There is an old joke that I was reminded of today as many people stood up for the Supreme Courts decision to allow corporations to spend all the money thay wanted or could afford to spend as a part of election campaigns. This decision can not be allowed to stand or it will surely be the undoing of our democracy and the republic. But, this is just one more case of corporate interests taking over our lives. Here is the joke.
In an old western town, a man swings open the doors of the bar and looks around, obviously very mad and looking for someone. At the end of the bar he spots a man drinking a whiskey and he walks up to him, getting very close to the man's face.
This is the way the conversation went.
"Are you the one they call the tall dark stranger?"
"Yep"
"Are you the man who stole all of my cattle?"
"Yep"
"Are you the man who burned my fields and destroyed my crops?"
"Yep"
"Are you the man who raped my wife and my daughters?"
"Yep"
"Are you the man who then burned down my house?"
"Yep"
"Are you the man who then killed all my family, leaving me alone and broke?"
"Yep"
"Well buddy, next time, let's watch that shit!!!"
Conservatives in this country are so busy hating that which they feel so smug in hating that they are allowing the Supreme Court and corporations to do to all of us what the Tall Dark Stranger did to the rancher. These "freedom loving fanatics" are giving away every freedom that they have so that they can rack up points in their stupid little game of "Who are the real patriots?" There is indeed cultural snobbery at work in this country and it is the people who are what my Italian son calls "Red Neck Wannabes" that are the snobs. Meanwhile their accomplices in suits are destroying our country with the blessing of these Wannabes. It is enough to turn you into a Grenola.
Friday, January 22, 2010
He Is Who I Thought He Was
At the end of his first year in office, the country is in a storm. It really did not matter who we elected as President, that storm was coming. It is born of the economic insecurity and all the hundred million reasons that people have to not trust government to come to their personal aid or represent their interests. That segment of our population who figure that they were ordained by God to rule have set upon this president with a special vengeance. Is it because he is black? I think so.
But, he is who I thought he was when I voted for him and encouraged others to do the same. I have run my own business for over 30 years and I understand that there is a big difference between actually creating a good product and creating satisfied customers, and talking about what I would do if I did run my own business. I also taught mathematics for 11 years and while Barack Obama was a law professor, law, like mathematics, requires a high degree of mental discipline. I knew that if I could read the evaluations of his students, then I would know the man. Those students said that above all, he was practical.
The din of pure bull coming from the right about Barack Obama reverberated upon itself and took many a person to a level of total hysteria about him and his coming presidency. In the midst of that din, there was nothing of logic and truth that could get through, and many of the people participating are still walking around unable to hear and see what is right before them. Every action coming from President Obama is twisted to fit the prophecy of that din, and thus we have a large portion of our population who will never know the man, and that is a shame.
Barack Obama was a novice to politics compared to many who had come before him. He was going to have some monster stumbles, but through it all, unlike George W. Bush, he was and is capable of learning and adjusting. George Bush came in absolutely confident that his narrow way was right, and beyond any need for adjustment. He never adjusted to any realities and he led this country into several of the worst situations that we have found ourselves over the last century.
And to what is it that Barack Obama will adjust? The teacher's mind will direct him along a path to an answer that is both possible and reasonable. It may never lead to the kind of absolute rightness that George Bush always enjoyed, inside his mind, but it will lead to the best answer possible under existing circumstances. That is what we need in this country today, a realization that we can improve our corporate lives by finding solutions to problems that take us to at least a little higher on the hill than we are today, even if they never take us to the top. We need to start improving our lives by increments and a practical person will settle for a better tomorrow, even if it is not perfect.
It may well be that big improvements in the health care and health insurance situations are not possible politically. If that is the case, watch as President Obama finds out what he can get and goes with that. We have already seen that, and we have seen the Democrats abuse their mandate by filling the bill with every kind of pork that they needed to buy out all the effected parties. Now, Congress must find itself and the will to go back to the drawing board to construct something that both incrementally improves the current situations and and is not filled with billions of dollars of give aways to Senators who would abuse their situations.
After George Bush, I just wanted a president who was willing to listen, learn, and work on incrementally getting us back to where we need to be as a country. Barack Obama has filled that bill very well. He is who I thought he was and I like that.
