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| North Carolina Outer Banks |
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
"Have you got any news?"
I have an uneasy relationship with my dad. He was never there for me when I was young, and he was abusive to both my mother and me. I mean he was violent, as well as verbally and emotionally abusive. I don't know why he stayed with us as long as he did, but when I was nineteen, he left the family. He had been so mean and so hostile that I was glad to see him go, but my mom, a typical battered wife, almost died when her marriage ended. She had lost herself to him, and when he was gone, she was nowhere to be found. She was a wonderful, brave woman, although I could not see this at the time, who held on to her religious faith until she could find herself again. Eventually she remarried and was very much in love with my step-father. They had twenty-one years together before she lost him to cancer.
The memory of the last beating I got from my dad is as clear as if it had been yesterday, yet it was over forty years ago. It was the summer I was eighteen, after I had graduated from high school, but before I had left for college. A group of four or five girls planned to go out that night, to do what I don't remember. A friend called and invited me while my Dad's mom and sister were visiting us. My dad, who was very strict, said of course I could go, but the minute my grandmother and aunt left, he hissed at me that I wasn't going anywhere that night. His gracious behavior had all been for show. I knew better than to say anything in response, so I took the news without reacting. My mom spoke up for me and criticized my dad for his hypocrisy. Dad told her to shut her goddamned mouth. At that point, I spoke. I said, "Why do you talk to my mother that way? She doesn't deserve it."
When I challenged Dad, he lunged for me, and I took off running for my room. He was right behind me, unbuckling his belt, slipping it out of the loops on his pants, getting it ready to use as a whip. He came at me, and I walked backwards away from him. Each step he took toward me, I took another step back. I picked up my guitar, and I planned to El Kabong him over the head with it rather than withstand another beating. He kept coming. I kept walking back until my legs hit the side of my bed, and I could retreat no further.
"You won't hit me," he said. "You don't have the guts to hit me." And he began lashing me with his belt. He was right, and he was wrong. I didn't hit him, I couldn't, but not because I didn't have the guts. I couldn't hit him because he was my dad and I loved him and I wasn't raised to be a violent person. I fell back onto my bed, dropped my guitar, and submitted to the beating. Mom tried to intervene and he knocked her to the floor. She got up and went to his closet, getting another of his belts. She stood behind him and for every time that he hit me, she hit him. I still can't believe he didn't kill her for that. But he did kill something in me. I was different after that episode, easily upset, nervous, high strung - all characteristics that made life harder for me as I went away to college and tried to become a young woman.
My parents moved a lot, always in the same county. They kept thinking that a new house, a new neighborhood would make things better between them. One day Dad moved us against our will while I was at school and my mom was at work. He took us to a place he had promised we would never have to go, to a tobacco farm far out into the country away from all my friends and school activities. A chest of drawers filled with my belongings fell off the back of a pick-up truck. It was just my stuff, nothing important, right? so he didn't even stop to retrieve a thing. I've always wondered what the people in other cars thought when they came upon a chest of drawers in the middle of the road. I mean, that was a hazard, wasn't it? But my things wouldn't matter to Dad. I always had parts in our school plays, and he never came to see me act. I sang in the school chorus. He never came to hear us sing. I played in the marching band, and he never came to see one half-time show. I was a cheerleader, and he never came to see me cheer. I graduated, and he didn't come to see me get my diploma.
When I was seventeen, I wanted to take ballet lessons for the exercise and for my posture. But Dad did not "believe in" dancing, and he would not allow me to take the lessons. There was another big scene in our home, and then I went to my room. It was cold, it was winter time, and it was raining at the farm we lived on far from neighbors, farther from town. I put on a coat with a hood, got my transistor radio, and put a pair of scissors in my pocket for protection. I put records to play on my stereo so the music could be heard outside my room, and no one would suspect what I had done. And then I climbed out of my bedroom window and jumped to the ground and ran away from home. I walked alone in the dark, in the cold rain and covered three or four miles, across creeks, through areas where there were no houses. Suddenly a dog came at me barking furiously. His owner, Irene, was an elderly woman, my grandmother's half-sister. She came out to see what the dog was barking about, and she heard me crying. She look closer and saw me and then she recognized me. She took me to her next door neighbor's, to Mr. Paschal's, because she had no phone. He called my parents and told them where I was. I was four miles from home.
My mother came to get me at Mr. Paschal's house, but she brought with her at least two weeks of clothing and supplies for me. She took me to my grandmother's house, and let me stay there for several weeks. I wouldn't go home. Later, I learned that Mom had come into my room and had found the records playing for no one and had seen the curtains blowing in the wind and the rain coming in the window. She asked my dad to get the car so they could go looking for me on that deserted country road. She wanted him to drive so that she could look on both sides of the road, and she knew I would try to hide if a car came by. He refused. He said nothing. He just ignored her. He continued to watch TV. She got on her knees and begged him to help her look for me. He said nothing. He ignored her. He watched TV. He did not care. He was content to leave me out on my own on a country road ten miles from town, late at night in the rain in January. But just then the phone rang, and it was Mr. Paschal and Irene, who had caught me.
Dad took me on exactly one family vacation in my eighteen years at home. He spent each Thanksgiving and Christmas hunting rather than being with family. The truth is he just didn't love my mother or me, and he was cruel enough that about five years ago, he told my mother that he had never loved her. Before I left for college my father asked if I needed anything from him. I told him the best thing he could do for me was to love my mother. He said, "I'm sorry." That's all. And then I left.
I wanted love so badly and deeply believed it was out of reach, so that I spent my young adulthood focused on his many infidelities, his lies and other failings as a husband. I wasn't able even to begin dealing with his abuse of ME until I was much older and had marriage wreckage in my rear view mirror.
