Jan11

As The Book Is Banned, A Cautionary Tale

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NeonomiconBannedI haven’t written a librarian post in quite some time, mainly because I haven’t been an official librarian in several years now. However, I remain a librarian at heart and just because I’m not working in a library, I haven’t turned a blind eye to the library world and the eye of the library world is blackened and puffy due to events transpiring right in my home town public library system. A book has been banned in from the Greenville County Public Library System.

The Greenville News has the entire story, but allow me to give you a short precis’. Last year, a fourteen year old girl used her father’s library card to check out Alan Moore’s graphic novel Neonomicon. When she showed the book to her mother, the mother was aghast and appalled at the content so she took the book back to the library and lodged a formal complaint. As per the library’s policy, a materials review committee went over the book using all the various criteria for selection such as literary merit, author reputation, awards, etc. After a thorough and careful review, the committee voted to uphold the book’s inclusion in the library’s collection. Then events took an ominous turn. The director of the library system, one Ms. Beverly James, used her “executive authority” to go against her own policy and OVERRULE HER EMPLOYEE COMMITTEE by ordering the book removed.

Let’s review. ONE person made a complaint about a book. The complaint went through proper protocols and channels. The committee upheld the book’s placement. The library director — a librarian with education and experience — went against their recommendation and BANNED THE BOOK.

A LIBRARIAN BANNED A BOOK!! This wasn’t a city council pressured by picketing pressure groups or a school board acting to quell an imagined scandal. This was a librarian taking a book off the shelves because ONE PARENT COMPLAINED! What’s next? Garbage-men pouring trash into the streets? Plumbers causing leaks in pipes? Congress passing meaningful legislation?

In the interest of full disclosure, Neonomicon is a harsh book. Alan Moore wrote it as a commentary on the horror genre and how it is racist and misogynistic. Since it is a graphic novel, it has pictures and some of the pictures show an orgy and later a rape scene. Did I mention it was a horror book? I can understand a parent not wanting his or her child to read this book. I get that, but that’s the issue.

This is Ms. Beverly James. She ordered a book banned after her materials review committee upheld it.

This is Ms. Beverly James, Director of the Greenville County Library System. She ordered a book banned after her materials review committee upheld it.

If you are a parent, you have EVERY right in the world to monitor your child or teen’s reading habits. You have the right to order YOUR child not to read something. You have the right to impose your views on morality on your children. I don’t have a problem with that. What I have a tremendous problem with is when YOU try to impose YOUR views on MY child and — regardless of how you want to sugar coat it — that is what censorship is, one person or one group of people imposing THEIR views on others by denying others the opportunity to books, movies, etc which the others have a First Amendment right to see and read.

Simply put, NO parent has the right to RAISE ANOTHER PARENT’S CHILDREN, but that is exactly what this ONE woman has done. She has, with the complicity of the HEAD LIBRARIAN of our county system, told EVERY teenager in this county “You cannot read this book because I don’t like it.”

I find that appalling.

Someone in the comments section of the article tried to defend Ms. James by saying she was acting in the interest of the prevailing views of the community and THAT is where another serious problem crops up. Librarians are PUBLIC servants. They act as agents of the state / city. As agents of the state, librarians are responsible for acting in the interest of the ENTIRE COMMUNITY, not just those who hold power or majority views. A librarian does not and should not have the luxury of allowing his or her personal views to taint his or her service to the community served. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

Is it just me or is the resemblance amazingly uncanny?

Is it just me or is the resemblance amazingly uncanny?

A friend of mine is a librarian in a high school in the upstate. She has a good selection of LGBT young adult novels as well as reference books and other non-fiction books that address LGBT topics. She put this collection together because her school has a growing number of students who identify as LGBT and she wants THEM to have a place and voice in the library even though she personally doesn’t support the LGBT lifestyle because it runs counter to her beliefs as an Evangelical Christian. She is and has always been VERY conservative but she realizes something lots of people don’t — she is an agent of the state from the time she gets out of her car on campus until she gets back in to leave.

She gets a lot of heat from people, including people in her own family for having such a liberal selection policy, but I applaud her because she realizes something too many Christians, especially in the South in general and the communities here in the Buckle of the Bible Belt do not — THE MORALITY OF HER STUDENTS IS THEIR PARENTS” RESPONSIBILITY, NOT HERS. Her job is to serve the school community as a whole, not promote any agenda.

