Sunday, June 30, 2024

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 BELIEFS

America has entered a paradigm that concerns and confuses me. I understand certain aspects of it. The seeds were planted when Ronald Reagan chose to announce his presidential campaign in Philidelphia, Mississippi, the place where three civil rights workers were seized to be executed for promoting voting rights among southern African Americans. This was a "dog-whistle" that, unfortunately, resounded with some normal minds as well as those of bigots.

The seeds germinated through the efforts of Newt Gingrich and others who preached that hatred of political opponents was not only permissible, but a necessity for domination.

The weeds sprouted full grown with the election of a man of color as president of the United States of Americana nourished by 24-hour-a-day fertilization by the Fox organization. Whereas the Germans had real problems to be utilized by the Nazis, false news pundits created false problems in the minds of Americans. It was easier than having to deal with real ones.

So here we are. I understand how many fell into this scheme. I grew up, after all, in the American South. What I don't understand, and what I will carry to the grave with me not fully understood, is the participation of those I thought would never inure such shenanigans.

These are people I once considered friends and fellow believers in the potential for righteousness among Americans. Now I find them posting support of a cult that calls me a sucker and loser for serving my country while calling the January 6 insurrectionists heroes, hostages, and victims. The leader of this cult is one who portrays not one shred of what we call human decency. He seems to strike some emotional chord not explainable by our present moral standards. There must be a source buried deep within our primordial consciousness.

It seems that the answer may reside in our evolutionary disposition for violence in service of our tribe. I shall study this more and return.



Saturday, June 29, 2024

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 EGO

Long ago in an America far away, I stood on the edge of the Great Tide Pool in Monterey, California (actually Pacific Grove) one bright November morning. For those who don’t know, I had positioned myself very near the most western spot of dry land in our country.

In one hand I held a copy of orders to report to the Support Activity in Da Nang, Vietnam for a year’s duty in Naval security. They would soon train me to use weapons, throw grenades, and be brave even when I didn’t feel safe. Then they would set me at the edge of a jungle with a rifle in my hands, waiting for whatever happened.

In the other hand I held an offer for an all-expense-paid escape into Canada, from where I was told then I would be safe from the war but could never return to America.

I sat on a dry rock and smoked a cigarette, an infiltered Camel as I remember. The moment was too important for distillation. Finished, I put the cold butt in my pocket. That place was too sacred for despoliation.

My mind was tearing itself apart. My ego was telling me that no person or agency could make me participate in a war that I didn’t support. My life belonged to me to do with as I pleased. What I wanted stood far above what my country wanted.

My heart was telling me that my America had nourished and protected me for my entire life and deserved repayment. My family's name was worth the danger to a son and brother.

My ego screamed, “Do what you wish.”

My heart said, “America may wander afield, but she needs good people to bring her to harmony."

I stood and turned to face land. The entire United States of America lay in front of me, from where the wild Pacific pounds on her shores to where the gentle Atlantic flows past a simple public place called Fort Sumter, bought with the blood of many who may have been as unwilling as I.

Life demanded a decision.

I put my ego aside and did what I thought was best for our country.

Sometimes you just have to do that, even when it hurts, even when it hurts very badly.




Friday, June 28, 2024

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

 HOLDEN CAUFIELD

“I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.” - Holden Caufield

It's good to re-read books from the past. Perspectives change. Situations change. Even memories change. We realize that the two motorcycle riders we thought were so cool back when financed their journey by selling dope that destroyed individuals, families, and even entire neighborhoods. Here are some present-day thoughts on a seminal book from the 1960s, The Catcher In The Rye.

Maybe one reason for the book’s continuing population is that it nails the pains of adolescence so well. The fact that Holden didn’t handle it well doesn’t make the act of growing up any less real, or as John Steinbeck put it: “Just because something didn’t happen doesn’t mean it isn’t true.” We have, each of us maybe, wished on more than one occasion that our lives could have been frozen like a museum tableau at some less painful stage in our life.

But then we reach our "golden years."

We find, and "give with brief thanksgiving" a blessing for the fact, that we have come through it all, and most of it we wouldn’t have missed for the world. That a brief dream about a face from 40 years ago can break our heart one more time simply reminds us that once upon a time we loved that hard and hopelessly, not a bad thing. And though the deck may heave beneath us, we’ll always find a welcome port.

 As a lesson, the perspective of years says to me that the tough part of life is the living part. The things of value for me have always come hard: education, patience, empathy, perspective, and on and on. One can’t become an adult simply by being able to purchase cocktails in a bar. One doesn’t truly set one’s self apart from his peers by wearing an oddball hat. One doesn’t become a protector of the innocent by daydreaming. It all comes hard, some of it damned hard.

But hard as it was, it has been worthwhile. I treasure the acquaintance and I will see you later Holden, my old friend. You’ve been instructive through it all, even through the war and all the other dark times. Thanks for teaching me, way back then, that bemusement was okay. I’m not sure I could have made it through some of the times without that. Making it through has always been important to me. Oddly enough, making it through was the one thing you seemed never to get a handle on yourself. Maybe you did eventually

I hope so. I really do.

