Defeat

People made a lot over an op-ed piece this weekend in The New York Time about the city of Clinton, Arkansas and Van Buren County. A local writer, Monica Potts, is working on a book about low-income women in Arkansas. Her piece was entitled, In theLand of Self-Defeat, and well worth reading. At its core lay an uproar over plans to combine two jobs at the county library and raise the remaining recipient’s salary. A Facebook poster, in what is becoming common in local government administration, whipped some of the local population into a frenzy, scraping scabs off whatever sores of social misery an individual might suffer and blaming it on the unfortunate librarian, or education, or taxes, or Hillary Clinton, anything but logic.

I felt the piece was well-written and thought-provoking. Here are some of the thoughts it provoked in me.

First, it carried a hint of inductive reasoning. Somehow, the actions created by Facebook postings may or not generalize into an explanation of why we now see Donald Trump in the White House, or why one party is now dominant in our state (it’s the same party that was dominate during my youth, just with a different name).

Also, I grow a little weary of pundits and writers talking about the “mistakes that Hillary Clinton made.” Here are what I believe are the major political mistakes that created our nightmare.

- Many Americans allowed two multi-billionaires (an Australian and a Saudi-Arabian) who own a cable channel to form their attitudes with a two-year TV smear campaign of lies, innuendos, and outright slander against Clinton, and praise of her opponent in a monstrosity disguised as a news channel.

- James Comey, caught between a “rock and a hard place,” chose poorly (based no doubt on which side he thought could do him the most harm) and sabotaged the Clinton campaign just days before the election.

- The campaign was unable to overcome a genuine feel of “Clinton-Fatigue.” Perhaps a simple “there are worse things” campaign could have helped.

But …

The biggest boulder in this landslide of misjudgment was that Hillary Clinton had served as Secretary of State under an African-American. Yes, a … well I won't use the word I heard so often to describe him. The bigotry test prevailed over the rational method. Sorry.

And if one is from Arkansas, one will have a hard time refuting that with a straight face. Remember the campaign flyers that contained neither platform pledges nor administrative challenges, but simply a big photo of the opponent alongside Barack Obama? Admit it, and then try to claim that logic of any sort resulted in our Electoral College votes, or set the stage for where our country finds itself at present.

The article covered other conservative shibboleths such as anti-education and anti-taxation. I don’t feel qualified to discuss those feelings for a specific city. I’ve only visited Clinton once. That’s when I was invited up after a devastating tornado had torn through the area. They hardly knew I was there. The local folks were too busy courting the FEMA reps who had arrived, with bags of money, to help.

In the final sense though, Clinton shares some of the same obstacles as other small towns in Arkansas. The reason for their original existence, whether it be trade, the railroad, tourism, or settlements for farm labor has disappeared. Along with this has come the lowering of income for middle-class workers. There simply aren’t enough people or resources to support a community facing the so-called “Retail Apocalypse.”

The hill country of Van Buren County, Arkansas offers a beautiful place to live, but little in the way of sustenance. The flat Delta country to the south offers some of the most fertile land in the world, but is a low, flat land, harsh in places, and deemed by many to lack the picturesque beauty that would attract new residents or businesses.

So small communities watch the world go by, while residents focus on such things as a librarian’s salary, whether or not education is, in the long run, good for society, or the color of a president’s skin.

Someone or something must take the blame.

We should be able to do better.

Peace

After the national and international news of the week, I propose we return and re-visit an item that we covered in our tour of The Beatitudes. I refer to the seventh one, to wit:

“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” Matthew 5:9 (KJV)

Have you noticed how the Galilean posits a reward for each of the announced traits? The merciful shall obtain mercy. Those “persecuted for righteousness' sake” shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Those who “hunger and thirst after righteousness” shall be filled. The “pure in heart” shall see God. And so forth.

But to be called a child of God, one must be a peacemaker.

