i have been wrestling with some weird problem with my relatively new Mac Air for several months and about thirty hours with Apple Care and an Apple store to resolve the issue.

This afternoon, Darla, a senior supervisor walked me through a process that seems to have worked.

So maybe, just maybe, i’m back in the real world again.

In doing the work and checking out old stuff, a photo popped up. i have cropped out the goofy guy. After all, we are working on thirty-seven years, and the woman in this photograph was like the Clover’s “One Mint Julep:” she was “the cause of it all.”

i am working on this being one of my signature photos here, Facebook, and other places. But for now, i wanted to post this because this day, July 30, 1983, was the real beginning:

My Thoughts About Where We Are and Where We Should Go 

i have wrestled with my desire to remain out of this fray. i am not, not taking sides. i am sure the radicals on every side will not take my comments that way and either point to it as promoting their contentions or ridiculing it and me for being for the other side. But folks, as Peter Finch’s character Howard Beale declared in prophetic movie “Network” (although the media hasn’t yet reached the extent of the film plot) declared, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” It is my time to take my stand, even though i may be the only one standing in this position.

*     *     *

On September 17, 1796, George Washington presented his farewell address as the first president of the United States of America. In that address, he warned, “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.”

During the following term, Washington’s successor, John Adams pointed out “a division of the republic into two great parties … is to be dreaded as the great political evil.”

*     *     *

On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

His plan for reconstruction reached out to the former Confederate states to provide a peaceful transition to becoming one nation again. The plan was not well received by Congress but likely would have become reality had not the assassination occurred.

The Vice-President, Andrew Johnson, became president. Although Johnson, a Tennessean did not agree with the plan in that he thought it was too lenient, nevertheless attempted to carry out Lincoln’s plan. However, the cabinet and congress wanted revenge, to teach the South a lesson. This resulted in the failed impeachment attempt of Johnson and much harsher treatment of the South.

*     *     *

Washington and Adams’ fears have reached fruition. The constitution has been polluted by party interests becoming more important than our nation and our citizens. It has now reached trench warfare mentality resulting in protests and violence. I have had dear, intelligent friends on both sides of this line of liberal and conservative war insist their right to protest was part of the second amendment only to attack the other side for protesting. Violence on both sides and in our law enforcements response is unacceptable  It is time for our politicians to join together and work to create the best laws and policies to make our country better, not act like little brats incapable of logical thought.

*     *     *

I recognize my thoughts on this will be attacked, but I believe had Lincoln remained president, Reconstruction would have been much more successful and the great divide between blacks and whites (I still despise those two terms for describing human beings) eventually would be much closer to true equality in the South. But Lincoln was dead, and blacks in the South were abused and considered second class citizens in reaction to the vindictive revenge unleashed on the Southern whites.  Even today, there are people who spout hatred of the other race.

Perhaps I am naïve and acknowledge hate of human beings of different race, ethnicity, religion, and political beliefs have been ably demonstrated throughout history and are certainly rampant in our country today, both directly and indirectly.

Execution of Lincoln’s plan might have diminished that hatred to only a few. Unfortunately, we will never know.

We have the opportunity with the terrible assault on our constitution on Wednesday, January 6, 2021 having just occurred, to once again reach out, as Lincoln did, to work together to make our country stronger and much, much better.

However, the pointing fingers began as the assault was underway. The capitol police are under attack because many Monday morning quarterbacks believe law enforcement could have done better, and they are searching for the guilty. Anger on both sides is boiling over. Media and politicians are comparing the response to responses to the other side’s earlier protests and violence. One good friend has decried that the enemy of this country are all of the white males, of which he and i are in company. I think it was these white males with many faults created by the beliefs of their time that created this Constitution with the idea of independence, quality and the inalienable rights for all of its citizens. Their idea was limited by not including all who were not white, male, or property owners.

But the ideas of freedom and equality grew and more and more white males have attempted to have those inalienable rights extended to all with significant success even though we still have a long, long way to go. As those rights were extended, women, blacks, native Americans, and many others have been allowed to participate as they should have been all along, and they have joined the effort to attain true equality for all.

The recent digging of trenches by both sides has been deeper and created a deep and dark divide among our citizens. I am not aware of anyone sitting down with the other side to attempt to find the root causes of the divide, the fear, the hatred. No one seems able to do that because they are too occupied with pointing their fingers, throwing their rocks over the wall, making unsubstantial claims (we used to call lies) and calling their allies to join the fight with them.

*     *     *

One more thought: Parts of one side of this divide decided to show disrespect for our flag. The other side adopted our flag as a symbol as if they owned it, as if it did not belong to all of our citizens. Then this group so offended by the disrespect others had shown began to desecrate our flag by modifying Old Glory to make their political statements.

