Friendship

 Each day I resolve not to be abrasive. Then I see utterances from people I once knew to be kind, generous, educated, and thoughtful. Somewhere, something or someone flipped a switch and a horrible transmogrification took place. I Don’t know how to respond. Let me just say this.

If your cult has convinced you to hate Dr. Anthony Fauci and love Kyle Rittenhouse, your soul needs a greater level of forgiveness than I can provide.

If your cult teaches you that slavery was okay but committed love between two people of the same sex is not, your sense of morality needs a greater level of support than I can provide.

If your cult makes you believe that only white Americans deserve the right to vote, your sense of America needs a greater level of education that I can provide.

If your cult convinces you that women only have the rights conferred upon them by men, your understanding of democracy requires a new meaning of community than I can provide.

In the words of the immortal Woody Guthrie, “So long, it’s been good to know you.”

Feelings

 Today I awoke with the news pundits expressing the total annihilation of the political party that my family supported for, oh, two generations. The third one back was from Illinois, and the local wisdom back then was to support the political party in office, or likely to be in office, due to job patronage considerations. Politische Partei nicht Mann. Oh, and not all of my family. Some now embrace nihilism for odd reasons. Anyhow …

 I’m in a strained position. I still earn some money on small jobs for organizations I love and for work I enjoy. My continued success is important. It keeps me doing paying work in urban planning which I love and for which I get paid instead of doing farm work which I abhor and for which I don’t get paid. I need to understand all viewpoints.

 My first reaction on reading this morning’s news was to begin imagining how I would feel when I heard the boxcar’s scraping metal doors opening. and a voice yelling, “Raus raus und anstellen.” Oops, sorry, “Out, out and line up.”

 Then I started thinking. While the dreadful direction in which our country is headed primarily rests upon the shoulders of one political party, I’ve landed in “a plague on both your houses” paradigm. If our country doesn’t get back nearer the center, we are doomed.

 For the left, it prevailed somewhat in the last election. Despite the usage of the worst choice of a political slogan in my lifetime, i.e. “defund the police,” it managed victories. How many millions voted for the other party because of that one statement is beyond imagining. Sadly, they are keeping it up.

 Now, for a political minefield. Whether we “progressives” wish to admit it or not, such an issue as that involving transgender persons frightens some people. Wait wait. Educated people such as you and I understand that it is a biological phenomenon and should be treated as such. We reason that as taxpayers, do we prefer acceptance and understanding, or are we willing to face the costs of mental care? That was the choice upon which the U.S. Military based its decision. That decision finally came out well, by the way.

 On the other hand, we must try to understand that for some of our brothers and sisters, the prospect of having a young daughter enter a restroom where the sex of others within it is flexible is not a prospect easily accommodated from an emotional viewpoint for many. Cursing and reviling them for their feelings is not productive.

Now that I’ve read all the hate mail, one recurring theme is, “You think you are so [insert adjective of choice] smart, and you think you are never wrong.”

Allow me to disabuse you of that notion. Back when the long-time minority political party of our state became the majority party, they first elected some of what I considered the worst miscreants imaginable to office. My soothing thought was, “Once they are in power and realize the complexity and potential good of government, they will elect better people.”

There. I was dead-assed wrong. Enjoy your gloat.

Regrets

When I was young, I came to the conclusion that America was not a perfect country. While it held a great future for me, that future wasn't available to others that I knew who worked and strived as much as anyone. Sometimes I felt that we operated on shifting sands.

As I grew older and more aware, that thought grew. It peaked when I was sent to an immoral war, from which service I received no thanks but some benefits. Even those benefits eluded a large segment of the brothers and sisters with whom I served. Through it all, though, I strongly believed that, though not perfect, the country I served had the potential to be a good and righteous place. It was showing a movement thereto,  a movement led by its better angels. Then one day, selfish and greedy people, seemingly from out of nowhere, began taking over.

Now they, and their counterparts on the opposite end of the political spectrum, seem hell-bent on combining forces to destroy this needy country that I love so much. I weep not for myself. I’ve had a good run and have learned to survive. I weep for the young, and for friends who cherish their young. We are faced with such a waste of unwanted promise.

I only wish I'd had more courage.

 They were there, had we only looked: bigotry, prejudice, and racism, the monsters of our psyche, writhing and slobbering like a den of 1950s science fiction monsters.

 They were not dead, as we had hoped and dreamed. They were not even moribund. They were simply submerged, like Godzilla, or a giant spider, just waiting to be freed by a shock of super-seismic proportions. What would it take to release them upon an unsuspecting public?

 It took nothing more than the election of a president of the United States born of a white mother and African father, the very model of a modern African-American.

 That’s all it took. The “monsters from the id,” as they called them in the 1956 film, The Forbidden Planet, took control of the minds of otherwise decent people. Things changed overnight. Old friends began to greet you with, “How do you like our n****r president?” Hatemongers on the internet devised the acronym “SOS” to describe the elected leader of the United States of America. Photoshopped images of watermelon patches on the White House lawn appeared on social media. The man’s family members attracted descriptions as “gorillas” or worse. Sentiments and language that had been shoved to the bottom of our cultural sea and buried were fashionable again. Hate groups flourished and became more emboldened, as did hate media. A sense of shame settled over us.

