Not Charlie

When each biennial Roundup of the Usual Suspects is winding down, we agree on a location for the next reunion, and someone takes responsibility for scouting out locations and making arrangements.

In our minds, we Usual Suspects are still the four young couples that we were in the mid-1960s when our friendships formed in St. Petersburg, Fla. Photos from the ‘60s, from our first reunion in 1994, and the most recent one last year, however, would reveal the irresistible tug of time and gravity.

It has been a long journey

Just getting accustomed to being adults and too poor to be pretentious, we were friends simply because we liked each other. We are friends now because we still like each other.

We could have missed knowing that, though, except for a lunchtime conversation.

Jean and Charlie had remained in St. Petersburg, and Tom and Shirley lived in Clearwater. The two couples did not see each other often, but Jean and Tom both worked in downtown St. Petersburg and often lunched in the same place.

By then Chuck and Leanne and Adelaide and I had long been gone from St Petersburg. They were settled in Claremont, Calif., and we lived in Montgomery, Ala.

One day at lunch, Jean suggested that the four couples have a reunion at the house Tom and Shirley had built in the mountains of Colorado in anticipation of retirement.

I think curiosity impelled all of us to attend that first reunion, and we approached it with questions and a certain amount of trepidation. Within minutes of the last couple’s arrival, the intervening years were swept away, and the Usual Suspects were born.

We agreed that meeting every other year would keep the reunions from becoming a duty, and the schedule gave us something to look forward to. The primary site specification was that there be room for all of us to hang out.

If you listened to a sound track of our gatherings, you would understand why. You would hear laughter, punctuated by barbs that would make you wonder how the verbal combatants could possibly be friends. We are armed with sharp tongues, but we never draw blood.

Each time a Roundup of the Usual Suspects ends, we know that our numbers might be diminished before the next gathering. Mortality is a reality, and as the years pass, the horizon comes closer.

Still, in the summer of 2008 when our reunion on the Oregon coast broke up, none of us expected that the first person missing would be Charlie.

Charlie was full of life, passionate and curious and energetic. He loved corny jokes and bad puns, and he would tell them with relish, knowing that his reward would be a chorus of groans.

He loved his native St. Petersburg and the starkly beautiful Four Corners of the Southwest and the brooding mountains of Tennessee. And because he loved them, he acquired a depth of knowledge about the flora and the fauna and the people of each region.

He loved visiting rock shops, and he polished stones to decorate the exquisite wooden boxes that he crafted.

He and Jean were the perfect pair. And he was positively gaga about his grandchildren.

In all the years, we had never known Charlie to be ill with anything.

But not long after he and Jean returned home from the reunion, Charlie was diagnosed with lymphoma. Chemotherapy drove it away, and last spring Jean and Charlie and Adelaide and I spent a week in his beloved mountains celebrating his remission from lymphoma and my recovery from bypass surgery.

The lymphoma had retreated, but it had not surrendered, and it returned last summer more virulent than before.

Charlie died just before Christmas.

So early in January six of the Usual Suspects will go to St Petersburg. We will join Jean at a memorial service for her husband and our friend.

Adelaide and I will share our son’s observation upon learning of Charlie’s death: “To make a difference and to be well remembered is something everyone aspires to.”

Certainly Charlie achieved that and much more.

But knowing that does not ease the sting of his departure.

Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

Good words about Good Old Boys

(I ran across this while cleaning out some old files -- more about that later -- and realized it had never been published. So here 'tis.)


    Good old boys have an image problem.
    Say good old boy and the picture that comes to mind is of an ignorant redneck with mud on his shoes and beer on his breath, an overweight hayseed whose vocabulary is smaller than his belt size, a hick in a rusty pickup truck.
    The reason for this sad state of affairs is that good old boys don’t spend their time indoors writing scripts for TV shows or drawing cartoons for slick magazines.
    It’s time someone set the record straight. It’s time to say something good about good old boys.
    A good old boy is polite to a fault. He will take time to compliment the flowers in your front yard and inquire about the health of your mammy and pappy even before he asks to use the phone to call the ambulance because his wife has gone into labor with their third child.
    A good old boy is helpful. If you have hay in the field and it’s making up to rain, he’ll show up before you call for help and he’ll stay til you’re through. In fact, if what you’re doing is more interesting than what he was doing, he’ll stay til his wife threatens to serve supper without him.
    A good old boy has perspective. He knows that a hundred years from now not much of what anyone’s doing is going to be in the history book, so if it’s a nice day and the fish are biting, it’s no big deal if the fence doesn’t get painted until tomorrow. Or the next day.
    A good old boy is an island of calm. When’s he sitting on the front porch in the rocking chair and he looks as if he’s asleep, he’s just meditating. Folks in town pay big money to their yoga teachers to learn to do that.
    A good old boy is friendly. Notice what happens when you meet one coming down the road in his pickup truck. If he doesn’t know you, he’ll lift one finger off the steering wheel. That’s short for “Hi.” If you’re another good old boy, he’ll lift two fingers. That short for “Hi, there.”
    A good old boy is not a slave to fashion. You won’t see him changing his wardrobe every year just because some dandy in Paris or New York said it’s the thing to do. He never bought a leisure suit or a Nehru jacket, and there aren’t that many different ways to tailor a pair of hog washers.
    A good old boy is a smart consumer. The cartoonists may picture him as a rube dumb enough to buy the Brooklyn Bridge, but you won’t find him paying good money just to buy drinking water that some slicker has put in a fancy bottle. Heck, you can get beer for that kind of money.
    A good old boy is a conservationist. If there’s something around the house that he doesn’t know what to do with, say an old water heater or air conditioner, he’s won’t just take it to the dump. No, he’ll toss it over the fence, because sooner or later he or one of his neighbors is going to need to scavenge something off of it to fix something else.
    A good old boy shares. You won’t find him throwing a perfectly good aluminum beer can in the garbage can. He’ll toss it in the ditch, instead, so some less fortunate soul can salvage it for recycling.
    A good old boy uses cash only if all else fails. He’d rather trade than eat, and anything he’s got is prime for barter except his kids and his hound dog. Well, the hound dog for sure.
    A good old boy knows good food. He’d eat fried dirt if you put batter on it.
    Being a good old boy is a state of mind. Even someone who has been to college, even a lawyer, can be one.
    Of course you can’t have good old boys without good old girls, but that’s a whole other subject.


Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

Barreling Down the Wrong Trail

    I wonder how historians a few decades from now will view this crazy period we are living in. My guess is that they will regard it as one of those fits of temporary insanity that our country goes through every now and then, sort of collective post -traumatic stress syndrome.
    Although we tend to regard our own era as unique, it is not; our country has lived through many tumultuous periods when the old order was changing and the future was uncertain.
    The post World War I and World War II Red scares, the Great Depression, even the candidacy and election of a Roman Catholic as president, all caused alarms of one degree or another. And that’s just a short list.
    These times shared some common elements: There were those who preached that the sky was falling, those who believed them and panicked, those who saw advantage in the alarm and profited, and those who stood bemused on the sidelines.
    Each time there were prophets who preached that this time was different. The sky really was falling.
    What was different was the prophets themselves.
    The sky was not falling then; it is not falling now.
    The current prophets of doom are Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, the Walter Winchell and Father Coughlin of their day. Like Winchell and Coughlin, they will one day be just footnotes in the history book.
    It’s easy to regard the protesters spurred on by people like Beck and Limbaugh (and encouraged by Republicans who seem bent on emulating the Federalist Party of Jefferson’s time) as crazies and racists.
    The so-called 9/12 protests in Washington, D.C., would give some support to that notion. There’s no need to recount all the wild claims and hatefully racist themes of some of the signs some protesters carried.
    And yet, not all of those protesters – perhaps not even a majority of them – are crazies. In fact, they have a lot in common with those who have not taken to the streets. They are angry about the present and uncertain about the future. They know that they have lost ground and don’t see how they are going to make it up. They have seen that there is one set of rules for the powerful people and institutions and another for them.
    They are looking for someone to blame, a scapegoat. That’s happened many times before, too.
    And there are always those to spur the mob on, this time in the personages of Limbaugh and Beck, among others. (Hearing those two try to turn President Obama into a Nazi is more than ludicrous. They have more in common with Hitler themselves. Like him, their ravings become increasingly bizarre as time passes.)
    Of course they are abetted in whipping up anxiety and hate by Republicans, who know that if they can divert attention from everything they did to get the country into this mess, the better chance they have of returning to power.
    These Republicans appear willing to do whatever it takes to win. They are, after all, the inheritors of Lee Atwater’s legacy.
    The Republicans know that there is no evidence to dispute President Obama’s American citizenship. Even the Republican governor of President Obama’s home state of Hawaii has attested that his birth certificate is in order. But they refuse to dismiss that phony issue and encourage the crazies to keep beating the drum.
    They know that none of the health care reform legislation would create “death panels” to pull the plug on grandma, but they have stoked that fear.
    They know that the president’s so-called czars aren’t evil cadres appointed to subvert the constitution. But they hyperventilate trying to scare the socks off the citizenry.
    Consider Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., pandering before the Values Voters Conference. “I’d be just about as happy,” he said, “if more of them (members of Congress) read this a little more,” he said, holding up a copy of the constitution.
    “Nowhere in here can I find the word czar,” he went on. “Washington, D.C., must become a no czar zone.”
    Red meat for the right, certainly, but Rep. Pence either is thick as a brick or he knew he was dissembling.
    As David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey, who served in the Justice Department under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, pointed out in a column in The Washington Post, “The White House czars are presidential assistants charged with responsibility for given policy areas. As such, they are among the president's closest advisers. In many respects, they are equivalent to the personal staff of a member of Congress. To subject the qualifications of such assistants to congressional scrutiny – the regular confirmation process – would trench upon the president's inherent right, as the head of an independent and equal branch of the federal government, to seek advice and counsel where he sees fit.”
    They also noted: “Some of the positions many are now criticizing have existed for years. As The Post reported this week: ‘By one count, Bush had 36 czar positions filled by 46 people during his eight years as president.’ “
    Perhaps Rep. Pence and his shocked colleagues (as shocked as Capt. Renault was to discover gambling was going on in Rick’s café in the movie Casablanca) should spend a little more time reading the constitution themselves, especially the separation of power section.
    It’s not just liberals or middle-of-the-roaders who think that the conservative anger at President Obama is misplaced.
    Consider Bruce Bartlett. He is one of the original supply-siders who helped draft the Kemp-Roth tax bill in the 1970s. He was a leading Republican economist in the 1980s and 1990s.
    In a column last month in The Daily Beast, a news and opinion reporting and aggregating web site, he wrote:
    “To a large extent, Obama is only cleaning up messes created by Bush. This is not to say Obama hasn’t made mistakes himself, but even they can be blamed on Bush insofar as Bush’s incompetence led to the election of a Democrat. If he had done half as good a job as most Republicans have talked themselves into believing he did, McCain would have won easily.”
    “Conservatives delude themselves that the Bush tax cuts worked and that the best medicine for America’s economic woes is more tax cuts; at a minimum, any tax increase would be economic poison. They forget that Ronald Reagan worked hard to pass one of the largest tax increases in American history in September 1982, the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, even though the nation was still in a recession that didn’t end until November of that year. Indeed, one could easily argue that the enactment of that legislation was a critical prerequisite to recovery because it led to a decline in interest rates. The same could be said of Clinton’s 1993 tax increase, which many conservatives predicted would cause a recession but led to one of the biggest economic booms in history.
    “Until conservatives once again hold Republicans to the same standard they hold Democrats, they will have no credibility and deserve no respect. They can start building some by admitting to themselves that Bush caused many of the problems they are protesting.”
    Bartlett has a number of other insights. You can read his complete essay
here.
    Watching the protesters in full cry after President Obama, I am reminded of my youth in North Louisiana.
    On many a warm summer night, we would put the coon hounds in the back of the truck and drive out in the country to find a corn field. We would listen as the dogs struck a scent and then went baying after their quarry.
    You could tell whether they were trailing and when they had treed.
    Armadillos were establishing themselves in the area by the mid 1950s, and far too often you could tell that the hounds were chasing an armadillo instead of a raccoon. When they were chasing the wrong animal, you might as well call them in and go home.
    Nobody is going to call the protesters in, but maybe they will figured out they’re on the wrong trail.

