Trying to change a genetic instruction

There is imprinted in my DNA a basic instruction. It says: Never throw away something you might be able to use later.
I am trying to rewrite that instruction, which I have followed all too well, or at least to redefine it. I am locked in a mental battle that parallels disputes over interpreting our constitution: strict construction or loose construction.
I have been a strict constructionist of my genetic instructions. If there is any conceivable possibility that I might be able to use something later, I've kept it. (And it has occasionally paid off: just the other day I used a piece of metal tubing left over from a boat shade, a bail from a five-gallon bucket and a hose clamp to repair a colorful little wind-driven whirlygig down by the patio.)
I am trying to accept the notion that I should keep only those things that there is a reasonably good chance that I will need. I'm not sure the bail from the bucket or the piece from the boat would qualify.
I have been given some impetus in my quest because we are thinking about downsizing our home.
I have already tackled my library and my closet, though much remains to be done in those departments.
But those have been minor forays compared to the task now at hand. Confronting stuff in general.
So, there I stood in the middle of a storage building, confronted with the reality of my resolution.
Various tools from past projects: a tile cutter and a grout float I bought when I remodeled the kitchen of an old house we owned in Montgomery.
A pipe flaring tool.
A gear puller.
I couldn't recall why I had acquired some of those items.
But realistically, would I ever use them again?
And the smaller things: screws and nails and bolts, all of differing sizes. Would I ever have or take the time to sort them out. An electric motor from a food processor, hinges from a glass door, things that I couldn't identify but which I obviously thought I might use for something.
Cans of paint that, even if it isn't a lump inside the can, probably wouldn't cover anything I started painting and which probably could not be matched.
I divided the stuff into two piles -- keep and discard.
Some of the stuff migrated from one pile to another more than once. After disposing of what I could bear to, I took the rest home and put it in the cave, the name we give to a part of the crawl space. There's standing headroom and lights, but now it is dense with the stuff from the storage building, and I still have a lot of decisions to make. If do sell the house soon, I either will speed up the decision process or carry a bunch of stuff on one more trip.
Sorting through the accumulation, I think of my grandmother. She saved everything: the string that closed a 25-pound bag of flour, the empty 10-pound sugar sack, the gallon syrup jug.
The difference is, she knew the end use of the stuff she was saving. I have yet to get there.

Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

If I wanted a dog, ...

    I do not have a dog, nor do I wish to have a dog.
    It is not that I don't like dogs. As a youth, I had several dogs; I had cats, too.
    Since we have been married, we have had a succession of cats. Both of us worked long, and often odd, hours. A dog would have demanded far more attention than we could give. Cats, on the other hand, regarded us as staff and occasional entertainment, often pretending they hadn't noticed we'd been gone. Their demands for affection, while single-minded (it's impossible to ignore a cat who doesn't wish to be ignored), are brief.
    We are retired now, but when the last cat disappeared, we decided that we did not want to have another pet. At least not now. It is nice to simply close the door and leave home without boarding an animal.
    As I am writing these words Raka is lying on floor of my study, regarding me with his sad brown eyes.    Raka is definitely a dog. And he is living in my house (all of my dogs were outside pets) But he is not my dog. He belongs to our older son and his family.
    How he came to be here is one of those long stories that is best told briefly. Our son, an Air Force officer, spent the past two years in South Korea. He moved on to a new assignment in England this summer. The family couldn't take Raka directly from South Korea to England without the dog spending six months in quarantine. If, however, Raka spent six months in the United States, he could go to England without being quarantined. So Raka came to the states to stay with our daughter-in-law's family. When our son's family came to stay at our house en route to England, Raka came  with them. Somehow he never got back our daughter-in-law's folks, and when time came for the humans to go to England, Raka stayed here. He will  be eligible to go to England sometime this fall, and I suppose whoever goes to visit England first will take him.
    The family got the dog when they were stationed in Turkey, and they originally named him Raki after the Turkish national drink. No one seemed to be able to pronounce the name properly, so they changed the spelling to Raka.
    Raka is a Vizsla, a Hungarian breed which Wikipedia describes as "elite sporting dogs and loyal companions." It goes on to say that "through the centuries the Vizsla has held a unique position for a sporting dog – that of household companion and family dog."
    I don't know about the hunting part, but I can attest to Raka's qualities as a household companion. He is very much a people dog, and he likes to be where we are. When I go downstairs to have coffee early every morning, he follows to see whether I am doing anything interesting. When he decides that I'm not he goes back up and curls up in his bed in our bedroom. I go up and down the stairs about a million times a day, and each time Raka follows, although he is somewhat conflicted when one of us is upstairs and the other down. When I -- and he -- make one of my brief trips up and down, he looks at me with some disgust, as if to say, can't you just sit still for a minute?
    Like most dogs, Raka likes to sit on the car seat and poke his head into the breeze, reveling in new smells and sights. When I pop out of the car for a minute, he is sitting behind the steering wheel when I come back.
    All of this may sound as if I am leaning toward getting a dog.
    I am not.
    I do not have a dog, nor do I wish to have a dog.
    But if I did want a dog, I would want him to be like Raka.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