But, he is who I thought he was when I voted for him and encouraged others to do the same. I have run my own business for over 30 years and I understand that there is a big difference between actually creating a good product and creating satisfied customers, and talking about what I would do if I did run my own business. I also taught mathematics for 11 years and while Barack Obama was a law professor, law, like mathematics, requires a high degree of mental discipline. I knew that if I could read the evaluations of his students, then I would know the man. Those students said that above all, he was practical.
The din of pure bull coming from the right about Barack Obama reverberated upon itself and took many a person to a level of total hysteria about him and his coming presidency. In the midst of that din, there was nothing of logic and truth that could get through, and many of the people participating are still walking around unable to hear and see what is right before them. Every action coming from President Obama is twisted to fit the prophecy of that din, and thus we have a large portion of our population who will never know the man, and that is a shame.
Barack Obama was a novice to politics compared to many who had come before him. He was going to have some monster stumbles, but through it all, unlike George W. Bush, he was and is capable of learning and adjusting. George Bush came in absolutely confident that his narrow way was right, and beyond any need for adjustment. He never adjusted to any realities and he led this country into several of the worst situations that we have found ourselves over the last century.
And to what is it that Barack Obama will adjust? The teacher's mind will direct him along a path to an answer that is both possible and reasonable. It may never lead to the kind of absolute rightness that George Bush always enjoyed, inside his mind, but it will lead to the best answer possible under existing circumstances. That is what we need in this country today, a realization that we can improve our corporate lives by finding solutions to problems that take us to at least a little higher on the hill than we are today, even if they never take us to the top. We need to start improving our lives by increments and a practical person will settle for a better tomorrow, even if it is not perfect.
It may well be that big improvements in the health care and health insurance situations are not possible politically. If that is the case, watch as President Obama finds out what he can get and goes with that. We have already seen that, and we have seen the Democrats abuse their mandate by filling the bill with every kind of pork that they needed to buy out all the effected parties. Now, Congress must find itself and the will to go back to the drawing board to construct something that both incrementally improves the current situations and and is not filled with billions of dollars of give aways to Senators who would abuse their situations.
After George Bush, I just wanted a president who was willing to listen, learn, and work on incrementally getting us back to where we need to be as a country. Barack Obama has filled that bill very well. He is who I thought he was and I like that.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Grandma Lilly In Her Kitchen
Mrs Lillian, Grandma, Mrs. Lilly, World's Best Cook, Sheriff Dillon DevoteeI have many pictures of my maternal grandmother, but this is my favorite, for it is the only one that I have of her in the kitchen. The lady loved to cook and she was nothing less than a genius when it came to the culinary arts, not the jazzy stuff you see on television, but the real stuff where you take a chicken, some flour, some lard, a few different vegetables, some sugar, tea, and you feed the masses that come to your door.
See that sheet in front of her? That covers a table of food that has already fed the gathered once that day and is waiting on them to get hungry to eat again. As you can tell, the house is old and lacks all the modern conveniences, but it was the house that I most wanted to be in, especially on a Sunday at dinner time, which was what you modern people call lunch.
The whole town of Fort Mill knew my grandmother as Mrs. Lilly or just Grandma. She loved people and she loved it when those people would allow her to cook for them and offer them a place to sit and talk for a spell. First Baptist church did not start until Grandma was in her seat, though my Grandfather never darkened the door. Grandma worked in the cotton mill across from her house until she could work no longer, but she never stopped taking care of her family.
Grandma loved to ride in her car. When her second from the youngest son was killed in Korea, she took her part of the insurance money and bought a new Buick, though she could not drive. Anyone could drive the car so long as they satisfied one condition, she was the front seat passenger. Sometimes, when she just wanted to ride, she would take her pocketbook, go sit in the car, and wait for someone to come out and take her somewhere. She has sat in that car for a couple of hours waiting patiently.
Grandma's other great love later in life was Sheriff Matt Dillon, of Gunsmoke. She did not miss the program for anything. If you were in the house when it was on, you stayed quiet.
Grandma had a great sense of humor and told some rather bawdy jokes now and then. She loved to laugh and tell her stories. She dipped snuff and a spitting can was always close by. She was the best pea and bean sheller in the family and we always went to get her when we had lots of them to shell.
