Love

    I remember Christmas as a boy in the deep, dark woods on my Grandparent's farm.  I can remember the routine of tending to the cows being interrupted by a trip into the woods to cut a tree and decorating it and trips to the attic for Christmas paraphernalia.  My Grandparents had amassed the most marvelous train set. 75 different cars. Two engines, a coal and a diesel locomotive. Two transformers and hundreds of pieces of track, trestles, tunnels and accessories.  About once a year we would take it down and play with it on a few idle summer days as well.
    For some reason those Christmases were always white.  The house was always filled with those who could make the trip that particular year.  Bustle and baking, comfort and cooking.  Gossip and wrapping paper.  Scenes that Norman Rockwell had in mind for us all which were repeated across the country.  Warmth and cheer, all cast in the softened colors of memory.  A whiff of coal smoke takes me back 60 years and longer.
    My Grandparents had eight children.  By the time I happened along those children had all become adults well on their various ways in life.  I noticed a few things about that that I have always tried to remember.  Instead of having children my Grandparents had a wide circle of adult friends and they treated them exactly that way.  It was a good example and it showed me that I would know my children far longer as adults rather than kids.  With my own kids I always tried to think of the adults I would like to know and I always tried to imagine the qualities in those adults I would like to see.
    That eventually got me to thinking about friendship and loved ones.  I've noticed that my friends do treat me with affection and toleration just as we all do.  Friends will seek and value my advice and even take it from time to time without criticism or condemnation.  Friends will ask for or offer assistance without reservation or resentment.  They will freely offer advice and be critical without reservation, condescension or self-consciousness.  These seem to be hallmarks of true affection.
    On the other hand,  loving a person seems to be a terrible thing to do to them.  It seems to open the door to all kinds of negative features of human relations.  I've always tried to treat loved ones as though I just really, really liked them.  To the point my wife knows that my saying  ' I really like you'  is high praise indeed.
    I really like  Christmas Eves and remember them in great detail.  Christmas Day, not so much.  They always seem like a sort of  anti-climax.  I will say, in all this time, there has never been a Christmas day I would call bad just less memorable than the evening before, somehow less special.  I dunno.  How do you rank something like that?  You don't.  You shouldn't.  You can't.
    I really like Christmas Eve and I proved it by getting married on that evening years ago.  Our joke was it was either very romantic or we had just ruined a perfectly good holiday.  I guess the jury is still out on that.  It's been a pretty good quarter century of Holidays.
    One more thing:  Tinsel, no more than four strands at a time and no throwing.
    Merry Christmas to you and yours.  I hope you really, really like your Holidays.

There Is This

    An awful lot has been said about the current first lady.  People across the political spectrum have shared their thoughts on Melania.  You do have to admit the circumstance is "unusual" to say the very least.
    Other than a veritable cottage industry growing up around the idea the woman hates Trump not much real comment has been spent on exploring what she really thinks.  She really doesn't have the opportunity for frank comment.  That's understandable.  On top of that her accent, fairly or unfairly, is a handicap to any communication she might impart.  However, if you factor out the obvious plagiarism and the  'Moose and Squirrel' aspect of her accent you have to assume there is an active mind there.  The grammar is perfect and the words all have the right number of syllables.  If you were trying to send some sort of message you certainly could do worse than plagiarizing Michelle Obama.  If you wanted to be subversive to current circumstances you could hardly do better than Michelle Obama.  It may be wrong to ascribe things to the failings of subordinates.
    Melania recently compared the White House to a South American prison. That's not too unusual or really noteworthy.  Bill Clinton once said the White House was the crown jewel of the federal prison system.  Who remembers that?  More telling,  she recently said she'd rather spend Christmas on a desert island.  I don't think she's happy but if you look at her photos over the years, both famous and not so famous, no one is gonna call her 'Smiley'.  Apparently, you can't get her to crack a smile with lots of jewels and a Gulf Stream.  Some women are just like that.
    So, the question becomes: Is the first lady being deliberately subversive or are these just off-hand, casual remarks,  maybe subtle jokes from an active mind?
    Consider this: The White House has been decorated like a scene from "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and the first lady came out in costume as Sally/ Shock from that movie.  You would have to believe the woman is completely culturally ignorant to not recognize that was,  not a cry for help but a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
    No matter what you think about that it certainly creates an interesting dynamic and probably led to some interesting private residence conversations.

A Mistake

    It's a trick of age I suspect.  I remember 1974 as though it was yesterday.  On the other hand,  I remember yesterday as though it was 1974.  Apparently, you'll have that.  It can be sort of annoying sometimes but usually it's just nice.  I sure can hold a grudge  but I tend to forget recent arguments.
    Speaking of holding grudges. I sure didn't like Richard Nixon much and in the ensuing years my opinion hasn't gone up to any measurable degree.  I thought it was a mistake in 1968 and I still think so.  How's that for holding a grudge?
    I, like most of the country, was taken by surprise when Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon.  A lot of people seem to think Ford's pardon was the factor that made Jimmy Carter President.  Nah, people didn't like most anything to do with the republicans by that time and Carter was a very good candidate.  He seemed to speak directly to the Angels of Our Better Nature.  That's sure fire if you're following a sour puss.  Gerald Ford was a nice guy but Carter surely followed Nixon in the nation's mind.  Carter's major shortcoming was he actually wasn't a politician.  He was completely unprepared for what the people surrounding Reagan were prepared to do.  He was a genuine nice guy.  I don't think it had sunk in to him there actually were people of that ilk in government.  I digress.
    People didn't like the idea of pardoning Nixon much.  I understood at the time and until recently thought it was the right thing to do.  Nixon wasn't just the symbol of dishonesty.  He was the symbol of the failure of the ideas that got us into Vietnam and by that time those ideas were recognized as poison.  We realized we had been sold a deadly bill of goods.  A few more years of criminal trials of Nixon were not what was needed.  It was time to heal and move on with the business of the nation.
    The business of the nation.  That brings up a mistake about that era.  There have been several reasons given for the economic troubles we faced at that time.  None of them are correct.  There were really only three things that mattered.  The foremost problem was knuckling under to OPEC.  That really screwed us all.  It exacerbated the other two.  Second was the economic wind down from the Vietnam War.  The third one is never mentioned but was very important.  The Baby Boomers came of age in that decade and entered the job market in unprecedented numbers.  The pressure that put on the labor markets can't be overstated.  It would help if it were even noticed to any degree but there you have it.
    But that's not the mistake I mean.  Given what's going on now it seems to have been a mistake to not make an example out of Nixon. There are people who seem to have gotten the idea that blatant, literal crimes against our way of life carry rather light personal consequences.  Nixon actually dying in prison might have better informed the malefactors.  I don't know about you but I prefer my malefactors better informed and with a tad more class.  I prefer Ceasare Romero over Heath Ledger; Burgess Meredith over Danny DeVito.
    Here's more of that mistake.  The Federal Government is not a business.  It can't be run as a business and a businessman almost certainly will be at least incompetent if not an outright disaster.  One aspect we're witnessing now is the tendency to misunderstand the penalties for failure.  In a business based on bombast, exaggeration and sharp dealing the greatest penalties are bankruptcy and occasionally subordinates do short stretches in jail.  In politics the ultimate penalties can find you hanging upside down at an abandoned gas station while thousands cheer.  Though not as extreme, we did miss an opportunity for Nixon to set a useful example and that was a mistake we are paying for.

Moore vs Jones

    There were a lot of things about the recent special Senate election that have been reported wrong and or just didn't happen.  As the pundits adroitly manipulated the numbers from the last several elections in Alabama to divine what might happen they totally missed the import of the numbers they were looking at.
    The first and most important fact that is never reported enough is states like Alabama are NOT "deep red". They are purple at best and they will remain so.  The reported recapitulations of the last several years of statewide elections in Alabama show the votes have always been very close.  I would really like to know what roll increased scrutiny of rural voting machines played.  No matter. There were over 22,000 write in votes for other candidates.  You have to believe they were republicans who never would have voted for Jones but couldn't vote for Moore.  It is reasonable to observe a generic republican candidate would have won albeit narrowly.  It was Moore's election to lose and he stayed in and did just that.  Only Moore could have lost this election but it's a shame he lost over 30 year old allegations whether they were true, distasteful or not true.  The guy has been a flat out, objectionable nut case in much more recent years.  It's hard to imagine someone like this has stayed out of jail let alone held public office; without visiting any malls.
    It does seem to be a rejection of the influence of Trump.  First, he backed Luther Strange in the primary and was rejected by the voters and then came late to the cause of Roy Moore and was once again rejected.  It's reasonable to say those 22,000 write-in votes were votes against Trump.  It's also reasonable to say Strange would have won the general election.  However, is anyone surprised a real estate tycoon from New York doesn't have a lot of influence in the deep south?
    In spite of what the pundits say there doesn't seem to be any predictive value for next year beyond the ordinary. The out party is going to be highly motivated because they are the "out" party. They will turn out in great numbers and the "in" party will lose seats.  Trump is very unpopular and will be a drag on republican candidates.  Nothing that happened  in Alabama will change that but we see projection after projection saying there is some indication of a sea-change. Nah.
    We saw the same "urban" verses "rural" divide and it's being much discussed.  The truth is, no such thing seems to actually exist.  What has happened and is happening is where people live in greater numbers they vote against republican candidates.  The standard republican message of exclusion for whatever reason just doesn't work on Americans grouped in large numbers.  It may be that people living in closer proximity understand exclusion doesn't work.  It is probably just a fluke in numbers distribution in large groups.  Now, you can't really sell that on CNN but if you're a political consultant or a politician you should understand and remember.
    The election coverage did re-prove one time honored axiom: Unless it is currently on fire or being shot into space, television news is worthless as a source of information.

