EVIL

 Sometimes I feel like I'm beating a silent drum but, hey … a malignant dictator has been ruling my beloved country since, as he promised, the day he took office. He has continually trashed and degraded every promise of hope and tradition we have built in this country of such promise. He is a nasty, vile, and degenerate person who rules the country for which I gave up four years of my life.

That bothers me.

There are six elected officials, elected to national office, in my state who have chosen to become politically “joined at the hips” with this creature, enabling each of his antics with their silence. A majority of our state officials frolic behind him shouting hosannas.

This bothers me.

But, people I once knew as kind, generous, patriotic, and righteous souls laud his every act because he has attacked, or promises to attack, people they don't like or ideas they don’t agree with. Many of those ideas come straight from the mouth of the Galilean. Cult members support each destructive move as long as their enemies are in the line of fire. Good people now praise evil and worship the evil one.

That's what really bothers me.

MORNING THOUGHTS

More thoughts on obsessions.

Continuing my thoughts inspired by my current reading of “Moby Dick,” let’s return to the concept I call, “exclusionary obsession.” This refers to an obsession so strong and overpowering that it eclipses any concern for the welfare of all. Once afflicted, one will support, vote for, and follow the most otherwise evil of persons who swear to address the obsession.

Last trip, I mentioned abortion, now let us consider what may be the next in order of prevalence, the obsession regarding devices that use explosive force to propel a projectile through a metal tube at a high velocity. Yes, a gun.

Now I would never demean a gun owner. We store nearly a dozen, well-hidden and secured. Two we purchased. One served as gift to a 12-year old raised in a “cowboy culture.” The rest drifted down from the ownership of deceased relatives or their friends.

There was another. The federal government confiscated it from me on the second happiest day of my life.

But I digress. From whence comes this obsession that would cause a person to actually vote for a Donald Trump? Confiscation would be an impossibility. Future purchases fall under the protection of the United States Constitution.

As a result, some 46% of American households own a gun. They have that right.

The Constitution protected flintlock muzzle-loading firearms with a rate of fire of, maybe, three rounds per minute in the hands of trained users.

One of the heaviest weapons today that might be carried (by a strong soldier) today is the M-60 machine gun capable of firing between 500 to 650 rounds per minute using a caliber known in the civilian market as the .308 Winchester. A well trained and hefty father could protect his home and family with one, I suppose, if it were kept ready, handy, oiled, locked, and loaded.

Why would a person support the most despicable candidate possible simply because they feel denied personal ownership of an M-60?

Let’s return to “Moby Dick.” We might say Ahab hated the whale because he no longer owned both legs, but no. It was something more cosmic. The whale demoted him to a secondary status in the Universe, impelling him to vow, "I'd strike the sun if it insulted me,". What created and then nurtured this obsession? One wonders, but:

What if, each morning of his life, a messenger came to Ahab with a note from a trusted source saying, “The whale has plans to take your other leg?”

DEFEAT FASCISM

Journal of a Left-Wing Radical: Spent the evening watching a video about Blues Music in America. Of course it covered the enduring myth of the man who sold his soul to the devil in return for mastery of the guitar. This morning, my “hair shirt hour” featured reading Adam Smith on the development of currency. From Abraham's paying four hundred shekels of silver for the field of Machpelah to the modern evangelicals selling their decency for political power, we love the concept of bartering. This is true even though we’re not quite sure why Judas wanted his 30 pieces of silver. Sadly, we’re now bartering the life of our planet for a few generations of mobility and the fun it brings. And a cult is bartering the health of our children for the strained concept of “owning the libs.” When someone asks me why I accept being labeled a liberal, and thus “owned,” I’m reminded of the tale, a wonderful but likely apocryphal one, featuring Henry David Thoreau in jail for not paying his poll tax. According to the story, when friend Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Thoreau and asked why he was in jail, Thoreau is said to have responded, "Waldo, why are you not here?”

This draws one to the line from John Steinbeck’s "Sweet Thursday": “There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen".