When Grandma gave up house keeping after Grandfather's death, the kitchen table that she had came to our house to replace our old one. Hers was a metal table with a green formica top. I can see it as well today as I could fifty years ago. When we took it into our kitchen I told my mom that it was sad for I feared that I had eaten my last good meal off that table. We laughed, for my mom had inherited her mom's cooking skills.
Today, the two things in my house that I hold the most attachment to are the old cast iron wash pot and the ceramic biscuit bowl that belonged to my Grandma. So long as I am here, they will be also to remind me that whatever I am, I owe so much to this grand old lady.
Protocols, Here is a Middle Finger To You
The dictionary defines it as a code of correct conduct. A second definition is that it is the ceremony and etiquette that is observed by heads of state, diplomats, military officers, and such. Then too, it is rules surrounding the formatting and transmission of data in world of computers.
Last month, I ran into one of the really stupid protocols that got me to thinking about them and how we are changing life, not with actual advancement of any tangible kind, but with rules that supplant the actual production of wealth and make it appear as if we are advancing while we go backwards.
Look at it this way. You are in a long hallway on your way to a door on the far, far end. The walls of the hallway are decorated with a continuous scene that is seamless. The scenery moves toward you to make it appear that you are moving forward. You like the scenery so you walk backwards to enjoy the scenery longer, but because the scene moves faster and faster, it appears that you are walking forward. You will never reach your goals, of course, but the allusion of moving forward is so strong that all your mental factors play along and, as though in a trance, you play the game.
Now, to the stupid protocols that got me to this point. I take two blood pressure medicines, both low dosage medicines that are available in generic forms. Together, they keep my blood pressure well under control even when I do stupid stuff and do not watch my weight. So, let us look at protocol number one. It is a rule that blood pressure must be within a certain range, even if those forces that affect it are not controlled, and the control of the blood pressure can and should be regulated artificially. I like this protocol, and though I am the poorer for using it to my advantage, I am happy as I move backward.
Protocol number two is the one that says that if I am going to use these artificial crutches, then I have to abide by a series of rules that allocate monies to parties that have positioned themselves within the process so as to benefit from my weakness. This starts with the doctor with the really nice office and flat screened televisions and minions creating and filing paperwork. If I want these pills that cost less than one cent per pill to produce, I have to pay the doctor at least $175 every so often. Now that I am on Medicare, I might add that you pay the doctor now.
But Protocol number two has many sub-protocols, and the really neat part about them is that no one knows exactly what they are. I will attempt to identify some of these. The first is a protocol that says that Uncle Sam has a stake in my situation and thus has passed a law, under George Bush and the Republicans I might add, that says that since I am 65 and on Medicare, then I have to get my medicines according to a set of rules they have spelled out in a bill that is too complex to ever understand. Here is the sum total of that bill. It is a way of making sure that drug companies can, from now till the end of time, make obscene amounts of money by not having to compete in an open and fair market place. You can't pay for those expensive medicines? Well, join Uncle Sam's program and he'll show you how you really could afford it, and some more for the obscene profits.
The drug programs that were passed under the Republicans, are a set of protocols that include the fact that if you do not join, then no licensed drug dispenser can charge you less than some high arbitrary amount for your drugs. If you will not join the program, then they will force you into the program by making it impossible for you to afford even the least costly of drugs. My two prescriptions, without a drug program, were to cost me over $35.00 per month and the pharmacist insisted that no one could sell them to me for less because that was the law.
So here was my quandary. How do I get around all the stupid protocols and get the two prescriptions that I needed for a reasonable price. The doctor protocol is a tough one, but now that I am on Medicare, those visits are no longer $140 to $190 out of my pocket. In fact, they do not cost me, as I said before, they cost you. So, for the doctor protocol, I simply employ another protocol that shifts the cost to you. I knew that you would like that one.
The second protocol is possible if I just say that I do not have insurance and do not tell them my age. In that case, several outlets will let me have the pills for a total cost of $8.00 per month. I will not name those places, but I am sure that most of you know them whether I spout their names or not. The local pharmacist at the drug store that I once used told me that I would get caught and they would force me to pay the higher price. I flipped him off as I walked away.