Remember Pearl Harbor

    I love conspiracy theories. They are just simple enough in their complexity to be accessible to all.  In a world of seemingly ever more intricate and intractable problems they offer such simple, satisfying explanations.  All you have to do to feel just a tad superior is to connect the dots. Unfortunately,  the world has not changed.  Things have always been intricate and intractable.  People haven't changed either.
    I would eagerly believe all conspiracy theories except for two undeniable facts.  You should never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity and most conspiracies really boil down to confederacies of dunces.
    Conspiracy theories can be very powerful.  The international communist conspiracy for a time stripped democracy from the United States.  Currently, the international Islamic conspiracy has us pretty much eating our young.  That's nothing compared to what the international Zionist conspiracy theory did to Europe in the early part of the last century. That theory eventually produced World War Two.
    You think WWII was something?  Wait till you get a load of this.  The World Trade Center was attacked twice because the attackers saw it as the center of Jewish Banking in the world.  No other reason.  It was the locus of the Zionist Conspiracy. How's that for a conspiracy theory?   When you consider the World Trade Center was a failed real estate development,  owned by the Port Authority because it couldn't be run at a profit the whole thing is pretty funny.  Here's a conspiracy factoid for ya.  You can make the case Manhattan real estate brokers and building owners were primary beneficiaries of the 9/11 attacks because it so dramatically changed the vacancy factor for prime office space.  Hmm. I wonder if the new building has anywhere near the offices the Twin Towers had?  Who's a big owner of office space in Manhattan?
    See how easy it is to string together simple statements and questions to create an almost Byzantine world?  But that's not my point.  And I do have one.
    I was originally thinking about the importance of institutional memory in organizations large and small.  In this particular instance I was thinking of the U S Navy.  Pearl Harbor is, in one way, a story of how institutional memory was preserved.  It's also the basis of a conspiracy theory.  It's a dandy and parts of it have the useful feature of being true.
    The story is Roosevelt and his cabal knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor and did nothing because they needed an excuse for a reluctant America to enter WW II.  We had broken the Japanese military codes and knew the date and hour and just waited.   Some of that is sorta true.
    At that point we had broken the Japanese diplomatic codes but it wasn't till later we broke the Japanese military codes.  Nevertheless, we did know they were coming and where and when.  The idea of a reluctant American public is kinda funny.  A couple years of contemporary Gallup polling shows that somewhere around 80% of Americans thought war with the Axis Powers was inevitable. There may have been a need for casus belli to motivate republican isolationists in Congress but the public was ready to fight.  We're Americans by God!  We'll fight at the drop of a hat.  I wish people would quit believing that's not true.  In point of fact we are the most violent people who have ever lived.  We are the people who conceived and built an atomic weapon and then we actually used the damned thing.  Now we have 10 or 12 thousand laying around ready to go.
    The Arizona was the most modern battleship in the fleet. It was built in 1916. In the 1920's and '30's Japan had built a modern battle fleet.  The truth is: Had our battle fleet met the Japanese fleet it would have been a disaster. Our fleet would have been dispatched to the bottom along with the crews.
The difference on that Sunday morning was the crews were at liberty.  It's a truth of combat that those who have survived a first encounter tend to continue to survive subsequent encounters.  There is a deadly truth to the phrase, ' battle hardened veterans'.  For example: The veterans of North Africa and the Italian campaigns cut thru the Germans in France like a knife.
    So, by allowing the Japanese to sink a fleet of obsolete ships while their crews were ashore,  institutional memory was preserved and then employed in modern ships to defeat the Imperial Fleet.
    It was a conscious decision. The lives of 1,300 people were traded for the lives of maybe 130,000.  How would you like to be confronted with that decision?
    So, was it some sort of conspiracy?  No, it was a choice made by decent men faced with totally unattractive alternatives.
    The question we face is: Do we currently have men who could make such a decision?

Scribble, Scribble, Scribble, Ay Mr Gibbon?

    That was said by Prince William Henry, Duke of Glouster and Edinburgh  to Mr Edward Gibbon who wrote " The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire".  A magnum opus in every sense of the word.  Even I haven't waded thru that total employment of the King's English in it's entirety. The parts I have had occasion to read are actually quite good. The guy is readable.  Prince William's remark was one of the great put-downs.
    It made me think of "Bulfinch's Mythology". Now there was a tome and it's been a standard text for generations.  Greek Mythology is spectacular as fantasy, science fiction, imaginative fiction.  It's the basis for so much of Greek tragedy and general drama.  Yeah, this guy managed to make it dry as dust and basically killed it.  You try reading that shit.  Even I couldn't do it and in those days I smoked dope.
    I'm not big on memorizing dates except in a general way.  It is good to have a sense of the order of events.  If you have a sense of that you can better understand why this guy did or said this when he did.  Sometimes when she did.  That's a different discussion.  So much of history is dismissed as memorizing dates.  That's too bad.  If I know the era I can look up the dates.
    To me,  history reads like a good novel.  It's certainly not history's fault some of the writers suck. McHistory or the History Channel has kinda bridged that gap if the bridge builder lacked opposable thumbs.  At least it's got people interested.  Sometimes that leads to more detailed reading.  I can't tell you the times I've been reading some historian or other and said to myself, " So that's why!"  Things that make ya go hmmm.  I like that.
    So, there is a point. Honest!  I can think of three real tomes that are very popular.  For my generation it's "The Lord of the Rings".  If you count "The Hobbit" and the "Silmarillion" that's gotta be 1,600 pages.   In actuality, it's a rip off of Norse Mythology but in practice, it's a detailed history complete with dates and significant personages whom we all know.  It is good and evil.  It has pith and moment.
    The other that comes immediately to mind is  all the Harry Potter novels.  More good and evil and pith and moment.  Each one seemingly longer and more detailed than the other.  Then we come to the current magnum opus: " A Song of Fire and Ice".  About ten of you know that's the real title of the series of novels  known as "Game of Thrones".
    They're all histories. They have important personages and pivotal dates.  We all can recite them.  We all know the figures true motivations and impacts.  What are we talking about, maybe 5,000 pages total?
    If the average person had spent as much time reading the history of their own culture as they have reading this drek we would live in a far better society.  It would be damned hard to sell a person thusly informed a bill of goods as we so often see today and sadly yesterday.  Jesus!  If you think you only have so much time to read, read something worthwhile. It's fascinating. Honest!
    Here's some examples.  Did you know that JFK was actually in the gallery at the British Parliament when they declared war on Germany in 1939?   He was so good at managing history because he'd seen so much of it first hand.  Did you know that Franklin Roosevelt not only had been Secretary of the Navy but made the choice, when struck with polio at 39 years of age to forego extensive rehabilitation to pursue his political career?  The career that would make him not just the governor of New York but President?  Did you know that's why it's called "The March of Dimes"?  Did you know that's why FDR's face is on the dime?  Did you know that Harry Truman was not just the last President to not have a college degree  but was an artillery captain in France in WWI? Harry also said, "The only thing new under the sun is the history you haven't read yet."
    If you had spent as much time reading the history of your own country as you wasted reading  "Game of Thrones"  you would know those things.
    Winter is coming. You'll need something to read.

That Voo Doo That You Do So Well.