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Journal of a Left-Wing Radical: There came a blessed day in my life in which I thought I would never face fear again. Oh, I’m not talking about the temporary scare of a spring storm, a near automobile accident, or being lowered from a ship in a small boat into six-foot seas.

I’m talking about that gnawing, primal fear that forms when you have no control over your life and you are well aware that there are forces all about you that wish you dead. It’s that “any minute, any second” fear that some know more about than others and which most have never known. It is at its rawest and most fearful on a dark night between midnight and dawn.

Extended fear can seep deeply into places you desperately want to be sacred and untouched. It changes a person, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

I was right for over 50 years. There were storms and there were moments of deep concern, any number of temporary fears. There was even fear that she would say, “No.”

But there wasn’t the raw kind that steals your soul and makes you shrink from strange faces.

Until now.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Journal of a Left-Wing Radical: Reaction to this latest abandonment of government illustrates the famous idiom known as "Miles Law," i.e. "Where you stand depends on where you sit." My words will change no minds.

One thing troubles me though. The oligarchs who finance the President of the United States of America have had him command that the elected officials of my state publish and transmit easily discernible lies concerning the origins of this abandonment of responsibility.

You say, "Oh, but politicians lie all the time. Yes, but they are seldom this transparent about it and often hide falsehoods under the cover of contextuality.

Politicians shall not lie. I'll have to ask my attorney friends if this has legal weight. They say police officers can lie if it suits a public purpose. The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that a president can to it, and worse, any time it is convenient and there is a backup majority of both houses for protection.

But I'll tell you, these folks that claim to be Christians are going to have one hell of a time with it.

Facts and Fools

It's funny how we learn things. I posted something about the late Dale Bumper's this morning, mentioning that he was  was Governor of our state and then our senior U.S. Senator for years. He wrote a book titled, The Best Lawyer in a One-lawyer Town, He was an attorney. And a statesman. And a source of pride for our state. Now the funny part: I had originally added, "That's a rare combination, one that's not likely to be matched in a while."

Then I remembered a lesson I learned from an unusual source. A friend and I were having lunch in Little Rock's Riverfront area one day. The friend taught Law and a friend of his, whom I didn't know, joined us. The stranger was a successful trial lawyer. We talked of many things, specifically of a trial taking place in Washington, D.C. at the time. A piece of the trial transcript had caught my attention. "Why," I asked, "Didn't the government's attorneys point this or that out?"

The answer, from a complete stranger, amazed and enlightened me. "You never want to state the obvious. You have to assume that the judge is no fool."

I can't tell you how many times I've used that advice in writing. Accordingly, I amended my post to take out the final sentence. Any reader at an eighth grade level or above will get the point about giants and pygmies.

Out earning today. Here's a couple of thoughts, though.

I know there are those who are horribly stressed and debilitated by having to live around others whose specific religious beliefs are not exactly the same as theirs, around people whose skin is a different color, or people to whom the vagaries of nature assigned a different sexual proclivity. I know each day is a trial of tormented anguish. But it’s nothing compare to me the day that they grabbed my ass, cut my hair off, and sent me to Vietnam. So suck it up, Buttercup, like the Senator says.

You'll get a chance, maybe soon, to feel the burn. Either directly or for your kids. They say John Bolton is getting ready to lead us into a ground war with Iran. Well, not lead us, no, send us, you know, the regular way. Not me. I'm too old and I know the way to Canada. Your kids better be picking out a branch soon. Knowledgeable people tell me that we've scraped the bottom of the barrel with our "volunteer" Wehrmacht. Here's my take on the branches.

I'm partial to the Navy, but I think they are a little more tight-assed than when I was in. And they were tres tight-assed when I was in.

I've great respect for the Marines, but hell, just jump in front of a semi-tractor rig It would be a lot faster.

The Army? It has some of the best leaders in the world and some of the worst. You have to ask yourself, "Do I feel lucky?"

