"A Picture From Life's Other Side"

Spotlighting "the other side of life"

2011-02-19T16:05:00.000-08:00

"A Picture from Life's Other Side"
by Hank Williams
1923-1953

*****

Hank Williams can be an "acquired taste."

He can also be an "inspiration."

Songs of loneliness, tears and compassion -- laced with that honky tonk zest for life.

Part songster, part preacher, part observer of "the other side of life."

"Hank, you were my inspiration"
(Waylon Jennings, 1937-2002, R.I.P.)

Lyrics | Waylon Jennings Lyrics | Hank Williams Syndrome Lyrics

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When there is no choice but "who am I?"

2011-02-19T15:50:00.000-08:00

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Great singer song writers, such as Hank Williams, may have little time for "ethics. Still some, like Williams and Johnny Cash become preachers for our time.

They would probably be the first to admit that moral actions most often come not from preaching but from those special times when there is "no choice" but to act -- regardless of the price to be paid.

Doing the "right thing" may cost you -- in the end it may bring you peace.

But don't count on it.

The greatest miracle, a "satisfied mind" may not be easy to win.

Doing the "right thing" may carry no reward.

The nature of moral choice may be that there is no choice. The choice is dictated by the answer to the question "who am I?"

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Lean back, think of those you have touched, those you have reached out to.

But remember that suffering in itself is no virtue. It must be chosen -- sometimes even when there is "no choice" -- as the sometimes high price for doing the right thing.

Doing the right thing may cost you -- in the end it may bring you peace.

But don't count on it.

Ask Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrestled to the time of his hanging with the question "Who am I?"

Yet his choice was almost automatic -- for there was no other path given "who he was."

Full steam ahead; babe, they're ain't no back in time

2011-02-18T08:54:00.000-08:00

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Back Babe, Back in Time:
Wasted on the Wayside
by Gillian Welch

Standing on the corner with a nickel or a dime
There use to be a rail car to take you down the line
Too much beer and whiskey to ever be employed

And when I got to Nashville, it was too much soldiers joy
Wasted on the wayside, wasted on the way
If I don’t go tomorrow, you know I’m gone today

Back babe, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine
Back babe, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine

Black highway all night ride
Watching the times fall away to the side
Clear channel way down low
Is comin’ in loud and my mind let go

Peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall
If I can’t have you all the time, I won’t have none at all
Oh, I wish I was in Frisco in a brand new pair of shoes
I’m sittin’ here in Nashville with Norman’s Nashville blues
So come all you good time rounders listenin’ to my sound
And then drink a round to Nashville before they tear it down

Back babe, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine
Back babe, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine

******

First the tears

Now full steam ahead

Why does love hang around? the porcupine factor

2011-01-29T06:05:00.000-08:00

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Schopenhauer: on porcupines and "boundaries"

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

For those of you who have come painfully close to intimacy, consider the porcupine (see video above).

According to the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, this magnificent animal sets a true example of the prickly things which can happen when humans love each other.

As for women:

"Without them there would be little assistance at birth, little pleasure at midlife, little consolation at death."

Thus wrote this unhappy in love German philosopher. He spelled out his theories that for all its sufferings love is simply the "will to life," the unconscious working out of nature's need for procreation (see video below).

Schopenhauer's analysis of will led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fulfilled.

He favored a lifestyle of negating human desires, similar to the teachings of ancient Greek Stoic philosophers, Buddhism, and Vedanta.

See his The World as Will and Representation.

By emphasizing the importance of love and sex Schopenhauer foreshadowed the theories of Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud.

Schopenhauer refused to conceive of love as either trifling or accidental. Instead he understood it to be an immensely powerful force lying unseen within man's psyche and dramatically shaping the world:

"The ultimate aim of all love affairs ... is more important than all other aims in man's life; and therefore it is quite worthy of the profound seriousness with which everyone pursues it."

"What is decided by it is nothing less than the composition of the next generation ..."

Could be. So why does it hang around in older age?

Could it be the "porcupine factor?"

It is time for the "saints" to march on in...

2011-01-27T07:06:00.000-08:00

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It is long past time that the destructive tendencies within the African American community be checked and reversed.

As only African Americans themselves can do.

Here is the story of Kimberly Bailey -- 150 years after the American Civil War.

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The result of the Wednesday Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) skills section retest:

A very nervous Kimberly passed in -- then an hour later emerged buoyant and full of hope.

She had walked through the gate to a salary increase and promotion at one hospital where she is an experienced mental health worker.

Now she is qualified to apply for a second high paying job at another.

With the test passed, and Kimberly fully registered as a CNA in North Carolina, she can stay in the Valley of the Angels.

Had she failed, she would have been forced to take a civilian job in Afghanistan, the Valley of the Gun, to earn money to restore her finances.

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She is now qualified to register for and join in an registered nursing (RN) program.

And move onward and upward toward $65,000 a year....!!!!!

In America military service and years as a teacher and mental health worker may bring in limited money.

Until the right certificate is earned to grant promotion and and a path to still higher certification.

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Oh yes, "when the saints come marching in. "

Kimberly Bailey has helped show the way.

But without the black and white "saints" of the Civil War, that gate might never have opened.

Indeed Kimberly was in such a state of anxiety and self doubt when I met her that she might not have been able to move as rapidly through the gate without my encouragement and support.

The movie Glory, 1989:
"saints" who opened the gate

Even with an open gate, it takes a "saint to march on through."

For many that is the challenge: to garner up the strength, the courage, the discipline to march on through.

To feed themselves with dignity -- to say goodbye to manipulation of the white "massa," to say goodbye to the government handout.

To say goodbye to the flaunting of sex for prostitution or for surviving by trading drugs.

It's a rough road up and through the narrow gates -- and few of the "saints" meet the standard definition of a "saint."

Indeed many pioneering "saints" can be deeply flawed.

Toward them:

"Let those who have not sinned throw the first stone."

"To those who have given much, much is forgiven."

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The challenge is to enter the narrower gate: to build self esteem, to avoid the temptation to rely on easy quick buck schemes.

To honor the memory of the "saints" who came before.

As Kimberly Bailey has done -- to become her own kind of "saint" 150 years after the Civil War.

The doors have opened...It is long past due for many more "saints" to march on through.

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In the Jewish Christian tradition of martyrdom suffering is not in vain.

Through it comes the crown, for God recognizes those who have suffered -- and promotes their souls upward onto a throne of Glory.

I can personally bear witness that God has smiled on Kimberly -- but it is she who has done the work "walking through that lonesome valley by herself."

Kimberly Bailey has shown the way.

Others must now follow.

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Kimberly Bailey:
"walking through the valley"

Ft. Wagner: black and white "saints" of the Civil War

2011-01-22T05:24:00.000-08:00

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TO LAY A WREATH

In honor of the black and white "saints"
of the Civil War whose sacrifices made possible
a future "saint" -- Kimberly Bailey,
Afro-American soldier,
educator, and nurse

May she reach her "Promised Land;"
their dream survives

BUT in the path to freedom
there is no "free lunch"

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Sometime in the next year I will embark upon a kayak expedition to lay a wreath in honor of Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts at the remains of Fort Wagner off Charlestown Harbor.

Where their sacrifice in front of rebel guns opened the way for racial equality in the U.S.

This is the battle made mildly famous by the 1989 film: Glory.

By helping to prove blacks could fight, Fort Wagner opened the way for President Lincoln's decision to massively enlist African Americans into the Union Army.

For more on the role of colored soldiers in the Civil War see the massacre at Petersburg by this writer.

Ft Wagner: price paid

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The mass grave at Fort Wagner no longer exists; the site has eroded way back at the beginning of the last century.

The remains of Colonel Shaw and his men have long since been washed out to sea by Atlantic hurricanes.

All that is left is a few skulls which sometimes wash up on the beach.

Ft. Wagner is at lower left

This is the battle made mildly famous by the 1989 film: Glory.

By helping to prove blacks could fight, Fort Wagner opened the way for President Lincoln's decision to massively enlist African Americans into the Union Army.

For more on the role of colored soldiers in the Civil War see the massacre at Petersburg by this writer.

The morning after

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At dusk July 18, 1863 was launched an attack spearheaded by the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, a black regiment.

(For the broader strategy of the 1863 Union assault on Charleston Harbor see Gate of Hell by Stephen B. Wise. The assault on Battery Wagner was a key part of the Union's effort to gain revenge for the Confederate capture of Fort Sumter in April 1861.)

The unit’s leader, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, was killed.

A 25 year old white officer, a child of Boston aristocracy, immortalized in Blue-eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.

Spoiled, sheltered, with a wandering sense of entitlement, he seemed to thrive when the Civil War finally came.

He became a man with a mission.

Years later philosopher William James, a Shaw acquaintance, recalled a special kind of courage:

-- the lonely courage it took to drop a commission leading a socially correct white regiment and throw himself into this "new Negro soldier venture where loneliness was certain, ridicule inevitable, failure possible; and Shaw was only 25."

All the more remarkable because Shaw had some of the common prejudices of his day -- and only gradually came to see the fighting potential of his men.

He became their strongest advocate -- that they should be treated fairly, well armed, and adequately paid.

As his respect for his men grew, he ceased to use terms he once used: "niggers," and "darkeys."

After years of wandering uncertainty shifting from job to job young Robert was at last a man with a mission.

A man of many flaws was to be reborn a hero

His destiny was to die young -- to do his small but dramatic part to help a downtrodden race rise up free.

What greater "Glory" could a man seek? In his weakness he picked up the burden of a martyr who bows to death for a broader purpose.

These then were the last letters home by a youthful "saint" who died with "his" black free men in the assault on Fort Wagner:

July 18, Morris Island

"We are in General Strong's Brigade, and have left Montgomery. I hope for good. We came up here last night and were out again in heavy rain. Fort Wagner is being very heavily bombarded. We are not far from it."

And here is the last:

Morris Island
July 18, 1863
Dear Father

I enclose this letter for (wife) Annie, which I didn't intend to send to you because it is impossible to tell whether I can write again by mail...We hear nothing but praise for the Fifty-fourth on all hands....

Love to mother and the girls.

Rob

The Boston Memorial

The night before the battle
("Let them know we went down standing up")

The 54th Massachusetts attacks:
eyewitness accounts

Shaw took his black men to the front, past thirteen often cheering white support regiments.

At six hundred yards from the fort, Shaw ordered his men to form two lines of battle, fix bayonets, and lie down in the sand.

The men shook hands, exchanged letters, and reminded each other who to send letters to in case they were killed or captured.

Shaw briefed his men and challenged them to "take the fort or die."

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Members of a brigade scaled the parapet but after brutal hand-to-hand combat were driven out with heavy casualties.

Shaw reached the top of the fort's wall, took a bullet near the heart, and fell dead inside.

Half the regiment had penetrated the fort before withdrawal.

Of the 600 men of the 54th who charged the fort, 272 were killed, wounded or captured. Additional losses from the white regiments which followed brought union losses to 1,515.

Confederate gravediggers buried 800 Union soldiers in the sand in front of the fort the morning after the battle.

Confederates suffered 174 casualties.

The Federals resorted to siege operations to reduce the power of the fort.

This was the fourth time in the war that black troops played a crucial combat role.

The battle for Fort Wagner helped prove to skeptics that black troops could fight effectively. President Lincoln stepped up efforts to recruit them (Wikipedia).

Here is the story of flag bearer Sgt. William H. Carney who, although severely wounded, kept the flag off the ground.

He battlefield exploit was the first in a sequence of Civil War actions to earn an African American the Congressional Medal of Honor (1900).

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After the battle, the Southern soldiers made a trench, dropped Shaw's body inside. then threw the bodies of some 20 of his black soldiers on top of him -- before shoveling them all over with sand.

Insult though this was, Shaw's abolitionist family thanked the Southern soldiers for burying Shaw with his men.

The dream of these "saints" -- both black and white -- survived.

Morris Island today

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National Archives:
The Fight for Equal Rights:
Black Soldiers in the Civil War

"Once let the black man get upon his person
the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle
on his button, and a musket on his shoulder
and bullets in his pocket, there is no power
on earth that can deny that
he has earned the right
to citizenship."

-Frederick Douglass

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Kimberly, you follow in a grand tradition.

Courage is to stand up as a professional, self reliant, seeking handouts from no one.

Fighting with courage to make one's way.

The road can be dark and hazy.

For it is, as always, a world without free lunches.

Look forward but also backwards to the "saints of the past."

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The issues of emancipation and military service were intertwined from the onset of the Civil War.