That would likely come as a surprise to the current occupant of our nation’s office. He’s been in office going on a year, and never once has he

- Called for a unified America

- Called for peace among those of differing faiths

- Called for a truce in our war against God’s planet

- Called for a truce with those who criticize him for the most apparent mistake

- Called for peace between his base and other Americans

- Called for peace among nations

One can hear a diehard supporter respond, No problem. We’ve had presidents before who chose not to wear religion on their sleeve. Abraham Lincoln never made a public confession of a religious belief. Neither Thomas Jefferson nor Andrew Johnson professed any religious affiliation. George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe, and John Tyler are often identified as having some degree of deistic beliefs. Most presidents attended church, but none as sincerely and devoid of guile as Jimmy Carter.

So, they would assert, Americans have a First American right to worship, or not worship, within or without any religious belief. This right even extends to the President of the United States. The current occupant has no legal stricture to follow a Beatitude or any other of the Galilean’s teachings. There you go. Peacemaker? Forget it. We like him just as he is, free not only from human restraints, but religious ones as well.

A true believer might observe that the Galilean is watching.

Artwork by Lisa Casey

Old Tales

An interesting time, how wonderful. We sat on the patio of our “small town” home the other day allowing the sun to fade in the west and enjoying “Happy Hour.” We got to talking about things that will be lost to local history someday. She told me about the steam machines in which physicians used to sterilize hypodermic needles. I remembered them but knew no details. She told me how the late country Doc in her hometown, Dr. Byron E. Holmes, taught her to use the autoclave as a young girl. I hadn’t known the details, I only knew that when a doctor swung that top open, and the steam rolled out, a shot was coming and, like one of Pavlov’s dogs, I would instinctively shrink from the impending pain.

I told her about the homemade “boll weevil” trap my father used on his little three-acre cotton patch out behind our store. I think he raised it more for fun than for profit, and to have an excuse to go his barn after he closed the store, find his bottle of Old Yellowstoned, and enjoy his own "Happy Minutes."

Anyway, to kill the weevils, he constructed this little contraption that seemed to think would work. He placed two saw horses in the middle of the field, and placed “two by sixes” across them upon which he placed a Number Three washtub full of water. He put a plank across the tub and, upon it, placed a railroad lantern.

With the lantern lit at night as a draw, the boll weevils would fly to the flame, get too hot, and fall into the water, whereupon they would drown. Don’t ask me if it worked or not. It didn’t last long before it fell over one night and his helpers refused to attend it further, fearing some demonic “haint” at work in the field. He quit growing cotton not long after that and switched to raising cows.

We got to thinking, she and I, about how much folklore, lies, truth, and exaggerations involving rural life, and the old ways in general, will be lost under the pitiless void of cell phone staring. Most times that the funeral home doors open, there is one less person left to tell us about how things used to be. I’m not talking about who was president, or what war we had started. That stuff gets written down and made public. Most of it anyhow. Well, some of it.

I’m talking about how to make those canned peaches that Mamma Rodgers used to make. I’m talking about how my daddy used to make me hold a piglet’s legs while he “unmanned” the poor creature. I’m talking about how they used to make the women sit around a quilting frame and sew on Sunday afternoons while the men played dominoes and talked politics.

On people I’ve known, and on a more cosmic scale, I’m talking about how many Einstein’s, Casals, Hurstons, Picassos, Darwins, Newtons, Kings, Salks, and Mandelas died, or grew up undernourished and brain-damaged, in a sun-scorched shotgun shack in the Arkansas Delta, never to sing their songs.

Maybe someone should start a blog called, “Old Days, Old People, and Old Tales.” Who knows? Someday, someone might show an interest. Who knows, maybe someday, after a much more spirited Happy Hour, I may share the tried and true U.S. Navy way, according to the old salts, of getting rid of crabs.

I knew the children of
former slaves like this
woman, but never asked.

