Nov28

Giving Thanks in 2013

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thanksgiving-eventAnyone who reads GB&GSF regularly knows this holiday season is incredibly difficult for me. It’s hard to believe it’s our first Thanksgiving without Mama. Mama loved to cook and she loved to eat, but the last few years, she hadn’t been able to do either. Still, instead of dwelling on the pain, I’m going to get through the day by following the advice attributed to one of one of the wisest men I’ve ever read — Dr. Seuss — who said, “Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.” With that in mind, instead of spending the day in tears heartbroken because Mama is gone, I’m going to give thanks for the 42 Thanksgivings I was blessed to spend with her. I’m thankful for all the Thanksgiving dinners Mama cooked and when she got tired of cooking, I’m thankful for all the cooks and waitresses at Ryan’s Family Restaurant and Cracker Barrel for giving some of their holiday to wait on us and feed us.

I’m thankful for all the Thanksgiving suppers my Granny Wham made for us over the years she was with us. I’m thankful for all the times I listened to Papa Wham as he bowed his head to say the grace I still remember to this day, “Father please pardon us for all of our sins and we thank you for these and all our other many blessings in Christ’s name, amen.”

I’m thankful for my family and friends still with me. I’ve lost many of them over the years and I figure to lose many more before it’s my turn to journey across Jordan. In just a few hours, I’ll be thankful to sit down at a table FULL of food prepared by my loving “second wife” Laura and other members of her (and by adoption and extension, my) family. I’m thankful for Laura herself and her precious real husband, Cameron and my ersatz nephew Jacob.

I’m also thankful for my beloved Budge and the 17 Thanksgivings she has endured me and my sometimes stormy moods around the holidays. I could never have guessed a simple Hummer ride up a washboard mountain road would turn out to be the beginning of a much longer and sometimes stranger trip.

I’m thankful for all the men and women whose duties won’t allow them to spend a quiet day with their families — our soldiers, sailors, and airmen stationed here and across the world providing safety and security for our nation and many other nations across the globe. Also, I’m thankful for our doctors, nurses, and medical technicians who are staffing our hospitals ready to treat the various injuries and illnesses a day of overeating, overexertion, and — sometimes — overexposure to family can bring.

Finally, I’m thankful that one day I’ll get to rejoin Mama and my other loved ones around another table at a marriage supper and I’m thankful for the One who made that possible by His sacrifice that redeemed Mama, Granny, Papa, Budge, me, and so many millions more down the centuries. Our world was in a mess and without any hope, but Jesus came and by His sacrifice, set right everything Adam screwed up. I know not everyone who reads my blog believes Jesus even existed, much less lived and died to save a doomed humanity, but . . . well, He did and my life is living proof as anyone who knew me “back when” can attest to.

I’m also thankful for all of you who read my blog and who’ve encouraged me over the years. Remember I love all y’all and keep those feet clean as you “gobble til you wobble” today!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Nov22

Why I Believe the Warren Report

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I concur, but I wish I didn't.

I concur, but I wish I didn’t.

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated fifty years ago today as he wrote in a convertible limousine through Dealy Plaza in Dallas, Texas. The imagery of that fateful fall day are forever etched in the minds of Americans of that generation. Several times as I was growing up, Mama told me the story of being eleven years old in gym class at Gray Court – Owings School when the principal came over the PA system and asked teachers to get their classes seated and quiet for a very important announcement. She said several of the teachers cried and many of the older students did as well. Mama always said she didn’t think about the President much, but she was very concerned for “Mrs. Jackie” and her well-being.

Ten months and 889 pages after the events in Dallas turned America upside down, The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy told the public Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in killing Kennedy and Jack Ruby had acted alone in killing Oswald. Never in the course of human events has such a document caused so much furor. The Warren Report has been vilified and vindicated; it has been pooh-poohed and propped up, but it has never ceased being controversial.

For better or worse, a significant portion of Americans, and the world at large as well, believe the Warren Committee got it wrong. My generation grew up hearing conspiracy theories abound implicating everyone from LBJ to aliens in killing the President and framing Oswald. Try to read all the books, articles, and web pages on the assassination and you will never finish. As far as I’m concerned, however, the committee was correct, but my opinion doesn’t give me much comfort. In fact, I think Oswald acting alone is much scarier than any grand conspiracy.

Lee Harvey Oswald was a complete nobody with strange political ideals and odd habits. He wasn’t on any FBI or CIA radar because he was just a nobody . . . but with three shots from a cheap Italian rifle, he changed the world. THAT is scary. See, a big conspiracy would be comforting for me. Smart people run conspiracies and dangerous organizations. The world has agencies who can protect us from a group of boogeymen; sooner or later, someone will talk to the wrong person and the group will be broken up and we’ll all be safe again.

Locating and limiting a loner loser like Lee, however, takes nothing less than lots of luck. That is terrifying.

“Lone wolfs” are the most dangerous of all terrorists and criminals. They report to no one; they are in league with no one; they are, quite simply, alone with their thoughts of murder and mayhem, and that makes them supremely dangerous. As a people, we don’t like the thought of such dangerous people walking around among us. It’s unsettling to realize that one person — a “shadow person” at that — can rip the fabric of a nation into tatters and change the way we live in our day to day world. It’s better, safer at least, to believe only big organizations with heads and resources and charts and data can pull off something like a Presidential assassination. Big particles get caught in a sieve quickly, but the tiny singletons pass right through.

Oswald wasn’t the first person to act alone and change the world and he hasn’t been the last. Look at Charles Whitman, the University of Texas Sniper. Nothing about him suggested he was anything other than a mild, hard working veteran, student and husband . . . until the day he murdered his mother and wife then climbed into the clock tower on the UT campus in Austin and shot fifty people, killing seventeen.