News from Fort Sumter set off a rush by free black men to enlist in U.S. military units.

They were turned away, however, because a Federal law dating from 1792 barred Negroes from bearing arms for the U.S. army (although they had served in the American Revolution and in the War of 1812).

In Boston disappointed would-be volunteers met and passed a resolution requesting that the Government modify its laws to permit their enlistment.

The Lincoln administration wrestled with the idea of authorizing the recruitment of black troops, concerned that such a move would prompt the border states to secede.

When Gen. John C. Frémont in Missouri and Gen. David Hunter in South Carolina issued proclamations that emancipated slaves in their military regions and permitted them to enlist, their superiors sternly revoked their orders.

By mid-1862, however, the escalating number of former slaves (contrabands), the declining number of white volunteers, and the increasingly pressing personnel needs of the Union Army pushed the Government into reconsidering the ban.

As a result, on July 17, 1862, Congress passed the Second Confiscation and Militia Act, freeing slaves who had masters in the Confederate Army.

Two days later, slavery was abolished in the territories of the United States, and on July 22 President Lincoln presented the preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet.

After the Union Army turned back Lee's first invasion of the North at Antietam, MD, and the Emancipation Proclamation was subsequently announced, black recruitment was pursued in earnest.

Volunteers from South Carolina, Tennessee, and Massachusetts filled the first authorized black regiments.

Recruitment was slow until black leaders such as Frederick Douglass encouraged black men to become soldiers to ensure eventual full citizenship.

(Two of Douglass's own sons contributed to the war effort.)

Volunteers began to respond, and in May 1863 the Government established the Bureau of Colored Troops to manage the burgeoning numbers of black soldiers.

By the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men (10 percent of the Union Army) served as soldiers in the U.S. Army and another 19,000 served in the Navy.

Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war—30,000 of infection or disease.

Black soldiers served in artillery and infantry and performed all noncombat support functions that sustain an army, as well. Black carpenters, chaplains, cooks, guards, laborers, nurses, scouts, spies, steamboat pilots, surgeons, and teamsters also contributed to the war cause.

There were nearly 80 black commissioned officers.

Black women, who could not formally join the Army, nonetheless served as nurses, spies, and scouts, the most famous being Harriet Tubman, who scouted for the 2d South Carolina Volunteers.

Kimberly, you "travel in the footsteps of those who came before."

Why men and women fail: explore two views

2010-12-28T06:42:00.000-08:00

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See "the last word" at blog's end

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Saith the man:

"Wouldst that I could stay with thee...but alas, fair maid, 'tis time for moving on....

"Sometimes women make good friends -- as long as you take them with a grain of salt...

"For what they say is scarcely what they mean.

"Every town I ramble round, there are more pretty girls than one.

"Just one kiss, dear, and then I am gone..."

Now for another take on the same subject: an age old Scots Irish song which men and women have for centuries understood.

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Classic Carter Family

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Come all ye fair and tender ladies.
Be careful how you court young men.

They're like a star on a summer's morning.
They'll first appear and then they're gone.

They'll tell you some loving story
They'll declare to you their love is true
Then they will go and court some other
And that's the love they have for you

Do you remember our days of courting
When your head lay upon my breast
You could make me believe
with falling of your arm
That the sun rose in the West

I wish I was a little sparrow,
And I had wings with which to fly
Right over to see my false true-lover,
And when he's talking I'd be nigh.

But I'm not a little sparrow,
I have no wings with which to fly
So I sit here in grief and sorrow,
To weep and pass my troubles by.

If I had known before I courted
that love was such a killing thing
I'd a-locked my heart in a box of golden
and fastened it up with a silver pin.

******

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Last Word: the Divorced Ian and Sylvia
("Of Love there is no end")

Last Word: Men and Women Together
(Read all about "High Noon")

Last Word: "Our Little Cabin Home on the Hill"
(Read about the late Senator Robert C. Byrd)

Richard Holbrooke: a pioneering "Quaker Jew"

2010-12-26T16:07:00.000-08:00

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Farewell, Farewell...

In honor of a childhood friend, Richard Holbrooke, a Jewish - Quaker who combined power and ideals.

"Sir Richard," I salute you -- for your courage of a lion and your heart of a lamb.

In sadness for "Sir Richard" the big mouth, sometimes bullying, confrontational son of Jewish refugees.

With whom I had walked to Quaker meeting as a junior high student in Scarsdale, New York during the late 1950's.

We walked similar paths -- both part children of German Jews who sought for us to blend in by adopting Quakerism.

We continued to walk similar paths -- with him at the top as ranking diplomat and me at the bottom as lowly newspaper foreign correspondent.

Focusing in different ways on the same issues.

I had not seen him since 1977 in Beijing -- where both he and I were participating in different ways in the diplomacy to bring an American-Chinese alliance.

We were both peace makers of sorts -- although we had both rejected Quaker pacifism as too parochial.

By the 1990's Holbrooke was well into rediscovering his Jewish roots, while I was beginning to study Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his concept of "costly grace" -- as well as the theological underpinnings of my childhood interest in "Christian realism."

Farewell, farewell to you who'd hear
You lonely travellers all.
The cold North winds will blow again
The winding road does call.

******

Farewell, Farewell, my boyhood friend.

Who died December 13 (born 1941, the same year as myself) of a ruptured aorta while serving as President Obama's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In an age of bureaucrats and cautious politicians, the late "Sir Richard" swaggered through a classic role: the flawed hero.

Tough as nails with an idealistic heart and an elephant-size ego, he did not hesitate when calling for military action. But power was to be channeled for constructive ends.

Throughout his 69 years Holbrooke struggled with the challenge of how to impose American will for stability and humane rule -- first in Vietnam, then in the former Yugoslavia, and lastly in Afghanistan.

He served every Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson, and made millions as a Wall Street Banker when Republicans were in power.

"Sir Richard" was a manager of the "American Empire." He sought to combine military, economic, and humanitarian power with what today would be called "nation building" in far away places.

Often it seemed an illusive task of "squaring the circle."

A year before his death, he declared, "I still believe in the possibility of the United States, with all its will and all its strength, and I don't mean just military, persevering against any challenge. I still believe in that."

Holbrooke's greatest achievement was his lobbying of President Clinton to instigate military action during the Serbian genocide against Muslims in Bosnia when Clinton and others were timidly fleeing from an activist foreign policy.

Both inside and outside of government he unabashedly advocated the use of force when human rights issues and U.S. foreign policy goals coalesce.

Because of Bosnia, I see Holbrooke as a truly historic figure. He was militarily a hawk, but a moral conscience within the establishment.

Bosnia was remarkable when compared with Uganda and all the other human rights issues where President Clinton and the UN looked the other way.

But with lots of foot dragging force in Bosnia came too little and too late. Lots of the genocide had already been done by the time NATO air power and troops forced the 1995 Dayton accords negotiated by Holbrooke.

(See "Holbrooke: Why I Mourn," a remembrance of Holbrooke's role in Bosnia by TV journalist Christiane Amanpour. See also New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, On the Ground.)

(See this survey of how humanitarian agencies now see the use of force.)

Holbrooke also pioneered as one of the first Jews to penetrate the foreign policy establishment using non Jewish connections rather than a the traditionally Jewish Ph.D. professor route.

Instead of going on for a doctorate he chose to join the Foreign Service in 1962 -- mucking around in Vietnam's dangerous Mekong delta while contemporaries such as myself buried our noses safely in doctoral program libraries.

Today Jews serve widely in the foreign service, in the military, and in all kinds of think tanks and establishment groupings where once they would have been unwelcome. Moving deep into establishment journalism -- especially into outlets like National Public Radio.

They are no longer confined to ghettos of political radicalism -- or to stereotypical niches in law, teaching, small business, or finance.

When Holbrooke's father died young, he was, some say, partly "adopted" by future Kennedy Secretary of State, the very non-Jewish fellow Scarsdale resident Dean Rusk. Rusk's son was among Holbrooke's closest friends.

Holbrooke went on to Brown University, which was an excellent penetration point for a Jew seeking transition to the non Jewish foreign policy establishment.

His path to success was not the familiar Jewish academic one, but through mentoring relationships with gentiles such as Dean Rusk, and other establishment State Department people: Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. and General Maxwell Taylor.

His mentors were "muscular men," gentile veterans of the World War II generation -- for whom the use of massive military force was a familiar fact of life. No bespectacled agonizers on moral dilemmas were these.

I would see it like this: the U.S. failure in Vietnam and the plight of Indochinese refugees sensitized Holbrooke to refugee issues, out of a sense of US failure in Vietnam in which he was deeply involved as a young foreign service officer.

Then in 1995 Holbrooke took as his third wife Kati Marton, the Hungarian American journalist of Jewish background. She and her writing projects , helped reopen his Jewish past. For she had only recently discovered her own Jewish identity.

Thus his reawakened sense of Jewish identity and the plight Holocaust victims sat heavily on his sense of the suffering of Indochinese refugees displaced from Cambodia and Vietnam by American defeat there.

His outrage at Serbian genocide in Bosnia as both a private citizen and a government official thus stood at a double foundation: the failure of the West during the Holocaust and the suffering which came out of American failure in Indochina.

For Holbrooke the challenge was always to seize success from failure, "to make the next chapter work."

Let someone pick up the torch.

Sex, lies, growing prostitution on the internet

2010-11-18T05:13:00.000-08:00

The New

Hank Williams might be amused but not surprised to learn that a woman I recently met on an internet dating service appears to be doing a form of "sex for money."

A black woman of magnificent and towering charms, a serious "single mother" most eager to elicit gifts, money from a stranger.

Her voluptuous body seethed with hints of future sex.

For days she had been sending scantily clad photos to my cellphone: something a journalist is bound to note.

As the clues mounted, I used standard investigatory techniques to locate the Jacksonville, North Carolina "double wide" mobile home in which she lived -- in a nice middle class, mixed race semi-rural area.

Driving out while she was at work, I cautiously drove into her drive circle to be followed in a truck by her polite white husband and charming six year old daughter.

He had a round and pleasantly mustashioed face, and kindly backed out his truck, so that I could drive up to him for a few words.

"I am looking for Mr. Smith, (not the woman's name)" I said.

In a cautious interchange with him in his car and me in mine, I ascertained he was the husband, they were not divorced as she had claimed -- and she had not kicked him out of the house as she claimed.

I did not wish to stay around for coffee.

Checking "Facebook" with a friend we located her wish list of luxuries she wished to own in a year.

Things she was trying to scam gently and indirectly from me. Well above my pay grade. And with no services rendered.

When gently confronted by text message and phone, she put out a fresh line, more likely true: that she was in the midst of a divorce, moneyless, facing the loss of her mobile home.

All the while, as our research indicated, in search for luxuries.

There was, of course, no sex....only a hint of it.....

The Old

We see a growing pattern of prostitution and such on the internet --- both on broader internet and and dating services. And many many escort services advertised in this area.

One other woman was a lovely black hospital worker, both slim and buxom of build.

I met her on a computer dating service. She invited me to her house in Greenville, North Carolina for a sparkling three hour chat.

And then came the text messages asking for "a favor:" could I spare $100 here and there?

She had earlier shown me her bedroom with the comment, "This is where we play."

"A friend with benefits" was what she sought.

She was stunning and charming and sophisticated -- although her bathroom toilet lacked a handle.

I felt that as a journalist of record it was not my part to participate.

I did offer to fix her toilet handle. She declined.

The combination of hard times and high tech gives new imperatives and new opportunities to the modern variety of "con women" and "sex workers."

Some are medical workers.

Some are inveterate beauties, one I met a former airline stewardess, trying to get "help" in return for sex. Many are single mothers.

In the black culture there is a long tradition of sex for gifts. With the full knowledge that a white man will be more vulnerable to a pitch. White women may be more skillful at covering up the nature of this transaction.

As a black woman friend told me, "A black man would laugh off this pitch." But a white and lustful bleeding heart, that's another story.

Many are spurred by minimum wage jobs, the crunch of not being able to meet their needs in this declining economy. Or a thirst for luxuries their incomes will not afford.

Now, it is not all black. A retired white New Bern, North Carolina nurse with many expenses, whom I met on the dating service "Matchcom," recently offered to supply sex for a regular monthly stipend.

I could not help but notice that she was "poured into her jeans."

"Maybe it's time to change careers," she confided. Needless to say I did not take her up on this -- although I did a little bargaining for journalism's sake.