The flag is the representation of our Constitution. It is not the property of one party. The Constitution grants the right of free speech. As Dave Carey once explained, we in the military were sworn to defend the constitution and therefore we defended the rights of our citizens to have free speech.

Our politicians and their followers have twisted that to somehow inexplicably to believe they have the right to say or do anything they want, including disrespect and desecration of our flag, the symbol representing our Constitution, not a president, not a party, not a movement, but our system designed to achieve equality and protect our inalienable rights but suspend that belief for the other side.

*     *     *

I was hoping this terrible insurrection would lead to our politicians to reach across the aisle to make things better, but their need for power, money, and reelection will not allow them to wander far from their party’s winner-take-all attempts. The media, looking for viewers and listeners to make more money and gain more power, are fueling the fire rather than reporting the facts.

And we, myself included, are going along with this insanity, finding fault, spewing invectives against those we perceive to be a danger to our beliefs. There needs to be accountability. There needs to be justice. There needs to be inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.

And we need to reach out and work together to ensure our constitution, the greatest idea for governing a country ever written, remains intact and operates the way it should.

God bless America. Right now, we need his blessing and help in finding our way out of this morass.

i remain shaken from the assault on our constitution yesterday. i am very proud of Sarah for her response to this event and the reactions to it. i am ashamed of the media and the politicians who attempted to compare yesterday to earlier events and promote their agenda rather than factually reporting what was happening. Then, in the middle of the night, the first few lines of the below poem flew into my head. i don’t know from whence they came.  It may be the first in a series as other words flew right behind the initial ones. It may be the beginning of a much longer poem. i don’t know right now. It is not associated with yesterday’s tragic occurrence in our capital, but i suspect that event fostered those first words flying in the middle of the night to my head. It is, for me, an escape for a while.

then back when

once, back when, a man and a woman walked;
then back when, they got
a horse, a mule, a camel, or an ass
and
rode slowly;
then back when, they tied sticks to the animals
and
carried things with them;
then back when, they made a wagon with wheels
to be pulled by the animals
and
they went further and faster with more;
then back when, they got bicycles and pedaled;
then back when, they got on a train
and
rode further and faster;
then back when, they got a self-powered vehicle
and
cranked it to ride without an animal or pedaling;
then back when, they put on big wheels and paved roads
and
went faster and farther;
then back when, they got a vehicle with an enclosed cab and a starter switch
and
rode in style;
then back when, they added an automatic transmission and air conditioning
and
rode in more comfort;
then back when, they added radio
and
listened to  people talk and play music while they rode;
then back when, they installed a global positioning system
and
knew how to get where they were going and quit going down untraveled roads;
then back when, they added telephones and talked to other folks far away;
now they are looking to get a self-driving car
and
i wonder when they won’t be able to walk or find their way
without their gadgets.

I spent just short of a quarter of a century in the Navy with my sworn obligation to defend the constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Today, i saw our constitution attacked.

i will let all of you and the media throw rocks.

i will only say what i saw today is wrong. It is an attack on our constitution and there is no question in my mind the President is responsible for it happening.

i have watched the media reports today for five hours and i did not hear a factual report of the news. i heard commentators use this terrible event to support their stand on political issues.

i won’t tell you my position other than what i have written above.

i will tell you i have cried more than several times this afternoon.

Our country, our constitution has suffered greatly.

i will cry some more.

After i posted my curmudgeon rant last night, i got to thinking. That is not always a good thing.

Of course, that post centered on baseball, leading to recalling my three quarters of a century love affair with the game, leading to thinking about my past, admitting again, i am one lucky man, leading to me to quit…er, bitching.

Considering what we experienced this year and what fallout from this year we will deal with in 2021, i decided i would focus on the good things this lucky man has experienced.

There was this place i was born and will always be connected. It was and remains home — i will go back there and rest beside my parents when this crazy life takes the  final turn. Back when it was mine and i was its youngster, it was a town in the Faulkner sense of the word, not a village, not a hamlet, not a city, but a town. Round about five thousand souls spread out on farmland with the aptly re-named Town Creek (It was “Sinking Creek” in the beginning) running under the square they built, convenient but flood prone. No matter. That square was the center of the universe for Lebanon, Tennessee. Restaurants, three hardware stores, clothing stores, two drug stores (back before folks thought that “drug store” meant something else), banks, cab station, cobblers, and a couple of pool halls, all dominated by a gothic-like courthouse. On the first block off the square of the two roads, one east-west, the other north-south were more shops and restaurants and two movie theaters.

Farmers came in and sat on the worn concrete steps of the courthouse, chewing tobacco, whittling cedar wood, and solving the world’s problems although their world was significantly smaller than today’s world.

