Colin Kaepernick Exercises Freedom of Speech; "Patriots" Livid

I've seen many versions of this ignorant crap floating around since the 49ers quarterback sat out the national anthem the other night. Many of them have said something to the effect of, "Our military didn't fight and die so you can disrespect the flag." 
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.

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.

  

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.

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. 
 

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!

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!

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.
  

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.

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.

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.   

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

Religion, Outrage, Murder

Religion is absurd. Before anything else, let's be honest about that. "Treat other people the way that you want to be treated." Really? In this economy? Ludicrous! "If someone slaps you on one side of your face, offer them the other side so they can do it again." Riiiiiiiight! Just after I get through knocking their teeth down their throat. "Eat my body and drink my blood to remember me." Uh, thanks Mr. Donner, but my memory works just fine on its own.
"You're just another anti-christian liberal making fun of mypersonallordandsaviorjesuschrist!" Could be. But just to be fair and balanced..."OK, now all of you guys line up. We're going to cut some loose skin off your business. You'll never miss it. And this will hurt me more than...forget that part. Now, this will show...that...you are devoted to me! Yeah, that's the ticket." "Alright, good. Moses, I appreciate you doing this for me. Oh, and, no offense, but since you've agreed to make this little trip for me and risk your fugitive life mouthing off at Pharaoh, I'm going to try to kill you tonight, out of gratitude, I guess." "Hey, Abe, you know that kid I promised you? The one you waited so long for? Take him off by yourselves and slit his throat for me, just to kiss my ass a little bit, OK?" Still too close to home? How about this: a local good for nothing found golden tablets containing a third testament of Holy Words (two magic books not being enough) which just happen to tell him that god said he could marry as many women as he could con...I mean as many women as he wanted to marry. And he and his followers would be run out of every decent...I mean, make a pilgrimmage to...Utah (Freaking Utah!?!) where they will proclaim themselves the (way, way) lost tribe of Israel and start a really kick-ass choir, and..." Oh, shut up! And quit knocking on my door. And some of you people really want one of these nuts running the country? What, you couldn't find any of the Hale-Bopp crew? Oops, I guess they're all still dead waiting to be picked up by the comet. Anyway.
Here's the deal: to anybody who is not of your religion, you look and sound like somebody in need of a white coat and butterfly net. And you won't be holding the handle! And it doesn't make any difference what your religion is. Those who don't know your code or buy into your story think you are whacko.
But that doesn't mean you should be whacked.
Somebody made a tacky movie that made fun of Mohammed. Whoop-ti-do! I tend to find that whole "fly an airplane into a building, get eternity with 70 virgins" thing as ridiculous as anything humanity has EVER come up with. Except that 3,000 people wound up dead over it 11 years ago, and four more were murdered over religion last night. People in Libya killed the American ambassador and three embassy staff members. Because somebody made fun of Mohammed.
Mohammed must be one uptight bastard. Like that mormon asshole who declared that our christian American President had sympathy for the murderers of Chris Stevens and the other Americans, but didn't care beans about those people who'd been sent there by this same President. But, then again, you'd get the idea that jesus and his dad didn't have much sense of humor, either, if you just listened to the loudmouths on tv purporting to know the thoughts of whatever deity they claim to manage like Willard Romney is handled these days.
One thing I do know: if one or more of these gods actually exist, and actually have any power, she/he/they have an awesome sense of humor! How do I know? Because all these people who run all these religions into the ground are still running around!
Lighten up, Francis!

