Dialogue ....

 Checked on Facebook today. Too much hate. So, I’ve been listening to it rain and thinking about how so many phrases there are that so many people wouldn’t understand these days. Maybe if we softened our dialogue, it might calm our whole country a bit. How many still understand the following?

“Don’t stand there with that ice-box door open.”

“I’m gonna cut me switch.”

“It’s about time we gave you another permanent.”

“It runs like a sanger sewing machine.”

“They just drove by and was sackin’ air.”

“This place is in bad need of some hooverin.’

“That man is puredee mean.”

“He wouldn’t pay a nickel to see a piss-ant eat a bale of hay.”

“It’s so cold it’ll cut your water off.”

“Rich as five feet up a bull’s [hind end].”

“… like a jackass eatin’ briars.”

“Just a hop, skip, and a jump … .”

“Fit to be tied.”

“Your face is gonna freeze like that.”

“Were you raised in a barn?’

And that’s how the hog ate the cabbage.

The Russians love this.

The blessings of civility ...

So-called social media gets to be a little more than I can stomach from time to time. I still go back to it, though. I’ve found too many lost friends and comrades therein. I’ve re-established ties with relatives I haven’t heard from in years and made friends with some I barely knew. Sadly, I’ve found that some contacts, on both sides of the political spectrum, whom I thought were kind and gentle like the best of Christians, have what I call an “abscess on their soul.” Fortunately, they are somewhat outweighed by what I call my “Brothers and Sisters of the Beatitudes.”

What’s happened to us? There is a lot of hate boiling on the Internet these days. It can’t be good for us in the long run. Can’t we accomplish more and better things as friends, rather than enemies? Sometimes, I think of a city for which I worked years ago as a consulting city planner. It was in the process of shifting from one political party to another. I had a chance to watch the transition.

It was a fairly benign process. I don’t recall that it affected the condition of the city at all. Government at the most basic “grass-roots” level must avoid the pitfalls of prejudice and the passions of political partisanship that can plague us if it is to survive. I, being wiser then, played my cards carefully. Members of both parties felt I was one of them. I didn’t make any attempt to dissuade them. We all concentrated in making the city and its neighborhoods better. I still maintain friends there and I think the city is a better place to live because we dodged controversy.

Maybe it was easier to do that back in that day. It proved to be a lucky time for me. It comprised an eight-year period of peace and prosperity which we may never see again. It also coincided with my peak earning years. As a result, I became financially secure and a slightly well-regarded fish in a very small, but wonderful, pond. I attribute some, if not much, of my success to keeping my political views to myself.

“Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now…”

- Bob Dyan: My Back Pages.

Peace ...all it takes is
a good pal, and
a change of perspective

Overcoming Guilt

I am, as most people know, about one wheel short of a semi-trailer rig. Take, for example, the concept of guilt. Oddly, I don’t feel guilty about having told some lesser being off, using swear words in at least four languages. No, in fact, I brag about such antics with Philosophy Club members who meet, from time to time, at E.J’s on the corner of 6^th and Center streets in my beloved city of Little Rock. They tend to guffaw at my antics and that makes me smile.

On the other hand, I feel guilty when I pick a turnip green, shredding its life in my fingers. I might add that such guilt only lasts until said plant, along with a crowd of its brothers and sisters, has been thoroughly washed, seasoned, boiled until it is tender and tasty, and served with other victims of planticide: juicy corn kernels made into a thick wholesome bread and accompanied by buttermilk.  Guilt only extends so far in my world, or so I'd like to believe.

Why bring this up? The latest guilt-laden escapade of mine involves a small wooden table. We, my wife and I, obtained it like most of the hundred thousand or so objects we own. People con us into taking them, she buys them at flea markets, people leave them to us, she picks them up from piles of discarded trash, she swaps her pal Nick Nicholson something for them, we inherit them, or people leave them at our doorstep, ring the doorbell, and run away.

Anyway, I have, after hours of sanding and stripping, reduced this table to near its natural state. This effort revealed that the top comprises a number of woods of different shades, textures, colors, and grain. Was this arrangement deliberate? We would have to travel back a hundred years, find an artisan, and beg for the truth. To hell with that.