Unfortunately, a lot of people can’t or won’t see the bigger picture. I support freedom to read, freedom of religion, and the separation of church and state NOT because I am not a Christian, but because I am and I’ve realized something — our majority is slipping. Islam is growing in America by leaps and bounds. Latin American Catholicism, which has some unsettling differences from the run of the mill Catholic churches around here, is growing with the growing influx of Latinos — legal and illegal. What happens when W.A.S.P.s are no longer in control? It’s something to think about and think about carefully. Sure, you probably support prayer in schools, but what happens when the class president or valedictorian is a Muslim and wants to pray in Allah’s name instead of Jesus’? When that day comes, and it WILL come, many Christians will be wishing they had listened to Thomas Jefferson’s message to the Danbury Baptist Association much more carefully.

So what does that have to do with the book banning? Everything. To boil it down, if WE insist on banning THEIR books today because we can, what do we say when the shoe is on the other foot and they want to ban OUR books? Think about this before I go; the woman who started the ball rolling which ended in Neonomicon being banned cited the book’s graphic depiction of violence and nudity as her reasons for wanting the book off the shelves. As an amateur theologian who has read the book cover to cover many times, I can tell you this — if graphic depiction of violence and misogyny were grounds for banning a book, the Old Testament of the Holy Bible wouldn’t  last a week.

Love you all, and I hope this makes it to the computers of some of my former colleagues so they can spread the alarm around the state and around the country. Now, keep those feet clean AND dry and I’ll catch you next time.

Jan3

Happy Birthday, Beren!

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jrr-tolkienJ.R.R. Tolkien would be 121 — “twelvity-one” in hobbit-speak — today were he still with us in body. I say “in body” because any person moderately interested in the fantasy genre knows full well just how omnipresent Mr. Tolkien is in spirit and influence. I am not, however, of the faction who feel Tolkien created the world of high fantasy. Certainly Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jules Verne, and Arthur Conan Doyle — to name a few — blazed part of that trail before Bilbo set off on his most unBaggins-like, unhobbitish  journey.

Tolkien, though, picked up their trail and turned it into a superhighway traveled by the “usual suspects” of fairy tales like shape-shifters, dragons, and elves — though Tolkien’s elves wouldn’t have been recognizable to the Grimm brothers, but also by new wayfarers like orcs, wargs, and — of course — hobbits. I can’t say much that isn’t already written in the multitude of volumes in libraries today extolling Tolkien’s works and cutting into the minutiae of Middle Earth. I have nothing in my poor hack writing to add to them. What they cannot do, however, is tell what Tolkien, hobbits, and Middle Earth meant and still mean to me.

I read The Hobbit for the first time thirty years ago when I was a fat, awkward kid in sixth grade. The library at Gray Court – Owings School was a welcome refuge for me since I was nonathletic, unaesthetic, and borderline neurotic. One October afternoon, I had just finished off the last book in the World War II section of non-fiction when Ms. Goodhue, the finest school librarian to ever hold the title, sat me down and asked if I’d ever read any fantasy. I could honestly reply in the negative because I wasn’t really sure what fantasy even was. Without fanfare, she went to the paperback section of the “big kids” side of the library (supposedly for 7 – 8 graders) and brought back The Hobbit. She told me to try the first few chapters and let her know if I liked it.

Much to the chagrin of my 3-6 period teachers AND my grandmother, I read the entire book before bedtime that night, stopping only to take a spelling test and eat supper.

Grave_2

Just in case you’re wondering who in the world is Beren and why is he in the title of a post about Tolkien.

The next day, Ms. Goodhue took my glowing report of how much I loved the book then reached into her book bag and pulled out HER PERSONAL COPY of The Fellowship of the Ring for me to borrow. I read it — and The Two Towers and The Return of the King — by the end of the week. That Saturday, I went to the now-long-defunct Waldenbooks in the now razed-to-the-ground Greenville Mall and bought a matched set of all four books with my entire piggy bank . . . and a little “advance” from Papa Wham. To this day, they sit in an honored place on my office bookshelf. I’ve read and reread those four books AT LEAST sixteen times cover-to-cover in the intervening years. In fact, that set is so precious to me, it nearly caused my beloved Budge and I to “have words.” The movies were due out and she wanted to read the books beforehand so she asked me if she could read MY set. Having seen how she was prone to treat other paperback books she read — crushing their spines and bending pages — I flat-out told her NO to her (and my) utter shock. In my defense, we’d only been married about four years and I did not possess the wisdom and knowledge a husband of more years would have displayed. I immediately recanted and told her she could, but as every woman reading this knows, I couldn’t have PAID her to TOUCH “those books of mine” so I took her to dinner RIGHT THEN and we bought her very own set — which I have not touched to this day.