Confessions of a "recovering idealist"

2010-11-16T04:27:00.000-08:00

*****

*****
"Moritzism"
Stay "armed" young man. Stay "armed"

(When the wages of virtue can be death)

"Shit" is what you make of it.
Never rely on goodness in others.
Nor show excessive kindness lest
that be taken for weakness.
Be careful whom you trust
for the Devil can come
to you with the face
of an Angel

It's all in how you play the game.
Play for all, settle for less, and always have
an exit strategy.

Hope for the best.
Prepare for the worst.
Do not expect mercy from others.
Grant it whenever you can.

Laugh and Love
(But above all laugh
for love requires at least two)

*****

"Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

"He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all."

Samuel David Coleridge
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

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A personal theology in film
Confronting evil with restrained firmness
("A little caution makes for a longer life")

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A personal theology in song

Some women wait for Jesus, and some women wait for Cain
so I hang upon my altar and I hoist my axe again.
And I take the one who finds me back to where it all began
when Jesus was the honeymoon
and Cain was just the man.

-Leonard Cohen

Saving a Space for Love

Love Without End

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Constructing a personal theology involves not just abstract theological texts, but an examination of one's entire life experience.

My own was 69 years in the making -- flowing from an idealistic Quakerly stress on the merits of kindness to a realization that weakness will be exploited, that in situations charged in power, an effort to get along can be a road to disaster.

Avoid too much "loving kindness," too much trust -- unless you hold plenty of the cards.

Stay armed young man, stay armed.

My own voyage reflects my academic and journalism career, my personality, and the nature of my childhood formative times.

These reflections are based on 55 years of studying issues of war and peace, numerous years as journalist and foreign correspondent, and the sometimes searingly brutal realities of academic politics -- where the worst of human nature is often revealed.

I cannot say that I have come much farther than my rejection of Quaker idealism in the 1950's. I grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust -- and learned through hard personal experience that weakness in the name of kindness is no substitute for the ability to manipulate, to hang tough.

So I end up with the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr discovering what is obvious on the streets: that the strong will bully the weak -- and that love (if it hides weakness) will not conquer all.

His classic, Moral Man and Immoral Society, is as relevant today as when first published in 1932.

Experience is my teacher. It taught me nothing that prophet Niebuhr did not warn me of fifty years ago.

The Serenity Prayer
by Reinhold Niebuhr

An idealist may choose safe venues where a veneer of respectability cloaks the cutthroat aspects of life.

But when one ventures out beyond the Eden-like garden of middle class affluence and security one must handle oneself with care.

Saintliness presupposes a willingness to be martyred.

Those of us who are not saints and who have little wish to be martyred had best stay well armed.

Set limits, be firm, do not "speak truth to power" unless you are willing to suffer the consequences.

They can be swift and brutal.

Acquaintances along your road will be exactly as cruel and ruthless as you allow them to be.

*****

In aggregate terms, good often triumphs. But evil will most likely triumph for the individual who does not cultivate strength and the ability to ward off bullies.

This is one reason why toughness and the ability to thoroughly engage in the most brutal of conflicts is essential for the maintenance of most forms of civilization.

The lawyer, the police officer, and the army are powerful and sacred instruments of "God's Will."

These can all be misused, but without them "we are lost."

We can note they are not by themselves sufficient, that they too must be restrained.

True, the advent of new technologies can spread sunlight on evil -- and help dissolve its harmful nature.

But even as we speak, new forms of destruction are being prepared by men and women who will willingly inflict massive pain and death.

Never forget the dark side of the moon.

Gandhi can be nice.

But think twice before turning in your gun.

*****

One way to protect oneself and sally forth in success is to acquire skills and property which other people need.

Then they will develop and show to you their finer points --- respond more positively to shows of reasonable virtue.

When armed with weapons or valuable commodities, one can more easily bring out the positive side of people.

But be careful. Beneath the smiles can be sharks waiting to come out.

If you don't have something valued to sell, you are vulnerable if weak.

Most people instinctively know this without extensive study.

For them there is no reason to construct a blog such as this.

But for some of us who are perennially tempted to be too nice, it is important to stay "on point."

Label Fred "a recovering idealist."

Damn, why did it take so long?

Oh, Lord, perhaps there is still time.

*****
Saving a space for sacrifice
Ft. Wagner: black and white "saints"
of the Civil War
Sometimes there is no choice
but to choose

******

Sometime this year I will rent a kayak to lay a wreath at what remains of Battery Wagner off Charleston Harbor.

In honor of Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th colored Massachusetts.

Where their sacrifice in front of rebel guns helped open the way for racial equality in the U.S.

Saint Robert was shot down at 25, an idealist.

He scarcely had time to recover from an idealism which was, in part, thrust upon him.

Sometimes there is no choice but to lift idealism's flag.

The price can be high -- when one succumbs to temptation.

Do it if you must....but do not be surprised if "the wages of virtue are death."

******

When under fire, no need to shoot the horse

2010-11-15T10:10:00.000-08:00

Keeping things in perspective...

Remington New Army .36 cal.
1863 Police (Navy) revolver

Who needs to shoot horses when you own a sweet baby .36 cal. Colt 1851 "Navy" revolver like the one above?

Or a .36 cal. Remington New Army Police (Navy) 1863 revolver like the one below:

******

U.S. Army tests back in 1835 urged a .45 cal. pistol to stop a horse.

But what are the chances I will face a cavalry attack in my mobile home park?

Most of my enemies will come "on foot."

Yet never say never.

There may come a time when I need to shoot a horse -- what with the way the world is going now!

It's no fun to be sabered by a rider on a pale horse.

But why be overarmed for the "worst possible case?"

Keep things in perspective.

For now the .36 is fine.

Still, keep a bigger gun in the background, just in case...

Now, scroll down to meet my two late gunfighter friends: William Hickok and John Wesley Hardin.

Each of them was satisfied with a .36.

"Men for all seasons" -- they each carried a Colt Navy Revolver.

Until they each got shot in the back of the head.

Not something to write home about.

******

Watch this video on outlaw
John Wesley Hardin's .36 Navy Colt

******

Last night I loaded up my classic modern made .36 Navy Colt (Model of 1851) to use for home defense.

It replaces, for now, my heavier .45 Colt Army Model 1860, "New Dragoon."

Why not keep the lighter, perfectly balanced, fast handling weapon close at hand?

(It bears the name "Navy" because of the engraving of a naval engagement on its cylinder)

A classic piece once used by abolitionist John Brown and General Robert E. Lee.

-- Not to mention gunfighter "Wild Bill" Hickok and outlaw John Wesley Hardin.

I also have handy the .36 cal. Remington Police model.

*****

Now, to be sure, no one tries to break into my mobile home park...

Still, I believe it's unsporting to use a modern weapon in self defense.

If the old style was good enough for the guys who really needed it, it should be good enough for me.

Here is the company I kept, both of whom killed with a "Navy."

"Wild Bill:" lawman, gunfighter

******

Gunfighter, lawyer

The 1851 was the first "cap and ball" Colt Revolver light enough to be carried at the belt -- rather than in a horse holster.

But powerful enough to do real damage.

True the Model 1860 "New Dragoon" was preferred by cavalrymen -- for, as I said, army tests of 1835 concuded a minimum of .45 caliber was needed to down a charging horse.

British soldiers who used the lighter .36 during the Crimean War of 1853-56 found themselves sometimes sabered by charging mounted Cossacks.

Not something to write home about.

But I am not on horse.

Nor am I facing horsemen -- breaking into my home.

Not yet, anyway....

Just in case I hear the sound of horse, let's keep my two Remington .45 army revolvers on reserve.

It's a more reliable gun than the Colts.

(Based on an 1858 patent, the improved version was issued in 1863, in time to be the "top gun" of the American Civil War)

"No problem." As they say.

Challenging Islam: Palin sex in Christian style

2010-10-04T06:36:00.000-07:00

*****

Hank Williams would love this.

No doubt that backwoods boy of the 1940's would write a song -- and dance along....

The delightful Bristol Palin exactly symbolizes what Islamic extremists resent in American life: public decadence and the peddling of easy sexuality.

Ironically the values of Muslim fundamentalists are similar to the family values Sarah Palin praises -- even as she peddles glamor and her daughter does a playful form of sex dance.

Yes, Sarah Palin is the classic "Christian nationalist."

She warns of a Muslim threat, promotes American military power and urges the defense and spread of traditional American Christian values.

While daugher Bristol symbolizes the freedoms so foreign to traditional Islamic culture: sex and pregnancy outside of marriage merchandised to earn personal fame and fortune.

We know that some Muslims find Western "decadence" appealing -- with young men sometimes enjoying strip clubs when overseas.

We know that eroticism is present in some Islamic societies -- for example the tradition of "belly dancing" (or "Arabic Dance") in Egypt, Lebanon, and Turkey.

Still, many fundamentalist Muslims circle the wagons to prevent Western cultural infiltration of their societies.

So Bristol in her modestly sexual way is a classic symbol of the "clash of civilizations."

She is the essence of a cultural force which Islamic fundamentalists fear will seep across the world to disrupt their more traditional values.

*****

"Dominionism" is closely related to the concept of "Christian Nationalism."

Stimulated by rapid domestic change and the threat of Islamic terrorism, it sees the very rise of Islam as a Sharia Law threat to Christian life.

It calls for the assertion of Christian national power.

It is the mirror image of those Muslims who see materialism and sexual license in the West as a threat to Islamic life.

Dominionism is so prevalent in U.S. life that we rarely notice it.

It is a partner in dance with Islamic extremism.

Together they help shape our world.

Christian nationalists can fear that imported Sharia law may undermine the West.

Islamic fundamentalists can fear post Gloria Steinem liberated women conveyed by movies and internet may subvert their ways.

So, everyone, why not just relax a bit?

Enjoy the View. Humanity deserves a laugh.

Understanding Islam: "howling at the moon"

2010-08-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

*******

The Korean War raged as Hank Williams neared his death in 1953.

Who knows how this Alabama boy interpreted the seemingly simple clash between communism and capitalism.

But he would surely be "howling at the moon" if he were alive today -- as Americans debate "what to do about Islam."

In the wars of this century Americans are most deeply involved in parts of the world which they are least prepared to understand.

The nuances and "remoteness" of Islam for the U.S. make it virtually impossible for large numbers of Americans to understand the challenges -- let alone respond in a rational way.

We live in rich fields for demagogues to spin history -- to enlist media to build emotion to build their political careers.

The journalistic principle of balance guarantees ideologues and demagogues will have plenty of voice.

For every person with knowledge of Islam interviewed by media, a shrill demagogue will be chosen to demonstrate fairness.

One purpose is to promote the controversy that will draw audience interest and boost ratings.

*******

Just as important there are few American Muslims in the public eye.

Unlike American Jews, they have not widely penetrated into the media, university faculties, American political races, or the diplomatic service.

Thus most Americans have little concept of Muslims other than as strange foreigners wearing funny clothing -- or even carrying bombs.

The worlds of university and scholarship are just as useless as the media world in enlightening American public. They offer little that is understandable, concrete and useful to the non-specialized reader.

Serious scholarly books and magazines are far too complex and time consuming for most Americans to understand.

Most "serious" published work on Islam is largely irrelevant except at the "elite" highly educated level.

Islam is distant, exotic, full of bizarre names, leaders and sects -- ever changing, wrapped in historical nuance.

Without travel and or detailed study very few Americans can understand it.

Too many negative images already deeply enshrined by war, terrorism, 9/11, degradation of women, and the seemingly unending hostility to Israel found so widely in the Islamic world.

This leaves an enormous vacuum for demagogues and ideologues to fill.

And so lots of us are "howling at the moon."

The bottom line is that dogmatic anti-Islam feelings are becoming a mainstay of American conservativism -- at the political, intellectual, religious and grassroots level.

Like anti-communism in the days of yore, anti-Islam is the current platform on which extreme American nationalism is built.

Political scientist, historian, and former CIA analyst Graham Fuller has just published a provocative book to probe the nuances of Islam, "A World Without Islam."

To help Americans grasp the nuances of this issue that raises fear and confusion among many.

Fuller, former Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council of the CIA, and formerly CIA station chief in Kabul, Afghanistan, is now adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia.

He rejects current notions of a clash of civilizations or of conflicts fundamentally based on religion. He calls for a rethink in some of our discussion.

He sees radical Islam as sometimes giving expression to grievances flowing from interaction of the West with the Middle East.

But he focuses on enduring "geopolitical conflicts" which might well have been there even without Islam.

