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.

Growing Up Southern: January 5, 2018

My father augmented the income from our little country grocery in several ways. One that involved me was the sale of firewood. I’ve thought about that many a time during this spell of cold weather.

Mostly, it involved slab wood, which is the outer portions left over at the sawmill when they square the logs. I don’t know whether he paid anything for it or not. If he did, it wasn’t much, for the slabs were generally considered waste. He hired men to pick the wood up at the mill and haul it to a vacant lot beside our store. There he had a hand-made saw rig that would cut the slabs into pieces for burning in stoves. They were maybe a little over a foot long. I never knew exactly.

Sometimes, in the slow part of the afternoon, he would saw the wood himself. He rigged a monster bell on the side of the store from which he could hear the phone ring. This was back in time when the phone would ring until someone answered it or the caller became gave up. There was no answering machine to interrupt after two rings. He would saw until the phone rang or a customer showed up. Things were different back then.

When business was brisk, though, as cold weather approached, teamwork kicked in. One man would hand over a slab, one would saw it, and one would pitch the pieces into a pile. That’s where I came in.

He would sell the wood to folks who still heated their homes, and cooked, with wood-burning stoves. They were not the richest folks around by any stretch of the imagination. He sold it by the “rounded” pickup truck load. As a teenager, I delivered it. It was one of my early introductions to real poverty. Sometimes I would arrive, in frigid weather, to meet shabbily-dressed children waiting to rush the first pieces into their homes.

One of my favorite customers was a lady of indeterminate age who lived alone in the east side of town, an area inhabited mostly by “railroad workers.” She lived in a small, but well-maintained, shack just across the levee from the Arkansas River. She would meet me and supervise the unloading. She directed me in her best broken English, her long dress, partially covered by an apron, brushing the ground as she walked. I remember that she always clapped her hands and smiled when the last piece fell on the pile.

You would surely forgive me if I stretched the definition of “rounded load” for some customers. And I'm sure that there are still unpaid bills my father never collected for my deliveries. Business sometimes involved more than perpetually-increasing profits back in those days.

I never knew how these folks supported themselves. Under FDR's New Deal, some measures were passed to provide a measure of succor for the poorest of those among us. It couldn’t have been much. While home from college one winter in the late 1960s, I saw a piece in our hometown newspaper about a woman who lived on $300 a year. I’m not sure if it was true or not. If it was, shame on our species.

Probably, the only income for many in those days was from the government. I’m sure that, even then, there were those who considered them, including my “East-side Lady, as “takers,” and resented the taxes paid to assist them. These days, there are those who spend time concocting laws against them from, as Alistair Cook put it, “… a warm place on a full stomach.”

At least back then we didn’t demand that we be allowed to drug test the poor, or even those poor in spirit, as a condition for our Galilean-ordained love.

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.

Sailing To Oblivium: July 8, 2017

He looked at me, frowned, and said, “Mr. Jimmie, if y’all don’t straighten out, the Lord’s gonna quit blessing you white folks.” That made me stop and think.

It was in response to some whimpering complaint about a burden I felt at the time. I can’t remember now if it, the burden, was real or imaginary. The speaker was, though. He was a man who lived next to us and whom I had known my whole life. His name was Amos Fletcher. I’m sure his grandparents had been born slaves.

At any rate, I think of his admonition a lot. It never fails to bring to mind, as well, the verse, currently much out of fashion, from the 12^th Chapter, 48^th verse of the Gospel According to Luke in the Christian New Testament: “to whom much is given, much will be required.”

Today, we’ve turned that one around, haven’t we? In the next version, I’m sure it will be corrected to read, “to whom much is given, more will be given until all is given, and even that will prove wanting of justice.”

For the time being, we’ll just use the “taken out of context” ruse. It seems that every time the Galilean steps on someone’s toes, he is accused of out-of-contextedness, Is that a word? Well it should be. We can pretend it is anyway.

We have looked at two of the world’s great philosophers, Amos Fletcher and the Galilean, now let us visit a third, Jonathon Swift. I don’t think we could contemplate our current set of political leaders without thinking of a species encountered in the classic Gulliver’s Travels. I’m speaking of course of the Yahoos. Swift describes them as noxious, hairy creatures and adds,  

“They're endlessly greedy: they kill each other over a certain shiny rock found in Houyhnhnm Land (which, beyond being shiny, has no value). And even if there are only 5 Yahoos supplied with enough meat to fill 50, they will still attack each other for control of these supplies.”

