Don't Get Me Started: 11, 2017

 Part of me says, “Oh, how nice for the temperature to be in the 70s on a day when 11º F was the record low and the 40s would be typical.” Another part says, “Oh my. It’s passing strange. Things change and we dawdle.” I have the feeling that I’m like a Titanic passenger who just heard Captain Smith order “Full speed ahead,” as we sail into a documented iceberg field.

“Quick! The Schubert.”

There, that got the systolic back under 200. More on the weather: It’s been like this all during late fall. Further, we’ve had no significant rain since August. As the old folks would say, “It’s drier that a popcorn fa....” Oh, let’s just say it’s dry. The weather is alternatively comforting and destructive. What can we trust? Certainly not our present government, as they say. Oh no, not our present government.

I’m a little older than most. I can remember when science was important in this country. There was no schizophrenia about it within our government. Now we have the idiocy of an official stricture prohibiting speaking about climate change while the entire United States Military operation is busily going about preparing for it, spending millions in the effort.

We have an official government policy of science denial as we provide aid to low-lying coastal cities that are being overrun by the sea.

Back in the 1960s, I read an essay in a college sociology class, the name of said essay being, Our Schizophrenic Society. I’ve not been able to find it lately, but it dealt with how young children grew up facing incompatible teachings, such as an emphasis on honesty by a father who cheated on his income taxes. Or, learning to appreciate, at school, a science that eliminated polio, while facing a denunciation of that same science on Sunday.

It produced a generation that urged respect for the environment and social justice while driving a gas-guzzling SUV 50 miles to work and back each day so their children wouldn’t have to attend school with kids of a different skin color.

In his recent book, A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America, Bruce Gibney blames many of our current problems on that generation raised in schizophrenia and fed on non-sequiturs. It’s true, no doubt, although the “Boomers” did help end our country’s involvement in an evil and wicked war. Oops, no. Most supported American’s involvement in the war, just not their personal involvement in it.

They were spoiled, greedy, selfish, wasteful, unbridled, shortsighted, and self-aggrandizing. Now they vote conservative and control things. Preservation of their privilege seems to be the primary concern. They can’t control the planet as an entity, though, so they just stopped teaching about it.

In short, it seems as if we’re headed for rocky shoals. I think it’s time to start resisting.

Morning Thoughts: December 9, 2017

It was my turn for caretaking last evening. My wife went our condo in Little Rock and I stayed at the farm with mother-in-law. Started out rough. I had to issue some demerits for untoward behavior. Didn’t work. Then I tried shame. “You promised us you would behave.”

“I had my fingers crossed,” with a mischievous smile. Then she sang “Santo Claus is Coming To Town,” for the 32^nd time that day. Next, we went through the litany of what each sibling was doing. They have all died, but we went through the list again anyway, for the fourth or fifth time that day.

It’s challenging, caring for someone who’s memory has deserted them. On the one hand, it is pleasant to think they are being cared for and that they are comfortable, well-fed, and free from work and worry. On the other hand, it’s like looking through a window toward a magnificent view that is blocked by a thick and permanent layer of fog. The beauty is there, somewhere, but we’ll never see it again.

There was only one thing left to do last night. That was to play our favorite game, the one that we play when we are alone. I call it “Name That Hymn,” and it works like this. I love playing the guitar, although I’m not very good at it at all. Old church hymns lend themselves to the finger-picking style that I’ve been trying to master for 40 years with very little result. I am to the point, though, that the hymns I play are recognizable to someone who grew up with them.

So I play. She listens, and tries to identify the song, hence the name of the game. Last night she was “in the zone.” Didn’t miss a one. That’s remarkable for someone who can’t remember that her own father passed away nearly 50 years ago.

Sometimes she’ll perseverate for a short time in naming the hymn. That’s a medical term from the root “persevere,” and it refers to “getting stuck” on some thought. When it happens, every song might be “In the Sweet By and By,” for a while. Last night, though, she moved right through from “I’ll Fly Away,” to “The Soul of Man,” batting a thousand. I couldn’t even fool her with seculars like “Maggie,” or “The Old Spinning Wheel.” And remembered more of the words to “Grandfather’s Clock” than I did.

It was a splendiferous time, all in all. Then my fingers got sore and we watched “Scrooge.”