That incident is just a taste of how The Lord of the Rings has been a thread through my last three decades. I think the major reason is I discovered the books at a time when I was in profound need of seeing someone small and insignificant use wits . . . and a bit of Tookish luck . . . to overcome tons of negative stuff being hurled at him. Even though it had been five years since my parents’ divorce, I was still unable to process why my mother and father were not together. To top things off, Daddy had remarried and so had Mama and now Mama was realizing exactly what the wise aphorism “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face” really meant. In short, I was at a time of overwhelming mental and emotional turmoil. Tolkien gave me a place to go. When I was in Middle Earth, I was aware of the dangers, but they were dangers I could face on equal terms with sword and steel instead of lying helpless before words and people more cruel than any orc. Middle Earth was my refuge at a time when I desperately need one and it has sheltered me from many more woes and foes this world has offered.

So thank you, Professor, for turning the horror of WWI’s trenches into a world where a little boy could escape, if but for a little while and join a heroic quest to a Lonely Mountain because, as writer G.K. Chesterton so eloquently stated, ““Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

Love you all and hope the new year is off to a great start! Keep those feet clean.

Dec30

2012 in review

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 50,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 12 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

Dec27

Happy Birthday #60, Mama!

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Me and Mama when I was in 5th Grade.

Me and Mama when I was in 5th Grade.

Today has been my beloved Mama’s sixtieth birthday. She completed her sixth decade in spite of fighting a terrible battle with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease or COPD that saw her hospitalized for two weeks with two bouts that left her very near death’s door. More than once, I thought I was going to lose her.

Anyone who has known me more than an hour will know how much Mama means to me. She has been the one guiding star and constant throughout my life. Some people take being called a “mama’s boy” as an insult, but I’ve worn it as a badge of pride all my days.

One facet of our relationship that’s made our bond so strong is for many years at many times, we were all each other had. Mama and Daddy separated when I was five and finalized the divorce when I was eight. Today, people don’t think much about divorces but at that time (1977) in such a small town, I was the only one of my friends who entered kindergarten with divorced parents. Of course, by the time we graduated high school, several of my friends joined me on the Split Up Family Express, and I found out later I’d gone to school with other divorced kids, but I didn’t know any of them as friends so it wasn’t a great help to me.

The divorce was hard — way hard — on Mama. People didn’t know nearly as much about depression and its effects in those days as they do now. I have an early memory of sitting on her lap with her sobbing uncontrollably and I put my hands up to her face and said, “I’ll take care of you, Mommy.” Today, 35 years later, when she has an anxiety attack and starts smothering, I still put my — now much bigger — hands around her face and say, “I’ll take care of you, Mommy.”

What a lot of people don’t understand about Mama and me is how much I’ve felt her sacrifice throughout my life. In the picture of us on this page, I’m in 5th grade so Mama would’ve been about 28, which isn’t too old to start over by any scale and as you can plainly see, she was a beautiful woman. She had numerous suitors vying for her affection, but she always brought me out immediately in the conversation and any man who balked hit the bricks. She had more than one man of wealth who would have loved to marry her and make her life much simpler and easy, but she always put me before herself and my happiness before hers so she never took that risk. Security was one of the wonderful gifts Mama gave me.

Of all the things Mama gave me, though, the greatest was her faith. Mama gave her life to the Lord when I was barely three and it guides her still. I have a crystal clear memory of being six years old. It was summer. We were in the first trailer Daddy and Mama had bought and put on the homeplace in Gray Court where Mama still lives. I was playing in the floor in the living room putting together Lego blocks and I heard Mama crying in her bedroom down the hall. Like I always did when I heard Mama crying, I went to be beside her, but when I got to her bedroom door something made me stop. Mama was kneeling at the foot of the bed with her head resting on an open bible, sobbing. Through the tears, I could make out one sentence over and over, “I can’t raise him alone; You have to help me. He belongs to You, not me.”

Folks, I’ll be as honest as I know how. I’ve done a multitude of things I won’t mention. I’ve been a terrible person. I’ve been drunk, high, and stoned out of my mind. I’ve hurt people and been hurt myself, but no matter where I’ve been; what I’ve been through, or what I’ve done, I’ve never been able to get that scene out of my mind. More than anything else in this entire messed up life of mine, the reason I believe there is a God, a man called Jesus, and a place called Heaven is they’ve lived in my mother’s eyes since I was three years old.

One day, maybe sooner, maybe later, I’ll stand beside a pink casket over an empty grave next to Papa John’s in Cannon Memorial Gardens. I’ll read the 23 Psalm and the 31st Chapter of Proverbs before I say a prayer for Mama’s soul, and while I am completely certain my heart will be broken into shards t0o many and too fine to number, I’ll have the knowledge that I will see her again. Until then, however, I’ll cherish every moment with her.

