Free Market, My A..

Here is my medical history. I let myself get a little overweight and did not exercise like I should, so at the age of 63 I started a mild blood pressure medicine, Hydrochlorothyozide. Then, about a year later, to get my blood pressure down to where I was comfortable in the long run I asked the doctor for a little boost and he gave me a prescription for Lancinopril. I have taken both ever since, and I just turned 65.

My old medical insurance allowed me to get these two filled for about six dollars a month, together, at the local Walgreen Drug Store. Then upon reaching 65, I opted not to sign up for a drug plan since my medicines would be so inexpensive, I thought.

When I went to fill the prescriptions last week, I was hit in the face for a $34 bill for one month's supply for the two together at Walgreen. I basically told them where they could stick their pills. I came home and told Sarah that I was willing to die before I would pay that much for pills that are produced at probably about two to three cents apiece.

We called Walmart and found out that we could get a three month's supply of each for $10, basically what I was paying with insurance to Walgreen. We had the prescriptions changed over and Walgreen will also lose my wife's business which was much bigger than mine. We had already refused to buy even a bag of candy from CVS because they refused Sarah's drug plan.

I read some junk in the paper this morning about how we should let free markets work and keep government out of them. I could not agree more, but was it not government that stepped in to forcibly prevent workers from carrying on union actions that led to government protection of them? Was it not governments that propped up the financial system when it was in failure?

And, is it not government almost guaranteeing the ability of insurance companies to pillage the population by making them free of anti-trust regulations? Is it not government that makes it possible for drug companies to have so many different markets for their prices that they can charge ten cents for a pill here and eighty cents over there? In a truly free market, would people not be allowed to go to wherever the lowest prices are, even if they are in Canada?

NO LARGE CORPORATION DOING BUSINESS TODAY WANTS A FREE MARKET AND THEY ARE LYING THROUGH THEIR TEETH IF THEY CLAIM OTHERWISE.
Without government protection, propping up, subsidies, special tax rules, and a hoste of other benefits, these corporations would have to become competitive, and that is the last thing they want unless they are allowed to form monoplies. The whole Republican/Free Market connection is an illusion.

I happen to be taking two medicines that Walmart buys in quantity. If I did not, then I would be subject to a market place that is about as free as a dog on a short leash and tied to a metal pole. It is that way because nobody wants to compete any longer. Competition does not assure the very high ongoing salaries of the executives, so screw it, they want the government to give them the protection that we call socialism and communism if it is given to poor working stiffs or common people, but which we now have labeled free market when corporations are the beneficiaries.

Incivility Is Never Justified

"What do you hate about this country" the older man asked the son in law? This was not because of any action that the younger man had done against the United States. It was simply because the younger man had the gall to stand up for his beliefs. Those beliefs conflicted with those of the older man, and that and that alone was the gray beard's reason for his question.

It does not make any difference on which side of the current issues the two men have found themselves. Both of them know in their hearts that the other loves our country and would do nothing to bring hurt to it. But, political discussion today simply does not allow us to remain civil, I guess. We have to go after the other person's very core love of country in order to outdo anything that they might say.

The old man was being uncivil, and that is un-American in and of itself, for it is on civility and rule of law that we base the principles of the country. The act of accusing a political foe of hating our country is a statement by the accuser that he really does not understand the founding principles of the country. It does not show that he hates this country, but simply that he has replaced the concept of our country with the concept of his country, the very definition of incivility.

Thanksgiving at The Farm

Thanksgiving traditions are worth more than all the wealth of nations when they are built using solid families who understand their relationships to each other, their maker, and the land on which they grow. Sarah's family has built such a tradition on a little farm, just outside York, South Carolina. I have been a part of that tradition for 41 years, but it is much older than Sarah, even.
The Farm it is known as in the family and the only two people living there today are Sarah's oldest brother, Carroll, and her only living aunt, Nell, who lives in a mobile home in front of the house. The house has its own road, Arrow Road, that extends about one half a mile between two main roads. It is relatively isolated.
The Farm, and all the land was sold to the local electrical co-op several years ago, but they allow Carroll to keep living in the old house for a small monthly charge. He has a big garden and grape and blackberry bushes, but the old tractor does little work any longer except haul around the children on Thanksgiving.
Most of the cousins started their own Thanksgiving traditions when the farm was sold, so only Sarah, her sister and two brother, and all their families keep the long tradition going. But, there are a lot of children right now so it is not unusual to have upwards of forty people at one of the gatherings.
There were years when the total of people present would climb to sixty or seventy, but those days are long gone. The old dinner bell outside still rings for all to come to eat, as it has for all those years. The old kitchen still holds all the food that is prepared with a slow line going through.
My children love this tradition, and we were responsible for 11 of the attendees this year, Carroll 5, Becky 13, Don5, and Aunt Nell 3. Two of my daughter-in-laws could not attend. The kids chase the chickens and play with the dogs and ride the tractor. Us old people stand around and talk, and eat, of course.
This tradition probably has between five and ten years left. I doubt that the generation of our children can hold it together, but I would not bet on that. Because we have over three acres here, it well may move to our house some day. That would be great. The grandchildren only four or five already know that going to The Farm for Thanksgiving is a special event.

The State House(of Prostitution)

The more that I watch the political process, the more that I am sure that if one of my children or grandchildren proposed entering that world beyond the local level, that I would give them books of brain teaser games to take with them because there is nothing in partisan politics to tease the brain, stimulate the intellect, or challenge the thinking that all that money was spent early on in schooling to facilitate.

Watching various politicians "connect" to the people is like having a peep hole into a house in the red light district. If there is any such thing as people values, American values, democratic values, family values, apple pie values, or any of the other code phrases of the unthinking, then surely they get tossed on the beds of prostitution by the political class.

Sarah Palin is "Going Rogue" to connect. I still say that I wrote the best summary of her when I said that my good friend, Robbie Cannon, though he was assured by a Catholic priest that he was not smart enough, has more of a chance of making it into Hell than Sarah Palin has of being smart enough to be anything beyond a mom of several children; and we all know that either side of parenting, male or female, does not require a lot.

This morning, I find that those wonderful words spoken in support of the biomedical industry by both Democrats and Republicans were actually written by the....biomedical industry. I wonder who taught the congressmen to read. Watching a lady politician go from this meeting to that meeting last week, I wondered, does she not get tired of hearing pantyhose rub against pantyhose. Take a break lady and save the country, and me a lot of money that you are going to take from my pockets if you get what you want.

There are things that I wonder about. Does it really take all that beautiful hair, on the men no less, to win elections? Should they not be more concerned about what is under the hair? That was rhetorical!! Should we not change the old adage question to "Which came first, the politician or the corruption?" How much red, white, and blue paint does Sue Myrick use up in a year so that you will not notice the blackness of her heart and the dullness of her mind? How many roads will David Holye of Gaston County have built so that he can sell a farm to the state that just happens to lie in the path of the road?

Nevada is the only state that legalizes prostitution of the body. The other states only allow the non-carnel forms of prostitution and the politicians are those who jump to the front of the line and plead for you to take them, for they alone can make your dreams come true. A few thousand, and you are still searching for the satisfaction that a few thousand more will surely bring to you.