 Campaigning against candidates of the Democratic Party in our state became simple. All one had to do was request it from East Coast PACs and they would deliver boatloads of brochures, simple ones with just a photo of their opponent facing a photo of President Obama. The stated message would be, “he/she is with him.” The hidden message would be “the n****rs are coming for your women and he/she is going to help them.”

 It worked like magic, even among citizens of our state who are alive today because of the Barack Obama’s efforts toward universal health care. The illogic of that could make a healthy person nauseated. Our state will suffer for decades.

 Now don’t get me wrong. I strongly support the rights of Americans to vote for the candidates of their choice. My only wish is that we would all vote for candidates on the basis of the principles of good government, as we see it, and not the principles of the KKK.

 Meanwhile, can’t we work toward eliminating the monster born of bigotry and racism? Unchallenged, it will destroy us as a unified nation as surely as a giant lizard could destroy a city. The Galilean’s admonition for us to “love one another” might be that best hope for us. As they used to say in the aforementioned films of the 1950s: “It just might work!”

 It becomes more obvious every day that such healing will not come from the highest offices of government. It must begin at the citizen level.

 I’ll try. That’s what I think on July 4, 2017.

 My Sainted Mother would have made a great city manager: How many times, during a public meeting, have I heard an elected body vote to do some stupid thing because other cities were doing it? My mother would have shaken her finger at them and, well you know what she would have said. It would have included the admonition about other kids jumping off cliffs and such.

 Throughout my career as an urban planner, the profession has held up two cities in particular as examples of doing planning right. They deserved emulation, imitation, and adulation. They received it in bushels. Today, portions of those cities lie in smoldering ruins while the rest of the urban area avoids taking a deep breath for fear of setting off more explosions. Could it be that over the years, they were applying the right solutions to the wrong problem?

 As I grow closer to the inevitable termination of my “use module,” I wonder if proactive planning is a “'a consummation devoutly to be wished” as much as reactive planning. The overarching dynamic of a city rests more on the vagaries of fortune than upon the foresightedness of humankind. The modernization of farming technique resulted in the loss of population in our state’s delta areas. Transportation decisions left some cities isolated and abandoned and other cities bisected, dissected, and infected. Long festering racial bigotry, made so despairingly evident with the election of Barack Obama, ballooned sleepy, all-white villages into throbbing metropolitan areas.

One may say, with accuracy, that the bigotry existed long before the Obamas and that other events had stirred the sleeping monster. True that. When a gentle appearing politician announced his candidacy for president in the racially iconic city of Philadelphia, Mississippi, the “dog whistles” were loud and clear. The demon must have stirred and smiled, perhaps never to sleep again. Later politicians would sharpen his mendacity and unleash it hard against Americans, particularly the "least of those among us."

Not all white-flight cities prospered equally. Some managed growth better than others. Some cities on the other end of the success spectrum managed hardships better than others. Some cities, like well-ballasted transports, lumbered through the storms. Some simply died. In most cases, however, results depended more on reaction than conscious visioning.

 How to proceed? Hell, I’m not sure. Maybe we understand that beautiful streetscapes, long considered a proper move for downtown areas, may not work in places where the level of crime prevents downtown merchants from unlocking the doors to their businesses during peak hours.

 Maybe finding the right problem is, after all, more important than finding the right solution.

 

 

 Finished, or at least taking a break from, my study of Woodrow Wilson, a fascinating person. He could soar to heights of intellect, decency, and prescience before descending into stubbornness and vindictiveness, perhaps due to his health. His counsel could, had it been followed (or had he the health to push it through), have likely prevented World War Two. Though still befuddled about the man, as are historians, I learned things from my effort:

Most people don’t understand the complex and irrational dynamics of politics.

It was a lot easier to keep personal secrets in 1919 than it is now.

Physical health is a wonderful ally to mental health.

Most people have better and not better angels of their nature. Ascendency can change the world.

Revenge serves as a poor palliative for post-war restoration.

Mitch McConnell was not the first malevolent senator in U.S. history.

Writers should borrow a trick from cinematographers and use shorter segments as they approach the end of their work.

Had one exalted leader like Woodrow Wilson shown support, in those days, for racial equity, America would be a much different place today.

I will go to my grave not understanding how African Americans donned uniforms and went to war in 1941 considering their treatment after 1918.

Fear

 These words stand before you written by a man who is far from perfect. On my decent side, I love reading, studying ideas, from science to history to woodworking. On the negative, I’m “not eaten up” as my Sainted Mother would say, with the desire to do manual labor. I’m prone to be mercurial at times. A close friend once said that I “don’t have 24-hour a day attitude about anything." I’m a bit selfish and known, I think, as a nice person except when I’m not.