I love her. She’s my Mama.

Love all of you, too! Keep those feet clean.

Dec25

And So This Is Christmas

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A_Christmas_CarolI just finished watching my favorite version of A Christmas Carol. In this rendition, Captain Jean Luc Picard plays the part of Scrooge and brings such a weightiness and excellent acting to the part that I tape the version each year to watch on Christmas Eve. As I told a friend of mine while chatting on Facebook tonight, I believe Dickens’ novella is the greatest story of a man finding redemption to be had outside the pages of the Bible. He starts the movie a hard-hearted miserly old . . . well, SCROOGE, but four ghosts later, he is a changed man who knows the meaning of Christmas isn’t presents or even family. The true meaning of Christmas is redemption.

Scrooge can find redemption for the same reason we all can, because a little over two thousand years ago, God was born in the flesh to a teenage virgin girl huddled with her betrothed in a dank odoriferous cave converted into a makeshift stable behind a cheap motel in the backwater town of Bethlehem in the equally backwater region of Palestine. That girl then wrapped God — creator of the Universe — in clean, but frayed cloths and laid Him in a feed trough and probably sang Him to sleep. Royal robes to old rags; angelic choir to a mother’s lullaby. All so that He could undo the tremendous mess His most prized creation had gotten the world into. He came as a baby with one purpose in sight — to die on a cross and save the world. Everyone born WILL die; He was born TO die . . . and save us all.

Atheists, scientists, other religions’ leaders down the centuries have tried to disprove that teenage girl ever had a child named Jesus. They’ve tried through time to say He never existed, and when they failed in that, they tried to say He existed, but He wasn’t God. I think they’ve failed at that as well.

See, the name of the holiday (holiday = holy day) is Christmas. Literally, that means Mass of Christ. Now I’m not going into all the theological historical arguments about Christmas being a usurpation of the pagan Saturnalia and Jesus not being born in December. I know all of those arguments and if you insist on hashing them out, give me an email in the comments and we’ll talk. Now, back to the name. A mass is a celebration so Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Christ. It’s right there in the name.

The name isn’t “Toymas.”

It’s not “Santamas”

It’s not “Treemas” or “Partymas” or “Frostymas.”

It’s not called “Shoppingmas” or “Retailmas” or “Giftmas.”

We don’t sing about “O Shopping Night” or “The First Black Friday.”

We don’t because no matter how much the rising tide of secularization tries to wash away anything Christian to do with Christmas, they haven’t thought to change the name. They’ve tried a time or two. Years ago it started with “Seasons’ Greetings” and today the most PC among us go with “Happy Holidays” (again:  holiday = holy day). Christmas is still on the calendar though. The name of the Federal holiday (holy day) is “Christmas” and not “Winter Holiday.”

The Roman Empire was one of the mightiest political entities ever. They tried to kill the holiday in the womb and stamp out Christianity, but they couldn’t get it done. Neither could Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, or Mao and they ALL had more power than any of our Presidents have ever possessed.

Every gift you run around buying? You are constantly reenacting a central part of the Christmas story — the Magi bringing gifts to the Christ child. Every scrap of “holiday” music you listen to from Halloween to December 26th? Reenacting the angelic host announcing to the shepherds the birth of the Christ child. Wrapping all those gifts? Just like Mary wrapped our ultimate gift.

So try to stamp it out. Try to humbug it like Scrooge did, but at the end of it all, despite the best efforts of generation after generation of genuises, the message of Christmas is still Christ is Born. To quote the greatest showman wrestler of all time, Mr. Richard Fleer, aka Ric “The Nature Boy” Flair, “Whether you LIKE it, or DON’T LIKE it, sit down and LOOK at it, because it’s the best thing going today!”

Can I get a “whooooo?”

Love y’all, keep those feet clean, and Merry Christmas.

 

Dec20

It’s Already Tomorrow in Australia

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It seems reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated!

It seems reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated!

As I’m writing this, folks who slept in all around Southeast Asia are just crawling bleary-eyed out of bed and on their side of the International Date Line, it’s already Friday, December 21, 2012 and the BBC, MSNBC, and FoxNews are all reporting nothing of consequence is happening across the Pacific. So, it looks like 12-21-12 is going to join a long and distinguishedly infamous list of other dates under the heading of “Days the Apocalypse Didn’t Come.”

I know some people are seriously disappointed. I don’t mean “fake disappointed,” either. Some folks are probably sitting around scratching their heads in real consternation wondering where all the earthquakes and meteors are or what happened to Nibaru? I wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised to hear some disturbed individuals will have committed suicide by the time 12-21-12 makes it all the way around the globe. Echo and the Bunnymen said it best, “People are strange.”

