Just so we're clear, sports is nothing but an enjoyable break from the misery of the real world right now.
That said, our beloved Grizzlies aren't much of an enjoyable break right now. The front office made the conscious decision to bring in a bright young coach in the summer before the 2016-2017 season. David Fizdale was fresh off the Miami Heat bench, having served as Eric Spoelstra's Associate Head Coach during the whole LeBron James/Championship era in Miami. Under Fizdale's leadership, we were going to become a modern NBA team. We would play fast. We would shoot threes.
To that end, the front office decided to let Zach Randolph and Tony Allen leave through free agency last summer. Those two men were the grit and the grind in the Grizzlies' grit and grind.
Prior to last season, in addition to the NBA maximum contracts given to Mike Conley and Marc Gasol, the Grizzlies signed Chandler Parsons to a third max contract. Parsons was the three point shooter who would loosen up the middle with his marksmanship from the arc. Only he was broken into pieces, and never made any contribution last year whatsoever.
Now, Conley is out, again, with his Achilles tendon. He has missed major portions due to injury three of the last four seasons. Gasol is making 41% of his shots this year, and either cannot or will not rebound or defend. He is 33 years old, ancient in the NBA. He won't get better than he is right now.
And Sunday night, as Gasol had shot 6 of 17 with 5 rebounds through three quarters against the hapless Nets, already seven games into a losing streak, Fizdale sat Gasol for the fourth quarter.
Gasol pitched a fit after the game. He talked to every media member he could find. He said he wouldn't put up with being benched. He said that it was only done to hurt him and make him look bad. He is, in a word, delusional. He does not deserve to be playing right now.
Oddly, he never mentioned his on-going poor performance.
But yesterday afternoon, the front office heard their prima donna's hurt feelings, got the message, followed his directions, and fired the offending, offensive coach.
Gasol has spent every minute since making sure everyone knows that he didn't demand Fizdale's firing. He didn't have to. After his post-game performance, it was clear he wanted a different coach. NOW!
He got what he wanted.
Mike Conley was here before Zach Randolph arrived. Marc Gasol was here before Zach Randolph arrived. The Grizzlies made the playoffs three times prior to Randolph's arrival.
But they were swept each time.
The Memphis Grizzlies never won even one playoff game until Zach Randolph came to Memphis, much less any playoff series. Now, with him gone, and Conley incapacitated, and Gasol more effective at running the front office than playing, they likely will not even make the playoffs again for many years to come.
Not much of an enjoyable break from the real world right now. None, after Tiger football ends with their bowl game in a few weeks.
Never said that before!
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Thursday, November 16, 2017
Abusing women is unacceptable. Do we really have to tell guys this? Al Franken version.
Al Franken became a hero of mine through his association with Saturday Night Live, at first with his old comedy partner, Tom Davis, and, later, on his own. I was thrilled when he became part of Air America, in the effort to counter the massive right-wing media (Fox News, Limbaugh, etc.) with a liberal presence. His friendship with Paul Wellstone solidified Franken's interest in politics, and my desire to support him. I couldn't have been happier when he was elected, and re-elected, and his service in the US Senate has been exemplary. I can't imagine any US Senator with whom I would be in more complete agreement on issues. I have been hoping that he would run for President in 2020. I fully intended to vote for him.
But today, Leeann Tweeden told her story.
She told her story, and shared a photograph from a 2006 USO tour. Al Franken is 66 years old now, which makes him 55 in 2006. No 55 year old man can possibly think that it is acceptable to pose for that photograph. Ms. Tweeden is clearly asleep in the photo. Franken does not appear to be touching her in the photograph, but his hands are positioned in places where a decent man would not and cannot position his hands. And her story goes well beyond a photograph.
Roy Moore should not be in the US Senate because of his behavior with girls and young women while he was in his 30s. Al Franken should not be in the US Senate because of his behavior with a young woman while he was in his mid-50s. Franken should resign, and should resign immediately.
This behavior is not acceptable. It cannot be made acceptable. It must, invariably, be made public, and the appropriate consequences must be borne by the perpetrators of this behavior. Harvey Weinstein lost his company. Kevin Spacey and Louis CK have lost their careers. Roy Moore should not get a Senate seat, and Al Franken should lose his.
And I would simply ask, again, why is Donald Trump, a constant and unrepentant sexual predator, still allowed to be in the White House?
But today, Leeann Tweeden told her story.
She told her story, and shared a photograph from a 2006 USO tour. Al Franken is 66 years old now, which makes him 55 in 2006. No 55 year old man can possibly think that it is acceptable to pose for that photograph. Ms. Tweeden is clearly asleep in the photo. Franken does not appear to be touching her in the photograph, but his hands are positioned in places where a decent man would not and cannot position his hands. And her story goes well beyond a photograph.
Roy Moore should not be in the US Senate because of his behavior with girls and young women while he was in his 30s. Al Franken should not be in the US Senate because of his behavior with a young woman while he was in his mid-50s. Franken should resign, and should resign immediately.
This behavior is not acceptable. It cannot be made acceptable. It must, invariably, be made public, and the appropriate consequences must be borne by the perpetrators of this behavior. Harvey Weinstein lost his company. Kevin Spacey and Louis CK have lost their careers. Roy Moore should not get a Senate seat, and Al Franken should lose his.
And I would simply ask, again, why is Donald Trump, a constant and unrepentant sexual predator, still allowed to be in the White House?
Monday, October 02, 2017
Our American Hobby, Las Vegas Edition, October 2, 2017
At 8:15 am on Monday, October 2, 2017, CBS is reporting the numbers out of Las Vegas as "50+ killed, 400+ hurt." Another white man. American born. No significant police record. With multiple automatic weapons, of course. There is no other way to kill and wound that many people, short of explosives.
We have seen this happen in elementary schools. We have seen this happen in high schools. We have seen this happen in movie theaters. We have seen this happen in nightclubs. What we have not seen is anything change after any and all of these previous incidents.
Now? I doubt it.
Except, possibly, for one thing.
This was a country music festival.
This attack on country music fans carries with it somewhere between a possibility and a likelihood that many of the dead and wounded are members, or are closely related to members, of the National Rifle Association.
This is the NRA's strongest demographic.
Will this be the moment that Americans realize that the NRA gives not one shit about human life? That the NRA has not bought and paid for members of the House or the Senate to guarantee anyone's freedom? That the only interest that this trade association has is selling more guns? And the bigger, stronger, more deadly, therefore more expensive, the better?
Profits are all that matter to the National Rifle Association.
They don't give a damn about children.
They don't give a damn about young adults.
They don't give a damn about people in a nightclub frequented by LGBTQ men and women.
They don't give a damn about christians at prayer in their church.
They don't give a damn about people gathered in a movie theater.
They don't give a damn about our military personnel on their bases.
And we are about to learn that they don't give a damn about people gathered at a country music festival.
Their own people.
Their own demographic.
Their own gun owners.
They don't give a damn about anyone or anything but profits from the sale of guns.
And now, I would guess, we won't even give a damn when the NRA's fraud is finally left exposed for all the world to see. Their only interest in gun owners is as marks to turn over more money to gun manufacturers. Their only interest in your freedom is in your freedom to die at the hands of a gun nut.
No one outside the military needs automatic weapons. No one outside the military needs these voluminous magazines that makes it possible to fire so many rounds that the smoke in a hotel room becomes so thick that it sets off the smoke alarms. That, by the way, is how the police figured out where this shooter was.
He shot so many times that the fire alarms went off.
We have decided that it does not matter that our democratic process was pirated by Vladimir Putin and his minions.
We have decided that it does not matter that we are led and represented by a raving lunatic who lacks the impulse control of the average two year old.
We decided long ago that it does not matter if numbers of our fellow citizens, including our children, are murdered indiscriminately on a daily basis.
Now we will decide if the NRA's own people can join this list of It Doesn't Matter, if, truly, no one and nothing matters but profits from selling guns.
I know what I expect that answer to be.
I sure would like to be wrong.
We have seen this happen in elementary schools. We have seen this happen in high schools. We have seen this happen in movie theaters. We have seen this happen in nightclubs. What we have not seen is anything change after any and all of these previous incidents.
Now? I doubt it.
Except, possibly, for one thing.
This was a country music festival.
This attack on country music fans carries with it somewhere between a possibility and a likelihood that many of the dead and wounded are members, or are closely related to members, of the National Rifle Association.
This is the NRA's strongest demographic.
Will this be the moment that Americans realize that the NRA gives not one shit about human life? That the NRA has not bought and paid for members of the House or the Senate to guarantee anyone's freedom? That the only interest that this trade association has is selling more guns? And the bigger, stronger, more deadly, therefore more expensive, the better?
Profits are all that matter to the National Rifle Association.
They don't give a damn about children.
They don't give a damn about young adults.
They don't give a damn about people in a nightclub frequented by LGBTQ men and women.
They don't give a damn about christians at prayer in their church.
They don't give a damn about people gathered in a movie theater.
They don't give a damn about our military personnel on their bases.
And we are about to learn that they don't give a damn about people gathered at a country music festival.
Their own people.
Their own demographic.
Their own gun owners.
They don't give a damn about anyone or anything but profits from the sale of guns.
And now, I would guess, we won't even give a damn when the NRA's fraud is finally left exposed for all the world to see. Their only interest in gun owners is as marks to turn over more money to gun manufacturers. Their only interest in your freedom is in your freedom to die at the hands of a gun nut.
No one outside the military needs automatic weapons. No one outside the military needs these voluminous magazines that makes it possible to fire so many rounds that the smoke in a hotel room becomes so thick that it sets off the smoke alarms. That, by the way, is how the police figured out where this shooter was.
He shot so many times that the fire alarms went off.
We have decided that it does not matter that our democratic process was pirated by Vladimir Putin and his minions.
We have decided that it does not matter that we are led and represented by a raving lunatic who lacks the impulse control of the average two year old.
We decided long ago that it does not matter if numbers of our fellow citizens, including our children, are murdered indiscriminately on a daily basis.
Now we will decide if the NRA's own people can join this list of It Doesn't Matter, if, truly, no one and nothing matters but profits from selling guns.