The Thread #9, Strong, Supportive Communities

No single idea has more punctuated my life experiences than the benefits of a supportive community. You never have and you never will hear me extolling the notion that we are self made people. I do not believe it in any sense because in order for that to have any validity, we would have to strip away the thousand of years of built up support which gave us a very high platform from which to start making ourselves.

It is also very false to assume that we all start off from, if not the same height of platform, at least platforms that are equivalent in terms of their ability to launch us into our life endeavors. No, if this is a race, then some people start off very near the finish line, or beyond it, and some start far back and behind great obstacles. In fact, for some, there is no race because those obstacles are all booby trapped, and one of them will be their undoing.

I very well understand that I was positioned well by my childhood to run a good race. Many factors went into that positioning, but one beyond immediate family really stands out in my mind, and that was the community of Weddington. Around the elementary school and the church across the road were the events that, all put together, gave the children a real boost. We were a part of something bigger than our selves or our families. The community picked up our education where our families left off and taught us things that our families could not.

There is little wonder that I came to see church as the best of all civic organizations.
As a matter of fact, I rather resented when religion got in the way of its being a great civic center. In the late 40's and 50's, Weddington Methodist Church was a beehive of activity, and it was there that the families of Weddington held those events that made being a child then and there so wonderful.

I will go so far as to say that there is no substitute for a supportive community. No parent or set of parents can or will construct an environment, free of community, that supplants the very active and supportive community that gives the individual the sense of being a part of that thing that is so much larger than themselves.

We are built in such a fashion that we are unable to be complete within ourselves. It is only through interaction with other humans that we are fulfilled in any sense. Men have honored this truth for eons. The self made man or woman does not exist, and where there is someone who claims to be such, he or she is nothing more than a self deluding individual. The parents who claim to be able to oversee and determine, in total, the education of their children are cheating their children out of their chance to understand their rightful place in the community of man.

Stories of people who are isolated in nature with only the animals as friends are stories of how those humans became like the animals, not about how the animals became like the people. The community always ends up being an expanded community of the teachers, the animals in these cases. Contrary to what some would say, these stories actually prove that without community, man is nothing, and that he will find his supportive community wherever he can find it.

As my life went along, I learned more and more that the religious aspects of my life had been largely contrived. I am no atheist or any such being. I can not wrap my mind around or accept the idea that I am capable of saying that there is no God. But, I still see the church as being at its best as a community of people who give support to and direction to the lives of the people that make up the community. I accept the existence of a God that is somehow in charge of the whole of the world and humanity in particular. I am willing to wait until my death to get to know this God as well as some claim to know Him here on Earth.

But, so long as I am here on Earth, and my mental capacities are only capable of telling me about this existence, I will spend my time and my efforts telling people that they are best fulfilled by being a part of a community of people whose main purpose is to give support and direction to all its members. That could be a church or it could be a combination of many things. If you choose to give up that support, you have only chosen to cheat yourself out of what should have been your birthright.

As I am expanding my knowledge of what became of the students I once taught, I am finding that most of them have chosen to seek that community through a church. That is not surprising, this is the South. But, I am also finding that the religiosity of the younger group, that is younger than myself, is much more pronounced than what was even considered in good taste in earlier years. I do dearly hope that the overt religiosity does not translate into communities where people are not allowed to grow as they feel the need to grow. Community that has indoctrination as a part of its program can be very destructive.

Out of healthy communities, be they church based or otherwise, come the range of human interests, talents, world views, professions and the gamut of what it takes for communities to be self sustaining and self correcting. If and when a community ceases to have the power of self correction, then it is no longer community, it is a prison for most of the people who are caught in its grasp.

Cliches, Reprinted from Waxhaw Exchnage

I said that I would on occasion reprint articles from my two years of writing for the local papers. Here is one that makes no sense, but makes a statement about something that really irritates me.

There is one thing that you can say for these political campaigns that we are now enduring, they are loaded with cliches. Even original statements become cliches in the time span of the campaigns because they are repeated so often. The Cambridge Dictionary defines cliche as a comment that is made often and therefore not original or interesting.

My English teaching son says that my generation is a generation of cliches. According to him, all our songs and popular culture are just long strings of too often repeated phrases. That being true, I wonder if we are responsible for the quality of the campaign rhetoric.

Well, if we are the problem, then to all of you who love to use your storehouse of these trite phrases and hang onto them as if they were gold, here is a tribute to the wonderful thought substitutes. In tribute to bad politics and worse cliches, I offer the following. I call it The Nonsense of 101 Cliches."

I am a member of the Grand Old Party and she is a tree hugger. I am a suit and tie man and she is a liberal pinko. I am a compassionate conservative and she is a flip flop irrational feminist. But, she was the light of my life.

Her eyes were as blue as the sky and twinkled like the stars. She was as delicate as a flower, a babe in the woods, but she had a bee in her bonnet. I told her, "you can not go home again, so she should stand by her man, keep her chin up, and never say die."

She asked, "Is you is or is you ain't my baby?" I replied by giving some red roses to the blue lady. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. She said that I could wait until the cows came home because she was headed for the other side of the mountain and greener pastures.

A good woman is hard to find and true love never runs smooth, but there goes my everything, my eternal flame, and a woman of great moral fiber. I am sick as a dog, and though the rank and file are behind me, I think that I was too far right of center on this one. I was taking part in a smear campaign against my one and only.

"Cry me a river" said the prophet without honor. All shook up, the same old song fixed me on the head of a pin. "My heart sighs for you, cries for you, dies for you," I yelled! The walls had ears and yelled back, "Climb every mountain."

I flew like the wind to her side. "You win again," I said. "Tomorrow is a new day and we can come together for the nation. Mi casa es tu casa. Let us celebrate our differences. Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"

"It is time for a change," she said, "and I am the agent of change. I have to break the gridlock in our relationship. I regret any pain that I may have caused. You have been out of sight and out of mind, and I have lost that loving feeling."

"Have you lost your marbles," I asked" She had been on the tips of my fingers and was my bridge over troubled waters. Now, I will count flowers on the wall. Oh, lonesome me!!!

I thought that she hung the moon, but now it is a blue moon. She was pie in the sky, fool's gold, and I had been in a fool's paradise. I could laugh it off, or I could cry tomorrow, but life is too short and she is long gone.

I will walk into the sun of a new day, ready to face the challenges of a new millennium. There will be no more blue eyes crying in the rain for me. I am here to serve the American people and we have to reach across party lines, but, it is the red, white, and blue, not the blue, white, and red.

I am a compassionate conservative and she was a tax and spend Democrat. I believe in family values and she is pro gay rights. I wanted politics as usual and she wanted to shake things up. The union was split and she was a lost cause.

She will be out of sight and out of mind. In the playground of my mind, I will be as free as a bird. Life is for the living, and you should have the time of your life in the prime of your life.

Two can live cheaper than one, but you must speak for yourself, believe in yourself, and pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Be careful, however, for the toes that you step on today may be attached to the butt that you have to kiss tomorrow.

The polls tell us that time and tide wait for no man. I will bide my time and put my pants on one leg at a time.

I am a poorer but wiser man today. I can not pull a rabbit out of a hat, but I stop to smell the roses. I travel in the middle of the road now. The world is neither red nor blue. It is time to move forward.

