Happy Birthday, USA

Two hundred thirty three years ago tonight, it was hot and sticky in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Clouds of biting mosquitos would undoubtedly infect some of those gathered with Yellow Fever for which colonial Philly was famous. Crowds cheered and the Liberty Bell rang as America’s birth certificate was read to the masses. The greatest experiment in representative democracy since the Roman Republic had begun.

Two and a third centuries, five declared wars, a bloody Civil war, many other uses of the armed forces, several recessions, and one Great Depression later and we’re still here. Sure, we may not do everything right everytime, but if we’re such a bad place, why do so many people risk so much — up to and including their lives — to come to our country by any means, legal or illegal?

Truthfully, we need look no farther than the hysteria taking place in Iran. They have an election, the ruling party is theoretically ousted and they don’t leave. Instead, they recount the votes, claim victory, and SHOOT anyone who disagrees. Now, the difference between us and them is, granted, around fifty percent of the people in the country don’t want the person who is President to be President but we don’t SHOOT each other over it.

So, watch the fireworks and let’s hope that when all gets said and done, this recession ends and we keep Cadillacing along. After all, we can’t go under . . . the world needs America. Otherwise, who else would the rest of the world love to hate?

Keep your feet washed y’all and have a happy Fourth

On Father’s Day

Yesterday was Father’s Day. That means Saturday past I had to perform the most difficult scheduled task in my year. I had to pick out a Father’s Day card for Daddy. The problem that makes the task so onerous is my inability to lie to myself and others coupled with the extreme lack of creativity exhibited by most greeting card writers.

Most cards for Father’s Day, at some point in them, will say something on the order of “Thank you for always being there for me” or “I could always count on you being there.” I can’t buy those cards because they would be a lie. Daddy wasn’t always there for me. As a child, he almost NEVER was there for me. I can’t remember a play or a chorus concert he ever attended. I wrestled four years in high school. He came to one match.

Daddy doesn’t live in Texas or Alaska or anywhere else like that. He lives about six or seven miles away from me, as he has pretty much since he left Mama and me.

Now, things are better these days between the two of us. Budge worked very hard in the early years of our marriage to broker, if not complete reconciliation, then at least a peaceful coexistence that allowed us to be in the same room without firing daggers at one another out of our eyes. For reasons I don’t fully understand, Daddy loves my Budge very much — not that I find that hard to believe, but Daddy actually TELLS her he loves her.

So holidays are pretty much enjoyable these days. I can go eat a meal my stepmother (who is the woman Daddy left Mama for) has prepared without nausea; I can even acknowledge that she makes my favorite chicken since Granny Hughes stopped cooking. Daddy, Nicholas (my 12 year younger half-brother, that I don’t count the “half” because none of this sordid mess was his fault and he’s always loved me warts and all), and I can sit in the living room with our spouses and have grown up civil conversations.

Daddy has not mellowed much over the years. Rather, he’s gotten older and so cannot keep up the rant for as long as he once could. He is not a happy man. A good part of that is due to terrible times he endured in Vietnam’s Central Highland killing fields as a 19 year old kid. Some of it is due to Granny’s unyielding and un-breathing over-protectiveness. Some of it is due to his own father, my late, beloved, sainted Papa Wham’s belief that a man showed love to his family by providing comforts for them rather than quality time.

Daddy is very complex and I love him tremendously. I have ALWAYS loved him, even when I’ve wanted to rip his heart out and take a bite out of it right in front of him. At the heart of 99% of everything I’ve ever done, attempted, or accomplished has been the desire for two things: to show Daddy just what a great thing he left AND to hear him say, “Son, I’m very proud of you.” He will never admit the former and I still haven’t heard the latter in 38 years.

I cannot discuss my relationship with Daddy in “adult terms” because, for reasons I can’t explain, but my therapist probably can, any discussion of Daddy and I turns me back into a helpless, fat, blubbering, five-year old standing on the front porch of the trailer where I grew up watching Daddy put his bags in the truck I “helped” him paint as I begged him not to leave then watching him leave.

We have an understanding now, Daddy and I. No peace treaty has ever been signed. We are rather more like the DMZ of North and South Korea than we are the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri. I do love him and I live to please him AND over the years I’ve learned as a man things that a child cannot have understood. Daddy isn’t quite the monster that five year old inside me accuses him of being. Mama wasn’t quite the angelic saint the five year old clung to. In my five year old mind, the math is simple. Mama stayed; Daddy left. That was as far as I took the matter for years and it remains the “argument ending” fallback position. But I do love Daddy.

I just have a very hard time finding him a Father’s Day card that is truthful AND loving.

Fathers out there. Take this post for what it’s worth to you.

Sons out there. You do the same.

The phone lines run both ways. So do the post office, the cell towers, and email. Don’t tell me it’s too hard and don’t DARE tell me I don’t understand.

So, until next time. Love y’all like always.

Keep cool and wash your feet.