What we do and who we are

There was the farmer in Kentucky.  A veteran of Omaha Beach in Memphis.  A radiator man in an outlying county.  A couple of retired preacher friends.  A foreman in Raleigh.  An attorney from Midtown.  These old men stand out among a bunch of others who shared their struggles with identity over the years.  In each instance, they were wrestling with the problem of who they were apart from their careers.  Once the domain of men, now a plague open to women, too, we define ourselves by what we do.  I've thought that it had to do with avoiding who we are, as much as anything.
The last couple of years I've wondered what I sounded like to them.  In a couple of those instances, I was in my mid-20s.  Young and stupid.  They must have known it.  All but one were far too gracious to say it.  The one who wasn't, well, I lied my way through his funeral for the sake of his family, which is more consideration than he ever gave them.
In my 50s now, after the last couple of years, I know some things about their struggle that I could only imagine before.  I ceased to be a contributing partner in my household two years ago.  The vultures who were then in control of my life cut my income almost in half.  A year later, they came back to do more and I walked.  Always the courage of my convictions here!  Anybody else notice there was an economic meltdown, with a jobless recovery behind it?  I guess I didn't. 
That, of course, isn't true.  I knew times were bad.  I just wasn't going to let the former employers make our times any worse.  Finding any kind of job was a challenge.  After several months, finally, one came along, but  I hadn't worked a minimum wage job since I was 15.  My parents helped out, but there are limits.  We hit them.
Then came summer.  Teachers aren't overpaid, by any non-Tea Party definition, but teachers' assistants don't look forward to summer the same way teachers do.  I thought last year was tough.  This summer has taught me about tough.
The toughest part of the whole thing has been our kids.  One has arthritis in her back, aggravated by her work waiting tables.  She has no insurance.  One decided that the job he trained for isn't at all what he wants to do.  That happens with young people.  The other is heading back to school this fall and living with my parents.  Those are all things I expected to be able to take care of by this stage of life.
Not so much.
A woman I was once married to caused a bit of a stir a while back when, after two marriages that produced children, she announced on Facebook that with the current boyfriend, she is "finally in love for the first time in [her] life."  Even if it is true, I don't think I'd have thrown that out there in public for my kids to read.  However, I believe it.  Because I know what it feels like to be loved now.  Grandmommie has held me, and our family, together through all of this time.  She was the first to insist that I was worth more than the way I was being treated in the previous job.  When I fall into guilty feelings, still, about not earning, not helping the kids, not making life a little easier for her, she is still the one who tells me to knock it off, as "We would never go back to those people!"  She rides with me to put in the next application, telling me that something is going to work, it is going to be alright.  I can't always see what she seems to be seeing, but she sounds like she knows what she's talking about.
I'm wrestling with these identity questions hour by hour.  I have had days like that one George Bailey had in It's A Wonderful Life.  The only difference is, I'm not worth more dead than alive, as I don't even have the life insurance policy.  I lectured all those old guys about how their worth wasn't in what they did, earned or produced, but rather in the love their family carried for them.  Turns out, I was right.
But it's still tough. 
   

One Year On

I'm celebrating a full year of sobriety today.  A solid 366 (leap year) since escaping from the church.  Everyday that passes, I'm happier about the decision.  I read an absurdly whiny blog today from a former friendly acquaintance who moved into a DS slot a year ago. Like 98.7% of the people who do that, he's now crossed the bar, and just suffering terribly from the hideous preachers who don't appreciate the suffering of the cabinet as that current crop of pompous asses screw with the lives of those who are lectured to "live up to their ordination vows" while injustice upon injustice is heaped upon them.  I used to listen to one of those who chastised his district every time we were together about our unwillingness to leave Shelby County. Did I mention that the only appointment he ever served outside the Metro Districts was while he was a student at Lambuth?
Anyway, the gist always seems to be, "If we could just get rid of our workers (preachers), everything would be fine!" You folks "managing" the church, or Bain Capital? They continue down their path of immorality unto death, locally and generally.  They are striving again to attach their financial problems to the retired clergy.  If only we can strip them of their insurance coverage, then the books will automatically balance, the conferences can merge, and the lion shall lie down with the lamb! What is it that turns preachers of the gospel of jesus christ into republicans with a simple appointment onto a district?  Or is it, rather, simply a revelation of the absence of anything christlike in their character that they had managed to keep hidden previously?  (And before anybody tells me that I just don't know how tough it is, remember, I watched my grandfather and my father suffer through terms in that very work, sacrificing sleep and health to avoid abusing people the way that it is routinely done today.)  Hey, geniuses, you're not standing on the shoulders of giants so you can more easily shit on them!  And that's not even to mention the ongoing hypocrisy of this church with its "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors" PR campaign, which means, "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors, as long as you're not gay, don't want to discuss gays, and certainly don't believe in marriage for gays." The DS referenced above said in that same blog entry that resolving what, for many people is an enormous issue of historic injustice, won't fix anything for the church. To put it into terms of your morality: God won't bless anything built on injustice!
The whole "we're following the bible" cover that they now hide behind is simply code for "Tea Party meets here!" And a great deal of that mentality means little more than "We got to get the [black guy] out of the White House."  Good luck with that!
And they can't figure out why young people as a whole don't want any part of them? Really?
I'm truly sorry that things have worked out this way.  The church that my grandfather served is no more.  They stand for nothing progressive, nothing prophetic, and ultimately, nothing faithful.  I would never have believed, 30 years ago, that these forces could have such an impact on my church, much less take it over.  I feel for the handful of good souls still fighting the good fight.  But at this point, it needs to die, to get out of the way.  The predicament of a faithful pastor in this conference of this church reminds me of LBJ's desk plaque: If you ain't the lead dog, the view never changes!
Or, in the church words of the Serious Theologian: Ultimately there are two kinds of people. Those who say to God, "Thy will be done." And those to whom God says, "Thy will be done."  You're getting what you're asking for. Hope you're happy with it!
It was killing me, breaking my heart.  No more!

