I have been giving a good deal of thought lately to patriotism and to Christianity. More specifically, I’ve been thinking about the number of people who are not the least bit reluctant to make judgments about a person’s patriotism or religious commitment or both.
Although the phenomenon is not new, it reached a fever pitch during the interminable presidential campaign. The political campaigns, aided and abetted by the Internet and the media (especially cable television), gave legitimacy to this judgmental mood.
A few snapshots: A congressional candidate said she thought Barrack Obama was “very anti-American” and that the media should investigate members of Congress who she thought were not “pro America.” A senate candidate tried to pin a Godless label on her opponent, who happened to have been a Presbyterian Sunday School teacher. A vice presidential candidate said she was happy to be campaigning in a part of the country that was “pro America.”
People who count themselves as Christians, many of whom I know and like, happily circulated the most scurrilous items about Obama, cleverly posed in the form of questions, as if that absolved them of responsibility for what they were doing. They implied that he was a secret agent of Islam (perhaps they’ve seen too many reruns of The Manchurian Candidate) and they argued that even if he went to a Christian church, he couldn’t possibly be a patriotic American if he heard the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons and didn’t walk out (I’m sure they carefully read through Rev. Wright’s sermons and weighed the context of those brief video clips that we all saw.)
No matter how acceptable it might have become, I think judging another’s religion or patriotism is a dangerous game.
In both cases, the people doing the judging are demanding conformity to their ideas of how Christians and patriots should behave.
But patriotism often demands nonconformity.
James Bryce, a British jurist, historian and statesman, observed, “Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity. Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.”
Mark Twain once wryly observed, “The nation is divided, half patriots and half traitors, and no man can tell which from which.”
On a more serious note, he wrote, “Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.”
Christians probably have a longer history of nonconformity than patriots do.
Thomas Jefferson counted the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom along with the authorship of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the University of Virginia as the only accomplishments worthy of noting in his epitaph.
The preamble to the statute is a sentence long enough to give an English teacher heart failure, but Jefferson’s points are worth considering:
“God has created the mind free, so that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion … the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, has established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world …. .”
Jefferson’s correspondence indicated that he was equally concerned with the interference of the church in affairs of state.
Too bad he isn’t around to offer his insights on the present role of politics in religion and vice versa.
If that’s not enough, the Bible itself has a warning for Christians in Matthew 7:1-2: Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make, you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.
Wearing a flag lapel pin doesn’t make one a patriot. Quoting the Bible doesn’t make one a Christian.
Sinclair Lewis had a grim vision of the danger of mixing religious certainty with patriotic certainty: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.”
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Lessons to Be Learned -- Again
Many years ago, Martha Mitchell, the sharp-tongued wife of disgraced U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell observed, “Life is slippery, like a bar of soap. If you think you’ve got a grip on it, you’re wrong.”
I have been seeing the truth of her observation play itself out in recent weeks.
I had thought that this time of year would be a good one for enforced idleness. Time to catch up on some reading, watch some sports on television.
Instead, I’ve sat hypnotized by the train wreck that is the stock market. Even when I have muted the shrill voices talking past each other on CNBC, it has been all too evident that a large hunk of our life savings has been evaporating like rain on hot pavement.
I am like many Americans who played by the rules, as we understood them: live within your means, save for the future and invest those savings so that you can have a secure retirement. We thought that we were giving up immediate gratification for security.
Now we wonder whether we have been played for fools.
We have been let down – by just about everybody.
The so-called leaders of finance have been too willing to abandon prudence in order rack up huge bonuses and pack golden parachutes.
Now our so-called political leaders are trying to assess blame. They should look in the mirror. Some of them have been such doctrinaire free marketers that they have believed their own rhetoric that the marketplace could regulate itself.
Sen. Phil Gramm provided the vehicle for the train wreck. Surely his philosophical blinders shut out skepticism. Even Alan Greenspan, who was regarded as at least a demigod during his reign at the fed, was an apostle of the libertarian gospel.
Greek mythology is filled with tales of what happens when hubris mixes with avarice. Somehow, though, we have to keep learning that lesson.
We have to keep re-learning, too, that the essential purpose for establishing government is the police function not just to protect us against violent crime but also against those who steal with a fountain pen.
Folk singer Woody Guthrie talked about that kind of crime in the last two stanzas of The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd:
My late father-in-law, who funded his own retirement through by saving money (fortunately before avarice overtook judgment on Wall Street), was something of a cynic.
“If you want a good retirement,” he used to growl, “Work for the government.”
He was talking about the security of having a check arrive every month regardless of how the economy was doing.
Just like Social Security checks. We can breathe a sigh of relief that the effort to privatize Social Security went nowhere.
My father-in-law was part of that generation that was marked by the Great Depression.
It is difficult at this point to know how deep this meltdown will go, but I think that more than one generation
But I think more than one generation has developed a deep distrust of our institutions.
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, William Faulkner said, "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail."
At the moment, enduring might be enough.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
I have been seeing the truth of her observation play itself out in recent weeks.
I had thought that this time of year would be a good one for enforced idleness. Time to catch up on some reading, watch some sports on television.
Instead, I’ve sat hypnotized by the train wreck that is the stock market. Even when I have muted the shrill voices talking past each other on CNBC, it has been all too evident that a large hunk of our life savings has been evaporating like rain on hot pavement.
I am like many Americans who played by the rules, as we understood them: live within your means, save for the future and invest those savings so that you can have a secure retirement. We thought that we were giving up immediate gratification for security.
Now we wonder whether we have been played for fools.
We have been let down – by just about everybody.
The so-called leaders of finance have been too willing to abandon prudence in order rack up huge bonuses and pack golden parachutes.
Now our so-called political leaders are trying to assess blame. They should look in the mirror. Some of them have been such doctrinaire free marketers that they have believed their own rhetoric that the marketplace could regulate itself.
Sen. Phil Gramm provided the vehicle for the train wreck. Surely his philosophical blinders shut out skepticism. Even Alan Greenspan, who was regarded as at least a demigod during his reign at the fed, was an apostle of the libertarian gospel.
Greek mythology is filled with tales of what happens when hubris mixes with avarice. Somehow, though, we have to keep learning that lesson.
We have to keep re-learning, too, that the essential purpose for establishing government is the police function not just to protect us against violent crime but also against those who steal with a fountain pen.
Folk singer Woody Guthrie talked about that kind of crime in the last two stanzas of The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd:
Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.
Lyrics as reprinted in Woody Guthrie, American Folksong, New York, NY, 1961 (reprint of 1947 edition), p. 27. © 1958 Sanga Music Inc., New York, NY.
My late father-in-law, who funded his own retirement through by saving money (fortunately before avarice overtook judgment on Wall Street), was something of a cynic.
“If you want a good retirement,” he used to growl, “Work for the government.”
He was talking about the security of having a check arrive every month regardless of how the economy was doing.
Just like Social Security checks. We can breathe a sigh of relief that the effort to privatize Social Security went nowhere.
My father-in-law was part of that generation that was marked by the Great Depression.
It is difficult at this point to know how deep this meltdown will go, but I think that more than one generation
But I think more than one generation has developed a deep distrust of our institutions.
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, William Faulkner said, "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail."
At the moment, enduring might be enough.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Saturday, October 4, 2008
A Lovely Season on the Lake
There are few topics more boring to others than one's health, so I will simply report that the bypass surgery was a success and that I am facing a longer period of mending than I would like. Why is patience something that I never quite master?
On to more interesting matters.
For those of us who live on the lake, this is a lovely time of year. The weekenders and vacationers have, for the most part, disappeared. With so many schools systems beginning their year in August, activity on the lake begins slowing down well before the traditional Labor Day season end.
By this time of year, the lake activity is almost nil during the week and limited on weekends. The fact that the water level fell and then came back up contributes to the lack of traffic this autumn. Many people assumed the water was down for the winter and put their boats away.
Even though I am months away from paddling my kayak or maybe even riding in a boat, I find much to appreciate about the lake.
I was up before dawn and sat with my morning coffee watching the hummingbirds defy gravity and physics as they did their best to keep their the feeders for themselves, even though there is enough for everyone.
nbsp; I stepped out onto the front deck for a few moments. The only man-made sounds I could distinguish were low and far away. The sun was catching beginning to light the trees across the slough. Each morning the trees are showing more color.
I don't know how colorful the autumn will be. Very often drought makes for more colorful leaves it seems, and I don't know whether that or the moisture we had toward the end of summer will have a greater influence. In either case, we will appreciate what nature offers us.
Each evening the sun drops over the ridge closer and closer to the Smith Mountain fire tower. We judge the season by the relationship of the sun to the tower, and soon I will be taking sunset photos with the sun silhouetting the tower.
My wife showed me a photo in the home section of one of the newspapers recently. It showed a fairly extensive yard makeover, and I must say it was very attractive.
But in the photo, at the back of the garden, was a fence and beyond that roofs of other houses.
I am content to look from our windows and see the native azaleas and hydrangeas that grow where they want to without much human intervention, and to see beyond them expanses of water.
Especially now.
Bill Brown can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com.
On to more interesting matters.
For those of us who live on the lake, this is a lovely time of year. The weekenders and vacationers have, for the most part, disappeared. With so many schools systems beginning their year in August, activity on the lake begins slowing down well before the traditional Labor Day season end.
By this time of year, the lake activity is almost nil during the week and limited on weekends. The fact that the water level fell and then came back up contributes to the lack of traffic this autumn. Many people assumed the water was down for the winter and put their boats away.
Even though I am months away from paddling my kayak or maybe even riding in a boat, I find much to appreciate about the lake.
I was up before dawn and sat with my morning coffee watching the hummingbirds defy gravity and physics as they did their best to keep their the feeders for themselves, even though there is enough for everyone.
nbsp; I stepped out onto the front deck for a few moments. The only man-made sounds I could distinguish were low and far away. The sun was catching beginning to light the trees across the slough. Each morning the trees are showing more color.