Thursday, June 27, 2024

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 BRIBERY

Years ago, in an Arkansas far away, it was a well-established situation that a professional services firm wishing to do businesswhen the contract was governed by a specific state cabinet agency—would have first to make a “campaign contribution” to the constitutional head of that agency. It was a dirty but necessary cost of doing business, one deemed and declared to be legal. How the head of the agency turned the contribution to personal use was a process that led him to a prison sentence.

Too bad for him. If the people and process were in operation today, there is good news. The United States Supreme Court just ruled that it would be perfectly okay to pay the favor off openly, in cash, and without danger of indictment as long as the payment occurred after the work was done and not before.

Only Sam “The Flag” Alito and Clarence “Big Cigar” Thomas could have developed that logic stream.

There is one catch. That lies in the fact that the public official must have sufficient trust in the paying party that such emolument can be delayed until the proper and legal moment. Since the deal can’t be included in the contract, both sides must trust one another. It could be done with a nod and wink implying “I know as much on you as you know on me.” In botanical terms, the leaves must be as rotten as the roots.

In other words, there must be a level of trust not normally extant in such people.

It has taken awhile, but we are there.

Coda: Supposedly it would work like a "reverse tip." Now if only there were some way it could be made tax deductible.

Wednesday, June 26, 2024

A STORY OF LITTLE ROCK

 THE ASSIGNMENT

Truth be known, I didn’t want to do the piece in the first place. Hell, I wasn’t even a journalist. I was a consultant, a pretty good one, and should have stuck to it. But I had been doing these modest little columns for a Little Rock quarterly that promoted historic preservation. I was acquainted with the editor, I lived in a so-called historic district, and I knew most of the people who lived there. Little Rock was the city that nourished me for most of my adult life. So I agreed to help.

 It was a good fit. People associated living in historic neighborhoods with eccentricity back in those days. They welcomed things that supported that paradigm. So, folks liked my little “human interest” pieces. As for me, I was happy to stick to them. There was no chance of running out of characters, and I didn’t have to travel.

            Then the editor called me one day and asked me to stop by. When I got there, she up and gave me an assignment. Just like that, like I was some cub reporter or something. This posed a noticeable departure from the usual process whereby I just picked out some local oddball and wrote about how they had adjusted to living in an old house.

This time she picked the subject. Why? Beats me. Maybe I was getting stale, or she was trying to sell more copies or something. Rather than speculate, I went along with her for the moment.

            Well guess what? You never know what dish life is going to serve up and what decisions are going to throw themselves in front of you, threatening your hemostasis like a group of western bandits with their pistols drawn and ready.

Here’s how it started.

            A local bigwig, known to us all as a neighbor and a nice guy, had bought one of the most historic homes in the city. It boasted such long-term provenance that the house and grounds came with a caretaker who had worked there since the Great Depression. Mr. Pitts cared for the grounds and lived in a small apartment attached to the carriage house, a.k.a. the garage. He was a quiet little man of advanced age who lived alone and remained out of sight when not working. All the neighbors knew him to nod at, but none of us had ever talked to him.

            The editor explained the human-interest angle. Supposedly, a friendship had grown up between Mr. Pitts and the banker’s young son Alfie—Alfred Chidester LaRue was his full name—a little blond-haired kid from the high-rent side of life. Get it? Old black gardener and white heir apparent, the image of an odd couple as corny as it was appealing to our liberal audience. All I had to do was interview the old man, mine a few historic nuggets and take a picture of him and the kid together. It would produce enough “ain’t that cutes?” to make a tough man buy a round of drinks. There was no Pulitzer looming, but it would get me through until another deadline appeared like a hungry tiger emerging from the mist. No problem.

Anyway, I didn’t have to. These columns represented a public service for me. In other words, I didn’t get paid. Seeing my words in print provided my only emolument. So, I had a degree of leverage unavailable to a poor inky wretch actually writing for a living.

I could have refused the assignment and interviewed, instead, a friend who was restoring a cottage near ours and who looked more like Charles Manson than Manson did himself. He played cello in the city’s symphony orchestra and would have been great material for a photo essay, the research being carried out over a couple of beers. Why should I spend a dry afternoon interviewing the town’s oldest gardener? It didn’t make a bit of sense. “To hell with the editor and her aspirations,” I kept telling myself. Was I my own man or what?

            Naturally, I took the assignment. I had to go through the bigwig himself and he pretty much outlined what he wanted the piece to say. Alfie was an only-child and, having few young friends in the neighborhood, he had taken up with Mr. Pitts. Followed him everywhere. Shared secrets with him. Even helped with the yardwork. Well, maybe a little. The important thing was the friendship that had developed between man and boy. That was the angle.

            Sure. One of the greatest and most persistent dreams of American Caucasians is that, someday, an African American will love them. But I could pretend with the best, so I pressed on to complete the assignment.