Adventure: The Second Coming (Continued)

            Last week we met two young men from the Depression-era Arkansas Delta. They had launched off on an adventure that would involve watching a neighbor’s daughter take her Saturday night bath. First though, they had to escape, a trick complicated by the fact that the narrator’s father made whiskey this time of year and might have been too conscientious in the task. We re-join the narrative.

My fears were realized. Papa had tied one on by the time I came home, but luckily for me he had sailed right past belligerence and was nearing a state of bewilderment as Mama tore into him. I could hear them when I reached the front yard.

"You low down sorry outfit.

Silence

“You ain't fit to live!"

            Finally a response: "Shut up for Christ's sake," Papa was struggling to keep his balance. He kept reaching for the garden fence and every time he did he grabbed a handful of blackberry vines.

            “Damn it to godalmighty hell,” he yelled.

            "Blasphemer!" Mamma shouted.

            "Yes, goddammit!" Papa countered, "Now get out of here and leave me alone." I had walked up and noticed the green cast to his skin. "I don't feel good," he said weakly. He tried to look past Mamma to me.

            "No wonder," Mama shouted right into his face.  "You been swillin' rotgut whiskey all day and now git ready for the Lord's turn." Then she looked around at me. "Bobby you get over here and help me pray."

            "I was going over to Uncle T. J's," I said.

            "You get your hind-end over here and pray." Mama said. Then she dropped to one knee.

            "All of you leave me alone. Just get away!" Papa shouted. Then his jaw went slack. "I'm gonna be sick," he announced, not to any particular person. He just announced it like it was of some importance to the world at large.

            "You get out of my sight then," Mama said although she needn't have bothered, for Papa had already lurched around the corner of the house. Then she turned to me. "I hope you're satisfied."

            "Me?"

            "You should look after him. You know how sorry he is."

            Papa was making awful noises. Sort of like the gurgling sound that a hog makes when it's stuck, I thought, only much louder and with a lot more thrashing around. I didn't want to draw attention from him so I played it contrite. "I ain't done nothin'."

            "Hush," Mamma said, to my relief. She was listening for Papa, who wasn't making any noise at all now. I looked at her and I could see real concern in her face.

            "You think he passed out?" I asked.

            "You shut your little smart mouth!" Mamma said. I had forgotten that criticizing Papa was a privilege that she reserved for herself.  "He may have died for all you know. A man that works all day and all week for you and who don't ask nothin, who ain't never done nothin' but smell the backside of a mule all his life and ain't got a nickel to his name for it because he spends it to keep you fed and who you ain't never once offered to help, even once when his back was bent over and breakin', not once, just always off with Clifton doin' God knows what."

            She could have gone on like this for hour or so if she had wanted to. I've seen her. But Papa had walked up so quietly that we hadn't noticed. He stood by the back door and he looked worse than before.

            "I think maybe you had better pray after all," he said softly, his eyes meeting Mamma's.

            "Halleluiah!" she said and forgot all about me.

            It was settled then. I was cleared for action. I changed shirts; that's the only thing I could think of that might add dignity to the affair.  It was true that the shirt I changed to was exactly like the one I discarded, and that my dress was the same overalls and blue shirt that every young boy in the county wore, but I felt that the impending activities required some sort of special attention, no matter how modest.

            I stopped by a window before I left to make sure that Mamma and Papa were going to be occupied for a while, and, sure enough, they were going at it in earnest.  Mamma had Papa on his knees with his head in both hands and tears were streaming down her face, which was, of course, raised toward the Savior.

            "Lord, look at this poor drunk sinner." she began.

            "Wait!" Papa cried. "Wait just a goddam minute!"

            "A blasphemer and a drunkard," Mamma expanded.

            "Wait," Papa said again and he tried to rise but Mamma had him in salvation's grip. He simply rolled over on his back.

            "You be still, "Mamma said, and she raised her face once more toward heaven. "Lord, this drunk sinner needs forgiven. I wouldn’t do it if it was me, but you’re a better person, I think."