I don't know how colorful the autumn will be. Very often drought makes for more colorful leaves it seems, and I don't know whether that or the moisture we had toward the end of summer will have a greater influence. In either case, we will appreciate what nature offers us.
Each evening the sun drops over the ridge closer and closer to the Smith Mountain fire tower. We judge the season by the relationship of the sun to the tower, and soon I will be taking sunset photos with the sun silhouetting the tower.
My wife showed me a photo in the home section of one of the newspapers recently. It showed a fairly extensive yard makeover, and I must say it was very attractive.
But in the photo, at the back of the garden, was a fence and beyond that roofs of other houses.
I am content to look from our windows and see the native azaleas and hydrangeas that grow where they want to without much human intervention, and to see beyond them expanses of water.
Especially now.
Bill Brown can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
In The Blink of an Eye...
Countless songs describe how quickly things can change, The song that says it most directly to me – “things change, rearrange in the blink of an eye” – is by the Moonalice Band.
(You can listen or download a copy of the song and other of the band’s music at www.moonaliceband.com)
We’ve had many blinks of an eye moments this year, and things certainly have changed and rearranged.
The first was back in the winter when my wife, Adelaide, fell down the stairs at our house – 16 of them. Miraculously, she survived without permanent injuries, but it has taken months of recovery, and that process continues. Things change.
Then two weeks after what is usually a routine surgical procedure, I began hemorrhaging, and made two trips to the emergency room in a single day. Rearrange.
The resulting anemia left me weak and frustrated. It took an agonizingly long period for the red blood cells to regenerate, and I spent the summer only as a spectator.
I slowly recovered, though, and had enough energy to attend the Biennial Roundup of the Usual Suspects that I wrote about in an earlier post, although there were a couple of times when I just ran out of gas.
A couple of weeks after our return I stopped by the doctor’s office to get a prescription renewed. She asked about our trip, and when I told her that I’d hit the wall a couple of times, her ears perked up. You know, those can be the symptoms of heart disease, she said, and we ought to get it checked out.
I respect her skill, so I had a calcium scan the next day. We hadn’t gotten home from that good before she was on the phone saying that I needed to come see her that morning.
&nb The scan results put me in an extremely high risk category, she said and made me an appointment with a cardiologist.
Here I was riding along with the top down, so to speak, and I got hit by a log truck.
In the blink of an eye.
More tests, including a heart cath. The result was not what I had hoped for, so, barring the unforeseen – boy aren’t there a lot of unforeseens in life – in the next day or so, a surgeon will bypass the clogged arteries and we will begin adapting to still more changes in our lives.
There have been countless blinks of the eye that have been immeasurably great. But not so many this year. So we will be happy to put a close to 2008 and look forward to some of those great ones next year.
“Things change, rearrange, in the blink of an eye.”
Bill Brown can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com
(You can listen or download a copy of the song and other of the band’s music at www.moonaliceband.com)
We’ve had many blinks of an eye moments this year, and things certainly have changed and rearranged.
The first was back in the winter when my wife, Adelaide, fell down the stairs at our house – 16 of them. Miraculously, she survived without permanent injuries, but it has taken months of recovery, and that process continues. Things change.
Then two weeks after what is usually a routine surgical procedure, I began hemorrhaging, and made two trips to the emergency room in a single day. Rearrange.
The resulting anemia left me weak and frustrated. It took an agonizingly long period for the red blood cells to regenerate, and I spent the summer only as a spectator.
I slowly recovered, though, and had enough energy to attend the Biennial Roundup of the Usual Suspects that I wrote about in an earlier post, although there were a couple of times when I just ran out of gas.
A couple of weeks after our return I stopped by the doctor’s office to get a prescription renewed. She asked about our trip, and when I told her that I’d hit the wall a couple of times, her ears perked up. You know, those can be the symptoms of heart disease, she said, and we ought to get it checked out.
I respect her skill, so I had a calcium scan the next day. We hadn’t gotten home from that good before she was on the phone saying that I needed to come see her that morning.
&nb The scan results put me in an extremely high risk category, she said and made me an appointment with a cardiologist.
Here I was riding along with the top down, so to speak, and I got hit by a log truck.
In the blink of an eye.
More tests, including a heart cath. The result was not what I had hoped for, so, barring the unforeseen – boy aren’t there a lot of unforeseens in life – in the next day or so, a surgeon will bypass the clogged arteries and we will begin adapting to still more changes in our lives.
There have been countless blinks of the eye that have been immeasurably great. But not so many this year. So we will be happy to put a close to 2008 and look forward to some of those great ones next year.
“Things change, rearrange, in the blink of an eye.”
Bill Brown can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
When things settle down...
It’s a lesson that you would think I’d have learned by now, but I delude myself, and so I have to keep learning it over and over:
Things are never ever going to settle down.
I think that telling ourselves that things will settle down is simply a way of coping with the fact that we will always have more things that we need to do / want to do than we have the time to do them.
So we pretend that eventually we will have all the time we need.
When things settle down, I’m going to:
… go through the closet and get rid of all the clothes I’ll never wear again.
… finally read War and Peace (or one of those other important books that we would like to have read but haven’t ever put a high priority on actually reading).
… weed the flower bed.
… volunteer at the food pantry.
… learn a foreign language.
And when will things settle down?
When the houseguests leave…
When I get through with all these medical tests…
When there’s a little more money in the bank…
When things aren’t so busy at work….
“When things settle down” is a small-scale version of the “one of these days I’d like to…” syndrome.
I’ve learned to deal with the latter more effectively than with the former. The “one of these days” want to list usually is made up of fewer, more substantial things: One of these days I want to go hiking on the Appalachian Trail. One of these days I want to go to France.
Those “one of these days” things can be turned into reality by putting them on the calendar. You’re never going to make that trip to France unless you put your departure date on the calendar – in ink – and work backwards, listing everything you need to do to depart on that date.
The “when things settle down” items are those things that don’t seem nearly as consequential, and they wind up on a list that only grows longer even as it gathers dust.
So many of those “little” things seem to be beyond our control. Life in a family and in a community imposes obligations, and it is easy for the days to slide away one by one as we accommodate to the obligations we feel.
Once again I am realizing that being more jealous of my time – even if it occasionally makes someone else unhappy – is the only way of getting to those things on the “when things settle down” list.
There’s only time when things will truly settle down, and I’m not really eager to get there.
You can contact Bill Brown at billatthelake@gmail.com
Things are never ever going to settle down.
I think that telling ourselves that things will settle down is simply a way of coping with the fact that we will always have more things that we need to do / want to do than we have the time to do them.
So we pretend that eventually we will have all the time we need.
When things settle down, I’m going to:
… go through the closet and get rid of all the clothes I’ll never wear again.
… finally read War and Peace (or one of those other important books that we would like to have read but haven’t ever put a high priority on actually reading).
… weed the flower bed.
… volunteer at the food pantry.
… learn a foreign language.
And when will things settle down?
When the houseguests leave…
When I get through with all these medical tests…
When there’s a little more money in the bank…
When things aren’t so busy at work….
“When things settle down” is a small-scale version of the “one of these days I’d like to…” syndrome.
I’ve learned to deal with the latter more effectively than with the former. The “one of these days” want to list usually is made up of fewer, more substantial things: One of these days I want to go hiking on the Appalachian Trail. One of these days I want to go to France.
Those “one of these days” things can be turned into reality by putting them on the calendar. You’re never going to make that trip to France unless you put your departure date on the calendar – in ink – and work backwards, listing everything you need to do to depart on that date.
The “when things settle down” items are those things that don’t seem nearly as consequential, and they wind up on a list that only grows longer even as it gathers dust.
So many of those “little” things seem to be beyond our control. Life in a family and in a community imposes obligations, and it is easy for the days to slide away one by one as we accommodate to the obligations we feel.
Once again I am realizing that being more jealous of my time – even if it occasionally makes someone else unhappy – is the only way of getting to those things on the “when things settle down” list.
There’s only time when things will truly settle down, and I’m not really eager to get there.
You can contact Bill Brown at billatthelake@gmail.com
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Abandoning Freedom a Little at a Time
I ordinarily write about everyday life, about yellow cats and early mornings, flowers and friends and family. But every once in a while, the wider world intrudes and cannot go unremarked. A report in the Washington Post brought the latest intrusion and these reflections:
Do you think there is even the remotest chance of Al Qaeda – or the Taliban or Hezbollah or any other extremist Islamic group – taking over this country?
There is no more likelihood of that than there was of the Irish Republican Army taking over Great Britain.
If we realize one day that the freedoms we have taken for granted – the ones we’re taught about in school – are gone, we will see that the people who have taken over look just like us. And they will not have wrested control in one convulsive coup. In exchange for promises of security, we will have willingly surrendered our freedoms step by step.
We have been confronted with the false choice between freedom and security since the early days of the republic – think of the Alien and Sedition Acts – and we have periodically lurched into spasms of fear ever since.
All of this is brought to mind by a recent Washington Post story reporting that the Justice Department wants to make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the data with federal agencies and keep it for at least 10 years.
Of course, the supporters say the measures preserve civil liberties and are subject to internal oversight.
The Post quoted White House spokesman Tony Fratto as saying the administration agrees that it needs to do everything possible to prevent unwarranted encroachments on civil liberties, adding that it succeeds the overwhelming majority of the time.
The Post article quoted Jim McMahon, deputy executive director of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, as saying, "It moves what the rules were from 1993 to the new world we live in, but it maintains civil liberties."
Have you ever heard anyone in a position of authority say, “What we are doing encroaches on your civil liberties.”
This latest move is just one more effort to break down a wall erected in the mid-1970s after extended Senate hearings into widespread abuses of citizens’ rights.
The committee chaired by Sen. Frank Church found that “Intelligence agencies have collected vast amounts of information about the intimate details of citizens’ lives and about their participation in legal and peaceful activities. The targets of intelligence activities have included political adherents of the right and the left, ranging from activists to casual supporters.”
Among committee’s findings:
The FBI had kept files on a million Americans and investigated a half a million “subversives” between 1960 and 1974 without a single court conviction.