            I set up an appointment for the next Saturday afternoon. It was a nice autumn day that welcomed a person outdoors. I grabbed an ancient Rolliflex camera that I used for such work, made sure I had pen and paper, and walked the two blocks to the house.

The house sat on a half-block facing one of the two main streets leading directly to downtown. When it was built, wealth had followed the topography. The larger houses were on the highest ground and homes fell off in size and value as the topography dropped into the flood plain. It was never more than a short walk from the mansions to the homes from which domestic help could be hired, for practically nothing, in the good old days. In other words, urban form followed economic function. Households weren’t separated by income as they are now. That’s how, thanks to the historic preservation craze, I could afford to live near a bunch of mansions.

            I arrived. Mr. Pitts had dressed up a bit. He always wore neat clothes with a narrow-brimmed dress hat. Today he had added a tie. He stood at attention with his hands to his side and presented a smile like a boot-camper at inspection. Alfie was bouncing a ball against a tree and the parents stood by with pride. All was set for this to be a painless adventure. Wham, bam, thank you m’aam and I meet my deadline.

            I called little Alfie over and made him sit for a picture with Mr. Pitts. As I lined it up, I pulled a few grunts out of the kid to the effect that he liked Mr. Pitts and enjoyed helping him with the yard work. Mr. Pitts sat smiling through thick eyeglass lenses that distorted his face to where it looked like one of those cartoon characters that has just seen something either real juicy or real dangerous.

            So far, so good.

            Figuring I had about all out of Alfie I was going to get, I excused him with “Now Alfie, why don’t you let Mr. Pitts and me visit while you get back to your yard work?” In other words, “Scram, kid!”

            Alfie was more than happy to be rid of adults, so he walked to beyond the garage. There, someone had dug a shallow pit from which smoke was rising. Within the pit, I assumed from the smell, were dead leaves, trash, and some sort of organic waste. Alfie amused himself by kicking more leaves into the fire.

His mother saw the opportunity and appeared from nowhere with a tray of cookies and iced tea. She sat them on the bench between us and asked, sweetly, and devoid of sincerity, the way only a southern woman can ask, if we were comfortable. After receiving affirmatives, she then swished away amid a crackling of petticoats and an almost audible smile. I pushed the tray toward Mr. Pitts. He smiled and pushed it back toward me.

            “No, please, go ahead,” I stammered, fumbling for my writing pen.

            “Thank you, suh,” he said. He exaggerated the “suh” so I—so we both—would know he didn’t attach any meaning to it. Then he took a cookie in one hand and a glass of tea in another. He neither drank nor ate right away, though. He rested the arm with the cookie on his leg and wrapped a hand around the glass of tea as if to keep it from flying away. He smiled at me. His eyes looked even larger than before.

            A breeze filled the yard and blew smoke from Alfie’s fire toward us. As it did, Mr. Pits finally raised the cookie in a soft arc to his mouth and took a small bite. He lowered it and raised his glass with the same grand gesture and sipped his tea.

            Hoping to get started, I asked him how long he had lived around there.

            “Oh, I was born around here,” he said. “I been here for as long as I can remember. We lived on Tenth Street but it went for the freeway. House ain’t there no more.”

            He chewed his cookie with what I thought was a grim expression. As he did, the smoke circled us and I caught the pleasant smell of burning leaves punctuated by the sharp odor of the other trash smoldering in the pit. Mr. Pitts stiffened and his eyes retreated behind his thick glasses.

            “I been here since when things were different than they are now,” he said. “Way different.”

Then, that far into the interview, he stopped talking. His voice didn’t exactly trail away as much as it fluttered beyond us like a feather caught in a whirlwind.

            I was losing him. I hurried back to work.

            “Different in what way?” I asked.

            He just looked at me. He seemed to struggle to respond and when he did, it wasn’t really to me but, it seemed, to the trees and the garden and maybe to the city itself with all its history and smoky secrets.

            “Way yonder different. Folks weren’t as good to you then.” He took another bite of cookie and drank from his glass. That energized him.

“My folks had it hard back then.”

            I tasted panic. Alfie had disappeared behind the garage and I felt as if I were on an asteroid hurtling through space with an alien. This affair wasn’t going according to plan. I nodded as if I understood and scratched on my pad without looking up. He continued.

            “The worse was what they done to Mr. Carter.”

            “Mr. Carter?” That was all I could manage.

            “Ain’t nobody should have had that done to them. Nobody. I don’t care if he was colored.”

            I gave up and stared at my pad. What was he saying, and where was he taking me? I stared right through my pad and into the ground. From therein oozed a memory. I met it halfway and solved the mystery.

Back in the 1920s, there had been a lynching in Little Rock, less than a half-mile from where we sat. It happened right in the middle of what was then the center of the “colored” commercial area, along Ninth Street.

“Oh my god,” I thought. “This is where he is going.” I tried to raise my head but it took three attempts to overcome the gravity created by that realization. When I did manage to look up, Mr. Pitts was somewhere far away, and scared. I mean really scared. His hand was shaking so much the tea was spilling.