            This time Papa prevailed. "Don't tell Him I're drunk, dammit, tell Him I're sick!"

            "I can't lie to the Lord," Mamma said, and she raised Papa's head up until his eyes met hers. "I won't lie to the Lord, even for you."

            "Just tell him I're sick, then, that part's the truth. Just don't mention the drunk part."

            "I can't Homer, not even for you."

            "Oh please just this once. Who’ll know?"

            I listened to them go on like this for a few minutes and I guess you could say that Papa finally got his way, for as I left for Clifton's house I could hear Mamma's voice drifting out over the cotton fields. It was sort of musical, like some misty plea for mankind itself.  "Help this poor sick sinner, Lord.  He ain't worth a ten-cent bucket of lard, but could you help him please?  He ain't much, but he's sick and he's all we got."

            I skedaddled before Papa got his strength back.

            I arrived at Uncle T.J.'s house on time. Clifton was ready. I don’t think that I would have been disappointed if he had thought up an alternative adventure. But he was as determined as ever and we were soon on our way. We told his grandparents that we were going to check our trotlines. I don’t think they even heard us. They were sitting on the front porch, Aunt Hallie snapping green beans and Uncle T.H. reading the Bible. Neither of them looked up. We backed off the porch and across the yard, quietly. Then we simply evaporated, headed for the bayou.

Clifton was giving the directions and I was following as best I could. I was, at the same time, plotting an escape route in the event that old man Ratliff became involved. I didn't mention this to Clifton, of course, for it was his strong belief that if you even thought of an unlucky possibility it was more likely, than not, to happen. Planning for any sort of mishap, would, in his way of looking at it, invite that very disaster. So why bother?

            "Lucky for us they live on the edge of the bayou," Clifton explained as we crossed the Ratliff's field. "We'll act like that's where we're headed and then we'll just move up in the cover of the woods when the sun starts going down."

            "Sounds good." I tried to sound older than I was.

            "You ain't told nobody, have you?'

            "Who would I tell—Mama and Papa?"

            "Something like this, well you just got to keep it to yourself," Clifton said with a wise nod. "No use letting it get around."

            "You're right," I agreed and fought away the image of old man Ratliff's knife.

We decided to sit for a time on the bank of the bayou to wait for the sun to go down. It was quiet and peaceful there. The shade felt good and there was a soft summer breeze drifting through. We had a few moments, time to ponder the greater mysteries of life.

            "Clifton?"

            "What."

            "Why do men want to?"

            "Want to what?"

            "You know," I struggled for the words.  "See nekkid women."

            "Just something to do," said Clifton.  "Just for fun, like us I reckon.  Why else would they want to?"

            "That's what I wondered, myself," and I noticed that the woods were getting darker. "Think it's nearly time?"

            "Purt-near," he replied and I felt something inside me tremble like it was cold but I knew it couldn't be in August.

            "Clifton?"

            "What."

            "Do you reckon we'd go to hell for this?"

            "We ain't old enough. You got to get to what they call the ‘age of accountability’ for it to count that hard agin’ you."  He paused for a minute as he chewed on a twig.  "I reckon we're safe from about anything for a couple of more years. Except maybe killin' or something."

            "Oh," I said. I hoped that the relief didn't show through in my voice.

            "So I guess we'd better get going," he said.

            "Yep, I guess we'd better," I said.

            We were able to stay well hidden by hanging close to the edge of the bayou, it being so low that time of year.  We got due south of the Ratliff place just as it got dusky dark for we could make out the two oak trees that stood by the house place. As we began to ease our way up the bank toward a vantage spot, Clifton whispered his final instructions.

            "No more talkin'. Find yourself a low tree limb to sit in and enjoy the show. I"ll whistle like a Bob White two times when it's time to go. Okay?"

            "Okay," I whispered, thankful that I didn't have to muster enough spit to talk out loud.

            "You won't forget this night," Clifton said, and disappeared into the darkness.