With just a minimum of help from a couple of friends, Timothy McVeigh carried out the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in the country’s history when he blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and killed 168 men, women, and children. During his trial, McVeigh made a statement I think sums up what I’m trying to get across. People speculated McVeigh had co-conspirators and pressured him to name them before he exploded saying

You can’t handle the truth! Because the truth is, I blew up the Murrah Building and isn’t it kind of scary that one man could wreak this kind of hell?

Isn’t it scary indeed? Time and again in our history, one person with an attitude, a vendetta, or just a chip on his shoulder has carried out an act so heinous it has altered the way we conduct our lives. Thanks to Oswald, Presidents are vastly less accessible than they once were. No one ever heard of crime in Norway, much less mass murder, but one violent true believer in “antizionism” changed that when Anders Behring Breivik bombed several government buildings in Oslo before donning a police uniform and traveling to an island full of teenagers at summer camp and shot and killed 69 of them. Mehmet Ali Agca swore allegiance to no particular group but still decided to shoot and very nearly kill Pope John Paul II. That act gave the world The Popemobile, but imagine if Agca’s bullet had pierced the pontiff’s heart.

Finally, do any of you parents feel as safe sending your children to school as you felt when you were going to school? Lone, disturbed, and disaffected people have made school a terrifying place. From the Columbine Massacre to the latest mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary almost a year ago now, we have to worry that some person with a beef and a gun is going to break into our schools and kill our children.

I understand people want to see conspiracies, but in Kennedy’s case, I think Oswald acted alone, like so many others before and since, which proves to me no well thought and planned conspiracy is nearly as terrifying as the twisted human nature of a lone killer.

Love y’all, and keep those feet clean.

Nov10

This is NOT a Movie

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enders_game_ver12Budge and I went to see Ender’s Game Saturday afternoon. I read the book eons ago and Budge knew enough that we both expected the “twist” at the end. I sat through the movie, which was beautifully shot and orchestrated, but after it ended, Budge and I walked back to the car in depressed silence.

This movie is not — let me repeat that to be clear — NOT a faithful representation of the source material in Orson Scott Card’s novel. What it is, and in spades I’ll add, is a blatant and scathing indictment of America’s actions towards foreign countries over the last two Presidential administrations.

It doesn’t bother me that the movie could have been a Michael Moore rag; what bothers me is how spot on it was in its satire in places AND how simple it was for me and Budge (who abhors politics) to pick out the director’s theme.

I don’t usually put spoilers in my movie posts, but I’m making an exception in this one, so if you’re planning to see it 1) don’t say I didn’t warn you and 2) don’t read any further down this post.

In the BOOK, Earth is attacked TWICE by “Buggers” who show every intention of returning again, which establishes a pretty good case for some type of preemptive action on the three NATIONS of the Earth. The BOOK has two important sub-plots that involve Ender Wiggins’ psychopathic brother Peter and his beloved sister Valentine. In the BOOK, we look like a species trying to defend ourselves from another eminent attack from space.

In the MOVIE, we look like bullying, Nazi-esque douchebags.

Our planet is attacked one time. The “Buggers” show no sign of coming back, propaganda to the contrary, and the globe is depicted as a single New World Order type unified one-nation entity, thereby discarding the three warring “mega-nations” that gave purpose and tension to the novel. The book is subtle in it’s Cold War political message; the movie isn’t subtle at all. Instead, the movie invokes the old saw that, “If the only tool in your box is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Children are taken from their homes at ridiculously tender ages and sent to “Battle School” where they are pitted against each other in a series of Darwinian tasks that make The Hunger Games look like an afternoon of croquet.

The book has those elements as well, BUT in the movie, everything is stripped down. NO allowance is made for the fact THESE ARE CHILDREN, and in the end, one of those children — the eponymous main character — becomes the architect and executor of a genocide Hitler, Stalin, and Mao couldn’t have imagined in their collectively most coked out acid trips. In the movie, our wonderfully united species spends 50 years building a space-faring fleet with one purpose in mind — eradicating the “Buggers.” We don’t try to communicate with them because the bodies we discovered after the “invasion” show no vocal cords so naturally a species capable of interstellar flight couldn’t POSSIBLY have some other way of communication than spoken words.

Nope, they are different from us, they apparently don’t like us — but we don’t bother to ask them, so obviously, we have to kill every single one of them in order for our world to be safe. Does any of this sound the slightest bit familiar? If it doesn’t, turn off Rush Limburger and Sean Hennessy and think about it for a minute. If you do, you’ll see it’s a perfect picture of American foreign policy for the last 12 years.

The USA was attacked on 9-11-2001 by elements of Al-Qaeda under the influence and command of Osama Bin Laden. Quite predictably — and I think appropriately — we flipped our collective lids and beat our pruning hooks into swords overnight. All of our intelligence, indeed all of the WORLD’S intelligence, pointed to Bin Laden hiding out in the mountainous border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. So, with revenge on our minds, we gear up for a massive beat-down such as the world has never seen. We load up the transports and carriers with men and weapons and we head across the waters to kick the everloving sh . . . I mean poop out of — wait for it — IRAQ!?

W.T.F? Bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda people are in Afghanistan / Pakistan. Why are we invading Iraq? Bin Laden is not in Iraq. Bin Laden is in Afghanistan / Pakistan somewhere. Yet for reasons NO ONE can adequately explain, we roll in to a sovereign nation, shoot the place up, destabilize the entire region, and ultimately kill Bin Laden? NO. BECAUSE BIN LADEN ISN’T IN IRAQ!! No, we kill Saddam Hussein, who, yes, is a raging asshole who killed his own people (with a lot of weapons he got from us in America) and turned the country from something resembling a nation into a festering bed of warring sects who hate each other AND, incidentally, HATE US TOO.

Only after we tidy up the loose ends that Dubya’s daddy left hanging in the family closet do we go flounder around in the deserts and badlands of Afghanistan for ten years and finally manage to kill the ONE GUY we’ve been looking for as he was kicked back and relaxing in our supposed “ally’s” backyard.