The CIA – with cooperation from the Post Office – illegally opened mail for over 20 years, collecting information on more than a million Americans.
The National Security Agency intercepted every overseas telegram sent or received by an American citizen between 1947 and 1975.
The IRS gave tax returns of 11,000 groups and individuals to the FBI and conducted audits as a form of political harassment.
Army intelligence investigated 100,000 American citizens during the Vietnam War.
The FBI’s COINTELPRO counterintelligence program was designed to “disrupt” groups and “neutralize” individuals that the FBI deemed to be threats to domestic security.
And that’s just a sampler.
All kind of Americans were targeted. Suspected subversives were under every bed.
The FBI’s well-publicized war against Martin Luther King was perhaps the most egregious example of government run amuck. But it wasn’t just J. Edgar Hoover striking out on his own
The Church Committee found that every president from Roosevelt to Nixon had pressed the intelligence agencies to go beyond the law.
Even with the laws that grew out of the Church Committee investigation in place, in the past half dozen years undercover New York police officers infiltrated protest groups before the 2004 Republican National Convention, California state agents eavesdropped on peace, animal rights and labor activists; and Denver police spied on Amnesty International and others before being discovered.
And of course the Bush Administration claims that it is unhindered by constitutional safeguards as long as it invokes the magic phrase “national security.”
Our founders had a first-hand acquaintance with unchecked power, and they established a constitutional form of government to protect the citizens against the government. Read that again if you like. The citizens need to be protected against the government, regardless of whether that government is controlled by Republicans or Democrats.
The founders were willing to risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to seek freedom. We’re not willing to risk much of anything to preserve it.
The excuse for abridging freedom in the 1970s – as it was with the Palmer raids in 1919 and 1920, which swept up the innocent along with the guilty, and the McCarthy madness in the 1950s – was the Communist menace.
The excuse now is the threat of Islamic terrorism.
We have been afraid since Sept. 11, 2001, and there have been those who played our fears like a violin.
Former FBI Director Clarence Kelly said in a speech some years ago that “we must be willing to surrender a small measure of our liberties to preserve the great bulk of them.”
That pretty much falls into the same category as “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
When I read the recent Post story, I recalled that Michigan Sen. Phil Hart had been heartbroken by what the Church Committee had found.
I found Hart’s reaction in the conclusion of a speech former Sen. Walter Mondale, who also served on the Church Committee, delivered not long:
Hart said that his family had been right all along. They had told him repeatedly that the FBI was trying to thwart dissent against the Vietnam War.
“As a result of my superior wisdom in high office, I assured them that they were on pot – it just wasn’t true. [The FBI] wouldn’t do it.”
Turning to the witness before the committee, Hart said softly and sadly “what you have described is a series of illegal actions, intended to deny certain citizens their first amendment rights – just like my children said.”
In the McCarthy era, journalist Edward R. Murrow took the occasion of a See It Now broadcast to remind us of some truths that are relevant today:
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. …We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. …We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
Or, as Benjamin Franklin, observed, “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty or security.”
Bill Brown can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com
Do you think there is even the remotest chance of Al Qaeda – or the Taliban or Hezbollah or any other extremist Islamic group – taking over this country?
There is no more likelihood of that than there was of the Irish Republican Army taking over Great Britain.
If we realize one day that the freedoms we have taken for granted – the ones we’re taught about in school – are gone, we will see that the people who have taken over look just like us. And they will not have wrested control in one convulsive coup. In exchange for promises of security, we will have willingly surrendered our freedoms step by step.
We have been confronted with the false choice between freedom and security since the early days of the republic – think of the Alien and Sedition Acts – and we have periodically lurched into spasms of fear ever since.
All of this is brought to mind by a recent Washington Post story reporting that the Justice Department wants to make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the data with federal agencies and keep it for at least 10 years.
Of course, the supporters say the measures preserve civil liberties and are subject to internal oversight.
The Post quoted White House spokesman Tony Fratto as saying the administration agrees that it needs to do everything possible to prevent unwarranted encroachments on civil liberties, adding that it succeeds the overwhelming majority of the time.
The Post article quoted Jim McMahon, deputy executive director of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, as saying, "It moves what the rules were from 1993 to the new world we live in, but it maintains civil liberties."
Have you ever heard anyone in a position of authority say, “What we are doing encroaches on your civil liberties.”
This latest move is just one more effort to break down a wall erected in the mid-1970s after extended Senate hearings into widespread abuses of citizens’ rights.
The committee chaired by Sen. Frank Church found that “Intelligence agencies have collected vast amounts of information about the intimate details of citizens’ lives and about their participation in legal and peaceful activities. The targets of intelligence activities have included political adherents of the right and the left, ranging from activists to casual supporters.”
Among committee’s findings:
The FBI had kept files on a million Americans and investigated a half a million “subversives” between 1960 and 1974 without a single court conviction.
The CIA – with cooperation from the Post Office – illegally opened mail for over 20 years, collecting information on more than a million Americans.
The National Security Agency intercepted every overseas telegram sent or received by an American citizen between 1947 and 1975.
The IRS gave tax returns of 11,000 groups and individuals to the FBI and conducted audits as a form of political harassment.
Army intelligence investigated 100,000 American citizens during the Vietnam War.
The FBI’s COINTELPRO counterintelligence program was designed to “disrupt” groups and “neutralize” individuals that the FBI deemed to be threats to domestic security.
And that’s just a sampler.
All kind of Americans were targeted. Suspected subversives were under every bed.
The FBI’s well-publicized war against Martin Luther King was perhaps the most egregious example of government run amuck. But it wasn’t just J. Edgar Hoover striking out on his own
The Church Committee found that every president from Roosevelt to Nixon had pressed the intelligence agencies to go beyond the law.
Even with the laws that grew out of the Church Committee investigation in place, in the past half dozen years undercover New York police officers infiltrated protest groups before the 2004 Republican National Convention, California state agents eavesdropped on peace, animal rights and labor activists; and Denver police spied on Amnesty International and others before being discovered.
And of course the Bush Administration claims that it is unhindered by constitutional safeguards as long as it invokes the magic phrase “national security.”
Our founders had a first-hand acquaintance with unchecked power, and they established a constitutional form of government to protect the citizens against the government. Read that again if you like. The citizens need to be protected against the government, regardless of whether that government is controlled by Republicans or Democrats.
The founders were willing to risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to seek freedom. We’re not willing to risk much of anything to preserve it.
The excuse for abridging freedom in the 1970s – as it was with the Palmer raids in 1919 and 1920, which swept up the innocent along with the guilty, and the McCarthy madness in the 1950s – was the Communist menace.
The excuse now is the threat of Islamic terrorism.
We have been afraid since Sept. 11, 2001, and there have been those who played our fears like a violin.
Former FBI Director Clarence Kelly said in a speech some years ago that “we must be willing to surrender a small measure of our liberties to preserve the great bulk of them.”
That pretty much falls into the same category as “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
When I read the recent Post story, I recalled that Michigan Sen. Phil Hart had been heartbroken by what the Church Committee had found.
I found Hart’s reaction in the conclusion of a speech former Sen. Walter Mondale, who also served on the Church Committee, delivered not long:
Hart said that his family had been right all along. They had told him repeatedly that the FBI was trying to thwart dissent against the Vietnam War.
“As a result of my superior wisdom in high office, I assured them that they were on pot – it just wasn’t true. [The FBI] wouldn’t do it.”
Turning to the witness before the committee, Hart said softly and sadly “what you have described is a series of illegal actions, intended to deny certain citizens their first amendment rights – just like my children said.”
In the McCarthy era, journalist Edward R. Murrow took the occasion of a See It Now broadcast to remind us of some truths that are relevant today:
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. …We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. …We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
Or, as Benjamin Franklin, observed, “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty or security.”
Bill Brown can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Watching Another Morning Arrive
Without any particular effort or desire on my part, I have become a morning person.
It is a far cry from my younger years, when I worked at night by choice. On a Saturday or Sunday could easily sleep until noon.
Now, at a time when I rarely have any need to set an alarm or get up at a certain time, I awaken, lie for a while considering whether it is possible that I will go back to sleep,and then get up to greet another day.
Our house is perched on hillside overlooking the lake, and the bedroom is on the second floor. Next to the bedroom is a small room with two chairs separated by an old children’s school desk and a floor lamp.
We call it the reading room, but in the mornings it is where I sit nursing a cup of coffee and letting my mind wander as a new day takes shape. My wife usually is still asleep, and I sit quietly to try to avoid awakening her.
Everything is quiet. Not even the birds are stirring, and at this time of year, it is light well before the school bus runs.
The view from the reading room is of the upper part of the trees that grow in front of the house, the water, and the land on the far side of the slough.
The morning sort of sneaks up on me, even while I am looking. Perhaps that’s a metaphor for life in general.
At first light, the world in monochromatic. The trees, those just outside the window and those across the slough, a simply silhouettes. The open water and the sky are the color of tarnished silver. There are patches of water that reflect the trees along the shore, and it is difficult in the half-light to determine what are trees and what are reflections.
Across the way, at the end of a slough, a light blinks on, blinks off briefly, then on again in a night-long ritual. I know from having paddled past it that the light comes from a miniature lighthouse painted in the orange and blue colors of Auburn University.
A hummingbird levitates almost as high as the white oak tree in front of the house and then darts sharply away. Three ducks fly by in a hurry to get to somewhere.
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, colors emerge, the greens of the leaves, the colors of the house across the slough.
The sun rises behind our house, so we don’t see it appear over the horizon. What we see is the sun’s work. The sky overhead slowly turns blue; if there are any clouds, they are painted a tropical pink.
Soon enough the creation of a new day is completed; I am glad for having seen it.
The writer can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com
It is a far cry from my younger years, when I worked at night by choice. On a Saturday or Sunday could easily sleep until noon.
Now, at a time when I rarely have any need to set an alarm or get up at a certain time, I awaken, lie for a while considering whether it is possible that I will go back to sleep,and then get up to greet another day.