Conflicts between tribes, over territory (as with Palestine), over resources, over who holds power.

"If there had never been an Islam, if a Prophet Mohammad had never emerged from the deserts of Arabia, if there had never been the saga of the spread of Islam...wouldn't the relationship between the West and the Middle East today be entirely different? No, I would argue, it might actually be quite similar to what we see today."

(Listen to Graham Fuller interviewed on NPR or watch this interview with him below)

There are many other ways of understanding Islam's history and contemporary challenge.

Most, like Fuller, are not easy reading.

*******

Television and newspapers are largely useless for educating Americans on Islam.

For many the subject is incomprehensibly "boring" -- unless hyped with images of savage violence or argumentative rhetoric.

Red hot political controversies (such as the proposed Islamic center near "Ground Zero") drive out programming with perspective.

Talking heads with not so hidden agendas spout out slogans aimed at inflaming emotion.

"In time of war the first casualty is truth."

Despite the confusion and fear, there are deep reservoirs of tolerance in the U.S which are likely to carry the country through.

But do not count on understanding.

Taliban in Battle

Americans in Battle

There's not "a snowball's chance in Hell" that Hank and most other Americans can understand the nuances of Islam's complicated history -- or of how and when it may become extreme, a threat which must be countered.

Hank could make a beginning stab by consulting "Islam" on Wikipedia.

There is even a Wikipedia Site for him to check out if he wants information on Islam and Secularism. Still another Wikipedia site deals with controversial Islamic Sharia Law.

The Wikipedia entry Islamic Symbols contains a chart of Islam links and a link to Wikipedia's "Islam Portal."

Would Hank really have the patience to dig further through a website on Islam and Islamic Resources? He would quickly notice many of these links do not work.

Google shows there are only fragmentary web resources on Islam. Most of them are clearly slanted in one direction or another.

There seems to be no real on the ground literature or website which brings to life the wide variety of Islamic life in terms of concrete life styles from country to country.

In human, understandable terms.

The absence on the web of reliable and understandable resources on Islam is a fundamental threat to American understanding and national security.

It virtually guarantees that journalists writing on Islam will have few reliable resources.

The absence of serious web resources submitted by Americans or others is truly remarkable given the decades of American involvement in the Islamic world.

Not to mention continuous warfare with Islamic states since 2001.

A wealth of resources is scattered on many varied websites, but little systematically brought together as "links" on "gateway" pages linking to Islam-related information.

For Americans a focus on topics such as pre-emptive war, weapons of mass destruction, and the Arab--Israeli conflict appears to have crowded out focus on the cultures and histories of the Islamic world.

It is a recurring American weakness to be ignorant of the minds and cultures of other peoples.

*******

Hank would be the first to concede we are a country largely unprepared to understand the relationship between al-Qaeda and Islam.

He would scratch his head when asked if all Islam is a Nazi like force threatening the U.S. He would know little of the varieties of Islamic experience in a variety of "remote" countries, and how that experience has changed over time.

*******

It is unrealistic to expect to educate the American people on Islam.

Anyone seeking to change American views will need to manipulate them with skilled propaganda and public relations.

"In time of war the first casualty is truth."

Fuller's "A World Without Islam" can be a whiff of fresh air -- if you are not willing to be herded like sheep, if you would liberate yourself from media, if you would like to think about alternate views.

It may help you stop "howling at the moon."

But it will take work, very rewarding work -- especially if your knowledge of world history is weak.

One thing we know about Americans: they are "babes in the woods" when it comes to world history.

Images of Islam: they vary

Saint Joan: be very careful where you lead us

2010-07-15T16:57:00.000-07:00

******

Analyzing a Saint's Intelligence Data
(The Messenger, 1999)

Does a saint about to go to war "see what she wants to see."

When a saint goes to war, it is more than her motives she must check.

Her intelligence analysis must be sound. Does the evidence require the sword -- or are there other alternatives?

"God's signs" can be misleading even if the CIA approves them.

A saint's decisions are as sound as her "signs," her visions.

Did God really mean what he seemed -- or was the data ambiguous?

Even a saint such as Joan must face her "Conscience."

Did she sacrifice for God or kill for her own "pleasure?"

Here are some eternal questions for all who go to war.

Does it take a saint to wage a "just war?"

Can even a saint be corrupted once "just war" begins?

Does even a saint get dragged down into cruelty once battle flames?

The Banner and the Sword

"Just War" Defined

Even if noble at the outset, can the saint become addicted to a love of winning?

Even if she seeks to inspire with the banner, can she end up taking pleasure in conquests by the sword?

A saint can lead by inspiration -- but ultimately she must take responsibility for the deaths her sword caused.

Even in Joan's day, there was no free lunch.

The Seduction of Battle

Now, let us see how it can work if you are not a saint.

When men and women go into battle -- and get dragged beyond their "just" intentions into cruel results.

Meet former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara -- surely no saint.

He died in 2009 -- not before leaving as atonement this movie, The Fog of War (2003)

In it he takes upon his long anguished self to explain how he helped kill hundreds of thousands in WWII and Vietnam.

A man who woke up one day to be a villain examines how misplaced visions and flawed intelligence led him and others to be not saints but angels of death.

Saint Joan, President Obama, be very careful where you lead us.

We would be wise not to trust you.

For in your righteousness you may be deluded.

******

Saint Joan, Is This Where You Led Us?

Ah, Saint Joan, explore thy motivation.

Here the secretly filmed hanging of Saddam Hussein reveals the final act of Bush family revenge.

George W. Bush went to war in part to eliminate a long time family enemy, the man who tried to assassinate his father, George H.W. Bush.

The leader of a great nation used an American invasion to execute by proxy a personal enemy.

Thy motive, dear Joan, keep thine eye on thy motive.

For motive can be one part of the puzzle when deciding if a war is "just."

Fire, light: but must it come so cruel, so bright?

2010-07-12T04:16:00.000-07:00

*******

Hank Williams was no Catholic.

His lonely backwoods ballads were worlds away from the lonely suffering of a warrior saint.

It's a long, long road from the Alabama woods to the Canadian Jewish poet Leonard Cohen.

The singer song writer who has synthesized Jewish and Catholic traditions.

A poet and songster lights up a Catholic saint as only a Jew can.

For the two traditions are cut from the same cloth: martyrdom.

Let us honor those who sacrifice:

******

"But the souls of the upright are in the hands of God, and no torment can touch them.

"To the unenlightened, they appeared to die, their departure was regarded as disaster,

"their leaving us like annihilation; but they are at peace.

"If, as it seemed to us, they suffered punishment, their hope was rich with immortality;

"slight was their correction, great will their blessings be. God was putting them to the test and has proved them worthy to be with him;

"he has tested them like gold in a furnace, and accepted them as a perfect burnt offering.

-The Book of Wisdom, Chapter 3, New Jerusalem Catholic Bible

(often attributed to a Hellenistic Jew, of the 1st or 2nd century BC, Alexandria, Egypt)

******

The Song: set against "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928)

"The Messenger," 1999

It is Done: 1928

It is Done: 1999

In the spirit of Jean Anouilh's "The Lark:"
Let Us Honor not only the dying "Bird in Flames" --
but also the soaring "Bird in Flight"

******
Joan of Arc Archive
Was Saint Joan Raped?
Saint Joan's Sexuality
Was Saint Joan Mentally Ill?
A More Thorough Discussion of Joan's Visions
George Bernard Shaw: Saint Joan
Jean Anouilh: The Lark

******

Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc
as she came riding through the dark;
no moon to keep her armour bright,
no man to get her through
this very smoky night.

She said, "I'm tired of the war,
I want the kind of work I had before,
a wedding dress or something white
to wear upon my swollen appetite."

Well, I'm glad to hear you talk this way,
you know I've watched you riding every day
and something in me yearns to win
such a cold and lonesome heroine.

"And who are you?" she sternly spoke
to the one beneath the smoke.

"Why, I'm fire," he replied,
"And I love your solitude, I love your pride."

"Then fire, make your body cold,
I'm going to give you mine to hold,"
saying this she climbed inside
to be his one, to be his only bride.

And deep into his fiery heart
took the dust of Joan of Arc,
and high above the wedding guests
he hung the ashes of her wedding dress.

It was deep into his fiery heart
he took the dust of Joan of Arc,
and then she clearly understood
if he was fire, oh then she must be wood.

I saw her wince, I saw her cry,
I saw the glory in her eye.
Myself I long for love and light,
but must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?

*******

Those Who Came Before

*******

*******

Saint Joan of Arc or The Maid of Orléans (French: Jeanne d'Arc, ca. 1412 – 30 May 1431) is a national heroine of France and a Catholic saint.

A peasant girl born in eastern France, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, claiming divine guidance, and was indirectly responsible for the coronation of Charles VII.

She was captured by the Burgundians, sold to the English, tried by an ecclesiastical court, and burned at the stake when she was nineteen years old.

Twenty-four years later, on the initiative of Charles VII, Pope Callixtus III reviewed the decision of the ecclesiastical court, found her innocent, and declared her a martyr.

She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. She is, along with St. Denis, St. Martin of Tours, St. Louis IX, and St. Theresa of Lisieux, one of the patron saints of France.

Joan asserted that she had visions from God that told her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War.

The uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege at Orléans as part of a relief mission.

She gained prominence when she overcame the dismissive attitude of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. Several more swift victories led to Charles VII's coronation at Reims and settled the disputed succession to the throne.

--From Wikipedia

With thanks to another Joan:
a friend who knows the meaning
of sacrifice

Tipping point: some bridges are not worth taking

2010-07-06T04:56:00.000-07:00

*******

No, folks, it's hardly rocket science.

True, it is not yet "closing time."

Men still chase women. Nations still chase empire.

But the "tipping point" is very near.

*****

It has been an easy assumption that anything is possible.

That "no bridge is too far."

Now is the time to put aside the illusions.

Some bridges, no matter how enticing, just cannot be taken.

*******

We must ask if the American superpower has approached, is approaching, or will approach what the Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz called the "tipping point"

We must ask whether for a well seasoned man, well seasoned women are still worth the trouble of the chase. Everyone has just too much "baggage."

Tipping Point:

When a nation on the military offense reaches the point in its aggressive operations where it is ever more costly to defend its acquisitions.

Or when a well seasoned man decides that new relationships are no longer worth the "lifting of never ending heavy baggage."

Where garrisoning troops, supplying them, defending them drains a nation's power and eventually requires retreat.

As did Napoleon after he sent his forces in to occupy Russia in 1812.

As did Hitler after he attempted to do the same thing in 1941.

As the U.S. did after it attempted to occupy and and shape Vietnam.

Both men and nations must stop to ask "is the objective worth the cost of the chase?"

In their sixties men and women are like firmly potted plants, more like rigid Redwood trunks than like flexible saplings. Preformed by decades of living, they are unlikely to freely dance in a rhythm of fresh romance, of new union.

Yes, there can be friendship and an occasional date.

But no more overseas "wars of occupation."

*******

Now is a magical moment.....

Let's put together President Obama, Carl von Clausewitz, Afghanistan, Iraq, the American Medical Association, healthcare reform...

Let's add to that shrinking credit cards, shrinking credit, unending exploding deficits -- and the prospect of spending one million a year for every additional American soldier sent to Afghanistan.

Remember "Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"

A slogan by Americans who resisted the Vietnam war....

Back when President Lyndon Baines Johnson thought he could have "both guns and butter."

The choice is different today.

"Can we have both guns and doctors?"

As Obama has ramped up his decision on more troops to Afghanistan, scarcely anyone has asked the question:

"What can the United States afford?"

It has been an easy assumption that anything is possible.

That "no bridge is too far."

Now is the time to put aside the illusions.

Take note, 'O Men and Nations.

Some bridges just cannot be taken.

Ah, but maybe it is not quite too late. Maybe just one more...

******

Berkeley: where ignorance and idiocy triumphed

2010-07-04T10:47:00.000-07:00

*****

It was 1964, 1965 -- the "Free Speech Movement" at the University of California, Berkeley.

Long ago -- surrounded by the swirls of Berkeley radicalism -- this writer found the seeds of independent journalism amidst the deafening rhetoric piped out to enraptured crowds.

The lesson I learned:

Do not trust the rhetoric of establishment professors; do not believe the rantings of power seeking radicals, do not let the authoritarian posturing of any kind of ideologue kill the quest for learning.

Rely instead on direct investigation, talking with people of all backgrounds and belief.