I never seriously considered the world ending today. I still owe money and haven’t hit the lottery. If you ever see me on TV holding up one of those funny, oversized PowerBall checks, THEN you should probably make preparations because I’m willing to bet if I ever get rich, the game is going to end. That’s just my luck.

In the interest of some vein of seriousness though, any thinking person should have realized the world wasn’t going to end on this specific day. First, look at the problem scientifically. The Universe couldn’t care less about dates. The idea of dates — as well as most other divisions of time — are human inventions. “Tomorrow” or “next century” don’t have any meaning to planetary forces like earthquakes. Comets don’t punch time clocks. Any scientific end-of-the-world scenario hitting on a particular date is simply the wildest of consequences. The Universe just doesn’t have a calendar.

Secondly, from a theological standpoint, God doesn’t have a calendar. Neither does Allah or any of the other myriad gods man has worshipped over the millenia. Time doesn’t matter to an eternal being. God will end the world if and when He gets good and ready and not before. A being who exists OUTSIDE of time has no need of specific dates so anyone trying to pin a date down is just flirting with disappointment.

We petty human peons are the only creatures on the planet things like the page on a calendar or hands on a clock mean anything to. Animals go by seasons and the sun and natural rhythms. Tides have no time, but only the pull of the Moon and the Sun. We alone fret over our arbitrary conventional invention.

So get over it and go shopping, people. Christmas is only four days away! Go on. Occupy yourselves some other way until the next big prediction comes along. But until then,

Love y’all and keep those feet clean.

Geez, people, you took our lands, you took our gold, you took our way of life . . . can't you take a freaking joke? Just turn to the next calendar page!!

Freaking A, people, you took our lands, you took our gold, you took our way of life . . . can’t you take a freaking joke? Just turn to the next calendar page!!

Dec14

Let Us Join With Rachel As She Weeps

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Rachel weeping I was all prepared to write something funny or something Christmasy as would befit the season, but this morning’s events in Connecticut have jolted me from that path and brought new sadness as well as sadness of memory to what should be the most wonderful time of the year. Earlier this morning, 24-year-old Ryan Lanza went into his mother’s 20-year-old Adam Lanza entered a kindergarten classroom in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, shot and killed his mother, and opened fire on the children. All we know for certain at the moment is 18 children — all under age ten — are dead along with eight of their teachers. Those numbers could rise. Lanza’s mother was found dead later.

This hurts me on more levels than I can adequately express. For one, I was a high school teacher in the black days of Columbine and the spate of copycat killings which followed. My colleagues and I talked about little else during that awful period because we were completely aware it could easily happen to us. We all knew students — TAUGHT students — who were ticking time bombs whom we were powerless to help. I must have run over an attack scenario in my mind hundreds of times. I even set up my classroom to provide maximum cover for students should someone think the unthinkable. The school supposedly had a plan; I know I did and I told my students if they heard gunshots they only had to remember one instruction, “follow Coach Wham.” My children knew how seriously I took the phrase in loco parentis and if anyone was getting shot, it would be me or over my dead body.

As someone who struggles with mental issues of my own, I also hurt because I KNOW this young man had to be mentally disturbed in some way, shape or form. Normal, well-adjusted people do not kill innocent babies in cold blood; they simply don’t; not even in wartime. That’s why the epithet of “baby killer” is one of the most terrible insults anyone can spew at a soldier. I have no idea what will eventually come to light, but I’m willing to bet someone somewhere is thinking right now “I KNEW this was going to happen. I saw all the signs.” I know what it feels like to cry out for help in all the wrong ways and to feel so helplessly out of control and at the mercy of my own mind. I’m just thankful that my anger has always turned inward because I can’t imagine doing something like this on the worst unmedicated day I’ve ever had, but at the same time I ache terribly for someone so consumed he could find no other means towards peace than this massacre which ended with him taking his own life.

This tragedy disturbs me and angers me as well because I am a gun owner and a gun supporter, but I know it won’t be long until some politician tries to make a name for himself by leading a crusade against firearms. First of all, it makes me want to puke whenever I see some little political worm making political hay out of a tragedy like this. It cheapens the deaths of these innocents and it paints even more innocent people with an unfairly broad brush. I will soon be 42 and been around guns all my life, but I have yet to see one that could act of its own free will. Legislators can ban anything they want but until they can ban evil and hatred from the human heart they don’t have a chance of stopping violence because laws do not affect people who have no intention of following the laws in the first place.