The 9/11 attacks changed everything. I know that. I sat and bawled like a baby for six hours watching the news after I got home from teaching classes that day. Unfortunately, they destroyed our country and no one seems to mind. The best estimate I can find is 2,996 people died in the attacks. In the Iraq War that followed — tell me why did that happen again — 4,486 American soldiers died. That doesn’t include the 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed because when everyone looks the same and there is no real front line, you kill them all and let God and Allah fight it out.

Despite all those casualties, the worst face of the Iraq War / “Global War on Terror” is the face of the soldiers who are coming home. It’s bad enough for our regular forces to have to face combat, but so many of the troops who’ve fought this war AREN’T regular forces. They’re National Guard troops who signed up for some extra money and to help fill sandbags during floods or look for missing people during a hurricane. They were never trained to go to a foreign country, meet interesting people, and kill them.

Now they are back and they are broken inside and from what I can see, no one gives a really good damn about it. THAT is what saddens me most about what our country has become and that is what’s brought to the fore so painfully in this mockery of Ender’s Game: the movie. One line in the movie says it best of all. The psych officer is confronting the main training colonel about his harsh training tactics and the line she delivers is one for the ages:

“You are turning these children into KILLERS and when it’s over and they finally get to come home you want ME to try to fix them. Well, they can’t BE FIXED!”

I lost my daddy in Vietnam . . . another war eerily similar to the Iraq War. Oh, he’s alive and probably sitting in his recliner watching westerns on tv as I’m writing this, but he went to Vietnam a 19 year old kid from Fountain Inn, SC who’d never been on a plane and he came back 13 months later and 100 years older. I never got the chance to know the man my mama and Granny Wham talked about.

And now, it’s happening again.

Love y’all. Keep your feet clean and I’m sorry I don’t know the answers or what else to say.

Nov4

Mayday! Mayday! We’re Going Down In Flames!

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hindenburg-wide

Unfortunately, that’s not a Led Zeppelin album cover, but a fairly close rendition of the state of my project.

I thought y’all might like a progress report on my project for NaNoWriMo. After all, I did make a big splashy announcement in my last post about how I was going to finally start that novel so many people have been pestering me about. Well, here is my report:

OH LORD! The HUMANITY! THE HORROR!

Truthfully, I don’t think Hemingway or Faulkner either one did it this way. Of course, they were most likely drunk during the entire time they were writing so they may not have noticed anyway. The short precise’ is, this has so far been an unmitigated disaster, heavy on the unmitigated-ness. Let me give a bit of a rundown.

First, for over a week before Friday, I would have trouble falling asleep because the characters and plot points were dancing like sugar plums in my feverish little mind. I practically had the entire first chapters ready to go, and I was just waiting on Friday to begin like the rules stated. Woke up Friday ready to start . . . nothing. The blank page with the accusing little blinking cursor at the top was a Xerox of my mind. Everything was gone as completely as degaussed hard drive. I had one page of notes I’d made and I started getting them somewhat organized, but everything else was, to quote Mortal Kombat, “Toasty!”

On top of my sudden loss of information, I started suffering from my first cold of the season. My head was completely stuffed and my chest — the real worry — was as tight as Dick’s hatband. I was wheezing and trying to cough, but the cough was nice and dry and hacky. Long experience with my doctor let me know it would be futile as resisting the Borg to bother scheduling an appointment. Dr. Lopez does not believe in antibiotics for “colds.” I agree, since colds are viral and antibiotics are useless against viruses, but I’ve also suffered from recurring bouts of walking pneumonia since I was in kindergarten so my chest being so tight bothers me. Oh, and there’s the little matter of the rasping and wheezing which didn’t do much for my nerves since it hasn’t been all that long that I watched Mama DIE rasping and wheezing. So, the cold triggered unwanted memories of Mama’s last days sending me into a nice depression that even now is spiraling downward as I write this.

Those little tidbits would be enough to put the quietus on the project but I’m not done recounting this Job-ian disaster just yet. I soldiered on through the weekend typing what I could remember into this amazing new word processing program I found that is JUST FOR NOVELISTS!! It outlines your novel and keeps up with your character biographies and lets you storyboard the plot points . . . using it early Saturday morning had me thinking I’d found a successor to sliced bread. I typed in several character biographies and outlined parts I couldn’t completely remember. I was slowly making headway even as I fought the black dog down from my throat. One of the greatest points of this program is it runs off a flash drive so I can move between computers as the mood to change scenery takes me.

Except . . . it doesn’t.

Nope. I moved from the desktop to my laptop just fine. I typed up a few hundred more words, saved and backed up everything, then took a break. I took the flash drive BACK to the desktop, and that’s where, to quote the band Citizen Kane, “The bottom dropped out.” Not only was my project gone . . . the entire PROGRAM was gone from the thumb drive! I didn’t panic, because I backed everything up on my laptop . . . except I didn’t. While sorting out this whole sordid debacle, I found in the “readme.txt” file on this program (you know the ONE thing people read LESS than the EULA for new software?) that running the program on a jump drive requires you to create an empty .ini file, which I did not. As a result, my project saved partly on the desktop in some strange location and partly on the laptop in an equally strange location. When I FOUND the two projects and tried opening them, Marilyn, my trusty desktop, told me they were corrupted. Well OF COURSE they were!

So, I’m back to square ZERO and if I choose to continue on this path of agony, I’m going back to OpenOffice or MS Word.

I say “if” because of the LAST piece de resistance I discovered last night reading some headlines on MSN. Harper Lee, author of my second favorite novel — To Kill A Mockingbird, is suing her hometown for copyright violations relating to her work and the museum the town erected years ago in her honor. Apparently, as she has gotten older and more infirm, Miss Lee — or someone representing her — has become quite litigious over her sole written work. This isn’t the only lawsuit she has in the works. So, why should I care? Well guess what MY NaNoWriMo project novel was to be based on? The events and some characters from To Kill A Mockingbird!! Well OF COURSE it is!