    When George Herbert Walker Bush campaigned against Ronald Reagan in 1980, he described Reagan's economic proposals as "Voo Doo Economics".  He was right but he could never really explain why because, as became obvious later, he had no real grasp of what was going on around him.
    It has always disappointed me to have to differentiate between presidents Bush. The idea someone was dumb enough to create a second one just kills me.
    Later, much later, Cheney famously said,  Reagan proved deficits don't matter.  He didn't mean incurring debt didn't matter in the long run.  He meant deficits didn't matter politically because the average person just didn't understand.  Lucky for him, he was right.  It was unfortunate for us.
    If you factor out Social Security and Medicare outlays, debt service on national borrowing is the second largest budget item behind Defense. In a very few years, it will e our primary expense. Social Security and Medicare can be ignored because they collect as much as we spend as a general rule.  It can't be said often enough:  It's our money whether you're 80 or 18.
    In that vein; here's another lie they love to tell.  There has been no "raid" on Social Security.  Over the years the government has borrowed from itself at no interest from the Social Security Trust Fund. The "no interest" part of that formulation is very important as, hopefully, I can explain.
    Social Security has been described as a Ponzi Scheme.  Maybe so.  But there's no denying it's been an economic boon and benefit to us all, 18 to 80.
    Deficits do matter and they matter much more than anyone has seemed to notice or admit.  The truth is,  unbridled spending unsupported by taxation has contributed to a skyrocketing of expense and taxation since the middle 1970's.  That's when the lie,  lower taxes would lead to greater revenue started to be told. You can call it  Voo Doo or trickle down or some sort of Laffer Curve.  Common sense first and then cold hard experience makes any iteration of the idea nothing but an outright lie. G W's tax cuts did not create anything but exploding debt.  2.5 trillion put on a credit card over 10 years.  Imagine what it is now when you consider the effects of compound interest.
    This is the part everyone seems to miss.  All these tax cuts since 1981, have been aimed at the famous 1%.  They pay such a great preponderance of all income taxes they actually pay about 24% of all Federal Revenue.  Frankly, if they don't have additional access to government you'd have to wonder why not.  They pay the damned bills.  So, why don't they see that every one of these debt growing proposals that reduce their tax bill this year grows their tax bill next year?  Why can't they see how much lower everyone's taxes would be if we weren't paying three hundred billion a year in debt service on the money that's been borrowed?  Not only that, at the present rate, it's projected to be six hundred billion by 2020.  Now there is a proposal to make that even worse.  I'm at a loss to imagine why the 1 percent isn't just enraged by these deficit growing proposals.  I thought rich people were supposed to be smart.
    Let's be honest here.  Elected officials are never going to cut Social Security or Medicare.  You can bribe them, err, I mean contribute to them all you want but they not just want to be re-elected they have to be re-elected to do anything for you.  So, that's out.  There are 324 million Americans, all wanting and needing goods and services only the government can provide.  The services we provide to the less fortunate don't really amount to a hill of beans compared to what we've just outright handed the rich in the form of bailouts and we're just not gonna stop doing it.  We're too nice for that.
    So, what's that leave us?  The only thing left is to make an effort to reduce what we pay in debt service.  That means we pay our damned bills as they come due.  That means responsible taxation.
    I have to say it again.  I thought rich people were supposed to be smart.
    Let's have a show of hands.  How many families have sat around the kitchen table and realized they wouldn't have the financial problems they faced if they didn't have consumer ( read credit card) debt? Now think about the fact the government borrows money at terms resembling the predatory practices of the worst credit cards.
    Geez, pay the damned bills and just laugh at the politicians who suggest otherwise.

The Performance Enhancing Drug Scandal

    When someone says performance enhancing drugs we think of Sosa, McGuire, Canseco, Barry Bonds. Asterisks in sports record books.  That's the tip of the iceberg.  Bonds probably typifies the problem in his motivations. They are common to what so many face.
    Bonds was a phenomenal baseball player though he was not well liked.  He came into the National League with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was part of the foundation of a very good team that was blocked by the Atlanta Braves from true record book greatness.  Old fan's memories die hard.  Hope springs eternal, as they say.
    Barry had an entitled, resentful side to him.  He, one time, said he thought people in Pittsburgh didn't like him much because he was black.  The city with heroes such as Roberto "Bobby" Clemente,  Joe Green,  Lynn Swann,  Willie "Cool Pappa" Stargel said,  no, we don't like you because you're an asshole and he went to San Francisco without so much as a wave good-bye.
    Once in San Francisco he continued to build on an unquestioned Hall of Fame career.  Then the juiced bats and juiced arms of the Sosas and McGuires came along.  He began to fear he was being eclipsed by inferior talents artificially enhanced.  Fear.  Just fear.
    He began taking performance enhancing drugs and his asterisk was insured.
    Abuse of these drugs didn't stop there and it was never confined to sports.  Since, at least, the late 1970's, police have been abusing these drugs for the very same reason: Fear.  Just fear.
    In my personal experience I have known 3 officers who abused these drugs and can think of at least 3 others I've come in contact with but don't know personally.  In forty years it has created a dangerous ethos we see and read the consequences of on a regular basis.  Police agencies from small towns to big cities have paid literally millions over the years for the misbehavior associated with roid rage.  But it's worse than that.
    These people because of their perceived toughness and false aggression have moved into training and doctrine positions and passed  their arbitrary aggression into policy.  The most innocent of statements from the most innocent of citizens can and commonly does immediately escalate into a violent incident for no reason other than very poor training driven by the effects of performance enhancing drugs.  How else do you explain some of these incidents?   How do you explain some of these frenzies of unwarranted violence?  It's become so pervasive it's hard to not notice and it's hard to pick any given one incident as an example.
    The answer, that won't be implemented for some long time,  is universal  PED testing of law enforcement personnel from command on down.  This problem has had forty years to fester and it sure is gonna take some fixing.  There is a conspiracy of silence and it will take quite some time to penetrate but it is the real PED scandal in the U S.  

Thanksgiving Maybe.

    I was in a
            laundromat.
    Yes,  it was a laundromat.    I was there.  It was Thanksgiving.  It must have been 1983.
     I can't see how that would matter.  The year I mean.  I sometimes can't see how any of this matters. Then, now or ever.  But it runs thru my head.  I can never tell if it wants to be said or if I just want to say it.
    I can never tell.
    It was Thanksgiving.   I said that.
    I was
    invited to dinner.  I needed clean clothing.  I was in a laundromat.
    I said that.
    This is a story that needs carefully told. There are things I wanna know but there are things I don't really want to hear..  Some of those things are the same and I have to be careful.  It's kinda foolish.  It's my story.  I must surely know what's in it.  Let's see if I do.
    I was supposed to meet a girl.
    I met a girl.
    She came in while I was washing my clothes and reading.  Always reading.
    She was badly dressed and carrying a large shoulder bag.  She had badly arranged hair and the facial ricktus of the totally self-involved,  perhaps tormented by inner demons. She could have been attractive on a better day if she were in better circumstances.  She seemed homeless.  She moved thru the place checking all the coin returns and looking in the washers and dryers for the forgotten quarter or crumpled dollar that might be found.  She was gone in less than the time it took me to make my assessment of her and her circumstances.
    Called away from my reading and my reveries it took me a moment to realize I had about $200 on me and for a mere tenth of my wealth I could make all the difference in her day.
    Her Thanksgiving Day.
    I went to the door and surveyed the parking lot of the little shopping strip but she was gone. I never saw her before and I've never seen her since.  It's 34 years.  There's no reason to think about it but I do.  A moment lost.  I've even had the thought that thinking I might have done something of value is no more than conceit.  I berate myself for the larger things I haven't done in those 34 years and belittle myself for thinking,  instead,  of some chance thing I might have done.
    I might have done.
    I was supposed to meet a girl.  I said that.
    I was invited to Thanksgiving Dinner to specifically meet a girl.  Her friends, our co-workers, thought we would make a couple.  I was aware as was she that we would be there so as to make friends, perhaps even leave together and in the future come back together. Maybe to dinner.
    She carried herself well and was a pleasure to see unexpectedly. She had long, blond hair and a nice almost constant smile. She was beautiful.  Sometimes after we had met over work or such I was left thinking of something I wished I'd said.  It was a nice feeling I still enjoy remembering.
    I didn't go to that dinner.  I didn't meet that girl.
    I decided I couldn't face the idea of eventually becoming a disappointment.
    Not a new experience.
    I was in a laundromat.
    It was Thanksgiving.

Learning and Education

   Obviously, learning and education are  two different things.  Any successful education fosters learning.  It's surprising the number of people who just don't know that.  It's surprising the number of educators who seem to have missed that.  One glaring, recent example is the movement to discontinue teaching cursive.  The idea is almost crippling and therefore is amazingly misguided.
    Education fosters the ability to gather, properly handle, integrate and understand integrated information.  That's it.  No nutshell. That's it.  OK, we're done here.

    Well, maybe just a little more.  I've read some articles on education by well meaning people.  I've never met them.  I can only assume they're well meaning.  I can also assume they aren't very bright.  Maybe they're more convincing in person.  Anyway,  these people seem to believe a few things I think are just wrong. One is the laughable assumption you can somehow further education by teaching less of the basics.  That's as untrue in detail as it sounds on its face. Take teaching cursive. Cursive!, We don't need no stinking cursive.
    Cursive teaches two basic things. It teaches fine motor skills which sure do come in handy. More importantly, it's a secondary method of handling data.  It converts the symbols of block printing to the symbols of the script alphabet.  This type of tactile transfer of information is a reinforcement along the lines of the Montessori Method.  In case you don't know, kids taught with the Montessori Method never have dyslexia. Never. That means dyslexia isn't a learning disability, it's a teaching disability.  It seems to me anyone involved with early-childhood education should know that.
    Hey, that was an easy sell.  I'm gonna wish I had some complimentary steak knives to pass out for this next item.  Let's all learn Latin.  It's really too late for us but for god-sake man, save the children!
There are a couple things about Latin that strike me as important.  The words themselves make up about a third of our language. That's kind of important.  In addition, Latin grammar constitutes the underpinning rules of our language.  We think in symbols and the symbology we use is  language.  Therefore,  understanding our language from basic underpinnings to finished product forms a logical chain that is just invaluable.  Honest!  I wouldn't lie.  Try them steak knives. They're great.  I'll also point out that a century ago we taught Latin and Greek in grade school and now we teach remedial English in college.  That sounds like a problem.
    Here's something else that I find absolutely laughable.  These people seem overwhelmed by the flood of information the digital age has made available.  Somehow they seem to have gotten the idea there is more information and the medium of delivery has somehow changed the information itself.  That's just not true.  Marshal McLuhan aside,  the conclusions they have reached based on those erroneous assumptions are wrong.
    So, in conclusion,  all I can really say about early childhood education is,  Neener, neener.

Momma, Why's It Called Obamacare ?