Our house is perched on hillside overlooking the lake, and the bedroom is on the second floor. Next to the bedroom is a small room with two chairs separated by an old children’s school desk and a floor lamp.
We call it the reading room, but in the mornings it is where I sit nursing a cup of coffee and letting my mind wander as a new day takes shape. My wife usually is still asleep, and I sit quietly to try to avoid awakening her.
Everything is quiet. Not even the birds are stirring, and at this time of year, it is light well before the school bus runs.
The view from the reading room is of the upper part of the trees that grow in front of the house, the water, and the land on the far side of the slough.
The morning sort of sneaks up on me, even while I am looking. Perhaps that’s a metaphor for life in general.
At first light, the world in monochromatic. The trees, those just outside the window and those across the slough, a simply silhouettes. The open water and the sky are the color of tarnished silver. There are patches of water that reflect the trees along the shore, and it is difficult in the half-light to determine what are trees and what are reflections.
Across the way, at the end of a slough, a light blinks on, blinks off briefly, then on again in a night-long ritual. I know from having paddled past it that the light comes from a miniature lighthouse painted in the orange and blue colors of Auburn University.
A hummingbird levitates almost as high as the white oak tree in front of the house and then darts sharply away. Three ducks fly by in a hurry to get to somewhere.
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, colors emerge, the greens of the leaves, the colors of the house across the slough.
The sun rises behind our house, so we don’t see it appear over the horizon. What we see is the sun’s work. The sky overhead slowly turns blue; if there are any clouds, they are painted a tropical pink.
Soon enough the creation of a new day is completed; I am glad for having seen it.
The writer can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Flowers, Neatness Paint Powerful Picture
Our biennial reunion, as has always been the case, exceeded our expectations, which have become pretty high. Even the weather on the Oregon coast was unusually clear. Appropriately, the day that we said our goodbyes and departed, the sky was leaden and the air was saturated.
We stayed on for another week, seeing some magnificent sights and some interesting towns in western Oregon and Washington, with a quick trip to Victoria, British Columbia, thrown in.
We spent the week on the move. It is possible, I discovered, to be away from cell phone service, the Internet and even the daily papers without suffering psychic harm.
The week was time for relaxation, not research, but it some patterns were seemed obvious.
One was the abundance of flowers, not only along the roadsides, but also in the towns.
Many of the towns we visited, or just passed through, seek tourists, and one thing that makes a dramatic impression on visitors, is flowers. Admittedly, the weather in the places we have visited is often gray, and color makes an even greater impression. But planters along sidewalks and window boxes add interest and energy to the streetscape. They give the impression that the residents are proud of their community. Really, that's probably as important to the local residents as it is to visitors.
And we saw very little litter, either on rural roads or in the towns. It's something that I am acutely aware of, since we in the South seem to accept litter as a fact of life instead of treating it as a blight on our beautiful land.
It takes a while to notice the absence of something, so it took a few days to realize that one reason we were so aware of the beauty of the countryside was the fact that we could see the countryside without peering through a jungle of roadside signs and billboards. (I must admit that I often rely on signs to tell me where the next eating place or gas station is located, though the growing number of car navigation systems and cell phones that can access such information may one day make billboards superfluous.) There are many places, though, where a sign is like a zit on the face of a beauty queen.
I did not expect to be particularly impressed by Port Angeles, Washington, which is probably best known as a place to catch the ferry over to Victoria, but I revised my opinion. The city itself has a population of around 19,000, but it thinks a lot bigger than that. With Victoria just a short ferry ride away, it is important, I would imagine, to give visitors a reason to linger in Port Angeles, if only for a few hours.
There is the profusion of flowers that we noticed in other towns, but there's more. A local Rotary club sparked the creation of several striking murals depicting the city's history, and along the streets are all kinds of public art, apparently sponsored by local businesses.
In any number of towns, we saw that instead of being razed to make way for new businesses with their standard one-design fits all architecture, many older structures had been adapted to new uses. Again, that is an important part of being attractive to visitors. I believe that it was Ed McMahon, the preservationist, not Johnny Carson's sidekick, who said that tourists weeks out places that don't look like the place where they live.
As we drove through our hometown on the way home, I recognized that ours is a pretty place. I realized, too, that there is a lot more that we could do.
The writer can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com
We stayed on for another week, seeing some magnificent sights and some interesting towns in western Oregon and Washington, with a quick trip to Victoria, British Columbia, thrown in.
We spent the week on the move. It is possible, I discovered, to be away from cell phone service, the Internet and even the daily papers without suffering psychic harm.
The week was time for relaxation, not research, but it some patterns were seemed obvious.
One was the abundance of flowers, not only along the roadsides, but also in the towns.
Many of the towns we visited, or just passed through, seek tourists, and one thing that makes a dramatic impression on visitors, is flowers. Admittedly, the weather in the places we have visited is often gray, and color makes an even greater impression. But planters along sidewalks and window boxes add interest and energy to the streetscape. They give the impression that the residents are proud of their community. Really, that's probably as important to the local residents as it is to visitors.
And we saw very little litter, either on rural roads or in the towns. It's something that I am acutely aware of, since we in the South seem to accept litter as a fact of life instead of treating it as a blight on our beautiful land.
It takes a while to notice the absence of something, so it took a few days to realize that one reason we were so aware of the beauty of the countryside was the fact that we could see the countryside without peering through a jungle of roadside signs and billboards. (I must admit that I often rely on signs to tell me where the next eating place or gas station is located, though the growing number of car navigation systems and cell phones that can access such information may one day make billboards superfluous.) There are many places, though, where a sign is like a zit on the face of a beauty queen.
I did not expect to be particularly impressed by Port Angeles, Washington, which is probably best known as a place to catch the ferry over to Victoria, but I revised my opinion. The city itself has a population of around 19,000, but it thinks a lot bigger than that. With Victoria just a short ferry ride away, it is important, I would imagine, to give visitors a reason to linger in Port Angeles, if only for a few hours.
There is the profusion of flowers that we noticed in other towns, but there's more. A local Rotary club sparked the creation of several striking murals depicting the city's history, and along the streets are all kinds of public art, apparently sponsored by local businesses.
In any number of towns, we saw that instead of being razed to make way for new businesses with their standard one-design fits all architecture, many older structures had been adapted to new uses. Again, that is an important part of being attractive to visitors. I believe that it was Ed McMahon, the preservationist, not Johnny Carson's sidekick, who said that tourists weeks out places that don't look like the place where they live.
As we drove through our hometown on the way home, I recognized that ours is a pretty place. I realized, too, that there is a lot more that we could do.
The writer can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Hopefully Not the Last Roundup
Barring the unforeseen, by the time this is posted we are ensconced in a house overlooking the Pacific Ocean near Yachats, Oregon.
It is the eighth edition of a biennial reunion that has been dubbed the Roundup of the Usual Suspects. Unlike that first gathering, we are approaching this iteration without trepidation
The first roundup was almost happenstance. It brought together for the first time in decades four couples of us who had been close friends in our relative youth in St. Petersburg, Fla.
When we first became friends, we were all early in our careers and our married lives. We enjoyed being together, and our entertainment often consisted of dinner at someone’s house and watching the children play. We didn’t have any pretensions, because we didn’t have anything to be pretentious about.
Two of the couples left Florida in the early ’70s. We all stayed in touch, swapping Christmas cards with the usual notes about the children and vacations. Some of us had seen each other now and then in the intervening years – a quick dinner on a business trip, that sort of thing – but those contacts had been fleeting. Even the two couples who remained in the St. Petersburg area lived far enough apart that they saw each other only occasionally.
The reunion idea was born when Tom and Jean, both of whom still lived in St. Petersburg, ran into each other. Tom mentioned completing what was to become his and Shirley’s retirement home in the Rockies, and Jean said that would be a great place to get the old gang together.
And it happened. Everyone was interested enough, or curious enough, to work it into their schedules.
As we drove westward from Colorado Springs for that first gathering, I wondered whether we would still find common ground when we hadn’t been together for more than 25 years. We were about to find out whether it was best to leave those glossy old memories unsmudged by current reality. Later, the others would admit having the same questions.
We should not have worried.
We were the last to arrive, and the others were gathered at the table eating chili. We slid into our seats and joined in.
Within minutes the intervening years had evaporated. I looked around the table. We all showed a little wear and tear, but we’d earned it. And in the important things, we were still the people we had been.
We weren’t alike way back then, not by a long shot, but the things we shared in common were more than enough to let us accept the things that made us different, and we were comfortable with each other’s shortcomings.
The reunion was enough to remind us that those early friendships are special treasures. It also was enough to tell us that we didn’t want to wait 25 years for another get-together, so we decided to make it a biennial affair.
Since then we’ve met by the ocean in California, on Lake Martin in Alabama, in the mountains of Tennessee, at Lake Tahoe, on Mount Desert Island in Maine, and, two years ago, in St. Petersburg. We called that gathering the return to t he scene of the crime.
All of us have hit a few bumps along the way, but on the whole we have been very lucky. We are still here, still married to the same spouses. We have raised our children and have been rewarded with grandchildren.
But, for a week or so, we will be in our 20s again. When we are together now, as it was then, we are all individual people, not someone’s son or daughter, not someone’s business associate or boss. We are important to each other because of who we are, not because of our title or economic standing.
And if our week together had a soundtrack, it would be filled with laugher.
That is a wonderful thing to keep.
The writer can be contacted at billatthelake@google.com
It is the eighth edition of a biennial reunion that has been dubbed the Roundup of the Usual Suspects. Unlike that first gathering, we are approaching this iteration without trepidation
The first roundup was almost happenstance. It brought together for the first time in decades four couples of us who had been close friends in our relative youth in St. Petersburg, Fla.
When we first became friends, we were all early in our careers and our married lives. We enjoyed being together, and our entertainment often consisted of dinner at someone’s house and watching the children play. We didn’t have any pretensions, because we didn’t have anything to be pretentious about.