While In The Canadian Rockies, Take Some Side Trips

If you take a trip to the Canadian Rockies, there are two side trips that you will not want to miss. Do not get me wrong. The trip up the Icefields Parkway from Banff to Jasper is nothing less than awesome. You could live a lifetime looking out at the vistas there and yet each time would be more wonderful that the last.

Yet, outside the park lies two experiences that you should not die without experiencing. The top one is Mt. Robson, the tallest mountain in the Canadian Rockies. Standing at the base, you look up about 8,000 feet at a monster of a mountain. In fact, the relief on this mountain, distance from where you view to top, is greater than any mountain there. It verticality for that long distance is what makes it so special. You are privy to a world where the base temperature where you are standing may be 70 degrees, but the top of the vertical cliffs are probably well below freezing. From the visitors center, you may hike whatever distance you choose, but the trails are steep.

The bottom picture is a picture taken from Rogers Pass in Canada's Glacier National Park in the Selkirk Mountains, just west of the Rockies Range. It is accessed along Canadian Route 1A from the Icefields Parkway, through Yoho National Park and through the valley between the two ranges.

Traveling from the valley floor to Rogers Pass, the cliffs are very vertical and you never have a good view of what is out there. To add to that, you pass through many avalanche tunnels that protect the road. It is not until you reach the pass and look back that you see this view. This is avalanche central and it is in this location that the Canadian government developed the use of howitzers to cause avalanches. Howitzer placements can be found throughout the area.

This area of the Selkirks is where a lot of avalanche deaths of skiers take place. A couple of years ago, there were two such incidents that took a total of 9 lives. Because it lies to the west of the Rockies, it gets much more snow than the Rockies. This particular view from Rogers Pass gives you some idea of what awaits a visitor to the Selkirks. They are Awesome

After losing a lot of time, trains, and lives, the Canadian Railroad finally built the Connaught Tunnel under Rogers Pass, a distance of 5 miles. Canada, unlike our country, really does its business by rail and the loss of time was a luxury they could not afford.

The Gentleman Agriculture Teacher

The fellow at the center of these two photographs, the gentleman in the plaid shirt, is Temple Hill. The lady next to him in the orange blouse is his wife, Blanche. Temple and Blanche live on some acreage in eastern Union County, north of Marshville. Until a few years ago, Temple kept beef cattle, but now, at age 86, he no longer keeps any animals or treats the acreage as a farm. He is staying off the day when he and Blanche give up the farm and move to some sort of assisted living center, and he seems to be doing a pretty good job of extending that time. To get to this luncheon, they had to drive a total of about 60 miles, around Charlotte to Dallas. This is a reunion of teachers at Dallas High School and North Gaston High School.

Temple was an agriculture teacher, which morphed into a horticulture teacher as the world changed. He is a gentleman of impeccable civility who could just as well could have been the greeter at a court of royalty. Never, never, has he ever failed to be the unassuming friend, that would be welcomed, anywhere that he wanted to place his hat.

But, Temple had his edge and he did not tolerate incompetence. This gentleman taught me how to play checkers, when I thought that I was good, by wiping me out in precious few moves. Then he explained to me, you attack down the center of the board, not on the edges.

And Temple had one little weakness. He made great wine and he wanted his friends and fellow teachers to be able to partake of the juice. He would bottle it, wrap each bottle in a secure bag, and send it around to the teachers using one of his students. When the kid came to the door with a brown bag and said that this was from Mr. Hill, you did not ask any questions.

I was always proud to call myself a member of this bunch of teachers. I am now learning through Facebook just how successful many of our students became. And even thought he did not teach what we called an academic course, Temple was as sharp a blade as we had. His knowledge, which he would always downplay, was phenomenal.

This is one more life friend that I have because of those years of teaching, and one of us will go to the other's funeral, I am sure of it. Whichever does not matter. I love that my path crossed Temple's path. I am a better man because of it.

The Pride of the Nez Perse and A Drive You Will Never Forget

This is the Beartooth Plateau which you access along the Beartooth Highway that exits the northeastern exit of Yellowstone Park, passes through the mining town of Cooke City and then dips south into Wyoming before heading back north towards Red Lodge Montana. This drive is often ranked as the second most scenic drive in the lower 48 and passes through the plateau that constitutes the biggest contiguous land mass above 10,000 feet in the lower 48. This tundra landscape with its deep valleys with verticle cliffs, its lakes and wild flowers interspersed with patches of snow all summer long, and its views of distant mountains is an adventure that has to be seen to be believed. I warn you that the drive is not for the faint hearted.

You might also access the Beartooth by heading north out of Cody, Wyoming to the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway which is also a great experience. It was named in honor of the leader of the Nez Perse who escaped through Idaho, through Yellowstone, and along the path over the Beartooth Pass into northeastern Montana where they were finally captured and where Chief Joseph said those famous words, "From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

If you can get immersed in the experiences of the Beartooth area without feeling the pride in the human spirit that these pround people exhibited, then you are a more callous soul that am I. I have driven the highways several times and never without both that pride and the shame of what my people did to those people.

There Should Be A Law Against Pink Dragon Outfits

Growing up in the country, Halloween just was not that big of a thing. In fact, I am not sure that it ever went beyond the fall festival stage at our elementary school. Sarah, however, dressed our sons up as all sorts of scary creatures and paraded them through the neighborhoods.
But, my daughter-in-law, Amy, simply has too much imagination, and my grandson was dressed up in this pink dragon outfit and taken to a party on base in Lawton, Ok. and then paraded around the streets later by Amy and Sarah. They thought, to use Amy's words, that he was "so cute."
I doubt that my grandson was permanently harmed by this experience, but I think that the jury is still out on that. Certainly PTSD can wait years to reveal its destructive ways.
If you have a young boy, please do not dress him up in a pink dragon outfit for Halloween, speaking for all the one and two year olds out there. If pictures of that surfaced about the time that the fellow is expressing his first rumblings of manhood, it could set the guy back for decades.

The Thread #8, My Religious Training

I do not know how much influence the world outside a person's brain can have on the religious beliefs of the person. I do know how people learn to incorporate religion into their lives in ways that seem very non-religious. I have spent a lot of my life wondering how people could turn words and ideas to fit their purposes with no problem with the seemingly intrinsic contradictions that they were ignoring.

My father was a pragmatist first. His religion was mostly for show and blending into the larger family and community. He always attended church and he taught Sunday School now and then, but he never let religion inhibit his natural tendencies to get the job done, whatever that job was. My first paragraph about ignoring the contradictions can be first applied to my father. He seemed to have no problem with them.

My mother lived her religion, very much never allowing statements of religiosity to enter her vocabulary of useful phrases. Unlike my father, she made few statements of belief and absolutely no show of her beliefs that could be construed as phony or contradictory of her statements on life. You might never know that my mother had a religious side, except that she was there in her pew on Sunday morning.

So, while we children were ushered off to church with our parents every Sunday, growing up, we were not bombarded with religion during the week. The large Bible was there on the coffee table, and we all looked at it often and read from it, but there were no family devotion or prayer times, except the blessing before a meal.

I listened to all that they had to say. I learned the bible verses and participated in the discussions. But, a child does not really know his or her own mind. To immerse the child in any philosophical belief and reinforce that with all the symbolism, even to integrate it into the totality of the learning process, is no guarantee that it will stick.