I had planned a continuation of sorts delving into the behind the scenes actions in the jury deliberation room and the eventual fates of some of the characters. It was all going to be derivative which is supposedly fair use under copyright law, BUT I’ve found the law to be what the judge SAYS it is and the judge SAYS what the person with the highest paid LAWYER wants him to say. I don’t have a lawyer, highly paid or otherwise, so I’m at an impasse. I don’t want to waste time writing unpublishable fan-fic BUT, I don’t want to get sued by a little old lady from south Alabama either.

So, I’m in the shadow of my own end zone and I’m punting. What’s coming next is anyone’s guess but y’all will be among the first to know!

TIl then, love y’all and keep those feet clean.

Oct24

Taking the Plunge

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Oh god what have I gotten myself into now?

Oh god what have I gotten myself into now?

“You should write a book!”

“I wish you’d write a novel!”

“I just LOVE your stories; why don’t you write a novel?”

“You are such a talented writer; you need to write a book.”

Okay, FINE. Y’all talked me into it, mostly because I’m tired of hearing it! So November is National Novel Writing Month or “NaNoWriMo” to the initiated and since all one has to do is sign up on their website, which I did, I suppose I’m one of the initiated.

I’m also one of the terrified. I’ve never been much on challenges. Someone would say, “I dare you to ____,” and I’d politely decline. My reasons ran the gamut from inability to fear to outright cowardice, but the results were the same. I’d be branded a chicken, but I managed to avoid broken bones, road rash, and grounding for my entire childhood and teenage years so I’m not complaining.

This challenge, however, has been a long time coming. I really have been pestered for years by people who seem to think I can produce a work of book length which people, besides them, will want to read. It was a common theme in college from my professors, especially my Southern Literature professor and my Writing Methods professor. Some of my colleagues (and a good many students) during my teaching career would goad me to turn the tales I’d spin for them of my childhood and adolescence into a book length narrative and even today, friends and family delight in saying, “I’m still waiting for that book!”

So, I’m taking on NaNoWriMo. The challenge is to turn out a rough draft of a NOVEL in thirty days, beginning November 1st and ending Midnight on November 30th. My biggest worry is the stories people love me to tell and write so much are not eligible for this contest. Under the rules, those constitute a “personal memoir” and that genre isn’t allowed. Instead, I’m supposed to produce “a work of fiction with a minimum of 50,000 words within the 30 days from 11-1-2013 to 11-30-2013.” Of course, it for memoirs to be disallowed since I’ve got a person or two still to pass away before I could write EXACTLY what I want to say and not catch hell from someone.

To give you a little perspective, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is 46,118 words, Kurt Vonnegut’s much-lauded and loved Slaughterhouse-5 is 49,459 words, and that bane of the existence of American Lit high school students everywhere — The Great Gatsby — weighs in at 47,094 words. By contrast, HP and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first and shortest of the Harry Potter series is 77,325 words, my favorite novel — To Kill a Mockingbird has 99,121 words, and Tolstoy’s Russian tome War and Peace tips the scales at a heartbreaking 587,287 words or 37,140 MORE words than the entire Lord of the Rings PLUS The Hobbit.

Looking at the word count next to those paragons of fiction, 50K doesn’t seem like anything nearly insurmountable, but I know when I sit down and look at that blinking cursor taunting me from the top of a blank screen, 50K words are going to be magnified. I figure it’s a lot like eating calamari, sure, that bite doesn’t look very big, but when you pop it in your mouth and start chewing, it grows exponentially! I look at it as 50 of my typical 1000 word blog posts set end to end. That works out to around 1.6 blog posts per day . . . EVERY DAY instead of my usual schedule of three or four posts a month. I’m not thinking this is going to be easy.

But, to quote Julius Caesar as he stood by the cold rushing River Rubicon on January 10, 49 BC, “Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος” or “Let the die be cast!” If I’m going to write a book, I may as well do it in November. I have a couple of ideas I’m going to be whittling down over the next few days, but if any of y’all have something you think I could knock out of the park, be sure to let me know in the comments or drop me an email.

In the meantime, love y’all, and keep those feet clean!

Oct11

The Nobel Putz Prize

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Alfred Nobel is thrashing about in his grave.

You gave my award to whom?! I want my money back.

You gave my award to whom?! I want my money back.

The cause of his unrest is once again the prize for peace he established to salve his conscience after inventing dynamite has become a farce. Since 1901, The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded annually (with some exceptions like during both world wars) to those who have “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”. Since its inception, an amazing array of people and organizations have won the prestigious award.

In 1905, Teddy Roosevelt won the prize for brokering the peace treaty ending the Russo-Japanese War. The International Red Cross won in 1917 and 1944 — the only awards given during a world war — for helping ease suffering. In 1953, Gen. George Marshall received the award for successfully pushing his plan to rebuild war-ravaged western Europe. The list of people and organizations rewarded for promoting peace goes on and contains names like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Andri Sakharov, Lech Walesa, Elie Weisel and Nelson Mandela.

Many times in the last several years, though, the awards committee was apparently drinking heavily before picking the winner of the prize meant for promoting peace. For example, in 2007, Irena Sendler was a front-runner for the award. This elderly Polish lady had helped save 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto at the cost of imprisonment and severe torture. Instead of giving her the award, however, the committee chose Al Gore for his “work” on bringing attention to global warming . . . because that certainly counts as working for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses. Similarly, US President Barack Obama won in 2009 after doing . . . pretty much nothing to win the award. He was only nine months into his first term as President! Then last year, the European Union won the award. Why? Inquiring minds would love to know. As bad as those picks were, this morning’s announcement represents one of the worst miscarriages of justice in the 112 year history of this prestigious award and is proof to me the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has become just another geo-political shill peddling some kind of watered down political correctness.