August Started Early, Looks to Stay Late

    August seemed to arrive about the end of May, and it shows no sign of departing anytime soon.
    The herbs and flowers that Adelaide so hopefully planted in what was supposed to be spring have long since given up and turned brown. Even regular watering didn't give them the will to see the summer through. Even some of the native plants, particularly azaleas and hydrangeas, are looking particularly stressed. We lost some during the last drought, and I expect that we will lose some more.
    We have lost several small trees, and I worry  about the red oak right beside the front deck and the white oak by the patio. Both of them show dead limbs, occasionally dropping one. Their demise would deprive us of much needed shade -- and having them removed would cost a princely sum, because both would have to be taken down in pieces and carried away by hand.
    I was making good progress of my list of outdoor home improvement projects until I nearly amputated my left thumb with a table saw. That put paid to the outdoor projects. Realistically, I would have postponed many of them anyway because of the heat.
    Since I am a left hander, the injured thumb also meant postponing a good many indoor projects, too. For a while, even trying to type was slow and painful, but within the past few weeks I have been able to apply at least nine fingers to the keyboard.
    I have managed to keep the bird feeder filled. It hangs from an oak limb just outside the dining room window, and watching nature through double-glazed windows has provided more entertainment than television. The grandchildren have found the nuthatches a particular treat, marveling as they watch them walk up the tree trunk and then walk back down, always facing the direction of their travel, sometimes hanging upside down on the limb by the feeder. We had an abundance of goal finches early in the spring, but now a solitary brightly colored bird makes occasional trips to the feeder.
    The red bellied woodpecker has returned to the feeder after an unexplained absence. When he cruises in to the feeder, the smaller birds scatter like destroyers making way for a battleship. Even the squirrel casing the feeder from a nearby maple branch doesn't want to cross him.
    The fireflies which were so profuse during the spring have disappeared, but the August night brings its own interested creatures. We were sitting on the front deck one recent evening when Adelaide noticed the bird feeder moving. I had already noticed that on many mornings a feeder that was full at sundown was considerably less so by sunup. We flipped on the spotlights at the corner of the house and we could see the shadow of a creature clinging to the feeder A flashlight provided more illumination, and my suspicions were confirmed: we once again had a flying squirrel as a nighttime diner. It was unphased by all of the attention.
    I walked down the steps to the base of the tree that the feeder hangs from.The feeder is about 20 feet overhead from that vantage point. From the base of the tree, there is a line that leads up to a pulley, which provides a way to lower the feeder for filling.
    I gave the line a quick tug, and the squirrel glided down, passed just over my shoulder and disappeared into the darkness.
    I'd be happy if August followed him.

Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

Boorishness Reigns on the Water

    By Sunday evening, most of the weekend boaters had packed up and gone home, and I went down to the dock to see how it and our boat had fared.
    Not well.
    Traffic had been heavy all weekend, with boats racing by at full speed just yards off our dock, and our pontoon boat had bucked and pitched like a horse saddled for the first time. I'd checked on the lines and the fenders several times during the weekend and shook my fist at a boat pulling a water skier past our dock, sending out a wake that rivaled waves at the beach. For all the good it did.
    By the time I made my inspection Sunday evening, the accumulated idiocy had taken its toll. A stout, well secured dock cleat had been yanked so violently that it had come loose, but not before the dock board it was anchored to and the banding it was nailed to had pulled loose.
    Here I am left to repair the damage caused by inconsiderate idiots.
    It made me long for an earlier time when there were fewer boatmen and a certain pride in seamanship. That seamanship included adherence to a code of conduct that included fundamental courtesy toward other craft and to those ashore. We learned and relearned that as the operator of a vessel you are responsible for damage caused by your wake.
    There were fewer boats then, and they were less powerful. In some ways, they required more skill to operate, and there was some sense of fraternity among boatmen. (There were exceptions, of course, just fewer of them.)
    Now any idiot who can pass a fairly simple test can twist the key of a high powered boat and go roaring off unshackled by the bonds of common courtesy.
    Under the law, boaters are still responsible. Alabama law's definition of reckless operation of a vessel includes "willful or wanton disregard for the safety of persons or property... ."
Careless operation includes "endangerment of life, limb or property."
    Those rules are included in the leaflet "Alabama Boating Laws and Regulations that you can find at most marinas and at many sporting goods dealers.
    Enforcement of the law is spotty though. The Marine Police are stretched pretty thin, and Lake Martin is a big body of water.
    Boorishness on the water is just a small part of the me first attitude that prevails in so much of our culture.
    Meanwhile, I'm considering investing in a small canon and perhaps a few mines.


Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

Of Course I'll Go Back to the Shop

    My brother, my sister and I concluded not long ago that our real hobbies are work. When our two boys were lazy adolescents, they used to kid, "Well, you know, before breakfast Dad has installed a sprinkler system and found a cure for cancer."
    So it is with some difficulty that I am spending a great deal of time sitting around with my left hand elevated to try to reduce the swelling in my mangled-but-repaired left thumb.. (I should note here that we are fortunate to have an institution like UAB Hospital so near, and I was even more fortunate that Dr. Ian Marrero was available. I am told he is the person you want to fix your hand, and I will endorse that statement.)
    I was fretting the other day about all of the things I need/want to do, but I reminded myself, "Well, dimwit, if you hadn't stuck your thumb in the table saw you wouldn't be having to work on the patience thing."
    The reactions I get from acquaintances has been interesting. Sympathy, of course. Some people recall their own close calls – anyone who has spent any time working with power tools has had a close call – or talk about someone they know who did. Some people ask whether I plan to stay away from power tools. I tell them I think I'll just call Blue Cross and tell them I'm planning to make some more Adirondack chairs and they will say, "hey, we'll bring you some. What color do you want?"
    It's funny. A friend of mine had a moment of inattention not long ago and crashed his car. I'll bet no one will ask him whether he plans to stop driving.
    Of course I will go back to the shop -- just as quickly as I am able. A saw is no more dangerous than an automobile. Both will let you get away with being careless, until that they don't. I will just look at what's left of my thumb and use it as a reminder to pay more attention to the things that can hurt you.


Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

A New Charge: Murder of a Culture

    I am in mourning for the people of my home state of Louisiana. Although I grew up in the northern part of the state, populated mostly by folks who moved west from Georgia and Louisiana, I have some roots in the south.
    And I have developed a love for the generous, warm spirited people who make up the broad swathe of South Louisiana that is called Cajun Country.    I like the strong sense of family. I like to sit in a café and watch people enjoying themselves and each other. Grandfather and grandmother, mother and father, and the kids, treating their meal as a celebration and not a refueling stop, getting up to dance to music that makes it hard to keep your feet still.
    I like the fact that people are not too busy to stop and visit. The clock is not their master.
    I like the slow movement of the bayou and the sunlight filtered through Spanish moss. And I like the marshes, where a single tree stands out like a beacon.    And I don’t even have to talk about the food.
    The Cajun culture has had an endangered existence. Years ago there were efforts to stamp out the French spoken in so many homes, much as there was an attempt to do away with the native languages of American Indians.  &nbspFortunately, reason finally prevailed.
    Then came the oil industry.
    It brought jobs and some prosperity to what had been to largely subsistence economy. At the same time, it began slowly killing the place that is home to that unique culture. Oil exploitation required the cutting of canals, and swamps that had seen only trappers and fishermen became hosts for barges and drilling platforms.
    The canals changed water flows and accelerated the loss of coastline.
    Now the BP disaster.
    It is like going from slowly poisoning a victim to garroting him.
    I am not sure that most people understand the magnitude of the disaster that is unfolding.
    It is one that will affect all of us for years to come.
    But in South Louisiana, a unique way of life is dying.
    If there is any justice – and I have very little confidence that there is – criminal charges will come out of this disaster.
    I would like to add one: Murder of a culture.

Contact the writer at
billatthelake@gmail.com

I've Gotten Away With It Before

    The following was written Sunday, but I could not post it for lack of an internet connection:    I am writing this with one hand while sitting in a room in UAB Hospital in Birmingham.The other hand, swathed in bandages, is being held vertically higher than my heart to keep fluids from building up in the thumb doctors sewed back on Friday night.
    It was a near thing. The surgery resident who was attending me had consulted with his boss and was already numbing the area around my dangling left thumb, preparing to amputate right there in the emergency room, His pager summoned him. His boss apparently had taken another look at the X-rays and decided it might be possible to save the thumb. I don't know whether he knew that I am left handed.
    The upshot was that a surgical team spent four or five hours putting back together nerves and blood vessels, and I am tethered to an IV pole that is infusing me with antibiotics and blood thinner to try to prevent the vessels and capillaries from getting plugged up.     The surgeon stopped by earlier this afternoon and said things are looking pretty good, though nothing is certain. He explained that he could not save the nail bed and that he pulled a flap of skin up to cover the missing nail. If it works, the thumb will be a little shorter with the first joint fused.If the flap fails, the thumb will be shorter still.     As so often is the case, there was no indication that disaster was looming, On Friday morning, I was working alone in my neighbors shop on some Adirondack chairs for our front deck. I have worked with tools and wood almost all of my life. I know the safety rules, and like many others, I have skirted the safety rules from time to time without suffering consequences.
    Until Friday. A moving saw blade, a hand too near it, and a mangled thumb. No one was around, so I wrapped my T-shirt around my hand and walked home. My wife was not at home and I couldn't reach her on her cell phone, so I found some gauze and tape and wrapped my hand and drove to the Russell Medical Center emergency room. They quickly determined that I needed to go to UAB and made arrangements.     I had plenty of time during the ambulance to reflect on my own folly, and I am no less chagrined by hearing the doctors stories about power tool accidents much more catastrophic than mine. I've had time to consider, too, that it is not just guys with tools who grow dangerously complacent after years of getting by.     Recent reports about inattention in airline cockpits have stirred concern. And I suspect that the many of the people aboard that oil-drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico were doing things they've done for years.     The consequences of my complacency were great enough. Complacency on a larger scale can be truly catastrophic.


Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

Spring is Really Here, Sniff, Sniff

Letter to a friend in Minnesota:
Fortner:
    Funny you should write today that you love the Master’s because of the azaleas. I’ve been mentally composing a note letting you know that after several false starts, Spring arrived here in earnest over the Easter weekend.
    One day it was winter, and the trees were forlorn, almost lifeless; the next day, the dogwoods were in blossom, and the native azaleas couldn’t be outdone. Even the oak-leaf hydrangeas put out tender green leaves. (Our cultivated azaleas have buds that will open up any day now).
    Along the roadsides, red bud trees are showing off, and on my walk the other day, I noticed that the violets have come out.
    Perhaps the surest sign of spring was the snake I saw slithering across the highway just south of Walnut Hill the other day. And the carpenter bees. There has been a super-abundance of them. A friend gave me some desiccant powder that is supposed to kill the larvae, if I can find all the holes the bees have made and pump the powder into them. Meanwhile, I’ve been swinging away at the bees with an old tennis racket. I don’t know whether I’m getting better or the bees are getting dumber. Either way, I’m doing in a bumper crop.
    I don’t know whether it has anything to do with Spring, but a mature bald eagle sat in the white oak tree just outside our bedroom window for five or six minutes one day last week. We have several nesting pairs on the lake, but that’s the closest that I have every been to one. And since our bedroom is on the second floor, we were at eye level, so to speak. It was a most impressive sight. Meanwhile, the gold finches, which had been packing away the bird seed at a prodigious rate, seem to have disappeared.
    The blooming things include the pine trees, with their pollen that covers every surface with gold dust. It is amazing how the pollen can find its way into the most remote parts of the car. I have to hose off the windshield every day so I can see to drive, There is no point in giving the cars a thorough washing until the pollen stops falling.
    There has been pollen floating in the lake, and rain today washed more of it in, and the wind formed it into windrows.
    The oaks are putting out pollen, too. You don’t really see it, but it’s the kind that works its way into your sinuses and lungs. I’ve been snuffly for the past couple of days, and it's small comfort that the TV news reported tonight that it is an unusually heavy pollen season. Soon, the trees will begin dropping catkins, and it will be time to haul the blower out again.
    I have been madly trying to get the place looking presentable. I’ve replaced some rotted cedar, and cleaned some of the decks and the flagstone on the landing and steps that lead down to the dock. The decks have just gotten a power washing the past few years, but every now and then they need a thorough cleaning. That means, in some places, tackling the ground in dirt with a bucked of TSP solution and a brush. Fortunately, we’re having the place painted this year, so the painting contractor will clean the mildew from the siding and soffits.
    While I was scrubbing, the temperature was in the 80s, more like July than April. Today’s rain, though, was the harbinger of a cool front, and when I went down to the lake side to watch the sunset, it was considerably cooler than a day earlier.
    I watched the first round of the Master's, too, and thought about our trip with you and Jerilyn to Callaway Gardens. You'll be envious to know that Adelaide's church group is talking about making a trip to Callaway soon. You just need to come for another spring.
Regards,
Brown


Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

A few seeds sprout great entertainment

    We get weeks of entertainment for what we’d spend on a couple of movie tickets and popcorn.
    We buy a bag of bird seed, fill the feeder, and sit back and watch the action.
    Our bird feeder hangs from a limb of a white oak tree just outside our dining room window; since we are on a steep hillside, that means the feeder is 25 feet or so above the ground. It is attached to a line which runs through a pulley so I can lower the feeder to refill it.
    I’ve had to fill the feeder a couple of times a day lately as we have witnessed what could be described as avian food riots. I’m almost afraid not to refill it when so many of them seem to stare in the window impatiently waiting.
    Goldfinches predominate at this time of year. They are not yet the canary yellow that will identify them later on Instead the are a sort of yellowish green.
    They teem in the trees, contesting for perching places on the feeder. Squadrons of them drop to the ground like rocks, gleaning seeds that have been spilled.
    A red-bellied woodpecker steams into the feeder like a battleship among destroyers, scattering the smaller birds, which return as soon as the larger bird departs. His smaller cousin, the hairy woodpecker, doesn’t cause that kind of alarm.
    Other birds come to the feeder, too: chickadees and house finches and titmice and nuthatches, those funny little birds that walk down a tree trunk facing down, and the occasional sparrow. Brilliant male cardinals and less flamboyant females sit on the branches looking longingly at the feeder and make an occasional pass at it, but they are too large to feed easily.
    Squirrels play chase around the trees, leaping from one pencil-sized limb to another. They sometimes venture out on the limb above the feeder and even hang by their back legs and try to access the bountiful supply of sunflower seeds, but they find that the shutters close -- or that I will lean out of the window and yell at them -- so they mostly scurry around the ground under the feeder, claiming spilt seeds. They are joined by the doves, also too large for the feeder.
    A trio of mallards occasional waddles along the ground under the feeder, even the odd crow shows up briefly.
    From early morning until later afternoon the area around the feeder is as frenetic
as at an anthill that has just been kicked.
    When the gold finches depart, traffic at the bird feeder will drop.
    But we’ll soon be putting out the hummingbird feeders and it will be warm enough to sit on the front deck and watch their aerial antics.
    Meanwhile, we sit comfortably behind our double glazed, lingering over lunch and marveling at the show outside.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