Two of the couples left Florida in the early ’70s. We all stayed in touch, swapping Christmas cards with the usual notes about the children and vacations. Some of us had seen each other now and then in the intervening years – a quick dinner on a business trip, that sort of thing – but those contacts had been fleeting. Even the two couples who remained in the St. Petersburg area lived far enough apart that they saw each other only occasionally.
The reunion idea was born when Tom and Jean, both of whom still lived in St. Petersburg, ran into each other. Tom mentioned completing what was to become his and Shirley’s retirement home in the Rockies, and Jean said that would be a great place to get the old gang together.
And it happened. Everyone was interested enough, or curious enough, to work it into their schedules.
As we drove westward from Colorado Springs for that first gathering, I wondered whether we would still find common ground when we hadn’t been together for more than 25 years. We were about to find out whether it was best to leave those glossy old memories unsmudged by current reality. Later, the others would admit having the same questions.
We should not have worried.
We were the last to arrive, and the others were gathered at the table eating chili. We slid into our seats and joined in.
Within minutes the intervening years had evaporated. I looked around the table. We all showed a little wear and tear, but we’d earned it. And in the important things, we were still the people we had been.
We weren’t alike way back then, not by a long shot, but the things we shared in common were more than enough to let us accept the things that made us different, and we were comfortable with each other’s shortcomings.
The reunion was enough to remind us that those early friendships are special treasures. It also was enough to tell us that we didn’t want to wait 25 years for another get-together, so we decided to make it a biennial affair.
Since then we’ve met by the ocean in California, on Lake Martin in Alabama, in the mountains of Tennessee, at Lake Tahoe, on Mount Desert Island in Maine, and, two years ago, in St. Petersburg. We called that gathering the return to t he scene of the crime.
All of us have hit a few bumps along the way, but on the whole we have been very lucky. We are still here, still married to the same spouses. We have raised our children and have been rewarded with grandchildren.
But, for a week or so, we will be in our 20s again. When we are together now, as it was then, we are all individual people, not someone’s son or daughter, not someone’s business associate or boss. We are important to each other because of who we are, not because of our title or economic standing.
And if our week together had a soundtrack, it would be filled with laugher.
That is a wonderful thing to keep.
The writer can be contacted at billatthelake@google.com
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Hands Off Gulf State Park
An upscale resort and convention center on Alabama’s Gulf of Mexico beachfront sounds swell.
Most of us Alabamians, I think, like to be able to tell the world that we know how to do things well. We’re proud of the reputation that the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail has earned, even if we don’t play golf. We’re proud of the Grand Hotel’s legendary status, even if we can’t afford to stay there.
A $100 million hotel and convention center, complete with a spa, on the powdery sands of the Gulf could go right on that list. It just reeks of luxury and exclusivity.
All we would have to do is turn over a hunk of Gulf State Park to private enterprise. Technically, the park land would remain in pubic ownership while being leased long-term to Auburn University, which would then have a private developer build and operate the center.
Anyway you slice it, though, the public would lose something it once had.
You may remember the lodge that the state operated at the park. It was, well, pretty plain, and it had already fallen on hard times before Hurricane Ivan finished it off. Even in its decline, though, the lodge was right on one of the loveliest stretches of beach that you can find anywhere. And the price for lodging meant that a vacation at the beach was within the reach of average Alabamians.
Some of the folks who want to see a luxury resort rise on the site use the derelict condition of the old facility as a reason for building something grander. But the condition of the old lodge was the result of years of shameful neglect, a neglect that affected most of the state’s parks. Those same parks had once been among the finest in the nation – something else that we once would point to with pride.
The parks are among the things (some would argue the few things) the state provides that benefits ordinary citizens. Yet the state – or at least Gov. Bob Riley’s administration – wants to shut ordinary Alabamians out of a prime part of the park system and make it the haunt of the well heeled. (Any time you talk about the increasing disparity between the incomes of the few at the top of the heap and the vast majority, Republicans accuse you of fomenting class warfare. Actually, the war is over. They won.)
I don’t know Charley Grimsley, the former conservation commissioner who has led the effort to derail the deal, but I applaud him.
Ruling in a suit that Grimsley and others brought, Montgomery Circuit Judge Gene Reese ruled against the Riley administration. He found that the plan violated the constitutional provision that any facility at the park be operated and maintained by the state Conservation Department. He said state law sets the longest lease at 12 years and stipulates that a lease be competitively bid (Riley’s plan calls for a lease up to 99 years with no competitive bidding). Reese also ruled that the plan violated a state law that requires the state to take into account the average per capita and family income of Alabamians in planning lodging at the state parks.
Grimsley said, “Gulf State Park was built so that the working people could have a place to enjoy the beach. Long after I’m gone, I want the poorest man in Alabama to be able to take his child or grandchild to Gulf State Park.
 The governor is appealing Reese’s decision. “We can’t continue to lose millions of convention dollars to our neighboring state of Florida because we don’t have adequate hotel and convention facilities at Gulf State Park,” he said.
Well, that is disingenuous at best. State parks were created for all of the people, not just the privileged.
If there is a market for a luxury hotel and convention center (and spa), isn’t that an opportunity for private enterprise? Aren’t the Republicans supposed to be the party of free enterprise? It’s interesting to note that among those suing to stop the state plan is a hotel operator in Orange Beach, presumably one who is operating without a state subsidy.
I think Bob Riley is the best governor Alabama has had in a long, long time. But in this case, I think Bob Riley is dead wrong.
 If he really wants to be governor for all Alabamians, he ought to drop the appeal.
You can contact Bill Brown at billatthelake@gmail.com
Most of us Alabamians, I think, like to be able to tell the world that we know how to do things well. We’re proud of the reputation that the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail has earned, even if we don’t play golf. We’re proud of the Grand Hotel’s legendary status, even if we can’t afford to stay there.
A $100 million hotel and convention center, complete with a spa, on the powdery sands of the Gulf could go right on that list. It just reeks of luxury and exclusivity.
All we would have to do is turn over a hunk of Gulf State Park to private enterprise. Technically, the park land would remain in pubic ownership while being leased long-term to Auburn University, which would then have a private developer build and operate the center.
Anyway you slice it, though, the public would lose something it once had.
You may remember the lodge that the state operated at the park. It was, well, pretty plain, and it had already fallen on hard times before Hurricane Ivan finished it off. Even in its decline, though, the lodge was right on one of the loveliest stretches of beach that you can find anywhere. And the price for lodging meant that a vacation at the beach was within the reach of average Alabamians.
Some of the folks who want to see a luxury resort rise on the site use the derelict condition of the old facility as a reason for building something grander. But the condition of the old lodge was the result of years of shameful neglect, a neglect that affected most of the state’s parks. Those same parks had once been among the finest in the nation – something else that we once would point to with pride.
The parks are among the things (some would argue the few things) the state provides that benefits ordinary citizens. Yet the state – or at least Gov. Bob Riley’s administration – wants to shut ordinary Alabamians out of a prime part of the park system and make it the haunt of the well heeled. (Any time you talk about the increasing disparity between the incomes of the few at the top of the heap and the vast majority, Republicans accuse you of fomenting class warfare. Actually, the war is over. They won.)
I don’t know Charley Grimsley, the former conservation commissioner who has led the effort to derail the deal, but I applaud him.
Ruling in a suit that Grimsley and others brought, Montgomery Circuit Judge Gene Reese ruled against the Riley administration. He found that the plan violated the constitutional provision that any facility at the park be operated and maintained by the state Conservation Department. He said state law sets the longest lease at 12 years and stipulates that a lease be competitively bid (Riley’s plan calls for a lease up to 99 years with no competitive bidding). Reese also ruled that the plan violated a state law that requires the state to take into account the average per capita and family income of Alabamians in planning lodging at the state parks.
Grimsley said, “Gulf State Park was built so that the working people could have a place to enjoy the beach. Long after I’m gone, I want the poorest man in Alabama to be able to take his child or grandchild to Gulf State Park.
 The governor is appealing Reese’s decision. “We can’t continue to lose millions of convention dollars to our neighboring state of Florida because we don’t have adequate hotel and convention facilities at Gulf State Park,” he said.
Well, that is disingenuous at best. State parks were created for all of the people, not just the privileged.
If there is a market for a luxury hotel and convention center (and spa), isn’t that an opportunity for private enterprise? Aren’t the Republicans supposed to be the party of free enterprise? It’s interesting to note that among those suing to stop the state plan is a hotel operator in Orange Beach, presumably one who is operating without a state subsidy.
I think Bob Riley is the best governor Alabama has had in a long, long time. But in this case, I think Bob Riley is dead wrong.
 If he really wants to be governor for all Alabamians, he ought to drop the appeal.
You can contact Bill Brown at billatthelake@gmail.com
Sunday, July 13, 2008
There's MoreThan Luck in Being a Parent – But a Little Luck Helps
I look at our two sons, grown now with children of their own, with wonder and some amazement – how did they turn out so, well, decent – and a small degree of pride – maybe we had something to do with it.
All of that is fresh in mind because the two of them were together with us for a couple of days over the July 4 holiday. That happens rarely – geography conspires to keep the apart – so I relished every moment, talking with them or just watching them enjoying each other.
Here were two people whom I respect and whose company I would enjoy even if they weren’t kin to me.
As much as I would like to think that it was all our doing, I know that raising children doesn’t work that way. There are no surefire rules for being a successful parent, though I am sure you could write down some surefire rules for being a failure.
A lot of us have had to learn parenting as we go along. I know I didn’t have a real role model for being a dad. I never saw my father after my 16th summer and saw precious little of him before then. We moved too often for me to have anyone who could be called a mentor.
Fortunately, most children are remarkably resilient, and I have come to believe that just being around counts for a lot.
I like to think that our sons learned some things from me. I know that I have learned a great deal from them and continue to do so.
From our older son, I have learned about optimism. He was born with the ability to see the positive side of almost any situation. You’ve got a flat tire? Aren’t you lucky that you have a spare and that it isn’t raining? That kind of mindset is not my nature, and I don’t know how many times I have been taking a gloomy view only to think of what Jeff would say and have smiled.