Religious belief is an adult thing because only adults really understand the concept of faith. I was a literal child and I think that all the other children were as literal as I was. Literally, church, for all its teaching and preaching, was about getting together with other children and having a good time. It seems to me that if man wants anything to endure that is so encompassing as religious belief, then we best be content with the children looking forward to it as a good time set of events.

I make very little connection between the choices that I have made as an adult relative to church and religion and what I experienced as a child, save this one. I knew that I wanted my children to have the same opportunities that I had, growing up inside a nurturing church community, and so we provided that to them.

But, my religious choices as an adult have to do with what I have learned, and continue to learn as an adult. I really did adhere to the Paul's advise, when I became an adult, I "put away childish things." I quit thinking and speaking as a child on religious matters. The results have been what the results have been.

I never had someone to "push religion down my throat." It is probably a good thing that I did not, for I would have rebelled completely against any such effort. I never really had people warn me that if I did not do this or that, then I would burn in the fires of Hell. Again, had they done so, I would have rebelled completely. I got to be an adult without a strong sense of needing to be "saved" or "born again."

Religion was not presented to me in a way that it gave me reason not to learn all that I could learn. I felt no need to reconcile knowledge that I was learning about the age of Earth or the concept of man being here on Earth for tens of millions of years. I was free to approach science as the great tool of man that it is, and to feel pretty good about the conclusions of science that passed muster.

I really can not speak for all children, maybe not any except myself as a child, but I know that the lack of pressure on me as a child to accept religious beliefs and to change my world view based on those beliefs was a great asset to me later in life. It allowed me to reconcile that wide gulf between the tenets of religion and the practice of religion. I really did not grow up with any great expectations of religious people being any better people than non-religious people. My wonderful and honorable Grandfather Anderson Howington probably had a lot to do with that for he did not join a church until near his death.

Today, I write and speak without the language of church and religiosity. I can quote the Bible very well and use its lessons often. But, I refuse to either blame religion for my shortcomings or give it too much credit for my good moments. This probably can all be attributed to the qualities of my mom and my dad and the freedom that they gave me to be the person that I would become.

Weddington Needs A.....Money Palace?

If you drive across North Dakota and South Dakota, you start to understand, they raise a lot of corn there, a whole lot of corn! So it is not surprising that someone came up with the idea of the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. But, pulling it off is another thing. You see, all the outside of the building except the lower walls is decorated yearly with corn and grain. The great thing is that they actually grow the many colors of corn in the area only to decorate this building. The many inside and outside murals are done by local families, groups, and organizations. There is big competition for these mural decorating rights.
The building is nothing but a town recreation center. It has basketball courts and can seat a few thousand, I suppose. But, it draws tourists from across the land. It is a great symbol of the crops that are grown locally, but also the great spirit of the people.
Visiting Mitchell, South Dakota, and standing in front of this magnificent structure, it hit me that my home had so changed that if we were to set out to copy Mitchell in some fashion, our palace would have to be covered with money, I suppose. That seems to be what everybody around here is so proud about. A past mayor of Weddington made no qualms about wanting to close the town to only "the right kind of people", and he meant those who had wealth. Even the local church that was once the proud center of a community of small farms gave its thumbs up to a minister who openly recruited "moneyed people" into his fold.
There is no substitute for the wonderful experience of growing up in a town where there is purpose that goes beyond personal financial success. I stood looking at the building and was jealous in a way that I had not been jealous in a long time. I wanted what they had, but I wanted it where I live.

I Love Small Towns

Here is what I love about small towns. This is the gymnasium of the old Dallas High School where I taught. Today, it is a community gym and it carries the name of the biggest little man I ever knew. His name is Dennis Franklin, and he is still alive, though he has liver cancer that will probably take his life in the not too distant future. I would not bet on it though, he is the toughest guy that I may have ever known.

Dennis came to Dallas in 1947. He was from Franklin, NC where his family owned a farm and a general store. He came to teach, coach, and play semi-pro baseball as a shortstop. He was about 5' tall and had more spunk than a mountain lion. For many years he coached both the baseball team and the basketball team at the high school.

Dennis quit coaching the baseball team about 1965. During the 18 years that he did coach it, in the toughest county in the state, he never came worse than second in his conference, which his teams won most of his years.

In basketball, he matched that record for 28 years. His teams never came in worse than second place until his last year of coaching, and won the conference consistently. In order to build his teams, he ran a Optimist Club program for town youth in the gym during summers most of the years that he coached.

The Gaston County Sports Hall of Fame inducted Dennis into its ranks about 7 years ago. This is no small time thing. It includes several major league baseball players and pro basketball players, plus other coaching legends of the storied history of Gaston County sports.

Dennis is my buddy and I will see him this coming Saturday at a reunion of us old teachers at Dallas High School and North Gaston High School. He was a great typing and bookkeeping teacher for forty years just as he was a great coach. We called him "Stumpy" as a term of love and respect, but we never doubted for a minute what he brought to the table in all his capacities.

Small towns have these kinds of characters and that is the reason that excellence and even exceptionalism are so often found in the people that they in turn produce. It is the reason that however much we keep spreading out in suburbs, our soul will always be in those small towns that dot our landscape.

Take Your Grubby Little Hands Off Our Hospital

Many of you will recognize these two buildings. The small one is Weddington Methodist Church as it exists today. The large one is the old church, now used for different things but still a part of Weddington Methodist Church holdings.

Many years ago, when all that existed on the hill where the new church sits was what was left of the old Weddington School, many in the church wanted to sell the property for about $900,000. It was the seven acres that was the most desirable potentially commercial property in Weddington. The majority of the members of the church wanted to sell the property so they could expand the facilities that we had.

Some of us said a very loud, NO WAY! Though we were small in number we put up a good fight, and just when crunch time came, the actual owner of the property, Western North Carolina United Methodist Conference, came to our rescue and helped us save the property. Land that had been out of private hands for a hundred years or more, and served the community as a school, would stay institutional and non-commercial.

Now, some people want to sell the hosptial in Monroe. The dollar signs are doing to some the same that the dollar signs did to members of Weddington United Methodist Church many years ago. It is a time to again to say, NO WAY!

The Thread #7, Developing A Love For Nature

Moving to the seclusion of the small farm that my dad had purchased and built a house on for his family, at the age of eight, was the beginning of a whole new world of learning, but nothing so important as developing an understanding of nature and my place in that world that suddenly was very big for such a young boy. While our farm was just under 50 acres, when you added the land of my aunts, uncles, and grandparents, it was about 200 acres. But, that was just the beginning. The range of our exploration and play was more like about a thousand acres, and 70% or more of it was wooded.

On that thousand or so acres was the west fork of Twelve Mile Creek, about two miles of it in total, plus several feeder streams. The dropoff to the creek was rather pronounced with twenty to fifty feet of steep inclines. The bottom land bordering the creek was flat and rather wide in places for such a small creek. On the hillsides were old gold mines filled in with rock. The quartz rock that I have always heard signaled the likely presence of gold was plentiful.

Nature provided many edible fruits and plants, including creasy greens, wild strawberries, wild plums, blackberries, huckleberries, black walnuts, muscadines, and of course the honey of bees that was often found in a rotten out tree. For young boys, the water of the creek was fit to drink, so, we learned to live off the land, in a manner of speaking. We certainly collected and ate most of the foods that I listed above.