Most of all, however, this awful episode deeply saddens me as a Christian. I know, as surely as I know stop signs are red, people are going to start throwing out expressions like “Where’s this ‘God’ of yours now?” They’ll ask, “How could a God who’s supposed to love us let this happen to CHILDREN?” They’ll claim, “I’ll never follow or believe in a God who is powerless to stop this kind of evil.” And it will go on and on. Atheists like Richard Dawkins have a field day whenever a tragedy like this occurs because they point at it as proof God doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, too many people won’t look for answers and will believe this wrong thinking.

Where was God? He was where He’s always been — sitting on the throne of Heaven completely aware of everything that has ever happened, is happening, or ever will happen from eternity past to eternity future. The hard truth is, God knew this was going to happen before the plan ever became a thought in the poor deranged gunman’s mind. What so many people fail to realize is “knowing” something isn’t the same as “causing” something.

So, why does God “let” these things happen? That’s a have your cake question. Sure, God can “make” His creations (that’s us) do whatever He wants us to do, but that’s a one way street. Make us do something once, we’ll be made to do everything forever. It’s free will. We all praise and love the idea of “freedom” and “free will” but most of us don’t want to acknowledge the fact that “freedom” means just that — and if we’re free to do good; we’re also free to do otherwise. Without free will, we would never have anything like school shootings, but we’d never have anything like the Mona Lisa or the Empire State building either. Free will is all about choices and in order to free us to make good choices, God had to acknowledge some of us would make bad choices. We can’t have our cake and eat it too.

Finally, let me say one thing to those who can’t believe God could allow / do something like this AND to all the parents who lost their precious children in this horrible tragedy, God understands EXACTLY how you feel. He is a parent. He had an only child too — a son actually — who was also killed by hate filled, unfeeling men, with one important difference — God DID allow His Son to be killed. God knew from eternity past that His only beloved son would die, and He knew He would STAND ASIDE and allow it to happen even as that Son begged His Father for rescue. God the Eternal, Perfect Father watched His son die so that we could live. I do not pretend to understand it, but I know it is so. So for all the parents and loved ones who lost children today, understand that you are understood by the One who catches your tears in a bottle. If you will reach out to Him, even in this darkest hour, you will find Him waiting to comfort you.

Dec8

Forget the Mayans; REAL Evidence of the Apocalypse

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Proof positive we are a country of lunatics.

Proof positive we are a country of lunatics.

Folks, lots of people out “there” are completely convinced the world is going to end on December 21, 2012. If correct, we’ve got about 15 days left to go. Personally, I think these guys have the facts straight, but that’s not the point of this post. I’m now convinced the world is coming to an end sooner than later and it’s not because an ancient (and dead) civilization brilliant enough to follow the stars but too dense to invent the wheel says so. I’m also not worried about the polar bears or the end of the Gulf Stream because we aren’t going to live long enough for that to happen. No, gentle readers, I am convinced the world is going to end before schedule because America, the land I love, has been taken over by bands of raving lunatics and, no, I don’t mean Republicans. I am talking about “collectors” in general and collectors of Hallmark “Keepsake” Ornaments in particular.

Budge and I buy a few ornaments from Hallmark each year before Christmas. We seldom buy more than three and we always buy at least one based around the year being prominently displayed. We’ve done this ever since we’ve been married and we’ve got a beautiful collection of ornaments for our tree. Now this year was the first season in four years we’ve put up our tree, and I’ll tell that story soon, but not now. In celebration, we splurged on a couple more ornaments than usual. Now understand, every ornament we have in our three Rubbermaid 55 Quart Snap Top Tubs goes on our tree. We don’t buy “extra” ornaments for an “investment” because they are “collectable.”  If I want an investment, they make these things called “stocks and bonds.” Unfortunately for our country, I may have to change that philosophy.

One ornament we picked up this year was a miniature replica of the “Moose Mug” prominently featured in the Christmas classic National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Any killjoy Scrooges in the crowd, please keep your comments to yourselves as I am well aware the movie contains crude humor and bright blue language; the fact is, I don’t care. The movie is hysterical and a lot closer to the modern American Christmas than It’s a Wonderful Life ever was. I also happen to know Christmas Vacation is the favorite Christmas movie of my 1st-cousin-in-law Ashley, who not only is one of the purest, sweetest, and most Christlike young women I know, but also happens to be married to my oldest 1st cousin, Zach who, despite his surroundings in his early years, is a youth pastor as well as the purest, sweetest, most Christlike young man. If Zach will allow Ash to watch the uncut Christmas Vacation DVD snorting with laughter, I refuse to feel guilty.

But I digress.