Is it just me or does Al Gore look like a dead ringer for Jimmy Hoffa?

Is it just me or does Al Gore look like a dead ringer for Jimmy Hoffa?

The apparent front-runners for the award this year seemed to be poised to reverse the specious trend, however. Denis Mukwege is a Congolese gynecologist who pioneered ways to rebuild women’s insides after they were destroyed by gang rapes common during the region’s civil war. He and his clinic fellows have treated over 30,000 women brutalized by soldiers. At age 86, Lyudmila Alexeyeva is one of the old school Soviet dissidents still actively speaking out against the now Russian government. She started her protesting during the black days of Soviet oppression and she’s still going strong opposing the new laws concerning homosexuality in Russia. She gets death threats often, but at 86, she figures it doesn’t matter much! Claudia Paz y Paz is Guatemala’s first female attorney general and — again despite death threats — is the first government official to arrange and pursue prosecution of the people responsible for the human rights abuses committed by the military dictatorship during Guatemala’s civil war. Until she took her post, no one had thought to try bringing these madmen to justice.

Then you have Malala Yousafzai. At the jaded and cynical age of TWELVE, she started a blog speaking out against the Taliban who held sway over her home region in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. She was upset that girls were treated so poorly and denied education and she spoke out about it, loudly. Her blog started picking up viewers and by the time she was fourteen, she’d caught the notice of Taliban “officials” to the point she was getting warnings to stop. Instead, she upped her efforts. This enraged the rabid followers of the peaceful Islamic religion to the point on October 9, 2012, a Taliban gunman stopped the vehicle she was riding home from school in and SHOT HER IN THE HEAD! Instead of dying like a normal person, she survived and was airlifted first to a big hospital in Pakistan where she was stabilized then flown to the UK where she had as much of the damage repaired as possible.

At this point, most people would get the message and just shut up. Instead, Malala kept right on going and as soon as she was able, she resumed her blogging and on July 12, 2013, she addressed the United Nations about acting to ensure the right to education for females all over the world. She’s still writing, still blogging, and still speaking. Oh, and the Taliban leadership have gone on record stating they will finish her off as soon as they get the chance. In an interview with CNN, Taliban Pakistan spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said Malala was targeted because she was used in propaganda against the militants. The Taliban would target her again if given the chance, just as it would target anyone who opposes the group, Shahid told CNN. “She accepted that she attacked Islam so we tried to kill her, and if we get another chance we will definitely kill her and that will make us feel proud,” he was quoted as saying. Wow. Just, wow. Real peaceful religion y’all got there Shahid.

Yeah, girl, you got ripped off, but keep on smilin'.

Yeah, girl, you got ripped off, but keep on smilin’.

So with all these worthy candidates, the committee had hard work ahead of them. Or so it seemed. Instead, they ignored all the people making a huge difference and awarded the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons “for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons”. Who? Better yet, WHAT? This year’s prize was awarded to a bureaucratic agency supposedly overseeing the dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons, and MY, MY, MY haven’t they done a bang-up job?! So Peace takes a backseat to politics once again and I’m surprised that I’m actually surprised!

What. A. Joke.

Well, as Chicago Cubs fans always say, “Maybe next year.”

Love y’all and keep those feet clean.

Sep28

The Pen Beats the Sword Everytime

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blogging-is-mightier-and-more-viral-than-penI’ve always held man-whores in contempt and disdain.

I think all females are special and should be treated respectfully and if they choose to disrespect (looking at you Miley C.) themselves, a real man should do what he can to aid them rather than prey on the tendency.  Unfortunately, one guy who lived near me my sophomore year didn’t share my high-mindedness on the subject. He was, in short, a man-whore who led a parade of coeds to his room — usually at night, but not always. Had he stopped at being garden variety man-whore, I’d probably turned the other cheek; instead, he was a cocky, braggadocio, insufferable man-whore. Anyway, if I’d let things go their course, his long-suffering roommate would probably have killed him and that would have been sad.

In late September, the roommate knocked on my door at 2 one  afternoon. As I let him in, he threw a strip of red cloth on the floor in disgust. It was the sign the man-whore used to let him know the room was, “occupied.” I looked at the roomie and realized he was nearing his limit. The sheen in his eyes told of fantasies centering on several notably violent urban legends. I told him he could crash in my room as long as he wanted. I was going to put a stop to this madness once and for all. When he questioned what methods I planned to use, I just told him the less he knew, the safer he was. He  was still there when I returned three hours later, so I cajoled him into going to supper with me. He again pressed me on what I’d done and I repeated my admonition to avoid seeking forbidden knowledge.

Two days later, I was sitting in the recliner in my dorm room around 3 PM watching Tiny Toon Adventures when my viewing pleasure was interrupted by a wail of despair which wouldn’t have been out-of-place in a production of Dante’s Inferno. It was a gripping, heartsick, bitter cry sounding thick with remorse and primal fear. Then all was quiet again. A few moments later, I answered a slight knock on the door; it was the roomie with a look of abject terror on his face and a single sheet of paper in his hand. I invited him in and he sat on the bunk, looked at me with that fearful expression, and said, “Remind me to NEVER piss you off.” I told him I was certain I had no idea what he was talking about. He gave me a “yeah, right” nod and handed me the paper.

It was a typewritten letter on infirmary letterhead — very official appearing, right down to the slightly illegible doctor’s signature stamp at the bottom. The body of the message was quite short. In its entirety it ran thusly:

Dear Sir,

A person claiming to have had unprotected coitus with you has tested positive for antibodies related to the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. As you may know, this is the virus which is the active agent in Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, which is usually referred to by the acronym AIDS. This is an extremely serious matter compounded by the currently unknown incubation period of the virus and its attendant disease. At present, we simply do not know how long it takes someone exposed to the HIV agent to contract AIDS nor are we certain that such exposure inevitably results in development of the full-blown disease.