From our younger son, I’ve grown to appreciate a longer perspective – and patience. Funny that he learned before I did that there are a lot of things that aren’t nearly as important as we make them at the time, things we won’t even remember. Just because other people have priorities that aren’t the same as yours, it doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
I watch our sons with their children, and I suspect that in many ways they are better fathers than I was. I only hope that they turn out to be as lucky as I have been.
The writer can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com
All of that is fresh in mind because the two of them were together with us for a couple of days over the July 4 holiday. That happens rarely – geography conspires to keep the apart – so I relished every moment, talking with them or just watching them enjoying each other.
Here were two people whom I respect and whose company I would enjoy even if they weren’t kin to me.
As much as I would like to think that it was all our doing, I know that raising children doesn’t work that way. There are no surefire rules for being a successful parent, though I am sure you could write down some surefire rules for being a failure.
A lot of us have had to learn parenting as we go along. I know I didn’t have a real role model for being a dad. I never saw my father after my 16th summer and saw precious little of him before then. We moved too often for me to have anyone who could be called a mentor.
Fortunately, most children are remarkably resilient, and I have come to believe that just being around counts for a lot.
I like to think that our sons learned some things from me. I know that I have learned a great deal from them and continue to do so.
From our older son, I have learned about optimism. He was born with the ability to see the positive side of almost any situation. You’ve got a flat tire? Aren’t you lucky that you have a spare and that it isn’t raining? That kind of mindset is not my nature, and I don’t know how many times I have been taking a gloomy view only to think of what Jeff would say and have smiled.
From our younger son, I’ve grown to appreciate a longer perspective – and patience. Funny that he learned before I did that there are a lot of things that aren’t nearly as important as we make them at the time, things we won’t even remember. Just because other people have priorities that aren’t the same as yours, it doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
I watch our sons with their children, and I suspect that in many ways they are better fathers than I was. I only hope that they turn out to be as lucky as I have been.
The writer can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com
Monday, July 7, 2008
Maybe Things Aren't Going to Hell in a Hand Basket as Quickly as We Fear
Many of us, I suspect, harbor the secret conviction that the next generation somehow dropped the vessel of culture as we were handing it off to them. It doesn’t matter that the generation before us thought the same thing; this time we’re sure it’s true.
Every once in a while, though, I get a sliver of evidence that we are too pessimistic.
Such was the case the other night.
Our Air Force son and his family have been visiting with us between assignments, and several of his friends and their children – the next couple of generations, if you will – were guests at our house over the July 4 holiday weekend.
They don’t get to see each other in person very often, and after dinner they were catching up.
Eventually, the talk turned to entertainment – particularly to television programs that they have followed for multiple seasons. I was largely an observer. We do not watch very much television at our house, and I had never seen any of the programs that they were talking about.
Television has always been part of their lives, and it is a different medium for them than it was for us.
Television and we were relatively young at the same time. Our choices were limited, and if there were a program that we liked, we bent our schedule to that of the television network. Either you watched a show at the time it was broadcast or you missed it.
This generation doesn’t operate that way. They record the programs they like, or get a whole season on DVD, or download programs from the Internet.
They watch movies, too, and as they talked, they compared their movie watching with their television habits.
A more apt comparison, I thought, was with books, with literature.
Movies are more like plays. From Aristophanes to Shakespeare to Albee, playwrights have tackled the human condition and stimulated their audiences to think and discuss as well as to enjoy.
But a play or a movie, as arresting as it may be, is of a far more limited nature than a book.
As they discussed their television shows, they took a much longer view than they would of a movie: “The first two seasons were really good, but they got off track in season three; this season is much better.”
It wasn’t just the individual story lines that occupied most of their attention. They talked about characters – and character. Is one of them good or evil, or some of both? How has the character changed over time?
Aren’t those the kinds of things that people who read Tolstoy or Faulkner talked about, too? And good literature is entertaining as well as enlightening.
Personally, I still get far more from the printed word than I do from television. But just because a younger generation gets its literature in a different fashion, it does not mean that it is less intelligent or thoughtful.
Perhaps the vessel carrying our culture hasn’t been broken so much as it has changed shape.
The writer can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com
Every once in a while, though, I get a sliver of evidence that we are too pessimistic.
Such was the case the other night.
Our Air Force son and his family have been visiting with us between assignments, and several of his friends and their children – the next couple of generations, if you will – were guests at our house over the July 4 holiday weekend.
They don’t get to see each other in person very often, and after dinner they were catching up.
Eventually, the talk turned to entertainment – particularly to television programs that they have followed for multiple seasons. I was largely an observer. We do not watch very much television at our house, and I had never seen any of the programs that they were talking about.
Television has always been part of their lives, and it is a different medium for them than it was for us.
Television and we were relatively young at the same time. Our choices were limited, and if there were a program that we liked, we bent our schedule to that of the television network. Either you watched a show at the time it was broadcast or you missed it.
This generation doesn’t operate that way. They record the programs they like, or get a whole season on DVD, or download programs from the Internet.
They watch movies, too, and as they talked, they compared their movie watching with their television habits.
A more apt comparison, I thought, was with books, with literature.
Movies are more like plays. From Aristophanes to Shakespeare to Albee, playwrights have tackled the human condition and stimulated their audiences to think and discuss as well as to enjoy.
But a play or a movie, as arresting as it may be, is of a far more limited nature than a book.
As they discussed their television shows, they took a much longer view than they would of a movie: “The first two seasons were really good, but they got off track in season three; this season is much better.”
It wasn’t just the individual story lines that occupied most of their attention. They talked about characters – and character. Is one of them good or evil, or some of both? How has the character changed over time?
Aren’t those the kinds of things that people who read Tolstoy or Faulkner talked about, too? And good literature is entertaining as well as enlightening.
Personally, I still get far more from the printed word than I do from television. But just because a younger generation gets its literature in a different fashion, it does not mean that it is less intelligent or thoughtful.
Perhaps the vessel carrying our culture hasn’t been broken so much as it has changed shape.
The writer can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Lies at the Speed of Light
Most of the time I simply press the delete key when I receive one of those e-mails sliming some individual or group. You know, the ones that someone has forwarded to everyone in his (or her) address book.j
Occasionally, though, I read through one, search for the facts, and send a link to Snopes or one of the other fact-checking sites to all of the addresses on the e-mail. Not that it does a lot of good.
I find it curious – and even a little scary – that people who are civil enough personally are not the least reluctant to pass on the most venomous personal attacks. They receive a mass e-mail that gibes with their opinion, suspend any skepticism or sense of civility, and speed it on.
They become a mob with a computer keyboard instead of a brickbat.
I find it curious, too, that so many of the people who do that are the same ones who rail against the so-called mainstream media for being unfair or inaccurate. They want publishers to be fair and accurate, but assume no responsibility for being the same. Yet when they click on the send button, they have become publishers themselves.
So many of the things you receive don’t tell you who originated them or where the purported facts came from.
I have recalled more than once my days as a young reporter. Objectivity was the goal – whether anyone can be truly objective is a matter for another column – and reporters were not only supposed to tell the reader where the information in the story came from, they also were to keep their personal opinions out.
No one wanted to have a story that he’d written returned with a terse “Says who?” scrawled in red grease pencil at the top and an offending sentence circled. Attribution was the name of the game, whether it was an opinion or a “fact” that might be disputed.
I wish those people busy forwarding e-mails would more often take time to ask, “says who?”
Even if you know where the piece you’re reading originated, the “says who?” question often goes unanswered.
I received in a mass e-mail the other day a particularly odious piece about presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama. It was a sort of John Birch Society meets the Ku Klux Klan. It did not take long to figure out that the writer made no pretense to being “fair and balanced” or that he was satisfied with planting innuendo in the form of questions.
That was only one of many venomous pieces about Obama circulating, and it is not surprising that The Washington Post reported the other day that his victory has been marked by an increase in racist and white supremacist activity, mainly on the Internet.
None of this is really new. The poison pen has a long history in American politics.
Thomas Jefferson paid notorious propagandist James Callender to pen the most vicious attacks on John Adams. (Callender later turned on Jefferson and circulated the stories about Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings.)
The big difference between then and now, though, is that the poison pen artist has thousands of willing accomplices, and lies can circulate at the speed of light.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Occasionally, though, I read through one, search for the facts, and send a link to Snopes or one of the other fact-checking sites to all of the addresses on the e-mail. Not that it does a lot of good.
I find it curious – and even a little scary – that people who are civil enough personally are not the least reluctant to pass on the most venomous personal attacks. They receive a mass e-mail that gibes with their opinion, suspend any skepticism or sense of civility, and speed it on.
They become a mob with a computer keyboard instead of a brickbat.
I find it curious, too, that so many of the people who do that are the same ones who rail against the so-called mainstream media for being unfair or inaccurate. They want publishers to be fair and accurate, but assume no responsibility for being the same. Yet when they click on the send button, they have become publishers themselves.
So many of the things you receive don’t tell you who originated them or where the purported facts came from.
I have recalled more than once my days as a young reporter. Objectivity was the goal – whether anyone can be truly objective is a matter for another column – and reporters were not only supposed to tell the reader where the information in the story came from, they also were to keep their personal opinions out.
No one wanted to have a story that he’d written returned with a terse “Says who?” scrawled in red grease pencil at the top and an offending sentence circled. Attribution was the name of the game, whether it was an opinion or a “fact” that might be disputed.
I wish those people busy forwarding e-mails would more often take time to ask, “says who?”
Even if you know where the piece you’re reading originated, the “says who?” question often goes unanswered.
I received in a mass e-mail the other day a particularly odious piece about presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama. It was a sort of John Birch Society meets the Ku Klux Klan. It did not take long to figure out that the writer made no pretense to being “fair and balanced” or that he was satisfied with planting innuendo in the form of questions.
That was only one of many venomous pieces about Obama circulating, and it is not surprising that The Washington Post reported the other day that his victory has been marked by an increase in racist and white supremacist activity, mainly on the Internet.
None of this is really new. The poison pen has a long history in American politics.