            He didn’t have to tell me that. I eased forward toward where I thought the house was and immediately decided to amend Clifton's plan. I wasn't going to climb any tree and risk getting caught there by a Ratliff. No thank you.  I'd take my chances on foot even if it meant getting in closer.

            I took each step slowly, easing through the foliage as I had been taught to when hunting, not making a sound, even when walking on dry leaves, the way they said Indians could do.  I parted each vine carefully, half expecting some trap to spring, set by a Ratliff as a precaution against … well against people like me.

All around me the night voices of lowland insects had erupted with the end of the last light and I had never heard them enjoin so loudly. Surely they were alerting the household to the presence of strangers. I stopped, swallowed as best I could, and eased forward again. Never in my life, I imagined, would I ever be as alone as I was now.

            "Surely I'm almost there," I was thinking when the area directly in front of me exploded in light. I froze in my steps. A sharp, electric surge raced across the back of my tongue and I could almost see the front of my overalls bounce with every beat of my heart which I knew could be heard for half a mile. I couldn’t, of course, see my hair but I was sure it was standing straight up. This was it. This was what life had come to for a ten-year old boy who would never see another adventure, who in fact was destined to die before his first was really underway good. I froze and waited.

            Then I realized that I was still in the shadow of the woods and that, at least yet, nothing was coming for me. As I watched, with blood screeching through my head with every heartbeat, the scene formed before me.

            The light was coming from a lantern which had been swinging from an arm and which now was being set on a barrel. The light framed a clearing about fifty feet across with the Ratliff's chicken house on the back side and the woods on the other three. In the center of the light was Geehaw Ratliff. Her head was framed in its glow and the scene brought back a memory of something I had seen before. But I was too scared to remember what. A picture of something I had seen. What was it?

Then I remembered. In the Bible, the pictures of the Virgin Mary always looked like that. With her head framed in light and all. The Wise Men would be looking at her and the Baby Jesus and the light would glow all around them like this. But this wasn’t the Virgin Mary and the Baby Jesus. It was Gehaw Ratliff and I was not a wise man, I felt, just a common sinner, watching something I had no business watching.

She had all her clothes on but there was a number three washtub in front of the barrel and I could see that the tub was full of water.  It had no doubt been set out earlier to warm in the sun.  As for me, I was completely hidden in the dark, but another step or two would have had me walking into the clearing just as Gehaw did.

            So it seemed that for now I was safe. Gehaw went about her business without looking our way so I guessed that Clifton was safe as well and had a good view. Gradually, my heart stopped pounding and I felt as normal as a person could have felt under those circumstances, I suppose.  Actually, if you had known the truth, there were a lot of places where I would rather have been, but I was here so I determined to take her in for all it was worth.

            As my presence of mind returned, I noticed that Gehaw didn't seem in any hurry to take a bath. In fact, she seemed a little nervous and kept looking toward the far corner of the chicken house. I was puzzled. If she was going to take a bath I wished that she would get it over with so I could find Clifton and get out of there.

            Then I saw what she was looking for. There was someone else that had come to take part in this Saturday night ritual - a guest that was surely more welcome than the two of us. He was standing in the shadows at the edge of the building but I could make out who it was and I tell you I was shocked to the bottom of my feet, more shocked still when Gehaw walked over to him like she had been waiting for him all of her life, and shocked further when she took him by the hands and spoke to him so softly that I couldn't hear. I was so shocked, in fact, that I didn't notice old man Ratliff come around the opposite corner.

            "Come out from around there," he yelled and I turned to see him clearly in the light.

I guess, now that I think about it, it was just a regular shotgun. But in that pale light, with the bugs beginning to swirl around it, things took on a bizarre look and the gun sure looked bigger. It looked more like a cannon, I thought, and it wasn’t even aimed at me.

"I got you now," Mr. Ratliff said. He sounded like a man on a hunt that had just trapped a coon in a tree.