I don't remember the first brutal beating he gave me, but I've been told about it by my mother and by my aunt and uncle, with whom we lived, and others who witnessed it. I was around two years old. We had gone to the movies on a summer evening. I took my shoes off in the theatre. That's it. That's the crime. Dad made me get my shoes on and leave the theatre. Mom thought we'd be right back. She didn't know that Dad would make me walk the two miles home while he walked behind me with a "switch," a small branch stripped of its leaves used for "whipping" children. The story goes that he hit me repeatedly all the way home. When my mother got home, she cleaned all the wounds and put salve on them. I had welts all over my body. I think of all the people who drove by and saw him hitting me, and no one stopped. No one did or said a thing. I guess no one wanted to get involved.
Dad is 86 now and in an assisted living facility in my hometown, which is about 30 miles from where I live. I get over to see him when I can and whenever he needs me, and we sit in near silence with little to say to each other. Before he got this old, we could talk about his garden, his tomatoes and his cantaloupes, his dog, my step-mother and later, his girlfriend. Now he keeps to himself at the home, mostly staying in his room, not participating in activities, not making many friends. He always asks me, "Have you got any news?" and by this he means gossip about people he would know. I almost never do, and after a decent interval, I leave.
I call Dad at 6 o'clock every evening. The calls last about three minutes. He complains that he can't hear me (but he won't consider a hearing aid), and I ask him how he is and how his day was. Then he asks me, "Have you got any news?" I say "No, I don't." And he says, "Well, call me when you get some news." And that's it til the next night. I've asked him would he like me to skip a night or really wait until I have some news and he says an emphatic "NO!" He really wants to be called every day. It's the high spot of his day! He always tells me he loves me before we hang up. He never told me that when I was young.
When we hang up, I have the saddest, emptiest feeling. I read somewhere today that people get more happiness from their pets than from any of their human relationships. I don't know about that, but I do know that I go from the phone to Miss Kia, the Great Pyrenees, and bury my face in her abundant fur most nights at the end of those calls. And then Readmore, the sweetest cat in the world, comes and sits on me, as though he owns me, and I feel good to be owned.
Life isn't always easy. Some challenges are just too big. You don't fight them. You just try to be still standing after they hit you.
The memory of the last beating I got from my dad is as clear as if it had been yesterday, yet it was over forty years ago. It was the summer I was eighteen, after I had graduated from high school, but before I had left for college. A group of four or five girls planned to go out that night, to do what I don't remember. A friend called and invited me while my Dad's mom and sister were visiting us. My dad, who was very strict, said of course I could go, but the minute my grandmother and aunt left, he hissed at me that I wasn't going anywhere that night. His gracious behavior had all been for show. I knew better than to say anything in response, so I took the news without reacting. My mom spoke up for me and criticized my dad for his hypocrisy. Dad told her to shut her goddamned mouth. At that point, I spoke. I said, "Why do you talk to my mother that way? She doesn't deserve it."
When I challenged Dad, he lunged for me, and I took off running for my room. He was right behind me, unbuckling his belt, slipping it out of the loops on his pants, getting it ready to use as a whip. He came at me, and I walked backwards away from him. Each step he took toward me, I took another step back. I picked up my guitar, and I planned to El Kabong him over the head with it rather than withstand another beating. He kept coming. I kept walking back until my legs hit the side of my bed, and I could retreat no further.
 |
| Me at 19 |
My parents moved a lot, always in the same county. They kept thinking that a new house, a new neighborhood would make things better between them. One day Dad moved us against our will while I was at school and my mom was at work. He took us to a place he had promised we would never have to go, to a tobacco farm far out into the country away from all my friends and school activities. A chest of drawers filled with my belongings fell off the back of a pick-up truck. It was just my stuff, nothing important, right? so he didn't even stop to retrieve a thing. I've always wondered what the people in other cars thought when they came upon a chest of drawers in the middle of the road. I mean, that was a hazard, wasn't it? But my things wouldn't matter to Dad. I always had parts in our school plays, and he never came to see me act. I sang in the school chorus. He never came to hear us sing. I played in the marching band, and he never came to see one half-time show. I was a cheerleader, and he never came to see me cheer. I graduated, and he didn't come to see me get my diploma.
When I was seventeen, I wanted to take ballet lessons for the exercise and for my posture. But Dad did not "believe in" dancing, and he would not allow me to take the lessons. There was another big scene in our home, and then I went to my room. It was cold, it was winter time, and it was raining at the farm we lived on far from neighbors, farther from town. I put on a coat with a hood, got my transistor radio, and put a pair of scissors in my pocket for protection. I put records to play on my stereo so the music could be heard outside my room, and no one would suspect what I had done. And then I climbed out of my bedroom window and jumped to the ground and ran away from home. I walked alone in the dark, in the cold rain and covered three or four miles, across creeks, through areas where there were no houses. Suddenly a dog came at me barking furiously. His owner, Irene, was an elderly woman, my grandmother's half-sister. She came out to see what the dog was barking about, and she heard me crying. She look closer and saw me and then she recognized me. She took me to her next door neighbor's, to Mr. Paschal's, because she had no phone. He called my parents and told them where I was. I was four miles from home.
My mother came to get me at Mr. Paschal's house, but she brought with her at least two weeks of clothing and supplies for me. She took me to my grandmother's house, and let me stay there for several weeks. I wouldn't go home. Later, I learned that Mom had come into my room and had found the records playing for no one and had seen the curtains blowing in the wind and the rain coming in the window. She asked my dad to get the car so they could go looking for me on that deserted country road. She wanted him to drive so that she could look on both sides of the road, and she knew I would try to hide if a car came by. He refused. He said nothing. He just ignored her. He continued to watch TV. She got on her knees and begged him to help her look for me. He said nothing. He ignored her. He watched TV. He did not care. He was content to leave me out on my own on a country road ten miles from town, late at night in the rain in January. But just then the phone rang, and it was Mr. Paschal and Irene, who had caught me.