In addition to the fruits, barries, nuts, plants, and honey, there were also animals that were very edible. Fish were the principle ones. Twelve Mile Creek had planty of catfish in that day, and a couple of local pounds had brim, bass, and couters. On the land, there were lots of rabbits. We learned to catch the fish with hook and bait, and also by seining with a large net that we had. The rabbits we caught in rabbit boxes that we learned early-on how to build.

My dad owned one shotgun that almost never came out of the closet. Hunting was not a part of our life, a condition that probably led to none of use owning guns today. It is interesting that the only brother that I have who does own a gun came along much later and grew up mostly in the town of Matthews after we had left home.

Of all the foods available to us from the wild, only blackberries and catfish were what you would call staples in our diet. We picked enough blackberries every summer to put up a couple of hundred pints of jam and jelly, and during the summer, catching fish to eat was a regular part of our routine. I tell people that I am not a fisherman today because when we fished, it was catch the fish or not have any fish for Friday night supper. Thus we often employed the seine or the old crank telephone. But, mostly we dug up worms and set several lines along the bank that we kept a close watch on. Fishing for me was for sustenance , not fun, and as an adult I simply do not need the sustenance.

I watch children growing up today with their hand held games, their planned lives, their programmed activities, and I want to cry for them. God gave us the most magnificent world and yet people grow to adulthood never realizing the width, breath, and depth of that world nor what it can mean to them. I heard some man on the radio last week talk about what he called "nature deficit syndrome." That is one way of saying it. I am not sure what species we become when we move ourselves from the world of nature into being casual observers of it. When you see the damage many are willing to do to nature for their own profit, it is obvious that we have lost respect for that which first gave us life.

There are so many small and insignificant things that we learned in those days on that land that add together to an education in the ways of nature. How does the doodlebug dig those little conical shaped holes that they hide in, waiting on an ant to enter to be quickly gobbled up? Can you really charm them out of those holes with little couplets like we sang to them? "Doodlebug, Doodlebug, where have have you been? Doodlebug, Doodlebug come back again?"

Where do you find running cedar that can be used around Christmas to decorate a mantle or from which you can build a wreath? Why is almost always near ferns in totally shaded areas during the summer? Can you really smell a snake before you encounter them? If you are cutting firewood with a crosscut saw and splitting it with an ax, what type of tree do you try to find to make the job as easy as possible but still have wood that will burn long and hot? Where do you go to find the ideal trees?

When you are playing in a stream, how long can you let the leech stay on your skin before it is too late to just pull him off? How do you find the most illusive of creek creatures, the crayfish? Can snakes bite you underwater and where around creeks do they like to hang out? When the creek dries up, where do you look to find water and all the creatures that live in it except the fish?

These questions and a million other tidbits of knowledge about the crops and gardens that we raised, the animals that we kept, and often ate, the fruit trees and grape arbors that we benefited so much from having, and how to schedule time to take care of it all, constituted a great part of my education. But, the farming aside, it was just getting to know mother nature so up close and personal without parents always there to direct our explorations that I now realize was so absolutely wonderful.

I have spent a lot of time in churches over the years, listening to preachers and others tell me about God and his ways, his love, his will, his gifts, and his demands on us. But, to this day, I have not heard a single preacher say anything that would compare to the silence of the forest as a teaching tool. I do not need a moralizer to tell me what a great gift life is and how much someone must have loved me to make me a part of all of this wonderful world.

There is no aspect of my education that means as much to me as what I learned playing and exploring with my two older brothers on that land that was available to me as a child and teenager. It set me on a trek that has taken me across this land to places like Glacier National Park, Mount St. Helens, the high desert of southern Wyoming, Yellowstone Park, The Great Smokies National Park, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia and New Burnswick, the Wichata Mountains of Oklahoma, up and down the wonderful sea coast of Maine, the redwood forests of northern California, the swamps of southern Georgia, the beauty of the Great Plains, and I am not finished yet.

I thank God every day that my children are as smitten with the nature bug as I have been. They all prefer a walk through a deep forest more than they enjoy the sandy beaches when the crowds are there. Hardly a month goes by that one of them is not exploring some new discovery. Already, my oldest grandchild, who was named for a pass in Glacier National Park, shows a real interest in the great outdoors and its endless ability to amaze and inspire.

On acreage here in Union County, I found my love for the great outdoors and the learning experiences that are offered by nature if I would but ask the questions. There is no end to what can be learned there, and I have more wonders to discover than my brief lifespan could possibly absorb.

West Virginia Never Lets You Down, Even When It Should

Sarah and I have decided to quit going around West Virginia, and go through it. Thus, on two recent trips lately to see our grandchildren in Pennsylvania, we gave up returning by the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia for the unknown experiences of West Virginia. We had visited West Virginia once before when we took the children to Snow Shoe Ski Resort, some twenty years ago. Other than that, we have avoided West Virginia just like we have a tendency to drive around New York City.

This Columbus Day weekend, we met our grandchildren and their dad at Gettysburg. The Cyclorama has been finished since we were there last, and neither the grandchildren nor their dad had very been to the battlefield. We had a great day on Saturday and then we hopped into the car and headed for West Virginia to see the colors.

My dear departed mom always said that West Virginia would be the biggest state in the union if they would iron it out. It is hard to argue with that. But, we hit it, especially the higher elevations, say above 2000 feet, on the perfect weekend. The picture on the right above was taken on the slopes of West Virginia's highest peak. Believe it or not, that is the only mountain in the state that gets above the decidious tree line, so the whole state is a hardwood forest, and I will place bets on which, W. Va. or Vermont is the most beautiful in the leaf changing season. I will put my money on W. Va. any day.

For those of you who go to W. Va. to see the "Wild and Beautiful", as its slogan goes, I doubt that you are ever let down. There is simply nothing like it in the eastern part of this country. But, W. Va. also has another legacy and it can be seen in the old rotting out building in the first picture. It is hick central on the eastern side of the Mississippi, including Mississippi. Encircled by the snobby northeast, the highly industrilized midwest, and the progressive southern states of Virginia and Tennessee, it sits as the place where it is still safe to be unpolished, uncooth, and uncaring what other people think about you.

Sarah and I stopped at an old store that shares the parking lot with the building above. We went in to find a little grill in the back and figured that it would be a good place to get a sandwich before going on. Sarah wanted a grilled cheese and I wanted a hamburger. The young girl behind the counter in the grill had no idea what a grilled cheese was, so we explained it to her. She said that she could do that, so she took our order. There was one other customer there, but the girl seemed to be too busy talking to people to make up our order. Sitting at the booth with the other customers, she pulled off her flip flop and was showing them something about her toes, putting her fingers between them and on the bottom of her feet.

Then she got up, went behind the counter and picked up Sarah's bread and put it in a toaster oven with the same fingers that she had between her toes a few seconds earlier. She fixed that sandwich and my hamburger without ever washing her hands. Sarah saw none of this, and I was raised in a barn, so I figured that I had enough built up resistance to live through whatever was on her toes. I know the obvious question to follow that, but I just do not want to go there.