Two years ago, we bought the ornament memorializing the scene in the movie where Clark finally gets all the lights on his house to glow simultaneously. After hanging the moose mug right next to the Griswold house I got on eBay’s online auction site to see if I could find the other two ornaments in the “series” from Hallmark. In less than 30 seconds, I found over twenty of the first ornament in the group — Cousin Eddie’s RV, circa 2009. Once I saw what they were going for, I didn’t even bother looking for the station wagon with the huge Griswold Christmas tree strapped to the top.

The CHEAPEST “Cousin Eddie’s RV” listed was over $100 dollars! The one in the image at the top of this post was at $215 and the reserve price hadn’t been met. I saw MANY going for OVER $300. Please, read that again slowly. Three. Hundred. Dollars. For a hunk of plastic resin made and assembled in Sri Lanka.  A family in sub-Saharan Africa could live a year off what these people are willing to pay for a PLASTIC CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT THAT IS NOT EVEN FIVE YEARS OLD!!! It’s not like it’s a rare painting by one of the “Old Masters.” It’s a freaking ORNAMENT for a TREE.

Folks, I’m not going to go on and on about this because there’s really no need to. The evidence is plain. When we’ve reached the point where people line up to give $300 dollars OR MORE for a small chunk of painted plastic churned out by children in a sweatshop factory located in a country 97% of the people using eBay couldn’t find with a GPS, a globe, and Google Earth, we are beyond the point of no return; we have converted the movie Idiocracy from a wonky comedy to a documentary and made the late Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron” a work of true prophecy.

We. Are. Doomed. and we deserve to be.

So, keep those feet clean for the time we’ve got left and remember I love y’all so take care of yourselves!

Dec2

Why I Still Believe: Reason 2

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Granny Wham on her last Christmas with us.

Granny Wham on her last Christmas with us.

Granny Wham started teaching Sunday School when she was 18 and only quit over 50 years later because a stroke left her too weak to stand long enough to deliver the weekly lesson. She started teaching Sunday School at Dials United Methodist Church down Highway 101 where she grew up, but the bulk of her teaching years were given to Beulah Baptist Church in Greenpond. By the time I was born, the Sunday School Committee honored her by naming a class after her. “The Martha Wham Bible Class” exists to this day unless it’s changed and no one told me.

Her teaching Sunday School, however, doesn’t force me to still believe the truth of Christianity even in my darkest times. Not her teaching, not the beautiful hymns she used to sing with the choir, not the way she taught me personally about what Jesus expected of me. None of that. What is burned in my mind and scribed on my heart from a childhood spent at her knee is her faith.

Granny Wham had the purest faith of any Christian — man or woman, adult or child, clergy or laity — I’ve ever known. She believed the Bible was the Word of God. It was black (and some red) words on white pages and gray didn’t enter the equation. Granny’s faith in God and His Son Jesus Christ was a rock solid, steel strong backbone for her whole life.

Granny didn’t develop her faith living some cupcake life on easy street. Of The Greatest Generation who came of age during the Great Depression, she worked in the house with her sister — my great-Aunt Mary — and in the fields with her two half-brothers, Uncle Gordon and Uncle Henry. When old enough, she worked in the sweatshop conditions of a textile mill for a time. Her childhood and youth weren’t easy, but her faith endured those hard early years.

Her faith endured watching those brothers go off to war, one to the Army and one to the shipyards. During that awful war she started exchanging letters with a nice young man from a nearby community. That nice (and handsome) young soldier eventually became Papa Wham and her faith and prayers helped bring him and all her loved ones home safely.

Her faith would not forsake her when Papa Wham came in to her hospital room late on a cold night in January 1948, gently took her by the hand and told her their precious infant child — a little girl she never got to hold — had passed away. I’ve lived to see the death of a child rip marriages to shreds and reduce the strongest faith to agnosticism, but it did not overcome Granny. She grieved, and in some very powerful ways, Aunt Judy’s death would mark Granny — and through her, all of us — for the rest of her life, but as the writer said of Job, “Through all this, [s]he never lost her integrity, nor blamed God foolishly.”

Granny’s faith endured some of worst trials through her other two children. Daddy especially was singled out for her unceasing prayers when he was sent to Vietnam for 13 months to fight. I’ve heard how drawn and pale and haggard Granny looked over those months of waiting, never knowing if the knock on the door would reveal an Army officer and a chaplain with the awful news so many mothers received in those terrible years. It wasn’t to be though, and Granny’s faith was rewarded with Daddy’s safe return.