Cars were left in parking spaces unlocked. Even homes didn’t have locked doors until the inhabitants went to bed. Children walked to school unless they lived too far away, and then they took the school bus and the school patrol was comprised of eighth graders until they created a junior high across town and the sixth graders became the school patrol, a responsibility and an honor rewarded with a tour of the state penitentiary and a baseball game at Sulphur Dell in Nashville.

Shorts, no shirt, no shoes were de rigueur from mid-May until September. Bee stings, mosquito bites, poison oak or ivy were part of the learning process.

And the sandlot, empty fields, backyard baseball kept on. Until the first Little League came to town (1954? Where’s George Harding when i need him?), we played pickup ball. We got some rudimentary instructions from our fathers. Mine showed me how to throw a curve and a knuckle ball. We listened to Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese, hawking Falstaff beer,  while we watched the “Game (that’s one game) of the Week” on Saturdays, and occasionally, our dads would take us to the above mentioned Sulphur Dell to watch the Double A, Southern Association, Nashville Vols.

We still played pickup ball with various rules for yard size and whose yard was chosen for the field.

On the Sabbath, we went to Church for Sunday School, and the church service at 11:00 dressed to the nines with fresh haircuts combed just right and then dressed a little more casually (but not much) for the Methodist Youth Fellowship, the men’s choir supper, and the evening service with short sermons and lots of gospel songs.

Beginning in the early ’50’s, we began to watch one channel, WSM, which chose which network show to watch of the three, NBC, CBS, or ABC, which went off the air at midnight and came back on at three p.m. the next afternoon (with the Kate Smith hour). Red Skeleton, Milton Berle, Martha Raye, The Ted Mack Amateur Hour, Fred Waring, and Ed Sullivan were staples. Saturday mornings, television came on early with the kids no longer playing in the lot next door but scrunched around the television watching “Andy Devine’s Gang” with Froggy the Gremlin who had a magic twanger set off by “Nice” Midnight the Cat, and of course, Buster Brown and his dog Tige both of whom lived in a shoe. Gunga Ram captivated in his serial. There was the “Sealtest Big Top” and “Red Ryder” and there was Devine again as Jingles on “The Adventures of  Wild Bill Hickok with Guy Madison as Wild Bill. And there were others before that baseball game.

And we went to school and played during recess on equipment that would get the school administration in jail today for endangerment. We had fights and we played every kind of game and sport known to kids.

And we mustered outside for roll call during fire drills and we hid under our desks to save us from the Red Menace dropping the H-Bomb and we got the first polio shots and we put baseball cards in our one-gear bicycle spokes and put our gear for sports and other pursuits in the handlebar basket.

Then we grew up to realize some of us were male and some female. i fell in love from a dream. Then i “went” with many wonderful girls, taking them to movies, the fair, and if it cost more than ten dollars, i couldn’t afford it. That little town had so many wonderful young women, i remain amazed.

And i am going to stop now thinking about all of that stream of wonderful things in my past i was intending to include.

You see, we learned right before i grilled a great steak for supper that one of Maureen’s closest cousins with a wonderful family passed away last night after dealing with brain cancer for about half a terrible year. i was probably closer to Greg Cook than anyone else on Maureen’s side. His daughter, Cookie, took Sarah under her wing. It is a shock,  a bit of life’s reality that will always be tough to deal with.

i lit the fire in the hearth before supper and we watched “The Princess Bride” for our end of the year entertainment…and to escape the sadness of a good man passing.

So this godawful year is ending.

After i started the fire in the grill and toasted Greg out in the coolness of the Southwest corner winter air, i tuned my fittingly obsolescent iPod to Albert Bell and hooked up to the bluetooth speaker. As the grill heated up and the steak lay near and the bears, Ursa Major and Minor crawled across the heavens to the northeast, and Pegasus flew across the southern sky,  and i could dwell in the house of the constellations and the beauty of the Greeks for a long, long time.

But the steak needed tending. Albert was wailing as only he can about being “Born Under a Bad Sign” and “Let’s Have a Natural Ball.” i saluted Greg one more time and then, then this damn near seventy-seven year old man began to move with the music. i was moving across the small patio outside the kitchen thinking absurdly how my moves weren’t much different than when i was a pretty decent dancer. Maureen and i were good dancing together. She was more graceful, refined, and seemed to flow. i moved to the rhythm and loved it. As with all things, we fit.

And Albert wailed and his guitar played the blues. The old man danced away the blues in the chill of the night and promised to just keep on trying to do the right thing for all that’s remaining of this remarkable event we call life.

i am at peace. i only hope those i love, which are one heck of a whole bunch of people, have a healthy, bountiful, and happy 2021. As i have said to many, it’s about time, and we are due for a change for the good.