This morning I opened up Facebook and I had a question from a friend about whether or not the athletic teams of the high school where I once taught had an activity bus. We did not, we used a regular bus that was assigned to the school. We did not have the protocol that said that they could not be used for insurance reasons, or whatever. The question was enough to drive me here to attack the whole world of protocols that have made our lives so complex, and expensive, that we have lost fact of what is going forward and what is going backward. I will elaborate on this in later posts.
Last month, I ran into one of the really stupid protocols that got me to thinking about them and how we are changing life, not with actual advancement of any tangible kind, but with rules that supplant the actual production of wealth and make it appear as if we are advancing while we go backwards.
Look at it this way. You are in a long hallway on your way to a door on the far, far end. The walls of the hallway are decorated with a continuous scene that is seamless. The scenery moves toward you to make it appear that you are moving forward. You like the scenery so you walk backwards to enjoy the scenery longer, but because the scene moves faster and faster, it appears that you are walking forward. You will never reach your goals, of course, but the allusion of moving forward is so strong that all your mental factors play along and, as though in a trance, you play the game.
Now, to the stupid protocols that got me to this point. I take two blood pressure medicines, both low dosage medicines that are available in generic forms. Together, they keep my blood pressure well under control even when I do stupid stuff and do not watch my weight. So, let us look at protocol number one. It is a rule that blood pressure must be within a certain range, even if those forces that affect it are not controlled, and the control of the blood pressure can and should be regulated artificially. I like this protocol, and though I am the poorer for using it to my advantage, I am happy as I move backward.
Protocol number two is the one that says that if I am going to use these artificial crutches, then I have to abide by a series of rules that allocate monies to parties that have positioned themselves within the process so as to benefit from my weakness. This starts with the doctor with the really nice office and flat screened televisions and minions creating and filing paperwork. If I want these pills that cost less than one cent per pill to produce, I have to pay the doctor at least $175 every so often. Now that I am on Medicare, I might add that you pay the doctor now.
But Protocol number two has many sub-protocols, and the really neat part about them is that no one knows exactly what they are. I will attempt to identify some of these. The first is a protocol that says that Uncle Sam has a stake in my situation and thus has passed a law, under George Bush and the Republicans I might add, that says that since I am 65 and on Medicare, then I have to get my medicines according to a set of rules they have spelled out in a bill that is too complex to ever understand. Here is the sum total of that bill. It is a way of making sure that drug companies can, from now till the end of time, make obscene amounts of money by not having to compete in an open and fair market place. You can't pay for those expensive medicines? Well, join Uncle Sam's program and he'll show you how you really could afford it, and some more for the obscene profits.
The drug programs that were passed under the Republicans, are a set of protocols that include the fact that if you do not join, then no licensed drug dispenser can charge you less than some high arbitrary amount for your drugs. If you will not join the program, then they will force you into the program by making it impossible for you to afford even the least costly of drugs. My two prescriptions, without a drug program, were to cost me over $35.00 per month and the pharmacist insisted that no one could sell them to me for less because that was the law.
So here was my quandary. How do I get around all the stupid protocols and get the two prescriptions that I needed for a reasonable price. The doctor protocol is a tough one, but now that I am on Medicare, those visits are no longer $140 to $190 out of my pocket. In fact, they do not cost me, as I said before, they cost you. So, for the doctor protocol, I simply employ another protocol that shifts the cost to you. I knew that you would like that one.
The second protocol is possible if I just say that I do not have insurance and do not tell them my age. In that case, several outlets will let me have the pills for a total cost of $8.00 per month. I will not name those places, but I am sure that most of you know them whether I spout their names or not. The local pharmacist at the drug store that I once used told me that I would get caught and they would force me to pay the higher price. I flipped him off as I walked away.
This morning I opened up Facebook and I had a question from a friend about whether or not the athletic teams of the high school where I once taught had an activity bus. We did not, we used a regular bus that was assigned to the school. We did not have the protocol that said that they could not be used for insurance reasons, or whatever. The question was enough to drive me here to attack the whole world of protocols that have made our lives so complex, and expensive, that we have lost fact of what is going forward and what is going backward. I will elaborate on this in later posts.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Clyde and Nell Moore's Children and Grandchildren
Last and only picture that I have of all of we brothers togetherI have no idea why we did not take more pictures together, but we obviously did not. The best that I can calculate from the picture is that it was taken in 1968 or 1969. The only way that I can do that is that I know that the younger one of us, Kevin, looks about 10 or 11 in the picture and he was born in 1958. Roger, the one in the green shirt, and the fourth by birth, died of Hodgkins Disease in 1977, shortly before his 28th birthday.