I know what I expect that answer to be.
I sure would like to be wrong.
Sunday, July 30, 2017
Summer
I was a bit anxious at the outset. More than a bit, actually. Because when I first thought about this summer prior to school's dismissal in late May, I thought that it had been quite a long time since I had spent a summer responsible for a child. Sheer terror set in as I thought about it, because I quickly realized that I had never been at home, every day, all day, with a child for the entire summer, and, since Grandmommie teaches Summer School each year, that was exactly what was about to happen.
And suddenly, late 50s did not seem like a good time to try to learn how to do that. Granddaddy was sweating it, big-time!
Three weeks would be simple. My parents take Kaly to Vacation Bible School each summer. They continue to choose to be religious, and that's their business, not mine. And you try to tell great-grandparents that they can't have their great-grandchild. Then, she had been accepted for a week of the school system's CLUE Camp. (CLUE-Creative Learning in a Unique Environment-is the Shelby County Schools program for gifted children.) Finally, Grandmommie had registered her for a week of camp at the Memphis Zoo, given her love for that wonderful place and its animals.
Kaly thoroughly enjoyed each of those weeks, especially Zoo Camp, and that just raised the bar for the remaining time of Hanging Out with Granddaddy.
I was determined that we wouldn't sit in the house watching TV all summer. Which was kind of silly, because one thing we have learned about our granddaughter, since she came home in mid-October, is that she really doesn't watch TV. So that one was easy. The iPad, however, was a genuine challenge. And I was no more interested in a summer of small screen than I was of giant screen.
I knew that one day would be Library Day. That is a summer tradition for us. Even when she wasn't living here, we did our best to have a significant library visit each week in the summers. Then, I knew that for at least a generation, Malco Theaters' Summer Movie Camp had played on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings throughout the summer, and the movies tend to be pretty good. They certainly were again this summer! (Rio 2, Mr. Peabody and Sherman, Penguins of Madagascar, Trolls, and Horton Hears a Who) Hard to beat for $2 apiece per film! Also, the Orpheum Theater's Summer Movie Series always includes family films. This year, we caught the annual Wizard of Oz, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (That's the Gene Wilder version. You know, the GOOD one.), and The Princess Bride, one of the greatest films ever made.
And, in checking on options, I found that Memphis Botanic Garden was holding Mudpie Mondays and Adventure Fridays. On Mondays, the kids were able to make old-fashioned mud pies for the garden fairies who live in the My Big Backyard part of the Garden. Fridays brought a presentation on something fascinating about the natural world each week. (Mosquitos: why they bite us, and how to run them off, for example) Each of those activities was followed by some time in the Garden's spray park, where it thunders for two minutes to signal that the rain is about to fall, every 30 minutes. Then I discovered that our wonderful Brooks Museum held Wacky Wednesdays. The Brooks is our fine arts museum, and they had volunteers to help the kids make a piece of art (Wire Sculpture was her favorite), then they showed several short films from Caldecott and Newberry Award winners, then they provided a bingo game that encouraged the kids to tour the museum to find the pictures shown on the game cards. Then we threw in a few Saturday morning visits to the Memphis Zoo for animals, the Teton Trek fountain, and picnics. We also mixed in a few Lazy Days, just to take it easy.
I think that I have never had so much fun in one summer. It has been an absolute blast spending it with this delightful little girl, who has so much personality, so much confidence, such an intellect, and her mother's beauty.
She made this intimidating prospect of a whole summer a great deal of fun for an awfully anxious old Granddaddy!
And suddenly, late 50s did not seem like a good time to try to learn how to do that. Granddaddy was sweating it, big-time!
Three weeks would be simple. My parents take Kaly to Vacation Bible School each summer. They continue to choose to be religious, and that's their business, not mine. And you try to tell great-grandparents that they can't have their great-grandchild. Then, she had been accepted for a week of the school system's CLUE Camp. (CLUE-Creative Learning in a Unique Environment-is the Shelby County Schools program for gifted children.) Finally, Grandmommie had registered her for a week of camp at the Memphis Zoo, given her love for that wonderful place and its animals.
Kaly thoroughly enjoyed each of those weeks, especially Zoo Camp, and that just raised the bar for the remaining time of Hanging Out with Granddaddy.
I was determined that we wouldn't sit in the house watching TV all summer. Which was kind of silly, because one thing we have learned about our granddaughter, since she came home in mid-October, is that she really doesn't watch TV. So that one was easy. The iPad, however, was a genuine challenge. And I was no more interested in a summer of small screen than I was of giant screen.
I knew that one day would be Library Day. That is a summer tradition for us. Even when she wasn't living here, we did our best to have a significant library visit each week in the summers. Then, I knew that for at least a generation, Malco Theaters' Summer Movie Camp had played on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings throughout the summer, and the movies tend to be pretty good. They certainly were again this summer! (Rio 2, Mr. Peabody and Sherman, Penguins of Madagascar, Trolls, and Horton Hears a Who) Hard to beat for $2 apiece per film! Also, the Orpheum Theater's Summer Movie Series always includes family films. This year, we caught the annual Wizard of Oz, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (That's the Gene Wilder version. You know, the GOOD one.), and The Princess Bride, one of the greatest films ever made.
And, in checking on options, I found that Memphis Botanic Garden was holding Mudpie Mondays and Adventure Fridays. On Mondays, the kids were able to make old-fashioned mud pies for the garden fairies who live in the My Big Backyard part of the Garden. Fridays brought a presentation on something fascinating about the natural world each week. (Mosquitos: why they bite us, and how to run them off, for example) Each of those activities was followed by some time in the Garden's spray park, where it thunders for two minutes to signal that the rain is about to fall, every 30 minutes. Then I discovered that our wonderful Brooks Museum held Wacky Wednesdays. The Brooks is our fine arts museum, and they had volunteers to help the kids make a piece of art (Wire Sculpture was her favorite), then they showed several short films from Caldecott and Newberry Award winners, then they provided a bingo game that encouraged the kids to tour the museum to find the pictures shown on the game cards. Then we threw in a few Saturday morning visits to the Memphis Zoo for animals, the Teton Trek fountain, and picnics. We also mixed in a few Lazy Days, just to take it easy.
I think that I have never had so much fun in one summer. It has been an absolute blast spending it with this delightful little girl, who has so much personality, so much confidence, such an intellect, and her mother's beauty.
She made this intimidating prospect of a whole summer a great deal of fun for an awfully anxious old Granddaddy!
Saturday, July 08, 2017
Our Historic Good Fortune
We were incredibly fortunate that George Washington was on the scene when the Revolutionary War broke out, and again, when the Articles of Confederation failed miserably, and we moved to our present form of government.
We were incredibly fortunate that Abraham Lincoln was on the scene when the approximately 90 year struggle over slavery (referring strictly to the time when there was an independent American government) broke out into warfare.
We were incredibly fortunate that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was on the scene, first, when the Great Depression was at its peak, to restore a sense of hope and institute the New Deal to get the country moving again, economically, and then again when war came to America again in 1941.
We were incredibly fortunate that, in 1962, John F. Kennedy was on the scene when the Soviet Union put nuclear missiles in Cuba, and our military leaders wanted to attack them. His cool prevented World War III from breaking out, and got those missiles removed.
We were incredibly fortunate that Barack Obama was on the scene when the worst economic disaster since 1929 befell the world in 2008. His judgement and determination contributed mightily to saving the world economy.
We are incredibly fortunate that, in 2017, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron are on the scene. Since the United States has decided to abdicate our responsibility to lead the world by inexplicably allowing in office an utterly ignorant and ill-mannered buffoon, we depend mightily and totally on these statespersons who know, and are committed to, the traditions, the values, and the principles that have sustained the western world in this post-World War II period. This critical moment, as each of those described above, is no time for ignorance and arrogance as policy.
At least the citizens of Germany and France know that.
We were incredibly fortunate that Abraham Lincoln was on the scene when the approximately 90 year struggle over slavery (referring strictly to the time when there was an independent American government) broke out into warfare.
We were incredibly fortunate that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was on the scene, first, when the Great Depression was at its peak, to restore a sense of hope and institute the New Deal to get the country moving again, economically, and then again when war came to America again in 1941.
We were incredibly fortunate that, in 1962, John F. Kennedy was on the scene when the Soviet Union put nuclear missiles in Cuba, and our military leaders wanted to attack them. His cool prevented World War III from breaking out, and got those missiles removed.
We were incredibly fortunate that Barack Obama was on the scene when the worst economic disaster since 1929 befell the world in 2008. His judgement and determination contributed mightily to saving the world economy.
We are incredibly fortunate that, in 2017, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron are on the scene. Since the United States has decided to abdicate our responsibility to lead the world by inexplicably allowing in office an utterly ignorant and ill-mannered buffoon, we depend mightily and totally on these statespersons who know, and are committed to, the traditions, the values, and the principles that have sustained the western world in this post-World War II period. This critical moment, as each of those described above, is no time for ignorance and arrogance as policy.
At least the citizens of Germany and France know that.
Sunday, August 28, 2016
Colin Kaepernick Exercises Freedom of Speech; "Patriots" Livid
Yes, they did.
Because in this country, we are guaranteed the freedom of our speech, the freedom to dissent, and the freedom to seek redress of grievances. And the freedom of speech, in particular, is a guarantee to speech that is NOT popular, NOT the norm, and NOT what the majority of people think. Because you don't have to protect popular speech, normal speech, or the speech of the majority. That speech is protected by its bulk.
I've read others saying, "there oughta be a law..." It would be unconstitutional. And, before the case was decided by the Supreme Court, it would be a law that demanded to be violated. Just like the Jim Crow laws in the south that led to the Civil Rights movement. The prime defense in the Nuremberg Trials at the end of World War II, when the surviving Nazi bigwigs were put on trial for their war crimes, was, "I was just following orders." It didn't work. It never works. We are each responsible for ourselves. You abide by an immoral law, you are an immoral person. Such a law would never stand.