Air Force. Uh, we're actually talking about joining the military, here. Just kidding. Just kidding. I kid the fly-boys.

Coast Guard. Great and brave folks, but I'd tire quickly of risking my life for rich daredevils who've gotten themselves in trouble.

Best choice? Hell, after all these years, it's still Canada.

Morning Thoughts: March 11, 2018

Had lunch yesterday with some good friends, most fellow vets of the same age. We don’t think much of the upcoming “Honor the Vets” bash. Too late, much too late for us, and we accept no responsibility for assuaging anyone’s guilt. We’re all fine. Stick you medal where … oh, never mind.

We had fun swapping tales, though. Dining with friends is one of the great leveling exercises of life. In addition to other shared interests, we all have a fondness for woodworking. They are all serious and accomplished, I’m a “wannabe.” They accept me though, and I learn much from them, some of it even useful.

In addition to bringing joy, woodworking helps hone many life-skills. For example, there are mandatory rules.

Rule One: Measure twice, cut once.

Rule Two: Measure twice again before cutting.

Optional but Recommended Rule Three: Measure again. It never hurts.

Other mandates include

Think before you act. Hmm. This might be useful for other endeavors.

Don’t do complicated maneuvers late in the afternoon or before sunrise.

Copious amounts of alcohol are forbidden before or during. Afterwards: it makes anyone’s work look better and major mistakes seem as if they occurred long ago in a woodshop far away.

More and better tools always help, but not always in productive ways. In the procurement process, it sometimes helps to tell a spouse that all your friends have (whatever). Be aware, though, that they teach the “Jump Off The Cliff Rule” at Wife’s School.

If your best and dearest friend tells you something will work, measure anyhow. If doing so appears to hurt their feelings, measure again.

If you create something really nice, send it to a professional for finishing.

Fast spinning pieces of steel will cut your goddam fingers off.

Woodworking is best at making you use language of which your Sainted Mother would not approve.

If you have the skills to be a concert violist, take up scrapbooking, not woodworking, as a hobby.

Always remember that the people who do this on TV can do “re-takes” and you won’t know it. Those smug looks are taught, not earned.

You can trim a piece of wood but you can’t stretch it. (They also teach this at Wife’s School, but in a different context).

Revel in goof-ups. There’s no better way to learn. Well, maybe there is, but woodworkers prefer the hard way.

And, finally, if like our group, you served in some miserable little “f-up” of a war thought up by arms manufacturers and politicians, you’ve been living on borrowed time for fifty years anyway, so screw it all and head for the shop. There’s only so much time left. Use it wisely.

Tell Senator Cotton to “make sawdust, not war.” You need to teach your grandchildren how to create things, not blow them up.

Sometimes, despite your best efforts,
things turn out okay … sort of.

Morning Thoughts With Schubert and Wolfgang:: January 26, 2018

I’ve known my share of military veterans. For years I’ve watched how we treat them. Sadly, we tend to stereotype them. We shouldn’t.

Veterans aren’t all heroes. Some, many, maybe even most, may be. Some aren’t, in my experience. In my life, I’ve met some of the finest individuals on the planet who have worn, or are now wearing, the uniform of our country. I’ve also met some of the sorriest sons of bitches you would never want to associate with in your life, not hordes of them, but more than a few.

What veterans do have in common is that they, assuming they completed their service honorably, have done something that most other Americans haven’t done, or won’t do. They have paid a price in time, danger, injury, or psychological demands that less than one-percent of Americans are now willing to pay, Other than that, they are simply a group of Americans that are as diverse and immune to labeling as any.

We try though, to label them that is. In my lifetime, World War Two veterans were typecast as ordinary people who rose to do extraordinary things and were granted hero status for their sacrifice. That luster has never faded.

Korean War veterans were simply the leftover heroes or their younger brothers. We didn’t want to think about them after the Great Challenge.