Thomas Jefferson paid notorious propagandist James Callender to pen the most vicious attacks on John Adams. (Callender later turned on Jefferson and circulated the stories about Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings.)
The big difference between then and now, though, is that the poison pen artist has thousands of willing accomplices, and lies can circulate at the speed of light.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Generation Gap Measured
In Thickness of Aluminum Can
The gap between my and my children’s generation is defined not by the IPod or the Internet, but by a simple aluminum drink can. Half full. Warm. Sitting on the kitchen counter or the coffee table or by a chair on the front deck.
It is not just my children -- adults now -- who take only a few sips and then leave their drink to get warm and flat. Taking a few hummingbird like sips of nectar before flitting off seems to be common to all of their generation.
I keep my peace, but my thrifty soul recoils. If I told them that a soft drink was once a rare treat, something to be eagerly anticipated and then savored to the very last drop, they would categorize that information as more harping from dad about his youth, their idea of prehistory. They would roll their eyes and mutter under their breaths, “And you walked to school through the snow – uphill both ways – carrying your lunch in a syrup bucket.” I doubt they really know what a syrup bucket is.
The can is only a symbol, of course. The real divide is an attitude forged by economics. They would never dream that deciding whether to spend money on a soft drink required thought. To them, a soft drink is nothing more than a cheap commodity, like bottled water. (I still have difficulty actually paying for water; my grandfather would think it was just plain nuts.)
For us a soft drink – we never used that term; we called them soda pop, or used Coke as a generic for any kind of soft drink – was nectar.
My aunt, who was single and had a good job, bought Cokes by the case. I hoped that one day I would be as well off. I was out of college and well into my first job before I felt that prosperous.
In our youth, if we could scrounge up a nickel, my cousins and I would trudge up the country road to the store and get a soda pop. Sometimes the money was a generous gift, but more often it came doing chores or from collecting soft drink bottles and turning them in for two cents each. If we had a dime, we could buy a bag of peanuts to go with our drink.
The store was typical of its kind with a lone gas pump out front and a wide porch with hanging swings flanking the door. The store occupied the front room; the rest of the wood frame house was living quarters, territory that we rarely entered. In the front room were shelves with canned goods, bread, flour and meal and a large glass counter that had candy bars, chewing gum and other treats.
And there was the drink box.
It wasn’t like the ones in the stores in town. It was a water-filled cooler that farmers used to keep milk fresh until the dairy truck picked it up.
You plunged your arm deep into the icy water to fish around for your drink – in a glass bottle, of course.
Although we were just school kids, we had firm opinions about our purchases. If we were really thirsty, we went for quantity. That meant a Royal Crown Cola, which we never called anything but RC, or a Pop Kola. If we wanted to balance quantity and taste, we went for a Pepsi Cola, slightly smaller than an RC but bigger than a Coca Cola. (The store didn’t carry root beer because the owners, strict Baptists, wouldn’t stock anything with beer in the name).
If we wanted the best, though, we spent our nickel on a Coke.
We paid for our purchases, often in pennies, and sat on the front porch swing and savor our drinks. If we could affords peanuts, there was a standing debate about whether to pour the them into the drink bottle or to eat from the bag, taking a swig of pop in between. My cousins favored the former while I opted for the latter.
Experiencing the icy liquid and the bubbles on our tongue was the focus of our attention, The drinking itself was the event itself, not an auxiliary to some other activity. With our children’s generation, the drink is very much an incidental.
It was through the price of soft drinks that we learned about inflation. We had heard for months that soft drinks were going up to 6 cents. Then one day we went to the store and indeed they had. No bag of peanuts that day. And more scrounging whenever we wanted a treat.
I don’t think our kids ever scrounged for money to buy a soft drink, nor did they ever trudge up the road in the August heat to buy one.
I understand all of that intellectually, and I don’t complain aloud about the profligacy of leaving nearly full can of pop, but I do notice.
Perhaps one day they will tell their kids about the choices they had to make when gasoline shot up to $4 a gallon.
The writer can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com
It is not just my children -- adults now -- who take only a few sips and then leave their drink to get warm and flat. Taking a few hummingbird like sips of nectar before flitting off seems to be common to all of their generation.
I keep my peace, but my thrifty soul recoils. If I told them that a soft drink was once a rare treat, something to be eagerly anticipated and then savored to the very last drop, they would categorize that information as more harping from dad about his youth, their idea of prehistory. They would roll their eyes and mutter under their breaths, “And you walked to school through the snow – uphill both ways – carrying your lunch in a syrup bucket.” I doubt they really know what a syrup bucket is.
The can is only a symbol, of course. The real divide is an attitude forged by economics. They would never dream that deciding whether to spend money on a soft drink required thought. To them, a soft drink is nothing more than a cheap commodity, like bottled water. (I still have difficulty actually paying for water; my grandfather would think it was just plain nuts.)
For us a soft drink – we never used that term; we called them soda pop, or used Coke as a generic for any kind of soft drink – was nectar.
My aunt, who was single and had a good job, bought Cokes by the case. I hoped that one day I would be as well off. I was out of college and well into my first job before I felt that prosperous.
In our youth, if we could scrounge up a nickel, my cousins and I would trudge up the country road to the store and get a soda pop. Sometimes the money was a generous gift, but more often it came doing chores or from collecting soft drink bottles and turning them in for two cents each. If we had a dime, we could buy a bag of peanuts to go with our drink.
The store was typical of its kind with a lone gas pump out front and a wide porch with hanging swings flanking the door. The store occupied the front room; the rest of the wood frame house was living quarters, territory that we rarely entered. In the front room were shelves with canned goods, bread, flour and meal and a large glass counter that had candy bars, chewing gum and other treats.
And there was the drink box.
It wasn’t like the ones in the stores in town. It was a water-filled cooler that farmers used to keep milk fresh until the dairy truck picked it up.
You plunged your arm deep into the icy water to fish around for your drink – in a glass bottle, of course.
Although we were just school kids, we had firm opinions about our purchases. If we were really thirsty, we went for quantity. That meant a Royal Crown Cola, which we never called anything but RC, or a Pop Kola. If we wanted to balance quantity and taste, we went for a Pepsi Cola, slightly smaller than an RC but bigger than a Coca Cola. (The store didn’t carry root beer because the owners, strict Baptists, wouldn’t stock anything with beer in the name).
If we wanted the best, though, we spent our nickel on a Coke.
We paid for our purchases, often in pennies, and sat on the front porch swing and savor our drinks. If we could affords peanuts, there was a standing debate about whether to pour the them into the drink bottle or to eat from the bag, taking a swig of pop in between. My cousins favored the former while I opted for the latter.
Experiencing the icy liquid and the bubbles on our tongue was the focus of our attention, The drinking itself was the event itself, not an auxiliary to some other activity. With our children’s generation, the drink is very much an incidental.
It was through the price of soft drinks that we learned about inflation. We had heard for months that soft drinks were going up to 6 cents. Then one day we went to the store and indeed they had. No bag of peanuts that day. And more scrounging whenever we wanted a treat.
I don’t think our kids ever scrounged for money to buy a soft drink, nor did they ever trudge up the road in the August heat to buy one.
I understand all of that intellectually, and I don’t complain aloud about the profligacy of leaving nearly full can of pop, but I do notice.
Perhaps one day they will tell their kids about the choices they had to make when gasoline shot up to $4 a gallon.
The writer can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com
Sunday, June 8, 2008
A New Front Opens in the Little War With the Squirrels
The squirrels have opened a new front – actually reopened an old one – in our low-intensity conflict.
After I declared victory in our battle over the bird feeder, they decided to seize the territory under our widow’s walk for a housing development.
I could see why they would find the landscape inviting. Our house sits on a steep lot overlooking Lake Martin. From the lakeside, the house is nosebleed tall. There are two chimneys, a real one for the fireplace flue and a false one with a door that opens onto the widow’s walk.
The widow’s walk is reached by climbing the XX rungs of the ladder hidden inside of the false chimney. It is not of much practical value, but it is a good place to sit on a clear summer night and watch for shooting stars or to lie on your back and look straight up into the far reaches of the Milky Way. And it does make the house distinctive. When you say you live in the house with the widow’s walk, people who have seen it from the water know which one you’re talking about it.
Our builder resisted building the widow’s walk, because it’s challenging to support a structure like that atop the roof without having leaks. He could save us money by leaving it off, he said. Build it, we said. You won’t ever use it, he said. Build it, we said. It will just collect leaves, he said. Only if leaves fall up, my wife pointed out. He gave up.
The squirrels were glad that he did.
I happened to gaze up at the widow’s walk one day last summer and noticed a substantial number of twigs protruding from under a part of it. It clearly was not an accidental accumulation. I climbed up to the widow’s walk for a closer examination. Looking over the railing, I could see portions of the nest sticking out, but there was no way I could reach it.
The boards on the deck were nailed down, and I had to pry one of them up in order to gain access to the nest. I broke it up and sent the twigs sliding down the steep roof. The squirrels also had tried to chew through the soft cedar siding, presumably to get inside the false chimney. I repaired that.
Throughout the winter, I didn’t see any construction, and I thought the squirrels had given up.
I should have known better.
The drought-stressed oak trees produced a bumper crop of acorns, which in turn produced a bumper crop of squirrels, and, I suppose, a demand for housing. Spring brought a new construction season.
We sat at the dining table and watched squirrels stretching out on the tiniest of limbs gathering twigs, arranging them in their mouths, and leaping from a tree limb to the roof.
I climbed to the widow’s walk. Sure enough, a new project had started, this one far more ambitious than the previous one, a condominium compared to a cottage. Fresh limbs with leaf buds
But this time, I thought, I had outsmarted the squirrels. I had replaced the decking of the widow’s walk, fastening down the boards with screws so that they were easily removed.
I directed a cascade of twigs down the roof and into the flowerbed. I did not replace the boards, figuring that the exposure would discourage them.
A few days later I was sitting at the dining table watching morning come to the lake when I heard what sounded like a parade on the roof above me. I went out to the front deck and looked up. Three squirrels bearing twigs were marching up the ridge of the roof, headed for the widow’s walk.