 I do have a consistent attitude about some things. I eschew, for example, blind bigotry and prejudice aimed at those who don’t deserve it. This includes people of color, people whose genes have produced different sexual makeups, women in power, and immigrants fleeing death and persecution. I abhor violence toward others, crime, deceit, physical and mental abuse, disrespect for the physically challenged, gratuitous lying, the use of inherited wealth (really any wealth but particularly the “lucky sperm” kind) to mistreat or take advantage of others.

 I’m ambivalent about most religions but hostile to any that espouses hatred, violence, or bigotry. I’m very suspicious (a condition taught me by aforementioned Sainted Mother) of religious fanatics and hypocrites. I especially steer clear of those who use religion for financial or political reasons.

 I’ve paid taxes each year since 1961, served my country for four years, one in a war zone, and have managed to convince a remarkable woman to keep me for over 48 years. The only financial handouts I’ve received were via the G.I. Bill and my portion of stock values of companies that are heavily subsidized by local, state, and federal taxes, (which is almost all of them).

 A typical 2020 version of J. Alfred Prufrock you say? I’ll accept that. But just imagine, only imagine, the shock I’ve felt during the last four years as I’ve learned that close friends, some of whom I’ve used as role models, have succumbed to the trumpet call of a group ruled by a man whose every action stands in direct opposition to everything I love and respect, who preaches and supports all the elements of life and history that scare me into a primal fear and dread of living. Now, it seems

 Bad is good,

Good is bad,

Beauty is ugly,

Ugly is beautiful,

Facts are stupid things.

The U.S. Constitution sucks.

Greed is the highest order of things,

Altruism is for fools and liberal fantasizers,

Science is a foolish fantasy of progressives, and

The function of politics is to make your enemies weep.

 I weep, but not for myself. I’m old and everything I write is “from a warm room on a full stomach.”

 I weep for the grandchildren of my friends and pray, “to whatever gods may be," that they are never born poor or different.

Answers

 

Sundown In Zion

CHAPTER fifty-one

            They all took Sunday off. Sheriff Love explained that they each enjoyed enough excitement on Saturday to last a lifetime. “Besides,” he said, “I have to take my wife to church on Sunday. We haven’t missed a service in over 47 years and we’re not going to start now.”

            Charlie was at Angela’s house. Nelson tried all that morning to reach Tina, but she didn’t answer her phone at home. He also tried her office with no luck. He read for an hour after breakfast and then fired up his computer to make notes for his report.

            The first thing that appeared on his screen was notice of an email from Tina. He clicked to it. It read.

            Forgive me, but please don’t try to contact me again. It is all over, through no fault of yours, only mine. I do not love you and will never love you. For better or worse, love is a one-time thing with me. Sex is a relief from the pain of loss, but only a temporary one. I thought perhaps you were different, but no. I loved the sex, but each time we finished, and you lay beside me, I was filled with disgust. Not only with you, but with myself mostly and with the thought of dishonoring the memory of my husband. See, I didn’t love him when we married. He represented an end to a student’s poverty and a little physical fun, that’s all. Then something strange happened as we faced life together and overcame its petty struggles. I woke up one morning and realized that I worshipped the ground on which he walked. Every time I took a breath, that feeling grew stronger. May you share it someday. Being loved can generate love, that’s not from a sociologist, but from a life’s partner of a wonderful person. When we meet on campus, let’s meet as friends. You can even take my class if you wish. Friends, that’s all. I need all of them I can find. Take care.

Tina

Nelson closed the email. He spent the afternoon making notes of his remembrances, and the evening thinking, with a glass of Jack Daniels close by.

The next morning, he walked into the sheriff’s office to find him in an expansive mood. “Come in my nautical friend. Get some coffee and sit. When they both had settled comfortably, he said, “Know what our preacher preached on yesterday?”

Nelson shook his head.

“Handling life’s surprises with the help of God,” he said. “Now ain’t that a fucking hoot? What you want to know about first?”? He stopped and spoke loudly toward the door. “Mrs. M, you’ll know all about everything when you type my report. Right now, you’ll just have to wait.” There was a familiar scuffling sound from the other side of the door. He waited.

“Now,” he said. “You’ll first want to know about Brother Dale Underhill, as he is known, right?

Nelson nodded.

“When he figured the jig was up,” the sheriff said, “he started singing. Not hymns either but a sad and tragic story. Seems greed-envy overtook him the way inertia overtakes many of our county residents. He saw those TV evangelists with their private jets and mansions, and it gnawed on him like glory gnaws on people like us.” They both smiled. “Then he read a book about those fundamentalist Mormon men out west. He and Bully spent way too much time talking about it and they hatched a plan.”

“Let me guess,” Nelson said. “It involved the Ransom Center.”

“Bingo. He used some secret network that preachers have and found this huge market for brainwashed young starlets and the two of them sprang into action.”

“Brigette said they appraised her at fifty grand.”

“That’s a discounted price,” he said, “because she was so hardheaded and difficult to train. She’s also a little old. They like them no older than 14, as a rule. Anyway,” he said. “A few sales financed their entry into a more lucrative, although riskier, field. Greed overcame caution and here we are. He says they were quitting all of their businesses after Bridgette and that delivery we intercepted. You were making things too warm for them and they all had their nests made anyway. It was off to the Caribbean after that final load.”