Enough said. West Virginia did not let us down. It reminded me of Mississippi and our first trip through it. A stop in Jackson at a buffet place to eat brought out the manager and a couple of others asking us questions like where we were from and how long we would be there. I looked at Sarah and asked her if my skin had darkened or something. I had made sure to use my best southern draw. But, then I realized that I brought in a map and maybe they wanted to take a look to find out how to get out of that place. I left it on the table.

The Thread #6, Play, The Person Builder

Who gets to decide how the child spends his or her play time? In the education of children, there is probably no single factor that is more important to who that child will become as an adult. Why does that message not sink into the skulls of more young parents? You tell me for I have no idea. There are more than enough experts out there telling parents to "back off" for the good of the child.

For the first eight years of my life, playing occupied most of my waking hours. Even when we worked, picking cotton for Mr. Deese, in Weddington, we really played. Our world was not very big, but it did not have to be. The area that was our playground in Weddington probably covered 20 acres or so, but withing that area was plenty to keep active little minds occupied.

In the first installment of The Thread, I told about early school and how the play time was such a big part of every day. I told about how we decided what we would play and the games that we played. Play was interaction with others; learning to build and strengthen relationships and solve differences.

Play in and around the house was no less a teaching experience. I sat up in the poplar tree next to the road and watched as the road workers first paved Matthews Weddington Road. For reference, that was about 1951. Until then it was a gravel road. By the time they had finished the work, I knew what you had to do to pave a road.

Sitting in that same tree, we kept a lookout for the iceman, who delivered blocks of ice that kept the food chilled in the ice box that preceded the refrigerator. We ran in and watched him use those giant tongs to grab the ice block and carry it into the house. One of our chores was to empty the water from below. The process of cooling food and which foods have to have that cooling was learned early.

But, we also learned that a ground spring could keep milk fresh, for it was in a spring that we kept our extra milk. Water from beneath the ground was cooler than water in the creek and could be used as a refrigerator. it was also safer and cooler to drink that creek water.

The broom straw field between our house and the Deese house was a great place to hide and play Cowboys and Indians. The straw was so thick that you could stay hidden for a long time. But, it was not the place to play with matches, as we learned one day when we set the field on fire and watched it burn in only a few minutes. It was my oldest brother who got the matches, I swear.

The eroded gullies behind the house and field were not just gullies, they were canyons where young children could invent all sorts of games that involved wall climbing and butt sliding or war games that involved using the high ground as a place from which to attack your enemy.

And in the house, sitting beside the radio that gave you no clue as to what pictures went with the stories, you created your own pictures and pictured the Lone Ranger riding through the canyons behind your house, Sky King flying his airplane over the field in front of your house, and Gene Autry riding across your broom straw field where outlaws hid deep within the grass.

On Satruday morings, you listened to Big John and Sparkie as they looked under your bed to see if there was dust, which you had cleaned out waiting for them to come on the air. You promised them that you had not talked back to your mom and dad that week and had done everything that they told you to do. Then, you waited on that special week when they sang the birthday song just for you.

"Today is a birthday, We wonder for whom.
We know that its for someone whose right in this room.
So look all around you for somebody who.
Is smiling and happy. My goodness its you.
Happy birthday friend, from all of us to you.
Happy birthday friend, from daddy and mommy too.
We congratulate you and pray good luck follows you.
Happy birthday friend. May all your good dreams come true."

There was reality during those years and sometimes the reality burned like a branding iron on your heart. I remember the day that the letter came back that mom had sent her brother in Korea. I knew that she was up there in her bedroom crying and I wanted her to be alright. I remembered Roy, the brother, before he went off to the Marines. He played with us kids like he was one of us.

I remember holding on to the post of the funeral tent as the soldier yelled, "Cock! Aim! Fire! I remember being scared so badly that I jumped up off the ground when the first shots were fired. I remember the taps they played and seeing them fold the flag that they gave to my grandma.

But, I also remember that even as the funeral day was coming to a close, we were playing games with our cousins behind our grandparents house while the grownups talked about their lost brother in the house. I remember, if not that day, mocking those soldiers using sticks, and folding pieces of cloth into the cocked hat like the real soldiers had folded the flag.

When I was eight years old, my family moved to the new house that my dad and some other guys had built on the land that he had bought with his dad, sister, and brother. Our part was 44.9 acres and our lives changed significantly with that move. Work became a bigger part of our lives than play. But, when play time came, what a wonderland of a playground we had.

I would never hold up my childhood as some sort of model for the raising of children. My parents, like all parents, were a product of their times and their own training. There is so much about my childhood that I would wish on no child. Much of what happened during those years just happened as a natural consequence of our lives.

But, I have no problem telling anyone that the freedom to invent my own play, and have plenty of time to do that without the planning or intercession of adults, was a great experience that I would recommend to all parents. There is no life that my parents could have given me that would have been nearly so rewarding.

Hovering parents who see it as their duty and prerogative to plan and oversee every moment of their child's play have become the norm in much of our present day society. There are pressures on parents today that we and my parents did not have. Society has built up an unfortunate checklist of things that "good" parents do. I have seen this in my own family and in many others. The unfortunate losers in this rush for safety and early excelling is the very people who all this is about, the children.

And of course, when a child loses the ability to discover for himself or herself, a grownup with frustrations has been molded using nothing but the best of intentions.

Sarah's Crazy Time Machine

Ok, if Sarah wrote this blog, then she could enumerate my silly ways of doing things, but I write the blog.

For many years now, very many, the clock in our bedroom has been on Sarah's side of the bed. This was for good reason, she got up first. She is an early riser and I will get up when I have to do so. Most couples have this dichotomy.

So how does Sarah motivate herself to rise early? She sets the clock ahead in time by 10 to 15 minutes, 20 to 25 minutes on occasion. The problem is that I never know what time it is when I wake up. I play the game of it being 25 minutes earlier than what the clock says only to find out later that it was only 10 minutes earlier, and I am late getting ready for work in the old days, late for an appointment now.

Then, burned, I go back to assuming that it is only 10 minutes earlier when it was 25 minutes earlier and I cheat myself out of 15 minutes of napping.

Any attempt to correct the situation by simply setting the clock myself while she is not around is quickly noticed by her and she resets it. This morning, I complained and she set the clock to the correct time. She wants something that is going to cost me a lot of money. I can feel it.

Having Fun In Seattle

The picture below almost got my camera confiscated at the Museum of Modern Art in Seattle. In fact, it would have been had not another couple decided to do what I did and snap a picture. They were seen by the oncoming worker and their film was taken. I was out of there quickly and got to bring home this picture of Margret Stamey kissing a very puckered up whatever you call it. The picture on the right is taken a short distance from the Space Needle in an area of totem poles. I am sure that I am not the only person that has a picture of the top of the Space Needle perched atop a totem pole.

GERONIMO!!!

It was as cold as a witches teat and the wind was blowing across Oklahoma like it was in a real hurry to get somewhere on this cold December day. The grave site is on the eastern side of Fort Sill, where Geronimo was kept during his last years. Native American visitors leave ribbons tied to the tree limbs and trinkets of all sorts that are put on the monument. This is as much the American story as all the stuff that we learned in school about immigrants and their "taming" of the land. In Lawton, the Museum of the Plains has much more about Geronimo and the Apache Nation that was there before the white settlers.

Where Is The Blue Ox? Everybody Asks.