Along came Vietnam. That was where the stereotyping became cruel and senseless. They were crazy, drug-obsessed, wastrels not fit to marry your daughters. Even as recently as last month, I read a newly released novel that had, you guessed it, the obligatory Vietnam veteran character who was mentally deranged and simply walked the streets of the city talking to himself. I immediately thought of a friend and fellow veteran of that sad and senseless war who recently retired from an illustrious career with one of the most prestigious law firms in Arkansas. His type has never appeared in book or film.

Let’s return to the deranged Vietnam Vet wandering the city and scaring the hell out of decent folks. Along the way, he would see, no doubt, many veterans of wars waged since Vietnam. Those veterans are, to a man or woman, we are led to believe, all homeless dependents. The insults and cruelty continue to this day.

The point herein is this: Serving America is both an honor and a badge of merit. It is not a singular characteristic for electing leaders. Ulysses S. Grant was a great general but mediocre (although perhaps not, according to Ron Chernow, to the extent that history has chosen to typecast him) president.

Joseph McCarthy was a veteran of World War Two and tried his best to do great harm to many Americans after he was elected to the Senate. Is there a cautionary tale therein or what?

Lee Harvey Oswald was a veteran who murdered an innocent man, casting the entire planet into turmoil, because that man was president of our country.

Charles Whitman was a veteran who shot and killed college students from a tower on the University of Texas campus.

General Curtis LeMay was an honored veteran who later ran for office as George Wallace’s potential vice-president.

And the list goes on. While pondering it, we might consider that John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, among others, never wore the uniform. Abraham Lincoln only served briefly in a militia unit and never, in all my readings, claimed that experience as forming military expertise or a prerequisite for leadership.

My opinion, and mine only, is that we may afford veteran status whatever degree of importance we wish, but should use our blessed cognitive abilities to decide to what degree that status would make one a great leader for all Americans.

Motives are motives, after all. Did serving in our military make one suitable for leadership, or was it simply a calculated gesture to “have one’s ticket punched” for later political aggrandizement?

Monument to the 442nd Regiment.
Japanese American Internment Camp
Rower, Arkansas. - Real Heroes.

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: November 28, 2017

Talked cities most of yesterday. Woke up in one of the great ones this morning. All in all, having a splendiferous time. Storm clouds threaten, though.

As elected officials in our nation’s capital and our statehouses become increasingly frivolous and irresponsible, those in our nation’s cities are buckling up for the crises ahead. They are even taking on the opioid epidemic while others quake in fear of big pharma. There may be lawsuits, and there surely will be blood. As Margo Channing said, “Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night.”

I would just say that before you curse or denigrate your mayor, consider that she may be the last bulwark between you and Gotterdammerung. Consider the current problems she faces: wealth inequality, crumbling infrastructure, vacant retail buildings gone to Amazon, and mega-rich families hoping to end their public-school systems. She also sees more serious ones of the potential variety:

- A two front war that would require a draft of most entry level workers and most, if not all, of our federal budget, (Who’ll serve us Big Macs? How would we get to them or pay for them)?

- A day when practically all public resources not allocated for war will be allocated to serve the automobile and simple walking is impossible,

- A Brave New World environment in which public contentment will be determined by mind-controlling pharmaceuticals, and

- Our downtowns, once the heart and souls of our communities, laid waste and bare, save for vacant concrete slabs where we once met and knew one another, and
- Others that we cannot now imagine. After all, we've seen much in the past 11 months that we couldn't have imagined in times gone by.

It’s a bleak and possible future no doubt, one whose problems won’t be solved in Washington or, heaven knows, in our state capitals. So far, we do elect good people to our city halls. Here’s hoping we continue to do so.

A beautiful city, and may she always be.

Morning Thoughts: November 22, 2017

Got word of another brother's dying last week. I didn’t know him that well.  He was a good friend of a good friend, a year younger than I. He was a strapping, handsome man as a youth. He joined up, became a Green Beret, and came home with a Bronze Star, hardly a sickly specimen.