“Speaking of that,” Nelson said, “how did Don Dillahunty fit in?

“Seems he came to Brother Dale complaining that his wives, both former and present, were bankrupting him and he didn’t know what to do.”

“And?”

“Just so happened that the meth-gang needed a way to smuggle hard-to-get ingredients in and Don imported a lot of furniture from the Vietnamese. They, the Vietnamese ain’t above stuffing such furniture creatively. Don ask why. They are still pissed off about the war, if you ask me. Anyway, as Brother Dale put it, in that charming way of his, ‘It was a marriage made in Heaven’ and the rest is history.”

Bridgette’s mother is happy?”

“Look up the word in the dictionary and you’ll see her picture there.”

“Will they keep Martin out of the news?”

“Now there is another shocking development. I trust you didn’t fail to see a little more than rescuer and rescuee attraction during our little get together?

“Who could have missed it? That explains the portion of the letter her mom found.”
“It explains a lot of things,” the sheriff said, “not the least of which is why they took her

from the Ransom Center when they didn’t really need kidnap money anymore. They stop short of murdering for miscegenation now, these assholes. Besides, they had a better treatment.”

            “What about the crime scene?”

“They went yesterday and looked as best they could. A total wipeout. All they’ve identified so far was a section of a forearm with the letters “SW” tattooed on it, and a partial set of dentures.”

            “Believe it or not, those both belonged to Bully.”

            “Stands to reason,” the sheriff said. “I mean as far as the dentures. Man-fighting, meth, and Mountain Dew don’t make for a full set of choppers.

            “So,” Nelson said, “that about wraps in up?”

            Before the sheriff could answer, three knocks came at his door. “Ah,” he said, “Mrs. M’s secret code. This is important. “Enter.”

            The door opened and a voice said, “Agent Benson is here.”

            “Send ‘Little Jedgar’ in.”

            The door opened fully, and Tom Benson entered. He surveyed the room. “Gentlemen,” he said. He shook hands with Nelson. “I think I owe you an apology for thinking of you as a pest,” he said.

            “Oh?” Nelson said.

            “Yes. I think you’re going to get me transferred to the Beverley Hills office yet.” He turned and shook hands with the sheriff. He nodded back toward Nelson and said. “Just who the hell is this man? He got me credit for solving two interstate crimes in one night.”

            “Just a former sailor,” the sheriff said. He motioned toward an empty chair. “Sit.”

            “I don’t know much more than what I reported to you yesterday,” he said to the sheriff. “We’re getting ready to assemble all we can about Chief of Police Banks over in Connorville and his possible role in all this.”

            Sheriff Love said, “If I know the Weasel, he has covered his tracks pretty well.”

            “Our trackers look hard and deep,” Benson said. “We’ll see what his financial dealings tell us. Right now, I only have one disappointment.”

            Both men sat forward. “Oh?” said the sheriff. “A loose end? I thought all your suspects were all singing “Just as I am without one plea.”

            “They are, pretty much,” Benson said. “Except for one thing.”
            “What’s that?” Nelson asked.

            “They admitted killing Bonnie Sue Anderson. Seems she went to see Dale Underwood because there was something about Bridgette Thompson she hadn’t told anyone, something that could have stirred the pot pretty badly.”

            “Which was?” The sheriff was leaning more toward Benson now.

            “Underwood won’t say,” Benson said, “and she can’t. We may never know. But that’s not the main thing they won’t admit?”

            “What’s that?” the sheriff asked.

            Benson took a deep breath. “None of them will tell us shit about Abbey Stubblefield.”

            “Why?” the sheriff was getting agitated. Nelson showed no emotion.

            “Who knows? Maybe they think they have enough trouble without getting the NAACP on their case as well.”

            The sheriff leaned back and looked at Nelson. “Well now,” he said. Ain’t that a pisser, after all you did for us?”

            “Maybe,” said Nelson. “Just maybe they don’t know.”

            This time it was Benson who leaned forward, toward Nelson. “What do you mean?”

            Nelson shook his head and sorrow showed across it. “You fellas want to take a ride?”

 

 

The Future

 Friend texted: “Why worry? Future only holds that abortions are illegal, no health care, teachers start each school day with a Christian prayer, low-income minority neighborhoods can’t vote, women work for half pay, low minimum wage, and people who own stocks do great. Won’t affect you. It will be just like 1957. Men like you did fine then.” 

Me: “Two things trouble me so.” 

Him: “What?” 

Me: “That pesky U.S. Constitution and the worrisome 25^th Chapter of Matthew.”

Fighting the Blues

Another day of tumultuous news. It makes it hard to stay positive. I work on it by thinking back to my parents’ generation. Can you imagine living through The Great Depression, the “dust bowl" catastrophe, and the collapse of social order in one lifetime? Just imagine the relief upon emerging alive. Then imagine seeing a faint glimmer of hope just as the radio announces the bombing of Pearl Harbor?