What I want to do is paint it and use it as a “splash of color” in a lonely corner of a bathroom in our Lonoke house. The color I’ve chosen is Pantone Color Institute’s color of the year, “Living Coral. That places me among the elite cadre of tasteful aficionados who cherish the dernier cri. Look:

So, why the guilt? Am I killing the soul of this antique table by converting it to a “splash of color?” After all, when it was first utilized, there was no such thing as color in poor rural homes, only drab furniture on the floor, and newspapers pasted on the walls and ceilings.

Am I demeaning history?

It gets worse. Taking Herself to Lowes to seek out the Color of the Year, I found the closest thing I could and suggested it.

“No.”

“What?”

“Here.” She pointed.

Now, raw courage came into play. At the risk of divorce at best and a session with “Mr. Louisville” at worst, I managed, in as strong a voice as I could manage, on the floor of Lowes, “My precious. I love you like Jesus loves a sinner. And if a hand grenade bounced down the aisle, I would jump atop it to save you.”

“But?”

“But, Navy Blue is not ‘a splash of color.’”

It still stands in limbo. Anonymous suggestions would be welcomed.

Sunrise With Schubert: February 18, 2018

Perhaps we ought not to let the murder of 17 young Americans divide us further. We’re divided enough already, don’t you think?

I keep reading where we ought to talk to one another. That sounds like a good idea to me. I’m not quite sure how it would work, though. I’m not sure how to talk to someone who doesn't believe the scientists who say the Earth wasn't created 6,000 years ago. And I’m sure there are those who don’t know how to talk to someone who doesn’t believe scientists when they say that genetically modified foods are safe.

What are we to do? There are those in either direction who would change their beliefs on neither Torquemada’s grandest torture mechanism, nor from the soundest logic of Socrates. How can sincere dialogue take place in the middle of such chaos?

Maybe it could if we lop a couple of standard deviations off each side of the political spectrum and try again. I could start by saying that I know a few of things with which I think my philosophical opposites would agree, or at least agree to discuss without resorting to ad hominem attacks. To wit:

America, with all its warts and blemishes, is still the envy of most other countries. They wouldn’t criticize us so if it weren’t.

It’s not the number of activists who make change happen. It’s the type of activists who can work for change while attracting enough tacit support to allow victory and not pissing off enough people to ensure failure.

Science and technology are both wonderful things, but, as the late Stephen Jay Gould opined, the two of them can outrace, at times, our moral and ethical growth.

When regulators believe that their job is to write regulations instead of protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the polis, we become an over-regulated society and many lose faith in government.

Without a system of governmental oversight, our rivers may catch fire, daily life may become a nightmare of anarchy, and dangers that we may not even imagine now may destroy us.

We don’t really want our planet destroyed.

We may not agree with Mattie Ross of the immortal True Grit, that “enough is as good as a feast,” but we should agree that those who have everything should not want to obtain more on the backs of their fellow countrymen. At least I hope we think so.

Few people or groups of people are either perfect or without some redeeming points.

A lack of education does not obviate a lack of goodness.

Education is not evil.

Southerners are not all racists idiots, Easterners are not all hypocritical elites who preach brotherhood from their limousines, Northerners are not all gangsters and union thugs, and Westerners are not all drugstore cowboys or nuts who have all rolled to the edge of the known world.

We’re all in this together.

Feel free to add your own. I'm ready to talk.

Talking is good.

Sailing to Oblivium: July 27, 2017

Life takes funny turns. It found me, in May of 1966 living at 1016 Masonic Street in San Francisco, a block from Haight and two from Ashbury. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t go there. I landed there, fleeing an Arkansas governed by Orval Faubus, and hoping to catch sight, by some miracle, of what at the time I thought was a great love of my life. It was a girl who had left me standing alone on Fayetteville’s Leveritt Street, and married a SF native.

Hope springs eternal, as they say, in a young heart. I had nothing else to do, and the apartment on Masonic just happened to be available. I had no idea at the time who the hippies were, but I would soon learn.