You should, of course, be tested for the HIV antibodies as soon as possible, but please note such a test may prove inconclusive at this time. The person who listed you as a partner believes their exposure was likely some three to four years ago. It will be necessary for you to be retested at a minimum of once each year for likely the next ten years or until some new development makes diagnosis more accurate. In the meantime, it is important you do not have unprotected coitus with anyone until your infectious status is determined in order to prevent further spread of the disease.

Finally, I regret to inform you that at this point there is no vaccine, no treatment, and no cure for HIV / AIDS. To this point, everyone who has developed full-blown AIDS has expired.

Sincerely,

Dr. ___________

I  handed it back to the roomie who then stood to leave. I asked him if the poor lad had any plans after getting such a shocking letter. He said the guy had sprinted to the infirmary where they’d told him, yes, they would have sent such a letter if someone had reported any STD and wanted to “do the right thing” and alert previous partners but they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give him specific names citing privacy concerns.

I think I grunted something non-committal like, “that’s a shame. No way of knowing who sent it then?” He shook his head as I patted him on the back and shrugged. He stared at me meaningfully before he nodded once again and went back to his room. The letter’s recipient went from man-whore to monk in moments. He finished his degree, after changing his major to microbiology from engineering. I heard he was planning on going to medical school, but I haven’t had word of him in years. Funny how things work.

Love y’all, and keep those feet clean.

Sep19

Somebody Just Got Rich, but It Ain’t Me!

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powerball-ticketAs I write this, someone, somewhere here in my beloved Palmetto State is the nouveau-est of the nouveau riche.

Someone in South Carolina purchased a PowerBall lottery ticket yesterday and for his or her trouble is now $400 million richer. Let that sink in just a minute. Yesterday morning, this person got up and maybe went to some dead-end job to give a little more sweat and time to The Man in exchange for enough of a paycheck to get by. All day long yesterday at his machine or behind her desk, this special someone was working away without the slightest idea the Long Black Freight Train of Fate was rolling down the tracks right towards him or her. For once, the light at the end of the tunnel WAS a train — metaphorically at least — and this time, that wasn’t a bad thing.

I like to picture this soon-to-no-longer-be-a-drone getting off work and starting towards home in a car or truck with broken air conditioning, four bald tires, and a drooping headliner. He sighs as he pulls out of the parking lot. She waves goodbye to the security guard at the gate. Either way, one of them turns into the late afternoon sun for a hot, sticky ride to the house. Suddenly, the headache that’s been building all day gets annoying so she pulls into a Quickie Mart clone near home to grab a Pepsi Max to wash down a few Advil in hopes of taking the edge off the pounding before facing the kiddos.

He’s a decent guy so he’s probably making some small talk with Apu behind the counter when he notices the sign stating the PowerBall jackpot is up to $400 million. He figures, “Eh, what the Hell?” and gives over a couple of dollars, fills out the ticket and heads home laughing at himself a little at the silliness of buying a lottery ticket. What would his sainted grandmother think if she could see him now?

Just as an aside, this is one of the quirks of lotto ticket buying I’ve never understood. I’ve actually heard people say, “Ah, the pot’s only at $50 million . . . I don’t even bother getting a ticket if it’s less than $200 million.” That’s crazy talk! You are standing on a sidewalk in front of a 7-11 looking like death on a stick and you’ve come to the conclusion a mere $50 million wouldn’t be worth your while? Now I read somewhere that Bill Gates would actually lose money if he stopped to pick up a $100 bill off the sidewalk. I have no idea if that’s true, but I know none of us are Bill.

Anyway, our erstwhile worker ant gets home, talks to the significant other, plays with the kids . . . whatever. Supper’s ready then the dishes get washed and he turns around to the TV just in time to catch the day’s numbers. Funny . . . those sound familiar. Not even seriously hoping for anything and certainly not expecting anything, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his lotto stub with the numbers he chose. He takes one look at his ticket, looks back at the screen, and the next thing he knows his wife is kneeling beside him fanning him and dabbing his neck with a cool cloth. When she asks him what happened, he shows her the ticket, points to the TV, and just manages to catch her head before it hits the floor. They won. They have hit the big time.

Dude is now LOADED. He woke up in the morning wondering how he was going to stretch the money to the end of the month and he’s going to bed tonight with visions of Maserati and mansions dancing in his head.  Of course he can’t sleep. First thing this morning he called in sick to work. Dude’s tickled to death about he money, but he’s smart so he called the lawyer who helped him close on the double wide. Then he called a buddy of his who is an accountant. THEN, the three of them went down to the store to turn in that ticket.

Now here’s another thing that cracks me up. I was reading some of the comments on the stories about the winning lottery jackpot. One guy, obviously eating a bushel of sour grapes, remarked how sad it was $400 million gets taxed down to $145 million and “no one seems to care.” WHY WOULD YOU CARE!!!??? The day before, stand up weenies and saltine crackers were a gourmet lunch because this guy was one paycheck away from the poor-house and today he has $145 Million after taxes? Sure, Uncle Sam, take your chunk because I’m STILL RICH!! ONLY $145 million. That’s like saying the Star of India is ONLY a diamond or the Grand Canyon is ONLY a hole in the ground.

So this guy is set for life now, whoever and wherever he is and I’m truly happy for him. If there is any real justice in the world, he or she is a teacher with the class from Hell this year and now gets to quit if she wants to because that brings up my final funny point . . . all these people who win these millions get interviewed and say “I just don’t think I could stay home all day so I think I’ll keep on working like always.” RIIIIGHT! When I was a high school teacher I used to talk about hitting the lottery with my students and I always told them the same thing, “Folks, if you see Coach Wham on the news holding up one of those big paper checks that says ‘Lottery Winnings: $X millions’, DO NOT look for me at work the next day! I will hire my OWN substitute, but I’m going fishing!”