Establishments both Left and Right can be cacoons which block out the sunlight and justify the most horrendous atrocities. They can exploit emotion and rhetoric to draw the crowd into a vise of predictable orthodoxy.

And so there was an abysmal slide toward idiocy.

Berkeley's staid Establishment apologized for the savagery of America's war in Vietnam.

While the screaming Left, as it did with Stalin's totalitarianism of the 1930's, surrendered any consistent concern for human rights.

It championed civil rights in the American South, but portrayed the brutality of China's Communism with its millions of death as "paradise on earth."

Idiocy and ignorance triumphed at one of the world's great universities.

There lies a lesson for today.

Bottom feeders: "suckup artists" of the modern world

2010-07-04T10:03:00.000-07:00

******

A "bottom feeder" seeks sustenance from others

One of America's greatest industries is the care and feeding of the "bottom feeder:"

That would be a person with total lack of responsibility for him or herself -- who relies on friends, family, neighbors, social workers, judges, lawyers, or anyone else for sustenance.

A defining characteristic of the bottom feeder: one who makes bad decisions and then expects someone else to bail him or her out.

President Dwight Eisenhower once cited the growing importance of this group when he warned of the "the bottom feeder industrial complex."

Bottom feeders of all races cycle through the prisons and courts, the child custody hearings, divorce courts .

They rely on social services such as Medicaid to treat their unwanted pregnancies, relying on lawyers and judges to sort out the complexities of their lives.

Bottom feeders live off of public indulgence and chew up billions of dollars in social services. They cloak themselves in controversies about spousal abuse and child support

They leech off those who work hard but have real unmet needs. They fuel the practices and line the pockets of lawyers and social workers.

In the end, despite their ability to "work the system," bottom feeders frequently fall victim to both themselves and others.

Matchcom.com: ponying up to the "sticker price"

2010-06-26T04:53:00.000-07:00

******

The ever lonely Hank Williams died too young (1953) to try his luck on the online dating service "Match.com."

But surely he would understand the millions of lonely or bored ones who try their hand in this rollicking way of meeting -- and occasionally even bedding -- the opposite sex.

It was only a matter of time before your intrepid blogger would test the waters.

To see what manner of denizen frequented the dark screens and bright lights of this international institution -- which may be almost as important as CNN.

Subscribers are some 2.8 million according to recent releases.

Match.com can best be understood through "transactional analysis."

The most basic transaction prototype encountered through personal experimentation and the testimony of women met is this:

"Sex for money."

The man, in my age group at least, lists his most valuable items: incomes, profession, homes, travel practices, retirement plans.

These are his "chips in the game."

The woman will list all the things she enjoys (for a man to join in or subsidize).

She will advertise all of her charms -- backed up by photos, protestations of morality or virtue, supplemented by smiling hints that she is still juicy, still sexual.

This constitutes her "sticker price."

His message is "here is what I can give you if you put out."

Her message is "this is what you must give if you want me to put out."

A match can ensue if assets match sticker price.

Sometimes the woman may let the man take her for a trial ride -- with only a partial down payment. Often she must first be convinced the man's assets match her sticker price

Still there are plenty of women on Match who are happy to go for a ride just to enjoy the scenery.

The man's financial assets may be less important if she likes his looks, manner, if he has compensating assets -- and if she knows he knows how to drive.

*****

"The first thing women look for is money, career, and prestige," one female source told me.

"First I look at his picture, then at his income," said another. "I don't bother with anything else."

*****

While this is the most basic dating paradigm, there are others.

There are prosperous, even wealthy women, who do not look to men to fund them. Indeed there are men on Match.com who seek "to land" a well-monied woman.

Many men and women both profess they seek the hallowed, if elusive LTR (long term relationship).

Still many remain on Match.com for years -- dating here and there, finding a revolving door of emails, telephone calls, and perhaps even of mates.

For change and compromise are not male/female strong points (at least at my age.). So the chances of a LTR? Well the proof is in the pudding....

I have found the names of many of the same people on Match.com during this assignment as during preliminary explorations in the last ten years.

For all the talk of LTR, the name of the game is often "serial dating."

*****

It is impossible to understand the nature of Match.com without understanding the dual phenomena of addiction and trolling.

For those who are single and into online dating, there is no substitute for the juicy selection of possible choices Matchcom pushes as good possibilities in daily customized email briefings.

Every day there will be someone new to explore, to fantasize about. And who knows? Tomorrow's may be juicier than today's.

So how much energy should I put into pursuing today's if tomorrow's may be snappier?

And surely it makes sense to be emailing, telephoning, meeting more than one, because that one may be exploring five -- "playing you."

If I put too much energy into one, it is all wasted if she flies off with someone else.

And so we have the "player" phenomenon -- each man or woman hedging his/her bets, courting a half dozen partners at a time. Watching for new possibilities in each morning's Match.com email.

And if there is a real date, not to worry. Don't sweat it. Don't invest too much effort.

One can always go back to one's computer and troll the database for someone new, fresh, better.

So "trolling for fish" is one sub-paradigm for "transactional analysis."

Trolling for Fish

Hungry for Romance

*****

While it is important to understand the fundamental sex for money paradigm, it is also important to remember other dimensions.

During this reporter's undercover investigation, he encountered many decent, very interesting people.

No, not everyone is money hungry riff raff. But truly the riff-raff are sometimes more appealing than the high toned.

One thing this reporter did uncover: money has little to do with "class."

*****

Many, both divorced or widowed, sincerely seek companionship -- although at my age, at least, there is enough baggage to go around.

Indeed in a decade beginning slightly before 9/11 this reporter had three Match.com generated LTR's which inadvertently resulted from earlier reporting assignments. And also had, of course, many interesting -- if platonic -- dates.

It is important to remember that a LTR going beyond short term sex also involves the matching of sticker price with buyer assets. It will most likely be much more than financial -- involving a broader satisfaction of mutual human needs.

*****

Yes, many classy and decent people do join this hi-tech "meat market."

Most are in it not to give (I already gave in a previous marriage at the office!), but to receive, to have their needs met.

Some honesty and frankly embrace the sex for money paradigm. Others live by it but seem in "denial."

Some are seeking more -- but will settle for less. Some get less than they bargained for.

Many seem in a state of high confusion -- and seem not to know what they want.

God, what's it all about?

And if the meat market miracle does not happen at once, it's out again by boat, to troll upon the high seas!!!!!

Even when in bed, it's a good idea to keep your boots on, mate.

More trolling may be ahead.

*****

Haiti quake: a wakeup call for a new "war" ahead

2010-06-19T06:33:00.000-07:00

******

Haiti: Fighting a "New Kind of War"

****

"A picture of life's other side" includes the dark futility of much rescue effort in Haiti.

Maximum outpouring of international concern, but slow access to the trapped, wounded, homeless, and hungry.

Against a "deadline" after which hundreds, even thousands, of those trapped will be dead.

The dark picture also contains a compelling wake up call: to step up prediction and contingency planning for a new form of "war" which may lie ahead.

*****

Despite all the international attention, very little in the way of medical aid and rescue assistance made its way to those in need during the window of opportunity during which entrapped survivors were still alive.

And then thousands who could not be reached quickly were dead.

Looking Backwards: What Happens Without Planning

****

As bottlenecks opened, aid workers and thousands of U.S. soldiers poured in to help sustain those who survived.

An exercise in futility?

Hardly, for the money collected and the attention aroused could be used for future long term recovery -- after the dead are buried.

After the failure to save those who could not be quickly reached comes the second major challenge: to maintain interest, commitment, and co-ordination for long term recovery.

*****

And the broader challenge: to step up prediction and contingency planning for a new form of "war" which may lie ahead.

Looking Ahead: One Guide to Choice

Stepped up international planning will be necessary to meet fresh emergencies.

From unpredictable weather, earthquakes, climate change, and a rise of ocean water levels which may threaten coastal settlement in both poor and rich parts of the world.

There is a need to learn from Haiti, to improve precautions against bottlenecks, methods of co-ordinating aid, establishing security, getting medical teams in fast.

Haiti may be an extreme case but the challenges it presents will occur again and again.

Coastal Flooding: Waves of the Future?

Climate Change: To Mitigate and Adapt

It matters little whether climate change is "man made."

To one degree or another we can expect the consequences will be there.

In some cases there will be sudden catastrophes.

In some cases gradually developing, more manageable problems.

But stepped up international planning and co-ordination will be necessary to minimize bottlenecks, confusion, rivalry.

As we push forward ahead, let us learn from Haiti.

New forms of "war" lie ahead.

Needed: a "rolling reassessment" to bring 'em home

2010-06-16T05:57:00.000-07:00

*****

So Hank, it's time to shift "Left" a bit.

Redeploy, bring 'em home.

It's time for a major, major strategic reappraisal.

As the "fog of war" swirls around the long term impact of the oily invasion of the Gulf Coast, a reduction of the American military presence in Afghanistan is essential for this nation's security.

We must cease living in a fantasy land. Those who seek to fly too high will have their waxen feathers melted by the sun.

Yes, but how to do this -- without plunging the region into chaos, without creating new sanctuaries for terrorists?

For that we need a "rolling reassessment."

That will not be easy.

But ways must be found to reduce the American military "footprint" in Afghanistan, support local and regional accommodations among competing warlords, even to support competing factions from a distance. The Taliban could win complete control, but there may be other outcomes.

Above all to focus American goals on the demolition of Al-Qaeda base areas.

Mr. President, you are not so good at waging war....so focus on the vital ones.....

The Gulf oil spill has the potential of doing as much long term damage to te economy of parts of this country as Al-Qaeda. That is only one challenge facing the US.

You have no choice but to win this new "Battle of New Orleans" -- and many others.

Learn from the Soviet experience in Afghanistan....Bring 'em home.

*****

Back to Basics: with the U.S. bogged down in Iraq, Afghanistan, and an oil slickened Gulf, it important to remember the thousands of young soldiers and their mothers whose lives are caught up in the tribal flames of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Over extension can be the Achilles heel of great nations.

Obama must exercise leadership to protect many more from a lifetime of pain.

Now it is time to win this new "Battle of New Orleans."

Scarlett Tide

"When the Crater Meets Afghanistan"
Obama's War: to Lift the Fog or Tap the Passions
The way Ahead: Does Obama Need a Bit of Clint Eastwood

We Are All Soldiers: Honoring the Miracle of Survival
Obama's Sophie's Choice: a Blind Media
"Tipping Point:" guns or doctors? China watches
What Will We See When the "Fog of War" Clears?
Obama's New Policy: Senator Kerry's Speech
Obama's Great Grim Gamble: He Holds a Weak Hand
A Digital View of Afghanistan: Obama and a Hybrid Strategy
Rudyard Kipling Warns President Obama
Will Obama Follow Lord Roberts Advice: Get in Fast, Withdraw
Pick off an Occupying Army: Updating an Old Story
Following Alexander the Great to Afghanistan
Should Prez Obama Take Advice From a Russian
Left, Right, Join In: Ring the Bell on "Obama's War"
US in Afghanistan: Bearing Gifts to Other Nations
America and China: Circling the Afghan Carcass with a Bamboo Curtain Dead
"The Kiterunner" as a Guide to Afghanistan

******

A lesson in Geriatrics 101

2010-04-08T04:37:00.000-07:00

******

Riding Toward a Lynching
on a Southbound Train

Barring last minute revelations, illness, or death I will NOT be moving from New Bern, North Carolina to Huntsville, Alabama -- to be closer to my daughter Kara.

Sorry, Hank, I will not be joining you in your native 'Bama.

It is important to stay independent while still alive -- to have plenty of fun and games in North Carolina.

So I will just have to enjoy from a distance that musical genius Hank Williams, poet of the heart, master of the Honky Tonk.

Waylon Jennings; Hank Williams, Jr.:
"The Conversation"

Hank William as inspiration to Waylon Jennings.

(With whom I have a certain kinship since I once dated his former girl friend, a former bartender then on public assistance, a part native American, former Hippy whose husband was eaten in Somoa by a shark) .

With this well seasoned lady, I traveled to Petersburg, Virginia -- to complete the research for: "Lessons From the Crater: the Road to Cold Mountain."

As I say, dating can be fun.

Miranda James at the entrance to the Petersburg, Virgina
tunnel used to plant the horrendous explosion
at "The Crater," July 1864

The author: amidst ghosts of the past

"The Crater" blows

Are You Sure Hank Done It This A Way?

Hank, thin as a rail, suffering from the lonely pain of lifelong spinal bifida, until his death at 29.