    That's a great question and the answer is pretty funny.
    Politicians really love catch phrases.  The republicans seem to love wearing their hearts on their sleeves. May Day became Law Day as an answer to communism. Obviously,  an international workers holiday couldn't be tolerated.  Damned Commies.  Then we had the Patriot Missile.  Pfft, what??  Operation Iraqi Freedom. That's a bad joke.  Enduring Freedom, actually a dumber joke and so on. I guess one name is as good as another.   But Overlord seems better than "Let's Go Kill All the Nazis". The Manhattan Project, though it had nothing to do with Times Square, is certainly better than "Let's Make 'em Glow In The Dark".  I digress.
    So, the President who is very popular, does the heavy lifting and comes up with a plan for one of people's primary concerns and expenses. The republicans oppose it at every step of the process but they can't stop it though they sure did try.
    Now let's hold on here a minute. The duty of the opposition is to oppose and nothing I say should be construed to mean I object to that fact.  I do kind of object to just how completely incompetent they were about it but what are ya gonna do?  They were what they were.  No one ever referred to a collection of republicans as the Best and the Brightest.  They might want to look into that.
    Actually, that phrase, "The Best and the Brightest" typified the problem they faced.  Take that phrase together with the "New Deal",  "Social Security",  "Camelot",  "Medicare" ( which they fought tooth and nail with a lot of the same arguments we're hearing today),  "The War on Poverty",   "The Great Society".  What did they really have?  " A Chicken in Every Pot",  "That Man in Washington",  "Mr Roosevelt's War",  "The Little Man On Top of the Wedding Cake",  "The Silent Majority",  "Peace With Honor",  "Voodoo Economics",  "Trickle Down",  "Weapons of Mass Destruction."
    They were stuck.  They could see the advent of a government program that would be a popular fixture of our society and a true legacy maker yet again, so they decided to denigrate it.   To their constituents Obama was a really unpopular guy and they really hated him.  Don't get me wrong. They didn't hate Obama for his race.  They hated him for the same reason they hated Clinton.  He'd pushed their snouts from the public trough.  That didn't mean they were above exploiting the inherent racism of the constituency they had so carefully cultivated.  They were just more interested in the spoils of office. They just forgot about the minority their constituency actually was.
    They decided on a catch phrase that would appeal to their constituency in a negative way: Obama Care.  Yeah, that didn't work.  The people, the media, the society decided:  OK, wanna call it that?  Fine, we like it.  Now it hangs around their neck almost exactly like the albatross in "The Rhyme  of the Ancient Mariner". and pretty much for the same reasons.
    Nothing special about it.  It just ranks with other miscalculations of minorities but it is pretty funny. Wait until they get a load of what "MAGA" does for them.

So, How Bad Is It ?

    It sure is gonna take some fixing but really, how bad is it?   The only measure we have is the recent past.  I know to the so-called Millennials 2001 seems like a lifetime ago because to them it has been a lifetime but in reality it's a very pertinent part of living memory. There's a lot of similarities. We had a prominent figure of a very popular previous administration denied elected office by what could be described as underhanded tactics. The economy was moving forward at a steady but slow pace.  We were being told that pace was a dire circumstance so tax cuts for the well off would seem palatable, The poor were leeches and the military needed more financial commitment. Remarkably similar.
    What mattered was what happened in the ensuing few years. We abandoned any semblance of fiscal responsibility or restraint. We were attacked.  We started out attacking the right country only to almost laughably bungle that.  We followed up by irrationally attacking the wrong country. We killed nearly a million totally innocent people and destabilized the Middle East for at least two generations.  We normalized and employed torture as a national policy and to this day there are elements in our society that think people objecting to that totally unacceptable idea are somehow suspect. There are people who believe noticing obvious evil is somehow unmanly or unpatriotic. In the meantime the executive branch had been rendered totally ineffective in responding to emerging natural calamities.
    That was all topped off ten years ago by a financial collapse that exposed every so called "conservative" financial idea and policy to be just so much nonsense.  The recovery has featured standard liberal economic ideas proposed and implemented by both parties.  There is no debate it worked.  There is, as always, debate as to whether it has worked fast enough.
    Where are we now?  So far we haven't killed anybody but Trump sure is threatening a bunch of people.  He sure would torture people but we have a remarkable shortage of potential victims.  He's attempting to abandon fiscal responsibility but that'll be fixed directly.  ( See Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez)  The deficit has skyrocketed.  The poor are still leeches and the military has gotten even more than it's dreams of avarice.  Doing mischief to health care is dead in the Congress and the rest will be in the courts for years.  Certainly long enough for cooler heads to prevail.  The executive branch is back to being incapable of realistically responding to natural disasters.
    Internationally our reputation is back in the toilet.  People just don't like this guy much.  You could say it's good they seem to be working things out on their own.  Obama wanted to curb our influence by toning down and stepping back.  Trump is eroding our influence merely by pissing just about everyone off.  In the end not much of a difference in result and you do have to admit it's kinda funny watching Trump get the cold shoulder from the Queen.  The Brits know a parvenu when they see one.
    Economically, things seem Ok but it does kinda have a 2006 feel to it.  The emphasis  on deregulation has stayed away from the financial; markets, so that's a good thing.
    It is true that formerly undesirable elements of our society have been emboldened and to some extent normalized.  However, the major impact seems to have been the mobilization of the Angels of Our Better Nature.  That's a good thing.
    So, the guy is unpleasant and every bit as unfit as advertised.
    All in all I'd say, just wait it out and enjoy the show but don't be silent. These are necessary national debates we should have had long ago.  It's time to assert our educations and our upbringing.  It certainly is time for the Angels of Our Better Nature to get some necessary exercise.  A lot of people are worried there has been a coarsening of society.  People who a few years ago would have remained silent feel free to repeat what they think they've heard from the President. The dog whistle effect is very powerful.
    Frankly, a large part of this has no real impact if you're a white guy other than just being offended  and maybe worried for the future but what if you aren't white?  What if you're a member of one of the myriad of  minorities being targeted by the dog whistle?  You would have to rightfully feel your life and membership in society hadn't been just lessened but that you had been assaulted in a uniquely personal way.  That's quite simply an outrage.
    So, to date the guy sure is offensive but nowhere near as destructive as Bush. That sure doesn't seem like much but it is something.

Yeah, Got That Wrong.

    I was thinking about things I got wrong as a kid and things the grown ups got wrong.  I think we should be more attentive to what young kids are actually thinking.  I know I was a lot more thoughtful than people gave me credit for and I resented it and I've often been surprised how thoughtful young people really are.  I think we should know it's a little deeper than, "Kids Say The Darnedest Things".  They are listening and they sure are thinking.
    For example:  When I was 4-5  my hero was Superman.  I remember my Uncle George who,  I'm sure had the best of intentions, telling me Superman wasn't real.  I argued back that he could be real.  I was pissed.  Thank God we weren't discussing Santa and don't be telling me what you might have heard about Santa . Not ready for that.
    Anyway, Superman was coming to Pittsburgh!  Daily, they promoted on the radio, "Meet Superman."  My parents were excited!  They were so happy that I would have the chance to meet my hero!  I think that incident is why  I still have a twinge of social anxiety.  I thought I was gonna have to shake hands with the guy.  "Well, hi Jim, how have you been?"  "Not bad sir. How have your been?" Maybe sit down and have some Bosco.  I was terrified but the powers that be seemed so pleased with themselves all I could say was, " Yeah, great."
   I went to Kennywood Park like I was being led to a gallows.  I was so relieved when it worked out I was so far back in the crowd I could barely see the guy even on my Dad's shoulders.  It coulda been my Uncle George.  What a relief!
    That was a little bit after I'd learned my bedtime prayers. 'Now I lay me down to sleep.  I pray the  Lord my soul to keep.  If I should die before I wake.  WAIT ! WHAT??
    We had chickens. We sold the eggs.  It's actually kinda interesting to weigh, classify and candle the eggs.  At times it was my job to gather the eggs.  It turns out hens don't like you screwin around with their offspring much. They would peck hell outta ya.  I hated them fucking chickens.
    Eventually, the price of eggs went down and the hens got old.  The decision was made to kill all the chickens and get out of the egg business.  As a side effect, we did have chicken for about a year. A little ham now and then would have been nice.
    Killing and dressing chickens is kind of a gruesome business.  Killing and dressing 45-50 of them is really a gruesome business. I became aware my grandparents were concerned it might be a bit much for my 6 year old sensibilities.  Did I mention I hated them fuckin chickens?  My fist pumps as they were beheaded should have given my true feelings away.  I was unscathed.  Hell, I'da done it myself.
    Shortly after that it was time to butcher a cow which had been raised with the intent to take up whatever room was left in the freezer not already occupied by the chickens.  I was definitely excluded from that gruesome exercise.  It really is a process not for the squeamish.  So, naturally,  being excluded, I found a knothole in the wall of the shed being used as a slaughterhouse in order to watch.
    The crew consisted of my Grandfather, my uncle George and my uncle Bill.  George and Bill must have been in their early 20's. The cow was about a year and a half old not that it matters.
     The cow was led into the shed by a rope halter. It was positioned in the middle of the shed and belted in the head, straight between the eyes, with a sledge hammer by my uncle George. The cow went down.  My uncle Bill climbed on the cow's back and began to cut it's throat with a large Bowie knife,  the idea being to bleed the cow to death.  This woke the cow up.  With a bellow it got to it's feet and began to thrash about with my uncle on it's back now just stabbing it with great blows.  It was like bull riding except you get to stab the bull.  Meantime,  my uncle George is trying to whack the cow again with the sledge without cold cocking my uncle Bill.  To this day it's still one of the funniest things I've ever seen.  Describing it just doesn't do it justice.  In a few seconds the cow collapsed to the great relief of us all.  My presence was discovered and attempts to protect my sensibilities came to an end. Especially since I insisted on telling the story with belly laughs pretty much to anyone who would listen.  They got it that I understood farm life.
     There's a few things I learned. We butchered a pig. In that process, you dip the dead pig in scalding water.  To accomplish this we built a fire under an old, oaken barrel.  I assumed the fire would set the barrel on fire but because the barrel was full of water  it doesn't. You can do the same thing on a smaller scale with a paper bag of water. Other than that tidbit the pig was uneventful.  They shot the pig.  It reduced the excitement and the entertainment value.
    About this time I learned something from my Grandfather that I didn't realize I'd learned for fifty years. He said to me, " I bet you can't eat an entire apple in 8 bites."  It's something I try to do to this day.  It's something I've said to all of my children and other,  random children.  It wasn't until the children were long grown that I realized what he was up to.  He had 8 children.  He must have got tired of seeing half-eaten apples so it was a little trick to get them to eat the whole thing.  The little light bulb didn't come on until I was in my  50's but the lesson was passed on to yet another generation.  That's pretty cool.
    So I learned some things and they learned some things not to worry about.
    We had a dog. It was a farm, we had plenty of dogs. We had a dog. The dog was a puppy when I was a baby. Jerry.  As I got older the dog got older.  He was a great dog.  Part lab and part golden retriever.  When I was 17 it was obvious Jerry was very bad off.  I would come home every couple weeks and it was obvious neither my uncles or grandfather had the heart to do anything about it.  One day I came out to the farm, grabbed a shovel and dug a hole at the bottom of the hill.  I got the .22 out of the closet and a box of shells.  C'mon  Jerry let's get some birds.  He pulled himself to his unsteady legs and followed me out the door by smell I suppose.  He was mostly blind.
    I gotta tell ya. I thought the sound of a single shot in that remote hollow would be just too mournful. I broke up the process of filling in the hole by firing a few random shots into the air. After a while I walked back to the house. Put the rifle and the shells back in the closet and sat down in the living room with my Grandmother and wordlessly, though we knew, watched TV.