            “I remember that day like it was yesterday,” he continued. They made us all go inside, for they knew there was to be trouble. I was just a child, but the oldest. My Momma put the youngest under the bed and made me watch after them. She said the white folks had done killed Mr. Carter and was draggin’ him down Ninth Street behind a car. She was scared and she made us all cry.

“We could hear people yellin’. They was honkin’ their horns and yellin’ so loud we could hear them in the bedroom. Wasn’t no colored folks on the street, except Mr. Carter and he was dead. They hung him and beat him and drug him up and down Ninth Street. We was all hidin’ and cryin.’ My Momma was tellin’ us to be quiet.” He stopped, looked away and back, directly at me.

“They shouldn’t have done that.”

            Here I was. It was a nice brisk autumn day and I should have been somewhere else, but I was sitting in someone else’s yard listening to an old man reciting his version of our city’s most awful moment and I couldn’t escape.

            “They drug him and drug him. All back and forth on Ninth Street. We could hear the cars and them horns honkin’, the honkin,’ oh my lord, the honkin’. Ain’t nobody ought to have that done to them. We was still cryin’ when they built a fire at Ninth and Broadway and burned him up. We could smell the smoke and that made us cry harder. My momma had some cookies in her apron pocket and she gave one to the younger kids to hush them up. She broke one in half and gave me a piece. She took the other half and then she started cryin’ too.”

            He looked at the cookie in his hand, then returned to that awful day.

            “Somebody said they broke one of his arms off and waved it at the cars going down Broadway,” he said. “I don’t know. Nobody looked out the window the whole time, for we was too scared.”

            I pretended to write something.

            “Too bad,” he said so low I barely heard him. “Them was bad days. Bad for us all.”

            The smoke circled us and I sat as still as I could. Mr. Pitts stopped talking and sat with his hand with the cookie resting on his leg. As the fog of remembrance cleared, he began to smile. He didn’t say anything. He was done talking to white strangers for the day.

            He sat there proud and triumphant, a black-skinned Cicero having had his say, needing neither accolades nor approval. I thanked him, not sure at all whether he even heard me, and then eased away and headed home. I was all confusion, trying to sort out what had just happened. I still had an assignment but what the hell was I going to write? The truth about what happened? That would be the honest thing. It might even be a good piece. Shake the readers up a bit. Let them know that history wasn’t all about cute Victorian houses. Hell yes!

            Back home, I sat in the kitchen and stared through the window. When I tried, I could hear the shouts on the street, feel the throb of the car engines running, and smell the acrid smoke of man and wood burning.

Damn that old man!

Outside the afternoon was dissolving into evening. The shadows got longer and darker the way our thoughts will as we doze. Beyond the kitchen window, the air was still crisp and clear. Inside, it was dark and gloomy. The evening sky changed purposefully that time of year like a lover moving from caresses to kisses, and then to the dark undertones of passion. My thoughts moved that way, too, as I reflected on the day and what it was trying to tell me. Maybe it was trying to tell me to be brave, or truthful …, or honest. Maybe it was suggesting that I approach what I was doing with something a little deeper than just seeing my name in print. Maybe it was just trying to tell me to say something else entirely, before darkness came. Maybe. Maybe.

After a time, I stood up and retrieved a beat-up Remington typewriter and package of paper from a closet and carried them, with as much gentleness as I could muster, into the kitchen. I placed the typewriter on the kitchen table so I could see beyond it into the deepening gloom. Then I slid a page of paper into it and turned the cylinder so the paper positioned itself precisely across the top, aligned there neat and worthy of higher-level thought. I drew and released a long breath of sad air—air that had once moved through the city and down the streets and around the large oak trees past the moving cars and quaint old houses and had once even flowed around the twitching, smoking body of John Carter.

I didn’t want to, but I smelled that smoke.

Click, click, I advanced the paper.

I was ready. My mind was as clear as the way of a traveler making the last turn on the last curve before home. I rubbed my hands. I thought how funny it would be to make the Sign of the Cross.

Instead, I started to type: “Mr. Otis Pitts, age 70 and a lifelong resident of Little Rock, has a new best friend who is only five years old.”


Tuesday, June 25, 2024

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 EXCESSES

As strange as it seems, drinking too much water can kill a person. As reported in Scientific American in 2007: “Earlier this year, a 28-year-old California woman died after competing in a radio station's on-air water-drinking contest. After downing some six liters of water in three hours in the ‘Hold Your Wee for a Wii’ (Nintendo game console) contest, Jennifer Strange vomited, went home with a splitting headache, and died from so-called water intoxication.”

If consuming too much of one of life’s essential intakes can be deadly, are excesses of other kinds harmful? How about intellectual propensities? Let’s see.

Too much exuberance for a just cause created the harmful yapping of “Defund the Police” that threw thousands upon thousands of votes to the most despicable political candidates our country has ever fielded.

Too much patriotic zeal sanctioned an unwarranted war in the Middle East that has now metastasized into conflagrations that could spell the end of humanity.

The excess of religious ideology led to the horrendous deaths of opposing believers and now fills the daily news.

