Sunrise With Schubert: February 17, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now we know how they knew.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grandmothers get mad too.
Best not risk it.

Morning thoughts: February 15, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunrise With Schubert

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does that mean? Roughly? Diddly squat.

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

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

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

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

What does that mean?

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

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

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

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

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

Just thinking.

Sunrise With Schubert: February 13 , 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But wait, it’s fifty years too late.

“No problem. Better late than never.”

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

“You’re kidding.”

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

“Too bad. Are you going to sign up?”

No.

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

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

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

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

“But?”

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

“So what will you do during the ceremony?”

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

Honor or Insult?

Sunrise With Schubert: February 11, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yay. Yay. Another day!

Sunrise With Schubert: February 11, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s hard to argue with that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yep.