“Hot damn boys, I got him now!”  I half expected him to say something like that.

            Gehaw didn't say a word, just flattened herself against the building like maybe she could get so flat that her Papa couldn't see her. 

            "Girl git to the house," he said and motioned that way with the gun. Then he addressed the still hidden figure again.  "I told you once to get around here you son of a bitch - I got a shotgun!"

            The other man never moved. I was the only one who could see them both and I could tell that he wanted to run but maybe he didn't know exactly where Mr. Ratliff was or whether there might be some more Ratliffs waiting where he wanted to run. Mr. Ratliff started toward that end of the chicken house.

It was when he was about halfway there that Gehaw let out a scream that curled my toes and that was when we first saw it. We must have all seen it right about the time that she screamed, for I heard the man behind the chicken house yell "Oh my God!" Gehaw was still screaming and even Mr. Ratliff stopped to look.

Then the shotgun went off.

            Let me tell you, it was confusing for a couple of seconds.  Old man Ratliff must have fired the gun off accidentally when he saw the thing in the sky and when that happened, the other man just disappeared. In fact, there seemed to be movement everywhere.

The spray from the gun hit the roof of the chicken house right over Gehaw's head and shingles flew every which way. She bolted and ran right by me out into the edge of the field and ran smack into a section harrow. The handle was sticking up and she hit it with a thud that made me sick to my stomach. She screamed again but just kept running out of the light and into the cotton field.

            "Come back daughter!" old man Ratliff yelled but it was no use.  She was gone. He didn't stay long either. He took one more look into the sky, threw down the shotgun and ran for the house screaming  "Mamma get the boys, the world's coming to an end and I done kilt Caroline!"

            “Caroline?” So that was her name. Of all the shocking things going on before me, I remember being most interested in the fact that Gehaw had a real name.

            Then I heard the woods coming alive to my right and in a second I heard Clifton holler, "Bobby, you all right?"

            "Yeah," I hollered back. "I'm right over here.

            Clifton materialized in a second and, after assuring himself that I hadn't been shot, pointed to the sky.  "What in the hell is that?"

(To be continued)

Redemption

Words matter. Sometimes they matter in a sad way. Sometimes they matter in another way. Sometimes their impact is predictable. Sometimes their impact is not. One person reads the immortal Sermon on the Mount and believes it carries a redemptive message of grace and righteousness. Another reads it and believes it carries a direct message to eliminate the tax on inherited wealth, punish immigrants, or despise those who are born with different sexual orientations.

Unlike water, words don’t remain the same after they are poured into a container. Consider, for example, a politician we all know. While running for office, he said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?” He then mimicked firing a gun with his fingers, adding. “It’s, like, incredible.” For these words, he was elected president of the United States of America, albeit by the Electoral College and not by popular vote. Nonetheless, he now occupies the same White House where Abraham Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, Dwight David Eisenhower, Harry Truman, and others once slept.

Having arrived there, this politician used words to dishonor the military sacrifice of a man who served six years in a brutal prisoner of war camp on behalf of our country. He used words, with the assistance of gestures, to mock the speech and movements of a disabled man. He later used words to describe a group containing Neo-Nazis as having some “very fine people.” He used words to mock the family of a soldier killed in war in the service of our country.

His base supporters lauded and approved these and other words, solidifying even more tightly around him.

The sad thing is: consider what might happen if this politician were to request TV time tonight to make the following speech.

“My fellow Americans, we have become a divided nation and we must heal ourselves. We are all in this together, and face a highly complex and sometimes terrifying future. May I suggest that we face it together as friends, not foes? Our patriots faced a harsh future at Valley Forge. Our brave soldiers and sailors, men of every color, race, religion, and orientation, faced and conquered fear on the shores of Normandy. Our grandparents faced hunger and desolation, along with fear, during the Great Depression. Our heroes of the Civil Rights movement faced dogs and clubs on the streets, highways, and bridges of our nation in their fight for freedom.