By birthday and year born:
Donnie Parks Moore, the one in the two toned blue shirt was born on May 29, 1941.
Wayne Allen Moore, the one in with the red sweater was born on July 25, 1943.
James Aubrey Moore, (me), the one in the white shirt was born on Nov. 27, 1944
Roger Clyde Moore was born on February 14, 1950
Roy Kevin Moore was born on April 14, 1958.
By profession we were and are:
Donnie works in engineering for Duke Power Co. as he has for 40 or so years though now he do so on a contract basis.
Wayne worked for Rexham Corporation until he retired as its President in 2002, I think. He briefly owned his own cruise booking company.
Aubrey was a math teacher for 12 years and has owned his own custom drapery business since. I still work.
Roger worked as a bartender at Rhineland House in Charlotte for several years before his death.
Kevin was a nuclear operator in the Navy before working shutdowns at nuclear power plants for many years. He then worked for several companies in IT before becoming a stay at home dad for his son, George.
Wives were:
Donnie married Nancy Farris of Charlotte and Harding High School in 1963. Nancy has been a stay at home mom most of those years.
Wayne married Reen Harris of Chapel Hill in 1969. Reen has also been a stay at home mom and wife most of those years.
Aubrey Moore married another teacher, Sarah Moore(now Sarah Moore Moore) of Gastonia and Ashley High School, in 1968. Sarah taught for 10 years, worked in the business, and worked as a stay at home mom when possible.
Roger married Patti Flynn of Charlotte and Myers Park High School in 1972. Patti has held many positions and has lived in several countries outside the U.S., including Peru, Germany, Pakistan, Thailand, and short stints in others. Patti is now an environmental lawyer living in Bangkok, Thailand and writes environmental law for third world countries. Patti never remarried.
Kevin married Dr. Liz Fink, an internist, from Warner Robbins, Georgia in 1995. Liz has worked as a physician since, allowing Kevin to be the stay at home parent.
Children are:
Donnie and Nancy: Sheri Evans(the eldest of the grandchildren) and Donna Youngblood.
Wayne and Rene: Katie Rakestraw, Allen Moore, and Meredith Moore(married to a Moore).
Aubrey and Sarah: Brian Moore, Darren Moore, David (Ormand) Moore
Roger and Patti: No children
Kevin and Liz: George Moore( adopted form Cambodia).
Directional Shifts and Renewal of Purpose
Having grown up part of a couple of clans that were filled with real doozie of personalities, I came to see families as imperfect, or terribly messed-up, you take your choice. As I live, my feelings of being a part of something that I have to overcome have been replaced by an acceptance of my family as-is. That has been a long journey and I am very often at war with my own feelings, even today.
Family, even the distant ends of it, has a strong pull on me. As I sit here and write this, just behind me, spread out over the bed that is in this room, are hundreds of pictures of family from as far back as 80 years. I love looking at them, naming all the poeple in the pictures, and relating to anyone willing to listen the qualities and relationship to me of the persons pictured.
I inherited this group of pictures from my deceased parents. Nobody else really wanted them. There are many in there that I really love and cherish. I have been looking at some of them off and on most of my life. Many are of me and my brothers when we were small children. A really special one is me sitting at the feet of my mother, who is standing; just me and mom, wow.
We are much more than our history. We are what we do today and the plans and preperations that we make for tomorrow. We are the kind word we give to a stranger and we are the promise that we remake to our spouse to love him or her till death do us part. We are the vision that we act upon when we vote, when we give to charity, and when we help build community institutions.
And yet, I sit in the midst of history that I have collected. I catalogue it and I sort out that worth keeping and that not worth another viewing, reading, or hearing. Thanks to digital cameras and recorders, and digital storage, my storehouse of that history now runs into the tens of thousands of pictures, hundreds of short movies, thousands of songs, and thousands of pages of written history.
And so, last year I set out on a project. I will not leave this mountain without some story that it tells the willing listener or reader. I will make some sense of it all and that is who I will be today and tomorrow, the person who gives some form to all of this that people to come might learn from it, or simply entertain themselves by listening and reading.