Dad took me on exactly one family vacation in my eighteen years at home. He spent each Thanksgiving and Christmas hunting rather than being with family. The truth is he just didn't love my mother or me, and he was cruel enough that about five years ago, he told my mother that he had never loved her. Before I left for college my father asked if I needed anything from him. I told him the best thing he could do for me was to love my mother. He said, "I'm sorry." That's all. And then I left.
I wanted love so badly and deeply believed it was out of reach, so that I spent my young adulthood focused on his many infidelities, his lies and other failings as a husband. I wasn't able even to begin dealing with his abuse of ME until I was much older and had marriage wreckage in my rear view mirror.
I don't remember the first brutal beating he gave me, but I've been told about it by my mother and by my aunt and uncle, with whom we lived, and others who witnessed it. I was around two years old. We had gone to the movies on a summer evening. I took my shoes off in the theatre. That's it. That's the crime. Dad made me get my shoes on and leave the theatre. Mom thought we'd be right back. She didn't know that Dad would make me walk the two miles home while he walked behind me with a "switch," a small branch stripped of its leaves used for "whipping" children. The story goes that he hit me repeatedly all the way home. When my mother got home, she cleaned all the wounds and put salve on them. I had welts all over my body. I think of all the people who drove by and saw him hitting me, and no one stopped. No one did or said a thing. I guess no one wanted to get involved.
Dad is 86 now and in an assisted living facility in my hometown, which is about 30 miles from where I live. I get over to see him when I can and whenever he needs me, and we sit in near silence with little to say to each other. Before he got this old, we could talk about his garden, his tomatoes and his cantaloupes, his dog, my step-mother and later, his girlfriend. Now he keeps to himself at the home, mostly staying in his room, not participating in activities, not making many friends. He always asks me, "Have you got any news?" and by this he means gossip about people he would know. I almost never do, and after a decent interval, I leave.
I call Dad at 6 o'clock every evening. The calls last about three minutes. He complains that he can't hear me (but he won't consider a hearing aid), and I ask him how he is and how his day was. Then he asks me, "Have you got any news?" I say "No, I don't." And he says, "Well, call me when you get some news." And that's it til the next night. I've asked him would he like me to skip a night or really wait until I have some news and he says an emphatic "NO!" He really wants to be called every day. It's the high spot of his day! He always tells me he loves me before we hang up. He never told me that when I was young.
When we hang up, I have the saddest, emptiest feeling. I read somewhere today that people get more happiness from their pets than from any of their human relationships. I don't know about that, but I do know that I go from the phone to Miss Kia, the Great Pyrenees, and bury my face in her abundant fur most nights at the end of those calls. And then Readmore, the sweetest cat in the world, comes and sits on me, as though he owns me, and I feel good to be owned.
Life isn't always easy. Some challenges are just too big. You don't fight them. You just try to be still standing after they hit you.
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| Readmore, the sweetest cat in the world |
Monday, February 21, 2011
Nathan Bedford Forrest
There were almost 300 black Union soldiers at Fort Pillow, Mississippi, on the morning of April 12, 1864, but by the end of the day, 80% of them had been killed and only 20% remained alive. Some of them were killed in battle, but most were slaughtered after they surrendered. It's called the Fort Pillow Massacre, mostly in the North. Some in the South still call it the Battle of Fort Pillow, and that says a lot. The Confederate troops were led by Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Fort Pillow had been built by the Confederates at the First Chickasaw Bluff of the Mississippi River, forty miles north of Memphis in 1861. The fort had passed into Union hands in 1862, and Union soldiers had added an inner fortification. On that spring day, the fort was occupied by Union soldiers, the 300 black artillery men and 300 white southern members of the Union's Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, all under the command of Union Major Lionel F. Booth.
Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest attacked with a cavalry division of 2,500 men around 10 a.m. Forrest captured the outer walls of the fort. Confederate sharpshooters had easy pickings, and Major Booth was killed. Major William F. Bradford assumed command of the Union forces. The Union gun boat on the river was rendered useless to help. Forrest demanded unconditional surrender; Bradford asked for an hour to consider. Forrest gave him twenty minutes.
Bradford refused to surrender. A savage assault followed, and the fort was soon back in Confederate hands. Men surrendered on their own. Unarmed Union men fled toward the river and were shot as they ran. Black Union troops were shot, hanged, bayoneted as they tried to surrender individually. In contrast to the 20% survival rate of the black Union troops stands the 60% survival rate of the white Union troops. Race clearly got them killed. Reports came from the battlefield of men on their knees, begging for mercy, and still being killed. A Confederate soldier said in a letter home that "the poor, deluded negroes would run up to our men, fall upon their knees, and with uplifted hand scream for mercy, but were ordered to their feet and then shot down." It was a true atrocity, a war crime. Under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest.
After everything was over, Forrest casually headed for Jackson, Mississippi, but decided to stay over and rest due to bruises he had received when his horse was shot out from under him. He went on the next day. There was a United States investigation of the massacre, in which Forrest was accused of war crimes for slaughtering the black Union troops. The Confederates never responded.
After the war Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had been a slave owner and a slave trader before the war, went on to become one of the founding fathers of the Ku Klux Klan and its first Grand Wizard.
This is the man the Mississippi Sons of the Confederacy want to honor with a vanity license plate for Mississippi cars. This is the man Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour refuses to denounce. Well, I don't. I don't even refuse to denounce Haley Barbour. Over the last six months he has shown a pattern of gross insensitivity, if not racism - I cannot read his mind - on issues of race. From claiming that the Sixties Civil Rights Movement was easy to misremembering going to an integrated college, he just doesn't get it. And he won't get the presidency, either. Not that he had a chance.