I destroyed. They rebuilt. I destroyed again. In the end my perseverance won the skirmish. I guess they were under some pressure to finish new homes somewhere, so they gave up on the condos for this season.
They returned their attention to the bird feeder. Last year the feeder hung by a slender cord from a limb on a white oak tree, and I swelled with pride as I watched a squirrel, practically hanging from the tree limb by his back feed as he tried to reach down to the feeder.
This spring, they discovered that a tree near the white oak had grown, and its limbs reached out toward the bird feeder. I watched as a squirrel scampered out a pencil-sized limb and launched himself at the bird feeder. The feeder is only 10 feet or so outside the dining room window, but the squirrel simply smirked at me when I tapped on the window glass. It was only after I raised the window and shouted dire threats that he retreated.
So I moved the feeder to another tree that is visible from the dining room. I hung it well out on a limb, suspended six feet or so below the limb.
It did not take long for the squirrels to discover it had been moved. I watched a squirrel scurry up and down the tree, out on every skinny limb anywhere near the feeder, and back again.
And I watched as he launched himself from a limb downward at a 20- or 30-degree angle across 10 feet of space and make an aircraft carrier type landing on the feeder. The Flying Wallendas should be so daring.
I raced onto the front deck and shouted at him. He shinnied up the cord hopped onto the tree limb, laughing at me as he leapt from one tree to the next.
I replaced the cord with wire, thinking it would be too slick for the squirrel to climb.
I was wrong. He jumped. I yelled. He scampered up the wire with ease.
I sprayed the wire with lithium grease. He slipped a little as he darted up the wire, but not enough to discourage from trying again.
So, it’s back to the drawing board.
I could get one of those feeders with shutters that close when something as heavy as a squirrel lands on them. We’ve had them before, and they work, but they seem to last only a season.
Besides, getting one would somehow seem like cheating.
After I declared victory in our battle over the bird feeder, they decided to seize the territory under our widow’s walk for a housing development.
I could see why they would find the landscape inviting. Our house sits on a steep lot overlooking Lake Martin. From the lakeside, the house is nosebleed tall. There are two chimneys, a real one for the fireplace flue and a false one with a door that opens onto the widow’s walk.
The widow’s walk is reached by climbing the XX rungs of the ladder hidden inside of the false chimney. It is not of much practical value, but it is a good place to sit on a clear summer night and watch for shooting stars or to lie on your back and look straight up into the far reaches of the Milky Way. And it does make the house distinctive. When you say you live in the house with the widow’s walk, people who have seen it from the water know which one you’re talking about it.
Our builder resisted building the widow’s walk, because it’s challenging to support a structure like that atop the roof without having leaks. He could save us money by leaving it off, he said. Build it, we said. You won’t ever use it, he said. Build it, we said. It will just collect leaves, he said. Only if leaves fall up, my wife pointed out. He gave up.
The squirrels were glad that he did.
I happened to gaze up at the widow’s walk one day last summer and noticed a substantial number of twigs protruding from under a part of it. It clearly was not an accidental accumulation. I climbed up to the widow’s walk for a closer examination. Looking over the railing, I could see portions of the nest sticking out, but there was no way I could reach it.
The boards on the deck were nailed down, and I had to pry one of them up in order to gain access to the nest. I broke it up and sent the twigs sliding down the steep roof. The squirrels also had tried to chew through the soft cedar siding, presumably to get inside the false chimney. I repaired that.
Throughout the winter, I didn’t see any construction, and I thought the squirrels had given up.
I should have known better.
The drought-stressed oak trees produced a bumper crop of acorns, which in turn produced a bumper crop of squirrels, and, I suppose, a demand for housing. Spring brought a new construction season.
We sat at the dining table and watched squirrels stretching out on the tiniest of limbs gathering twigs, arranging them in their mouths, and leaping from a tree limb to the roof.
I climbed to the widow’s walk. Sure enough, a new project had started, this one far more ambitious than the previous one, a condominium compared to a cottage. Fresh limbs with leaf buds
But this time, I thought, I had outsmarted the squirrels. I had replaced the decking of the widow’s walk, fastening down the boards with screws so that they were easily removed.
I directed a cascade of twigs down the roof and into the flowerbed. I did not replace the boards, figuring that the exposure would discourage them.
A few days later I was sitting at the dining table watching morning come to the lake when I heard what sounded like a parade on the roof above me. I went out to the front deck and looked up. Three squirrels bearing twigs were marching up the ridge of the roof, headed for the widow’s walk.
I destroyed. They rebuilt. I destroyed again. In the end my perseverance won the skirmish. I guess they were under some pressure to finish new homes somewhere, so they gave up on the condos for this season.
They returned their attention to the bird feeder. Last year the feeder hung by a slender cord from a limb on a white oak tree, and I swelled with pride as I watched a squirrel, practically hanging from the tree limb by his back feed as he tried to reach down to the feeder.
This spring, they discovered that a tree near the white oak had grown, and its limbs reached out toward the bird feeder. I watched as a squirrel scampered out a pencil-sized limb and launched himself at the bird feeder. The feeder is only 10 feet or so outside the dining room window, but the squirrel simply smirked at me when I tapped on the window glass. It was only after I raised the window and shouted dire threats that he retreated.
So I moved the feeder to another tree that is visible from the dining room. I hung it well out on a limb, suspended six feet or so below the limb.
It did not take long for the squirrels to discover it had been moved. I watched a squirrel scurry up and down the tree, out on every skinny limb anywhere near the feeder, and back again.
And I watched as he launched himself from a limb downward at a 20- or 30-degree angle across 10 feet of space and make an aircraft carrier type landing on the feeder. The Flying Wallendas should be so daring.
I raced onto the front deck and shouted at him. He shinnied up the cord hopped onto the tree limb, laughing at me as he leapt from one tree to the next.
I replaced the cord with wire, thinking it would be too slick for the squirrel to climb.
I was wrong. He jumped. I yelled. He scampered up the wire with ease.
I sprayed the wire with lithium grease. He slipped a little as he darted up the wire, but not enough to discourage from trying again.
So, it’s back to the drawing board.
I could get one of those feeders with shutters that close when something as heavy as a squirrel lands on them. We’ve had them before, and they work, but they seem to last only a season.
Besides, getting one would somehow seem like cheating.
You can e-mail the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Last Evidence of Yellow Cat Disappears
With a few strokes of a paintbrush the other day I erased the last physical sign of Yellow Cat's presence.
After he died in March, I put away the little house I'd put out for him – one that he seldom deigned to use, not matter how cold the weather – and discarded his food and water dishes.
But I left the scars on the corner board at the top of the steps leading from the side deck to the alcove just outside the door. Yellow Cat was a big guy, and he liked to stretch full length against the corner board and drag his claws down the soft cedar. I covered the raw scars with gray stain any number of times. It would last for a while, but sooner or later he felt the urge to stretch and etch into the wood the sign that this was his home.
Yellow Cat was not my cat; in fact, he was no one's cat, although I do now know whether that was by his choice or whether someone abandoned him. Over the past four years, though, we had achieved an understanding. I would provide food and water and take him to the vet for shots or to be patched up when he occasionally was wounded by some more aggressive creature. In exchange, he would decorate the porch railing or the deck or the driveway, lolling in the sun or curled up in a ball on the bench.
I had been seeing Yellow Cat (that started as a description and became his de facto name) off and on for more than a year before we began slowly establishing a relationship. He would be curled up in the sun at the end of a retaining wall or sitting under a bush down the hill from the house. He covered a wide range. I had spotted him in the woods by the boat ramp more than a mile from the house, and neighbors had seen him lurking around their places.
He was skinny, and his fur was matted; he had luminous eyes. If anyone came too close, he disappeared into the bushes. Occasionally I put food out, well away from the house. It disappeared, but I never knew whether he was the diner.
After we moved to the lake full-time and brought out indoor cat with us, sightings of Yellow Cat increased.
Over time, Yellow Cat began eating from a dish on the side deck, and then from a dish on the stoop. He no longer retreated when I appeared, but allowing an occasional scratching of his ears was about as much contact as he tolerated. He no longer looked emaciated; he grew sleek and seemed to content to spend most of his time around the house.
On the Wednesday morning that he died, Yellow Cat was at the side door as usual, staring patiently through the glass, head cocked to one side, waiting for breakfast.
I filled his dish – it had been licked clean, which meant thad a coon or possum had wandered by; Yellow Cat always left a few crumbs.
A couple of hours later, I went to put some things in the car preparatory to taking my wife to Birmingham for a medical appointment. Yellow Cat was sprawled on the side deck, looking very much as he did when he stretched out in a warm, sunny spot. The day, however, was cold and windy, and ordinarily he would have taken shelter under the tea olive bush at the corner of the house.
He was dead, peacefully dead, as if the end had come by surprise, and I would like to think, painlessly. There were no marks on him, not even any sign of discomfort. It must have happened not long before I found him, because rigor had not yet set in. When animals know they are dying, they often seek a secluded spot to pass away. Yellow Cat apparently didn't have that warning, and I am glad, because if he had simply disappeared, I would always have wondered what happened to him.
I covered him to keep the buzzards and other animals from getting to him, and when we got home that evening, I buried him on the hillside overlooking the lake. My wife donated flowers from a bouquet that someone had sent her.
The next day, I called our veterinarian to tell him about Yellow Cat's death and to ask whether I should be concerned about the health of our indoor cat. The circumstances of his death didn't yield a ready explanation, and he asked me to remove Yellow Cat from his hillside so he could be sent to Auburn University for an autopsy.
So I carefully removed the now stiff body from his hillside and took him to the vet in a black plastic bag.
I said goodbye to Yellow Cat for a second time and promise myself that I won't reach an understanding with another homeless animal. At least not any time soon.
Post Script: A few weeks later, the vet called me with the autopsy report. Yellow Cat died of a heart attack. We never knew how old he was, and a heart attack was a far easier death the the renal failure that claims so many older cats.
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