    Isn't that an almost tender little vignette?  Of course it wasn't till years later I learned my Grandmother's silence was because she was utterly horrified that her monster of a grandson had shot the poor, old family dog five times.

    See?  Ya just never know.  

 

What We Should Know

 
    There are things about the Las Vegas shootings that just seem off-kilter to me, although I can't imagine what about this could be remotely normal or understandable.
     One thing I heard today bears repeating often until it sinks in:  It is not too soon to seek solutions to gun violence.  It is too late.  But that doesn't mean there are not things we can know and should know if for no other reason than to tamp down speculation which is already becoming rampant.
    What is the timeline of these events from the first shots to the discovery of  Stephen Craig Paddock's body?  I do think it's telling that he has acquired the notoriety of being known with his middle name.
    How many shots were fired from how many different weapons?  Is there a way to determine in what order the weapons were used?
    How long had the guy been dead when the Vegas cops got to him?  Did the cops hear the shot that killed him? Was a gunshot from one of his weapons his manner of death?  If so, which weapon?
    How many and what type of weapons did he have and how much ammunition for each?  Where did these weapons come from?
    How was it that his live-in companion didn't know he had these weapons?  How did he manage to get such an arsenal into the hotel?
    It has been said he broke out windows on the 32nd floor.  How soon did building security know these windows had been broken?  In a building of that type there surely has to be a program that reports such an occurrence.  How long did it take them to respond?
    I mention these things because this is going to be discussed and speculated upon for some time.  I think timely answers to these questions will keep unwarranted speculation to a minimum.
    If the wave of comments on social media are any indication this has a potential of becoming a cottage industry of sorts.  The multiple tie ins to current political debate is too tempting. We already have, race, gun issues, emerging issues of wealth.  This could get really ugly and timely answers to basic questions are very important. I can't imagine these aren't questions that would occur to any good journalist but so far, and it is awfully early, there aren't many answers.

It Sure Seemed Like a Crisis To Me

    When we think about the Boomer's youth we think of Hula Hoops and Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol,  maybe black and white television and Studebakers that looked the same coming and going.  We think about the hot days of the Cold War but we don't really think about the impacts on 10 and 11-year-old kids.  I know it scared the living bejesus outta me.
    We were literally bombarded with images of impending doom on the nightly news. We were told nuclear war was inevitable but we still had to do our homework.  Our parents had been scared to death by real-world events unfolding around them thru out their lives.  They had to do their homework. They were born into a time where homelessness and starvation was a real and present threat.  Most forms of serious illness were a death sentence.  Even the President had had polio.  Smallpox outbreaks were relatively common into the 1940's.  Kids died of whooping cough, chicken pox, measles all the time.  If that wasn't enough;  Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito were real guys killin folks left and right.  Eventually, our parents got drafted to go fight them guys and nearly a half million got killed for their trouble.  It's no wonder they built a country so strong it dare not be opposed and also no wonder they built a society where privation was basically outlawed.   Vaccinations, for smallpox and polio were the LAW of the land.  It would be hard to describe the relief a young parent must have felt  when Doctors Salk and Sabin rode to the rescue.  I could swim in a lake or a stream but never in a public pool.  We all knew kids who had had polio. Some died, some were in iron lungs, many wore braces on withered limbs.  Loud, boisterous, strong, rough and ready they certainly were but even our parents were obviously apprehensive and we, their children noticed.
    Another thing no one mentions about the revolution in public health in those days.  The abject fear of venereal disease surely did encourage public morality.  You don't hear about it much anymore but people we called spastics actually were victims of spinal ataxia.  That came from mothers with untreated syphilis.  It was just one of a myriad of ailments associated with promiscuity.  Men are pigs but most of the women got the message.  Adultery led to the bedroom farce but the lurking threat of venereal disease subconsciously refined it, kinda gave us Tennessee Williams.  I have digressed.  They were tough but the Cold War sacred them. We noticed.  Everybody got that?
    So, we did these air raid drills in grade school.  Duck and cover or my favorite: We would file out into the hall and kneel against the wall and freely imagine all that concrete block raining down on our very young heads.  The really bad part about that was we knew even if we managed to crawl out of the rubble with our frail bodies semi-intact we would die from radiation poisoning.  How did we know that?  They told us so pretty much every day on the TV.  And not just any "they".   Walter Cronkite for Chrissake!  It's not like it was Fox News.
    We did that for five or six years and then it was autumn of 1962. The greatest of all fears was played out for the better part of two weeks for all to see. The tension was palatable.  As real as it gets. It came to a head that would be resolved one way or another, we all knew, the following day.  We did our homework, ate our vegetables and slept fitfully at best,  contemplating our predicted doom. That sounds like an exaggeration but that is literally true.  That happened.  I was there.
    In all honesty, the rest of the Cold War was anti-climax.  Reason and humanity won. The rest was like filling in a by-the-numbers painting.
    Here's a question that has never been adequately asked:  What if Nixon had won the razor thin, 1960 election?  Seeing his later disastrous performance as President what could have been the outcome?  What would his pronounced paranoia have wrought?  He was a man remarkably lacking in the finesse of Kennedy.
    What would that war have looked like?  Between the superpowers, there were less than 300 nuclear weapons that may or may not have functioned properly. The carnage may have been terrible but it would not have been anywhere near the end of the world.  It would have been the end of the Soviet Union but it would have been only a severe challenge to us.  Argue that conclusion from any angle you chose.  It's inescapable.
    What about now?  Does anyone really believe we have the command and control in place to  survive a crisis like the Cuban Crisis of 1962, in 2017?  Do we really believe the military has enough respect for current civilian authority to avoid immensely fatal mistakes?  Do we believe the Pentagon has calmer heads in place to avoid fatal mistakes?
    These certainly seem like legitimate questions.  I don't know those questions are much different from the questions our kids have now, in active shooter drills.  Are those drills any more or any less traumatic?  Probably not and it's a damn shame we can't seem to do better.

    Sleep well.