ADDENDUM: Today, Tuesday, February 22, Gov. Barbour announced that he would not sign a bill creating a license plate to honor Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest should such a bill come before him.
Fort Pillow had been built by the Confederates at the First Chickasaw Bluff of the Mississippi River, forty miles north of Memphis in 1861. The fort had passed into Union hands in 1862, and Union soldiers had added an inner fortification. On that spring day, the fort was occupied by Union soldiers, the 300 black artillery men and 300 white southern members of the Union's Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, all under the command of Union Major Lionel F. Booth.
Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest attacked with a cavalry division of 2,500 men around 10 a.m. Forrest captured the outer walls of the fort. Confederate sharpshooters had easy pickings, and Major Booth was killed. Major William F. Bradford assumed command of the Union forces. The Union gun boat on the river was rendered useless to help. Forrest demanded unconditional surrender; Bradford asked for an hour to consider. Forrest gave him twenty minutes.
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| The Battle at Fort Pillow |
Bradford refused to surrender. A savage assault followed, and the fort was soon back in Confederate hands. Men surrendered on their own. Unarmed Union men fled toward the river and were shot as they ran. Black Union troops were shot, hanged, bayoneted as they tried to surrender individually. In contrast to the 20% survival rate of the black Union troops stands the 60% survival rate of the white Union troops. Race clearly got them killed. Reports came from the battlefield of men on their knees, begging for mercy, and still being killed. A Confederate soldier said in a letter home that "the poor, deluded negroes would run up to our men, fall upon their knees, and with uplifted hand scream for mercy, but were ordered to their feet and then shot down." It was a true atrocity, a war crime. Under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest.
After everything was over, Forrest casually headed for Jackson, Mississippi, but decided to stay over and rest due to bruises he had received when his horse was shot out from under him. He went on the next day. There was a United States investigation of the massacre, in which Forrest was accused of war crimes for slaughtering the black Union troops. The Confederates never responded.
After the war Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had been a slave owner and a slave trader before the war, went on to become one of the founding fathers of the Ku Klux Klan and its first Grand Wizard.
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| Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest |
ADDENDUM: Today, Tuesday, February 22, Gov. Barbour announced that he would not sign a bill creating a license plate to honor Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest should such a bill come before him.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Socialism in America
I am so tired of hearing people rant and rave about socialism, people who can't even spell it and obviously don't know what it is. These people usually accuse our president of having a socialist agenda. Well, he's in good company, like Ben Franklin. We'll get to him. But first, here's a dictionary definition of socialism:
socialism 'sō shə lizəm
noun
a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
"The community as a whole." How awful.
Do you want to excavate, grade, and pave that highway all by yourself? Do you want to regulate traffic on those roads all by yourself? You can't go in with your neighbors, now, because that would be a community working together as a whole. You must do all this alone. Do you want to hire a private contractor and pay for that all by yourself?
The truth is that America has always had a mixed economy, some capitalism, some socialism, some private, some public, ever since and even before the founders added "to promote the General Welfare" to the preamble of our sacred Constitution, even before the word socialism was bandied about, before the word was ever in use. It was considered a good thing. How can we promote the General Welfare if we don't band together, work together, cooperate with one another, and each of us pay our fair share?
But if you don't want any socialism, you're welcome to go the route of the rugged individualist. Just do it honestly and consistently. First, give up your Social Security, your Medicare, take your kids out of public schools and universities. There goes ACC basketball. It will hurt, but you must turn your back on the Armed Forces, who have joined together to protect us all and are paid for out of the public kitty. If you're a veteran, you get no benefits when you get out. No GI Bill for education. No VA hospitals. No nothing.
I don't care how you travel as long as you don't drive on our public roads; stay off the Interstates, especially. And don't use city water and sewer, handle your own intake and output as best you can. Can't you dig a well and have an outhouse? Use candles and lanterns, stay away from socialist city power. All the street lights go out on your street, and garbage pick-up stops. Don't call the police force no matter how badly you need them, don't call the fire department, stay out of the library and buy all your books, magazines and newspapers. Get yourself a pony to deliver your mail because you can't use the Post Office anymore. Never park your car at a public space and put money into a socialist parking meter. Never pay another toll on the road again. And stay out of city, state and national parks. They aren't for you.
None of this is new; it's always been there. When the founders added "to promote the General Welfare" to the preamble to the Constitution, they enshrined communal projects, but this was already the American way of life. The first Public School was established by Puritan settlers in 1635. Benjamin Franklin, who had been the British postmaster for the colonies, appointed our first Postmaster General in 1775, a year before the Declaration of Independence. He established the first fire department, a volunteer one. Franklin also started the first library, a subscription library; he and his peers pooled their money to buy books, which they could then take out and read. Sounds a bit socialist, hmm? This library has grown into a great scholarly and research library today, and Franklin hired the first American librarian.
What would the city of Boston be without its famous T? They are proud to have the nation's first subway system, which goes back to the 1800s. It took a bit of socialism to pull that off, not to mention today's Big Dig. And when you tithe at your church and that money goes to pay the salary of the preacher, and church expenses, you're banding together with others in your church community in a little socialist activity.
All of these things are for the public good, and they are too big for the individual to do on his or her own. So we come together, put money in a pot in the form of taxes, and we take on these tasks as communities, as towns, counties, states, as a nation as a whole. And yes that means there is some socialism in our economy, but it wasn't even called that. And that means we redistribute the wealth to where it is most needed for the General Welfare. No, not that kind of welfare. The General Welfare, The Public Good. We all pay for what is good for all of us. We learn in economics class that we have a mixed economy, and these socialist aspects don't make the United States a socialist country any more than voting made Afghanistan a true democracy.