Oh, it may have been a “great generation.” I won’t argue that point. I think all generations have some greatness in them, along with their share of shortcomings. I know that many think the so-called “Baby Boomers” had theirs. I point out to you, though, that many of them went, when their country asked, to an immoral war during a time that had its share of tumultuousness. More than 50,000 of them never returned alive. All provided their service under criminally poor leadership, a service for which their country has never forgiven them.

We all press on, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past.” Today the dreadful past has created a gaping hell hole that draws us toward the bigotry, hatred, and racial injustice from which we had thought we were escaping. We had hoped against hope that past racism lay dormant, but like a 1950s subterranean movie monster, we awoke it by electing a man of color as president.

Now, bigotry is creeping over us like a blob landed on Earth from an unfriendly planet. In its worst form, we find that it is a political tool—a highly effective political tool. “I hate the same people that you do,” has replaced "We're all in this together," and “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Will we survive? It seems up for grabs as some at the highest echelons of power seem, for some indeterminable reason, to be using all the power at their disposal to prevent it.

For hope, I look back, as I say, to the generation before mine. Their country survived, although not as intact for some of its citizens as for others. And when I think of how hard the struggle for survival was for my parents, I can only marvel at how much more difficult it would have been for them had they not been white.

Would today have been different had more Americans voted out of hope rather than out of media-induced dislike? I don't know. As Ernest Hemingway said, "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

Sadness On The Land

Back to Gettysburg. The news of recent days distracted me. Finally, I decided that it seemed appropriate to return to a previous crisis in which 85,000 men fought to save the Union and dissolve slavery and 75,000 men fought to save slavery and dissolve the Union. It started when elements of Heth’s Division stumbled into Union Forces north of the city of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and ended when Robert E. Lee withdrew his defeated army and retreated to Virginia. More than 7,000 soldiers and one civilian, a woman named Jennie Wade would lie dead. The Union would survive and the bigotry and inhumanity that ignited would end.

They thought. We thought.

I once worked with a great-grandson of Thomas G. Clark who marched into Gettysburg on July 1, 1863 with his two sons Jonathan and Albert as members of the 42^nd Mississippi Regiment under BG Joe Davis, a nephew of Jefferson. He shared transcripts of letters now in the Confederate Museum at Oxford, TN.  Captain Clark had written to his wife on June 13^th: “Try to keep in good spirits for I intent to come home this summer or fall to stay for I think that the Boys have had experience enough now to git along without me and it is my duty to pay some attention to my family at home and in fact I think that I am gitting to old and have become unhealthy and I think that in justice to myself and family at home it it is my duty to quit this army at least for a while.” [Grammar transcribed as written.]

Thomas and his son Jonathon would die on July 1, when General Heth’s division ran into that of General Buford. Many of Davis's men would die in an abandoned railroad cut when he lost control of the division after an initial victory. It's likely this included the father and son. No one knows where they are buried.

Albert would die on July 3 as part of the left flank making the assault on Cemetery Ridge. A few of the men in that sad and battered regiment would make it to Emmetsburg Road and maybe 50 would cross it. The Virginian descendants of the Pickett’s fresh division would cruelly blame those on the far left for the failure of the insanely ordered assault. History can be as deceitful as the present.

A granddaughter would later write of the widow and mother of the Clark men: “When the news of this awful disaster reached home, Grandmother Clark prayed and shouted all night, and she often told us in speaking of those days that we didn’t know what sorrow was.”

Renown author Zora Neale Hurston would have one of her characters in “Their Eyes Were Watching God” express the war differently: “But it was a long time after dat befo’ de Big Surrender at Richmond. Den de big bell ring in Atlanta and all de men in gray uniforms had to go to Moultrie, and bury their swords in the ground to show they was never to fight about slavery no mo’. So den we knowed we was free.”

Free? As we have found over the last days, not quite yet.

Day One: The Railroad Cut

Orphans in a Storm

 Sometimes there just isn’t anything you can say about a situation. In fact, I have come to realize that for some situations, it’s just better to say nothing. Saying something you had to think up that might fit the moment just sounds like a self-serving plea for absolution. I found that out years ago.

Two days after James Earl Ray murdered Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968, the I – Corps area of the then Republic of South Vietnam was tense, almost as tense as it was the previous January during the Tet Offensive. Bars were closed and all access to alcohol stopped. American military bases were on “lockdown,” and nobody was saying much, not much at all in our compound just outside Da Nang. Events halfway around the world had our little universe on the brink of explosion.

That morning, they chose me—perhaps because I was a little older than most in the Naval Security detachment—and another sailor because he was an unofficial leader among what everyone called “the brothers” back then, to guard the far back gate of our compound. We knew one another as shipmates, nothing more. We were just two wary souls thrown together in the face of a storm we neither chose nor caused. They told us that no one was to leave, and no one was to enter.