I admire Colin Kaepernick. He took a stand, or a seat as it were, based on his clearly articulated grievances with our country. I think he is right in his named grievances. Clearly, there are major issues for people of color in the United States of America. I also admire that he, apparently, made the decision to take the heat that will be heaped upon him now. There is no more draconian institution in America than the National Football League. Since Kaepernick has been a marginal player, at best, since the year he led the 49ers to the Super Bowl, he will likely be fined, may be suspended, and I doubt anyone in the league would criticize the 49ers if they released him. But, remembering the parallels again, John Lewis was beaten half to death, Martin Luther King was murdered, Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman were murdered, James Meredith was shot, Medgar Evers was murdered, and on and on and on, for standing up for what they believed. America may guaranteed the freedom of speech, but there is no guarantee that you won't be killed for it, either literally of figuratively, by the most un-American of Americans.
But no matter how loudly the popular speech today may condemn Colin Kaepernick for sitting, this country was built precisely on the principle that he, indeed, could do it. And I'm grateful to him, and every other American, who has taken this country at its words. Those in the Constitution. Not the words of Fox "News" or Rush Limbaugh or Donald Trump. But the words, largely written by James Madison, perfected by the Constitutional Convention, ratified by the original states, and accepted by every state that has joined the Union since. They are the only words that matter. And Colin Kaepernick was genuinely American and patriotic in trusting and relying on them.
Whether you like it or not. Especially if you don't like it.
Monday, July 04, 2016
July 4, 1976
Forty years ago today, I was in Washington, D.C. As a part of the Marshall County High School Band, I marched in the National Bicentennial Parade in our nation's capital. I don't know how the Marching Marshalls were selected as Kentucky's entrant. I don't know who it was that went to George Milam, the band's director, and explained that the minister at First United Methodist Church had been reassigned to Jackson, Tennessee, but he had this kid who had just finished ninth grade and played the tuba, and could the kid possibly go on the trip anyway? I don't have any idea why Mr. Milam agreed to that request, except that he was just a terrific guy. He had decided that for this once in a lifetime opportunity, he would invite his just-graduated seniors to make the trip, and go ahead and bring up the just-finished ninth graders, too, to make the band as big as possible.
The immediate problem was that Dad and Mom and the sibs were moving a couple of weeks before the trip, and there would be no way for me to get to practice in Draffenville, Kentucky, from Jackson, TN. Enter my grandparents. Granddaddy was in his final appointment before retirement at Murray First UMC. They agreed to put me up and put up with me, and tasked my uncle, Bill, a Murray State student at the time, with transporting the 15 year old nephew back and forth for rehearsals. I can only imagine how thrilled he was with that assignment.
Logistics in place, rehearsals completed, we boarded the buses for the longest, farthest away from home trip I'd ever been on. Mr. Milam was an educator, so he wasn't interested in the easy way out of just going up for the parade on July 4, and returning home as quickly as possible. He planned an extravaganza that gave us six days in Washington after the parade.
The parade was incredible. It was eight miles. It was July. It was Washington. It was 100% wool uniforms. I'm not sure to this day how I survived. Hot and itchy is not my best thing. We got it done. And that night, after the parade and showers, we went to the National Mall for the show. Johnny Cash sang, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller spoke, and there followed the greatest fireworks display that to this day I have ever seen. All of this at the base of the Washington Monument.
After that, in the following days, we saw the Lincoln Memorial. We visited the United States Capitol. We went to the White House. We saw the prototype of the Lunar Module that Neil Armstrong had piloted to the surface of the moon at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum. We saw the Supreme Court building. One of the last stops we made before setting out for home was the National Archives, the home of our nation's most significant documents.
The United States' Constitution was there, each page of it, the size of a newspaper page in my recollection, in a separate case, and there were several of them. We could walk right up to them and read everything it said. And displayed above, in its own case, one that rose from a vault that reached deep into the ground in case of nuclear attack, built during the Red Scare of the 1950s by the Mosler Safe Company of Ohio, was The Declaration of Independence.
I had already, on that trip, found the Lincoln Memorial to be a sacred space. I cannot begin to put into words the experience of standing before the great sculpture of a seated Abraham Lincoln in that magnificent, open hall, on that first trip, or on another, just a few years ago. I had that same sense as I stood before The Declaration of Independence. While the Declaration largely fell by the wayside, especially after the 1787 writing of the Constitution, its reputation and prominence began to rebound as the nation approached the 50th anniversary in 1826. The coincidence of the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two of the last three living signers of the Declaration on July 4, 1826, that exact 50th anniversary (Charles Carroll of Maryland lived until 1832, when he died at the age of 95), contributed to its return to prominence. But it was Abraham Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address's references to it, that made the Declaration once more a living, breathing document. Lincoln recalled the breathtaking aspirations, the dreams of all humanity, and the determination to pursue them, that mark the writing committee's work as an eternal expression of all that we believe that we can become. (The committee was comprised of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert Livingston of New York. Adams proposed that Jefferson write a first draft, and when it was done, Adams and Franklin acted as editors before the committee presented it to the Continental Congress)
That trip was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. It fed a love for American history and our American institutions that lives in me to this day, and will continue throughout my life. It made many of those things that I had already read about real. I'll forever be indebted to whomever it was that asked George Milam to include me. I assumed for many years that it was one or both of my parents that asked for that kindness, but they both insisted again, just this afternoon, that it was not them.
I wish every American could make that trip, and especially those who are filled with such contempt for Washington, our government and its institutions, and the dreams and expectations that the Declaration describes. For as far as I am concerned, contempt for those dreams and expectations is simply contempt for Americans, as we are, truly, those who consider Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness to be Unalienable Rights for All.
The immediate problem was that Dad and Mom and the sibs were moving a couple of weeks before the trip, and there would be no way for me to get to practice in Draffenville, Kentucky, from Jackson, TN. Enter my grandparents. Granddaddy was in his final appointment before retirement at Murray First UMC. They agreed to put me up and put up with me, and tasked my uncle, Bill, a Murray State student at the time, with transporting the 15 year old nephew back and forth for rehearsals. I can only imagine how thrilled he was with that assignment.
Logistics in place, rehearsals completed, we boarded the buses for the longest, farthest away from home trip I'd ever been on. Mr. Milam was an educator, so he wasn't interested in the easy way out of just going up for the parade on July 4, and returning home as quickly as possible. He planned an extravaganza that gave us six days in Washington after the parade.
The parade was incredible. It was eight miles. It was July. It was Washington. It was 100% wool uniforms. I'm not sure to this day how I survived. Hot and itchy is not my best thing. We got it done. And that night, after the parade and showers, we went to the National Mall for the show. Johnny Cash sang, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller spoke, and there followed the greatest fireworks display that to this day I have ever seen. All of this at the base of the Washington Monument.
After that, in the following days, we saw the Lincoln Memorial. We visited the United States Capitol. We went to the White House. We saw the prototype of the Lunar Module that Neil Armstrong had piloted to the surface of the moon at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum. We saw the Supreme Court building. One of the last stops we made before setting out for home was the National Archives, the home of our nation's most significant documents.
The United States' Constitution was there, each page of it, the size of a newspaper page in my recollection, in a separate case, and there were several of them. We could walk right up to them and read everything it said. And displayed above, in its own case, one that rose from a vault that reached deep into the ground in case of nuclear attack, built during the Red Scare of the 1950s by the Mosler Safe Company of Ohio, was The Declaration of Independence.
I had already, on that trip, found the Lincoln Memorial to be a sacred space. I cannot begin to put into words the experience of standing before the great sculpture of a seated Abraham Lincoln in that magnificent, open hall, on that first trip, or on another, just a few years ago. I had that same sense as I stood before The Declaration of Independence. While the Declaration largely fell by the wayside, especially after the 1787 writing of the Constitution, its reputation and prominence began to rebound as the nation approached the 50th anniversary in 1826. The coincidence of the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two of the last three living signers of the Declaration on July 4, 1826, that exact 50th anniversary (Charles Carroll of Maryland lived until 1832, when he died at the age of 95), contributed to its return to prominence. But it was Abraham Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address's references to it, that made the Declaration once more a living, breathing document. Lincoln recalled the breathtaking aspirations, the dreams of all humanity, and the determination to pursue them, that mark the writing committee's work as an eternal expression of all that we believe that we can become. (The committee was comprised of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert Livingston of New York. Adams proposed that Jefferson write a first draft, and when it was done, Adams and Franklin acted as editors before the committee presented it to the Continental Congress)
That trip was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. It fed a love for American history and our American institutions that lives in me to this day, and will continue throughout my life. It made many of those things that I had already read about real. I'll forever be indebted to whomever it was that asked George Milam to include me. I assumed for many years that it was one or both of my parents that asked for that kindness, but they both insisted again, just this afternoon, that it was not them.
I wish every American could make that trip, and especially those who are filled with such contempt for Washington, our government and its institutions, and the dreams and expectations that the Declaration describes. For as far as I am concerned, contempt for those dreams and expectations is simply contempt for Americans, as we are, truly, those who consider Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness to be Unalienable Rights for All.
Saturday, June 04, 2016
Muhammad Ali
When people think of Muhammad Ali, I hope the boxing comes to mind second. I
agree completely that he was The Greatest, the best boxer who ever
lived. But I hope his courage is what people will remember first.
He was brave enough to stand up against the Viet Nam war in 1967. He refused to be inducted. He refused to run away to Canada. He was ready to go to jail. He lost his title. He lost his livelihood. He lost three years that would have been, as good as he was before and after, his best years as an athlete.
He was reviled. He was hated, passionately. White people, and many black people, had no use for him, whatsoever. And he knew that was going to happen. He took it all on. He did it before Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy broke with President Johnson over Viet Nam. He did it three weeks after Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his sermon "Beyond Vietnam" at the Riverside Church in New York City. (Dr. King would be murdered one year to the day from the moment of that sermon.)
He had been a friend of Malcolm X, before they had a falling out. He was a friend of Dr. King, as the FBI's wiretaps of Dr. King documented. He was acquainted with Jacqueline Kennedy, and certainly aware of Robert Kennedy's assassination. He knew what the cost could be, of standing up for what he believed.
He did it anyway.