If you are on your way to Bar Harbor, Maine, or on into New Brunswick, and happen to have a couple of hours on your hand that you have to spend somewhere, then turn up the river to Bangor, Maine. For the life of me, I can not think of another reason to go there, but they do have this statue of Paul Bunyan that is unbelievable. While we were there, Don Imus, on his radio talk show before he got into female athletics as a critic, spent two days telling the world how absolutely worthless Bangor was, because they would not let him promote a local appearance by putting an Imus t-shirt on Paul. He could do what Sarah is doing, just come and stand in front of it, but, NO, Imus was a rear end long before his stint in female athletics caused him to be de-aired for a while.

Little Girls Grow Up In The Most Delightful Way

Sarah Elizabeth Moore. And, all of these were before I even knew her. She never matured from the playful little girl in the earliest picture, in many ways, but thank God did in others. This is the reason that God has so little trouble getting males say, "till death do us part." The dark glasses were a sixties thing.

The Thread #5, My Best Teacher

Our lives overlapped by twenty years and as of today, our combined lives span 135 years. I spent the night with him before he died the next morning. A cousin and I took him to the bathroom once, rubbed his feet several times, and listened as he moaned and groaned his way to his mid-morning meeting with his Maker.

The world outside the family called him Mr. Walter. Inside the family we called him Grandpa, Papa, and Daddy. Everybody called him a saint for having the ability to live with my grandma all those years. My love for the old man is the reason that I ask that my grandchildren call me Grandpa. Mrs. Sue was a hellion who never really learned how to live at peace with the rest of the world. Her's in another story.

There is not a day that goes by that I do not meet someone who would have benefited by knowing my grandpa. When I would stand in front of classes years ago and tell them that they did not realize how much knowledge is lost as we adopt new ways of doing things, I was most often thinking of the things that my Grandpa knew about and how to do.

Grandpa could read and write very well, but he was far from an educated man if you are talking about "book learning," except for the Good Book, as it was called back then. He did not own his own land until he was in his seventies. Until then he had sharecropped and rented since leaving his dad's home just outside Pineville as a young man.

I live in an ocean of false bravado, ignorance parading as everything from patriotism to toughness of spirit, "me-ism" parading as honest conservatism and enlightened liberalism, and insecurity so deep that the ownership and display of guns, guns, and more guns substitutes for the security of knowing one's self and one's proper relationship to all of God's gifts. My Grandpa would not fit in this world today.

There is little doubt that different ones of those of us who knew Grandpa walked away with different lessons. He was a complicated man and could speak to a variety of people with a variety of needs. To my oldest brother, he imparted a proper working relationship with God. To me he imparted the need to know how to do many things well. To our brother between us, he imparted frugality and saving.

You see, Grandpa was not a teacher, in his own mind. He just went through his days doing what he had to do and what he wanted to do in a way that you could call efficiently, purposefully, skillfully, reasonably, thrift driven, humbly, and charitably. He let the world see what it wanted to see, and we saw that which we most needed to see, or wanted to see.

I loved and respected my grandpa too much to give him as the reason for my religious or political leanings. I will not borrow from his well of good sense to justify what may turn out to be my own failings or misunderstandings. My views are mine, not his. He was a part of the world that gave me the freedom to be who I think that I should be.

I have no idea how Grandpa would fall on the healthcare bill in Congress. I have no idea what he would think of modern day church experiences. Would he have registered Republican or stayed Democrat in the seventies or eighties? Again, I have no idea. If he and I diverged one hundred and eighty degrees on those questions, it would be of no concern to me. I do not worry about letting him down so long as I stand strong for those things in which I believe, treat my fellow man with respect, and always keep a charitable heart.

I try to carry the essence of the man in my mind and heart and attempt to reflect that essence in my own life. That is what a good teacher leaves his student. The student, in the end, will educate himself or herself. They will ask their own questions and find the answers where they believe the answers lie. It is up to us adults to give the examples of honesty, strength, charity, efficiency, humility, frugality, and a host of other character building qualities that will made their paths fruitful.

Grandpa was no saint. He could give a mule a lesson in foul language that even the mule would never forget. But, he knew that he was working to become the equal of a saint someday, and he pursued that path with every ounce of his energy. In doing so, he became the teacher of life that I needed, the teacher the schools could not provide.

And thus, no recounting of my early education would be even close to complete without telling of this special man and his influence on my life.

"My Lands Are Where My People Are Buried"

In the Black Hills of South Dakota, about 20 miles from Mount Rushmore, is the carving of Crazy Horse that is taking shape. The carving on the left is what it will look like when finished. On the right was the state of the carving as of the summer of 2008. To give some idea of how big it is, the hole in the mountain below what will be the arm is ten stories high. This dwarfs the carvings on Rushmore.

The completion of this effort is at least 50 years away. It is now in about its 30th year of work. No tax money is being used on the project. This is so much more interesting than Rushmore that is is hard to compare the two.

The visitor center is large and filled with prints and pictures like the one above. Some of you no doubt know the story of the Pema Indian from Arizona, Ira Hayes, who was one of the flag raisers it Iwo Jima. You have seen the famous statue near Arlington Cemetery and the Pentagon. This picture puts Ira Hayes in native dress, a most moving rendition of that courageous event.

Accompanying the statue of Carzy Horse, one of the suvivors of Little Big Horn, is his famous statement, "My lands are where my people are buried." If you are taking a trip out west and are anywhere near, this is one of the great places to visit in this country.

The Thread #4 Thinking Like A Mule

Education is more than schools and books, it is the totality of the experiences of any person. Growing up on a small farm, those experiences have their own character, their own domain within the bigger world of experiences. If you miss them, then supplanting them is hardly possible, and most people would be thankful for that hole in their education.

My dad, his oldest brother, his sister and her husband, and my grandfather went together to buy just under 200 acres of land on what is now Forest Lawn Drive in Weddington. That was about the time that I was born. The Byrum boys from over near Union Church came over and cut the timber from the land. The income from the timber paid for the land.

If you know anything about small farms, then this information is pertinent. While there was limited cleared fields on the higher ground, along the nearly one mile stretch of the West Fork Twelve Mile Creek that ran through the property, there were five good size bottoms. A bottom is a field along a creek or river. In residential terms, it is the flood plain.

It was in one of those bottoms that we set aside space for the grazing of the farm animals that we had. We fenced in about twenty acres total to get one bottom and the creek included for a source of water. Thus, when we had to milk a cow or hook the mule up to a wagon or plow, the first order of business was to find them in the fifteen acres of woods and five acres of field.

Now, cows are pattern animals. They always go to the same area, they take the same paths, and they tend to come to the barn when they are hungry. But, a mule is a different animal. He knows nothing of patterns and he is as likely to be standing beside a tree deep withing the wooded area as he is to be in the field grazing.

My dad had the little saying about finding the mule. He would tell us to think of ourselves as a mule and then decide where we would be today if that were the case. He assured us that if we really did that, we would go directly to where the mule would be standing.

It may well be that people today have not the slightest idea of how to think like a mule, or to use the transfer of learning that is inherit in that ability, think like another person. It seems that we have no desire to find the other person any longer and believe that it is incumbent on the other person to always think like us. It is always he or she who is lost, not us.