Under appreciated in the North - a cultural giant of my times.

Saint? Northern Liberal?

No. Just a creative soul up from grim poverty in the shadow of the Great Depression and World War II.

So now in North Carolina it's time to party.

Bring on the Honky Tonk.

It's the only way to die.

And yes:

"Hank would have done it this a way."

Hank Williams: a modern touch

"I'm Alabama Bound"--
but still living in North Carolina

A time for keeping alive Easter day anger

2010-04-04T12:51:00.000-07:00

*****

The Wreck on the Highway

A week ago a most comely 24 year old uninsured waitress/student careened through a redlight and took out my Hyundai Tucscon.

She managed to knock out $5100 worth of damages on the most expensive, least vital front left area of fender, light, bumper, and engine hood.

She was lovely to talk with -- a shapely sight to appreciatively behold -- and kind enough to leave me uninjured.

Fortunately I have insurance for uninsured motorists.

No sweat -- when you consider the below, this "picture of life's other side."

*****

Easter Day in the Waffle House -- where I do much of my reporting -- there sits next to me a greying 51 year old man with his ten year old grandson.

"If I catch that damn woman on my block speeding again, I'll run her right off the road into a ditch," he says, his voice rising with anger.

"I've called the police chief...If he doesn't take care of her, I'll watch for her speeding and run her off the road."

My Waffle House neighbor repairs transmissions for a living.

His 30 year old daugher lives with him, with her ten year old son.

"Are you married?" I ask him.

"My wife has been death three years," he replies.

"It took her three months to die as a quadraplegic," he continues, with growing anger.

*****

"This is all I have -- my daughter and my grandson."

"A speeding car rammed my wife's car...Our grandson was riding in the car with her. She steered to dodge so she was hit instead of our grandson. She gave her life to save him."

"I don't want nothing to happen to that boy," he adds.

"If I catch that damn woman on my block speeding again, I'll run her right off the road into a ditch," he says once more -- his voice careening with anger.

"Sure I speed up to 75, sometimes more -- but I always look both ways. I know what I'm doing."

No, the speeder on his block is not the one who killed his wife.

Does it matter?

That's "a picture of life's other side."

The Crash on the Highway

Last night I had the strangest dream.....

2010-03-24T04:18:00.000-07:00

The kindest mother to heal that dream is for the world a "Dancing Queen." Beauty is the enemy of sorrow.

****

It was the middle of the night.......

And the rain was falling.......

Four bodies lay in the mud....

And I who was never in the military was in command.

The young soldier came to me...puzzled.

"I don't understand," he said.

"Was the man I killed a soldier -- or a civilian?"

We walked over to examine the body -- half buried in the mud.

The flapless pistol holster on the dead was not military issue.

We could feel the rain come down.

The dead man's faceless face was covered with mud.

"Did I do the right thing?" asked the trembling young soldier. "Who was he?"

I had no answer...

The young man looked up at me -- with a touch of fear.

He was shaking -- and held himself from breaking down.

"I guess war is doing what you don't want to do," he said.

He then walked out of my bedroom and left through the dining room door.

I was alone with the rain and mud -- and receeding images of the dead...

So I thought of a woman I care about.

And rose to write this blog.

Later I found the U Tube segment on the World War II vet above.

And, yes, the kindest mother in that dream is for the world a "Dancing Queen."

And beauty is the enemy of sorrow

****

Hank sure would have had him a chuckle

2010-03-07T19:39:00.000-08:00

*****

Asks Hank:

"Whatever got into Lyle Lovett?
And Cohen, what's he on?"

Lah, Lah, Lah, the times are different now. Everyone's a dancing.

Singing the memory of those who died too young.

2010-02-19T07:10:00.000-08:00

****

Hank was dead -- long before a talented Texas songwriter, Townes Van Zandt, brought a mixture of celebration and tragedy to our ears.

Townes, like Hank, died young.

But left many songs behind.

There is a season for those who die too young -- and leave the riches of their lives for others to enjoy...

They need not be saints to leave behind the treasures of their hearts.

Hank, meet Townes...I am sure you already know each other.

May you both S.I.P. ("Sing In Peace").

****

Both songs written by Townes Van Zandt

Valentines Day: children and poetry: a labor of love

2010-02-14T11:14:00.000-08:00

****

Ah, Scotland's Robert Burns, who borrows this blog on Valentine's day, 2010, was known for spreading his love widely.

Despite his best efforts as a lover, he produced even more writings than children.

Both were labors of love.

It is fitting that on this Valentine's Day the very amorous and very active "Rabbie" Burns should borrow this blog from lonely "crying in his beer" Hank Williams.

As "Rabbie" well knew, there was nothing sad about time spent with the "lassies, O."

*****

Still, Hank Williams takes no back seat to an Eighteenth Century philanderer when it comes to compassionate love from the heart.

China, US: both hit by fast movin' trains

2010-02-09T04:10:00.001-08:00

*****

****

As China pulls ahead with its fast moving trains, Americans ponder whether Sarah Palin scribbles notes on her lovely hands.

Could it be that Sarah Palin is a fast movin' train?

****

We all know what Sarah Palin can do to a crowd.

Let's take a look at another "picture from life's other side" to see a bit about what fast trains can do for some Chinese:

TIPS for the US?
all aboard the
GUANGZHOU-WUHAN EXPRESS

"Once the speed gauge hits 350 kilometers per hour, or 217 miles per hour, passengers charge down the aisle to photograph the electronic display.

"'If we go any faster, we'll take off!' jokes Hu Qing, cracking open another can of beer on China's world-record-breaking train.

"The Dec. 26 opening of the high-speed link between south Chinese cities Guangzhou and Wuhan is the latest example of massive state spending to keep China's economy roaring.

"The fast-expanding network of high-speed trains is stoking patriotism, too."

If I don't go tommorrow, you know I'm gone today

2010-02-03T18:24:00.001-08:00

*****

Riding the train back, Babe,
back to another time

*****

Riding toward a lynching on a southbound train

2010-02-02T05:50:00.001-08:00

*****

The Scottsboro trial opens: April 1931

Riding the 'Bama train

****
In honor of my father, Arthur M. Moritz (1897-1991),
a German-Jewish New York lawyer, a "WWI socialist"
who made it a point to sit in the "colored section"
when riding southern railroads

"Let justice be done
though the heavens may fall"
--Judge James E. Horton

****

Railroads have carried America from past to future.

Sometimes through the darkest tunnels of life.

It was on the southbound Alabama freight train from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Huntsville, Alabama that it all began -- the attempted 1931 legal lynching of the nine "Scottsboro Boys."

A series of trials which became a foundation of the modern civil rights movement.

A dark, dark time when both impoverished blacks and whites were pawns in the battle between southern racists and northern Marxists.

It took twenty more years before the black civil rights movement could break free from dependence on northern benefactors -- and chart its own course in a "new South."

****

Let us go back to a time when nine black "boys" aged 13 to 19 were accused of raping two white women on a slow freight from Tennessee to Alabama.

The prosecution sought the electric chair.

Nine black "hoboes" accused of volating the most sacred southern taboo: black men raping white women.

A seedy, tabloidy, tawdry case about race, sex, and lynching.

About teenage "hoboes" -- workers and prostitutes -- black, white, men, and women.

Smudged in soot, dirty with hunger, "riding the rails" in gravel filled cars, in search of work in depression stricken America.

Fighting (and fornicating?) aboard a slow moving freight.

A case which underlined the age-old truth:

"If you treat people like animals, they may behave that way."

Lest we forget, lest we forget: the fruits of past savagery die a slow, slow death.

Moscow's Joseph Stalin: courting
American blacks

A case about how the poor and lowly of both races were used, abused, and exploited for many a purpose.

A case that drew local, national, and international attention.

Where southern politicians sought political hay -- while Joseph Stalin's American and Russian Marxists used the trials to recruit black and whites toward revolution.

(See an extensive online research project on the "Scottsboro Boys," part of the "Famous American Trials Series," by the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. Examine primary resources from the PBS documentary: "An American Tragedy: the Scottsboro Boys.")

****

This, then, was the trial of the "Scottsboro Boys."

While the defendants escaped the death penalty, they spent years in brutal Alabama prisons -- caged like animals who must embrace savagery to survive.

Nine black defendents were humiliated pawns in a battle between southern white mobs and northern left-wing white activists -- whose support kept them alive.

Indeed the trials of the "Scottsboro Boys" tells as much about whites as about blacks.

About the darkest days of hatred and poverty in Depression era America. When life was cheap and brutality accepted as business as usual.

The trial of the "Scottsboro Boys" demonstrated how legalized "terror" against blacks was sometimes used to maintain order just seventy years after the Civil War.

How the humiliations of impoverished whites could be exploited by politicians and activists of many stripes.

It also illustrated that "white institutions" such as the U.S. Supreme Court were beginning to stir in a way which would ultimately advance civil rights.

It took two more decades for southern blacks to proudly launch and lead their own movement.

Rosa Parks and others, including Martin Luther King, began a self-sustained Afro-American protest campaign with the 1954 Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott.

The Scottsboro case had as one of its many lessons: it was as important for the civil rights movement to be free from the northern white Left as from the southern racist Right.

****

So what did 'Bama born Hank Williams think of the "Scottsboro Boys?"

Hard to say. He was only ten.

"The midnight train is whining low,
I'm so lonesome I could cry.
I've never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by.
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry. "

Times have changed since 1931 -- and so have trains.

From eighty years ago, when the modern American civil rights movement began with the trial of the "Scottsboro Boys."

Tracking a train
(Click to enlarge)

Hoboes were men and women of both races who rode freight trains in search of scarce work.

The tradition went back to at least the early 1900's.

Thousands of black and white teenagers took to the rails during the Great Depression from 1929 to 1939.

(For more detailed accounts, see Teenage Hoboes in the Great Depression)

****

Nine "Negro boys," ages 12 to 19, were the hoboes on trial for their lives.

On charges of raping two poor white homeless women mill workers, also hoboes, on a freight train from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Huntsville, Alabama.

A posse of some 50 armed whites first arrested the "Negroes" at the rail line near Paint Rock, Alabama -- after complaints the blacks had kicked a group of white hoboes off the train.

Rape charges followed -- after two women were found on the train.

A national spotlight descended on southern poverty, lynch mob mentality, and the rough mannered ways of the unlady-like alleged victims.

The two "victims" were variously described as impoverished homeless job seeking mill workers -- or prostitutes plying their trade to "Negro" men.

Most likely they were both.

These apparently were not "Scarlett O'hara's" embodying the finest virtues of the "Confederate Woman."

They were tough women, seasoned to survive.

Were they raped? Medical testimony cast doubt on the claim.

One of them, Ruby Bates, withdrew her charges -- and ended up demonstrating with the mothers of the defendants -- and "leading" a protest group to the gates of the White House.

Bates moved into a new life in the employ of left-wing labor groups in the North.

See a chronology of the case.

See an extensive Wikipedia essay on the case.

Hoboes ride the freight in search of work

And then there was the controversy of a rising American Communist Party taking on the civil rights cause.

Under the instruction of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet dominated international Comintern, American communists targeted black Americans as a separate nationality which could be mobilized for political action.

The communist dominated International Labor Defense (ILD) edged out the National Association of Coloured People (NAACP), which favored a more legalistic Scottsboro defense.

Scottsboro was for the communists test of whether large numbers of American blacks could be mobilized for communist purposes by defending blacks under attack.

Song by Jewish New York high school teacher,
communist Abel Meerpol

Then there were those liberal New York Jews and liberal New York Protestant clergymen -- "outside agitators" inserting themselves into the affairs of the unwelcoming South.

Many were deeply committed, horrified by the brutality they saw in the widespread lynchings of their day.

For some American Jews lynchings were painful reminders of anti-Jewish pograms back in Europe.

For some the promise of a new society in Soviet Russia seemed preferable to the cruelties they saw in their own country.

Others were locked in competition with the communists to lead social movements of their day.

In 1934 Stalin adopted his "united front" -- and left behind the "ultra-left" approach.

American communists were urged to tone down their activities in favor of co-operation with President Roosevelt against the growing threat of Nazi fascism.

Still, during the many trials of the "Scottsboro Boys," Jews, New Yorkers, and communists were like "oil and water" in the "Old South."

Alabama authorities were committed to convict "Negro" defendants. But they worked hard to prevent embarassing lynchings or assassinations of outsiders intervening in behalf of the "Scottsboro Boys."

See biographies of key figures.