“We survived these struggles through unity, not divisiveness. We joined hands as Americans and do what American do best, prevailing against the forces of hate and disparagement. In short, we faced the future as a united nation. That’s what I’m asking you to do tonight. I’m extending my hand in this symbolic gesture, and asking you, if you are physically able to move yours, to extend your hand toward my voice and join me in an oath of unity. If, because of infirmity or disability, you cannot extend a hand, simply smile as best you can and know that we stand with you and that we all stand together.

“The main religious figure for many of you charged us to care for the least of those among us. Another religious leader commanded that we care for the poor. I pledge to orient my administration to that charge. Starting tomorrow, I will not post my thoughts on the Internet. Instead, I will post my thoughts through action. Join me and let us persevere, as did our ancestors at Valley Forge. Let us charge into the Valley of the Shadow of Death as did those brave men in France. Let us welcome sacrifice in the name of justice as did my brother John Lewis and the brave women and men who fell underneath the horses and clubs at Selma. Let us be Americans, and show the world what that means, and may whatever God we each worship, including an inner-spiritual one who dwells in our own heart, bless us.”

Well. You and I both know what would happen. He would lose half his base overnight. Franklin Graham would never speak to him again. Stephen Miller would melt into a blubbering mass. Vladimir Putin would be shocked into silence. Fox “news” would shut down for emergency repairs, and five members of the United States Supreme Court would start wearing Groucho Marx disguises when leaving the building          .

Know what though? I think the Galilean would be smiling.

Many have given.
Many haven't.
 Some gave all.

Comfort

A person can’t help getting a bit discouraged these days. It dismays the strongest American heart to realize that we have gone from “fireside chats” in 1933 to “tweeted” threats of civil war and murder of our political opponents in only 86 years. That’s a normal life span of one of us these days. Not a very long time, would you agree?

Contrast that with Ancient civilizations. Egypt’s dynastic period started with the reign of its first king, Narmer, in approximately 3100 BCE, and ended with the death of Cleopatra VII in 30. That’s a longer period of time than that which has elapsed since the fatal asp bit its way into history. We seem to destroy with a speed and vengeance rarely matched in history. It ain’t hardly reason to hold up a “We’re Number One” glove, now is it?

Something has happened to us. A president in 1933 came on the radio to comfort our parents and grandparents who were distraught and suffering from the devastating effects of The Great Depression while, at the same time, they were watching fascist monsters threatening countries across both oceans. I’ve heard that families gathered around the radio and held hands when FDR spoke and felt a little better when he finished. It was going to be all right. Somehow, it was going to be all right.

Now, a different president avails himself, at hours, with digitized diatribes against any American who isn’t, at least for that moment, on his team. Only a relatively few Americans actually read his threats, insults, and terroristic blather. But the press repeats each blustering bit of babble as if it were carved in stone on the heights of Mount Sinai itself. After each outburst, we feel a little worse. America’s not going to be all right. Somehow, this time it’s not going to be all right.

Some blame technology. Maybe. But the ancient Egyptians toyed with technological advances that must have been as dramatic and mysterious to them as the advancement of artificial intelligence is to us. Do you think those pyramids at Giza were simply great stones piled upon one another? Would you believe that they involved intricate and masterfully imagined structural techniques that kept them from sliding past one another, or collapsing? There were even failures. One, the so-called “Bent Pyramid, located at Dahshur, seems to have started at an untenable angle before corrections saved the day. Our ancients made adjustments.  Does “Twitter” need to be re-oriented in like fashion?

Maybe F. Scott Fitzgerald was partially right when he ended Gatsby with “So we beat on, boats against the current …,” but wrong about being “… borne back ceaselessly into the past.” We seem to be riding the rapids into a terrifying future while we ignore the past lessons of history.

Mister, we could use someone like FDR again.

Egypt's Bent Pyramid. Like Twitter, the
 demands of reality required rethinking.