A miracle did happen. Armed with my college degree and a draft card stating I was “1A,” (better known to my fellow Americans as “canon-fodder”), I managed to land a job with a company in the Mission District. I rode the Haight-Sunset bus to and fro each day and lived a happy life until the Draft Board found me.

Gosh, what things I saw. Masonic dead-ended at the panhandle of Golden Gate Park, across the street from where Ken Kesey and his Band of Merry Pranksters parked that summer and danced the days and nights away for a spell.

There was the local who went out on his balcony overlooking Haight each morning and played “Reveille” on a beat-up trumpet.”

Sometimes, the “Grateful Dead” would hang out on a porch stoop.

It was fun to see the kids begging money, attired in clothing that cost $200 or more.

I thought about this the other night when the family and I watched a documentary on PBS about the Haight-Ashbury. It concentrated on 1967, the so-called “Summer of Love.”

For my memories of 1966, the show left out some things. One was the sight of a Bank of California branch a half block west of Ashbury on the south side of Haight. From opening to closing, a line branch from its door all the way around the block. They were cashing those checks from home so they could keep sneering at me for having a job.

Still, it was exhilarating, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. There was something childlike and fascinating about the experiment.

Then one morning I found myself at the Southeast corner of Haight and Masonic waiting for a bus, not to take me to work but to the Oakland Induction Center. I remember waiting there with an elderly Chinese man and watching the fog gallop down Haight toward us. (No “little cat feet” crap in “The City”). It thundered that morning, and it doesn’t thunder in San Francisco as a rule.

I’ve thought about that many times. In his book, A Generation of Sociopaths. How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America, Bruce Cannon Gibney says my generation supported the Vietnam War but didn’t support serving in the military. I guess I represented the opposite view. I despised the war, but served when my country asked. And it has never forgiven me. Such is love.

By the summer of ’67, I was stationed in Monterey, California and rode the bus up numerous times to The City to visit friends.

Things had changed. Every bus disgorged a group of wild-eyed newcomers. Some, it seemed, were still in their early teens. The streets were filthy. Stores had changed. The fun was forced. The very air seemed to tell the cleansing fog to “begone.” The “Haight-Ashbury,” as it had existed, was doomed.

I guess social experiments turn out that way. There exits excitement, adventure, and a sense of majesty in the beginning. This draws the infectious and the despoilers. Then, the experiment that had existed is doomed, toppled by the gravity of its own success. I only hope we aren’t seeing that in our country today.

Just trying to fit in—a lifetime habit.

Sailing To Oblivium: July 21, 2017

There is another memory of growing up in a small country grocery store that I wouldn’t believe had I not seen it. Those were different times, you know, very different times.

Most of the business that supported the store came in the morning, at noon, (“dinner time”) and late afternoon as people got off work. Since families had only one car, if any at all, there was not much traffic at mid-afternoon. After crops were “laid by,” there was even less.

During weather such as we are having lately, the only relief from heat in the store was a large pole fan aimed directly at the counter. It provided a minimum of comfort for both customers and the proprietor, my daddy.

Now here is where it gets a little unbelievable. As I have said before, my parents arose each morning at 5:00 a.m. in order to catch the early traffic. One can imagine how someone may have felt by mid-afternoon. Needless to say, small stores like that didn’t turn enough in sales to allow hiring help. You owned it—you ran it—and you just grabbed a little rest when you could.

I have seen my daddy, back in the old, old days, curl up on the counter of the store, under the fan, and nap briefly at that slow time of day. If a customer did come in, it would wake him and he would be right back on the job. Even had he not awakened, the customer would have probably just put an empty bottle in a rack, grabbed a “cocola,” and left a nickel on the counter.

Those times are long gone, in many respects. For one thing, the traffic never ceases these days on that once quiet highway, a graveled one in my early youth. Now, four lanes of asphalt accommodate a steady stream of drivers going somewhere, to do something, for some reason. They drive at speeds my mother would have described as “sacking air,” so one would imagine their purpose is an important one, but of that I am not certain.