Download in .pdf file an indepth study in the Dartmouth Law Review on the role of Judge James E. Horton in overturning the second conviction and death sentence of Hayward Patterson.

For defenders of the "Scottsboro Boys," Judge Horton emerged as a hero of the cases. See a dramatic and detailed profile.

*****

Hayward Patterson: arrested at age 18;
in jail until his death of cancer in 1952
at age 39

"Let justice be done
though the heavens may fall"
--Judge James E. Horton

"His decision made me feel good.
I saw that there could be white folks
in the South with the right mind.”
--Hayward Patterson

****

Numerous trial verdicts rejected the death penalty.

With historic precedents, the U.S. Supreme intervened to overrule some verdicts on grounds defendants were deprived of legal counsel and tried by juries from which blacks had been excluded.

Still eight of the nine defendents served six to 19 years in prison.

In 1976 Governor George Wallace pardoned Clarence Norris, the last of the defendents still subject to Alabama law.

Norris, the last surviving "Scottsboro Boy," died in New York City in 1989 at age 76.

Victoria Price, 21, and Ruby Bates, 17, in 1931:
both homeless "mill girls" from Huntsville.
Detractors said they were prostitutes

*****

During the early trials the American Communist Party had largely taken over the defense.

It hired the prominent non-communist New York Jewish defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz to take on the sexual emotions of Southern racism.

Defendents with
defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz

Ruby Bates, one of the two alleged victims often described as prostitutes, rallied to the defense side under the influence of famed New York liberal clergyman Harry Emerson Fosdick.

She said rapes never took place.

Ruby Bates, turncoat
"reborn" in New York "finery "

Victoria Price: stuck to her story

A book brought it all back in 1970.

This healing shock which remembered the primitiveness of recent America was Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South, by historian Dan T. Carter.

A book reawakened the past

And now in the sleepy town of Scottsboro a new generation of citizens, politicians and activists raises money for a museum honoring this tragedy of the "Old South."

It is a case which darkened America -- but opened the door for the sunlight of a revitalized South.

In Scottsboro a new kind of train pulls into the station.

A new museum will honor the memory
of the "Scottsboro Boys"

A bumpy ride, a steady landing into
modern Scottsboro, Alabama --
crossing the Tennessee River

The train is no longer the main way in.

How would Hank have "done it" at Port Arthur?

2010-01-31T18:23:00.000-08:00

*****

Japan and Russia do battle at Port Arthur, 1904

****

Lushun today (Port Arthur) today showing
Chinese naval vessels at anchor

Would Hank have "done it" this a way?

*****

It's a fair guess that Hank Williams -- traveling musician though he was -- never made it to the city of Dalian in Northeast China.

Could this Honky Tonk singing preacher known as "Luke the Drifter" have made head or tails of the convulsions this part of China has lived through in the last century?

Some Honky Tonk preaching

What music would he have written if he experienced these sights and sounds?

Surely he would return home with "a picture of life's other side."

Damn, Hank would have enjoyed today's night clubs.

Hank would have enjoyed Honky Tonk China

*****

It was different when the Japanese took Dalian from China in 1895.

Japan was then forced to give Dalian and Port Arthur to Russia in 1898.

But Japan seized the area back during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904.

And held onto it pretty much until 1945 when the Russians took it back following World War II.

And finally returned it to China in 1954.

****

Forty miles south of Dalian is the naval base of Lushun, once known as Port Arthur.

At night the screaming ghosts of Chinese civilians massacred by Japanese troops in the Sino-Japanese war of 1895 can still be heard.

Reporting on "a tale of darkest massacre" was Canadian/American journalist James Creelman -- writing for Pulitzer's "yellow" New York World.

His eyewitness account of Japanese soldiers shooting and sabering some two thousand Chinese civilians shocked the world.

Creelman blew open Japan's retreat into sadistic barbarism -- a barbarism which was to reemerge in World War II.

This writer has described Creelman as "the father" of modern human rights reporting.

James Creelman

*****

Japan at first denied the atrocities -- but later admitted them and apologized for them to James Creelman's boss, Joseph Pulitzer.

In 1904 Japan foreshadowed its attack on Pearl Harbor by beginning its war against Russia with a surprise attack at Port Arthur -- finally winning the naval battle of that name.

The carnage at sea was hardly enough.

Japanese troops charging up at Russian land fortifications at Port Arthur have had their suicidal assault immortalized in a 1980 Japanese film.

****

Russo--Japanese War Memorial at Port Arthur

Today all is peaceful.

Hank relaxes in a hotel, visits an airport, rides a bus and enjoys the beauty of China's scenery.

Let's hear it for "two pictures of life's other side"

2010-01-29T16:56:00.000-08:00

*****

Yeppers!!

Here we have two pictures -- from two of life's diametrically opposite "other sides."

For Americans freedom of expression on the internet is a given.

Throw the gates wide open -- oops, except for child predators, violent pornography, patent infringement, fraud, and theft.

Here is the historic Hillary Clinton speech:

It proclaims freedom of the internet to be a universal value transcending national sovereignty.

Firmly in the American tradition of viewing this country as the bearer of a universal mission to be spread around the world.

As China and Russia once sought to export Marxism, so the Americans have long agressively pushed their value system.

Around the world it is a popular one -- but not without critics.

*****

For China and other authoritarian regimes, hey, not so fast.

Let's not let this technology be an out of control high speed highway for subversion, and anti-social activities.

Let alone for treasonous movements aimed at splitting up the country, polluting the moral spirit, undermining discipline, promoting individualistic selfishness, and slowing economic growth.

Let's build a "firewall."

But "we Chinese" still want the internet to help connect us to a global world of information and commerce on which our economic power depends.

Ah, perhaps both sides wish to have their apples -- and eat them too.

And here is the Chinese version of events:

Truly "A Picture From Life's Other Side."

When a heroic reporter becomes "part of the story"

2010-01-16T13:50:00.001-08:00

****

It is truly "a picture from life's other side" when things are so grim that a reporter must abandon his professional duties and tackle the things others are responsible for doing.

Then we must ask: has the journalist been led astray from doing his true job?

It is sometimes said, almost scathingly, that such a journalist "has become part of the story."

Or has he/she simply stepped up to a higher level of involvement -- the level of "hero?"

In an age where, as always, journalism is sullied by greed, propaganda, and superficial hype it is well to re-remember those stellar occasions when reporters rise to the challenge.

When they grab onto a story --and never, never let go.

A journalist is about as perfect as a cop -- but occasionally just as heroic.

*****

****

So when is it appropriate for the media to become part of the story?

To move beyond simply watching and reporting to stepping in actively to participate?

Three preconditions:

1) When lives are at stake.

2) When there is no one else around willing or able to step in.

3) When abandoning all pretense of detachment and objective produces an "even better story."

And that is what happened with CNN's medical reporter, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

When on January 15 a Belgian relief group ordered its medical team withdrawn for security reasons from a temporary hospital set up in earthquake stricken Haiti.

All three pre-conditions were met.

Dr. Gupta remained all through the night in the makeshift hospital, tending to the injured, caring for the sick and post operative patients the doctors had abandoned.

****

An Overview of Situation by Dr. Sanjay Gupta

Even a stagecoach robber specializes when retraining

2010-01-14T13:40:00.000-08:00

****

There comes a time for professional retraining -- even if you have had proud career robbing stagecoaches.

How about train robbing?

Learning a New Trade: Train Robbing

The Action: Different When Older

The Song

The Real Bill Miner

The Movie

The Romance

*****

From a "viewer/reviewer" -- not me.

"This really is a masterpiece of film -- and, unfortunately, largely unknown to the greater film-watching public in the United States.

"It is beautiful to watch, to listen to (with its soundtrack including both original work by award-winning composer Michael Conway Baker, of Canada, and the Chieftains) -- and to examine as a chronicle of the period that concluded the Wild West's grasp on the 19th Century and its reach for the 20th.

"  Bill Miner, the 'Gentleman Bandit,' was a historical figure whose long prison term for stagecoach robbery left him entirely unprepared (vocationally) for his release back into society -- a society that was now devoid of stagecoaches, and beginning to discover the wonders of motorcars and moving pictures.  

"The 29-year-old director, Phillip Borsos (1953-1995), made this film tribute to the last outlaw of the Wild West and to the region that he lived in.

"While others might have gone heavy-handed and clichéd in such a production, Borsos' eye and ear both figure significantly in the film's direction, and its numerous examples of originality:  

* A senior citizen star (the late Richard Farnsworth --whose Hollywood career had started as a stuntman, in Westerns -- playing Bill Miner as a thoughtful and kind gentleman) who even gets to look hunky;

  * A respectful treatment of an early 20th Century feminist (played by Jackie Burroughs);

  * Cinematography that highlights the beauty of the Pacific Northwest, rather than some anonymous California desert;  

* A soundtrack that ISN'T Coplandesque (or Morriconesque);  

* A 'cowboy picture' where the hero gets the girl, but doesn't get vulgar or trite or even testosterone-driven; AND

  * An accurate look at the turn-of-the-century a hundred years ago in a landscape that hasn't entirely disappeared. Yet.  

"I have hummed the music from its tuneful soundtrack since the first time I saw it in its initial U.S. theatrical release, and have wanted to visit Kamloops, BC, ever since.

"If you can stand movies without gratuitous pyrotechnics or violence, don't let another day go by without checking out this film classic."

*****

Covering the Bill Miner Story

Bombs in underpants? time to watch your backside

2010-01-06T15:43:00.000-08:00

*****

What next can we expect when we fly the friendly skies?

Unpredictability is the name of the game -- whether you are man, woman, or beast.

"Be Prepared," as the Boy Scouts say.

*****

We must all watch our backsides to protect ourselves from attack.

(For a more frivolous treatment of these issues see Frederic A. Moritz, Predicting Unexpected Attack: Is It Negligence or an Impossible Task?)

New Year's Eve: poverty is alive and well in America

2010-01-04T08:15:00.001-08:00

******

"A Picture From Life's Other Side."

New Year's Eve in Huntsville, Alabama.

Poverty is alive and well in America.

My travels this Christmas season through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama suggest this song -- written by the late Townes Van Zandt -- is a reasonably accurate portrait of our current economy.

For the poor there is perennial economic depression with a constant danger of layoff.

I have met many of these brave "Carolines" -- and known them -- though only in a distant, non-carnal way.

They often bottle sadness in a smile -- but sometimes there can be no smile when times are tough.

******

Flying friendlier skies: the nude option

2009-12-29T18:18:00.001-08:00

******

A new way to speed the line

******

My Washington contacts in the Obama Administration indicate that when it comes to your flying safety and convenience, current brainstorming is definitely "outside of the box."

The "roll out date" is uncertain -- given the political delicacies involved.

However, the promotion code for the new policy is already set: "LCMS" for "less clothes; more security."

Here is the current thinking:

Fliers will be given a choice.

Those who choose the "nude option" will, after disrobing, be scooted through security at a breathless pace.

They will quickly take their places on plane seats where they will be covered only by transparent "blankets."

This will allow crew and other passengers to maintain constant surveillance for anything suspicious in bare passenger behavior.

At the first sign of suspicious action both passengers and crew will be positioned for an instinctual preemptive lunge.

All those choosing the nudist option will be required to sign a good behavior pledge assuring that prudent -- not prurient -- surveillance of other passengers will be motivated purely by security concerns.

*****

Those of a more prudish, less nudist nature will suffer the consequences.

Far more waiting, far more delay.

Those who reject the nude option will face an exercise in "behavior modification" -- an alternative to the "nudist track." See below:

An alternative to the "nude track"

******

Thorough, full body pat downs by security personnel in hopes that more and more of the folks who find this disconcerting will be induced to choose the less touchy-feely option: a quick dash through security in the nude.

Those who enjoy the full body pat down may, of course, suffer a more pleasant flying experience.

Administration officials are aware this could all backfire -- if too many travelers find this security massage so relaxing that many, many choose the slower pat down option over the faster full nude flight mode.

*****

Checking with care

*****

A "flier in the ointment" is how to handle the crucial lavatory challenge.

How to prevent these largely unsupervised solitary episodes from becoming nightmare havens for inflammatory action by would be saboteurs.

*****

Portable potties in history

One option, still in the "brainstorming phase," is to replace passenger lavatory visits with traveling portable potties rolled down the aisles by "hospitality workers" summoned on passenger demand.

This bares thinking.

Life on the other side: the "Soggy Mountain Boys"

2009-12-16T20:06:00.001-08:00

******

"A Picture of Life's Other Side" is nicely brought to life by the movie "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?"