Contact the writer.

Perhaps She's Still Invisible

    The reunion of the Ruston (La.) High School Class of 1959 was, I imagine, very much like the 50th reunions of countless high school classes.
    At the last reunion I attended, the 30th, the erosive qualities of time and gravity had begun to alter the landscape of the class of ’59, but now they had plowed deep furrows and dragged away our youth. I could have passed a lie detector test that I had never seen some of those people in my entire life.
    (Memo to class reunion planners: Make the name tags really big, so people with fading eyesight aren’t so obvious in trying to read a name as they squeeze a hand and say something like, “Hey, Robby, of course I remember you.”)
    I did not keep in touch with my classmates after I went away to college and essentially left my hometown for good. Many classmates remained in town or nearby, but over the years when I returned to visit, I spent most of the time with my brother and sister and with the diminishing number of other kinfolks.
    The reunion events were limited: a tour of the old alma mater – it has been renovated and expanded, but it was more recognizable than some of the alumni – and a party at the home of a class member.
    In the weeks leading up to the reunion, it was natural to try to recall what school felt like at the time.
    Racial segregation was still the order of the day, so our high school was all white. It was the only white high school, though, and as small as it was (about 110 in our class), it comprised a wide variety of people.
    There were the kids who rode in from the country on big yellow buses. Many of the boys took classes in agriculture and shop and were distinguished by their blue corduroy Future Farmers of America jackets. Many of the girls took home ec and wore dresses that had been sewn by their mothers or had come from the bargain rack or a catalog. (There were exceptions, of course; no group is totally homogenous.)
    There were the town kids – the children of business people and professors at the college – who constituted the school’s social elite.
    There were, of course, the athletes who were a group in themselves and who had, at least for a time, acceptance by the elites.
    The largest group was no group at all, that faceless middle that fell into that category simply because it did not fall into any other. I was one of those.
    So, in some sense, the gathering of the Class of ’59 was only partly a reunion, since for some the only unity had been in being a member of that particular year’s graduating class.
    The high school years may be more difficult for girls than it is for boys. Our school, for example, had sororities, which by their very nature exclude people.
    It started, I think, with one sorority – the upper tier as it were – followed by formation of another sorority, which I guess was composed of those who hadn’t quite made the first cut. They were pretty exclusive themselves, so during my high school years, a group of girls who had not been invited to join either of the other groups formed their own club..
    But some girls – and boys – were rejected by everyone, even that faceless middle.
    There was a girl I remembered who always seemed as frightened as a cornered animal. She was obviously poor. Her clothes had the appearance of hand-me-downs, and I am not sure they were always clean. She did not seem to have any friends; I don’t recall seeing her chatting with anyone in the halls or in the lunchroom. She never participated in class. I remember a time or two trying to start a conversation with her, but by then she must have been so wounded that she was suspicious of everyone.
    I hadn’t thought of her for at least 50 years, but she came to mind as I tried to recall those years. I wondered what had happened to her.
    The reunion committee had done a good job of tracking down the members of the Class of ’59, and they handed out a sheet with the names and addresses of the living and a list of the departed.
    On the entire list there were only two names that had no information at all. Hers was one of them. No one knew her then; no one knew her now.