Music In the Grass!

The real reason for living in Memphis is the music.  No surprise there.  But a fabulous surprise popped up a few years (I believe three) ago.  One of our cultural touchstones and flashpoints for years was the Overton Park Shell.  The thing has a fabulous history, but it fell into disrepair.  The city didn't have the money to fix it, or wanted to spend the money elsewhere.  The Save Our Shell folk were largely folkies, which means that their heart was in the right place, but they had no wallets.  Then, magically, the Mortimer Levitt Foundation appeared.  Never heard of them?  Me, either.  And I had no great enthusiasm for a non-local not for profit taking over our Shell.  I could only see a brief reprieve before it would be abandoned.  Pyramid II, anyone?
Well, how wrong can I be?  Pretty darned wrong!  The Levitt Foundation is awesome.  We are now entering (I think) our fourth season of free concerts every Thursday through Sunday, from mid-May until early July, and then again in September and October, fifty-plus shows in all! 
The menu always includes every imaginable genre.  Many performers are young and new, but name people are also included.  This spring, Jimbo Mathus will be back.  Todd Snider makes his annual appearance. Steve Forbert is coming, too.  Then, in the fall, this year's benefit will be performed by goddess Emmylou Harris!  To quote Matt Damon, "How 'bout them apples?"  
This is a family experience for us, as most things are.  That is to say, Dancing Baby loves the Shell.  She has named this excursion "Music in the Grass."  When she could barely walk, she was shaking her little booty to any/every beat in Overton Park.  She has been asking for the last three weeks when Music in the Grass is.  Tomorrow night, baby, tomorrow night!  And the first show, Thursday, is The Stooges Brass, a New Orleans band with horns!  That is DB's favorite music.  On Friday, The Cedric Burnside Project will play the blues as only a grandson of RL Burnside can.  Saturday will bring The Wandering, with Luther Dickinson playing and leading the band, and Amy Levere, Shannon McNally, Sharde Thomas and Valerie June doing the singing.  Sunday, it's The Boogers, a group advertised as Barney's nightmare and the antidote for the Wiggles.  They make those familiar kids' songs rock! 
So, if you can make it down this weekend, and if you're within a hundred-mile radius you should be, look for the precious little three year old who's just jammin' out.  That'll be Dancing Baby, in all her glory!  And Grandmommie and Granddaddy won't be too far away.