Moreover, the forces of darkness become adept at utilizing the effects of excessive zeal. We can’t imagine for a second that some won’t seek to lure voters by the use of videos of innocent people held in traffic stops from reaching their jobs, families, and emergency care.

When we see a draft-dodging, anti-veteran, mendacious individual hugging the American flag and then sparking an attack on our nation’s capitol, we must accept some logic in the assertion of Dr. Samuel Johnson that “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

The no-regulatory stance on capitalism has allowed the purchase of the United States Supreme Court justices by a small percentage of American and foreign individuals.

Some have even posited that an overabundance of study can create a numbing experience something like “educational incapacity.”

What can The Center do? The Center can’t control or change the minds of the extremists. The Center can support just causes.

The Center gave tacit support and enabled victory in the American Revolution.

The Center gave tacit support and enabled progress in the Civil Rights Movement.

The Center gave tacit support and helped end our horrendous experience in Vietnam.

The Center gave tacit support and helped vote Donald Trump out of office.

There is still more work to be done.

Monday, June 24, 2024

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 SCIENCE

Interesting evening. While waiting for some soup to cook I flicked on the TV at random and was too lazy to change channels.

Well let me tell you.

It was a documentary featuring grown men, some with PhDs behind their names claiming that the Jewish book of Genisis actually spelled out dependable and reliable history. Yep. The universe is not billions of years old (Old Age Paradigm “OAP”) but thousands of years old (Young Age Paradigm “YAP.)

The reason, they claim, that we base scientific claims on the OAP is that scientists are too “invested” in it to admit they are wrong. So, facts must be tortured to comply with it.

The documentary aimed solely at torturing facts to comply with the YAP.

Time about is fair play, I suppose.

Of course, there are troubling issues like the dating of rocks based on radioactive decay.

No problem, the YAP scholars say. The Creator simply altered the time frames for radioactive decay from initial to present. A million years in in the early stages of a rock was only a second or two, depending on how busy the Creator was creating the 350,000 species or so of beetles, (Order Coleotera).

That, of course, reminds one of when British evolutionary biologist and geneticist J.B.S. Haldane quipped that if a god or divine being had created all living organisms on Earth, then that creator must have an “inordinate fondness for beetles.”

Seems the dinosaurs were around until the flood, that wondrous event that created the Grand Canyon in a few months, not the ridiculously long time espoused by mainstream science (MS). The canyon and other majestic features are just remnants of the flood’s subsiding, according to their better science (BS).

I went to sleep thinking about the fact that, in my state of Arkansas, tax dollars that I have worked hard for are going to private schools that teach BS.


Sunday, June 23, 2024

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 TRAUMA

This week I realized that being called a “fenderhead” by a Master Chief Bosun’s Mate won’t qualify me for a handicapped parking sticker. I’ll learn to live with it.

What it does qualify me for is pot, weed, Mary Jane, herb, grass, … you know, marijuana. Isn’t that something?

It works this way. They have this modern miracle called “medical marijuana.” If a doc prescribes it, you can get it, and plenty of it. Legal? What you talking about? Just check out the traffic jam down at the dispensary.

Then they have this thing called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is a serious disorder and deserves serious consideration. It appears frequently in veterans. In the Civil War, it was called “soldier’s heart.” In WWI, “shell shock.” In WW II, “battle fatigue.” All those terms signify participation in combat. Now they just call it “PTSD.”

As I say, it deserves recognition and those suffering from it deserve solace, succor, and treatment. Ultra-woke and don’t feel safe with my talking about it? Bite me.

Here’s the catch. It’s a self-diagnosed ailment. It applies equally to the grunts who survived the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley and the airmen who spent their enlistment an Homestead Air Force Base in Miami-Dade County, Florida.

Wonder what ailment qualifies you for the legal enhancement?

All I would have to do is say I have it. “Gee Doc, I wake up in a sweat with “Fenderhead” pounding in my brain.”

Bingo. The only problem is that I think smoking pot is the silliest thing since disco music.

I could get it but don’t think I should sell it. I could barter it for things like lawn mowing, but I’ve seen the result of work done by kids that probably had a toke or two.

Maybe I should just continue to overcome my anxieties by keeping up with the daily news.

Uh, don’t think so. I might really get it.

Saturday, June 22, 2024

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 PATRIOTISM

The Vietnam War generation doesn’t receive the approval that the WWII Generation did. No wonder. One lost. The other won. The Korean War generation doesn’t receive much attention at all. No one can figure out exactly what the result was. No one even knows what the current generation is doing. There aren't enough of them to matter.

The Vietnam vets have a special place in my heart though, for one obvious reason. Beyond that, there is a special place in glory for those who were faced with a situation where the justification for the war was fabricated and false, the sentiment for it was mixed, opposition to it was violent, and the rich kids seemed to avoid it if they wished. What is special about a group of young men on the verge of their adult life facing the forced encounter with such a war?

Answer: They went anyway.

Yes they went. Some because they had to. Some because they wanted to. Some, myself included, because they wouldn’t risk telling their mothers they were cowards. One supporting layer floated them all. Deep down inside, they felt America was worth sacrificing two or more years of their life for, and maybe even itself.

