running his grocery, and have a good nip of Old Yellowstone under the pretense of feeding his animals. One nip. One nip only. If a rare case of backsliding occurred, and one nip became two, all hell would break loose. You don’t even want to imagine Sainted Mother in a state of rage.

Anyway, back to the dream. In a bizarre setup, he had three pens where he fed animals. In one were ten huge boars. Next to it, in another pen, stood a crowd of sows and piglets with their noses pressed against the fence. In the last pen stood a male skunk who was rumored far and wide to be stricken with rabies. All the neighbors, along with our family, wanted the skunk gone and forgotten.

On a typical evening, Daddy would come out and ladle bucket after bucket of nourishing food to the boars while the sows and piglets watched. The skunk would sulk.

In the dream, Daddy, suddenly, one evening, decided that things were out of balance. When the usual crowd gathered in the store next morning, he vowed that he was going to straighten out the problem of imbalance he had with feeding his animals.

“About time,” said Sam the bread man.

  

“That makes sense,” said Sol who ran a body shop next door.

“It just ain’t right what you are doin’ now,” said the canned-goods salesman.

“Yep,” Daddy said, “I need to feed my pet skunk more.” Before the startled group could respond, he eased out the front door of the store to “wait on” a gas customer.

True to his word, that evening, he instituted his redirection of nourishment. After he ladled the usual rations to the boars, he cursed the sows and piglets for not growing fast enough and slopped a quarter-bucket of feed into their trough. “Here, losers,” he said.

He walked over to the skunk, who pretended not to notice him. He smiled and then walked back to the boars’ pen and dipped a full bucket of feed from their share, hoisted it over the fence, and poured it for the skunk.

You should have heard the sound from the boars’ pen. Although they could rarely manage to eat all their rations at once, the unfairness of losing any of it caused great uproar. In fact, they stampeded to the gate and began trying to get to the skunk’s pen to retrieve their lost rations.

Yes, you might imagine the scene. Each boar would try to scoot his swollen form underneath the exit only to get caught. Then each would raise the most unholy ruckus you’d ever heard.

You might say that each of them was squealing like a hog stuck under a gate.

I still don’t know what it meant, but the sounds woke me up. They might have awakened Sainted Mother too. Too bad for Daddy if they did.

Please Sir ...

Living With Lies

At my age, re-calibration of the brain requires effort. Take the weather for example. I recall the days when my late father-in-law was farming in the Arkansas Delta. When the crops lay parched and withering in the summer heat, a “weather-man” might predict an 80 percent chance of rain for the area next day.

Yay.

What it would mean, though, was there was an infinitesimal chance that a late afternoon shower might bring a fine mist over an adjoining farm, not enough to settle the dust by any stretch of the imagination, just a thin, teasing, cruel cloud that knew exactly where property lines lay.

Farmers like him learned to live with it.

Fast forward. The abuse of our planet by us homo sapiens changed things. We might call what we experience now the monsoons except for one thing, and I speak from experience. Monsoons end. They may seem to last forever, but they ultimately end. Our climate-induced "rainsoons" don’t end, though

No, what we are experiencing now requires recalibration. Now when the “weather-person” says there is a slight chance of “showers” producing less than and inch of rain, prepare for five to seven inches. Farmers lean on their tractors staring at the lake that used to be their best bean field wondering what the next "shower" will bring.

Do the weather-people lie with evil intent? Probably not. I think that prevarication has just become so popular among some politicians that a segment of the population takes it as the normal.

This doesn’t bode well if you ask me. It has all the earmarks of a national emergency.