These videos tell it all.

As the World Turns: say "bye bye" to being on top?

2009-12-16T05:27:00.000-08:00

*****

Is American world dominance a thing of the past?

Is the Obama Administration's aggressive forward strategy to stabilize and reshape Afghanistan a glamorous, quick flashing cover for an over extension, then a lessening of American power?

Will China match or even win over American power?

Anyone can have an opinion.

Let's hear one.

Geopolitical strategist Parag Khanna suggests that three centers of competing but cooperating power are emerging.

His argument emerges in his volume The Second World: How Emerging Powers Are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-first Century, Random House, February, 2009

Read Khanna's provocative views directly in this New York Times article, "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony," March 6, 2008.

Here is how Publisher's Weekly summarizes his thinking:

Khanna, a widely recognized expert on global politics, offers a study of the 21st century's emerging geopolitical marketplace dominated by three first world superpowers, the U.S., Europe and China.

Each competes to lead the new century, pursuing that goal in the third world: select eastern European countries, east and central Asia, the Middle East Latin America, and North Africa.

The U.S. offers military protection and aid.

Europe offers deep reform and economic association.

China offers full-service, condition-free relationships.

Each can be appealing; none has obvious advantages.

The key to Khanna's analysis, however, is his depiction of a second world: countries in transition.

They range in size and population from heavily peopled states like Brazil and Indonesia to smaller ones such as Malaysia.

Khanna interprets the coming years as being shaped by the race to win the second world—and in the case of the U.S., to avoid becoming a second-world country itself.

The final pages of his book warn eloquently of the risks of imperial overstretch combined with declining economic dominance and deteriorating quality of life.

******

And here is how The New York Times Book Review puts it:

"No shots will be fired. Instead the three imperial rivals will woo and coerce, relying on distinct styles.

The United States offers military protection, along with the promise of democracy and human rights.

The European Union dangles the prospect of membership in, or affiliation with, the world’s most successful economic club, provided that applicants undertake specific reforms.

China talks trade, investment and infrastructure projects, with no annoying demands for political reform in its would-be client states.

“To a large extent, the future of the second world hinges on how it relates to the three superpowers,” Mr. Khanna writes, “and the future of the superpowers depends on how they manage the second world.”

Yes, "size can matter" in the search for hegemony

2009-12-12T06:18:00.001-08:00

Keeping things in perspective....

*****

When reporting "a picture of life's other side," some topics can be more senstive than others.

One of them is size.

We all know of the perennial debate -- raging from the bedroom, to the water cooler, to the therapist counch, to the talk show, to the battlefield: "Does Size Matter?"

Please don't dismiss this as just "girl talk."

*****

Size has been raised by President Barak Obama -- during his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize at Oslo, Norway, December 10. 2009.

He most delicately addressed the issues of what your benefits and obligations are when you are really big -- the world's only military superpower.

It has become increasingly clear that although Obama talks of early withdrawal from Afghanistan, his great power policy seeks American hegemony in the Afghanistan area -- to a far greater degree than did President Bush.

Do military superpowers really have more fun?

Or do they just get all tied up in knots?

*****

Men and women have been caught up in these discussions for centuries.

How big is "big enough?" How big is "too big?"

Can "too big" make you the "odd man out?"

Can "too small" leave you rejected, laughed at?

Can "too big" win you enemies by making you vulnerable to a kind of "big penis jealousy?"

(All of these questions assume you are a man. If you are a woman, please translate to match your gender).

Some therapists will advise you that a good way to answer these questions is "to talk to your partner."

*****

Fortunately satirist, writer and clergyman, Jonathan Swift has symbolically dealt with these questions in his "Gulliver's Travels," 1726.

In this classic, size proved a double-edged sword.

Let Wikipedia tell the story.

*****

On his first voyage, Gulliver is washed ashore after a shipwreck and awakes to find himself a prisoner of a race of people one-twelfth the size of normal human beings (6 inches/15 cm tall), who are inhabitants of the neighbouring and rival countries of Lilliput and Blefuscu.

After giving assurances of his good behaviour, he is given a residence in Lilliput and becomes a favourite of the court.

Gulliver assists the Lilliputians to subdue their neighbours the Blefuscudians (by stealing their fleet).

However, he refuses to reduce the country to a province of Lilliput, displeasing the King and the court. Gulliver is charged with treason and sentenced to be blinded.

With the assistance of a kind friend, Gulliver escapes to Blefuscu, where he spots and retrieves an abandoned boat and sails out to be rescued by a passing ship which safely takes him back home.

*****

A global intellectual analysis with

analytical detachment

*****

Today, too, size can be a double-edged sword.

As the world's sole superpower, the U.S. can feel obliged, pressured, entitled to roam the world to subdue its enemies.

But even when they are small, they can sometimes tie one down.

And the bigger you are, the easier it can be for them to find some way to bind you down.

So how to break free?

To make size once again an asset which wins you friends and gives others enjoyment?

Remember, the biggest guy doesn't always win.

The bigger the guy, the harder he can fall

*****

One answer is to use a big head -- to think things through.

For size unguided can backfire.

There is nothing like using one's intelligence.

Time to date again -- in Afghanistan?

2009-12-10T04:55:00.000-08:00

"They got some pretty little women there...and I'm a gonna' get me one."

It's a sentiment easy to understand -- especially if you like women in body armor.

Not all of these helicopter pilots
are in standard body armor

Let's remember all is not dark in "A Picture From Life's Other Side."

So if you are tired of trying your luck on "E-harmony" and "Matchcom," why not try something a bit more earthy -- or shall we say "sandy?"

Try your luck in playing your hand in the "Great Game" -- where great powers and small chieftains have wrestled with caravans, tanks, and humvees for centuries.

Today many who play in the "Great Game" are women.

******

Well, there may not be that many ready and available...and, yes, I am a bit senior for those out there in civilian or military capacity.

Let's face it, a growing number of American and European women serve in the military -- and in civilian Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT).

(Not to be confused with PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is something some combat people bring home with them from Afghanistan).

In Afghanistan there are women to meet

U.S. women Marines
engage Afghan women

Let's remember there are exciting jobs available out there in Afghanistan -- as the U.S. seeks to mediate, administer and protect local development.

Men and women of an adventurous nature have ahead of them exciting and challenging cultural and professional experiences which will enrich them for the rest of their lives.

And the money isn't bad.

Just keep nearby the helmet and the body armor.

Indeed the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are currently advertising for new recruits for temporary positions at $70,000 to $155,000 a year.

Check this USAID page for more detail on Provincial Reconstruction Teams.

******

There are issues:

Are the PRT's under U.S. military protection and leadership economic development tools militarized and Americanized and -- thus made more vulnerable to Taliban attack?

Can new forms of PRT more independent of the military be developed without being vulnerable to Taliban attack?

Are these PRT's compromising the role of non-government organizations (NGO's) as neutral humanitarian organizations protected from military attack?

Here's wishing you a non-scary Christmas season

2009-12-09T06:15:00.001-08:00

Keeping things in perspective....

When it comes to Christmas greetings, we're definitely talking "a picture from life's other side."

Here in North Carolina, we note the changing of the seasons by reaching out to friends and neighbors -- and even to you on the internet...

We send you our warmest wishes for a non scary Christmas season...

Child of the North..at home with Ms. Tawdry

2009-12-07T06:17:00.000-08:00

*****

It's hard to improve on this portrayal of my life.

Banjo picker, punk rocker, a child of the North, snuggling comfortably in the South....

Ah, 'tis truly a picture from life's other side.

However, I do not know Ms. Tawdry.

When in hospital gun that "pale horse" down...

2009-11-27T10:59:00.001-08:00

******

I am just back from overnight in hospital emergency room.

Doing some follow up work on symptoms from a min-stroke last February.

Turns out the problems may be wonderfully manageable, a result of sleep deprivation -- in part from lots of study, writing, working on these blogs.

There was no pale horse this time, no end times...but I always carry a big imaginary gun in case that pale horse doth approach.

Gun it down...

"The Preacher...
and Hell followed with him"

******

Nice to have a bit of Christian fundamentalism raising its head.

Got tired of those Islamic folks having a monopoly on this stuff?

When dealing with scenes of the Christian Apocalypse, it is always nice to have Wikipedia to fall back upon.

Many of you will enjoy this ecclesiastical portrayal of the End Times.

How's about a little "Christian profiling?" Careful, you may have to shoot a pale horse.

When you see that pale horse coming,

that's death itself: open fire with
.45 cal. cap and ball horse killers!
But wait, what if it's a white horse?
That could be evil, the anti-Christ --
or it could be Christ himself.
Careful you don't shoot
the wrong horse.

******
Check your Wikipedia to see just
how hard it is to tell.

Taking on the pale horse with
something really big

Giant version Remington .44 cal Model 1863

Holy Passages: when a donkey becomes a Baptist

2009-11-17T13:56:00.001-08:00

Take me home to R.I.P.

*******

A pig named Curly has been dead several weeks.

There's still no funeral in sight.

For his preacher owner the grief has subsided...yet lingers.

Yes, Curly was his only pig....

And it's not every day that a caring master is forced to shoot his pig between the eyes.

The alternative was unacceptable.

And so old Curly lies a mouldering in his grave.

*******

"I called a preacher friend to preside at Curly's funeral," explains Curly's owner.

"But he's too busy with his wife. She's sick with cancer.

"Perhaps I should call the Methodist Memorial folks. They work with animals."

********

It's not as though Curly's grieving master is any stranger to good works.

"A few days back I got a call from a man who wanted a service for his dear deceased, long time companion, Pat.

"I drove out to help and asked where the casket was ....He led me to the barn..."

"Pat was a donkey.....

"I asked him if Pat were a Baptist.

"'No,' he replied.

"I guess it didn't matter, 'cause he offered me five hundred dollars. I did the service.

"That donkey's now a Baptist."

********

So Pat the Baptist donkey is home with God.

May Curly someday find a similar peace.

R.I.P., dear Curly.

You are missed.

*******

Remember: keep cool when under fire

2009-11-16T18:39:00.000-08:00

It's wise to be prepared.

In North Carolina you never know what you'll face.

'Nuff said.

A new "hookup" -- or is this "true love?"

2009-11-15T11:03:00.000-08:00

Let us rejoice.

Now that the cats, the TV, and the woman are back at home with her fiance, his trailer is almost empty.....

Just a man and his beer.....

And a new girlfriend...a new "hookup?" Or is it true love?

But this time it is different.......

"She has her own place...her own job...her own money...and she doesn't want me to buy her anything..."

Can this be a dream?????

The American dream?

For now, he says, there is no drama....

Keeping his fingers crossed.....

The trailer is almost empty now:
the new lady has her own place

Hey -- what's a little strain on family values?

2009-11-15T05:27:00.000-08:00

I got something on my mind.

What to do?

When your girlfriend moves her cats and TV into your trailer...then criticizes your father for drinking.

-- Just because he broke into your trailer to steal your beer.

And if your brother and his girlfriend move out in anger.

-- Just because your girlfriend got angry because his girlfriend called her the "N word."

And if your girlfriend, after a week, moves out to go back to her "fiancee."

Leaving her cats and her TV behind.

Ah, "hooking up is easy."

But "breaking up is hard to do."

No one I know

Grieving when you're forced to shoot your pig

2009-11-14T07:37:00.000-08:00

I had just dropped in "to have a cup of coffee, friend."

*******

"Yesterday I lost everything I owned on the stock market," my somewhat distraught evangelical preacher friend confided.

-- with a sad twinkle in his eye.

"What happened," I inquired.

"I had to shoot Curly, my pig."

We had talked his pig for many a month. Me with my Maltese doggy and he with his swine.

My friend lives alone in a small rural town.

He had only one pig to his name.

Now he has none.

Many was the time we joked about his pinning a sign "humans stay away" on his pig to protect him from humans bearing "swine flu."

Seems the pig had gotten himself a spell of acting out, pushing through the fence door.

Out through the front yard toward the road -- misbehaving a bit like so many humans do.

The prospect of a law suit from an angry motorist grieving over his totaled vehicle sealed that pig's fate.

So choosing between the duty of officiating over a wedding for which he had to leave immediately -- and coddling an errant pig, my buddy of the cloth rushed in for his .22 caliber rifle.

Shot his pig right between the eyes.

Now Curly's owner is in quiet grief.

We are still talking about when the services will be held and who will officiate.

My dog "Taz" is worried.

And behaving very well.