On The Reality of Free Will

I believe in God and Jesus. I was raised a Southern Christian. Fire Baptized Pentecostal in fact, and that’s about as Southern and as Christian as you can get. Folks who threw eggs and rotten tomatoes at our church said we were just one step removed from snake-handlers. Shame they didn’t come on Saturday nights; they might have changed their minds about that last one.

Anyway, if you’re still reading and haven’t turned me off, understand that I hold no animosity towards anyone’s religion. More people have been killed in the name of whatever someone calls “god” or “God” than every other reason combined. I just had to let you know where I stand theologically or this particular post wouldn’t make sense. If you are an atheist, read on and chuckle if you must. I won’t take offense. I’m just betting you’re wrong and you’re betting I’m wrong. No big deal. Certainly not worth shooting people over. Jesus wouldn’t like that.

So, one of the biggest debates in Christendom for the last two millenia is the idea of Free Will versus Presdestination. Now I could go all theology school on you, but I won’t. Here’s the skinny: some Christians believe man has free will to do pretty much as he pleases while others believe God has everything mapped out. After what I’ve seen this week, I feel completely certain man has free will. Here’s why.

God takes care of the animals. It says so in the Bible in several places. I could cite book, chapter, and verse, but we’d be here all night so I’m asking you to just go with me on this one. God looks after the animals. Now, God programmed the animals with what we call “animal instincts.” It’s what makes meat eaters hunt veggie eaters and veggie eaters hunt salad bars and so on down the line. Now, that’s point one. God takes care of the animals and He’s programmed them to best act and do in order to further their own good health.

Here’s point two. I live in South Carolina. We have three seasons. here They are hot and a little humid, hot and ungodly humid, and January. This week has been the first good week of the “hot and ungodly humid” season. You could drink the air. Flying fish jump out of the water and just keep flying because they can breathe the so called “air” through their gills. If you have naturally curly hair, well, find a good therapist because a hairstylist isn’t going to do you a lick of good.

Now to put point one and point two together. If you drive by a cow pasture (field of grass ringed with “bob” wire and containing bovines for those from the city) on days like we’ve had lately, all the cows will be in the pasture pond if one is available. If no pond is to be had, they will be in the woods at the edges of the field in the shade. If the pasture is completely open, they will, at least, be sedately sitting or lying in the lush grass. That is because God did not give cows Free Will. He gave cows good sense. When it is 90 degrees, with over 80% humidity and not a breath of air stirring, cows understand that their place is resting somewhere as cool as possible. Remember? No free will because God takes care of the cows (and horses, chickens, etc.).

Now let us turn to humans and their obvious possession of Free Will. Humans have developed something called (cue the angelic choir) “air conditioning”. This modern day manna factory takes “hot and ungodly humid” air and cools and dries it so that we who were made in His image can make it through a day at the office or a night in the bed without profaning His Name because it is “TOO *&*&%&% HOT TO SLEEP.” God gave man the knowledge to create such wonders as “air conditioning” and I, as a fat man, am very thankful He did.

HOWEVER, humans do have Free Will. I know this because this week, Budge and I passed not one, not two, but about six people JOGGING always at around 12 NOON in NINETY ONE DEGREE HEAT. The heat index was WAY over 100 and there they were in their clinging, sweat soaked tank tops over Spandex jogging shorts that should NEVER have been made in THAT size, just jogging along. They pretty much looked like microwaved death on a stick. That is how I know that humans have Free Will. Cows and horses, because of the instinct that God endowed them with, know to find somewhere cooler and out of the sun to rest in the heat of the day. Dogs instinctively know to root under the porch and lie spreadeagled on the dirt to get cool. Cats? Well, cats just make their pet humans turn down the (cue angelic choir) “air conditioning.”

But not humans. God gave our race the freedom of choice to go out and die of a heatstroke in the name of “getting healthy” any old time we want. He decreed that if we wished to “lay out in the sun” and roast ourselves like a cheap hot dog on the rotisserie at the local Stop and Steal, then so be it. But as for this pasty white Pillsbury Dough Boy fat man, I’ll be forever grateful for the knowledge Our Father gave us of (cue angelic choir) “AIR CONDITIONING.”

Can I get an amen?

Stay cool and wash your feet in COLD WATER if y’all are down here.

Love y’all.

Is Anyone Listening?

Sometimes I feel no one is listening to me. I talk and I write and I try to get to the heart of very important things, but it seems that a great many people either tune me out or mentally pat me on the head as if to say, “There, there now, dear, it’s not good for your blood pressure to get so worked up.”

On good days, when the medication is working the way it’s supposed to, I realize that I’m not alone and most people prefer not to hear unpleasant things (unless the unpleasantness is someone like Brittney Spears singing) and they would rather just pretend that everything is okay. I wish I had the ability to do that. It would make my life — and Mama’s and Budge’s — a lot easier. Forty six years ago this week, people weren’t listening in South Vietnam either.