The latter half of Granny’s life gave a multitude of trials. Mama and Daddy’s divorce was a crushing blow to Granny’s heart because is was bitter torture for her to see her family torn. Later, when my Aunt Cathy and Uncle Larry’s had to endure some growing pains in their early years, Granny prayed hard for them too. When Aunt Cathy was so very sick through two extremely difficult pregnancies, Granny stood by constantly to help and to pray. Of all Granny endured, however, one night nearly 20 years ago stands clearest testament to her trust in her Lord.

It was December 1995; Papa had passed away in July on the day after Granny suffered a stroke. For months she had battled to talk clearly and to walk unaided, but worst of all after 49 years — just 6 months shy of 50 — Granny was alone. This night, we’d eaten at Daddy and Teresa’s. I was on the couch with Budge and Granny watching The Trip to Bountiful which reminded me so much of what Granny had endured I was teary-eyed before the old hymn “Blessed Assurance” began to play.

I thought Granny might have dozed off until I heard a voice — not the strong alto that sang to me, read to me, and prayed for me all of my childhood and beyond — a thin voice, a tremulous voice, but for all that, a perfectly clear voice singing softly, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. Heir of salvation; purchase of God. Born of His spirit; washing in His blood. This is my story; this is my song; praising my Savior all the day long; this is my story; this is my song; praising my Savior all the day long.” Laid low by a stroke, no longer independent, and bereft of the love of her life, Granny Wham still sang her praises to the One who had never forsaken her, Blessed Assurance truly was her story and her song.

Granny is gone  now. I wish she’d been peacefully at the home she and Papa built together, but in her last years, she required more care than we could give her. She was never happy in the nursing home, but her love of us kept her here until she missed Papa more than she needed to stay and “look after us.” So, with Aunt Cathy gently holding her hand she slipped away to join the loves of her life — Papa Wham and Jesus Christ, and that is why she is a powerful reason I still believe.

PurchasePurchasing – Purchasing refers to a business or organization attempting for acquiring goods or services to accomplish the goals of the enterprise. →

Nov22

Thanksgiving 2012

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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I wanted to take the time this morning to ponder some of the many things I am thankful for. It’s been a tough year in many ways with Mama being so sick and other difficulties Budge and I have encountered and tried to overcome with varying degrees of success. Still, it is a poor, poor life indeed that has nothing to be thankful for and I happen to have plenty.

  • First of all, I am thankful Mama is still with us this Thanksgiving despite fighting COPD tooth and nail this entire year.
  • I’m thankful for all my family — the ones I was born with and the ones I’ve chosen and who have chosen me over the years.
  • I’m thankful for Budge and the nearly 18 years she’s deigned to put up with me.
  • I’m thankful all my furry babies are happy and healthy for another year.

Of course, everyone can be thankful for such wonderful things, but I’m thankful for some stuff others might not think of.

  • I’m thankful to live in a country where the Antichrist can be elected President and defeated for President in the same night.
  • I’m thankful to live in a country where people have the luxury of getting to act like complete fools over a bunch of young men chasing a tough little odd shaped pumpkin up and down a cow pasture.
  • I’m thankful I’ve never been shot at to be free, but I am eternally grateful for every man and woman who HAVE been shot at for my freedom.

I’ve got some things to be thankful for others may not need. I’m thankful that:

  • some scientist somewhere figured out how to isolate whatever makes bupropion and venlafaxine do what they do so I can have a chance at a normal life.
  • even though three of the four are gone on now, I had over twenty precious years with the most wonderful grandparents anyone could hope to have.
  • my beloved Papa Wham — who worked hundreds of 16+ hour days at his service station in Fountain Inn — didn’t have to see the day we’d pay for water in a bottle AND air from a pump.
  • my sweet nephew Stoney and my beautiful niece McKenzie Grace came into my life in this past year.
  • Logan and Caitlyn Brown aren’t my nephew and niece by blood, but by love and that’s all matters anyway.

Being a former librarian, I’ve got some strange things to be thankful for, such as being grateful that:

  • 75 years ago this year, a little Hobbit went on a great adventure and wrote about it in the Red Book of Westmarch.
  • Peter Jackson finally gets to put that Hobbit’s story on the big screen next month.
  • 50 years ago, a precious lady wrinkled time.
  • 150 years ago this year, Prisoner 60214 was released from 19 years hard labor and had an encounter with a kind priest that changed his life and made literary history.
  • 60 years ago a doomed little pig met a very talented spider and the rest, they say, is history.

I’m also extremely thankful for all of you, my readers, who stop by and spend a few minutes with me. I realize time is precious these days and you have many things you can do when you’re online so the fact you choose to come here, some quite regularly to see what I’ve pounded out is gratifying to say the least.

So, know I love y’all and, as always, keep those feet clean and enjoy Thanksgiving with family and friends!