TR's words have contemporary ring

    On my way to re-reading President Eisenhower’s farewell address, I got sidetracked by Teddy Roosevelt.
    It was not a presidential speech that snared my attention, but one that he delivered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Oct. 14, 1912.
    Roosevelt had already served as president as a Republican and was now running as the nominee of the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party that he had created.
    He delivered the speech with an assassin’s bullet still in his chest.
    We think of ourselves as a peaceful people, but presidents have not fared so well. Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy are perhaps the most famous victims of assassination, but there were also James A. Garfield and William McKinley. And attempts were made on the lives of Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. That’s 20 percent of American presidents who have been the targets of violence.
    And then there is Roosevelt, who ascended to the presidency upon the death of McKinley.
    The campaign of 1912 was a bitter one, with William Howard Taft as the Republican nominee, Woodrow Wilson as the Democratic nominee and Roosevelt as the major figures. The Socialist Eugene V. Debs was a minor figure.
    Roosevelt’s life was spared in Milwaukee because a folded copy of the speech he planned to deliver and a steel spectacles case in his breast pocket were enough to slow the .38 caliber bullet.
    Roosevelt didn’t deliver all of his prepared speech in Milwaukee, but here are some of the things he did say:

    “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet - there is where the bullet went through - and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.
    “... I want to say something very serious to our people and especially to the newspapers....
    “Now, I do not know who he was or what he represented. He was a coward. He stood in the darkness in the crowd around the automobile and when they cheered me, and I got up to bow, he stepped forward and shot me in the darkness.
    “Now, friends, of course, I do not know, as I say, anything about him; but it is a very natural thing that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful mendacity and abuse that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers in the interest of not only Mr. Debs but of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Taft.
    “Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man of my party who attacks with such foul slander and abuse any opponent of any other party; and now I wish to say seriously to all the daily newspapers, to the Republicans, the Democrat, and Socialist parties, that they cannot, month in month out and year in and year out, make the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not expect that brutal, violent natures, or brutal and violent characters, especially when the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind; they cannot expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.
    ...”What I care for is my country. I wish I were able to impress upon my people – our people – the duty to feel strongly but to speak the truth of their opponents. I say now, I have never said one word on the stump against any opponent that I cannot defend. I have said nothing that I could not substantiate and nothing that I ought not to have said – nothing that I – nothing that, looking back at, I would not say again.
    “And now, friends, this incident that has just occurred – this effort to assassinate me – emphasizes to a peculiar degree the need of the Progressive movement. Friends, every good citizen ought to do everything in his or her power to prevent the coming of the day when we shall see in this country two recognized creeds fighting one another, when we shall see the creed of the "Havenots" arraigned against the creed of the "Haves." When that day comes then such incidents as this to-night will be commonplace in our history. When you make poor men – when you permit the conditions to grow such that the poor man as such will be swayed by his sense of injury against the men who try to hold what they improperly have won, when that day comes, the most awful passions will be let loose and it will be an ill day for our country.”
    Roosevelt’s words, spoken nearly a century ago, sound uncannily contemporary.


Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

Putting the Shards Together

“It’s a semi-true story, believe it or not, I made up a few things and there’s some I forgot…”
         Jimmy Buffett song

    Although we are only a year apart, my sister and I have some very different memories of childhood – not just points of view but entire episodes.
    That came home to us on one of my recent visits to my hometown. We were talking as we drove to one of her job sites, and for some reason the conversation turned to childhood. (Of course, reminders of childhood are everywhere in my hometown, more so since Sis’s house is only a few feet from where the house where I grew up stood.)
    I recounted an incident that had a lasting impact on me one that happened when we were five or six years old. I was surprised that she did not remember it at all.
    Other events from childhood bubbled up, and we realized that each of us had an entire catalog of memories that the other had long forgotten.
    I am sure we have different recollections of the same events, too, though we didn’t get that far in our conversation.
    So we made a bargain of sorts.
    I told her that I would write down some of the things that I remember and will send that collection to her so she can add her own memories and perspectives on the things that we both remember.
    Eventually we will pass it all along to our brother, who is four and a half years younger. He will, I am sure, have memories that are totally foreign to the two of us.
    I am up early, and sunrise lately has found me at the keyboard, savoring a cup of coffee as I engage in my own form of time travel. It is curious how one memory leads to others, and I pause to jot down the topics before they wing away.
    Some of the memories are happy ones –we tend to use those to crowd out the demons from the past – and some still bring a twinge of pain. Some, perhaps, are best left buried.
    I do not know what my sister and my brother and I will do with this project, assuming we actually finish. We are not writing autobiography or even a coherent narrative. Rather we are putting together pieces, rather like trying to reconstruct an old pot when some of the shards are missing. One day our children or grandchildren may want to explore the relics.
    At some point I will have to decide that childhood has been covered. Not too soon, though. I keep thinking of stuff that Sis might be interested in.


“...But the life and the telling are both real to me, and they all run together and turn out to be a semi-true story.”

Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

Memories go out in a garbage bag

           
            From the dark recesses of the attic, I retrieved a couple of file storage boxes labeled “Bill’s Stuff” to search for some tax records.

            I didn’t find the tax records; it turned out that I didn’t need them anyway.

            What I did find was fragments of my long ago youth, clippings that marked a career in newspapers that began in 1962.

            “By William Brown” the bylines read, although no one called me William. The St. Petersburg Times of that day insisted on using given names in bylines; there were no Bills or Bobs or Chucks. (Male Times reporters also wore ties and jackets when many of the other media representatives were wearing sport shirts.)

            The clippings were folded and brittle, but as I browsed through them, they took on color and smell and shape. I could remember what things looked like and smelled like and even tasted like (blue sky that went on forever and thunderheads that seemed to portend the end of the world, the soft smell of tropical flowers and the tang of salt air, smoked mullet at Ted Peters and black beans and rice and crusty Cuban bread at the Jockey Club).

            For a little while I was a newly minted college graduate setting out on a great adventure. There was my first byline only a few days after I’d started work on a story about a fatal traffic accident at Roosevelt Boulevard and Ninth Street North. I could recall following the police officers and the gurney down the hallway in the emergency room at Mound Park Hospital and watching one of the doctors pull the sheet over the victim’s head.

            Welcome to the real world.

            The clippings in the stack were eclectic:

            Murders and suicides and fires and accidents.

            Feuding politicians and ambitious land developers.

            A story about the great freeze of 1962, written on an old Smith-Corona portable typewriter by the light of a fire in an orange grove in Pasco County as the growers fought, mostly unsuccessfully, to keep their crop from freezing.

            An interview with the creator of the long-running soap opera “The Edge of Night” who mailed in his scripts from his home in Sarasota.

            A thoroughbred horse auction in Ocala.

            There were columns, too, complete with a photo of a kid who must have been me.  

            It is perhaps vanity, but even the routine stories still read well.

            The clippings ended when I became an editor and didn’t appear again until years later when I began writing a column regularly.

            I looked at that pile of clippings and thought: What a grand and glorious adventure it truly was.

            But it was my adventure. To anyone else they would just be a pile of old newsprint.

            So I picked out a few of them to help stoke the fires of memory. The rest of my long ago youth I put in a black plastic bag and took out to the garbage can.

Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

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

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

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

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

The Dangers of Certainty

    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