I read somewhere that they are using music help ease the symptoms and pain of dementia. I hope so. I’ve been trying it. I caught her once listening to some hymns being sung on YouTube. I videoed a short segment, and spent two days fiddling with Adobe Premier Pro (a highly complicated and confusing profession film-making software), just to pass the time and exercise my own brain. Here it is, an altogether amateurish and rocky piece of work but, most of all, an act of love. That helps with most things.

Late Morning Thoughts: December 8, 2017

I remember reading about evolution for the first time when I was about eleven. Sounded interesting. Made sense. I mentioned it to a fundamentalist acquaintance who spent the next hour describing a burning and eternal fire to which a loving deity sent people who believed in science. We only broke off our discussion when we had to go watch a film about kids who lived in iron lung because they had polio.

About a week later, I was still pondering the concept as I was taking a shower. I dropped the wash rag and, without even thinking, I clutched it with my toes and retrieved it. At that instant, I knew it was absolutely true, this science stuff.

Years later, I decided I didn’t know enough about the subject to allow me not to suffer fools lightly. I began to study the subject in earnest. I’ve probably read nearly 50 books on the topic and I’m still fascinated. Would recommend, as a starter, the late Stephan J. Gould’s All about Darwin. Then follow up with Origin of the Species. It’s fairly easy going.

Some specific facts amaze me from all the reading I’ve done. One: the early embryos of an alarming number of species are amazingly similar. Two: many species take the same number of breaths during their life. Three: We humans all start out as females in the earliest embryonic stages. The unlucky ones experience some folds and turns and end up as a an inferior model. The way things work is that genetic malfunctions like that offer some advantage, through modification, to the expansion of the species, so here we are. Four: males are inferior creatures who have to rely on size and finery to attract females. Five: Intelligence appears to derive from the size of the brain relative to body size, resulting a head too large for delivery at what would be full birth maturity, resulting in an extended gestation stage outside the womb.

These are all from Gould’s writings, so if I’m wrong, I learned it from him. I still trust him more than any TV evangelist I’ve ever heard.

Oh, one final fact, since the publication of “Origins” in 1859, practically every scientific discovery has supported Darwin’s theory of descent through modification. (He never actually used the term “evolution.” It came about later). There may have been no more prescient book ever written.

Just thinking, and wondering why we would elect a person to political office that would deny science but use antibiotics when facing a serious illness. Scary. Oh hell no. It's beyond scary.

Morning Thoughts: December 7, 2017

Do we, as Americans, learn, or only remember? The last man I knew who was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 died this year. His name was Kay Matthews and he wouldn’t talk about it. No wonder, it turned out to be a day of tragedy and horror, in epic proportions. In total, 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,200 were wounded the day Japan attached our country.

Like most all veterans, Kay came home from the war and led a successful and productive life, his as an attorney and later a judge. He was still practicing law until a little over a year ago. His was a great generation in many ways, I’ll be the first to admit.

I wonder how it must have felt to a generation that was just emerging from the horrors of the Great Depression to have awakened almost three weeks from Christmas, 76 years ago, to hear the news that the Empire of Japan had just carried out a surprise attack on American military bases in Hawaii. I still know people who were young then and can recall what they were doing at the moment they heard the news. Their stories range from the numbness of shock to total surprise.

My generation has similar stories to tell about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Later generations can empathize from their witnessing of the attacks on the Twin Towers. There are things we will always remember, but will we learn from them?

While still numb from the news of Pearl Harbor, Americans learned the next day that Germany had declared war on our country in an act of solidarity with Japan. World War Two had entered what would eventually come to be its final phase. The American contribution to the successful Allied war effort spanned four long years and cost more than 400,000 American lives. Other countries counted their losses in the millions, with most of their cities devastated.

National resolve, uncommon effort, and the leadership of people like Franklin Roosevelt brought our country out of the war as a world leader.

The end of the Great Depression and World War Two sometimes seemed comforting to me. It said that America can prevail. What seemed to be the beginning of the end to the ravages of unbridled racial prejudice in the country was uplifting as well—that is until the country elected a mixed-race president. Like a 1950s science fiction monster awakened by nuclear gamboling, the horror of racism ravishes us anew while gaining strength from the tacit approval of the powers ruling our country.

I’m afraid, and this my opinion only, that we are now seeing planned and powerful attacks upon the very values and institutions that provided the strength for America to achieve the moments of greatness that it has in the past.