Levon Helm

The generations that have been shaped by rock and roll have always known death as a close companion. Even before Sam Phillips, Little Richard, Elvis, Ike Turner and the others had the stove turned on, Robert Johnson was hoodooing up a vat of deep blues that would be distilled into one vein of rock. Mr. Johnson was poisoned. Was it a jealous husband? Maybe a boyfriend, or even the woman herself. Or was it the devil, come to collect on a bargain made at the crossroads? Whoever the perpetrator, Robert Johnson left way too much music unplayed.
James Dean seemed rock and roll. He wasn't a musician, but he was young, loud, angry and lonely. That's as rock and roll as it gets. Dean bought it in a fast car, going too fast around a curve. Life in the fast lane, indeed!
Buddy Holly and Richie Valens died in an airplane crash way too young. They were in Iowa in the winter, trying to get to the next gig. Hey, the show must go on, right?
The drug deaths that rock appropriated from jazz came later. Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, Epstein, Jones, Moon, Bonham...live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse? Motto of the late 60's and 70's!  But it didn't stop there. Fat Elvis lived every excess known to humanity. And died from them, too.
John Lennon's murder brought musicians' deaths into uncharted territory. Who'd have ever thought that a rocker would become the target of (depending on how you see John and his killer) a mentally ill obsessive, or an assassin. We learned about John's killing on Monday Night Football, from the ubiquitous Howard Cosell. It became an Event. We wrestle with it still.
The rappers took over the death biz. East Coast v. West Coast, the would-be gangsters shot off their mouths on their albums, and shot up the competition in the streets. Tupac, Biggie and about 197 of their colleagues whose names I don't know or care to know are dead for...what, the bling? Did any of them see 30? Nice work, morons!
There have been others and other circumstances, Cobain and Hutchence and on and on.
But a new day has dawned. We have reached the time when those who've made it through everything else are getting old, or sick, or old and sick. Cash, Dickinson, Zevon, gone from the issues that plague normal people. Just this last year, Sumlin, Willie Big Eyes Smith and Pinetop Perkins are gone at advanced ages. For crying out loud, even The Monkees' Davy Jones just died of a heart attack.
Now, Levon Helm is gone. Levon was homefolks, from just across the river in Arkansas. He grew up on the music we all did in this part of the country, and somehow took all that and fell in with a bunch of Canadians. They played as the Hawks. Backing Ronnie Hawkins.  Hawkins and the Hawks. Get it? They were smart and funny but mainly tremendous musicians. So good that Bob Dylan asked them to back him. They were on the scene as Dylan blew music up in 1965 and 1966, being accused of everything in plugging in and, allegedly turning his back on the folkies. Death threats, riots, all kinds of fun accompanied the tour of Dylan and the group now known as The Band.  Music from Big Pink, The Basement Tapes, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, The Weight, Cripple Creek, Rag Mama Rag; how did the Canadian Robbie Robertson write such music for that fabulous, soulful Arkansas voice? Levon drummed, he sang, he played the mandolin, and helped carve out the sound that influenced everybody who came after them. When Dylan went back out in 1974 to do his first shows since 1966, and the motorcycle wreck, he had to have The Band around him. 'Nuf said!
It was all supposed to end with Scorsese's movie, The Last Waltz. The Band's farewell concert is a great movie, although Levon wasn't that wild about it. Helm gathered the boys, minus Robertson, for several more albums and tours, moving even further to the center of the stage. That was a good thing!
In the late 90's, Levon was diagnosed with throat cancer. Wasn't supposed to ever speak again, let alone sing. But somewhere along the line, things started to come together again. And when they did, Levon recorded. He issued Dirt Farmer in 2007 and won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album. 2010 brought Electric Dirt, and another Grammy, this time for Best Americana Album. His last recording, Ramble at the Ryman, took 2011's Grammy in the same category.  Pretty good encore, eh?
Levon and his Ramblers played Memphis' Orpheum Theatre on November 10, 2010. It was one of the most joyous concert experiences I've ever known.
A few weeks ago, Levon's family posted a message on his Facebook page that he was in the last stages of his fight against a recurrence of his cancer. He died at home on April 19, five weeks short of his 72nd birthday. Levon lived long and well, and died the same way. I was hoping for a whole lot more music from Levon Helm, but his last teaching was in wrapping things up and celebrating a good life.

"Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece."

Dylan wrote it. Levon sang and lived it. We're richer for it.