Let Us Pray

    Let's all bow our heads. Until 1963 we were pretty much all given that instruction every morning. Our public school day began with a by-rote recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, The Lord's Prayer, and a stumbling  reading of several verses of the King James Version of the Bible.  In our school we recited the long-form Lord's Prayer preferred by Presbyterians everywhere.  None of that short, Catholic version for us. They had their own schools for that sorta off-brand stuff.  If they were too lazy to say the whole thing...well, that was on them.
    The Bible reading was done by a different student every day.  It was normally concluded quickly because watching a third grader trying to read the KJV Bible was nearly painful.  Those of us who could read aloud fairly well always had to read longer.  I resented that.  I remember not one word. Maybe we should have read the "Song of Solomon".
        That's the problem with forced obeisance, no one pays any attention.  It's all pro-forma and no imparted substance.  I wonder why people don't know that.  I also wonder why they would bother to worship a god that doesn't know that.  Their god seems to me to have a less than  complimentary contempt for the mental or spiritual abilities of his adherents.  I think a legitimate God knows the difference between indoctrination and the adult acceptance and embrace of faith.  What's so hard about that?
      Here's one practical side to my particular belief.  My wife and I agreed about the difference between indoctrination and an embrace of faith.  To that end we raised our daughter with a minimum of childhood, spiritual instruction.  She was certainly raised with the Golden Rule  and a healthy degree of moral certitude.  Maybe too much of that certitude, I sometimes think but we were young and carried that certainty, inflexibility of youth.  It wasn't until she became old enough to discuss secular philosophical ideas and ideals  that I realized she was functionally ignorant of about a third of the culture.  Literary allusions to things most people learned in Sunday School were lost on her.  She had an extra burden of learning at a time when learning was burden enough.  Not that either of us ever thought learning was an unwelcome burden but there's only so much you can cram into your head at any given time.
    So, what's the point?  As near as I can tell there was no point.  We seem to have trivialized what some would honor.  I'm a relatively observant guy but I had to look up the Lord's Prayer to get the words straight. That's after repeating it by rote probably 800 times.  Bush senior made a big deal of the Pledge of Allegiance during the '88 campaign.  At a photo op at a flag factory in Massachusetts, he fumbled the words.  Demonstrating that something that has been trivialized by mindless repetition apparently knows no politics but political expediency knows no shame.
    Anyone who can imagine the thoughts of students around finals time or the prom knows there is a lot of sincere prayer in public schools.  It's hard to imagine an omnipotent God who wants or needs something as puny as a government or a school administration to force faith into a student's mind or heart.  It's also hard to imagine such a God that doesn't know the effort isn't just useless but ultimately insulting to the whole idea.  I'm not sure why that seems like such an obscure concept.  Maybe because my mind tended to wander in grade school.
    Sixty-five percent of Americans who apparently aren't currently in school think there should be mandatory prayer in schools.  It's interesting to note the vast majority of those people could never have experienced organized school prayer.  I wonder what they could think it would mean or accomplish.
    Amen.

Gonna Rock Down To 2nd Avenue

    I grew up about 30-35 miles north of Pittsburgh.  At night you could always tell which way was south because the southern sky glowed red from the mills.  In the winters you could also tell you were near Pittsburgh because within 3 days of any snowfall there was a coating of soot on the snow at even that distance.  Sometimes, even in the daytime, there was a black wreak in the southern sky.  We really didn't think much of it.  A lot of us ended up making a living for young families by working for fabricators and other suppliers of those mills that produced that glow. My generation was the last. That's a different issue.
    As a boy, sixty years ago, we used to go to Pittsburgh to visit my Step-Dad's family and neighborhood. It was a cool trip most of which you can still make though the mills are gone along with their pyrotechnics. The route is a little different now but you still go on Crosstown Blvd to Second Ave.  That brings you under the bluffs Duquesne University occupies. There was and is this huge, concrete retaining wall. They just refurbished it last year. It's got to be well over 100,000 yards of concrete.  I was amazed by the thing then and I still am today.  I'd be surprised if the refurbishment didn't take longer than building the thing originally.  I can find no date for it's construction. It's gotta be shortly after WWII.  I will say the reading trying to find a date is interesting.  Or, I get bored so you don't have to. I enjoyed it.
    Second Avenue brought you to the old  J and L Steel works.  I know this section of Second Av was redone in 1954 because the B&O railroad overpass still bares that date. That graphic is done in blue tinted concrete.  I wonder how they did that?  It hasn't faded or changed in 60 years I can think of.
    The Jones and Laughlin  Steel works sprawled across the Monongahela River. The Southside Works stretched for over two miles. The two sections were connected by the Hot Metal Bridge.  It was spectacular at night.  It carried crucibles filled with molten iron from the blast furnaces  along 2nd Avenue to the Southside Works.  It was flat cars drawn by steam locomotives. The crucibles would glow red  from the heat of the iron.  The bridge carried up to 180 tons an hour.  It's safe to say it will be there for quite some time. To a young boy it was fascinating and I often wondered if it wasn't what hell must look like.  Later in life I worked in a bronze foundry.  I didn't like that much and it certainly seemed like parts of that employment were paying the wages of sin. My joke was, the time cards weighed 40 pounds.  The pay check wasn't bad really but the foundry itself was pyrotechnicly spectacular as well.
    Then you came to the blast furnaces themselves. Just amazing!  From the outside you saw these four 60-80 foot stacks. At the top they flared off stack gases in 25-35 foot plumes. Enough in one hour to heat every home in the Pittsburgh area for a year or longer and they burned 24 hours a day every day for nearly 80 years. There's a carbon footprint for ya.  I do have to think they should have created a wasteland extending to Three Mile Island but they didn't.  Think about that.
    Then you made a left and got Dahn the Run. Saline Street. It was a little world unto itself.  The language was a patois of  Slav and English as were the customs.  It was a neighborhood made up, in those days, of post WW I immigrants from eastern Europe.  They came to work in the adjacent steel works and they brought their culture with them.  The center of that culture was and is St John Chrysostom  Byzantine Rite Catholic Church. It's an impressive place.  Outside it's more than ordinary but inside the illuminations, iconography and  frescoes are just eye-popping. The pageantry of the services for the various holidays is something to behold.  When you come in the door you see banks of votive candles and on the wall behind and above is a life size, realistic Crucifix.  It's inspiring and absolutely brutal in it's depiction of the suffering of Christ.  The guy looks dead.  I read somewhere that second and third world religious art was so often brutal in it's depictions because day to day life was so brutal the art had to be almost gruesome  to make a dent.  Think about that.
    In those days that church operated on the Julian Calendar. That made us the luckiest of children. Our parents who had moved away and become assimilated celebrated Christmas with the rest of the country on the Gregorian Calendar and then two weeks later we went to their childhood homes and did it all over again. Two Christmases a year!  And Dahn the Run, in those days, it was full on Christmas . Carolers, Midnight Mass and best of all, a second crop of aunts and uncles placing a second crop of gifts under the tree.  Avarice doesn't occur to someone confronted with copious plenty. That might be a lesson worthy of wider teaching.
    There was another feature.  After barely staying awake thru Midnight Mass you returned for Holy Night Dinner.  Because Christmas Eve was a Black Fast, very often the adults had not eaten all day. The dinner consisted of a ritual procession of delicacies. It was summed up with a taste of honey to keep you sweet, a piece of garlic to keep you healthy and a dram, even for the children, of whiskey to keep you happy in the coming year.  It wasn't until 30 years later I learned the whiskey of choice in that household was rye.  I was always a bourbon drinker until I tasted rye again.  I drank rye for 10 years after I re-tasted it.  There's a mystic cord of memory for ya.
    So massive architecture, heavy industry, religious illumination, ritual, family tradition and just a wee taste.  I recommend the journey.

Hey, We Can't Lose.....Can We?

    In the course of history our,military is literally incredible.  We can project overwhelming power into any and every corner of the globe for good or ill.  If all else fails we can reduce an area to rubble that will glow for five centuries.
    Let me bore you for a bit but it's important you know this for this conversation.  There are two sides to military power.  There is the Tactical.  We're pretty damned good at that.  We do have some problems with asymmetrical warfare but our Special Forces people are getting better and better at that.  One problem we  face there is a failure to understand the commitment of our adversaries.  If the United States were invaded  we would fight to the death and we would encourage our children and grandchildren to do the same.  The idea that other peoples love their country any less is just idiotic but it permeates military thinking. That limits our tactical success. The Tactical is battlefield superiority.
    Then there is the Strategic.  All indications are we just suck at that. The Strategic advances national goals.  No member of the Armed forces from the longest serving enlisted man to the highest ranked general has ever been involved in a military campaign that has been a strategic success.  That includes Clint Eastwood and Robert Duvall.   John Wayne, who never served in the military, did a bang up job with WWII.  But if you wanna see something laughable and illustrative watch "The Green Berets".  It explains, in great detail, what was wrong with and done wrong in Vietnam.  Every strategic, political and social assumption in Vietnam was just completely wrong.  "The Green Berets", viewed as a farce, is interesting but in reality Vietnam is a tragedy of misapprehension worthy of Shakespeare that has never been adequately explored in drama.  Maybe we would all understand it better had it been.
    The idea of an epiphany is powerful and rarely seen acted out in public.  President Johnson is the last and maybe the only example of a public epiphany in my life time.  He was an amazing man and history treats him more kindly with each passing year, as it should.  Johnson went on television and said he would not seek the nomination of his party and would not run. He took a Sherman.  He announced a cessation of the bombing of the North Vietnamese and announced our planned participation in the Paris Peace Talks. It was a 180 degree reversal of policy and reversal of his personal assessment of the reality.  It was an amazing rejection of 20 years of Cold War assumptions which he had tried to serve.
    It's long been assumed  McCarthy's victory in New Hampshire changed his mind but the political reality was he would have had the nomination if McCarthy had continued to be strong and he certainly would have beat Nixon.  Humphrey proved the establishment was that strong by garnering the nomination and Johnson was a much stronger geographic candidate than Humphrey ever could have been.  Bobby Kennedy would have been a different matter but that was short stopped.  The people behind Nixon would have murdered him no matter.
    There was never an avenue for "victory" in Vietnam. There was never an avenue for "victory" in Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria and on and on. Never having been involved would be the recipe for success. The truth is we have occupied Germany and Japan for 70 years and we sure did win those wars.  I wonder what that ultimate price tag is?  We've occupied Korea for 65 years.  How's that working out?
    The truth is the only place our goals of establishing a semi-democratic, capitalist based society have been accomplished without intensive occupation is in southeast Asia and we had to totally capitulate, isolate them from our influence and leave. It totally confirms my passive / aggressive approach to life but I digress.
    What does it say that the only success has been a result of capitulation?  One thing it says loud and clear is, " Asses and elbows outta the Middle East!"  Let me see you sell that idea at the Pentagon. There's a sales call that would take some balls to make.  Better bring a buncha complimentary steak knives. Wear your best tie.
    There's something else in this vein. A lot has been made of setting arbitrary time-tables for withdrawals. It's a lousy strategic idea but all the other ideas are bad.  Simply put:  We can't stop you from doing stupid things but we can set a time table for you to accomplish some sort of framework for stability after you're forced to give up doing the undoable.  It's never been put bluntly that way but it sure should be.  Maybe hand them a couple complimentary steak knives.