I strained my brain for the six hours while we stood the watch for something to say. Nothing came. So we did our duty and stopped anyone from leaving and joining some fracas or other. I stopped the white sailors and he stopped the black sailors. Had any of them refused, I have no idea what would have happened. We, of course, would have been fully authorized to fire upon them. To this day, I don’t know what would have happened. We stood our watch and turned the post over to our reliefs. It was dark by then and tensions had cooled. We nodded to one another and parted. I was sent up to a mountain compound shortly thereafter and I don’t think we ever saw one another again.

I’m not African American, so I cannot even imagine what it would be like to be in constant strife with the authority around me. I cannot image what it would be like always to stand guilty whether innocent or not. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be viewed as a lesser form of citizen. I have endured curt glares and some caustic comments, but only because of some service ribbons given to me “by a thankful nation.” Those looks and comments mostly came from fellow servicemen, so I had to overlook them.

I’ve never been a police officer. Those I have known personally have been honorable people. I have no idea how it would feel to drive the mean streets of a city on the midwatch, with suspicious eyes staring from every windshield and every bedroom, not knowing which car seat contained a loaded pistol. I do know that I’ve been alone during those same dark hours with the safety of my comrades in my hands, so scared I would have shot my own mother had she burst out of the jungle and ran toward me.

So I’ll pass no judgement on the community of police officers. Neither will I condemn those who riot. I have no idea what I would do if my genetic improbabilities had developed differently. I’d probably be rioting, but who knows?

I’ve witnessed and watched, though, and I’ve lived a long time. I feel entitled to make some observations, not judgments mind you, just observations.

Sadly, there is a percentage of Americans who simply don’t like people of color. It may be from ignorance, lack of communion, radical nurture, tribalism, a penchant for homogeneity, shortsightedness, fear, racial prejudice, bigotry, xenophobia, or some social disorder. We used to call it all those things. We’ve now collapsed them, and linguistically elevated them to the simple “racism.” Wars on nouns are always dicey, but this one sets a particularly high bar.

Now I don’t know what the percentage of those to whom I referred is. I suspect it’s around 30 percent of white Americans, larger in the South. It's not enough to determine elections if the righteous and pure of heart wish it otherwise. I do know something about white Americans of righteous bearing. It is good to have them on your side, or at least in tacit support of one’s fundamental rights as a human being. That tacit support can be a strong ally. Ask the American Freedom Fighters of the 1960s. I also know that it is subject to being added to or taken from, sometimes becoming a welcome ally, at others a missing friend. Ask Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, both affected by the margins. Increasingly, it seems to me, those increments determine our elections.

I'm not talking only about those who sit out elections. I'm also talking about those who may base a vote on the fact that a freeway was blocked by protesters while they tried to get their sick child to a hospital. Unfocused retribution falls on the just and the unjust.

Adroit politicians and those whose primary purpose is to win first and be right later, will avoid actions that effect the tacit support that can determine revolutions as well as elections. I know that elections increasingly turn on small increments of support.

I also know that Donald Trump is an expert at manipulating the support and moving the flexible fringe toward his side.

He needs no help whatsoever.

Drifting Too Far From Shore

I feel we are seeing the first stirrings of a call to action from those who would destroy my country. I hope—really hope—I’m wrong. There’s another seemingly inexplicable action by a police officer caught on video. The entire county is outraged. Then those outraged the most justifiably fall into the traditional trap of acting in such a manner that their actions can be equated by bigots as equal to, or greater than, the damage done by the police officer. Riots fall on the shoulders of the just and the unjust. The unjust know exactly what to do. The just stand and cry out for justice.

As the nation “turns its weary” eyes for leadership, there is none, only a trumpet sound for more violence. An event that greater Americans would have used to promote healing is becoming another cudgel in the hands of those who want to divide and anger us more.

I found years ago that apologies at a time like this are hollow. The only means of obtaining understanding derives from actions previously taken. All the “I’m with you” claims in the world cannot take you back to show support when it was needed before now and wasn’t there.

The darkness grows, and I wonder what path I will take when forced to choose. I don’t think I will join the Legions of Hate, although they may well be poised to prevail. I have no good feeling toward them. I have no hate toward them, either. Good people throughout history have succumbed to their darker angels. It won’t stop. They will always be there, but I don't have to choose to join them.

Indeed, if I tried to cross over that historical bridge, the leaders of the victorious party would have a name for me as did the Nazis for those who “came late to the party.” They called them Märzveilchen – "March Violets." They were the ones who joined the NSDAP after the Reichstag elections of March 1933. Generally, the "March Violets" were assumed to join the Party for opportunistic reasons only, and were held in contempt by the Old Fighters, also called Märzgefallene or "March casualties."

Mitch McConnell would see through me in a millisecond.

I hope I will have the courage to fight. It would be easy to sit it out. I’m older than those in the higher-priority groups: the immigrants, minorities, teachers, scientists, same-sexed, and mainline Christians. I do have one characteristic that could help when the assault-rifle folks come. I’m what you might call a “liberal with guns,” and I don’t necessarily fear or respect those who, as Ernest Hemingway described them, get an erection from the feel of holster leather on their thighs. Besides, I’m a better shot than most of them. I profited both from growing up in rural Arkansas and, later, from countless hours of practice with unlimited free ammunition.