Right here and now, let me be clear. This is not a post or discussion of the Vietnam War. My kind and fun-loving father fought and died in Vietnam and sent a similar looking stranger that no one in the family, including Mama, knew back to his home in his place. I lost the father I never got to know to the Vietnam War — that is all I know of that war and I’m quite passionate about that fact. If you don’t believe me, feel free to contact the Clemson professor who told the class I sat in my sophomore year that Vietnam was fought by a bunch of drugged out baby killers. I did manage to graduate once the charges were dropped though. So, spout politics around me all you want, but leave the Southeast Asian War Games out of it.

But I digress.

Forty six years ago. South Vietnam. The president of that vile little nation was a vile little man named Ngô Đình Diệm. Under his administration, religious freedom was quashed throughout the land. The Mahayana Buddhist monks of the country were especially hard hit and oppressed. Their temples were being invaded and destroyed in some cases and many of the monks themselves were jailed or, in some cases, murdered outright. Despite the protests from within and without the country, Diem turned a deaf ear to the monks’ pleas. He simply refused to listen to them. Unfortunately, lots of the powerful people in his nation and the world at large didn’t listen either. It wasn’t their concern, they weren’t Mahayana Buddhists, it didn’t affect them, they weren’t going to worry about it.

Then along came fifty-six year old monk Lâm Văn Tức. He didn’t feel anyone was listening to him either and it broke his heart and moved him to take action to ensure people would listen. At rush hour on June 11,  1963, he, accompanied by a handful of his monastic brothers and pupils, walked out into the busiest intersection in Saigon, seated himself in the lotus position, poured five gallons of gasoline over his head and body, lit himself on fire, folded his hands in his lap, and burned to death. Perhaps you’ve seen the Pulitzer Prize winning picture taken by Malcolm Browne?

Lam Van Troc burning himself to death June 11, 1963.

The administration didn’t immediately cease the crackdowns, but the monk’s actions had inflamed the population against Diem. Before the end of 1963, he would be dead by an an assassin’s bullet and his government replaced by a military coup. The oppression ended then. It took drastic measures, but someone finally started listening.

Now, I don’t think anyone who reads this should self-immolate. I am using the extreme to draw attention to the mundane. Having said that, do you think anyone is listening to teachers, librarians, parents, police officers, firemen . . .?

The list could go on. Our professions are attacked and our motives vilified. We make too much money and the students we turn out are inferior. We are saddled with laws and policies and rules that we had no voice in making and the people who made them will take no hand in bringing to fruition. Is anyone listening?

I have a very short time left that y’all will listen to me. That’s why I’m writing these hard to take posts now instead of usual summer fare. I’m not employed anymore . . . it seems increasingly unlikely that I will be a librarian or an educator of any sort come start of school next year. For good or bad, it seems principals don’t want “my type” in their schools. That means I’ll begin losing credibility with others who are educators because I won’t be “in the trenches” anymore, so I’m trying to fire you up now and leave you with a battle call that lasts after your memory of me fades.

Summer is here. Rest, recuperate. Most of all, though, plan your battles for the upcoming year. You are usually your students’ best advocates. You often know them better than their parents. Do not allow them to squander their potential, but more than that, do not allow the godforsaken system of testing and “rote”ssiere learning to victimize their spirits. Every brawl I’ve gotten into with the powers that be has been over my doing what I thought best for children. Whatever I’ve done, for nearly fifteen years now, I’ve done for my kids. When no one would listen, I made them hear, but that kind of passion is not without its price as Don Quixote and I have discovered.

I know lots of you may not feel like it, but I won’t be there to carry on the fight . . . so don’t let the fight die down.

Please. For me. For them.

Now, wash your feet, y’all, preferably in a nice cool ocean surf on some beach . . . somewhere.

Till next time. Love y’all.

Of Crabs and Their Buckets

This post has been on my mind for quite some time now and tonight is just as good a night as any to get it off my chest. Not to put too fine a point on it, I am sick and tired of fighting the crab bucket people inhabiting this crab bucket world with its abundance of crab bucket mentality.

Some of you get the allusion right off; others of you are convinced, if you weren’t already, that I have finally lost my mind. I stepped in something barefooted and the toxins went through the crust on my grocery store feet and right to my brain. I hear you thinking now, “The poor man (or we would say here in the South, “Bless his heart”) he’s overcome by seafood.”