Contract the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

I Don't Think Hendry Is Coming Back

    It has been four weeks since Hendry went missing, and I am gradually acknowledging that she is not coming back.
    Still, every morning when I come downstairs, I look out the door to the side deck, half expecting her to be sitting there waiting for me to let her in and ready to give me a scolding for leaving her outside so long.
    When I am dressing in the morning, I automatically reach out to the small step ladder I use for getting things down from the closet shelf as though she had hopped up to the top step and was waiting for me to scratch her ears.
    When I sit down on the stair to put on my shoes, I expect her to come sit by my right side, always the right side, and to butt my hand with her head until I stop and give her the attention she craves.
    Although Hendry technically is not our cat, we have been her people long enough for her to be a part of our daily lives. In theory, Hendry belongs to our son’s family, but even as their cat, Hendry showed an independent streak that led our oldest granddaughter, Nora, then eight years old, to proclaim, “Hendry belongs to the world.”
    It was Nora who gave Hendry her name. Her family adopted a small kitten when Nora was four. They thought it was a male, and they named it Henry. When Nora tried to say the name, though, it came out Hendry. So Hendry it became, and the name stuck, even after it turned out that Hendry was a she.
    Our son’s family lived next door to us in Montgomery then, and although Hendry spent a good deal of time outdoors, she never displayed any particular interest in us.
    But a few weeks after our son’s family moved several miles away, Hendry showed up at our house. Our son, who happened to visiting us at the time, took Hendry home, and they kept her inside for several more weeks.
          Hendry kept coming back, crossing several busy thoroughfares en route. So, even though we had decided not to have any more pets after Lightnin’, our little Manx cat, disappeared, we took Hendry in, reasoning that sooner or later she was going to get hit by a car as she crossed one of those streets.
    When we moved fulltime to the lake, we brought Hendry with us. We kept her inside for months, fearing she’d undertake a long trek back to her old neighborhood. She made no such effort; she was as content with the peace and quiet of the lake as we are.
    Hendry craved attention only on her terms, and most of the time she was content simply to be in whatever room we were occupying. She would curl up on the couch in the living room, or sprawl on the floor in our bedroom as we slept. If we walked down to the dock, she followed along, although after having taken an unhappy ride on the pontoon boat she kept out of reach.
    One of the times that she did demand attention was right after dinner. She seemed to sense when I had finished eating, and when I pushed away from the table, she would come sit by my chair until I made room for her to jump up beside me and have her ears scratched. When she’d had enough, she would jump down.
    After the Yellow Cat died, Hendry began spending more time outdoors, but she was mostly an indoor cat. She often wanted to go out in the evening. When we were ready to go upstairs at bedtime, I would go to the door. She was usually waiting to come in or sitting on the stoop or the railing contemplating the evening.
    So when she was eager to go outside on a Wednesday evening, I opened the door and she scampered out. A couple of hours later we were ready to go up for the evening and I went to the door to let her in. She wasn’t at the door or on the steps or on the railing. Nor was she on the hood of the car, another of her favorite perches.
    She did not come when I called, which was not unusual. Dogs come when you call them; cats respond with studied indifference.
    I expected that she would be waiting at the door the next morning, as she had been several times before, complaining loudly about being left out all night. But she was not there. We checked around the property; no sign of her or of a fight of any kind. The neighbors said they had not seen her. I checked along the roads near the house; no sign of a dead animal.
    I had not wanted another pet, but with cats, you are chosen about as often as you choose.
    But this time, like Sherman, if elected I will not serve.
    Still, every morning when I come downstairs, the first thing I do is look to the door.


Contract the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

What's Wrong with a Decent Respect for the Opinons of Mankind?