I hope not. Any thinking American must hope not. The signs, though, aren’t encouraging. As recently as yesterday, our current president announced plans that could result in the complete destabilization of a fractious part of the world, one that Americans fought and died for in World War Two. That destabilization could very well mean the end of the planet as it currently exists. This end, unfortunately is supported by a fanatical religious sect within our own country that sees a worldwide conflagration as an integral element of their religious fulfillment. This conflagration would usher in, according their beliefs, the beginning of what they imagine as a glorious eternity.

A rock-solid belief in a heavenly and blissful afterlife—for the chosen—seems to be a common doctrinal cornerstone for religious sects bent on the annihilation of worldwide harmony and peace.

The Galilean must be weeping.

The sect represents a small, but united and politically powerful, segment of our society. Its members contribute little to the well-being of our country, but command an inordinate proportion of attention and media coverage. Those who resist them are being systemically reduced in strength, even including the right to vote or have their children educated. Many Arkansans pay no attention at all. They are more concerned with the hiring of a new football coach.

I find my optimism being eaten away like the foundations of a lighthouse located on a wild and uncompromising sea.

Lewis Thomas, in his classic Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony warned that during the second movement of that work, he could hear the bomb bay doors opening to initiate the end of the world. Anymore, I’m afraid to listen. I’m afraid that I, personally, might hear “the eternal footman snicker.”

Growing Up Southern: December 6, 2017

Did I ever tell you about the time the Hester boys and I decided to build a raft and float down Bayou Bartholomew from Jefferson County, Arkansas to New Orleans?

It was like this.

The Bayou ran just south of the city limits of Pine Bluff back then. In places, it was clogged with stumps, logs, and wild growth. But we found a stretch that promised to run fairly clear for a mile or two, then we would take our chances on getting the rest of the way to New Orleans, if our parents gave us permission (and supplies).

We had a nice place to start from, it being a clearing we had used as a hideout and as a defensive position to ward off any invasions from the city boys on the north side. It was an ideal raft-building spot. We had a fair collection of tools by then, including a couple of rusty old axes we had pilfered from a junk pile and a “mill bastard” file I had borrowed from my daddy’s tool box. It was going to take work, but we had all summer.

The Hester boys claimed, or at least their mother did, ancestry with some famous Indian chief or other, so it was naturally assumed that they possessed some genetic understand of raft construction. First thing one Monday morning, we selected our first tree and commenced work.

The idea suggested itself before long that our Indian forefathers didn’t value the art of felling trees very highly. Progress proved slow. We took turns at the effort. Wesley, the oldest Hester boy went first. Then I took my turn. Robert Hester went third. The youngest of that family, Bobby Joe took one turn and jumped ship. We didn’t mind, for we had already decided that three passengers was about all our raft would handle.

Long story short. By Friday, we had felled our first tree and cut it into ten-foot lengths. A glorious life of adventure lay straight ahead. We spend the weekend pilfering every scrap piece of rope we could find and reassembled our band at the port of debarkation Monday morning. The time for initial assembly was upon us. We needed to make room for the next tree.

Did I mention that I can’t remember what kind of tree we chose for our masterpiece? It might have been Pine, for I remember vaguely christening it the “Pride of Pine Bluff,” as we imagined our historic entry into the Crescent City.

We lined the sections so they touched one another, rolled them to the pre-prepared entry point, lined up at third points and rolled the first phase into the brown water of Bayou Bartholomew.

I wish I could remember exactly what species of tree we had chosen, the exact kind that we had spent a week on in assembly, the source of so many blisters and splinters, and the cause of such fatigue. Then I could acquaint you with a fact that might prove useful to you some day.

That species of tree won’t float when it’s green.

Maybe none will. We never knew. As we watched those logs disappear into the brown soup and roll to the bottom of the “longest bayou in America,” our wanderlust sank with it. We decided, after a gang-vote, that our next construction project would be land-based.

We were going to build a tower so high we could see Little Rock from it.

We never did, though.

Stuff that dreams
are made of.

Don't Get Me Started: December 4, 2017

A few years back, my trophy wife fell and broke her ankle in three places. I used the “Fireman’s Carry” I learned in the Navy and got her into the car. At the emergency room, we were lucky. They got her in quickly and efficiently (Springhill Baptist in North Little Rock, AR ☼☼☼☼☼).

It was Friday. Turned out the Doc on duty was the surgeon who operated on such breaks. He operated on Saturday. I took her home on Sunday. Within a week I was pushing her through Lowe’s parking lot in her wheelchair going “Whee whee whee!”