If I were religious, therefore, I would pray for the courage to fight. As it stands, I’ll have to talk myself into it. Our president is helping me do just that.

Late at night I feel a little bad that I’ve had a full life when there are so many who haven’t and won't. I feel genuine sorrow for those who will succumb to the purveyors of hate. But then, I didn’t vote for the bastards.

Crime

Yesterday, an old friend asked me a question:

“Most every city has a poor(er) area, with higher crime rates and all that accompanies. Given your expertise, what can cities do to uplift those areas? Or are even the best efforts doomed to fail because there will always be a poor(er) area with higher crime rates, etc.? I wondered whether "low-income" housing would help the area but then questioned whether higher-income development would result in forcing the truly low-income folks elsewhere”

My answer: You have asked question that has confounded the experts for years. As you know, that's never stopped me from trying.

First: ghettos are ghettos, no matter how many pretty bows we place on them or what many fancy names we use for them. A gated-community ghetto can still be damaging to society when it dooms interaction among socio-economic groups. Second, even at the highest levels of government, we cannot escape the cognitive failure of confusing correlation with causation, for example, some high-density areas are correlated with crime, so high densities must create crime. Well, we have a condo in the highest-density spot in Little Rock and the most common crime there is dumping over-sized loads into the garbage chute.

The question is much too complicated for a sound-bite. Maybe I'll post some ideas in the future. In my opinion, the systemic bigotry that has erupted like some 1950s subterranean monster accounts for much of it, maybe most of it. I can’t believe the epidemic of hatred and racism unleashed by America’s electing an African-American president … twice.

On the other hand, and I can't say this publicly, but drug use and the failure of some ethnic groups to self-police is retarding progress. On the other, other hand, forced busing led droves of generally law-abiding citizens to flee to sundown cities, facilitated by the decision of the Arkansas Highway Construction Department to facilitate the flight by building more and better commuter lanes. In addition, there’s

·       Income inequality

·       White-flight

·       The attack on public schools by the ultra-rich

·       Military spending instead of people spending

·       Emphasis by cities on growing population instead of growing their people

·       The almost sexual obsession with guns and violence by many Americans

Oh hell, don't get me started. Stay tuned.

As an aside, we had a late Christmas lunch with some Hispanic friends in the Lonoke area yesterday and heard a harrowing story from two (both long-term residents and model citizens) of how a police officer harassed them in one's front year for GTWWH (going to work while Hispanic. I'm having a hard time being optimistic these days.

One of the men was someone whom we helped gain a college education. We could have ignored him. Problem was, he was extremely intelligent and verging on bitterness. I kept thinking of the Bob Dylan line, "Yonder stands your orphan with his gun." Does the libertarian Nirvana of complete selfishness outweigh the cost of all those prisons?

Politically-inspired hatred of one another ain’t helping a bit. Old friend, you just had to pull my chain, didn’t you? 

A Trip Back Home

We decided, my wife and I, to take a “spur of the moment” trip to my hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas today so I could mow some pasture land my brother owns, a part of the old home place. He’s not enjoying good health at present and isn’t even able to put diesel in his tractor. I took him some, fueled the tractor, and mowed the field while he and Brenda sat in the shade and talked. I can only hope that it wasn’t all about me.

I wasn’t bored. A portion of the field I was mowing once boasted the best homemade baseball backstop ever built by boys under the age of fourteen. It comprised sweet gum saplings sunk in the ground and backed by burlap feed sacks stitched together. Since the lads were better builders than batters, it held up to a lot of hard use. Each time I passed the spot, I could hear the sound of a ball pounding into burlap, oh, and, on rare occasion, the crack of a bat.

I mowed alongside an old stock pond that probably saw more youthful recreation per square foot than any patch of ground in America. It was partly filled with debris now. But the sight of a young boy sitting with his grandmother and begging to “pish” just a little more still shines through the dim past.

Across the field, I mowed along a dirt road that lead no place geographically but to amazing places in the minds of young boys: cowboy hideouts, Indian camps, unseen spots for smoking pilfered cigarettes, and a gathering spot for bemoaning the vicissitudes of childhood and the unfathomable allure of girls for older boys.

The family home and grocery disappeared long ago. To a person growing up there, though, key markings remain. There’s my dad’s favorite tree, still bearing the signs of white paint left from a trick my brother played on our nephew. There’s the road to nowhere, originally named “King’s Road,” after an African-American man who lived toward the end of it. That name didn’t suit the 9-11 addressing crew, so it’s now named after my family, over the strenuous protests of Sainted Mother at the time.

She was a stickler for tradition and truth. I still recall her “aghastness” when a group of yuppies moved onto a road near where she grew up and made the County change the name. To mother, it had always been “Hog-eye Ben Road” and should have remained so.

There’s the house across the highway from our homeplace, standing in the exact shape as it did over 70 years ago. In my brother’s yard, if one looks closely, he can see the remnants of the pipe where our pump house once stood, From there, one can triangulate, using the painted tree, to the location of our chicken yard, barn, wash house, and even the privy.