He told the truth, with courage. He would not go to kill Vietnamese people, people, he declared, who had never called him that N word. Black people in America in 1967 had seen the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act enacted into law, but they had not seen them enforced throughout the nation. They certainly had not seen the hearts and minds of all Americans changed. The black people of Ali's generation had seen fathers and uncles and friends come back from fighting for America in World War II, and as soon as they got home, be reminded that they were not equal, and they certainly were not genuinely free by any definition.
He stood up. With courage. Knowing the consequences.
And he paid the price. He lost. He lost a lot.
But then he won.
The Supreme Court reversed his conviction. He fought again. He became the champion again. And he became beloved. And did it all without the loss of his integrity. Because of his courage.
He was brave enough to stand up against the Viet Nam war in 1967. He refused to be inducted. He refused to run away to Canada. He was ready to go to jail. He lost his title. He lost his livelihood. He lost three years that would have been, as good as he was before and after, his best years as an athlete.
He was reviled. He was hated, passionately. White people, and many black people, had no use for him, whatsoever. And he knew that was going to happen. He took it all on. He did it before Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy broke with President Johnson over Viet Nam. He did it three weeks after Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his sermon "Beyond Vietnam" at the Riverside Church in New York City. (Dr. King would be murdered one year to the day from the moment of that sermon.)
He had been a friend of Malcolm X, before they had a falling out. He was a friend of Dr. King, as the FBI's wiretaps of Dr. King documented. He was acquainted with Jacqueline Kennedy, and certainly aware of Robert Kennedy's assassination. He knew what the cost could be, of standing up for what he believed.
He did it anyway.
He told the truth, with courage. He would not go to kill Vietnamese people, people, he declared, who had never called him that N word. Black people in America in 1967 had seen the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act enacted into law, but they had not seen them enforced throughout the nation. They certainly had not seen the hearts and minds of all Americans changed. The black people of Ali's generation had seen fathers and uncles and friends come back from fighting for America in World War II, and as soon as they got home, be reminded that they were not equal, and they certainly were not genuinely free by any definition.
He stood up. With courage. Knowing the consequences.
And he paid the price. He lost. He lost a lot.
But then he won.
The Supreme Court reversed his conviction. He fought again. He became the champion again. And he became beloved. And did it all without the loss of his integrity. Because of his courage.
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
General Stupidity
There seems to be a lot of fretting about the united methodist general
conference today. I haven't followed it, and hadn't intended to comment,
as life is far too pleasant since having escaped that organization
several years ago. I have one friend inside the dragon, and a few acquaintances of one distant level or another. And after some significant amount of puzzlement/despair/frustration/anger on their parts, well, here are my thoughts.
It is mystifying to me that people of good will are still shocked when conservatives act like conservatives. That club that claims to be a church was long ago taken over by operatives of an extreme right-wing crew that had already succeeded in comandeering most of the rest of America's religious clubs. I have become very grateful to Bishop Dick and his lackies for teaching this to me. After all, why should I have wasted any more of my life? There is no such thing as church. There is simply a club that rewards those who play along with the conservatives, and massacres those who don't. Never having been much of an ass-kisser, I'm better off out.
The leaders of the club pretend to be things they are not. For instance, many of them continue to insist that a "church" is not obliged to worry about what is wrong and what is right. They simply need to plot a course that will allow them to keep their members, and, more importantly, their members' money. Which is interesting, because the ones who keep threatening to leave if they don't get their way are the conservatives. Think Texas republicans' constantly stated desire to secede. They aren't going anywhere. They are just playing games. Now, if there were any such thing as a church, you would think that distinguishing right and wrong and standing with right might be fairly important to it. The methodist church just wants to talk about "making disciples," and address the continual loss of members and money over the last 40 years.
When you pretend to be a church, and you won't stand for what is right and against what is wrong, you won't draw in new people. You'll just sit around watching the angry old conservative assholes slowly die off.
While your club dies, too.
I've been to enough funerals.
It is mystifying to me that people of good will are still shocked when conservatives act like conservatives. That club that claims to be a church was long ago taken over by operatives of an extreme right-wing crew that had already succeeded in comandeering most of the rest of America's religious clubs. I have become very grateful to Bishop Dick and his lackies for teaching this to me. After all, why should I have wasted any more of my life? There is no such thing as church. There is simply a club that rewards those who play along with the conservatives, and massacres those who don't. Never having been much of an ass-kisser, I'm better off out.
The leaders of the club pretend to be things they are not. For instance, many of them continue to insist that a "church" is not obliged to worry about what is wrong and what is right. They simply need to plot a course that will allow them to keep their members, and, more importantly, their members' money. Which is interesting, because the ones who keep threatening to leave if they don't get their way are the conservatives. Think Texas republicans' constantly stated desire to secede. They aren't going anywhere. They are just playing games. Now, if there were any such thing as a church, you would think that distinguishing right and wrong and standing with right might be fairly important to it. The methodist church just wants to talk about "making disciples," and address the continual loss of members and money over the last 40 years.
When you pretend to be a church, and you won't stand for what is right and against what is wrong, you won't draw in new people. You'll just sit around watching the angry old conservative assholes slowly die off.
While your club dies, too.
I've been to enough funerals.
Thursday, April 07, 2016
Remembering Mr. Justice Scalia
So somebody that matters at George Mason University decided it would be a good idea to name their law school for the late, unlamented Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia. Now, without delving at this point into whether or not that's a good idea (seems to me to be kind of like naming a day care after a child molester; like naming a bank after John Dillinger; like naming a zoo after the dick dentist who shot Cecil the Lion; like naming a synagogue after...well, let's not go there, even with Scalia...you get the point), it seems that no one considered the inevitable acronym of said school.
That acronym business is serious. My sister-in-law attended the Southern Baptist Educational Center, and lived to tell about it. Jim Dickinson once told of how he'd been held hostage by a religious cult. He spent a semester at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, a Southern Baptist school, but I digress. SBEC has been a part of the Memphis community for generations. When, however, First Assembly of God started their school, they weren't about to acronym Jesus' little sports warriors FAGs. So First Assembly of God named their school First Assembly Christian School. FACS as a name wouldn't lead all the precious little Johnnys and Susies into sin. Or something.
When they realized that the shortening of the Antonin Scalia School of Law would be ASSOL, they sought another approach. It seems they then settled on ASSLaw, until somebody sobered up and it dawned on them that they didn't like that any better.
Now, responsible members of the George Mason community (the faculty, rather than the boneheads with the money that sit as trustees who brought up this nonsense in the first place) have concluded that "the values that Scalia affirmed from the bench do not reflect the values of our campus community," and want the whole idea to swim with the fishes (Mafia reference in honor of Justice Scalia's Italian heritage). While I fully understand their concern, I hope they let the naming stand. As long as they leave the original acronym in place. For what could be a better summation of Mr. Justice Scalia than ASSOL being associated with his name for eternity!
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Changing Demographics
When it comes to television viewers, the group that advertisers want is males, 18-34 years old. Advertisers seem to feel that this group has some money, is not yet locked into their patterns of living, and can be influenced by the right celebrity or sales pitch. There are exceptions to this rule. Some report that reality show advertisers are after the 18-34 year old females. I was part of the main desired group, but I left it a long, long time ago.
The next sought after group is males, 18-54 years old. I'm not really sure what the extra 20 years is for here. Maybe they extended the demographic when Viagra and Cialis became available and there was money to be made, but not typically among the 18-34 year olds. Any way, later this week, I shall depart the land of desired demographic, extended version.
My first thought was to say that I'm becoming a speed limit, but, like TV's new response to me, my speed limit analogy is out of date. We've gone back to 70 on the interstates, and I'm not quite there yet. So let's stick with the television consideration. I understand why the advertisers consider me a lost cause. I let go of my last vehicle only when it was pronounced dead after 270,000 plus miles. I buy tennis shoes that feel good for $15 at Pay Less. I've never been in a Joseph A. Bank, even when they are offering buy 1, get 3 free. I wear old blue jeans and t shirts, preferably with no logo. I won't eat at Sonic, as it is pretty clear to me from their ads that eating at Sonic makes a person really, really stupid. I have never seen even one episode of American Idol or Survivor. I am aware that they exist; I just have no interest whatsoever. I haven't seen Star Wars, the new James Bond movie or Matt Damon's adventure on Mars, and this isn't because I've been unemployed since early October. I have no interest in paying more than $10 for a movie ticket, and I don't like the way people act, usually with their phones, at the movies. I have used the same personal care products for longer than I can remember.
I read books. History books. Big, heavy, involved history books. Because there is just nothing more fascinating than where we come from, and what that past suggests about where we are going. And Sherlock Holmes. The formality of Victorian England seems more attractive with each year that goes by. I don't want to live there. It's just nice to visit periodically. My grandparents all died between 1978 and 1991. I find myself thinking of them more often and missing them more. But I have a seven year old granddaughter who keeps me busy and delighted. My grandfather would have utterly adored her.
In short, if that's possible at this point, I have pieced together a happy and fairly set approach to life. And, for the most part, it is very enjoyable to me. So I don't really care which shoe the new number one draft pick is endorsing, or which car the last newly-retired future Hall of Famer is driving. I guess the tv advertisers know what they are doing when they set their desired demographic boundaries.
And I don't mind, even a little bit, riding right out of that crowd.
Happy Trails, from an Old Cowhand!
The next sought after group is males, 18-54 years old. I'm not really sure what the extra 20 years is for here. Maybe they extended the demographic when Viagra and Cialis became available and there was money to be made, but not typically among the 18-34 year olds. Any way, later this week, I shall depart the land of desired demographic, extended version.
My first thought was to say that I'm becoming a speed limit, but, like TV's new response to me, my speed limit analogy is out of date. We've gone back to 70 on the interstates, and I'm not quite there yet. So let's stick with the television consideration. I understand why the advertisers consider me a lost cause. I let go of my last vehicle only when it was pronounced dead after 270,000 plus miles. I buy tennis shoes that feel good for $15 at Pay Less. I've never been in a Joseph A. Bank, even when they are offering buy 1, get 3 free. I wear old blue jeans and t shirts, preferably with no logo. I won't eat at Sonic, as it is pretty clear to me from their ads that eating at Sonic makes a person really, really stupid. I have never seen even one episode of American Idol or Survivor. I am aware that they exist; I just have no interest whatsoever. I haven't seen Star Wars, the new James Bond movie or Matt Damon's adventure on Mars, and this isn't because I've been unemployed since early October. I have no interest in paying more than $10 for a movie ticket, and I don't like the way people act, usually with their phones, at the movies. I have used the same personal care products for longer than I can remember.