So here’s to you Mr. or Mrs. Lottery Winner. I hope the wealth doesn’t change you — unless of course you are a raging asshole and then hopefully it will change you for the better, and to all the dreamers who have worthless slips of paper in your pockets, all I can say is “better luck next time.”

Til then though, I love y’all — rich or poor — and remember to keep those feet clean!

Sep10

Life is a Circle, but not like Disney

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Nothing prepared me to be bitten multiple times by my grandmother.

kelloggwomanWhen I entered this world, I had four living grandparents AND four living great-grandparents. Granny Matt (short for Mattie) and Papa Hurley passed before I developed memories of them, but family members have told me both loved me tremendously. It’s not good to grow up with six doting grandparents; it’s not so much the danger of being spoiled rotten — which I was — so much as such excess love doesn’t prepare a person for what a terrible place the world is.

Papa Wham passed in 1995 — the first person so close to me to die. I was attending a wake for a student who’d been killed in a car wreck when my brand new cell phone rang. The first cell phone call I ever received was to let me know Papa Wham was gone.

Little Papa Hughes, my maternal great-grandfather, died on New Year’s Day 1997. He was a tiny man with a heart entirely too large for his slight frame. He was also a bit of “a character” and I have stories on top of stories about him.

Big Granny Hughes, whom Mama (and pretty much everyone) called Maggie-Valmer went Home in February 2001. I call it a testament to her life that it took three preachers — including me — to do her life justice.

After losing those three wells of my adoration, the next few years were quiet. Then Papa John died October 17, 2006. I didn’t grieve Papa’s death for 18 months because Mama was in such a terrible state I wasn’t sure if I was going to lose her as well. I can say from personal, painful experience it is dangerous to one’s mental health to suppress a terrible grief because once Mama came somewhat out of the fog, I had the nervous breakdown that ultimately cost me my job, my second career, and almost my sanity.

I came out of my breakdown just in time to lose Granny Wham on February 5, 2008. As much as I adored Granny Wham and as much as I know she loved me, her passing was easier to take. After Papa died and she became unable to care for herself or be left alone, we had no choice but to place her in a facility. My Aunt Cathy wore ruts in I-385 between Fountain Inn and Laurens going to see her mama; Uncle Larry stopped by on his way to and from the Roadway terminal in Columbia every time he had a trip; and I tried to see her at least once a week, but she missed being home tending her family. Still, miserable though she was, she soldiered on three years at Martha Franks Retirement Home.  A week before she passed I went to see her; she told me, “Mama {her mama} came to see me last night.” I knew it wouldn’t be long. Now Granny Wham is waiting on the other side of those Gates of Pearl (with Papa Wham nearby and most likely seated on a golden bench talking baseball with St. Peter).

So Granny Ima (for Imogene) is all I have left. She’s under hospice care at NHC nursing home in Clinton. I go to see her at 10:00 AM every Tuesday, and I leave a sliver of my heart each time I turn from her bed to come home. Ima has dementia. She knows who I am, who Rob is, and who my Aunt Pearl is, but she can’t say our names. All she can say clearly is “yep” and “nope.” I took Mama to see her twice a week as long as she was able, then once a week, then once every two weeks . . . then I took her when she could rally the strength, but one thing never changed — Granny always said, “My baby girl’ whenever Mama asked her who she (Mama) was. I haven’t told Ima that Mama is gone. I tell her the truth — Wannie (her name for Mama) can’t get up anymore to see her, but she loves her very much. Every time I tell her, Granny nods.

Unfortunately, though, Granny’s mind is riddled with holes and she’s lost control of her emotions (especially her temper) just as she’s lost her language. She can’t stand being poked and prodded and she seems to see everything as being poked and prodded. She has a hissy fit whenever she gets a bath — or what passes for a bath when you’re bedridden. I gave my signed permission today for the nursing staff to stop sticking her fingers twice a day for blood sugar samples to control her diabetes. Dr. Blackstone told me years ago diabetes wasn’t what was going to kill Granny. I told the head of nursing today, there are worse ways to die than diabetic coma.

Granny saves a special rage for anyone who tries to clean her hands and especially her fingernails. She cannot abide having her hands or nails messed with, which wouldn’t be so bad, but Granny’s mind wanders now and she will not stop digging in her disposable briefs. Maybe she itches, maybe it’s something else, but whatever the cause, she can’t tell us. I’m not going to be graphic, but you can draw your conclusions as to the state of her nails. Mama cried every time she saw Granny’s nails, but the staff can only do so much because Granny is “combative” which is nicely saying she gets pissed off when you touch her too much.

However, as family, I am not bound by the facility’s rules against restraints, and her nails and hands were so hideous today that I held my precious grandmother while two nurses cleaned and trimmed her nails. I linked my fingers in hers like we used to do crossing the street. She fought but her strength was no match for mine, just as mine was no match for hers long ago when I had to have childhood shots. As I cupped her arthritic fingers gently as I could so as to not hurt her, the tears ran down my face just as they ran down hers long ago. Then I knew with perfect clarity what a parent means when he says, “This is hurting me more than it hurts you.” At one point, she managed to get my hand near her mouth so she bit me. It seemed to make her feel better, so I just left my arm where she could gnaw on it at will — a small bruise or two (she has no teeth) are a small price to pay for her hands to be clean. After we finished, a nurse brought her a strawberry nutrition shake and the nurses were forgiven . . . her look told me I was not, even though next Tuesday she won’t remember a thing. I sat with her a while longer, then kissed her cheek, placed today’s sliver on her pillow, and turned to come home.

The old proverb, “Once a man; twice a child” is painful to see in someone you love.Freshly pressed

Love y’all; keep those feet clean.