I finished the mowing and we left, deciding to “drag Main,” and see what was happening. The old town has suffered in modern times. There’s nothing more fun for the residents of “Sundown Towns” than to laugh at the old girl and the troubles she’s seen. I suspect it’s better, though, to live in a town full of problems and people who are willing to work on them, than in a town full of bigoted assholes.

One final joy, the old Community Theater still stands intact. In fact, we enjoyed a conversation with two nice young men doing some repairs to the flooring. When I was a kid, if you were white and had a quarter, you could spend an entire afternoon there. You paid ten cents to get in, ten cents for a box of popcorn, and five cents for a cup of soda. For that, you got a double-feature and four cartoons. You had to be white, though.

Still a handsome city.
My great-grandfather's
Civil War unit once defended
this street from attack
by the Rebs.

Folks are now spending big money in the city for projects that are available to all citizens. They are even beginning work on restoring the old Pines Hotel on Main. There’s lots of new building going on, some near the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. A once distressed shopping center in our part of town now appears fully occupied. There are glimmers of hope everywhere.

Things change in this world, and they don’t change toward equity. It takes luck and hard work to provide livable and diverse communities. My hometown takes no back seat to any in terms of the latter.

Oh, and my brother was grateful for the help.

What's normal?

Okay, here goes. Seems we need to repeat this from to time.

Gender orientation and sexual preference are physiological conditions. They result from perhaps billions of impulses, triggers, and connections within our genetic makeup, any one of which may affect our final condition. One scientific premise, for example, is that all embryos start out as female. Over time, and countless genetic maneuvers, physical folding, merging, and transformations, some develop as male, although with useless breasts, hirsute shortcomings, and a dearth of nurturing synapses.

Over geologic time, the pairings of genetic types of mostly male and mostly female tend to enjoy of the evolutionary advantage of reproduction-capability. Thus the predominance of so-called, “heterosexual” genetic models. Since we don’t believe it aborting rarer genetic types, (Right?) we fully expect to share the planet with models whose sexual preference or identity lies outside the majority but who stand among us nonetheless. In short, we are all brothers and sisters within the genomic bell-curve.

It all evolves from scientific determinants.

On the other hand. Bigotry and prejudice are conditions that erupt like projectile vomit from the basest of human sources, the worst of those among us. We, as individuals, must accept or reject the venomous teaching and societally induced impulses generated by humans, even when they are fed by so-called religious sources. Actually, we should reject those in particular, as they demean and sour the acts of truly spiritual people seeking love, stability and harmony in an unpredictable world.

So there you have it. If you went to church this morning and paid attention to the minister when he or she preached love and grace, go forth in peace. Peace and understanding may yet save the planet.

On the other hand, if you listened to a drooling bigot when he urged hatred and bigotry against a fellow creature whose genetic makeup differs from yours, you need to find another source of religion.

In short, using an exalted position to repeat false witness, hatred, and bigotry to a cult audience deprived of critical-thinking skills is a sin.

Being born with a genetic makeup that differs from that of a hegemonic minority is not.

Quit trying to create a moral equivalency.

Amen. Closing hym: Just As I Am Without One Plea.

Contributions to this sermon may be mailed to my home address or to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, folks who really know how to treat kids.

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Will We Never Be One Again?

Yesterday showed us that there may be few days in the future of our country in which events don't occur to divide us further.

A popular actress in a popular television show posted a rather tasteless comment on social media. The furor was exacerbated by the fact that the actress is a vocal admirer of the current president of our country. Further, the character she plays in the TV series voices support of Donald Trump in her dialogue. Opponents of the president were already angry about the show. Fans of the president were equally joyful.

The network cancelled the series with great fanfare. The results proved predictable.

Opponents of the president chortled and danced like fairies.

Supporters of the president stiffened in their resolve to hate anyone who is not an avid member of their cult.

Americans in the middle scratched their heads. Rumor has it that tears ran down the cheeks of the Statue of Liberty, but no dependable source has verified this.

I've never watched a segment of the TV series in question, either in its original or current form. It's not my cup of tea. So far in America, we have freedom of choice. At any rate, I can't vouch for the quality of the program. I do feel for the many actors and support staff who lost their jobs along with the transgressor.

The problem is, as I see it, that she, the transgressor, will enjoy the fame, and profit by the enhanced support that she will receive from the president's supporters. I also believe that an added percentage of previous neutrals will take her side. Americans are about fed up with what they perceive as "political correctness," even when it points out acts of hatred and bigotry. I think maybe we crave love and grace, but who am I to say?

Franklin Graham will say that the transgressor was speaking through God and her firing was a direct blasphemy of the Almighty. He may even go so far as to recommend that God's treatment of the Midianites be replicated against anyone who doesn't love Donald Trump. He's that crazy.

The president's political party will gain an additional five percent or so in voter support.

America will continue toward Gotterdammerung.

In a few months, the effects of the flareup will remain, but the reasons will have been forgotten.

Good morning America, I hardly know you.