I always wonder, when men like that die before they might have, if he might have also come home with a little Agent Orange working on them as well, slowly, cruelly, and inexorably.

The obit didn’t say. Maybe so. Maybe not. But it was one more potential cost of war that my generation still faces. I know some that do, or have.

Agent Orange was a herbicide and defoliant chemical used to clear foliage in Vietnam so our forces could bomb more efficiently whomever happened to be below. It was clear and came in orange containers, hence the name.

It proved a hard substance to contain, and some say that any U.S. serviceman who served in-country from 1961 to 1971 may have been exposed. I seem to have been one of the lucky ones, as they unloaded the poison at piers that I guarded. I have walked within spitting distance of pallets of it stacked beside rows of coffins waiting to be shipped home.

Maybe 2,000 GIs have been treated for its damage. Reports seldom mention the 4 million Vietnamese who were exposed or the 3 million that reportedly suffered from its use.

One may imagine that its manufacturers, including Dow Chemical, Monsanto, and Diamond Shamrock, among others, made good profits from its use.

It seems that Americans, particularly some politicians such as my state’s junior senator, increasingly see gun use, other violence, and even war as the solution to all political, and many social, issues. It is a fairly easy sell, since I think I read this week that the VA estimates that only 7.3 percent of living Americans have served, or do serve, in the military. That includes the ones who wake up each morning of their lives fearing symptoms of an ancient and invisible enemy.

Only about 0.4 percent of us currently serve, and practically none with political influence. The profiteers and war hawks will win. Everyone else will lose, and more obituaries will feature lives that might have lasted much longer than they did.

And they say the Galilean called “The Peacemakers” blessed.

Growing Up Southern: November 12, 2017

There’s a body of water near where I grew up that is of some local interest. It’s Bayou Bartholomew, the longest one in the world. They say it is, anyway. It runs from Pine Bluff, Arkansas all the way to South Louisiana. It’s the meat of legend and song.

I say “runs” with a fair degree of hyperbole, for bayous don’t really run. They merely slug along, catching and preserving whatever flows into them, much like the South itself. But anyway, what’s a Southerner without hyperbole? We feasted on the concept long before it reached the Borough of Queens, in New York. It matches the tendency of our minds to take sharp turns.

Our hyperbole, though, tends to favor the harmless variety. For example, our mosquitoes are so big that they can stand flat-footed and [have sex with] a turkey, or keep a person awake at night as they crack “hikker-nuts” (Hickory nuts) with their beaks. We have snakes that are so mean that one can kill a tree by coiling around it and stinging it with its tail. We had a banker once who was so crooked that it took three grave plots to bury him. And I personally knew a man whose cousin’s postman told him of a fallen woman so attracted to “group sessions,” that she had to buy thank-you notes by the case.

So what if we would, as William Faulkner observed, cut down a 100-year old oak tree to get at a squirrel’s nest? It would be like Joseph and Mary clearing a spot in the manger for the little Galilean baby, wouldn’t it? Well maybe not, but what’s a little exaggeration among friends? Can’t hurt anyone, can it?

What if we are tending more and more toward electing our politicians for their entertainment value rather than potential benefit to humankind? It allows us to say, “Did you hear the one about the one senator that was so mean the other senators started noticing it?” What about funerals? Would one of the Northern Tribesmen, when asked to say something grand about the deceased, ever stand and say, “Well, I always heard his brother was worse?” The South, after all, originated what the late columnist Richard Allin called the act of “filibustering the deceased into Heaven.”

Are there people anywhere other than the American South that are so “hard-featured” that their face would “make a freight train take a dirt road?” It might even be a face that closely resembled a “mule’s ass sewed up with a logging chain.” Such people thrive here, bigly.

But back to Bayou Bartholomew. It was once what they dumped raw sewage into, but they stopped that back in the 1950s, I think it was. We might expect them to start the practice again. We’ll just have to wait and see.