Thoughts

Ah, Fall! Just makes you remember the smell of new books and musty old classrooms, doesn’t it? Makes you feel as if a new world is opening again. We are all energized. Power to the people! Question authority. Don’t trust anyone over… let’s see… it would be 70 now, I suppose.

Autumn reminds me to question old ideas, consider new ones, and hold on to the ones that are timeless. Sorting those out is particularly tough in my profession. 

Sometimes I go back and re-read some of my old columns just to make sure I don’t have to use the “Law Professor’s Expostulation.” It is named after a teacher who was, in addition to being one of the country’s preeminent land-use law experts, somewhat of a character. A former student once trapped him on the witness stand with a quote from one of his law school textbooks—a quote that contradicted a statement Prof had just made to the opposing attorney. “Aren’t these your own words, Sir?” the cross-examiner said.

The old gentleman didn’t miss a beat. “Why hell,” he explained. “I’ve changed my mind since then.”

Few of us will ever achieve that level of respect. Most of us, however, remember things that we once thought were granite-hard truths only to see theme morph into putty as the years rolled by. Take some examples from urban planning.

We all used to believe that bigger and wider made everything better, particularly streets. Then we began giving mere children their own personal automobiles some six or seven years before they had enough sense to drive them. They see those wide streets not as a convenience but as the Neighborhood 500. Stuck with the streets, we sure wish we could see the front porch of our neighbor across the street without binoculars, but we sure aren’t going to risk walking over there for the privilege.

Meanwhile, the New Urbanists have shown us that narrow streets can not only function better, but also create a more person-friendly environment.

How about curbs and gutters? If there ever was a sacred cow in planning and engineering theory, it was the superiority of curb-lined streets. Suddenly now we are noticing that they sure wash a lot of impurities into creeks and rivers. And those curbs don’t seem to regenerate the aquifer the way grass swales do. Hmm.

We don’t even need to mention the practice of creating malls from our Main Streets. Oh heck, let’s do it anyway. This was going to save downtown when I was a cub planner. It was what the out-of-town experts were foisting on the locals back then.

Let’s move on to parking. Cities are slowly, from the literature I read, moving from a stance of “the more the better” to one of “do you really need that much?” If I can manage to last a few more years, I may see the day when we say “this is all you can have.”

“Tear it down and rebuild” was the going urban mantra in the 1940s and 1950s. Lay this one on the so-called “Greatest Generation.” It was before my time. After hundreds of thousands of displaced families and thousands of mutilated neighborhoods, they recognized the folly. (See The Power Broker  by Robert Caro or The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, the two most essential books, in my opinion, on American city planning.)

Back to my era—sometimes we must test the alternatives before we reach a sensible position. Take sidewalks. They used to be a given. Then we decided we didn’t need them. Then we decided that we need them sometimes. Then, more recently, we decided that we needed them everywhere after all. Now we are realizing that their presence or absence should reflect the context of the particular development. That is to say requirements for sidewalks might best be made according to considerations of density, location, and the function of the street. Again, thanks to the New Urbanists.

So what urban principles may be the fallen angels of the future?  I don’t know—maybe the assumed efficacy of highways and bypasses. Our traffic planners seem to operate under the belief that a new highway, an additional traffic lane, or one more bypass will solve every problem from slow growth to the “heartbreak of psoriasis.” So far they have only created more traffic. Planners in the future may point to the mess they have made by not expanding their mandate to transportation in general.

Or, as much as I hate to say it, the jury may still be out on new urbanism. I am a true believer and there is no doubt that they are building nicer-looking subdivisions—mostly for rich folks. Future city leaders may discover, though, that they failed to address the real urban problems facing our communities. I don’t see many of them, for example, in the Arkansas Delta. The movement may prove to be akin to pseudo medical treatments that make us think we feel better for a wile but don’t really get at the underlying cause of our misery.

Speaking of which—misery I mean—that’s enough for this now.