When the country was small we didn't even need an income tax. Until 1817, the federal government got its money from internal taxes, taxes on spirits, carriages, sugar, tobacco, and slaves, but that year it switched to tariffs. The income tax was begun in 1862, was stopped in 1872 and was restarted in 1894. The 16th Amendment was added in 1913 and made the federal income tax a fixture of American life. The income tax has always been progressive, a vital feature we have been losing since 1980. The tax of 1894 applied only to individuals making over $4000 per year, less than 10% of the population. And imagine if the stewards of our money, that is Congress, did not abuse their tax collection powers and truly spent our tax dollars on the general welfare, the more perfect union, domestic tranquility and common defense: taxes would be lower, and so would blood pressure and tempers. So that's one problem.
But I think the main problem is that what these low information voters really mean is that they don't want Marxism, and they think all socialism is Marxism and communism. They think public projects are socialist, therefore, Marxist, and are intended to lead to the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a classless society under communism with central planning and gulags and the whole schmeer. Every thing would be public. By force. I abhor that prospect in every way. And our president is not a Marxist. But what of the opposite? Privatizing? I think that privatizing everything is just as dangerous and as suicidal as communism, but that's a subject for another day.
Communalism is not communism. Communalism is good. Community is not communist. Community is good. The public and the private sectors co-exist beautifully in our culture and have since Ferdinand and Isabella financed Christopher Columbus's plan to find a better route to the West Indies, politically correct or not. Think about that the next time you drive on a public road or mail a letter on your way to the mall.
socialism 'sō shə lizəm
noun
a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
"The community as a whole." How awful.
Do you want to excavate, grade, and pave that highway all by yourself? Do you want to regulate traffic on those roads all by yourself? You can't go in with your neighbors, now, because that would be a community working together as a whole. You must do all this alone. Do you want to hire a private contractor and pay for that all by yourself?
The truth is that America has always had a mixed economy, some capitalism, some socialism, some private, some public, ever since and even before the founders added "to promote the General Welfare" to the preamble of our sacred Constitution, even before the word socialism was bandied about, before the word was ever in use. It was considered a good thing. How can we promote the General Welfare if we don't band together, work together, cooperate with one another, and each of us pay our fair share?
But if you don't want any socialism, you're welcome to go the route of the rugged individualist. Just do it honestly and consistently. First, give up your Social Security, your Medicare, take your kids out of public schools and universities. There goes ACC basketball. It will hurt, but you must turn your back on the Armed Forces, who have joined together to protect us all and are paid for out of the public kitty. If you're a veteran, you get no benefits when you get out. No GI Bill for education. No VA hospitals. No nothing.
I don't care how you travel as long as you don't drive on our public roads; stay off the Interstates, especially. And don't use city water and sewer, handle your own intake and output as best you can. Can't you dig a well and have an outhouse? Use candles and lanterns, stay away from socialist city power. All the street lights go out on your street, and garbage pick-up stops. Don't call the police force no matter how badly you need them, don't call the fire department, stay out of the library and buy all your books, magazines and newspapers. Get yourself a pony to deliver your mail because you can't use the Post Office anymore. Never park your car at a public space and put money into a socialist parking meter. Never pay another toll on the road again. And stay out of city, state and national parks. They aren't for you.
None of this is new; it's always been there. When the founders added "to promote the General Welfare" to the preamble to the Constitution, they enshrined communal projects, but this was already the American way of life. The first Public School was established by Puritan settlers in 1635. Benjamin Franklin, who had been the British postmaster for the colonies, appointed our first Postmaster General in 1775, a year before the Declaration of Independence. He established the first fire department, a volunteer one. Franklin also started the first library, a subscription library; he and his peers pooled their money to buy books, which they could then take out and read. Sounds a bit socialist, hmm? This library has grown into a great scholarly and research library today, and Franklin hired the first American librarian.
What would the city of Boston be without its famous T? They are proud to have the nation's first subway system, which goes back to the 1800s. It took a bit of socialism to pull that off, not to mention today's Big Dig. And when you tithe at your church and that money goes to pay the salary of the preacher, and church expenses, you're banding together with others in your church community in a little socialist activity.
All of these things are for the public good, and they are too big for the individual to do on his or her own. So we come together, put money in a pot in the form of taxes, and we take on these tasks as communities, as towns, counties, states, as a nation as a whole. And yes that means there is some socialism in our economy, but it wasn't even called that. And that means we redistribute the wealth to where it is most needed for the General Welfare. No, not that kind of welfare. The General Welfare, The Public Good. We all pay for what is good for all of us. We learn in economics class that we have a mixed economy, and these socialist aspects don't make the United States a socialist country any more than voting made Afghanistan a true democracy.
When the country was small we didn't even need an income tax. Until 1817, the federal government got its money from internal taxes, taxes on spirits, carriages, sugar, tobacco, and slaves, but that year it switched to tariffs. The income tax was begun in 1862, was stopped in 1872 and was restarted in 1894. The 16th Amendment was added in 1913 and made the federal income tax a fixture of American life. The income tax has always been progressive, a vital feature we have been losing since 1980. The tax of 1894 applied only to individuals making over $4000 per year, less than 10% of the population. And imagine if the stewards of our money, that is Congress, did not abuse their tax collection powers and truly spent our tax dollars on the general welfare, the more perfect union, domestic tranquility and common defense: taxes would be lower, and so would blood pressure and tempers. So that's one problem.