Until she made me stop, but that’s another story.

We’ve had to go back to that emergency room a couple of more times: once with a kidney stone (me) and once with acute dehydration and pneumonia (mother-in-law).

It’s gotten more crowded each time. Last time, I’ll swear I sat beside a teenager and 12 of her close relatives. From all appearances, she was there for a pregnancy test, or something very close to it. (When she came back from consultation, they all wanted to know if it was a boy or girl). Also saw someone we knew who, from all accounts, has the distinction of never having held a job in his adult life. He was with his latest girlfriend and their baby, I think his fifth. No. Not African-American—white and ultra-conservative. You ought to hear hear him rant about that "n****r" president."

Here’s my big fear for the future. The current plan for the ruling party, apparently, is for the emergency rooms across the country to provide care for those who don’t see the need for health insurance. I guess we’ll pay our share of the cost. We don’t like to watch suffering.

But … and here is the real rub. It’s going to be a helluva wait if you happen to need emergency care.

Oh, and I recently saw a particularly hateful and venomous essay by former football coach Lou Holtz. Yeah, he’s the one who left Arkansas because they wouldn’t let him use his position as football coach at U of A to advertise air conditioners. Anyway, he claims our country is divided into doers and takers. Made me think, yeah, there’s some truth to that. I thought of America’s “Sweetheart City,” Savanah, Georgia and how the “doers” who built those fancy homes were, upon completion, never allowed within them again except, perhaps, to serve the “takers.”

Now there’s the current ex-coach. He was supposed to “do,” but he didn’t. So, he’s “taking” somewhere near $12 Million to go and “not do” somewhere else.

I think I read in the Book of Ludicrous that oversimplification is as great a sin as worshiping riches.

Morning Thoughts: December 3, 2017

A family was practically destroyed once by a spoiled, self-centered, and selfish child. There were signs and warnings, had one been paying attention. I thought about that family last month when I re-read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I do that every decade or so and find it fascinating how my perception changes with age, experience and education.

On first reading, way back in high school, I regarded both boys as simply high-spirited youngsters. Some writers even now refer to them as “all-American boys.” I have even seen a piece of serious scholarship that actually described Tom Sawyer as the symbol of “Yankee ingenuity and entrepreneurship.”

Now, I see Huckleberry Finn as a character possessing some potential for growth and maturity. He has occasional sparks of goodnesss, although he is much too slow and passive to use it effectively.

Tom Sawyer, on the other hand, I would best describe with the use of the pop-psychology term “sociopath.” He is self-centered and careless to the point of endangering the lives of those around him. He almost leads his childhood sweetheart to her death by carelessly luring her beyond the realm of safety in a cave. He allows his family and friends to mourn his death before miraculously appearing at his own funeral.

Tom is capable of good, we see early on, but he uses it so rarely that is penchant for the bad and careless is even more painful to watch.

In Huckleberry Finn, he repeatedly, and with insightful cruelty, threatens the life of the slave Jim, perhaps the most noble character in either book.

Tom is a person who, in order to feed his own self-satisfying fantasy-life, would do great damage not only to all around him, but to his family and best friends as well. He is a pre-civil war “Ferris Bueller.”

Which brings me to the initial subject of today’s rant. The person I knew started out as simply a rebellions boy. To his great misfortune, he was “cute and charming.” It started with such seemingly harmless things as being a finicky eater, not caring that his mother had to fix a separate meal for him. Disobediences for which siblings had been severely punished were overlooked in him. Cruelty to a playmate was explained by the claim that he was just “all boy.” (This statement is the prevalent euphemism for sociopathic behavior throughout our part of the world.)

Cruelty to others gave permission for a greater act of misbehavior, the next more serious still. Before he reached adulthood, his only concern on any given day was what might bring him pleasure. Illegal behavior cost his family again and again. Provided a stake with which to earn a living, he squandered it in bad decisions.

Perhaps the most obvious part of the pattern was that each outrageous act forgiven or overlooked led to ones more outrageous still. Observers looking for a bottom to his reckless behavior never saw one until his looks, his luck, and his support ran out, leaving ruin raining down all about him.

That is what comes of overlooking errant actions because the perpetrator is considered cute, charismatic, or contemptuous of cultural norms.

Disclaimer: The person described is a composite from my study and experience and not intended to represent an actual person, at least not one I know personally.

Just thinking.