    In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson took care to explain the reasons for the colonies’ separation from Great Britain out of “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind. …”
    The founders understood that they would need the goodwill of other nations if the fledgling nation were to succeed.
    If an e-mail I got the recently is representative, many Americans, perhaps a large number of Americans, no longer think the opinions of mankind matter.
    The e-mail came from a friend who I assume sent it to a list of right thinkers in his address book and perhaps to a few like me who just don’t get it.
    The e-mail began:
“While on Obama's trip to Europe, he stated that ‘we are an arrogant country.’”
    It listed the number of American dead in a military cemetery in France
   “We Apologize.” it continued with undisguised sarcasm.
   It listed the number of American dead in a cemetery in Belgium.
    “We are arrogant.”
    It listed the American dead in another cemetery in France.
    “Excuse us.”
    It listed more American dead in cemeteries in England, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Italy.
    “IF ADDED CORRECTLY THE COUNT IS 104,366.”
    “Apologize to no one. Remind those of our sacrifice and don't confuse arrogance with leadership.
    “As Americans, let's all look forward to the next elections - to find a President who doesn't think we need to be ashamed.
    “May God have mercy on us until this presidential term is over!”
    What has the writer is foaming at the mouth is President Obama’s trip to Europe where he did in fact apologize for some of the strains in relations between the United States and Europe in the recent past.
    What eludes me is the connection that the author of the e-mail tries to make.
    What do American deaths on European battlefields in World Wars I and II have to do with whether in recent years we have been arrogant and dismissive?
    Certainly, American sacrifices tilted World War I in favor of Britain and France. And without the United States, Britain and much of the rest of the world may have fallen to the Germans and their allies.
    But in both wars we weren’t solely altruistic. We were fighting to preserve freedom in our own country.
    When President Woodrow Wilson went before a joint session of Congress on April 2, 1917, to request a declaration of war against Germany, he cited Germany's violation of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and its attempts to entice Mexico into an alliance against the United States, as his reasons for declaring war.
    In asking Congress to recognize that a state of war existed between the United States and Germany and between the United States and Italy, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote, “On the morning of Dec. 11 the Government of Germany, pursuing its course of world conquest, declared war against the United States. The long-known and the long-expected has thus taken place. The forces endeavoring to enslave the entire world now are moving toward this hemisphere. Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization. Delay invites great danger. Rapid and united effort by all of the peoples of the world who are determined to remain free will insure a world victory of the forces of justice and of righteousness over the forces of savagery and of barbarism. Italy also has declared war against the United States.”
    If, as the e-mail’s author suggests, we are exempt from criticism from Europe because of the sacrifices we made in two wars, then we have no right to criticize France, because without that country’s support, the colonies probably would have lost the War for Independence.
    President Obama didn’t crawl to Europe on his knees. In its coverage of his speech in Strasbourg, France, The Telegraph of London said that he went further than any United States president in history in criticizing his own country’s action while standing on foreign soil.
   “But,” The Telegraph said, “he sought to use the mea culpa as leverage to alter European views of America and secure more troops for the war in Afghanistan.
    “He declared that there had to be a fundamental shift on both sides of the Atlantic. ‘America is changing but it cannot be America alone that changes,’ ” he said.
    “Addressing a crowd of some 2,000 mainly students from France and Germany, Mr. Obama said: ‘In America, there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.’
    “He then balanced this striking admission with a tough message to Europeans that blaming America was foolish.
    “’But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual, but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what is bad.’
    “On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common. They are not wise. They do not represent the truth. They threaten to widen the divide across the Atlantic and leave us both more isolated. They fail to acknowledge the fundamental truth that America cannot confront the challenges of this century alone, but that Europe cannot confront them without America.’"
    In his debate with Al Gore at Wake Forest University on Oct. 11, 2000, George W. Bush said he didn’t think other nations should look at the United States with envy. “It really depends upon how [our] nation conducts itself in foreign policy. If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll resent us. If we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us. Our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power. And that’s why we’ve got to be humble and yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom. We’re a freedom-loving nation. If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll view us that way, but if we’re humble nation, they’ll respect us.”
   I think we have to cut the Bush Administration some slack in light of the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
    But we also have to admit that his promise to treat foreign countries with humility quickly went by the boards. We divided nations into those that were for us or against us, ignoring the fact that other nations might have their own national interests and problems. We were dismissive and derisive of those who didn’t fall into lockstep. Remember “Freedom Fries?”
    We were the most powerful nation on earth and that was what counted. We based our national strategy on our military dominance.
    That has its drawbacks. In his 1987 book “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” Paul Kennedy observed that “…the United States now runs the risk, so familiar to historians of the rise and fall of previous Great Powers, of what might roughly be called ‘imperial overstretch’: that is to say, decision makers in Washington must face the awkward and enduring fact that the sum total of the United States’ global interests and obligations is nowadays far larger than the country’s power to defend them all simultaneously.”
    Time has validated Kennedy’s thesis.
    For the moment at least (watch the Chinese), we are the greatest military power on earth. But like Gulliver among the Lilliputs, we have found that a giant can be hamstrung by midgets.
    We cannot go it alone. President Obama ought to be cut a little slack in trying to regain the respect and cooperation of the Europeans, especially since we did a lot to alienate them.
    “…don't confuse arrogance with leadership.” Right. Leaders have followers. People follow out of respect, not fear.
    “Apologize to no one. …”
    That strikes me as, well, arrogant.