America was that important. They were willing to sacrifice it all for her.

Now we have politicians that don’t seem to feel that way. Either their cult, their greed, their egos, or their simple mendacity govern their actions. If they loved America as much as we did, they would step aside and let young people with fresh and wholesome ideas run for office.

On some days, reading the news, I’m not sure that our present people deserve the America for which young men once risked it all.


Friday, June 21, 2024

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 TREASON

When I was a teenager, someone told me that if you did anything portraying the United States flag upside down it was an act of treason, the FBI would come after you, and you would be sent to prison. I believed it to the point of once trying to steam off a stamp that had a picture of the flag on it that I had mistakenly pasted the wrong way. Didn’t work, and that was when the cost of a stamp was important to me.

Now I know it’s okay. A Justice of the United State Supreme Court has indicated so. I still don’t do it though. It’s that oath I took, and all.

Some are saying that justice should recuse himself from certain cases since he believes in displaying treasonous beliefs in public. He won’t. The Chief Justice, John Roberts won’t make him, saying, “The practice we have followed for 235 years [is that] individual justices decide recusal issues.” This “we’ve-always-done-it-that-way” seems more fitting for poor workmanship or an excuse justifying school segregation than behavior in the highest court in the country.

That’s the court, by the way, that didn’t buy said argument in the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954.

Things change I suppose. Next time I accidently paste a stamp on upside down I won’t end up throwing the envelope away and I’ll thank Justice Samuel Alito for saving me 66 cents. Now I’ll run to the PO and buy some more stamps. I’ll ignore local laws and if a police officer stops me for speeding through the city streets my defense will be, “I’ve always done it that way.”


Thursday, June 20, 2024

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 WORDS

A couple of things I’ve seen recently bother me. One happened yesterday when I clicked a YouTube video featuring a replay of a local TV news show reporting a rape. All was fine except that the word “rape” was blocked. Same-same the “F” word or the other six forbidden utterances. Something is wrong here and I struggle to imagine just what it is.

I’m not a fan of gory, but I do revere history. The old films of war and holocaust now suffer from having explicit scenes and photos of dead bodies blurred. Disclosures appear before ads and videos warning that the following may make someone uncomfortable.

Have we gotten too “woke?”

I fear it may be so. Will the word “Nazi” be blurred in future telecasts because millennials don’t “feel safe” when they hear it? How about "Manson, Bundy, Dahmer, and Gingrich?"

I tell you what makes me feel “not safe.” It’s the wimping and bastardization of human intercourse and the blurring of reality in the name of succor. I've been so "not feeling safe" in my life that I would have emptied a clip on my Sainted Mother had she come screaming out of the jungle at me. I think it served to make the rest of my life more joyous. Reality teaches and strengthens. An impenetrable wall to block fear is nothing more than a woke Plato's Cave. 

The unfortunate result of all this? I’m drifting farther from the left and toward the center. I’ll never reach the cruelty, selfishness, and irrationality of the right, but the extreme left may lose a tacit supporter. And just ask those who participated in the American revolution, women’s suffrage, or the civil rights struggle how important tacit support is.


Wednesday, June 19, 2024

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 PASSWORDS

Although the claims abound, I’m not sure that it is the economy, specifically inflation, that has America teetering on the edge of anarchy. A simple anecdotal observation is that, on my trips to our local Walmart, the baskets I see driven by folks with MAGA hats or Confederate flag decals are filled with Mountain Dews, bottled water, and snacks.

Seems that there is something else troubling us. It may be that technology is outpacing our evolutionary adeptness. As a “near” Baby Boomer, I am distressed with passwords. The demand for them has become so ubiquitous and complex that I sometimes verge on the edge of despair. The ultimate, and sometimes most circuitous demands are those required to pay a bill online.

I can’t help but feel that if a someone wishes to hack into my account and pay my bill, what the hell?

So passwords exasperate me. But I don’t blame Joe Biden for them.

But wait. Suppose, just suppose, that I suffered a fall and woke with a penchant for watching Fox “news” ten hours a day on the television.

And suppose that for a majority of those ten hours, the pundits thereon preached an incessant stream of claims that Joe Biden was, in fact, the inventor and dictator of passwords.

Day after day the message lands. Joe Biden equals passwords. The word "password" sends me into an apoplectic frenzy like the character in the old "Niagra Falls" routine.

Would I then join The Cult?

Jeez, I hope not but the jury might offer a different opinion.

Oh, wait, can’t mention the word “jury.” That’s a current obsession on Fox.

Tuesday, June 18, 2024

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 TRIBAL INSTINCTS

We wonder what is happening to America. Civility as we once knew it has not only disappeared in politics, but it is now considered a weakness.

If one accepts the idea currently circulated among scientists and academics that evolutionary psychology is the main determinant of our actions, (and I know what a hard intellectual pill this is to swallow) the answer becomes clearer.