For those who don’t know the story, a young man walked up to a guy crabbing off a pier and noticed the crabber had a bucket with several crabs in it and the bucket had no lid. Being a curious sort, the youngster inquired of the man why his bucket was lidless. Wasn’t he afraid of losing his hard won bounty? The crabber’s reply is telling and if we work in education it sticks a knife in our guts if we dare to give it more than a passing read; if we really let it sink in: “No son, you don’t have to put a lid on a crab bucket. The crabs take care of themselves. Soon as one gets a claw on the bucket rim and starts to work its way out, some of the others will grab it and drag it back on down into the bucket. Seems like they want to make sure everyone gets to the boiling water together.“

Know any crabs? Seen a bright student flush with potential get locked onto by some pincer claws and pulled back down into the crab bucket chaos? Crabs are everywhere and we’re all in the middle of a big crab bucket. The easiest crabs to deal with are those outside. They’re a lot of them, but they can be quickly dismissed as lacking intelligence enough to discuss the matter at hand. Politicians seem to be a crabby lot and they come to mind in this first bunch. You know the ones who get up and bluster “our public schools are FAILING OUR CHILDREN and if you elect me and support my voucher campaign, we’ll fix everything!!!!” Those of y’all working in those so-called “failing schools” and turning out exceptional children each year probably get a little nauseated everytime you feel that cold crab claw closing.

The second species of crabs are much worse . . . much, much worse. They are the insiders. They are the purest form of crab because they really ARE in the same bucket with you. Ever heard one colleague remark about or even TO another colleague something on the order of “I don’t know why you are bothering with National Boards (or getting a Phd or another Masters or working with a difficult child or using a different brand of toilet paper . . . etc) because it’s just a waste of time and effort because . . . ” and the old crab gives a list of reasons why “it’s a waste of time and effort” and, more often than not, the poor crabbitten victim starts to believe some of the poison.

So crabs are everywhere. You’ve got your Principal Crabs, your School Board Crabs, Parent Crabs, and the list can go on and on of people who just seem to enjoy watching, and sometimes helping, others fail. It’s human nature at its absolute worst. “I can’t do that so I’ll be hanged if I let you do that.” We think that schoolyard stuff gets left behind in the halls of middle school, but it has a way of surviving. Crabs are a very old group of animals and they’ve adapted well at surviving.

Still, those aren’t the worst crabs. The absolute, no doubt, bar none worst crab we have to deal with is the one reading this computer screen right now. Yep, I said it. WE are our own WORST CRABS. We listen to the devil on our shoulders. We believe the negative self talk and depressing thoughts about ourselves that always seem present. How many of you have ever sat down to hash out how you were going to do something new and innovative? How many times have you had to fight through the self-whispers like “What am I thinking?” and “This’ll never work!”

Dunno, maybe I’m the only one who has to deal with a nasty crusteacean between my ears. In any event, it’s up to us to fight back and claw our way out of these buckets we’re in by any means necessary. For some, it may mean a job change while for others it may take setting different boundaries with some family members. You can be your sweet Aunt Rosie’s right rear cheek that it won’t be easy, no matter what. But, you owe it to yourself to do it.

If I’d listened to the crab-thoughts in my head, I’d never have set foot on a college campus, much less ended up with a MLIS, and I’m a horrible crab fighter. So, the old school year just ended. Crush all your crabs and have a good old fashioned Lowcountry Boil. Vow right now to make next year a crab free time.

While you’re at it . . . watch out for your kids and for each other. Sometimes it’s easier for a friend to knock those pesky creatures off another friends back. Remember what I’ve always said if you don’t remember anything else I ever right in this dinky little corner of cyberspace “we are all on this rock together and we won’t make it if we don’t help each other AND just because no one else seems to want to help is no reason I shouldn’t.” We’ve got to look out for each other, y’all. It’s the only way we’ll make it.

Until next time, check out some of the new members of my blog roll for some crab fighting tips and as always, I love y’all and don’t forget to wash your feet.

The Longest Day

I won’t belabor my point and post today. Suffice it to say that 65 years ago today, a brave group of men from America and our Allies launched the largest beach assault the world had ever seen. It was the beginning of the campaign to retake Europe from the hands of a madman. It was D-Day for Operation Overlord.

Every June 6, I always miss Papa Wham even more than on other days. Papa was a member of the Big Red One, the US Army’s First Infantry Division. His DD-214 reads like a map of the European / African / Mediterranean Theater of WWII. The one battle he would never discuss with me, however, was that day at Normandy. From snatches overheard in the back room of the store Papa ran while the old men talked about The War when they thought I wasn’t listening, this is what I managed to piece together.

Papa was in the fourth wave to hit Omaha Beach. The two boats to either side of his were blown to bits by artillery, probably an .88 on Point Du Hoc, before they ever made the surf line. He was one of ten men to get out of his LC-I alive when the ramp dropped, one of five to reach the beach proper through the surf, one of three to take cover behind a tank barricade, and the single survivor of that craft once the sun had set. From that strip of beach, he walked all the way to the Rhine River.

In any event, Papa wouldn’t ever watch the movie “The Longest Day” and he was gone on before “Saving Private Ryan” made Tom Hanks a legend. Normally, he didn’t have flashbacks and if he suffered PTSD (as I’m certain he must have to some degree) he suffered quietly, but around D-Day, he would often get moody and, every tenderhearted, he would cry much easier than usual. Daddy, who had fought in his own war, tried to explain it to me as Papa’s way of remembering all those boys on that beach so far away.