Sep2

World of Nursery-craft

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Man-Holding-Crying-BI am an exceedingly odd duck — and not for the reason most longtime readers of my work are thinking of right now.  I am a male nursery worker whose wife doesn’t work in the nursery with him.  To my knowledge, and the knowledge of everyone I’ve discussed this with, I am the only member of my kind.  I serve in the Snails class at our church.  This class is the pre-Sunday School of Sunday School and encompassed ages from “walking steadily without help” down to “mama finally has the courage to leave her bundle with a semi-stranger.”  I serve because I enjoy babies — spit up, dirty diapers, and all.  I should note, however, that my church has a policy forbidding males to change any baby’s diaper.

It’s one of those particular rules which runs its fingernails down the chalkboard of my anti-authoritarianism because I resent the implication implicit in the policy, but I make it a point of honor to tell my co-servers I am forbidden by statute, not a weak stomach, from changing diapers.  After all, I am a veteran of three Samples children from my former church nursery.  Those little tykes — who are now in high school and middle school — were fearsome in what they could pack in a Pamper. Their mom didn’t bring Wet Wipes, she packed Bounty paper towels and a shop-vac.  On more than one occasion, I have held a Samples child beneath a running faucet to expedite the removal of “material” from his back and it is not unknown for a nursery worker to resort to shampooing hair to complete a full diaper change. After Logan, Riley, and Emily, nothing in a Huggies can deter me. Stun me for a moment, maybe, but not deter.

But I digress.

This past Sunday morn, I was on the schedule to serve with the Salon twins.  They have never served with me before and when they arrived and I was already in the room, I got the usual “well, he’s going to be useless” look.  Most of the time, I take women by surprise because of having Shannon for a first name.  I love and miss Mama, but regardless of the fact she swore to her dying day it’s a unisex name, I never got to have a bicycle tag or a book bag tag because all the Shannon’s were pink and not blue. But I’m not bitter. Anyway, these two are in college and are six-year veterans of nursery work and babysitting and I could tell they figured on carrying me for the day. crying-baby-cartoon

Oh thee of little faith.

When the first song of the service started, we had three charges: Jackie, who is the chunkiest little boy you’d ever want to meet and adorable besides; Madeline, a darling little girl who isn’t long for Snails since she is up on two legs and motoring well; and Oakes, another little girl but she is a tee-tiny newborn and her mom was leaving her in the nursery for the first time. Three babies; three workers.  Easy-Peasey, right? No.

To understand what happened next, you have to understand a little about church.  Service starts at 9:15 AM.  That means the first song cranks up then.  Most people seem to live in some other time zone, though, because THEIR 9:15 is much closer to OUR 9:25 — 9:30.  It never amazes me how the same parents who can get multiple children out the door to school and day care so they can get to WORK on time have such an awful record of getting those same children to CHURCH on time.

Same goes for those scheduled to serve — a man or woman who may have a seven-year running record of perfect attendance at his or her employment doesn’t think twice about calling the staffing coach to say they “just can’t make it today.”  Now that it’s football season, it’ll get exponentially worse.  A guy can stay out until midnight on Monday or Thursday at the sports club watching football and still manage to get to work on time or even a little early, but for some reason he just can’t get up the day after tailgating and watching a NOON game at the ol’ alma mater forty-five minutes away.

Anyway, having three bambinos at 9:15 means nothing.

By 9:30, we had EIGHT.  Madeline was our best walker, Jackie our fastest crawler, and Oakes had another member of the “car carrier club” situated next to her in the teensy person of Lyndsey.  Our other four were Osteen, Mae, Benjie, and Sidney. Only Maddie was fully mobile so it looked like we were off to a good start . . . for five whole minutes.  Then, for some reason we never did determine, Mae decided to see if she could hit E flat over Middle C.  For those of you who’ve never worked with babies en masse, it’s the funniest thing — when ONE of them goes ballistic, they ALL go ballistic! By 9:45, we had an eight piece choir making a not-so-joyful noise.  The three of us looked at each other with a gaze that must have been reminiscent of the look the troopers of the 7th Calvary gave Custer when all those Sioux and Cheyenne rose up out of the grass at the Little Bighorn.

We petted and rocked and patted and replaced binkies which were promptly spit right back out.  I know a lot of you are wondering why we didn’t just cork the kids with a nice warm bottle? No such luck. The majority of women at our church are nursers and while I am capable and willing to do a lot of things traditionally considered “woman’s work,” breast-feeding is something God in His infinite wisdom thankfully did not equip me to do.  We were swimming upstream against an Amazonian current.  At one point, I had a baby on each thigh hugging and rocking them while simultaneously rocking Lyndsey’s car carrier with my foot.  The twins, veterans that they were, had two and sometimes three little ones, walking them around the room, trying to interest them in a ball or a rattle or something.  Then we had to make sure Jackie and Madeline — our two mobile mites — didn’t get into something dangerous. It was nothing short of pandemonium.

Just in time for Mom and Dad to pick up and take home.

Just in time for Mom and Dad to pick up and take home.

Now we have a system for paging parents to come get their children if we can’t get them settled, so why didn’t we?  Well, that’s the heart and soul of nursery work.  For a lot of these moms, this is baby number two or three . . . and sometimes four.  These are really busy women and even though they would be down at the nursery seconds after seeing their child’s number flash on the pager, all most of us who serve in the nursery realize this hour is the only time many of these moms have a chance to THINK.  We hold out as long as we possibly can, then hang on just a bit longer so the moms can have some time to themselves to worship and thank God for the precious little baby who is even now screaming his head off a mere twenty feet beneath her seat!

It’s not pride. It’s service and that why I do it and why most of the ladies I serve with do to.  As for this past Sunday, mercifully the whole group began to nod off into sound slumber — literally “sleeping like babies” — a whole five minutes before the first parent came down to pick up at the end of the service!  Nothing like having service end right at morning nap time! Oh, and the girls know I can hold my own in the nursery now!

Love y’all, keep those feet clean!