But I think the main problem is that what these low information voters really mean is that they don't want Marxism, and they think all socialism is Marxism and communism. They think public projects are socialist, therefore, Marxist, and are intended to lead to the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a classless society under communism with central planning and gulags and the whole schmeer. Every thing would be public. By force. I abhor that prospect in every way. And our president is not a Marxist. But what of the opposite? Privatizing? I think that privatizing everything is just as dangerous and as suicidal as communism, but that's a subject for another day.
Communalism is not communism. Communalism is good. Community is not communist. Community is good. The public and the private sectors co-exist beautifully in our culture and have since Ferdinand and Isabella financed Christopher Columbus's plan to find a better route to the West Indies, politically correct or not. Think about that the next time you drive on a public road or mail a letter on your way to the mall.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Kia! What a gift!
Kia is 93 pounds of love and devotion. Her first four weeks here were sometimes hard for her; she was sometimes tense; she even smelled different. I think she never knew when she might be taken away to yet another place. The first time we went for a ride in the car, she was shy about getting into the car and visibly surprised when we returned to the same place we had started from. That night she stuck to me like glue. But now she loves to ride. Kia had been found as a stray, pregnant at that, and all efforts to find her owners failed. The animal shelter eventually sent her to Carolina Great Pyrenees Rescue in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she spent several months before being placed in one of their foster homes. She was in her foster home only three weeks, and then she came to me. She had to be confused. But her uncertainty could not hide her beautiful nature and personality.
And something wonderful happened somewhere around the one-month mark. Kia seemed to realize that this is home, that I am hers; her scent changed, and she embraced her routines with newly found gusto. She guards me and this space as her job. Great Pyrenees are working dogs, and Kia wants something to do. She has a beautiful low-pitched, deep voice, and when she barks, she throws her head back as though she were going to howl.
Shadow, one of my cats, gets me up by 7 or 7:30 every morning, and Kia has her breakfast in the kitchen just a few feet from where the two cats, Shadow and Readmore, are having theirs. If you knew Readmore, you'd know what a miracle this is. Kia never bothers them, never tries to get their food, never pulls rank on them. Readmore was terrified of dogs, and when I had tried to bring other dogs into my home, I could not do it because Readmore fled to the master bedroom, hid, and would not come out, not even for food. I ended up taking food and water upstairs to him, but he only ate when he was alone. But he was never afraid of Kia. He accepted her from the very first day, jumping over her, walking past her, sitting in my lap while I scratched Kia's head and ears. He sensed from the very beginning that Kia was no threat to him. People call Great Pyrenees dogs "gentle giants," and it suits them so well. And they snore.
After breakfast Kia and I go for a walk. We live next to a park. Kia always stands patiently on the stoop, on leash of course, while I lock the door, never starting down the steps without me. When I turn to start our short walk to the park, she trots, she prances, her head held high, she's alert and happy. I seem to be the only person in my neighborhood who goes out armed with a plastic bag to scoop poop, but I don't believe in allowing your dog to mess up common spaces that you share with friends and neighbors. I frequently curse under my breath at the general sorriness of some people. But of course, that's just more delight for Kia, more evidence of who else has been there, and she loves to track. Her nose is to the ground for half our walk. The park is often full of geese and that changes our path. We avoid them. She pays them no mind. But they have a fit over us.
We try to go out again around noon most days. Again she trots and prances to the park. She never pulls on the leash. She usually stays close to me. We walk together. Sometimes she wants to play. She lowers the front of her body, showing that she wants to play, then runs away hoping I will chase her. I run with her as best I can.
Our last walk is just before sunset, whenever that is. I feed Kia and the cats their dinner, and then she and I go out for our good night walk. She can make it til sunrise the next morning.
In the house, Kia is mostly wherever I am. If I am on the left end of the sofa, she is lying curled up at my feet on the left. If I am on the right end of the sofa, she moves to lie in front of me on the right. She sleeps on the floor right below my head. (The cats sleep with me.) But sometimes she stretches out in the middle of the living room rug. She looks huge. She is too large for my German Shepherd crate! Kia comes to you for attention. When you pet her or scratch her head or her ears and try to stop, she takes her paw and reaches for your hand, asking for more. But if you turn your hands and say "All gone," as you would to a child, she understands and leaves you alone.
And Kia loves popcorn. Get yourself a bowl of popcorn, and you will have Kia by your side. I tried tossing pieces to her, and she acted as though no one had ever done that for her before. She does not understand that she is supposed to catch them. She does not even try. But she gets them from the floor, eats them, and she enjoys them. She loves to be hugged and lets me hug her all I want. And when I am done, again here comes that paw asking for more. She's perfect. I haven't found anything wrong with her. Oh yes, there was the time that she jumped up and got an empty skillet off the kitchen counter to lick what had been ham. If that's it, I am surely blessed.
Kia was tan, not really white, when she arrived on Christmas Eve and her nails needed clipping, so I scheduled a grooming for between Christmas and New Years. Imagine my joy when my stunning white Great Pyrenees was brought out to me at the end of the day. She was beautiful, so beautiful that I promoted her to Miss Kia. Miss Kia has let me know that she knows that she is mine and I am hers. I could not be happier.
ADDENDUM: It's Thursday morning, February 10, and I have on television news. Michele Bachman came on to say that her goal was to make Barack Obama a one-term president. Miss Kia began to bark at the TV and to growl at Ms. Bachmann. Good dog!