I read books. History books. Big, heavy, involved history books. Because there is just nothing more fascinating than where we come from, and what that past suggests about where we are going. And Sherlock Holmes. The formality of Victorian England seems more attractive with each year that goes by. I don't want to live there. It's just nice to visit periodically. My grandparents all died between 1978 and 1991. I find myself thinking of them more often and missing them more. But I have a seven year old granddaughter who keeps me busy and delighted. My grandfather would have utterly adored her.
In short, if that's possible at this point, I have pieced together a happy and fairly set approach to life. And, for the most part, it is very enjoyable to me. So I don't really care which shoe the new number one draft pick is endorsing, or which car the last newly-retired future Hall of Famer is driving. I guess the tv advertisers know what they are doing when they set their desired demographic boundaries.
And I don't mind, even a little bit, riding right out of that crowd.
Happy Trails, from an Old Cowhand!
Friday, August 15, 2014
Mr. Williams
He was a little guy with a news stand outside a comedy club in San Francisco. One of those people you immediately recognize as not terrifically educated, but extremely wise. He confronted the rockstar popular young comedian, Robin Williams, as he went in to do a show that would be taped for broadcast on HBO. As he tried to sell Mr. Williams a paper, he began commenting on his appearance. There were solicitous comments about his health and spirit. He advised, "Joke them if they can't take a fuck," before sending him in for his performance with the caution, "You take care of yourself, Mr. Williams."
Robin Williams was analyzed, diagnosed and prescribed, powerfully, by the little news stand guy. Who was played by Robin Williams.
That HBO special was the first time I ever saw Robin Williams in his free and natural habitat. I couldn't look away. I also couldn't stop hurting, both sides aching from the constant, deep laughter that rolled on, unabated, for the 90 minute special.
I reacted to Robin Williams that way every time I witnessed the spectacle of his performance of standup comedy.
I often found myself reacting to him that way on screen. Except when he tore my heart out. Sometimes the humor and the pathos fell so hard on one anothers' heels that it was hard to recognize when and where one had stopped and the other began. Just like life.
I knew he struggled with life. He had several stops in rehab to deal with multiple issues. Hell, he partied with Belushi and all of his contemporaries in the 70's California comedy explosion. Just like I thought I wanted to. He talked with David Letterman after the fact several times, each one, proclaiming that he was clean and doing better. The truth may have been that he was attempting to self-medicate for the hurt and darkness he carried.
Does comedy attract people trying to deal with themselves by baring all and making light of it, or does comedy take people into those places? I don't have any idea, but it seems to happen over and over and over again. I haven't done any research, but I bet that as many comedians have died at their own hand, of overdose or otherwise, as rock musicians. Ah, the glamor!
But let's be honest here for a moment. Haven't we all thought at one moment or another about not being here? I'm not talking about sitting down at the table with a gun or anything like that. But haven't we imagined what it would be like not to be in the circumstances of the moment? Fortunately, most of us can still recognize a reason somewhere to go on.
Either that, or we're too afraid of how we might wind up if the attempt went awry.
So Monday, he died. The funniest man I ever saw. They said he had a belt around his neck. They said he had money trouble. They said he had fallen off the wagon again, although his wife said no. She said he had been diagnosed with early stage Parkinson's, leaving him with the prospect of losing control of his body and his speech, both so instrumental to his art. We have to know all that stuff. All that stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with the tragedy of a supremely gifted man finding himself with no hope left whatsoever.
He knew, all those years ago on the HBO special, that he needed someone to tell him, "You take care of yourself, Mr. Williams." For whatever reason, he couldn't hear that voice anymore on Sunday night.
It is hard for me to imagine that that face and voice, so prominent in my life for the last almost 40 years, won't be back in the next movie or tv appearance or comedy special, but I'm just a fan. There are three people for whom he was Dad, and another for whom he was husband, and I can't begin to imagine their loss and hurt.
It is all just so heartbreaking. And there's nothing funny about it.
Robin Williams was analyzed, diagnosed and prescribed, powerfully, by the little news stand guy. Who was played by Robin Williams.
That HBO special was the first time I ever saw Robin Williams in his free and natural habitat. I couldn't look away. I also couldn't stop hurting, both sides aching from the constant, deep laughter that rolled on, unabated, for the 90 minute special.
I reacted to Robin Williams that way every time I witnessed the spectacle of his performance of standup comedy.
I often found myself reacting to him that way on screen. Except when he tore my heart out. Sometimes the humor and the pathos fell so hard on one anothers' heels that it was hard to recognize when and where one had stopped and the other began. Just like life.
I knew he struggled with life. He had several stops in rehab to deal with multiple issues. Hell, he partied with Belushi and all of his contemporaries in the 70's California comedy explosion. Just like I thought I wanted to. He talked with David Letterman after the fact several times, each one, proclaiming that he was clean and doing better. The truth may have been that he was attempting to self-medicate for the hurt and darkness he carried.
Does comedy attract people trying to deal with themselves by baring all and making light of it, or does comedy take people into those places? I don't have any idea, but it seems to happen over and over and over again. I haven't done any research, but I bet that as many comedians have died at their own hand, of overdose or otherwise, as rock musicians. Ah, the glamor!
But let's be honest here for a moment. Haven't we all thought at one moment or another about not being here? I'm not talking about sitting down at the table with a gun or anything like that. But haven't we imagined what it would be like not to be in the circumstances of the moment? Fortunately, most of us can still recognize a reason somewhere to go on.
Either that, or we're too afraid of how we might wind up if the attempt went awry.
So Monday, he died. The funniest man I ever saw. They said he had a belt around his neck. They said he had money trouble. They said he had fallen off the wagon again, although his wife said no. She said he had been diagnosed with early stage Parkinson's, leaving him with the prospect of losing control of his body and his speech, both so instrumental to his art. We have to know all that stuff. All that stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with the tragedy of a supremely gifted man finding himself with no hope left whatsoever.
He knew, all those years ago on the HBO special, that he needed someone to tell him, "You take care of yourself, Mr. Williams." For whatever reason, he couldn't hear that voice anymore on Sunday night.
It is hard for me to imagine that that face and voice, so prominent in my life for the last almost 40 years, won't be back in the next movie or tv appearance or comedy special, but I'm just a fan. There are three people for whom he was Dad, and another for whom he was husband, and I can't begin to imagine their loss and hurt.
It is all just so heartbreaking. And there's nothing funny about it.
Saturday, June 07, 2014
Popeye
Don Zimmer died this week. He was one of those characters that are often found associated with baseball. I never knew him as a player. He was a teammate of Jackie Robinson in Brooklyn, but by the time he got to the bigs, he had already suffered a beaning in the minors. Zimmer's injury was serious enough that had to have brain surgery, and a plate put into his head. Many writers cite Zimmer's beaning as the turning point that led to batting helmets becoming mandatory. It was a good move for baseball, but too late for Zimmer, as he was never the same player he had been before.
But his diminished playing skills probably sped up the clock on Zim's coaching and managerial career. He became a valued instructor. He coached in the minors before moving up to the Expos and Padres. Then, the offer to manage came. He started with the lowly Padres in 1972, but that didn't go well or last long. He joined Darrell Johnson's coaching staff in Boston for the '74 season. He was there in 1975 when Rice and Lynn were rookies, Yaz was the star, Dewey Evans was playing Hall of Fame caliber rightfield, El Tiante was spinning on the mound, and for the first time since '67, the Sox were winners. They played the Big Red Machine in one of the truly epic World Series of all time.
Don Zimmer managed perhaps the best Red Sox team between Bill Corrigan and Tito Francona in 1978. They should have won the American League East that year. They would have won the AL East that year, if not for one Bucky F. Dent. There's a long drive to left...Yastrzemski's not going to get it...It's a home run!
Zimmer later had a stop with the other sad sack franchise of Major League Baseball, the Chicago Cubs. Was it an accident that the Red Sox and Cubs each had success and won under Popeye? (Zim had many nicknames, but when he got mad and argued with umpires, his eyes would bug out, he would turn red, and he looked like Popeye) Was it an accident that the Yankees last dynasty was guided by the totally unflappable Joe Torre and his bench coach/Yoda, Don Zimmer? No. There are no accidents. Don Zimmer knew the game. Don Zimmer taught the game. Don Zimmer managed the game. And on the rare occasions that his players were anywhere near good, he won the game.
Zim was what is called a "Baseball Lifer." For crying out loud, he married his beloved Soot (Carol Jean), whom he started dating in 10th Grade, in 1951, at home plate, before an Elmira minor league game. She was by his side when he died on Wednesday. His son, Tom, is a scout for the Giants. The Zimmers also have a daughter, Donna, and four grandchildren.
Starting late in his tenure coaching with Torre and the Yankees, Don Zimmer began wearing a uniform bearing the number of years he had been in the game. His last stop was as an instructor and advisor with the Tampa Bay Rays. His uniform this year carried the number 66.
Zim isn't in the Hall of Fame. But he managed, coached and taught the game to a lot of men who are. And several of them have come forward this week to say that without Don Zimmer, they might not be there, either.
And the game certainly would not have been as much fun, had Zip Zimmer not been there.
But his diminished playing skills probably sped up the clock on Zim's coaching and managerial career. He became a valued instructor. He coached in the minors before moving up to the Expos and Padres. Then, the offer to manage came. He started with the lowly Padres in 1972, but that didn't go well or last long. He joined Darrell Johnson's coaching staff in Boston for the '74 season. He was there in 1975 when Rice and Lynn were rookies, Yaz was the star, Dewey Evans was playing Hall of Fame caliber rightfield, El Tiante was spinning on the mound, and for the first time since '67, the Sox were winners. They played the Big Red Machine in one of the truly epic World Series of all time.