Back toward town a short distance is a Walmart store, located on a site, incidentally, that once housed a stock car track. Any number of supporting businesses are located there now as well. Suffice it to say that a motorist headed South would have no use for a country grocery store these days.

And even if one did exist, the noise of modern life would probably keep the storekeeper from grabbing a nap.

Just remembering …

Memories of a Drive

As I mentioned, I drove south on I-30 this week to Texarkana AR, past Malvern, Arkadelphia, Gurdon, and Hope, all other cities I have worked for over the years. There were times I made the trip weekly. There’s a spot between Malvern and Arkadelphia where the lanes split and form an interesting view. It always reminds me of the trip I made on my first day of work after my mother died. I recall the feeling I had that day. Why did all this running around trying to be successful seem so important when it really wasn’t? I still don’t have the answer but the question itself brings peace at times.

I also remember some of those with whom I had the pleasure of working with over the years. One of the most memorable was Mike Kelly, who owned a dress shop in Hope and ran the local housing authority. He was a man of short stature offset by a huge heart. He and his wife Marguerite never had children, but sort of adopted the city as their child.

Mike was a devout Catholic and his wife an equally devout Methodist. How did that work out? “On Sunday mornings, we went our separate ways, she hers and me mine. And we never spoke of it.”

Until Marguerite died, and later when Mike took sick, they had not missed a Razorback football game since 1947—anywhere. I picked up her brother in Little Rock and drove him to Hope for her funeral and he disclosed the most amazing thing, Marguerite didn’t like football at all. She followed because she loved Mike.

I pity our country when we stop producing people like that.

Holidays: 2016

Notes on the beginning of the holiday season, 2016:

I wasn’t in America for most of 1968. I only read about what was happening in “Stars and Stripes.” It sounded bad. Seemed like each week there was a new assassination or a new round of riots or a new recruiting office bombed. My employer—the United States Navy—and my shipmates and I had to deal with the internal tensions created by the mess back home in addition to carrying out our mission. In the midst of it all, an African-American sailor in my unit, the Naval Security Force in Da Nang, was found stabbed to death in a guard tower during the midwatch. I remember thinking, “How tragic, how utterly senseless, cruel, and monumentally tragic, to be sent home in a body bag at the hands of your own shipmate.

After days of lockdown and growing tensions, NCIS apprehended the killer. The murder had resulted from a personal feud between two members of the same ethnic group. A mother met her son’s body at the airport as the result of a disagreement between two Americans. A name is on the wall in Washington, instilled forever in cold black, granite, because one American killed another American during an attack of rage and hatred.

Despite all that, I remember the moment when the sight of land disappeared from beneath the airplane taking us home and seeing, below, nothing but the South China Sea. In an instant, those sparkling blue waters washed away all the fears, anxieties, and turmoils of the last year. We all cheered to be alive and going back to the United States. There were neither races nor colors on the plane at that moment, only Americans. What a great and wonderful feeling.

Maybe it would be a good day for us all to seek that feeling. Anyone tempted to post an incendiary note condemning an entire profession or ethnic group might pass on it for one day. Anyone tempted to fuel the fires of violent passions might just put aside the thought for a day. What a grand day it would be for us all mentally to fly back home to America.

Who knows what I was thinking?

Perhaps I recalled Matthew Arnold:

I, on men's impious uproar hurl'd, 

Think often, as I hear them rave, 

That peace has left the upper world 

And now keeps only in the grave.

Thoughts: November 25, 2014

Early morning thoughts with Gustav Mahler
and other old friends …

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
- From “The Second Coming”
William Butler Yeats

 “I, on men’s impious uproar hurl’d,

 Think often, as I hear them rave,
 That peace has left the upper world
 And now keeps only in the grave.”
- From “Lines Written in Kensington Gardens”
Matthew Arnold

 "Who's winning? Nobody's winning. Cities are dying and ships are sinking and aircraft is going in, but nobody's winning."

- From “Alas Babyon”
Pat Frank


Lynne Mapp Drexler, “Gotterdammerung”, 1959

See also: www.wattensawpress.com