The tornado of 1947 generally followed the course of Bayou Bartholomew as it ravaged a huge area south of the city of Pine Bluff. There were, if I remember correctly, 32 people killed as a result of the damage. Six young men shooting craps of a Sunday afternoon died in the storm. This happened in an abandoned house less than two city blocks distance from our little country grocery store. To the East of us, an entire family died when their house was lifted, turned upside down, and deposited into Bayou Imbeau, a black-water body near Bayou Bartholomew.

The houses on both sides of our house and store were totally destroyed. The store was undamaged. My father gave away its entire inventory to survivors, asked no money, and went bankrupt. The local newspaper suggested erecting a monument to him. They never did. The small town of Lonsdale, Arkansas did send him a check for $45.00.

In 1957, the bayou flooded. I could watch it from our front porch rise a couple of feet above the highway. They built a major “big box” development at that location a few years ago. When it floods, if there is a functioning government then, we’ll all pay for the recovery. Such is life.

I guess one lesson is that the function of a responsible government, including disaster relief, is not a matter for humor, hyperbole, or political aggrandizement. The best we can hope for is to ooze along like a bayou, hope for the best, love our fellow humans, and be thankful when we aren’t targeted for destruction in the meantime. Peace.

There's not a huge demand for "Bayou-side Mansions,"
but it is possessed of a certain charm.

Morning Thoughts: November 5, 2017

I was in an ugly frame of mind this morning: another year older, eye swollen shut from a wasp sting, and a list of “must do” items a mile long. The bi-annual ordeal with time change has begun, and, furthermore, it’s Sunday.

On top of all that, I’m scheduled for an overnight trip this week. That means I’ll have to pack a bag, wear a suit, and sleep alone in a galaxy far away.

If that doesn’t suck enough, I need to patch a hole in the roof of one of the buildings at the farm. Along with the “year older” bit, the height at which I become debilitated from fear of heights is a foot lower, now standing at six feet—two feet lower than the roof.

Just thinking of the national news creates ten percent rise in my blood pressure.

The devil on my left shoulder began to list my shortcomings.

- I’ll never write like John Steinbeck.

- I’ll never play guitar like Steve Davison or Mike Benetz.

- I’ll never create woodworking masterpieces like the fellows at the hardwood store.

- I’ll never be elected to the Piddlers’ Hall of Fame unless I drop my remaining consulting work.

- I’ll never finish Finnegan’s Wake.

- I’ll never convince some of my friends to use The Sermon on the Mount as a voter’s guide.

- I’ll never give Scarlett Johansson a case of the vapors.

Wait a moment!

That's when I woke up. I looked into the sleeping face of the prettiest woman in my world. A soft glow surrounded that face like a thin gauze pressed from fairy dust. She smiled in her sleep and whispered "Matthew McConaughey" but I knew she was thinking of me.

I smiled. Another year older and another year wiser and less likely to panic over what someone possessing high power tweets. America has survived worse.

Music? If it still makes you smile, to hell with fame and fortune. And the most important thing about woodworking is not making masterpieces, but not cutting off your fingers.

Voting? The arc of history will flow back to justice, peace, and compassion, just you wait and see.

Another year older, but not another year deeper in debt. Our investment portfolios have risen steadily since the Great Recession and we’re currently taking profits in prep for the next GR, or, as we financial gurus put it, “when the chickens come home to roost.”

I’m too old for the draft, but also more advanced in my knowledge of avoidance should we actually achieve the current goal of a two-front war. The bone spurs only bother me at heights above six feet, and helicopters go a lot higher than that.

The three of us are in good physical condition for our ages, and we all still enjoy a glass of wine, a good laugh, and happy music.

With these thoughts a’swirling, I went to the bathroom and stared at my swollen face. It stared back and said “Just remember, this face once snared one of the most beautiful girls in Arkansas."

True that.

Then I walked to the table and fired up the trusty old computer. Lo and behold! That great teacher and writer: The Journalist Sonny Rhodes, had lauded something I wrote.

Suddenly, I was beautiful again.

When you're loved by
someone like this, you
have a damned fine life.