Don Zimmer managed perhaps the best Red Sox team between Bill Corrigan and Tito Francona in 1978. They should have won the American League East that year. They would have won the AL East that year, if not for one Bucky F. Dent. There's a long drive to left...Yastrzemski's not going to get it...It's a home run!
Zimmer later had a stop with the other sad sack franchise of Major League Baseball, the Chicago Cubs. Was it an accident that the Red Sox and Cubs each had success and won under Popeye? (Zim had many nicknames, but when he got mad and argued with umpires, his eyes would bug out, he would turn red, and he looked like Popeye) Was it an accident that the Yankees last dynasty was guided by the totally unflappable Joe Torre and his bench coach/Yoda, Don Zimmer? No. There are no accidents. Don Zimmer knew the game. Don Zimmer taught the game. Don Zimmer managed the game. And on the rare occasions that his players were anywhere near good, he won the game.
Zim was what is called a "Baseball Lifer." For crying out loud, he married his beloved Soot (Carol Jean), whom he started dating in 10th Grade, in 1951, at home plate, before an Elmira minor league game. She was by his side when he died on Wednesday. His son, Tom, is a scout for the Giants. The Zimmers also have a daughter, Donna, and four grandchildren.
Starting late in his tenure coaching with Torre and the Yankees, Don Zimmer began wearing a uniform bearing the number of years he had been in the game. His last stop was as an instructor and advisor with the Tampa Bay Rays. His uniform this year carried the number 66.
Zim isn't in the Hall of Fame. But he managed, coached and taught the game to a lot of men who are. And several of them have come forward this week to say that without Don Zimmer, they might not be there, either.
And the game certainly would not have been as much fun, had Zip Zimmer not been there.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
A Very Ugly Place Indeed
The world can seem a not very pretty place these days. No reflection (especially on Earth Day) on the spectacular show that nature stages every Spring. Rather, it has to do with the way the top of the food chain is trashing the place.
Politically, for just a couple of examples, the local solons continue their process of mucking up the school situation in our fair metroplex. You don't want your kids in school with mine, and I don't want mine in school with yours. I don't want to pay for your kids, and you don't want to pay for mine. Or yours. And so the stomach turns. Then there are the Feds, who have their hands full with a petty thief out West who wants to make himself out the Great American Patriot. He isn't Robin Hood, unless Robin's story got backward somewhere along the line. I suspect that the various agencies are a bit anxious about another Waco or Ruby Ridge breaking out. To me, it's time to give this clown a date certain to pay his bills, or his property gets seized. No more ifs, ands, or Fox News butts.
Spiritually, if there still is such a thing that can be taken seriously, the church continues in the throes of an inability to stand up for what's right. Some of those in positions that they feel requires them to make "bold" pronouncements on How Things Should Be, tell everyone else-who are chastised for calling one another names-that if they weren't so stupid, they could see the damage the debate is doing to the church, and if they were only as "holy" as those making the pronouncement they wouldn't be hung up on little things like right and wrong. In the church.
Which explains the church's lack of credibility on anything that matters.
The debate isn't doing the damage. The damage is the result of milquetoast leadership that can't find a position with both hands, and doesn't have the courage to do anything that's right if it's going to endanger the job, or the fantasy of episcopal election, or becoming a unicorn herder, or whatever.
While it would be easy to pile log on log of the conflagration, I'd suggest a couple of little bumps on the proverbial road to fake hell. First, something possessed Rupert Murdoch to put Neil DeGrasse Tyson on television for an hour a week to tell some truth. Yes, Rupert Murdoch. Master of Faux News. Hacker of murder victims' families' cell phones. Rupert Freaking Murdoch! Dr. Tyson is the preeminent spokesperson for education, intelligence, integrity and honesty in what passes for our current public discourse. Watch Cosmos. Feel better about doing your own thinking.
Second, at the risk of appearing immodest, opt out. Ditch what's killing you. Stop wasting your life if what you're doing is worthless or doesn't lead to your bliss, in the Joseph Campbell sense. I have found salvation in working with special needs teenagers. This work makes a real, tangible difference in their lives every day.
If you trusted people with your life, and subsequently discovered that you had been deceived by deceivers and are somewhere between spinning your wheels, murder, or suicide, take the reigns back. You do not owe liars your life.
Remember your dreams. Find the place to make a difference. Change the world.
It can still be done!
And then the world starts to look like a more beautiful place again.
Politically, for just a couple of examples, the local solons continue their process of mucking up the school situation in our fair metroplex. You don't want your kids in school with mine, and I don't want mine in school with yours. I don't want to pay for your kids, and you don't want to pay for mine. Or yours. And so the stomach turns. Then there are the Feds, who have their hands full with a petty thief out West who wants to make himself out the Great American Patriot. He isn't Robin Hood, unless Robin's story got backward somewhere along the line. I suspect that the various agencies are a bit anxious about another Waco or Ruby Ridge breaking out. To me, it's time to give this clown a date certain to pay his bills, or his property gets seized. No more ifs, ands, or Fox News butts.
Spiritually, if there still is such a thing that can be taken seriously, the church continues in the throes of an inability to stand up for what's right. Some of those in positions that they feel requires them to make "bold" pronouncements on How Things Should Be, tell everyone else-who are chastised for calling one another names-that if they weren't so stupid, they could see the damage the debate is doing to the church, and if they were only as "holy" as those making the pronouncement they wouldn't be hung up on little things like right and wrong. In the church.
Which explains the church's lack of credibility on anything that matters.
The debate isn't doing the damage. The damage is the result of milquetoast leadership that can't find a position with both hands, and doesn't have the courage to do anything that's right if it's going to endanger the job, or the fantasy of episcopal election, or becoming a unicorn herder, or whatever.
While it would be easy to pile log on log of the conflagration, I'd suggest a couple of little bumps on the proverbial road to fake hell. First, something possessed Rupert Murdoch to put Neil DeGrasse Tyson on television for an hour a week to tell some truth. Yes, Rupert Murdoch. Master of Faux News. Hacker of murder victims' families' cell phones. Rupert Freaking Murdoch! Dr. Tyson is the preeminent spokesperson for education, intelligence, integrity and honesty in what passes for our current public discourse. Watch Cosmos. Feel better about doing your own thinking.
Second, at the risk of appearing immodest, opt out. Ditch what's killing you. Stop wasting your life if what you're doing is worthless or doesn't lead to your bliss, in the Joseph Campbell sense. I have found salvation in working with special needs teenagers. This work makes a real, tangible difference in their lives every day.
If you trusted people with your life, and subsequently discovered that you had been deceived by deceivers and are somewhere between spinning your wheels, murder, or suicide, take the reigns back. You do not owe liars your life.
Remember your dreams. Find the place to make a difference. Change the world.
It can still be done!
And then the world starts to look like a more beautiful place again.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
What's in a name? With Weiner, apparently a lot.
It would seem that it is still news that adults behave badly in public. It shouldn't be. After all, the entire fake "Reality Television" industry is based on people who are willing to be just awful every week at 9, 8 Central, for the million dollar prize, or at least for the chance to be on tv and get noticed by...someone?
Rational people might argue that former Congressman Anthony Weiner, now running for Mayor of New York, should be one person who is incredibly careful about his behavior. Not so. You know the situation. Ol' Tony, wife at home and pregnant, was entertaining himself by tweeting (hate that term) pictures of things better kept out of the ironically named smartphone. Which led to the resignation and sort of apology that we have come to expect in such cases. "If anyone has been offended..." Somehow the apology for offending always sounds to me to be a little accusatory at the person(s) offended, rather than an apology for the actual bad behavior, but that's just me.
Now, he's had another press conference, wife by his side still (and getting thrashed for it, as though this is all her fault!), but has not removed himself from the New York City Mayor's race. Yet. It seems that you can take the sexter out of Congress, but you can't take the ironically named smartphone away from the sexter. Yes, Tony was sending more "lewd messages" to at least three other women, even after losing a seat in the House for having done precisely that earlier. Although, these days, there might be other members of the House that would consider such to bail out of the Temple of Boehner.
And now, the aftermath. I'm sick and tired of hearing people talk about sex addiction. Tiger Woods cheated serially on his wife, so he went to a sex addiction clinic. Now Anthony Weiner is being diagnosed by the brilliant talking heads who can often barely read. Addiction is a bitch. I've seen its effects. So have you. This ain't that.
I suppose that every man, left to his own devices, pardon the expression, would act just like Anthony Weiner, Tiger Woods, Bill Clinton, the guy we roomed with in college, and multitudes of other fellows who seem shameless. And every now and then most of us might, for a second or too, think that those guys were having all the fun. But the reality is that those of us who aren't sending those texts/tweets/facebook posts, aren't hitting on every Waffle House waitress we see, are remembering that the interns at our place of business are the age of our daughters, if not granddaughters, are actually the men who are getting life right.
We are the ones trying to set an example for younger guys, who might someday be dating our daughters and granddaughters. We are the ones trying to show a little respect to the women who are in the places that our mothers, sisters, daughters and granddaughters have found themselves in time and again. We are the ones trying to do our thinking at the correct end of things.
We can debate why that is. Are we afraid of getting caught? Maybe. Although if you're doing anything online and think it will be kept private, you're a fool. Are we repressed and hung-up? Maybe. And if so, thank goodness for it. If we want to be anything more than instinctual animals, motivated only by the biological imperative to reproduce, or at least go through the motions, then grow up boys!
Otherwise, we're just like Weiner.
You know, a dick.
Rational people might argue that former Congressman Anthony Weiner, now running for Mayor of New York, should be one person who is incredibly careful about his behavior. Not so. You know the situation. Ol' Tony, wife at home and pregnant, was entertaining himself by tweeting (hate that term) pictures of things better kept out of the ironically named smartphone. Which led to the resignation and sort of apology that we have come to expect in such cases. "If anyone has been offended..." Somehow the apology for offending always sounds to me to be a little accusatory at the person(s) offended, rather than an apology for the actual bad behavior, but that's just me.