As for me, all I can say is how much I appreciate Papa making it home, but I also appreciate all those young lifes who gave up all their tomorrows so that I could have a future. I only knew my papa, but I imagine there were many, many papas among those boys. Many papas who would never get to bounce a grandchild on their knees, but who were willing to die storming a beach to assure that someone would bounce that grandchild in freedom.

Freeing Europe from the Nazi fist was a job that had to be done, and Papa Wham, and the tens of thousands of men like him, did it. God help us if that need should ever arise again. Given the “me first” attitude and utter decadence of our current American society, I doubt a modern day Hitler would have anything to worry his sleep.

Of Tragedy and Old Friends

I stopped by Kentucky Grilled Chicken (?!?!?) today for a three honey BBQ snacker snack at lunchtime. I was done with the tater wedges and halfway through my second snacker when an old friend showed up in the KFC (KGC . . . KGB . . . ???). Now when I say “old friend”, this chicka is quite possibly my second oldest friend in the world. She and I literally have known each other from right near the cradle. We went through twelve years of grade school and K5 together. I distinctly remember talking her out of playing with the toy kitchen set in Miss Coggins’ room so she would come play in the sandbox with me. Birthday parties, McDonald’s parties, swimming dates. We go way back.

For the purpose of this story, her name will be Nadia. First, I don’t want her real name plastered all over the Internet because she’s a private person and second, I didn’t go to school with anyone named Nadia at any time that I can remember, so people won’t be running to the old yearbooks (as if they cared) to see who I’m talking about.

Nadia was one of my first kindergarten crushes. I thought she was beautiful with china blue eyes and long snowy blond hair, but even more, she was cute and funny. She was a lot like me. Her parents were the first couple in my dinky little home town to get divorced after mine broke the ice. It wasn’t much of a loss for the family since her dad was, as Papa used to put it, “not worth the powder it would take to blow his brains out.” Still, not much ever seemed to get her down. She was the middle child of three, then the second oldest of four when her mother got a bit of a surprise when Nadia and I were beginning sixth grade. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the only surprise Nadia’s family would get that year.

Nadia was the most graceful gymnast I knew in my short life. She was athletic all around — great runner, champion swimmer, etc. — but her true gift lay on the floor exercise platform. I still recall our sixth grade talent show when she did her floor routine and absolutely floored everyone else. Her dream was the Olympics. She had her sights set on Los Angeles and 1984 and none of us, young or old, doubted her ability or commitment. We joked in math class about how much tickets to LA would cost. Our closest airport wasn’t even equipped for that kind of trip then. Nadia had big dreams and we all dreamed with her. Somewhere boxed up I’ve got a wallet sized picture of her in her leotard with her rhythm hoop. She’s smiling that spotlight smile and looks for all the world like she was posing on the podium getting the gold medal.

If iPods had been around in 1982, I don’t doubt for a minute she’d have made LA. Nadia, her mother, her mother’s best friend, and Nadia’s three sisters, including the baby, were on their way home in a car driven by Nadia’s oldest sister, who had just gotten her permit. The cassette they were listening to reached the end and automatically ejected. It came out of the player and fell to the floor beneath the sister’s feet. When her sister glanced down to mark where it fell, the car was in the beginning of a curve and drifted into the path of a fully loaded gravel truck  from the local quarry.

The Highway Patrol statement said there were no skid marks visible from either vehicle. Neither driver had touched a brake pedal. The truck was stopped by climbing atop the car and sliding several hundred feet until both vehicles went into the ditch. The truck driver was physically unscathed and everyone, including Nadia, have always maintained there was nothing humanly possible he could have done to avoid the collision. In any event, I heard the accident drove him to the bottle. Whether that is true or not, I can’t say. You’ll hear anything in a small town.

What is a fact is Nadia’s Olympic dream ended in a tangle of sheet metal and diesel fuel. Her spine was severed right below her belly button. She would never walk again. Her mother, the friend, oldest sister, and the baby, who wasn’t in a car seat because she didn’t have to be in those days, all died at the scene. Nadia’s next sister, seated at impact between the friend and Nadia, walked away with a cut over her left eye that required five stitches.

I don’t know many well adjusted grown men and women who could have withstood a tragedy of that magnitude with all mental flags flying, but Nadia seemed to. I don’t pretend to know what nightmares have ridden roughshod through her dreams these last thirty years, but I know she took to her wheelchair like the proverbial duck to water. After some therapy, she was riding rings around her grandmother and grandfather’s home. She even came back to school and finished the year.

In those pre-Americans with Disabilities Act days, our beloved principal and several of the more “handy” fathers came to the school several days over the winter break and built ramps to every place they could imagine Nadia wanting to go. She was given a key to the faculty bathroom because it was the only restroom in the school large enough to accommodate her and her wheelchair. One of her trusted friends would always accompany her in case she fell making the transition from chair to commode and back. That’s how we did it back then. We took care of each other.