Contract the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

There's No Right not to be Offended

    Heaven help us if the desire not to be offended is ever enshrined as a right. There seems to be no end of people who think they have some inherent right to be sheltered from anything that offends them, and some pursue it, even to the point of violence.
    "Angels & Demons," the latest Ron Howard/Tom Hanks/Dan Brown religious blockbuster, received mixed faith-based reviews. Hanks plays a Harvard professor on the trail of a sinister religious society plotting to install their candidate as Pope and blow up the Vatican.
    The Catholic Bishops Conference of India would like to have the movie banned, but will settle for a disclaimer that states the movie is a work of fiction. "It deliberately denigrates the Catholic Church and is intended to offend the faithful," said Father Babu Joseph.
    Here in the U.S., the Catholic League and the Universal Society of Hinduism asked the film's producers to add a disclaimer wherever the movie is shown.
    You may recall that the earlier Howard/Hanks/Brown film of “The Da Vinci Code” was condemned by the Vatican as “an offense against God.” The condemnation didn’t seem to affect the film’s box office, and the Vatican’s reaction to the new film is low key.
    Some years ago, Muslims took offense to Salman Rushdie’s novel, “The Satanic Verses,” and to the works of a Danish editorial cartoonist. They were so offended that they sanctioned the killing of the offenders.
    Of course, it is not just religious matters that raise hackles.
    Closer to home, an Auburn, Ala., city councilman was so offended by the small Confederate battle flags on the graves of Civil War soldiers at a city cemetery that he removed some of them.
    They had been placed by members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy to commemorate Confederate Memorial Day.
    The councilman, who is black, said the flags were “offensive to me.”
    “It’s intimidating to black folks, and it’s intimidating to me as a civil rights leader,” he said.
    One can understand the councilman being offended, but it’s difficult to imagine him being intimidated by much of anything.
    It is equally difficult to imagine the United Daughters of the Confederacy setting out to intimidate anyone.
    It’s not just symbols that offend, of course. Words do, too.
    Take the word niggardly, which means stingy. It dates back to the 1300s in Middle English and has no racial origin, unlike the Romance language root of the infamous N word.
    Niggardly has caused a world of commotion over the years, mostly from people presuming to know what it means without bothering to look it up.
    Several years ago, a white aide to the black mayor of Washington, D.C., in a discussion with two city employees used the word to describe a budget appropriation. He was accused of using a racial slur. In the uproar, he offered his resignation and it was accepted, though eventually reason prevailed and he was rehired.
    An English major at the University of Wisconsin complained to the Faculty Senate that a professor teaching Chaucer had used the word "niggardly" and continued using it after she told him that she was offended. "It's not up to the rest of the class to decide whether my feelings are valid," she said.
    Someone is always getting outraged by a book in the pubic schools or in the public library and they want to make certain not only that they are not offended but that others don’t get to judge for themselves whether they are offended.
    Almost any writer, philosopher, artist or composer whose work has endured has offended someone.
    I am offended by many things. I am sure you could make your own list.
    I am offended by the burning of the American flag, for example. But as much as I am offended, I would be much more offended by any action to punish those who burn the flag. Nearly any speech (and that includes symbolic speech) that is worth its first amendment protection is likely to offend someone.
    When someone argues that the thing that offends him or her is somehow different, that it deserves to be suppressed, it is time to be particularly wary. We have already surrendered too many of our ideals. We must now surrender our support of the first amendment right of free speech and the other rights it guarantees.
    As Benjamin Franklin observed, “…If all Printers were determin'd not to print any thing till they were sure it would offend no body, there would be very little printed.”

Write Bill Brown at billatthelake@gmail.com

A Better Gardener Than I

Written on Earth Day, 2009


    As you crest a hill on Old Susanna Road just before it drops down to our short side road, the horizon stretches before you. In the distance the hills march westward. Most prominent is Smith Mountain, with its abandoned fire tower still standing watch over the lake.
    From this vantage point you see more shades of green than the vocabulary can name. It is worthwhile to pull to the side of the road and drink in the scene.
    On our half hill spring is rampant. Last week, I prepared a two beds for some flowers that I had started from seed a couple of months ago. I was beginning to think that the plants would become root-bound before there was enough of a break in the cold, wind and rain for me to set them out.
    At last, though, sun appeared, the soil dried and the thermometer climbed, and I carried the tray of fledgling flowers down to the beds by the seawall.
    The planting went quickly. When I finished, I stood erect and stretched and let my eyes wander. The native azaleas are past their prime, and the winds have stripped the flowers from the dogwoods. But the oak leaf hydrangeas have fresh green leaves, and wildflowers abound.
    Violets are still blooming, and the flowers that look like tiny asters – according to Joab Thomas’ excellent wildflower book wild asters should not be blooming, so perhaps they’re daisy fleabane – abound. Small yellow flowers – I think they are eared coreopsis – abound on the hillside and on the flat path along the seawall. One of these days I will have to run the string trimmer along the path, but not until the flowering is past.
    The attention getters, though, are the wild irises. They are small, even delicate. It seems impossible that they would thrive on their own, but there they are. I am reminded of one of my favorite Kate Campbell songs: “He used to call her Wild Iris; if you said don’t, she would.” Which in turn reminds me of my own wild iris.
    All of these wildflowers and more are around the beds into which I’ve prepared.
    I confess that I am only a semi-skilled gardener, and I don’t know whether any of the seedlings I set out will survive, much less thrive. My success or failure in this particular venture doesn’t matter, though. In the riot of shapes and colors around me, I recognize that God is a lot better gardener than I am.
    Perhaps my – our – greatest contribution to our beautiful planet would simply be to avoid messing it up.

Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

A Long Road to Simplicity

Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.
Yankee Proverb

The proverb came to mind not long ago as I read a newspaper article reporting that in this trying economy more people are having their clothing mended and shoes resoled, using the public library instead of buying on Amazon, and preparing more meals at home instead of eating out.
It came to mind again as I was wheeling the garbage can to the street. It was nearly full, despite the fact that only my wife and I live at home, and we recycle newspapers and magazines, aluminum and steel cans and cardboard. We save our plastic grocery bags for use by the food pantry.
What is it that we are throwing away? By far, the most substantial part of it is packaging. Everything seems to come in multiple layers of paper and plastic. Some of it is leftovers that got left over for too long. It is obvious that we are throwing out more than we’re wearing out.
Whether you call it frugality or conservation, it is unarguable that our footprint on this plant is much larger than that of the generations that went before us.
I’m sure that the generation my grandparents belonged to didn’t think of themselves as being eco-friendly, or as we say now, “green.” They thought they were simply being sensible.
Certainly industries used our air and our streams as convenient dumps and didn’t concern themselves with the consequences.
On a lesser level, not everything my grandparents did, such as burning household garbage in an empty oil drum and then burying what remained in an old borrow pit, was particularly earth friendly. But on the whole, they made far fewer demands on the planet’s resources than we do.
We buy paper towels by the case; my grandmother wiped the kitchen counter with a cloth from a 25-pound bag of flour.
Many in our generation and even more in the one following us buy bottled water. When my grandfather went to the field, he carried his drinking water in a gallon syrup jug, insulated with an empty 10-pound sugar sack.
Most of the food was grown in the garden and didn’t come shrink-wrapped in a Styrofoam tray. Meat purchased at the grocery store was wrapped in butcher paper instead of plastic. Far more items, from foodstuffs to hardware were sold unpackaged.
My grandfather’s old Studebaker pickup truck probably was not as efficient as the engines of today’s vehicles. But he drove fewer miles in a year than we do in a month.
The closets in my grandparents’ house were impossibly small, but the closets and a couple of chifforobes held everything they owned, and they did not feel compelled to buy new things before the old clothes wore out.
At our house, the clothes dryer runs a good deal of the time; I can’t remember the last house we lived in that had a clothesline. Although my grandmother eventually had an automatic washing machine, she never had a dryer and never felt the need for one.
I don’t hold those days up as the ideal. Times change and so do we. I’m pretty sure, though, that despite our consumption of a larger share of the planet’s bounty, we are not really any happier than they were.
Would we be more content if we owned less, if we used less? I don’t know. All that simplicity may be more attractive in the abstract.
Intellectually, I know we have all kinds of stuff that we don’t really need, but as long as we have a place to put it – even if we can’t remember where we put it, or sometimes even remember that we have it – simplifying will continue to be a challenge.
My efforts thus far have been limited. I’ve thinned my library of a fair number of books, taking them to the public library for use in one of the Friends of the Library’s periodic book sales. But I have to consider a book multiple times before I admit that I’m not going to read it again or use it for reference. I’ve gotten rid of bags of clothing that no longer fits, things that are too big instead of too small. I want to make it expensive to regain the weight I’ve lost.
It was easy enough for Thoreau to preach, “Simplify, simplify, simplify.”
And simplifying would make us greener.
It’s the doing that is difficult.

Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

Conservatives -- Or Just Suckers?

    If you have any doubt that state government in Alabama is operated for the benefit of the elected and the connected, look no further that the case of Rep. Sue Schmitz.
    Schmitz, D-Toney, is accused by the feds of accepting a salary from Central Alabama Community College without doing the work to earn it.
    Actually, it’s a second trial for Schmitz. Jurors in her first trial deadlocked. Perhaps they couldn’t decide whether taking a government check without doing much work is really a crime.
    They might have reason to wonder. Prosecuting people for that kind of thing doesn’t seem to be at the top of state law enforcement’s priority list. It’s those picky old feds that insist on trying to change the way we do things in Alabama. In the Schmitz case, federal money was paying her salary, she’s charged with four counts of fraud and four counts of mail fraud.
    (Students of history might recall that it wasn’t state law enforcement that toppled the corrupt Huey Long machine in Louisiana. It was the feds there, too. And it was mail fraud charges that began unraveling the regime).
    Regardless of whether Schmitz actually showed up for work, it is how she got her job that offers an insight into how things work.
    Did she send in her resume? Submit to interviews? Take a competitive exam?
    Not if you believe the testimony of some people who have incentives to tell the truth; she just had powerful friends.
    Consider Seth Hammett’s testimony.
    Hammett, who wields considerable influence as House speaker, said Alabama Education Association executive secretary Paul Hubbert, who is generally regarded as the state’s most influential lobbyist, told him that Schmitz would be coming to see him with a request and that he’d take it as a favor if Hammett honored it.
    Hammett said that at Schmitz’s request he asked the head of the committee over the education budget to include money for the job for her.
    In response to a question from Schmitz’s attorney, Hammett said he had changed his testimony about whether he had asked for money to be added to the budget “upon reflection.” He didn’t say what encouraged that reflection.
    Former two-year college system chancellor Roy Johnson, who is helping the feds while awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to 15 felony counts (cooperating could net him less prison time), testified that both Hubbert and Hammett had asked him to find a job for Schmitz.
    Perhaps I’m being cynical, but I wonder whether we would have heard about any of this if the Community Intensive Training for Youth program where Schmitz was employed were not run with federal money.
    Although Schmitz doesn’t appear to have been a stickler about the procedures by which she got her job, she seems much more concerned about seeing that the rules on firing employees are followed to the letter. Schmitz, who was fired in October 2007, contested the firing on the grounds that the Fair Dismissal Act had not been followed.
    An administrative law judge agreed, ruling that she could not be terminated at will. This week, a Montgomery County circuit judge upheld that ruling and ordered the college to reinstate her with back pay and benefits.
    The college and the CITY program are appealing the order to grant Schmitz back pay.
    Alabamians pride themselves on their conservatism. They hate paying taxes and are proud of it. Even if the two-year college scandal were the only looting of the public purse, there would be reason to think that too much of the taxpayers’ money goes to waste.
    Unfortunately, it’s not the first scandal
It likely won’t be the last, because we Alabamians aren’t really conservatives.
    We’re suckers.
    Year after year we watch the elected take care of themselves and the connected. And then we elect them again, because they assure us they have “conservative Alabama values.”
    Some conservatives. Some values.

Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

A Bucket of Warm Spit

    The government scandals in Illinois led pundits to draw parallels with the colorful history of political corruption in my home state of Louisiana.
    The comparisons are facile, but shallow.
    A more striking parallel, which those pundits have failed to draw, is between the Louisiana Legislature in the Huey Long era.
    Louisiana had a constitution that like the U.S. Constitution created three branches of government. Huey Long was elected governor under that constitution and proceeded to shred it, establishing what is likely the closest thing we have seen to a dictatorship in America.
    He seized control of the legislature. Those who didn’t succumb to persuasion were bullied and blackmailed. One legislator is said to have a waved a copy of the constitution in front of Long only to be met with the response that “I’m the constitution now.”
    Soon the courts and the supposedly independent state agencies were under his thumb, too. He even instituted a Bureau of Criminal Identification, a separate organization responsible only to the governor, which could arrest and detain anybody without warrant.
    Of course, Adolph Hitler became chancellor of Germany under the Weimar Constitution and then shredded it.
    We can look back and shake our heads and wonder why no one was brave enough or principled enough or cared to defend the constitutions.
    One day perhaps we will look at our national government and wonder why no one was brave enough or principled enough or cared to defend the Constitution.
    Power flows to the executive branch during times of military or financial crisis. People seem to be more willing to accept authoritarian government when they are afraid.
    Congress long ago gave up its constitutional authority to declare war. Its authority “to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.”
    After 9/11, when the Land of the Brave became the Land of the Afraid, instead of providing leadership to defend the constitution, the Congress rolled over to the executive branch. The same people who once called for reading the Constitution literally suddenly found that some of the provisions that spell out the most fundamental rights – the right to a Writ of Habeas Corpus, the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures, the right to a speedy trial and to be confronted with witnesses – didn’t mean exactly what the words say. The executive branch could decide what they meant.
    The Congress’s most immediate priorities seem to be securing partisan advantage and winning re-election.
    The founding fathers weren’t gods, or even demigods, although I think we can make the case that they were visionaries. They had had recent experiences with the abuses of power, and they framed a constitution that was designed to prevent the government they were creating from subjecting its citizens to those same abuses.
    They provided a framework, but no written constitution can protect our freedom unless we – and those we elect to lead – believe in it enough to defend it.
    John Nance Garner famously said that the vice presidency wasn’t worth a bucket of warm spit.
    Which may put it one notch above the Congress.

Contract the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

Do Overs Are For Kids' Games

The slate looks clean, but underneath, the chalk remembers the soul beneath.

--Lyric from “Blink of an Eye” by Ann and Roger McNamee

    We were not sorry to tear the last leaf off the 2008 calendar.
Although there were times of joy and blessing, it is not a year that we expect to recall with nostalgia. What we will recall is Adelaide’s fall down the stairs, resulting in severe injuries, followed by my summer of weaknesses from blood loss after surgery and bypass surgery for three clogged arteries. (And we, along with millions of Americans, saw the value of our life savings erode dramatically.)
    So, we are ready to move on.
    There are no do overs except in kids’ games. We all know intellectually that our lives don’t have chapters that coincide neatly with the months and volumes that correspond to the year.
    We awoke on the morning of Jan. 1 the same people who went to bed on Dec. 31, carried along on the current of everything that has gone before. Adelaide is still recovering the injuries suffered in her fall, and I am still recovering from the bypass surgery. And who knows what the new year will bring.
    Let’s face it, though. That brand new calendar inevitably invites us to evaluate where we are and to make new plans.
    I learned long ago that New Year’s resolutions tend have a larger element of wish than resolve.
    But there is one resolution that I happily will renew: I will try to recognize that each day is a gift to be appreciated and savored.

The writer can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com