Now, he's had another press conference, wife by his side still (and getting thrashed for it, as though this is all her fault!), but has not removed himself from the New York City Mayor's race. Yet. It seems that you can take the sexter out of Congress, but you can't take the ironically named smartphone away from the sexter. Yes, Tony was sending more "lewd messages" to at least three other women, even after losing a seat in the House for having done precisely that earlier. Although, these days, there might be other members of the House that would consider such to bail out of the Temple of Boehner.
And now, the aftermath. I'm sick and tired of hearing people talk about sex addiction. Tiger Woods cheated serially on his wife, so he went to a sex addiction clinic. Now Anthony Weiner is being diagnosed by the brilliant talking heads who can often barely read. Addiction is a bitch. I've seen its effects. So have you. This ain't that.
I suppose that every man, left to his own devices, pardon the expression, would act just like Anthony Weiner, Tiger Woods, Bill Clinton, the guy we roomed with in college, and multitudes of other fellows who seem shameless. And every now and then most of us might, for a second or too, think that those guys were having all the fun. But the reality is that those of us who aren't sending those texts/tweets/facebook posts, aren't hitting on every Waffle House waitress we see, are remembering that the interns at our place of business are the age of our daughters, if not granddaughters, are actually the men who are getting life right.
We are the ones trying to set an example for younger guys, who might someday be dating our daughters and granddaughters. We are the ones trying to show a little respect to the women who are in the places that our mothers, sisters, daughters and granddaughters have found themselves in time and again. We are the ones trying to do our thinking at the correct end of things.
We can debate why that is. Are we afraid of getting caught? Maybe. Although if you're doing anything online and think it will be kept private, you're a fool. Are we repressed and hung-up? Maybe. And if so, thank goodness for it. If we want to be anything more than instinctual animals, motivated only by the biological imperative to reproduce, or at least go through the motions, then grow up boys!
Otherwise, we're just like Weiner.
You know, a dick.
Monday, June 24, 2013
An Irrelevant Anniversary
I missed my anniversary! June 16 marked the completion of my second year as a free man. I can report that life has become joyous to the point that the only time I think about the earlier misery is when someone asks about it. I'm not really sure what is being sought when church is brought up to me. Do I miss it? No, and I don't think any thinking person would, if they removed themselves from that life for a time. Do I miss preaching? No, my adult children were once teenagers; that was all of the having my every word ignored that I'll ever need. Do I miss the labor relations? Not even close, as I have found honest people with a genuine mission and real integrity to work for, which is pretty much all I ever asked.
I'll be starting my third year in a local school district in about six weeks. This year I'll be working with a High School class of special needs kids. I'm excited to have the opportunity to encourage and assist people who are open to and appreciative of that assistance. I deeply admire teachers and all that they accomplish under the most difficult of circumstances. It is a privilege to support and assist them in their work.
So, there it is. No more sleepless nights. No more headaches. No more pointless and unnecessary aggravation. The worst thing I've had to deal with in two years is Comcast. That's a pretty good life, by any definition!
And a vast improvement over the interminably fraudulent organization of previous decades' efforts.
I'll be starting my third year in a local school district in about six weeks. This year I'll be working with a High School class of special needs kids. I'm excited to have the opportunity to encourage and assist people who are open to and appreciative of that assistance. I deeply admire teachers and all that they accomplish under the most difficult of circumstances. It is a privilege to support and assist them in their work.
So, there it is. No more sleepless nights. No more headaches. No more pointless and unnecessary aggravation. The worst thing I've had to deal with in two years is Comcast. That's a pretty good life, by any definition!
And a vast improvement over the interminably fraudulent organization of previous decades' efforts.
Friday, June 21, 2013
The Eloquence of La Deen
The speculation was raging, on at least one media outlet tonight, on how much damage Paula Deen has done to her career with the reporting on Ms. Deen's deposition in which she acknowledged using the "n-word" and various other revelations that seem out of step with the racial proprieties of this century. Or the last one.
Damage? Seriously?
In the eyes of, oh, about 92% of white southern christians, Ms. Deen's comments qualify her for sainthood. The very fact that she is being sued for racial discrimination makes her a respected, sympathetic victim. Wanting to stage a wedding with black men standing about in slave costume? Why, that's just standing up for tradition!
In the party that has a candidate currently running for lieutenant governor who actually said this week that blacks were better off as slaves than they are receiving food stamps, she's far more likely to be nominated for President than Chris Christie is.
Damaged? Paula Deen has never in her greasy, bigoted life been in a better career position!
She knows her audience!
Damage? Seriously?
In the eyes of, oh, about 92% of white southern christians, Ms. Deen's comments qualify her for sainthood. The very fact that she is being sued for racial discrimination makes her a respected, sympathetic victim. Wanting to stage a wedding with black men standing about in slave costume? Why, that's just standing up for tradition!
In the party that has a candidate currently running for lieutenant governor who actually said this week that blacks were better off as slaves than they are receiving food stamps, she's far more likely to be nominated for President than Chris Christie is.
Damaged? Paula Deen has never in her greasy, bigoted life been in a better career position!
She knows her audience!
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Just Stop It!
I cannot comprehend the sense of loss that has overtaken Newtown, Connecticut. The very idea of 20 six and seven year old children shot repeatedly to death, along with six adults who lived their commitments to children every day, is more than I can or want to get my mind around. My life is about my children and granddaughter, and my wife who offers speech therapy in a school, my mother who taught elementary school, my sister who home schools her twins, my sister-in-law who teaches day school. I grieve for the families, but I cannot imagine what they are going through.
But we, in the broader American community, need to shut the hell up.
My president, for whom I have voted twice, just said to them that we are all heartbroken with them, that we are with them, that they are not alone. He is lying.
Barack Obama has had nothing to say or do about guns in this culture in four years as our president. The members of Congress have done nothing but the bought and paid for will of the National Rifle Association on the one hand, and cower for fear of an NRA-financed opponent on the other.
We have decided, as a nation, to sell out our ability to send our children to school safely, to go to a movie safely, to attend university safely, to meet our congressional representative or go the grocery safely. Those who still participate in public worship of whatever god they profess to believe in cannot even go about that worship safely any more.
We cannot go about our lives any more with any reasonable expectation of safety, because we Americans have chosen our god. It is guns.
Because we men have to have quick and easy access to what Dirty Harry threw around to compensate for our tiny penises, Adam Lanza was able to kill 26 people on Friday. He did all of it with legal, registered guns that his mom had. She liked to target shoot. She became his first target. He hit that target, repeatedly, before going to school.
Because we citizens have chosen an absurd, utterly bizarre reading of our Constitution that is based on nothing but pandering to the NRA and the mentally ill community that believes that we are mere moments from Stalin-like control by our government, we truly have no problem with what happened in Newtown. Or Aurora. Or Wisconsin, Or Columbine, Or Virginia Tech, or...or...or........
We have chosen to allow the world's most successful trade organization, the National Rifle Association, to sponsor, aid and abet every one of these mass murders and any that are percolating for the future, so that their clients can trade their product uninhibited. Because we have chosen to subscribe to a perverted notion of what constitutes freedom, we just really don't mind when this sort of thing happens. It is going to happen again. It probably won't be very far into the future.
And, once again, there will be fake hand-wringing, dishonest tears, a false show of grief and every other kind of bullshit imagineable and un. But what there will not be is one bit of action that will actually stop this sort of thing from happening again in the days to come. And happen, and happen, and happen.
Cause I'm a sum-bitchin' 'Murican, and I can have all the sum-bitchin' guns I want!
Bow before your god, America! And save your tears for something you mean.
But we, in the broader American community, need to shut the hell up.
My president, for whom I have voted twice, just said to them that we are all heartbroken with them, that we are with them, that they are not alone. He is lying.
Barack Obama has had nothing to say or do about guns in this culture in four years as our president. The members of Congress have done nothing but the bought and paid for will of the National Rifle Association on the one hand, and cower for fear of an NRA-financed opponent on the other.
We have decided, as a nation, to sell out our ability to send our children to school safely, to go to a movie safely, to attend university safely, to meet our congressional representative or go the grocery safely. Those who still participate in public worship of whatever god they profess to believe in cannot even go about that worship safely any more.
We cannot go about our lives any more with any reasonable expectation of safety, because we Americans have chosen our god. It is guns.
Because we men have to have quick and easy access to what Dirty Harry threw around to compensate for our tiny penises, Adam Lanza was able to kill 26 people on Friday. He did all of it with legal, registered guns that his mom had. She liked to target shoot. She became his first target. He hit that target, repeatedly, before going to school.
Because we citizens have chosen an absurd, utterly bizarre reading of our Constitution that is based on nothing but pandering to the NRA and the mentally ill community that believes that we are mere moments from Stalin-like control by our government, we truly have no problem with what happened in Newtown. Or Aurora. Or Wisconsin, Or Columbine, Or Virginia Tech, or...or...or........
We have chosen to allow the world's most successful trade organization, the National Rifle Association, to sponsor, aid and abet every one of these mass murders and any that are percolating for the future, so that their clients can trade their product uninhibited. Because we have chosen to subscribe to a perverted notion of what constitutes freedom, we just really don't mind when this sort of thing happens. It is going to happen again. It probably won't be very far into the future.
And, once again, there will be fake hand-wringing, dishonest tears, a false show of grief and every other kind of bullshit imagineable and un. But what there will not be is one bit of action that will actually stop this sort of thing from happening again in the days to come. And happen, and happen, and happen.
Cause I'm a sum-bitchin' 'Murican, and I can have all the sum-bitchin' guns I want!
Bow before your god, America! And save your tears for something you mean.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Books
I do not know where they came from. My parents may have bought them for me, or maybe my grandparents. They could have been from my mother's teaching materials. Perhaps they passed through the hands of one or more of my uncles before reaching me. They were my first books. They comprised a series of biographies of prominent Americans. Not the George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln-type pantheon; these books were on Robert Fulton and the steam engine, Eli Whitney and the cotton gin, great figures of American industrialization. And they were awesome!
In very short order, Fulton's engine powered the riverboats that led to Mark Twain, who led to The West and everything that was smart funny. Whitney's gin led to the world that cotton made: The South, plantations, the abomination of slavery, Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, The Harlem Renaissance, Jazz, lynching, Brown v. Board of Education, Thurgood Marshall and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was murdered in my hometown right in the middle of my childhood, and all of this reading, all of these books.