Off With Their Heads

    In our form of government there is often a tension between the will of the majority and simple right and wrong. One area where that is starkly illustrated is the issue of capital punishment.  Is it right?  Is it wrong?  Thankfully, we have the courts for that.  I do like it that several governors of both parties, when confronted with being the final agent in the process of ending a life have just refused.  I find it disappointing that various legislative members, not realizing their hands are on the switch as well, encourage the blood lust of the mob. They behave as if they don't know you get to go to hell for that.  They should know better.
    Florida just killed a guy for something he did 29 years ago.  Regardless of whether or not he could be rehabilitated he never would have gotten out of jail.  He was leaving feet first no matter the agency of his death.
    There are all kinds of ancillary arguments about this.  My personal favorite is: Society has a right to defend itself. We do.  It's persuasive  but in these cases what exactly are we defending against?  No one convicted of the kind of crimes that would land a person on death row would ever see the light of day in any event.  The death penalty has no more deterrent effect than life without parole.  That's an established fact.  Revenge and justice are two very different things and revenge has no place in our courts.
    With that thought in mind, it's easy to see some of the most strident arguments for capital punishment  become arguments against.  Some of the punishments that are called for would require a person twice as blood thirsty as any murderer the punishments might be used against.  Do we really want to hire a psychopath to deal with a criminal?  Obviously not.  Where would we find someone willing to do some of these things for a government check?  Of course, that's extreme and obviously not germane.
    In the end, I think these are the adult considerations.  Our punishments say much more about us as a society than they ever say about those we punish.  History tells us that. We look with horror at the executions practiced by the Romans  or the medieval church or the Saracens and on and on. The criminals and the crimes were the same. We judge the societies.
    Viewed that way we see we have a responsibility to ourselves in the face of posterity at least, if not   in the face of Providence.  We face the practical and the divine. Those are very powerful specters.  It's always right to remember we are discussing us; you and me and our neighbors working together to take someone's life.  In the face of those specters, how complicit do we want to be?  How complicit do you want to be?  I know I'm out.

Oh, Puleese! Just shut up.

      I would prefer to use this space for basic concepts rather than current affairs.  Obviously, there are times when current affairs and basic concepts forcefully overlap. We are in such "interesting" times. The things we have been seeing over the last several days will be discussed for a generation, perhaps longer and it certainly seems to me to be time for us all to speak up.  Forcing everyone to speak up is usually the end to populist / nativist  waves.  They return to froth on the rocky shore of common sense.
    In the end it's a speech issue.  Being angry, I started reading about speech and constitutional limits on speech.  Looking for loopholes I suppose and  I might have found some.  I can make a pretty good argument that espousing Nazi ideas and displaying Nazi regalia sure could be illegal.  I can make the same argument about Confederate regalia.  Both of these things could be said to embody treason.  Most people are against treason, as they should be. That's a pretty serious argument to make on an oh so serious subject and boy was I serious.  If it hadn't been for the Tiki Torches I might have even stayed convinced and convincing.  I'm thinking the proper response to a movement powered by Tiki Torches can only be Citronella Candles.
    There are those who would have us believe the objections to the Confederate monuments are based on racism and slave ownership. To a degree that's true but those people do that to justify their own racism. There's no mistaking that.  Monuments honoring "heroes" of the Confederacy honor armed, defeated insurrection against the United States of America.  Maybe those who support such monuments have lost sight of that.  Maybe those who support the public maintenance of such monuments  have lost sight of that.  We shouldn't  lose sight of that and certainly a President should know better.  That's how Jefferson got dragged into this. The president doesn't know the difference.
    Here's the difference that counts between Lee and Jackson and Washington and Jefferson.  Lee and Jackson committed treason  against the United States. Washington and Jefferson didn't.  However, Jefferson said the remedy for bad speech was more, better speech. The remedy for the pests a Tiki Torch draws in the dark is something as simple as a Citronella Candle.
    Here's better speech. Every right we have comes with responsibility.  Speech and expression are no different.  We have to take responsibility for the validity of what we say.  We are liable to correction; sometimes violent correction.  Samuel Johnson said, "Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth and every other man has a right to knock him down for it."  This might be jarring but I don't think it's too violent.
    One traitor to the United States glorified is one too many. I don't care if Lee owned the Shroud of Turin, a splinter of the True Cross, the Hope Diamond or slaves. The issue is he was a traitor.  Sure he was pardoned.  How many statues do we have to Nixon?
    Over 400,000 Americans died to defeat the Nazis.  We have monuments to their memory and sacrifice in literally every village and town. One Nazi marching openly in the streets of the United States is one too many.  It is blindingly inappropriate for a president to not know that.  It is incredibly offensive for a president to try to defend such a  march.  People should be corrected in great detail if they speak as though they don't know that.
    Any public expression of racism is one expression too many.  The public discourse has recognized and codified that.  For a public official to defend any public expression of racism is and should be disqualifying.
    The only real issue I see with Confederate monuments is they shouldn't be supported by tax dollars or allowed on public property.  Error corrects itself in a free society.  Just don't make me pay for it.
   We don't need and really can't tolerate laws limiting these expressions of error.  We need the public discourse to rise up and correct these affronts to our selves, our country and our liberties.  It usually does.  The power of our culture is and should be far more fluid and influential than our laws.
    Here's the true formulation and we are seeing it play out.  The Culture drives the Economy and the Economy drives Politics. Until you know that, it's hard to imagine you would see what's really going on.

Time and Integrity

    People are all born, high and low, with these two things and only these two things:  Time and integrity.  It's up to us how we use our time and how we preserve our integrity.  I was never told that in so many words.  I learned by example.  Every day when I was growing up was filled by my elders with an effort at something useful  which I was expected, no, allowed, to participate in to the limit of my ability.  I was given to understand by those around me that what I would learn to be integrity consisted mainly of doing the right thing even when no one was looking.  My voice, my sensibilities, were the real arbiter. The final arbiter.   There was no reference to my immortal soul.  Just to my self.  In this connection I wasn't expected to be anything.  Industry and integrity were merely basic conditions of life.  I don't think that's unique. As a matter of fact, I think it's the glue that makes our society what it is.
    Here's an example:  Most fiction doesn't work unless we all share and believe in the basic definitions of honesty.  Simple right and wrong.  Of course, that means that most people who do wrong, damned sure are aware they're doing evil. Try to follow me here.  One question in philosophy has been:  Do we all see colors in the same way. Is red, to me,  red to you and blue and so on. In the end that answer has to be, yes.  They are the same.  If they weren't,  pastels wouldn't work.  It's inescapable that all basic human concepts have to follow that model.  At least,  I haven't found an exception. I don't think there is any exception to the concepts of right and wrong.  I know my kids won't allow me one.
    Good for them.  In the end, that's the idea isn't it and, in the end, we all do agree on right and wrong. We dissemble when we feel we are wrong and sadly, condescend when we know we are right.
    The hard-eyed guys in the red ties are the exception not the rule.  Sometimes they are glaring exceptions but they couldn't exist without the froth our time and integrity produce. In the end, some of the things we see as evil are just evidence of our overall good.  Sometimes they are just evil.  It's an interesting thought that when you embrace a faith in God you must also admit the existence of the Devil.  It's pretty much right there in black and white.  Read the fine print.
    Maybe the world isn't as good and forgiving as I always end up thinking it is but I'm sixty-five years old and to quote an old friend,  "I've been everywhere but the electric chair and you ain't showin me nuthin."
    I see the time I have been granted as a tremendous gift and given my upbringing, there is no way I can think I've used it to best advantage.  Most people of my acquaintance feel exactly that same way.  I also hope my integrity isn't in the tatters my kids seem to think. That's pretty cool.  I always smile at the pleasure they get from correcting the Old Man and from time to time they have corrected my thought.  That's pretty cool.  I usually think, ' Yeah, I thought of that' but it's a real pleasure to think, 'Ya know I never thought of it that way.'  I guess that's a blessing of maturity. I actually enjoy changing my mind and there is still time.