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
A case for true believers
Martin Link, 47, is scheduled to be executed in Missouri tomorrow, February 9, at 12:01 a.m. Central Time, for a crime he committed 20 years ago. He will be Missouri's first execution in almost two years. But Martin is no martyr. He is a convicted kidnapper, rapist, and murderer. I can't beg for mercy for him because of a biased jury, flimsy evidence, mistaken identity or any other reason. One has to be really against the death penalty to oppose Martin Link's execution. He's a hard man to defend. Even Link has seemed disinterested in saving himself; he attempted suicided by cutting his wrists three years ago. Ironically, prison officials and doctors worked to save his life for his execution. At 12:01 tomorrow morning, tonight really, may God have mercy on him.Elissa Self-Braun was only 11 years old in January, 1991. She had a three-block walk to catch her school bus to Enright Classical Junior Academy in St. Louis, Missouri, a school for gifted children. Elissa left her home on Friday, January 11, around 6:30 a.m. to catch that bus, but she never made it to the school. Four days later, on Tuesday, January 15, her body was found 135 miles from St. Louis on a pile of debris on the banks of the St. Francis River.
A little over a week later, Martin Link was driving in Kirkwood, Missouri, with one headlight out. When police tried to pull him over, he attempted to get away, leading them on a brief high-speed chase until he ran into a telephone pole. So police knew he had more to hide than just an outed headlight. They found in his car a jar of petroleum jelly containing flecks of blood. His fingerprints were identified on the outside of the jar, and the blood found inside the jar was traced to Elissa Self-Braun through DNA analysis. In addition, his DNA matched that found in the sperm on the vaginal swabs taken from Elissa's body. Her blood in his jar, his DNA in her body. A two-way match. That was all the jury needed, and all I need, to find Martin Link guilty of kidnapping, forcible rape, and first-degree murder.
If anyone deserves the death penalty, it is Martin Link. Yet I do not want to see him killed. I do not believe in an eye for an eye. I would prefer life without the possibility of parole. I grieve whenever there is an execution. I grieve for the condemned, whose life is cut short not by God but by the state and who may not yet be prepared to die. I grieve for the victim, in this case the 11-year-old girl Elissa Self-Braun, who must have suffered terribly before her death. God help her. And I grieve for her parents, and all who loved her, who suffered the agony of not knowing where she was or what was happening to her for four days, and who must live without her now and all the hundreds of days in between. But most of all, I grieve for our society, which has so run out of answers and solutions that it knows nothing more to do than to legally sanction the state's taking the life of one of its citizens.
Amnesty International says that the death penalty is "the ultimate denial of human rights. It is the cold-blooded and premeditated killing of a human being by the state." It is also the greatest wielding of state power. Most of the countries in the world have eliminated the death penalty in law or in practice. The United States stands alone among developed Western nations in killing its own citizens, just as we stand alone in the rate at which we kill one another. I think there is a connection there. Life has become pretty cheap in our culture. Because the death penalty is the greatest violation of the right to life, it can only occur when we allow exceptions to that right. And once we begin allowing exceptions, there is no end to the violence. There can be a million excuses to kill.
The anthropologist Colin Turnbull, famous for writing The Forest People and The Mountain People, worked with death row prisoners in his later years. Turnbull wrote about the death penalty, showing how it brutalizes the society that implements it in the true sense of the word 'brutalize.' It hardens our hearts. It makes US brutes. It makes US killers without conscience. What kind of people can rejoice at a death and sing "Burn, Baby, Burn"? What do you have to do to your humanity before you can do that? And what are the repercussions for our society when it's made up of people who have done that to their humanity?
Yes, Martin Link is a brute. He deserves to die. He deserves no mercy. But the nature of mercy is that it is given to the deserving and the undeserving - it is a gift. And do we deserve to be his killers? At 12:01 tomorrow morning, tonight really, may God have mercy on us.
ADDENDUM 6:30 p.m. The U.S. Supreme Court is considering Martin Link's case. At issue is the fact the governor, Jay Nixon, who denied Link's appeal for clemency, was the attorney general when Link was convicted.
ADDENDUM The State of Missouri executed Martin Link at 12:15 a.m., February 9, 2011. The parents of his victim Elissa Self-Braun were present as witnesses. Elissa would now be 31 years old.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Saturday, February 5, 2011
The Woolworth's Sit-In
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| Four students from NC A&T sit in at Woolworth's counter on Feb. 1, 1960 |
I missed a very important anniversary four days ago.
On February 1, 1960, four African American college students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University sat down at a lunch counter and ordered coffee. They were at Woolworth's, in downtown Greensboro, NC, where I had eaten dozens of times as a child when my family left our small town of Reidsville to shop in the big city of Greensboro. However, these young students were not able to do what I could do any time simply because they were black. The lunch counter at Woolworth's was all white. The students were denied service, but they politely refused to leave. They kept their seats, following the policy of nonviolent resistance.
The next day, more than twenty courageous black students came to Woolworth's. They sat quietly and read books, ignoring the heckling and taunting of some of the whites in the crowd. Yet they were still denied service. It was store policy, after all. This time, there was media coverage of the sit-in.
On the third day, more than 60 people came to the protest, yet Woolworth's still would not budge. On the fourth day more than 300 people participated in the protest, so many that the organizers decided to send some to conduct a sit-in at Kress.
Within a week, their courageous refusal to leave without being served until closing had started a peaceful sit-in movement across North Carolina, one that was eventually joined by scores of students and that lasted for months. Civil Rights protests likes this one spread quickly across the south, to Richmond and Nashville, ultimately leading to the desegregation of the lunch counters and restaurants they targeted. But it took months. The African American employees of Woolworth's were the first to be served at that lunch counter on July 25, 1960. The lunch counter was officially desegregated the next day, on July 26, 1960.
The original Woolworth's lunch counter and stools from Greensboro where the first four students sat are still in their original location. In a happening of great irony, the old Woolworth's building has become the International Civil Rights Center and Museum. It opened on February 1, 2010, the 50th anniversary of the sit-in one year ago. A section of the lunch counter can also be seen in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
Small, quiet actions of great courage change the world.