I just never cared about Kidnapped or Treasure Island. The real world was always more interesting, scarier, more thrilling and more heartbreaking than things that anyone made up.
I have never asked them, but I have often wondered why my parents let me run. I cannot describe my good fortune in having those two wonderful people at home who, no matter what they may have thought or felt out of my hearing, never made me feel weird for reading all the time, or reading what I wanted to read all the time. I don't know how many first-graders were reading Strength to Love, and I certainly didn't get all those words, but what words they were! And still are. Anyway, when Mrs. Willis, first grade at Idlewild Elementary, objected to my reading during spelling tests, I never got in trouble at home.
As I am basically ignorant of the language of architecture, I don't know the proper name for them, but we lived in those years in a house of the type you still find all over mid-town Memphis. The St. John's associate pastor's parsonage was on Harbert, east of McLean. That meant two things: lots of nooks and crannies inside and out perfect for sitting and reading where little brother and baby sister weren't, and we were just a couple of blocks from the Memphis Public Library. The new, Hooks Library is great, but it will never be my library. Mine sat on Peabody at McLean. It was a wonderful old building to me, its modern style notwithstanding, with the whole world inside it, in the pages of what seemed like its miles and miles of books. The bike racks out front told me before I ever got inside that kids were welcomed there. The Library was my Fortress of Solitude, even though it was always full of people. I was fascinated at the feeding of the microfilm into the reader to reveal what had gone on before, seemingly to the beginning of time. The card catalogue seemed like an enormous treasure box, because it was, surrendering the next golden nugget of a book that would become the next adventure or port of call or shoes to fill for just a little while. I loved the way that the place smelled. Books had that odor-a little bit musty, slightly damp, that smelled like knowledge. I just wanted to know all that stuff that was hidden in those books that I didn't know. Yet. I doubt that children ever smell that smell today, with acid-free paper and total climate control. It is a tragic loss of the sense of place. A place of books.
I bought my first book in 1969. Eastside Elementary, like schools all over America, got the Scholastic Books fliers, handed out in all the classes in case we wanted to place an order. I did. For a couple of bucks, I became the extremely proud possesser of a copy of Strange But True Baseball Stories For Boys by Atlanta's great sportswriter, the late Furman Bisher. I can still remember turning it over in my hands, soaking in the weight and texture of my very own book. To this day, I get a rush holding a new book.
I can remember the towns by the libraries. Union City, Benton, Jackson, Covington, back to Memphis. In each one, very helpful librarians seemed very happy at being asked where the history section was, or the baseball, or the politics. Not so much, the work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. I was eleven during the 1972 presidential campaign. I understood that Nixon was a bastard. I was also very impressed with Senator George McGovern. I could not understand why stopping the war in Viet Nam would be a bad thing. I still don't. I could not understand why asking the wealthiest Americans to help a little more to provide for people in desperate need was a bad thing. I still can't
But my political education came in two pieces in the almost two years from when Tricky Dick the Crook got re-elected until he resigned, disgraced: the Watergate Hearings, and Hunter Thompson's furious Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Senator Sam Irvin's committee was fascinating. Thompson's book was mind-bending. Thompson's access was shocking. Did Nixon's people really talk like that? (Yes, and, if anything, he was worse!) Could McGovern really be that honest and decent? (Yes, and, if anything, better!) For Thompson, politics was ultimate reality. It was stranger than any drug trip. It was more absurd than any joke. The very fact that a man like Nixon could so resoundingly defeat a man like McGovern says everything that can ever be said about the intelligence of the average American voter. Or lack thereof. But Thompson's work, for all of its seeming cynicism, is a deeply idealistic book. The searcher doesn't give up. He just keeps looking, always believing that next time, the story will come out right.
Almost like a motto for a reader...
To Be Continued.
In very short order, Fulton's engine powered the riverboats that led to Mark Twain, who led to The West and everything that was smart funny. Whitney's gin led to the world that cotton made: The South, plantations, the abomination of slavery, Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, The Harlem Renaissance, Jazz, lynching, Brown v. Board of Education, Thurgood Marshall and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was murdered in my hometown right in the middle of my childhood, and all of this reading, all of these books.
I just never cared about Kidnapped or Treasure Island. The real world was always more interesting, scarier, more thrilling and more heartbreaking than things that anyone made up.
I have never asked them, but I have often wondered why my parents let me run. I cannot describe my good fortune in having those two wonderful people at home who, no matter what they may have thought or felt out of my hearing, never made me feel weird for reading all the time, or reading what I wanted to read all the time. I don't know how many first-graders were reading Strength to Love, and I certainly didn't get all those words, but what words they were! And still are. Anyway, when Mrs. Willis, first grade at Idlewild Elementary, objected to my reading during spelling tests, I never got in trouble at home.
As I am basically ignorant of the language of architecture, I don't know the proper name for them, but we lived in those years in a house of the type you still find all over mid-town Memphis. The St. John's associate pastor's parsonage was on Harbert, east of McLean. That meant two things: lots of nooks and crannies inside and out perfect for sitting and reading where little brother and baby sister weren't, and we were just a couple of blocks from the Memphis Public Library. The new, Hooks Library is great, but it will never be my library. Mine sat on Peabody at McLean. It was a wonderful old building to me, its modern style notwithstanding, with the whole world inside it, in the pages of what seemed like its miles and miles of books. The bike racks out front told me before I ever got inside that kids were welcomed there. The Library was my Fortress of Solitude, even though it was always full of people. I was fascinated at the feeding of the microfilm into the reader to reveal what had gone on before, seemingly to the beginning of time. The card catalogue seemed like an enormous treasure box, because it was, surrendering the next golden nugget of a book that would become the next adventure or port of call or shoes to fill for just a little while. I loved the way that the place smelled. Books had that odor-a little bit musty, slightly damp, that smelled like knowledge. I just wanted to know all that stuff that was hidden in those books that I didn't know. Yet. I doubt that children ever smell that smell today, with acid-free paper and total climate control. It is a tragic loss of the sense of place. A place of books.
I bought my first book in 1969. Eastside Elementary, like schools all over America, got the Scholastic Books fliers, handed out in all the classes in case we wanted to place an order. I did. For a couple of bucks, I became the extremely proud possesser of a copy of Strange But True Baseball Stories For Boys by Atlanta's great sportswriter, the late Furman Bisher. I can still remember turning it over in my hands, soaking in the weight and texture of my very own book. To this day, I get a rush holding a new book.
I can remember the towns by the libraries. Union City, Benton, Jackson, Covington, back to Memphis. In each one, very helpful librarians seemed very happy at being asked where the history section was, or the baseball, or the politics. Not so much, the work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. I was eleven during the 1972 presidential campaign. I understood that Nixon was a bastard. I was also very impressed with Senator George McGovern. I could not understand why stopping the war in Viet Nam would be a bad thing. I still don't. I could not understand why asking the wealthiest Americans to help a little more to provide for people in desperate need was a bad thing. I still can't
But my political education came in two pieces in the almost two years from when Tricky Dick the Crook got re-elected until he resigned, disgraced: the Watergate Hearings, and Hunter Thompson's furious Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Senator Sam Irvin's committee was fascinating. Thompson's book was mind-bending. Thompson's access was shocking. Did Nixon's people really talk like that? (Yes, and, if anything, he was worse!) Could McGovern really be that honest and decent? (Yes, and, if anything, better!) For Thompson, politics was ultimate reality. It was stranger than any drug trip. It was more absurd than any joke. The very fact that a man like Nixon could so resoundingly defeat a man like McGovern says everything that can ever be said about the intelligence of the average American voter. Or lack thereof. But Thompson's work, for all of its seeming cynicism, is a deeply idealistic book. The searcher doesn't give up. He just keeps looking, always believing that next time, the story will come out right.
Almost like a motto for a reader...
To Be Continued.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Gun!
If you live in my neighborhood and last night watched what passes for news locally, you were informed that one of our students brought a gun to school yesterday. The story had the requisite outrage that parents weren't notified more quickly, this, in spite of the fact that the reporter had time to get to our campus and find people to interview IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. There was the one funny part of the story: citizens stunned by the report, claiming "This can't happen in _______________!" which is ludicrously absurd whether it is spoken in Collierville, Germantown, Memphis proper, or our little suburb. Kids find guns wherever there are kids who get angry or feel threatened, and guns. And, after all, that's the American Way. But I'm not here at the moment to tell you what I think of the money-grubbing, bullshit-spewing, death machine of a trade association called the National Rifle Association, which rules this country by fiat, leaving a mountain of corpses in its wake each year that the late Osama bin Laden could only dream of and admire. And, parenthetically, can you imagine the right-wing nutjobs' utter moral outrage if Al Qaeda killed all the Americans annually that the NRA does? Hey! That's got to be the explanation! That damned Moslem terrorist Obama hasn't taken all the guns away, so that Americans will kill each other FOR the terrorists! Yeah, that's the ticket!
Anyway, the point here is that our people handled it right. I never even knew anything had happened yesterday until last night's news, and I was in the building where and when it happened. According to the dopes on channel 3, a student had the good sense to tell an adult that a classmate had the thing, the teacher told the principals, it was handled and no one was injured or endangered. The police dealt with the student who brought it. End of story, no tragedy! Sorry, local news!
I quickly came to the conclusion, after coming to work here almost a year ago, that this school and community are fortunate to have this principal, these assistant principals, and this faculty and staff teaching and caring for their children.
Yesterday just underlined that conviction, and put a few exclamation points at the end of the sentence!
Anyway, the point here is that our people handled it right. I never even knew anything had happened yesterday until last night's news, and I was in the building where and when it happened. According to the dopes on channel 3, a student had the good sense to tell an adult that a classmate had the thing, the teacher told the principals, it was handled and no one was injured or endangered. The police dealt with the student who brought it. End of story, no tragedy! Sorry, local news!
I quickly came to the conclusion, after coming to work here almost a year ago, that this school and community are fortunate to have this principal, these assistant principals, and this faculty and staff teaching and caring for their children.
Yesterday just underlined that conviction, and put a few exclamation points at the end of the sentence!
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