Nadia was the first handicapped person I knew up close and personal. She could have been the poster child for how to deal with the biggest poop sandwich I’ve ever seen handed to one person in one lifetime. She was, and still is, a survivor. She and I graduated the same night and I lost track of her for some time. Then I started running into her at local stores and such. She was still pretty as ever. In time’s due course, she married a very kind and decent man. He was with her today. They have four children and the oldest was graduating tonight, just as his mother and I did these twenty years gone.

So I told y’all Nadia’s story to tell you, and myself, this little tidbit — it could ALWAYS be worse. What’s more, when it GETS worse, it’s up to you how to handle it. If anyone in this world has ever had a right to end up hooked on drugs or completely depressed or suicidal, Nadia was that person. That wasn’t how she rolled, pun intended, though. One dream and most of her family had died, but the woman I saw today still had a head held high and her china blue eyes still sparkled. The snow blond hair had some grey streaks, but mine does as well and my life has been a cakewalk compared to Nadia’s. So don’t take anything for granted folks. Life moves at the speed of love and it moves by very fast. Nadia is moving right along with it. She’s been an inspiration to me for going on thirty years now. I hope her story inspires some of y’all as well.

So, love y’all bunches and now that summer’s here, when y’all come in from chasing fireflies, don’t forget to wash your feet!

In Memorium 2009

As you read this post, I ask that you please leave your politics at the door and join with me to remember Lexington, Yorktown, Lake Erie, New Orleans, Shiloh, Antietam, San Juan Hill, Santiago, Belleau Wood, Ypres, Argonne, Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Anzio, Normandy, Inchon, Chosin, Khe Sahn, Da Nang, Saigon, Kuwait City, Baghdad, Fallujah, Tikrit, Kabul, and a thousand other bloody fields famous, infamous, or maybe forgotten where American men and, lately, women have spilled their blood to dye the red stripes of Old Glory and keep her waving high.

They did not have the luxury of picking their wars or their battles. The veteran of the jungles of I Drang could not switch places with his forebear at Iwo Jima. One who stormed the beach at Sicily cannot walk through the Sunni Triangle. At this time and on this day, let there be no debate over whether their cause was just . . . they fought and they died for their comrades in arms, their families back home, and for their country.

Please do not demean or belittle the names on the black granite scar because they did not free the world of tyranny as their comrades enshrined a few hundred yards away did. They went where they were told to go and they all, from the colonial militiaman taking aim at a Redcoat to the squad of Marines creeping house to house in Iraq, died under arms to make this country — for good or ill — what it is today.

General Sherman said that war is indeed hell, but, sadly, war and death will always be necessary so long as Lady Liberty lifts her light in New York Harbor. This country will always be hated for what we stand for, warts and all. So let us look with awe upon the rows of white stones at Arlington, the sea of white crosses overlooking the beaches at Colleville-sur-Mer, the monuments in over a hundred cemeteries here and abroad where brave men and women lie still and cold in the earth’s embrace that liberty and freedom might burn hot and active across this country.

Never forget them. Never forget the price they paid. They are our fathers and mothers, our brothers and sisters, our relatives and friends.

They are the honored dead.

Remember them.

In Flanders Fields

By: Lt Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

What Does Pelosi Know About This?

Okay, so Friday, The Reason I Get Up In The Morning and our adopted 30 year old girl child wanted to go to the local Vietnamese Embassy nail parlor to have that quintessential rite of womanhood relaxation — the pedicure. I, being the manly man, stayed in the car with my iPod and played Solitaire — that quintessential rite of manhood relaxation.

Well, the days are beginning to heat up here in the South after a particularly wonderful spell of unseasonably cool and non-humid weather and the Midnight Blue of the Santa Fe began to draw a mite too much heat for my comfort. So, when the sweat rivulets began to form, I struck my flag in surrender and went into the nail parlor where it was cooler.

Once I recovered from the assault on my nose from whatever noxious and probably toxic chemicals were venting into the air, I settled down on a pagoda armed chair and went back to my Solitaire game. I looked up every now and again just to maintain an air of situational awareness and the last time I looked up, my two female charges were head to head with the diminutive owner of the business. Once glance in my direction and I knew the day was about to take a turn for the strange.

Sure enough, the ladies had bought me a pedicure. Now I could have stood my ground and battled for my manly rights to grocery store feet and lack of daintiness, but it was two and a half against me and I just didn’t have the energy to mount the necessary defense. So, in the name of science (at least that’s what I told myself) I mounted the raised platform and sank into the depths of a surprisingly large and comfortable Naugahyde recliner with a foot basin at the bottom. No sooner had I settled in than said basin began filling with fizzy blue water. This piqued my interested because the fizzy blue water was exactly the shade of fizzy blue water that Granny Wham went to great lengths to keep my feet — and other body parts — out of when I was younger. Of course, that water had been contained in a basin of a different material and makeup, thus the difference. Still, the cognitive dissonance was there.