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| The International Civil Rights Center and Museum, Greensboro, NC |
Friday, February 4, 2011
The Big Black Dog of Depression
I have fought the big black dog of depression for more than forty years. It never gets any easier. The problems it causes change as my life changes with my age, but the difficulty stays the same. When I was younger, I was upset a lot, frantic to straighten things out, things that couldn't be straightened. I was also frantic to find answers to questions that couldn't be answered. I found that living with ambiguity and uncertainty was something I could not do. It triggered depression. Now I don't try so hard to do the impossible; I just live with the depression.
Depression is so much more than life's normal sadness or the blues. With depression, you feel empty. Like you are no one. You find you can no longer enjoy things you once enjoyed, no matter how hard you try. You may feel you are living in slow motion; you may need to sleep too much or you may not be able to sleep at all. You will feel fatigue or exhaustion from doing nothing beyond that which you have ever felt from doing something. You have no energy or strength. You may feel guilty and not know why. You may feel worthless and not know why. You may have difficulty concentrating. It may be impossible to make decisions. There is a sense of desolation, of despair, of hopelessness, of sorrow that goes far beyond anything that is normal. You may be tired of being you. You may be tired of being. Depression can even be fatal.
"Depression is a fierce enemy, making it a struggle just to stand up, get dressed and walk around," says Brigette Weeks in Daily Guideposts. "And living with it, the name of the game is to look and act ordinary." That isn't always easy. Sometimes it's impossible to hide the depressions, but you'd be amazed at how often people just don't see it.
For me, the hardest part is the emptiness. When I am empty I cannot talk, I cannot write. Whatever I say feels false and phony even when I know it is sincere. I try so hard to go on as though nothing is happening, and often no one knows but me. But I know, and the cost of performing is high. What I want, what I need is more time to turn inward until I feel strong enough to face the world again. I try to do this while never neglecting the relationships in my life. If I know I'll need to go to bed early and won't be able to be on Facebook for chatting, I'll call a Facebook friend on the phone for a more personal touch instead.
But it is inevitable that there will be people who say you let them down, you didn't chat enough, you didn't come enough, you didn't write enough. And when you are doing all you can do and you can't do any more, then there is a finality to their complaints that you cannot help. You can't do more. And then the emptiness grows even larger; it threatens to swallow you whole. The guilt and shame of failing at friendship pull the floor from under your feet. You are in free fall. Down and down, with no floor. What is there to stop the fall?
Thank God I love politics. I am trying to focus on the poor people in Egypt whose peaceful revolution has turned violent and ugly, through no fault of their own. I am trying to read a little book on the will of God. I have to walk my dog two or three times every day. And I talk to my mother every day. These are my lifelines.
I am in a bad way now. I have let down a friend, who had been one of my lifelines, by needing to sleep and not chat on Facebook. She has decided on her own that her friendship must be too much for me, and so she drew back. I don't think this is just, and I cannot handle that. I have no coping skill for that. I don't let you into my heart easily. I am very careful. I don't have a Plan B. And when you pull back, the empty space you leave is devastating.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Robert Lysiak, Artist's Statement
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| Mountain Barn |
Born on the lower east side of New York City and raised on Long Island, Mr. Lysiak has lived on a 50 acre farm in Trade, Tennessee for the past 28 years with Lynne, his wife of 35 years, Brandon, his 26 year old son, and uncountable dogs and cats. He has raised cattle, goats, hogs, chickens, and, regrettably, geese. Their house is bounded to the east by Snake Mountain and to the west by a wooded ridge rising several hundred feet above the holler. They share the land and air with the deer, hawks, wild turkey, skunks, possums, ferrets, owls and foxes that roam the place day and night. He has built additions on their 80 year old farmhouse himself, wired it, plumbed it, built sheds and repaired fences, doctored livestock, loaded hay and tobacco with friends and neighbors, been selected Johnson County Conservation Farmer of the Year in 1990, cut trees for firewood, cursed at tractors, trucks, and equipment that wouldn't start. He holds a Ph. D. in Middle English Language and Literature and has taught medieval literature and linguistics in the English Department at Appalachian State University since 1973.
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| Chanticleer |
His successful group and solo shows, popular workshops and demonstrations have earned him regional acclaim. Recent awards include Honorable Mention (1998) for "Truck," at the Virginia Highlands Art Show, Abingdon, VA; Best in Show (1999) for "Choppin' Weeds," at the Appalachian Art Show, Kingsport, TN; Award of Merit (1999) for "Twilight Tractor" at the Virginia Highlands Art Show; Award of Excellence (2000) for "The Color of Money" at the Appalachian Art Show; Award of Distinction (2000) for "Summer Maple" at the Virginia Highlands Art Show; Second Place Award (2001) for "Retired" at the Appalachian Art Show; Award of Merit (2001) for "Enraged" at the Virginia Highlands Art Show; Honorable Mention (2001) for "Trio" at the High Country Watermedia Show. He has been featured in Watermedia Focus Workbook, April, 2001. Recent solo exhibitions include "Country People, Country Places" (1999) in the Arts Depot Spotlight Gallery, Abingdon, VA; "All Things Appalachian" (1999) at the Appalachian Cultural Museum, Boone, NC; "Recent Watercolors" (2000) at the Kingsport Renaissance Center; the Ridgefields Country Club, Kingsport (2001), the Artists Palate in Blowing Rock, NC (2001); the Arts Depot Members Gallery (2001); Wilkes Art Gallery, Wilkesboro, NC (upcoming, 2002). He has conducted highly successful workshops for the Kingsport (TN) Arts Guild; The Arts Depot in Abingdon (VA); Cheap Joe's, Boone (NC) for the High Country Watermedia Association. His work is represented in private and corporate collections nationwide.
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| Buttermilk Road |
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
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