Morning Thoughts: October 9, 2017

It's Columbus Day, or whatever the hell they call it these days. Should one take a day off from blogging today? Inquiring minds want to know.

I never got to take it off before. The only federal agency I ever worked for didn't observe it, and most private companies don't.

Of course I never got to take Veterans Day off either. By the time I became a veteran, the draft dodgers had all the good public service jobs that offered such perks. Oh well.

Anyway. I'm bummed out. Watched a good part of On the Beach last night. I feel closer to the insanity that it portrayed now than I ever have. We have elected, I fear, a horde of politicians that would make Dr. Strangelove appear sane.

I think maybe that's why people are driving the way they do.

Sailing To Oblivium: June 25, 2017

We expect cruelty in this country. After all, slavery was written into our Constitution. We also expect goodness. We fought a Civil War over it, one of our most tragic but most noble moments.

We hope for the best but we don’t always plan for the worst. This past week has seen the results of this. Meanness is oozing from our national psyche like noxious gas from a garbage dump. Oh, we’ve seen cruelty since the Civil War. The long and horrible era of the Jim Crow South. The destruction of ways of life of the original inhabitants of our country. The Joseph McCarthy era. The subjugation of women. We’ve seen much. And many of us have had to endure so much more than I, a white male of European descent.

The meanness and cruelty of a health care act—specifically designed to punish the poor and elderly while benefitting the rich—prepared in secret and brazenly tossed out for expedited passage still makes us cringe, though.

Even though we might not be religious ourselves, we could once take comfort in faiths that taught love, compassion, and social justice. Those old voices are being drowned out now, though, by voices that teach hate, anger, and greed.

What can we do? Allow me an idea.

Sometimes in the middle of the night, beset by worries and falling prey to despair, I comfort myself by forcing pleasant images as pictures into my mind to cover over and erase the bad. I think I’ll do that now, even in my waking hours. I can, if I choose, maintain the images of

- President Abraham Lincoln urging us to listen to “the better angels of our nature.”

- President Franklin D. Roosevelt assuring us “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

- President Harry S. Truman telling us “I do not believe there is a problem in this country or the world today which could not be settled if approached through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.”

- President Dwight D. Eisenhower telling us “This world of ours... must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.”

- President John F. Kennedy telling us to “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.”

- President Lyndon B. Johnson, ending the first State of the Union message after the assassination of President Kennedy, promising us that “We shall overcome.”

And many others, any of which could erase the thoughts of early morning soundbites, delivered via social media, by a frightfully insecure, immoral, and divisive man.

We have had moments of cruelty in this country and we have had moments of sublime glory. We have had bad leaders in this country and we have had great ones. We have had bad days and we have had good ones. If we all join hands together, we can have great ones again. We will truly and surely overcome.

Sailing to Oblivion: June 20, 2017

Odd thing is, there is not a city council in this country that could pass a law the way our United States Senate is doing. Why? One wonders.

Why would we hold local politicians to a higher standard than national ones? Local ones may make decisions that affect us more directly, “where the rubber meets the road,” and all that. But they lack the power, as individual bodies of government, to destroy the economy, the world, or our planet. The ones in Washington can accomplish all those things, and now seem hell-bent on doing just that, and doing it in secret. Why? One wonders. As a social-media post asked recently, “Why is everything not enough?”

Further, my experience with city governments, and it is an exhaustive one, demonstrates that the leaders most often seem to be trying to build something, solve a problem, or make ends meet. They, in the vast majority of cases, attempt to look after us.

But we watch them, the women and men who run our cities, just the same. We make the operate in the sunlight. We make their methods transparent. We make their records public and available to the press. We hold them accountable. We do, in a surprising number of cases, kick them out it they don't do right. More often than not, they behave accordingly.

Wouldn’t it be nice if our senators did the same? Perhaps they would if we started selecting them by performance and not by party.

That is the question I ponder after reading the news of June 6, 2017.

Just wondering.