Now, I am danged sure that the old mule never considered that it was he who was lost. When we appeared with the bridle, he, no doubt, figured that he had found us. If a mule can think, that has to be how he would think because I know that in the human world we rightfully call people of that kind of mind, "mule headed."

The Olivia Dukakas character in "Steel Magnolias" said that it was the ability of humans to accessorize that put us above the other animals. I would like to add a second human characteristic that does that also, the ability to compromise. In more specific terms, it is the human ability to think like the other person and see the value in that person's way.

The acidity of the conversation today on both sides, or all sides, of the issues is of the lower forms of life that we want to think of ourselves as being above. It is of people who have been given so much that they have lost contact with the reality of their own dependence on the others around them.

The mule went to the tree to scratch himself, forgot why he went, and just stood there. We humans, likewise go to positions and forget how we got there, but we are danged sure that those who stand elsewhere are somehow out of place or lost. We never consider that we should think like that person for a moment and maybe find ourselves in the process.

Here is where I am going with all this. We have devalued the humanities in our schools. We now call people educated who are nothing more than trained to do a job. That is a catastrophe for our society. My favorite people to pick on are the half of our college students who are enrolled in business schools.

But, it goes far beyond that. Most colleges are nothing more than cheap training grounds for corporations. The result is a population, not so much unwilling to try the humanity of compromise as incapable of doing it. Rigidity and absolutes, and the wars that accompany them, are the gospel preached from the religious dais and the secular dais alike.

We must put respectable humanities requirements back into our education. We must find the will to require that in order for a person to carry a degree from a college or university, he or she must have a good background in the liberal arts. The quote of why is Biblical. "What does it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his soul?"

Pretty Much As Wonderful As It Looks

From the 6th floor balcony on the opposite side of the Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton Park, a part of Glacier International Peace Park that spans the Montana, Canadian border, looking down Waterton Lake toward the United States, about half way down the lake, and across the neatest little town on the continent, Waterton, you simply stare in awe. If there is a more heavenly view in all the continent, then I have not seen it. A hundred miles to the north, Lake Louise takes a stab at that title, but falls a little short. Sarah and I have spent 5 nights in this hotel on three trips. It is a budget buster, but what a way to bust a budget!!!

My God, I Have A Vagina

I have worked for thirty one years with the best interior designer in the region, hands down. I can give you a list of accomplishments a mile long to justify that statement, if you need it. Or, I can just refer you to other designers in the Charlotte region who will tell you that my friend is the one on the top of the mountain to whom all the other looked up to see.

Along with being a great designer, my friend is also sharp of wit and tongue. One day, in disgust for the lack of talent and lack of professionalism of one of the brigade of would be designers in Charlotte, he let go a quip that I have used often over the years and applied to other areas.

Particularly disgusted with the woman who, without any training or proven talent, but sure of her own abilities, crept upon and murdered an unsuspecting room, he let go the following quip: "She just stepped out of the shower, looked at herself in the mirror and yelled, 'My God, I have a vagina. I am a decorator!'"

Watching Newt Gingrich on television this morning, I wish that Newt had, upon getting a look at what a barber was able to do with that poof of hair, first thought of himself a minister or a gospel singer. America will always be the lesser because he first thought himself to be a politician.

The Thread #3, I Know That Language

I am not sure what grade I was in or what year it was, but my dad took us to a couple of KKK rallies. One was very near the present day intersection of Indian Trail Waxhaw Road and Potter Road. The other was out on Highway 74, very near the present day Walmart. My best guess is that the year was somewhere in the 1954 to 1955 range because they were surely a reaction to the Supreme Court's knocking down the "separate but equal" validity for segregation in schools. The South was in an uproar then as it is now. Everywhere there were signs and billboards that read, "Impeach Earl Warren", the Supreme Court chief justice.

White southerners are some of the most easily aggrieved people on Earth. A large portion of our people never bought into the idea of a true United States that could function as a government for all of the people. They have spent hundreds of years proving that you only have to take care of certain groups.

If you think that paragraph is some sort of exaggeration, then I suggest that you take off your blinders and look at the evidence. The concept of equality never really made it into the South, not by the decrees of Abraham Lincoln nor the hand of God. This region, especially areas like South Carolina low country, were built on the idea of a caste system and that belief lives today in many of its white citizens. The dictum from Earl Warren and his court was one more reason for some white southerners to don their capes and hoods and turn the Bible and the Christian religion on its head. God, Jesus, the Constitution, and all the angles were not, are not, and never have been reason for many white southerners to accept that they are not, in fact, the focal point of the creation and all good things that came after it.

I remember rather vividly the language of the speakers at the KKK rallies. Once you took out all the racial and ethnic slurs, it boiled down to a very simple, "God put us here as the supreme deciders of all things right and wrong within his creation. To give the other man a chance is to be a fool to the corruption of his soul. It is better to slay him before he has a chance to corrupt our world."

For every white southerner who accepted the errors of the ways of the Old South and attempted to reconcile their lives to the realities of the world, another never considered that he or she had any reason to be contrite, and continued teaching their children the "old ways."

Now, here we are in the twenty-first century, over forty years removed from the enactment of the voting rights bill. We have been through forced busing and other forms of court ordered integration. We have a very large professional and middle class population ofBlacks. It is a fact that most segregation today is more economic based than cultural based.

The election of a person who was half white, half black seemed to be a positive in most respects. There was a pretty big cultural backlash during the election campaign, fueled by the image of the pure white girl who was being used to beat up on the black man. It was ugly but ineffective in the end.

But, many of us said then, and we say again today, the level of and the tone of the attacks on candidate Obama were racially fueled. In my adult lifetime, I have not seen anything that comes close to the level of disgusting lies that were told, with no hint of any attempt to stay with bounds of civility.

But, that was little more than a warmup for what was to come after the election. The image of a black family in the White House seems to be just too much for tens of millions of whites across this country, and especially here in the South. The level of dialogue has fallen to KKK days, again, except absent some of the most vile terminology.

There is indeed a strong feeling about the level of spending in the country and the level of debt. But, it was people fully supported by most of those tens of millions of white people who got us to the debt level that we are at today, and there was hardly a word of accusal language. Where it did exist, it was civil and respectful of the president.

I know this language as well as I know the lullabies that my mother sang to me. I know the difference between honest concerns that may give rise to heated debate and strong language, and the words of the white race that feels that it is under attack. To those who still fight the Civil War, anything done or said is justified to return the people, who see themselves as gods, to the places of power they have always occupied. This is war.

I would hope that all peoples of color across this nation would stop and take a good look at what the Republican Party now represents. It is saddled with the Old South while the Democratic Party now represents more of the New South. We need a strong and viable Republican Party that is willing to shed that burden. It will not grow nationally until it does.

I am actually writing this on September 12, 2009, the day of the Tea Parties and the march on Washington. I have seen the signs of hatred the participants carry that will only stiffen the casue of those who feel an affront by them. I have seen or heard nothing today that will do anything but cause the reinforcement of the lines of defense of those who feel threatened by this level of vitriol.

As a sixty five year old man who remembers the KKK rallies and knows the message, I will say that it is, today, our duty to stand up to this new assault on humanity from those who would bring back to these shores inhumanity masked as God's Will, and incivility masked as the original intent of the formers of the Constitution.