Some postulate that what we call a movement toward morality is not a spiritual movement, but rather a long process of socio-economic tradeoffs.

  • We won’t raid your village if you don’t raid ours.
  • I won’t try to kill you if you won’t try to kill me.
  • We will trade goods with you for mutual gain.
  • We will agree to use artificial objects, i.e., money for exchange instead of direct and laborious bartering.
  • We will agree to live in peaceful harmony in cities to facilitate life’s needs and make life easier.
  • Etc.

Accepting that, what we now see is simply a reversion to a more primitive, tribal state of evolution, spurred by fake news outlets and social media.

  • Danger is everywhere.
  • We must band together as a tribe for survival.
  • The Tribe is the most sacred of all entities.
  • We must destroy all who threaten the tribe.
  • We must forget personal peace and pleasure to protect the tribe.
  • We will develop a spiritual belief system to control large populations withing the tribe.
  • Our leaders must offer strength, not goodness.

Kind of begins to make sense, doesn’t it?


Sunday, June 16, 2024

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 FATHER'S DAY

Each year on this day I get the feeling that I must be the only person on Facebook that didn’t have a perfect father. Oh, mine wasn’t imperfect, his personal radar simply picked up a few blips from time to time. Those made him more interesting than sinister, except when it came to punishment for my myriad transgressions.

Perhaps his most salient characteristic was that he worked. My Sainted Mother emphasized it once when I mentioned a girl with whom I thought for sure I was in love. “Love,” she said. “Let me tell you about love. When I married your daddy, I wasn’t in love. I married him because we all knew the von Tungelns worked. And I knew I would never have to go hungry again. His family didn’t even go hungry during the depression. Then we sharecropped together, butchered hogs together, and bought this store together. After a while, I woke up one morning and realized I worshipped the ground he walked on.”

That thought echoed back to me not long ago when I asked my bride of over 50 years why she married me. “Good looks? Nice personality? Intelligence? Wit?”

“You had a J-O-B,” she said. “That’s important around here.”

It was important in our house. That little country grocery store was open six days a week from before daylight until late evening. In the slow part of the day, my daddy would butcher meat for the store, or cut wood to be sold to folks for heating their homes. During one long period he spent after hours adding two rooms to our house which, incidentally, was attached to the store.

A fond memory involves the annual four-day vacation the family took to the beaches at Florida or Texas. It was on one of those that I learned to read a map. Daddy showed me how. I considered it a minor miracle that one could follow those little lines and know what city was coming up next. I don’t guess the kids today will ever experience that miracle. Too bad.

I guess it was the reputation he and Sainted Mother bestowed on the family that I remember best. On a couple of occasions I managed to find myself under the questioning eye of a police officer who would have been delighted to arrest a careless teenager. Each time I was scolded and ordered home when I told them my name.

Things like that bring back memories as does a yellowed newspaper article I keep in a safe deposit box. It contains a piece written in our hometown newspaper after a deadly tornado tore through our area south of Pine Bluff in 1947. It tells how my father gave away things in our store to anyone who needed them after the damage, the righteousness bankrupting the little business. Another piece, a smaller one, reports how the little town of Lonsdale, Arkansas collected $45 and sent it to us after reading the first article. That would be almost $1,500 today.

So I don’t mind that he kept a cow for most of his life that he fed every night after the store closed or that he did so not for love of cattle but for love of the nightly nip of the Old Yellowstone he kept hidden in the hay.

Life’s radar needs a blip each day like Daddy needed that nip.


Wednesday, June 12, 2024

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 POLICE OFFICERS

I’ve always gotten on well with police officers. Let me rephrase that, some of my best friends served as police officers. When I read or hear of the highly publicized malpractices of a few of the nearly three-quarters of a million law enforcement officers in our country, I think of a man I knew in a city not far from where I live.

He was a paragon of virtue. Just ask some of those who remember him. A realtor, banker, insurance agent, entrepreneur, and winner of every “man of year” award his city offered, he never harmed a soul. A real person, he is also the living representative of the same man in every city in which I’ve ever worked. The church house walls bulged at his funeral.

One of his big sources of income was selling homes to people who couldn’t afford a mortgage. He sold them “on a contract” which means they built up no equity unless the loan was paid in full. Folks in town told about the poor fellow, almost always African American, who had faithfully paid his monthly installment for years before missing a month due to a family hardship. Next day he would find his home being cleared to make way for the next family getting it “on contract.”

The newspapers never reported on that.

“Yes, as through this world I've wandered

I've seen lots of funny men

Some will rob you with a six-gun

And some with a fountain pen

And as through your life you travel

Yes, as through your life you roam

You won't never see an outlaw

Drive a family from their home.”

-          - Woody Guthrie “Pretty Boy Floyd”


Tuesday, June 11, 2024

TODAY'S EPIPHANY

 LAWYERS

 I’ve always gotten on well with attorneys. I admire them for their logic and willingness to see that all, not just the favored, receive a fair trial. Do some push the limits? Sure. But some physicians prescribe antibiotics for viruses. Some engineers designed the crematoria at Auschwitz. Heck, some urban planners even promote bike paths when kids are starving in the Mississippi River Delta.