Once the basin was filled and the water jets were jetting, a tiny, tiny, tiny ageless but seemingly young and definitely dainty Asian lady came up to me, smiled at me and, by pointing, made me to understand I was to put my feet into the fizzy blue water. I did so. Then I sat marinating my prized grocery store feet in fizzy blue water for ten minutes.

At the end of the aforementioned marinating time, the aforementioned animated doll came up and seated herself on a stool at my feet. Then she opened a drawer next to the basin. This drawer was filled with a variety of implements that I had not seen since the final torture scene of Braveheart. My apprehension grew, fueled not only by the sight of the drawer of horrors, but also by some nagging thought that I should remember something that was gnawing at the fringes of my consciousness. This seemed singularly important, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not bring the memory to recall.

So, somewhat confused over my nagging memory, I put myself into the hands of the dainty picture at my feet. She again smiled sweetly and touched my right calf in a manner that I assumed, correctly it turned out, meant, “please take this huge beef shank out of the fizzy blue water and place it on the stand in front of the basin.” I complied and she picked up some metal and plastic tool closely resembling a piece of two by four with sixteen penny nailed studded throughout it. Budge told me it was a callous file. In any event, the precious lady at my feet grasped the “file” in one hand and clamped down on my right foot in a grip of iron. It was at that moment I remembered what my brain had been trying to tell me for the last twenty minutes.

The bottoms of my feet are ungodly ticklish.

For as long as I can remember, anyone wanting to torment me who could manage to contain my size and adrenaline would grasp my ankle and proceed to run fingers or a feather or anything lightly over the sole of my foot. I would explode into paroxysms of laughter and involuntary spasms of jerking and kicking. As a child, it was the favorite pastime of my beloved Uncle Larry to hold me off the ground dangling upside down by one foot while he tickled said foot and watched me turn blue. Once, however, he made the mistake of doing this not knowing I’d eaten a half-gallon of Rocky Road ice cream right before he arrived. Granny Wham and Aunt Cathy were none too happy at the resulting inverted geyser. But I digress.

The foot therapist’s touch immediately triggered the old reactions and it was only at the last second and only by brute force that I managed not to unleash a front kick that would have no doubt propelled my attendant through the air and probably the far wall. For the next fifteen minutes, thirty if one counts the repeat performance on the left foot, I fought back insane laughter and jerky twitches of my poor assaulted feet. To make matters worse, my beloved and our girl child sat next to me visibly shaking as they tried to contain their laughter.

Finally, it was over, or so I thought. She released my feet into the fizzy blue water and I took a breath for the first time in nearly half an hour. Then she turned to her assistant and said something in the melodious sing song that is the Vietnamese language. I soon found out that her words loosely translated into, “Please bring me two asbestos bags of molten lava to help soften and rejuvenate this poor sap’s feet.” Of course, I didn’t know at the time that the beautiful amber liquid in the plastic bags the assistant brought was the temperature of the Sun’s corona. So, I unthinkingly and meekly put both feet into the bags . . . and watched through tears as my toenails melted off. As the “paraffin” hardened like so much basalt around my poor feet, I thought of how I was going to crawl to the car and, once I reached home, I’d have to rename the blog “Granny Beads and Grocery Store Ankle Stumps”.

Then, as quickly as the whole process began, it was over. The bags were removed from my feet, my calves were massaged with fragrant lotion, and my torturess was remarking how much she’d enjoyed working me since I was a “big man, like [her] husband.” I thanked her and told her that was wonderful and the intimate contact we had enjoyed with her at my feet made us husband and wife in several cultures, but irony doesn’t translate well.

So, we paid our bill and I walked out to the car on callous free feet as far from grocery store grime as the day I was born. In retrospect, the feeling was delicious and I can totally see how ladies become addicted to the experience. Perhaps next time, I’ll go for the hot stone massage . . . we’ll just have to be very clear on our definitions of “hot.”

Until then, wash your feet in fizzy blue water!

Love y’all

Midweek Drama!

It never ceases to amaze me just exactly what people put each other through. I look around and see all these folks eating at each other and tearing each other down and more often than not, the worst perps are the ones who claim to love each other the most. I’ve always maintained that if your family cannot drive you insane, you cannot be driven insane. Here’s my case in point about the painfulness of love.

I went to eat with Mama today at the Waffle House. After I had my waffle, hashbrowns, and Diet Coke, I headed back to the house. It was 9:30ish. I pulled into the neighborhood and was greeted by an interesting parade. A woman, looking around mid twenties, was booking it at a power walk pace up towards the main road. She had a small girl-child on her right hip and was clutching the hand of a slightly older girl-child in her left hand. This wee one had to jog to keep up with the woman’s frantic pace. To make the image even more surreal, a small dog — possibly a chihuahua or a Jack Russell — was cavorting madly around the two walkers’ feet, yapping its head off the whole time. The woman had what I can only describe as a maniacal look on her face. She was all wild-eyed and her hair was a disheveled mop atop her head. We made eye contact briefly and she looked possessed by some hidden insanity.