Tell Me, Who Are You !

    When I decided to write this I did a lot of research on how much we spend on various things. How much it costs us to accomplish certain things. Is our generosity of spirit cost effective? My research confirmed my thoughts.  Hopefully, I won't go to hell for having just that formulation of thought.  The more I think about it the more I find it to be shameful and I'm sorry to have ever had such a thought. A cost effective generosity of spirit,  Gawd!
    I do believe we have a responsibility to limit  our generosity thru the government to that which benefits all of us since we expect all of us to pay for it.  Charity and the operation of government is and should be two different things.  I think how we are known to posterity is a huge component of providing for the general welfare. You may feel, as I do, that how we are known to Providence is a big portion of OUR welfare.  What will you say to St Peter?  But if you don't feel that way, all of us still have to answer to the future. We have to answer to our children and their children.  We owe them a future with simple kindness as a huge component.  History has taught us that.  We are direct beneficiaries of our parents and their parents knowing that.  It's a powerful American Value.
   I think you can say both the Germans and the Japanese tried to build world orders that discounted simple human decency and we did beat hell out of them for trying it.  We could also say both attempts fell of their own weight but we did beat hell outta them. We kinda killed them for the sake of kindness.  There's a thought.
    I think it's shameful that we went, in a few short years from making war on poverty to making it fashionable to look askance at the poor.  How we abandoned our values to embrace that message is a mystery to me.
    I could go on forever but it boils down to this:  There are two kinds of people in this world. There are those who are proud to contribute to and live in a society that can easily provide for  even the most despicable among us and insure to the limits of our abilities their children don't go hungry or go without health care or education or go without the simplest of comforts. Then there are those who those facts just fill with resentment and envy.  Which are you?  Who are you?

Wee Willy Winkie

    I have often said I never saw Bill Clinton do anything stupid with his pants up. That's not entirely true but we'll get to that.  I do think he gets economic credit he doesn't really deserve, sorta.  Clinton and the republicans did negotiate and implement tax and spending policies that set up, briefly, responsible management of spending.  They announced, in 1995, their plan would balance the budget by 2002.  I thought, at the time it was awfully convenient to set a date for long after they would be  out of office.  Everyone was surprised when the budget balanced years ahead of schedule.  Since I've never seen anyone give a reason for the success I assume they are mystified. The claims of imposed republican fiscal responsibility kind of evaporate when you consider the same basic Congress never batted an eye when G W started writing what would eventually be 13 trillion in hot checks.
    It's a collection of elected officials and economists.  Of course they're mystified.  Watching members of Congress discuss taxation and economic policy is like watching chimps sniff a Rubik's Cube.  Some of them have gotten kinda close. They dismiss Clinton's success by saying he rode the tech bubble. Those are guys who think the economy stops at the end of Wall Street.  It's no real surprise they generate nothing of value.
    What happened was we bought a bunch of new stuff that we had never needed before.  We bought VCR's, cell phones and PC's mainly.  It was a whole new class of mid level, pervasive consumer purchases of totally new durable goods.  On top of that the Boomers were working out from under the twin body blows of the energy "crisis" and Reaganomics and coming into their economic prime.  Here's a practical illustration of what happened.  In 1970, a standard home electrical panel was 60 amps or sometimes just a little more. By 2000 a standard, residential service panel was 150 amps and now it's 200.  That's basic consumption of an underlying resource.
     It took some real doin to put a crimp in that surge.  Here's a question:  How the hell do you wage two wars and crash the economy at the same time?  The obvious answer is you let a bunch of guys like Dick Cheney and Ken Lay steal everything that isn't nailed down.  You let it be known open season has been declared on the financial markets.  The term "obvious" bares repeating.  In order to obscure the obvious you need a blizzard of crap.  That's where Willie's Winky comes in.
    Let's look at 1984.  Gary Hart was having some "Monkey Business" with Donna Rice.  I think he was taken by surprise that the republicans broke the old boy's code and he reacted badly which drug the whole thing out and effectively ended his national career.  It was a different era but had I been him I'da stuffed the girl in a bikini, called a press conference and said, " What would you do?"
    Clinton danced around a lot and basically ended up at exactly that same place and got away with it.  Middle-aged men in responsible positions have been chasing young girls forever.  I thought Hart and Clinton were totally pedestrian. Trump, who actually is kinda creepy,  just shrugged it off.  In a way he did a public service.  We probably won't see that nonsense as a campaign tactic for a while.  I don't care if you like  screwin goats.  Don't do it on the White House lawn and don't write hot checks.
    Here's what I think Clinton did wrong.  (Beyond the obvious.)  He never should have cooperated with the Paula Jones deposition.  Having made that mistake he should have just shut up.  Instead he got into playing lawyer with these guys.  Each deposition has it's own list of definitions for terms key to the specific suit.  These guys over-thought everything, so much so that Clinton joked about the definition of the word "is".  I imagine that was a result of mediocre guys finding themselves in circumstances well above their pay grade.  It's a symptom of self-perceived inadequacy.  The joke on the word "is" was kind of a nuggy.  Sort of a ruffling the hair of an over officious inferior.
    Clinton noticed and may even have manipulated these guys into a definition of the term "sexual relations", "sex"  that  didn't include fellatio.  (Eatin ain't cheatin?)  I can't imagine what kind of fun these guys might have had in college but I'm thinking it couldn't have been much. When you think about it, they almost certainly weren't gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.  Just sayin.
    Clinton's mistake was making a statement in public that technically wasn't a lie under the definitions but was an obvious lie to just about anyone who wasn't a lawyer.  The republicans went wild and the loyalists shook their heads and said, " Oh Geez."
    Pants zipped? Pretty smart. Pants unzipped?  Not so much.  Kinda a cross section of the American public.

Go Soak Your Head. Your Hair Seems to Have Caught Fire

    My liberal friends are completely outraged.  Hell, so am I!  If you aren't outraged you just aren't paying attention but it is kinda time to put our hair out and actually look around.
    The will to power is the most powerful of human drives,  at least in a societal setting.  It far exceeds avarice or the drive for acceptance and recognition.
    Before you brand me as an apologist let's be clear. Trump is employing so many of the tactics of Hitler it's almost laughable.  I'm amazed there haven't been bonfires at his rallies; no torchlight parades,  no giant images of his smiling, benevolent countenance.  But these expressions of megalomania aren't exclusive to Hitler.  The demagoguery, the self-aggrandizement, the building of a personality cult , the demands for blind allegiance above loyalty to the state are common to all tyrants.  The Greeks and Romans had their men on horseback. Tyrants and Emperors  respectively.  The Founding Fathers railed against so much of what we are seeing because they had seen it so often in the European History of two, three and four centuries ago.  It's nothing new.  In fact,  it's so common the bulwark they built against it has been surprisingly resilient.  I don't think Trump is following some Hitlerian blueprint. I think he's living out a common neurosis just as Hitler did.  I think he's bloody common in the overall scheme of things.
    Nevertheless, we certainly have had our share of personality cults. The sainted Washington and Lincoln come to mind and fit the bill.  Franklin Roosevelt certainly comes to mind as does Kennedy. Reagan certainly has been elevated to a status beyond any real accomplishment.  Obama certainly is on his way to near cult status.  It remains to be seen what the overall effect of these recent events will be on ourselves and our institutions but I think, in the end it will be minimal.
    Here's why I think that.  Primarily,  this is not Germany in the era of the Great Depression.  Our economy is strong.  Our government is staffed  at a deep level by well educated, dedicated professionals. Those who would pursue bad ideas, meeting that deep level of institutional knowledge and resistance have coined the derogatory term "deep state".  They may have a point but not the malicious point they proffer.  It's a huge institution naturally resistant to change.  Our other institutions, the media, entertainment, business, political parties, education, religion are entrenched and powerful and for the most part benign.  As much as we have been encouraged to believe otherwise our society and culture is not in a shambles. There is no urban mob to be motivated, inflamed and abused.  There is also no urban mob to turn on it's abusers.  Trump will not meet the swift fate of Robespierre but  though mundane,  his prospective fate looks to be tragic.  Nor does there appear to be a Bonaparte in the wings or a need for one.  The weight of  our stable institutions will gradually reassert itself.  It's important to remember tyrants and wannabes always end badly.  But what of their supporters?  Bonapartism did damage for over a half century.
    Hillary Clinton referred to a subset of these supporters as "deplorables".  She was right but not too bright to have said it out loud. You can group them together with a benign subset  I think of as "lowercase americans".  Those who don't understand the complexity of government and the complexity of our history.   That's the problem.  Those of us who actually do know everything tend to be condescending to those who merely think they know everything.  That's obviously a joke but it does sum up part of the problem pretty well.  People don't like to be dismissed.
    You no longer hear that,  "Johnny can't read."  You have to be able to read to engage in the babel of social media.  The debate about media and alternative facts and so on is, in the end, a good and healthy debate and every day more and more people are exposed to the debate.  Good and right ideas persevere.  That's not going to change and the subset of the less informed shrinks everyday, particularly the louder we debate.  These "forgotten" people will fade back into forgetfulness or become better informed and better citizens.
    In the meantime our culture and society are more than strong enough to withstand the debate.  We are not the Germany of the '30's.  We are The United States of America of the 21st Century.  Put your hair out and be of good cheer but get with the program.