Thus, this blog, which I am using as a sorter, a gauge, and a chance to see some things in print so that I might know what is worth the keeping and what is not. I have taken off some time from the blog to evaluate what I have written and decide the direction that I want to go. I have some idea of what is worth my time and what is not, and if you follow the blog, then you will begin to see the changes that I intend to make.
While I have toned down the political, I will always have comment to make on issues that I consider too important to overlook, or where I feel that I have a worthwhile perspective. But, I have lost much of the political passion that I had only a few years ago. At most levels of government now, the people there are the people that I supported, so I have little to complain about, and I am willing to trust my instincts and wait on good results.
My travel is being diminished because of the economy and Sarah's physical problems. That is fine, we have traveled most of this country and much of Canada, and I have few feelings of need to go see places that I have not seen. I love the road, but I do not have to have the road.
My efforts will turn more to stories of people, many times family, and those stories will probably have a running theme of acceptance of the things that I can not change, and would not change just to fit my narrow view of what is good and what is bad.
And, while this blog will continue to be used as a lab, I will co-ordinate with others to tell stories using other mediums. It is my hope that in the not too distant future, those efforts will yield fruits. That has to be seen.
And those stories will be stories of my family members, largely. Accepting them as they were, I find that much of their lives are very compelling, and I want anyone willing to read this blog to get a chance to know the folks that I called cousin, aunt, uncle, grandma, grandpa, brother, mom, dad, or somehow connected to all those people.
Family, even the distant ends of it, has a strong pull on me. As I sit here and write this, just behind me, spread out over the bed that is in this room, are hundreds of pictures of family from as far back as 80 years. I love looking at them, naming all the poeple in the pictures, and relating to anyone willing to listen the qualities and relationship to me of the persons pictured.
I inherited this group of pictures from my deceased parents. Nobody else really wanted them. There are many in there that I really love and cherish. I have been looking at some of them off and on most of my life. Many are of me and my brothers when we were small children. A really special one is me sitting at the feet of my mother, who is standing; just me and mom, wow.
We are much more than our history. We are what we do today and the plans and preperations that we make for tomorrow. We are the kind word we give to a stranger and we are the promise that we remake to our spouse to love him or her till death do us part. We are the vision that we act upon when we vote, when we give to charity, and when we help build community institutions.
And yet, I sit in the midst of history that I have collected. I catalogue it and I sort out that worth keeping and that not worth another viewing, reading, or hearing. Thanks to digital cameras and recorders, and digital storage, my storehouse of that history now runs into the tens of thousands of pictures, hundreds of short movies, thousands of songs, and thousands of pages of written history.
And so, last year I set out on a project. I will not leave this mountain without some story that it tells the willing listener or reader. I will make some sense of it all and that is who I will be today and tomorrow, the person who gives some form to all of this that people to come might learn from it, or simply entertain themselves by listening and reading.
Thus, this blog, which I am using as a sorter, a gauge, and a chance to see some things in print so that I might know what is worth the keeping and what is not. I have taken off some time from the blog to evaluate what I have written and decide the direction that I want to go. I have some idea of what is worth my time and what is not, and if you follow the blog, then you will begin to see the changes that I intend to make.
While I have toned down the political, I will always have comment to make on issues that I consider too important to overlook, or where I feel that I have a worthwhile perspective. But, I have lost much of the political passion that I had only a few years ago. At most levels of government now, the people there are the people that I supported, so I have little to complain about, and I am willing to trust my instincts and wait on good results.
My travel is being diminished because of the economy and Sarah's physical problems. That is fine, we have traveled most of this country and much of Canada, and I have few feelings of need to go see places that I have not seen. I love the road, but I do not have to have the road.
My efforts will turn more to stories of people, many times family, and those stories will probably have a running theme of acceptance of the things that I can not change, and would not change just to fit my narrow view of what is good and what is bad.
And, while this blog will continue to be used as a lab, I will co-ordinate with others to tell stories using other mediums. It is my hope that in the not too distant future, those efforts will yield fruits. That has to be seen.
And those stories will be stories of my family members, largely. Accepting them as they were, I find that much of their lives are very compelling, and I want anyone willing to read this blog to get a chance to know the folks that I called cousin, aunt, uncle, grandma, grandpa, brother, mom, dad, or somehow connected to all those people.
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