Oh, and part of my feelings for attorneys are mercenary. They always made sure I got paid for expert testimony. Mostly my feelings stem from admiration for their knowledge. I might have followed the law, but I thought all attorneys had to do what Perry Mason did. That image shied me away. The thought of standing and speaking in public was more terrifying to me than thoughts of snakes, vampires, sci-fi monsters, or meeting a Catholic nun in the dark.

One of my best friends is an attorney. We jogged many a morning together and shared thoughts. He is a Harvard Law School grad, so unlike the venom-spewing Ted Cruz or Tom Cotton that they might be from different planets. I learned logic, dedication to the law, and concepts of the advocacy system of jurisprudence from him.

Imagine then, my dismay at the condition of the current United States Supreme Court. I always imagined it as a pinnacle of dedication, Knowledge, fairness, and legal righteousness. Along came the current majority.  Now I feel as I might have, as a youth, to find that Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Red Ryder, Tex Ritter, Lash Larue, and Hopalong Cassidy, were really Nazi spies.


Monday, June 10, 2024

TODAY'S EPIPHANY

 CHOICES

It’s difficult to choose one side unconditionally these days. I’ve always leaned left, but don’t always subscribe to the silliness. Yes, no offense, but there are some silly things going on ‘die äußerste Linke,” way over yonder. This “pronoun crap” in my opinion, is silly. This “I don’t feel safe hearing an opinion I disagree with” is silly. This stopping traffic while innocent people are trying to get to work, to the hospital, or home to their children is beyond silly.

Every sports coach knows that one never makes a statement that the opposing coach will tack to the locker room walls to motivate players. Think how many votes Donald Trump received just from “defund the police.”

But, to allegorize something Sigmund Freud probably never said but got stuck with, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

Silliness is just silliness. Unproductive actions are just unproductive actions. Extreme “wokeism” is just extreme wokeism. People don't normally die from them.

Making a 12-year-old girl give birth to a rapist’s sperm residue is more than silliness.

Attacking the police guarding the United State Capitol is more than just silliness.

Defunding programs that feed the poor is more than just silliness.

Persecuting someone because of their genetic wiring for sex is more than just silliness.

Decisions stem from points along a spectrum of reality. At one end are rainbow flags. At the other are crematorium ovens.

Sunday, June 9, 2024

A New Epiphany

 PASSWORDS

Yesterday’s Epiphany: It can’t be the economy. Most folks are doing well enough, and many are doing quite well. The job I first went to work for earning $400 per month now starts at around $65,000 per year. No, I just think there’s an uneasy feeling pervading America, a sense that something is wrong, and disaster is imminent.

As the Nazis rose to power, there had been major hard times in Germany: inflation, stagnation, poverty, and even starvation. They felt Hitler had led, and would continue to lead, the country out of the mess.

In America today, they don’t have a past crisis to build upon. But wait, what if they could convince people that there are, indeed, hard times upon us and worse times to come? Then they could march out a charlatan who only had to babble about blaming others and making things better. A mindset built on lies is as firm as one built on truth. People are malleable.

Take the Baby Boomers for example. (I’m not technically one. I was a “don’t draft me” baby but the BBs accept me.) Now what upsets me and my cohort?

Passwords.

Yes, passwords. I’m suffering a primal despair over them. I’ve suffered from demands for them for years and I’m even running out of ideas. I must even furnish one to pay a bill when I would rejoice at the thought of a hacker paying it for me.

So, I hate passwords and suffer a love-hate relationship with modern technology.

Passwords. Damn them.

I don’t, though, blame Joe Biden for them.

But wait.

Say I watched Fox “news” for seven or eight hours per day. And what if that deplorable institution used the time to pound it into me that Joe Biden invented and promotes, even mandates, passwords.

Soon, I’d be speaking neo-German with the rest of The Cult.


Wednesday, June 5, 2024

An Alarming Epiphany

 AN ALARMING EPIPHANY

After working my way through Steven Plinker’s “Blank Slate” and following his recommendation to “The Nurture Assumption” by Judith Rich Harris, I’ve come to the unsettling conclusion that our actions depend, for the most part, on evolutionary psychology. Exhaustive research finds no demonstrable impact by the home. It explains so much, like how the military can turn average young people into raging warriors with a few weeks of manipulation. More alarmingly, it explains why people I once knew as caring, compassionate, and thoughtful individuals now embrace a culture of hatred, violence, and cult obedience.

We don’t have to take people forward, just help them step backwards toward the evolutionary psychology of tribalism, xenophobia, and violence. Going back is a much easier task than going forward. What we call moral improvement or the advance of civilization consists of difficult and slippery reciprocal agreements:

  • We won’t attack your village if you won’t attack ours.
  • We'll leave your property alone if you leave ours alone.
  • We won't try to kill you if you don't try to kill us.

We achieve harmony not through some quest for righteousness but through actions that move us away from our primitive nature and toward a stable environment. Unsettling, but enlightening.