Twenty five yards or so back of her was a swarthy complected guy with a buzz cut, muscle shirt, and tattoos on his right bicep and right and left forearms. He had two clear plastic bags full of stuff thrown over his left shoulder and was obviously trying to catch the diminutive Amazonian who had just gotten to the entrance of the subdivision. His pace was steadier and slower than hers and he seemed to be patiently following.

I went by, pulled into my driveway, sat there for about fifteen seconds, then backed out to go see what I could do to help the situation. To anyone out there who may be contemplating a similar move, may I respectfully request that you refrain from doing so. I am a professional nutcase and have absolutely no idea what I am doing in cases like these, but I am driven by some inner Saint Bernard spirit to help — even against my better judgment. Just remember that of all the dangerous situations law enforcement officers find themselves in, the one they fear the most is a domestic disturbance call. Anything can happen.

So I pull back through the neighborhood and take a left. The woman is still nearly running on up ahead and the guy is still patiently plodding along after her. I pull up alongside him, roll down the window and ask “Dude, you need some help with something?” He turns and smiles wearily and says, “No thanks.” I jerk my head towards the woman and say, “Y’all in a fight or something?” He nods and I nod and drive on up the road. He doesn’t need my help. Things are well in hand. I pass the woman, who is now trying to flag down ANY passing vehicle, and pull through the local Stop and Steal to make a u-turn and head back to the house.

Up ahead, the woman has stopped a green Toyota Corolla and hurled both children AND Spike into the car. Now, both of those girls should have been in car seats, but I sensed that was the least of the issue at the moment. I could see the woman inside gesticulating wildly at the driver who stepped on the gas. The guy then stepped in front of the car. Luckily, she screeched to a halt in front of him and went to turn around him. He shifted to stay in front of the vehicle. At this point, the Tony Stewart wannabe driving the car throws it into reverse and comes barrelling back towards ME. I perform some sort of vehicular ballet to avoid being made road pizza as the Corolla executes a J-turn that would make a highway patrolman proud and zooms away.

I look over at the guy who has walked into the driveway of a shutdown business and dropped his physical burden. From the look on his face, though, what he’s carrying inside is much heavier than what he’s got in those two sacks. I pull over and roll the window down again and call out, “NOW do you need some help?!” He gives me a weary smile and brings the bags over. I give him a quick lesson in how to open the passenger door of a Honda Element and he’s inside and we’re all good, considering.

“So, ” I start, “where can I take you to regroup?” He smiles again and asks me if I can take him to the end of this particular road. Well, I’m not taking medicine and I don’t have a watch to stand, so I pull out and head towards where he points. I don’t say anything so he starts. Here’s the gist of the story.  He’s 27 from Puerto Rico via New Jersey (talk about a stranger in a strange land), out of work, and as he puts it, “having a really bad Wednesday.” Wild woman is 25 and is his children’s mother. The girl she was carrying was released from the hospital on Monday after a bout of pneumonia that nearly killed her. She still has a PIC line in her chest and as my passenger put it she’s “supposed to be on the way to the doctor right NOW for a followup”

One of the bags contained several dozen packages that I recognized as nebulizer packets for breathing treatments. The other sack held the machine, wrapped in a quilt. Anyway, the mother is supposed to be taking medicine for her “head” because she “goes a little loco sometimes,” but she’s “stubborn and won’t take it like she’s supposed to so she gets like this.” She had gotten into an altercation with her grandmother, whom the couple was staying with, that ended with her shoving the grandmother down, throwing a chair throught the sliding glass door, and storming out with the children. He said, “I’m just trying to get to her because my daughter has to have one of these treatments every 90 minutes and she’s due for the next one right now.”

I just listened. I’ve seen this before and I know what happens when a person who’s supposed to be taking anti-psychotics or anti-depressants doesn’t follow the prescribed regieme. A bad situation actually gets worsened by what was supposed to improve it. I told him that, in my opinion, following her was useless at this point and what he needed to do was get somewhere safe with people he could rely on and form a plan. He agreed and twenty minutes and a life story later, I dropped him off at what he described as his aunt’s home. I asked him what he was going to do and he told me of his intention to call his sister to come pick him up and the two of them would go find the mother and the children (and Spike too, I hope).

As he left, I gave him a $20 bill and said, “Take this so you can buy your sister’s gas. It’ll keep her in a little better mood while y’all are hunting.” He took the money reluctantly and thanked me over and over again. I told him not to worry about it, just find his daughter and take care of her.

I told Budge about it and she reminded me I was going to get shot one day pulling stunts like that. I told her I knew but when that time came to remember that I didn’t want to be buried in a suit and I wanted to wear my favorite pair of lime green Crocs.

So that was my Wednesday morning. Maybe what I did was crazy, getting in the middle of a “domestic dispute.” Still, I figure we are all traveling together on this little blue marble in space. We have to help one another out if we’re gonna make it. So wash your feet, y’all, and be good to each other.