What They Talk About Down South

A post by an old friend made me think of a Southern tradition. You may smile if you’ve ever had a relative who told a story this way:

“There was this time Bob Ashcraft and me went deer hunting. You know Bob. He was one of the Ashcrafts from down around Kedron, not that that bunch over on Hogeye Ben Road where old man Ledbetter lived before he dropped dead. Just out in his cow barn and dropped dead. They say it was a heart attack. Dr. Reid told me about it one day when he had stopped by the store for some milk. I sold Borden’s milk and the Doc liked it. I used to sell milk from the Okay Dairy but switched to Borden’s when the Chidister boy started delivering it. You know the Chidister boy, the one whose daddy got killed at Pearl Harbor. Lots of folks don’t remember where they were when they heard about Pearl Harbor, but I can tell you just where I was. I was digging fence post holes for Mr. Finkbiner for fifty cents a day. He was the one who had the bad teeth and whistled when he talked. I normally don’t care for whistling but he was funny. His wife would get onto him about it. She was from Texas, so that kinda explains it. She was fatter than Suzi Bell Austin if you remember her…”

Author's Note: I had me such a relative. He was married to my Sainted Mother. You know. She was one of the Harris girls from down at Pleasant Ridge. They were also kin to the Coats family, the ones that came from Bradley County, down past Pansy. I went to school at Fayetteville with this girl from Pansy. She was almost a pretty as my wife, who’s from over around Lonoke. Her daddy was in the 79^th Infantry Division and they fought all the way across Europe, with Patton’s Third Army for a while. Lots of folks didn’t like Patton …

Anyway, it's funny to hear them talk. My wife likes it..

I'm fixna give you about
a minute to shut the hell up.

A Confession Long Overdue

Okay … Okay. Old friend Rick Fahr  asked me a pointed question about possible sins of my errant youth. After a long week of contemplation, I must confess. While a grade-schooler and Cub Scout, a native Hawaiian woman, married to a serviceman, moved next door to my Den Mother. In what must have been a retributive act, they forced our den to learn the Hula. More than that, they made us assume the position of dancers and perform before friends and parents at the Lakeside Elementary School auditorium, all of us, and I could name some names if I took a notion to. Sainted mothers of the scouts had to make Hula outfits out of crepe paper. It included halter tops consisting of a narrow strip over what would have been, in a more realistic setting, ample bosoms. Instead, they were held up with tape.

Yes. I insulted an entire race, denigrated people who would become my fellow Americans only seven years later, despoiled the service of brave veterans like Daniel Inouye, and dishonored a magnificent cultural phenomenon. It’s even rumored that it later caused young men of that state to disguise their citizenship because of the insult.

So there, Fahr. Truth to power, but I can never run for office. Well, maybe if I chose a good “Salvation Date” that would prevent snoopy journalists from delving into my previous life. That worked for GWB.

Oh, and glad you asked. Sainted mother thought it hilarious. Had I pre-deceased her, I’m sure she would have told about it at my funeral. My sister would be happy to relate it had I not so many tales with which I could respond.

Here’s the number we did. They do it a bit better, but hell, we were only eight years old, and flat-chested boys. One was captain of our school's football team. Think about that for a minute or two. It may answer some questions. But remember those names I could disclose.

Yes I married him, but I was nearly 20 and desperate.

My Redacted Life: Misc.

Visited by phone with my favorite Mayor today, Mayor Furlough Thompson of Pot Luck, Arkansas. He was born in 1943 after his dad came home on leave and then went overseas to join up with the First Division. I knew, like me, he is a Vietnam Vet and was a bit of a rounder in his younger days. I asked him how he had avoided the sort of scandals based on revelations of long-ago sins, the kind that are ruining careers these days.

“It’s simple,” he said. “You got to pick you a good Salvation Date.”

“A what?”

“Salvation Date. The day you saw the light and your sins was washed away. Ain’t you never heard of that Bush boy, or Chuck Colson?”

“Yes, but …”

“Jist before I ‘nounced, I picked me a date far enough back to where I knew there weren’t no scandals buried.”

“What about before then?”

“Ain’t no before then if you pick a good Salvation Date.”

“What?”

“That’s the day you renounced sin, boy. Then there ain’t nobody can ask you a question about your life before then, not the press, not your opponents, not the pundits, nobody. You been born again and your life just started on your Salvation Date.”

It began to dawn on me. “So, unless you can change water into wine, that is to say you are without sin, or your ‘hidden years’ are really hidden, you’d better pick you one?”

“Hell, son,” he said. “If Bill Clinton had picked one and stuck to it, we’d have abolished the 22^nd  Amendment for him.”