Houyhnhnms, on the other hand, are a breed of intelligent horses who, in Swift’s mind, represent the most noble of creatures. He says of them,

: "… the Houyhnhnms, who live under the government of reason, are no more proud of the good qualities they posses, than I should be for not wanting a leg or an arm, which no man in this wits would boast of, although he must be miserable without them.”

For now, perhaps it is time to think about where we Americans stand in the great river of history. As we exercise our precious privilege of being able to vote for our leaders, will we choose Yahoos or Houyhnhnms?

If we choose poorly, will our blessings disappear?

Sailing To Oblivium: July 6, 2017

Seems our Secretary of State is going to give Donald Trump some of my personal voting information. Amazing.

Here's a hint. Before each election cycle, I study the Beatitudes from the Gospel of Matthew in the Christian New Testament. Then I think about them. I don't encouraging the mixing of politics and religion, but I think the Beatitudes, whether viewed as religion, literature, philosophy, or moral guidance, are useful in contemplating the manner in which a country is governed.

So, I use them to initiate thought. I must say they have influenced my voting record over the years, so Mr. Trump can view it, along with our Secretary of State, Mitch McConnel, Paul Ryan, and the Koch Brothers.

I don't think they are going to like it, though.

Just Thinking

Sailing To Oblivium: June 23, 2017

In life, we can be caring and good. We can be mean and greedy. I’m not sure we can be all at once and preserve our humanity.

I thought about this much of yesterday. I also thought about the words attributed to the Galilean at the end of the 25^th Chapter of  the Gospel of Matthew in the Christian New Testament. Whether you think it was spoken by a god in human form, a real person, or a historical character of fiction, it is an amazing piece of literature. It may be the most embarrassing passage in history to those who seek to hide their baseness behind a cloak of religion.

In the Galilean's own words, as he spoke of the final judgement by his god:

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,

43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” (NIV)

Plainly spoken if you ask me. Rough translation? “Don’t use me as the basis for your cruelty and greed.”

Sailing to Oblivion: June 10, 2017

It’s like this professor: I didn’t intend to make a “D” on that paper. It’s just that I’m new at this. I should get a “A.”

It didn’t work. Nor did it when I received my first traffic ticket. And I was new at it then, driving that is. Needless to say, it didn’t work in my marriage either. I found that, “You knew I was an idiot when you married me” works better.

I can only assume that had Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Paul Ryan had been my professor or the police officer, the defense of “new at this” would have carried more weight. After all, he did use it this week to excuse some fairly troubling instances of incompetence by the President of the United States. As Mr. Spock would say, “fascinating.”

Allow me to submit a proposal that I thought of when I read about this.

First, some background would help. There is a legal defense of sorts that used to be taught in the law schools of my state. It may still be, I haven’t heard lately, and I don’t go there, Law School that is, except occasionally to speak on how urban planners respond to the law.

Anyway, the defense is named after a prominent attorney and state legislator from Hope, Arkansas in a case years ago. Accused of some malfeasance or other rising to the level of potential illegality, he formed a uique line of reasoning. The logic employed was remarkable. It ran something along the lines of

“I’m accused of doing something that, on analysis, is very stupid. Am I stupid? No. I graduated from college and law school, and passed the bar exam. I’m savvy enough to be elected to our state legislature, perhaps no great, but certainly no mean, feat. I have a successful law practice. So, I’m not stupid. When one considers that what I’m accused of would be a stupid act, and one sees that I am obviously not stupid then, ipso facto, (a legal term meaning: darn tootin’) the chances of my guilt are zero.”

I seem to remember that it worked but I’m not sure.

So now we have what I propose to label the “Donald Trump Defense.” It would run, in contra-conception to one mentioned above, along the lines of

“I’m accused of doing wrong. I’m new at this. Being new at something, there is no way a person can be held to the standard of what is right or wrong. Therefore, libet dicere (rough translation: bite me) my innocence is assured beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

A few words of caution bear noting. As I mentioned earlier, wise men will avoid this defense with spouses. Also, members of progressive political parties should eschew its use as they labor under the legal assumptions of intelligentes estis and  competentsus est assurdant. (legal terms meaning: don’t try this crap with us).

There exist many examples where the efficacy of the “Donald Trump Defense" would not prove appropriate, getting caught parked in Mike Tyson’s spot for example. And, in the event of accidently initiating a nuclear war, don’t bother considering its use. We’ll then be operating under another legal principle, id est moot, (a legal term meaning alle ist kaput).

Oops.